Noam Chomsky, U.S. Foreign Policy, Propaganda, Syria, International Terrorism, And Grasping At Straws

Jeremy Kuzmarov, Managing Editor of Covert Action Magazine, has recently posted a piece called The U.S. May Have Lost the Military War in Syria, But Has Won the Propaganda War at Home By Portraying its Murderous Invasion as a Moral Crusade, which he opens by claiming that, in the case of Syria, the

propaganda has been so good that [Noam] Chomsky himself at times was taken in by it.

This is the first article I have ever read by Jeremy Kuzmarov, and I couldn't agree less! So we're off to a good start!

In my view, the propaganda regarding Syria has been so obvious and so desperate that it's now much easier than ever to see that Noam Chomsky himself plays a part in it.

It's not easy for everyone, of course. It's not even easy for Jeremy Kuzmarov, who himself has at times been taken in by Chomsky, I would say.

The World At War: AFRICOM vs. Ghana in the Round of 16

We Are The World, and even as I write, we are preparing for another battle, the next in a month-long series of short, controlled skirmishes which will draw the attention of billions of people, although neither the individual skirmishes nor the entire series have any actual significance. Such is the power of modern marketing.

The imminent clash pits the huge and mighty USA -- which just recently admitted running overt and covert "clandestine operations" in at least 75 "sovereign" nations -- against the small and mostly impoverished African nation of Ghana. Despite the disparity in resources, USA is not considered a "prohibitive favorite". Such is the nature of modern football (which Americans insist on calling "soccer").

Recently, at a family gathering, one of the older women -- a mother of three boys, two of whom joined the Marines as teenagers -- was talking about the Vietnam-era anti-war demonstrators. Many people believe that the anti-war movement forced an end to the war. I wouldn't go quite that far, but at the very least the anti-war movement proved to me that some Americans still had functioning brains and hearts.

I don't see that very much anymore; the brains appear to have turned to mush, and the hearts to stone. I was hoping the old woman was about to say something of a similar nature, but instead, looking back on the protests, she said, "That was so difficult for the parents!"

Given the circumstances, there was little I could say. I certainly couldn't say what I was thinking: "The parents!? It was difficult for the parents?? How do you think it was for the children???"

First we had to throw off all the propaganda we'd been fed by our schools, by our parents, by the teevee and the radio, the movies and the newspapers and all the rest of our so-called "culture"; then we had to bring ourselves face-to-face with the fact that our government had adopted a policy of killing millions of innocent people, who had no means to harm us and no intention of doing so, for fun and profit. It was a most repulsive revelation, especially in the midst of all the Disney-crap we'd been "brought up" on.

But even that wasn't enough, because having learned what we had learned, having taken the stands we had taken, we then had to endure the rejection of our parents: and we saw with our own eyes how the people who had brought us into this world, fed us and held us, taught us and loved us, turned against us when we brought to light the most vital truth of their lives, preferring the deadly fiction to which they were accustomed, and with which they were so much more comfortable. And now, "it was so difficult for the parents". Such is the power of modern American stupidity.

None of this makes any difference, of course, to the billions preparing to tune in to the match between USA and Ghana. Very few of the world's sporting fans seem to know or care whether Ghana is seen by USA as nothing but a tiny component of AFRICOM, which in itself is simply one cog in the Pentagon's plan to rule the world by force. I know people who will be standing and cheering and yelling "USA!! USA!!" all afternoon, but I cannot share -- or understand -- their sentiment.

I want to see the whole world screaming for Ghana. I want to see the whole world waking up and aligning itself against the USA, not only in world football but also -- much more significantly -- against the American plan to rule the world.

I want ordinary, "decent", "intelligent" Americans to see the unprovoked murder of even one innocent person as an intolerable outrage; then I want them to understand that their country has murdered millions upon millions of innocent people, not just at one time and in one place but repeatedly, all over the world, for decades. And I want them to realize that their chant of "USA!! USA!!" is -- for the rest of the world -- the most obscene of non-violent gestures.

Not that it matters in the slightest to anyone, but it breaks my heart to realize that the country of my birth is a serial mass murderer, and that even despite the horror that is USA, many of the allegedly most intelligent people I know, including elderly and supposedly wise members of my extended family, still support it, while seeing any prospect of facing the truth about it as "difficult for the parents".

I want the so-called "Family of Man" to take a stand. I want to hear millions and millions -- billions -- of voices, jeering and whistling every time an American player touches the ball. I want to hear billions of voices jeering and whistling every time an American president tells another outrageous lie, every time the American military launches another unprovoked attack against innocent people, every time ... every time ...

I know none of this will happen. But then again this is football, where everything is artificial and nothing matters. Surely a battered old man with a broken heart can have a dream now and then, can't he? Isn't that what the beautiful game is all about?

To comment on this post, please click here and join the Winter Patriot community.

Drowning In A Giant Cesspool I: Consultation

Hi. Can I help you?

I hope so, Doc! I really do.

What seems to be the problem?

I suffer from a recurring ... sensation ... that I'm drowning ...

That's not uncommon.

... in a giant cesspool!

Well, that is uncommon. Why do you say "a giant cesspool"?

It's so dark, and so foul. I can't see anything. I struggle just to keep my face above the surface. I breathe through my mouth because the smell is so horrible. And every now and then I bump into something that's floating, and I want to grab it, and hold onto it ... but ...

But what?

... but I know I shouldn't ... because it's probably ... well, why do you think I said "cesspool"?

I see ... You say this is a recurring sensation?

Yes.

How often does it come on? When did it start?

It started in November of '63. One day I was an innocent little kid and the sun was shining; the next day the President was dead, everything was dark, and I was up to my neck in slime. It got worse in the summer of '68, and it's never really gone away -- and never got any better, either. But in the past eight years or so, it's been getting a lot worse, and even more frequent, and now it's a constant feature of my life ... I fight it every night.

So, this dream...

Oh no! It's not a dream! It happens when I'm awake.

When you're awake?

Yeah.

What triggers it?

Reading the paper. Watching TV. Listening to the radio. Surfing the net. Talking to idiots who think they're geniuses, and fools who think they know everything. There are other triggers, but these are the main ones.

And how does it happen? Is it always the same? Or is it always different?

Oh no. It's different every time.

Can you give me an example?

Are you kidding? I could give you a thousand.

Let's start with one, shall we?

OK. Let's start at the bottom of the tank. Look: If I lose it for a second -- if I slip under the surface -- my feet get into muck like this:

Why You Should Love Your Carbon Footprint

By: Paul A. Ibbetson (Right Truth Exclusive)

America, with all its imperfections, is still truly the land of opportunity. This has been the unique component that has brought people from around the world, in every way imaginable, and even some ways not. This opportunity to succeed and, yes, to also fail, is a product brought about by individual freedom that has been unique to America since our founding fathers placed their lives on the line to create a better future for themselves and their families....

You see what I mean? This isn't floating. This is not something I would want to hang onto. This is the sort of poison I am trying to get away from!

How do you know it's poison?

First of all, look at the name of the site. Right Truth. It's a contradiction in terms, flashing in neon, right out in the open for all to see. What does that tell you?

What am I supposed to see in it?

"Truth" is not "Right" or "Left"; those are political labels. Principles of "right" or "left", or the use of any other simplistic labels, get in the way of the truth more often than not -- as ideology always does! -- as ideology is intended to do!!

So when I see a site that's openly marked in such a political way, claiming to tell me the truth, I'm more than suspicious. It's as if they don't even have enough guile to pretend to be neutral observers.

