Tag: Saddam Hussein

Slam Dunk Osama Guantanamo: Jump the Shark!

Jump The Shark 2

The most important single fact about the CIA and the only fact that anybody knows for sure is that the CIA is stupid, and way back when I was occasionally invited to parties on Embassy Row in Washington (because of the Harvard Cyclotron) I proved this over and over with a little game.

“The stupidest person at every party in Washington always works for the CIA,” I would say, and inevitably some guy in white socks would get red in the face and blurt out…

“That’s not true!”

But it was all too true, and the CIA has demonstrated this self-evident proposition once again by jumping the shark with their already ridiculous story about the death of Osama bin Laden.

It wasn’t enough just to kill one sick old Arab chained to a dialysis machine in a house with no telephones. It wasn’t enough to kill one sick old Arab that it cost us more than $1 trillion to kill.

They had to jump the fucking shark!

They also had to prove that all that torture at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib was a very good thing!

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), who was repeatedly subjected to methods including “waterboarding” and stress positions, provided the CIA with the name of bin Laden’s personal courier, according to US officials. The killing of the world’s most wanted man as a direct result of information obtained from Guantanamo detainees such as KSM will reignite the debate over whether torture is a legitimate interrogation technique in the “war on terror”.

Torture paid off!

HURRAH!!!

Now we can forget all those pesky accusations about crimes against humanity and the Geneva Conventions! Torture saved us from UBL! Case closed!

And this is exactly the same kind of overkill that couldn’t stop piling new and ever more incredible weapons into the arsenal of Saddam Hussein until the CIA had inflated him from a tin-pot dictator with a rusted-out army all the way to the status of SUPERHUMAN MONSTER, who supposedly possessed not only the kind of armament that he might have actually possessed, like chemical and biological weapons, but also a whole fleet of totally imaginary drone-bombers which could fly all the way from Baghdad to Manhattan, along with 500 tons of yellow-cake for non-existent nuclear weapons.

This was exactly the same kind of overkill that couldn’t stop piling new and ever more HORRIBLE CONSEQUENCES upon the very idea of losing the War in Vietnam! It wasn’t enough that Vietnam would be re-united under a communist ally of the Russians! The CIA also had to “prove” that dominoes would fall all the way from Saigon to London unless we sent yet another hundred thousand soldiers to fight and die in those god-forsaken rice-paddies! Western Civilization will die! Defeat is not an option! Be very afraid! And don’t just feel fear…

Piss your pants and give us all your money!

So of course anybody with minimal intelligence immediately sees right through these ridiculously exaggerated stories…

But that still leaves 85% of the American electorate to piss their pants and give away all their money.  

Iraq War Inquiry Resumed: Tony’s Turn

Haven’t posted anything in about a week or so on the Inquiry as I’ve had some other issues I’ve been following and there wasn’t really much more coming out as to the tidbits of what was happening on this side of the pond, my interest in this as the Brits are holding these hearings and that’s up to them to sort out there own leaderships guilt or innocence in justification for Iraq.

Tony Blair’s turn to testify is today and that’s already started, you can tune in here as he will be testifying for some six hours, these live video’s are then archived.

Not much has been covered as to these hearings here in the states even when mention of our administration, and others, were talking about taking down Saddam before 9/11, on 9/11 and shortly after and more.

Stonewalling of Torture Evidence in Britain

A couple of months ago, the British High Court ruled that a document containing information on the torture of Binyam Mohamed should be disclosed in full.  The original document supposedly contains seven paragraphs which describe the brutal methods used to interrogate Mohamed, including waterboarding and slicing his genitals with a scalpel.

David Miliband, the British Foreign Secretary who has been resisting the High Court’s efforts to release the document, now describes the decision as irresponsible.

David Miliband accused the two senior judges of irresponsibly “charging in” to a diplomatically sensitive area over what happened to former terror detainee Binyam Mohamed while held by the Americans in Pakistan.

Jonathan Sumption QC, appearing for the Foreign Secretary, told the Court of Appeal the judges’ stance was “both, in many respects, unnecessary and profoundly damaging to the interests of this country.”

Mr Sumption added: “I would go so far as to say their views were irresponsible.”

Tony Blair:

Tony, like our own leaders?, have found their excuses and justifications, they sound an awful lot like those of the bin Ladens and Saddam’s of this world!

