Middle East expert Juan Cole on the newly exposed Pentagon campaign to influence military ‘experts’ on television (see previous post) to paint a more rosy picture of military operations:
“You always suspected these things about corporate media coverage of Iraq, but seeing it in cold black and white is bracing. I have more than once been put opposite some sunshine peddler on radio or television and wondered whether the person was on the take”
A global recession is imminent
Never fear…Our Commander in chief tells us the economy is strong.
But some actually had it right all along. Some commentary from before we went to war, predicting that a prolonged war in the middle east would lead to a global recession:
Robert Shapiro, former undersecretary of commerce in the Clinton administration, 10/2/02:
“If the conflict wears on or, worse, spreads, the economic consequences become very serious. Late last year, George Perry at the Brookings Institution ran some simulations and found that after taking into account a reasonable use of oil reserves, a cut in world oil production of just 6.5 percent a year would send the United States and the world into recession.”
Independent, 11/16/02
“A war against Iraq could cost the United States hundreds of billions of dollars, play havoc with an already depressed domestic economy and tip the world into recession because of the adverse effect on oil prices, inflation and interest rates, an academic study [by William Nordhaus, Sterling professor of economics at Yale University] has warned.”
CBS MarketWatch, 3/20/03
“If war with Iraq drags on longer than the few weeks or months most are predicting, corporate revenues will be flat for the coming year and will put the U.S. economy at risk of recession, according to a poll of chief financial officers.
From Newsweek:
John Arquilla, an intelligence and counterinsurgency expert at the Naval Postgraduate School, is even harsher in his assessment of Petraeus:
“I think Colin Powell used dodgy information to get us into the war, and Petraeus is using dodgy information to keep us there,” he said. “His political talking points are all very clear: the continued references he made to the danger of Al Qaeda in Iraq, for example, even though it represents only somewhere between 2 and 5 percent of the total insurgency. The continued references to Iran, when in fact the Iranians have had a lot to do with stability in the Shiite portion of the country.
And it’s not at all clear why things are a little better now. Is it because there are more troops, or is it because we’re negotiating with the insurgents and have moved to small operating outposts? On any given day we don’t have more than 20,000 troops operating. The glacial pace of reductions beggars the imagination.”
What more is there to say about the Petraeus and Crocker show today, predictably unveiling nothing but more fucking of America.
Fucking of the troops - those killed for George’s messianic visions, or worse, maimed for life. Fucking of their families - the sons and daughters of who live with this disaster every second and have to buy into it because…Christ…How can you admit that this hellish life is all a mistake?
Fucking of our standing in the world - Yes, as a superpower but an often benevolent one. Fucking of the good will and sympathy we had after 9-11. Fucking of world opinion of the U.S.
Fucking of previous military leaders who didn’t back the party line. Fucking of the Iraq Study Group, Fucking of the GAO report on the surge…Fucking of our own intelligence agencies, who say we’re breeding terrorists over there faster than we can kill them.
Fucking of the real numbers - Sectarian violence, Children dying, poor levels of electricity and water, increases in disease, families displaced.
Fucking of the Iraqi people yet again, who in the latest BBC poll say life is worse for them and that the surge isn’t working.
Fucking of the future of America - not just of our strength in the world but our future health care, education, your children’s Social Security, our roads and bridges.
It goes on…and who is to blame? The Neocons, for sure. The party in power…the media…Our loser reps in Congress. All the bit players on the inside who see the wrongs everyday and bite their tongues either in fear or in denial.
And the American people as one. Including you and I.
The next step will be the ultimate wag the dog. A bad sequel that, someday, we will realize already played out 5 years ago. A new marketing prgram that somehow sounds familiar. After all, why change something that worked so well (and continues to)?
Those paying attention lately will not be surprised to find out the latest product will be another attack - this time on Iran. Sure, we could never send in ground troops, but we can bomb he hell out of them.
You don’t think the American people will go for it? It won’t happen again? I hope you’re right, but standby to be barraged with propaganda designed to convince say, 1/3 of the people that Iran is an imminent threat that needs to be handled. What about the other 66 percent?
Fuck the rest! That’s their feeling - these guys DO NOT CARE.
They have nothing to lose. They are going out with their biggest bang yet.
9-11. Iraq. Iran.
Cheney will be pushing it, but through his lapdog’s 9-11 memorial speech.
Start paying attention. Listen to the war drums. Be aware. Warn your friends.
Maybe as a nation we can head this one off…It will either take impeachment…or a lot of people in high places who truly are fed up…or a lot of marching in the streets.
