Meet the New Boss...

Anyone feel safer now?

Oh yeah, Carol. LOTS...........

Here is a good background (BBC 4 part series):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/persian/revolution/

Also excellent:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_revolution

What started as more of a student and peoples' rebellion ended in theocracy. I remember it well as I had Iranian students at that time at the Univ. of WA where I was a TA (PhD program).

Also heard a good special on this approx. 2 months ago on NPR. There is much more to the story than meets the eye. I suggest looking into it deeply, if one wishes to understand more the implications of Iran's new government.

Also, may people don't know that BEFORE the Shah Reza Pahlavi (whom the US was favorable toward & he was as much a tyrant as Khomeini would be later, but different politically) - BEFORE the Shah, Iran had a democratically elected leader.

He was removed from power by the British and American intelligence agencies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Mossadeq

The story needs to start at the beginning, in Persia.

Casey,

How did you come up with this one, you little sleuth! Interesting...

Live 16 mm footage of Black Friday was brought into the United States and we saw it at the University of Washington soon after it happened.

The only way to understand what happened is to start with the original rule of the Shah, his ouster, and his return (with US/British) help, his eventual overthrow, the promise of the revolution (self-determination, self control of oil, especially), and then the usurpment by fundamentalist religous extremists. How sad.

This is a pretty accurate depiction of the footage we saw, which consisted of student carnage after being shot from the air by government helicopters.

Black Friday (1978)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Black Friday occurred September 8, 1978 (17 Shahrivar 1357 AP) in Iran. The country had long been convulsed with protests against the rule of the Muhammad Reza Shah. The Shah thus declared martial law. This was ignored, however. On September 8, Tehran erupted with mass protests. Despite the largely peaceful nature of the protests the military used all available force to break up the demonstrations. This included the use of tanks and helicopter gunships. Many hundreds, mostly students, were killed.

The event utterly destroyed any moderate support the Shah had in Iran. An even larger round of protests followed the massacre, one that shut down the oil industry, which was essential to the regime's survival.

The events were an important part of the lead up to the Iranian Revolution that saw the destruction of the Shah's regime less than a year later.

..I would be thrilled if Americans became more interested in middle eastern history. Persia/Iran is very close to my heart because of people I have been close to for over 25 years. Then consider that after all this, they had a decade-long war with Iraq, who many people lump together with them (they are not even racially similar nor do they share a remotely related language).

DiAnne,

One of the best sources I have read on what happened is READING LOLITA IN TEHERAN. Have you read it yet?

She writes about her own days as a student in the US while the Shah was having his own people killed.

And also about the return to fundamentalism under the Ayatollahs.

[ LBJ, meet GWBu$h.
Its deja vu time.]

from Editor & Publisher, By Greg Mitchell

(June 29, 2005) -- As the press continues to argue over what President Bush said, didn't say or should have said about the war in Iraq on Tuesday night, I'll take this opportunity to simply roll out, as food for thought, the words of another president caught up in a difficult conflict not quite in its final throes. Here is a speech delivered by Lyndon B. Johnson on April 7, 1965. Make of it what you will.

President Urges Patience on War--but it's LBJ, and it's 1965
"To abandon this small and brave nation to its enemies, and to the terror that must follow, would be an unforgivable wrong," Johnson said. "To withdraw from one battlefield means only to prepare for the next." At that moment, only 400 American boys had died in the rice paddies.

snip~
Why are we in South Viet-Nam?

We are there because we have a promise to keep. Over many years, we have made a national pledge to help South Viet-Nam defend its independence. And I intend to keep that promise.

To dishonour that pledge, to abandon this small and brave nation to its enemies, and to the terror that must follow, would be an unforgivable wrong.

We are also there to strengthen world order. Around the globe from Berlin to Thailand are people whose well being rests in part on the belief that they can count on us if they are attacked. To leave Viet-Nam to its fate would shake the confidence of all these people in the value of an American commitment and in the value of America’s word. The result would be increased unrest and instability, even wide war.

We are also there because there are great stakes in the balance. Let no one think for a minute that retreat from Viet-Nam would bring an end to the conflict. The battle would be renewed in one country and then another. The central lesson of our time is that the appetite of aggression is never satisfied. To withdraw from one battlefield means only to prepare for the next. We must say in Southeast Asia--as we did in Europe--in the words of the Bible: "Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further."

Our objective is the independence of South Viet-Nam, and its freedom from attack. We want nothing for ourselves-only that the people of South Viet-Nam be allowed to guide their own country in their own way.

We will do everything necessary to reach that objective. And we will do only what is absolutely necessary.

