Bush Palestinian Checkpoints Joke
Insincere as usual having no understanding of how Palestinians are treated by the Israelis.
Bush dismissive of past U.N. Resolutions regarding Israel and the Palestinians.
Remember he is Pro-Israel and anti-U.N.
Al Jazeera analyses Bush's checkpoint gaffe - 10 Jan 08
Bush Preparing for War with Iran
George Bush launches scathing attack on Iran - 13 Jan 08
Aljazeera English
The President on Middle East Trip, High Oil Prices and Why an Israeli-Palestinian Peace Deal Is Possible
And here are excerpts from the interview with my little asides throughout :
ABC NEWS : BUSH THEY VIEW ME AS A WARMONGER,By KATIE ESCHERICH,Jan. 15, 2008
Despite that optimism, the president also said that he does feel misunderstood in the Middle East.
"My image [is] 'Bush wants to fight Muslims.' And, yes, I'm concerned about it. Not because of me, personally. I'm concerned because I want most people to understand the great generosity and compassion of Americans," he said.
(So what do Americans stand for a quasi-police state with torture ,renditions, war crimes , atrocities & disregard for International Law , the Geneva Conventions any code of ethics. )
"I'm sure people view me as a war monger and I view myself as peacemaker," the president said. "They view me as so pro-Israeli I can't be open-minded about Palestinian peace, and yet I'm the only president ever to have articulated a two-state solution. And you just have to fight through stereotypes by actions."
( We can only judge George Bush by his words and his actions . What he believes or thinks the reality is may not have any relation to the real world. He is need of some psychotherapy and soome medication . )
...Bush said despite Saudi Arabia's connection to some of the Sept. 11 hijackers and terrorism ideology in general, he views the Saudis as "our friends." He spoke of meeting with Saudi entrepreneurs and business leaders during his trip who worry that Americans view them as enemies, not friends.
"There's a lot of really good people here," Bush said. "Look, you can't deny the fact that some, a majority, of the terrorists came from Saudi, but you should not condemn an entire society based upon the actions of a handful of killers."
(---If that's so why has he killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and destroy their country all in an effort to take revenge on Saddam Huesein )
and:
"I really don't pay attention to your polls," the president said. "I haven't analyzed your polls, and you don't want a president making decisions based upon polls. We had a good end of the year when it came to working with Congress on the budget and keeping taxes low. And I'll have a strong agenda coming out of the State of the Union address. I intend to work with Congress to get it passed. And really what matters is the results, rather than paying attention to your polls."
( So what does he mean by this that whatever the American people want has little to do with what he wants to do. This seems to be a complete disconnect with American history and its move towards creating a more ' just society " i.e. " And Justice For All ". So if the people of America want to withdraw from Iraq or if they want a better Health Care system or are against their country becoming a Theocracy run by Taliban style radical Evangelical Christians -
These desires are of no interest to Bush. It is in the same way that Bush sees and characterizes the Constitution and the Bill of Rights as merely pieces of paper without any real legal or moral weight. Since Bush is either on a mission from God or on a mission to implement the Neoconservative Vision of the New World Order there is no reasoning with him.
This is especially true as we see that he believes that Iraq and Afghanistan are the great exemplars of Democracy and Democratic principles at work .)
and more of Bush's absurdities and meaningless rhetoric:
"Look, I know I've been accused of being a hopeless idealist. On the other hand, I don't see any alternative, if you believe it's an ideological struggle."
"The way to protect America in the short term is to use our intelligence services to find [terrorists] and bring them to justice. In the long term is to offer a better alternative than the status quo, or societies that don't give people their rightful place, or societies that don't listen to the demands of people."
( but hasn't he misinterpreted what the American people want or distracted them with his propaganda that Iraq was the enemy & now Iran and Syria are theenemy and that Pakistan is a model democratic state !)
"And so the freedom agenda is absolutely essential. And the freedom agenda doesn't develop in one man's term of office. It takes a while. My job is to plant the seeds. [The] truth of the matter is that freedom is advancing quite amazingly in the Middle East."
"The other thing is, if I could be perfectly blunt about it, I think people who say we can be free, but you shouldn't be, are elitist," the president added.
The president said that "elections themselves represent freedom," even when they put in power leaders who are against the interest of the United States.
At the same time, the president defended his support of undemocratic regimes in countries such as Saudi Arabia.
