From The Guardian George Bush has claimed he was on a mission from God when he launched the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, according to a senior Palestinian politician in an interview to be broadcast by the BBC later this month.

From The guardian

"""""""BBC shies away from Bush story

Tara Conlan
Friday October 7, 2005

BBC programme editors turned lukewarm on a claim by a BBC2 programme that George Bush believed God told him to invade Iraq and Afghanistan after a strong denial by the White House.

Just 24 hours after accusations that the corporation's news coverage was backing away from risk-taking, some of the BBC's key outlets decided not to run an exclusive story unearthed by BBC2 about the US president.

It was all the more unusual as yesterday morning the corporation sent out a press release trumpeting the exclusive in BBC2's forthcoming "major three-part" series called Israel and the Arabs: Elusive Peace.

In the programme, Palestinian minister Nabil Shaath said Mr Bush had told them during a meeting in June 2003 that God had given him a mission to invade Iraq and Afghanistan and also to create a Palestinian state.

Abu Mazen, another minister attending same meeting, said Mr Bush had told him: I have a moral and religious obligation. So I will get you a Palestinian state."

As the BBC release was embargoed until 10.30pm yesterday, it had been expected the story was being saved for the corporation to break and would first appear on BBC2's Newsnight.

Yesterday afternoon, as newspapers and other agencies began inquiring into the story, the White House refused to comment. But later in the day a spokesman, Scott McClellan, said Mr Bush had "never made such comments."

However, Mr McClellan admitted he had not been at the June 2003 meeting referred to in the BBC2 programme.

Newsnight decided not to run the story. The official reason given was that the running order was packed and included another story about Mr Bush.

Subsequently, the Today programme also decided not to cover it - except in its newspaper round-up.

However, after it appeared in most of the national newspapers, BBC Breakfast featured an item, while Radio 1, 5 Live, News 24 and BBC online also ran it.

But the BBC News website's coverage was distinctly lukewarm - running the story under the headline "White House denies Bush God claim", rather than the press release's headline of "God told me to invade Iraq, Bush tells Palestinian ministers".

One BBC source said: "The denial by the White House put some programme editors off. It probably played a big part in some of their decisions not to run the story."

The lukewarm response by other BBC outlets to a BBC News exclusive in the wake of a denial by the US government is likely to dismay the new head of television news, Peter Horrocks.""""""""

Gus News
So if god did not tell him to go to war who the devil did?

Or is it a question of the BBC having water on the knees...

From the BBC

..........

"""""""""Bush God comments 'not literal'

Programme excerpts

A Palestinian official who said the US president had claimed God told him to invade Iraq and Afghanistan says he did not take George Bush's words literally.

Nabil Shaath said he and other world leaders at a Jordan summit two years ago did not believe Mr Bush thought God had given him a personal message.

Mr Bush's spokesman said the original allegation, which will appear in a BBC documentary next week, was absurd.

Scott McClellan said the comments had never been made.

The comments were attributed to Mr Bush by Mr Shaath, a Palestinian negotiator, in the upcoming TV series Elusive Peace: Israel and the Arabs.

Mr Shaath said that in a 2003 meeting with Mr Bush, the US president said he was "driven with a mission from God".

"God would tell me, George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan. And I did, and then God would tell me, George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq... And I did.

"And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East. And by God I'm gonna do it."

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, who attended the meeting in June 2003 too, also appears on the documentary series to recount how Mr Bush told him: "I have a moral and religious obligation. So I will get you a Palestinian state."

'Strong faith'

But in an interview for the BBC Arabic service on Friday, he said the president - who had just announced an end to hostilities in Iraq, was merely expressing his heartfelt commitment to peace in the Middle East.

"President Bush said that God guided him in what he should do, and this guidance led him to go to Afghanistan to rid it of terrorism after 9/11 and led him to Iraq to fight tyranny," he said. """"""""

God, aren't we totally confused?!!!

Hi Gus. 

 

I finally got through to the boss this morning & I can confirm that she hasn’t spoken to george. 

 

She said that she was very, very frustrated by the fact that so many people were taking her name in vain – to the point where she was considering cancelling ALL spiritual franchises ahead of some large-scale remedial training.  

 

In George’s case, she said she’d tried to speak to him on numerous occasions but every time he was either doped-out on tennessee whiskey or some tricky white stuff or the line was faulty.  

 

She’d said she’d also tried to get through to johhnie on a number of occasions but that his office had said that catching-up with other gods wasn’t among his ‘core’ priorities. 

 

Likewise she had tried to get through to tony, but his office said he couldn’t make himself available without cherie’s approval & that wasn’t going to be forthcoming unless a satisfactory appearance fee could be negotiated. 

 

She said she wasn’t very optimistic about being able to get hold of george any time soon, as it’s almost impossible to get a word in edgeways when you’re dealing with schizophrenics.  

