I’m no particular fan of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but his recent remarks about the global hypocrisy regarding uranium enrichment were rather astute. Commenting on the West’s demand that Iran cease uranium enrichment prior to talks being held, the threat of sanctions looming in the background, Ahmadinejad said…

“Justice demands that those who want to hold talks with us shut down their nuclear fuel cycle programs too. Then we can hold dialogue under a fair atmosphere.”

Like it or not, he has a valid point.

For example: Israel’s nuclear program has never been subjected to the scrutiny of the United Nations, nor has the Israeli government ever officially confirmed its existence. Only a leak by Mordechai Vanunu, once employed at the Negev Nuclear Research Center, to the Sunday Times of London in October of 1986 has confirmed that Israel has an active nuclear program. For telling the truth, Vanunu was sentenced to 18 years in prison for revealing state secrets. Israel has also not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, obviously because it refuses to acknowledge that it has a nuclear program or weapons (even though it sent a man to prison for almost two decades for suggesting that it did). And unlike Iran, or even Iraq, the United Nations has never been granted access to any Israeli facility.

Ironically, Iran is a signatory state of the Non Proliferation Treaty and has allowed the UN access to its facilities, though with some trepidation.

There are those that will read what I have just written and automatically disregard it by suggesting that Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism and that the Iranian acquisition of a nuclear weapon would be utterly disastrous. There is also a point to be made about controversial remarks made by Ahmadinejad about the destruction of Israel. Yet even to that sort of idiocy one can offer a logical defense, that being that we are not talking about conventional missiles but rather weapons with the ability to decimate cities. There are indeed logical responses to the fear mongering that has become synonymous with Iran of late, the foremost being that Iran’s quest for a nuclear deterrent has everything to do with the preemptive, unilateralist policies of the United States in the region more than its desire to acquire a device so that it can hand it off to a terrorist organization or use it to recklessly attack Israel.

In Errol Morris’s Fog Of War, former US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara put it best…

“The indefinite combinations of human fallibility and nuclear weapons will lead to the destruction of nations.�

This outlook is proven accurate simply by examining the United States’ military response to 9/11. The invasion of Afghanistan and the deposition of the Taliban regime may have been entirely warranted in the eyes of the world, but the truth is that the objective of the invasion was to neutralize the command structure of al-Qaeda, an objective that five years later has yet to be met. The point being, the entire country was invaded in response to the 9/11 attacks, even though the country itself was not particularly complicit in the plot.

This is relevant with regards to the use of nuclear weapons in that were a terrorist organization to use a nuclear device, the retaliatory actions of the likes of the United States and Israel would most assuredly be to respond with moderate to maximum nuclear force against those that they believed helped facilitate the attacks. And given the horror of nuclear devastation, what frightened, enraged public would question such a response before it was too late?

In the case of Iran, the question that must ultimately be asked is - would Ahmadinejad’s government, or a faction within the Iranian military, willingly hand over a nuclear device to a terrorist organization or a sympathetic faction in Iraq? Do we in the West believe them so stupid as to be completely ignorant of the realities of what would befall them were a nuclear device to be used in a terrorist attack in the region or somewhere in the Western world? Are we so propagandized that popular belief has embraced the lunacy that the majority of the Muslim world is populated by mass murderers bent on sacrificing the very existence of their nations in pursuit of destroying non-Muslims?

Since the United States decimated Nagasaki and Hiroshima in the summer of 1945, the purpose of nuclear weapons has been to act as deterrents against conventional or nuclear aggression. And as the world’s two foremost nuclear powers began to use proxies and foreign locales to engage in a laundry list of lunacies, be they real or perceived, the spread of nuclear weapons followed suit precisely because of their value as overwhelming deterrents. With the end of the Cold War, the United States found itself in an interesting position, one in which it could have led the way in mass nuclear disarmament. Instead it chose tempered decreases and still possesses the world’s foremost nuclear arsenal, the capability of which extends over various commands, from the Navy to the Air Force. In truth, one American Ohio Trident class nuclear submarine has the ability to inflict 52 million casualties.

The population of Canada as a whole is roughly 33 million.

Should we fear a nuclear Iran? In a unilateralist, post 9/11 world I think the more accurate question is – what is the difference between aggression and deterrence with regards to Iran’s objectives given the realities of what has occurred in Iraq?

