Marco Rubio - Another Reepo Buffoon - Falls Into the Iraq Trap

Rubio pouts after mucking up an Iraq question from FOX's Chris Wallace.

What is it with these mentally deficient Republican presidential candidates that even after they behold the alleged "front runner'" stumble over an Iraq question ('if you knew what you do now would you still have invaded?') they still get tongue tied and end up spouting a dopey, half-assed response? The latest chowderhead is Marco Rubio, a junior Senator from Florida and Tea Party gadfly who somehow fancies himself another Obama. He isn't.  He barely qualifies as a 'Barney Fife' wannabe. (Google the name if you don't know it.)

Asked  on Sunday by a Fox anchor (Chris Wallace) a similar question, Rubio could only sputter:

"I still say it was not a mistake because the president was presented with intelligence that said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, it was governed by a man who had committed atrocities in the past with weapons of mass destruction.”

Bull Pockey! You dodged the question, you putz!

When Wallace pushed him to say whether he’d call it a mistake, even knowing about the faulty intelligence, he responded in classic 'Barney Fife' fashion:

“The world is a better place because Saddam Hussein is not there…” .

Uh no, Barney, errr....Marco. In case you haven't noticed, a bunch of vicious terrorists called ISIS are running amuck - pillaging, murdering and raping- unleashed by Bush's folly - barging into a sectarian Muslim nation using a total BS ruse.. (More on this below)

When a CBS News political analyst was asked this morning what he made of these stumbles, he replied: "Well, none of these guys want to second guess the signature event of the last Republican president".

Which is beyond pathetic, given how 75 percent of the country now believes the Iraq invasion and occupation was not worth it - according to polls.  It also leaves open the possibility that any one or all of these losers would re- invade (Lindsey Graham calling for "10,000 troops" this morning to secure Anbar province) and make the situation even worse. I suppose one ought not second guess Reepo insanity - which is "doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result"

The brutal fact none of these monkeys can grasp? That Bush Jr. ought to have left Saddam alone, and not invaded to satiate little Georgie's pique that the "bad man" threatened his daddy. That is what it was all about after all, and the "WMD" bullshit was just an elaborate ruse and cover to justify invasion of a sovereign state.

True, Saddam was no angel, not one bit. But the Bushies'  2002 exploitation of the false "al Qaeda-WMD" narrative to justify an American invasion actually back fired, because now an even more malignant force - ISIS -  has taken up residence in the chaotic vacuum left behind. What the invasion did, which had been controlled up until then, was unleash the sectarian strife between Sunnis and Shi'ites which Saddam had controlled by his anti-religious, secular power. Once Saddam was removed from power, the Sunnis and Shi'ites were free to go at each others' throats - and all the American occupation did was delay it.

When the American phony program for Iraqi  democracy spawned a pseudo-dictatorship run by the Shia - the stage was set for a Sunni spinoff bunch of terrorists to wage bloody onslaughts - as they are now doing in Ramadi  - on the verge of taking it over. No one but a certified idiot could believe any of this shit would be going down if Saddam was still around and in control.

So this is what Rubio, Jeb Bush and likely some of the other Reeptard clowns don't get, and why they make mince meat of what should be straightforward answers to simple, direct questions. Which elicits the question of why anyone would want any of these dolts occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  I mean, are voters really that stupid to want the country expending more vital resources in Iraq Showdown II? I would hope not, or I'd have to seriously consider moving back to Bim.

But by all standards of reason and processing of history, there's no going back now. We already wasted $4 trillion there, which we could have better used to repair our crumbling infrastructure here at home. What one does hope is that in the case of both Iraq and Afghanistan - we finally re-learn the lessons we ought to have learned after Vietnam. That is to stay the fuck out of places where our immediate domestic security isn't threatened.  Were all those troops" fighting for my freedom"? Hell no! They were fighting for Wall Street, the Bushie opportunist Oil imperialists and their privateer companies (like Halliburton and Bechtel) and the advance of Amerikkan Neoliberalism.

If you don't understand that then you don't know recent history and aren't paying attention.

