(WAR + IRAQ) REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT=RECORD GAS PRICES

So last week the average price of gas reached an all time high:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. average retail gasoline prices rose to an all-time high over the past two weeks, due to a number of refinery outages, according to the latest nationwide Lundberg survey.

The national average price for self-serve regular unleaded gas was $3.0684 a gallon on May 4, an increase of 19.47 cents per gallon in the past two weeks, according to the survey of about 7,000 gas stations.

The prior all-time record was an average price of $3.0256 per gallon, that was reached on August 11, 2006.

Supposedly the price increase is due to "refinery outages" and the source in the story says there have been "at least 12 refinery incidents" in the last two weeks. Anybody know anything about those 12 incidents?

I have definitely felt this:

"So far this year the average price of regular unleaded gasoline has surged more than 88 cents per gallon..."

I'm sure ExxonMobil has felt that "surge" also, but not in the same way as you and I...I'm sure they'll break the all-time quarterly profit record again...

Considering all the people I encounter that cite high gas prices during the Carter administration, I found this part interesting:

"However, the current price is 6.4 cents short of the inflation-adjusted high that was reached in March of 1981, at that time regular grade self serve gasoline was $1.35 per gallon, but on an inflation-adjusted basis today that would translate into $3.13 per gallon."

That was at the beginning of Ronald Reagan's first term...I'll have to file that little factoid away for future use--the inflation-adjusted high for gas prices came under Reagan...

Oh, and one other thing--when that record was reached, there was a conflict involving Iraq going on, just...like...now. So I guess we have more proof of this theorem: (war + Iraq) Republican president =record gas prices.

WAINWRIGHT UPDATE--HOPKINS STILL WON'T TALK

The Hattiesburg American files an update:

Southern Miss Police Chief Bob Hopkins said Thursday that the case hadn't been turned over to Forrest and Perry county District Attorney Jon Mark Weathers' office.

This is an outrage. Wainwright was arrested on April 18th (smack dab in the middle of the week of the Virginia Tech massacre and the Columbine anniversary) for writing SOMETHING that's supposedly criminal but Hopkins won't tell us what that criminal writing is. And now Nancy Kaffer finds out that Wainwright's case hasn't even been turned over to the DA?

That means Hopkins won't tell anyone--not the media, the public, OR the criminal justice system--what Wainwright wrote that was criminal in nature. Wainwright will have been in jail for 3 weeks this Wednesday, all because Hopkins wants us to believe he has an open and shut case but won't share the evidence with anyone. Perhaps because he...doesn't have any?

LOSING THE "WAR ON TERROR"


Happy "Mission Accomplished" Anniversary!

If the goal of the so-called "war on terror" is to REDUCE terrorism, then the U.S. is losing that war.

Compared to 2005, terrorist attacks were UP 25% in 2006, and 40% more people were killed by extremists in 2006. This is coming from the Bush administration's own State Department, which said there were around 14,000 terror attacks in 2006.

Just under half of those were in Iraq!

If on the other hand, the publicly unstated but actual goal of the "war on terror" is to reduce the civil liberties of Americans and give their tax money away in the form of fat government contracts to the military-industrial complex, we're winning the "war on terror" big-time! Go USA!

WAINWRIGHT: TRANSFERRED, NEW BULLETIN REVEALED, HOPKINS MUM

The Hattiesburg American reports today that Charles Yuri Wainwright has been transferred from the Forrest County Jail to the Lamar County Jail but won't "say why the transfer was made."

Also, USM police chief Bob Hopkins continues to keep to himself whatever evidence he has of a "threat" made by Wainwright. The only conclusion I can draw from Hopkins' refusal to produce any evidence is that there is none. There is absolutely no reason for Wainwright's "threat" to be a secret known only to Bob Hopkins, especially more than a week after Wainwright's arrest.

The Hattiesburg American did reveal the text of an April 15th MySpace bulletin heretofore unknown to the general public:

"Due to unbearable conditions in the lack of any self imporatance (sic) beyond a shallow narcissism and a commodity fetish sense of well being, I will not bother with a justification for my future actions," Wainwright wrote in a bulletin dated April 15. "America has become an insipid hypocrisy for the one virtue it was meant to represent, and the time has come to unleash that contradiction in the most violent, ruthless way possible."

As Rome was undone by barbarians, he continues, "the facism of Ameirca (sic) must be shown through the most obvious statement of its decadence. Collateral damage is an assumed casualty."

The prose is very untidy and awkward, the spelling careless, and the message incoherent. There's a little Marx in there (the "commodity fetish" part), and a poster on the Hattiesburg American forum thought he detected some Nietzsche.

I'm curious as to what Wainwright would define as the "one virtue" America was "meant to represent." I wonder what Bob Hopkins or a jury would think that "one virtue" is. It might be clearer if we had the entire text of this bulletin to work with, but then again, maybe it wouldn't. We do have the entire text of four other, post-Virginia Tech bulletins, and they're about as vague and rambling as this one.

What are his "future actions?"

I think Hopkins assumes, or wants the public (or a jury) to assume that what Wainwright is referring to as his "future actions" is an allusion to some threat. After all, Wainwright does go on to say that it's time to violently and ruthlessly "unleash that contradiction." However, the future actions are left to the imagination of the reader--maybe that was Yuri's one big mistake.

How does one "unleash" a contradiction, anyway? Especially if one isn't told the specifics of the contradiction--we understand that Yuri thinks America acts contrary to that elusive "one virtue" it's "meant to represent." But even then, how are contradictions "unleashed?" I mean, really--what the fuck is this dude talking about?

I think Wainwright's lack of clarity and lack of specificity will lead to his eventual exoneration. Words have meanings, Mr. Hopkins. One cannot read references to "future actions" and contradictions violently unleashed and "collateral damage is an assumed casualty" and just assign those words whatever meaning one would like them to have. By the way, that last bit seems to be saying that collateral damage will be done away with rather than that there will be a lot of innocent people killed.

But back to the meaning of words and sentences and contexts--Wainwright is obviously a blowhard--a smart blowhard, but still a blowhard--that wants to sound thoughtfully meancing but instead just kinda sounds like a guy regurgitating a bunch of "difficult" philosophical catch phrases meant to sound like dialogue from a "deep" sci-fi/action flick. And obviously this tripe was sent out as bulletins to his MySpace "friends," most of which would have deleted it without ever reading it, or would have understood where he was coming from and maybe even agreed. After all, they were his "friends."

Bottom line, writing a bunch of pretentious, vague bullshit to your friends shouldn't get you locked in jail on a million dollar bond just to let the police make a point. Is this still America or was Yuri absolutely right about the "insipid hypocrisy" and the "facism [sic]?"

GWOT: INTERESTING COINCIDENCES...

Isn't it veeeerrry interesting that the day after the Senate passes an Iraq spending bill that contains a timetable, suddenly we're capturing (also killing) insurgents, taking back cities from the Taliban, and the Saudis are foiling "terror plots" to get this--fly planes into oil refineries?

What a series of convenient coincidences to help neocons make the case that we're succeeding in the war on our freedom...I mean, the war on "terror"...I mean, terror (no quotes)...

Here's what the AP had to say about the foiled "terror plot":

"They had reached an advance stage of readiness, and what remained only was to set the zero hour for their attacks," the ministry's spokesman, Brig. Mansour al-Turki, told The Associated Press in a phone call. "They had the personnel, the money, the arms. Almost all the elements for terror attacks were complete except for setting the zero hour for the attacks."

No "zero hour?"

So this supposed attack could have theoretically taken place any time between today and the end of time?

Huh...I guess that's why they had to move on it, then. Surely the U.S. Senate having passed their Iraq sort-of-but-not-really withdrawal bill the day before the arrests had nothing to do with it...

WAINWRIGHT--The more I read...

...the more suspicious I am that this is all about using the arrest to make USM look tough. The Sun Herald mentions a Wednesday, April 18th (the day of Wainwright's arrest) press conference held by Bob Hopkins. Perfect timing to make USM look like they're tough on crime--two days after Virginia Tech and two days before the Columbine anniversary.

Here's another thing that's odd--Hopkins assures us that Wainwright posted this material on MySpace before Virginia Tech. That means that whatever Wainwright posted had to be posted at the latest on Sunday, April 15. Then why wait until Wednesday the 18th to arrest him?

