Moon of Alabama Brecht quote
April 18, 2006
The Ever Lasting Zarqawi

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: […] I think we just have to accept it, that people have a right to say what they want to say, and to have an acceptance of that and recognize that the terrorists, Zarqawi and bin Laden and Zawahiri, those people have media committees.
They are actively out there trying to manipulate the press in the United States. They are very good at it. […]
Rush Interviews Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld; April 17, 2006

—–

One internal briefing, produced by the U.S. military headquarters in Iraq, said that Kimmitt had concluded that, "The Zarqawi PSYOP program is the most successful information campaign to date."
Kimmitt is now the senior planner on the staff of the Central Command that directs operations in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East.
Military Plays Up Role of Zarqawi; WaPo; April 10, 2006

So we know Zarqawi is comitted bullshit but still used. So what about bin Laden and Zawahiri is really real?

I don´t know. Do you?

Comments

as rumsfled…erm, now wouldn’t that be nice…as rumsfeld once said, “it’s very difficult to know things that people get up every morning and try to keep you from knowing”

Posted by: b real | Apr 18 2006 19:38 utc | 1

lol, its like a pretzel! the image we are creating out of nothingness has grown so powerful it now has his own image makers and our image makers are duking it out.
meanwhile, back in reality Dahr Jamail has just written about
al-Adhamiya being a trial run for that 2nd liberation of baghdad the london times reported last weekend.

The article states that “Sources close to the Pentagon said Iraqi forces would take the lead, supported by American air power, special operations, intelligence, embedded officers and back-up troops. Helicopters suitable for urban warfare, such as the manoeuvrable AH-6 “Little Birds” … are likely to complement the ground attack.”
    This is disturbingly similar to what just occurred in al-Adhamiya.

Posted by: annie | Apr 18 2006 19:58 utc | 2

I don’t know. I don’t know to the point where I even wonder whether Bin Laden in fact had any involvement with the attacks on 9/11. In fact, I’m not even sure anymore what the attacks on 9/11 really were. I do know that the Bush Administration has shown itself capable of the most bald-faced lies. I would put on my tinfoil hat, except I’m using it right now to bake some potatoes.

Posted by: Aigin | Apr 18 2006 19:58 utc | 3

I think the key word is BULLSHIT. I do not in this entire world believe that they can out propaganda the Bushco masters of propaganda. Rummy is throwing up smoke and mirrors as is the military.

Posted by: jdp | Apr 18 2006 20:16 utc | 4

STOP THE PRESSES!
Rumsfeld “personally involved,”, yes that’s right “personally involved” in abuses at Guantanamo, according to a recently obtained report
(by Salon)
the army inspector general report which contains a sworn statement from a Lt. General (pdf).
“The question at this point is not whether Secretary Rumsfeld should resign, it’s whether he should be indicted.”

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Apr 18 2006 22:06 utc | 5

there’s already more than enough evidence to indict all of ’em, according to int’l law & such. the real question is when will this start happening. i’d like to think that it’ll happen while they’re still cognizant enough to be aware of their punishment.

Posted by: b real | Apr 18 2006 22:15 utc | 6

Bin Laden died in Dec. 2001. Even the Israelis admitted that, but they made a big deal out of inheritance, continuity, attacks, attacks, etc. Musharaff also has said he must be dead…
Link
He died of lung infection (or similar) following his kidney malfunction. He was buried in Tora Bora.
Link (arabic! I can’t read it either..)
Good evidence for that is that all appearances, pictures or audio tapes after that date are either questionable and have been debunked or shown to be obvious fakes (like the Fatty Binny) and that no family member (e.g. his brother Yeslam in Geneva, his ex-wife in London, and many, many others) have ever reported seeing him after that.
The last series of internationally published photographs (published in the EU in women’s mags – splendid pictures, combining eastern rusticity with pious beauty, spare and colorful scenes..) date from Feb 01 – his son Saad’s wedding in Kandahar. (Careful, some of the pictures that google will turn up are fakes.)
The family breathed several sighs in relief and some branched out –
Link
That would never have happened if he was alive.
– My reading of the situation.

