$60 a bbl oil was his goal - Mission Accomplished.

We now know whose fault it is for the failure in Iraq - yes, that is indeed what they are saying - FAILURE. The Democrats are saying it - FAILURE. Even the Republicans are saying it - FAILURE. Most importantly the mass media are beginning to say it (thanks to the incredulous James Baker Iraq Study Group probably - beginning to direct the propaganda machine?) - FAILURE. According to MSNBC everyone in Washington is talking about it - FAILURE. People across the country, people like you and I, Joe Citizen, are talking about it - FAILURE. But FAILURE aside (Let's not emphasise that TOO much), now we are beginning to understand at last the root of all our ills in Iraq, the reason Georgie and Dickie and Donnie have - FAILED. Was it the Europeans who refused to go along? Was it the fact that we sent too few troops? Waas it Al Qaeda? Was it Iran? Syria? Was it shitty pre-war, post-war planning by incompetent neocons? No, my friends. It was none of those. We should have known all along. We should have awakened to smell the roses. It was in front of us all along. It was the................IRAQIS themselves!!!!! THEY are to blame for all this mess we are in. Bastards! Can't govern their own country. Don't deserve friends like the US trying to save them from...well....something very bad, I think. Don't care enough about themselves to pitch in and solve these problems. Just don't co-operate with those who know what's best for them. What prats! http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15941124/ Have a good read. Do this now. Follow the propaganda machine as it gears up over the next few weeks and months. Before it's over, the Dark One and his minions will come up smelling like roses - SUCH helpful roses - and those fucking Iraqis - who can't and won't care about themselves and their families and businesses to solve these problems - will be cast as little more than uncooperative jerks, who if they had done what we told them in the first place would be doing just fine now, thank you.

Don't know about you, but this is one I will not pass up.... http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/112806O.shtml Apologies to Truthout if they didn't want me posting this reference.

Our parents knew this without being Buddhists. They told us to associate with people whose values and actions were what we, or they, admired or agreed with. If you hang with the ¨wrong crowd¨, you will take on their beliefs and/or actions without even recognizing it.   

At worst, he is a closeted Neo-con hawk just itching to take his place with the rest of them, and show them how it's truly done! They all start off with hollow rhetoric and false patriotism, criticizing the policies of the current government, but never really denouncing the underlying structure...And, of course, hypocrisy and collective amnesia is the name of the game. And they all seem to be experts at who can sell their soul (as well as history, culture, identity) for the highest price to the devil. Anyways, it's only a matter of time before all these "liberals" show their true colors. Nevertheless, this should be a clear sign to the American people of what they're in for with these Democrats that they've staked all their hopes and dreams on. More of the same crap...  

Also, don't forget Obama voted for the PATRIOT Act. That's definitely more than just the kind of empty posturing Asil is interpreting Obama's remarks to be.

The reason the Rockefellers, Bushs, etc are in gov is to make sure the people elected do as they are told and for pr purposes. They do not care about the graft or pay of the middle management types who get elected to things, in fact want the pay to be high relative to the rest of society.......that is the carrot. If the elected have many opportunities for graft, and are taught to look after number one so that they take these opportunities, that is the whip to keep them in line.

Senators, Representatives, Cabinet members, top civil servants, etc, are not the top level rich and powerful, they are there to do the bidding of the real rich and powerful.

 

THAT IS ALSO THE REASON FOR THE PROFESSIONAL POLITICIAN..... the r/p like to keep their trained dogs after they have been taught not to pee on the carpet.

 

Victor -  that was great.  

All government exists to insure that "He who has the gold makes the Rules" - World History stands as proof.

We the people should wake up to the reality of our uncivil society -  a government - Of the rich - by the rich -  for the rich.

How about this for an idea.

A new amendment to require any citizen who is elected to any public office must forever divest of their worldly possessions for life, and are paid 3 times the national median income for life on which to live, for their service and patriotism. 