Here's the complete text.
fascinatingly creepy, knowing what we know now~
http://tinyurl.com/cfj6w

Yahoo news has picked up the Iran president-elect was ex-hostage captor story from AP:

Ex-Hostages Say Iran Leader Was a Captor

By RUSS BYNUM, Associated Press Writer
44 minutes ago

SAVANNAH, Ga. - A quarter-century after they were taken captive in Iran, five former American hostages say they got an unexpected reminder of their 444-day ordeal in the bearded face of Iran's new president-elect.

Watching coverage of Iran's presidential election on television dredged up 25-year-old memories that prompted four of the former hostages to exchange e-mails. And those four realized they shared the same conclusion — the firm belief that President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had been one of their Iranian captors.

more~
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050630/ap_on_re_us/iran_former_hostages

Dianne...it kills me what is going on in the middle east, and what this President is doing that will make it even worse.

Iran is a wonderfull country that has had the bad fortune to have this nation support terribly corrupt leaders.
Persia discovered and promoted so much; monotheism, astronomy, math, science, medicine.

20 years ago Iran was Fighting off Iraqi Army forces when the US supported saddam hussein militarily and financially.
American foreign policy is based on quick returns. In this manner we have damaged so much, and have been so short sighted.

I've been searching for some information tonight about exactly how the hundreds of billions of dollars going to the Bush-Blair Invasion are being spent. I've had little success finding those figures.

But in my travels through cyberspace, I have come across a number of true conservative websites that focus on the Neocon Menace. These sites generally are not isolationist but rather argue for good relations with neighbors based on mutual respect. They are not new sites, they were worried about the Neocons many years ago. Concerns are expessed about the Neocons' use of Bush Jr and the Republican Party to further their Empire agenda. It was very enlightening, to say the least. There were complaints about the way the media of the right - eg the WA Times, Fox News, etc - is covering up the real facts and protecting the Neocons, who are ruining the Republican Party and America.

One of these conservative sites, which proclaimed that the old concepts of left and right no longer apply - a statement with which I would agree - linked to a very interesting European Site which also discusses the Neocon Menace. Here is that European link and a clip from the home page:

http://www.eurolegal.org/

"A matter of special concern to us is the phenomenon of Neoconservatism which we believe is fascism in embryonic form and which is impacting negatively on relations between the USA and Europe and contributing to the destabilisation of the Middle East and to the growth of terrorism world wide."

Very explicit: the Neocon Menace is contributing to the GROWTH of terrorism world wide.

Thanks for that Amy--very good research!

Karen

Thank you! I almost bought that in the airport during my last trip & had wondered about it. I'll read it now.

Toolmaker

Thanks too. That's the point I was making. The same warped foreign policy that used Bin Laden to coverty fight the Russians in Afghanistan, who sold chemical weapons to Saddam, who used the CIA to oust democratically elected leaders in Iran and other places - to keep oil flowing our way - is the same foreign policy we see in a more heightened form under W. But it's not new.

Brown Root & Kellogg (r/t Halliburton) provided infrastructure in Vietnam as well as Iraq.

Here is the story from the 25th anniversary of the Iran hostage crisis, well worth listening to.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4144174

Remember that there would not have been a hostage crisis had we not overthrown Mossadeq and installed the Shah, who was at least as bad as Saddam - and we have all been driving around on cheap oil partly because of it.

Remember that there would not have been a Gulf War had Halliburton not slant-drilled into Kuwait.
http://www.hermes-press.com
http://www.americanpolitics.com
http://www.lossless-audio.com/usa/topic4.php
http://www.ringnebula.com/Oil/Timeline-Iraq_040903c.htm
http://www.counterpunch.org/gorman0913.html
htp://www.plastichassle.com/mt_blogs/po_pollyana/archives/000828.html
http://www.mediamonitors.net/rehankhalil1.html
http://www.patriotist.com/tlarch/tl20030818.htm
http://www.nexusmagazine.com/articles/overview.html
http://www.kclabor.org/

We shelter behind the myth that progress is being made

By Robert Fisk
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/story.jsp?story=648952
http://www.selvesandothers.org/article9990.html

So we are going to support the myth. As the headless bodies are found along the Tigris, as the mortuaries fill up, as the American dead grow far beyond 1,700 - and, let us remember, the Iraqi dead go into the tens of thousands - Europe and the rest of the world still support the American project.

The Brussels summit was - and of course I quote our good friend Mr Kofi Annan, secretary general of the United Nations - "a clear sign that the international community will be determined and dedicated to [the Iraqis] on the tough walk ahead".