I’d write something indepth about tonight’s State of the Union address but it’s really rather pointless.

All the rhetoric and ninth grade vocabulary in the world doesn’t change the fact that Iraq was illegally invaded, that the United States did so in direct contravention of the UN Charter, that it had nothing to do with 9/11, did not possess WMD’s, and was not home to foreign extremists prior to the 2003 invasion. Nothing Mr. Bush said this evening alters numerous facts, paramount among them that his administration deceived the American people and that that deception has cost the lives of more than 3,000 US service men and women – the very same that he so gallantly praised to standing ovations this evening.

To protect America against evil and deliver it democracy (at the end of a gun), countless Iraqis have been made to pay the price for something they had nothing to do with (and even their deaths have been trivialized by making the war in Iraq sound like some transitional disaster aimed at calling out the likes of Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, et all). I’m sorry, this might sound terrible of me, but 3,000 American lives lost on September 11th are not worth the lives of 10,000 Iraqis, let alone 100,000 of them. What sort of ignorance breeds such arrogance? What sort of a people can applaud a man that would, were he not the leader of one of the world’s foremost powers, be immediately labeled a war criminal? What sort of people can applaud a man whose administration has decimated the global respectability of their nation, rendering it thought of as the largest threat to world security by a majority of the planet’s population?

Perhaps the very same people that can allow victims of the worst natural disaster in US history to be treated like second class citizens more than a year and a half after the fact.

In short, tonight’s address was the oversimplification of bullshit after it had been hit by a car and woken up in hospital with amnesia.

Updated: That was quick…

“A US Senate committee has rejected President Bush’s plan to send extra troops to Iraq, passing the measure to the full Senate for a vote next week.”

I wonder how they plan to do that considering that the deployment has already started?

On January the 10th, 2007, President Bush revealed his new way forward in the White House’s increasingly convoluted and desperate Iraq policy. Replete with underlying contradictions, on the surface it appeared little more than a reaffirmation of his continuing and isolated belief that the war in Iraq serves a greater purpose with regards to US national security. But as Professor Stephen Zunes wrote soon after for Foreign Policy In Focus…

“The broad consensus among strategic analysts, including those in the U.S. military and intelligence agencies, is that the struggle engaged by the U.S. armed forces, despite their enormous sacrifices, has compromised efforts to counter international terrorism and has made America less safe. If succeeding in the fight against terrorism was really the administration’s goal, President Bush would call for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq.â€?

Two days after the President’s affirmation that more troops would be introduced into the Iraqi theatre, newly appointed Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was furthering the ambiguities of Bush’s initiative by claiming that no firm timetable exists with regards to judging whether the new strategy is being effective. All of this comes, of course, on the heels of the removal of Gen. John Abizaid as commander of CENTCOM, who has been replaced by Admiral William Fallon, formerly the commander of USPACOM and once a deputy director for operations with Joint Task Force Southwest Asia, whose appointment many believe is a sign that US air action against Iran prior to the next Presidential election is not only likely, but in the works. Gen. George Casey too is to be replaced, most likely with Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, whose pervious assignment was the training of Iraqi security forces. But one need only look at the testimonies of Generals Anthony Zinni, Greg Newbold, John Riggs, John Batiste, Paul Eaton, and Charles Swannack for proof that both the Pentagon and White House have played two contradicting games with regards to the war, one involving the placation of domestic concerns about the loss of life and reassuring the public that what is occurring in Iraq is not as negative as they are being led to believe, and the other consisting of continually claiming that those carrying out the mission are their top priority while repeatedly failing the men and women of the military with regards to some of the most basic provisions while providing contracts that have generated literally billions of dollars for private contracting firms who provide everything from interrogation to food services to security for high ranking personnel.

In a recent article Frida Berrigan commented…

“Even though today the Armed Forces can’t recruit enough soldiers or adequately equip those already in uniform, the Pentagon is committing itself to massive corporate contracts for new high-tech weapons systems slated to come on-line years, even decades, from now, guaranteed only to enrich their makers.

The typical soldier in Iraq carries about half his or her body weight in gear and suffers the resulting back pain. Body armor, weapon(s), ammunition, water, first aid kit — it adds up in the 120 degree heat of Basra or Baghdad.

