1. I would hope so, since none of these guys had anything to do with 9/11:
“LA Times: “Death penalty in 9/11 trials may be difficult”
http://www.911blogger.com/node/21995
2. “9-11 Commissioner Bob Kerrey finally confesses 9-11 Commission could not do it’s job
Jeremy confronts Kerrey about the aspects of treason involved with covering up the truth about 9-11, and Kerrey responds “It’s a 30 year conspiracy”.”
http://www.911blogger.com/node/21994
3. “The Galula Doctrine
According to the official narrative, poverty, ignorance, and isolation from modernity are the reasons for the stubborn refusal of the Afghan people to support their American and NATO liberators. The solution, by this administration’s lights, is to construct what has never really existed in Afghanistan: a unified, modern nation-state. Building “infrastructure,” it seems, is the liberal-progressive answer to humanity’s problems worldwide, and in Afghanistan, too, where roads, hospitals, schools, networks of mass communication, and the very fabric of modernity itself must be built from the ground up.
The sheer arrogance of American policymakers and military theoreticians blocks them from recognizing the simple reality of the insurgents’ motivation, which is nothing more nor less than aversion to the conditions of military occupation. Short of withdrawing all U.S. forces from Afghanistan, there is no way to satisfy the central demand of the Afghan insurgents – who resist the American-NATO occupation not because they are ignorant savages who hate us for our freedoms, but because they seek their own version of freedom – which, understandably, does not involve kowtowing to an American viceroy.
…
The truth, however, is that the Vietnam War was always a losing proposition, as was the Algerian conflict. Absent massive repression, the peoples of those nations would never have consented to “pacification” by the West, and it is useless to pretend otherwise. At the core of COIN theory is a valuable insight, first put forward by Étienne de La Boétie, in his classic The Politics of Obedience: the rulers of a country must, to some significant degree, win the voluntary consent of the ruled.
However, it should be clear that winning “hearts and minds” is incompatible with invading and occupying a foreign country, no matter how ostensibly benevolent one’s motives may be. Assuming our unwillingness to utilize more extreme methods of “pacification,” such as those engaged in by Monsieur Galula and his confreres in Algeria, the advantages enjoyed by rebels in asymmetrical warfare – especially when it is waged on their home turf – may be impossible to overcome. In which case, the Afghan war is an exercise in futility.”
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2009/11/29/the-galula-doctrine/
4. “Obama’s Big Speech
I’d like to see him go on TV Tuesday night and say, “My fellow Americans, I was wrong. Our war in Afghanistan has nothing to do with national security anymore and we can’t afford it, and I’m not sending one more kid into harm’s way to fight there. As of tonight, I’m ordering a complete withdrawal.” But the odds of that happening are slimmer than a licorice rope. Obama couldn’t take the heat.
Former four-star Barry McCaffrey, the military-industrial ghoul who was the worst of the retired military media analysts who helped sell the Iraq war to the American public, is, incredibly, back on the air with NBC. He’s pushing the “no exit strategy, no timeline in Afghanistan” line. McCaffrey has ties to DynCorp International, a company that has a five-year contract to support bases in Afghanistan.
A swell fellow, that McCaffrey is, but he’s really just a symptom of a larger American disease. Our wars, even though they’re destroying our economy, are making a lot of people rich. The cash caisson, the gravy ship, and the wild blue budget continue to grow. War is our only export, and counterinsurgency is the perfect tool of the Long War mafia, because counterinsurgency wars are unwinnable.”
http://original.antiwar.com/huber/2009/11/29/obamas-big-speech/
5. “The endless appeals to “spreading democracy,” fostering “stable governments,” and all the rest are nothing but marketing and public relations. They are the camouflage for the actual purposes of our government’s actions. You can dissect and demolish those purported justifications for U.S. policy all you wish; our leaders don’t care about any of that, no matter how successful your demolition efforts are, because all of that is completely irrelevant. But our leaders and most commentators do love the marketing, so with only very rare exceptions, their analysis and even their criticisms remain on this superficial level.
The actual reasons that drive U.S. policy aren’t hidden. Again, the evidence is spread before you in plain sight: all you have to do is look at and understand it. I discussed the general contours of U.S. foreign policy for over the last hundred years in a piece just the other day: “The Empty Establishment: No One’s Home in an Intellectual Wasteland.” With regard to our presence in Afghanistan, a presence which will continue in one form or another for decades to come barring unforeseen developments (or possibly a regional conflagration, which would most likely be set off by a U.S. attack on Iran), I direct you to an invaluable article by the indispensable Robert Higgs. The article first appeared over a year ago, and I’ve been meaning to discuss it ever since.