You can say "tough" again. How many suicide bombers have now immolated themselves against the Americans and their mercenaries and the new Iraqi army and the new Iraqi police force and their recruits? The figure appears to stand at around 420. Back in the days of Hizbollah’s war against Israeli occupation in Lebanon, a suicide bomber a month was regarded as phenomenal.

In the Palestinian "intifada", one a week was amazing. But in Iraq, we reach seven a day; Wal-Mart suicide bombing that raises the darkest questions about out ability to crush the uprising.

Condoleezza Rice says she wants more Arab ambassadors in Baghdad. I bet she does. When King Abdullah of Jordan promises to send his man to Iraq "as soon as it is safe", you know that the Arabs have understood the situation in a way the Americans have not. Who wants to be a late ambassador? Who wants to put his head on the block in Baghdad?

The reality - unimaginable for the Americans and their self-deluding allies, tragic for the Iraqis themselves - is that Iraq is a hell-disaster. Visit any Iraqi embassy in Europe, talk to any Iraqi in Baghdad - unless they live in the dubious safety of the pallisaded "Green Zone" - and you will hear their narrative of violence and have to accept that we have failed.

We are to be, so the myth-makers of Brussels claimed yesterday, "a full partner in the emergence of a new Iraq", to prove that "the people of Iraq have plenty of friends". Oh yes indeed. Except that most of these "friends" dare not visit Iraq (like the putative Jordanian ambassador) lest they have their heads chopped off.

American journalists now writing optimistically about the war - or the "insurgency" as we still insist on calling it - either travel with US forces in Iraq or conduct a form of "hotel journalism" from their heavily guarded Baghdad hotel rooms, working their mobile phones to talk to the self-imprisoned people of Iraq or their foreign mentors. A few American reporters still venture out - may they receive their appropriate awards (preferably not in heaven) - but the voice that now speaks of Iraq is that of officialdom, the narrative written by men and women who will, so they fervently hope, never have to visit real Iraq.

The representatives of more than 80 countries are urging the elected Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari to reach out to Sunnis - the same Sunnis who are destroying American and Iraqi lives on a shocking scale across the country - but the official line, so cringingly enunciated by the BBC last night, was that "top diplomats" (I like the "top" bit) had "thrown their weight behind US efforts to build a democratic Iraq". Only the word "efforts" suggested the truth.

The reality is that Iraq is more insecure than ever, that no foreigner dare now travel its highways, that few will venture into the streets of Baghdad. And we are told that things are getting better. And still we believe these lies. And still we fool ourselves in the movie-world of the Pentagon and the White House and Downing Street and, these days, the UN.

If all those dignitaries and puffed-up politicos and self-important diplomats were so sure that Iraq was going to be a success story, why didn’t they meet in Baghdad rather than Brussels? And of course, we all know the answer.

www.independent.co.uk

from http://www.juancole.com

An Iraqi response to Bush's claim that he is fighting terrorism by drawing terrorists to Iraq:

' "Why don't they find another place to fight terrorism?" asked Abdul Ridha al-Hafadhi, 58, head of a humanitarian aid group. "I don't feel comforted by Bush's remarks; there must be a timetable for their departure." '

On Wednesday, a grenade attack wounded two Polish troops near Diwaniyah, and a bombing in Tel Afar killed four. On Tuesday, a bombing near the Japanese base at Samawah killed two Iraqis. Thousands of people came out for the funeral of slain parliamentarian Dhari Ali al-Fayyadh.
On Tuesday, guerrillas killed US troops at Balad and Tikrit; several were also wounded.
Reuters also reports that on Wednesday US forces arrested Dhahir al-Dhari, a major clan leader whose brother heads up the Association of Muslim Scholars, a hard line Sunni clerical group.

' But another Sunni leader, Ayham al-Samarai, a former minister in the previous, U.S.-backed interim government, launched a new political movement, saying he aimed to give a voice to figures from the "legitimate Iraqi resistance". "The birth of this political bloc is to silence the sceptics who say there is no legitimate Iraqi resistance and that they cannot reveal their political face," he told a news conference. '
Al-Zaman: The Ministry of Labor is opening an inquiry into why several major Iraqi factories have closed down.

Iraq's health minister has warned against a building humanitarian crisis in the Qaim area. US military operations in the cities near the Syrian border have left made refugees out of 7,000 families, some of them now living in tents in the desert. It is alleged that the US is not allowing ambulances and humanitarian aid into the cities, and that there is danger of some refugees starving.

