Why The USA Can’t Leave Iraq

B’Man: From Gorilla’s Guides, we have an editorial that expresses (from an Iraqi perspective) the rationale for our invasion and continued occupation of Iraq (and the intense possibility of going into Iran). Although I disagree with the final association with “Americans” and what we can do to change what is happening to them, I cannot disagree with the rationale assessment for “why” we are doing it.

I do have an alternative solution, but it means ridding ourselves of the dependence on oil (which means Bush, Cheney, Rice, et al) will fight my solution with every fiber of their body.

Our country has been hijacked and in many ways, Americans don’t “seem” to care. This is where I believe the editors get the overall thing incorrect. Americans, by and large, disagree with what is happening. It is only a very select few who speak for us (and I want to take them out for what they say does not represent my feelings and desires).

Why the USA can’t leave Iraq

Posted by Editors on July 5, 2008

Have you noticed that the US anti-war debate has begun to resemble Congress’s attitude to Iraq and Iran? There’s mild criticism of the Bush administration’s devastation of Iraq but the president does whatever he wants in Iraq and makes absurd accusations against Iran unchallenged. Debate concentrates on mistakes made rather than asking why such immense costs are being expended in the first instance. More than most Americans, the anti-war movement examines the Iraq war in detail and it is realizing consciously what the US political class already know. There are no mistakes. The US is staring over a cliff and is going to go over. It cannot leave Iraq. If he can find a plausible reason, President Bush will be allowed to invade Iran as well. Everyone will then pretend that it’s all another tragic mistake.

Two factors make up the cliff that America nears:

• Simple supply and demand: the depletion of oil reserves, the necessity for the oil producers to conserve supplies and the inevitable effects of oil price rises on the world’s most intensive oil user (see What the US Congress knows about Iraq and Iran).
• The US dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency. This requires some explanation.

A reserve currency is one that all countries will accept for trade purposes. It is really a substitute for gold because there is not enough gold to underpin the world’s currencies. It is particularly useful for trading oil, which is normally priced in dollars. Most countries also hold much of their foreign currency reserves in dollars both for this purpose and because the US has been regarded as a politically and financially stable country.

Unhappily, the US is running a trade and current account deficit, that is, it pays other countries more dollars in trade and services than it receives. The US is essentially a business running at a loss. You might wonder where it gets the dollars to pay for the difference between cash received and cash paid. Firstly, it uses the capital inflows from foreign investors. This is like spending borrowed money because investors are entitled to take their money back. Secondly, it can print money. That’s right. To get a billion dollars cash, the government simply prints the banknotes or interest bearing treasury notes for any amount it needs. These are purchased both within the US and by foreign investors and governments who can use them for trade generally, not necessarily with the US.

Now, it is not always a bad thing to print money; indeed, in an expanding economy it is essential to increase the “money supply”. Unfortunately, the US economy is not expanding. The money supply increase is to support increased borrowing, both domestic and foreign. It is of concern to many that in March 2006 the US Federal Reserve Bank ceased publishing M3 data, which is the broad measure of money supply. The fear is that this was to hide an inflationary borrowing.

Inflation in a reserve currency is a bad thing. Other governments’ reserves are devalued – they need more dollars to buy the same amount of oil and anything else priced in dollars. They might think it better to keep their foreign exchange reserves in euros, yen or a basket that corresponds more to their trade pattern. Investors don’t like inflation because both their capital investment and earnings are worth less. They will look for a more stable home for their investments.

There are particular concerns in the case of the USA:

• The level of government debt is now 9.5 trillion dollars with interest payable of about 450 billion dollars per year. This can only come from taxation (depressing the economy) or printing more money (fuelling inflation).
• The US economy is arguably contracting. Figures for jobs and GNP do not necessarily provide an accurate picture. The types of jobs and distribution of income, for example, need to be taken into account.
• Much US manufacturing has shifted off-shore or closed down. The industrial base is weak; industry is increasingly uncompetitive against China, India and other Asian countries. US financial and other services are highly vulnerable to European and Asian competition.
• The recent sub-prime mortgage problems, crash in house prices and massive increase in liquidity in response from the Federal Reserve bring into question the Federal Reserve’s monetary competence (money supply and interest rate policy).
• Government borrowing against present and future expenditure commitments is unsustainable. The USA is living beyond its means, according to David Walker, recently retired US Comptroller-General who is the government’s top accountant (see video at the end of this article). This calls into question the US government’s fiscal competence (taxation and government spending policy).
• Due to increasing competition for a diminishing supply, oil is being bartered or direct access agreements are being made between states. This undermines the petrodollar (dollars reserved for or involved in oil transactions).
• Oil is being priced in currencies other than the US dollar and large-scale oil barter schemes are being established between Venezuela-South America and Iran-China/Japan, also undermining the petrodollar.

There is plenty here to worry international investors and holders of dollar reserves – and they are worried. The change in the dollar’s value demonstrates this:

1 April 2002: = 1.14 euro

1 April 2008: = 0.64 euro

Over this period, foreign governments and international investors have seen their dollar reserves, US investments and earnings lose 43 per cent against the euro, 33 per cent against the yen and 18 per cent against the rupee. This means that a manufacturer holding euros at present has an oil-buying advantage of 43 per cent over an American manufacturer, compared with their positions in 2002. The same is true of other commodities priced in dollars. This is why some governments are selling their dollar reserves.

If oil ceases to be traded in dollars, an important reason for the dollar’s reserve currency status will have disappeared and if it should lose reserve status, the US will find few foreign buyers for its paper debt. If foreign investors disinvest in the US as well, its economy could well collapse.

