(How obvious does it need to be folks? This administration is wrapping up the most criminally successful term of any president in our history. They stole billions from us and from the nation of Iraq, they put their companies in a position to rake in massive profits for decades, and we paid the price with 4,100 soldiers dead, tens of thousands wounded, over a half a trillion dollars of our treasure, and 3,000 citizens killed on Sept. 11th. Our constitution is in tatters and the core of the democratic and republican parties have been hijacked. Our voting system is in ruins, our education system is shot; the real money earned income is dwindling as the top 1%ers make more money than ever before. If anyone tries to tell you this administration is incompetent, just don’t even talk with them anymore; they are either too stupid to know what is going on or they are complicit.)
A group of American advisers led by a small State Department team played an integral part in drawing up contracts between the Iraqi government and five major Western oil companies to develop some of the largest fields in Iraq, American officials say.
The disclosure, coming on the eve of the contracts’ announcement, is the first confirmation of direct involvement by the Bush administration in deals to open Iraq’s oil to commercial development and is likely to stoke criticism.
(The “surge” failed on many different levels. But the one thing they credit the surge with, the reduction of violence in Baghdad, isn’t about the numbers of troops on the ground; it’s about treating the inhabitants of Iraq as if they are all criminals, and forcing them to live in a ghetto-like prison of a city; where everyone is forced to move through checkpoints and “show their papers” many times a day. They have literally walled off the entire city so that they can control every movement of it’s inhabitants. This is the “freedom” they brought to Iraq. I wrote about this over a month ago, in an article called “The Israeli Model surges Toward Iraq“. Now, the real question is, when will they start selling this idea here at home? the answer, they already have.)
Baghdad hasn’t been this quiet in years. But the respite from bloodshed comes at a high price.
Up to 20 feet high in some sections.
Rows after rows of barrier walls divide the city into smaller and smaller areas that protect people from bombings, sniper fire and kidnappings. They also lead to gridlock, rising prices for food and homes, and complaints about living in what feels like a prison.
I would like you to think about this objectively; not as an American or a Republican or a veteran. Just look at the sequence of events over the past 7 1/2 years, the full term of the Bush Administration, as one would review any long term business model performance report. I want you to look at it and I want you to think about the term “savage capitalism“.
Think in terms of criminal investigations; of motive and opportunity. Right now you see part of the picture but I want us to look at it all like you would a business plan; with an unflinching indifference to “party” or nation. Just to look at the evidence as if you were a reporter, unaffected by by who owns the paper.
If the media won’t tell us these things, we are forced to tell each other, before they are lost to the revisionists history.
Amman, Jordan - Talks with the United States on a new long-term security pact have reached a “dead end” because of U.S. demands that infringed Iraq’s sovereignty, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Friday.
“We have reached a dead end, because when we started the talks, we found that the U.S. demands hugely infringe on the sovereignty of Iraq, and this we can never accept,” Maliki told journalists during a visit to neighboring Jordan.
(Darryl Anderson tells his story. The MSM doesn’t cover Iraq stories right now because of the upcoming elections. Darryl talks about how the U.S. rules of engagement changed in 2004. We adapted an Israeli tactic of returning fire when fired upon, regardless of Innocent civilians who might be in the way. The idea was that if we kill enough civilians, they would turn against the insurgents. But that isn’t the real idea behind the plan. The plan is designed to continue aggressions on both sides. We kill civilians, they get angry and kill more soldiers, so we kill even more civilians. This idea is not new. Israel does it because a certain minority there doesn’t want peace; they want to wipe out the Palestinians and so they use this tactic to perpetuate their anger. The military contractors, with their connections to the upper leadership of the military brass, has pushed this barbaric policy because they know that if there were a peaceful resolution in Iraq, and the insurgency stopped tomorrow, then they would have no orders to fill for munitions or new weapons, or fighting equipment. In short, they have persuaded the military leadership to use these tactics to continue their revenue stream for as long as possible, at the cost of Iraqi civilians and U.S. soldiers. This is savage capitalism at its most basic level. And it is being practiced by those running this country.)
Details of the new long term security deal that the Bush administration has been trying to get passed in Iraq are troubling indeed. The Independent has published leaked details of the plan and it’s no wonder that even Maliki is resisting it.
According to the report, Bush wants 50 permanent military bases, full control of Iraqi airspace, free reign to detain and arrest Iraq civilians and conduct military operations without consulting with Iraqi government officials, complete immunity for U.S. soldiers as well as contractors, and all of this is irrevocable no matter who wins the election in Nov.
When you combine this piece of legislation with the Union busting tactics the provisional authority established and the Hydrocarbon law that they are still trying to stuff down the Iraqi’s throat, you begin to get a glimpse of just what kind of “freedom” that Bush and his associates have been gunning for since day one.
(I know it’s not popular to talk right now about anything but how evil McCain is and what a saint Obama will be in office, but… these guys are still being killed, you know?)
Dozens of veterans from the U.S. occupation of Iraq converged in this West Coast city over the weekend to share stories of atrocities being committed daily in Iraq, in a continuation of the Winter Soldier hearings held in Silver Spring, Md., in March.
At the Seattle Town Hall, some 800 people gathered to hear the testimonies of veterans from Iraq. The event was sponsored by the Northwest Regional Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) and endorsed by dozens of local and regional antiwar groups like Veterans for Peace and Students for a Democratic Society.
“I watched Iraqi police bring in someone to interrogate,” Seth Manzel, a vehicle commander and machine gunner in the U.S. Army, told the audience. “There were four men on the prisoner … one was pummeling his kidneys with his fists, another was inserting a bottle up his rectum. It looked like a frat house gang-rape.”
This is an excellent interview I found over at After Dowing Street. As I was doing a little research into Nisour Square, one name kept popping up that has a certain significance to it. So I thought you might like to read about it.
In the much anticipated Countdown interview with Scott McClellan, Keith Olberman, the progressive lefts chosen one, coos over McClellan’s version white-washed White House, just like the complicit enablers McClellan talks about in his book. Can we really be as stupid they think we are?
“To that point, there is, I think, actual poetry in here, and I don‘t mean to vainly flatter you here. But let me read something else: “Although I didn‘t realize it at the time, we launched our campaign to sell the war, what drove Bush toward military confrontation more than anything else was an ambitious and idealistic post -9/11 vision of transforming the Middle East through the spread of freedom.” Keith Olberman discussing McClellan’s new book on Countdown.
(The best part of this story is: records show that KBR found the problem several months before Staff Sgt. Maseth died, but because they didn’t have fixing the problem in their “cost-plus” contract, they didn’t. Fixing the ground on the system, might have taken an hour or so… then, believe it or not, to cover for the contractor, or KBR,, the Army tried to tell his mother he had gone into the shower “with a corded appliance” and that is what killed him. He was still being electrocuted when his fellow soldiers tried to save him. One of them was severely electrocuted in the process. It’s a good thing KBR is so close to Vice President Cheney, or they might have lost a contract or two because of this.)
PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania (CNN) – A highly decorated Green Beret, Staff Sgt. Ryan Maseth died a painful death in Iraq this year. He died not on the battlefield. He died in what should have been one of the safest spots in Iraq: on a U.S. base, in his bathroom.
The water pump was not properly grounded, and when he turned on the shower, a jolt of electricity shot through his body and electrocuted him January 2.
