Victory In Iraq
Condescending Rice
 01/15/2006: While I am sure many have seen the sound bytes, offered up by the media, of Dr. Rice during the last
several days of congressional hearings, the full impact of Dr.
Rice's testimony can only be digested after hours of review. Of
course, C-SPAN continues to offer this programming, and of
course, I have had the great pleasure of spending some time
reviewing the hearings, more than once.
My initial impressions changed dramatically with time as what
first appeared as credible testimony morphed into well practiced
scripts all cleverly crafted to support her president's
ideology. Victory in Iraq.
Cleverly, because any succinct review of the lectures, and
lectures they were, results in very convincing talking points,
well practiced over the years, to shine the light on our President's good and moral intentions.
And despite constant head shaking up and down, side to side, and
despite very lengthy explanations designed either to limit the number of
questions posed, or to offer up straw men with condescending
lectures of history, sprinkled with a few unforeseen setbacks,
stern reminders of language semantics like surge, escalation,
augmentation, redeployment, toss in some menacing finger and
hand waiving, a few proclamations of bravado, a few hushed
chuckles, can you take more than eight hours
of testimony?,... one thing was not said.
How Long? How Much?
I mean, how long and how much?
The 'New Way Forward' is a six month extension of 'Stay the
Course'.
The twenty thousand troops is perhaps 5% of the total boot power
required for the job, as defined by our new (Iraq) General David Petraeus. Petraeus wrote the War Department’s updated manual on
counterinsurgency.
President Bush thinks we will all thank him in thirty years.
Lets see, $2 billion/week times 52 weeks times 30 years. $3,120
billion! The price tag for changing democracy in Iraq, the
Mission Accomplished, to a Republic. Read “Democracy
is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner.
Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.” -
Benjamin Franklin
In 30 years, our security will be assured by middle eastern
democracies, democracies that don't invade others, just like,
um, us.
In 30 years we will have secured energy resources that will
last for, well, about 30 years!
Oh yeah, I almost forgot, Iran and Syria.
And to drive the point home, today, President Bush made talking
points of our need to kill, kill, kill, kill the bad guys and
announced that any lawyer that messes around with the clients of
GitMo, say, in an effort to provide the basic right of habeas
corpus, should face economic repercussions.
The New Way Forward?
Dr. Rice did serve up one salient point, where's your plan?
Certainly one other must exist? Certainly it involves eliminating the middle east as a strategic interest of the
United States.
And Congress is attempting to ask this question, with 4 trillion
reasons to do so, not to mention all that messy red stuff. We
could, and should, ignore the child that cries to get attention,
while they cry, and work to eliminate an unsustainable
dependence on the middle east, you do remember, that oil
addiction?
Dr. Rice, thank you for clarifying the notion that we are on a modern day crusade,
a necessary battle to prevent the religious caliphate, complete with modern day urban warfare, and laced with moral piety. It has been a thousand years since the world last
witnessed such a spectacle.
And no Dr. Rice, I don't need a PhD to see this, just a bit of
imagination free of dogma. You and your President's vision is
one of endless war, to ensure our security. It is little wonder
that your administration denies a civil war exists in Iraq, for
the admission would end your war powers authority granted by
congress, war powers that were obtained by deception, and war
powers that have been abused to deceive the American public to
your true agenda.
I reject this vision. No alternative? Please, we could be well
on our way to oil independence within 10 years, at considerable
cost savings. Certainly it would help eliminate a major source
of funding to terrorists, the black gold, at a cost savings of
trillions of tax dollars. It's not quite as sexy as waging war,
nor as news worthy, nor quite as bloody.
Imagine, just for a split second, our President calling us to
greatness, to transform the United States to a 21st century
economy, one free of fossil fuels, to challenge us all to
greatness, to promote new technologies, to employ our people, to
create the blueprint for societies for the next century, to
create a new economic basis for exports, and to free our people
from the threat stemming from Peak Oil.
Our President recently spoke of healing our wounds after the
death of President Gerald Ford, relating that the decision to
pardon President Nixon was an unpopular decision that led to
the loss of an election for President Ford.
It was not the
popularity of the decision that was note worthy, it was the
healing of the wounds.
It is time we heal the wounds of 9/11.
Bush Serves Fried Rice
 (01/11/2007): President Bush hit the ground running today,
his first day of 'The New Way Forward', offering up Secretary of State Dr. Condoleezza Rice to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and showing he is
serious, taking his first steps, toward making good on his
promise last night to stop Iranian intervention in Iraq by detaining six Iranians in
Iraq and signing orders to extend the tours of duty of approx.