General Petraeus’ 6-month surge report is coming soon, and I feel about as much excitement as I would watching a bad western, knowing it will be a happy ending and our hero will ride off into the sunset.
The media will be all ‘a-twitter’ for a few days, but we all know what it will say, or at least what the spin will be. Sometimes I wonder why they even bother. I guess they have to pretend…
As a nation, we’ve now forgotten the last giantly hyped ‘benchmark’ report, the Iraq Study Group report, though it was less than a year ago. This was the one we all anxiously awaited, then watched as the Bush team downplayed it and somehow decided to take a 180 degree turn and increase our troop levels.
Last week an incredibly bleak report on the Iraq political situation came and went, making news for a day or two, but likely to be forgotten. The GAO report on the Iraq surge (which could not have been more critical of the claimed progress in Iraq) was released (leaked?) a week earlier than expected, so as to make news before the White House had a chance to whitewash it (though they are still doing so).
Recently, Our fearless leader has begun a campaign of comparing this war to previous wars, somehow attempting to twist the dire struggle in Iraq to previous world struggles against fascism, or aggression, or…who knows?
Now, the man who knew nothing of Sunnis and Shiites is lecturing the country in new versions of war history which, once again, would be highly amusing if the stakes were not so depressing. As one military analyst said:
“This was history written by speechwriters without regard to history”
Now, for the first time, the Boy Commander even compares Iraq to Vietnam, after claiming for several years that the comparison is unfair. In this case his spin was so outrageous that the Washington Post reported:
“Bush’s most controversial assertion — that U.S. troops could have prevailed in Vietnam had they stayed longer — is a neoconservative fantasy that almost all historians ridicule. But the overall campaign may still work”
Where will it end?
Perhaps the more realistic (not cynical…you can’t be too cynical about these guys) will foresee the selling of some bullshit benchmark progress on the media and the people. Perhaps they will expect the WDNBOC (Wimpy-Bend over-Do Nothing-Congress) to debate it in a flurry of hot air for a few days…then once again, in fear of looking weak (or somehow not supporting the troops), hand over another $50,000,000,000 (at the least) to continue Bush’s masturbatory ’spreading of democracy.’
I think it will end, as all stories do, with an unexpected twist. One that, in hindsight, was really not so unexpected.
To be continued tomorrow. Stay tuned…
UPDATE: TO BE CONTINUED ON 9/10/07
(IN ORDER TO BRING THE CONTINUATION OF STORY ON THE EVE OF THE RELEASE OF THE ADMINISTRATIONS ‘NEW PRODUCT.’)
“How many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth?”
This week video surfaced from 1994 of Dick Cheney being asked about the decision to NOT continue on into Baghdad at the end of Gulf War I.
As I understand it, he was speaking to the “Association of Wingnuts Who Feel We Should Invade The Rest of The World,” or American Enterprise Institute for short:
Q: Do you think the U.S., or U.N. forces, should have moved into Baghdad?
A: No.
Q: Why not?
A: Because if we’d gone to Baghdad we would have been all alone. There wouldn’t have been anybody else with us. There would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq.
Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein’s government, then what are you going to put in its place? That’s a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off: part of it, the Syrians would like to have to the west, part of it — eastern Iraq — the Iranians would like to claim, they fought over it for eight years. In the north you’ve got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey.
It’s a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.
The other thing was casualties. Everyone was impressed with the fact we were able to do our job with as few casualties as we had. But for the 146 Americans killed in action, and for their families — it wasn’t a cheap war. And the question for the president, in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad, took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein, was how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth?
Our judgment was, not very many, and I think we got it right.
This is not a joke!
Yet another brilliant idea to help bring stability to the Middle East:
“The United States has asked Israel to check the possibility of pumping oil from Iraq to the oil refineries in Haifa. The request came in a telegram last week from a senior Pentagon official to a top Foreign Ministry official in Jerusalem.
The (Israeli) Prime Minister’s Office, which views the pipeline to Haifa as a “bonus” the U.S. could give to Israel in return for its unequivocal support for the American-led campaign in Iraq, had asked the Americans for the official telegram.
The new pipeline would take oil from the Kirkuk area, where some 40 percent of Iraqi oil is produced, and transport it via Mosul, and then across Jordan to Israel.”
While the administration and the media keep scapegoating Iran and Syria for the mayhem in Iraq:
Some media outlets report that the insurgency is largely made up of Iraqis, and that foreign fighters are but a small minority of the EDTWAUHIWDFTT.** (In effect, the ‘evil-doers’ are simply Iraqis who are fighting the occupation of their land by a hostile foreign power).