The rich humor of it all is that at the time the Bushie PR and propaganda machine actually compared Saddam to Hitler! Never mind that Saddam was the one being pounded by the most devastating shock and awe attack since the Blitzkrieg launched by Hitler on Poland in 1939. But this sort of human evil had been strenuously reasoned and formally justified by Bushie Neocons like William Kristal, Paul Wolfowitz and Dick Cheney!  Most of whom Jeb Bush wants back on his "team" if he should become President. (He finally declared his candidacy in NV last week.)

In addition, the U.S. corporate media acted as a willing accomplice, fully complicit in spreading the WMD hysteria that led to the Iraq invasion on March 17, 2003.  Hence each and every one of these actors, agents  (such as then NY Times troll Judith Miller) share blame in manifesting and accommodating human evil, including the devastating costs exacted on Iraqi civilians. (Which the World Health Organization add up to 600,000 deaths or one hundred times more than even Saddam would have wrought if left in power)

A final bit of historical reference to jog the brains of the remaining Reepo herd re: Iraq. Its invasion didn't emerge all of a sudden but was planned as long ago as 1992,  This was as part of the Project for the New American Century" (PNAC) which had originally designated Iraq's seizure and Saddam's ouster for 1993 after an expected Bush Sr. election win. This plan had been originally designed by the likes of Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld to extend American power in the world starting in the Middle East, namely Iraq and Afghanistan. Oil also figured mightily into the planning, and no surprise a big Oil honcho like Cheney would be humping and pumping it to the nth degree. A secondary aspect was to oust Saddam which George Sr. stopped short of doing in the Gulf War.

All the best laid plans went askew after Clinton won the 1992 election, and so the PNAC plan had to be put on hold, specifically its plan for an Iraq invasion and occupation.  The plan sprung to life anew after the Bush Jr. win in the 2000 general election (though Al Gore won the popular vote). Cheney, Wolfowitz et al knew they needed an excuse for invasion, however, since "Americans are still suffering from Vietnam hangover" as Wolfie once put it.  The event for springing into action occurred with 9/11 - and all the Bushies needed was an invention (WMD) to link Saddam to it - even if it was all bullshit.

Will the Reepos learn from their mistakes? I doubt it as they haven't yet. Nor will they if elected. As Joan Walsh points out in a piece on Rubio at salon.com:

" Rubio’s been trying to challenge Bush for neocon support. Check out his campaign tagline — “Join Marco’s Fight For A New American Century!” – which suggests homage to the Project for a New American Century, peddlers of the Iraq war (Jeb Bush signed their founding document.)"

One can only hope voters next year will be brighter than these dim bulbs!

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/tina-dupuy/62255/the-bush-years-an-explainer

Cheney & Other Neocons Ought to be Keeping Silent - Not Trashing Obama

"Never mind the fact that the perpetrators of this enormous fraud, this smash-and-grab robbery, this looting of the Treasury, this act of first-degree murder on a massive scale, all walked away scot-free to pursue new careers and live lives of comfort. Amazingly enough, that's not the worst part. The worst part is that they're all on my television again, trying to blame President Obama for the circumstances created by their own feckless, murderous decisions." - William Rivers Pitt, in 'They Belong in Prison, Not on TV' on smirkingchimp.com

I still have my mouse pad given to me as a gift some years ago: it shows Dick Cheney's snarling mug on one side and that of his spitting image - a snarling "Satan" on the other, e.g.
Given this piece of filth was largely the Maestro of the Iraq invasion, one would have thought he'd be keeping a low profile, as opposed to actually having the nerve to pen an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal daring to insinuate Obama committed "treason" for "betraying the future of our country". What the fuck is he talking about? He and his fellow Neocon vermin betrayed the country by destabilizing Iraq and opening the doors to real terror. He and the necons were actually WAR Criminals, who ought to now be rotting just outside the Hague - but because of the overly good graces of Obama, these scum were never prosecuted or turned over! One must question where the thanks are now. Have they no shame? No they don't!

