Is this supposed to make me feel good.
The US deRangers will start to downsize their murderous invasion/occupation of the places known as Afghanistan in 2011, maybe.

Obomber should have his Nobel revoked.

This entire war is a theater exercise. The entire affair from the false flag of 9/11 was simply to provide cover and excuses for the continuation of a big stick foreign policy and a means to control energy reserves in the region.

It’s all based on lies, with players – even AQ recruited trained and playing their parts.

But this has been going on since the good war when the corporations aligned themselves with the military for profits – a win win for both groups.

People assume the U.S. government and Karzai are independent actors. It’s a useful ruse because they can scapegoat each other, but I have always believed Karzai works for the CIA.

I am looking forward to hearing Greg Mortenson (late of “Three Cups of Tea,” now with “Stones into Schools) this week. He seems to have a successful approach.

Perhaps he can be approached for a book session at FDL.

Trudy Rubin (or the other guest, Scott Wilson) said on WJ this morning that the U.S. has a list of acceptable Afghan cabinet members for the new cabinet. Gee, they’re not even trying to hide the strings anymore. I’ll be they’re pissed that they can’t just let Rahm run the Afghan govt.

Not scalable, imo.

Meanwhile, U.S. hasn’t known where OBL is for years.

Well said. Following in the steps of our Brit progenitors, it is the way our predator class does things..

But this has been going on since the good war when the corporations aligned themselves with the military for profits – a win win for both groups.

But it has been going on longer than that. See James Bradley’s Op Ed in today’s Times

Hey! FDL switched to Eastern time when I wasn’t looking.

Meanwhile, U.S. hasn’t known where OBL is for years.

Just as the Bush administration understood so does the Obama, the worst thing that could happen is to find and execute OBL. It would devastate the business of war making, not to mention embolden the common folk to demand its government.work on their behalf.

Very interesting article. Thanks for the link. I read Rape of Nanking yesterday, which makes what TR did all the more chilling. RoN was the largest single attrocity in all of WWII. (Collective actions of Nazis were worse, but not in a single city did they slaughter & rape as many as the Japanese did in Nanking.)

only in Attackerland ;)

I think he’s dead and gone.

There have been some voice authenticated messages released over the years. Can’t remember when the last one was.

I loaded up the comments of this story with links on why we are there,

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/144380/this_week_in_right-wing_media_crazy/#comments

I believe the illegal drug trade is a critical part of it, as is munitions sales and creating a responsibility free zone for committing war crimes.

We could start investigating the whole thing as a big criminal enterprise. We are not going to suggest that it is OK if criminal, drug dealing gangs of politicians are running our country, are we?

Yes. I have lost much of my admiration for T.R. He was a war maker.

Read about the 3rd Marines missions in Asia and the Opium Wars. And that is just off the top of my head. Pillage and plunder for business is sadly the way of Multinational(would that be globalization?)business. It has been especially egregious in Asia.
They are still dying in Bhopol and nothing has happened to Union Carbide/Dow.

(Lisa’s upstairs – Theocracy: Imposing Faith into Politics in the US and Abroad)

Who did the authentication, tho?

“. . . take charge of securing population centers in three years and the whole country in five. “

Wow, what a lucid brilliant guy. Almost like Obama. As if those dates mean anything except a free ride for Karzi because, you know, he’s Barack’s partner baby. Maybe he’ll get invited to the state of the union again.

The whole charade makes me sick.

Nice one, that’s what I’m saying.

I like the way Pepe Escobar puts it: “The myth of al-Qaeda has to be exposed. . . . [They're] essentially a thinly disguised brigade of Saudi intelligence.” Have you read his analysis of Obama’s West Point Speech?

Taking pains to distance his new policy from the Vietnam trauma, Obama stressed, “Unlike Vietnam, the American people were viciously attacked from Afghanistan.” Wrong. If the official narrative of 9/11 holds, the hijackers were trained in Western Europe and perfected their skills in the US.

And even while he still emphasizes the drive to “disrupt, dismantle and defeat” al-Qaeda and deny it a “safe haven”, Obama is fully contradicting his own national security advisor, General James Jones, who has admitted that there are fewer than 100 al-Qaeda jihadis in Afghanistan.

The myth of al-Qaeda has to be exposed. How could al-Qaeda pull off 9/11 but be incapable of mounting a single significant attack inside Saudi Arabia? That’s because al-Qaeda is essentially a thinly disguised brigade of Saudi intelligence. The US wants to win “the war on terror”? Why not send special forces to Saudi Arabia instead of Afghanistan and knock the Wahhabis – the root of it all – out of power?

