Awww, half-truths about Iraq make me nostalgic -- were we ever so young?

This is a good moment to pull out my favorite reason for invading Iraq:

"Maybe we do stir the pot and see what comes up," one US official said.

I mean, it couldn't be worse, right? What do we have to lose?

BTW, I bet some of those Ukrainians handing out flowers to Nazi troops are the grandparents of the Svoboda fascists we support today.

Hitchens, a scholar of Orwell my @$$. Only if you can be a scholar of something and understand nought of it. Liberal hawks are a special kind of odious: wrapped up their slavering glee at the destruction of societies and deaths of civilians with a lot of cant about human rights, never having to pay anything in the blood of their own children while making good lucre by it as cover for the more forthright hawks.

Only if you can be a scholar of something and understand nought of it.

You mean, like perhaps a certain former Constitutional law professor from a prestigious US law school?

Has any "Constitutional Scholar" and Nobel Peace Prize winner ever droned so many children to death, been in his own words "good at killing people" and spying AND kept the "slavering" support of the liberal left. Oh, that's right....he's black.

Like Cousin Deadeye sez, "They've turned a corner."

over at the new yorker blog, john cassidy urges us to place the blame for the iraq mess where it deserves - which he asserts is with those who invaded a country without just cause (as i recall, back in the 20th century this was called a "crime against humanity" - but in those days some believed there was such a thing as 'law' - whereas experience shows there is only power)

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2014/06/the-iraq-mess-place-the-blame-where-it-is-deserved.html

on the last round of comments on this blog i was glad to see several familiar names, and was just a bit too late to post the following, which i am submitting now even though written a week ago:

earlier this week a stranger and i exchanged angry words about snowden

i was at the military retirement community in dc where my father the late colonel charley resided, and where his widow still resides

in a public area i was speaking to a resident i've known for years when she brought up the recent snowden kerfuffle, and i said that, when offered the choice of pardoning him or giving him a trial, i preferred the third option - he should receive a medal

at this point a stranger nearby, overhearing me, spoke up to denounce snowden - the fellow was a white male, seventy-something years old, and evidently a retired officer

in the course of our conversation he had occasion to invite me to leave the country if i didn't like it here - now that i think of it this very retro rhetorical device is kind of comical

i gave no ground - maybe he's used to bullying people, but i persisted in proclaiming the truth as i see it - i summed up the entire discussion in a very fair and objective way - "i'm right and you're wrong" -

i had run into my acquaintance while i was on the way out - she assured me she agreed with me, by the way - there's a few of the old ladies there who know what's going down - several years ago some of them invited helen thomas to speak there, to the delight of some residents and the dismay of others - i have the autographed book to prove it - Watchdogs of Democracy? The waning Washington press corps and how it has failed the public - "to mistah and missus charley - my warmest best wishes - Helen Thomas, July 21, 2006" -

as i left i told the desk clerk, who had heard the whole thing, that i hated the militarization of our society, and that the last justified war the u.s. had fought was world war ii

jonathan, thanks for reminding me about john ralston saul - i have three of his books - doubter's, globalization, siamese twin - and want to read more in them

Glenda, Our most beloved anti-racist president oversaw a war in which maybe 50,000 civilians were killed, murdered, in some of the most horrible imaginable circumstances http://listverse.com/2013/03/17/10-war-crimes-of-the-us-civil-war/ How many do you think were children? Our most beloved sort of socialist president sent our youth to a war where *30 million* civilians died, maybe five million on the responsibility of the Allies; no question but that FDR allowed it to happen, especially in the firebombing of Germany and Japan. Certainly immoral and probably criminal actions, and yet we continue to revere Lincoln and Roosevelt for the good things they did—I certainly do, the end of slavery and the New Deal are just too important to me. I make excuses. Yet we are supposed to condemn Obama for the relatively tiny number of similar crimes committed on his watch as he brought an end to the most unjustifiable wars in American history, why? "Oh, that's right... he's black."

Pepe/Glenda/Yastreblyansky: Obama is just following the same script as his predecessors since St Ronnie. His race/color makes absolutely no difference in the grand scheme of America's Frankenstein Foreign Policy. St Ronnie CREATED Bin Laden&Al Qaeda(PAID&trained) to fight The Soviets and Poppy, Big Dawg, Codpiece, and The Perfessor ALL took shots at them. I expect the next POTUS to continue the same show. (The endless in "endless war" means endless)

mistah Charlie, ph.d: REMEMBER--- Big Brother is watching!(illegally)

Mike, your paranthetical statement is just too good to be left in parantheses :)

The endless in "endless war" means endless

The Americans have 250 years experience with warfare.