Although the primary stated goal of US campaigns in places such as Qaim is to root out guerrillas using them as bases, the massive force employed clearly announces that a subsidiary goal is to terrify the Sunni Arab population and to "encourage" them to report on the guerrillas from now on. Jane Arraf of CNN when reporting on the al-Qaim campaign showed a picture of what looked like a large community center being blown up by American planes. I thought to myself that it couldn't possibly be necessary to destroy that nice building. And, at the same time, the US is talking to the guerrilla leaders. Saddam called this sort of policy "tahrib wa taqrib": first you terrify your subjects, then you find ways of pulling them close to you. It does not reflect well on the US that the techniques it is now using look so familiar.

http://www.juancole.com

Arguing with Bush

"The terrorists who attacked us and the terrorists we face murder in the name of a totalitarian ideology that hates freedom, rejects tolerance and despises all dissent.

"Terrorists" are not a cohesive ideological category like "Communists" as Bush suggests. Lots of groups use terror as a tactic.

The Irgun Zionists in 1946 and 1947 did, as well. Also ETA in Spain, about the terrorist acts of which Americans seldom hear in their newspapers (they are ongoing). The Baath regime in Iraq engaged in so little international terrorism in the late 1990s and early zeroes that it was not even on the US State Department list of sponsors of terrorism. Bush could take the above rationale and use it to invade most countries in the world.

"To achieve these aims, they have continued to kill: in Madrid, Istanbul, Jakarta, Casablanca, Riyadh, Bali and elsewhere."

Yes, and these were al-Qaeda operations, and you haven't caught Bin Laden or al-Zawahiri.

"The commander in charge of coalition operations in Iraq, who is also senior commander at this base, General John Vines, put it well the other day. He said, We either deal with terrorism and this extremism abroad, or we deal with it when it comes to us."

This is monstrous and ridiculous at once. The people in Fallujah and Ramadi were not sitting around plotting terrorism three years ago. They had no plans to hit the United States. Terrorism isn't a fixed quantity. By unilaterally invading Iraq and then bollixing it up, Bush and Vines have created enormous amounts of terrorism, which they are now having trouble putting back in the bottle.

"Our military reports that we have killed or captured hundreds of foreign fighters in Iraq who have come from Saudi Arabia and Syria, Iran, Egypt, Sudan, Yemen, Libya and others."

Maybe 8 percent of the fighters in Iraq are foreign jihadis. Of the some 25,000 guerrillas, almost all are Iraqi Sunni Arabs who dislike foreign military occupation of their country. You could imagine what people in Alabama or Kentucky would do if foreign troops came in and tried to set up checkpoints in their neighborhoods.

Moreover, many of those jihadis fighting in Iraq wouldn't even be jihadis if they weren't outraged by Bush's invasion and occupation of a Muslim country.

The fact is that the US went in and convinced the Sunni Arabs of Iraq that we were going to screw them over royally, driving them into violent opposition. They aren't inherently terrorists and could have been won over.

There are no Iraqi military units that can and will fight independently against the Sunni guerrillas, so all those statistics he quoted are meaningless.

Almost all the coalition allies of the US have a short timetable for getting out of the quagmire before it goes really bad. Bush's quotation of all that international support sounds more hollow each time he voices it.

An interesting Flash presentation on Coalition casualties can be found here, demnstrating their geographical extent throughout the country.

The political process in Iraq has not helped end the guerrilla war. It has excluded Sunnis or alienated them so that they excluded themselves. It offers no hope in and of itself.

There was nothing new in Bush's speech, and most of what he said was inaccurate.

http://www.Tomdispatch.com takes apart Bush's moral relativism or amoral relativism and is worth a read.

Robert Parry | War or Impeachment
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0629-27.htm
Excerpt:
"The second hard truth is that the American people have only two choices on what to do next: they can continue to send their young soldiers into the Iraqi death trap for at least the next several years and hope for the best, or they can build a movement for impeaching George W. Bush and other administration officials – and then try to make the best of a bad situation in Iraq."
Elizabeth Holtzman | Torture and Accountability
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0629-28.htm

House Votes to Cut Bush's Democracy Plan
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0629-05.htm
Excerpt:
"Money for the program, the Millennium Challenge Account, is included in the $20.3 billion foreign aid bill the House approved on a 393-32 vote Tuesday."
[Does anyone know anything about this Millennium Challenge Account??? Is this another thing where Bu$h's buddies get more taxpayer money?]

