The Necessity Of Lies About The Necessity Of War

The upcoming weekend is a big holiday weekend, and, as usual, the big oil companies will exploit it by raising gas prices to pocket big profits. And motorists will gripe and grumble, and still pay it, because Americans are still too stupid to invest in any sensible alternative energy, a reliable mass transit service, or anything else that would ease our country's dependence on fossil fuels.
But if you think you're going to see high fuel prices now, just wait until the US and Israel strike Tehran. OPEC has warned war with Iran would mean an unlimited price hike, which means, bend over and grab your ankles, America. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mullen also thinks a military strike on Iran would be destabilizing.
And yet, there we are, surrounding Iran on all sides, prepared to do our worse, all based on lies. Which proves how stupefied the American people have become by the corporate media. They have forgotten that the reason were in Iraq is a bunch of lies. Weapons of Mass Destruction? Now they've conveniently moved to Iran
I could once again debunk every argument you may hear about why we need to go to war with Iran. But I'm as tired of typing them as you are of reading them. But still the lies continue. Because we need them, our corporate media isn't interested in the truth, and are too far embedded in the Washington DC Cocktail Party Set to be honest.
So I give Rep. Dennis Kucinich, the only Democrat I'd ever vote for:
"We are losing our nation to lies about the necessity of war. Bring our troops home. End the war. Secure our economy."
Amen.

Go, Johnny Go

Well, the Iowa headache is over, and with 49 or more of these to go, it's too soon to call it, but I am delighted to see that Clinton pulled in to a third place position, or as TIME, the most corporate of corporate media put it, Edwards barely beat Clinton. (In a state where she outspent and campaigned twice as much (with help from her husband) as Edwards. And frankly, I'm glad.
Edwards, while no Kucinich, is a candidate for change. Clinton is part of the elite that has been running the country for the last twenty years, and look where we ended up. If she does (God forbid) win, that means in nearly a quarter of a century, only two families have controlled the White House. How's that for democracy?
Can we really trust these people? Bill Clinton got elected by promising to help the working people, then worked to pass NAFTA, which worked the working people right out of work. Bush ran on a platform of smaller government, has since increased the federal government making it more sluggish and inefficient than it ever has been. What promises has Hillary made? No, not to us, but to all the campaign donors with deep pockets and control of the corporate media which has painted her as a front runner. You know, the people who aren't really hurting under $100 a barrel oil.
As Bill was fond of saying back in '92, it's the economy, stupid. And as the Republicans were fond of saying back then, Anyone But Clinton.

A Kinder, Gentler Machine Gun Hand

Hilary Clinton is trying to "warm up" her image, in which she is seen as cold and calculating.
Excuse me, but isn't that in and of itself a cold and calculating move?
Sen. Clinton has slipped somewhat in the polls, and with the primary season busting wide open next month, she must do something to counter that slippage.
Only the loyalist of Kool-Aid drinkers are unable to see her for what she really is, the next step in turning our country over to the corpocracy that began with her husband screwing over the working class in this country by giving away the keys to the farm with NAFTA. Sure, she may have suckered some into believing she may do something about the abysmal health care system in this country, but I surely hope you don't believe she'll actually do anything about it.
As someone from the John Edwards camp stated "In fairness, I think the only image make-over that would work would be Senator Clinton saying no to lobbyist money and finally embracing an agenda of real change".
Like that's gonna happen.
Remember the days, long before television, when a politician ran on their accomplishments, not on some focus-group-created image designed to sucker voters into voting against their own self-interest? Real accomplishments, not some exploit-a-national-tragedy-for political-gain situation (I'm looking at you, Ghouliani).
Unfortunately, some people want to keep you from hearing those people who want to effect real change, which in case you haven't noticed, is what we really need.

Bush's Boogeyman is Back

Curiously timed and conveniently undated videotape of Osama Bin Laden has surfaced, right when we have Bush administration officials proclaiming their "gut feelings" about imminent terrorist attacks and then being ridiculed all over everywhere for it. This was then followed up by Condi Rice proclaiming warning signs of a terrorist attack.
And now we have Osama, once again providing tape of an unspecified origin, right when the Bush administration needs their boogeyman. Support for the war in Iraq is slipping, not only amongst the citizens of America, but amongst the GOP itself. What better way to cloud the minds of the people with fear than to wave the scariest boogeyman (and former CIA asset) at them. That is so, like, 2004, dude.
Now we know that while we're bogged down with war in Iraq Al Qaeda has regrouped in Pakistan and garnered more recruits, making them stronger than ever. While we're wasting time waging a war against Iran, we're no safer than we were on September 10, 2001. All the illegal wiretaps, torture and spying on the American people haven't made us any safer, and neither has the Republican party, or it's incompetent leadership in the White House, which has bathed itself in secrecy to no end. But in order to end this madness, we need a new strategy, which no front runner from either party has offered up, only the same old same old, which has been so (in)effective so far.