Posted by: Noisette | Apr 18 2006 22:21 utc | 7

Even Michael Ledeen, of all people, states Binny is dead, but he has shifted the date …and has him expire in Iran..
And, according to Iranians I trust, Osama bin Laden finally departed this world in mid-December. The al Qaeda leader died of kidney failure and was buried in Iran, where he had spent most of his time since the destruction of al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
Mid-December, here, refers to 2005. Or at least that is what a regular interpretation throws up…
National Review

Posted by: Noisette | Apr 18 2006 22:55 utc | 8

Donald [actually every Bushie]looks at the world and – as usual – describes himself. It is his mirror.

Posted by: gylangirl | Apr 18 2006 23:35 utc | 9

Osama is not wanted for 9/11:
fbi
Sadly, the FBI does not give dates on its bulletins. Afaik, no later, updated one has been published.
The latest ‘most wanted’ seems to be this, where the most wanted terrorist is Isnilon Totoni Hapilon ! Huh?
fbi
clicking on OBL leads to the same old description…
OBL’s privacy rights have been strenuously protected:
Judicial Watch
And as we all know the Bin Laden relatives and hangers on were promptly removed from the US after 9/11 as the US Gvmt. organised special flights for them.
And those passenger lists (for once they are available in full!) make fascinating reading.
House of Bush

Posted by: Noisette | Apr 18 2006 23:42 utc | 10

President Bush : “I’m the decider and I decide what is best and what’s best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the Secretary of Defense.”
Intentionally deprived of sleep,
Forced into painful physical positions
(known as stress positions)
Subjected to forced exercises,
Forced standing,
Sexual and other physical humiliation.
Forced to accept an intravenous drip for hydration
He refused trips to the latrine
And urinated on himself at least twice.
Threatened with forced enemas,
forced to undergo an enema.
White noise
Sexual humiliation

Did I miss any?

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Apr 18 2006 23:53 utc | 11

Glad to see General Kimmitt has risen to the full height of his ineptitude.
Must be the Peter Pace principle playing itself out.
What wonders we mortals are privileged to see.

Posted by: Groucho | Apr 19 2006 0:10 utc | 12

Donnie Rumsfield said he stood at his desk all the time, and this torture was no big deal. So why not waterboard him and restrain him…and make sure some of the army who got sent over with no body armor gets to test out his hypothesis that it’s no big deal.
…and then he can go visit the Int’l Criminal Court, like good ole Charles Taylor.
btw, off topic, but did anyone see that the FBI has told Jack Anderson’s family and his biographer that they are going to go through his (uncataloged) papers
the (FBI) agents told the family they planned to remove from the columnist’s archive — which has yet to be catalogued — any document they came across that was stamped “secret” or “confidential,” or was otherwise classified.
“He would be rolling over in his grave to think that the FBI was going to go crawling through his papers willy-nilly,” the younger Anderson told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday.
His account is similar to conversations described by Mark Feldstein, a George Washington University journalism professor and Anderson biographer. Feldstein said he was visited by two agents at his Washington-area home in March.

Posted by: fauxreal | Apr 19 2006 0:50 utc | 13

It’s time for the Two Minutes of Hate! Look, there’s Goldstein! Save us, Rummy!

Posted by: Rowan | Apr 19 2006 2:05 utc | 14

It is not likely that they will fire Rumsfeld. How could they allow a disgruntled and doddering old “gentleman” and 9-11 pointman to be on the outside? Who knows what he might mumble about why the country was not defended that day, or worse yet what really happened on that day that “changed everything”?

Posted by: ww | Apr 19 2006 2:40 utc | 15

When history is crafted in the service of power, evidence and rationality are irrelevant. – chomsky

Posted by: b real | Apr 19 2006 2:55 utc | 16

Chomsky’s library must be heavily stocked with Bob Woodward, currently.
And a few other known knowns throughout time.
Since 1960 thereabouts, serious historians have done pretty well at it.

Posted by: Groucho | Apr 19 2006 3:07 utc | 17

Quote:
there’s already more than enough evidence to indict all of ’em, according to int’l law & such. the real question is when will this start happening.

Real question is : Who is going to do it?
Quote:
Bin Laden died in Dec. 2001.

To be perfectly honest I am not sure this guy ever actually existed (in a form presented to us) and I specially am not sure what was his role and his actual connections in 9/11 or what ever terrorism act that would be.
Quote:
It is not likely that they will fire Rumsfeld.

What would be the difference exactly?

