More on the Afghanistan CIA bombing...

Last week I wrote up an article on Cause and Effect. I want to discuss the cause and effect because some statements came out that change the initial snap conclusion of the last post, but rather could prove disturbing in the ultimate scheme of things.

I went by the timeframe in which three news articles were posted but there was smoke to that fire after all. Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing in Afghanistan that killed 8, 7 of which were CIA agents reportedly. They said they did this because of drone attacks the US had made on them. Now, we're in a war supposedly and I don't feel bad for Al-Qaeda members being picked off during it. They knew what they were getting into with the two WTC bombings, the Cole bombing, the Embassy bombing, etc. So frankly I have no sympathy for them.

My problem was the first half of my cause and effect note - the one where Afghans were irate about NATO/US raids that killed civilians. The Cause in my post was actually justifiable drone attacks. The effect was them bombing us. In a war this is something that happens and it is hard to avoid.

What isn't hard to avoid is when we make foolish, war crime decisions on the battle field which is what those Afghan protests were about.

What we did there was beyond the pale. The type of stuff that creates sympathy amongst the Afghan people for the Al-Qaeda cause and works as a recruitment tool for generations of new terrorists.

In the raid US/NATO troops went into three buildings, grabbed out 10 people, most of which were children. Handcuffed them so they posed no armed resistance... and killed them.

From the London Times:

“The delegation concluded that a unit of international forces descended from a plane Sunday night into Ghazi Khan village in Narang district of the eastern province of Kunar and took ten people from three homes, eight of them school students in grades six, nine and ten, one of them a guest, the rest from the same family, and shot them dead,” a statement on President Karzai’s website said.

-snip-

“First the foreign troops entered the guest room and shot two of them. Then they entered another room and handcuffed the seven students. Then they killed them. Abdul Khaliq [the farmer] heard shooting and came outside. When they saw him they shot him as well. He was outside. That’s why his wife wasn’t killed.”

A local elder, Jan Mohammed, said that three boys were killed in one room and five were handcuffed before they were shot. “I saw their school books covered in blood,” he said.

The investigation found that eight of the victims were aged from 11 to 17. The guest was a shepherd boy, 12, called Samar Gul, the headmaster said. He said that six of the students were at high school and two were at primary school. He said that all the students were his nephews. In Jalalabad, protesters set alight a US flag and an effigy of President Obama after chanting “Death to Obama” and “Death to foreign forces”. In Kabul, protesters held up banners showing photographs of dead children alongside placards demanding “Foreign troops leave Afghanistan” and “Stop killing us”.

So while the cause wasn't correct in my initial posting of the Afghan incident last week, the effect could be the same. Increased terror attacks now and for years down the road, just as I mentioned with the Yemen situation. Our actions help in the creation of new terrorists. We may not want to hear it but it's true. The longer we seem imperialistic and invade countries at will to push our own agendas, the more enemies we create.

And as critical I am of Obama, I know damn well this isn't all his fault. He didn't start both of these wars. Hell, we were running ops in Yemen before Obama ever took office. And as US Ambassador to Morocco Marc Ginsberg points out, it was Dick Cheney's personal authorization of the release of the Saudis who fueled the resurgence of Al-Qaeda in Yemen to begin with. Tough on terror that guy.

I just want Obama to earn that Nobel and make the right call. That call is withdrawal. There are very few Al-Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan now. Less than 100 by some estimates. The longer we stay there the more we make clear that the entire purpose for being there is to protect and prop up the Karzai Government, which took the recent elections by stealing them... the way Karzai's friend Bush did in 2000 and 2004.

Karzai is illegitimate to the Afghan people. Our presence is illegitimate to the Afghan people. How many of those people are going to join Al-Qaeda's cause if it means getting us out of there? How many Iraqis did the same thing, not for love of Al-Qaeda but to fight against us occupying their nation?

This is all common sense logic. Sadly enough, not enough people in our Government have the willpower to use it.

The Value of Life

I guess it came as no surprise to me this past week when I found out that not only was our government calculating the dollar amount each of our lives were worth but also that since Bush took office our lives lost nearly $1 million in said value.

