War presented by those who have no idea what the reality is

 And war presented by those who know full well what it means:

   

An Afghan woman cries out among the dead and injured in Kabul after a suicide bomber hidden among worshipers at a Shiite Muslim shrine exploded a device, killing 55 people and injuring 134 others. It was one of two deadly bomb attacks on Shiites in Afghanistan on a religious holiday. (Massoud Hossaini, AFP/Getty Images / December 7, 2011)

But we knew this already...

Two years before the 9/11 attacks on America, George W. Bush told a Houston journalist if elected president, “I’m going to invade Iraq.”

Bush made the comments about starting an aggressive war to veteran Houston Chronicle reporter Mickey Herskowitz, then working with Bush on his book “A Charge To Keep,” later brought out by publisher William Morrow.

This disclosure was uncovered by Russ Baker, an award-winning investigative reporter when he interviewed Herskowitz for his own book, “Family of Secrets” (Bloomsbury Press) about the Bush dynasty. However, Baker says, when he approached The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times with the potentially devastating story to President Bush prior to the 2004 presidential election, they declined to publish it.

In a new book, “Media In Crisis”(Doukathsan), Baker quotes Herskowitz as telling him: “He (Bush) said he wanted to do it(invade Iraq), and the reason he wanted to do it is he had been led to understand that you could not really have a successful presidency unless you were seen as commander-in-chief, unless you were seen as waging a war.”

Bush told Herskowitz that his father (President George H.W. Bush) knew that from Panama and (President Ronald)Reagan knew that from Grenada and…(UK Prime Minister)Maggie Thatcher knew this from the Falklands.”

According to Baker, Bush told Herskowitz, “The ideal thing was a small war, and this is why Bush said nobody was going to be killed in Iraq because he thought it would be small war.”

Since we can't impeach him, can we at least have a war crimes tribunal?

What's wrong with this picture?

Compare and contrast:

HOUSTON – Exxon Mobil Corp. on Friday reported a profit of $45.2 billion for 2008, breaking its own record for a U.S. company, even as its fourth-quarter earnings fell 33 percent from a year ago.

To this:

At least 1.3 million homes and businesses were without power across a wide swath of the country. Utility companies struggled through ice-encrusted debris into Friday morning as they worked to restore power, but warned it may not return until Saturday at the earliest. It could take until mid-February for some to come back online.

At least we have our priorities straight...

Money makes the world go round

But torture makes me sick.

Avedon Carol of The Sideshow shows what this war was really about... Greed:

At the NYT, some chump change:

"A North Dakota manufacturer has agreed to pay $2 million to settle a suit saying it had repeatedly shortchanged the armor in up to 2.2 million helmets for the military, including those for the first troops sent to Iraq and Afghanistan."

They deliberately endangered our troops for money. Harry Truman said war profiteers are traitors. You don't just fine traitors.

Exactly. Usually you line them up before a firing squad and shoot them. Shortchanging helmets? Why isn't this company getting to pay for care of the brain-damaged soldiers being brought back from Iraq? How about forcing the CEO to do community service at the local Disabled Veterans Association? WTF?

And speaking of assuming that all of us are with the Bush administration in this glorious adventure in Iraq, here is an utter dimwit representative declaring that Americans all really support torture:

When questioning Attorney General Michael Mukasey today, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) insisted that “99% of Americans would support” waterboarding, and emphasized that the Bush administration should “not be defensive about using” the technique:

In regard to interrogation techniques — and I know you’re going to be asked a lot of questions about that today — I just want to express the personal opinion that I hope the administration will not be defensive about using some admittedly harsh but nonlethal interrogation techniques, even techniques that might lead someone to believe they’re being drowned even if they’re not.

My guess is that 99 percent of the American people, if asked whether they would endorse such interrogation techniques to be conducted on a known terrorist with the expectation that information that might be derived from such interrogation would save the lives of thousands of Americans, that 99 percent of the American people would support such interrogation techniques.

As Paul Kiel points out, a recent CNN poll showed that 68% of Americans said waterboarding was torture, and 58% said the U.S. should not be allowed to use the technique against suspected terrorists.

Only cowards and those who are mortally afraid of their enemy need to use torture. We can get answers and information from people without debasing ourselves. For those who are tortured suffer, but those who torture are lost and become monsters themselves.

Torture is torture. And we are better than that.

