The Iranian Strait Of Hormuz Tanker "Attack" - Can We Say 'Gulf Of Tonkin' Redux?

"Yeah, it'd be a great idea to blame Iran for the oil tanker attacks and start another bogus war!"

"Right now, the U.S. and the Saudis are pointing fingers at the Iranians. Perhaps — but it begs the question, why? Tensions in the region, thanks to the highly inflammatory rhetoric coming out of the Trump administration, are already dangerously high.

National Security Adviser and longtime proponent of war with Iran John Bolton is predictably pushing Donald Trump to, for lack of a better phrase, make war on Iran.

The Saudis, who view Iran as a bitter regional rival, are pushing for the same thing. They would love for the U.S. to use its military against its enemy."  - Marc Ash,  'Were The Gulf Tanker  Strikes A Saudi-Run Operation?', smirkingchiimp.com

"Why of course the people don’t want war...But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship ... Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they’re being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.” --  Hermann Goering.  Nuremberg, 1946

Hours ago,  Trump -corrupted Washington claimed Iran was behind a succession of recent shipping attacks in the Gulf. The Trumpie liars, criminals and reprobates asserted that  grainy video published on the U.S. Central Command’s website provided "evidence"  of Iran’s involvement in Thursday’s attacks. The footage purportedly shows crew from an Iranian boat removing an unexploded mine from one of the vessels.   (Note: It did not show them placing the mine ON the vessel. Hence, alert to how rabid the Amerikkan warmongers are for a new regime change, it made sense to remove what Saudi operatives likely planted, in order to provoke a conflict with Iran.)

Outlandish!? Not any more than Trump and Pompeo's nest of propaganda and BS when we know that John Bolton is itching for a new Mideast war. Do I believe any of the crap spewed out by this administration? Well, no more than I could hurl them all into the Potomac!  

As the Trump cabal and its allies beat the drums for war with Iran, pardon me while I don't buy the huff and puff from pundits, or the alleged "evidence' or the ancillary claims.  In fact it's all too much of a perfect setup, a big pretext for an unnecessary conflict  - like Vietnam or Iraq.  As blogger Marc Ash put it:

"Iran stands to gain little by damaging or destroying Japanese or Norwegian ships. There is no economic or military logic to support that. To the contrary, with U.S. sanctions constraining the Iranian economy, it would be in Iran’s interest to maintain good relations with Japan, Norway, and any other country willing to maintain trade."

Truth be told what's unfolded in the Strait of Hormuz  reminds me more of the bogus Gulf of Tonkin incident that triggered the Vietnam War.  At the time  (summer of 1964)  LBJ ordered two destroyers,  the Turner Joy and Maddox, to stage daylight runs into North Vietnamese waters to test the 12 nautical mile limit.

 Not long after invading the water, the two vessels were allegedly "attacked without provocation".  The claim of  LBJ  - much like Trump today with the oil tanker attacks alleged to be the work of Iran - is the attacks on  Turner Joy and Maddox were initiated by the North Vietnamese.

But in 2005, an internal National Security Agency historical study was declassified; it concluded that the Maddox had engaged the North Vietnamese Navy on August 2, but that there were no North Vietnamese Naval vessels present during the incident of August 4. The report stated regarding August 2:

“At 1505G, Captain Herrick ordered Ogier's gun crews to open fire if the boats approached within ten thousand yards. At about 1505G, the Maddox fired three rounds to warn off the communist boats. This initial action was never reported by the Johnson administration, which insisted that the Vietnamese boats fired first”

And regarding August 4:

“It is not simply that there is a different story as to what happened; it is that no attack happened that night. [...] In truth, Hanoi's navy was engaged in nothing that night but the salvage of two of the boats damaged on August 2”

In other words, the U.S. aggressors used it as a pretext to demand the "Gulf of Tonkin Resolution"  and launch a war that killed nearly 58,000. Like other pretext wars (e.g. Iraq, see the excellent MSNBC special ‘Hubris’) Vietnam never should have occurred. It was once again a case of congress abdicating responsibility as opposed to actually declaring a war.

In the same vein, what's happening now near the Strait of Hormuz is all bogus, a setup, a pretext to start a war.   Fortunately, António Guterres, the UN secretary general, called for an independent investigation, affirming:

"It’s very important to know the truth and it’s very important that responsibilities are clarified. Obviously that can only be done if there is an independent entity that verifies those facts,"

Well, yes, because a war with Iran would be calamitous, far more than the Iraq conflict and we saw how that has turned out - what with ISIS being spawned and massive instability throughout the region.

