Month: September 2007

After the debacle of missing the Republican debate hosted by Tavis Smiley at the HBC, Morgan State University by the four front-running Republican candidates it would be easy to dismiss their failure to participate as racism. Many pundits and bloggers have made that connection, with many saying that unlike their good friend Bill O’Reilly these candidates still believe that the “negroes will not be well-behaved” and there is a difference. I think to take this tack is to misunderstand the state of racial affairs in America. With the stakes as high as they are and with the spotlight beaming on race relations thanks to our friends in Jena, La, would any candidate be stupid enough to be so blatantly racist? Maybe, but I doubt it, so what is the answer to them being willing to ignore the black voters of America and not worry about backlash?
I am afraid the true answer is much more frightening than the easy answer. Many people believe falsely I think that the opposite of love is hate or racism, but I disagree. I think that the opposite of love is indifference. Indifference says that I don’t care if you live or die just don’t bother me. In the story of “The Good Samaritan” the other travelers didn’t hate the victim; they just didn’t care enough to get involved. Unfortunately, this is the attitude of many of the “core base” of the Republican Party and it was expressed by their candidates in their refusal to participate in the debate. It isn’t that they hate, they just really don’t care.

This attitude of indifference is most profoundly directed at Blacks and immigrants, but it is also directed toward anyone that doesn’t share their religious and moral beliefs as well. By their refusal to participate in the debate the candidates and the Party by proxy sent the message that the Black vote is irrelevant; you people don’t matter. Your concerns are not our concerns. We will ignore you and hope you go away. These are the people who want to keep us divided and easy conquered. They use subtle code words to express their displeasure with the way “liberals” have allowed the country to be commandeered by Blacks and other minorities. They would rather we return to some historical nirvana when the “white privilege” went unquestioned, when Blacks and minorities knew their places. When they were seen and not heard.

I am sure these candidates did not want to have to answer questions about Jena, voter suppression drives, and other issues that affect minorities. By not allowing themselves to be questioned on these issues the candidates sent a message to their base that these questions were unimportant and not worthy of their responses.

It is a common belief among Republican pundits and campaign staffers that Blacks will vote overwhelmingly Democratic and therefore to lobby them would be a wasted effort. They speak as if Blacks were some mindless group of voters who are not independent enough or intelligent enough to weigh the issues and vote accordingly. Many also believe that Blacks for the most part don’t vote anyway so the cost/benefit numbers don’t add up. The cost being possibly alienating their “base” and the benefit being gaining a few million votes, obviously these staffers have forgotten how close the last two elections have been. In a country divided as we are, every vote is going to count.

Finally, I think another important element in all of this is what the “base” of the Republican Party must be that their candidates can be this indifferent towards a large group of Americans and it does not bother them. If appealing to your base means ignoring blacks and minorities, then what are the priorities of your base? More and more of the Republican strategists believe that the black vote can be ignored in favor of cultivating the southern and rural white voters, these same voters who split with the Democrats over civil rights and abortion. Obviously, they believe that there are enough of these voters to overcome any impact black voters may have for the Democrats. Besides, these guys are trying to win primaries and let’s face it there won’t be many blacks voting in Republican primaries. I think it would be hilarious if all the mindless black voters switched parties for the primaries and voted in the Republican primaries, wouldn’t that be fun?

It is unfortunate when politicians are pandering to the baser nature of humanity instead of seeking to educate and promote unity among all Americans. The reason racism is still alive and well in America is because no one really wants to end it. Right now it serves too many purposes for too many people, both black and white. Maybe someday the truth of who and what we are will finally penetrate our hard heads, but until then. I can’t wait to see how whoever the Republican nominee will be try to spin this come general election time and what self-respecting black would allow themselves to be used to sell the spin. Our politicians should be demonstrating to all Americans how to embrace the diversity of the country, not how to run from it, because guess what we ain’t going nowhere.

Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence. – Henri Frederic Amiel

The Disputed Truth

Dr. Stephen Zunes is a Professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco. He has written extensively on a range of foreign policy issues, from Afghanistan and Iraq to Lebanon, Israel/Palestine, non-violent struggle and nuclear proliferation. He is the author of 2003’s acclaimed Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism, is a regular contributor to Tikkun magazine and the Common Dreams website, among other places. He serves as Middle East editor for the Foreign Policy in Focus think-tank and as an associate editor of Peace Review. His articles can be viewed here, and information about his books is available here.

