We are all expendable foot soldiers

posted by ewing2001 on Sunday October 19, @05:49PM

We are all expendable foot soldiers

By Tonie 61 -October 19

We are all pawns in Dubya’s schemes. Some of us are not soldiers, but we might as well be in garrison US. Since the US economy is being destroyed to give his buddies, the top 1% everything, while funneling every last cent into the high-tech, bloated military, we can say we are under the control of the military’s payroll. Do you doubt that?

Read the articles “Fiscal Doomsday in the Offing” by David Broder and “Stating the Obvious”, by Paul Krugman which portray Dubya not as a typical “compassionate conservative, but as a radical GOP swindler raping the US. He is ruining our economy and intentionally destroying our social service network, for GOP political advantage.

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The list of lies and charades is so all encompassing, and so transparent, there has to be a devious plot brewing for the 2004 election. Can Solicitor General Ted Olson find a loophole that either Homeland Security Director Herr Ridge, or Attorney General, “Cover-up the nude statues” Herr Ashcroft can use to call off the 2004 election? Olson cheated the nation out of the 2000 presidential election--maybe he is planning to revamp that role and cancel this before its starts with hypocritical national security reasons.

Maybe they are planning on destroying the election, and the article, by the Global Free Press, “Former Diebold Worker: Company installed Uncertified Patches”, shows a perfectly overt method in which they can do so. This quote, is disgusting, “Last January the electronic voting machine maker faced public embarrassment when voting activists revealed the company's insecure FTP server was making its software source code available for everyone to see. Now a former worker in Diebold's Georgia warehouse says the company installed patches on its machines before the state's 2002 gubernatorial election that were never certified by independent testing authorities or cleared with Georgia election officials. If the charges are true, Diebold could be in violation of federal and state election-certification rules. The charges also raise questions about the integrity of the Georgia election results and any other election that uses patched Diebold systems that have not been re-certified.”

I’m a computer programmer, and believe me; I’ve had a set of modifications being tested since July 17th. The purpose of my programs is trivial in comparison to providing for the accuracy and security of the nation’s greatest responsibility, the right to vote.

The “you won’t have Richard Nixon to kick around any longer” hypocrite; Nixon had his “domino theory”. It went that the Communists would takeover over the world, domino by domino, to terrify a dimly aware US populace in 1968. It was the precursor for both the “Evil Empire” as well as the “Axis of Evil”. Dubya liked Ronnie’s so much he had to keep “Evil”. My son watches Sponge Bob cartoons and one of the good guys, Mermaid man is repeatedly screaming “Evil”. I guess the GOP has market tested that phrase to appeal to 10 year olds, which the right-wing villains consider to be the average intelligence of their target audience.

“Tricky Dick” would have loved to tell us his “Secret Plan to end the Vietnam War”, but he couldn‘t do so without revealing plots and characters.

Dubya has already used the current day reincarnation of the phrase “can’t reveal sources and methods”, so evilly and constantly to push the US Congress and the UN into the Iraq War. Soon, the Congressional hearings about his “16 words” and other intelligence failings will start, as Republicans are already peeling away from Dubya. When he gets backed into a corner about his “everlasting war against terrorism” he can apply that technique into a rationale for stonewalling, or using executive privilege, for not discussing anything that will reveal the truly treasonous activities of his regime.

October 17, 2003 saw two major events occur. The US Senate and House passed very different versions of the $87 billion bonanza for Dubya’s “Rangers” and “Pioneer” contributors for rebuilding Iraq. Also, the UN passed the US Iraq resolution. The Washington Times, a major piece in the Big Brother Herr Führer 43, propaganda blitzkrieg has telegraphed the method that Herr Rove has ordered for this to play out.

The Washington Times ran this article “Bush plan on rebuilding Iraq nears final Hill OK “, which sound promising for Dubya. It doesn’t tell the facts though. There will be a meeting between House and Senate leaders to reconcile the differences between their versions of the $87 billion. Doesn’t that sound promising?

How this reconciliation will play out is obvious from recent history. Remember how DeLay pushed through a Senate House compromise. He stated that he would not consider a Democratic measure to provide an increased tax credit to 6.5 million low-income families who did not receive it in the new tax law, and since these smug thugs are so evil, he didn’t. How did he do it? The credit was dropped in negotiations among House and Senate leaders and White House representatives that included no Democrats.

Prior to this reconciliation, the House had wanted $1.7 billion to be in loans and the Senate $10 billion out of the total of $20 billion for Iraqi reconstruction. Maybe I’m cynical of this group but my guess is that at the conclusion of these meetings there will no loans and the money being spent on the Iraqi reconstruction will increase to at least $30 billion. The promising part of this, which is not mentioned in the Murdoch-Rove media, is that eight Republican Senators, after getting face to face intimidation sessions from Dubya, voted against the agreed upon GOP policy. Maybe the lock step efficiency of the Dubya Nazi regime is finally faltering.

