Melinda Barton: We Don't Have What It Takes

I've been absorbed in some compelling reading courtesy of The Raw Story. Melinda Barton says we don't have the right stuff to be a global empire. Fortunately or otherwise, as the case may be. Well worth a read. American Empire: Fallen before it ever came to be:

The American Empire. Pax Americana. The fervent dream of the ruling party. The nightmare of its opponents. Today’s political discourse is rife with tales of this mythical beast rising from the back rooms of Washington to wreak havoc on the unsuspecting citizens of the world.

Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately,) we just don’t have what it takes to become the latest empire. In the meantime, as we pursue the right wing’s pipe dream, American hegemony, the more benevolent albeit weaker younger brother of empire, is spiraling to its destruction. The American Empire is falling before it has even truly risen.

And more here.

Civil War As An Exit Strategy?

I think the Asia Times might have it mostly right here: Exit strategy: Civil war

"In reality, the electoral process was designed to legitimize the occupation, rather than ridding the country of the occupation ... Anyone who sees himself capable of bringing about political reform should go ahead and try, but my belief is that the occupiers won't allow him."
-- Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr

As Shi'ites and Kurds fought for three months to come up with an Iraqi cabinet, it is emerging from Baghdad that soon a broad front will emerge on the political scene composed of politicians, religious leaders, clan and tribal sheikhs - basically Sunni but with Shi'ite participation - with a single-minded agenda: the end of the US-led occupation.

This front will include, among others, what we have termed the Sinn Fein component of the resistance, the powerful Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS) and the Sadrists. It will refuse any kind of dialogue with new Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari and his government unless there's a definite timetable for the complete withdrawal of the occupation forces. Even the top Marine in Iraq, Major General Stephen Johnson, has admitted, "There will be no progress as long as the insurgents are not implicated in a political process."

But the proliferation of what many moderate Sunnis and Shi'ites suspect as being Pentagon-organized black ops is putting the emergence of this front in jeopardy. This is obvious when we see Harith al-Dhari - the AMS leader - blaming the Badr Brigades (the armed wing of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution - SCIRI - in Iraq, a major partner in the government) for the killing of Sunni Arab clerics.
...
Several Iranian websites have widely reported a plan to break up Iraq into three Shi'ite southern mini-states, two Kurdish mini-states and one Sunni mini-state - with Baghdad as the seat of a federal government. Each mini-state would be in charge of law and order and the economy within its own borders, with Baghdad in charge of foreign policy and military coordination. The plan was allegedly conceived by David Philip, a former White House adviser working for the American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC). The AFPC is financed by the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, which has also funded both the ultra-hawkish Project for a New American Century and American Enterprise Institute.

The plan would be "sold" under the admission that the recently elected, Shi'ite-dominated Jaafari government is incapable of controlling Iraq and bringing the Sunni Arab guerrillas to the negotiating table. More significantly, the plan is an exact replica of an extreme right-wing Israeli plan to balkanize Iraq - an essential part of the balkanization of the whole Middle East. Curiously, Henry Kissinger was selling the same idea even before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Curiously? Very curiously indeed, and there's more here.

I don't think 'exit' is part of any 'strategy' but we'll see. I see 'civil war' as part of a strategy to make the war go on forever. And it seems to be working. Even opponents of the war are buying the idea that we have to stay until we stabilize the country, when seems quite clear that the civil war is state-sponsored. In other words, our presence is a major destabilizing factor and the longer we stay, the less chance Iraq has of ever being stable again. Many opponents of the war do not realize this. And that is very curious, don't you think?

Bolivia: The 'Blame Game' Rages On

According to the BBC, US behind Bolivia crisis - Chavez

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has blamed Washington's brand of capitalism for the recent troubles in Bolivia.

Speaking on his weekly TV programme, he said US open market policies in Latin America had led to "exclusion, misery and destabilisation".

He called President George W Bush's proposal for a regional free trade agreement a "medicine of death".

Bolivia was brought to a virtual standstill by protesters calling for economic and constitutional reforms.

"Look at Bolivia. Fortunately the Bolivians opened the door toward a peaceful path, but they were on the verge of a civil war," said Mr Chavez.
...
The Venezuelan leader, who is an outspoken critic of Mr Bush's foreign policy, was responding to suggestions by some US officials that he was stirring up the Bolivian protests.