I asked Dr. Zunes a few questions about the current ‘Iran crisis’, the situation in Iraq and the Israel/Palestine conflict. The second part of the interview, dealing with Iraq, is published below. The third and final part will be published shortly.
1. What are U.S. interests in Iraq today? Have American objectives in the region changed since the invasion, and does the Bush administration still think that it can achieve them?

Clearly the original U.S. goal of establishing a pro-American secular free market-oriented democratic government is now considered unreachable. Now Washington is just hoping that the Sunni insurgents can be contained, the Shiites in power will loosen their close ties to Iran, the Kurds won’t do anything too provocative to the Turks (like declaring full independence), U.S. companies can effectively control a good percentage of the county’s oil, and the United States can establish a network of large permanent bases to better facilitate U.S. military domination of the Middle East.

President Bush recently declared that the eventual goal for U.S. troops is “overwatching” — a term I could not locate in any dictionary — Iraqi forces. This suggests that allowing Iraqi forces to act independently is not even considered a long-range prospect anymore and that the Bush administration intends for American armed forces to ultimately be in charge of security in Iraq indefinitely.

2. Should we expect a full U.S. withdrawal from Iraq any time soon?

Unless and until Congress is willing to eliminate funds for U.S. operations except what is needed to safely withdraw them from Iraq, a full withdrawal is out of the question. Hillary Clinton and most of the other contenders for the Democratic Party nomination for president (with the exceptions of Elliot Richardson, Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel) intend, if elected, to keep tens of thousands of U.S. troops in the country even after the withdrawal of most combat forces. Senator Clinton’s plan, for example, would mean a reduced combat role for American forces, but would still maintain at least 60,000 U.S. troops remaining in that country.

Bush’s plan, meanwhile, means very little in terms of overall reduction in troop strength. There will be virtually no reduction of troops by December nor will there be a reduction of forces beyond the numbers prior to the pre-surge levels by next July. The Pentagon currently has plans to add an additional 4,000 Army troops in the next couple of weeks, more than making up for the 2,200 Marines ending their tour of duty in Anbar and nearly making up for the 4,500 additional forces he plans to pull out by Christmas. Furthermore, the larger reduction of five combat brigades expected by next July will place the total number of combat troops at levels no less than they were prior to the start of the surge, when the Baker Commission — representing the consensus of the foreign policy establishment — called for the complete withdrawal of regular combat forces by that same month.

U.S. military commanders have made it clear that American forces simply cannot sustain the current level of combat troops in Iraq and there would need to be a withdrawal to pre-surge levels regardless of the situation on the ground. The drawdown recommended by General Petreaus and announced by President Bush had already been planned months ago as there will be insufficient fresh forces available to sustain the escalation. So, the limited withdrawals announced by Bush in his speech in September should not be mistaken for the beginning of a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

3. The “surge” has led to a sharp increase in the number of internally displaced refugees and has failed to cut attacks on civilians. How can it be that some people are touting it as a success?

Basically, General Petraeus and the Bush administration manipulated the numbers. Figures released by the Bush administration purporting to cite a decline in sectarian killings appear to be based on some rather arbitrary calculations, including a determination that being shot in the back of the head is a sectarian attack whereas being shot in the front of the head is a criminal act, even in cases where eyewitnesses indicated the frontal killing was indeed sectarian in motivation. All car bombings, even those apparently sectarian in motivation, are also excluded from Bush administration calculations.

If indeed there actually has been a slight decline in sectarian killings in Baghdad over the past six months, it could be attributed to the hundreds of thousands of Sunnis and Shiites who have fled mixed neighborhoods — at a rate of over 50,000 per month — into segregated enclaves, many with concrete walls erected around them to keep out militants from the other side. A recent report from the Government Accountability Office on the situation in Baghdad noted how “The average number of daily attacks against civilians remained about the same over the last six months; 25 in February versus 26 in July.” The Iraqi Interior ministry also confirmed that there has been no drop in civilian deaths.

