Tag: McCain

AT LEAST $40 BILLION PER YEAR TO FIGHT “TERRORISTS” WE CREATED TO FIGHT OUR OTHER ENEMIES

It was about a year ago when the neo-cons and supporters of the military industrial complex (every Congressman with a defense contractor in their district and contributor to their re-election campaign) warned of the dire cuts to the Defense budget. It didn’t matter that they weren’t actually cuts. It was a slowing in the rate of increase. But who needs the truth when a good storyline will do.

Just as our beloved arms industry was going to see a slight drop in their obscene blood profits, a new enemy arose from nowhere. No one had ever heard of ISIS one year ago. Shitstain McCain was over in Syria taking pictures with a bunch of rag headed “freedom fighters” and Obama was trumping up false gassing charges against Assad.

We funneled arms and money to these “freedom fighters”. They have now somehow morphed into the dreaded ISIS army of beheaders. We now have Assad and ISIS as our sworn enemies, even though they are fighting each other. Turkey is our ally. The Kurds are our ally. ISIS and Turkey are fighting the Kurds. And Iran will always be our enemy. Russia is now an imminent threat to our freedom in the Ukraine.

This all makes sense. Right?

Now Obama and his new neo-con allies are committing to fight ISIS, Assad, the Taliban, Al Qaeda, Russian rebels, and the dastardly Iranians forever. That sounds cheap. The opening quote is $40 billion per year. Remember when Larry Lindsey was fired from the Bush White House when he estimated the total cost of the Iraq War would be $50 billion? The final tally will be in the $6 TRILLION range. Missed it by that much.

Do you think the initial estimate for fighting American made “terrorists” of $40 billion per year will be too high or too low? When one of our cruise missiles blows up one of the tanks we gave to Iraq, does that count as a double expense?

I always come back to who benefits from this shit. The military industrial complex is more powerful than you know. They are enriched by endless war. Peace leads to declining profits. Eisenhower was right. We didn’t listen.

“This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.”

 

Guest Post by Mike Shedlock

 

Defense Dept. to Request $30-40 Billion a Year to Fight ISIS; History Lessons

Anyone recall how the war in Iraq would pay for itself? That was the US Defense Department estimate in 2003.

Now some $3 trillion later (add in veterans’ benefits, depreciation of equipment, humanitarian aid, covert action, and paying for the military efforts of our coalition ‘partners’ and the Total Cost of Iraq, Afghan Wars is $4-6 Trillion.

Come Hell or High Water

That $4 to $6 trillion Iraq, Afghan cost projection was made in 2013. That estimate assumed the costs would be winding down now. They won’t.

On September 30, 2014 Vice President Joe Biden’s pledge to get out of Afghanistan “come hell or high water by 2014” came to an abrupt halt when President Obama agreed to a deal to leave US troops in the country until 2024 “at least“.

For details and an assessment of that announcement, please see “Come Hell or High Water” Promise Morphs Into “Infinity and Beyond”.

How Much Will Fighting ISIS Cost?

Boston Globe writer Linda J. Bilmes asks Fighting the Islamic State — how much will it cost?.

President Obama and his military top brass have pronounced that the effort to defeat the Islamic State will be “long” — translation: expensive. The Pentagon has admitted to spending over $1 billion so far, with the current pace running at some $10 million per day. Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments believes the annual bill for military operations will range from $4 billion to $22 billion, depending on duration, scope, and the extent to which ground forces get involved — which is becoming increasingly likely. Obama has ruled out sending troops, but it is clear the Pentagon has not given up on boots on the ground — they just may not be worn entirely by Americans.

Twelve months ago, the wartime culture of “endless money,” as former Defense Secretary Robert Gates dubbed it, with its endless “emergency” funding from Congress (nearly $2 trillion in more than 30 special funding bills) — was finally coming to an end. The Beltway was filled with talk of belt-tightening at the Department of Defense, including a 10-year $497-billion cut imposed by the so-called sequester. The Pentagon was proposing to shrink the size of the armed forces, trim military compensation and benefits, and mothball expensive weapons and military installations left over from the Cold War.

But now that’s all so-last-fiscal-year. The new trend is ramping up Pentagon spending. At their press conference last week, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declared that they don’t have enough funding to conduct the operation against the Islamic State.

In addition, Congress is refusing to let the Pentagon make even modest changes to its current base benefit plan. This will surely encourage the department to ask for another blank check to pay for new operations. Requests are already mounting.

The combined cost of abandoning planned cutbacks at the Defense Department, new spending to combat the Islamic State, and extra foreign military assistance means that America will wind up spending up to $100 billion more on military activities than we had expected this year alone.

Washington assumes that we will simply borrow whatever is needed — and continue to pass the cost of today’s wars onto future generations. This feckless approach has already led to much higher national debt, as well as rampant waste and corruption in our military appropriations.

Financing the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts with debt has hidden the true costs from public view. President Obama has just asked Americans to embark on another decade-long military engagement. He needs to propose a strategy for how it should be paid for, and what sacrifices will be required.

$100 Billion More Than Expected Already This Year Alone

Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments believes the bill will “range from $4 billion to $22 billion” annually, even though we are going to spend $100 billion more this year on defense than expected.

How’s that work? I’ll tell you how: Money is pooled into an “Overseas Contingency Operation” slush fund and spent as the department wants. Moreover, veterans’ benefits, medical treatment and numerous other war costs don’t show up in any war-related buckets.

New U.S. Price Tag for the War Against ISIS: $40 Billion a Year

In a 100% guaranteed to be underestimated cost analysis, the Fiscal Times reports New U.S. Price Tag for the War Against ISIS: $40 Billion a Year.

