US airstrikes in Somalia KILL 70 INNOCENT NOMADS. The American whore media subscribes to the Nazi "we don't report on the dead and 'disappeared'" model of 'news' reporting.
===========================================
US strikes on al-Qa'ida chiefs kill nomads
By Anne Penketh and Steve Bloomfield
13 January 2007
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/article2149716.ece
The herdsmen had gathered with their animals around large fires at night to ward off mosquitoes. But lit up by the flames, they became latest victims of America's war on terror.
It was their tragedy to be misidentified in a secret operation by special forces attempting to kill three top al-Qa'ida leaders in south-ern Somalia.
Oxfam yesterday confirmed at least 70 nomads in the Afmadow district near the border with Kenya had been killed. The nomads were bombed at night and during the day while searching for water sources. Meanwhile, the US ambassador to Kenya has acknowledged that the onslaught on Islamist fighters failed to kill any of the three prime targets wanted for their alleged role in the 1998 US embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.
The wanted men are Fazul Abdullah Moham-med, Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan and Abu Taha al-Sudani, who were all supposedly sheltered by the Union of Islamic Courts during its short reign in Mogadishu.
The operation, which opened a new front in Washington's anti-terror campaign, seems to have backfired spectacularly in the five days since it was launched. In addition to the scores of Somali civilians killed, the simmering civil war in the failed state has been rekindled.
Yesterday concern was mounting at the high number of civilian casualties, despite a claim by the US ambassador, Michael Ranneberger, that no civilians had been killed or injured and that only one attack had taken place. The UN's refugee agency, UNHCR, reported that an estimated 100 people were wounded in Monday's air strikes on the small fishing village of Ras Kamboni launched from the US military base in Djibouti after a mobile phone intercept.
The operation was only confirmed by the Pentagon a day after it was launched and it continued despite international protests and warnings that it risked being counterproductive.
Yesterday the Americans had boots on the ground for the first time since a 1993 mission backfired and led to a humiliating withdrawal from Somalia. According to The Washington Post, a small number of US military personnel are in southern Somalia trying to determine exactly who was killed in the raids by an AC-130 gunship.
Oxfam - which had received reports from its Somali partner organisations about the herdsmen's deaths - and Amnesty International have asked whether the the air strikes violated international law.
"Under international law, there is a duty to distinguish between military and civilian targets," said Paul Smith-Lomas, Oxfam's regional director. "We are deeply concerned that this principle is not being adhered to, and that innocent people in Somalia are paying the price."
There is also concern that the attacks by American and Ethiopian gunships have fanned the country's civil war. Somalia's main warlords yesterday appeared to agree to disarm their militias and form a new national army. But as the warlords met with the Somali President, Abdullahi Yusuf, gun battles raged outside the presidential villa underlining the scale of the security problems.
Somalia has witnessed a fresh surge in violence this week as warlords have fought to regain old ground and Islamists have attacked government forces and their allies. The Ethiopian military, acting in support of the US-backed transitional government in Somalia, had only recently routed the Islamists from the capital.
Yesterday, fighting in Mogadishu claimed the lives of at least six militia men after a clash with troops. The gun battle was believed to have been sparked by an argument over a parking space.
Monday, January 15, 2007
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Helen Thomas: Media ROLLING OVER for BushCo LIES have "DESTROYED AMERICA's HALO as vIsionaries for a better mankind."
<< "I think the American press corps has lost its way," Thomas said, adding: "There’s no reason the media played along with the administration’s shifting rationales, all untrue in the run-up to the catastrophic war in Iraq."
"Congress rolled over, as we did, no questions asked," Thomas said. "But the result of our default has been devastating? We lost our halo as the visionaries for a better mankind." >>
=================================================
Correspondent Helen Thomas lashes out at the "lapdog media."
By Trevor Aaronson
January 13, 2007
http://www.commercialappeal.com/mca/local/article/0,2845,MCA_25340_5278569,00.html
Tapping into one of the strongest undercurrents at the National Conference for Media Reform in Memphis, longtime White House correspondent Helen Thomas criticized what she described as a lapdog media for not erecting roadblocks on the road to war in Iraq.
The doyenne of Beltway journalism, Thomas issued a sweeping indictment of American media during a Saturday-afternoon discussion at the Cook Convention Center.
"I think the American press corps has lost its way," Thomas said, adding: "There’s no reason the media played along with the administration’s shifting rationales, all untrue in the run-up to the catastrophic war in Iraq."
"Congress rolled over, as we did, no questions asked," Thomas said. "But the result of our default has been devastating? We lost our halo as the visionaries for a better mankind."
Thomas served on a panel about the media’s coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The panel also included Paul Rieckhoff, an Iraq war veteran and author of "Chasing Ghosts" who expressed concerns about the media’s disconnect with American foreign policy.
"When I came back from Iraq in 2004, the No. 1 story was Janet Jackson’s exposed breast," he said.
"Congress rolled over, as we did, no questions asked," Thomas said. "But the result of our default has been devastating? We lost our halo as the visionaries for a better mankind." >>
=================================================
Correspondent Helen Thomas lashes out at the "lapdog media."
By Trevor Aaronson
January 13, 2007
http://www.commercialappeal.com/mca/local/article/0,2845,MCA_25340_5278569,00.html
Tapping into one of the strongest undercurrents at the National Conference for Media Reform in Memphis, longtime White House correspondent Helen Thomas criticized what she described as a lapdog media for not erecting roadblocks on the road to war in Iraq.
The doyenne of Beltway journalism, Thomas issued a sweeping indictment of American media during a Saturday-afternoon discussion at the Cook Convention Center.
"I think the American press corps has lost its way," Thomas said, adding: "There’s no reason the media played along with the administration’s shifting rationales, all untrue in the run-up to the catastrophic war in Iraq."
"Congress rolled over, as we did, no questions asked," Thomas said. "But the result of our default has been devastating? We lost our halo as the visionaries for a better mankind."
Thomas served on a panel about the media’s coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The panel also included Paul Rieckhoff, an Iraq war veteran and author of "Chasing Ghosts" who expressed concerns about the media’s disconnect with American foreign policy.
"When I came back from Iraq in 2004, the No. 1 story was Janet Jackson’s exposed breast," he said.
(Corporate) Media Whores NO DIFFERENT than the "kept media" of a DICTATORSHIP. Madison, Wisconsin, Times
Again, we here at MediaWhoresUSA.blogspot.com APOLOGIZE to the sex-workers of the world, many of whom were driven into their trade by bullying, evil forces beyond their control, and many of whom support their families by plying "the world's oldest profession."
But in the case of America's multi-million dollar MEDIA WHORES, we can summon no amount of derision or scorn sufficient to describe THE BETRAYAL of the ideal of a FREE and INDEPENDENT media, by those "independent" organizations that are JOINED AT THE HIP with a dictatorial and chronically lying administration in the favor of vast sums of money for a garbage and awful product.
These media whores JOIN the Bush administration, IN BOLD FACED LYING: they are neither "INDEPENDENT" nor "JOURNALISTS," but paid whores spreading propaganda LIES for wealth and profit, at the expense of blood and lost opportunity here in America and across the world.
<< Handing the bully pulpit over to a president who has repeatedly misused his position to DECEIVE the Congress and the American people is not journalism; it is stenography.
And make no mistake: A "free" press that practices STENOGRAPHY TO POWER is no different from the KEPT PRESS of a TOTALITARIAN state. >>
Like the Nazi press before them, America's corporate media whores of today take an idea (in this case, American supremacy and "legitimacy" to start a war anytime, anywhere, on the most atrocious of pretexts) as making them Holy and Superior, and JUSTIFYING ANY bending of the facts (lies) to legitimize their goals, in this case legitimizing a lying, criminal, and corrupt government.
======================================================
Editorial: Bush in the bully pulpit
Madison Times, Wisconsin, editorial
Jan 13 2006
http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/index.php?ntid=114813&ntpid=0
It is all well and good to celebrate the cautious baby steps being taken by Congress to reassert itself as a check and balance on the executive branch excesses of the monarchical Bush administration. When even Republicans, such as Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, are publicly admitting that the House and Senate failed during the first six years of the Bush interregnum to practice even minimal oversight, there is perhaps a measure of hope for the republic.
But that hope will not be realized if we wait for Congress to develop the spine it has been deprived of since the Watergate era. There must be an external check and balance on the executive branch, and that will only happen if the media abandon the bended-knee position from which they have covered the Bush administration.
The willingness of most mainstream media outlets to continue to treat seriously the absurd and propagandistic claims of this president and his aides is at least as damaging to the discourse and, by extension, to the American experiment as the collapse of congressional oversight. To allow the administration and its supporters to suggest, at this late stage in the disaster that is the Iraq invasion and occupation, that challenges to the president's proposal to escalate the war are disrespectful of U.S. troops serving there is to perpetuate a lie that warps the national debate in a manner that ensures more Americans and Iraqis will be killed.
The president and his dwindling circle of supporters certainly have a right to make their pronouncements. But they do not have a right to expect that lies and spin will be swallowed by the media and then regurgitated into the living rooms of Americans.
AP Photo/Gerald Herbert
President Bush delivers a speech to troops and their families at Fort Benning, Ga. Jan. 11.
Unfortunately, that is what happened Wednesday night, as a presidential address that should have been met with unbridled skepticism was instead treated as a meaningful statement regarding the future U.S. presence in Iraq.
Just as it would be wrong for the media to censor Bush, it is equally wrong for the media to allow the madness of this modern-day King George to infect the discourse without the immediate application of the antidote of truth.
Handing the bully pulpit over to a president who has repeatedly misused his position to deceive the Congress and the American people is not journalism; it is stenography.
And make no mistake: A "free" press that practices stenography to power is no different from the "kept" press of a totalitarian state.
Indeed, the promise of "freedom of the press" is nothing more than a meaningless clause in a disposable document if journalists do not use the freedom they have been afforded by the Constitution to challenge the status quo.
It is significant, indeed, that the travesty of the latest presidential address to the nation came on the eve of this weekend's third National Conference for Media Reform, which has brought more than 3,000 activists, academics, members of Congress and concerned journalists to Memphis this weekend. They could not have picked a better time to address the crisis created by an increasingly consolidated, dumbed-down and homogenized national media.
There is a dawning realization that what's wrong with America is not just the fault of an incompetent and deceptive president, nor of a cowardly and dysfunctional Congress. The founders established a free press to keep watch on the executive branch particularly in a time of war. No less a figure than James Madison warned, "A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy or perhaps both."
Iraq is a tragedy. Proposals to escalate U.S. involvement are a farce. And surely, Madison would tell us a media system that does not have the capacity to communicate that fact to the American people bluntly, and without apology is in need of radical reform.
But in the case of America's multi-million dollar MEDIA WHORES, we can summon no amount of derision or scorn sufficient to describe THE BETRAYAL of the ideal of a FREE and INDEPENDENT media, by those "independent" organizations that are JOINED AT THE HIP with a dictatorial and chronically lying administration in the favor of vast sums of money for a garbage and awful product.
These media whores JOIN the Bush administration, IN BOLD FACED LYING: they are neither "INDEPENDENT" nor "JOURNALISTS," but paid whores spreading propaganda LIES for wealth and profit, at the expense of blood and lost opportunity here in America and across the world.
<< Handing the bully pulpit over to a president who has repeatedly misused his position to DECEIVE the Congress and the American people is not journalism; it is stenography.
And make no mistake: A "free" press that practices STENOGRAPHY TO POWER is no different from the KEPT PRESS of a TOTALITARIAN state. >>
Like the Nazi press before them, America's corporate media whores of today take an idea (in this case, American supremacy and "legitimacy" to start a war anytime, anywhere, on the most atrocious of pretexts) as making them Holy and Superior, and JUSTIFYING ANY bending of the facts (lies) to legitimize their goals, in this case legitimizing a lying, criminal, and corrupt government.
======================================================
Editorial: Bush in the bully pulpit
Madison Times, Wisconsin, editorial
Jan 13 2006
http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/index.php?ntid=114813&ntpid=0
It is all well and good to celebrate the cautious baby steps being taken by Congress to reassert itself as a check and balance on the executive branch excesses of the monarchical Bush administration. When even Republicans, such as Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, are publicly admitting that the House and Senate failed during the first six years of the Bush interregnum to practice even minimal oversight, there is perhaps a measure of hope for the republic.
But that hope will not be realized if we wait for Congress to develop the spine it has been deprived of since the Watergate era. There must be an external check and balance on the executive branch, and that will only happen if the media abandon the bended-knee position from which they have covered the Bush administration.
The willingness of most mainstream media outlets to continue to treat seriously the absurd and propagandistic claims of this president and his aides is at least as damaging to the discourse and, by extension, to the American experiment as the collapse of congressional oversight. To allow the administration and its supporters to suggest, at this late stage in the disaster that is the Iraq invasion and occupation, that challenges to the president's proposal to escalate the war are disrespectful of U.S. troops serving there is to perpetuate a lie that warps the national debate in a manner that ensures more Americans and Iraqis will be killed.
The president and his dwindling circle of supporters certainly have a right to make their pronouncements. But they do not have a right to expect that lies and spin will be swallowed by the media and then regurgitated into the living rooms of Americans.
AP Photo/Gerald Herbert
President Bush delivers a speech to troops and their families at Fort Benning, Ga. Jan. 11.
Unfortunately, that is what happened Wednesday night, as a presidential address that should have been met with unbridled skepticism was instead treated as a meaningful statement regarding the future U.S. presence in Iraq.
Just as it would be wrong for the media to censor Bush, it is equally wrong for the media to allow the madness of this modern-day King George to infect the discourse without the immediate application of the antidote of truth.
Handing the bully pulpit over to a president who has repeatedly misused his position to deceive the Congress and the American people is not journalism; it is stenography.
And make no mistake: A "free" press that practices stenography to power is no different from the "kept" press of a totalitarian state.
Indeed, the promise of "freedom of the press" is nothing more than a meaningless clause in a disposable document if journalists do not use the freedom they have been afforded by the Constitution to challenge the status quo.
It is significant, indeed, that the travesty of the latest presidential address to the nation came on the eve of this weekend's third National Conference for Media Reform, which has brought more than 3,000 activists, academics, members of Congress and concerned journalists to Memphis this weekend. They could not have picked a better time to address the crisis created by an increasingly consolidated, dumbed-down and homogenized national media.
There is a dawning realization that what's wrong with America is not just the fault of an incompetent and deceptive president, nor of a cowardly and dysfunctional Congress. The founders established a free press to keep watch on the executive branch particularly in a time of war. No less a figure than James Madison warned, "A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy or perhaps both."
Iraq is a tragedy. Proposals to escalate U.S. involvement are a farce. And surely, Madison would tell us a media system that does not have the capacity to communicate that fact to the American people bluntly, and without apology is in need of radical reform.
Saturday, January 13, 2007
Poor little Media Whores! They push the FICTION of "Iraq SOVEREIGN NATION" meme, even while prepping the OUSTING of Maliki...
IF the LA Times had their heads any further up the Bush adminstration's keister.. they'd be Judith Miller and Arthur Sulzberger of the New York Slimes! Here, the LAT pretends that Iraq is a "SOVEREIGN NATION," in the way a teenage driver is an independent adult..... "Just make sure you ASK before you take that car out for a drive, junior!"
<< Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has filled the top military job in Baghdad with a virtually unknown officer chosen OVER THE OBJECTIONS [of the REAL VICEROYS of Iraq] the objections of U.S. and Iraqi [NOT!] military commanders, officials from both governments said.
Iraqi political figures said Friday that Maliki also had failed to consult the leaders of other political factions before announcing the appointment of Lt. Gen. Abud Qanbar. >>
Maliki - dead man walking, as the junior Bush in the US White House hopes to add another scalp to his bloody trophy pole.
=======================================
Iraqi leader goes own way to fill top post
He picks an unknown to lead forces in Baghdad, which raises questions about his motives.
By Louise Roug and Peter Spiegel, Times Staff Writers
January 13, 2007
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-commander13jan13,0,2026180.story?coll=la-home-world
BAGHDAD — Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has filled the top military job in Baghdad with a virtually unknown officer chosen over the objections of U.S. and Iraqi military commanders, officials from both governments said.
Iraqi political figures said Friday that Maliki also had failed to consult the leaders of other political factions before announcing the appointment of Lt. Gen. Abud Qanbar.
The appointment is highly significant because it is Maliki's first public move after President Bush's announcement that he was sending more troops to Iraq. The prime mission of those troops is to reduce violence in Baghdad, much of which is blamed on sectarian fighters.
As the Iraqi commander for the capital, Qanbar would play a central role in that campaign, and any ties he might have to sectarian groups could undermine the new U.S. effort.
In his speech Wednesday, in which he announced the troop increase, Bush said political and sectarian interference in security matters would no longer be tolerated.
"If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people," Bush said. "The prime minister understands this."
Maliki's decision to push through his own choice for one of the country's most sensitive military posts — and to reject another officer who was considered more qualified by the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. George W. Casey — has renewed questions about the prime minister's intentions.
"It's a delicate situation," said Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish lawmaker who questioned the choice of Qanbar. "It's very dangerous if it turns out that he has affiliations," he said, naming Maliki's political party and the anti-American Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr.
U.S. officials are skeptical of Qanbar not only because of the way he was named, but because they know little about him. Moreover, they have questioned the degree to which Maliki's government is reliant on sectarian figures, particularly Sadr. Maliki essentially is asking American officials to take Qanbar on trust at a time when they have little left.
