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TORTURING DEMOCRACY a New Documentary

by ThePete 3:49 pm 2008-10-17
I’m a big fan of taking the good with the bad. If it’s true, even if it’s bad, I want to hear about it and I want to deal with it, the sooner, the better. Sadly (to me), not everyone shares this view. Many people want to deny and ignore as much as they can when they don’t like it. When the Abu Ghraib story broke a few years ago, I really didn’t want to see those photos. I really didn’t want to believe that my government would torture.

I had heard that government officials would take suspects and have them "interrogated" in countries where torture was legal. This disturbed me enough. When the waterboarding stuff broke, I wasn’t shocked, but I was disappointed. Then, when Bush insisted that "we don’t torture" I knew it was just Orwellian doublespeak and that we do torture.

"Torturing Democracy" is all about America committing acts of torture. According to the official website (http://torturingdemocracy.org/ ) the documentary: "…relies on the documentary record to connect the dots in an investigation of harsh interrogations of prisoners in U.S. custody - and points straight to the top. Timely and powerful, at its heart the film is about the rule of law - and how the government pushed it aside despite the fierce resistance of many on the inside."

Attached to this post is one of the excerpts available on the official site and it features Richard Armitage, Deputy Sec of State under Colin Powell, talking about how he was waterboarded (as part of training) and how he definitely considers waterboarding a form of torture. He also mentions that he’s ashamed that the discussion about whether waterboarding is torture or not is even being considered.

If you’re in the Washington DC area, watch this docu on WETA at 10pm tonight (10/17/8). Check out a complete listing of channels and times here: http://is.gd/4gLf

OR just go to http://TorturingDemocracy.org/ to watch the entire movie right now.

I have yet to watch it, but plan on doing so this weekend. I’ll post a review next week.

Be responsible for what your government does–watch this movie and be offended as you should be. Then, vote accordingly.

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George W. Bush Solves Economic Crisis by Snapping Fingers!

by ThePete 4:00 am 2008-09-25
utterli-image
This is a totally useless observation, but I noticed
tonight while looking at the pic of Bush delivering
his historic "we’re screwed" speech to
the nation a little black spot under his jaw. Can
you see it? WTH is that?
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Ugh, so here is a fun one–George W. Bush trying to convince us all that he’s right about something else that has gone to shit under his watch.

Seriously, everything this man touches turns to fine smelling feces. I challenge anyone to name something he’s gotten right. I mean, do we really need me to go through this transcript to know that Bush will distort the facts, deceive us and dodge responsibility? Well, I’m a glutton for punishment (it comes from watching every episode of MST3K several times over), so here we go!

The below transcript of Bush’s historic “We’re Screwed” speech comes from JPGardners’ Donkelphant.com and remember, Bush’s comments will be in italics while mine will be factually accurate and not in italics.

THE PRESIDENT: Good evening.

Oh, Al Gore was there? :P (Get it? It says “THE PRESIDENT”. YES I’m still bitter god damn it!!)

This is an extraordinary period for America’s economy.

THIS GUY IS SHARP, BOY! What’s next? An observation that touching open flames cause pain??

Over the past few weeks, many Americans have felt anxiety about their finances and their future.

“Few weeks”?!?!?!

Try “few years” idiot. I’ve been blogging about the value of the dollar dropping for three years, possibly more.

It’s really hard not to use the word “retard” in connection with this fool, but I don’t want to insult anyone who is actually mentally handicapped.

I understand their worry and their frustration.

Ah, so you’re not frustrated? Why should you be? You’re wearing a beautiful new golden suit spun with gold so fine that you can’t see it, you tremendous feeb.

Sorry, I know it’s not mature to call people names, but this fucker won’t go away! He’s committed crimes, failed to protect Americans from terrorists and killer storms, bungled two wars almost simultaneously and now he’s managed to oversee one of the biggest economic failures America has seen since the Great Depression.

Ah, good stuff! o_O
More…

Can We Call It WW III NOW???

by ThePete 3:55 pm 2008-08-11
utterz-image
I’m not sure how many major-theater/major-world-power wars need to be going on at once before we’ll actually call this what it is: a world war.

I know it’s a big scary thing to call it a "world war" but I feel that we need to take responsibilty for all of this death and destruction before every continent is engulfed in combat.

Merriam-Webster.com defines a "world war" as: "a war engaged in by all or most of the principal nations of the world,"

That’s pretty much what we’ve got going on here. So why not just call a spade a spade?

OH YEAH. Because then we’d have to take responsibilty for it.

Yick! Responsibility!

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Didn’t They Already Have a Say?

by ThePete 8:53 pm 2008-07-10
utterz-image
Grabbed this screencap from Google News in the early hours of 7/9 and just had to shake my head.

I mean, REALLY.

A bipartisan panel wants the government to play a bigger role when a president decides to go to war.

Uhhhhh, YEAH.

You know what, Mr. or Mrs. Bipartisan Panel?

THEY ALREADY HAVE A BIGGER ROLE.

They just turned over that role to Bush in the lead-up to the Iraq Attack–or did you guys not study very hard in school?

I mean, any kid who paid attention in history class (or for me, Social Studies class) knows that it’s Congress’ job to authorize military force. Before we invaded a sovereign member of the UN (Iraq) back in 2003, the US Congress told Bush that he could swing his ability to declare war around like a huge penis in order to scare Saddam into fessing up about his WMD.

