Can We At Last Admit the Iraq Occupation Was A Waste? Have We Finally Learned the Lessons of Vietnam?

These questions bear asking as we behold  all the effort of 8-plus long years of Iraq occupation evidently all for naught as thousands of ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq in Syria)  militants rage across the country - taking Mosul, Tikrit, Samara and bearing down on Baghdad. In the meantime, the $100m the U.S. spent prepping an Iraqi Army appears to have been wasted, along with the $150b reported wasted in Afghanistan this morning,  on equipment never used - only stored.  This, as we beheld images of the Iraqis cutting and running even tearing off their uniforms

Let us go down memory lane and recall here that every manjack with a brain knew Saddam was no angel, but at the same time no one would be stupid enough to displace him - given it was his strongman secular stranglehold that was in fact preventing Muslim factionalism and civil war between Shi'ites and Sunnis. Let us also recall, lest memories have become ossified or lost, that the U.S. actually cultivated Saddam as its own 'creature' (in the 1980s)  to leverage against the Iranians. (A video still exists from the media, likely found on Youtube, showing Donald Rumsfeld praising Saddam for his efforts.) In addition, the U.S. supplied Saddam with billions of dollars in weapons to carry on the fight against the Ayatollahs - some of which were believed to be the "WMD" the Bushies used as a pretext to launch the Iraq invasion. See e.g. http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-scheer/56466/up-close-and-personal-with-george-w-bush-s-horrifying-legacy

After being shoehorned into the Oval Office by the five conservo Supremes in 2000, Bush was now in position to implement the "Project for the New American Century" (PNAC) which had originally been designed for 1992 after an expected Bush Sr. election win. This plan had been originally designed by the likes of Cheney, Wolfowitz and 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 (Halliburton) like Cheney would be humping and pumping it to the nth degree.

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 a means to link Saddam to it - even if it was all bullshit.

The Bushies did a well known propaganda two step, first perfected by Hitler ("If you repeat a lie often enough, most people will believe it.") . They started by using the Reepo-friendly FOX bunch to keep repeating a link between al Qaeda and Saddam. As this specious crap kept being repeated the Bushies became elated as watching pro-intervention poll numbers increase. Now, they needed another more believable Act Two.

They attained it via a dog and pony show after enlisting  Colin Powell to be their stooge in front of the UN. Using every sort of ruse - from 'yellowcake' to aluminum tubes and alleged claims of possible "weapons of mass destruction" (from a rat named 'curve ball') - the Bushies pumped 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.

Those of us who knew history, watched the hijinks in disbelief, wondering how or why so many - especially in the media - could believe it. Some tried to head it off, like Joe Wilson in an op-ed in the WSJ, pointing to the fact the whole "yellowcake in Niger"  thing was a ruse. But Wilson was crucified by the Bush bastards in a vengeful media onslaught (mainly on FOX) and in addition they outed Wilson's wife  (Valerie Plame) as a CIA agent.  Not one damned thing was done to the putative bastard who did it, which is why I don't get exercised now when the same weasels insist Edward Snowden is a "traitor".

Let's also bear in mind that congress was the last bulwark to stop the Iraq invasion and they punted. Though yes,   Bush and his craven neocon slime confected an "Iraqi War Resolution" enough courageous congressmen could have killed it - but they were yellower than the yellowcake link the Bushies claimed- as most signed on to it. So even if Bush and his cohort designed the plan, congress as the last bulwark to preventing an outlaw act could have stopped it. They didn't.

And it indeed was an outlaw, illegal act - invading a sovereign state under a pretext to launch a pre-emptive war. Bush’s aggression then exposed other unsavory aspects about ourselves as a nation:  a willingness to violate Nuremberg Article IV to actually launch a pre-emptive, aggressive war just as the Nazis did when they invaded Poland in 1939. The rich humor of it all is that at the time the Bushies actually compared Saddam to Hitler!  Some 'Muricans actually swallowed this shit up and took it as gospel!

Again, to those of us who know and RECALL history, it also disclosed disturbing similarities to Vietnam.  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. Later documents released under the freedom of information act showed it was all based on deceptions and lies.

 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.

In the aftermath, the more sober heads believed the U.S. had finally learned its lesson not to intervene in other nations on the basis of false pretexts. The losses, in blood and treasure, were just too costly. Vietnam rang up a loss of $269b compared with $ 4 trillion in Iraq.  The sad part is that our unjustifiable meddling in Iraq showed we never learned the lessons of Vietnam.

Worse, through all the years of military waste and intervention - in both Iraq and Afghanistan - we could have better used those trillions to  attend to our own nation's needs: repairing our crumbling infrastructure, bolstering our social insurance programs and providing money for students in affordable loans. What one hopes now, in the case of both Iraq and Afghanistan -  is that 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 and not to invent bogus pretexts to make war on others. 


Were all those troops that went to Iraq and Afghanistan "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. Believe it! (Some, of course, loved the 'high' of 'war' - as professed yesterday morning by the guy who did the recent documentary 'Korengal' and fought in Afghanistan. He claimed on CBS Early Show he got "addicted" to the "brotherhood" and the "action".)

