*Warning: side effects include the mass murder of thousands of innocents and the revelation of the fact that you are an arrogant, puerile, greed-driven moron.

War of Terror

Image from Infinite Jest

'The era of strategic deception'

"HAVING PRESIDED over the two worst intelligence disasters since Pearl Harbor -- 9/11 and the misbegotten invasion of Iraq -- the Bush Administration and its apologists are now whining, "Okay, we were wrong about Iraq's weapons and supposed threat, but so was everybody else. Besides, it was all the CIA's fault."

"No way. The Iraq weapons fiasco was absolutely not caused by an "intelligence failure," as the White House and the recent Senate whitewash claim. U.S. national security and CIA were corrupted and blinded by extremist ideology, cowardice, and careerism. Nor was everyone wrong about Iraq. Scores of Mideast professionals, this writer included, insisted from Day 1 that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, posed no threat to the U.S., and had no link to al-Qaida.
(Snip)

"Former CIA director George Tenet, a political aparatchik, not an intelligence professional, undermined his agency by pandering to all of Bush and Cheney's prejudices. Careerism and hand-licking took precedence over professionalism. Those with dissenting views were ignored or shunted aside.

'This column has long reported smouldering anger among veteran CIA officers over Bush's deeply flawed policies towards Iraq and the Muslim world." "In late 2001, I was shocked and horrified to hear a distinguished member of the CIA's founding families actually claim a "fifth column" had taken control of Iraq policy and was driving the U.S. to war. But even the compliant CIA failed to satisfy Bush and Cheney's growing demands for more damning "evidence". Cheney and Defence Secretary Don Rumsfeld created two independent intelligence units, Office for Special Plans, and "Team B."

"Their mission: Find the smoking guns to justify immediate war against Iraq. These two units became the main conduits for disinformation about Iraq, promoting every rumour the White House and media wanted to believe, no matter how absurd. Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi -- created, financed, and managed by Pentagon neocons -- was a major source of information."
(Snip)

"This was no intelligence failure. This was strategic deception, a combination the Soviet KGB called "disinformatzia" and "maskirovka." This was facilitated by an ideologically and religiously extreme president; a Dr. Strangelovian vice-president lusting for war and oil; neocon ideologues and a cowardly Congress that violated its most basic responsibility to the nation. All that, plus a national security establishment that lacked the cojones to tell superiors or Americans the truth.

"Purging the CIA is not the answer. If anyone should be purged, it is the politicians and neocons in the Pentagon and media, who misled the U.S. into a catastrophic war that has so far cost the lives of more than 880 Americans, 13,000 Iraqi civilians, $200 billion US, and ruined the good name of the United States around the world. They and Britain's Tony Blair must not be allowed to escape full blame and retribution by hiding behind the sophistry that everyone -- and thus no one -- was responsible."

Eric Margolis

What about all of the other prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan?

What about the American Gulag at Gitmo?

Bush is just another petty tyrant like Saddam Hussein but with better spin control.

From the “Cakewalk through the gates of Hell” files.

These story links have been seen by most blog/Net junkies but I, like millions, must record them on my blog. There are so many stories and reports of American warcrimes as

"Operation Iraq Liberation" festers and the will of the Bush/Cheney Administration sees the capture and control of the world's oil supply.

The seeds of global terrorism have blossomed with the Military Industrial Terrorism of the Bush/Cheney Cartel's Imperial Homeland U.S.A. acting as a potent fertilizer.
Reviewing the gross lies and condescending platitudes from former Proconsul Bremer and the "War President" a year ago, the ineptitude and arrogance of the international war crime that is the Iraq Occupation becomes sadly apparent.

"The Iraqi people are now free. And they do not have to worry about the secret police coming after them in the middle of the night, and they don't have to worry about their husbands and brothers being taken off and shot, or their wives being taken to rape rooms. Those days are over." - Paul Bremer, Administrator, Iraq Coalition Provisional Authority, Sept. 2, 2003

"Iraq is free of rape rooms and torture chambers." - President Bush, remarks to 2003 Republican National Committee Presidential Gala, Oct. 8, 2003

UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT!

Seymour Hersh - exposé of Iraqi prisoner torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib - Eschaton

'Secret film shows Iraq prisoners sodomised' - The Independent

Evidence for Hersh's claims of child sexual abuse at Abu Ghraib? -Boing Boing

"The Abu Ghraib Prison Photos" - AntiWar.com

"Torture at Abu Ghraib Followed CIA's Manual" - A. McCoy,University of Wisconsin-Madison

"Sexual Humiliation is the Norm in Military Prisons" - By K.Zernike and D.Rohde - N.Y. Times

INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT
: US efforts to obtain impunity for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
-Amnesty International.