 

It was good to chat but I must say she wasn’t happy about the humanity gig at all – it seems that the whole genetic master plan thing for mankind had never looked like realizing its potential from the moment cain smote abel. 

 

Anyway, I’ll catch you later – gotta go & mix some more mushies before my next call.

Hi Gus.

Some insights on george's relationship with God from Steve Bradenton.

God's Typo 

 

God Lied 

 

God's Favourite War President 

 

God's Tongue 

 

Walkin' with God 

 

Divine Intervention 

 

God Help Us

2000

‘Fears that British forces in Iraq are reaching "breaking point" grew last night as the first hard evidence of a crisis in morale began to emerge.  

 

Army sources are warning that the mood among soldiers of all ranks is at its gloomiest since the invasion in March 2003. The outlook has become darker as the war proves increasingly intractable and much more dangerous than troops had expected.’ 

 

Are British Troops At Breaking Point In Iraq?

From 'Standing Up' A Constitution
[...]When Baghdad was engulfed in the lawlessness and looting that gutted the Iraqi state after Saddam Hussein's regime fell, Donald Rumsfeld's response was: "Stuff happens" and "it's untidy, and freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things." These now-famous words, writes Packer, "implied a whole political philosophy," which had what Packer calls "the purity of untested thoughts":

"The defense secretary looked upon anarchy and saw the early stages of democracy. In his view and that of others in the administration, but above all the president, freedom was the absence of constraint. Freedom existed in divinely endowed human nature, not in man-made institutions and laws. Remove a thirty-five-year-old tyranny and democracy will grow in its place, because people everywhere want to be free. There was no contingency for psychological demolition. What had been left out of the planning were the Iraqis themselves."

Which means there was almost no planning. Why plan for what will sprout spontaneously?

When America's Constitution was ratified in 1789, federalism was an unfinished fact. (It still is, but today's adjustments of states' rights and responsibilities are minor matters.) If the federal government of 1789 had not grown in strength, relative to the states, far more than most ratifiers of the Constitution anticipated or desired, the United States probably would not have remained united. So the question today, which will be answered in coming years by the political process framed by Iraq's new constitution, is whether that constitution "stands up" a nation, or presages the partitioning of it, perhaps by the serrated blade of civil war.

From Fraud billions 'washed' in banks:
AUSTRALIA'S multibillion-dollar money laundering trade is being fuelled mostly by fraud — not illicit drugs — and much of it is being processed through banks and other legally regulated financial institutions. These are among the conclusions of a damning report by the world's leading authority on money laundering and terrorist financing, which says that the Federal Government has failed to act effectively against the activity in Australia. [...]

From Bill Bennett, Bob Bennett and the Criminal Element:
[...] If he were to address the issue of white collar and corporate crime -- the kind that his brother Bob defends every day for a very nice living -- then he might have said something like -- "you could abort every white male destined to go to Harvard Business School, and your crime rate would go down." Now that would be impolite. But the reality is that crimes committed by the powerful -- both in government and in corporations -- inflicts far more damage on society than all crime committed by the powerless. [...]

From Rice Won't Rule Out Force on Syria, Iran:
[...] She told lawmakers the United States will follow a model that was successful in Afghanistan. Starting next month, she said, joint diplomatic-military groups - Provincial Reconstruction Teams - will work alongside Iraqis as they train police, set up courts, and help local governments establish essential services. [...]

Ah! More jam for Halliburton and the crony gang, from the chunderous Condi.

[...]Rice said the United States was using diplomatic means to urge a change in the behavior of both countries - but she stopped short of ruling out military force. ``I'm not going to get into what the president's options might be,'' Rice said. ``I don't think the president ever takes any of his options off the table concerning anything to do with military force.'' [...]

If the threat of a mushroom cloud won't work, there's always Mom.

 

You call yourself a Christian
I think that you're a hypocrite
You say you are a patriot
I think that you're a crock of shit 

From DISPATCHES FROM AMERICA : Grenades in the global economic cockpit
[...] TD: Despite the usual centrality of domestic issues, I happen to think that, above all else, the war has driven the Bush people ever since the post-invasion period. When, for instance, you look at the latest AP/Ipsos poll, what's bothering the evangelicals now above all else? It's the war.
JC: Yes, they are upset about what happened in Iraq because Bush made an alliance with the religious Shi'ites, which meant an alliance with Islamic fundamentalists who have now put a Koran veto on legislation in Iraq. You know, the evangelicals were dreaming big. They thought Iraq was going to be a missionary success, that they would make the Iraqis into Protestants. But any missionary who showed up in Iraq now, we'd soon be seeing him on video pleading for his life. None of their objectives with regard to Iraq have been achieved. This is something, by the way, that the evangelicals have been dreaming of since the 1850s. It's how the American University in Beirut got there. The Presbyterian missions were the ones that originally tried to missionize the Middle East and they failed all along the line - and they continue to fail. The Bush moment was a moment in which those nineteenth century dreams of evangelical missionizing and imperial might being melded together were briefly revived. Now it's become clear to them that this is just not going to happen, so they're angry, they're disappointed. You can understand that.

