Friday, April 11, 2008

War-Monger-in-Chief Delivers "Lies & Delusion" Speech


In March 2003 the United States invaded Iraq, a sovereign nation, justified by the purported "fact" that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was conspiring with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to kill Americans. Not one shred of evidence was found to prove either claim. Since then, over 4000 troops have been killed, tens of thousands maimed or wounded, and $500 billion wasted. We don't even know how many innocent Iraqis have been killed or wounded. Last Summer, the United States sent an additional 30,000 soldiers--the infamous "troop surge"--with the goal of slowing the sectarian violence in and around Baghdad and Al Anbar Province, creating a secure environment that would lead to fundamental political change in the war-ravaged country. While the violence has indeed lessened, we now know, given the recent outbreak of Shite government and Shite militia bloodshed, that the slowdown was more due to the 6-month truce (which recently fell apart) negotiated with Moktada al Sadr, head of the Mahdi militia, than it is the troop surge. And as far as any political progress, fugeddaboudit. But the obvious facts on the ground still have not prevented President Bush from taking to the podium for yet another in a seemingly never-ending series of "Lies & Delusion" speeches.

"Fifteen months ago, Americans were worried about the prospect of failure in Iraq," The Decider told a small White House group Thursday, attempting to bolster support for the war. "Today, thanks to the surge, we’ve renewed and revived the prospect of success."

Bush has a very strange definition of success: failure. Accomplish nothing you set out to accomplish, and, voila, you have success!

Bush reiterated his commitment--and his endorsement of Gen. Petraeus's position--to keeping the troops in Iraq as long as it will take to complete the mission, whatever the hell that is. What's more, the Great Conflator continued his deceptive rhetoric about al Qaeda and Iran.

"Iraq is the convergence point for two of the greatest threats to America in this new century: Al Qaeda and Iran...If we fail there, Al Qaeda would claim a propaganda victory of colossal proportions, and they could gain safe havens in Iraq from which to attack the United States, our friends and our allies...Iran would work to fill the vacuum in Iraq, and our failure would embolden its radical leaders and fuel their ambitions to dominate the region."

Propaganda? Is he fucking kidding? This is absolutely infuriating. No one has been more guilty of perpetrating a relentless, reckless and shameless propaganda campaign than Bush and his partner in crime, Dr. Evil himself, VP Dick Cheney. No one has terrorized the American people more than the Busheviks. Al Qaeda? Is the media going to give this dangerous fool yet another free pass to morph the terrorist group who attacked us on 9-11 into the Shite militias responsible for almost all of the violence in Iraq?

And then came The Threat. The same type of irresponsible cowboy shit we've sadly come to know all too well from the worst president in history:

"If Iran makes the right choice, America will encourage a peaceful relationship between Iran and Iraq...Iran makes the wrong choice, America will act to protect our interests and our troops and our Iraqi partners."

Gee, where have we heard this smoke and mirrors act before? What makes Bush so supremely arrogant is his utter disregard for history, and the fact that he's been 1000% wrong on every single aspect of his Iraq policy before, during and after the invasion. That he believes he can come before the cameras yet again and regurgitate another crock of shit, this time about Iran, spewing the exact same incendiary rhetoric as we heard about Iraq in '02 and '03, is a colossal insult to the intelligence of every single American.

So what are we gonna do about it this time? That some Democrats say they will vote for Sen. John McCain, the GOP's presumptive nominee, is monumentally distressing. The only thing McBush is gonna do is perpetuate this disastrous, meaningless, military debacle that has no clear objective and no end in sight. And if we elect this dangerous, out-of-touch war-monger, then we deserve everything we get.


On another note, we could use your help at The The Adrienne Shelly Foundation. We are a tax-exempt, non-profit organization dedicated in my wife's honor to help carry out her spirit and passion, with the goal of assisting women filmmakers. Adrienne was brutally killed in NYC on November 1, 2006. Through the Foundation, her commitment to filmmaking lives on. We've established scholarships, grants, finishing funds and living stipends at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts/Kanbar Institute of Film; Columbia University; American Film Institute; Women in Film; the Independent Feature Project; the Nantucket Film Festival; and the Sundance Institute. We're very pleased to announce that one of last year's grant recipients, Cynthia Wade, just won an Oscar for Best Documentary Short Subject for "Freeheld." We are proud of Cynthia and to have supported this film. Your generous contribution will go a long way towards helping us continue to achieve our very important mission.
Thank you.

