Parallel realities?
I suspect that, as usual, Outraged, has offered a devastating refutation. Nevertheless, many people will
buy this claptrap, and even honest American truth-seekers who haven’t been to Iraq will have another “reason” to “remain on the fence”, or be moderate in their opposition
to this criminal folly. Probably that’s the whole point
of issuing such “war bulletins”. For a decidedly
different take on what’s happening the Yorkshire Ranter (second essay, i.e. Wednesday June 22) offers an interesting analysis. Of course, I don’t
think he’s been to Iraq recently.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Jun 23 2005 14:58 utc | 3

@b
The Zinmeisters manufactured and pre-packaged white propaganda is just another of thier endless variations re the ‘reality gap’ …

May 11, 2005: The Reality Gap – “When a country adopts a wildly adventuristic military policy, as we have done since the Cold War ended, it gets beaten.”

Posted by: Outraged | Jun 23 2005 15:31 utc | 5

The Bush Administration’s Psy-Ops on the US Public An Interview with Col. Sam Gardiner. By Kevin Zeese via counterpunch

There is absolutely no question that the White House and the Pentagon participated in an effort to market the military option. The truth did not make any difference to that campaign. To call it fixing is to miss the more profound point. It was a campaign to influence. It involved creating false stories; it involved exaggerating; it involved manipulating the numbers of stories that were released; it involved a major campaign to attack those who disagreed with the military option. It included all the techniques those who ran the marketing effort had learned in political campaigns.

…just more marketing.

Posted by: beq | Jun 23 2005 15:46 utc | 7

finally, some good news coming out of Iraq. I feel a lot better now.

Posted by: dan of steele | Jun 23 2005 16:18 utc | 9

The Carve-Up Begins.

The Iraq war has so far cost America and Britain £105billion. But the financial clawback is gathering pace as British and American oil giants work out how to get their hands on the estimated £3trillion worth of oil.
Executives from BP, Shell, Exxon Mobil and Halliburton, Dick Cheney’s old firm, are expected to congregate at the Paddington Hilton for a two-day chinwag with top-level officials from Iraq’s oil ministry. The gathering, sponsored by the British Government, is being described as the “premier event” for those with designs on Iraqi oil, and will go ahead despite opposition from Iraqi oil workers, who fear their livelihoods are being flogged to foreigners. The Met will be on hand to secure the venue ahead of the conference.
“This is a networking opportunity for UK businesses involved in Iraqi oil,” explained Dr Hussain Rabia, managing director of the consultancy Entrac Petroleum Ltd. “We have the moral support of the UK government. They’re bringing the guys over from Iraq, offering them visas. We expect all the big oil companies to be there,” he said.
Delegate numbers are described as “confidential”. Shell spokesman Simon Buerk would not confirm that a representative of the company would be attending, but said he “wouldn’t be at all surprised if they were”.
“We aspire to establish a long-term presence in Iraq,” he said. “We have been helping the [Iraqi] Ministry of Oil and engineers with training.”
Those who have purchased their £1,200 tickets can expect access to executives from Iraq’s oil ministry, including Salem Razoky, the director general of exploration.
But Iraqi oil workers are furious about the conference. “The second phase of the war will be started by this conference carving up the industry,” said an outraged Hasan Juma’a, head of the Iraqi General Union of Oil Employees. “It is about giving shares of Iraq to the countries who invaded it – they get a piece of the action as a reward. The British government will back this action in order to pay its debt in Iraq.”
Hasan, who represents 23,000 skilled oil workers, fears that deals struck at the conference will see profits from Iraq’s massive oil reserves – the second richest in the world – lining the pockets of multinational corporations at the expense of the Iraqi people.
Previous form suggests his concerns are well founded. Under the initial wage table drawn up by Paul Bremer’s provisional Baghdad government in September 2003, oil workers were to receive a minimum monthly pay packet of £25. After a threatened union strike, it was raised to £38. And, Hasan insists, “Iraqi oil workers are good enough to rebuild without any need of help. ”
Greg Muttitt, a researcher with Platform, an independent environmental think thank, agrees. “The decisions on how to carve up Iraq are being made behind closed doors in Washington, London and Baghdad.
“This conference is a key part of the plan to help multinational companies get stuck in once those arrangements are in place. It’s a corporate feeding frenzy – they’re not writing the recipes, they’re tucking in their napkins.”

