U.S.-Russia Clash in Ukraine?
By Patrick J. Buchanan
Among Cold War presidents, from Truman to Bush I, there was an unwritten rule: Do not challenge Moscow in its Central and Eastern Europe sphere of influence.
In crises over Berlin in 1948 and 1961, the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 and the Warsaw Pact invasion of Prague in 1968, U.S. forces in Europe stayed in their barracks.
We saw the Elbe as Moscow’s red line, and they saw it as ours.
While Reagan sent weapons to anti-Communist rebels in Angola, Nicaragua and Afghanistan, to the heroic Poles of Gdansk he sent only mimeograph machines.
That Cold War caution and prudence may be at an end.
For President Obama is being goaded by Congress and the liberal interventionists in his party to send lethal weaponry to Kiev in its civil war with pro-Russian rebels in Donetsk and Luhansk.
That war has already cost 5,000 lives — soldiers, rebels, civilians. September’s cease-fire in Minsk has broken down. The rebels have lately seized 200 added square miles, and directed artillery fire at Mariupol, a Black Sea port between Donetsk and Luhansk and Crimea.
Late last year, Congress sent Obama a bill authorizing lethal aid to Kiev. He signed it. Now the New York Times reports that NATO Commander Gen. Philip Breedlove favors military aid to Ukraine, as does Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. John Kerry and Gen. Martin Dempsey of the joint chiefs are said to be open to the idea.
A panel of eight former national security officials, chaired by Michele Flournoy, a potential Defense Secretary in a Hillary Clinton administration, has called for the U.S. to provide $3 billion in military aid to Ukraine, including anti-tank missiles, reconnaissance drones, Humvees, and radar to locate the sources of artillery and missile fire.
Such an arms package would guarantee an escalation of the war, put the United States squarely in the middle, and force Vladimir Putin’s hand.
Thus far, despite evidence of Russian advisers in Ukraine and claims of Russian tank presence, Putin denies that he has intervened. But if U.S. cargo planes start arriving in Kiev with Javelin anti-tank missiles, Putin would face several choices.
He could back down, abandon the rebels, and be seen as a bully who, despite his bluster, does not stand up for Russians everywhere.
More in character, he could take U.S. intervention as a challenge and send in armor and artillery to enable the rebels to consolidate their gains, then warn Kiev that, rather than see the rebels routed, Moscow will intervene militarily.
Or Putin could order in the Russian army before U.S. weapons arrive, capture Mariupol, establish a land bridge to Crimea, and then tell Kiev he is ready to negotiate.
What would we do then? Send U.S. advisers to fight alongside the Ukrainians, as the war escalates and the casualties mount? Send U.S. warships into the Black Sea?
Have we thought this through, as we did not think through what would happen if we brought down Saddam, Gadhafi and Mubarak?
America has never had a vital interest in Crimea or the Donbass worth risking a military clash with Russia. And we do not have the military ability to intervene and drive out the Russian army, unless we are prepared for a larger war and the potential devastation of the Ukraine.
What would Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon or Reagan think of an American president willing to risk military conflict with a nuclear-armed Russia over two provinces in southeastern Ukraine that Moscow had ruled from the time of Catherine the Great?
What is happening in Ukraine is a tragedy and a disaster. And we are in part responsible, having egged on the Maidan coup that overthrew the elected pro-Russian government.
But a greater disaster looms if we get ourselves embroiled in Ukraine’s civil war. We would face, first, the near certainty of defeat for our allies, if not ourselves. Second, we would push Moscow further outside Europe and the West, leaving her with no alternative but to deepen ties to a rising China.
Given the economic crisis in Russia and the basket case Ukraine is already, how do we think a larger and wider war would leave both nations?
Alarmists say we cannot let Putin’s annexation of Crimea stand. We cannot let Luhansk and Donetsk become a pro-Russian enclave in Ukraine, like Abkhazia, South Ossetia or the Transdniester republic.
But no one ever thought these enclaves that emerged from the ethnic decomposition of the Soviet Union were worth a conflict with Russia. When did Luhansk and Donetsk become so?
Rather than becoming a co-belligerent in this civil war that is not our war, why not have the United States assume the role of the honest broker who brings it to an end. Isn’t that how real peace prizes are won?
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/02/patrick-j-buchanan/us-russia-war/
Wednesday, February 4, 2015
Tuesday, February 3, 2015
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."
McDaniel and Botkin Are Wrong: The Troops Never Defended Our Freedom in Iraq and Vietnam
by Jacob G. Hornberger
The controversy surrounding Sheldon Richman’s article “The American Sniper Was No Hero” generated the repeated use of a bromide that is inculcated in the American people from the time they enter the first grade in the public (i.e., government) schools that their parents are forced to send them to — a bromide that holds that the troops defend our freedom when they invade and occupy other countries.
A good example of this phenomenon appeared in an article entitled “Smackdown! War Hero Pummels ‘American Sniper’ Critic,” which appeared Sunday on the conservative website WND.com. The article featured two Vietnam veterans, Navy Captain Eugene “Red” McDaniel, a POW in the Vietnam War, and Marine Major Richard Botkin, author of a book entitled Ride the Thunder: A Vietnam Story of Honor and Triumph.
Both men criticized Richman’s article. Oddly, neither of them addressed the central point in the article: that the United States was the aggressor nation in the Iraq War and that Iraq was the defending nation. Instead, both men focused on the standard bromide: that if it weren’t for the military establishment, Americans wouldn’t be free. Here is how McDaniel put it:
I would ask him how he thinks this “freedom” he talks so much about will be preserved. The people who are willing to put their lives at risk to defend it are the ones who provide this freedom, both for him and for his children and grandchildren.
Here is how Botkin put it:
People like him are kept free by better men.
Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, neither McDaniel nor Botkin explained exactly how the troops that invade and occupy foreign countries preserve and defend the freedom of the American people.
The reason they didn’t is that they can’t. Not only is it a bromide, it’s a false bromide.
Let’s consider Iraq. Pray tell, Mssrs. MdDaniel and Botkin: Tell me exactly how the troops in Iraq defended our freedom. You can’t do it.
Were Iraqi officials coming over here to take over the IRS and take our money from us so that they could give it to brutal foreign dictatorships?
Were they coming over here to take over the DEA so that they steal money from people on the highways under the asset-forfeiture program and put even more people away in jail?
Were they coming over here to take control over the Social Security Administration so that they could plunder and loot young people who are just getting started in life?
Were they coming over here to take charge of the NSA so that they could secretly monitor the activities of the American citizenry?
Were they coming over here to take command of the School of the Americas so that they could instruct Latin American military thugs in the techniques of torture and assassination?
Were they coming over here to take over the reins of the CIA so that they could destroy democratically elected regimes and install brutal military dictatorships?
The answer, gentlemen, is an unequivocal “NO” to all those questions.
So, I repeat: What were the Iraqis doing to take away our freedom?
The truth is that the Iraqis were doing nothing to take away our freedom. That’s what made the U.S. government the aggressor nation in the conflict. As both McDaniel and Botkin know full well, the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, which had the full support of U.S. officials, labeled a war of aggression a war crime, regardless of who is committing it.
I repeat: What did the troops in Iraq do to protect our freedom?
The answer is unequivocal: The troops in Iraq did absolutely nothing to preserve, defend, or protect the freedom of the American people. That’s because the freedom of the American people was never threatened by Iraq.
As a matter of fact, the U.S. military invasion of Iraq and the war of aggression against the Iraqi people is what has threatened the freedom of the American people. That’s because the killing of countless Iraqis generated the same deep anger and hatred for the United States that the 11 years of brutal sanctions that the U.S. government enforced against Iraq prior to the invasion generated — sanctions that contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi children — deaths that motivated the terrorists to retaliate against the United States on 9/11, which launched “the war on terrorism,” a war that is set to last even longer than the “war on communism.”
More anti-American anger and hatred leads to more terrorism, which leads to ever-increasing budgets for the military-industrial complex (What a nice coincidence!), not to mention the ever-increasing infringements on our liberties here at home at the hands of the federal government, in the name of “keeping us safe”’ from the terrorists that the troops produced with their invasion of Iraq.
Let’s be blunt: The national-security establishment, including its armies of countless “defense” contractors and subcontractors feeding at the public trough at the expense of overburdened taxpayers, is, to use the words of former U.S. Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler, nothing but one great big racket, a racket by which the troops and the CIA purportedly protect us from the supposed threats to our freedom that they themselves generate with their invasions, wars of aggression, partnerships with brutal dictators (including Iraq’s very own Saddam Hussein in the 1980s), foreign aid and military training for pro-U.S. tyrannical regimes, and, of course, never-ending regime-change operations in other countries, many of which destroy experiments with democracy in order to install brutal pro-U.S. military dictatorships in their stead. And then they use those purported threats to our freedom as a justification for ever-increasing budgets and ever-increasing infringements on our freedom here at home, all in the name of “keeping us safe” and “defending our freedom.”
Show me a bigger racket than that. You can’t do it.
I can only assume that both McDaniel and Botkin are familiar with the term “military-industrial complex.” That’s the term coined by President Dwight Eisenhower in his Farewell Address in 1961. Ike knew a bit about the military. Let’s see what he said about the vast military establishment that still characterizes our nation despite the fact that the Cold War, which was its original justification, ended a long time ago:
Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Imagine that: The president of the United States and the former Supreme Commander of Allied Forces during World War II warning the American people that the vast military establishment, which was entirely alien to America’s original, constitutional governmental structure, poses a grave threat to the liberties and democratic processes of the American people.
I wonder if Captain McDaniel and Major Botkin and WND.com would have smacked down and pummeled Five-Star General Dwight Eisenhower for issuing that warning to the American people. Indeed, would they have dared to smack down and pummel Marine Corps Major General Smedley General Butler, the most decorated Marine in U.S. history up to his time, for speaking the truth about what a racket foreign military interventionism is?
I also wonder what Ike would say today upon learning that we now live in a country in which the military and the CIA wield the power to take people into custody, including American citizens, place them in a concentration camp or military dungeon, torture them, and even execute them after some sort of kangaroo military tribunal.
Undoubtedly, McDaniel and Botkin call that type of system “freedom,” notwithstanding the fact that the American people would never have approved the Constitution if they knew that it would bring into existence a warfare state apparatus that is characteristic of totalitarian regimes, not free societies.
The WND.com article pointed out that McDaniel suffered six years of captivity and torture at the hands of the North Vietnam communists after the plane that he was piloting over Hanoi was shot down.
Apparently the reason that that information was included in the article was to demonstrate how McDaniel made a tremendous sacrifice to, once again, preserve and defend our freedom.
Really?
Okay, here’s a challenge to both Vietnam veterans McDaniel and Botkin: Show me exactly how the freedom of the American people was being threatened by the government of North Vietnam. You can’t do it.
Go back to the questions I asked above. Replace Iraq with North Vietnam. Was North Vietnam coming over here to take over the IRS, the DEA, the NSA, the public schools, Social Security, the School of the Americas, the CIA, or any other of America’s socialist or interventionist programs, departments, and agencies?
Nope. They didn’t give a whit about taking over any part of the U.S. government. Like other governments in history, their goal was to unify their country in a violent civil war.
For some 50 years, people like McDaniel and Botkin have maintained that if it hadn’t been for them and the U.S. invasion of Vietnam, the rest of the dominoes would have fallen to the communists and that Americans would be speaking communist.
Really? Then why are we not speaking communist today? Oh sure, we all speak welfare-state socialism today but that’s not because of Ho Chi Minh. That’s because of President Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal.
Permit me to remind Mssrs. McDaniel and Botkin of a discomforting truth: The United States lost the Vietnam War! At the risk of belaboring the obvious, the United States is still standing. The dominoes never fell. The North Vietnamese never came to get us and order us to talk communist.
The truth, as discomforting as it might be to McDaniel and Botkin, is that U.S. troops in Vietnam never preserved and defended the freedom of the American people because the freedom of the American people was never under any threat by the North Vietnamese.
The truth is that those 58,000 plus American soldiers who lost their lives in the Vietnam War died for nothing. Nothing at all. Unless you want to call lies, deceptions, and falsehoods, including the one relating to the Gulf of Tonkin, something worth dying for.
The reason that people like McDaniel and Botkin continue to subscribe to the freedom bromide, notwithstanding its obvious emptiness and falsehood, is that they simply cannot accept the fact that what they did in Vietnam — all the death and destruction they wrought — all the suffering they underwent and caused — was for nothing.
Consider McDaniel’s six years of captivity and torture at the hands of the North Vietnamese. He cannot bring himself to recognize the truth — that it was all for nothing. Those six years that were taken from him — those six years of captivity and brutal torture — had nothing to do with defending the freedom of the American people. After all, at the risk of belaboring the obvious, if McDaniel had been here at home instead of dropping bombs on the people of North Vietnam — people who never attacked the United States or even threatened to do so — he wouldn’t have spent six years of life in a North Vietnamese prison being tortured.
Perhaps I should mention the fact that there was no congressional declaration of war against North Vietnam, just as there wasn’t against Iraq.
Why is that important?
Because the U.S. Constitution prohibits the president from waging war against another nation without a congressional declaration of war.
Why is that important?
Because every soldier, including McDaniel and Botkin, takes an oath to support and defend the Constitution when he becomes a soldier.
But I suppose McDaniel and Botkin might argue that the job of a soldier is to blindly obey the orders of the president regardless of what the Constitution says. After all, isn’t that how the U.S. military and the CIA justify torturing people, just like the communists did to McDaniel?
Link:
http://fff.org/2015/02/03/mcdaniel-botkin-wrong-troops-never-defended-freedom-iraq-vietnam/
by Jacob G. Hornberger
The controversy surrounding Sheldon Richman’s article “The American Sniper Was No Hero” generated the repeated use of a bromide that is inculcated in the American people from the time they enter the first grade in the public (i.e., government) schools that their parents are forced to send them to — a bromide that holds that the troops defend our freedom when they invade and occupy other countries.
A good example of this phenomenon appeared in an article entitled “Smackdown! War Hero Pummels ‘American Sniper’ Critic,” which appeared Sunday on the conservative website WND.com. The article featured two Vietnam veterans, Navy Captain Eugene “Red” McDaniel, a POW in the Vietnam War, and Marine Major Richard Botkin, author of a book entitled Ride the Thunder: A Vietnam Story of Honor and Triumph.
Both men criticized Richman’s article. Oddly, neither of them addressed the central point in the article: that the United States was the aggressor nation in the Iraq War and that Iraq was the defending nation. Instead, both men focused on the standard bromide: that if it weren’t for the military establishment, Americans wouldn’t be free. Here is how McDaniel put it:
I would ask him how he thinks this “freedom” he talks so much about will be preserved. The people who are willing to put their lives at risk to defend it are the ones who provide this freedom, both for him and for his children and grandchildren.
Here is how Botkin put it:
People like him are kept free by better men.
Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, neither McDaniel nor Botkin explained exactly how the troops that invade and occupy foreign countries preserve and defend the freedom of the American people.
The reason they didn’t is that they can’t. Not only is it a bromide, it’s a false bromide.
Let’s consider Iraq. Pray tell, Mssrs. MdDaniel and Botkin: Tell me exactly how the troops in Iraq defended our freedom. You can’t do it.
Were Iraqi officials coming over here to take over the IRS and take our money from us so that they could give it to brutal foreign dictatorships?
Were they coming over here to take over the DEA so that they steal money from people on the highways under the asset-forfeiture program and put even more people away in jail?
Were they coming over here to take control over the Social Security Administration so that they could plunder and loot young people who are just getting started in life?
Were they coming over here to take charge of the NSA so that they could secretly monitor the activities of the American citizenry?
Were they coming over here to take command of the School of the Americas so that they could instruct Latin American military thugs in the techniques of torture and assassination?
Were they coming over here to take over the reins of the CIA so that they could destroy democratically elected regimes and install brutal military dictatorships?
The answer, gentlemen, is an unequivocal “NO” to all those questions.
So, I repeat: What were the Iraqis doing to take away our freedom?
The truth is that the Iraqis were doing nothing to take away our freedom. That’s what made the U.S. government the aggressor nation in the conflict. As both McDaniel and Botkin know full well, the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, which had the full support of U.S. officials, labeled a war of aggression a war crime, regardless of who is committing it.
I repeat: What did the troops in Iraq do to protect our freedom?
The answer is unequivocal: The troops in Iraq did absolutely nothing to preserve, defend, or protect the freedom of the American people. That’s because the freedom of the American people was never threatened by Iraq.
As a matter of fact, the U.S. military invasion of Iraq and the war of aggression against the Iraqi people is what has threatened the freedom of the American people. That’s because the killing of countless Iraqis generated the same deep anger and hatred for the United States that the 11 years of brutal sanctions that the U.S. government enforced against Iraq prior to the invasion generated — sanctions that contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi children — deaths that motivated the terrorists to retaliate against the United States on 9/11, which launched “the war on terrorism,” a war that is set to last even longer than the “war on communism.”
More anti-American anger and hatred leads to more terrorism, which leads to ever-increasing budgets for the military-industrial complex (What a nice coincidence!), not to mention the ever-increasing infringements on our liberties here at home at the hands of the federal government, in the name of “keeping us safe”’ from the terrorists that the troops produced with their invasion of Iraq.
Let’s be blunt: The national-security establishment, including its armies of countless “defense” contractors and subcontractors feeding at the public trough at the expense of overburdened taxpayers, is, to use the words of former U.S. Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler, nothing but one great big racket, a racket by which the troops and the CIA purportedly protect us from the supposed threats to our freedom that they themselves generate with their invasions, wars of aggression, partnerships with brutal dictators (including Iraq’s very own Saddam Hussein in the 1980s), foreign aid and military training for pro-U.S. tyrannical regimes, and, of course, never-ending regime-change operations in other countries, many of which destroy experiments with democracy in order to install brutal pro-U.S. military dictatorships in their stead. And then they use those purported threats to our freedom as a justification for ever-increasing budgets and ever-increasing infringements on our freedom here at home, all in the name of “keeping us safe” and “defending our freedom.”
Show me a bigger racket than that. You can’t do it.