28 comments:

Anonymous said...

Excellent post, Andy. Love the Uncle Sam pic. Where do you get these amazing pics from?

Anonymous said...

Keep watching the polls. If McCain and Obama are close, McCain wins.

The Democratic base is ticked off (women) and too many men will not vote for a minority. They view this as the last stand for white power. Not all the racists are dead yet.

Obama supporters are naive.

Obama workers in Pennsylvania are starting to see the backlash now. They have had some very heated discussions outside of the urban areas with white Democratic voters.

There are not enough young folks to make up for the white male vote or the ticked off women vote.

Will I vote for Obama? You bet!

Do I think he will win? Sadly no.

Anonymous said...

I wish I didn't agree with 12:16.

Where I live white men will not vote for Obama.

I'm not proud of this fact, but that is reality. No one brings this up, but it is true.

Anonymous said...

I found this other excellent article on the very same subject. Sorry it's long and be warned that the dems get their fair share of criticism as well. No flames please.

Bush orders Iraq escalation to continue.

By Patrick Martin
11 April 2008

In a brief televised speech delivered just before noon Thursday, President Bush announced that there would be no further reduction of US troop strength once the current drawdown of forces is completed in July. This means that some 140,000 US soldiers will remain in occupation of the country through the November election, and likely until Bush leaves the White House on January 20, 2009.

The speech followed two days of testimony on Capitol Hill by General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker. While their appearance before a series of House and Senate committees provided the semblance of consultation with the legislature, the decision to maintain US troop strength was taken weeks ago and made public well in advance in both Baghdad and Washington.

Bush himself barely gave lip service to a congressional role in foreign policy in his 15-minute speech, saying only that Congress had to pass as soon as possible the latest $108 billion emergency war funding bill submitted by the administration. “Members of Congress must pass a bill that provides our troops the resources they need,” he said, “and does not tie the hands of our commanders or impose artificial timelines for withdrawal.”

As in dozens of previous speeches on Iraq, Bush portrayed the war, which began with the unprovoked US invasion in March 2003, as part of a global struggle against Al Qaeda terrorists—although there was no Al Qaeda presence in Iraq until the US invasion, and the Islamic fundamentalists were deeply hostile to the secular nationalist dictatorship of Saddam Hussein.

There was a prominent addition to the roster of enemies, however, as White House speechwriters worked Iraq’s neighbor, Iran, into the address. At one point Bush declared, “Iraq is the convergence point for two of the greatest threats to America in this new century: Al Qaeda and Iran.” (Neither, of course, had significant influence until the US invasion shattered the Baathist regime in Baghdad.) Bush later said, “If we succeed in Iraq, after all that Al Qaeda and Iran have invested there, it’d be a historic blow to the global terrorist movement and a severe setback for Iran.”

This rhetorical joining of two antagonists—the Al Qaeda leaders are fundamentalist Sunnis who regard Shiites, like the Iranian mullahs, as apostates and renegades—is typical of the Bush administration’s propaganda. The hope is that constant repetition of such fabricated associations will prepare the American public for the next radical shift in US foreign policy, from a counterinsurgency war against Iraqis to air strikes or even a major invasion of Iran.

The speech exuded the growing crisis of the Bush administration in its final months. The brevity of the address and the perfunctory delivery, even by Bush’s dismal standards, suggest a White House going through the motions, barely able to summon the energy to trot out the usual lies and distortions which world public opinion, and the American people, have largely discounted.

The repeated invocations of “freedom” and “democracy” as the goals of the US invasion and conquest of Iraq coincided with the attempts of the US-backed puppet regime in Baghdad to physically exterminate the most widely-based Iraqi political movement—that headed by the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Bush described the military offensive against Sadr’s forces, ordered by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, as “operations in Basra that make clear a free Iraq will no longer tolerate the lawlessness by Iranian-backed militants.”

