Now Playing: Weekend Quotable List
Topic: Quotables
The truth at the heart of this discussion is that Americans have walked away from the spoon feeding hack pack press, which includes Kristol and Fox "News," much to his chagrin. Calling out patriotic progressives working in the pursuit of more liberty in the face of Bush's executive overreach isn't going to scare anyone, especially not our '08 candidates. They realize who the blogs represent. It's the voters,stupidBill.
"...we are not blind . . . and those fecal piles are still there."
America's exit from Iraq will be a geopolitical calamity for the United States in its quest for regional dominance. But it won't have to be a geopolitical calamity for the region itself other than perhaps Israel's expectations, and even that is questionable if a plan for peace is quickly drafted and enacted for the region sans interference from the US.
The greater calamity will be for the US to insist in a continued presence there, including a prolonged military stay -- regardless of stated reasons -- whether in Iraq proper or any nearby Gulf locations, including Kuwait.
Just where was Dr. Kissinger during those six months preceding the invasion of Iraq? For all we know, he was probably advising our light-brained hierarchy at both the White House and Pentagon. And now he is writing an article giving "a political solution for Iraq"? Once again, just like all those other times in the past, he is taking all Americans for first-class chumps.
Iraq's solution for coming out of this quagmire in which it was placed through criminal action of the US government does not reside in any Johnny-come-lately military options, such as General Petraeus' surge; or Senator Biden's ill-conceived idea of partitioning Iraq; or the present course by Bush: "let me just gamble lives and money on this thing until I bust."
Ben Tanosborn, columnist, poet and writer, resides in Vancouver, Washington (USA), where he is principal of a business consulting firm. Contact him at ben@tanosborn.com.
If the Bush administration wants to continue its wars in the Middle East and to entrench the "unitary executive" at home, it will have to conduct some false flag operations that will both frighten and anger the American people and make them accept Bush's declaration of "national emergency" and the return of the draft. Alternatively, the administration could simply allow any real terrorist plot to proceed without hindrance.
However, Roberts emphasized, "the problem with this reasoning is that it assumes that Cheney and Rove and the Republicans are ignorant of these facts, or it assumes that they are content for the Republican Party to be destroyed after Bush has his fling." Roberts believes instead that Cheney and Rove intend to use a renewal of the War on Terror to rally the American people around the Republican Party. "Something's in the works," he said, adding that the Executive Orders need to create a police state are already in place."
'The administration figures themselves and prominent Republican propagandists ... are preparing us for another 9/11 event or series of events," Roberts continued. "Chertoff has predicted them. ... The National Intelligence Estimate is saying that al Qaeda has regrouped. ... You have to count on the fact that if al Qaeda's not going to do it, it's going to be orchestrated. ... The Republicans are praying for another 9/11.'
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
More from Paul Craig Roberts, one of the last of the old line trustable Republicans.
In his novel 1984, George Orwell portrayed a future time in which the explanations of recent events and earlier history are continually changed to meet Big Brother's latest purpose. Previous explanations disappear down "the memory hole."
... The American and British media work the same way as the Ministry of Truth in Oceania. A day arrives when the "truth" no longer serves the empire or hegemonic power or center of moral purpose in the world, or for short, the regime. When that day arrives, a new explanation appears and is repeated until it, too, is discarded down the memory hole.
In recent weeks Americans have been fed a series of reports from official sources that Iran is arming both Iraqi insurgents and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Experts, both within the government and without, who have been made more attentive by the Bush Regime's false charges of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, have disputed the news reports.
But the reports keep on coming. As I write, the latest story is that the US military "discovered a field of rocket launchers near a US army base south of Baghdad armed with 34 Iranian-made missiles."
Can you imagine?
The insurgents went to the trouble of lugging powerful missiles within striking distance of a US base and just left them there unfired to be discovered by the Americans. To further serve Cheney's plan to attack Iran, the media report states:
"Earlier this month, US commanders stepped up the charges [against Iran], claiming that senior leaders of Iran's special forces and of the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah militia have trained Iraqi fighters and provided other support." [US finds Iranian rockets aimed at Iraq base, Agence France Presse, July 14,2007]
Notice that none of the explanations fed to Americans over the years have ever mentioned, even as a faint possibility, that the US invasion and occupation of Iraq might be the cause of the violence in Iraq.
Allegedly, the US is a free and open country with a free press and a government accountable to the people. Yet, the information fed to the American people is as thoroughly false as that fed to the citizens of Oceania by Big Brother through the Ministry of Truth in Orwell's famous novel.