Qanbar, a commander in the navy during Saddam Hussein's reign, has not worked with American military officials, who say they know little about him other than that he hails from Amarah, a city in Iraq's Shiite-dominated south, and that he was taken prisoner by American forces near Kuwait during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
U.S. commanders have said that officials in Maliki's government have intervened several times to block them from combating Sadr's Al Mahdi militia, which is accused of being behind much of the bloodshed in Baghdad. When U.S. forces did raid the militia's stronghold of Sadr City, a largely Shiite neighborhood of east Baghdad, Maliki's government publicly criticized them. On several occasions, Maliki ordered the release of suspected militiamen captured there, frustrating U.S. commanders.
The appointment of Qanbar comes as the U.S. military is debating whether to attack Sadr City. As the Iraqi commander, Qanbar could have advance knowledge of U.S. operations. He would command 18 brigades of Iraqi forces that are supposed to be deployed to work with the Americans.
U.S. officials have said the decision on whether to move into Sadr City will be left to the Iraqi government. Privately, senior military officials say that new rules of engagement negotiated with the Iraqis would allow them to go into the neighborhood and target individual insurgent and militia leaders.
At least some Pentagon planners appear to relish the opportunity to target the Al Mahdi militia.
"This time we have a commitment from Maliki and other key players in the Iraqi government … to have a no-holds-barred arrangement for neighborhoods in Baghdad," said a senior military official who requested anonymity in order to freely discuss military planning. Sadr City "will not be a safe haven" for militias, he said.
Within the Pentagon, not everyone agrees that attacking Sadr City is advisable.
Crucial to the decision will be the incoming U.S. commander in Iraq, Army Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus. He has not commented on the tactics he plans to pursue, but for the last two years he has overseen the development of the military's new counterinsurgency field manual, which appears to argue against a large-scale invasion of a neighborhood such as Sadr City, particularly in the early part of the new Baghdad security campaign.
The manual's first chapter, which Petraeus is known to have aggressively rewritten, advises commanders that though largescale offensives against insurgents may be necessary, they should be limited.
"Killing every insurgent is normally impossible," the manual says. "Attempting to do so can be counterproductive in some cases; it risks generating popular resentment, creating martyrs that motivate new recruits, and producing cycles of revenge."
An influential plan for Baghdad security drawn up by retired Army Gen. Jack Keane and military analyst Frederick Kagan strongly advised against moving into Sadr City. The plan, which was highly influential within the White House and is considered to mirror Petraeus' thinking, argued that an attack on Sadr City would unite now-splintered Shiite factions against U.S. forces.
"We have an opportunity now to keep the Shiite parties separate and to avoid a full-scale military conflict with them," Kagan said. "If we go into Sadr City, that will not be the case. We will find ourselves in a full-scale, very bloody operation, which probably will look something like Fallouja."
There is even more division over whether to target Sadr himself.
Senior military officials refused to discuss which insurgents and militia commanders might be in the crosshairs. They have been vague about whether Sadr could be detained or killed.
"The people we target are not fundamentally political leaders," said the senior military official. "We're targeting people who are directly involved with promoting violence either against our Iraqi partners or, in some instances, against us."
To quell the concerns U.S. commanders have about Qanbar, American officials and the Iraqi government have agreed on a complicated system in which another layer would be added to the command structure between Maliki and Qanbar. That layer would include the top U.S. commander, a high-ranking American official said.
But that decision did not appease Iraqi politicians who object that they were not consulted on Qanbar's appointment.
"Nobody asked us," said Adnan Dulaimi, a lawmaker with a main Sunni bloc. "This is the first I've heard."
louise.roug@latimes.com
Times staff writer Raheem Salman contributed to thi
<< Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has filled the top military job in Baghdad with a virtually unknown officer chosen OVER THE OBJECTIONS [of the REAL VICEROYS of Iraq] the objections of U.S. and Iraqi [NOT!] military commanders, officials from both governments said.
Iraqi political figures said Friday that Maliki also had failed to consult the leaders of other political factions before announcing the appointment of Lt. Gen. Abud Qanbar. >>
Maliki - dead man walking, as the junior Bush in the US White House hopes to add another scalp to his bloody trophy pole.
=======================================
Iraqi leader goes own way to fill top post
He picks an unknown to lead forces in Baghdad, which raises questions about his motives.
By Louise Roug and Peter Spiegel, Times Staff Writers
January 13, 2007
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-commander13jan13,0,2026180.story?coll=la-home-world
BAGHDAD — Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has filled the top military job in Baghdad with a virtually unknown officer chosen over the objections of U.S. and Iraqi military commanders, officials from both governments said.
Iraqi political figures said Friday that Maliki also had failed to consult the leaders of other political factions before announcing the appointment of Lt. Gen. Abud Qanbar.
The appointment is highly significant because it is Maliki's first public move after President Bush's announcement that he was sending more troops to Iraq. The prime mission of those troops is to reduce violence in Baghdad, much of which is blamed on sectarian fighters.
As the Iraqi commander for the capital, Qanbar would play a central role in that campaign, and any ties he might have to sectarian groups could undermine the new U.S. effort.
In his speech Wednesday, in which he announced the troop increase, Bush said political and sectarian interference in security matters would no longer be tolerated.
"If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people," Bush said. "The prime minister understands this."
Maliki's decision to push through his own choice for one of the country's most sensitive military posts — and to reject another officer who was considered more qualified by the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. George W. Casey — has renewed questions about the prime minister's intentions.
"It's a delicate situation," said Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish lawmaker who questioned the choice of Qanbar. "It's very dangerous if it turns out that he has affiliations," he said, naming Maliki's political party and the anti-American Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr.
U.S. officials are skeptical of Qanbar not only because of the way he was named, but because they know little about him. Moreover, they have questioned the degree to which Maliki's government is reliant on sectarian figures, particularly Sadr. Maliki essentially is asking American officials to take Qanbar on trust at a time when they have little left.
Qanbar, a commander in the navy during Saddam Hussein's reign, has not worked with American military officials, who say they know little about him other than that he hails from Amarah, a city in Iraq's Shiite-dominated south, and that he was taken prisoner by American forces near Kuwait during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
U.S. commanders have said that officials in Maliki's government have intervened several times to block them from combating Sadr's Al Mahdi militia, which is accused of being behind much of the bloodshed in Baghdad. When U.S. forces did raid the militia's stronghold of Sadr City, a largely Shiite neighborhood of east Baghdad, Maliki's government publicly criticized them. On several occasions, Maliki ordered the release of suspected militiamen captured there, frustrating U.S. commanders.
The appointment of Qanbar comes as the U.S. military is debating whether to attack Sadr City. As the Iraqi commander, Qanbar could have advance knowledge of U.S. operations. He would command 18 brigades of Iraqi forces that are supposed to be deployed to work with the Americans.
U.S. officials have said the decision on whether to move into Sadr City will be left to the Iraqi government. Privately, senior military officials say that new rules of engagement negotiated with the Iraqis would allow them to go into the neighborhood and target individual insurgent and militia leaders.
At least some Pentagon planners appear to relish the opportunity to target the Al Mahdi militia.
"This time we have a commitment from Maliki and other key players in the Iraqi government … to have a no-holds-barred arrangement for neighborhoods in Baghdad," said a senior military official who requested anonymity in order to freely discuss military planning. Sadr City "will not be a safe haven" for militias, he said.
Within the Pentagon, not everyone agrees that attacking Sadr City is advisable.
Crucial to the decision will be the incoming U.S. commander in Iraq, Army Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus. He has not commented on the tactics he plans to pursue, but for the last two years he has overseen the development of the military's new counterinsurgency field manual, which appears to argue against a large-scale invasion of a neighborhood such as Sadr City, particularly in the early part of the new Baghdad security campaign.
The manual's first chapter, which Petraeus is known to have aggressively rewritten, advises commanders that though largescale offensives against insurgents may be necessary, they should be limited.
"Killing every insurgent is normally impossible," the manual says. "Attempting to do so can be counterproductive in some cases; it risks generating popular resentment, creating martyrs that motivate new recruits, and producing cycles of revenge."
An influential plan for Baghdad security drawn up by retired Army Gen. Jack Keane and military analyst Frederick Kagan strongly advised against moving into Sadr City. The plan, which was highly influential within the White House and is considered to mirror Petraeus' thinking, argued that an attack on Sadr City would unite now-splintered Shiite factions against U.S. forces.
"We have an opportunity now to keep the Shiite parties separate and to avoid a full-scale military conflict with them," Kagan said. "If we go into Sadr City, that will not be the case. We will find ourselves in a full-scale, very bloody operation, which probably will look something like Fallouja."
There is even more division over whether to target Sadr himself.
Senior military officials refused to discuss which insurgents and militia commanders might be in the crosshairs. They have been vague about whether Sadr could be detained or killed.
"The people we target are not fundamentally political leaders," said the senior military official. "We're targeting people who are directly involved with promoting violence either against our Iraqi partners or, in some instances, against us."
To quell the concerns U.S. commanders have about Qanbar, American officials and the Iraqi government have agreed on a complicated system in which another layer would be added to the command structure between Maliki and Qanbar. That layer would include the top U.S. commander, a high-ranking American official said.
But that decision did not appease Iraqi politicians who object that they were not consulted on Qanbar's appointment.
"Nobody asked us," said Adnan Dulaimi, a lawmaker with a main Sunni bloc. "This is the first I've heard."
louise.roug@latimes.com
Times staff writer Raheem Salman contributed to thi
Media REFORM Conference, Memphis, Tenn. attracts 2 of 5 FCC Commissioners....
The MEDIA WHORES suck up ONE-HALF-TRILLION Dollars from American consumers for the FREE USE of PUBLIC AIRWAVES.
They also have a DEFACTO MONOPOLY over COMMUNICATIONS in American elections: candidates MUST fork over MILLIONS OF DOLLARS to the whore Corporate media, to reach American viewers/consumers/voters in each and every election cycle.
Of course, a huge portion of responsibility for this horrific fact rests with American consumers/viewers/voters themselves: IF they were subjected to the rock-bottom Right-Wing "ideal" - $ZERO minimum wages: NO social security net; NO government intervention no matter how parasitic, corrupt, and predatory industrial monopolists were - we would have a situation we have all seen before (in history books if not in our own memories), THE GREAT DEPRESSION, and people would PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT THEIR GOVERNMENT is doing for them, and DEMAND that the government do something for them.
Instead, 300 million of us Americans have the luxury of eating meat 3 or more times a day if we choose to; we expect to have running electricity 24 hours a day; we EXPECT the government to protect our savings accounts; and we expect the government to provide an economic system whereby our children can expect employment for life and education at least through high school graduation.
Rethuglicans would LOVE to destroy ALL the above, and in the case of PENSIONS at ENRON, World-Com, and other corporations, Right-Wing politicians have pretended that it was INEVITABLE that thousands of workers, pensioners, and investors lost their fortunes due to pathetic regulatory oversight of those parasitic executives.
THAT AMERICAN CORPORATE MEDIA has MONOPOLY control over the US airwaves, and the democratic election process, is the result of the DISORGANIZATION and ego-driven "herding cats" nature of the "Democractic/Progressive/Left," and as well that millions of American voters still, to this day, despise the Democratic agenda that brought many of them into the American lifestlye of the late 20th century that they take_for_granted.
(That media corporations push policies on American voters that put billions of PUBLIC taxpayer dollars into corporate profits, and give million-dollar "campaign-contribution" SLUSH-FUND KICKBACKS to BRIBERY/EXTORTION SPECIALIST LOBBYISTS and legislators like Jack Abramoff, Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney, and Tom DeLay, is a given.)
______________________________________________________________________
<< Two of the five FCC commissioners have enthusiastically attended the last two Media Reform conferences: Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein. (In fact, they are sitting next to BuzzFlash as newly-elected Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is speaking.) They are as energized as the Eveready battery bunny about bringing media ownership back to America’s citizens.
As Copps pointed out in remarks on Friday, Big Media PULLS IN A HALF a TRILLION DOLLARS FOR FREE USE OF THE PUBLIC AIRWAVES. That is CORPORATE WELFARE at a GARGANTUAN LEVEL.
========================================
BuzzFlash Thoughts from the Media Reform Conference in Memphis -- January 12-14
A BuzzFlash News Analysis
Sat, 01/13/2007
http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/analysis/171
Having attended the three Media Reform conferences sponsored by FreePress.net over the last few years, BuzzFlash is profoundly optimistic that the harmful and insidious "news [propaganda] frame" created by the corporate media may be countered by a grassroots movement of activists.
From the first Media Reform conference in Madison, Wisconsin, a few years back to this year’s conference in Memphis (January 12-14), attendance has tripled to well more than 3,000 activists.
Although media reform is essential to restoring an active, vital grassroots democracy to the United States, it is often a topic that causes even BuzzFlash readers to bypass it because of two reasons. One is that the power Big Media maintains through billions of dollars of consolidated ownership and profits appears too insurmountable to counteract to many progressives.
The second issue is that many of the regulatory and legislative issues that are necessary to rein in an entertainment/propaganda industry that is de facto aligned with the Republican government and the status quo…many of these regulatory and legislative issues appear arcane and difficult to understand.
But the growing numbers of activists, legislators, regulators, celebrities, and new media stars joining the media reform movement indicate that there is a groundswell that is not going to be dissuaded by these obstacles.
The attendees here in Memphis are geared up for battle. They are not just energized; they are growing increasingly savvy about how to strategically take on Big Media and start winning.
Two of the five FCC commissioners have enthusiastically attended the last two Media Reform conferences: Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein. (In fact, they are sitting next to BuzzFlash as newly-elected Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is speaking.) They are as energized as the Eveready battery bunny about bringing media ownership back to America’s citizens.
As Copps pointed out in remarks on Friday, Big Media pulls in a half a trillion dollars for the free use of the public airwaves. That is corporate welfare at a gargantuan level.
And, in return we get Brittney Spears, kidnapped white blondes in Aruba, and unfiltered White House propaganda.
That is government-sanctioned robbery of the public commons. For profiteering use of our airwaves, we receive garbage tossed back in our faces.
The vast crowd at the Media Reform conference in Memphis this year indicates that there is a growing rumbling spreading from the Atlantic to the Pacific – and this is not just a Northeastern urban movement. In rural, suburban and urban areas, citizens are as Mad as Hell and not going to take it anymore.
The media should be accountable to the American people, and we want it back. It is a dramatic development that this may no longer be a dream – and it is clearly evident this week in Tennessee.
They also have a DEFACTO MONOPOLY over COMMUNICATIONS in American elections: candidates MUST fork over MILLIONS OF DOLLARS to the whore Corporate media, to reach American viewers/consumers/voters in each and every election cycle.
Of course, a huge portion of responsibility for this horrific fact rests with American consumers/viewers/voters themselves: IF they were subjected to the rock-bottom Right-Wing "ideal" - $ZERO minimum wages: NO social security net; NO government intervention no matter how parasitic, corrupt, and predatory industrial monopolists were - we would have a situation we have all seen before (in history books if not in our own memories), THE GREAT DEPRESSION, and people would PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT THEIR GOVERNMENT is doing for them, and DEMAND that the government do something for them.
Instead, 300 million of us Americans have the luxury of eating meat 3 or more times a day if we choose to; we expect to have running electricity 24 hours a day; we EXPECT the government to protect our savings accounts; and we expect the government to provide an economic system whereby our children can expect employment for life and education at least through high school graduation.
Rethuglicans would LOVE to destroy ALL the above, and in the case of PENSIONS at ENRON, World-Com, and other corporations, Right-Wing politicians have pretended that it was INEVITABLE that thousands of workers, pensioners, and investors lost their fortunes due to pathetic regulatory oversight of those parasitic executives.
THAT AMERICAN CORPORATE MEDIA has MONOPOLY control over the US airwaves, and the democratic election process, is the result of the DISORGANIZATION and ego-driven "herding cats" nature of the "Democractic/Progressive/Left," and as well that millions of American voters still, to this day, despise the Democratic agenda that brought many of them into the American lifestlye of the late 20th century that they take_for_granted.
(That media corporations push policies on American voters that put billions of PUBLIC taxpayer dollars into corporate profits, and give million-dollar "campaign-contribution" SLUSH-FUND KICKBACKS to BRIBERY/EXTORTION SPECIALIST LOBBYISTS and legislators like Jack Abramoff, Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney, and Tom DeLay, is a given.)
______________________________________________________________________
<< Two of the five FCC commissioners have enthusiastically attended the last two Media Reform conferences: Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein. (In fact, they are sitting next to BuzzFlash as newly-elected Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is speaking.) They are as energized as the Eveready battery bunny about bringing media ownership back to America’s citizens.
As Copps pointed out in remarks on Friday, Big Media PULLS IN A HALF a TRILLION DOLLARS FOR FREE USE OF THE PUBLIC AIRWAVES. That is CORPORATE WELFARE at a GARGANTUAN LEVEL.
========================================
BuzzFlash Thoughts from the Media Reform Conference in Memphis -- January 12-14
A BuzzFlash News Analysis
Sat, 01/13/2007
http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/analysis/171
Having attended the three Media Reform conferences sponsored by FreePress.net over the last few years, BuzzFlash is profoundly optimistic that the harmful and insidious "news [propaganda] frame" created by the corporate media may be countered by a grassroots movement of activists.
From the first Media Reform conference in Madison, Wisconsin, a few years back to this year’s conference in Memphis (January 12-14), attendance has tripled to well more than 3,000 activists.
Although media reform is essential to restoring an active, vital grassroots democracy to the United States, it is often a topic that causes even BuzzFlash readers to bypass it because of two reasons. One is that the power Big Media maintains through billions of dollars of consolidated ownership and profits appears too insurmountable to counteract to many progressives.