Ask soldiers in Iraq what they need most and answers may include: well-armored Humvees (many soldiers are jerry-rigging their own homemade Humvee armor); more body armor (an unofficial 2004 Army study found that one in four casualties in Iraq was the result of inadequate protective gear), or even silly string (Marcelle Shriver found out that her son was squirting the goo into a room as he and his squad searched buildings to detect trip wires around bombs).�

It amazes me that military commanders towed the line as long as they did before publicly succumbing to the obvious reality that the plans conceived and put into effect by the Pentagon were not merely militarily inept, but too conveniently open ended. One can only speculate at the true frustration that they, and their subordinates, must have endured because of the partisan nature of the war, one which has not merely seen the placement of Bush loyalists in key positions in Baghdad despite the fact that there are others better qualified, but one that has repeatedly placed the requirements of the war on their shoulders while muting them from publicly commenting on its realities and the decisions made by men such as former Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld which were ultimately projected on to them.

The Central Intelligence Agency has also succumbed to internal convolution and partisanship, with Baghdad station chiefs being replaced for having the audacity to write missives, known as aardwolves, that dared to detail the reality of what was occurring in Iraq during the early months of the occupation. The disregard of negative information with regards to numerous agencies pre-dates the invasion of course, but it continued well after it became clear that a variety of groups, some consisting of elements of the Iraqi officer corps and former intelligence apparatus, chose to slip into the countryside and organize a variety of different resistance groups. That what was later termed ‘the insurgency’ showed rapid adaptation with regards to dealing with American tactics and weapons.

There is little doubt that this administration has acted solely on information that coincides with its political objectives, not necessarily with reality, despite claims that have been made regarding a mountain of nonsense including that the requirements of commanders in the field are of the utmost importance. It is the same engine which has allowed the administration to successfully paint a wide variety of guerrilla groups in Iraq with the same brush, one that ultimately produces the likeness of Osama Bin Landen standing somewhere in the background.

I have often wondered how, after placing a group of even semi-intelligent people in a room, they could walk out of it without considering the underlying cultural and religious tensions that have been prevalent throughout the region’s history in the event that the invasion didn’t turn out to be a re-enactment of the liberation of Paris. After the utter failure of America’s last unilateral farce, Vietnam, one would think someone with a respectable amount of gray matter might dare voice a few hard hitting queries, such as: what if this thing doesn’t go as planned?

From US commanders standing around central Baghdad without orders as to what to do once they reached it, to the farcical mission accomplished stunt, to this month’s troop surge, the United States finds itself once again in the position of a blind giant that has taken no time to survey the terrain while expecting nothing less than the quicksilver success of pro-Western democracy and all the perks that the privatization of industry brings with it (oil being the primary indulgence in this case). Tack on to that the estimated fourteen permanent bases being built in Iraq, not to mention the planet’s largest and most heavily fortified embassy (complete with Starbucks and a variety of other chain stores), and you’ve also got a very convenient military footprint in a vital region of the world, one that allows for the greater application of US funding and training of proxies in the region, such as is currently occurring in Ethiopia with regards to events in Somalia.

Four years on, Iraq remains unstable, its civilian infrastructure still in shambles, and its population overwhelmingly in support of American withdrawal and insurgent attacks on occupational forces. It is a nation engulfed in a civil war that no one on this side of the world will admit is really happening in earnest despite the fact that Baghdad’s morgue alone took in an estimated 16,000 unidentified bodies in 2006 and more than a million Iraqis have fled the country.

While visiting a friend in the States over the holiday’s, a friend of his, whose first admission was that he was a conservative, told me that if America wanted to defeat ‘the Iraqis’ that it possessed the military power to do so. That if it committed all of its resources it could decimate Iraq. He made that statement most likely in an attempt to exonerate America’s inability to successfully impress their ideals on a foreign people, reverting back to age-old standard that, in the end, might makes right. I didn’t spend a great deal of energy arguing the point with him. After all, what is one to say to that? That the country that he professes to love was founded on principles that openly detest the sort of blatant militarism now prevalent in American society, not to mention the use of unilateral force? Then again, had 9/11 occurred prior to the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitutional Convention perhaps things would be different. I suppose if the abandonment of core principles can be so easily embraced then one has to wonder why they are needed in the first place? Perhaps simply to make people feel better when their elected representatives engage in illegal wars and have to go on national television to not merely defend their necessity, but their escalation.