1800 marines.
The Senate feasted on fried Rice in a profound meeting as our
Secretary of State demonstrated her uncanny skills and knowledge
vs. a flurry, from Senator after Senator, all determined to
begin to understand how our President's 'New Way Forward'
differs from 'Stay The Course'.
Dr. Rice fought valiantly, but managed to win only one or two
rounds with only two senators opting to stay out of the ring.
While demonstrating that our administration has considered a
comprehensive list of the various facets of Iraq, her
explanations were all doomed for failure, as they proceeded from
premises that the American public clearly rejected during the
midterm elections. As Patrick Buchanan related last night,
American Imperialism is at its end.
Media concerns also reacted to our President's speech last night
with Chris Matthews of MSNBC actively questioning whether our
President intends to invade Iran. Chris sniffed the fish out of
Iraq, long before anyone else, and his nose is a twitching.
This time Chris has some company. The Honorable Senator
Joseph R. Biden closed today's opening Senate Foreign
Relations Committee Hearings on Iraq with a stern warning,
clearly sending our President the message, that Congress has not
authorized incursions across Iranian borders and to do so, would
risk a constitutional crisis with the Senate of the United
States. Dr. Rice generously offered to honor the committee's
request for a legal statement defining the administration's
position.
It's a beautiful sight, watching our founding father's creation,
our U.S. Constitution, demonstrate a seemingly timeless value,
refusing to die, despite all the efforts some have made, to
grind it to dust.
Jacked Up
(12/09/2006): If you are a dedicated fan of the NFL, you are
probably familiar with ESPN's SportCenter programming and
Chris Berman on Monday Night Countdown. One of my favorite segments of the programming
is 'Jacked Up', a review of the top five bone jarring hits
delivered during the previous week of play. Often times these
hits knock the opponent backwards, off his feet, sometimes end
over end, and always buried into the turf. One of my favorites
was the #1 pick two weeks ago when the reigning world
champion Pittsburgh Steeler's quarterback Ben Roethlisberger got
Jacked Up during the Baltimore game.
If there is a political version of 'Jacked Up', then my vote for the best political 'Jacked Up' would go to
President Bush. His meeting with the Iraq Study Group,
which marked the group's formal presentation of their
conclusions to the President, had the look of turf stuck in the
helmet. The president, obviously shaken,
constantly fumbled with the report, before bringing
himself to hold the report upright for the cameras. I was
reminded of President Clinton's Monica finger waiving episode of
past years when our president shook the book at the cameras.
At last, we have an end to 'Stay the Course'. We can only hope
that 'The Way Forward' is not another obfuscation for addressing
the problems in Iraq.
President Bush got, JACKED UP!
Victory in Iraq
(12/02/2006): The sixty four billion dollar question, the
capstone of the Bush administration, an elusive and ever
changing goal, the reason the Democrats won the midterm
elections. What is victory in Iraq?
According to Ambassador David M. Satterfield, victory in Iraq is
the successful creation of a democratic and free state who is a
partner in the war on terror. A powerful vision indeed. But can
we really state with certainty, that a population willing to
kill each other over whether their religious leaders must be
descended from a religious bloodline, the fundamental
difference
between Sunni and Shiite, has the will to be democratic,
to be free, or to be a partner in the war on terror?
Indeed, does not the Islamic faith dictate that their religious
leaders are the sole source of truth and of law?
And what are we to think of our President when he states that
the problems in Iraq can be solved with some gentle fine tuning
of a well oiled machine, the proverbial engine oil change? What
are we to think when our President refuses to call the conflict
a civil war because he is afraid that the American public will
become confused by comparing the conflict to our own civil
war?
"I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're
really talking about peace."
Bush, June 18, 2002
"War is Peace"
Big Brother in George Orwell's 1984
And has not our President made it clear, that when it comes to
politics, that the truth is not to be trusted? And if so, how
does our President expect us to believe anything that he states
as true?
There is fundamental tool used in logic that has no place in
politics, that of a
proof by contradiction. This handy bit of
reasoning allows us to determine an assertion (premise) false, if we can
show that the assertion leads to an obvious contradiction. For
example, we could show that the assertion that we needed to go
to war in Iraq because of WMD is false because no proof of WMD existed.
Or we could conclude that there is no real threat of terror here
at home, for if there was, continuing a policy of open borders
would not be possible.
So why won't our administration come clean with the real reasons
we are in Iraq? If you take the time to investigate and apply
proof by contradiction, you can uncover the truth, it is what is
left over after you have eliminated the obfuscation. We are in
Iraq for two reasons. The first reason is to establish super
military bases in the middle east (like the emerald city, the
green zone) and the second reason is to take control of Iraq's
natural resources, primarily oil, the largest virgin oil fields
known to man.