The second issue is that many of the regulatory and legislative issues that are necessary to rein in an entertainment/propaganda industry that is de facto aligned with the Republican government and the status quo…many of these regulatory and legislative issues appear arcane and difficult to understand.
But the growing numbers of activists, legislators, regulators, celebrities, and new media stars joining the media reform movement indicate that there is a groundswell that is not going to be dissuaded by these obstacles.
The attendees here in Memphis are geared up for battle. They are not just energized; they are growing increasingly savvy about how to strategically take on Big Media and start winning.
Two of the five FCC commissioners have enthusiastically attended the last two Media Reform conferences: Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein. (In fact, they are sitting next to BuzzFlash as newly-elected Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is speaking.) They are as energized as the Eveready battery bunny about bringing media ownership back to America’s citizens.
As Copps pointed out in remarks on Friday, Big Media pulls in a half a trillion dollars for the free use of the public airwaves. That is corporate welfare at a gargantuan level.
And, in return we get Brittney Spears, kidnapped white blondes in Aruba, and unfiltered White House propaganda.
That is government-sanctioned robbery of the public commons. For profiteering use of our airwaves, we receive garbage tossed back in our faces.
The vast crowd at the Media Reform conference in Memphis this year indicates that there is a growing rumbling spreading from the Atlantic to the Pacific – and this is not just a Northeastern urban movement. In rural, suburban and urban areas, citizens are as Mad as Hell and not going to take it anymore.
The media should be accountable to the American people, and we want it back. It is a dramatic development that this may no longer be a dream – and it is clearly evident this week in Tennessee.
Friday, January 12, 2007
Uber-WHORE Rupert Murdoch WHORES MORE WAR... Can we deport the treacherous SOB?
Condoleeza Rice is PROOF of how George W. Bush turned our elected "leaders" of BOTH the Republican Party AND Democratic Party into cheap, pathetic sycophants, because having been confirmed as NATIONAL_SECURITY_ADVISOR, Condoleeza Rice TESTIFIED BEFORE CONGRESS, under oath (in her testy little way) that "NO ONE COULD HAVE IMAGINED HIJACKING AIRLINERS AND USING THEM AS FLYING MISSILES" to attack the World Trade Towers in New York and Pentagon in Washington, D.C.
...... EVEN THOUGH the DEFENSE DEPARTMENT was running SIMULATIONS of EXACTLY that type of attack days before 9-11-2001! Not to mention that Condi, then the nation's NATIONAL_SECURITY_ADVISOR, attended the G8 ECONOMIC SUMMIT in Genoa, Italy, where THE ITALIAN #@!^*#! POLICE stationed SURFACE-to-AIR MISSILES AROUND THE CITY, _SPECIFICALLY_ to deter the THREAT of Al Qaida hijacking an airliner to fly it into the summit meeting - a threat which (security forces having detered), Al Qaida CALLED IN to the summit just to stake their claim to notoriety and terror!
We now have a SECRETARY of STATE who yesterday TOLD US SENATORS "I DON'T THINK WE SHOULD START MAKING PLANS FOR THE POSSIBILITY THAT THIS ONE [Bush's "SURGE" of another 21,000 troops to Iraq] FAILS"!
That is, a NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR completely, grossly INCOMPETENT at imagining possible tactics and plans of terrorists; PROMOTED by the COWERING Republicans and Democrats to the DEPARTMENT OF STATE - where she presumes to tell Senators that it would be WRONG to make CONTINGENCY PLANS in the event that the 21,000 troop "surge" is swallowed up by the carnage in Iraq the way the 130,000 troops already there have been!
Given this record of GROSS INCOMPETENCE and FAILURE TO ANTICIPATE THE FUTURE, leave it to the TREACHEROUS, if not TRAITOROUS, RUPERT MURDOCH to come to Condi's defense... and try to SMEAR those Senators TRYING to give the great American public a LITTLE bit of OVERSIGHT over their out-of-control, bloodthirsty government!
Mr. Murdoch wasn't happy with trashing unions and workers rights in Australia and England... so he has migrated here to America, hoping to make EVEN MORE MILLIONS at the expense of American workers, voters, and our Constitutional government and heritage. It's time to TURN UP THE HEAT on the cruel, callous, and scornful Mr. Murdoch, no matter how clever he is at packaging hate and derision for his American "news" consumers.
BOXER'S LOW BLOW
by RUPERT MURDOCH's NEW YORK POST
January 12, 2007
http://www.nypost.com/seven/01122007/postopinion/editorials/boxers_low_blow_editorials_.htm?page=0
-- Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, an appalling scold from California, wasted no time yesterday in dragging the debate over Iraq about as low as it can go - attacking Secre tary of State Condoleezza Rice for being a childless woman.
Boxer was wholly in character for her party - New York's own two Democratic senators, Chuck Schumer and Hillary Rodham Clinton, were predictably opportunistic - but the Golden State lawmaker earned special attention for the tasteless jibes she aimed at Rice.
Rice appeared before the Senate in defense of President Bush's tactical change in Iraq, and quickly encountered Boxer.
"Who pays the price? I'm not going to pay a personal price," Boxer said. "My kids are too old, and my grandchild is too young."
Then, to Rice: "You're not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, with an immediate family."
Breathtaking.
Simply breathtaking.
We scarcely know where to begin.
The junior senator from California ap parently believes that an accom plished, seasoned diplomat, a renowned scholar and an adviser to two presidents like Condoleezza Rice is not fully qualified to make policy at the highest levels of the American government because she is a single, childless woman.
It's hard to imagine the firestorm that similar comments would have ignited, coming from a Republican to a Democrat, or from a man to a woman, in the United States Senate. (Surely the Associated Press would have put the observation a bit higher than the 18th paragraph of a routine dispatch from Washington.)
But put that aside.
The vapidity - the sheer mindlessness - of Sen. Boxer's assertion makes it clear that the next two years are going to be a time of bitterness and rancor, marked by pettiness of spirit and political self-indulgence of a sort not seen in America for a very long time.
In contrast to Boxer, Sen. Clinton seemed almost statesmanlike - until one considers that she was undercutting the president of the United States in time of war: "The president simply has not gotten the message sent loudly and clearly by the American people, that we desperately need a new course."
Schumer, meanwhile, dismissed the president's speech as "a new surge without a new strategy."
Frankly, we're not surprised by Hillary Clinton's rush to judgment. With both eyes firmly set on 2008, her Iraq position flits like a tumbleweed in the political wind. Who knows where she'll wind up?
Heck, she admitted as much by citing November's midterm elections to justify her newfound opposition to the war. (And who needs a commander-in-chief who tailors war-fighting strategy to public opinion?)
Clinton would do well to consider the words of GOP Sen. John McCain, another White House hopeful, who frankly admits that his strong support for a troop surge in Iraq has cost him votes. (Some Democrats, in fact, already are calling this "McCain's surge.")
Said McCain: "I'd rather lose a campaign than lose a war."
As for Schumer, we're profoundly disappointed by his remarks.
While he's always been a fiercely parti san Democrat (nothing to be ash amed of), time was when Schumer seemed to understand the existential threat posed by Islamic extremism.
Now he's been elevated to a top position in his party's Senate leadership - and he has bigger fish to fry.
Like electing Democrats.
And so, like Boxer, he cheers on Barack Obama, Chris Dodd, Joe Biden and John Edwards - with Clinton, presidential aspirants - as they trash Bush's plan.
To the extent that such behavior encourages America's enemies - and of course it does - he, like they, stands to have innocent blood on his hands.
Yes, the party's bloggers will be happy.
So will al Qaeda.
True enough, Democrats don't hold a monopoly on appalling behavior.
Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, a Republican presidential candidate and favorite of some conservatives, has joined with Democrats in opposition to the troop surge - and he's not alone.
The president deserves better.
Indeed, the least these critics can do is suggest an alternative that leads to success in Iraq rather than simply criticize.
Or suggest that America simply wave the white flag.
As Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) said: "Now that the president has outlined a change in strategy, we should give his proposals an opportunity to work." Instead, Kyl rightly noted, "some declared the president's proposals unworkable even before they were announced."
No such nay-saying, however, was to be heard from two Capitol Hill stalwarts: McCain and Sen. Joe Lieberman, the independent Democrat from Connecticut.
"I applaud the president for rejecting the fatalism of failure and pursuing a new course to achieve success in Iraq," said Lieberman, who alone in his party genuinely comprehends what a U.S. defeat in Iraq would mean.
As for McCain, his support is tempered by the fact that he argued correctly, from the start, that the war was being fought with too few troops. Had the administration listened four years ago, this tactical shift might not be necessary now.
It would take a truly hard heart not to be touched, deeply, by the sacrifices made by the young men and women now wearing their country's uniform.
And one can only imagine the pain felt by the families of those killed and cruelly wounded in service to America. Just as it was hard to imagine the agony of the loved ones left behind on 9/11.
But even to suggest that Condoleezza Rice is not fit to serve her country because she is childless is beyond bizarre.
It is perverse.
Sen. Boxer needs to apologize.
And she needs to do it today.
...... EVEN THOUGH the DEFENSE DEPARTMENT was running SIMULATIONS of EXACTLY that type of attack days before 9-11-2001! Not to mention that Condi, then the nation's NATIONAL_SECURITY_ADVISOR, attended the G8 ECONOMIC SUMMIT in Genoa, Italy, where THE ITALIAN #@!^*#! POLICE stationed SURFACE-to-AIR MISSILES AROUND THE CITY, _SPECIFICALLY_ to deter the THREAT of Al Qaida hijacking an airliner to fly it into the summit meeting - a threat which (security forces having detered), Al Qaida CALLED IN to the summit just to stake their claim to notoriety and terror!
We now have a SECRETARY of STATE who yesterday TOLD US SENATORS "I DON'T THINK WE SHOULD START MAKING PLANS FOR THE POSSIBILITY THAT THIS ONE [Bush's "SURGE" of another 21,000 troops to Iraq] FAILS"!
That is, a NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR completely, grossly INCOMPETENT at imagining possible tactics and plans of terrorists; PROMOTED by the COWERING Republicans and Democrats to the DEPARTMENT OF STATE - where she presumes to tell Senators that it would be WRONG to make CONTINGENCY PLANS in the event that the 21,000 troop "surge" is swallowed up by the carnage in Iraq the way the 130,000 troops already there have been!
Given this record of GROSS INCOMPETENCE and FAILURE TO ANTICIPATE THE FUTURE, leave it to the TREACHEROUS, if not TRAITOROUS, RUPERT MURDOCH to come to Condi's defense... and try to SMEAR those Senators TRYING to give the great American public a LITTLE bit of OVERSIGHT over their out-of-control, bloodthirsty government!
Mr. Murdoch wasn't happy with trashing unions and workers rights in Australia and England... so he has migrated here to America, hoping to make EVEN MORE MILLIONS at the expense of American workers, voters, and our Constitutional government and heritage. It's time to TURN UP THE HEAT on the cruel, callous, and scornful Mr. Murdoch, no matter how clever he is at packaging hate and derision for his American "news" consumers.
BOXER'S LOW BLOW
by RUPERT MURDOCH's NEW YORK POST
January 12, 2007
http://www.nypost.com/seven/01122007/postopinion/editorials/boxers_low_blow_editorials_.htm?page=0
-- Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, an appalling scold from California, wasted no time yesterday in dragging the debate over Iraq about as low as it can go - attacking Secre tary of State Condoleezza Rice for being a childless woman.
Boxer was wholly in character for her party - New York's own two Democratic senators, Chuck Schumer and Hillary Rodham Clinton, were predictably opportunistic - but the Golden State lawmaker earned special attention for the tasteless jibes she aimed at Rice.
Rice appeared before the Senate in defense of President Bush's tactical change in Iraq, and quickly encountered Boxer.
"Who pays the price? I'm not going to pay a personal price," Boxer said. "My kids are too old, and my grandchild is too young."
Then, to Rice: "You're not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, with an immediate family."
Breathtaking.
Simply breathtaking.
We scarcely know where to begin.
The junior senator from California ap parently believes that an accom plished, seasoned diplomat, a renowned scholar and an adviser to two presidents like Condoleezza Rice is not fully qualified to make policy at the highest levels of the American government because she is a single, childless woman.
It's hard to imagine the firestorm that similar comments would have ignited, coming from a Republican to a Democrat, or from a man to a woman, in the United States Senate. (Surely the Associated Press would have put the observation a bit higher than the 18th paragraph of a routine dispatch from Washington.)
But put that aside.
The vapidity - the sheer mindlessness - of Sen. Boxer's assertion makes it clear that the next two years are going to be a time of bitterness and rancor, marked by pettiness of spirit and political self-indulgence of a sort not seen in America for a very long time.
In contrast to Boxer, Sen. Clinton seemed almost statesmanlike - until one considers that she was undercutting the president of the United States in time of war: "The president simply has not gotten the message sent loudly and clearly by the American people, that we desperately need a new course."
Schumer, meanwhile, dismissed the president's speech as "a new surge without a new strategy."
Frankly, we're not surprised by Hillary Clinton's rush to judgment. With both eyes firmly set on 2008, her Iraq position flits like a tumbleweed in the political wind. Who knows where she'll wind up?
Heck, she admitted as much by citing November's midterm elections to justify her newfound opposition to the war. (And who needs a commander-in-chief who tailors war-fighting strategy to public opinion?)
Clinton would do well to consider the words of GOP Sen. John McCain, another White House hopeful, who frankly admits that his strong support for a troop surge in Iraq has cost him votes. (Some Democrats, in fact, already are calling this "McCain's surge.")
Said McCain: "I'd rather lose a campaign than lose a war."
As for Schumer, we're profoundly disappointed by his remarks.
While he's always been a fiercely parti san Democrat (nothing to be ash amed of), time was when Schumer seemed to understand the existential threat posed by Islamic extremism.
Now he's been elevated to a top position in his party's Senate leadership - and he has bigger fish to fry.
Like electing Democrats.
And so, like Boxer, he cheers on Barack Obama, Chris Dodd, Joe Biden and John Edwards - with Clinton, presidential aspirants - as they trash Bush's plan.
To the extent that such behavior encourages America's enemies - and of course it does - he, like they, stands to have innocent blood on his hands.
Yes, the party's bloggers will be happy.
So will al Qaeda.
True enough, Democrats don't hold a monopoly on appalling behavior.
Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, a Republican presidential candidate and favorite of some conservatives, has joined with Democrats in opposition to the troop surge - and he's not alone.
The president deserves better.
Indeed, the least these critics can do is suggest an alternative that leads to success in Iraq rather than simply criticize.
Or suggest that America simply wave the white flag.
As Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) said: "Now that the president has outlined a change in strategy, we should give his proposals an opportunity to work." Instead, Kyl rightly noted, "some declared the president's proposals unworkable even before they were announced."
No such nay-saying, however, was to be heard from two Capitol Hill stalwarts: McCain and Sen. Joe Lieberman, the independent Democrat from Connecticut.
"I applaud the president for rejecting the fatalism of failure and pursuing a new course to achieve success in Iraq," said Lieberman, who alone in his party genuinely comprehends what a U.S. defeat in Iraq would mean.
As for McCain, his support is tempered by the fact that he argued correctly, from the start, that the war was being fought with too few troops. Had the administration listened four years ago, this tactical shift might not be necessary now.
It would take a truly hard heart not to be touched, deeply, by the sacrifices made by the young men and women now wearing their country's uniform.
And one can only imagine the pain felt by the families of those killed and cruelly wounded in service to America. Just as it was hard to imagine the agony of the loved ones left behind on 9/11.
But even to suggest that Condoleezza Rice is not fit to serve her country because she is childless is beyond bizarre.
It is perverse.
Sen. Boxer needs to apologize.
And she needs to do it today.
Media whores enrich themselves by BLEEDING AMERICA DRY....
RadarOnline.com has a series of web pages that illustrate, writer by writer, those "reporters," analysts, and op-ed writers who continue to make FAT PROFITS from their columns and appearances on network/cable TV, while CONSISTENTLY BEING WRONG on ALL of their predictions, especially those about the horrific Iraq war.
Unfortunately, R-O's guide is far from complete - in fact, it doesnt' even include the most parasitically WRONG of the media commentators, which list would have to include WILLIAM SAFIRE of the New York Times, ARTHUR SULZBERGER, the publisher (owner) and thereby supreme-editor of the Times; and WILLIAM KRISTOL, the Wall St. Journal fear-monger and Fox 'news' "contributing expert," who in an independent review was right only THREE out of TEN times. That is an ERROR RATE of SEVENTY PERCENT (70%)!!
With "experts" like these, we Americans find ourselves on a repeat of history: the path from PROSPEROUS America following the WWI production boom to the America of 'Hoovervilles and Hoover-hogs' (shanty-towns and rats & armadillos for meat) during the Great Depression that followed the presidential terms of Rethuglicans Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover.
While RadarOnline's expose of CONSISTENTLY WRONG media pundits doesn't include the above three "biggies" (and dozens of others, including of course Rush Pimpball, the major domo of making Right-Wing HATE RADIO sound semi-respectable), it does start off with New York Times celebrity "SLASH THE AMERICAN SOCIAL SAFETY NET IN THE NAME OF PROFIT!" pundit, THOMAS FRIEDMAN.
Cut through all of their pretenses of patriotism, shared-sacrifice, and national security, all these Righty, neo-con, and neo-confederate vultures worship one thing and one thing only: MONEY ($$) and the CONCENTRATION OF WEALTH, the penultimate idealization of which was CHATTEL SLAVERY during the ante-bellum and Confederate eras.