As it happened, the military operation was a complete failure, with Iraqi government forces requiring rescue by the US and British military, and Maliki compelled to send representatives to the Iranian religious capital, Qom, to plead with Sadr for a ceasefire. Fighting is still continuing on a lesser scale, particularly in the stronghold of Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia in the Sadr City neighborhood on the east side of Baghdad.

Bush also painted a delusional picture of improving economic and financial conditions in Iraq—a country with an unemployment rate over 50 percent, no functioning banking system, a chronic lack of electrical power and clean drinking water, and 4.5 million displaced people.

The speech combined warnings about the dire consequences of an American defeat with overblown claims about the success produced by the increase in US troop strength from 130,000 to 160,000 last year. Bush said that as a result of this escalation of the war—initially dubbed a “surge” to suggest that the troop buildup was temporary—“a major strategic shift has occurred. Fifteen months ago, America and the Iraqi government were on the defensive. Today, we have the initiative.”

The president did not bother to explain why his depiction of Iraq flatly contradicts the optimistic statements that were made by the White House in previous years. Prior to the launching of the “surge” in January of 2007, equally grandiose accounts of success on the part of the US occupation were being made regularly by White House spokesmen. Vice President Cheney said the Iraqi resistance was “in its last throes” at a time when, in retrospect, the administration now admits the US occupation regime was losing ground.

Neither the servile media nor Bush’s Democratic collaborators hold the administration to account for its ever-changing but always mendacious descriptions of “progress” in Iraq. Nor do they raise the real and horrifying conditions facing the population of that tortured country—more than 1 million dead, 2 million internally displaced, 2.5 million refugees, mainly in Syria and Jordan, and the complete devastation of what was once among the most prosperous and economically advanced countries in the Arab world.

The criticism of the administration by congressional Democrats and the two candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, remained entirely within the framework of what is best for the American “national interest,” without the slightest outrage expressed over the ongoing crimes committed by the occupation regime against the Iraqi people.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent a letter to the White House, after Petraeus’s testimony, condemning “a war that has claimed more than 4,000 American lives ... cost nearly a trillion dollars that could have been used to meet urgent needs at home and damaged the reputation of the United States in the eyes of the world.” She warned that an over-commitment to Iraq was allowing a threat from Al Qaeda on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border to “grow because our resource commitment in Iraq makes it is impossible to respond adequately.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid noted the Catch 22 character of the Bush administration policy in Iraq. “When violence is up, the president says we cannot bring our troops home,” he said. “When violence dips, the president says we cannot bring our troops home.” He complained that Bush was squandering “America’s limited resources” and “leaving all the tough decisions to the next administration. President Bush has an exit strategy for only one man, himself, on January 20, 2009.”

Senator Clinton attacked Bush for failing to spell out an exit strategy for Iraq, and the Republican presidential nominee, Senator John McCain, for backing an open-ended war, while at the same time attempting to criticize her opponent for the Democratic nomination, Senator Obama, as insufficiently antiwar. “One candidate will continue the war and keep troops in Iraq indefinitely, one candidate only says he’ll end the war,” she said, “and one candidate is ready, willing and able to end the war and to rebuild our military while honoring our soldiers and our veterans.”

Clinton initially positioned herself as the most right-wing of the Democratic presidential candidates on the war, refusing to apologize for her 2002 vote to authorize the US invasion or to set a deadline for withdrawal. With her chances to win the nomination dwindling, Clinton is making a desperate and transparently insincere appeal to popular antiwar sentiment.

Obama, for his part, attacked both Clinton and McCain for their 2002 votes to authorize the war, and, at a town hall meeting in a Philadelphia suburb, asked again, “why we want to invade a country like Iraq that had nothing to do with 9/11.” At the same time, he reiterated his support for “success” in Iraq, without defining it, and called for a major increase in manpower for both the Army and the Marines, and for an escalation of the US military intervention in Afghanistan.

The conflict between the Democrats and the Republicans is a factional struggle within the ruling elite in which both sides conceal the predatory war aims behind US imperialism’s military aggression in Iraq.

