Iraq Wants Us Out: Bush Says, “So What?”

B’Man: How many times have we heard our own lying government officials say that when the Iraqis wanted us out, we would go?

I’m sure the excuses will come any moment now, suggesting that now the Iraqi government and people are too stupid to figure out when we should go, or somehow we can decide for ourselves that they really don’t want us to leave… or…

Bush’s fools will come up with some excuse to thumb our noses at the Maliki government and stay just as damn long as there is oil to be pulled from their land.

jperryam has another poignant video up, with associated information and a clip from W, himself, saying that if they asked us to leave, we would. (he then said they wouldn’t do it).

As usual and is the case in every instance, this dumb asshole is wrong. Sorry, not wrong. Just caught in another lie like all the others.

Iraq is now demanding a firm date for complete withdrawal of all foreign troops before they will sign a security agreement with the Bush administration. Bushco is refusing, of course, because they truly don’t care about anybody’s objectives but their own. But what did the Pretender-in-Chief say back in April of 2007 during an Interview with Charlie Rose?

Just more Bushco propaganda, no doubt.

Go here for the full video interview with Charlie Rose:
http://www.charlierose.com
Enter “George W. Bush” in the search box. Scroll 11 minutes into the video for the quote about leaving Iraq.

And here’s an interesting piece on this subject that I came across today:
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnew…

George Bush’s March Down Insanity

Gotta travel today so posting from me will be limited. But I thought I would at least share this video of Scott from BrassCheckTV (they done gone and sent me another good one). He explains that a war with Iran will be far different than a war with Iraq. He lays it out quite simply, if we bomb Iran, we WILL use nukes and it will fail. And IF we bomb Iran, we need to choose which city we want gone, for they will not stop until NY, Seattle, Chicago, whatever is bombed and gone.

What An Attack On Iran Will Look Like

Consequences

Bush continues to push for an attack on Iran.

He is goaded by the Israeli War Lobby, the “religious” right, and other assorted domestic fascists and lunatics.

Iran is not Iraq.

Iran is a bigger country, a better armed country and a much more socially cohesive country than Iraq ever was - or could be.

Iran is PERSIA, a society with thousands of years behind it. Iraq was a glued together set of random kingdoms.

Iran is a country that has the ability to fight back and fight back massively.

As in Iraq, the weapons of mass destruction claim is a total fraud - and yet to war we go.

McCain is all for it. He can’t wait. Obama is being artfully vague about his intentions.

And then there’s Bush and Cheney. They still have nearly six months left to put the final bullet in the back of America’s head before they go.

Eight years ago, who could have ever imagined this insanity?

The History of WWI (It’s All About The Oil)

I received a video from BrassCheckTV (you should check them out). In about half the cases, I have already seen the video, but many times they surprise me by sharing something that I WISHED that I had seen already.

Such is the case of:

Oil and War

A stage show
by Robert Newman

BrassCheckTV has the entire 45 minute Google video up, but erkd1 has it broken down into smaller chunks on his YouTube Channel (he has many really good videos there… worth a check). I have made a playlist at my BuelahMan YouTube Channel with this list to go by or start with this one:

Laugh and learn!

The brilliant Robert Newman comes to grips with the wars and politics of the last hundred years - but rather than adhering to the history we were fed at school, places oil at the center stage of all the cause of all commotion

Robert points out that from the year 2000 ~ 2002 each of the “Axis of Evil” decided (evilly, apparently) to stop trading their oil in American Dollars and move to the Euro. One by one they did it and became our enemy. But the problem is much deeper than “defiance”, as is portrayed by Bush, et al (including complicit media). You should really watch the entire series, but if nothing else, watch the first 3 clips which explains how even WWI was about Britain’s invasion of Iraq for oil and how we have been meddling in their oil affairs ever since.

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.

The REAL WMD in Iraq is OIL

Let a patriot explain it:

And while we’re at it, consider the cost in innocent lives in the ME (not JUST Iran, for the nuclear waste will spread to adjacent countries) when we use bunker-buster bombs (they are nuclear weapons, didn’t you know?). Where IS our sense of decency and commitment to innocent people?

