Tuesday, July 10, 2007

THIS JUST IN! STILL CRAZY!

 
LIKE THE ILLEGAL WAR, THE CAMPAIGN OF JOHN MCCAIN FOR 2008 U.S. PRESIDENT IS LOST.
 
DEMONSTRATING HOW HE MORE THAN EARNS THE NICKNAME "SENATOR CRAZY," SENATOR MCCAIN DECLARED TODAY THAT HIS CAMPAIGN WOULD CARRY ON.
 
CARRY ON?  NO, IT WAS NOT ABOUT YET ANOTHER FUNDRAISING CYCLE WHERE SENATOR CRAZY BARELY MANAGED TO PULL AHEAD OF RON PAUL AND YOUR AUNT JODY WHO KEEPS SAYING "P.T.A. PRESIDENT!  I'M RUNNING FOR P.T.A. PRESIDENT!"  THOUGH, TRUTH BE TOLD, SENATOR CRAZY COULD PROBABLY EARN MORE CAMPAIGN MONEY STANDING ON THE STREET AND BEGGING FOR QUARTERS AT THIS RATE.
 
SENATOR CRAZY TOLD THE PRESS TODAY HIS CAMPAIGN WOULD CARRY ON, DUBBED "THE CRAZY TRAIN! ALL ON BOARD THAT'S DUMB AND BORED!" EVEN THOUGH TERRY NELSON, HIS CAMPAIGN MANAGER, AND JOHN WEAVER, HIS CHIEF STRATEGIST, HAD WALKED OFF THE CAMPAIGN TODAY.
 
SENATOR CRAZY TOLD THE PRESS, "IT WON'T EFFECT ME ONE BIT.  NOW I CAN REALLY GO WILD.  IN FACT, AS A FUNDRAISER, I AM ANNOUNCING MY NEW LINE OF VHS TAPES ENTITLED SENATOR CRAZY GONE WILD.  YOU WILL SEE ME TOPLESS, YOU WILL SEE ME DRUNK.  YOU WILL SEE ME TOPLESS AND DRUNK.  I REALLY THINK THAT WILL HELP MY CAMPAIGN."
 
 
 
Starting with war resistance.  Today Lynn Franey (The Kansas City Star) deploys to attack war resisters with half-trues and every other device in a bad reporters bag.  Kyle Snyder and Ricky Clousing are misreported but Franey can't get anything right writing, at one point, that Snyder and Clousing were AWOL for 30 days and "[a]fter a month they became, officially, deserters."  Really?  Who told Franey that the Deserter Fairy?  No, that's now when Snyder and Clousing's classification changed.  Legally it can be (though it doesn't have to be).  But people do not move automatically from one roll to the next.  Anyone who decides to self-checkout knows the lengthy wait before you even show up on the AWOL list.  Only Franey is confused. 
 
Franey's also confused when repeating official army numbers on checkouts.  On March 19, 2007 -- someone tell Franey -- Nancy Mullane broke the news on NPR that the US army was undercounting the number of self-checkouts for the 2006 period. Mullane reported, "Instead of 3100 deserters [for 2006], the real number may be closer to 5,000. That's according to analysts within the Army's personnel division at the Pentagon and at the Fort Knox desertion information center. Both reached that 5,000 figure by adding on soldiers who deserted and then were discharged from the Army throughout the year."   Franey elects to repeat the count and play dumb.
 
Franey also suffers from some mistaken belief that Snyder is the client of Jim Fennerty.  Fennerty was Snyder's attorney when Snyder decided to return to the US (from Canada).  That was October 2006 and someone screwed that up.  Fennerty was the profession, the attorney, maybe he should step up and own the blame?  Snyder attempted to turn himself in (at the wrong place, thanks Jim Fennerty) as part of an alleged deal Fennerty had made with the military.  Fennerty then sailed off leaving Snyer to deal with the Fennerty pieced together deal that fell immediately apart.  Snyder self-checked out again.  He toured the country speaking out and, here's the thing, he really wasn't in that close of contact to Fennerty.  When he returned to Canada -- and he did return -- he really didn't need an American attorney.  He's got a refugree application in process.  In addition, Snyder is married to a Canadian woman.  Kyle Snyder's attorney is Jeffry House but somehow Lynn Franey (rhymes with Lynn Cheney) manages to miss that and every other aspect of the story.
 
