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Banned
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Seaver, I am sorry that you've chosen to "shoot the messenger", instead of reading the message and contemplating what it truly means. I know nothing that is not also available for your examination and consideration, if you look for it. It just affects me differently, perhaps because I lived through America in the '60's, the assassination of the Kennedy's, King, and I saw Oswald silenced on live TV. Vietnam, then Watergate, the fall of Nixon, Carter struggling to be our president and an honest christian American (he couldn't do it), Reagan's academy award winning performance as POTUS, and the selection of Dan Quayle as our VP. I'm weary, Seaver, I'm angry, and I doubt all that they tell us. If you read the examples I provide, I am confident that you will agree that there is considerable basis for my distrust and cynicism. Maybe in the short term, ignoring me is the easiest choice, but none of the incongruities anf contradictions that I display here, or the hypocrisy that I often point out, will go away.
Quote:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story...522983,00.html
So, Mr Bremer, where did all the money go?
At the end of the Iraq war, vast sums of money were made available to the US-led provisional authorities, headed by Paul Bremer, to spend on rebuilding the country. By the time Bremer left the post eight months later, $8.8bn of that money had disappeared. Ed Harriman on the extraordinary scandal of Iraq's missing billions
Thursday July 7, 2005
The Guardian
When Paul Bremer, the American pro consul in Baghdad until June last year, arrived in Iraq soon after the official end of hostilities, there was $6bn left over from the UN Oil for Food Programme, as well as sequestered and frozen assets, and at least $10bn from resumed Iraqi oil exports. Under Security Council Resolution 1483, passed on May 22 2003, all these funds were transferred into a new account held at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, called the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI), and intended to be spent by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) "in a transparent manner ... for the benefit of the Iraqi people".
The US Congress also voted to spend $18.4bn of US taxpayers' money on the redevelopment of Iraq. By June 28 last year, however, when Bremer left Baghdad two days early to avoid possible attack on the way to the airport, his CPA had spent up to $20bn of Iraqi money, compared with $300m of US funds.............
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Quote:
http://mkanejeeves.com/?p=129
....Last September, a Rumsfeld commissioned report by the non-governmental Defense Science Board advised the Administration to change it’s Middle East Policy pronto, telling it to listen to the populace of the Middle East and communicate in a way that “should seek to reduce, not increase, perceptions of arrogance, opportunism, and double standards.”
The Board went onto say: “Muslims do not ‘hate our freedom,’ but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the long-standing even increasing support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably (in) Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf states.” Our buddies.
To understand the violence in London, today, you have to take a look at the history of the Middle East. For instance, back in 1917, British Lt. General Stanley Maude declared, after invading and occupying Iraq to “free” its people from dictators. “Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators.”
Middle East countries have been “liberated” since before the time of Christ (Rome getting in there, first.) The Middle Eastern nations have been conquered or liberated by the West (And I’m not counting Mongols, because, frankly, who does, anymore? They are soooo passé.), largely after the birth of Christianity by the Crusaders, the Normans, the French (a few times, including by Napoleon), the Germans, the Russians, the British (a few times), the Americans (a few times) and the Nazis (once was enough).
In the last two hundred years, Western liberators (wearing pants and all) decided that the robe-wearing, bearded, turban-clad denizens of the Middle East were somehow “beneath” us. They had to be taught. They had to be led. They had to be “civilized.” And, oh, yeah, there was that riches thing. (In the past hundred years? Oil. Black Gold. Texas Tea. Weee-doggies.)
Plus, they weren’t Christian.
The Rumsfeld appointed panel went onto state: “…when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy.”
The panel stated that BushCo. saying “‘freedom is the future of the Middle East’ is seen as patronizing, suggesting that Arabs are like the enslaved peoples of the old Communist World.”
Arabs, it seems, don’t see themselves in that light. In fact, the report explained, a large majority yearn “to be liberated perhaps from what they see as apostate tyrannies that the U.S. so determinedly promotes and defends.
“In the eyes of Muslims, American occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq has not led to democracy there, but only more chaos and suffering…
“The critical problem in American public diplomacy directed toward the Muslim world is not one of ‘dissemination of information,’ or even one of crafting and delivering the ‘right’ message…
“Rather, it is a fundamental problem of credibility. Simply, there is none…
“If we really want to see the Muslim world as a whole and the Arab-speaking world in particular move toward our understanding of ‘moderation’ and ‘tolerance,’ we must reassure Muslims that this does not mean they must submit to the American way.”
That, plus the latest CIA Report that states Bush’s Iraqi invasion has, basically, inspired thousands of new terrorists to “come on down” and fight the fight on the sands of Iraq, gives you some idea of why London was bombed today.
There have been, and always will be, terrorists. All it takes is ten people and a bomb, or a spear, or a rifle and a belief. But part of the reason London was targeted today is that, for some aberrated reason, Blair decided to back Bush in Bush’s illegal war on Iraq.......
,,,,,,,,,,,, On the same day as the London bombings and the KBR contract, Christopher Preble, a national security specialist at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, declared re: our Iraq fiasco: “There are no good options…There are going to be thousands more casualties and we’re going to spend $4 billion to $8 billion a month for some time to come.”
On the plus side? The Bush administration raised the terror alert a notch to code orange, today, for the nation’s mass transit systems.........
........... Said George Bush: “They have such evil in their heart that they will take the lives of innocent folks. The war on terrorism is on.
“…we will spread an ideology of hope and compassion that will overwhelm their ideology of hate.”
Remember that the next time you bomb the heck out of a city filled with innocents, Speed-Racer.
And, remember that the next time you read an official government report that shows that you’ve screwed up big time...........
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Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2004Dec14.html
Bush Gives Medal of Freedom to 'Pivotal' Iraq Figures
By Ann Gerhart
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 15, 2004; Page C01
Trumpeting America as liberator, the White House conferred the highest civilian honor yesterday on three men intimately involved with the decision to invade Iraq or the troubled aftermath of the invasion.
President Bush awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Tommy Franks, the now-retired Army general who led the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq; former CIA director George Tenet, who told Bush it was a "slam dunk" that Iraq still had weapons of mass destruction; and L. Paul Bremer, who presided over the first 14 months of Iraq reconstruction. ............
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