A softer, gentler Blackwater

Still has San Diego county in the crosshairs:

So it has come to the border hamlet of Potrero, population 850. Eight miles from Mexico and 40 miles inland from San Diego, Potrero has found itself at the centre of a controversy.

But it is a dispute that goes beyond the rights and wrongs of a large company intent on developing farmland. Opponents fear that it will be the first step towards Blackwater moving in on the potentially lucrative and politically sensitive job of patrolling the US-Mexico border. While Congress has authorised increased recruitment for the Border Patrol, the federal agency that polices the border, many have asked how it is going to be paid for and who is going to do the training. Enter Blackwater West.

"We're here by happenstance," said Brian Bonfiglio, Blackwater West's vice-president. Bonfiglio, who was previously in charge of security for Paul Bremer, the former head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, was dispatched a year ago from the company's base in North Carolina to oversee the expansion west. "We're a training company. This site was not chosen because of its proximity to the border. The Border Patrol has not approached us and we're not chasing Border Patrol contracts. If the government said here's a contract we want you to bid on, I can't say what the company would do."

Bonfiglio may not be able to say, but the company's president did. In his book Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, journalist Jeremy Scahill recounts company president Gary Jackson's May 2005 appearance before the House homeland security committee. "Just as the private sector has responded in moving mail and packages around the world more efficiently," Jackson told the committee, "so too can Blackwater respond to the customs' and Border Patrol's emerging and compelling training needs."

The first salvo against Blackwater's plans comes on December 11, when a recall election - called as a result of a petition by residents - will be held to replace the majority of the Potrero planning group. The group has been criticised for unanimously approving Blackwater's application to build a training facility on a dilapidated chicken farm. Set in 824 acres, the valley that would be Blackwater West is surrounded by low brush and hills. The land includes part of the Cleveland national forest, although Blackwater says it will not use any of the forest land on its property.

Approval was given last December before all but a handful of residents were aware of the plans. Once details emerged, some locals decided to act. "A lot of my neighbours were of the opinion that you couldn't do anything about it," said Parks. "But as time went by I found out that we had some supporters. Now there are more people who aren't afraid to come out and speak."

And has plans branching out into more areas:

Jeremy Scahill for The Nation:

Prince promises that Blackwater "is going to be more of a full spectrum" operation. Amid the cornucopia of scandals, Blackwater is bidding for a share of a five-year, $15 billion contract with the Pentagon to "fight terrorists with drug-trade ties." Perhaps the firm will join the mercenary giant DynCorp in Colombia or Bolivia or be sent into Mexico on a "training" mission. This "war on drugs" contract would put Blackwater in the arena with the godfathers of the war business, including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon.

In addition to its robust business in law enforcement, military and homeland security training, Blackwater is branching out. Here are some of its current projects and initiatives:

§ Blackwater affiliate Greystone Ltd., registered offshore in Barbados, is an old-fashioned mercenary operation offering "personnel from the best militaries throughout the world" for hire by governments and private organizations. It also boasts of a "multi-national peacekeeping program," with forces "specializing in crowd control and less than lethal techniques and military personnel for the less stable areas of operation."

§ Prince's Total Intelligence Solutions, headed by three CIA veterans (among them Blackwater's number two, Cofer Black), puts CIA-type services on the open market for hire by corporations or governments.

§ Blackwater is launching an armored vehicle called the Grizzly, which the company characterizes as the most versatile in history. Blackwater intends to modify it to be legal for use on US highways.

§ Blackwater's aviation division has some forty aircraft, including turboprop planes that can be used for unorthodox landings. It has ordered a Super Tucano paramilitary plane from Brazil, which can be used in counterinsurgency operations. In August the aviation division won a $92 million contract with the Pentagon to operate flights in Central Asia.

§ It recently flight-tested the unmanned Polar 400 airship, which may be marketed to the Department of Homeland Security for use in monitoring the US-Mexico border and to "military, law enforcement, and non-government customers."

§ A fast-growing maritime division has a new, 184-foot vessel that has been fitted for potential paramilitary use.

Meanwhile, Blackwater is deep in the camp of GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Cofer Black is Romney's senior adviser on counterterrorism. At the recent CNN/YouTube debate, when Romney refused to call waterboarding torture, he said, "I'm not going to specify the specific means of what is and what is not torture so that the people that we capture will know what things we're able to do and what things we're not able to do. And I get that advice from Cofer Black, who is a person who was responsible for counterterrorism in the CIA for some thirty-five years." That was an exaggeration of Black's career at the CIA (he was there twenty-eight years and head of counterterrorism for only three), but a Romney presidency could make Blackwater's business under Bush look like a church bake sale.