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Jun 23 2005 17:07 utc | 11

Who ya gonna believe.
The AEI or Riverbend.

Posted by: RossK | Jun 23 2005 17:45 utc | 13

ô outrageous
they, the cheney bush junta like their models – the mafia – the more they scream they are winning, the ore they use disproportionate force – you know absolutely that they are losing

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jun 23 2005 19:22 utc | 15

Karl Zinmeister’s assessment of the progress in Iraq seems to be a bit more rose-tinted than General John Abizaid’s assessment. Curious how people with an agenda (and who have no personal responsibility) can see an entirely different picture than do others.

Posted by: Monolycus | Jun 23 2005 21:06 utc | 17

OK, they’ve declared victory. So now they can bring the troops home, right?

Posted by: Billmon | Jun 23 2005 21:56 utc | 19

@Porco Rosso
I am a huge fan of yours, but never expected to meet anywhere, even online. Have you made any more movies recently?
@Monolycus
I skimmed too fast – apologies.

Posted by: citizen | Jun 23 2005 22:38 utc | 21

It appears that Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rove are preparing 2 possible exit strategies.
EXIT STRATEGY 1:
Mission accomplished, for real.
From Leslie Gelb’s April 2005 report to Council on Foreign Relations on his 10-day trip to Iraq

QUESTIONER [Pete Peterson]: . . . presuming for the moment that our military knows that the training [of Iraqi soldiers] is inadequate, it doesn’t take a total cynic to conclude that one of the possible reasons that that’s going on is the administration is playing a kind of a numbers game in which they want a rationale or a rationalization to pull out American troops. Do you think the military knows and agrees with you that the training is inadequate? And if they are doing it in spite of that, elaborate further on what you think the administration’s motivation is.
GELB: These are very smart guys, the senior military officers we have there. Very able people–I think some of the most able people we have in the armed services. Whether they think they’re doing the right thing in the right way and that the training will take place subsequently, I can’t tell you they don’t believe that, Pete. All I can tell you is that my experience is that when you, in a revolutionary chaotic situation like this, try to turn out that number of troops, it has been my experience that it’s under political pressure.

John Burns, NYT 6/19/05

. . . a feeling is growing among senior officers in Baghdad and Washington that it is only a matter of time before the Pentagon sets a timetable of its own for withdrawal. ..
“I think the drawdown will occur next year, whether the Iraqi security forces are ready or not,” a senior Marine officer in Washington said last week. “Look for covering phrases like ‘We need to start letting the Iraqis stand on their own feet, and that isn’t going to happen until we start drawing down’. “

Evidently, it did not occur to the senior Marine officer that they might actually claim victory.
EXIT STRATEGY 2:
War critics betrayed the country and caused any Iraqi failure.
Karl Rove’s attack in NYC on liberals and Sen. Durbin

“Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers…”
Mr. Rove also said American armed forces overseas were in more jeopardy as a result of remarks last week by Senator Richard J. Durbin…
… “Has there ever been a more revealing moment this year?” Mr. Rove asked. “Let me just put this in fairly simple terms: Al Jazeera now broadcasts the words of Senator Durbin to the Mideast, certainly putting our troops in greater danger. No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals.”

John in DC at AMERICAblog identifies the tell-tale earmarks that identify Rove’s remarks as one volley in a White House-orchestrated campaign. 1. White House released TEXT of Rove’s remarks. Etc.
With two exit strategies in preparation, it’s hard to imagine the Cheney administration is thinking hard about staying much longer. Of course, they never did plan to stay, so this would be consistent.

