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Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Gnter Grass still thinks reunification was a bad idea.
By Paul Hockenos
Forty years of writing from Taylor Branch, James Fallows, Katherine Boo, Marjorie Williams, Joshua Micah Marshall, and more.
By the Editors
How a million surveillance cameras in London are proving George Orwell wrong.
By Jamie Malanowski
With help from Washington, the for-profit college industry is loading up millions of low-income students with debt they'll never pay off.
By Stephen Burd
The best recent memoir from republican Washington is a hoax. That should tell you something.
By Joshua Green
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October 21, 2006
FIGHTING BACK....Commenting on the continuing Democratic obsession with the attack ads that cost Max Cleland his Senate seat in the 2002 election, Matt Yglesias comments: Democrats over and over again seem to think that biographical qualities either are or [ought] to somehow immunize nominees from political attacks based on national security issues and they keep getting burned. They need to get over it the world doesn't work that way and the world shouldn't work that way. This is on a par with whining that Republicans are politicizing national security. Well, guess what, national security is a political issue. The Democratic Party is full of politicians. They need to learn to do politics the whining just looks weak and pathetic.
I agree, and I note that the same thing is happening over the latest Republican ad, "These Are the Stakes," a standard-issue bit of fear-mongering with roots in both LBJ's infamous "Daisy" ad from 1964 and Reagan's "Bear in the Woods" ad from 1984.
Don't like it? Then fight back instead of complaining. Run an ad showing a mushroom cloud over the Korean peninsula and asking how George Bush let things get to this point. Why not?
In any case, Marc Lynch makes the right criticism of the Republican ad. He thinks that al-Qaeda's media arm, al-Sahab, must be pretty jazzed that the GOP is helping the cause: This is not just a video which suggests that Republicans will be better at fighting terror. It actually very closely resembles real al-Qaeda videos....This video would not look out of place on a jihadi forum, and it wouldn't surprise me if it actually gets posted on them and admired (although the production values are a bit low for an actual al-Sahab product).
Anyone involved in analyzing or combating al-Qaeda's media strategies has to be astounded that the Republican National Committee has financed, produced, distributed on the internet, and aired on US television what is for all intents and purposes an al-Qaeda recruitment video. The video, if it works as intended, will frighten the American people and influence American politics... just like al-Qaeda's own videos. Bin Laden couldn't be prouder, or more grateful, especially since it didn't cost him a thing.
Read the whole thing for more on this theme. Marc notes that the Arab media has caught on to this "bizarre turn of events" even if the American media hasn't.
—Kevin Drum 8:10 PM
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Shorter Al: Only Republicans are allowed to run sleazy ads. We started it, and no copy cats. Nixon was running sleazy ads in 1948. We are the OG's-- the original greaseballs.
Posted by: Shorter Al on October 21, 2006 at 8:17 PM | PERMALINK
The way to counter this ad is to run another pointing out that if Bin Laden is still at large and threatening America it's because the Republicans, who have been in power since 9/11, haven't been able to stop him. A nice soundbite of President Bush saying Bin Laden isn't a priority would go far. This should be the easiest ad in the world to turn into a boomerang!
Posted by: Eric Elfman on October 21, 2006 at 8:22 PM | PERMALINK
Who does OBL help get elected? He helps Republicans get elected because he's a GOP candidates best friend.
Posted by: obscure on October 21, 2006 at 8:23 PM | PERMALINK
What Dems should do is use this EXACT add, but in a larger font over the existing text, state "Republicans control Congress, Republicans control the Whitehouse, Republicans have let Bin Laden go free for 5 years."
Posted by: Fred F. on October 21, 2006 at 8:27 PM | PERMALINK
My free, though not very profound, advice to Democrats is to show this ad over and over in every corner of USA.
Scene 1:
Split Screen:
Left: GWB's press conference in which he says that he does not worry about OBL any more.
Right: GOP's ad during this cycle scaring everyone that OBL is gonna come and get you.
Scene 2.
Thuddum.
Where is Osama?
That's it. Short and sunccinct.
Unfortunately, the Democratic leaders are too afraid of the criticism from the mad men and women of the right, and too afraid to lose if this backfires due to the incessant wingnut rants it is bound to generate, and this ad will never appear.
Posted by: gregor on October 21, 2006 at 8:28 PM | PERMALINK
Can I add just one thing that is relevant, but rarely ever mentioned? This is not a slick ad. This is amateurish crap. From the editing, compositing, timing, keying, audio...on all levels, this ad looks like it was made by a kid in his basement. The average Joe may not notice these flaws in particular, but when you add them up, the effectiveness of the spot is greatly diminished.
Someone should point out that the GOP thinks we are so stupid that they can berate us with an ad that wouldn't make the cut on late night TV. It's fearmongering on the cheap, and someone should call them on it.
Posted by: enozinho (wetorture.com) on October 21, 2006 at 8:29 PM | PERMALINK
Picture this:
A photo of Bush & Osama standing and smiling at the camera with their arms around each other.
The caption reads: "To the best PR man in the business. I couldn't have done it without you!"
Posted by: obscure on October 21, 2006 at 8:36 PM | PERMALINK
What exactly would the Democrats advertise with? "Boldly protecting America!*
*Promise only appliciable if the UN says it's okay, nobody will be offended, and nobody will get hurt.
Posted by: American Hawk on October 21, 2006 at 8:43 PM | PERMALINK
Bullshit. Gonna hurt yourself leaping that far to a conclusion.
Posted by: Global Citizen on October 21, 2006 at 8:46 PM | PERMALINK
What exactly would the Democrats advertise with? "Boldly protecting America!*
*Promise only appliciable if the UN says it's okay, nobody will be offended, and nobody will get hurt.
Pretty funny AH. If liberals had their way, America would still be waiting for permission from the United Nations and the French to invade Afghanistan while Osama Bin Laden has his suicide bombers blowing things up in Boston and Birmingham.
Posted by: Al on October 21, 2006 at 8:48 PM | PERMALINK
Fight back with pictures of Ramzi Yousef in shackles and remind America that he was brought to justice under a democratic administration. And Timothy McVeigh. Him too, in custody and sentenced to death under a Democratic president. What terrorists have come to justice under Bush again?
Posted by: Global Citizen on October 21, 2006 at 8:51 PM | PERMALINK
A nice soundbite of President Bush saying Bin Laden isn't a priority
Exactly. For the life of me, I still can't fathom why they didn't do this in 2004. I get the feeling sometimes that Dem consultants couldn't be more effective for the opposition if they were GOP moles.
Posted by: R. Porrofatto on October 21, 2006 at 8:52 PM | PERMALINK
It's just the fucking utter audacity of it all that knocks my hat in the creek. Talk about stones. It's a miracle these mother fuckers can walk.
Posted by: Global Citizen on October 21, 2006 at 9:10 PM | PERMALINK
Guy, it's not about ads; it's about the Demoratic Party's actual positions. The Dems are the dovish party.
Sure, there are exceptions. Some Reps are dovish; some Dems are hawkish. But, generally speaking, the Dems tend to put civil liberties protection before defense, the Dems tend to want to cut troops, to withdraw sooner, not to go to war, etc.
The Dems can run all the ads in the world, but they aren't going to convince voters that they're born-again hawks. Voters for whom national security is the overriding issue will vote Rep. The Dems best hope is that this group is not a majority.
Ironically, if the Bush team had been less effective at protecting the country, so that more terrorist attacks had taken place here, then national security might be a bigger issue.
Posted by: ex-liberal on October 21, 2006 at 9:11 PM | PERMALINK
So the Republicans create propaganda for AL Qaeda so George can say he doesn't know or care where Osama is.
Thats not brilliant, thats moronic.
Posted by: Dog_named_Boo on October 21, 2006 at 9:14 PM | PERMALINK
The Dems can run all the ads in the world, but they aren't going to convince voters that they're born-again hawks. -exliberal
Their voting record on War proves otherwise...
Posted by: Dog_named_Boo on October 21, 2006 at 9:17 PM | PERMALINK
A political theory of Why Can't We Be Friends is doomed to failure.
The motivating principle for 'Values Voters' is evidence of values and the only motivating values they care about are values exemplifying authoritarian personality disorder --unqualified single minded aggression. It is actually possible to pull off votes from Republicans, or at least to suppress the Republican vote, through a single minded focus on destroying them as people.
'They are criminals and treasonous whores. They have no right to exist. A Republican is the same thing as a cancer cell and should be treated with the same care and respect. The only distinction between the Republican party and the mafia is that Republicans like to do it on tv.'
This approach will bring in the values voters, if you really mean it.
Posted by: cld on October 21, 2006 at 9:20 PM | PERMALINK
blah blah blah bilge bilge bilge spew
Posted by: Al
If GrOPers had their way Bush would still be ignoring North Korea and allowing Kim Jong Il to create more nuclear weapons. Or maybe sitting on his Ranch ignoring the PDBs while America is being attacked by Saudi terrorists and Anthrax letters.
Posted by: Dog_named_Boo on October 21, 2006 at 9:24 PM | PERMALINK
I generally agree. However, while it is true that Democrats can be expected to be opposed by Republicans no matter what, and that if they should expect on the basis of policy proposals, it also true that almost the main Republican method of political attack is the personal smear. Nobody had to vote for Kerry because of his war record, but what they did was falsely smear his war record.
What the Democrats should have realized is that none of the smears really should ever have been taken seriously, and that anyone can be smeared. It's not that character really is an issue for Republicans -- it's that character assassination is a tactic.
Posted by: humble blogger on October 21, 2006 at 9:28 PM | PERMALINK
The motivating principle for 'Values Voters' is evidence of values and the only motivating values they care about are values exemplifying authoritarian personality disorder -cld
'Value Voters',what another cornball Rovian compassionate hypocritic statement.
Sure the GrOPers talk about values, those they wish they had.. they should just call themselves the Velvet Fundie Mafia and be done with the charades..
Posted by: Dog_named_Boo on October 21, 2006 at 9:28 PM | PERMALINK
*Promise only appliciable if the UN says it's okay, nobody will be offended, and nobody will get hurt.
Posted by: -American Dodobird [hawk lmao]
What exactly would the GrOPers advertise with? "Boldly Fondling Young America!*
Posted by: Dog_named_Boo on October 21, 2006 at 9:31 PM | PERMALINK
I talk to a hawkish guy on a different site who feels the way about Democrats that American Hawk and Al do. The guy is really hurting, because he's realized that the Bush people are incompetent frauds, but this doesn't make him like the Democrats any better.
Of course, he has a triple-digit IQ and personal integrity, so we shouldn't hope for Al and A.H. to follow his example. And no one's paying him to blog, either.
Posted by: humble blogger on October 21, 2006 at 9:33 PM | PERMALINK
cld wrote: A political theory of Why Can't We Be Friends is doomed to failure.
The motivating principle for 'Values Voters' is evidence of values and the only motivating values they care about are values exemplifying authoritarian personality disorder --unqualified single minded aggression. It is actually possible to pull off votes from Republicans, or at least to suppress the Republican vote, through a single minded focus on destroying them as people.
'They are criminals and treasonous whores. They have no right to exist. A Republican is the same thing as a cancer cell and should be treated with the same care and respect.
On the "No Shame" thread, I asserted that the Dems had abandoned moral principles and would now do anything to win. Cld makes my point better than I did.
Shakespeare made a similar point even more effectively in Lady MacBeth's soliloquy:
The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements. Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood;
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry 'Hold, hold!'
Posted by: ex-liberal on October 21, 2006 at 9:33 PM | PERMALINK
The GOP has nothing left but fear, they have screwed up every other issue. True to their crisis managment character, they WILL create a crisis. Very Messianic these Hegelian Straussian Lie-o-cons.
American Hawk and AL still haven't figured out that they are nothing but wackos and nutjobs to the neo-cons. But then again AL and American Chicken Haw probably still send money to the cloaked crook Falwell.
Posted by: Dog_named_Boo on October 21, 2006 at 9:36 PM | PERMALINK
On the "No Shame" thread, I asserted that the Dems had abandoned moral principles and would now do anything to win. Cld makes my point better than I did.
Cheney has Two DWI's -- I have none.
Cheney lost his morals a long time ago when he became a chickenhawk and got 5 deferments.
Bawkkkkk!! Moral-less ChickenS!!
Posted by: Dog_named_Boo on October 21, 2006 at 9:40 PM | PERMALINK
Kevin, take a look at today's (Saturday's) emerging conservative blogosphere meme (at least Volokh and Instapundit) - they're essentially passing on as fact the possibility that impeached federal judge Alcee Hastings could become chair of the Intelligence Committee in a Democratic House.
I'm extremely dubious that would happen. The Washington Post article that Volokh links, which reports on potential minority committee chairs under the Democrats, indicates that some chairs are sure things (Rangel at Ways and Means, for example) but that Hastings is far from sure.
I'm guessing we'll see references to Hastings-at-Intelligence as a scare tactic by the Republicans over the next few days.
Posted by: Richard Riley on October 21, 2006 at 9:43 PM | PERMALINK
The GOP himself is a man whore
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements. Come, you spirits
That tend on sick amoral thoughts, Pages! sex me here!
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst riches! make thick my Hitler mustache;
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of sexual sickness
Shake my fell pee pee Foley!, nor keep peace between The stiff effect and it! Come to my Pages derrier!,
And take my spooge for all, you murdering GOP crooks,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on Bush's mischief! Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of GOP hell,
That my greed see not the war it makes,
Nor people see through the blanket of evil GOP!
To cry 'Away, Away! GOP!'
Satanic pedophiles of the GOP!!
Posted by: Dog_named_Boo on October 21, 2006 at 9:46 PM | PERMALINK
America would still be waiting for permission from the United Nations and the French to invade Afghanistan
There's no point in telling this there are French forces in Afghanistan, that they went in in December of 2001.
No.
He's impervious to evidence.
Posted by: Davis X. Machina on October 21, 2006 at 9:50 PM | PERMALINK
I'm guessing we'll see references to Hastings-at-Intelligence as a scare tactic by the Republicans over the next few days.
Posted by: Richard Riley
It's all the poor little value voters have - lies and fear.
It's how they were raised up.
Posted by: Dog_named_Boo on October 21, 2006 at 9:50 PM | PERMALINK
DXM: How dare you burst the bubble of francophobia and implied inuendo. These guys forget taht all of are military ranks are rooted in the French...For a reason.
Posted by: Global Citizen on October 21, 2006 at 9:55 PM | PERMALINK
Kevin makes a mature and accurate point on Cleland. Why do democrats continuously whine when their supposed heros are attacked on policy? As Kevin said, what did Cleland's amputee status have to do with the attack ad?
However, Kevin then goes back into his liberal cacoon and makes the silly argument with Lynch that the Republican ad somehow does the work of al qaeda and is a recruitment video. Who is being recruited in Ohio with that video? How is al qaeda being supported by a ad saying vote republican so we can kill al qaeda terrorists because they are monsters.
One last thought that does not penetrate the liberal cacoon. Isn't arguing that we cannot win militarily in Iraq or we need to redeploy out of Iraq doing the bidding of al qaeda? Kevin will not acknowlege that, but he strenously argues that a political ad that we need to be tough on al queada somehow supports al qaeda. Yes, it intends to influence american politics, but not the way al qaeda wants to influence politics - it seeks to elect republicans not democrats. It is amazing liberals don't see that, but I guess they cannot accept that al qaeda wants democrats to be elected.
Posted by: brian on October 21, 2006 at 10:01 PM | PERMALINK
One cannot help but notice that the liberals are screaming and confused again and you have the masterful tactics of George W Bush to thank for that. What looked like a "slam dunk" for the liberals last week is now, at least according to Barron's, not going to happen. No, sorry, liberals--you played the expectations game and you lost. You built yourselves up as winning seventy seats and now you'll be lucky to win twelve. The American people have sussed you out--you're prepared to surrender to all of our enemies to have the privilege of raising taxes on everyone who makes more than $12,000 a year.
This video does not look like a Jihadi recruiting video--it looks like an honest assessment of the situation. If the Dumbocrats take over the Congress, we will start capitulation talks with al Qaeda. Osama will get to come to Washington DC and stay at one of the finer hotels while he is fawned over and primped with new clothes from the Men's Warehouse, all courtesy Screaming Dean's credit card.
Did it ever occur to you liberals that the video looks the way it does because the GOP is going to try to enlist Arabs in a jihad of their own against Osama? If you can't beat'em, trick them into fighting each other, as the saying goes.
I must say--Obama is more of a threat to this country than Osama.
Bah!
Won any elections lately? I didn't think so.
Posted by: Norman Rogers on October 21, 2006 at 10:05 PM | PERMALINK
brian:
Who is being recruited in Ohio with that video?
My dear fellow, that's a good question that should be answered honestly. Because I don't think we're going to get anything approaching an honest answer, you should step aside and let me take the reins on this discussion as I have far more credibility and experience as a Republican on this blog.
In the first place, this country has millions of crater-faced, good-for-nothing liberal kids who sit in their dorms and watch that Stephen Stewart fellow make lame jokes on the Comedy Central pay channel. They hoot and holler and play video games and grabass and use drugs at an astonishing rate while they snicker helplessly at a good man fighting a good war--one would think that these cretins would receive a severe beating in another period of our history for even thinking they could laugh at a joke about the Secretary of Defense.
In the second place, they have lots of money in their pockets, thanks to Bush's tax cuts and fiscal policies.
So you have idle kids and disposable income--now you expose them to liberalism. It's like nitro-glycerine and dynamite wrapped in semtex and set off with a potatomasher handgrenade. Suddenly, you have kids on drugs with nice cars committing jihad in our heartland, all for the privilege of being able to high five one another as the Federal Courthouse in Columbus burns to the ground with thousands of good people inside.
That's who is being recruited when Bush is strong and everyone else is weak. And you all wonder why it is so.
Posted by: Norman Rogers on October 21, 2006 at 10:17 PM | PERMALINK
In order for brian to have a point he would first have to define what winning in Iraq means. Saddam Hussein is no longer in power there, there are no WMDs because there never were, and they have a democratically elected government. All of the excuses given by the Republicans for why we should attack a nation that wasnt a threat to our national security have been covered.
Brian, the Republicans are weak on national security. Their destabilization of the Middle East is just another perfect example of this. They are weak on taxes, cutting taxes on those most able to pay at a time of deficit spending isnt a tax cut so much as a tax on those who follow.
The Republicans are a national joke. While is it not assured that they will be the minority party after the election, it is what the party with no national security vision deserves. Oh, and pretending that the Democrats have no national security vision will get you nowhere. Remember, Bush decided to invade Iraq, Clinton did not. Bushs plan cost hundreds of billions of dollars, thousands of dead soldiers, and hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis, Clintons did not. Bushs plan led to greater instability in the Middle East, Clintons did not. When it comes to national security there is no question the Democrats are much better than the Republicans.
Posted by: Will Allen on October 21, 2006 at 10:17 PM | PERMALINK
I saw the ad and thought that it made a pretty good case for how screwed up things have become under Bush and the Republicans.
On a related note, the AP reports that
A senior U.S. diplomat said the United States had shown "arrogance" and "stupidity" in Iraq but was now ready to talk with any group except Al-Qaida in Iraq to facilitate national reconciliation.
In an interview with Al-Jazeera television aired late Saturday, Alberto Fernandez, director of public diplomacy in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs at the State Department offered an unusually candid assessment of America's war in Iraq.