Like so many of the Neo-Cons, Friedman started off a semi-decent fellow: in the aftermath of the last reign of Rethuglican insanity in America (the Bush-1 recession), Friedman took it upon himself to rebut the "HATE GOVERNMENT!" rhetoric of Right-Wing HATE radio, which for example included former Nixon CIA break-in operative G. GORDON LIDDY saying on his syndicated talk-show in the early 1990's "WHEN SHOOTING JACK-BOOTED FEDERAL AGENTS, AIM FOR THE HEAD, SO YOU AVOID HITTING THEIR BODY ARMOR."
It was THAT rhetoric that drove GULF WAR-1 DECORATED COMBAT VETERAN Tim McVeigh to BOMB the Federal Govt. building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, killing over 100 American citizens and costing tens of millions of dollars worth of damage and grief. Today, Washington Post parasite pundit GEORGE WILL offers THIS tidbit of wisdom for those who seek to increase the minimum wage: [Will] "There should be NO minimum wage, $0"!
Will's advice to GULF WAR-1 and IRAQ WAR-2 veterans who aren't able to hold a job because of wartime injuries or PTSD - or even a slow-burn rage such as Tim McVeigh experienced- ??
{Paraphasing George Will's Washington-Post/ABC agenda):
"SUCK IT UP, combat-wounded SUCKERS, while multi-millionaires like me [George Will] get BIG, FAT GOVERNMENT and community SUBSIDIES and CONRACTS and CONCESSIONS to build HUGE SPORTS STADIUMS on the public dime!"
We here (your humble editors and writers at MediaWhoresUSA.blogspot.com) are full-on participants in the culture of major-media professional sports, but why should sports stars make millions of dollars per year risking their bodies on the gridiron, while IRAQ WAR SOLDIERS and Marines RISK THEIR LIVES, DAILY, some for THREE YEARS, only to get the crumbs thrown to them by the GEORGE WILL/TOM FRIEDMAN/ARTHUR SULZBERGER parasitic media?
Tom Freidman isn't as bad as George Will, but that is faint praise: like Will, Kristol, Limbaugh, O'Reilly, and dozens of other Right-Wing parasites & vultures, Friedman is SELLING THE AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE _DOWN-the-River_ just as fast as he can get his next book or NYT column published.
====================================================
GETTING RICH BY BEING WRONG
Tom Friedman
http://www.radaronline.com/features/2007/01/betting_on_iraq_2.php
WAR PROFITEER Friedman
Pre-war position: Re-reading Friedman's columns from the six months or so prior to the invasion of Iraq can induce vertigo. Unlike many of his hawkish colleagues, he grokked all the vital details of the situation. He understood that there were alternatives to war ("Bottom line: Iraq is a war of choice"). He understood that the WMD casus belli was for the most part a convenient line (cautioning that it was merely the "stated reason" for the war, and early on calling out Bush and Blair for "hyping" the evidence). He took a shine to the idea of regime change, but seemed clear-sighted about its low chances for success ("Setting up the first progressive Arab state ... would be a huge undertaking, though, and maybe impossible, given Iraq's fractious history"). He grasped that the consequences of failure would be dizzying ("if done wrong, the world will never be the same") and that to succeed, at the very least, would require exceedingly deft execution on the diplomatic front as well as the military one. Yet he also noted that the Bush Administration was incompetent in at least the former respect, and recognized them as essentially a bunch of pathologically insensitive and hyperaggressive bumblers ("we are talking about nation-building ... [and] the Bushies seem much more adept at breaking things than building things").
So even a Webelo-grade logician knows where to go from here, right? You connect the dots and conclude that while it would be very nice to get rid of Saddam, it would also be stupid and dangerous.
But somehow he still managed to come out in favor of the war. And if the whole thing weren't so tragically misguided, his reasoning would be worth a chuckle. Says Friedman: "something in Mr. Bush's audacious shake of the dice appeals to me." A nice ballsy gamble of a war. Sure, it could throw the region into chaos, bankrupt this country, and dye the fertile crescent red with the blood of civilians; yet an audacious war is like a red lollipop—who isn't powerless to resist it?
Career status: At the peak of his field. Before the war he was charging less than $40,000 to give a speech; these days it's a rumored $65,000. And afterward the audiences are encouraged to scoop up copies of the World is Flat, his love letter to corporate globalism that has been on the Times best-seller list for 91 weeks. The royalties certainly help defray the costs of a $9.3 million mansion in Bethesda and a second home in Aspen that—if the local phone book and Google Earth are to be trusted—is a massive chateau with its own lake on the swanky northern side of town, where Prince Bandar has his monstrosity.
Friedman was feted by Queen Elizabeth in 2004, and also received a lifetime award from the Overseas Press Club. Though he was probably the most influential pro-war voice in the American media, he still hasn't had to own up to his mistake. If you ask him about it—as Don Imus did recently—he quotes a few misgivings from his columns to demonstrate that he was quite aware the war could be a fiasco and a bloodbath. But let no one say it wasn't audacious.
<<
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Media Whores, in Stalinist/Goebbels fashion, pretend Bush's "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" photo-op NEVER HAPPENED.
Does it get any more BLATANLTY WHOREISH for the "major media" to REFUSE to CONFRONT President Bush on his many gross failures and abject incompetence?
Could it get ANY more INVERSE of the truth, than for White House Press Secretary (and former FOX 'news' celebrity blabbermouth) TONY SNOW to TRY TO BLAME THE TROOPS for the "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" banner at Bush's infamous USS Lexington photo-op (the one where the Lexington was forced to steam in circles, just out of sight of land, to justify Bush making his oh-so-brave S-3 Navy jet landing on the carrier) - even though THAT canard (media lie) has been DISPROVED months ago?
- "Tax cuts will benefit middle-class Americans" when they focus almost exclusively on the top 2%...
- "Clear Skies" to mean allowing coal plants to spew millions MORE tons of toxins into the air...
- "Healthy Forests" to describe WHOLESALE, slash-everything-in-sight logging...
- "dedicated to mine safety" to describe GUTTING mine safety standards....
- "No Child Left Behind" to describe UNFUNDED, DICTATORIAL federal education mandates...
- "The case that Saddam has Weapons of Mass Destruction is a SLAM DUNK!" to describe Cheney and Bush CHERRYPICKING intel, even including the LUDICROUS claim that Iraqi RADIO CONTROL AIRPLANES would come crashing into American homes!
- The massive, wholsale DISENFRANCHISEMENT of Democratic voters, under the cover of "Democrat's VOTE FRAUD!"
- going all the way back to the 2000 election, when Texas Gov. George Bush pledged "A more BIRPARTISAN tone in Washington".... IN THE SAME SPEECHES where he DERIDED "Washington officials"!
ON ALL the above issues, and DOZENS of others, the SIGNATURE element of Bush-Republican political success has been the WHORE MEDIA INVERTING the truth, and not even asking the simple "compare and contrast" questions THAT WE WOULD EXPECT OUT OF 10th graders!
======================================================
Snow Falsely Claims That Bush Said ‘Just The Opposite’ Of ‘Mission Accomplished’
In today’s press briefing, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow tried to distance President Bush from his infamous “Mission Accomplished” speech, claiming that Bush said “just the opposite” of “Mission Accomplished”:
I think the public ought to just listen to what the president has to say. You know that the mission accomplished banner was put up by members of the USS Abraham Lincoln, and the president, on that very speech, said just the opposite, didn’t he?
For that May 1, 2003, Bush stood in front of a large banner that read, “Mission Accomplished.” In the opening of his speech, he declared, “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.” He called the “battle of Iraq” a “victory.” In his radio address shortly after the speech, he boasted, “I delivered good news to the men and women who fought in the cause of freedom: their mission is complete and major combat operations in Iraq have ended.”
Additionally, as Bob Woodward reported in October, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had to pressure the White House to take out of the speech the actual phrase “Mission Accomplished,” but he couldn’t “get the sign down.”
In Oct. 2003, then-White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan admitted that the White House — not members of USS Lincoln — had “take[n] care of the production of the banner.”
Full transcript below:
QUESTION: Tony, this goes to your previous acknowledgment that the president is aware of public anxiety about the situation in Iraq.
What would your guidance be to a public that has seen the president stand under a mission accomplished banner, proclaim an end to major combat operations, a vice president talking about the last throes? How should the public go into viewing this speech tomorrow?
SNOW: I think the public ought to just listen to what the president has to say.
You know that the mission accomplished banner was put up by members of the USS Abraham Lincoln, and the president, on that very speech, said just the opposite, didn’t he?
He said it was the end of major combat operations, but he did not say it was the end of operations. Instead, he cautioned people at the time that there would be considerable continued violence in Iraq and that there would be continued operations for a long period of time.
Could it get ANY more INVERSE of the truth, than for White House Press Secretary (and former FOX 'news' celebrity blabbermouth) TONY SNOW to TRY TO BLAME THE TROOPS for the "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" banner at Bush's infamous USS Lexington photo-op (the one where the Lexington was forced to steam in circles, just out of sight of land, to justify Bush making his oh-so-brave S-3 Navy jet landing on the carrier) - even though THAT canard (media lie) has been DISPROVED months ago?
- "Tax cuts will benefit middle-class Americans" when they focus almost exclusively on the top 2%...
- "Clear Skies" to mean allowing coal plants to spew millions MORE tons of toxins into the air...
- "Healthy Forests" to describe WHOLESALE, slash-everything-in-sight logging...
- "dedicated to mine safety" to describe GUTTING mine safety standards....
- "No Child Left Behind" to describe UNFUNDED, DICTATORIAL federal education mandates...
- "The case that Saddam has Weapons of Mass Destruction is a SLAM DUNK!" to describe Cheney and Bush CHERRYPICKING intel, even including the LUDICROUS claim that Iraqi RADIO CONTROL AIRPLANES would come crashing into American homes!
- The massive, wholsale DISENFRANCHISEMENT of Democratic voters, under the cover of "Democrat's VOTE FRAUD!"
- going all the way back to the 2000 election, when Texas Gov. George Bush pledged "A more BIRPARTISAN tone in Washington".... IN THE SAME SPEECHES where he DERIDED "Washington officials"!
ON ALL the above issues, and DOZENS of others, the SIGNATURE element of Bush-Republican political success has been the WHORE MEDIA INVERTING the truth, and not even asking the simple "compare and contrast" questions THAT WE WOULD EXPECT OUT OF 10th graders!
======================================================
Snow Falsely Claims That Bush Said ‘Just The Opposite’ Of ‘Mission Accomplished’
In today’s press briefing, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow tried to distance President Bush from his infamous “Mission Accomplished” speech, claiming that Bush said “just the opposite” of “Mission Accomplished”:
I think the public ought to just listen to what the president has to say. You know that the mission accomplished banner was put up by members of the USS Abraham Lincoln, and the president, on that very speech, said just the opposite, didn’t he?
For that May 1, 2003, Bush stood in front of a large banner that read, “Mission Accomplished.” In the opening of his speech, he declared, “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.” He called the “battle of Iraq” a “victory.” In his radio address shortly after the speech, he boasted, “I delivered good news to the men and women who fought in the cause of freedom: their mission is complete and major combat operations in Iraq have ended.”
Additionally, as Bob Woodward reported in October, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had to pressure the White House to take out of the speech the actual phrase “Mission Accomplished,” but he couldn’t “get the sign down.”
In Oct. 2003, then-White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan admitted that the White House — not members of USS Lincoln — had “take[n] care of the production of the banner.”
Full transcript below:
QUESTION: Tony, this goes to your previous acknowledgment that the president is aware of public anxiety about the situation in Iraq.
What would your guidance be to a public that has seen the president stand under a mission accomplished banner, proclaim an end to major combat operations, a vice president talking about the last throes? How should the public go into viewing this speech tomorrow?
SNOW: I think the public ought to just listen to what the president has to say.
You know that the mission accomplished banner was put up by members of the USS Abraham Lincoln, and the president, on that very speech, said just the opposite, didn’t he?
He said it was the end of major combat operations, but he did not say it was the end of operations. Instead, he cautioned people at the time that there would be considerable continued violence in Iraq and that there would be continued operations for a long period of time.
Media Whores ARE TRAITORS: ABC affiliate Hate-Talk radio hosts call for murders, torture, and mass-murder of elected officials and other Americans...
Contact ABC 'news' and tell them that you are TIRED of the TRAITORS in the "major media" CREATING AN ATMOSPHERE OF TALK RADIO HATE such as the one that drove Gulf War 1 combat-decorated Army veteran Tim McVeigh to BOMB THE Oklahoma City Federal Building in 1995 - an era when (for example) Right-Wing Hate-Radio talk show host and former Nixon administration "plumber" (CIA operative) G. GORDON LIDDY was telling his listeners "WHEN YOU SHOOT AT JACK-BOOTED FEDERAL AGENTS, AIM FOR THE HEAD TO AVOID HITTING THEIR BODY ARMOR."
e-mail to: customerservice@abc.com
mailto:David.Wasicki@abc.com
For General Programming or ABC Radio sales questions, please call: 212.735.1700
<< In 2006, a blogger named Spocko began spotlighting inflammatory rhetoric common to several talk radio hosts on KSFO, an ABC Radio-owned station in San Francisco. Spocko compiled a litany of examples on both his weblog, Spocko's Brain, and in numerous letters to corporations advertising on KSFO. He noted that KSFO hosts had claimed to have put "a bull's-eye" on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), advocated hanging various New York Times editors, called for the murder of millions of Muslims, and so on. >>
========================================
ABC shut down blogger who criticized violent rhetoric on one of its radio stations
by MediaMatters.org
Tuesday, 9 January 2007
http://mediamatters.org/items/200701090004
Summary: The mainstream media have yet to report on the story of a blogger whose website was shut down after he began spotlighting inflammatory rhetoric common to several talk radio hosts on KSFO, an ABC Radio-owned station in San Francisco.
In 2006, a blogger named Spocko began spotlighting inflammatory rhetoric common to several talk radio hosts on KSFO, an ABC Radio-owned station in San Francisco. Spocko compiled a litany of examples on both his weblog, Spocko's Brain, and in numerous letters to corporations advertising on KSFO. He noted that KSFO hosts had claimed to have put "a bull's-eye" on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), advocated hanging various New York Times editors, called for the murder of millions of Muslims, and so on. This letter-writing campaign apparently got results, as major advertisers such as MasterCard, Bank of America, and Visa reportedly pulled their ads from the station. But as numerous blogs have noted in recent days, on December 21, ABC Inc., a subsidiary of the Disney-ABC Television Group, apparently issued a cease-and-desist letter targeting Spocko and his blog for copyright violation. Specifically, ABC alleged that by posting brief audio clips of various talk radio hosts on KSFO, the site was "in clear violation" of the station's copyright. The letter demanded that the owner of the site "remove the content immediately." Soon after, according to Spocko, his Internet service provider shut down his blog.
But while this story has received widespread coverage in the blogosphere, the mainstream media have yet to report on it.
In the past year, Media Matters for America has documented several inflammatory statements by KSFO hosts Melanie Morgan and Brian Sussman (here, here, and here). On his blog, Spocko featured numerous additional examples by these and other KSFO personalities, such as Lee Rodgers and Officer Vic. Spocko also wrote to KSFO's corporate sponsors calling their attention to these statements. For instance, in a November 20, 2006, letter to telecommunications giant AT&T, he wrote: "Thanks to radio hosts from KSFO your brand is being associated with torturing and killing people." He included in the letter numerous examples of the hosts' invective:
* Rodgers on a repeat offender in Lincoln, Nebraska: "Some SOB like this -- you know, lock him up, throw away the key. Better yet, put a bullet between his eyes and get it over, because he's never gonna be worth a damn, never gonna be anything but a criminal anyway. ... Now, you start with the Sears DieHard -- the battery cables connected to his testicles and you entertain him with that for a while, and then you blow his bleeping head off." (8/16/06)
* Rodgers' suggestion of how to punish an arsonist responsible for a forest fire: "I say they catch the person, tie 'em to a post and burn 'em. Set 'em on fire." Morgan added: "Hog tie 'em first. That would be good." (10/27/06)
* Sussman asking a caller to prove that he is not a Muslim: "Say Allah is a whore. ... Say that you love eating pig." (October 2005)
* Rodgers on Indonesia: "Indonesia is really just another enemy Muslim nation. ... You keep screwing around with stuff like this, we're going to kill a bunch of you. Millions of you." (10/25/06)
* Morgan on Pelosi: "We've got a bull's-eye painted on her big, wide laughing eyes." (11/14/06)
* Morgan on New York Times executive editor Bill Keller and other Times editors: "Hang 'em." (6/27/06)
Spocko went on to urge AT&T to drop its advertisements from these KSFO shows. He concluded the letter as follows:
I want to emphasize that if you withdrawal [sic] your ads you aren't limiting their free speech, just removing your paid support of it. Some other company without the values you describe on the AT&T website can support them. You can choose to advertise elsewhere. This is really about YOU. Do YOU want to be associated with these comments? Do you want your company and brand to be associated with these comments?
I urge you to discontinue advertising on KSFO during the shows hosted by Melanie Morgan, Lee Rogers, Tom Brenner and Brian Sussman.
Following Spocko's communications, advertisers such as Netflix, MasterCard, Bank of America, and Visa all reportedly withdrew their KSFO advertising, as a January 5 Online Media Daily article reported. Spocko has further claimed that Federal Express, AT&T, and Kaiser Permanente are considering pulling their ads from the station.
