Thursday, September 13, 2007

While Petraeus Read Bush's Lies, Iraq Burned and Terrorism Grew Worse

One day after Gen Petraeus reassured an increasingly hostile Congress that things were actually going according to plan in Iraq, a bomb --in Iraq's western province of al-Anbar --kills the head of the US backed Sunni alliance. [See: Iraqi insurgents kill key US ally ] It will be interesting to see how Bush's gang of venal crooks try to spin this one.

Screw Bush's "intentions" in Iraq. We've heard the speculation before. It's about oil. The chaos is deliberate! Bush is actually succeeding in achieving his goals.

I don't care what Bush's personal goals are. Accident or deliberate, chaos is still chaos. Whether it works for Bush's goals or not, mass murder is still mass murder, war crimes are war crimes. I don't care whether Bush gets his jollies hearing about Abu Ghraib tortures, it is still a crime, perverted and punishable under international conventions. Whatever Bush's intentions, the war against Iraq is a war crime prohibited by our own federal statutes. They state clearly that what Bush has done in and to Iraq is punishable by death. Bush is a felon and there is probable cause to charge him with mass murder.

Am I getting through to anyone? Or --do Americans no longer care what their "presidents" do? Let's take a sober look at the facts. What Bush has done in Iraq is punishable by death. In our system, charges are brought when there is "probable cause" that a crime has been committed. There is, in fact, right now, probable cause to bring just such charges against George W. Bush.

It gets worse.

Gen. Betrayus should be fired and retired. Clearly --the speech he read had been written for him by Bush's propagandists and focus groups. Clearly, he put his own lousy career ahead of the truth, the interest of the American people. Such venality approaches high treason.

It's time to take a good, hard look at the scam, the fraud that this gang of GOP Bushies and hang overs from the Reagan years have perpetrated upon this nation. It's time to round up every one of the crooks and put them on trial for the capital crimes that they have committed under the cover of our national sovereignty.

There is a word for that. High treason. When "integrity" still had meaning, high treason was hanging offense.

In the meantime, read US Codes, Title 18, Section 2441 and then try to explain to me why George W. Bush and his gang of crooks and perverts are above the law!
§ 2441. War crimes

(a) Offense.— Whoever, whether inside or outside the United States, commits a war crime, in any of the circumstances described in subsection (b), shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim, shall also be subject to the penalty of death.

The Iraq Effect: The War has Increased Terrorism Sevenfold Worldwide

By Peter
Bergen
and Paul Cruickshank
Research fellows at the Center on Law and Security at the NYU School of Law. Bergen is also a senior fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C.

"If we were not fighting and destroying this enemy in Iraq, they would not be idle. They would be plotting and killing Americans across the world and within our own borders. By fighting these terrorists in Iraq, Americans in uniform are defeating a direct threat to the American people." So said President Bush on November 30, 2005, refining his earlier call to "bring them on." Jihadist terrorists, the administration’s argument went, would be drawn to Iraq like moths to a flame, and would perish there rather than wreak havoc elsewhere in the world.

The president’s argument conveyed two important assumptions: first, that the threat of jihadist terrorism to US interests would have been greater without the war in Iraq, and second, that the war is reducing the overall global pool of terrorists. However, the White House has never cited any evidence for either of these assumptions, and none appears to be publicly available.

The administration’s own National Intelligence Estimate on "Trends in Global Terrorism: implications for the United States," circulated within the government in April 2006 and partially declassified in October, states that "the Iraq War has become the ‘cause celebre’ for jihadists...and is shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives."

Iraq is falling apart. The world has become a more dangerous place amid increasing terrorism. It does not surprise me. I've been writing about it for almost ten years now. More recently, I was attacked by the Heritage Foundation for daring to quote FBI stats that support what I have been saying for years: Terrorism is Always Worse Under GOP Regimes.
So much so that one would think GOP regimes cause terrorism. According to FBI stats, terrorism has been worse under GOP regimes at least since 1980. Reagan's "War on Terrorism" caused terrorism, or at least, made it worse. During a period of two years, terrorist attacks against the United States increased. [Source: Total Acts of Terrorism in the US 1980-98, America's Response to Terrorism, The Brookings Institution (Based on FBI Statistics)]

Some history is needed to put this all in context. Ronald Reagan ordered a US invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and, like Bush now, his invasion was premised upon what was politely called a "deceitful pretext", in other words - a lie! The "pretext" was that the PLO, called a terrorist organization, had shot the Israeli ambassador to London. In fact, the shooter may never have been a PLO member.
[Fading Illusions: D-Day and Reagan].

