USA Imperialism

[Michaelangelica]

Sure I'll send you parcels. They'll probably come for me first though. :eek2:

Meet you there. The climate sounds nice

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

 

Reporter who broke story on secret U.S. pact appeals

Kyodo News

 

A former Mainichi Shimbun reporter filed an appeal Monday against a district court ruling rejecting his claim that his career was ruined by an illegal indictment over his report about a secret U.S.-Japan pact on the reversion of Okinawa.

 

Takichi Nishiyama, 75, sought 33 million yen in compensation and an apology from the government, arguing his report that Japan secretly shouldered $ 4 million in costs for Okinawa's 1972 reversion was backed up by the release of U.S. documents and by a retired Foreign Ministry diplomat who admitted taking part in crafting the accord.

 

The Tokyo District Court ruled in March that his right to a claim expired as the 20 years during which he should have filed the suit has passed.

 

It did not rule on whether the secret pact really existed.

Japan Times.

You would think we would know 60 years after the event.

[TheFaithfulStone]

Oddly enough, I seem to be the only American in this thread.

 

I mean, it's hard for me to "refute" your accusations of imperialism, since I think a lot of them are probably true. But I also have to say that I think a lot of the talk of "imperialism" is probably ratcheted up rhetoric for things that all nation-states do.

 

In the case of the US, we can be "imperialistic" because "we" have the power to do so. When Ethiopia attacks Sudan, it's not imperialism? What about when India attacks Pakistan (or vice versa) because they want Kashmir? When Iran attacks British boats in Iraqi waters because of a territorial dispute over the coast line?

 

The point is that the US is a nation - it's a collective group of people. As such I imagine that it acts "morally" at a much lower percentage than any individual. Whether or not it acts more or less morally than any other country, I don't know. I suspect it's not looking out for it's own interest and to hell with everyone else any moreso than other countries, but that may not be true.

 

That said, I have no problem with pointing out all the awful things we Yanks have done (and we've done a lot) or for holding us to a standard where we SHOULDN'T do awful things. Just because everybody else behaves badly doesn't mean it's okay for us to do it as well.

 

Yes, yes, yes... USA bad. USA worse than everyone else? I doubt it.

 

 

Re: the Hawaiian independence movement. The "Independence" crowd is actually pretty small. The larger, more moderate movement want what the Indians have on the mainland, which is kind of "State-within-a-State" movement. Wiki knows all

 

Frankly, though, the Wiki paints all of the factions as pretty equal. When I lived in Hawai'i, all of the native Hawaiians I talked to, not ONE wanted total independence. The guys like ALOHA, and David Sai are pretty much extremists, and although they may be admired, most wouldn't actually want to be independent of the US. Most of Native Hawaiians just think that they got screwed in pretty much the same way as the Indian tribes (which they did) and would like to see something similar to the Indian Nations set up in Hawaii. The OHA is widely considered a joke - a kind of BIA, but run entirely by the people it's designed to oppose.

 

Basically, the consensus position among Native Hawaiians is that they should be treated largely the same as mainland Native Americans.

 

TFS

- your dirty haole -

[Buffy]

Here's another data point: Iran is very actively supporting Hezbollah, Shia Militias in Iraq, etc., etc. That is, they are acting like a classical Imperialist. Why is it that no one calls them one?

 

Hang loose, brah,

Buffy

[Tormod]

Here's another data point: Iran is very actively supporting Hezbollah, Shia Militias in Iraq, etc., etc. That is, they are acting like a classical Imperialist. Why is it that no one calls them one?

 

Perhaps because they don't pretend not to be Imperialist? :hihi:

[silverslith]

Here's another data point: Iran is very actively supporting Hezbollah, Shia Militias in Iraq, etc., etc. That is, they are acting like a classical Imperialist. Why is it that no one calls them one?

 

Hang loose, brah,

Buffy

 

Proof please buffy.

And I don't mean US/UK spin designed to make a case for invasion.