The Sun Herald reproduces the email that was sent out to everyone at the university after the arrest, and they lay it on thick:

University Police are sensitive to heightened concerns in the wake of Monday’s tragic incident at Virginia Tech University.

“Our critical incident response system was successful in this case. It worked because a member of the campus community came forward with information that we were able to assess and then act upon,” said Dr. Joe Paul, vice president for student affairs at Southern Miss. “We want our faculty, staff and students to come forward any time they feel the need.”

Wow! A good reason to email everyone on campus and let them know that "our cops are on the beat" despite what Student Printz writer Haskel Burns referred to as "the considerable amount of crime which takes place on the Southern Miss campus" in an April 17 editorial headlined "Campus crime surge intolerable." Then a press conference smack dab in the middle of the week of Virginia Tech and the Columbine anniversary.

But still no word on what it was that Wainwright said that got him arrested. The Sun Herald mentions Hopkins' certainty that the threats were real, but "he would not elaborate" on what Wainwright wrote, supposedly because he is still "in the early stages of the investigation."

What is there to investigate? Presumably Hopkins was tipped off that Wainwright said something bad on MySpace, investigated it, and arrested Yuri. Therefore, what we want to know has already been investigated. They may go through Wainwright's computer or notebooks or whatever and find lots of other stuff, but the charge he was arrested for--"Posting of Messages through Electronic Media for Purpose of Causing Injury to Any Person"--has already been investigated.

I hope my suspicions are proven wrong...then I could go back to having a life.

THE WAINWRIGHT "THREATS"

updated--added 4-24-07

The story so far:

4-17-07

-Charles Yuri Wainwright logs into his MySpace page for the last time

4-18-07

-Charles Yuri Wainwright was arrested at a gas station in Lamar County

-Wainwright charged with "Posting of Messages through Electronic Media for Purpose of Causing Injury to Any Person" (Sec. 97-45-17 of the MS Code)

-Wainwright's home is searched and a number of guns found--also, his computer and other writings are seized

4-19-07

-Wainwright questioned by authorities


4-20-07

-Wainwright appears in Forrest County Justice Court and his bond is set at $1,000,000

-Wainwright is interviewed by the Hattiesburg American, calls the situation a "misunderstanding" and mentions 3 MySpace bulletins he posted

-Poster "Hcinms" joins Hattiesburg American forum and claims to be one of Wainwright's "potential targets"

-Poster "efevans" claims threats were made against 2 USM faculty members by name

-Poster "dorkface" joins the forum, says his wife worked with Wainwright and went to high school with him

4-21-07

-Dorkface posts the text of Wainwright's bulletins


4-23-07

-Hattiesburg American claims authorities are withholding from the paper the text of Wainwright's offending writings

-efevans claims that Wainwright's threats were not in the bulletins, but rather in MySpace emails

-I talk to sources involved with the USM press who confirm that UPD Chief Bob Hopkins is withholding the text of the threats from the press

4-24-07

-Student Printz publishes MySpace bulletins from forum, two columns questioning Wainwright's detention.

-In Student Printz story, Hopkins still refuses to comment on the nature of the "threat"


My take on all this

It is now approaching a week since Wainwright's arrest, and the offending statements that Wainwright supposedly wrote have not been made public. My suspicion is that Wainwright is being used to demonstrate that USM is on top of things in the wake of the Virginia Tech tragedy.
Certainly headlines such as these make it look as though UPD chief Bob Hopkins has everything under control at USM:

"Authorities Say USM Arrest Averted Tragedy" WLBT.com, 4-19-07
"USM police: Student was planning attack" WLBT.com, no date given

However, like many people who have read Wainwright's MySpace blogs, bio and bulletins, I don't think that he should have been thrown in jail and slapped with a million dollar bond. And that is my whole concern about this issue: did what he wrote warrant jail? But the authorities won't tell the public or the media what he wrote. This has a rather chilling effect on free speech, methinks, as evidenced by the reluctance of dorkface to post the bulletins.

There may in fact be some more Wainwright writings that we have not yet seen that do threaten bodily harm to specific people. But if that were the case, one would think the UPD would charge him under Sec. 97-45-15--that's the part of the Mississippi code that deals with cyber-stalking and threatening people with bodily harm, to wit:

"(1) It is unlawful for a person to:

(a) Use in electronic mail or electronic communication any words or language threatening to inflict bodily harm to any person or to that person's child, sibling, spouse or dependent, or physical injury to the property of any person, or for the purpose of extorting money or other things of value from any person."

The law he was charged with violating, Sec. 97-45-17, seems rather vague and inconsistent with what seems to be the thrust of the investigation and the innuendo surrounding it, i.e., he threatened professors, he had guns, he was planning an attack but we don't know when, etc. To commit an offense under Sec. 17, one would have to "post a message for the purpose of causing injury to any person." That's it--that's the long and short of it.

That statute seems like it could apply to almost any situation and does not have the caveat that 97-45-15 has, which is that political speech does not fall under its purview.

I can't say for sure that Wainwright didn't do anything wrong--he very well may have. And if he did, then it's good that action was taken. But each day that goes by without a revelation of what Wainwright wrote that got him thrown in jail creates more suspicion that Wainwright is being used as a stalking horse to make the university look tough on crime.

However, my feeling is that Wainwright is guilty of nothing more than bad, distasteful, juvenile, and purposely shocking writing. And maybe also dissatisfaction with his college courses. He may be "guilty" of being an atheist, or being off his meds, or owning a lot of guns. But I think if they really had something on him, we'd already know what it was.

But I could be wrong--we shall see.

THE CAT'S IN THE CRADLE...

My father is a very educated man and consequently has a lot of books. When I was younger, I would occasionally skim through the titles in his library, which took up a whole wall in our house.

One day I ran across a book with a split spine and the cool artwork you see here:



I asked my father about the novel and he didn't know that much about it--he seemed to know who Vonnegut was, but didn't really remember the book. At any rate, he said I could borrow it and read it (not sure how old I was then--late teens?). So I did.

And I completely loved it. In my estimation, both then and now, it's the perfect book--provocative and challenging but easy to read. It's highly imaginative and takes on so many aspects of the human condition that "Slaughterhouse-5" pales in comparison. To me, anyway--to be honest, I never finished "Slaughterhouse-5."

I then began to haunt secondhand bookstores and collected all of his writing I could find. I meant to read every one of them, but I still have yet to do that. After all, as the man himself said:

"Listen: We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different."

So I farted around some, but I did read a lot of his books multiple times. His sense of humanity and his iconoclastic take on the world is one of a kind. Given that, I am so glad that he lived long enough to help us make some sense of the Bush II years. Vonnegut wasn't afraid to point out that the emperor had no clothes, or to put it another way:

"No damn cat, no damn cradle."

PROFIT OVER PEOPLE (PART THE UMPTEENTH)...AND THE "IRAQ EFFECT"

Three stories caught my eye today. They all have something in common--trying to minimize costs while sacrificing people's livelihoods.

Here's the first one about Citigroup eliminating 17,000 jobs--yes, 17,000:

"NEW YORK (Reuters) - Citigroup Inc. (C.N: Quote, Profile , Research) said on Wednesday it would eliminate 17,000 jobs, or about 5 percent of its workforce, in a broad restructuring designed to cut costs, boost profit, and bolster a lagging stock price.

An additional 9,500 jobs will move to lower-cost locations, including two-thirds through attrition, meaning 8 percent of the bank's 327,000-person workforce will be affected by the restructuring."

I assume that "lower-cost locations" means somewhere outside the United States. And so it continues, the quest for profit over people.

Here's the second one, about Walter Reed hospital:

"In addition, the Pentagon made problems worse by ordering a hold-down on costs and expenses — dubbed "efficiency wedges" — even as Walter Reed began experiencing an influx of thousands of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan."

The "hold-down on costs and expenses" means that profit takes precedence over caring for wounded soldiers. The move to privatize services at Walter Reed led to the exodus of many long-time employees.

And the third one, about Jefferson Davis County Schools in Mississippi:

"PRENTISS, Miss. -- The Jefferson Davis County school system is cutting 16 teaching positions in order to save money.

Superintendent Wayne Fortenberry made the announcement at a school board meeting Tuesday.

Fortenberry said that the teachers, who were let go based on seniority, are part of a reduction-in-force plan designed by state financial adviser Diane Day."