Claims by President Bush of an improvement in a decline in violence outside Baghdad also have little relation to reality. This may be in part because the administration’s figures purporting to show a decline in sectarian violence exclude such tragic mass killings as the slaughter of 322 Yazidi Kurds in northern Iraq in August or the growing violence in Basra, Karbala and elsewhere in southern Iraq between rival Shiite factions. Estimates based on records from Iraqi morgues, hospitals and police headquarters around the country reveal that the numbers of civilians killed daily is almost twice as high as last year’s level. Six out of ten Iraqis in a recent poll indicate that their security situation has worsened since the surge began and only one out of ten say that it has improved. Seven out of ten believe that the surge has “hampered conditions for political dialogue, reconstruction and economic development.”

4. Do you think it’s important for the anti-war movement to come out and be pro-active about recognising the right of the Iraqi people to resist the U.S.-led occupation? It seems that at the moment, Bush’s narrative about the resistance being composed entirely of al-Qaeda has become the dominant one, to the extent that when an “insurgent” is killed it is generally seen as acceptable, or even good.

There are dozens of different insurgent groups, including neo-Baathists, Sunni Islamists, independent nationalists, tribal-based groups, radical Shiite militias and others. Al-Qaida is constitutes only a tiny minority of the insurgency. The U.S. military estimates that foreign fighters represent barely 5% of the insurgency. The overwhelming majority of those fighting U.S. forces have no desire to build a radical Islamic empire or attack the United States itself. They want to rid their country of foreign occupation forces and oust a government they see as repressive, corrupt, and too closely aligned with their Persian and American enemies.

While attacks against foreign occupation forces cannot be legally considered terrorism and are arguably legal, most identify with various Baathist and Islamist ideologies that few American opponents of the war can identify with. I think the anti-war movement should primarily point out how the longer the U.S. has been fighting, the more the insurgency has grown and that the majority of insurgents unaffiliated with al-Qaida would likely put down their arms and join a broad coalition government in return for amnesty and a timetable for a U.S. withdrawal, options the Bush administration has rejected.

A sizable majority of Iraqis – both Sunni and Shia – believe it is legitimate to attack American forces. Even those making up the Anbar Salvation Council – the coalition of local sheiks and Sunni militias which came together to fight al-Qaeda forces which Bush has touted as evidence his “surge” strategy was working (even though it formed last September, four months before the “surge” in U.S. forces into the province began) – had been fighting alongside al-Qaeda against U.S. and Iraqi government troops previously. They have temporarily allied with the United States because al-Qaeda’s extremist Islamist ideology and its massacres of civilians so alienated the populace. The hostility of those in the Anbar Salvation Council to the Iraqi government (which they see as dominated by pro-Iranian Shiite fundamentalists) as well as to the United States (which they see as a foreign occupier) raises the likelihood that once the al-Qaeda forces are marginalized, they will turn their guns once again on U.S. and Iraqi government forces. Unlike the extremists, those in the Anbar Salvation Council have widespread popular support and — thanks to American arms and training provided in recent months — could end up being a bigger threat to the Iraqi government and U.S. forces than al-Qaeda, a possibility acknowledged in a recent National Intelligence Estimate. And they are unlikely to be placated, as Prime Minister Malaki has explicitly ruled out working with some of the Sunni groups temporarily allied with U.S. forces in Anbar.

5. Why have the Democrats, despite winning last year’s mid-terms on a tide of popular anti-war sentiment, failed to force an end to the occupation by cutting off funds, or making them conditional upon a withdrawal?

First of all, it’s important to remember that five years ago, when Congress gave President Bush the unprecedented war powers to invade Iraq at the time an circumstances of his own choosing, Democrats controlled the Senate, the Democratic leadership of both houses endorsed the resolution, and the majority of Democratic senators supported it. Overwhelming majorities of Democrats have supported unconditional funding of the war ever since. With only a few conscientious exceptions, most Democrats who now oppose the war are doing so only because of constituent pressure.