Of course, no amount of penis-swinging would get Saddam to admit something that wasn’t true, so Bush got to use his war powers. Of course, if Congress hadn’t been lied to by the White House, they’d have known Saddam had nothing to declare as we threatened to cross his border.

They trusted the guy in the White House. It’s my impression that the Founding Fathers didn’t want the guy in the White House to have the power to invade a country–so why did Congress defy that interest of the FF? Especially to a man like Bush who was such a great leader he let 911 happen, invaded a whole country and then couldn’t even capture the guy who was behind 911.

This was a guy who didn’t even have the decency to make sure he won the 2000 election.

Hey, did you know that when there’s a tie in a presidential race the US Constitution states that it’s *Congress* that votes on who the president should be?

Yeah, apparently the Supreme Court hadn’t heard that either. By I digress!

The USC(ongress) should never have given Bush the ability to shoot his military load into Iraq to begin with, so essentially, since Bush "took office" the Supreme Court, Congress and the White House all let us down. That’s all three branches, isn’t it?

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The Real Reason the US Will Invade Iran

by ThePete 11:38 pm 2008-04-10

I’ve blogged a bunch about the petrodollar–don’t know what that is? In a nutshell, it’s kind of a nickname for dollars used to buy oil from OPEC countries. A lot of folks don’t know that the only way to get oil from OPEC member nations is by using USD. What happens if you don’t have USD? You have to buy it. Read more about petrodollars here: http://en.wikipedia.org/…etrodollar

What does this have to do with Iran? Well, for a couple years now (see my first post on it here: http://thepete.com/…vade-iran/ ) Iran has been trying to get it’s own oil bourse going. What’s a bourse? Just a fancy-shmancy word for a commodities exchange. In this case, the commodity would be oil. Well, Iran has had a bit of trouble getting their bourse off the ground but they finally pulled it off on February 17, 2008–yep, just a couple of months back. Guess what currency they’re selling oil with.

It ain’t dollars.

And now, according to the above-screencapped April 6, 2008 article from AP.org (available here: http://biz.yahoo.com/…_opec.html ), Iran wants other OPEC nations to bail on the dollar, too. From the article:

"According to the Iranian government’s Web site, Ahmadinejad told OPEC Secretary General Abdalla Salem el-Badri the cartel "should establish a joint bank as well as having joint currency.""

Sure, other OPEC nations don’t support the change, but Iran isn’t the first nation to stop trading oil with dollars–Venezuela doesn’t.

Why am I so sure that Iran will be invaded because they don’t want to sell oil with USD? Well, remember Saddam? He swapped out the dollar for the euro.

Yeeeah.

Middle East oil, not traded with the USD?

Good luck with that Iran.

Read more about that bourse here: http://en.wikipedia.org/…Oil_Bourse
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StopMilitaryRape.org

by ThePete 1:53 am 2008-04-07

I have mixed feelings about the military. While I never served, I did come close and I have family that has and does serve currently. I have great respect for men and women that feel strongly about doing what they call "fighting for their country." That said, the military is still filled with people. Regular folks, just like you and me. They do good jobs and bad, make mistakes and make things right. They both mean well and don’t–the military is a microcosm of civilization. In that sense, it should be no surprise that there is crime. One of those crimes is rape.

Sadly, women have been pretty much second class citizens until just the past couple of decades and even now, it’s more like the 1800s for them–sometimes they get hazed (of course, so do men) and sometimes, they get raped (almost as frighteningly, so do men). And like the civilian world, in the military, rape often goes unreported–of course, as I said, it’s more like the 1800s for rape victims.

It’s MUCH harder to report a rape if you actually like the military. Just Google "Suzanne Swift" if you don’t believe me. She reported being raped by a superior and eventually ended up with him in charge of her. Check out SuzanneSwift.org to read her story.

You can also check out the DemocracyNow.org story that first informed me of the website http://StopMilitaryRape.org/ by going here: http://www.democracynow.org/…n_soldiers

That DN article talks about a conference that took place on International Women’s Day, back in March of this year, that featured military women talking about rape and sexual abuse they’ve experienced or witnessed. Listening to their stories in the audio version of the article was pretty much gut-wrenching (here’s the MP3 of the episode if you’ve got a strong stomach: http://www.archive.org/…1_64kb.mp3 ).

So, if you know anyone who is dealing with rape, please help them get help. If you know anyone who is in the military dealing with rape, point them to http://stopmilitaryrape.org/

Rape, in the military or out, isn’t about sex, or even lust. It’s about power and control. The people who commit such acts should not get away with it and the people who fall victim need all the help they can get to move on with their lives.
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Daily Show: Republican Admits They Effed Up

by ThePete 4:22 am 2008-04-03

This isn’t some play on words or a clip of Bush "accidentally" saying the opposite of what the speech writer told him to say–on the episode of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" from March 31, 2008, Republican Senator from Nebraska, Chuck Hagel, actually admitted that Congress made a mistake in allowing Bush to decide to go to war. What Hagel said in this interview is incredibly important:

"We did not do our job. We failed the American People in that we didn’t ask the toughest questions."

What saddens me is that Hagel is the second person in government, during the Bush administration, who has admitted that Congress did let the American people down. The first was Richard Clark, the terrorism czar that George W. inherited from Bill Clinton. I can’t even remember when Clarke admitted that the government had let the American People down, but he did. In his case it was in regards to the USG allowing 911 to happen.