But on December 21, Spocko's Internet hosting service, 1&1 Internet Inc., received a cease-and-desist letter bearing ABC's logo. In the letter, Enid J.H. Karpeh, who identified herself as ABC's counsel, claimed that Spocko's use of brief audio clips of Rodgers, Morgan, and other hosts was "in clear violation of KSFO's copyright." The letter signed by Karpeh went on to demand that 1&1 Internet "remove the content immediately."
Following is the letter [FROM ABC counsel ordering "Spocko" to cease-and-desist highlighting ABC radio host's CALLS TO VIOLENCE, TORTURE, and MURDER, both in America and against citizens in foreign countries.]
(click here to see full-size version):
http://mediamatters.org/static/images/item/abc-ksfo-full.jpg
Monday, January 08, 2007
Media Whores swallow Neo-Con Nightmare whole: MORE NUCLEAR WEAPONS, MORE wars, MORE secrecy, MORE Gestapo powers for the "Black government" of the USA
Robert Parry has one big problem: despite writing one BLOCKBUSTER investigative news story after another after yet another, his articles NEVER get "TRACTION" across the nation, because the WHORE CORPORATE MEDIA is in the "DISTORT, DIVERT, DISINFORM, MISLEAD, and DISTRACT" business. Parry should take a tip from MEDIA mega-WHORE RUPERT MURDOCH: SENSATIONALIZE your charges (Parry wouldn't even have to lie or exaggerate) to STIR UP THAT PUBLIC OUTRAGE!
The Bush-Cheney occupation of Iraq has been one nightmare of CRIMINAL NEGLIGENCE followed by GROSS INCOMPETENCE followed by CRIMINAL CORRUPTION followed by WAR CRIMES VIOLATIONS... and EVERY TIME, the WHORE new york times and the WHORE washington post and the WHORE cnn, abc, FOX, and other "news" networks TOE THE PARTY LINE... "DON'T LOOK HERE, MOVE ALONG, MOVE ALONG... LOOK OVER THERE... SADDAM IS A THREAT TO AMERICA, his radio-control airplanes are going to come crashing into your breakfast-nook window!"
Well, the MEDIA WHORES, like the election-stealing Bush administration, KNOW NO SHAME, and they are back to their DIRTY OLD TRICKS... this time TALKING UP NEW NUCLEAR WEAPONS, NUCLEAR STRIKES, MORE WAR, MORE DEFICITS, and MORE government GESTAPO/STALINIST POWERS!
WHY don't the MEDIA WHORES even MENTION DICK CHENEY's TIES TO SADDAM HUSSEIN in the late 1990s? (As Chairman and CEO of Halliburton, Dick Cheney had Halliburton European subsidiaries SELL OILFIELD DRILLING EQUIPMENT to Saddam's regime, SKIRTING the US-enforced UN EMBARGO on that regime!)
WHY doesn't the WHORE US MEDIA even MENTION DICK CHENEY'S DEALINGS WITH SADDAM HUSSEIN????
FOR THE SAME GOD-DAMNED REASON THE GERMAN PRESS in wartime (Nazi) Germany DIDN'T MENTION THE DEATH-CAMPS - it wouldn't be good for business or the regime's legitimacy!
HOW can the god-damned "Major Media" networks SPEND HOURS and HOURS and HOURS documenting Saddam Hussein's evil past... WITHOUT MENTIONING HIS TIES with DON RUSMFELD, DICK CHENEY, and George H.W. Bush (Sr.); the three of whom sent Saddam not only (literally) BILLIONS of dollars in "agricultural credits"; BUT _WMD PRECURSOR TECHNOLOGIES_ and MATERIALS as well?? (Saddam got the materials to make his poison-gas bombs and missiles from American and European companies, with the full knowledge and approval of the Bush Sr. administration, of whom Dick Cheney, Don Rusmfeld, and James Baker were all either Secretaries of Defense (or Baker Sec. State) IN APPROVAL of US support for Saddam's WEAPONS PROGRAMS.
See: "Spider's Web": The Secret History of How the United States Illegally Armed Saddam Hussein" a book that was published LONG before George W. Bush (junior) stole his two elections in 2000 and 2004.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/07/0312256
Well, don't take our word for it: the Bush adminstration, BACKED INTO A CORNER where their GROSS LIES, INCOMPETENCE, and especially BLEED AMERICA DRY CORRUPTION, are STRIKING OUT like a cornered viper.
They know ONLY ONE AGENDA: MORE BOMBS, MORE TAXES (on working- and middle-class), MORE WARS, MORE MEN SENT INTO COMBAT as CANON-FODDER for their CORRUPT CONTRACTS, SECRET GOVERNMENT, and budget-busting crony tax-cuts for billionaires.
=====================================================
Bush's Rush to Armageddon
By Robert Parry
January 8, 2007
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/010807.html
George W. Bush has purged senior military and intelligence officials who were obstacles to a wider war in the Middle East, broadening his options for both escalating the conflict inside Iraq and expanding the fighting to Iran and Syria with Israel’s help.
On Jan. 4, Bush ousted the top two commanders in the Middle East, Generals John Abizaid and George Casey, who had opposed a military escalation in Iraq, and removed Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte, who had stood by intelligence estimates downplaying the near-term threat from Iran’s nuclear program.
Most Washington observers have treated Bush’s shake-up as either routine or part of his desire for a new team to handle his planned “surge” of U.S. troops in Iraq. But intelligence sources say the personnel changes also fit with a scenario for attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities and seeking violent regime change in Syria.
Bush appointed Admiral William Fallon as the new chief of Central Command for the Middle East despite the fact that Fallon, a former Navy fighter pilot and currently head of the Pacific Command, will oversee two ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The choice of Fallon makes more sense if Bush foresees a bigger role for two aircraft carrier groups now poised off Iran’s coastline, such as support for possible Israeli air strikes against Iran’s nuclear targets or as a deterrent against any overt Iranian retaliation.
Though not considered a Middle East expert, Fallon has moved in neoconservative circles, for instance, attending a 2001 awards ceremony at the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, a think tank dedicated to explaining “the link between American defense policy and the security of Israel.”
Bush’s personnel changes also come as Israel is reported stepping up preparations for air strikes, possibly including tactical nuclear bombs, to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities, such as the reactor at Natanz, south of Tehran, where enriched uranium is produced.
The Sunday Times of London reported on Jan. 7 that two Israeli air squadrons are training for the mission and “if things go according to plan, a pilot will first launch a conventional laser-guided bomb to blow a shaft down through the layers of hardened concrete [at Natanz]. Other pilots will then be ready to drop low-yield one kiloton nuclear weapons into the hole.”
The Sunday Times wrote that Israel also would hit two other facilities – at Isfahan and Arak – with conventional bombs. But the possible use of a nuclear bomb at Natanz would represent the first nuclear attack since the United States destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan at the end of World War II six decades ago.
While some observers believe Israel may be leaking details of its plans as a way to frighten Iran into accepting international controls on its nuclear program, other sources indicate that Israel and the Bush administration are seriously preparing for this wider Middle Eastern war.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has called the possibility of an Iranian nuclear bomb an “existential threat” to Israel.
After the Sunday Times article appeared, an Israeli government spokesman denied that Israel has drawn up secret plans to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities. For its part, Iran claims it only wants a nuclear program for producing energy.
Negroponte’s Heresy
Whatever Iran’s intent, Negroponte has said U.S. intelligence does not believe Iran could produce a nuclear weapon until next decade.
Negroponte’s assessment in April 2006 infuriated neoconservative hardliners who wanted a worst-case scenario on Iran’s nuclear capabilities, much as they pressed for an alarmist view on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction before the U.S. invasion in 2003.
Unlike former CIA Director George Tenet, who bent to Bush’s political needs on Iraq, Negroponte stood behind the position of intelligence analysts who cited Iran’s limited progress in refining uranium.
“Our assessment is that the prospects of an Iranian weapon are still a number of years off, and probably into the next decade,” Negroponte said in an interview with NBC News. Expressing a similarly tempered view in a speech at the National Press Club, Negroponte said, “I think it’s important that this issue be kept in perspective.”
Some neocons complained that Negroponte was betraying the President.
Frank J. Gaffney Jr., a leading figure in the neoconservative Project for the New American Century, called for Negroponte’s firing because of the Iran assessment and his “abysmal personnel decisions” in hiring senior intelligence analysts who were skeptics about Bush’s Iraqi WMD claims.
In an article for Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Washington Times, Gaffney attacked Negroponte for giving top analytical jobs to Thomas Fingar, who had served as assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research, and Kenneth Brill, who was U.S. ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which debunked some of the U.S. and British claims about Iraq seeking uranium ore from Africa.
Fingar’s Office of Intelligence and Research had led the dissent against the Iraq WMD case, especially over what turned out to be Bush’s false claims that Iraq was developing a nuclear bomb.
“Given this background, is it any wonder that Messrs. Negroponte, Fingar and Brill … gave us the spectacle of absurdly declaring the Iranian regime to be years away from having nuclear weapons?” wrote Gaffney, who was a senior Pentagon official during the Reagan administration.
Gaffney also accused Negroponte of giving promotions to “government officials in sensitive positions who actively subvert the President’s policies,” an apparent reference to Fingar and Brill. The neocons have long resented U.S. intelligence assessments that conflict with their policy prescriptions. [See Robert Parry's Secrecy & Privilege.]
In his personnel shakeup, Bush shifted Negroponte from his Cabinet-level position as DNI to a sub-Cabinet post as deputy to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. To replace Negroponte, Bush nominated Navy retired Vice Admiral John McConnell, who is viewed by intelligence professionals as a low-profile technocrat, not a strong independent figure.
A Freer Hand
Negroponte’s departure should give Bush a freer hand if he decides to support attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Bush’s neocon advisers fear that if Bush doesn’t act decisively in his remaining two years in office, his successor may lack the political will to launch a preemptive strike against Iran.
Bush reportedly has been weighing his military options for bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities since early 2006. But he has encountered resistance from the top U.S. military brass, much as he has with his plans to escalate U.S. troop levels in Iraq.
As investigative reporter Seymour Hersh wrote in The New Yorker, a number of senior U.S. military officers were troubled by administration war planners who believed “bunker-busting” tactical nuclear weapons, known as B61-11s, were the only way to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities buried deep underground.
A former senior intelligence official told Hersh that the White House refused to remove the nuclear option from the plans despite objections from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Whenever anybody tries to get it out, they’re shouted down,” the ex-official said. [New Yorker, April 17, 2006]
By late April 2006, however, the Joint Chiefs finally got the White House to agree that using nuclear weapons to destroy Iran’s uranium-enrichment plant at Natanz, less than 200 miles south of Tehran, was politically unacceptable, Hersh reported.
“Bush and [Vice President Dick] Cheney were dead serious about the nuclear planning,” one former senior intelligence official said. [New Yorker, July 10, 2006]
But one way to get around the opposition of the Joint Chiefs would be to delegate the bombing operation to the Israelis. Given Israel’s powerful lobbying operation in Washington and its strong ties to leading Democrats, an Israeli-led attack might be more politically palatable with the Congress.
Attacks on Iran and Syria also would fit with Bush’s desire to counter the growing Shiite influence across the Middle East, which was given an unintended boost by Bush’s ouster of the Sunni-dominated government of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
The original neocon plan for the Iraq invasion was to use Iraq as a base to force regime change in Syria and Iran, thus dealing strong blows to Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories.
This regional transformation supposedly would have protected Israel’s northern border and strengthened Israel’s hand in dictating final peace terms to the Palestinians. But the U.S. invasion of Iraq backfired, descending into a sectarian civil war with Iraq’s pro-Iranian Shiite majority gaining the upper hand.
In effect, by ousting Saddam Hussein, Bush had eliminated the principal buffer who had been holding the line against the radical Shiites in Iran since 1979. By tipping the strategic balance to the Shiites, Bush also unnerved the Sunni monarchy of Saudi Arabia.
A Nightmare
By 2006, the dream of a U.S.-orchestrated transformation of the Middle East had turned into a nightmare of rising Shiite radicalism. To address this unanticipated development, Bush began pondering how best to throttle Shiite expansionism.
In summer 2006, Washington Post foreign policy analyst Robin Wright wrote that U.S. officials told her that “for the United States, the broader goal is to strangle the axis of Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria and Iran, which the Bush administration believes is pooling resources to change the strategic playing field in the Middle East.” [Washington Post, July 16, 2006]
Bush’s advisers also blamed the governments of Syria and Iran for supporting anti-U.S. fighters in Iraq.
Yet lacking the military and political capacity to expand the conflict beyond Iraq, the Bush administration turned to Israel and its new Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. By summer 2006, Israeli sources were describing Bush’s interest in finding a pretext to take Syria and Iran down a notch.
That opening came when border tensions with Hamas in Gaza and with Hezbollah in Lebanon led to the capture of three Israeli soldiers and a rapid Israeli escalation of the conflict into an air-and-ground campaign against Lebanon.
Bush and his neoconservative advisers saw the Israeli-Lebanese conflict as an opening to expand the fighting into Syria and achieve the long-sought “regime change” in Damascus, Israeli sources said.
One Israeli source told me that Bush’s interest in spreading the war to Syria was considered “nuts” by some senior Israeli officials, although Prime Minister Olmert generally shared Bush’s hard-line strategy against Islamic militants. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Bush Wants Wider War.”]
In an article on July 30, 2006. the Jerusalem Post also hinted at Bush’s suggestion of a wider war into Syria. “Defense officials told the Post … that they were receiving indications from the US that America would be interested in seeing Israel attack Syria,” the newspaper reported.
In August 2006, the Inter-Press Service added more details, reporting that the message was passed to Israel by Bush’s deputy national security adviser Elliott Abrams, who had been a central figure in the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s.
“In a meeting with a very senior Israeli official, Abrams indicated that Washington would have no objection if Israel chose to extend the war beyond to its other northern neighbor, leaving the interlocutor in no doubt that the intended target was Syria,” a source told the Inter-Press Service.
In December 2006, Meyray Wurmser, a leading U.S. neoconservative whose spouse is a Middle East adviser to Vice President Cheney, confirmed that neocons inside and outside the Bush administration had hoped Israel would attack Syria as a means of undermining the insurgents in Iraq.
“If Syria had been defeated, the rebellion in Iraq would have ended,” Wurmser said in an interview with Yitzhak Benhorin of the Ynet Web site. “A great part of it was the thought that Israel should fight against the real enemy, the one backing Hezbollah. … If Israel had hit Syria, it would have been such a harsh blow for Iran that it would have weakened it and (changed) the strategic map in the Middle East.”
But the Israeli summer offensives in Gaza and Lebanon fell short of Olmert’s objectives, instead generating international condemnation of Tel Aviv for the large numbers of civilian casualties from Israel’s bombing raids.
Wounded Leaders
Now, as two politically wounded leaders, Bush and Olmert share an interest in trying to salvage some success out of their military setbacks. So, they are looking at possible moves that are much more dramatic than minor adjustments to the status quo.
Democrats and some Republicans are questioning why Bush wants to send 20,000 more U.S. troops to Iraq and offer Iraqis some jobs programs, when similar tactics have been tried unsuccessfully in the past.
Indeed, one source familiar with high-level thinking in Washington and Tel Aviv said an unstated reason for Bush’s troop “surge” is to bolster the defenses of Baghdad’s Green Zone if a possible Israeli attack on Iran prompts an uprising among Iraqi Shiites.
The two U.S. aircraft carrier strike forces off Iran’s coast could provide further deterrence against Iranian retaliation. But the conflict would almost certainly spread anyway.
Likely Hezbollah missile strikes against Israel would offer another pretext for Israel to invade Syria and finally oust Hezbollah’s allies in Damascus, as the U.S. neocons had hope would happen in summer 2006, the source said.
In the neoconservative vision, this wider war would offer perhaps a last chance at achieving the regional transformation that has been at the heart of Bush’s strategy of “democratizing” the Middle East through violence if necessary.
However, few Middle East experts believe that Bush really would want the results of truly democratic elections in the region because Islamic militants would almost surely win resoundingly amid the anti-Americanism that has grown even more intense since the hanging of Saddam Hussein in late December.
An Israeli assault on Iran could put the region’s remaining pro-American dictators in jeopardy, too. In Pakistan, for instance, Islamic militants with ties to al-Qaeda have been gaining strength and might try to overthrow Gen. Pervez Musharraf, conceivably giving Islamic terrorists control of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.
For some U.S. foreign policy experts, this potential for disaster from a U.S.-backed Israeli air strike on Iran is so terrifying that they ultimately don’t believe Bush and Olmert would dare implement such the plan.
But Bush’s actions in the past two months – reaffirming his determination to achieve “victory” in Iraq – suggest that he wants nothing of the “graceful exit” that might come from a de-escalation of the war.
Losing Faith
Bush has dug in his heels even as some senior administration officials have lost faith in his strategy.
On Nov. 6, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld sent Bush a memo suggesting a “major adjustment” in Iraq War policy that would include “an accelerated drawdown of U.S. bases” from 55 to five by July 2007 with remaining U.S. forces only committed to Iraqi areas that request them.
“Unless they [the local Iraqi governments] cooperate fully, U.S. forces would leave their province,” Rumsfeld wrote.
Proposing an option similar to a plan enunciated by Democratic Rep. John Murtha, Rumsfeld suggested that the commanders “withdraw U.S. forces from vulnerable positions – cities, patrolling, etc. – and move U.S. forces to a Quick Reaction Force (QRF) status, operating from within Iraq and Kuwait, to be available when Iraqi security forces need assistance.”