By voting on non-binding resolutions for a timetable for withdrawal, they can tell their constituents they oppose the war, while simultaneously voting to give unconditionally funding to Bush to continue fighting the war. The Democrats do not need a two-thirds majority to override a presidential veto in order to stop the war. All they need to do is to refuse to pass any funding bill that does not condition war funding on a strict timetable for withdrawal, something that is well within the prerogative of the majority party.

As a result, one can only conclude that most Democrats in Congress actually support President Bush’s policies and are only pretending otherwise so as to assuage the anger of their constituents.

They also assume that anti-war voters will vote for Democrats anyway and will not support Green or independent anti-war candidates, so they believe that they have little to lose by continuing to support funding for the war.

You can read part one, a discussion of the so-called “Iran crisis”, here.

Cross-posted at The Heathlander

Here my favorite piece of wisdom from Sy Hersh’s latest piece.

The difficulty of determining who is responsible for the chaos in Iraq can be seen in Basra, in the Shiite south, where British forces had earlier presided over a relatively secure area. Over the course of this year, however, the region became increasingly ungovernable, and by fall the British had retreated to fixed bases. A European official who has access to current intelligence told me that “there is a firm belief inside the American and U.K. intelligence community that Iran is supporting many of the groups in southern Iraq that are responsible for the deaths of British and American soldiers. Weapons and money are getting in from Iran. They have been able to penetrate many groups”—primarily the Mahdi Army and other Shiite militias.

A June, 2007, report by the International Crisis Group found, however, that Basra’s renewed instability was mainly the result of “the systematic abuse of official institutions, political assassinations, tribal vendettas, neighborhood vigilantism and enforcement of social mores, together with the rise of criminal mafias.” The report added that leading Iraqi politicians and officials “routinely invoke the threat of outside interference”—from bordering Iran—“to justify their behavior or evade responsibility for their failures.”

And not only Iraqi politicians.

Sy Hersh.

The thing that continues to surprise me about the continuing Blackwater saga is that the White House and the GOP Right Wing Noise Machine is dead silent about Blackwater.  Only the Pentagon and State Department even bother to mention anything about the company, yet news stories keep popping up daily.

It’s been two weeks now since the Blackwater shooting incident left 16 Iraqis dead.  Not one word out of the White House about it.  And more and more evidence is being presented that Blackwater is now being thrown under the bus, especially as of this weekend.
First we have SecDef Gates cracking down on PMCs.

In a three-page directive sent Tuesday night to the Pentagon’s most senior officers, Gates’ top deputy ordered them to review rules governing contractors’ use of arms and to begin legal proceedings against any that have violated military law.

Gates’ order contrasts with the reaction of State Department officials, who have been slow to acknowledge any potential failings in their oversight of Blackwater USA, the private security firm that protects U.S. diplomats in Iraq and was involved in a Sept. 16 shooting that left at least 11 Iraqis dead.

For years, there have been tensions between mid-level military officers who operate under strict rules and private security firm employees who work in Iraq under less-rigorous guidelines. But Pentagon officials emphasized they do not believe that wrongdoing is widespread among the agency’s 7,300 security contractors or that the armed guards operate with impunity.

However, one senior Pentagon official, speaking on condition of anonymity when discussing internal department debates, said a five-man team that Gates sent to Iraq over the weekend discovered that military commanders there were unclear about their legal authority.

Commanders were not certain whether they had the authority to enforce existing laws, including the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice. The officers requested a clarification, the official said, prompting Gates to issue the directive.

“Commanders have UCMJ authority to disarm, apprehend and detain DoD contractors suspected of having committed a felony offense” in violation of the rules for using force, said the memo, written by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon R. England and obtained by The Times.

The Pentagon directive does not affect private security guards under contract to other agencies, including the State Department, which is investigating the Blackwater shooting.

Unsure of the directives?  I wonder why that is.  If I’m a commander on the ground in Iraq, and I know that any chance of success whatsoever rests in winning the hearts and minds of the locals, and I hear tales of PMCs killing civilians and basically undoing ANY progress I’ve helped to make, you better believe I’m gonna ask somebody about what the hell to do to deal with them.

“Unsure of the directives” means that somebody very high up on the chain is telling these ground officers to ignore the PMCs, and these ground officers are politely saying “we’re not going to fry for doing that, you’re not going to Abu Ghraib us.  We’re not going to be the ‘bad apples’ for you.”

