While the Russian Cat's Away ... the Georgian Mice Start a HOT WAR!

Under cover of the allegedly spectacular (missed it!) opening ceremony of the Olympic Games (on purpose!), and with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin in China, the former Soviet "Republic" of Georgia, now a "friend" of the USA, has opened a new hot phase in the allegedly "former" Cold War.

Chris Floyd, one of the very few writers I read every day (hint, hint!), lived for several years in Moscow, where he reported on world affairs for the English-language Moscow Times.

Me, I've been east of Cincinnati a couple of times. A mighty world traveler. So who are you gonna believe on this one?

In the past few days Chris has put together two excellent posts, which I hope you will read in full (and I hope you will make it a habit of reading Chris in full every day). I'll give you the links in a moment; first please read a few excerpts:

from Friday:

With the world distracted by the glitz and glam of the Olympic opening ceremonies in Beijing -- where George W. Bush (after some entirely rote criticism) nestled down with his long-time family business partners and fellow crony-capitalist authoritarians in the Chinese leadership -- the new Cold War fuelled by the old Cold Warriors in Washington took a sharp and bitter turn in Georgia.

Yesterday, Georgia's American-educated, pro-NATO president, Mikhail Saakashvili sent a heavy force into the breakaway region of South Ossetia, which has enjoyed de facto independence since the early 1990s. Georgian forces shelled the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali, and sent thousands of refugees fleeing north into Russia. Several Russian peacekeepers, which have been stationed in South Ossetia for years as part of earlier ceasefire agreements, were killed in the attack. Saakashvili announced that his invasion had "liberated" much of the region.

Today, in retaliation, Russian troops and tanks began moving into South Ossetia (where up to 90 percent of the population hold Russian passports) and reportedly bombed some installations in Georgia proper. Saakashvili immediately appealed to his chief patron, George W. Bush, to step in and save him from the Russian bear: "It's not about Georgia any more," he told CNN. "It's about America, its values. We are a freedom-loving nation that is right now under attack."

and on Saturday:

... at the Guardian, David Hearst provides an excellent analysis of the current conflict. Here's an excerpt:

Observers had little doubt the operation to take South Ossetia back under Georgian control bore the hallmarks of a planned military offensive. It was not the result of a ceasefire that had broken down the night before. It was more a fulfillment of the promise the Georgian president, Mikhail Saakashvili, made to recapture lost national territory, and with it a measure of nationalist pride.

The assault appears to have been carefully timed to coincide with the opening of the Olympic games when the Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin, was in Beijing. Tom de Waal of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting and an expert on the region said: "Clearly there have been incidents on both sides, but this is obviously a planned Georgian operation, a contingency plan they have had for some time, to retake [South Ossetia's capital] Tskhinvali.

"Possibly the Georgians calculated that with Putin in Beijing they could recapture the capital in two days and then defend it over the next two months, because the Russians won't take this lying down."

... the fighting is rapidly spreading [...] with Russian planes bombing targets in the Georgian city of Gori (Stalin's birthplace), killing several civilians. This brutal assault -- including a murderous airstrike on an apartment house -- only underscores the savagery that awaits if the conflict cannot be tamped down quickly.

It seems clear at this point that Georgia has taken an enormous gamble in launching the initial attack into South Ossetia, hoping for a quick knock-out blow and then strong support from Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili's Terror War pals in Washington ...

Saakashvili's tenure in Tblisi -- which began as a self-proclaimed reformist revolution -- has deteriorated into a regime marked by much of the same kind of corruption, cronyism and repression that it puported to overthrow. One of Saakashvili's partners in the revolution, Irakli Okruashvili, had a dramatic falling-out with the boss last year. When he announced he was running for president against Saakashvili, he was arrested "and taken to Tbilisi’s notorious Isolator Number 7, the scene of well-documented torture of political prisoners since 1991," as Mark Almond of Oriel College, Oxford, noted in an article last year. After subjection to "strenuous interrogation techniques," Okruashvili "recanted" his charges against the president, and coughed up $6 million in shakedown "bail" money to win his release.

And what were Okruashvili's charges? Almond provides this quote from the former defense minister in Saakashvili’s government:

“The style of Saakashvili’s governance … has made dishonesty, injustice and oppression a way of life. Everyday repression, demolition of houses and churches, robbery, ‘kulakization’, and murders, I would stress, murders, have become common practice for the authorities.”

You can see why George W. Bush has embraced Saakashvili so enthusiastically. Saakashvili is also a war criminal, albeit at a much smaller level than his patron Bush or his enemy Putin. Saakashvili has eagerly taken part in the greatest war crime of our still-young century (I'm sure we ain't seen nothin' yet): the war of aggression against Iraq, which has already led to the slaughter of at least a million innocent people. No one forced Saakashvili to be an accomplice to this horrendous crime; he chose to do it willingly, and he cannot escape the guilt. ...

Saakashvili ordered the heavy bombardment of the South Ossetian capital just hours after declaring a supposed "cease-fire" ... Georgian forces targeted and killed several Russian peacekeeping troops that had been stationed in the region for years. These brutal and boneheaded moves provided the perfect excuse for the Kremlin to flex its muscles and secure an even tighter hold on Georgia's breakaway regions...

The ultimate outcome of this war will be, as always, death and ruin for multitudes who have nothing to do with the violent aggression of corrupt elites on every side.

I agree completely with the last bit. And as for all the preceding details, it's beyond my capacity to comment. I'm still learning. And there's a lot to learn.

Chris Floyd's coverage provides much more depth than these short excerpts can convey; you should read these pieces in full (and follow the links too!):

Marching Through Georgia: Cold War II Proxy Conflict Turns Hot

Marching Through Georgia II: The Kremlin Surge

Then bookmark the site, and/or add it to your list of favorites, and/or subscribe to Floyd's site feed.

You can thank me later, but that won't be necessary. Once again, virtue is its own reward.

Is Pakistan's "Public Enemy Number One" A CIA Asset? Of Course He Is! Otherwise He'd Have Been Dead A Long Time Ago

Pakistan's most feared terrorist communicates with encryption so strong the Pakistani intelligence services cannot crack it. He gets information on Pakistani troop movements from an unidentified foreign government. He's said to be responsible for the vast majority of terrorist attacks in Pakistan (including the assassination of Benazir Bhutto), but the Americans -- who don't mind bombing "Islamic militants" in Pakistan every now and then -- have refused to attack him despite having solid information as to his whereabouts. And on, and on, and on...

All this and more is highlighted in a excellent piece from "State of Pakistan", which I have reproduced in full below, with just a bit of editing and a few comments.

Baithullah Mehsud could be a CIA ‘intelligence asset’ in this double game

A report published by the News on August 5, 2008 includes the following (apparently based on information given by the ISI officials):

”The top US military commander and the CIA official were also asked why the CIA-run predator[s] and the US military did not swing into action when they were provided the exact location of Baitullah Mehsud [photo], Pakistan’s enemy number one and the mastermind of almost every suicide operation against the Pakistan Army and the ISI since June 2006. One such precise piece of information was made available to the CIA on May 24 when Baitullah Mehsud drove to a remote South Waziristan mountain post in his Toyota Land Cruiser to address the press and returned back to his safe abode. The United States military has the capacity to direct a missile to a precise location at very short notice as it has done close to 20 times in the last few years to hit al-Qaeda targets inside Pakistan. Pakistani official[s] have long been intrigued by the presence of highly encrypted communications gear with Baitullah Mehsud. This communication gear enables him to collect real-time information on Pakistani troop movement from an unidentified foreign source without being intercepted by Pakistani intelligence.”

Both the CIA and the ISI have been playing a double game. Fighting and nurturing terrorists and warlords at the same time! Why?

If this is a serious question then perhaps I can answer it.

Now please carefully read the following published and circulated by the State of Pakistan on January 31, 2008.

