‘Perfectly Ridiculous’
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“Whenever anyone talks to me about mad cow, I just pull out a picture of my ex-wife.”
– Interview, Wall Street’s market animal, The Bull, Esquire, January, 2009
European voters knocked the soup bowl over yesterday, creating a change in the air for the financial chaos that’s got the whole region in a choke hold — a Socialist took the big chair in France, while Greece took the route of throwing the bums out, or at least trying.
The head of the right-leaning New Democracy party: “I asked for a strong mandate, but people chose differently. I respect their message.”
A whole motley crew of political parties — some not existent just a year or so ago — must come up with a new coalition government before May 17, or another round of elections must be held.
A mess, but that’s just how austerity sometimes works.
(Illustration found here).
And near-about so here in the good olde US of A.
Yesterday another plot in the plot of the narrative of the political point — Liz Cheney, The Dick‘s daughter, claimed she will/won’t run for the Senate from Wyoming.
Off Fox News — of course — via Crooks and Liars:
“I love Wyoming,” she explained.
“Wyoming is my home.
And what I have been hearing from people all across Wyoming is how important it is that we defeat Barack Obama in 2012.
And they’re very afraid about — you ask people in Wyoming, ‘Are you better off now than you were $5 trillion ago?’
They’ll say, absolutely not.”
“There was a report yesterday that you’re traveling around the state, and that you’re thinking of running for Senate from Wyoming in 2014,” Wallace pressed.
“Look, I have been honored to have been asked to help support the Republican Party in Wyoming,” Cheney replied.
“As I said, it’s my home.
It’s a very special place, but I’m really focused on defeating Barack Obama.
We don’t have the luxury, frankly, of looking beyond this election because this election is so important.”
“And let me tell you, folks: to be continued,” Wallace concluded.
Oh, the joy she would bring — the entire US is bat-shit crazy.
And speaking of which — Michele Bachmann will not go away.
Yesterday on CBS’ Face the Nation (why the shit do these Sunday TV shows have nothing but GOP assholes) Bachmann said women will flock to the Republican standard in November because the GOP’s war on women is just a big ole fairy tale.
Via Raw Story:
“First of all, that’s a myth and it’s not true,” Bachmann insisted. “There’s not a Republican war on women. That’s coming from the Obama re-election team because everything they do right now is — any word that you hear will go through the grid of Obama’s re-election.”
…
“I think this time again what women want, Bob, is they want competence, and, unfortunately, with all due respect to the president, he’s not competent to deal with the economy. Mitt Romney is competent in spades. That’s what women are going to be looking for.”
Most-likely women are looking for someone who’s not a creepy liar.
Howard Dean stepped into the fray a bit later and lambasted Bachmann for being, ah, well, for being Bachmann:
“Michele Bachmann has never had much command of the facts and that shows us exactly why,” the former Vermont governor declared.
“Women are terrified of what the Republicans are talking about.
They’re talking about basically stripping away their ability to have insurance pay for their birth control pills.
Latinos are terrified of the Republicans because they seem to have a total tin ear when it comes to the basic needs of treating people with dignity.”
…
“This candidacy is a shipwreck, and for Michele Bachmann to go out there and claim that women are going to vote for Mitt Romney is perfectly ridiculous.”
And more wisdom from The Bull: “Its and advantage, really. I’m thinking about reclining in a meadow, but I look like I want to kill a man.”
Have a perfectly ridiculous Monday…
‘Deranged, Crazy Person’
Filed Under Bullshit, Madness, War & Politics | Leave a Comment
Mitt Romney gave his most-rich thoughts yesterday on the massacre of Afghan civilians over the weekend: Asked whether he agrees with conservative commentators who say the U.S. should accelerate the pullout, Romney said Monday that he “wouldn’t jump to a new policy” because of a “deranged, crazy person.”
Crazed, of course.
The US Army staff sergeant who perpetrated the slaughter was indeed carrying a shitload of mental baggage, but the incident way-underscores the horror in a decade’s worth of killing children in far off lands which has created a legion of deranged, crazy people.
