NYT on the Generals' Revolt

Coming as it does after years of promoting Judith Miller and other liars on their front page - which some have seen as either craven kowtowing to the power elites or else burying their heads in the sand - the editors of the New York Times seem to have thrown caution to the wind and published a scathing article critical of this sitting president's conduct of the Iraq occupation, and specifically how his administration - and Donald Rumsfeld in particular - using the very generals various news programs call upon to give unbiased, professional military commentary - attempted to mold public perceptions about the situation on the ground in Iraq with what can only be characterized as no less than an illegal PsyOps against the American people. In other words, brainwashing by the Pentagon.

Given the track record of the entire mainstream media and its (choose one) naive, cynical or manipulative reporting (or lack) of the Long War, I am moved to ask the following:

Q: Are the Bilderbergs actually beginning to think that this engineered recession might not be such a good idea after all, and looked the other way as the NYT published this article? or,

Q: Is the NYT becoming a real newspaper again, and published this article despite the Bilderbergs?

Q: Are the Cowboys beginning to lose ground to the Yankees in the war for the Republic? (1) (2) (3)

Q: Is there light at the end of the tunnel?

Q: Will the Chicago Cubs take the pennant this year, or will they wimp out and blame it on the start of WWIII?


Inquiring minds want to know.


Thanks and a tip 'o the hat to Chris Locke

Update: PDF of a transcript of one of Rumsfeld's meeting with his pet media generals is here.

Update: Larry Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell, in an interview with the Guardian newspaper yesterday talked about the travel plans of the Bush administration lawyers who wrote the Guantanamo torture memos,

"Haynes, Feith, Yoo, Bybee, Gonzalez and - at the apex - Addington, should never travel outside the US, except perhaps to Saudi Arabia and Israel. They broke the law; they violated their professional ethical code. In future, some government may build the case necessary to prosecute them in a foreign court, or in an international court."

current-events

Cutting of Internet cables no accident?

Countries affected by cut cable shown in red. Kish Island is in the Persian Gulf, upper right.
Map courtesy DailyWireless (dot) org

Mostly ignored by big media here in the United States, the recent flurry of undersea cables being cut across the Middle East and the Mediterranean have all the earmarks of military action, possibly as a means to stall the opening of the Iranian oil bourse, originally scheduled for this week (Feb. 1 – 11), but now postponed due to the interruption of Internet service, suggests Market Watch, a respected online financial newsletter.

A number of cables, possibly as many as eight, have been cut, all within a matter of hours. Affected areas include parts of Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and India, and significantly, an island off the southern coast of Iran – Kish - where the Iranian oil bourse is headquartered.

The Iranians have been moving for some time to open the bourse, which has as one of its main purposes changing the denomination of oil trades from US dollars to the euro. This is, of course, threatening to Western powers, which have a vested interest in continuing to use the US dollar – and that’s putting it mildly - as the international trade in crude oil is the bedrock of international trade and hence, the stability of governments all over the world. Specifically, a shift from dollars to the euro (which is now trading better than par with the dollar) will further erode America’s already staggering trade deficit, and possibly trigger an abandonment of the dollar altogether, completely trashing the value of Treasury bills, which are only ultimately backed by the “full faith and credit” of the United States.

Recall President Bush’s assertion that “all options are on the table” in dealing with Iran; most people would assume that to mean armed intervention, but there are other “options” besides the use of guns and bombs.

For instance, Venezuela recently had a major bank account in the United States frozen (maybe) as the Venezuelan national petroleum operator Petroleos de Venezuela SA suffered a judgment brought against it by ExxonMobil in US, Dutch and British courts, to the tune of $12 billion. The judgment came down at roughly the same time the Internet cables were cut, by the way.