It does not increase international confidence in the US government’s financial policies and regulatory systems that the US has in the last few years exported to other countries many billions of dollars in worthless sub-prime mortgage “securities”. Nor does it help that debt supports its high profile wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the threatened war against Iran.

Here we come to the imperative for the US to seize the Iraqi and Iranian oilfields. With its own oil nearing exhaustion, it cannot in future afford to purchase the enormous proportion of the world’s oil production on which its living standards are based. Its industrial production is uncompetitive, currency depreciating, finances supported by debt and, recently, its banks and investment houses have been supported by printed money in defiance of its much vaunted free market principles. The US needs an alternative philosophy and finds that it does not have one. It needs to change but cannot bring itself to change.

If the US fails to put its economy and finances into a fit state for world competition it could be paying 500 dollars per barrel, perhaps 1,000 dollars per barrel for oil in five or 10 years time. This is why it cannot leave Iraq and why direct control of the Iranian oilfields are also desirable. Of course its actions in Iraq are themselves creating instability.

I have previously suggested from circumstantial evidence that the US is stealing Iraqi oil and falsifying the statistics. In fact, no statistics for the past five years of US occupation exist. The Iraqi oil fields and export terminals have been unmetered for this period. (See the 2007 report of the International and Advisory Monitoring Board (IAMB) on Iraq, operating under United Nations Security Council Resolution 1483. The published production and export statistics have no validity whatever. One may reasonably conjecture that the trading records are of similar quality. The IAMB also reports that barter agreements for oil are not accounted for by the Development Fund for Iraq as required by UN Security Council Resolution 1483. In terms of even the most basic standards of accounting and accountability this can only be called scandalous and criminal. It makes a mockery of the US government’s claims to be developing Iraq and reveals the simple truth behind the invasion of Iraq. The invasion was a strategic plan to seize oil supplies that the US government will soon be in no position to purchase.

We have tended to think that the American people have been deceived by the Bush administration’s lies. It appears that, although initially this was the case, America has realized the truth but cannot admit its complicity. It cares about its high living standards and American deaths, not Iraqi or Afghan poverty and deaths. The American people do not recognize themselves in the mirror. They evidently see only fantasy images, unrelated to reality, derived from films. The reality that others see is horrific.  If President Bush can engineer an excuse and a plan involving low American casualties, America will permit him to invade Iran as well – and pretend that it did not know the truth.

David Walker, recently-retired US Comptroller-General, totalled up the US government’s income, liabilities and future obligations. He concluded the numbers don’t add up. Courtesy: CBS, 8 July 2007

The Impostures of Pretended Patriotism

Happy Independence Day. Right?

But what are we independent from? Are we independent from Big Oil and Big Money control? No. Are we independent from a fascist state that cares little for personal freedoms and liberties? No. Are we independent from the fear the neocons have used against an unsuspecting and gullible public? No. Are we independent from the very kind of power structure that we decided to rebel from? No.

We live in a false grandeur… a self-assigned and brainwashed thought that we are morally better than the rest of the world and just because we have been lied to to convince us otherwise (it was easy to do) we forget that and do not want to hold those liars accountable, for we don’t hold our representatives accountable for anything they do, unless it is have a gay person suck them off.

We pretend that we are flag-waving, true patriots, yet we allow our government to attack and ruin other’s lives in search for oil and its control.

How soon we forget what our first true hero and president said about this. How quickly we turn our back on what is important and honorable. How quickly we allow these assholes to lie to us and us believe them. Mr Washington said in his farewell address:

“In offering to you, my countrymen, these counsels of an old and affectionate friend, I dare not hope they will make the strong and lasting impression I could wish; that they will control the usual current of the passions, or prevent our nation from running the course which has hitherto marked the destiny of nations. But, if I may even flatter myself, that they may be productive of some partial benefit, some occasional good; that they may now and then recur to moderate the fury of party spirit, to warn against the mischiefs of foreign intrigue, to guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism. …”

I read an article by Robert Scheer at Alternet called The U.S. Is Drowning in Pretend Patriotism and it caused me to think about this day in a different way.

We are drowning in the “impostures of pretended patriotism,” used to cover the lies that got us into Iraq, the defense of torture and the violation of our basic liberties. In the name of patriotism, we presume a God-given American right to reorder the world to our liking, masking the vice of unfettered greed as an obligation of national security.

Any doubts as to this later governing impulse of our imperial ambitions were shattered with the recent news that U.S. advisers to our puppet government in the Green Zone of occupied Iraq have worked out agreements for American oil companies to gain control of Iraqi oil fields. But, then again, what did we expect when we elected a Texas oil hustler, and a failed one at that, to be our president?

Only in an America dumbed down by constant propaganda about our innate moral superiority will anyone any longer believe that we didn’t invade Iraq for the oil, even though Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice came to the Bush administration from the board of directors at Chevron, where they named an oil tanker after her. Like Vice President Dick Cheney with those Halliburton contracts, Rice has stayed true to her corporate sponsors. That’s what the U.S. invasion of Iraq accomplished; for the first time in more than three decades after Iraq joined a worldwide trend of formerly colonized nations gaining control of their own resources, Big Oil is getting its black gold back. It was always about the oil — that’s why “we” invaded Iraq — only “we” aren’t getting any, at least not at a reasonable price. The oil companies are.

“Yeah, but now that we are there, what are we to do?” Or the even harder idiocy, “We went there to give them freedom, they owe us the oil and we should take it.”

