the rix mix

November 2, 2012 Iraq contractor to pay $85M for toxic exposure 

 PORTLAND, ORE. A jury on Friday ordered an American military contractor to pay $85 million after finding it guilty of negligence for illnesses suffered by a dozen Oregon soldiers who guarded an oilfield water plant during the Iraq war. 

After a three-week trial, the jury deliberated for just two days before reaching a decision against the contractor, Kellogg Brown and Root. 

The suit was the first concerning soldiers' exposure to a toxin at a water plant in southern Iraq. The soldiers said they suffer from respiratory ailments after their exposure to sodium dichromate, and they fear that a carcinogen the toxin contains, hexavalent chromium, could cause cancer later in life.

This is just the beginning. There are also suits over poisoning from garbage burn pits in Itaq & Afghanistan. I was thinking about this kind of tragic, long-lasting outcome of the Iraq War before the war began. Why weren't the loudest, most out-spoken pro-war veterans then looking out for these future veterans?

Labels: Iraq, war more war

URBANDALE, Iowa - Texas Gov. Rick Perry opened up a new line of criticism against President Obama today, saying he hadn't shown the proper courtesy in welcoming troops returning home from the war in Iraq.


"It really disturbs me that after nine years of war in Iraq, this president wouldn't welcome our many heroes home with a simple parade in their honor," Perry said during a meet-and-greet with the West Side Conservative Club here. He speculated that there was no parade due to the war's unpopularity among Democrats.

Fishing for a issue. Whew. The government's home front strategy for the Iraq War under both presidents was to hide the true costs of the war,  so we wouldn't be aware of how many military personnel were there as they were deployed & redeployed like  a deadly version of three-card monte; how many dead; how many wounded; how much money was borrowed & wasted.  It was a series of short cons adding up to one big con.  The first con, if you recall, was connecting Saddam with the 9/11 conspiracy. Most Americans still believe that one, so the rest were relatively easy.

March a few thousand soldiers, the last to serve in Iraq,  up Broadway or Pennsylvania Ave., & we're supposed to think, "Gee, mission accomplished!  That didn't take  much."  Sheese, the Repugs would have a field day with that! We'll be "honoring"  vets for decades to come with cutbacks in vet benefits & medical care, as we continue to deny the price America had to pay to rid the world of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction & install a radical Islamic government  we expect to be "friendly" to the United States.

Labels: Iraq

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. forces formally ended their nine-year war in Iraq on Thursday with a low key flag ceremony in Baghdad, while to the north flickering violence highlighted ethnic and sectarian strains threatening the country in years ahead.

"After a lot of blood spilled by Iraqis and Americans, the mission of an Iraq that could govern and secure itself has become real," Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said at the ceremony at Baghdad's still heavily-fortified airport.

Almost 4,500 U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis lost their lives in the war that began with a "Shock and Awe" campaign of missiles pounding Baghdad and descended into sectarian strife and a surge in U.S. troop numbers.

U.S. soldiers lowered the flag of American forces in Iraq and slipped it into a camouflage-colored sleeve in a brief outdoor ceremony, symbolically ending the most unpopular U.S. military venture since the Vietnam War of the 1960s and 70s.

So "ends" a war to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction it never had, toppling a brutal dictator who, in a perverse irony, was suppressing both Iranian-backed radical Shiites & the Saudi-backed Sunni terrorists responsible for the 9/11 attacks. A FB friend reminded us today of a quote from Ernest Hemingway:

"The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector."

What does your shit detector tell you about the "end" of the Iraq War? Is it over for us? Ya think?

Labels: George W. Bush, Iraq

Can't help but think the vast majority of the people chanting "U.S.A.! U.S.A.!" last night have been no closer to a real battlefield than what they've seen on TV.  The average age in front of the White House looked around 20.  Party. What are you supposed to do, just recall  the horror ten years ago, know the world is better off without him on it, & go to bed? That's what most Americans did. Also, every triumphant chant generates an echo with exactly the opposite sentiment. But it was a natural reaction. The workers toiling in the pit of Ground Zero, grim, hopeless work, literally inhaling bodies, personally earned their moment when President Bush visited with a bullhorn. But even there I felt something important was lost - the sense of a global tragedy.