After all I can’t think of very many Americans outside of well connected rich people (see: Oil company executives) and the Bushies themselves who haven’t felt that we just lost close to a decade of our lives (or set our children back 20-30 years in progress and debt).

What a wasted opportunity after all. We ended the year 2000 with a budget surplus, gas prices were still fairly low, we hadn’t started a war of choice with an enemy that had nothing to do with an attack on us and FEMA still existed as a way to help citizens rather than to murder them and steal their property.

Our environment wasn’t exactly on a full path to green energy but we might have President Gore there to make that a reality.

Instead we have had eight years of the biggest disaster ever to hit America. Sure, 9/11 was bad, Katrina was horrible but none of them top the totality of Dubya.

After all had he not been President there is certainly a case to be made that 9/11 might never have happened because we are fairly certain President Gore wouldn’t have ignored that August 6, 2001 PDB nor would he have told the agents that briefed him that they had “covered their ass” in attempts to shoo them away out of annoyance.

Katrina would have still happened. It was an act of nature after all. But President Gore was far more likely to approve the funding needed to repair those levies. And even if that had not happened he sure as hell wouldn’t have left them to die in the Superdome, cutting residents off from any form of escape and then after waiting days to do nothing offered short term trailers that poisoned the people that stayed in there. Not even to mention, his FEMA would not have allowed these trailers to be used since the agency knew they were poisoned.

Of course the woulda, coulda, shouldas count for nothing at this point.

However you have to wonder, since they’re putting a price tag on us, how much are Iraqi lives worth?

You could try to count the deaths (suppressed or uncounted by our Defense Department) and take our current spending on the war and divide it up but that brings up two issues.

1. Since the death count is going up daily and we aren’t given legitimate numbers how do we even know these numbers are legitimate? Oh yeah and we’re still not done throwing money at this war so those numbers will change too.

2. That money is going to Halliburton, GE, Blackwater, etc. Not to Iraqi people. We’re paying them regardless of whether or not they fulfill the contract. This money has no relation to the Iraqi citizens. In fact if it were not the Iraq War, Bush would most certainly find another way to launder this money to them. See the $2-3 trillion that is missing from the Pentagon. No accountability = theft of your tax dollars.

So when I try to put in context how much the Iraqi life is worth I think the foremost expert of life worth evaluation, Babs herself said it best.

''Why should we hear about body bags and deaths and how many, what day it's gonna happen?'' Mrs. Bush declared. ''It's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?''

And why should she? Her beautiful mind sees the biggest fucking lemons you have ever seen and she makes lemonade with it!

When speaking about Hurricane refugees that were staying at the Astrodome in Houston she said:

''What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them."

I know Barbara Bush doesn’t make policy but her equally uncaring son does. We now have proof that Bush was going into Iraq no matter what evidence steered them away from 9/11 wrongdoing.

Bush didn't care who died. He wanted his War glory and he wanted Saddam as his trophy. When you consider that and how those contracts would have been given to those companies, if not for Iraq then for something else, the answer is clear. Iraqi lives are worth zero (well at least according to our current Government). If they're not worth being counted correctly or worth protecting by not invading nor pulling out then Bush obviously sees these people as expendable.

And if Iraqi lives are worth zero while being set up as a corporate power grab for his buddies, Afghanistani people must be worth even less than that. Especially when you consider that we invaded there to capture Bin Laden and then let him go and just stopped caring or thinking about him at all. They died for nothing and weren’t even worth the corporate hullabaloo that Iraq was.

And hey you can make conflicting cases for the value of American lives either going up or down.

On one hand the value of the dollar is less thanks to Bush tanking our economy with deregulation of housing and energy markets so it’s only natural our lives would be worth less with that devaluation.

On the other there are more of us dead thanks to two wars, 9/11, countless disasters where the government didn’t care about acting and a completely broken health care system that only rewards drug and insurance companies. So by that theory there should be more American money to spread to fewer people right?

Oh wait, Bush has sold America to Chinese debt basically so there actually is less value to each of us… well at least in American Dollars.

The point of this that through the past eight years we have seen the value of human life actually be defined. Although it’s not in dollars as the EPA’s report says.

