For the 56,000 Army marriages that have ended since the war on terror began, a Freedom Salute medal doesn't mean much. It isn't particularly valuable for this father, whose son returned from Iraq. He wrote:"I need your help. My son's body showed up at my house for Christmas but [my wife] and I did not know the person who claimed to be [our son]. He was severely drunk every day for the whole week, belligerent, and generally just someone that nobody wanted anything to do with. He has nightmares every night of the murdered innocent children and civilian Iraqis. The Army has abandoned him as far as giving him help. They will go out of their way to help him re-enlist though."
A Freedom Salute medal isn't going to make things better for Pat Gunn, who got this response from the Army after she contacted a member of Congress when her son was redeployed to Iraq following a diagnosis of PTSD:
"SPC Gunn was wounded in the leg during an attack on his HUMVEE. The soldier behind him was literally torn in half. After returning from convalescent leave [Gunn] was informed he would be redeployed. [He] indicated he would not go back to Iraq [and] was sent to Heidelberg Hospital for evaluation. They concluded he was suffering some post traumatic stress from seeing his comrade killed so violently. They recommended he be retained and treated at Heidelberg, [which] was contacted by medical authorities from Iraq. After discussion of his case it was determined [that SPC Gunn be] treat[ed] downrange [as it] may be in his best interest mentally to overcome his fear by facing it. [SPC Gunn was] cleared for redeployment."
The Freedom Salute medal is just tin on a ribbon for the families of Marine Reservist Jeffrey Lucey, National Guardsman Doug Barber, and the dozens of other Iraq Veterans who have committed suicide after the Veterans Administration refused to treat them. Last year, the VA denied requests for care from over a quarter of a million veterans. Congress has tried to cut funding for veterans, and has grossly underestimated the needs of the soldiers returning from Iraq. You want to take care of our veterans? Quit making new ones.
Friday, March 03, 2006
Family Values
85%
From a very recent Zogby poll of US soldiers in Iraq:
"85% said the U.S. mission is mainly 'to retaliate for Saddam’s role in the 9-11 attacks'"
What's the mesage, in March 2006? Same as it ever was: "Remember" September 11th, 2001 - but be very careful not to know too much about it. Otherwise, you might be tempted to have mercy on strangers who had nothing to do with it.
Thursday, March 02, 2006
Somebody is trying to provoke a civil war in Iraq
The real question I ask myself is: who are these people who are trying to provoke the civil war? Now the Americans will say it's Al Qaeda, it's the Sunni insurgents. It is the death squads. Many of the death squads work for the Ministry of Interior. Who runs the Ministry of Interior in Baghdad? Who pays the Ministry of the Interior? Who pays the militia men who make up the death squads? We do, the occupation authorities.
Robert Fisk shares his Middle East knowledge
Reporter: Tony Jones
TONY JONES: Well, Robert Fisk is one of the most experienced observers of the Middle East and in his latest book, 'The Great War for Civilisation - the Conquest of the Middle East', he draws on almost 30 years of reporting from his base in Lebanon to look at the forces which have shaped current events and conflicts Robert Fisk, thanks for being there.
ROBERT FISK, WRITER & JOURNALIST: You're welcome.
TONY JONES: Now, unless you've changed your position in recent days, the one thing that you and President Bush agree on is there's not going to be a civil war in Iraq.
ROBERT FISK: Yeah, I listened to Bush. It made me doubt myself when I heard him say that. I still go along and say what I said before - Iraq is not a sectarian society, but a tribal society. People are intermarried. Shiites and Sunnis marry each other. It's not a question of having a huge block of people here called Shiites and a huge block of people called Sunnis any more than you can do the same with the United States, saying Blacks are here and Protestants are here and so on. But certainly, somebody at the moment is trying to provoke a civil war in Iraq. Someone wants a civil war. Some form of militias and death squads want a civil war. There never has been a civil war in Iraq. The real question I ask myself is: who are these people who are trying to provoke the civil war? Now the Americans will say it's Al Qaeda, it's the Sunni insurgents. It is the death squads. Many of the death squads work for the Ministry of Interior. Who runs the Ministry of Interior in Baghdad? Who pays the Ministry of the Interior? Who pays the militia men who make up the death squads? We do, the occupation authorities. I'd like to know what the Americans are doing to get at the people who are trying to provoke the civil war. It seems to me not very much. We don't hear of any suicide bombers being stopped before they blow themselves up. We don't hear of anybody stopping a mosque getting blown up. We're not hearing of death squads all being arrested. Something is going very, very wrong in Baghdad. Something is going wrong with the Administration. Mr Bush says, "Oh, yes, sure, I talk to the Shiites and I talk to the Sunnis." He's talking to a small bunch of people living behind American machine guns inside the so-called Green Zone, the former Republican palace of Saddam Hussein, which is surrounded by massive concrete walls like a crusader castle. These people do not and cannot even leave this crusader castle. If they want to leave to the airport, they're helicoptered to the airport. They can't even travel on the airport road. What we've got at the moment is a little nexus of people all of whom live under American protection and talk on the telephone to George W Bush who says, "I've been talking to them and they have to choose between chaos and unity." These people can't even control the roads 50 metres from the Green Zone in which they work.TONY JONES: OK.
