dagblog - Comments for "$3 trillion and beyond ... and Gen Hugh Shelton Writes: Bush administration Lied?"

Thank you for the list, NCD;

we are stardust — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 11:06:38 +0000

In reply to The Iraq war is over as far

Thank you for the list, NCD; I hadn't meant to be cavalier about the people. I'm not in my heart.

Yes, OGD; I read Johnson and

we are stardust — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 11:03:54 +0000

In reply to Ya' know . . . That price we

Yes, OGD; I read Johnson and Tom Englehardt and Nick Turse a lot, quote them plenty on my war blogs. Turse has done lots of interviews with people who were harmed during our misadventures in Southesast Asia, and the stories are chilling.

Pepe Escovar has a new, very long piece out at the Asia Times that's about another New Silk Road concerning energy, not the potential mineral riches of Afghanistan. I'll go get it later; it's very early here, and my brain hasn't been adequately coffeed yet.

I did a piece here recently about our myriad bases (far more than a thousand by now) as indicators of Perpetual War plans.

http://dagblog.com/reader-blogs/war-everlasting-7102

"But the problem is, who's learning?" Yes. Any more, when I hear that stupid quote about learning history or we are doomed to repeat our mistakes, I ask the same question. We don't seem to learn anything from history, or if we do, at least our leaders and overlords learn all the wrong lessons from history.

Ya' know . . . That price we

oldenGoldenDecoy — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 08:23:58 +0000

In reply to The Iraq war is over as far

Ya' know . . .

That price we are currently paying, and will continue to pay into the unforeseeable future is the same price we have paid over the past 60+ years (yes starting in '48), and are still paying to this very day due to our intervention in South East Asia that I experienced as a twenty year old in the mid 60s.

My old professor Chalmers Johnson at UC San Diego back in the mid 60s, and I know you are most likely hip to his works, was a old "cold warrior" back then. But since then he has become a sharp critic of American imperialism that he has chronicled well about the enforcement of American hegemony over the world through the siting of hundreds of military bases throughout the world.

And from Professor Johnson we get the Lessons of Blowback. But the problem is, who's learning?

Unfortunately, the egos of many Americans are too easily manipulated when it comes to American Exceptionalism.

Your points do not fall on deaf ears with me.

Thanks for chiming in . . .

~OGD~

The Iraq war is over as far

NCD — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 04:07:21 +0000

In reply to Believe me when I say that

The Iraq war is over as far as the media are concerned. But not for DoD, State, or the Iraqis.

..or the wives, husbands, parents, sisters, brothers, kids of the dead, from Iraq, America, Italy, UK, Poland, Bulgaria, Spain, Ukraine, Thailand, and on, and don't forget Sergio DeMello a highly skilled Brazilian UN executive and the dead from the first big bombing of the UN building, all the news persons killed, the Iraqi's who fled the country into poverty, the Iraqi Christians who were protected by Saddam but not by America or what pretends to be an Iraqi government. And then there are the wounded, in body and spirit, the suicides, and the US troops who murdered or killed whose lives became ruined due to this war, one they were not suited to fight in, and which, in the end, no one should ever have been sent to fight.

Believe me when I say that

we are stardust — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 15:34:18 +0000

In reply to $3 trillion and beyond ... and Gen Hugh Shelton Writes: Bush administration Lied?

Believe me when I say that the endless trillions for the Iraq war are nauseating to contemplate, OGD. I once blogged about what else just one of the trillion might have paid for at the time. The truth is, it wouldn't have been used to pay for infrastructure investment, education, alternative energy, verterans' mental health care, federal banks lending to actual small businesses, etc. Congress pays attention to the budget for programs like those; but while they grumble for the cameras, they always apporve supplementals for War.

I haven't read the Stiglitz-Bilmes piece yet, though I will, but the 'broader impact' phrase got me thinking again of not just the economics, but all the blowback from that war, which is certainly not over, nor will it be. I can't even find a site that says how many contract forces are there by now; all anyone talks about is the State Dept.'s private army of 7000. There are likely many, many thousands more already. They are already expanding the Embassy in Bagdad, that 3/4 of a billion dollar city.

Someone on the boards here had mentioned the desirability of leaving Afghanistan 'a little better', and I remembered reading a snapshot of Iraq today: how we left it. And I wanted to write about it, but can't find the source again. It spoke of the myriad toxic and radioactive dump sites, four hours of electricity, millions of cubic feet of concrete rubble, ubiquitous hunger, increasing civil war, and no government having been formed yet. The global political 'broader impacts' would seem huge to me: the enemies created, as is happening in Af/Pak at an alarming rate.

And Obama just quietly announced a $60 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia, ramping up the ME arms race even more. To hear folks like Tony Cordesman, et.al., speak of the virtues of that is, again, nauseating. We don't learn diddley from our mistakes, simply because we rarely acknowledge them until it's too late, and no one is paying attention. See? The Iraq war is over as far as the media are concerned. But not for DoD, State, or the Iraqis.

Anyway; rant's over for now. ;o)

Perhaps they didn't want him

we are stardust — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 15:01:23 +0000

In reply to One of the things that nag me

Perhaps they didn't want him caught or killed; it mightta ended some oil missions of the Cheney Energy Task Force plans prematurely.

You mean you don't think the

NCD — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 04:29:41 +0000

In reply to $3 trillion and beyond ... and Gen Hugh Shelton Writes: Bush administration Lied?

You mean you don't think the world is safer and better off without Saddam, with terrorists rampant in Iraq, and with Muqtada al-Sadr running his death squads and militias in Iraq from Iran where he has friends?

And it all has taken only $3,000,000,000,000 dollars and 5,000 dead Americans to do it? Bush did get Saddam's gun, that has to be worth something? Right?

Mullah Muqtada al-Sadr

One of the things that nag me

Oxy Mora — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 04:29:37 +0000

In reply to $3 trillion and beyond ... and Gen Hugh Shelton Writes: Bush administration Lied?

One of the things that nag me at 3:00 a.m, other than did the bank lose my last deposit, is why the cabal didn't send in the reinforcements to get OBL when he was cornered at TORA BORA. Wow, that might have quenched Americans' apetites for revenge.