Price Floyd worked at the State Department until a few weeks ago. He recently wrote a remarkable OpEd about his experience selling Bush’s policies:

As the director of media affairs at State, this is the conundrum that I faced every day. I tried […] to reach people in the U.S. and abroad and to convince them that we should not be judged by our actions, only our words.

Groucho’s ‘Who are you going to believe, …‘ may be effective once or twice. But after years of U.S. propaganda contradicting everything the U.S. does, it has lost the trust of other nations.

Bush’s bogus recent announcements on aids spending (a bondongle for U.S. pharma and "abstinence only" Christians) and global emissions goals (avoiding any real action) will reinforce the international lack of trust.

How might that change?

Cont. reading: U.S. Judged By Actions, Not Words

Open threat: "If you don’t comment, the terrorists will win …"

There was some truth in this statement:

April 13, 2004

As a proud and independent people, Iraqis do not support an indefinite occupation — and neither does America.
President Addresses the Nation

But that knowledge seems to be lost now:

May 30, 2007

President George W. Bush would like to see a lengthy U.S. troop presence in Iraq like the one in South Korea to provide stability but not in a frontline combat role, the White House said on Wednesday.
Bush envisions U.S. presence in Iraq like S.Korea,

Has Bish changed his mind? Of course not. Fifty years of U.S. troops in South Korea, supporting a military dictatorship for most of that time, is not indefinite occupation and that is all he talked about.

And there is even hope some Iraqis will agree to such a not-idefinite occupation. Those living in London and Washington may even like the idea.

Every evening throughout World War II radio stations in Germany read out the "Forces Bulletin." A daily success report with a series of victories here, accomplishments there and lots of heroic deeds.

The victorious wording never really changed but the locations did. People marked those places on their maps. After Stalingrad they found that each announced victory on the eastern front happened further west than yesterday’s victory.

The described heroic deeds became defensive. Some Sergeant got decorated for stopping a big infantry attack single handed, a commander was lauded for rescuing his crew out of a burning tank.

Despite the positive language, the negative content could easily be detected.

Reading the Air Force May 28 airpower summary for Afghanistan, the similarity is striking:

Cont. reading: NATO Defeat in Afghanistan

Klammheimliche Freude, clandestine joy, is an expression from the 1970s in Germany.

Whenever the Red Army Fraction or another violent left movements had a successful operation, their sympathizers were accused of such joy. To a certain extend such blame was true. Only few agreed with the RAF actions, but a lot felt joy that someone was doing something against the repressive rightwing political/capital dung pile of that time.

A month ago I titled a piece In Favor of Killing American Troops. I tried to explain how I do NOT wish for anybody to die violently, but that reports of ever higher U.S. casualties will be the only way to get the U.S. out of Iraq.

With 10 more GI’s dead yesterday, I’ll get to see the headline I wished for "U.S. May deathtoll in Iraq exceeds record." Guilty of klammheimliche Freude, again.

Guilty also of feeling much sadness and sorrow.

Cont. reading: Klammheimliche Freude

by James
James is a friend of MoA barfly Beq. He asked this to be posted. I am not sure I agree with it, but it certainly deserves discussion.

Voting in 2007 or The Bush Economic Boycott:

Starts June 1, 2007, ends when ALL troops are removed from Iraq.

1. Cut out-of-pocket expenses by whatever you can (a goal of 25% is recommended).
2. No purchases of homes, cars, luxury items: unneeded appliances, computers, electronics, jewelry, etc.
3. Shop at non-Bush friendly vendors only. www.opensecrets.org may help.
4. Cut all non-essential driving. A goal of 50% is recommended.
5. A 100% boycott of gift purchasing on the December holidays (children are optional, just cut back) Make gifts, bake goods, etc.

Our goal is to force the Bush administration to finally take notice of our strength in numbers. Yeah. They got the guns but…

They totally ignored the 2006 elections. So vote again in 2007. Every dollar not spent to fuel the economy will eventually help save American and Iraqi lives. I can’t think of a better sacrifice that we can make to stop the bloodshed.

Note: For those of you who live elsewhere, boycott wherever you can if you don’t already.

Insurgents hijack 2 buses in Baghdad
Raids target Shiite insurgents in Baghdad’s Sadr City
Fear, fortitude in Kandahar city as insurgents turn to cities for refuge

As we think about this important front in the war against extremists and terrorists, it’s important for our fellow citizens to recognize this truth: If we were to leave Iraq before the job is done, the enemy would follow us home."
President Bush Discusses Progress in Afghanistan, Global War on Terror

Bush was wrong. It already happened. The enemy is already there. Right in the heart of Texas.