Posted by: small coke | Jun 24 2005 2:18 utc | 23

if it’s over, what’s up w/ this wapo article on the pentagon using a private marketer (thereby circumventing legal obstructions) in order to compile a database listing “high school students ages 16 to 18 and all college students to help the military identify potential recruits.”? the madsen report says the draft is coming folks, and points out that halliburton/kbr’s arlington office just so happens to be right across the street from the selective service office ( “now up and running with new staff, over 300 computer workstations, and high level attention from Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld”). maybe they’ll start w/ the families kicked out of their houses in order to make room for shopping malls, eh? better yet, since things have turned out so well in iraq, thank god – the white one, that is – why not send the pr flacks to the front lines? let them take over, ya know, practice their chops & spin themselves silly while spreading freedumb and working on their tans.

Posted by: b real | Jun 24 2005 4:04 utc | 25

All right then. Let’s pull out.

Posted by: yy | Jun 24 2005 7:34 utc | 27

A Swedish case: Sweden: Expulsions carried out by US agents, men tortured in Egypt
A German case: CIA Flying Suspects To Torture?

Khaled el-Masri was born in Kuwait, but he now lives in Germany with his wife and four children. He became a German citizen 10 years ago. He told 60 Minutes he was on vacation in Macedonia last year when Macedonian police, apparently acting on a tip, took him off a bus, held him for three weeks, then took him to the Skopje airport where he believes he was abducted by the CIA.
“They took me to this room, and they hit me all over and they slashed my clothes with sharp objects, maybe knives or scissors,” says el-Masri.
“I also heard photos being taken while this was going on – and they took off the blindfold and I saw that there were a lot of men standing in the room. They were wearing black masks and black gloves.”
El-Masri says he was injected with drugs, and after his flight, he woke up in an American-run prison in Afghanistan. He showed 60 Minutes a prison floor plan he drew from memory. He says other prisoners were from Pakistan, Tanzania, Yemen and Saudi Arabia. El-Masri told 60 Minutes that he was held for five months and interrogated by Americans through an interpreter.
…
At that point, did anyone ever tell him that they’d made a mistake? “They told me that they had confused names and that they had cleared it up, but I can’t imagine that,” says el-Masri. “You can clear up switching names in a few minutes.”
He says he was flown out of Afghanistan and dumped on a road in Albania. When he finally made his way back home in Germany, he found that his wife and kids had gone to her family in Lebanon. He called there to explain what happened.

Also on the el-Masri story: ‘They beat me from all sides’
US Said to Regret Kidnapping of German

Posted by: Fran | Jun 24 2005 12:34 utc | 29

@vbo
” He now says the US will win in Iraq, as it did in Afghanistan, and that it will be an enormous success story.”
Was I asleep at the wheel? When did the US win the invasion of Afghanistan? I would have expected that the first successful war against Afghanistan (a war neither the British nor the Soviets, both huge armies at the time, were unable to pull off) would have been much bigger news.

Posted by: Monolycus | Jun 24 2005 18:53 utc | 31

Edit the pre-coffee double negative in the above. You know what I was trying to say.

Posted by: Monolycus | Jun 24 2005 18:56 utc | 33

I’m going to have to consult a handy grammar guide to figure out if a double-post constitutes a negation. (I’m not a big fan of the new scripting, B!)
Anyway… I was rattling off a quick observation about how Afghanistan withstood and repelled both the British and Soviet armies, but when I re-read it (after my coffee began to kick in), it sounded like I was saying that the Brits and Soviets had both conquered Afghanistan. I would think that my intended statement was obvious, but the way people play fast and loose with documented facts these days (“What proliferation treaty?” “I never said anything about UN resolution 1441… we went there to get rid of a ruthless dictator!” “We didn’t lose in Vietnam!” et cetera, ad nauseum), I thought that I had better try to make myself a bit clearer.
In retrospect, I just murked up a perfectly valid meaningless observation that would have slipped unnoticed into the background chatter if I could have just let it be. Kind of like I’m doing now.

Posted by: Monolycus | Jun 24 2005 23:19 utc | 35