"We tried to do our best but I think there is much room for criticism because, undoubtedly, there was arrogance and there was stupidity from the United States in Iraq," he said.
Posted by: Qwerty on October 21, 2006 at 10:19 PM | PERMALINK
I have far more credibility and experience as a Republican on this blog.
We are at the height of the manic phase, apparently. Norman, please know that your credibility is limited to in your own mind.
And Norman - yes, we have won an election lately. All politics is local, and the conservatards got tossed out in the primary in Kansas on August 8. Just so you know.
And ask again in November 8th. If you care show your "face' after the loss you fuckheads are about to get handed.
BWA! This is me sneering at you:
:/
Hormonal Citizen
Posted by: Global Citizen on October 21, 2006 at 10:25 PM | PERMALINK
Will Allen:
Brian, the Republicans are weak on national security. Their destabilization of the Middle East is just another perfect example of this. They are weak on taxes, cutting taxes on those most able to pay at a time of deficit spending isnt a tax cut so much as a tax on those who follow.
The Republicans are a national joke.
Stand down, man! You are incorrect and misguided! Tax cuts have made this nation strong, secure and vibrant! They are driving an economy shaped like a freight train through a train yard full of derelict cars like a knife through hot butter! We are kicking ass everywhere and writing down the names when it pleases us. Did you miss the part where the Dow closed at its highest level ever? Did you miss the fact that gas is under $2 a gallon in some places?
And you liberals wonder aloud as to why you won't win in November--you cannot see the forest for the trees.
Posted by: Norman Rogers on October 21, 2006 at 10:25 PM | PERMALINK
Did you miss the part where the Dow closed at its highest level ever?
And at just a few points above where it was six years ago, too. Ignore the fact that you have enjoyed a few days of record high DJIA's - meanwhile we had several years.
Posted by: Global Citizen on October 21, 2006 at 10:28 PM | PERMALINK
Hormonal Citizen:
That was a leer, you maniacal hussy. Why don't you hop on your motor scooter and hand out tickets to a Dumbocrat pity-party on November the 8th--I hear they're serving wine, cheese and a healthy plate of hush the hell up.
THIS is a sneer:
:\
Posted by: Norman Rogers on October 21, 2006 at 10:29 PM | PERMALINK
This is the dumb look on your face when a man like me explains to you all how the world really works:
:|
Now, get used to it.
Posted by: Norman Rogers on October 21, 2006 at 10:37 PM | PERMALINK
This is me rolling with laughter at your self-agrandizing bullshit:)))
Posted by: Global Citizen on October 21, 2006 at 10:38 PM | PERMALINK
Will Allen
Your response has nothing to do with the ad. In my commment, I was thinking of Howard Dean declaring we cannot win in Iraq militarily, which must have been music to al qaeda's ears.
What we need here is an honest discussion of whether al qaeda wants republicans to lose and democrats to win. It seems obvious to me that they would, but perhaps some here have a different view. If it it true that they want republicans to lose, then the republicans' use of al qaeda tape to defeat democrats is obviously not doing the bidding of al qaeda.
Posted by: brian on October 21, 2006 at 10:39 PM | PERMALINK
Some people can snicker and sneer about doves and beatniks and liberals until the cows come home; they can huddle in their houses with central heating and running water, watching Fox and yapping on about national security and terrorism whle munching Fritos; they can pontificate about evil liberal morals - but their own privacy and rights are, of course, of paramount importance.
No one can stand a hypocrite, and that, unfortunately, is this administration through and through; that is exactly why we have few diplomatic cards left to play. But it is not what I understand America to be; fearful isolation is not what I was taught our forefathers envisioned for this country.
I am PROUD to be a liberal; I am proud to work for peaceful causes; I am proud to be a Democrat, and I'm proud to be the daughter and granddaughter of veterans. And I am, as I'm sure other liberals are, so over apologizing for my beliefs. It sure wasn't our policies that got us into this quagmire.
I have no problems with conservatives; keep in mind, Bush and his administration cannot be defined as conservative in any sense of the word.
Willful ignorance and blind hypocrisy, however, just piss me off - yes, this peace-loving hippie-esque commie liberal is pretty fucking sick of being told I'm unpatriotic by some asshole who supports a war that could end my boyfriend's life at any moment. Prattling about how "hawkish" one is - that's really not something to brag about. But then again, what do I know? I'm just a "crater-faced, good-for-nothing liberal".
My Lance can't talk about what he sees every day over in Iraq. By can't, I mean won't. So I would advise some people to think twice before cheerleading this war, when they don't have a CLUE about the consequences - present and future. It's not a fucking video game.
Posted by: Mary Eliz on October 21, 2006 at 10:40 PM | PERMALINK
The lady who doesn't shave herself:
Some people can snicker and sneer about doves and beatniks and liberals until the cows come home
Yes, yes I do! I giggle and laugh helplessly when some liberal thinks they know what they're doing. One time, I had to throw away a perfectly good pair of boating shoes because I laughed so hard and ruined them. Beatniks? Beatniks? Dear lady, we cracked beatnik skulls in the middle part of the last century when my fraternity would travel into New York City for fun and hijinks. I, myself, cracked the last beatnik's skull with a beer bottle in 1964. And, if you live where there are cows, please--do not post here. This is for people who live in decent places, yes? There are plenty of blogs out there that will publish your latest sob story about how the milk cow fell over the pig and gave out bacon flavored dairy products.
This is you when you figure out that you cannot defeat me in battle.
:0
You liberals have taken every shot imagineable at me, and in moments you'll begin to see the ham-fisted parody posts appear--they are insignificant to me. I am powerful and I can destroy you liberals without breaking a sweat. I have been to war, as you all know.
(Full Disclosure: No, I have not served in the Armed Forces, but I have been to war, in the figurative sense, because of the difficult nature of my business dealings)
And on election day, you'll all wonder where it all went wrong, mark my words, yes, you will.
Posted by: Norman Rogers on October 21, 2006 at 10:47 PM | PERMALINK
brian, its quite obvious who Al Queda would want to win. The guys whose goals coincide with theirs. Both the Republicans and Al Queda are interested in the same thing terrorizing the American people. This is why we cant afford to let the weak on national security Republican Party hold the levers of power any longer.
As to your inability to see the straight-line connection between the advertisements message and my comment, well thats why you support a party with no national security vision. Whats the message of this RNC crapfest brian?
Posted by: Will Allen on October 21, 2006 at 11:00 PM | PERMALINK
Dems tend to put civil liberties protection before defense
To the extent that this even makes sense (not very much), I'm all for it, since the opposite is "I'd rather live on my knees then die on my feet."
Is that really the GOP position now?
Actually, I can answer that: yes.
Posted by: craigie on October 21, 2006 at 11:14 PM | PERMALINK
My attempt at a response ad, which I share mostly for the closing line:
"The Republicans want you to believe they'll make America safer.
But they let North Korea have a nuclear bomb.
They let Osama bin Laden live free.
The war in Iraq is creating new terrorists every day.
They're losing the war in Afganistan too.
And here, in the United States of America... an entire city was left to drown.
If you think the Republicans will keep this country safe, you're dead wrong."
Posted by: Tim at Mooselessness on October 21, 2006 at 11:17 PM | PERMALINK
Norman, please: get back on the ledge!
Posted by: beth on October 21, 2006 at 11:24 PM | PERMALINK
(Full Disclosure: No, I have not served in the Armed Forces, but I have been to war, in the figurative sense, because of the difficult nature of my business dealings)
Tell us more about your dark and heroic business dealings, Norman. We're all gathered around the campfire and we're just dying for a good story.
And we all think you are very manly.
Posted by: Alfred E. Newman on October 21, 2006 at 11:26 PM | PERMALINK
ex-liberal,
It isn't abandoning moral principles to see nothing wrong in exploiting the social conservatives lack of ethical standards, outside an obsequious deference to their own selfishness, crapulence and bullying, to be rid of them.
We simply need to take advantage of who they are.
Posted by: cld on October 21, 2006 at 11:27 PM | PERMALINK
craigie, yes my wording was clumsy, but you understood. Reps want a Patriot Act; Dems have civil liberties concerns. Reps want harsh questioning of terrorist prisoners; Dems have civil liberties concerns. Reps want warrantless wiretaps of phone calls with terrorists overseas; Dems have civil liberties concerns. Reps want investigation of financial transactions by terrorism suspects. Dems have civil liberties concerns.
Maybe the Dems are right on all these issues (although I don't think so). But, my point is, the Dems have staked out these positions. No ad will transfor the Dems' image into a war party.
Posted by: ex-liberal on October 21, 2006 at 11:32 PM | PERMALINK
Hmmm. Looks like a cheap al Qaeda film... Do you think the Republican Party and al Qaeda are in the production business together....?
Posted by: pol on October 21, 2006 at 11:33 PM | PERMALINK
Hi American ChickenHawk,
What are you still doing here? I thought you would be off to 'defend' our country by now! If Hussein was still in charge, would your freedom be curtailed in any way, shape, or form? Do you condone your fellow countrymen dying for absolutely no reason? Please enlist and save us all! You should have no problem as the Armys new recruiting pitch is 'Eight to Eighty, Crippled or Crazy'. Have fun!
Posted by: Ralphy D on October 21, 2006 at 11:35 PM | PERMALINK
Kang winning hearts and minds,
http://img169.imageshack.us/img169/538/kangwinsheartsandmindsoc4.jpg
Posted by: cld on October 21, 2006 at 11:39 PM | PERMALINK
Ex-liberal, your work needs an editor:
Reps want a Police State; Dems have civil liberties concerns. Reps want to torture people who havent been convicted of any crimes; Dems have civil liberties concerns. Reps want warrantless wiretaps of phone calls by American citizens; Dems have civil liberties concerns. Reps want to violate international law in their investigation of financial transactions by people they havent demonstrated have any connection to terror. Dems have civil liberties concerns. Now it more closely resembles the facts.
Posted by: Will Allen on October 21, 2006 at 11:52 PM | PERMALINK
Don't reasonable liberals find it offensive when guys like Will Allen argue "Both the Republicans and Al Queda are interested in the same thing terrorizing the American people."
Al Qaeda are terrorists who would want to cut the heads off of each of us and who were pleased to kill 3,000 innocents on September 11. I don't think, and conservatives never argue, that democrats are interested terrorizing American people the same as Al Qaeda. Can't we bring some sanity to this discussion?
I'm not even certain that republicans will do better in the war on terror. The future is too unknown. But isn't it clear that Al Qaeda would rejoice in the defeat of republicans?
Posted by: brian on October 21, 2006 at 11:55 PM | PERMALINK
Nicely put, Will.
Posted by: Windhorse on October 21, 2006 at 11:56 PM | PERMALINK
Al Qaeda are terrorists who would want to cut the heads off of each of us
Those five thousand guys better get busy.
isn't it clear that Al Qaeda would rejoice in the defeat of republicans?
How do you figure? They have seen great success under this president and this congress. Their recruiting numbers are way up, they have killed more Americans than they did on September 11, and we went to them to make it easy for 'em. So sure, they are just achin' for these clowns to be tossed out.
Posted by: Global Citizen on October 21, 2006 at 11:58 PM | PERMALINK
again with the unclosed tag. sigh.
Posted by: Global Citizen on October 21, 2006 at 11:59 PM | PERMALINK
But isn't it clear that Al Qaeda would rejoice in the defeat of republicans?
Quite the opposite is true.
If I'm a tiny organization that nobody gives a shit about, how can I rally people to my side and advance my cause?
Why, I can rely on the obstinacy and stupidity of boneheaded American hawks, goading them into land wars in Asia (when they really should just be sending special forces teams after me) turning a significant population of the Muslim world against them and recruiting them to my point of view.
Which, in fact, is just what happened.
Like any revolutionary group, al Qaeda relies on press and the discontent of the locals to survive. Without either they would just wither on the vine. Republicans have given them an inexhaustible supply of both in spades.
Posted by: Windhorse on October 22, 2006 at 12:05 AM | PERMALINK
But isn't it clear that Al Qaeda would rejoice in the defeat of republicans?
Because, um, why exactly? What could AQ want that the GOP hasn't given them in truckloads? Chaos? A rallying cry? An American public taught to be afraid of a bunch of small men hiding in basements around the world?
You'd almost think that Bush is an Al Qaeda double agent. In fact, I'm pretty sure that he and Cheney are sleeper agents, sent here a long time ago to destroy this country from within.
So far, so good.
Posted by: craigie on October 22, 2006 at 12:12 AM | PERMALINK
You guys are detached from reality. Any American election that rejects Bush is a cause for rejoicing by Al Qaeda.
I realize you apparently sincerely beleive democrats would do a better job in the war on terror, but it is astonishing how you project your own Bush hatred/democrat talking points into the minds of Al Qaeda.
Posted by: brian on October 22, 2006 at 12:18 AM | PERMALINK
Any American election that rejects Bush is a cause for rejoicing by Al Qaeda.
It's going to take more than that to convince me. State your case. Convince me. I am open to considering your evidence with an open mind, so lay it out.
Posted by: Global Citizen on October 22, 2006 at 12:21 AM | PERMALINK
I realize you apparently sincerely beleive democrats would do a better job in the war on terror, but it is astonishing how you project your own Bush hatred/democrat talking points into the minds of Al Qaeda.
Don't take our word for it -- take the word of Republican anti-terror czar who served under three presidents:
What was unique about George Bush's reaction" was the additional choice to invade "not a country that had been engaging in anti-U.S. terrorism but one that had not been, Iraq." >In so doing, he estranged allies, enraged potential friends in the Arab and Islamic worlds, and produced "more terrorists than we jail or shoot."
"It was as if Osama bin Laden, hidden in some high mountain redoubt, were engaging in long-range mind control of George Bush, chanting 'invade Iraq, you must invade Iraq,' " Clarke writes.
Richard Clarke -- not a Democrat, no Bush hatred, terrorism expert -- plainly sees what a disaster Bush's policy has been for the U.S. and what a windfall it has been for al Qaeda and terrorist groups everywhere.
Posted by: Windhorse on October 22, 2006 at 12:31 AM | PERMALINK
Oh, and I forgot to add:
I realize you apparently sincerely believe Republicans would do a better job in the war on terror, but it is astonishing how you project your own liberal hatred/Republican talking points into the minds of Al Qaeda.
Posted by: Windhorse on October 22, 2006 at 12:33 AM | PERMALINK
Global,
If you really have an open mind, it is a fair question to ask for my arugment. But when the argument is over the mental state of others who neither of us have ever met (in this case, Al Qaeda), it really is not a question in which each side is in a position to present much evidence.
But as a matter of commons sense, any political defeat of a party that has attacked Al Qaeda has to be looked upon favorably by Al Qaeda. Bush is their principal enemy/adversary. If he goes down, they like it.
When they brought down the conservative party in Spain, they rejoiced. They no doubt would rejoice with a Blair defeat in Britain (even though conservatives likely would be more hostile to them than the labor party).
If the politician who drove them from Afghanistan and attacked Iraq is defeated, how can they not be happy with it.
Posted by: brian on October 22, 2006 at 12:36 AM | PERMALINK
I think I am in a pretty good position to interpret the middle eastern mindset in contrast with the western-rationalist mindset. I have lived in the middle east for just under six of my 43 years. So please, state your case. I am qualified to make a judgenment.
Posted by: Global Citizen on October 22, 2006 at 12:38 AM | PERMALINK
Brian, since you brought up the British, let me point out a little piece by Matthew Parris in todays Times of London. Give that a read, since you want to invoke the British.
Posted by: Global Citizen on October 22, 2006 at 12:42 AM | PERMALINK
windhorse,
what are you talking about? I think al qaeda would like republicans to lose. Sure, democrats want the same thing. But how does that make me project liberal hatred/republican talking points to Al Qaeda?
Posted by: brian on October 22, 2006 at 12:47 AM | PERMALINK
If the politician who drove them from Afghanistan and attacked Iraq is defeated, how can they not be happy with it.
In case you missed it, the militants in Afghanistan fell back, regrouped and are now back. Any feelings of glee they feel at the defeat of Bush will not be for the reasons you seem to think they will be for. It won't be relief that he can't come get them now, because he isn't doing that anyway. Where is Osama again? Any happiness thay feel at neocon downfall will be one of "Ha! The bastards got theirs!" And I can't deny them that one.
history of western involvvement starts before the olympic village in Munich in 1972.
Ever heard of a little coup that took place in Tehran in 1953? Tht was orchestrated by US Secratary of State John Foster Dulles. then there was the Sues Crisis instigated by Israel, France and Britain fifty years ago this coming week. Bone up on that little cock-up too.
Posted by: Global Citizen on October 22, 2006 at 12:49 AM | PERMALINK
global,
I read the article. It seems like fairly run of the mill criticism of the decision to invade Iraq. What does it have to do with whether al qaeda wants Bush and republicans to lose?
Moreover, quit being so elusive. I doubt that you really had an opening mind at the start of this discussion, but tell us what you think.
Posted by: brian on October 22, 2006 at 12:50 AM | PERMALINK
As soon as we elect a politician who drives them from Afghanistan then we can talk about how much Al Queda hates him (or her). But in the meantime we have Bush whose incompetence let their leader escape and whose diversion of attention to the war on Iraq allowed them to regain the upper hand in Afghanistan. The politician who gave them a recruiting bonanza by invading Iraq, on the other hand, thats a guy they want in power.
The only hatred on display here, brian, is yours for the truth. One doesn't have to hate the kids in the Special Olympics to recognize that they are not, in fact, capable of competing on a level playing field with regular Olympic athletes. In the same way, Republicans are not competent on national security. Those who want Americans to be frightened are pretty much guaranteed to be happy with an advertisement that scares the American public. The terrorists can only be happy with this ad.
Posted by: Will Allen on October 22, 2006 at 12:50 AM | PERMALINK
Unless there's something missing from the audio on the GOP site, this is not an effective ad. The viewer is expected to read some pretty dense prose quickly off the screen while the tick-tock rises in volume annoyingly. It's a turn-off on several levels.
This is the ad the GOP spent just $20k to air, right? Understandable. It's not meant to be seen by the public, but to be quoted by the pundits.
Posted by: allbetsareoff on October 22, 2006 at 12:51 AM | PERMALINK
You need to make your case. Please do so.
Posted by: Global Citizen on October 22, 2006 at 12:52 AM | PERMALINK
The British will leave Iraq by 01 March. that will leave us alone in Iraq with sixteen Dominicans and a few Russian advisors.
Posted by: Global Citizen on October 22, 2006 at 12:54 AM | PERMALINK
The OBL ad is like telling children about the boogyman, somewhat primitive I think but the DAISY ad was just great, the little cute, innocent girl picking the pedals off a DAISY and the MUSHROOM CLOUD in the back was simply unforgettable, just great.
Hope for good artists to produce something equally good.
Posted by: Renate on October 22, 2006 at 12:54 AM | PERMALINK
General Barry McCaffrey on Meet the Press a few weeks ago:
I'm not sure it's the right question. First of all, they're not
available. The National Guard brigades--you know, we just
had Lieutenant General Blum testifying, we had the chief
staff of the Army testifying. The Army is $23 billion short,
our equipment's coming apart, we're drafting 42-year-old
grandmothers to be privates in the Army. I shouldn't have
said draft, asking for volunteers. So I don't think the combat
power is there in the Army and the Marine Corps to solve
this problem militarily.