It's about damned time future troops understand what they're getting into before they enter some hyped- up "freedom crusade" - and they also understand that when they sign onto a "volunteer army" (even for later supposed "benefits")  they become de facto mercenaries in the service of war capitalists.  As for getting "high" on the fighting, and "brotherhood" - I suggest they join a gym, take up amateur boxing, and sign on to a club volunteering in positive ways to assist their communities. You don't have to blow up villagers and kick down their doors to get "get high". Or shoot them dead.

To that end, all citizens also need to understand how Bush has recently  tried to whitewash his crimes in Iraq using the venue of his Bush Library. To see Rachel Maddow's  take down of this nonsense, go to one of my previous blog posts here:


http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/05/rachel-maddow-exposes-bush-library-for.html

When the militants finally get to Baghdad, as they will - and the media will show the imagery non-stop-  let's remember all the above and how we really only have limited control over our own plot of the planet. Let's mind that before we fuck around with others in the future! The Neocons, their puppets in the media (like the WaPo's Trudy Rubin) and other miscreants will scream for "boots on the ground" but that ain't an option! Besides, with a backlogged VA,  where will all the additional wounded go for care?  If the Reepos aren't going to fund the VA they have no right to call for any more wars, or ground troops!

See also:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-parry/56347/blaming-obama-for-iraqs-chaos

and:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/chris-floyd/56373/hell-s-gate-the-iraqi-blitzkrieg-and-the-cult-of-violence

and:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/gary-leupp/56399/no-peace-and-no-democracy-two-occupations-ending-in-hopeless-disasters

The Bowe Bergdahl Case: Let The Biggest Hypocrites Cast The First Stones!

This revolting, disgusting display of hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy, is this what we’ve finally become?

Are we now so filled with foul bilious hatred, are we now so consumed with soul-destroying fear, do we now despise our own selves so much that we would actually protest the return of one of our own? Is that it?

Is that what we’ve become? - Jim Wright, today on smirkingchimp.com

First it was Benghazi, then it was the eruptions against Edward Snowden's justified whistle blowing (and the ninnies and cowards in the country calling him a "traitor") and now - in the wake of a POW release, we have the Bowe Bergdahl hair on fire screeching that "Oh my god, no! This guy DESERTED! How can any town hold a celebration for him!! He's a TRAITOR! BWAAAHAHAHAHA!"

Ok, let's get a grip and kick some lamo, defunct and defective ass here. It seems as soon as the most minor informational conflict comes into play now ('Hero released, no wait, deserter!'), half the fucking country goes nuts, as is occurring now with Bergdahl.   Was he a deserter? We don't know. That remains to be ascertained. Should he have been left in Afghanistan if he was? NO! Because we as decent Americans -as opposed to walking turds - leave no soldier behind, and we certainly don't pre-judge a man before he's had his day and say in a proper judicial venue - NOT the court of public opinion. (Of course, if Steve Rattner had his way, even a proven war hero would have been left behind rather than make the trade for 5 Taliban. Though Rattner did say this a.m.- in response to Eugene Robinson's question-  that if it was "a Senator, or even Joe Scraborough" we'd make any deal necessary. Hmmmmm.....so you really don't respect any of our serving soldiers, eh Steve?)

Let's accept ab initio as a proposition to work with that any war, even a minor,  localized conflict (compared to WWII - which my dad fought in),  is likely to lead to clusterfucks and the proverbial fog of war, not to mention so much propaganda you don't know who's telling it straight. The military can't be relied on for the truth because they themselves have left a long trail of bullshit behind, and from the time they launched these two wars of choice, in Iraq and Afghanistan.

For the sake of memory jog, anyone recall the Jessica Lynch story? We were fed the line that she was rescued in Iraq while on some mission and was a "heroine". Lynch herself exposed the bullshit some time later when she said she never even fired her weapon and was knocked unconscious - and remained so - for most of the time any firefights went on. The whole Jessica Lynch rescue story was a Pentagon 'dog and pony' show to appease the masses - make 'em feel good.

Anyone recall Pat Tillman?  The former NFL star (Arizona Cardinals)  like so many - promptly signed up for God and country in the wake of 9/11. Some time later, in Afghanistan, he was killed - we were told this occurred while bravely engaged in a firefight with the "enemy".  This soothed many minds until the truth came out that he was killed by friendly fire. The Pentagon - as in the case of Jessica Lynch -  tried to bury the real story and push a phony PR one.

My point is that you need to exercise caution when confronted with "hero stories" or "traitor stories" - especially the latter since they are most likely to arouse screeching and accusations. As sober citizens we therefore don't respond to network dog whistles but instead let the truth find its way out ....as it will in the Bergdahl case. For those that pre-judge and have screamed "Traitor!" - they themselves need a wake up call from our own history (which too many of our countrymen either forgot or never knew in the first place.)