(Illustration — Salvador Dali’s ‘Soft Self-portrait With Fried Bacon‘ — found here).
First and foremost:
“In making the case for war, the Administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent.
As a result, the American people were led to believe that the threat from Iraq was much greater than actually existed.”
“It is my belief that the Bush Administration was fixated on Iraq, and used the 9/11 attacks by al Qa’ida as justification for overthrowing Saddam Hussein.
To accomplish this, top Administration officials made repeated statements that falsely linked Iraq and al Qa’ida as a single threat and insinuated that Iraq played a role in 9/11.
Sadly, the Bush Administration led the nation into war under false pretenses.
This the June 2008 findings of the US Senate Intelligence Committee , which under sane, rational rules would have sent a shitload of high-in-the-government assholes to the jailhouse.
However, just as with all those banksters that brought the world’s financial house down that same year, not one of those responsible has spent even a second behind bars — talk about crazed and what’s-up-with-that-shit.
One wonders at that staff sergeant’s state of mind when he seemingly methodically killed 16 people, including nine children and an entire family, all 11 members, in a total nutcase of an incident.
A clinical psychiatrist told HuffPost the guy might have gone ‘berserk‘ and lost all mental capacity as berserkers “have this curious quality of icy and flaming rage; all they want to do is destroy, they want nothing to get in the way of their unmediated destruction and killing, and they are truly insensitive to pain. They are totally beyond the society of their own military forces and disconnected from them.”
The sergeant’s entire life will soon be an open book, but we may never know what happened to snap his brain.
Three tours of the nightmare inferno of Iraq might be a clue, but there’s been so much of this ‘berserk‘ shit in the last few years, vets are afraid of the backlash.
From military.com:
“It’s a huge concern,” said Matt Gallagher, an Iraq War vet and senior fellow at Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.
“The only thing missing right now is a powerful visual, but I’m sure someone is going to find a creepy photo of the sergeant in question posing with guns, and that will be blasted everywhere.”
That perception affects the “99 percent of veterans who never have committed any crimes or unnecessary violence,” Gallagher said.
“[It affects] not only job searches, but how friends and family interact with them,” he said.
One must, however, remember this from a non-indicted war criminal: Rumsfeld paused, asked Wilson to repeat the question, then finally replied, “You go to war with the army you have.” Besides, he added, “You can have all the armor in the world on a tank and it can be blown up.”
Juan Cole offers his thoughts this morning:
It should be remembered that frequency and duration of deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan were substantially increased by then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
As a result of the Bush administration’s frenetic pursuit of multiple wars abroad, the small professional military of the US was put under enormous strain.
Deployments were increased from a year to 18 months, and multiple deployments became common.
Because of the prevalence of roadside bombs as an insurgent weapon of choice, brain injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan sky-rocketed.
The murky military occupations of countries where young US troops had little local knowledge produced paranoia and widespread Islamophobia, sometimes reinforced by evangelical hatemongering among the troops. British officers who served with Americans in Iraq were shocked and appalled at the sheer racism they often encountered among their US colleagues, complaining that Americans viewed locals as Untermenschen, a lesser race as the Nazis would have put it.
Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome often went untreated.
Used and discarded in other words.
If these dumb-ass wars aren’t terminated and US military veterans treated for all sorts of war trauma, most-likely more of this kinds of delayed horror will happen.
And who’s the deranged, crazy person?
Afghan Reality
Filed Under Bullshit, War & Politics | Leave a Comment
In all the bullshit noise this past week — even from yesterday’s ‘secular high holy day‘ along with the Three-Ring-Three-Stooges GOP political antics — there’s still folks dying in Afghanistan.
A war now beyond the decade limit, and from all indications, going really, really bad.
An example of the dumb-ass futility of it all: An American soldier shot and killed an Afghan guard at a base in the country’s north, apparently because the American thought the guard was about to attack him, Afghan police said on Sunday.
