The price of “freedom”?
Apr 24 at 10:10pm by Jagwire X
Iraq War Casualties
Check out some of the results of our foreign policy: Iraq Body Count
Really great stuff. I guess this is what a “benevolent global hegemony” looks like.
Related posts
As if we didn’t know this
Apr 22 at 11:11am by Jagwire X
Here’s a nice little article about how the US has plans to change and dominate the Mideast. Who cares if the locals have other plans or desires. Wouldn’t it be nice if the US could stay the hell out of other people’s business? Or if we have to be involved I imagine there are a thousand other solutions than domination.
Here’s the article: Iraq first domino in Mideast plan.
Related posts
Whoops! Sorry about all those lies we presented as fact…
Apr 15 at 1:01pm by Jagwire X
Basra, Iraq
Washington Post tells a different story for the record. Turns out there was no uprising underway.
People in Basra Contest Official View of Siege
Life Was Mostly Normal, Residents Say; Doctors Report Many Civilians Killed
By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, April 15, 2003; Page A13
BASRA,
Iraq — There was nothing resembling a popular uprising against the Iraqi militiamen who controlled this city during its 13-day siege by British forces. Life continued largely as normal in many neighborhoods, with police directing traffic and residents doing their best to avoid fighting.
Doctors at local hospitals treated scores of civilians wounded by British artillery and U.S. bombs during the siege, despite briefing-room claims of pinpoint accuracy. Many others were killed.
These conclusions about life under siege emerge from a week of interviews in Basra and they differ in many ways from accounts offered by military and other sources before the city’s fall. Reports of large numbers of Basra residents being forced to take up arms and militiamen firing from behind human shields were similarly not borne out in the interviews.
Related posts
PNAC and The New Militarism
Apr 12 at 12:12pm by Jagwire X
Project for the New American Century
Current policy, it seems, is being made by certain intellectuals and politicians who have been moving towards a new vision of American militarism for many years.
One of the focal points for this movement has been the think-tank group “Project for the New American Century”. They have been openly calling for a renewed militaristic expansion of “American interests” around the world. Basically, they feel that the US military is the glue that holds the world together; or, rather, should be.
But don’t take my word for it. Read their “Statement of Principles” on their own website, written in 1997.
It clearly foreshadows the current “preemption” policy, and reliance on military might as a foreign policy tool. Note the names who signed this statement. You may recognize a few.
Also see their 1998 letter to President Clinton, urging him to invade Iraq, where they conclude:
“We believe the U.S. has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf. In any case, American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.”
Sounds familiar. Again, notice the list of names at the bottom.
These people finally have the stage, and are implementing strategies that they have long written about, but never had the opportunity to put into practice. Bush, and 9/11, have given them that opportunity.
Again, don’t just take my word for it. For example, see this portrait of PNAC that goes over much of the same ground I do. It’s from a mainstream source: Were Neo-Conservatives’ 1998 Memos a Blueprint for Iraq War?
Of course, you can always “Google it”, as they say.
Try: “PNAC“, or “Project for the New American Century“, or even “neo-conservatives” (a moniker that some of these new century types go by).
It is my belief, and the belief of others within the antiwar community, that this agenda needs to be opposed. It’s humanitarian price is too high, and it’s methodology severely misguided.
Related posts
History Repeating Itself
Apr 8 at 5:05pm by Jagwire X
Lt. Gen. Stanley Maude
On March 8, 1917, Lt. Gen. Stanley Maude issued a “Proclamation to the People of the Wilayat of Baghdad“. Maude’s Anglo-Indian Army of the Tigres had invaded and occupied Iraq - after storming up the country from Basra - to “free” its people from their dictators. “Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators,” the British announced.
Read the article - Liberate? For centuries we’ve been ‘liberating’ the Mideast. Why do we never learn?
Related posts
What you missed while watching the war
Apr 8 at 2:02pm by Jagwire X
New York Stock Exchange
The Supreme Court hands a big victory to corporations. They have limited the punitive damages awarded to victims of corporations. Since the only language corporations understand is profits and losses, the supreme court has effectively dismantled the right of a citizen to sue a corporation into compliance. Corporations will now have even less of a motive to follow the law knowing that the awards they pay out will never significantly impact their bottom line.
Did you see this in your local paper? No, it was all war talk. It’s one of the benefits of All War All the Time. It allows for a distracted public while the Radical Right Wing can further insure that the United States is a republic for business and not for its citizens.
Read all about it in The Financial Times.