Revenge tastes best served cold, the saying  attributed to Sicilians. This would have had the taste of revenge served medium-hot, on Sept 11, 2002.

The war goes on. Osama was a symbol, not a commander, his organization fractured into independent cults. It's an ideology, not a nation. or a person.

Very mixed reactions all around.The usual partisan name-calling. in comments on Facebook last night President Obama was called a "jerkoff" & an "asshole."  You have to grant the office some dignity even if you believe the person occupying it is a complete fool. Someone else will have the job & shouldn't have to wipe the shit people threw  off the desk.   Barack Obama is not a fool. An oligarch, yes. But so was George W. Bush. That's the kind of national government we now have. It may be the government we've always had. I don't enjoy thinking about it.

I despised George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq.  We didn't catch Osama because we didn't know how to find  Osama until we redirected our efforts to Afghanistan & Pakistan. But killing Osama sooner wouldn't have been like killing Hitler in, say, 1943.

Googling "Paterson NJ Muslim 9/11" returns not a single  eyewitness account, police report, news story, or photographic evidence that anyone from the large Islamic community there celebrated in the streets after the attacks. Yet, like any urban legend, many accept it as fact. Apparently, no brave patriot from the 'burbs, some of whom regularly visit Paterson to obtain their stashes, ventured there on  9/11 to check out the rumors.

Labels: George W. Bush, in the news, Iraq

The U.S. military now has more people in its marching bands than the State Department has in its foreign service....
Nicholas D. Kristof, The Big (Military) Taboo

I'm surprised they haven't yet privatized & subcontracted military bands to KBR or Dyncorp, which would pay musicians three times  as much as military personnel, tax free, no union,  if they'll do a year in the Iraq Green Zone or at Bagram Airbase outside Kabul.

Our sacrosanct military budget: "The United States spends nearly as much on military power as every other country in the world combined.."

Two wars, troops & fleets & bases spread around the world, & we don't  have a "Truman Commission"  a WWII Senate Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program that brought the future president into the national spotlight. They investigated waste in the military budget. There's no waste like war waste.

Does it save money to privatize & subcontract so many crucial military support services?  Is it good for morale? 

Some jerk off right wing senator recently tried to stall the START treaty vote  by complaining that Russia took two of our humvees during the Georgia conflict.

We arm & train the national security forces  of South Korea & Saudi Arabia - & they are very well-trained & armed -  & then are expected to fight their battles, too. Which we're currently doing for the Saudi Royal Family in both Afghanistan & Iraq.  You know there's about 20,000 filthy rich Saudi princes & they run everything important in their country, & not one of them  to my knowledge is driving a Humvee in Afghanistan.

Our military-corporate-media establishment manipulates sincere "Support the Troops" sentiment to undermine very broad & real dissatisfaction with  our war policies & aims.

Although we maintain huge, unnecessary bases all over the globe, the Army brass decided it was too expensive to use, reassign, or mothball a small, versatile, irreplaceable piece of prime real estate in Jersey called "Fort Monmouth." So, to be "cost-effective,"  they gave it away.

Labels: bully pulpit. war more war, in the news, Iraq

In the run up to the Iraq invasion Donald Rumsfeld thought George W. Bush had to be given some spine with a Sunday School pictorial adorning a presidential memo, using stock Dept. of Defense photos & Bible quotes out of context. A Christian Crusade against the Infidels. Us bloggers have good reason to tag some of our posts "Blogging against theocracy."

Yes, Bible literalists fumble with metaphor. Open the door to one & a hundred more walk through [metaphor], & soon you can't tell the difference between a miracle & a meteorological event. But only the most simple-minded of believers could fall for this above the silhouetted image of a tank:
Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Ephesians 6:13

Rumsfeld's quote. Next unquoted sentence: Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.

Ain't gonna study war no more.