Is there any question in a redneck’s mind that this illegal invasion was anything except a way to get control of the Iraqi oil? How stupid does an American have to be to still believe these THUGS like Cheney and Rice (not to mention Bush and the rest of the thieves and liars) when every issue points to their neocon, oil-driven, world-control agenda? I mean, REALLY.

Are you people still so ignorant and stupid that you still believe them? No matter what the evidence is? To me, that is down-right treasonous. If you still support these maniacs, then you are also a traitor, in my opinion… at the very least, the stupidest of the stupid and should get mental help.

Sorry, but that is the way it is. There is no longer any excuse for you people… you Bushie Fools.

As Robert says, it may be impossible for the oil money soaked congress to get the point, but the Oil Companies and the American public are not the same. When Haliburton can screw Americans by moving off shore, they are no longer American. Period.

As they get richer and richer, we are suffering by paying for their ultra-profits. Now, they have “negotiated” some sort of contract to pull the oil from under the sand for the Iraqi government and will reap 75% of the money, leaving 25% for the Iraqis.

Now think about that for a second. Our “war” was to be paid for by their oil money, but the Oil companies get 75% and we are to be repaid or they will finance the rest of our 100 year war with 25% of the oil proceeds. Does any other redneck think the math is screwed? How many other countries do you think would allow this? Saudi Arabia?

What we have done is certainly a humongous rip-off of other people’s resources. Period. And we (all of us Americans) have allowed it and actually chide it along because of our “imposture” of pretended patriotism. “Imposture” is the act or practice of deceiving by means of an assumed character or name. We assume a false patriotism, we pretend that this patriotism is honorable and warranted, but it is simply the catalyst that our leaders have used to brainwash us into believing our superiority to the rest of the world, especially a bunch of sand dwelling rag heads.

We have become precisely what our greatest hero warned us of.

So, today, as I gather signatures for Ralph Nader, don’t put your flag pin up in my face, unless you are ready to sign this thing and get rid of these lying SOB’s who are ruining our country.

Robert finishes with this:

So, take that American flag off your lapel and replace it with a button bearing the Exxon or Chevron logo. C’mon, Dick Cheney and Condi Rice, be straight about what it is you are really pushing here. ‘Fess up — it’s not the good old USA as represented by the sucker taxpayers conned by your patriotic blather. No sirree, what you would have Americans paying homage to is the majesty of the big multinational corporations that exploit American military power to rule the world.

But recognize that you have shamed the legacy of our first president. George Washington, who distinguished the promise of the new world from the corruptions of the old by shunning imperial conquest, said: “Our commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand; neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of commerce, but forcing nothing.”

If Barack Obama or John McCain was to offer such words of wisdom this Fourth of July, he would be vilified as “weak,” and that is a fit measure of just how far we have descended from the high hopes of our first president.

Truth Hurts… But Obama Is Owned By Big Money Influence

June 25, 2008
www.votenader.org

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Senator Obama said earlier today that I haven’t been paying attention to his campaign.

Actually, I have.

And it’s clear from Senator Obama’s campaign that he is not willing to tackle the white power structure - whether in the form of the corporate power structure or many of the super-rich - who are taking advantage of 100 million low income Americans who are suffering in poverty or near poverty.

Senator Obama is opposed to single payer national health insurance.

Why?

Because he favors the health insurance giants over the millions of Americans in poverty or near poverty who are uninsured or under-insured. Eighteen thousand Americans die every year because they cannot afford health insurance, according to the Institute of Medicine.

Senator Obama wants to expand the military budget which is loaded with waste, fraud and abuse - instead of cutting it and investing the long ignored peace dividend in the inner cities with good jobs and public works - including schools, clinics, and libraries.

Why?

Because he fears and favors those thousands of lobbyists in charge of enlarging the military industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us against.

Senator Obama says he favors a living wage. But he doesn’t say he would immediately increase the minimum wage to $10 an hour, which is the equivalent of the 1968 minimum wage adjusted for inflation - because by doing so he would offend the big corporations who exploit labor in places like Wal-Mart and fast food chains. (The minimum wage needs to be increased immediately, not phased in over a number of years, as Senator Obama would have it.)

So Senator Obama, let’s get specific.

We’re looking for deeds, not, as Shakespeare put it, words, words, mere words.

Your public career, which I have also been paying attention to, is long on words, and short on action when it comes to consumer protection, cracking down on corporate crime, curbing the violence of toxic environmental racism, and extending clean, affordable public transit, among other issues.

For the purposes of the here and now, three things:

One, why don’t you support single payer national health insurance, which is supported by a majority of doctors and the American people?

Two, why do you favor expanding the military budget which is replete with waste, fraud and abuse?

And three, why don’t you come out and support an immediate increase of the minimum wage to $10 an hour?

When can we expect the authenticity of hope and change?
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Israel: America’s Pussy

My family are cat people. I like cats because by and large they can fend for themselves and don’t require constant petting and care. They pretty much decide when and where to be petted and bothered. They insist on us doing their bidding when they need it, at the moment they need it. Our cats, in many ways, control us, more than we do them. Such it is with Israel.

Have you heard recently that Israel is reaching out to its enemies and offering peace? Have you wondered why and why now? Is it a change of heart of the Israeli government?

Do you think that they have “listened to their hearts” and realize that what they have done is wrong and want to give Syria back its lands? Or that they finally realize that Hamas was democratically elected or that the Palestinian people need to be treated better than dogs.

Or do you think that the Israeli government is trying to pursuade its neighbors that it is really a loving country that is misunderstood… that they are really, at heart, nice guys.