As a corollary, the immense funding, to the tune of $8 billion
per month, provides an rich and ample source of funding for our
Black Ops Projects.
Did you know that our oil elites were engaged in
negotiations with the Taliban to build an gas
pipeline across Afghanistan? It was after these negotiations
failed that we invaded, using the pretext of 9/11, and
propped up a new government which would allow the pipeline
construction on terms demanded by the oil elites.
Do you remember Bush's political banter just prior to the
midterm elections? Our president argued for our presence in Iraq
stating that we could not allow Iraqi oil to fall into the hands
of the terrorists, claiming that they would deny us of the oil,
in an attempt to force the price of oil to $300-$400/barrel.
This, despite the fact, that similar sized oil disruptions have
failed to produce the perceived threat, the price of crude above
$300-$400/barrel. Perhaps our President had the consequences of
war with Iran on his mind.
And then there is David M. Satterfield's recent testimony in
Congress, where he clearly stated that the signing of a new
hydrocarbon law was considered a crucial milestone for the war
in Iraq.
If it is crucial, that the best interests of our country require
us to commandeer oil resources, say, for example, because of the
problem of
peak oil,
then why won't our elites and our President tell us so?
Need I ask?
California's Representative Duncan Hunter in Election Denial
(11/16/2006): The lame duck Chairman of the House Armed Services
Committee has been on the air waves as of late, claiming that
the small percentage of voters that handed the complete control
of congress to the Democrats, was not significant in terms of
our Iraq policy. Chairman Hunter went on to state that we must
continue on with the second stage of our 3 stage war policy in Iraq,
citing a 60 year history of our government's involvement in
standing up new governments, protecting them, and then leaving.
Well known plan? While Chairmen Hunter seems to
know history,
this is the first time I have heard any of our politicians claim
that our overseas adventures over the last 60 years are part of
a viable, proven strategy for disposing of governments we don't
happen to like.
'Since World War II, U.S. rulers have played a crucial role in
overthrowing reformist democratic governments or insurgent
popular movements in Guatemala, Guyana, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay,
Syria, Iran, Indonesia, Greece, Argentina, Haiti, Egypt, Peru,
Congo, Portugal, Nicaragua, Jamaica, Venezuela, Bolivia,
Mozambique, East Timor, the Fiji Islands, Grenada, Panama, and
various other countries, at a cumulative cost of millions of
lives. All this is a matter of public record yet seldom
mentioned in mainstream discourse'. -
Strange Liberators
And of course, the resulting "blowback" that occurs as a direct result of our good intentioned interventions, is described to the faithful as examples of how the enemy is and has been at war with us for decades.
Indeed, prior to the election President Bush was out bashing the
Democrats, demanding that they reveal their Iraq plans.
Meanwhile ex-Senator Conrad Burns was on the campaign trail stating
that he could not reveal our administration's plan, because it
was a secret!
Apparently the implications of the results of our election were
not lost on all of our leaders. Yesterday's Armed Services
Committee meetings seemed proof of that. The Honorable
Senator
Lindsey Graham demonstrated his unique interrogation
techniques in a memorable line of questioning truly worthy of a
JAG officer.
(Graham) How many
al-Qaeda in Irag? (Hayden) Approx. 1500, the bulk of the
foreign fighters in Iraq. (Graham) How many insurgents in Iraq? (Hayden)
In the low 5 figures. (Graham) What is the population of Iraq?
(Hayden) Around 25 million. (Graham) How many Iranians in Iraq? (Hayden)
I'll be happy to answer that in closed session.
Then the bombshell. (Graham) Is not the war in Iraq the
centerpiece of our war on terror?
While
Senator Graham does not support troop withdrawal from Iraq,
I applaud the Senator for asking why we are not acting like Iraq
is our centerpiece for the war on terror. In fact, when pressed,
General John P. Abizaid, USA, David M. Satterfield, Lieutenant
General Michael D. Maples, USA, and General Michael V. Hayden,
USAF all rejected calls for increasing troop levels in Iraq.
So what do you have when our administration is unwilling to do
what it takes to win? What do you have when we spend over one billion
dollars of borrowed money per week to chase 1500 al-Qaeda?
Certainly not a centerpiece for the war on terror. And while Senator Graham criticizes the strength of conviction of those against the war in Iraq, it is indeed the lack of strength of conviction that has lead to years of war, years that have failed to eliminate a few thousand so called al-Qaeda wanna be's.
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