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?

Huge Bombing in Baghdad "Raises Questions" about USGIs Leaving Iraq

Huge Bombing in Baghdad "Raises Questions" about USGIs Leaving Iraq, originally uploaded by thepetecom.

Capped this article just now on my iPhone (source) and it makes me wonder if more violence will be used as an all too convenient excuse to "find" ourselves "forced" to leave troops in Iraq.

Forget that Iraq will have to take over their own country eventually, there are those who will use this bombing and any further violence as an excuse to keep our men and women over there.

In fact, new violence in Iraq is such a convenient excuse that it makes me wonder just who was behind the bombing and whose side they are on.

TimesOnline.co.uk says Israel Preparing for Potential Attack Iran

TimesOnline.co.uk says Israel Preparing for Potential Attack Iran, originally uploaded by thepetecom.

TimesOnline.co.uk is reporting that Israeli warships are positioning themselves in the Suez Canal in preparation for a possible invasion of Iran.

Speaking strictly as the fiction writer and the observer of world events that I am, I must say the timing of this does make some amount of tactical (if I'm using the word correctly) sense from the Israeli standpoint. Iran is a mess after its government cracked down, rather oppressively, on protestors (mostly students, apparently). There's been talk for the past month of a complete revolution in Iran--the leaders can't seem to decide if their recent election counts or even if the ballots were properly counted and it's not the easiest thing to get an accurate account of the state of things inside Iranian borders due to a crackdown on foreign press.

So, with that kind of chaos--a stumbling government and a rather large contingent of their citizens feeling pretty rebellious, Israel may have picked a perfect time for invasion--one that just might catch the Iranian military at a place where they simply will not have their shit together enough to defend against an attack.

The theory before the recent Iranian crackdown was that even though the populace didn't seem to generally care for the leadership, said leaders could still rally the Iranian people to rise up and defend the country from any outside attackers. After showing such bloodthirsty instincts on it's own people, Iran's leaders just might find it harder to get support from those people--at least, that's what I bet Israel is thinking.

Does this mean an Israeli attack on Iran is moral or even legal? No and no--not from my perspective, anyway. Iran would have to attack Israel in order to make an attack on Iran legal in the eyes of the UN Charter (aka international law). On a moral level (think the Golden Rule) Israel can't invade a country that may be talking shit, but isn't doing shit to mess with them--so how could Israel feel the need to attack? But then, Israel is the country that's been occupying a people for decades for no easily discernible reason, so anything is possible.

No, I don't hate Jews, nor do I hate Israel. I just don't like what their government is doing. Drawing first blood is never a good thing--end of story. PR, rhetoric, even blatant threats do NOT justify an attack on another country. ONLY an unprovoked attack from that country justifies an attack on it.

Let's hope Israel is just going for a sail.

Fingers crossed!

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

OK, For the LAST TIME, Israel Needs to CHILL.

Discover Simple, Private Sharing at Drop.io Read the latest as of this blog post at CNN.com here.

So, here's the deal.

I've been writing about this shit going on in Israelistine, or Palestisrael (which ever you prefer), for many, many years. So, let me break it down to the simplest terms I can think of:

Israel can bring peace if they want to.

That's it. Now, please, consider the following:

1) Is Hamas, or anyone in the occupied territories a real threat to Israel? Or are they just a bunch of pissed off people with crappy, unreliable weapons.

No and yes.

2) Did Hamas even exist before Israel occupied the occupied territories?

No.

So, doesn't that mean Israel is the root cause of this strife?

Let's keep going:

3) No one ever asks the question: What does Israel want by occupying these chunks of land?

Jerusalem? They have it. Now what are they doing with all of those Palestinians?

3) Does anyone really think pounding a house, a mosque, or even a neighborhood with weapons like the kinds Israel can afford will do anything but make people hate them more?

Terrorism is the result (generally) of a person or people feeling they have no other options--they have no voice, no control and think hurting people or destroying things is the only thing they can do. Keep reacting that way and you'll never stamp out terrorists--but you will create dozens more.

In fact, some might see the Israeli government's actions as part of a terrorist-making machine. In fact, if I were a corrupt leader who was more interested in keeping my citizens rallied behind me and less with their well-being, I'd say "kudos" to the Israeli government for doing what the Nazis did by giving the citizenry a unified enemy to always be afraid of. Well done!