Unfortunately, the UK appears to have sided with the U.S.  warmongers.   The Foreign Office issued a statement saying: “It is almost certain that a branch of the Iranian military – the Islamic Revolutionary Guard – attacked the two tankers on 13 June. No other state or non-state actor could plausibly have been responsible.”

This, of course, is baseless codswallop.  There are at least two other actors with the means, motives, and opportunity - including Israel and Saudi Arabia.  Both detest Iran to the core, and each would like nothing better than a war fought against Iran but on their behalf.   As smirkingchimp blogger Marc Ash put it in regard to each:

"Israel gets thrown in only because they do have the military technology, they are in the region, and they do share the Saudis’ fear and contempt of Iran."

Ash does add, however, that the Israelis likely didn't mount the tanker attacks given that "striking Japanese and Norwegian vessels is not the type of thing Israel would engage in".   Yeah, but if they wanted a U.S. war with Iran bad enough, they could.  

So why is the UK siding with the Trump vermin?   Well, maybe their Foreign Secretary happened to watch Trump's bloviating performance on FOX and Friends yesterday a.m. and bought it.  Trump is a great con man you know. Particularly where Dotard yapped:

“Iran did do it. You know they did it because you saw the boat. I guess one of the mines didn’t explode and it’s probably got essentially Iran written all over it … You saw the boat at night, successfully trying to take the mine off – and that was exposed.”

And we're supposed to believe this drivel from a walking maggot.  This now after he blabbed three days ago he'd willingly accept the help of a foreign power in the 2020 election - then retracted it the next day? Excuse me while I laugh.  So I am far more inclined  (especially after the fake Iraq WMD B.S. too) to accept the take of Iranian ambassador to the UK, Hamid Baeidinejad.  He said the western intelligence claims were similar to :

“false fabrications during World War I, the Vietnam war and Iraq war that were designed to instigate military interventions and armed conflicts in different parts of world.”

Bingo, Mr.  Baeidinejad, you nailed it!    Besides, in Tokyo yesterday the owner of the Kokuka Courageous   affirmed the Japanese tanker's sailors saw “flying objects” (drones?) before the attack, suggesting it was not damaged by mines. The claim of the  company’s president, Yutaka Katada, totally  contradicted the U.S. military account.

Bottom line, claims of monstrous terror and shameless attacks on innocents (in oil tankers)  cannot be accepted from a monstrous administration that prides itself on flouting the rule of law, and shameless attacks on innocents. (Like locking migrant kids and families up in cages and glorified NM "dog pounds".)

Amidst this background and the further  lying drumbeat for war in the coming days, we should be mindful of the words of former Obama deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes (on 'All In' last night):

"I step back and I worry about the two most disastrous wars in this country's history, Vietnam and the Iraq war. The second thing is that Donald Trump has lied repeatedly about Iran....There's been this pyramid of lies built up about Iran, so he has little credibility now.  The American people if they're being asked to go to war need to be able to trust the people who are leading...

It feels like we are trying to provoke  the Iranians to do something to serve as a pretext to have a war, which is what John Bolton wants.  Do the American people really want to go to war over the fact that two tankers blew up in the Gulf of Oman?  Do the American people want to go to war on behalf of Saudi Arabia, a murderous country that butchers journalists and provokes famines in Yemen?"


Amen, Mr. Rhodes!  I for one certainly don't  trust the deranged renegades now in power, whether Bolton, Trump or Pompeo. They comprise a Liar's Triumvirate. As I  said before, after Trump's 4,500th lie, I would not believe this turd if he claimed the missiles were flying from North Korea.  

If I would not believe him in that context there's no way in hell I'm believing him now with the manufactured "Iran threat".

See also:

Middle East

Were the Gulf Tanker Strikes a Saudi-Run Operation?

And:

Will the Real Bombers Please Stand Up

And:

Armed Forces | Environmental Policy

How the Pentagon’s Forever Wars Are Killing the Planet

by Ilana Novick | June 15, 2019 - 6:46am | permalink

Obama's Executive Move On Immigration - Paints GOOPS Into A Corner

As the crazed Reepos continue to scream and froth at the mouth over Obama's executive action on immigration (see Sen. Ted Cruz's latest fulmination on 'stopping this lawless administration and its unconstitutional amnesty') we see that the end result has been a brilliant strategic move - with the public now favoring any kind of action forward on immigration (See: 'Public Favors Immigration Order', The Denver Post, Nov. 23, p. 6A).

