Surrealpolitic for surreal times.: September 2006

9.29.2006

S.I.N. (Sex, Iraq & November)

Did we miss anything while we were out? Like a Republican Congressman digitally pleasuring a page? How about another e-card from Al Qaeda? Was there, perchance anything about the upcoming November elections or a rebuttal to a Bob Woodward book? Good. But before we begin let's take a step back, as we are prone to do after a vacation and look at the big picture.

Yes, Republicans have sex. Sometimes it's illicit and sometimes it's of a homosexual nature. Is that wrong? If they're underaged, yes, but otherwise no. What makes it wrong is that they subscribe to a party that makes it a moral issue. To us, that's the most disgusting part about the whole Foley incident. Hey, Foley, if you're going to have homosexual tendencies, may I recommend either the Peace and Freedom or Green Parties? They're the ones who promote sexual diversity. But let's face it, Republicans are to hypocricy as Democrats are to ... whatever they're about this week. The good thing about ex-representative Foley is that he resigned before he took up two press cycles. Now that's class.

Now, let's talk Iraq. The war isn't going well and the President can't and won't admit the truth. We have to, as a nation, deal with this fact. You are not going to wake up one day and see the President weeping on Fox News, apologizing for misleading Congress into war and for approving illegal wiretapping. Readers, he's reviewing memos from Henry Kissinger for advice!!! He's not going anywhere. So if you want a change go to the voting booth in November and vote for the other party. You sometimes forget that you have more rights over your elected officials than the amount of people who have ever lived in history collectively. Truth be told, The Administration can't withdraw from Iraq at this point and it's not about looking weak, it's about Iran. If we pull out now, Iran will control Iraq through its Shi'ite population and, ultimately the world's second greatest oil reserves. If you think this Administration is going to let that happen, you are sadly mistaken. So, like a bad date, you're stuck with the check for an expensive dinner you didn't want and a rash that is difficult to cure.

One more thing. Let's talk about November. In 2000 and 2004 there are some pretty irrefutable truths that the outcome of those elections were tampered with in Florida and Ohio respectively. The American media turned a blind eye to some glaring facts while the British media did our work. Guess what? If the party in power is benefitting from voting irregularities, they're not likely to stop any time soon. If you vote in a battleground state and suspect voting irregularity, it's your responsibility to alert the media, hire a lawyer, talk to people and fight to save your democracy. Fox News ain't gonna do it. If nothing is done to fix the paperless, electronic voting machines and the compromised voter roles, we will quickly become a one-party nation that isn't going to care what you think about illegal wiretapping, Iraq or voting irregularities. Oh, wait...

9.08.2006

Congress Loses Monopoly On Deception

Napoleon once said (and I'm paraphrasing here) that you never had to actually lie to the people, just delay the truth until it is no longer relevant. Fortunately for Bonaparte, he never had the New York Times, CNN or the internet to contend with or he never would have been able to convince his people to go to war without provocation. Thank God, we live in the twenty-first century where war and ignorance have been abolished and we savor the delicious taste of Soylent Green.

Today the Senate Panel released a scathing report (Are there any other kinds these days?) on the Administration for, wait for it, misleading the American people on pre-war intelligence. And they said it with a straight face. Truth be told, the Administration didn't mislead the American people, they misled the American people who voted for the use of military force and the last time I looked, that was still Congress.

Senator Carl Levin (D - MI), one of the more outspoken critics of the Administration's misinformation campaign and one of the members of the panel was incensed. When George Tenet, then-director of the CIA told Bush that his agency's intelligence on Iraq's possession of wmds was a "slam dunk" (he did a hell of a job, didn't he?), Levin responded by saying this was "a corruption of the intelligence process". Except he didn't say that in October 2002 when it mattered. He said it today. What he said when it mattered was: "The war against terrorism will not be finished as long as [Saddam Hussein] is in power." (CNN's Late Edition, 12/16/01) And he wasn't alone. A lot of Senators believed this to be true. To his credit, Levin didn't vote to authorize the use of military force in October 2002 while newly reincarnated doves like Senators Clinton, Reid and Schumer did. My question is this: I knew the Administration was lying to us and I live in Everytown, USA. Why the hell didn't you guys figure it out when you're the ones who are supposed to have all the information?

Anyone doing the very minimal amount of research and possessing even the tiniest amount of critical thinking would have understood that Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden were, like the mongoose and the cobra, natural enemies. Osama killed people for not praying to Allah while Saddam killed people for not praying to him. Much of the Administration's and Congress' information came from Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi refugee who, according to the Wall Street Journal participated in a secret Defense Policy Board meeting just a few days after the September 11, 2001 attacks in which the main topic of discussion was how 9/11 could be used as a pretext for attacking Iraq. Not to mention the fact that the New Yorker did piece after piece discrediting the Administration's own Middle Eastern Madam Chiang Kai Shek. Now, don't tell me that these two publications know more than the CIA. And if they do, perhaps we need to make Seymour Hersh the head of Homeland Security.

So when White House spokesmodel, Tony Snow tells the AP that there was "nothing new" in the Senate Panel report, he for once isn't lying; there is nothing new in what it says. There was no link between Iraq and Al Qaeda regarding 9/11. It's Senators like John D. Rockefeller IV (D - WV) who are lying by claiming the Administration "exploited the deep sense of insecurity among Americans in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, leading a large majority of Americans to believe - contrary to the intelligence assessments of the time - that Iraq had a role in 9/11." It was he who had the deep sense of insecurity. He was the one who actually voted to go to war. Anyone who picked up the New Yorker or the Wall Street Journal knew exactly what was going on. I guess if Napoleon were alive today he would alter his statement by saying all a leader would have to do is delay the news long enough from Congress until it was no longer relevant.