Only fitting [pun alert] that this disturbing exposé was in GQ, where men go for our weekly Ten Fashion Essentials.

• tan or beige sports coat
  
• hand-painted tie
  
• WFMU tee shirt
  
• baseball type cap better than a common geezer would wear
  
• winter jacket that actually keeps you warm
• bead necklace made by & given as a gift from a woman
• spare shoelaces in sock drawer
• guayabera shirt
• clean unsmelly sneakers
• Breastplate of Righteousness

Labels: blogging against theocracy, George W. Bush, home furnishings, Iraq, religion

Our nation enters this conflict reluctantly, yet our purpose is sure. The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder.

We will meet that threat now with our Army, Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard and Marines, so that we do not have to meet it later with armies of firefighters and police and doctors on the streets of our cities.

Now that conflict has come, the only way to limit its duration is to apply decisive force. And I assure you, this will not be a campaign of half measures and we will accept no outcome but victory.

My fellow citizens, the dangers to our country and the world will be overcome. We will pass through this time of peril and carry on the work of peace.

George W. Bush, March 19, 2003

& war is what we got.

The Battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11th, 2001, and still goes on.
***
In these 19 months that changed the world, our actions have been focused, and deliberate, and proportionate to the offense. We have not forgotten the victims of September the 11th — the last phone calls, the cold murder of children, the searches in the rubble. With those attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States. And war is what they got.

George W. Bush, May 1. 2003

Labels: George W. Bush, Iraq

Five Muslim immigrants from South Jersey were convicted today of plotting to kill American soldiers, a crime that prosecutors said demonstrated how Al Qaeda was using the Internet to recruit, train and incite supporters for attacks in the United States and around the world.

Jurors at federal district court in Camden deliberated into a sixth day before declaring the men guilty of conspiracy. The jurors, however, acquitted the men of an additional charge of attempted murder. Four of the five men were also convicted of related weapons counts.
***
The Fort Dix five include brothers Eljvir, Dritan and Shain Duka, ethnic Albanians who worked at a family roofing business; Mohamad Shnewer, a Jordanian who drove a cab and worked at his family's market in Pennsauken, and Serdar Tatar, a native of Turkey who was an assistant manager at a Philadelphia 7-Eleven.

Each faces up to life in prison on the conspiracy charge. Under terrorism laws, prosecutors may seek an enhanced sentence of life without parole.
***
The evidence indicated that the men gathered weekly at a Palmyra mosque and regularly watched and discussed Al Qaeda videos extolling jihads and depicting deadly attacks against U.S. forces. In January 2006 and February 2007, they rented a house in the Pocono Mountains, where investigators said they trained for an attack by riding horses, shooting weapons at a rifle range and playing war games with paintball.

Read the whole crazy news article.

The conviction of these fellows oughtn't be taken as a serious warning to or about potential Islamic terrorists. It's a hell of a cautionary tale for loud-mouthed, bigoted white men bonding around their guns, Budweiser , & right wing fantasies. America has plenty of those nasties. Because in nearly every way except their names, religion, & choice of targets, the Fort Dix Five reminded me of stupid, angry white guys immersing themselves in the kind of insane neofascist rhetoric & culture you find simmering just below the surface all across America, bending elbows & ears in roadhouses, running around paintball battlefields, & making incautious remarks about the president-elect.

On one hand, I think the five guys were set up & entrapped by the FBI. On the other hand, it's undeniable that they were imagining & discussing some terrible ideas, & some of them are ingrates & not the least bit thankful to be living & working in America rather than stuck in godforsaken villages where they might have nothing to do but bitch about shameless American sluts as they drool over scantily clad women in dubbed reruns of CSI: Miami.

Their indiscreet talk centered on Fort Dix, the staging point this past summer for our National Guard units beginning the long journey to Iraq via some hot, difficult training in the West Texas desert. You can tell the jurors that has nothing to do with the charges, but you can't make them not think it.

