Wednesday, December 19, 2007

JINGO BELLS IRAQ

John McCain is no longer singing:

Bomb, bomb Iran

Bomb, bomb Iran.

He's now singing:

Jingo-bells, Jingo-bells

All the way to Baghdad

It's basically the same tune.

War hero McCain is waving his Victory flag and singing the Jingoism jingle.

Bush lied and led America into Iraq, and McCain is willing to continue to carry out the Liar-in-Chief's disastrous and costly pre-emptive war.
The prominent propaganda now, to justify the occupation of Iraq, are the postive proclamations that conditions are improving in Iraq. As with everything...time will tell. But Professor Juan Cole wrote this:

The guerrilla movement in Iraq is generating a steady 600 attacks a week using bombs, small-arms, mortars and sniping. This number has not changed during the past six weeks, and although it is lower than the rate in September, it is a very significant number of attacks. Roadside bomb attacks in specific are down, but there is no change in the number of over-all attacks. The Iraqi government statistics show 600 civilian deaths a month (the US military's statistics are lower).

The US troop escalation that began last February seems to be implicated in the displacement of over one million Iraqis to Syria between March and October of this year, adding to the nearly 450,000 that fled there in 2006. This is according to projections from a United Nations weighted survey of nearly 800 refugees. Some 78% of those interviewed in Syria said that they came from Baghdad.

The United States military in Iraq has arrested and imprisoned 30,000 or so Iraqis, the majority of them Sunni Arabs. That is 0.1% of the entire Iraqi population! Marine Maj. Gen. Doug Stone says he fears that many of those detained are moderates or simply fought because they were paid to, and that holding so many of them together for very long may actually create more hardened terrorists.

Thursday, December 20, 2007

http://www.juancole.com/

Informed Comment
Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion

Patriotism is McCain's theme song for his race to the White House.

He, like Bush, is appealing to the fear factor:

Fear the Al-Qaeda terrorists even more even though there are fewer in Iraq;

Yes, the Iraq war is messy, and it is still a challenge---but to leave now would leave America at even greater risk.

America will stay there for a long, long time.

Those are my words, but they reflect Mr. McCain's ideas.

It is what George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and their followers have done to America in order to bomb Iraq that is their most despicable and damning CRIME, notwithstanding the causation and motivation of 9/11 itself.

Among all of the GOP presidential candidates, John McCain is now the number one cheerleader for the continuation of the occupation of Iraq.

McCain wants to be the hero-savior sword-bearer of the Pentagon's geopolitical and national security interests in Iraq.

McCain doesn't feel that it is a bad or wrong war, but only that it is a war that was waged badly.

If that isn't twisted logic I don't know what is.
But to say that the United States of America is jingoisic is to risk being called unpatriotic. Everybody has to keep singing that same tune, to the same beat...
Jingo Bells Iraq.


So keep those taxes coming in, America.

The war in Iraq is going to go on and on.

Jingo-bells

Jingo-bells

All the way to Baghdad...

Forever in Iraq.



Obviously, I have to talk to you about the war in Iraq. All of us---all of us---are frustrated. All of us are angry because of the mishandling of the war. All of us are saddened by the loss of our most precious asset, and that’s American blood.

Even so, the costs of retreat would be higher, fueling chaos in Iraq and drawing terrorists to U.S. shores. I want us to have patience. I want us to succeed.

John McCain



What Bush will almost surely be pushing for is permanent U.S. bases in Iraq, enshrined in a pact he can sign a few months before he leaves office. And here, as they used to say, is the beauty part: As far as Bush is concerned, he doesn't have to seek congressional ratification for such an enduring commitment of American force, treasure and lives.

If the dividing line between the two parties is that one backs Bush on Iraq and the other does not, the Republicans might as well give up the ghost and nominate Dick Cheney as their presidential standard-bearer. Bush's policy legacy, in short, poses a serious threat to what one presumes he wishes his political legacy to be -- a thriving Republican Party.

The president who waged a preemptive war now wants to lock in place a preemptive occupation. Only this time, instead of preempting a foreign nation, he is seeking to preempt Congress and his successor. It's the logical conclusion for his misshapen and miserable presidency, and I doubt the American people -- if they have any say in the matter -- will stand for it.

From Bush's Next Preemptive Strike

By Harold Meyerson

http://www.washingtonpost.com/

Thursday, November 29, 2007; Page A25



Impeachment is the elephant in the room. Everyone knows that this country is being run by a criminal syndicate that has rigged elections, hidden its knowledge of the 9-11 attacks, lied the country into war, plotted to out an important CIA undercover operative and then obstruct a criminal investigation into that act, subverted most of the articles of the bill of rights, emasculated the Congress and the Courts (which it has also shamelessly packed with shameless hacks), betrayed veterans, surrendered a major American metropolis to the devastation of a hurricane, plotted to enable the declaring or martial law, tortured and kidnapped people in violation of international law and obstructed efforts to deal with the unprecedented crisis of global warming for an unconscionable seven years.

From The Corporate Media Means No Real News

When Impeachment is Out of Print

By DAVE LINDORFF

December 18, 2007

www.counterpunch.org

No rational person can deny that Iraq never had any connection whatsoever to the 9/11 attacks, especially given that none of the 9/11 attackers were even from Iraq. Yet, countless Iraqi people are now dead or maimed and their entire country is destroyed. One might easily say that Iraq is the federal massacre of Waco magnified a million-fold. The whole situation in Iraq brings to mind the famous dictum of Tacitus: "They made a desert and called it peace."
Nothing, not even "peace" in Iraq, will ever be able to morally justify a war of aggression against a nation whose people were totally innocent of the 9/11 attacks. Nothing, not even some warped definition of "terrorist," will ever be able to morally justify killing Iraqis who were doing nothing more than trying to oust their country of an illegal invader who had invaded with a thirst for vengeance and regime change relying on fake and false rationales for its invasion. Nothing will ever be able to morally justify the killing of even one single Iraqi, much less hundreds of thousands of them, given that neither the Iraqi people nor their government ever attacked the United States.

Neo-con supporters of the U.S. government's war of aggression against Iraq are undoubtedly holding their collective breath in the hope that U.S. military forces have finally smashed any further violent opposition to their conquest of Iraq. The attitude would then be, "You see, this shows that we were right after all to invade and occupy Iraq and kill and maim hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people."
Meanwhile, the Associated Press is reporting that U.S. soldiers have found mass graves next to a torture center north of Baghdad. In the torture center, chains were attached to blood-spattered walls while a metal bed was attached to an electrical shock system.


Where is Our Tacitus?
Nothing Can Morally Justify the Invasion of Iraq

By JACOB G. HORNBERGER

December 21, 2007

http://counterpunch.com/hornberger12212007.html

IT'S THE OIL STUPID!

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