The rich greedy bastards that run our society will be gone - because I guarantee the rich won't run.

Money can only make people rich , it cannot make them smart or good. Personal financial gain will be gone and guys like Clinton and  B.O. would have to give their $Million book deals to the Treasury.

REMEMBER GEORGE´S BIOGRAPHY, I THINK IT WAS, WHERE HE SAID HE DID NOT REALLY BELIEVE ALL THAT BS, HE JUST ADOPTED IT TO GET POWER? 

Whatever happened to Condi Rice? She seems to have disappeared from everyone's radar...

"The end does not justify the means and the means change the end, if that makes any sense."

Paul, it makes perfect sense. Gandhi said something similar when he pointed out that "wrong" means compeltely vitiate the ends.

Interesting ZNet commentary from Gary Olson today. It actually does a nice job of summarising who does what in America's class hierarchy. Olson seems to promote the idea that the top 2% are really the rulers and the decision-makers of America and own most of what is worth owning. Those below them, the Co-Ordinator Class, as he gives Michael Albert credit for, form the next 18% of the population and are responsible to carry out the ruling class's every desire. As a reward for this, they are treated to a lavish life-style and power (though limited). The ruling class are gods and the Co-Ordinator Class are literally priests who act as mediators between the great Unwashed (us) and them, the gods. This class includes both political parties and all government offices. Anyone in power owes their allegiance, either directly or indirectly to the gods. Anyone hoping to become a part of the Co-Ordinator Class must pay their dues or they just won't get in to the "circle of trust", the Holy of Holies in the Temple as it were. That's the simple truth. And Obama must, therefore, have met the critical acceptance criteria, or he could not be where he is today. The interesting thing as I see it, however, is the ingenuity of the system. Based loosely upon the principles of capitalism, which in a nutshell, are the principles of the Law of the Jungle, the fittest survive, the American ruling class structure is open-ended, allowing fresh entrants from time to time, if they have the will, the natural skills and enough love of riches and power to pay the dues by devoting their entire lives to capital accummulation. People like Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and the like come to mind. So the ruling class never becomes stale and settled and lazy and complacent. It continuously renews itself (though "old" money certainly exists there as well!). But it always remains only 2%, though I suspect it would not object to decreasing its size to 1%. The rest of the 80%, according to Olson are worker bees, having little or no power, influence or riches (relatively speaking, of course). We are expected to accept all this, and lead our lives truly believing that we are a free and democratic people and willing to literally fight and die for anything that threatens that system (of course, it is the gods that tell us through their priests when are way of life is under threat). Don't get me wrong here, the ruling gods are not some kind of conspiracy as we know the concept. They do not get together and come up with evil action plans. No, the system is "culture" with a defineable thought environment, wa common world view which acting independently will reach common decions based upon that world view - a paradym, if you will. The LAST thing these folks want, and what they fear MOST (yes they DO fear, and in fact I think they live their entire lives in fear), is that someday Joe America will awake from his dream and take a hard look around. That would be most uncomfortable for the gods, in fact, dangerously uncomfortable. And when you think about it, all this applies most nicely with virtually all countries of the world. So the quesiton in my mind is "When will Joe World wake up and smell the roses?" These folks are not our friends - never have been, never will be. We are trash to them, less than the cattle of the fields. We represent expendible cheap labour and high profits to them. If they could get away with it, they would pay us only enough to barely survive, offer no medical or social security (if we don't make it, we simply die and are replaced by the next maggot), and remove all education from us except whatever it takes to get their jobs done for them and continue rolling in the profits and serving in their armies and protecting their interests worldwide. I believe that if they could get away with it, they would remove all grasps of history and geography and socio-political critical thought from our educational system (such that it is today). Trained monkeys come to mind. I'm not one who believes there is anything inherently "cool" about the working-class or blue-collar or whatever - actually, I must admit that I really don't care for some of those folks. Of course, I don't really care for a lot of people of all so-called "classes"....;-) But in spite of how I might feel about some, I truly believe we all remain just people sinmply doing the best we can to survive anyway we can in a world being destroyed by unchecked greed and an unbridled lust for power on the part of a relative few. A few whose wealth and power should be removed from their clutches, by force if necessary, and re-distributed intelligently back to the world tribe. These folks are destroying our world, and perhaps humanity itself. And until we wake up to that, we are in deep, deep do-do. There shouldn't be ANY class structure. But there is. And Obama has made it. Congratulations. You are now Washed and Clean and a Made Man - though you might have a REALLY sore arse.