I can only assume that both McDaniel and Botkin are familiar with the term “military-industrial complex.” That’s the term coined by President Dwight Eisenhower in his Farewell Address in 1961. Ike knew a bit about the military. Let’s see what he said about the vast military establishment that still characterizes our nation despite the fact that the Cold War, which was its original justification, ended a long time ago:
Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Imagine that: The president of the United States and the former Supreme Commander of Allied Forces during World War II warning the American people that the vast military establishment, which was entirely alien to America’s original, constitutional governmental structure, poses a grave threat to the liberties and democratic processes of the American people.
I wonder if Captain McDaniel and Major Botkin and WND.com would have smacked down and pummeled Five-Star General Dwight Eisenhower for issuing that warning to the American people. Indeed, would they have dared to smack down and pummel Marine Corps Major General Smedley General Butler, the most decorated Marine in U.S. history up to his time, for speaking the truth about what a racket foreign military interventionism is?
I also wonder what Ike would say today upon learning that we now live in a country in which the military and the CIA wield the power to take people into custody, including American citizens, place them in a concentration camp or military dungeon, torture them, and even execute them after some sort of kangaroo military tribunal.
Undoubtedly, McDaniel and Botkin call that type of system “freedom,” notwithstanding the fact that the American people would never have approved the Constitution if they knew that it would bring into existence a warfare state apparatus that is characteristic of totalitarian regimes, not free societies.
The WND.com article pointed out that McDaniel suffered six years of captivity and torture at the hands of the North Vietnam communists after the plane that he was piloting over Hanoi was shot down.
Apparently the reason that that information was included in the article was to demonstrate how McDaniel made a tremendous sacrifice to, once again, preserve and defend our freedom.
Really?
Okay, here’s a challenge to both Vietnam veterans McDaniel and Botkin: Show me exactly how the freedom of the American people was being threatened by the government of North Vietnam. You can’t do it.
Go back to the questions I asked above. Replace Iraq with North Vietnam. Was North Vietnam coming over here to take over the IRS, the DEA, the NSA, the public schools, Social Security, the School of the Americas, the CIA, or any other of America’s socialist or interventionist programs, departments, and agencies?
Nope. They didn’t give a whit about taking over any part of the U.S. government. Like other governments in history, their goal was to unify their country in a violent civil war.
For some 50 years, people like McDaniel and Botkin have maintained that if it hadn’t been for them and the U.S. invasion of Vietnam, the rest of the dominoes would have fallen to the communists and that Americans would be speaking communist.
Really? Then why are we not speaking communist today? Oh sure, we all speak welfare-state socialism today but that’s not because of Ho Chi Minh. That’s because of President Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal.
Permit me to remind Mssrs. McDaniel and Botkin of a discomforting truth: The United States lost the Vietnam War! At the risk of belaboring the obvious, the United States is still standing. The dominoes never fell. The North Vietnamese never came to get us and order us to talk communist.
The truth, as discomforting as it might be to McDaniel and Botkin, is that U.S. troops in Vietnam never preserved and defended the freedom of the American people because the freedom of the American people was never under any threat by the North Vietnamese.
The truth is that those 58,000 plus American soldiers who lost their lives in the Vietnam War died for nothing. Nothing at all. Unless you want to call lies, deceptions, and falsehoods, including the one relating to the Gulf of Tonkin, something worth dying for.
The reason that people like McDaniel and Botkin continue to subscribe to the freedom bromide, notwithstanding its obvious emptiness and falsehood, is that they simply cannot accept the fact that what they did in Vietnam — all the death and destruction they wrought — all the suffering they underwent and caused — was for nothing.
Consider McDaniel’s six years of captivity and torture at the hands of the North Vietnamese. He cannot bring himself to recognize the truth — that it was all for nothing. Those six years that were taken from him — those six years of captivity and brutal torture — had nothing to do with defending the freedom of the American people. After all, at the risk of belaboring the obvious, if McDaniel had been here at home instead of dropping bombs on the people of North Vietnam — people who never attacked the United States or even threatened to do so — he wouldn’t have spent six years of life in a North Vietnamese prison being tortured.
Perhaps I should mention the fact that there was no congressional declaration of war against North Vietnam, just as there wasn’t against Iraq.
Why is that important?
Because the U.S. Constitution prohibits the president from waging war against another nation without a congressional declaration of war.
Why is that important?
Because every soldier, including McDaniel and Botkin, takes an oath to support and defend the Constitution when he becomes a soldier.
But I suppose McDaniel and Botkin might argue that the job of a soldier is to blindly obey the orders of the president regardless of what the Constitution says. After all, isn’t that how the U.S. military and the CIA justify torturing people, just like the communists did to McDaniel?
Link:
http://fff.org/2015/02/03/mcdaniel-botkin-wrong-troops-never-defended-freedom-iraq-vietnam/
Exercising your constitutional right of assembly is now viewed as terrorism in NYC...
NYPD Commissioner: Because Terrorism And Protests Are Roughly The Same Thing, A New Special Unit Will Handle Both
from the pipe-bomb-or-placard?-better-safe-than-sorry dept.
The NYPD has created yet another special unit to handle the myriad problems that arise from being terrorists' occasional target. The SRG (Strategic Response Group) will be tasked with handling certain situations, most of which did not occur in New York City.
“It is designed for dealing with events like our recent protests, or incidents like Mumbai or what just happened in Paris,” the commissioner [Bill Bratton] said.
So… it's designed for dealing with protests -- the most recent of which were kicked off by the clearing of a cop who choked an unarmed man to death. The other two incidents have nothing to do with New York other than the fact that the NYPD sent its own officers overseas at the request of nobody.
Apparently, the new unit will be armed to the teeth, as behooves riot protest cops.
“They’ll be equipped and trained in ways that our normal patrol officers are not,” Bratton said. “They’ll be equipped with all the extra heavy protective gear, with the long rifles and machine guns — unfortunately sometimes necessary in these instances.”
Or not, said the department when its new counterprotest unit began taking heat for Bratton's conflation of terrorism and tying up traffic.
When asked if New Yorkers should expect to see police officers with “machine guns” at city protests, a spokesman for the NYPD told The Intercept, “No. They’re not carrying them at protests.” In general, however, the spokesman said officers would have access to the weapons “either on them or in their vehicles.”
So, they won't carry machine guns while policing protests, but they'll be in easy reach. Bratton stated that responding to protests and terrorist attacks require "overlapping skills," hence the creation of a single unit. There has been no further clarification on what these "skills" might be, other than possibly being able to discern whether it's a protest or terrorist attack they're dealing with and, consequently, whether the machine gun stays in the squad car.
This new unit must be something special. Or its already-existing counterpart must be something awful.
SRG also will supplement the 1,000-officer NYPD counterterrorism program, which has also been trained in heavy-weapons tactics, a police official said.
In addition to the 1,350 counterterrorist cops, there will be more surveillance. The NYPD's push to turn the city into the next London continues, with the promised addition of cameras in every subway car, accessible to both the conductor and "offsite" viewers within the PD.
Bratton is also pushing for something less lethal than "long rifles" to be carried by his cops.
The commissioner said he will also ask Mayor Bill de Blasio for more funding to buy more Tasers as an alternative to the use of force. Bratton reportedly wants at least 450 cops — five or six at each of the city’s 77 precincts — to carry Tasers on them, not leave them in their cars…
Well, I'd say Bratton need to fix the second part first. There's no reason to buy new Tasers if you can't get cops to carry them. Locking them up in the glovebox pretty much ensures that the only force officers can deploy will be of the "deadly" variety. The difference between tasing someone into submission and shooting someone into submission is often the difference between life and death. Of course, NYPD officers are also fond of other such "less-lethal" tactics like chokeholds and unprovoked beatings. Adding a Taser just means some citizen's going to have electricity pumped into his system on top of anything else the officers feel like deploying.
Using the word "terrorism" in a sentence is an easy way to route funds to your law enforcement agency. New York -- being both highly populated and an American icon -- is certainly high on the list of terrorist targets. But years of counterterrorist investigations have done very little to reduce the threat. The NYPD has been overselling and under-delivering on the "imminent terrorist threat" front for years. Because it has so little to police at home, it's been sending its officers around the world to actual terrorist attacks -- a tactic that has earned it little more than the irritated scorn of those actually charged with policing much more dangerous parts of the world.
Above and beyond all of this, there's Bratton's assertion that the same special unit should be tasked with counterterrorism and handling protests, as if the two were remotely related in any way. The message is clear: civil disobedience is an attack on New York City itself -- and Bratton's boys and girls trained in the art of counterterrorism will be on hand to break up the next one. To dissent is to strike terror into the NYPD -- itself a pleasant thought. But once the SRG hits the streets, it probably won't end well for those would-be terrorists and their evil protests.
Link:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150202/12195129884/nypd-commissioner-because-terrorism-protests-are-roughly-same-thing-new-special-unit-will-handle-both.shtml
from the pipe-bomb-or-placard?-better-safe-than-sorry dept.
The NYPD has created yet another special unit to handle the myriad problems that arise from being terrorists' occasional target. The SRG (Strategic Response Group) will be tasked with handling certain situations, most of which did not occur in New York City.
“It is designed for dealing with events like our recent protests, or incidents like Mumbai or what just happened in Paris,” the commissioner [Bill Bratton] said.
So… it's designed for dealing with protests -- the most recent of which were kicked off by the clearing of a cop who choked an unarmed man to death. The other two incidents have nothing to do with New York other than the fact that the NYPD sent its own officers overseas at the request of nobody.
Apparently, the new unit will be armed to the teeth, as behooves riot protest cops.
“They’ll be equipped and trained in ways that our normal patrol officers are not,” Bratton said. “They’ll be equipped with all the extra heavy protective gear, with the long rifles and machine guns — unfortunately sometimes necessary in these instances.”
Or not, said the department when its new counterprotest unit began taking heat for Bratton's conflation of terrorism and tying up traffic.
When asked if New Yorkers should expect to see police officers with “machine guns” at city protests, a spokesman for the NYPD told The Intercept, “No. They’re not carrying them at protests.” In general, however, the spokesman said officers would have access to the weapons “either on them or in their vehicles.”
So, they won't carry machine guns while policing protests, but they'll be in easy reach. Bratton stated that responding to protests and terrorist attacks require "overlapping skills," hence the creation of a single unit. There has been no further clarification on what these "skills" might be, other than possibly being able to discern whether it's a protest or terrorist attack they're dealing with and, consequently, whether the machine gun stays in the squad car.
This new unit must be something special. Or its already-existing counterpart must be something awful.
SRG also will supplement the 1,000-officer NYPD counterterrorism program, which has also been trained in heavy-weapons tactics, a police official said.
In addition to the 1,350 counterterrorist cops, there will be more surveillance. The NYPD's push to turn the city into the next London continues, with the promised addition of cameras in every subway car, accessible to both the conductor and "offsite" viewers within the PD.
Bratton is also pushing for something less lethal than "long rifles" to be carried by his cops.
The commissioner said he will also ask Mayor Bill de Blasio for more funding to buy more Tasers as an alternative to the use of force. Bratton reportedly wants at least 450 cops — five or six at each of the city’s 77 precincts — to carry Tasers on them, not leave them in their cars…
Well, I'd say Bratton need to fix the second part first. There's no reason to buy new Tasers if you can't get cops to carry them. Locking them up in the glovebox pretty much ensures that the only force officers can deploy will be of the "deadly" variety. The difference between tasing someone into submission and shooting someone into submission is often the difference between life and death. Of course, NYPD officers are also fond of other such "less-lethal" tactics like chokeholds and unprovoked beatings. Adding a Taser just means some citizen's going to have electricity pumped into his system on top of anything else the officers feel like deploying.
Using the word "terrorism" in a sentence is an easy way to route funds to your law enforcement agency. New York -- being both highly populated and an American icon -- is certainly high on the list of terrorist targets. But years of counterterrorist investigations have done very little to reduce the threat. The NYPD has been overselling and under-delivering on the "imminent terrorist threat" front for years. Because it has so little to police at home, it's been sending its officers around the world to actual terrorist attacks -- a tactic that has earned it little more than the irritated scorn of those actually charged with policing much more dangerous parts of the world.
Above and beyond all of this, there's Bratton's assertion that the same special unit should be tasked with counterterrorism and handling protests, as if the two were remotely related in any way. The message is clear: civil disobedience is an attack on New York City itself -- and Bratton's boys and girls trained in the art of counterterrorism will be on hand to break up the next one. To dissent is to strike terror into the NYPD -- itself a pleasant thought. But once the SRG hits the streets, it probably won't end well for those would-be terrorists and their evil protests.
Link:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150202/12195129884/nypd-commissioner-because-terrorism-protests-are-roughly-same-thing-new-special-unit-will-handle-both.shtml
"Anyone who tells you the JFK assassination is not solved stick this in their face."
Heavy Insider Buying in LTV Stock by LBJ Insiders Just Weeks Before JFK Assassination.
By Robert Morrow
Heavy insider buying in LTV stock by LBJ insiders DH Byrd and James Ling occurred in Nov. 1963 in the weeks before the JFK assassination. Major defense contract was awarded to LTV in January, 1964, paid for out of the nonexisting 1965 budget
One needs to go to JFK Counter Coup footnote #49
49. In early November 1963, Byrd and his investment partner, James Ling, made a significant insider purchase of stock in their defense industry investment, LTV. Although required by SEC rules to report this insider purchase, they delayed doing so until well after Kennedy’s assassination. Then in January LTV received the first major LBJ defense contract from the Pentagon – for a fighter plane designed for Vietnam. Cf. Joan Mellen, “The Kennedy Assassination and the Current Political Moment,” Part II, http://www.joanmellen.net/truth-2.html.
DH Byrd was so close to LBJ they might as well have been Siamese twins. And he is Col. DH Byrd Air Force friends with Gen Curtis Lemay who called the Kennedys' "cockroaches" in his LBJ oral history. Air Force Gen. Edward Lansdale running the show at Dealey Plaza - joint CIA/military intelligence operation.
The heavy insider buying was based on DEAD KENNEDY coming up soon with LBJ INSIDE WHITE HOUSE.
Anyone who tells you the JFK assassination is not solved stick this in their face.
LBJ-DALLAS OIL/MILITARY CONTRACTORS/CIA/MILITARY INTELLIGENCE murdered JFK.
I should note that DH Byrd 1) employed LBJ's personal hit man Malcolm Wallace 2) the DH Byrd owned the Texas School Book Depository and 3) that DH Byrd could land his plane on LBJ's ranch anytime he wanted to even when LBJ was president. 4) DH Byrd also had the "sniper's window) of the Texas School Book Depository removed and sent to his home as a trophy. DH Byrd was a noted "big game" hunter and JFK was the biggest one he ever snared.
Byrds, Planes, and an Automobile by Richard Batholomew
http://www.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/17th_Issue/rambler3.html
It is probable that Byrd knew David Ferrie and he definitely knew the very top Air Force brass through Civil Air Patrol (CAP). CAP Captain David Ferrie was CAP cadet Lee Harvey Oswald's trainer.316
Byrd was a co-founder of Civil Air Patrol. Displayed in his office, at 1110 Tower Petroleum Building in Dallas, were many pictures of himself in uniform with aviation dignitaries and Air Force Generals.317 He was an aviation buff but could not become a fighter pilot because his eyesight was bad.318 He co-founded CAP six days before Pearl Harbor.319 After World War II he spearheaded the establishment of the Cadet Program in CAP and contributed many scholarships to its cadets.320 In Dallas on May 24, 1963, the U.S. Air Force presented to Byrd its Scroll of Appreciation, which reads:
For rendering meritorious service to the United States Air Force from Dec. 1941 to April, 1960. Motivated by a strong sense of patriotism, Mr. Byrd played a major part in the successful operation of the Texas Wing, Civil Air Patrol, throughout World War II. After the war he assisted in the incorporation of the Civil Air Patrol and its designation as an Auxiliary of the Air Force. Mr. Byrd helped initiate the International Air Cadet Exchange and worked closely with the Air Cadet League of Canada. The many scholarships established or supported by Mr. Byrd have aided countless cadets in the attainment of additional training and higher education. His contributions of material and personal aircraft to the use of Civil Air Patrol materially aided in the performance of its mission.. The distinctive accomplishments of Mr. Byrd have earned for him the sincere gratitude of the United States Air Force.