ROBERT FISK: There's total chaos now in Iraq.
TONY JONES: Let's go back, if we can, to start answering that question about who wants civil war. Back one week to the bombing of the golden shrine in Samarra. Now, most people do think the only people with reasons for doing that would be the Al Qaeda in Iraq group led by al-Zarqawi. You don't agree?
ROBERT FISK: Well, I don't know if al-Zarqawi is alive. You know, al-Zarqawi did exist before the American Anglo-American invasion. He was up in the Kurdish area, which was not actually properly controlled by Saddam. But after that he seems to have disappeared. We know there's an identity card that pops up. We know the Americans say we think we've recognised him on a videotape. Who recognises him on a videotape? How many Americans have ever met al-Zarqawi? Al-Zarqawi's mother died more than 12 months ago and he didn't even send commiserations or say "I'm sorry to hear that". His wife of whom he was very possessive is so poor she has to go out and work in the family town of Zarqa. Hence the name Zarqawi. I don't know if al-Zarqawi is alive or exists at the moment. I don't know if he isn't a sort of creature invented in order to fill in the narrative gaps, so to speak. What is going on in Iraq at the moment is extremely mysterious. I go to Iraq and I can't crack this story at the moment. Some of my colleagues are still trying to, but can't do it. It's not as simple as it looks. I don't believe we've got all these raving lunatics wandering around blowing up mosques. There's much more to this than meets the eye. All of these death squads that move around are part of the security forces. In some cases they are Shiite security forces or clearly Sunni security forces. When the Iraqi army go into Sunni cities they are Shiite soldiers going in. We are not making this clear. Iraqi troops, we've got an extra battalion. The Iraqi army is building up. The Iraqi army is split apart. Somebody is operating these people. I don't know who they are. It's not as simple as we're making it out to be. What is this thing when Bush says we have to choose between chaos and unity? Who wants to choose chaos? Is it really the case that all of these Iraqis that fought together for eight years against the Iranians, Shiites and Sunnies together in the long massive murderous Somme-like war between the Iranians and Iraqis - suddenly all want to kill each other? Why because that's something wrong with Iraqis? I don't think so. They are intelligent, educated people. Something is going seriously wrong in Baghdad.
TONY JONES: Can we look at one thing that might possibly be wrong, the Sunnis feel like they are being left out of the political equation. The Shias could end up running the majority of the government because they are indeed in the majority in a democracy.
ROBERT FISK: They do run the Government now. The Shiites do run the Government.
TONY JONES: Indeed. Couldn't that precisely be one of the reasons for the violence?
ROBERT FISK: Because the Sunnis don't have power anymore? But we've been saying this if the start. Don't you remember that after 2003 the Anglo-American invasion, the resistance started against the Americans and we were told they were Saddam remnants, 'dead-enders', that was the phrase used. Not anymore, because there are 40,000 insurgents, but that was the phase used at the time. They were Sunnis. They didn't like the fact they didn't have power. Then we captured Saddam and Paul Bremer, the number two pro-Consule in Baghdad, says, "Oh, we've got him," and everything was going to be OK. And then the insurgency got worse still. The reason was because people who wanted to join the insurgency feared that if they beat him out he might come back. Well, the moment Saddam was captured, they knew they could join the insurgency and Saddam wouldn't come back. I mean, there is something wrong in the narrative sequence that we've been given. You know, the idea that the Sunni community is suddenly sacrificing themselves en mass, strapping explosive belts to themselves and blowing themselves up all over Iraq because they don't have power anymore is a very odd reflection. I think what is going on among the Sunni community is much simpler. The Sunnis are not fighting the Americans because they don't have power and they're not fighting the Americans just to get them out - and they will get them out eventually. They are fighting the Americans so that they will say, "We have a right to power because we fought the occupying forces and you, the Shiites, did not," which is why it's very important to discover now that Moqtada al-Sadr, who has an ever-increasing power base among the Shiite community, is himself threatening to fight the British and Americans. Now, if the Shiites and Sunnies come together, as they did in the 1920s in the insurgency against the British, then we are finished in Iraq. And that will mean that Iraq actually will be united.
TONY JONES: But, Robert Fisk, what's is happening now, by all accounts and, indeed, the accounts of these Washington Post reporters who've been into the morgue and report hundreds of bodies of Sunnies who evidently have been garroted or suffocated or shot, are all saying that Moqtada al-Sadr's thugs have actually taken these people away and murdered them. That was in revenge for the Golden Shrine bombing.
ROBERT FISK: Yeah, look, in August, I went into the same mortuary and found out that 1,000 people had died in one month in July. And most of those people who had died were split 50/50 between the Sunnies and the Shiites, but most of them, including women who'd been blindfolded and hands tied behind their backs - I saw the corpses - were both Sunnies and Shiites. Now, I'm not complaining that the Washington Post got it wrong - I'm sure there are massacres going on by Shiites - but I think they are going on by militias on both sides. What I'd like to know is who is running the Interior Ministry? Who is paying the Interior Ministry? Who is paying the gunmen who work for the Interior Ministry? I go into the Interior Ministry in Baghdad and I see lots and lots of armed men wearing black leather. Who is paying these guys? Well, we are, of course. The money isn't falling out of the sky. It's coming from the occupation powers and Iraqi's Government, which we effectively run because, as we know, they can't even create a constitution without the American and British ambassadors being present. We need to look at this story in a different light. That narrative that we're getting - that there are death squads and that the Iraqis are all going to kill each other, the idea that the whole society is going to commit mass suicide - is not possible, it's not logical. There is something else going on in Iraq. Don't ask me to...
