Showing posts with label iran war. Show all posts
Showing posts with label iran war. Show all posts

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Would Dem leaders work be OK from cop, lawyer, doctor or exterminator?

From impeachment, to ending the Iraq War, to prevent the Iran War, the Democratic leadership in Congress has made at best half-hearted efforts toward representing the public, without using every procedural and investigative option at their disposal, and at worst have fallen all over themselves to enable Bush as in the case of ramping up for the Iran War and funding the Iraq War.

Imagine someone in other professions applying the same kind of effort and getting the same results as Democratic leaders like Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, and Rahm Emanuel.

How long would you continue to employ them?

What would happen to a cop if he applied the same level of effort to a murder investigation?

He tells the grieving family that the victim was in a dangerous neighborhood, which is why he was killed, but neither gives more details nor asks for them. He tells the family they are lucky he's the cop and not the murderer. When pressed, the cop reluctantly investigates some, but when a suspect starts to emerge, he apologizes to the suspect and suggests the law should be changed to make murder legal.

Or a lawyer.

A prosecutor never speaks during the trial for the murder of your loved one except to make lunch arrangements with the defense counsel and try to line up a job with the accused or at least get campaign donations from him. During a break, you stick your head in another trial and notice the prosecutor is objecting and even demanding a mistrial for lesser misconduct than you have seen from the defendant's counsel in your trial. You go back and talk to the prosecutor in your case, and he starts to object on peripheral issues but says a mistrial is "off the table" even though the defense is clearly winning over the jury.

or a judge.

You are a judge in the trial like the one above. The prosecution has put forward compelling evidence beyond a reasonable doubt and the jury has decided to convict the defendant. You rebuke the jury, set aside their verdict, release the defendant, and apologize to him because murder happens to be illegal at the moment, but you hope that will change soon.

or a doctor.

A doctor discovers a cancerous tumor in your abdomen. Instead of removing it, he redirects blood vessels to it. Doing some research on your own, you discover this ''treatment'' will lead to the tumor growing faster, and that removal, chemotherapy, and radiation are the usual treatments. When you confront your doctor with this, he gets offended and asks who has more experience in dealing with cancer, him or you. Meanwhile, the tumor grows to the size of a basketball.

Or an exterminator.

You notice cockroaches. You call the exterminator. When he arrives, he sprays insecticide on your children, leaving them coughing and rubbing their burning eyes, and then takes some food out of your fridge and puts it down where the cockroaches can find it. When they come out, he makes sure they all get enough to eat and sets up a little cockroach playground for them. You try to stomp on the cockroaches, and he grabs your foot to stop you.

and so on.

In any of these other professions, you would not only fire them, but sue them for malpractice.


Wednesday, July 04, 2007

POLL: Is it taxation without representation if those we elect ignore the public will?

There are a number of issues both parties do this on like trade and immigration.

The Democrats in particular ignore their base on these core issues:

  • the Iraq War
  • potential Iran War
  • impeaching Bush & Cheney
  • healthcare reform that eliminates insurance companies or at least makes them subservient to the public good.
In some ways, we have exactly what Bush gave the Iraqis: the appearance of democracy that is intended to anything but actually represent our interests.

Maybe the only thing that's changed since 1776 is who's doing the screwing and how subtly they are doing it.




Is it taxation without representation if those elected ignore public will?
YES--it is taxation without representation. We are suckered into thinking we have a choice then just get screwed from a slightly different position.
NO--business interests are just more effective at working the system than us, so it's our own fault.
NO--people like the glacial, inperceptible change the Democrats pursue. That's what people really dislike about the Patriot Act--passed too darned fast.
other
Free polls from Pollhost.com



Sunday, February 25, 2007

top generals will resign if Bush starts an Iran War

Even though anti-war sentiments put Democrats in the majority of both houses of Congress, we are still seeing a greater dedication to sanity and even our democracy in the Pentagon.

This is almost the exact opposite of the early 60s when the Pentagon gave Kennedy advice that would have led to a nuclear war if followed and the president chose sanity, peace, and patience instead. The soviet union eventually imploded on its own. The Islamic revolution in Iran was on its way to doing the same since the novelty of a religious state has worn thin with older folks, and kids born since the revolution had no use for it in the first place.

But when Bush put our troops two of Iran's borders, it had a similar effect that 9/11 had on us. We ignored the flaws of our cruel, retarded, supposedly religious, profoundly greedy and corrupt and united around him for a time. Iran has done the same (in fairness, I don't know if their president and mullahs are retarded or greedy).


KEY EXCERPTS:

The Sunday Times
February 25, 2007
US generals ‘will quit’ if Bush orders Iran attack
Michael Smith and Sarah Baxter, Washington

“There are four or five generals and admirals we know of who would resign if Bush ordered an attack on Iran,” a source with close ties to British intelligence said. “There is simply no stomach for it in the Pentagon, and a lot of people question whether such an attack would be effective or even possible.”