(Signed) - Curtis E. Le MayChief of Staff
(Signed) - Eugene M. ZuckertSecretary of the Air Force321
D.H. Byrd counted among his close friends one of the most famous aviators, General Jimmy Doolittle.322 Byrd and Doolittle were hunting buddies. Of Doolittle he wrote, "Having a fondness for being Number One in all my undertakings, it doesn't come naturally for me to confess that Doolittle is the one man whom I would gladly serve in any venture as Number Two."323 On one intriguing trip without Doolittle, Byrd went hunting in central Africa in November and December 1963. It was his first such trip of five during his lifetime outside of the U.S., Mexico, and Canada.324
Byrd prepared well for the trip: Temco, Inc. was an aircraft company founded by D.H. Byrd and which later merged with his friend James Ling's electronics company (1960), and aircraft manufacturer Chance Vought Corporation (1961) to form Ling-Temco-Vought (LTV). Byrd became a director325 of LTV and bought, along with Ling, 132,000 shares of LTV in November 1963.326 Byrd then left the country to go on his two-month safari in central Africa. He returned in January to find his good friend Lyndon Johnson president of the United States, his building famous, and a large defense contract awarded to LTV to build fighter planes -- to be paid for out of the 1965 budget which had not yet been approved by Congress.327
Mac Wallace, who received a five-year suspended sentence in the shooting death of John Douglas Kiner in Austin on October 22, 1951, went to work for Temco, Inc. of Garland, Texas five months after his trial. He remained in that position until February 1961, four months before Henry Marshall's mysterious death on June 3, 1961, when he transferred to the Anaheim, California offices of LTV.328
The transfer required a background check by the Navy. "The most intriguing part of the Wallace case was how a convicted murderer was able to get a job with defense contractors. Better yet, how was he able to get a security clearance? Clinton Peoples [the Texas Ranger Captain who investigated the Marshall and Kiner murders]329 reported that when the original security clearance was granted, he asked the Naval intelligence officer handling the case how such a person could get the clearance. `Politics,' the man replied. When Peoples asked who would have that much power, the simple answer was, `the vice president,' who at the time was Lyndon Johnson. Years later, after the story broke [of Billie Sol Estes' March 20, 1984 testimony that implicated Lyndon Johnson, Malcom Wallace, and Clifton Carter in the death of Henry Marshall], that investigator could not recall the conversation with Peoples but he did say no one forced him to write a favorable report. He also added that he wasn't the one that made the decision to grant the clearance. The whole matter might have been solved with a peek at that original report but unfortunately, when the files were checked, that particular report was suspiciously missing. It has never been seen since."330
Wallace was transferred and given clearance in February 1961. "In January 1961, the very month Johnson was sworn in as vice president, and the month Henry Marshall was in Dallas discussing how to combat Estes-like scams, Billie Sol Estes learned through his contacts that the USDA was investigating the allotment scheme and that Henry Marshall might end up testifying. The situation was supposedly discussed by Estes, Johnson, and Carter in the backyard of LBJ's Washington home. Johnson was, according to Estes, alarmed that if Marshall started talking it might result in an investigation that would implicate the vice president. At first it was decided to have Marshall transferred to Washington, but when told Marshall had already refused such a relocation, LBJ, according to Estes, said simply, `Then we'll have to get rid of him.'"331
According to Craig Zirbel, author of The Texas Connection, in May 1962, "...Johnson flew to Dallas aboard a military jet to privately meet with Estes and his lawyers on a plane parked away from the terminal....This incident would probably have remained secret except that LBJ's plane suffered a mishap in landing at Dallas. When investigative reporters attempted to obtain the tower records for the flight mishap the records were "sealed by government order."332
Still more LTV intrigues were revealed by Peter Dale Scott: "A fellow-director of [Jack Alston] Crichton's333 firm of Dorchester Gas Producing was D.H. Byrd, an oil associate of Sid Richardson and Clint Murchison, and the LTV director who teamed up with James Ling to buy 132,000 shares of LTV in November 1963. While waiting to be sworn in as President in Dallas on November 22, Johnson spoke by telephone with J.W. Bullion, a member of the Dallas law firm (Thompson, Wright, Knight, and Simmons) which had the legal account for Dorchester Gas Producing and was represented on its board. The senior partner of the law firm, Dwight L. Simmons, had until 1960 sat on the board of Chance Vought Aircraft, a predecessor of Ling-Temco-Vought. One week after the assassination, Johnson named Bullion, who has been described as his `business friend and lawyer,' to be one of the two trustees handling the affairs of the former LBJ Co. while its owner was President."334
Another appreciative friend of Byrd's was Arthur Andrew Collins, the founder of the Collins Radio Company. Byrd, along with John D. Rockefeller, Jr., was a financier of his cousin Admiral Richard E. Byrd's polar expeditions by air. A mountain range at the South Pole is named the Harold Byrd Mountains in his honor.335 Some of that money went for the purchase of radio equipment and technical support from Arthur Collins. The 1933 expedition was the first big break for the young Collins Radio Company of Cedar Rapids Iowa.336
In May 1951 Collins began an expansion program to build a one-million dollar plant near the Dallas suburb of Richardson. A hanger was leased at nearby Red Bird Airport to install and repair airborne equipment. The move was due to a decentralization plan urged by the Defense Department for security reasons.
Madeleine Duncan Brown was a mistress of Lyndon Johnson for 21 years and had a son with him named Steven Mark Brown in 1950. Madeleine mixed with the Texas elite and had many trysts with Lyndon Johnson over the years, including one at the Driskill Hotel in Austin, TX, on New Year's Eve 12/31/63.
Late in the evelning of 12/31/63, just 6 weeks after the JFK assassination, Madeleine asked Lyndon Johnson:
"Lyndon, you know that a lot of people believe you had something to do with President Kennedy's assassination."
He shot up out of bed and began pacing and waving his arms screaming like a madman. I was scared!
"That's bullshit, Madeleine Brown!" he yelled. "Don't tell me you believe that crap!"
"Of course not." I answered meekly, trying to cool his temper.
"It was Texas oil and those fucking renegade intelligence bastards in Washington." [said Lyndon Johnson, the new president.] [Texas in the Morning, p. 189] [LBJ told this to Madeleine in the late night of 12/31/63 in the Driskill Hotel, Austin, TX in room #434 which is now known as the Governor’s Suite. LBJ kept this room on retainer for business and as a place to tryst with his mistresses. LBJ and Madeleine spent New Year’s Eve ‘64 together here.
Link:
http://www.targetliberty.com/2015/02/heavy-insider-buying-in-ltv-stock-by.html#more
By Robert Morrow
Heavy insider buying in LTV stock by LBJ insiders DH Byrd and James Ling occurred in Nov. 1963 in the weeks before the JFK assassination. Major defense contract was awarded to LTV in January, 1964, paid for out of the nonexisting 1965 budget
One needs to go to JFK Counter Coup footnote #49
49. In early November 1963, Byrd and his investment partner, James Ling, made a significant insider purchase of stock in their defense industry investment, LTV. Although required by SEC rules to report this insider purchase, they delayed doing so until well after Kennedy’s assassination. Then in January LTV received the first major LBJ defense contract from the Pentagon – for a fighter plane designed for Vietnam. Cf. Joan Mellen, “The Kennedy Assassination and the Current Political Moment,” Part II, http://www.joanmellen.net/truth-2.html.
DH Byrd was so close to LBJ they might as well have been Siamese twins. And he is Col. DH Byrd Air Force friends with Gen Curtis Lemay who called the Kennedys' "cockroaches" in his LBJ oral history. Air Force Gen. Edward Lansdale running the show at Dealey Plaza - joint CIA/military intelligence operation.
The heavy insider buying was based on DEAD KENNEDY coming up soon with LBJ INSIDE WHITE HOUSE.
Anyone who tells you the JFK assassination is not solved stick this in their face.
LBJ-DALLAS OIL/MILITARY CONTRACTORS/CIA/MILITARY INTELLIGENCE murdered JFK.
I should note that DH Byrd 1) employed LBJ's personal hit man Malcolm Wallace 2) the DH Byrd owned the Texas School Book Depository and 3) that DH Byrd could land his plane on LBJ's ranch anytime he wanted to even when LBJ was president. 4) DH Byrd also had the "sniper's window) of the Texas School Book Depository removed and sent to his home as a trophy. DH Byrd was a noted "big game" hunter and JFK was the biggest one he ever snared.
Byrds, Planes, and an Automobile by Richard Batholomew
http://www.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/17th_Issue/rambler3.html
It is probable that Byrd knew David Ferrie and he definitely knew the very top Air Force brass through Civil Air Patrol (CAP). CAP Captain David Ferrie was CAP cadet Lee Harvey Oswald's trainer.316
Byrd was a co-founder of Civil Air Patrol. Displayed in his office, at 1110 Tower Petroleum Building in Dallas, were many pictures of himself in uniform with aviation dignitaries and Air Force Generals.317 He was an aviation buff but could not become a fighter pilot because his eyesight was bad.318 He co-founded CAP six days before Pearl Harbor.319 After World War II he spearheaded the establishment of the Cadet Program in CAP and contributed many scholarships to its cadets.320 In Dallas on May 24, 1963, the U.S. Air Force presented to Byrd its Scroll of Appreciation, which reads:
For rendering meritorious service to the United States Air Force from Dec. 1941 to April, 1960. Motivated by a strong sense of patriotism, Mr. Byrd played a major part in the successful operation of the Texas Wing, Civil Air Patrol, throughout World War II. After the war he assisted in the incorporation of the Civil Air Patrol and its designation as an Auxiliary of the Air Force. Mr. Byrd helped initiate the International Air Cadet Exchange and worked closely with the Air Cadet League of Canada. The many scholarships established or supported by Mr. Byrd have aided countless cadets in the attainment of additional training and higher education. His contributions of material and personal aircraft to the use of Civil Air Patrol materially aided in the performance of its mission.. The distinctive accomplishments of Mr. Byrd have earned for him the sincere gratitude of the United States Air Force.
(Signed) - Curtis E. Le MayChief of Staff
(Signed) - Eugene M. ZuckertSecretary of the Air Force321
D.H. Byrd counted among his close friends one of the most famous aviators, General Jimmy Doolittle.322 Byrd and Doolittle were hunting buddies. Of Doolittle he wrote, "Having a fondness for being Number One in all my undertakings, it doesn't come naturally for me to confess that Doolittle is the one man whom I would gladly serve in any venture as Number Two."323 On one intriguing trip without Doolittle, Byrd went hunting in central Africa in November and December 1963. It was his first such trip of five during his lifetime outside of the U.S., Mexico, and Canada.324
Byrd prepared well for the trip: Temco, Inc. was an aircraft company founded by D.H. Byrd and which later merged with his friend James Ling's electronics company (1960), and aircraft manufacturer Chance Vought Corporation (1961) to form Ling-Temco-Vought (LTV). Byrd became a director325 of LTV and bought, along with Ling, 132,000 shares of LTV in November 1963.326 Byrd then left the country to go on his two-month safari in central Africa. He returned in January to find his good friend Lyndon Johnson president of the United States, his building famous, and a large defense contract awarded to LTV to build fighter planes -- to be paid for out of the 1965 budget which had not yet been approved by Congress.327
Mac Wallace, who received a five-year suspended sentence in the shooting death of John Douglas Kiner in Austin on October 22, 1951, went to work for Temco, Inc. of Garland, Texas five months after his trial. He remained in that position until February 1961, four months before Henry Marshall's mysterious death on June 3, 1961, when he transferred to the Anaheim, California offices of LTV.328
The transfer required a background check by the Navy. "The most intriguing part of the Wallace case was how a convicted murderer was able to get a job with defense contractors. Better yet, how was he able to get a security clearance? Clinton Peoples [the Texas Ranger Captain who investigated the Marshall and Kiner murders]329 reported that when the original security clearance was granted, he asked the Naval intelligence officer handling the case how such a person could get the clearance. `Politics,' the man replied. When Peoples asked who would have that much power, the simple answer was, `the vice president,' who at the time was Lyndon Johnson. Years later, after the story broke [of Billie Sol Estes' March 20, 1984 testimony that implicated Lyndon Johnson, Malcom Wallace, and Clifton Carter in the death of Henry Marshall], that investigator could not recall the conversation with Peoples but he did say no one forced him to write a favorable report. He also added that he wasn't the one that made the decision to grant the clearance. The whole matter might have been solved with a peek at that original report but unfortunately, when the files were checked, that particular report was suspiciously missing. It has never been seen since."330
Wallace was transferred and given clearance in February 1961. "In January 1961, the very month Johnson was sworn in as vice president, and the month Henry Marshall was in Dallas discussing how to combat Estes-like scams, Billie Sol Estes learned through his contacts that the USDA was investigating the allotment scheme and that Henry Marshall might end up testifying. The situation was supposedly discussed by Estes, Johnson, and Carter in the backyard of LBJ's Washington home. Johnson was, according to Estes, alarmed that if Marshall started talking it might result in an investigation that would implicate the vice president. At first it was decided to have Marshall transferred to Washington, but when told Marshall had already refused such a relocation, LBJ, according to Estes, said simply, `Then we'll have to get rid of him.'"331
According to Craig Zirbel, author of The Texas Connection, in May 1962, "...Johnson flew to Dallas aboard a military jet to privately meet with Estes and his lawyers on a plane parked away from the terminal....This incident would probably have remained secret except that LBJ's plane suffered a mishap in landing at Dallas. When investigative reporters attempted to obtain the tower records for the flight mishap the records were "sealed by government order."332
Still more LTV intrigues were revealed by Peter Dale Scott: "A fellow-director of [Jack Alston] Crichton's333 firm of Dorchester Gas Producing was D.H. Byrd, an oil associate of Sid Richardson and Clint Murchison, and the LTV director who teamed up with James Ling to buy 132,000 shares of LTV in November 1963. While waiting to be sworn in as President in Dallas on November 22, Johnson spoke by telephone with J.W. Bullion, a member of the Dallas law firm (Thompson, Wright, Knight, and Simmons) which had the legal account for Dorchester Gas Producing and was represented on its board. The senior partner of the law firm, Dwight L. Simmons, had until 1960 sat on the board of Chance Vought Aircraft, a predecessor of Ling-Temco-Vought. One week after the assassination, Johnson named Bullion, who has been described as his `business friend and lawyer,' to be one of the two trustees handling the affairs of the former LBJ Co. while its owner was President."334
Another appreciative friend of Byrd's was Arthur Andrew Collins, the founder of the Collins Radio Company. Byrd, along with John D. Rockefeller, Jr., was a financier of his cousin Admiral Richard E. Byrd's polar expeditions by air. A mountain range at the South Pole is named the Harold Byrd Mountains in his honor.335 Some of that money went for the purchase of radio equipment and technical support from Arthur Collins. The 1933 expedition was the first big break for the young Collins Radio Company of Cedar Rapids Iowa.336
In May 1951 Collins began an expansion program to build a one-million dollar plant near the Dallas suburb of Richardson. A hanger was leased at nearby Red Bird Airport to install and repair airborne equipment. The move was due to a decentralization plan urged by the Defense Department for security reasons.
Madeleine Duncan Brown was a mistress of Lyndon Johnson for 21 years and had a son with him named Steven Mark Brown in 1950. Madeleine mixed with the Texas elite and had many trysts with Lyndon Johnson over the years, including one at the Driskill Hotel in Austin, TX, on New Year's Eve 12/31/63.
Late in the evelning of 12/31/63, just 6 weeks after the JFK assassination, Madeleine asked Lyndon Johnson:
"Lyndon, you know that a lot of people believe you had something to do with President Kennedy's assassination."
He shot up out of bed and began pacing and waving his arms screaming like a madman. I was scared!
"That's bullshit, Madeleine Brown!" he yelled. "Don't tell me you believe that crap!"
"Of course not." I answered meekly, trying to cool his temper.
"It was Texas oil and those fucking renegade intelligence bastards in Washington." [said Lyndon Johnson, the new president.] [Texas in the Morning, p. 189] [LBJ told this to Madeleine in the late night of 12/31/63 in the Driskill Hotel, Austin, TX in room #434 which is now known as the Governor’s Suite. LBJ kept this room on retainer for business and as a place to tryst with his mistresses. LBJ and Madeleine spent New Year’s Eve ‘64 together here.
Link:
http://www.targetliberty.com/2015/02/heavy-insider-buying-in-ltv-stock-by.html#more
"Meteorology has many facts and many scientific principles but, at this stage of its development, weather forecasts just a week ahead are still iffy. Why then should we let ourselves be stampeded into crippling the American economy with unending restrictions created by bureaucrats who pay no price for being wrong?"
Bad Stormy Weather Predictions and Impossible Climate Forecasts
By Thomas Sowell
It was refreshing to see meteorologists apologize for their dire — and wrong — predictions of an unprecedented snow storm that they had said would devastate the northeast. It was a big storm, but the northeast has seen lots of big snow storms before and will probably see lots of big snow storms again. That's called winter.
Unfortunately, we are not likely to hear any similar apologies from those who have been promoting "global warming" hysteria for years, in defiance of data that fail to fit their climate models. What is at issue is not whether there is "climate change" — which nobody has ever denied — but whether the specific predictions of the "global warming" crowd as to the direction and magnitude of worldwide temperature changes are holding up over the years.
The ultimate test of any theoretical model is not how loudly it is proclaimed but how well it fits the facts. Climate models that have an unimpressive record of fitting the facts of the past or the present are hardly a reason for us to rely on them for the future.
Putting together a successful model — of anything — is a lot more complicated than identifying which factors affect which outcomes. When many factors are involved, which is common, the challenge is to determine precisely how those factors interact with each other. That is a lot easier said than done when it comes to climate.
Everyone can agree, for example, that the heat of the sunlight is greater in the tropics than in the temperate zones or near the poles. But, the highest temperatures ever recorded in Asia, Africa, North America or South America were all recorded outside — repeat, OUTSIDE — the tropics.
No part of Europe is in the tropics, but record temperatures in European cities like Athens and Seville have been higher than the highest temperatures ever recorded in cities virtually right on the equator, such as Singapore in Asia or Nairobi in Africa.
None of this disproves the scientific fact that sunlight is hotter in the tropics. But it does indicate that there are other factors which go into temperatures on earth.
It is not only the heat of the sunlight, but its duration, that determines how much heat builds up. The sun shines on the equator about 12 hours a day all year long. But, in the temperate zones, the sun shines more hours during the summer — almost 15 hours a day at the latitude of Seville or Athens.
It is also not just a question of how much sunlight there is falling on the planet but also a question of how much of that sunlight is blocked by clouds and reflected back out into space. At any given time, about half the earth is shielded by clouds, but cloudiness varies greatly from place to place and from time to time.
The Mediterranean region is famous for its cloudless summer days. The annual hours of sunlight in Athens is nearly double that in London — and in Alexandria, Egypt, there are more than twice as many annual hours of sunlight as in London.
How surprised should we be that cities around the Mediterranean — Alexandria, Seville, and Tripoli — have had temperatures of 110 degrees or more, while many tropical cities have not? Clouds and rain are common in the tropics.
American cities like Phoenix and Las Vegas often hit summer temperatures of 110 degrees or more, because they are located where there are not nearly as many clouds during the summer as are common in most other places, including most places in the tropics. The highest temperatures on earth have been reached in Death Valley, California, for the same reason, even though it is not in the tropics.
Putting clouds into climate models is not simple, because the more the temperature rises, the more water evaporates, creating more clouds that reflect more sunlight back out into space. Such facts are well known, but reducing them to a specific and reliable formula that will predict global temperatures is something else.
Meteorology has many facts and many scientific principles but, at this stage of its development, weather forecasts just a week ahead are still iffy. Why then should we let ourselves be stampeded into crippling the American economy with unending restrictions created by bureaucrats who pay no price for being wrong?