Now, Hagel is saying it, too only this time it’s about something even less forgivable than not being on the ball enough to stop terrorists from doing something insane. Of course, it’s easy for Hagel to say he and others in Congress let us down–he’s got a book to sell (much like Clarke did) and Hagel’s not running for president (it’s always easier to tell the truth when you aren’t worried about your job). He also jokes in the interview with Stewart that he’s not likely to have a job in Washington after this November. I hope this is true for many more people in Congress aside from him.

And don’t think that Hagel is some saint just because he actually has the balls to say it like it is–the dude is rumored to be just as corrupt as everyone else. I recall reading somewhere that he was elected on ballot machines made by a company he owns.

Maybe we should consider his criticisms of the war to be just sour grapes reflecting his frustration that he invested in a balloting machine company instead of Halliburton or Bechtel.

Oh well, at least he said it!
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So, Is This World War III, Yet?

by ThePete 1:41 pm 2008-02-26

I definitely feel like we’re all suffering from that curse–you know the one I mean. The one that says "may you live in interesting times."

I feel like we’re living in an important part of history. Bigger than Vietnam, bigger than Korea and approaching the level of importance of WWII. In fact, I’d almost say it’s identical to the time before WWII.

Labor is cheap and our economy is weak (though I suppose it was back on track after the depression in the immediate years before WWII) and we’re looking at war in "multiple theaters." "Multiple theater war" is just a Web 2.0-style phrase that describes a World War.

America, the Earth’s last super-power has combat operations in Afhganistan and Iraq. We seem to have our sights set on Iran. Turkey has invaded northern Iraq as you can see from the above screencap from Google News (get updates here: http://news.google.com/ ). There are all sorts of military messes in Africa, Pakistan is unstable (to say the least), Kosovo has declared its independence and Israel and Palestine, well, let’s just say they’re still not getting along.

So, with all of these skirmishes, is it time we start calling this World War III?

I feel that if we start calling it what it is, we’ll take it that much more seriously and work to end it. Since we’re still thinking of it as "The War Against Terror" it seems a bit too close to "The War on Drugs." I don’t think any of us took T.W.O.D. too seriously. Likewise, T.W.A.T. doesn’t seem that much more like a "real" world than T.W.O.D. did. As a result, we’re all very disconnected from the atrocities being committed in our name.

I feel like we Americans are not very good at facing the depressing realities of our world. And I say "we" as in me, too. Calling this a World at War just might hammer home the seriousness of what’s going on.

Then again, American Idol might be on.

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The 5 Minute Show Episode 20030223 Anti-War Protest pt 2!

by ThePete 3:16 pm 2008-02-22

And here are the continuing adventures of ThePete at an Anti-Iraq War protest shortly before we went to war in Iraq. :(

GITMO TRIALS RIGGED TO END IN CONVICTION?

by ThePete 2:15 pm 2008-02-21

Here’s another gem from http://DemocracyNow.org/. On yesterday’s show, they reported on the former chief prosecutor for Guantanamo’s military commissions who told the Nation magazine that there was no way any of those six guys accused of taking part in the 911 attacks would get a fair trial. Here’s a bit from the show’s transcript (get the whole thing here: http://www.democracynow.org/…guantanamo ): "The 9/11 trials for the six Guantanamo prisoners charged by the Pentagon last week with conspiracy to commit war crimes might have been rigged from the start to rule out the possibility of any acquittals, this according to the latest statements to The Nation magazine from Colonel Morris Davis, the former chief prosecutor for Guantanamo’s military commissions.

Colonel Davis recounted a 2005 meeting with the Bush administration-appointed Pentagon General Counsel William Haynes, who now oversees the prosecutions and the defense for the tribunal process. Haynes said, “We can’t have acquittals. If we’ve been holding these guys for so long, how can we explain letting them get off? We can’t have acquittals, we’ve got to have convictions”

Colonel Davis resigned from the military commissions in October 2007, saying the system had become ‘politicized’ and he could no longer be effective. His latest statements to The Nation magazine offer the most pointed evidence of the military commission’s bias and undermine the Bush administration’s claims of ensuring fair trials for the accused."

Weeee! This is the biggest thorn in my side regarding all of this "Post-911 Thinking" going on. In one of our country’s founding documents we make the statement that all humans are equal, right? I’m paraphrasing, but that’s what is accepted, right?

Well, the exact phrasing is: "all men are created equal."

Please note: it doesn’t say that all "Americans" are created equal.

Therefore, EVERY human on the planet deserves the same rights as any American citizen.

So, even if these six guys in Gitmo are guilty of what they are accused of, they STILL deserve a fair trial! I don’t care if they’re criminals, war criminals or "enemy combatants" (whatever the hell those are). They should still get fair trials and the same rights any other human gets.

If we don’t provide what we promise how can anyone outside of the US trust what any of us say?

Now, to me, this doesn’t sound like the trials are rigged. However, if the guys in charge of the trials say something like "there can be no acquittals" you have to admit, that screams "unfair bias" all over the damn place.

Just a sidenote here: there have been no convictions for the 911 attacks. There have been just a handful of convictions of terror suspects involved in other attacks not on US soil. We’ve invaded two countries and ended hundreds of thousands of lives in the interest of catching terrorists, yet we can’t seem to convict hardly anyone in a court of law.

How much you wanna bet those six dudes in Guantanamo have exactly nada to do with 911?
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Oklahoma 911/The War On Terror License Plate

by ThePete 1:53 pm 2008-02-04

I can’t believe I, of all people, missed this story last August, but I did. I stumbled across a post about it a week, or so, ago (here: http://enews.org/…ights.html ) and I felt like I had to make a bigger deal out of it. Have a look at that ugly, horrible sample plate. If you own a car in the fine state of Oklahoma, you can decorate your car with this thing for just $37 (http://www.tax.ok.gov/…45.html)...

