The Ones Who Attacked Us

Laurie Lipton, Collateral Damage

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-afghan9-2008oct09,0,6830841.story

According to the investigation, conducted by U.S. Central Command, the civilian death toll in the Aug. 22 strike on the village of Azizabad was far lower than the 90 claimed by the United Nations and the Afghan government. Their assertions are questioned in the report, which argues that they “lack independent evidence” to support the higher death toll.

Both the first and the latest U.S. investigations conclude that the attack was a “valid military action,” military officials said.

“This was a legitimate target,” said a senior military official. “There is no culpability.”

“We are deeply saddened at the loss of innocent life in Azizabad,” Army Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey, the acting head of Central Command, said in a statement. “We go to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties in Afghanistan in all our operations, but as we have seen all too often, this ruthless enemy routinely surround themselves with innocents.”

Army Gen. David D. McKiernan, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, asked for the new investigation after a grainy cellphone video seemed to show a much higher civilian death toll than military officials had acknowledged.

Air Force Brig. Gen. Michael W. Callan, who led the new investigation, found that charges that U.S. or Afghan forces had violated the rules of engagement were “unsubstantiated.”

The report concludes that of the 33 civilians killed, eight were men, three were women, and 12 were children, based on videos from the aftermath of the fighting. Ten others were not identified.

So there is ”no culpability”, but there is, incidentally, this mother of all natural gas pipelines in the works:

http://www.aprodex.com/pipeline-opens-new-front-in-afghan-war-1028-n.aspx

To prepare for proposed construction in 2010, the Afghan government has reportedly given assurances it will clear the route of land mines, and make the path free of Taliban influence.

In a report to be released today, energy economist John Foster says the pipeline is part of a wider struggle by the United States to counter the influence of Russia and Iran over energy trade in the region.

The so-called Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline has strong support from Washington because the U.S. government is eager to block a competing pipeline that would bring gas to Pakistan and India from Iran.

The TAPI pipeline would also diminish Russia’s dominance of Central Asian energy exports.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080730.wmackay0730/BNStory/National/home

Defence Minister Peter MacKay insisted Wednesday that Canadian troops are not in Afghanistan to guard a new natural gas pipeline being built through the southern part of the country.

Mr. MacKay told a Halifax radio talk show that Canada has to let Afghanistan map its own future.

He said fears that Canadian troops may end up paying a hefty price to protect the U.S.-backed project from insurgents are unfounded.

Seeing the phrase ”dominance of Central Asian energy exports” brings to mind the author of The Grand Chessboard, one Zbigniew Brzezinski. In that bold but seldom-cited 1997 apology for 21st century American empire Brzezinski writes:

“Never before has a populist democracy attained international supremacy. But the pursuit of power is not a goal that commands popular passion, except in conditions of a sudden threat or challenge to the public’s sense of domestic well-being. The economic self-denial (that is, defense spending) and the human sacrifice (casualties, even among professional soldiers) required in the effort are uncongenial to democratic instincts. Democracy is inimical to imperial mobilization.”  (p.35)

“Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multi-cultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat.”  (p. 211)

“The momentum of Asia’s economic development is already generating massive pressures for the exploration and exploitation of new sources of energy and the Central Asian region and the Caspian Sea basin are known to contain reserves of natural gas and oil that dwarf those of Kuwait, the Gulf of Mexico, or the North Sea.”  (p.125)

And how has Dr. Brzezinski recently busied himself? He is a “top foreign policy adviser” to Barack Obama.

http://www.nysun.com/national/despite-criticism-obama-stands-by-adviser/62534/

Yes, like the view of an Afghan village from an AC-130 gunship, things really are so much clearer when you have the Big Picture.

Meanwhile, the “progressive” Democratic Senator from Illinois is already fully onboard.

http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/08/obamas_right_war.php

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081022.wcampaign_speech23/BNStory/Afghanistan/?page=rss&id=RTGAM.20081022.wcampaign_speech23

Sounding presidential, Senator Barack Obama said Wednesday he would order a surge of U.S. troops – perhaps 15,000 or more – to Afghanistan as soon as he reached the White House.

“The terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 are still at large and plotting,” he said, echoing Mr. Bush’s oft-repeated refrain.

On that we are agreed, Senator.