A British defence source confirmed that there were deep misgivings inside the Pentagon about a military strike. “All the generals are perfectly clear that they don’t have the military capacity to take Iran on in any meaningful fashion. Nobody wants to do it and it would be a matter of conscience for them.

“There are enough people who feel this would be an error of judgment too far for there to be resignations.”

A generals’ revolt on such a scale would be unprecedented. “American generals usually stay and fight until they get fired,” said a Pentagon source. Robert Gates, the defence secretary, has repeatedly warned against striking Iran and is believed to represent the view of his senior commanders.
FULL TEXT:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article1434540.ece


iran

Thursday, October 26, 2006

VIDEO: Bush & co. "Stay the course" then "NEVER said stay the course"

click to see video:




One of the most effective hits on Kerry during the 2004 campaign was "flip flopper," that helped by saying he "voted for the bill before he voted against it" instead of "the later version had changes that I couldn't support" or something like that. But at least he didn't say he never supported it.

This is remarkably similar to what the Bushies did with weapons inspectors in Iraq before the war. One of Bush's demands was that Saddam let weapons inspectors back into Iraq. Apparently, he didn't expect Saddam would actually agree, which he did, and the inspectors found nothing. The Bushies improvised by saying it was because Saddam was hiding the weapons from them therefore we must attack anyway. But once the weapons inspectors pulled out before our attack, Bush went back to saying the war was because he wouldn't let weapons inspectors in as if they had never been there.

And most people swallowed it.

The protagonist's job in the commie dictatorship in 1984 was cutting people who fell from government favor out of news stories and photos, but in real life, that is unnecessary. Most people never think to check the archives and those who get their news from Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, and Fox News probably believed Bush never said "stay the course" as soon as he said he never said it. And if he says he never said he never said it, they will believe that too and dutifully forget the previous revision.



public relations

Sunday, February 19, 2006

How and Why Bush will invade Iran

Most people have correctly noticed that Iran is a much bigger and more culturally unified country than Iraq, and that our troops are too bogged down in Iraq for Bush to invade anyway.

But neither of those are problems if they only plan to occupy the oil producing region near Iraq and bomb enough of the rest to make resistance difficult--it is much easier and less dangerous to smash in a store window, grab the goods, and run than to do a home invasion robbery. Iraq was the home invasion, Iran will be a smash and grab.

Two reasons Bush will do this:
  1. steal the oil per the PNAC plan


  2. stop Iran from trading oil in euros, which could destroy the dollar. I wasn't sure how much credibility to give this dollar/euro until Sharon in Israel announced they would attack Iran in March if the US didn't first. March is when Iran plans to open their market to trade oil in euros.

This has nothing to do with their nuclear program as Iran's willingness to have their fuel processed in Russia shows. If we were really worried about nuclear proliferation, we would attack and invade Pakistan, which is a much less stable country that markets nuke technology and barely contains the fundamentalist terrorist groups in their country.




KEY EXCERPTS:



Annexing Khuzestan; battle-plans for Iran

By Mike Whitney

...Equally astonishing, the administration has coerced both Russia and China into bringing Iran before the United Nations Security Council although (as Mohamed ElBaradei says) “There’s no evidence of a nuclear weapons program.” The surprising capitulation of Russia and China has forced Iran to abandon its efforts for further negotiations; cutting off dialogue that might diffuse the volatile situation.


Bush has no intention of occupying Iran. Rather, the goal is to destroy major weapons-sites, destabilize the regime, and occupy a sliver of land on the Iraqi border that contains 90% of Iran’s oil wealth. Ultimately, Washington will aim to replace the Mullahs with American-friendly clients who can police their own people and fabricate the appearance of representative government. But, that will have to wait. For now, the administration must prevent the incipient Iran bourse (oil-exchange) from opening in March and precipitating a global sell-off of the debt-ridden dollar. There have many fine articles written about the proposed “euro-based” bourse and the devastating effects it will have on the greenback. The best of these are “Petrodollar Warfare: Oil, Iraq and the Future of the Dollar” by William R. Clark, and “The Proposed Oil Bourse” by Krassimir Petrov, Ph.D.

The bottom line on the bourse is this; the dollar is underwritten by a national debt that now exceeds $8 trillion dollars and trade deficits that surpass $600 billion per year. That means that the greenback is the greatest swindle in the history of mankind. It’s utterly worthless. The only thing that keeps the dollar afloat is that oil is traded exclusively in greenbacks rather than some other currency. If Iran is able to smash that monopoly by trading in petro-euros then the world’s central banks will dump the greenback overnight, sending markets crashing and the US economy into a downward spiral.

FULL TEXT:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11743.htm