…If you want to.

WHY you’d want to is beyond me. The post I linked to above, written by a guy calling himself "Espresso Sucking Pavement Dweller" or ESPD for short, is all about the lousy design of the plate. ESPD is right–the black on red banner is hardly readable (it looks like it says "944" to me) and the clipart used for the Towers look like completely different buildings. He makes a few other points, including one about how others will criticize this license plate for reasons other than design.

Let me be one of those people. Let’s begin:

1) Since when do you have license plates memorializing terrorist acts? Isn’t it a little ghoulish to use the deaths of those 3000 people on 9/11/1 as advertising for a war?

2) I’m of the belief that America is stronger than a few thousand Muslim extremists. We can handle anything they can throw at us and the idea that we need to fight "The Global War On Terrorism" seems like over-dramatizing the threat of Al Qaeda and terrorism, in general. If you look at the statistics, cars, cancer and AIDS each kill more people every year than terrorism (more: http://thepete.com/…0-points/).

3) Oklahoma is fighting the war on terror? How’s that, exactly? What does Oklahoma have that Al Qaeda wants?

4) As I mentioned in point 1, this plate is just an advertisement for a war–for killing people. Has "The Global War on Terrorism" brought us Bin Laden or even a single conviction on actual terrorism-related charges? So far it seems like this whole thing hasn’t meant–well, I could be off color, here, I’ll just suggest you refer to the acronym for "The Global War On Terror" only remove the "Global."

As Super Duper Tuesday is tomorrow and the next presidential election is in seven months, don’t let 911 and mentions of the wars, Al Qaeda and other fear-mongering scare you into voting for one person or another. Vote with your head–not your fear.

Do I think we should go after Al Qaeda? Definitely. They do want to kill some of us. However, a war on a few thousand people with no country, no army, no nukes, and no obvious hierarchy seems like blatant, soulless, overkill. Plus, it’s just what they want us to do.

Who knows? Maybe Bin Laden will see this license plate and give up. But I’m thinking it’ll just make us snobby cityfolk point and snicker.
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Death Photo of Ernie Pyle: WW2 Embedded Reporter

by ThePete 1:41 pm 2008-02-03

Source: http://www.breitbart.com/…rticle.php

Sorry if anyone is offended by the above photo–I think as pictures of dead people go, this one’s pretty tame. Plus many view him as an American hero, so I think it’s important that we all see this picture.

See, I always thought that embedded reporting started with Iraq in 2003–but apparently, it goes way back, but wasn’t called the same thing. Ernie Pyle was probably the most famous American embedded reporter of World War II. He was shot in the temple by Japanese soldiers and died immediately. It was 1945 and he was 44.

His intensely personal columns covering the frontlines of the war won a Pulitzer and the hearts of America. When he was killed, it made the headlines. Late last year I was visiting a friend of mine up in Burbank –we wandered into a used bookshop where they had an original newspaper reporting the death of Ernie Pyle.

Sadly, that was the first time I’d heard of the man. It sounds like he was an amazing individual. Sadly, the above picture has barely ever been seen and no negatives are known to exist, so I’m trying to put it in front of as many people as possible.

I feel like most Americans don’t understand how important and how dangerous it is to be a reporter. Well, a *real* reporter. Not someone like Anderson Cooper or one of the idiots on Fox News, who have make-up and hair people standing by. Pyle was the real thing.
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WOMAN CLAIMS GANG RAPE BY HALLIBURTON SUBSIDIARY KBR

by ThePete 6:00 am 2007-12-12

God damn, what the hell is wrong with people today? If this woman is telling the truth (I have no idea why anyone would lie about being gang raped), there are some seriously effing dark tendencies hiding in people just waiting for the moral permission to jump out and make us regret human “civilization” getting this far. I’m getting ahead of myself. Check out this cutting from a December 10, 2007 article at ABCNews.com about Jamie Leigh Jones claiming to be gang raped by KBR employees while working for them in Iraq:

A Houston, Texas woman says she was gang-raped by Halliburton/KBR coworkers in Baghdad, and the company and the U.S. government are covering up the incident.

Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she’d be out of a job.

“Don’t plan on working back in Iraq. There won’t be a position here, and there won’t be a position in Houston,” Jones says she was told.

Wow–I’d pretty much not be giving a shit about keeping my job if that had happened to me.

“Hmmm, continue working for the people who gang raped me or get mental help?” That would not be a question I’d be asking myself.

Regardless, this is a pretty sad state of affairs. Sure, if true, the gang rape was committed by the traditional (read: cliche) “few bad apples” but we really need to start asking the question what the hell is it about Iraq that is turning people into monsters?

Whether it’s the Haditha massacre of 24 civilians, the rape and murder of a 14 year-old girl and the murder of her family, or this new story, something about the culture of America Vs. Iraq has had seriously corrupting effects on people who are supposed to be “the heroes” (read:USGIs).

Sure, war makes savages of us all, but if it’s that simple–then why the fuck do we keep waging it??

US SAYS IRAN’S REVOLUTIONARY GUARD ARE TERRORISTS, but…

by ThePete 6:00 am 2007-12-07

source: the CIA Factbook

Let me start out with a cutting from a November 15, 2007 WSJ.com article that talks about Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC):

Most Americans already know more about the IRGC than they’d like to. In September the Senate voted overwhelmingly in favor of a nonbinding resolution urging President Bush to label the IRGC a terrorist group. He did so a month later and has since implemented harsh new sanctions targeting the business interests of the IRGC. As Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson told the press recently, “It is increasingly likely that if you are doing business with Iran you are doing business with the IRGC.”