Coke or Pepsi?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Investigative journalist Gary Webb refused to be complicit. For his courage, the Mockingbird character assassins remembered him with this hit-piece of an obituary: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/13/obituaries/13webb.html

After the 2004 election, five weeks before his “suicide”, he called out the American people for their apathy and moral cowardice.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3977503.stm

“What this election tells me, unfortunately, is that it doesn’t matter to most Americans if their government lies to them repeatedly.

They no longer care if their leaders erode their civil liberties, push this country further towards a police state, or shroud their actions in additional layers of official secrecy.

They don’t mind if their government operates strictly for the benefit of the rich and the corporate class, as long as their own taxes don’t go up.

Nor do they care if their government spends itself to the brink of bankruptcy. As long as they feel threatened by some external evil, everything is permitted.”

By the time Webb spoke these words the 2004 election had already been conceded to George W. Bush by John Kerry, despite already staggering evidence of fraud which has since been exhaustively catalogued by investigators like Robert Kennedy, Jr. http://tinyurl.com/5aq39o And Ohio was only one of the holes leading to that dark warren. http://www.bradblog.com/Docs/ClintCurtis/CC_Affidavit_120604.pdf

 

 

 

 

 

But even assuming pervasive election fraud in 2004, enough Americans were sufficiently moved to press the red button that the Bush regime was renewed, claiming a “mandate” that endowed it with “political capital”. This “mandate” made the US public complicit in–among other crimes of state–the crime against humanity the Iraq War already clearly was. Within days, the punitive annihilation of Fallujah began. http://tinyurl.com/6qvtvz

Bold voices against militarism are among us. Dennis Kucinich, the only member of Congress with the moral courage to draft Articles of Impeachment against both Bush and Cheney, was marginalized and smeared in the corporate media before being ejected from the debates altogether. Was it something he said? http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2007/10/31/kucinich-i-saw-a-ufo/

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/nbc-appeals-ruling-on-adding-kucinich-to-debate/?hp

http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2007/08/5255_kucinich_wins_d.html

And if, say, the female African-American Green Party candidate for President speaks out and the media ignore her, does she make a sound? http://www.mckinney2008.com/PRESIDENT/index.php

Was Gary Webb right about “most Americans”? Admittedly, for all the right-wing hystrionics about the menace of the “leftist” or “socialist” Democratic candidate, the American people have again been given a choice between corporate Red and corporate Blue. But there is a difference. Many more millions are informed and aware than were in 2004. Fear has passed its sell-by date. Whoever gets the “nod”, We the People are awake, and watching.

Confess

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/14/AR2008101403331.html?nav=hcmodule

The Bush administration issued a pair of secret memos to the CIA in 2003 and 2004 that explicitly endorsed the agency’s use of interrogation techniques such as waterboarding against al-Qaeda suspects — documents prompted by worries among intelligence officials about a possible backlash if details of the program became public.

http://dennisloo.blogspot.com/2008/04/bush-admits-approving-torture.html

From Dennis Loo:

Bush Admits Approving Torture

When you are trying to acclimate a people to a new normal – in this case, the new normal means routine torture, with international law, and the law more generally, all subject to subordination and disregard as “military necessity” dictates – you start out by denying that you would even think of doing such terrible, illegal things as torture. For a long time, Bush claimed that he had approved an “alternative set of procedures” that were not, heaven forbid, torture, but that the exact details he couldn’t reveal because it would give aid and comfort to the enemy. He assured the American people that all the relevant laws and procedures were being safeguarded. Remember his famous lines? “We do not torture.”

As time goes on, you carefully and progressively build the case for justifying extreme measures. Eventually, you shift from denying that you’re doing these things to admitting that you’re doing it, but, as Schwarzenegger’s character in the film True Lies admits to his wife, yes, I have killed some people, “but they were all bad.” This is now what has happened.

The moment we are now in is critical because the cat’s now definitively out of the bag – it’s now been admitted in full view in mainstream media – and the question before us is whether we will permit this or fight these war criminals and drive them from office. There will be those that say, “Oh, but Zubaydah was a bad man and you have to do these things to get information out of them.” People accept such logic are showing us three things.

First, they are demonstrating their utter credulity to the outrageous fictions of proven liars.

Second, they are demonstrating their inability to judge the overall direction of events. Today our government is torturing Arabs and converts to Islam (such as American citizen Jose Padilla). Tomorrow, our government will be torturing more Americans and anyone else they can stick the terrorist label on.