More likely the US/UK are organising and arming those militias. They've done it everywhere else since they brought down scotland with 12 cambells.

Most people don't call Iran Imperialists because they have shown no sign of imperialism. They are a little nationalist but magnitudes less than the US.

[Buffy]

Proof please buffy.

And I don't mean US/UK spin designed to make a case for invasion.

Any such intelligence has to be supported by looking at the sources. Here's one from ABC (US) News that is a middle of the road source. But even the wacko leftist publications like the Washington Post (which is certified as "wacko leftist" by folks like Michelle Malkin and Rush Limbaugh), and even the extreme anti-Bush blogs like Think Progress are emphasizing that it is going on. Iran really seized those British Marines in order to secure the release of Iranians who were involved in moving arms and supplies into Iraq.

 

No the debate is not *whether* there is any arming and support of Iraqi Militias, its about what that means to the US. The Administration has been trying to say that its purpose is to attack US troops, when in fact Shia Militias have--up until this week at least--been targeting Sunnis almost exclusively. Its the Sunni Militias and to a lesser extent al Qaeda operatives who have been attacking US troops.

 

More likely the US/UK are organising and arming those militias. They've done it everywhere else since they brought down scotland with 12 cambells.

In Iraq, the US has been arming the Militias through stupidityby accident, because they give arms to the Iraqi Army and Police who then disappear with their weapons into the night. I won't argue with that, but its hardly the majority source.

 

And then there's the other major mid-east conflict: are you going to argue that the US/UK are arming Hezbollah? Hezbollah has an *amazing* amount of hardware and *money*. Again, lots of reporting on this from across the entire spectrum of news sources (WaPo, the United Nations, and even the Arabic press!

 

Just because the US/UK/France/name-your-favorite-western-imperialist-power has done it in the past does not mean that everyone else is innocent. That's not logical.

Most people don't call Iran Imperialists because they have shown no sign of imperialism. They are a little nationalist but magnitudes less than the US.

"Shown no sign?" As Tormod said above, "because they don't pretend not to be Imperialist"! Per dictionary.com, Imperialism is defined as "the policy of extending the rule or authority of an empire or nation over foreign countries, or of acquiring and holding colonies and dependencies." I guess you can try to say that because they don't explicitly say they want to *rule* Iraq or Lebanon, that they're not Imperialist, but then neither do the US or UK who--except for the neo-con wingnuts--expressly seek the goal of creating free-standing democracies. You either apply this definition consistently, or you misrepresent the situation to favor "your side."

 

Personally, I would call the Bush Administration's policy quite Imperialist, but I would also call Khameni's (and his errand boy Amadinejad's) policy just as Imperialistic.

 

Pots and kettles are both black,

Buffy

[LaurieAG]

More US/UK Imperialism: echelon the global spy network that intercepts all our telephone,radio,internet and email and faxes worldwide:

 

Echelon doesn't/didn't catch many terrorists, but it will always be a good tool for industrial espionage purposes.

[freeztar]

Oddly enough, I seem to be the only American in this thread.

 

Like wolves in sheep clothing, we lie silent...

 

nice suit btw

 

But seriously, this worldwide turbulence needs to stabilize soon if we have any chance of changing the situation at hand, without distressing millions of people!

 

Unfortunately, it appears that Imperialism, of all kinds, will only stop when there is balance.

[Buffy]

Echelon doesn't/didn't catch many terrorists, but it will always be a good tool for industrial espionage purposes.

The problem with this is that the fact that the information is being captured is so sensitive, that the US Government can't afford to use this much. Moreover, its usually been used--according to rumors only--mostly against other *rich* countries: I've heard tell that Boeing was given info to beat out Airbus on some large contracts, but seriously, if this was widespread, it would destroy world trade.

 

It has been used mostly to sift bank transaction data, which has been very useful in pretty much shutting down international money laundering, which most countries actually like, and they mostly *cooperate* with the US on this!