With the war against ISIS off to a rocky start, there are signs that the Obama administration is getting ready to up the ante substantially on weaponry, manpower and aid to allies – at a cost of an additional $3o billion to $40 billion a year.

Earlier, Gordon Adams, a military analyst at American University, told The Fiscal Times that the mission to stop ISIS will cost $15 billion to $20 billion annually, based on his “back of the envelope” calculations. Other analysts have made similar forecasts. But based on soundings of the defense establishment, Adams said Thursday that the Defense Department would almost certainly request funding of twice that level later this year.

“I have consummate faith that they can get to $30 billion to $40 billion a year without breaking a sweat,” he added.

The estimated $30 billion to $40 billion of new spending would come on top of the Pentagon’s $496 billion fiscal 2015 operating budget for personnel and contractors and the roughly $58.6 billion in an “Overseas Contingency Operation” fund that is used to finance U.S. war operations in the Middle East.

The OCO, as it is known, has paid for the protracted U.S. military engagement in the Middle East with borrowing that adds to the long-term U.S. debt. If Adams’ projections are correct, then the OCO would total as much as $80 billion to $90 billion in the coming year.

However, House Speaker John Boehner and other congressional Republican leaders are skeptical that Obama’s strategy can work without substantially more resources – including more ground troops.

Iraq War: Predictions Made, and Results

Let’s take a look at previous predictions, when they were made, and how accurate they were, starting with a Christian Science Monitor report Iraq War: Predictions Made, and Results.

Ahead of and shortly after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, a number of officials, including former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz suggested the war could be done on the cheap and that it would largely pay for itself. In October 2003, Rumsfeld told a press conference about President Bush’s request for $21 billion for Iraq and Afghan reconstruction that “the $20 billion the president requested is not intended to cover all of Iraq’s needs. The bulk of the funds for Iraq’s reconstruction will come from Iraqis — from oil revenues, recovered assets, international trade, direct foreign investment, as well as some contributions we’ve already received and hope to receive from the international community.”

In March 2003, Mr. Wolfowitz told Congress that “we’re really dealing with a country that could finance its own reconstruction.” In April 2003, the Pentagon said the war would cost about $2 billion a month, and in July of that year Rumsfeld increased that estimate to $4 billion.

I believe we all know how that turned out.

Lost Cause

On July 24, 2010 I wrote Afghanistan is a “Lost Cause”; Leaked Documents Show Futility of Afghanistan War

The questions on my mind are: How many trillions of dollars do we have to spend, how many lives need to be wasted, and how much longer are we going to be involved in the boondoggle known as Afghanistan?

The total amount of the waste and lives lost is unknown, but we now have an answer to my 2010 question: “how much longer are we going to be involved in the boondoggle known as Afghanistan?“.

The unfortunate answer is “until 2024 at least“.

How much will fighting ISIS it really cost? No one can answer that now, but a safe starting point for discussion is somewhere between 10 and 100 times initial projections.

Time for Self Assessment

In Iraq Splinters Into Pieces, Al Qaeda in Control of Several Cities, Kurds Take Oil City Kirkuk; Thank George Bush and the Neocons; Iraq Before and After I held the Bush Administration largely responsible for this mess.

Sure, president Obama made many mistakes but the initial, most damning mistake was the Iraq invasion and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

In a follow-up post, Assessing the Blame for Iraq: Bush, Obama, McCain, Others; Iraq Sunken Costs I asked for self-assessment.

Time for Self Assessment

I can and do blame Obama for countless things. But Republicans would be very wise to self-assess on Iraq, on nation building, and on warmongering in general.

Instead of self-assessment, warmongers want more war.

Deficit-Hawk Hypocrites

As is always the case, John McCain leads the war rally cry in the Senate.  In the House, Speaker John Boehner Says U.S. may have ‘no choice’ on combat troops.

Not once have these Republican deficit-hawk hypocrites said how they propose to pay for this. Not once has McCain ever placed the blame for ISIS where it belongs.

ISIS a U.S. Creation

ISIS is 100% a US creation. ISIS arose following inane US nation-building policies starting with the absurd belief the “Iraq war would pay for itself.

This self-made mess produced Strange Bedfellows: To Fight ISIS, US Now Supports Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Other Terror Groups.

I concluded “Strange Bedfellows” with a warning “Just remember … To make matters worse, you have to begin somewhere.”

History Lesson

I conclude this post with another history lesson: “No mess is ever so big that it cannot be made worse by throwing more money at it.”

Mike “Mish” Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Read more at http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2014/10/defense-dept-to-request-30-40-billion.html#LysFD3iEcecQxF6f.99

VICTORIA NULAND IS A CHENEY NEO-CON

Guest Post by David Warsh

TWO VIEWS OF RUSSIA

Perhaps the single most intriguing mystery of the Ukrainian crisis has to do with how the Foreign Service officer who served as deputy national security advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney for two years, starting on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, became the Obama administration’s point person on Russia in 2014. Victoria Nuland took office as Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs a year ago this week. She became the “driving force” within the administration to take a tough line against Russia, according to Geoff Dyer of the Financial Times.

It was Nuland who in February was secretly taped, probably by the Russians, saying “F— the EU” for dragging its feet in supporting Ukrainian demonstrators seeking to displace its democratically-elected pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych, two months after he rejected a trade agreement with the European Union in favor of one with Russia. She made a well-publicized trip to pass out food in the rebels’ encampment on Kiev’s Maidan Square in the days before Yanukovych fled to Moscow.