(and here's another gem as he claims that one can have a democracy with a monarchy : Didn't the Americans revolt against a monarchy that other notorious King George - maybe he's planning to become King or President for life -)
"The American president doesn't come and lecture somebody. The American president develops a relationship where he can work with somebody. And as I told you, his majesty is, he is modernizing his society. Is it going to meet somebody's standards sitting in Washington, D.C.? Probably not overnight. Can it eventually? Yes.… And for us to say that you can't have a democracy if you've got a king is just not right."
Now after two terms of President Bush he now claims he does not interfere with a country's internal affairs then whay was he in Iraq given the public stated reasons were all shown to be mere empty rhetoric and propaganda and outright lies. Wasn't it to offer the Iraqis a more Democratic form of government.
The other oddity is that he speaks about elections as sufficient for calling a country Democratic. But shouldn't the elections be open and fair and that the people are offered different parties with different policies to choose from .
I guess I am under the mistaken belief that Democracy grants the citizenry certain basic rights i.e. freedom of speech ,freedom of the press, freedom of association, freedom of assembly ,freedom of religion, freedom to dissent , freedom of religion and other human rights such as the right to a fair trial, habeas corpus , freedom from abuse and torture etc.
Of course the Bush regime does not view these so-called rights as rights but that many are privileges which can be taken away on a whim of the executive branch of government for reasons of national security ; in a time of crisis i.e. natural disaster , an enemy attack or the declaration of war or for reasons which the public can not be informed about because of " Executive Privilege " and " National Security ".
But if there is not some sort of official non-Partisan oversight permitted a government can continue to rule in this way indefinitely.
I am still not convinced that Hillary Clinton for example will just continue to rule America under her presidency in the same manner. We know for certain that all of the Republican candidates who have some chance of leading their party will continue to fuel and stoke the fires of fear and so will rule in an authoritarian if not a dictatorial manner.
And as for more reasons to doubt Bush's sincerity and truthfulness and possibly his sanity :
Here's more of the propaganda techniques used by the Bush Regime to start a war with Iran . They need a plausible story and a number of pieces of false information . even if each piece is shown to be questionable it does not matter. Eventually an impression of a menace ie Iraq. Since most people only hear some of the initial story and don't pay much attention to in depth anaysis of the facts and how these facts have been manipulated. Often follow-ups to a story questioning the claims and accusations made. Eventually the common view is that this country or that is a menace to other countries and especially the United states. , to convince Congress and the American people and appeal for international support for attacks on Iran .
How The Pentagon Planted a False Hormuz Story,Analysis by Gareth Porter at Information Clearing House
16/01/08 -- WASHINGTON, Jan 15 (IPS) - Senior Pentagon officials, evidently reflecting a broader administration policy decision, used an off-the-record Pentagon briefing to turn the Jan. 6 U.S.-Iranian incident in the Strait of Hormuz into a sensational story demonstrating Iran's military aggressiveness, a reconstruction of the events following the incident shows.
The initial press stories on the incident, all of which can be traced to a briefing by deputy assistant secretary of defence for public affairs in charge of media operations Bryan Whitman, contained similar information that has since been repudiated by the Navy itself.
Then the Navy disseminated a short video into which was spliced the audio of a phone call warning that U.S. warships would "explode" in "a few seconds". Although it was ostensibly a Navy production, IPS has learned that the ultimate decision on its content was made by top officials of the Defence Department.
The encounter between five small and apparently unarmed speedboats, each carrying a crew of two to four men, and the three U.S. warships occurred very early on Saturday Jan. 6, Washington time. But no information was released to the public about the incident for more than 24 hours, indicating that it was not viewed initially as being very urgent.
The reason for that absence of public information on the incident for more than a full day is that it was not that different from many others in the Gulf over more than a decade. A Pentagon consultant who asked not to be identified told IPS that he had spoken with officers who had experienced similar encounters with small Iranian boats throughout the 1990s, and that such incidents are "just not a major threat to the U.S. Navy by any stretch of the imagination".
... The other elements of the story given to Pentagon correspondents were also discredited. The commanding officer of the guided missile cruiser Port Royal, Capt. David Adler, dismissed the Pentagon's story that he had felt threatened by the dropping of white boxes in the water. Meeting with reporters on Monday, Adler said, "I saw them float by. They didn't look threatening to me."
The naval commanders seemed most determined, however, to scotch the idea that they had been close to firing on the Iranians. Vice-Adm. Kevin Cosgriff, the commander of the 5th Fleet, denied the story in a press briefing on Jan. 7. A week later, Comdr. Jeffery James, commander of the destroyer Hopper, told reporters that the Iranians had moved away "before we got to the point where we needed to open fire".