Bush, McCain and the congressional Republicans declare that an American withdrawal from Iraq would be a colossal blow to the United States’ worldwide position. Clinton, Obama and the congressional Democrats declare that the Iraq war has become an endless and unproductive squandering of resources with devastating long-term effects on the capabilities of the US military.

Both, in a sense, are right. American imperialism is caught in a trap of its own manufacture: unable to withdraw from Iraq without a shattering loss of political authority, not only internationally but also at home, unable to win a war which has no definable end point except the physical extermination of the bulk of the Iraqi people, who will never accept the establishment of a US-backed semi-colonial regime that opens up the country’s oil resources to American corporations.

Left entirely out of this discussion are the sentiments of the vast majority of the American people, who, according to poll after poll, overwhelmingly favor the quickest possible withdrawal of American troops from Iraq—a position repudiated by all factions in both of the corporate-controlled political parties.

A Rasmussen telephone survey Monday found that 65 percent of Americans would like all US troops out of Iraq within a year, the highest total ever reported supporting a rapid withdrawal. Some 26 percent want troops brought home immediately. A separate poll by AP-Ipsos, published Thursday, found that Bush’s approval rating has hit a new low of 28 percent.

Anonymous said...

If McCain wins, we will be in another war for sure.

But the bigger question is: Who will fight it?

Without a draft we will be without enough bodies to continue.

Or maybe it will be an air war. The Air Force is not too engaged in the current war with Iraq.

Anonymous said...

Chuck Todd and other astute political analysts (including many Republicans) believe that Obama will get a significant bounce in the polls against McCain once he's the presumptive nominee (assuming Hillary drops out in the next 4-6 weeks). Why is this so? Because right now many Hillary supporters say they are undecided in a McCain-Obama race or even would vote McCain. The same goes for Obama supporters not coming out fully in these polls for Clinton. However, once the dust settles a vast majority of Hillary's Democratic supporters will gravitate back to the Democratic nominee. Sure, a small slice of voters (white, blue-collar, male ethnics) may gravitate toward McCain. I disagree with 12:16pm. Nearly all of the women supporting Hillary will get over Hillary's loss and support Obama, b/c he's far superior than the alternative on issues that concern women (abortion, health care, foreign policy...etc...)

Obama's going to outspend McCain 4-1 this year. No possible way McCain wins this thing, especially given his poor campaigning abilities.

Anonymous said...

Regarding McCain's "faux lead" and Obama's "unity bounce":

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/04/contemplating-unity-bounce.html

Anonymous said...

A bounce is just that. This far out, it still won't matter. You are forgetting the Republican smear machine just waiting to begin against Obama. Have you forgotten the 527s? They can get money and without a problem.

I still say in the privacy of the voting booth, too many white men will not vote for Obama. They wiil not give up the power. And women are ticked off. They might not vote for McCain, but they will not vote for Obama. If what you say about women was true (abortion , health care, etc.)we would not be suffering under Bush/Cheney How many time were we warned about them and it didn't matter?

Anonymous said...

Umm, more women voted for Gore and Kerry than Bush/Cheney. If it wasn't for women, Democrats would be a permanent minority party. I like how you state, categorically, that women "will not vote for Obama." As if the 80 million or so (whatever it is) voting women will en masse not vote or will vote for McCain. That's pretty foolish. Women aren't as dumb as you make them seem. Even Hillary will vote for Barack, and nearly all of her female supporters will vote for him as well.

As for the 527s, well, the Democrats will have superior amounts of money this year, so the Republicans will see how it feels to be under a constant barrage of attacks.

Anonymous said...

If Obama is our nominee for president McCain will win. Obama has too much scary baggage to win or even be considered. As another blogger pointed out,he's "owned" by Soros who has spent a fortune for Obama and helped other groups finance his campagin, and Obama is and has been bound to Wright for twenty years.

Those two connections plus all his other problems will be used by the Repugs and they will win again. The Democratic Party had better wake up and so should Soros so he'll stop throwing his money and weight into Obma's corner. Some things can't be bought.

And another thought -- why don't we hear screaming and shouting about Bush and his plans from the elected Democrats instead of just Ostroy and others. The elected Dems are spineless, useless and dumb.