Posted by: vbo | Apr 19 2006 3:30 utc | 18

thanks for posting vbo, good to hear you

Posted by: annie | Apr 19 2006 4:16 utc | 19

Nano-Mammon Bombing
Look, sure, Donnie The Bull sent our kids off to Iraq without any body armor and without armored Hum-Vee’s, even though he gets chauffered around Georgetown, DC, behind 1-1/2 inches of ballistic glass, and shielded by four giant bodyguards.
He’s a Don. Fehged abahd et. Besides, if you think riffing Saddam from Iraq was a debacle, just imagine if the civilian bean counters at the Pentagon are riffed, and there is nothing between our generals … and General Dynamics.
Know’m sayin’? Carlye-Burton Meets Richard B. Meyers in the Titanic Battle of Twin Deficits.
For all his foibles, false pride and petty self aggrandizement, Donnie is the Dutch boy with his finger in the aerospace defense welfare dike.
SPACE FORCE 2020: A FORCE FOR THE FUTURE. http://www.fas.org/spp/military/docops/usspac/lrp/ch02.htm
So I’m sitting here folding dollar bills into origami cranes for my grandchildren, and oops, there it is. Nano-Mammon Bombing. We know that micro-loans to women in underdeveloped countries are enormously successful, and bring a higher standard of living to the micro-loan recipients as well as their families and their community.
Now comes nano-loans. Individual $100 bills, not crated together into shrinkwrapped $1,000,000 bales, then heisted by the $B’s by profiteers, no! Just $100 bills, individually folded by some clever piece of Chinese machinery, then dropped by helicopter, the same way that those same helicopters used to drop 2-4-D in Viet Nam.
Low over the treetops, Der Valkerie blaring from speakers, deep into hostile territory, then up over beleagured cities of struggling civilians, tiny winged $100 bills raining down Freedom and Democracy from the skies.
A typical Central Asian city of 250,000, whose citizens are lucky to make $2.50 on a good day, you drop $10M worth of $100’s, and you’ve made their rent for months, you’ve planted seeds in their fields, you’ve purified their water and swept their streets and brought fresh food.
Like a welcome Uncle Sam, come to visit, to drive off the four horsemen and insurgents.
Call them Freedom dollars. Hey, put George Bush on the bills, who the f–k cares? 1,000 cities, $10M each, four drops a year is less than 1/4 what we’ve totally wasted without any tangible effect in Iraq. Imagine dropping $50B directly onto the individual citizens, instead of bombs.
Sweet Jesus.
Freedom Dollars, with George Bush’s face in profile (please), the national seal, the wild American turkey holding an olive branch, and Gnostic Bible verses. Nano-Mammon bombing.
Nano-Particle Dimming
George Bush tells us that global warming is science fiction. Science tells us that in the three days in September 2001 when no planes flew, the earth’s temperature changed by *’s.
Global warming by CO2 and methane, and global cooling, skies dimmed by dust and particulates, in a gentle tango high up in the heavens.
Now comes low-sulfur diesel, and particulate scrubbers and a global push for cleaner air. Global warming is predicted to take off, the earth’s temperatures as much as 18*’s warmer before our grandchildren have their children.
So I’m sitting here after making my origami cranes, dusting the windows, and oops, there it is. Nano-Particle Dimming. Titanium dioxide nano-dust, riding shotgun in the jump seat of every commercial airplane, 90 pounds of it every flight, hundreds of trillions of individual tiny white paint nano-flakes, carefully sieved out with the exhaust slip stream, electrostatically charged to spread out in a thin sheet and stay aloft indefinitely, cooling the earth.
Titanium dioxide, totally inert and non-toxic.
1,000’s of commercial flights a day to every corner of the earth. 90,000 pounds of nano-dust every day carefully placed at 40,000 feet above the highest clouds. Enough nano-dust to cover the entire globe, dim the sun, cool the desert, bring the rains, return the ice caps, and bring the earth back in balance, as we inevitably and inexorably eat through our hydrocarbon reserves.
As we must. Our civilization is carbon based. We eat hydrocarbons, everything we do is dependent on hydrocarbons. Before hydrocarbons in the 19th century there was no fertilizer, no tractors, no herbicides or pesticides, nothing.
When I was a kid, they still used a horse-drawn double-bottom plow, a chisel tooth harrow, a manure spreader, and a horse-drawn combine. And that was it. Sure the wheat was fuller then, and it didn’t lodge as easy, and the earth turned easier, had more tilth, more raw creative juice.
That’s gone. Face it, it’s gone. The very earth we depend on is blown away, washed away, the jet black Midwest loam, turned brown and sandy. We can’t go back. It doesn’t work that way. Look at the Chinese in the 1970’s during the Cultural Revolution. They sent 10M’s intellectuals out to the rural communes to feed themselves. They all starved to death. Our culture is a mushroom. We all surf out on the breaking wave. Only 5% of Americans live on the farm anymore. When oil and gas goes, we die as a civilization. It’s coming.
Until then, we can stretch it out. Nano-particle dimming, and broad-band telecommuting. Everyone at their terminals, video faces smiling, happily typing into keystroke loggers, all monitored on partitioned screen by RFID, a virtual cube farm.
And all the meatspace people, tradesmen and truck drivers, businessmen and tourists, off they go on flights around the globe, happily spreading nano pixie-dust like Tinkerbelle.
Nano-Mammon Bombing. Nano-Particle Dimming.
Word.
Sure beats wringing your titties over Dumsfeld.