Doesn’t this Washington Times’ article, “UN backs US on Iraq resolution” sound fair and balanced? It skipped a lot including that the concession announced earlier this week, setting a deadline for Iraq's US-appointed governing council to draw up a timetable to a new constitution and elections, allowed France, Russia and Germany to support the resolution. But the US still had to postpone the vote - originally scheduled for yesterday - to allow the three to discuss the final draft and decide whether to support it. The German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, told reporters at an EU summit in Brussels that the leaders had agreed their line believing the resolution to be an "important step in the right direction". But their backing does not in itself guarantee that the US will receive the financial and military support it is seeking.

The fact is it is only a sham. Next week there will be a UN donor’s conference for the US occupation of Iraq. The US will be begging these countries, which have no incentive to help Dubya out, to save his stupid butt. The US has already, via legal maneuvers, tied up the Iraq oil profits until 2008. If these countries help the US they are stupid. Their help will not equal the amount of money passed in under the table negotiations that Dubya’s money peddlers have been dishing out. Also, these counties have a modicum of humanity, unlike Dubya.

Remember on October 12th 2003 Meet the Press show that Senator Dick Lugar, R-IN, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee said that Dubya had to be the president, the Commander-in-Chief, instead of attempting to place the blame for Iraq on his minions. Dubya has a habit of switching roles and people, as that can be used as excuses for failed policy. What is this current hypocrisy of placing Rice above Rumsfeld about other than another GOP pretense? Ivo Daalder, who for five years has run a Brookings Institution-University of Maryland study project on the NSC, says that the new emphasis of Rice's role is her way of trying "to take control of a process that was in some sense running away from her -- which was clear in the Iraqi reconstruction process, but also the foreign policy process writ large." This temporary facade of Rice over Rumsfeld will result in no change of the US PNAC military policy; it will just take the heat off Dubya, the Commander-in-Chief.

What can be made of the charade of 4 speeches by Big Brother 43`s team about the progress being made in Iraq? These excursion from reality were made to try to address what Rove is describing as the filter that stops the positive news about the progress in Iraq from reaching the US populace. Republican Senator Dick Lugar, Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee also on the October 12th, 2003 Meet the Press show said that even these speeches were contradictory. None of them truthfully tried providing the US populace with information as to what Dubya's goals are in Iraq and what the projected cost, in terms of US troops or financial resources will be.

Democratic Senator Joe Biden, also on that show said that Dubya has to take charge of the atrocious situation, not push it off on Rice. Biden's remark is the ultimate usage of irony against the "Top Gun" , "bring em-on", we'll take him "dead or alive", self-proclaimed, straight shooter. If Dubya had taken the lead in this mess then his strong willed advisors would respect his opinion. More and more Republicans are coming out against Dubya's fiasco for oil. It makes my head hurt trying to give this guy the benefit of the doubt.

They’ve co-opted John McCain. McCain‘s concern over excessive influence of connected companies doesn’t extend to the bonanza that Cheney’s former company received, some without competitive bidding. On Hardball Chris Matthews asked McCain, “ Do you think that that is a bad situation? To have a huge contract that led to a company that the vice president was CEO of?” McCain‘s response was troubling, “ I’m going to get in trouble by saying to you that any appearance of impropriety is not good, because it gives your opponents ammunition. And so, no, I don’t think it’s a good thing to do. I think that Dick Cheney is a totally, completely thorough, honest man. A man of integrity. Unimpeachable integrity, in my view.” When McCain’s Campaign Finance Reform legislation was pushed off by Dubya’s GOP operatives, McCain was irate, and now this doesn‘t concern him. He has been paid off. As of now other Republicans are exhibiting more “honor and dignity” than McCain.

How many of us can’t remember how the GOP ruined Clinton’s second term because of much less than this. Why isn’t the major media attacking all of these business scams for profits at the expense of US soldiers lives and over 30,000 Iraqi innocent civilians being placed into the euphemistically labeled “collateral damage” statistics?

Some background on this is that as part of the administration's postwar work in Iraq, the government has awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts to American businesses. Those contracts, some without competitive bidding, have included more than $500 million to support troops and extinguish oil field fires for Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, which Vice President Dick Cheney led from 1995 until 2000, and they are not even providing adequate services.