Certainly neither China nor India will do that, and the amount of greenhouse gasses they put into the air will overwhelm any reductions we might achieve, even with draconian restrictions at astronomical costs.
Link:
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2015/02/bad-stormy-weather-predictions-and.html
By Thomas Sowell
It was refreshing to see meteorologists apologize for their dire — and wrong — predictions of an unprecedented snow storm that they had said would devastate the northeast. It was a big storm, but the northeast has seen lots of big snow storms before and will probably see lots of big snow storms again. That's called winter.
Unfortunately, we are not likely to hear any similar apologies from those who have been promoting "global warming" hysteria for years, in defiance of data that fail to fit their climate models. What is at issue is not whether there is "climate change" — which nobody has ever denied — but whether the specific predictions of the "global warming" crowd as to the direction and magnitude of worldwide temperature changes are holding up over the years.
The ultimate test of any theoretical model is not how loudly it is proclaimed but how well it fits the facts. Climate models that have an unimpressive record of fitting the facts of the past or the present are hardly a reason for us to rely on them for the future.
Putting together a successful model — of anything — is a lot more complicated than identifying which factors affect which outcomes. When many factors are involved, which is common, the challenge is to determine precisely how those factors interact with each other. That is a lot easier said than done when it comes to climate.
Everyone can agree, for example, that the heat of the sunlight is greater in the tropics than in the temperate zones or near the poles. But, the highest temperatures ever recorded in Asia, Africa, North America or South America were all recorded outside — repeat, OUTSIDE — the tropics.
No part of Europe is in the tropics, but record temperatures in European cities like Athens and Seville have been higher than the highest temperatures ever recorded in cities virtually right on the equator, such as Singapore in Asia or Nairobi in Africa.
None of this disproves the scientific fact that sunlight is hotter in the tropics. But it does indicate that there are other factors which go into temperatures on earth.
It is not only the heat of the sunlight, but its duration, that determines how much heat builds up. The sun shines on the equator about 12 hours a day all year long. But, in the temperate zones, the sun shines more hours during the summer — almost 15 hours a day at the latitude of Seville or Athens.
It is also not just a question of how much sunlight there is falling on the planet but also a question of how much of that sunlight is blocked by clouds and reflected back out into space. At any given time, about half the earth is shielded by clouds, but cloudiness varies greatly from place to place and from time to time.
The Mediterranean region is famous for its cloudless summer days. The annual hours of sunlight in Athens is nearly double that in London — and in Alexandria, Egypt, there are more than twice as many annual hours of sunlight as in London.
How surprised should we be that cities around the Mediterranean — Alexandria, Seville, and Tripoli — have had temperatures of 110 degrees or more, while many tropical cities have not? Clouds and rain are common in the tropics.
American cities like Phoenix and Las Vegas often hit summer temperatures of 110 degrees or more, because they are located where there are not nearly as many clouds during the summer as are common in most other places, including most places in the tropics. The highest temperatures on earth have been reached in Death Valley, California, for the same reason, even though it is not in the tropics.
Putting clouds into climate models is not simple, because the more the temperature rises, the more water evaporates, creating more clouds that reflect more sunlight back out into space. Such facts are well known, but reducing them to a specific and reliable formula that will predict global temperatures is something else.
Meteorology has many facts and many scientific principles but, at this stage of its development, weather forecasts just a week ahead are still iffy. Why then should we let ourselves be stampeded into crippling the American economy with unending restrictions created by bureaucrats who pay no price for being wrong?
Certainly neither China nor India will do that, and the amount of greenhouse gasses they put into the air will overwhelm any reductions we might achieve, even with draconian restrictions at astronomical costs.
Link:
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2015/02/bad-stormy-weather-predictions-and.html
"...the mortality rate of these illnesses were rapidly falling before the mass vaccination campaign began."
Should Mickey and Minnie Mouse Be Vaccinated?
By Dr. David Brownstein
The recent 2015 measles outbreak in Disneyland has sparked an outcry against parents who choose not to vaccinate their children. Over 60 people have been diagnosed with measles in this latest outbreak.
The hysteria surrounding this outbreak is beyond me. I have seen the articles stating that parents who choose not to vaccinate should be prosecuted. Parents who choose not vaccinate have been accused of child abuse.
I say everyone needs to chill out—easy for me to write that in the midst of a foot of snow falling.
Measles is a highly infectious disease. It is very common throughout the world. In fact, it is estimated that over 20 million cases of measles occur worldwide on an annual basis. Measles can lead to severe problems including encephalitis and death. However, serious complications from measles are rare in the developed world.
I am not downplaying serious problems related to the measles virus. However, serious problems can develop from anything—a common upper respiratory illness can develop into pneumonia. People can die from pneumonia. Should parents who send their children to school with an upper respiratory infection—a cold—be accused of child abuse? Should they be prosecuted? Of course not.
Measles can cause severe complications especially when someone is deficient in vitamin A. One of the best treatments for preventing serious complications from measles is vitamin A supplementation.
The measles vaccine was introduced in 1963. You would think from the propaganda surrounding the shot that the measles vaccine was responsible for the rapid decline in mortality from measles. Think again. Look at the graph below.
The Powers-That-Be claim that vaccines markedly lowered the death rate of common childhood illnesses such as measles and whooping cough. However, you can see from the graph above that the mortality rate of these illnesses were rapidly falling before the mass vaccination campaign began.
I am not saying that all vaccines don’t work. I know some of them do. The chicken pox vaccine has clearly lowered the incidence of chicken pox. However, is that a good thing? I am not sure as shingles cases have skyrocketed since the mass vaccination of chicken pox was started. And, perhaps a child’s immune system needs to be stimulated with these childhood infections to become strong...
Read the rest here:
http://blog.drbrownstein.com/should-mickey-and-minnie-mouse-be-vaccinated/
By Dr. David Brownstein
The recent 2015 measles outbreak in Disneyland has sparked an outcry against parents who choose not to vaccinate their children. Over 60 people have been diagnosed with measles in this latest outbreak.
The hysteria surrounding this outbreak is beyond me. I have seen the articles stating that parents who choose not to vaccinate should be prosecuted. Parents who choose not vaccinate have been accused of child abuse.
I say everyone needs to chill out—easy for me to write that in the midst of a foot of snow falling.
Measles is a highly infectious disease. It is very common throughout the world. In fact, it is estimated that over 20 million cases of measles occur worldwide on an annual basis. Measles can lead to severe problems including encephalitis and death. However, serious complications from measles are rare in the developed world.
I am not downplaying serious problems related to the measles virus. However, serious problems can develop from anything—a common upper respiratory illness can develop into pneumonia. People can die from pneumonia. Should parents who send their children to school with an upper respiratory infection—a cold—be accused of child abuse? Should they be prosecuted? Of course not.
Measles can cause severe complications especially when someone is deficient in vitamin A. One of the best treatments for preventing serious complications from measles is vitamin A supplementation.
The measles vaccine was introduced in 1963. You would think from the propaganda surrounding the shot that the measles vaccine was responsible for the rapid decline in mortality from measles. Think again. Look at the graph below.
The Powers-That-Be claim that vaccines markedly lowered the death rate of common childhood illnesses such as measles and whooping cough. However, you can see from the graph above that the mortality rate of these illnesses were rapidly falling before the mass vaccination campaign began.
I am not saying that all vaccines don’t work. I know some of them do. The chicken pox vaccine has clearly lowered the incidence of chicken pox. However, is that a good thing? I am not sure as shingles cases have skyrocketed since the mass vaccination of chicken pox was started. And, perhaps a child’s immune system needs to be stimulated with these childhood infections to become strong...
Read the rest here:
http://blog.drbrownstein.com/should-mickey-and-minnie-mouse-be-vaccinated/
What are the odds???
The Lost and “Found ID” Oddity in Terror Cases—Stupid or Sinister?
by Russ Baker
Categories: Deep Politics, The Odd
One intriguing—if barely discussed—aspect of the Paris massacre was the quick progress authorities made in their investigation.
According to CNN, this was thanks to a staggering error—by one of the two now-dead alleged perpetrators. The man, Said Kouachi, reportedly left his identification card in the abandoned getaway vehicle. “It was their only mistake,” Dominique Rizet, police and justice consultant for CNN-affiliate BFMTV, opined.
Nonetheless, it was a most curious mistake.
After all, this is the same man who went to such trouble to seemingly hide his identity by wearing a mask.
***
Intriguingly, such apparent gaffes have marked other watershed violence. Consider these examples, and draw your own conclusion:
The Bundle of James Earl Ray: The accused killer of Martin Luther King escaped from a prison shortly before the attack, and left several items on the sidewalk near the assassination site—in a bundle that included his rifle, binoculars, clothing, his prison radio, and a newspaper clipping revealing where King would be staying.
The Wallet of Lee Harvey Oswald: The alleged assassin of John F. Kennedy and killer of Officer J.D.Tippit purportedly dropped his wallet, which was found at the scene of Tippit’s murder. To some, this appeared a little too neat. In any case, original law enforcement reports with this scenario were almost immediately replaced by another version: that the police took the wallet from him after he was arrested. (See “Assignment: Oswald” by former FBI agent James P. Hosty.)
The Visa of Satam al-Suqami: This identify document of one of the alleged 9/11 hijackers somehow survived unscathed a few blocks from the twin towers, though the plane itself was virtually obliterated.
The Passports belonging to Ziad Jarrah and Saeed al-Ghamdi: The passports of two alleged hijackers of United Airlines Flight 93 supposedly survived the fiery crash in Pennsylvania that left the aircraft itself charred and widely scattered—with one passport entirely intact.
Remains of Ziad Jarrah's visa.
Read more here:
http://whowhatwhy.org/2015/02/01/lost-found-id-oddity-terror-cases-stupid-sinister/
by Russ Baker
Categories: Deep Politics, The Odd
One intriguing—if barely discussed—aspect of the Paris massacre was the quick progress authorities made in their investigation.
According to CNN, this was thanks to a staggering error—by one of the two now-dead alleged perpetrators. The man, Said Kouachi, reportedly left his identification card in the abandoned getaway vehicle. “It was their only mistake,” Dominique Rizet, police and justice consultant for CNN-affiliate BFMTV, opined.
Nonetheless, it was a most curious mistake.
After all, this is the same man who went to such trouble to seemingly hide his identity by wearing a mask.
***
Intriguingly, such apparent gaffes have marked other watershed violence. Consider these examples, and draw your own conclusion:
The Bundle of James Earl Ray: The accused killer of Martin Luther King escaped from a prison shortly before the attack, and left several items on the sidewalk near the assassination site—in a bundle that included his rifle, binoculars, clothing, his prison radio, and a newspaper clipping revealing where King would be staying.
The Wallet of Lee Harvey Oswald: The alleged assassin of John F. Kennedy and killer of Officer J.D.Tippit purportedly dropped his wallet, which was found at the scene of Tippit’s murder. To some, this appeared a little too neat. In any case, original law enforcement reports with this scenario were almost immediately replaced by another version: that the police took the wallet from him after he was arrested. (See “Assignment: Oswald” by former FBI agent James P. Hosty.)
The Visa of Satam al-Suqami: This identify document of one of the alleged 9/11 hijackers somehow survived unscathed a few blocks from the twin towers, though the plane itself was virtually obliterated.
The Passports belonging to Ziad Jarrah and Saeed al-Ghamdi: The passports of two alleged hijackers of United Airlines Flight 93 supposedly survived the fiery crash in Pennsylvania that left the aircraft itself charred and widely scattered—with one passport entirely intact.
Remains of Ziad Jarrah's visa.
Read more here:
http://whowhatwhy.org/2015/02/01/lost-found-id-oddity-terror-cases-stupid-sinister/
Monday, February 2, 2015
" The U.S. national-security state’s use of such bromidic titles as “Operation Iraqi Freedom” cannot alter truth and reality. The truth and reality are that the troops didn’t bring freedom to the Iraqi people. Faithfully following the orders of their superiors, they brought a hell-hole of death, destruction, and loss of liberty, not to mention the damage that the Iraq War has done to our freedom and well-being here at home."
Aggression and the American Sniper
by Jacob G. Hornberger
FFF Vice President Sheldon Richman stirred up quite a bit of controversy over his article last week entitled “The American Sniper Was No Hero.” Defenders of Chris Kyle, the U.S. military sniper around which the movie American Sniper revolved, took Sheldon to task for daring to criticize the members of the U.S. military who killed people in Iraq, including Kyle, who set the U.S. record for people killed through sniper fire.
One thing comes through loud and clear throughout all the controversy: While exuding praise for the troops in response to Sheldon’s article, defenders of Kyle and other U.S. soldiers who invaded and occupied Iraq simply cannot come to grips with the central issue that libertarians have raised since even before the Iraq invasion: aggression.
In the Iraq War, it was the U.S. government that was the aggressor nation and it was Iraq that was the defending nation. Defenders of Kyle find themselves unable to confront and address that issue and, therefore, just decide to ignore it, no doubt hoping that it will simply go away and that libertarians will stop raising it.
But the issue isn’t going to go away and libertarians aren’t going to stop raising it. It goes to the heart of the controversy.
Why is the issue of aggression critically important? It’s critically important because the nation that starts a war with a military invasion is killing people wrongfully — that is, killing people who are doing nothing more than defending their nation against an attack by an invading army.
Under international law, nations have the right to defend themselves from an attack initiated by another nation. Under libertarian principles, people have a right to defend themselves from anyone who is initiating force against them. The laws of every state in the Union and also U.S. federal law recognizes the right of self-defense.
That obviously means that Iraq, as the defending power in the war, had the right to defend itself. It also means that the U.S. government, operating through its military forces, had no right to kill the Iraqi people.
Under the law, a person who initiates force against another person is subject to being punished as a wrongdoer, whether he is a murderer, rapist, burglar, or robber.
Even if a bank robber engages in a tremendous act of courage in taking on five security guards in a shoot-out, we don’t call him heroic given the fact that he was robbing a bank and killing security guards in the process. The same holds true for a sniper who is part of the gang that is robbing the bank. We don’t call him a hero for protecting the lives of his fellow bank robbers by shooting the security guards who are shooting at the robbers in the process of defending the bank against the robbers.
If a security guard shoots at a bank robber, can the bank robber fire back in “self-defense”? Not under the law. If the bank robber kills the security guard after being fired upon first, every court in the land will refuse to permit the bank robber to plead self-defense.
What defenders of Kyle and the other U.S. troops who invaded Iraq just don’t get is that the same principle applies in the invasion of other countries. If a nation initiates an unprovoked military attack on another nation, under international law the attacking nation is in no different position from that of the bank robbers.
That’s the principle established at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, with the full support of the U.S. government. At Nuremberg, it was held that any nation that attacks another nation is guilty of the war crime of waging a war of aggression.
President George W. Bush and Vice President Cheney clearly understood this principle. That’s why they were trying desperately to link Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s ruler, to the 9/11 attacks. In that way, they could tell the American people that the United States wasn’t the aggressor power in the Iraq War but rather the defending power. They knew that German officials were punished as war criminals at Nuremberg for waging a war of aggression. They also figured that it would be easier for U.S. troops to kill people in Iraq if the troops were made to believe that they were killing in self-defense rather than as part of a war of aggression.
It’s not just man-made law that condemns the initiation of force by both private citizens and government officials. There are also religious principles to consider.
God’s commandment is clear and unequivocal: Thou shalt not murder. The commandment does not read: Thou shalt not murder except when one’s troops are initiating an unprovoked attack on another nation. It reads: Thou shalt not murder.
An American Catholic bishop named John Michael Botean, the head of the Roman Catholic diocese of St. George in Canton, Ohio, understood this principle in the run up to the Iraq War when he issued a letter to the members of his diocese that contained the following admonition:
….the nation-state is never the final arbiter or authority for the Catholic of
what is moral or for what is good for the salvation of his or her soul. What
is legal can be evil and often has been. Jesus Christ and his Church, not
the state, are the ultimate informers of conscience for the Catholic.
This is why the Church teaches as a norm of conscience the following: “If
rulers were to enact unjust laws or take measures contrary to the moral
order such arrangements would not be binding in conscience.” (Catechism
1903) She also warns “Blind obedience [to immoral laws] does not suffice to
excuse those who carry them out” (Catechism 2313). When a moral conflict
arises between Church teaching and secular morality, when contradictory
moral demands are made upon a Catholic’s conscience, he or she “must obey
God rather than man” (Acts 5:29)….
Therefore I, by the grace of God and the favor of the Apostolic See Bishop
of the Eparchy of St. George in Canton, must declare to you, my people, for
the sake of your salvation as well as my own, that any direct participation
and support of this war against the people of Iraq is objectively grave
evil, a matter of mortal sin. Beyond a reasonable doubt this war is morally
incompatible with the Person and Way of Jesus Christ. With moral certainty I
say to you it does not meet even the minimal standards of the Catholic just
war theory.
Thus, any killing associated with it is unjustified and, in consequence,
unequivocally murder. Direct participation in this war is the moral
equivalent of direct participation in an abortion. For the Catholics of the
Eparchy of St. George, I hereby authoritatively state that such direct
participation is intrinsically and gravely evil and therefore absolutely
forbidden….
Botean had it right. As members of the aggressor power, U.S. soldiers had no right under the laws of God (or man) to kill even one single Iraqi.
Throughout the Iraq War, supporters of the war were exhorting people to “support the troops” in Iraq. Such support presupposed the continued occupation of Iraq, an occupation in which the troops were continuing to kill Iraqi people. As we continually pointed out here at FFF, with support like that, the troops certainly didn’t need enemies.
Longtime supporters of The Future of Freedom Foundation will recall that we continually exhorted people to support the troops by bringing them home immediately — that is, before they had to kill any more Iraqis.
As everyone knows, many, if not most, of the troops who served in Iraq came back all screwed up in the head. Alcoholism, violence, family disintegration, drug abuse. Heck, Kyle, who himself came back all screwed up in the head, was himself murdered by an Iraq War veteran who was all screwed up in the head.
What do the defenders of the Iraq War say about all these troops who came back all screwed up in the head? They blame it on PTSD—i.e., the stresses of battle.
