Harry Reid’s failure—to appreciate the larger consequences of his own words
Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has called the war in Iraq a failure.
How does he know this? Because of the “extreme violence in Iraq this week.” And what did that violence consist of? A series of terrorist bombings that killed around 200 Iraqi civilians.
Originally, Reid voiced his “failure” viewpoint to the President at a White House meeting. I have no problem with that. But to make such a declaration publicly shows a narrow focus on politics as usual that is almost breathtaking in its self-absorption and its ignorance (or dismissal) of the consequences of his words.
So now it appears that the enemy can win a war simply by killing enough civilians to demoralize the Democrats. Their own civilians, that is; not ours.
That may seem like an odd definition of victory—I certainly find it so—but it’s the inescapable conclusion to draw. As such, I think it not only odd but unique in the annals of warfare.
Make no mistake about it, it’s very easy for our enemies to kill their own civilians. Not all that much is needed, really. You don’t need the support of many people in the country involved. You don’t need an army. You don’t need an enormous amount of money or a functioning state apparatus.
You don’t need, in fact, to be actually winning under any traditional (or even rational) definition of winning.
What do you need? You need a supply of high-powered explosives, and not an exhaustive one as that (Iran and others will foot the bill nicely). You need a small number of people willing to die in the process: check, no problem, in a society raised on the otherworldly rewards of suicide bombing. You need a group (once again, not that huge) able to plan and organize such bombings, which isn’t all that difficult either.
If Reid’s motive for his statement is the laudable and humanitarian one of aiming to stop the killing of civilians in Iraq, it would be hard to make the argument that an American withdrawal will aid that cause, either. It’s hard to escape the idea that he is cynically using concern for those citizens as a pawn in his own political game.
Reid’s new definition of success/failure in war paradoxically makes it even more necessary and desirable for the enemy to go on killing their own civilians in just such a manner. After all, whatever else could give such a huge payoff at so little cost? It is “victory” on the cheap.
[NOTE: When I say the enemy is killing its own, I’m well aware that not all the killers here are Iraqis. But virtually all the killers are either Arabs or Iranians, Muslims in neighboring countries with an interest in American defeat, and willing to murder other members of the so-called umma in order to achieve it.
On a related note, you might be interested in listening to a recent podcast in which I participated, a very relevant Blog Week in Review discussion of the attractiveness of defeat in Iraq.]
What a pointlessly vile war this is.
So, we should ignore the continuing ceaseless slaughter of the Iraqi civilian population?
To what end?
May I be the first to turn the comments back to the original posting topic.
The USA has a great history of perseverance. That includes coming back from horrible defeats. We came back from all of these:
– Most of the War for Independence.
– War of 1812, the burning of Washington
– Civil War, Bull Run
– Spanish-American War: Horrible logistics problems.
– WWI: Same as above. No supply of planes or tanks.
– WWII: Bataan, Wake Island, Kasserine Pass
– Korea: Pretty much the entire shooting match until MacArthur showed up.
In every case America hung in there until we could defeat the enemy.
Harry Reid and co. introduces a dimension of defeatism to the equation. Given their way in the situations above we’d still be British, have slavery, or be facing a goose-stepping world.
It will be a sad day when the likes of Harry Reid take over the Presidency.
Harry Reid is just one of a horde of surrender monkeys and appeasement opportunists. He speaks with all the authority of the NY Times, the US Democratic Party, and the Daily Kos.
Just be thankful he is speaking so honestly this far in advance of the next US elections. He is helping to draw the battle lines far enough in advance of the national choice to make a difference.
In the cheap media politics of today, timing is everything.
Reid’s new definition of success/failure in war paradoxically makes it even more necessary and desirable for the enemy to go on killing their own civilians in just such a manner.
That’s a good thing for Reid. When you align yourself with people and forces that aim to destroy human progress, what is good and what is bad, is not the same for someone who is resisting entropy and death.
So, we should ignore the continuing ceaseless slaughter of the Iraqi civilian population?
To what end?
You know Neo, sometimes people are just on auto cruise and depend upon their emotions for the puffy kittens to do the thinking for them. Absolutely atrocious.
Neo,
I agree that Reid’s utterance that the war’s lost was a either a craven partisan political move a shows how breathtakingly out of touch he is.
But in this asymmetrical fight for possession of the dominant public narrative and perception of this war, I unfortunately am coming to the conclusion that Reid may be right. The democrats and the MSM have been relentless in their politicization of and attacks on this war and have allied themselves with the enemies of the west. All it seems, for short term political advantage. They are the definition of decadence and unfortunately have been successful in convincing more and more people that the cause is indeed lost.
So in that sense, he’s right and he and his cohorts in congress play no small part in it.
Just my personal take on this, but increasingly, I find myself more and more outnumbered in any discussion of this topic by those who are ready to throw in the towel or just quit in disgust. The democrat/MSM axis of negativity and defeat has contributed in no small part to the public demoralization. Those who have not been deceived have been worn down. I hope Mr. Reid and his friends are proud of this achievement. But they are not alone, the present administration’s inability to articulate and sell its view has also helped. While history will damn the democrats for their will to appeasement in the face of this most serious threat, it will also damn the republicans for their corruption and ineptitude.
Harry Reid and so many others rely on an audience of people that don’t prize their freedoms because they don’t understand what they are. They haven’t serious tried to imagine what it would be like to lose them. They don’t understand that they can be lost to threats of many kinds. They have not tried to imagine the evil that would seek to take them away, the hunger for power that leads to cruelty simply to prove that the victim doesn’t have the freedom to escape. The monster is simply too large to be seen.
Maybe the comic books are right to present evil in a simple form: it gets the reader used to the idea of a very large evil, and enlarges his field of vision.
I’m reasonably sure that most of our politicians secretly realize that such evil exists, even as they deny it to avoid spooking the sheep, who might run to someone else. But I’m not sure about either our Fourth Estate or the left wing of the new Fifth Estate.
Sadly, I’m almost in agreement with Tim P. Although by just about every objective military standard we are in fact winning, the GOP has been so awful at PR that more and more of the country is seeing the whole thing as a failure. If this continues, we will in fact loose, no matter what the Marines do.
The terrorists only hope and goal is to demoralize Americans, and in that, and that only, they are winning. Therefore, Harry Reid is making self-fulfilling prophesies.