Here was his response when asked how we should approach the Iranian situation:
Well, I--you know, first of all, I applaud the efforts by
Secretary Rice and by others, Steve Hadley, trying to start
the beginnings of building an alliance to confront the Iranians.
The notion that we can threaten them with conventional
air attack is simply insane. First of all, we're more vulnerable
than they are to having the Persian Gulf closed, to leaving
135,000 troops 400 kilometers up into Iraq with a Shia
population on our supply lines. Never mind our allies who I
think are terrified by this, the--you know, the notion that
we would use air power to go after 70-some odd nuclear sites.
The Iranians are going nuclear. It's going to change the region
for the worse in the coming 10 years, and hopefully not
provoke the proliferation of WMD, where you end up with an
Arab Sunni bomb to counter the Persian Shia bomb. So I think
the answer to this one is diplomatic, economic: build alliances,
stop threatening military action.
And here's what he had to say about what the war in Iraq is doing to our military:
You know, one of the, one of the other problems that I think
the administration is trying to face up to finally, certainly the
National Security Council is, we drained $55 billion out of the
U.S. Air Force and the Navy and we're putting that money
into ammunition, medical care for wounded soldiers. We're,
we're literally giving up our modernization program for the
forces that need to be there in 10, 20 years to deter the
People's Republic of China. We don't need the F-22 to
confront the Iranian-Iraqi insurgents; we need that high-
tech capability to make sure we maintain stability in the
coming years.
So the danger is, we end up 36 months from now with
our military fundamentally broken. And that's what
I'm concerned about.
Posted by: Global Citizen on October 22, 2006 at 1:00 AM | PERMALINK
IT is fucking significant when retired Generals speak up in opposition as they have of late. This is unprescedented in our history.
Posted by: Global Citizen on October 22, 2006 at 1:02 AM | PERMALINK
Alberto Fernandez , the top U.S. State Department diplomat to the middle east, speaking in Arabic in an interview with al Jazeera that aired Saturday afternoon, confirmed what we already knew when he said "We tried to do our best but I think there is much room for criticism because, undoubtedly, there was arrogance and there was stupidity from the United States in Iraq. We are open to dialogue because we all know that, at the end of the day, the solution to the hell and the killings in Iraq is linked to an effective Iraqi national reconciliation," he said, speaking in Arabic from Washington. "The Iraqi government is convinced of this." He went on to state that failure to pacify the widening sectarian strife in Iraq as well as an enduring insurgency would damage the entire Middle East. "We are witnessing failure in Iraq and that's not the failure of the United States alone but it is a disaster for the region. Failure in Iraq will be a failure for the United States but a disaster for the region."
I am open-minded, but this is what you have to counter. I get news from various media outlets world-wide. RNC talking points are not going to go far.
Posted by: Global Citizen on October 22, 2006 at 1:08 AM | PERMALINK
Am I the only reader to think that "Will Allen" and all but the first "Norman Rogers" are one or two practical jokers, who may have gotten into the mushrooms a bit early?
Posted by: bad Jim on October 22, 2006 at 1:10 AM | PERMALINK
GC, what did you mean with the remark about the French origin of military ranks? I thought it was primarily the result of the Norman invasion and the mixed heritage of English, but I understand that your background may give you some extra insight.
Posted by: bad Jim on October 22, 2006 at 1:15 AM | PERMALINK
We can safely conclude that if Republican policies have inadvertently helped Al Qaeda grow both in members and in influence, then Al Qaeda would desire that Republicans be re-elected.
Here's a short list of intelligence agencies and entities that have concluded that the war in Iraq and/or our policies in the middle east have been a tremendous boost to Al Qaeda:
The CIA
The Army War College
The British Government
Jane's
The International Institute for Strategic Studies
The Cato Institute
the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies
British Intelligence
The Eisenhower Institute (predicted it)
Institute of Arabic and Islamic Studies
Royal Institute for International Affairs
As I said, it's a short list, there are more. Try googling "Iraq Al Qaeda Recruiting" and begin sifting the results. The neocons in the Republican party have been Al Qaeda's wet dream -- and vice versa. Without a boogeyman to frighten Americans with, Republicans would not have been winnning elections as they have over the past three years.
Fortunately for the country, their arrogance have incompetence are evident now even to the most stubborn of minds.
Posted by: Windhorse on October 22, 2006 at 1:16 AM | PERMALINK
Cavalry from chevalier, French for horse. General, Liequenant, Colonel, Sargeant - all are French derived. There is some Norman influence, but the Gallic terminology permeates.
Posted by: Global Citizen on October 22, 2006 at 1:19 AM | PERMALINK
badJim, I am curious as to what I've said that is not supported by the facts?
Posted by: Will Allen on October 22, 2006 at 1:21 AM | PERMALINK
Boy oh boy - Sergeant and Lieutenant. That's better.
Posted by: Global Citizen on October 22, 2006 at 1:21 AM | PERMALINK
I for one don't accuse AlQaeda of any particular cleverness or devious motive.
Just before Israel invaded Lebanon there was the nonsense of two captured Israeli soldiers.
Before George Bush, there was a President aware of threats to the country by those whose hatred over what had been done in their own country overrode any consideration except retaliation : even though that guaranteed payback.
Now America knows very well what they feel : fear and hate. George very cleverly sought to douse that fire with gasoline ( or funky grenades if you prefer ) - on innocent parties.
There is a question of whether the U.S. should be running around killing without a clue as to who will be a friend when they are trusted by none ?
Am I the only one who thinks people with this level of intellect should never have been trusted with any responsibility whatsoever ? I mean to say plainly they can't find their ass groping with two hands.
Posted by: opit on October 22, 2006 at 1:24 AM | PERMALINK
Am I the only one who thinks people with this level of intellect should never have been trusted with any responsibility whatsoever ? I mean to say plainly they can't find their ass groping with two hands.
Short, sweet and to the point.
These idiots should not be walkign down the street without helments.
(Opit - you have been blogrolled.:)
Posted by: Global Citizen on October 22, 2006 at 1:30 AM | PERMALINK
bad Jim
Lieu - in place of
Tenant - occupier
You can see the idea of different meanings for this word in English and French is not on.
Posted by: opit on October 22, 2006 at 1:32 AM | PERMALINK
opit - you need to go smack the straight arrow around.
Posted by: Global Citizen on October 22, 2006 at 1:46 AM | PERMALINK
Sigh. Preacher's Kid. Old habits die hard.
I think most find it weird for someone to have a strong connection to the military - dad was at war - I took a few years of training - and Protestant with some time pushing that for perhaps more than it deserved.
Anyhow. You've been knocking me out with your latest string of articles and contributions. This lot is missing a treat if they don't check you out : http://bluegalinaredstate.blogspot.com/
And you'll be on a blogroll at my site the moment I figure out how to post favourite links ( don't hold your breath ).
Posted by: opit on October 22, 2006 at 2:08 AM | PERMALINK
Thanks for the props. I've been a bit fired up of late.
Posted by: Global Citizen on October 22, 2006 at 2:13 AM | PERMALINK
Apologies, Will Allen. You were suddenly so congenial that I assumed you were being imitated.
The incompetence we've displayed in Afghanistan, a country in which we actually had a chance to make things better, should have warned everyone that this administration would make a mess of anything it attempted. Yet it was returned to office.
Posted by: bad Jim on October 22, 2006 at 2:21 AM | PERMALINK
This from the Chicage Tribune Sunday morning paper:
If Republican leaders feel blindsided by the turn, then they would do well to pay a call to the Wheaton home of Lois and Gerald Sheridan, for years one of the GOP precinct committeemen who rallied voters for Hyde at election time.
Fed up with the Bush administration and the Republican Congress, the Sheridans say they are backing Democrat Tammy Duckworth as Hyde's replacement over Republican Peter Roskam. They say a lot of their friends and neighbors will be doing the same.
"It's the war or the deficit," Lois Sheridan said. "One of those things put them over the edge. These are die-hard, longtime Republicans, and they're switching."
Posted by: Global Citizen on October 22, 2006 at 2:23 AM | PERMALINK
Opit, Global Citizen, this much I understand. But I thought this was general usage around the time of the revolution. AFAIK, we didn't reorganize the army after Napoleon.
We could have been giving lessons to European armies after the Civil War, although I don't know whether those lessons would have saved lives or increased the carnage.
In the ongoing Iraq debate we're rehashing rhetoric from Vietnam. Talk of "appeasement" rehashes arguments from before WWII. With all due respect to Marx and Santayana, we're doomed to repeat history, as both tragedy and farce, for the same reasons we did it before, because we can and because we can be persuaded that we have to.
Posted by: bad Jim on October 22, 2006 at 2:36 AM | PERMALINK
No, no, you were right about that. The other guy who calls himself Will Allen shrieks about the tribalism of Democrats but voted for George W. Bush even after the manifest incompetence of the handling of Afghanistan and the sleazy conversion of an authorization to use force if Hussein had WMDs into a war on the people of Iraq. Im not him. Im not that stupid and unaccountably arrogant. But I like the notion that I am providing the balanced viewpoint he imagines he brings.
Lets be clear. Balance isnt bringing up 30-year-old scandals in an attempt to deflect from a current one. Balance is looking at the facts and making the correct choices. No one relying on facts to be their guide could vote for the people who brought us the War on Iraq.
Posted by: Will Allen on October 22, 2006 at 2:36 AM | PERMALINK
I see what you are saying - yeah, the french terms had become English common-usage terms by the time the Continental Army was formed. We were going back to the actual root origins.
Posted by: Global Citizen on October 22, 2006 at 2:38 AM | PERMALINK
I still don't understand why we pronounce "colonel" as "kernel".
Back to our host's main point: Clinton, who had actual issues which could be exploited and were, vigorously defended himself and won elections. Kerry and Cleland were viciously smeared by lies and lost.
If there's any point to this sorry story, it's that neither truth nor honor is a perfect defence, but a prompt counterattack can save the day. Better a quick horndog than a laggardly hero.
Posted by: bad Jim on October 22, 2006 at 3:38 AM | PERMALINK
I'm rather disappointed that Brian failed to lay out his case. I have been waiting for five years for someone to explain this all to me in such a way I could have a light-bulb moment and just give over to it all. But always that liberally biased bitch reality rears its head.
Posted by: Global Citizen on October 22, 2006 at 3:57 AM | PERMALINK
"Run an ad showing a mushroom cloud over the Korean peninsula and asking how George Bush let things get to this point. Why not?"
Because ours is the politics of Hope.
"I will not engage in the politics of fear. Because fear is poisonous. All through history it has been used to hold back progress and limit fairness. Only hope defeats fear. It always has." Deval Patrick, Boston Common, Rally for Change, October 15, 2006.
Posted by: Bostonbound on October 22, 2006 at 4:30 AM | PERMALINK
Hey, Brian and Norman Rogers--
since you two guys are obviously so spellbound by George W. Bush and his inestimable leadership skills, why aren't you guys fighting in his war in Iraq? C'mon, do you really mean what you say, or are you guys just a bunch of cowardly keyboard warriors? Time to put up or shut up. Enlist in the war and go and fight, otherwise you're just hypocrites.
Posted by: Percy on October 22, 2006 at 5:20 AM | PERMALINK
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Republican congressman responsible for protecting minors online and calling for more severe penalties for internet predators, Mark Foley, made friends with a wide circle of teenaged U.S. House of Representatives pages, then singled out "hot" boys to write to. A former top aide to Foley said he told senior aides to GOP house leader Dennis Hastert about Foley's behavior three years ago, but Republican leaders said they did not know about the explicit e-mails sent by Foley before media reports. Four more former pages have now said they were sexually solicited by Foley. One said Foley sent him e-mails years ago when he was 16 asking about "my roommates, if I ever saw them naked" and said Foley hinted about a GOP job opportunity "because I was a hot boy". Two years later the page wrote Foley to ask about hotels in Washington. "You could always stay at my place. I'm always here, I'm always lonely, and I'm always up for oral sex," he quoted Foley as saying in reply. Another former page said he felt he had to flirt with Foley. Foley has said he is a homosexual and an alcoholic. "I didn't want to piss off a member of an institution that I really revered," the former page said. "I figured maybe someday I will want to be involved in Congress. I didn't want to make an enemy." After resigning, Foley is now collecting a government pension.
Posted by: We The People on October 22, 2006 at 7:39 AM | PERMALINK
Norman Rogers may be off is rocker, but his over-confidence is unsettling. How do you explain someone completely closing thier eyes to reality like that?
Couold anyone here actually imagine what you would say if you had the chance to speak one on one with the president? The only thing that kept Matt Lauer from getting his ass kicked was the camera.
These guys are nuts.
Posted by: Michael Buchanan on October 22, 2006 at 7:47 AM | PERMALINK
Hey Brian,
I am still awaiting your reply to Global Citizen.....Oh, you must have run off to enlist!
I'm not a Dem or Repub, just a plain fellow with a tad of common sense. If you make it back from that country that hadn't had state supported terrorism since about 1990, please give your reply to Global Citizens question. Good Luck!
Posted by: Ralphy D on October 22, 2006 at 10:03 AM | PERMALINK
Yes, Brian has gone off to "study war" - He knows that, while skills learned in basic training can be essential to surviving live combat, one really becomes honed under actual live fire conditions.
This is why al-Quada relishes Bush remaining in office. In days of yore in Afghanistan, they only practiced fighting methods. Today, under our very generous federal grant program of On The Job Training, they can actually train in the real world of combat. Even though they lose many, it helps recruit more and more willing combatents.
However, in all of this al-Quada talk, the majority of fighting is being done by local, home grown militias.
So while Brian marches off to war, Jenna and Barbara are refining their bar room brawl skills in case they have to fight al-Quada in the country and western bars of Austin. Ye-Hah!
Posted by: thethirdPaul on October 22, 2006 at 10:49 AM | PERMALINK
Make an ad showing a mushroom cloud over the Korean peninsula. Why not?
I'll tell you why not. Because it does nothing but induce fear. As long as people are basing their actions on fear they are using predominantly their reptilian brain and do not think logicaly. Thus they will not be open to hear a hopefully more rational solution from the democrats when it is presented to them and will be even more inclined to vote for the party of Big Brother. Unless the Dems are willing to out Big Brother the Repubs, and in this day and age that would mean becoming all out fascists, the only hope lies in lowering the level of fear and allowing people to act on thought and not emotion.
Please no more mushroom clouds. Stupid idea.
Posted by: Paul on October 22, 2006 at 11:35 AM | PERMALINK
Wow ... why would another perfectly sane and cordial liberal steal the handle of the notorious concern troll Will Allen? I don't get that at all; the original Will rarely shows up to begin with; he hasn't been here since we spanked him hard for his Studds = Foley equivalence two weeks ago. Weird ...
As for Norman -- parody or otherwise, the dude's just completely hysterical. Easily my favorite troll. Here's where I think he's coming from, though:
Mehlman is trying very hard to put out the meme that the GOP has stablized in the wake of FoleyGate diminishing as a wall-to-wall mediathon. Notice Rove's insane spin last week that the GOP has "$100 million" in the bank to spend in the home stretch, when their overall cash advantage is closer to $10 million and the Dems aren't hurting for money in the final stretch. But recent polls are showing the Dems leading in only 10 of the 15 seats they'll need to take the House, and are still two away from the Senate. Putting aside the public mood reflected in all the recent macro-level polling data, the election can be seen as much closer than some of the giddy expectations we've been hearing in the wake of the first week of FoleyGate, which stopped a GOP poll recovery after Terrorism September dead in its tracks.
But notice something: Much of the last weeks' "Democratic sweep" talk didn't come from Democrats. It came from MSM GOP pundits. Some of it, no doubt, reflects the anger that conservatives feel about Bush's incompetency -- but also I think at least some of it came as a deliberate attempt to jack up Democratic expections. Certainly they're now attempting to use this meme as the foundation for their new one: that a narrow win will mean that Democrats lost the expectations game.
Let it be known for the record that I've never predicted more than a 20-seat gain (net 5) in the House and a 4-seat gain in the Senate.
And, if anybody's interested, I'll be happy to put a little money where my fingers are :)
Bob
Posted by: rmck1 on October 22, 2006 at 11:37 AM | PERMALINK
bad Jim
The alphabet used in French ( or Italian, i.e. Latin ) is the same as English. Usage for pronunciation : not. What I'm saying is that phoenetics ( or phonics these days) mislead compared to common use. Change languages and import a foreign word and it's as bad as trying to import foreign software and expecting it to run natively.
That's why colonel is cuh-nel in the original : it doesn't take much linguistic drift - and sloppy pronunciation - to get ker-nel from that.
Back to your original query. I'm not a linguist : but if you know French "enfant" is the same as English "infant" you will understand the slap in the face infantry really means.
Posted by: opit on October 22, 2006 at 12:15 PM | PERMALINK
Expose the Capitalists Divide-and-Conquer Statecraft to Partition
Iraq Under False Pretext: To Prevent Slide Into Civil War after
U.S. Failed Attempt to Instigate a Civil War by Provocation,
Which the Majority of Iraqis Recognize and Reject!
United States Sacrificed Their Own Agent Provocateur Zarqawi
Recognized by the Iraqi Majority to have beeen Working For the U.S.!
Zarqawis Zero Credibility Made Him Worth More Dead Than Alive!
U.S. Trumpets Phony Great Propaganda Victory For Bush Regime
And Steps Up Sectarian Bombing Provocations as Pretext for Partition!
The U.S. Has Now Begun the Final Intensive Drive For Partition of Iraq
Under The Ridiculous Pretext of Change of Direction!
The U.S. Invasion of Iraq affects every person on this planet either directly or indirectly, and ultimately provides the basis for the Call for Mutiny by the U.S. armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistanwhich in turn is the Precondition for a Socialist Revolution in the United States. The U.S. objective from well before the invasion has been to try to instigate a civil war in Iraq as a pretext to partition Iraq and short of that to PARTITION IRAQ by any means possible. At the present time in order to cover up this central fact as described in detail below that the U.S. intelligence personnel are deliberately manipulating the Sunnis against the Shiites as standard DIVIDE AND CONQUER OPERATING PROCEDURE, the capitalists have gone into denial modehence the Bob Woodward book State of Denial and lame, totally disingenuous New York Times Op-Ed Big Lie propaganda articles (e.g. October 17, 2006) falsely claiming that high level U.S. government intelligence personnel do not even know the difference between Sunnis and Shiites, who supposedly dont have a clue. Sure, right! As the capitalists begin their final drive to partition Iraq their propaganda campaign has kept pace with their stepped up campaign of provocation of sectarian bombing, as their media describe low-grade civil war and uncontrollable chaos in Iraq spinning out of control, which only partition can prevent! (NBC October 18, 2006.) Up until his assassination by his own masters the capitalists used their agent, Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi (see below), to manipulate Sunni Islamic fundamentalists to blow up Shiite Mosques on a regular basis and to frequently attack innocent Shiite civilians (Innocent civilians are not those applying to work for the United States puppet military!) in order to try to: 1.) Discredit the Iraqi Liberation Movement, which is mostly separate and apart from the fundamentalist provocateurs manipulated by the U.S. through Zarqawi & Co., and now others, e.g., Abu Hafs (Al Masri), none of whom are supported by the Iraqi masses, 2.) Create division and to try to set the basis for a U.S.-instigated civil war as a basis for partition and 3.) help the Bush Regime domestically. Having failed to actually instigate a civil war, which the majority of Iraqis recognize as the divide-and-conquer objective of the United States, the U.S. still plans to partition Iraq under the phony pretext of preventing a full-scale civil war!(!) The capitalists plan at present is to emphasize the bloodshed their invasion has unleashed in order to try to be better able to sell their solution of Partition of Iraq. See below.