Even if that were true, what about the psychological effect on a person who wrongfully kills another human being? After all, the average soldier is not a pathological serial killer, that is, one that seems to have no conscience. The average soldier is like all the rest of us — a person with a conscience, a person who is committed to doing the right thing, a person who subscribes to the same basic moral code that the rest of us subscribe to.
Can a soldier avoid the psychological and religious consequences of wrongfully killing another person by simply telling himself that he was loyally and blindly obeying the orders of his superiors?
No way. Life doesn’t work that way. In this regard, I would recommend one of the most profound essays ever written, entitled “Conscience on the Battlefield” by Leonard E. Read.
In order to heal and recover from the wrongful killing of another human being, the killer must acknowledge the wrong he has committed. In a religious sense, he must confess his sin. He must repent. He must feel genuine remorse for what he has done.
Thus, those who convince the troops who served in Iraq that they were patriots and heroes are doing them a grave disservice, as grave a disservice as they performed for the troops when they failed to support an immediate end to the long, violent occupation of Iraq. By convincing the solders who killed Iraqis that they are heroes, he who claims to be supporting the troops is actually interfering with their recovery.
In a very real sense, it’s not just the troops who must face the truth and the reality regarding the death and destruction that the U.S. national-security state unleashed on Iraq. It’s also the American people who must finally confront the truth about Iraq: The U.S. government had no right, under the laws of man or the laws of God, to invade and occupy Iraq, which means that no U.S. soldier had any right, under the laws of man and the laws of God, to kill even one single Iraqi.
The U.S. national-security state’s use of such bromidic titles as “Operation Iraqi Freedom” cannot alter truth and reality. The truth and reality are that the troops didn’t bring freedom to the Iraqi people. Faithfully following the orders of their superiors, they brought a hell-hole of death, destruction, and loss of liberty, not to mention the damage that the Iraq War has done to our freedom and well-being here at home.
Link:
http://fff.org/2015/02/02/aggression-american-sniper/
by Jacob G. Hornberger
FFF Vice President Sheldon Richman stirred up quite a bit of controversy over his article last week entitled “The American Sniper Was No Hero.” Defenders of Chris Kyle, the U.S. military sniper around which the movie American Sniper revolved, took Sheldon to task for daring to criticize the members of the U.S. military who killed people in Iraq, including Kyle, who set the U.S. record for people killed through sniper fire.
One thing comes through loud and clear throughout all the controversy: While exuding praise for the troops in response to Sheldon’s article, defenders of Kyle and other U.S. soldiers who invaded and occupied Iraq simply cannot come to grips with the central issue that libertarians have raised since even before the Iraq invasion: aggression.
In the Iraq War, it was the U.S. government that was the aggressor nation and it was Iraq that was the defending nation. Defenders of Kyle find themselves unable to confront and address that issue and, therefore, just decide to ignore it, no doubt hoping that it will simply go away and that libertarians will stop raising it.
But the issue isn’t going to go away and libertarians aren’t going to stop raising it. It goes to the heart of the controversy.
Why is the issue of aggression critically important? It’s critically important because the nation that starts a war with a military invasion is killing people wrongfully — that is, killing people who are doing nothing more than defending their nation against an attack by an invading army.
Under international law, nations have the right to defend themselves from an attack initiated by another nation. Under libertarian principles, people have a right to defend themselves from anyone who is initiating force against them. The laws of every state in the Union and also U.S. federal law recognizes the right of self-defense.
That obviously means that Iraq, as the defending power in the war, had the right to defend itself. It also means that the U.S. government, operating through its military forces, had no right to kill the Iraqi people.
Under the law, a person who initiates force against another person is subject to being punished as a wrongdoer, whether he is a murderer, rapist, burglar, or robber.
Even if a bank robber engages in a tremendous act of courage in taking on five security guards in a shoot-out, we don’t call him heroic given the fact that he was robbing a bank and killing security guards in the process. The same holds true for a sniper who is part of the gang that is robbing the bank. We don’t call him a hero for protecting the lives of his fellow bank robbers by shooting the security guards who are shooting at the robbers in the process of defending the bank against the robbers.
If a security guard shoots at a bank robber, can the bank robber fire back in “self-defense”? Not under the law. If the bank robber kills the security guard after being fired upon first, every court in the land will refuse to permit the bank robber to plead self-defense.
What defenders of Kyle and the other U.S. troops who invaded Iraq just don’t get is that the same principle applies in the invasion of other countries. If a nation initiates an unprovoked military attack on another nation, under international law the attacking nation is in no different position from that of the bank robbers.
That’s the principle established at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, with the full support of the U.S. government. At Nuremberg, it was held that any nation that attacks another nation is guilty of the war crime of waging a war of aggression.
President George W. Bush and Vice President Cheney clearly understood this principle. That’s why they were trying desperately to link Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s ruler, to the 9/11 attacks. In that way, they could tell the American people that the United States wasn’t the aggressor power in the Iraq War but rather the defending power. They knew that German officials were punished as war criminals at Nuremberg for waging a war of aggression. They also figured that it would be easier for U.S. troops to kill people in Iraq if the troops were made to believe that they were killing in self-defense rather than as part of a war of aggression.
It’s not just man-made law that condemns the initiation of force by both private citizens and government officials. There are also religious principles to consider.
God’s commandment is clear and unequivocal: Thou shalt not murder. The commandment does not read: Thou shalt not murder except when one’s troops are initiating an unprovoked attack on another nation. It reads: Thou shalt not murder.
An American Catholic bishop named John Michael Botean, the head of the Roman Catholic diocese of St. George in Canton, Ohio, understood this principle in the run up to the Iraq War when he issued a letter to the members of his diocese that contained the following admonition:
….the nation-state is never the final arbiter or authority for the Catholic of
what is moral or for what is good for the salvation of his or her soul. What
is legal can be evil and often has been. Jesus Christ and his Church, not
the state, are the ultimate informers of conscience for the Catholic.
This is why the Church teaches as a norm of conscience the following: “If
rulers were to enact unjust laws or take measures contrary to the moral
order such arrangements would not be binding in conscience.” (Catechism
1903) She also warns “Blind obedience [to immoral laws] does not suffice to
excuse those who carry them out” (Catechism 2313). When a moral conflict
arises between Church teaching and secular morality, when contradictory
moral demands are made upon a Catholic’s conscience, he or she “must obey
God rather than man” (Acts 5:29)….
Therefore I, by the grace of God and the favor of the Apostolic See Bishop
of the Eparchy of St. George in Canton, must declare to you, my people, for
the sake of your salvation as well as my own, that any direct participation
and support of this war against the people of Iraq is objectively grave
evil, a matter of mortal sin. Beyond a reasonable doubt this war is morally
incompatible with the Person and Way of Jesus Christ. With moral certainty I
say to you it does not meet even the minimal standards of the Catholic just
war theory.
Thus, any killing associated with it is unjustified and, in consequence,
unequivocally murder. Direct participation in this war is the moral
equivalent of direct participation in an abortion. For the Catholics of the
Eparchy of St. George, I hereby authoritatively state that such direct
participation is intrinsically and gravely evil and therefore absolutely
forbidden….
Botean had it right. As members of the aggressor power, U.S. soldiers had no right under the laws of God (or man) to kill even one single Iraqi.
Throughout the Iraq War, supporters of the war were exhorting people to “support the troops” in Iraq. Such support presupposed the continued occupation of Iraq, an occupation in which the troops were continuing to kill Iraqi people. As we continually pointed out here at FFF, with support like that, the troops certainly didn’t need enemies.
Longtime supporters of The Future of Freedom Foundation will recall that we continually exhorted people to support the troops by bringing them home immediately — that is, before they had to kill any more Iraqis.
As everyone knows, many, if not most, of the troops who served in Iraq came back all screwed up in the head. Alcoholism, violence, family disintegration, drug abuse. Heck, Kyle, who himself came back all screwed up in the head, was himself murdered by an Iraq War veteran who was all screwed up in the head.
What do the defenders of the Iraq War say about all these troops who came back all screwed up in the head? They blame it on PTSD—i.e., the stresses of battle.
Even if that were true, what about the psychological effect on a person who wrongfully kills another human being? After all, the average soldier is not a pathological serial killer, that is, one that seems to have no conscience. The average soldier is like all the rest of us — a person with a conscience, a person who is committed to doing the right thing, a person who subscribes to the same basic moral code that the rest of us subscribe to.
Can a soldier avoid the psychological and religious consequences of wrongfully killing another person by simply telling himself that he was loyally and blindly obeying the orders of his superiors?
No way. Life doesn’t work that way. In this regard, I would recommend one of the most profound essays ever written, entitled “Conscience on the Battlefield” by Leonard E. Read.
In order to heal and recover from the wrongful killing of another human being, the killer must acknowledge the wrong he has committed. In a religious sense, he must confess his sin. He must repent. He must feel genuine remorse for what he has done.
Thus, those who convince the troops who served in Iraq that they were patriots and heroes are doing them a grave disservice, as grave a disservice as they performed for the troops when they failed to support an immediate end to the long, violent occupation of Iraq. By convincing the solders who killed Iraqis that they are heroes, he who claims to be supporting the troops is actually interfering with their recovery.
In a very real sense, it’s not just the troops who must face the truth and the reality regarding the death and destruction that the U.S. national-security state unleashed on Iraq. It’s also the American people who must finally confront the truth about Iraq: The U.S. government had no right, under the laws of man or the laws of God, to invade and occupy Iraq, which means that no U.S. soldier had any right, under the laws of man and the laws of God, to kill even one single Iraqi.
The U.S. national-security state’s use of such bromidic titles as “Operation Iraqi Freedom” cannot alter truth and reality. The truth and reality are that the troops didn’t bring freedom to the Iraqi people. Faithfully following the orders of their superiors, they brought a hell-hole of death, destruction, and loss of liberty, not to mention the damage that the Iraq War has done to our freedom and well-being here at home.
Link:
http://fff.org/2015/02/02/aggression-american-sniper/
Our leaders are nuts!!!
MUST Russia Be Stopped?
Michael S. Rozeff
Significant numbers of people in America have the following sentiment: “Russia MUST be stopped, it cannot be allowed to take over other countries at will. I just wish that Obama would see the light of day and provide military aid to Ukraine to offset the enemy.”
A reading of this article may help place Putin in a different light for those who think he’s another Hitler. For a discussion of the propaganda alleging Russian aggression, see here.
Putin had years to make a move on Ukraine if he had wanted to take it over. He’s had important posts in Russia since 1999. He never made such a move, never hinted at it, never built up a military force to accomplish it and never wrote books or made speeches to prepare Russians or the world for such a bold move. The current turmoil in Ukraine is not of Putin’s making. He’s been reacting to events in Ukraine that he did not initiate. He reacted to Kiev’s attacks on eastern Ukraine. Furthermore, his reactions have not been to take over Ukraine, which the Russian armed forces could have accomplished swiftly had he ordered them to do so.
Russia is not taking over countries at will. It specifically is not taking over Ukraine. Why would it want to do so? Ukraine is a basket case economically. It’s divided and would be a headache to govern. Large numbers of Ukrainians would see Russia an an invader and form a troublesome resistance to its rule. It’s not impossible that Russia might make a military move on Kiev, under certain conditions, such as Kiev making stronger moves against Donbas or Russia, under the auspices of the West. There are those in Ukraine who want to attack Russia. Other conditions might include events (possibly false flag) that disrupt Ukraine’s nuclear facilities or blow up an important dam or assassinate its current leadership. However, the current sentiment to stop Russia is not based on such scenarios. It is based on the false idea that Russia is an aggressive force out to take over nearby countries. There is not the slightest evidence that Russia wants to take over the Baltic republics or other eastern European countries that once were satellites of the Soviet Union. Under threats and provocations of NATO and the West, a variety of Russian actions and pressures become possible and more likely, but these possibilities are not what motivate the notion that Obama or the West should stop Putin. That idea is being planted by an immense propaganda effort and demonization of Russia that is pushing the false notion that Putin is another Hitler and that to do nothing is appeasement. Americans who believe this are more than willing to turn a blind eye to one American aggression and/or use of military force after another in countries far from these shores; while at the same time condemning Russia for whatever aid it’s providing to help Russians in Donbas from being slaughtered by Kiev’s attacks. This region is clearly also within a Russian sphere of influence and has long been so, especially Crimea. The U.S. government was more than willing to invade Mexico on several occasions for reasons that were far less defensive in nature. World powers saw no reason to intervene. If Russia had no designs on Ukraine and still doesn’t, the term appeasement does not apply. No American interest is at stake anyway that warrants Americans inserting themselves into yet another trouble spot, this one confronting a major nuclear power. Russia cannot sit idly by while American forces enter Ukraine. And if America does adopt the bankrupt and divided Ukraine as its child, it can only be the greatest of follies.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/
Michael S. Rozeff
Significant numbers of people in America have the following sentiment: “Russia MUST be stopped, it cannot be allowed to take over other countries at will. I just wish that Obama would see the light of day and provide military aid to Ukraine to offset the enemy.”
A reading of this article may help place Putin in a different light for those who think he’s another Hitler. For a discussion of the propaganda alleging Russian aggression, see here.
Putin had years to make a move on Ukraine if he had wanted to take it over. He’s had important posts in Russia since 1999. He never made such a move, never hinted at it, never built up a military force to accomplish it and never wrote books or made speeches to prepare Russians or the world for such a bold move. The current turmoil in Ukraine is not of Putin’s making. He’s been reacting to events in Ukraine that he did not initiate. He reacted to Kiev’s attacks on eastern Ukraine. Furthermore, his reactions have not been to take over Ukraine, which the Russian armed forces could have accomplished swiftly had he ordered them to do so.
Russia is not taking over countries at will. It specifically is not taking over Ukraine. Why would it want to do so? Ukraine is a basket case economically. It’s divided and would be a headache to govern. Large numbers of Ukrainians would see Russia an an invader and form a troublesome resistance to its rule. It’s not impossible that Russia might make a military move on Kiev, under certain conditions, such as Kiev making stronger moves against Donbas or Russia, under the auspices of the West. There are those in Ukraine who want to attack Russia. Other conditions might include events (possibly false flag) that disrupt Ukraine’s nuclear facilities or blow up an important dam or assassinate its current leadership. However, the current sentiment to stop Russia is not based on such scenarios. It is based on the false idea that Russia is an aggressive force out to take over nearby countries. There is not the slightest evidence that Russia wants to take over the Baltic republics or other eastern European countries that once were satellites of the Soviet Union. Under threats and provocations of NATO and the West, a variety of Russian actions and pressures become possible and more likely, but these possibilities are not what motivate the notion that Obama or the West should stop Putin. That idea is being planted by an immense propaganda effort and demonization of Russia that is pushing the false notion that Putin is another Hitler and that to do nothing is appeasement. Americans who believe this are more than willing to turn a blind eye to one American aggression and/or use of military force after another in countries far from these shores; while at the same time condemning Russia for whatever aid it’s providing to help Russians in Donbas from being slaughtered by Kiev’s attacks. This region is clearly also within a Russian sphere of influence and has long been so, especially Crimea. The U.S. government was more than willing to invade Mexico on several occasions for reasons that were far less defensive in nature. World powers saw no reason to intervene. If Russia had no designs on Ukraine and still doesn’t, the term appeasement does not apply. No American interest is at stake anyway that warrants Americans inserting themselves into yet another trouble spot, this one confronting a major nuclear power. Russia cannot sit idly by while American forces enter Ukraine. And if America does adopt the bankrupt and divided Ukraine as its child, it can only be the greatest of follies.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/
Another war-monger presidential candidate...
Governor Walker Endorses the Bush Doctrine
Michael S. Rozeff
Gov. Scott Walker wants the American military to be everywhere on earth.
“I think anywhere and everywhere, we have to go beyond just aggressive air strikes,” Walker said during a live interview on ABC’s This Week. “We need to have an aggressive strategy anywhere around the world.”
Walker is Republican governor of Wisconsin and considering running for president in 2016. Walker said
“I think when you have the lives of Americans at stake and our freedom loving allies anywhere in the world, we have to be prepared to do things that don’t allow those measures, those attacks, those abuses to come to our shores.”
This is the Bush Doctrine, which is for the U.S. to attack threats that it perceives even before they are actual threats, that is, to attack threats of threats. To quote what Bush proposed in full:
“The security environment confronting the United States today is radically different from what we have faced before. Yet the first duty of the United States Government remains what it always has been: to protect the American people and American interests. It is an enduring American principle that this duty obligates the government to anticipate and counter threats, using all elements of national power, before the threats can do grave damage. The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction – and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy’s attack. There are few greater threats than a terrorist attack with WMD.
“To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively in exercising our inherent right of self-defense. The United States will not resort to force in all cases to preempt emerging threats. Our preference is that nonmilitary actions succeed. And no country should ever use preemption as a pretext for aggression.”
In practice, what this has meant is that the U.S. attacks foreign countries. Under this doctrine, the U.S. attacked Iraq and Afghanistan. It instigated attacks by drones in Pakistan and Yemen. It has attacked in Somalia. It attacked Libya. It has supported attacks in Syria and now is actually attacking in Syria. This doctrine entails continual warfare as each new attack generates new enemies of the attacking U.S. and as U.S. politicians identify new threats and new terrorists. The leaders of Ukraine want the rebels in their East to be identified as terrorists. That would justify U.S. boots on the ground under this doctrine.
There is no ambiguity in what Walker stands for:
“I think aggressively, we need to take the fight to ISIS and any other radical Islamic terrorist in and around the world, because it’s not a matter of when they attempt an attack on American soil, or not if I should say, it’s when, and we need leadership that says clearly, not only amongst the United States but amongst our allies, that we’re willing to take appropriate action.”
Escalation of U.S. attacks on targets in foreign countries has increased, not decreased, those foreign men and women antagonistic to the U.S. The aggressive attacks of the U.S. anywhere it chooses overseas radicalizes more and more young men against the invaders. This raises the risks of their attacks on the West and America. The Bush Doctrine supported by Walker is dead wrong. For arguments against this doctrine, see here, here, here, here, here, and here.