I have, over the years, wondered at how the use of the word terrorism is possible within the context of war. William Tecumseh Sherman once remarked that there is no use trying to reform war, that it is ‘all hell’. And if it is, then how does one even attempt conciliatory definitions? Is it defined by the actions of a handful of radical zealots hijacking planes and flying them into buildings? Is it defined by the deaths of 2,000 Panamanian civilians during the US invasion of that country in 1989 to capture one man who was not only at one point a CIA asset, but a graduate of the School Of The Americas and whose daughter was actually the Goddaughter of the President of the United States at the time? Is it defined by the deaths of an occupied people who are daily made to suffer the arrogance of a world power so that a population a half a world a way can remain safely anaesthetized?

Convolution prevails. While last November’s elections were clearly a referendum on the war, polls still indicate that a majority of Americans believe that the regime of Saddam Hussein had something to do with September 11th. Factual information and opinion has become so blurred that the bigotry openly displayed by some of America’s most prevalent right-wing voices is enjoying what one can only term a black hole renaissance - a period in which historical fact and implication is somehow dismissible by way of ones ability to simply believe it irrelevant and employ the simplest of logic to demonize entire religions, cultures, and those who would dare point to substantiation. It brings to mind the ferocity of the Inquisitions with regards to their impact on the degradation of philosophical and scientific development, let alone true spirituality.

In his speech, President Bush accepted responsibility for US failures in Iraq, and was right to do so. And had it not been an admission to curry domestic favor, but one that was genuine, then his statement would not have been one in which a troop surge was announced. Rather, it would have been quite the opposite.

There are 130,000 US soldiers in Iraq. There are less than 20,000 US soldiers in Afghanistan. It seems to me, though I might be a little cloudy on this, that the objective was to kill or capture those responsible for the 9/11 attacks. I get a bit fuzzy-headed, because since that doesn’t seem to be the priority anymore, what exactly is the focus of the War On Terror? To be honest, it’s become a tad bit confusing. I’m just taking a shot in the dark here, but I think it’s become far more about the 2008 US Presidential election than any military or ideological goal.

Canadian Forces continue to play a roll in combat operations in Afghanistan. In fact, they just began taking part in a British led mission in Panjwaii District, west of Kandahar, where a landmine has already injured one Canadian soldier. The CF will also, according ISAF’s Maj.-Gen. Ton Van Loon, continue their work with the Afghan army in an attempt to weed out Taliban hardliners from the civilian population – the usual hearts and minds campaign (when will we learn?).

The operation, named Falcon’s Summit, was launched as a show of strength and a demonstration of NATO’s ability to combat and defeat the Taliban – again, in hopes that Afghans won’t continue to fill the ranks of the Taliban who pay better than the Afghan army, among other things.

One wonders if George Patton was the last field commander to actually open a history book. Like it or not, these same ‘backward’ goat herders successfully staved off the Soviets…on horseback…with little more than Kalashnikov’s and RPG’s.

They had help of course – our help, but the lessons they learned during that conflict, and years of fighting besides, have obviously not been forgotten. The longer that the government in Kabul remains ineffectual and ISAF and CENTCOM continue to run the show, it seems to me that the Taliban and other armed groups are simply going to increase in size. Like Iraq, a can of worms has been opened that was always far too complex to fix in a year by slapping on a band-aid of UPS delivered democracy, supported by the always arrogant presumption that an overwhelming display of highly advanced weaponry would ensure that it arrived on time.

The United States has 130,000 combat troops in Iraq and that number is expected to increase. They invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to remove the Taliban and neutralize al-Qaeda and have accomplished neither. Instead, they invaded Iraq in 2003 and now Canadians are coming home in body bags (not since Korea has the Canadian Armed Forces sustained such losses) because they have been forced to play a greater combat roll in a conflict in which they were initially focusing on humanitarian and security objectives.

It’s obvious that the roll played by the CF in Afghanistan, with the exception of Joint Taskforce 2, began to change after the US invasion of Iraq primarily because of the transfer of a significant number of US personnel from one theater of operation to the other. Thus, a greater onus was placed on the ‘international coalition’ to play a larger roll in something that the United States had initially planned and then, in many ways, abandoned – something that must have just thrilled many within our Defense Ministry and General staff.

But what is the reality of Afghanistan as a front in an ambiguous war, and what level of sacrifice should we be willing to endure to achieve…

…hmmmm, wait a second.

