Category: Iraq

This is one of the first filters we made in Iraq. We are working on an US base south of Baghdad and it can be dangerous to be associated with the military. I gave these men the press, kiln and all the equipment they need to start up a shop. They are skilled potters and the one in charge is studying for his masters degree in engineering at the University of Babylonia. It took almost 3 years and 5 trips to Iraq to get the filter production started but we are finally underway. The men were so thankful for the opportunity. There is a great need for the filter in this area and the army has already ordered 2000 filters for distribution and the word is that the project is being studied at the highest levels. I realize that some of you have serious reservations about my work with the military but my goal was to help the people get access to clean water. The soldiers have a very tough job in a near impossible situation in Iraq and this effort seemed to do a lot to reinforce a commitment to help the people.

This is work that saves lives in Iraq every day, from God-forsaken little villages in the middle of nowhere all the way to Baghdad and the slums of Sadr City. Happy birthday, Richard Wukich! You made the world a better place for hundreds of thousands of people!

They tell us we’re dropping about $10 billion a month in Afghanistan so we can catch that Bin Laden guy…but eventually, we’re gonna catch him, and as soon as we do you can imagine that folks will be wondering why we’re still over there – and I gotta tell ya, I’m one of those people.

I mean, we’re over here talking about how we’re so broke that we have no choice but to cut a couple of billion from heat assistance for the poor, and a billion-and-a-half from the Social Security operations budget, and money from food stamps and childcare assistance and tornado forecasting in Alabama…but every single month, just as regular as clockwork, we seem to be able to find another $10 billion to spend in Afghanistan, even as we have an economy that could badly use another round of truly productive stimulus.

And I don’t think y’all even realize just how much money $10 billion really is – but today we’re gonna see if we can’t fix that with a bit of a thought exercise.

Imagine if we set up a program that took that Afghanistan money and spent it right here at home for a year or two – and it was spent in the form of a lottery, where we stimulate the larger economy, help fix the mortgage crisis, and create a more energy-independent nation, all at the same time.

I got all we need except a catchy name; with that in mind let’s move on to the description of how the Happy Super Fun Day Peace Lotto Stimulus Thingy works.  

Faces of the Enemy

copyright © 2011 Betsy L. Angert.  Empathy And Education; BeThink or  BeThink.org

Today, Americans walk it back, Belatedly, and too late to bring home American and Allied troops who died in battle, government officials released recordings.  The media distributes and discusses these en masse.  Those prominent in the Press and Public Office say “the people have the right to know,” exactly what the tale that could have been told decades ago.  Osama Bin Laden was never more than human, a tragic hero, a comical character, just as you or me.

On May 1st, An Infuriating Anniversary, the day of the Mission Accomplished’ Speech and Banner as to Iraq eight years prior, the War of Choice, that turned the Afghan Operation into same, nothing to do with 9/11 al Qaeda nor bin Laden, the Afghan ‘Mission is Finally Accomplished’, bin Laden dead, after creating possibly thousands of bin Ladens seeking blowback!

Tens of thousands dead, millions turned into refugee’s, lives and countries destroyed, and still no ‘Sacrifice’ as to the results for the Veterans of nor Accountability for the lies of those who ordered the destructive decade plus, Still Ongoing!!

Bring the Troops Home and take care of All of them and their families when they return!!

A decade of much more already said, and much will be said over the days to come, as a Country, not willing to ‘Sacrifice’ for the results of what’s been done, starts celebrating{?}!

Few doing so had anything to do directly with either war nor knew anyone who gave their all, Soldiers and Families of, killed in action, multiple tours in two theaters, wounded physically and mentally!

Doubt if many have it marked on their calendars, probably don’t want to be reminded that some 70plus% supported it and the drum beating from Washington and the Media outlets, all of them!

But Greg Mitchell over at ‘The Nation’ would like to remind everyone that an important anniversary approaches, everyone outside of those who serve us and their families, you know, the ones the Country has yet to ‘Sacrifice’ for and few even Demanding they do.