Everything which was done to Iraq was planned and deliberate. However; our TV pundits describe the horrors as being simple "Mistakes" because America does not fight "Immoral" wars.

Actually; I think that the planning of the war itself is "Immoral" but the fighting is said to be done in a "Moral" manner.

The Middle East Wars are being carried out with exactly the same tactics which were used against the North American Indian. Divide and conquer.

The North American Indian Wars could not of been won without the destruction of complete societies. The leadership wiped out. The intellectual properties, statistics, and all historic records must be destroyed. And finally, you take away their Gods by showing that the White Mans God was stronger than the Aboriginal God.

I believe that all NATO countries (including Israel) were going to walk away from the United Nations and that NATO would become the World Policeman.

As China becomes more prominent upon the world stage, the less "Prestige" the U.S. has with being the "Only" Arbitrator Of Disputes.

Both Russia and China have challenged the "Arbitrator" role and are suggesting that all three of these world powers are "Equal" and have recently vetoed several U.S. initiatives at the United Nations concerning Iran and Syria and Ukraine.

Within the next 5 years, there will be several other attempts by the 130 Non-Aligned Nations to force Israel back to the 1967 borders, and when Israel leaves the U.N. it will ignore any and all U.N.resolutions.

The first thing that had to happen was that Europe must be weaned off of Russian energy products.

When Russia shuts down gas deliveries to Ukraine it will cause huge anger and the population will destroy all Russian pipeline facilities which pass through Ukraine to supply Europe.

The upsurge of violence in Iraq has just secured the largest oil/gas deposits on the face of this earth for the Americans.

The Kurds in Northern Iraq owe their very existence to the Americans and the Iraqi constitution was deliberately set up to give the oil rich north of Iraq "autonomy" and thus able to make energy deals without the consent of the government in Baghdad.

The plan is to ship Iraqi oil from the Kurdistan areas Northern Iraq through Turkey to Europe.

When Turkey allowed the Americans to invade Iraq from Turkish soil in 2003, the agreement was that America would own the Kirkut oil fields and ensure that the Kurds would not own the assets. Turkey has huge problems with the PKK.

Calm

Just watched Hutchens on an old Daily Show interview. He made some good points about Iraq's violating some treaties WE signed. (but then again WE violate treaties too.)
WE didn't solve a single thing in ALL those years except kill Sadaam along with a hell of a lot of INNOCENT people. Going in again looks like more of the same.
As David Bowie said, "This ain't rock-n-roll, this is genocide."

hey, mike

yes, i am well aware that big brother is keeping track of my opinions - but I have published similar sentiments under my meat world name, and the only reason I don't publish under my meat world name here is to continue to associate myself with my comments of former times - i know they know where i live

at any time they can do whatever they want to me - but since i am of no importance, it is my hope they won't bother - time will tell

This is not related to the post but in view of the comments Mike Meyer and Mistah Charley Ph.D., it is a must read by ALL commenters if not already seen......
We are not resisters, dissidents or activists.... Pentagon has different ideas BUT that is not going to stop any one from doing what he/she HAS to do.....I hope.....

here

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/jun/12/pentagon-mass-civil-breakdown

ps I tried to post the exact same text but when I clicked "post", service was denied!!!!!

from the comments section of the guardian article that rupa linked to:

>>Fusion centres are intelligence gathering hubs - here's a quote from the NY times

- The following documents, distributed by people working with counterterrorism and intelligence-sharing offices known as “fusion centers,” are a selection from among about 4,000 pages of unclassified emails and reports obtained through freedom of information requests by lawyers at the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, who represent Occupy participants. The documents, which they provided to The New York Times, offer details of the scrutiny of the Occupy protests in 2011 and 2012 by law enforcement officers, federal officials, security contractors and others.Law enforcement surveillance is not just a camera, but an engine, driving society in a certain direction. It is not a mirror of our nature, but a modulating source of selves. What defense analysts characterize as dissent risk ... can easily expand to include the very foundations of self-governance. We cannot let it continue to scrutinize dissent, deviance, or disagreement wholly disconnected from lawbreaking.