Myths, I might add, aren’t the same as lies. They’re very comforting ways of looking at and being in the world. The power of the myth of American Exceptionalism is our ultimate WMD. It creates the hellish cosmos in which war is the way the world was made to work in our favor in perpetuity.

So petitioning our public servants has been inverted into questioning the throne of heaven itself, infecting civil discourse with the zealotry of holy war fanatics (culture war, anyone?). Even the slightest disagreement, if they don’t reprove it quickly enough (as in Uganda lately), threatens their idea of their eternal soul, so they rush to send us to hell first.

IMO, that’s why, to pick one example, Mount McCain occasionally erupts. He’s confused himself with an almighty master of the universe (MOTU).

SEN. ROBERT BYRD: My hands tremble, but my heart still throbs. I read this quote: “Naturally, the common people don’t want war. But after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament or a communist dictatorship. The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.” Hermann Goering, president of Reichstag, Nazi Parliament, 1934. Democracy Now! March 25, 2008

I think it obvious: as Gore Vidal suggests, we imported Goering’s method of jacking nations, and have been busily updating and upgrading it ever since. As in the Pentagon’s infamous Message Force Multipliers.

I must confess to being unfamiliar with Ackerman’s work. What role does he assign to the power of myths, narratives, propaganda, etc. in jacking nations to war? But for the myths that pervert public opinion and create false histories and realities, would the wars be possible?

In truth whoever is able to make you believe in absurdities will also be able to make you commit atrocities.–Voltaire, 1765

This blurb from Saturday’s New York Times website seems ridiculous to me: “The Pentagon has to do a better job of recruiting, training and retaining effective Afghan security forces in order to hand over control to the Afghans.”

How does the Pentagon know who to recruit or take steps to retain people in another country’s army? What!!??

How does the Pentagon know who to recruit or take steps to retain people in another country’s army? What!!??

General Petraeus is a genius. Doncha know?

I watched “Nanking” last night, a docudrama made in 2007. It is interesting, and worse, the Japanese still deny they did it.

Hail Petraeus, MOTU!

Good Intentions in Afghanistan

and our american system

Feeding on the body politic

If he’s working for the CIA, you would have to assume his contract wouldn’t have been renewed and that he would have been reassigned to Venezuela or Newfoundland.
He’s a pain in our ass, not an asset.

So you know who really was behind the attack!
http://news.3yen.com/wp-content/images/marvin-flag-closeup.jpg

The author I quote in my diary on shock therapy “Democracy Inc”, Sheldon Wolin starts out his book with the chapter “Myth in the Making.” It’s all about myths. He says that myths “present a narrative of exploits,not an argument or a demonstration. It does not make the world intelligible, only dramatic.”

He says that neocons and neoliberals hate “the sixties” partly because through teach-ins at public universities, young people and their professors destroyed the myths.

Also, isn’t Iran between Iraq and Afghanistan. Don’t we have to keep them in pincers?

I’d be willing to let Rahm run the Afghan government, if he gets out of ours in the doing.

Corporate greed is the only reason that we are still occupying Afghanistan and Iraq. American corporations want to put pipelines through Afghanistan and also control/steal Iraq’s vast oil reserves.

Isn’t American imperialism wonderful? We will bomb, invade, torture, blindfold, jail and overthrow anyone who stands in the way of our stealing their natural resources. The US military has been pulling this crap in third world countries since 1898, for one hundred and eleven years. Do you think that they are going to stop now?

President Obama is just the most recent face on US imperialism.

Can you list any natural resources that we’ve stolen from Afghanistan?
Can you name a greedy corporation that oversaw the plan to invade Afghanistan and steered the authorization through the Congress?

that was a really good comment. I love Pepe Escobar, too.
thanks

macaquerman, War was never declared so nothing had to be steered.
Karzai was a Unocal man, and his brother in Law Ahmed Wali, the drug lord is on the CIA payroll, so what does that tell you?
I’ll let you google it for yourself.

Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_(2001–present)#U.S._plans_to_remove_the_Taliban_prior_to_September_11.2C_2001

In August 2001, U.S. State Department official Christina Rocca met with the Taliban, at their last negotiation over U.S. energy giant Unocal’s planned oil and gas pipeline through Afghanistan. She is reported to have said, “Accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs.”[41]

shekiss, war was authorized by Congress, and nearly unanimously. You could look it up.

my brother-in-law worked for the CIA,not merely might have taken some money from them, what does that tell you?