Fool Me Once...

It's no longer a surprise to anyone paying the least bit of attention to the actions of the Bush administration and their rubber stamping comrades on Capitol Hill that citizens of the United States and of the world were severely misled-- about almost everything-- in the build up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

In January of 2003, for example, "White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Bush continues to work with other countries on a peaceful solution [for Iraq].

'But if Saddam Hussein will not disarm peacefully and it becomes necessary to disarm him by force, then what we would be doing is not only disarming a real and growing threat, but liberating Iraqi people from a brutal, oppressive regime,' McClellan said."

Almost a year before-- in July of 2002-- according to the Downing Street Memos, "Bush had made up his mind to take military action [in Iraq]" and to facilitate this "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

Now, in 2007, there is growing tension between the US and Iran. Yesterday, Helen Thomas asked White House spokesperson Dana Perino if President Bush would consult congress before attacking Iran.

    HELEN THOMAS: Did [President Bush] consult -- would
    he tell Congress before attacking Iran -- before he attacks Iran?

    DANA PERINO: Helen, we are pursuing a diplomatic
    solution with Iran.

    HELEN THOMAS: I'm asking you, does he feel committed
    to ask Congress for permission?

    DANA PERINO: We are pursuing a diplomatic solution in
    Iran.

Déjà vu.

Have we learned our lesson? Previous disasters have an uncanny tendency to slip the minds of Americans, but it's been a mere four years. The warmongers continue to push for military action in Iran while spewing lies about their 'diplomatic efforts'.

Congress certainly won't curb the executive's war plans. It's up to the American people to speak out in any forum and by any means available to them if we are to avoid a sequel to the Iraq debacle.

Patriotism?

Today I saw a sign on the back of a truck.

It said:

"Support our troops
Wherever they go
No aid or comfort to the enemy, ever"

I almost cried...

Bush Didn't Bungle Iraq, You Fools

The Mission Was Indeed Accomplished

The Guardian– — Get off it. All the carping, belly-aching and complaining about George Bush’s incompetence in Iraq, from both the Left and now the Right, is just dead wrong.

On the third anniversary of the tanks rolling over Iraq’s border, most of the 59 million Homer Simpsons who voted for Bush are beginning to doubt if his mission was accomplished.

But don’t kid yourself — Bush and his co-conspirator, Dick Cheney, accomplished exactly what they set out to do. In case you’ve forgotten what their real mission was, let me remind you of White House spokesman Ari Fleisher’s original announcement, three years ago, launching of what he called,

“Operation

Iraqi

Liberation.”

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The Death of Hope

Post-Cold War, New-World-Order time, it looks good for the Military-Industrial-Intelligence Complex and their global partners in crime, the World Bank and the IMF. They've got their NAFTA, and soon their World Trade Organization. They're dictating economic, poltical and social development all over the Third World and Eastern Europe. Moscow's reaction to events anywhere is no longer a restraining consideration. The UN's Code of Conduct on Transnational Corporations, 15 years in the making, is dead. Everything in sight is being deregulated and privatized. Capital prowls the globe with a ravenous freedom it hasn't enjoyed since before World War I, operating free of friction, free of gravity. The world has been made safe for the transnational corporation.

Will this mean any better life for the multitudes than the Cold War brought? Any more regard for the commmon folk than there's been since they fell off the cosmic agenda centuries ago? "By all means," says Capital, offering another warmed-up version of the "trickle down" theory, the principle that the poor, who must subsist on the table scraps dropped by the rich, can best be served by giving the rich bigger meals.

The boys of Capital, they also chortle in their martinis about the death of socialism. The word has been banned from polite conversation. And they hope that no one will notice that every socialist experiment of any significance in the twentieth century-- without exception-- has either been crushed, overthrown, or invaded, or corrupted, perverted, subverted, or destabilized, or otherwise had life made impossible for it, by the United States. Not one socialist government or movement-- from the Russian Revolution to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, from Communist China to the FMLN in Salvador-- not one was permitted to rise or fall solely on its own merits; not one was left secure enough to drop its guard against the all-powerful enemy abroad and freely and fully relax control at home.

It's as if the Wright brothers' first experiments with flying machines all failed because the automobile interests sabotaged each test flight. And then the good and god-fearing folk of the world looked upon this, took notice of the consequences, nodded their collective heads wisely, and intoned solemnly: Man shall never fly.

William Blum - from the 1995 edition of Killing Hope

Words Of Wisdom From Howard Zinn

On the third anniversary of President Bush's Iraq debacle, it's important to consider why the administration so easily fooled so many people into supporting the war.

I believe there are two reasons, which go deep into our national culture.

One is an absence of historical perspective. The other is an inability to think outside the boundaries of nationalism.

If we don't know history, then we are ready meat for carnivorous politicians and the intellectuals and journalists who supply the carving knives. But if we know some history, if we know how many times presidents have lied to us, we will not be fooled again.

President Polk lied to the nation about the reason for going to war with Mexico in 1846. It wasn't that Mexico "shed American blood upon the American soil" but that Polk, and the slave-owning aristocracy, coveted half of Mexico.

President McKinley lied in 1898 about the reason for invading Cuba, saying we wanted to liberate the Cubans from Spanish control, but the truth is that he really wanted Spain out of Cuba so that the island could be open to United Fruit and other American corporations. He also lied about the reasons for our war in the Philippines, claiming we only wanted to "civilize" the Filipinos, while the real reason was to own a valuable piece of real estate in the far Pacific, even if we had to kill hundreds of thousands of Filipinos to accomplish that.

President Wilson lied about the reasons for entering the First World War, saying it was a war to "make the world safe for democracy," when it was really a war to make the world safe for the rising American power.

