War, Politics, and Life by Bruce Maulden
Interview of Seymour Hersh by Arabic daily, Asharq Al-Awsat, via AlterNet: I really believe something happened to America; after 9/11 we became a different country. That is fine, presidents sometimes might want to do that, but my issue is how did Bush do it? How did he beat the press? How did he beat the…
Life as we know it is coming to a quick, sure end. A story this morning is disturbing: So burn this into your mind: between 2007 and 2008 the IEA (International Energy Agency) radically changed its assessment. Until this year’s report, the agency mocked people who said that oil supplies might peak. In the foreword…
A war that just keeps on giving, and in lieu of current events, now the shoe could be on the other foot. Five years ago, Decider George blubbered bring ’em on like his ass was actually on the line — a big mouth that killed a lot of people. Now Mullah Omar and his Taliban…
Bloomberg reported Friday a certain Turkish shoe is flying off the shelf (h/t TPM): Baydan has received orders for 300,000 pairs of the shoes since the attack, more than four times the number his company sold each year since the model was introduced in 1999. … “We’ve been selling these shoes for years but, thanks…
During the daily US State Department press briefing Thursday, Sean McCormack said the infamous shoe-throwing incident last weekend will be eclipsed by other more-important shit 50 years from now. An image, though, for pure foolish failure: A shoe-gram for the last eight years. (Illustration found here). Also a pure snapshot of twisted, historical logic. (h/t:…
Another observation from the UK’s Patrick Cockburn on last weekend’s shoe-throwing-at-Decider George incident and how these press conferences, media glad-handing photo ops can be highly misleading. Even with all the Iraqi public support for the shoe bomber. I used to comfort myself with the thought that these official visits did little harm even if they…
War correspondents are a relatively new entity on history’s battlefields, only since the middle of the 19th century have these adrenaline-driven reporters been around to point out foolish, fatal horrors of war. In the Crimean War (1853-1856), William Howard Russell is credited with being the world’s first battlefield reporter. Others followed, such as Winston Churchhill,…
Advice from fabricators and twisters of truth. The current White House people have produced “contingency plans” for President-Elect Obama in case some emergency might quickly pop up in the first few weeks of his administration, which in turn, creates the silly scenario of actually taking serious the managing director of the White Star Line. (Illustration…
Under the newly-approved SOFA arrangement in Iraq, US troops have to be out by 2011. This dovetails with President-Elect Obama’s 16-month commitment to pull the plug on the Iraqi misadventure, but the way things happen, this may or may not be the reality. Decider George’s Middle East entanglements leave a narrow window of opportunity to…
As the UK prepares to remove its Iraqi operations out in a couple of months — in a “humiliating” withdrawal — Decider George’s last visit to that ruined country this past weekend windows the disaster this past near-eight years has been. From a UK (Scottish) commentary: We can ask, nevertheless. What has it all been…