What is a traitor, after all? Is it a young, disillusioned kid who probably - once he was in theater- saw Afghanistan for the stupid, money-wasting fiasco it was and wanted to back out?  OR - might it be an actual government or political party,  that does business with the enemy - to the extent of taking them on for service in a government agency (CIA)? You get my point? For example, the CIA in cooperation with the Vatican helped thousands of Nazis escape to South America along the infamous “ratlines” set up just before the end of World War II. This is all thoroughly documented in a number of books, especially Aarons and Loftus’: Unholy Trinity: The Vatican, The Nazis, and the Swiss Banks, 1998, St. Martins Press)

In addition, then O.S.S. head Allan Dulles (later to become head of the CIA) officially implemented the policy via Operation Bloodstone to import former Nazi spies to help the U.S. set up its own intelligence service to spy on the Soviet Union (Never forget – despite the lunatic tea party portrayals – the Nazis were the mortal enemies of the Marxist –Socialists in the Soviet Union!)

Readers can learn more here:

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/Bloodstone_B_CS.html
Much of this would have been fully revealed to Americans' eyes in the Nazi Wartime Disclosure Act, but it was shot down in 1999 so never became law. According to a Baltimore Sun article ('Government May Soon Open Files on Nazi War Criminals', Aug. 2, 1998, p. 20A):

"Under pressure from Congress, the Justice Department and other agencies may be forced to declassify tens of thousands of top-secret documents describing the U.S. intelligence community's dealings with Nazi war criminals in the Cold War years. Legislation to open most of those files has already passed the Senate and could come up for a vote in the House this week. Some historians suspect that the opened files could cause 'tremendous embarrassments' for the United States."

Less than one year later the GOP congress voted against passage, and that was it. No one has heard much about it since. Perhaps the GOP Neocons and their fellow travelers knew then, as they do now, they didn't want to let the "cat out of the bag"  The primary ones who voted against it were, of course, the Repukes and their right wing reactionary confederates - the same  Foxite drones screaming for Bowe Bergdahl's head now (to the extent they won't even let Bergdahl's hometown in Idaho celebrate his return in peace.)

Maybe these characters would do well to recall that their favorite party, the GOP, was very big on Nazi links back in the day....around the Reagan and pre-Reagan era.  For those of us in deep politics, the history of the Nazi-backed Republican Heritage Groups is well -known. All this is well documented  by Russ Bellant, in his book 'Old Nazis, The New Right and the Republican Party' ( South End Press, Boston, 1991, p. 77). Bellant painstakingly documents how Nazis, and former S.S. infiltrated the Republican Heritage Groups and Council from the time of Reagan's ascension in 1980. He provides actual letters written and received as well as how their agenda is spelled out. He also notes a key figure who had established connections many decades earlier, i.e.

"Philip Guarino helped establish the ethnic division of the GOP in 1952. He was vice-chair of the Republican Heritage Groups Council from 1971-75."

By April 8, 1980, Guarino "was a senior member of the Republican Party National Committee, which at the time was concentrating all its efforts on getting Ronald Reagan elected President." (Recall Reagan also gave a nod to these vermin when he visited the grave site of a Waffen S.S. in Bitburg, W. Germany. The PR at the time was that it was "an accident", but don't buy it for a second!) The "ethnic division of the GOP" refers to Ukrainian and Latvian assistants and associates, or members of the extension group affiliated with the German Waffen S.S. which had helped carry out pogroms during WWII- usually butchering Jews and communists in their own nations. (Recall, Hitler often conflated the Jews with Marxists, communists based on the fact Karl Marx was a Jew.)

It then may also be no coincidence that neo-Nazis have been observed and documented amongst these proper "democracy" protestors in the Ukraine, overturning statues, harassing those who disagree with them and in general carrying on like rogues and thugs. But how much do you hear of that in the Western Press?  To make a long story short, part of the GOP agenda dating from the original Nazi infiltration, evolved to overturning elected governments that didn't meet the Reagan- Far Right "smell tests".  (The mistake of Obama was in allowing too many of these GOOps to remain at State where they could cause havoc.)

Let's also note Bellant's claims re: associations, groups - apart from establishing direct ties of former S.S. affiliates to the GOP, were also well substantiated in the Newsweek article ('The Right Wing Web', February 22, 1999, p.34).  The reason for reinforcing Bellant's book is that the putative basis for widespread former Nazi use and recruitment (including in our intelligence agencies, e.g. CIA) would have been laid bare....but it seemed evident to me even then that the GOP congress wished to cover its party tracks and all possible links to Nazi interests.

SO tell me now: Can a political party which has knowingly harbored known Nazis - even allowing them to be integrated into its "Heritage" groups, be trusted  when its lackeys and pols scream "traitor" - directing it at a forlorn, confused kid who likely never knew what the fuck he was getting himself into in the first place?  WHO are the REAL enemies here?  I submit they're not immature kids who sign on to something they later find out is BS, but mature, cynical fuck-faces that enlist the services of the most wretched, dastardly murderers the world has ever known.

I say let the biggest hypocrites - namely the ones who voted down the Nazi Wartime Disclosure Act and belonged to the Republican Heritage Groups when known Nazi-S.S. links were established - to get their asses out there and toss the first stones at Bowe Bergdahl when he lands in the US of A. I am betting they won't have the balls to even show their faces, but instead will push their foolish, FOX- brainwashed pawns out front to do it for them. You know the ones, the same types that responded to the Clive Bundy dog whistle in Nevada- and beat their chests senseless while declaring themselves "patriots" and everyone else scumballs or "traitors".