From New 'Smart' Bombs for Australia's F/A-18 Aircraft Australia’s F/A-18 fighter jets will be equipped with new ‘smart’ bombs that will provide a state-of-the-art weapon capability that can be accurately fired during day or night and all weather conditions, Defence Minister Robert Hill announced today. The McDonnell Douglas Corporation (a wholly owned subsidiary of The Boeing Company) has been selected as the preferred tenderer of ‘smart’ GPS guidance kits, and a contract with Defence will be signed later today. [...]

Handy things for pre-empting Indonesian fishing boats and terrorist-breeding pesantren.

Yes TG.

Every day we hear about the US air strikes in Iraq, using 'precision' bombing to kill innocent civilians, including women & children. No apologies, no regrets: they're all 'terrorist insurgents' is the shreiking justification from the Pentagon. And what about those not cut down? If they are not galvanized into immediately supporting the insurgency, it would be a miracle.

The tactics of the amerikan military in Iraq are the same as those they pursued in Vietnam: a scorched earth policy pursued with utter disregard to the civilian populace - a genuine 'war of terror'. And the only thing that's changed is that they no longer even bother to do 'body counts'.

Crimes against humanity, with the UK & Australian governments totally & criminally complicit. 

‘Our country is under a spell, sleep walking towards disaster, while its decent, distracted citizens ponder interest rates, the footy and whether to put a plasma opposite the Jacuzzi. Our poets are lost for words, our comedians fiddle the stock market, our movie stars flock to the Imperial Court, our auction-star painters extrude sullen abstracts, while singing hymns at Howard’s table.  

 

There’s a widespread switch off about crimes in Iraq. Mention Fallujah to the bright Westerners who “dedicate their waking hours to media-induced sensations, to their pursuit and their creation

‘The most serious charge against Saddam is the massacre of about 140 Shite villagers over an alleged assassination attempt in 1982. In the same year, the US, it should be recalled, removed Iraq from the list of states sponsoring terrorism! And within two years of the massacre the US restored diplomatic relations with Iraq. 

 

Saddam used chemical weapons on both Iraqis and Iranians. The US and its allies could have nipped those attacks in the bud. Sadly, their hypocrisy wouldn’t allow them to do so. The US was the only country that voted against a UN Security Council statement in 1986 condemning the mustard gas attacks by Iraq on the Iranian forces! 

 

The US also allowed its companies to export chemicals to Iraq, which used them on humans. All chemical attacks by Saddam on the Kurds under the Anfal campaign, which left over 150,000 Kurds dead, over 1,000 Kurdish villages destroyed and about 300,000 Kurds displaced had the blessings of the West.  

 

The crop spraying helicopters used in these attacks came from the US! These massacres had no impact on the trade that Iraq had with the West. Instead, it increased! Today, we hear the West condemning those crimes against the Kurds!’ 

 

Why Only Saddam? Try Them All! 

From the Guardian

Casualties of a war a world away

Jamie Wilson Washington
Wednesday October 26, 2005
The Guardian

Elaina Morton is not listed as one of the 2,000 Americans now confirmed killed in Iraq since the start of the war, but she might as well be. In US military parlance the 23-year-old lab technician from Kansas would have been referred to as a "surviving spouse". But three months after her husband, Staff Sergeant Benjamin Morton, was killed by insurgents in Mosul, Elaina picked up a gun and shot herself.

The fact that the military did not issue a press release to announce the death of the former college student who loved her cat, Stinky, and enjoyed hiking, photography and camping, does not make her any less a casualty of the war. Hers is thought to be the first confirmed case of a war widow committing suicide, and as the US toll in Iraq yesterday hit the grim 2,000 landmark her death is proof of the immeasurable emotional toll that the conflict has put on families of servicemen and women.

etc etc...

Bingo !!!

‘In this his time of troubles, Bush seems to be moving deliberately and rapidly toward new wars of aggression in an unforgivable gamble to overcome his troubles. His speech on Veterans' Day, November 11, 2005 at the Tobyhanna Army Depot in Pennsylvania leads to this conclusion more clearly than any of his previous speeches and activities.  

 

The new wars would be the start of a world war initiated by Bush and radical Christianity against what he calls radical Islam, but in truth the wars would be waged against all Islam.’ 

 

Evidence Mounts That Bush Wants More Wars

As part of an information offensive in Iraq, the US military is secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish stories written by American troops in an effort to burnish the image of the US mission in Iraq.

 

The articles, written by US military "information operations" troops, are translated into Arabic and placed in Baghdad newspapers with the help of a defense contractor, according to US military officials and documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times.  

 

Many of the articles are presented in the Iraqi press as unbiased news accounts written and reported by independent journalists. The stories trumpet the work of US and Iraqi troops, denounce insurgents and tout US-led efforts to rebuild the country.’ 