Gates knows he’s got a potential mutiny on his hands. Not only are the Iraqis truly pissed off at the PMCs, but the military is clearly not going to tolerate them anymore.  He’s giving a clear, loud warning.  Yes, he’s covering his ass, but he’s doing it by saying that the Pentagon can and will prosecute PMCs.

Meanwhile back home, Blackwater is putting expansion on hold indefinitely.

In more fallout from the Sept. 16 shooting in Baghdad that left 11 Iraqis dead, Blackwater USA apparently has stopped its expansion projects.

On Wednesday, the North Carolina private military contractor canceled a $5.5 million deal to buy 1,800 acres of farmland near Fort Bragg, where it was going to set up a training ground for soldiers and corporate executives.

The diplomatic and public relations damage from the shooting, combined with next Tuesday’s scheduled testimony before Congress by Blackwater Chairman Erik Prince, prompted the company to put all new projects on hold, according to the president of the company that had agreed to sell the land to Blackwater.

“Blackwater said they had pulled all new projects off the table because of this shooting in Baghdad and because they were preparing Prince for Congress,” said Wayne Miller, the president of Southern Produce Distributors. “It’s a shame. This would have been good for the economy of North Carolina.”

Methinks they need the money for lawsuits more than land deals at this point.  Blackwater’s in trouble and they know it.  There’s several other shooting incidents they’re being tied to.

Five cases this year in which private Blackwater USA security guards killed Iraqi civilians are at the core of a U.S. review of how the hired protection forces guard diplomats in Iraq, officials said Friday.

Iraqi authorities are also concerned about a sixth incident in which Blackwater guards allegedly threw frozen bottles of water at civilian cars, breaking windshields. No one was killed.

The United States has not made conclusive findings about the incidents, which include a Sept. 16 case in which at least 11 Iraqis died. A State Department official said investigators are not aware of others. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the inquiries are in progress.

The wingers have had more than enough time to formulate a response, but the thunderous, deafening silence means the right wing is conveniently trying to retend PMCs don’t exist in Iraq, because of the fact that you don’t have to spend more than a few minutes to discover that the problem goes much, much deeper than Blackwater.  Any media attention here is bad for the President.  But the plan here is clearly to hang Blackwater out to dry and see if the PMC issue goes away.

The private security firm Blackwater USA brushed aside warnings from another security firm and focused on cost, not safety, before it sent its personnel to escort trucks to Fallujah in 2004, resulting in four American deaths that marked a major turning point in the war, a congressional report said yesterday.

The report comes as Blackwater — the State Department’s prime security force — faces new scrutiny for its role this month in the killing of at least 11 Iraqis. Citing e-mails, fresh interviews and previously undisclosed incident reports, the report by the majority staff of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform provides details about how cost considerations appeared to shape Blackwater’s decisions that led to the brutal deaths of its employees at the hands of insurgents on March 31, 2004.

For example, the assessment said that Blackwater, then operating under a Defense Department contract, was supposed to use vehicles with armored protection kits, but as of the date of the killings, no such vehicles had been obtained. A Blackwater internal report obtained by the committee quoted an employee who said the contract “paid for armor vehicles” but that “management in North Carolina . . . made the decision to go with soft skin due to cost.”

The report disclosed that another complicating factor was a contract dispute with a different company. The report suggested that Blackwater never intended to armor its own vehicles. Instead, Blackwater employees were told to “string along” the other company in hopes of forcing them out of their contract or giving them “no choice but to buy us armored cars,” according to interviews by the committee staff with Blackwater officials.

“These actions raise serious questions about the consequences of engaging private, for-profit entities to engage in essentially military operations in a war zone,” the committee report said.

So while Erik Prince twists in the wind and the rest of the wingers whistle past the graveyard in hopes that all this nasty stuff goes away, we see the standard GOP scandal-control playbook in action:  disavow and ignore publicly, and leak damaging info privately.

The question is once again will the media do its duty?  Will they follow up and ask questions about ALL the PMCs America has worldwide, or will they fight over Blackwater’s corpse and ignore the real story because they are being told to?