 

No, actually the *most* widespread use of this stuff has been turned inward to spy on *Americans*. Remember, the DoD and CIA and NSA have almost no interpreters in interesting languages like Arabic or Pasho (heck the Army has been busy discharging those it finds are gay), so Eschelon (the international wiretapping initiative) doesn't produce anything they can even use! As to the American taps, in spite of vague and unsupported claims that it has "stopped terrorist acts" it has been used exclusively for stopping minor money laundering and pornography cases. What is your liberty worth?

 

Sure its horrifying, but actually Eschelon has been a bit of a bust...unless you're an American....

 

What's that heavy breathing,

Buffy

[freeztar]

What is your liberty worth?

 

More than our collective incompetence.

I'm not rushing out to Iraq, nor would I criticize those that do. I just think our timing is off and in the vein of this thread, might be percieved as imperialistic. As you pointed out Buffy, many countries are guilty. Micro-Imperialism is rampant these days as well.

 

I'll quote John Stuart Mill (On Liberty) to summarize:

He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation.

[Boerseun]

No single country today can survive without a healthy economy. Command economies have a tendency to completely collapse. What a country needs, is to have a fertile environment for companies to do business in, be it manufacture, mining, anything, really.

 

China being a bit of a contradiction, having a booming 'command' economy. But the boom only realised after the tight reigns they had on their business environment was slackened, and a healthy business environment was created. China's economic policies is very much dictated by business, after all, most companies will simply withdraw from China if its policies goes against their wishes. Like raising wages, for instance.

 

But to cut a long story short, governments act the way they do nowadays in order to protect their economies. In the olden days, countries waged war based on nationalism and ideology. Nationalistic and ideological wars are becoming smaller and more localized in scope. The Big Wars of today and tomorrow is resource-driven, and protectionist of resource-flow and control. Economies will be fighting each other, where alliances will be based on economic policies and economic interests.

 

Whic brings the root of modern imperialism straight to the front door of Corporate Culture. Corporations are the disseminating agents of cultural imperialism, and they are answerable to no voters. Simply to millions of faceless shareholders of which the majority don't even know they are shareholders. They answer, in effect, to nobody at all.

 

The biggest threat of the 21st century isn't terrorism or neo-conservatives or communism or global warming or green men from Mars, the biggest single threat to global peace and stability is the basically uncontrolled (and virtually uncontrollable) rampant growth of multinational corporations and their ever-growing hold over governments - who, of course, are armed to the teeth with armies, air forces and navies who have no other reason to go to war with each other except in protecting resource flow and control, dictated by corporations giving governments special deals (like employment, investment, etc.)

 

Our biggest threat lies in Wall Street, not the Pentagon. The Pentagon merely sways to the will of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who are doing what they have to keep Wall Street happy.

 

I think ideology have seen its last War in WW2. All wars since have been economically driven, and, as we see now with Iraq, a thin cloak of 'ideology' is painted over it to make it more palatable for the taxpayer, whilst being only about resources.

 

American Imperialism is an artifact of economic theory, and can be laid at the door of Wall Street - not the White House. He's simply a puppet.

 

Think about it - when George Bush speaks, the world says "Oh crap, here we go again..." But before he resigned (actually still), when Alan Greenspan spoke, the Earth literally shook. Who wields the bigger club?

 

(An unsolicited observation from the Third World...)

[silverslith]

Pots and kettles are both black,

 

If you want to ask the question of who's stirring it up, you have to look at three things.

 

-Who's going to gain and how.

-Whats their modus operandi in previous cases.

-What evidence in the current case.

 

Iran has nothing to gain by creating civil war in Iraq. America can only stay there while mayhem is occurring.

Iran has nothing to gain by giving Hezbollah knee high fireworks to fire at Israel. This is only an excuse for Israel to expand "their" lands by violence.

 

The divide and conquer strategy of synthesising or controlling and financing,arming extremist groups to create civil war that allows "global policemen" to enter, appoint puppet dictators, take control of resources etc is very well established and studied and is a clear modus operandi of the US and UK states and other european empires over the last few centuries.