And in what could be read as an implicit criticism of Bush’s lofty rhetoric about transforming Iraq and the Middle East, Rumsfeld said the administration should “recast the U.S. military mission and the U.S. goals (how we talk about them) – go minimalist.” [NYT, Dec. 3, 2006]
On Nov. 8, two days after the memo and one day after American voters elected Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, Bush fired Rumsfeld. The firing was widely interpreted as a sign that Bush was ready to moderate his position on Iraq, but the evidence now suggests that Bush got rid of Rumsfeld for going wobbly on the war.
On Dec. 6, when longtime Bush family counselor James Baker issued a report by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group urging a drawdown of U.S. troops in Iraq, Bush wasted little time in slapping it down.
Instead, Bush talked about waging a long war against Islamic “radicals and extremists,” an escalation from his original post-9/11 goal of defeating “terrorists with global reach.”
At his news conference on Dec. 20, Bush cast this wider struggle against Islamists as a test of American manhood and perseverance by demonstrating to the enemy that “they can’t run us out of the Middle East, that they can’t intimidate America.”
Bush suggested, too, that painful decisions lay ahead in the New Year.
“I’m not going to make predictions about what 2007 will look like in Iraq, except that it’s going to require difficult choices and additional sacrifices, because the enemy is merciless and violent,” Bush said.
Rather than scale back his neoconservative dream of transforming the Middle East, Bush argued for an expanded U.S. military to wage this long war.
“We must make sure that our military has the capability to stay in the fight for a long period of time,” Bush said. “I’m not predicting any particular theater, but I am predicting that it’s going to take a while for the ideology of liberty to finally triumph over the ideology of hate. …
“We’re in the beginning of a conflict between competing ideologies – a conflict that will determine whether or not your children can live in a peace. A failure in the Middle East, for example, or failure in Iraq, or isolationism, will condemn a generation of young Americans to permanent threat from overseas.”
Escalation
Since then, Bush has floated the idea of a troop “surge” and replaced commanders who disagreed with him. Bush also removed U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad, a Sunni Muslim generally considered a voice for moderation in U.S. policy who privately objected to Bush’s decision to press ahead with the hanging of Saddam Hussein.
There are even indications of tension between Bush and Cheney, who like his old friend Rumsfeld, appears to have grown disillusioned with the war.
In a little-noticed comment on Jan. 4, Sen. Joseph Biden, the new chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Cheney and Rumsfeld “are really smart guys who made a very, very, very, very bad bet, and it blew up in their faces. Now, what do they do with it? I think they have concluded they can’t fix it, so how do you keep it stitched together without it completely unraveling?” [Washington Post, Jan. 5, 2007]
But Bush does not appear to share that goal of limiting the damage. Instead, he is looking for ways to “double-down” his gamble in Iraq by joining with Olmert – and possibly outgoing British Prime Minister Tony Blair – in expanding the conflict.
Since the Nov. 7 congressional elections, the three leaders have conducted a round-robin of meetings that on the surface seem to have little purpose. Olmert met privately with Bush on Nov. 13; Blair visited the White House on Dec. 7; and Blair conferred with Olmert in Israel on Dec. 18.
Sources say the three leaders are frantically seeking options for turning around their political fortunes as they face harsh judgments from history for their bloody and risky adventures in the Middle East.
But there is also a clock ticking. Blair, who now stands to go down in the annals of British history as “Bush’s poodle,” is nearing the end of his tenure, having agreed under pressure from his Labour Party to step down in spring 2007.
So, if the Bush-Blair-Olmert triumvirate has any hope of accomplishing the neoconservative remaking of the Middle East, time is running out. Something dramatic must happen soon.
That something looks like it may include a rush to Armageddon.
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'
The Bush-Cheney occupation of Iraq has been one nightmare of CRIMINAL NEGLIGENCE followed by GROSS INCOMPETENCE followed by CRIMINAL CORRUPTION followed by WAR CRIMES VIOLATIONS... and EVERY TIME, the WHORE new york times and the WHORE washington post and the WHORE cnn, abc, FOX, and other "news" networks TOE THE PARTY LINE... "DON'T LOOK HERE, MOVE ALONG, MOVE ALONG... LOOK OVER THERE... SADDAM IS A THREAT TO AMERICA, his radio-control airplanes are going to come crashing into your breakfast-nook window!"
Well, the MEDIA WHORES, like the election-stealing Bush administration, KNOW NO SHAME, and they are back to their DIRTY OLD TRICKS... this time TALKING UP NEW NUCLEAR WEAPONS, NUCLEAR STRIKES, MORE WAR, MORE DEFICITS, and MORE government GESTAPO/STALINIST POWERS!
WHY don't the MEDIA WHORES even MENTION DICK CHENEY's TIES TO SADDAM HUSSEIN in the late 1990s? (As Chairman and CEO of Halliburton, Dick Cheney had Halliburton European subsidiaries SELL OILFIELD DRILLING EQUIPMENT to Saddam's regime, SKIRTING the US-enforced UN EMBARGO on that regime!)
WHY doesn't the WHORE US MEDIA even MENTION DICK CHENEY'S DEALINGS WITH SADDAM HUSSEIN????
FOR THE SAME GOD-DAMNED REASON THE GERMAN PRESS in wartime (Nazi) Germany DIDN'T MENTION THE DEATH-CAMPS - it wouldn't be good for business or the regime's legitimacy!
HOW can the god-damned "Major Media" networks SPEND HOURS and HOURS and HOURS documenting Saddam Hussein's evil past... WITHOUT MENTIONING HIS TIES with DON RUSMFELD, DICK CHENEY, and George H.W. Bush (Sr.); the three of whom sent Saddam not only (literally) BILLIONS of dollars in "agricultural credits"; BUT _WMD PRECURSOR TECHNOLOGIES_ and MATERIALS as well?? (Saddam got the materials to make his poison-gas bombs and missiles from American and European companies, with the full knowledge and approval of the Bush Sr. administration, of whom Dick Cheney, Don Rusmfeld, and James Baker were all either Secretaries of Defense (or Baker Sec. State) IN APPROVAL of US support for Saddam's WEAPONS PROGRAMS.
See: "Spider's Web": The Secret History of How the United States Illegally Armed Saddam Hussein" a book that was published LONG before George W. Bush (junior) stole his two elections in 2000 and 2004.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/07/0312256
Well, don't take our word for it: the Bush adminstration, BACKED INTO A CORNER where their GROSS LIES, INCOMPETENCE, and especially BLEED AMERICA DRY CORRUPTION, are STRIKING OUT like a cornered viper.
They know ONLY ONE AGENDA: MORE BOMBS, MORE TAXES (on working- and middle-class), MORE WARS, MORE MEN SENT INTO COMBAT as CANON-FODDER for their CORRUPT CONTRACTS, SECRET GOVERNMENT, and budget-busting crony tax-cuts for billionaires.
=====================================================
Bush's Rush to Armageddon
By Robert Parry
January 8, 2007
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/010807.html
George W. Bush has purged senior military and intelligence officials who were obstacles to a wider war in the Middle East, broadening his options for both escalating the conflict inside Iraq and expanding the fighting to Iran and Syria with Israel’s help.
On Jan. 4, Bush ousted the top two commanders in the Middle East, Generals John Abizaid and George Casey, who had opposed a military escalation in Iraq, and removed Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte, who had stood by intelligence estimates downplaying the near-term threat from Iran’s nuclear program.
Most Washington observers have treated Bush’s shake-up as either routine or part of his desire for a new team to handle his planned “surge” of U.S. troops in Iraq. But intelligence sources say the personnel changes also fit with a scenario for attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities and seeking violent regime change in Syria.
Bush appointed Admiral William Fallon as the new chief of Central Command for the Middle East despite the fact that Fallon, a former Navy fighter pilot and currently head of the Pacific Command, will oversee two ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The choice of Fallon makes more sense if Bush foresees a bigger role for two aircraft carrier groups now poised off Iran’s coastline, such as support for possible Israeli air strikes against Iran’s nuclear targets or as a deterrent against any overt Iranian retaliation.
Though not considered a Middle East expert, Fallon has moved in neoconservative circles, for instance, attending a 2001 awards ceremony at the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, a think tank dedicated to explaining “the link between American defense policy and the security of Israel.”
Bush’s personnel changes also come as Israel is reported stepping up preparations for air strikes, possibly including tactical nuclear bombs, to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities, such as the reactor at Natanz, south of Tehran, where enriched uranium is produced.
The Sunday Times of London reported on Jan. 7 that two Israeli air squadrons are training for the mission and “if things go according to plan, a pilot will first launch a conventional laser-guided bomb to blow a shaft down through the layers of hardened concrete [at Natanz]. Other pilots will then be ready to drop low-yield one kiloton nuclear weapons into the hole.”
The Sunday Times wrote that Israel also would hit two other facilities – at Isfahan and Arak – with conventional bombs. But the possible use of a nuclear bomb at Natanz would represent the first nuclear attack since the United States destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan at the end of World War II six decades ago.
While some observers believe Israel may be leaking details of its plans as a way to frighten Iran into accepting international controls on its nuclear program, other sources indicate that Israel and the Bush administration are seriously preparing for this wider Middle Eastern war.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has called the possibility of an Iranian nuclear bomb an “existential threat” to Israel.
After the Sunday Times article appeared, an Israeli government spokesman denied that Israel has drawn up secret plans to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities. For its part, Iran claims it only wants a nuclear program for producing energy.
Negroponte’s Heresy
Whatever Iran’s intent, Negroponte has said U.S. intelligence does not believe Iran could produce a nuclear weapon until next decade.
Negroponte’s assessment in April 2006 infuriated neoconservative hardliners who wanted a worst-case scenario on Iran’s nuclear capabilities, much as they pressed for an alarmist view on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction before the U.S. invasion in 2003.
Unlike former CIA Director George Tenet, who bent to Bush’s political needs on Iraq, Negroponte stood behind the position of intelligence analysts who cited Iran’s limited progress in refining uranium.
“Our assessment is that the prospects of an Iranian weapon are still a number of years off, and probably into the next decade,” Negroponte said in an interview with NBC News. Expressing a similarly tempered view in a speech at the National Press Club, Negroponte said, “I think it’s important that this issue be kept in perspective.”
Some neocons complained that Negroponte was betraying the President.
Frank J. Gaffney Jr., a leading figure in the neoconservative Project for the New American Century, called for Negroponte’s firing because of the Iran assessment and his “abysmal personnel decisions” in hiring senior intelligence analysts who were skeptics about Bush’s Iraqi WMD claims.
In an article for Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Washington Times, Gaffney attacked Negroponte for giving top analytical jobs to Thomas Fingar, who had served as assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research, and Kenneth Brill, who was U.S. ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which debunked some of the U.S. and British claims about Iraq seeking uranium ore from Africa.
Fingar’s Office of Intelligence and Research had led the dissent against the Iraq WMD case, especially over what turned out to be Bush’s false claims that Iraq was developing a nuclear bomb.
“Given this background, is it any wonder that Messrs. Negroponte, Fingar and Brill … gave us the spectacle of absurdly declaring the Iranian regime to be years away from having nuclear weapons?” wrote Gaffney, who was a senior Pentagon official during the Reagan administration.
Gaffney also accused Negroponte of giving promotions to “government officials in sensitive positions who actively subvert the President’s policies,” an apparent reference to Fingar and Brill. The neocons have long resented U.S. intelligence assessments that conflict with their policy prescriptions. [See Robert Parry's Secrecy & Privilege.]
In his personnel shakeup, Bush shifted Negroponte from his Cabinet-level position as DNI to a sub-Cabinet post as deputy to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. To replace Negroponte, Bush nominated Navy retired Vice Admiral John McConnell, who is viewed by intelligence professionals as a low-profile technocrat, not a strong independent figure.
A Freer Hand
Negroponte’s departure should give Bush a freer hand if he decides to support attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Bush’s neocon advisers fear that if Bush doesn’t act decisively in his remaining two years in office, his successor may lack the political will to launch a preemptive strike against Iran.
Bush reportedly has been weighing his military options for bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities since early 2006. But he has encountered resistance from the top U.S. military brass, much as he has with his plans to escalate U.S. troop levels in Iraq.
As investigative reporter Seymour Hersh wrote in The New Yorker, a number of senior U.S. military officers were troubled by administration war planners who believed “bunker-busting” tactical nuclear weapons, known as B61-11s, were the only way to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities buried deep underground.
A former senior intelligence official told Hersh that the White House refused to remove the nuclear option from the plans despite objections from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Whenever anybody tries to get it out, they’re shouted down,” the ex-official said. [New Yorker, April 17, 2006]
By late April 2006, however, the Joint Chiefs finally got the White House to agree that using nuclear weapons to destroy Iran’s uranium-enrichment plant at Natanz, less than 200 miles south of Tehran, was politically unacceptable, Hersh reported.
“Bush and [Vice President Dick] Cheney were dead serious about the nuclear planning,” one former senior intelligence official said. [New Yorker, July 10, 2006]
But one way to get around the opposition of the Joint Chiefs would be to delegate the bombing operation to the Israelis. Given Israel’s powerful lobbying operation in Washington and its strong ties to leading Democrats, an Israeli-led attack might be more politically palatable with the Congress.
Attacks on Iran and Syria also would fit with Bush’s desire to counter the growing Shiite influence across the Middle East, which was given an unintended boost by Bush’s ouster of the Sunni-dominated government of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
The original neocon plan for the Iraq invasion was to use Iraq as a base to force regime change in Syria and Iran, thus dealing strong blows to Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories.
This regional transformation supposedly would have protected Israel’s northern border and strengthened Israel’s hand in dictating final peace terms to the Palestinians. But the U.S. invasion of Iraq backfired, descending into a sectarian civil war with Iraq’s pro-Iranian Shiite majority gaining the upper hand.
In effect, by ousting Saddam Hussein, Bush had eliminated the principal buffer who had been holding the line against the radical Shiites in Iran since 1979. By tipping the strategic balance to the Shiites, Bush also unnerved the Sunni monarchy of Saudi Arabia.
A Nightmare
By 2006, the dream of a U.S.-orchestrated transformation of the Middle East had turned into a nightmare of rising Shiite radicalism. To address this unanticipated development, Bush began pondering how best to throttle Shiite expansionism.
In summer 2006, Washington Post foreign policy analyst Robin Wright wrote that U.S. officials told her that “for the United States, the broader goal is to strangle the axis of Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria and Iran, which the Bush administration believes is pooling resources to change the strategic playing field in the Middle East.” [Washington Post, July 16, 2006]
Bush’s advisers also blamed the governments of Syria and Iran for supporting anti-U.S. fighters in Iraq.
Yet lacking the military and political capacity to expand the conflict beyond Iraq, the Bush administration turned to Israel and its new Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. By summer 2006, Israeli sources were describing Bush’s interest in finding a pretext to take Syria and Iran down a notch.
That opening came when border tensions with Hamas in Gaza and with Hezbollah in Lebanon led to the capture of three Israeli soldiers and a rapid Israeli escalation of the conflict into an air-and-ground campaign against Lebanon.
Bush and his neoconservative advisers saw the Israeli-Lebanese conflict as an opening to expand the fighting into Syria and achieve the long-sought “regime change” in Damascus, Israeli sources said.
One Israeli source told me that Bush’s interest in spreading the war to Syria was considered “nuts” by some senior Israeli officials, although Prime Minister Olmert generally shared Bush’s hard-line strategy against Islamic militants. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Bush Wants Wider War.”]
In an article on July 30, 2006. the Jerusalem Post also hinted at Bush’s suggestion of a wider war into Syria. “Defense officials told the Post … that they were receiving indications from the US that America would be interested in seeing Israel attack Syria,” the newspaper reported.
In August 2006, the Inter-Press Service added more details, reporting that the message was passed to Israel by Bush’s deputy national security adviser Elliott Abrams, who had been a central figure in the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s.
“In a meeting with a very senior Israeli official, Abrams indicated that Washington would have no objection if Israel chose to extend the war beyond to its other northern neighbor, leaving the interlocutor in no doubt that the intended target was Syria,” a source told the Inter-Press Service.
In December 2006, Meyray Wurmser, a leading U.S. neoconservative whose spouse is a Middle East adviser to Vice President Cheney, confirmed that neocons inside and outside the Bush administration had hoped Israel would attack Syria as a means of undermining the insurgents in Iraq.
“If Syria had been defeated, the rebellion in Iraq would have ended,” Wurmser said in an interview with Yitzhak Benhorin of the Ynet Web site. “A great part of it was the thought that Israel should fight against the real enemy, the one backing Hezbollah. … If Israel had hit Syria, it would have been such a harsh blow for Iran that it would have weakened it and (changed) the strategic map in the Middle East.”
But the Israeli summer offensives in Gaza and Lebanon fell short of Olmert’s objectives, instead generating international condemnation of Tel Aviv for the large numbers of civilian casualties from Israel’s bombing raids.
Wounded Leaders
Now, as two politically wounded leaders, Bush and Olmert share an interest in trying to salvage some success out of their military setbacks. So, they are looking at possible moves that are much more dramatic than minor adjustments to the status quo.
Democrats and some Republicans are questioning why Bush wants to send 20,000 more U.S. troops to Iraq and offer Iraqis some jobs programs, when similar tactics have been tried unsuccessfully in the past.
Indeed, one source familiar with high-level thinking in Washington and Tel Aviv said an unstated reason for Bush’s troop “surge” is to bolster the defenses of Baghdad’s Green Zone if a possible Israeli attack on Iran prompts an uprising among Iraqi Shiites.