Basically, a funny thing happened after the mid-terms: Instead of Obama coming out all meek, self-pitying and weak, he came out like a ball buster and handed the Reeps their nuts with his audacious immigration address and the issuance of an executive order the next day. Never mind this order is in fact relatively modest, i.e. it only sends immigrants to the back of the deportation line - and even then they'd have to have  been in the country at least five years. So one wonders why the Reepos have so easily lost their minds over this.. (Many immigrants,  on learning the limits, are actually now complaining a bit as noted two days ago in a Miami Herald piece.)

Maybe it's because Obama, basically, has painted the GOP into a corner on an issue that could spell a monstrous loss for the Rs in the 2016 presidential election. Why? Because if the little fuckers go too far off the deep end - shutting down the gov't or trying to pull funding from immigration programs or trying to impeach Obama, they WILL lose at the ballot box.

They will antagonize millions of Hispanic voters, for one thing, and this is the same demographic that was critical with Obama winning back in 2012. They will also outrage many sane Americans who now demand some kind of action on immigration - via Obama's executive orders, if not actual legislation.

As the Denver Post article puts it:

"With the public favoring changes in the immigration system, the Republicans' best short term response appears to be purely rhetorical...Beyond that their hope of reversing his policies appears to be either a years long lawsuit or the 2016 presidential election."

But as the article also notes:

"GOP congressional leaders are desperate to squelch talks of a government shutdown or even impeachment."

Why? Because such moves, even if undertaken and unsuccessful, will ensure the demise of any GOP presidential election hope in 2016. They will simply piss off too many voters who will take out their anger via the ballot box by voting for the Dem Presidential nominee.

So basically, like a classical pin move in chess (using one piece, e.g. knight,  to neutralize two of the opponent's pieces) Obama has pinned the Reepos. If they go crazy and shut down the government over this, or over-react and try to impeach him or even refuse to vote on his assorted nominations, they will lose at the polls in '16 and big time.

Obama has thus won by being headstrong and forceful as opposed to taking the mid-term defeat personally (as a rebuke) or as an obligation for him to be a pusillanimous supplicant to the belligerent Reeps. And this alone drives them crazy.

Apart from the above, it is well to take a meta perspective on the whole kerfuffle. Why, exactly, are the Repukes working themselves into a lather over a minor immigration executive order when congress as a whole has abdicated its most important powers for the past 60 years? If you are going to be a Constitutional fetishist, I would think you'd be a purist about it and not pick and choose which constitutional powers you're going to demand while ignoring the most critical. (Or, using rhetorical ploys to explain away the ceding of war powers!)

Thus, in Article I, Section 8 we read the full swath of congressional powers - all prefaced with the words: "Congress shall have the Power to......"

To what? Well everything from to "lay and collect Taxes, Duties and Imposts to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States" to

"coin money, regulate the Value thereof"  and

"To declare war, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal"

But what have we actually observed?

Well, recent congresses (Demo and Reepo)  have done little or nothing in the way of laying Taxes to provide for the general Welfare - specifically our crumbling infrastructure - now featuring some 70,000 bridges on the verge of collapse, as noted on '60 Minutes' last night (about which I will have more to say in a future post).

As for money, Congress (and the Treasury Dept. by extension), has basically ceded the printing of money - bills - to the Federal Reserve. Recall this entity (not in any way associated with the federal government proper) lays interest on every note made and this is passed on to the banks. The Federal Reserve also has the foremost power in the valuation of money,  for example by its implemented policies such as "quantitative easing" and hiking or lowering interest rates.  (QE and lower interest rates makes every dollar cheaper - which the stock market loves - and raising interest rates makes each dollar more dear and which the stock market hates.)

Where's the beef there? I guess maybe congress- especially the Reeps - forgot they had any say to do with money.

Last but not least, is the congressional  power to declare war, missing since World War II. In each of the wars that have occurred since - for whatever reason - Congress has allowed the executive branch to define either a "police action" (i.e. Korea, so not specifically requiring formal declaration) or some "resolution" (Gulf of Tonkin Resolution for Vietnam War, Iraq War Resolution for Iraq War) to finagle congress into ceding its own war powers and declarative power in favor of passive votes on the executive's resolution. And now these wussies are whining about the executive having "too much power" and presidential "lawlessness"? Give me a freakin' break!