Why does the U.S.A. want total immunity where torture and mass murder are concerned when these acts, (as committed by other countries), are part of the rationale for U.S.invasion and occupation of their nations? I guess the Bush Cartel realizes they have no international credibility left - why not go for broke?

"Feels Like the Third Time" - Newly unearthed, once-classified documents remind us that Abu Ghraib is hardly the first time that torture became policy.

"Convoy of Death" - In Afghanistan, filmmaker Jamie Doran has uncovered evidence of a massacre: Taliban prisoners of war suffocated in containers, shot in the desert under the watch of American troops.

"Bush's secret army - The USA hires contract soldiers to fight in Iraq"- Janes

"Americans accused of running private jail appear before Afghan judge, say they have Pentagon links" - Boston.com

(Who do they answer to?)

The torture is systemic. The war crimes are documented. Nobody in the Bush Administration has taken responsibility and stepped down for an offence so gross, it would see anybody in any profession thrown out of work in a New York minute.

The Republicans have repeatedly blocked every avenue through which accountability could become a consideration domestically and globally.

The stagnant cronyism of the Bush/Cheney war profit Cartel is so glaringly obvious. They do not even attempt to conceal the fact that they work for themselves and not the United States of America.
“American Interests” are now defined by oil companies, weapons manufacturers and every little public purse pit stop in the bloated web of Bush/Cheney contributors.

So much money and death.
How can any American support the Bush/Cheney corporate cartel that programs its citizens with brainwashing, misdirecting Psyops and fabricated truth? With the manufactured consent of a strategically uninformed electorate these 21st Century Robber Barons have sent another generation of underprivileged (and often desperate) Americans off to die for the preservation and improvement of the opulent lifestyles of America's elite.

Let us not consider the mutilation, torture and murder of tens of thousands of Iraqis under U.S. bombs and at the hands of duped and angry U.S. soldiers whose hatred of those whose oil they were sent to liberate has been the cause of needless brutality and unnecessary violent death.

I think that both overt and latent Western racism are still some of the most effective tools of right wing parties in North America. As long as "Us and Them" continues as a mindset for the globally isolated United States, it will be easier for corrupt administrations to manufacture consent for mass murder invasions from a programmed and willfully ignorant support base.

I suppose alien invasion from beyond the stars is the only way Earthlings will ever begin to think in terms of
"We, the citizens of Earth."

ROGER WATERS SIGNS WALL.

"We don't need no thought control"

"Roger Waters, formerly of Pink Floyd has backed War on Want's campaign, saying, “The poverty inflicted by the wall has been devastating for Palestinians. It has kept children from their schools, the sick from proper medical care and continues to destroy the Palestinian economy. I fully support War on Want’s campaign, and hope that as many people as possible sign the wall – as a strong message to the UK government that immediate action is essential.”

War on Want launches "Writing's on the Wall" campaign.(E.I.)

I was thrilled to read on Electronic Intifada that Roger Waters, (real Pink Floyd), is using his elite celebrity status to intervene and bring to light the atrocities and inhumanity surrounding the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
You don’t see a whole lot of Roger on the “celebrity” scene. Unlike many of today’s remaining legends and icons from the “Golden Age of Rock” who are busy shoring up the retirement fund with cheesy corporate endorsements and greatest hits packages and tours, Waters seems to be plunging headlong into the festering international sore that is the Israel/Palestine reality.

I would imagine as an artist who has dealt with the resonance and eternal damage of war in much of his body of work, Waters must feel the seething wrong of the middle-eastern nightmare.
Good on Waters for speaking out on a relevant and contentious issue that needs serious discussion and action from the citizens of the Western World.

This almost makes up for Bob Dylan and his shameful stint as underwear shill for Victoria’s Secret. How many roads, Bob?

The Writing's on the Wall from THE WAR ON WANT.

"The separation wall (or‘fence’) being built by Israel officially under the guise of ‘keeping Palestinian suicide bombers out’ is set to be 650km long – that is, twice as long as the Berlin wall, and three times as high.
The wall will cut off half a million Palestinians from the rest of the West Bank and East Jerusalem when completed, separating people from their local schools and hospitals, farmers from their land and crippling local businesses. Palestinians living on the Israeli side of the wall will, in addition, be denied access to Israeli services, leaving them stranded.