Through their drastically stepped-up policy of systematic provocation and directly instigated sectarian murder as described below, the United States has escalated their policy of mass murder in Iraq and have now begun the final drive to partition Iraq! According to an exhaustive study by the British medical journal, The Lancet, published online (www.thelancet.com) October 11, 2006, clumsily denied by the U.S. Regime, nearly 655,000 Iraqis have died as a direct result of the U.S. Invasion of Iraq! (See below for further discussion.) The capitalist media are pulling out all the stops to try to get approval from the U.S. domestic audience for partition to prevent further bloodshed and ethnic cleansing, which is exactly what the capitalists did in partitioning the former Yugoslavia. The current U.S. domestic propaganda objective is to try to make partition falsely sound like a reasonable solution to end all that sectarian violence and to falsely justify the continuous U.S. Invasion/Occupation of Iraq as necessary to prevent full-scale civil war. The reality is that those who are involved in the U.S.-instigated Sunni versus Shiite sectarian attacks and ethnic cleansing form only about 10% of those who have taken up arms in Iraq against the U.S. Invasion. In the event of a mutiny by U.S. forces and subsequent complete U.S. withdrawal from Iraq as occurred after the mutiny in 1975 in Vietnam, the Islamic Fundamentalistsboth Sunni and Shiite would be suppressed by the real Iraqi Liberation Movement, and the Iraqi population in general which is secular, which recognizes that the overall U.S. objective is to divide and conquer Iraq! See below. Meanwhile we are all supposed to suspend disbelief in the Big Lies of the U.S. government and its media the same media which brought us weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, etc., etc. The media has even engaged in a huge campaign to inject superstition into the minds of the largely brainwashed masses in order to recruit support among the religious reaction for the continuing Invasion of Iraq and U.S./Israeli Invasion of Lebanon. CNN has heavily pushed religious dogma by giving heavy coverage to religious conspiracy rubbish, which equates the mass murder and destruction being carried out in the final stage of capitalismPermanent War and State Terrorismto the biblical Battle of Armageddon between good and evil, which is sanctioned by the bible and is thus gods will, which naturally must be supported and encouraged because afterwards the reward will be Christ's 1000-yr. reign of peace and righteousness on earth. That has the sound of George Orwells 1984: War is Peace Freedom is Slavery and Ignorance is strength. It also sounds very much like the promise of the 1000-Year Reich of the Nazis.
The objective of partition was not changed in the slightest with the U.S. assassination of their agent Zarqawi. In fact Zarqawis assassination was a deliberate provocation which was carried out partly in order to try to recruit more Islamic Fundamentalists from among the Iraqis to increase the scale of Sunni-Shiite division in Iraq as a supposed backlash against murder of the great martyr. And that has in fact apparently occurred to some degree. Meanwhile the U.S. media have pored it on and falsely tried to equate the U.S.-instigated provocations/atrocities by the tiny minority of Islamic Fundamentalist Sunnis and the retaliatory atrocities by the Shiites as proof of civil war, and many Americans have even been falsely convinced that there is a civil warjust as convinced, the capitalists hope, as they were that there were supposedly weapons of mass destruction in Iraq! Its time to wake up. A tape from Osama Bin Laden released on July 2, 2006 praising Zarqawi documents an apparent reversal of the previous Al Qaeda policy of opposing Sunni-Shiite division and now supports the same civil war objective of the United States in Iraq. (See below for comprehensive discussions of Occupied Palestine, the statecraft of capitalism and religion and the 911 Attack where the U.S. used the Osama Bin Laden Islamic Fundamentalists to carry out what was a carefully planned and executed U.S. Government-Facilitated Provocation.) In Iraq the actions of Abu Haf (Al Masri), the new U.S. chosen front man, a former Egyptian police officer (!) promoted to his new political police agent role as a manipulator of Islamic Fundamentalists for the express purpose of furthering U.S divide and conquer policies, policies which continue e.g. with huge car bombs targeting even the poorest Shiite areasSadr City markets killing and injuring hundreds and now all over Baghdad. Now with the support of Osama Bin Laden, who plays directly into the hands of the United States as he did with the 911 Attack, the U.S. Invasion of Iraq which was carried out to steal the oil and directly dictate to the entire Middle East, can be more easily falsely portrayed as a key to the War on Terrorism!
The fact that Zarqawi had so little credibility in Iraq increased his expendability rating off the charts. His assassination was actually another act of desperation by the United States! The U.S. assassination of Zarqawi was designed 1.) To turn Zarqawi into some sort of martyr to try to generate recruitment of more fundamentalists and 2.) To falsely disassociate the U.S. from their agent, widely understood in Iraq to be a U.S. agent. It is widely recognized throughout the Mideast that Zarqawis deliberate attempt to foment Sunni-Shiite division and a civil war in Iraq, which has not really happened, has defined the U.S. divide and conquer policy in Iraq. Outtakes made from a promotional film made to promote Zarqawi (see below) were an indication that Zarqawis usefulness as a fundamentalist hero in Iraq had come to an end. 3.) The third objective of Zarqawis assassination by his own masters was also to try to temporarily pump up the Bush regime prior to the 2006 Midterm Elections and to try to build support for the continuing Invasion of Iraq within the U.S. domestic audience with the ridiculous claim that Zarqawis death was a severe blow for Al Qaeda and now represents a turning point for the Bush regime in Iraq. The U.S. media went all out to falsely equate Zarqawi and the Islamic Fundamentalists with the Iraqi Liberation Movement, which they are not even part of despite the fact that a U.S.-manipulated Sunni Islamic Fundamentalist group calling itself the Mujahedeen Shura Council paraded through the cities of Haqlaniyah and Haditha on October 20, 2006 (AP) in an attempt to try to intimidate residents to support their proclamation that they have established an Islamic State made up of 6 provinces including Baghdad. (!!) Right, Divide and Conquer! We are supposed to believe that the secular Iraqi Liberation Movement and masses are just going to submit to a march and proclamation designed to intimidate them?! While the Moktada al-Sadr backed Mahdi Army militia and Badr Brigade militia position to fight it out in southern Iraq. Can you say divide and conquer? The reality is that the U.S./Zarqawi objective has been to manipulate those who sincerely oppose the U.S. invasion to help achieve the U.S. objective of partition of Iraq! The overwhelming majority of Iraqis hated and despised Zarqawi because his objectives were the U.S. objectives!! Note that the U.S. chose not to capture and arrest Zarqawi but to kill him. The U.S. knew his location precisely and could easily have gotten the drop on him. The reason that they did not want to capture him was because he was a U.S. agent and would have revealed his myriad connections with his U.S. masters. The capitalist media also used Zarqawis assassination to take the focus off the U.S. massacre in Haditha and other routine massacres and atrocities committed daily by the terrorist U.S. and British invaders all over Iraq.
The Iraqi Constitution Was Dictated by the U.S. Invaders In Order
To Set a Phony Legal Basis To Partition Iraq! The New U.S. Line
That Their Efforts To Defeat the Insurgency Militarily are Not Working
Is Being Used to Lay the Basis for Partition as A Reasonable Option!
The bottom line is that despite the deliberately U.S.-instigated daily sectarian atrocities there is no civil war in Iraq and the majority of Iraqis themselves wont buy it. Despite phony denials from the Bush Regime, the divide and conquer partitioning Iraq has been the U.S. plan from the beginning in order to help impose U.S. dictatorship and steal Iraqs oil, while they threaten the entire Mideast and the entire world to bow down and be subjugated by U.S. imperialism. Partitioning of Iraq was formally broached by Peter Galbraith, former Ambassador of Croatia, where he helped partition and divide up the former Workers State of Yugoslavia! Preparatory steps to partition of Iraq included the installation of a puppet regime controlled by Shiites through phony staged sham elections, where only U.S. capitalist-approved candidates could seriously run, just like in the United States! The new Iraqi Constitution was also a total fraud written in order to set the basis for division of Iraq and a hoped-for civil war as the pretext. No government or constitution installed under the aegis of the U.S. invaders, including any U.S.-installed, supposed national unity government, can represent the interests of the Iraqi masses. In Vietnam 87% of the South Vietnam VOTED in elections staged to install a U.S. puppet regimea higher percentage of the population than in the Iraq elections, but the vote numbers do not change the fact that the regime in South Vietnam was a U.S. puppet regime and that the present regime in Iraq is also a U.S. puppet regime. It is a compelling fact that the Iraq under the dictator Saddam Hussein and the Baath Socialist Party modeled somewhat after the Soviet Communist Party provided full employment, no homelessness, free education to the highest level and free medical and dental care and had the highest living standard in the entire Mideast, including Israel, up until the Iraq-Iran War of 1980-1988, which was also instigated by the United States! See below. In addition to the purpose of diverting focus away from the U.S. invasion, the capitalists believe that either a civil war or Partition of Iraq to prevent civil war would also be very helpful because it would not decrease oil production any more than it already is and would permit the U.S. to move their forces mostly into the Iraqi oil regions which they think would then permit an increase in oil production! But the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and everything the U.S. does turns to failure and a fiasco!
The Shiite-controlled U.S.-puppet regime has been given the green light to torture and kill Sunni Muslims on a regular basis in order to try to foment further division, while the U.S. at every opportunity falsely disassociates itself at the top of its lungs from its divide and conquer objectives in Iraq and the puppet regime it has installed, by falsely claiming that the U.S. would not support sectarian policies, which has been their actual goal from before the invasion! On February 22nd the U.S. agent Zarqawi directed his group of manipulated Sunni fundamentalists dressed in military uniforms to blow up the Askariya golden-domed Shiite Mosque in Samarra, an act which was deliberately designed to invite widespread retaliation and bring Sunni-Shiite division to a feverish peak. And on August 11, 2006 a U.S.manipulated Sunni Fundamentalist provocateur detonated a suicide bomb at a checkpoint near the Shiite Imam Ali Mosque killing 35 and wounding 122 which was designed to ratchet up sectarian division. (The U.S. denial that they do not want civil war in Iraqwhich the Iraqis rejectis like Brer Rabbit pleading with Brer Bear not to throw him in the briar patch!)
The U.S. wants to instigate civil war, or short of that sectarian bloodshed, also in order to divert the hostility of the invaded country away from the U.S. invaders and let the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds fight among each other and wear each other out, just like what happened when the United States previously instigated the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988!! (The U.S. got their Khomeini-installed Islamic fundamentalist/anti-Communist government to violate the Iraq border 175 times before the Iraqis finally declared war and the U.S supported both sides of that war!) The United States brought back Khomeini from Paris and installed him in power in order to counterpose Islamic Fundamentalism against the Marxist-Leninist Peoples Fedeyeen and the National Liberation Movement in Iran when it looked like Iran might possibly become a Workers State after the overthrow of the Shah in 1979 and might ally with the Soviet Union, with all that oil! Not if the capitalists could help it! Ramsey Clark, now posturing as some sort of leftist opposition, which he most certainly is not, who now demands Bushs impeachmentin order to keep people within the fold of capitalist reformist illusion and to try to pump up his credibility (see below), carried out the Shuttle diplomacy at that time to bring Khomeini back from France. At the time Khoumeini was paraded as an intransigent revolutionary by the fake left Workers World, led by the U.S. governments chief not-very-deep-cover political police agent, Ramsey Clark himself, in order to hide the U.S. anti-Communist objectives behind that move.
The Truth of the Zawahiri Letter
It was previously admitted on December 16, 2005 by CNN and elsewhere that the U.S.-puppet Iraqi security forces had captured Zarqawi last year and released him. The reality is more likely that Zarqawi was actually captured by mistake and released on purpose by the U.S. puppet Iraqi military on direct orders from its U.S. masters!! In order to hide the fact that he was working for the U.S. invaders and simultaneously to help falsely portray the Iraqi Liberation Movement as a bunch of terrorists, Zarqawi pledged allegiance to Osama Bin Laden, who said in a tape on Al-Jazeera that he recognized Zarqawi as the Al Qaeda representative in Iraq, CNN, December 27, 2004! Later Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, Bin Ladens doctor and second in command, apparently tried to halt Zarqawis attacks on Shiite Mosques with a long letter apparently written by al-Zawahiri on July 9, 2005, laying out plans for Jihad, but directly condemning Zarqawis attacks on the Shia and their Mosques and warning that such a policy would undermine popular support for Jihad. That letter, which U.S. intelligence supposedly intercepted and released, sounds completely authentic and makes perfect sense from the Jihadists point of view. But on October 13, 2005 the letter was declared to be a forgery by Zarqawi, who continued willy-nilly to bomb Shiite Mosques under orders from his U.S. masters, even escalating the policy to include the Askariya Mosque in the recent U.S. push to instigate civil war!
The Zawahiri Letter does not appear to be fabricated (see: http://www.dni.gov/letter_in_english.pdf some piece of work if were fabricated, which appears unlikely), or it is entirely legitimate, which is more likely, and was released by the U.S. in order to falsely justify the U.S. presence in Iraq and the phony U.S. War on Terrorism by falsely hyping the threat from Jihad in Iraq, where Jihadists remain in the minority, and to act as the pretext for the present shift into the final stage of capitalismPermanent War. In fact that is exactly how the U.S. Director of National Security and the capitalist media played it (see: http://www.dni.gov/release_letter_101105.html), while simultaneously allowing their agent Zarqawi to denounce the correct advice in the Zawahiri letter to stop bombing Shiite Mosques, as supposedly fraudulent, thus permitting Zarqawi to falsely disassociate himself from his U.S. masters and strengthening his hand while escalating the bombing/provocations! The reason that the United States deliberately did not report the specifics of how they intercepted the letter in this case was a tactic used in order to strengthen Zarqawis false claim among his constituents that the letter was supposedly fabricated by U.S. intelligence. In comparison, remember how eager the U.S. was to report all the specifics of how they captured Saddam Hussein! It is indisputable that Zarqawis actions clearly defined him at the very minimum as an objective agent of U.S. imperialism. Undoubtedly Zarqawi was much more than simply an objective agent of the U.S.! Up to the point the U.S. decided to assassinate him he was crucial to U.S. objectives in Iraq and would have to have been fully in full confidence on virtually every detail.
Despite the U.S./Zarqawi strategy of provocation the majority of Iraqis have not swallowed the bait and are not accepting the U.S. planned civil war scenario, despite the stepped up systematic atrocities carried out by Zarqawi, and the retaliatory slaughters carried out by the Madi Army and other Shiite militias which will have not stopped, but have increased since Zarqawis assassination! The Iraqi masses smell a rat and are not eager to play into the hands of the United States clumsy divide and conquer plans. The condemnation of the attacks on February 25th by religious leaders simply reflected this awareness and reality as much as it may have been to hide their part in it. The Iraqi Liberation Movement, the main opposition to the U.S. invaders, targets the U.S. invaders and its puppet Iraqi army almost exclusively and saw through Zarqawi and the U.S. objective to partition Iraq and they do not support a civil war! Even the cleric Moktada al-Sadr initially did not seem ready to commit to a civil war immediately in the conventional sense despite the fact that his followers, the Mahdi Army, supposedly numbering several thousand fighters, who to their credit previously fought in 2 uprisings against the U.S. invaders, have recently been manipulated into attacking Sunnis in response to U.S. agent Zarqawis campaign of bombing Shiite Mosques and now are supposedly poised to fight it out for control of Shiite areas with the Badr Brigade militia (AP) October 20, 2006. Their escalated execution attacks on Sunnis have increased following the bombing of the Askariya Mosque by the U.S. agent Zarqawi and Co. and the huge car bombs set off by U.S.-manipulated Sunni fundamentalist provocateurs in the Shiite Sadr City markets and at an Imam Ali Mosque checkpoint and other areas in Baghdad.
Moktada al-Sadr knows very well that the U.S. has been behind all of the bombings of Shiite mosques and civilians as part of the U.S. Divide and Conquer strategy in Iraq, but he has agree to go along and may believe that he can play a leadership role in a divided Iraq based on the strength of his militia, which has already infiltrated the Iraqi police and military. Although Moktada al-Sadr, under pressure from popular opinion, held a large demonstration on August 4, 2006 in support of Hezbollah and to disassociate himself from his U.S. masters by denouncing the U.S. and Israel, most of the Mahdi Army in practice now supports the U.S. Invaders and its puppet government by not attacking the U.S. Invaders and instead allowing themselves to be used in the U.S. divide and conquer game by attacking only Iraqi Sunnis! But rogue, splinter groups of the Mahdi Army do not go along with it and have joined the Iraqi Liberation Forces and have indeed increased bombing of the U.S. Headquarters and the U.S. puppet Iraqi government located in the Green Zone. The U.S. worries that the number of the splinter groups may increase. (New York Times, August 12, 2006.) Any way he plays it, except by joining the Iraqi Liberation Forces, which is not about to happen, the reality is that the opportunist Moktada al-Sadr will still wind up where he is nowon his knees to his U.S. masters. The Mahdi Army now has members in the puppet Iraqi parliament and ministers in the government with the understanding that in practice they support the U.S. goal of partition of Iraq.
In order to try to pump up the credibility of their recently sacrificed agent provocateur Zarqawi among his constituency of brainwashed Islamic fundamentalists, after the totally discrediting bombing of the Askariya golden-domed Shiite Mosque in Samarra, the U.S. dishonestly released a video made in November 2005, which his U.S. masters had received earlier but had been saving to release, showing Al Qaedas second in command Zawahiri still praising Zarqawi apparently in the vain hope that he might yet still have some influence on Zarqawi in line with the recommendations made in the Zawahiri letter not to bomb Shiite mosques and civilians. This was before Zarqawi and his Islamic fundamentalist fanatics/manipulees blew up the Askariya mosque which as mentioned above, was carried out in order to elicit escalated retaliatory killing of Sunnis by Shiite militias, all designed to help set the stage for the long-planned U.S. goal of partition of Iraq! Divide and Conquer! In another apparently weird attempt to simultaneously pump up Zarqawi among his tiny devoted brainwashed Sunni fundamentalist constituency before assassinating him, while falsely disassociating themselves from their agent provocateur as supposedly a bumbling idiot, the U.S. evidently had Zarqawi make a videotape which was then played repeatedly all over the Mideast media where Zarqawi fires a machine gun and appears to look very macho. But on closer examination several days later on outtakes from the preparation of that video, outtakes that the U.S. claims were captured but which they could only realistically possess if they were the ones to commission the making of that promotional film (a specialty of the capitalists) in the first place, it was revealed that Zarqawi did not even know how to fire and clear the chamber of a 50-caliber machine gun himself and that he wears U.S. New Balance athletic shoeswhich may have been provided to him by his U.S. masters. (New York Times, May 5, 2006.) The reason for the promotional film and the outtakes became completely clear with Zarqawis assassination on June 8, 2006. (See above.)