The two U.S. aircraft carrier strike forces off Iran’s coast could provide further deterrence against Iranian retaliation. But the conflict would almost certainly spread anyway.
Likely Hezbollah missile strikes against Israel would offer another pretext for Israel to invade Syria and finally oust Hezbollah’s allies in Damascus, as the U.S. neocons had hope would happen in summer 2006, the source said.
In the neoconservative vision, this wider war would offer perhaps a last chance at achieving the regional transformation that has been at the heart of Bush’s strategy of “democratizing” the Middle East through violence if necessary.
However, few Middle East experts believe that Bush really would want the results of truly democratic elections in the region because Islamic militants would almost surely win resoundingly amid the anti-Americanism that has grown even more intense since the hanging of Saddam Hussein in late December.
An Israeli assault on Iran could put the region’s remaining pro-American dictators in jeopardy, too. In Pakistan, for instance, Islamic militants with ties to al-Qaeda have been gaining strength and might try to overthrow Gen. Pervez Musharraf, conceivably giving Islamic terrorists control of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.
For some U.S. foreign policy experts, this potential for disaster from a U.S.-backed Israeli air strike on Iran is so terrifying that they ultimately don’t believe Bush and Olmert would dare implement such the plan.
But Bush’s actions in the past two months – reaffirming his determination to achieve “victory” in Iraq – suggest that he wants nothing of the “graceful exit” that might come from a de-escalation of the war.
Losing Faith
Bush has dug in his heels even as some senior administration officials have lost faith in his strategy.
On Nov. 6, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld sent Bush a memo suggesting a “major adjustment” in Iraq War policy that would include “an accelerated drawdown of U.S. bases” from 55 to five by July 2007 with remaining U.S. forces only committed to Iraqi areas that request them.
“Unless they [the local Iraqi governments] cooperate fully, U.S. forces would leave their province,” Rumsfeld wrote.
Proposing an option similar to a plan enunciated by Democratic Rep. John Murtha, Rumsfeld suggested that the commanders “withdraw U.S. forces from vulnerable positions – cities, patrolling, etc. – and move U.S. forces to a Quick Reaction Force (QRF) status, operating from within Iraq and Kuwait, to be available when Iraqi security forces need assistance.”
And in what could be read as an implicit criticism of Bush’s lofty rhetoric about transforming Iraq and the Middle East, Rumsfeld said the administration should “recast the U.S. military mission and the U.S. goals (how we talk about them) – go minimalist.” [NYT, Dec. 3, 2006]
On Nov. 8, two days after the memo and one day after American voters elected Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, Bush fired Rumsfeld. The firing was widely interpreted as a sign that Bush was ready to moderate his position on Iraq, but the evidence now suggests that Bush got rid of Rumsfeld for going wobbly on the war.
On Dec. 6, when longtime Bush family counselor James Baker issued a report by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group urging a drawdown of U.S. troops in Iraq, Bush wasted little time in slapping it down.
Instead, Bush talked about waging a long war against Islamic “radicals and extremists,” an escalation from his original post-9/11 goal of defeating “terrorists with global reach.”
At his news conference on Dec. 20, Bush cast this wider struggle against Islamists as a test of American manhood and perseverance by demonstrating to the enemy that “they can’t run us out of the Middle East, that they can’t intimidate America.”
Bush suggested, too, that painful decisions lay ahead in the New Year.
“I’m not going to make predictions about what 2007 will look like in Iraq, except that it’s going to require difficult choices and additional sacrifices, because the enemy is merciless and violent,” Bush said.
Rather than scale back his neoconservative dream of transforming the Middle East, Bush argued for an expanded U.S. military to wage this long war.
“We must make sure that our military has the capability to stay in the fight for a long period of time,” Bush said. “I’m not predicting any particular theater, but I am predicting that it’s going to take a while for the ideology of liberty to finally triumph over the ideology of hate. …
“We’re in the beginning of a conflict between competing ideologies – a conflict that will determine whether or not your children can live in a peace. A failure in the Middle East, for example, or failure in Iraq, or isolationism, will condemn a generation of young Americans to permanent threat from overseas.”
Escalation
Since then, Bush has floated the idea of a troop “surge” and replaced commanders who disagreed with him. Bush also removed U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad, a Sunni Muslim generally considered a voice for moderation in U.S. policy who privately objected to Bush’s decision to press ahead with the hanging of Saddam Hussein.
There are even indications of tension between Bush and Cheney, who like his old friend Rumsfeld, appears to have grown disillusioned with the war.
In a little-noticed comment on Jan. 4, Sen. Joseph Biden, the new chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Cheney and Rumsfeld “are really smart guys who made a very, very, very, very bad bet, and it blew up in their faces. Now, what do they do with it? I think they have concluded they can’t fix it, so how do you keep it stitched together without it completely unraveling?” [Washington Post, Jan. 5, 2007]
But Bush does not appear to share that goal of limiting the damage. Instead, he is looking for ways to “double-down” his gamble in Iraq by joining with Olmert – and possibly outgoing British Prime Minister Tony Blair – in expanding the conflict.
Since the Nov. 7 congressional elections, the three leaders have conducted a round-robin of meetings that on the surface seem to have little purpose. Olmert met privately with Bush on Nov. 13; Blair visited the White House on Dec. 7; and Blair conferred with Olmert in Israel on Dec. 18.
Sources say the three leaders are frantically seeking options for turning around their political fortunes as they face harsh judgments from history for their bloody and risky adventures in the Middle East.
But there is also a clock ticking. Blair, who now stands to go down in the annals of British history as “Bush’s poodle,” is nearing the end of his tenure, having agreed under pressure from his Labour Party to step down in spring 2007.
So, if the Bush-Blair-Olmert triumvirate has any hope of accomplishing the neoconservative remaking of the Middle East, time is running out. Something dramatic must happen soon.
That something looks like it may include a rush to Armageddon.
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'
Saturday, January 06, 2007
Media WHORES, CNN edition: Glen Beck "jokes" that New York getting the New Orleans treatment might be a good thing...
As we have said for years, the NEWS WHORES editors, directors, and publishers of America's "major media" newspapers and news networks are the strongest argument that we can think of for bringing back CORPORAL PUNISHMENT: put 'em in STOCKS, in the center of town square, for a night, a weekend or week or two. These sadistic, unprincipled psychopaths WALLOW in their ability to feed American news consumers inaccurate, misleading, and hateful 'news.'
Like for example CNN race-baiter GLEN BECK saying "it might be a GOOD THING if a hurricane were to 'CLEAN OUT THE STREETS' of New York City."
(That would be the clever George W. Bush "ENTHIC CLEANSING of New Orleans" treatment.)
OH! How clever are our major media NEWS WHORES and their leader in the White House: pay attention to the details, and they actually believe that what happened to New Orleans on George W. Bush's watch WAS "a good thing" - the whores!
=====================================
CNN Anchor: "It Might Not Be Bad" If I Hurricane Were To "Clean The Streets Out" In NYC...
January 5, 2007 08:42 AM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/01/05/cnn-anchor-it-might-not_n_37897.html
From mediamatters.org
BECK: OK. Yesterday and when I heard the final -- the final words of the hurricane chief, and he said, you know, this is coming, I thought exactly of the words that I read about, starting I think in the 1950s, the warnings in New Orleans, "It`s coming, it`s coming, reinforce the walls" and nobody did anything about it.
And now here we are rebuilding the wall to the exact same level as it was before. I mean, it`s going to happen again in New Orleans, isn`t it?
LANDSEA: Well, New Orleans is very vulnerable. So is Houston. So is Tampa. So it Miami, even New York. And so it`s not a matter if you`ll have a strong hurricane strike those areas; it`s a matter of when.
BECK: What is the city that you`re most concerned about? What`s the one that you say, this is it? This is ground zero?
LANDSEA: It could be Tampa. Extremely vulnerable, low lying, a big bay. A hurricane will funnel the water in and flood the entire city.
BECK: Right.
LANDSEA: New York is extremely vulnerable, too, if a hurricane strikes just west of them and funnels all that water just north along Long Island into the city itself. They could have 20 to 25 feet of storm surge.
BECK: Actually, that would clean the streets out. It might not be bad.
Chris, thanks a lot.
Coming up, Mexico may be given illegals GPS units to help them cross the border safely. Stick around for "The Real Story". You won`t believe it.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
Read entire transcript here.
Like for example CNN race-baiter GLEN BECK saying "it might be a GOOD THING if a hurricane were to 'CLEAN OUT THE STREETS' of New York City."
(That would be the clever George W. Bush "ENTHIC CLEANSING of New Orleans" treatment.)
OH! How clever are our major media NEWS WHORES and their leader in the White House: pay attention to the details, and they actually believe that what happened to New Orleans on George W. Bush's watch WAS "a good thing" - the whores!
=====================================
CNN Anchor: "It Might Not Be Bad" If I Hurricane Were To "Clean The Streets Out" In NYC...
January 5, 2007 08:42 AM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/01/05/cnn-anchor-it-might-not_n_37897.html
From mediamatters.org
BECK: OK. Yesterday and when I heard the final -- the final words of the hurricane chief, and he said, you know, this is coming, I thought exactly of the words that I read about, starting I think in the 1950s, the warnings in New Orleans, "It`s coming, it`s coming, reinforce the walls" and nobody did anything about it.
And now here we are rebuilding the wall to the exact same level as it was before. I mean, it`s going to happen again in New Orleans, isn`t it?
LANDSEA: Well, New Orleans is very vulnerable. So is Houston. So is Tampa. So it Miami, even New York. And so it`s not a matter if you`ll have a strong hurricane strike those areas; it`s a matter of when.
BECK: What is the city that you`re most concerned about? What`s the one that you say, this is it? This is ground zero?
LANDSEA: It could be Tampa. Extremely vulnerable, low lying, a big bay. A hurricane will funnel the water in and flood the entire city.
BECK: Right.
LANDSEA: New York is extremely vulnerable, too, if a hurricane strikes just west of them and funnels all that water just north along Long Island into the city itself. They could have 20 to 25 feet of storm surge.
BECK: Actually, that would clean the streets out. It might not be bad.
Chris, thanks a lot.
Coming up, Mexico may be given illegals GPS units to help them cross the border safely. Stick around for "The Real Story". You won`t believe it.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
Read entire transcript here.
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
"Mainstream Media" overlooks some GOOD NEWS from 2006... because from corporate standpoint, they don't like good enviro. or "liberal" news...
The 2006 You Didn't Hear About
By Rebecca Solnit, AlterNet.
December 29, 2006.
http://www.alternet.org/story/46015/
While many of the big stories in 2006 were bad news, there were hundreds of activist successes in 2006 that permanently changed the world.
The big news is usually the bad news, and this year the biggest stories weren't even news -- climate change and the war in Iraq were trouble that had begun well before 2006. But dozens of small stories set another tone -- the tone of that graffiti in Seattle during the shutdown of the World Trade Organization there in 1999: "We are winning" -- not the same as "we have won" and can stop; "we are winning" is a call to action. Activists won dozens of small and not-so-small victories for human rights and the environment in 2006. The fabric of the world is woven out of small gestures; the large ones mostly just rend it and leave more to mend. And the small gestures continue. Here are some of them.
By Rebecca Solnit, AlterNet.
December 29, 2006.
http://www.alternet.org/story/46015/
While many of the big stories in 2006 were bad news, there were hundreds of activist successes in 2006 that permanently changed the world.
The big news is usually the bad news, and this year the biggest stories weren't even news -- climate change and the war in Iraq were trouble that had begun well before 2006. But dozens of small stories set another tone -- the tone of that graffiti in Seattle during the shutdown of the World Trade Organization there in 1999: "We are winning" -- not the same as "we have won" and can stop; "we are winning" is a call to action. Activists won dozens of small and not-so-small victories for human rights and the environment in 2006. The fabric of the world is woven out of small gestures; the large ones mostly just rend it and leave more to mend. And the small gestures continue. Here are some of them.
Media whores "accidentally" morph or confuse Barak OBAMA with OSAMA bin Laden... for 1,000th time. Stupid Democrats pretend not to notice....
HOW #^^@#!! PATHETIC is the Democrat Party?
Well, in both the 2000 and 2004 elections, the Dem. presidential candidates won almost/over 49,000,000 (forty-nine-million) votes, even by Rethuglican vote counting in states like Ohio and Florida - ostensibly the Dem. candidate representing nearly ONE HALF of the ENTIRE US electorate - and yet, every damn year, the Democratic message and talking points are DROWNED OUT by the inevitable corporate news "SPIN" on important issues and campaign themes.
EVEN WHEN the !!#*#^!%*! LYING MEDIA has to CONCOCT scandals out of THIN AIR, as for example the "Lincoln Bedroom Scandal" and the "White House trashing scandal"; both of which saw not only accusations against a Democratic White House by Republican attack dogs, BUT those Republican accusations were REPEATED, ECHOED, and AMPLIFIED, verbatim, FOR FREE by the whore corporate media, at the tremendous expense to the Democratic candidates and campaigns, WITHOUT ANY REAL SUBSTANCE to the prolonged, front-page, leads-the-headlines smear-and-attack campaigns!
The stupid Democrat leadership tells us this relentless right-wing bias of the corporate media is "INEVITABLE" because "FREE MARKET ENTERPRISE" is the HOLY GRAIL of America. But what corporations, Republicans, and Democrats insist is "free market enterprise" is really much closer to something that most Americans learn to distrust and abhor at an early age in elementary school: the state (government) enforcing PREDATORY MONOPOLIES by private parties who answer to no one but themselves, parties that have close, intimate connections with the highest levels of government, namely by influencing that government with KICKBACKS and other lucrative donations.
We're referring, of course, to the BOSTON TEA PARTY, and the EAST INDIA TEA COMPANY whose MONOPOLY powers were SO DESPISED by American patriots that citizens risked REBELLION (a capitol crime in the period before the Revolution) to toss the tea company's entire shipment into Boston Harbor in late December of 1773 in what would become a major prelude to the American revolution of 1776. The British responded with the 'suppress rebellion' Intolerable Acts just 3 months later in March of 1774, and just 13 months later the defiant colonist replied with OPEN REBELLION, brave militia men first opposing the Red Coats' march at the town green of Lexington on a cold morning of April 19, 1775, then engaging in a bloody, drawn out battle at the Concord bridge later that same day, a running battle from Concord bridge all the way back to Boston harbor 24 miles away. (As an indication of how tough were the soldiers of the Royal Army and their Patriot adversaries during the American Revolution, the Redcoats departed Boston harbor at midnight, prompting Paul Revere's famous ride; marched the nearly 20 miles to Lexington and another 4 to Concord, and then fought a running battle all the way back to the harbor, for a 50 mile round-trip march with little water or supplies, being shot at by rebellious colonists the entire return trip.)
Returning to the present, official Washington, the Republicans, Big Business, and even important Democrats tell us that having MEDIA MONOPOLIES in America today is the way it MUST be, because the precious dollar determines what voters hear, see, and read about in American 'news.'
But let's look at the flip-side of that coin. Every other year Democrats try to raise MILLIONS of dollars from Democratic voters... and EVERY YEAR Democratic consulting firms and campaign managers hand BAGS OF CASH over to the VERY CORPORATIONS who spend the entire year BASHING Democratic candidates, leaders, issues, and goals!
Republican-leaning MEDIA CORPORATIONS donate millions of dollars to Republican Party candidates and elected officials, whose campaign staffs produce attack ads against Democrats, and then those Repub. campaigns pay those SAME MEDIA COMPANIES millions of dollars to run the ads they produce.
The SAME process occurs with the Democrats, except that when a Democratic candidate is paying $2 million to run ads in a major market, those REPUBLICAN leaning media corporations will GIVE SOME OF those funds (as a percentage of their gross profits) BACK to the Republican candidates they favor! That's not even including the "FREEBIE" innuendo and attack stories that turn molehills into mountains, such as Al Gore receiving a small ($2,000) donation from a Buddhist temple, while in 2004 the Republican candidate benefitted from MILLLIONS OF DOLLARS worth of Vatican (Roman Catholic Church) efforts to discredit and oppose Democratic candidate John Kerry (re "moral values" issues such as the abortion issue and gay rights).
Democrats tell us WE MUST PUT UP WITH THIS GROSS DISPARITY in media influence because "PRIVATE PROPERTY" and "FREE MARKET ENTERPRISE" are the Holy of Holies in America; above even the legitimacy of SAFE, SECURE, VERIFIABLE, and TRANSPARENT elections (which the whore corporate media express ZERO interest in safeguarding!), and even ABOVE the 'right' of the MAJORITY of American citizens to have THEIR government safeguard THEIR concerns. (e.g. saving social security, drawing down the war in Iraq, securing worker's pensions, raising the minimum wage, providing health care to working families; and even outsourcing American jobs; etc. etc. etc.)
That is, our Dem "leaders" tell us we Democratic voters MUST put up with this GROSS MEDIA DISPARITY, EVEN when the "FREE MARKETS" aren't "FREE" at all (they are intensely regulated, and in the case of for example Clear Channel radio, they act as predatory conglomerates who have been known to buy out a show just to keep it off air, e.g. the Randi Rhodes show was not syndicated nationally until Air America came along, Clear Channel corp. BLACKBALLED Randi from national syndication at the behest of drug-addled blabbermouth Rush Limbaugh, who threatened to take his show from Clear Channel if Clear Channel syndicated the Randi Rhodes show.)
Oh, and the airwaves aren't "PRIVATE PROPERTY" either - they are in the PUBLIC DOMAIN, regardless of how BushCo and the George Will corporate press/media try to imply that they "OWN" the airwaves around us.
