To the President,
I would ask- have you no decency, no sense of morality, no sense of judiciousness? The perpetuation of a war started on lies, driven by lies, and propelled by fear is your legacy. Well done. You and your associates will die wealthy war profiteers, but in doing so have defiled the name of this country worse than it has been in recent memory. Bush emits a veritable constellation of brilliance that has shown over and again that what you have to say, what you think, means absolutely nothing. And should you digress with their ideas, you are simply un-American, something to be mocked by the general establishment as deluded and misinformed. I remember how Barbara Bush used to regale the public concerning the virtues of reading (it’s fundamental, you know), but we can all see how well that worked with her own brood. A “C” average former coke user and alcoholic with a brother that I daresay does a “Heckuv a job.” Especially around election time or hurricane season. Along the same vein, another very recent development has been that now Bush has decided your mail can be opened without a warrant under “emergency conditions”. This was quietly signed into law on December 20th. I wonder if the wiretapping of Princess Diana was considered an “emergency condition”. Even the secret domestic eavesdropping program caught Capitol Hill by surprise. I wouldn’t consider this sort of culture of anxiety as “doubleplusgood”, (thanks Orwell), or even a success. This is a result of people whom insist this will be a war which is expected to be something that “will be ongoing”. Vagaries in matters of life and death without a clear purpose are the pinnacle of the pompousness. “Ongoing” to me equates with exploitation, not necessarily any noble function, as certainly none are clearly outlined. Is it oil money for reconstruction? Liberation? Establishing a new democracy? Yellowcake uranium? So far, it appears to be none of the above. So what’s next? What’s the new shift in strategery? Why did Bush have to wait until the passing of the New Year to decide to announce his new whiz kid move? The theme of his upcoming speech is rumored to be all about “sacrifice”. We’re sending more troops in harms way. Lives of no less value than those of the children of Congressmen and Congresswomen, members of the Senate, or even those kids MENSA have been trying to track down for the last few years; the Bush twins. We don’t see them fighting for something they themselves portray as “just” or “moral”. Let the poor people do it, or more recently; let the persons who are non-citizens of the US do it to ensure their citizenship. There will be roughly twenty thousand more men and women going across the globe to do what they believe to be the right thing. For political reasons and not military ones, twenty thousand more people risk death. Make no mistake, I think these are some of the most courageous people there may be, but I don’t think their lives are being put in peril for what one could say is a just cause. Bush has disregarded the Iraq Study Group, he has ignored the opinions of his Generals in Iraq, and has overlooked the common will of his own people. I don’t think I need to regurgitate any more data on dereliction. I do think the statistics regarding this “conflict” are anesthetizing to a degree. Of course we comprehend that there is a war going on, but it all seems like chatter in the background to the average person. We consistently hear about polls, death tallies, recent car bombings, and the latest condemnations of this war by members of the President’s own staff, including a majority (for the first time) of generals in Iraq. Our own servicepersons do not want any more troop buildup. Updates here….triumphs there…sad moments more often than not…they all roll across the collective media like the crawler on the bottom of the news screen, not likely to be repeated. That doesn’t mean we care any less, only that we have been led down so many different paths regarding this war it seems we have become communally numb to the constant turmoil in the background. With this War© it seems difficult enough just to cognate the enormity of what is happening a world away. “Mission Accomplished”? Quagmire? Vietnam 2.0? Liberation? What is the actuality? When Clinton was in office, an extramarital affair triggered an avalanche of people calling for impeachment. Where is our outrage now? It takes a catalytic moment, a point in time so precise and extraordinary it polarizes people in a definitive resolve. These are times that jar us out of our collective complacency. 9-11, the JFK assassination are the first that come to mind, and suddenly we are acutely aware of our surroundings. We have experienced that instant and wanted to make right what had so painfully happened to us. However; that impulse for the fervor of swift retaliation and justice has been amazingly and gradually replaced by a culture of fear. Slowly, like stepping stones, the disinformation is dispensed. The assumption that we are numb replaces any notion that we are aware. What are we doing?
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I know what I am doing..you however, appear to be spending too much time reading the national enquirer. Get a life, get involved and stop whining…
I know what I am doing..you however, appear to be spending too much time reading the national enquirer. Get a life, get involved and stop whining…
This kind of press is long overdue. In order for Bush Sr. to get us into this war he had to hire a marketing firm for God’s sake! When 60 Minutes did an expose on how they got the Kuwati ambassador’s niece to lie to convince Congress to go in there and grab the reins of power that was bad enough. When you examine that fact that Bush Sr. helped set Saddam up in power to begin with (from his CIA days) and that we went in to distabilize the only democratic power in the Middle East where women and minorities were represented in government should shine a light on how contrary our nation’s actions are to our “values.”