TONY JONES: Alright. But...
ROBERT FISK: Yeah, go on.
TONY JONES: No, it does seem to be impossible to explain, but, of course, this is exactly what people were saying in Bosnia before that war started up - that people were too intermarried, that you couldn't separate the community.
ROBERT FISK: Iraqi is not Bosnia. Iraqi is not Bosnia. Iraqi is not Bosnia. Iraqi is not Bosnia. We discovered here in Lebanon - and this city I'm talking to you from - that, during the civil war, which lasted from 1975 to 1990 and killed 150,000 people, that there were many outside powers involved in promoting death squads and militias here, and paying militias, not just Arab powers, but European powers were involved in stirring the pot in Lebanon. I think we're being very naive. Just because I can't give you the detail, like, of who ordered this death squad, doesn't prevent us saying that something is wrong with the narrative we're being given the press, from the West, from the Americans, from the Iraqi Government. There is something going wrong. Iraqis are not suicidal people. They don't go around blowing up mosques every day. It's not a natural thing for them to do. It's never happened before. I can't say to you, "Well, ok, here is the person who killed this person, or here's the person who left this explosive truck." All I am saying to you is that it is time we said, "Hang on a minute, this is not how it looks."
TONY JONES: What if you put Iran into this equation, because, as we all know, Iran is under tremendous pressure from the West and particularly from the United States at the moment. It has links to these Shia militias and, possibly, links too, to these people you are talking about in the Interior Ministry.
ROBERT FISK: No, no, no, that's wrong. The Iranians' link is with the Iraqi Government. The main parties in the government of Iraq which have been elected, who are there now dealing with the Americans, these are the representatives of Iran. Moqtada al-Sadr is irrelevant to Iran. Iranians are already effectively controlling Iraq because the two major power blocks, the two major parties who were elected and who Bush has just been talking to, these are effectively the representatives of Tehran. That's the point. Iran doesn't need to get involved in violence in Iraq.
TONY JONES: Unless the pressure from the United States ratchets up on Iran to the point where there are military threats against these nuclear facilities. Could it not therefore create havoc in Iraq?
ROBERT FISK: Well, you could say the same about Syria, too, couldn't you? And, of course the Americans are also accusing Syria of supporting the insurgents or letting them cross the border. But I think it it's much more complicated than that. For example, my sources in this area, who are pretty good, tell me that the Americans have already talked to the Syrians and are trying to do a deal with them to try and get the Syrians to help them over the insurgency and the price of Syria's help, I'm told, is that the Americans will ease off on the UN committee of inquiry into the murder of ex-prime minister Rafiq Hariri, here in Beirut, only a few hundred metres from here, on the 14th February last year. You know, if the Americans are going to get out of Iraq - and they must get out, they will - they need the help of Iran and Syria. And I think you'll find that certain elements within the State Department are already trying to work on that. Now, we hear the rhetoric coming from Bush. I mean, he's got an absolute black-hole chaos in Iraq, he's got Afghanistan - not an inspiration to the world, it's been taken over effectively by narco warlords, many who work for Karzai, the man who's just been making jokes about the Afghan welcome for Bush - and Bush wants another conflict with Iran? I don't think the Americans are in any footing or any ability, military or otherwise, to have another war or to have another crisis in that region. They're in the deepest hole politically, militarily and economically in Iraq. The fact that the White House and the Pentagon and the State Department seem to be in a state of denial doesn't change that.
We had Condoleezza Rice here - literally in that building behind me - a few days ago saying that there are great changes taking place in the Middle East - optimistically. Well, sure, there is a mosque war going on in Iraq with the Americans up to their feet in the sand, there's an Iranian crisis, or so we're told, the Saudis are frightened the Iraq war will spill over into Saudi Arabia, the Egyptians don't know how to reconcile Syria and Lebanon, there are
increasing sectarian tensions here in Lebanon. You would think that someone is building what used to be called Potemkin villages, you know, these extraordinary things that Catherine the Great's court favourites use to build, facades of villages, so that everything looked nice in Russia even though things were barbarous behind the facades. I mean, this is a barbarous world we're living in now in the Middle East. It's never been so dangerous here, either for journalists or soldiers but most of all for Arabs. Hence the thousands of people in the mortuary.
-------------------------
U.S. strategy in Iraq: No, it's not Vietnam. This one's a civil war : All sides in today's Iraq debate share a common but unspoken assumption: the way to succeed in Iraq is to refight the Vietnam War, but the right way this time. Official strategy mirrors the Nixon administration playbook: win hearts and minds while handing the fighting over to the locals.
Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a universal law.