If the Dems were as determined to beat the Iraqi insurgents as they are to defeat Bush, the war would probably be over by now. If the GOP were as determined to beat the Dems as they are the terrorists, it might be, too.
I hope that the little twerp’s constituents are paying attention…
Reid is just voicing what the entire military establishment already knows and has said.
There is no military solution to this conflict.
Bush knows it too, I’m sure.
“Surrender monkies”? How cute – my four year old likes monkies. Silly monkies.
Neo – you are a seriously vile human being. Your quote about the Iraqi civilians is a new low for you.
Wasn’t this war all about the Iraqis?
Now it’s about ‘winning’ – as meaningless, and vague a term imaginable in the Iraq war context.
What a bunch of freakin’ idiots, to still support this war….
My apologies, Neo.
That should read ‘excuse for a human being’.
You’ve the emotional developement of a 4 year old, and the sensibilities of a sewer rat.
To “Tom”—
Always nice to see you, stevie my boy (neo here, of course).
There is no military solution to this conflict.
Bush knows it too, I’m sure.
Are you seriously trying to claim that Reid is a loyal opposition party member, and is just trying to help out Bush and the US military by carrying their water and making their points for them?
If Reid isn’t, then obviously it doesn’t matter what Reid says, his intentions are diametrically opposite that of military leaders who say not to focus on a military solution. And in point of fact, there may not be any military solution because of the politicians themselves.
The notion that Reid is just aping Bush’s understanding of the war, seems a bit flawed.
Neo – you are a seriously vile human being. Your quote about the Iraqi civilians is a new low for you.
Don’t worry about it, Neo, Tom’s had his fixations on the path to entropy long before he met you. You can’t educate people who don’t want to understand, Neo. I think we’ve seen events akin to that many times over over the lifespan of your blogspot.
People who want to learn, gravitate towards you and are willing to try to exceed their limitations. But there are also people that gravitate towards you because you threaten their horizons, threatening to expand them that is. Some people don’t want their horizons of comprehension expanded, they want to continue living in their parochial world. I didn’t like that situation, which is why your obvious facility with studying Vietnam, was of such great import to someone like me.
In order to expand my limited understanding of what was going on now, I had to completely understand what had gone before. And what better way to do it, then to rely upon someone who participated and therefore had a very unique and erudite perspective? I wished to share in the wisdom you accrued Neo, because one cannot become wise just by relying upon one’s own misperceptions and biases. This is the true strength behind diversity, that is all too often fettered away for ideological purity.
It goes beyond what you said to Austin, Neo. It isn’t just about putting their political identities and psyches on the line, betting on disaster in Iraq in order to prove and justify their beliefs. This is more like Cho than anything else. Cho knew something was wrong, but instead of trying to improve things, he decided that it was time to destroy, time to accelerate entropy and let it takes his soul in sacrifice for “getting back” at people he hated. So he kills because he feels he is justified. That decision, the one that sacrifices other people’s lives in order to benefit yourself personally, is the very definition of Evil actions.
Is Evil about intent, about having good intentions? Not fully. Every murderer believes he is justified, all that don’t feel any guilt that is, which is most of them. So we cannot really depend upon any kind of “subjective criteria about good intentions”. That would be as bad as depending upon psychologists and their ability to tell who is violent or not.
Regardless of what evil is technically defined as, we do know that if a person falls prey to Evil’s lure, they are not going to be able to do anything good for human beings on this world and time. Resisting evil becomes a lot harder, Neo, once you start to work for evil. And it doesn’t matter whether you know it or not, whether you deny it or not, or whether you believe it or not. Those who serve the forces of darkness, inevitably further destruction of human values and all that humanity has built over the toils and suffering of billionbs and billions of lives.
The Left doesn’t have blood on their hands, Neo. Because they believe that so long as another person is the one that is using the axe, they the Left, are innocent. But are they innocent Neo, are good intentions enough to shield you from the depravity of evil and its temptations? I think not. It takes more than that to resist evil, it takes more than that to create something of lasting worth and of benefit to human civilization, Neo.
Here’s one thing of practical worth. To Backup what Siggy said, Evil people hate the Good and people who serve the cause of Goodness. Evil folks will see what you do as… evil. Few people knowingly pursue the path of evil simply for power and personal benefits. And even of those folks, like Hugo and whatever, they still believe in their own propaganda. It takes a lot of self-honesty to know that you are a monster and keep doing monstrous things. A lot of strength, but strength doesn’t come from evil folks like Hugo. Strength comes from doing Good things, and being good. As the United States is good, and strong because we are good, because we do raise women and children from the pits of darkness, poverty, and hopelessness.
Is the Left going to exert their power to lift the helpless and the deserving to a higher place, with less suffering, Neo? Are they?
Reid’s assurance of US defeat in Iraq is telling of the increasingly fragmented, erratic and even desperate situation of the Democratic platform. What’s completely mind boggling is that Petraus was (if I’m remembering correctly) unanimously confirmed.
I suspect when Reid refers to top military commanders asserting “we can’t win,” he’s taking their comments out of context. Most strategists would likely tell you that counter insurgency cannot be one through strictly kinetic or effects based operations but requires a damn complex framework of social, economic, political and combative efforts. I think Reid is conveniently leaving the meat and potatoes out of the stew when he makes these references.
I have my reservations regarding the ultimate success of the surge. Sadly it’s about three years too late and one of the major elements requisite to stabilize Iraq into a democracy have largely either fled to Jordan or Syria or come under command of the Shia Mahdi or Sunni tribes.
That said to completely reverse course before the entire operation is in place is ridiculous. This whole “I support the troops but not the war” bit works for citizens but when high level politicians denounce or announce failure there’s no way in hell they can also honestly claim to “support the troops.” Any who do so are completely unaware or ignorant of and indeed adding fuel to a most effective element of war: Propaganda.
Reid is just making an empirical statement. The war has been “lost” in the sense that it has not achieved any of its strategic objectives. Yes, Saddam is gone (this is certainly a good thing), but Iraq is in a horrible mess (a terribly bad thing). Even Shia leaders (like Sadr) are demanding that the US leave the country. The US presence doesn’t seem to be helping the situation any, as huge numbers of civilians are getting killed in spite of the US presence. (And it doesn’t help of course that sometimes US troops themselves are killing civilians, as for example in Haditha.)