 

US Paying Iraqi Newspapers To Publish Stories

‘So, it is mission impossible that Bush has accomplished: A terminally inept U.S. occupation of Iraq now threatens to make the despot we overthrew look good by comparison. But don’t take my word for it; hear it from the United States’ No. 1 ally in that increasingly nightmarish land.  

 

“[Authorities] are doing the same as [in] Saddam’s time and worse,

From the Washington Post

Dedication and Danger in Iraq

By Joseph E. Robert Jr.
Saturday, April 29, 2006; Page A17

I've had the opportunity to travel to Iraq three times, most recently last month, courtesy of the nonpartisan Business Executives for National Security. On every trip I'm struck by the difference between the Iraq I hear and read about back home and the Iraq I see in person. Iraq defies expectations and easy definition.

For me as a business executive, these visits provide a firsthand look at the largest U.S. reconstruction effort since the Marshall Plan. As the father of a Marine who recently returned from a tour in Iraq, I find that these trips also offer a glimpse of our frontline troops that few military families ever see. Among my general impressions:

First, U.S. forces in Iraq remain focused on their mission. Talking with soldiers and Marines over dinner in their mess halls, it's easy to see why reenlistment rates among U.S. troops in Iraq are the highest in the military. These men and women understand their mission and believe they are making a difference. Like my son, Joe III, after he returned from a tough mission in Fallujah, the Marines I met said they would be happy to return to Iraq because they believe what they're doing is important.

......

Nothing in history is inevitable; events unfold as they do because leaders and their publics make choices. Neither civil war nor a democratic, pluralist government is predestined for Iraq. But one fact is clear: Premature withdrawal of U.S. forces -- before Iraqi troops are ready, or before the political and economic situation stabilizes -- will condemn Iraq and the region to a future of chaos, destruction and death.

The writer is chairman and chief executive of J.E. Robert Companies, a global commercial real estate and mortgage investment firm based in McLean.

------------------------

Gus: Very commendable to think this way Joseph, yet the underlying unease has been that the war was unnecessary and illegal in the first place — all based on a scaffolding of lies... Thus the whole process of reconstruction — basically reconstructing what the Yanks have demolished — is a difficult one. If US civilians go in Iraq to help by sitting in control position in the green zone, it's paternalistic... but help is more complex than managing a company that, more often than not, can manage itself without a manager... I know many "managers/owners' who have set up their companies in such a clever way that they do not have to interfere but let it run full bore and from time to time nudge it along, no more... One of the massive problem there is the US mentality of opportunism for cash-making rather than the opportunity to altruistically help... Not forgetting that the religious sensitivities and local allegiances are not conducive to a certain form of interference.

And let's be blunt. Before the war in iraq, even during the food for oil sanctions, Iraq was pumping 2.8 millions gallon of oil per day. Now it's barely reaching 1.4 million... On top of that all the refineries in Iraq that provided cheap products for the locals are not working and Iraq has to import most of its refined product making petrol very expensive. On top of that too, despite what is seen, nearly 50 per cent of the population is unemployed... Yes we've had a massive regression due to the war... and more than 100,000 dead. So as far as the war is concerned it has had a debatable liberating effect but dire economic results... That the army is working its butt off to make it better, fantastic.... But the real US administration's goal is not to succeed too soon... It wants a foothold there for the next 25 years at least and it will get it by whatever means, including mismanagement of the reconstruction accompanied with words of great spruiking to the contrary.

See cartoon at head of this line of blogs...

From Al jazeera and other media around the sphere

Iraqi forces to take charge in months

Iraqi forces could take charge of most of the country's security by December and all foreign troops may be gone within four years, the new Iraqi prime minister and aides of the visiting British prime minister have said...

read more at Al Jazeera.

---------------------------

Gus is sceptical: Yes sure but something can (and will) come along to throw out this stretched out time table... See cartoon at head of line of blogs.

From the independent

A frustrating aspect of writing about Iraq since the invasion is that the worse the situation becomes, the easier it is for Tony Blair or George Bush to pretend it is improving. That is because as Baghdad and Iraq, aside from the three Kurdish provinces, become the stalking ground for death squads and assassins, it is impossible to report the collapse of security without being killed doing so.
Read more at the independent
_________

From the New York Times

Sectarian Violence Forces Iraqis to Flee

By DAMIEN CAVE and JOHN O’NEIL
Published: July 20, 2006
BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 20 — Relentless sectarian violence is forcing Iraqis to flee their homes in larger and larger numbers, with more than 1,000 families abandoning mixed areas for Shiite or Sunni strongholds in the last week alone, according to government figures released today.

A spokesman for the Iraqi Ministry of Displacement and Migration called the figures “a dangerous sign’’ for the country.

------------------

Gus: This can only lead to more polarisation of sectarian conflicts. The "no-post war plan" is working perfectly for the Americans... as planned.