So, in the end, who has the real power to create peace here?

The Palestinian terrorists who keep shooting their useless little rockets into Israel killing almost no one? Or the big guys with the undisclosed nuke program?

Israel can take her lumps--that's all they'll ever be. Hamas and anyone else in the occupied territories have limited resources. They'll never be a formidable foe or threat to Israel. So, the violence stops when the government of Israel stops acting like an abusive parent and starts acting like a civilized governing body. They need to treat the handful of terrorists in the territories as criminals because that's what they are.

When hundreds are killed in the name of stopping a handful, you have to wonder: who is worse?

Why Bush Should Have Let the Shoe Hit Him

Discover Simple, Private Sharing at Drop.io Why did he duck? The shoes weren't even loaded!

As Muntadhar al-Zaidi becomes a hero across Iraq for throwing his Iraqi-made shoes at George W. Bush during a recent surprise(d) visit to Iraq, I couldn't help but think about how fast good old King George was to duck those shoes. Just last night, Steve Isaacs microblogged that he felt Bush dodging those shoes made the current occupant of the White House look competent and capable. That got me thinking.

In the movie Cool Hand Luke (spoiler alert) there's a great scene where Paul Newman's character proves his grit by standing up to the prison bully. He doesn't win the fight--he doesn't even get a few good punches in. In fact, he gets his ass pounded. The thing is, he keeps getting back up to get pounded again.

This is heroism, folks. This is taking responsibility for your actions. Newman's "Luke" wanted to take on the big man and put him in his place, but he couldn't do it with strength. So, he did it with honor.

So, it's natural that, like a weasel, Bush ducks the shoes as they fly at his face. That's what he's been best at all this time, right? Ducking responsibility for one colossal fuck-up after another.

911 wasn't his fault--it was the terrorists who hate our freedom. Forget that memo with the title "bin Laden determined to strike inside the United States." Forget that it's the government's job to stop things like the 911 attacks from happening. Forget that there used to be FAA regulations that allowed for USAF fighters to shoot down any aircraft heading toward populated areas. What happened to that regulation, anyway? I remember what happened to Payne Stewart.

Katrina wasn't his fault--how could they predict a storm like that and an aftermath like that? Well, National Geographic Magazine did.

Saddam not having WMD wasn't Bush's fault, either. How could they know that Saddam had no WMD? I mean, besides the fact that there was no hard evidence he had WMD?

Iraq being the absurd quagmire that it has become--certainly, there was no way to predict that! Of course, the British experienced it first hand... in 1917. I won't bring up Dick Cheney's own prediction of a mess back in 1992.

So, consider how just one of those shoes hitting Bush in the face would have made you feel. I know I'd have still laughed and played the clip over and over and over.

But him ducking the shoes?

Nothing new there. Just same old not-so-artful dodging from a man who didn't even have the decency to make sure he was properly elected... either time.

It just shows you the kind of spineless, fearful little weasel George W. Bush is.

It's a shoe, man. What's it going to do to you? Knock out a tooth? Break the skin?

Bush, you're supposed to be the president of the United States of America and you're afraid of a couple shoes.

Other Shoe Falls on Bush During Visit to Iraq--and It's from an Iraqi Foot

Wow, I hope the guy that threw those shoes at Bush doesn't end up in Abu Ghraib or Gitmo. Pull that kind of thing here in the land of the Free and the Brave and you get your ass investigated and possibly even arrested for threatening the life of the guy in the White House. Hell, in this country just talking about throwing a shoe at the occupier of the Oval Office might bring the Secret Service's shoe down on your throat.

Hey, you didn't really think we have 100% free speech didja?

After all, Bush himself agrees that there should be limits to freedom (and he said that before 911!).

Read more about King George's encounter with the shoe-throwing Angry Iraqi at CNN.com.

Posted via email from thepete's posterous

CORRECTION: I just watched the video--turns out the Iraqi dude threw both of his shoes at Bush. So, I corrected the text above to reflect multiple shoes thrown. :)

UPDATE: Here's video of the actual event as it happened:

Discover Simple, Private Sharing at Drop.io

Chances of a WMD Attack in a big city better than 50%??

