"The War Is Over! It's Safe To Go Home Now!"

In the years following my escape from the USA I met some other young expats who were in the same boat as I was. Or at least it looked that way until January of 1973, when a wave of excitement swept through the "young expat community", with everyone saying:

"The war is over! It's safe to go home now!"

But I exaggerate. To be honest, not everyone was saying it. I wasn't saying anything.

Politics 101: Know the Difference between WE and THEY

WE didn't do this. THEY did this.

Apologies for writing something personal, but this is a special anniversary for me.

I was born in 1957, so I was six years old when President Kennedy was assassinated. At the time, I didn't even  know what the word "assassinated" meant, much less understand what it meant that this particular President had been assassinated. But I saw how the news affected my parents, and all the other adults, and I realized I needed to start paying attention to the news -- and especially to politics, which previously had seemed boring. 

In 1968, when Senator Kennedy was assassinated, I was only eleven, but I had been paying close attention for five years. I knew what "assassinated" meant, and I knew what it meant that this particular Senator had been assassinated. To the country, and to the world, it meant that we were destined for a long and horrible war. For me personally, it meant if I didn't get out of the United States in the next seven years, my life would be in danger. 

9/11 @ 20: It Could Have Been So Much Worse!

Fortunately, the collapse of the twin towers
was "an ordinary thing to have happened".
If it were unusual for skyscrapers to
collapse in this way, some troubling
questions might have been raised.

For those who were alive on September 11th, 2001, the events of the day seemed horrible beyond measure. But with the sober perspective that comes from two decades of hindsight, we're bound to admit that things could have turned out much worse, in countless ways.

For instance, even though only two of the seven buildings that made up the World Trade Center complex were hit by airplanes, all seven suffered heavily. Early media attention focused on the "collapse" of Buildings 1 and 2. And later we learned that Building 7 had also "collapsed". But until recently, only a few dedicated researchers were aware that Buildings 3, 4, 5, and 6 were also destroyed on the same day. Nowadays, thanks to the exceedingly free flow of information that we currently enjoy, most people know all about this.

And in light of these facts, we must accept an unpleasant truth: Rogue airliners can do infinitely more damage than we previously thought. To be honest, we ought to be grateful that the impacts of those two airplanes hitting those two buildings didn't destroy all of Wall Street, or most of Manhattan, or half of New York State, or a significant portion of the Eastern Seaboard. We're lucky that none of these things happened, because clearly if they had, we would be in much worse shape than we are now.

Common Ground With A War Criminal: Stryker Brigade Commander Harry D. Tunnell IV Sneered At COIN Doctrine, And So Do I

Col. Harry D. Tunnell IV, US Army

The Stryker Combat Brigade in Afghanistan, some of whose members stand accused of killing civilians for sport, was led by a man who openly sneered at the U.S. military's counterinsurgency strategy, according to Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post.

From Whitlock's report of September 18th:

The U.S. soldiers hatched a plan as simple as it was savage: to randomly target and kill an Afghan civilian, and to get away with it.

For weeks, according to Army charging documents, rogue members of a platoon from the 5th Stryker Combat Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, floated the idea. Then, one day last winter, a solitary Afghan man approached them in the village of La Mohammed Kalay. The "kill team" activated the plan.

One soldier created a ruse that they were under attack, tossing a fragmentary grenade on the ground. Then others opened fire.

According to charging documents, the unprovoked, fatal attack on Jan. 15 was the start of a months-long shooting spree against Afghan civilians that resulted in some of the grisliest allegations against American soldiers since the U.S. invasion in 2001. Members of the platoon have been charged with dismembering and photographing corpses, as well as hoarding a skull and other human bones.

The subsequent investigation has raised accusations about whether the military ignored warnings that the out-of-control soldiers were committing atrocities. The father of one soldier said he repeatedly tried to alert the Army after his son told him about the first killing, only to be rebuffed.
...
Seven other soldiers have been charged with crimes related to the case, including hashish use, attempts to impede the investigation and a retaliatory gang assault on a private who blew the whistle.

And so on.

As Whitlock reported on October 13th,

When the 5th Stryker Combat Brigade arrived in Afghanistan, its leader, Col. Harry D. Tunnell IV, openly sneered at the U.S. military's counterinsurgency strategy. The old-school commander barred his officers from even mentioning the term and told shocked U.S. and NATO officials that he was uninterested in winning the trust of the Afghan people.

Instead, he said, his soldiers would simply hunt and kill as many Taliban fighters as possible, as dictated by the brigade's motto, "Strike and Destroy."

What resulted was a year of tough fighting in territory fiercely defended by the Taliban and a casualty rate so high that it triggered alarms at the Pentagon. By the time the 3,800-member brigade returned in July to Joint Base Lewis-McChord, near Tacoma, Wash., it had paid a steep price: 35 soldiers were killed in combat, six were dead from accidents and other causes, and 239 were wounded.
...
As sordid accounts of the platoon's activities continue to emerge, critics inside and outside the Army are questioning whether the brigade's get-tough strategy, which emphasized enemy kills over civilian relations, influenced the behavior of the accused.

Questions also persist about why the 5th Stryker Brigade's chain of command did not intervene earlier ...

And so on.

I happen to agree with Col. Harry D. Tunnell IV, at least insofar as I have openly sneered at the U.S. military's 'counterinsurgency' strategy myself.

In a much different way, no doubt, but apparently to the same degree, Col. Harry D. Tunnell IV and I see the so-called 'COIN' strategy as -- to use the clinical term -- one big fat lie.

I cannot speak for Tunnell, but my understanding begins with the fact that the words 'insurgent' and 'insurgency' are entirely inappropriate in this context. In dictionary-English, as opposed to the political double-talk that goes on in America, an 'insurgent' is someone who rebels against a legitimately established government.

Both Iraq and Afghanistan were bombed, invaded, demolished and occupied, based on transparently obvious lies. The fact that the lies were exposed as such -- which wasn't very hard to do -- has not made a whit of difference to the wars; they still carry on, although the propaganda attending them has morphed as the official 'justifications' change and change and change...

And the governments set up by the Americans in Baghdad and Kabul are mere puppets, even though they sometimes try to bite the hand that moves them. The so-called 'elections' in both countries which installed these governments were controlled by occupying foreigners, so even if they had been 'fair', they never could have been 'free', and their results would have been tainted in any case.

Because the invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are undoubtedly war crimes and crimes against humanity of the highest order, and because the governments of these two countries are decidedly illegitimate, the people in these countries who are fighting against the US-led, NATO-assisted, ongoing war crimes are not 'insurgents' by any stretch of the imagination.

Secondly, as I see it, 'COIN' doctrine, which has evolved precious little despite the enormous numbers of casualties it has claimed and the relatively few successes it can point to, is based on the idea that occupying foreign soldiers can 'win' the 'hearts and minds' (or, in the Vietnam-era acronym, HAM) of indigenous people.

Perhaps in some fantasy land somewhere, but not on this planet, is it possible to 'win' anything resembling the 'hearts and minds' of any people at the same time as you are systematically killing their friends and relatives, demolishing their social and physical infrastructure, poisoning their landscape, setting up checkpoints to control their movement, kidnapping and torturing them, and dropping bombs on them from the skies -- all in an effort to gain control of their country.