Bush Flops in Prime-time
Death by a thousand cuts.
by Mike Whitney
He produced no plan, no strategy, and no vision; just a continuation of the same trends; the steady erosion of national confidence, a precipitous decline in credibility, and the daily loss of life.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9339.htm

Who's spreading what?: Bush's democratic hoax in Iraq:
President George Bush told the nation on Tuesday night 28 June that we are in Iraq to fight terrorism and spread democracy. Joseph Goebbels, Adolph Hitler's minister of propaganda said: "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."
http://www.redress.btinternet.co.uk/rburbach28.htm

Bush’s Flagship USS Fiasco is Sinking :
George Bush will officially leave office in January 2009. For millions of Americans this surely seems an interminable time to wait to reclaim the country from a period of almost inexplicable and collective madness--one that will likely be known simply as the “Bush Era”,
http://civillibertarian.blogspot.com/2005/06/bushs-flagship-uss-fiasco-is-sinking.html

Bonnie Erbe | Rice Doesn't Stand Up for Saudi Women
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/062905WA.shtml
[Bonnie Erbe is the host of To The Contrry - a women's opinion show (from a variety of perspectives) which used to air at noon every Sunday in our local PBS market. The show has now been moved to a Monday morning 5:30 a.m. time slot.]

Rick Wilson | Conservative Extremists Want to Undermine Social Security
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/062905SA.shtml
Excerpt:
"This skewed dream is in danger of coming true. After the 2004 election, the Associated Press reported that "the business groups supporting Bush's effort have a financial interest in changing Social Security, including financial services companies that could benefit from fees charged for managing the investment accounts." It's probably no coincidence that the Center for Responsive Politics reports that securities and investment firms were the fourth- largest donor to Bush's re-election campaign."

Board: Teflon Cancer Risks Downplayed
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/062905HB.shtml

Debate over Vaccines, Autism Continues
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/062905HA.shtml

Teen Mental Health Declining in the United States
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/062905HC.shtml
[My, oh, my! Isn't the book about teen mental health conveniently coinciding with the Bu$hCo plan to test all children for mental health problems - mandatory, by law, as he did in TX??? Making lab rats of our kids to see how psychotropic drugs work on young minds is just not a civilized thing to do....]

Micro-Power Hailed as Cheap, Safe Energy of Future
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/062905EB.shtml

Get a grip people...

Iran is a sovereign nation like any other and they have the right to their lifestyle, religion and form of governement as any of us who are born into this universe within our natural rights.

70% of Iran's population are under 30 years old.

Most are college educated in Western universities.

And if the thought of GE and Halliburton building and supplying the turbine generators, engineering start-up technology and controls to the same damn nuclear plants that our government is condemning them for is not enough hipocrisy...read this from someone none of us have a right to censor, condem or ignore...

They are DONE with Iraq...do you think they want to die in Iran?

No MAS
Leonard Clark, 860th MP CO
AZ Army National Guard
6-28-5

I have been talking to my fellow soldiers about this whole situation and I have told them about how the leadership in Washington is trying to get the American people to silence their criticisms of the continued lunacy we call the occupation of Iraq.

I tell them that they are saying to the Congress: "Well, ya know, our poor soldiers wanna stay and finish the fight in Iraq, but you people in Washington D.C. are undercutting their morale by bringing up this 'time table stuff'" and "What the hell are we doing in Iraq? Do we have a plan?" stuff.

When I tell this to my fellow soldiers, they immediately begin to laugh and then they get pissed off that such bullshit is being spouted back home, because we are the ones who are calling home and telling our families what a bunch of lies and crap they are telling the American people.

There are, to be sure, some soldiers (fewer and fewer, day-by-day) who are naively still blindly believing the lies. In fact, if they could have been around in 1968 they would have fit in real well, you know what I mean:

"What do you mean should we stay in Vietnam? We're gonna win this thing. Were killing 50 to a 100 of those Viet Cong and they're only killing 3 of us."

And then the next question to them would be: "Well, what about all the American soldiers who are going to die for this so-called 'Police Action' in Vietnam?" Their response: "Well, it's for democracy and if it takes more American sodiers to die well then so be it."

I told some fellow soldiers who still blindly eat the crap being spoon-fed to them about the Vietnam scenario, and their response was: "Vietnam and Iraq are not alike, it's like comparing apples and oranges because Vietnam's communists were well-funded and supplied by the Chinese." I then asked them about the report from the CIA that was in the press which stated the terrorists are well-funded, ...and they just ignored what I said.

You know what, fellow activist? Five to ten years from now, we are going to be debating these same people after 5,000 to 10,000 American soldiers are killed only to see another undemocratic theocratic church state probably led by another dictator of our choosing ruling Iraq. Was it worth it?

And they'll probably say "Gee, ya know what? Maybe it wasn't worth it. We should have kicked Saddam Hussein out and then left Iraq and let the Iraqi government we set up run their own country, but instead we just stayed on and on and on, and the American soldiers continued to die on and on and on....and the funerals and the mother and fatheless children continued, on and on."