This war is so messed up, allies are shooting each other — the US GI’s trigger finger was in response to the Afghan military/police people killing NATO troops.
(Illustration found here).
Last month, an Afghan soldier shot and killed four unarmed French troops at a base in eastern Afghanistan, and the whole war operation is worse than deadly.
Civilian deaths increased again in 2011 — up 8 percent from 2010, which saw 2,790 deaths, and an increase of 25 percent from 2009, when 2,412 civilians were killed.
From McClatchy on Saturday:
Mir Ahmad Joyenda, deputy director of the Kabul-based Afghan Research and Evaluation Unit, and a former member of Parliament, said the rise in civilian deaths reported by the U.N. was a reminder that ordinary Afghans were at risk of violence “from morning to night.”
“Nobody’s safe, nobody’s secure,” said Joyenda. “Everyone is suffering.”
The country’s f*ucked.
And now one US solider has opened up something closer to the truth.
Lt. Col Daniel L. Davis has described a reality on the ground considerably inconsistent with the official statements the military presents to political leadership or the American public (via antiwar.com).
Davis posted a document with Armed Forces Journal on his observations on the reality of the other side of the Afghan war.
A few snips:
I saw the incredible difficulties any military force would have to pacify even a single area of any of those provinces; I heard many stories of how insurgents controlled virtually every piece of land beyond eyeshot of a U.S. or International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) base.
I saw little to no evidence the local governments were able to provide for the basic needs of the people.
Some of the Afghan civilians I talked with said the people didn’t want to be connected to a predatory or incapable local government.
From time to time, I observed Afghan Security forces collude with the insurgency.
…
On a patrol to the northernmost U.S. position in eastern Afghanistan, we arrived at an Afghan National Police (ANP) station that had reported being attacked by the Taliban 2½ hours earlier.
Through the interpreter, I asked the police captain where the attack had originated, and he pointed to the side of a nearby mountain.
“What are your normal procedures in situations like these?” I asked.
“Do you form up a squad and go after them?
Do you periodically send out harassing patrols?
What do you do?”
As the interpreter conveyed my questions, the captain’s head wheeled around, looking first at the interpreter and turning to me with an incredulous expression.
Then he laughed.
“No! We don’t go after them,” he said. “That would be dangerous!”
According to the cavalry troopers, the Afghan policemen rarely leave the cover of the checkpoints.
In that part of the province, the Taliban literally run free.
…
To a man, the U.S. officers in that unit told me they had nothing but contempt for the Afghan troops in their area — and that was before the above incident occurred.
In August, I went on a dismounted patrol with troops in the Panjwai district of Kandahar province.
Several troops from the unit had recently been killed in action, one of whom was a very popular and experienced soldier.
One of the unit’s senior officers rhetorically asked me, “How do I look these men in the eye and ask them to go out day after day on these missions? What’s harder: How do I look [my soldier’s] wife in the eye when I get back and tell her that her husband died for something meaningful?
How do I do that?”
One of the senior enlisted leaders added, “Guys are saying, ‘I hope I live so I can at least get home to R&R leave before I get it,’ or ‘I hope I only lose a foot.’
Sometimes they even say which limb it might be: ‘Maybe it’ll only be my left foot.’
They don’t have a lot of confidence that the leadership two levels up really understands what they’re living here, what the situation really is.”
…
If Americans were able to compare the public statements many of our leaders have made with classified data, this credibility gulf would be immediately observable.
Naturally, I am not authorized to divulge classified material to the public.
But I am legally able to share it with members of Congress.
I have accordingly provided a much fuller accounting in a classified report to several members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, senators and House members.
Read the whole post — might piss you off.
Also read the New York Times story on Davis.
And this reader’s comment from another NYT piece on Davis highlights the historical significance of the US military’s continued amnesia:
Those of us who are old enough remember General Westmoreland’s glowing reports on progress in Vietnam right up until we airlifted people out of Saigon by helicopter.
Reality ain’t no bowl game.
