True to form, of course, the corporate mainstream media have paid scant, if any, attention to this story of how dozens of retired officers helped shape American military policy while secretly still attached to the Administration teat. See here, (www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/05/09/cnn_abc/index.html ) here, ( www.sfgate.com:80/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/04/25/notes042508.DTL ) and here (www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/5/9/134810/7431/904/512691 ).
In this instance, and many more that could be named, the mainstream press, by not mentioning or following up on such CheneyBush scandals, does democracy a dangerous disservice.
Our political system depends on citizens receiving accurate information about what's being done in their names so that they can make intelligent decisions when voting for those who represent them.
LIES & DECEPTIONS
If they respond at all, Busheviks tend to say that even if these stories are true, how we wound up in Iraq is "old news," it's history, we're there, let's just make the best of it, "finish the job" and then go home.
However, if your original reasons for invading a sovereign country were based on lies and deceptions, and a lot of incorrect assumptions and ignorance, then your occupation policies will never work and you will have alienated and angered the local population to the point of violent resistance against you. The result: You will be stuck in a quagmire of your own devising, where the most you can hope for is endless stalemate. This was the case of the U.S. screwup in Vietnam in the 1960s and '70s, and it's the case today with the its five-years-and-counting occupation of Iraq.
Now, it can be argued that endless stalemate is of no great concern to the shock-doctrine practitioners of Bush&Co.; indeed, it may be the desired result as it guarantees prolonged chaos and thus more need for companies like Blackwater, Bechtel, Halliburton, KRB, et al. to help keep the broken society together. The U.S. and Iraqi dead and maimed are but the inevitable "collateral damage."
But, as CheneyBush have learned, domestically you can push the U.S. military, and American citizens, only so far before both begin to push back and call for a new, more rational approach to political and foreign-policy adventuring.
Key military officers within the Joint Chiefs of Staff (even, to some extent, Defense Secretary Gates) are watching their armed forces stretched much too thin around the globe. Because there is no military draft, the Pentagon is forced to use and abuse its existing troops to the point of near-rebellion, resulting in lower morale and increased psychological damage, including 300,000 Iraq veterans returning home with mental problems ( www.alternet.org/waroniraq/82912) and a rising rate of suicides. ( click here ).
'08 VOTE A REFERENDUM ON WAR
This abuse includes overuse of the stop-loss policy of refusing to let soldiers go home after they've completed their Iraq rotation, constantly recalling troops who have been sent home after completing their exended service, lowering the army's physical, intellectual, pyschological and moral standards in order to fill the recruiting gap when the services can't meet their enlistment quotas, returning physically or psychologically wounded soldiers to battle despite their doctors' recommendations, etc. etc.
Moreover, the citizens appear to have had enough. Since two-thirds of polled Americans believe the Iraq invasion and occupation are outrageously expensive follies and it's time to start bringing the troops back home, the opposition party is about to nominate as its presidential candidate someone who aims to get the troops out within 16 months. The Republican Party is set to nominate someone who wants to continue the CheneyBush war even if it means keeping U.S. troops in Iraq for a hundred years or more, and probably starting more conflagrations in the Greater Middle East.
In a fair and open election, the Democratic candidate should win that contest easily. However, there is compelling evidence ( www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0804/S00368.htm ) that in the past eight years, U.S. elections have been corrupted through the use of hackable, unverifiable, paperless "touch-screen" machines, and vote-tabulating computers, which utilize secret software, manufactured and programmed by companies with Republican affiliations.
BOMB, BOMB, BOMB IRAN
All this isn't just "old history." CheneyBush are itching to bomb Iran's military installations and scientific laboratories while they are still in control of the Executive Branch, and are "capapulting the propaganda" for such an attack in ways eerily similar to how they deceived Congress and the American people into bombing and invading Iraq.
There are reports that Secretary Gates has been trying to stop such attack-Iran moves, or at least to greatly reduce the scale of the operation. But other reports suggest that the decision to bomb already has been made, and the appointment of Gen. David Petraeus to take over at Central Command is a key sign that all the ducks are just about lined up in a row.
Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at universities in California and Washington, worked for two decades as a writer-editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently serves as co-editor of The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org).
Everybody that has kept up with real news (not MSM ) has known for years these retired Generals, military annalists, and other hired experts were lying to support the Bush/Chaney war. Though some posters would rather beat up on MMFA when it was actually the NYTs that broke the story
by
GUY P. FRASER (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 60 comments)
on Wednesday, May 14, 2008 at 11:25:14 AM