Let’s recall here (for the memory-challenged) that it was Cheney who originally had a plan underfoot to bogusly attack Iraq from 1992  (under the banner of the 'Project for the New American Century') operating under the presumption that Poppy Bush (George the First) would be re-elected. Well, he wasn’t.  Clinton took the election thanks to Ross Perot splitting the ‘puke vote. This meant Cheney’s plan had to be put on hold until another Bush could get in, and that wasn’t until 2000 – when five treasonous Supreme Court justices interrupted a Florida recount to hand the election to Junior, aka Dumbya.

Even then it wasn’t a done deal, a pretext still had to be found for invasion and occupation. The gift fell into the laps of Bush, Cheney and their Neocon warmonger cohort with the devastating 9/11 attacks. People will argue over 9/11’s real origins until their dying day but one thing we do know: the Bush Criminals profited handsomely in the wake, with Bush’s approval rating shooting up into the 90s (from below 35%) even as the national security state and military –industrial complex got the go ahead for the biggest spending in 60 years. At the very least, while many of us don’t believe these vermin deliberately blew up the Twin Towers, we do think it highly probable they KNEW what was coming and sat back and did nothing. In other words they let it happen.  It was simply too great a benefit ‘plum’ to do otherwise. See also: http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/09/how-responsible-was-bush-for-911.html

It also finally enabled the original Cheney Iraq invasion-occupation plan to be put into motion. All the Neocon memos surfacing from just after 9/11 (many from Paul Wolfowitz & Cheney) showed repeated underscored emphases like: “TIE SADDAM TO 9/11! HOW?” Indeed, how? Since Saddam was a resolute secularist who had no tolerance for religious extremists of either the Sunni or Shi’ite Muslim stripe. But the traitor Cheney and his Neocon ilk were determined to make the connection and have the corporate U.S. media coopted to assist in the PR blitz that lasted from October, 2002 until March, 2003 when the Cheney-bred dogs of war were unleashed. To that end, the Cheney-directed Neocons employed every sort of ruse - from 'yellowcake' to aluminum tubes and alleged claims of WMD (from an Iraqi traitor rat named 'curve ball') - to pump up a bogus case for invasion just like Hitler and the Nazis did (using faked imagery of German fraus being raped by Poles) to justify an invasion of Poland in 1939. Once he had the U.S. corporate media on his side it was merely a matter of drum beating a sheep-like American public into giving him the poll numbers he desired to launch an invasion in March, 2003.

If there was one prime Nazi I'd compare Cheney to it would probably be Rudolph Hess, but the malignancy of Hess pales besides that of Cheney.  While Hess likely was directly responsible for the deaths of thousands, Cheney's Iraq interference machinations led to a wasteful occupation that in the end cost us over $3 trillion and more than 4400 American lives as well as 600,000 innocent Iraqi lives (according to WHO, the World Health Organization). Meanwhile, the bloody Nazified takeover as well as hyped rhetoric (“Axis of Evil”) drove the other two members of that defined “axis”, Iran and North Korea, to develop their own nuclear weapons – realizing this would likely be the only deterrent to the crazed Amerikkan pre-emptive warmongers. So, if Iran and North Korea do have ‘x’ atomic bombs today, you can lay the blame on Dick Cheney’s lap as well as his accomplices, aka the Neocon rats like Paul Wolfowitz, William Kristol, Richard Perle et al.

 Make no mistake that Cheney is the real traitor, whose costly pre-emptive war will cost us well into the future, including the brain-damaged vets needing aid, and benefits. But at the same time Cheney's is only one dastardly head belonging to the multi-headed Hydra Neocons. This Hydra is now raising its voice in the media to try to brand Obama responsible for the current Iraqi turmoil - as opposed to pointing the finger at themselves. For they were the architects of one of the worst geopolitical disasters in living memory.

Make no mistake I wanted all of them brought to account, especially for their torture and rendition practices - as well as launching  a pre-emptive war. I had opined at the time (just after Obama's 2008 election) that he needed to prosecute them with the full force of law - using all the resources of the Justice Dept.-  and if not hung as war criminals, then tossed into assorted slammers here in the U.S. to rot. But Obama was too gracious by far insisting we must "look forward, not backward".  Did he have any notion then of the ingratitude these degenerates would show now? Not bloody likely!

