Category: US

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Johnny can go lower

Barack WhoYep, little Johnny Rodent has shown he can limbo down further even than Alexander Beetle when it comes to backing their best mate, Doodoo Dubyah. Our cheeky prime monster takes to Dem presidential contender Obama and the Dems en masse with his baseball bat, and the world cringes.

“If I was running al-Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008, and pray, as many times as possible, for a victory not only for Obama, but also for the Democrats,” our intemperate Doodoo-worshipping prime monster decreed to goggle-eyed Americans and all and sundry. Sounds like Johnny thinks he has a telepathic connection with OBL. His wires are crossed though because OBL and co have declared their love for Doodoo on several occasions, logically aware that crass, stupid chest-thumping and warmongering delivers lots more fanatical supporters for the Al Qaeda agenda than the Dem’s sophisticated diplomacy.

Howard attacks Obama
Obama swiftly volleyed back, calling little Johnny’s shameless reacharound with best buddy Doodoo “empty rhetoric” and inviting him to put his troops where his mouth is.

Senator Obama also rejected claims that a US withdrawal would increase the threat of terrorism, noting that the “Bush administration’s own intelligence agencies have indicated that the threat of terrorism has increased as a consequence of our actions over there.”

According to an October 2006 poll conducted by the Lowy Institute for International Policy, this is a view shared by the majority of Australians. It found that 84 per cent of Australians believe the Iraq war has done nothing to lower the threat of terrorism.

Two-thirds of respondents disagreed that the war would lead to the spread of democracy in the Middle East, and 91 per cent said they believed that the Iraq war had worsened US relations with the Muslim world.

Executive director Alan Gyngell said the poll showed a strong trend in the attitudes of Australians toward the Iraq war. Referring to the Australian public’s long-standing skepticism about intelligence used in the lead up to the US-led invasion, Mr Gyngell told ABC Radio, “The debate seems to be over about the reasons that we went into Iraq, that is 84 per cent disagree with the statement that the threat of terrorism has been reduced by Iraq. There’s pretty strong agreement that is hasn’t worked.”

He also said that, “There’s a very strong view that the US has too much influence on our foreign policy.”

Both Dems and Repubes expressed their annoyance with Johnny’s craven plug for the United Stupids’ latter day Caligula. But that didn’t stop the heroic Alexander from missing an opportunity to suckhole his leader *and* Doodoo contemporaneously.

“It’s a free world, and we are entitled to a point of view,” he grovelled. Well so are we, Alexander, so are we and from the Lowy Institute’s study, it looks like you are way off beam if you think Australians support you and Johnny’s sycophantic warmongering.

Kevvie homes in on Johnny’s mighty blunder with what seems to be a growing killer instinct:

“I cannot understand how any responsible leader of this country can say … that the Democratic Party of the United States, is the terrorist party of choice,” he told Parliament.

“Let us be clear what is at stake here – not just an attack upon a single US senator but an attack upon an entire political party.”

Quite right, Kevvie. Little Johnny tries to slither, backpedal and lie that he didn’t say ‘all the Dems’, but to no avail, his words are there in black and white. And neither will the rodent retract his Obama accusations. What a loyal Doodoo servant he is.

Howard not a lying rodent
Paul Keating scores the best Johnny paddywhack of the day after the shock horror latest polls show Rudd and the ALP way in front:

“He’s become an old desiccated coconut, hasn’t he, and he stayed too long,” Mr Keating said.

“He had a chance to get out, give it to Costello, but he wants to hang on. You know prime ministers have got araldite on their pants, most of them, they want to stick to their seat and you either put the sword through them or you let the public do it.”

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Ziocon Feith Nailed

Although no charges against Feith and his co-conspirators are forthcoming at this stage at least, the truth behind the ziocon push to illegal war against Iraq is being exposed unequivocally for public view at last.

“A leading figure in the Bush administration’s march to war in Iraq helped justify the 2003 invasion by undercutting the CIA with questionable intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s links to al Qaeda, a Pentagon watchdog agency said in a report on Friday.

Former U.S. defense policy chief Douglas Feith presented the White House with claims of a “mature symbiotic relationship” between Iraq and al Qaeda as if they were facts, while ignoring contradictory views from the intelligence community, the report by the Pentagon inspector general said.

“They did not show the other, dissenting side,” Defense Department acting inspector general Thomas Gimble told the Senate Armed Services Committee at a hearing.

A claim by Feith’s office that September 11 hijacking ringleader Mohamed Atta met with an Iraqi official months before the 2001 attacks could not be verified by intelligence, he said.

Gimble, who produced the classified report after a one-year review, concluded that Feith was authorized by former deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to pursue alternative intelligence conclusions and that the action was lawful.

