TILLMAN EVIDENCE, SAUDI ARMS DEALS, HAGEE'S WET DREAM...who says the U.S. is not the cause of all the wars in the world?

Pat Tillman murdered?

$20 billion arms deal with Saudis?

Hagee wants war with Iran?

Read on...

New evidence has come to light about the death of Pat Tillman. You may recall that the story evolved in the following manner:

1. Pat Tillman was killed by enemy fire and he is a hero

2. OK, we lied–he was killed by friendly fire but is no less a hero

Now we find out that Army doctors found the evidence surrounding Tillman’s death to not be indicative of friendly fire. Prison Planet has a good summary:

“Army medical examiners concluded Tillman was shot three times in the head from just 10 yards away, no evidence of "friendly fire" damage at scene, Army attorneys congratulated each other on cover-up, Wesley Clark concludes "orders came from the very top" to murder pro-football star because he was about to become an anti-war political icon”

It sounds incredible, that Tillman would be murdered, but apparently the propaganda value of a pro football player turned soldier in helping the Bush administration could have a lot of reverse propaganda value for the antiwar movement. And surely the Bushies realized that...

Arming Dictators–and the Iraq insurgents?

The New York Times says we’re about to sell $20 billion worth of weapons to the Saudis–and their neighbors:

“WASHINGTON, July 27 — The Bush administration is preparing to ask Congress to approve an arms sale package for Saudi Arabia and its neighbors that is expected to eventually total $20 billion at a time when some United States officials contend that the Saudis are playing a counterproductive role in Iraq.”

And don't miss the part where they buy off Israel, who's understandably nervous about this deal:

"Senior officials who described the package on Friday said they believed that the administration had resolved those concerns, in part by promising Israel $30.4 billion in military aid over the next decade, a significant increase over what Israel has received in the past 10 years."

The Several Things Wrong With This Picture

OK, there are several things wrong with this picture. Fifteen of the 19 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, remember? None was from Iraq or Afghanistan. Or Iran. Of course 9/11 was an inside job, but the story the Bush administration wants us to swallow is that Osama bin Laden, also a Saudi, convinced 15 other Saudis and a few others to fly planes into buildings.

All right, that’s problem number one–we’re literally selling weapons to the “people that attacked us on 9/11.” Won't some enterprising reporter ask that question of George Bush/Tony Snow/any neocon? Why is it our policy to hold hands with and sell arms to the people that actually (according to the official story, anyway) attacked us on 9/11 while we bomb the living shit out of countries that literally had nothing to do with it?

Problem number two–the Saudis are still technically in a state of war with Israel, our supposed ally. Jews are not allowed inside Saudi Arabia. Also, Saudis oppress women, commit gross human rights violations, and have a dictatorship. I also covered this here.

Some ally, those Saudis, eh? And you thought George Bush’s mission was to bring God’s gift of democracy to all people. Who are you going to believe, Bush or the overwhelming evidence against everything he says?

Problem number three–most of the foreign fighters in the Iraq insurgency are from–you guessed, Saudi Arabia.

“An article in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times detailing the national origins of foreign insurgents in Iraq has punctured a large hole in the Bush administration’s relentless propaganda against Iran. For months, the White House has been demonising Tehran for “meddling” in Iraq by establishing networks to arm, train and finance anti-US insurgents. Most foreign fighters, however, come, not from Iran, but Saudi Arabia, a close American ally, with which the Bush administration in particular has intimate ties.

According to military statistics provided to the Los Angeles Times, about 45 percent of the hundreds of foreign militants involved in attacks on US troops and Iraqi civilians and security forces are from Saudi Arabia. Another 15 percent are from Syria and Lebanon and 10 percent from North Africa. Nearly half the 135 foreigners currently held in US detention facilities in Iraq are Saudis.

A senior American military officer told the newspaper that Saudis are believed to have carried out more suicide bombings in Iraq than those of any other nationality. He estimated that half of all Saudi jihadists come to Iraq as suicide bombers, who in the past six months have been responsible for killing and maiming at least 4,000 Iraqis.”

Is it not conceivable that these weapons could be used by Saudi insurgents against our troops in Iraq? If that is not conceivable, shouldn’t we say, avoid selling military equipment to the Saudis as an incentive to get them to stop the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq? At the very least?

But it appears that the real concern of the Bushies is to get back the petrodollars from Saudi Arabia. You know the deal–we buy oil from them in dollars, and then sell them weapons to get the dollars back. Arthur Jensen summed it up in “Network”:

“The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back. It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity. It is ecological balance.”

So what if Saudis have committed the most suicide attacks in Iraq? To the Bushies/corporatists, it’s a small price to pay to get their money back.

One more thing--don't forget that Bush 41 was meeting with Saudis, bin Ladens even, on the morning of 9/11!!!!

Can anyone still really believe that George Bush and his supporters care one iota about democracy? Or freedom? Those words are curses in their mouths.

Hagee and his war

Just watched the Max Blumenthal video on the Christians United For Israel convention. That is some scary-ass, fucked-up, way-out-there shit, dude.



Rapture Ready: The Unauthorized Christians United for Israel Tour from huffpost and Vimeo.