Iraq Effect, Fucked-up Priorities and the Triumph of the Corporatocracy

I'm not really sure how this fits into my little thesis here or if it even does--obviously there's not a corporation involved in this story, so there's not really a profit motive to cut jobs. But I suppose the connection to the other two stories is this--fucked-up priorities.

By which I mean, this school story is a perfect example of the "Iraq effect"--the sense created by the myth that we're doing a good thing "helping" people overseas yet our own children and communities go wanting. The conservative choir, directed now by John McCain, is always singing the tune called "But what about all the good things we're doing in Iraq?" By which they mean painting schools, building hospitals, insuring universal health care, and creating a haven for the corporatocracy.

The problem is, we're spending so much friggin' money to be in this unnecessary war that has only exacerbated terrorism and completely defeats its own supposed purpose, that Jefferson Davis County schools has to lay off teachers, which means classrooms that are more crowded, courses that aren't offered, etc. So Iraqi schools supposedly get painted and we have to lay off teachers.

And all to save money! Money that's going right down the shitter and into the hands of Halliburton and Blackwater and who the fuck knows who else in the wasteland of Iraq. Don't forget the pallets of billions of dollars in cash that just disappeared. Could some of that money been used to keep teachers at Jefferson Davis County schools?

The Crux of The Biscuit-round and round it goes

That's called "fucked-up priorities." That's how the school story is connected to the corporate stories--war is a racket for the corporatocracy which steals money away from our schools, our communities, and our future to make a buck off a protracted, ill-advised, immoral war that not only doesn't make us safer but also puts us in danger.

And then that profit is used in turn to eliminate 17,000 jobs and bid for services at veteran's facilities...and round and round it goes.

IRANIAN WEAPONS IN IRAQ? IS BUSH PLAYING THIS CRAPPY TUNE AGAIN?

I thought we had debunked this whole Iran-in-Iraq thing. Maybe the Bushies thought that the Iranian detention of the 15 Brits set the stage for people to buy this bullshit story about Iran "destabilizing" Iraq.

The best post I've read so far about it is here at Americablog. The title of the post gets it just right:

" Iran reportedly training Sunni insurgents. In related news, government is full of it."

Here's a great quote from the CNN story linked above:

"The death and violence in Iraq are bad enough without this outside interference," Caldwell said. "Iran and all of Iraq's neighbors really need to respect Iraq's sovereignty and allow the people of this country the time and the space to choose their own future."

The sheer fucking arrogance of this is unbelievable--the U.S. is the "outside interference" that did not/does not "respect Iraq's sovereignty!" Who is fooled by this utterly transparent fakery? I guess the piddly one-third of the populace who still clings to Bush and his stupid, horrible war, that's who. Oh, and of course, the media.

From the same story, here's another way you know this shit is fake:

"We know that they are being in fact manufactured and smuggled into this country, and we know that training does go on in Iran for people to learn how to assemble them and how to employ them," Caldwell said. "We know that training has gone on as recently as this past month from detainees' debriefs."

Iraq and Iran established diplomatic relations in 1990 but still have a lot disputes. Caldwell doesn't given any specifics about the detainees he mentions, but one can imagine that if they're Iraqis and/or being tortured, why the hell wouldn't the Iraqis try to pin something on Iran? After all, these detainees may figure that the U.S. will leave Iraq to go after Iran, which is what people fighting againt the U.S. would like to see. So it's perfectly logical for an Iraqi detainee to blame "EFPs" on Iran.

Also, since it's probably very obvious what the U.S. forces want to hear during "interrogations," detainees--particularly if they're Sunni--are more than happy to blame something on Iran so that we'll go over to Iran and leave the detainees' domestic operations alone.

One more thing

One more quote from the CNN story:

"Munitions from Iran were found in a black Mercedes sedan in Baghdad's Jihad neighborhood on Tuesday after a tip from a civilian, he said. An Iranian-made rocket was found in the back seat and Iranian weapons were found in the trunk and around a nearby house, Caldwell said."

Let's suppose that it's actually true that Iranian weapons were found in Iraq. That does not necessarily mean that it is the stated policy of the current ruling government of Iran to provide Iraqi insurgents with weapons. For all we know, insurgents go into Iran and steal weapons.

Plus, so what if Iran trains Iraqi insurgents? The U.S. doesn't own the world--Iran is a sovereign country and has a right to conduct foreign policy according to international law. Is it anymore illegal under international law for Iran to sell weapons to Iraq than it is for us to rush cluster bombs to Israel in the midst of a conflict (which I guess would mean pretty much at any time)?

R.I.P., JERRY BURGE

A guy from my hometown died in Iraq recently and his funeral is this Thursday. His name was Jerry Burge--he's two years older than me and I'm trying to find pictures of him to see whether I knew him or not. The one picture I found doesn't look like anyone I know.

Another death for "freedom!" Fuck this fucking war and its death and waste and imperialism.

I read a good quote today from the Howard Zinn book I've been slowly going through (it's a collection of essays called "Passionate Declarations" and it's really quite good). Zinn's quoting a WWII veteran that said the following to Studs Terkel:

"It was a useless war, as every war is...How goddamn foolish it is, the war. There's no war in the world that's worth fighting for, I don't care where it is. They can't tell me any different. Money, money is the thing that causes it all. I wouldn't be a bit surprised that the people that start wars and promote them are the men that make the money, make the ammunition, make the clothing and so forth. Just think of the poor kids that are starving to death in Asia and so forth that could be fed with how much you make one big shell out of (p. 104)"

And then there is also this quote from Admiral Gene LaRocque, also speaking to Terkel about WWII:

"...I hate it when they say 'He gave his life for his country.' Nobody gives their life for anything. We steal the lives of these kids. We take it away from them. They don't die for the honor and glory of their country. We kill them (p. 105)."

R.I.P., Jerry Burge. Note to readers who may be considering joining the military--don't.

NEOCON JOE AND SYRIAN HYPOCRISY

On Morning Edition with Wolf Blitzer, Joe implies that we should go after Syria or at least not negotiate with them because they're a "state sponsor" of "terrorism," specifically mentioning Hamas.

Saudi Arabia also supports Hamas and maintains a state of war against Israel.

Joe says “I say this because we’re in a war. We’re in a war against the Islamic terrorists who attacked us on 9-11-01.”

According to the unlikely yet official story, 15 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia and none was from either Iraq or Afghanistan. Yet our president receives Saudi officials at his Texas estate and holds their hands and kisses their cheeks.

But I want to make something clear: by pointing these things out, I am not advocating a war with or an attack on Saudi Arabia. Rather, I am trying to point out the glaring hypocrisy of the neocon/Bush/batshit-crazy hawk position. And not just the hypocrisy, but the wanton disregard for human life that has come about as a result of that hypocrisy.

I would ask the neocons--if our involvement in the Middle East is truly about freedom, democracy, morality, fighting "terrorism" and NOT about oil, then why are we not occupying Mecca? That's the reason I bring this up--because it points out the selective use of the neocon's already tortured (pun intended) logic when it comes to threats to Israel, state sponsorship of "terrorism," democracy, and treatment of women.

In other words, what George W. Bush and the neocons are saying to Saudi Arabia is the following:

"If you play our game, i.e., you don't try to get out from under the petrodollar and buy lots of weapons from us and let us have military bases there and invest in the U.S. and specifically with the family business of the President, then the following facts do not matter to us: that you are not a democracy, you're a state sponsor of terror, you oppress women, 15 of the 19 hijackers were from your country, and so forth."

That's just realpolitik, man--calm down!

That may in fact be realpolitik, but for George W. Bush to pretend to advocate democracy for the Middle East and send Americans to die in Iraq in a war of choice which he says will achieve a democratic Middle East while he chooses to have Saudi leaders to his ranch instead of bombing them, is a sign of a very sick man.

And here's my main point: why can't other state sponsors of terror be dealt with like Bush deals with Saudi Arabia, a state sponsor of terror? Why can't we negotiate with them like we do with Saudi Arabia? Why can't we avoid sending our soldiers to die in the countries of state sponsors of terror--that's what we are currently doing with Saudi Arabia?