President Truman lied when he said the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima because it was "a military target."

And everyone lied about Vietnam - President Kennedy about the extent of our involvement, President Johnson about the Gulf of Tonkin and President Nixon about the secret bombing of Cambodia. They all claimed the war was to keep South Vietnam free of communism, but really wanted to keep South Vietnam as an American outpost at the edge of the Asian continent.

President Reagan lied about the invasion of Grenada, claiming falsely that it was a threat to the United States.

The elder Bush lied about the invasion of Panama, leading to the death of thousands of ordinary citizens in that country. And he lied again about the reason for attacking Iraq in 1991 - hardly to defend the integrity of Kuwait, rather to assert U.S. power in the oil-rich Middle East.

There is an even bigger lie: the arrogant idea that this country is the center of the universe, exceptionally virtuous, admirable, superior.

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Tears

Each day I shed a tear for our men and women in uniform, many of whom have unwittingly become the Bush Regime's pawns in its' not-so-hidden policy of economic imperialism.

Each day I shed a hundred tears for the Iraqi people, who have become the victims of a devastating war of aggression. I weep for the dead, the wounded, the tortured. Why don't we hear their stories in the media?

But, most of all, I weep for the future. Will the United States continue to expand its' global economic empire, enriching the rich and exploiting the poor? Where is the U.N.? Why haven't they charged the Bush Regime with high crimes of war? What are they waiting for? Plain and simple- the Bush Regime has violated the Geneva Convention- not to mention the basic human rights of the Iraqi people- and they must be held accountable.

Let History Judge

Well, this is certainly fitting:

In a recent article, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter spoke about his testimony before the Bush Crimes Commission [sessions held last month in New York]:

President Bush has tried to justify his embrace of hegemony and pre-emption as a tragic necessity in the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001. But the facts do not add up. The triple-threat outlined by the Bush administration as the justification for this new policy -- Saddam Hussein's WMD, the Hussein-Osama Bin Laden alliance, and the transfer of WMD technology from Iraq to Al Qaeda for the purpose of attacking America -- could not be backed up either in the form of intelligence data or intelligence analysis. The fact that the Bush administration pushed so aggressively for pre-emptive war in the face of no viable threat speaks volumes about the nature and intent of the President and those who advise him.

In 1946, the Nuremburg Tribunal rejected the German defense of pre-emption when it came to the invasion of Denmark and Norway in 1940. The Germans had cited the imminent occupation of these two nations by the armed forces of France and Great Britain, which would have threatened the German northern front, as just cause. This defense was rebuked by the tribunal, led by US Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, who instead identified the German action as constituting a "war of aggression." Judge Jackson went on to say that "To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

Judge Jackson's words, and my steadfast allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of America, motivated me to give testimony this past Saturday at the International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration, in particular in support of the first count put forward by the commission: that the Bush administration authorized a war of aggression against Iraq.

I'm not a big fan of un-mandated tribunals, but given the absolute lack of attention on the part of Congress regarding the decision to invade Iraq (a lethargy encouraged somewhat by Congress's own culpability in abrogating its responsibilities under the Constitution when it comes to war powers and holding the Executive Branch in check), I felt that my participation in the Commission's work would help create a record that might someday in the future motivate the representatives of the American people who occupy the Legislative Branch of government to carry work that not only serves the interests of their respective constituencies, but also defends both the letter and intent of the Constitution they are sworn to uphold and defend. America should not be looking to any international commission or tribunal to hold President Bush and his administration to account; that is the job of the American people.

When historians look back on the policies enacted by the Bush administration in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, starting off with the decision to invade Iraq in March 2003, they will be passing judgment on a United States that has violated international law as egregiously as any power in modern history. The final chapters have yet to be written on the Presidency of George W. Bush, but even if time stopped still at the present, the crimes of America and its leader are many, and terrible.

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Where do I live?

So I just got home- haven't been home since Thursday. Or maybe it was Friday morning, I can't remember. I didn't intend to be gone that long, but Allston really sucks you in. Heh...

What the hell am I doing in Norwood? Anyone? Kelly? Nothing wrong with Norwood, but right now my heart is in Allston. That's where all the action is kids. Don't take my word for it, see for yourself.

Anyway, I finally saw Why We Fight tonight. Definitely worth seeing, but good luck if you don't live in a major market. You might have to wait for the DVD if the film doesn't make it to all theaters.

The film really takes a step back from the 'America-as-savior' dogma and examines modern economic imperialism through a removed, un-embedded, objective, historical lens- the kind of presentation we are likely to see in a history text centuries or even mere decades from now.

The corporate elite and the political elite are quickly becoming one and the same in the United States- a sort of post-democratic aristocracy to rule the post-democratic pseudo-facist global economic empire of America. Now there's a mouthful...

Let's just call it the rich-old-white-guy-club for short.

These 'American aristocrats' are war profiteers- imperial conquerors- and the United States military is their mercenary army. We must denounce the unprovoked invasion and imperial occupation of the sovereign nation of Iraq and wars of aggresion in general. We must voice our objections to the ongoing establishment of permanent garrisons in Iraq.

Do you find my choice of words a bit zealous or excessive? Maybe you've been watching too much FOX News.

Oh and while we're on the subject, I want to again recommend "Killing Hope" by William Blum. You might be surprised at how frequently the United States intervenes (and has done so for decades) around the world to protect and promote the economic interests of our corporate establishment, all at the expense of countless lives and endless suffering.

Why We Fight

I would like to encourage everyone to check out this trailer for Why We Fight, an award winning war documentary.

Find showtimes near you.