When Russian President Vladimir Putin said the other day, “Our Western partners, with the support of fairly radically inclined and nationalist-leaning groups, carried out a coup d’état [in Ukraine]. No matter what anyone says, we all understand what happened. There are no fools among us. We all saw the symbolic pies handed out on the Maidan,” Nuland is the pie-giver he had in mind

Before she was nominated to her current job, Nuland was State Department spokesperson under Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton during the Congressional firestorm over the attack on the diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya.

So how did the Obama administration manage to get her confirmed – on a voice vote with no debate?  The short answer is that she was stoutly defended by New York Times columnist David Brooks and warmly endorsed by two prominent Republican senators, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John McCain of Arizona.

Clearly Nuland stands on one side of a major fault-line in the shifting, often-confusing tectonic plates of US politics.

A good deal of light was shed on that divide by John Mearsheimer, of the University of Chicago, in an essay earlier this month in Foreign Affairs.  In “Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault,” Mearsheimer described the US ambitions to move Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit via expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as the taproot of the crisis.  Only after Yanukovych fled Ukraine did Putin move to annex the Crimean peninsula, with its longstanding Russian naval base.

Putin’s actions should be easy to comprehend. A huge expanse of flat land that Napoleonic France, imperial Germany, and Nazi Germany all crossed to strike at Russia itself, Ukraine serves as a buffer state of enormous strategic importance to Russia. No Russian leader would tolerate a military alliance that was Moscow’s mortal enemy until recently moving into Ukraine. Nor would any Russian leader stand idly by while the West helped install a government there that was determined to integrate Ukraine into the West.

Washington may not like Moscow’s position, but it should understand the logic behind it. This is Geopolitics 101: great powers are always sensitive to potential threats near their home territory. After all, the United States does not tolerate distant great powers deploying military forces anywhere in the Western Hemisphere, much less on its borders. Imagine the outrage in Washington if China built an impressive military alliance and tried to include Canada and Mexico in it. Logic aside, Russian leaders have told their Western counterparts on many occasions that they consider NATO expansion into Georgia and Ukraine unacceptable, along with any effort to turn those countries against Russia — a message that the 2008 Russian-Georgian war also made crystal clear.

Why does official Washington think any different? (It’s not just the Obama administration, but much of Congress as well.)  Mearsheimer delineates a “liberal” view of geopolitics that emerged at the end of the Cold War, as opposed to a more traditional “realist” stance.  He writes,

As the Cold War came to a close, Soviet leaders preferred that U.S. forces remain in Europe and NATO stay intact, an arrangement they thought would keep a reunified Germany pacified. But they and their Russian successors did not want NATO to grow any larger and assumed that Western diplomats understood their concerns. The Clinton administration evidently thought otherwise, and in the mid-1990s, it began pushing for NATO to expand.

The first round of NATO expansion took place in 1999, and brought the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland into the treaty. A second round in 2004 incorporated Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.  None but the tiny Baltic Republics shared a border with Russia. But in 2008, in a meeting in Bucharest, the Bush administration proposed adding Georgia and Ukraine.  France and Germany demurred, but the communique in the end flatly declared, “These countries will become members of NATO.”  This time Putin issued a clear rejoinder – a five-day war in 2008 which short-circuited Georgia’s application (though Georgia apparently continues to hope).

The program of enlargement originated with key members of the Clinton  administration, according to Mearsheimer.

 They believed that the end of the Cold War had fundamentally transformed international politics and that a new, post-national order had replaced the realist logic that used to govern Europe. The United States was not only the “indispensable nation,” as Secretary of State Madeleine Albright put it; it was also a benign hegemon and thus unlikely to be viewed as a threat in Moscow. The aim, in essence, was to make the entire continent look like Western Europe.

In contrast, the realists who opposed expansion did so in the belief that Russia had voluntarily joined the world trading system and was no longer much of a threat to European peace. A declining great power with an aging population and a one-dimensional economy did not, they felt, need to be contained.

And they feared that enlargement would only give Moscow an incentive to cause trouble in Eastern Europe. The U.S. diplomat George Kennan articulated this perspective in a 1998 interview, shortly after the U.S. Senate approved the first round of NATO expansion. “I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies,” he said. “I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anyone else.”

Policies devised in one administration have a way of hardening into boilerplate when embraced by the next. So thoroughly have liberals come to dominate discourse about European security that even the short war with Georgia has done little to bring realists back into the conversation. The February ouster of Yanukovych is either cited as the will of a sovereign people yearning to be free or, more frequently, simply ignored altogether.

The liberal worldview is now accepted dogma among U.S. officials. In March, for example, President Barack Obama delivered a speech about Ukraine in which he talked repeatedly about “the ideals” that motivate Western policy and how those ideals “have often been threatened by an older, more traditional view of power.” Secretary of State John Kerry’s response to the Crimea crisis reflected this same perspective: “You just don’t in the twenty-first century behave in nineteenth-century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped-up pretext.”

Nuland was present at the creation of the liberal view. She served for two years in the Moscow embassy, starting in 1991; by 1993 she was chief of staff to Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott. She directed a study on NATO enlargement for the Council on Foreign Relations in 1996, and spent three more years at State as deputy director for Former Soviet Union Affairs.

After a couple of years on the beach at the Council on Foreign Relations, President George W. Bush named her deputy ambassador to NATO in Brussels, in 2001. She returned to Brussels in the top job after her service to Cheney. When Obama was elected, she cooled her heels as special envoy to the Talks on Conventional Forces in Europe for two years until Clinton elevated her to spokesperson. Secretary of State John Kerry promoted her last year.

