so here's a little ditty to begin with :
And the question is How Long can America continue to occupy Iraq & Afghanistan
One and a half million dead is not enough to satisfy America's lust for blood & Revenge. How long before they realize this is not a video game and that the people of Iraq and Afghanistan are in fact Human Beings . Will Obama end American Expansionism and Colonialism or will he continue to bully other nations threatening them with sanctions and invasion if they don't obey America.
How Long...
Original song and video by Marshall Cook -Oct. 10, 2006
Anyway a journalist tossed his shoes at outgoing President Bush during his Victory Tour Of The Middle East where he spoke publicly again and again about how wonderful things now were in the world , the Middle East and especially in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many Americans are upset and angry about this incident but they refuse to see it from the point of view of the Iraqi people . To Americans Bush is still the President and as the President of the United States is this bigger than life exalted God appointed super-hero but to many Iraqis Bush is some guy who fucked up their country. And to many Bush is no longer seen as being the President now that Barack Obama has been elected so to some in the Middle East and elsewhere Bush is just this has-been who's going around making speeches and trying to spread more Rovian Propaganda and lies.
But why was Bush at this late date touring the Middle East since he is the out-going President who is deeply resented and hated in the Middle East? Once again Bush & Co. are out there trying to rewrite history and creating their own Peter Pan style fantasy which completely ignore reality or as they put it the facts on the ground. A million dead Iraqis , a country in shambles still waiting to be rebuilt into the modern society it once was til the Americans decided to bomb the Iraqi people back into the stone-age- Mission Accomplished. While a few hundred thousand Iraqis are left in over-crowded miserable jails and another million live in camps waiting for the end of the conflict and another couple of million Iraqi refugees are left to suffer in nearby countries . As for Afghanistan it is much the same story as it too has been torn to pieces by American & NATO forces with no exit plan or any other plan it seems except to blow up more stuff and bomb " Wedding Parties " and abusing & insulting every Aghanistani that they can while abusing & torturing those whom the NATO forces capture all in an effort to humiliate these people to teach them that the West calls all the shots . And in the meantime the worst elements of Afghanistan's society battle it out over the Opium trade while the Taleban control more and more of the country while a dysfunctional corrupt government looks on..
Maddow Bush's Victory Tour Of The Middles East & Shoe Throwing Dec. 15
Rachel Maddow - Bush & The Taleban- Rewiting History
Bush lies again-
" I' never said the Taleban were eliminated; I said they were removed from power " Bush
Even now Bush & cheney & CO. are trying to defend torure and the Iraq War. Maddow doesn't think the media or the American people will buy it this time.She believes President Elect Obama can undo much of the harm done by the Bush Regime. But I'm not as sure as Maddow is since Americans have little or no memory about past events and that in general Americans want to believe in the superiority of their nation and their leaders so they may be all too willing to help Bush and Co. rewrite the history of the last eight years.
Dick Cheney & Torure & Guantanamo
Throwing shoes at President Bush
Bush Ducks From Flying Shoes- The Young Turks-Dec. 15 Cenk Uygur's Comments on Shoe Throwing
In Arab culture throwing shoes at someone is a serious insult.
Journalist cries out ' this is for all the widows & orphans and all those killed in Iraq '
Michael Hirsh of Newsweek on The Young Turks- Dec. 15
Bush's So What Comment about Al Qaeda & Iraq War- The Young Turks Dec. 15.
Al Qaeda was not in Iraq before the war - So What !
One million dead - So What !
Billions defrauded from the US Government -So What !
Bush still B***S****ing So What's New about that !
On the Rebuilding of Iraq:
And see the article from the New York Times on reconstruction in Iraq:
The New York Times "Official History Spotlights Iraq Rebuilding Blunders" By JAMES GLANZ and T. CHRISTIAN MILLER : December 13, 2008
BAGHDAD — An unpublished 513-page federal history of the American-led reconstruction of Iraq depicts an effort crippled before the invasion by Pentagon planners who were hostile to the idea of rebuilding a foreign country, and then molded into a $100 billion failure by bureaucratic turf wars, spiraling violence and ignorance of the basic elements of Iraqi society and infrastructure.
In one passage, for example, former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is quoted as saying that in the months after the 2003 invasion, the Defense Department “kept inventing numbers of Iraqi security forces — the number would jump 20,000 a week! ‘We now have 80,000, we now have 100,000, we now have 120,000.’ ”
Mr. Powell’s assertion that the Pentagon inflated the number of competent Iraqi security forces is backed up by Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the former commander of ground troops in Iraq, and L. Paul Bremer III, the top civilian administrator until an Iraqi government took over in June 2004.
Among the overarching conclusions of the history is that five years after embarking on its largest foreign reconstruction project since the Marshall Plan in Europe after World War II, the United States government has in place neither the policies and technical capacity nor the organizational structure that would be needed to undertake such a program on anything approaching this scale.