...

Like Iraq today, the Lebanon Reagan invaded became a magnet for various "terrorist groups". They grew more active over the duration of the American occupation. Armed and dangerous, they tested Reagan's resolve and eventually won. Like Bush today, Reagan's definition of victory was defined with meaningless slogans -like "you can run but you can't hide". They did both and then counter-attacked. Reagan lost his war against "terrorism".

Terrorism, in fact, grew worse over the two years that he waged it. The trend did not abate until Bill Clinton became President. There were about three times as many terrorist attacks against US interests during the Reagan regime than against US interests under Bill Clinton.

Nevertheless, Reagan's adventure in Lebanon is remembered for two things: a) the thousands of lives lost amid even more waves of refugees; b) Reagan's ignominious pull-out following the bombing of the US marine barracks. Thought cowardly at the time, it may be too charitable in retrospect to attribute to Reagan remorse for having wrongly invaded to begin with. That's too much to expect from the GOP. In this earlier invasion, Ronald Reagan supported Israel just as Bush has more recently, just as the US always has. [See: Reagan Orders Marines Out of Lebanon]

--Terrorism is Always Worse Under GOP Regimes

It's all been a callous, cynical, criminal fraud --nothing less than the hijacking of the United States of America.

The Great Iraq Swindle

How Bush Allowed an Army of For-Profit Contractors to Invade the U.S. Treasury

Operation Iraqi Freedom, it turns out, was never a war against Saddam ­Hussein's Iraq. It was an invasion of the federal budget, and no occupying force in history has ever been this efficient. George W. Bush's war in the Mesopotamian desert was an experiment of sorts, a crude first take at his vision of a fully privatized American government. In Iraq the lines between essential government services and for-profit enterprises have been blurred to the point of absurdity -- to the point where wounded soldiers have to pay retail prices for fresh underwear, where modern-day chattel are imported from the Third World at slave wages to peel the potatoes we once assigned to grunts in KP, where private companies are guaranteed huge profits no matter how badly they fuck things up.

And just maybe, reviewing this appalling history of invoicing orgies and million-dollar boondoggles, it's not so far-fetched to think that this is the way someone up there would like things run all over -- not just in Iraq but in Iowa, too, with the state police working for Corrections Corporation of America, and DHL with the contract to deliver every Christmas card. And why not? What the Bush administration has created in Iraq is a sort of paradise of perverted capitalism, where revenues are forcibly extracted from the customer by the state, and obscene profits are handed out not by the market but by an unaccountable government bureauc­racy. This is the triumphant culmination of two centuries of flawed white-people thinking, a preposterous mix of authoritarian socialism and laissez-faire profit­eering, with all the worst aspects of both ideologies rolled up into one pointless, supremely idiotic military adventure -- American men and women dying by the thousands, so that Karl Marx and Adam Smith can blow each other in a Middle Eastern glory hole.

--Rolling Stone
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8 comments:

Diane B said...

Yes, There has always been more terrorism under Republican leadership, then Democrat, here are two reasons, this might be so, 1st, recently I read an interesting article on buzz flash, which explained the difference of Conservatives and Liberals by studying the brain. I do not have the article to review, so understand this is from my memory. The Conservative is more focused, control driven, where as the Liberal's mind wants to expand, is varied in its thinking, and normally excels in science.

2nd reason may be the way Democratic Leaders approach and relate to other Countries, which is thoughtful and a wanting to work
together with the other Countries, ready to seek solutions, which really ties in with the first reason.

You are right Len, these characters
that are running are government, have committed so many horrendous crimes, and need to be in prison if not worse. It appears this is not going to happen with this Congress,will it ever, who knows.

Mark Prime (tpm/Confession Zero) said...

Screw Bush's "intentions" in Iraq.

That's putting it nicely. too nicely...

Diane,
They have committed so many...
And that line alone will set my muse forth in search of my words for the next offering.
Sometimes it only takes a word
or two
strung together by a friend
and bang;
she smacks me around-
I mean into shape-
and I begin to create.