It seems fair to say that Putin has trumped Obama at every turn in the maneuvering over Ukraine – including last week, when the Russian president concluded a truce with the humbled Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko while leaders of the NATO nations fumed ineffectively at their annual summit, this year in Wales. Never mind the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, China, Israel. Even in Europe, the president’s foreign policy is in tatters.

Backing away from the liberal view is clearly going to be costly for some future presidential aspirant. The alternative is to maintain the expensive fiction of a new Cold War.

McCAIN, GRAHAM, KING – THE 3 STOOGES OF WAR

Via David Stockman’s Contra Corner

The GOP War Party’s Gone Hysterical Again: ISIS Can Be Handled Without US Military Intervention

by  • 

U.S. air strikes since Friday have opened a corridor through which tens of thousands of Yazidis, trapped and starving on a mountain in Iraq, have escaped to safety in Kurdistan.

The Kurds, whose peshmerga fighters were sent reeling by the Islamic State last week, bolstered now by the arrival of U.S. air power, recaptured two towns. But the peshmerga have apparently lost the strategically important town of Jalawla, 20 miles from Iran, the furthest east that ISIS forces have penetrated.

Last week’s gains by the Islamic State caused Republican hawks to flock to the Sunday talk shows.

“ISIS is a direct threat to the United States of America,” said Rep. Peter King. John McCain called for bombing ISIS in Syria and Iraq.

But using air power to prevent ISIS from seizing the Kurdish capital of Irbil and Baghdad is not enough, said Sen. Lindsey Graham. “We need to go on offense,” he told FOX News, “There is no force within the Mideast that can neutralize or contain or destroy ISIS without at least American air power.”

The Islamic State is “an existential threat” to our homeland, Graham added, asking, “do we really want to let America be attacked?”

Came then this warning from Sen. Graham:

“If he [Obama] does not go on the offensive against ISIS, ISIL, whatever you want to call these guys, they’re coming here. This is not just about Baghdad, not just about Syria. It is about our homeland.”

“I think of an American city in flames because of the terrorists’ ability to operate in Syria and Iraq,” said Graham, “Mr. President … what is your strategy to stop these people from attacking the homeland?”

This semi-hysterical talk of an “existential threat” to the “homeland,” and the dread specter of “an American city in flames” is vintage war party, designed to panic us into launching a new war.

But before allowing these “Cassandras” to stampede us back into the civil-sectarian Middle East wars that resulted from our previous interventions, let us inspect more closely what they are saying.

If ISIS’ gains are truly an “existential threat” to the republic and our cities are about to “go up in flames,” why did these Republican hawks not demand that President Obama call back Congress from its five-week vacation to vote to authorize a new war on ISIS in Syria and Iraq?

After all, King, McCain and Graham belong to a party that is suing the president for usurping Congressional powers. Yet, they are also demanding that Obama start bombing nations he has no authority to bomb, as ISIS has not attacked us.

King, McCain and Graham want Obama to play imperial president and launch a preemptive war that their own Congress has not authorized.

What kind of constitutionalists, what kind of conservatives are these?

Is Graham right that an “existential threat” is at hand? Is our very existence as a nation in peril? Graham says no force in the Mideast can stop ISIL without us. Is this true?

Turkey, a nation of 76 million, has the second-largest army in NATO, equipped with U.S. weapons, and an air force ISIL does not have.

If President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wanted to crush ISIS, he could seal his border to foreign fighters entering Syria and send the Turkish army to assist President Bashar Assad in annihilating ISIS in Syria.

The jihadists of the Islamic State may be more motivated, but they are hugely outnumbered and outgunned in the region.

The Syrian government and army, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Shia-dominated government of Iraq, a Shia Iran of 70 million, and the Kurds in Syria and Kurdistan are all anti-Islamic State and willing to fight.

All are potential allies in a coalition to contain or crush ISIS, as is Vladimir Putin’s Russia, if U.S. diplomacy were not frozen in the 1980s.

Only last August, McCain and Graham were attacking Obama for not enforcing his “red line” by bombing Syria’s army, the most successful anti-ISIL force in the field.

The threat of the Islamic State should not be minimized. It would provide a breeding and training ground for terrorists to attack us and the West. But it should not be wildly exaggerated to plunge us into a new war.

For wherever ISIS has won ground, it has, through atrocities and beheadings, imposition of Sharia law, and ruthless repression, alienated almost everyone, including al-Qaida.

Should ISIS succeed in holding northern Syria and western Iraq, who will recognize this caliphate? Who will trade with it? How will it hold the allegiance of peoples upon whom it is even now imposing terrorist rule?

The Sunni of Iraq are already chaffing against ISIS rule. How long will Turks, Syrians, Iraqis, Kurds and Iranians tolerate a Talibanized Islamic State right next door? And should ISIS attack the United States, we have more than sufficient means to retaliate, without sending in American troops.

Let Middle Easterners take the lead in fighting this newest Middle East war.

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of Churchill, Hitler, and “The Unnecessary War”: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World. To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at http://www.creators.com.

This is a syndicated repost courtesy of Antiwar.com Original. To view original, click here.

Another ‘Saigon’: US Evacuates From Libya

Another American foreign interventionist success story. I think John McCain should do a photo op in Libya to show our continued support for whoever the fuck is running that civil war racked country.
Written by Daniel McAdams via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace
Saigon Hubert Van EsOne month ago today, President Obama was congratulating Libya on a “milestone” election — even though the disintegration of the country after the 2011 US invasion was ongoing.

Said Obama in June:

I congratulate the Libyan people on the conclusion of the elections for a new Council of Representatives, a milestone in their courageous efforts to transition from four decades of dictatorship toward a full democracy.

