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Saturday, September 30, 2006
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: RETURN OF KIISSINGER in STATE OF DENIAL - washingtonpost.com
Woodward's book makes clear that the vile and sinister Henry Kissinger has been a major player in Bush administration Iraq policy and its foreign policy debacles, trying to fight Vietnam again. Here's the excerpt:
"Lessons From Kissinger
A powerful, largely invisible influence on Bush's Iraq policy was former secretary of state Kissinger.
"Of the outside people that I talk to in this job," Vice President Cheney told me in the summer of 2005, "I probably talk to Henry Kissinger more than I talk to anybody else. He just comes by and, I guess at least once a month, Scooter and I sit down with him." (Scooter is I. Lewis Libby, then Cheney's chief of staff.)
The president met privately with Kissinger every couple of months, making him the most regular and frequent outside adviser to Bush on foreign affairs.
Kissinger sensed wobbliness everywhere on Iraq, and he increasingly saw the situation through the prism of the Vietnam War. For Kissinger, the overriding lesson of Vietnam is to stick it out.
In his writing, speeches and private comments, Kissinger claimed that the United States had essentially won the war in 1972, only to lose it because of the weakened resolve of the public and Congress.
In a column in The Washington Post on Aug. 12, 2005, titled "Lessons for an Exit Strategy," Kissinger wrote, "Victory over the insurgency is the only meaningful exit strategy."
He delivered the same message directly to Bush, Cheney and Hadley at the White House.
Victory had to be the goal, he told all. Don't let it happen again. Don't give an inch, or else the media, the Congress and the American culture of avoiding hardship will walk you back.
He said the eventual outcome in Iraq was more important than Vietnam had been. A radical Islamic or Taliban-style government in Iraq would be a model that could challenge the internal stability of key countries in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Kissinger told Rice that in Vietnam they didn't have the time, focus, energy or support at home to get the politics in place. That's why it had collapsed like a house of cards. He urged that the Bush administration get the politics right, both in Iraq and on the home front. Partially withdrawing troops had its own dangers. Even entertaining the idea of withdrawing any troops could create momentum for an exit that was less than victory.
In a meeting with presidential speechwriter Michael Gerson in early September 2005, Kissinger was more explicit: Bush needed to resist the pressure to withdraw American troops. He repeated his axiom that the only meaningful exit strategy was victory.
"The president can't be talking about troop reductions as a centerpiece," Kissinger said. "You may want to reduce troops," but troop reduction should not be the objective. "This is not where you put the emphasis."
To emphasize his point, he gave Gerson a copy of a memo he had written to President Richard M. Nixon, dated Sept. 10, 1969.
"Withdrawal of U.S. troops will become like salted peanuts to the American public; the more U.S. troops come home, the more will be demanded," he wrote.
The policy of "Vietnamization," turning the fight over to the South Vietnamese military, Kissinger wrote, might increase pressure to end the war because the American public wanted a quick resolution. Troop withdrawals would only encourage the enemy. "It will become harder and harder to maintain the morale of those who remain, not to speak of their mothers."
Two months after Gerson's meeting, the administration issued a 35-page "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq." It was right out of the Kissinger playbook. The only meaningful exit strategy would be victory"
STATE OF DENIAL - washingtonpost.com
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Report Says Rove Aide Accepted Abramoff Gifts - washingtonpost.com
more Bush scandals, how can We the People let them get away with this culture of corruption, even the media is kicking in and at the most corrupt and mendacious and incompetent administration in US history
Report Says Rove Aide Accepted Abramoff Gifts - washingtonpost.com
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Saturday, September 23, 2006
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Bush Gets His Way
the "compromise" on the torture issue means that Bush gets to choose who to torture, another cave in to Bush-Cheney Reich
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2006/09/22/BL2006092200703.html
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New terror that stalks Iraq's republic of fear
Iraq is major source of fear and terrorism, thanks to Bush
http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=11030§ionID=15
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U.S. Best Seller, Thanks to Rave by Latin Leftist
Chavez boosts Chomsky's sales...
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/23/books/23chomsky.html?ei=5094&en=9cc61599b3ae705d&hp=&ex=1159070400&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print
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Friday, September 22, 2006
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"Devil" in the Details: Chavez, Limbaugh and Hypocrisy on Name-Calling
the rightwing has no sense of humor....