 

The worldwide media though largely controlled by big money has broadcast evidence that this is indeed the same old story as I have mentioned and linked in this and other threads.

 

My opinion: Many Americans have great difficulty in seperating the rightful love they feel for their geographic home and admiration for the achievements of ther fellow inhabitants with a loyalty to a state that deserves neither respect or survival in a world where humanity matters. This is in my opinion very likely due to the extremist nationalistic brainwashing they are subjected to by being forced to recite thousands of times a pledge of allegiance to a state over which they have no control during their formative years. Not to mention the least informative and most controlled by greedy sociopaths media of any country in the world. Russians I know are incredulous at the ability of americans to suck up the constant propaganda fed to them by their media. I've been there and even before 911 I was horrified by the standard of news feeds that US citizens have to deal with.:)

[Buffy]

Iran has nothing to gain by creating civil war in Iraq.

You're right. If Iraq had a choice between having a friendly Shia-controlled regime in Iraq and Saddam, they'd choose Saddam or a Sunni Oligarchy every time! Makes perfect sense!

America can only stay there while mayhem is occurring.

You're right. If America had the choice between sitting in a self-driven civil war that means that they have to spend billions of dollars to support an economy that cannot produce much oil because the civil war keeps disrupting production (and by the way letting this nerve rattling conflict drive oil prices through the roof), and letting whatever will happen there after a withdrawl settle down and turn production up again, they'd choose civil war with a black hole for money and dead young people *every time*. Makes perfect sense!

Iran has nothing to gain by giving Hezbollah knee high fireworks to fire at Israel. This is only an excuse for Israel to expand "their" lands by violence.

That's right! Israel is *so* smart to figure out how to buy all those rockets that are manufactured by Iran, let them shoot them at Israel, killing its own citizens, destroying its tourist trade, and trashing their budget, just so they can take land from Lebanon. They did that right? Wait. Sez here they withdrew. Well the facts don't matter: its just simply *obvious* that this is true.

 

Oh and Iran: Just like with Iraq, they get no benefit whatsoever from having another country in Lebanon be controlled by its Shia population. It would be much better to treat Hezbollah which preaches anhilation of Israel and denies the Holocaust as a paraiah, because *no one* in the Iranian government agrees with those stances! I *dare* you to find one statement that indicates that Iran does not fully back Israel's right to exist!

 

Many Americans have great difficulty in seperating the rightful love they feel for their geographic home and admiration for the achievements of ther fellow inhabitants with a loyalty to a state that deserves neither respect or survival in a world where humanity matters.

You're right. Unlike every single other country in the world, Americans are monolithic brainwashed drones doing the bidding of an evil right-wing cabal! Yes, that's why you see absolutely consistent polls that show 80% support in America for the entire neo-con Imperialist platform! That's why in the last elections the most extreme right-wing Republicans were totally victorious and now control all of the levers of power in America!

 

Oh and that Putin! Wow! Total democrat! And *no* Russians are fooled by him! They completely disagree with him and he's changing his tune to match their will.

 

We're all Dick Cheney clones,

Buffy

[silverslith]

Sorry Buffy. Please consider how deeply the US administration is entwined with Big Oil and how much profit they are making by forcing up Oil prices.

 

Special Forces May Train Assassins, Kidnappers in Iraq - Newsweek The War in Iraq - MSNBC.com

‘The Salvador Option’

The Pentagon may put Special-Forces-led assassination or kidnapping teams in Iraq

 

World Prout Assembly: Iraq: The Salvadoran Option = Death Squads!

Death Mask: The Deliberate Disintegration of Iraq

 

By: Chris Floyd

Thursday, 01 December 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 dread conclusion in a remarkable work of synthesis drawn from 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 now 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.

 

We first reported here in June 2003 that the U.S. was already hiring Saddam's security muscle for "special ops" against the nascent insurgency and re-opening his torture haven, Abu Ghraib. Meanwhile, powerful Shiite militias ? including Talibanic 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 American 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 aegis are rarely investigated by the police.