Today, the US announced it has evacuated all US personnel from Libya. They piled into vehicles and escaped to Tunisia.

The only thing left behind was the hollow words of hollow State Department Spokeswoman Marie Harf:

Due to the ongoing violence resulting from clashes between Libyan militias in the immediate vicinity of the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, we have temporarily relocated all of our personnel out of Libya.. …We reiterate that Libyans must immediately cease hostilities and begin negotiations to resolve their grievances.

Nothing better demonstrates the enormous disconnect between Washington’s rhetoric and actual reality than this, an emergency evacuation of the entire US diplomatic and military presence in Libya just weeks after a “milestone” election and just over three years after a US/NATO attack that was to bring democracy and prosperity to the country.

As the US and NATO attacked Libya in March, 2011, President Obama addressed the American people to explain his decision to attack.

Gaddafi was killing his own people, Obama claimed. That was a lie. He was fighting the very insurgents whose ongoing violence has forced the United States to flee the country.

US intervention would stop the violence, Obama claimed. That was a lie.

“Qaddafi has not yet stepped down from power, and until he does, Libya will remain dangerous,” said Obama.

But Gaddafi was forced from power — sodomized and murdered by US allies in Libya. The country is more dangerous than ever. The US has been forced to evacuate.

Obama claimed that the US/NATO invasion would end the violence in Libya:

[W]e were faced with the prospect of violence on a horrific scale.  We had a unique ability to stop that violence:  an international mandate for action, a broad coalition prepared to join us, the support of Arab countries, and a plea for help from the Libyan people themselves.

That was a lie. The violence worsened.

America was exceptional, claimed Obama in his 2011 speech. That is why we had to invade Libya:

To brush aside America’s responsibility as a leader and -– more profoundly -– our responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances would have been a betrayal of who we are.  Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries.  The United States of America is different.

Libya was supposed to be the next “domino” in the fantasy of an “Arab Spring” pushed so hard by the US administration and its compliant media. Instead, Egypt is ruled by a US-backed dictator who overthrew an elected government and Libya is a completely destroyed no-go zone.

Reality caught up with Obama and the murderous rhetoric of the interventionists and neocons.

Moscow is next on their target list. Those in the US who push back against the lies designed to provoke a war with Russia are called “Putin’s best friend” and “Russian agents.” Just like they were called “Saddam’s best friend” and “Iraqi agents” just like they were called “Gaddafi’s best friend” and “Libyan agents.” The lies are the same, the results are always a disaster.

Will Americans notice what failures their leaders are? Will Americans demand an end to the disastrous interventions?

Let this sink in: three years after the US invasion of Libya that would “free” the country, the US has been forced to have a Saigon moment.

WE’RE #1

War – What’s it Good For?

Corporate Profits

Is the American Empire policing the world or inciting war around the globe?

Are Obama, McCain and the rest of the One Party politicians keeping the American people safe or putting the world in danger by proliferating weapons of destruction across the earth?

The proof is in the profit figures of the U.S. military industrial complex.

“WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small “inside” group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.”

Smedley Butler

DEBUNKING THE GUTTING OF MILITARY STORYLINE

“War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.” – General Smedley Butler – War is a Racket

I peruse a number of websites everyday as I look for interesting articles to post or reference in one of my articles. I agree with many conservative leaning websites when it comes to economic issues, but when it comes to war mongering and flag waving, I go my own way. Any site that supports our empire building and excessive spending on war is not a conservative website. You can’t act in a fiscally responsible sustainable manner without dismantling our war machine and taking on the military industrial complex. You’re a faux fiscal conservative if you think we can continue to spend $800 billion per year on war with no financial implications. The entire Federal budget was $800 billion in 1983.

The latest storyline being propagandized by Mad Dog McCain and his band of merry neo-cons is that Obama’s latest defense budget will gut our military and make us susceptible to attack from all of our enemies. The mainstream media mouthpieces like Fox News repeat these boldfaced lies without seeking facts or real data. The power of the military industrial complex is dangerous to our citizens. They have bought off Republicans and Democrats in Congress and they control journalists who get paid to write scary articles about the horrific budget cuts and danger to our nation. It’s all lies. Spineless corrupt politicians like Bush and Obama do and say whatever is necessary to win the most votes. Statesmen like Dwight D. Eisenhower stood up to the military industrial complex and their bought off lackeys in Congress.

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

Statesmen are like bald eagles around here – almost extinct.

The United States spends more per year on war than the next thirteen countries combined. That imminent attack by the Iranian navy may be overblown. Our generals blather about the threat from China, that spends 18% of our budget, and threat from Russia, that spends 7% of our budget. The mainstream media articles and fear mongering drivel from our corrupt bought off politicians are nothing but propaganda designed to keep the billions flowing to the arms peddlers like Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, Raytheon, Boeing, and the rest of the dealers of death. Politicians who have been bribed with decades of “political contributions” won’t even vote to get rid of weapons programs the military no longer wants.

It’s interesting how politicians are able to tell citizens they are only spending $520 billion per year on war when the true figure is $820 billion. Obama’s FY15 budget says we are going to spend $520 billion. He conveniently leaves out the cost of ongoing wars and the cost of past wars. We are still spending over $100 billion per year on our ongoing wars in Afghanistan, occupation in Iraq, and provocations in Libya and Syria. We are also providing military support of $50 billion to Egypt, Israel and dozens of other countries around the globe. Lastly, we spend over $150 billion per year on veterans of past wars. Our beloved leaders move that expense to another line item in the budget and pretend it is not a cost of war. The American people have short attention spans and once our wars of choice aren’t on the nightly news anymore they think it’s over. Tell that to the families of the 7,100 dead soldiers killed in our Middle East invasions, along with the 50,000 badly wounded servicemen, and the thousands more mentally damaged by the ordeal.  The cost of war goes on forever. Government obfuscation does not fool anyone with critical thinking skills.

