The Loan Sharks of War

I guess this is inflation, the Friedman unit is played out, it’s time for the McChrystal unit, c’mon just another 12-18 months-

The general overseeing the US military campaign in Afghanistan has warned that the offensive against the Taliban in southern Helmand province’s Marjah town is just the start of an operation that could last 18 months. General David Petraeus, the commander of US Central Command, said on Sunday that the months ahead will be “tough”.

Petraeus said the campaign, which started on February 13, would not stop with Marjah and nearby Nad Ali.  “This is just the initial operation of what will be a 12 to 18-month campaign as General [Stanley] McChrystal [the head of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan] and his team mapped it out,”

The Faces Change, Imperial Foreign Policy Remains The Same- Obama’s War Pimps

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Vice President Joe Biden said on Sunday the United States expects to gain China’s support for imposing sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program.

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has told an international conference that Iran has left the world little choice but to take harsher action to contain its nuclear program. Clinton told the US-Islamic World Forum in Doha, Qatar that Iran has not lived up to its nuclear obligations.

See Simon Jenkins Imposing idiot sanctions on Iran is a direct route to war and below Alistair Crooke (former spook so be advised) in Asia Times Online assessing the terrain wrote in December-

But if sanctions on Iran are widely acknowledged – at least in private within the US administration – as destined to fail, this must be provoking some interesting self-questioning within the White House: The US is in the process now of withdrawal from Iraq, it is looking for the exit in Afghanistan and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is getting messier. None of these events seems likely to become particularly glorious episodes for the administration.

It is not hard to imagine White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel and White House senior adviser David Axelrod asking themselves, “why the president should want to risk another perceived failure” – as sanctions on Iran surely will be. “Why”, they may ask, “do sanctions and open ourselves to persistent Republican jeering at their inevitable failure and then ultimately force us to have to ask … well, what do we do next, Mr President”?

Cry Me A RIver

Madeley’s a wanker, Campbell had direct power in conspiring to kill a million plus people and remains unrepentant (ht2 Harpy). There is no way in which Campbell is acting out of good faith, he was instrumental in concocting the media lies to move us into war. Why the media waste our time giving these lying scum air time is a lesson in who the media consider worthy of their and our attention and as they were also part of the process they keep returning to this apologia for their own shortcomings, to convince themselves they are not such risible hacks. A plague on both their houses.

Wanker Of The Week

He always was a total wanker, Richard Madeley defending Blair’s war crimes (ht2 AD). This is just waiting for the comedy remixes which I expect are already being made. Also I hear that Hitler was a nice chap (hey Madeley started it with the V2 nonsense, somehow Iraq becomes Nazi Germany to Dickhead).

Of course the serious point is he is an important part of the popular media establishment, who think they are well informed if they read a newspaper or two then some minister gives them some ‘insider gossip’ and verily they know the truth, they then pimp it out to viewers of varying levels of gullibility. Less seriously it’s the style they have chosen for this awful clip, like a mid 90’s educational film about the need to wear condoms by a celebrity, or Hitler will win, Churchill wore condoms and no one hauled him up before an inquiry. Or something… It’s almost as funny as the disingenuous nonsense -dealt with by Though Cowards Flinch–  by the Young Fabians (sadly there is crossover with Left Foot Forward). The witless are really oozing out of the woodwork now their idol risks his halo being dislodged in the popular memory.

The Secret Of How To Stay Delusional

Make sure even your biographer Anthony Seldon is similarly in-fucking-sane. Yes clearly Tony Blair committing to Bush’s invasion of Iraq to alleviate ‘Iraqi suffering’ was really just the parable of the good Samaritan writ large. Um, just to be clear when you were alleviating this suffering why did you precede it with sanctions that killed half a million children and deliberately destroyed Iraq’s water system, then when the ‘shock & awe’ began (was that to alleviate suffering? Of course it was!) bombed infrastructure so food, power and sanitation was destroyed. I mean I really want to know how this alleviates ‘Iraqi suffering’ and is evidence of great concern for the Iraq people. I think it aids regime change by weakening a nation through collective punishment so when the opportunity to attack comes it is a walk over but that is not the same thing. Saddam Hussein=bad so anything we do to Iraq=good is about as retarded as you get, but nice try though you mad evil fuckos.