Human life is something you put a price tag on when you are evaluating whether or not to protect people through regulatory laws (aka how does protecting people hurt my rich corporate friends?)
And Human life is also a valuable political football… red meat to throw at the Christian Right when you play the abortion card. Of course nobody mentions that the GOP and Bush owned Congress for 6 years and they could have passed something to end Roe v. Wade or seriously restrict or possibly even end legalized abortion. They know better. They don’t really care about it until it’s campaign time when they can sucker you in with all of those extreme photos of “botched abortions” and all the dead fetuses (which again are incredibly dishonest since most abortions look nothing like this and occur well before the baby has developed into anything even close to that large).

Once these mothers to be give birth though, Republicans again don’t care about life. They cut programs like Food Stamps, Medical Assistance, Energy Assistance, WIC, AFDC, School Lunch Programs, public education funding, etc. They make it impossible to get help in raising the baby they insist you have.

The combination of that complete lack of caring about young children. Their usual eagerness to support torture and the death penalty. Their incredibly stupid plans for perpetual war. Their aggressive attempts to build more nukes to destroy the world. Their smash and grab style of theft to people who suffer through natural disasters as their Government leaves them to die. Their attempts to edit, censor and re-write EPA reports that prove that our planet is in peril thanks to our energy habits. Their lack of willingness to take care of 9/11 first responders or to veterans returning from these wars.

Forget that EPA report. You, just like the Iraqis are worth nothing. Zero. Zip. Nada.

It’s their world. Only the ultra rich are worth anything and they use lobbyists, their owned media outlets and basic propaganda to keep you blaming yourself.

It’s the stupid people who lived in New Orleans that didn’t leave that deserved to die. Not the Government who forced many to stay.

It’s the lazy people that don’t work that abuse welfare and steal your hard earned tax dollars but it’s not the corporations fault if they require billions more than social welfare could ever cost you in corporate welfare to make sure they make bigger profits and those CEOs can make $20-200 million.

It’s the idiots that didn’t understand home loans and took ones they couldn’t afford that made the housing market bust, not the mortgage lenders who purposely schemed to rip these people off with conveniently confusing loans that changed terms easily.

Blame the victim. And why not? They’re worthless anyway.

Only 9 More Months of This...

Wow these people are completely oblivious to the facts. It's no longer simply reality denial so much as it is reality refusal. Denial would more likely imply an innocence to their inability to grasp facts. Refusal better explains their ability to see facts that counter their claims and outright refusal to care about them.

How else might one explain these recent gaffes by the Worst Presidential Administration Ever?

From ABC News:

The failure of U.S. intelligence in assessing Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was like "a yearbook photo on your worst hair day ever," according to one of the country's top spy bosses, Thomas Fingar, deputy director of National Intelligence.

Fingar made the comment in defending the overall quality of U.S. intelligence during an appearance at the Council of Foreign Relations in New York, five years to the week after the 2003 start of the Iraq war.

At another point, Fingar called the U.S. assessment of whether Iraq had nuclear weapons "the single worst product" he had seen in his 38 years serving in various U.S. intelligence agencies.

Bad Hair Day? Product? What fucking reality are these people living in? I wonder how many times this asshole would be punched in the face if he said the "bad hair day" line in a speech to families of dead soldiers.

But of course nobody can top the Dick in reality refusal...

From Reuters:

WASHINGTON, March 19 (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney said on Wednesday that the economy is going through a "rough patch," a day after the Federal Reserve slashed interest rates to try to protect the economy from financial turmoil.

"We're currently going through a rough patch here, there's no question about it," Cheney said on ABC's "Good Morning America."

"We've got problems in the housing industry, mortgage backed securities and so forth, that have created problems we're having to deal with," he said.

The Federal Reserve on Tuesday slashed interest rates by 75 basis points to 2.25 percent as policymakers scramble to bolster the economy amid a housing downturn.

-snip-

Informed that two-thirds of Americans now think the war was not worth fighting, Cheney said: "So?"

He added: "I think we cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations of the public opinion polls. There has in fact been fundamental change and transformation and improvement for the better. That's a huge accomplishment."

A rough patch? Tell that to the millions of people who are going to lose their homes and the billionaires you have to bail out because of your failure to police economic policies and make sure the SEC and other oversight agencies were doing their jobs.