The dogs of war – McCain and Graham,  along with hundreds of other war mongering pricks in Congress claim Obama is some pacifist attempting to dismantle our beloved military. These traitors of truth evidently can’t understand math or charts. Bush’s last war budget was $731 billion. The Iraq war has ceased and Obama is still spending $820 billion per year on war. Does it sound like the military is being gutted? Are we more in danger of being attacked by another country today than we were in 1999? That is the question that should be asked. They call it the DEFENSE budget because it is supposed to be used to defend us from attack, not to bully countries throughout the world and attack sovereign countries who are no threat to our security. Isn’t it convenient that the U.S. provoked overthrow of the democratically elected government of the Ukraine has initiated a new media created “Cold War”?

The country was sufficiently defended with a war budget of $333 billion in 1999. No one invaded us or threatened to invade. The Cold War was long over. The military industrial complex needed a 9/11 to revitalize their profits. The neo-con/military industrial complex created War on Terror has opened the door to never ending wars of choice around the world with no consent or approval from the people. War spending grew to $879 billion by 2011, a 164% increase in 13 years. Over this same time frame GDP grew by 74%. Does this sound like the military has been short changed? The fear mongering neo-cons and conservative websites are nothing but nattering nabobs of nonsense. Even the hint of slowing in spending on our empire building creates an urgency for a new evil enemy. Is it a coincidence that Vlad Putin has now emerged as an existential threat to our freedom and liberty according to the den of vipers in Congress, the military industrial complex, and the corporate media mouthpieces?

Even the dreaded sequester would have done nothing but slowed the rate of growth in war spending. You have to understand that a Federal government spending “cut” isn’t really a cut. It means the increase in spending you anticipated will be slightly lower. Of course, the one party system in Washington DC compromised and eliminated the sequester “cuts”. Those politicians need those “political contributions” to get re-elected in 2014. Defense spending will be far higher over the next decade, not including the inevitable wars of choice we are led into by our noble leaders. Putin must be stopped. Assad must be stopped. Iran must be stopped. China must be stopped. The world policeman must do his job and bankrupt the empire. War is highly profitable for peddlers of debt, corporate dealers of death, and the politicians getting bribed by Wall Street and the military industrial complex. The peasants who are sent off to die are nothing but cannon fodder for the power brokers of death, destruction and debt.

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The war mongers will continue to use propaganda and misinformation to convince you we are in danger if the war budget is cut by 2%. The truth is that we need to cut the military by 50%, stop trying to operate a world empire, and withdrawal our troops from Germany, Japan, and the dozens of other countries around the globe. We need to stop handing billions of dollars we don’t have to Israel, Egypt and dozens of other countries so they can buy arms from our arms dealers. We are the cause of all the war and violence in this world. The job of our military is to protect our borders, not to police the world. Hubris, arrogance, and overreach, financed by central bank created debt, is how empires die.

“As many frustrated Americans who have joined the Tea Party realize, we cannot stand against big government at home while supporting it abroad. We cannot talk about fiscal responsibility while spending trillions on occupying and bullying the rest of the world. We cannot talk about the budget deficit and spiraling domestic spending without looking at the costs of maintaining an American empire of more than 700 military bases in more than 120 foreign countries. We cannot pat ourselves on the back for cutting a few thousand dollars from a nature preserve or an inner-city swimming pool at home while turning a blind eye to a Pentagon budget that nearly equals those of the rest of the world combined.” – Ron Paul

Understand where they are spending your money:

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year_spending_20XXUSbn_XXbs2n_3031_051

WILL OBAMA MAN UP & CONFRONT WAR MONGERS LIKE McSHITSTAIN

Via David Stockman’s Contra Corner

On Obama’s Craven Obeisance To The War Party: Its Time To Man-Up Like Ike and JFK

by •

When it comes to national security policy there is only one way to describe the 2008 candidate of change you can believe in. Having achieved the first clear mandate for peace from the American people in 50 years, Barrack Obama promptly learned the Washington “pivot”—- beating his plowshares into an even mightier sword than the grizzly one he inherited from the “decider”.

Soon enough defense spending was rising to a historic peak, the spy-state was flourishing like never before and US drones rained destruction from the skies over more countries than even Dick Cheney had ever imagined. Meanwhile, Guantanamo remained open, another misbegotten surge was launched in Afghanistan and a whole new round of intervention and meddling was begun in Libya, Egypt, Somalia, Syria and Yemen, to name just a few.

But the worst part is that the peace candidate re-appointed the War Party to run his government—-Gates, Jones, Panetta, Blair, Clapper and countless more. So it is not surprising that five years have been wasted and that President Obama stumbles down the same calamitous path as his predecessors. In the insightful and historically rich essay below, Robert Parry essentially says enough is enough, and implores the President to man-up!

Won’t happen.

Can Obama Speak Strongly for Peace?

By Robert Parry

With the neocons again ascendant – and with the U.S. news media again failing to describe a foreign crisis honestly – Barack Obama faces perhaps the greatest challenge of his presidency, a moment when he needs to find the courage to correct a false narrative that his own administration has spun regarding Ukraine – and to explain why it’s crucial to cooperate with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the cause of world peace.