And such is the case here. Paul Ibbetson starts with a mass of lies and then builds on them. And what do you think he builds? More lies!

Ibbetson is opposed to Obama's Cap and Trade bill, which I do not support either, but I see no reason to support my position by telling lies -- such as the claim, advanced by Ibbetson, that Obama's deeply flawed policy is

a symptom of the liberal environmental psychosis, of which capitalism and the free market (and the prosperity both bring), are seen as dangerous and destructive. It is through this derangement that CO2, a naturally occurring substance - crucial for life on this planet, can be seen as a poison and we are all told to hate our "carbon footprint."

It is true that CO2 is a naturally occurring substance, but like every naturally occurring substance, there are limits to how much can naturally occur and still leave the planet in a condition to support life -- any life, not to mention complex social systems such as we "advanced" and "prosperous" "free-market" humans have evolved.

Oxygen is naturally occurring, but if we had too much oxygen in the atmosphere, the next spark would ignite us all.

Water is naturally occurring as well, but if the oceans were a mile deeper ... well, you get the idea, don't you?

The larger point is: environmental destruction is real. It's not a liberal derangement. It's happening -- here in a big way, elsewhere in much bigger ways. The rich export their garbage. And even though our economy is in a spin, we are still the rich of the world. We consume the bulk of the resources. We generate the bulk of the pollution. Our prosperity comes at great cost to the planet, and to the other people with whom we allegedly share it. Everybody else in the world knows this. And to deny it ... is ... so typically American!

But then denying reality is typically American. According to Ibbetson, America is "unique" in offering personal freedom, plus the chance to succeed or fail! What could be more stupid? Do they not have personal freedom in any other country in the world? Can foreigners not succeed? Or fail?

To hear Paul Ibbetson tell it, such opportunities are uniquely American, and therefore foreign success stories must be fiction. Forget Ferrari, Mercedes, Toblerone, Abba; they just don't exist for the bottom-feeders who call themselves "Right" and call what they're selling "Truth". If it weren't so poisonous, it would almost be funny.

Well, it may be incorrect, but why do you say it's poisonous?

Because these introductory lies are used as building blocks for the next layer of lies, and they form a foundation for an edifice of fiction that goes on forever ... with nary a glimpse of reality to be found.

Here's another example, from the same website. "Breaking Big Government", by R.J. Godlewski, contains astonishing admissions of ignorance and hatred, such as:

... we are constantly drilled on the perceived injustices that we supposedly unleashed upon the planet.... We would rather be suckered into believing that our nation has done the world great harm instead of understanding that that [sic] world had [sic] suffered us into nearly every war that we fought.

These lies are multi-faceted, multi-layered and multi-purposed.

We are in no sense "constantly drilled". What America has done to the rest of the world is the best-kept secret of all -- never allowed in American schools, from elementary to university; never allowed onto TV news; only mentioned on the most truth-telling of blogs! -- but the whole sorry saga is well-known to those who have bothered to look for it, and, of course, to those upon whom the damage has been inflicted.

The "perceived injustices" that we "supposedly unleashed" include countless millions of innocent people dead; tens of millions of other innocent people displaced; scores of democratic governments overthrown; dozens of other countries thrown into states of violent chaos that have lasted a generation or longer -- sometimes much longer. Add in chemical, biological and nuclear pollution that runs in the hundreds of thousands of tons, and we're just getting started.

Furthermore, nobody wants to believe that our nation has done the world great harm. Liberals and conservatives both deny it outright, albeit in different ways. Most of us can't even be "suckered into" contemplating the truth for a moment, let alone embracing it long enough to begin to understand it.

As I read him, Godlewski was trying to type "the world has suffered us into nearly every war that we have fought", which makes syntactic sense, even though it does little else -- at least on first sight. On the other hand, it may reveal more than Godlewski intended, for surely the world has "suffered" mightily because of nearly every war we have fought.

As for the world having "suffered us into" those wars, one might struggle a bit with the semantics, but as Merriam-Webster makes clear, "suffer" is indeed the correct word, in more than one sense.

1 a : to submit to or be forced to endure
1 b : to feel keenly : labor under
2 : undergo, experience
3 : to put up with especially as inevitable or unavoidable
4 : to allow especially by reason of indifference

It is no doubt true that the world has "submitted" and been "forced to endure" damage it has "felt keenly"; and that it has been "undergoing" and "experiencing" great pain, which to this point has indeed been "inevitable" and "unavoidable", at least as far as the victims have been concerned.

But to claim that the world has "allowed" America to attack and destroy one defenseless country after another for the past 60 or 100 years by reason of "indifference" is as misleading as any lie you'll ever read.

Clearly the international scene is dominated by the often unspoken but occasionally explicit threat: Who wants to be the next Iraq?

Nevertheless, the stack of lies gows ever deeper, and Godlewski even says this:

Since 2006, our Congress and Presidency have exceeded that which caused the colonists to fight back against King George III; the United States to fight back against Nazi Germany; and America to fight back against Soviet Russia. Yet, we remain silent and submissive. We allow the traitor-ship of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and, most recently, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, to quickly dismantle the very foundations of our liberties and rights while we attentively “listen” for explanation of these transgressions. There is no excuse for treachery, no justification for thievery.

I agree with some of his sentiments, but it's obvious that the problem did not begin in 2006 -- when the Democrats "took control" of the Congress -- and that the list of treacherous thieves is not confined to -- and doesn't even begin with -- Peolsi, Reid, Obama and Biden.

It was the Bush administration -- "Conservative" "Republicans" of the "Right" -- who neglected their national security responsibilities enough to allow terrorists to strike us (or worse!) and then used the resulting "crisis" to implement a regime featuring indefinite detention without charge or trial (but with enhanced torture), warrantless surveillance on an unprecedented scale, unprovoked wars against two (or three) (or four!) different countries, and on and on and on ... not that it was all Bush's fault. Most of this has been brewing since Bush I, if not Reagan, if not Truman, if not Wilson, if not Teddy Roosevelt. And all the while they told us that only they -- and not the Democrats -- could be trusted to provide national security. These clowns who had failed us, or traitors who had sold us down the river, made this ridiculous claim, and the media broadcast it far and wide, day and night. None of these problems started with Obama, or in 2006. But of course such a wide historical perspective is not "Right" or "Truth", and so Godlewski is not selling it.

He's selling this, instead:

We permitted the indiscretions of Bill Clinton and the inconsistencies of George W. Bush to open the doorway to transnationalism and the breakdown of the Republic when it is “Big Government” that deserves our wrath.

Could any analysis ever be more shallow? If only all we had to worry about were Clinton's "indiscretions". And what are we to make of Godlewski's claim about Bush's "inconsistencies"? When has a president ever "stayed" such a brain-damaged (or criminally corrupt) "course" so steadfastly?

As for "the doorway to transnationalism", that's something the US "business community" has been trying, not to open but to obliterate, for more than a hundred years. Having bashed it down is an "achievement" both parties can be "proud" of.

Piling on is a foul in football, but in "Right" "Truth" "journalism", piling on is a proven tactic, and so Godlewski throws in one more lie to close the paragraph, saying that it's "Big Government" that "deserves our wrath" when in fact the problem with our government is not its size but its orientation. If the government were large and powerful and working on our behalf, that would be another story -- a very different story indeed.

Perhaps it's asking too much of Godlewski to tell us some truth. By his own admission, he's spent his adult life immersed in the mother of all giant cesspools:

While Mr. Obama was basking in the glow of his liberal professors, I was actively serving my nation in order to keep the Red Menace off Main Street. While he was practicing law, I was defending America. Later, when Mr. Obama left college he went on to become a “community organizer”. When I left the Navy I went on to organize efforts to defeat global terrorism.