I imagined these guys being spotted early by MPs & chased through the Jersey Pine Barrens for hours, our jihadists tossing their armaments & shouting, "Aiyee, aiyee," wading across mucky creeks, smacking at mosquitoes & scratching their poison ivy rashes, & surrendering to a couple of startled state troopers sipping Wawa coffee by a patrol car on a rural road outside the base. I'd film it as a dark comedy. In truth, I couldn't imagine them pullng together any kind of serious plot & acting on it. The most earnest conspirator was the FBI informant, a bad, bad man. Without his participation, it's possible the defendants would've morphed into a bowling team named "Jihad Pizza."

Really, I try to think the best of the clerks in the 7-11, & cab drivers, & the illegal immigrants nailing roof shingles on brutally hot afternoons.

No doubt The Fort Dix Five will appeal the verdict, & if they're granted one have a strong chance of reversing the conspiracy conviction. The gun charges could stick. But the Duka brothers would be glad to go home to Albania. Unlike any other members of their family they've exposed to deportation.

Labels: count the yoyos, in the news, Iraq, New Jersey

Every day walking to school I passed a remarkable statue in the small park at the corner. Later I learned it was called "Spirit of the American Doughboy," by sculptor E.M. Viquesney, & that there might be as many as 200 of them scattered across America, purchased & erected after World World One. The design was so popular that metal & plaster statuette reproductions were manufactured (the pictured 6" model was restored by Charlie Burdick), including lamp & candle holder versions

Eventually I realized this soldier on top of the granite monument in the park wasn't some happy-go-lucky guy singing "Mademoiselle from Armentières." He has a rifle with bayonet affixed, a hand grenade in his raised right hand (has he pulled the pin?), & in the best preserved statues he's stepping through some nasty barbed wire, a small piece of a deadly no man's land. I wondered if when veterans looked at him, they weren't seeing themselves, but their friends & comrades who died.

There were still doughboy vets in town, proudly showing up for Memorial Day & Veterans Day (Armistice Day) ceremonies in their quaint wide-brimmed campaign hats, but they had been unintentionally pushed into the background by younger WWII vets, who vastly outnumbered them. We had a five-star general as President of the United States, then a younger hero naval officer. Local American Legion & V.F.W. halls were popular social clubs, with busy cash bars & even printed menus & paid cooks in the kitchens. It was an era of veteran visibility & power.

Vietnam changed the climate for vets, as must happen with a controversial war, & soldiers doing their one year stints & coming home individually & alone. The incidents of returning soldiers being spat upon & called "baby killers" are definitely overstated, although certainly they happened. What I mostly saw were apathy & indifference across the spectrum, by those supporting the war as well as those opposing it. Draftees know they are the expendables of war, but during Vietnam our government didn't even bother to pretend they weren't expendable.

Government tries to hide the true costs of war in blood, spirit, & money. Morale drops as the costs become known & yet war drags on. The costs of the Civil War & WWII were evident to everyone by the final years of those wars. Wars are profitable. Vietnam convinced me that wars could be prolonged to make them more profitable, & Iraq reminds that some wars are planned & waged for profit, as bloody business ventures, whatever other rationales are used, legitimate or not. So-called "preemptive" wars are best for this purpose. With a long occupation, rebuilding the occupied nation's infrastructures, & possibly looting its resources.

Now we have a "volunteer" military. Does this make it easier to hide the costs, since no one is drafted into the military against his or her will, & a spirit of shared sacrifice on the home front discouraged? Just avert your eyes & keep shopping. Not over the longer run. Iraq & Afghanistan are creating a generation of kick-ass veterans. Their bond with America is of the heart. But their relationships with the military services are contractual. These vets - if they are not already friends & neighbors from National Guard service - are finding each other & getting organized now. At least we have not made symbols of them for or against policy. They are not the policymakers. We properly see them as dutifully & honorably serving their nation. They will renew the veterans movements, which will also help our aging Vietnam vets. Perhaps they will also help restore a broader, less partisan patriotism to this country.

Labels: growing up, holidays, Iraq

If Bush put every neuron of his reptillian brain to work at once he would not be able explain what off shore oil drilling has to do with $4 per gallon gasoline.