Third, they are demonstrating their narrow-minded national chauvinism, concluding that it is OK to torture others as long as it supposedly makes them safer.

What kind of people are we really? How will history judge us?

History will not be kind to those who say that they did not act because they were relying upon the Democrats to do something or that they waited for months and months hoping that a new president in 2009 would stop these practices.

History will ask: why did you remain silent? You knew. You had a moral responsibility to act and you didn’t. You cannot hide behind the inactions of those you expected to do the right thing. You are responsible, not the complicit Democrats and the complicit mass media. You.

The story from ABC News below incorrectly states that Abu Zubaydah gave up important information after being watertortured. The truth is something else. As New York Times reporter Ron Suskind says, Zubaydah was a low-level operative with nothing of real value to reveal.

From Jason Leopold’s 12/19/07 article entitled: Chertoff Concealed Role in Tape Destruction:

In his book “The One Percent Doctrine,” author Ron Suskind said Zubaydah was not the “high value detainee” the CIA had claimed. Rather, Zubaydah was a minor player in the al-Qaeda organization, handling travel for associates and their families, Suskind says.

Abu Zubaydah’s captors soon discovered that their prisoner was mentally ill and knew nothing about terrorist operations or impending plots. That realization was “echoed at the top of CIA and was, of course, briefed to the President and Vice President,” Suskind writes.

But Bush portrayed Zubaydah as “one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States.

“And, so, the CIA used an alternative set of procedures” to get Zubaydah to talk, Bush said in the spring of 2002, after Zubaydah was captured.

Suskind writes that Zubaydah became one of the first prisoners in the wake of 9/11 to undergo some of the harshest interrogation methods at the hands of American intelligence officials.

Suskind says that, despite the fact that Bush was briefed by the CIA about Zubaydah’s low-level al-Qaeda status, the president did not want to “lose face” because he had stated his importance publicly.

“Bush was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth,” Suskind writes. Bush questioned one CIA briefer, “Do some of these harsh methods really work?”

Zubaydah was strapped to a waterboard and, fearing imminent death, he spoke about a wide range of plots against a number of US targets, such as shopping malls, the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty. Yet, Suskind writes, the information Zubaydah had provided under duress was not credible.

Still, that did not stop “thousands of uniformed men and women [who] raced in a panic to each … target.” And so, Suskind writes, “the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered.”

But of course to comprehend the scope of what has occurred is to remember we are talking about more than water torture. Officially sanctioned or tolerated “enhanced interrogation techniques” have included threats of violence against prisoners’ families, mock execution, sexual humiliation, exposure to extreme noise, heat and cold, sensory and sleep deprivation, beatings and electrocution. Scores were literally tortured to death–murdered.

http://brokenlives.info/?page_id=69

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/06/18/ex-state-dept-official-hundreds-of-detainees-died-in-us-custody-at-least-25-murdered/

If the sadism of a “few bad apples” at Abu Ghraib was official policy all along, a culturally studied psychological operation against the “enemy”, what does it mean that the top officials of the current US regime have admitted to authorizing  torture in violation of their Oaths of Office, US Constitutional and International Law and yet they remain in power? What does it mean that only a small chorus of Congressional voices have demanded their impeachment and prosecution, or that the corporate media continue to ”spin” these high crimes as defensible departures from the moral norm in the name of the “War on Terror” when they mention them at all?

If the essence of fascism consists in the acclimation of the public to moral abasement in exchange for promises of protection and “security” (precisely the relationship between a prostitute and her pimp), in what 21st Century Oceania do we live where this exchange can take place in the White House press room?

Is Helen Thomas really the only member of the White House Press Corp who perceives reality and is properly outraged in response, or are the other “journalists” present merely too compromised and cowardly to challenge the mouthpiece of a regime whose criminality is self-evident?

A nation of Dana Perinos might well deserve its debasement and demise.

There is no statute of limitations on torture or murder. Come January, demand justice or surrender your Republic–and your humanity–once and for all.

O Captain! My Captain!

“What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children – not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women – not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.”

“I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary rational end of rational men. I realize that the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war – and frequently the words of the pursuer fall on deaf ears. But we have no more urgent task.”