Perhaps it's asking too much of Godlewski to understand that there was never any "Red Menace" to Main Street; on the contrary there were many years when the lion's share of the "membership" dues collected by the Communist Party of America came from FBI agents who had been assigned to infiltrate the Party.

Perhaps it's asking too much of Godlewski to understand that he has spent many years "defending America" against a "threat" that never existed at all, except insofar as it was fomented by the Pentagon and her Mossad friends, and exaggerated by politicians and media moguls.

And given all that, perhaps it's not very surprising that a man who has been immersed in toxic waste for his entire life could write:

I begin every day with a simple prayer that God drops a large asteroid upon our planet for I cannot bear seeing a future without my beloved United States of America at its helm.

But I can't help starting every day with a similar prayer -- that God drops bolts of lightning on J. R. Godlewski and every other ignoramus who "thinks" the way he does, and who spreads manure so vile that it sinks to the bottom of the cesspool immediately!

Perhaps you're over-reacting?

Perhaps you didn't understand me! But that's ok, because we're just getting started.

We may just be getting started, but unfortunately our time is up. We can schedule another session, if you like.

Sure. What does it cost? Oh, never mind. Just send my bill to the White House!

To comment on this post, please click here and join the Winter Patriot community.

Anti-Semitism In Action: UK Lowers Terror Threat Level; Guardian Reports On The Change

Is anti-Semitism on the rise? You bet it is, and for good reason. It's well-funded.

Consider, for example, the following piece from Alan Travis, home affairs editor of The Guardian, which appeared on July 20, 2009. The headline reads: "Britain downgrades al-Qaida terror attack alert level". The sub-heading says "Officials reduce assessment of threat from 'severe' to 'substantial', its lowest level since 9/11", and the text of the article reads:

The official assessment of the threat level of an al-Qaida terrorist attack on Britain has been lowered from "severe" – where an attack is deemed highly likely – to "substantial", where an attack is considered a strong possibility.

The decision to lower the official threat level follows a new assessment by MI5 and the joint terrorism analysis centre, based on intelligence gathered in Britain and abroad on how close terrorist groups may be to staging an attack.

The designation of a "substantial" threat level is the lowest since 9/11. It confirms that the swine flu pandemic is now a bigger threat to the life of the nation than terrorism.

The home secretary, Alan Johnson, acknowledged that fact on Sunday, when he told the BBC's Andrew Marr programme that swine flu came "above terrorism as a threat to this country". He said the long-term preparations had involved the whole "Cobra machinery", a reference to the Cabinet's emergency committe [sic] that handles major disasters.

The decision reportedly follows an official assessment of Operation Pathway, one of MI5's biggest counterterrorism campaigns, which led to the arrest of 11 Pakistani men in April. All those arrested were released without charge, and no explosives or weapons were found.

The system of threat levels is made up of five stages. At "critical", an attack is expected imminently. At "severe", an attack is regarded as highly likely. At "substantial", an attack is a strong possibility. At "moderate" an attack is possible but not likely. And at "low", an attack is deemed unlikely.

The home secretary said in a statement: "We still face a real and serious threat from terrorists and the public will notice little difference in the security measures that are in place, and I urge the public to remain vigilant. The police and security services are continuing in their thorough efforts to discover, track and disrupt terrorist activity."

Did you catch the anti-Semitism in this piece? Don't feel badly if you didn't; it's very subtle and it takes an expert to detect it. Fortunately, such an expert happened to be available -- eventually. But first, a number of Guardian readers made comments reflecting the obvious absurdity of the situation, such as this from nega9000:

Hang on a minute, weren't we being told just last month that a, quote, 'spectacular' attack was being planned?

Oh, I get it, whoever's our equivalent of Jack Bauer averted said attack in the nick of time, killed all the terrorists and is, as we speak, copping off with the foxy but feisty young agent who was there for no discernable reason other than to offer expository dialogue.

Phew. Was getting worried there for a minute.

and this from metalvendetta:

Let me get this straight, they arrested eleven Pakistanis and couldn't find anything to link them to terrorism, so now the threat is reduced? Could it be that they just arrested the wrong people? Or is this decision based on intelligence - the same kind of intelligence that led them to believe that those eleven innocent men were terrorists in the first place?

Haywire asks:

Does this mean i now have to stop rifling through my neighbours' bins looking for empty 'chemicals' containers which may well have been used for making bombs, as was suggested by a recent publicity awareness campaign? If so, what the hell am i now going to do with my Sundays? Go to church??!!

nimn2003 asks:

Does this mean we no longer need ID Cards and the Database? Thank the Lord for that!

and ChrisWoods answers:

No we still need ID Cards and database because although there is more chance of dying by eating peanuts, the risk of death by terrorism is still too great and we need total surveillance of you all the time and also need to know all your private details, phone conversations & email just to make sure you will be ok in the future.

Do you see it yet? Nobody has mentioned Israel, and nobody has said anything about any Jew or Jews in particular, nor has anyone said anything about Jews in general. But still, for those with the correct viewpoint, there's anti-Semitism dripping from every word.

Eventually -- belatedly but better late than never -- comes along GnosticMind, with a comment to set them all straight:

I am shocked at the inhrently anti semitic slant displayed in the entire article , not to mention in the tone of the public responses-- Only in the Guardian is such blatant anti semitism, and anti israel rhetoric allowed, and even considered manifestly praiseworthy.

The very next comment was from butteredballs, who wrote

@ GnosticMind

please explain yourself

but GnosticMind was busy elsewhere, apparently. And the comments on this article are now closed, so GnosticMind could not come back and explain, even if she wanted to. Not -- as I see it -- that she would want to.

You see? It's so ineffable, you could never explain it.

It's inherent. It's blatant. But it can't be put into words -- at least not by GnosticMind, or any of her cohorts... and not by anybody else who just happens to be working for the Israeli government.

According to an article published July 5th in Calcalist, a Hebrew-language paper based in Tel Aviv,

Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. The Foreign Ministry’s department for the explanation of Israeli policy* is running the project, and it will be an integral part of it.

We're reading an English translation prepared by George Malent for Occupation Magazine, courtesy of MuzzleWatch.

In a footnote, Malent explains the asterisk: for "the Foreign Ministry’s department for the explanation of Israeli policy" you can read "the Ministry of Propaganda".

The piece continues:

“To all intents and purposes the Internet is a theatre in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and we must be active in that theatre, otherwise we will lose,” Elan Shturman, deputy director of the policy-explanation department in the Foreign Ministry, and who is directly responsible for setting up the project, says in an interview with Calcalist. “Our policy-explanation achievements on the Internet today are impressive in comparison to the resources that have been invested so far, but the other side is also investing resources on the Internet. There is an endless array of pro-Palestinian websites, with huge budgets, rich with information and video clips that everyone can download and post on their websites. They are flooding the Internet with content from the Hamas news agency. It is a well-oiled machine. Our objective is to penetrate into the world in which these discussions are taking place, where reports and videos are published – the blogs, the social networks, the news websites of all sizes. We will introduce a pro-Israeli voice into those places.

Yes, of course! That's exactly what's missing today, among the endless array of pro-Palestinian websites: a pro-Israeli voice!!

Will the responders who are hired for this also present themselves as “ordinary net-surfers”?