It’s tempting to expect perfection from those we admire, but we romanticize lone heroes at our peril. A few years before one-time supporter Jon Krakauer challenged the truthfulness of Greg Mortenson’s Three Cups of Tea, a professor asked me my thoughts on using the book as a reading for first-year students, to encourage them to become more engaged with global issues. I hesitated. Mortenson was doing valuable work, I said.  The book was a great read. I admired his creativity and courage, and the leap of faith he took to begin building his schools without the slightest guarantee of success. I admired how he persisted through seemingly endless obstacles to sow seeds of hope. His approach seemed a powerful rebuke to Bush administration assumptions that if the U.S. just bombed enough of the bad guys, the region’s problems would disappear. Mortenson also appeared to respect local Pakistani and Afghan culture in a way that seemed to offer key lessons for America’s broader relationship with the world.

Can’t say nobody didn’t tell them so.

How much of this do you think will be reported on our 24/7 media outlets, especially in detail!!

Started talking about a year before the Brits gave approval for the blair to embrace the bush!

19 April 2011 – Plans to exploit Iraq’s oil reserves were discussed by government ministers and the world’s largest oil companies the year before Britain took a leading role in invading Iraq, government documents show.

The papers, revealed here for the first time, raise new questions over Britain’s involvement in the war, which had divided Tony Blair’s cabinet and was voted through only after his claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

Yep them there WMD’s, weapons of mass destruction, were all over the place along with those many other changing excuses for justification!

The minutes of a series of meetings between ministers and senior oil executives are at odds with the public denials of self-interest from oil companies and Western governments at the time.

The documents were not offered as evidence in the ongoing Chilcot Inquiry into the UK’s involvement in the Iraq war. In March 2003, just before Britain went to war, Shell denounced reports that it had held talks with Downing Street about Iraqi oil as “highly inaccurate”. BP denied that it had any “strategic interest” in Iraq, while Tony Blair described “the oil conspiracy theory” as “the most absurd”.

Nobody turned these over to Chilcot, wonder what else is well hidden only to come trickling out over the coming decades. And oh my, a shock, Shell oil Lied and the pols went along with it, surprise, surprise, surprise!

But documents from October and November the previous year paint a very different picture.

Five months before the March 2003 invasion, Baroness Symons, then the Trade Minister, told BP that the Government believed British energy firms should be given a share of Iraq’s enormous oil and gas reserves as a reward for Tony Blair’s military commitment to US plans for regime change.

The papers show that Lady Symons agreed to lobby the Bush administration on BP’s behalf because the oil giant feared it was being “locked out” of deals that Washington was quietly striking with US, French and Russian governments and their energy firms.

And even More Shocking reveal, the cheney/bush were dealin with other coutries and oil firms behind the Brits back, oh my and in Secret!!

Mr Muttitt, whose book “Fuel on the Fire: Oil and Politics in Occupied Iraq” is published next week, said: “Before the war, the Government went to great lengths to insist it had no interest in Iraq’s oil. These documents provide the evidence that give the lie to those claims.

“We see that oil was in fact one of the Government’s most important strategic considerations, and it secretly colluded with oil companies to give them access to that huge prize.”

Lady Symons, 59, later took up an advisory post with a UK merchant bank that cashed in on post-war Iraq reconstruction contracts. Last month she severed links as an unpaid adviser to Libya’s National Economic Development Board after Colonel Gaddafi started firing on protesters. Last night, BP and Shell declined to comment. {continued with some small cuts from the docs}

I’ll tell I’m Shocked, Shocked I say, oh wait a minute, I and hundreds of thousands, Millions, were saying almost exactly what this is reporting!!

Oh and Iraq’s output is up, yet so are oil prices rising, as the glut continues and nobody else stopped pumping!