When next the neocons are tempted to go off on Obama, they need to visualize just where they'd be right now had he not been so generous and forgiving five years ago.

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/william-rivers-pitt/56519/they-belong-in-prison-not-on-tv

The VA Scandal: It's About Too Many Long 'wars', Not Enough Gov't Employees

 As the Republicans continue screeching outrage and pique  - now about the VA hospitals that left dozens of vets on "secret waiting lists"- it is important (as with most things the 'pukes scream about, like Benghazi) to get a perspective.  The Republicans and their vocal media mouthpieces (like Hannity, Beck and Limbaugh) are all about how Obama and his administration left those patriotic vets hanging waiting for care, until the bitter end.

But polls show people don't buy it, at least the sensible ones. One poll cited yesterday (by Bill Maher)  disclosed only 17% blame Obama for the fiasco at the VA, but truth be told this should even be lower. It is, in fact, the Republicans who dispatched the country into two, extended wars of choice - that were totally unnecessary. Bush, Cheney and their minions then are to blame for launching these wars, while also CUTTING taxes instead of raising them.

This budgetary myopia showed they were more interested in starting unnecessary conflicts than looking ahead to the formidable costs, in medical and psychological terms. They wanted the pseudo-glory and bravado, such as trotting Dumbya Bush out in his flight suit to the "Mission Accomplished" idiocy, as opposed to constructing all the hospitals and hiring the VA staff that would be needed to care for the maimed vets they dispatched into harm's way ......on false pretexts.

The Reeps never talk about having been able to vote on a $24b bill that would have opened 27 new VA hospitals but punted. They felt it was "too much money" going to fuel "big government". Well, you get what you pay for.  The Reepos have also overseen the downsizing of VA staff - in tandem with their yen to "sink government in a bathtub" .

 Currently then, only 20,000 VA workers are there to take care of 100 million appointments a year - which is an outrage. There ought to be at least double that number, as there ought to be more Social Security offices (and workers too), instead of shuttering hundreds of S.S. offices across the nation - to make it much more difficult for seniors to get benefits.

The moral of the story in all this? Don't instigate or incite wars where you don't belong, and keep them going for a decade (or more) if you're not willing to pay for the projected medical costs. Don't cut taxes and call what you're engaging in a "war" if you don't increase taxes so that all citizens share in the sacrifice. Don't tell 98% of the nation to "go shopping" and tell the others they must "fight for the 98 percent's freedoms" - unless you want to make an ass out of yourself.

Sadly, Obama, in his visit to Afghanistan over the weekend, still doesn't seem to have gotten the message - indicating the Afghan conflict "must end responsibly" - meaning troops will remain there in harm's way past this year. WHY? There is no reason to keep them there, and doing so will not secure Afghanistan's future any more than staying in 'Nam would have secured its future from the North Vietnamese. As Sun Tzu would have put it, that war was lost before even begun. (His actual statement in 'The Art of War' is "Wars are lost or won before they begin").

The wise move here, given the unfolding VA crisis in inadequate medical care, is to pull those troops - ALL of them - by year's end. Then, there is some smattering of a chance (not much!) that the VA personnel needs can catch up to the urgent care and waiting vets. But it is clueless to risk many more injured vets - from Afghanistan- when the under-staffed and underfunded system obviously can't handle them.

Mr. Obama, end the Afghan fiasco now! Take note of Thomas Friedmann's words that it makes no sense to do nation building overseas if we don't do nation building in our own country first.

Our own country cries out for repair (of its infrastructure) and also creation of millions of new jobs not affiliated with weapons manufacture or warring. Not to mention, healing its own citizens-  from students' inundated by debt, to families barely eking by on food stamps.

Let us take care of our own country now, and the existing vets awaiting care, as opposed to adding thousands more that the downsized (thanks to Reepos) government  and VA simply cannot handle.

Just my two cents!

Obama's Hollow Threats: A Failure To Grasp Geopolitics – As He Defends Iraq War

"The vast human cataclysms of the 20th century will not likely repeat themselves. But the worldwide civil society that the elites thought they could engineer is a chimera. The geographical forces at work will not be easily tamed.......In geopolitics the past never dies and there is no modern world." - Robert Kaplan, in 'Old World Order', TIME, March 31, p. 35.