“Of course,” says Shturman. “Our people will not say: ‘Hello, I am from the policy-explanation department of the Israeli Foreign Ministry and I want to tell you the following.’ Nor will they necessarily identify themselves as Israelis. They will speak as net-surfers and as citizens, and will write responses that will look personal but will be based on a prepared list of messages that the Foreign Ministry developed.”

What will they be required to do? Shturman continues:

Their missions will be defined along the lines of the government policies that they will be required to defend on the Internet.

and here -- finally! -- is the explanation of the anti-Semitism in The Guardian.

The Israeli government wants you to be frightened of the militant Islamofascist suicide bomber jihadis and jihadi-wannabes who are everywhere and who are always plotting against you. The Israeli government wants you to be afraid of them, even if they don't exist, not because it's good for you to be afraid of things that don't exist, but because it's good for the Israeli government.

From the correct -- Israeli -- point of view, it's bad enough that Britain has downgraded the threat level. That's a blatant betrayal by a close ally, and it's inherently made worse by the Guardian's having the nerve to report on the government's downgrade. But worse still are the comments, making fun of the British government for taking so seriously -- or pretending to take seriously -- a threat which -- dare I say it? -- has been vastly overblown, if it existed at all.

But how can employees of the Israeli government say this? They can't, unless they are very highly placed, with chutzpah in professional abundance and a swarm of faux-journalists running interference for them.

Ordinary Israeli government employees can merely mouth the party line, as supplied by the Foreign Ministry's department of policy-explanation: the official propagandists cannot say "You must believe this lie even though it's bad for you, because it's good for us."

That would be just a touch too transparent.

Instead we get nonsense like this:

I am shocked at the inhrently anti semitic slant displayed in the entire article, not to mention in the tone of the public responses -- Only in the Guardian is such blatant anti semitism, and anti israel rhetoric allowed, and even considered manifestly praiseworthy.

which -- let's be honest -- is not transparent at all!

To comment on this post, please click here and join the Winter Patriot community.

'The Iraq War Was A Game To Us', 'Just A TV Game, A Fantasy'

The following email was received and posted verbatim by my Australian friend Gandhi under the title "Confessions Of An Anonymous Wingnut".

As is my custom, I have corrected spelling and punctuation and added a few links, which I do hope you will explore. The emphasis below is also mine.

Gandhi,

OK. I visited your blog again today after seeing your latest comment at ITM. And your last post is exactly right.

I remember you from your previous atttacks on Omar and Mohammed. I always thought you were a jerk, and I admit that I was one of the people who used to post nasty comments about you. To be honest, I guess I never thought too much about what you were saying or why you were saying it. I was just angry that you were disrupting a blog where I enjoyed spending time.

Sorry about that.

My attitude to the Iraq War and other things has changed a lot in the last few months. I no longer believe that the USA will achieve anything like "victory" in Iraq. In fact, I think the whole thing has been a big disaster, and I am very angry about it.

I am angry at all the people like George Tenet and Wolfowitz, who lied to us, but I am also angry at myself for believing the lies. Actually I don't think I ever really believed them, I just accepted them thoughtlessly because they fitted with what I wanted to believe. I didn't really care if they were true of not.

I am also really sorry that I have spent so much of my time and energy on something that was not just worthless, but actually WRONG. Countless people have died because of lies that I helped to spread. When you stop and think about that, it is chilling.

For my "friends" and I the war was never real, it was just a TV game, a fantasy. We were a big, strong "team" and we worked hard to defeat "the enemy" (and that made us feel good about ourselves). But our enemy was never really Al-Q'aeda or even the insurgency, it was people like YOU. I only just realised that recently.

The Iraq War was a game to us. The rise of blogs and the Internet made it possible for us to join in, to be players on the field of battle. We already knew which "side" we were going to be on when President Bush stood in the rubble of 9/11 and called us to action. What we didn't know was where that action would lead us. Or who we were following.

You need to understand that many of the people "fighting" you are actually good, decent people who are just going in the wrong direction. BTW I still think that people like you and Michael Moore are jerks. Your rudeness actually forces people like me to ignore you, or fight you. A more polite and humble approach would be better. But that's just free advice. What I really wanted to say was "thanks" because you were right and I was wrong, and maybe people like you helped me to wake up, in the end.

Also, I wanted to say about your comments about Mo and Omar being CIA agents, and people who post comments there being paid US agents and stuff. It's not true, at least I don't think so, but in a way it is true too.

For example, I know a guy with a kinda popular blog who makes a lot of money from advertising right wing stuff. He is also increasingly skeptical about the war but he is afraid to say anything in case he loses his sponsors. Another guy got onto a college campus he never thought he would get and the dean (or somebody) said something like "Great work on the Internet, J." Then you have those US Attorneys, right? It's not as obvious as you think it is, but it's there: everybody supporting the war knows that it could be good for them one way or another, just like everyone who helps out on campaigns knows it could lead to a job or something later.

I'm sure the military is doing PsyOps too, of course, and there have been a few strange comments at ITM that made even me think "HMMM", but I doubt it's like you say.

OK. I gotta go. But I just wanted to say sorry.
...

I guess I can't blame you if you want to publish my email address, but please don't: I am working to fix some of the damage I have helped cause, so please give me a chance. Like I said before, don't be a jerk! LOL.

LOL indeed. Cheers, mate!

Truth-Teller Lou Dobbs Under Attack For Alleged Hate Speech

Kurt Nimmo reports:

“A Jewish group is calling for the firing of an outspoken CNN anchor, Lou Dobbs, after he accused advocates for illegal immigrants of using propaganda techniques employed by Nazi Germany,” reports the New York Sun. “Mr. Dobbs has crossed the line between responsible television commentary and hate-speech propaganda of his own. Keeping him on the air is essentially sanctioning by CNN -- which is why we’re asking CNN to remove Dobbs from his very public platform,” complained Gideon Aronoff. “Comparisons to Nazis -- especially in this day and age -- are abhorrent.”

Au contraire, Mr. Aronoff! Comparisons to Nazis -- especially in this day and age -- are particularly relevant. But apparently irony rules the day, and relevance is fast becoming "quaint".

For instance, is it not supremely ironic that a representative of a Jewish group -- who presumably would want us to remember always what the Nazis did and how they did it -- would now tell us that mere "comparisons" to Nazis are "abhorrent"? It goes to show just how far we've fallen through the looking glass, especially when, as Nimmo points out,

it is perfectly legitimate to compare Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Hitler and the Iranian government to a gaggle of Nazis. Dobbs made the mistake of saying something hurtful—never mind the truth of his statement—against a government protected minority group.

And that's not to mention the obvious and entirely overlooked fact that the propaganda techniques employed by Nazi Germany are well-known, easily detected and more or less ubiquitous in the bizarre culture of fiction and hatred which the criminals who've taken over our country call "the post-9/11 world".

It is no mistake Mr. Aronoff used the words “hate-speech propaganda” in his denunciation. Indeed, in the weeks ahead, as the Senate passes the “Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act,” also called the “Gay Hate Bill,” we can expect additional targets to come under attack for the egregious crime of speaking their minds. Prosecuting preachers and Christians opposed to homosexuality is but the useful veneer of this draconian legislation, as the government, of course, does not give a whit about the supposed rights of homosexuals -- or, in fact, the rights anybody but a small number of bankers and transnational corporations.

Apparently nothing for our pseudo-Christian leaders is Eternal and Everlasting but their newfangled Unholy Trinity of Fiction, Hatred, and Irony.