I strongly recommend you read every word of it, several times at a minimum: “CENTCOM’s Master Plan and U.S. Global Hegemony.”
It comes as no surprise, then, that of all the unified commands, CENTCOM is the one in which, in today’s world, the U.S. empire’s rubber meets the road most abrasively. The command’s area of responsibility includes a great part of the world’s known petroleum and natural gas deposits, a preponderance of Israel’s enemies, and the places in which the George W. Bush administration has chosen to focus its so-called Global War on Terror. Of course, the region also includes Iraq and Afghanistan, where U.S. forces have been fighting for years, and, sandwiched between these two battlefields, Iran, where Dick Cheney and the rest of the neocons ardently desire to extend the fighting at the earliest opportunity.
This is the general policy that Obama continues, and that he will continue into the foreseeable future. He made his intentions clear from the beginning of his campaign, and nothing has changed. Nor will it, certainly not insofar as Obama is concerned. …
So all of the feigned bafflement and incessant caterwauling about the supposedly indecipherable actions of the United States — Why, oh why, did we invade Iraq?, and Why, dear God, are we in Afghanistan? — represent only the capitulation of the purported critics to precisely those arguments U.S. leaders hope you will engage. They want you to spend all your time on those arguments, because they’re only marketing ploys having nothing at all to do with their actual goals. As I said the other day, if you want to stop this murderous madness — and I dearly hope you do — forget about what they say their goals are (fostering “democratic” governments, “regional stability,” “security,” and all the associated claptrap), and focus on the real problem: the carefully chosen policy of U.S. geopolitical dominance over the entire globe. On the day Obama announces the scheduled closure of at least one-third of the U.S.’s worldwide empire of bases, I’ll believe he’s serious about altering any of this, and not a moment before. He never will, and you know he won’t. (I myself would prefer the closure within three to six months of three-quarters of them at a minimum. But contrary to some of my critics, I actually do reside in this world, and not the one I would prefer.)
Higgs’ argument and those I consistently make explain the U.S. presence in Iraq, Afghanistan, and in countless other places around the world.”
http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2009/11/wherein-we-gaze-into-our-inerrant.html
6. No surprise here:
“President Obama will maintain a lid of secrecy on millions of pages of military and intelligence documents that were scheduled to be declassified by the end of the year, according to administration officials.
The missed deadline spells trouble for the White House’s promises to introduce an era of government openness, say advocates, who believe that releasing historical information enforces a key check on government behavior. They cite as an example the abuses by the Central Intelligence Agency during the Cold War, including domestic spying and assassinations of foreign officials, that were publicly outlined in a set of agency documents known as the “family jewels.’’”
7. No surprise here:
“FBI paid controversial NJ blogger for help
A New Jersey blogger about to stand trial on charges he made death threats against federal judges apparently was paid by the FBI in its battle against domestic terrorism, according to a published report.
The Record of Bergen County reported Sunday that Hal Turner received thousands of dollars from the FBI to report on neo-Nazis and white supremacist groups and was sent undercover to Brazil.
Turner also claims the FBI coached him to make racist, anti-Semitic and other threatening statements on his radio show, but the newspaper also found many federal officials were concerned that his audience might follow up on his violence rhetoric.”
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jzBi0fWBvJIDUVijJgw7oQJRMYrQD9C9G98O0
8. “It’s impossible to find a more perfectly representative face for the rotted Washington establishment than Evan Bayh. He is the pure expression of virtually every attribute that makes the Beltway so dysfunctional, deceitful and corrupt.
Bayh wants to send other people into every proposed war he can find and keep them there forever ever without ever bearing any of the costs himself — not in military service for him or his family nor even in higher taxes to pay for his glorious wars. Sacrifice is for everyone other than Evan Bayh and his friends. He runs around praising himself as a “deficit hawk” while recklessly supporting wars and indefinite occupations that the country can’t afford and which drive us further into debt. He feigns concern over the “deficit” only when it comes time to deny ordinary Americans benefits which he and his family already possess in abundance. He is a loyal servant to the insurance and health care industries over his own constituents — as his wife sits on the Boards of numerous health care giants, who, right when Bayh became a Senator, began paying her millions of dollars in cash and stock. And this Sermonizer of Personal Responsibility is the ultimate by-product of nepotism, following faithfully and effortlessly in the footsteps of his Daddy-Senator, whose seat he now occupies. The fact that he’s a Democrat — and was Obama’s close-second choice for Vice President — just underscores how bipartisan these afflictions are.
When the sad and destructive history of the U.S. over the last decade is written, the coddled, nepotistic, self-serving face of Evan Bayh should be prominently included. It embodies virtually every cause.”
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/