From the Guardian

'Stunning victory' for war families
Press Association
Wednesday July 26, 2006 7:23 PM

The families of British soldiers killed in Iraq have won a dramatic legal breakthrough in their bid to force a full public inquiry into why Britain entered the conflict.

In what their lawyers described as "a stunning victory", the Court of Appeal ruled they were entitled to apply for judicial review of the Government's refusal to hold an independent inquiry.

The applicants are relatives of four servicemen who died in military action between 2003 and 2005.

They say they want the Government "to be held accountable" for a war which "breached international law and was based on a series of lies".

Lawyers for the Prime Minister, Secretary of State for Defence and the Attorney General had argued it would be an "unwarranted shift of power" for the courts to make pronouncements on the Government's right to go to war.

The family's legal battle looked doomed last December when their application for a judicial review was blocked by Mr Justice Collins in the High Court on the basis that their case was "unarguable"

----------------------

Gus editorialises, sorry:

War is the most ugly of all human activities... Collective organised aggression is beyond belief. Historically, wars have always been declared uselessly, have exposed extremes of greed, of lust, of illusions of grandeur, of massive anger and encouraged desires of revenge, apart from death and destruction. One would have hoped that in the new enlightened millennium in which the challenges for the planet are many, wars would have been things of the past and the age of reason beset humanity.

But no. The illegal war (2003) declared in Iraq by the US, the UK and Australia — our Aussie Johnnee like a little dog on a leash — followed old lines of deceit, of fudges, of illusions, of conquest and revenge... But a "new" (old, revisited spruik) vernacular entered the "motivation" for these modern wars to make them more palatable, as the public at large may be becoming a bit less gullible.

Fear and moral value-illusions... Fears of weapons of mass destruction were fabricated, after a tragic terrorism event that — instead of giving way for a new development towards a better thought-out peace and proper understanding of origins, via peaceful means — became the catalyst for more revenge and more useless deaths. Moral value-illusions are always cultivated as "for the good"...

"Hell" is full of them. Moral value-illusions always backfire: "he who seeks to be an angel always becomes a beast" said the French philosopher Pascal in the 17th century. Good can work when it comes from a fully altruistic position — a non-religious position that does not seek a favourable result for oneself, but a favourable outcome for the recipient. Unfortunately this is utopia in our world...

Let be said right here: most of the people dying in wars, usually are innocent parties: women, kids, old folks, adults of working age, anybody... But members of their surviving families are most likely to enter the deadly cycle of revenge in one way or another...

There were no WMDs in Iraq and the US administration knew that. It lied. Pure and simple. But to convince a majority of less gullible people at the United Nation, where a super-fake expose of Saddam's WMDs was being rejected with scepticism by France and Germany, words like "freedom" and "democracy" were painted at the last minute on top of the ugly lies... Still the UN did not buy the line... thus the trio of desperado gangsters went on their merry way to war on their own...

In fact the Iraq war was waged for the conquest of oil, for shifting of influences in the region, for the engrandizement of an imperial US who want their vassals to be economic subservient boot-lickers —providers and consumer in a profitable manner for the US...

There is a certain noble aim being tooted in this grand plan — the stability of the world and a more co-operative conglomerate of nations... Sure... But the method to achieve this, is highly counter-productive and ugly. Really, one has to suspect that the true desires are not those stated because, rarely in history, if ever, has the "declaration" of war brought the desired result of stability, co-operation and understanding. All war and its uneasy peace did was to prepare the ground for the next war... Yes, International affairs are fraught with pitfalls and blanket tugging... of which war is the ugliest of all...

One would have to question the sanity of those who declared war on Iraq and hoped to be feted as "liberators" forever. Yes, the euphoria can last five minutes... Not only the war was promoted on super-gross lies, the "reconstruction" was performed in such imbecile manner that one cannot stop asking if this was deliberate... And the answer is unfortunate... it had to be deliberate otherwise it would not make sense of the brainpower of the "liberators"...

All the "thousand of mistakes" made by the US — and admitted to by Ms Rice — weren't mistakes at all... These programs were designed at higher echelons for "inexperienced" underlings to bungle so that a certain chaos would come in, creating the inevitable divisions, resentment, revenge and the terrible state of affairs that see more than a hundred people a day being violently killed and nearly 40 attacks per day on "occupation" forces in Iraq... These mistakes are too numerous to post here but think of the official line: "No blood No foul"... Is this not an indication of an ugly edict in which underlings could take the blame for "overstepping" the mark while those in charge encourage the deed?

Any clever person would have to know at the time of the implementation of certain decrees in Iraq that more terrorism and more chaos were going to be the outcome — especially when studying the obvious stupid path of these "mistakes"... Was the US administration full of Imbeciles? I think not... well I hope not... this would be too tragic. Thus the paths to "reconstruct" Iraq had to be deliberately chosen to achieve chaos. Is the US administration full of sadists, schemers and clever scrooge warmongers? I hope not... but I think yes... there is no other explanation for the result of their actions.