"[T]he first condition for resolving whether to accept or to reject the doctrines which Hegel propounds (I am constrained to make explicit what I should have preferred to leave to be understood) is to read his books: and to put an end to the spectacle, half comical and half disgusting, of the accusation and the abuse of a philosopher by critics who do not know him, and who wage a foolish war with a ridiculous puppet created by their own imaginations, under the ignoble sway of traditional prejudice and intellectual laziness."
- Benedetto Croce, What Is Living And What Is Dead Of The Philosophy Of Hegel
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
"I never knew--in my gut, not my head--that I was capable of killing someone till that night."
"I ran to the clerk and said, 'Is he taking the memory card?' The clerk pressed his lips together, closed his eyes, and nodded. I burst out the door after him."
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
The Bush Gang: "A veritable juggernaut of competence."
Those who call the Bush mob "incompetent" make a fatal error. On some unconscious level, they seem to think that these criminals somehow share any of the goals of decent human beings, and have therefore "failed" to produce good results. But that, of course is the idea that motivates the Bush crime family: to produce evil results that happen to enrich their own class.
The situation in Iraq for example is not the result of "incompetence." It is all according to plan, which was to destroy that nation.
Over and over we see the awesome competence of the Bush regime in accomplishing their radical plans - at every stage very much thanks to the enablers who run the Democratic Party, and who have smoothed the way for the Bush mob in each of their following accomplishments:
*Stealing Election 2000.
*Trillion dollar giveaway to the rich, intentionally plunging the country into deficit.
*9/11. Exactly as desired.
*Stealing a sum specified as "2.3 trillion dollars" from Pentagon assets.
*Repealing the Bill of Rights in the USA PATRIOT Act.
*Getting dozens of other countries to pass their own PATRIOT acts.
*Invading Afghanistan. Exactly as planned, years in advance.
*Funnelling trillions more legally into the Pentagon.
*Establishing a Homeland Gestapo.
*Instituting Rule by Fear, color-coded no less.
*Railroading the idiot Congress into approving the war in Iraq.
*Accepting the assassination of Wellstone by whatever lower-level operative delivered it.
*Stealing Election 2002.
*Establishing "Total Information Awareness" and getting away with it, even after departure of Poindexter.
*Invading Iraq. Killing untold thousands.
*Getting the Iraqis into a civil war, with the intent of making sure that country never recovers.
*Covering up 9/11.
*Using 9/11 as an election device and excuse for everything.
*Stealing Election 2004.
*Using Katrina as the opportunity to empty out New Orleans and test out long-standing "civil disturbance" doctrines.
*Pushing through two right-wing Supreme Court appointments without a filibuster.
*Rewiring Americans overnight to believe Iran is now the enemy.
Wow! What a list! A veritable juggernaut of competence.
The Bush mob (almost) always get what they want, and the Democratic "leadership" (almost) always helps them when it counts. Yes, they had to take a loss on the first attempt to steal the entire Social Security fund, but there are many opportunities yet to come.
Yes, it's all at a time of awesome crisis to US-based capitalism, so much of it looks jerry-rigged but so what? It's not like the Bush mob invented the crisis of capitalism. So far, they're getting away with a particular plan to thrive in that crisis, by plundering everything, whether nailed down or not.
Competent at what they do, which is what they've always done: pillage and plunder.
And those who call them "incompetent" sadly serve to excuse and enable their crimes.
Jack Riddler follows up with two further posts in the same thread:
But you reminded me of something BIG I forgot: Enabling the Wall Street plunder of America. 9/11 and its hysteria (and the destruction of the SEC at Building 7) successfully distracted away from 200 plus ongoing securities fraud cases. In the end, we get an Enron trial and a few other high-profile trials, but think of all those who got away to plunder more later...
And:
Those who attack the Bush regime as "incompetent" because of the horrors it has wrought are in effect excusing criminal behavior as merely stupid behavior. It matters not whether they are competent or incompetent; they are criminal, that's what matters.
Not Alone
There was a Zogby poll in New York. The question asked was, do you believe the government had advance knowledge of the attacks and consciously let them happen? Forty-nine percent in New York City said yes. I believe it was 43% statewide. That is a pretty remarkable figure. In this country there has not been a poll that asked, do you believe the government actually planned and orchestrated the attacks? The question has been raised in Europe and Canada and has gotten to somewhere around 20%. It would be interesting to have such a poll in the United States.
Sunday, February 26, 2006
Towards a Renaissance of Citizens' Balls
Paul Donovan in The Observer, October 5 2003:
"The willingness of journalists to accept the establishment's view of the events of, and after, 9/11 is truly staggering."
Newsweek wonders what would happen if the public ever found out. Well, maybe they should try actually helping the public to find out, instead of burying their revelations on the sixth page of a six-page article. Maybe they should send a few of their own reporters to Florida, for instance, where Mohammed Atta's ex-girlfriend has much to tell us about his hard-partying lifestyle and his German and Austrian friends. Maybe they should ask themselves, and us, a few simple questions about Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his bizarre conduct on The Day That Changed Everything. Maybe they should tell us about the long-planned hijack wargames on September 11, carried out under the command of Richard Cheney and/or General Ralph Eberhart. All of this information is available in the public domain, and has been for some time; so maybe Newsweek - and CNN and the Observer and the BBC and the NYT - should think about actually reporting it, instead of continuing to hide it.