Does Big Oil Control Bush? You Decide

B’Man: From Open Left by David Sirota:

Bush Cites Enviro Concerns to Curb Solar Development…While Accelerating Oil Drilling

LAFAYETTE, IN - A few weeks back, I wrote a New York Times magazine article about the populist uprising against unbridled oil and gas drilling in the Mountain West. The article highlighted a major theme in my new book, THE UPRISING. In the article, I discussed how the Bush Bureau of Land Management has thrown the principle of environmental caution overboard by opening up a huge amount of federal land to drilling. So it is with more than a little bit absurd to read this New York Times story today:

“Faced with a surge in the number of proposed solar power plants, the federal government has placed a moratorium on new solar projects on public land until it studies their environmental impact, which is expected to take about two years. The Bureau of Land Management says an extensive environmental study is needed to determine how large solar plants might affect millions of acres it oversees in six Western states.”

Look - I agree that we need to do a better job of measuring environmental impacts of all proposed energy development - whether that development is solar, oil or gas. But what’s so incredible about this story is that the BLM is working to curtail solar development in Western states by citing environmental concerns while at the same actively accelerating oil and gas drilling in Western states - drilling that is way, way worse for the environment than solar energy, from both an emissions perspective and a land-use perspective.

This kind of government fealty to the rapacious fossil fuel industry is precisely what the energy-related populist uprising in West is revolting against.

B’Man: The Oil Companies must be shitting their pants that they might lose some record profits, so Presnit Idiotass slows alternative energy development for them to reap even more. If you rednecks ever thought that Big Oil and Big Money doesn’t own W’s ass, surely this proves it to you. They don’t care about you.

George Bush Is A Genius

B’Man: Hilarious, until you understand how true this is…

Bremner, Bird, and Fortune: George Parr (Iraq oil)

An interview with ‘George Parr’ (a fictional character stating real facts). Shown in 2007 during Bremner, Bird, and Fortune the interview features Iraq and it’s oil. Taken from the new series of BBF currently on Channel 4 (captured via Channel 4 +1).

Jim Hightower Explains What The Iraq War Is All About

Oil Companies Win (A Supreme Court Gimmee)

Court Rewards Exxon for Valdez Spill

by Greg Palast

Chicago Tribune (revised)

[Thursday, June 26, 2008] Twenty years after Exxon Valdez slimed over one thousand miles of Alaskan beaches, the company has yet to pay the $5 billion in punitive damages awarded by the jury. And now they won’t have to. The Supreme Court today cut Exxon’s liability by 90% to half a billion. It’s so cheap, it’s like a permit to spill.

Exxon knew this would happen. Right after the spill, I was brought to Alaska by the Natives whose Prince William Sound islands, livelihoods, and their food source was contaminated by Exxon crude. My assignment: to investigate oil company frauds that led to to the disaster. There were plenty.

But before we brought charges, the Natives hoped to settle with the oil company, to receive just enough compensation to buy some boats and rebuild their island villages to withstand what would be a decade of trying to survive in a polluted ecological death zone.

In San Diego, I met with Exxon’s US production chief, Otto Harrison, who said, “Admit it; the oil spill’s the best thing to happen” to the Natives.

His company offered the Natives pennies on the dollar. The oil men added a cruel threat: take it or leave it and wait twenty years to get even the pennies. Exxon is immortal - but Natives die.

And they did. A third of the Native fishermen and seal hunters I worked with are dead. Now their families will collect one tenth of their award, two decades too late.

In today’s ruling, Supreme Court Justice David Souter wrote that Exxon’s recklessness was ”profitless” - so the company shouldn’t have to pay punitive damages. Profitless, Mr. Souter? Exxon and it’s oil shipping partners saved billions - BILLIONS - by operating for sixteen years without the oil spill safety equipment they promised, in writing, under oath and by contract.