Will we have another wall for Iraq like we do for Vietnam? You see, Federal three-piece suited politicians are not really different from City politicians - they'll wait until enough people die before they put in a stoplight at the local intersection in their city. To them one life is not worth the $100,000 for a stoplight, but ah, yes, maybe 8 to 10 lives when the voters start to notice.

It doesn't matter to them if the right thing would be to put in a stoplight, and it doesn't matter if people beg them - for the safety of their children - to put in the stoplight, because decency and compassion will not get them elected. Only money and votes will. We all know that these hypocrites value money more than they do human life.

Well, I'm not gonna wait for another damn wall for Iraq to be filled with the names of my fellow soldiers, and I hope you're not either. The cause we fight for is noble and just, it is to save the lives of American soldiers who are tragically dying over here needlessly. If we can save just one more American soldier's life who knows - we might just end up saving humanity itself.

There are those who say that one life is not worth much, but I say every human life is the gift of GOD, and to destroy one of those lives for the greed and corruption of hypocrites who do not have to fight wars - nor whose children do not have to fight wars - is a great sin. To lie and say we are dying over here to ensure 'democracy' in the Middle East when what we really are doing is fighting for Exxon and Halitburton is impeachable.

Remember this: not one more American soldier should die over here, for it is a needless death that didn't have to happen...but only for the US occupation of Iraq.

One last note: Today, after my three-vehicle patrol passed through a certain stretch of highway, an hour to 2 hours later another patrol was hit by a bomb on that same stretch and ANOTHER AMERICAN soldier was killed and at least 3 of his comrades were wounded, hopefully they will all live.

NOT ONE MORE AMERICAN SOLDIER! NO MAS !

Please pray for us soldiers and we will pray for you and the Peace of GOD will see us through.


Leonard Clark (Damned Liberal serving in Iraq)

National Guard soldier serving and patrolling the mean streets of Iraq every day
Civilian occupation: Kindergarten teacher (inner city school) Public Schools
Candidate for United States Senate in Arizona against John Kyl

Remember that there would not have been a Gulf War had Halliburton not slant-drilled into Kuwait.
Posted by: DiAnne at June 29, 2005 11:55 PM

From Kuwait into Iraq?

From one of the sites you linked to:

"Fully 3/4 of the world's oil reserves are now under US control (Caspian reserves via a trans-Afghanistan pipeline, and two-hundred-fifty billion barrels via Iraqi occupation). The US is thus able to control world oil trade and demand that oil be purchased with US dollars as opposed to competing currencies (Euros). Nations of the world are therefore forced to hold hundreds of billions of US dollars in reserve allowing the dollar to remain in demand."

http://www.ringnebula.com/Oil/Timeline-Iraq_040903c.htm

Still reading! Thanks for all that.

Thanks Indy
That is going out to Vets for Peace

For all the talk about "spreading freedom," the concept of sovereignty and national self-determination by other nations is not comfortable for our government, unless it serves their corporate interest.

Posted by not my president at June 30, 2005 12:11 AM

I have been reading, reading, reading tonight and have learned alot. I have a question, it is a simple question. I don't know if the blog is the place to ask it, but I will this time, and if there is a better place for me to ask questions someone can contact me and let me know. My thought here is too that maybe there are some who are reading our blog but cautious about asking questions. I am a newbie, and have been reading alot these past 6+ months, but find I have many somethings to learn each day. I don't want anyone who is looking in to think every one here is as novice as I - I am finding my base of knowledge and understanding expanding, and things are beginning to gel, but there is always so much more to learn!

O.K., my question this evening is referenced by the following quotes taken from Not My President's last post.

Re:
Maybe 8 percent of the fighters in Iraq are foreign jihadis. Of the some 25,000 guerrillas, almost all are Iraqi Sunni Arabs who dislike foreign military occupation of their country.
~snip~
and:
Moreover, many of those jihadis fighting in Iraq wouldn't even be jihadis if they weren't outraged by Bush's invasion and occupation of a Muslim country.
~snip~
and:
The fact is that the US went in and convinced the Sunni Arabs of Iraq that we were going to screw them over royally, driving them into violent opposition. They aren't inherently terrorists and could have been won over.
~snip~
and:
There are no Iraqi military units that can and will fight independently against the Sunni guerrillas, so all those statistics he quoted are meaningless.
~snip~

I know this may sound elementary, but surely these facts are known by some of our Senators and Congressmen. Why doesn't anyone stand up and speak the truth to power and to our citizens?

Amy

"The US is thus able to control world oil trade and demand that oil be purchased with US dollars as opposed to competing currencies (Euros). Nations of the world are therefore forced to hold hundreds of billions of US dollars in reserve allowing the dollar to remain in demand."

