What have we become?

Up to 30 billion dollars of US tax money is going to pay for private paramilitary companies in Iraq. Our "all volunteer Army" isn't that at all. It's a half-mercenary army, with the private half paid up to $500 a day for the less dangerous work, while our soldiers receive $1200 a month to fight and die.

Isn't this how the British lost the colonies, by hiring out to the Hessians? Isn't this why Rome fell?

I suppose I should be pleased that we're using mercenaries, but I gotta tell ya, it feels really gross. Slimy. UnAmerican.

"Both sides are sharpening their knives."

The insurgents--Sunnis and others--attack the Shiites and Kurds, and others (the US). The latter attack the insurgents. Now, we learn that since the most recent election, which favored the Shiites, the latter are systematically murdering former Baathists, mostly Sunnis, in revenge for years of oppression.

If that's not a civil war, what is it? Chopped liver?

Without the Internet, where would we be?

A few nights ago, quite late, I read this article on the web, wherein Scott Ritter, former US marine and UN weapons inspector--who's been anti-Iraq-war and right-on in his predictions about its outcome for three straight years--told us he'd learned that the US plans to attack Iranian nuclear plants "in June."

Guess what? This morning, I learn from the MMM (that's mainstream media to the cyberincognenti) that the Bushies are issuing an ultimatum-sounding fiat to Europe: Bring Iran to heel by June, or we act.

Brothers and sisters: Take to the streets. Now!

I hate to say I told you so, but...

the world economy, much too much dependent on the flaccid US economy, is gonna collapse pretty soon, says the Executive Director of the International Monetary Fund. America is drunk with buying foreign goods, not producing anything much and is spending wildly on wars and unproductive defense items.

In four more years this drunk in the White House is going to leave America--no, the entire planet--with a hangover even he can't lie and cheat and slime his way out of.

Ya know, I hope so. I want an end to these evildoers that have seized power in the US, and the only way we'll get rid of them, seems to me, is for them to so screw things up that even their monied supporters bail out.

So--spend on, Bush. March on, Bush. Lie and cheat and steal. Do your worst. I've decided to root for you, all the way into oblivion.

Smoking gun

One doesn't often see a murder on videotape, so when a newsman films a US soldier shooting an already-injured Iraqi at point-blank range--and then joking about it--one would think there might be grounds for a court martial. But no, not in this man's army. There's apparently "insufficient evidence."

Raimondo scores again

with this excellent piece about the NeoCons' march to war against Syria, in particular the baseless drumbeat that Syria was behind the recent bombing of a former Lebanese prime minister.

The most telling part of the essay is his quote from an article by Ron Suskind, recounting his conversation with a Bush admininstration aide on the nature of truth in the American Empire:

The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'

Mourning

No posts today. I'm in mourning. Sandra Dee and Hunter Thompson died. Nobody left to look up to.

The man on the street, a German street, reacts to Bush's imminent visit.

Essentially saying it's a pain in the ass.

Don't hold your breath

waiting for this UN report on the miserable conditions and prospects for Afghanistan to be reported by the mainstream media (hereinafter MSM) in the US.

"I serve in shame"

Check out this post from an army man serving in Iraq. The cartoon at the bottom is telling too.

Talk about a quagmire

In addition to arming Sunnis, in case the Shiite government turns in the wrong direction in Iraq, a I reported a few posts ago, the US, it turns out, is now negotiating with the Sunnis to end their involvement in the insurgency. Doubtless, they're being promised some position in the new "popularly elected" government. To the chagrin, of course, of those in that government.

What hypocrites the members of the administration are. What liars and frauds.

A fine kettle of fish

The Bremer-dictated "transitional law" that allowed him to escape Iraq without a shot was crafted, at the insistence of the Kurds, to allow them an effective veto over the terms of the constitution. This kept the Kurds happy, but even as the veto provision was inserted in the transitional law, the Shiites objected--but were over-ridden by the force of our occupation.

