Everything Old is New Again
UPDATE: At left-look at George. From the Yale paper. Visual proof that integrity has never been the name of his game. Granny says money does not buy class...not even if your last name is Bush.
The Prissy Patriot returns Friday...
Here's news of interest-from Iran-read with a grain of salt... www.mehrnews.com/en/NewsDetail.aspx?NewsID=262552
Coup brewing in Iraq? From Tehran Times Opinion Column
After the collapse of Saddam Hussein'’s dictatorship, Allawi, who was once an Iraqi officer close to Saddam and a prominent member of the now disbanded Baath Party, tried to isolate all of the popular Iraqi political figures, with the help of the United States and certain regional Arab countries.
And now, regional Arab countries'’ satellite networks are trying to portray Allawi as a national hero and savior.
Concurrently with all these measures, at meetings with leaders of some regional Arab countries during a recent trip, Allawi discussed a plan, according to which he would lead a coup in Iraq after reestablishing the Iraqi army and reorganizing the scattered forces of the Baath Party.
The regional Arab countries, the United States, and some other Western countries believe that, at this point in time, only a military dictator can extricate Iraq from the current crisis and that Allawi is the man for the job.
This plan is being considered because the United States and certain Arab countries fear a Shia victory in Iraq's December 15 parliamentary election will lead to the formation of a Shia Crescent in the region.
Is this Condi's answer? "Oh, we closed them. The prisons which may or may not exist."
www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17478410%255E1702,00.html
CIA prisons in Europe 'closed'
Before leaving Washington for Europe today, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, defended US treatment of terrorism suspects.
She did not directly address the allegation that the CIA had run secret prisons in Eastern Europe, however, she reaffirmed the US did not use torture.
ABC News cited intelligence officers as saying that Ms Rice could say that because of a presidential finding that approved six refined methods of interrogation, not defined by the US as torture.
When Dubya and Condi say the United States "does not torture"- Prissy thinks they are saying that they have not personally participated in the use of such techniques.
From Prissy's Inbox: This note and article is from a Vietnam Veteran friend:
I knew when Negroponte (US Ambassador to Guatemala that experienced many death squads covertly supported and allowed to operate with US sanction in the 80s) first went to Iraq as the new US Ambassador, it wouldn't be too many years before a story like this appeared...
Original link www.bushwatch.net/floyd.htm
Chaos In Iraq: Gross Incompetence or Sinister Policy?
By Chris Floyd December 3, 2005 The recent revelations about the virulent spread of death squads ravaging Iraq have only confirmed for many people the lethal incompetence of the Bush Regime, whose brutal bungling appears to have unleashed the demon of sectarian strife in the conquered land. The general reaction, even among some war supporters, has been bitter derision: "Jeez, these bozos couldn't boil an egg without causing collateral damage."
But what if the truth is even more sinister? What if this murderous chaos is not the fruit of rank incompetence but instead the desired product of carefully crafted, efficiently managed White House policy?
Investigative journalist Max Fuller marshals a convincing case for this conclusion in a remarkable work of synthesis based on information buried in reams of mainstream news stories and public Pentagon documents. Piling fact on damning fact, he shows that the vast majority of atrocities attributed to "rogue" Shiite and Sunni militias are in fact the work of government-controlled commandos and "special forces," trained by Americans, "advised" by Americans and run largely by former CIA assets, Global Research reports.
(Daniel Ellsberg in Crawford, TX Thanksgiving 2005 with Cindy Sheehan. Ellsberg was the leaker of the "Pentagon Papers" the documents which showed the US public was being decieved about Vietnam and is a Veteran for Peace)
We first reported here in August 2003 that the United States was already hiring Saddam's security muscle for "special ops" against the nascent insurgency and reopening his torture haven, Abu Ghraib. Meanwhile, powerful Shiite militias -- including religious extremists armed and trained by Iran -- were loosed upon the land. As direct "Coalition" rule gave way to various "interim" and "elected" Iraqi governments, these violent gangs were formally incorporated into the Iraqi Interior Ministry, where the supposedly inimical Sunni and Shiite units often share officers and divvy up territories.
Bush helpfully supplied these savage gangs -- who are killing dozens of people each week, Knight-Ridder reports -- with U.S. advisers who made their "counter-insurgency" bones forming right-wing death squads in Colombia and El Salvador. Indeed, Bush insiders have openly bragged of "riding with the bad boys" and exercising the "Salvador option," lauding the Reagan-backed counter-insurgency program that slaughtered tens of thousands of civilians, Newsweek reports. Bush has also provided a "state-of-the-art command, control and communications center" to coordinate the operation of his Iraqi "commandos," as the Pentagon's own news site, DefendAmerica, reports. The Iraqi people can go without electricity, fuel and medicine, but by God, Bush's "bad boys" will roll in clover as they carry out their murders and mutilations.