I thik Asil's reflections are poignant and important. BTW on race Barockstar is a genius in his appeal to white America. In his book he says that the "reservoirs of white guilt" have been "exhausted" and so its no longer possible to work in a meaningful and direct race-specific way for racial justice/equality in America (so "don't be talking crazy stuff like reparations" and all the rest).... where black household net worth is 7 cents on the white household wealth dollar and where 1 in 3 black male adults is now marked with the lifestime scar of a felony record and where...[look it up and fill in other "little" details like those]. It was curious to see Obama's book talk about blacks being "brought into the economic mainstream" (that's an old bourgeois Urban League phrase) when it's author knows very well about the little 7 cents-on-the-dollar thing and about the nation's wildly race-disparate poverty and health statistics. One reason so many whites love B.O. (and its similar with Oprah and was before with Colin Powell) is the way he exudes foregiveness for racial sins they can't be blamed for in his elite-certified opinion: "it's okay to vote for me white America...an Obamanation will not be looking for any black poker game payback for all those chips you've been piling up since 1619. We wouldn't want to inject race into the game cuz you say that's pretty much all over now in this glorious post-Civil Rigts Age." Like Powell, his cultural manner is "less black" than say Reverend Jackson, who sends racially uncomfortable white eyes rolling in about two seconds. I'm very familiar with the thoughts that Rockwell contributes. I've had that conversation many times. In this case, I think the commenter needs to spend more time gaging the depth and degree of the probably heartfelt (well, who knows or cares?) centrism and conservatism of the not-so "progressive" politician in question. To get the story it's good to read the "Audacity of Hope" book (borrow and don't buy)and pay special attention to the foreign policy chapter...though you need to know U.S. foreign policy history (and here the best source to begin with is Noam Chomsky's masterpiece "Deterrring Democracy")to get a sense of just how incredibly awful this chapter is. The other thing on Rockwell's comment is that the Buddhists have a point when they say "the path is the goal." The notion that you have to opportunistically say all these conservative things to get into office and then you can really rock and roll in a true progressive way forgets that (even if Obama were some kind of closeted progressive waiting to get into touch with his inner democratic socialist or whatever) the daily practice of compromising democracy and justice comes to shape and define you. You become your path. The end does not justify the means and the means change the end, if that makes any sense. This is part of why Martin Luther King, Jr. rejected efforts to get him to run for the presidency. One of the the last century's best U.S. presidential candidates Eugene Debs said he only wanted to rise with --- and never from ---- the working-class. Obama talks pseudo-messianiacally (that spelling error at least is on purpose) about taking occasional "dips in the cool stream of the people" when he goes to town-hall meetings around Illinois. And then of course it's back into the hidden halls and rooms with his many old and new friends among the super-privileged few (amazing how many millionaires he relates hanging out with in the book...of course now he's one too), who have made sure that he's "a player" before letting him in.

ro0ckwell, obama will not change the rule of the game, what he will try to do is to make violence and war against ather nations more acceptable to american people. I don't think much of emeperors, they are usually of a cuckhold class..

Slow down people.  Lets not blow a gasket.  Obama is a politician.  Yelling about Iraqi civilian deaths isn't going to help his political career; screaming about American soldier deaths will.  Who knows what the guy thinks in private, but in public he can either decry the war on humanitarian grounds and lose all hope of an effective political career, or he can parse his words, play it political, and aim for the White House... or whatever he's looking at.  It's difficult to change the rules of the game without winning it first. 

