Tag Archives: Iraq

George Bush attacked by flying shoes in Iraq

“An Iraqi journalist hurled his shoes and an insult at George W Bush, without hitting him, as the US president was shaking hands with the Iraqi prime minister at his Baghdad office on Sunday.” (Read more from livenews.com)

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Across Mideast, Arabs hail shoe-hurling journalist
“BAGHDAD – Thousands of Iraqis took to the streets Monday to demand the release of a reporter who threw his shoes at President George W. Bush, as Arabs across many parts of the Middle East hailed the journalist as a hero and praised his insult as a proper send-off to the unpopular U.S. president.” (Read more from news.yahoo.com)

Excerpt from Nuremberg Diary

We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction.

“Why, of course, the people don’t want war,” Goring shrugged. “Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.”

“There is one difference,” I pointed out. “In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare war.”

“Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.” (Nuremberg Diary, pp. 278-79)

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I found this in the Library of Economics and Liberty.

Gitmo prosecutor consults priest. ‘I am beginning to have grave misgivings about what I am doing.’

“I am beginning to have grave misgivings about what I am doing, and what we are doing as a country,” he wrote in the Aug. 5 e-mail, which the priest shared with The Associated Press on Monday night. “I no longer want to participate in the system, but I lack the courage to quit. I am married, with four children, and not only will they suffer, I’ll lose a lot of friends.” (Read more from MSNBC)

Meat must be rationed to four portions a week, says report on climate change

“People will have to be rationed to four modest portions of meat and one litre of milk a week if the world is to avoid run-away climate change, a major new report warns.” (Read more from guardian.co.uk)

My global warming skepticism is rooted in suggestions like this one which implicitly call for massive government power – whether it be national government or global government. If the noise is part of a global-governance movement, we’re still in an early phase. The people still need to be made to believe. Continue the propaganda.

Joe Biden – A Profile in Cowardice

“In Friday’s presidential debate on foreign policy (assuming the show still goes on), we can be sure that Barack Obama will hit John McCain hard for supporting what Obama has called a ‘dumb war’ in Iraq. But in doing so, Obama has at least one major handicap to overcome: his running mate.

In October 2002, Sen. Biden voted to authorize the Iraq war. ‘I made a mistake,’ he now says – he had ‘vastly underestimated’ how incompetent the Bush administration would be in prosecuting the war.

So has Biden changed his position on Iraq? Not really. In October 2002, when the congressional vote was held, Biden, like most members of Congress, was in favor of avoiding accountability and punting the question of war or peace to the president. And Biden remains firmly in favor of avoiding accountability for Iraq today. That tells us something about Joe Biden’s judgment and integrity. More importantly, it tells us a lot about the health of Congress as a political institution, and about the erosion of Congress’s power to declare war.” (Read more from the Cato Institute)

RAND Report Utterly Discredits GWOT

“A new report by the conservative Rand Corporation calls the so-called ‘War on Terrorism’ fundamentally flawed, doomed to failure. The study pulls the rug from under John McCain who had promised not just more of the same old horse dung but perhaps another one hundred, another ‘10,000 years’ of war against Iraq!

Saying that the US should ‘re-think’ the so-called ‘war on terrorism’, the report claims that Bush failed to meet his own stated objectives. It was, the report concludes, the wrong approach to begin with.” (Read more from existentialistcowboy.blogspot.com)

Read actual RAND report “U.S. Should Rethink ‘War On Terrorism’ Strategy to Deal with Resurgent Al Qaida”

Robert Baur on Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, GWOT

From an interview with former CIA agent, author Robert Baur in Mens’ Journal May ’08:

“We’re going on seven years in Afghanistan, and the Taliban are still closing down schools in Kandahar. It’s a joke. And Iraq is a corpse that Petraeus keeps putting lipstick on to make it look like it’s still alive. All the Iraqis are doing is cooperating to get American arms. Petraeus says it’s thanks to Iran that they’re keeping the peace. That’s an extraordinary statement: Our main Middle Eastern enemy is keeping the peace for us? We’re fucked. What to do? Come home. Just come home. Impose visas, make sure you know who’s coming into your country, lock the cockpit doors, and be nice to Muslims here. The worst thing to do is to continually shed Muslim blood.”

You said it bro. “Just come home.” I’ll point out, however, that Ron Paul said it first.

Time Columnist Dares to Speak Out

“I have now been called antisemitic and intellectually unstable and a whole bunch of other silly things by the folks over at the Commentary blog. They want Time Magazine to fire or silence me. This is happening because I said something that is palpably true, but unspoken in polite society: There is a small group of Jewish neoconservatives who unsuccessfully tried to get Benjamin Netanyahu to attack Saddam Hussein in the 1990s, and then successfully helped provide the intellectual rationale for George Bush to do it in 2003. Their motivations involve a confused conflation of what they think are Israel’s best interests with those of the United States. They are now leading the charge for war with Iran.

Happily, these people represent a very small sliver of the Jewish population in this country. Unhappily, their views have had an impact in the highest reaches of the Bush Administration–and seem to have an influence on John McCain’s campaign as well.

. . . .

I am not going to make the same mistake twice. I don’t think a war with Iran is coming, thank God, but this time I am not going to pull any punches. My voice isn’t very important in the grand scheme of things, but I’m going to do my job–and that means letting you know exactly where I stand and what I believe. I believe there are a small group of Jewish neoconservatives who are pushing for war with Iran because they believe it is in America’s long-term interests and because they believe Israel’s existence is at stake. They are wrong and recent history tells us they are dangerous. They are also bullies and I’m not going to be intimidated by them.”

(Read more from www.time-blog.com’s Joe Klein)