But Feith’s actions were sometimes “inappropriate” because they “did not clearly show the variance with the consensus of the intelligence community,” said an unclassified two-page executive summary of the report released by the inspector general’s office.

As a result, Feith’s office “did not provide ‘the most accurate analysis of intelligence’ to senior decision-makers,” it said.”

The New York Times presentation on the Inspector General’s report goes into more depth and quotes Gimble more extensively:

“Mr. Gimble told the committee today that, while the Pentagon’s in-house intelligence-gathering was not illegal or unauthorized, ‘the actions, in our opinion, were inappropriate, given that all the products did not clearly show the variance with the consensus of the intel community, and in some cases were shown as intel products.'”

Feith starts covering himself and dragging in his co-conspirators:

“On Thursday, as details of Mr. Gimble’s report were beginning to come out, Mr. Feith issued a statement saying his office’s activities had been authorized by former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and former Deputy Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, and that his office properly shared its findings.”

Further questions remain to be answered:

“However, Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, drew from Mr. Gimble a statement that Mr. Feith had not been entirely consistent in his intelligence briefings, in ways Mr. Gimble said he could not go into for security reasons.’He changed the briefing for his audience?’ Mr. Reed asked.

‘There were adjustments made depending on the audience,’ Mr. Gimble replied.

‘Well, why would he do that?’ the senator asked. ‘Why would he make changes based on the audience?’

‘I don’t think I’m in a position to make a comment on why he would do what he did,’ Mr. Gimble said.”

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Coalition of the Gobbling vs Iran V

Brzezinski, grand master of the Great Game and unrepentant original architect of the rise of Bin Laden and the Afghanistan mess, has thrown the book at the mad chimp, warning that he is seeking a pretext to whack Iran, ironic considering Brzezinski’s own Machiavellian manipulations and designs on preventing the “barbarians”, Russia, China and Iran, from coming together.

Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security adviser in the Carter administration, delivered a scathing critique of the war in Iraq and warned that the Bush administration’s policy was leading inevitably to a war with Iran, with incalculable consequences for US imperialism in the Middle East and internationally.

Brzezinski, who opposed the March 2003 invasion and has publicly denounced the war as a colossal foreign policy blunder, began his remarks on what he called the “war of choice” in Iraq by characterizing it as “a historic, strategic and moral calamity.”

“Undertaken under false assumptions,” he continued, “it is undermining America’s global legitimacy. Its collateral civilian casualties as well as some abuses are tarnishing America’s moral credentials. Driven by Manichean principles and imperial hubris, it is intensifying regional instability.”

Brzezinski derided Bush’s talk of a “decisive ideological struggle” against radical Islam as “simplistic and demagogic,” and called it a “mythical historical narrative” employed to justify a “protracted and potentially expanding war.”

“To argue that America is already at war in the region with a wider Islamic threat, of which Iran is the epicenter, is to promote a self-fulfilling prophecy,” he said.

Most stunning and disturbing was his description of a “plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran.” It would, he suggested, involve “Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks, followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure, then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the US blamed on Iran, culminating in a ‘defensive’ US military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.” [Emphasis added].

This was an unmistakable warning to the US Congress, replete with quotation marks to discount the “defensive” nature of such military action, that the Bush administration is seeking a pretext for an attack on Iran. Although he did not explicitly say so, Brzezinski came close to suggesting that the White House was capable of manufacturing a provocation—including a possible terrorist attack within the US—to provide the casus belli for war.

That a man such as Brzezinski, with decades of experience in the top echelons of the US foreign policy establishment, a man who has the closest links to the military and to intelligence agencies, should issue such a warning at an open hearing of the US Senate has immense and grave significance.

Brzezinski knows whereof he speaks, having authored provocations of his own while serving as Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser. In that capacity, as he has since acknowledged in published writings, he drew up the covert plan at the end of the 1970s to mobilize Islamic fundamentalist mujaheddin to topple the pro-Soviet regime in Afghanistan and draw the Soviet Union into a ruinous war in that country.

Following his opening remarks, in response to questions from the senators, Brzezinski reiterated his warning of a provocation.

He called the senators’ attention to a March 27, 2006 report in the New York Times on “a private meeting between the president and Prime Minister Blair, two months before the war, based on a memorandum prepared by the British official present at this meeting.” In the article, Brzezinski said, “the president is cited as saying he is concerned that there may not be weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq, and that there must be some consideration given to finding a different basis for undertaking the action.”

He continued: “I’ll just read you what this memo allegedly says, according to the New York Times: ‘The memo states that the president and the prime minister acknowledged that no unconventional weapons had been found inside Iraq. Faced with the possibility of not finding any before the planned invasion, Mr. Bush talked about several ways to provoke a confrontation.’

