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Tomgram: Engelhardt, War Is a Drug
The one flaw in this essay is that Englehardt uses in his narrative the "official conspiracy theory" of the 9/11 attacks, i.e., that a lame outfit called al-Qaeda was not only able to out-fly top gun fighter pilots and catch NORAD asleep but they also eithermagically violated laws of physics in bringing down the World Trade Center towers or they preloaded them with hundreds of tons of exotic explosives. Anyone who still doubts that 9/11 was an inside job may also want to check, here, here, and here. So if you the reader should substitute "insiders" wherever you read "al-Qaeda" or "jihadis," Tom's story becomes even more powerful.
Just as 2010 ended, the American military’s urge to surge resurfaced in a significant way. It seems that “leaders” in the Obama administration and “senior American military commanders” in Afghanistan were acting as a veritable WikiLeaks machine. They slipped information to New York Times reporters Mark Mazzetti and Dexter Filkins about secret planning to increase pressure in the Pakistani tribal borderlands, possibly on the tinderbox province of Baluchistan, and undoubtedly on the Pakistani government and military via cross-border raids by U.S. Special Operations forces in the new year.
In the front-page story those two reporters produced, you could practically slice with a dull knife American military frustration over a war going terribly wrong, over an enemy (shades of Vietnam!) with “sanctuaries” for rest, recuperation, and rearming just over an ill-marked, half-existent border. You could practically taste the chagrin of the military that their war against... well you name it: terrorists, guerrillas, former Islamic fundamentalist allies, Afghan and Pakistani nationalists, and god knows who else... wasn’t proceeding exactly swimmingly. You could practically reach out and be seared by their anger at the Pakistanis for continuing to take American bucks by the billions while playing their own game, rather than an American one, in the region.
In the front-page story those two reporters produced, you could practically slice with a dull knife American military frustration over a war going terribly wrong, over an enemy (shades of Vietnam!) with “sanctuaries” for rest, recuperation, and rearming just over an ill-marked, half-existent border. You could practically taste the chagrin of the military that their war against... well you name it: terrorists, guerrillas, former Islamic fundamentalist allies, Afghan and Pakistani nationalists, and god knows who else... wasn’t proceeding exactly swimmingly. You could practically reach out and be seared by their anger at the Pakistanis for continuing to take American bucks by the billions while playing their own game, rather than an American one, in the region.
( I seem to recall Bush-era Iran 'war' as being marked by 'Friedman Units' as every 6 months the spin was slipped into the next iteration of how things were going swimmingly.And to think Rove,Cheney and the Pentagon were not appreciated for the artistry of their fabricated reality : literally 'made from whole cloth' )
Forget the fact that crossing similar borders to get similar information and wipe out similar sanctuaries in Cambodia and Laos in the Vietnam War years led to catastrophe for American planners and the peoples of the region. It only widened that war into what in Cambodia would become auto-genocide.
( Forget it ? Not likely ! Not if you manage to figure out the obvious : that when smart men do 'dumb' things it's because they regard it not as a bug...but as a feature ! )
To take full stock of that group, however, we would first have to pilot our time machine back to June 3, 1997, the day a confident crew of Washington think-tank, academic, and political types calling themselves the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) posted a fin de siècle “statement of principles.” In it, they called for “a military that is strong and ready to meet both present and future challenges; a foreign policy that boldly and purposefully promotes American principles abroad; and national leadership that accepts the United States' global responsibilities.” Crucially, they were demanding that the Clinton administration, or assumedly some future administration with a better sense of American priorities, “increase defense spending significantly.”
The 23 men and two women who signed the initial PNAC statement urging the United States to go for the military option in the twenty-first century would, however, prove something more than your typical crew of think-tank types. After all, not so many years later, after a disputed presidential election settled by the Supreme Court, Dick Cheney would be vice president; I. Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby would be his right-hand man; Donald Rumsfeld would be Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense; Zalmay Khalilzad, head of the Bush-Cheney transition team at the Department of Defense and then the first post- invasion U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, as well as ambassador to Iraq and UN ambassador; Elliot Abrams, special assistant to the president with a post on the National Security Council; Paula Dobriansky, Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs; Aaron Friedberg, Deputy Assistant for National Security Affairs and Director of Policy Planning in the office of the vice president; and Jeb Bush, governor of Florida. (Others like John Bolton, who signed on to PNAC later, would be no less well employed.)