What goals are we planning to achieve? To defeat a group that was supposed to be defeated five years ago, disarm warlords that we’ve used to help us fight the Taliban in exchange for looking the other way with regards to their poppy operations (which we’ll then tell them to shut down causing them to want their guns back), train a military that would require at least a decade’s worth of stability in its officer corps before it can effectively operate against internal groups while patrolling one of the most porous frontiers in the world, end centuries of tribal and religious indoctrination in exchange for the promise of modern Western conveniences, all in a greater ploy to have the populace begin its love affair with what we’ll tell them is democracy but is in reality our very own conduit of internal exploitation allowing Western companies to storm their ramparts and employ Afghans for one fiftieth of what a kid in Arkansas would refuse to make burgers for…

…oh, and defeat terrorism, everywhere and for all time. Or, if we’re going to cut the shit and talk plainly – just those we deem terrorists or the facilitators of terrorism. Islam, of course, will have to go completely. Because let’s face it, all Muslims are terrorists, or have the potential to become terrorists, right?

And that’s just Afghanistan, whose desolated masses, let’s face it, we spent a considerable time fretting over prior to September 11th.

Since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the US armed forces have lost 2,866 service men and women. This month alone there have been 3,709 Iraqi deaths.

In the last 22 days more Iraqi civilians have died than did Americans on September 11th, and have been suffering similarly unacceptable numbers since the occupation began - some at the hands of Anglo-American forces, some due to sectarian violence, and some because of pure lawlessness. There are low estimates of Iraqi civilian casualties and estimates that are considered too ghastly to contemplate, which are viciously challenged in an attempt to spare our superior sense of morality.

No matter the arguments produced in an attempt to justify this spike in civilian deaths (sectarian violence, for example), to discard the realities of cause and effect as context is absurd. Saddam Hussein’s regime was oppressive, committed numerous crimes in both peace time and during its war with Iran, but let us also not forget that until Iraqi tanks rolled across the Kuwaiti frontier the regime of Saddam Hussein was an ally of the United States, who provided the Hussein regime with a laundry list of favors, from billions in aid to spy satellite coverage of Iranian troop movements. The hard cold fact remains, like it or not, while in power and in favour with the US, 3,700 civilians a month were not violently dying in Iraq.

I think UN Secretary General Kofi Annan put it best yesterday when he said that the United States is trapped in Iraq. The argument between withdrawal and ‘staying the course’ is defeated by the truth that a hole has been ignorantly dug that has become almost too deep to escape.

Jesse Jackson wrote recently in The Chicago Sun Times that supporters of the war in Iraq must face the music. And that…

“…the neocons are positioning themselves to blame the mess on those left to clean it up. Soon they will be filling the op-ed pages with cries of being betrayed, and with calls for a new military adventure, packaged once more with deceptions and distortions. America will have squandered priceless lives and, in the end, over one trillion dollars on their folly. But the neocons will learn nothing. They will lose nothing. The only question is whether the rest of us will know better the next time.�?

I’m sure there are tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of Iraqis who have lost loved ones who would obviously concur. Perhaps that would be why a majority of Iraqis approve of attacks on US forces despite the fact that some 94% of them disapprove of al-Qaeda.

Racial Profiling

I witnessed it first hand in 2002 while boarding a plane in Hawaii. Call me naïve, but I have a feeling that had this been six Catholic priests, nothing would have come of it.

Updated: Watch the video of the girl being interviewed. The Imam with the sunglasses on that she mentioned was blind and therefore did not remove them because it was dark. Hell, sometimes I wear sunglasses on planes when it’s dark because they’re perscription. I also travel with a large group most of the time, and when we fly we’re never all seated together. Ever. Ironically, all of the 9/11 Hijackers were seated in first class and not spread out at all.

Updated: I was actually struck silent today when I watched a YouTube interview conducted by MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson in which he claimed that anti-Islamic behavior is not racism but that anti-Semitism is. Carlson, who agreed that the six Imam’s removed from the flight were unjustly treated, claimed that Muslim groups were taking advantage of the incident, and that Americans as a whole should not be lumped into one category simply because one passenger on one flight was suspicious of the men because they were praying prior to boarding (all devout Muslims pray 5 times daily at specific times during the day). So, as stupefying as it may sound, Carlson was, in essence, claiming that it’s unfair for a minority to claim that it’s being racially profiled by a society because only a single passenger raised concerns about the Imams, and that, in fact, the majority of Americans don’t automatically equate those of the Muslim faith, or those of Middle Eastern descent, with terrorism.