Or do you consider it even remotely possible that this government is simply trying to convince its neighbors that peace is its goal, just to do the magician’s sleight-of-hand where the actual goal is to attack Iran?

At the beginning of this month, Israel conducted a war exercise that seemed to simulate an air assault on Iran (mission was same general distance with refueling planes and rescue operations conducted in the Gulf). Olmert (immersed in controversy, himself, in Israel) had a meeting with Bush recently where he eluded that something is afoot and that there would be action taken against Iran.

The old adage is “follow the money” to find the corruption. Here is a quick breakdown to show how we have supported Israel with far more support than we have given anyone in the world:

Considering economic assistance that the USA has given the world from 1949 - 1996, we gave Israel $62.5Billion (58 Million people) and in the same timeframe gave the REST OF THE WORLD (1.05 Billion) $62.5 Billion. That works out to $10,775 per Israeli and a whopping $59 per person for the rest of the world. Wonder what that kind of investment gets us?

Of the USA’s annual aid, Israel gets a full 1/3 (there are 191 countries in the world).

In March of 2003 America gave Israel $10Billion and we give more and more. From 1946- 2006, US aid to Israel was a conservative estimate of $108Billion.

For a population the size of Wisconsin, we are giving $2-3 Billion per year or $6-8 Million per day. We defend Israel, no matter what they do or violations they conduct in the world. Although the USA strongly held Iraq accountable for breaking UN Security Council violations, Israel has broken these resolutions 40 times and the USA uses its veto strength in the council to save them… EVERY TIME.

It doesn’t matter what Israel does in the world. Lie, kill, starve, steal land. We protect them.

Am I the only redneck in this country who is questioning why we support the biggest destabilizing country in the world ?

Freaky Sex Friday: When She’s Wore Out, It’s Time To Pull Out

Iraq War will cost $5 TRILLION ($50,000 per American Family)

B’Man: Let that sink in before reading how Joseph Stiglitz arrives at these numbers (this is minimum). We have no clue about some of the monies. Black Ops, money lost. Medical payments and care for the full 1/3 returning vets with medical issues. Its all from Gorilla’s Guides.

Quick Quote: In his (Stiglitz) discussion he produced two truly dreadful and staggering statistics. US veterans returning from current wars are now committing suicide at the rate of 18 per day – a far higher death toll than on the battlefield.

Wow. Our men and women are killing more of themselves than the “enemy” is. WTF?

Now, I know all you rednecks have an extra $50Grand laying around to help out all those poor military companies who are raping us AND taking our money while doing it. And I know that your patriotic asses don’t mind that when Herr Bush leaves office he will have taken our country’s debt to $9 TRILLION, most due to excessive military costs.

I know that you just lost your job at the factory and you had to drop even that piss-poor Hospitalization insurance you could barely afford anyway. I know that gas has risen a bit, but buckle up and realize you are Americans, by God. Like Bush told the woman working 3 jobs just to make ends meet… “uniquely American” (as if HAVING to work three jobs to get by is some wonderful thing… fucking idiot).

But even beyond all of those really cool things happening to our country, conducted by a bunch of ruthless criminals, things could be worse. We could be the Iraqis who are taking the brunt of all this “help” and “democracy” we are “bringing” them. Enjoy, Mr Iraqi.

(shaking head in total disbelief)

The cost of war in Iraq keeps on rising

Counting the true cost of war has been a task to daunt the best of thinkers from Thucydides in ancient Athens to the Nobel economics laureate Joseph Stiglitz calculating today the real cost of the continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Earlier this year he put a figure on the conflict in Iraq – the Three Trillion Dollar War – proportionately one of the most expensive of modern times and, he calculates, more costly to the US economy and society than the ragged Vietnam campaign from the early 60s to 1975.

And he has just revised his calculations sharply upward. In a discussion at the Frontline Club in London this weekend, he said the real bill for the Americans will be around $5tn at least – an impost of about $50,000 per American family.

Of course the burden isn’t only on Americans and their economy. Not least there is the wreckage to the Iraqi economy and community – more than 60% unemployment, families and homes destroyed, half the doctors now working than there were five years ago.

There is an awful lot that is hard, almost impossible to calculate. The string of non-compete contracts to outfits like Haliburton, Blackwater and Dyncor security is very hard to pin down. In the case of the UK there are the orders under urgent operational requirements, for which there is little or no competition, and they are difficult to track because of the complexity of accounting between the Treasury and MoD.

Stiglitz is pretty sure that the extended Iraq war and crisis has played a huge role in the current oil price surge but, he told his London audience, this is hard to define precisely.

In the scrupulous way he crunches statistics and numbers in his book, there is a faint hint of Wilde’s definition of a cynic, the man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. But it must be said right away that beneath the facts and figures, Joseph Stiglitz cares above all about the value of human life and respect for law, particularly international law.

One of the most shocking revelations in his book is just how much the care of the physically and mentally injured from the current conflicts is going to cost our communities, a brutal truth British administrations have glossed over as much as their US counterparts. He and his co-author Linda Blimes now calculate that up to a third of US soldiers come back from war with mental and physical damage, particularly with post traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury (TBI). In families with an injured veteran, at least one member is giving up work to be a full-time carer.

In his discussion he produced two truly dreadful and staggering statistics. US veterans returning from current wars are now committing suicide at the rate of 18 per day – a far higher death toll than on the battlefield. Bush’s military adventures and huge defence expenditure, now around the $600bn mark annually, means that by the time he leaves office this winter the US government will have a debt of around $9tn. In Bill Clinton’s day there was a budget surplus of 2% of GDP.