So far the U.S. efforts in ethnic cleansing of Sunni areas, in order to set the basis for a de facto partition of Iraq, have resulted in the displacement of over 60,000 Shiites by April 2006, and 65,000 Shiites by July 2006, from Sunni areas who now live in tents, and according to the U.N. Refugee Agency 914,000 Iraqis have fled their homes since the U.S. Invasion. The U.S. helped engineer the very same ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia and have tried to blame people such as the Serbians Slobodan Milosevic and Milan Babic for this divide and conquer policy. The U.S. had both Milosevic and Babic poisoned in The Hague after Milosevic won his case at the International War Criminals Trial at The Hague. The U.S. now demands that Serbia turn over Ratko Mladic for trial to be likewise assassinated, who the imperialists want to take the rap alone for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, one massacre among many which was a result of implementation of the United States ruthless plan to divide and conquer Yugoslavia, a country where people of all ethnic and religious backgrounds previously lived in peace and complete harmony! This ethnic cleansing is exactly what is happening in Iraq at this moment! The capitalists most recent divide and conquer efforts have resulted on May 22, 2006 in the division of Montenegro from Serbia thereby punishing the Serbian people and permanently cutting it off from the sea! The U.S. had already installed a puppet government in place in Serbia to facilitate this final divide and conquer of Yugoslavia. As an indication that the United States and it puppet government in Iraq are about to move to officially partition Iraq the media are screaming: Time is running out to hold this country together! (NBC News, July 22, 2006.) In August 1947 the British gave independence to British India and because they feared such a large unified country, deliberately fomented Hindu-Moslem differences to simultaneously partition it into todays India and Pakistan forcing millions of Moslems North and millions of Hindus South in a huge forced migration. The capitalists are very experienced at creating division and that is why it is important to organize on the basis of the only valid division, the division between the capitalist class and the Working Class.
While some U.S.-controlled Iraqi print media scream for civil war, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has a strong influence on Iraqi Shiites also correctly fingered the United States in the Askariya Mosque bombing, but incorrectly also blamed the Israeli Zionists. (The U.S. does not need much direct help from Israel in Iraq! But in Lebanon the U.S. did authorize the Zionists to blow up and assassinate the politically expendable Rafik Hariri and in July 2006 the U.S. directed its proxy state of so-called Israel to attack Lebanon! See detailed explanation below under subheads!) The majority of the population in Iraq knows that the only player which actually benefits from a civil war or partition of Iraq is the United States. Divide and conquer is a well-known policy of capitalist statecraft and is also used within the United States and around the world, as is explained further below. On the other hand the Muhammad Cartoon Provocation and statements from the new NAZI Pope, which are analyzed extensively further below (see subhead on this topic below), were also designed to elicit anger and a violent response from Islamic fundamentalist everywhere, which in turn provides the continuing pretext for the capitalists policy of Permanent War. During this whole time conspiracy theorists have continued to insist that either Zarqawi or Bin Laden or both were dead or make other bizarre claims, in order to keep their followers confused and unable to even follow what is going on! Now they can have their way on Zarqawi while they cover up the role he played. See section further below on conspiracy theory. Also see below the large section on the Middle East which includes the Invasion of Lebanon, the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin by the U.S. and Israel in a thwarted Queen Sacrifice to try to advance the Oslo Peace Accords, the assassination of Yassar Arafat and the assassination of Lebanons Rafik Hariri.
The only correct political position for all progressive opposition to the U.S. Invasion of Iraq must be: Support the only position with successful historical precedent: Call for Mutiny of U.S. armed Forces in Iraq as in Vietnamthe real reason and the only reason that the Vietnam War finally ended in 1975. The slogan Bring Home The Troops is a double-edged pacifist deception carefully designed 1.) To demoralize the masses when they see that the capitalists do not bring home the troops after protest demonstrations and venting which does not propose a realistic solution and leads nowhere. (The contradiction here is that opposition to the war continues and even increases but faith in organized opposition remains miniscule and is deliberately kept small.) and 2.) To deliberately deceive the masses to believe that capitalism, which is fundamentally dependent on war and mass murder to steal new resources and markets, can somehow be reformed and made peaceful. That is not happening because it ignores the dynamic and the history of capitalism. The Bring Home The Troops slogan appears even more absurd as capitalism has now entered its final stage of Permanent War! Permanent War is actually the most ideal Pre-Revolutionary situation possible because the likelihood of mutiny is maximally increased, and cries out for mutiny. The capitalists cannot reverse from the stage of Permanent War. But we cannot wait 13 or 14 years before there is a mutiny as in Vietnam, which was quickly quelled by the U.S. evacuation. Mutiny must be called for by all revolutionaries in the United States and carried out by developing Communist soldiers in Iraq. (A Communist is anyone who wants a new system based on human need not private profit and actively works to further this objective.) It is well known that the morale in the U.S. armed forces is very bad. Bad for the capitalists! Good for us! So do not adopt an opportunist position or be fooled or scared by the U.S imperialists bravado or threats of listening to phone conversations or monitoring your bank records. The release of such information in the capitalist media is purely for purposes of intimidation of the U.S. domestic population, which overwhelmingly opposes the policies of the capitalist dictatorship, which they recognize is hardening by the day. The phony protest by the capitalist dictatorship at the exposure of domestic spying programs by the main flagships of U.S. imperialism, New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal is done precisely in order to falsely disassociate the media which is doing the bidding of its master, to make the media appear free and independent, when in fact the information is released for one purpose onlyto intimidate peopleto scare, divide and more easily control the masses.
There is no substitute for a mutiny, which is the Pre-Condition for a Socialist Revolution, because the capitalists must be deprived of the ability to send bodies of armed men against the masses before opposing viewpoints can even be heard on an equal basis. All levels of military leadership should be targeted to support the mutiny because survival of the human race is in everyones interest! In the armed forces only Fascist militarist zombies are unable to realize that. All wars are either won or lost on moral and every movement begins with the call! The experience of the U.S. Mutiny in Vietnam must be widely publicizednot covered up as is done by all of the fake left, which is run by a network of political police agents led by fanatical anti-Communists such as Ramsey Clark and other misleaders of the fake left. With the Mutiny an accomplished fact and as the military comes under the control of the Socialist Revolution it will be supplemented with the armed vanguard of the exploited and working people. In addition, we have to make every effort to break the morale of the capitalists themselves. This is both possible and necessary and occurred to some extent in Russia in 1917 and it must occur to an even wider degree in the United States. The basis for this is the Law of Unity of Oppositesa person can be both a capitalist and a Communist simultaneously. This is a corollary of Dialectical and Historical Materialism which is covered up by the all of the fake left groups. Friedrich Engels himself was a capitalist and owned a large factory! Every possible effort must be made to recruit the capitalists themselves to break their class loyalty! The huge philanthropic effort made by Bill Gates and Warren Buffet can not go very far toward achieving their imagined illusory objectives because it is opposed by programs already in place and policies of the United States government which are based fundamentally on mass murder and designed to spread disease and reduce the population. The one possible exception might be a vaccine for malaria because the capitalists do want to develop Africa. See below.
The United States is Deliberately Using Depleted Uranium
Ammunition in Order to Make Iraq Permanently Uninhabitable
Just As They Did To Southern Iraq Already During The 1991
Pershing Gulf Slaughter and Again in Kosova and Serbia!
Since 1980 all U.S. tank, artillery and machine gun shells down to the 50-caliber machine gun cartridges have used Depleted Uranium (also known as Uranium-238) in order to make any area the U.S. fights permanently uninhabitable. This is documented by the 2004 report in The New York Times that the former Soviet Union (now Russia), which was always far ahead of the U.S. in metallurgical advances, offered to give the U.S. the formula for their own secret alloy which is not radioactive but equally as strong as Depleted Uranium and much lighter in addition, with the added advantage that it would not weigh down tanks as the DU does. (Depleted Uranium is 1.7 times as dense as lead!) The United States refused the Russian offer out of hand and refused to even discuss it with the Russians. In other words the U.S. is using Depleted Uranium not only because it is a very hard material but also for political reasons precisely because it is radioactive and sends a long-term message! That message is: if you actually dare to confront the United States militarily your country will be left permanently uninhabitable. The argument that the U.S. is supposedly being smart and saving money by recycling a tiny percentage of its huge amount of nuclear waste is totally fraudulent. The U.S. government will spend any amount of money on virtually any weapons system and fund virtually any conceivable project, which is not a totally transparent boondoggle, because doing so also accomplishes one of the primary goals of the Capitalist Regimediversion of money from social spending. The real reason for the Bush Tax Cuts, also known as Supply Side Economics and Trickle Down Economics in the Reagan Regime, is to create a Strategic Budget Deficit in order to divert money from social spending just like in the Reagan Regime as explained in the 1986 book The Triumph of Politics: Why The Reagan Revolution Failed by David Stockman, Ronald Reagans economic czar. See further below.
The United States also does not care whether it sacrifices its own troops to achieve its objectives which include the radioactive contamination of countries it invades. Far from it! Its not that they dont care. They do it deliberately! In fact the U.S. welcomes a means of early disposal of their military veterans due to cancer from exposure to Depleted Uranium or protective anthrax vaccine after they have served their purpose. After all, the soldiers purpose under capitalism is to do and die and not ask the reason why! Military personnel under capitalism have become just another expendable resource to be used and disposed of like so much garbage minus their limbs, life or mental state. This coincides perfectly with the Fascist U.S. Social Darwinist objective of world and domestic population reduction. See below. The undeniable reality is that the capitalist regime has cut back on Veterans Benefits and is in the process of closing Veterans Hospitals throughout the United States. Approximately 186,000 1991 Gulf War vets came down with health problems, most of them from Depleted Uranium. (The other cause of the Gulf War Syndrome was due to the multiple and polyvalent vaccinations all soldiers were obligated to take prior to being deployed to Iraq. (Some did refuse!) The proof of this is the fact that a significant percentage of soldiers who received those vaccinations but were not deployed to the Gulf in 1991 came down with the Gulf War Syndrome. See under Vaccinosis subheading below.) This is one more reason for all members of the U.S. military to organize a Mutiny in Iraq as in Vietnam in 1975!
Depleted Uranium is a radioactive heavy metal which emits steady alpha radiation and is extremely dense. The U.S. government tries to cover up that reality with the Big Lie that DU is only mildly radioactive and chemically toxic. HaHaHa! Very funny! The half-life of Depleted Uranium is a mere 4 billion years! DU is a by-product of nuclear reactor fuel processing and also contains traces of plutonium-239 and radioactive uranium-236, as reported in January 2001 by a Swiss Laboratory. Depleted Uranium is a misnomer because it contains about 60% of the radioactivity found in natural uranium. It also possesses a pyrophoric property which enables it to punch and burn its way through conventional armor. Armor plating made of Depleted Uranium provides increased protection from conventional shells. When a Depleted Uranium (DU) shell strikes a target, up to 70% of it vaporizes into a fine dust which then settles out in surrounding soil and water, sometimes more than a hundred miles away. Over half the aerosolized particles are smaller than 5 microns and anything smaller than 10 microns can be inhaled. Once lodged in the lungs the particles emit a steady dose of alpha radiation. DU is also chemically toxic which damages the kidneys, the immune system and the central nervous system and, of course, is highly carcinogenic! M1A1 Abrams battle tanks fire 120 mm. rounds which each contain 10.5 lbs. of depleted uranium. M1 and M60 tanks fire a 105 mm round with 8.5 lbs of Depleted Uranium!
The Pentagon reported that they had fired 14,000 Depleted Uranium shells in the 1991 Persian Gulf Slaughter; 7,000 of which were fired in Saudi Arabia for target practice, 4,000 were fired against the Iraqi forces and 3,000 were consumed by fires or other accidents! In addition, 940,000 30 mm Depleted Uranium rounds were fired by A-10 Warthog jets in tank killing operations. All together the Pentagon estimated 320 tons of Depleted Uranium were fired by the U.S. and British troops. All of that still remains in southern Iraq, where the incidence of cancer is astronomical! Over the years since the Desert Storm Slaughter, the incidence of leukemia and cancer in southern Iraq has risen 9 times from 11 in 100,000 to 96 in 100,000. And now with the U.S. Invasion of Iraq in 2003 Depleted Uranium is found all over Iraq and in the central cities! On April 4, 2004 the New York Daily News reported that even U.S. military police were coming back from the latest U.S. invasion which began in 2003 with cancers caused by DU in their bodies as measured by multiple collector inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry. Depleted Uranium shells have been used everywhere in Baghdad and Iraq since the 2003 invasion. The U.S also used Depleted Uranium (10,000 DU rounds) against Serbian forces in 1994-1995 in Bosnia and in the 1999 U.S. and British forces bombed and shelled the Yugoslav army with 31,000 shells of various calibers. The so-called Balkan Syndrome was the same as the Gulf War Syndrome and was characterized by cancer, memory lapses, insomnia, inflammation of joints and the respiratory tract. All of these countries invaded by the U.S. are now permanently uninhabitable! Would you like to live there? All expenses paid?
Materials which could replace Depleted Uranium, other than the unknown alloy offered by the Russians which was rejected by the U.S., are titanium and tungsten alloys. The authors of the 1999 book Metal of Dishonor edited by John Catalinotto of the fake left Workers World Party, are chief anti-Communists Ramsey Clark and Michio Kaku, who cover up the U.S. refusal of the Russian offer and the actual reason the U.S. has chosen to use Depleted Uranium and it true significance as outlined above, even in their most recent speeches on Depleted Uranium. Neither so much as calls for a new economic-political-social system based on human need, not private profit. The fake left tries to control every issue and perpetuate the illusion that capitalism can be reformed and made peaceful and that we should continue to permit the capitalist dictatorship to retain state power and mainly get ready for another election to take back Congress. Kaku is a pretentious fraud, pushed by the anti-Communist WBAI fake left Pacifica radio station (see below), who sucks in the gullible and pushes string theory in a brazen attempt to try to supplant quantum mechanics with fraudulent undocumented purely mathematical theory in a decision by the so-called U.S. Intelligence Community to keep the masses confused even on basic physics (see below). Kaku is also part of the cover-up of the documented fact that AIDS is Biowarfare by the U.S. Government against Blacks and Gays. See the section on Biowarfare below. Meanwhile, WBAI radio station in the person of Gary Null, who evidently was threatened to stop exposing AIDS as Biowarfare by the U.S. government if he wanted to keep appearing on WBAI and to keep selling his books and his overpriced vitamins, now pushes the most reactionary position of allthat AIDS has no etiologic agent (!) and is supposedly a lifestyle disease thereby Blaming the Victim, and even generalizing it to the denial of the entire microbiological basis of infectious disease!
Incidentally, Tabo Mbeki, present leader of the African National Congress and President of South Africa, takes the very same deliberately false position that there is no etiologic agent of AIDS and that AIDS is just a lifestyle disease! This is one more demonstration that class loyalty supercedes all others, including family loyalty or racial or religious or ethnic loyalty. Tabo Mbeki is a nationalist, supports capitalisms Social Darwinist/Malthusean objective of worldwide population reduction and is an arch anti-Communist despite his early background. Mbeki is to the right of Nelson Mandela, who does not deny that AIDS is caused by a virus, but allows the AIDS Biowarfare Operation to proceed without confronting Mbeki! Mbeki and Mandela shed no tears, along with Gorbachev who undoubtedly authorized it, when Chris Hani, the leader of the Communist Party of South Africa, was assassinated in 1993. That murder allowed the ANC to form a block directly with the capitalists with the very minimum of social guarantees for the Working Class and the Poor and ironically resulted in retaliation by the masses against individual capitalist businesses in South Africa for many years afterwards, but was never organized on a class basis. Tabo Mbekis class loyalty is to the capitalist class not the Working Class. His position on AIDS was taken in order to deny even the drug regimen to the primarily Black South Africans deliberately infected with the AIDS virus. Naturally he could never call for independent development of an effective recombinant vaccine for AIDS as described below. Mbeki even denies the drug AZT to pregnant women, which prevents the babies from developing AIDS. Mbeki is not a fool! He knows exactly what he is doing! Mbeki is part of the International AIDS Biowarfare Operation and he is just as much a scoundrel as George Bush or any other U.S. dictator. It is very true that high doses of AZT are toxic but high doses are not being given to the pregnant women and Mbeki has had that explained to him repeatedly. His position that the AIDS virus does not exist allows HIM to deny a cure to newborns. One more reason why we all need a Socialist Revolution in the United States!
The United States Now Threatens and Prepares to Bomb Iran!
The U.S. Has Used its Proxy State of Israel to Invade Gaza and
Totally Destroy Lebanon in Order to Threaten Syria and Iran Under
The Ridiculous Pretext of Kidnapped Soldiers and Rocket Attacks,
Both Homemade (Gaza) and Katyushas, and for refusing to be
Subjugated by the U.S./Israeli Axis, as U.S. Imperialism Sets
The Stage for the Main Objective of Bombing Iran!
In an April 17, 2006 article in The New Yorker magazine Seymour Hersh, a longtime U.S. intelligence agent, was provided with the information to make the case for bombing Iran. The capitalists have used Hersh in previous situations. Among his many disservices to humanity Hersh previously wrote a book in service of the Fascist Reagan regime entitled: The Target is Destroyed in order to systematically cover up the U.S.-orchestrated Korean Airliner (KAL) Provocation which was used to undermine Soviet opposition to the placement of U.S. Pershing II First Strike missiles in Germany less than 15 minutes from Moscow, a move which did in fact result in the 1988 Soviet surrender to the threat of a nuclear warnot an economic collapse. (See further below.) In that provocation an altitude bomb (described by the Soviet pilot Gennadi Osipovich as a large secondary explosion which destroyed the aircraft as it descended) was placed in the Korean 747 airliner to insure that even if the USSR did not shoot it down, which it did, the U.S. could claim the plane was shot down. The Korean pilot was directed to fly straight into the Soviet Union over the Kamchatka peninsula and was personally assured by the disgraced murderer Richard Nixon who was at the airport in Anchorage, Alaska before it took off, that the Soviets would not shoot down the plane because they would not risk the bad publicity which would damage international relations! The official story was that Nixon almost took the flight! So disingenuous! See further below for complete analysis of this topic.
The Seymour Hersh article in The New Yorker on the other hand actually makes the strongest possible U.S. case to bomb Iran, or even by extension North Korea for that matter, citing all the fanatics in the CIA and Israel as well as those who argue that it would be a big mistake. While some believe that the article is merely a threat. But the one-way dynamic/dialectic of capitalism, which is independent of the wills of the capitalists and politicians which make it up, and which is now in its final stage of Permanent War, makes such a military striketargeting at least 400 targets in Iran including the possible use of tactical nuclear bunker-buster weapons such as the B61-11 very possible, unless Iran backs down and submits to the dictates of the United States. Which does not seem entirely likely! The strategy of the U.S. dictatorship is apparently to use its Proxy State of Israel to carry out this objective, just as they previously used Israel to bomb the Osirak Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981. On July 12, 2006 Hezbollah kidnapped 2 Israeli soldiers and demanded a prisoner exchange. Although this has occurred numerous times previously, this time Israel seemed to be waiting for what has served as a pretext for a massive all-out attack and total destruction of Lebanon with relentless aerial slaughter of population centers and bombing of the infrastructure, including power stations and the water supply just as they have already done in Gaza! As a ridiculously false pretext for massive bombing of civilian areas the U.S./Israeli Axis bizarrely claims that Hezbollah is hiding behind human shields. The genuinely repulsive Christiane Amanpour Rubin, a professional liar and member of the United States intelligence community, married to the former chief spokesman for the U.S. State Department, clumsily tried to blame the victim: Hezbollah has brought a rain of terror down upon Lebanon!(?) CNN July 22, 2006.