Nicholas Schmidle, who was expelled from Pakistan in January 2008 for writing a detailed report in the NY Times on the tribal areas and the NWFP, later wrote in the Washington Post,

“foreign journalists are barred from almost half the country; in most cases, their visas are restricted to three cities — Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi. In Baluchistan province, which covers 44 percent of Pakistan and where ethnic nationalists are fighting a low-level insurgency, the government requires prior notification and approval if you want to travel anywhere outside the capital of Quetta. Such permission is rarely given. And the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), where the pro-Taliban militants are strong, are completely off-limits. Musharraf’s government says that journalists are kept out for their own security. But meanwhile, two conflicts go unreported in one of the world’s most vital — and misunderstood — countries.”

What does the government want to hide?

I could probably answer that, too.

Most governments make every effort to expose terrorists. Authorities pursue them relentlessly including placing advertisements about purported crimes, requesting people to come forward and give information. When arrested they prosecute the alleged terrorists vigorously and publicize convictions. But no such pattern in Pakistan. The website of Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency lists only two, yes only TWO terrorists from the federally administered tribal areas (FATA) as wanted. The star of ‘Jaish-e-Muhammed’ Masood Azhar was allowed to escape. The other star, Omar Saeed Sheikh, is still alive (ostensibly because his case is under appeal) although he was sentenced to death in July 2002. The alleged ‘master mind’ of the plan to blow up trans-atlantic flights, Rashid Rauf, has mysteriously escaped and the government does not even want to hear about it. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the master mind of 9/11, has been kept in Guantanamo since 2004 and has not been tried. Abdullah Mehsud (Baitullah’s relative) was released by the U.S. from Guantanamo and allowed to return? Why? So that they can issue threats to blow up the White House (interview to Al-Jazeera on Jan. 29, 2008) and provide justification for the so-called ‘War on Terror’ which has not seen a single terrorist attack on the U.S. soil since 9/11?

YES! Exactly!

Let’s now talk about Baitullah Mehsud who became a big militant leader soon after Abdullah’s release by the U.S. government from Guantanamo Bay in March 2004. Until the end of 2004, Baitullah Mehsud (former FATA secretary Brig. Mahmood Shah says he is in 40s) lived in the shadow of his daring and charismatic fellow tribesman, Abdullah Mehsud, who, with his long black hair, was considered a terrorist rock star. Abdullah fought with the Taliban in Afghanistan against the Northern Alliance and in 1996 lost a leg when he stepped on a land mine. He was taken captive by warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum who turned him over to American forces. Abdullah Mehsud was sent to Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba and held for two years, insisting the whole time that he was just an innocent tribesman. He was released in March 2004 for reasons which remain unclear and returned to Waziristan. Soon after his return, he orchestrated the kidnapping of two Chinese engineers working on a dam in his region, proclaiming that Beijing was guilty of killing Muslims. He also ordered an attack on Pakistan’s Interior Minister in which 31 people perished. The government came under tremendous pressure from the Chinese to hunt Abdullah after the killings of their engineers.

The Afghan Taliban, who were in the process of organizing themselves to fight in Afghanistan and were desperately trying to avoid a head-on confrontation with Pakistani forces in the tribal regions, were not pleased with the killing of the Chinese engineers. Abdullah was made a deputy of Baitullah Mehsud and a shura or tribal council was set up which further undermined his authority. It was said at the time that the Taliban preferred a cool-headed Baitullah over the temperamental Abdullah. Dejected, Abdullah left for Afghanistan to fight in Musa Qilla in the southern Afghan province of Helmand and was killed by security agencies in the Zhob area of the south-western province of Baluchistan while returning home to Pakistan.

Mehsud’s first battlefield experience was in Afghanistan in the late 1980s against Soviet invaders. His mentor at the time was Jalaluddin Haqqani, a powerful commander in eastern Afghanistan backed by the United States against the Soviets. Now Haqqani is wanted as a terrorist by the U.S. and NATO but the CIA has also been trying to get his support according to the Wall Street Journal. The ISI once considered him a ‘moderate’ Taliban.

For almost three years now, Baitullah Mehsud has been the leading face of militant resistance whose influence, security officials acknowledge, transcends the borders of South Waziristan, according to the sources in the governments of Pakistan and the United States. But there is little independent reporting on the tribal areas. Most of the so-called experts writing for the think tanks have never visited these areas. Mostly they cite each other in their papers or quote US or Pakistani officials.

[The] government [...] acknowledged Baitullah Mehsud as the new chief of militants in the Mehsud part of South Waziristan [...] in February, 2005, when it entered into an agreement with him in Sara Rogha following violent clashes and ambushes. He was reportedly paid [20 million rupees] as part of this deal though it remains unclear who picked [up] the tab, Pakistani or the U.S. government? But read the following report of Jan. 30, 2005 published by the Daily Times, Karachi:

“Baitullah Mehsud gets ready to surrender, Sets aside demand for amnesty to Abdullah Mehsud

By Iqbal Khattak

PESHAWAR: A key local Taliban militant expressed his willingness to surrender to the government after holding talks with tribal elders and clerics at an undisclosed location in South Waziristan Agency, said one of the negotiators on Saturday.

Baitullah Mehsud, a key tribal Taliban commander in the troubled South Waziristan tribal region bordering Afghanistan, expressed readiness to surrender, Brig (r) Qayyum Sher, a member of the peace committee that met the militant, told Daily Times from Tank.

“He (Baitullah) is ready to settle the matter with the government,” said the tribal negotiator. “We met him today and he said he is ready to resolve the matter.” The tribal negotiator said Baitullah did not press his old demand that his comrade Abdullah Mehsud should also be pardoned if he surrenders. “He (Baitullah) will surrender alone,” said Brig Qayyum.

However, the peace committee will discuss modalities for Baitullah’s surrender with the government. “The modalities will now be sorted out with the government. How, when and where he will surrender will be discussed with the military and the political administration,” said Brig Qayyum.

A military source told Daily Times that Baitullah’s surrender would prove a serious setback to Abdullah Mehsud. “That is what we want. But we have to wait for the moment when he (Baitullah) surrenders,” the source said on condition of anonymity. Lt Gen Safdar Hussain exempted Abdullah Mehsud from amnesty after his alleged involvement in two Chinese engineers’ kidnapping in October last year.

Brig Qayyum said Baitullah, who unlike Abdullah Mehsud and Nek Muhammad was not in the media limelight, set no conditions for his surrender and the Peshawar corps commander had already declared amnesty for him if he laid down arms.

Gen Safdar set a January 26 deadline for the two militants to surrender or “face military onslaught” and hoped sanity would prevail upon Baituallah to live peacefully. However, Gen Safdar had refused to pardon Abdullah Mehsud.

He pledged to cease attacks on security forces and government installations in return for a commitment by the government to withdraw forces from the Mehsud territory and not to take any punitive action against him and his associates. This followed a brief lull in fighting, prompting the then Pakistani army corps commander, Peshawar, Lt-Gen Safdar, to declare Baitullah Mehsud a “soldier of peace” after a meeting with him at Jandola in August, 2005.

The meeting followed accusations by Baitullah Mehsud that the government was not honouring its commitments, was refusing to withdraw its forces and was continuing to attack his mujahideen. Violence erupted again in the restive tribal region and a time came when the government’s writ was restricted to the compounds of the political administration.”

Why was not Baitullah captured when he was ready to surrender? Instead, he was given money and allowed to grow his militia from a few hundred to nearly 20,000? Why? Who made the decision?

Who else?

Baitullah Mehsud addressed his tribe after the Sararogha pact and clearly swore allegiance to Mullah Umar of the Taliban. His power over the two agencies is owed to his wealth and his ability to wage war. He goes around in a bullet-proof car and is followed around by 30 armed guards. Like Nek Muhammad, he too has two wives and has three castle-like houses in North and South Waziristan. Although he is not a tribal leader by lineage or by election, he is more respected as a warlord by the people of the two agencies than any other person. Although he denies that he received [20 million rupees] from the secret funds of the government without signing a receipt, corps commander Peshawar General Safdar Hussain is on record as saying that the money was indeed set aside for him.

