Dropping Bombs

[miles]

Re: Excellent article and excellently written...

After raising so many questions, will they be answered? I doubt it, but it does lend credence to the widespread belief that the US government is not to be trusted...

Even by its own citizens.

ppman

Hey pp, did redwave do a good job tossing your salad?

 

[iwmggw]

I also didn't expect many would actually read the whole article, it's a long and painful thing to read, and I would guess even more so for those who have had blind, unwavering support for Bush.

Of course, questioning our commander in chief in a time of war can only be seen as unAmerican to some. He did say that you're either with us, or against us.

One year or so later, a few tattered little flags remain on the antennae of Fords, Dodges and Chevys. I saw a star-spangled poster at Burger King today telling me to never forget September 11.

Like I ever would...

A conspiracy case can be made on any subject. We live in a world of conspiracy. I read the article you provided, and your right, it is long and painful......just not for the reasons you think. Its long and painful because of its bias and the writers total lack of anything more than conjecture and innuendo...........its painful because you seem to have such a flawed look at what our nation is really all about. Go on with your beliefs............just don't act like they are gospel. The reality is, there are people that hate us and will continue to act against us. Whether their reasons are legitimate or not, matters not one iota. Bottom line is, we must not forget we are involved in a war...one very different from anything we've been in before. We have no choice but to accept the fact that any/all of us can be targets. This is reality. You come across as a sincere.........but very biased individual. Nothing wrong with being a cinic...but try and wake up to the true dangers at hand. Its not our government. When you arre at war, not only individual sacrifice is required, so too, are individual freedoms. These sacrifices are temporary.......and are necessary. Anyone who has been involved in true combat can tell you that. One more thing, a persons message can be given some credence based on its supporters........once lance and peepee came on board.........yours weakened.......considerably. Sorry for the "long and painful" retort.>gw

 

[A Desert Rose]

I just read your thread starter and the subsequent posts. Unlike Miles, I am a Gore Vidal (as a writer) fan.

It is a very distrubing piece, PH. I need to re-read this and absorb it a bit more. Thank you for the post.

 

[A Desert Rose]

After re-reading

there are simply too many points to take on here. Where does one start?

The basic premise as I understand it, seems to be some great, grand conspiracy and a great deal of lethargy on the part of our government and our leaders.

I am by nature, a skeptic. I have worked for the press for many years. One can't believe everything reporters and authors provide to read, see or hear.

Somewhere in all of those words, is some truth. It is a biased article. I tend to shy away from theories in deference to facts. This is a theory based article.

 

[Purple Haze]

...........its painful because you seem to have such a flawed look at what our nation is really all about. Go on with your beliefs............just don't act like they are gospel.

Maybe you can tell me what you think our nation is all about, you don't know what I think our nation is all about, so don't pretend you do. And if you think I'm flawed because I think we're being handed a pile of baloney, and maybe we should look into it, so be it. The Gospel according to Haze.

The reality is, there are people that hate us and will continue to act against us.

This is exactly what this administration wants you to think.

When you arre at war, not only individual sacrifice is required, so too, are individual freedoms.

I knew that was coming.

These sacrifices are temporary...

Bullshit! You think someday they're gonna say "the War on Terrorism is over, you can have your rights back"? C'mon.

One more thing, a persons message can be given some credence based on its supporters........once lance and peepee came on board.........yours weakened.......considerably.

Because you don't like lancecastor or p_p_man, my opinion is worthless?

There's some flawed thinking...

 

[Lancecastor]

One more thing, a persons message can be given some credence based on its supporters........once lance and peepee came on board.........yours weakened.......considerably.

You might want to drop Gore Vidal a line to let him know about his credibility loss.

Ha!

Your President and his family businesses have been doing business with the Bin Ladens for years. This is not news.

Your President's family has been in the oil business for nearly as long as there's been an oil business. Controlling the world supply of oil is really good for the family business and not just the USA, just as being big in booze was pivotal to the Kennedy family at the height of their business influence.

There's a pretty good chance your President's family bought the election, and if you heard it here first, well you might want to get out more often.

Haven't you ever wondered why fighters weren't scrambled even after the first hit on 9/11?

Haven't you ever wondered why all of a sudden you've stopped bombing Afghanistan, no news on Bin Laden....then all of a sudden you're after Saddam Hussein again after a 10 absence?

There is definitely something stinky going on in the USA and there's increasing evidence that it's stinkier than you are being told.

Warren Commission. Watergate. Stranger shit has happened.

 

[SINthysist]

What? Me, Worry?

Paul Craig Roberts
Friday, Nov. 1, 2002

Americans have a wide choice of worries to worry about. We can worry about terrorists, war in the Middle East, snipers, job security, teen shooting sprees, the stock market, political leadership, badly educated kids, political correctness, civil liberties, disease-carrying mosquitoes, environmental degradation, sexually active preteens, sexism, racism, reverse discrimination, lawsuits. Just name it. Probably it is a recognized worry.

