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QuoteBut don't ever suggest our troops over there or the ones here who have already served are anything less than brave.
Anyone who is willing to become the property of the govt and willing to follow orders whatever they may be is a courageous soul and I commend them. If this makes someone a coward for not being able to do what they do, then so be it. I wouldn't be a cop either...
But if our men and women are being lied to in some way, to get them to move in a certain direction, then what? Aren't occupying forces violating some kind of treaties daily by using DU (nuclear waste) weapons?? Our own treaties?? Morals???
Waht about the prisoners in Cuba? Being held for YEARS, without charge or anything. Does this violate the Geneva Convention regarding prisoner treatment??? Or did the prez claim they aren't POWs, so those rules don't apply??
Whose enemy was Iraq anyway, I mean before they stopped following orders? Iraq certainly wasn't any threat to anyone living in the US at the time of either US invasion... But they were made out to be our enemy in our popular media, to support the planned invasions. Even after all pretexts to our latest invasion were discovered to be lies, we have 'stayed the course'. That is certainly not the troops fault, but they are forced to deal with the concequences of a bumbling fool and his handlers.
Our preisdent is a walking disaster, from his cowardly military duty to pathetic academic record to driving multiple companies into the ground through gross mismanagement to multiple brushes with the law, etc etc ad nauseum...
I am proud of being an American as well. it is unfortunate however international corporations and foriegn countries control our American Government and not the Americans...
Iraq is no different than any other war. It is all about profit and the use of shallow words such as "freedom" and "democracy" is all smoke and mirrors to hide the real reason for war - profits. U.S. companies have made billions from promoting war. The Bush family made its millions from war profiteering. They supplied both sides in WW1 and are responsible for the rise of Adolf Hitler and what was to follow. The invasion into Iraq is no different. Those at the very top are making millions and laughing all the way to the bank while thousands of children, women and men are being killed. Our country, the U.S., is one huge war machine. Its sole purpose is to create war and to invent new and creative ways to kill and then sell those weapons to outside interest in the hope that they will be used, thus creating a return customer. Iraq is one such war created by the war profiteers in the hope that they will become loyal customers. And they better stay loyal or else whoever is the leader may also find himself swinging at the end of a noose as it is no big secret that the U.S. favors executions and war in the name of profits hidden beneath shallow words such as "freedom" and "democracy".
Bush family history shows a dark past unseen by most
By Douglas Yates
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Jun 20, 2006, 11:49
Few would argue that trust, like democracy, is earned and not inherited. So how is it that we've missed the lessons of four generations of Bush family history?
As Kevin Phillips recounts in "American Dynasty," the Bush family presents a record of war profiteers who use public office to gain wealth and advantage. Along the way, Bush family business cronies receive political access and legitimacy.
One of the most venal characters is Prescott Bush, the president's grandfather.
In 1942, Congress seized the assets of Prescott Bush and charged him with trading with the enemy. Bush and his father-in-law, George Herbert Walker, were managing directors of the Union Banking Corp. of New York City. Allied with Brown Brothers Harriman, the largest private investment bank in the world, Bush and Walker were front men for Nazi industrialist Fritz Thyssen.
Thyssen, whose empire was founded on coal and steel, financed the rise of Adolf Hitler. Then as now, cloaking funds destined for subversion of democracies or weapons shipment was a useful tactic. To hide transactions and conceal ownership, Thyssen created a banking network. The first node was established in Berlin, a second in neutral Holland. UBC in New York was the linchpin.
Little more than a money-laundering office for Nazi operations in the United States, Bush, Walker and other confederates oversaw almost a dozen separate businesses. Acting with Thyssen's money, they aided the Nazi invasion of Europe by supplying resources for weaponry. In 1937, Bush set up a deal to help the Luftwaffe obtain tetraethyl lead to boost aircraft performance.
Americans first heard about Thyssen's American operations in the New York Herald-Tribune on July 30, 1942, eight months after Pearl Harbor. The headline declared "Hitler's Angel Has $3 Million in U.S. Bank." However, the story did not identify Bush or Harriman as UBC executives.
After the war ended in 1945, investigators learned that Bush had extremely close ties to Thyssen and continued to work as his agent to the end. When hostilities ceased, Bush helped move Thyssen assets to Panama, Argentina and Brazil, all major destinations for the flight of Nazi capital.
In 1951, following Thyssen's death in Argentina, the U.S. alien property custodian released the assets of Union Banking Corp. Prescott Bush cashed out his ownership share for $1.5 million. (In 2004 dollars, that's more than $10 million.) He used it to fund a successful U.S. Senate campaign from Connecticut and launch his son, the president's father, in the oil business.