My guess is going to be not only the latter, but that Blackwater coverage won’t even make a dent in the media’s push for war with Iran unless they’re forced to.

Not much time is left.

This morning, Tom Friedman cribs my material by saying:

What does that mean? This: 9/11 has made us stupid. I honor, and weep for, all those murdered on that day. But our reaction to 9/11 — mine included — has knocked America completely out of balance, and it is time to get things right again.

I don’t really mind the lack of attribution, even though I’ve said this repeatedly. I do mind Friedman’s next point because it violates common decency and basic logic.

I’d love to see us salvage something decent in Iraq that might help tilt the Middle East onto a more progressive pathway. That was and is necessary to improve our security. But sometimes the necessary is impossible — and we just can’t keep chasing that rainbow this way.

It’s precisely this notion that America has a necessary foreign policy need which is simultaneously impossible to accomplish that set us on the disastrous course.

It was Friedman that famously told Charlie Rose that America needed to respond to 9/11 by going into an Arab country, knocking down doors, and telling the residents that if they thought we would tolerate total strangers (to them) flying airplanes into our buildings, they could ‘suck on this’.

Four years later, Friedman admits that 9/11 made him stupid. It made a lot of people stupid. But Friedman does not appear to be cured. He is slowly awakening…he recently said there should be no more Friedman Units in this war. But anyone that can say that it is necessary for us to attempt the impossible is an idiot.

And when the impossible involves getting over half a million people killed, trashing America’s brand, and bankrupting our country?

Idiots should lose their jobs.

Whenever PBS airs a big program/mini-series there is an announcement at the end. “Corporate sponsorship of Name of Mini-Series was brought to you by Name of Corporation.” This had unfortunate and amusing results for General Motors’ sponsorship of Ken Burn’s The War.

Recent history has profound lessons for us in the U.S. today about how fascist, totalitarian, and other repressive leaders seize and maintain power, especially in what were once democracies. The secret is that these leaders all tend to take very similar, parallel steps. The Founders of this nation were so deeply familiar with tyranny and the habits and practices of tyrants that they set up our checks and balances precisely out of fear of what is unfolding today. We are seeing these same kinds of tactics now closing down freedoms in America, turning our nation into something that in the near future could be quite other than the open society in which we grew up and learned to love liberty.
– Naomi Wolf, The End Of America

It is a Sunday Morning and I am sitting and thinking about the postings I have made in the past few months and those of so many others in the blogosphere. We are six years into the Bush Administration, 25 years into the age of Ronald Reagan’s dismantling of the great American Middle Class, and 62 years since the creation of that Middle Class that was the result of triumphing over the Depression and World War II. So many things have changed for us, and over such a long period of time, that we almost ignore our complacency in making it happen.

Last night, watching a re-run of The War on PBS, seeing the dedication of a whole country (including a focus section on folks from Waterbury, CT, my birthplace and Home Town) to defeating the fascist invaders who had used preemptory strikes at defenseless countries in Europe, Asia and Africa to bring their choice of government to the world, my wife and I started discussing what had happened to us… to ordinary Americans.

How did we let Reagan start privatizing those elements of the government that had made us so strong: education, unions, healthcare? And how did he get the people he had hurt the most… the lower middle class, the middle class, my parents… to love him for it?

How did we let Bush get into office twice? How did we let him start turning control of things the military used to handle to private companies? How did we let him develop relationships with America’s own Blackshirts and Brownshirts (Blackwater, if you haven’t noticed)? How did we let him cut Habeas Corpus from the Constitution? How did we lose our freedom from being wiretapped, or having our luggage searched if someone put our name on a no-fly list for authoring a blog like mine or writing an article criticizing the government?

Senator Inouye was one of the talking heads on The War last night, one of the Japanese-Americans recruited to a segregated army contingent (which ended up the most decorated battalion in US History), saying how his father encouraged him to join by saying how much America had done for them… giving them their freedom and an education! I laughed as I thought of how long we would be paying for my son’s school loans knowing this country no longer gives anyone an education… we have made education one of the most expensive purchased goods imaginable (after healthcare, of course).

We now have a Supreme Court which, we are told, does not legislate from the bench. It does, however, appoint those who lost the vote as president without allowing a full recount. It does put the rights of individuals behind the rights of corporations. It does uphold the destructuring of the Constitution.