Government officials now claim that Baitullah has been running a number of training camps for militants and suicide bombers. And in January 2007, helicopter gunships targeted what the government claimed was a militant compound, killing 20 people. Baitullah responded angrily and threatened revenge which he said “would be such that it would pain their heart”. It was followed by a string of suicide attacks in Peshawar, Dera Ismail Khan and Islamabad. By this time, government officials had begun pointing the accusing finger at Baitullah Mehsud. A UN report released in September 2007 blamed Baitullah for almost eighty percent of suicide bombings in Afghanistan. Now since when has the UN become so well informed as to be able to account for the exact percentage of the perpetrators of suicide bombings as to their source? Who is feeding this information (or disinformation).

In an address to the nation on January 2, 2008, Mr. Pervez Musharraf said that he believed Maulana Fazlullah and Baitullah Mehsud were prime suspects in the assassination of Bhutto.In its January 18, 2008 edition, The Washington Post reported that the CIA has concluded that Mehsud was behind the Bhutto assassination. “Offering the most definitive public assessment by a U.S. intelligence official, [Michael V.] Hayden said Bhutto was killed by fighters allied with Mehsud, a tribal leader in northwestern Pakistan, with support from al-Qaeda’s terrorist network.”

The CIA is really well informed! It could not trace Mullah Omar (who reportedly lived in Quetta) or Osama (who escaped helped by the cease fire ordered by Dick Cheney at Musharraf’s request in 2001) in more than six years but it can “conclude’ within three weeks of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto that Mehsud was behind it. Meanwhile Talibans in Afghanistan want to distance themselves from him?

According to a DAWN report (Jan. 28, 2008), the Taliban in Afghanistan have distanced themselves from Pakistani militants led by Baitullah Mehsud, saying they don’t support any militant activity in Pakistan. “We do not support any militant activity and operation in Pakistan,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told Dawn on telephone from an undisclosed location on Monday. The spokesman denied media reports that the Taliban had expelled Baitullah Mehsud, the head of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan. “Baitullah is a Pakistani and we as the Afghan Taliban have nothing to do with his appointment or his expulsion. We did not appoint him and we have not expelled him,” he said.

Now a $10 billion question: What is the end-game of the U.S. if Baitullah Mehsud is indeed an ‘intelligence asset’ of the CIA?

That's simple: Either they continue to protect him and hide the truth (about him, about themselves, about 9/11, and about the entire bogus "War On Terror"), or they all go straight to the guillotines.

Is the aim is to create a theatre of the ‘War on Terror’ in Pakistan to create the justification for the landing of the U.S. troops so that the republican administration can continue to tell American people that it is fighting terrorism while spending billions to enrich the military-industrial complex, win the next elections in Nov. 2008 and tighten its control over Pakistan to pursue its anti-China and anti-Iran foreign policy goals?

For those Pakistanis who may think this is far-fetched, here is a quote from “Devil’s Game” by Robert Dreyfuss (pp. 336-337, published 2005). Citing the infamous policy memo written by leading neocons in 1995, entitled, “A Clean Break” to then Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel to ‘contain, destablize, and roll back’ various states in the region, Dreyfuss concludes:

“Neoconservatives want to control the Middle East, not reform it, even it means tearing countries apart and replacing them with rump mini-states along ethnic and sectrian lines. The Islamic right, in this context, is just one more tool for dismantling existing regimes, if that is what it takes.”

It's not far-fetched at all; it's happening in many countries simultaneously.

And "dismantling existing regimes" is indeed "what it takes".

Furthermore, it will continue until and unless a few "existing regimes" -- in Washington, Islamabad and a few other places -- are "dismantled". That is to say: indefinitely.

It's Like Shooting Fish In A Barrel

Please hold your applause. The success of my recent prediction is not worthy of being celebrated.

Late last month when discussing the seemingly brightening prospects for peace in Pakistan, I wrote:

If ever there were a situation where a drone needed to drop a bomb to kick-restart a nasty little war, this would seem to be it.

Making the prediction was simplicity in itself -- like shooting fish in a barrel. Unfortunately that's just about how hard it is for long-range Americans with remote-controlled drones to bomb defenseless Pakistani people.

As Chris Floyd reports:

On Wednesday, missiles from an American drone destroyed a house in the Pakistani village of Damadola, killing at least 15 people, with women and children reportedly among the dead.

Think about that for a moment. How extraordinary! If a Pakistani plane dropped a bomb on an American home, we would consider it an act of war, even if fewer than 15 people were killed, and even if the Pakistanis claimed that every one of the victims was a bona fide Bad Guy.

So: How big a story is this? The United States has committed an act of war against its number one Asian ally in the Global War On Terror! It's a crime of monumental proportions, isn't it?

Ha! Unfortunately, and typically, it's even worse than it first appears. Chris Floyd again:

The ostensible target was a gathering of Taliban fighters, who control the surrounding area in this border region with Afghanistan.

But the real target of the attack, no doubt, was the peace process now underway between the local militants and the new Pakistani government. As AP notes:

The explosions came as Pakistani authorities and Taliban militants exchanged dozens of prisoners in the latest step in a peace process that is stirring growing alarm in the West. NATO claims [that] militant incursions into Afghanistan have increased.

This is a familiar pattern of the worldwide Terror War launched by the Bush Administration. We saw it a few weeks ago in Somalia, when national unity talks between the government and insurgents were disrupted at a delicate stage by the "targeted assassination" of a rebel leader (and the usual assorted civilians) by U.S. missiles.

If a Pakistani plane dropped a bomb on an American residence -- just once -- ever -- our pundits would be clamoring for endless retribution -- against Pakistan, or maybe against the entire Muslim world. Dozens of fat former generals would be showing up on television talking about how easily we could pulverize Pakistan, and how fun and interesting it would be to do so, and how Pakistan's most recent actions were so provocative that a war against Pakistan was now almost certainly inevitable. Within weeks Islamabad would be a pile of smoking, bleeding rubble. Just because of one attack.

But the shoe is on the other foot and it's not just one attack, but part of a pattern. A pattern with a long, broad, deep pedigree: America doesn't like foreigners very much, but it likes 'em better when they're at war -- with one another!

The border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan has been unstable -- in the midst of largely undeclared warfare -- for nearly 30 years, ever since America's foreign policy establishment thought it would be a good idea to get some Islamic terrorism going in Afghanistan in the hopes of luring the Soviets into invading.

More recently, American drones have bombed "the tribal areas" of Pakistan prior to this assault, and the Pakistani government has looked away. It's no wonder they're considered such good allies: they don't know anything about it. Just like the American media.

And when we find Muslims (including Pakistanis) who are angry at the USA, or who mean our country harm, what do we say then?

It seems to me we have two choices:

We can say they hate us for our freedoms, and then we might get on TV.

Or else we can say they hate us for our foreign policy, which is why they attacked us on 9/11, and then even though we won't be on TV, we might get some play on the internet.

Or ... or ... if we're completely something or other, we can take the third choice, the one not listed, none of the above: we can say they hate us for our foreign policy, and that's why the official story of 9/11 is somewhat plausible, or at least it would have been plausible if not for the mountains of evidence contradicting it ... but then we won't be taken seriously anywhere.

Ahhh, the national discourse. It's a good thing not to be part of.

I wish we could say the same about this endless, borderless, pointless war. But we can't. We're all in it. We're complicit in waging it, and we're victims of it too -- all at the same time. Every day that it goes on, it drains away our future, and our children's future. Even if we haven't lost friends or family to the military effort, we are still big losers, because our mute acceptance of this monstrous crime makes us all criminals, and every day that it continues, we all move a little farther along the road to Hell.

And even now, with this stupid omnivorous thing raging for more than six years, simply wanting to talk about it is considered impolite.

But is it considered impolite to remotely drop a bomb on a house thousands of miles away and kill 15 people?

Of course not! It's just like shooting fish in a barrel!