 

"It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes.  But the half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor."

--Neil Gaiman

Paul, is this guy for real? Does he even listen to the bullshit that's spewing from his mouth?!!! Do these people have no shame whatsoever? I see Americans have reached new heights of narcissism that I thought was not possible even for the most self-absorbed people. They never cease to amaze me...So the Americans had to witness their sons and daughters (who are no more or less than occupation soldiers) being killed in the streets of Fallujah. And I suppose the Iraqis who witnessed the massacres and rapes of their sons and daughters, not just at Fallujah, but Baghdad, Basra, Abu Ghraib, etc can basically go straight to hell!!! This Uncle Tom, following close on the heels of Colin Powell and Condaleeza Rice (may they both rot in hell!!!) is supposed to be the hope of the new democratic government. The African-American community must be proud!!!! I once had an arguement with a friend of mine (who's boyfriend is a Cuban-American living in in New York) right after Hurricane Katrina. I remarked how there was no longer any spirit of militant resistance or activism in the African-American community. She replied back defensively that they're not all in prison or gang-rappers, there are black Senators and Congressmen and politicians. Well, we all know very well what these black Senators and Congressmen go on to accomplish once they've established themselves firmly in the Imperial government. No wonder the African-American community is in the mess it's in now. But with all due respect to the black and Hispanic communities, as a Muslim and an Arab, I'm hardly going to cry and bleed my heart out for the poor American soldiers, armed to the teeth I might add, who suffered psychological traumas for killing and torturing innocent civilians. Have the "liberals" in the Mad House lost all sense of perspective? We'll have to forgive the Iraqis (and the entire Muslim world) if they don't mourn the deaths of American soldiers, but who would actually rather dance on their graves. And then the squeaky-clean, innocent and wide-eyed, noble, saintly American citizenry wonder why the world hates their guts, when the politicians they elect heap insult upon grievous injury by dishonouring the memory of our dead, in fact, completely ignoring and denying our dead!!!

Mariam: My sense is that (beneath his pronounced statements of Christian committment) Obama is a soulless political machine who says what he thinks will get him into the White House some day. What he or other policymakers and politicans truly believe is rarely a simple matter to discern; sometimes it comes out only later. Pretty much by definition they make a big distinction beween private beliefs and public statements. My sense is that B.O. is more conscious than most politicians of the extent to which he is spewing bullshit. I mean he's no dummy. Like Clinton and unlike, say, Bush, he is highly intelligent. B.O. is considered to have strong "man of the people" and related domestic policy credentials (this even while he has been vetted by corporate elite power brokers, who have determined that he is safe for existing homeland hierarchies) but to be presidentially suspect (as far the structurally super-empowered corporate imperial folks who matter are concerned) because of short national experience particularly with regard to grave matters of foreign policy. That's why you see him giving these weighty global policy speeches with obvious major input from people in around the foreign policy establishment. He is trying to sound presidential and safe for the Empire. If you look at the chapter called "The World Beyond Our Borders" in his plodding book "The Audacity of Hope," it's just loaded with terrible statements showing (1) the significant influence of elite doctrine and education (how much he believes I have no idea...) and (2) a desire to impress the elite that he's safe and will seek to maintain basic imperial continuties.. a more intelligent and "competent" version of American global dominance than that promised by incompetent morons like Bush II. Speaking of being smart and Chomsky, I don't give smart people a lot of points for being smart but for what they do with their brains. What's so great about Chomsky in my opinion is that he took an obviously super-gifted mind and background --- capacities that could have probably put him into the economic super-elite if that's what he'd wanted --- and applied it all instead to marvelous morally engaged radical-democratic criticism of social injustice and imperial criminality. I've worked for many years (though no longer) in and around academia and must say that it is full of people with all kinds of smarts (no not Chomsky-level smarts, but very clever and knowledgeable people often enough) who just do nothing worthwhile or meaningful (not to mention radical) with their capacities and their privlege. With some noble exceptions, they spend most of their time making excuses for the crimes of concentrated power or just pursuing totally innocuous subject mattters. It's a very boring and often quietly vicious, back-kniving world where the stultifying stench of irrelevance and wasted energy is thick indeed. Interestingly enough there's a real acadedmic feel and related boring tone about Obama's prose in this last book. He has worked for years as a professor at the legendarily dull, vicious,and reactionary University of Chicago.