 

Earlier this year, one enterprising Knight-Ridder reporter, Yasser Salihee, actually found several eyewitnesses willing to testify to the involvement of the U.S.-backed commandos in 12 such murders. The offer was shrugged off by the Interior Ministry's spokesman ? an American "adviser" and veteran bones-maker from the Colombian ops. In the end, it didn't matter; Salihee was shot dead by a U.S. sniper at a checkpoint a few days afterwards.

 

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, and 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 substantial American 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. For example, 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. (The true number of victims is certainly much higher.)

 

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: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam. Later, Saudi magnate Osama bin Laden ? whose family firm helped kick-start George W. Bush's business career ?joined the operation, and his men were sent to America for "anti-Soviet" terrorist training, as Greg Palast reports. And of course, these examples only scratch the scorched-earth surface of America's double-dealings in this deathly shadow world.

 

This bi-partisan policy has been remarkably consistent for more than half a century: to augment the wealth and power of the elite, American 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 inevitable blowback against ordinary Americans ? means nothing to these Great Gamesters; it's merely the price of doing business. Bush's "incompetence" is just a mask for stone-cold calculation.

 

The Salvador Option has been invoked in Iraq

The Salvador Option has been invoked in Iraq

 

The American public is being prepared. If the attack on Iran does come, there will be no warning, no declaration of war, no truth.

 

By John Pilger

 

05/04/06 "ICH" -- -- The lifts in the New York Hilton played CNN on a small screen you could not avoid watching. Iraq was top of the news; pronouncements about a "civil war" and "sectarian violence" were repeated incessantly. It was as if the US invasion had never happened and the killing of tens of thousands of civilians by the Americans was a surreal fiction. The Iraqis were mindless Arabs, haunted by religion, ethnic strife and the need to blow themselves up. Unctuous puppet politicians were paraded with no hint that their exercise yard was inside an American fortress.

 

And when you left the lift, this followed you to your room, to the hotel gym, the airport, the next airport and the next country. Such is the power of America's corporate propaganda, which, as Edward Said pointed out in Culture and Imperialism , "penetrates electronically" with its equivalent of a party line.

 

The party line changed the other day. For almost three years it was that al-Qaeda was the driving force behind the "insurgency", led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a bloodthirsty Jordanian who was clearly being groomed for the kind of infamy Saddam Hussein enjoys. It mattered not that al-Zarqawi had never been seen alive and that only a fraction of the "insurgents" followed al-Qaeda. For the Americans, Zarqawi's role was to distract attention from the thing that almost all Iraqis oppose: the brutal Anglo-American occupation of their country.

 

Now that al-Zarqawi has been replaced by "sectarian violence" and "civil war", the big news is the attacks by Sunnis on Shia mosques and bazaars. The real news, which is not reported in the CNN "mainstream", is that the Salvador Option has been invoked in Iraq. This is the campaign of terror by death squads armed and trained by the US, which attack Sunnis and Shias alike. The goal is the incitement of a real civil war and the break-up of Iraq, the original war aim of Bush's administration. The ministry of the interior in Baghdad, which is run by the CIA, directs the principal death squads. Their members are not exclusively Shia, as the myth goes. The most brutal are the Sunni-led Special Police Commandos, headed by former senior officers in Saddam's Ba'ath Party. This unit was formed and trained by CIA "counter-insurgency" experts, including veterans of the CIA's terror operations in central America in the 1980s, notably El Salvador. In his new book, Empire's Workshop (Metropolitan Books), the American historian Greg Grandin describes the Salvador Option thus: "Once in office, [President] Reagan came down hard on central America, in effect letting his administration's most committed militarists set and execute policy. In El Salvador, they provided more than a million dollars a day to fund a lethal counter-insurgency campaign . . . All told, US allies in central America during Reagan's two terms killed over 300,000 people, tortured hundreds of thousands and drove millions into exile."