Selling Hope And Unity, Obama Makes His Intentions Clear

Hope is a wonderful thing, without which we can achieve nothing of value. And that may be sufficient reason to sell it as a political commodity, but it's not a good reason to buy it.

On the other hand, after seven years of being sold nothing but fear, the American people are ready to buy something different. So "hope" it is, and "unity" too -- two hot-ticket items this year.

But hope for what? Unity behind what? Clearly Barack Obama is hoping the country will unite behind him; but what then would become of the country?

Obama explained his position as clearly as we could ask for in Pennsylvania on Friday, as reported by Devlin Barrett of the AP, via Chris Floyd:

Obama aligns foreign policy with GOP

Sen. Barack Obama said Friday he would return the country to the more "traditional" foreign policy efforts of past presidents, such as George H.W. Bush, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.

At a town hall event at a local high school gymnasium, Obama praised George H.W. Bush — father of the president — for the way he handled the Persian Gulf War: with a large coalition and carefully defined objectives.
...

"The truth is that my foreign policy is actually a return to the traditional bipartisan realistic policy of George Bush's father, of John F. Kennedy, of, in some ways, Ronald Reagan, and it is George Bush that's been naive and it's people like John McCain and, unfortunately, some Democrats that have facilitated him acting in these naive ways that have caused us so much damage in our reputation around the world," he said.

Under the title "Hope Abandoned: Obama Stands Up for Murder and Plunder", Chris Floyd goes on to explain just what it means to "return" to the "traditional bipartisan realism" that has marked US foreign policy since World War II, with the exception -- according to Barack Obama -- of George W. Bush, who has been -- in Obama's word -- "naive".

You should read the whole piece. But you won't have to go far.

After quoting the AP piece, Chris writes:

Obama is doing two things here, reaching out to two very different audiences, on different wavelengths. First, for the hoi polloi, he is simply pandering in the most shameless way imaginable, throwing out talismans for his TV-addled audience to comfort themselves with: "You like JFK? I'll be like him! You like Reagan? I'll be like him too! You like the first George Bush? Hey, I'll be just like him as well!" This is a PR tactic that goes all the way back to St. Paul the spinmeister, who boasted of his ability to massage his message and "become all things to all men." Obama has long proven himself a master of this particular kind of political whoredom -- much like Bill Clinton, in fact, another champion of "bipartisan foreign policy" who for some strange reason got left off Obama's list of role models.

But beyond all the rubes out there, Obama is also signaling to the real masters of the United States, the military-corporate complex, that he is a "safe pair of hands" -- a competent technocrat who won't upset the imperial applecart but will faithfully follow the 60-year post-war paradigm of leaving "all options on the table" and doing "whatever it takes" to keep the great game of geopolitical dominance going strong.

What other conclusion can you draw from Obama's reference to these avatars, and his very pointed identification with them? He is saying, quite clearly, that he will practice foreign policy just as they did. And what they do? Committed, instigated, abetted and countenanced a relentless flood of crimes, murders, atrocities, deceptions, corruptions, mass destruction and state terrorism.

Obama is telling us -- and the war-profiteering powers-that-be -- that he will give us "realistic policies" like those of John Kennedy. These include his steady march into the quagmire of Vietnam, and the backing of a deadly coup in Saigon to replace one brutal junta with another; greenlighting successful coups in Guyana, the Dominican Republic and Iraq, where the CIA helped the Baath Party come to power; greenlighting the spectacularly unsuccessful Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba, not to mention the terrorist operations and assassination attempts there. As Edward Jay Epstein noted (in John Kennedy Jr.'s magazine George, of all places):

While the Mafia continued its unsuccessful machinations, John F. Kennedy became President and, in April 1961, launched the Bay of Pigs invasion, an attack on a swamp in Cuba by CIA-trained Cuban exiles that ended in disaster. Furious at this humiliating failure, Kennedy summoned Richard Bissell, the head of the CIA's covert operations, to the Cabinet Room and chided him for "sitting on his ass and not doing anything about getting rid of Castro and the Castro regime" (as Bissell recalled). Richard Helms, who succeeded Bissell, also felt "white heat," as he put it, from the Kennedys to get rid of Castro.

By then, the Kennedys had set up their own covert structure for dealing with the Castro problem the Special Group Augmented, which Attorney General Robert Kennedy and General Maxwell Taylor effectively ran and which, in November 1961, launched a secret war against the Castro regime, codenamed Operation Mongoose. Secretary of Defense Robert Strange McNamara, who was not a formal member of this group but attended meetings, later testified: "We were hysterical about Castro at about the time of the Bay of Pigs and thereafter. And there was pressure from JFK and RFK to do something about Castro." It was a "no holds barred" enterprise, as Helms termed it, for which the Special Group Augmented assigned such "planning tasks" as using biological and chemical warfare against Cuban sugar workers; employing Cuban gangsters to kill Cuban police officials, Soviet bloc technicians, and other targeted people; using agents to sabotage mines; and, in what was called Operation Bounty, paying cash bonuses of up to $100,000 for the murder or abduction of government officials.

More of this kind of thing, then, from Obama when he reaches the White House?

As for his other two foreign policy mentors, Reagan and Bush I, the rap sheet is far too long for even a brief accounting here. (And indeed, I've spent much of the past seven years detailing many of these crimes in various venues -- because they involved so many of the same players now spewing filth and blood from the current administration.) We could begin, I suppose, with Reagan and Bush's act of treason in negotiating with Iranian hostage-takers in 1980 to ensure that Teheran would not release the American captives at the U.S. embassy before the November election; in return, Reagan and Bush pledged to provide cash and military hardware to the extremist mullahs, which they duly did. (See here, and here.)

Or we could cite Reagan's ardent support for mass-murdering militarist regimes in Central and South America; the arming and funding of the Contra insurgent army in Nicaragua, which received CIA training in terrorist tactics. Or the Iran-Contra affair, which saw Reagan and Bush ship weapons to the extremist Iranian regime in return for cash which they then gave to their Contra terrorist militia, in flagrant violation of the law. Or Reagan's stupid and pointless invasion of Grenada, which he undertook solely to cover up the embarrassment of his stupid and pointless intervention in Lebanon, where 241 American soldiers were killed after having been dropped into the middle of a multi-sided civil war. Or Reagan's vast expansion of a policy begun under Jimmy Carter of arming, funding, training and organizing a global network of violent Islamic extremists -- a "foreign policy" masterstroke that is still paying dividends today. (Quite literally paying dividends for investors in the defense, security and military servicing industries.)

But at least Obama did qualify his embrace of Reagan's traditional and realistic bipartisan foreign policy, saying that he would emulate "some" of Reagan's approaches. So maybe he will skip on the election-fixing treason and go for supporting mass-murdering militarist regimes instead? Or are we being too cynical? Perhaps Obama means he will follow in the footsteps of some of Reagan's more merciful and reconciliatory policies -- such as the time the Great Communicator laid a wreath at a cemetery where Nazi SS soldiers lie in honored burial: a clear signal from the U.S. president to these dead mass-murderers that "all is forgiven" at last.

Obama offers no qualification at all to his championing of George Herbert Walker Bush however. Indeed, his was the first name uttered in the paean to bipartisan foreign policy. But here too one quails (and Quayles) at the prospect of toting up the high crimes and monstrous follies of this "traditional realist" whom Obama promises to emulate. Should we start with Bush's arming and funding of Saddam Hussein -- long after the latter "gassed his own people" -- and Bush's later perversion of the legal process to cover up his largess to the dictator? Or Bush's pointless and unnecessary invasion of Panama, which killed hundreds if not thousands of innocent people and drove at least 20,000 people from their homes, all to remove a long-time U.S. intelligence "asset," Manuel Noriega, who in the 1970s received fat payments of bribes from the director of the CIA -- one George Herbert Walker Bush?