MASCAL Contingency Planning Exercise, November 3, 2000
Then it wouldn't be quite so easy for quite so many people to continue pretending they hadn't found out anything at all. And if we all stopped ignoring the obvious so assiduously, then the War on Terror wouldn't have a leg to stand on. In truth, it never has had.
Do we have to be as old as Howard Zinn or as wealthy as Gore Vidal before we can bring ourselves to speak out about this in public? No. The Bush Gang's complicity in the crimes of 9/11 is by now an open secret. It is the one issue that clearly frightens them, and not for no reason. And if there is a faster way to stop the ongoing and worsening War on Terror than to demand a full, open and independent investigation of the 9/11 crimes, I've yet to hear it.
It was, very obviously, an inside job, and they are still exploiting it mercilessly as a casus belli for Endless War. Therefore: Towards a mass campaign. Towards the impeachment of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and at least a dozen others. Towards a Renaissance of Citizens' Balls.
Nothing else will work.
Saturday, February 25, 2006
War On Blogging
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was warmly greeted at the recent meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations. The CFR is the hand-picked assemblage of western elites from big-energy, corporate media, high-finance and the weapons industry. These are the 4,000 or so members of the American ruling class who determine the shape of policy and ensure that the management of the global economic system remains in the hands of U.S. bluebloods. As the Pentagon’s chief-coordinator, Rumsfeld enjoys a prominent place among American mandarins. He is the caretaker of their most prized possession; the high-tech, taxpayer-funded, laser-guided war machine. The US Military is the crown-jewel of the American empire; a fully-operational security apparatus for the protection of pilfered resources and the ongoing subjugation of the developing world.
Rumsfeld’s speech alerted his audience to the threats facing America in the new century.
He opined: “We meet today in the 6th year in what promises to be a long struggle against an enemy that in many ways is unlike any our country has ever faced. And, in this war, some of the most critical battles may not be in the mountains in Afghanistan or in the streets of Iraq, but in newsrooms—in places like New York, London, Cairo, and elsewhere.”
“New York”?“Our enemies have skillfully adapted to fighting wars in today’s media age, but for the most part our country has not”.
Huh? Does Rummy mean those grainy, poorly-produced videos of Bin Laden and co.?
“Consider that the violent extremists have established ‘media relations committees’—and have proven to be highly-successful at manipulating opinion-elites. They plan to design their headline-grabbing attacks using every means of communications to intimidate and break the collective will of free people”.
What gibberish.
It’s foolish to mention “intimidating and breaking the collective will of free people” without entering Abu Ghraib, Guantanomo and Falluja into the discussion. Rumsfeld is just griping about the disgrace he’s heaped on America’s reputation by his refusal to conform to even minimal standards of decency. Instead, he insists that America’s declining stature in the world is the result of a hostile media and “skillful enemies”; in other words, anyone with a computer keyboard and a rudimentary sense of moral judgment.
(Our enemies) “know that communications transcend borders…and that a single news story , handled skillfully, can be as damaging to our cause and as helpful to theirs, as any other method of military attack”.
If the Pentagon is really so worried about “bad press coverage” why not close down the torture-chambers and withdrawal from Iraq? Instead, Rumsfeld is making the case for a preemptive-assault on free speech.
“The growing number of media outlets in many parts of the world….too often serve to inflame and distort, rather than explain and inform. And while Al Qaida and extremist movements have utilized this forum for many years, and have successfully poisoned the Muslim public’s view of the West, we have barely even begun to compete in reaching their audiences.”
“Inflame and distort”?
What distortion? Do cameras distort the photos of abused prisoners, desperate people, or decimated cities?
Rumsfeld’s analysis borders on the delusional. Al Qaida doesn’t have a well-oiled propaganda mechanism that provides a steady stream of fabrications to whip the public into a frenzy. That’s the American media’s assignment. And, they haven’t “poisoned Muslim public opinion” against us. That has been entirely the doing of the Pentagon warlords and their White House compatriots.
“The standard US government public affairs operation was designed primarily …to be reactive rather than proactive…Government, however, is beginning to adapt”
“Proactive news”? In other words, propaganda.
Rumsfeld confirms his dedication to propaganda by defending the bogus stories that were printed in Iraqi newspapers by Pentagon contractors. (We) “sought non-traditional means to provide accurate information to the Iraqi people in the face of an aggressive campaign of disinformation….This has been deemed inappropriate—for examples the allegations of ‘buying news’”.A brazen defense of intentionally planted lies; how low can we sink?
This has had a “chilling effect for those who are asked to serve in the military public affairs field.”
Is it really that difficult to print the truth?
Rumsfeld boasts of the vast changes in “communications planning” taking place at the Pentagon.
A “public affairs” strategy is at the heart of the new paradigm, replete with “rapid response” teams to address the nagging issues of bombed-out wedding parties, starving prisoners, and devastated cities. No problem is so great that it can’t be papered-over by a public relations team trained in the black-art of deception, obfuscation, and slight-of-hand. Trickery now tops the list of military priorities.
“US Central Command has launched an online communications effort that includes electronic news updates and a links campaign that has resulted in several hundred blogs receiving and publishing CENTCOM content.