Anonymous said...

Obama/Clinton or Obama/Richardson will completely destroy McCain. They'll outspend McCain 3:1 or 4:1. Democratic 527s will far outnumber Republican 527s and will have more money to get their message across. The GOP base is demoralized with the selection of McCain, who has never been loved by the conservative base (outside of neocons). Democrats are poised to make big gains in the House and Senate. McCain doesn't stand a chance. Obama's the 44th President of the United States.

Anonymous said...

1:39 The Bush administration believes in outsourcing. He has used countless "contracted professonal soldiers" to fight in Iraq and they are of course paid far more than our country's voluteer soldiers. I was also shoccjed and dismayed when the story about workers looking at the three candidates' passports revealed that that government office is no longer a federal employee job and part of our government, but is outsourced and done by a contractor. That means the workers probably get less than the government used to pay employees for their work; the "contractors"/big business men get most of the money; and it all costs more than it once cost when these agencies were part of the federal government workforce. Bush wants to privitize social security; he's already succeeded with part of Medicare and he wants to finish off the public schools and have only private schools. He is destroying our govenment workforce, which by the way, is not interested in making personal profits, but is costing us much more to pay for the private companies.

Back to the point -- that's what he has started to do and will continue to do with the fighting forces.

Anonymous said...

12:16 It is evident all the racists are not dead by the 98 percent black vote for Obama. To point out the obvious: all racists are not white.

Anonymous said...

3:31pm is definitely a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan. Without a doubt...

A. Magnus Publius said...

Anyone who watched the vote flipping shenanigans during the New Hampshire primary and still thinks that there will be any kind of honest elections this time around needs to have their head examined. Or they need to liquidate their assets right away and send them to me for more responsible stewardship. The last thing we need are deluded, stark raving lunatics running around thinking they're free under this corporate socialist regime.

Anonymous said...

America is in such a mess now.
You've had it from both sides and now are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Don't let them break you. Hold on. Yes, most people are walking zombies and wouldn't know the difference between good and evil. But they gave up on themselves long ago. Most American's are so brainwashed they can't decide what is wrong and right or heaven or hell.

Anonymous said...

I can NOT offer my support for hatred and war. However, I've delved into some truths many have either ignored or haven't even heard of yet to be "in the know". One of the several truths is an important driving force behind the mentality of the elite behind the escalations in the Middle Eastern region.

There is the false reason and there is the true reason behind it. The false reason for the invasion is said to be for the purpose of acquiring control of Middle-Eastern oil.

The TRUE reason for the invasion is extermination - to set the people of the Middle-East behind by at least two centuries to - prevent them from becoming a threat to the NEW MIDDLE EASTERN OIL DEPOT found in the region of Western Wyoming, Colorado and Utah.

In 2005 President Bush signed a presidential "directive" to a handful of companies to begin exploring for the lowest-cost areas to begin extracting OVER A TRILLION BARRELS OF OIL from our own natural resources: OIL SHALE (ROCK).

Under these states in the West/Midwest lies an extractable oil reserve which is equals and some say exceeds the reserves in the Middle-Eastern regions.

The fear of private corporations and government is that the U.S. will become a serious threat to the Middle-Eastern nations and their oil revenues which would lead to invasion of the U.S. once these companies have found the proper technology to cost-effectively harvest this massive oil resource within the continental United States.

The mentality is to weaken the military capabilities of those nations so they cannot do to us in the future what we are doing to them NOW. In other words, the weakening of the Middle-Eastern region is for the supposed security of the U.S. from them once these reserves are tapped.

In the meantime, a HALF-TRUTH exists regarding Middle-Eastern oil. Half of the reason actually is to receive some benefit from their oil as a "hedge" until OUR oil trapped within the oil shale can be harvested in a cost-effective manner which means a self-sufficient U.S.A.

Unfortunately, evil begets evil. May the GOOD people of the U.S. prevail. may the warmongers and those who only know greed and hatred - MURDERERS for the sake of profits - experience all of the hell they deserve for their unrepentant and less-than-human actions.

Anonymous said...

6:07 Your information, which could be valuable, is useless unless you give reliable references and sources for your information.