“He described the several ways in which this could be done. I won’t go into that… the ways were quite sensational, at least one of them.

“If one is of the view that one is dealing with an implacable enemy that has to be removed, that course of action may under certain circumstances be appealing. I’m afraid that if this situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate, and if Iran is perceived as in some fashion involved or responsible, or a potential beneficiary, that temptation could arise.”

At another point Brzezinski remarked on the conspiratorial methods of the Bush administration and all but described it as a cabal. “I am perplexed,” he said, “by the fact that major strategic decisions seem to be made within a very narrow circle of individuals—just a few, probably a handful, perhaps not more than the fingers on my hand. And these are the individuals, all of whom but one, who made the original decision to go to war, and used the original justifications to go to war.”

None of the senators in attendance addressed themselves to the stark warning from Brzezinski. The Democrats in particular, flaccid, complacent and complicit in the war conspiracies of the Bush administration, said nothing about the danger of a provocation spelled out by the witness.

Following the hearing, this reporter asked Brzezinski directly if he was suggesting that the source of a possible provocation might be the US government itself. The former national security adviser was evasive.

The following exchange took place:

Q: Dr. Brzezinski, who do you think would be carrying out this possible provocation?

A: I have no idea. As I said, these things can never be predicted. It can be spontaneous.

Q: Are you suggesting there is a possibility it could originate within the US government itself?

A: I’m saying the whole situation can get out of hand and all sorts of calculations can produce a circumstance that would be very difficult to trace.

Vid of Brzezinski’s testimony here …

PDF download of testimony.

Brzezinski testimonies to the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee since the above:

Strategic Assessment of U.S.- Russian Relations (06/21/2007)

OIL, OLIGARCHS, AND OPPORTUNITY: ENERGY FROM CENTRAL ASIA TO EUROPE (06/12/2008)

U.S. STRATEGY REGARDING IRAN (03/05/2009)

FINDING COMMON GROUND WITH A RISING CHINA (06/23/2010)

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Coalition of the Gobbling vs Iran IV

Posted by Dub and written by Douglas Herman, read the chilling Aftermath: Day 2 of the War With Iran.

An excerpt:

In the first fierce day of war, when coordinated air strikes on Iranian targets destroyed most of the Iranian air force and navy, the US military appeared invincible again. Wrecking a second-rate military power does that for an imperial war machine.

By the second day of the war, however, most American and Iranian citizens wished for peace. Unfortunately, wars are always easier to get into than out of. While the war planners in the Pentagon and Israel had devised a workable plan to force Iran into war, using a fake attack on US warships by Iranian gunboats (as the faked Tonkin Gulf attack initiated the Vietnam War), the US Navy fared far worse than the planners wished.

Journalistic luminary John Pilger provides a timely, superb summary of the current precarious situation.

Continue reading “Coalition of the Gobbling vs Iran IV”

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Coalition of the Gobbling vs Iran 111

A couple of weeks ago, Col. Sam Gardiner (Ret.) wrote that “one of the last steps before a strike, we’ll see USAF tankers moved to unusual places, like Bulgaria. These will be used to refuel the US-based B-2 bombers on their strike missions into Iran. When that happens, we’ll only be days away from a strike.”

Now we read that:

President Bush is preparing to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities before the end of April and the US Air Force’s new bases in Bulgaria and Romania would be used as back-up in the onslaught, according to an official report from Sofia.

“American forces could be using their two USAF bases in Bulgaria and one at Romania’s Black Sea coast to launch an attack on Iran in April,” the Bulgarian news agency Novinite said.

….

Sofia’s news of advanced war preparations along the Black Sea is backed up by some chilling details. One is the setting up of new refuelling places for US Stealth bombers, which would spearhead an attack on Iran. “The USAF’s positioning of vital refuelling facilities for its B-2 bombers in unusual places, including Bulgaria, falls within the perspective of such an attack.” Novinite named Colonel Sam Gardiner, “a US secret service officer stationed in Bulgaria”, as the source of this revelation.

Curiously, the report noted that although Tony Blair, Bush’s main ally in the global war on terror, would be leaving office, the president had opted to press on with his attack on Iran in April.

Before the end of March, 3000 US military personnel are scheduled to arrive “on a rotating basis” at America’s Bulgarian bases. Under the US-Bulgarian military co-operation accord, signed in April,2006,an airbase at Bezmer, a second airfield at Graf Ignitievo and a shooting range at Novo Selo were leased to America. Significantly, last year’s bases negotiations had at one point run into difficulties due to Sofia’s demand “for advance warning if Washington intends to use Bulgarian soil for attacks against other nations, particularly Iran”.

Not good news at all. Can the Dems stop the chimp’s cynical war frenzy in time to save the world? Unlikely, as they are equally a part of the US MIC.