In short, Blackwater is moving ahead at full steam. Individual scandals clearly aren't enough to slow it down. The company's critics in the Democratic-controlled Congress must confront the root of the problem: the government is in the midst of its most radical privatization in history, and companies like Blackwater are becoming ever more deeply embedded in the war apparatus. Until this system is brought down, the world's the limit for Blackwater Worldwide--and as its rebranding campaign shows, Blackwater knows it.

Just what are the plans for Blackwater in the United States? Or, saying it another way, what plans does the Bush administration have for Blackwater? Containing war protesters? A holy crusade? Concentration camps? A coup? A fascist state?

Just exactly what is going on?

War is good business

If not our own, then somebody else's. Robert Silvey of Rubicon:

Frida Berrigan of the World Policy Institute has details at TomDispatch. She points out that, among all nations on this planet, we greedy, militaristic Americans are:

• first in oil consumption
• first in carbon dioxide emissions
• first in external debt
• first in military expenditures
• first in weapons sales
• not first in automobiles
• not even first in bulk goods

But then she comes back to our real economic strength—weapons sales—and breaks it down. We are:

• first in sales of surface-to-air missiles
• first in sales of military ships
• first in military training
• first in private military personnel

That's what keeps the economy humming, all those profits in wars, our own and other countries'. When the US is not starting a war or exacerbating an existing war, we're making it easy for others to start their own.

What the Republican party stands for now

Is greed, corruption, corporations, scandals, and war. Even invoking Reagan's name brought back Iran-Contra and the fact that so many of those players then have access to the White House now.

Frank Rich via jurassicpork of Welcome to Pottersville:

By my rough, conservative calculation — feel free to add — there have been corruption, incompetence, and contracting or cronyism scandals in these cabinet departments: Defense, Education, Justice, Interior, Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, Health and Human Services, and Housing and Urban Development. I am not counting State, whose deputy secretary, a champion of abstinence-based international AIDS funding, resigned last month in a prostitution scandal, or the General Services Administration, now being investigated for possibly steering federal favors to Republican Congressional candidates in 2006. Or the Office of Management and Budget, whose chief procurement officer was sentenced to prison in the Abramoff fallout. I will, however, toss in a figure that reveals the sheer depth of the overall malfeasance: no fewer than four inspectors general, the official watchdogs charged with investigating improprieties in each department, are themselves under investigation simultaneously — an all-time record.

Wrongdoing of this magnitude does not happen by accident, but it is not necessarily instigated by a Watergate-style criminal conspiracy. When corruption is this pervasive, it can also be a byproduct of a governing philosophy. That’s the case here. That Bush-Rove style of governance, the common denominator of all the administration scandals, is the Frankenstein creature that stalks the G.O.P. as it faces 2008. It has become the Republican brand and will remain so, even after this president goes, until courageous Republicans disown it and eradicate it.

Why on earth should we elect to govern those who hate government and have, when given free rein, gutted the treasury and lost their ethics, their focus, and their reason?

Why on earth would we want more of what these last six years and counting have brought us?

Republicans cannot govern.



Update: Morse at the Republic of Sestakastan says it better.

Blackwater owns Iraq

And acts without accountability. They profit from continuing this war. Via whig at Cannablog, Jeremy Scahill:

When will they give us our money back?

Because we are owed billions:

Joe Sudbay of AmericaBlog:

War profiteers have benefitted handsomely from the war in Iraq. They've done it with little oversight. In my opinion, anyone who commits fraud or waste or abuse in a war zone is guilty of treason. They endanger the lives of our soldiers for profit:

[Special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction Stuart] Bowen's comments came in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, as lawmakers complained that assessing fines is not enough to stop the billions of dollars in waste, fraud and abuse plaguing Iraq reconstruction projects. Auditors last month told Congress that about $10 billion has been squandered by the U.S. government on Iraq reconstruction aid because of contractor overcharges and unsupported expenses.

The U.S. has appropriated more than $38 billion for Iraq relief and reconstruction, including some money for security forces and economic programs, according to the latest quarterly report from the special inspector general, released in January.

Assessing fines isn't enough. War profiteers should be in jail doing hard labor.