Yes, that would be amusing and depressing at the same time.

 I can't emphasisze strongly enough how incredibly offensive it is to the world and to the Iraqi, Arab and Muslim communities for Obama to have referenced FALLUJAH as a place where the American people (with their purpoted vast reservoirs of supposed noble imperial resolve)"saw their sons and daughters die." FALLUJAH was the site of incredibly graphic and open U.S. imperial war ciminality in 2003 (some early atrociities were conducted early in the illegal invasion)and 2004. Thousands of Iraqis were butchered by U.S. forces in FALLUJAH.

B.O.'s choice of that town to make his point is incredibly provocative, revealing, and disgraceful. 

Also offensive is Obama's line about U.S. soldiers "serving" in Iraq "without question." Problem one there is upholding the notion of unquestioning execution of imperial duties as a good thing. Good Germans and good Americans just do what they are told.

Problem two is that it's factual bullshit. He's lying. I guarantee people that's there's all kinds of dissent and questioning on the part of the troops and there has been since early on. To start to get a more realistic and less insulting take on troop realities, take a look at some of the often remarkable testimonies given on the web site of Iraq Veterans Against the War. 

Prickesses should be razed, so we can start over and have a real educational system in this country.

The pretext?

In my lifetime, the graduates of these schools have used the incompetence excuse so often that I am sure there is no wiggle room there.

THIS DRIVEL?

THAT WOULD, OF COURSE, MAKE HIM NOT VERY BRIGHT.

 

Then there is the other Colin Powell selection....his soul has been bought and paid for OR TRADED FOR, as in the case of Powell, by some money people and he is a parrot. I admit I was disappointed to learn about Powell. I thought for about 30 minutes back when he retired that this was a rare man of integrity, only to find that he was the apologist for My Lai and had jettisoned any decency long before I knew anything about him. 

Who financed the twerp´s rise to power in politics and his becoming the up and coming poster boy?

 

Are you as sick of these clowns as I am? What is a man´s, a very young man´s, as i know these experienced oldsters sell for very high prices, intregrity going for these days?

Paul, Noam Chomsky made a speech at Columbia on April 4, 1999 called U S Middle East Policy that can be found on the Chomsky site and is worth a read.

Friends:

"Once the president makes the decision to go in, our priority has to be with the safety and success of our troops," state Sen. Barack Obama, D-Chicago, said from Springfield, where the state Legislature is in its spring session.
"Our prayers are with the families, and we have to hope for the best possible outcome in the shortest possible time." 

-- "Some Illinoisans cheer, others protest U.S. attack on Iraq," Megan Reichgott, Associated Press, March 20, 2003
 

Politicans like this come a dime-a-dozen.

You can keep 'em.

I'm not buying.


David Peterson
Chicago, USA

"I don't oppose all war; I oppose dumb war."

-- Illinois State Senator Barack Obama, speaking at a downtown Chicago rally, October 2, 2002 (as reported in the October 3, 2002 Daily Herald, "300 attend rally against Iraq war," Greg Bryant and Jane B. Vaughn). This is the oldest public record of Obama's position specifically about the looming U.S. aggression over Iraq that I've been able to find reported in the U.S. media.

One interesting question for the gentleman might be: Under which conditions would you support war against the United States?

Presumably his answer would be: Under no conditions.

The follow-up question would be: But then how could you not oppose all war?