The above are worries we know about. Graver worries remain unknown to the vast majority. Authors write books to inform us so that we are not taken unawares. In a current national best seller, "Wealth and Democracy," Kevin Phillips warns against the machinations of interest groups and the rich that produce unacceptably large disparities of income and wealth from which, Phillips promises, untoward consequences will follow.

Blaming the rich was a New Deal technique. Paul Gottfried finds a new and original worry: The U.S. government has transmogrified from an accountable government into an intrusive therapeutic administrative state with many Orwellian overtones.

Gottfried's new book, "Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt," is a speculative work. It posits the advent of a secular theocracy preoccupied with controlling thought and expression and with modifying social behavior in order to ameliorate injustices inflicted on victims (Third World peoples, women, homosexuals and the disabled) by victimizers (white Christian men).

Gottfried's book is chilling because the author is a learned and well-read scholar who is on top of political, legal and ideological developments in the United States and Europe. The well-documented and referenced analysis Gottfried provides conveys a comprehensive understanding of the intellectual atmosphere now regnant in the West and why this intellectual outlook is dangerous to liberty.

Just as in Oceania in George Orwell's "1984," Western Europe has enacted laws against "crimes of opinion." Gottfried reports that every year many German journalists and scholars are tried by the government in courts for "inciting the public." This charge is subjective and includes expressing unprogressive and insensitive opinions. Gottfried says that more Germans are languishing in prison for this Orwellian infraction than were in East German prisons before the fall of communism.

To propose immigration restrictions is evidence of xenophobia, which is in the process of being criminalized in the European Union. As well, it is prohibited to question details of the Holocaust and to deprecate Islam.

Recently, when Austrian politician Jorg Haider rallied Austrians to control immigration, the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia quickly set up in Vienna to report on Haider's "assault on democracy." Austria was boycotted by the European Union until Haider resigned.

In the name of protecting racial minorities, the British government has clamped controls on speech and behavior of the native-born population. Political elites in the United Kingdom consider the Magna Carta and the English Bill of Rights less important than compelling Britons to acquiesce to the presence and ways of Third World immigrants.

In the United States, environments, behaviors and expressions deemed to be offensive to racial minorities, feminists or homosexuals are repressed by law or administrative action. Public officials and schoolteachers have been fired or disciplined for using the word "niggardly" because poorly educated and over-sensitized blacks mistook this fine old English word for a racial slur. A recent court case in Idaho treated a verbal assault against a "protected minority" more seriously than it treated that minority's physical assault against a white woman.

Gottfried believes that a Protestant sense of guilt is blameworthy in creating public pliancy with government policies that disadvantage whites and diminish liberties in order to make restitution to "oppressed minorities." He describes "the fusion of a victim-centered feminism with the Protestant framework of sin and redemption."

Gottfried believes that the intrusive therapeutic administrative state has already begun the process of breaking down the inherited identities of Germans, British, French and Americans in order to reconstruct society as a multicultural heaven-on-earth where prejudice is forbidden.

Mass immigration from the Third World is a useful instrument of change employed by the therapeutic administrative state to deconstruct the character and history of a majority population. Throughout the once-confident West, a political situation has been created in which only native-born whites – victimizers – can be legally discriminated against.

Gottfried believes that the days are gone when democracy meant self-rule. Today, democracy means regime change in the sense of government reconstructing our values and identities in order to achieve a culture of inclusiveness and diversity regardless of the desires of the majority population.

This agenda gives government powers that consign freedom of conscience, freedom of expression, freedom of association, the Constitution, the English Bill of Rights, national sovereignty and facts themselves to the trash can of history.



Dr. Roberts' latest book, "The Tyranny of Good Intentions," has been published by Prima Publishers.

 

[Purple Haze]

Good article, SINthysist.

What the fuck does it have to do with this thread?

I can't wait for this...

 

[REDWAVE]

Source?

What really bothers me is that SIN posts all those articles without even giving the source.

I checked NewsMax, but didn't find it there.

 

[Purple Haze]

It's amazing that an essay could have such a shelf life, an interesting read after all this time. It was harder to believe such fraudulence could exist then, before General Powell's outrageous claims, before the premeditated killing of thousands of civilians.

Is it more believable now?

 

[tim66]

I saw Vidal on Bill Maher's show. He does not impress me as a guy in control of his facilities. The book Ghost Wars talks about the UNOCAL project in Turkmenistan and Afghanistan. For the pipeline to go through there needed to be a stable govt in Afghanistan. There a lot easier and cheaper ways to get commericial access to areas of the world rich in raw materials than conquering them. The world has grown up a little and the power brokers realize it is easier to colonize through MNCs and the doller than it is through the gun.