This all just cracks me up because it’s a wonderful example of how full of shit the USGovernment really is, here. Because a fraction of the terrorism going on in Afghanistan and Iraq seem to be caused with the help of the IRGC, we label them terrorists and start making it hard for them to do business.

What if the favor were returned?

What if the Republican party were labeled a terrorist organization?

“Oh, yeah, the Republicans were behind the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Neither country did anything directly aggressive yet, the Republican in charge of the US military ordered invasions! We’re banning all business with America because if you’re doing business with America, you’re probably doing business with a Republican.”

Yeah, not so cool when you look at it from the other side, is it?

Of course, the reverse scenario will never happen because America is too powerful.

What happens to the most powerful country on the planet when it is left unchecked and begins to abuse the massive power it holds?

Nothing.

It just gets more and more abusive. Why should it stop?

No, seriously, why should it stop?

TYPICAL BUSH: Iran Still a Threat Even Without Nukes

by ThePete 9:00 am 2007-12-05

Uuuugh, this is getting OLD, man. Check out what I saw on my Twitterstream yesterday morning:

Isn’t that nice? What’s worse is what the BBC News reported in their article from December 4, 2007 about Bush’s paranoia about Iran, or as I like to call it, pIRANoia:

Iran remains a threat to the world despite new intelligence saying the country may not be building nuclear weapons, the US president says.

Mr Bush said the report released on Monday was a “warning signal” and his view that a nuclear Iran would be a danger “hasn’t changed”.

The president stressed that Iran was still trying to enrich uranium and could restart its weapons programme.

Tehran has denied continued accusations that it is developing nuclear weapons.

Haven’t we heard all this before??? There’s a great scene in an episode of the edgy Cartoon Network show, Boondocks, featuring white street-thugs who hold up a 7-11-style store and demand the Saddam look-alike behind the counter drop his gun, even though the Saddam look-alike isn’t holding one. I hope the show’s creator, Aaron McGruder, is ready to make this same joke again because it still looks like Bush is going to drag us into Iran.

Personally, I’m getting to the point where I wish it would just happen. It can get a lot worse than it is now and so many Americans are still just going about their business as though we’re not in the middle of a World War. Us and Iraq, Us and Afghanistan, Turkey and the Kurds, the mess in Myanmar (Burma), how many more theaters of war do we need before we start to accept that WWIII is here? Or WWIV or whatever number we’re up to.

DICK CHENEY PREDICTS CURRENT IRAQ MESS IN 1992

by ThePete 2:54 am 2007-11-19

Sorry to get political ^_^ but I saw this on Democracy Now (DemocracyNow.org) last Friday and thought it was so important that I should share it. It’s a clip that shows Dick Cheney in 1992, the then Sec of Defense, explaining why Bush 42 and Pals didn’t go all the way into Iraq to get rid of Saddam Hussein after kicking his butt out of Kuwait. In his address at the Economic Club of Detroit, Cheney predicts everything that has happened since the Iraq Invasion of 2003.

Every

Last

Detail

…Cheney knew in 1992.
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Now, what this means is that he DID know that Iraq in 2003 would be a mess and just didn’t care. Why? My guess is because he stands to make a shitload of money as soon as he gets out of office in 2009. He ran Halliburton for a time, and I seriously doubt they won’t repay him for the mess in Iraq that Halliburton has made huge buckets of cash off of. These military industrial companies don’t forget their benefactors and Cheney and his boss, Bush, have made a mess of Iraq on purpose so they can rake in the cash.

Yes, I’m saying they’re both sociopaths. I blogged about Bush being diagnosed as a paranoid meglomaniac in a book back in 2004 and this new/old video shows us that Cheney is no fool–he knew and agreed with all of us “hate America firsters” back in 1992 but chose to disagree with us in 2003.

No, we’ve got some serious psychos on our hands and the Dems are too spineless and protective of their jobs to actually do their jobs.

Oh and in case you don’t want to sit through the above video, check out the transcript of the clip taken from the full transcript of the Friday, November 16, 2007 edition of Democracy Now. I’ve added emphasis to save you even more time:

AMY GOODMAN: As we talk about how President Bush and Vice President Cheney made the case for war in Iraq, I want to turn to comments made by Dick Cheney in September of 1992. At the time, he was President George H.W. Bush’s Secretary of Defense. During an address at the Economic Club of Detroit, Cheney was asked why the United States didn’t bury Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War. This is how he responded close to fifteen years ago.

DICK CHENEY: At the end of the war in the Gulf, when we made the decision to stop, we did so because we had achieved our military objectives — that is, when we decided to halt military operations. Those objectives were twofold: to liberate Kuwait and, secondly, to strip Saddam Hussein of his offensive military capability, of his capacity to threaten his neighbors. And we had done that.

There is no doubt in my mind, but what we could have gone on to Baghdad and taken Baghdad, occupied the whole country. We had the 101st Airborne up on the Euphrates River Valley about halfway between Kuwait and Baghdad. And I don’t think, from a military perspective, that it would have been an impossible task. Clearly, it wouldn’t, given the forces that we had there.