”The military plans to develop the “institutional capability” to respond to critical news coverage within the same news cycle and to develop a comprehensive scheme for infiltrating the internet.
The Pentagon’s strategy for taking over the internet and controlling the free flow of information has already been chronicled in a recently declassified report, “The Information Operations Roadmap”; is a window into the minds of those who see free speech as dangerous as an “enemy weapons-system”.
The Pentagon is aiming for “full spectrum dominance” of the Internet. Their objective is to manipulate public perceptions, quash competing points of view, and perpetuate a narrative of American generosity and good-will.
Rumsfeld’s comments are intended to awaken his constituents to the massive information war that is being waged to transform the Internet into the progeny of the MSM; a reliable partner for the dissemination of establishment-friendly news.
The Associated Press reported recently that the US government conducted a massive simulated attack on the Internet called “Cyber-Storm”. The wargame was designed, among other things, to “respond to misinformation campaigns and activist calls by internet bloggers, online diarists whose ‘Web logs” include political rantings and musings about current events”.
Before Bush took office, “political rantings and musings about current events” were protected under the 1st amendment.
No more. The War Department is planning to insert itself into every area of the Internet from blogs to chat rooms, from leftist web sites to editorial commentary. Their rapid response team will be on hair-trigger alert to dispute any tidbit of information that challenges the official storyline.
We can expect to encounter, as the BBC notes, “psychological operations (that) try to manipulate the thoughts and the beliefs of the enemy (as well as) computer network specialists who seek to destroy enemy networks.”The enemy, of course, is anyone who refuses to accept their servile role in the new world order or who disrupts the smooth-operation of the Bush police-state.
The resolve to foreclose on free speech has never been greater. As for Rumsfeld’s devotees at the CFR, the problem of savaging civil liberties is never seriously raised. After all, these are the primary beneficiaries of Washington’s global resource-war; should it matter that other people’s freedom is sacrificed to perpetuate the fundamental institutions of class and privilege? Rumsfeld is right. The only way to prevail on the information-battlefield is to “take no prisoners”; police the Internet, uproot the troublemakers and activists who provide the truth, and “catapult the propaganda” (Bush) from every bullhorn and web site across the virtual-universe. Free speech is a luxury we cannot afford if it threatens to undermine the basic platforms of western white rule.
As Rumsfeld said, “We are fighting a battle where the survival of our free way of life is at stake.”
Indeed, it is.
************* Mike Whitney
The War on Humanity
What are the statistics in the fifth year of the War on Terror (which is a struggle for Our Values) ?
Friday, February 24, 2006
This Charming Man is a Potential Terrorist Sympathiser
The flower-brandishing "melancholic warbler" was questioned by FBI and Special Branch. Now why would they do that, if not to scare everyone shitless? In the farcically unlikely event that they did worry about him being a BinLadenite, they could have found out very easily by tailing him or by tapping his phone. So why this high-profile questioning of a high-profile English dandy? They must have known he was bound to talk about it; he didn't call himself Big Mouth for nothing.
And why did they bother to bully a low-profile English actor, who had had the temerity to play an exonerated terrorist suspect in a film? Why the Big Fist? Why the free publicity?
The message - through them, to us - is surely clear: Be afraid. Be very afraid. And don't get ideas above your station.
The Dictatorship: Daring, Diligent and Deft
AMY GOODMAN: We're going to go to an excerpt of that movie in just a minute, but I want to ask you about, right now, what journalists are facing in Iraq, just learning about the Al Arabiya reporter, thirty-year-old woman, her two crew, cameraman and soundman, who were just killed. Jill Carroll remains kidnapped.
DANNY SCHECHTER: Yeah. I mean, this is one of our demands also, to release not only kidnapped journalists, but journalists who have been jailed by U.S. authorities without any charges being filed against them, without any information being provided about why they're being arrested, no due process whatsoever. The International Federation of Journalists has raised this issue. It’s an issue that we all should take seriously, because it’s the fight for the right to know. It's the fight for information, and the journalists on the front line are in a very dangerous situation, more journalists dead in Iraq than in the entire Vietnam War, and this is something we have to take seriously. The woman who just died from Al Arabiya was an Al Jazeera correspondent before that, you know, a very brave reporter, very popular reporter, and for her to be killed, and we don’t know who’s doing this. You know, this is --
AMY GOODMAN: Atwar Bahjat, she was just heading into Samarra.
DANNY SCHECHTER: Yeah, we don’t know who’s behind all this. You know, there are hit squads --
AMY GOODMAN: And in that case, the reports were that those that killed her shouted out, “We want the correspondent, the correspondent!” She was Iraqi, herself, from a Sunni Shia family.
DANNY SCHECHTER: So, they basically want to keep us in the dark about what's happening in Iraq. That’s why the coverage has – you know, it’s become “when it bleeds it leads.” There's very little analysis and background and context being offered that helps people get a perspective about the complete failure of the U.S. intervention there.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And, Danny, as somebody who has been monitoring this coverage now on a regular basis, your sense, has there been any impact or change in any of the corporate media as a result of how badly the war has gone?