When a New York Times editorial takes you to task for over the top and antagonistic rhetoric you know you’re off the beam as a President. The Editorial (‘A Tortured Policy Towards Russia’) noted:

“THE United States has once again twisted itself into a rhetorical pretzel. As when it threatened military action against Syria if a “red line” was crossed, the Obama administration’s rhetoric about Russia and Ukraine goes far beyond what it will be willing and able to enforce. “

It went on to point out:

“Washington’s rhetoric is dangerously excessive, for three main reasons: Ukraine is far more important to Vladimir V. Putin than it is to America; it will be hard for the United States and Europe to make good on their threats of crippling sanctions; and other countries could ultimately defang them”.

All of which I wholeheartedly agree with.  And yet what do we behold Obama doing yesterday? Well,  continuing with his offal and hollow, belligerent rhetoric denouncing the “brute force” he said Russia used to intimidate neighbors like Ukraine and vowing that the United States “will never waver” in standing up for its NATO allies against aggression by Moscow.”   Of course, he knows as his incompetent aides do as well, that he can never ever back that up without being willing to have a nuclear war. Does he? I doubt it.

In a speech clearly written by Robert Kagan or some other Neocon idiot-  evident by its lack of intelligence and puerile bombast  -   Obama dismissed Russian justifications for its intervention in Ukraine point by point, as “absurd” or unmerited.  He also used the Neoliberal media trope that Russia was “re-drawing borders” totally oblivious to the geopolitics of the issue. To remind readers, geopolitics is basically the “battle for space and power played out in a geographical setting” (TIME, ‘Old World Order’, March 31, p. 32).

As the TIME piece adds: “This is a concept that hasn’t changed since antiquity yet one which to which too many Western diplomats  and academics have lately seemed deaf.”

The reason for that is that these “diplomats” and “academics” (sic) have tried to lend urgency and memetic superiority to the Neoliberal “New World Order” which purported to organize the 21st century according to economic arrangements, financial and trade agreements and abstract unions. The problem is that the reality of geography (and ethnicity)  trumps this hyper-bullshit for most humans, and in the case of Ukraine  (ibid.): “its very geography makes it nearly impossible to orient itself entirely toward the West.”  It is IN Russia’s sphere of influence, holds its most strategic sea port and hence there was no doubt Russia would claim it if the Neoliberal West pushed its advantage too hard – with expansion of NATO. Hence, Russia has far more invested in controlling this geography than the U.S. and would fight to the death to preserve its hegemony. Meanwhile, the U.S. has no business meddling, period.

This is grasped even by Mikhail Gorbachev, he who advocated originally for the New World Order (allowing the Soviet Union to break up), but saw successive U.S. Presidents break their promise not to expand NATO.  No wonder as TIME noted (‘Morning After in Crimea’, p. 12, Gorbachev- when asked his opinion of Putin’s actions on the eve of the referendum- pointedly noted that “Putin should not stop at Crimea but take all of southern Ukraine”.  Which makes sense from a geopolitical viewpoint given that otherwise Crimea is cut off from Russian supply lines, roads, etc.  Gorbachev emphasized this geopolitical view when he said (ibid.)

“In essence, southern Ukraine is just like Crimea. Its population is Russian. It was civilized by Russians.”

Does Obama get any of this? Clearly not.  Incredibly,  this guy even defended aspects of the Iraq war, which he had opposed as a junior senator, as a stark contrast to the way Russia has seized the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine. One’s mind must boggle at this incomprehensible turnaround but of course Obama watchers have seen it before – many times- altering positions and policies from what he stoutly proclaimed in campaign mode. It’s almost becoming a pattern like a broken record.  So, we weren't terribly surprised when he  said:

“But even in Iraq, America sought to work within the international system. We did not claim or annex Iraq’s territory. We did not grab its resources for our own gain. Instead we ended our war, and left Iraq to it people in a fully sovereign Iraqi state that can make decision about its own future.”