We now are taught not to refer to our country as America, but as “The Homeland”. The security of “The Homeland” trumps the security of Americans. We invade countries who, we now find out, have been willing to negotiate to the terms we wanted all along, and are told that we are defending “The Homeland.”

Our political parties are now opposition teams that disagree along party lines. Republicans have forgotten the great Republicans: Lincoln who fought for Freedom and Unity of the country, and Eisenhower who warned us against “The Military-Industrial Complex” which now eats up our economic future on a cost-plus basis. Democrats have forgotten the great Democrats: FDR, who put the people above those who caused the markets to collapse and brought us the Depression, and Truman who made sure that corporations did not profit from the misery of a people at war.

We are led by a man that we often make fun of… I am guilty of this as much as anyone. He handles the English language poorly. He seems to function as the tool of NeoCon fascisti. But he should not be seen as a center of amusement.

He is a man who, more than anything else, has a love affair with his control over life and death. As a governor in Texas this was noticeable: he seemed to delight in signing death warrants, even joking about at least one in public. He set a record! As president, he sends our soldiers to their deaths, but avoids their funerals or the return of their flag-draped coffins. When it is revealed that he knew all along that he could have avoided their deaths (and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis young and old) in the Spanish Press (see my previous post Revelations This Week Show Bush Could Have Avoided War…), his office gives “no comment.”
The great dictators we fought in World War II… Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo … had no qualms about sending men to their deaths, either.

And we go on, wondering what we can do about it now. Wondering why our Congress, with it’s slim Democrat majority, doesn’t even hold up the funds to keep Bush going. Wondering why the leading Democratic candidates seem to be unable to commit to an instant pullout and change of policy, but are willing to justify continued death until at least 2013. Wondering why the Republican candidates, except one Libertarian (who would fund nothing – not education, not health, and, yes, not war), are stepping all over themselves to show us which one would push more “freedom” onto the Middle East.

And we seem to find no way out.

Under the LobsterScope

This is just incredible (warning; do NOT click link before breakfast – while the comments are nauseating enough, the article also has a picture of Ms. Cagan that will be a shocker this early):

Britsh MPs visiting the Pentagon to discuss America’s stance on Iran and Iraq were shocked to be told by one of President Bush’s senior women officials: “I hate all Iranians.”

And she also accused Britain of “dismantling” the Anglo-US-led coalition in Iraq by pulling troops out of Basra too soon.

The all-party group of MPs say Debra Cagan, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Coalition Affairs to Defence Secretary Robert Gates, made the comments this month.

And apparently, the comment was not out of context – recall that body language convey much more information than the verbal:

Although it was an aside, it was not out of keeping with her general demeanour.

“She seemed more keen on saying she didn’t like Iranians than that the US had no plans to attack Iran,” said one MP. “She did say there were no plans for an attack but the tone did not fit the words.”

Another MP said: “I formed the impression that some in America are looking for an excuse to attack Iran. It was very alarming.”

The article is well substantiated:

The Pentagon denied Ms Cagan said she “hated” Iranians.

“She doesn’t speak that way,” said an official.

But when The Mail on Sunday spoke to four of the six MPs, three confirmed privately that she made the remark and one declined to comment. The other two could not be contacted.

I admit to never having heard of her before, but a quick google brought me to The Newshoggers which reports that she had the patronage of Richard Armitage since early this decade (scroll down for their ‘Update’).

So there we have it – foreign policy being set by irrational emotions and extreme prejudice.  This place is getting truly scary.

[Crossposted from my Real History blog.]

I have a number of interesting correspondents, and one of them sent me something that was both so salient and so funny that I begged permission to share. Why should the study of history be boring, when you can read something like this? Enjoy, from my anonymous but very informed friend!

Before we begin, allow me to set the stage. A few weeks ago, I received a link to this article in the mail, containing this salacious, if ridiculous, passage:

As the plump sausages were beginning to brown, there was a knock on the door. Chicago Mob Boss SAM GIANCANA showed no fear as he turned back thedouble locks on the heavy steel door of his fortress like home that protected him from the outside world. Sam looked his old friend JOHNNY ROSSELLI in the eye and invited him in. The men kissed on the cheek, exchanged pleasantries and shared a laugh.