Tony, Tony, Tony…Andrew, Andrew, Andrew

Is it worth responding to the shit eating grin of Britain’s premier war criminal? What he has said here is what all of us who were against the war and who knew the rationales were bullshit (please, anyone who say how could we have known either cannot read or are clinically dumb as a spoon, the info was there at the time) yet he says it in such a way as if he were stating- Look I was right all along! In other words he is a motherfucker, he will do anything, ANYTHING, and spout specious shit about it afterwards and not care that he subsequently contradicts himself or proves himself a liar, after all in his position he is pretty well much assured there will be no consequences for his actions absent a concerted plot by capable snipers. So he is scum, sociopathic bulging eyed messianic scum. The real problem is media who continue to give him a platform and here we see hard news internationally respected independent investigative journalist John Pilger Fern Britton…um what? It can only be a matter of time before he appears In The Night Garden to defend his record BUT he need not run from the supposed real journalists at the BBC, on Start The Week Andrew Marr while talking with Tariq Ali did this-

I have puzzled quite a while in between sweary rants about what exactly this was, he was correcting Ali’s widely acknowledged figure for the casualties of the Iraq war with a lower figure which came from…well he said UN but I think he means the Lancet study figure that is now 3 years out of date (plus he lowballs it to exclude those dead from degraded health and sanitary conditions which the war created), because there is no UN total figure. But really what it put me in mind of more than anything else was a teacher’s pet or class prefect repudiating a fellow pupil who said something he knew his master would not like to hear. He then pushes the conversation onwards so there is no argument over his moronic interjection, because y’know 600,000 is like fine and ok and only loonies think it was a million or more and therefore it was a bad thing. Why fucking say it unless he has deeply internalised lower figures, why do that unless you fundamentally side with the establishment, I cannot say it made me glad I had not wasted time on his history vanity project because there was zero prospect of me bothering to watch it anyway. I presume he records the numbers killed by the Nazis as roughly half of what respected and sourced studies say and await the righteous fury for his Holocaust denial as he is fired from the BBC…oh look that hasn’t happened, I guess we’ll have to wait for a Nazi to present a show where they can interject into the conversation with a guest saying “6 million Jews and another 6 million victimised minority groups were killed”.

“Actually” Oberleutnant Marr will correct his guest, knowing his superiors are listening and his access to them for career enhancing interviews will dry up if he sides with this deranged lefty trouble maker, “it was only 3 million of each. But let’s leave that there, what about this new show my other guest has out, lets promote that, and later why big ears and looking like a deformed Gelfling formed through the unholy union between Gollum and Prince Charles is sexy.”

No wonder Anthony is so assured in his smug superiority to those who object to war crimes. And you know what, when he dies, it’ll be like when Reagan kicked it, he’ll be fucking canonised, if not by these actual hacks than by their following generation of arse lickers. And when some terrible act of violence rooted in what we did in Iraq occurs here, they absolutely will publish articles asking Why Do They Hate Us?

How could they not?

Q2N Replay

Can I get a rewind?

The UN’s chief weapons inspector, Mohamed ElBaradei, said today he had seen “no credible evidence” that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, rejecting British intelligence allegations that a weapons programme has been going on for at least four years.

The Guardian too spread propaganda and the media frenzy is ludicrous, but the war pimps objective is not so funny.

The Only Thing That’s Definitely True In This NYT Piece

War Pimps ahoy! Q2N is back in fashion, the NYT is up to speed with- A Nuclear Debate Brews: Is Iran Designing Warheads? Happily it does include this one true sentence-

The debate, in essence, is a mirror image of the intelligence dispute on the eve of the Iraq war.

Funny stuff. (Hmmm, so ‘intelligence dispute‘ is what the kids are calling it now, I remember when we just called them ‘lies’. Y’know, before we killed over a million people.)