The only way in which it is possible to stop indigenous people from attacking invaders and occupiers is to kill enough of them, in gruesome enough ways, and destroy enough of their environment, so completely and so permanently, that the survivors lose every aspect of their humanity except their survival instinct, and start cooperating, albeit tacitly, with manifest evil.

I understand that, and Col. Harry D. Tunnell IV understands it, and Barack Obama understands it too -- but Obama can never say it, and neither can Tunnell, and neither can any of the other men and women who make their living by manifesting the policy of evil.

But sometimes -- even despite the best efforts of those who have nothing but contempt for humanity and the truth -- facts come out which demand action. In such cases, the difference between the truth as we know it and the lies that must be told serves as a grindstone which destroys anyone unfortunate enough to be squeezed against it.

This is the inevitable consequence of a long-standing, bi-partisan, national policy so unspeakably evil that the people who implement that policy will never dare to tell the truth about it ... if they think anybody's listening.

In other words, they don't call it the Stryker Brigade for nothing.

If they were truly out to win Hearts And Minds, they would call it the HAMster Brigade.

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Truth Is Fiction: Peace Prize Fits Obama Like A Velvet Glove

War Is Peace in Orwell's 1984, and the same is true here and now.

In addition, Truth Is Fiction, as demonstrated in Barack Obama's selection as Nobel Peace Prize winner, and as elucidated in the New York Times, which says: "Surprise Nobel for Obama Stirs Praise and Doubts"

“The question we have to ask is who has done the most in the previous year to enhance peace in the world,” the Nobel committee chairman, Thorbjorn Jagland, said in Oslo after the announcement. “And who has done more than Barack Obama?”

Clearly this was one of those unaccountable moments when the list of possible answers was so long that the list itself seemed to disappear. But that's not the first time this has happened to the Nobel committee.

This is the same "Peace Prize", we may remember, that was given to Henry Kissinger, who at the time, as Richard Nixon's Secretary of State and National Security Adviser, was directing a massive American bombing campaign against Southeast Asia, part of a "war effort" that killed at least two million people and led directly to the deaths of at least two million more, not to mention damage to the survivors and their countries. Southeast Asia was only one of Kissinger's killing fields. And Kissinger is only one of the war criminals who have won this "Peace Prize".

With his mythical "withdrawal" from the war crimes in Iraq, his aggressive escalation of the war crimes in Afghanistan, his instigation of more war crimes in Pakistan, and his continuation of the war crimes in Somalia, Barack Obama has clearly "done the most in the previous year to enhance peace in the world" -- certainly much more than anyone on a list so long it seems to disappear.

Similarly, the list of Obama's efforts in support of the atrocities begun under the George W. Bush administration is a long one. And it must have disappeared as well, since nothing of it is ever mentioned in mainstream news reports.

By going to court to keep evidence of torture secret, for example, Barack Obama has inscribed his own name on the list of American war crime enablers -- a list so long no one can find it anywhere. And this list dates back much further than the Bush/Cheney years, back to a history that seems too awful to be countenanced, most of which has apparently evaporated.

But it's not just about Iraq and Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia. The list of countries not currently occupied but still under threat of American force is a long one, and some of the names on it are certainly victims of American interference: Iran, for example, Venezuela, Honduras, Russia, China... The list goes on and on but -- curiously -- it also seems to be invisible whenever the official historians are around.

War Is Peace. Truth Is Fiction. And the fabric of reality is threadbare. Before it vanishes entirely, let us make a few hasty notes:

As the tale of WMD in Iraq clearly demonstrates, the USA is currently engaged in a state-sponsored program of mass murder for fun and profit. One might say the USA is a state-sponsored program of mass murder for fun and profit. Enormous fun for the rubes. Enormous profit for those who pull the strings. Enormous pain and suffering, death and destruction for the rest -- in numbers so large they can't even be seen.

To become a "leader" of the USA, one must excel at the game of politics. Politics in general is the pursuit of power -- normally above all else, inevitably to the exclusion of all else. And politics in the USA is primarily -- or entirely -- the pursuit of power over a state-sponsored program of mass murder for fun and profit.

As the USA is still nominally a democracy, American politics necessarily involves doing one thing while saying another -- constantly, eternally, as a matter of course. And, for structural coherency if nothing else, the pinnacle of this murderous and deceptive power structure must house the mother of all murderous lies. Thus, a Peace Prize for a War Criminal is not only warranted and predictable, but altogether fitting and proper. It's amazing that American presidents don't get Nobel Peace Prizes every year.

None of this depends on Barack Obama personally, or any aspect of his background, or any member or members of his staff. The same could be said of any President in your lifetime who wasn't assassinated in office -- and anyone else who has risen to the top of the system. Indeed, the same could be said of the system itself. And the system is -- and was designed primarily to be -- self-perpetuating.

We appear to be headed for more of the same unless and until we can change the system. And we appear to have no way to change it.

To wit: What are our resources? What are our obstacles? Who are our friends? Who are our enemies?

Speaking of enemies -- enemies of peace, enemies of truth, enemies of humanity -- it is quite clear, is it not, that the Nobel committee is one of them. And so is the New York Times. And so is the president of the United States.

But then, how much of this is news?

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Home Improvement, Post-9/11; Part I: Wood Chips Tell A Sad Story

I've just finished helping a friend set up some new flower beds and trim them with a border of wood chips.

It's a good way to mulch, with recycled organic matter blotting out weeds on the way to becoming plant food.

We used 12 cubic yards of chips. That's not a lot by industrial standards, but it took us two days to put those chips where we wanted them.

And while we were doing that, I was playing around with a few numbers...

There are 3 feet in a yard and therefore there are 3x3x3 = 27 cubic feet in a cubic yard. We moved 12 cubic yards or 12x27 = 324 cubic feet of wood chips.

That's enough to cover a path 3 feet wide, 4 inches thick, and 324 feet long.

On a football field, such a path would extend from one end zone to the other.

There are 12 inches in a foot and therefore there are 12x12x12 = 1728 cubic inches in a cubic foot.

We moved 324 cubic feet or 324x1728 = 559,872 cubic inches of wood chips.

That's about half a million cubic inches of chips.

Picture a cubic inch: it's about the size of a golf ball. You can hold it between your thumb and forefinger. You can put it in your shirt pocket.

Remember that cubic inch; hold on to that image. Now let's get hypothetical...

If each cubic inch of wood chips were worth two dollars, the chips on that path -- three feet wide, four inches thick, from one end zone to the other -- would be worth about a million dollars. Even with inflation, a million is still a very large number.

If each cubic inch of wood chips were worth a million dollars, the chips on that path would be worth about $500 billion, which is roughly the size of the Pentagon's annual operating budget, not including black-budget programs or additional appropriations for actual wars, such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

Think of this: A million dollars per cubic inch. Three feet wide; four inches thick. One end zone to the other. Year after year after year. And that's just for standard operations.

Clandestine acts of terrorism and overt wars of aggression cost extra, of course.