DANNY SCHECHTER: Well, I think because, as public opinion has shifted against the war, media doesn't want to alienate what customers it has left, so they want to try to appear to be a little bit more balanced. When people like John Murtha speak out, they can’t ignore it. So there has been some shift in the media coverage, but basically they have been locked into, you know, justifying this intervention. First, they justified the invasion. Now they're saying, “Well, withdrawal can't work.” You know, they're raising a blizzard of questions about why nothing can be done about the situation.
AMY GOODMAN: Danny, we want to turn for a few minutes to your film. It's called W.M.D.: Weapons of Mass Deception.
ARI FLEISCHER: The President will address the nation at 10:15.
PRES. GEORGE W. BUSH: My fellow citizens, at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger.
ABC NEWS OFFICE, Amman, Jordan: The level of protection would be minimal, and if I were a news president or news executive right now, I would be pulling my people out.
DANNY SCHECHTER: When the war had finally begun, the networks began pulling their reporters out of Baghdad. Peter Arnett was in the Iraqi capital with a National Geographic documentary team. He decided to stay.
PETER ARNETT: Covering wars are a dangerous business. You can die, and those companies feel responsible for their people in harm's way. They sometimes order them out.
ABC NEWS OFFICE, Amman, Jordan: I think there is something to be said for staying. However, from a news executive standpoint, the risks are enormous.
PETER ARNETT: I sort of have a genetic tic that allows me to go into dangerous areas without too much concern.
ROBERT YOUHNG PELTON: The interesting thing was that the American military were trying to intimidate these journalists. They were saying, you know, “You are going to be a target” and everything, and the journalists were working overtime to say, “Look, we’re here. This is our coordinates. Don't fire,” and everybody knew that journalists were at these hotels. That’s why they were at these hotels. It was also known that if you are going to have shock and awe, you need somebody to record it. I mean, the one thing that they left out was that they needed the media to fight this war. The war was set up to be filmed and recorded by the media, so there was this bizarre, symbiotic relationship.
DAN RATHER: CBS’s David Martin at the Pentagon is following the planning and has the latest on a possible timeline.
DANNY SCHECHTER: To promote its war, the Pentagon made media management a priority. Their strategy was sophisticated, clever and almost always covert. Few media outlets exposed it. Most participated willingly for their own political and economic reasons. Pentagon strategy went beyond traditional P.R., using marketing strategies and perception management. Administration officials likened their war planning to a product rollout. It was all to guarantee there would be only one storyline in the media and in the minds of Americans: theirs. A Pentagon advisor told me it was intentional. They knew that TV networks prefer storytelling to sloganizing. Their storyline became a master narrative, defining Iraq as the problem and U.S. military intervention as the only solution. Traditionally, propaganda is targeted at the enemy. In this war, it was smoothly infiltrated into the news, aimed at American and global public opinion.
DONALD RUMSFELD: There are “known knowns,” there are things we know that we know. There are “known unknowns,” that is to say, there are things that we now know we don't know, but there are also “unknown unknowns.” There are things we do not know we don't know.
GEN. TOMMY FRANKS: This platform is not a platform for propaganda. This is a platform for truth.
DANNY SCHECHTER: In his war plan, Tommy Franks, the U.S. military commander, described the press, once known as the “fourth estate” as the “fourth front.” He knew that a supportive media was essential for victory, and he cultivated one.
GEN. TOMMY FRANKS: This will be a campaign unlike any other in history.
DANNY SCHECHTER: The Pentagon focused on winning the media war, leaking their plan to reporters they could trust.
GREG KELLY, FOX News Embed: We knew the plan, and I think the military benefited as far as positive coverage during the war because we knew what the plan was. So we reported that things basically were on plan, or we weren't worried when we got delayed two or three days, because we knew overall it was very successful.
DANNY SCHECHTER: Earlier, when the media pressed for access, Franks's team came up with the idea of embedding reporters, a former corporate P.R. professional turned Pentagon official ran the program.
VICTORIA CLARKE: One of the things we did -- it wasn't rocket science, but it was hard work -- we took the same kind of planning and training and discipline that you put into military operations and put it into this aspect of the military operations, and Rumsfeld and Myers, being enlightened guys, had included people like me in the war planning from the very earliest stages.
JOHN STAUBER: Victoria Clarke got major networks and news organizations to sign a 12-page contract agreeing to certain ground rules that actually kept the Department of Defense public affairs people in the driver's seat. And you got reporters in with these young, idealistic troops who really believed all the spin of what was going on -- we were going to liberate Iraq -- that the reporters would, overall, identify with the troops, and their reporting would be very positive.
BRITISH SOLDIER: When we get there, if any sort of incident happens, please keep calm and remain on the bus. We will deal with the situation, no matter what it is, as swiftly as possible.
"Chaos" in Samarra: Good for whom?
FOX News screen-grab courtesy of Crooks and Liars
Lenin's Tomb has a very good discussion of this; see also the comments thread. Chabert links to some newsworthy first-hand reports from Iraq.
These reports - which include brave eyewitness accounts of activity by US personnel at the mosque all night - naturally remain unmentioned by the BBC, which reports, with a straight face, that the US, Britain and Australia will be very sad about having to stay a little longer in the world's second most oil-rich country.