It would be a real hooter to listen to the gentleman explain the finer differences between "smart" wars (cakewalks for the Americans) and "dumb" wars (those where the otherwise smart warriors from the States can't kill their targets with relative ease and impunity).

David Peterson
Chicago, USA 

don't apologizes for the lacking of others

cyrano - The elite are so far removed from REAL people that they in fact have lost nearly all touch with what it means to be human and struggle. They purchase Harvard grads to do that for them. Of course those grads are left with something on their hands that they don't quite know what it is, much less how to deal with it. Apologies but I seem to be a little cynical today. Maybe I'll feel better tomorrow.... ;-)

What's that smell in the air?.....I believe its another Harvard elite.

STREET wrote: it's about confronting and forcing the hand of power from the bottom up though peoples'power and direct action and alternative institutions and vision and ultimately about smashing concentrated power and replacing it with a democratic, participatory, classless and relatedly empire-free world and society. This appear to be reasonable. I guess it is a question of chanelling your/our energies in this direction. ( kinda difficult to shame the elite, I wonder how easy it is for the prez to wake up in the morning , knowing he was responsible for countless deaths.. my bet is for him, is just like nothing happened.. )

Here is one of the more amusing/disurbing passages from Obama's speech last Monday: "The first [lesson of O.I.L.] is that we should be more modest in our belief that we can impose democracy on a country through military force. In the past, it has been movements for freedom from within tyrannical regimes that have led to flourishing democracies; movements that continue today. This doesn't mean abandoning our values and ideals; wherever we can, it's in our interest to help foster democracy through the diplomatic and economic resources at our disposal. But even as we provide such help, we should be clear that the institutions of democracy – free markets, a free press, a strong civil society – cannot be built overnight, and they cannot be built at the end of a barrel of a gun." The main problems here are (1) Democracy promotion was just a cynical cover story for the invasion since: thelast thing U.S policy makers ever wanted want to see break out in and around oil rich Iraq and the oil-rich ME was actual "democracy" and national freedom (right...we want the Iraqis to be free to do whatever they wish with all that geopolitically and world-economically super-strategic oil...yes, we can an be sure that's what Kissinger and Baker and the rest of the adults called in to supervise the child president are whispering to Dubya these days: "let those people and their oil go free!"); (2) the plutocratic-busines-dominated politically winner-take-all-six-corporations-controlling-half-the-media-longest-working-hours-and-most-unequal-disitribution-of-wealth-in-the-industrialzed-world-no-health-insurance-United-States of America ain't got all that much "democracy" to export in the first place even if its damn authoritarian imperial elites wanted to export such a thing, which they wouldn't be able to recognize if they had it to send out in the first place... if you all know what I'm saying; (3) the so-called "free market" (nice phrase for reactionary corporate-state hegemony) undermines and does not create democracy; (4) America lacks both a truly "free press" and a "strong civil society" and this is in part because of its addiction to empire. cyrano we've got enough Iraqi deaths since a long time to make our point but yes its getting worse (though that's something the right and center can and do use to argue for maintaining and even increasing U.S. presence). As for Obama and whether he can reach "altruistic standards," that is of no concern to me. It's not about having ethical and/or wise and/or benevolent leaders... and it's not about "speaking truth to power" (a phrase I hear too often on the "left" and just loathe): it's about confronting and forcing the hand of power from the bottom up though peoples'power and direct action and alternative institutions and vision and ultimately about smashing concentrated power and replacing it with a democratic, participatory, classless and relatedly empire-free world and society. B.O. and other 'realists' would probably call this an "ideological fantasy," which can be debated but what they cannot expect us to seriously believe that they are somehow magically beyond "ideology." That passage I just quoted to start off this comment is just chock full of dominant doctrine. B.O. has drunk deeply at the wells of conventional ruling class wisdom and ideology.

HPaul to add weight to your discussion about Iraqis dying in Iraq. UN report : Iraqis deaths in the past month

I dont know Paul, I think Obama may never be able to reach
altruistic standards as the ones inherent to the left.