The more the US stays, the more it convinces the rest of the world that it’s there only for the oil. Don’t you see how badly US credibility is being undermined by continuing this unfortunate situation? The prudent course for the US would be to withdraw and request the UN to step in.
The UN has certainly done wonders for the Darfur…
“Reid is just making an empirical statement. The war has been “lost” in the sense that it has not achieved any of its strategic objectives.”
Charlemagne
No strategic objectives achieved?
Well – sniff, sniff, boo-hoo – at least the GWOT is in fact a success, including some of its strategic objectives – at least thus far, for those of you in Rio Linda.
No more 9/11-like attacks = primary goal.
Hence also, no economy crashing from attacks, and instead running to near perfection by all conventional standards.
Fighting “them there instead of here”, as AQ agrees is the case = primary goal.
Iran becoming more and more defined as the festering threat it is, isolated, and tactically surrounded.
Background of Dems with no plan except surrender/the self-fullfilling prophecy of ineluctable defeat = enslavement or death.
Even confining the debate [unrealistically] only to Iraq, we have not lost unless we leave soon in consonance with Democrat focused, self-fullfilling defeatism, which would, however, then make Reid’s statement “empirical”.
For those of you who might be wondering, “Tom” is stevie, of course. In fact, most of the trolls that have visited since the changeover have been our old friend stevie.
We continue to be Neoconned. Blood for oil, that is all Bush cares about. That is why we went into Iraq, to line the pockets of the greedy oil barons. They may not get the reward now, but the neocons want us to be there continually and want to eventually get the oil barons their reserves. Neocons are unamerican. Eisenhower warned us about them.
Concerning the idea that we have “lost” in Iraq, in particular: from Alaa @ The Mesopotamian, if the enemy has no hope of winning, we have certainly not lost.
“What must be realized is that as long as the U.S. is strategically present, the enemy has no hope of achieving any of his objectives. This enemy knows this only too well; and his prime objective is to bring about this withdrawal and retreat by all means. He pins his hopes on the internal situation in the U.S., and this is his most potent weapon. Therefore most of his actions and attacks are basically publicity stunts aimed primarily at the MSM and American and western public opinion.”
At this point, only by following Harry Reid, enc., can we lose.
What did Eisenhower say about nazis like you, Gary?
“We continue to be Neoconned. Blood for oil, that is all Bush cares about.”
Gary Anderson
Please tell us how this would work. Otherwise, you are merely perseverating a very vague but dominating and controlling paranoid delusion. The delusion is controlling you, and by your own aquiesence to it.
If we went there to take over/steal Iraq’s oil, we certainly wouldn’t be messing around with the kind of war we are fighting now. And all Saddam Hussein had to do to prevent his own displacement and to keep his oil was to comply with inspections. Why didn’t he?
Yes winningsaves lives. What could be more elementary than that — ideology is a sort of serious bulletproofing.
It is unamerican to lie to the troops as to the reason we are going to war. Bush did it and you Lee are for this lying. Right?
Don’t skirt the issue. Take the skirt off and answer the question.
J Peden, Iraq moved to the Euro in favor of petrodollars. That weakened the dollar and was a no no. Here is a link that has many links in the posts that show we had a plan to go into Iraq and divy up the oil, that we acted upon the plan for contrived reasons, and that we thought it would be easier, but it hasn’t turned out that way.
http://pub35.bravenet.com/forum/2973085091/show/622636
OK, Gary, since you like humiliation so much, let’s take a look at Bush’s “lies” as your nazi propaganda likes to call them:
1: “The United Nations conclded in 1999 that Saddam Hussein had biological weapons materials sufficient to produce over 25,000 liters of anthrax;…” Can nazis read, Gary? The United Nations concluded…not Bush. In 1999, not 2001.
2: “The United Nations concluded that Saddam Hussein had materials sufficient to produce more than 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin;…” Again, the U.N. not Bush.
3: Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard, and VX nerve agent….”
Well, no one is perfect; not even nazis. Just ask Hitler.
4: U.S intelligence indicates that Saddam Hussein had upwards of 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents. Inspectors recently turned up 16 of them, despite Iraq’s recent declaration denying their existence….” And we’ve been finding thousands of these ever since. Scott Ritter and Hans Blix and Ted Koppel have seen them, and thanks to Ted, I have seen them.
Be back later for more debunking. I’m sure you’re not going anywhere, right, nazi boy(Gary)?
No more 9/11-like attacks = primary goal.
Hence also, no economy crashing from attacks, and instead running to near perfection by all conventional standards.
Fighting “them there instead of here”, as AQ agrees is the case = primary goal.
In other words, you are arguing that Iraqi civilian lives can be sacrificed to save US civilian lives? That Iraqi civilians’ lives are expendable?
Gary, please. In the realm of fact, the Iraqi oil is not being handled by the U.S.. It is being sold by an international agency [U.N.?] in the global market. Oil companies which need oil beyond what they get from their own operations have to buy oil from the global market, unless perhaps Hugo Chavez gives someone a special deal.
So where is your evidence of the non-global market diversion of Iraqi oil to BushCo., in contrast to your conspiracy theory? It is not up to me to explain or prove what you are claiming. Since it is your site you referred me to, and I can’t readily see any explanation, why don’t you just tell it to me in your own words?
Well, Charlemagne, are you going to admit that you were wrong about Harry Reid stating an “empirical fact” when he said we have “lost” in Iraq?
Charl, many hundreds of thousands of French, Belgian, Italian, Dutch, North African, Luxemburgers, and Germans had to be killed by American and British weapons to liberate Europe from the Nazis. Your question is a false dilemma. It was the Nazis who made them the human shields, in Iraq it is the terrorists who make human shields of the population. Are you suggesting the Iraqis should be left under the control of the terrorists to allow the enemy to advance to America?
“In other words, you are arguing that Iraqi civilian lives can be sacrificed to save US civilian lives? That Iraqi civilians’ lives are expendable?”
Charlemagne
As neo has also explained above, we aren’t killing very many of them. Do you think that massive Iraqi civilian murder wasn’t going on for a long time before we got there? Do you think it would lessen if we left?
To folks like Stevie, it makes perfect sense to accuse us of not caring about the loss of Iraqi life, all the while insisting that we pull out so many more Iraqis can die in the REAL chaos that would ensue. If you really cared about Iraqi lives Steve-o, you’d insist on us staying. I guess your BDS is just too important to let those little brown people get in the way.