Scream Into The Horror of The Night
Filed Under Bullshit, Crime, War & Politics | Leave a Comment
Announce that whatever new approach the U.S. decides on, the U.S. is doing so on a trial basis.
This will give us the ability to readjust and move to another course, if necessary, and therefore not “lose.”
– Donald H. Rumsfeld memorandum, Nov. 6, 2006
(Illustration found here).
In the annuals of world history there’s near-about no match for the horror of the US invasion of Iraq and all its far-flung ugly consequences.
Despite any rational reasoning beyond greed, George Jr.’s little party tipped the world into the hellish crevasse it now finds itself and murdered thousands of Iraqi innocents in the process — and despite the guffaws, a tribunal in Malaysia right-recently found George Jr. and his suck-buddy, Tony Blair, guilty of war crimes for their instigation of the slaughter: The Malaysian tribunal judges ruled that the decision to wage war against Iraq by the two former heads of government was a flagrant abuse of law and an act of aggression that led to large-scale massacres of the Iraqi people.
Why hasn’t the rest of the world jumped?
Nobel Peace Prize nominee, political scientist Michael Haas on just the noncompliance of rational, humane justice:
First, however, it is useful to recall that when the Afghan War began, General Tommy Franks ordered compliance with the Geneva Conventions on October 17, 2001.
On November 13 he was countermanded by an executive order in the form of a military order from President George W. Bush regarding prisoners who were then being collected, though no specific mention was made of the Geneva Conventions.
When the first prisoners arrived at the Naval Base on January 11, 2002, the commanding general, Brigadier General Rick Baccus, ordered compliance with the Geneva Conventions.
His order was then rescinded on February 7 by another executive order signed by George W. Bush making specific reference to the inapplicability of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 but not the 1929 Geneva Convention.
On Guantanamo alone George Jr. and ‘The Dick‘ Cheney should be jailed with the keys thrown into the muddy Potomac River.
And so today, in fanfare and a shitload of lying bullshit, the US ended its “official” military presence in Iraq with a so-called flag-casing ceremony in Baghdad — US defence honcho Leon Panetta added his body weight in bullshit, too.
From Aljazeera English:
Nearly nine years after the start of the controversial invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein and sparked years of violence, Panetta told Iraqis “Your children will have a better future”, and said the US and Iraq would have “a new relationship rooted in mutual interest and mutual respect”.
“We are not about turn our backs on all that has been sacrificed and accomplished in Iraq,” Panetta said.
“Iraq will be tested in the days ahead by terrorism, by those who would seek to divide, by economic and social issues … by the demands of democracy itself,” he said, while adding that the US would be a “committed friend and … partner” to the country.
General Lloyd Austin, the commander of US forces in Iraq, said that the country would be “a source of stability and inspiration in the region”.
And the locals?
“If the Americans have achieved anything, they have achieved it to their own benefit in the first place.
They are the ones who get benefits from this issue.
As for Iraqis, maybe they have the change they have been waiting for, but they paid high price for it as you can see the killings, devastation and sectarian violence.
And up to now the situation is still unstable,” said Qassim Abdullah, an Iraqi citizen.
What benefits?
The Iraqi people see the benefit — a yearly celebration of the US departure.
Via Pakistan’s Daily Times:
Shouting slogans in support of the “resistance,” the demonstrators held up banners and placards inscribed with phrases like, “Now we are free” and “Fallujah is the flame of the resistance.”
In the centre of the city surrounded by the Iraqi army, demonstrators carried posters bearing photos of apparent insurgents, faces covered and carrying weapons.
They also held up pictures of US soldiers killed and military vehicles destroyed in the two major offensives against the city in 2004.
The demonstration was dubbed the first annual “festival to celebrate the role of the resistance.”
In the place of flowers.
President Obama traveled yesterday to Fort Bragg, N.C., to add his two-cents worth to the madness, claiming the Iraqi adventure “an extraordinary achievement,” and let it go at that.