The same stupid pathway is befalling Lebanon... A small border skirmish by a group of hot-head "terrorists" (conveniently called so) responding in tit for tat to an arrogant Israel, was chosen by Israel to wage an open war on Lebanon for not having enforced a resolution (1559) to disarm its militias... Israel itself unwilling to follow earlier resolutions imposed by the UN on the invasion of territories. So the tit for tat continues and escalates daily in open murder, massive destruction of infrastructure, creating more resentment and more desire of revenge... One can defeat an army, one cannot defeat an idea.

Of all the most despicable declaration of war ever was the "war on terror" that was changed to the "war on terrorism" and now renamed, obviously with open-ended intent," the long war". This is a vile imposition on the world. Sure terrorism has to be dealt with... But declaring an open war on this vague definition of an intent, forgets the multiple root causes of it which starts an individual level... in the ghettos, in the streets... in revenge, in oppression.

For the US, a nation — that unfortunately exhibits the most murders per capita in the world, that has the most people imprisoned in the world by at least three times the next country [China], ...a clever nation that unashamedly displays the most people with desires of sophisticated robbery at all level of business, whether through petty crimes, subsidies, tax evasion and corruption — ... yes, for that nation trying to teach the world how to behave, after having itself been built on stolen lands, is most hypocritical.

For that nation to wage — or encourage its friends into — "preventive" wars as well as supply weapons, is despicable.

As US arrogance as yesterday, when a couple of huge US army cargo planes landed in Scotland... for refuelling and a short rest for the crews. Nothing wrong here but these planes were secretly carrying tons of bunker bursting bombs urgently destined to the Israelis. Obviously the UK is not "officially" impressed and will protest but to what degree...? Isn't there a secret desire in the heart of the UK Prime Minister to see Israel in their conflict — lets call it what it is: a conflict with Lebanon, as that country has many Shia people supportive of their "real" army, Hizbollah since the official Lebanese army is weak and useless — be supported to hilt while officially arguing to the contrary?

For a country like the US, the beauty of a "war on terror" is that it can never be won... Thus is gives then "carte blanche" to go and fiddle around the world in which ever way they wish, under this banner. Terrorism cannot be defeated in an open war but in redressing many wrongs and many injustices, themselves also multiplied by this "war on terror" with no end in sight since it is presently "planned" by the Pentagon boffins to go on for many many years... The US soldiers of 2040 are being primed. The "war on terror" under its new or old name is geared to defeat itself, endlessly... on purpose to fuel its own existence.

The dark-ages Crusades have never ended. Pity...

May peace be with you...

And visit the cartoon that heads this line of blogs...

From Al Jazeera

Turkey tries scores of [http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/B29A5F26-792B-4590-83F7-0A6BA5212C8F.htm|Kurdish mayors]

Tuesday 26 September 2006, 20:56 Makka Time, 17:56 GMT
Fifty-six Kurdish mayors have gone on trial in Diyarbekir, a city in southeastern Turkey, on charges of supporting Kurdish separatists.

The men were charged with "supporting terrorism" on Tuesday for writing a joint letter to Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Danish prime minister ,last December.
The mayors had asked Fogh Rasmussen to ignore the Turkish government's call to close down Roj TV, a Denmark-based Kurdish television station.
Turkey says Roj TV is a mouthpiece of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), an armed separatist group, which Ankara, together with the European Union and the US, classifies as a terrorist organisation
--------------
Gus: The same organisation (PKK — under different guises) has been declared heroic on the other side of the border... In Iraq... "supported" by the CIA in the early 1990s and praised recently in its role to "free" Northern Iraq from Saddam... But one in the US cannot be too smug because the PKK is a socialist-communist organisattion fighting to "free" people and wanting freedom for Kurdistan — but the colour of "that" freedom is not the colour of freedom the US really want (The US hates anything that smells of socialism because one cannot make huge amount of money out of it). The PKK various alliances and human rights violations are no more strange or bloody than those of the US... PKK support is not unanimous in "Kurdistan" and quite diluted on the edges, but the fact that 56 mayors have signed this letter indicate a strong underground base for maintaining Kurdish culture.

From our ABC

....

US Vice President Dick Cheney arrives in Australia on Thursday and Mr Howard says he does not expect the US to ask Australia to contribute more combat troops to Iraq.

Mr Howard also says Australia's defence force commitment to Afghanistan is under constant review.

"The situation in Afghanistan is not easy," he said.

"We would like to see a greater commitment in the southern part of the country from a number of the non-NATO countries.

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Gus: So our rodentus "says he does not expect the US to ask Australia to contribute more combat troops to Iraq"... What a lot of crap. So close to the visit of a US VP, the diplomatic channels would have already either made the request, either not asked for more Aussie troops in Iraq and the press release about it would be ready. Why can't Rodentus say exactly what has been "pre-arranged".