Or perhaps we should follow Obama's example and point to "the way [Bush] handled the Persian Gulf War." Yes, let's take a closer look at that, since Obama clearly sees it as a model for his own presidency. Here's an excerpt from an earlier piece, Scar Tissue: How the Bushes Brought Bedlam to Iraq (where you will also find much more on Bush's backroom tryst with Saddam):

Then came Bush's "Gulf War," when he turned on his protégé after Saddam made the foolish move of threatening the Kuwaiti royals – Bush's long-time business partners [in the oil business], going back to the early 1960s. Saddam's conflict with Kuwait centered on two main issues: first, his claim that the billions of dollars Kuwait had given Iraq during the war with Iran was simply straightforward aid to the nation that was defending the Sunni Arab world from the aggressive onslaught of the Shiite Persians. The Kuwaitis insisted the money had been a loan, and demanded that Saddam pay off. There was also Saddam's claim that Kuwait was "slant-drilling" into Iraqi oilfields, siphoning off underground reserves from across the border. These disputes raged for months; a deal to resolve them was brokered by the Arab League, but fell apart at the last minute when Kuwait suddenly rejected the agreement, saying, "We will call in the Americans."

How worried was Bush about the situation? Let's look at the historical record. In the two weeks before the invasion of Kuwait, Bush approved the sale of an additional $4.8 million in "dual-use" technology to factories identified by the CIA as linchpins of Hussein's illicit nuclear and biochemical programs, the Los Angeles Times reports. The day before Saddam sent his tanks across the border, Bush obligingly sold him more than $600 million worth of advanced communications technology. A week later, he was declaring that his long-time ally was "worse than Hitler."

Yes, the Kuwaitis had called in their marker. Like a warlord of old, Bush used the US military as a private army to help his business partners. After an extensive bombing campaign that openly – even gleefully – mocked international law in its targeting of civilian infrastructure (a tactic repeated in Serbia by Bill Clinton – now regarded as an "adopted son" by Bush), the brief 100-hour ground war slaughtered fleeing Iraqi conscripts by the thousands – while, curiously, allowing Saddam's crack troops, the aptly-named Republican Guard, to escape unharmed. Later, these troops were used to kill tens of thousands of Shiites who had risen in rebellion against Saddam – at the specific instigation of George Bush, who not only abandoned them to their fate, but specifically allowed Saddam to use his attack helicopters against the rebels, and also ordered US troops to block Shiites from gaining access to arms caches. It was one of the worst, most murderous betrayals in modern history – and has been almost entirely expunged from the American memory.

Then came the Carthaginian "peace" of the victors – Iraq sown with the salt of sanctions, which led to the unnecessary death of at least 500,000 children, according to UN's conservative estimates. The sanction regime actually strengthened Saddam's grip on Iraqi society, as the ravaged people were reduced to surviving on government handouts of food....

Yes, these are truly worthy examples of the kind of traditional, realistic, bipartisan foreign policy that we need more of. And my stars, isn't that Obama a breath of fresh air, promising to take us back to that golden age of yore!

Next up: "Sen. Barack Obama said today that he would appoint Supreme Court Justices 'like John Roberts, Samuel Alito and, in some ways, Antonin Scalia,' in 'a return to a more traditional, realistic, bipartisan judicial philosophy.....'"

P.S. We've said it before and no doubt we'll say it again: an Obama presidency, like a H. Clinton presidency, will mean some measure of genuine mitigation of some of the worst depredations of the Bush Regime. There's no question about that. But no one who openly embraces the foreign policy of Ronald Reagan and George Bush I, or John F. Kennedy for that matter, is going to change in any substantial way the militarist-corporate machine that has already destroyed our democracy, gutted our Constitution, corrupted our system beyond all measure (and probably beyond all repair), and killed – and keeps on killing – hundreds of thousands of innocent people, decade after decade. Given this fact, every American voter must decide, in his or her own conscience, this question: Should I act to mitigate some small measure of the mass suffering wrought by this machine; or does that action, that participation, merely legitimize the machine, and strengthen it?

That is the only question at issue in this election. For none of the prospective presidents offer any hope – audacious or otherwise – of any kind of root-and-branch reform of the imperial system, which will continue to grind on -- in its traditional, realistic, bipartisan way.

I almost always agree with Chris Floyd, but we disagree just a bit this time. My understanding of Kennedy's position on Vietnam is closer to John Newman's analysis (which Noam Chomsky calls "deeply flawed") than it is to Chomsky's (to which Chris links with approval).

In other words, I believe Kennedy was trying to get out of Vietnam, rather than marching into the quagmire there -- certainly Kennedy didn't march in with gusto, the way LBJ did. But this minor disagreement is of little consequence in the long run, and in all other respects (in my humble opinion), Floyd's history lesson is right on the money -- so much so that there's very little left to be said. But that's never stopped me before.

I want to point out that the word "realistic", when used in this context, is meant in the political (i.e. false) sense. When did we ever have a "realistic" policy? We didn't. But we have had some presidents who liked short, sharp wars against small, weak countries, and these are the presidents (if I am right about Kennedy) whom Barack Obama wants to emulate. They didn't attack big countries all alone; if they couldn't drum up a "coalition", they subverted them quietly instead.

This is the "realistic" foreign policy that appeals to Barack Obama. He's not against all wars, he's just against long ones that we lose!

So there's not much to return to. And a turn to something resembling sanity is unthinkable -- not without a full and open investigation of 9/11 (and the subsequent anthrax attacks), and -- even more unlikely -- a full repudiation of George W. Bush's so-called "reaction" to those events.

But Obama won't have it, and there's the rub, because investigating 9/11 and punishing the crimes of the previous administration would be just the first step. The next step would be a repudiation of the foreign policy Barack Obama wants to emulate.

One other point is absolutely critical in this regard: Because the so-called War on Terror has been declared a top-priority item (as opposed to so many of the "realistic, bipartisan" war crimes committed by JFK, RWR and GHWB) it will get all the money it wants, until and unless it is stopped. So Barack Obama's domestic policies have no chance to get funded, unless he ... What am I saying? There's no money left anymore anyhow; even if Obama nuked the Pentagon and never gave the DoD another nickel, there would still be no way out of the mess his predecessors have made.

Not that he's looking for a way out, mind you -- he simply wants to abandon Bush's "naive" ideas about invading and occupying big countries, and return to the traditional, realistic, bipartisan method of "picking up small crappy little countries and throwing them against the wall, just to show the world we mean business" ...

... for as long as we can afford it ...

