Archives: 2007 September

The saddest, most troubling, and down right depressing article I have read yet on the effects of the Iraq war on Iraqi civilians and on American servicemen is posted at The Nation Institute website.

I quote from the introduction given on The Nation website:

“Over the past several months The Nation has interviewed fifty combat veterans of the Iraq War from around the United States in an effort to investigate the effects of the four-year-old occupation on average Iraqi civilians. These combat veterans, some of whom bear deep emotional and physical scars, and many of whom have come to oppose the occupation, gave vivid, on-the-record accounts. They described a brutal side of the war rarely seen on television screens or chronicled in newspaper accounts.”

Try and read the accounts of the Bush Macho Men team’s war on the lives of those he says that we are helping. American deserves better and our servicemen and women deserve far better than to placed into such a corrupting and brutal situation.

In the name of American freedom and liberty we have destroyed a nation. God help America and God help the members of the American military who will have to carry the burden of what has occurred in Iraq with them for the rest of their lives.

Read the interviews. As sad as they are it will give you a realistic assessment of the insane way Bush and his team have conducted this war in the name of America.

The tragedy for America in electing, then reelecting a madman to the White House continues. If anything it looks like it is about to get worse with a renewed Bush buildup to starting a war with Iran.

President Bush spoke yesterday before the National Convention of the American Legion in what was his most frightening misguided speech to date. Here is an excerpt from the speech.

“The other strain of radicalism in the Middle East is Shia extremism, supported and embodied by the regime that sits in Tehran. Iran has long been a source of trouble in the region. It is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. Iran backs Hezbollah who are trying to undermine the democratic government of Lebanon. Iran funds terrorist groups like Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which murder the innocent, and target Israel, and destabilize the Palestinian territories. Iran is sending arms to the Taliban in Afghanistan, which could be used to attack American and NATO troops. Iran has arrested visiting American scholars who have committed no crimes and pose no threat to their regime. And Iran’s active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust.

Iran’s actions threaten the security of nations everywhere. And that is why the United States is rallying friends and allies around the world to isolate the regime, to impose economic sanctions. We will confront this danger before it is too late.”

The full text of the madman’s speech will be found HERE.

Glenn Greenwald has written a thoughtful and scary article about the Bush administration’s build up for a massive air strike against Iran.

Michael Klare is a theorist on the resumption of global resource wars. Klare writes that oil is no longer just a commodity but a national security matter. The U.S. military has become a “global oil-protecting service.”

The US consumes about 25% of the world’s oil resources and at the current time produces only about 5%. Such a mismatch leaves the US in an extremely vulnerable position in maintaining its economy and standard of living as oil forms the backbone of our energy needs.

As a matter of US security the land of the free and the brave has been transformed into the land of might makes right. We are at a stage of our development cycle that is the “high noon” of empire. In order to protect the wasteful (in terms of the consumption of natural resources) American way of life we must use our military to take and to protect what we must have.

Many Americans seem more than wiling to compromise their standards of fair play and of justice in order to keep on doing the unsustainable for as long as possible. The trouble is that what is unsustainable has a way of coming to abrupt and unpleasant ends.

The resource wars have already started. We have the sorry saga of the war in Iraq and probably will witness more such misguided adventures in the near future. Our global oil protecting service will be a busy one until American reigns in its dependence on imported oil.

Judging from past and present performance that will likely be a very long time.

There is a very interesting survey that was recently conducted by Foreign Policy and the Center for American Progress. Basically it confirms what most Americans know by now. The Bush administration has been a total disaster for America.

A couple of excerpts follow. The entire article is a well worth your while read.

“In the third Terrorism Index, more than 100 of America’s most respected foreign-policy experts see a world that is growing more dangerous, a national security strategy in disrepair, and a war in Iraq that is alarmingly off course.

The world these experts see today is one that continues to grow more threatening. Fully 91 percent say the world is becoming more dangerous for Americans and the United States, up 10 percentage points since February. Eighty-four percent do not believe the United States is winning the war on terror, an increase of 9 percentage points from six months ago. More than 80 percent expect a terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11 within a decade, a result that is more or less unchanged from one year ago.”