Posted by: tante aime | Apr 19 2006 4:56 utc | 20

Dig it, tante.
Not sure about the dimming but great minds think alike and I love the Mammonites, drifting to earth. I guess if they never touch ground that makes them Mammonoids.
By my calculation it cost $100,000 per dead Iraqi (may god rest his/her soul) in the Persian Gulf war. And the US made a profit, as measured by their stated cost and the contributions from non-military countries, mostly Japan I recall.
Spoke with a young man, twenty or so, who was in the Guard for kicks or extra bucks, had a great civilian job, making good money, clearing nuclear sites before he was called up and sent to the desert: Hire locals, their instructions “take ten steps forward, pick up one piece of waste, turn to your left and put it in the barrel, walk out and go home. Never come back.” “Next.”
Anyway, he spent about a year dug into a hole in the sand. At least, that was the first three or six months. After it was over, another three or six months, this time in tents with tons of candy, treats and walkmans, battery tv’s and so on that came from Japan.
For some reason he never reported back to the guard after he got back home. Go figure.

Posted by: jonku | Apr 19 2006 5:11 utc | 21

Tante, welcome back. We can’t go back, but we sure as hell can spiral upward…replenishing the soil, eliminating manure & herbicides have long been solved. I’m more worried about the oxygen supplies myself, as they cut down forests & kill the ocean…
Stick yr. head Here You’ll come back refreshed after reading about Permaculture Australia (The Mother Ship)
Commissioned in August 2000 by a Japanese aid organization to work in association with a Jordanian aid organization their first visit involved the design of a flat 10 acre, highly salted, very alkaline, piece of land in the Dead Sea Valley, 400m below sea level and just a few kilometers from the Palestinian border. The aim was to demonstrate sustainable farming practices.
It is amazingly simple. Using native materials and simple swales in the land they were able to reduce soil salinity, increase soil microbial acitivity and produce foodstuff and grow trees on land was essentially wasteland

And from a commenter: I had previously seen a movie with one of the founders of permaculture helping to rebuild this piece of arid land in India. At first it was just hard clay flat land which stretched out into the distance and in just a couple years it was thick with fruit growing and you couldn’t see 10 feet there was so much vegetation.
Cruise on over there & you can see the movie of the transformation of the Dead Sea Valley.