To do policy on the hop because some VP is close to your face is not a way to do good policy, unless one's mind is already made up to send about "200 more troops as "military trainers to Iraq" that would not be counted as sending more "combat" troops for the Aussie average moron and would be counted as troops for a Missaquail VP. Vernacular of the liars. Rhetoric of the porkyists... Fudge of the rodentuses...

see cartoon at the top of this line of blog...

A senior Swiss executive at the banking giant UBS has been indicted in an investigation of the bank and its offshore private banking services for wealthy Americans, federal prosecutors said on Wednesday.

The executive, Raoul Weil, oversaw UBS’s lucrative cross-border private banking operations from 2002 to 2007.

In a move that could spell bigger trouble for UBS, the indictment also referred to unindicted co-conspirators who “occupied positions of the highest level of management within the Swiss bank.” The individuals, the document said, sat on committees that oversaw legal, compliance, tax, risk and other issues. The indictment also referred to unindicted senior bankers, and the managers and “desk heads” who oversaw them.

Prosecutors for the United States attorney’s office in the Southern District of Florida charged Mr. Weil with conspiracy, contending that he allowed American clients to evade taxes by hiding assets overseas in accounts that went undeclared to the Internal Revenue Service.

"I was not allowed to speak to the chief of defence logistics," Lord Boyce told the Chilcot Iraq inquiry. "I was prevented from doing that by the Secretary of State for Defence because of the concern of it becoming public knowledge that we were planning for a military contribution." He added that there were fears that the preparations "might be unhelpful in the activity in the UN to secure a Security Council resolution".

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An investigation as that happening in the UK should also happen in Australia, to demonstrate how John Howard, Tony Abbott and their Liberal cronies send Australia to war with Iraq. Bush, Blair and Howard lied and lied and lied... War criminals? sure are... And now ve've got the "love child" of Howard as the leader of the Liberals. Are we nuts?...

See toon at top

Singer James Blunt 'stopped World War 3'

 

Singer James Blunt has told the BBC how he refused an order to attack Russian troops when he was a British soldier in Kosovo.

Blunt said he was willing to risk a court martial by rejecting the order from a US General.

But he was backed by British General Sir Mike Jackson, who told him "I'm not going to have my soldiers be responsible for starting World War 3".

Blunt was ordered to seize an airfield - but the Russians had got there first.

In an interview with BBC Radio 5Live, to be broadcast later on Sunday, he said: "I was given the direct command to overpower the 200 or so Russians who were there.

"I was the lead officer with my troop of men behind us ... The soldiers directly behind me were from the Parachute Regiment, so they're obviously game for the fight.

"The direct command [that] came in from General Wesley Clark was to overpower them. Various words were used that seemed unusual to us. Words such as 'destroy' came down the radio."

'Mad situation'

The confusion surrounding the taking of Pristina airfield in 1999 has been written about in political memoirs, and was widely reported at the time.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11753050

see toon at top...

MacDILL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. — The Obama administration plans to bolster the American military presence in the Persian Gulf after it withdraws the remaining troops from Iraq this year, according to officials and diplomats. That repositioning could include new combat forces in Kuwait able to respond to a collapse of security in Iraq or a military confrontation with Iran.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/world/middleeast/united-states-plans-post-iraq-troop-increase-in-persian-gulf.html?hp

The Holy Triumvirate — The United States, NATO, and the European Union — or an approved segment thereof, can usually get what they want. They wanted Saddam Hussein out, and soon he was swinging from a rope. They wanted the Taliban ousted from power, and, using overwhelming force, that was achieved rather quickly. They wanted Moammar Gaddafi's rule to come to an end, and before very long he suffered a horrible death. Jean-Bertrand Aristide was democratically elected, but this black man who didn't know his place was sent into distant exile by the United States and France in 2004. Iraq and Libya were the two most modern, educated and secular states in the Middle East; now all four of these countries could qualify as failed states.

These are some of the examples from the past decade of how the Holy Triumvirate recognizes no higher power and believes, literally, that they can do whatever they want in the world, to whomever they want, for as long as they want, and call it whatever they want, like "humanitarian intervention". The 19th- and 20th-century colonialist-imperialist mentality is alive and well in the West.

Next on their agenda: the removal of Bashar al-Assad of Syria. As with Gaddafi, the ground is being laid with continual news reports — from CNN to al Jazeera — of Assad's alleged barbarity, presented as both uncompromising and unprovoked. After months of this media onslaught who can doubt that what's happening in Syria is yet another of those cherished Arab Spring "popular uprisings" against a "brutal dictator" who must be overthrown? And that the Assad government is overwhelmingly the cause of the violence.