Charl, many hundreds of thousands of French, Belgian, Italian, Dutch, North African, Luxemburgers, and Germans had to be killed by American and British weapons to liberate Europe from the Nazis.
Two points need to be made here:
(1) Some (not all) of the civilian blood shed by the US in World War II was, of course, gratuitous and unnecessary. The firebombing of Dresden and the atom-bombing of not one but TWO Japanese cities were, simply put, war crimes.
(2) The more important point here, however, is this: Holland, France, etc. were Nazi-occupied, and Britain under Nazi threat. Iraq, however, did not have any Al Qaeda BEFORE the US went in. By going into Iraq and messing it up, and bydisbanding the Iraqi army without providing security, the US created the conditions of narchy in which Al Queda was then able pour into Iraq. This was reckless endangerment of the life of Iraqi civilians on the part of the US.
Your question is a false dilemma. It was the Nazis who made them the human shields, in Iraq it is the terrorists who make human shields of the population.
But the point is that before the US went into Iraq, there were no terrorists there.
When the argument is made that it was necessary to go into Iraq so that “we can fight them (Al Queda) there instead of fighting them here”, it becomes clear that the US saw Iraqi civilians’ life as not worth very much. For it was entirely predictable that, if the US occupied Iraq and created conditions (through incompetence) that lead to a security vacuum and anarchy in that country, terrorists and would-be terrorists from nearby countries would pour in and that Iraq would become, in fact, a terrorist magnet. That of course provides the US the opportunity now of “fighting them over there” — but it shows, I think, the supreme callousness that US policy thinking has had all along towards the little matter of Iraqi civilians. For the whole strategy of “fighting them over there so that we don’t have to fight them over here” means inevitably that lots and lots of Iraqi civilians would get killed in crossfire and at the hands of terrorists (and, to a lesser extent, at the hands of (a small number of) US soldiers who go postal under stress like what happened in Haditha). Somehow, this seems to US policy to be an acceptable price to pay, i.e. Iraqi civilian life does not seem to matter, as long as US civilian lives are protected (i.e. as long as we keep fighting the terrorists THERE).
Also, once our marines leave Iraq, the terrorists will also leave Iraq. They are in Iraq because they want to fight Americans. If there are no Americans, they will have no reason to be in Iraq any more. The Iraqi civil war too would die down, because it is kept stoked by Sunni foreign terrorists fomenting atrocities against the Iraqi Shia, which in turn sets off cycles of revenge killings.
Charl, in response to (1): Dresden was a major urban road and rail transportation hub. Also, as any major city, a source of food and shelter for retreating army units. While no major armaments factories were there, many smaller parts and supplies were manufactured there, such as synthetic oil refineries, auto parts, etc. In other words “a legitimate military target” Hiroshima was a major Japanese naval port, second in size only to Yokusaka, and Nagasaki a major source of aircraft. All legitimate military targets.
(2) Richard Cohen, Richard Clark, and the 9-11 Commission disagree with you about Al Qaeda, Anser Al Islam and Al Aqsa being in Iraq before March 2003. I suggest you read the 9-11 Commission Report before putting out easily refutable assertions. Al Douri, the Achille Lauro mastermind, was captured in Iraq; Abu Nidal “retired” and died in Iraq. Salman Pak was a major terrorist training camp for Fatah, Hezbollah, Chechens, and others. Sounds to me like there were plenty of terrorists in Iraq long before we ever got there. Zarqawi arrived in August 2002 to begin preparations for his insurgency, as I recall.
The Global War on Terror involves not only rooting out the terrorists, but also their state sponsors, like Iraq.
I also love the twisted logic that we were stupid to think that by going to Iraq, we would create a “magnet” for terrorists; then say because of our “incompetence”, Iraq has become a “magnet” for terrorists.
J Peden this is MY site. Check all the links and you will see that we had a plan to go into Iraq prior to 9/11 per Paul Oneill, that we acted upon it with contrived and faulty intelligence, that we did not go after Osama but rather Saddam, that we redirected the war for a reason, that the neocons were arguing with the oil companies saying that they needed to own the land outright, but were overridden by the oil companies who instead chose to make a contract where they would gain far more profit than the Iraq people. Again here are the links: http://pub35.bravenet.com/forum/2973085091/show/622636
Lee, you say I am being humiliated, but really, it is you who come across as a wacko. Sorry, but that is an objective analysis.
You still haven’t told me why Laurence Lindsey (Bush aid) was talking about invading Iraq to lower pump prices when Rummy was saying oil had nothing to do with it, while the neocons were arguing that the oil companies should have outright ownership of the land and why Cheney was keeping his energy conference so secret.
Too many nutters, neo; I’m not going to read comments for a while, just your well-written thoughts.
People might want to follow this Wiki link about the energy task force that will no doubt be updated. A focus of the task force was oil fields and maps of the middle east. Also, many oil companies distance themselves from the meeting, although apparently most were there one way or another. Remember, this secret meeting was prior to 9/11, and Cheney is fighting tooth and nail to keep it secret. Here is the Wiki link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Task_Force
Here are some additional links furnished by this Wiki article about Iraq oil imperialism fostered by the 2003 invasion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_imperialism_theories
Sure we had a “plan” to attack Iraq prior to 9/11…At any given time we have contingency plans available on how to attack any potential enemies…There are military think tanks that draw these things up…In the late thirties we had plans how to fight Japan, Germany, Italy,the Soviet Union, Mexico and believe it or not, Great Britain…We now have plans in place to attack N Korea, China , Russia, Pakistan, Syria, Iran, Sudan, S Arabia and other potential foes including, hopefully, France….
Nobody is talking about the goal that we are ostensibly striving for in this war, or even what we want the goal to be.
How can you win with no clear consensus about what you want to accomplish.
I don’t think anyone is still looking forward to a unified, democratic, autonomous state, do you?
If this war wasn’t actually happening it would be a good storyline for a satirical geo-political novel.
On Dresden: It was the RAF which firebombed Dresden…..Those who think that Dresdeners were somehow innocent victims should read of Otto Klemperer, a Jewish college professor who had been booted out of Dresden University…The day before the bombing he and the last reminant of what had been a substantial prewar Jewish population, were ordered to report, the following day, to gestapo HQ for shipment to “the camps”..