But we made a very conscious decision not to proceed for several reasons, in part because as soon as you go to Baghdad to get Saddam Hussein, you have to recognize that you’re undertaking a fairly complex operation. It’s not the kind of situation where we could have pulled up in front of the presidential palace in Baghdad and said, “Come on, Saddam. You’re going to the slammer.” We would have had to run him to ground. A lot of places he could have gone to hide out or to resist. It would have required extensive military forces to achieve that.

But let’s assume for the moment that we would have been able to do it, we got Saddam now and maybe we put him down there in Miami with Noriega. Then the question comes, putting a government in place of the one you’ve just gotten rid of. You can’t just sort of turn around and away; you’ve now accepted the responsibility for what happens in Iraq. What kind of government do you want us to create in place of the old Saddam Hussein government? You want a Sunni government or a Shia government, or maybe it ought to be a Kurdish government, or maybe one based on the Baath Party, or maybe some combination of all of those.

How long is that government likely to survive without US military forces there to keep it propped up? If you get into the business of committing US forces on the ground in Iraq to occupy the place, my guess is I’d probably still have people there today, instead of having been able to bring them home.

We would have been in a situation, once we went into Baghdad, where we would have engaged in the kind of street-by-street, house-to-house fighting in an urban setting that would have been dramatically different from what we were able to do in the Gulf, in Kuwait in the desert, where our precision-guided munitions and our long-range artillery and tanks were so devastating against those Iraqi forces. You would have been fighting in a built-up urban area, large civilian population, and much heavier prospects for casualties.

You would have found, as well, I think, probably the disintegration of the Arab coalition that signed on to support us in our efforts to eject the Iraqis from Kuwait, but never signed on for the proposition that the United States would become some kind of quasi-permanent occupier of a major Middle Eastern nation.

And the final point, with respect to casualties, everybody, of course, was tremendously impressed with the fact that we were able to prevail at such a low cost, given the predictions with respect to casualties in major modern warfare. But for the 146 Americans who were killed in action and for their families, it was not a cheap or a low-cost conflict. The bottom-line question for me was: How many additional American lives is Saddam Hussein worth? The answer: Not very damn many. I think the President got it right both times, both when he decided to use military force to defeat Saddam Hussein’s aggression, but also when he made what I think was a very wise decision to stop military operations when we did.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Dick Cheney, speaking in September of 1992 at the Economic Club of Detroit.

Crazy–absolutely crazy. He said in 1992 that getting Saddam out of power was worth “not very damn many.” But maybe 911 changed all that. Maybe Cheney just wanted to get rich.

Maybe it’s both.

DONALD RUMSFELD STEPS IN SEVERAL PILES OF CRAP

by ThePete 6:00 am 2007-11-07

OK, so what happens when you authorize torture and then leave your job? Shit haunts you, that’s what. In “Donny-Don” Donald “Rummy” Rumsfeld’s case it’s not an emotional haunting (you know, like with guilt or shame) but a literal one where your actions bite you on the ass. Let’s have a look:

1) From Workers.org (a commie-looking site, so be careful) the following cutting comes to us sourced in an article reporting on Rumsfeld having torture-related criminal complaints filed against him in France:

Donald Rumsfeld reportedly fled France Oct. 26 after four human rights groups filed a criminal complaint against the former U.S. secretary of defense for “ordering and authorizing torture” of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.

Rumsfeld was spirited away from the U.S. Embassy in Paris following a talk sponsored by Foreign Policy magazine. Hundreds of anti-war activists were outside waiting to confront the former Bush administration top gun. Rumsfeld can no longer claim immunity from prosecution as a government official since resigning his post last year.

The International Federation of Human Rights, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights and the French League for Human Rights filed the complaint with the Paris prosecutor before the Tribunal de Grande Istance.

Will Rummy be a man and face the charges? Well, he’s already fled France–what do you think?

2) The following few snippets come to us from a WashingtonPost.com article that chronicles some memos that Rummy wrote revealing, among other things why Arabs are lazy and like to hire foreigners:

In a series of internal musings and memos to his staff, then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld argued that Muslims avoid “physical labor” and wrote of the need to “keep elevating the threat,” “link Iraq to Iran” and develop “bumper sticker statements” to rally public support for an increasingly unpopular war.

The memos, often referred to as “snowflakes,” shed light on Rumsfeld’s brusque management style and on his efforts to address key challenges during his tenure as Pentagon chief. Spanning from 2002 to shortly after his resignation following the 2006 congressional elections, a sampling of his trademark missives obtained yesterday reveals a defense secretary disdainful of media criticism and driven to reshape public opinion of the Iraq war.

In a 2004 memo on the deteriorating situation in Iraq, Rumsfeld concluded that the challenges there are “not unusual.” Pessimistic news reports — “our publics risk falling prey to the argument that all is lost” — simply result from the wrong standards being applied, he wrote in one of the memos obtained by The Washington Post.

Under siege in April 2006, when a series of retired generals denounced him and called for his resignation in newspaper op-ed pieces, Rumsfeld produced a memo after a conference call with military analysts. “Talk about Somalia, the Philippines, etc. Make the American people realize they are surrounded in the world by violent extremists,” he wrote.

People will “rally” to sacrifice, he noted after the meeting. “They are looking for leadership. Sacrifice = Victory.”

Neither Europe nor the United Nations understands the threat or the bigger picture, Rumsfeld complained in the same memo. He also lamented that oil wealth has at times detached Muslims “from the reality of the work, effort and investment that leads to wealth for the rest of the world. Too often Muslims are against physical labor, so they bring in Koreans and Pakistanis while their young people remain unemployed,” he wrote. “An unemployed population is easy to recruit to radicalism.”