Although Hezbollah is supported by both Syria and Iran, Hezbollah is primarily an extremely popular social service movement in Lebanon composed of Lebanese not Iranians, which runs hospitals, schools and supports virtually all of the social services in southern Lebanon from construction to picking up the garbage and even paying the bills, including $10,000.00 paid to each of the 15,000 Lebanese families whose home or apartment was destroyed by the U.S./Israel. Hezbollah also has a self-defense guerilla army, not a terrorist army made up of Lebanese Shiite civilians. The Hezbollah self-defense guerilla army is supported by the overwhelming majority of the general Shiites, Sunnis and even some in the Christian population and many in the 17 other religious sects of Lebanon and is the reason why U.S./Israel also bombed some Christian areas of Lebanon! It should be recalled that Israel used the Christian Phalangist Militia to carry out the massacres of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila Refugee Camps in September 15-16, 1982! Despite every effort to divide the Sunnis and Shiites in Lebanon, as the U.S. is making every effort to do in their goal to partition Iraq using manipulated provocateurs as their main weapon as explained above, this effort has completely failed in Lebanon. As part of the preparation for their long planned War Against Lebanon, which began on July 12, 2006, the United States directed the Israeli Mossad to assassinate their loyal anti-Syrian and vehemently anti-Shiite, but politically expendable Rafik Hariri one year previously, as the pretext to force Syria to withdraw its ground forces from Lebanon in preparation for the planned Invasion of Lebanon, and to try to take over the Lebanese government and convert it into a U.S. puppet moderate state such as Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates! Although the capitalists were able to force Syria to withdraw its forces from Lebanon and were able to install their puppet Fuad Saniora as Prime Minister they were not able to take over the government completely! It is a well-known fact that an invading army cannot defeat a guerrilla army such as Hezbollah, which is supported by the population! It is also a well-known military fact that such an invasion against a popularly supported guerrilla army cannot be won on the ground, and it most certainly cannot be won by an aerial bombing campaign! Hezbollah can also not be defeated by eliminating the civilian population from the border by completely destroying the housing and infrastructure near the border. In fact, destroying Hezbollah was not the U.S./Israeli objective. After the ceasefire in Lebanon Hezbollah confirmed that it still had thousands of Katyusha rockets and that the U.S./Israeli bombing had very little effect on their voluntary defense army, the supposed objective.
The U.S. and its Proxy State of Israel knew that they could not destroy or disarm Hezbollah, nor can they destroy the Palestinian Sunni Hamas popular movement in Gaza. The reality is that the U.S. has decided to use its Proxy State to change the rules by destroying housing and infrastructure and targeting the human population, not just at the border but throughout newly rebuilt Lebanon and Beirut! The real reason for the total destruction of Lebanon was to threaten Syria and Iran and to condition the world to accept widened U.S./Israeli Fascist aggression throughout the Mideast, where a similar bombing campaign against Syria and Iran will be more easily accepted in what is to be another Bait and Switch Operation, like the U.S. used in shifting its focus from Afghanistan to Iraq. This is not hidden but stated completely openly: Israel wants to send a strong message to all its enemies, especially Iran, that the consequences of attacking the Jewish state will be unbearable. (Associated Press July 20, 2006.) It should be obvious that the U.S./Israel Axis can arrange or assert or concoct such a provocation at the drop of a hat to justify an all-out aerial attack on Iran precisely as described in the Seymour Hersh article in The New Yorker!
In order to shift gears in preparation for Israel to bomb Lebanon the present Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert may have to be replaced by the crazed Judeo-Nazi Binyamin Natanyahu, who has begun a full-scale attack from the right ridiculously criticizing the Israeli armys inevitable loss to the Hezbollah Guerilla Army in Lebanon calling for a preemptive attack on Iran, where he calls Hezbollah an Iranian Army Division fighting in a war conceived, organized, trained an equipped by Iran, with Irans goal of destroying Israel... (New York Times, August 13, 2006) This is firstly a brazen cover-up of the fact that so-called Israel is NOTHING but a Proxy State of the United States! And get serious! Hezbollah, with no air force whatsoever except a few drones, may indeed have been prepared to defend itself to a limited degree by Iran and Syria, but the total destruction of Lebanon, mass murder and the deliberate environmental oil pollution of 50 miles of Lebanons, and now Syrias, absolutely beautiful Mediterranean coasts which are crucial for their economies, was all carefully planned in advance by the U.S. and its Proxy State of so-called Israel right down to the assassination one year in advance of Rafik Hariri! See below! In an absurd attempt to help mobilize U.S. domestic support for the probable bombing of Iran the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalizad has even introduced the Big Lie that Iran is pressing Shiite militias to step up mortar and rocket attacks against the U.S. invaders Green Zone in retaliation for U.S./Israeli total destruction and mass murder in Lebanon (New York Times, August 12, 2006). As if the Iraqis, Shiite and Sunni, cant think for themselves in fighting against the U.S. Invader! The destruction of Lebanon is one more demonstration that capitalism has moved into its final stage of Permanent War and State Terrorism, from which it cannot reverse! The U.S. message is: Get used to it! The U.S. Hands Are Tied! The rules are changedchanged to expand and condition the world to accept the U.S./Israel policy of Permanent War and State Terrorism. That is what is really meant by changing the rules!
Hezbollah Is NOT a State Within a State!
Hezbollah Is a State within the Puppet State of Lebanon
Lebanon is a Failed Puppet and Proxy for the United States
And Its Proxy State of so-called Israel!
It should be duly noted that ONLY Hezbollah fought to defend Lebanon! The Lebanese army and present puppet government leadership is in practice completely subservient and obedient to the U.S. and Israel and even gave passive support to their supposed U.S./Israeli enemy by standing aside to permit the invasion to occur allowing Lebanon to be reduced to total rubble. The U.S./Israelipuppet Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora has provided diplomatic and political cover for the U.S./Israeli State Terrorists to completely destroy Lebanon and commit mass murder with total impunity by meeting with the U.S. KindaSleezy Rice, who in practice insists on the total destruction of Lebanonbut not to destroy Hezbollah, which they know is not possible, but as a first step to raise the ante to condition the World to more easily accept the planned bombing of Iran and Syria! (See above.) In a vain attempt to try to regain some sort of credibility the U.S./Israelipuppet Saniora claimed that he would order the Lebanese Army to defend Lebanon if Israel invaded10 days after Israel had already totally destroyed most the country. He never did. Saniora lied! Although Israel had no intention of actually occupying Lebanon on a long term basis, because Hezbollahs Guerrilla army had already defeated Israel in the previous 18 year occupation of Lebanon forcing Israel to withdraw from Lebanon in May 2000, Israel did in fact invade Lebanon on July 2, 2006, going through the motions in a vain attempt to destroy Hezbollah, while continuing to bomb Lebanon into rubbletheir main objectivein preparation to bomb Iran and Syria. The U.S. directed its puppet Saniora to order the Lebanese Army to stand completely aside to permit further destruction of Lebanon! The U.S./ Israeli Axis and their puppet Lebanese puppet Saniora declared that they actually intended to use the Lebanese Army to help some international force disarm Hezbollah and go on its knees to the Invaders! That will never happen! Nor should it! The present Lebanese government leadership does not represent the interests of the Lebanese people. On August 7, 2006 in order to hide his complicity in the destruction of Lebanon, Saniora went so far as to repeatedly publicly feign tearstransparent crocodile tearsundoubtedly with the aid of chemical stimulants as used in Hollywood, as the Lebanese body count and destruction of Lebanon continued! The false claim that Hezbollah is a state within a state is designed to hide the fact that Hezbollah is actually a state within a nonstatethe present U.S. puppet Lebanese government! A government which has no credibility! It will be very difficult for the U.S./Israel to retain control of the Lebanese government after the Hezbollah victory and the obvious role of the present Lebanese government leadership as a puppet of the United States and its Proxy State of so-called Israel.
Hezbollahs defense of Lebanon had to be limited to Katyusha rockets and slightly longer range Fajr-3 (25 miles) and the (rarely used) Fajr-5 (45 miles) because of total air supremacy by the U.S./Israel. Although Hezbollah was able to fire around 200 rockets a day into Israel, the largest Hezbollah rockets contained no more that 100 lbs. of explosive and they were totally unguided. The U.S. on the other hand used its Proxy State of Israel to drop 4000 500 lb. and 1000 lb. bombs every day on Lebanon and the capitalist media cover up this slight discrepancy. The Israelis have objected vehemently, angrily, indignantly and absurdly to the fact that the Lebanese, but only through Hezbollah alone, have had the temerity to even fight back against the Fascist Judeo-Nazi onslaught. The Israelis claim to have pushed back and degraded Hezbollah. But this is just another Big Lie! No matter how deep the Israelis move into Lebanon they are totally surrounded and attacked on all sides and their supply lines are attacked at will by the outgunned Hezbollah. This is the only reason that the U.S./Israel agreed to a cease-fire at the U.N. on August 11, 2006. The capitalist media support fully the U.S./ Israeli mass murder in Lebanon, where the Israelis through mass bombing have slaughtered more than 10 Lebanese for every Israeli. Here the subservient Lebanese government has even falsely under-reportednot over-reportedthe number of Lebanese casualties refusing to include the huge number of people slaughtered in the rubble. Unlike the phrase innocent Lebaneseor Palestinian civilians, it should be reiterated there is no such thing as an innocent Israeli civilian because every Israeli citizen must serve every year in the Israeli army until age 55! Every Israeli childboy or girlis a future brainwashed mass murderer of Palestinians, Lebanese and whoever they are directed to kill for any concocted reason. Some future they have! The Palestinians, Lebanese and the entire Middle East has been fighting a purely defensive war ever since the 1948 creation of so-called Israel. The media, a privatized arm of the U.S. governments intelligence community, for the most part has covered up and disingenuously reported merely that the U.S. was giving Israel enough time to degrade and weaken Hezbollah, when they know very well that the objective goes much, much farther, as a practice run, a dress rehearsal to prepare to bomb Iran, the main objective as described above, while they condition the world to accept an uncontrollable Israel. Meanwhile Israel has used the minimally proportioned retaliation from Katyushas and the threat of Zelzal-2 missiles, which have been used perhaps twice, which have a 200-km range but lack a guidance system rendering them very inaccurate, to try to perpetuate the hoax of defending so-called Israel. The Israeli army even ridiculously labels itself: Israel Defense Forces!
The unsupported Israeli claims that it was not an unmanned drone laden with explosives which hit an Israeli missile warship but an Iranian-made, radar-guided C-802 missile as well as the totally unsupported accusations that the rockets are under the control of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) or Syrian commanders, which even if they were true, but which is very unlikely, is indubitably motivated by more than a mere hypocritical attempt to try to hide the fact that Israel is just a Proxy State of the United States, by falsely labeling Hezbollah as a proxy army of Syria and Iran. This appears to be simply part of the move to politically position Israel, the cats paw of U.S. imperialism, to bomb Iran under the phony pretext of defense. The U.S. hypocritically criticizes Syria and Iran for supplying Hezbollah with high tech rockets, while it supplies virtually all of the precision satellite and laser guided bombs and missile systems and every conceivable weaponry for its Proxy State of so-called Israel. Israel has chosen to manufacture most of its own artillery shells and ammunition down to 50-caliber machine gun cartridges because all of the U.S. manufactured ammunition is made of Depleted Uranium, which the U.S. has already used to deliberately make Iraq, Afghanistan and parts of the former Yugoslavia permanently radioactive and provide a means of permanent population reduction in those countries! (See above!)
On August 11, 2006 on the very day of the unanimous cease-fired agreement at the United Nations Israel asked the U.S. to speed delivery of M-26 Anti-Personnel Cluster Bomb Rockets (New York Times, August 11, 2006) and announced that it would Expand Its Push Into Lebanon as a ridiculous public relations stunt, while suffering their own highest daily losses on the ground, to try to make it appear that Israel had achieved some sort of victory. The Israeli advance was accompanied by dozens of air strikes in order to kill more innocent Lebanese civiliansbecause they already know they cannot kill, much less even see or rarely find any Hezbollah fighters. (New York Times, August 13, 2006.) The reality is that Hezbollah did not retreat a single inch except temporarily and did not suffer any measurable loss in their manpower or stockpile of rockets, while they destroyed almost two dozen U.S./Israeli tanks in just a few days. Only 110 Hezbollah fighters were lost, not 500 as falsely claimed by the Big Lie Israel propaganda ministry who could not produce any proof of such a claim! The reason for the Israeli request for cluster bombs is that Israel had been completely neutralized on the battlefield by Hezbollah and wanted to retaliate by murdering more innocent Lebanese civilians, because the Lebanese to Israeli death count was only around 10 to 1. Israel wanted to make Lebanon pay a higher price in civilian deaths
Posted by: William H. Depperman on October 22, 2006 at 12:17 PM | PERMALINK
Israel wanted to make Lebanon pay a higher price in civilian deaths and intimidation and to cover up their defeat on the ground to their domestic audience. But no matter how deep they advance into Lebanon the U.S. Proxy State of so-called Israel can not remove Hezbollah! On the ground Israel lost! The U.S. has also supplied so-called Israel with over 200 nuclear weapons kept at Damona and has already supplied Israel with both 1000 lb. and one hundred 5000 lb. conventional laser-guided bunker buster bombs (GBU-28s), some of which they have used in Lebanon (U.S. Speeds Up Bomb Delivery For the Israelis, New York Times, (July 22, 2006), and may also have supplied its Proxy State with bunker buster nukes perhaps to be used in Iran as described in the Seymour Hersh article! On August 24, 2006 after the humiliating defeat of their Proxy State of so-called Israel on the ground in Lebanon, the United States purchased 2 $1.3 billion Nuclear Missile German-made Dolphin submarines for Judeo-Nazi Israel with Germany paying one third of the costs! (Associated Press) In addition to Israel only puppet Arab states receive U.S. military aid. For example, the U.S. puppet state of Saudi Arabia also received $6 billion in military aid this year from the United States. The U.S. definitely seems to be actively mobilizing to bomb and possibly nuclear bomb Iran!
True to past form and tradition, in an act of unbelievable hypocrisy the U.S. made an absurd and ridiculous attempt to falsely disassociate itself from its Proxy State of so-called Israel by Opening an Inquiry Into Whether Israels Use of U.S. Cluster Bombs Violated a Secret Pact (New York Times, August 25, 2005). The Time Editorial page, which unconditionally supported the total destruction and mass murder in Lebanon during the U.S./Israeli onslaught, climbed aboard the next day August 26th, with preposterous false indignation, disingenuously condemning Israel for using cluster bombs against civiliansfor which they are primarily designed!!! A percentage of cluster bomblets are deliberately designed NOT to explode immediately upon impact, but to remain in the environment until they experience a secondary disturbance due to handling, almost always by unknowing civilians! Lebanon is now completely covered with tens of thousands of U.S. anti-personnel cluster bomblets designed to kill and maim as many Lebanese as possible.
Every effort has been made since the forcible creation of so-called Israel to deny that Israel is merely a Zionist puppet/proxy state doing the bidding of the United States. For example, in 1967 the U.S. even went so far as to directly authorize Israel to attack its own U.S. warship, the USS Liberty deliberately sacrificing the lives of 34 U.S. sailors in an attempt to falsely dissociate the U.S. from its Israeli Proxy State by portraying Israel as uncontrollable. As it rushed to ship more and more precision guided missiles and other high tech weaponry to Israel the U.S. dictatorship tried to clumsily disassociate itself from its direct authorization of a massive new ground offensive into Lebanon by its Proxy State of Israel on August 9, 2006 by lamely saying that neither Hezbollah nor Israel should escalate the war!? (See further below for complete discussion of Israel.) To hide the fact that the U.S. directed and authorized the present escalation of all out war in the Mideast the capitalist media uses such ridiculous and absurd headlines as U.S. Supports Israels Right To Self Defense (Self-Defense?!), U.S. Gives Qualified Support For Israels Strikes, U.S. on Israels Side, U.S. Gives Green Light to Israel and U.S. Finds Its Hands Tied! Without the $3-4 billion the U.S. gives Israel each year and the oil supplied by the U.S. the puppet government Israel would collapse immediately. H.W. Bush provided the formal pretext to keep Israel out of the Persian Gulf War in 1991 with the threat of cutting off $6 billion in economic credits. See below. Meanwhile the U.S. government is trying to build support for U.S./Israeli atrocities and destruction in Lebanon by every means possible, including apparent funding for an enormous increase in the Jews For Jesus group to hand out flyers at hundreds of subway stops in New York City and putting up advertisements for a newly concocted group Jesus for Jews in subway cars! We think Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah got it about right when he said: "The killings, massacres, destruction, atrocities and barbarism that have taken place since the first day of the war and continue to be, Bush and his US administration are the first ones to be blamed. In our opinion, Olmert and his government are mere executive tools of this war" - Nasrallah Speaks, Aug 3, 2006.
A note on the case of Jonathan Pollard: Note that the case of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard who was convicted of stealing top-secret U.S. military intelligence and diplomatic codes; names of nearly 100 U.S. agents in the Mideast, who were then turned by Israel (Oh really, just like that?); NSA code-breaking techniques and targets; intercepts of foreign communications; and U.S. war-fighting plans for the Mideast by pilfering several desk drawers full of documents, enough to stuff his brief case full after several efforts as revealed by a surveillance video camcorder apparently precisely set up to catch him in the act, has all the ear marks of an arranged provocation, and in any case has been used precisely as a provocation, to try to falsely disassociate the U.S. from its Proxy State so-called Israel by trying make it appear that U.S. intelligence and the Israeli intelligence are not intimately connected at every level. Supposedly a number of key CIA agents in the East Bloc were allegedly executed as a result of Pollard's spying, which allegedly gave the KGB access to top-secret U.S. codes supposedly directly from Israel (Oh, really?!), or through spies in Israel's government. Give us a break. Jonathan Pollard serves a very useful purpose in prison. Viewing the videotape made available by U.S. intelligence it is very likely that Pollard, who really looks ridiculous pilfering those papers just lying around in that desk, was used just as Yigal Amir, the Zionist fanatic who assassinated Rabin was used in another way to advance U.S. and Israeli interests. See above. The capitalists actually want people to suspend disbelief just one more time and accept that U.S. war fighting plans for the Mideast are secret from Israel. Right! This way Israeli leaders can complain about Pollard forever, if they can keep him alive that long, thereby conveniently helping to falsely disassociate Israel from its master, the United States! Guess its easier for the U.S. than authorizing Israel to blow another hole in the USS Liberty where identifiable people actually have to die to falsely portray Israel as uncontrollable!