That night the last surviving Dresden Jews got together for one last dinner…It was a somber affair, as they knew that they were going to their deaths……One of them mentioned that it would take a miracle to save them…A bit later they heard the rumble of the approaching RAF bomber fleet…
In the chaos of the firestorm, they were able to tear the yellow stars of david off their garments and flee the city…Klemperer said that from a hillside just out of town they were able to look back with satisfaction on a burning Gestapo HQ……
There was some military manufacturing in Dresden…An optics plant produced bombsites for the Luftwaffe & parascopes for the Uboat fleet….Another facility made poison gas which was shipped to a place named Auschwitz……..
TomTom–just scroll past the names you don’t want to read, and read the others. That’s my suggestion, anyway.
There was a piece in The New Republic in which foreign policy “experts” were asked what might happen in Iraq were we to suddenly leave…Most seemed to think that a real bloodbath would ensue, quite possibly on the scale of Pol Pot’s Cambodia….
Here is Laurence Lindsey’s specific comment. Remember he was a Bush insider, and a main cog in his campaign and chief economic advisor:
Under every plausible scenario, the negative effect will be quite small relative to the economic benefits that would come from a successful prosecution of the war.
The key issue is oil, and a regime change in Iraq would facilitate an increase in world oil.”
“Economic Effect of War Seen as Small: Lindsey Says
Benefits of Ousting Saddam Outweigh Costs”
Washington Times, 09/19/02
I posted this questions on Bernard Goldberg’s blog yesterday:
Sir, how are you. Please bear with me. I was born half Jewish, with a Jewish father. I was adopted at three months and raised a Gentile to agnostic parents. I have certain religious and political views, but my concern here is that Jewish neocons have turned the world upside down. Along with their Gentile neocon counterparts, these guys like Perle and Wolfowitz have put America on the imperialistic, unilateral, war crime tract of stealing oil with the blood of American soldiers.
This tract is disconcerting because the UN charter established Israel, and established the authority to prosecute the Nazi’s. Since Bush has taken office, Bush has used Fox News to trash the UN, to trash international law, all in an effort to undermine international law. The goal of all this was to attack Iraq to steal their oil.
This war crime is making many Americans hate neocons and everything they stand for. America stood for more than this unilateral greed! What happened, Bernard? Why are you supporting this miserable meltdown of American foreign policy? Was Eisenhower right and the Military/Industrial/Oil complex run amuck? IMO Israel, who I support, should distance herself from these totally unethical and lying necons, and the sooner the better. Israel’s very existence rests on a strong committment to the UN Charter and international law!
You could answer the thirty or so questions that I have presented here if you have the time. Thanks for reading.
_________________
Gary Anderson
No more wars for oil. No more Bush lies.
http://bushliar.newcovenanttheology.com
“Nobody is talking about the goal that we are ostensibly striving for in this war, or even what we want the goal to be.”
reddog
Apparently it is you who has not been listening. Ain’t nothing anybody says that’s going to cure that.
J Peden, today on This Week on ABC Senator Dodd stated that Iraq was about oil. The truth is slowly dribbling out, there are smoking guns everywhere, including Laurence Lindsey, and the rest of the Cheney energy conference info will be out at some point, and we will see exactly what was going on with that.
History will prove that this view is the correct one. Some have said that Wolfowitz stating that Iraq is swimming in oil was just an effort to state that North Korea was poor and we could control them, and that Iraq was rich and we could not control them, but when you link that statement with other neocon views, and the view of Bush aid Laurence Lindsey, you have the smoking gun over and over.
We invade Iraq because they were swimming in oil, bottom line.
It is one thing to have a plan Workinstiff, but quite another to act on it. Bush acted on it instead of going after Bin Laden, and he wanted this to happen for oil. No WMD’s, no 9/11link, just oil That is the only reason left, and was the original one.
“We invade Iraq because they were swimming in oil, bottom line.”
Gary Anderson
Exactly right, Gary: that’s also why George Soros has recently bought 1.9 million shares of Halliburton. He’s in on it, too.
Therefore, I wouldn’t be surprised if Dodd was part of the conspiracy himself. What do you think?
washingtonpost.comOf course many are in this. As Kramer says you make money on money and morality is separate. I don’t completely agree with that. But here are mor facts J Peden:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A18841-2002Sep14
And a quote from the above link”‘It’s pretty straightforward,’ said former CIA director R.
James Woolsey, who has been one of the leading advocates of
forcing Hussein from power. ‘France and Russia have oil
companies and interests in Iraq. They should be told that if
they are of assistance in moving Iraq toward decent
government, we’ll do the best we can to ensure that the new
government and American companies
work closely with them.'”
“No neo – you don’t give a rat’s ass about Iraq or America….”
Stevie
Stevie, your name is not “neo”. You are projecting your own views upon neo, then fearing them in a paranoid fashion, instead of recognizing that what you are afraid of is yourself, or your own sense of personal helplessness.
No charge.
An interesting quote from the Washington Post article cited above:
Officials of several major firms said they were taking care to avoiding playing any role in the debate in Washington over how to proceed on Iraq. “There’s no real upside for American oil companies to take a very aggressive stance at this stage. There’ll be plenty of time in the future,” said James Lucier, an oil analyst with Prudential Securities.
But with the end of sanctions that likely would come with Hussein’s ouster, companies such as ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco would almost assuredly play a role, industry officials said. “There’s not an oil company out there that wouldn’t be interested in Iraq,” one analyst said.
(I almost read that name as James Lucifer. Not far off.)
Right again, Gary: what reasonable gov’t or person would want to work closely with both France and Russia, or even either one alone? Certainly, we can’t allow that to happen.
Joining TomTom, I think it’s about time for me to fly over the cuckoo’s nest for a while.
Gary, stop embarrassing yourself. This is from the Financial Times AND CNNMoney.com Ready:
http://article.wn.com/view/2007/04/07/India_to_get_oil_contracts_from_Iraq/
WASHINGTON: Despite whispers in some quarters that the Bush administration invaded Iraq to take control of its oil, the first contracts with major oil firms from Iraq’s new government are likely to go not to US companies, but rather to firms from China, India, Vietnam, and Indonesia. “While Iraqi lawmakers struggle to pass an agreement on exactly who will award the contracts and how the revenue will be shared, experts say a draft version that passed the cabinet earlier this year will likely uphold agreements previously signed by those countries under Saddam Hussein’s government,” CNNMoney.Com has said in a report citing energy experts.
