Category Archives: Foreign Policy

Benghazi Doesn’t Register On The State’s Scale of Scandals

Bush, Foreign Policy, Iraq, Military, Terrorism, War, WMD

Benghazi is a scandal but it is no Iraq. Why, the Benghazi affair doesn’t rise to the level of a scandal compared to the invasion of Libya, which Obama leveled for no good reason. (And Benghazi is no scandal compared to Obama’s health-care nationalization, which will kill many more.) But Republicans love leveling this or the other country occasionally. So not a murmur did one hear from them about Libya.

In case your eyes glaze over when Benghazi is mentioned on Fox News—at least as often as CNN goes on about Donald Sterling and the missing Malaysian plane—a reminder: An American mission was left undefended, resulting in the slaughter of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans (who, given the pecking order in the Empire, generally go unnamed). No attempt was made at a rescue, because of an order from high-above to stand down.

Obama’s real scandal is Zero-care, not Benghazi, which doesn’t really register on the American state’s scale of scandals.

As to Bush, Cheney and creepy Condoleeza: Yes, they are war criminals. For perspective, “BUSH’S 16 WORDS MISS THE BIG PICTURE,” published July 16, 2003, is worth a read:

This column informed readers about the Niger lie in March 2003, after Muhammad ElBaradei, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s chief, unceremoniously and politely called the allegation that Saddam Hussein had sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa “inauthentic.” It’ll take the mainstream media a few years to work out, but many in the administration (not least Condoleezza Rice and Dick Cheney) had been sitting on this intelligence since February 2002, when a diplomat called Joe Wilson was sent to Niger by the CIA and the State Department to ferret it out.

Members of the media aren’t capable of much more than fragmenting and atomizing information. Integrating facts into a conceptual understanding is certainly not what Howard Fineman, Chris Matthew’s anointed analyst, and the brain trust on MSNBC’s “Hardball” does. To disguise his pedestrian politicking, Fineman discussed who, at what time in the afternoon, as well as when in the estrus cycle of the next door cow, did an official put the infamous 16 words about nukes and Niger on the president’s desk. That ought to make a nation already bogged down in concrete bits of disconnected data see the forest for the trees, wouldn’t you say?

Reducing this administration’s single-minded will to war to an erroneous 16 words ignores the big picture. First came the decision to go to war. The misbegotten illegality that was this administration’s case for war followed once the decision to go to war had already been made. The administration’s war wasn’t about a few pieces that did not gel in an otherwise coherent framework; it wasn’t about an Iraq that was poised to attack the U.S. with germs and chemicals rather than with nukes; it was about a resigned, hungry, economic pariah that was a sitting duck for the power-hungry American colossus.

By all means, dissect and analyze what, in September 2002, I called the “lattice of lies” leveled at Iraq: the uranium from Africa, the aluminum tubes from Timbuktu, the invisible “meetings” with al-Qaida in Prague, an al-Qaida training camp that existed under Kurdish—not Iraqi—control, as well as the alleged weaponized chemical and biological stockpiles and their attendant delivery systems that inspectors doubted were there and which never materialized.

But then assemble the pieces and synthesize the information, will you? Do what the critical mind must do. The rational individual, wedded to reality, reason, and objective, non-partisan truth saw Bush’s sub-intelligent case for war for what it was. He saw Bush as the poster boy for “the degeneracy of manner and morals” which James Madison warned war would bring—the same “bring ’em on” grin one can also observe on the face of a demented patient with end-stage syphilis. The rational individual saw all this, and understood that when Madison spoke of “war as the true nurse of executive aggrandizement,” he was speaking of the disposition of this dictator.

Hold the CIA responsible for giving in to the War Party’s pressure, if you will. But recognize that the CIA was only obeying the wishes of its masters. The CIA had attempted to resist. Witness the early statements by Vince Cannistraro, former counterterrorism chief, who scoffed at the concoction of an al-Qaida-Iraq connection. Having come under fire after September 11, the agency gave in to White House pressure to politicize and shape the lackluster information.

Unforgivable? Yes. But consider who the intelligence community takes its corrupt cues from. Perhaps New Jersey’s poet laureate Amiri Baraka had a point when he wondered, “Who know [sic] what kind of Skeeza is a Condoleezza.” The National Security Adviser has since September 11 been rocking the intelligence community with her antipathy to the truth. As if her Saddam-seeded nuclear-winter forecasts were not bad enough, on September 8, 2002, she told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that “We do know that there have been shipments into Iraq of aluminum tubes that really are only suited to nuclear weapons programs.” “That’s just a lie,” an appalled David Albright of the Institution for Science and International Security told the New Republic.

