Free Iraq

iraq is not collapsing because of americans soldiers it is collapsing because for 30 years it has been committing suicide under a sociopathic imbecile. for 30 years it has destroyed its own people and the neighbouring countries around it. i would not have liked to be an iranian or kuwiati or israeli living next to that. its a good thing that iraq is changing
 

A CINDY SHEEHAN QUOTE DURING 2004: 'That was the gift the president gave us, the gift of happiness, of being together'

CINDY 2004

THE REPORTER of Vacaville, CA published an account of Sheehan's visit with the president at near Seattle on June 24, 2004:

"'I now know he's sincere about wanting freedom for the Iraqis,' Cindy said after their meeting. 'I know he's sorry and feels some pain for our loss. And I know he's a man of faith.'

"The meeting didn't last long, but in their time with Bush, Cindy spoke about Casey and asked the president to make her son's sacrifice count for something. They also spoke of their faith.

"The trip had one benefit that none of the Sheehans expected.

"For a moment, life returned to the way it was before Casey died. They laughed, joked and bickered playfully as they briefly toured Seattle.

For the first time in 11 weeks, they felt whole again.

"'That was the gift the president gave us, the gift of happiness, of being together,' Cindy said."

CINDY 2005

Sheehan's current comments are a striking departure.

She vowed on Sunday to continue her protest until she can personally ask Bush: "Why did you kill my son?"

In an interview on CNN, she claimed Bush "acted like it was party" when she met him last year.

"It was -- you know, there was a lot of things said. We wanted to use the time for him to know that he killed an indispensable part of our family and humanity. And we wanted him to look at the pictures of Casey.

"He wouldn't look at the pictures of Casey. He didn't even know Casey's name. He came in the room and the very first thing he said is, 'So who are we honoring here?' He didn't even know Casey's name. He didn't want to hear it. He didn't want to hear anything about Casey. He wouldn't even call him 'him' or 'he.' He called him 'your loved one.'

Every time we tried to talk about Casey and how much we missed him, he would change the subject. And he acted like it was a party.

BLITZER: Like a party? I mean...

SHEEHAN: Yes, he came in very jovial, and like we should be happy that he, our son, died for his misguided policies. He didn't even pretend like somebody...

On her current media tour, Sheehan has not been asked to explain her twist on Bush; from praise to damnation!

Shame on her for using false emotions about her son's death to start a political rally
 

SHEEHAN: "We had decided not to criticize the president then because during that meeting he assured us 'this is not political.' And I believed him," Sheehan wrote. "Then, during the Republican National Convention, he exploited those meetings to justify what he was doing."

She can't make up her mind at all about such crucial matters. No wonder many people disbelieve her
 

DDDallas,
On the possibility that you're interested in history (not to be confused with propaganda), I leave you these links: 1, 2, & 3.

As for your belief that Iraq "is not collapsing because of American soldiers," please, then, won't you explain the meaning of 100,000 dead Iraqis, probably multiples of that figure injured and permanently maimed, the virtually eternal effects of widespread use of depleted uranium, an obliterated infrastructure (hospitals, sewage, electricity), and death and terror around every corner? Is this the best that Western 'freedom' has to offer? "Sociopathic" is a word that springs to mind.
----------------------------

On A Different Level,
Given that your comment here replicates yours of 6:30 AM (Tuesday, August 23, 2005 post) my 8:30 AM response, same post, refers. Please check.
 

Most site visitors will know Dahr Jamail's stunningly courageous unembedded Iraq war reports. For those looking for direct links to his work, his site is: Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches. Check out his links at the top of the blog Hard News and Reports. For a gut-wrenching reality check, his photos are at Images.
 

An American constitution for Iraq: "Negotiators here described American officials as playing a major role in the draft. U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad shuttled among Iraqi leaders, pushing late Monday for the inclusion of Sunnis in talks, negotiators said. U.S. Embassy staff members worked from a Kurdish party headquarters to help type up the draft and translate changes from English to Arabic for Iraqi lawmakers, negotiators said."

