An Interesting Quote by David Petraeus From 1987:

From adamweinstein:

“And while observing the Soviet difficulties in Afghanistan with a certain sense of vindication, the US military are at the same time reminded of the difficulties of defeating a determined guerrilla opponent who enjoys sanctuaries and is fighting in rugged terrain. After all, if a country with relatively few public opinion concerns or moral compunctions about its tactics cannot beat a bunch of ill-equipped Afghan tribesmen, what does that say about the ability of the United States — with its domestic constraints, statutory limitations, moral inhibition, and zealous investigative reporters — to carry out a successful action against a guerrilla force?”

— From now-General P.’s Princeton Ph.D. dissertation.

Wow, not only did I find another great example of USGs wanton stupidity (or of its corrupt, amoral behavior) but I also found a new blog to follow on Tumblr. Sheesh, like I need another blog to follow on Tumblr! >_<

Wikileaks Adventures Comics: US Admiral Accuses Internet Superheroes of Bloody Hands; Mrs. Irony

Today on Democracy Now, they played the following quote from Admiral Mike Mullen who spoke out against Wikileaks and their huge document-release:

ADM. MIKE MULLEN: Mr. Assange can say whatever he likes about the greater good he thinks he and his source are doing, but the truth is, they might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family. Disagree with the war all you want, take issue with the policy, challenge me or our ground commanders on the decisions we make to accomplish the mission we’ve been given, but don’t put those who willingly go into harm’s way even further in harm’s way just to satisfy your need to make a point.

via democracynow.org

The huge irony here is the part I italicized. I’m sure, if there’s one thing Admiral Mike Mullen (or any other military mucky-muck) knows about, it’s what it’s like to have blood on your hands. What a child to think that sort of argument would work against someone like Assange.

And check it out—if Assange ends up being to blame for the deaths of anyone, doesn’t it follow that it’s really the military that should be blamed since they put those soldiers and those Afghan families in harm’s way in the first place? Let’s take that one better—let’s blame the guy who put the military in a place where it could then put those soldiers and Afghan families in harm’s way. It’s the Commander-in-Chief. So really, it’s George W. Bush who may have the blood of “some young soldier or that of an Afghan family” not Jim Henson’s Wikileaks Babies.

Give me a break, Mullen.

Everyone knows people die in war!! The news media and the military has done a great job of cynically reminding us of how there’s nothing new in the docs that were Wikileaked. So, why the hell would Assange and his supporters hesitate to release docs that could result in deaths when so many on both sides have died already?

Oh really? “Some young soldier” might die? Well, maybe if he hadn’t been ordered to invade a country, he wouldn’t have died.

Stupid, useless argument.

And how can the military and it’s propaganda wing have the gall to ignore the rich, choco-flavored irony of accusing Assange and Pals of having blood on their hands???

Seriously—is there not a sane brain in the American government today?

This war is unjust, it’s costing too much, people continue to die for nothing and we all know it—WHAT IS THE DEBATE HERE?

US Military: you’re following orders, we get that, but this war (and the one in Iraq) is a dead dead dead end. We can’t fix it and are only responsible for the latest round of messed-up-edness there. That “country” has been messed-up for thousands of years. Let it go.

And let our soldiers come home.

Yes people will die because we left, but they’ll die if we stay. And we shouldn’t have gone in the first place. If we had sent in an elite, light-weight task force to track down ObL, I think we’d have gotten a lot closer to our goal there. But that’s an alternate reality now… or is *this* the alternate reality? >_<

Listening to DemocracyNow: The New Pentagon Papers: WikiLeaks Releases 90,000+ Secret Military Documents Painting Devastating Picture of Afghanistan War

Listening to DemocracyNow: The New Pentagon Papers: WikiLeaks Releases 90,000+ Secret Military Documents Painting Devastating Picture of Afghanistan War

Ignore the MSM—listen/watch/read Democracy Now’s coverage, including comments from Daniel Ellsberg—the Godfather of government leaks (he released the Pentagon Papers).

No wooshy graphics, no glitzy sets, no brain-dead anchors—Democracy Now.