How much extra? Look at it this way: If each cubic inch of wood chips were worth two hundred thousand dollars, the chips on that path would be worth about $100 billion, roughly as much as congress just approved to keep the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan going until the end of September!

And that's just the cost to America. It's a pittance compared to the cost borne by the rest of the world.

And how much is that? Consider Iraq:

If each cubic inch of wood chips represented three people killed, at least six others injured, and nine more refugees, the chips on that path -- four inches thick, three feet wide, from one end zone to the other -- would show just some of the damage we have done to Iraq.

The people of Iraq, if you recall, never attacked us, never intended to attack us, and never could have done us any damage even if they had wanted to. That didn't matter to the president who started the war, it doesn't matter to the president who is continuing it, and it doesn't matter to the Americans who support it.

We are talking about mass murder of innocent people as a matter of state policy. And there's no reason for it, none at all ... except:

If each cubic inch of wood chips were two million barrels of oil...

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Message From Guantanamo: "America is Double Hetler in unjustice"

I direct your attention to the following article, dated June 3, 2009, by Michelle Shephard of the Toronto Star:

Gitmo protest captured on film

WASHINGTON – A Guantanamo Bay detainee committed suicide late Monday just hours after two Chinese Muslim captives staged the detention centre's first public protest, increasing the pressure on U.S. President Barack Obama to outline his plan of how he will close the offshore prison.

Was it really a suicide? No details on which to base a judgment seem to be available, which is par for the course. And as for Obama and "pressure" to "outline his plan", that's not all the so-called "suicide" increases, but journalists can only say so much, even if they work in foreign countries.

Yemeni Muhammad Ahmad Abdallah Salih, 31, is the first prisoner to die since the White House changed hands four months ago. His suicide follows weeks of criticism from both ends of the political spectrum over the fate of the remaining 240 Guantanamo detainees.

News of the suicide was emailed to the media just as a flight bringing journalists from Guantanamo landed in Maryland.

Based on the track record of the organization sending that email, it might be best to refer to Muhammad Salih's death as a "so-called suicide", at least until further details emerge.

But I say this with two caveats, neither of which is likely to be satisfied, ever.

First, even if further details about Muhammad Salih's death do emerge, will they be credible? Probably not, especially if they are not corroborated. Will they be corroborated? Probably not, especially considering that detainees are being held at Guantanamo precisely to hide them, both from the media and from the protections normally afforded accused individuals under US and international law.

And second, how much is a man supposed to take? How much of the responsibility for Muhammad Salih's death must be laid at the feet of our government -- which held him for more than seven years, with no charge or trial or hearing, and no prospect of any of these in the near or distant future? -- which went to extreme lengths to deny him and all the other detainees any legal recourse or challenge, even though it never intended to charge them? -- which offered mountain tribesmen thousands of dollars apiece for any "terror suspects" they happened to capture, at the same time as innocent civilians were fleeing the bombing of their homes in Afghanistan?

Or to put it another way, given the scope and scale and ferocity of the forces arrayed in a deliberate and knowingly unjustified attempt to ruin the lives of Muhammad Salih and many others like him, how could his death be considered anything other than murder?

The press had been at the U.S. naval detention centre for the war crimes court hearing of Canadian Omar Khadr.

Khadr, 22, is accused of war crimes, including the murder of a U.S. soldier during a firefight in Afghanistan in July 2002.

And he's still in prison in Guantanamo despite two very inconvenient facts: that he was a child when he was captured, and that the "evidence" against him is clearly fabricated.

But then again, the same forces that ruined the life of Muhammad Salih are deployed against Omar Khadr, as they have been ever since ... since ...

Here's the big news! A protest! and information coming from detainees:

Hours after Khadr's brief hearing Monday, fewer than a dozen journalists on the trip, including a Toronto Star reporter, witnessed a rare unscripted moment on the base when two Uighur (pronounced Wee-gur) detainees managed to hold an impromptu protest.

The group was at an Oceanside prison known as "Camp Iguana," where 16 Uighur and one Algerian detainee are imprisoned.

As the journalists neared the fence line, the captives held up messages written in crayon on prison-issued sketch pads, knowing the Pentagon prohibits journalists from speaking to detainees.

For a few minutes they silently turned the pages quickly, as journalists shot video, photos and scribbled down their messages.

"We are being held in prison but we have been announced innocent a corrding to the virdict in caurt," one message said. "We need to freedom (sic)."

Most of the detainees currently held at Guantanamo are (or surely must be considered) innocent, either because they have been cleared of wrongdoing by a military court or because they have never been charged to begin with. And that's why

[a]nother stated, "America is Double Hetler in unjustice," seemingly comparing their treatment by the U.S. government to that of the Nazis.

Seemingly? Seemingly?? What else could they possibly be talking about? They were obviously comparing their treatment by the U.S. government to that of the Nazis. But then again, journalists can only say so much.

The Uighur prisoners with Chinese citizenship have been cleared for release but there's nowhere for them to go since the minority group is persecuted in its Communist-controlled homeland. The U.S. government has tried for months to find a country willing to provide the group asylum.

That's a laugh. It's a sick laugh, to be sure, but that's the only kind of laugh we get anymore.

The US government has spent years and years telling anyone who will still listen that these people are despicable terrorists, "the worst of the worst", and so on. Even now Dick Cheney is going around saying that if they are merely transferred to civilian prisons in the US, they will be plotting terrorist attacks against us from their cells. It's ludicrous, but that's what takes priority now according to the mainstream media. And reporters can only say so much ...

Reporters were ushered away from the fenced-in area shortly after the Uighurs had their written protest. One of the captives yelled as the gate was locked behind the group: "Is Obama Communist or a Democrat? We have the same operation in China."

Journalists were later forbidden from sending photos or video footage of the signs until Guantanamo officials received clearance from the White House – which didn't come until about 14 hours later.

No, truly. It's a free country. Always has been, always will be. Seriously.

But the best [read: worst] is yet to come:

Pentagon ground rules signed by reporters stipulate that images of detainees must be pre-screened and cannot identify the captives due to regulations in the Geneva Conventions prohibiting the exploitation of prisoners of war.

Isn't that just rich?

A whole new category of mock-legal language was created, and the prison camp at Guantanamo was built, precisely in order to circumvent the Geneva Conventions and their prohibitions against the exploitation of prisoners of war.

And that's why Guantanamo detainees like Muhammad Salih are not normally called "prisoners", much less "prisoners of war". Instead they are called "enemy combatants" or "illegal enemy combatants" or simply "detainees".

Long, involved, and utterly cynical "legal" documents were created in order to give a semi-plausible veneer to some of the most blatant falsehoods of the terror war, documents whose existence has never been a secret, documents some of which have themselves been coming into the public eye recently: documents whose purpose appears to have been to deny these people "prisoner of war" status so that the protections mandated by the Geneva Conventions can be semi-plausibly described as not applicable to them -- and so that the Pentagon can ignore the Geneva Conventions in dealing with them.

So for the Pentagon to turn around and say that journalists cannot publish the names or faces of the captives, because to do so would be a violation of the Geneva Conventions...!