Assad actually appears to have a large measure of popularity, not only in Syria, but elsewhere in the Middle East. This includes not just fellow Alawites, but Syria's two million Christians and no small number of Sunnis. Gaddafi had at least as much support in Libya and elsewhere in Africa. The difference between the two cases, at least so far, is that the Holy Triumvirate bombed and machine-gunned Libya daily for seven months, unceasingly, crushing the pro-government forces, as well as Gaddafi himself, and effecting the Triumvirate's treasured "regime change". Now, rampant chaos, anarchy, looting and shooting, revenge murders, tribal war, militia war, religious war, civil war, the most awful racism against the black population, loss of their cherished welfare state, and possible dismemberment of the country into several mini-states are the new daily life for the Libyan people. The capital city of Tripoli is "wallowing in four months of uncollected garbage" because the landfill is controlled by a faction that doesn't want the trash of another faction.1 Just imagine what has happened to the country's infrastructure. This may be what Syria has to look forward to if the Triumvirate gets its way, although the Masters of the Universe undoubtedly believe that the people of Libya should be grateful to them for their "liberation".

As to the current violence in Syria, we must consider the numerous reports of forces providing military support to the Syrian rebels — the UK, France, the US, Turkey, Israel, Qatar, the Gulf states, and everyone's favorite champion of freedom and democracy, Saudi Arabia; with Syria claiming to have captured some 14 French soldiers; plus individual jihadists and mercenaries from Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Libya, et al, joining the anti-government forces, their number including al-Qaeda veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who are likely behind the car bombs in an attempt to create chaos and destabilize the country. This may mark the third time the United States has been on the same side as al-Qaeda, adding to Afghanistan and Libya.

Stratfor, the private and conservative American intelligence firm with high-level connections, reported that "most of the opposition's more serious claims have turned out to be grossly exaggerated or simply untrue." Opposition groups including the Syrian National Council, the Free Syrian Army and the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights began disseminating "claims that regime forces besieged Homs and imposed a 72-hour deadline for Syrian defectors to surrender themselves and their weapons or face a potential massacre." That news made international headlines. Stratfor's investigation, however, found "no signs of a massacre," and declared that "opposition forces have an interest in portraying an impending massacre, hoping to mimic the conditions that propelled a foreign military intervention in Libya." Stratfor added that any suggestions of massacres are unlikely because the Syrian "regime has calibrated its crackdowns to avoid just such a scenario. Regime forces have been careful to avoid the high casualty numbers that could lead to an intervention based on humanitarian grounds."2

Reva Bhalla, Stratfor's Director of Analysis, reported in a December 2011 email on a meeting she attended at the Pentagon about Syria: "After a couple hours of talking, they said without saying that SOF [Special Operation Forces] teams (presumably from US, UK, France, Jordan, Turkey) are already on the ground focused on recce [reconnaissance] missions and training opposition forces." We know of Bhalla's comments thanks to the 5 million Stratfor emails obtained by the Internet hacker group Anonymous in December and passed on to Wikileaks.3

Human Rights Watch has reported that both Syrian government security forces and Syria's armed rebels have committed serious human rights abuses, including kidnapings, torture, and executions. But only the Holy Triumvirate can get away with the sanctions they love to impose. Assad's wife is now banned from traveling to EU countries and any assets she may have there are frozen. Same for Assad's mother, sister and sister-in-law, as well as eight of his government ministers. Assad himself received the same treatment last May.4 Because the Triumvirate can.

On March 25, the US and Turkish governments announced that they were discussing sending non-lethal aid to the Syrian opposition, implying quite clearly that until then they had not been engaged in such activity.5 But according to a US embassy cable, revealed by Wikileaks, since at least 2006 the United States has been funding political opposition groups in Syria as well as the London-based satellite TV channel, Barada TV, run by Syrian exiles, that beams anti-government programming into the country. The cable further stated that Syrian authorities "would undoubtedly view any U.S. funds going to illegal political groups as tantamount to supporting regime change."

Regime change in Syria has been on the neo-conservative wish list since at least 2002 when John Bolton, Undersecretary of State under George W. Bush, came up with a project to simultaneously break up Libya and Syria. He called the two states along with Cuba "The Axis Of Evil". On a FOX News appearance in 2011 Bolton said that the United States should have overthrown the Syrian government right after they overthrew Saddam Hussein. Amongst Syria's crimes have been their close relations with Iran, Hezbollah (in Lebanon), the Palestinian resistance, and Russia, and their failure to conclude a peace treaty with Israel, unlike Jordan and Egypt; all this constituting evidence to the Holy Triumvirate of Syria, like Aristide, being "uppity".

The clinical megalomania of the Holy Triumvirate can scarcely be exaggerated. And never prosecuted.

A closing word from Cui Tiankai, Chinese vice foreign minister for United States affairs:

‘The US has the strongest military in the world and spends more than any other country. But the US always feels unsafe or insecure about other countries. ... I suggest the United States spend more time thinking about how to make other countries feel less worried about the United States.’

 

Anti-Empire Report