Grabbed this on my iPhone just now and I have to admit that I don't trust this task force. These guys MUST be lying or hopelessly paranoid. There is no way you could say there's a better than 50/50 chance that a city will get hit by WMD.
 
Of course, bio or chem weapons I could see as being more likely, but still not a 50% chance, but nukes (which are what we all think of first when we hear the letters "WMD")?? No way, man, and reporting this story this way is nothing short of alarmist and fear mongering.
 
Reuters is really doing us a disservice by not making it immediately clear that nukes are much less likely than chem or bio. And even knowing that, when I saw that headline and read that first paragraph, I thought they meant their was a better than even chance that nukes would definitely hit a big city--then reality set in and I remembered how the odds of any random big city being hit are dramatically against.
 
Thanks, Reuters, for making us crap our pants...again!
 
Oh and newsflash: government task forces have been getting it wrong for the last 8 years--probably longer--all the press ever does is highlight the fear and bury the logic. Way to unquestioningly quote the party line and question little-to-nothing.

Posted by email from thepete's posterous

TORTURING DEMOCRACY a New Documentary

I'm a big fan of taking the good with the bad. If it's true, even if it's bad, I want to hear about it and I want to deal with it, the sooner, the better. Sadly (to me), not everyone shares this view. Many people want to deny and ignore as much as they can when they don't like it. When the Abu Ghraib story broke a few years ago, I really didn't want to see those photos. I really didn't want to believe that my government would torture.

I had heard that government officials would take suspects and have them "interrogated" in countries where torture was legal. This disturbed me enough. When the waterboarding stuff broke, I wasn't shocked, but I was disappointed. Then, when Bush insisted that "we don't torture" I knew it was just Orwellian doublespeak and that we do torture.

"Torturing Democracy" is all about America committing acts of torture. According to the official website (http://torturingdemocracy.org/ ) the documentary: "...relies on the documentary record to connect the dots in an investigation of harsh interrogations of prisoners in U.S. custody - and points straight to the top. Timely and powerful, at its heart the film is about the rule of law - and how the government pushed it aside despite the fierce resistance of many on the inside."

Attached to this post is one of the excerpts available on the official site and it features Richard Armitage, Deputy Sec of State under Colin Powell, talking about how he was waterboarded (as part of training) and how he definitely considers waterboarding a form of torture. He also mentions that he's ashamed that the discussion about whether waterboarding is torture or not is even being considered.

If you're in the Washington DC area, watch this docu on WETA at 10pm tonight (10/17/8). Check out a complete listing of channels and times here: http://is.gd/4gLf

OR just go to http://TorturingDemocracy.org/ to watch the entire movie right now.

I have yet to watch it, but plan on doing so this weekend. I'll post a review next week.

Be responsible for what your government does--watch this movie and be offended as you should be. Then, vote accordingly.

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George W. Bush Solves Economic Crisis by Snapping Fingers!

This is a totally useless observation, but I noticed tonight while looking at the pic of Bush delivering his historic "we're screwed" speech to the nation a little black spot under his jaw. Can you see it? WTH is that? Mobile post sent by thepete using Utterli.   Replies.

Ugh, so here is a fun one--George W. Bush trying to convince us all that he's right about something else that has gone to shit under his watch.

Seriously, everything this man touches turns to fine smelling feces. I challenge anyone to name something he's gotten right. I mean, do we really need me to go through this transcript to know that Bush will distort the facts, deceive us and dodge responsibility? Well, I'm a glutton for punishment (it comes from watching every episode of MST3K several times over), so here we go!

The below transcript of Bush's historic "We're Screwed" speech comes from JPGardners' Donkelphant.com and remember, Bush's comments will be in italics while mine will be factually accurate and not in italics.

THE PRESIDENT: Good evening.

Oh, Al Gore was there? :P (Get it? It says "THE PRESIDENT". YES I'm still bitter god damn it!!)

This is an extraordinary period for America’s economy.

THIS GUY IS SHARP, BOY! What's next? An observation that touching open flames cause pain??

Over the past few weeks, many Americans have felt anxiety about their finances and their future.

"Few weeks"?!?!?!

Try "few years" idiot. I've been blogging about the value of the dollar dropping for three years, possibly more.

It's really hard not to use the word "retard" in connection with this fool, but I don't want to insult anyone who is actually mentally handicapped.

I understand their worry and their frustration.