Of course, this is firstly devoid of any basic grasp of GEOPOLITICS!  Iraq, at over 6,000 miles distant from the U.S. - posed no remote geographical security interest or threat - unlike the Ukraine and NATO's incursion does for the Russians. Iraq was perpetrated purely out of bogus WMD bullshit hatched by a rat nicknamed "Curve ball". ON that basis, and because Saddam once made some vague threats about Pappy Bush, a full scale assault was launched that eventually cost hundreds of thousands of lives and trillions in treasure.

 Thus the Iraq War was indefensible as well as illegal from the get go, irrespective of whether the U.S. claimed one city, or one sand berm. The  truth is that the legitimate "international system" condemned the Iraq invasion and occupation since it violated Principle VI of the Nuremberg laws - the crimes against peace, and pre-emptive war.   Instead of contorting himself into such ridiculous positions to try to justify a verbal attack on Russia, he’d do better to watch and listen to the young Senator’s opposition to that disgusting pre-emptive war which imitated the Nazi invasion of Poland.  Meanwhile, Russia’s occupation of the Crimea was actually justified by a 1997  treaty with the Ukraine, which allowed a limit of 25,000 troops.

Obama - in his spiel yesterday- even conceded the U.S. itself has NO geopolitical stake in Ukraine:

"To be honest, if we define our interests narrowly, if we applied a cold hearted calculus, we might decide to look the other way. Our economy is not deeply integrated with Ukraine’s. Our people and our homeland face no direct threat from the invasion of Crimea.   Our own borders are not threatened by Russia’s annexation"


But he then bloviated that, oh we just had to get involved and be the Cop of the World, because "casual indifference would ignore the lessons that are written in the cemeteries of this continent."

Clearly, it appears Obama’s brain has been hijacked by the neocons and their disreputable endless war narrative. Where we once held out hope he’d rise to the level of a transformative President – like Kennedy did after the Cuban Missile Crisis – it is now evident Obama has regressed to his mean over the past 6 years.  The only difference now is his use of belligerent, antagonistic rhetoric when calm, thoughtful,  dispassionate response is sorely needed.  To repeat the words of Col. Lawrence Wilkerson (Ret.) on Chris Hayes’ ALL In show two weeks ago:

“This is not something that anybody needs. Not the West, not Russia, not the world, There needs to be an end to the polemics, as you showed from people like John McCain, an end of the passion, an end to the punditry, and a solution.”

Unlike Obama and the Neoliberal and neocon imps and lackeys in his administration, Col. Wilkerson proposed an actual pragmatic geopolitical solution: making Ukraine a buffer state between NATO and Russia which is a reasonable solution.  As he went on to point out –from the transcript:

“Ukraine needs to be the buffer state. Crimea needs to be exactly where it is, with Russia - where it's been for over three hundred and fifty years, and we need to stop the passionate statements and get down to business and work this out. We don't need a war."

Meanwhile, Obama continued on from his intemperate remarks the day before,  as if he’s begging for a war, asserting (New York Times, March 30 headline story, 'Obama Renewing U.S. Commitment to NATO'):

“We have to make sure that we have put together very real contingency plans for every one of these members, including those who came in out of Central and Eastern Europe. And over the last several years we have worked up a number of these contingency plans.”

More worrisome, and disclosing that the neocons have seriously egged him into rash, provocative actions, the NY Times (op. cit.) reported that:

The United States has already sent an extra six F-15C Eagles and 60 airmen to Lithuania and 12 F-16 fighter jets and 200 service members

And the provocations are likely to worsen, as the  NY TIMES continued, noting:

Aides said the president would bolster that presence by rotating more ground and naval troops for exercises and training in Poland and the Baltic countries; update contingency planning for specific countries and update NATO’s threat assessment in the region; and increase the capacity of a NATO quick-response force.

Sadly, we don’t know where this will end or how. We had expected the sober and pragmatic  response of a statesman and someone who could work with Russia in a serious way –  predicated on  feasible geopolitical solutions as opposed to Pax Americana fantasies. But it appears the neocons in Obama’s administration have had the last laugh in turning him into one of them (even accepting THEIR IRAQ WAR!) 