They've got the churches -- including the church my family attends -- fighting for what they call "freedom of religion", which is supposedly under attack. But the only alleged infringements that they ever complain about seem to revolve around the church's "right" to discriminate against homosexuals. No other aspect of religious freedom seems to be an issue for these people, who would never dream of allowing their church to be "used" for "political" purposes (such as, perhaps, a protest against a whole series of unprovoked amd unjustified wars) despite the undeniable fact that the instructions "Thou shalt not kill" and "Thou shalt not steal" feature much more prominently in the Bible than anything it has to say about homosexuality.

And so the truth-twisters who now run our country have managed to turn the opponents of hatred -- as well as its practitioners -- against the Bill of Rights. How long can a former republic divided against itself remain standing?

Meanwhile, the irony continues unabated, as Nimmo points out.

“In calling for Dobbs to be kicked off the air for simply using an analogy about Nazi Germany, the Jewish group are behaving like Nazis themselves, attempting to chill free speech and create a climate where nobody is allowed to say anything in case it offends someone,” notes Prison Planet. “Since Don Imus made an ignorant off-hand comment about a black female basketball team, enemies of free speech everywhere have crawled out of the woodwork in an attempt to exploit the controversy and silence anyone who dares challenge political correctness or simply makes a statement that some would consider controversial.”

In the case of Dobbs, however, it is not simply controversy, as the anchor strikes at the heart of the concerted effort to reduce the American worker to carefully engineered pauperism and usher in a New Serfdom through open borders and ongoing currency devaluation.

Not to mention his longstanding efforts on behalf of electoral-system sanity, as chronicled in detail here.

It is really quite remarkable Lou Dobbs was allowed to righteously complain for so long on CNN’s dime about open borders and illegal immigration.

It's also remarkable that he was allowed to complain for so long about the bogus "voting" machines, in my opinion. But perhaps the powers-that-be judged the American public too apathetic to do anything, even if the truth about our so-called "electoral" system were generally known. They may have been right about that.

Nonetheless, as Nimmo remarks, we can

expect prosecutions and witch hunts to commence forthwith, especially against truth tellers.

Especially against truth tellers! There's a good one; Kurt Nimmo cracks me up!!

Isn't suppression of truth tellers the whole point of the exercise? Who else would they mount witch hunts against?

Mercy And Dignity For Unarmed Noncombatants? You Must Be Joking!

Blockbuster revelations from USA Today:

A new Pentagon survey of troops in Iraq found that only 40% of Marines and 55% of Army soldiers would report a member of their unit for killing or wounding an innocent civilian.

Clearly the survey measured the number who said they would do such a thing. That may be a far cry from the number who actually would do so.

For a more realistic percentage, we might compare the number of innocent civilians killed or wounded with the number of cases in which one member of a unit has reported another.

You see what I mean?

In the first internal military study of battlefield ethics in Iraq, officials said Friday they also found that only a third of Marines and roughly half of soldiers said they believed that non-combatants should be treated with dignity.

Let's slow down and get this straight: Two out of every three Marines, and one out of every two soldiers, can't even be bothered to pretend they think non-combatants should be treated with dignity.

If this is the best our officers can train their men to lie, it's no damned wonder they can't train them to win a war. And if this is the best propaganda they can generate, why do they even bother?

Actually, the propaganda does stink, but it's much better than the reality. Chris Floyd has recently written two enormous posts showing how we're bringing the enlightened concept of "No Mercy" to Afghanistan. Excerpts from both posts follow:

April 30, 2007:
"No Mercy": Annals of the Afghan Liberation

Britain's arch-conservative Sunday Telegraph continues to be a source of some of the most revealing reports about George W. Bush's "War on Terror." In its unquenchably pro-war pages, where the news section is just as skewed as the reliably rabid editorials, the ST regularly -- albeit inadvertently -- gives us a glimpse of the true face of the Terror War behind the painted masks of piety worn in Washington and London.
...

The burden of the piece is this: British forces in the hotly disputed Helmand province were not "ruthless enough in finishing off their targets" when going after the Taliban. They too often refrained from instant, massive retaliation in fear of killing civilians. But now the Americans have come down to show them how it's done, with the "uncompromising use of air power" and orders to "show no mercy" against suspected Taliban fighters. The centerpiece of the story is an attack by Apache helicopter gunships on a boatload of men crossing a Helmand river. Even though the copter crew "didn't have hostile intent or a positive ID from the ground commander," Special Ops told them "that although they could not themselves see the men on the boat, they must be the Taliban who had [earlier] attacked them." And so the Apaches swung in low and opened up with 30mm cannons on the Afghans, who had by this time scrambled to shore.

1st Lt. Jack Denton, 26 [photo], described it for the Telegraph: "You can see the person but you can't see the features of his face. The 30mm explode when they hit and kick up smoke and dust. You just see a big dust cloud where the person used to be." One particular dust cloud caught Lt. Denton's attention:

As the helicopters came in to attack, Lt Denton said, one of the men turned to face him and dropped to his knees. "I think he knew that there was no hope," he said. "He was making his peace."

Spiritual degradation [...] has permeated the minds of ordinary soldiers carrying out their ordinary duties -- if anything can said to be "ordinary" about Bush's intervention in Afghanistan's long-running civil war on the side of a coalition of war criminals, drug barons, warlords and woman-hating religious fanatics, that is. Witness the Telegraph story's closing words, from young Lt. Denton. The passage is obviously meant to be a bit of gung-ho G.I. bravado of World War II vintage, the kind of line you might hear in an old movie from a cheerful, apple-cheeked, tough-guy-with-a-heart-of-gold dogface played by, say, Ronald Reagan:

But for now, the American airmen are not losing any sleep over [the threat of being shot down]. "When you are on top of the enemy you look, shoot and it's, 'You die, you die, you die'," Lt Denton said. "The odds are on our side. I really enjoy it. I told my wife, if I could come home every night then this would be the perfect job."

...

Because the Terror War has no deeper meaning -- no real purpose beyond loot and power for a few -- it devalues and degrades everything it touches. To kill a human being is nothing more than stirring up a bit of dust; it's easy -- "the odds are on our side" -- it's fun, "I really enjoy it."

May 4, 2007:
The "No Mercy" Doctrine Strikes Again in Afghanistan

This week, we saw yet another example of the uncompromising aggression ordered by the Bush Administration in the supposedly liberated land: dozens of civilians killed in an American air attack on three rural villages in Herat province. The bodies of at least 45 civilians -- including a large number of women and children under 10 -- have already been recovered, with more to come, say officials of the Bush-backed Afghan government. Several other women and children apparently drowned in a nearby river as they fled the massive air assault, which destroyed more than 100 houses and left more than 1,600 people homeless, as the New York Times' Abdul Wafa and Carlotta Gall report:

A provincial council member from Herat, Naik Muhammad Eshaq, who went to the area independently, said he had visited the three bombing sites and produced a list of 50 people who had died, including infants and other children under age 10. People were still digging bodies out of the rubble of their mud-walled homes on Tuesday afternoon, he said...

[Farzana Ahmadi, a spokeswoman for the governor of Herat Province,] said all 42 dead counted by the government delegation were civilians. She said the government was continuing its investigation to see if enemy fighters had also been killed.

Eshaq, the council member, said villagers were adamant that there had been no Taliban fighters in the area. "I could not find any military men," he said.

Pamela Constable of the Washington Post adds:

"So far the people have buried 45 bodies, and they are still taking out more," said Ghulam Nabi Hakak, the Herat representative of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, reached by telephone Wednesday night. "Yesterday they buried 12 children. They told us some women and children ran away and got lost and drowned. The exact number of dead is not clear, but the people are very angry."