Ah, so you're not frustrated? Why should you be? You're wearing a beautiful new golden suit spun with gold so fine that you can't see it, you tremendous feeb.

Sorry, I know it's not mature to call people names, but this fucker won't go away! He's committed crimes, failed to protect Americans from terrorists and killer storms, bungled two wars almost simultaneously and now he's managed to oversee one of the biggest economic failures America has seen since the Great Depression.

Ah, good stuff! o_O

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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Didn't They Already Have a Say?

Grabbed this screencap from Google News in the early hours of 7/9 and just had to shake my head.

I mean, REALLY.

A bipartisan panel wants the government to play a bigger role when a president decides to go to war.

Uhhhhh, YEAH.

You know what, Mr. or Mrs. Bipartisan Panel?

THEY ALREADY HAVE A BIGGER ROLE.

They just turned over that role to Bush in the lead-up to the Iraq Attack--or did you guys not study very hard in school?

I mean, any kid who paid attention in history class (or for me, Social Studies class) knows that it's Congress' job to authorize military force. Before we invaded a sovereign member of the UN (Iraq) back in 2003, the US Congress told Bush that he could swing his ability to declare war around like a huge penis in order to scare Saddam into fessing up about his WMD.

Of course, no amount of penis-swinging would get Saddam to admit something that wasn't true, so Bush got to use his war powers. Of course, if Congress hadn't been lied to by the White House, they'd have known Saddam had nothing to declare as we threatened to cross his border.

They trusted the guy in the White House. It's my impression that the Founding Fathers didn't want the guy in the White House to have the power to invade a country--so why did Congress defy that interest of the FF? Especially to a man like Bush who was such a great leader he let 911 happen, invaded a whole country and then couldn't even capture the guy who was behind 911.

This was a guy who didn't even have the decency to make sure he won the 2000 election.

Hey, did you know that when there's a tie in a presidential race the US Constitution states that it's *Congress* that votes on who the president should be?

Yeah, apparently the Supreme Court hadn't heard that either. By I digress!

The USC(ongress) should never have given Bush the ability to shoot his military load into Iraq to begin with, so essentially, since Bush "took office" the Supreme Court, Congress and the White House all let us down. That's all three branches, isn't it?

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The Real Reason the US Will Invade Iran

I've blogged a bunch about the petrodollar--don't know what that is? In a nutshell, it's kind of a nickname for dollars used to buy oil from OPEC countries. A lot of folks don't know that the only way to get oil from OPEC member nations is by using USD. What happens if you don't have USD? You have to buy it. Read more about petrodollars here: http://en.wikipedia.org/…etrodollar

What does this have to do with Iran? Well, for a couple years now (see my first post on it here: http://thepete.com/…vade-iran/ ) Iran has been trying to get it's own oil bourse going. What's a bourse? Just a fancy-shmancy word for a commodities exchange. In this case, the commodity would be oil. Well, Iran has had a bit of trouble getting their bourse off the ground but they finally pulled it off on February 17, 2008--yep, just a couple of months back. Guess what currency they're selling oil with.

It ain't dollars.

And now, according to the above-screencapped April 6, 2008 article from AP.org (available here: http://biz.yahoo.com/…_opec.html ), Iran wants other OPEC nations to bail on the dollar, too. From the article:

"According to the Iranian government's Web site, Ahmadinejad told OPEC Secretary General Abdalla Salem el-Badri the cartel "should establish a joint bank as well as having joint currency.""

Sure, other OPEC nations don't support the change, but Iran isn't the first nation to stop trading oil with dollars--Venezuela doesn't.

Why am I so sure that Iran will be invaded because they don't want to sell oil with USD? Well, remember Saddam? He swapped out the dollar for the euro.

Yeeeah.

Middle East oil, not traded with the USD?

Good luck with that Iran.

Read more about that bourse here: http://en.wikipedia.org/…Oil_Bourse
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StopMilitaryRape.org

I have mixed feelings about the military. While I never served, I did come close and I have family that has and does serve currently. I have great respect for men and women that feel strongly about doing what they call "fighting for their country." That said, the military is still filled with people. Regular folks, just like you and me. They do good jobs and bad, make mistakes and make things right. They both mean well and don't--the military is a microcosm of civilization. In that sense, it should be no surprise that there is crime. One of those crimes is rape.