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/node/901/print
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Sunday, September 10, 2006
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Alternet stories
from AlterNet=
Top Stories from AlterNet for September 9, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/
______________________________
IMAGINE THE TWIN TOWERS HADN'T FALLEN ON 9/11
Tom Engelhardt, The Nation and TomDispatch.com
What if there had been no giant cloud of destruction capable
of bringing to mind the look of "the day after," no images
of crumbling towers worthy of Independence Day?
http://www.alternet.org/story/41425/
WAR-MONGERING AMERICA TERRORIZES THE WORLD
Howard Zinn, AlterNet
The USA's massive military campaigns are both strategically
ineffective and morally indefensible.
http://www.alternet.org/story/41430/
WHEN WILL JOE BIDEN BECOME FAIR GAME?
Matt Taibbi, RollingStone.com
Senator Joe Biden is the ultimate creep Democrat -- happy to
attack Rumsfeld when Iraq is polling badly, and arch
defender of the credit industries that have put thousands
of US troops abroad in bankruptcy.
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/41407/
______________________________
New in AlterNet Video:
UPDATED: ARNIE PORN (VIDEO IS RATED 'R')
Governor says 'black blood' makes Latinas 'hot.'
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/41434/
DISNEY'S 'MOCKUDRAMA' CONTROVERSY
Fake history IS a problem.
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/41432/
______________________________
AlterNet's Best Stories of the week:
THE 10 MOST BRAZEN WAR PROFITEERS
Charlie Cray, AlterNet
Halliburton has become synonymous with war profiteering, but
there are lots of other greedy fingers in the pie. We name
names on 10 of the worst.
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/41083/
THE SINNER'S GUIDE TO THE EVANGELICAL RIGHT
Rob Lanham, AlterNet
A hilarious new book provides instructions on how to argue
the big issues with ultra-conservative fundamentalists.
http://www.alternet.org/story/41031/
WOMEN EXPOSE STREET HARASSMENT
Elana Fiske, Ms. Magazine
Women who are cat-called on the street can put their
harassers to shame with the help of a New York-based
website.
http://www.alternet.org/story/41324/
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9/11
9/11 empowered Bush and the US and world suffered.... from Salon as the anniversary comes up....
"What we lost
Almost 3,000 Americans died on Sept. 11, 2001. But our losses are still mounting -- in Iraq and at home -- thanks to the bullying, big-lie culture that dominates American politics today.
Editor's note: This article continues a Salon series exploring the impact of 9/11 five years after the attacks.
By Joan Walsh
Print Email Digg it Del.icio.us My Yahoo RSS Font: S / S+ / S++
Five years later, I remember odd fragments from Sept. 11, 2001. The kindness in the voice of the co-worker who called to tell me about it; the care and concern I saw everywhere that day, in fact. At my daughter's school-bus stop in the near-dark that morning (yes, many of us sent our kids to school in California, only to have them sent home), not all of the parents knew about the tragedy yet, but I'll never forget the sadness and compassion in the eyes of those who did -- for ourselves, for our children, and also for the people in our group who hadn't seen the television yet. We already knew: Nothing would ever be the same.
We had no idea. As awful as our losses were that day, five years later they're almost incalculable. New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said something that moved me at the time -- that the losses were likely to be "more than we can bear." In fact, he was right, even though the death toll was ultimately lower than first expected. The losses from 9/11 may still ultimately be more than we can bear.
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Shameful 9/11 TV film
Will 9/11 Commission criticize the ABC TV 9/11 film that blames Clinton and shows Bush a resolute fighter of terror?
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/node/351
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Bush under attack in new films
Toronto Film Festival shows many films attacking Bush; here in UK where I'm visiting Blair is under attack for his Bush connections.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/08/movies/08cnd-toro.html?ex=1158033600&en=2078c5f41bf5a419&ei=5087%0A
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C.I.A. Said to Find No Hussein Link to Terror Chief
Not a surprise....