They don't even care anymore how transparent their lies are. They really couldn't care less whether or not you can see through their charade instantly. Is it because they have the big bucks, and the big weapons, and the big media, and the big politicians on their side, while we only have one another and the truth?

Back to the alleged suicide.

Hours after the protest guards found Salih unresponsive in his cell in a separate area of the prison and attempts to revive him failed.

We can be sure that the attempts to revive him were most vigorous, but what happened to Muhammad Salih in the hours before he was found unresponsive? And what happened to him in the years before that?

At least we know the answer to the latter question.

He had been held without charges at Guantanamo since February 2002 and appeared to have joined a lengthy hunger strike, according to medical records released in response to an Associated Press lawsuit.

How many years could you be held incommunicado, halfway across the world from your family, with no charges or evidence filed against you, no right to challenge your incarceration, and no prospect of ever obtaining your freedom, much less justice -- how many years of that could you take, even without any "enhanced interrogation techniques", before you decided it might be a good idea to stop eating?

Then again, a journalist can only say so much.

On the other hand, Michelle Shephard does manage to provide the photo above, and some very telling context:

Three detainee suicides in June 2006 under the George W. Bush administration drew international outrage, further fuelled by comments about the military's reaction.

"They have no regard for human life, neither ours nor their own," then-Guantanamo commander Rear Adm. Harry Harris Jr. said. "I believe this was not an act of desperation but an act of asymmetric warfare against us."

The psychopathy [*] on display here is striking, and perfectly fitting for a commander of a place such as Guantanamo.

They killed themselves -- and nobody else -- as an act of warfare against us!

We -- their oppressors: the people who held them in captivity for years, with no charges, no evidence, no due process and no hope -- are the victims of their deaths.