This may, in fact, be the first example in history of a think tank coming to power and actually putting its blue-sky suggestions into operation as government policy, or perhaps it’s the only example so far of a government-in-waiting masquerading as an online think tank. In either case, more than 13 years later, the success of that group can still take your breath away, as can both the narrowness -- and scope -- of their thinking, and of their seminal document, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” published in September 2000, two months before George W. Bush took the presidency.
This crew of surgers extraordinaires was considering a global situation that, as they saw it, offered Americans an “unprecedented strategic opportunity.” Facing a new century, their ambitions were caught by James Peck in his startling upcoming book,Ideal Illusions: How the U.S. Government Co-opted Human Rights, in this way: “In the [Reagan] era, Washington organized half the planet; in the [Bush era] it sought to organize the whole."
The 23 men and two women who signed the initial PNAC statement urging the United States to go for the military option in the twenty-first century would, however, prove something more than your typical crew of think-tank types. After all, not so many years later, after a disputed presidential election settled by the Supreme Court, Dick Cheney would be vice president; I. Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby would be his right-hand man; Donald Rumsfeld would be Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense; Zalmay Khalilzad, head of the Bush-Cheney transition team at the Department of Defense and then the first post- invasion U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, as well as ambassador to Iraq and UN ambassador; Elliot Abrams, special assistant to the president with a post on the National Security Council; Paula Dobriansky, Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs; Aaron Friedberg, Deputy Assistant for National Security Affairs and Director of Policy Planning in the office of the vice president; and Jeb Bush, governor of Florida. (Others like John Bolton, who signed on to PNAC later, would be no less well employed.)
This may, in fact, be the first example in history of a think tank coming to power and actually putting its blue-sky suggestions into operation as government policy, or perhaps it’s the only example so far of a government-in-waiting masquerading as an online think tank. In either case, more than 13 years later, the success of that group can still take your breath away, as can both the narrowness -- and scope -- of their thinking, and of their seminal document, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” published in September 2000, two months before George W. Bush took the presidency.
This crew of surgers extraordinaires was considering a global situation that, as they saw it, offered Americans an “unprecedented strategic opportunity.” Facing a new century, their ambitions were caught by James Peck in his startling upcoming book,Ideal Illusions: How the U.S. Government Co-opted Human Rights, in this way: “In the [Reagan] era, Washington organized half the planet; in the [Bush era] it sought to organize the whole."
The Next START
The asymmetry in tactical nuclear weapons is primarily in favor of the Soviet Union, but the asymmetry in strategic weapons in reserve is primarily in the favor of the United States and is a very sore issue with the Russians that I speak to. We have the capability of rapidly uploading thousands of nuclear weapons onto our strategic forces if we choose to do so.
As former Secretary of Defense (and Energy) Jim Schlesinger pointed out twice in the same hearing, the United States keeps a large reserve when Russia does not because of differing approaches to stockpile stewardship. We maintain existing weapons indefinitely — so we like to have lots of backups. The Russians appear to just keep churning out replacement warheads before the old ones go bad — “turning over” the entire force every 10 years or so.
Obama Employs Bush Administration Tactic, Blocks Photos
The Trial of John YoWALKING SPEED COULD PREDICT LIFESPAN IN SENIORS
Retracted autism study an 'elaborate fraud,' British journal finds
The Big Lie is our economic problems are due to a government that’s too large, and therefore the solution is to shrink it.
The truth is our economic problems stem from the biggest concentration of income and wealth at the top since 1928, combined with stagnant incomes for most of the rest of us. The result: Americans no longer have the purchasing power to keep the economy going at full capacity. Since the debt bubble burst, most Americans have had to reduce their spending; they need to repay their debts, can’t borrow as before, and must save for retirement.
The CNP, "alternative" media and controlled opposition
The CNP was founded as a forum for "conservative" politicians, business leaders, members of the media, and evangelical leaders seeking to "strengthen the political right" in the United States. Surely anyone who has done their homework knows that the Left vs. Right argument is a ruse, and that whether somebody in a position of power claims to be "liberal" or "conservative" they are still -- knowingly or unknowingly -- working toward the furtherance of the globalist, one world agenda..