I'm not sure I'm being entirely clear, so I'll rephrase what I'm trying to say: George W. Bush, supposedly the great slayer of terrorists and benevolent bringer of democracy to the Middle East, has taken very different approaches to the same problem in the cases of Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

Iraq--a state sponsor of terror which was no threat to its neighbors, was a secular regime and had no WMD--was invaded, resulting in an ongoing bloodbath which consumes American lives all but daily.

However, Saudi Arabia, not only a state sponsor of terror but also a threat to our main ally in the region (they maintain a state of war with Israel), an Islamic fundamentalist dictatorship, and the breeding ground for the head of al Qaeda and 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers--gets to send its leaders to hold hands with our leader and is not subject to invasion.

Therefore, Bush has put the lie to his own rhetoric about the "war on terror" and the price Americans must pay. He's proven that state sponsors of terror do not have to be invaded and subjugated and the lives of our soldiers sacrificed.


My final point

My final point, then, is not to ask why we haven't invaded Saudi Arabia, but rather to ask why we have invaded Iraq, given the strikingly similar track records of the two countries. Or to say it another way--and taking Bush's own rhetoric to its logical conclusion--since we don't have to invade Saudi Arabia, we never had to invade Iraq (which I've already said a million times, but not with Saudi Arabia as a comparison).

Why aren't more people angry about this?

NO PRE-WAR LINKS TO AL QAEDA; MORE ON SAUDI ARABIA

I've been doing a lot of writing on the forum this week...

No al Qaeda links

Here's an article published today that indicates Saddam had no links to al Qaeda:

Coincidentally (or perhaps not), Dick Cheney was on Rush Limbaugh yesterday contradicting these Defense Department findings, which were:

"(AP) Saddam Hussein's government did not cooperate with al Qaeda prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the U.S. Defense Department said in a report based on interrogations of the deposed leader and two of his former aides."

This was something I had hoped would be done before Saddam's execution--simply ask him whether he had ties with al Qaeda and if he had WMD. Now we see that they asked him about al Qaeda; I wonder if a Defense Department report will be released any time in the near future indicating that they asked Saddam about WMD.

More on Saudi Arabia

I found out something the other day that I was not aware of, namely that Saudi Arabia maintains a state of war with Israel. The Saudis are also known funders of Hamas and Hezbollah, and if one believes the official 9/11 story, 15 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. None of the hijackers were from Iraq or Afghanistan.

I am not advocating that we go to war with Saudi Arabia, but I am curious why Bush chose to invade Iraq instead of Saudi Arabia. I am curious why Bush holds hands with Saudi princes when they come to his villa in Crawford for cordial visits. After all, there is no doubt that Saudi Arabia had/has "al Qaeda connections" (Osama bin Laden is a Saudi, after all) and that they fund groups that are at odds with Israel and that they consider themselves to be in a state of war with Israel. Also, Saudi Arabia is a fundamentalist Islamic monarchy that tramples on the rights of women.

These are all arguments used to justify invading Iraq and Afghanistan, but somehow Bush is willing to overlook them in Saudi Arabia's case. What I'm trying to say is that, in light of these facts, Bush's claim to be fighting a "global war on terror" while simultaneously considering Saudi Arabia an ally is completely absurd.

Now I can think of a couple reasons why it wouldn't be a good idea to go to war with Saudi Arabia--namely, Mecca and Medina, the two holiest cities in Islam. Arguing that we are not at war with Islam would be very difficult while bombing and/or occupying Mecca.
But also, the Bush family has been very cozy with the Saudis for decades now. Saudis helped George W. out of a couple jams in his business dealings. Also, the price of oil would be even more outrageous than it is now if we were to attack Saudi Arabia.

Consequences of not playing the game by our rules

But I think the real reason we don't attack Saudi Arabia is because they have bought into our system. They have invested heavily in the U.S., they've let the U.S. have military bases there, they aren't threatening the hegemony of the petrodollar, etc.

In other words, they're playing our game and they benefit from it. The U.S. has never liked countries that don't play our game, i.e., Cuba, Chile, Venezuela, Iraq, etc. We don't mind dictators as long as they know and remain in their place in the international system over which we rule--Saudi Arabia being a prime example of that principle. China is another example--they're a Communist country that violates human rights but since our biggest retailer Wal-Mart benefits so greatly from trade with China, we give them a pass.
However, we maintain a crippling embargo against Cuba supposedly because it is a Communist country. The real reason, however, is that Castro doesn't play our game.

WHY THEN DOES BUSH HOLD THEIR HANDS? AND KISS THEIR CHEEKS?

Aren't we often told that we have to support Israel above all else when it comes to foreign policy decisions regarding the Middle East? And aren't we also told that those who wish harm to Israel are our enemies simply because of their antipathy for Israel? And that states shouldn't sponsor terrorism? And that countries that treat women badly are backwards? And that theocratic, fundamentalist absolute monarchies are anathema to us?

If that's so, why does George Bush stroll hand-in-hand with representatives of Saudi Arabia? After all, we are reminded in an AP report today that:

"Olmert specifically called on Saudi Arabia on Sunday to take the lead in holding a regional conference, the first time Israel has made such a request of the Saudis, who maintain a state of war with Israel but are pushing for a peace deal."

A few facts about Saudi Arabia

Fifteen of the 19 supposed 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia.

Here's a description of the restrictions on women in Saudia Arabia from Human Rights Watch:

"In interviews with roughly 100 Saudi women academics, educators and medical professionals, Human Rights Watch documented how male guardianship of adult women denies women the right to employment, education, health, and freedom of movement. Government policy often explicitly requires male consent for a range of everyday activities. This system, premised on the idea that women have limited or no legal capacity to act on their own behalf, affects all Saudi women across economic or social divides. While guardianship is construed as a form of protection for women, in fact, it fails to protect some of their most basic rights."

Here's some info from Amnesty International on Saudi Arabia's medieval system of law enforcement:

"There are still scores of political prisoners and possible prisoners of conscience. Saudi Arabia continues to use flogging and amputations as punishments. Executions, beheadings with a sword, occur regularly and are disproportionately carried out against foreign nationals. Foreign workers are vulnerable to abuse and exploitation, particularly female domestic workers, who have virtually no protection at all."

And here's some info on Saudi Arabia's relationship with Israel:

"However, the fifth Arab nation contiguous to Israel, Saudi Arabia, now the dominant nation in the Arab League, remains in a formal state of war with Israel, having never agreed to any armistice or any semblance of a peace agreement with Israel. Instead, Saudi Arabia has consistently funded all terror groups at war with Israel, from Hamas to the 10 PLO terror factions based in Damascus.

Saudi Arabia has earned the distinction as the first nation since the Third Reich which is officially "Judenrein" - Jew free. By law, no Jew may visit or live in Saudi Arabia."

Let's Recap

Saudi Arabia is a known state sponsor of terror and yet is one of the U.S. defense industry's biggest clients.


Saudi Arabia has never made peace with Israel and forbids Jews to even enter their country.

Saudi Arabia calls for Israeli withdrawal from occupied Palestianian territories and a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as the capitol.

Saudi Arabia oppresses women and has a horrible human rights record. Saudi Arabia is not a democracy and makes no pretense of being one--they don't even have demonstration elections.

And according to the official 9/11 story, 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis.

But the Bush admininstration considers Saudi Arabia to be a strong ally in the war on terror. What the fuck is wrong with this picture?



Many of the things we've established about Saudi Arabia were also true of Saddam Hussein. Many of the arguments neocons used to condemn Saddam Hussein (or Arabs and/or Muslims generally) are true of Saudi Arabia. So why was Saddam demonized while Bush holds hands with Prince Abdullah? I would sum up the difference in one word: Petrodollar.

PERSIAN GULF OF TONKIN...

Prison Planet asks what everyone's thinking--"Was The British-Iranian Hostage Crisis Staged?". However, the article basically seconds comments made on BBC NewsNight and exhorts people to watch it, which I started doing but the video wasn't synching very well to the audio and so forth...

I am of the mind that this event had to be staged, in the sense that the British knowingly entered Iranian waters and set themselves up to be captured in order to provoke Iran into doing something that the Brits can justify losing their cool about so that the bombing can begin.

But I admit I don't have a lot of evidence to feel that way--I just don't trust Blair/Bush. And why should anyone trust them after their outlandish claims about Iraqi WMD?