Any moron and his pet monkey knows, or should, that war powers have far greater repercussions than almost any other and indeed their execution can influence a nation's debt and future welfare. This ain't rocket science, or astrophysics!

Author Gore Vidal pinpointed this absurd willingness of congress to cede power to the executive  when he noted (Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta, 2002, p. 124)


"Since 1950 the United States has fought perhaps a hundred overt and covert wars. None was declared by the nominal representatives of the American people in Congress…they had meekly turned over to the executive their principal great power to wage war. That was the end of that Constitution”. 


So now the Repups are squalling because a President delivered a moderate executive order on immigration? No wonder this country is in the crapper - too many have lost touch with reality-  or the actual touchstones of history showing how the constitutional landscape has changed- and how THEY contributed to it by abdicating too much power to the executive.  How can we put this so they understand? Oh yeah! It's a bit hard to corral all the cows back into the barn after leaving the barn door open! DOH!

Maybe they all need to go back to school, and maybe take remedial history 101.

Don’t Blame Me for Not Supporting Illegal Wars Our Political Rats Began!

"Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded because it comprises the germ of every other. As the parent of armies, war encourages debts and taxes, the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few”-   James Madison

"Why of course the people don’t want war...But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship ... Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they’re being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.”

 - Hermann Goering, Nuremberg, 1946

It seems Mike wants me hung for capital treason (he even has a ‘Wanted for Treason’ poster up on his blog) because I dared to retell the truth on the origin of the Vietnam war and why it was illegal. In the course of his online tirade, he compares me to the Unabomber (Ted Kaczynski) expending over three paragraphs on his math abilities and then compared his poor teaching abilities to mine (claiming I received ‘poor ratings’ like Kaczynski – when I regularly received awards from Harrison College for superior teaching). He also exaggerates my reliance on memory (interesting coming from a guy with zero memory) and tries to impute this means I'm unable to do any scholarly or original work! (Tell that to the referees of my papers on solar physics-SID flares!) He then compounds that with other lies, and even had the chutzpah to call me “the Black sheep of the family” when HE fit that label to a ‘T’.  At the end of reading such a volume of doggerel, one wonders if he can even distinguish it from dogshit. (Well, he interjects his mutt, 'Rebel', to carry forth that banner!)


Re: 'Black sheep': The folks always had to be bailing him out of trouble at Hialeah High for all the gang- bat fights he incited, as well as bullying, beating up weaker kids for their lunch money or other 'insurance' extortion. More than once the cops appeared at our door and dad had to plead ignorance and then give assurances it wouldn’t repeat. Finally, he got so disgusted with Mike’s pugnacious antics he let the punk sign up early (by age 17) for the Marines just to get him out of his hair. ‘Black sheep’? It fits this bellicose little bum perfecto!  (Before that, of course, the little imp challenged me to a fight, ca. Easter, 1970. I damned near killed him while I had him in a headlock, but finally got him to spit out "Uncle Remus!" From some of his recent blather on how tough he thinks he is, seems like he forgot that incident. Maybe he needs reminding.)

Anyway, he makes the mistake of finishing his rant (which I have no problems with – other than his lies - since our blog wars have been characterized by high intensity) by posting a photo-shopped image of my face attached to the body of an OWS protestor (from 2011, dredged up from Fox News) defecating on an American flag. Well, that was a step TOO far, a reaction too extreme, so with heavy heart I had to report it to Google Blogger as a ‘terms of service’ violation. He seems to think it was akin to 'running to da-da' whatever the fuck that means, but it was actually a proportionate response, as opposed to what I really wanted to do to his sorry,  rebel punk ass..

His recent over-the-top photo-shopped response was reminiscent of last Oct. when he put my address (in 'neon highlights', i.e. giant, 45 pt.. black font) up with a sign held by a homeless bloke reading "Free  Food For All Homeless at .........". My wife was so livid her blood pressure must have spiked to 200/190. Fortunately, another (middle) brother alerted me to this perfidy or I’d never have known. But this is typical for Mike, and explains the reasons for his constantly getting in trouble with the law during his earlier years. He always reacts to a stimulus with an excessive response. He can’t react with proportion, but always with more vehemence, violence or intensity than called for. Now, he claims that with my ‘Amazing Race’ blog I “spit” on the Vietnam vets who fought in that war, but he fails to process my previous writings on wars, such as at:
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/09/not-all-troops-are-heroes-dangers-of.html

In that blog I carefully noted that, despite the PR -incessant brainwashing of the Military-Industrial complex we are not obliged to honor all soldiers. If therefore, a Vietnam soldier (like Lt. William Calley) committed (or participated in)  a massacre like My Lai then he’s no better than a Jeffrey Dahmer or Charles Manson in a uniform. I do not honor him, I spit on him and all his ilk, accomplices. I make no apologies for doing so, and Mikey can exercise his bowels and bladder on his keyboard all he wants in fulmination but I do not retract it. Similarly, if a pilot or group in a B-52 flies over civilians and drops napalm to burn them up, or Agent Orange to poison their crops, I spit on them – I do not honor them.