The War Pimps Are Up To Something

I don’t buy this-

America’s spy chief was sent on a secret mission to Israel to warn its leaders not to launch a surprise attack on Iran without notifying the US Administration. As Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, prepares to visit Washington, it emerged yesterday that Leon Panetta, the head of the CIA, went to Israel two weeks ago. He sought assurances from Mr Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, the Defence Minister, that their hawkish new Government would not attack Iran without alerting Washington.

Notice at no point does it say ‘Do not attack’ it just says- Hey, tell us first. But that’s not it, why send the CIA head two weeks before Bibi he comes to Washington. Well it was ahead of the AIPAC conference for one (so, co-ordinating a message, friction but not too much), it also meant…well do you trust the CIA? Are they working wholly for the Obama administration or are they working towards an attack on Iran, or is that the true Washington intention. After all we should now be used to betrayals of the campaign rhetoric. We know spying for Israel will not be prosecuted now and Harman also walked, Senators sign any old shit AIPAC give them and this is from a Murdoch paper, an attempt to isolate and weaken the negotiations route? The generally given reason the US would have to green light an attack is Israeli jets would be flying through US controlled Iraqi airspace, so why have to ask to be warned? The conventional wisdom says the airspace question means Israel has to resolve that to mount an attack with permission, so how come now the US thinks it will be surprised? Would US forces confronted with Israeli jets fire or not? This suggest they had a meet up to try and avoid that situation occurring, but not by ruling out an attack, so what did they discuss, scheduling?

Follow The Money

The cost of fighting the war in Afghanistan will overtake that of the Iraq conflict for the first time in 2010, Pentagon budget documents showed Thursday. On top of the basic defense budget of 533.7 billion dollars, the White House is requesting a further 130 billion dollars for overseas missions, including 65 billion for Afghanistan and 61 billion for Iraq. “This request is where you’re going to first see the swing of not only dollars or resources, but combat capability, from the Iraqi theater into the Afghan theater,”

I think the Pentagon is enjoying its increased budgetary importance (now over the halfway mark, so war now rules the nation) and will not let it drop back to the nominal (yet still huge) levels pre 911, so the terrifying nuclear Taliban are the latest brand to be rolled out to maintain their market share. Chris Floyd makes a great point, it must never be forgotten imperialism is fuelled in part on racism-

One of the largest empires the world has ever known – complete with second-largest nuclear arsenal in the world, capable of wiping out the planet several times over – disintegrated completely in the early 1990s, breaking into a myriad of different nations, and chaotic polities, some of which went to war with each other while others had internal wars that raged for years. Corruption was rampant, society collapsed, death rates climbed, birth rates plunged – all of this, again, with a vast nuclear arsenal looming over it all. Yet I don’t recall anyone recommending any U.S. military intervention to “preemptively mitigate the risks that might ensue from political chaos” in the break-up of the Soviet Union, to which I was eye-witness for a time. The only difference I can see in regard to Pakistan is that the scale of the risk and its possible global ramifications are actually much, much

Oh, I suppose there is one other difference, of course. The Pakistanis are Other – dark-skinned, Asian, Muslim, etc. – whereas most people perceived the Soviets to be like Us – white, European, etc. (Even though, in reality, many of the peoples of the Soviet Union were in fact dark-skinned, Asian and Muslim.) And thus, as Other, we must assume that a) they are so primitive, childish and incapable that they need real people like Us to step and save them from themselves and sort out their affairs; and b) they are so wild and crazed that they will seize the first possible opportunity to grab those nukes and blow up half the world. This is precisely the level of witless prejudice that underlies — or indeed, defines — any argument for “intervention” in Pakistan, of whatever degree. No matter how the argument is tricked out with think-tank speak and the savvy tropes of realpolitik, it actually goes no further than that.