While we're at it we can add the Reepo blowhard Saxby Chambliss to the list too! This is the dirt bag from Georgia who never served a day himself, but had the nerve to try to slime the (Vietnam) service bona fides of Max Cleland in the 2002 election- by trying to link him to Osama Bin Laden and Saddam. Shitheads like Chambliss have no right to mouth off at all about "security" or "traitors" and they definitely need to STFU about Bowe Bergdahl.

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/eric-boehlert/56249/when-fox-news-declared-war-on-a-military-family

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/ted-rall/56267/going-after-bergdahl


http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/jim-wright/56250/negotiating-with-terrorists

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/dave-lindorff/56230/the-us-military-is-a-terror-organization-a-nation-of-cowards-fears-freeing-taliban-pows

and:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/russ-baker/56243/what-would-afghan-spending-buy-at-home

Afghans Go To Polls : Will The U.S. Now Remain Past 2014? - And WHO Will Pay For It?

"Unlike the old empires, we don’t make these sacrifices for territory or for resources.  We do it because it’s right." - Barack Obama,  2011


Today is a big voting day in Afghanistan, and likely will be an even bigger one for the American Military- Industrial National Security State. It means there is a good chance the vote will see pressure for the U.S. to remain long term, possibly even through 2024 - despite the fact we lack the money to do that. Hell, we have more pressing problems here at home with a collapsing infrastructure as well as middle class. We can't be the world's cop forever!

What we know is that eight candidates are competing in the race. The problem is that the five minor candidates’ separate  shares of the total  vote will make it even more difficult for any one candidate to reach the 50 percent threshold that would allow an outright victory. In this case, a runoff vote is unlikely to take place until the end of May at the earliest. The leading candidates going into the vote were Ashraf Ghani, 64, a technocrat and former official in Mr. Karzai’s government; Abdullah Abdullah, 53, a former foreign minister who was the second biggest vote-getter against Mr. Karzai in the 2009 election; and Zalmay Rassoul, 70, another former foreign minister.

All three of these guys are said to be in favor of approving a long term American troop presence. Up in the air is how long an American force will remain in Afghanistan after 2014. Hamid Karzai’s refusal to sign a long-term security deal to allow that presence through 2024 was a major point of tension between the American and Afghan governments.  Why, baffles the mind of the objective and rational observer, given the continued costs to Americans in blood and treasure.  Hell, we've already been there over 12 years and have little or nothing to show for it other than a lot of pissed off people - at home and over there. (Many of the latter pissed and outraged at drone strikes that took out family members and for which they were offered a few head of sheep and a thousand bucks as  reparation.)

I mean, in the normal world of logic and rationality and given our dwindling resources and stupendous debt - with domestic needs already stretched beyond limits - we ought to have taken Karzai's 'out'  and left, lock, stock and barrel. But oh no, we have to continue the pretense of Pax Americana and being the cop of the world. But, of course, why would a national security state that killed the President who inveighed most against Pax Americana (in 1963)  pay any attention to it now? They wouldn't because they removed the sole obstacle to its future implementation, via the document NSC-68.

As in the case of Vietnam, which ought to have had its plug pulled much earlier (thereby saving thousands more lives), we ought to be pulling the plug on this Afghan fiasco and THIS year!  We can't do the Afghans' nation building for them.  It's now their job. We invested in their security forces as much as we can and as it is that trillion dollars pissed away over there has set us back in sundry ways. Hell, to me it'd be more crucial to use the projected money we might spend there on lowering the interest on college students' debt.

But make no mistake that Amerikkan  Neocons and the military-industrial state want a presence there if for no other reason to bleed down our domestic resources even further - thereby widening the nation's economic inequality and hastening the end of the American Middle class. The longer the U.S.  presence, the more money pumped into the pockets of defense contractors for more stupid weapons, including setting up a "combat air brigade" at a cost of $1 billion here in Colorado Springs. (And ranchers here are already in an uproar that the Army wants to claim over 200,000 acres for "drone maneuvers", for cripes' sakes!)

Yes, it may take six months or even longer for the Afghan issue to be settled, following today's election, but make no mistake the end result will be an unwise extension of our presence, of at least 10,000 troops - maybe more. Obama has made it clear this is what he wants-  for reasons I cannot begin to fathom- other than that the neocons have burrowed into his head. In effect, making 10,000 (or more)  targets for the Taliban as well as laying the potential for more incidents to piss off the Afghans and surrounding nations, likely leading to more terrorist blowback.

Which, of course, the national security state welcomes as more justification to keep its expansive surveillance system going. They ought to be more concerned with the additional thousands of returned troops likely to go mentally  'haywire' and ending up with tragedies such as we beheld at Fort Hood 2 days ago.