If, however, the Vietnam vet was a draftee, sucked into that war of choice, and if he merely tried to stay alive and defend himself but didn’t engage in overt criminal actions- then I treat him the same way as all other victims of that conflict who suffered collateral damage. Mikey wants medals for what he did, but what did he do? When he left the Marines after 2 years in August, 1973, all I heard when I briefly stayed with him in Hialeah (home from Peace Corps after my first 2 year term and before re-upping) was how hard it was, especially Parris Island. How those bad man drill instructors mistreated him and the other booyahs, and that he was ‘gonna write a book’. Well, using my old Smith-Corona typewriter he did manage to peck out about five pages and showed them to me. I didn’t diss them but encouraged him to get on with the book. But after a few months it petered out, and his book was stillborn.

Not long after, unable to find any work in Florida, he re-signed with the Army. From all the information I’ve been able to gather from other sources, he never saw one single rice paddy in Vietnam the whole time he was in either Marines or Army. Yet he projects this overt braggadocio of how HE was the big “military man” while I “hid” in Peace Corps! In fact, I probably accomplished more in my first month of Peace Corps than he did in his four years in the military….as primarily a cook and bottle washer.

As for his bollocks that ours was a “military family” – don’t make me laugh!  A military family by definition is one in which successive generations sign up to actually FIGHT in real wars (Civil War, WWI, WWII). A tradition is passed on. No such tradition was passed on for our family, rather each of us made a choice to perform service where we believed we were most needed and which didn't intersect the others. Thus I elected the Peace Corps (4 years) , the second brother chose the Navy(where he also worked in kitchen duty) while another brother picked the Air Force where he worked in signal intelligence in Brindisi, Italy (and also spent some time with reconnaissance in Vietnam) and Mike picked his Marines, then the Army.Does this make any of us “heroes”? Not really, but it does mean we each served our country in our own respective ways, with variable degrees of contribution.

Now, getting back to ‘Nam, let us try to recall some basic facts of how and why that was instigated. Much of it I related 3 blogs ago, noting LBJ’s connivance in the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, based that altercation on the North Vietnamese, when the ship (Maddox) that fired the first shots belonged to the Americans. This according to an NSA file released in 2005. Even before this, JFK planned to pull out all personnel by 1965, as per Freedom of Information Act released files. ('Documents Show JFK Planned Viet Pullout by '65, The Baltimore Sun, p. 3A, December 23, 1997).

Meanwhile, after the assassination, LBJ issued NSAM-273 to retract and nullify Kennedy's NSAM -263, setting the stage for the Vietnam War ramp up. All LBJ needed was a pretext to incite a war and he found it in August, 1964.

Still, as Rachel Maddow reported last week (based on Nixon tapes released from a UK source), there was the chance to end the war in the fall of 1968. The Paris Peace Talks had brought all sides (U.S., NVA, S. Viets) together and resolution was at hand, as the U.S. was ready to halt all military action. But as Maddow reveals, Nixon (who bragged in his 1968 campaign HE would end the war if elected, not Hubert Humphrey) had unknown malefactors contact the S. Vietnamese before the talks were midway through and tell them they’d be shafted by the final agreement. The talks were blown up, Nixon was elected, and the rat fucker kept the war going for 7 more years with nearly 25,000 more lives lost. The bastard, as Oliver Stone noted, even extended the war into Cambodia.

Maddow noted that Johnson knew about Nixon’s disgusting political ploy but was unable to relate it prior to the election, because it entailed the use of spy technology the CIA (and NSA) didn’t want exposed. So, ironically LBJ, who originally crafted the ploy to instigate the Vietnam war, had to sit quietly and not say one word while Nixon used a lie to get elected – when Johnson knew all along what he really planned. Readers who wish to access the segment can do so here: http://theimmoralminority.blogspot.com/2013/03/rachel-maddow-reports-that-richard.html

Of course, this is all evocative of launching – with a multitude of lies and deceit – the Iraq War, for which no WMD were ever found, and Saddam had not one damned thing to do with al Qaeda. Never mind, once the liars and political maggots got going, including getting the press on board, it became merely a matter of time before ‘Shock and Awe’ and the loss of nearly 600,000 Iraqi lives, and 4,500+ Americans. Oh, and a cost of over $3 trillion!