For the US, it’s not about giving contracts to this or that firm for refining the oil. For the US, it’s about making sure that oil prices stay low in the world market (the US being the largest consumer of oil in the world). For this, controlling the oilfields in Iraq is the primary objective. Which company refines the oil after it is extracted is not of much relevance.
If oil was not part of the equation, why do you think the US invaded Iraq to liberate it from a dictator rather than, say, try to liberate Tibet from China’s llegal occupation? (Hint: Tibet has no oil.)
I see that it is Troll Sunday, the day they know Neo does not police the comments.
It always amazes me how many lefties drive cars, pack lunches in disposabe microwaveable bowls, saran wrap, plastic cased cell phones, cd’s, band-aids, kids toys, but say it’s all about oil. Maybe if you, Charlemagne, stopped being an oil addict, people wouldn’t have to die for your convenient lifestyle, and you and all your leftie friends could hitch-hike to Tibet and liberate it if it was THAT important. No one is denying that oil is “part of the equation”, what is incredible is that the lefties think they can “wash their hands” and pretend they are not responsible for the importance of oil in the world.
Hey, Gary, how many brownshirts have come around to the truth since you’ve been revealing it?
(like we haven’t heard all this before; Alex Jones)
Maybe you need a new tack.
Iraq was doable, To invade Tibet would mean WWIII…Do you really think we would invade Tibet if it had oil???….Since Reagan was elected in 1980, we have had military incursions in Granada, Panama, Lebanon, Somilia, Liberia, Haiti,Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait , Afghanistan & Iraq….Only two of those countries produce oil….Sometimes I think that the left can’t see the forest for the trees as their view is dominated by one giant sequoia called oil…..
For those who feel that Saddam had no connections to WMDs, you might want to read the following, http://strategicstudies.org/
( go to “special reports on right margin & click on “Libya assessments” then click on “Iraq WMD debate & intel: the links to Libya”…..Apparently old Saddam had outsourced his Nuke program…..
Gee, workinStiff, you mean Saddam, like a drug dealer, flushed his stash when he knew the bust was coming?
Charlemagne:
“If oil was not part of the equation, why do you think the US invaded Iraq to liberate it from a dictator rather than, say, try to liberate Tibet from China’s llegal occupation? “
OK, bet.
Lets say Bush announces tomorrow morning that he has launched a war with China over Tibet. Are you down for the cause brother?
It’s not about the “truly noble” causes the left espouses, it’s about Bush.
Unless you’re Gary. Then it’s about the “real jews”(aryans) vs. the “fake jews”(Jews).
Is this the price of “power”, Charlemagne? Ally yourself with nazis like Gary? “Anything” to get a democrat elected?
Workinstiff, check out Melanie Phillips’ blog. She has some interesting things to say about those “nonexistent” WMD’s.
It always amazes me how many lefties drive cars, pack lunches in disposabe microwaveable bowls, saran wrap, plastic cased cell phones, cd’s, band-aids, kids toys, but say it’s all about oil. Maybe if you, Charlemagne, stopped being an oil addict, people wouldn’t have to die for your convenient lifestyle
I don’t own a car. I ride a bicycle to and from work, and use public transportation when I have to travel longer distances.
In respect of transportation, the USA has a lot to learn from Europeans.
I don’t have a cell phone either. I use Skype over my computer.
What’s your computer cased in, Charl? How about your TV? Plastic coated co-axial cable or plastic coated fiber optics? CD’s? Or just a plastic I-pod?
Shssss Don’t tell anybody…Were also in Dafar; special forces with US equipped & led Eritrian guerrillas have given the jaja weed a few nasty surprises lately..;…an suddenly sudan is more amenable to un “peacekeepers”.
At the grocery store, do you say “paper”, or “plastic”? How’s that plastic and styrofoam bike helmet fit? Spandex riding suit? Plastic knee and elbow guards? Make coffee in the morning? Lemmie guess: YOU use an old stainless steel percolator.
“J Peden, today on This Week on ABC Senator Dodd stated that Iraq was about oil. The truth is slowly dribbling out, there are smoking guns everywhere, including Laurence Lindsey, and the rest of the Cheney energy conference info will be out at some point, and we will see exactly what was going on with that.”
Finally getting out? You mean to say the everyone from Jimmy Carter to Dan Rather HASN’T been shrieking that the invasion of Iraq was all about the oil? That the “peace protesters” haven’t been shrieking “no blood for oil” as far back as the January before we actually invaded?
What a strange world you live in! Where people ignore your “truths,” not because these “truths” have nothing to do with reality, but simply because you haven’t found the right way to communicate them, or because the forces of evil keep emanating untruthy vibrations that make their innocent victims demand things like proof, or even logic, before they will consider your truths.
The real truth is, we’ve been drowning in your “truthiness” ever since the floodgates of the media opened the day after 9/11, with the first commandment they handed down: “We must ask ourselves why they hate us.” Now we are finally tiring of fighting the flood of “truth,” and starting to go under… cause for celebration, I suppose, for the individual raindrops that have formed the flood.
Plastic zippers on your backpack, bike packs? Pack your lunch wrapped in wax paper, or ziplock? Drink out of the fountain, or bottled water?
The “blood” is on your hands, Charlemagne. And you and nazis like Gary use the same “talking points”.
You are a dupe, Charlemagne.
For you, it’s about “democrats in power”.
That I can understand. Misguided in that you think you can stop terrorism more effectively, but at least I can understand that kind of utopian wishful thinking.
Gary, on the other hand, knows that “redeployment” and “change of power” will only make us more vulnerable. He’s counting on more 9-11’s, hoping for “dirty bombs” and “suitcase nukes” to bring about the chaos and panic that he hopes the nazis can take advantage of, and create the “Fourth Reich” in America.
You better wake up, Charlemagne. You and the liberal left are the useful idiots who will bring about the very thing you claim we have now. Bush is “Hitler”?
What would you prefer, Charlemagne? Would you prefer Iraqis live like “us”, or, would you prefer we live like “Iraqis”?