Related posts
Oregon Law Would Jail War Protesters as Terrorists
Apr 3 at 1:01pm by Jagwire X
Protest
This is truly frightening. Oregon is attempting to pass law that would equate protesting with terrorism. Obviously it hasn’t occurred to these vapid lawmakers that the point of the protests is to get their attention because something is TERRIBLY WRONG (this country is becoming more and more oppressive, it’s wages unjust wars on nation that post not real threat to us, etc., etc.) with this country and as a lawmaker YOU SHOULD DO SOMETHING to rectify it. Instead they try making it more oppressive. Bad solution.
Senate Bill 742 identifies a terrorist as an individual who “plans or participates in an act that is intended, by at least one of its participants, to disrupt” business, transportation, schools, government, or free assembly.
There is a conservative radio pundit (Lars Larson, whom you may want to contact with your opinion of his fascist views) who is promoting this bill. No doubt making protesters out to be callous, uncaring individuals who frighten grandmothers and prevent ambulances from getting where they need to go. This is unlikely to be true. And if business gets a bit snarled, well, get the point: THIS WAR IS WRONG and we want you to do something about it. No you don’t get to have business as usual, as citizens of this country our consciences dictate that we must do whatever we can to alter the course of events.
The bill carries a very heavy very immoral and very wrong automatic 25 year sentence. This is not the America I was born in. This is not the America our founders had in mind. It’s beginning to sound a lot more like the England our founders fought to be free of.
This may be the most oxymoronic bill ever introduced anywhere at any time.
This would also technically make the police and lawmakers terrorists the moment they disrupt or plan to disrupt a free assembly of individuals who are protesting.
Oregon Law Would Jail Protesters
Related posts
Bush Sr. Warning Over Unilateral Action From The London Times
Apr 2 at 10:10pm by Jagwire X
Gulf War
March 10, 2003
Bush Sr warning over unilateral action
From Roland Watson in Washington
THE first President Bush has told his son that hopes of peace in the Middle East would be ruined if a war with Iraq were not backed by international unity.
Drawing on his own experiences before and after the 1991 Gulf War, Mr Bush Sr said that the brief flowering of hope for Arab-Israeli relations a decade ago would never have happened if America had ignored the will of the United Nations.
He also urged the President to resist his tendency to bear grudges, advising his son to bridge the rift between the United States, France and Germany.
“You’ve got to reach out to the other person. You’ve got to convince them that long-term friendship should trump short-term adversity,” he said.
The former President’s comments reflect unease among the Bush family and its entourage at the way that George W. Bush is ignoring international opinion and overriding the institutions that his father sought to uphold. Mr Bush Sr is a former US Ambassador to the UN and comes from a family steeped in multi-lateralist traditions.
Although not addressed to his son in person, the message, in a speech at Tufts University in Massachusetts, was unmistakeable. Mr Bush Sr even came close to conceding that opponents of his son’s case against President Saddam Hussein, who he himself is on record as loathing, have legitimate cause for concern.
He said that the key question of how many weapons of mass destruction Iraq held “could be debated”. The case against Saddam was “less clear” than in 1991, when Mr Bush Sr led an international coalition to expel invading Iraqi troops from Kuwait. Objectives were “a little fuzzier today”, he added.
After the Gulf War, Mr Bush Sr steered Israel and its Arab neighbours to the Madrid conference, a stepping stone to the historic Israeli-Palestinian Oslo accords, in much the same way that the present President has talked about the removal of Saddam as opening the way to a wider peace in the region.
In an ominous warning for his son, Mr Bush Sr said that he would have been able to achieve nothing if he had jeopardised future relations by ignoring the UN. “The Madrid conference would never have happened if the international coalition that fought together in Desert Storm had exceeded the UN mandate and gone on its own into Baghdad after Saddam and his forces.”
Also drawing on the lessons of 1991, he said that it was imperative to mend fences with allies immediately, rather than waiting until after a war. He had been infuriated with the decision of King Hussein of Jordan to side with Saddam rather than the US, but while criticising the Jordanian leader in public and freezing $41 million in US aid, he also passed word to King Hussein that he understood his domestic tensions.
Mr Bush Jr, who is said never to forget even relatively minor slights, has alarmed analysts with the way in which he has allowed senior Administration figures such as Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, aggressively to criticise France and Germany.
There are, however, signs that Mr Bush Sr’s message may be getting through.
Father and son talk regularly and it was, in part, pressure from Mr Bush Sr’s foreign policy coterie, that helped to persuade the President to go to the UN last September.
RECENT COMMENTS