The bitterest message of all for the reconstruction program may be the way the history ends. The hard figures on basic services and industrial production compiled for the report reveal that for all the money spent and promises made, the rebuilding effort never did much more than restore what was destroyed during the invasion and the convulsive looting that followed.
and it notes:
Five years after the invasion of Iraq, the history concludes, “the government as a whole has never developed a legislatively sanctioned doctrine or framework for planning, preparing and executing contingency operations in which diplomacy, development and military action all figure.”
the whole process was flawed and a disaster:
In the preface, Mr. Bowen gives a searing critique of what he calls the “blinkered and disjointed prewar planning for Iraq’s reconstruction” and the botched expansion of the program from a modest initiative to improve Iraqi services to a multibillion-dollar enterprise.
Mr. Bowen also swipes at the endless revisions and reversals of the program, which at various times gyrated from a focus on giant construction projects led by large Western contractors to modest community-based initiatives carried out by local Iraqis. While Mr. Bowen concedes that deteriorating security had a hand in spoiling the program’s hopes, he suggests, as he has in the past, that the program did not need much outside help to do itself in.
...But the portrait that emerges over all is one of a program’s officials operating by the seat of their pants in the middle of a critical enterprise abroad, where the reconstruction was supposed to convince the Iraqi citizenry of American good will and support the new democracy with lights that turned on and taps that flowed with clean water. Mostly, it is a portrait of a program that seemed to grow exponentially as even those involved from the inception of the effort watched in surprise.
-------
also see Arianna Huffington's article at the Huffington Post Will The Madoff Debacle Finally End The "Who Could Have Known?" Era? Dec. 15, 2008 in which the Bush Regime in each of these debacles appear amazed at what actually happened as opposed to what they expected or wished for since it appears that these "brainiacs" such as Karl Rove and Rumsfeld and Cheney believed they could shape reality by the use of their super-powered Brains:
See if this sounds familiar:( note she also adds Hurricane Katrina & 9/11 attacks & the Wall Street general Meltdown )
An ambitious and risky undertaking carried out with hubris, and featuring the weeding out of anyone who raises alarm bells, little-to-no transparency, an oversight system in which no central authority is accountable, and the deliberate manufacturing of ambiguity and complexity so that if -- when -- it all falls to pieces, the excuse "who could have known?" can be used....
Is it Iraq? Fannie Mae? Citigroup? Bernie Madoff?
The correct answer is: all of the above.
When you look at the elements that were crucial to the creation of each of these debacles, it's amazing how much in common they all have. And not just in how they began but in how they ended: with those responsible being amazed at what happened, because...who could have known? Well, to paraphrase James Inhofe, I'm amazed at the amazement.
In fact, when historians look for a name that sums up the Bush II years, they could do worse than calling them The "Who Could Have Known?" Era.
Each of the disasters listed above was entirely predictable. And, indeed, was predicted. But those who rang the alarm bells were aggressively ignored, which is why it's important that we not let those responsible get away with the "Who Could Have Known?" excuse.
as she concludes her commentary :
Then there is Alan Greenspan, who, looking back in October of this year on the makings of the financial crisis he helped create (I mean, that just happened to come out of nowhere) delivered this "Who Could Have Known?" classic: "If all those extraordinarily capable people were unable to foresee the development of this critical problem...we have to ask ourselves: Why is that? And the answer is that we're not smart enough as people. We just cannot see events that far in advance."
The only problem is, many people did see events that far in advance.
Unlike Greenspan, I don't believe the problem is that we are "not smart enough as people." As we've seen time after time, smart enough people are all too willing to ignore facts they don't like. Or, even worse, they construct oversight systems designed to be ineffective -- and unable to provide to those in power information they don't really want to know.
Much has been made of the smartness of Obama's new team. But I'm hoping that their defining characteristic won't be their IQs but their willingness to confront reality and take responsibility for their decisions.
It's time to say goodbye to the "Who Could Have Known?" era. It's time to know things again. And to know that you know them.
For more on how the War on Terror has been not just a failure but that it has increased the number of terrorists and the number of terroists attacks worldwide see Arundhati Roy's article:
From TomDispatch at Truthout
Nine is not 11(and November Isn't September) 12 December 2008 by Arundhati Roy, Tom Dispatch
and also see: "Arundhati Roy: 9 Is Not 11" Dec. 15, 2008 at Democracy Now! and MWC ( Media With Conscience )
and I refer the reader to yesterday's post and my discussion of Deepak Chopra's attempt to bring reason to the discussions on terrorism and the possible actions to be taken but as he discovered the American Mainstream Media if not the American people don't want to listen to reason they just want more decisive actions no matter how ill conceived. As long as more towns and villages are being blown up and more people arrested and tortured than the Talking Heads of the Mass Media in America can feel comforted that something is being done.
and so it goes,
GORD.
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