PS. The Justin Raimondo piece going around about Jon Stewart, well duh, he’s ultimately a nice corporate liberal with vestiges of passion, a gift for comedy and a patriotic sentimentalist. He wouldn’t have gotten the gig if he was -stubbornly- radically dangerous and the US atomic attacks are still verboten in mainstream narrative of the ‘Good’ war. But the part about torture and US liberals focusing on that while letting Obama’s wars slide is only partially true (it’s mostly true of Dem partisan liberals) both can and should be done, oppose war and torture vocally. His attitude to the torture ‘debate’ I can understand in-so-much as I don’t have a badge saying ‘this blog is anti torture’, opposition to torture is normal, only abnormal cretins support torture (it is an aberrant phenomenon like paedophilia, think about that ’24’ fans). But it is still necessary to talk about it, because it is spread far and wide and the media now won’t even call torture torture and a key part of any apparatus of torture is intimidation of others. By speaking out we stem that intimidation. But then I suppose I am not in the ‘debate’ there is none, torture is wrong. Still his antiwar credibility is fine, just take his right wing libertarian roots under advisement (and yeah the Chavez bit was crap too).

Corporate Media Covers Up Its Corruption

Journo wins Pulitzer prize for investigation that found the massive coordinated Pentagon program to feed retired military into the media as pundits, whom the media welcome to pimp the Iraq war, media don’t mention it, try to act surprised, Glenn Greenwald–

Awarded to David Barstow of The New York Times for his tenacious reporting that revealed how some retired generals, working as radio and television analysts, had been co-opted by the Pentagon to make its case for the war in Iraq, and how many of them also had undisclosed ties to companies that benefited from policies they defended.

By whom were these “ties to companies” undisclosed and for whom did these deeply conflicted retired generals pose as “analysts”?  ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN and Fox — the very companies that have simply suppressed the story from their viewers.

Eve of Destruction

Foreign Affairs Minister Tzipi Livni and Israel’s ambassadors around the world are preparing to launch a global effort in a bid to secure backing for the anticipated operation in the Gaza Strip.

The campaign is intended to create an ‘international umbrella’ of support for the intensification of military action against Hamas, and possibly prevent the passing of UN Security Council resolutions against Israel.

As reported by Ynet, the triumvirate of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Livni ruled in favor of the operation in a clandestine meeting last Thursday. The international diplomatic groundwork was one of the steps the three agreed would have to precede the operation.

The diplomats singled out three key dates in the near future: January 9th – when Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is to step down, the changing of the guard in Washington on January 20th with the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama, and the general elections in Israel on February 10th. It was also noted in the meeting that the Christian world will soon be celebrating Christmas and New Year’s.

The first will see Livni speaking with her counterparts around the world. The second will send Israel’s diplomats stationed abroad to explain the situation to both the public and the leadership of their respective host countries. And the third calls for Livni to meet with the foreign ambassadors stationed in Israel, some of whom she will take on a tour of the rocket-battered town of Sderot and its neighboring communities.

Ignoring that Hamas did not renew the truce because Israel broke it in November while continuously besieging Gaza, yet most media only report Hamas as being responsible for the truce failing. It’s going to be murder in Gaza, first starved, now in for the kill. Colonisation as usual and an arms race of brutality to fuel political careers-

Tzipi Livni, currently the Israeli foreign minister, said on Sunday that her primary goal if she wins the February election is to overthrow Hamas. “The Hamas government in Gaza must be toppled, the means to do this must
be military, economic and diplomatic,” she said. “Whenever they shoot at Israel, Israel must respond.”

Benjamin Netanyahu, Likud party leader and Livni’s main rival, made similiar statements. “In the long-term, we will have to topple the Hamas regime,” he said. “In the short-term … there are a wide range of possibilities, from doing nothing to doing everything, meaning to conquer Gaza.”

Bipartisan Covert War With Iran

Seymour Hersh’s latest [here] details an expanded program of covert US activities against Iran, what is also important to note is-

Under federal law, a Presidential Finding, which is highly classified, must be issued when a covert intelligence operation gets under way and, at a minimum, must be made known to Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and the Senate and to the ranking members of their respective intelligence committees—the so-called Gang of Eight. Money for the operation can then be reprogrammed from previous appropriations, as needed, by the relevant congressional committees, which also can be briefed. “The Finding was focussed on undermining Iran’s nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change,” a person familiar with its contents said, and involved “working with opposition groups and passing money.” The Finding provided for a whole new range of activities in southern Iran and in the areas, in the east, where Baluchi political opposition is strong, he said.