Iraq was the only Middle Eastern nation that nationalized their oil, as opposed to privitization – where the multi-billions that really run our world can get richer. So when you look closer the whole mess looks like some Frankensteinian machine where our military men and women (and Iraqi citizens) trades their blood for Iraqi oil.
The whole situation has been all color of wrong right from the get go. My friends have been over there with Ramsey Clark (JFK’s attorney general) and have seen the destruction of the ancestors of the cradle of civilization first hand. All for what? The evidence points to only thing – these lives were sacrificed on the altar of our nation’s true god – Money. Not money for the average citizen, but for the elite who already have more than their share, and all at the expense of those who have none. Sometimes today looks a lot like the feudal era.
This kind of press is long overdue. In order for Bush Sr. to get us into this war he had to hire a marketing firm for God’s sake! When 60 Minutes did an expose on how they got the Kuwati ambassador’s niece to lie to convince Congress to go in there and grab the reins of power that was bad enough. When you examine that fact that Bush Sr. helped set Saddam up in power to begin with (from his CIA days) and that we went in to distabilize the only democratic power in the Middle East where women and minorities were represented in government should shine a light on how contrary our nation’s actions are to our “values.”
Iraq was the only Middle Eastern nation that nationalized their oil, as opposed to privitization – where the multi-billions that really run our world can get richer. So when you look closer the whole mess looks like some Frankensteinian machine where our military men and women (and Iraqi citizens) trades their blood for Iraqi oil.
The whole situation has been all color of wrong right from the get go. My friends have been over there with Ramsey Clark (JFK’s attorney general) and have seen the destruction of the ancestors of the cradle of civilization first hand. All for what? The evidence points to only thing – these lives were sacrificed on the altar of our nation’s true god – Money. Not money for the average citizen, but for the elite who already have more than their share, and all at the expense of those who have none. Sometimes today looks a lot like the feudal era.
Hey Alphatard, when news is distorted in the name of political correctness, everyone loses. And I don’t know if I would consider noting that thousands more americans will be sent to die “whining”.
Hey Alphatard, when news is distorted in the name of political correctness, everyone loses. And I don’t know if I would consider noting that thousands more americans will be sent to die “whining”.
A interesting look at a bit of the history of Iraq (Mesopotamia)
A Report on Mesopotamia
by T.E. Lawrence
August 2nd, 1920
Thomas Edward (T.E.) Lawrence, a.k.a. “Lawrence of Arabia” (1888-1935), British soldier and author, whose works include The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, achieved world renown for his exploits as Britain’s military liaison to the Arabs during the rebellion against the Ottomans. Sent to Mecca on a fact-finding mission when the Arabs rose in revolt, in 1916, he soon became a friend of the Arab people and their struggle for independence is chronicled in his book, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, as well as Revolt in the Desert.
The sellout of the Arabs at Versailles, and the subsequent carving up of the Ottoman Empire by the victorious European powers, disgusted him, and he returned to England disheartened. In protest, Lawrence refused to accept medals from the King, and wrote numerous letters to the newspapers in favor of Arab independence. When British attempts to impose colonial rule on Iraq failed – in a way that, by the account below, seems awfully familiar – Winston Churchill asked Lawrence to help him draft a settlement.
In conjunction with this recent article by Niall Ferguson on the historical parallels between Britain’s futile crusade in Iraq and our own, Lawrence’s piece should be required reading for U.S. policymakers, whose sense of history seems to stretch only as far back as last week.
Sunday Times
August 2nd, 1920
[Mr. Lawrence, whose organization and direction of the Hedjaz against the Turks was one of the outstanding romances of the war, has written this article at our request in order that the public may be fully informed of our Mesopotamian commitments.]
The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. It is a disgrace to our imperial record, and may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are to-day not far from a disaster.
The sins of commission are those of the British civil authorities in Mesopotamia (especially of three ‘colonels’) who were given a free hand by London. They are controlled from no Department of State, but from the empty space which divides the Foreign Office from the India Office. They availed themselves of the necessary discretion of war-time to carry over their dangerous independence into times of peace. They contest every suggestion of real self-government sent them from home. A recent proclamation about autonomy circulated with unction from Baghdad was drafted and published out there in a hurry, to forestall a more liberal statement in preparation in London, ‘Self-determination papers’ favourable to England were extorted in Mesopotamia in 1919 by official pressure, by aeroplane demonstrations, by deportations to India.