Tensions in the Texas House boiled over in a parliamentary showdown between Republican House Speaker Tom Craddick and some GOP and Democratic insurgents.
[…]
Craddick survived a five-hour rebellion on the House floor that included a bold attempt to boot him from office, the physical restraint of insurgent lawmakers trying to overtake the speaker’s podium, and the House parliamentarian nearly pushed to tears before resigning.
[…]
CBS Station KEYE correspondent Keith Elkins reports that anti-Craddick forces (known as "the insurgents") have whispered that there would be a move for a member vote to have the Speaker removed. That move came this week — or would have if the Speaker had allowed them to be heard.
[…]
CBSNews: Chaos In Texas House Over Speaker Fight

"Capture one of these killers, and he’ll be quick to demand the protections of the Geneva Convention and the Constitution of the United States. Yet when they wage attacks or take captives, their delicate sensibilities seem to fall away. These are men who glorify murder and suicide. Their cruelty is not rebuked by human suffering, only fed by it. They have given themselves to an ideology that rejects tolerance, denies freedom of conscience, and demands that women be pushed to the margins of society.

The terrorists know what they want and they will stop at nothing to get it. By force and intimidation, they seek to impose a dictatorship of fear, under which every man, woman, and child lives in total obedience to their ideology. Their ultimate goal is to establish a totalitarian empire … They view the world as a battlefield and they yearn to hit again. And now they have chosen to make Iraq the central front in their war against civilization."
link

News & views …

Should Associated Press be renamed to Voice of the Empire?

This is what happened today in Iraq:

In the early morning the U.S. military bombed a row of cars waiting in front of a gas station in Baghdad. Several civilians got killed and more wounded, some house were damaged as was the Habibiya maternity
hospital.

That’s the essence of the story as confirmed by eyewitnesses in the Reuters report and by the AFP’s account.

But what AP is reporting is tons of propaganda and only a tiny little bit of the truth.

5 killed after U.S. raid in Sadr City

A day after radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr resurfaced to end nearly four months in hiding and demand U.S. troops leave Iraq, American forces raided his Sadr City stronghold and killed five suspected militia fighters in air strikes Saturday.

Hmmm – typical revenge act – Sadr wants the U.S. to leave, the U.S. goes after Sadr folks.

But why suspected fighters? Didn’t they fight? Next graph:

Cont. reading: Associated Press: Voice of the Empire!

About the ongoing shelling of a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, Franklin Lamb has a very recommendable report at Counterpunch: Inside Nahr al-Bared and Bedawi Refugee Camps.

As he explains the U.S. is heavily involved via the ‘Welch Club.’ It is now even delivering three plane-loads of ammunition to the Lebanese Army so the slaughter can continue.

(This bears the question how much ammunition has already been expanded on a small piece of land with a very high density population. The official death count of some 25 seems unbelievable low.)

Please read the Lamb piece. It explains a lot.

Still there is one big issue Lamb misses.

Cont. reading: Nahr al-Bared and a New U.S. Air Base

"We’d rather lose lives than elections^*," is the new slogan of the Democratic party.

It is their justification given for caving in to Bush and for removing any timelines or conditions from the war funds.

Dem insider Tomasky writes:

Cont. reading: Pitchfork Time

There are several accounts this week on future U.S. planing in Iraq. These reports seem to contradict each other and they of course contradict the facts on the ground.

None of the strategies discussed involves a decrease of troop numbers and as the Democrats (predictively) have folded and conceded defeat to themselves, Bush certainly has no need to plan any decrease at all. With Congress giving more money than he asked for, troop strength will increase.

The "surge" did look fake to me when it was announced. Some 25,000 additional troops for some month was the official line. Now smart people at Hearst newspapers have analyzed the actual Pentagon activation orders and the numbers look much higher:

When additional support troops are included in this second troop "surge," the total number of U.S. troops in Iraq could increase from 162,000 now to more than 200,000 — a record high number — by the end of the year.

Cont. reading: Confusing Iraq Strategies

In the mids of the U.S. Attorney firing scandal is Monica Goodling.

She’ll testify under immunity at 10:15am today before the House Judiciary Committee. (There is a webcast link on the committee page and it is on CSPAN-3.)

Will she really spill the beans? I don’t think so. She probably drank too much red-cup cool-aid to ever get sober.

Goodling was an ardent practitioner of her faith, according to former colleagues [..] Her conservative ideals, they said, were such that she once refused to go to a Justice Department baby shower because the mother was unwed. They also said that she once balked at funding an anti-gun public service video because she thought it promoted rap music and glorified a violent lifestyle.
Link

Now what about that handbag. I certainly don’t known much about fashion, but isn’t this seriously out of style for an informal alumni barbecue?