I'm not saying that we won't have to do that drilling in the future. My gut sense is that it'll be difficult to avoid even if we adopted a sane, comprehensive long term energy policy. But it's another thing, & won't rescue SUV dinosaurs or bring down the price. High gasoline prices & an end to the truck as family car are two absolutely necessary components of that policy. The oil billionaires & their lackeys (George has a foot in both groups) would like us to believe there's undiscovered gushers aplenty in the United States that if tapped will painlessly loosen our chains to despotic oil producing regimes abroad (we have our own despotic oil producing regime here). But we & they know these reserves would supply but a fraction of our current oil requirements. We have to curb our oil use drastically for the additional sources to matter much.

I'm a NAMBY* kind of person. But if America had a farsighted energy policy that dealt with global warming & was designed to free us from the House of Saud - a dependence that warps our foreign policy & threatens national security, if we planned for the future the way Europeans are forced to do, there's a lot I think we could accept in New Jersey that isn't now so attractive.

* Not in my backyard.

Labels: George W. Bush, in the news, Iraq

Good luck to the Army National Guard's 50th Infantry Brigade, which shipped out from Fort Dix to Fort Bliss, Texas yesterday to prepare for deployment to Iraq.

The brigade's one-year mobilization is New Jersey's largest National Guard deployment to a combat zone since World War II.

About 2,850 of the 3,100 soldiers in the brigade are from New Jersey, earning the group the nickname of "Jersey Blue." The remaining 200 are from the Michigan Army National Guard.

About 30 percent of the brigade has been deployed before, officials said.

They enlisted knowing this day could come. The 50th includes units & detachments from Fort Dix, Freehold, Atlantic City, Mount Holly, Burlington, Cherry Hill, Woodbury, Riverdale, Newark, Jersey City,Vineland, Morristown, Toms River, Lawrenceville, Woodbridge, Dover, Woodstown, Newton, West Orange, Hackettstown, & Somerset. We love you, take care of each other, come home safely, & we're hoping a major hurricane doesn't hit Jersey while you're away. After a summer training in West Texas, maybe Iraq won't seem all that awful. Which is why the Army is sending you there first.

Labels: Iraq, New Jersey

I read somewhere the suggestion that Memorial Day has been trivialized by making it a Monday holiday. I don't think that's exactly true. I think we've trivialized all our holidays. Monday holidays are convenient for just about everyone, including business. A holiday on a Tuesday or Thursday invites a four day weekend. Memorial Day is much more of a start of summer celebration now. The 4th of July used to serve the purpose, believe or not. Beyond that, Memorial Day cannot be turned into anything other than another retail shopping occasion. Shopping is the #1 hobby. It feeds on every other hobby.

Memorial Day comes to us from the Civil War. My grandparents' generation, born around the turn of the 20th Century, were the last to directly feel that connection. But through them, I felt it, helped by the Civil War Centennial while I was a teenager. About the time Memorial Day would have begun fading in significance, we had another great war that touched everyone in America, & so it became an important day in the 1950's & 60's, with parades concluding in solemn & touching ceremonies at town monuments to war dead. Those monuments had many additional names from World War Two.

Now we have trivialized war. The burdens are shared by relatively few Americans, all "volunteers" & their families - if three & four deployments of the same Guard & Reserve units could be considered volunteering. Soldier graves are dug one at a time, here & there, at widely separate places. it's easy to avoid seeing them. Where profit was once the great opportunity of war, now it provides the reason itself. Iraq is about profit, & all the other reasons are ruses. We know them to be ruses. We have the proof, for God's sake! The ruses are possible only as long as most Americans can be distracted & not asked to sacrifice anything. Our president sacrificed his golf game because he felt families of dead American soldiers would be offended by photos of him swinging a club on exclusive links with oil billionaires & other war profiteers. Instead, he takes long, invisible vacations at a remote location in Texas. His emotional response to the war he started is mere sentiment, & that enrages me. It is about patriotic display without substance. It is about crocodile tears. It is about not fearing for the lives of his children, that they might be swept up in a sense of duty or by economic necessity & themselves "volunteer" for a year in Iraq or Afghanistan, or staring at arrays of screens & switches deep inside a ship, or even sitting at a desk in the middle of a hot, boring military installation in America. In a way, George W. Bush is perfect for an America that fights two wars at once as we complain bitterly about the sacrifices we are forced to make because of the price of a gallon of gasoline.