Although some legislators were troubled by aspects of the Finding, and “there was a significant amount of high-level discussion” about it, according to the source familiar with it, the funding for the escalation was approved. In other words, some members of the Democratic leadership—Congress has been under Democratic control since the 2006 elections—were willing, in secret, to go along with the Administration in expanding covert activities directed at Iran, while the Party’s presumptive candidate for President, Barack Obama, has said that he favors direct talks and diplomacy. (ht2 People’s Geography)

And both are keeping tight lipped-

Reuters- Many of these activities are not specified in the new finding, and some congressional leaders have had serious questions about their nature, it said. Among groups inside Iran benefiting from U.S. support is the Jundallah, also known as the Iranian People’s Resistance Movement, according to former CIA officer Robert Baer. Council on Foreign Relations analyst Vali Nasr described it to Hersh as a vicious organization suspected of links to al Qaeda.

The article said U.S. support for the dissident groups could prompt a violent crackdown by Iran, which could give the Bush administration a reason to intervene. None of the Democratic leaders in Congress would comment on the finding, the article said. The White House, which has repeatedly denied preparing for military action against Iran, and the CIA also declined comment.

Maybe, maybe the Democratic leadership have a faulty dictionary with incorrect definitions of- opposition, democracy, honesty and spine. Or it further confirms the leadership cynically co-opted anti-war feelings to get votes with no intention of actually fulfilling that role. Which leaves the election seeming an even weaker version of the least-worse-choice every day. You can vote empire, or you can vote empire, your choice! The real issue as Cyrus Safdari @ Iran Affairs says-

The “Iranian nuclear threat” talk is a pretext, a distraction and a smokescreeen. “Wmds in Iraq” was the pretext to invade Iraq, and “Communism” was the same pretextual justification for the CIA’s 1953 coup in Iran to secure oil. Bloggers should not allow themselves to be distracted into that debate, and should keep the focus on the real issue.

<…>

THAT is really what is behind this nonsense about “nuclear weapons” — a battle by developing nations with the rich to control their access to energy by monopolizing nuclear enrichment technology under the guise of non-proliferation. In the particular case of Iran, the Bush administration is also seeking to keep Iran economically deprived and backward, to suit Israel and thereby help secure Israel’s dominant position in the Mideast while also creating a pretext for implementing a policy of regime change.

Grooming

The government is to back an expansion of the cadet corps in schools and a national Armed Forces Day as part of moves to boost support for UK forces.

Bush Strains the Limits of Chutzpah

As many have recounted he rolls up in the Knesset and proceeds to give a speech variously-

• Playing the Holocaust card (despite his families fascist past -coup plotting in the US- and support and dealings with the Nazis).
• That he’s like the people who didn’t appease Hitler and fought back for freedom and all that good stuff in WWll (except he’s the one invading countries in wars of aggression, institutionalising torture and designating people legally sub human).
• And is so rabidly Zionist even manic Zionists are overwhelmed with his zeal –He later proposed that Bush should replace Olmert-(never mind this leads to suspicions that this born again idiot has swallowed the dominionists end timer shit whole, that Israel must occupy all the lands to trigger the apocalypse where the Jews must either be slain or convert to Christianity as they fight the ‘Beast’ and the rapture saves the righteous right out of their shoes).

As has been observed this is green light to the continued ethnic cleansing of Palestine, there’ll still be the fiction of ‘peace talks’ after all easier to coordinate atrocities under cover of talks. And the main attraction-yes we are with you all the way me and my neo-con/Likudnik friends in getting our war on with Iran.

To top this Bush now needs to appear live on stage balls deep in a 3 year old girl pledging to find Madeleine McCann and stamp out the horrors of child abuse, he then slits the girls throat and finishes with a sanctity of life bit and how abortion is bad as the red stains spread on his $400 shirt- Thank you and goodnight, try the veal!