Are the Lies the Lying Government Officials tell actually lies? Or...?

newsweek:

“What does it mean to tell the truth about a war? Is it a lie, technically speaking, for the Administration to say that it has faith in Hamid Karzai’s government and regards him as a legitimate leader—or is it just absurd? Is it a lie to say that we have a plan for Afghanistan that makes any sense at all? If you put it that way, each of the WikiLeaks documents—from an account of an armed showdown between the Afghan police and the Afghan Army, to a few lines about a local interdiction official taking seventy-five-dollar bribes, to a sad exchange about an aid scam involving orphans—is a pixel in a picture that does, indeed, contradict official accounts of the war, and rather drastically so.”

—

The New Yorker: Wikileaks and the War

  (via southpol)

So, they are lying?

Like it even matters.

Who freaked out in 2000 when it was obvious to anyone paying attention that there was no clear winner in the election?  Or that it’s Congress’ job to settle ties, not the Supreme Court’s?

What public rose up to demand impeachment when it became obvious the Bush Administration’s USG had violated international law several times over, least of all by invading countries unprovoked?

Every single one of us wander the streets of our cities and towns knowing full well that the cash in our pockets isn’t worth anything tangible, yet we just keep pretending that’s not true.

We, The People, are used to dealing with lies—all the time.  Whether it’s God, Santa, our money, our government or the fact that Diet Coke is really no better for you than regular Coke.  We lie to each other and ourselves all the time and this shock that the USG is lying to us about war is, you guessed it: a lie.  This one, like many of them is to make us feel better.

No one in the USG should worry.  Both endless wars can continue. We have no ability to stop them from doing so and even if we did we wouldn’t use that ability.

And that is no lie.

The Disturbing Truth: Our Government is Protecting Us from Nothing

Dig that crazy redaction! It's like the FOIA request from the ACLU that got this doc released got us
a whole lot of nothing--of course, despite appearances, it gave us enough rope to hang the Bushies
with... if only the Obamites will bother...

After reading today's column from Andrew Sullivan at TheAtlantic.com, I have had my fears reinforced and have come to feel that the United States Government has been and continues to be a sociopathic entity. Sullivan's column is called "The American Way Of Torture" and includes select quotes from the Office of the Inspector General's report on how the CIA systemically tortured terror suspects during the Bush years. There are some disturbing truths that Sullivan's piece forces us to consider:

1) this new OIG report pretty much damns the Bush Administration by proving they not only endorsed torture, but did so in writing.

2) this was definitely torture--what else do you call it when detainees are left in their own excrement?

3) Sullivan makes the point best:

In the past, the US was known for being a country whose soldiers would never mistreat prisoners; now, the US wants the world to know that US custody is something to be dreaded.

This is the same technique used by Grand Moff Tarkin in the original Star Wars movie--his exact line was "Fear will keep the systems in line..."

So yes, all those Daily Show jokes about Cheney were accurate: the United States was run by an evil, cartoonish bad guy.

Now this next part popped into my head thanks to Democracy Now, quoting one leader who spoke about Afghanistan:

The insurgency in Afghanistan didn’t just happen overnight, and we won’t defeat it overnight. This will not be quick nor easy. But we must never forget, this is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven, from which al-Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting; this is fundamental to the defense of our people.

That's not an old quote from Bush--that's Obama speaking at the Veterans of Foreign Wars national convention in Phoenix, Arizona, last week.

So, here comes Obama, explaining that we have no choice but to be in Afghanistan, mimicking the same rhetoric that came from the Bush 43 Admin for so many years. We did it because the Taliban were harboring Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. My question is, how big a threat is Al Qaeda to America? OK, fine, Obama, they're plotting
against us--but how many of us can they really kill?

In 2008 34,017 Americans were killed in car accidents according to the DOT.

In 2005 (the most recent year numbers are available) 159,217 Americans died of lung cancer alone according to the CDC.

In 2007 around 2 million people worldwide were killed by AIDS according to Avert.org.

In 2007 terrorism caused 22,685 deaths worldwide according to the US National Counter Terrorism Center. The number of American civilian deaths by terrorism is almost non-existent since Americans have to leave the country to be killed by a terrorist.