The surprise in Walker’s commentary is how deeply the Bush Doctrine has embedded itself in the country and in the political discourse. It is truly shocking how the cluster of ideas that surrounds the word “terrorism” has become embedded in American life and discourse. This is a tribute to propaganda, a mass media that supports it, and a public whose sentiments are easily swayed toward fighting wars without thinking through the consequences or considering alternative means of addressing problems.
The surprise is in the doctrine’s far reach, to the point where a presidential candidate thinks that it is both eminently correct and will win him votes. You could say that the U.S. government is a “pusher”. It has pushed terrorism. It has foisted it on America, using 9/11 as a perfect excuse. There are many in government who have themselves become hooked. They have taken the bait and swallowed it. Governor Walker is one of these. He is taking the doctrine to its logical limit. He is unafraid to speak it openly. If this doctrine resonates as deeply as he thinks and hopes it will, then America is doomed to endless warfare for the foreseeable future; and it already has had continual warfare for the past 14 years.
Walker believes what he’s saying, and so do many others. They believe in American might, and they believe that American might won’t fail to end terrorism. Did American might win in Vietnam? Did it succeed in turning Iraq into a country free of terrorism? Is Libya now a haven of stability?
The problem with these true believers is at three levels. They won’t face arguments against their ideas at a theoretical level, and they won’t face the fact that American might doesn’t win all its battles, indeed, loses many and creates even more enemies. But the biggest problem is that they are in power and/or seeking power. The problem is that we have a government at all that can promulgate and implement a Bush Doctrine.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/governor-walker-endorses-the-bush-doctrine/
Michael S. Rozeff
Gov. Scott Walker wants the American military to be everywhere on earth.
“I think anywhere and everywhere, we have to go beyond just aggressive air strikes,” Walker said during a live interview on ABC’s This Week. “We need to have an aggressive strategy anywhere around the world.”
Walker is Republican governor of Wisconsin and considering running for president in 2016. Walker said
“I think when you have the lives of Americans at stake and our freedom loving allies anywhere in the world, we have to be prepared to do things that don’t allow those measures, those attacks, those abuses to come to our shores.”
This is the Bush Doctrine, which is for the U.S. to attack threats that it perceives even before they are actual threats, that is, to attack threats of threats. To quote what Bush proposed in full:
“The security environment confronting the United States today is radically different from what we have faced before. Yet the first duty of the United States Government remains what it always has been: to protect the American people and American interests. It is an enduring American principle that this duty obligates the government to anticipate and counter threats, using all elements of national power, before the threats can do grave damage. The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction – and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy’s attack. There are few greater threats than a terrorist attack with WMD.
“To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively in exercising our inherent right of self-defense. The United States will not resort to force in all cases to preempt emerging threats. Our preference is that nonmilitary actions succeed. And no country should ever use preemption as a pretext for aggression.”
In practice, what this has meant is that the U.S. attacks foreign countries. Under this doctrine, the U.S. attacked Iraq and Afghanistan. It instigated attacks by drones in Pakistan and Yemen. It has attacked in Somalia. It attacked Libya. It has supported attacks in Syria and now is actually attacking in Syria. This doctrine entails continual warfare as each new attack generates new enemies of the attacking U.S. and as U.S. politicians identify new threats and new terrorists. The leaders of Ukraine want the rebels in their East to be identified as terrorists. That would justify U.S. boots on the ground under this doctrine.
There is no ambiguity in what Walker stands for:
“I think aggressively, we need to take the fight to ISIS and any other radical Islamic terrorist in and around the world, because it’s not a matter of when they attempt an attack on American soil, or not if I should say, it’s when, and we need leadership that says clearly, not only amongst the United States but amongst our allies, that we’re willing to take appropriate action.”
Escalation of U.S. attacks on targets in foreign countries has increased, not decreased, those foreign men and women antagonistic to the U.S. The aggressive attacks of the U.S. anywhere it chooses overseas radicalizes more and more young men against the invaders. This raises the risks of their attacks on the West and America. The Bush Doctrine supported by Walker is dead wrong. For arguments against this doctrine, see here, here, here, here, here, and here.
The surprise in Walker’s commentary is how deeply the Bush Doctrine has embedded itself in the country and in the political discourse. It is truly shocking how the cluster of ideas that surrounds the word “terrorism” has become embedded in American life and discourse. This is a tribute to propaganda, a mass media that supports it, and a public whose sentiments are easily swayed toward fighting wars without thinking through the consequences or considering alternative means of addressing problems.
The surprise is in the doctrine’s far reach, to the point where a presidential candidate thinks that it is both eminently correct and will win him votes. You could say that the U.S. government is a “pusher”. It has pushed terrorism. It has foisted it on America, using 9/11 as a perfect excuse. There are many in government who have themselves become hooked. They have taken the bait and swallowed it. Governor Walker is one of these. He is taking the doctrine to its logical limit. He is unafraid to speak it openly. If this doctrine resonates as deeply as he thinks and hopes it will, then America is doomed to endless warfare for the foreseeable future; and it already has had continual warfare for the past 14 years.
Walker believes what he’s saying, and so do many others. They believe in American might, and they believe that American might won’t fail to end terrorism. Did American might win in Vietnam? Did it succeed in turning Iraq into a country free of terrorism? Is Libya now a haven of stability?
The problem with these true believers is at three levels. They won’t face arguments against their ideas at a theoretical level, and they won’t face the fact that American might doesn’t win all its battles, indeed, loses many and creates even more enemies. But the biggest problem is that they are in power and/or seeking power. The problem is that we have a government at all that can promulgate and implement a Bush Doctrine.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/governor-walker-endorses-the-bush-doctrine/
"What strikes me most about this history relies on a fact that goes unmentioned: the former South today provides the strongest popular support for U.S. wars. The South has long wanted and still wants done to foreign lands what was — in a much lesser degree — done to it by General Sherman."
Exporting Sherman’s March
By David Swanson
Sherman statue anchors one southern corner of Central Park (with Columbus on a stick anchoring the other):
Matthew Carr’s new book, Sherman’s Ghosts: Soldiers, Civilians, and the American Way of War, is presented as “an antimilitarist military history” — that is, half of it is a history of General William Tecumseh Sherman’s conduct during the U.S. Civil War, and half of it is an attempt to trace echoes of Sherman through major U.S. wars up to the present, but without any romance or glorification of murder or any infatuation with technology or tactics. Just as histories of slavery are written nowadays without any particular love for slavery, histories of war ought to be written, like this one, from a perspective that has outgrown it, even if U.S. public policy is not conducted from that perspective yet.
What strikes me most about this history relies on a fact that goes unmentioned: the former South today provides the strongest popular support for U.S. wars. The South has long wanted and still wants done to foreign lands what was — in a much lesser degree — done to it by General Sherman.
What disturbs me most about the way this history is presented is the fact that every cruelty inflicted on the South by Sherman was inflicted ten-fold before and after on the Native Americans. Carr falsely suggests that genocidal raids were a feature of Native American wars before the Europeans came, when in fact total war with total destruction was a colonial creation. Carr traces concentration camps to Spanish Cuba, not the U.S. Southwest, and he describes the war on the Philippines as the first U.S. war after the Civil War, following the convention that wars on Native Americans just don’t count (not to mention calling Antietam “the single most catastrophic day in all U.S. wars” in a book that includes Hiroshima). But it is, I think, the echo of that belief that natives don’t count that leads us to the focus on Sherman’s march to the sea, even as Iraq, Afghanistan, and Gaza are destroyed with weapons named for Indian tribes. Sherman not only attacked the general population of Georgia and the Carolinas on his way to Goldsboro — a spot where the U.S. military would later drop nuclear bombs (that very fortunately didn’t explode) — but he provided articulate justifications in writing, something that had become expected of a general attacking white folks.
What intrigues me most is the possibility that the South today could come to oppose war by recognizing Sherman’s victims in the victims of U.S. wars and occupations. It was in the North’s occupation of the South that the U.S. military first sought to win hearts and minds, first faced IEDs in the form of mines buried in roads, first gave up on distinguishing combatants from noncombatants, first began widely and officially (in the Lieber Code) claiming that greater cruelty was actually kindness as it would end the war more quickly, and first defended itself against charges of war crimes using language that it (the North) found entirely convincing but its victims (the South) found depraved and sociopathic. Sherman employed collective punishment and the assaults on morale that we think of as “shock and awe.” Sherman’s assurances to the Mayor of Atlanta that he meant well and was justified in all he did convinced the North but not the South. U.S. explanations of the destruction of Iraq persuade Americans and nobody else.
Sherman believed that his nastiness would turn the South against war. “Thousands of people may perish,” he said, “but they now realize that war means something else than vain glory and boasting. If Peace ever falls to their lot they will never again invite War.” Some imagine this to be the impact the U.S. military is having on foreign nations today. But have Iraqis grown more peaceful? Does the U.S. South lead the way in peace activism? When Sherman raided homes and his troops employed “enhanced interrogations” — sometimes to the point of death, sometimes stopping short — the victims were people long gone from the earth, but people we may be able to “recognize” as people. Can that perhaps help us achieve the same mental feat with the current residents of Western Asia? The U.S. South remains full of monuments to Confederate soldiers. Is an Iraq that celebrates today’s resisters 150 years from now what anyone wants?
When the U.S. military was burning Japanese cities to the ground it was an editor of the Atlanta Constitution who, quoted by Carr, wrote “If it is necessary, however, that the cities of Japan are, one by one, burned to black ashes, that we can, and will, do.” Robert McNamara said that General Curtis LeMay thought about what he was doing in the same terms as Sherman. Sherman’s claim that war is simply hell and cannot be civilized was then and has been ever since used to justify greater cruelty, even while hiding within it a deep truth: that the civilized decision would be to abolish war.
The United States now kills with drones, including killing U.S. citizens, including killing children, including killing U.S. citizen children. It has not perhaps attacked its own citizens in this way since the days of Sherman. Is it time perhaps for the South to rise again, not in revenge but in understanding, to join the side of the victims and say no to any more attacks on families in their homes, and no therefore to any more of what war has become?
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/02/david-swanson/shermans-march/
By David Swanson
Sherman statue anchors one southern corner of Central Park (with Columbus on a stick anchoring the other):
Matthew Carr’s new book, Sherman’s Ghosts: Soldiers, Civilians, and the American Way of War, is presented as “an antimilitarist military history” — that is, half of it is a history of General William Tecumseh Sherman’s conduct during the U.S. Civil War, and half of it is an attempt to trace echoes of Sherman through major U.S. wars up to the present, but without any romance or glorification of murder or any infatuation with technology or tactics. Just as histories of slavery are written nowadays without any particular love for slavery, histories of war ought to be written, like this one, from a perspective that has outgrown it, even if U.S. public policy is not conducted from that perspective yet.
What strikes me most about this history relies on a fact that goes unmentioned: the former South today provides the strongest popular support for U.S. wars. The South has long wanted and still wants done to foreign lands what was — in a much lesser degree — done to it by General Sherman.
What disturbs me most about the way this history is presented is the fact that every cruelty inflicted on the South by Sherman was inflicted ten-fold before and after on the Native Americans. Carr falsely suggests that genocidal raids were a feature of Native American wars before the Europeans came, when in fact total war with total destruction was a colonial creation. Carr traces concentration camps to Spanish Cuba, not the U.S. Southwest, and he describes the war on the Philippines as the first U.S. war after the Civil War, following the convention that wars on Native Americans just don’t count (not to mention calling Antietam “the single most catastrophic day in all U.S. wars” in a book that includes Hiroshima). But it is, I think, the echo of that belief that natives don’t count that leads us to the focus on Sherman’s march to the sea, even as Iraq, Afghanistan, and Gaza are destroyed with weapons named for Indian tribes. Sherman not only attacked the general population of Georgia and the Carolinas on his way to Goldsboro — a spot where the U.S. military would later drop nuclear bombs (that very fortunately didn’t explode) — but he provided articulate justifications in writing, something that had become expected of a general attacking white folks.
What intrigues me most is the possibility that the South today could come to oppose war by recognizing Sherman’s victims in the victims of U.S. wars and occupations. It was in the North’s occupation of the South that the U.S. military first sought to win hearts and minds, first faced IEDs in the form of mines buried in roads, first gave up on distinguishing combatants from noncombatants, first began widely and officially (in the Lieber Code) claiming that greater cruelty was actually kindness as it would end the war more quickly, and first defended itself against charges of war crimes using language that it (the North) found entirely convincing but its victims (the South) found depraved and sociopathic. Sherman employed collective punishment and the assaults on morale that we think of as “shock and awe.” Sherman’s assurances to the Mayor of Atlanta that he meant well and was justified in all he did convinced the North but not the South. U.S. explanations of the destruction of Iraq persuade Americans and nobody else.
Sherman believed that his nastiness would turn the South against war. “Thousands of people may perish,” he said, “but they now realize that war means something else than vain glory and boasting. If Peace ever falls to their lot they will never again invite War.” Some imagine this to be the impact the U.S. military is having on foreign nations today. But have Iraqis grown more peaceful? Does the U.S. South lead the way in peace activism? When Sherman raided homes and his troops employed “enhanced interrogations” — sometimes to the point of death, sometimes stopping short — the victims were people long gone from the earth, but people we may be able to “recognize” as people. Can that perhaps help us achieve the same mental feat with the current residents of Western Asia? The U.S. South remains full of monuments to Confederate soldiers. Is an Iraq that celebrates today’s resisters 150 years from now what anyone wants?
When the U.S. military was burning Japanese cities to the ground it was an editor of the Atlanta Constitution who, quoted by Carr, wrote “If it is necessary, however, that the cities of Japan are, one by one, burned to black ashes, that we can, and will, do.” Robert McNamara said that General Curtis LeMay thought about what he was doing in the same terms as Sherman. Sherman’s claim that war is simply hell and cannot be civilized was then and has been ever since used to justify greater cruelty, even while hiding within it a deep truth: that the civilized decision would be to abolish war.
The United States now kills with drones, including killing U.S. citizens, including killing children, including killing U.S. citizen children. It has not perhaps attacked its own citizens in this way since the days of Sherman. Is it time perhaps for the South to rise again, not in revenge but in understanding, to join the side of the victims and say no to any more attacks on families in their homes, and no therefore to any more of what war has become?
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/02/david-swanson/shermans-march/
From the ministry of propaganda: "Also never mentioned: Saddam Hussein, Nouri al-Maliki, oil corporations, or Abu Ghraib or any other U.S. detention camps — not one word. The word “mercenaries” occurs in one fleeting line of dialogue, but any corporate name such as Blackwater stays as unmentionable as menstruation in a Victorian lady’s parlor. These absences absolve the United States of its many war crimes in Iraq and perpetuate the war-mongering narrative we are all too familiar with in the still-ongoing “War on Terror” era."
Gunman As Hero, Children As Targets, Iraq As Backdrop: A Review of ‘American Sniper’
"American Sniper" is well acted, slickly produced, and occasionally gripping. It's also war propaganda.
By Janet Weil
American Sniper, the latest blockbuster by director Clinton Eastwood about Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle, is having a major moment.
Articles about the film’s big opening weekend, its star and co-producer Bradley Cooper, and its six Academy Award nominations fill mainstream, alternative, and social media alike. Controversies involving Michael Moore’s and Seth Rogen’s critical comments, and their subsequent explanations and apologies, have flooded twitter.
The film’s audio track begins with the recitation of Allahu Akbar from a mosque in Fallujah. (The Iraqi scenes were filmed in Morocco.) Then the screen fills with U.S. Humvees, rolling through the destroyed streets of a former residential district, and the rumble of the vehicles interweaves with the repetition of the call to prayer, creating an auditory/emotional confrontation between the exotic, dangerous Orient and the techno-military U.S. forces.
Next we see Chris Kyle, lying belly-down on the roof of what was once an Iraqi home, looking through his gunscope, providing “overcover” for the marines going house-to-house on a brutal, door-smashing manhunt. The Navy SEAL sniper spots an Iraqi man on a cellphone in a nearby house, followed by a woman and young boy emerging. The woman, presumably the boy’s mother, passes him an RPG to fire off as a group of Marines approach on foot. Kyle’s large green eye behind the scope expresses anxiety and doubt — what’s he going to do?
Cue the childhood flashbacks: Chris as a boy, going with his father to kill his first deer (“you have a gift, son” is the father’s praise for his precise shot). Chris as a middle school student, beating up a schoolyard bully hurting his younger brother. Chris as a young rodeo cowboy, throwing his cheating girlfriend out of his house.
So far, it’s an almost comical presentation of deeds that an adolescent boy — the target demographic of major motion pictures like this one — would most admire. Young Chris, a church-going but hard-drinking Texas youth, is shown developing as a protector, a theme that will repeat throughout the movie, in others’ grateful recognition of his “gifts” and in his own words about his motivations.
The 9/11 attacks shake 30-year-old Kyle out of his rather unsatisfying life as a cowboy, and he joins the Navy SEALs to “protect America.” A sense of purpose and the love of a good (albeit often whiny) woman, Taya — played by an unrecognizable Sienna Miller — follow the cornball scenes of Kyle and other young men training on the beach, lying in the cold surf, slathered in mud, and hanging tough in face of taunts by their instructors.
At his wedding to Taya, the call comes through for Kyle and his buddies to be deployed, thus making a narrative link back to his reason for joining the military (9/11) and going to war against Iraq. Thus is the Bush administration’s lie about the link between the attacks in 2001 and the country of Iraq repeated and emotionally underscored through the film.
The scenes set in Iraq — of briefings, gun battles with “the bad guys,” and joshing among the troops — sit at the center of the film, showing Kyle’s four, increasingly harrowing tours of duty. And what about the locals? In his brilliant analysis in Reel Bad Arabs, Professor Jack Shaheen gives a sort of taxonomy of Arab male types in popular films — the evil Arab, the silly/horny Arab, the primitive Arab, and the nervous/arrogant Arab. With the exception of the “primitive” type with camels, these stereotypes are on display in “American Sniper,” plus a couple of others I would name “Pitiful Father” and “Kid as Target.”
The presentation of children as potential or actual evildoers, and thus “deserving” victims of Kyle’s kill shots, seems to me a sinister new development in American film.