Angry is right; thousands of people in the area have come out to protest the massacre in Herat. In addition, hundreds in Nangahar province mounted vociferous protests "accusing U.S.-led forces of killing six civilians, including a woman and child, during a counterinsurgency raid," Constable reports. Even Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the photgenic ex-oil executive whom Bush installed as leader of the "sovereign" Afghan government, spoke out strongly against the killings -- although, perhaps mindful of the true provenance of his limited power, his lament was more in sorrow than in anger, as the [Post] noted:

"The intention may be very good to fight terrorism, sometimes mistakes are made, but five years on, it is very difficult for us to continue to accept civilian casualties," Karzai said. "It's not understandable anymore....We are very sorry when the international coalition force and NATO soldiers lose their lives or are injured. It pains us. But Afghans are human beings, too."

That's where the resplendent satrap is wrong, of course; Afghans are not fully fledged human beings -- at least not in the eyes of those waging the Terror War. Neither the wielders of disproportionate state power nor the "asymmetrical" resistance they spawn with their sledgehammer tactics consider those whom they slaughter to be real human beings. They are just counters in a grand geopolitical game for loot and dominion: cannon fodder, kafirs, collateral damage. There is simply no recognition -- even among the Ivy-educated elite, inheritors of centuries of civilization and enlightenment -- that those who stand in their way, or get ground up in their schemes, are individuals every bit as worthy of life as nice white folks with big bank accounts. No recognition that these faceless victims -- killed from afar, killed from on high -- feel the loss of their loved ones, the destruction of their homes, the ruination of their lives just as deeply and intensely as "normal" people in America or England do.

And so the "uncompromising" application of merciless force will go on, in Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia, and in lands still waiting for the Terror War's touch.

UPDATE: Investigator Sarah Meyer has more on the earlier civilian killings at Nangahar, which have also sparked mass protests, plus more much more in-depth research on the war in Afghanistan, which is growing worse -- more than five years after the "defeat" of the Taliban. You can find it all here: Index on Afghanistan.

The question is clear:

Can we go home now?

The answer is clear too.

Not until all the oil and gas run out.

Washington's War: Even A Shallow Analysis Is Damning Enough

General Sir Michael Rose, one of the most highly decorated British officers since World War II, has written a new book which began as a study of Britain's failed military tactics during the American Revolution and ended up as damning indictment of the Bush-Blair coalition's disastrous aggression in Iraq.

So writes Chris Floyd in a new post at his excellent blog, Empire Burlesque.

I would invite you to "Go read the whole post", but who are we kidding? Most of my readers don't click links no matter how many times I ask them to. So forget it. Don't click anything. Just keep reading:

Rose "argues that the [Iraqi] insurgents' tactics have been seen before - ironically when George Washington's forces succeeded in defeating the British Army -- then the world's greatest military power -- to win independence for the US in 1776," as the BBC reports.

The BBC has offered an excerpt from the book which we in turn have excerpted below. Note that there is nothing in this analysis by an honored stalwart of the British Establishment that could not have been written by, say, Noam Chomsky. This should not be remarkable, of course; the truth is the truth, and anyone not stunned into idiocy by the white noise of the corporate media -- or by the cowardly fear that fuels the Bush bootlickers' embrace of authoritarianism and their unquestioning acceptance of the Leader's wisdom -- will see the same thing when viewing the hell that Bush and Blair have made in Iraq. But unfortunately, branding is all in our consumerist dystopia, and so critiques that carry the Establishment "brand" have a better chance of gaining wider resonance.

At any rate, whatever the brand, Rose's insights are well worth reading. And his critique goes far beyond Iraq, to take in the underlying, bipartisan, transatlantic mindset that led to the launching of this vast war crime -- a mindset that was formed for many of today's players in the delusions and myths surrounding the much-lauded "humanitarian intervention" in Bosnia and Kosovo.

Chris then quotes highlights from the piece quoted by the BBC, which calls it "an extract from the preface". Here is a slightly different set of quotes, with emphasis added and a few comments thrown in, from

General Sir Michael Rose: Washington's War:

When I first started visiting the battlefields of the American War of Independence, it was well before the 9/11 terrorist attacks had taken place and President Bush had yet to declare global war against Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. My intention had originally been to write an analysis of the military lessons learned by the British Army in what for them had been an unfortunate and ultimately disastrous war. Over the next five years I came to see how great the similarities are between the policies being pursued by America in the present Iraq war and those of Britain in the eighteenth century. Not only do the same political and military imperatives apply, but also George III's inability to recognize what drove the American colonists to rebel against the British Crown is exactly matched by George Bush's lack of understanding of the motivations of Islamic extremist terrorists.

With all due respect, the lack of understanding is duplicated here, as General Sir Michael Rose shows clearly that he has no idea what the war is about, nor does he suspect that George Bush may be lying when he talks about the motivations of Islamic extremist terrorists, just as he seems to be lying about virtually everything else.

The notable exception to these similarities is the very different quality of military leadership shown in the two wars. Most senior naval and military commanders on the British side during the American War of Independence proved to be professionally inadequate. That certainly cannot be said for the many American and British officers that I have met in Iraq and elsewhere. They understand far better than I the complexities of modern war and the difficulties that they confront. Those serving in the armies of free democratic nations have to respond to the dictates of their political masters without public comment, no matter how much they may believe the policies and strategies being followed are flawed. They always strive to succeed to the best of their ability, and sadly many of them and their soldiers lose their lives in so doing. It therefore falls on those who have studied history, or who have spent their careers in the military, to point out where politicians decide to ignore the lessons of history and lead their countries into ill-judged wars.

Ill-judged by whose standards? In my slightly frozen view, this war has been ill-judged only by those who took the rhetoric at face value. The people running the war are getting exactly what they want, and for them it is not ill-judged at all. They see it as a successful policy.

The failure of President Bush and Prime Minister Blair to understand the limitations of military force in combating terrorism undoubtedly stems from their misunderstanding and misrepresentation of the wars in the Balkans that took place between 1992 and 1999.

One could easily argue that the preceding assertion is absurd on its face and utterly unsupportable; further one could argue that the lies Bush and Blair tell about the wars in the Balkans are every bit as deliberate as the lies they tell about Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iran, and so on, and on and on. Nonetheless, the following analysis is worthy of close attention:

My own experience as the commander of the United Nations Protection Force in Bosnia in 1994 demonstrated to me just how far politicians are prepared to go in their efforts to alter history. Even today, in their speeches, Bush and Blair continually repeat the message that peace was returned to the Balkans by the use of military force, and that efforts at peacekeeping by the United Nations in the region had been ineffective. In this wholly inaccurate analysis, it was the bombing of the Serbs in September 1995 that brought peace at Dayton and it was the bombing of Yugoslavia that removed Milosevic from power in 1999. Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth. The decision by the Serbs to sign up to the Dayton peace accord came about, not through NATO bombing, but because the military balance of forces on the ground had been changed by the halting of the fighting between the Muslims and Croats the year before. The two previously warring factions had formed a federation and it was that federation's military success in the autumn of 1995, when they captured much of the territory that the Serbs had wished to trade for peace on their terms, which finally forced the Serbs to bring a halt to the fighting. It had been the UN that had brokered this peace and implemented the peace deal between the two sides.

It had been left to the UN peacekeepers to sustain the people and preserve the state of Bosnia during three and a half years of bloody civil war. Although their mission was limited to the alleviation of human suffering by the delivery of humanitarian aid, the presence on the ground of UN troops was ultimately able to create the conditions in which peace became possible. Without the UN mission, Dayton would never have happened.