The official story is, “Drunken Skipper Hits Reef.” But don’t believe it, Mr. Souter. Alaska’s Native lands and coastline were destroyed by a systematic fraud motivated by profit-crazed penny-pinching. Here’s the unreported story, the one you won’t get tonight on the Petroleum Broadcast System:

It begins in 1969 when big shots from Humble Oil and ARCO (now known as Exxon and British Petroleum) met with the Chugach Natives, owners of the most valuable parcel of land on the planet: Valdez Port, the only conceivable terminus for a pipeline that would handle a trillion dollars in crude oil.

These Alaskan natives ultimately agreed to sell the Exxon consortium this astronomically valuable patch of land — for a single dollar. The Natives refused cash. Rather, in 1969, they asked only that the oil companies promise to protect their Prince William Sound fishing and seal hunting grounds from oil.

In 1971, Exxon and partners agreed to place the Natives’ specific list of safeguards into federal law. These commitment to safety reassured enough Congressmen for the oil group to win, by one vote, the right to ship oil from Valdez.

The oil companies repeated their promises under oath to the US Congress.

The spill disaster was the result of Exxon and partners breaking every one of those promises - cynically, systematically, disastrously, in the fifteen years leading up to the spill.

Forget the drunken skipper fable. As to Captain Joe Hazelwood, he was below decks, sleeping off his bender. At the helm, the third mate would never have collided with Bligh Reef had he looked at his Raycas radar. But the radar was not turned on. In fact, the tanker’s radar was left broken and disasbled for more than a year before the disaster, and Exxon management knew it. It was just too expensive to fix and operate.

For the Chugach, this discovery was poignantly ironic. On their list of safety demands in return for Valdez was “state-of-the-art” on-ship radar.

We discovered more, but because of the labyrinthine ways of litigation, little became public, especially about the reckless acts of the industry consortium, Alyeska, which controls the Alaska Pipeline.

• Several smaller oil spills before the Exxon Valdez could have warned of a system breakdown. But a former Senior Lab Technician with Alyeska, Erlene Blake, told our investigators that management routinely ordered her to toss out test samples of water evidencing spilled oil. She was ordered to refill the test tubes with a bucket of clean sea water called, “The Miracle Barrel.”

• In a secret meeting in April 1988, Alyeska Vice-President T.L. Polasek confidentially warned the oil group executives that, because Alyeska had never purchased promised safety equipment, it was simply “not possible” to contain an oil spill past the Valdez Narrows — exactly where the Exxon Valdez ran aground 10 months later.

• The Natives demanded (and law requires) that the shippers maintain round- the-clock oil spill response teams. Alyeska hired the Natives, especiallly qualified by their generations-old knowledge of the Sound, for this emergency work. They trained to drop from helicopters into the water with special equipment to contain an oil slick at a moments notice. But in 1979, quietly, Alyeska fired them all. To deflect inquisitive state inspectors, the oil consortium created sham teams, listing names of oil terminal workers who had not the foggiest idea how to use spill equipment which, in any event, was missing, broken or existed only on paper.

In 1989, when the oil poured from the tanker, there was no Native response team, only chaos.

Today, twenty years after the oil washed over the Chugach beaches, you can kick over a rock and it will smell like an old gas station.

The cover story of the Drunken Captain serves the oil industry well. It falsely presents America’s greatest environmental disaster as a tale of human frailty, a one-time accident. But broken radar, missing equipment, phantom spill teams, faked tests — the profit-driven disregard of the law — made the spill an inevitability, not an accident.

Yet Big Oil tells us, as they plead to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, as Senator John McCain calls for drilling off the shores of the Lower 48, it can’t happen again. They promise.

*****************

Greg Palast is a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow for Investigative Reporting at the Nation Institute, New York. Read and view his investigations for BBC Television at http://www.GregPalast.com. An earlier version of this report originally appeared in the Chicago Tribune. Photos by James Macalpine (1993). Support the Palast Investigative Fund and find out more about this “well-designed disaster” by picking up Palast’s NY Times best-selling book The Best Democracy Money Can Buy at http://www.palastinvestigativefund.org/

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