That is, on BOTH of the foundations that the Right-Wing uses to justify the corporate media's 'right' to SPIN the news - "FREE MARKET ENTERPRISE" and "PRIVATE PROPERTY" BOTH are PROPAGANDA TERMS used to define a CLOSE, CONTROLLED MARKET, and a PRIVATE MONOPOLY of the PUBLIC airwaves.
All the above demonstrates how the press-media GETS PAID to run ads of Vietnam war TRIPLE-AMPUTEE Senator Max Cleland's photos being juxtaposed between pictures of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden's in Cleland's electoral "defeat" in the Georgia senate race in 2002 (NOT!); or how hapless, clueless Dem. Senate MAJORITY leader Tom Daschle's picture was MORPHED into Osama bin Laden during the 2004 election in South Dakota; or how today CNN blowhard 'news' anchor Wolf ("AIPAC iz us") Blitzer's CNN broadcast "ACCIDENTALLY" substituted a chyron (text) of "Where's OBAMA" when the headline was supposed to read "Where's OSAMA?" Or how the media ran with the story "WELLSTONE MEMORIAL SERVICES show how PARTISAN are those treacherous Democrats for remembering the issues and battles Senator Wellstone FOUGHT FOR, and WAS FIGHTING FOR, when his airplane tragically fell out of the sky one night on a campaign flight to win re-election in 2002.
For ALL the above gross media abuses in appalling attack ads, the stupid Democrats offer ONLY ONE SOLUTION for Democratic voters: "HAND OVER MORE CASH, which we will in turn hand over to those very media corporations running the foul ads for Republicans!"
Democrats, thy name is CLUELESS OBLIVIOUSNESS.
CNN, thy name is LYING MEDIA WHORES!
-------------------------------------------------------------------
British Tea Act, Boston "Tea Party," British Intolerable Acts, leading to American Revolution's "shot heard 'round the world."
http://www.patriotresource.com/events/bostontea.html
============================================
CNN apologizes for Obama gaffe in Bin Laden graphic
Michael Roston
Published: Tuesday January 2, 2007
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/CNN_comments_on_Obama_gaffe_in_0101.html
A Monday night broadcast of CNN's Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer confused America's "number one enemy" with one of America's most popular senators, RAW STORY has learned. CNN apologized for the error, which came after a SERIES of 'INCIDENTS' in recent months in which Illinois Democrat Senator Barack Obama was subtly or directly linked with militant Islamic personalities who have been hostile to the United States.... [continued, click our headline-link]
Monday, January 01, 2007
Charlie Reina at HuffPost captures the PANTS-WETTING FEAR that underlies all right-wing ideology and power-politics
TERRIFIC article!
Charlie Reina captures the Alpha & Omega of Right-Wing politics and identity: "PANTS WETTING FEAR."
FEAR is the UNIFYING ELEMENT of Right-Wing politics and political groups, from the days of the American frontier during the savage Indian wars, to the post-Civil War creation of the KKK, and the modern tendency of Americans right-wing groups to foment DEATH SQUAD DIPLOMACY in South America, Central America, Haiti, and now Africa and the Middle East.
Dennis Miller IS the Joke
Charlie Reina
01.01.2007
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charlie-reina/dennis-miller-is-the-joke_b_37544.html
For years now, the Rush Limbaugh set has been telling this joke: "What do you call a liberal who's been mugged? A conservative."
It's a pretty good joke, too, because it says so much about the people who delight in telling it. I don't mean conservatives or Republicans, necessarily, because the punch-line has less to do with politics than with human nature.
No, these joke tellers are merely hypocrites who, whether or not they ever had a selfless thought, can't quite cope with the shame of their own fear, cowardice and selfishness, so they project it onto others. They tell us: We're all out for Number One; only, liberals can't admit it. But what they really mean is: I'd sell out my own brother for a tax rebate; wouldn't you?
These days, the comedian Dennis Miller is a prime mouthpiece for this shabby, "but-at-least-we're-honest-about-it" world view. As a social commentator, the pseudo-intellectual Miller is far more glib and smug than he ever was thoughtful.
Back in the 1980's, he turned what had begun as a sweetly goofy Saturday Night Live "news" segment into an exercise in mean-spiritedness. Then, on nine-eleven, Miller looked down at the wet spot on his pants and discovered not shame but salvation.He would cash in on the country's post-attack hysteria and proclaim himself a reformed liberal. Terrorism, you see, feeds on the muddle-headedness that is all things liberal.
Charlie Reina captures the Alpha & Omega of Right-Wing politics and identity: "PANTS WETTING FEAR."
FEAR is the UNIFYING ELEMENT of Right-Wing politics and political groups, from the days of the American frontier during the savage Indian wars, to the post-Civil War creation of the KKK, and the modern tendency of Americans right-wing groups to foment DEATH SQUAD DIPLOMACY in South America, Central America, Haiti, and now Africa and the Middle East.
Dennis Miller IS the Joke
Charlie Reina
01.01.2007
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charlie-reina/dennis-miller-is-the-joke_b_37544.html
For years now, the Rush Limbaugh set has been telling this joke: "What do you call a liberal who's been mugged? A conservative."
It's a pretty good joke, too, because it says so much about the people who delight in telling it. I don't mean conservatives or Republicans, necessarily, because the punch-line has less to do with politics than with human nature.
No, these joke tellers are merely hypocrites who, whether or not they ever had a selfless thought, can't quite cope with the shame of their own fear, cowardice and selfishness, so they project it onto others. They tell us: We're all out for Number One; only, liberals can't admit it. But what they really mean is: I'd sell out my own brother for a tax rebate; wouldn't you?
These days, the comedian Dennis Miller is a prime mouthpiece for this shabby, "but-at-least-we're-honest-about-it" world view. As a social commentator, the pseudo-intellectual Miller is far more glib and smug than he ever was thoughtful.
Back in the 1980's, he turned what had begun as a sweetly goofy Saturday Night Live "news" segment into an exercise in mean-spiritedness. Then, on nine-eleven, Miller looked down at the wet spot on his pants and discovered not shame but salvation.He would cash in on the country's post-attack hysteria and proclaim himself a reformed liberal. Terrorism, you see, feeds on the muddle-headedness that is all things liberal.
US media whores whitewash Iraq war ESCALATION as momentary "SURGE"....
When the history of the Cheney-Bush administration is finally distilled to its essence some decades from now, the overwhelming factor of its "successes" will be that the Republican administration was able to WALLOW in its control of the American, corporatized press-media, and thus able to shovel entire tons of raw, unmitigated propaganda on the 'news' consuming American public.
This trend started as soon as the "Iron Curtain" and Soviet Union collapsed, robbing America's right-wing intellectuals and political advocates (wealthy businesses and billionaires) of the ENEMY they required to focus their ideology and party political goals on; the focus used by the Right-Wing ideology to 'rouse the troops' and rally political activists; the focus used to aim and define America's multi-trillion dollar foreign policy and defense policy goals.
For example, for a half a century - from 1945 to 1995 - America's rhetoric overseas and especially in Eastern Europe was that if Communist nations could just break free of Soviet tyranny, America would be there to safeguard their freedoms and independence. Yet almost simultaneous with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Bush-Baker-Eagleberger-Helms (et al) Republican foreign policy establishment pled "WE CAN'T DO ANYTHING" about Yugoslavia's descent into murderous chaos. (Baker's infamous formulation was "we don't have a dog in that hunt.") Which begs the question: "if America couldn't afford to safeguard SOME form of multiparty cooperation during the collapse of Yugoslavia (as Germany sought to safeguard Slovenia) after the Soviet Union GAVE UP WITHOUT A FIGHT, how the hell would the United States have sought to protect our allies in Europe in a real, NATO vs. Warsaw-pact shooting match?"
Sidestepping this propensity for Republican 'genius' foreign policy architects to create (or allow) huge debacles to occur right there in Europe (less than an hours flight from the Vatican in Rome), the greater problem is, how does the AMERICAN PRESS/MEDIA ENABLE the American Republican Right-Wing's WORST NATURE??
In 1992 Arkansas governor Bill Clinton ran for the Democratic Party nomination for president, and his right-wing detractors (most of whom detested the entire 1960s Civil Rights era) shouted "BILL CLINTON IS A DRAFT-DODGER!"
Yet these same critics utterly FAILED to hold the same criticism to the Bush family, who had FOUR sons of military age during the Vietnam war, yet NOT ONE OF THOSE BUSH draft-age sons made ANY effort to join the war that their family "SUPPORTED" so vociferously!
This huge DOUBLE STANDARD by the press/media: a hypercritical scorn for the "liberal Democrat" president, a huge FREE-PASS for holding Right-Wing leaders and politicians to even close to those same standards - would become the DC press corps' insatiable appetite for ALL SCANDALS CLINTON, even when the WHORE press corps was reduced to CREATING SCANDALS out of THIN AIR, as for example the "LINCOLN BEDROOM SCANDAL!" and the even more vociferous "White House TRASHING scandal!"
The first was ABSURD: ANY president, including a Democratic proponent of Civil RIghts, has a RIGHT to invite friends and supporters to spend the night in the White House; the US press/media's propensity to GO ALONG WITH Republican ATTACK-SMEARS trying to make a scandal of the Clinton's overnight guest list smacks of "field slaves" being prohibited from entering the owner's mansion on a slave plantation. (And where is the press' insatiable appetite for learning how much time gay ex-Marine prostitute Jeff Ganon/Jim Guckert spent in the White House, or convicted bribery lobbyist Jack Abramoff???)
Worse, the WHORE New York Times and Washington Whore Post allowed themselves to trumpet the Bush 43 White House accusations "DEMOCRATIC STAFFERS TRASHED THE WEST WING OFFICES!" smear..... WITHOUT A SINGLE PHOTOGRAPH OF EVIDENCE!
This inherent propensity for the NEW YORK TIMES and WASHINGTON POST to LIE on behalf of Republican Right-Wing ATTACK politics, is how we now have a press/media TALKING UP AN ESCALATION of the US ground war in Iraq... despite the MAJORITY OF AMERICANS being AGAINST exactly such an escalation.
The publishers of the NEW YORK TIMES and WASHINGTON POST are WALLOWING in their ability to impart a lying, propaganda spin on EVERYTHING they set before the American public, whether calling the puppet government in Iraq a "Sovereign nation," (Saddam hanged in a US prison by an American dominated court to chants of "Long live Muqtada al Sadr!") or calling a marked escalation of the US war in Iraq a "temporary SURGE."
MEDIA WHORES, thy name is Washington Post, New York Times, and network 'news', and thy business is legitimizing the STOLEN ELECTIONS and GROSS CORRUPTION, INCOMPETENCE, dereliction of duty, and the sneering, hateful SCORN of the George W. Bush administration.
-------------------------------------------------
'Surge' Protectors
By Greg Mitchell
December 29, 2006
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003525778
Inside reports suggest President Bush has already decided on sending many more troops to Iraq starting next month. Until now, the media has bought into his labeling of this as a mere "surge." But the media needs to call it by its proper name: "escalation."
-- Sometimes one little word, especially in the press, means a lot. Take “surge.” Or, if you prefer (as many now do), an alternative: “escalation.” No, I'm not talking about the very disturbing rise in U.S. deaths in Iraq this month.
“Surge” is what President Bush and his war planners have called a plan – not yet announced but rumored to be favored – to send 20,000 or many more troops to Iraq in the next few months. Sometimes they add the word “temporary” as a kind of prefix, though this may not be necessary since surges (electrical or tidal or sexual or whatever) always come and go.
In any case, the media (including E&P from time to time) have largely bought into the “surge” descriptive from its unveiling several weeks ago. You might call them "surge" protectors. Just today, for example, Reuters did the White House the favor of referring to the idea as a "short-term troop 'surge' aimed at containing rampant violence."
There are several problems with this, of course. For one thing, who is to say, in advance, that this will actually prove to be a mere “surge” of troops versus a long-term buildup? What is the time limit for a “surge” to recede before it seems semi-permanent? A few months, as the White House has suggested? Or a year or more, as some of its outside backers demand, saying anything less would be futile?
This trend started as soon as the "Iron Curtain" and Soviet Union collapsed, robbing America's right-wing intellectuals and political advocates (wealthy businesses and billionaires) of the ENEMY they required to focus their ideology and party political goals on; the focus used by the Right-Wing ideology to 'rouse the troops' and rally political activists; the focus used to aim and define America's multi-trillion dollar foreign policy and defense policy goals.
For example, for a half a century - from 1945 to 1995 - America's rhetoric overseas and especially in Eastern Europe was that if Communist nations could just break free of Soviet tyranny, America would be there to safeguard their freedoms and independence. Yet almost simultaneous with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Bush-Baker-Eagleberger-Helms (et al) Republican foreign policy establishment pled "WE CAN'T DO ANYTHING" about Yugoslavia's descent into murderous chaos. (Baker's infamous formulation was "we don't have a dog in that hunt.") Which begs the question: "if America couldn't afford to safeguard SOME form of multiparty cooperation during the collapse of Yugoslavia (as Germany sought to safeguard Slovenia) after the Soviet Union GAVE UP WITHOUT A FIGHT, how the hell would the United States have sought to protect our allies in Europe in a real, NATO vs. Warsaw-pact shooting match?"
Sidestepping this propensity for Republican 'genius' foreign policy architects to create (or allow) huge debacles to occur right there in Europe (less than an hours flight from the Vatican in Rome), the greater problem is, how does the AMERICAN PRESS/MEDIA ENABLE the American Republican Right-Wing's WORST NATURE??
In 1992 Arkansas governor Bill Clinton ran for the Democratic Party nomination for president, and his right-wing detractors (most of whom detested the entire 1960s Civil Rights era) shouted "BILL CLINTON IS A DRAFT-DODGER!"
Yet these same critics utterly FAILED to hold the same criticism to the Bush family, who had FOUR sons of military age during the Vietnam war, yet NOT ONE OF THOSE BUSH draft-age sons made ANY effort to join the war that their family "SUPPORTED" so vociferously!
This huge DOUBLE STANDARD by the press/media: a hypercritical scorn for the "liberal Democrat" president, a huge FREE-PASS for holding Right-Wing leaders and politicians to even close to those same standards - would become the DC press corps' insatiable appetite for ALL SCANDALS CLINTON, even when the WHORE press corps was reduced to CREATING SCANDALS out of THIN AIR, as for example the "LINCOLN BEDROOM SCANDAL!" and the even more vociferous "White House TRASHING scandal!"
The first was ABSURD: ANY president, including a Democratic proponent of Civil RIghts, has a RIGHT to invite friends and supporters to spend the night in the White House; the US press/media's propensity to GO ALONG WITH Republican ATTACK-SMEARS trying to make a scandal of the Clinton's overnight guest list smacks of "field slaves" being prohibited from entering the owner's mansion on a slave plantation. (And where is the press' insatiable appetite for learning how much time gay ex-Marine prostitute Jeff Ganon/Jim Guckert spent in the White House, or convicted bribery lobbyist Jack Abramoff???)
Worse, the WHORE New York Times and Washington Whore Post allowed themselves to trumpet the Bush 43 White House accusations "DEMOCRATIC STAFFERS TRASHED THE WEST WING OFFICES!" smear..... WITHOUT A SINGLE PHOTOGRAPH OF EVIDENCE!
This inherent propensity for the NEW YORK TIMES and WASHINGTON POST to LIE on behalf of Republican Right-Wing ATTACK politics, is how we now have a press/media TALKING UP AN ESCALATION of the US ground war in Iraq... despite the MAJORITY OF AMERICANS being AGAINST exactly such an escalation.
The publishers of the NEW YORK TIMES and WASHINGTON POST are WALLOWING in their ability to impart a lying, propaganda spin on EVERYTHING they set before the American public, whether calling the puppet government in Iraq a "Sovereign nation," (Saddam hanged in a US prison by an American dominated court to chants of "Long live Muqtada al Sadr!") or calling a marked escalation of the US war in Iraq a "temporary SURGE."
MEDIA WHORES, thy name is Washington Post, New York Times, and network 'news', and thy business is legitimizing the STOLEN ELECTIONS and GROSS CORRUPTION, INCOMPETENCE, dereliction of duty, and the sneering, hateful SCORN of the George W. Bush administration.
-------------------------------------------------
'Surge' Protectors
By Greg Mitchell
December 29, 2006
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003525778
Inside reports suggest President Bush has already decided on sending many more troops to Iraq starting next month. Until now, the media has bought into his labeling of this as a mere "surge." But the media needs to call it by its proper name: "escalation."
-- Sometimes one little word, especially in the press, means a lot. Take “surge.” Or, if you prefer (as many now do), an alternative: “escalation.” No, I'm not talking about the very disturbing rise in U.S. deaths in Iraq this month.
“Surge” is what President Bush and his war planners have called a plan – not yet announced but rumored to be favored – to send 20,000 or many more troops to Iraq in the next few months. Sometimes they add the word “temporary” as a kind of prefix, though this may not be necessary since surges (electrical or tidal or sexual or whatever) always come and go.
In any case, the media (including E&P from time to time) have largely bought into the “surge” descriptive from its unveiling several weeks ago. You might call them "surge" protectors. Just today, for example, Reuters did the White House the favor of referring to the idea as a "short-term troop 'surge' aimed at containing rampant violence."
There are several problems with this, of course. For one thing, who is to say, in advance, that this will actually prove to be a mere “surge” of troops versus a long-term buildup? What is the time limit for a “surge” to recede before it seems semi-permanent? A few months, as the White House has suggested? Or a year or more, as some of its outside backers demand, saying anything less would be futile?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)