Other American companies that armed Hitler included General Motors, Standard Oil and Chase Bank. All were quietly sanctioned after Pearl Harbor; then government files were lost or forgotten. For 60 years, the full record of Prescott Bush's complicity in the Nazi war machine has been ignored or denied by participants and the U.S. media.
But no more. Documents relating to the seizures were recently uncovered in the National Archives and the Library of Congress. Confirmed by Dutch government sources, they show that Bush shipped tons of strategic resources to the Third Reich as Hitler prepared to invade Poland.
Despite this history, the news media continue to present a selective picture of the Bush family and its business connections. People who tried to show the warts were shouted down; in 2000, St. Martin's Press, the first publisher of "Fortunate Son," a George W. Bush biography, was forced to recall and destroy its inventory.
After launching a bloody occupation of Iraq, perhaps it's time Americans connect the dots and see the big picture. It ought to have been done before the invasion, but since we're trained to accept media and TV dinners uncritically, developing a context for identifying domestic enemies is a challenge. Rhetoric and flag waving have replaced hard-nosed insistence on the truth. Meanwhile, lies send our troops to die far from home; war profits flow to favored industries in billion-dollar contracts.
In private action and public policy, Bush family history reveals a pattern of war profiteering spanning four generations. It's a legacy of deceit and death. For the naïve and uninformed, the facts may be a slap in the face. For those who look closely, the sign is as clear as blood on snow.
Then again, perhaps the pattern is lost in the noise. According to Bob Woodward's "Bush At War," the president attended a New York Yankees game not long after the 9/11 attacks. Wearing a New York City fireman's jacket, Bush threw out the first pitch and the crowd roared its approval. From a skybox above the stadium, Karl Rove, Bush's political adviser, likened the roar of the crowd to "a Nazi rally."
Douglas Yates, a Marine Corps veteran, is a writer and photographer living in Ester, Alaska.
Copyright © 1998-2006 Online Journal
Also, see...
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/
Bush family history shows a dark past unseen by most
By Douglas Yates
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Jun 20, 2006, 11:49
Few would argue that trust, like democracy, is earned and not inherited. So how is it that we've missed the lessons of four generations of Bush family history?
As Kevin Phillips recounts in "American Dynasty," the Bush family presents a record of war profiteers who use public office to gain wealth and advantage. Along the way, Bush family business cronies receive political access and legitimacy.
One of the most venal characters is Prescott Bush, the president's grandfather.
In 1942, Congress seized the assets of Prescott Bush and charged him with trading with the enemy. Bush and his father-in-law, George Herbert Walker, were managing directors of the Union Banking Corp. of New York City. Allied with Brown Brothers Harriman, the largest private investment bank in the world, Bush and Walker were front men for Nazi industrialist Fritz Thyssen.
Thyssen, whose empire was founded on coal and steel, financed the rise of Adolf Hitler. Then as now, cloaking funds destined for subversion of democracies or weapons shipment was a useful tactic. To hide transactions and conceal ownership, Thyssen created a banking network. The first node was established in Berlin, a second in neutral Holland. UBC in New York was the linchpin.
Little more than a money-laundering office for Nazi operations in the United States, Bush, Walker and other confederates oversaw almost a dozen separate businesses. Acting with Thyssen's money, they aided the Nazi invasion of Europe by supplying resources for weaponry. In 1937, Bush set up a deal to help the Luftwaffe obtain tetraethyl lead to boost aircraft performance.
Americans first heard about Thyssen's American operations in the New York Herald-Tribune on July 30, 1942, eight months after Pearl Harbor. The headline declared "Hitler's Angel Has $3 Million in U.S. Bank." However, the story did not identify Bush or Harriman as UBC executives.
After the war ended in 1945, investigators learned that Bush had extremely close ties to Thyssen and continued to work as his agent to the end. When hostilities ceased, Bush helped move Thyssen assets to Panama, Argentina and Brazil, all major destinations for the flight of Nazi capital.
In 1951, following Thyssen's death in Argentina, the U.S. alien property custodian released the assets of Union Banking Corp. Prescott Bush cashed out his ownership share for $1.5 million. (In 2004 dollars, that's more than $10 million.) He used it to fund a successful U.S. Senate campaign from Connecticut and launch his son, the president's father, in the oil business.
Other American companies that armed Hitler included General Motors, Standard Oil and Chase Bank. All were quietly sanctioned after Pearl Harbor; then government files were lost or forgotten. For 60 years, the full record of Prescott Bush's complicity in the Nazi war machine has been ignored or denied by participants and the U.S. media.
But no more. Documents relating to the seizures were recently uncovered in the National Archives and the Library of Congress. Confirmed by Dutch government sources, they show that Bush shipped tons of strategic resources to the Third Reich as Hitler prepared to invade Poland.
Despite this history, the news media continue to present a selective picture of the Bush family and its business connections. People who tried to show the warts were shouted down; in 2000, St. Martin's Press, the first publisher of "Fortunate Son," a George W. Bush biography, was forced to recall and destroy its inventory.