The Cabinet cannot disclaim all responsibility. They receive little more news than the public: they should have insisted on more, and better. They have sent draft after draft of reinforcements, without enquiry. When conditions became too bad to endure longer, they decided to send out as High commissioner the original author of the present system, with a conciliatory message to the Arabs that his heart and policy have completely changed.*
Yet our published policy has not changed, and does not need changing. It is that there has been a deplorable contrast between our profession and our practice. We said we went to Mesopotamia to defeat Turkey. We said we stayed to deliver the Arabs from the oppression of the Turkish Government, and to make available for the world its resources of corn and oil. We spent nearly a million men and nearly a thousand million of money to these ends. This year we are spending ninety-two thousand men and fifty millions of money on the same objects.
Our government is worse than the old Turkish system. They kept fourteen thousand local conscripts embodied, and killed a yearly average of two hundred Arabs in maintaining peace. We keep ninety thousand men, with aeroplanes, armoured cars, gunboats, and armoured trains. We have killed about ten thousand Arabs in this rising this summer. We cannot hope to maintain such an average: it is a poor country, sparsely peopled; but Abd el Hamid would applaud his masters, if he saw us working. We are told the object of the rising was political, we are not told what the local people want. It may be what the Cabinet has promised them. A Minister in the House of Lords said that we must have so many troops because the local people will not enlist. On Friday the Government announce the death of some local levies defending their British officers, and say that the services of these men have not yet been sufficiently recognized because they are too few (adding the characteristic Baghdad touch that they are men of bad character). There are seven thousand of them, just half the old Turkish force of occupation. Properly officered and distributed, they would relieve half our army there. Cromer controlled Egypt’s six million people with five thousand British troops; Colonel Wilson fails to control Mesopotamia’s three million people with ninety thousand troops.
We have not reached the limit of our military commitments. Four weeks ago the staff in Mesopotamia drew up a memorandum asking for four more divisions. I believe it was forwarded to the War Office, which has now sent three brigades from India. If the North-West Frontier cannot be further denuded, where is the balance to come from? Meanwhile, our unfortunate troops, Indian and British, under hard conditions of climate and supply, are policing an immense area, paying dearly every day in lives for the wilfully wrong policy of the civil administration in Baghdad. General Dyer was relieved of his command in India for a much smaller error, but the responsibility in this case is not on the Army, which has acted only at the request of the civil authorities. The War Office has made every effort to reduce our forces, but the decisions of the Cabinet have been against them.
The Government in Baghdad have been hanging Arabs in that town for political offences, which they call rebellion. The Arabs are not at war with us. Are these illegal executions to provoke the Arabs to reprisals on the three hundred British prisoners they hold? And, if so, is it that their punishment may be more severe, or is it to persuade our other troops to fight to the last?
We say we are in Mesopotamia to develop it for the benefit of the world. All experts say that the labour supply is the ruling factor in its development. How far will the killing of ten thousand villagers and townspeople this summer hinder the production of wheat, cotton, and oil? How long will we permit millions of pounds, thousands of Imperial troops, and tens of thousands of Arabs to be sacrificed on behalf of colonial administration which can benefit nobody but its administrators?
*Sir Percy Cox was to return as High Commissioner in October, 1920 to form a provisional Government.
I encourage everyone to look into Iraqs past and see the real intrigue of our involvement there.
A interesting look at a bit of the history of Iraq (Mesopotamia)
A Report on Mesopotamia
by T.E. Lawrence
August 2nd, 1920
Thomas Edward (T.E.) Lawrence, a.k.a. “Lawrence of Arabia” (1888-1935), British soldier and author, whose works include The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, achieved world renown for his exploits as Britain’s military liaison to the Arabs during the rebellion against the Ottomans. Sent to Mecca on a fact-finding mission when the Arabs rose in revolt, in 1916, he soon became a friend of the Arab people and their struggle for independence is chronicled in his book, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, as well as Revolt in the Desert.
The sellout of the Arabs at Versailles, and the subsequent carving up of the Ottoman Empire by the victorious European powers, disgusted him, and he returned to England disheartened. In protest, Lawrence refused to accept medals from the King, and wrote numerous letters to the newspapers in favor of Arab independence. When British attempts to impose colonial rule on Iraq failed – in a way that, by the account below, seems awfully familiar – Winston Churchill asked Lawrence to help him draft a settlement.
