Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Shutting down the debate through invitation

Tonight Barack Obama addresses the nation during prime time on the topic of the Iraq War. The US president will lie that he's kept his campaign pledge. (Mara Liason, on NPR's Morning Edition, may be the only MSM reporter to point out he promised 16 months, not 19.) As Barack gears up for a new wave of Operation Happy Talk, Robert Burns (AP) notes, "Historians will sort out the details of what went wrong in Iraq, but already it's possible to point to a keay reason: American troops and diplomats entered the country with little understanding of its ethnic and sectarian divisions and of the deep societal scars left by decades of repressive rule by Saddam [Hussein]." Anne E. Kornblut (Washington Post) reports on the advance swirl around the speech:

"Maybe he's entitled to the partial victory lap, but this is not the right moment for it," said analyst Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution, who has been critical of both Democratic and Republican approaches to the war. "If I were him, I'd wait until we have an Iraqi government, and do it with the Iraqis together."
O'Hanlon said he was "confused about the planned Oval Office speech." It could raise unrealistic expectations among the public about the chances for calm in Iraq, he said. And the timing of the pullout of combat troops may be seen as having more to do with the president's political needs than with real signs of progress on the ground.

The News Chief editorial board notes that this is the second time the US government has declared combat operations over and points out, "Now we are proclaiming the end of 'formal combat operations,' meaning that what the troops do will be either reactive or in support of Iraqi troops. It still will be combat." But the bulk of the press will spin and whore. They will find -- sorry -- uneducated members of the military or War Hawks in the military to put a microphone in front of. NPR featured one such this morning insisting that the US had 'won' even though (afterthought) there weren't any WMD in Iraq. This was followed by Robert Gibbs attempting to hide behind service members, specifically the uninformed one speaking.

What we get from the media is the voices of the War Hawks -- in the Bush administration, in the Barack one, in the military, retired from the military. We just don't get any damn honesty. Even though weapons of mass destruction were not found.

Even though.

Quick aside.

The illegal war was sold on that afterthought.

A functioning democracy would have gotten to the bottom of the lies. We don't have a functioning democracy as evidenced by the fact that Barack Obama ran on change and refused to bring any. He refused to prosecute the crimes against the Constitution, the crimes against democracy, the crimes against the people. And today, he makes time to chat with Bully Boy Bush on the phone. Because? Because Barack Obama is a fraud. Maybe all the idiots can now grasp just how correct Bill Clinton was when he called Barry's alleged opposition to the Iraq War a "fairytale." It is and was a fairytale.

And taking their lead from Barack, the media refuses to ask the questions that need to be asked. Amy Goodman got it wrong in her 2003 critique. She said that the media wouldn't ask the questions before the war started and said they couldn't ask it while it was going on so, when it was over, it would be too late. The Iraq War isn't over. But nearly 8 years later (as they sell the lie that it is over), the media still refuses to ask the questions needed in a democracy.

Eugene Robinson always has been and always will be an idiot and fool. And the Washington Post columnist grandstands on a very thin layer of 'bravery' in his latest column:

George W. Bush elected to send U.S. forces to invade and occupy Iraq, even though there was no urgent reason to do so. I won't rehash all the arguments about what was suspected, reported or "confirmed" about the nonexistent weapons of mass destruction that provided the Bush administration's justification for war. But even if Bush and his aides believed in their hearts that Saddam Hussein was actively seeking to develop nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, they had no reason to believe that the United States or its allies faced an imminent or even proximate threat.


Eugene, idiot ass that he always has been, wants to pretend like a chapter is closing on Iraq and yet he doesn't want to "rehash" the past. But if there was ever a time to rehash the past of the Iraq War, it would be as a sitting president geared up for a big speech on the Iraq War. In other words, Eugene is no longer just lazy and idiot, he's someone who's publicly confessing that his job duties are beyond him and it's really time he was shown the door. Or does he think his stammering performances on MSNBC 'enrich' the national dialogue?

Phyllis Bennis (Foreign Policy In Focus) issues the following statement:

The U.S. occupation of Iraq continues on a somewhat smaller scale, with 50,000 troops. These are combat troops, “re-missioned” by the Pentagon with new tasks, but even Secretary of Defense Gates admits they will have continuing combat capability and will continue counter-terrorism operations. The 4500 Special Forces among them will continue their "capture or kill" raids while building up the Iraqi Special Operations Forces as an El Salvador-style death squad.
The only transition underway is not from U.S. to Iraqi control, but from Pentagon to State Department deployment. Thousands of new military contractors, armored transport, planes, “rapid response” forces and other military resources will all be shifted from Pentagon to State Dept control, thus remaining within the terms of the U.S.-Iraqi Status of forces Agreement that calls for all U.S. troops and Pentagon-controlled mercenaries to leave by the end of 2011.
President Obama’s speech will not use any terms remotely close to “mission accomplished” – because with violence up, sectarianism rampant, the government paralyzed, corruption sky-high and rising, oil contracts creating more violence instead of national wealth, there is no victory to claim.

Will we see or hear Phyllis on the MSM? Will her voice be reflected? Or will we continue to hear from the ones who sold the illegal war and continued it only? The media political spectrum has narrowed even more under Barack. Don't think for a moment, the fraud wasn't backed by Big Business for just that reason. And don't think for a moment that who gets invited to speak and who doesn't goes to what message the outlets want to send.

We'll close with this from Scott Trent's "The Truth About Obama's "Accomplishments" and the Need to Build a Mass Movement " (World Can't Wait):


A friend posted an article today about the "Eight things Obama has done to make the world a more peaceful place." Check out that article here.

It turns out that the article is a year old, and even less true today than it was then. I took the liberty of responding to all eight of the points. As much as we might want these things to be true, there is actually nothing true on that list. It's all deceptive PR from the Obama government intended to silence and placate the people who criticized the Bush regime for these same practices.

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

































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