... even if it means we can never afford anything else.

~~~

The perversion of the language is so severe that it's almost impossible to write about these issues without lying. We're in the realm of political "secret code", where the words don't always mean what they mean.

For instance, Obama calls the policies of three of his recent predecessors "realistic", "bipartisan", and "traditional".

There's no doubt that such policies were "bipartisan". In fact, two of the three past presidents Obama mentioned were Republicans.

And there's no doubt that such policies are "traditional" as well -- after all, they've eaten everything in their path for the last 60 years. And that's why we now have nothing left except a government of heinous criminals, a propaganda mill of blood-soaked liars, massively crumbling infrastructure, a crippling national debt, the enmity of the entire world, and these "realistic" policies. Oh yeah, and some private armies, too. I suppose they add to the realism.

Meanwhile, George W. Bush's foreign policy features preemptive, aggressive war based on lies -- not just one lie but a deliberately crafted, expensively packaged, constantly shifting story. It includes bombing defenseless residential neighborhoods. It involves the use of incendiary weapons on innocent civilians. It involves indefinite detention without charges, and torture as a matter of course. And when Barack Obama describes these policies, the word that comes to mind is "naive".

Naive?

having or showing unaffected simplicity of nature or absence of artificiality; unsophisticated; ingenuous ... having or showing a lack of experience, judgment, or information; credulous ... simple, unaffected, unsuspecting, artless, guileless, candid, open, plain ...

Let's get this straight: the president starts a war based on a pack of lies that kills a million people and destroys the lives of millions of others, and when his lie is exposed, he makes a big joke and laughs about it, and this happens because he's "guileless, candid, open, plain ..."??

How about cynical?

showing contempt for accepted standards of honesty or morality by one's actions, esp. by actions that exploit the scruples of others ... selfishly or callously calculating: showed a cynical disregard for the safety of his troops in his efforts to advance his reputation.

But that's not a hopeful and unifying message, is it?

Ebb Tide V: Robert Parry Looks At Barack Obama And Sees Michael Douglas

Veteran journalist Robert Parry has done fantastic work on a number of important fronts; see, for instance, Iraq War As A War Crime (Part One), and don't forget (Part Two).

But he frustrates me because he won't talk about 9/11 in any terms other than the official story, he never mentions any issues relating to election integrity, and his take on the Democratic nomination process has been bizarre -- and increasingly so.

Bob Parry quite rightly points out deceit and gamesmanship when it comes from Hillary Clinton. But he seems to have a blind spot when the same tactics come from Barack Obama -- who has never quite managed to make me stand and cheer. But when Bob Parry looks at Obama, he sees ... Hollywood!

Thus, "Obama's 'Michael Douglas Moment'"

Barack Obama’s speech on race – both laying out the nation’s multi-sided racial resentments and pointing to a path beyond them – might be called his “Michael Douglas moment,” reminiscent of the speech near the end of “The American President.”

In the climactic scene of that 1995 movie, the President (played by Douglas) responds to political attacks against his girlfriend over an old photograph of a burning American flag and to insinuations about his own alleged lack of patriotism reflected in his American Civil Liberties Union membership.

After weeks of political maneuvering in his pursuit of a second term – and finally fed up with the attack politics of his opponent, Bob Rumson – the President bursts into the press room to denounce the smears and to renounce his own politics of equivocation.

“We have serious problems to solve,” Douglas says, “and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things, and two things only: making you afraid of it, and telling you who’s to blame for it.

“That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections. You gather a group of middle-age, middle-class, middle-income voters who remember with longing an easier time, and you talk to them about family and American values and character, and you wave an old photo of the President’s girlfriend and you scream about patriotism. …

“We’ve got serious problems, and we need serious people. And if you want to talk about character, Bob, you’d better come at me with more than a burning flag and a membership card. If you want to talk about character and American values, fine. Just tell me where and when, and I’ll show up. This is a time for serious people, Bob, and your fifteen minutes are up.”

Well, that's just about the way I saw it ...

Except that Obama didn't get serious -- he changed the subject!

And he didn't denounce the smears -- he capitulated to them!

And he didn't renounce his equivocation -- he wallowed in it!

Other than that, Bob Parry's analysis is ... well ... let's just say his introduction didn't contain any misdirection.

I left him a long comment at his blog, and since it took me quite a while to compose it, and since it lays out my thoughts a bit better than any of my recent posts here, I thought I might share it with you.

It makes me sad to say this, Mr. Parry, but I cannot understand how an observer as intelligent and as experienced as you could fall for this.

I do understand that we all see things differently and we all form our own opinions. But to me it seemed as if Obama played his "race cards" for just long enough to put everyone in a warm and fuzzy mood, but not quite asleep, and then while nobody was looking he threw the truth under the bus.

Facts are facts, are they not?

Jeremiah Wright, September 16, 2001, Chicago:

“I heard Ambassador Peck on an interview yesterday. Did anybody else see or hear him? He was on FOX News, this is a white man, and he was upsetting the FOX News commentators to no end. He pointed out, a white man, an ambassador, he pointed out that what Malcolm X said when he was silenced by Elijah Mohammad was in fact true, he said America's chickens, are coming home to roost.”

“We took this country by terror away from the Sioux, the Apache, Arikara, the Comanche, the Arapaho, the Navajo. Terrorism.

“We took Africans away from their country to build our way of ease and kept them enslaved and living in fear. Terrorism.

“We bombed Grenada and killed innocent civilians, babies, non-military personnel.

“We bombed the black civilian community of Panama with stealth bombers and killed unarmed teenage and toddlers, pregnant mothers and hard working fathers.

“We bombed Qaddafi’s home, and killed his child. Blessed are they who bash your children’s head against the rock.

“We bombed Iraq. We killed unarmed civilians trying to make a living. We bombed a plant in Sudan to pay back for the attack on our embassy, killed hundreds of hard working people, mothers and fathers who left home to go that day not knowing that they’d never get back home.

“We bombed Hiroshima. We bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon and we never batted an eye.

“Kids playing in the playground. Mothers picking up children after school. Civilians, not soldiers, people just trying to make it day by day.

“We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff that we have done overseas is now brought right back into our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.

“Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred. And terrorism begets terrorism. A white ambassador said that y’all, not a black militant. Not a reverend who preaches about racism. An ambassador whose eyes are wide open and who is trying to get us to wake up and move away from this dangerous precipice upon which we are now poised. The ambassador said the people we have wounded don’t have the military capability we have. But they do have individuals who are willing to die and take thousands with them. And we need to come to grips with that.”

What in the name of heaven is wrong with this? Is there a single assertion of fact here that is incorrect? If anything, Reverend Wright's list is too short. He left out Guatemala. He left out Vietnam. He left out death squads in El Salvador. On and on it goes.

Barack Obama, March 18, 2008, Philadelphia:

the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

This is one lie after another; let's look at only the last of them:

Do "the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam" emerge from a cosmic void? Can the United States really continue to bomb and invade and destroy one foreign country after another without ever releasing any "chickens" that might someday "come home to roost"?

Operation Cyclone

Beginning in 1979, Americans working secretly through the Pakistani intelligence agency ISI, as well as some other Middle Eastern allies, recruited and trained terrorists; armed and funded them; motivated them with extremist Islamic propaganda; and infiltrated them into Afghanistan via Pakistan.

The object was to hassle the Soviets, to lure them into invading Afghanistan. The American-trained terrorists were known as "mujahadeen" at the time, and in the USA they were called "freedom fighters". Their modern offshoots have names like "Taliban" and "al Qaeda".

The damage these groups have done is almost immeasurable. We hear about al Qaeda all the time although they don't attack here. That's because they attack in Pakistan. And elsewhere. In Pakistan alone in 2006 there were more than 600 terrorist attacks in which more than 900 people were killed. In 2007 the numbers were even higher. That's just one country. We think we know about terrorism. We know nothing.

Operation Cyclone was started during the Carter administration. It was a brainchild of Carter's National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Carter, Brzezinski, and the other supposedly "pro-human rights" Democrats thought nothing of fomenting terrorism in one foreign country, exporting it to another and using it to attack a third.

Is this not a war crime of the highest magnitude?

Zbigniew Brzezinski is now a foreign policy advisor to Barack Obama. So tell me: How much hypocrisy does it take for Barack Obama to say what he has said about the conflicts in the Middle East? How can he dismiss America's long and gruesome record of crimes against humanity so easily?

How can we possibly hope for peace or justice or unity in the face of such mendacity?

Barack Obama essentially wasted 37 minutes of our time telling us how unfortunate it was that Jeremiah Wright was an older black man who grew up harboring certain resentments that are no longer relevant, or something to that effect.

He turned the whole story into an issue of race, when the basic question was "Why did you sit through his sermons? Why did you stay in his church?" and the correct answers would have been "Because he's a good man who loves God and his country, and because was telling us the truth!"

"Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred. And terrorism begets terrorism."

Barack Obama should have repudiated his foreign policy advisor, not his pastor.

Horrifying: Obama's Brilliant Speech Of Hope And Unity Scares Me Half To Death

The Sermon Obama Repudiated Was One We All Needed To Hear

My comment has not produced a response. As far as I know, it hasn't even caused a single mouse to click. If that changes, I'll let you know.

In the meantime, I'll continue to read Consortium News. But when it comes to the Democratic primaries, I'll be getting my "independent investigative journalism" elsewhere.