I am reminded of a comment made by a blogger yesterday about the residents of Gaza, presumably all of which are not die-hard members of Hama’s militant wing, celebrating the Democrat’s successes last night.

According to the BBC, which may or may not be on Charles Johnson’s pro-terrorist, pro-Islamofascist, anti-Semitic list of news agencies, there were at least 18 Palestinians in Gaza that weren’t able to celebrate the Democratic capture of the House today. Unfortunately, they were killed by Israeli tank fire in Beit Hanoun.

When it comes to the Israel-Palestinian conflict let me state a few things. First, it is a conflict that has, for decades, been driven by radical ideologues on both sides, the majority of whom are completely unwilling to entertain any serious compromises that would be required to resolve the issue. Were aliens to land on this planet tomorrow and look at that part of the world they might very well wonder why it is not simply one nation populated by people of differing religious beliefs who are represented by a similarly diverse democratically elected government. If it’s Jerusalem that’s the deciding factor, turn the whole thing into a national monument and be done with it. Because no place deemed sacred is worth the lives of thousands of people, let alone one. And I firmly believe that no God in any heaven would ever choose death in the defense of rock, brick, wood, and glass over life itself. Because that is not holy, nor wise, nor compassionate, and therefore devoid of the components of divinity itself.

Fantasy? Perhaps, given the complexities of historical context. But not entirely without its merits.

Second, when you militarily engage a guerrilla force in the world’s largest ghetto there are going to be civilian casualties. The other side of that coin is that if you’re going to conduct a guerrilla resistance against an established military power from within the confines of the world’s largest ghetto, expect similar results.

Third, the victims on both sides are predominantly the innocent, and it must not be forgotten that neither side has a monopoly on innocence.

Fourth, where’s Yitzhak Rabin when you need him? That’s right, dead at the hands of an Israeli terrorist because he dared to dream of a better future for both peoples.

Olmert, of course, expressed regret over the loss of life, vowing to halt artillery attacks and extend help to the wounded. Both the Red Cross and Unicef commented that they were ‘appalled’ at the killing of women and children, while the UN’s special investigator on human rights in the Palestinian territories, John Dugard, requested the Security Council take action.

Chances of that occurring in a timely fashion, if at all?

I could care less what a single, or even a handful of militant spokesmen say about yesterday’s elections in the US. Only idiots take such nonsense to heart, unable to see it as the exact same sort of propaganda employed by the likes of the Bush administration. The production of fear is what both are ultimately after, and the fanning of such flames is precisely what those who employ such tactics have come to expect.

Updated: The Blogger in question threw up a few links in response to this entry, while not actually linking it, which basically did little but point out that the quagmire in Iraq was viewed by the media in the Middle East as the primary reason for Republican losses this week. Of course, the same is true of most North American media, so go figure. He then linked the out of context Gaza video from September 11th, as if to remind us that evil lurks just around the corner. If there is one thing Charles Johnson needs to do it’s to actually study the foreign and covert policy history of his own country. Because what a tale it tells, Republican and Democrat alike.

1.6 million Iraqis have fled their own country since the 2003 invasion. That’s 12% of the entire population. That’s the equivalent of the entire population of the city of Vancouver disappearing and a million more suburbanites along with them.

What’s one to do? Leave Hussein in power? Allow his non-existent weapons of mass destruction program to carry on until such a point is reached that it becomes too difficult to justify the invasion of a sovereign nation so that it can’t be used as a regional footprint? No post war Pentagon planning at the insistence of the Secretary himself? Fourteen permanent military instillations currently in the works according to the likes of Chalmers Johnson, and we’re supposed to sit here and swallow seasoned horseshit about pseudo democracy and radicalism? Has the war in Iraq not helped radicalize the Islamic world? That seems to be the general consensus. But maybe that’s what the neo-Christian warriors plaguing the political landscape of the United States are after. I don’t know, but I can tell you that they, along with their radical Islamic bedfellows, can chip in to help build a giant spaceship so that they can fuck off Mars together and fight it out there, because this sailor has had enough.