Sadly, women have been pretty much second class citizens until just the past couple of decades and even now, it's more like the 1800s for them--sometimes they get hazed (of course, so do men) and sometimes, they get raped (almost as frighteningly, so do men). And like the civilian world, in the military, rape often goes unreported--of course, as I said, it's more like the 1800s for rape victims.

It's MUCH harder to report a rape if you actually like the military. Just Google "Suzanne Swift" if you don't believe me. She reported being raped by a superior and eventually ended up with him in charge of her. Check out SuzanneSwift.org to read her story.

You can also check out the DemocracyNow.org story that first informed me of the website http://StopMilitaryRape.org/ by going here: http://www.democracynow.org/…n_soldiers

That DN article talks about a conference that took place on International Women's Day, back in March of this year, that featured military women talking about rape and sexual abuse they've experienced or witnessed. Listening to their stories in the audio version of the article was pretty much gut-wrenching (here's the MP3 of the episode if you've got a strong stomach: http://www.archive.org/…1_64kb.mp3 ).

So, if you know anyone who is dealing with rape, please help them get help. If you know anyone who is in the military dealing with rape, point them to http://stopmilitaryrape.org/

Rape, in the military or out, isn't about sex, or even lust. It's about power and control. The people who commit such acts should not get away with it and the people who fall victim need all the help they can get to move on with their lives.
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Daily Show: Republican Admits They Effed Up

This isn't some play on words or a clip of Bush "accidentally" saying the opposite of what the speech writer told him to say--on the episode of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" from March 31, 2008, Republican Senator from Nebraska, Chuck Hagel, actually admitted that Congress made a mistake in allowing Bush to decide to go to war. What Hagel said in this interview is incredibly important:

"We did not do our job. We failed the American People in that we didn't ask the toughest questions."

What saddens me is that Hagel is the second person in government, during the Bush administration, who has admitted that Congress did let the American people down. The first was Richard Clark, the terrorism czar that George W. inherited from Bill Clinton. I can't even remember when Clarke admitted that the government had let the American People down, but he did. In his case it was in regards to the USG allowing 911 to happen.

Now, Hagel is saying it, too only this time it's about something even less forgivable than not being on the ball enough to stop terrorists from doing something insane. Of course, it's easy for Hagel to say he and others in Congress let us down--he's got a book to sell (much like Clarke did) and Hagel's not running for president (it's always easier to tell the truth when you aren't worried about your job). He also jokes in the interview with Stewart that he's not likely to have a job in Washington after this November. I hope this is true for many more people in Congress aside from him.

And don't think that Hagel is some saint just because he actually has the balls to say it like it is--the dude is rumored to be just as corrupt as everyone else. I recall reading somewhere that he was elected on ballot machines made by a company he owns.

Maybe we should consider his criticisms of the war to be just sour grapes reflecting his frustration that he invested in a balloting machine company instead of Halliburton or Bechtel.

Oh well, at least he said it!
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So, Is This World War III, Yet?

I definitely feel like we're all suffering from that curse--you know the one I mean. The one that says "may you live in interesting times."

I feel like we're living in an important part of history. Bigger than Vietnam, bigger than Korea and approaching the level of importance of WWII. In fact, I'd almost say it's identical to the time before WWII.

Labor is cheap and our economy is weak (though I suppose it was back on track after the depression in the immediate years before WWII) and we're looking at war in "multiple theaters." "Multiple theater war" is just a Web 2.0-style phrase that describes a World War.

America, the Earth's last super-power has combat operations in Afhganistan and Iraq. We seem to have our sights set on Iran. Turkey has invaded northern Iraq as you can see from the above screencap from Google News (get updates here: http://news.google.com/ ). There are all sorts of military messes in Africa, Pakistan is unstable (to say the least), Kosovo has declared its independence and Israel and Palestine, well, let's just say they're still not getting along.

So, with all of these skirmishes, is it time we start calling this World War III?

I feel that if we start calling it what it is, we'll take it that much more seriously and work to end it. Since we're still thinking of it as "The War Against Terror" it seems a bit too close to "The War on Drugs." I don't think any of us took T.W.O.D. too seriously. Likewise, T.W.A.T. doesn't seem that much more like a "real" world than T.W.O.D. did. As a result, we're all very disconnected from the atrocities being committed in our name.