The first named Arab character is arch villain Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, shown during a rapid-fire briefing before Kyle and buddies hit the streets to find and “kill or capture,” as ordered, “this motherfucker.” Al-Qaeda in Iraq, or AQI, is mentioned frequently throughout the film, without one line of dialogue as to how al-Qaeda had penetrated Iraq following the U.S. invasion, or what Zarqawi’s political allegiances might be.
Another named character is Zarqawi’s second-in-command, nicknamed “The Butcher” for his MO of maiming and killing his Iraqi victims with an electric drill. The “Pitiful Father” meme is represented by a man called “The Sheikh,” whose daughter has been maimed by The Butcher and who is forced, in a horrifying house raid scene, to give information about this evil man’s whereabouts, though he pleads that he and his family will be killed if he does so.
In this scene, of necessity, an Iraqi interpreter suddenly appears. The interpreter is not presented as a character beforehand, is not named, and has no scenes outside of those showing his utility as a translator. What is his motivation, his relationship with Kyle (and other U.S. soldiers), his feelings about the U.S. occupation of his country? We’ll never know, and this is one of many blanks the film leaves open.
Also never mentioned: Saddam Hussein, Nouri al-Maliki, oil corporations, or Abu Ghraib or any other U.S. detention camps — not one word. The word “mercenaries” occurs in one fleeting line of dialogue, but any corporate name such as Blackwater stays as unmentionable as menstruation in a Victorian lady’s parlor. These absences absolve the United States of its many war crimes in Iraq and perpetuate the war-mongering narrative we are all too familiar with in the still-ongoing “War on Terror” era.
The Bay Guy Supremo in American Sniper, however, is not Zarqawi or The Butcher, but Mustafa — the Best Bad Guy Sniper, reputed to be a former Olympic and Syrian athlete. Mustafa is Kyle’s counterpart and competitor in killing. Handsome, nimble, and cunning, the Bad Guy Sniper, played by Egyptian Sammy Sheik, evades death by leaping from roof to roof or running into a tunnel after shooting Kyle’s buddies. In the interminable final gun battle scene, the American Sniper locates and kills the Bad Guy Sniper, whose death is shown in slow motion for maximum emotional impact. This is a revenge killing that endangers the entire local operation and brings down fire from Iraqis, until a last-minute rescue — guided by a surveillance drone — from an attack chopper.
By now, Kyle as Protector has been reduced by the hell of war to a scared fuck-up, crying to Taya on a satellite phone (their long distance conversations punctuate the battle scenes), “I’m ready to come home!” Sadr City, and by extension the entire country of Iraq — a malodorous hellscape — are visually annihilated as a sandstorm sweeps in, and Kyle is pulled into a vehicle on his way back to the United States.
The violent battle scenes had, for me, a tedious inevitability that kept me from being pulled in emotionally. What hurt me the most, as I flashed back to my own memories — based mostly on the courageous reporting of Dahr Jamail of the two terrible sieges of Fallujah in April and November 2004 — was my sense of Iraq being used as backdrop. It’s reduced to a hot, dirty place that “smells like dog shit,” as one Marine says in the opening scene. “This place is evil,” Kyle’s psychologically shattered younger brother, a fellow veteran, tells him as he departs the country. One war-blasted city looks much like another, almost as if a painted stage backdrop representing “Urban War Scene” were just hauled from one scene to the next. Fallujah… Ramadi… Sadr City… whatever.
The important data points are Kyle’s escalating kill counts in those places, which soon earn him the honorific of “The Legend” and a bounty on his head of $180,000. The Iraqis that Kyle kills lie flat, literally and metaphorically, like images in a video game, and we hear no one weep for them (with the exception of “The Sheikh,” whose screaming daughter runs to his corpse). One scene briefly shows dogs eating Iraqi corpses. The American dead, by contrast, are pulled at great risk from the battleground, wept over, accompanied in their flag-covered coffins in flights home, and laid to rest in magnificent ceremonies, remembered.
The American dead were persons, and they count. The Iraqi dead were objects in a sniper’s scope, and they are counted. That in a nutshell is the message of “American Sniper.”
How Chris Kyle and hundreds of thousands of other, mostly young Americans came to invade and occupy, wound and be wounded, kill and be killed in Iraq — for what politics, for whose profits — cannot be touched upon in American Sniper. Because to do so would be to move the narrative away from the isolated, tragic white male — that hoary old trope of Western Civ — toward something more politically and historically informed, and much less of a money maker.
And the boy in Fallujah with the RPG in his arms? Kyle kills him, and the woman with him. It’s Kyle’s initiation as sniper. We as audience are asked to listen to Kyle’s fellow SEAL’s reassuring justification for his first kills (which he is shown feeling guilty for), and to empathize, not with the boy in the devastated street, but with a “tormented” man becoming a hardened killer, who calls Iraqis “savages” in several scenes.
Snipers are protectors, and invaders are The Good Guys. Iraq children are legitimate targets, and Iraq is battleground and backdrop for American deeds and emotions — nothing more. In war propaganda — a huge genre in which American Sniper stands as a well-acted, high-production example — fictional narratives borrow just enough from true-life stories to reinforce already established memes. Cowboy, family man, Navy SEAL, sniper, trainer, author, veteran, celebrity, murderer, and eventually a murdervictim of another tormented combat veteran — Chris Kyle was a mystery. American Sniper portrays the life of a flawed “hero” who is also a blank slate on which other Americans can project rage, hatred, and ignorant misconceptions about Iraqis and other Arabs, as well as their — our — many conflicted feelings about war, “the troops,” and veterans.
As the U.S. bombing campaign continues in Syria and Iraq, with the issue of a new Authorization to Use Military Force hanging, American Sniper has come out at a fraught moment in U.S. foreign policy. I left the movie theater with an aching head and a heavy heart, and the feeling that this is a very dangerous film.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/02/no_author/gunman-as-hero/
"American Sniper" is well acted, slickly produced, and occasionally gripping. It's also war propaganda.
By Janet Weil
American Sniper, the latest blockbuster by director Clinton Eastwood about Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle, is having a major moment.
Articles about the film’s big opening weekend, its star and co-producer Bradley Cooper, and its six Academy Award nominations fill mainstream, alternative, and social media alike. Controversies involving Michael Moore’s and Seth Rogen’s critical comments, and their subsequent explanations and apologies, have flooded twitter.
The film’s audio track begins with the recitation of Allahu Akbar from a mosque in Fallujah. (The Iraqi scenes were filmed in Morocco.) Then the screen fills with U.S. Humvees, rolling through the destroyed streets of a former residential district, and the rumble of the vehicles interweaves with the repetition of the call to prayer, creating an auditory/emotional confrontation between the exotic, dangerous Orient and the techno-military U.S. forces.
Next we see Chris Kyle, lying belly-down on the roof of what was once an Iraqi home, looking through his gunscope, providing “overcover” for the marines going house-to-house on a brutal, door-smashing manhunt. The Navy SEAL sniper spots an Iraqi man on a cellphone in a nearby house, followed by a woman and young boy emerging. The woman, presumably the boy’s mother, passes him an RPG to fire off as a group of Marines approach on foot. Kyle’s large green eye behind the scope expresses anxiety and doubt — what’s he going to do?
Cue the childhood flashbacks: Chris as a boy, going with his father to kill his first deer (“you have a gift, son” is the father’s praise for his precise shot). Chris as a middle school student, beating up a schoolyard bully hurting his younger brother. Chris as a young rodeo cowboy, throwing his cheating girlfriend out of his house.
So far, it’s an almost comical presentation of deeds that an adolescent boy — the target demographic of major motion pictures like this one — would most admire. Young Chris, a church-going but hard-drinking Texas youth, is shown developing as a protector, a theme that will repeat throughout the movie, in others’ grateful recognition of his “gifts” and in his own words about his motivations.
The 9/11 attacks shake 30-year-old Kyle out of his rather unsatisfying life as a cowboy, and he joins the Navy SEALs to “protect America.” A sense of purpose and the love of a good (albeit often whiny) woman, Taya — played by an unrecognizable Sienna Miller — follow the cornball scenes of Kyle and other young men training on the beach, lying in the cold surf, slathered in mud, and hanging tough in face of taunts by their instructors.
At his wedding to Taya, the call comes through for Kyle and his buddies to be deployed, thus making a narrative link back to his reason for joining the military (9/11) and going to war against Iraq. Thus is the Bush administration’s lie about the link between the attacks in 2001 and the country of Iraq repeated and emotionally underscored through the film.
The scenes set in Iraq — of briefings, gun battles with “the bad guys,” and joshing among the troops — sit at the center of the film, showing Kyle’s four, increasingly harrowing tours of duty. And what about the locals? In his brilliant analysis in Reel Bad Arabs, Professor Jack Shaheen gives a sort of taxonomy of Arab male types in popular films — the evil Arab, the silly/horny Arab, the primitive Arab, and the nervous/arrogant Arab. With the exception of the “primitive” type with camels, these stereotypes are on display in “American Sniper,” plus a couple of others I would name “Pitiful Father” and “Kid as Target.”
The presentation of children as potential or actual evildoers, and thus “deserving” victims of Kyle’s kill shots, seems to me a sinister new development in American film.
The first named Arab character is arch villain Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, shown during a rapid-fire briefing before Kyle and buddies hit the streets to find and “kill or capture,” as ordered, “this motherfucker.” Al-Qaeda in Iraq, or AQI, is mentioned frequently throughout the film, without one line of dialogue as to how al-Qaeda had penetrated Iraq following the U.S. invasion, or what Zarqawi’s political allegiances might be.
Another named character is Zarqawi’s second-in-command, nicknamed “The Butcher” for his MO of maiming and killing his Iraqi victims with an electric drill. The “Pitiful Father” meme is represented by a man called “The Sheikh,” whose daughter has been maimed by The Butcher and who is forced, in a horrifying house raid scene, to give information about this evil man’s whereabouts, though he pleads that he and his family will be killed if he does so.
In this scene, of necessity, an Iraqi interpreter suddenly appears. The interpreter is not presented as a character beforehand, is not named, and has no scenes outside of those showing his utility as a translator. What is his motivation, his relationship with Kyle (and other U.S. soldiers), his feelings about the U.S. occupation of his country? We’ll never know, and this is one of many blanks the film leaves open.
Also never mentioned: Saddam Hussein, Nouri al-Maliki, oil corporations, or Abu Ghraib or any other U.S. detention camps — not one word. The word “mercenaries” occurs in one fleeting line of dialogue, but any corporate name such as Blackwater stays as unmentionable as menstruation in a Victorian lady’s parlor. These absences absolve the United States of its many war crimes in Iraq and perpetuate the war-mongering narrative we are all too familiar with in the still-ongoing “War on Terror” era.
The Bay Guy Supremo in American Sniper, however, is not Zarqawi or The Butcher, but Mustafa — the Best Bad Guy Sniper, reputed to be a former Olympic and Syrian athlete. Mustafa is Kyle’s counterpart and competitor in killing. Handsome, nimble, and cunning, the Bad Guy Sniper, played by Egyptian Sammy Sheik, evades death by leaping from roof to roof or running into a tunnel after shooting Kyle’s buddies. In the interminable final gun battle scene, the American Sniper locates and kills the Bad Guy Sniper, whose death is shown in slow motion for maximum emotional impact. This is a revenge killing that endangers the entire local operation and brings down fire from Iraqis, until a last-minute rescue — guided by a surveillance drone — from an attack chopper.
By now, Kyle as Protector has been reduced by the hell of war to a scared fuck-up, crying to Taya on a satellite phone (their long distance conversations punctuate the battle scenes), “I’m ready to come home!” Sadr City, and by extension the entire country of Iraq — a malodorous hellscape — are visually annihilated as a sandstorm sweeps in, and Kyle is pulled into a vehicle on his way back to the United States.
The violent battle scenes had, for me, a tedious inevitability that kept me from being pulled in emotionally. What hurt me the most, as I flashed back to my own memories — based mostly on the courageous reporting of Dahr Jamail of the two terrible sieges of Fallujah in April and November 2004 — was my sense of Iraq being used as backdrop. It’s reduced to a hot, dirty place that “smells like dog shit,” as one Marine says in the opening scene. “This place is evil,” Kyle’s psychologically shattered younger brother, a fellow veteran, tells him as he departs the country. One war-blasted city looks much like another, almost as if a painted stage backdrop representing “Urban War Scene” were just hauled from one scene to the next. Fallujah… Ramadi… Sadr City… whatever.
The important data points are Kyle’s escalating kill counts in those places, which soon earn him the honorific of “The Legend” and a bounty on his head of $180,000. The Iraqis that Kyle kills lie flat, literally and metaphorically, like images in a video game, and we hear no one weep for them (with the exception of “The Sheikh,” whose screaming daughter runs to his corpse). One scene briefly shows dogs eating Iraqi corpses. The American dead, by contrast, are pulled at great risk from the battleground, wept over, accompanied in their flag-covered coffins in flights home, and laid to rest in magnificent ceremonies, remembered.
The American dead were persons, and they count. The Iraqi dead were objects in a sniper’s scope, and they are counted. That in a nutshell is the message of “American Sniper.”
How Chris Kyle and hundreds of thousands of other, mostly young Americans came to invade and occupy, wound and be wounded, kill and be killed in Iraq — for what politics, for whose profits — cannot be touched upon in American Sniper. Because to do so would be to move the narrative away from the isolated, tragic white male — that hoary old trope of Western Civ — toward something more politically and historically informed, and much less of a money maker.
And the boy in Fallujah with the RPG in his arms? Kyle kills him, and the woman with him. It’s Kyle’s initiation as sniper. We as audience are asked to listen to Kyle’s fellow SEAL’s reassuring justification for his first kills (which he is shown feeling guilty for), and to empathize, not with the boy in the devastated street, but with a “tormented” man becoming a hardened killer, who calls Iraqis “savages” in several scenes.
Snipers are protectors, and invaders are The Good Guys. Iraq children are legitimate targets, and Iraq is battleground and backdrop for American deeds and emotions — nothing more. In war propaganda — a huge genre in which American Sniper stands as a well-acted, high-production example — fictional narratives borrow just enough from true-life stories to reinforce already established memes. Cowboy, family man, Navy SEAL, sniper, trainer, author, veteran, celebrity, murderer, and eventually a murdervictim of another tormented combat veteran — Chris Kyle was a mystery. American Sniper portrays the life of a flawed “hero” who is also a blank slate on which other Americans can project rage, hatred, and ignorant misconceptions about Iraqis and other Arabs, as well as their — our — many conflicted feelings about war, “the troops,” and veterans.
As the U.S. bombing campaign continues in Syria and Iraq, with the issue of a new Authorization to Use Military Force hanging, American Sniper has come out at a fraught moment in U.S. foreign policy. I left the movie theater with an aching head and a heavy heart, and the feeling that this is a very dangerous film.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/02/no_author/gunman-as-hero/
"You can no longer rely on the Constitution to protect you."
The Police State Is Upon Us
By Paul Craig Roberts
Anyone paying attention knows that 9/11 has been used to create a police/warfare state. Years ago NSA official William Binney warned Americans about the universal spying by the National Security Agency, to little effect. Recently Edward Snowden proved the all-inclusive NSA spying by releasing spy documents, enough of which have been made available by Glenn Greenwald to establish the fact of NSA illegal and unconstitutional spying, spying that has no legal, constitutional, or “national security” reasons.Yet Americans are not up in arms. Americans have accepted the government’s offenses against them as necessary protection against “terrorists.”
Neither Congress, the White House, or the Judiciary has done anything about the wrongful spying, because the spying serves the government. Law and the Constitution are expendable when the few who control the government have their “more important agendas.”
Bradley Manning warned us of the militarization of US foreign policy and the murderous consequences, and Julian Assange of WikiLeaks posted leaked documents proving it.
Were these whistleblowers and honest journalists, who alerted us to the determined attack on our civil liberty, rewarded with invitations to the White House and given medals of honor in recognition of their service to American liberty?
No. Bradley Manning is in federal prison, and so would be Julian Assange and Edward Snowden if Washington could get its hands on them.
Binney escaped the Police State’s clutches, because he did not take any documents with which to prove his allegations, and thus could be dismissed as “disgruntled” and as a “conspiracy kook,” but not arrested as a “spy” who stole “national secrets.”
Greenwald, so far, is too prominent to be hung for reporting the truth. But he is in the crosshairs, and the Police State is using other cases to close in on him.
These are only five of the many people who have provided absolute total proof that the Bill of Rights has been overthrown. Washington continues to present itself to the world as the “home of the free,” the owner of the White Hat, while Washington demonstrates its lack of mercy by invading or bombing seven countries on false pretenses during the past 14 years, displacing, killing, and maiming millions of Muslims who never raised a fist against the US.
Many commentators have written articles and given interviews about government’s ever expanding police powers. The totality of the American Police State is demonstrated by its monument in Utah, where an enormous complex has been constructed in which to store every communication of every American. Somehow a son or daughter checking on an aged parent, a working mother checking on her children’s child care, a family ordering a pizza, and sweethearts planning a date are important matters of national security.
Some educated and intelligent people understand the consequences, but most Americans perceive no threat as they “have nothing to hide.”
The Founding Fathers who wrote the Bill of Rights and attached it to the US Constitution did not have anything to hide, but they clearly understood, unlike modern day Americans, that freedom depended completely on strictly limiting the ability of government to intrude upon the person.
Those limits provided by the Founding Fathers are gone. The hoax “war on terror” demolished them.
Today not even the relationships between husband and wife and parents and children have any protection from arbitrary intrusions by the state.
Essentially, government has destroyed the family along with civil liberty.
Those insouciant Americans who do not fear the police state because they “have nothing to hide” desperately need to read: Home-schooled Children Seized By Authorities Still In State Custody.
In Police State America, authorities can enter your home on the basis of an anonymous “tip” that you are, or might be, somehow, abusing your children, or exposing them to medicines that are not in containers with child-proof caps or to household bleach that is not under lock and key, and seize your children into state custody on the grounds that you present a danger to your children.