What this all means is that terrorism is a tiny, tiny, tiny threat to the American way of life. Yet, the Bush administration and now the Obama administration thinks it's worth ignoring our morals and our principles to stop the killing of less than 23,000 Earthlings while seven times that number die of lung cancer in America, alone. 53,005 died of colorectal cancer, 27,259 American women died of gynecological cancers, 41,116 American women died of breast cancer--and I could go on.

So, in the end, our government is "protecting" us from nothing. We're spending over a trillion dollars in Iraq and Afghanistan to stop this threat which does not even really exist. My only conclusion is that our government actually enjoys being horrible to people--it's literally sociopathic. Either that, or our government is too addicted to fear, or rock-stupid, to check and compare the statistics, which took me about 30 minutes to do.

With all these people dying of Cancer in the US right now, wouldn't it be nice to have a War on Cancer, instead of a War on Terror?

Wikileaks Cracks Pentagon Encryption; My Faith in Our Leaders is Restored (or NOT)

This is hilarious--well, assuming you think massive incompetence being a Pentagon job requirement is funny. Can you believe this? Apparently there was a password on the politically sensitive file at this URL:

http://oneteam.centcom.mil/isc/Shared%20Documents/NATO%20Master%20Narrative.doc

By the look of it, the only thing protecting the contents of this file is the fact that it's a password-protected MS Word doc. Wtf?? What bright-eyes thought this would be a good idea? Let's just leave a politically sensitive WORD DOC in an unprotected directory and expect a fracking MS Word password to keep it safe. WHAT COULD HAPPEN?

So, anyway, the post at Wikileaks.org (see screencap above or original here: https://secure.wikileaks.org/wiki/N1 ) doesn't explain how the "encryption" was "cracked" but I suspect it was something simple, like the highly technical process of entering random words until something worked.

You may be wondering what was so politically sensitive in the Word doc. Well, it turns out it was a document meant for NATO officials, and it tells them not to tell anyone that the country of Jordan is involved in helping us with the War Against Terror (aka tWAT) in Afghanistan. What's the catch with the world knowing Jordan is involved? It's supposed to be a secret. Apparently, back in 2001 they officially withdrew from the ISAF (International Security Assistance Force), which is officially in charge of our efforts in Afghanistan. It seems like they sure didn't stop helping us.

Why is it a big deal that Jordan is still involved in our Afghani efforts? Well, it seems they're real big in the torture community. They are also said to be big helpers with our extraordinary renditions program. So, essentially, they help us when we go into one country, kidnap a suspect and deliver said suspect to another country where we ask them questions and let local authorities torture if we don't like the answers.

In an obviously related story the Pentagon shut their entire site down this afternoon. Gee, I wonder why they did that!

Does anyone still wonder why the world has so much wrong with it when our leaders are smegging moronic enough to use only a single password to protect sensitive information?

OH yeah and the password on the doc? Progress.

Well done, Pentagon! Well done!!

Massive kudos to Twitter-user Zaibatsu who posted about Wikileaks cracking the password on the NATO file.

I wonder if this story will hit CNN or any of the other MSM news "sources."

Posted via email from thepete's posterous

Can We Call It WW III NOW???

I'm not sure how many major-theater/major-world-power wars need to be going on at once before we'll actually call this what it is: a world war.

I know it's a big scary thing to call it a "world war" but I feel that we need to take responsibilty for all of this death and destruction before every continent is engulfed in combat.

Merriam-Webster.com defines a "world war" as: "a war engaged in by all or most of the principal nations of the world,"

That's pretty much what we've got going on here. So why not just call a spade a spade?

OH YEAH. Because then we'd have to take responsibilty for it.

Yick! Responsibility!

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Oklahoma 911/The War On Terror License Plate

I can't believe I, of all people, missed this story last August, but I did. I stumbled across a post about it a week, or so, ago (here: http://enews.org/…ights.html ) and I felt like I had to make a bigger deal out of it. Have a look at that ugly, horrible sample plate. If you own a car in the fine state of Oklahoma, you can decorate your car with this thing for just $37 (http://www.tax.ok.gov/…45.html)...

...If you want to.