The LA Times reports in a sobering article that the overwhelming majority of the inurgensts come not from Syria or Iran but from our “Ally,” Saudi Arabia. (Coincidentally, 15 of the 19 9-11 hijackers also came from Saudi Arabia).
And finally, our own government released a study this week which basically said that we cannot account for 190,000 guns issued to Iraq security forces in the last two years (not to mention hundreds of thousands of helmets and body armor pieces).
So tell me again who is arming the insurgents?
**EDTWAUHIWDFTT: ‘Evil-Doers-That-Will-Attack-Us-Here-If-We-Don’t-Fight-Them-There’
Iraqi legislators pass a law designed to (possibly) end the occupation of their country
How does this go unreported?
What kind of fucking proof is needed that this occupation is not desired (as claimed) by the Iraqis!
Long story short: A bill passed this week by the Iraqi parliament requires their government to seek parliamentary permission for asking the United Nations to extend the mandate of U.S.-led forces in Iraq when the existing request expires in December.
It reflects growing disenchantment with the U.S.-backed government, and particularly Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. How odd that the democrats are too paralyzed with fear to get us out, yet a contentious, 2 year old parliament may come to the rescue.
It may not be making ANY news now, but let’s see what happens in December…
Speaking of ‘Crazies’ seeking war…(see previous post, below this one)
The above is an actual headline on the ABC news website.
The third paragraph, however, shows (to anyone with at least the mental capacity of Terri Schiavo) the whole premise to be questionable (or, at least nothing new):
“Secretary of Defense Robert Gates stopped short earlier this week of blaming Iran, saying the U.S. did not have evidence ‘of the involvement of the Iranian government in support of the Taliban.’”
Well… would that not put the “red-handed” claim to bed for the moment?
Apparently not. The article goes on to make a number of dubious statements, almost all attributed to “a senior coalition official” (not named, of course):
“Clear evidence of Iran’s involvement…”
“Part of a considered policy…”
“Clear indications that [munitions recovered in two Iranian convoys] originated in Iran…”
“Iran has provided (lethal EFPs, or explosive formed projectiles, the roadside bombs) to Iraqi insurgents with deadly results…”
“These clearly have the hallmarks of the Iranian Revolution Guards”
The only other comments are from some closet neo-con wingnut at the Rand Institute who seems to make a living writing about the projection of American power abroad.
Wow. after all the flak about Iraq I would expect the lapdogs to be a little subtler this time around.
But the ‘hopeful’ part is in the comments ABC received. Maybe the party’s over for this kind of reporting?
Almost all the comments I read attacked the sensational headline and lack of real sources:
“Please don’t become part of the new neo con push for a new war in Iran. Check and double check your sources. We had far too much of the media serving as the mouthpiece for this administration leading up to the Iraq war. We don’t need another media encouraged disaster.”
“As soon as I see this reported by a reputable source that is not a member of the United States corporate media, I’ll start believing it. ABC News, like the rest of the American media, helped the Bush Administration lie us into the quagmire in Iraq. The RAND Corporation, who they quote so freely, is run by people who stand to make BILLIONS off of the next war that we are lied into. Let me hear this from someone who doesn’t stand to make a profit off of the next military misadventure.”
“If the report has evidence that the Iranian government is behind it, then, sure, make that headline, but hiding behind “Report says” and analysis of unnamed official without evidence should no longer be acceptable reporting in this country…Not after similar reporting contributed to the war in Iraq.”
“Read the article three or four times. You will see that both sources are SPECULATING that the Iranian government is inolved. COMPLETELY SPECULATING. So why does ABCNEWS say Iran was caught ‘red handed’? Why is this disinformation being used on the American public? For what purpose are we being lied to? Why are the powers that be trying so hard to get another diastrous war started?”
Write to ABC news. Let ‘em know how shameless they are, or go to the article above and post a comment (It takes 5 seconds).
UPDATE (6/7/07) - NATO Force General debunks claims:
Another news article out today centers on a direct rebuttal from U.S. Army General Dan McNeill, commander of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force. Interesting, as the ABC news site specifically attributed the ‘red-handed’ discovery to NATO:
Although he confirmed that NATO did intercept two convoys of weapons, he said there is no clear evidence that Iran is supplying the Taliban with weapons, and that it is common in Afghanistan to encounter weapons that originate in other countries.
General McNeill mentions the finding of mortar rounds of Iranian origin in one convoy, as well as explosives similar to the U.S.-made C-4 in the other.
“Beyond that, there’s not much significant to report on these two convoys,” he said.