Though there was much discussion from the floor at the London meeting about the need to cut the losses and for the US to quit Iraq right away, Professor Stiglitz himself was surprisingly uncertain about what could or should happen next. He stressed how unmindful, ignorant even, the Bush administration was of the requirements of international law from the outset of their Iraq adventure. “They didn’t understand that under the UN’s principles they would be the de facto occupier, have to govern in the interest of the Iraqi people. They didn’t realise they couldn’t just take over a country in the 19th century (or even 18th century) manner and use it for their own ends.”

Now the law, of nations and the international community, is catching up with the conquerors of spring 2003. The UN security council resolution empowering the American and coalition presence as the de facto occupier runs out in December, and won’t be renewed. The Americans have been desperately trying to negotiate a security pact with the Baghdad government take the UNSCR’s place. Last night, after three months of talks, the Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki, definitively rejected the deal which was to be based on a status of force agreement. His government was unwilling to grant the US rights to 58 bases, some huge, in the country, judicial immunity to all US personnel, and the right to arrest, try and extradite any Iraqi citizen.

Al-Maliki has powerful backers in rejecting the deal – among them the Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, supreme guide and leader in Iran. Even more pertinent the leading Shia cleric in Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has also indicated he wants to the Americans given no permanent institutional presence in a future Iraq.

The British would be in an even more acute dilemma should there be no agreement for the continuing presence of international forces beyond December. Any wrongdoing by a British soldier, and possibly even his or her very presence on Iraqi, could see them brought before the international criminal court, to which Britain subscribes but America does not.

Joe Stiglitz’s critique has been another timely reminder how context-free, and contemptuous of history regime George Bush and regime Tony Blair have been (just read Cherie Blair’s autobiographical ramblings about Iraq) in their Middle East escapade. However, history cannot be predictive. The Iraq crisis of today is different from where it was at the end of 2003, when things started to go really badly wrong. Now it is inextricably tied up with the increasingly complex crisis and confrontation with Iran – an aspect Stiglitz omitted to mention in his Front Line colloquium.

What he did flag up was that the Iraq mess is likely to go on for a lot longer than we may have imagined only a few months ago. Even an Obama presidency would be hard pushed to get the troops home in months rather than years, without risking further troubles and war across the Gulf. And Joseph Stiglitz is surely right in conjecturing it is going to cost the US, UK and the global economy a lot more than we may even imagine now.

Source: Robert Fox: The cost of war in Iraq keeps on rising | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

“God Save Us From American Peace and Liberty”

I’m no fan of the music (I suppose one must be born there to dig it), but the words are a perfectly apt description of America. Like it or not, the rest of the world is beginning to hate us (they already distrust us and are scared in most of the world).

It is our policies driven by the military industrial complex which has controlled the neocon agenda in wars that causes this.

But let me throw something at you… what if the rest of the world becomes so scared that they team up against us? What if the rest of the world decides that the only way to stop the carnage of America (the illegal agressor) is to ban together and fight us?

Sure, some of you foolish Bushies will say, “Bring ‘em on!”, but that is only an idiot’s brain in action.

If I lived elsewhere and witnessed what we have done, especially in the last 7 years, I would be very worried. Our country has become a monster and most rednecks are oblivious to this fact.

h/t BrassCheckTV

Buelahnomics: Why The US Has Gone Broke

B’Man: You hear me discussbitch about ‘Big Money’ and ‘Big Military’ and all the other ‘Bigs” listed over in the category section. These ‘Bigs’ are the owners of America and what drives everything our government does and is beholden to. What was once ‘for the people’ & ‘by the people’ is now for the Ultra rich and their new corporate citizenship mentality.

However, one of the biggest ‘Bigs’ we have is ‘Big Military’ (aka the military industrial complex) and how this ‘Big’ is probably the leading cause for our country’s demise from ‘leader’ of the ‘free’ world to ‘enforcer’ of the ‘invaded’ world. As with each and every other empire throughout history, this incessant drive towards more military spending as some economic sustaining entity, will simply cause our financial destruction. Essentially, we end up spending money on stuff that never gets used and take away from our own infrastructure and manufacturing base.

As a redneck, I can’t explain it completely, but I do read alot about the subject and found this article that breaks this down as well as any I have read in some time. It is worthy of a full read, but I want to point out some key points for a rednecks education…

Why the U.S. Has Gone Broke

by Chalmers Johnson

…There are three broad aspects to the U.S. debt crisis.

First, in the current fiscal year (200 we are spending insane amounts of money on “defense” projects that bear no relation to the national security of the U.S. We are also keeping the income tax burdens on the richest segment of the population at strikingly low levels.

Second, we continue to believe that we can compensate for the accelerating erosion of our base and our loss of jobs to foreign countries through massive military expenditures — “military Keynesianism” (which I discuss in detail in my book Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic).

By that, I mean the mistaken belief that public policies focused on frequent wars, huge expenditures on weapons and munitions, and large standing armies can indefinitely sustain a wealthy capitalist economy. The opposite is actually true.

Third, in our devotion to militarism (despite our limited resources), we are failing to invest in our social infrastructure and other requirements for the long-term health of the U.S. These are what economists call opportunity costs, things not done because we spent our money on something else. Our public education system has deteriorated alarmingly. We have failed to provide health care to all our citizens and neglected our responsibilities as the world’s number one polluter. Most important, we have lost our competitiveness as a manufacturer for civilian needs, an infinitely more efficient use of scarce resources than arms manufacturing.