 

Although the Reagan administration spawned the current Bushites, or "neo-cons", the pattern was set earlier. In Vietnam, death squads trained, armed and directed by the CIA murdered up to 50,000 people in Operation Phoenix. In the mid-1960s in Indonesia CIA officers compiled "death lists" for General Suharto's killing spree during his seizure of power. After the 2003 invasion, it was only a matter of time before this venerable "policy" was applied in Iraq.

 

According to the investigative writer Max Fuller (National Review Online), the key CIA manager of the interior ministry death squads "cut his teeth in Vietnam before moving on to direct the US military mission in El Salvador". Professor Grandin names another central America veteran whose job now is to "train a ruthless counter-insurgent force made up of ex-Ba'athist thugs". Another, says Fuller, is well-known for his "production of death lists". A secret militia run by the Americans is the Facilities Protection Service, which has been responsible for bombings. "The British and US Special Forces," concludes Fuller, "in conjunction with the [uS-created] intelligence services at the Iraqi defence ministry, are fabricating insurgent bombings of Shias."

 

On 16 March, Reuters reported the arrest of an American "security contractor" who was found with weapons and explosives in his car. Last year, two Britons disguised as Arabs were caught with a car full of weapons and explosives; British forces bulldozed the Basra prison to rescue them. The Boston Globe recently reported: "The FBI's counter-terrorism unit has launched a broad investigation of US-based theft rings after discovering that some of the vehicles used in deadly car bombings in Iraq, including attacks that killed US troops and Iraqi civilians, were probably stolen in the United States, according to senior government officials."

 

As I say, all this has been tried before - just as the preparation of the American public for an atrocious attack on Iran is similar to the WMD fabrications in Iraq. If that attack comes, there will be no warning, no declaration of war, no truth. Imprisoned in the Hilton lift, staring at CNN, my fellow passengers could be excused for not making sense of the Middle East, or Latin America, or anywhere. They are isolated. Nothing is explained. Congress is silent. The Democrats are moribund. And the freest media on earth insult the public every day. As Voltaire put it: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

This article first appeared in the New Statesman. For the latest in current and cultural affairs subscribe to the New Statesman print edition.

 

© New Statesman 1913 - 2006

[Buffy]

Sorry Buffy. Please consider how deeply the US administration is entwined with Big Oil and how much profit they are making by forcing up Oil prices.

Excuse me. You may have noticed you were falling into the trap of tarring all Americans with the sins of the current administration in your previous post.

 

No you'll probably deny that. Fair enough, just realize that when you do this, it simply makes you look like yet another wingnut, just from the opposite end of the political spectrum.

 

Always fun to be a centrist: the crazies from both sides want to shoot you.

 

Never ascribe to conspiracy that which can be more easily ascribed to stupidity,

Buffy

[silverslith]

Cosmic Iguana - Voice of the Evil Doers: AMERICAN REGISTERED CARS USED IN INSURGENT ATTACKS

 

AMERICAN REGISTERED CARS USED IN INSURGENT ATTACKS

They claim they are stolen, but why ship a car halfway around the world when you can steal one right in Iraq? SIDNEY MORNING HERALD:

 

The FBI's counterterrorism unit has launched a broad investigation of US-based theft rings after discovering some vehicles used in deadly car bombings in Iraq, including attacks that killed US troops and Iraqi civilians, were probably stolen in the United States, according to senior US Government officials...

 

...The inquiry began after coalition troops raided a Falluja bomb factory last November and found a Texas-registered four-wheel-drive being prepared for a bombing mission... [*]

 

 

The only reason to ship a car that far is if you are making some big bucks on it... Not blowing it up. WRH makes another point:

 

This is pure spin to cover the fact that US-registered cars are being used for the "insurgent" bombs. Having shipped cars myself by cargo vessel I can assure you that there is a huge paperwork process to go through in which you must prove you are the legal owner of the vehicle before they will allow it on board.