I feel like we Americans are not very good at facing the depressing realities of our world. And I say "we" as in me, too. Calling this a World at War just might hammer home the seriousness of what's going on.

Then again, American Idol might be on.

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The 5 Minute Show Episode 20030223 Anti-War Protest pt 2!

And here are the continuing adventures of ThePete at an Anti-Iraq War protest shortly before we went to war in Iraq. :(

GITMO TRIALS RIGGED TO END IN CONVICTION?

Here's another gem from http://DemocracyNow.org/. On yesterday's show, they reported on the former chief prosecutor for Guantanamo's military commissions who told the Nation magazine that there was no way any of those six guys accused of taking part in the 911 attacks would get a fair trial. Here's a bit from the show's transcript (get the whole thing here: http://www.democracynow.org/…guantanamo ): "The 9/11 trials for the six Guantanamo prisoners charged by the Pentagon last week with conspiracy to commit war crimes might have been rigged from the start to rule out the possibility of any acquittals, this according to the latest statements to The Nation magazine from Colonel Morris Davis, the former chief prosecutor for Guantanamo's military commissions.

Colonel Davis recounted a 2005 meeting with the Bush administration-appointed Pentagon General Counsel William Haynes, who now oversees the prosecutions and the defense for the tribunal process. Haynes said, "We can't have acquittals. If we've been holding these guys for so long, how can we explain letting them get off? We can't have acquittals, we've got to have convictions"

Colonel Davis resigned from the military commissions in October 2007, saying the system had become 'politicized' and he could no longer be effective. His latest statements to The Nation magazine offer the most pointed evidence of the military commission's bias and undermine the Bush administration's claims of ensuring fair trials for the accused."

Weeee! This is the biggest thorn in my side regarding all of this "Post-911 Thinking" going on. In one of our country's founding documents we make the statement that all humans are equal, right? I'm paraphrasing, but that's what is accepted, right?

Well, the exact phrasing is: "all men are created equal."

Please note: it doesn't say that all "Americans" are created equal.

Therefore, EVERY human on the planet deserves the same rights as any American citizen.

So, even if these six guys in Gitmo are guilty of what they are accused of, they STILL deserve a fair trial! I don't care if they're criminals, war criminals or "enemy combatants" (whatever the hell those are). They should still get fair trials and the same rights any other human gets.

If we don't provide what we promise how can anyone outside of the US trust what any of us say?

Now, to me, this doesn't sound like the trials are rigged. However, if the guys in charge of the trials say something like "there can be no acquittals" you have to admit, that screams "unfair bias" all over the damn place.

Just a sidenote here: there have been no convictions for the 911 attacks. There have been just a handful of convictions of terror suspects involved in other attacks not on US soil. We've invaded two countries and ended hundreds of thousands of lives in the interest of catching terrorists, yet we can't seem to convict hardly anyone in a court of law.

How much you wanna bet those six dudes in Guantanamo have exactly nada to do with 911?
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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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Death Photo of Ernie Pyle: WW2 Embedded Reporter

Source: http://www.breitbart.com/…rticle.php

Sorry if anyone is offended by the above photo--I think as pictures of dead people go, this one's pretty tame. Plus many view him as an American hero, so I think it's important that we all see this picture.

See, I always thought that embedded reporting started with Iraq in 2003--but apparently, it goes way back, but wasn't called the same thing. Ernie Pyle was probably the most famous American embedded reporter of World War II. He was shot in the temple by Japanese soldiers and died immediately. It was 1945 and he was 44.

His intensely personal columns covering the frontlines of the war won a Pulitzer and the hearts of America. When he was killed, it made the headlines. Late last year I was visiting a friend of mine up in Burbank --we wandered into a used bookshop where they had an original newspaper reporting the death of Ernie Pyle.

Sadly, that was the first time I'd heard of the man. It sounds like he was an amazing individual. Sadly, the above picture has barely ever been seen and no negatives are known to exist, so I'm trying to put it in front of as many people as possible.

I feel like most Americans don't understand how important and how dangerous it is to be a reporter. Well, a *real* reporter. Not someone like Anderson Cooper or one of the idiots on Fox News, who have make-up and hair people standing by. Pyle was the real thing.
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