Oh and in response to your, "So?" comment: FUCK YOU.

You, Dick, have been wrong on everything. Wrong on greeting us as liberators, wrong on flowers and candy, wrong on the insurgency being in its "last throes", wrong about WMD intelligence to start and now you and Bush have been critically wrong on Iran. You're ALWAYS wrong.

The war is a failure, people know it and it's no longer just an "opinion poll" to Americans. Those two-thirds of Americans are, unlike you, reality based.

Thankfully there's only Nine Months left of these assholes being able to fuck it up for the rest of us. Hmmm... Nine Months, that's the span of a human pregnancy.

Think we could abort Bush and Cheney? Hell I don't mind waiting a little for the late-term effect either. Just get them out!

-Rp

Hillary = Bush/Cheney/McCain

Well Hillary did it again today. Touting how McCain is Presidential material and Obama is not. It's rather sickening that Democrats who hate George W. Bush and his military policy can even contemplate Hillary Clinton as a serious Democratic choice.

She echoes Bush on everything. It's just ridiculous.

See for yourself what she said today and has said on other military issues in which she practically plagiarizes Bush and Cheney.

h/t to The Jed Report for creating this great video.



-Rp

The War Time President

Bush has often declared himself a "Wartime President". He seemed to do it with glee in a private interview with Tim Russert for Meet the Press a few years back. As ironic as it is for someone who went AWOL from their National Guard duty to now be Commander in Chief and declaring wars, he seems eager to not only continue his current wars but start new ones before he leaves.

General Petraeus is getting ready to give Congress that September report on Iraq as we have reported here several times. The media is gearing up for it by discussing how it might involve troop withdrawals from Iraq. It will be, as expected, positive media for Bush who will look like he's pulling some troops out and not being the complete stubborn prick he has been otherwise. The problem with this is the media again has no idea what they are talking about as troop rotations would require that some troops be redeployed or withdrawn anyway.

As I have said before, anything Petraeus says should be immediately dismissed. Republicans and Neo-Cons (like the World's Biggest Idiot, William Kristol on this The Daily Show appearance this week) try to play him off as some independent, non-partisan voice. As we know from my previous postings that is simply not true.

Not to mention everyone is waiting on his report to Congress as if whatever he says is what we need to act on. This would be a foolish decision for any Democrat in Congress to make especially now knowing that the White House is actually writing his report.

Yes, they've now admitted what I have been saying all along!

From the LA Times:

Despite Bush's repeated statements that the report will reflect evaluations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, administration officials said it would actually be written by the White House, with inputs from officials throughout the government.

And though Petraeus and Crocker will present their recommendations on Capitol Hill, legislation passed by Congress leaves it to the president to decide how to interpret the report's data.

Well that pretty much sums up how truthful that report will be. Petraeus himself earlier this year slipped up and said the surge didn't stem the violence in Baghdad. Must have been a fleeting bout of conscience I guess.

As if that were not enough for Mr. Wartime President, his Vice-President Dick Cheney is urging for strikes on Iran. These people are unbelievable.

What I'd like to note here is that their flawed (as usual) premise is that the upswing in violence during the surge is somehow all Iran's fault and that all the Shiites that are fighting US forces in the surge are connected to Iran in some way.

Strange how they were surpressing the actual numbers of casualties by excluding deaths by bombing originally in this surge but are now using those numbers to justify a war with Iran.

The worst part is the lack of logic that goes into this explanation. Our surge, by it's very nature, is meant to induce more violence. We're going in and forcing more conflict with al-Sadr's Shiite sect and thus the violence between US Forces and Shiites has risen. It likely has little to do with Iranian influence as much as it does with Iraqi Shiites just wanting to force us out of their homeland.

From the Asia Times:

When a top US commander in Iraq reported last week that attacks by Shi'ite militias with links to Iran had risen to 73% of all July attacks that had killed or wounded US forces in Baghdad, he claimed it was because of an effort by Iran to oust the United States from Iraq, referring to "intelligence reports" of a "surge" in Iranian assistance.

But the obvious reason for the rise in Shi'ite-related US casualties - ignored in US media coverage of Lieutenant-General Raymond Odierno's charge - is that the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr was defending itself against a rising tempo of attacks by US forces at the same time attacks by al-Qaeda forces had fallen.