 
Ehren Watada is also in the news as the US military attempts to figure out whether they'll embrace the Constitution or shred it.  Courage to Resist (at Political Affairs magazine) observes that Tom Brookhart and Gerri Haynes, of Seattle Veterans for Peace, have received subpoenas to testify in the intended second court-martial of Watada.  Judge Toilet -- John Head -- ruled a mistrial, over defense objections, in the Feb. court-martial and at issue is whether the Constitution is the Supreme Law of the land or not.
 
There is a growing movement of resistance within the US military which includes Ross Spears, Jared Hood and James Burmeister, Eli Israel, Joshua Key, Ehren Watada, Terri Johnson, Luke Kamunen, Leif Kamunen, Leo Kamunen, Camilo Mejia, Kimberly Rivera, Dean Walcott, Linjamin Mull, Augstin Aguayo, Justin Colby, Marc Train, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder , Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Kevin Lee, Joshua Key, Mark Wilkerson, Patrick Hart, Ricky Clousing, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, Clifton Hicks, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Joshua Casteel, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Chris Capps, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake, Christopher Mogwai, Christian Care, Kyle Huwer, Vincent La Volpa, DeShawn Reed and Kevin Benderman. In total, forty-one US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.

Information on war resistance within the military can be found at Center on Conscience & War, The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, Iraq Veterans Against the War and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters.
 
Watada is also mentioned in a new essay John Feffer, Miriam Pemberton and Erik Leaver (Foreign Policy in Focus) have written on the issues of peace and the US' role in the process.  The US role?
 
The topic of the day. The big topic in the United States. What to do about Iraq!!!!
 
First, let's note that 83 female service members have died in the illegal war -- 83 members of the so-called coalition.  Why note that first?  Apparently someone damn well needs to.  Today on CBS' The Early Show, it was bad enough to hear alleged news person Harry Smith discussing "guys" and only became worse as White House spokesperson Tony Snow rushed to agree with him about the "guys" in Iraq ("Snow Discusses Iraq Report"). Both were referring to the US military and the service members in Iraq.  They do grasp that males and females are stationed there, right?  Maybe not.  US Senator and 2008 presidential wanna be Joe Biden was on immediately after Snow and Smith and, speaking with CBS' Hannah Storm, made it clear in his opening remarks that he grasped the make up of today's military.
 
Biden then went on to argue that no conflict like Iraq ever is resolved with federalism and that the country should be split up.  The country would be Iraq and, of course, Biden doesn't serve in the Iraq Parliament so what he thinks, honestly, really shouldn't matter.  Iraqis should be determining their own fate.  If that means splitting up their country, that's their choice.  But the region was already split and grouped before by the British at the start of the 20th century and that didn't work out so well, now did it?
 
So the big topic is the report that the White House has been working on, the one they would be delivering to Congress.  That's what had Tony Snow trying to look all agreeable this morning on network TV as he said of the illegal war that began in March of 2003.  Yes, he was talking of the escalation which he hailed as a 'plan' and cautioned it hadn't been allowed the proper length of time to play out.  Tony Snow and the White House better grasp that there are no more longterm plans of any kind.  The American people turned against the war in 2005, the opinion hardened and grew to the point that now approximately 70% of Americans are against it.  But Tony Snow, speaking for the White House, wants to give the illegal war 'more time' because the 'plan' needs 'more time.'  The plan?
 
Escalation. Do the same thing but with more US troops.  That passes for a 'plan' with the current White House.
 
It's a funny sort of 'plan' and one that allows the likes of John Howard, prime minister of Australia, to insist that the US must stay in Iraq because to leave would be catastrophic.  Howard, you understand, is so concerned about bringing something (who knows what) to Iraq that he has 500 troops stationed in Iraq with another 1,000 around the edges.  The US (currently 160,000 troops) must stay in Iraq, argues Howard, while he poines up the laughable number of 500.  His Minister of Defence, Brendan Nelson, raised eye brows last week when he told Australia's ABC radio that the reason for the illegal war is oil.  Meanwhile, Australia is still talking about Howard devising a plan to pull (the limited number of) Australian troops and how it's so top secret even the US White House hasn't been party to the talks.
 