somehow the previous comment by me got garbled -

the last four sentences are not from the comments section of the Guardian, quoting the NY Times - but rather from an article by Frank Pasquale, Professor of Law at the University of Maryland

http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2014/06/surveillance-capture-and-the-endless-replay.html

In ANY militarized society the ONLY war crime is "failure to participate."
In Orwell's Oceania Two minutes of hate was mandatory while love was a crime punishable by torture and death. Big Brother watches everybody---EVERYBODY!!!
"Arbeit Macht Frei"
In Birkenau, near crematoriums IV&V, were 30 storage buildings. People that worked there (Enslaved Jews) separated loot in a bureaucratic manner. One might gather men's shoes only, another, toys only, yet another, handbags only, etc.
And so it is with Big Brother. One study is for non-violent protesters, another for violent protestors, yet another for the apathetic, until EVERYBODY IS SPIED UPON and placed into some study or other.
ENDLESS FUNDING MEANS ENDLESS POSSIBILITIES FOR ENDLESS WORK WITHIN THE STRUCTURE OF ENDLESS WAR.

ColCheng: Hutchens, although once a mentally active writer, celebrated world wide for his books and opinions on just about anything and everything having to do with the body politic, may well be brain dead at this time since he has "passed on" and was buried.

Out in those fields
Where poppies grow
Sit tanks and planes
Row on row
Left there in Afghanistan
Left there for The Taliban
Leave them there
And don't look back
WE'll buy brand new
For Iraq

Mike Meyer's verse (is this your own work? a quick search doesn't find any other instances of it - it is well done) is an ironic repurposing of some of the words from the world war i poem 'in flanders fields' by canadian officer/doctor/poet john mccrae - the wikipedia article on mccrae is very informative

a train of association leads me to think of "where have all the flowers gone", pete seeger's anti-war song - and also southey's poem, below which my late father, colonel charley, memorized as a child growing up in post-world war i canada

THE BATTLE OF BLENHEIM

by: Robert Southey (1774-1843)

IT was a summer evening,
Old Kaspar's work was done,
And he before his cottage door
Was sitting in the sun,
And by him sported on the green
His little grandchild Wilhelmine.

She saw her brother Peterkin
Roll something large and round
Which he beside the rivulet
In playing there had found;
He came to ask what he had found,
That was so large, and smooth, and round.

Old Kaspar took it from the boy,
Who stood expectant by;
And then the old man shook his head,
And with a natural sigh,
"'Tis some poor fellow's skull," said he,
"Who fell in the great victory.

"I find them in the garden,
For there's many here about;
And often when I go to plough,
The ploughshare turns them out!
For many thousand men," said he,
"Were slain in that great victory."

"Now tell us what 'twas all about,"
Young Peterkin, he cries;
And little Wilhelmine looks up
With wonder-waiting eyes;
"Now tell us all about the war,
And what they fought each other for."

"It was the English," Kaspar cried,
"Who put the French to rout;
But what they fought each other for
I could not well make out;
But everybody said," quoth he,
"That 'twas a famous victory.

"My father lived at Blenheim then,
Yon little stream hard by;
They burnt his dwelling to the ground,
And he was forced to fly;
So with his wife and child he fled,
Nor had he where to rest his head.

"With fire and sword the country round
Was wasted far and wide,
And many a childing mother then,
And new-born baby died;
But things like that, you know, must be
At every famous victory.

"They said it was a shocking sight
After the field was won;
For many thousand bodies here
Lay rotting in the sun;
But things like that, you know, must be
After a famous victory.

"Great praise the Duke of Marlbro' won,
And our good Prince Eugene."
"Why, 'twas a very wicked thing!"
Said little Wilhelmine.
"Nay ... nay ... my little girl," quoth he,
"It was a famous victory."

"And everybody praised the Duke
Who this great fight did win."
"But what good came of it at last?"
Quoth little Peterkin.
"Why, that I cannot tell," said he,
"But 'twas a famous victory."

THIS battle was fought near the village of Blenheim, in Bavaria, on the left bank of the river Danube, on August 13, 1704. The French and Bavarians, under Marshall Tallard and Marsin, were defeated by the English and Austrians, under the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene.