B’Man: Our country’s elite, who are in government or control those that are, have grown to be so focused on protecting their stuff that we have insane tax codes in place that are ruining many facets of social assistance. But, more than that, we have completely turned into the “complex” of building our economy from weapons and thus becoming implementers of war and carnage (while still calling ourselves “Christian”, I might add).

Fiscal disaster

It is virtually impossible to overstate the profligacy of what our government spends on the military. The Department of Defense’s planned expenditures for the fiscal year 2008 are larger than all other nations’ military budgets combined. The supplementary budget to pay for the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not part of the official defense budget, is itself larger than the combined military budgets of Russia and China.

Defense-related spending for fiscal 2008 will exceed $1 trillion for the first time in history. The U.S. has become the largest single seller of arms and munitions to other nations on Earth. Leaving out President Bush’s two on-going wars, defense spending has doubled since the mid-1990s. The defense budget for fiscal 2008 is the largest since the second world war. Before we try to break down and analyze this gargantuan sum, there is one important caveat. Figures on defense spending are notoriously unreliable. The numbers released by the Congressional Reference Service and the Congressional Budget Office do not agree with each other. Robert Higgs, senior fellow for political economy at the Independent Institute, says: “A well-founded rule of thumb is to take the Pentagon’s (always well publicized) basic budget total and double it.” Even a cursory reading of newspaper articles about the Department of Defense will turn up major differences in statistics about its expenses.

Some 30-40% of the defense budget is ‘black, ‘” meaning that these sections contain hidden expenditures for classified projects. There is no possible way to know what they include or whether their total amounts are accurate. There are many reasons for this budgetary sleight-of-hand -including a desire for secrecy on the part of the president, the secretary of defense, and the military-industrial complex - - but the chief one is that members of Congress, who profit enormously from defense jobs and pork-barrel projects in their districts, have a political interest in supporting the Department of Defense. In 1996, in an attempt to bring accounting standards within the executive branch closer to those of the civilian economy, Congress passed the Federal Financial Management Improvement Act. It required all federal agencies to hire outside auditors to review their books and release the results to the public. Neither the Department of Defense, nor the Department of Homeland Security, has ever complied. Congress has complained, but not penalized either department for ignoring the law. All numbers released by the Pentagon should be regarded as suspect. In discussing the fiscal 2008 defense budget, as released on 7 February 2007, I have been guided by two experienced and reliable analysts: William D Hartung of the New America Foundation’s Arms and Security Initiative and Fred Kaplan, defense correspondent for Slate.org. They agree that the Department of Defense requested $481.4bn for salaries, operations (except in Iraq and Afghanistan), and equipment.

They also agree on a figure of $141.7bn for the “supplemental” budget to fight the global war on terrorism - - that is, the two on-going wars that the general public may think are actually covered by the basic Pentagon budget. The Department of Defense also asked for an extra $93.4bn to pay for hitherto unmentioned war costs in the remainder of 2007 and, most creatively, an additional “allowance” (a new term in defense budget documents) of $50bn to be charged to fiscal year 2009. This makes a total spending request by the Department of Defense of $766.5bn. But there is much more. In an attempt to disguise the true size of the U.S. military empire, the government has long hidden major military-related expenditures in departments other than Defense. For example, $23.4bn for the Department of Energy goes towards developing and maintaining nuclear warheads; and $25.3bn in the Department of State budget is spent on foreign military assistance (primarily for Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Republic, Egypt and Pakistan).

B’Man: With the gas prices at $4.00/gallon and are GOING to rise more, we are in for a very fast fall, folks. The people in control don’t want you to know how close to devastation we are, for when America realizes it, she will shut totally down, causing even more failure within the Big Money system.

Think about how much fuel the Iraqi invasion requires while the price is continually rising (and I would bet, highly elevated prices). Keep in mind that the $4 mark is based off of $90.00/barrel of oil and we just went to around $138/barrel. When the prices catch up, we will be, at least, at $5.00/gallon and likely to be around $6.00/gallon before the summer ends. People are so slow to bitch to those who can help. We bitch at each other about it and shrug, “What are we gonna do?” Then we get into the car and drive off, forgetting that doom is impending.

But it isn’t just us rednecks that can’t drive far or even afford to drive to work any longer. The cost of fuel for food delivery will skyrocket. The cost of fuel to run equipment to gather the crops will skyrocket (making groceries skyrocket even more than we have seen).

People that need to fly will be less able to afford it, even if the airlines make it without total bankruptcy (several have already gone bust), for their costs are skyrocketing, as well. All forms of transportation will skyrocket, for they can’t bear the entire fuel burden when they are so competitive to begin with.

Plastics are made of petro-chemicals, so even packaging and everything that is made of plastic will skyrocket.

So, why has the US gone broke? Because we are run and controlled by corporate interests protected by those we elected who get most of their campaign contributions from these same entities that run the country. GE owns the media which lies to us about the truth AND is heavy into Military and nuclear. Same for others. Vested interests cause them to lie and keep silent about the lies of the administration.

They will pillage what they can… to hell with us, the real Americans.

Long Term Presence in Iraq? Not If The Iraqis Have Anything To Say About It

B’Man: Since our own government doesn’t seem to care what Bush does anywhere in the world and would support his murderous campaign wherever he sees fit, as Americans, we must hope that Iraqis will shut down this illegal occupation. They will eventually, but not until they have sucked as much of our tax money from us, as we can (I don’t blame them).

But after they have taken as much as we will give them, they WILL shut this down and sidle up with Iran. It is inevitable.

