Elaine Meinel Supkis
At first, it was 'stay the course' all the time, then 'we are turning corners' all the time and now the new plan is 'passing milestones' all the time. How about 'off the cliff' all the time? Things get worse and worse in Iraq and the Iranian kitty cat has a neat solution: Iran will join in the military patrols all over the Middle East! Easy, no?
Milestones one the road to doom.
October 27, 2006
BY ANDREW GREELEY
It would appear that two weeks before the election, President Bush may be revising the course as well as staying it. Perhaps this is the ultimate Karl Rove scam: We will stay the course until victory in Iraq, but we will set up "milestones" that will in effect be a schedule for withdrawal. We will have our cake and eat it too. After all, as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld himself has said, Iraq belongs to the Iraqis; it's up to them to take it over.
None of them are being blown up. If the Pentagon was being blown up...oops. Already done that!
The milestones have replaced the corners which replaced the straight ahead which replaced the mission accomplished and the only one who is accomplishing missions is bin Laden. All the violent moves we make makes things worse. There is no end to all this, none at all.
We egged Pakistan's dictator into bombing a school at night.
By HABIBULLAH KHANKHAR, Pakistan (AP) - Pakistani troops backed by missile-firing helicopters destroyed a purported al-Qaida-linked training facility in a northwestern tribal area near the Afghan border Monday, officials said. At least 20 people were killed.
The pre-dawn attack targeted a religious school, or madrassa, holding 70-80 militants in Chingai village near Khar, the main town in the Bajur tribal district, said army spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan.
The bodies of 20 tribesmen killed in the attack were lined in a field near the madrassa before an impromptu burial attended by thousands of locals, according to an Associated Press reporter at the scene.
How many minds and hearts were won with that gesture? Is it going to be better for us or worse? By next week we will know as counterstrikes and riots burst into flame. So far, every time we or our puppets do something like this, things get worse. I don't see it getting better. The reaction of the people who witnessed this was to take care of the dead and to show defiance towards the Great Satan.
A hint for America: if someone wants us to look like a Great Satan, the stupidest thing we could do is to act like a Great Satan. We aren't supposed to be conquerers winning land and wars, we are supposed to be saviors bringing peace, prosperity and freedom to Muslims. Our military as well as our media keeps forgetting this stuff even as various media outlets and politicians claim we want to do this in Darfur, too.
TEHRAN, Oct. 29 (Xinhua) -- Iran said on Sunday that a security cooperation treaty among the six states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) plus Iran and Iraq would be the best way to maintain security in the Gulf region, the official IRNA news agency reported.Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad-Ali Hosseini made the remarks when asked at a weekly press briefing to comment upon the military maneuvers by the United States, Britain, France, Italy, Australia and Bahrain in the Gulf.
On Sunday, the U.S. Navy said that vessels from six countries began a naval training exercise off the Iranian coast in the Persian Gulf aimed at blocking smuggling of nuclear weapons and arms proliferation.
And Russia wants to join NATO, too. We don't want this, we want to dominate the Middle East. This means waving a big, fat club while bellowing and bleeding to death. A great plan if one is suicidal. And speaking of war crimes while suppressing rebellions: Saddam's obvious sentencing is delayed.
By Mariam KarounyBAGHDAD, Oct 29 (Reuters) - A court trying Saddam Hussein for crimes against humanity could delay its verdict by a few days, the chief prosecutor said on Sunday, in a move that would shift the announcement until after U.S. midterm elections.
The U.S.-backed court had been due to deliver a verdict on Nov. 5, two days before U.S. elections in which President George W. Bush's Republicans fear they could lose control of Congress.
The chief prosecutor, Jaafar al-Moussawi, said the Iraqi High Tribunal was still working on the judgment. "We will know a day or two before the trial if they are ready to announce the verdict," Moussawi told Reuters.
Saddam could go to the gallows if he is found guilty over his role in the killing of 148 Shi'ite Muslims in the village of Dujail after a 1982 assassination attempt.
Bush shoved Maliki and so Maliki kicks Bush in the shins. Heh. Next: Bush's trial for the destruction of Fallujah. We didn't kill the measly numbers Saddam killed. We go big-time when we rampage. And no one can punish us, either. Nayyyy.
Iraq's new political team needs foreign invaders to stay in power.
By Paul Holmes and Mariam KarounyBAGHDAD, Oct 30 (Reuters) - Iraq plans to ask the United Nations Security Council to extend the mandate governing the presence of U.S.-led forces in Iraq for another year, Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said on Monday.
"The presence of the multinational force is indispensable for the security and stability of Iraq and of the region at the moment," Zebari told Reuters in an interview.
This is beyond stupid, this is called 'treason' and of course, the people doing this will be hung one fine day. Um. Like the guy in Afghanistan who worked with the Soviets.
And the rebels are very well armed and trained by the USA as I have pointed out in the past.
