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POPSGreen ‘Peace Party’ positions against the Iraq and Afghanistan wars compared to pro-occupation Clint
“The occupation of Iraq will continue whether a Democrat or a Republican moves into the White House in January 2009,” said Jason Wallace, Green candidate for Congress in Illinois’ 11th District <http://www.electwallace.us> and a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War <http://ivaw.org/index.php>. IVAW has announced ‘Winter Soldier’ (March 13-16), a four-day event bringing together veterans from across the country to testify about their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan <http://ivaw.org/wintersoldier>. “The ILWU action planned for May 1 is evidence that working people are impatient with vague promises to end these wars. Will Ms. Clinton or Mr. Obama endorse the ILWU protest and pledge to call home all US military personnel immediately?” “By calling the Iraq War a matter of military preparedness and botched strategy, Democrats are sidestepping the premise of the war,” said Bob Kinsey, Green candidate for the US Senate in Colorado <http://www.kinseyforsenate.org>. “While it’s true that
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POPS"Generation Kill" brings the Iraq war to the TV viewer From the producers of "The Wire" With its $550 billion budget and 1.5 million troops, the military might seem a mechanized colossus of precision-guided violence, give or take a few bad apples and errant artillery shells. But if you have served in the military or written about it from the inside, you know that on the unit level it is filled with men and women of vastly different motivations and skills. The Marines in Generation Kill are intelligent and dimwitted, panicked, sensitive, racist, comic, homicidal, brave. It is a wonder when things go according to plan. "You know what happens when you get out of the Marine Corps?" says one of the characters. "You get your brains back."
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POPS10 McCain Gaffes from This Week That Should Have Damaged His Chances see the site for details. 3. Iraqi leaders call for a timetable for U.S. withdrawal, McCain gets caught in a bizarre denial and flip flop. The Iraqis now want us to begin planning our withdrawal -- McCain however wants to stay foooorrreeevvveerrrr. So what does McCain say -- First, he refuses to accept Maliki's statement as being true. Then he concedes that it was an accurate statement, but was probably just a political ploy to curry favor with his own people and WOULD NOT influence his determination to keep US troops in Iraq indefinitely. Yet, McCain in 2004 at the Council on Foreign Relations said that if the Iraqis asked us to leave, we would have to go. No matter what. But that was apparently a younger and less experienced John McCain.
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POPSWhat did I say last year? The really sad and outrageous thing is, for the troops anyway, and innocent Afghanis, is that they all will be sent to Afghanistan to continue the war. And Iran?
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POPSSeeds of Current Propaganda found in Reagan Era Enduring Skills Beyond these individuals, the manipulative techniques that were refined in the 1980s — especially the skill of exaggerating foreign threats — have proved durable, bringing large segments of the American population into line behind the Iraq War in 2002-03. Only now — with more than 4,100 U.S. soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead — are many of these Americans realizing that were manipulated by clever propaganda, that their perceptions had been managed. For instance, the New York Times recently pried loose some 8,000 pages of Pentagon documents revealing how the Bush administration had manipulated the public debate on the Iraq War by planting friendly retired military officers on TV news shows. Retired Green Beret Robert S. Bevelacqua, a former analyst on Murdoch’s Fox News, said the Pentagon treated the retired military officers as puppets: “It was them saying, ‘we need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you.’” [NYT, April 20,
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POPSAnd they said the war wasn't for the oil “We pretend it is not a centerpiece of our motivation, yet we keep confirming that it is,” Frederick D. Barton, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said in a telephone interview. “And we undermine our own veracity by citing issues like sovereignty, when we have our hands right in the middle of it.” SURPRISE, SURPRISE---NOT!
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POPSEndless Funding for Endless Wars On and on and on and on it goes....Why don't we just take the babies from their moms when they're born and be done with it...give 2/3 of all you earn to the Pentagon...
