War champions on the job

After McChrystal: What Now? by Jim Lobe

"Led by Sen. John McCain and many of the same neoconservatives who championed the war in Iraq, hawks are calling on President Barack Obama to abandon his July 2011 timetable for beginning to withdraw U.S. combat troops in favor of an open-ended military commitment to achieve “victory” over the Taliban and al-Qaeda."

Bill

5 Basic Reasons the US Doesn't Need to Be in Afghanistan

After the McChrystal Affair, Let's Talk About the 5 Basic Reasons the US Doesn't Need to Be in Afghanistan By Malou Innocent

This article - and others on this subject - point to the foolishness of the Afghanistan invasion and occupation.

At this point, only a fool would think we're winning anything over there.

What none of these articles dare to say, however, is despite all of the compelling reasons we shouldn't be there, why we are there.

The people behind the scenes who pull the strings of our military invasion of the Middle East - the Zionists embedded in Washington, Wall Street and - foremost - our information supply - are using Afghanistan as a parking lot for our troops until they either get or can fabricate a reason for the next phase of their war.

The one thing - the only thing - they wouldn't tolerate is the withdrawal of our troops from the Middle East, because it would leave their beloved Israel surrounded by enemies intent on it's destruction. True or not, it's what they believe. Have you ever heard the term "self-fulling prophecy"? It's where something is predicted, and the act of predicting it helps to make it happen.

Personally, I gave up on Israel a long time ago. I've called it a failure and I believe it's a major albatross around America's neck. My sympathies are far greater for the Palestinians, and I think nowadays many Americans finally see it this way too, despite the propaganda machine's mastery of the psychology of persuasion (and the polls that measure it's success - comprende?).

We're not going to see the changes we desperately need until we change the basis of our information supply (to the Internet, obviously), and remove from the election process. These are giant tasks - but they will decide our fate.

I want to make one thought clear: I'm not against the Jewish people, it's Zionism that's killing us, literally.


Bill

McChrystal

I think McChrystal schemed to get fired.

Why would he want it? I think it's because he sees his position as untenable, and that no matter what he does, it's downhill from here. He knows full well the lessons of history, even though too many Americans obviously don't.

He's washing his hands of it now, before it and his reputation start to tank.

He knows that being fired by Obama while still being respected by the public is a badge of honor that will be exploited by the Neocon-connected circuit, with speaking fees through the moon. With him, the propagandists get an ongoing series of fresh McChrystal stories to put in people's faces. And they just love splashing Irish names and faces on the military image.

Yup, going the circuit route will be a major win-win for both McChrystal and the Neocon gang, so long as he doesn't cross them. He may even hate this war, and he may well see it as unwinnable, but he's still a military man at heart, so if that's all he's called upon to be, I'm sure he'll be on Fox, MSNBC, CNN and the other propaganda channels telling us about some real exciting shit. Can you hear him now, yelling about how we should have done this or that to win the war?

But will he talk about the Big Picture, the invasion of the Middle East? Nope. That's not part of the deal. If he did that, he would be him crossing them. But we can expect some real tough talk on everything else. Real titillating stuff that keeps most people glued to the channel.

And Obama? The Neocon gang has little use for him, but so long as he stays the course and leaves their people in place and running things, it looks like they'll keep him on. But if he slips up by turning against them, by, for example, deciding to pull the military out of the Middle East altogether, then they'll pull out some of the Big Guns they're sitting on and fry him alive. Maybe they've got nothing on him, but I doubt it - he is, after all, still human. And we all make mistakes. What we don't realize - yet - is just how powerful computers, databases and networks really are. If we had the same access the Neocon gang has, we'd also be able to get that information. It's all there, in the "computer", for those with the correct access codes.

Obama is not a fool, but he thinks of himself as a realist, and he's bought lock, stock and barrel into the arguments that support that point of view.

But America was created by idealists, not realists. The realists wanted to stay with the King. The Bill of Rights wasn't crafted for the government's benefit, it was to limit their power.

Well, the Neocon gang sure found some clever ways around that (war on terrorism, war on drugs, invasion of Middle East, legislation that setup the Wall Street heist), didn't they?

Right now the propaganda machine has gotten people riveted on details and tactics, such as the McChrystal story - which other then something to talk about has no affect on us personally at all - it's just a propagandists tool, to puff something so much that people talk about it.

And we - we continue to send our family, friends and neighbors to go and happily kill, die, maim and destroy for the cause.

Stop and think! Really think about it. What are we really doing over there?

I'll tell you what we're doing: we're serving the Neocon gang's agenda, and their propaganda machine has way too many people hypnotized. Can you hear Goebbels chuckling from his grave?



Bill

"Afghanistan is not in our vital interest – there's nothing for us there."

Some quotes below from The Runaway General By Michael Hastings in the current issue of Rolling Stone magazine.