The Numbers Are Growing....

Despite the best efforts of the corporate media to downplay the Bush Crime Family's illegal and unethical behavior, Nearly half of Americans favor impeachment of Bush, while more than half support an impeachment of Cheney. Of course, more than 75% of Americans bleieve in ending th war in Iraq, which leads me to wonder, why haven't the Democrats done anything that they were voted in to do?
Even now, with anew election cycle around the corner, more and more Republican senators are jumping ship and calling for a withdrawal of troops from Iraq, while timid congressional Democrats refuse to back Dennis Kucinich's call for impeachment of Cheney. Way to drop the ball again, Democraps!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hey, You! Remember Us? The People Who Vote For You And Pay Your Wages?

Today must be the day that all is right with this country. New Orleans has been rebuilt, our borders are secure, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have ended, Dick Cheney has impeached, and the White House has accepted subpeonas in the US attorney firing case. Oh, wait a minute, none of that has happened.
What has happened is the House of Representatives has passed H Con Res 21, which passed with only Reps. Kucinich and Paul voting against it. What this resolution does is pressure the UN to bring Iranian president Ahmadinejad with violating the 1948 Convention on Genocide and the United Nations charter. Something that has never happened. That's right folks, we're punishing a man for making a statement that he never said. What he did say was:

this occupation regime over Jerusalem" to "vanish from the page of time.'

This hardly qualifies as genocide (especially with regard to how Americans are slaughtering Iraqis and IDF forces are killing Palestinians), and would more likely be tantamount to suicide, since Israel has nuclear weapons and Iran has yet to be proved to have them. What this is in reality is part of the Likudnik party's "A Clean Break", which calls for breaking up all Arab states in the region into smaller pieces (like we're doing in Iraq, since the Neocons are so chummy with the Likudniks)for the security of Israel. This is also a ramping up of rhetoric against Iran in preparation for a US strike against them using tactical nuclear weapons, which will likely kill a lot of Iranian civilians, but in no way can that be construed as genocide.
While all this is happening, the US is committing war crimes, violation UN resolutions and the Geneva conventions, but that's okay (not really). And Israel stands in violation of numerous UN resolutions itself.
So with the conitnuing slump in housing sales, the health care crisis, global warming trends, outsourcing of jobs, and lack of support for the wars overseas, it's nice to know that Congress could get together on one thing totally irrelevant and unnecessary to the American people. Good job!
(Well, they also came together on a pay raise for themselves, after all, ignoring the American people is hard work.)

Random Rantings

Last week, on Face The Nation, independent (yeah, right) Senator Joe Lieberman advocated the bombing of Iran. While not in line with the way many people feel about excelerating the MidEast conflict (most of them want it ended, hence the Democraps control of Congress in 2006), it is in line with the neocons and the Israeli government, who have been looking for an excuse to drop nuclear weapons on Iran for as long as two years ago. As Charley Reese put it:

Iran has no intercontinental missiles, and the only country in the Middle East with nuclear weapons is Israel. Please note that the United States flatly refuses to endorse the idea of a nuclear-free Middle East. Iran has signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Israel has refused to sign it. Iran admits international inspectors. Israel flatly refuses to allow international inspectors. The only country in today's Middle East with weapons of mass destruction and a history of invading and occupying other people's countries is Israel.

As for Iran's alleged threat to "wipe Israel off the map," that is propaganda based on a mistranslation. Nobody in Iran has ever threatened to attack Israel militarily. The accurate quotes from Iranians have been simply that Israel as a Zionist state will eventually collapse, just as the Soviet Union as a communist state did. Iranian officials have even explicitly said they have no desire or intention of attacking Israel.

The Bush Doctrine Applied To Other Countries
Now suppose Iran, who has been threatened by not only the US, but Israel as well, decided to pre emptively strike first? Wouldn't that be okay? By the Bush regime's specious reasoning, the attacks on 9/11 were perfectly justified because the US had threatened the Taleban first with a carpet of bombs, after they rejected our carpet of gold to build a pipeline through their country.
Send Your Kids To Die, Leave Mine Alone
Mitt Romney has stated he wants to increase the size of the military. But like Joe Lieberman, Rudy Ghouliani, or any other war pimps running for the presidency (which includes everyone, with the exception of Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul, and Mike Gravel), none of them have any family members in the military.
That's why there's the big push to pass the immigration "reform" bill, not only will it lower wages by flooding the labor pool, but:

a provision in the stalled immigration bill that would have allowed some undocumented aliens to join the military

What right-thinking white person wouldn't endorse a war where we send all them brown-skinned people from over here to fight all them brown-skinned people over there? When this bill passes, it won't matter that the Army missed it's recruitment goals, because there'll be plenty of people to send off to kill and die for big oil and the military-industrial complex. Especially when the war engulfes the whole MidEast because some idiots decided we needed to bomb Iran.