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POPSElite US Army Academy Lures Kids With Mud and Duty this sickening; Kathleen Engle, 16, from Fairfield, California, said she had looked into the Peace Corps and other options but decided on the military. “I was in fifth grade when 9/11 happened and that’s when I decided the best thing I could do for my country was this,” she said, playing a video game called “America’s Army.” “I guess it’s going to be hard to kill someone, but if that’s your job and that’s what our commander tells us we need to do, I’m going to do that in order to protect my country.” Brainwashed at 16, or sooner
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POPSThey're Baaack--Juan Coles take on Amerikan Big Oil in Iraq Thanks to Ratilfar...Maybe he clipped it too but it deserves all the spreading it gets...excellent column by Juan Cole: Bush and Cheney clearly went into Iraq primarily in order to put US petroleum firms in precisely this favored position. The US power elite wanted this outcome and connived actively at it. As Alan Greenspan put it, “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.” Poor Iraq has been looted, occupied, and disrupted by the industrialized West for a century because of the curse of its oil wealth. The Iraqi Petroleum Company was until 1929 the Turkish Petroleum Company since it began in 1912 with a concession from the Ottoman Empire, which ruled Iraq before the 1917 British conquest. The victors of World War I used their victory to leverage themselves into Iraqi oil. The Ottomans had thrown in with Germany and Austria in 1914, and were defeated by the victorious allies. Iraq was considered a s
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POPSDeals With Iraq Are Set to Bring Oil Giants Back The no-bid contracts are unusual for the industry, and the offers prevailed over others by more than 40 companies, including companies in Russia, China and India. The contracts, which would run for one to two years and are relatively small by industry standards, would nonetheless give the companies an advantage in bidding on future contracts in a country that many experts consider to be the best hope for a large-scale increase in oil production. There was suspicion among many in the Arab world and among parts of the American public that the United States had gone to war in Iraq precisely to secure the oil wealth these contracts seek to extract. The Bush administration has said that the war was necessary to combat terrorism. It is not clear what role the United States played in awarding the contracts; there are still American advisers to Iraq’s Oil Ministry. Sensitive to the appearance that they were profiting from the war and already under pressure because of record high oil pric
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POPSBlackwater’s Bright Future The company’s most infamous moment came last September, when Blackwater operatives were alleged to have gunned down 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad’s Nisour Square. A U.S. military investigation labeled the shootings a “criminal event,” and a federal grand jury in Washington is hearing evidence in the case. The father of one of the dead, a 9-year-old boy shot in the head, testified before the grand jury in late May. He has rejected offers of monetary compensation from the U.S. government and Blackwater; he demands a public admission of guilt by the company. “This is important for me, morally, for my family and my tribe,” said Mohammed Hafidh Abdul-Razzaq. Other survivors have been offering testimony to the United Nations, and some have filed a lawsuit in federal court in this country. At the end of the day, perhaps criminal charges will be brought against a handful of Blackwater operatives as a token gesture. But this will not bring substantive change to the unaccountable private w
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POPSBlackwater's Private CIA Who is gonna stop these powerful mercenaries? You, me or Obama? SOMEbody better stand up to these profiteering scum-bullies!
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POPSObscene Pentagon Budget disappearing down the Rabbit hole of corruption Money Problems The Pentagon has its work cut out for it. Keeping track of its more than half trillion dollar budget and the hundreds of billions more in war spending is no easy task. There is bound to be some slippage here and there. But the Pentagon’s Inspector General’s Office recently reported to Congress that the Pentagon is unable to account for nearly $15 billion earmarked for the Iraq reconstruction effort. In a May report to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the Inspector General’s Office highlights $7.8 billion paid to contractors for everything from telephones to trucks without any support documentation—like a check for $5.6 million to an Iraqi contractor. For what? No one knows. Or the $32 million doled out to build a facility for the Iraqi military. Never built. Why not? No one knows. One reason that money just seems to disappear is that there are not enough people watching the books. While the Pentagon budget has soared in the past seven years,
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POPSCheney Enrages Iraqis with Demands for New Laws * grants the U.S. long-term rights to maintain over 50 military bases in their California-sized country * allows the U.S. to strike any other country from within Iraqi territory without the permission of the Iraqi government * allows the U.S. to conduct military activities in Iraq without consulting with the local government * allows U.S. forces to arrest any Iraqi without consulting with Iraqi authorities * extends to U.S. troops and contracters immunity from Iraqi law * gives U.S. forces control of Iraqi airspace below 29,000ft. * places the Iraqi Defense, Interior and National Security ministries under American supervision for ten years * gives the U.S. responsibility for Iraqi armament contracts for ten years No doubt some key figures in the Bush administration have asked themselves that, and here's what they come up with. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York holds $ 50 billion of Iraq's foreign exchange reserves as a result of the UN sanct
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