See also: 'Afghan Elections for Another Fake Regime' - by Eric Margolis

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/eric-margolis/55206/afghan-elections-for-another-fake-regime

Excerpt:

Afghanistan’s national election held this week is a sham. A group of candidates, handpicked by the US, will pretend to compete in an election whose outcome has already been determined – by Washington. The candidates include US -groomed politicians, and drug-dealing warlords from the Tajik and Uzbek north. Chief among them, Rashid Dostam, a major war criminal and principal CIA ally who ordered the massacre of over 2,000 Taliban prisoners.

Such is the rotten foundation on which Washington is hoping to build a compliant Afghan “democracy” that will continue to offer bases to US troops and warplanes. Afghanistan’s majority, the Pashtun tribes, have little voice in the election charade.

Obama's SOTU - So So....

The rhetoric was soaring - often even Reaganesque- especially as it accented the notes of nationalism, and the promise of the nation's future. Of course, this is what any President delivering his SOTU aspires to. Only a guy like the fictional character 'Bulworth' would tell Americans the truth: that their nation is caught in a gulf of inequality from which it will never emerge (given the 'pay to play' system), it's in decline because of corroding infrastructure (needing $1.6 TRILLION to repair - according to the American Society of Civil Engineers) and the energy promise of fracking is about like fool's gold.

Let's take the last first. Recall from last year's State of the Union, Obama sang the praises of natural gas exploration via fracking.  He actually expatiated on a  "100 year supply of natural gas that's right beneath our feet" and the goal to "develop it safely".  This time he even rivaled that, claiming the U.S, is now nearly energy independent and did briefly mention the need to "safely" extract the energy, but of course the evidence is not there. Anyone who saw Erin Brockovitch's  map - displayed on Bill Maher's REAL TIME last Friday - of the contaminated water sites from fracking would get that. 

The frackers claim, and the corpora-media have attempted to bolster, the notion that "fracking is safe for water". But IF it is, why is fracking exempt from compliance with the Safe Drinking Water Act? Surely, NO exemption is needed if it was truly safe! This is like the misbegotten trope that GMO foods don't need to be labeled because they're "proven safe". Well, how about just humoring me. You know, I'd like to KNOW what I'm ingesting!

More importantly fracking does NOT solve the problem of climate change /global warming as Obama claimed last night. Indeed, it makes it worse.  People-citizens need to process this, and I suggest they get hold of  Richard Heinberg's 'Snake Oil: How Fracking's False Promise Imperils Our Future'.

As Heinberg observes  (p. 110):

Kerogen is not oil. It is better thought of as an oil precursor that was insufficiently cooked by geologic processes. If we want to turn it into oil, we have to finish the process nature started: that involves heating the kerogen to a high temperature for a long time. And that in turn takes energy- lots of it, whether supplied by hydroelectricity, nuclear power plants, natural gas, or the kerogen itself. Therefore the EROEI in processing oil shale is bound to be pitifully low. According to the best study to date, by Cutler Cleveland and Peter O'Connor, the EROEI for oil shale production would be about 2:1. That tells us that oil from kerogen will be far more expensive than regular crude oil.

Recall 'EROEI' denotes energy returned on energy invested.

Heinberg  also disposes of the myth of "100 years of natural gas".

He observes, for example(ibid.), that "a study of the EROEI for electrical heating of methane hydrate deposits between 1000 and 1500 meters deep yielded ratios from 2:1 up to 5:1, depending on the source of the electricity"

Also, the methane extracted is a major contributor to accelerated global warming. It is not innocuous as Obama appears to believe. Hence, his clarion call for attention to climate change while approving of natural gas fracking is exponentially cognitively dissonant.

Obama's challenge to the Reepo congress to reinstate unemployment benefits was spot on, but his praising of the "budget deal" in December didn't mesh with that call. The fact is that deal was an abomination and gave away the store to the Repukes by leaving unemployment extension out of the plan.
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/12/latest-budget-deal-seeks-to-preserve.html

Now the Dems call for reinstating benefits but that's like shutting the barn door after the cow's vamonosed.  The time to have ensured the benefits was when leverage existed - at the time of the budget dealing. Not now when the Reeps will simply ignore all calls .....oh, unless "equal cuts" can be found elsewhere. (How about the military? Like that F35 white elephant?)

The most stirring part of the address was the promise to "take action", presumably by Executive orders - not Executive "actions" - which are far weaker. (Recall JFK's Exec. ORDER 11,110 actually approved the printing of U.S. Notes outside the Federal Reserve system. It translated to $4.2 bllion such notes being generated.)

But as The UK Guardian observed:

 the executive orders will have only limited impact in comparison with legislative action, and his speech laid bare how powerless Obama is in the face of intransigence from the Republican-controlled House.

Finally, the one inspiring note I wanted to hear was sounded when Obama proclaimed the need to end the fiasco in Afghanistan, and the necessity to cease "permanent war".  However, whether he's true to his word here will depend on whether ALL troops leave at the end of this year, or some new deal is struck that allows 12,000 or so to remain another ten years.

THAT is not halting perma-war!

Time to End the Afghan Intervention - And Use the $$$ HERE in the U.S. of A.!