The French and Bavarians were taken by surprise in the village, and their armies were badly handled. On the opposite side Marlborough and Prince Eugene showed themselves splendid cavalry leaders and led an attack that proved successful through its very recklessness. The French and Bavarians lost 30,000 in killed, wounded, and prisoners, while Marlborough's loss was only 11,000. The battle broke the prestige of the French king, Louis XIV; and when Marlborough returned to England his nation built a magnificent mansion for him and named it Blenheim Palace after this battle.

Southey's poem tells how a little girl found a skull near the battle-field many years afterward, and asked her grandfather how it came there. He told her that a great battle had been fought there, and many of the leaders had won great renown. But he could not tell her why it was fought or what good came of it. He only knew that it was a "great victory." That was the moral of so many of the wars that devestated Europe for centuries. The kings fought for more power and glory; and the peasants fled from burning homes, and the soldiers fell on the fields. The poem gives an idea of the real value to men of such famous victories as that of Blenheim.

The text and analysis of "The Battle of Blenheim" is reprinted from Historic Poems and Ballads. Ed. Rupert S. Holland. Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs & Co., 1912.

mistah Charlie, ph.d.: The first 4 lines have a triple meaning/reference. Flanders Fields of course, Afghanistan's opium trade and OUR ties to that and OUR military adventures in those fields, and morphine addiction which is called "Soldiers Disease" in some quarters. Yes, it is mine.

I see this morning that OUR TROOPS have set foot in Iraq, as advisors, of course, so my poem is just in the nick of time.

I've been reading Wilfred E. Owens' poetry of late. He was a British Officer in WW1 and was killed crossing a canal Nov 4, 1918. He almost made it to the end of the war but the machine guns got him. "Dulce Et Decorum Est"

My Grandfather, whom I was named after, fought in WW1. He left home a simple uneducated plowboy, came back a machinegunner.

Raymond d'Aguiliers, historian of the First Crusade:

Accordingly, after the victory and the spoils had been won, the several heads of the dead were brought to the camp. And that we might cause fear among the enemy by the evidence of the (fate of) their scattered allies, the heads that had been brought along were suspended on stakes. This we believed later to have been done by the disposition of God. For when the standard of the Blessed Mary had been captured, they put it point downward in the ground, as if to shame us. And thus it happened hat they were restrained from taunting us by the sight of the uplifted heads of their men.

At this time there were in our camp envoys from the King of Babylon, who, upon seeing the wonders which God was working through His servents, glorified Jesus, the son of the Virgin Mary, who through His poor had ground to dust their mightiest tyrants. These envoys, moreover, promised us favor and good will with their king; besides, they told of very many good deeds of their king toward the Egyptian Christians and our pilgrims. Thereupon, our envoys were sent back with them to enter upon a treaty and friendship with the King.

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/cde-antioch.asp

Schoolbooks and Krags; the United States Army in the Philippines, 1898-1902.
Author: Gates, John Morgan, 1937

On the surface, most of the changes taking place in the American pacification campaign appeared to increase its severity and to abandon the policy of benevolent pacification, but this was not the case. Provost-Marshal-General Bell's comments to the officers serving under him placed the policy changes in their proper perspective. Bell began by stating that he had "frequently heard the opinion expressed that no good has been accomplished" by the old policy. He continued:

"I cannot concur in that opinion, for I feel convinced that this policy has had a good effect. Had we been building for a day only or solely in order to put an end to hostilities, a different policy might have been indicated, but ... we have got to continue to live among these people. We have got to govern them. Government by force alone cannot be satisfactory to Americans. It is desirable that a Government be established in time which is based on the will of the governed. This can be accomplished satisfactorily only by obtaining and retaining the good will of the people ... Our policy heretofore was calculated to prevent the birth of undying resentment and hatred. This policy has earned for us the respect and approval of a large majority of the more intelligent and influential portion of the community. We cannot lose their support by now adopting such measures as may be necessary to suppress the irreconcilable and disorderly."

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/philamer/afj2305.0001.001/228?rgn=full+text;view=image
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/philamer/afj2305.0001.001/229?rgn=full+text;view=image

I see in the headlines at Huffpo where Maliki might get his puppet strings cut, take a stab in the back for the good of the team.
Ah, the memories! Takes me back to the good ole dayz Diem. And Madam Nhu, the Bar-b-que Lady, she was a honey, a real class act, that one. It seemed one day WE were lending them a helping hand, handing them a LOT of money and the next day, bam, they were gone in a cloud of smoke. Funny how that works, ain't it, with puppets and all.