Posted by: jj | Apr 19 2006 5:38 utc | 22

It’s So Amazing, I’m including more from the Permaculture Site:
The local agricultural department described the land as useless for any serious production. With a soil salt level of 5,000ppm, the only available irrigation water at 4,100 ppm salt content, and a pH of 9.5, even10 in places it was considered impossible to grow figs and many other fruit trees and crops.
With the local project workers well educated in permaculture design, Sindhu and Geoff’s instructions were carefully followed and on their next return visit, four months after the first trees were planted, the results were very exciting. Figs were growing well and fruiting, so were guavas and pomegranates, some of the pioneer trees had reached two meters in height and the general greening up of the site was very encouraging. These results indicated that the salt levels must have dropped, pH must have also dropped and soil fertility must have improved. The Agriculture Department were invited back to do further soil tests and the results were incredibly exciting even to Geoff and Sindhu.
The good results would normally indicate a large use of sweet water, but on the contrary, the high cost of transporting sweet water on to site is not only against permaculture principles, but is financially out of reach to the average farmer and also too costly for our own budget. We used the same salted water that local farmers have to irrigate with, but because of good design only 1/5th the amofunt of water was used compared to that of a farm similar in size. The effects achieved were a mystery to the local people, and to the agricultural department, and a great deal of attention from all sorts of individuals and authorities resulted. The soil had come alive, the lifecycles within the soil were starting to lock up the salt, the process of soil creation had begun, and not only had pH and salt dropped dramatically, the pale sandy soil was turning deep brown with the creation of hummus, Geoff and Sindhu found themselves explaining this process time and time again to satisfy the astonishment of those who had not believed they could succeed.
link
In short, the problem is not restoring the Earth, the problem is the Goddamn Trash on Wall Street & in DC.

Posted by: jj | Apr 19 2006 5:50 utc | 23

Thank you tante aime, for what you say and especially how you say it.

Posted by: beq | Apr 19 2006 11:39 utc | 24

Glad I’m not the only one in the tante aime fan club. Go shibumi.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Apr 19 2006 12:19 utc | 25

Man, TA. I want some of whatever you are smoking.
The Nano-Mammon meme deserves to propagate. It’s an incredible comparison with the value destruction in Iraq. On the Nano-Particles we need a physicist or climatologist to weigh in. Beware the law of un-intended consequences though.
@jj; On permaculture, I’ve seen it in action and it’s hard to believe the results. At Findhorn the community converted gravelly sand-dunes to an amazingly fertile garden; and at Tagari Bill Mollison created a self-maintaining garden of eden with seeds and elbow grease. My wife took the residential Permaculture Design course from Bill and we’ve been improving our own land part-time for about 15 years.
The real impact so far has been in places like India and Africa.
Of course, GDP is higher if you ship your mono-culture produce to another continent and then ship your own food back from there.

Posted by: PeeDee | Apr 19 2006 22:38 utc | 26

@tante aime & jj:
Both visionary posts. Beautiful.

Posted by: Malooga | Apr 20 2006 3:55 utc | 27

@jj:

I don’t have the time right now to research, so I’m going to ask you, since you seem to have enthusiastically read a lot of their material: how diverse is the selection of plants used in Permaculture? It sounds really wonderful, but if they’re relying on a small list of species, then that could spell trouble in the long term.

Posted by: The Truth Gets Vicious When You Corner It | Apr 20 2006 4:16 utc | 28

Thanks, Malooga. I feared I was disrupting the thread, but felt I had to respond to Tante’s despair immediately. That was going to be my Easter Renewal Post, as I thought it was so magnificent to create a garden of Eden in the lowest most salt-ridden part of the planet, and do it in a way in which impoverished locals can afford, but it ended up here.
Truth, I wouldn’t worry about that. Their philosophy is follow nature, so they would be planting native crops, but could only introduce them as the conditions improve – and they’re not constricting genetic diversity, which is key. Clearly they’re doing something right since they created healthy soil, which will allow a much greater range of things to be planted.

Posted by: jj | Apr 20 2006 4:33 utc | 29

For those who want something to listen to about permaculture, there is this from “Unwelcome Guests”:
This week we continue our series of presentations from the first national conference on peak oil and community solutions held last month in Yellow Springs, Ohio. In the previous weeks’ programs, speakers have explained how modern industrial society has been made possible by cheap and plentiful fossil fuel energy, which from this point on will be increasingly expensive and scarce, and how this is likely to impact an economic system which is based on the false assumptions of unlimited natual resources and endless growth. And we have heard how our population, techonolgies, and expectations of bigger and better, are on a collision course with the finite resources of this planet.
In this episode we’ll focus on sustainable agriculture in the context of sustainable human culture, and examine our assumptions about progress, technology, and social relations in light of our ecological reality. We’ll begin with a presentation from the conference on Permaculture, a design system that many believe is the perfect tool for transition to the energy descent society.

I seem to remember that she did a few other episodes about Peremaculture around that time as well. Check it out if you wish.

Posted by: Malooga | Apr 20 2006 4:45 utc | 30