U.S. Marines urinate on Taliban corpses almost 2 years ago. It is now time, with the opportunity to leave -  to do so. We can't afford to pour $8 billion a year into this deficit pit to stay another 10 yrs.













With the news of an 8 year old boy killed Friday in Kandahar province, adding another to the list of thousands killed by wayward drone attacks in Afghanistan, it is now time to pull ALL U.S. troops out forthwith and the use the money we'd spend there on needs here. I am talking about nearly 16 million American kids who go to bed hungry each night, after the SNAP program was discontinued and now new food stamp cuts are being proposed as part of a "Farm" bill. A Farm bill, btw, which is actually a subsidy to rich agri-business operations, not to little "moms and pops" as some might believe.

Writing about the bill's  $14  billion a year "crop insurance" subsidy, Jim Hightower wrote in one of his recent columns (e.g. Colorado Springs Independent, Nov. 30):

While the House wants to force food stamp recipients to prove that their incomes are low enough to qualify for benefits, the crop insurance handout requires no means testing and has no limits on how much recipients can get. This means that billionaires who're only incidental "farmers" will be among the biggest beneficiaries


We need to process that, as well as the image of hungry kids by the millions who have to go to school each day with empty bellies, as their parents now struggle to get adequate food supplies after the Reeps cut the SNAP program. With the $36 a month cut to SNAP - enough for nearly a week's dinner meals for a family of 4- people now are pouring into food banks which themselves are finding their shelves bare.

Now, how can THIS be reconciled with the willingness to piss 8 billion a year for the next TEN years into Afghanistan, according to a new "accord" the U.S. wants - to allow up to 10,000 American troops to remain there until 2024? The total intended to be pissed away amounts to $80 fucking BILLION - enough to ensure NO American kid or his parents goes hungry for the next ten years. You want to know where the money is to feed those families before you cut the food stamp program by $40 billion, THERE it is, Mr. GOOPr!

Obama originally promised a pullout next year following 13 years of the longest "war" ever, but now for some odd reason is proffering a "security compact" to stay another ten years with billions spent each year. I am wondering if the stresses of his healthcare.gov debacle have overly muddled his neurons or what?  Whatever, Susan Rice insists the Americans will be forced to withdraw by 2015 without a security deal.

Meanwhile, Hamid Karzai has insisted on his own assurances as part of the deal, including no reckless drone attacks on friendlies and no kicking their doors in, invading their homes and doing spurious searches.  The U.S. in response has made it clear it can't make such guarantees, and Obama evidently wrote a letter to Karzai assuring him that "the U.S. will make every effort to respect the sanctity and dignity of Afghans in their homes."

Well, try running that one past the families already  affected, and nearly 15,000 homes kicked in, and occupants tossed face down on the floors,  over 12 years..

Additionally, the U.S. press is all het up about Karzai's "disparity of reaction" (New York Times, Dec. 1, p. 16) reacting with fury to a U.S. led drone attack, but remaining silent about a Taliban suicide bomber attack. But again, this is another reason to leave the damned place and make no deals with Karzai. Indeed, Atiqullah Baryalai, quoted in the Times piece, observed that Karzai's silence is: "sending a message to the Taliban that he really doesn't want a security agreement with the Americans".

If this is the case, we shouldn't walk out, we ought to race the fuck out and leave Karzai and his nation of fifty tribes and tribal passions to themselves. Even remaining 50 years wouldn't be sufficient to help them!

Essentially, Karzai by his dithering on any security deal has given us a perfect excuse to leave Afghanistan and not look back. But what has the U.S. been thinking of doing? Going instead to Karzai's second in command and seeking a deal with him! WHY? You have the opportunity to leave, TAKE IT!

Our people are the ones that need that money! Our kids are the ones going to bed hungry each night, and 48 million Americans are living off piddling, grudgingly bestowed food stamps that can barely keep body and soul together. 

If Obama has any sense he will take the cue on offer, thank Karzai for his input and LEAVE!  Invest right here at home now, for once, instead of pissing $80 b more into a barren deficit trap!

One more thing: Dianne Feinstein has initiated a new round of terror mongering, asserting we are at increased risk now for terror attacks and more than we have ever been. Obviously and clearly she wants more funding for the national security state which has served her and hers just fine. She likely also wants to keep the NSA spooks fully occupied and funded as long as she can bleed money from the rest of us. Of one thing she is correct: that terror risks will rise the longer we remain with our asses in the Middle East, antagonizing all and sundry.

We seem not to have processed that is what led initially to 9/11 as blowback, as the late Chalmers Johnson has noted.  When asked in an interview with In These Times if September 11 was an example of blowback, Johnson responded:

Of course it is. That's exactly what my book was written for: It was a warning to my fellow Americans, a year ago, that our foreign policy was going to produce something like this. It's important to stress, contrary to what people in Washington and the media are saying, that this was not an attack on the United States: This was an attack on American foreign policy.


Similarly, the longer we remain in Afghanistan the greater the risk of blowback. As with Vietnam we need to let them, the Afghans, determine their own destiny.