A key to understanding the situationnamely that the U.S./ Israeli attack on Lebanon was planned long in advanceis the fact that Israel refused to exchange the 2 captured Israeli soldiers and chose instead to bomb Lebanon back to the Stone Age, while making every effort to implicate Syria and Iran, in what was undoubtedly a completely independent action by Hezbollah, similar to actions which had occurred intermittently for years previously! The masses throughout the Mideast do not have to receive orders from Syria or Iran to hate, despise and attack so-called Israel! Israel has a long history of prisoner exchange. On March 15, 1979 Israel exchanged 66 Palestinians for one Israeli soldier! On November 24, 1983 Israel exchanged 4,700 Palestinians and Lebanese for 6 Israeli soldiers! On June 28, 1984 Israel exchanged 291 Syrian soldiers and 20 security prisoners for 3 Israeli soldiers, 3 Israeli civilians and the remains of 2 Israeli soldiers. On May 21, 1985 Israel exchanged 1,150 Palestinians for 3 Israeli soldiers. On July 21, 1996 Israel exchanged 45 Shiite Muslims and bodies of 40 Hezbollah fighters for the dead body of an Israel soldier! On October 1997 Israel exchanged 70 prisoners including Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin for 2 Israeli intelligence agents captured in a failed attempt to assassinate Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal. On January 29, 2004 Israel exchanged 420 prisoners and 59 bodies of Lebanese killed in fighting for 3 Israeli soldiers. The reason that the Israeli did not immediately exchange prisoners this time is that the U.S. wanted its Israel Proxy State to build the momentum to falsely implicate Syria and Iran prior to the very likely bombing of Iran and the attempt to overthrow the governments of both countries, attempts which will undoubtedly fail just like all of their policies are failing everywhere around the world! This is the reality which cannot be denied by the facts on the ground!
The U.S./Israeli invasion of Lebanon also helps further the constant objective of deliberately and maximally inflaming Islamic anger and subsequent retaliation worldwide, which in turn is crucial to maintaining the pretext for the hoax of the so-called War on Terrorism used as the pretext for the final stage of capitalism-imperialismPermanent War and State Terrorism! The actions of the U.S./Israel in the Mideast, just like the U.S. Invasion of Iraq, etc. represent the naked dynamic of capitalism-imperialism now in its final stage of Permanent War and State Terrorism! Accusations aimed at Iran, combined with refusal or inability by Lebanon, Syria and Iran to comply with the absurd U.S./Israeli demands, will at the minimum be used as the phony pretext to constantly escalate U.S. imperialist aggression and State Terrorism throughout the Middle East. While there is no direct proof of a nuclear weapons program in Iran, the Iranians realize that only by becoming a nuclear state can they defend themselves against the U.S. This is also the reason why North Korea is unlikely to agree to actually ever give up its nuclear weapons program in the face of crazed U.S. Imperialism, because to do so might invite U.S. bombing. The U.S. does not threaten countries which possess nuclear weapons. If Saddam Hussein had actually had been able to develop nuclear weapons, which the U.S. knew very well that Iraq had not done, the U.S. would never have invaded Iraq. Both India and Pakistan possess nuclear weapons and the U.S. does not bother either country and forms alliances with them. The only way to permanently end nuclear weapons worldwide and the threat of a nuclear war is by carrying out a Socialist Revolution here in the United States, thereby permanently ending the system of capitalist-imperialism, which is fundamentally based on war, subjugation and mass murder in order to steal new resources and new markets. Only on this basis will the world have a genuine basis to completely and permanently disarm!
The Rafik Hariri Assassination, Authorized by the United States and
Carried Out by Israeli Mossad, was a Provocation Aimed at Syria!
Yasser Arafat Was Also Assassinated by U.S/Israel and France!
This after the U.S.-Israeli Mossad Axis bombed out (assassinated) Rafik Hariri and blamed it on Syria, who had no motive for such a crime! The Syrians incidentally have no special history of assassination in the Mideast or anywhere, while the Israeli IDF uses assassination as one of its most frequent weapons of choice and is the most experienced in the entire Mideast in assassination! Since the Hariri Blow-Up the U.S. has authorized a veritable stream of assassinations in Lebanon in order to inflame anti-Syrian opinion, which has no motive to assassinate anyone! Previously the United States authorized Israeli agents to also assassinate Arafat! Nothing happens in Israel policy wise without U.S. authorization, although isolated Zionist crimes do occur from time to time. The dog wags the tailnot the other way around, despite lies to the contrary which conspiracy theorists try to push. Israeli is not actually a conventional state, it is an entity (the Zionist Entity), a U.S. puppet/proxy state because it is completely dependent militarily, economically and diplomatically on the United States for its existence. It is the cats paw of U.S. imperialism in the Mideast! For example, in order to keep Israel out of the 1991 U.S. Invasion of Iraq the Bush Regime threatened to cut off $6 billion in credits to Israel to keep the fanatic Zionists in line. The U.S. authorized the Israelis, with the helpful assistance of agents of Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) & Co., to initially administer Arafat poison in Ramallah, giving him an isolated case of thrombocytopenia (low platelets) with no other symptoms, symptoms which could only occur by poisoning, as his doctors in Ramallah so testified! The French provided timely assistance first by immediately sedating Arafat when he arrived in Paris so that he could not speak or know what was happening to him. The French, who have historically always worked closely with Israel and Mossad and, of course, with the United States (except in Iraq), indubitably administered the final overdose of anti-coagulant or other poison in order to induce a stroke. Arafat used to be their boy but was sacrificed primarily because he had largely lost the support of his militant constituency and the capitalists wanted to install new personnel, which has turned out to be a total failure for them once again. The irony is that during the 1980s several assassinations of highly militant PLO figures were carried out by Mossad in the close proximity of Arafat, always leaving him untouched. This time the capitalists sacrificed him.
It is true that the Syrian leaders are completely opportunist and have worked closely with both the U.S. and Israel. The Syrians have and will continue to torture absolutely anybody the U.S. sends them through their so-called "Extraordinary Rendition Torture Program, which incidentally is not extraordinary for the capitalists but routine and an everyday event. But Syria would have NO MOTIVE whatsoever to assassinate Hariri! Only the United States and Israeli, the puppet of U.S.-led world imperialism, and Mahmoud Abbas have the motive! The motive of the Hariri assassination was 1.) to generate the pretext to pressure Syria to withdraw from Lebanonwhich was the almost immediate result and 2.) to supply the pretext to try to overthrow the Baath Socialist Party-led government of Syria! Syria has a socialist system, which provides full employment, no homelessness, free education to the highest level and free medical and dental just like Iraq used to have, all of which is unavailable in the United States! The capitalists want to get rid of it and institute so-called freedom and democracy, which under capitalism have become euphemisms for capitalist dictatorship and enslavement. Just like in Iraq and everywhere else, including the U.S.A.! Long and convoluted articles based on CIA files, e.g. the November 3, 2005 article in the New York Times demonstrate how determined the capitalists are to try to undermine the Syrian Baath Socialist government and falsely implicate Bashir al-Assad, a former ophthalmologist as supposedly having given the order to assassinate Hariri! But Hariri had already resigned from the government when he was assassinated! If the Syrians hated him so much they would have assassinated him while he was in office. The reason that he was assassinated after he left office rather than when he was in office and presumably more of a threat, which he never really was, was that such a provocation simply did not occur to U.S. and Israel earlier. The truth is that Hariri never ever had a majority support for his anti-Syrian position! Not even close! Not even after he was assassinated! Not even now! Syria has supported Hezbollah, whose defensive attacks against the illegal Israeli occupation of Lebanon, forced Israel to finally pull out of Lebanon and all the Lebanese know it! The U.S.-directed Mossad is widely recognized and understood to be the assassin of Hariri and Arafat, etc. throughout the Mideast! Its time to wake up here in the USA!
To assassinate Hariri the U.S. directed Israeli Mossad assassins used a huge truck bomb, which they drove through Syria, or assembled in Syria, and painstakingly filmed leaving Syria and driving all through Lebanon and Beirut before being blown up, where it was also filmed at the point of detonation! It is not credible that surveillance cameras would be so strategically placed to document this event so precisely unless it had been planned in advance. This is very similar to the video that was made of the first AIDS Typhoid Mary (so-called patient 0) where the capitalists deliberately infected a promiscuous male airline steward through his doctor with the AIDS virus then followed him, videotaping him going from one assignation to another unknowingly spreading AIDS. But what these Biowarfare enthusiasts, who could not have made the film for any other reason than to document their Biological Warfare handiwork, did not realize was that the film actually implicated those who made it. The questions immediately arose: 1.How did the video tapers know that person had AIDS? 2.) Why didnt they stop him? The same thing applies with the film of the Hariri truck bomb.
Instead the United States has ordered its United Nations puppet leadership to begin a phony investigation, which has been authorized by the Security Council! The only problem is that the capitalists currently have only one witness. (Of course more can be manufactured if necessary!) The witness, Hossam Taher Hossam, who identified himself to the UN inquiry as a former Syrian intelligence officer, alleged in a 75-minute interview on November 27, 2005 that Hariris son, Saad Hariri, met him several months ago and offered him $1.3 million to testify against top Syrian officials. But the question of credible motive and who only benefits from such assassinationsthe United States and its cats paw Israelis never raised in this brazen provocation. The capitalists are running totally amok! Everything the capitalists attempt turns into a fiasco. On June 28, 2006 the U.S. ordered its Proxy Zionist Army of Israel to buzz the Syrian coast and the house of Syrian leader Bashir al-Assad while threatening to attack Syria on the pretext that the exiled supreme leader of Hamas, Khaled Mashaal, living in Syria ordered the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier! Right! This was carried out while the U.S. Zionist Proxy State of Israel was invading Gaza under the laughably fraudulent pretext of trying to rescue the kidnapped (murderer) Israeli soldier, for whom they do not give a damn, and relentlessly bombing and shelling Gaza population centers and torturing the population all night with sonic booms in order to deprive them of sleep just like they torture prisoners in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, all in direct violation of International Law, just exactly like its U.S. master which writes Torture Memorandums and gives virtually all the orders.
The U.S. and its Zionist Proxy State of Israel also wage economic war against Hamas by having Israel collect $55 million in taxes from the Palestinians and then refusing to turn the money back over to the Palestinians to run their government because the capitalists do not really believe in democracy when the masses choose to elect Hamas. They actually thought that they might be able to impose the election of Fatah on the Palestinians after it was taken over by U.S./Israeli Puppet Mahmoud Abbas after he was nice enough to help poison Arafat! After the assassination of Arafat by the U.S./Israel/Abbas-Fatah Axis the majority of those Fatah leaders who had been loyal to Arafat were expelled from Fatah, which has now been taken over lock stock and barrel as a tool of the U.S. and its Zionist Proxy State. Fatah has been organized to attack Hamas and to create chaos in Gaza (New York Times, August 29, 2006), while Judeo-Nazi Israel simply arbitrarily arrests dozens of Hamas cabinet ministers and legislators. (Reuters, June 29, 2006) Prior to its air attack on Lebanon the U.S. Israeli Proxy State pledged to bomb the infrastructure of Lebanon back to the Stone Age, which they did, while they threatened Syria and Iran! All completely authorized by their master the USA! Bombing a country back to the Stone Age was precisely the policy of the U.S. in Vietnam! This is why in order for there to be a genuine solution in the Middle East there first must be a Socialist Revolution in the United States!
The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin Was a Queen Sacrifice Carried Out by
the Israeli Government, under Authorization From its United States Master, in Order to Increase Support Among Israelis for the Oslo Peace Accords in 1995
But Was Gratuitously Sabotaged by Likud-directed Shin Bet!
In 1995 support for the Oslo Peace Accords was substantial among Palestinians because it represented a better situation than they had, but Israel was split right down the middle with supporters versus opponents. Because the Mideast and the Oslo Accords were so important to the United States, Israel and the entire capitalist world, both politically and economically, potentially opening up an area which had been shunned by big investors because of the Intifada and constant threat of suicide bombings, the capitalists decided to carry out what is known in politics and chess as a Queen Sacrifice in order to increase support for the Oslo accords among the Israelis. At a rally in support of the Oslo Accords on November 4, 1995, members of the Israeli security forces deliberately allowed a Zionist fanatic, Yigal Amir, to breach security around Rabin as the rally ended and Rabin was on his way to his car. (In this respect the Rabin assassination was very similar to the 9/11 Trade Center Attack, which was also a government-facilitated provocation, where the Bush Regime deliberately opened the door to the Islamic Fundamentalists to permit them to obtain flight training for jumbo jets in the face of local FBI protests [see above] and kept the Air Force jet interceptors grounded for over an hour in order to permit the 9/11 Attack to be successfully carried out.) After the Rabin assassination support for the Oslo Accords among Israelis increased to over 71%!
The assassination of Rabin appeared to be a success! But shortly thereafter on January 5, 1996, the head of Shin Bet, Avi Dichter, known up to that time only as Kaf, under pressure from the fanatical Zionist Likud Party and acting against the objectives of the United States and its puppet Israeli government, gratuitously assassinated the chief Hamas suicide bomb maker, Yehiya Ayash, in the Gaza Strip by planting a radio-controlled bomb in his cell phone. But Yehiya Ayash had had no business for years! Ayash was no longer a viable threat because nobody wanted to volunteer for suicide bombing against Israel and in fact there had not been any suicide bombing in Israel for several years after the signing of the 1993 Oslo Accords, which stood to improve the situation for Palestinians living in Occupied Palestine. Support for the Oslo Accord was also at an all time high among Israelis after the successful Queen Sacrifice of Rabin. Avi Dichter was a literal example of a loose cannon and his motive was clear as crystal! The Israeli government and the United States were furious! The Shin Bet Chief Kafs offer of resignation was accepted several days after he ordered the assassination of Ayash. Previously Kafs pro forma offers of resignation after the carefully planned Rabin assassination were turned down by Peres, who was also part of the Rabin assassination, which briefly advanced Israeli interests! In order to expose Kaf for acting against Israeli and U.S. interests, the new Shin Bet Chief, Ami Ayalon, former Rear Admiral in the Israeli Navy agreed to openly accept the position as the new Shin Bet Chief one week after the Shin Bet assassination of Ayash, allowing his name to be known for the first time as the new Shin Bet Chief in order to permit the Israeli government to be able to then reveal the name of his trouble-maker predecessor, Kaf, who was Avi Dichter, who would no longer enjoy the government security he had while head of Shin Bet!
It was a completely new precedent in Israeli politics to announce the name of the head of Shin Bet, and was designed to jeopardize the security of those Zionist fanatics who would act independently against Israeli interests and U.S. interests. (Yigal Amir, the Zionist fanatic who assassinated Rabin was manipulated to advance U.S. and Israeli interests.) The assassination of Yehiya Ayash of Hamas was a deliberately calculated provocation by Likud to sabotage support for the the Oslo Accords among Israelis by providing the pretext for retaliatory suicide bombing by Hamas and other Islamic Fundamentalist groups, which began immediately after the assassination and has continued ever since right up to the present moment. On September 28, 2000 Ariel Sharon went onto the Temple Mount, Al Haram ash-Sharif in Arabic, as a deliberate provocation, after the Camp David negotiations broke up earlier on July 5th, in order to incite the Palestinians and start up a Second Intifada, which was used to further crush and oppress the Palestinians and to try to force them into submission. This has continued despite the fact that Likud Chief Sharon before his stroke agreed to U.S. demands to withdraw from Gaza and try to give the appearance of supporting a Two State Solution with the Palestinians, where the Palestinians would in practice remain under the jackboot of the Israeli Fascists behind the Israeli Apartheid Wall, which is three times as long and twice as high as the Berlin Wall, and where the huge Israeli West Bank settlements, which are designed to incorporate valuable land and resources of the West Bank into so-called Israel, are left mostly intact, and the Palestinians are left in a few nonviable Bantustans, which the US and Israel try to call a state for the Palestinians! The Israeli Apartheid Wall is 25 ft. high, presently 216 miles long and counting, with 95-315 ft. of buffer zone with electric fence, trenches, cameras and security patrols, which according to the new acting Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, of the new so-called centrist Kadima Party, will form the basis of the permanent boundary between Israel and a proposed Palestinian State! While this may have represented a bargaining chip to cause Hamas to recognize Israel (which it now has by establishing a national unity government with Arafat assassin Mahmoud Abbas thus implicitly recognizing Israel), there is no real possibility that Israel will ever dismantle it. The Israeli Apartheid Wall represents the hardening dictatorship of U.S. capitalism in the Mideast.
The Only Solution for the Middle East is One Secular
State Of Palestine which has as its Pre-Condition:
Socialist Revolution in the United States!
The only solution which could ever succeed on a long term basis is a One Secular State Solution which is neither a Zionist state nor an Islamic state. This can only come about after a Socialist Revolution here in the United States and will automatically be one of the immediate outcomes of that Socialist Revolution. This fact should be made widely known to all Jews and all Moslems. There can be no oppression of Palestinians and there can be no oppression of Jews. ZionismJewish nationalismhas no place in a peaceful future in the Mideast and neither do Islamic Fundamentalist States, both of which represent reaction not progress. The Jewish people have always had a progressive history up until World War II and the Holocaust. Two-thirds of the leadership of the Russian Revolution was Jewish! In Europe Jews followed Communists and Social DemocratsNOT Zionists. In Germany the Zionists only got about 5% of the Jewish vote, while in Poland it was higher, up to 35%, due to the capitalists barrage of anti-Soviet anti-Communist propaganda because of its proximity to the Soviet Union. The Jewish people had its Communist and progressive leadership beheaded in the Holocaust along with the 6 million Jews murdered by Hitler, who also murdered 27 million Soviet citizens and millions of others, 57 million in WWII. After the Holocaust, reactionary and Fascist Zionists, some who had actually made agreements with Hitler, were insinuated into leadership positions among the Holocaust Survivors, whose first choice was to emigrate to the United States and Great Britain. Both countries turned down the Holocaust Survivors, prevented their entry and directed them to Palestine, where the capitalists helped them set up the Zionist entity Israel as a garrison proxy state to protect U.S. and British imperialist oil interests. Stalin, no Communist (see below), eager to ingratiate himself with the United States was the first to recognize so-called Israel As mentioned, Israel is not formally even a state because it is economically, politically, diplomatically and militarily dependent on the United States. If this support were withdrawn Israel would collapse like a house of cards. Israels 200 plus nuclear weapons at Damona would be of no help to the Zionist criminals without oil. The Proxy State of so-called Israel does not represent the interest of the Jewish people. Israel is bad for Jews! Its existence has increased the threat to Jewish people everywhere! This is undeniable and can only be ended with a Socialist Revolution in the United States!
The Kibbutzim Are A Total Deception and a
Means of Neutralizing Potential Communists!
Jewish people worldwide and Israelis alike must organize themselves against Zionism and for a Socialist Revolution. Israel plays another little number on its citizens many of whom aspire to Socialism and would like to think of themselves as progressive. Israel runs a network of 270 Kibbutzim, which are communal settlements supposedly based on the principle of joint ownership of property, equality and cooperation of production, consumption and education; the fulfillment of the idea "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." But the reality is that they do not represent Socialism at all in any way and cannot because they exist within a capitalist dictatorship and function to help maintain that dictatorship. This is an example of the dialectical contradiction of form and essence. The Kibbutzim are a just a trick, a deception used to exhaust progressive-minded people and to isolate potential Communists away from main population centers and to exploit the labor of about 130,000 Israelis who supply and help maintain the Imperialist-cats paw of the United StatesIsraelin its permanent war against the Palestinians and the other Mideast countries. At age 18 all members of the Kibbutzim all must serve in the Israel army, 3 years for men and 21 months for women, and for each year thereafter until age 51 men must serve 39 days each year in the army, while those who have seen combat are allowed to stop after age 45. Thus there are no innocent Israeli citizens unless they are in the process of organizing a mutiny in the Israeli puppet army. Unless the Israeli people carry out a mutiny the reality is that every child in Israel will grow up brainwashed and be organized to kill, torture and oppress Palestinians. Only a Socialist Revolution in the United States can bring this to an end. Its pre-condition is mutiny in all the armed forces of the capitalist countries!
