I am sick to death of all the pussyfooting around the subject that has occupied the media for the duration of this premeditated, illegal war of terror that we the people of the United States have allowed to be waged against the people of Iraq, in our name, for the last several years.
No matter how much lipstick and rouge we smear on the face of this war no matter how we attempt to dress up the evil and bestial acts that have been performed in its unholy name, it still has the hideous countenance of an evil swine from hell.
It is an illegal war, begun and conducted under false pretenses, by a group of criminal liars and thieves in the United States Government, abetted by a cowardly congress who abrogated their constitutional duties in exchange for hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign funds and furthered by a complaisant press that ignored their obligation to remain independent from government, from their sponsors and report the facts.
The members of the completely rogue executive department acted in their own self interest in a quest for personal power and wealth, in concert with the usual domestic and international corporate pirates who, in the depths of their insatiable greed, continually amplify human conflict to their own ends and bring poverty, war, suffering and death down upon the world.
There is no such animal as extraordinary rendition, nor do I know of the existence of any beasts called enhanced interrogation methods.
The first is kidnapping, it is illegal, a felony and the second word is torture, its meaning is clear:
NOUN:
1. Infliction of severe physical pain as a means of punishment or coercion. 2. An instrument or a method for inflicting such pain. 2. Excruciating physical or mental pain; agony: the torture of waiting in suspense. 3. Something causing severe pain or anguish.
Torture is illegal in this country, a felonious act, it is illegal in the world at large, according to several conventions that we are legally bound by. Anyone committing torture, causing it to be committed, directing its commission, or training others in its techniques is guilty, guilty of war crimes, of crimes against humanity and crimes against “Nature’s God.
The people who lied us into this war are not statesmen, nor are they patriots acting out of a misguided love of country, as I have heard in some quarters. They are murderers, murderers, modern day Nazis or Fascists if you prefer, cold dispassionate sociopaths, heinous criminals, without conscience, without mercy, without humanity.
I read in the press and heard in the media yesterday and this morning of the “murky legal territory” in which the “private contractors” operate in Iraq and the murky area of law in which our dedicated public servants must operate as they determine just how far they can go in the extreme physical abuse of human beings before they stray in to a “gray area.”
Bullshit, I think that when a lying pig of a lawyer like David Addington describes a “murky legal area” it means that he thinks he can get away with it. The legal situation in Iraq was intentionally designed to protect the mercenary scum that we send there to perform high priced serial murders as they fulfill bloated contracts to protect our criminal leadership, thieving diplomats and cowardly congressmen.
I believe that the actions of following people must be investigated and, if warranted by the evidence, tried in criminal courts, and if convicted, face the full consequences of both US and International law:
George W Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, William Kristol, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, Eliot Abrams, Scooter Libby, John Hannah, David Wurmser, Andrew Natsios, Dan Bartlett, Mitch Daniels, George Tenet, Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, David Addington
There are more, in every corner of the executive, the congress, among the highest levels of the military as well as the intelligence community, various think tanks, news organizations, public and private corporations and other NGOs.
This is a cancer that must be quickly, loudly and publicly removed from the heart of America.
I'm pretty sour on the Obama campaign at this point of the juncture. I'm baffled about the hype. Liberal white guilt? Some so beaten by 7 years of Bush that they latch on to anyone selling “hope”? People that buy into the “American Dream” b.s. rhetoric? And Obama supporters are undoubtedly the most uncritical supporters of any candidate on this side of the aisle The guy can do no wrong in their eyes. It's ridiculous, like he was Jim Jones or something. I tend not to like candidates that have that cult of personality thing going on, because if he wins, and pushes through bad legislation or ideas, his most ardent supporters are going to go along for the ride, unquestioning. We already have that with Bush. I don't want it with Obama.
He's positioned himself as the 'change' candidate, yet just about everything he talks about is middle-of-the-road, and play-it-safe. I really don't think the word “bold” is in his eloquent vocabulary. And that's what irks me so much… at this point in the game, we need a fighter, not someone who tries to be everything to everybody. There's a war going on here, and I'm not talking about Iraq. So the only thing he's got going for him in my eyes is that he's not Hillary Clinton. Hardly a ringing endorsement.