Talks with US on new pact hit ‘dead end’: Maliki

AMMAN (Agencies)

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki declared on Friday that talks with the United States on a new long-term security pact had reached a “dead end” because of U.S. demands that infringed Iraq’s sovereignty.

“We have reached a dead end, because when we started the talks, we found that the U.S. demands hugely infringe on the sovereignty of Iraq, and this we can never accept,” Maliki told journalists during a visit to neighboring Jordan.

The United States and Iraq are negotiating a new agreement to provide a legal basis for U.S. troops to stay in Iraq after Dec. 31, when their United Nations mandate expires.

They are also negotiating a long-term strategic framework agreement on political, diplomatic, economic, security and cultural ties.

In his first detailed comments on the talks, which are taking place behind closed doors, Maliki said Iraq objected to Washington’s insistence on giving its troops immunity from prosecution in Iraq and freedom to conduct operations independent of Iraqi control.

“We can’t extend the U.S. forces permission to arrest Iraqis or to undertake terror fighting in an independent way, or to keep Iraqi skies and waters open for themselves whenever they want,” he said.

“One of the important issues that the U.S. is asking for is immunity for its soldiers and those contracting with it. We reject this totally.”

U.S. President George W. Bush said on Wednesday that he was confident of reaching an agreement with Iraq. U.S. officials say they hope to reach a deal by July, but Iraqi officials have been more cautious and suggested that date may be missed.

h/t Alarabiya

When War Becomes Murder

B’Man: From AlterNet.org (originally posted at TomPaine.com); written by Chris Hedges. This is one of the very best essays on the true travesty of war we call Iraq. I have a dad who did two tours in Nam and have heard similar stories. I know that Nam changed my dad into a monster, a drunk and a callous unloving bastard. I can only imagine what this war is doing to Americans caught in the middle of it today. Please read all of the article, if you have time, but I wanted to highlight a few of the more poignant aspects.

Chris Hedges is the former Middle East Bureau Chief of the New York Times, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and a Senior Fellow at the Nation Institute. He is the author of several books including War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. This piece has been adapted from the introduction to the just-published, Collateral Damage: America’s War Against Iraqi Civilians (Nation Books), which he has co-authored with Laila al-Arian.

The War in Iraq Is Pure Murder

By Chris Hedges

Troops, when they battle insurgent forces, as in Iraq, or Gaza or Vietnam, are placed in “atrocity producing situations.” Being surrounded by a hostile population makes simple acts, such as going to a store to buy a can of Coke, dangerous. The fear and stress push troops to view everyone around them as the enemy. The hostility is compounded when the enemy, as in Iraq, is elusive, shadowy and hard to find. The rage soldiers feel after a roadside bomb explodes, killing or maiming their comrades, is one that is easily directed, over time, to innocent civilians who are seen to support the insurgents.

Civilians and combatants, in the eyes of the beleaguered troops, merge into one entity. These civilians, who rarely interact with soldiers or Marines, are to most of the occupation troops in Iraq nameless, faceless, and easily turned into abstractions of hate. They are dismissed as less than human. It is a short psychological leap, but a massive moral leap. It is a leap from killing — the shooting of someone who has the capacity to do you harm — to murder — the deadly assault against someone who cannot harm you.

B’Man: Alas, Chris gets to the very basis of what is truly happening. We have gone from a so-called honorable pursuit, to one that is basically about callous murder.

The war in Iraq is now primarily about murder. There is very little killing. The savagery and brutality of the occupation is tearing apart those who have been deployed to Iraq. As news reports have just informed us, 115 American soldiers committed suicide in 2007. This is a 13% increase in suicides over 2006. And the suicides, as they did in the Vietnam War years, will only rise as distraught veterans come home, unwrap the self-protective layers of cotton wool that keep them from feeling, and face the awful reality of what they did to innocents in Iraq.

American Marines and soldiers have become socialized to atrocity. The killing project is not described in these terms to a distant public. The politicians still speak in the abstract terms of glory, honor, and heroism, in the necessity of improving the world, in lofty phrases of political and spiritual renewal. Those who kill large numbers of people always claim it as a virtue. The campaign to rid the world of terror is expressed within the confines of this rhetoric, as if once all terrorists are destroyed evil itself will vanish.

The reality behind the myth, however, is very different. The reality and the ideal tragically clash when soldiers and Marines return home. These combat veterans are often alienated from the world around them, a world that still believes in the myth of war and the virtues of the nation. They confront the grave, existential crisis of all who go through combat and understand that we have no monopoly on virtue, that in war we become as barbaric and savage as those we oppose.

This is a profound crisis of faith. It shatters the myths, national and religious, that these young men and women were fed before they left for Iraq. In short, they uncover the lie they have been told. Their relationship with the nation will never be the same. These veterans give us a true narrative of the war — one that exposes the vast enterprise of industrial slaughter unleashed in Iraq. They expose the lie.

War as Betrayal

“This unit sets up this traffic control point, and this 18 year-old kid is on top of an armored Humvee with a .50-caliber machine gun,” remembered Sgt. Geoffrey Millard, who served in Tikrit with the 42nd Infantry Division. “And this car speeds at him pretty quick and he makes a split-second decision that that’s a suicide bomber, and he presses the butterfly trigger and puts two hundred rounds in less than a minute into this vehicle. It killed the mother, a father, and two kids. The boy was aged four and the daughter was aged three.

“And they briefed this to the general,” Millard said, “and they briefed it gruesome. I mean, they had pictures. They briefed it to him. And this colonel turns around to this full division staff and says, ‘If these f—ing hajis learned to drive, this sh-t wouldn’t happen.’”