Now, however, the Shiites are contending that the new assembly can change that veto provision, effectively canceling the Kurds' power--which the Kurds covet so that they can exercise control over their northern provinces, including Kirkuk, which contains vast oil deposits. The Shiites contend the transitional law is not binding because it was produced during the occupation by the US. And, of course, the Sunnis take that same position, a position which, in effect, leaves the transitional law in effect only as to the parts that no one objects to.

Let me say this: I wouldn't want to be in that assembly this summer when these matters are decided. For that matter, I wouldn't want to be in the streets of Baghdad or Mosul or elsewhere in Iraq, where they are more likely to be decided.

I can't wait to hear

what Rummie says about the Army's destruction of photos of torture, having assured us, in Senate testimony, that the world would judge us by our transparency in dealing with the allegations of prisoner abuse.

When is it going to dawn on somebody that the Bushies are no different from other regimes that have run the US, or, for that matter, other empires--except that they're better at it. Namely, they lie and they've convinced a majority of us they're saintly. Come to think of it, there was a similar regime in Germany six decades ago.

The past is prologue

Here's a fine piece, showing what British kids are being taught about the VietNam war, comparing the revisionist version of that terrible conflict to what's happening to the truth in Iraq.

Upbeat? I think not

Greenspan's long-awaited testimony before the Senate was ambiguous at best. My take: He sees that the US in the long run can't continue as it is, spending, not taxing, continuing both as a nation and as its citizens to borrow from the future.

He's right, but he's not being heeded, not by consumers, not by our president or congress. At the end of Bush's second term we're going to be in the same situation we were at the end of the last trickle-down president, Reagan, who left us a heritage of massive debt that we still haven't paid. off.

Ya know, sometimes bad is better

With Kerry's outlandish push for more, not fewer, troops in Iraq, and approving, without question, Bush's 80-plus billions as a supplement for the defense department, I'm not sure Bush's election wasn't, in the long run, a good deal for us lefties. After all, what would we do with Kerry in control? Protest against our victor? Sure, he wouldn't be privatizing everything, but he's got an odd set of priorities in international relations, namely, the time-worn ideas that power makes peace.

So much for John Kerry

Now that he's shown himself to be a gutless, principle-less clot. I'm glad we elected Bush. He's easier to hate, and he's their asshole, not ours.

The power of the press

"Stocks Mixed Despite Strong Retail Report," is the headline of an AP story, dated today, at 11:01 a.m., EST. "Retail Sales are Weakest in Five Months," reads the headline of another AP story, same date, 15 minutes earlier, but this report by an economics reporter, referring to the same "retail report," which, in actuality, showed a significant drop in retail activity, but a slightly smaller drop than some economists forecast.

This is how the world works these days: All is illusion, spin, hype. All is lies. Karl Rove knows this and works precisely this way, over-stating projections of budget shortfall and then claiming victory when the budget doesn't do as badly; understating cost of Medicare benefits, then claiming foul when he later releases the higher true cost figures.

We've not only got to take back the White House, we've got to take back the media that got them into power and keeps them there.

The power of the press

"Stocks Mixed Despite Strong Retail Report," is the headline of an AP story, dated today, at 11:01 a.m., EST. "Retail Sales are Weakest in Five Months," reads the headline of another AP story, same date, 15 minutes earlier, but this report by an economics reporter, referring to the same "retail report," which, in actuality, showed a significant drop in retail activity, but a slightly smaller drop than some economists forecast.

This is how the world works these days: All is illusion, spin, hype. All is lies. Karl Rove knows this and works precisely this way, over-stating projections of budget shortfall and then claiming victory when the budget doesn't do as badly; understating cost of Medicare benefits, then claiming foul when he later releases the higher true cost figures.

We've not only got to take back the White House, we've got to take back the media that got them into power and keeps them there.

Tell me it isn't so

That the US is secretly arming Baathists in Iraq, using Pakistani arms to do so, in order to fashion a strong resistance to the possibility that the elected assembly might turn toward a fellow Shi'ite state, Iran, for allegiance.

I don't doubt the report, actually, because it's the kind of thing we regularly do in the world. We are, after all, the chief cause of unrest around the globe, and have been for decades.