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/09/world/middleeast/09intel.html?ex=1158033600&en=593fc3d376a2291f&ei=5087%0A
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Nick Burbeles on Iraq fiasco
here's Nick's news summary of Iraq=
"Freedom on the march in Iraq
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060907/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_al_arabiya
The Iraqi government on Thursday ordered Arabic satellite network Al-Arabiya
to shut down its Baghdad operations for one month, state television
reported. Al-Arabiya said Iraqi police later arrived at its offices to
enforce the order. . . . The other pan-Arab satellite network, Al-Jazeera,
had its office in the capital closed two years ago. . . .
The military still hasn't figured out how to deal with IED's (Improvised
Explosive Devices) in Iraq - and when you think about it, this story is a
microcosm of why we are failing in Iraq
http://billmon.org/archives/002717.html
[Billmon] This strikes me as a fairly textbook example of the Pentagon's
failure to cope with the realities of asymmetric warfare. According to Gen.
Meigs, his organization is now spending over $1.4 billion a year to develop
new gizmos for finding, jamming and/or defusing IEDs. As a result, he
proudly reports, over half of them are now detected before they explode.
But, compared to the cost of adding another high-tech acronym to the Defense
Department's alphabet soup, IEDs are dirt cheap. And their killing power can
be greatly expanded with relatively minor tweaks -- modifications that are
well within the technological competence of most Iraqi insurgent groups,
with or without Iranian help.
The numbers tell the story: While more IEDs are being found, even more are
being planted. For a time, the high-tech gizmos were at least able to keep
the casualties from rising, but now, Gen. Meigs grudgingly admits, they
can't even do that . . .
But it gets worse (of course). More bombs and more casualties makes
patrolling more dangerous, which increases the incentive for commanders to
keep their soldiers off the roads and avoid particularly "hot" areas. This
is fine with the brass, since they know that their political masters know
that limiting the number of U.S. casualties is critical to keeping support
for the war back home from collapsing completely.
However, fewer patrols and a lighter footprint on the ground reduces the
flow of intelligence that helps guide the high-tech gizmos in their search
for IEDs . . .
More:
http://www.juancole.com/2006/09/36-killed-in-civil-war-violence-al.html
And in Afghanistan. . .
http://www.first-draft.com//modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=7106
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Deflated Dick?
Is Cheney losing his power? NYT thinks so=
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/10/washington/10cheney.html?hp&ex=1157947200&en=dd2796fe2fa400dd&ei=5094&partner=homepage
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Cowboy Bush falls off his horse
Introducing the latest analysis from International Relations Center
Protecting the Paradigm
By Leon Hadar
Israel’s failure to decimate Hezbollah has seriously damaged one of the
neoconservatives’ favorite paradigms—that what’s good for Israel’s
strategic interest is good for America, and vice versa.
Leon Hadar, a Washington, D.C.-based journalist and global affairs
analyst, is the author of Sandstorm: Policy Failure in the Middle East
(2006). He blogs at globalparadigms.blogspot.com.
See new IRC article online at:
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/rw/3496
With printer-friendly pdf version at:
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/pdf/0609paradigm.pdf
Playing Cowboy—and Falling off the Horse
By Leon Hadar
U.S. President George W. Bush has fancied himself playing Gary Cooper’s
role in High Noon. Yep, Sheriff W. and his loyal deputy Tony B. ride
into Mideastville, where they confront a revenge-seeking killer by the
name of Saddam and his Islamofascist gang, while cowardly lawmen
Jacques C. and Gerhard S. hide in the Old Europe Café. W. vanquishes
the enemy and spares the town from frontier justice brought on by a
deadly group of outlaws. In the final scene, our cowboy rides into the
sunset, leaving behind a once-dishonorable town that has now been
transformed into the civilized and prosperous Greater Middle East. But
that screenplay is old, and now it seems that some unhappy “producers”
in Washington, DC are hoping to change the script. After all, it’s now
“The End of Cowboy Diplomacy.”
Leon Hadar, a Washington, DC-based journalist and global affairs
analyst, is the author of Sandstorm: Policy Failure in the Middle East
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). He blogs at globalparadigms.blogspot.com/.
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Saturday, September 02, 2006
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The Smirking Chimp
The Washington Post smears Joe Wilson, shame, shame, shame on them!
The Smirking Chimp
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Friday, September 01, 2006
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