Monday 7th of October 2024

our killing fields .....

‘Saddam was a wicked tyrant, yet he was our wicked tyrant, and so not a word was uttered about his war crimes and crimes against humanity, and especially muted to our ears and made blind to our eyes was his use of American WMD technology against both Iranians and Kurds.  He was our evildoer, just like so many before and after him, from all corners of the globe, from Marcos to Suharto to Pinochet to Batista to Mobutu, all dictators whose hands were made bloody by the support and encouragement America’s government engendered. Saddam maintained power in large part thanks to American generosity and financing, much the same as dozens of US supported dictators have for decades.  It was only when he was no longer needed to further the interests of America that he became expendable. It was when his character exceeded his allotted power, when his ego thought itself capable of more than he could handle that he went from ally shaking hands with Donald Rumsfeld to dictator and tyrant used to manipulate the fears of bed-wetting Americans. 

 

Once expendable, Saddam became, like all once-favoured despots and freedom fighters whose usefulness has expired, a bogeyman used to captivate the minds of American citizens.  Almost overnight Saddam became the reincarnation of Hitler, a dictator that prevented “freedom and democracy” from his people, a madman that had attacked his neighbour Kuwait, even though his neighbour was siphoning oil away from Iraqi fields and even though Kuwait had once been claimed by the peoples and lands of modern day Iraq, taken away from them by British interests at the turn of the 20th century and made a sovereign nation ruled by British supported monarchs.  The machines of propaganda had been turned on and miraculously, Saddam’s use of WMD was shouted for the world to hear, images of rotting Kurdish corpses used to turn friend into foe, his moustache spawning fear and insecurity in the minds of America’s citizens. The merciless engine of propaganda had been turned on.’ 

 

Oil, Simply Oil

Driven by myth

Listening to ABC radio breakfast at 6:35 Recoilless Guns!! What a blessing, what a sublime recognition of humanity's invincible progress. Who invented gunpowder, anyway?

Myth #1 - American specialness, and their god-given rights to bear arms, and therefore to shoot dead anyone who disagrees with them.

Myth #2 - Muslims wanting revenge, as promulgated in Last Best Chance, for a fictional 4 million, in nuclear explosions timed to take place on an auspicious date. It's easy to believe the Hamas victory is related to Iran's posturing.

From Wayne Madsen's WMR:
... Southeast Asian intelligence sources report that Burma's (Myanmar's) recent abrupt decision to move its capital from Rangoon (Yangon) to remote Pyinmana, 200 miles to the north, is a result of Chinese intelligence warnings to its Burmese allies about the effects of radiation resulting from a U.S. conventional or tactical nuclear attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. There is concern that a series of attacks on Iranian nuclear installations will create a Chernobyl-like radioactive cloud that would be caught up in monsoon weather in the Indian Ocean. ...

OTOH, it is as likely that the Burmese made the move on the strength of an astrological forecast. In which case, seek solace in  W.B.Yeats, or Rowan Atkinson ('Every joke has a victim'):
... It is absolutely right and reasonable that religions should be protected from threatening language, behaviour and written material but I support the amendment to retain the right to abuse and insult, because of the essentially irrational nature of religious beliefs. That is not to dismiss them: indeed, I'm a great believer that the most important and most sustaining things in life are essentially irrational. Love, beauty, art, friendship, music, spirituality of whatever form, these things make no rational sense yet they are more important than any qualities that are rationally measurable. Those who think that, as they lie on their deathbed, they will be able to judge the success of their lives by how big a BMW they could afford at the end of it, are in for a big surprise. However, it's their irrational nature that leaves religious beliefs wide open to interpretation, allowing occasionally practices to be established that are wholly contrary to the mores of a civilised, liberal society. ...

Counting the dead

the arch war criminal .....

‘The CIA official in charge of intelligence on the Middle
East until last year has accused the Bush administration of ignoring
assessments that sanctions and weapons inspections were the best way to deal
with Saddam Hussein, and that an invasion would have a "messy
aftermath". 

In an article in the next edition
of the bimonthly journal, Foreign Affairs, Paul Pillar, has become the
highest-ranking CIA official from the prewar period to accuse the White House
of manipulating the intelligence on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction.

The allegations contradict the
findings of two official inquiries into the intelligence debacle, which have
largely blamed the CIA and absolved the administration. They also emerged on
the day it was reported that Lewis Libby, a former aide to Vice-President Dick
Cheney, had told a grand jury that he had been "ordered" by "his
superiors" to leak classified WMD information to the press to bolster the
case for going to war.’

Bush Ignored CIA
Advice On Iraq, Says Former Spy