Anonymous said...

In a compaign speech yesterday or today, Obama dissed Americans who are out of work and who are poor. I guess hanging out with Soros has given him a different perspective on his maligned existence in a racist country which his pastor says should be damned. So I guess it ain't color so much as money that determines status. Big surprise.

Anonymous said...

You get no "I feel your pain from Obama." This is the speech 4:50 mentions:

"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them...And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.

And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigration or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Anonymous said...

6:44 I do have reliable sources for my post on the oil shale windfall here in the United States.

Per my post three writings above, here it is straight from the U.S. Government's own energy and natural resources department. Can't get much more "reliable" than that.

As for my source of what the "elite" are doing - I cannot state any sources for that portion of my writing except one: my own mystical delving through various methods of exploring "hidden knowledge"

Also, I am related by marriage to Senator Adrian Smith from Nebraska and I've had opportunity to hear him mention it rather briefly at a family function.

So all-in-all, I have two reliable sources and ONE source which is generally classified by society as "not reliable" - for today's society believes only on what they can see, here, feel, touch, taste and smell. Faulty is such reasoning, as all things have a hidden source which isn't clearly exposed to anyone except those who know where to look.

Here, then, is the link:

http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/reserves/npr/Oil_Shale_Resource_Fact_Sheet.pdf

I bid you fruitful knowledge should you choose to investigate for YOURSELF.

Anonymous said...

Obama might be able to slick talk his way out of the horribly condescending remarks he made about citizens of PA with some who are enthralled with him for some reason and who will overlook his scorn. However for most Americans I'm sure his remarks unmasked his contempt for the majority of Americans who live in small towns and his dislike of America and even American values. He called their love of religion and their claim for their first admendment rights a result of their bitterness.

Anonymous said...

Aside from his stupidity at making such vicious, condescending remaks about a huge number of fellow Americans, I'm surprised one who is supposedly so smart and "hip" doesn't see that he's like those he scorns. RELIGION He has attended and financially supported his church for over twenty years and even now won't disown his hostile preacher.
HATRED His preacher and his fellow-church member hate white people. GUNS I don't know if he carries one, but no need since he has a huge bodyguard service that protects him and his family at all times. BITTERNESS He is more clever at hiding this than is his wife Michelle who snarls her bitterness often.

Did he think we wouldn't notice?

Anonymous said...

Just spent an evening listening to CNN moan about how serious this is to Obama. It is being called his George Allen Macocka moment. There is no "context" that will fix this. He cannot win the general election now. He's just insulted at least 80 percent of the population -- Democrats and RepublicanS and Independents.

And what happened to his INPIRATIONAL LEADERSHIP, HOPE, TOGETHER WE CAN. WHAT A LAUGH THAT IS NOW.

Anonymous said...

I thought Obama was against free-trade when it hurt the worker. I guess his aide in Canada was telling the truth when he said it was just campaign talk to get elected He scorns the PA workers for "hating" free-trade and immigrants. And he seems to wonder how anybody could be against lawbreakers who come here and still social security numbers, etc. It's because they're bitter that they want the law upheld??????

Anonymous said...

6:27 If you want to see "what money can buy" go to GOOGLE.COM and type in "Soros owns Obama" and see how many "hits" you get.

Anonymous said...

The terrorist group that attacked us on 9/11 was Mossad, the U.S. military/NORAD, the CIA and MI-6. Given Israel's documented record of false-flag operations blamed on Muslims, anybody that still believes this fairy tale about Arabs with carpet knives is not only enabling the murdering thugs that perpetrated that outrage, they have shit for brains.

Anonymous said...

9:25 am,
You are an idiot because it was not BUSH that "left the people in Katrina to suffer". The federal government offered help BEFORE it was needed but the local government (Democrats) declined until AFTER people were dying.

After people were dying in Katrina, local Democrat William Jefferson was taking national guard members and at least one boat OFF LIFE SAVING duties so they can save a refrigerator from his house. He was later caught on video tape accepting a $100,000 bribe by undercover FBI agents who later found $90,000 in another of William Jefferson's (D-LA) refrigerator.