US assistant secretary of state Roger Noriega said President Chavez's support for the Bolivian indigenous leader Evo Morales might be partly to blame for the mass protests there.

But a report in the Argentinian newspaper Clarin quoted unnamed diplomatic sources as saying that Mr Chavez may have played a key part in achieving a solution to Bolivia's crisis.

The report said that a frenetic exchange of phone calls with Caracas encouraged Mr Morales to accept the constitutional outcome.
...
During his programme on Sunday, which lasted more than seven hours, Mr Chavez said Latin American countries were moving towards socialist economic models instead of US-style capitalism.

He said Mr Bush's idea for a hemisphere-wide free trade zone, mooted last week at a meeting of the Organisation of American States in Florida, would lead to more poverty and protests in the region.

"We say no Mr Bush, no sir... I'm sorry for you," he said. "The people of Latin America are saying 'no' to you, Mr Danger, they are saying no to your medicine.

"Capitalism is the road to destabilisation, violence and war between brothers."

You can find much more Winter Patriot coverage of the Boliviam situation; here is a good starting point.

Well Then ... Let's Call Them 'French Freedom Fries'

I'm quoting from Aljazeera's Freedom fries senator in Iraq U-turn [and the emphasis is mine]

A lawmaker who prompted cafeterias in the US Congress to change the name of their French fries to freedom fries in anger over France's opposition to the Iraq war, has turned against the conflict demanding a schedule on the withdrawal of US troops.

Walter Jones, a North Carolina Republican, has written more than 1300 letters of condolence to the families of soldiers killed in Iraq and will introduce legislation this week calling for a firm timetable on the withdrawal of US troops, ABC's This Week said on Sunday.
...
President George Bush's administration has refused to set a timetable on withdrawing its forces from the war-torn country.

Of course not. They want to stay in Iraq forever.

There's more to Aljazeera's story and it's here.

Ka-Blam-A-Rama

Your lowly and nearly frozen blogger continues to struggle. After-effects from a series of Irony Overloads have left him shaken but not blurred. Fortunately, the de-spinnerizer is still de-spinning...

Howard Dean calls the republicans a white Christian party and gets flak for it ... some of this flak comes from his own party ... even some of those who attack Dean seem to admit that what he said was true ... and therefore [!] Dean is called a racist ... Ka-blam!

Dean criticizes proposed police state legislation supported by F. James Sensenbrenner among others. Dean says:

"(T)hey are attacking immigrants: Two Republican congressmen, Jim Sensenbrenner and Tom Tancredo, have incredible anti-immigrant legislation."

It's not just anti-immigrant, of course. It's thoroughly unconstitutional and virulently un-American. I wasn't supposed to mention that, was I? Howard Dean wasn't supposed to mention that either, was he?

Sensenbrenner counter-attacked, writing a public letter to Dean and saying, among other things:

In recent days, your delusional outbursts have forced senior members of your own party to distance themselves from your comments. While I agree with your acknowledgment that you're "not very dignified," I sincerely hope you refrain from further personal attacks. These attacks are contrary to the passionate - but respectful - political debate the public deserves.

It's not at all ironic that a paragraph which urges one to refrain from personal attacks should start off with a phrase like "your delusional outbursts", is it? Ka-Blam!! But wait. It gets better!

Two days later, Sensenbrenner shuts down hearings on abuses of the so-called 'Patriot Act'. Ka-blam! Now we can't even talk about the abuses of the legislation we're not supposed to talk about. Don't ask yourself whether this is in the tradition of American governance because LOOKOUT! Ka-Blam!! Ka-Blam!!

Did you recognize that sound? It's Spontaneous Human Implosion! Fragments everywhere... and they're still coming in!

Meanwhile, more British memos have been leaking out and one of them accuses the US of doing a poor job of planning -- before the war -- for the aftermath of the war. That such a document should be dated eight months before the so-called president allegedly decided to wage war seems like a fairly serious indictment to me ... but what do I know? ... White House spokesman disputes the claim ... no, not the claims that the US was determined to go to war, the claim that there was a lack of planning! ... Everything else is left hanging, not denied, not acknowledged. The elephant in the room that nobody wants to mention.

