The title of this NPR feature (“Ron Suskind Alleges War Fought On False Premises”) is pretty lame. It’s old news. The news is that he has something else. There are very few who will read this, or listen to NPR, that don’t already assume this. The important thing here is the specifics, that here is YET ANOTHER bit of evidence Continue Reading
Why don’t we have a media that is all over this? 50 bases? U.S. blocking the “independence” of Iraq (ie. make it’s own decisions about their own economy, wanting to “diversify their receipts from oil sales away from dollar holdings into euros”. Sounds smart of the Iraqis to me. The intrepid Patrick Cockburn reveals that the White House is more Continue Reading
But here is the stark reality: there is a security gap in this country – a gap between the rhetoric of those who claim to be tough on national security, and the reality of growing insecurity caused by their decisions. A gap between Washington experience, and the wisdom of Washington’s judgments. A gap between the rhetoric of those who tout Continue Reading
in mid-April 2003, with looting still underway, Rumsfeld canceled deployment of the Calvary Division, a force of 16,000 soldiers An Interviewee testifies how that shocked everybody in the military who DID have concerns about post-invasion stabilization. This fits the accusation (and I think rightfully aimed) of Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine that de-stabilization WAS PART OF THE PLAN in Continue Reading
From Chapter 18 of The Shock Doctrine, another scary thought/revelation: On August 5, 2004, the White House created the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization, headed by former US Ambassador to Ukraine Carlos Pascual. Its mandate is to draw up elaborate “post-conflict” plans for up to twenty-five countries that are not, as of yet, in conflict. …Fittingly, a Continue Reading
from Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Nov. 29, 2007
The following from the aforementioned Klein article is a little-reported bit of evidence of the “free market” shock being undertaken in Iraq. There are seventeen state-owned cement factories across the country, but most are idle or working at only half capacity. According to the Ministry of Industry, not one of these factories has received a single contract to help with Continue Reading
Here’s the start of an article Naomi Klein (author of Shock Doctrine) wrote for Harper’s in September 2004: It was only after I had been in Baghdad for a month that I found what I was looking for. I had traveled to Iraq a year after the war began, at the height of what should have been a construction boom, Continue Reading
A PBS exploration of the film No End IN Sight on NOW. The DVD is out this past week (I may order it as well) (I really miss the Amazon plugin I used to have for WordPress. LiveWriter REALLY needs a good one. The one out now doesn’t search DVD’s, apparently.) About the Show Video: No End in Sight Nearly Continue Reading