And, of course, the US will continue to have a presence in country: The embassy compound is by far the largest the world has ever seen, at one and a half square miles, big enough for 94 football fields. It cost three quarters of a billion dollars to build (coming in about $150 million over budget). Inside its high walls, guard towers and machine-gun emplacements lie not just the embassy itself, but more than 20 other buildings, including residential quarters, a gym and swimming pool, commercial facilities, a power station and a water-treatment plant.
Along with all this shit, a staff of 16,000.
Iraqi Parliament Speaker Osama Al Nujaifi has called that high number of personnel “illogical.”
Not by warped, horrifying US logic, however.
Again, one wonders, why the jails aren’t full of George Jr.’s lackeys.
The Dick and The Drone
Filed Under Bullshit, Media, Terror | Leave a Comment
(Illustration found here).
The US drone war is the one conflict that’s always continually escalating — even as the US vacates an isolated Pakistani base from where UAV aircraft were launched will apparently not slow the operations down at all.
From Wired: The CIA just got kicked out of a major Pakistani launching pad for the drone war. But just because the agency is packing up its stuff like a dumped lover doesn’t mean the deadly flying robots will head home. They’ll just move to the airbases in nearby Afghanistan. Consider it the drone equivalent of crashing on a friend’s couch for a while.
These machines don’t need no introduction.
And this is the future.
George Jr. started the program, but President Obama has most-definitely put his mark on it.
There were about 30 strikes on Pakistan during Obama’s first year in office, up from about 13 strikes between 2004 and 2007 and in 2009, about 54 attacks, all also in Pakistan.
Last year, the war expanded to include Yemen, and a total of 122 strikes.
In 2011, there have been 81 strikes in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen combined — of course, there’s still Afghanistan, Iraq or Libya, where hot ‘legal‘ wars are being conducted.
Although there’s been a lot of news about drones, last week, Iran got their hands on a piece of US equipment in the form of a RQ-170 Sentinel, when it was somehow downed inside Iranian territory.
And despite Obama formally asking for the craft’s return, Iran says no way jose, considering the Sentinel “war booty.”
From Time this morning:
“Their plane invaded Iran and Iranian forces reacted powerfully,” said Defense Minister Gen. Ahmad Vahidi
“Now, instead of offering an apology to the Iranian nation, they impudently ask for the return of the plane.”
…
Vahidi said the United States should apologize for invading Iranian air space instead of asking for drone back.
“Iran will defend its stance and interests strongly,” Vahidi said in remarks carried by the semi-official Mehr news agency.
Some US officials say Iran won’t get much out of the captured drone, but Russia and China might as both are accustomed to copying military hardware from other countries and the innards of the Sentinel should have ant-tamper measures: At least, it’s supposed to, according to the Boeing engineer. “Dumbest thing in the world if it didn’t.”
Another brick in the wall in the nasty Iranian dust-up.
And now another big opinion in the ways of the war world: Richard ‘The Dick‘ Cheney says Obama is acting like a baby and he should man-up to the Iranians — in an interview with CNN on Monday, The Dick claimed Obama should have ordered an airstrike to destroy the downed Sentinel.
Via Press TV: “The right response to that would have been to go in immediately after it had gone down and destroy it,” Cheney said, adding, “You can do that from the air. You can do that with a quick air strike.”
If your bowels are strong enough, view the CNN interview here.
Use of drones is really most indiscriminate and the US should be ashamed of how these machines kill without remorse and without human feelings.
See the horror of the aftermath of drone attacks here.
From War correspondent Eric Margolis via RT:
“…it is a cheap way to fight, and does not endanger any American lives.
“It is popular on Capital Hill because it appears to be having success and the military has got to come up with something, or the CIA saying ‘we are killing militants’ and filling a body-count list.
But there is a danger here, and that is what American intelligence professionals have been rightly saying for sometime: As the CIA becomes more and more militarized, it is losing its primary mission, which is to provide intelligence and information on an unbiased basis… it is now a participant [in the US’s wars], and its decisions and information will be biased as a result.”
As a result…
(Illustration found here).
Drone on…