Bingo!
The Real But Unspoken Reasons For The Iraq War
..Saddam & the petrodollar

http://www.rense.com/general34/realre.htm
http://www.ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~pdscott/iraq.html
http://homepage.eircom.net/~gulufuture/news/eurozone_war030323.htm
http://www.fsmitha.com/h2/ch36.htm
http://www.ameinfo.com/23235.html
http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/002253.php

The reason for the war was Bush's goal of preventing OPEC from adopting the euro as an oil transaction currency standard. To pre-empt OPEC, we needed to get strategic control of Iraq along with its 2nd largest global oil reserves.

Hey Everyone, these link below are all soldiers running in the 2006 elecion if you want to check them out one in Ohio one where tutt lives she was looking for someone to check out dont know about the other one. If anyone wants to jump on their Band Wagon.

http://leonardclark.com/blog/?p=2#more-2

http://www.murphy06.com/index.html

http://hackettforcongress.com/

Kangaroo

Truth Shall Prevail

I think they should have known - but our foreign policy in the middle east is flawed going back many years. I don't think it was inevitable that we go into Iraq either time that we did.

I think the next thing to study might be how in apparent "peacetime," the CIA has been active in selectively backing dictators IF they were in place in countries that were of strategic interest to us, ie. had resources that the US, Britain, etc. didn't want "nationalized" (under control of the local governments).

We are not the only country to do this - Russia, Israel, many other countries have used "covert" operations to accomplish strategic goals, ie. helpful to big business.

I think our Senators and Congresspersons basically know how corrupt the world is - their job is to please their constituents, and then consider that each state has "special interests" that are pressuring them. Like in Washington - Boeing, the many military installations here, Microsoft & the like.

It's a big system and I believe it's corrupt to the core, that the Democrats are more populist and working for the "greater good," but that the whole system needs an overhaul. I'm not sure what that would take and we certainly aren't the only country that needs it. Most of them do, to some extent, and sometimes it happens! But we are currently one of the biggest and most powerful (even though we're partly owned by China, who is trying to buy Unocal, unless Chevron can outbid them!!)

Not sure that's an answer. The main person to address "special interests" and corruption last time was probably Howard Dean - & some people laughed at him, but it's true what he said. It's all about lobby groups in Washington. I do think that's true.

The articles I posted were by Robert Fisk, who is a prominent British journalist living in Lebanon, who has worked in the middle east for over 30 years. He's kind of radical though, but he does get his hands in the dirt and know whereof he speaks. (He was wounded while covering the Afghanistan war, etc.)

Then Juan Cole is a Professor with specialty in middle east. These are a couple of people who I like to read (about the middle east).

Others are Edward Saeed (who died recently), and I know he had his biases, like we all do, but was brilliant. The other is Tariq Ali, who has written about the several unsuccessful attempts to occupy Iraq in the past, such as the Ottomans and the British.

I think that Iraq is in civil war.

For crying out loud ..

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8407763/

Boy Barred From Singing Soprano in Choir

only in Texas ..

Darn..I put stuff on the previous thread...
Here is one of my repeats...

Another Lind beauty..
The Other War By William S. Lind

[snip]
As recently as April of this year, the senior U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. David Barno, said he envisioned “most of (the Taliban) collapsing and rejoining the Afghan political and economic process” within a year. He seems to have projected the winter’s quiescence as a trend, forgetting that Afghan wars always shut down in wintertime, as war did everywhere until the 19th century. Afghanistan is not so much Iraq Lite as Iraq Slow, the land that forgot time. Our defeat will come slowly. But it will come.

The reason we will lose is that our strategic objective is unrealistic. Neither America nor anyone can turn Afghanistan into a modern state, aka Brave New World. In attempting to do so, we have launched broadscale assaults on Afghanistan’s rural economy and culture, guaranteeing that the Pashtun countryside will eventually turn against us. Afghan wars are decided in the countryside, not in Kabul.

Truth Shall Prevail

Here are a couple of people who have been speaking out consistently for some time:

TED KENNEDY

To succeed in Iraq--and the war on terrorism--we have to restore trust in our nation's leadership. No matter where you stand on the war - we can all agree that we must not repeat the kind of mistakes that led us into this misguided war.

The truth about Iraq does not belong to any political party--it belongs to all of the American people, and they are entitled to hear it.

Please join me in calling on the President to lay out an effective strategy in Iraq. It is not enough to keep hoping that the Administration will finally wake up to the realities on the ground in Iraq. We must make sure that they do:

http://www.tedkennedy.com/iraqstrategy

WESLEY CLARK

Please go to General Wesley Clark's website at http://www.forclark.com/ and sign the petition to hold all accountable.