The position of all Communists, and all progressive people who are not yet Communists, is to support all those oppressed by capitalism-imperialism and its Zionist cats paw and that includes supporting the Hamas Palestinians and supporting Hezbollah against the U.S./Israeli Invasion of Lebanon. The Israeli army should be encouraged to mutiny, as should the entire population of Occupied Palestineso-called Israel! That does not mean that Communists support Islamic Fundamentalism or Sharia any more than they do Zionism. Nor does supporting Hezbollah and Hamas against the U.S. and Israel mean in any way that Communists support the nuclear bombing of Israel by Iran! Not at all! By consistently opposing capitalism-imperialism in all of its death throe invasions and statecraft against the people of this planet capitalism is weakened overall and the Socialist Revolution brought closer and with it a Secular State of Palestine. The overthrow of Zionism in Israel, will occur in tandem with the Socialist Revolution in the United States. The elimination of the Zionist state will permanently eliminate the threat to the Jewish people. The Jewish people must no longer tolerate representation by Zionists and should begin immediately to deprogram themselves of the cancer of Zionism!
_____________________________
William H. Depperman, Coordinator
United Front Against Racism
and Capitalism-Imperialism
October 19, 2006
Ayash was no longer a viable threat because nobody wanted to volunteer for suicide bombing against Israel and in fact there had not been any suicide bombing in Israel for several years after the signing of the 1993 Oslo Accords, which stood to improve the situation for Palestinians living in Occupied Palestine. Support for the Oslo Accord was also at an all time high among Israelis after the successful Queen Sacrifice of Rabin. Avi Dichter was a literal example of a loose cannon and his motive was clear as crystal! The Israeli government and the United States were furious! The Shin Bet Chief Kafs offer of resignation was accepted several days after he ordered the assassination of Ayash. Previously Kafs pro forma offers of resignation after the carefully planned Rabin assassination were turned down by Peres, who was also part of the Rabin assassination, which briefly advanced Israeli interests! In order to expose Kaf for acting against Israeli and U.S. interests, the new Shin Bet Chief, Ami Ayalon, former Rear Admiral in the Israeli Navy agreed to openly accept the position as the new Shin Bet Chief one week after the Shin Bet assassination of Ayash, allowing his name to be known for the first time as the new Shin Bet Chief in order to permit the Israeli government to be able to then reveal the name of his trouble-maker predecessor, Kaf, who was Avi Dichter, who would no longer enjoy the government security he had while head of Shin Bet!
It was a completely new precedent in Israeli politics to announce the name of the head of Shin Bet, and was designed to jeopardize the security of those Zionist fanatics who would act independently against Israeli interests and U.S. interests. (Yigal Amir, the Zionist fanatic who assassinated Rabin was manipulated to advance U.S. and Israeli interests.) The assassination of Yehiya Ayash of Hamas was a deliberately calculated provocation by Likud to sabotage support for the the Oslo Accords among Israelis by providing the pretext for retaliatory suicide bombing by Hamas and other Islamic Fundamentalist groups, which began immediately after the assassination and has continued ever since right up to the present moment. On September 28, 2000 Ariel Sharon went onto the Temple Mount, Al Haram ash-Sharif in Arabic, as a deliberate provocation, after the Camp David negotiations broke up earlier on July 5th, in order to incite the Palestinians and start up a Second Intifada, which was used to further crush and oppress the Palestinians and to try to force them into submission. This has continued despite the fact that Likud Chief Sharon before his stroke agreed to U.S. demands to withdraw from Gaza and try to give the appearance of supporting a Two State Solution with the Palestinians, where the Palestinians would in practice remain under the jackboot of the Israeli Fascists behind the Israeli Apartheid Wall, which is three times as long and twice as high as the Berlin Wall, and where the huge Israeli West Bank settlements, which are designed to incorporate valuable land and resources of the West Bank into so-called Israel, are left mostly intact, and the Palestinians are left in a few nonviable Bantustans, which the US and Israel try to call a state for the Palestinians! The Israeli Apartheid Wall is 25 ft. high, presently 216 miles long and counting, with 95-315 ft. of buffer zone with electric fence, trenches, cameras and security patrols, which according to the new acting Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, of the new so-called centrist Kadima Party, will form the basis of the permanent boundary between Israel and a proposed Palestinian State! While this may have represented a bargaining chip to cause Hamas to recognize Israel (which it now has by establishing a national unity government with Arafat assassin Mahmoud Abbas thus implicitly recognizing Israel), there is no real possibility that Israel will ever dismantle it. The Israeli Apartheid Wall represents the hardening dictatorship of U.S. capitalism in the Mideast.
The Only Solution for the Middle East is One Secular
State Of Palestine which has as its Pre-Condition:
Socialist Revolution in the United States!
The only solution which could ever succeed on a long term basis is a One Secular State Solution which is neither a Zionist state nor an Islamic state. This can only come about after a Socialist Revolution here in the United States and will automatically be one of the immediate outcomes of that Socialist Revolution. This fact should be made widely known to all Jews and all Moslems. There can be no oppression of Palestinians and there can be no oppression of Jews. ZionismJewish nationalismhas no place in a peaceful future in the Mideast and neither do Islamic Fundamentalist States, both of which represent reaction not progress. The Jewish people have always had a progressive history up until World War II and the Holocaust. Two-thirds of the leadership of the Russian Revolution was Jewish! In Europe Jews followed Communists and Social DemocratsNOT Zionists. In Germany the Zionists only got about 5% of the Jewish vote, while in Poland it was higher, up to 35%, due to the capitalists barrage of anti-Soviet anti-Communist propaganda because of its proximity to the Soviet Union. The Jewish people had its Communist and progressive leadership beheaded in the Holocaust along with the 6 million Jews murdered by Hitler, who also murdered 27 million Soviet citizens and millions of others, 57 million in WWII. After the Holocaust, reactionary and Fascist Zionists, some who had actually made agreements with Hitler, were insinuated into leadership positions among the Holocaust Survivors, whose first choice was to emigrate to the United States and Great Britain. Both countries turned down the Holocaust Survivors, prevented their entry and directed them to Palestine, where the capitalists helped them set up the Zionist entity Israel as a garrison proxy state to protect U.S. and British imperialist oil interests. Stalin, no Communist (see below), eager to ingratiate himself with the United States was the first to recognize so-called Israel As mentioned, Israel is not formally even a state because it is economically, politically, diplomatically and militarily dependent on the United States. If this support were withdrawn Israel would collapse like a house of cards. Israels 200 plus nuclear weapons at Damona would be of no help to the Zionist criminals without oil. The Proxy State of so-called Israel does not represent the interest of the Jewish people. Israel is bad for Jews! Its existence has increased the threat to Jewish people everywhere! This is undeniable and can only be ended with a Socialist Revolution in the United States!
The Kibbutzim Are A Total Deception and a
Means of Neutralizing Potential Communists!
Jewish people worldwide and Israelis alike must organize themselves against Zionism and for a Socialist Revolution. Israel plays another little number on its citizens many of whom aspire to Socialism and would like to think of themselves as progressive. Israel runs a network of 270 Kibbutzim, which are communal settlements supposedly based on the principle of joint ownership of property, equality and cooperation of production, consumption and education; the fulfillment of the idea "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." But the reality is that they do not represent Socialism at all in any way and cannot because they exist within a capitalist dictatorship and function to help maintain that dictatorship. This is an example of the dialectical contradiction of form and essence. The Kibbutzim are a just a trick, a deception used to exhaust progressive-minded people and to isolate potential Communists away from main population centers and to exploit the labor of about 130,000 Israelis who supply and help maintain the Imperialist-cats paw of the United StatesIsraelin its permanent war against the Palestinians and the other Mideast countries. At age 18 all members of the Kibbutzim all must serve in the Israel army, 3 years for men and 21 months for women, and for each year thereafter until age 51 men must serve 39 days each year in the army, while those who have seen combat are allowed to stop after age 45. Thus there are no innocent Israeli citizens unless they are in the process of organizing a mutiny in the Israeli puppet army. Unless the Israeli people carry out a mutiny the reality is that every child in Israel will grow up brainwashed and be organized to kill, torture and oppress Palestinians. Only a Socialist Revolution in the United States can bring this to an end. Its pre-condition is mutiny in all the armed forces of the capitalist countries!
The position of all Communists, and all progressive people who are not yet Communists, is to support all those oppressed by capitalism-imperialism and its Zionist cats paw and that includes supporting the Hamas Palestinians and supporting Hezbollah against the U.S./Israeli Invasion of Lebanon. The Israeli army should be encouraged to mutiny, as should the entire population of Occupied Palestineso-called Israel! That does not mean that Communists support Islamic Fundamentalism or Sharia any more than they do Zionism. Nor does supporting Hezbollah and Hamas against the U.S. and Israel mean in any way that Communists support the nuclear bombing of Israel by Iran! Not at all! By consistently opposing capitalism-imperialism in all of its death throe invasions and statecraft against the people of this planet capitalism is weakened overall and the Socialist Revolution brought closer and with it a Secular State of Palestine. The overthrow of Zionism in Israel, will occur in tandem with the Socialist Revolution in the United States. The elimination of the Zionist state will permanently eliminate the threat to the Jewish people. The Jewish people must no longer tolerate representation by Zionists and should begin immediately to deprogram themselves of the cancer of Zionism!
_____________________________
William H. Depperman, Coordinator
United Front Against Racism
and Capitalism-Imperialism
October 19, 2006
Posted by: William H. Depperman on October 22, 2006 at 12:19 PM | PERMALINK
William H. Depperman:
Please don't post here anymore. Your posts are 1) off-topic and 2) longer than the rest of the thread. I can guarantee you that nobody's going to read what you posted.
Besides, all you need to do is scroll through your spam to recognize that it's batshit insane.
I speak for nearly all of us here in requesting that you find a more suitable venue.
Thanks in advance for your consideration,
Bob
Posted by: rmck1 on October 22, 2006 at 12:31 PM | PERMALINK
the cheney administration and obl need each other. that's why cheney let him go at Tora Bora. If they caught him, then MISSION ACCOMPLISHED war over.
this way they can continue killing thousands of Americans, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and continue their ongoing efforts to turn Iraq into a corporatocracy run by Helliburton and the oil companies.
We have organized crime for a government
Posted by: marblex on October 22, 2006 at 12:44 PM | PERMALINK
And now for Chapters Three through Four hundred and sixty two of War and Peace.
"On a wintry day in 1811,.....................................................................................................................................
Posted by: thethirdPaul on October 22, 2006 at 12:54 PM | PERMALINK
Uncle Paul, could you read me "Pilgrim's Progress" next?
Posted by: stupid git on October 22, 2006 at 12:57 PM | PERMALINK
My favorite part (in the section on DU) was that Michio Kaku is a CIA mole broadcasting on WBAI (part of the fake-leftist Pacifica radio network) who's pushing string theory (against honest ol' quantum mechanics) as part of a government disinformation campaign to keep the masses in the dark about "basic physics."
It almost makes the rest of it seem worth reading :)
On second thought ... nahhh.
Bob
Posted by: rmck1 on October 22, 2006 at 1:06 PM | PERMALINK
Fitting that Laura had George name this National Tome Day.
Posted by: thethirdPaul on October 22, 2006 at 1:15 PM | PERMALINK
Congratulations Globe! I particularly liked this bit from your piece:
You only thought Marxism was extreme. Korean juche makes Marxism look like Montessori. When this regime finally collapses, the world is going to have to deal with an entire nation with psychopathologies normally associated with the trauma of captivity.
Posted by: Windhorse on October 22, 2006 at 1:32 PM | PERMALINK
I have been fired up of late.
Posted by: Global Citizen on October 22, 2006 at 1:36 PM | PERMALINK
That's 30 pages in a 9pt font! The winner!
Posted by: cld on October 22, 2006 at 2:41 PM | PERMALINK
Forget mushroom could over the Korean peninsula. Run an ad with a mushroom could over Seattle or San Francisco or LA (or Anchorage?).
"Bush admin did nothing while North Korea tested nuclear bombs and missiles that could hit North America."
Posted by: thump on October 22, 2006 at 3:01 PM | PERMALINK
opit, but if you know French "enfant" is the same as English "infant" you will understand the slap in the face infantry really means.
Absolutely never thought of that.
Posted by: cld on October 22, 2006 at 3:01 PM | PERMALINK
Global Citizen,
Congratulations.
By the way, what did you do to the water supply this morning? 20-6 at the half?
Your I have arrived is of course correct - However, it makes me think of a line from "Support Your Local Sheriff" where a character played by Harry Morgan said "They have arroved".
Hey, you have worked very hard to achieve your place in the weblog world - Kudos.
Posted by: thethirdPaul on October 22, 2006 at 3:10 PM | PERMALINK
thump suggests: Run an ad with a mushroom could over Seattle or San Francisco or LA (or Anchorage?).
"Bush admin did nothing while North Korea tested nuclear bombs and missiles that could hit North America."
A better idea for an ad would be "Democrats Will be More Effective than Bush at Protecting US from NK Nukes."
But, for the Dems to run my version of the ad, they would have to tell us what they will do. Clearly they have no idea.
All they do is bash Bush. If he acts multi-laterally, he should be unilateral. If he's unilateral, he should be multilateral. If he makes war, he should have negotiated. If he doesn't make war, he should have attacked.
Well, maybe pure negagtivism will work. The polls look very good for the Dems.
Posted by: ex-liberal on October 22, 2006 at 3:21 PM | PERMALINK
what did you do to the water supply this morning?
Why is everyone looking at the biochemist?
Posted by: Global Citizen on October 22, 2006 at 3:24 PM | PERMALINK
you have worked very hard to achieve your place in the weblog world
Just yesterday, I was merely a redheaded bitch with a broadband connection.
Posted by: Global Citizen on October 22, 2006 at 3:29 PM | PERMALINK
Globe Why is everyone looking at the biochemist ? Hmmm. Are you looking for a slot at Yuk-Yuks next ?
Posted by: opit on October 22, 2006 at 4:29 PM | PERMALINK
The Chiefs tend to do a lot better if I am intheir proximity. Just statin' the facts...
Posted by: Global Citizen on October 22, 2006 at 4:51 PM | PERMALINK
Well, maybe pure [negativism] will work.
After all, thats what the ex-liberals Republican party has done for the last dozen years negative attacks on Clinton, negativism about Clintons economic success, negative attacks on a war hero, negativism about the Democrats weakness on national security.
Ex-liberal, when was the last time the Republicans were on the right side of any national security issue? Was it when Bush told us in the 2000 election that terrorism wasnt an issue? Was it in 2002 when Bush told us we needed to get rid of Saddam Hussein because he has weapons of mass destruction? Was it back when Reagan invaded the military powerhouse of Grenada? Perhaps it was when Reagan was running around undermining Carter and promising arms to terrorists?
All the Democrats have to do is not start unnecessary wars and arm terrorists to be better on national security than the Republicans.
Posted by: Will Allen on October 22, 2006 at 5:55 PM | PERMALINK
Liberals have truth on their side - 9-11 happened on Bush' watch and when it did, he sat and stared blankly into space for over seven minutes, doing nothing because he has no ability to think on his feet, and then went and hid in a cornfield in Nebraska. Some fucking hero.
The truth about George W. Bush and what a ignorant, incompetent pussy he is, is uglier than any ad someone from a Madison Avenue ad agency can make up....
Posted by: The Conservative Deflator on October 22, 2006 at 6:01 PM | PERMALINK
I speak for nearly all of us here in requesting that you find a more suitable venue.
Bob,
Your psychopathologies are not unlike Mr. Depperman's in some respects. Like, for example, you seem to think yourself entitled to an outsized percentage of bandwidth.
If you can speak for "nearly all of us here" then would you allow me to speak for "nearly all of us here" in expressing the wish that you 'talk less and say more?'
Regards,
Matt Stern aka 'obscure'
Posted by: obscure on October 22, 2006 at 6:34 PM | PERMALINK
... the slap in the face infantry really means. opit at 12:15 PM
The upper ranks in the French army use the phrase"mes enfants" when referring to their troops. Sometimes you will hear "aux armes, mes enfants!" It's a holdover from far earlier times when officers in the French (British also) purchased their commission and the regular soldiers were improvised recruits or conscripts. I have never read that anyone considered that condescending, merely custom. In the Marseilles, the phrase is Allons enfants de la Patrie, which translated is [forward, arise, or let's go] "children of our country" and more in the tradition of referring to one's country as the Fatherland or the Motherland.
Damn, there I've gone all Francophile pedantic over trivia...
Posted by: Mike on October 22, 2006 at 7:16 PM | PERMALINK
Ironically, if the Bush team had been less effective...
True. The Bush team has only allowed one catastrophic terrorist attack. Of course, that's one more than any other administration. How can you be less effective than failing to secure Afghanistan, failing to capture/kill Bin Laden, and failing to win in Iraq?
Posted by: ckelly on October 22, 2006 at 9:40 PM | PERMALINK
I asserted that the Dems had abandoned moral principles and would now do anything to win.
Someone [ex-lib] is not keeping up. Are you projecting or are you really this dishonest?
Posted by: ckelly on October 22, 2006 at 9:43 PM | PERMALINK
Matt Stern / obscure:
>> I speak for nearly all of us here in requesting that
>> you find a more suitable venue.
> Your psychopathologies are not unlike Mr.
> Depperman's in some respects.
"Psychopathologies?" Fuck you, Matt. In fact, why don't you do a
little looking in the mirror. In all the time I've seen you post
here, Matt -- I find it very difficult to recall you leaving a
post that wasn't a vicious personal attack. 99% of the time it's
directed at a troll, so you're safe from reprisal. But do you, like,
*ever* talk about issues? Because if this is all about snarking at
individuals for you, then you really shouldn't be throwing stones ...
> Like, for example, you seem to think yourself
> entitled to an outsized percentage of bandwidth.
Oh bullshit, Matt. I haven't posted very much at all this past week,
and this weekend almost nothing. I tend to read all the threads, but
most of them I don't post in because I have nothing ... to ... say ...
on that particular subject. Like most of us, I have strong opinions
on a few things and an aversion to repeating myself. This is why
I've hardly posted anything on the recent Iraq threads. Others are
covering the factual material, and I've made my opnion quite known.
I do enjoy engaging a few trolls and quasi-trolls, because I like
closely-reasoned point-by-point exchanges. So sometimes a thread
(usually well after it started to go stale) will become full of my
back-and-forth in that sort of exchange. But this is compensated for
by the fact that for that time I'm not on any of the other threads.
> If you can speak for "nearly all of us here" then would you
> allow me to speak for "nearly all of us here" in expressing
> the wish that you 'talk less and say more?'
Matt, a troll or two aside, there isn't another regular here who
would endorse that view -- or draw an equivalence between the posts
I write to order and an unhinged extreme-left ("all Progressives who
don't know they're Communists yet") spammer. Haven't you seen that
screed before? Depperman shows up every six months or so and re-posts
it. It's the exact same piece of boilerplate he posted the last time.
Complaints about spammers are ubiquitous. You, OTOH, speak for no one but yourself.
> Regards,
Oh fuck off,
Bob
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