Elephant? Did I say elephant?? Ka-blam!!

Now all these memos are floating around ... Can the media possibly ignore it all forever? Maybe not!

Certainly not The Raw Story! There is a lot of good material there at the moment, including a timeline showing our 'progress' on the road to war.

The Raw Story also has all these memos:

A month after the 'axis of evil:' British foreign secretary Straw says case for Iraq is weak

Condi committed to regime change in early 2002

'The truth is what has changed is not the pace of Saddam's WMD programs'

'The need to wrongfoot Saddam on the inspectors' in which we find

Wolfowitz said that it was absurd to deny the link between terrorism and Saddam.

Fortunately, none of this matters very much, because Michael Jackson has been found not guilty! Ka-Blam!!

I've been saying the US policy toward so-called 'detainees' is "absurd". I meant this in the usual sense of the word, the same thing bush means when he says that Amnesty International's charges are "absurd"; the same thing wolfowitz means when he says it's "absurd" to deny the link between terrorism and Saddam. In other words, the policy strikes me as:

Ridiculously incongruous or unreasonable... foolish, silly, fatuous, preposterous, ridiculous, ludicrous

But I've recently learned that "absurd" has another meaning.

Of, relating to, or manifesting the view that there is no order or value in human life or in the universe.

Is this beautiful or what? The entire bush administration in a nutshell!

"there is no value in human life or in the universe"

"Culture of Life"? Ka-blam! Ka-Blam!! KA-BLAM!!!

Lookout!! Multiple Fragments Incoming!!

Global rates of Spontaneous Human Implosion have never been higher.

Pentagon Offers No Excuse For Abuse

Pentagon gives no excuses for suspect treatment; senators aghast

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US military offered no excuses for interrogation techniques used on a Saudi terror suspect at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, saying his questioning followed a "detailed plan" and that prevention of new attacks justified the means.

Your lowly and nearly frozen blogger suggests that if prevention of new attacks is the motive then might it not be prudent to try to identify the perpetrators of the previous attacks?

Some People Will Say Anything

Guantánamo detainees are 'bad people', says Cheney

People need to understand that detainees at Guantánamo Bay are "bad people", the US vice president, Dick Cheney, will say in an interview to be broadcast tonight as pressure grows for the detention centre to close.

Is that right? I've heard some of them are so bad that we had to buy them. But let's ask another question: Who is this big dick and why does he get to decide which people are bad?

Hot Topics

A quick apology to regular readers who may have stopped by expecting something new. There's a great deal of news but I haven't had time to blog about it recently. Hopefully this will change soon.

In the meantime I thought you might like to know that search engines have been bringing visitors to the following pages:

March: The Capture That Wasn't

April: 'Operation FALCON' Raises Disturbing Questions

May: Beware the Wolf Brigade

June: Bush: "Detainees Trained To Disassemble"

The truth is seeping out, slowly...

Bush, Gonzales Lying Again: WaPo has the story

And the story is all over the net.

According to the Washington Post, U.S. produces fewer terror convictions than officials claim

On Thursday, President Bush stepped to a lectern at the Ohio State Highway Patrol Academy in Columbus to urge renewal of the USA Patriot Act and to boast of the government's success in prosecuting terrorists.
...
Flanked by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, Bush said that "federal terrorism investigations have resulted in charges against more than 400 suspects, and more than half of those charged have been convicted."

Those statistics have been used repeatedly by Bush and other administration officials, including Gonzales and his predecessor, John D. Ashcroft, to characterize the government's efforts against terrorism.

But the numbers are misleading at best.

Misleading? At best?

An analysis of the Justice Department's own list of terrorism prosecutions by The Washington Post shows that 39 people — not 200, as officials have implied — were convicted of crimes related to terrorism or national security.

Most of the others were convicted of relatively minor crimes such as making false statements and violating immigration law — and had nothing to do with terrorism, the analysis shows.

Read the rest of U.S. produces fewer terror convictions than officials claim. Watch how various officials spin and back-pedal. They all know they're working for an administration that rewards loyalty above all else. One could even say it rewards loyalty but nothing else.