We can't be the 'Cops of the World', nor can we be nation builders when our own country daily falls into disrepair as the human fabric is also unraveled by misplaced priorities! We need to attend to our immediate domestic security before any more foreign "war" adventures!

Are Afghan Lives = American Lives? The Lessons of Vietnam - Why They Remain Unlearned.

My Lai, with some of the hundreds of villagers slain, in 1968 by Lt. William Calley and his troops. Will Americans ever learn the lessons of Vietnam, or remain in denial – providing an excuse for our leaders to start more wars?

The NBC News lead story last night noted the death of a 25-year old U.S. diplomat, her life cut short by a roadside bomb attack. Yes, she was yet another casualty of the odious overlong U.S. occupation of Afghanistan – still continuing even after al Qaeda has been chased out of the country and its putative leader, Osama bin Laden, killed. Less mentioned by our corpora-media was that 10 innocent Afghan villagers, including toddlers and women, were slain in a misguided NATO attack.

Let me spell this out in black and white so that even an idiot ignoramus like my youngest bro can compute it: If you kill more ‘friendlies’ than you do bad guys, you are not going to win the hearts and minds of the people you are supposedly fighting for, and you won’t win any claimed “war”. All the beleagured people will do, as they did in Vietnam, is collaborate with the enemy to rid themselves of the vicious invaders. This stuff isn’t rocket science, and it is but one more reason Obama, in his budget Wednesday, ought to be announcing an additional saving of $600b by pulling out of Afghanistan immediately! (Another $400b would be saved in having less materiel to send back after this farce is finished)

The Russians learned their lesson in Afghanistan, but too late. That involvement essentially laid waste to the USSR, and bankrupted their nation as it’s doing to us. A superpower was reduced to an ordinary power with lots of nukes. Meanwhile,  our politicos are so wedded to the tits of the military- industrial bloodsuckers (including their lobbyist defense contractors) and parasites they can’t or won’t see that. Hence, they refuse to act, though they insist the "deficits matter". Bull pockey!

According to a recent article in The Washington Spectator (Vol.39, No.4, p.6) by Nick Turse, the U.S. still hasn’t learned and applied the lessons of the Vietnam debacle. Because like it or not, our involvement in dozens of conflicts since Vietnam is underwritten by our failure to grasp the lessons of Vietnam. This, as Turse, notes, is because we display a “collective failure to reckon honestly with the reality of the Vietnam War”.

He goes on to add (ibid.):

“The reason that the conflict rises again and again like a B-movie monster is because the United States has long refused to truly acknowledge , let alone take responsibility for, the bombs and artillery shells, grenades and rockets, mines and bullets, incendiary weapons and chemical defoliants that ravaged the land, made refugees of more than 1.1 million, killed an estimated 2 million and wounded 5 million more.”


Why such waste of lives? FOREIGN lives? My personal theory is because this nation, exceptionalist that it is, doesn’t grant the same value to foreign lives (especially of those it seeks to ‘save’) as its own. Hence, it repeatedly gets involved on these ‘Pax Americana’ missions in which more  lives are wasted, destroyed than the putative ‘enemy’ would have done. Because we are so detached from reality in our exceptionalist blindness, we don’t see lives we have taken as wasted but write them off as “collateral damage”.

As if that stupid canard justifies further warmongering and ‘all is well’! (See also the book, 'Collateral Language' and how they are making our language a casualty as well, to mindfuck most of us not paying attention.)

Anyway, Turse goes on:

“Never having come to grips with what this country actually did during this war, we see its ghost arise anew with each successful military intervention. Was Iraq the new Vietnam? Or was that Afghanistan? Do we see the light at the end of the tunnel? Are we ‘winning hearts and minds’? Are we applying the lessons of Vietnam? What are those lessons anyway?”


At least one lesson ought to have been to remove the blinders and cease with the hindsight war mythology, e.g. “Vietnam was a conflict nobly fought by responsible commanders and good American boys who should not be tainted by the occasional mistake of a few bad apples in their midst”.


All of which is balderdash. The truth is Vietnam was a war of choice, initiated under false pretense, fought at the behest of banksters (Wall Street), oil men and defense contractors (who needed to try out new weapons developed since the Korean conflict) and by a manipulative president who nullified the previous National Security Action Memorandum of his predecessor to pull out by 1965.

Its commanders were mostly craven, untested egomaniacs who stayed at the rear while they ordered pizza deliveries and brewskies, as they sent green horn grunts out on ‘search and destroy’ missions. Those grunts were mostly only able to function by taking daily tokes on their weed or other drugs, and if they got pissed at a fellow grunt, or more often an officer, would as soon “frag” him as look at him. Moreover, given the demand for the daily “body count” – innocent villagers such as slain at My Lai, were way more common than generally believed.

But this is a truth that exceptionalist Americans- raised on the codswallop of Pentagon PR and modern “history” books- refuse to accept. However, until they do, we are bound to enter into ever more “wars” at the cost of even more blood and treasure.

The End Of the Rope: NOW is the Time to LEAVE Afghanistan!