Drive to the cemetery, look at the little flags on the graves, & think on that, & think on how this day once helped to heal the deepest divisions of this nation, & how it still tells us that there are worthier sacrifices, ultimate sacrifices even.

Labels: George W. Bush, holidays, Iraq

Let's say that the objective of a war is the defeat of an enemy. It may or may not include the occupation of territory.

Let's say that the measure of "success" in a war is how much closer a warring side is to the defeat of an enemy & the end of combat. The "light at the end of the tunnel" as General Westmoreland so infamously said about Vietnam in 1968.

War is always an opportunity for windfall profit. Work hard, bank it, & have fun spending it when the war is over. The Civil War. World War Two. "Conventional" wars.

But what if a war is waged for no other strong justification than the profit of the war itself? A war so profitable that there's no incentive to end it at all. Vietnam without the draft & heavy casualties. A war that doesn't personally touch enough citizens to make a nation demand that the war be brought to a conclusion one way or another. Like Vietnam, fight the war with America's underclass youth, but let them volunteer. With high college tuitions, lack of job opportunities, mortgages, & their uncynical patriotism, they want to volunteer. Run them through the front lines for two, three, four tours-of-duty rather than one year or, as in a full mobilization, "for the duration." Take many non-combatant duties - the cooks, truck drivers, construction units, security, etc. - & contract private firms at exorbitant fees to provide these services with civilians being paid wages much higher than military pay. & hope the soldiers don't feel they're being played for suckers.

Hide the dead & wounded. A funeral here, a funeral there. No long rows of freshly dug graves. "Did you hear Uncle Jack's friend's son got killed? Didn't know the kid myself, heard he was a nice guy, married, had a baby."

Toilet paper, Humvees, canned string beans, bullets, tents, socks, helmets, walkie talkies, laptops & software, beer, bombs, helicopters, motor oil, boots, pharmaceuticals, well pumps, bandages, gurneys, body bags, caskets. Transportation. Move the materials in, use them up. Replace them. But recycle the human beings. The American ones.

Endless profit. One-hundred years of profit. Five years into it. & getting away with it.

Terrorism, the perfect enemy; a tactic, not a nation or even a political system.

Labels: Iraq

Read here an account of antiwar protestors, smugly proud of themselves for their campaign of interrupting church services in upstate New York. These courageous souls risked martyrdom by unfolding a banner at a small Congregationalist church in Chappaqua during an Advent service that, from the description, was already focused on a message of peace. It pisses me off, the indifference to the diversity & individuality of purpose among mainstream churchgoers. Thank God some blameless old lady, praying for her ailing husband, didn't herself keel over & croak of a heart attack.

Given the militaristic nationalism found in so many large protestant churches & incorporated into worship services as propaganda pageants for the military-industrial complex, we are blessed by the sanctuaries of unpoliticized churches. We should feel a special affection for them & leave them alone rather than insist that they also become polarized.

When actions like this get no support at the Street Prophets progressive religion website, which has a 100% anti-Iraq war membership, there's something wrong with the tactic.

Labels: Iraq, religion

Am I the only one disturbed by this?

More than a year after Spc. Alejandro Albarran lost part of his right leg in an explosion in Iraq, he still hasn't decided whether he'll stay in the Army.

"Right now, I'm leaning against it," said the 20-year-old infantryman, looking ahead with distaste to a possible desk job.

Whatever he decides, he won't be leaving Army life behind — because his wife has enlisted to take his place in uniform.

"After everything he's gone through — and he loves the Army — he kind of inspired me," said Janay Albarran. "I made him a promise that I would finish what he started."

