Category: War

Dennis Ross is Barack Obama’s special advisor on Iran.  Dennis Ross is a pro-Israel hawk.  The dude made almost a million bucks last year making speeches to wingnut welfare think tanks.  Last year, Ross made more than $100,000.00 for shoveling propaganda on Fox News alone.  Ross’s only interest in negotiations with Iran is to get them out of the way quickly in order to neutralize a public clamoring for peaceful negotiations, i.e., “alas, we tried negotiations, but that failed,” so that the US can go “kinetic” and bomb the bejeezuz out of the Iranians.

By Robert Dreyfuss’s account, Dennis Ross is the last guy who should be in charge of negotiations with Iran.

Widely viewed as a cog in the machine of Israel’s Washington lobby, Ross was not likely to be welcomed in Tehran–and he wasn’t. Iran’s state radio described his appointment as “an apparent contradiction” with Obama’s “announced policy to bring change in United States foreign policy.” Kazem Jalali, a hardline member of the Iranian parliament’s national security committee, joked that it “would have been so much better to pick Ariel Sharon or Ehud Olmert as special envoy to Iran.” More seriously, a former White House official says that Ross has told colleagues that he believes the United States will ultimately have no choice but to attack Iran in response to its nuclear program.

Dennis Ross is a hardcore wingnut to the bone.  Dennis Ross pals around with war-mongering wingnuts, like Paul Wolfowitz and Andrew Marshall, and helped Martin Indyk of AIPAC fame launch the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP).

     Treat the captives well, and care for them.

    All the soldiers taken must be cared for with magnanimitty and sincerity so that they may be used by us.

    This is called ‘winning a battle and becoming stronger.’

    Hence what is essential in war is victory, not prolonged operations. . .

                               –  The Art of War

    Military contractors do not seek victory, but, “prolonged operations.”

    Instead of breaking minds and bodies in order to win hearts and minds, maybe we should have read more history.

    I have recently read Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War”. Although this book was written over 2300 years ago and in a time before drone missiles, military contractors and Military Industrial Complexes, I feel that it is a good book to read for everyone who would like to learn the age old and time tested concepts of military strategy.

Or were we, Shhhhhhhhhhh…………!!

On thursday, 6.11.09, I caught a short report about one of the legacies, more like the left over WMD’s, of our Wars and Occupations and their destructive power years later, and how we just walk away unconcerned and certainly uncaring, it’s now their problem, move onto the next War of Choice by the few, seeking their wants of power, wealth and glory in their sorry lives.

This report was on the NPR show, out of Boston, from WBUR’s Here and Now: Feeling the Pain in Laos, and was about a BBC journalist Jill McGivering reporting from Laos.

Crossposted at DKos

http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

Here is a good example of what is in H.R. 2346

   We are going to give $230+ million to a DoD Base Closure Account in order to carry out operation and maintenance, planning and design and military construction projects not otherwise authorized by law.

    ???

    Are we getting single payer health care? Are we getting a commitment to rebuilding America through building infrastructure and the manufacturing sector? Are we getting the return of the Glass-Steagal Act, or the repeal of Gramm/Leech/Bliley? Are we getting to the end of mountain top removal coal mining, or the beginning of a more sustainable energy plan? Are we getting investigations and a Special Prosecutor for the War Crimes committed by Bush/Cheney?

    No.

    What we are getting are drone missiles, new army bases overseas and defense contracts. With a side of suppression of evidence of war crimes and a big financial bailout on the side.

    We are getting a bill called H.R. #2346, The Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2009

This is an example of what your scarce national resources that are not there for national health care is going to…      

Back on the 25th, of last month, for Memorial Day I put up a post to cover an interview about a new book release I caught on NPR’s WBUR Here and Now, out of Boston.

While waiting for them to put up the stream link after the show I did some searching, for information on the book as well as some back information on what’s covered in same.

Below you will find that post but UpDated, with a few more links and audio discussion, I’ve found since the posting.

Today is the Celebration for Europe and the United States of D-Day President will address veterans at American cemetery on Omaha Beach, this is not to celebrate but to Remind, and in many cases Instill in everyones minds, there’s other sides, long living results, of All Wars Waged and not only for those who serve in them!