-snip-

Odierno claimed intelligence reports supported his contention of an Iranian effort to influence public perceptions of the "surge" strategy. "They're sending more money in, they're training more individuals and they're sending more weapons in."

He repeated the charge in an interview with Michael R. Gordon of the New York Times published on its front page on August 8 under the headline "US says Iran-supplied bomb is killing more troops in Iraq". In that interview, he declared of Iran, "I think they want to influence the decision potentially coming up in September."

What Odierno framed in terms of an Iranian policy, however, can be explained much more simply by the fact that the US military mounted more operations on Muqtada's Mahdi Army during the spring and summer.

Sounds like they're framing the Iranians to force a war to me. Not all that differently than how they framed Saddam for 9/11 so they could go to war with Iraq.

What goes through the minds of these people? Our President is supposed to keep us safe no matter what. Peace is always supposed to be the option and war is supposed to be a reluctant, last ditch effort made in self defense. Your job as President is to keep us OUT of wars. In doing so your job REQUIRES you to use diplomacy, even with those who have not traditionally been our allies or that completely agree with us. You use law enforcement here and abroad (with the help of partner countries) to capture terrorist suspects before they strike. You strengthen our own country's security at airports, nuclear facilities and ports. You make tactical strikes where you need to but with the cooperation of leadership in that country to have help in flushing out the enemy. But you DO NOT STRIKE PRE-EMPTIVELY JUST BECAUSE YOU WANT TO. That is NOT the President's job. Afghanistan you can make a strong case for after 9/11 but Iraq is absolutely wrong and Iran would be as well.

Not to mention our military is stretched beyond their limits. It's to the point where they'll accept anybody. They lowered standards and missed recruitment goals in 2005. They lowered them further and barely reached recruitment goals in 2006.

Much of the money we're sending to the Pentagon to handle this war has gone to overpay contractors like Blackwater, whose mercenaries go to Iraq with no United States military jurisdiction and kill at will. It's become a nightmare and they're killing our troops now... while we pay them!

So back to recruiters, they'll accept anybody right? Well almost anybody. Remember that Max Blumenthal video we posted about drafting College Republicans? Well apparently on townhall.com a College Republican wrote an editorial trashing him for it and proved why those cowardly jerks who used every cheap health excuse in the book, REALLY couldn't serve.

At the July 2007 National College Republican Committee Convention, whining wannabe journalist Max Blumenthal asked attendees why they weren’t fighting in Iraq. The college kids in his amateur ambush video fumbled with their words and gave medical excuses like asthma and bad knees. They were young, nervous and in front of a jerk holding a camera. Guilt isn’t necessary. The reality is that most of us wouldn’t make the cut.

There you have it. College Republicans are physically and mentally inferior to high school dropouts, felons, racists, convicts, and illegal immigrants and cannot join the military. They said it, not me.

That being said, if that is the case, none of them should then ever be considered qualified to be elected for a public office. After all they're too dumb to pass the military recruitment exams, do we really want them working on complex budget issues, passing laws, or worse dealing with complicated policy negotiations? Please. Time to treat this bunch of fools worse than drop outs are treated. At least the drop outs have the courage to stand and fight for their country, unlike these chickenshits who just call for war while hiding behind their parents' money.

-Rp

Where the hell was THIS video in 2004?

Or 2002 for that matter? Everyone's talked about Dick Cheney telling people about how going all the way to Baghdad would be a mistake. Nobody seemed to have video of it when it was most needed during the 2004 elections apparently.

Now you can see it for yourself. He even says it will be a quagmire!

Mark the calendar. It might be the only time Cheney's been right in his entire life.



-Rp

The Desperate Ramblings of The Right

Just when you thought you heard it all the Right Wingers came out swinging and ended up sounding completely nuts.

Let's start with the craziest idiot of them all, Dick Cheney.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich had planned on introducing his Articles of Impeachment in a press conference today that he plans to present in the House of Representatives. In an effort to avoid the obvious embarrassment that such a press conference would cause, Cheney's staff issued a release that Cheney was ill and going to the hospital once more. Only Cheney wasn't ill and he feigned the situation to garner sympathy. It worked too as Kucinich pulled his press conference. Then just as he does so, Cheney shows up at a press conference himself and blasts Harry Reid. To which Reid responded hilariously, "I'm not going to get into a name calling match with somebody who has a 9 percent approval rating."