In other words, if Obama is to salvage his historical legacy, he must find within himself the strength and eloquence that President John F. Kennedy displayed in possibly his greatest oration, his June 10, 1963 address at American University in Washington, D.C. In that speech, Kennedy outlined the need to collaborate with Soviet leaders to avert dangerous confrontations, like the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

President Barack Obama, with Vice President Joe Biden, attends a meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Dec. 12, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

President Barack Obama, with Vice President Joe Biden, attends a meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Dec. 12, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Kennedy also declared that it was wrong for America to seek world domination, and he asserted that U.S. foreign policy must be guided by a respect for the understandable interests of adversaries as well as allies. Kennedy said:

“What kind of peace do I mean and what kind of a peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, and the kind that enables men and nations to grow, and to hope, and build a better life for their children — not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women, not merely peace in our time but peace in all time.”

Kennedy recognized that his appeal for this serious pursuit of peace would be dismissed by the cynics and the warmongers as unrealistic and even dangerous. The Cold War was near its peak when Kennedy spoke. But he was determined to change the frame of the foreign policy debate, away from the endless bravado of militarism:

“I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary, rational end of rational men. I realize the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war, and frequently the words of the pursuers fall on deaf ears. But we have no more urgent task. …

“Too many of us think it is impossible. Too many think it is unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable, that mankind is doomed, that we are gripped by forces we cannot control. We need not accept that view. Our problems are manmade; therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.”

And then, in arguably the most important words that he ever spoke, Kennedy said, “For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s futures. And we are all mortal.”

Kennedy followed up his AU speech with practical efforts to work with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to rein in dangers from nuclear weapons and to discuss other ways of reducing international tensions, initiatives that Khrushchev welcomed although many of the hopeful prospects were cut short by Kennedy’s assassination on Nov. 22, 1963.

Eisenhower’s Warning

Kennedy’s AU oration was, in many ways, a follow-up to what turned out to be President Dwight Eisenhower’s most famous speech, his farewell address of Jan. 17, 1961. That’s when Eisenhower ominously warned that “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex. … We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.”

Arguably no modern speeches by American presidents were as important as those two. Without the phony trumpets that often herald what are supposed to be “important” presidential addresses, Eisenhower’s stark warning and Kennedy’s humanistic appeal defined the challenges that Americans have faced in the more than half century since then.

Those two speeches, especially Eisenhower’s phrase “military-industrial complex” and Kennedy’s “we all inhabit this small planet,” resonate to the present because they were rare moments when presidents spoke truthfully to the American people.

Nearly all later “famous” remarks by presidents were either phony self-aggrandizement (Ronald Reagan’s “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall” – when the wall wasn’t torn down until George H.W. Bush was president and wasn’t torn down by Mikhail Gorbachev anyway but by the German people). Or they are unintentionally self-revealing (Richard Nixon’s “I am not a crook” or Bill Clinton’s “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”)

Obama has yet to leave behind any memorable quote, despite his undeniable eloquence. There are his slogans, like “hope and change” and some thoughtful speeches about race and income inequality, but nothing of the substance and the magnitude of Eisenhower’s “military-industrial complex” and Kennedy’s “we all inhabit this small planet.”

But now may be the time for Obama to deliver a speech that grapples with the central foreign policy question facing the United States, essentially whether America will continue seeking to be an Empire or return to being a Republic. Obama also needs to confront the crisis in the political/media worlds where propaganda holds sway and the public is misled.

If Obama doesn’t meet this challenge head on – and explain to the American people why he has sought (mostly behind the scenes) to work with Russian President Putin to reduce tensions over Syria and Iran – he can expect that the final years of his presidency will be overwhelmed by neocon demands that he start up a new Cold War.

Taunting Obama as Weak

On the op-ed page of Saturday’s New York Times, Sen. John McCain gave Obama a taste of what that will be like. The newspaper version of the op-ed was entitled “Obama Made America Look Weak” with a subhead saying, “Crimea is our chance to restore our country’s credibility.”

McCain, the neocon/hawkish Republican who lost to Obama in 2008, wrote: “Crimea has exposed the disturbing lack of realism that has characterized our foreign policy under President Obama. It is this worldview, or lack of one, that must change. For five years, Americans have been told that ‘the tide of war is receding,’ that we can pull back from the world at little cost to our interests and values. This has fed a perception that the United States is weak, and to people like Mr. Putin, weakness is provocative. …

“In Afghanistan and Iraq, [Obama’s] military decisions have appeared driven more by a desire to withdraw than to succeed. Defense budgets have been slashed based on hope, not strategy. Iran and China have bullied America’s allies at no discernible cost.”

McCain also restated the old narrative blaming the Syrian government for the Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack near Damascus, even though that case has largely collapsed. McCain wrote: “Perhaps worst of all, Bashar al-Assad crossed President Obama’s ‘red line’ by using chemical weapons in Syria, and nothing happened to him.”

The New York Times, which only grudgingly acknowledged its own erroneous reporting on the Syria CW incident, made no effort on Saturday to insist that McCain’s accusations were truthful, fitting with how major U.S. news organizations have performed as propaganda vehicles rather than serious journalistic entities in recent decades. [For more on the Syrian dispute, see Consortiumnews.com’s “The Mistaken Guns of Last August.”]

From McCain’s op-ed and other neocon writings, it’s also clear that the new goal is to go beyond Ukraine and use it as a lever to destabilize and topple Putin himself. McCain wrote: “Eventually, Russians will come for Mr. Putin in the same way and for the same reasons that Ukrainians came for Viktor F. Yanukovych. We must prepare for that day now.”

This plan for overthrowing Putin was expressed, too, by neocon Carl Gershman, the longtime president of the U.S.-funded National Endowment for Democracy, a more than $100 million-a-year slush fund that was founded in 1983 to provide financial support for groups organizing to destabilize governments that Official Washington considered troublesome.