Hagee desperately wants a war with Iran. When he says that the U.S. should consider a pre-emptive strike on Iran, the crowd goes apeshit. There’s also some fucked-up scene of an American soldier marching through the crowd, going up onstage and comforting some Jewish woman. It’s unreal.

Hagee is a scary monster, that’s for sure, as I pointed out here.
And here I thought Jesus was the Prince of Peace. He did say “blessed are the peacemakers,” right? He didn’t say “blessed are the warmongers.”

What in holy fuck is wrong with these fucking people?

NSA WIRETAPPING MARCHES ON

I wondered out loud on this blog a week or so ago about whatever happened to Anna Diggs Taylor's decision that the NSA wiretapping program is unconstitutional. Well, I guess if I read the Washington Post every day I would have known. The headline to its article says it all: "Court Allows Wiretapping During Appeal." And just in time for the election, don'tcha know!!

There was something I forgot to mention about the Hagee broadcast we watched this past Sunday--when they did "God Bless America," lots of people in the congregation were doing the whole Pentecostal-one-arm-lifted-in-praise gesture, as though "God Bless America" was some deep religious song. It was kind of frightening to see that--no wonder so many people buy the argument that church and state should not be separate.

My wife and I were talking about that last night and I noticed for the first time how much the "one arm in affirmation" resembles a "Sieg Heil!" Here and here are pictures of the one arm gesture.

WHY NOT JUST NUKE ‘EM?

So I was staying in a hotel this weekend with the band in Tuscaloosa, AL (we played a frat gig there that night). On Sunday morning, we watched good ol’ John Hagee.

He was talking about terrorism and the correctness of the war on terror and had a giant billboard behind him that said “World War III has begun” and showed Israeli and American flags with targets over them.

He kept saying Ahmadinejad is a madman and that we can’t appease Hezbollah and that terrorists hate us because of our freedoms and what not. That last part isn’t a paraphrase, by the way–he actually said the words “they hate us because of our freedom.” It was hard to believe that he was trotting out that old canard in this day and age.

He repeatedly said that we’re at war and that the war is just and we have to fight it and so on. The congregation seemed to be very appreciative of his propaganda. The “altar call” consisted of Hagee leading the congregation in a rendition of “God Bless America.” Hagee said that the lyrics were written “as a prayer.”

The Thing Is...

As we watched this spectacle, we criticized each little Republican talking point he brought up. For example, he said that Muslims want to conquer the whole world and subjugate it under sharia law. It struck us that if that’s true (which it isn’t), we don’t really have any good options. I mean, with the signing today of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, it’s either live here under martial law without habeas corpus, or live here under sharia. Of course, that’s what we call a “false choice.”

Then our drummer had a good point–if Hagee is so concerned about the supposed threat of the “Islamists”–why doesn’t he advocate simply nuking them? Why must we fight this long and costly war when we could just take care of the “problem” right now–or as soon as Dear Leader can get “the button” under his hot little finger?

Not that I (or our drummer) am actually for that option–just the opposite is true. I’m violently opposed to nuking “the Muslims.” But the point is, if people like Hagee think that Muslims are such an existenial threat to the United States, why do they advocate fighting a more or less conventional war with them when we know we don’t have to do that?

Would the answer to that question be that if you eradicate the supposed problem with a few mushroom clouds, you suddenly lose the threat that allows a)Bush to keep taking away our liberties and/or b) people like Hagee to keep making money ($55 for a DVD set of his terror sermons)? Why yes, I think we’re on to something here.

Of course, Hagee and his ilk would say that they don't want to simply nuke our supposed antagonists because doing so would prevent the onset of the Rapture. But keep in mind, Hagee divorced his first wife and is married to a woman 12 years his junior. Don't evangelicals despise divorce, or is it just gay marriage that they don't like? Also, the Bible says that no one knows when Christ will come back and so it would seem to me to be the definiton of "a fool's errand" to try to hasten the Second Coming.

One other thing--as our drummer pointed out, there was nothing in Hagee's sermon (the part we saw, anyway) about loving God or loving your neighbor as yourself, which everyone knows is the entire point of Christianity. How 'bout them apples?

Terrorism Is A Problem Republicans Do Not Want To Solve

That is to say–terrorism is a problem Republicans do not want to solve, just like gay marriage and abortion and what they see as the general problem of “the culture.” Republicans (should I say “conservatives”?) feed off of these problems and use the promise of solving them as a way to get people like those in Hagee’s congregation to vote for them and support them. Why then would Republicans ever actually fix such problems?

It’s kind of like this crazy woman who keeps writing our local paper to say that Bush should be allowed to stay in office until the war in Iraq is over. What she doesn’t seem to understand (or thinks that other people don’t understand), is that if we tied the progress of a war to the length of time a person could stay in office, the war would never end. In other words, there’s no incentive to end wars or reduce/contain presidential power if we say to the President “You must be our leader until the war is over.” Then we’ll have a dictatorship for sure.

So this crazy lady is basically begging for a dictatorship, because she thinks Bush is such a good Christian man and by golly he’s doing the best he can to help our country. Meanwhile, Bush and company are insulting these theocons and their supporters behind theirs backs (according to “Tempting Faith”) and merely paying lip service to their causes while forging ahead with their real agenda, which is making the rich richer and the poor poorer.