I'm certain ISIS has its own idiot propagandists at work

Selling terror: how Isis details its brutality

By Roula Khalaf and Sam Jones
Financial Times

It is not a corporation and does not have shareholders, but the military success and brutality of the jihadi group surging through Iraq have been recorded with the level of precision often reserved for company accounts.

Since 2012 the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, (known as Isis) has issued annual reports, outlining in numerical and geographical detail its operations – the number of bombings, assassinations, checkpoints, suicide missions, cities taken over and even “apostates” converted to the Isis cause.

In 2013 alone, the group’s report claimed nearly 10,000 operations in Iraq: 1,000 assassinations, 4,000 improvised explosive devices planted and hundreds of radical prisoners freed. In the same year it claimed hundreds of “apostates” had been turned.

Called al-Naba – the News – the reports for 2012 and 2013 (a year in which 8,000 civilians died in Iraq) have been analysed by the US-based Institute for the Study of War, which corroborates much of the information they contain. Isis’s aim appears to be to demonstrate its record to potential donors.

for more see
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/69e70954-f639-11e3-a038-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz355icvhYh

mistah charlie, ph.d.; Maybe they are hoping to get on The Nightly News on TV with a daily body count?

Mike Meyer, I agree with mistah charley phd that your poem is good. I also enjoyed mistah charley's comment and that of Lewis, and rupa (and even the spambots made me smile).

Greenwald's book I highly recommend, and returning to reading after a long break I am also starting Piketty's Capital. The two together to me are not encouraging as to the outlook for future progress toward more equality, but one point Pikketty makes is that the two world wars of the twentieth century really account for most progress toward equality in the last century. When old orders collapse, the potential for betterment can arise. Beats me whether it will arise again. I do not think the objective facts are encouraging, but it is perhaps hubris to think I can see objective facts since it seems to me nobody really can.

Clearly, however, the people who run all our various agencies, and certainly NSA, are much crazier than they show themselves to be in public. That probably has changed considerably since we evolved into a society in which people feel like they matter, even though in truth that's not much more true now than it was in 1700, when all those peasants were killed around Blenheim, or during the First Crusade, or at Flanders Field. Even today, we are still ruled. The difficult and interesting question, I think, is who is ruling. Maybe I should have said 'important' rather than 'interesting', since that's a little debatable. But capital is now both increasingly concentrated and internationally mobile, and elites are too, but that does not mean all hell will not break lose eventually, just as it did in 1914, though of course should that happen the consequences will presumably be much greater, not that it matters if we're going to keep burning carbon at this rate. I used to think people too much like lemmings, but perhaps we are moths.

Peace to you all.

Mike Meyer, I agree with mistah charley phd that your poem is good. I also enjoyed mistah charley's comment and that of Lewis, and rupa (and even the spambots made me smile).

Greenwald's book I highly recommend, and returning to reading after a long break I am also starting Piketty's Capital. The two together to me are not encouraging as to the outlook for future progress toward more equality, but one point Pikketty makes is that the two world wars of the twentieth century really account for most progress toward equality in the last century. When old orders collapse, the potential for betterment can arise. Beats me whether it will arise again. I do not think the objective facts are encouraging, but it is perhaps hubris to think I can see objective facts since it seems to me nobody really can.

Clearly, however, the people who run all our various agencies, and certainly NSA, are much crazier than they show themselves to be in public. That probably has changed considerably since we evolved into a society in which people feel like they matter, even though in truth that's not much more true now than it was in 1700, when all those peasants were killed around Blenheim, or during the First Crusade, or at Flanders Field. Even today, we are still ruled. The difficult and interesting question, I think, is who is ruling. Maybe I should have said 'important' rather than 'interesting', since that's a little debatable. But capital is now both increasingly concentrated and internationally mobile, and elites are too, but that does not mean all hell will not break lose eventually, just as it did in 1914, though of course should that happen the consequences will presumably be much greater, not that it matters if we're going to keep burning carbon at this rate. I used to think people too much like lemmings, but perhaps we are moths.

Peace to you all.

mistah Charlie, ph.d./N.E. THANK YOU BOTH for the compliment.
I'm thinking that this situation WE face may well just linger on, kinda like tuberculosis.