Thursday, February 23, 2006
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Tagged (4)
1. Landscaper
2. Carpenter
3. Grocery Bagger
4. Temp
Four Movies I have watched more than once:
1. Brazil
2. Coffee and Cigarettes
3. Happy Gilmore
4. Trainspotting
Four places I've lived:
1. Cambridge, England
2. Edinburgh, Scotland
3. Chicago, US
4. A rut, variably
(Four TV shows I can bear to watch)
1. Ali G
2. Angel
3. Aquateen Hunger Force
4. The Simpsons
Four Places I Have Never Been But Want To Go
1. Madrid
2. Paris
3. Buenos Aires
4. Chabert's house
Four Guilty Pleasure Websites:
1. Long Sunday
2. The Valve
3. Kingdom of Loathing
4. Amazon.com
There's many more I don't feel guilty about.
Four Foods I can't stand and why
1. Sea food - smells bad, often looks like bugs
2. Steak - I'm vegetarian, blood is gross
3. Sausage - I'm vegetarian and am sorely tempted by the smell of sausage
4. Rice cakes - what's the point?
Monday, February 20, 2006
NEWSWEEK: CHENEY LIED AND THE 9/11 COMMISSION COVERED FOR HIM ("If the public ever found out...")
... Around 9:35 on the morning of 9/11, Cheney was lifted off his feet by the Secret Service and hustled into the White House bunker. Cheney testified to the 9/11 Commission that he spoke with President Bush before giving an order to shoot down a hijacked civilian airliner that appeared headed toward Washington. (The plane was United Flight 93, which crashed in a Pennsylvania field after a brave revolt by the passengers.) But a source close to the commission, who declined to be identified revealing sensitive information, says that none of the staffers who worked on this aspect of the investigation believed Cheney's version of events.
A draft of the report conveyed their skepticism. But when top White House officials, including chief of staff Andy Card and the then White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, reviewed the draft, they became extremely agitated. After a prolonged battle, the report was toned down. The factual narrative, closely read, offers no evidence that Cheney sought initial authorization from the president. The point is not a small one. Legally, Cheney was required to get permission from his commander in chief, who was traveling (but reachable) at the time. If the public ever found out that Cheney gave the order on his own, it would have strongly fed the view that he was the real power behind the throne.
- via Rose Siding at DU (discussed here)
Reminder: Cheney and Bush had refused to testify to the 9/11 Commission until they were permitted to do so
- together
- in closed session
- without taking oath.
And Philip Zelikow, the man who headed that Commission, was a long-term collaborator with the Bush Gang, and had co-authored a book with one of the star witnesses, National Security Advisor "Condi" Rice. Not only that: Zelikow was himself a star witness at the "investigation" he headed. It is no wonder that four World Trade Center widows argued passionately - and in vain - that he was unfit to head the Commission.
Yet again: Nothing to see here. Move on.
Permanent? Bases? Iraq?
Recently, Oliver Poole, a British reporter, visited another of the American "super-bases," the still-under-construction al-Asad Airbase (Football and pizza point to US staying for long haul). He observes, of "the biggest Marine camp in western Anbar province," that "this stretch of desert increasingly resembles a slice of US suburbia." In addition to the requisite Subway and pizza outlets, there is a football field, a Hertz rent-a-car office, a swimming pool, and a movie theater showing the latest flicks. Al-Asad is so large -- such bases may cover 15-20 square miles -- that it has two bus routes and, if not traffic lights, at least red stop signs at all intersections.
There are at least four such "super-bases" in Iraq, none of which have anything to do with "withdrawal" from that country. Quite the contrary, these bases are being constructed as little American islands of eternal order in an anarchic sea. Whatever top administration officials and military commanders say -- and they always deny that we seek "permanent" bases in Iraq -– facts-on-the-ground speak with another voice entirely. These bases practically scream "permanency."
Unfortunately, there's a problem here. American reporters adhere to a simple rule: The words "permanent," "bases," and "Iraq" should never be placed in the same sentence, not even in the same paragraph; in fact, not even in the same news report. While a LexisNexis search of the last 90 days of press coverage of Iraq produced a number of examples of the use of those three words in the British press, the only U.S. examples that could be found occurred when 80% of Iraqis (obviously somewhat unhinged by their difficult lives) insisted in a poll that the United States might indeed desire to establish bases and remain permanently in their country; or when "no" or "not" was added to the mix via any American official denial.
An Endless Unrehearsed Intellectual Adventure
"We in the West were born into a world that reflects the legacy of Socrates and the agora (...) We aim, in Michael Oakeshott’s words, to live amid the conversation — 'an endless unrehearsed intellectual adventure in which, in imagination, we enter a variety of modes of understanding the world and ourselves and are not disconcerted by the differences or dismayed by the inconclusiveness of it all.' We believe in progress and in personal growth. By swimming in this flurry of perspectives, by facing unpleasant facts, we try to come closer and closer to understanding (...) Our mind-set is progressive and rational. Your mind-set is pre-Enlightenment and mythological. You fundamentalists have turned yourselves into a superpower of dysfunction, demanding our attention week after week. But it is hard to intimidate people forever into silence, to bottle up the conversation, to lock the world into an epic war only you want."
- David Brooks (via; via)
(via)