After launching a bloody occupation of Iraq, perhaps it's time Americans connect the dots and see the big picture. It ought to have been done before the invasion, but since we're trained to accept media and TV dinners uncritically, developing a context for identifying domestic enemies is a challenge. Rhetoric and flag waving have replaced hard-nosed insistence on the truth. Meanwhile, lies send our troops to die far from home; war profits flow to favored industries in billion-dollar contracts.
In private action and public policy, Bush family history reveals a pattern of war profiteering spanning four generations. It's a legacy of deceit and death. For the naïve and uninformed, the facts may be a slap in the face. For those who look closely, the sign is as clear as blood on snow.
Then again, perhaps the pattern is lost in the noise. According to Bob Woodward's "Bush At War," the president attended a New York Yankees game not long after the 9/11 attacks. Wearing a New York City fireman's jacket, Bush threw out the first pitch and the crowd roared its approval. From a skybox above the stadium, Karl Rove, Bush's political adviser, likened the roar of the crowd to "a Nazi rally."
Douglas Yates, a Marine Corps veteran, is a writer and photographer living in Ester, Alaska.
Copyright © 1998-2006 Online Journal
Also, see...
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/
"...And once you're gone, you can't come back
When you're out of the blue and into the black."
Neil Young
When you're out of the blue and into the black."
Neil Young
tbrown 26
I don't have an ounce of sympathy for Saddam and believe that if he didn't deserve the death penalty, nobody else would. He plainly got what he deserved and people in Iraq would never believe or understand any reasoning to spare him.
That said, his death also points up the very real limitations of the death penalty. First, now that he's dead, he can't be killed again and wouldn't even feel it if somebody kicked his sorry carcass or dragged it through the streets, which of course did not happen. He's dead now, so there is no further or greater punishment for the S.O.B.
Second, he'd become completely irrelevant to the situation. the guy had already been rotting in jail for just over three years and the whole situation in Iraq has moved on, quite badly, without him. His death unfortunately does nothing to help the situation. It seems only to have pissed off a lot more people because he didn't stand an endless series of trials for his endless crimes, that he was executed at the beginning of a holy day, and so on & so forth from people who only know how to complain and kill each other other, when they're not killing us.
Personally I'm a little surprised there wasn't some kind of a dramatic jailbreak. I fully expected the Iraqi guards would've turned their guns on the Americans and driven Saddam off into the sunset and am a little surprised (and greatly relieved) it didn't happen.
It's ironic that he was executed for a massacre at a time when the US was supporting and arming him and sending diplomats like Donald Rumsfeld to shake his hand and tell him we'd look the other way while he nerve gassed his own people.
Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !
That said, his death also points up the very real limitations of the death penalty. First, now that he's dead, he can't be killed again and wouldn't even feel it if somebody kicked his sorry carcass or dragged it through the streets, which of course did not happen. He's dead now, so there is no further or greater punishment for the S.O.B.
Second, he'd become completely irrelevant to the situation. the guy had already been rotting in jail for just over three years and the whole situation in Iraq has moved on, quite badly, without him. His death unfortunately does nothing to help the situation. It seems only to have pissed off a lot more people because he didn't stand an endless series of trials for his endless crimes, that he was executed at the beginning of a holy day, and so on & so forth from people who only know how to complain and kill each other other, when they're not killing us.
Personally I'm a little surprised there wasn't some kind of a dramatic jailbreak. I fully expected the Iraqi guards would've turned their guns on the Americans and driven Saddam off into the sunset and am a little surprised (and greatly relieved) it didn't happen.
It's ironic that he was executed for a massacre at a time when the US was supporting and arming him and sending diplomats like Donald Rumsfeld to shake his hand and tell him we'd look the other way while he nerve gassed his own people.
Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !
Channman 2
Robert Fisk is another crack pot on a very long list.
QuoteRobert Fisk is another crack pot on a very long list.
Oh sure. And the loyalists called George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and the rest crackpots and traitors during their day. It is all a matter of perspective. Anyone that questions our leadership nowadays or thinks outside of the idiot box (or the propaganda that spews from it) is labeled a crackpot or 'against us' or a traitor to some degree. Just because I don't jump up and support mass murder and transfer of more and more property and wealth to the bastards running this train wreck of a government doesn't make me a crackpot, but anyone is welcome to think whatever they want. That IS what founded this country, much to the dislike of the elite of that day....
Any creature born in captivity thinks of nothing outside of the cage. Not capable cuz hes never been outside. They can even be taught to fear being outside...
Comes a point when the world has turned crazy and people start to believe the lies and spin... If someone writes normal stuff - he is made out to be a crackpot
(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome
(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome
I agree with you in that he was an evil person and did evil things and deserves no sympathy, yet is faciniating the seeming double standards of our government's actions.