In her latest damage control interview with Blitzer, Rice continued to insist that Saddam Hussein was threatening his neighbors when the president pounced, and, as justification for the war, she still makes reference to Saddam’s effort to pursue a nuclear program in … 1991, and to the burying of old centrifuge parts prior to the first Gulf War. Rice, of course, continues to deny the Niger forgery.

Clearly, Whitehall and Washington will not willingly give up their dark secrets. With few exceptions, such as U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd; Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Dennis Kucinich; John Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee; and Bob Graham of Florida, the utterly disposable and detestable Democrats have been only too pleased to aid and abet this (heritable) executive dictatorship.

And the media will continue to do what their collective intelligence permits: focus only on the one lie, thus making the lattice more impenetrable.

I will not be adjudicating the illegal, immoral invasion of Iraq here afresh. Comments to that effect will be removed from the Facebook Timeline. For a detailed chronicling of that war, I refer readers to the Articles Archive (click the relevant key words). As does Barely a Blog feature a search on the side bar.

The Occupational Hazards Of … Occupation & Murder

Barack Obama, Bush, Crime, Foreign Policy, The State, WMD

“Dude, this was like two years ago,” said Tommy Vietor, an ex-White House aide, in reply to Fox News’ questions about Benghazi. Your Millennial in action.

Republicans are furious over these latest revelations about Benghazi:

The Obama administration has been under fire since the emails were released earlier this week, with some Republicans calling them the “smoking gun.” The emails indicate a White House aide helped prep Rice for her appearances and pushed the explanation that the attack was because of an Internet video. The White House is now facing credibility questions, since they had previously downplayed their role in Rice’s talking points.
Vietor repeated the stance of Press Secretary Jay Carney, who has repeatedly tried to claim that the so-called “prep call” with Rice — as it was described in one email — was not about Benghazi. Vietor said the email was referring to ongoing protests around the world against American embassies.

You’d think that the fiasco and fibs of George W. Bush’s WMD were so much better. During the Bush years, GOP operatives, just like mainstream Democrat media, finessed Bush’s craven exploits in Iraq and refrained from covering the worst if it.

I feel for family members who mourn the deaths in Benghazi. But these are the occupational hazards of … occupation. Dedicate your life to doing the dirty work of the state—occupying people who’re uninterested in being occupied and democratized—and you should not expect your employer, Uncle Sam, to cherish your life or come to your rescue.

Speaking of occupational hazards, I approve of what Dana Loesch said on “The Kelly File” about the drawn-out, “botched” execution of confessed killer Clayton Lockett: “That’s the occupational hazard of killing somebody; your execution could go wrong.”

Here is an account of the “deeply troubling” Okla. execution of Clayton Lockett, as the execrable Obama called it, as well as the latter’s thoughts about abolishing the death penalty (with his pen and Idiot Pad, no doubt).

“In the application of the death penalty, we have seen significant problems,” such as racial bias and the execution of innocents, as well as the “deeply troubling” execution of Clayton Lockett, he said, responding to a question at a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday.
“All these do raise significant questions about how the death penalty is being applied,” he added.

Missing from the remarks of the odious Obama was mention of Lockett’s (white) victim. Was the termination of her life not a biased thing to do? Lockett shot young Stephanie Neiman twice with a shotgun before burying her alive, in a shallow grave. I believe that the fact of her rape has been omitted from the accounts.

Watch this beast’s confession:

Drone On The Attack

Foreign Policy, Justice, Propaganda, Terrorism, War

GOP TV (Fox News) correctly frames delays and exemptions in the implementation of Zero Care as a pre-election ploy. However, the drone-in-chief’s deadly show of force in Yemen, at a crucial time during an election cycle: now that’s all above board. Standard operating procedure. No hidden agenda there.

Obama’s illegal and naturally illicit drone attacks on Yemen are craven and far from ‘successful.’ Fox News cops to at least six civilians killed in the course of taking out “nine suspected Al Qaeda militants.” That’s an almost 50 percent failure rate, if you take on faith the tack offered by those operating outside the law (natural and other). Yes, you’d have to believe the Obama administration that individuals who’ve not been afforded due process of law are guilty. And you’d have to have faith in the same goons that the other casualties are necessary “collateral damage.”

I don’t. Nor should you.