That has to be all wrong--Big Brother 43 is doing his best for our soldiers, isn't he? According to the Newhouse News Service, "U.S. troops in Iraq suffered through months of unnecessarily poor living conditions because some civilian contractors hired by the Army for logistics support failed to show up." Not surprisingly, civilian contractors, and their insurance companies. get spooked by war zones. In Iraq, reports The Baltimore Sun, "the Bush administration continues to use American corporations to perform work that United Nations agencies and nonprofit aid groups can do more cheaply."

Where is the universal disgust regarding lying about the rationale for war and then seeing Wolfie of Arabia’s comments in the Guardian/UK article, of June 4, 2003, “Wolfowitz: Iraq War Was About Oil”? These PNAC boys are arrogant as well as loose-lipped, but that type of hubris always leads to a huge fall.

Where is one intelligence agent that didn’t tell Dubya that he would be increasing Islamic terrorism by this Iraq War? Two articles of October 15th, 2003, “Al-Qaida may try 'spectacular' attack on U.S. forces, group warns” and “Iraq war swells Al Qaeda's ranks says report” are particularly troubling. The bin laden tape from October 17th, 2003 promised attacks on US and threatened nations that are helping the US led occupation of Iraq.

Where is Dubya’s pledge to be an “uniter not divider”? He has two piles, the top 1% and the rest of the world. This is diametrically opposed to that trite uniter remark. His “Ranger” and “Pioneer” campaign contributors get the cream off the top and the remaining 99% get scraps. If you happen to live in a country, such as Iraq, where there is oil, the likelihood of becoming “collateral damage” geometrically increases. In the US, with no tax revenue for the social service network and domestic policies, due to his tax cut for the top 1% and bloated military and homeland security budgets, our children are being left behind, and our ill, elderly and poor are dying before their time.

The liar will campaign on his leader of the “everlasting war against terrorism”. Two of his former GOP operatives, Thomas White and Rand Beers, who in the short span of Dubya’s illegal occupation of the office of the US president, have left in disgust, have different facts to impart.

Even in the Rummy’s Pentagon, advisors are on record as being against the planning for the post-war Iraq occupation. In the article, "White-Rumsfeld Dispute, Round 2", White spoke about the inadequacy of Rumsfeld's planning for postwar reconstruction. White also sided with Army Chief of Staff Eric K. Shinseki, warning that several hundred thousand troops would be needed to stabilize Iraq after hostilities ended.

Dubya will say has made us more secure from terrorist threats, but Rand Beers disagrees. "The administration wasn't matching its deeds to its words in the war on terrorism," Rand Beers, a former special assistant to the president, told the Washington Post in an interview published June 16th 2003.

Remember how Dubya’s group promised a quick Iraq war? A typical estimate that Bush's team was pushing to the US during his pre-war propaganda blitzkrieg is contained in the of February 9th, 2003, Newsweek's article, "Post-War Iraq Hope Would be to Withdraw Troops in 30-90 Days", which just seems clearly silly! For an opposing point of view see, "The war in Iraq is just starting", by Jon Carroll on August 7th, 2003 for the San Francisco Chronicle, which seems closer to the truth. In this matter, as in all others, he tried his earlier con with a pair of twos again, but the world is prepared this time, and he is having many losing hands as a result of his earlier bluffs. Also, in a October 19th, 2003 New York Times’ article, “State Dept. Study Foresaw Trouble Now Plaguing Iraq”, it is quoted that, “Officials acknowledge that the United States was not well prepared for what did occur: chiefly widespread looting and related security threats, even though the State Department study predicted them....The Pentagon squandered a chance to anticipate more of the postwar pitfalls by not fully incorporating the State Department information.”

How is Dubya doing with the Muslim world? Bush's address to a joint session of the Philippine Congress was delayed more than an hour because of Secret Service concerns about the undulating throngs of protesters who lined his motorcade route past rows of shacks. More than 3,000 demonstrators also gathered outside the House of Representatives chamber, where Bush was speaking, and university students burned him in effigy along with about 100 American flags. Some of their signs stated, “Bush is a terrorist”.

If some of these points penetrated the consciousness of out populace how could Dubya continue? Where is one true word that Dubya has said? Where is the “return of honor and dignity to the White House”?

All of us NY or DC residents feel like unprotected potential victims of terrorism. Everyday, with these new bin laden tapes and reports of impending doom we are wondering when the next attack will occur. Some of us feel we are just hoping against hope and many of us are taking leave to correspond with anniversaries of al queda attacks. The consensus among the people at my water cooler is that the second we can retire we will. Many of the anxious ones don’t think that they will survive to reach their retirement, and that their spouse will be receiving survivor benefits. Why don’t we receive hazardous pay as we are just blocks from the White House and Congress?

b. connors