What’s your computer cased in, Charl? How about your TV? Plastic coated co-axial cable or plastic coated fiber optics? CD’s? Or just a plastic I-pod?
I don’t own a TV set. Nor an iPod. Also stopped buying CDs a couple of years ago — who buys CDs when you can buy music online from the iTunes store?
What would you prefer, Charlemagne? Would you prefer Iraqis live like “us”, or, would you prefer we live like “Iraqis”?
Neither.
If the rest of the population of the planet (a few billions) started living the lifestyle the US currently does, the result would be environmental catastrophe.
The US currently weighs in at last posiition in the industrial world in terms of life expectancy and infant mortality. There’s an epidemic of obesity. Divorce rates are among the highest in the world, in the USA.
It doesn’t seem like the consumerist lifestyle is leading to any great happiness in the USA.
We all need to learn to live a simpler lifestyle, and stop gobbling up nonrenewable resources like crazy as is currently going on now.
At the grocery store, do you say “paper”, or “plastic”? How’s that plastic and styrofoam bike helmet fit? Spandex riding suit? Plastic knee and elbow guards?
I reuse my grocery store bags (take them with me to the grocery store), so I say neither “paper” nor “plastic”.
Spandex ridng suit? Elbow guards? Knee guards? You must be kidding. I don’t use these things. I just tuck my trouser legs into my socks, and off I am gone on my bike!
Charl, I notice you only answer those questions you can “honestly” say “no”. “Agrarian” society? Hitler envisioned a “folkish” way of life, too. We are also the most enviormentally “regulated”. Maybe we should be more like France; they have more nuclear power plants per capita AND numerically than any other nation. And all those poor fat people. Think about that, the “poor” are worried that they are “fat”, as opposed to “starving”.
Still haven’t answered why you lefties are parroting the nazis.
Maybe we should be more like France; they have more nuclear power plants per capita AND numerically than any other nation.
Absolutely. I support nuclear power.
How ’bout those socks? Cotton, or gore-tex?
Aw…lemmie guess….cotton? Grow it yourself? Or was it harvested, ginned, spun, wove, wrapped(in plastic), and delivered to the store where you pedalled with your cloth bags to pick up?
nytimes.comnytimes.comAnd all those poor fat people. Think about that, the “poor” are worried that they are “fat”, as opposed to “starving”.
Today’s New York Times on the reason behind the obesity epidemic:
NY Times Magazine, April 22, 2007
By MICHAEL POLLAN
full: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/magazine/22wwlnlede.t.html
A few years ago, an obesity researcher at the
University of Washington named Adam Drewnowski
ventured into the supermarket to solve a mystery.
He wanted to figure out why it is that the most
reliable predictor of obesity in America today is
a person’s wealth. For most of history, after
all, the poor have typically suffered from a
shortage of calories, not a surfeit. So how is it
that today the people with the least amount of
money to spend on food are the ones most likely to be overweight?
Drewnowski gave himself a hypothetical dollar to
spend, using it to purchase as many calories as
he possibly could. He discovered that he could
buy the most calories per dollar in the middle
aisles of the supermarket, among the towering
canyons of processed food and soft drink. (In the
typical American supermarket, the fresh foods –
dairy, meat, fish and produce – line the
perimeter walls, while the imperishable packaged
goods dominate the center.) Drewnowski found that
a dollar could buy 1,200 calories of cookies or
potato chips but only 250 calories of carrots.
Looking for something to wash down those chips,
he discovered that his dollar bought 875 calories
of soda but only 170 calories of orange juice.
As a rule, processed foods are more “energy
dense” than fresh foods: they contain less water
and fiber but more added fat and sugar, which
makes them both less filling and more fattening.
These particular calories also happen to be the
least healthful ones in the marketplace, which is
why we call the foods that contain them “junk.”
Drewnowski concluded that the rules of the food
game in America are organized in such a way that
if you are eating on a budget, the most rational
economic strategy is to eat badly – and get fat.
This perverse state of affairs is not, as you
might think, the inevitable result of the free
market. Compared with a bunch of carrots, a
package of Twinkies, to take one iconic processed
foodlike substance as an example, is a highly
complicated, high-tech piece of manufacture,
involving no fewer than 39 ingredients, many
themselves elaborately manufactured, as well as
the packaging and a hefty marketing budget. So
how can the supermarket possibly sell a pair of
these synthetic cream-filled pseudocakes for less than a bunch of roots?
For the answer, you need look no farther than the
farm bill. This resolutely unglamorous and
head-hurtingly complicated piece of legislation,
which comes around roughly every five years and
is about to do so again, sets the rules for the
American food system – indeed, to a considerable
extent, for the world’s food system. Among other
things, it determines which crops will be
subsidized and which will not, and in the case of
the carrot and the Twinkie, the farm bill as
currently written offers a lot more support to
the cake than to the root. Like most processed
foods, the Twinkie is basically a clever
arrangement of carbohydrates and fats teased out
of corn, soybeans and wheat – three of the five
commodity crops that the farm bill supports, to
the tune of some $25 billion a year. (Rice and
cotton are the others.) For the last several
decades – indeed, for about as long as the
American waistline has been ballooning – U.S.
agricultural policy has been designed in such a
way as to promote the overproduction of these
five commodities, especially corn and soy.
That’s because the current farm bill helps
commodity farmers by cutting them a check based
on how many bushels they can grow, rather than,
say, by supporting prices and limiting
production, as farm bills once did. The result? A
food system awash in added sugars (derived from
corn) and added fats (derived mainly from soy),
as well as dirt-cheap meat and milk (derived from
both). By comparison, the farm bill does almost
nothing to support farmers growing fresh produce.
A result of these policy choices is on stark
display in your supermarket, where the real price
of fruits and vegetables between 1985 and 2000
increased by nearly 40 percent while the real
price of soft drinks (a k a liquid corn) declined
by 23 percent. The reason the least healthful
calories in the supermarket are the cheapest is
that those are the ones the farm bill encourages farmers to grow.