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Nobel Prize laureate Joseph Stiglitz has consistently pointed out that the US is on the wrong track for economic recovery and that the continued support for the money pit of Iraq and the shifting the countries wealth to the 2% elite will be the downfall of economics growth, He recently wrote an excellent article in Vanity Fair, Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%, pointing out that even the wealthy will come to regret this path.

t’s no use pretending that what has obviously happened has not in fact happened. The upper 1 percent of Americans are now taking in nearly a quarter of the nation’s income every year. In terms of wealth rather than income, the top 1 percent control 40 percent. Their lot in life has improved considerably. Twenty-five years ago, the corresponding figures were 12 percent and 33 percent. One response might be to celebrate the ingenuity and drive that brought good fortune to these people, and to contend that a rising tide lifts all boats. That response would be misguided. While the top 1 percent have seen their incomes rise 18 percent over the past decade, those in the middle have actually seen their incomes fall. For men with only high-school degrees, the decline has been precipitous-12 percent in the last quarter-century alone. All the growth in recent decades-and more-has gone to those at the top. In terms of income equality, America lags behind any country in the old, ossified Europe that President George W. Bush used to deride. Among our closest counterparts are Russia with its oligarchs and Iran. While many of the old centers of inequality in Latin America, such as Brazil, have been striving in recent years, rather successfully, to improve the plight of the poor and reduce gaps in income, America has allowed inequality to grow.

(emphasis mine)

This is well worth the time to read the entire piece and save it as a reference as this country sinks further into the morass and becomes a “Banana Republic”as the Tea Party Republicans try to drag this country back to the 19th century by repealing laws that protect children and workers.

Stiglitz also appeared on Democracy, Now! with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez to discuss his article and the current US “budget crisis” that has been fabricated by the right wing, Obama and the ever beholding MSM:

This week Republicans unveiled a budget proposal for 2012 that cuts more than $5.8 trillion in government spending over the next decade. The plan calls for sweeping changes to Medicaid and Medicare, while reducing the top corporate and individual tax rates to 25 percent. We speak to Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, who addresses the growing class divide taking place in the United States and inequality in a new Vanity Fair article titled “Of the 1, by the 1, for the 1%.” Stiglitz is a professor at Columbia University and author of numerous books, most recently Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy. “It’s not just that the people at the top are getting richer,” Stiglitz says. “Actually, they’re gaining, and everybody else is decreasing… And right now, we are worse than old Europe.” includes rush transcript

(Wanted this to be days’ earlier, but it wasn’t possible.  So, TMC’s diary here seemed a perfect place to comment, but then the comment became very long . . . . so!)

While traveling to an appointment last Thursday (April 7th), I listened to David Sirota, filling in for Thom Hartmann.*  Sirota began by talking about Pentagon horrendous wastes, even to the extent that the Pentagon has an Entertainment Division.  Essentially, the Pentagon puts up money to back films about war and for war and does everything, with money included, to discourage film makers from making films that are against war.  He said he has detailed that information in his book, “Back to Our Future.”

Several veterans (one of VietNam era) called in speaking about the excesses of Pentagon spending and blatant waste.  Both discussed Halliburton and Blackwater, in particular.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Not that I was ever in but I was willing to give Barack Obama the benefit of the doubt once he was elected but since kicking his base supporters off the bus in the middle of the desert, I can’t even hold my nose to vote for him. As was pointed out in a Raw Story article, these are just a few of the reasons:

1. Health care for all

If you’re an American making less than $30,000 a year, chances are you still have trouble seeing a doctor, despite the passage of President Obama’s health care reform plan. In 2007, then-Senator Obama said he wanted to make sure no American is without access to vital medical attention and proposed using revenues from the soon-to-expire Bush tax cuts to fund it. When the campaign laid out their specific plans in 2008, they included a “public option” that would be paid for by the public at large and made available to anyone who could not obtain coverage through their employer or other public program.

We all know how well that turned out, a massive sell out to the health insurance  and pharmaceutical industry and a cave ro extending the Bush (er, Obama) tax cuts. Yes, the consumer is forced to buy an inadequate insurance policy and still not have access to a doctor but hey, they’re insured. Now the Republicans are attacking Medicare and Medicaid so the government can fund more imperial wars and buy bigger and better weapons while giving the wealthy even more tax cuts.