I just think Bush is a secretive, incompetent asshole. He is not smart enough to be part of a plot to conquer Eurasia by force. He is not even smart enough to be a pawn for such a plot. These conspiracy filled plots just act to discredit the legitimate criticism that Bush was a sleep at the switch. He has said himself that if he knew where there was going to be an attack he would have done something. He is reactive not proactive. If he were proactive and gets warnings about hijackings he would beef up air line security or call a meeting of principals to make it
known to FBI the high interest from the pres and shake out info about the investigations . You see it everyday at your job. If the boss is interested it immediately becomes top priority.

 

[Purple Haze]

There a lot easier and cheaper ways to get commericial access to areas of the world rich in raw materials than conquering them.

Cheaper than dumping the bill on the taxpayers?

 

[ruminator]

I wish that every American would read that article.

Lance

Hell, even 2 out of 3 would help.

 

[RhumbRunner13]

Re: Source?

What really bothers me is that SIN posts all those articles without even giving the source.

I checked NewsMax, but didn't find it there.

Here is a link, Dickhead.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/paulcraigroberts/pcr20021030.shtml

Get a new search engine.

Rhumb

 

[ruminator]

Cheaper than dumping the bill on the taxpayers?

This is all still just part of a larger picture. What made the Iraq war possible was the galvanization of normally seperate factions who all had a different motive for the same ultimate goal.

For instance, the Christian Fundamentalist support came as their belief in the Biblical prophecy they were pursuing.

The media wanted the money from guarranteed good ratings for a long time to come.

The privare military complex and industrial complex each and all had profits dangling before them.

The oil companies wanted those easy to tap wells and vast reserves.

The list goeas on,.......but one of the most influential groups that tied it all together was PNAC/ supporters and the Carlyle Group.


To the post that said surely there were cheaper ways. It's true, but there was no other way that paid as well.

 

[ruminator]

.

There are several interconnected events that are a factor in a long building event.

The Dabhol power plant.
The Indian government gives approval for Enron's Dabhol power plant, located near Bombay on the west coast of India. Enron has invested $3 billion, the largest single foreign investment in India's history. Enron owns 65 percent of Dabhol. This liquefied natural gas powered plant is supposed to provide one-fifth of India's energy needs by 1997 [Asia Times, 1/18/01, Indian Express, 2/27/00] It is the largest gas-fired power plant in the world. Earlier in the year, the World Bank concludes that the plant is “not economically viable” and refuses to invest in it. [New York Times, 3/20/01] Enron apparently tries to make the plant financially viable by investing in gas fields in nearby Uzbekistan (see June 24, 1996), but it cannot get that gas to Dabhol without a gas pipeline through Afghanistan (see June 24, 1996 and June 1998 (B)). Construction of the plant is abandoned just before completion (see June 2001 (J)).

This coincides with the last few months of Enron.
The odd thing is, Bush didn't bail them out when Lay asked for and expected some sort of help.

 

[tim66]

Instead of cheaper I should have said in ways that draw less negative plublicity than sending troops in with guns.

You instead send in the MNC lawyer with the State department official promissing US aid if they sign the deal. Tax payers get to pay for the aid corporations get the profit with nobody killed or even anybody knowing about it.

 

[tim66]

Instead of cheaper I should have said in ways that draw less negative plublicity than sending troops in with guns.

You instead send in the MNC lawyer with the State department official promissing US aid if they sign the deal. Tax payers get to pay for the aid corporations get the profit with nobody killed or even anybody knowing about it.

Why do you need to invade when MNCs can use slave labor and take out natural resorces without regard to environmental laws. Why do you need a gun? MNCs get what they want without a gun. That is new age imperialism.

 

[tim66]

I think the most documented and plausible theory is the neo-cons are behind it. Them with their naive thinking of how it would be so easy to set up a democracy in Iraq. They did not seem to think Iraqis would be hostile to white christians who support Israel. They did not think the 3 major ethnic groups might not get along. Their theory becomes even more out of touch when they think it will by some kind of domino theory convert all the other countries to democracy. That fucked up idea of countries being like dominoes goes back to our other huge mistake of Vietnam. Do those neo-con assholes even read history?

Putting stock in and publicizing Vidal's theory will just turn off the undecided middle of the road types who dont pay attention to the news and trust their govt. The right will tell those types see how nutty and dangerous those Dems are to accuse your govt of this plot that has no evidence to support it.

 

[ruminator]

Instead of cheaper I should have said in ways that draw less negative plublicity than sending troops in with guns.

You instead send in the MNC lawyer with the State department official promissing US aid if they sign the deal. Tax payers get to pay for the aid corporations get the profit with nobody killed or even anybody knowing about it.

Why do you need to invade when MNCs can use slave labor and take out natural resorces without regard to environmental laws. Why do you need a gun? MNCs get what they want without a gun. That is new age imperialism.

That's a good plan and I feel sure it's already in use somewhere.

In the case of Iraq, it wasn't just the resources. It was also a sincere effort to remove a tyrannical regime and *install* a democracy. The bomb and rebuild is great profit. It didn't start as a negative action, hence the need for unquestioning loyal patriotism for the action.

I don't think gwb was part of the original plan, but was chosen for his effectiveness to garner the religious constituency support.