It doesn't get much more "Hetlerian" than that.

~~~

Psychopathy -- the personality disorder we see in the people-without-conscience who are variously called psychopathic, sociopathic, anti-social, and moral imbeciles -- comes in a variety of forms.

The most common psychopathic personality type is called "aggressive narcissism".

The following traits have been identified in a seminal work by Robert D. Hare as indicative of aggressive narcissism.

Read this list and try not to think of Harry Harris Jr., the former Guantanamo commander.

* Glibness/superficial charm
* Grandiose sense of self-worth
* Pathological lying
* Conning/manipulative
* Lack of remorse or guilt
* Shallow affect
* Callous/lack of empathy
* Failure to accept responsibility for own actions

Read that list again and try not to think of the Pentagon, or the mainstream media, or the "leaders" of our mainstream political parties.

Read it one more time and try not to think of our long record of violent foreign intervention, or our history of slavery and racism, or the obliteration of the people who lived here before America was "discovered", and the utter contempt with which their cultures and their descendants have been treated ever since.

"Double Hetler in unjustice" may be spelled incorrectly, but it is seemingly an understatement.

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Too Obvious To Mention: Obama-Era Lies Protect Bush-Era Crimes

Our new transformative president Obama's decision to fight a court order requiring the release of photos depicting the well-documented abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib -- while entirely in character for this transformative new administration -- is being widely described as shameful enough on its own, let alone for a president who portrayed himself as a champion of transparency and accountability in government.

But then again Obama was once a candidate and now he's a president. And when he was a candidate, certain people (like his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright) were portrayed as troublemakers and cast out of the national scene because they dared to point out that Obama was a politician!

Seriously! The campaign pretended the candidate was not a politician. How transparently false is that? Fortunately for Obama, he had to run against a man who was obviously certifiably insane, and a woman who was obviously even crazier. In that respect Obama's victory in the November election was more inevitable than remarkable. So what if he's part black? A green and blue guy could have won that election, if he was a half-decent politician.

And yet somehow it comes as a big surprise that the tales told by a politician when he was a candidate turn out to be false once he gets elected. Thus people are shocked and even mildly disappointed when their man, now in office, turns out to be somewhat different than he was portrayed during the campaign. When will we ever learn? I'll rephrase that: Will we ever learn?

Obama wants to suppress the photos even though their release is required by law, under the Freedom of Information Act [FOIA]. In his defense of his new position, Obama echoes Pentagon claims that the release of the photos would inflame our enemies and endanger our troops. And our old friends, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman, have gone so far as to craft legislation that specifically exempts from FOIA any photographs

taken between September 11, 2001 and January 22, 2009 relating to the treatment of individuals engaged, captured, or detained after September 11, 2001, by the Armed Forces of the United States in operations outside of the United States ...

if the Secretary of Defense, in consultation with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, determines that the disclosure of that photograph would endanger (A) citizens of the United States; or (B) members of the Armed Forces or employees of the United States Government deployed outside the United States.

Glenn Greenwald has been good on this topic, and so has Chris Floyd. I've read some others on the subject, not as many as perhaps I should have, but then again my eyes aren't what they once were. And they've had their fill. Nonetheless, I do report that in all my travels I have not once seen anyone make any hay via the the following obvious points:

First of all, it's the abuse that enrages and inflames people, not the photos. If we really want to avoid inflaming the rest of the world, the way to do that is to stop abusing people. And that means a lot more than the obvious facts that we have to stop smearing prisoners in excrement and dragging them around on leashes, and that we have to stop raping them or forcing them to engage in other sexual practices, and that we have to stop all the other indecent treatment. But we also have to end the despicable practice of indefinite detention without trial, without a hearing, without any evidence, and without any charges.

Aside from moral questions of right and wrong, there's also the obvious (but apparently unmentionable) fact that it's only propagandized and brainwashed Americans who don't know what's been going on at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, and who would be shocked and enraged by the release of the photos. The people in Iraq, for example, and in Afghanistan, and in far too many other countries, know all about the torture that's been happening in the American and American-friendly torture chambers of the world. So how much will they really be inflamed by the photos? And conversely, how much will they be inflamed by the attempt to keep those photos hidden?

Second, if Obama and Graham and Lieberman and their ilk really cared about the safety of "members of the Armed Forces or employees of the United States Government deployed outside the United States", they would not block the release of the photos, but instead they would vow to end the Bush-era wars immediately, and to quit attacking foreign countries that never did anything to us, never could have, and never even wanted to. But of course they will never do any such thing. They are obviously concerned about the safety of the troops, exactly to the extent that the troops further the goals of empire.

And third, if instead of destroying one country after another, based on one lie after another, the US spent its annual hundreds of billions building roads and schools and hospitals, and water treatment plants and electric generating plants, in one country after another, then "members of the Armed Forces" could go get real jobs, because "employees of the United States Government deployed outside the United States" would be viewed outside the United States as friends, not enemies.

It's all so obvious. No wonder nobody mentions it.

What's also obvious is that Obama and the Pentagon don't want to release the photos because of the impact they would have on "the home front", where we're the enemy and the ongoing battle is about control of information.

But here's the rub: what would happen if Americans knew a bit more about what went on during the Bush administration?

Not much, probably. The usual goons would celebrate a few more "Ay-rabs" "getting what they deserve", and the rest of us would hang our heads in shame. But fundamentally nothing would change, not only because most of us don't give a damn, but also because the rest of us have no means by which to change the vicious and corrupt system.

When they hand out the prizes for the most pathetic remnant of a former democracy, we'll be Number One. And that's pretty obvious too.

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Come, Let Us Celebrate The Best Of America, Living And Dead

To honor America and observe Memorial Day, let us now savor a few words from an anonymous AP stenographer, courtesy of the Los Angeles Times:

Obama marks Memorial Day with tribute at Arlington

In brief remarks after he laid the wreath and observed a moment of silence at Arlington, Obama saluted the men and women of America's fighting forces, both living and dead, as "the best of America."

"Why in an age when so many have acted only in pursuit of narrowest self-interest have the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines of this generation volunteered all that they have on behalf of others?" he said. "Why have they been willing to bear the heaviest burden?"

"Whatever it is, they felt some tug. They answered a call. They said 'I'll go.' That is why they are the best of America," Obama said. "That is what separates them from those who have not served in uniform, their extraordinary willingness to risk their lives for people they never met."

What kind of people are willing to risk their lives -- and throw away their souls! -- for the likes of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, or Bill Clinton, or George H. W. Bush, or any of their predecessors?

Obama called them "the best"; he forgot to mention that they're also "the brightest".

Obama said he can't know what it's like to walk into battle or lose a child.

"But I do know this. I am humbled to be the commander in chief of the finest fighting force in the history of the world," he said to applause.

This is beneath derision, and it went down swimmingly, of course. I understand completely.

Let's all have big parades to honor our professional and patriotic mass murderers, living and dead!

Let us line the streets to watch the psychopaths and fools -- and those who support the psychopaths and fools -- march by.

Let us complain about how nothing much has changed since the election, how Barack Obama shows the same chicken-hearted reluctance to move that ruined the second Bush-Cheney administration, and how -- despite years of furtive planning -- we still haven't got off our butts and righteously obliterated Iran.

Let us join together and decry the incompetence in the Beltway, which explains why we haven't won yet in Iraq or Afghanistan, and why we may not make any real progress there until after the next election.

Let us weep for the "victims" of the seemingly endless series of "government accidents" which have got us involved in "the wrong wars" at "the wrong times".

But let us never say a word word about the millions of people our heroes have killed over the years; the tens of thousands our heroes have incarcerated and tortured; the tens of millions whose homes and families our heroes have destroyed; the hundreds of millions whose homelands our heroes have violated, overtly or otherwise, and in whose nations "democratic institutions" are allowed to exist only if the "duly elected representatives" find it politically expedient to toe the line.