Then “Mooney”, as Johnny affectionately called Sam, heard the sausages sizzling in their pan and ran back to the stove to keep them from burning. While he was rolling them over, Johnny quietly crept up behind him and placed the muzzle of a .22 caliber handgun equipped with a silencer at the base of his skull and said “Sam, this is for Marilyn”.

Sam hesitated a moment as he tended to the sausages. A split second passed. In that moment, an image of MARILYN MONROE, the quintessential Hollywood Goddess, platinum blond bombshell, orphaned child, cheesecake pin up girl, fantasy lover to thousands of men, supposed tragic suicide victim and lover of PRESIDENT JOHN F KENNEDY and his brother BOBBY, filled Sam’s head.

Then Johnny pulled the trigger.

Knowing this to be a ridiculous but very amusing lie, I sent this to a friend who has his own theory on why a half-eaten sausage was found at the site of Giancana’s murder. I knew he’d laugh at this ludicrous scenario, but his response was too fun not to share:

Lisa:

Jesus-fucking-Christ.

Will the fantasy “know-it-all” accounts of these try-hard hanger-on Z-list losers never end?

If memory serves — and let’s face it, with me, it usually fails — Jeanne Carmen starred in a couple of extremely hardcore stag films from the late-1960s (after her “best friend” Marilyn had well and truly passed away) that I had the pleasure, as a young teenager, of being given on VHS as my introduction to pornography (or one of my introductions, at least.)

Ms. Carmen was obviously down on her luck (and down on her knees, in Reel 2) in the company of three or five (details, details) rather well-endowed (let’s not drag me into this) cowboy-types; a rather well-co-ordinated situation for all involved that resulted in… drumroll… well, Lisa, I’m sure you can guess the rest.

I mention this only because 2 years later, at the tender age of 14 (when I had graduated to hardcore German and Asian porn), I watched a documentary on TV regarding the death of Ms. Carmen’s “best friend,” Ms. Monroe. (And obviously tuned-in with great interest, as I recognized Ms. Carmen from her previous efforts, and was hoping for an encore.)

Anyway, in that doco, Jeanne talked about how lonely Marilyn was, and that Marilyn — in her humble opinion (as Marilyn’s “best friend”) — COMMITTED SUICIDE.

Now, call me crazy (and you have, in the past)… and call me horny (I have referenced my love for porn probably eight times too many, so who can blame ‘ya?), but if Marilyn Monroe was — according to Jeanne Carmen in that original documentary — just a sad, lonely and depressed fading movie star who killed herself with an overdose of sleeping pills…

… why the fuck is she NOW claiming that “Handsome Johnny” whacked “Momo” in a dispute over a messy love triangle??? (Marilyn was just a lonely girl, with no one who loved her, after all.)

That all said…

There really is no point to this e-mail, or any of the points that I made above, other than to let you know that I do emerge from hibernation (from time to time) when matters of trivia are at stake, and I address those matters of trivia with trivial messages such as this.

Just flexing my idiot muscle, as it were — much the same as you did when you sent me your ridiculous message about Jeanne Carmen to begin with. Damn you, Pease! Why must you vex me?!

If you’d like to know the REAL story about Marilyn Monroe, and how her death appears truly to have been, despite all disinformation to the contrary, an accidental overdose, please see Jim DiEugenio’s excellent article “The Posthumous Assassination of John F. Kennedy” in our book The Assassinations. (You can preview part 1 and part 2 here, but the full text is only in the offline book.) Jim has done a great job debunking the more outrageous claims relating to the Kennedys and Marilyn Monroe, Judith Exner, and Mary Meyer. The Meyer crap has been recycled of late, so be sure to read Jim’s new article shooting down many of the pieces of that ever-growing myth, and exposing those who contribute to its growth, on the CTKA site.

Trying to reclaim history from the likes of Gerald Posner, Vince Bugliosi, David Heymann, Gregory Douglas and others is tiring work. But letters like the above show remind me that it’s not boring. 😉 Who knew porn could teach so much about history? There, don’t you feel better now?