I've been trying to avoid writing about the Presidential election, at least in terms of the Dems, because although the roster is certainly a bit stronger than it was in recent elections past, I still think they're all a bunch of corporatist hacks to varying degrees. I suppose that they'd be an improvement over what we have now, but I'm not expecting any substantial move forward from any of them. Just look at Hillary's new healthcare plan… it still includes the insurance companies as a major player. That's like having guys who still beat their wives working on a task force to stop domestic violence.
Anyways, back to the hype. What prompted this little tirade is something in the WaPo this morning, about Obama going out and touting his antiwar speech from 2002. Now, Obama seems to forget that he's also a Senator, and is in a position to raise a lot of hell, should he find that spine of his that is seemingly absent. He also fails to realize that by doing something bold in the Senate now, whether it be forcefully introducing some antiwar legislation or filibustering the living shit out of some toothless proposal, he will force the other candidates to step up their antiwar positioning as well.
This 'don't have the votes' crap is getting old. Although it may be true, there is no reason to give up the fight, because the more attention brought to it, the more the GOP owns the war, and therefore, the bloodier the bloodbath in November. This is incredibly significant, because there are two other candidates, Dodd and Clinton, who are active members of the Senate. It'd be so nice to see them trying to outmaneuver each other in the Senate to be the most antiwar candidate. Obama talks a good game about how he'll end the war, if elected. Why do we have to wait? He has the power to throw a major wrench in the works and change the dialog, right now. But that requires courage, something that doesn't seem to be in Obama's character at this particular time. He's too busy enthralling his uncritical supporters and trying not to offend anyone. Audacity of hype, indeed.
I found an interesting tidbit in the Las Vegas Sun this morning. You may remember hearing a few weeks ago how Pat Leahy was going to possibly hold up the Attorney General confimation hearings for Michael Mukaskey until White House Counsel Fred Fielding accommodates his concerns about the president's controversial eavesdropping program and interrogation methods with captured terrorist suspects. Well, it looks like that game plan has changed:
But his[Leahy's] letter to Mukasey conveyed a lost hope for getting those answers from Fielding, and implied a willingness to move ahead with hearings. Democratic and Republican officials widely expect Leahy to schedule the proceedings as soon as Oct. 17, after an additional private session with Mukasey…
“Regrettably, the White House has chosen not to clear the decks of past concerns and not to produce the information and material it should have and could have about the ongoing scandals that have shaken the Department of Justice and led to the exodus of its former leadership,” Leahy, D-Vt., wrote to Mukasey in a letter first obtained by the Associated Press. “Those matters now encumber your nomination and, if confirmed, your tenure.”
Anyone getting tired of the tough talk then subsequent backdown? Mukasey will answer some questions, dodge some others, will clear the Judiciary Committee, and will be the next AG. What's really irksome is that since the Dems have taken the majority, aside from a few gestures from Reid, there hasn't really been the “dramatic showdown” on, well, anything. It blows my mind that the GOP, even in the minority, is really controlling much of the agenda. Even if there is another GOP bloodbath in '08, part of me wonders if, through sheer force of will, they'll still be controling things to a certain extent. Of course, the complicit media doesn't help things (just look at the way the MoveOn was covered vs. Rush's latest outburst of public flatulence), but it sure would be nice to see a fight for a change, a real fight, not one of tough talk and zero follow-through.
Senator Sanders' pushback on the non-oversight exercized by the Bush Nuclear Regulatory Commision continues, with Vermont Yankee (and the dramatic collapse of its cooling tower) as Exhibit A. Bernie presented the now-famous photos of the collapse to today's oversight hearing of the Subcommittee on Clean Air, Climate Change and Nuclear Energy, and in the process prodding NRC Chair Dale Klein to concede that Vermonters may be feeling a little less than warm and fuzzy under the commission's less-than-watchful eye.
Sanders is pushing legislation that would make safety reviews more frequent, and that would empower state officials to instigate them – for example, in a bullet aimed squarely at VY, a safety inspection would be triggered by a plant looking for permission to generate more power than it was originally designed to produce.