A major role indeed. The U. S. Embassy is working from Kurdish party headquarters to translate changes from English to Arabic for Iraqi lawmakers. So the Americans are writing the constitution in English, and then helpfully sending out - symbolically from Kurdish party headquarters - the drafts translated so the Iraqi lawmakers can see what the U. S. has planned for their constitution. By controlling the language in which the document is drafted, the Americans can control the terms of the debate, and ensure that the various factions can never come to a meeting of the minds in the kind of compromises that might lead to a workable document. Yet the spin on all this is how embarrassing it is for the Bush Administration that the constitution contains all these Shi'ite-influenced references to the dominance of Islam in the laws of the new state. Isn't it obvious that all this religion is being planted by the Americans in order to ensure that the Sunnis and religious moderates won't be able to live with the constitution imposed on them, thus leading to the break-up of Iraq and the formation of the new Shi'ite Empire?
 

An awful sense of déjà vu: "Today . . . the question of who and how wars get started is not considered to be a major topic of conversation for the corporate media, except that is, as something that is as natural as breathing, though unlike breathing, ‘regrettable’.

"Consider if you will, the run-up to the invasion of Iraq; it was always presented to us as a ‘last resort’, ‘Saddam left us no alternative’, ‘we were forced to act’ and so on and so forth.

"And it cannot have escaped your notice that prior to this, a considerable period of ‘softening up’ was needed in order to persuade us that it was necessary to start yet another war and, as per usual, war was necessary in order to ‘preserve the peace’.

"War and peace then, as far as the way the dominant culture presents it, are entirely interchangeable the difference being that when ‘we’ start a war it’s for entirely noble reasons but when ‘they’ start one, that trusty catch-all, ‘human nature’ kicks in and ‘they’ are presented to us as ‘evil’.

"For several centuries the leading capitalist powers have been perfecting what they like to call the ‘art’ of war, not as an end in itself of course but as a means to an end but in the course of mechanising war, that is, industrialising it, it has increasingly come to dominate our economies to such a degree that now, many millions of people find that their livelihoods depend entirely on preparing for war, not that this is a new phenomenon; the history of the British Empire is rooted in what has effectively been for at least four hundred years, a war economy.

" . . . [I]t is only by dehumanising the ‘enemy’ . . . that it is possible to sell war as peace and to use such overwhelming destructive power on defenceless civilian populations."
 

Reuters calls for US to release Iraqi cameraman
 

Papal Double Standards: "Once again, a Western leader blames the victims for the mistakes of their tormentors. Let a person of the Muslim faith perpetrate a violent or terrorist act, Christians will point their collective fingers at Islam and Islamic society as the repositories of violence and barbarism. An atavistic fear grips Catholics and Protestants alike when Muslim terrorists cause a few dozen civilian victims in London. Meanwhile, in the 20th and 21st centuries, it is Muslim societies that have born the greatest brunt both of Islamist terrorism, as in Algeria and Pakistan, and of Christian and Jewish state-sponsored and executed terrorism, as in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Palestine.

". . . [I]t is not Muslims alone who are 'living in the past' as many Western critics of Islamic societies often intone. Christian cultures have been equally unable to advance morally and ethically beyond the mindset of the 16th to the 19th centuries that led to the brutal colonisation by Western powers of such a multitude of nations around the Earth. Zionist Jews are similarly stuck in the past, using religious propaganda to justify and underpin their neo-colonialist political agenda. Christian and Jewish cultures are no more advanced than Muslim cultures, or no less developed if you prefer. The only difference seems to be that technology and relative wealthy comfort have served to mask the West's moral under-development that leads Westerners to believe that their lives are infinitely more valuable than those of their darker skinned brethren."
 

New Law slated to install Police State in Canada
(Naturally. By now we know that the neocons don't confine themselves to Washington.)
 

Bush’s campaign on Iraq: more lies in defense of war: "After Iraqi WMD proved to be non-existent, the Bush administration shifted its justification for the invasion to its alleged mission to establish democracy in Iraq. In his speech to the VFW, Bush portrayed all resistance to the US occupation of Iraq as opposition to democracy. 'Terrorists like bin Laden and his ally, Zarqawi,' he said, 'are trying to turn Iraq into what Afghanistan was under the Taliban, a place where women are beaten, religious and ethnic minorities are executed, and terrorists have sanctuary to plot attacks against free people.'