The decision to treat the Jan. 6 incident as evidence of an Iranian threat reveals a chasm between the interests of political officials in Washington and Navy officials in the Gulf. Asked whether the Navy's reporting of the episode was distorted by Pentagon officials, Cmdr Robertson of 5th Fleet Public Affairs would not comment directly. But she said, "There is a different perspective over there.
At Truthdig: Chris Hedges' Columns,The End of the Road for George W. Bush, Jan 13, 2008
By Chris Hedges
The Gilbert and Sullivan charade of statesmanship played out by George W. Bush and his enabler, Condoleezza Rice, as they wander the Middle East is a fitting end to seven years of misrule. Despots stripped of power are transformed from monsters into buffoons. And this is the metamorphosis that is eating away at the Bush presidency.
Bush stood in Jerusalem, uncomfortable and palpably bored. He mouthed platitudes about a peace settlement that mocked the humanitarian crisis he aided and abetted in Gaza, the rapacious land grab by Israel in the West Bank and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The diminished George Bush, increasingly irrelevant at home and abroad, is fading into insignificance. A year from now one half expects to see him stand up at the next president’s inauguration and screech “I’m melting! I’m melting!” as he sinks into a puddle of slime. He will return, I expect, to his ranch, where he will be able to spend the rest of his life doing the only task for which he has shown any aptitude—cutting down brush with a chain saw.
He publicly displayed his inability to connect rhetoric with reality. He promised peace and cooperation, a new era, a Palestinian homeland. He promised solutions that will arise from negotiations that do not exist. Negotiations, in his eyes, are always about to begin. They were about to begin a year ago. They were about to begin with Annapolis. They are about to begin now. The messy issues between the Israelis and Palestinians that he and his administration have never attempted to address—the borders, the expanding Jewish settlements and outposts, the plight of Palestinian refugees and Jerusalem—will all be seamlessly solved ... one day. But the brutal reality of the Israeli occupation barrels forward. The Jewish settlements and outposts continue to be expanded. The crisis in Gaza, with the cuts in fuel and electricity, the deadly army incursions and airstrikes, has turned the world’s largest walled prison into a swamp of human misery. And huge new settlements, like Har Homa, continue to rise up on Palestinian soil.
When Bush met with the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah he blithely defended the patchwork of Israeli roadblocks that have turned the West Bank into a series of ringed Palestinian ghettos. The roadblocks, he told Abbas, are necessary for Israeli security. He announced that the 1949 Green Line, the borders established by the United Nations, would never be restored. There would be no discussion, he said, of the status of Jerusalem. And the plight of Palestinian refugees would be solved by setting up an international fund, meaning, of course, that none would ever return. In short, he offered an unequivocal endorsement of right-wing Israeli policy with not a murmur of dissent. And the Palestinians can either have it rammed down their throat or rot. Bush will be back, he has promised, in May to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Jewish state. Olmert, no doubt, will again be fulsome in his praise, which is probably what Bush’s trip to the Middle East is, at its core, really about. Bush desperately wants someone to pretend with him that he is an agent for peace and statesmanship. Olmert, who knows the callow American leader will give him everything he desires, is happy to oblige.
He may yet rise again to torment us with an attack on Iran, condemning more innocents to slaughter. He and his cigar-smoking soul mate Ehud Olmert would like to go out with one more flash of mayhem and violence. But even this will not ultimately save him. Bush will soon be reduced to the cipher he once was, left to spend the rest of his life trying to salvage a legacy of shame and deceit. In a just world he would be put on trial, if not by the International Criminal Court of Justice then by the U.S. Congress. He would be forced to face up to his lies and wars of aggression. But the moral rot that infects the nation has seeped into the bowels of the legislative as well as the executive branch.
World leaders, including those whom Bush desperately wants to intimidate, now dismiss him. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said a few days ago that relations with the United States are of “no benefit to the Iranian nation. The day such relations are of benefit, I will be the first one to approve of that.”
The agenda of the Bush White House is exposed as irrelevant, myopic and counterproductive. Most Arab countries are in open defiance of Washington and are actively reaching out to Iran.
“As long as they [Iran] have no nuclear program ... why should we isolate Iran? Why punish Iran now?” Arab League Secretary-General Abu Moussa told The Washington Post.
The chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, is in Iran for talks. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad attended December’s Gulf Cooperation Council summit. The Iranian president attended the just-completed hajj in Mecca at the invitation of the Saudi monarch, King Abdullah. Tehran is exploring the resumption of diplomatic ties with Egypt, cut since the 1979 revolution, and has offered to cooperate with Cairo in the production of nuclear energy. And the Syrian and Lebanese governments have ignored Washington’s warnings to sever ties with Hezbollah and Hamas.
It is the end of the road for George Bush. The world takes less and less notice of him. He strutted and swaggered across the stage. He bellowed and raged. He plundered and murdered. And now he wants to be anointed as a peacemaker. His presidency, like his life, has been a tragic waste. But he at least he has a life. There are tens of thousands of mute graves in Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan that stand as stark testaments to his true legacy. If he wants to redeem his time in office he should kneel before one and ask for forgiveness.
--------------
Bush as delusional, dangerous or an irrelevant buffoon:
Robert Fisk: Bloody reality bears no relation to the delusions of this President 16 January 2008
As a bomb explodes in Beirut and Israel kills 19 in Gaza raids, Bush takes his Middle East peace mission to Saudi Arabia (and signs off $20bn weapons deal with repressive regime)
Twixt silken sheets – in a bedroom whose walls are also covered in silk – and in the very palace of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, President George Bush awakes this morning to confront a Middle East which bears no relation to the policies of his administration nor the warning which he has been relaying constantly to the kings and emirs and oligarchs of the Gulf: that Iran rather than Israel is their enemy.
... The difference between reality and the dream-world of the US government could hardly have been more savagely illustrated. After promising the Palestinians a "sovereign and contiguous state" before the end of the year, and pledging "security" to Israel – though not, Arabs noted, security for "Palestine" – Mr Bush had arrived in the Gulf to terrify the kings and oligarchs of the oil-soaked kingdoms of the danger of Iranian aggression. As usual, he came armed with the usual American offers of vast weapons sales to protect these largely undemocratic and police state regimes from potentially the most powerful nation in the " axis of evil".
It was a potent – even weird – example of the US President's perambulation of the Arab Middle East, a return to the "policy by fear" which Washington has regularly visited upon Gulf leaders. He agreed to furnish the Saudis with at least £41m of arms, a figure set to rise to more than £10bn in weaponry to the Gulf potentates under a deal announced last year – all of which is supposed to shield them from the supposed territorial ambitions of Iran's crackpot President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. As usual, Washington promised the Israelis that their "qualitative edge" in advanced weapons would be maintained, just in case the Saudis – who have never gone to war with anyone except Saddam Hussein after his 1990 invasion of Kuwait – decided to launch a suicidal attack on America's only real ally in the Middle East.
... For Arab leaders, Mr Bush's message to the Gulf leaders was wearily familiar. In the 1980s, when the Reagan administration was supporting Saddam Hussein's invasion of Iran, Washington spent its time warning Gulf leaders of the danger of Iranian aggression. Once Saddam invaded Kuwait, America's emphasis changed: It was now Iraq which posed the greatest danger to their kingdoms. But once the emirate was liberated, the oil-wealthy monarchs were told that – yet again – it was Iran that was their enemy.
Arabs are no more taken in by this topsy-turvy "good-versus-evil" narrative than they are by Washington's promises to help create a Palestinian state by the end of the year, scarcely a day before Israel publicly admitted to plans for yet more houses for settlers on Arab land amid Jewish colonies illegally built on Palestinian territory.
Yet to understand the nature of this extraordinary relationship with the Gulf monarchs, it is necessary to recall that ever since the President's father promised a weapons-free "oasis of peace" in the Gulf, Washington – along with Britain, France and Russia – has been pouring arms into the region.
and Robert Fisk concludes :
The West may have a short memory. The Arabs, who happen to live in the piece of real estate which we call the Middle East and who are not stupid, have not. They understand all too well what George W Bush now stands for. After advocating "democracy" in the region – a policy which gained electoral victories for Shia in Iraq, for Hamas in Gaza and a substantial gain in political power for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt – it seems to have dawned on Washington that something might be slightly wrong with Bush's priorities. Instead of advocating a "New Middle East", Mr Bush, lying amid his silken sheets in the Saudi king's palace, is now pursuing a return to the "Old Middle East", a place of secret policemen, torture chambers – to which prisoners can be usefully " renditioned " – and dictatorial "moderate" presidents and monarchs. And which of the Gulf despots is going to object to that?
--------
and so it goes...
GORD.
No comments:
Post a Comment