As for cutting the cables themselves, there are several possibilities and culprits. The US Navy has already demonstrated its ability to interfere with underseas cables with Operation Ivy Bells, back in 1971. There is also the existence of the USS Jimmy Carter, a fast attack submarine which has been retrofitted with an extra section in its hull, which some have claimed includes a room devoted to cable dredging equipment similar to that employed in Glomar Explorer, the joint CIA-Howard Hughes venture to retrieve a downed Soviet submarine back in the early 1970s. If in fact the Carter has these capabilities, it would be a major technological coup, as undersea cable operations are highly problematic.

That said, the present location of the Carter is unknown (the location of all US submarines while deployed is Top Secret as a matter of policy), but it has been estimated by those who know about these things – including myself – that Carter could not be responsible for more than one of the cable incidents, distance and travel times being a severely mitigating factor (the Carter would have to be traveling at near light speed to arrive at all the places in the given time frame– not even theoretically possible – and that’s leaving out the time required for the cutting operations themselves). Israelis? Maybe. They have submarines and the knowledge and motive. But then, so do the Chinese.

It’s a kettle of fish, frankly, but no doubt all a part of the Big Con.

current-events

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It's a win-win situation, folks. We get your vital statistics, and you get to show us your boobs.

current-events

I Love A Man In A Uniform

General David Howard Petraeus

By now everyone who spends any time at all on the Internet knows that the right-wing blogosphere is screaming that MoveOn.org labeled General David Petraeus a "traitor" in a recent New York Times advert.

In fact, they did no such thing, as can be seen by reading the ad itself, here (pdf). Bear in mind that MoveOn.org is no fan of military men, while, we - and I include my many military veteran readers - are either ambivalent or else downright supportive of a dude in a sharp-looking uniform such as the general, or even (God help us) that lying punk Lt Col Oliver North.

Meanwhile, reports are popping up - rather belatedly, one might righteously think - that the good general might not be the right guy for the job in Iraq after all; in fact, he's being painted by some as a "sycophant" and, um, an "ass-licker," and a "chickensh*t." These reports are somewhat shaky, however, being suspiciously vague as to their sources.

Well, far be it from me to refer to a commissioned officer with a bad word, but as a veteran, I can recall more than one instance of a higher rank being referred to derogatorily. (But really, is there any other way for a righteous grunt to refer to a superior officer, at least in private?) In any case, I think it's more than fair to say that Petraeus is no General Grant; more of a McClellan, if you will.

Which is to say, to hell with the uniform, the PhD, the book on counterinsurgency warfare; the fact is Petraeus isn't doing shit in Iraq. The state of our occupation of Iraq sucks, big time. Every independent study of the Iraq situation strongly disagrees with the general. See here, here, and here.

Before I go, a little dose of (un)common sense might be in order:

“Having admitted, however, that the odds of a military success in Iraq are almost impossibly long, Chaos Hawks nonetheless insist that the U.S. military needs to stay in Iraq for the foreseeable future. Why? Because if we leave the entire Middle East will become a bloodbath. Sunni and Shiite will engage in mutual genocide, oil fields will go up in flames, fundamentalist parties will take over, and al-Qaeda will have a safe haven bigger than the entire continent of Europe.

“Needless to say, this is nonsense. Israel has fought war after war in the Middle East. Result: no regional conflagration. Iran and Iraq fought one of the bloodiest wars of the second half the 20th century. Result: no regional conflagration. The Soviets fought in Afghanistan and then withdrew. No regional conflagration. The U.S. fought the Gulf War and then left. No regional conflagration. Algeria fought an internal civil war for a decade. No regional conflagration.

“So where does this bogeyman come from? Hard to say. Probably a deep-seated unwillingness to confront the fact that the United States can’t really influence a course of events we originally set in motion. But Iraq is already fighting a civil war, and that civil war will continue whether we stay or go. If we go it will likely become more intense, but also shorter lived. The eventual result, however, will almost certainly be the same: a de facto independent Kurdistan in the north and a Shiite theocracy in the south. The rest of the Middle East will, as usual, watch events unfold without doing much of anything about them, and will accept the inevitable results. The U.S., for its part, will remain in the north to protect Kurdistan, in the east in Afghanistan, in the west in the Mediterranean, and in the south in its bases in the Gulf. We’ll hardly be absent from the region.