I make it point to visit Obsidian Wings daily, and hilzoy is a favorite of mine, because she’s pretty darn thoughtful, but something was seriously off kilter today in her post about Obama’s Cairo speech.

This bit from Obama’s speech also struck me as very strong:

“Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America’s founding. This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia; from Eastern Europe to Indonesia. It’s a story with a simple truth: that violence is a dead end. It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered.”

The normal criticism of Palestinian violence is moral. That is as it should be, and Obama does not slight that: “That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered.” But that criticism leaves open the possibility of framing the debate over Palestinian violence as one of principle versus effectiveness. As long as it is framed that way, one can understand (though not agree with) Palestinians who say: you’d think differently if you didn’t have a state; if it was your land that was constantly being seized, and your pregnant wife who had to wait for hours at a checkpoint to see a doctor. You’d put aside your principles and do what works.

That’s why it’s immensely important to say, clearly, that violence is not just wrong, but ineffective.

It’s not so much that I agree or disagree with the double-barreled blast of “morality AND effectiveness” lines of argument.  It’s kind of like the torture debate: it’s not only immoral; it plain doesn’t work reliably.  Blam!  Blam!  You dead!  Rhetorically speaking.  That’s fine.

The part of the argument that indicates a severe case of hemi-neglect (when a brain-damaged patient can easily lift one arm on command, but when asked to lift they other, they say, “What other?”), was when she suggested:

This bit from Obama’s speech also struck me as very strong.

The disparity between the super rich and everyone else grows by the day, despite public bailouts, despite the economic clusterfuck I am calling “The Great Oppression”

Our rights are still under attack.

War crimes are going un-punished.

The opposition on the right is increasingly racist, insane and growing towards violence.

and not a single Democrat seems to have the stones to call this what it is.

Class warfare.

Dover ‘Old Guard’

Dover ‘Old Guard’ team shoulders heavy burden

Special Initiative on Agent Orange/Dioxin

Backround

From 1961 to 1971, U.S. military forces sprayed more than 20 million gallons of Agent Orange and other herbicides on forests and crops in southern and central Vietnam. The campaign had both human and environmental consequences. The immediate effect was to defoliate and destroy vegetation over wide areas. The delayed impact came from dioxin, a highly toxic chemical in Agent Orange that is critically harmful to humans…………….

     In Federal Insurance Co. v. Kingdom Of Saudi Arabia, a suit filed by several insurance companies who sought to recover over $300 billion for losses incurred by the 9/11 attacks, the following men are named as defendants.

   Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, president of SHC, who was warned in 2000 of his organization’s ties to al Qaeda;

   Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, the designated successor to King Abdullah, who received warnings as early as 1994 that some Muslim charitable groups were fronts for al Qaeda;

   Prince Naif bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, who as Saudi Minister of the Interior monitors and controls the charities operating in Saudi Arabia;

   Prince Turki al-Faisal bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, who was the director of the Kingdom’s Department of General Intelligence (“DGI”) until August 2001; and

   Prince Mohamed al Faisal al Saud, who unlike the other princes named is not a government official but a bank manager alleged to have knowingly provided material sponsorship to international terrorism.

cbs2chicago.com

    When the crown prince and successor to the throne of Saudi Arabia is warned back in 1994 that charities his family supports are funneling money to terrorist organizations, and then those groups attack America, you would think that somebody in the executive branch would find that interesting.

    But not Bush/Cheney. They spent every minute between the Inauguration and 9/10/2001 trying to find a way to attack Iraq. Defending America from terrorism was not very interesting until after the attack had already occurred.

    This is not the only evidence that the royal family and absolute rulers of Saudi Arabia directly aided Al Qaeda before and up to the attacks against America on September 11th. This evidence is well documented, and yet it went ignored.

    Why was this evidence ignored? I will not speculate on that point, rather, here is more evidence. You may decide for yourself.

‘Capture the Flag: A Political History of American Patriotism’

The flag is not powerful in spite of its ambiguity; it is powerful because of its ambiguity. It has stood, at different times, for radical democracy, opposition to immigration, the abolition of slavery, unregulated capitalism, segregation, integration, and a hawkish war policy, among many other things.