I found another article that details the history of Iraq since the 50s and the actual rise of Saddam. Very interesting that it seems we have been in contact with him since his 20s. Has links to back it up too.
http://www.juancole.com/2006/12/for-whom-bell-tolls-top-ten-ways-us.html
I found another article that details the history of Iraq since the 50s and the actual rise of Saddam. Very interesting that it seems we have been in contact with him since his 20s. Has links to back it up too.
http://www.juancole.com/2006/12/for-whom-bell-tolls-top-ten-ways-us.html
QuoteQuoteRobert Fisk is another crack pot on a very long list.
Oh sure. And the loyalists called George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and the rest crackpots and traitors during their day. It is all a matter of perspective. Anyone that questions our leadership nowadays or thinks outside of the idiot box (or the propaganda that spews from it) is labeled a crackpot or 'against us' or a traitor to some degree. Just because I don't jump up and support mass murder and transfer of more and more property and wealth to the bastards running this train wreck of a government doesn't make me a crackpot, but anyone is welcome to think whatever they want. That IS what founded this country, much to the dislike of the elite of that day....
Any creature born in captivity thinks of nothing outside of the cage. Not capable cuz hes never been outside. They can even be taught to fear being outside...
Hey, if you've read my posts, you know I'm no fan of Bush or the Iraq war!
I was thinking mostly about Robert Fisk's relentlessly positive spin he puts on Osama bin Laden & Al Quaeda. Fisk's commentaries generally say : Everything the USA & UK does is evil & everything OBL & Al Quada does is simply a reasonable response to it.
"Fisking" had become a blog slang for point-by-point refutations:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisking
Speed Racer
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Lucky... 0
QuoteQuoteQuoteRobert Fisk is another crack pot on a very long list.
Oh sure. And the loyalists called George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and the rest crackpots and traitors during their day. It is all a matter of perspective. Anyone that questions our leadership nowadays or thinks outside of the idiot box (or the propaganda that spews from it) is labeled a crackpot or 'against us' or a traitor to some degree. Just because I don't jump up and support mass murder and transfer of more and more property and wealth to the bastards running this train wreck of a government doesn't make me a crackpot, but anyone is welcome to think whatever they want. That IS what founded this country, much to the dislike of the elite of that day....
Any creature born in captivity thinks of nothing outside of the cage. Not capable cuz hes never been outside. They can even be taught to fear being outside...
Hey, if you've read my posts, you know I'm no fan of Bush or the Iraq war!
I was thinking mostly about Robert Fisk's relentlessly positive spin he puts on Osama bin Laden & Al Quaeda. Fisk's commentaries generally say : Everything the USA & UK does is evil & everything OBL & Al Quada does is simply a reasonable response to it.
"Fisking" had become a blog slang for point-by-point refutations:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisking
OK, but let's stop focusing on fisk and examine his speaking points. Not saying you, but radical righties seem to do that; focus on the author rather than the author's points. It's called an Ad Hominem, which is where you assassinate the author's credibility and once this has been done via the popularity poll, anything he says is garbage.
When people don;t have a way to argue an issue they revert to this. You see kids do this all the time, "OK, but so are you..." Then they grow up and use the same logic. I could post Ted Kennedy's senatorial voting record and some of the things, perhaps many of them would be like the way some conservatives would vote, yet they hear his name and call him an idiot. Politics are like that, but whne philosophic argument enters this kind of logic we get no where.
I don't blame those who use Ad Hominem, as they only do so due to no other argument available. If they actually had an arguing point they would certainly use that first. And of course conceding is out of the question......
Now, what were the issues?
Maybe it's because I read a lot of Fisk and possibly tend towards his political stand point - but I dont think that he does spin towards 'the enemy'. My reading is that he leans towards the innocents and agains the oppressors (so yes, against the Bush/Blair position)..... I could be wrong (for a change
)
(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome
)(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome
Lucky... 0
I hope no one wonders why small countries want nukes. SH downfall was not having nukes. Not that I support him in any way, but had he had nukes we wouldn't have gone in.
Are we gonna attack N Korea? NO, we only pick on small, weak, conventioal countries. When have we ever screwed with a superpower since WWII? Do we have scrapes with superpowers? Yes, China, Russia, but we don't invade them, why? Becuase we make a policy of not fucking with countries that can actually fight back.
One more time, do you wonder why small countries want nukes?
Are we gonna attack N Korea? NO, we only pick on small, weak, conventioal countries. When have we ever screwed with a superpower since WWII? Do we have scrapes with superpowers? Yes, China, Russia, but we don't invade them, why? Becuase we make a policy of not fucking with countries that can actually fight back.
One more time, do you wonder why small countries want nukes?
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
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