A public-health researcher from Mars might
legitimately wonder why a nation faced with what
its surgeon general has called “an epidemic” of
obesity would at the same time be in the business
of subsidizing the production of high-fructose
corn syrup. But such is the perversity of the
farm bill: the nation’s agricultural policies
operate at cross-purposes with its public-health
objectives. And the subsidies are only part of
the problem. The farm bill helps determine what
sort of food your children will have for lunch in
school tomorrow. The school-lunch program began
at a time when the public-health problem of
America’s children was undernourishment, so
feeding surplus agricultural commodities to kids
seemed like a win-win strategy. Today the problem
is overnutrition, but a school lunch lady trying
to prepare healthful fresh food is apt to get
dinged by U.S.D.A. inspectors for failing to
serve enough calories; if she dishes up a lunch
that includes chicken nuggets and Tater Tots,
however, the inspector smiles and the
reimbursements flow. The farm bill essentially
treats our children as a human Disposall for all
the unhealthful calories that the farm bill has
encouraged American farmers to overproduce.
full: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/magazine/22wwlnlede.t.html
Electricity in your unabomber shack? Or is that a (plastic cased) battery operated (plastic cased) computer?
Stop it, Charl….STOP IT! You’re making me hungry.
Installed your Sheryl Crow toilet paper meter yet?
“Electricity in your unabomber shack? Or is that a (plastic cased) battery operated (plastic cased) computer?”
Give it up dood, he’ll just say he’s using a public computer or somesuch.
If Micah Wright can pretend to be a Marine, Charley can pretend to be Robinson Crusoe. In the end you can’t make him confess to anything, because there’s always another story he can spin about himself.
Just trying to demonstrate how far into absurdity Charl there is willing to go in defense of a “simpler” life.
He still avoids the question about why he uses the same talking points and platitudes as the nazis.
Just trying to demonstrate how far into absurdity Charl there is willing to go in defense of a “simpler” life.
“Marketers are hoping this is a fringe movement. The signs point
elsewhere. According to recent surveys by sociologist Juliet Schor, 81
percent of Americans believe their country is too focused on shopping,
while nearly 90 percent believe it is too materialistic.”
http://adbusters.org/the_magazine/71.php?id=258#
Breaking the Consumer Habit: Living the Buy Nothing Life
April 20, 2007:
http://adbusters.org/the_magazine/71.php?id=258#
So, why do 100% of Americans keep shopping?
It is ridiculous in a sense, because all that matters is which side you are on. Are you on side the of human progress and enlightenment? Or are you on the side of chaos, death, despair, and destruction?
You can’t be on both and you can’t be neutral.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said:
“this war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything as indicated by the extreme violence in Iraq yesterday.” – Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev
The war is lost because the Iraqi people are fighting amongst themselves? Please don’t believe this crap…think for yourself. Imagine for a moment watching the Super Bowl game with your family and friends. It’s half time and your team is up 21 to 3 but they’ve lost a couple key players due to injuries and have already been penalized much more than normal. Would you look at your friends and say: “I don’t think we can win this one?”
The next weekend you’re watching a Heavyweight boxing match. Your guy has knocked down his opponent three times already and won every round but has yet to deliver the knock out punch. The bell rings and the last round begins and your guy comes out strong although he has a terrible black eye. Do you look at your buddies and say: “He’s losing this fight?”
Of course you would not, so why then are we hearing so much about losing the war in Iraq? We have been penalized, we have lost some players and we have a nasty black eye…but we have already won this war. We have done everything we promised we would, we have removed Saddam Hussein from power, destroyed his evil Baath regime, and installed a Democracy in Iraq with three free and successful elections under their belt.
Yes the Shi’a and Sunnis are involved in a Civil War, with the removal of Saddam’s brutal police force and military this was bound to happen. Saddam was a Sunni, as was everyone in the ruling party. With his iron fist the Sunnis ruled for decades in Iraq and any attempt the Shi’a made was brutality quashed. What we’re seeing on the News today is nothing new; they’ve been fighting since the death of Mohammad, almost 1,400 years ago when Islam split into the two factions. They will most likely be fighting for a long time to come…but what does that have to do with OUR war?
Here’s what I think happened. After the 2004 reelection of President Bush, a bunch of Democratic elite politicians and strategists began scheming. They decided that in order to regain the House and Senate in 06 and the Whitehouse in 08 they must do something about the quest for blood after 9/11 sentiment. In order to do that, they needed to turn the national pride over the war effort into disgust and malice towards our leaders. With that, they came up with the idea of us losing the war. They want us to lose this war because it’s the only way they could reclaim power.
Now don’t get me wrong, this is not a political paper, I’m not saying the Republicans are better than the Democrats because I’m sure the GOP would have done the same thing if a Dem would have been in power at the time of 9/11. I’m simply appalled at this Democratic strategy and even more so how the majority of the American public has fallen for it.
Everyone tells me, “I support the troops but I just don’t think we can win this war.” When I hear that it makes me sick. Then I ask: “Will you please tell me why you feel we’re losing the war?” It’s usually something like: “Well…Americans are dying over there.” Agreed, but in the big picture very few and in a war…people do die. Another popular response is: “We’ve created a Civil War amongst the Iraqis.” Well first of all, we haven’t created anything but an opportunity for it to flare up again. This Civil War is as old as Islam itself. Secondly…what does that have to do with us losing this war?
Many people are demanding a pull out; if you’re one of them, please consider something. What are the insurgents going to think of that? What about Iran and Syria and other Islamic crazy assholes over there? They know all they have to do is hang on, set a few bombs, and America will eventually go away. Yes, I agree we are done with this war because, as I said before, we’ve done everything we said we would. I do believe we need a major downsizing of troops in the area, but we must maintain a strong presence in the Middle East for years to come to insure our safety and security here at home.
If we do lose this war and in the bigger perspective, the showdown with Iran…it won’t be due to the Shi’a and Sunni Civil War, the lack of troops or the incompetence of the Bush Administration. It will be entirely the fault of Partisan Politics, the Media and the general public who have become like sheep. Wake up America…I’m not asking you to take my opinion on the subject or to change yours…I’m only asking that you think for yourselves and not let creeps like Harry Reid or the Media put words in your mouth or thoughts in your head.
When I heard Harry Reid spew that crap I wondered what former Presidents would have done if something like that would have been said during times of war. What if the Democratic Senate Majority Leader would have said this of Harry Truman during the Korean war? Ole Harry would have had him shot and the public wouldn’t have objected.
This is nothing but partisan politics and the only ones who suffer are the troops.
Sergeant S.W. Foster
US Army Reserves
Iraq War Veteran
http://www.DesertVets.org