That's our line, by the way.

So let us celebrate that line, just as we celebrate the psychopaths and fools who enforce it.

Let us wave our flags for those extroardinary people who have made sure -- on our behalf -- that the kids in these pictures, and millions of others just like them, never had a chance.

After all, we wouldn't want to be anti-American, would we?

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A Simple Question About Presidents And Their Actions

Over the past year or so, as the race for the presidency not-so-gradually became even more obviously farcical than I ever thought it could get, I often found myself overwhelmed by the split capacity of the "progressive-Democratic" writers I had been reading.

They seemed endlessly capable of spotting, and spotlighting, "conservative-Republican" transgressions of various sorts, from mildly aberrant sexual misadventures to truly horrific public policy. And there have been plenty of "conservative-Republican" transgressions, so that part of the "job" has been easy for these writers.

But many of them have been even more capable of ignoring "progressive-Democratic" transgressions of various sorts, up to and including truly horrific public policy. This part of the "job" should have been the hard part, but most of them have managed to make it seem easy as well.

In my opinion, the ascension of and worldwide adoration for Savior Obama has done more damage to the causes of peace, truth and justice than any event since -- and possibly even including -- the so-called "terrorist attacks" that launched the so-called "Global War On Terror".

The American imperial monster lives on, but now -- for far too many people -- its deadly tentacles are heavily masked.

Only the mask is new. The depredations remain the same. Incredibly (or predictably!), Budda Obama's campaign of hope and change and unity is turning out to be the precursor to an administration where change remains something you can hope for, whereas unity is now. And unity, of course, means uniting behind the horrific abuses of the previous administration -- and making those abuses permanent.

But the new mask is perhaps more powerful than any mask previously used to hide the imperial abuses of the American state. It is much more powerful because it's much more personal, existing, as it does, entirely in the splendor of the individual imagination.

I had a short and none-too-pleasant run-in with the mask a few days ago. The father of one of my wife's friends, a very pleasant and intelligent man, was telling me that America was now on a new track, that Obama's decision to retain Bob Gates as Secretary of Defense was a good one, and so on.

I was not in a good mood to hear such things, especially since I had just finished reading Chris Floyd's piece about Obama having ordered 17,500 more troops into Afghanistan. Floyd quoted an article from the New York Times which described a raid on Afghan civilians, apparently by US Special Forces, in which an entire family was gunned down, except for a four-year-old child.

Read this slowly and carefully, if you can stand it:

One day this month, an old man who called himself Syed Mohammed sat on the floor of his mud-brick hut in the eastern Kabul neighborhood of Hotkheil and recounted how most of his son’s family was wiped out in an American-led raid last September.

Mr. Mohammed said he was awakened in the early morning to the sound of gunfire and explosions. Such sounds were not uncommon; Hotkheil is a Pashtun-dominated area, where sympathies for the Taliban run strong.

In a flash, Mr. Mohammed said, several American and Afghan soldiers kicked open the door of his home. The Americans, he said, had beards, an almost certain sign that they belonged to a unit of the Special Forces, which permits uniformed soldiers to grow facial hair.

“Who are you?” Mr. Mohammed recalled asking the intruders.

“Shut up,” came the reply from one of the Afghan soldiers. “We are the government.”

Mr. Mohammed said he was taken to a nearby base, interrogated for several hours and let go as sunrise neared.

When he returned home, Mr. Mohammed said, he went next door to his son’s house, only to find that most of his family had been killed: the son, Nurallah, and his pregnant wife and two of his sons, Abdul Basit, age 1, and Mohammed, 2. Only Mr. Mohammed’s 4-year-old grandson, Zarqawi, survived.

“The soldiers had a right to search our house,” Mr. Mohammed said. “But they didn’t have a right to do this.”

Bullet holes still pockmarked Nurallah’s home more than four months after the attack, and the infant’s cradle still hung from the ceiling.

The day after the attack, a senior Afghan official came to the door and handed Mr. Mohammed $800.

“If you spent some time here, you would see that we are not the kind of people who would get involved with the Taliban,” Mr. Mohammed said. “Anyway, what was the fault of the babies?”

I said a few more harsh words about our new president, but our friend interrupted to say I should "cut Obama some slack" since "he hasn't been in office very long" and therefore, presumably, he hasn't even started to reveal his true agenda.

I showed my disgust and walked away as quickly as I could. My wife was very angry with me, saying I had been rude to her guest, and I suppose she was right about that.

We disagree about whether my rudeness was called for. But had I not turned tail and fled, I would have had to ask him:

How long does a President have to be in office before we can start judging him according to what he actually does?

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Torturing Democracy: A Documentary That Could Put Dick Cheney Out Of Our Misery

Torturing Democracy, an expose of how and why America came to be involved in open large-scale torture of prisoners (many of whom were simply shepherds captured by mountain tribesmen and sold into captivity), is now available for viewing online.

As Scott Horton reported last month, PBS can't find a time slot for this Frontline documentary until January 21, 2009 -- the day after Bush and Cheney are scheduled to leave office.

Horton has reported more recently that this documentary could help to provide "A Ticket to The Hague for Dick Cheney". Why? Because it has the power to change the minds of influential people in denial.

Horton explains:

Gene Burns is one of the nation’s most popular talk radio hosts. For years he has dismissed accounts of torture; America, he has said, does not torture. But last night, after watching Torturing Democracy and realizing that he had not understood how important and serious an issue torture had become, Burns abruptly changed his tune. Here’s a transcript of his remarks.

I now believe that some international human rights organization ought to open an investigation of the Bush Administration, I think focused on Vice President Dick Cheney, and attempt to bring charges against Cheney in the international court of justice at The Hague, for war crimes. Based on the manner in which we have treated prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, and the manner in which we have engaged in illegal rendition–that is, surreptitiously kidnapping prisoners and flying them to foreign countries where they could be tortured by foreign agents who do not follow the same civilized standards to which we subscribe.

I’ve always said that I’ve thought that even at Guantánamo Bay the United States was careful to stay on this side of torture. In fact, you may recall that on a couple of occasions we got into a spirited debate on this program about waterboarding, and whether waterboarding was torture. And I took the position that it was not torture, that it was simulated drowning, and that if that produced information which preserved our national security, I thought it was permissible.

And then I saw Torturing Democracy.

And I’m afraid, now that I have seen what I have seen, that I was wrong about that. It looks to me, based on this documentary, as if in fact we have engaged in behavior and practices at Guantánamo Bay, and in these illegal renditions, that are violations of the international human rights code.

And I believe that Dick Cheney is responsible. I believe that he was the agent of the United States government charged with developing the methodology used at Guantánamo Bay, supervising it for the administration, and indulging in practices which are in fact violations of human rights.

A large part of the population still credits the Bush Administration’s absurd claim that it never embraced or applied torture to detainees as a matter of policy. Two recent documentaries, Alex Gibney’s Oscar-winning Taxi to the Dark Side (for which I was both a consultant and interviewee) and Sherry Jones’s PBS feature Torturing Democracy investigate the administration’s policies and conduct. Both draw from decision-makers inside the administration and soldiers on the frontline.

The administration did its best to spike both films. Taxi was to be aired on the Discovery Channel, but with Discovery Communications then in the process of going public and facing sensitive SEC clearances, executives apparently decided not to risk provoking the anger of the White House. As I reported elsewhere, PBS also found that it had no network space for Torturing Democracy until January 20, 2009 — the day the Bush Administration decamps from Washington.

Why was the administration so concerned about these two films? The conversion of Gene Burns supplies the answer. No one who sits through these films, I believe, will be able afterwards to accept the official version of events. George Bush has good reason to be afraid of too many Americans watching these documentaries.

George Bush is not the only one who has good reason to be afraid of too many Americans watching these documentaries. And that, in my opinion, is good incentive to watch them -- and to spread the word about them!

So here are those links again:
Torturing Democracy
Taxi to the Dark Side

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Beyond Sick: Canada Mourns A Fallen Psycho Warrior

The American way of war has come to Canada, and it's incredible what a dose of manure can do, even in the cold!

Here's a case study in the process by which a government can take a menace to society, put him in a uniform, and ship him halfway around the world where he can be a menace to some other society until he gets himself killed there and comes home a national hero.