~~~

fifth in a series

Horrifying: Obama's Brilliant Speech Of Hope And Unity Scares Me Half To Death

A mere glance at the human condition reveals what a lifetime's study surely confirms: There can be no Peace without Justice. There can be no Justice without Truth. There can be no Unity without Peace. And therefore no one who values Unity above Truth can bring Peace, or Justice.

As you probably know, Senator Barack Obama has recently distanced himself -- somewhat, at least -- from remarks made in twenty years of sermons by his long-time (and now former) pastor, Jeremiah Wright, after Wright's "controversial", "divisive" and "incendiary" statements caused political problems for the Democratic presidential hopeful.

Obama side-stepped the issues very eloquently, in a way only a half-black, half-white candidate could attempt; the speech he gave on Tuesday has been hailed as an important effort at bridging the divide that separates us: one small step for the man himself, and a giant leap -- if not for mankind, then at least for the Obama vision, a vision of one people united.

It's a lofty and noble goal, in general terms. And it has never been expressed in anything but general terms during this campaign, nor can it ever be. The basic reason -- the unmentionable basic reason -- is that Obama's vision is spectacularly unsuited for the task at hand.

It's a lovely vision. It's perfect, perhaps, for some other time or some other place. But for early 21st century America, it's deadly.

Peggy Noonan echoed one of my reactions in the Wall Street Journal when she wrote:

It seemed to me as honest a speech as one in his position could give within the limits imposed by politics.

If this quality -- pushing honesty to the politically acceptable limit -- was its greatness, then it was also its downfall. Consider the following passage from Obama, Tuesday in Philadelphia:

We’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.

Wright's statements, which Obama says "denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation" and which therefore were breathlessly reported by the national press, included charges that America nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that America supported state-sponsored terrorism against South Africans and Palestinians, and that America's foreign policy was somehow responsible for the attacks of September 11, 2001.

They may offend "black and white alike", but not "rightly"; not by any stretch of the imagination. They certainly offend the ignorant and arrogant alike, but to anyone with a heart and a clue, they come as welcome reminders that somebody still notices and cares about the truth behind all the lies.

Here's Obama again:

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

Speaking of problems, the problem with Barack Obama's vision of unity is its comprehensiveness. In other words, he sacrifices verifiable truth in order to preserve a shadowy vision of unity. Or maybe he just ran up against the limits Peggy Noonan hinted at. One way or another, Barack Obama's analysis is in some respects entirely detached from reality.

Reverend Wright's "controversial remarks" contained a great deal of truth -- and as always, truth is the seed of change for the better. By explicitly rejecting the truths Wright has told, Obama has closed off any avenue of potential improvement.

I don't mean to imply that I agree with everything Jeremiah Wright has ever said; I am only aware of a few of his most "incendiary statements". But some of those statements were "incendiary" precisely because they were true! And Barack Obama's description of 21st century America is very different from reality in some important respects.

The question of whether white racism in America is "endemic" is a tricky one, and much depends on what one means by "endemic". In one sense, "endemic" means "confined to a certain region". Clearly white racism is not confined to the United States or any part thereof. So technically Obama's assertion may be true. However, "endemic" also means "natural to or characteristic of a specific people or place" and it is quite a stretch to assert that white racism is not natural to or characteristic of America -- it's an important part of our heritage, as Obama's speech itself showed!

In fact, Obama's speech is seen as remarkable because it concerned race relations and racial tension -- subjects which are seldom if ever mentioned in the national discourse. Does this very fact not also argue that Obama is wrong about the prevalence of racism? However you slice it, facts are facts, and here are a few more of them:

Some white people are less prejudiced than their ancestors were. Others are not. Some black people in modern America have advantages unavailable to their parents and grandparents. Others have no such luck. The racial divide, as Obama pointed out so eloquently, goes way back, back to the founding of the country -- a country founded by rich white men who owned black slaves.

Among other "incendiary remarks", Jeremiah Wright has said that modern America is ruled by rich white men. But what is news about this? They no longer own slaves, but they still run the country. When was it ever otherwise?

We can see. We can count. We know certain things; certain undeniable, easily provable things: There are very few African-Americans in the corridors of power. Those who dare to speak freely and truthfully are quickly removed -- or marginalized, while those who toe the line get to stay a bit longer and make a bit more noise. Thus we have Barbara Lee and Cynthia McKinney on the one hand; Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell and John Conyers on the other.

Blacks are more likely than whites to be charged with a crime. They are more likely to be convicted once charged. They are more likely to be given harsh sentences once convicted. We've reached a ridiculous extreme: one out of every nine young adult black men is in prison. How could this happen in a society where white racism wasn't endemic?

There are plenty of other aspects of American racism, and plenty of other things wrong with America, too. They are all well worth discussing, and in fact the discussion is necessary and long overdue, even if it risks the condemnation of those who see any criticism as "elevat[ing] what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America".

Even more to the point, the conflicts in the Middle East are firmly rooted in the actions of Israel, which is not a stalwart ally of the USA by any means. They are also firmly rooted in the actions of America and Great Britain; we ignore this at our peril. In fact, we ignore the entire history of the region at our peril, and we have done so, as comprehensively as possible, for a very long time.

Furthermore, and even more disastrously, the "perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam" were in large part "created" by "clever" Americans, who thought they were doing the world a favor.

Beginning in 1979, they recruited, armed, funded and motivated a gang of perverse and hateful radical Islamist terrorists, whom they trained in Pakistan under the watchful eye of their favorite Asian cutout, the ISI.

Once trained, the terrorists -- who were called "freedom fighters" -- were inserted into Afghanistan, to wreak havoc on the Russians. The "freedom fighters" were known as "mujahadeen" back then, but their modern offshoots are known as "Taliban" and "al Qaeda".

Barack Obama doesn't want you to know any of this. He can't allow the topic to enter into the national discourse. The reasons are many, but one is enough: The creation of the mujahadeen was the brainchild of Barack Obama's foreign policy advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski.

What was he thinking? Wikipedia puts it this way:

In 1998, Brzezinski was interviewed by the French newspaper Nouvel Observateur on the topic of Afghanistan. He revealed that CIA support for the mujaheddin had started before the 1979 Soviet invasion and was indeed designed to prompt a Soviet invasion, leading them into a bloody conflict comparable to America's experience in Vietnam. This was referred to as the "Afghan Trap". Brzezinski viewed the end of the Soviet empire as worth the cost of strengthening militant Islamic groups.

The text of the interview is here; this is the most interesting passage:

INT: How did you interpret Soviet behavior in Afghanistan, such as the April revolution, the rise of... I mean, what did you think their long-term plans were, and what did you think should be done about it?

ZB: I told the President, about six months before the Soviets entered Afghanistan, that in my judgment I thought they would be going into Afghanistan. And I decided then, and I recommended to the President, that we shouldn't be passive.

INT: What happened?

ZB: We weren't passive.

INT: But at the time...

(Interruption)

INT: Right, describe your reaction when you heard that your suspicions had been fully justified: an invasion had happened.

See how it works? We weren't passive. But we won't talk about what we did while we weren't being passive -- while we were trying to provoke an invasion!

In any case, on July 3, 1979, U.S. President Carter signed a presidential finding authorizing funding for anticommunist guerrillas in Afghanistan. The Soviets invaded in December.

INT: Reflecting on that whole situation in Afghanistan, do you think it was worth all the suffering that was involved?

ZB: I think the Soviets made a tragic mistake, and therefore it wasn't worth their while to go in. I think it would have been a tragedy if we had allowed them to overrun the Afghans.

In other words, Americans recruited terrorists in a foreign country[*], armed and trained them and then infiltrated them into a second, so they could attack a third. And they never thought anything of it -- as if it were somehow America's divine right to foment all the terrorism it likes in foreign countries. Pakistan and Afghanistan [*] are still suffering daily from the madness unleashed there almost 30 years ago by Brzezinski and his "human rights" president, Jimmy Carter. But now the facts of this "misadventure" -- of which its architects are still quite proud -- don't belong anywhere in our national history, except possibly under the rug.