While he underwent five-day-a-week rehabilitation to recover his balance and strength on a prosthetic leg at an Army rehabilitation facility in San Antonio, she was in boot camp at Fort Jackson, S.C., learning to shoot a rifle and stand in formation.

Janay Albarran graduated from basic training on Friday, gaining the rank of private. The couple's 2-year-old daughter is staying with a grandmother in Arizona.

The United States Army must be really desperate when it welcomes a recuit who walks away from a toddler child & a grievously injured soldier spouse. Call it unfortunate need or necessity if the family cannot survive financially any other way, but don't call it patriotic duty. Even if America asked for shared sacrifice, this wouldn't be it.

Labels: Iraq

From "190 arrested at D.C. protest."

Retired Air Force Lt. Col. Robert "Buzz" Patterson, speaking from a stage to crowds clad in camouflage, American flag bandanas and Harley Davidson jackets, said he wanted to send three messages.

"Congress, quit playing games with our troops. Terrorists, we will find you and kill you," he said. "And to our troops, we're here for you, and we support you."

That's a report of a smaller counter-protest a few blocks away. But the irony is that it also describes the dress & the views of many people who are against the war. & it's a challenge for the anti-war movement; the necessity of broadening the activist war opposition, which has to be kicked up to a another level now. For a start, it's time to gently ease Cindy Sheehan off the stage, with grateful thanks, & replace her with war veterans, officers & enlisted. Bring out the bikers & the American flag bandanas. Make it clear that we do want bin Laden & his minions; that we stand with all those who have endured terrible terrorist attacks around the world, that we love America & that we believe the Bush/Cheney junta has made us weaker, not stronger; that our miltary has been misused & abused by this adminstration. Let's bring the troops back, give the Guard & Reserves a break, refit, regroup, rethink our strategy & tactics, listen to our allies like Great Britain. Bush has told us what he's going to do; screw the troops, screw the American people. There's no choice but to push back, hard, at Bush, at Congress, & at the presidential candidates.

Labels: Iraq

Cindy Sheehan was never so effective, or nonpartisan, as when she was standing alone by a road outside Bush's ranch in Crawford Texas. The heat was brutal. She represented every grieving parent & spouse who had doubts about the cause for which a loved one had died or been maimed. Her request was simple: She wanted to talk to the President who had claimed time & again that he was grieving, too. This was only weeks before Katrina. Those events, Cindy's simple protest & the terrible storm, & Bush's sociopath responses to both, were punches from which he has never recovered, & from which unfortunately he has learned nothing.

Now "Cindy Sheehan is resigning." I wish she had remained "nonpartisan" The left was already in her corner; she was a galvanizing person who could touch the rest of the country. She needed to surround herself with other Gold Star Mothers, widows, & war veterans. She was not a very good writer, & she had an undeniable emotional frailty. She did what she believed was the right thing by adopting forums such as Move On & Kos. It was not the right thing. The left encouraged her to be The Inconsolable Wailing Irish Woman, & Casey Sheehan made into an iconic "every mother's son," which of course he was not. No one is. One only has to peruse the hundreds of sycophantic comments that attached themselves to every one of her diaries, & look at the shit thrown at her from the right, to realize how trapped & exposed she must have felt. So I'm glad she's going to the sidelines as a "leader," & doing so with angry words for those Democrats who recently betrayed our troops. Including Democrats Kos heartily supported, & two I've voted for. Because the only way to really "help the troops" now is by rescuing them, bringing them home, & thanking them as generously as we can by providing for their needs. & taking control of our armed forces back from the ruinous corporate profiteers & evangelical zealots. & thanking Cindy for going to Texas in 2005 & doing so much to expose the fool & fraud we have for a president.

Labels: George W. Bush, Iraq

WASHINGTON - President Bush, trying to defend his war strategy, declassified intelligence Tuesday asserting that Osama bin Laden ordered a top lieutenant in early 2005 to form a terrorist cell that would conduct attacks outside Iraq — and that the United States should be the top target.