In conjunction with this recent article by Niall Ferguson on the historical parallels between Britain’s futile crusade in Iraq and our own, Lawrence’s piece should be required reading for U.S. policymakers, whose sense of history seems to stretch only as far back as last week.
Sunday Times
August 2nd, 1920
[Mr. Lawrence, whose organization and direction of the Hedjaz against the Turks was one of the outstanding romances of the war, has written this article at our request in order that the public may be fully informed of our Mesopotamian commitments.]
The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. It is a disgrace to our imperial record, and may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are to-day not far from a disaster.
The sins of commission are those of the British civil authorities in Mesopotamia (especially of three ‘colonels’) who were given a free hand by London. They are controlled from no Department of State, but from the empty space which divides the Foreign Office from the India Office. They availed themselves of the necessary discretion of war-time to carry over their dangerous independence into times of peace. They contest every suggestion of real self-government sent them from home. A recent proclamation about autonomy circulated with unction from Baghdad was drafted and published out there in a hurry, to forestall a more liberal statement in preparation in London, ‘Self-determination papers’ favourable to England were extorted in Mesopotamia in 1919 by official pressure, by aeroplane demonstrations, by deportations to India.
The Cabinet cannot disclaim all responsibility. They receive little more news than the public: they should have insisted on more, and better. They have sent draft after draft of reinforcements, without enquiry. When conditions became too bad to endure longer, they decided to send out as High commissioner the original author of the present system, with a conciliatory message to the Arabs that his heart and policy have completely changed.*
Yet our published policy has not changed, and does not need changing. It is that there has been a deplorable contrast between our profession and our practice. We said we went to Mesopotamia to defeat Turkey. We said we stayed to deliver the Arabs from the oppression of the Turkish Government, and to make available for the world its resources of corn and oil. We spent nearly a million men and nearly a thousand million of money to these ends. This year we are spending ninety-two thousand men and fifty millions of money on the same objects.
Our government is worse than the old Turkish system. They kept fourteen thousand local conscripts embodied, and killed a yearly average of two hundred Arabs in maintaining peace. We keep ninety thousand men, with aeroplanes, armoured cars, gunboats, and armoured trains. We have killed about ten thousand Arabs in this rising this summer. We cannot hope to maintain such an average: it is a poor country, sparsely peopled; but Abd el Hamid would applaud his masters, if he saw us working. We are told the object of the rising was political, we are not told what the local people want. It may be what the Cabinet has promised them. A Minister in the House of Lords said that we must have so many troops because the local people will not enlist. On Friday the Government announce the death of some local levies defending their British officers, and say that the services of these men have not yet been sufficiently recognized because they are too few (adding the characteristic Baghdad touch that they are men of bad character). There are seven thousand of them, just half the old Turkish force of occupation. Properly officered and distributed, they would relieve half our army there. Cromer controlled Egypt’s six million people with five thousand British troops; Colonel Wilson fails to control Mesopotamia’s three million people with ninety thousand troops.
We have not reached the limit of our military commitments. Four weeks ago the staff in Mesopotamia drew up a memorandum asking for four more divisions. I believe it was forwarded to the War Office, which has now sent three brigades from India. If the North-West Frontier cannot be further denuded, where is the balance to come from? Meanwhile, our unfortunate troops, Indian and British, under hard conditions of climate and supply, are policing an immense area, paying dearly every day in lives for the wilfully wrong policy of the civil administration in Baghdad. General Dyer was relieved of his command in India for a much smaller error, but the responsibility in this case is not on the Army, which has acted only at the request of the civil authorities. The War Office has made every effort to reduce our forces, but the decisions of the Cabinet have been against them.
The Government in Baghdad have been hanging Arabs in that town for political offences, which they call rebellion. The Arabs are not at war with us. Are these illegal executions to provoke the Arabs to reprisals on the three hundred British prisoners they hold? And, if so, is it that their punishment may be more severe, or is it to persuade our other troops to fight to the last?
We say we are in Mesopotamia to develop it for the benefit of the world. All experts say that the labour supply is the ruling factor in its development. How far will the killing of ten thousand villagers and townspeople this summer hinder the production of wheat, cotton, and oil? How long will we permit millions of pounds, thousands of Imperial troops, and tens of thousands of Arabs to be sacrificed on behalf of colonial administration which can benefit nobody but its administrators?
*Sir Percy Cox was to return as High Commissioner in October, 1920 to form a provisional Government.
I encourage everyone to look into Iraqs past and see the real intrigue of our involvement there.