Either sheer ignorance is sheer bliss, or Daniel Dale of the Toronto Star had to be very, very careful writing the story of Darryl Caswell.

Under the headline "Loved son a family's loss, a nation's hero", and with the sub-title: 'Why didn't he get one more ticket?', Daniel Dale's ode to a national disgrace begins this way:

Darryl Caswell took out a loan to buy his baby, a Honda CBR600RR sport motorcycle painted orange. He didn't spend $13,000 to drive slowly.

At least Daniel Dale is upfront about the fact that Darryl Caswell was just the sort of fellow you'd avoid if you wanted to live a long and healthy life. Unfortunately, some other people were not so lucky.

Near Bowmanville [Ontario], his home-town, and near Petawawa [Ontario], where his Royal Canadian Dragoons were based, Caswell careened through the streets, sometimes in excess of 150 kilometres [93 miles] per hour, seeking thrills, courting danger, "this orange blur," his stepmother says, on dark, small-town nights. Darryl being reckless. Darryl being Darryl.

Darryl being Darryl? Seriously? That's it?

"Careening through the streets" of a small town "in excess of 150 kilometres per hour"? Please!

He was a menace to society. He didn't care if he killed himself.

He didn't care if he killed anybody else, either.

Seriously.

Families of innocent people killed by "thrill-seeking", "death-defying" assholes like Darryl Caswell mourn in every city and town of any size, yet their grief is never immortalized like the grief Canadians are expected to feel for this "national hero".

Seriously.

In the summer of 2006, Caswell got a speeding ticket – another speeding ticket – riding the bike near Peterborough. His superiors, unamused, issued a warning: one more ticket, no more Afghanistan.

Why do they give maniacs tickets for repeatedly driving more than three times the speed limit in a residential area?

Why don't they just throw them away and lose the key, before the maniacs kill somebody?

Because they have a better use for maniacs like Darryl Caswell.

Caswell burned his tires. He put the Honda in storage. At the end of January 2007, he deployed to Kandahar.

Caswell was headed to the war. And that's why his superiors were unamused.

"Caswell's gonna kill somebody", they must have thought. "Let's make sure it's not one of ours."

On the home front, more than a year later, his father is still deep in denial.

"They said, `One more speeding ticket, you won't be able to go on the mission,'" says his father, Paul. "You wonder, why didn't he get one more ticket?"

Paul Caswell, 49, is a conveyor belt inspector and repairman. He has worked for 30 years at Bowmanville's Goodyear plant. He speaks plainly, grieves quietly. But he has questions, "the what-ifs."

He is a father still trying to accept, more than a year later, that his son was in that country on that patrol in that vehicle on that road at that moment.

It couldn't be any other way. Parents who raise maniacs are always in denial.

In 2004, Darryl worked at Goodyear for six months. For a young man who needed speed, factory work was numbingly mundane. He joined the army. Less than three years later, he was in Afghanistan. Less than five months later, his body was transported home.

"Why couldn't I have kept him at Goodyear? Why didn't he want to stay there? Good job for me all these years," Paul says. "Just wasn't for him, all black and dirty. He was doing what he wanted to do, but you ask yourself, `what if?' You hear there was supposed to be a minesweep that day. Minesweep was supposed to go down and clear the path first. But it got behind or broke down or something, so they went anyway. And that's when Darryl hit it, and that was the end of it. You'd think today's technology – you can check out your backyard on Google – why can't they be watching those guys and see when they're burying bombs and stuff?"

Paul now rides the Honda.

And isn't that just perfect?

Darryl Caswell's grieving father -- who apparently hasn't progressed to asking why Canadian troops are occupying a nation halfway around the world, which never attacked Canada, or any other NATO country, and never planned to do so -- now drives his late son's suicide machine.

And he wishes his country could establish 24/7 wall-to-wall surveillance in Afghanistan, so more maniacs like Darryl don't get killed there. Seriously.

Daniel Dale's tale turns to Caswell's brother, Logan, who was celebrating his 12th birthday when he got the bad news about his brother's death in Afghanistan.

The phone rang at the Caswells' comfortable Bowmanville house on June 11, 2007, Logan Caswell's 12th birthday. Trooper Darryl Caswell, Reconnaissance Squadron, 2nd Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment, had promised his little brother he would call.

"I was waitin' for that call," Logan says. "Waitin' and waitin'..."

But Darryl, 25, was not on the line. The call was not for Logan.

While leading a supply convoy north of Kandahar City, the Coyote reconnaissance vehicle Darryl drove had struck an improvised explosive device. Less than two months before he was to return home, he was dead.

"I just thought to myself, it had to happen on my birthday," Logan says. "I didn't even cry. I just screamed."

It's a horrible thing, and you have to scream with him.

But even as Logan Caswell was screaming, the word was being passed down from Ottawa: "We've lost another psychopath; fire up the tribute machine."

Darryl's body, like the bodies of the 56 Canadian Afghanistan casualties before him, was flown to the military's base in Trenton, then driven west for an autopsy in Toronto. His family trailed the police-escorted hearse to the coroner's office, Paul and his wife, Christine, at their "lowest," Christine says, Darryl's death "finally real," their devastation mitigated only by the throngs of people who lined Hwy. 401 overpasses, wearing red and holding flags, to pay their respects.

For all but two of the repatriation convoys since Darryl's, Paul and Christine have stood on an overpass themselves. They wear red. They hold flags. From above, they watch strangers re-enact their nightmare.

"It's hard when we go, because it brings everything back," says Christine. "But we go because we know what it meant to us."

The military propaganda machine couldn't have better representatives than its very own victims:

Christine, a vivacious 46-year-old with blue eyes and blonde hair, married Paul in 1993. This Saturday afternoon, she wears a red Support Our Troops shirt, three pro-troops wristbands. A heart pendant, pictures of Darryl and Logan inside, hangs around her neck.

The families must go through hell; that's a given. So their pain is assuaged by the most vicious of fiction.

This fiction is a phony salve that leaves a permanent infection on the surrounding communities. And the disease spreads through intense government PR efforts which drive propaganda such as the piece we are now reading.

She can smile, now, when she flips through the Darryl photos she has placed on the coffee table of their family room. ("He loved his turkey and dressing. Darryl was meat and potatoes." "He was small but he was mighty. Strong as an ox." "Him and his dad, boot camp graduation. Darryl loved that photo. They had a special bond.")

She can laugh, now, when she tells Darryl-being-Darryl stories. ("Logan, remember when Darryl chased the chicken?")

"I'm getting to that point where I have a lot of good memories," she says. "I don't cry as much. Logan was getting sick of me crying."

Sick? This is way beyond sick!

Unfortunately, it is becoming more typical all the time.

The death of a soldier is unlike the death of anyone else. Darryl, a life-long daredevil, might well have died pursuing a private adventure. But he died in Kandahar, in a war of choice he deeply supported but millions of Canadians oppose.

A war of choice? Whose choice?

Have we sunk so low that our governments can now start, or join, foreign wars that are opposed -- on solid moral grounds -- by millions of people, yet perfectly ok for those who choose to fight, and who are called national heroes for doing it?

We have, you know. You bet we have.

We have sunk a lot lower than that.

And so the Caswells' loss, so deeply personal, was also both public and political, a subject for introspection and a catalyst, like 96 other soldiers' deaths since 2002, for national introspection. Darryl, their son, was now a national hero. For months, there were plaques to receive, ceremonies to attend, politicians to meet, interviews to do.

Some might be asking themselves questions like, "How long must this go on?"

The answer appears to be "Forever. The endlessness justifies the meaninglessness."

In November, Bowmanville High School honoured Darryl, a graduate, in its Remembrance Day ceremony. In May, a street in a new Bowmanville subdivision was named Darryl Caswell Way. Later in May, his name was added to Bowmanville's cenotaph.

"It's all great," says Paul. "Everybody has just been great. It's a great honour for the town. But it gets to be – we didn't really have a chance to have down time, to grieve normally. We didn't have a whole lot of break, with the town, the media and everything. We tried to be good with the media, get his name out there, let 'em know. But we've gotta get on with our lives, get some normalcy back."

It's all great! It's great for the town to be assosicated with a dead menace to society -- as long as it was a foreign society.

It's great for the family of the dead thrill-seeking menace to be feted all over the place. But enough is enough.

Framed photos of Darryl used to hang throughout the house's main floor. "Too much," says Christine.

They moved the photos to a corner of the basement. They seek a better balance between remembering and forgetting.

"You don't want people to forget about him," says Christine. "He's our son. We don't want anyone to forget about him, or who he was as a person. But we're at a point where we've gotta heal."

I cannot disagree with that sentiment. I only wish Christine knew how true it was.

They really do have to heal -- not just from the loss of their son but from a lifetime of propaganda.

They know nothing. They've been through all this and they still have no clue.

And that's why their government can take advantage of them the way it has.

And that's why they're continuing the tradition.

Three months or so after the phone call, Logan had his room painted in camouflage, a mural of his brother driving the Coyote armoured vehicle on the wall opposite his bed.