Some news & views …

It’s quite short of historic perspective as it keeps up a tale of "good Americans" before GWB, but the piece hits a nail which, to my utter shame, even I usually avoid to hit directly:

[T]here’s a deeper reason why the popular impeachment movement has never taken off — and it has to do not with Bush but with the American people. Bush’s warmongering spoke to something deep in our national psyche. The emotional force behind America’s support for the Iraq war, the molten core of an angry, resentful patriotism, is still too hot for Congress, the media and even many Americans who oppose the war, to confront directly. It’s a national myth. It’s John Wayne. To impeach Bush would force us to directly confront our national core of violent self-righteousness — come to terms with it, understand it and reject it. And we’re not ready to do that.
[…]
Bush tapped into a deep American strain of fearful, reflexive bellicosity, which Congress and the media went along with for a long time and which has remained largely unexamined to this day. Congress, the media and most of the American people have yet to turn decisively against Bush because to do so would be to turn against some part of themselves.
Why Bush hasn’t been impeached

Saudi Arabia is secretly forging ties with al-Qaida elements and Shia Arab militias in Iraq in preparation for a summer showdown with coalition forces intended to tip a wavering US Congress into voting for full military withdrawal, US officials say.

"Saudi Arabia is fighting a proxy war in Iraq and it’s a very dangerous course for them to be following. They are already committing daily acts of war against US and British forces," a senior US official in Baghdad warned. "They [Saudi Arabia] are behind a lot of high-profile attacks meant to undermine US will and British will, such as the rocket attacks on Basra palace and the Green Zone [in Baghdad]. The attacks are directed by the Al Mukhabarat Al A’amah (General Intelligence Directorate) which is connected right to the top [of the Saudi government]."

The official said US commanders were bracing for a nationwide, Saudi-orchestrated summer offensive, linking al-Qaida and Shia insurgents to Riyadh’s Sunni militia allies, that Saudi Arabia hoped would trigger a political mutiny in Washington and a US retreat. "We expect that al-Qaida and Saudi Arabia will both attempt to increase the propaganda and increase the violence prior to Petraeus’s report in September [when the US commander General David Petraeus will report to Congress on President George Bush’s controversial, six-month security "surge" of 30,000 troop reinforcements]," the official said.

Cont. reading: Saudi Arabia’s secret plan to kick the US out of Iraq

Annals of Short Memory:

Published on March 5, 2007 Seymour Hersh wrote:

American, European, and Arab officials I spoke to told me that the Siniora government and its allies had allowed some aid to end up in the hands of emerging Sunni radical groups in northern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, and around Palestinian refugee camps in the south.
[…]
Alastair Crooke, who spent nearly thirty years in MI6, [..] Crooke said that one Sunni extremist group, Fatah al-Islam, had splintered from its pro-Syrian parent group, Fatah al-Intifada, in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, in northern Lebanon. Its membership at the time was less than two hundred. “I was told that within twenty-four hours they were being offered weapons and money by people presenting themselves as representatives of the Lebanese government’s interests—presumably to take on Hezbollah,” Crooke said.

Now some unnamed Lebanon media see Syria behind violence

The Lebanese media are in no doubt that Syria is to blame for clashes between security forces and Fatah al-Islam militants

Obviously this is a Siniora minority government and U.S. financed operation that gave birth to another "Al Qaeda" organization.

Just in case you ask who sponsors such deadly "intelligence" efforts this screenshot taken some minutes ago might tell you something:

Juan Cole, various organizations and editorials are up in arms over Haleh Esfandiari.

She is an Iranian living in the U.S. and working for the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Middle East program. Esfandiari was recently detained while visiting Iran.

The center explains her side of the story as does her husband. Iran has not yet published any formal charges.

But Cole and others are demanding her release because they assume she is innocent.

That may well be, but how do they know?

There is an important cultural issue to learn from this Iraq piece in today’s Washington Post. The article is about some reluctance in the U.S. military to launch a Fallujah like attack on Sadr City.

But the really good stuff is in the very last paragraph:

Col. Hamoud, a police liaison who has lived in Sadr City for 19 years and spoke on condition his full name not be used, said residents welcome aid from the United States brought peacefully, but warned that if U.S. troops use force, they will meet opposition.

"If they put their boots on people’s heads," he said, referring to a highly insulting gesture in Iraqi culture, "there will be fighting."

Wow – who would have known? It’s highly insulting to Iraqis when you put boots on their heads?

The average reader would certainly have expected otherwise. Thank you Washington Post for letting us know. How alien these Iraqis are – funny little weirdos – ain’t they?

How about other issues? Like when you pee into someones tea is that an insult in Iraqi culture?

Maybe one can ask the writer of the piece, Ann Tyson. She seems to know a lot about the special features of Iraqi culture.

But don’t step on her head. She’s in Iraq, and there such is a highly insulting gesture.