Even if they don’t get a new war with the Russians, the damage to the cooperative relationship with Putin appears permanent. And Mr. Putin is the key to keeping further wars in Syria and Iran from igniting.

This rending of the cooperative agreement may have been what the neocons likely  wanted all along, which is bad enough. One thing I can say I never thought I’d see is Obama turning into a neocon! Though truth be told, Oliver Stone in his ‘Secret History of the United States’ did show Obama’s policies vis-à-vis Iraq and the Middle East much chummier with Bush’s than many have realized. Perhaps another reason he didn’t prosecute Bush, Cheney or Rumsfeld for war crimes, or enabling and approving the CIA renditions and tortures.

See also:

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/william-boardman/55005/media-whoop-up-stampede-to-cold-war-hot-war-whatever

And:
http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/cameron-salisbury/55095/vladimir-putin-rock-star-made-in-America

 And (On Ukraine's  Nazis):

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-parry/55086/ukraines-inconvenient-neo-Nazis
 

John Kerry Does a POE of a Hypocritical Political Hack

"Now, hear me out! You don't just invade another country on a completely trumped up pretext! (Uh, forget Iraq, folksies!)"


The parade of Neoliberal tools and fools continued yesterday, as John Kerry made assorted appearances on the Sunday talk show circuit to spiel about how him and his Neoliberal cohort were going to teach those Russkies a lesson!  Out of his own stupid mouth - instantly turning him into a parody ('POE') of a hypocritical Neoliberal hack (or more likely, a Neocon puppet):

"You just don't invade another country on a completely trumped up pretext!"

HA HA HA HA hahahaha! Pardon me while I roll on the floor howling with laughter at the staggering chutzpah of this deaf, dumb and blind tool!  So, Kerry.....what? Did Victoria Nuland the neocon give you your parroting script? Just wondering! To top that off he blurted:

"It is really a stunning, willful choice by President Putin to invade another country,” Kerry said on Face the Nation.

Hey, LURCH! Errrr......Kerry, do you have any historical memory at all?  Can I give you a hint about a  MEGA- Example of a "willful choice to invade another country" and using a "completely trumped up pretext" (WMD)?   Need another clue? I-R-A-Q!

As one salon.com blogger,  Lindsay Abrams, noted:

"In the seriousness of the situation, the irony of Kerry’s next comments may have gone missed. ”You just don’t in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pretext,” he said. He went on to repeat the assertion on Meet the Press, keeping a straight face as he told host David Gregory: ”You just don’t invade another country on phony pretext in order to assert your interests.”

Must I really REALLY point out the irony to which she refers? Must I?  Ok, I will. The Bushie-neocon driven invasion of Iraq, sanctioned by a bipartisan balless congress in 2003.  Instead of summoning the political courage to stop these vermin, most of congress signed on as willing supplicants to the ensuing Bushie horror show.  And who were the key perpetrators? Why, the neocons including Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, William Kristol and the other usual suspects - now at work now to incite strife between Russia and the West.

I won't recite all the noisome aspects of the Iraq debacle, as I already recounted most of them two posts ago. All the sordid details of exactly how Bush and his neocon filth drove the U.S. into Iraq under a WMD pretext. However, let me only point out that while Obama spent yesterday calling up all the Western Neolib-driven puppets.....errrr....allies...to back up his  anti-Russian crusade - even while dispatching Lurch to generate POEs, none of this faux unity comes close to what we beheld with over ten million citizens from nearly every nation on Earth marching against the imminent invasion of Iraq back in early 2003. You don't believe me? Then let this composite photo tell the story! (A picture's worth a thousand words, after all.)

In other words, a mass of humanity marched  around the world protesting with one voice the imminent  U.S. plan to invade another sovereign nation, but they were ignored. The mammoth  assembly against the invasion wasn't merely from token, puppet U.S. state tools but real people.  People moved to voice their opposition based on what they perceived another war would do - and they weren't amiss in their fears at all - as things have turned out. The U.S ignored them and invaded Iraq anyway, pounding Baghdad under a 'shock and awe' entry that would have made the Wehrmacht proud.