Framed photos of Darryl sit on his shelves. Darryl's T-shirts hang amongst his on his rack. Beneath his television, there are the shoot-'em-up video games he and Darryl played for hours, the ones he can't bring himself to play alone.

For several months after Darryl died, Logan slept on the floor in the basement recreation room, near the pool table, or at the foot of his parents' bed. "I have a chair in my room," he says softly, "and all I saw every night was him sitting, playing video games. Creepy. I don't really believe in ghosts, but..."

Creepy is right! This is creepy on a generational scale. And it's so American.

Canadians used to pride themselves on not being Americans, and not being like Americans, either. At least some of them used to.

Canadians used to pride themselves on being peacekeepers. Sorry about that, cold friends! This is the post-9/11 world, you know. You're all Americans now!

The family couldn't handle the rebellious kid but maybe the Army could. And maybe that was a good deal, for them, for a while:

As a teenager, Darryl lived in Bowmanville with Christine and Paul and in Sarnia with his mother Darlene and younger sister Jolene Cushman.

In high school, Christine says, he was sometimes a handful – an angry kid who had trouble following rules he did not create himself. He drank. He skipped school.

But he matured dramatically, perhaps never more noticeably than after he joined the military. "We couldn't believe the change when he completed basic training. ... He was so obedient, so sharp, very disciplined, well-mannered," Paul says. The man whose arms were covered by tattoos, who drove his 14-tonne Coyote so fast his comrades called him "Ricky Bobby," the name of Will Ferrell's deranged NASCAR driver in the film Talladega Nights, now told Christine how to fold laundry.

This is a public service message for parents of unruly teenagers:

See what they can do for your young psycho in Basic Training: they can teach him to act obedient, sharp, disciplined, well-mannered ... and they can even make him fold laundry!

They need to train him in obedience so they can get him to do what they want him to do: go overseas and kill and maim people he otherwise would never have even heard of.

Some soldiers need to be trained to overcome the fear of death. Darryl Caswell apparently wasn't one of them.

Some soldiers need to be trained to overcome the fear of killing. Darryl Caswell apparently wasn't one of them, either.

The Army loves guys like Darryl Caswell. All they had to do was whip him into line, teach him how to fold his laundry, teach him how to obey orders, and ship him out.

The lucky ones come home without the box, of course. Instead they come home physically wounded, or psychologically ruined, or both.

It's a horrific waste of human life; and that's not even counting the damage they inflict!

And all for a lie. Or a pack of lies.

To the end, Darryl thought of himself [...] as a work in progress.

Only in Afghanistan did he "find" himself, he wrote in his last journal entry, dated June 7, 2007. He had not yet shed his "dark shadow," he wrote in an earlier entry; he was not yet able to show people his "true self."

But he was close, he wrote June 7, and closer than ever to being the man he wanted to be. He had a new appreciation for life in Canada and for his family's love. He had a new desire to start a family of his own. He was going to walk the streets of his country with a newfound "sparkle and glow."

"It's like everything I do is new, and my life has been reborn," he wrote. Four days later, it was over.

And now all that remains is the private grief and the public adulation.

Paul says he tries to keep busy to keep his mind off his son. Christine says she thinks about him from morning to night. Too often, she says. A little less and things would be easier.

But a little less is hard. Hwy. 401, 1,500 metres from home, is the fastest route to work. When the weather is nice and she is not running late, Christine takes Hwy. 2 instead. The Highway of Heroes makes her cry.

It really is very sad -- but not in a way this Toronto Star report would ever actually tell you.

One of the comments posted on the Star website got it just about almost right, in one respect, anyway:

My sympathy to the family who lost a loved one. Your son was doing very necessary and noble work in Afganistan. It's hard for Canadians to really understand the work being done in Afganistan because it is not really covered by the media. Thank you to our troops for representing Canada in such a positive way internationally. I'm proud to be Canadian.

There's a nugget of truth in there, and even though it's in nega-talk, it applies to both Canada and the United States:

It's hard for anyone to really understand the war crime in progress in Afganistan because it is not really covered by the media.

So let's take a look at some of the things the media won't tell you:

Afghanistan has never attacked Canada.

Afghanistan has never attacked any NATO country.

The NATO mission in Afghanistan is based on more lies than you can count, even if you start counting as recently as 9/11. But the American subversion of Afghanistan has been going on for almost 30 years.

On July 3, 1979, U.S. President Jimmy Carter signed a presidential finding authorizing funding for a clandestine operation in Afghanistan, which was known as Operation Cyclone, also known as The Bear Trap.

Under Operation Cyclone, Americans working through friendly overseas cutouts recruited the baddest Islamic bad guys they could find, trained them in terror, gave them equipment, money, vicious primitive ideology and logistical support, and infiltrated them into Afghanistan via Pakistan.

Once in Afghanistan, the newly minted Islamic terrorists -- whom we called freedom fighters -- began to stage attacks on the Soviets just across the border. The idea was to lure the Soviets into Afghanistan, and bleed them dry. The devastation of Afghanistan, the incredible cruelty to be inflicted on the Afghan people, the horrible suffering they would endure for decades; none of these were part of the "equation".

The Soviets invaded Afghanistan in December of 1979. And they did terrible damage. Americans made sure the "freedom fighters" remained well-supplied, well-motivated, and well-supported. The Soviets continued to bleed. And the Afghan people continued to suffer.

In 1980, Carter lost his bid for re-election; Ronald Reagan took over in 1981 and opened the spigots. Freedom-fighters everywhere were welcome to unlimited American aid, as long as they were terrorizing communist countries, or countries that bordered communist countries, or countries in which people had heard of communism. The flow of money, weapons, and ammunition into Afghanistan increased dramatically -- and went on for years. And so did the suffering.

If ever America were to move -- hypothetically, of course -- in the direction of positive change, it would necessitate facing up to the reality of the most horrible crimes of our past, and fomenting terrorism surely must rank as one of them. Deliberately luring a second country into invading, occupying and destroying a third country ranks right up there, of course.

Much more has happened since then, of course. The "freedom fighters" we supported stopped being "mujahideen" and became "al Qaeda", and they turned against us, unless maybe they didn't, and either they did things or else they only got blamed for things that other people did. We may never know; but remnants of these Afghan freedom fighters appear to have been used by western intelligence against the Russians in Bosnia and Chechnya, and in other terrorist attacks as well ...

... including the most famous one.

And in October of 2001, without offering the world any evidence implicating Afghanistan in the "terrorist attacks" of the previous month, George Bush attacked Afghanistan, using war plans that were already sitting on his desk as the twin towers disintegrated, and then he dragged NATO into his war crime of naked aggression, and here we stand. All these years later, NATO continues to pound on Afghanistan, and the lie has become: We are needed there until we can stabilize Afghanistan.

But the truth of the matter is that Afghanistan has been a dangerous, unstable, terrorist-infested place for the past 30 years, precisely because the Americans have wanted it that way. The idea that Americans could somehow stabilize Afghanistan is absurd.

But that's ok, because the Americans don't want to stabilize Afghanistan anyway; now they want to own it. And they won't be happy until they do. But that will never happen, which suits them fine, because they are not in this war to win, only to fight. Fighting is more profitable, for those who don't have to do the fighting. And you know who won't have to do any of the fighting.

Instead, the killing and the dying are contracted out to young rebels who can't stand a day without a jolt and a half of adrenaline, to whom life means nothing, especially the lives of others. And when they come home in a box, they become national heroes.

A closing comment from the Toronto Star website encapsulates the insanity that has taken hold of us all, in one way or another:

Lest we forget...

People here disparaging the war against Afghanistan don’t have a clue about the history of the Afghan war-mongers. You have never been invaded by these people. But people who have suffered at the hands of the Moghals or Afghan kings ought to know. Why do you think Canada’s freedom isn’t challenged today? Just imagine if the Iraqi’s or the Taliban’s or any of the Muslim nations had the firepower the west has today, it would all be over for the western world. They would use every conceivable weapon to annihilate this world. That has been seen for 500 brutal years in South Asia. The British did rule south Asia but were never even a fraction as ruthless as the Islamic kings. So we ought to be grateful to these soldiers who are keeping us free for hundred more years to come.

In case you didn't catch the logic, it goes like this:

We have to kill all the people in all the Muslim nations, even though they don't threaten us, and even though they can't threaten us; because if they could threaten us, then surely they would do so.

Such is "progress" in the Great White North.

Once the true north strong and free, now simply martys on the road to hell.

Happy Remembrance Day, O Canada.

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