2. Close Guantanamo

As a symbol of everything that liberals thought to be wrong with the Bush-era, closing the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba should have been an easy target for the new and popular president and his Democratic super-majority in Congress — and, in fact, then-candidate Obama promised to do just that. But as he soon found out, strategic and political calculations have made it almost impossible to shuck.

Now we have even bigger and better military tribunals, no trials in civilian courts for those scary men in Guantanamo and for 47 of them, the possibility no trial ever and the rest of their lives in detention all in the name of the never ending War on Terror (On wait, we don’t call it that any more).

3. Defend labor rights

“Understand this,” Obama said during a campaign rally in 2007. “If American workers are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain when I’m in the White House, I will put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself, I’ll will walk on that picket line with you as President of the United States of America.” (Watch.)

He can’t find his comfy shoes? Michelle must have tossed them when they moved into the executive mansion. Truthfully, at this  point, it’s is best he stay away and silent.

4. Reform the Patriot Act

Contrary to popular belief, Obama has never actually argued for a repeal of the Bush administration’s sweeping, post-9/11 security initiatives, which were passed with a mandatory “sunset” clause to overrule the concerns of civil libertarians at the time. Instead, Obama has consistently said he favors enhanced judicial oversight and a pullback from some warrantless searches — like the provisions that allow the FBI to access library records without a warrant.

Obama “reformed” it all right. Besides defending it in court, he got it extended even for even longer than the Republicans wanted without any changes. This extends the governments ability to spy on every private citizen until 2013, a non-election year, when it comes up for renewal again.

5. End the wars

Even as a candidate, Obama maintained that Afghanistan should be “the focus” of Bush’s terror war, and he pledged to make it so. But the president was also swept into power on a wave of anti-war fervor behind his calls to end the occupation of Iraq. Iraq has calmed down quite a bit as U.S. troops steadily stream out of the country, but Afghanistan is more violent than ever amid Obama’s own “surge.”

The US will have troops in Iraq and Afghanistan for years. But, but, his loyalist supporters say, they aren’t “combat troops”. I hate to tell them but ALL troops are “combat troops”. Not only this, now there is the bombardment of Pakistan, Yemen and Libya.

One day after announcing his bid for reelection, Obama’s poll numbers show less than half the country believes President Obama deserves reelection, with disaffected liberals now a fast growing demographic and independents split. Would the country have been better off with McCain or Hillary as President is useless speculation. All that is important now is Dick Cheney is pleased.

Ronald Reagan once claimed that “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’

But of course that senile stooge for Big Money got it wrong. The nine most terrifying words in any language are…

“I’m from America, and I’m here to help you.”

My update of the Reagan Doctrine (insofar as that senile stooge ever had a “doctrine,” or even an idea, except stooging for Big Money) occurred to me when Baghdad was selected as the worst city in the world on the Mercer 2010 Quality of Life Survey.

After seven years of beneficent American occupation!

And Baghdad had to beat out some real humdingers among messed up cities to win that prize!

More messed up than Khartoum?

You betcha!

This was reminiscent of some recent headlines from Afghanistan, selected by Save the Children as the worst place in the world to be born. The worst place to be a mother! The worst place to be a child!

After nine long years of American “assistance!”

And now it’s Libya’s turn to hear those terrifying words…

“I’m from America, and I’m here to help you.”

And isn’t it just too fucking perfect that Obama can send that message from everybody’s favorite guided missile destroyer… the USS Barry!

The guided-missile destroyer USS Barry launches a Tomahawk cruise missile from the ship’s bow in the Mediterranean Sea on March 29. Barry is currently supporting Joint Task Force (JTF) Odyssey Dawn as part of the international response to the unrest in Libya.

And I’m goin to hazard a guess probably not the only one. Who in the hell does the screening for these so called ‘private contractors’ that are then sent into these occupation theaters?

I just caught this, and an update to the ‘kill team’ of U.S. soldiers.

This goes Way Beyond Disgusting!!

Especially what’s written about this, and people wonder why the world is turning it’s collective backs on us!!

This a**wipe can and should ask himself how many soldiers his actions have gotten killed while he parades around thinking he’s superior, scumbag!!