We Are Not Alone.

For the fifth year anniversary, our nation will look again to New York and remember. We will remember the planes, the screams off of a shaky, handheld video camera in New Jersey. We will recall ashen figures in suits and fingers pointing skyward. We will try and forget the tiny figures that plummeted downward and the brave last calls. We will also hopefully forget the anger that sometimes still ensues when we see the lonely figure of the Empire State Building searching southward for its lost friends. Let us not forget, however, that we are not the only ones in our grief.

Since September 11th, 2001 the world has seen a seige of a school in Beslan, Russia which resulted in the death of 187 school children and the reprisals which most likely killed thousands, an estimated 100,000 people butchered in Darfur and the number is still climbing. We've seen most recently a stupid miscalculation in the Middle East between Hezbollah and Israel which have cost hundreds of lives and the nearly 1,000 protestors in Uzbekistan who were murdered in the street for no reason except that they were protesting. Meanwhile, in China maybe a million or more "dissidents" are forced into labor camps or worse, into prisons without hope of ever being released. The same is true in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria and Israel. Across the globe, September 11th is happening every day in some countries. The tragedy isn't that it happened to us, the tragedy is that it happens to everyone.

So when you recall that day do not feel as though we stand alone. Quite the contrary. All we have to do is look around and see that the world is filled with those who mourn the loss of countrymen or loved ones. Each one with their own anniversary. On September 11th, let us grieve for our loss, but also recognize that the world is waiting for us to understand that our remembrance is but a drop in a vast and global bucket that yearns to someday be dry.

9.05.2006

Why We Fight. (Uncensored)

According to a survey in the London Times, 85 percent of soldiers fighting in Iraq believe they are there because of 9/11 while about two-thirds of the American people believe this as well. Meanwhile, back on Earth, even our President has said in response to whether or not Iraq played a roll in the 9/11 attack: "Nobody's ever suggested that the attacks of September the 11th were ordered by Iraq. Now I said, going into Iraq, we've got to take these threats seriously before they fully materialize. I saw a threat." So who's going to break it to the American people?

Since 9/11, the Administration has done everything in its power to force our nation into war with Iraq. Remember weapons of mass destruction? Remember enriched uranium? Remember mushroom clouds and anthrax? It was all a lie to get you to buy a war you didn't need. But why? There are plenty of terrible dictators out there we could have taken a moral high ground against, so why Saddam Hussein? Why not Islam Karimov or Kim Jung Il or the enitre House of Saud? I hear they're available. The Al Qaeda threat had been decreased exponentially after we illegally invaded Afghanistan (but that's a blog for another time). We had essentially dismantled the only nation in the region in which Osama Bin Laden could operate, so why did the Administration start a war that diminished its political credibility, treasury and the lives of its bravest soldiers on a nation that had nothing to do with 9/11 while actually increasing the threat of terrorism? This would have been like invading Canada after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Prepare to be bored: Oil. It's that simple. During the Clinton Administration the Pentagon had already drawn up plans to invade Iraq for several reasons and let's go through them point by point.
1. The world's oil supply is eventually going to run out. Some estimate we have roughly another 50 years, others say 100 but either way, any nation not prepared will quite literally find themselves in the Dark Ages. If we can control oil output, we can ... well, you can guess the rest.
2.Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the world. It was run by a dictator who was despised by muslims for being too secular, despised by his secular population for being too despotic and militarily weakened by twelve years of sanctions. You couldn't have asked for a more minimal risk with a higher yield.
3. Contracts for all of Vice President Cheney's friends was the nail in Iraq's coffin. Before the United States even set foot in the region, KBR (A subsidiary of Halliburton, the company which Cheney sat on the board for just before being appointed Vice President.) had already been issued - issued, mind you, they didn't need to bid - contracts to rebuild Iraq. Members of KBR were at the planning sessions with Pentagon officials to discuss what they should bomb. It has been reported in the London Times that certain targets were actually selected for a higher profit margin. That's right. Our 6 million dollar bombs were used to make sure Dick Cheney's friends made more money. For a mind-blowing account of their corruption go to: http://www.halliburtonwatch.org, it's a real eye-opener.

As I said, I was for the war in Iraq because after 9/11 we needed a base in the Middle East from which to stop terrorist groups and to demonstrate American military might. Yes, it's barbaric. Yes, it's unfair. But so are our enemies. My problem is that the Administration did such an incompetent job; if they had been prepared to immediately rebuild their infrastructure, if they had sent in the U.N. to police the nation until they had formed a solid coalition goverment, if ONLY they had done their homework and researched the delicate patchwork of religious and social networks that existed, then perhaps we wouldn't be facing a civil war and the death toll of almost 2,700 American soldiers and at least 50,000 Iraqi civilians. It was only a matter of time before we went into Iraq, but under a Gore or Kerry administration, it probably would have been done a lot smarter and without such obvious corruption. Donald Rumsfeld is wrong again: were not fighting fascism. Iraq's only crime was that it was rich in oil and poor in leadership and that is why we fight.