Would You Vote For A Trained Chimp?

Well, the Republican narrative on Iraq has shifted again. Now it's no longer about "fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here". Now it's we're "fighting alQaeda to keep their hands off our oil supply (funny, I thought the oil belonged to the Iraqi people)and cut it off to drive gas prices even higher" than the oil companies are doing all on their own. (See, it was all about the oil)The Republican change excuses more times than the number of costume changes at a Cher concert.
So, it must be apparent to anyone who does the math that the Republicans, like the Democrats who gave Bush a blank check to continue the wholesale slaughter, that the voters who demanded change last November were too stupid to realize that they don't have a choice if they aren't able to fill their party's war chest (at least as much as Aipac)because both parties are more concerned with how all this plays out on Fox News than in the way the majority of voters perceive it all. But credit must be given to the Republicans, at least they didn't say they were going to do one thing, and then turn around and do the complete opposite when given the chance. No, they have said all along, and will continue to say that for whatever this week's reason is, that's why we need to be in Iraq. Like a bunch of trained chimps reading from Karl Rove's copy of Joseph Goebbels' playbook(the more you repeat a lie, the more people will believe it), they are going to continue to lay lie upon lie to justify letting our troops die.
But they have abandoned out troops. They need someone who's going to send them off to defend our country, not act as an excuse for defense contractors to continue to fleece the country. Because if you really supported the troops, you'd see that their dying to support a failed foreign policy of pre-emptive war is neither noble nor patriotic, just plain stupid. If you really supported the troops, you'd realize that putting them in harm's way with no clear obtainable objective or exit strategy not only puts them at risk, it puts us all at risk because instead of being here to defend us, they're on the other side of the planet defending....the corpocracy. Proving once again that to the Republicans, the citizens of this country don't matter at all.

Dick Van Patton

The US has "gained" new intelligence that says Iran is three years away from enriching enough material for nuclear weapons, although where this report comes from isn't clear. The last NIE stated that Iran was at least ten years away, but I'm sure now the Cheney regime has replaced all intelligence officials who wouldn't file falsified reports it wouldn't be too hard figure out where this "new" intelligence came from, much the same way all the commanders in Iraq who dissented on obtainable victory were replaced by the likes of Gen. Betrayus, so Bush could still say he stands behind his commanders.
Cheney is the likely suspect for the change in intelligence (not just because he keeps getting stupider) as he was the one who had the "yellow cake" documents forged. This was what led to the whole Lewis Libby trial, Cheney, enraged that he had been called out as a liar, leaked Valerie Plame's name to the media in retaliation. And according to former British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon, Dick Cheney called all the shots in the Iraq invasion that has led it to be the abyssmal failure that it is. Funny how somebody who had "other obligations" when he was of age to serve his country (and gain combat experience) likes playing soldier now that he doesn't have anything to risk beyond his stock portfolio.
That's why we need to get Congress to back Dennis Kucinich's impeachment legislation. If we don't, this heartless bastard will surely start another war doomed to be as abyssmal as the previous two are turning out.

A Worthwhile Democrat

Sometimes you have to wonder what goes on in the minds of Democratic party supporters. Hillary Clinton is considered the front runner for her party's nomination because-she has raised a lot of money. What kind of democracy do we have when only the elites with disposable cash can buy a candidate for either party, and how can we expect said candidate to affect change when they are in the same pockets as the opposition? Barack Obama is also a contender, based on the fact that-well, he does have a certain air about him, but, really, what has he or Sen. Clinton done to affect change while in the senate?
Then there's John Edwards, who has been commended for standing by his wife while she has cancer, as if there was any alternative. (Well, there is, and in the Republican Party it's called serving her with divorce papers while she recovers from surgery a/k/a "Family Values") Has John Edwards done anything to end the war in Iraq?
No. The only Democratic party member worth a damn running is perrenial candidate Dennis Kucinich. Reading the voters, who, in frustration with ineptitude of the Republican majority, voted for change in the last election, Rep. Kucinich has announced plans to impeach Dick Cheney. Kucinich can be contacted at:
2445 Rayburn HOB
Washington, DC 20515
Phone (202)225-5871
Fax (202)225-5745
Of course, this, as every other bit of governing has been put on hold following the shootings at Virginia Tech. Which brings me to a post I read over at mike votes. Imagine if shootings like this occured three or four times a day. Every day. For a year. Then you may get an idea of what life is like for Iraqis following the illegal US invasion of that country under falses pretenses concocted by-Dick Cheney. If that's not reason enough to remove him, I'm sure there are thousands of others.