Antiwar.com offers what is likely a more accurate account:

A barrage of US drone strikes across Yemen’s south and east has entered its third day today, and shows no signs of slowing down, as the latest US attacks targeted the Shabwa Province.
With so many of the attacks occurring against remote villages in the hills of Yemen’s rural interior, the death toll is difficult to ascertain, but at least 68 are believed to be dead over the past three days.
Yemeni officials say the strikes are targeting “top leader” of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and that they have high hopes they may kill one such leader, but they can’t confirm anything of the sort so far.
Indeed, while all of the official statements from Yemen have termed the slain “militants” or at the very least “suspects,” not a single person has been identified at all so far officially, and many civilians were confirmed among the slain on Saturday.

To listen to other US mainstream media, it’s hard to ascertain who exactly is responsible for raining drones down on the southern and eastern parts of Yemen. The passive voice is deployed to conceal culpability.

“A ‘massive and unprecedented’ assault against al Qaeda fighters in Yemen appears to be targeting high-level operatives of the terrorist network,” writes CNN. In reading the article @ CNN.com it’s near impossible to determine for sure whodunit.

‘Putin’s Libertarians’

Foreign Policy, libertarianism, Ron Paul, Russia, The State

The proper libertarian foreign policy, in my opinion, is without the slobbering sentimentality adopted by many libertarians toward the putative push for freedom across the Middle East and beyond. Whomever—and wherever—they are, I wish freedom fighters well, but they’re on their own. Americans have their own tyrants to tackle. We no longer want to defend to the death borders not our own. I’ve promised, moreover, that when liberty deprived peoples the world over support patriots stateside (such as the Hage and Bundy families), I’d return the courtesy. It’s safe to say, however, that the world’s statists do not care about American liberties.

Not all libertarians share my detachment. Via my friend Yuri Maltsev comes another perspective on Ukraine (to which I’ve not devoted a second thought since penning “Presstitute-Cultivated Ignorance On Ukraine”). Yuri himself has written the following:

I am glad that there is a growing opposition to Putin’s regime in Russia itself. The list of eminent Russian intellectuals against aggression in Ukraine is much longer than those confused libertarians who support “Russian national interests” (Mises and Hayek would detest such an expression). …
There is nothing libertarian in the neo-Stalinist Putin’s regime. Stalinism is an exact opposite of freedom. It is the same as to embrace Hitler just because he disliked FDR. Enemy of my enemy is not necessarily a friend . . . I think that socialists Timoshenko and Yushchenko [the Orange revolution politicians elected after mass protests in 2004] squandered Ukrainian prospects for freedom and prosperity and should be blamed for that, but the alternative (Putin-Yanukovich) proved to be way more disgusting.

Youri’s recommended analysis is “Putin’s Libertarians” by Roman Skaskiw. Excerpts:

… I have been horrified by the libertarian coverage of events in Ukraine. Much of it has been such an uncritical parroting of Kremlin propaganda, so devoid of journalistic integrity, and such a betrayal of libertarian principles, that I can’t decide whether the authors, many of whom I’ve long admired, suffer a bias toward contrarian narratives or are on the Kremlin payroll. …

Paul Craig Roberts attempted to de-legitimize Ukraine’s protests by praising the now-deposed Yanukovych regime and turning a blind eye to its barbarity. His praise includes the term “human-rights trained Ukrainian police”, this after the police had begun kidnapping injured protesters from hospitals. One such protester, Yuriy Verbytsky, a seismologist from the Geophysical Institute in Lviv and mountain climber was injured in the protests, hospitalized, kidnapped from the hospital, severely beaten, and left in the woods where he froze to death. “Human-rights-trained” police do not strip and humiliate captured protesters in -10 C degree weather.

The corruption and savagery of Ukraine’s police is neither secret nor new. Last summer, police stepped aside during a violent raid against the business interests of opposition politician. The business manager was later assassinated. This sort of corporate raiding has been fairly common, though most victims quietly give up their businesses without a fight. There was also this story of policemen connected to the Party of Regions raping a young woman and going free until a rioters sacked the police station, it was a tragic repeat of a brutal rape-murder that happened the year before, also by politically connected persons who were also released by Ukraine’s “human rights trained” police.

It’s one thing to oppose intervention. I’ve done so myself. It’s another to mischaracterize the barbarity of the Yanukovych regime in an attempt to discredit the uprising against it.

Daniel McAdams, executive director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace has made the libertarian circuit — lewrockwell.com, the Tom Woods Show, the Scott Horton Show, and of course, RT. He makes a number of ridiculous claims, including the argument that the Russian military already had free reign in Crimea: “How can you annex and invade a territory in which you are already legally present?”

I really don’t know what to make of this. Can anyone help me? I find it equally unlikely that he is this disconnected from reality or that he is deliberately spreading disinformation. Are there other explanations? …

MORE.