B’Man: From the top, the brainwashing is insistent. No matter how many families are killed due to reactionary instincts of scared 18 year olds, it will be the “haji’s” fault. It doesn’t matter that we have caused these people to live in fear and squalor for years now. Americans don’t need to consider what we have done to them, just what they are doing to us. The goal is to dehumanize them, so our boys can live with themselves.

The Hobbesian world of Iraq described by Flanders is one where the ethic is kill or be killed. All nuance and distinction vanished for him. He fell, like most of the occupation troops, into a binary world of us and them, the good and the bad, those worthy of life and those unworthy of life. The vast majority of Iraqi civilians, caught in the middle of the clash among militias, death squads, criminal gangs, foreign fighters, kidnapping rings, terrorists, and heavily armed occupation troops, were just one more impediment that, if they happened to get in the way, had to be eradicated. These Iraqis were no longer human. They were abstractions in human form.

“The first briefing you get when you get off the plane in Kuwait, and you get off the plane and you’re holding a duffel bag in each hand,” Millard remembered. “You’ve got your weapon slung. You’ve got a web sack on your back. You’re dying of heat. You’re tired. You’re jet-lagged. Your mind is just full of goop. And then you’re scared on top of that, because, you know, you’re in Kuwait, you’re not in the States anymore… So fear sets in, too. And they sit you into this little briefing room and you get this briefing about how, you know, you can’t trust any of these f—ing hajis, because all these f—king hajis are going to kill you. And ‘haji’ is always used as a term of disrespect and usually with the F-word in front of it.”…

…

War thrusts us into a vortex of pain and fleeting ecstasy. It thrusts us into a world where law is of little consequence, human life is cheap, and the gratification of the moment becomes the overriding desire that must be satiated, even at the cost of another’s dignity or life.

“A lot of guys really supported that whole concept that, you know, if they don’t speak English and they have darker skin, they’re not as human as us, so we can do what we want,” said Spc. Josh Middleton, who served in the 82nd Airborne in Iraq. “And you know, 20 year-old kids are yelled at back and forth at Bragg, and we’re picking up cigarette butts and getting yelled at every day for having a dirty weapon. But over here, it’s like life and death. And 40 year-old Iraqi men look at us with fear and we can — do you know what I mean? — we have this power that you can’t have. That’s really liberating. Life is just knocked down to this primal level of, you know, you worry about where the next food’s going to come from, the next sleep or the next patrol, and to stay alive.

“It’s like, you feel like, I don’t know, if you’re a caveman,” he added. “Do you know what I mean? Just, you know, I mean, this is how life is supposed to be. Life and death, essentially. No TV. None of that bullsh-t.”…

B’Man: The intent is to scare the holy hell out of the Iraqis, as to provide some semblence of control over them. Many tactics are used:

Punishing the Local Population

Sgt. Camilo Meja, who eventually applied while still on active duty to become a conscientious objector, said the ugly side of American racism and chauvinism appeared the moment his unit arrived in the Middle East. Fellow soldiers instantly ridiculed Arab-style toilets because they would be “sh-tting like dogs.” The troops around him treated Iraqis, whose language they did not speak and whose culture was alien, little better than animals.

The word “haji” swiftly became a slur to refer to Iraqis, in much the same way “gook” was used to debase the Vietnamese and “raghead” is used to belittle those in Afghanistan. Soon those around him ridiculed “haji food,” “haji homes,” and “haji music.” Bewildered prisoners, who were rounded up in useless and indiscriminate raids, were stripped naked and left to stand terrified for hours in the baking sun. They were subjected to a steady torrent of verbal and physical abuse. “I experienced horrible confusion,” Meja remembered, “not knowing whether I was more afraid for the detainees or for what would happen to me if I did anything to help them.”

These scenes of abuse, which began immediately after the American invasion, were little more than collective acts of sadism. Meja watched, not daring to intervene yet increasingly disgusted at the treatment of Iraqi civilians. He saw how the callous and unchecked abuse of power first led to alienation among Iraqis and spawned a raw hatred of the occupation forces. When Army units raided homes, the soldiers burst in on frightened families, forced them to huddle in the corners at gunpoint, and helped themselves to food and items in the house.

“After we arrested drivers,” he recalled, “we would choose whichever vehicles we liked, fuel them from confiscated jerry cans, and conduct undercover presence patrols in the impounded cars.

“But to this day I cannot find a single good answer as to why I stood by idly during the abuse of those prisoners except, of course, my own cowardice,” he also noted.

Iraqi families were routinely fired upon for getting too close to checkpoints, including an incident where an unarmed father driving a car was decapitated by a .50-caliber machine gun in front of his small son. Soldiers shot holes into cans of gasoline being sold alongside the road and then tossed incendiary grenades into the pools to set them ablaze. “It’s fun to shoot sh-t up,” a soldier said. Some opened fire on small children throwing rocks. And when improvised explosive devices (IEDS) went off, the troops fired wildly into densely populated neighborhoods, leaving behind innocent victims who became, in the callous language of war, “collateral damage.”

“We would drive on the wrong side of the highway to reduce the risk of being hit by an IED,” Meja said of the deadly roadside bombs. “This forced oncoming vehicles to move to one side of the road and considerably slowed down the flow of traffic. In order to avoid being held up in traffic jams, where someone could roll a grenade under our trucks, we would simply drive up on sidewalks, running over garbage cans and even hitting civilian vehicles to push them out of the way. Many of the soldiers would laugh and shriek at these tactics.”

B’Man: We have total pwnage of