For instance, if the Brits were purposely going into Iranian waters, did they know they'd be captured and treated as well as they seem to have been treated? I would guess they couldn't know that for sure. Did they think they would be fired on by the Iranians? I'm sure they felt that was a possibility.

I mean, the Iranians have to feel threatened--the Western anti-Iran rhetoric has been building for at least the last couple of years, and now there are U.S. and British carrier strike groups doing war games supposedly in international waters in the Persian Gulf.

However, despite the threats, the Iranians have successfully thumbed their nose at Bush/Blair and basically thwarted all the neocon attempts to wrongfoot Tehran. But we know that Iran is/has been a target of the neocons and they must be getting desperate to gin something up against Iran since nothing so far has worked, i.e., the "reasonable offer" gambit or the fake "Iran-in-Iraq" dossier gambit.

So intentionally sending 15 soldiers into Iranian waters as bait to do one of the following:

1) Be taken hostage--in the planning meetings at 10 Downing St., this was probably the hoped-for scenario because a) no one dies b) it reminds the world of the '79 Iranian hostage crisis, and c) gives Blair a chance to huff and puff and go to the U.N. for--a resolution or something to be used against Iran and inch that much closer to war

2) Be fired upon and retreat/take casualties--in the planning meetings, this was second-best mostly because of the deaths or injuries involved, but also because it wouldn't put Blair on the world stage, pleading for Iran to just act right and follow international law, which will eventually make war with/bombing of Iran seem more justified in the long run. But drawing fire would've been the quickest way to get the war going.

At any rate, I have no trouble believing that these 15 Brits would do this, even with the full knowledge of what may happen to them. They're in the military--they follow orders. They want to be there--they believe in the mission. And all that jazz.


And the Iranians probably saw their chance to get back at the West but they're not stupid, so they just arrested the Brits. They were surely aware that firing on a British boat would be a very bad idea. And they of course knew that this exact same type of thing had happened in 2004 to no big fuss. But that was before Iran outmaneuvered Bush/Blair.

So was it staged?

I suspect yes, but we'll never know for sure--I can't prove it was, but there's no proof it wasn't. But at this point, it doesn't really matter whether or not this hostage-taking was staged or more accurately, I think, provoked. Now, the damage has been done--the media will unceasingly talk of this new "Iranian hostage crisis" and it will be painted as an act of "terrorism" despite the fact that the U.S. has itself taken Iranian hostages in the last few months and that the captured Brits are not civilians.

But however you look at it, this is still no casus belli. Faye Turney doesn't look as though she's been kept in stress positions or waterboarded or anything. The Iranians obviously gave her a pack of smokes. I'm not suggesting that she or any of the Britons are enjoying their captivity, but I am saying this is not something to go to war over.

A DEGREE IN HOMELAND SECURITY?

Anybody else seen this ad?



I clicked through and gave some bogus information to get to where they tell you what programs they offer and it took me to a University of Phoenix page, but there was no "Homeland Security" listed in the pulldown menu of degree offerings.

Is this shit really necessary? I find it interesting that the model in the ad is surreptitiously looking through some blinds, but you aren't shown who he's spying on. I imagined he was spying on vegans and antiwar protesters, but I got the feeling you were supposed to imagine him spying on "terror cells" made up of brown people.

I wonder what the courses are in the Homeland Security degree program. Gestapo 101?
Advanced Police State Tactics 403? False Flag 311 with a controlled demolitions lab? Do they have a "summer abroad" program at Guantanamo Bay?

Where could graduates of this program even find work? I'm guessing private "security firms" like Blackwater. Because that's what America needs--a bunch of goons validated with an online degree selling their "security" to the highest bidder. Yeah, that's gonna be a big help.

IRAN: ANYTHING SEEM "FISHY" ABOUT THIS TO YOU?

Does this sound like a fisherman to you? The following sentence is attributed in quotes to a "fisherman":

"Two boats, each with a crew of six to eight multinational forces, were searching Iraqi and Iranian boats Friday morning in Ras al-Beesha area in the northern entrance of the Arab Gulf, but big Iranian boats came and took the two boats with their crews to the Iranian waters."

Here's the account of who the "fisherman" is and how he came to tell the official story in one detailed yet concise sentence:

"A fisherman who said he was with a group of Iraqis from the southern city of Basra fishing in Iraqi waters in the northern area of the Gulf said he saw the Iranian seizure. The fisherman, reached by telephone by an AP reporter in Basra, declined to be identified because of security concerns."

Does that seem the least bit, um, fishy to anyone else?



Border incidents

"Border incidents" are the perfect way to start illegal wars. Especially when the border is disputed! They're a perfect excuse for starting wars! Look how effectively they were used to start the Mexican War, the Israel-Lebanon War of last year, WWII (the Gleiwitz incident--Operation Himmler), and so forth and so on.

When we will frigging learn?

TOYS I WON'T BE BUYING/CREEPING FASCISM...




Also, I've been meaning to put these up for a while. This is a reminder of how the "threat" of "terr-ists" is always with us, even (especially?) at the credit union (posted at the main desk):















Notice how the connection is made between them maintaining records of IDs and "protecting our country." In other words, ve vill need to see your PAPERS!


There was another picture (that was too blurry) of a sign in the credit union lobby that said "Goodbye Float--Hello Check 21" and went on to talk about how the banking system was all fucked up after 9/11 so they had to tighten the reins on customers like you and like me! Hooray!

DOES BUSH THINK CONGRESS IS IRAN?

Here's Bush, telling Congress that his offer to let Rove and Miers be "interviewed" without oaths or notetaking is a "reasonable" offer:

"If the Democrats truly do want to move forward and find the right information, they ought to accept what I proposed," Bush said. "If scoring political points is the desire, then the rejection of this reasonable proposal will really be evident for the American people to see."

Bush is doing his opposite game! He knows very well that his offer is unreasonable, just like he did when he tried to get Iran to fall for his "reasonable" offer to get them to stop enriching uranium:

VIENNA (Reuters) - President Bush said on Wednesday Iran's plan to reply by late August to a big power offer of incentives to halt nuclear work was "an awful
long time for a reasonable answer".

"It should not take the Iranians that long to analyze what is a reasonable deal," Bush told a news conference after talks with European Union leaders in Vienna.

"It shouldn't take the Iranians that long to analyze what is a reasonable deal. I said weeks, not months. I believe that's what the other partners (say too)," he added, referring to Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China.

Iran knew better than to accept Bush's bad faith deal--they told him to go fuck himself.

Will the Democrats have the same courage as Iran?

God, I hope so. This has the potential to bring down Bush's entire house of cards. Fingers crossed!

LIE BY LIE, or THIS WAR IS OLDER THAN MY SON

I've been doing battle on the forums today, so I'll post something from there. I can't let the 4th anniversary of the start of the Iraq war go by without comment, so here is one of my posts from today in response to a poster who said that Democrats also said Iraq was a threat:

"Bush pulled a fast one on the Congress and on America--he kept saying that Saddam must disarm while UNMOVIC was simultaneously demonstrating that Saddam had in fact disarmed.

The Blix report on March 7, 2003 contained these statements (interestingly enough, that was also the day that the head of the IAEA announced that the documents alleging Iraq's dealing with Niger were forgeries and that no Iraqi nuclear weapons or program had been found):

"No evidence of proscribed activities have so far been found." (This was in reference to the accusation that WMD were moved around on trucks.)

"No underground facilities for chemical or biological production or storage were found so far."

"There is a significant Iraqi effort underway to clarify a major source of uncertainty as to the quantities of biological and chemical weapons, which were unilaterally destroyed in 1991."

"In this [verifying the destruction of chem/bio weapons], as in other matters, inspection work is moving on and may yield results."

And the part Bush least wanted to hear:

"While cooperation can and is to be immediate, disarmament and at any rate the verification of it cannot be instant. Even with a proactive Iraqi attitude, induced by continued outside pressure, it would still take some time to verify sites and items, analyse documents, interview relevant persons, and draw conclusions. It would not take years, nor weeks, but months."

------------------------------
So Blix was saying that the Iraqis were cooperating, the inspectors weren't finding anything, and that they'd need more time to actually verify disarmament (inspections had only restarted on 11/27/02).

And that's what Bush didn't want to happen--after all, he'd already cooked up the war, put the troops in place, put his con job over on the Congress and the public--the last thing he wanted was for UNMOVIC to confirm what Kay and Duelfer later found, which was that Iraq had in fact disarmed after the Gulf War and had no WMD or programs to produce them.