[* The preceding paragraph was clean and clear-cut but overly simplified in several important ways. Terrorists destined for Afghanistan were recruited from all over the Middle East, not just from Pakistan. Many of them were sent to America for training. And, of course, the list of countries which are still suffering daily from the madness thus unleashed is much longer than I have indicated. For more details on this part of the story, see my "other other blog", Visas For Terrorists.]

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.

Depending on whom you believe, the terrorist group founded by Barack Obama's foreign policy advisor may have perpetrated the attacks of 9/11, and launched the so-called "Global War On Terror", which has killed so many innocent people we can't even count them all.

Alternatively, the 9/11 attacks could have been carried out much more easily by more powerful actors with more inside access; certainly the complexity of the operation and the degree of planning involved suggest some sort of inside knowledge, if not actual inside help.

Therefore it is not surprising that "the conventional wisdom" rejects all the alternative hypotheses, especially considering that this so-called wisdom is embodied, if not created, by a national "news media" which is clearly beholden to the most corrupt and militaristic of interests.

But it is remarkable to note the ferocity of the attack on Jeremiah Wright's assertion that 9/11 was in some sense "America's chickens coming home to roost". This, after all, was supposed to be the "official story": they hate us because of what we've done to their countries. It's just like the bombing of the Marines in Lebanon in 1982; American troops are stationed in places where they're unwelcome, and it's time for them to come home.

That's the way the story was supposed to go, apparently. Neglecting for the moment the obvious disparity between the official story and the observed events of the day, the idea that radical Islamic bombers would attack us in such a suicidal way because they hate what we've done to their countries is much more plausible than the idea that they would do so unprovoked by us and for no reason other than "hateful ideologies".

Nonetheless, Obama now blames "the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam" -- which were established on a terrorist footing by his own foreign policy advisor!

The line of "thinking" that led to the creation of Islamic terrorist groups is the very same line that led to the creation of death squads in Vietnam, and in Central America, and elsewhere.

The same line of "thought" has led to the overt invasion or covert subversion of countless foreign countries. The unprovoked and massively destructive assault on innocent, defenseless people in Iraq is only the latest chapter in a long and shameful history.

It's the history of the bipartisan consensus which has ruled America for more than a hundred years. And you are not supposed to know about any of it.

The people in office -- all the elephants, and virtually all the donkeys -- are addicted to a "vision" of "reality" that is in fact a web of lies. Our "news" media are heavily complicit in fabricating and distributing this distorted view of "reality", so it's no surprise that so many Americans share it.

This national, cultural delusion is nothing new; throughout human history we can find cultures entirely devoted to notions that we find quite ridiculous. But our delusion is uniquely dangerous, because our ridiculous notions are wedded to the most fearsome killing machine ever assembled.

In a well-educated democracy, the people would vote the offenders out of office. But we can't do that. We don't have a democracy. And we know virtually nothing.

Our elections can no longer be verified. Our government has ceased to be legitimate. Office-holders no longer need fear the rejection of the people they supposedly represent. And in some cases they flaunt their independence from the voters quite brazenly. It's very simple, and it's blatantly obvious, but it's a truth the American media will never tell.

And this is only one of the issues the media won't talk about.

They won't talk about the crimes committed by America overseas, in the name of liberty or democracy or protecting our interests. They will never admit the truth about our foreign policy. And therefore they cannot acknowledge the reasons why foreign terrorists hate America.

How can we win a war on terror when we don't even understand what motivates it? Strangely enough, that doesn't matter, because "we" have no intention of winning.

The point of the "Global War On Terror" is not to win but to fight. This has been clear for a long time -- since early on the day of September 11, 2001. But it's another one of the truths about America that the media will never tell, and that our national politicians, no matter how brave, will never mention.

Inevitably, many people are still trapped in the web of lies. And here I don't mean just the lies of the Bush administration, or the lies of the past generation of Republicans. These lies may be vile and critical, exceptionally vicious and ubiquitous -- but they are only the most recent examples.

I mean the lies about America -- lies about the role we play in the world, lies about the role we should play in the world, lies about who we support and why, lies about who controls the levers of power and why.

These lies are bought and sold by "leaders" of both major parties, and they've been doing it for more than a century. So if we think we can get beyond them quickly, or do so simply by voting for one party over the other, we are sadly mistaken.

We are in effect doubly trapped: we couldn't change the government by voting even if we wanted to, but most of us are so ill-informed that we don't really want to.

So how do we change that?

First and foremost, we need to focus on the truth and discard the lies. Barack Obama and his eloquent speech are not helping in this regard.

Rather than repudiating his pastor, he should have repudiated his foreign policy advisor.

Rather than distancing himself from a man who spoke the truth, he should have purged his staff of war criminals.

But Barack Obama will never do that, because he is a "serious" candidate for President of the United States. And that means that though he may show some courage by wading into the verboten field of "race in politics", he still has to embrace all the most important official lies, and he still has to reject anyone in his life who threatens the official fiction.

This is not the path to change. It is the road to hell.

But if Barack Obama were any less anxious to follow it, he wouldn't be in the position he's in today -- black or white, male or female.

~~~

The discussion continues: The Sermon Obama Repudiated Was One We All Needed To Hear

60 Minutes Coverage Of Don Siegelman Story Blacked Out In Alabama

Larisa Alexandrovna is sizzling at Huffington Post, and rightfully so, in my view. She's been reporting about the political persecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman [photo], who is currently serving a seven-year sentence in federal prison, for nothing more -- apparently -- than having been a successful Democratic politician in a "Republican state".

As I mentioned in an earlier post, CBS aired a segment on this story on 60 Minutes earlier this evening. Well, guess what?

Larisa:

As 60 Minutes was putting its show together, the White House put pressure on CBS -- the parent company -- to kill the show. Over the last few days, as word got out that the 60 Minutes show would air tonight, Karl Rove's associates began planting defamatory stories about journalists working on this story (see example here) and attacking the whistle-blower who came forward, Dana Jill Simpson. If you recall, Ms. Simpson testified, under oath, to Congress about Karl Rove's involvement in politicizing the DOJ. What you may not know, however, is that her house mysteriously caught fire and she was run off the road in the weeks leading up to her testimony.

What you may also not know is that Governor Siegelman's house was broken into twice during his trial as was his attorney's office.

Yesterday, the attacks on Simpson and journalists increased with a series of emails from the Alabama GOP. See Here.

Tonight was something truly unseen in US history. During the 60 Minutes broadcast and ONLY during the Don Siegelman portion -- the screen went black for Huntsville residents and Mobile residents. There are other reports of other locations, but I have not yet confirmed those. In Florida, a series of strange ads were running about the FISA bill and how Democrats are not tough on terrorism, apparently during the 60 Minutes hour and also right before 60 Minutes, but not after (still trying to confirm when the ads stopped running).

In other words, in the United States of America, a man is imprisoned for being a Democrat. When reporters attempt to get this story out, they are threatened and smeared. When all else fails, the public is not allowed to see the news. This is not acceptable and I -- as a US citizen -- demand that Congress investigate this series of blackouts immediately. Any company involved in this must have their FCC license pulled too. Karl Rove may be gone from office, but he clearly is not gone from power. So long as his buddy, George W. Bush, continues to occupy the White House -- what used to be a symbol of how a nation could both be governed and be free -- we will continue toward abuse after imperial, no Soviet, abuse against us. That too is unacceptable.

Agreed. If we will sit still for this we will sit still for anything.

Patriots? Anyone? Have we become too numb to care?

Please read more of the background from Larisa Alexandrovna at Raw Story The Permanent Republican Majority Part I | Part II | Part III

Excellent coverage from Scott Horton at Harper's
More excellent coverage at Larisa's blog, At-Largely
This evening's 60 Minutes broadcast
Larisa's piece at HuffPo: Parts of 60 Minutes Broadcast Blocked in Alabama...

And finally [!?], an update at Larisa's blog says CBS is blaming a technical problem in New York.

Yeah, sure!