And so we get stuff like this.
It's perfect, in an ironic kind of way.
Perfect because it illustrates a well-known fact:
Once they start lying, they can never stop.

Bolivia: All Clear ... For The Moment

Blockades in Bolivia city removed

The last blockades remaining around Bolivia's main city, La Paz, have been lifted, allowing fuel into the city for the first time in weeks.

The move follows a truce from indigenous Indian protesters ahead of a meeting on Sunday with the new President, Eduardo Rodriguez.

There's more to the article, of course. I think you should read it. But the bottom line, as written by the BBC, looks like this:

Residents of the slum city of El Alto adjoining the capital were the last to end their protests.

They say their main demands for the nationalisation of Bolivia's rich gas reserves and constitutional reform have yet to be met.

And they warn that without progress on these issues, their truce will only be temporary.

Other protest groups - including Indian peasant farmers and miners - have been more conciliatory.

Roadblocks across much of Bolivia were lifted on Friday.

And so long as President Rodriguez calls new elections promptly, most protesters - for now at least - will be satisfied.

Meanwhile, the New York Times is reporting:

Bolivia Installs New Leader With Very Long 'To Do' List

LA PAZ, Bolivia, June 10 - Bolivia's new president, Eduardo Rodríguez, began his first day in office on Friday pledging to convene early elections while working with Congress to address the demands of angry citizens for the nationalization of the energy sector and the drafting of a new constitution to give the Indian majority more rights.
...
Mr. Rodríguez, whose appointment was so sudden that he was not presented with the traditional tricolor presidential sash during his swearing in, stressed that new elections must be held, not only for president but for members of Congress. The political class in Bolivia is reviled by the opposition as corrupt and beholden to special interests.
...
"One of my attributions, a capacity I have, is to convene an electoral process that would transform and renew citizen representation so this Congress can become more democratic, more just and more fair," Mr. Rodríguez said near midnight on Thursday, shortly after being sworn in.

He means "attributes", of course, and not "attributions". But I am not going to jump on him for the mistake. Why was I unwilling to cut george bush the same slack when he said "disassemble" rather than "dissemble"? Could it be because bush was [1] lying and [2] speaking his native language?

"He's an honest man, but he has a task you wouldn't wish on your enemies," said Eduardo A. Gamarra, the Bolivian-born head of Latin American studies at Florida International University in Miami. "He's a worker, and his character is more of someone wanting to do things for the long term, while his task here is very short term."
...
"That is a big challenge, to achieve accords with Congress for what would basically be the self-dissolution of the Congress," said Álvaro García, a political analyst in La Paz. The new president will also be under pressure to convene a citizen assembly leading to the drafting of a new constitution and a referendum that would give Bolivia's far-flung regions more autonomy. And he also faces the task of placating Bolivians who want the state to squeeze foreign energy companies, even to the point of expropriating installations.

Mr. Rodríguez stressed that many of the changes Bolivians want most must be fashioned with Congress. Political analysts question whether the lawmakers will cooperate.

"He's a temporary president and a prisoner of the forces of Parliament," Mr. García said. "He does not even have political experience, the capacity to influence Parliament or the enthusiasm of the social movements."

Thus quoth the New York Times. We shall see.

It says here that the Times has run four related articles in the past three months. One of those is still available for free and that's here.

By contrast, your lowly and nearly frozen blogger will continue to keep a close eye on Bolivia. Previous Winter Patriot posts concerning this remarkable series of protests are here and here and here and here and here and here. All free. All still available.

Did I Die And Go To Heaven? Or Somewhere Else??

Can this possibly be true?

G-8 agreement wipes out $40-billion owed by 14 African and four Latin countries. Nine more impoverished states may soon be eligible for help.

I'm quoting the L.A. Times now and the Times is saying:

18 Poor Nations Relieved of Debt

The decision fulfilled a decades-old dream of anti-poverty activists, who have argued that payments on old loans drains the limited resources of the world's poorest nations, most of which are in Africa, keeping millions of people mired in poverty.

No kidding!