The same bin Laden who had dozens of al-Qaida cells possessing public library cards in the United States on 9/12/01? The same bin Laden we were going to hunt down & bring to justice? The same bin Laden who was working hand-in-hand with Saddam? Yeah, that bin Laden. The Cheney/Bush Junta couldn't even take a little overdue verbal heat from former President Jimmy Carter (who unfortunately didn't stand solidly behind his words), & is gearing up for another slander job on the man who had it right all along, Al Gore. & screw you, Rudy Giuliani, for going on Letterman & justifying Bush's war by claiming Bill Clinton was for "regime change." Not to mention the passing reference to the Fort Dix "terrorist plot," which was "two years" in the making - with an FBI informant practically leading it. You're lucky Dave had his nose so far up your ass by then that he couldn't get it out to ask you what the hell you were talking about.

Labels: in the news, Iraq, New Jersey, TV

Excuse me if I remain a bit skeptical about the level of threat to national security posed by our homegrown terrorist cell here in Jersey. The one comprised of six alleged jihadist wannabees in their twenties who grew beards, shouted slogans, played paintball, used public gun ranges, trashed rented houses, & are accused of planning a murderous attack on Fort Dix with weapons they didn't have & didn't know where to find, & were apparently giving themselves away at every step. They look like bomb-throwing anarchists from cartoons, & yet they were going to carry out this insane mission even as some of them resided in middle-class neighborhoods, their kids playing with other kids on the block, mowing their lawns, washing their cars in the driveway, & knocking down shots & beers with neighbors in local bars without drunkenly blurting out,"Death to America." Dead end jobs are what the co-conspirators all seem to have in common. I don't know if working in a convenience store during the day & delivering pizza for your dad's restaurant in the evening is enough to turn a young man into an anti-American fanatic, but I suppose it could. They definitely aren't the brightest of lightbulbs. I'm relieved they were caught & stopped, but everything I've read tells me that the plot had zilch chance of being carried through to completion. Take away the pumped up jihad talk & they were more like a Raccoon Lodge for lapsed Muslims. “This is a new brand of terrorism where a small cell of people can bring enormous devastation,” proclaimed Christopher J. Christie, the United States attorney for New Jersey. I would point out to the hyperbolating, ambitious Mr. Christie that the "new brand of terrorism" is already rooted here, evidenced by the brazenly lawless street gangs & sociopathic students who have little difficulty obtaining & using deadly weapons.

Labels: in the news, Iraq, New Jersey

Yes, we do have a foreign policv, so let Duh Prez sum it up in his own words.

"It’s an interesting period because, instead of having foreign policies based upon trying to create a sense of stability, we have a foreign policy that addresses the root causes of violence and instability.

"For a while, American foreign policy was just, Let’s hope everything is calm — manage calm. But beneath the surface brewed a lot of resentment and anger that was manifested on September the 11th.

"And so we’ve taken a foreign policy that says: On the one hand, we will protect ourselves from further attack in the short run by being aggressive in chasing down the killers and bringing them to justice.

"And make no mistake: They’re still out there, and they would like to harm our respective peoples because of what we stand for. In the long term, to defeat this ideology — and they’re bound by an ideology — you defeat it with a more hopeful ideology called freedom."

He never does say what's in the other hand. Wouldn't help to point out that "freedom" isn't an ideology. The stupid argument is always "We're fighting [insert enemy] there so we don't have to fight them here." Always implicit in Bush's rhetoric, often explicit from his supporters, most recently Sen. Elizabeth Dole, a mentally-challenged politician who's lost at least 75 IQ points since she quit working for the Red Cross. Rather, it's been instructive watching the weather disasters & power failures that have afflicted us over the past year: it took a week for Con Ed to restore power to a section of Queens, & then much of that through temporary generators. New Orleans remains a ruined city. I don't know why we haven't had terrorist attacks after 9/11, but I'm not going to credit the Iraq War as a magnet for lunatics who would otherwise be blowing up power transmission towers in California, subway trains in New York, or the Old McDonald Petting Zoo in Alabama. Clearly, we're still sitting ducks.

Labels: George W. Bush, Iraq