JOHN KERRY

I like John Kerry and he voted against going into Iraq the lst time. I did not agree with him in 1997 and 2002 but I know that he was worried about the time period when weapons inspectors were kicked out of Iraq (suspected to be spies).
Even though I was a strong supporter of John Kerry, this is one area where I never pretended to agree, but was closer to Ted Kennedy's position.

If anyone reads French, this is a good article from Andree that I'm still reading (along with others - I'm slow), but it's about the "upsurge in American pacifism" and mentions Dennis Kucinich and some others. You can also get French articles translated on the internet and if the "robot" speak is kind of confusing, you can usually understand from the context.

http://www.humanite.presse.fr/journal/2005-06-27/2005-06-27-809428

Posted by: not my president at June 30, 2005 01:02 AM

Thanks.

"Why doesn't anyone stand up and speak the truth to power and to our citizens?"

In simple terms, its Self Preservation.
There exists a Powerfull conservative movement that allied itself with the religious right. If you stand against it you take the risk of losing your office, and if you lose your office the voice of the people are lost as well.

That being said, Someone needs to stand and rage against that Machine existing in our government. Someone must step up and assume the risk of that move, that is why they are elected to Office. Barbara Jordon is the best example i can think of that understood what being a Representative truly meant.

It will occur, in History it has always happened. We cannot have massive corporations without a powerfull Government to check their power. There is no social injustice without the marches fighting to right it, its a pendulum. We cannot have this amount of abuse without someone finally standing up and fullfil the role of their office.

Our President repeats the word freedom and Democracy and does not understand what they truly represent.
Freedom is being able to fight the wrongs we see around us. Liberty is having the means to enforce your freedom. Our Constitution is the framework that guarentee's the right to keep them both.

We get angry, frustrated, and enraged, and we should. Enraged people created a Republic of self government, by, for and to serve the people.

its ok to be angry, but get active.

CNN poll on speech everyone.

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/06/29/bush.intl/index.html

Kangaroo

best point i have seen re timetable to leave:

A PLAN FOR WITHDRAWAL....William Saletan has an interesting column in Slate today that analogizes a scheduled withdrawal from Iraq to the scheduled withdrawal of benefits enacted by welfare reform in 1996. By providing the Iraqis with the open ended "welfare" of troop protection, he says, we're removing their incentive to provide for themselves:

What have the assembly's Shiite, Sunni, and Kurdish leaders done for the past five months? Bickered over every petty dispute. How much of the constitution have they drafted? Zip. Why are they bickering instead of buckling down? Because they can. Because they don't have to cut fast deals, meet the deadline, and give every faction a stake in the government to hold off the insurgency. They don't have to do these things, because 140,000 American troops are propping them up.

Saletan may be on to something. Like the Iraqis, the California legislature virtually never meets its constitutionally mandated goal of producing a budget by June 30. Instead, they bicker like children for months on end, barely even stopping for breath when the end of June sails by and newspaper editorialists begin their annual chitter-chatter of indignation.

But what happens next? Answer: they come up with a budget. When? Usually just in time to keep the schools from shutting down. That would piss people off, after all.

In other words, artificial deadlines don't mean much, and Iraqis know this just as well as Sacramento politicos. Real deadlines, on the other hand, the kind that lead to real consequences, produce action.

So here's the deal: the Iraqi transitional assembly is supposed to have a constitution drafted by August 15. Let's announce that troop withdrawals will start on September 15.

The constitution is supposed be put up for a vote on October 15. Let's announce that the second round of troop withdrawals will commence on November 15.

Elections for a government under the new constitution are supposed to be held on December 15. Let's announce that the third round of withdrawals will begin on January 15, 2006. After that, withdrawals will continue in an orderly way until the coalition presence is completely gone.

If the Iraqis ask for an extension, as the transitional law allows them to do, we should agree to push all these dates forward by an additional month. This sends a clear message: make the deals you need to make. Form a government. Get your troops trained. Because by the end of 2006, after nearly four years of war and occupation, coalition troops will be gone.

This doesn't mean the end of American help. Postwar aid has proven crucial to promoting stability and democracy in the aftermath of past conflicts, so we have every reason to be generous in providing reconstruction assistance of all kinds to the Iraqis. But it's time to let them know in a credible way that we aren't going to be there forever. Maybe that's just the motivation they need.

—Kevin Drum 3:33 PM Permalink | TrackBack (4) | Comments (129)

whoooo--eeeeee

Hubby just got invited to an anual fundraiser dinner with our own GWB. Should he go? Should we take a vote? Should we use diebold's to conduct this vote? Who thinks GWB will listen to our advice?