Wow, when I first heard about that last bit, I almost thought Rummy was describing the American practice of hiring illegal immigrants. I mean, what with the obesity epidemic and falling average grades and the influx of Mexican labor, Rumsfeld might as have been describing Americans as being detached “from the reality of the work, effort and investment that leads to wealth for the rest of the world. Too often {Americans} are against physical labor, so they bring in {Mexicans} and {more Mexicans} while their young people remain unemployed…”

Pretty neat, huh? Good old Rummy! He’s gone from US government, but certainly not forgotten!

US PUTS SANCTIONS ON IRAN…oh, we’re goin’ in…

by ThePete 6:00 am 2007-11-02

So, I guess the UN wasn’t “getting tough” enough on Iran–or maybe it was that the rhetoric was running out on the whole “Iran Is a Nuclear Threat” thing. Either way, this is something I wanted to make sure didn’t get lost in the miasma that is the American media shitstorm these days.

How much of what gets covered is ultimately useless crap? I’m going to say around 90 percent or more. The ten percent, like this, which is another example of the beating of the drum gets lost and blurred into all this other talk and when we’re in the middle of an Iranian Quagmire (IranQuag?) we’ll be looking back (once again) and wondering: “What exactly did Bush say about all this?”

So, here you go–here’s what King George the W.’s admin wants us to know about Iran as delivered by Sec O’ State (S.O.S.) Condi “White” Rice said, according to an October 25, 2007 article from AP.org available over at MyWay.com–check it out:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, joined at a State Department news conference by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, said the steps the Bush administration is taking against the Revolutionary Guard Corps and a number of banks are designed, among other things, to punish Tehran for its support of terrorist organizations in Iraq and the Middle East.

Rice said the moves were in response to “a comprehensive policy to confront the threatening behavior of the Iranians” although she also said that Washington remains open to “a diplomatic solution.”

But Rice quickly added: “Unfortunately the Iranian government continues to spurn our offer of open negotiations, instead threatening peace and security by pursuing nuclear technologies that can lead to a nuclear weapon, building dangerous ballistic missiles, supporting Shia militants in Iraq and terrorists in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, and denying the existence of a fellow member of the United Nations, threatening to wipe Israeli off the map.”

Haha! That’s a laugh. Let’s take each of those claims one by one, shall we?

“Unfortunately the Iranian government continues to spurn our offer of open negotiations,

Tee-hee! You mean the negotiations where you tell him to give up weapons he doesn’t have then clarify by saying he can’t have ANY kind of nukes even those for power? Those kinds of negotiations where you treat the Iranians like children not mature enough to handle a book of matches?

“…instead threatening peace and security by pursuing nuclear technologies that can lead to a nuclear weapon,

Wow–so, nuke tech is enough? What does it take to be trusted with nukes in the Middle East? Oh yeah, Judaism.

“…building dangerous ballistic missiles,

Unlike American ballistic missiles which are perfectly safe and ideal for use against our biggest enemy today, a bunch of terrorists.

“…supporting Shia militants in Iraq and terrorists in Iraq,

That’s funny because I could have sworn that I read someplace that Iran’s influence controls less than 20 percent of the insurgents in Iraq. I think it’s like Saudis that have the most influence. But we can’t invade them….they are our business partners!! Oh yeah, so Condi goes on about Iran supporting terrorists in Iraq and:

“…Afghanistan, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, and denying the existence of a fellow member of the United Nations,

Oh YEAH, denying the existence of a fellow member of the UN is WRONG, but INVADING another member of the UN and OVERTHROWING THEIR GOVERNMENT that’s, like, totally cool ‘n shit.

OH yeah, one last bit where Condi reminds us how Iran is:

threatening to wipe Israeli off the map.”

This is such a crock of shit. Ahmadinejad is NOT Iran’s top leader, dammit!! They call him “president” but he’s not the same as the president of the United States–there’s another guy ABOVE him who is really in charge–there’s a dude above Ahmadinejad who holds the position of “Supreme Leader.” You GOT IT?

Don’t believe me? CHECK OUT THE CIA WORLD FACTBOOK and see what they say about Iran’s government.

AHMADINEJAD IS NOT THE GUY WE SHOULD BE PAYING ATTENTION TO.

He’s like their Coni Rice and can do about as much. He can’t order military strikes and has no real power. He’s just the dummy on the knew of ventriloquist Supreme Leader Ali Hoseini-Khamenei. So, until we know what Khamenei says, WE SHOULD STOP JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS.

No, just because they let Ahmadinejad say stuff does NOT mean they condone his words. It only means for sure that they don’t give a crap what he says.

So, AS ALWAYS WITH THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION, don’t believe the hype!

It’s all crap! Iran doesn’t have nukes, won’t have nukes and would be retarded to actually use them on us because any idiot knows WE’LL use nukes back! Hell, even NoKo has more sense than to use nukes on us. And the guy in charge of that country really IS crazy.

But no, Bush wants to invade Iran. He’s got to save face for Iraq, so, now we’re going into Iran.

I’m getting to the point where I’m welcoming it. I don’t want the deaths, but clearly Congress needs him to go even further over the line than he’s already gone before they bother to do their jobs and impeach the bastard. In fact, at this point, I don’t know why Bush doesn’t just order the damn Iran Attack and be done with it. He clearly doesn’t need us to approve.