"These words actually describe what American occupation has created in Iraq. Only it is the Iraqi puppet of the US occupiers, the transitional government in Baghdad, which is attacking women and religious and ethnic minorities.

"There is no reason to believe, however, that the Bush administration will be pressured by the growth of antiwar sentiment to pull back from its policy of military aggression. On the contrary, a government which took the country into war on the basis of out-and-out lies will have no compunction about using the most brutal and anti-democratic methods to continue on its chosen course—including the preparation of new wars, such as an attack on Iran, using that country’s nuclear energy program as a pretext.

"Bush’s war policy is sustained, not by popular support, but by the consensus of opinion in US ruling circles, including virtually all the leading figures in the Democratic Party, that winning the war in Iraq is a vital necessity for American imperialism. Having embarked on a course of military aggression aimed at seizing control of crucial energy resources, there is to be no turning back.

"The eruption of American militarism has the most ominous implications, not only for the people of the countries targeted for US conquest, but for the working people of the United States as well. It was significant that Bush chose to devote much of his VFW speech, not to Iraq, but to demands for more repressive powers for the government at home, including renewal of the notorious USA Patriot Act. Rather than bringing democracy to the Middle East, the danger is that this program of military aggression will mean the end of democracy in the United States."
 

Father of Guard: "It's A Bad War"; "It's A Stupid War"; "I Believe We Were Lied To"
 

- Shia clash dents Iraq charter hopes

- Iraq charter deal pressure grows

- Iraq Lawmakers Won't Meet on Constitution

- Iraq constitution finished, will be approved -govt

- 36 executed bodies found in Iraq

- Gunmen kill two bodyguards of Iraqi president
 

TOO MANY PENDEJOS (Or, "Another Kind of An American")
 

MadAsHell, This one is for you (but, not 'at' you!).
To Hell With Muslim Terrorism: "We hope that those who do not get tired of lecturing Muslims and holding their faith responsible for all the wrongs in the world, would find out how their co-religionists with the papal bulls decimated an estimated population of 80 million at the time Columbus discovered America 'to a low of 210,000 in the 1910 census.' Their victims in these places were not Muslim barbarians for sure.

"It is too sad that those who are lecturing Muslims do not see what Director of Research of the California-based Institute for Economic Democracy, Dr. J. W. Smith, has observed. According to Dr. Smith, through the devastating historical process, Western civilization has been 'responsible for violently killing 12 to 15 million people since WW II and causing the death of 100s of millions more as their economies were destroyed or those countries were denied the right to restructure to care for their people. Unknown as it is, and recognizing that this has been standard practice throughout colonialism, that is the record of the Western imperial centers of capital from 1945 to 1990.' He adds that, 'One hundred and fifty thousand to 300,000 of these were tortured and killed by death squads set up by Western intelligence agencies, primarily the CIA.'

"Those who are lecturing 1.2 billion Muslims would do better to dig the root causes of present turmoil and realize the Muslims are not responsible for the present unjust global order. The political, economic and cultural processes that began with colonialism, culminated in the institutionalization of an international global political economy dominated by the Western powers at the expense of the rest of the world, which as Marc Ferro observes, began 'replacing a visible presence by the invisible government of the big banks: the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and so on': a system which Ferro describes as 'multinational imperialism'."
 

Ralph Nader, American Detachment; It's Time to Make the Iraq War Personal: "The galvanizing effect of the fallen Casey Sheehan's mother Cindy down in Crawford, Texas has been a rallying point which is spreading around the country. Cindy Sheehan has made her grief a personal appeal to see the President, thus sweeping aside his flacks, handlers and PR buffers and leaving him exposed to judgments of his character day after day."

[F]or whom does the bell toll?
"Asking this question puts our society on the road to finding the answers, as if people matter here and in Iraq first and foremost."
 

- "War is not good for you."

- The Real Motive Behind 'Dept Of Global Anti-Semitism'
(This is a desperately serious article.)