HOWEVER, even as late as March 16, 2003, Bush was still suggesting that military action against Iraq was not a given when asked point-blank, "Aren't we going to war?":

"Tomorrow is the day that we will determine whether or not diplomacy can work."

And the 17th was the day that the US, UK and Spain abandoned the attempt to get the UN to ratify the war. It was, surely by sheer coincidence, also the day that Bush announced that Saddam had 48 hours to leave Iraq.

Bush pulled a fast one, implying to the very end that war wasn't inevitable. Very good Iraq war timeline called "Lie By Lie" here."

9/11: FIRES AND COVER-UPS

Commenter LarryG comments on my comments about his comment...

Larry takes exception to the idea that fire was not the cause of the WTC collapses. He points out that "full tanks of jet fuel were burning inside these buildings at temperatures higher than normal building fires." To that I say: 1) bollocks and 2) there were no full tanks of jet fuel burning inside WTC 7. Because no plane hit WTC 7.

The WTC tower fires didn't burn anywhere near as long as the Windsor Tower in Madrid did in 2005. The Windsor Tower burned for 24 hours and even though some floors collapsed, a crane remained on the roof of the building. In contrast, the South Tower was hit at 9:03 and collapsed less than an hour later at 9:59--and it fell in less than 30 seconds.

Not only that, but there had been a fire in the North Tower in 1975 that burned for 3 hours (three times as long as the South Tower on 9/11!) and spread over the majority of the 11th floor and into the core but no serious structural damage was done. This fire burned in excess of 700 degrees C.

The twin towers did not collapse due to fire--it was a controlled demolition.

LarryG argues that setting up a controlled demolition in the WTC buildings would require the permission and foreknowledge of "the ENTIRE government." He also feels that the cover-up of the crime would require the cooperation of a "massive" amount of people. To which I say, maybe--or maybe not.

As an example of how sneaky our government can be, we heard Valerie Plame testify today about the lengths to which the CIA would go to make her appear to do something other than what she did:

"The CIA goes to great lengths to protect all of its employees, providing at significant taxpayers' expense, painstakingly devised and creative covers for its most sensitive staffers."

Is it not conceivable that the same "great lengths" could have been gone to in order to keep everyone involved in the 9/11 plot from knowing exactly what they were doing or knowing exactly what the final results of their actions would be and so forth?

Also, consider the Manhattan Project--it was worked on by thousands of scientists in many sites across the country, but even then vice-president Truman didn't know about it until he became President. Information can be compartmentalized and provided only on a need-to-know basis, and people that helped 9/11 along may not even be aware that they were involved. They were just doing their jobs.

9/11 IN CONTEXT

There was a comment--the only one, I might add--on my last post that I wanted to address. Just so you don't have to click away from here, here's the comment:

So, I guess that means the moon landings in '69 were fake as well...?

Are you suggesting that the Bush administration orchestrated the entire 9/11 disaster or that they were complicit in helping Al-Qaeda kill thousands of Americans?

What would be the benefit for Bush to do that? Surely the repercussions of being caught far outweigh the benefits of pulling off something like that...

I just don't get it...

I have never said that the Bush administration orchestrated the entire 9/11 disaster. I would not put it past the Bushies, but the only people who know who is responsible for 9/11 are the people who did it, and I am not one of them.

However, I think the argument the commenter makes about the cost-benefit analysis is not that strong. People are always doing things they'll suffer for if caught--that fact is almost what makes the deed even more delicious.

The Context Part

But anyway, here's why I have no problem believing that 9/11 was an inside job and why you shouldn't have a problem with it, either--governments always have and always will lie to get what they want, even if they kill their fellow citizens to get it. The United States government is no different.

Just because our grade school history books fail to mention things like the Top 10 False Flags That Changed The World doesn't mean those 10 things and many more like them never happened:

10. Nero, Christians, and the Great Fire of Rome
9. Remember the Maine, to Hell with Spain
8. The Manchurian Incident
7. Secrets of the Reichstag Fire
6. Fake Invasion at Gleiwitz
5. The Myth of Pearl Harbor
4. Israeli Terrorist Cell Uncovered in Egypt
3. U.S.-Sponsored Terrorism: Operation Northwoods
2. Phantoms in the Gulf of Tonkin
1. The September 11, 2001 Attacks

Remember how they started a war almost exactly 4 years ago because they said there were WMD in Iraq? And remember how we knew before the war that wasn't true because UN inspectors went to every site the U.S. told them to go to and found nothing? And then remember how we went to war with Iraq anyway because somehow not finding WMD proved their existence? And remember how we're still there, wasting lives and money?

Most people who buy the official 9/11 story are probably skeptical about a lot of other things. There are a lot of liberals who cling to the official story but despise Bush and his war and his policies in general. And that's what I don't get--why question everything except 9/11?

Forget about the question of whether Bush did it--we can't answer that because we don't have enough information. But we do have some very simple, Occam's Razor-type facts in play concerning 9/11:

1. The WTC collapses all looked exactly like controlled demolitions
2. The second tower hit was the first to fall--i.e., it burned for a shorter period of time yet fell more quickly
3. No modern, steel-reinforced building before or since 9/11 has ever collapsed due to fire
4. Reporters were given foreknowledge of the collapse of at least WTC 7
5. Larry Silverstein admitted that he had WTC 7 demolished or "pulled"

And on and on. Put two and two together--just getting the facts doesn't mean that you hate Bush or hate America. It doesn't necessarily mean that George Bush pressed the buttons that pulled the buildings down. The facts mentioned above don't prove that the Bush administration had anything to do with it--they just prove that all the destruction was not caused by the planes that hit the buildings. Don't forget that WTC 7 wasn't even hit by a plane!

9/11 OFFICIAL CONSPIRACY THEORY: THE "CONFESSION" OF KSM

The headline of this Yahoo story says it all: "9/11 mastermind confesses in Guantanamo." Sean Hannity would confess to being gay if, like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, he'd been tortured in secret CIA prisons and "Gitmo" for the last 4 years.

I don't know why the Feds are even worried about trying to convince the public that 9/11 wasn't an inside job of some sort. Everyone knows we tortured a "confession" out of KSM--it doesn't prove anything. The World Trade Center buildings were brought down by controlled demolition--that much is clear, and I kinda doubt KSM had anything to do with that.

WHY THEY REALLY HATE US

Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA's bin Laden unit (now dismantled) and author of "Imperial Hubris", has been lauded by Justin Raimondo for a long time. I had read a few pieces of his and a few interviews with him, but what he said yesterday on the Sam Seder show was absolutely right on. He laid out what was wrong with American intertwining foreign and domestic policy with a clarity and succintness that one doesn't hear very often.

I'm going to transcribe a few of his comments below...

SS: How does, as a whole, the Iraq endeavor [i.e., the war] affect our safety in this regard? I mean, is this genuinely the central front in the "war on terror?" If we weren't "there" [in Iraq] would that free them up to attack us in the United States?

MS: No, I think that's kind of a canard that's been used by a lot of people...What Iraq has done to make it more dangerous for us is to accelerate the transition of bin Laden and al Qaeda into "bin Laden-ism" and "al Qaeda-ism." Instead of a man and an organization, we now have a philosophy and a movement...

...What we did by invading Iraq was to successfully accomplish the definition for a defensive jihad in Islam--an infidel power invading a Muslim country without provocation and then occupying it. It is something that lifts the onus from bin Laden in the sense of him calling the jihad because so many now well-credentialed clerics have said "Yes, we have to fight a jihad against the Americans because of Iraq...

SS: So it's almost as if he [bin Laden] no longer has to make the case, we're making the case for him...

MS:We've very much validated his argument, sir.

If anyone asks what we're doing wasting, yes wasting, American lives in Iraq, you can say that we are validating bin Laden's argument--we are proving his point. The "sleeping giant" is also very clumsy and slow-witted, as it turns out.

How to "embolden terrorists"

In other words, we are "emboldening terrorists" by continuing to occupy Iraq, not the other way around. The Boehners and the Liebermans of the War Party have it exactly backwards. But the pro-war crowd has really turned that truth on its head by continuously repeating that if we leave, we will look weak and like losers and terrorists will be heartened.