TURKEY ATTACKS NORTHERN IRAQ–Is It WWIII yet?

by TheMobilePete 5:31 pm 2007-10-30

Hey, so did you hear? Turkey has attacked the Kurds in Northern Iraq! What does that mean? It means there is yet ANOTHER war being fought. So, let’s
see how many that makes:

1) the US against the insurgents in Iraq
2) the US against the Taleband in Afghanistan
3) the US against Al Qaeda all over the place
4) the Iraqi civil war
5) Turkey against the Kurds

OK, so that’s like five wars–how many more do we need before we can call it World War III?

Read more about the Turkish attacks on Kurdistan at CNN.com: www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/10/30/turkey.kurds.ap/index.html .

NEW US BASE ON IRAN-IRAQ-OIL-FIELD BORDER

by ThePete 12:37 pm 2007-10-07

About three weeks ago, I blogged about how TheUSMil was building a new base on the Iraq/Iran border in order to defend against Iranians coming over the border to help the cause of evil in Iraq. In my post I suggested it was posturing for an American invasion of Iran, but it looks like the reason for the base might be a bit more straightforward.

While looking for an article explaining that Iranians make up 20 percent of the terrorists in Iraq (I KNOW I saw that article SOMEplace) I stumbled across an October 7, 2007 opinion piece at KoreaTimes.co.kr (here: urltea.com/1onw) that explains a fun coincidence about this new base. Check it out:

Coincidentally, the U.S. is to build another vast base in Wasit Province, to protect Iraq from “insurgents” coming in from Iran. As the gimlet-eyed analyst Sarah Meyer points out coincidentally, another vast oilfield, it seems, has just been discovered there.

The piece refers to a Sarah Meyer who blogged about this very oil field back in September of this year. Here’s a cutting from her post:

Hassan Jumaa Awad, Iraqi union leader, was recently travelling to raise awareness of the US attempts to grab Iraq’s oil. Among the interesting points that he raised: “There is a newly discovered field in Wasit province in central Iraq with the potential to fill millions of barrels of oil. Under the law this new field will be given over to multinationals.”

Iraq revenue watch (pdf file) notes: “This field lies in the two provinces of Baghdad and Salaheddin, and probably extends southward within the province of Wasit.1 Hence, it should be jointly managed by the provinces of both Baghdad and Salaheddin, and perhaps that of Wasit too. … initial production has averaged 20,000 barrels per day from its Baghdad section compared with a potential production of about 120,000 barrels daily.”

What’s really interesting to me is that the opinion piece from the Korea Times mentions Smedley Butler. You may remember my post from last month about a corporate-sponsored planned coup on the American government that was foiled when Marine Major General Smedley Butler held a press conference announcing that he wouldn’t take part in said plan. This is the third online reference to this story that I’ve found since last month–funny how no one’s really heard of this and I’ve stumbled across mentions this many times in just a few weeks. Well, actually, the Korea Times piece doesn’t mention the planned coup, but it does talk about how Butler felt being a Marine and essentially being a shill for Big Business. Here’s another cutting from the opinion piece:

`There isn’t a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its `finger men’ (to point out enemies) its `muscle men’ (to destroy enemies) its `brain guys’ (to plan war preparations) and a ‘Big Boss’ (super-nationalistic capitalism.)

“It may seem odd, for me, a military man, to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to do so. I spent thirty-three years and four months in active service in one of our country’s most agile forces _ the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major General.

“During that period I spent most of my time being a high class muscle man for Big Business and Wall Street and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

So, it’s just a case of same shit, different day/country. What’s worse is that the American people just aren’t cynical enough to see through this. Sure, the average Amerishmuck on the street might admit to knowing the Iraq Attack was all about oil, but he probably would grasp the depth of this corrupt corporatism.

Think about it: first it was 911, then it was nukes, then it was freedom for the Iraqi people–all of that were lies to get this new oil law passed that would promise a lion’s share of Iraq oil profits go to foreign oil companies.

There are three angles that, I feel, explains the US government’s attitude here. Any or all of them could be at play here:

1) Peak Oil - This is the theory (more and more believe it’s no theory) that the planet Earth is very near to reaching it’s highest level of oil production. What happens after that highest level of production? Well, production goes down, of course. In other words, the Earth begins to run out of oil. As a result, oil companies around the world need to find new oil fields (like the one in Wasit, Iraq) to exploit to stay fluid (literally and figuratively) while they try to come up with some way to make money after the oil begins to run out and becomes prohibitively expensive.

2) Capitalism is Like A Shark - Capitalism is like some beast that has to keep moving at all times or it will die. This is not the truth, since capitalism is not alive in the first place and is a concept that can get discarded or re-adopted. However, a lot of power is tied up in capitalism and even more can be gained by keeping capitalism around and thriving. Any chance this shark can get to feed it will take and that’s what getting more oil for the oil interests (US and otherwise) would do–feed the capitalist shark.

3) The Petro-Dollar - I’ve blogged about the Petro-Dollar many many times. In a nutshell, Petrodollars are American cash that is bought by anyone on the planet to use when buying oil from any OPEC country. See, OPEC (generally) only sells oil in USD, so when you consider how much oil is bought every day around the world you get the idea of how much USD is tied up in OIL. More oil sold for an OPEC nation (like Iraq) means more American dollars being bought up, which means our economy is invested in. Incidentally, I’ve read that some experts believe Petro-Dollars make up about 60 percent of the US economy.

In the end, you need to remember that the number of dead American GIs in Iraq is higher than the number of Americans killed on 911. This isn’t really about avenging 911, or making America safe. This is about keeping oil and capitalism and oil-capitalism strong.