“I think it’s worthwhile for proponents of withdrawal to be honest about the likely aftermath of pulling out: an intensified civil war that will take the lives of tens of thousands and end in the installation, at least in the short-term, of an Iran-friendly theocracy. This is obviously not a happy outcome, but neither is it the catastrophe the Chaos Hawks peddle. The alternative is to babysit the civil war with American troops, spilling blood and treasure along the way, without truly affecting the course of events in any substantial measure."

Have a nice day. (And keep your powder dry.)


current-events

Tenet cries into his beer

The International Herald Tribune has obtained a copy of George Tenet's new book, "At the Center of the Storm," due out Monday. In it, Tenet unleashes his frustration at what he perceived as shabby treatment by the folks in the White House.

He pours a lot of vitriol over the figurative heads of the administration, and in no uncertain terms, although he never directly criticizes the president by name. Also, he whines just a little too much that he was a "patsy." (And him a grown man ...)

Anyhoo, some random quotes:

"There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat," Tenet writes in a devastating judgment that is likely to be debated for many years.

Nor, he adds, "was there ever a significant discussion" about the possibility of containing Iraq without an invasion.

Tenet admits that he made his famous "slam dunk" remark about the evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. But he argues that the quote was taken out of context and that it had little impact on Bush's decision to go to war. He also makes clear his bitter view that the administration made him a scapegoat for the Iraq war.

Tenet described with sarcasm watching an episode of "Meet the Press" last September in which Cheney twice referred to Tenet's "slam dunk" remark as the basis for the decision to go to war.

"I remember watching and thinking, 'As if you needed me to say 'slam dunk' to convince you to go to war with Iraq,'" Tenet writes.

He also expresses skepticism about whether the increase in troops in Iraq will prove successful. "It may have worked more than three years ago," he wrote. "My fear is that sectarian violence in Iraq has taken on a life of its own and that U.S. forces are becoming more and more irrelevant to the management of that violence."

As violence in Iraq spiraled, beginning in late 2003, Tenet writes, "rather than acknowledge responsibility, the administration's message was: Don't blame us. George Tenet and the CIA got us into this mess."

There's more at: Tenent Denounces Cheney

One monkey don't stop no show

"Thanks for taking the bullet for me, Gonzo"

The cabal that runs the White House must have thanked whatever dark lords presently preside over this country when former Attorney General John Ashcroft quit.

Ashcroft is no pushover. In fact, he is a deeply religious and somewhat morally rigid man, who would no longer put up with the neocons' immoral shenanigans and interference with his Justice Department. He announced that he was out of there.

The neocons were at a loss; they desperately needed a frontman to help push their consolidation of presidential power and John Yoo was occupied elsewhere spinning webs of lies and deceit. But - low and behold! - right there in their midst was a weak-willed, shifty, and easily manipulable sycophant that they could plop into the Attorney General's chair. He would do what he was told, and then conveniently forget about it: Gonzo the Forgetful.

It wasn't just that this guy possessed no critical faculties - which he doesn't - but his brain had grown so mushy in the dank and fetid air of the underground West Wing office that he occupied as counsel to the President that, like Golum, he could no longer tell right from wrong, or yesterday from the month before.

Yesterday's performance before the Senate Judiciary Oversight committee was beautiful - a tour de force of the high political drama of lies, evasions, prevarications, and just downright stupidity that is the modus operandi of the neocon architects of the New American Century.