Gotta go! Here she comes!

Christopher said...

You are but one of those Americans who’ve seen through all the White House lies and propaganda directed at the American people to get their tacit consent for everything done in the name of the war on terror and the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

But large numbers of Americans continue to believe that “If we don’t fight them there, we’ll have to fight them here”, and that “the terrorists hate us because of our freedoms”, and that Saddam was involved in 9/11, and that most of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqi, and that the Iraq war is still winnable. And no doubt large numbers of Americans will swallow all that General Petraeus said this week on Capitol Hill.

Is it that Americans are uniquely gullible? Not according to an article by Shankar Vedantam which appeared in the Washington Post on September 4th 2007, which says in so many words that first impressions are the ones that stick in the human mind, no matter how often they are subsequently refuted.

Amazingly, denials tend to reinforce in the human mind what it originally learned, no matter how demonstrably untrue the original information was. Therefore myth-makers have all the advantages, and myth-busters have all the odds stacked against them.

I’ve posted Vedantam’s article on my own site if anyone’s interested. It’s worth a read, for it explains a lot.

Diane B said...

It is all about the oil, the Bush family must be making an unbelievable amount of money off that oil. Everything else is only a smoke screen. Terrorism, fighting them there so they don't fight us here, That is simply their story to try and keep us agreeable to this crazy War. It isn't working, and people, aren't buying it.

Bush now wants to set it up, leaving us with troops there, for many years. He knows were going to elect a Democrat, and he's going to make it as difficult, as possible. So the Democrats take the blame for the eventual withdrawal from Iraq. He's also very concerned with how history views him. Bush just doesn't get it that it doesn't make any difference.Bush will go down in history as the worst President, not one of, but the worst.

Unknown said...

Christopher I said...

But large numbers of Americans continue to believe that “If we don’t fight them there, we’ll have to fight them here”, and that “the terrorists hate us because of our freedoms”, and that Saddam was involved in 9/11, and that most of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqi, and that the Iraq war is still winnable. And no doubt large numbers of Americans will swallow all that General Petraeus said this week on Capitol Hill.

Michael Shermer, I believe, wrote a piece entitled "Why People Believe Weird Things". If I can find it, I'll repost excerpts and credit it, of course. He wrote it, I think, before Bush crossed the Rubicon.

At about the same time, a Stanford U group rolled out their study supporting the proposition that GOPPERS have more night mares and night terrors than the rest of us. While I cannot explain why that should be the case, unless it is simply the work of a bad conscience, I do connect the Standford findings with a phrase that I sill recall from the GOP National Convention of 1992. "Reagan made us feel good about ourselves".

The GOP, therefore, is the party of extreme neuroses, characterized by extreme lack of self-esteem. Perhaps because of the horrible things to which they are as a party, as a class complicit, they feel badly about themselves and eagerly seek any absurd lie for the temporary relief it gives them.

Republicanism, then, is a psychological ROLAID, taken daily for the relief of pain and suffering. I can even recall the jingle: "plop plop fizz fizz! Oh what a relief it iz!"

BTW, Christopher, I have been remiss. I have placed a link back to your blog on my blog roll.

Unknown said...

Diane said...

Bush now wants to set it up, leaving us with troops there, for many years.

And I believed I wrote a piece warning that he would do just that. Indeed, Bush doesn't give a damn about human life, the Constitution, and, most of all, he cares nothing for the truth.

His worst critics now fear that the GOP will engineer another terrorist attack giving him the excuse to declare a state of national emergency and martial law. The terrorists, he will claim, "followed us home".

In fact, the terrorists ARE the GOP!

Tom Degan said...

Len, all I can sayn is that your blog is beyond supreme. Please, when you have the chance, take a look at mine:

www.tomdegan.blogspot.com

May I link your site to mine?
All the best,

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY

Unknown said...

Tom Degan's Daily Rant said...

May I link your site to mine?
All the best,


Tom, I am happy to exchange links. Am checkin' out your great blog as I write. I recommend the regulars here check it out.

thanks for your kind words and the fine work you are doing on your blog. You're always welcome here on our back porch. As we say in Texas, pull up a chair and "set" a spell.