Some have said that the CNP is even more powerful than the CFR. I find this hard to believe because the CFR is part of a global network and simply the American branch of the British-based Royal Institute for International Affairs (RIIA), which has satellites in all commonwealth countries -- ie. Canadian Institute for International Affairs, Australian Institute for International Affairs, etc. (In the US it's called the Council on Foreign Relations because we are supposedly free from British rule... or so we think.)
Television Is pure Poison
Awais has done a wonderful thing in the following article, because, in it, he makes a critical observation which all thinking individuals should have made by now--Television is much more than addictive entertainment; it is a subtle trap. All those who fall under its spell pause long enough to consider an alternative version of reality. Because of TV and the process of "suspending disbelief," we have allowed ourselves to entertain foreign thoughts which would have otherwise never entered into our thought processes. Because we embraced it as "entertainment," we have had the sick thoughts of every sort of sick criminal introduced into our heads.
Whether the viewer accepts the alternative reality is less important than the fact that he or she has paused and given thought to the programmed message. The greatest power of programming is in the subtle ways it infects the minds of its receivers. If the programmers are intent upon harming, or deceiving them, then the airwaves become instruments of psychological warfare. If you have an entire population willingly, eagerly, opening their homes to these alien signals, then you have a situation like that which we face today....
Whether the viewer accepts the alternative reality is less important than the fact that he or she has paused and given thought to the programmed message. The greatest power of programming is in the subtle ways it infects the minds of its receivers. If the programmers are intent upon harming, or deceiving them, then the airwaves become instruments of psychological warfare. If you have an entire population willingly, eagerly, opening their homes to these alien signals, then you have a situation like that which we face today....
This is our predicament--How do we convince millions of free-willed individuals to switch-off the poison that they have grown to love, which is manipulating their thoughts, inducing them to believe in false versions of reality, before the false reality that has been designed for us, overtakes us all?
SPOOKS IN NIGERIA, Siamese twins CIA/MOSSAD...
In 2010, Christmas Eve bombs, and attacks on churches, killed at least 86 people in Nigeria.
A mad 'Islamist' group called Boko Haram claims it did the bombings. (Boko Haram? Reuters)
Boko Haram says it supports the CIA's al Qaeda.
A mad 'Islamist' group called Boko Haram claims it did the bombings. (Boko Haram? Reuters)
Boko Haram says it supports the CIA's al Qaeda.
THIS is what we wrote in October 2010:
Nigeria would be a success story, if it was not for the CIA/MOSSAD, Dutch, French, British and other trouble makers.....
Nigeria is being helped by high oil prices, a lot of foreign investment and the gradual liberalization of its economy.
But, certain people may be stirring up trouble.
There appears to be a war going on for Nigeria's oil.
There have been talks between Nigeria and a Chinese oil company.
China hopes to grab certain oil blocks from western energy groups, Shell, Chevron, Total and ExxonMobil.
Nigeria would be a success story, if it was not for the CIA/MOSSAD, Dutch, French, British and other trouble makers.....
Nigeria is being helped by high oil prices, a lot of foreign investment and the gradual liberalization of its economy.
But, certain people may be stirring up trouble.
There appears to be a war going on for Nigeria's oil.
There have been talks between Nigeria and a Chinese oil company.
China hopes to grab certain oil blocks from western energy groups, Shell, Chevron, Total and ExxonMobil.
Seeing through the smokescreen
Anyone who has followed the Palestinian-Israeli peace process over the past decade and a half would be virtually blind not to see just how dysfunctional the entire setup really is. In this case, Israel’s inconsistencies seem so obvious, it is surprising that anyone takes some of the statements from some of its officials with anything but a grain of salt. For example, Israel’s recent ire over the Palestinians’ refusal to return to negotiations is ridiculous. Palestinians have said from the start that they would no longer sit at a table with Israel’s leaders as long as settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem continue to expand.
The Cost of Israel to U.S. Taxpayers: True Lies about U.S. Aid to Israel
So long as America's mainstream media, Congress and president maintain their pact of silence, few Americans will ever know the true cost of Israel to U.S. taxpayers."
U.S. employs Afghan War to build Global NATO
"You have to understand that the NATO lobbyists are very prominent in the Pentagon – both in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and on the Joint Staff."
Porter reminded readers that while serving as NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe from 2003-2006 Marine General James Jones (until recently the Obama administration's National Security Advisor) "sold (Defense Secretary Donald) Rumsfeld on turning Afghanistan over to NATO," according to the above-mentioned source.
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