October 30, 2006
U.S. Is Said to Fail in Tracking Arms for Iraqis
By JAMES GLANZThe answers came Sunday from the inspector general’s office, which found discrepancies in American military records on where thousands of 9-millimeter pistols and hundreds of assault rifles and other weapons have ended up. The American military did not even take the elementary step of recording the serial numbers of weapons provided to Iraqis, the inspector general found, making it impossible to track or identify any that might have fallen into the wrong hands.
Exactly where untracked weapons could end up was not examined in the report, although black-market arms dealers thrive on the streets of Baghdad, and official Iraq Army and police uniforms can easily be purchased as well, presumably because government shipments are intercepted or otherwise corrupted.
I like the 'intercepted or otherwise corrupted,' spin! Um, hate to tell the Times this, but the reason so many uniforms and weapons are 'circulating' is due to the fact that the people we train are joining only so they can get this stuff and then run off and use it against us and other ethnic groups! Who would have thought of such a devious plan except for around 500,000 Iraqis? Heh. I thought of how this could work! Warned about this several years ago!
And as always, I was right. And it isn't hard to figure out, either. The Germans didn't arm the people they invaded. They knew they were Nazis, you see! We think we are not Nazis. So we end up being very stupid Nazis. Well, I must say, the Iraqis certainly have passed more than one intelligence test the Pentagon generals failed.
By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN, Associated Press Writer 44 minutes ago
BAGHDAD, Iraq - At least 80 people were killed or found dead in Iraq on Monday, including 33 victims of a bomb attack on laborers lined up to find a day's work in Baghdad's Sadr city Shiite slum. The U.S. military announced the death of the 100th service member killed in combat this month.U.S. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley made an unannounced visit to the Iraqi capital where he met with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his Iraqi counterpart for talks on military and political coordination, the government announced.
Hadley was accompanied in the talks by U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad.
Hadley's trip was not announced in advance in keeping with security precautions taken for visits to Baghdad by senior U.S. officials, said Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for the National Security Council in Washington.
I suppose Bush doesn't care about these milestones because he can't do numbers. Or maybe he just doesn't care. He once talked about 'a family of four' and then said, 'They get four child deferments of $500.' which some people said, meant Bush couldn't count since a family of four has only two children but what I think is, he assumed this family would be four ORPHANS who lost both mommy and daddy in Iraq's endless war.
The fact that all our neoconmen have to sneak in and out of Iraq is funny as hell. Bush was very vain about his several very sneaky, Gollumish trips there. In and out in a flash and no warning even to the puppets who rule in our name! Hahaha! Aren't we clever, Precious?
Yessssss.
Elaine,
Time for another flat earth story:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/103006F.shtml
I had no idea...
Posted by: D. F. Facti | October 30, 2006 at 04:46 PM
D.F., One of the things I noticed in that story is simply this: The NYT does absolutely nothing when one of its most famous writers admits, essentially, to lying by writing about a subject he knew nothing about. Was there ever more glaring proof of the total collapse of journalistic ethics in the US?
Speaking of the press, I file everything the Pentagon says under little lies, big lies, or whoppers. From the CNN story on the Pakistan school bombing: In Afghanistan, U.S. military spokesman Maj. Matt Hackathorn denied the U.S. was involved in the strike. "It was completely done by the Pakistani military," he told the AP.
Not DONE by the US is probably one of those truths that tell a lie. We planned it, provided mission details and intelligence, armed the attackers with weapons and bombs, ordered the launches, etc. We were the finger pushing the finger on the trigger. It's irrelevant if US planes and helicopters were used. In addition, the Pakistani people aren't going to be duped by the Pentagon's transparent lies. They'll know who issued the kill command.
The same story talks about blood and body parts being blown all over the countryside. Your "hearts and mind" reference is exactly right, Elaine. The loathing, the all-consuming hatred that many Middle Easterners understandably feel toward us will now be directed not only at Americans but also at leaders like Musharraf. Come to think of it, he ought to read a biography of Benito Mussolini.
Posted by: Daliwood | October 30, 2006 at 05:15 PM
As I predicted, the fires of rage are now out of control in Pakistan!
gads.
Total insanity.
Posted by: Elaine Meinel Supkis | October 30, 2006 at 09:29 PM
As for Friedman: I have done many savage cartoons about that creep.
I truly hate him with a passion. The rich twerp. Note how I talk about his stupid flat earth all the time. He should be flattened by a steamroller.
Posted by: Elaine Meinel Supkis | October 30, 2006 at 09:31 PM
I used to call it the 'Corporate Media System'. Now I call it the 'Rathole Media Conspiracy'.
This Friedman character can obviously afford to have a Rathole constructed to save his scabrous ass when we all upchuck our lungs in the Apocalypse he and his neocon friends are foisting upon us. What will they do when I pop out with a flamethrower and a tank of gasoline? They will have guards. But if they have too many guards, they will eventually have mutiny. I need to start building the right surveillance technology to sort out the Friedman types.
Posted by: blues | November 03, 2006 at 12:30 AM