The latest news that a U.S. Army Sergeant went haywire and gunned fown 7 Afghan adults and 9 kids, is the final message that it's time for this nation to pack up, and move its ass out of that country. There is no further good that can come from staying the course in this foolish occupation, and only mountainous loads of instability (and debt, deficits) to reap. Of course, many of those with geopolitical savvy predicted as much even five years ago. This is what we call "batting on a losing wicket".

This insane and vile slaughter (which btw, not even 1 million offerings of "condolences" or apologies will make up for, any more than for My Lai in 'Nam back in '69) is merely the latest in a string of gross actions showing total disrespect for the people and country being occupied (I do not now or ever will call it a "war" because wars are PAID FOR in taxes, via allocated budgets. This never was, neither were its abominable "supplementals").

Earlier we had seen the atrocious and inexcusable burning of the Afghans' holiest book, The Qu'ran. Do you think if a mammoth Chinese Army were occupying the U.S. and burned 100 bibles they'd ease off with some apology? Oh no, at the very least all red-blooded Christian 'Muricans would call for the Chinese heathen responsible to be hung by the neck until dead.

Then there was the case of the video that showed U.S. Marines urinating on dead militia men, adding to the sense that these foreign occupiers don't have one fucking clue of where they are, what they're doing or what their stupid fucking objective is. What we can be sure of now, after the latest atrocities, is that whatever cause existed is now over...finito ...as surely as the American cause in Viet Nam once the My Lai massacre occurred. (Actually, the cause in 'Nam was lost after the Tet Offensive in January, 1968, but it took another 40,000 lives and multiple ass whippings by the Viet Cong and North Viet Regulars to finally concede it and cut losses).

The truth is the U.S. had no business going into this country at all (It was 19 Saudis that perpetrated 9/11). And even if "wipin' out them terr'ists" was at some point justified, it no longer was after al Qaeda spread out and especiallly after bin Laden was killed. After bin Laden's killing, we ought to have said 'Enough! Mission Accomplished' and Occupation over'.

We had by then already lost maybe half the hearts and minds through an accumulation of small scale missteps and stupidity like drone killings of wedding parties, and accidentally killing kids. Now, with the string of recent atrocities, we've probably lose 99% of heart and minds, which makes ANY success unattainable ....I don't care how many apologies are offered, and I am not even sure that hanging the guy that did it would have any effect. (As the Army ought to have hung William Calley after a court martial instead of giving him a slap on the wrist).

At least a hanging would show an equal respect for American and Afghan lives. Offering apologies and "condolences" merely shows that deep down inside you rank any American life as hundreds of time more than any Afghan's.

The Russians also saw this coming, and over the past three years - especially after Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize - offered multiple warnings if we didn't heed their experience. Most of these warnings came from the former Soviet generals who’d led the invasion of Afghanistan (by the Soviet 40th Army) in December, 1979. A number of these generals have gone on the record in the past few years, in major international organs such as The Financial Times, The Economist and other major newspapers, emphasizing the sheer futility of an extended Afghan occupation and the inability to maintain any lasting superiority. (Even if the Soviet experience didn't grab the U.S. attention, that of the British Empire should have ..nearly a century before!)

Just as the U.S. (at the Korengal Valley - from which they retreated after a year) the Soviets’ greater firepower secured only temporary victories but they were unable to hold on and consolidate them. The mujahadeen, like the current Taliban, merely had to wait them out then re-occupy. Eventually, the military overstretch didn't work and the funds to support the occupation ran out as the then Soviet Union was run into the ground. What ought to have been a cautionary lesson for any other superpower with pretensions to military exceptionalism.

Much of the Sovet Afghan experience has been well documented in the book Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan 1979-89, by Rodric Braithwaite, Profile Books, 2011.

As we know, the Russkies paid the price by the extreme costs of that occupation, by seeing their national economy go into the crapper. The same thing is happening to ours as our domestic needs go unattended and immense costs, deficits build up.....with enormous national debt facing us even as we piss $10 billion a month away in Afghanistan.

There is no, I repeat ...NO ..face lost in realistically seeing a situation as diminishing returns with no further upside. As for winning or losing, it's irrelevant since it doesn't apply to occupations anyway, only wars. This never was a "war", never mind the occasional shellings, mortars or whatever. My dad, fighting in 9 major battles in the Pacific during WW II, THAT was a war! With equal forces mobilized on each side, and defined battle lines, battleships firing from a distance, suicidal Kamikaze air attacks and trenches dug in for months and casualties in the tens of thousands per WEEK.

Even now, as I read my dad's war diary I am appalled at the ferocity of the Japanese and how comparing the Taliban to them is like comparing Pop Warner football teams to the NFL's most ferocious hitters.

Finally, as I said, WWII was paid for - by strict rationing and also what would be regarded today as punitive taxes - taxes that went on long after the war to support the Marshall Plan to rebuild a devastated Europe.

It is time, as I said, to have done with this sad and sordid episode in our history and move on - to rebuild our own country. As for Afghanistan, whether we stay another day or another ten years will not make one fucking dime's worth of difference because in the end, the country will still fall back into Taliban hands.

Our stupid, reckless and misguided actions have essentially assured it and all we can do now is make the blowback worse by remaining.