British Chancellor Gordon Brown, the major force in putting together the debt-relief package, announced that the poor nations' debt to the World Bank, the African Development Bank and the International Monetary Fund would be wiped out. Richer countries have agreed to replenish the reserves of the funding organizations as necessary.

Is this a hoax? It seems too good to be true! What strings are attached? Do they all have to bow to the Queen and say "jolly good ole chap!" all day long?

Just kidding there, of course. And I would never want to offend against the Queen, as one of my four or five regular readers appears to be English! But I digress. Back to the L.A. Times:

...
blah blah blah
woof woof woof
all this totally expected stuff
...

...and then, a few hints which are not entirely unexpected either, whether you read between the lines or not:

Blair pushed President Bush for action in a meeting in Washington last week. British officials reported on Friday that the White House made a significant concession

hmm... only three days after the master prevaricator bailed the blubbering half-wit's ass out of a huge jam, or at least held back the tide for the moment...

The 18 countries that would qualify immediately for debt relief have already been approved for relief under the World Bank's Heavily Indebted Poor Country Initiative, in which they commit to good governance, adhering to an IMF-endorsed financial plan and rooting out corruption.

How rich! Now I get to use the words bush and blair and the phrases good governance and rooting out corruption in the same sentence. Bloody delightful, eh what?

No, really. It's beautiful. A glib mendacious brit and blubbering american moron who happen to represent the biggest crooks in the world -- professional mass murders for hire to the highest corporate bidder -- send their money-men to the poorest countries in the world with IOUs worth billions in their hands, and their spiel goes

"Here's a debt worth several billion dollars. What would one of the world's poorest countries give to be free of such a debt?

Cool! Sold!"

Which gives me a whole new take on this quote:

"I know it is the intention of world leaders to forge a new and better relationship -- a new deal -- between the rich and poor countries of the world and, I believe that the advances that we have made can be built upon ... in the next few weeks," Brown said. "This is not a time for timidity, but a time for boldness, and not a time for settling for second-best, but aiming high."

Yeah, right. What kinds of cooperation would Brits and Americans require that called for "boldness", "not settling for second-best", "aiming high"? Is it just me or do these sound like the words of somebody who's trying to win a war?

Ah, right! They are trying to win a war. And if they can't win it in Iraq then they're going to try to win it in the hearts and minds of people like you and me.

Aren't they?

Dahr Jamail: "Civil War" in Iraq is "State-Sponsored"

Dahr Jamail hasn't posted much at Iraq Dispatches lately, but the stories he's getting ...

Regular readers of this space [all four or five of them] will remember that we've heard from Dahr Jamail once or twice or maybe even three times recently. His latest is called "State Sponsored Civil War" and it starts like this:

Yesterday at a conference in Baghdad, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a prominent Shia leader who is also the head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq announced, "In gratitude to the efforts, sacrifices and heroic positions of our brothers and brave sons from the Badr Organization."

"We must give them the priority in bearing administrative and government responsibilities especially in the security field," he added, while the "President" of Iraq, Jalal Talabani, listened on.

The Badr Organization (formerly known as the Badr Brigade) was formed by al-Hakim’s brother in the ‘80’s to fight Saddam Hussein. It has long since received funding and other "support" from Iran.

While civilians in Fallujah, Mosul, Ramadi, Baquba, Baghdad, Haditha and other cities in Iraq continue to complain of being beaten, looted and humiliated by the members of the Iraqi Army who are members of both the Badr Organization and Kurdish Peshmerga, these militias now have the overt backing of the interim Iraqi government."
...
"You and your (Kurdish) brothers are the heroes of liberating Iraq," added Talabani at the aforementioned conference.

So we have the US-backed Iraqi "government" overtly [...] pitting Shia and Kurdish militias against the primarily Sunni resistance. State sponsored/propagated civil war -- although most Iraqis continue to fear and loath the idea, and so many Iraqi political and religious organizations continue to work tirelessly to avert the worsening of this now low-grade civil war.

Dahr Jamail continues to receive interesting e-mail.

One man who is a security contractor writes, "Many nationalities from the planet, many cowboys. I feel like Tonto. Some of these boys are psycho. Been there done that on the international radar."

There's more. Read State Sponsored Civil War by Dahr Jamail. Bookmark Iraq Dispatches.