“Iraq War was right even if there were no WMDs”

“45 minute” Saddam claim came from Taxi Driver

Remember the Bush administration’s claim that Saddam Hussein could launch a WMD attack on the United States in 45 minutes time?

It was one of the centerpieces of his claims as to why we “needed” to go to war.

Well, turns out that claim came from ….. (drum roll please) ……

A taxi driver.

I’m not making this up.

Iraq War Inquiry, Day Six

As we wait to hear President Obama we already know that he will be increasing military troops in Afghanistan. We now need to hear just what the plan is now going to be, i.e. Exit Strategy, once a mainstay meme of the so called Strong on National Defense GOP. Even a certain State Governor called on the meme: “Victory means exit strategy, and it’s important for the president to explain to us what the exit strategy is,”  – George W. Bush, Texas Gov., 1999

But that was before they increased the hatreds and thus possible enemies towards us a thousand fold and for the coming decades!  

Iraq War Inquiry, Day Five

Caught the first piece earlier today, lays out similar to what many in our country have been saying for years, especially the recent years, and similar to other countries that are supposed to be leaders on this planet.

Whose foreign policy is it anyway?

British Inquiry Into Iraq War

This is what this Country, the United States, should be doing now or had already done during the previous administration, investigating towards Impeachment and possible Indictments, depending on what evidence of crimes and lies surfaced. Especially if we really are what we like to think and demand others to believe we are and if our Constitution still exist as the leading Representative Democracy on this planet. But leave it up to ‘Old Europe’, hopefully, to seek answers that should be in the light of day and a part of the physical history added to the already known.

But it’s never to late for us to try and minimize the blowback from our extremely destructive policies, or is it!

July 14, 1958 in Iraq-CIA-U.S.

Just something to think of as to tomorrow, and our history.

A group of Iraqi army officers staged a coup in Iraq and overthrew the monarchy of King Faisal II (who had ascended to the throne at age four). The new government, led by Abdul Karim el Qasim, was ousted in 1963 by a coup helped by the CIA and led by the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party-later dominated by Saddam Hussein.

Abu Nidal on U.S. Payroll?

If Robert Fisk’s reporting, and the files they are holding, are believable, apparently we had another of those Evil Terrorists People on our payroll, working and spying for us.

It wouldn’t surprise me.

Things never seem to change especially when the names and faces of long time inner Washington keep popping up!

I caught this Report: Notorious Palestinian Mercenary Was Hired by U.S. to Find Link Between Saddam and Al-Qaeda over at Alternet.

Iran and the Ayatollahs

For anyone born before 1970 or so, there are certain images that are come to mind whenever the name “Iran” is uttered: stern, bearded men in black robes, angry crowds, graphics depicting blindfolded American citizens with things like “Day 334” stamped over them, Ollie North bravely disgracing his uniform and perjuring himself, John McSame exploring the intersection of 1960s pop music and the idea of raining death from the skies.  In short, the past 30 years haven’t exactly been a model of how nations ought to think of one another.

Join me, if you will, in the Cave of the Moonbat, where tonight we’ll take a last look – a Parthian shot, if you will – at the recent history of Iran.  Maybe, just maybe, we’ll get past some of the more extreme caricatures the Traditional Media has been foisting upon us – and perhaps be able to start formulating a de-Bushified foreign policy that relies less on blustering incompetence and more on genuine historical understanding.

Out of the Shadows? A Tale of Two Wars

The New York Times famously writes that it publishes “all the news that’s fit to print.” But there’s a lot that doesn’t get published, even on the Internet. Let’s look at two examples.

Yesterday, the Pentagon made it official. According to a U.S. military study, Saddam Hussein had no links to Al Qaida. None. Nada. But like a pesky gopher that sticks its head up out of the ground, and then swiftly disappears down the hole into its dark tunnels, governmental truth made a very swift appearance yesterday. And now, it’s going to be snatched back out of the light and stuffed into a deep governmental shaft. Here’s the UK Guardian on subject (with a h/t to StuHunter at Daily Kos):

The Pentagon study based on more than 600,000 documents recovered after US and UK troops toppled Hussein in 2003, discovered “no ‘smoking gun’ (ie, direct connection) between Saddam’s Iraq and al-Qaida”, its authors wrote.

George Bush and his senior aides have made numerous attempts to link Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda terror in their justification for waging war against Iraq.

Wary of embarrassing press coverage noting that the new study debunks those claims, the US defence department attempted to bury the release of the report yesterday.