But Bernie knows the executive regime we're stuck with in Vermont, and as such, he's cast his proposed net a bit wider. From a Sanders office press release (thanks Will), emphasis added:
Under Sanders’ legislation, power plant operators seeking to extend licenses would be subject to special inspections at the request of the governor of a state where a plant is located, or by the governor of a neighboring state affected by a plant's operation.
(Wow. This one took some serious time. – promoted by odum)
When we evaluate the facts, the use of private military contractors appears to have harmed, rather than helped, the counterinsurgency efforts of the U.S. mission in Iraq, going against our best doctrine and undermining critical efforts of our troops. Even worse, the government can no longer carry out one of its most basic core missions: to fight and win the nation’s wars. Instead, the massive outsourcing of military operations has created a dependency on private firms like Blackwater that has given rise to dangerous vulnerabilities.The dark truth about Blackwater
The idea of privatization of American public and governmental functions has been at the center of the neo conservative movement and over the last decade has been presented as the cure for everything that ails us from Social Security to Medicare, prison administration to public education, law enforcement and even the waging of war.
This idea that private enterprise can accomplish governmental functions more efficiently, at less cost while providing better service is, of course absurd and, in fact, is nothing but an enormous lie, and, like all enormous lies, if repeated often and loudly by the right authority figures and affirmed in “scholarly” studies performed by the Heritage or American Enterprise think tanks, it will take hold and seem, to a sizable portion of the uncritical public, to be the truth, simply because they have heard it so many times from so many familiar voices.
The marketing/propaganda professionals of the Cheney /Bush administration have carefully studied their Goebbels and know that the truth is what they can sell to those gullible enough to believe it especially when delivered in a climate of xenophobic, racist or religious fear, and due to the fact that a large percentage of our citizenry are either unable to look at their government and the wider corporate culture which largely dictates public policy, with a properly suspicious eye, or simply doesn’t give a damn as long as no one threatens to take away their snowmobiles, shotguns and cheap access to the mind numbing inanity of popular culture and celebrity, the great lies become public truths and “common knowledge.”
Seven years ago the people of this country nearly elected a federal administration that came to office expressing a hatred of government and an intention to reduce the size and influence of it in regulating the affairs of the ruling capitalist class, while at the same time charting a course to invade the lives and privacy and reduce the fundamental freedoms of the lesser classes. How anyone could expect those who despise government and representative democracy to govern effectively and efficiently is well beyond my understanding.
After their near election and illegal appointment to the highest offices in a government that they had absolutely no respect for, Cheney and Bush along with their corporate mafia criminal associates began to strip the federal regulatory agencies of dedicated professionals who took the job of regulating business and industry in the interest of public health and safety seriously, and started replacing them with industry cronies who simply stopped enforcing the laws so that businesses could achieve greater profits.
Pause for a brief digressive rant
“The business of America is business,” Cal Coolidge said eighty some years ago, and these guys heard the phrase in Grandpa’s Sunday sermons and Grandma’s lullabies before they learned to read.
“Need a comprehensive national energy policy? Just holler down the hall from Cheney’s office and a half dozen current and former big oil Poobahs will write it up for you including emphasis on the necessity of gaining pipeline routes through Afghanistan and control of Iraq and Iran’s oil. They’ll phony up the intelligence, everything, a turnkey operation”
“Need to increase profits for some buddies in the coal industry? No problem, we’ll put one of our boys in charge of the Mine Safety and Health Administration. Make a recess appointment, you’ll get any mining plan you need approved, no matter the cost in death and injury to the miners who have to implement it.”
“Having trouble with the EPA, the FDA, OSHA or any other pesky collection of bureaucratic acronyms? We’ll gut it for you and have our boys in industry pay for bogus scientific opinions to justify our continuing rape of the environment and pollution of our air and water supply.”
“Labor costs out of line, we’ll loan you money at low interest, what the hell, make it no interest to build factories and send the jobs offshore. We’ll get you a subsidy to take your jobs to Asia or Central America where you’ll have no environmental regulations. You’ll be able to pollute at will and you can pay people in dirt. No kidding these people will work for dirt, you’ll love it there, the government over there shoots the bastards if they’re late for work. Its an entrepreneur’s Disney World.”