For months, stories from the Shiite south and Sunni center have reported the same phenomenon: people being summarily seized by large groups of armed men wearing police commando uniforms, packing high-priced Glocks, using sophisticated radios and driving Toyota Land Cruisers with police markings. The captives are taken off and never seen again -- unless they turn up with a load of other corpses days or weeks later, bearing marks of the gruesome tortures they suffered before the ritual shot in the head. Needless to say, these mass murders under police agencies are rarely investigated by the police.
(An "armored-up" Humvee -armor added after manufactoring-after being hit by a suicide car bomber in Iraq- Dubya has ordered US soldiers 25,000 unarmored Mini-Vans to replace the HumVee-neither were made for combat conditions)
The Bushists may have been forced to ditch their idiotic fantasies of "cakewalking" into a compliant satrapy, but they have by no means abandoned their chief goals in the war: milking Iraq dry and planting a permanent military "footprint" on the nation's neck. If direct control through a plausible puppet is no longer possible, then fomenting bloody chaos and sectarian strife is the best way to weaken the state. The Bushists are happy to make common cause with thugs and zealots in order to prevent the establishment of a strong national government that might balk at the ongoing "privatizations" that have continued apace behind the smokescreen of violence, or at the planned opening of Iraq's oil reserves to select foreign investors -- a potential transfer of some $200 billion of Iraqi people's wealth into the hands of a few Bush cronies, The Independent reports.
The violence is already dividing the county into more rigid sectarian enclaves, The New York Times reports, as Shiites flee Sunni commandos and Sunnis flee Shiite militias in the grim tag team of their joint endeavor. It's all grist for the Bushist mill: An atomized, terrorized, internally riven society is much easier to manipulate. And of course, a steady stream of bloodshed provides a justification for maintaining a U.S. military presence, even as politic plans for partial "withdrawal" are bandied about.
There's nothing new in this; Bush is simply following a well-thumbed playbook. In 1953, the CIA bankrolled Islamic fundamentalists and secular goon squads to destabilize the democratic government of Iran -- which selfishly wanted to control its own oil -- and pave the way for the puppet Shah, as the agency's own histories recount. In 1971, CIA officials admitted carrying out more than 21,000 "extra-judicial killings" in its Phoenix counter-insurgency operation in Vietnam. In 1979, the CIA began sponsoring the most violent Islamic extremist groups in Afghanistan -- supplying money, arms, even jihad primers for schoolchildren -- to destabilize the secular, Soviet-allied government and provoke the Kremlin into a costly intervention, as Robert Dreyfus details in his new book, "Devil's Game." Later, Saudi magnate Osama bin Laden joined the operation, and sent his men to the United States for "anti-Soviet" terrorist training, as the BBC's Greg Palast reports.
The policy has been remarkably consistent for more than half a century. To augment the wealth and power of the elite, U.S. leaders have supported -- or created -- vicious gangs of killers and cranks to foment unrest, eliminate opponents and terrorize whole nations into submission. The resulting carnage in the target countries and the inevitable blowback against ordinary Americans mean nothing to these Great Gamesters; that's simply the price of doing business. Bush's "incompetence" is just a mask for stone-cold calculation.