So they're lying. What else is new? When Bush wanted to invade Iraq and the UN Security Council wouldn't back him, he started inventing all sorts of newfangled contemporary history about how the UN was becoming irrelevant. The real story of the wars in the Balkans clashed with that myth even more dismally than it clashed with the myth they were selling before they trained their Shock and Awe on Baghdad, so none of this lying is surprising at all.

But today the propaganda message - that it was force of NATO arms that delivered Dayton, not the UN - is still being plugged by Bush and Blair in their determination to justify the use of military force as the principal means in the war against global terrorists. 'It was NATO that brought serious force to bear and gave the desperately needed muscle to end the war,' claimed Blair in a speech made on the fiftieth anniversary of NATO in 1999. 'In Kosovo we will not repeat those early mistakes made in Bosnia.' Both Bush and Blair clearly remain determined to advance the logic of war.

One might argue that the thing they are trying to advance is the "illogic" of war, but it is clear that they find war desirable. And the more the merrier.

In spite of their confident assertions, the use of military force in Kosovo also failed to achieve its declared political, humanitarian or military objectives. On 24 March 1999, Javier Solana, then Secretary General of NATO, stated that the objectives of NATO's war against Milosevic were to halt the ethnic cleansing and stop further human suffering in Kosovo. In spite of the most intensive eleven and a half weeks of bombing hitherto experienced in the history of war, 10,000 people were killed and one million people were driven from their homes. When judged on a humanitarian basis, it is clear that the mission failed entirely. At the same time, General Wesley Clark, the commander of NATO, announced that NATO air power would progressively 'disrupt, degrade, devastate and destroy' the Serb military machine to prevent it from carrying out any further ethnic cleansing. Yet, despite the fact that the Serb Army was equipped with 1950s Soviet technology and that it was exhausted by eight years of war, NATO completely failed to live up to General Clark's expectations. It is estimated that less than twenty Serb armoured vehicles were destroyed in the bombing, and the ethnic cleansing continued at an accelerated pace. When the bombing finally halted, the Serb Army withdrew into Yugoslavia, 'an undefeated army', in the words of the senior British commander on the ground. Bombing simply had not worked. Moreover, NATO failed to deliver any political goals. For it never obtained the freedom of movement throughout Yugoslavia that it had sought at the Rambouillet talks in January 1999. All NATO's other demands had been agreed to by Milosevic. For British politicians to claim today that the war in Kosovo was a success because NATO 'did, after all, succeed in getting rid of Milosevic', is to indulge in propaganda worthy of Milosevic himself. In reality, Milosevic was kept in power for a further eighteen months as a result of NATO bombing, which collapsed not only the bridges over the River Danube, but also the Serb political opposition. It was the people of Serbia who finally voted Milosevic out of power in the elections of 2001.

Exactly. We have featured the ousting of Milosevic in previously on this humble blog. But I don't expect anyone to click here.

In spite of the evident failure of their strategies in the Balkans, the politicians of NATO have reinforced the belief that it is possible to solve complex humanitarian, political and even international security crises through military means.

Or maybe they are more interested in fomenting crises rather than solving them, in which case their entire public presentation is a fraud. Did anybody ever stop and think of that?

This view has been translated into a doctrine of offensive military action, which has been now been applied in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet the past clearly shows that military action unsupported by an agreed political framework, and one, furthermore, that is backed by adequate economic and social programmes, simply will not endure. Nearly one decade after the end of the Balkan Wars, European Union troops are still required to maintain a presence on the ground in order to prevent a return to war. Both Bosnia and Kosovo have become, in effect, protectorates of Europe.

I have discussed the ideas contained in this book extensively with military and civilian audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. However, the only people who consistently refuse to discuss the invasion of Iraq and its related strategies have been politicians and their many apologists in the media. The quality of their argument was once well demonstrated to me during a live Channel Four television programme when I had put forward the view that the recently published September 2002 intelligence dossier, composed as it was of supposition, exaggeration and error, had failed to make a sufficient case for war. I seem to remember that the foreign secretary of the time, Jack Straw, limited his reply to a half-muttered, 'Well, General Rose is entitled to his opinion.'

Perhaps the people who refuse to discuss it -- politicians and their many apologists in the media -- are the only ones who know the truth, and they refuse to share it. How about that? Did you ever think of that one?

The same sort of dismissive response from politicians was received by Captain Liddell Hart and General Fuller from politicians after the First World War, when they queried the continuing use of the cavalry and semaphore in battle. They believed that the War Office should think strategically rather than be concerned with tactics, and they suggested that the army should experiment with the combined use of tanks, aircraft and radio communications in order to take advantage of advances in modern technology. Their advice was ignored and they were frequently ridiculed as armchair critics. However, Hitler, Guderian, Manstein and Rommel did choose to listen to Liddell Hart and Fuller, and the technical developments that were introduced into the Wehrmacht nearly brought about the defeat of Britain at the start of the Second World War. The failure of the present US and British administrations to understand the strategic consequences of the changed nature of modern conflict has led to similar deficiencies in effectiveness when it comes to fighting the war against global terrorists. Unless major changes are made by our politicians to their failing policies in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is certain that the West will face disaster not only in these two countries but also in the wider war against global terrorists.

And here's the problem: Brilliant though this analysis is (from the tactical and strategic viewpoints), and damning though it may be to those who are reputedly running the war, it still misses what in my view are the most obvious and most essential points.

If we focus on how the war is being fought then we miss out on the greater and much more hideous question of why the war is being fought.

If we allow ourselves to believe that we are fighting to do anything at all for the Iraqi people, or that peace and stability are our goals, or that humanitarian concerns are any concern of ours, we miss the crime of the century (so far) as it unfolds before our very eyes.

We're spending billions of dollars and thousands of soldiers to kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, for trillions of barrels of oil.

Most critics say this war is being bungled, but either they don't understand the math or else they fail to grasp two crucial points:

[1] Trillions of barrels of oil are worth much more than billions of dollars and thousands of lives combined.

[2] Even if that were not the case, it wouldn't matter anyway, because the oil is going in one direction, and the dollars and lives are coming from somewhere else.

And what about the Iraqis? Why are they not in any of the equations? Because they're worthless; the zero-term vanishes; that's why they're called "collateral damage". All this is simple: War Calculus 101.

It should go without saying, but let it be said nonetheless: If there were any justice in the world, the heads of the scoundrels running the war would have been hanging from the gates of the White House a long time ago, if only for the way in which the war has been run, and therefore the analysis General Rose provides is damning.

A more incisive analysis would be infinitely more damning; it would also leave far fewer questions unanswered. And the keys to a more incisive analysis are everywhere, hiding in plane site as it were, sitting there waiting to be noticed for more than five years.

But it's not really very surprising that General Sir Michael Rose didn't see any of them, or chose not to acknowledge them. After all, as Chris Floyd so correctly points out, his whole analysis could have been written by Noam Chomsky.

Phony War On Terror Demands Casualties -- And Gets Them

Robert Fisk's most recent article concerns Taner Akcam [photo],

the distinguished Turkish scholar at the University of Minnesota who, with immense courage, proved the facts of the Armenian genocide - the deliberate mass murder of up to a million and a half Armenians by the Ottoman Turkish authorities in 1915 - from Turkish documents and archives. His book A Shameful Act was published to great critical acclaim in Britain and the United States.