“The Iraqis won’t agree to your terms for oil leases? Fuck em, We’ll send in the troops, give em a little taste of shock and awe. Iran too? No problem bring it on. If these pussy Generals drag their heels we’ll send Blackwater.
During the first Gulf War the ratio of “private contractors” to regular troops was something like 6 or 7 to one, in Iraq today it is closer to 3 to 1.
“They use their machine guns like car horns.” America’s Private Army – Psycho Cowboys For Hire
When she saw the gunmen turn toward the bus, Ms. Sattar looked at her mother in fear. “They’re going to shoot at us, Mama,” she said. Her mother hugged her close. Moments later, a bullet pierced her mother’s skull and another struck her shoulder, Ms. Sattar recalled.
As her mother’s body went limp, blood dripped onto Ms. Sattar’s head, still cradled in her mother’s arms.
“Mother, Mother,” she called out. No answer. She hugged her mother’s body and kissed her lips and began to pray.The bus emptied, and Ms. Sattar sat alone at the back, with her mother’s bleeding body.
“I’m lost now, I’m lost,” she said days later in her simple two-bedroom home.
“They are killers,” she said of the Blackwater guards. “I swear to God, not one bullet was shot at them. Why did they shoot us? My mother didn’t carry a weapon.” 8 deadly days for Blackwater
Blackwater claims that they were attacked by armed insurgents and acted only in self defense. As reports surfaced of indiscriminate firing from Blackwater helicopters they denied that the choppers had fired at all. How to explain the large holes that had been blasted in several car roofs from above? That pesky al Oaeda in Iraq Air Force up to its usual mischief I suppose.
An Advertising Pitch For Serial Killers In Corporate-ese?
Blackwater Worldwide efficiently and effectively integrates a wide range of resources and core competencies to provide unique and timely solutions that exceed our customer’s stated need and expectations.
We are guided by integrity, innovation, and a desire for a safer world. Blackwater Worldwide professionals leverage state-of-the-art training facilities, professional program management teams, and innovative manufacturing and production capabilities to deliver world class customer driven solutions.
Our leadership and dedicated family of exceptional employees adhere to an essential system of core corporate values chief among them are integrity, innovation, excellence, respect, accountability, and teamwork.
By now you’ve probably seen videos of Blackwater and other mercenary outfits racing down Iraqi roads firing indiscriminately at innocent civilians to the tune of rock and roll music and raucous laughter. Paid at a rate four to ten times what we pay our legitimately serving soldiers, Bush’s army of “rent a thugs” has become yet another hairy wart on the perception of America in the eyes of the international community.
A clerk in the Iraqi customs office in Diyala province, she was in the capital to drop off and pick up paperwork at the central office near busy al-Khilani Square, not far from the fortified Green Zone, where top U.S. and Iraqi officials live and work. U.S. officials often pass through the square in heavily guarded convoys on their way to other parts of Baghdad.
As Ms. Hussein walked out of the customs building, an embassy convoy of sport utility vehicles drove through the intersection. Blackwater USA security guards, charged with protecting the diplomats, yelled at construction workers at an unfinished building to move back. Instead, the workers threw rocks. The guards, witnesses said, responded with gunfire, spraying the intersection with bullets.
Ms. Hussein, who was on the opposite side of the street from the construction site, fell to the ground, shot in the leg. As she struggled to her feet and took a step, eyewitnesses said, a Blackwater guard trained his weapon on her and shot her multiple times. She died on the spot, and the customs documents she’d held in her arms fluttered down the street.
Before the shooting stopped, four other people were killed in what would be the beginning of eight days of violence Iraqi officials say bolster their argument that Blackwater should be banned from working in Iraq. 8 deadly days for Blackwater
You may have also seen pictures of hired goons from the same company swaggering their way through the streets of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. The fact that private security firms were being hired to perform public law enforcement functions made my skin crawl two years ago and everything that I have learned since increases my sense of dread about this company, its political connections to the Cheney/Bush gang and the prospects of what its future “missions” may mean for Americans and our fundamental freedoms.