It's not that the neocons don't think that their stupid ideas are stupid and won't hold up under close scrutiny, it's that they can't be bothered having to explain their vision of a Pax Americana to the likes of you or me, or for that matter, to the Congress. So they just go and do what they do: kidnap and torture suspected enemies of the state, lie about their reasons for invading foreign countries, fire federal prosecutors when they get too close to the money, and - when finally questioned by previously supine Congress-critters - shove a fall guy out in front. When their stupidity is exposed they simply (like Rumsfeld) move down the hall, or (like Paul Wolfowitz) bail and take up posts at the World Bank, where they try to pull the same shit all over again. Except the World Bank is not staffed by myopic political dirtbags; it's run by hard-nosed moneymen who don't tolerate fucking with their institutional reputations.

So the Gonzo sideshow is over, but the circus hasn't left town yet. There's lots more demonstrations of levitation and porous memory to come, and possibly another Shock and Awe waiting in the wings. And don't be too surprised if a major city is vaporized by a stolen nuclear bomb (they still haven't found any of the missing 20-100 nuclear devices from the former Soviet Union stockpile). Finding those missing nukes (or bin Laden, for that matter) would be doing their job, a distraction from spreading their fungus over Washington.

As for us patsies, don't expect Congress to do it's job and impeach these criminal assholes; that would be too real, and there's a 1% chance they might not get reelected as a result, which for them is the center ring and the only thing that really counts.

Have a great weekend.

Comedian says New American Century not funny

Steve Bhaerman is a writer/deconstructionist comedian, who makes a living making people laugh in his role as cosmic comic Swami Beyondananda. In the following piece, he takes a break from comedy to unload about what he thinks is going wrong with this fair republic of ours.

As he points out, correctly, this administration has many things to answer for; but most importantly, that this fight many of us find ourselves in is not about party affiliation or conservative/liberal alignment, but of right vs wrong.

I should note that I got this article in my email in-box just moments after hearing a Republican senator on the Senate Judiciary committee (Tom Coburn, R-OK) call for Attorney General Gonzales' resignation today (and don't forget John Sununu of Vermont, a leading Republican, who called for "his head" back in March).

Bringing Down the House of Lies

The Final "Leg" of the Journey

By Steve Bhaerman

04/19/07 "ICH" -- -- It's a bit of a mixed feeling to realize that millions and millions of people who didn't get this distinction two, four or six years ago now understand that the "political' issues we now face aren't about right and left, they're about right and wrong. On one hand, what took you so long? On the other, thank God and welcome aboard.

Although the media has downplayed it -- it doesn't fit with the general stupidization program of creating a lot of heat but very little light -- more and more actual conservatives and even members of the religious right are coming to see the Bush-Cheney regime as a rogue administration and a thin cover for criminal enterprise. Such right wing stalwarts as former Georgia Rep. Bob Barr and Richard Viguerie (one of the architects of the far right wing) have formed an organization to protect our civil liberties from our own government. Chuck Baldwin, an associate of Jerry Falwell, has become an open advocate of impeachment and writes a very articulate column. These folks are far bolder than the Democrats in this regard, and they will play a key role when impeachment happens -- and it will.

Now some of you reading this who have a deeper spiritual understanding of love, forgiveness and the ways in which we do indeed create our own reality might be wondering "Gee, this whole impeachment thing seems pretty 'anti'. Shouldn't we be focusing on what we want instead of what we don't want?"

Indeed, the point can be made that the failure of the Democrats in 2004 -- aside from the minor issue of voting fraud in Ohio and Florida -- had to do with John Kerry's approach of "Vote for me, I'm not as bad as George Bush," and failure to articulate any compelling positive vision. However, the real issue goes much deeper.

Ending The American Hostage Crisis

It has nothing to do with loving or hating George Bush, whose policies have educated and awakened more Americans than all of the "progressive" leaders combined. It does have to do with what we need to recognize as the American Hostage Crisis.

The American people -- and particularly our soldiers in Iraq -- are being held hostage by a ruthless criminal cadre (this is not hyperbolic invective; the definition of "criminal" is "one who commits crimes"). The people up until now have been blackmailed into supporting a war of choice with the cynical cry, "Support our troops." As if our troops sent themselves over there and now we have to rescue them.

Read the rest at ICH: "The Final Leg of the Journey"