 

So what we have here is that a US vehicle was found being rigged for a bombing attack, and in response to the question of WHY a US vehicle is involved in an insurgent attack, we get, "Ummm, ahh, it was stolen. Yeah, that's it, the car was stolen. Sure sure. Yeah. Stolen." [*]

 

 

Back in February I noted that the US long term strategic interest was now with the insurgents and not the new pro-Iranian Iraqi government [*]. Reports sometimes surface of US involvement in bombings but they are always written off because the witnesses are Iraqis [*].

 

I won't say who is doing what but there is an argument known as Occam's razor (after its author William of Occam who says whatever explanation explains the same facts with the least complexity is the one to be preferred) [*]. I'll leave it to you to figure it out.

[Buffy]

Oh my! This one is really amusing, mainly because its so cluelessly self-referential!

The only reason to ship a car that far is if you are making some big bucks on it... Not blowing it up. WRH makes another point:

 

This is pure spin to cover the fact that US-registered cars are being used for the "insurgent" bombs. Having shipped cars myself by cargo vessel I can assure you that there is a huge paperwork process to go through in which you must prove you are the legal owner of the vehicle before they will allow it on board.

I think you said earlier: "Follow the money"... Halliburton gets paid *cost-plus* for shipping these vehicles to Iraq. They don't give a darn if they get stolen: they get paid anyway! The Army pays for them to outfit the fledgling Iraqi Army. They do their "ticket punching" and give it to the Iraqis so they can say, "see, we're doing everything we can to arm them! Its not our fault that their ranks are riddled with insurgents who steal them!" These guys are getting paid or praised for doing their job *without* some wacko conspiracy theory about being involved in "supporting the insurgents so they can kill everyone."

 

Seriously: You're the local commander for the Army, Marines or even head of Halliburton operations in Iraq: are you seriously going to be involved in doing *anything* to directly help someone who is trying very hard to kill you to do so? Do you realize how hard a coordinated effort to distribute new cars to be all the car bombs would be to keep "secret?" Does this make even a little bit of sense?

 

Back in February I noted that the US long term strategic interest was now with the insurgents and not the new pro-Iranian Iraqi government. Reports sometimes surface of US involvement in bombings but they are always written off because the witnesses are Iraqis.

Oddly enough, this is the exact *opposite* of what the Administration is doing, which is to *support* the Shia parties (from Challabi pre-war all the way to Maliki today), even though the Saudi's are threatening to start (and probably are actively) supporting the Sunni insurgents *because we won't* (and with good reason: they do nothing but bomb and shoot Americans!).

 

Of course what's really interesting is that he then invokes:

I won't say who is doing what but there is an argument known as Occam's razor... I'll leave it to you to figure it out.

So its simpler to say:

"There's a major sinister conspiracy to ship cars all the way from Texas to the insurgents *expressly* to blow up Americans and Iraqis indiscriminantly in order to cause chaos, that no one except for the wacko conspiracy theorists has found any evidence for because chaos is somehow good because it props up oil prices that need proping up because we've hit peak oil and they're already going through the roof which will destroy the US economy although all us oil fat cats will be dead by then because we're all 80 years old anyway, or believe in the Apocalypse happening in the next few years so it doesn't matter anyway"

than it is to say

"Halliburton made a pile of money off of shipping cars to Iraq because they're buddies of Cheney and they're laughing all the way to the bank."

 

I know what Occam would say! "Follow the Money!"

 

There are conservative publications like The Economist and The Wall Street Journal, and there are wacko wingnuts like "Little Green Footballs". Similarly there are liberal publications like The Independent or even Think Progress, and then there are conspiracy nuts like your "Cosmic Iguana."

 

Having to rely on things that appear in these extremist publications for "proof" really does not help your cause! Honest! :)

 

Now what's the real issue here? We get nowhere in solving the world's ills by lobbing not just false but *completely illogical* accusations at one another. What pray tell do you hope to accomplish? Is it *useful* to try to get everyone in the world to believe that everyone in America is a zombie-like, Bush-loving, rich and evil devil so that everyone believes that they must simply be exterminated at all costs? Do you think that *helps* create a fairer and better world?

 

Hatred is contageous,

Buffy