The House began a round of hearings yesterday before the Oversight and Reform Committee chaired by California Democrat Henry Waxman. The hearings come as a result of the deaths of as many as 20 Iraqi civilians in what looks like yet another in a long series of “shoot first and cover it up later” operations which seems to be the stock in trade of many of these “private security” firms. The committee will also be looking into the dozens of unanswered questions regarding the funding and even the number of “contractors” engaged in Iraq and elsewhere.
The hearings may be another toothless effort on the part of our limpwristed legislature as they have already agreed to defer to the FBI and the State Department. If they believe that they will get the truth from Blackwater’s enablers at State or any part of the Bush Department of Justice.. well, I have a bridge for sale.
So, Blackwater was a subcontractor to Regency, which was a subcontractor to ESS, which was a subcontractor to Halliburton’s KBR subsidiary, the prime contractor for the Pentagon — and each company along the way was in business to make a profit. U.S. Pays Steep Price for Private Security in Iraq, WAPO
Privatization has led directly to the doubling of our national debt during the Cheney/Bush era. Rather than performing public business more efficiently they have embroiled the world in a series of brutal and illegal wars while engineering the rape of the American treasury in the conversion of enormous amounts of public treasure to private hands. Fraud, waste and theft abound and what is done within the confines of the law is shameful.
For all the hubbub over the recent Blackwater incident, the American public remains largely unaware of the private military industry. While private forces make up more than 50 percent of the overall operation in Iraq, according to a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, they have been mentioned in only a quarter of 1 percent of all American media stories on Iraq.
Yet, at the same time, contractors are one of the most visible and hated aspects of the American presence in Iraq. “They seal off the roads and drive on the wrong side. They simply kill,” Um Omar, a Baghdad housewife, told Agence France Press about Blackwater in a report in mid-September. A traffic policeman at Al-Wathba square in central Baghdad concurred: “They are impolite and do not respect people, they bump other people’s cars to frighten them and shout at anyone who approaches them … Two weeks ago, guards of a convoy opened fire randomly that led to the killing of two policemen … I swear they are Mossad,” he said, referring to the Israeli spy service, which is a catch-all for anything perceived as evil in the Arab world.The dark truth about Blackwater
I don’t know what it will take for the people of this country to reverse this course, to stop this mad dash into the the abyss of fascist tyranny that I see on our horizon. Aside from responding to public opinion polls people seem to be sleepwalking through the ongoing destruction of our Constitution. During the Vietnam war the voices of protest increased every year until the government was forced to heed the crescendo and bring an end to the madness. Perhaps the press, the media in those days was more independent of the mega corporations that now determine public policy by buying every available politician, they are certainly quick to preach the Bush doctrine today, they are greatly to blame.
I don’t see anything from the general public but meekness, fear of being impolite, of creating a disturbance and that meekness is sustenance for those who would enslave us, our meekness is the very bread and wine of their existence. I think though, that we, all of us are public enemy number one, I did not work hard enough, write effectively enough or shout loudly enough, we acquiesced quietly in the face of authority figures and “experts” when we knew better.
The fundamental rule of democracy is to distrust authority and demand accountability and somewhere along the line we forgot that and abrogated our responsibility to stand firm and demand freedom and justice in the face of would be tyrants.
I hope that I get interesting cell mates in the gulag. The guy on the left may be our guard.
No matter how much lipstick and rouge we smear on the face of this war no matter how we attempt to dress up the evil and bestial acts that have been performed in its unholy name, it still has the hideous countenance of an evil swine from hell.
longer carry out one of its most basic core missions: to fight and win the nation’s wars. Instead, the massive outsourcing of military operations has created a dependency on private firms like Blackwater that has given rise to dangerous vulnerabilities.
Blackwater Worldwide professionals leverage state-of-the-art training facilities, professional program management teams, and innovative manufacturing and production capabilities to deliver world class customer driven solutions.
I think though, that we, all of us are public enemy number one, I did not work hard enough, write effectively enough or shout loudly enough, we acquiesced quietly in the face of authority figures and “experts” when we knew better.