Now, let’s understand how the seeds for all our illegal wars were spawned! This has been uncovered over decades by deep politics researchers, with the use of Freedom of information released files. If one looks back at the document track, one can pretty well discern that the incentive to meddle in other nations’ affairs – as part of U.S. foreign policy – probably commenced with The National Security Council (NSC) Directive ‘NSC 10/2’ on June 18, 1948. A key element therein warned that all activities to be conducted against “hostile” foreign states – on in support of “friendly” ones, were to be executed so that “no U.S. Government responsibility would be evident to any unauthorized persons.” The provision also had to be included that if such activities were discovered “the U.S. Government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them.”

The scope of activities enumerated under the directive included: “propaganda, economic warfare, preventive direct action – including sabotage; subversion against hostile states including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerillas and refugee liberation groups and support of indigenous anti-Communist elements in threatened countries of the free world.”


Ratcheting up the effect, and consolidating the impetus to Empire building was the document NSC-68, prepared by Paul Nitze of the National Security Council – completed by 1950. The document essentially contained the blueprint for unending strife and undeclared wars, all of which would be invoked on the basis of a zero tolerance threshold for foreigners’ misbehavior. The putative basis? To enable U.S. agitation, overthrow (or assassination) of democratically-elected leaders, and large and small occupations (ranging from the few thousand troops in the Dominican Republic in 1965, to more than 200,000 in Iraq by 2006.)
The motivating force of the document was clear in this regard:

“a defeat of free institutions anywhere is a defeat everywhere”

In other words, any place for which the U.S. even remotely construes a “defeat of free institutions” gives it license to intervene at will. This critical aspect is described thusly by Morris Berman[1]:

“Nitze emphasized the importance of perception, arguing that how we were seen was as crucial as how militarily secure we actually were. This rapidly expanded the number of interests deemed relevant to national security”.

In other words, it provided the formula for unending war, and the building of Empire. Gore Vidal pinpoints the emergence of the American Empire when he notes[2]:

“Since 1950 the United States has fought perhaps a hundred overt and covert wars. None was declared by the nominal representatives of the American people in Congress…they had meekly turned over to the executive their principal great power to wage war.

That was the end of that Constitution”.

The key point to note here is not only did the U.S. invoke a specious doctrine[3] to entitle it to engage in warfare wherever it deemed the “need” (e.g. Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Grenada, Nicaragua, Iraq, Afghanistan etc.) but also to take out democratically elected leaders where and when they threatened U.S. corporate interests, such as Premier Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran (1953)- threatened U.S. Oil interests, Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala (1954)   Even when specious doctrines weren't invoked, lies and deceptions often were in order to involve the U.S. in massive troop deployments and years of ruinous (to lives and treasure) military intrusions. For example, LBJ employed the ruse of the North Vietnamese firing on the Maddox and Turner Joy in international waters in August, 1964 as the basis to ramp up the Vietnam War. Similarly, Bush and Cheney employed the ruse that Saddam had "WMD" to justify Operation "Iraqi Freedom”.


The question for REAL citizens and REAL patriots (as opposed to 'consumers' and paper patriots), is whether they will stand up and question their country (and whatever party, political administration) when it veers off on the wrong track. This, as opposed to being unwilling, passive puppets who remain quiet while massively -spilled blood and treasure hurls us into further decline and eventual oblivion. Puppets who confirm again the words of Hermann Goering,  cited in the preface to this blog.  Meanwhile, rendering our nation just another in a series of empires relegated to the dustbin of history. The choice is one for each of us to make! And make no mistake, it IS a moral choice. All that's needed for evil to triumph is for good men to sit by and do or say nothing!

--------------
[1] Morris Berman: 2006, Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire, W.W. Norton, page 118.


[2] Gore Vidal: 2002, Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta, Thunders Mouth, p. 124.


[3] Of course, the ignominious “Bush Doctrine” – crafted under the auspices of the 2002 National Security Strategy – was even more noisome and outrageous, allowing for pre-emptive war as it made Iraq the gold standard for precedence. See: Berman, op. cit., p. 203.