“So, let us not be blind to our differences – But let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.”

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jfkamericanuniversityaddress.html

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/11/1120_021120_kennedy_pt_109.html

The Protection Racket

The President’s Secret Service detail has one mission and one mission only, a mission for which they perpetually train, a mission whose protocols are written in stone–to protect the President of the United States from threats to his life. In performing this mission they care neither for etiquette nor the sensibilities of children.

For this reason the behavior of President George W. Bush’s Secret Service detail on the morning of 9/11/2001 remains an “enduring mystery”. When Michael Moore incorporated the Booker Elementary footage in Fahrenheit 911 in 2004, the American public saw for the first time that President Bush had not in fact leapt into action after being apprised about 9:05 am by Andrew Card that “America is under attack” as White House and corporate news sources insisted, but rather he had continued to play his role in this minor media event for seven minutes, pretending to read from a child’s book about a goat. Moore’s film makes much of the Commander-in-Chief’s apparent apoplexy and lack of leadership (at best actually dereliction of duty), but fails to ask the essential question: Where is the Secret Service? Not only did Bush complete the reading event, he was allowed to casually linger in the classroom for photos before appearing live on national television at his scheduled time of 9:30 am, thus broadcasting his presence at the school as aerial attacks on high-profile US targets by an unknown number of hijacked aircraft continued. http://whatreallyhappened.com/IMAGES/feral_press_9-10.jpg

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/gwbush911florida.htm

“‘With an unfolding terrorist attack, the procedure should have been to get the president to the closest secure location as quickly as possible, which clearly is not a school,’ says Philip Melanson, author of The Secret Service: The Hidden History of an Enigmatic Agency. ‘You’re safer in that presidential limo, which is bombproof and blastproof and bulletproof.’”

http://www.sptimes.com/2004/07/04/news_pf/Worldandnation/Of_fact__fiction__Bus.shtml

Did it occur to anyone in the President’s detail to hustle him to his bomb-proof limousine and back to Air Force One only four miles away at Sarasota-Bradenton Airport? Yes, it did.

Three Secret Service agents, a SWAT member, the Marine and Balkwill turned on the television in a nearby front office as United Airlines Flight 175 out of Boston crashed into the south tower.

“We’re out of here,” the Marine told Balkwill. “Can you get everyone ready?”

http://billstclair.com/911timeline/2002/sarasotaheraldtribune091002.html

Who overruled this response?

Who allowed Bush to pause and wave from the open door of Air Force One when he finally reached the airport at 10:00 am, an hour after everyone on the planet with a television knew “America is under attack”?

Miller, the Bradenton congressman, hurried up the rear steps of the presidential jet while Bush went up the front. He paused in the doorway to wave to photographers, raising further questions about security that day.

http://www.sptimes.com/2004/07/04/news_pf/Worldandnation/Of_fact__fiction__Bus.shtml

Well, who ordered this exasperated man to abandon his assigned post on JFK’s limousine as it departed Love Field in Dallas?

DALLAS — Security details at Barack Obama’s rally Wednesday stopped screening people for weapons at the front gates more than an hour before the Democratic presidential candidate took the stage at Reunion Arena.

The order to put down the metal detectors and stop checking purses and laptop bags came as a surprise to several Dallas police officers who said they believed it was a lapse in security.

Dallas Deputy Police Chief T.W. Lawrence, head of the Police Department’s homeland security and special operations divisions, said the order — apparently made by the U.S. Secret Service — was meant to speed up the long lines outside and fill the arena’s vacant seats before Obama came on.

Several Dallas police officers said it worried them that the arena was packed with people who got in without even a cursory inspection. They spoke on condition of anonymity because, they said, the order was made by federal officials who were in charge of security at the event.

http://www.star-telegram.com/dallas_news/story/486413.html

“It’s just a handful of people that run everything, and that’s provable….I have this feeling that whoever’s elected president…no matter what promises you make on the campaign trail – blah, blah, blah – when you win, you go into this smoky room with the twelve industrialist, capitalist scumfucks that got you in there, and this little screen comes down… and it’s a shot of the Kennedy assassination from an angle you’ve never seen before, which looks suspiciously off the grassy knoll…. And then the screen comes up, the lights come on, and they say to the new president, ‘Any questions?’

‘Just what my agenda is.’”

- Bill Hicks