Annotations
Crying Wolf: Media Disinformation and Death Squads in Occupied Iraq www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=FUL20051110&articleId=1230 Global Research, Nov. 10, 2005
Frontline Police of Iraq are Waging Secret War of Vengeance observer.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5337535-102275,00.html The Observer, Nov. 20, 2005
Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam www.amazon.com/gp/product/0805076522/103-0283255-8949415?n=283155 Metropolitan Books, 2005
Killings Linked to Shiite Squads in Iraqi Police Force www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-death29nov29,0,7693413,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines Los Angeles Times, Nov. 29, 2005
The Salvador Option msnbc.msn.com/id/6802629/site/newsweek/ Newsweek, Jan. 14, 2005
Die Laughing: The Bush Way of Rehabilitation www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=313&Itemid=1 Empire Burlesque, Aug. 29, 2003
Iraqi Guards Seen as Death Squads www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/ny-wopoli1116,0,365886.story?coll=ny-world-big-pix Newsday, Nov. 15, 2005
Sunnis Accuse Iraqi Military of Kidnappings and Slayings nytimes.com/2005/11/29/international/middleeast/29security.html?ei=5094&en=f18810368c98ae2c&hp=&ex=1133326800&adxnnl=1&partner=homepage&adxnnlx=1133280039-8FtkG5vfcG2bm88QbSCt9g&pagewanted=print New York Times, Nov. 28, 2005
Sunni men in Baghdad targeted by attackers in police uniforms www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/special_packages/iraq/11999387.htm Knight-Ridder, June 27. 2005
Abuse of Prisoners in Iraq Widespread, Officials Say www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/13278134.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp Knight-Ridder, Nov. 29, 2005
Robert Dreyfus on Bush's Deadly Dance With Islamic Theocrats www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=39971 TomDispatch, Nov. 30, 2005
A History of Violence: Robert Dreyfuss Interview salon.com/books/int/2005/11/28/dreyfuss/print.html Salon.com, Nov. 28, 2005
Documents From the Phoenix Program www.thememoryhole.org/phoenix/ The Memory Hole, May 2003
Secrets of History: The CIA in Iran www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/041600iran-cia-index.html New York Times, April 16, 2000
The Hidden History of CIA Torture www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=1795 TomDispatch.com, Sept. 9, 2004
The World's Most Dangerous Man www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=8185 Antiwar.com, Nov. 30, 2005
Abuse Worse Than Under Saddam, Says Iraqi Leader www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1651810,00.html The Observer, Nov. 27, 2005
Revealed: The Grim New World of Iraqi Torture Camps observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1520136,00.html The Observer, July 3, 2005
Lost Amid the Rising Tide of Detainees in Iraq New York Times, Nov. 21, 2005
Did the President spike the investigation of bin Laden? www.nthposition.com/didthepresidentspike.php Greg Palast, Nth Position, March 2003
If the CIA Had Butted Out [In Iran] www.zmag.org/bouzidlat.htm Los Angeles Times, Oct. 21, 2001
Up in the Air: Where Is the Iraq War Headed Next? www.truthout.org/docs_2005/112805Y.shtml The New Yorker, Nov. 5, 2005
Private Security Crews Add to Fear in Baghdad www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/27/AR2005112700816_pf.html The Washington Post, Nov. 28, 2005
UK Funds Aid Iraqi Torture Units observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1520186,00.html The Observer, July 3, 2005
The CIA and Operation Phoenix in Vietnam www.serendipity.li/cia/operation_phoenix.htm Ralph McGehee, Feb. 19, 1996
U.S. Senate Review of Operation Phoenix homepage.ntlworld.com/jksonc/docs/phoenix-scfr-19700217.html United States Senate, Feb. 17 to March 19, 1970
Counter-Revolutionary Violence: Bloodbaths in Fact & Propaganda mass-multi-media.com/CRV/#sec10 Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman
Project X, Drugs and Death Squads www.consortiumnews.com/archive/lost19.html Consortium News, 1997
Phoenix Project: It's How We Fought the War www.commondreams.org/views01/0503-02.htm Los Angeles Times, May 3, 2001
The Phoenix Program Revisited www.counterpunch.org/valentine05152004.html CounterPunch, May 15, 2004
The Gentlemanly Planners of Assassinations slate.msn.com/?id=2073470 Slate.com, Nov. 1, 2002 *************************************************************
More information:
Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Inc. (773) 276-4189 e-mail: vvaw@vvaw.org www.vvaw.org
Fighting for veterans, peace and justice since 1967
Quotes of the Day
Oh you got credit LBJ...for 58,000 Americans and millions of Vietnamese deaths ...I don't believe I'll ever get credit for anything I do in foreign affairs, no matter how successful it is, because I didn't go to Harvard.~Lyndon B. Johnson
Our numbers have increased in Vietnam because the aggression of others has increased in Vietnam. There is not, and there will not be, a mindless escalation. ~Lyndon B. Johnson
More from Dubya's play book of war-just insert "Iraq" for "Vietnam"...
Our purpose in Vietnam is to prevent the success of aggression. It is not conquest, it is not empire, it is not foreign bases, it is not domination. It is, simply put, just to prevent the forceful conquest of South Vietnam by North Vietnam.
~Lyndon B. Johnson
I find it rather easy to portray a businessman. Being bland, rather cruel and incompetent comes naturally to me. I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones
The Prissy Patriot will return on Friday with Hot Links and Friday Funnies!