Another one screaming for 'stay the course' right to hell is British Canon Andrew White who has made a point to dash in and out of Iraq, or rather the heavily fortified Green Zone.  Mere months ago, while plugging his latest bad book, White was insisting that the US must stay.  And Vicar White, supposedly ministering to Iraqis?  Joanna Sugden (Times of London) summed it up best, noting that White "has fled Iraq because of what has been described as 'a serious security threat'."  Fled.  Presumably under the (unspoken) orders of the Lord Jesus Christ.  Take that, Joan of Arc. Howard can flee, White can flee, everyone can flee except Iraqis and the United States?
 
This as the latest US installed puppet government is in shambles.  Last weekend, Lara Logan (CBS News) reported that, July 15th, there was a plan to call for a no confidence vote in the Parliament on Nouri al-Maliki.  Speaking with Tony Snow today, Harry Smith (CBS The Early Show) raised that reported issue and Snow didn't even bat an eye as he hurried onto another topic. This as Brian Bennett (Time magazine) files the report asking, "Why is Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki still around? His cabinet seems to be crumbling around him. In April, the bloc allied with Shi'a strongman Moqtada al-Sadr pulled its ministers from Maliki's cabinet in protest of the Prime Minister's reluctance to set a timetable for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. (The head offices in key ministries such as health, education and transportation are still empty.) Then, two weeks ago, four Sunni ministers began boycotting al-Maliki's cabinet meetings to protest an arrest warrant issued for a fellow Sunni minister."
 
The al-Sadr bloc is crucial to al-Maliki if there is a challenge.   He can, and has, repeatedly ignored Sunni walk outs throughout his tenure of little over a year.  Without support from al-Sadr's his loose grip on power becomes even less secure.  Washington installed him and he knew the rules going in, get your cabinet together quickly and pass the oil law.  The cabinet did not come together quickly.  In fact, al-Maliki missed the Constitutional deadline on that.  At which point, he gave himself another deadline (out of whole cloth, his government is not only a puppet, it's also illegitimate).  But the understanding was that he would get the oil law passed guaranteeing the theft of Iraqi oil and the enrichment of foreign multin-nationals. Even with the Iraqi Parliament tossing aside their announced summer vacation, the oil law has still not passed.  When Time asks why al-Maliki is still around, in print, you better believe most of DC is as well.
 
While he's worked on that (worked with Americans on that, this is not Iraqi drafted legislation), Iraq still does not have basic resources.  Four hours a day of electricity is considered amazing.  Potable water is non-existant. In June of 2006, the heavily fortified Green Zone (home of the Iraqi parliament, the US embassy, the press and more) faced a serious attack one Friday as the barricades (Bremer walls) were stormed.  Managing to turn back that attack, the response was a 'crackdown.'  Since June of 2006, Baghdad has been under 'crackdown' in one form or another.  Sometimes it is juiced up, sometimes it is the regular 'crackdown.'  Not only has it not stopped the violence, it has destroyed what was one of the regions most cosmopolitan areas.  2007 saw the announcement that barricades would be going up around Baghdad (after the notion of a moat around the capital -- proposed in summer 2006 -- was finally dropped).  The barricades are the equivalent of the Bremer walls used to keep people out of the Green Zone.  Though the Sunni population in Baghdad has dropped (as has the Jewish population, the Palestinian population and much more), this was to be the answer to stopping the violence once and for all.  Or that's how it was sold.  To people living in Baghdad they saw it as the walling off of their city and it was the one thing that the Sunnis and Shias could agree on -- they didn't want the Bremer walls.
 
Out of the country as he, both vice-presidents and the president of Iraq, so often are, al-Maliki held a press conference to note that the walls would cease construction immediately.  al-Sadr was against it and that was enough for al-Maliki.  But al-Maliki had no weight to throw around.  Not only did the US forces continue constructing the walls, they did so with the help of Iraqi forces who were more than happy to share with the press that it didn't matter what al-Maliki said.  This would be Iraqi forces that, per the Iraqi constitution, are supposed to be under the control of the prime minister.
 
About every six weeks or so, al-Maliki will complain to the press about an operation in Iraq (often in Baghdad) that he did not approve of.  He will beg and plead for the US to at least inform him if not get his permission.
 
This is the alleged independent leader of Iraq.  He is a puppet.  He has not done anything to stem the violence, he has not done to lower the sky rocketing unemployment, he has not done anything about the basic resources.  He has worked on the oil law.  He has no legitimacy in the eyes of the majority of Iraqis.
 
 
 

Yahoo! oneSearch: Finally, mobile search that gives answers, not web links.
Posted by at