Despite an International Court of Justice ruling that the wall is illegal, the Israeli government has vowed to continue construction."

It's Not Always About You : by Gwynne Dyer

"You can never say this without hurting the feelings of at least some Americans, but it needs to be said. At the stone-laying ceremony of July 4 on the site where the World Trade Center towers once stood, New York state governor George Pataki dedicated the building that is to replace them with the rhetoric that is standard in the United States on such occasions: "Let this great Freedom Tower show the world that what our enemies sought to destroy — our democracy, our freedom, our way of life — stands taller than ever."
But 9/11 wasn't really about any of that."(snip)

"Public debate in the United States generally assumes that America is the only true home of democracy and freedom, and that other people and countries are pro-American or anti-American because they support or reject those ideals. Practically nobody on the rest of the planet would recognize this picture, but it is the only one most Americans are shown — and it has major foreign policy implications.
This is what enables President George W. Bush to explain away why the United States was attacked with the simple phrase, "They hate our freedoms," and to avoid any discussion that delves into the impact of American foreign policy in the Middle East on Arab and Muslim attitudes toward the United States. It also blinds most Americans to the nature of the strategic game that their country has been tricked into playing a role in." (snip)

"The reason Al Qaeda is still in business in a big way is that the Bush administration then invaded Iraq. The Islamists were astonished, no doubt, but they knew how to exploit an opportunity when one was handed to them. And so the real game continues, while the public debate in the United States is conducted in terms that have only the most tangential contact with strategic reality."(snip)

"Many senior American politicians and military officers understand what is going on, but it's more than their career is worth to say so out loud."

It's Not Always About You - by Gwynne Dyer

Dyer digs into the reality behind the ridiculous and insulting public rationale of the Bush Administration and its groupthink propaganda talking points for the Iraq occupation and American global hegemony.
More Gwynne Dyer linkage.

From the "I can't believe its not butter" files: Army Stage-Managed Fall of Hussein Statue.

Hey Sunshine,
It seems I took a big bloggin’ break over the extra-long weekend.
After the near best-case scenario from possible outcomes in the Canuckistan Election I had to step back from media and wallow in the Cannabis and crapulence of self-indulgent detachment.

Crazy flipper fingers are lethargically labouring toward greater things in the slap-dash and excruciatingly obviously free “Youngfox” Internet existence. I really want to create something interesting and at the very least readable for the two of you. Ohm.

Meanwhile in the land of ghostly false flags, cheap life and hastily produced puppet shows…

Paging private Lynch!

The tail wagging the dog again in the Bush/Cheney Cartels Amerika is old news to most folks who give half a shit and pay attention to the world around them.

Much like the staged testimony of the Kuwaiti ambassadors daughter regarding the “Iraqi maternity ward killers” back when the US propaganda machinations of Bush Senior were manufacturing public consent for Gulf War 1, the dark eyed puppet masters of New World Order America are even more brazen and vulgar with their agitprop reality confections.
The “pivotal”, (at least to the US media cheerleaders) moment of the American invasion was the psyops street theatre of the “toppling” of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Baghdad.

David Zucchino - L.A. Times

"The Army's internal study of the war in Iraq (news - web sites) criticizes some efforts by its own psychological operations units, but one spur-of-the-moment effort last year produced the most memorable image of the invasion.(snip)
After the colonel — who was not named in the report — selected the statue as a "target of opportunity," the psychological team used loudspeakers to encourage Iraqi civilians to assist, according to an account by a unit member.

But Marines had draped an American flag over the statue's face.

"God bless them, but we were thinking … that this was just bad news," the member of the psychological unit said. "We didn't want to look like an occupation force, and some of the Iraqis were saying, 'No, we want an Iraqi flag!' "

Someone produced an Iraqi flag, and a sergeant in the psychological operations unit quickly replaced the American flag"

Now as the cynical summer sun bakes the consumer mind in this year of war, the glib Neocon regime does not even attempt to cover their scurrilous trail of false flag deceit.

The psyop conspiracies now roll out of the mainstream media like some sort of intellectual placenta after the unquestioned and heralded birth of a bastard monster. I wonder how many Americans have awakened today to the fact that their nations “leadership” has opened a gaping wound on the face of global diplomacy in their names. The citizens of the USA are all on the hook for this military industrial fabrication and its murderous wake.

The Bush Cheney Cartel has destroyed the credibility of the United States of America.