And the Boehners and Liebermans have it exactly backward on purpose--war is business and war is the health of the state, and right now business is the state and vice versa. Whatever the pro-war crowd warns will happen, the opposite will be true--and that's why they issue such warnings. They know that the insurgency is caused by our presence and would have no reason to exist if we left, so they say we can't leave because if we do, the insurgency will get worse.

And such pronouncements make sense on the surface, especially to Fox News watchers who don't have a clear understanding of the way we were lied into war in the first place.

Anyway, back to Scheuer and Seder, because the best is yet to come...

MS: ...When you claim you've killed 2/3 of the leadership of al Qaeda, it's both true and irrelevant. Al Qaeda is an insurgent organization that grew up in Afghanistan fighting the Soviets. It always makes plans to replace its leadership. That's one of the main activities they engage in is preparing for leadership losses. And so every time we kill or capture a senior leader, whoever replaces him has been an understudy...

I'm not sure that what any of what we're fighting is "terrorism." I can tell you, at least from the intelligence officer's perspective, if al Qaeda was a terrorist group, the CIA would have destroyed it before 9/11. It's an insurgent organization that's spread worldwide and the president keeps saying "We're gonna arrest them one person at a time"--we're never gonna get the job done that way. They're really more insurgents than they are terrorists and by calling them "terrorists" I'm afraid the American people have not gotten a clear view of the danger that threatens our country.

Insurgents, not terrorists

Exactly, al Qaeda are insurgents, not terrorists. That means if we don't fuck with them, they don't fuck with us. But as has always been the case, the label of "terrorist" is misused on purpose to conceal the racket of war. To call someone a terrorist is to try to de-legitimize, marginalize, and de-sympathize (and de-empathize) with the person or group so labeled.

OK, a little more, and saving the best for last:

SS: What does it mean that [al Qaeda] is a worldwide insurgency as opposed to being a terrorist organization?

MS: A terrorist organization by definition has to be a small organization that's very tightly compartmented...what we're looking at is, from southern Thailand to Chechnya to Afghanistan to Kashmir to the Philippines are a number of localized Islamist insurgencies, most of them driven by local grievances. But, bin Laden has been, by the impact of our foreign policy in the Islamic world, able to focus some section of each of those insurgencies against the Americans. And so we're facing threats on virtually every continent and ones we're just not equipped over the long run to defeat.

The Crux of The Biscuit

MS: Partially we're in a hole of our own making because for the last 15 years--at least--our presidents and policymakers in both parties have told the American people that "they hate us because of our freedoms and liberties and gender equality and R-rated movies" and that has almost nothing to do with this war.

The reason bin Laden has been able to focus these Islamist insurgents on the United States is because of the impact of what our government does in the Muslim world.

SS: Specifically...

MS: Our ability to keep oil prices low, our support for Israel, our military presence on the Arabian peninsula, our presence now in Iraq and Yemen and Afghanistan. Probably most painful for the United States is our support for tyranny across the Arab world. The really spectacular hypocrisy between urging democracy in one place and supporting the al-Saud tyranny in Saudia Arabia is not lost, even on illiterate people.

SS: So what needs to be done at this point?

MS: Well, we're slowly turning into Israel at the moment. Because our leaders have lied about the motivation of the enemy, we are left with military and intelligence operations to defend ourselves. Once--if they ever get to the point, and I don't think it will occur until we get attacked again inside of this country--once they get to the point and say, "Well listen, these people are motivated not by the nonsense of R-rate movies and draft beer but by the fact that we're doing things in their part of the world," we can begin to discuss whether the policies we have and have had for the past thirty years are protecting America.

MS: Especially energy--everything is tied to energy. As long as we are dependent, and our allies are dependent on oil that comes out of the Persian Gulf, we are gonna have to support tyranny across the Arab world. And that keeps us locked--it leaves us with no options.

...We are not the main target of these people [al Qaeda and the worldwide insurgency]. What they've decided is that the tyrannies that rule the Arab world and Israel surive only because of the support of the United States. Whether or not that's true, that's their strategy. They believe that we're so much softer than the Israelis or the Egyptians or the Saudis, that they can drive us out of the area through economic damage to our country. And so we're not even the main target--we're just simply in the way of what they want to accomplish.

He said a few more things, but above are the things that just really caught my ear when I was listening to the podcast today. I'm exhausted...good night!

DON'T FALL FOR IRAN PROPAGANDA

That was the headline they came up with for my letter to the editor that was printed today in the Hattiesburg American. I'll post it as published with the parts they edited out in italics...

Don't fall for Iran propaganda

The Bush administration is gearing up for an attack on Iran on the grounds that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon and that Iran is "meddling" with our meddling in Iraq.

However, our own intelligence agencies have stated that Iran will not be able to produce nuclear weapons before 2015 if at all. Iran says its uranium enrichment is for peaceful purposes, and they are entitled to pursue this course under the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which they are a signatory.


In the past two weeks, the U.S. has produced supposed evidence that Iran is providing insurgents in Iraq with weapons that only Iranians can produce. However, this supposed "evidence" falls apart under the slightest scrutiny [as the weapons use devices readily available at Radio Shack or similar electronics stores and copper discs that can be produced by anyone with the proper machine tools].

Various administration officials have stated that the United States has no plans for war with Iran and no plans to attack Iran. However, so far we have moved at least two aircraft carrier groups into the Persian Gulf which would provide us easy access to Iran.

There is no reason for us to have a military confrontation with Iran - they pose no threat to us. Iran even tried to enter into negotiations with the Bush administration in 2003 but their overtures were ignored. A war with Iran would be a disaster for our country and the Middle East, indeed, for the whole world.

We must act to stop the war with Iran before it starts. Then it will be used as an excuse to keep it going so as to save face and not "embolden terrorists." [This was originally one sentence which read: We must act to stop the war with Iran before it starts, because if and when it starts, the fact that it has started will be used as an excuse to keep it going so as to save face and not “embolden terrorists” and so forth.] I hope that everyone will urge their friends and family not to fall for administration propaganda designed to take us into another war to divert attention away from the current illegal and immoral war in Iraq.

Clinton Kirby

Hattiesburg

Nice editing job--can't complain too much. I wish the copper disc and Radio Shack parts had been left in, but that's okay...

OFFICIAL 9/11 STORY IMPLODING LIKE WTC 7

I can't say this better than the guys at Prison Planet, who have done great job of investigating 9/11 in general and the "clairvoyance" of the BBC and CNN concerning their early announcement that WTC 7 would collapse or had collapsed.





Here's a quick rundown:

Someone found footage of a BBC World News reporter reporting live from New York on 9/11. As she is reporting that WTC 7 has already collapsed, the building is in fact still visible over her left shoulder. WTC 7 did not actually fall until between 20 and 30 minutes later.

CNN's Aaron Brown also announced that WTC 7 "has collapsed or is collapsing" a full hour before it actually happened. And WTC 7 was clearly visible behind him as well.

Loose Change

WTC 7 was the main thing that convinced me that 9/11 was inside job after I watched "Loose Change." I didn't really know much about its collapse before watching the documentary, but it's clear the official story about 9/11 or WTC 7 is true when you extrapolate from the uniform collapse of WTC 7 neatly into its own footprint and from Silverstein's comments that he had it "pulled." After all, there is no way to set up a controlled demolition the same day one decides to bring a building down, so if Silverstein had the building "pulled" on 9/11, that necessarily means the building had been set with explosives prior to 9/11.

And now that it has come out that both CNN and the BBC reported WTC 7's collapse 20 minutes to an hour in advance of the building actually coming down, it's perfectly clear that the building did not collapse unexpectedly, to say the least.

How could anyone alert news outlets that a building was going to collapse at least 30 minutes in advance of its collapse unless that event was already planned?

IRAN: "American officials" sticking to their story

The neocons are determined to go to war with Iran by hook or by crook. Mostly by crook. They must realize now that the "threat" of Iranian nukes is too similar a plot line to the way they sold the Iraq war and that it's well-documented by our own intelligence agencies that Iran is a long way off from having a nuclear weapon.