The government does not have to tell you who your accuser is. It can be your worst enemy or a disgruntled employee, but the tipster is protected. However, you and your family are not.
The authorities who receive these tips treat them as if they are valid. A multi-member goon squad shows up at your house. This is when the utterly stupid “I have nothing to hide” Americans discover that they have no rights, regardless of whether they have anything to hide.
We owe this police power over parents and children to “child advocates” who lobbied for laws based on their fantasies that all parents are serial rapists of children, and if not, are medieval torturers, trained by the CIA, who physically and psychologically abuse their children.
In the opinion of “child advocates,” children are brought into the world in order to be abused by parents. Dogs and cats and the fish in the fishbowl are not enough. Parents need children to abuse, too, just as the Police and the Police State need people to abuse.
Of course, sometimes real child abuse occurs. But it is not the routine event that the Child Protective Services Police assume. A sincere investigation, such as was missing in the report on the home-schooled children, would have had one polite person appear at the door to explain to the parents that there had been a complaint that their children were being exposed to a poisonous substance in the home. The person should have listened to the parents, had a look at the children, and if there was any doubt about the water purifier, ask that its use be discontinued until its safety could be verified.
But nothing sensible happened, because the Police State does not have to be sensible.
Instead, a half dozen goon thugs show up. The parents are put outside in the snow for 5 hours while the children are scared to death with questions and then carried away from their home, mother, and father.
In Police State America, this is called Protecting Children. We owe this tyranny to the idiot “child advocates.”
It is no longer important to protect children from homosexuals, unless the homosexuals are Catholic child pedophiles. But it is absolutely necessary to protect children from their parents.
So, yes, dear insouciant American fool, whether you have anything to hide or not, you are in grave danger, and so are your children, in Police State America.
You can no longer rely on the Constitution to protect you.
This is the only way that you can protect yourself: grovel before your neighbors, your co-workers, your employees and employers, and, most definitely, before “public authority” and your children, as your children can report you. Don’t complain about anything. Do not get involved in protests. Don’t make critical comments on the Internet or on your telephone calls. Don’t homeschool. Don’t resist vaccines. Turn your backs to leaders who could liberate you as it is too dangerous to risk the failure of liberation. Be an abject, cowardly, obedient, servile member of the enserfed, enslaved American population. Above all, be thankful to Big Brother who protects you from terrorists and Russians.
You, dear insouciant, stupid, American are back on the Plantation. Perhaps that is your natural home. In his masterful A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn documents that despite their best efforts the exploited and abused American people have never been able to prevail against the powerful private interests that control the government. Whenever in American history the people rise up they are struck down by brute force.
Zinn makes totally clear that “American freedom, democracy, liberty, blah-blah” are nothing but a disguise for the rule over America by money.
Wave the flag, sing patriot songs, see enemies where the government tells you to see them, and above all, never think. Just listen. The government and its presstitute media will tell you what you must believe.
More evidence of Police State America here.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/02/paul-craig-roberts/this-fascist-regime/
By Paul Craig Roberts
Anyone paying attention knows that 9/11 has been used to create a police/warfare state. Years ago NSA official William Binney warned Americans about the universal spying by the National Security Agency, to little effect. Recently Edward Snowden proved the all-inclusive NSA spying by releasing spy documents, enough of which have been made available by Glenn Greenwald to establish the fact of NSA illegal and unconstitutional spying, spying that has no legal, constitutional, or “national security” reasons.Yet Americans are not up in arms. Americans have accepted the government’s offenses against them as necessary protection against “terrorists.”
Neither Congress, the White House, or the Judiciary has done anything about the wrongful spying, because the spying serves the government. Law and the Constitution are expendable when the few who control the government have their “more important agendas.”
Bradley Manning warned us of the militarization of US foreign policy and the murderous consequences, and Julian Assange of WikiLeaks posted leaked documents proving it.
Were these whistleblowers and honest journalists, who alerted us to the determined attack on our civil liberty, rewarded with invitations to the White House and given medals of honor in recognition of their service to American liberty?
No. Bradley Manning is in federal prison, and so would be Julian Assange and Edward Snowden if Washington could get its hands on them.
Binney escaped the Police State’s clutches, because he did not take any documents with which to prove his allegations, and thus could be dismissed as “disgruntled” and as a “conspiracy kook,” but not arrested as a “spy” who stole “national secrets.”
Greenwald, so far, is too prominent to be hung for reporting the truth. But he is in the crosshairs, and the Police State is using other cases to close in on him.
These are only five of the many people who have provided absolute total proof that the Bill of Rights has been overthrown. Washington continues to present itself to the world as the “home of the free,” the owner of the White Hat, while Washington demonstrates its lack of mercy by invading or bombing seven countries on false pretenses during the past 14 years, displacing, killing, and maiming millions of Muslims who never raised a fist against the US.
Many commentators have written articles and given interviews about government’s ever expanding police powers. The totality of the American Police State is demonstrated by its monument in Utah, where an enormous complex has been constructed in which to store every communication of every American. Somehow a son or daughter checking on an aged parent, a working mother checking on her children’s child care, a family ordering a pizza, and sweethearts planning a date are important matters of national security.
Some educated and intelligent people understand the consequences, but most Americans perceive no threat as they “have nothing to hide.”
The Founding Fathers who wrote the Bill of Rights and attached it to the US Constitution did not have anything to hide, but they clearly understood, unlike modern day Americans, that freedom depended completely on strictly limiting the ability of government to intrude upon the person.
Those limits provided by the Founding Fathers are gone. The hoax “war on terror” demolished them.
Today not even the relationships between husband and wife and parents and children have any protection from arbitrary intrusions by the state.
Essentially, government has destroyed the family along with civil liberty.
Those insouciant Americans who do not fear the police state because they “have nothing to hide” desperately need to read: Home-schooled Children Seized By Authorities Still In State Custody.
In Police State America, authorities can enter your home on the basis of an anonymous “tip” that you are, or might be, somehow, abusing your children, or exposing them to medicines that are not in containers with child-proof caps or to household bleach that is not under lock and key, and seize your children into state custody on the grounds that you present a danger to your children.
The government does not have to tell you who your accuser is. It can be your worst enemy or a disgruntled employee, but the tipster is protected. However, you and your family are not.
The authorities who receive these tips treat them as if they are valid. A multi-member goon squad shows up at your house. This is when the utterly stupid “I have nothing to hide” Americans discover that they have no rights, regardless of whether they have anything to hide.
We owe this police power over parents and children to “child advocates” who lobbied for laws based on their fantasies that all parents are serial rapists of children, and if not, are medieval torturers, trained by the CIA, who physically and psychologically abuse their children.
In the opinion of “child advocates,” children are brought into the world in order to be abused by parents. Dogs and cats and the fish in the fishbowl are not enough. Parents need children to abuse, too, just as the Police and the Police State need people to abuse.
Of course, sometimes real child abuse occurs. But it is not the routine event that the Child Protective Services Police assume. A sincere investigation, such as was missing in the report on the home-schooled children, would have had one polite person appear at the door to explain to the parents that there had been a complaint that their children were being exposed to a poisonous substance in the home. The person should have listened to the parents, had a look at the children, and if there was any doubt about the water purifier, ask that its use be discontinued until its safety could be verified.
But nothing sensible happened, because the Police State does not have to be sensible.
Instead, a half dozen goon thugs show up. The parents are put outside in the snow for 5 hours while the children are scared to death with questions and then carried away from their home, mother, and father.
In Police State America, this is called Protecting Children. We owe this tyranny to the idiot “child advocates.”
It is no longer important to protect children from homosexuals, unless the homosexuals are Catholic child pedophiles. But it is absolutely necessary to protect children from their parents.
So, yes, dear insouciant American fool, whether you have anything to hide or not, you are in grave danger, and so are your children, in Police State America.
You can no longer rely on the Constitution to protect you.
This is the only way that you can protect yourself: grovel before your neighbors, your co-workers, your employees and employers, and, most definitely, before “public authority” and your children, as your children can report you. Don’t complain about anything. Do not get involved in protests. Don’t make critical comments on the Internet or on your telephone calls. Don’t homeschool. Don’t resist vaccines. Turn your backs to leaders who could liberate you as it is too dangerous to risk the failure of liberation. Be an abject, cowardly, obedient, servile member of the enserfed, enslaved American population. Above all, be thankful to Big Brother who protects you from terrorists and Russians.
You, dear insouciant, stupid, American are back on the Plantation. Perhaps that is your natural home. In his masterful A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn documents that despite their best efforts the exploited and abused American people have never been able to prevail against the powerful private interests that control the government. Whenever in American history the people rise up they are struck down by brute force.
Zinn makes totally clear that “American freedom, democracy, liberty, blah-blah” are nothing but a disguise for the rule over America by money.
Wave the flag, sing patriot songs, see enemies where the government tells you to see them, and above all, never think. Just listen. The government and its presstitute media will tell you what you must believe.
More evidence of Police State America here.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/02/paul-craig-roberts/this-fascist-regime/
Sunday, February 1, 2015
"As I have written on a number of occasions, facts no longer play a role in American political life. Fact-based analysis is also disappearing from academic life and no longer plays a role in official economic reporting. A matrix has been created, an artificial reality that channels the energies and resources of the country into secret agendas that serve the interests of the ruling private interest groups and neoconservative ideology."
Delusional America
Paul Craig Roberts
Robert Parry is one of my favorite columnists. He is truthful, has a sense of justice, and delivers a firm punch. He used to be a “mainstream journalist,” like me, but we were too truthful for them. They kicked us out.
I can’t say Parry has always been one of my favorite journalists. During the 1980s he spent a lot of time on Reagan’s case. Having been on corporate boards, I know that CEOs seldom know everything that is going on in the company. There are just too many people and too many programs representing too many agendas. For presidents of countries with governments as large as the US government, there is far more going on than a president has time to learn about even if he could get accurate information.
In my day Assistant Secretaries and chiefs of staff were the most important people, because they controlled the flow of information. Presidents have to focus on fund raising for their reelection and for their party. More time and energy is used up with formalities and meetings with dignitaries and media events. At the most there are two or three issues on which a president can attempt leadership. If an organized clique such as the neoconservatives get into varied positions of authority, they can actually “create the reality” and take the government away from the president.
As I have reported on many occasions, my experience with Reagan left me with the conclusion that he was interested in two big issues. He wanted to stop the stagflation for which only the supply-side economists had a solution, and he wanted to end, not win, the cold war.
Both of these agendas put Reagan at odds with two of the most powerful of the private interest groups: Wall Street and the military/security complex.
Wall Street for the most part opposed Reagan’s economic program. They opposed it because they understood it as Keynesian deficit pump-priming that would cause an already high inflation rate to explode, which would drive down bond and stock prices.
The CIA and the military opposed any ending of the Cold War because of the obvious impact on their power and budget.
Left-wing journalists never picked up on this, and neither did right-wing journalists.
The left could not get beyond Reagan’s rhetoric. For the left, Reagan was trickle-down economics, Iran/Contra, and the fired air traffic controllers.
The right-wing liked Reagan’s rhetoric and blamed him for not delivering on it.
For the left, the Reagan years were a traumatic time. Robert Parry has never recovered from them. He can scarcely write a column about events today, which are horrific in comparison, without dragging Reagan into it. Parry doesn’t realize it, but if it is all Reagan’s fault, little wonder it has been impossible to hold Clinton, Bush 1 and 2, and Obama accountable.
Having written these lines, I already detect the denunciations coming my way for again attempting to “rehabilitate Ronald Ray-Gun.” Reagan does not need rehabilitating. This column is not about Reagan, and it is not a criticism of Parry. It is praise for Parry’s column, “‘Group-thinking’ the World into a New War.” https://consortiumnews.com/2015/01/30/group-thinking-the-world-into-a-new-war/ Read it.
The pattern since Milosevic (and before) has been to demonize a foreign head of state and to take the US to war to get rid of him. That way the secret agenda is achieved under the cover of the necessity of deposing a bad or dangerous ruler.
Parry describes this well. Group-Think plays the important role of preventing any dissent, any suspicion of the case against the demonized person, and any examination of the real agenda that is being pursued.
Now it is Russian President Vladimir Putin who is being demonized. As Parry and I and Stephen F. Cohen, the most knowledgeable of the Russian experts, appreciate, Putin is not Saddam Hussein and Russia is not Iraq, Libya, Syria, Serbia, or Iran. To foment conflict with Russia that could lead to war is worse than irresponsible. Yet, as Parry writes, “from the start of the Ukraine crisis in fall 2013, the New York Times, the Washington Post and virtually every mainstream U.S. news outlet have behaved as dishonestly as they did during the run-up to war with Iraq.”
When Professor Cohen pointed out, correctly, that the lies about Russia, Ukraine, and Putin were hot and heavy, the propagandists had to get rid of the man with the facts. The New Republic, a hang-out for low IQ fools, called America’s leading Russian expert “Putin’s American toady.”
From Parry’s reporting, it appears that Group-Think has spread from the media and foreign policy community into the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies, which has decided that academic careers require adherence to the government’s propaganda line, which means the neoconservatives’ line.
As I have written on a number of occasions, facts no longer play a role in American political life. Fact-based analysis is also disappearing from academic life and no longer plays a role in official economic reporting. A matrix has been created, an artificial reality that channels the energies and resources of the country into secret agendas that serve the interests of the ruling private interest groups and neoconservative ideology.
The United States government and the American people cannot contend with reality, because they do not know what the reality is.
In America’s make-believe world, neoconservative toadies such as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, set the Group-Think tone, while knowledgeable experts such as Stephen Cohen are tuned out.
In effect, America is both blind and deaf. It lives in delusions. Consequently, it will destroy itself and perhaps the world.
Link:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/delusional-america.html
Paul Craig Roberts
Robert Parry is one of my favorite columnists. He is truthful, has a sense of justice, and delivers a firm punch. He used to be a “mainstream journalist,” like me, but we were too truthful for them. They kicked us out.
I can’t say Parry has always been one of my favorite journalists. During the 1980s he spent a lot of time on Reagan’s case. Having been on corporate boards, I know that CEOs seldom know everything that is going on in the company. There are just too many people and too many programs representing too many agendas. For presidents of countries with governments as large as the US government, there is far more going on than a president has time to learn about even if he could get accurate information.
In my day Assistant Secretaries and chiefs of staff were the most important people, because they controlled the flow of information. Presidents have to focus on fund raising for their reelection and for their party. More time and energy is used up with formalities and meetings with dignitaries and media events. At the most there are two or three issues on which a president can attempt leadership. If an organized clique such as the neoconservatives get into varied positions of authority, they can actually “create the reality” and take the government away from the president.
As I have reported on many occasions, my experience with Reagan left me with the conclusion that he was interested in two big issues. He wanted to stop the stagflation for which only the supply-side economists had a solution, and he wanted to end, not win, the cold war.
Both of these agendas put Reagan at odds with two of the most powerful of the private interest groups: Wall Street and the military/security complex.
Wall Street for the most part opposed Reagan’s economic program. They opposed it because they understood it as Keynesian deficit pump-priming that would cause an already high inflation rate to explode, which would drive down bond and stock prices.
The CIA and the military opposed any ending of the Cold War because of the obvious impact on their power and budget.
Left-wing journalists never picked up on this, and neither did right-wing journalists.
The left could not get beyond Reagan’s rhetoric. For the left, Reagan was trickle-down economics, Iran/Contra, and the fired air traffic controllers.
The right-wing liked Reagan’s rhetoric and blamed him for not delivering on it.
For the left, the Reagan years were a traumatic time. Robert Parry has never recovered from them. He can scarcely write a column about events today, which are horrific in comparison, without dragging Reagan into it. Parry doesn’t realize it, but if it is all Reagan’s fault, little wonder it has been impossible to hold Clinton, Bush 1 and 2, and Obama accountable.
Having written these lines, I already detect the denunciations coming my way for again attempting to “rehabilitate Ronald Ray-Gun.” Reagan does not need rehabilitating. This column is not about Reagan, and it is not a criticism of Parry. It is praise for Parry’s column, “‘Group-thinking’ the World into a New War.” https://consortiumnews.com/2015/01/30/group-thinking-the-world-into-a-new-war/ Read it.
The pattern since Milosevic (and before) has been to demonize a foreign head of state and to take the US to war to get rid of him. That way the secret agenda is achieved under the cover of the necessity of deposing a bad or dangerous ruler.
Parry describes this well. Group-Think plays the important role of preventing any dissent, any suspicion of the case against the demonized person, and any examination of the real agenda that is being pursued.
Now it is Russian President Vladimir Putin who is being demonized. As Parry and I and Stephen F. Cohen, the most knowledgeable of the Russian experts, appreciate, Putin is not Saddam Hussein and Russia is not Iraq, Libya, Syria, Serbia, or Iran. To foment conflict with Russia that could lead to war is worse than irresponsible. Yet, as Parry writes, “from the start of the Ukraine crisis in fall 2013, the New York Times, the Washington Post and virtually every mainstream U.S. news outlet have behaved as dishonestly as they did during the run-up to war with Iraq.”
When Professor Cohen pointed out, correctly, that the lies about Russia, Ukraine, and Putin were hot and heavy, the propagandists had to get rid of the man with the facts. The New Republic, a hang-out for low IQ fools, called America’s leading Russian expert “Putin’s American toady.”
From Parry’s reporting, it appears that Group-Think has spread from the media and foreign policy community into the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies, which has decided that academic careers require adherence to the government’s propaganda line, which means the neoconservatives’ line.
As I have written on a number of occasions, facts no longer play a role in American political life. Fact-based analysis is also disappearing from academic life and no longer plays a role in official economic reporting. A matrix has been created, an artificial reality that channels the energies and resources of the country into secret agendas that serve the interests of the ruling private interest groups and neoconservative ideology.
The United States government and the American people cannot contend with reality, because they do not know what the reality is.
In America’s make-believe world, neoconservative toadies such as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, set the Group-Think tone, while knowledgeable experts such as Stephen Cohen are tuned out.
In effect, America is both blind and deaf. It lives in delusions. Consequently, it will destroy itself and perhaps the world.
Link:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/delusional-america.html
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