What do you need other than being struck upside the head with a shovel not to see the occupation of Iraq for what it is. Like the lame, historic textbook ‘domino’ defense given to justify ten disastrous years in South East Asia that no one had the guts to put an end too because it would have been domestic political suicide, Iraq has become the latest pit of arrogance and deceit in which a nation historically too proud to admit to any fault has once again found itself. And, as is always the case, young men and women, along with countless innocents, are paying the price for it. While the nation sleeps, gorged on burgers and fries and shakes and Prison Break, the conned in camouflaged do their best to stay low enough to make it home. And when they get there, well, there’s always the chance that they could be the victims of loopholes and sent back, or discover that veterans funding has been diminished by the same administration that had the balls to exclaim – “bring it on�.

The problem with this world isn’t the differences of its peoples, be they political or religious or otherwise. The problem is that none of us can seem to admit that while clowns are entertaining at first, they’ll always eventually start hitting each other over the head with bowling pins.

From Scott Horton’s recent post on the Antiwar blog…

“…one of the most sickening, but as far as I can tell, unremarked upon bits of hearsay in Bob Woodward’s new book, State of Denial, is about the blood-lust of Henry Kissenger, apparently as relayed to Woodward by former Bush speechwriter Mike Gerson. From page 408:

“Why did you support the Iraq war?� Gerson asked him.

“Because Afghanistan wasn’t enough,� Kissinger answered. In the conflict with radical Islam, he said, they want to humiliate us. “And we need to humiliate them.�

The lesson is fairly obvious, no?

The problem again is collectivism. “We,� “they.� It is irrelevant that the government and people of Iraq were innocent of the crimes of September 11th, and in fact had nothing to do with “radical Islam.� They are “they� to Henry Kissinger, and so now they’re dead - in order to “send a larger message.�

The George Washington University’s National Security Archive has the recently declassified documents on the CIA’s LITEMPO project in Mexico…

“The declassified U.S. documents reveal CIA recruitment of agents within the upper echelons of the Mexican government between 1956 and 1969. The informants used in this secret program included President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz and future President Luis Echeverría. The documents detail the relationships cultivated between senior CIA officers, such as chief of station Winston Scott, and Mexican government officials through a secret spy network code-named “LITEMPO.” Operating out of the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City, Scott used the LITEMPO project to provide “an unofficial channel for the exchange of selected sensitive political information which each government wanted the other to receive but not through public protocol exchanges.”

Also see Kate Doyle’s ‘Tlatelolco Massacre: Declassified US Documets On Mexico And The Events of 1968‘.

From The World Policy Institute’s Iran: War Or Rumors Of War…

“But as Bill Berkeley notes in a well-argued piece in the Columbia Journalism Review, neither the Bush administration rhetoric comparing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Hitler nor his tirades about wiping Israel off the map can be taken at face value: “For all the recent rhetoric about wiping Israel off the map, which is hardly new, the Iranians are not Nazis. For one thing, Iran is not the dominant military power in the region, Israel is. Iran can harass Israel through its proxies . . . but it lacks the military capacity to attack Israel itself. Moreover, Iran lacks a rational motive for doing so, since Israel would surely respond to such an attack with massive force that could jeopardize the Iranian regime’s survival in power.” With an estimated 100 to 200 nuclear weapons in Israel’s arsenal, would an Iranian bomb change this calculation? And to the extent that it could shift the military balance in the region, shouldn’t the Bush administration finally break down and engage in open and direct talks with Tehran?”

From the Institute For Public Accuracy: President Bush has claimed that a recent study suggesting that over half a million Iraqis have perished since the 2003 invasion is ‘not credible’. Benetech’s Patrick Ball remarks…

“Ball is a co-author of the book State Violence in Guatemala, 1960-1996, and wrote the chapter “On the Quantification of Horror: Field Notes on Statistical Analysis of Human Rights Violations” in the book “Repression and Mobilization.” Questioned about the disparity between the Lancet study and figures from media reports and efforts like IraqBodyCount.net, Ball said: “I’ve found a similar disparity between reported deaths and likely deaths in other conflicts that I’ve studied in Guatemala, Kosovo, Peru and Timor-Leste. Methods such as media reports typically capture violence well when it is moderate, but when it really increases, they miss a great deal. There are a series of biases regarding what gets reported — we get very good reports about journalists killed, but not rural peasants; we know about big landowners, but not grassroots union organizers.”