The quotes are below, and there are more to be found in Huffington Post articles, such as this one

The most interesting part of all this is that it's a discussion of tactics, but whenever the matter of strategy comes up, nobody seems to know - while all the time it's very obvious: our military is in Afghanistan precisely because the people who really pull the strings - the Neocon gang and their handlers in AIPAC and Tel Aviv, the people who brought us the military invasion of the Middle East in the first place, will not permit our troops to come home, because when they are pulled out, they wouldn't go back - and that will leave our "friend" Israel without the military muscle it needs to establish authority in the region. So our troops are parked in Afghanistan until the Next Big War, which is waiting to be sparked by the gang. That is, NOBODY thinks Afghanistan is a war that can be won (as this article points out several times), yet NOBODY is looking at the big picture of why we're really there in the first place.

""Afghanistan is not in our vital interest – there's nothing for us there." says Marc Sageman, a former CIA case officer who has extensive experience in the region.

...

"They are trying to manipulate perceptions because there is no definition of victory – because victory is not even defined or recognizable," says Celeste Ward

...

After nine years of war, the Taliban simply remains too strongly entrenched for the U.S. military to openly attack. The very people that COIN seeks to win over – the Afghan people – do not want us there. Our supposed ally, President Karzai, used his influence to delay the offensive, and the massive influx of aid championed by McChrystal is likely only to make things worse. "Throwing money at the problem exacerbates the problem," says Andrew Wilder, an expert at Tufts University who has studied the effect of aid in southern Afghanistan. "A tsunami of cash fuels corruption, delegitimizes the government and creates an environment where we're picking winners and losers" – a process that fuels resentment and hostility among the civilian population. So far, counterinsurgency has succeeded only in creating a never-ending demand for the primary product supplied by the military: perpetual war. There is a reason that President Obama studiously avoids using the word "victory" when he talks about Afghanistan. Winning, it would seem, is not really possible. Not even with Stanley McChrystal in charge. "

Bill

So sick of bad news!

I follow the news, like many people, because we live in extremely difficult times, and knowledge sharing is all we have to try and repair our seriously, if not mortally, wounded country.

Once again, today I observe that most of the big stories are bad news stories. We've got at least a half million people at war in at least two foreign countries, neither of which we can win in any meaningful sense of the word. We and our children and their children are under a mountain of debt caused by some very crooked people, so many of our good jobs have moved overseas, government authority over our lives has vastly increased as our civil liberties are significantly decreasing. People who can't even spell the word privacy will soon learn the full meaning of the word.

The list goes on. Here's a particularly well written report published today on Alternet Are We Going Down Like the Soviets? By Tom Engelhardt

It all so sickening.

What SHOULD we be reading about?

Where's the project to take the money out of politics?
Where's the amendment protecting our privacy?
Why haven't the people who lied to us to launch the invasion of Iraq been put on trial for war crimes?
Why haven't the people who robbed our tax money on trial for theft?
Where are the good jobs for Americans programs?
Where's the leadership for creating world class alternative energy sources?
Why aren't we using our computers and nurses for the majority of our health care needs?
Why isn't the body of American case law online for all to share?
Why can't we explore government spending of our tax money to the detail level?

Where are these and many other significant projects that people can imagine, designed to make the quality of our lives and the world around us better? Why is it the while the list of projects we should be doing are at a standstill, while the list of what we shouldn't be doing continues to grow?

I've been around 62 years, and since my childhood I have seen incredible advances in machines and technology. Since I've earned my living programming computers for the past 40 years, I'll claim enough insight to sit here and yell very loudly over what I see.

I became involved with computers because I realized their potential to change our lives for the better. But seeing what actually happened, and is happening at an alarming rate, is changing our lives alright, but not for the better at all. Instead they are being used to control us in ways that far too many people don't even realize is possible.

I see manufacturing plants run by robots, desktop computers more powerful then early mainframes, instant information, astonishing advances in all the sciences, and so on. But look at what happened, think about what could be happening, and not only feel the angst, but do something. Talk with your family and friends. Write blogs and articles, or responses. But don't just sit there and do nothing!


Bill

American Military Casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan Now Exceed 500,000

American Military Casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan Now Exceed 500,000 by Matthew Nasuti

The title speaks for itself, as does the supporting data in the article.

Personal comment: I've lived with a hearing impairment from the Vietnam war. People just don't realize how loud explosions really are. Put it this way: if movie theaters duplicated the sound of real explosions, nobody would go to the movies (of course the same is true of sights and smells, but this is about hearing).


Bill

Retirements: the party line versus the truth

The NY Times, using the typical clever wording we've become so accustomed to, has a front page story today entitled: "In Budget Crisis, States Take Aim at Pension Costs" By Mary Williams Walsh

The story lead says "Many states, acknowledging that they have promised pensions they cannot afford, are reining in benefits — even for people yet to be hired."

If you read the story, it goes on and on about cuts states are making and the hard times ahead. The gist is that *we* have a big problem because states can't afford our retirements.

Nowhere, as we've come to expect from one of the propaganda machine's largest speakers, the so-called "paper of record" is any mention of the fact that the people we trusted with our retirements found a way to squander our money for their wars and the Wall Street heist.


Bill