Luckily Kucinich went back and decided to do that press conference today. Although chances of impeachment without actual charges are slim, it raises the profile of such charges and might open the door a bit wider down the road.

Bush himself came out with a rather crazy comment (like that's a shocker). Apparently according to Bush, the 2006 Mid-Term elections in which Democrats swept into power amidst the anger of Americans about the Iraq War, really was an election telling Bush to commit to the surge and THAT was the change of direction we the voters wanted. The elections were a mandate for the surge.

I shit you not:

Last November the American people said they were frustrated and wanted change in our strategy in Iraq. I listened. Today General David Petraeus is carrying out a strategy that is dramatically different from our previous course. But the American people did not vote for failure, and that is precisely what the Democratic leadership’s bill would guarantee.

Oh it gets crazier...

Republicans are now saying if Democrats go after the Bush Administration's Emails, then they will go after Clinton's emails.

This is hilarious for THREE reasons.

1. They are the minority party and don't have subpoena power to get ANYTHING. They couldn't even subpoena a television listing from TV guide if they wanted to. Welcome to the minority pals, you have ZERO power!

2. Independent Counsel already did this! Remember Ken Starr's old office? They tried everything, gathered every inch of info and NEVER found an impropriety in the Whitewater deals, which was the entire witchhunt that the GOP went on to get Clinton in the first place. Sorry, nothing to see here idiots.

3. What is it with these fucking guys? Bush has been in office for 6 years and it's still "Clinton's fault" with every single thing their leadership does. Regardless of HOW wrong their guys are they are always willing to try to turn it onto Clinton somehow. 50 years from now if they somehow manage to con Americans into electing another GOP President it STILL will be Clinton's fault when that guy inevitably fucks up.

But hey Clinton's not the only Democrat that should be held in the lowest possible regard. According to former GOP Rep. Tom Delay, Democrats are committing treason or at least very close to it for saying this war is lost. Ironically Delay did the exact same thing when it came to Clinton's Kosovo campaign. Is there a reason that guy is not in prison yet? Most certainly the Texas D.A. who is building the case against him has enough corruption proof to nail him by now.

Got to love the nutcases on the Right. They're going to sound even crazier in two years when they are pushed out of office for generations to come.

-Rp

The Global War on Lying Idiots

It has to be rough to live with yourself knowing you lie about everything. Or at least if you have a conscience that is. I am not so sure Dick Cheney has one so the whole feeling guilty scenario may never play out.

It turns out that Dick is still spouting the same lines in trying to make a pathetic connection between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. Even though the Pentagon released a report on Thursday that contradicts this directly after interrogations of Saddam and other Iraqi officials. Of course this is an Administration that would never let facts get in the way of a great big lie.

The whole point of this thing is to keep the connection going to keep Iraq a central point of attack in the whole unending Global War on Terror.

After all, if it's framed that way nobody will defund the War on Terror right?

Well what if we tossed out that term altogether?

After all there is a war in Iraq and a war in Afghanistan. Using the term, "Global War on Terror" is a piece of propaganda to link 9/11 to all of our military actions and continue funding whatever adventures this Administration wants to partake in. Not to mention being a direct flow of cash from taxpayers to Dick's company, Halliburton.

It seems Democrats have finally wised up to this game and are taking this trick on by requesting that the term "Global War on Terror" no longer be used in future legislation.

Cheney was apoplectic to say the least when spoke with Rush Limbaugh about it yesterday.

Personally I think they fear Democrats having the guts to stand up to even these small breaches of public trust. They know 9/11 was a tragic day that touched the lives of most Americans so they invoke it at every turn and use it as a tool to take taxpayers money and blow it on their wars of choice and their politically contributing contractors of preference.

Every single little step Democrats take to change the tactics used by this Administration is a step in the right direction for a country that has had it's reputation tarnished more than Britney Spears in the past 6 years thanks to the people in power.

-Rp