I post this to expose Lurch Kerry's staggering chutzpah and mind boggling hypocrisy about what he's claiming Russia is doing, as well as reminding Americans of past history - which these days is so easy to forget in the Twitterati world.

DO I "hate" my country? Of course not! I hate hypocrisy! I hate when we preach one standard for the rest of the world while we adopt another ("exceptional") one for ourselves. If there is one uniform moral principle at work and a defined law to support it, then ALL nations must comply! There can't be any exclusions! Thus, I hate it that our politicos mouth accusations against other nations that they themselves haven't adhered to!  I also hate the  Neoliberal, anti-citizen, inequitable 'system' under which the country operates which is not the same as the nation itself. See e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/09/america-haters-uhhno-system-haters.html

 Excerpt - quote from Charles Reich ('Opposing the System'):

"The System is not America. It is not the land we love, and indeed not a land at all. It does not merit our loyalty, affection or respect. However much the System may attempt to disguise itself in patriotic trappings, or set itself up as a source of authority, or cloak itself in the vestments of 'the community', it is none of these. We should always be ready to fire the System if it does not serve us well."

Hell, why the fuck would I "hate my country" when an ancestor of mine - Conrad Brumbaugh - fought in the Revolutionary War?   I am more inclined to believe I am channeling Conrad's own principles - which he himself  shed his blood for -  and would be demanding of the nation if he were alive today.

Would Conrad applaud or jump on the bandwagon of clueless Amerikkan Neolibs who don't live by the standards they demand of other nations? Would he cheer on a parroting tool like Kerry,  yapping away and exposing his own historical ignorance and national hypocrisy? No, he'd likely puke his guts out. He would not recognize what the country he'd fought for had mutated into - a polarized, plutocratic  oligarchy where a few billionaires control most of the wealth and all of the politics. Where a system designed to increase economic inequality also features an in- built predatory security state- spy system to monitor everything citizens do in case they might get "uppity" - like Occupy Wall Street back in '11.

On that score, if he saw the future and what had been wrought, including a nation that now believes it is above the law but can impose it on all others, he'd be aghast. Moreso, on learning how it had destroyed the cornerstone of the Constitution, the Fourth Amendment - by its wanton and indiscriminate spying on people all over the world - and particularly its own citizens.

And he'd surely despair at how the promise of a democracy had degenerated into a Corporatocracy.

See also:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-parry/54558/what-neocons-want-from-ukraine-crisis

Excerpt:

"(Victoria)Nuland was soon at work planning for 'regime change,' encouraging disruptive street protests by personally passing out cookies to the anti-government demonstrators. She didn’t seem to notice or mind that the protesters in Kiev’s Maidan square had hoisted a large banner honoring Stepan Bandera, a Ukrainian nationalist who collaborated with the German Nazis during World War II and whose militias participated in atrocities against Jews and Poles."


and :

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/chris-floyd/54562/oligarchs-triumphant-ukraine-omidyar-and-the-neo-liberal-agenda

Excerpt:

"American policy is based upon -- dependent upon -- a raging, willful, arrogant ignorance of other peoples, other cultures, history in general, and even the recent history of U.S. policy itself. The historical and cultural relationships between Ukraine and Russia are highly complex. Russia takes its national identity from the culture that grew up around what is now Kyiv; indeed, in many respects, Kyiv is where "Russia" was born. Yet one of the first acts of the Western-backed revolutionaries was to pass a law declaring Ukrainian as the sole state language, although most of the country speaks Russian or Surzhyk"


http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/shamus-cooke/54559/the-profit-at-stake-obama-s-far-right-foreign-policy

Excerpt:

"The conflicts in Ukraine, Venezuela, and Syria have one thing in common: the U.S. government is in favor of the groups who aspire to topple — or who have toppled — the government in power. Thus, U.S. politicians are giving either political, financial, or military support to these “opposition” movements. But in all three cases there are leading groups steering the “opposition” that want absolutely nothing to do with democracy — these groups are as far-right as politics gets."

And the detailed policy basis for the Iraq War- Based on the Neocon 'Project for the New American Century':

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1665.htm