He is now, needless to say, being threatened with legal action in Turkey under the infamous Law 301 - which makes a crime of insulting "Turkishness"

and in addition his freedom to travel has been compromised, apparently because of false allegations made against him on the Internet.

Akcam was travelling to lecture in Montreal and took the Northwest Airlines flight from Minneapolis on 16 February this year. The Canadian immigration officer, Akcam says, was "courteous" - but promptly detained him at Montreal's Trudeau airport. Even odder, the Canadian immigration officer asked him why he needed to be detained. Akcam tells me he gave the man a brief history of the genocide and of the campaign of hatred against him in the US by Turkish groups "controlled by ... Turkish diplomats" who "spread propaganda stating that I am a member of a terrorist organisation".

All this went on for four hours while the immigration officer took notes and made phone calls to his bosses. Akcam was given a one-week visa and the Canadian officer showed him - at Akcam's insistence - a piece of paper which was the obvious reason for his temporary detention.

"I recognised the page at once," Akcam says. "The photo was a still from a 2005 documentary on the Armenian genocide... The still photo and the text beneath it comprised my biography in the English language edition of Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia which anyone in the world can modify at any time. For the last year ... my Wikipedia biography has been persistently vandalised by anonymous 'contributors' intent on labelling me as a terrorist. The same allegations has been repeatedly scrawled, like gangland graffiti, as 'customer reviews' of my books at Amazon."

This wasn't the first time Akcam's freedom of movement has been restricted, and apparently for the same reason:

Prior to his Canadian visit, two Turkish-American websites had been hinting that Akcam's "terrorist activities" should be of interest to American immigration authorities. And sure enough, Akcam was detained yet again - for another hour - by US Homeland Security officers at Montreal airport before boarding his flight at Montreal for Minnesota two days later.

On this occasion, he says that the American officer - US Homeland Security operates at the Canadian airport - gave him a warning: "Mr Akcam, if you don't retain an attorney and correct this issue, every entry and exit from the country is going to be problematic. We recommend that you do not travel in the meantime and that you try to get this information removed from your customs dossier."

Fisk summarizes the incident:

So let's get this clear. US and Canadian officials now appear to be detaining the innocent on the grounds of hate postings on the internet. And it is the innocent - guilty until proved otherwise, I suppose - who must now pay lawyers to protect them from Homeland Security and the internet. But as Akcam says, there is nothing he can do.

Several bloggers have picked up this story, and one in particular has done a good job filling in some of the missing details. But they have all concentrated on the unreliability of Wikipedia and the general problem of how to tell whether something you find on the net is credible. And none -- not even Fisk himself -- has made the point that seems most obvious to me.

The so-called War on Terror is a fraud, a massive crime against all humanity "justified" by a web of carefully crafted and expensively disseminated lies. And like any web of lies, it cannot sustain itself without ever-increasing fiction. Thus we have phony terror plots leading to spectacularly hyped arrests (which may not even lead to charges, let alone a trial) and entrapment going on all over the place. But that still doesn't generate enough publicity to keep the illusion going under its own power.

Early in the phony war, the phony warriors needed suspects so urgently that they were buying them. But they can't keep doing that, so now they're using any other available pretext to try to meet their quotas.

And we have clearly reached a point where it doesn't even matter anymore whether somebody is a terrorist or not. If his name -- or some similar name -- is on the government's watch-list, that's good enough to justify ruining his trip -- or his life.

And meanwhile -- as if the utter phoniness of the bogus war needed any further emphasis -- an actual terrorist has been set free.

What does all this mean? It goes something like this:

Imagine if France arrested Osama bin Laden, and refused to extradite him to the United States on the grounds he would be tortured. Then imagine they refused to charge him with terrorism, but only with an immigration violation, and released him on bail. Now you'll have some idea of the situation with Luis Posada Carriles, with one exception - the United States does torture its prisoners, while Venezuela does not.

If you're not yet sick of the hypocrisy, you can read more about it here.

Was The Virginia Tech Shooting A Black Op?

[VIDEO UPDATE below]

Paul Joseph Watson and Steve Watson at Prison Planet dot Com are saying the shooting earlier today at Virginia Tech looks a lot like a black op.

Early details about the horrific school shooting at Virginia Tech strongly indicate that these events represent a Columbine-style black-op that will be exploited in the coming days to push for mass gun control and further turning our schools into prisons.

Eyewitness Matt Kazee told the Alex Jones Show that it was a full two to three hours after the shootings began that loudspeakers installed around the campus were used to warn students to stay indoors and that a shooter was on the loose.

Quite how the killer was afforded so much time before any action was taken to stop him is baffling, especially considering the fact that the campus, according to Kazee, was crawling with police before the event happened due to numerous bomb threats that had been phoned in last week.

The shootings came three days after a bomb threat Friday forced the cancellation of classes in three buildings, WDBJ in Roanoke reported. Also, the 100,000-square-foot Torgersen Hall was evacuated April 2 after police received a written bomb threat, The Roanoke Times reported.

CNN quoted a student who was outraged at the delay in identifying and stopping the killer.

"What happened today this was ridiculous. And I don't know what happened or what was going through this guy's mind," student Jason Piatt told CNN. "But I'm pretty outraged and I'll say on the record I'm pretty outraged that someone died in a shooting in a dorm at 7 o'clock in the morning and the first e-mail about it — no mention of locking down campus, no mention of canceling classes — they just mention that they're investigating a shooting two hours later at 9:22."

He added: "That's pretty ridiculous and meanwhile, while they're sending out that e-mail, 22 more people got killed."

The details that are beginning to emerge fill the criteria that this could very well be another government black-op that will be used as justification for more gun control and turing our schools into prisons, festooned with armed guards, surveillance cameras and biometric scanning to gain entry.

Ironic therefore it is that Virginia is a concealed carry state and yet Virginia Tech campus recently enforced a policy prohibiting "unauthorized possession, storage or control" of firearms on campus. According to gun rights activists such as Aaron Zelman of Jews For The Preservation of Firearms, VA Tech has "blood on its hands" for disarming the victims who could potentially have defended themselves against the killer.

Initial reports suggested there were two shooters, but the story quickly changed to just one shooter who later killed himself (as happens in almost all these cases) or was shot by police.

Eyewitness accounts describe police hiding behind trees and failing to pursue the killer, while ordering the school to be placed on lockdown so nobody could escape the carnage as the killer picked off his targets with seemingly little interruption from the police.

At the moment, the official death toll is 30, but could rise, making this the deadliest school shooting in history.

and more at this link.

In another article, the same authors write:

A gun ban recently enforced by Virginia Tech campus prevented over thirty victims of today's mass shooting from defending themselves against the killer, and yet gun control advocates are already politicizing this morning's tragic events to pull the lever for mass gun control.

Virginia is a concealed carry state and yet Virginia Tech campus recently enforced a policy prohibiting "unauthorized possession, storage or control" of firearms on campus.

According to gun rights activists such as Aaron Zelman of Jews For The Preservation of Firearms, VA Tech has "blood on its hands" for disarming the victims and other students who could potentially have stopped the killer in his tracks in the three hour time period he was allowed to carry out his rampage by cowardly police who hid behind trees as the carnage ensued.

Reuters is already disseminating the talking points for an imminent propaganda coup against the Second Amendment, and yet it was the stripping of that right to bear arms that ensured today's death toll represents the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.

and there's more at this link too.

Personally? I don't know, but there are lots of fishy details. How about I report for a while, then decide?

Here we have some videos courtesy of Black Krishna

I'm still not sure what to think but I am certainly open to ideas. Anyone?