WHY you'd want to is beyond me. The post I linked to above, written by a guy calling himself "Espresso Sucking Pavement Dweller" or ESPD for short, is all about the lousy design of the plate. ESPD is right--the black on red banner is hardly readable (it looks like it says "944" to me) and the clipart used for the Towers look like completely different buildings. He makes a few other points, including one about how others will criticize this license plate for reasons other than design.

Let me be one of those people. Let's begin:

1) Since when do you have license plates memorializing terrorist acts? Isn't it a little ghoulish to use the deaths of those 3000 people on 9/11/1 as advertising for a war?

2) I'm of the belief that America is stronger than a few thousand Muslim extremists. We can handle anything they can throw at us and the idea that we need to fight "The Global War On Terrorism" seems like over-dramatizing the threat of Al Qaeda and terrorism, in general. If you look at the statistics, cars, cancer and AIDS each kill more people every year than terrorism (more: http://thepete.com/…0-points/).

3) Oklahoma is fighting the war on terror? How's that, exactly? What does Oklahoma have that Al Qaeda wants?

4) As I mentioned in point 1, this plate is just an advertisement for a war--for killing people. Has "The Global War on Terrorism" brought us Bin Laden or even a single conviction on actual terrorism-related charges? So far it seems like this whole thing hasn't meant--well, I could be off color, here, I'll just suggest you refer to the acronym for "The Global War On Terror" only remove the "Global."

As Super Duper Tuesday is tomorrow and the next presidential election is in seven months, don't let 911 and mentions of the wars, Al Qaeda and other fear-mongering scare you into voting for one person or another. Vote with your head--not your fear.

Do I think we should go after Al Qaeda? Definitely. They do want to kill some of us. However, a war on a few thousand people with no country, no army, no nukes, and no obvious hierarchy seems like blatant, soulless, overkill. Plus, it's just what they want us to do.

Who knows? Maybe Bin Laden will see this license plate and give up. But I'm thinking it'll just make us snobby cityfolk point and snicker.
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10 Points

Here are 10 points to start off your new year on the right, er, center foot.

1) More than 2000 American soldiers have died during the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. Tens of thousands (hundreds of thousands?) more have been both mentally and physically wounded. Tens of thousands (over one hundred thousand?) of Iraqis have died during the invasion/occupation with countless more mentally and/or physically injured.

2) On 911 3000 Americans died with hundreds of thousands more mentally and/or physically injured.

3) No less than 37,000 people have died in car accidents every year since 1995 (source: http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/) in America, alone.

4) Lung cancer killed 157,630 Americans in 2002, the most recent year statistics are available. (source: http://www.cdc.gov/lungcancer/statistics/index.htm)

5) Worldwide, roughly 3 million humans died in 2005 thanks to AIDS. (source: http://www.avert.org/worldstats.htm)

6) While statistics vary wildly depending on who you talk to (+-thousands), the highest estimates have the human race losing, on average, 3,227 lives a year for the past five years to terrorism, worldwide. (according to RAND/MIPT numbers, 2001 and 2004 saw more than 4000 deaths for obvious reasons - 911 and Iraq) (source: http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/terrorism/intlterror.html)

7) According to the UN Ambassador from Sri Lanka, Prasad Kariyawasam, it will take $2.1 billion to give 150,000 Sri Lankans their homes back, post-tsunami. $500 million has been dispersed of the required money in the first year after the tsunami hit. (source: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/28/1457235)

8) At the start of 2006 the war in Iraq has cost Americans in excess of $230 billion. (source: http://nationalpriorities.org/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=182)

9) In 2004 projections estimated that the 2004 presidential election would cost more than $1 billion--this includes not only administration of the election itself, but also the advertising and general expenses of the candidates. (source: http://www.opensecrets.org/pressreleases/2004/04spending.asp)

10) You are more likely to die of AIDS, lung cancer, or in a car accident than you are in a terrorist bomb. Instead of spending hundreds of billions of dollars on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US Government could have paid for the complete reconstruction of Sri Lanka several times over ($2.1 billion), bribed Saddam Hussein into stepping down ($50 million? $100 million?), AND STILL had tens of billions of dollars left over to sink into a cure for AIDS, cancer and ways to make our roads and cars safer.

Why are you afraid of terrorists when cars are ten times more likely to kill you?

Hell, AIDS is a thousand times more likely to kill you...