So they seem to have decided that since they can't pin a high-tech crime on Iran, they'll keep trying to pin a low-tech one on them--which in this case is that ONLY Iranians can machine copper discs and wire infrared sensors. This despite the fact that a Major Weber admits in this New York Times story that the infrared sensors are readily available at electronics stores:

“Every P.I.R. in Iraq has been RadioShack, Digigard or Everspring,” Major Weber said. “But in southern Lebanon I never saw them use RadioShack.”

And John Pike of globalsecurity.org puts the lie to the idea that the copper discs can be produced nowhere but in Iran:

Mr. Pike said he was not swayed by arguments that the copper discs could only be made by equipment in Iran. All that is required are machine tools, he said. “You can buy them,” he said. “I mean, look at all those cylinders people use for L.P.G. cooking gas. Do you think they are all imported from Iran? Probably not. I bet there are guys all over Iraq who make those things for a living.”

Major Weber also tips his hand as to the provenance of these EFPs:

Could copper discs be manufactured with the required precision in Iraq? “You can never be certain,” Major Weber said. But he said that “having studied all these groups, I’ve only seen E.F.P.’s used in two areas of the world: The Levant and here,” meaning in Hezbollah areas of Lebanon and in Iraq. Hezbollah is thought to be armed and trained by Iran.

Hmmm...he's seen EFPs in Lebanon, where our ally Israel recently fought. Any chance that some (if not all) of these supposed Iranian weapons were found by Israel in Lebanon instead of Iraq and then either planted in Iraq or just claimed to be found in Iraq? This is what Neo at Entropic Memes has suggested, and it seems quite plausible to me. Quite...

FISHY POLL FROM REPUBLIC FIRM

So the Republics (yes, that is intentional as long as the President and the other Republics in Congress insist on referring to the Democratic Party as the "Democrat party") and their various media mouthpieces (i.e. Drudge) are touting a new poll from Public Opinion Strategies as proof that "Americans Want To Win In Iraq."

However, there are findings in the poll that would seem to be at odds with such happy talk. Here is a post I put up at the forum of my local paper:

Public Opinion Strategies is, by its own admission, a Republican polling firm.

The same poll found that 67% feel the country is headed in the wrong direction, and that 60% of people disapprove of the job Bush is doing (with 47% strongly disapproving).

It also found that, of four statements regarding Iraq, this was the one most preferred: "Whether Iraq is stable or not, the U.S. should set and hold to a strict timetable for withdrawing troops."

Why didn't the New York Post or Drudge trumpet that finding?

Furthermore, 60% of respondents said that the U.S. should "hold talks" with Iran.

Interestingly, most of the respondents were 65 years old or older and had not graduated from college. And 49% of the respondents voted for Bush in 2004.

And 81% were white.

EFPs FROM BAGHDAD, NOT TEHRAN?

I did not see this earlier today, but apparently it is possible to make EFPs somewhere besides Iran (how stupid must they think we are?):

US troops reportedly raided a Baghdad machine shop back in November, uncovering a cache of 5-inch diameter copper disks--EFPs--obviously being produced as part of an ongoing operation. If true, this makes another pretty big hit against Sunday's presentation of evidence that Iran's Qods Force is providing "EFP kits" to insurgents.

Well, well. The plot doth thicken.

Preface to a twenty volume suicide note

I loved this poem when I was in high school, and I was thinking about it today for some reason--I always wanted to name a band "The Holes They Leave," a line from the Baraka poem below. I just did a search and discovered some of his poems online, so here it is:

Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note

Lately, I've become accustomed to the way
The ground opens up and envelopes me
Each time I go out to walk the dog.
Or the broad edged silly music the wind
Makes when I run for a bus...

Things have come to that.

And now, each night I count the stars.
And each night I get the same number.
And when they will not come to be counted,
I count the holes they leave.

Nobody sings anymore.

And then last night I tiptoed up
To my daughter's room and heard her
Talking to someone, and when I opened
The door, there was no one there...
Only she on her knees, peeking into

Her own clasped hands

MY 'NAY'

Well, not that it matters because the non-binding resolution passed today, but one of the two Democratic nays was my Congressman, Gene Taylor. So here's the email I sent him today:

Mr. Taylor, I am very disappointed with your vote against the non-binding resolution concerning President Bush's surge in Iraq. I have always voted for you and have been pleased with your recent efforts to rein in the insurance industry.

But the war in Iraq is both immoral and illegal. We had no business invading that country in the first place, and it is certainly well past time we completely withdrew our troops (including those meant to stay in the giant embassy compound we're building). Like it or not, the war in Iraq was sold to us on a pack of lies--there were no WMD and no connections to al Qaeda or 9/11.

And now the administration is attempting to railroad us into some sort of military confrontation with Iran, which I vehemently oppose. I can only hope that you voted against the non-binding resolution because it didn't go far enough, but I know that's not how you felt about it.

Please reconsider your position on Iraq when any future votes come up about cutting off funds or troop withdrawals or even ending the war altogether. The so-called war on terror is really a war on our freedoms and the Iraq war only gives Bush an excuse to continue breaking laws and bringing this country that much closer to ruin.

I wouldn't vote for the guy at all, but he is a Democrat even if it's in name only. And frankly, there aren't gonna be many--if any--true progressives elected from South Mississippi any time soon. So I look at voting for him as a way to at least get one person closer to a Democratic majority if nothing else.

Now that I think about it

But now that I think about it, why in the hell didn't he just vote in favor of the resolution? It doesn't do anything but draw a line in the sand, and everyone knew it was gonna pass anyway. So for him to vote against a resolution that has only symbolic effect that was assured of passage, he's basically telling the warmongers that he's their boy. And he's telling the antiwar peeps to fuck off--basically, he's saying "I spit on the idea of even symbolically supporting my party or of acknowledging the feelings of the majority of the country."

I mean, this resolution isn't gonna end the war--it's only against escalation of it...and it doesn't even stop the escalation. The resolution is completely meaningless except as a gesture, as an acknowledgment that, hey this Iraq shit is fucked up and let's at least try to sorta say so, y'know...like maybe, I don't know, it's not such a great idea to send more people over there, but oh no, we're not gonna actually stop it from happening...

I--I don't even know how adequately to express my frustration at the...stubbornness of the attitude in this district that the Iraq war is a good thing and that we have to "win" and that Muslims are bad and that Bush is a good man, and on and on. And I'm sure that's the kind of crap that Taylor's hearing from most of his constituents and he may even feel that way himself.

But whatever. I'm glad the resolution passed, even if it is only symbolic. It's something. It's a start.

Hopefully it's the beginning of the end of this nightmare in Iraq...

"A LONG HISTORY IN FABRICATING EVIDENCE"

The above is unfortunately a very accurate quote from Ahmadinejad. He could be referring to, I don't know, the Maine incident. Or maybe the Gulf of Tonkin incident. He might very well be referring to Operation Ajax, which replaced the democratically-elected (for Iran, anyway) Mossadegh with the repressive Shah. He could be referring to 9/11. Or he could be referring to Iraq's non-existent WMD. Or any number of other such incidents.

And now, we've proven him right again, with the release of this Iran-in-Iraq dossier, with its fake evidence that provides the basis for fake claims intended to get us into a very real war. The dossier falls right in line with all of the above-mentioned ploys.

The good news is that neither the public nor the media seem to be falling for it--at least not as much as they fell for the claptrap about Iraq. Many are speculating that this newfound skepticism will force the hand of the neocons to manufacture some sort of "terrorist incident" along the lines of 9/11 or the Bush plan of painting a US plane in UN colors and tempting Iraq with it. This seems plausible to me--maybe even probable.

Prosecute the dossier fabricators?

But I'm curious about something else--does this fake dossier evidence violate any laws? Is there any way to prosecute anyone (from the president on down) involved in this scheme to deceive the public? If not, how can we keep this kind of thing from happening over and over again?

I'm afraid it isn't possible to prosecute anyone for such acts, simply because of the difficulty of proving evidence fabrication beyond a reasonable doubt when "national security is at stake." I would imagine that every time a prosecutor would request some piece of evidence from the government, they'd claim that providing it would be a breach of national security and stonewall, stonewall, stonewall.

Bullshit infrared sensors

So maybe the best offense is a good defense. All of us need to keep our bullshit detectors--or, active bullshit infrared sensors, if you like-- on high alert 24 hours a day and expose junk like this as soon as possible, and as accurately as possible, forever--or until the fabricators catch on that pulling a fast one on the public is gonna be more work than just telling the truth.