In a Washington Post op-ed last September, Gershman wrote that “Ukraine is the biggest prize,” but added that once Ukraine was pried loose from a close association with Russia, the next target would be Putin, who “may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.”

If President Obama doesn’t actually believe that the United States should undertake the willful destabilization of nuclear-armed Russia, he might want to tell the American people before these matters get out of hand. He also should describe more honestly the events now overtaking Ukraine.

But it has been Obama’s custom to allow his administration’s foreign policy to be set by powerful “rivals” who often have profoundly different notions about what needs to be done in the world. Obama then tries to finesse their arguments, more like the moderator of an academic debate than President.

The best documented case of this pattern was how Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and General David Petraeus maneuvered Obama into what turned out to be a pointless “surge” in Afghanistan in 2009. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Robert Gates Double-Crosses Obama.”]

Kerry’s Double-Dealing

But Obama has been undercut, too, by his current Secretary of State John Kerry, who has behaved more like President John McCain’s top diplomat than President Obama’s. To the surprise of many Democratic friends, Kerry has chosen to take highly belligerent – and factually dubious – positions on Iran, Syria and now Ukraine.

For instance, on Aug. 30, 2013, Kerry delivered what sounded like a declaration of war against Syria over what Kerry falsely presented as clear-cut evidence that the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad had launched a major chemical weapons attack on Damascus suburbs. But Kerry never presented any actual evidence to support his charges, and subsequent investigations, including a scientific assessment on the limited range of the one Sarin-laden missile, undercut Kerry’s claims.

After Kerry’s bombastic speech, President Putin helped President Obama find a face-saving way out of the crisis by getting Assad to agree to eliminate his entire chemical weapons arsenal (though Assad continued denying any role in the attack). Last fall, Putin also assisted Obama in getting Iran to sign an agreement on limiting its nuclear program, though Kerry again nearly scuttled the deal.

As Obama quietly tried to build on his collaboration with Putin, Kerry’s State Department undercut the relationship once more when neocon holdover Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland stoked the crisis in Ukraine on Russia’s border.

Last December, Nuland, the wife of prominent neocon Robert Kagan, told a group of Ukrainian business leaders that the United States had invested $5 billion to promote the country’s “European aspirations.” She also personally encouraged anti-government protesters in Kiev by passing out cookies and discussed in an intercepted phone call who should serve in the new regime once President Yanukovych was gone.

Last month, when snipers opened fire and the violence killed both protesters and police, Kerry’s State Department was quick to point the finger of blame at the democratically elected President Yanukovych, although more recent evidence, including an intercepted call involving the Estonian foreign minister, suggests that elements of the opposition shot both protesters and police as a provocation.

Nevertheless, the State Department’s rush to judgment blaming Yanukovych and the gullible acceptance of this narrative by the mainstream U.S. news media created a storyline of “white-hat” protesters vs. a “black-hat” government, ignoring the many “brown shirts” of neo-Nazi militias who had moved to the front of the Kiev uprising.

As the crisis worsened, Putin, who was focused on the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, appears to have favored some compromise with the protesters, urging Yanukovych to sign an agreement with the opposition and European nations on Feb. 21 accepting a cutback in his powers and moving up elections that would have removed him from office constitutionally.

But Putin reportedly warned Yanukovych about another element of the deal in which Ukrainian police pulled back. That created an opening for the neo-Nazi militias to seize government buildings by force and to force Yanukovych to flee for his life. Under the watchful eye of these modern-day storm troopers – and with pro-Yanukovych officials facing physical threats – a rump parliament voted in lock step to go outside the constitution and remove Yanukovych from office. [For a thorough account of the uprising, see “The Ukrainian Pendulum” by Israeli journalist Israel Shamir.]

A Murky Reality

Despite the many violations of democratic and constitutional procedures, Kerry’s State Department immediately recognized the coup government as “legitimate,” as did the European Union. In reality, Ukraine had experienced a putsch which ousted the duly elected president whose political support had come from the east and south, whereas the Kiev protesters represented a minority of voters in the west.

Faced with a violent coup on its border, Russia continued to recognize Yanukovych as the legal president and to urge the reinstitution of the Feb. 21 agreement. But the West simply insisted that the coup regime was now the “legitimate” government and demanded that Russia accept the fait accompli.

Instead, Russia moved to protect ethnic Russians in Crimea and in the eastern Ukraine. That, in turn, brought charges from Kerry’s State Department about Russian “aggression” and threats that a secession vote by the people of Crimea (to leave Ukraine and rejoin Russia) was illegal.

What should now be obvious is that Secretary Kerry and his team have been operating with a self-serving and ever-changing set of rules as to what is legal and what isn’t, with the mainstream U.S. press tagging along, conveniently forgetting the many cases when the U.S. government has supported plebiscites on self-determination, including just recently Kosovo and South Sudan, or when the U.S. military has intervened in other countries, including wars supported by Sen. Kerry, such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and so forth.)

But another reason why the Ukraine crisis represents a make-or-break moment for Obama’ s presidency is that he is facing extraordinary attacks from neocons and Republicans accusing him of inviting “Russian aggression” by making deals with international adversaries, rather than making war against them.

So, if Obama hopes to continue cooperating with Putin in efforts to resolve disputes with Iran, Syria and elsewhere, he is going to have to explain bluntly to the American people the real choices they face: continued warfare and costly confrontations as advocated by McCain and the neocons or compromise in the cause of peace, even with difficult adversaries.

At this point, it looks as if Obama will again try to finesse the crisis in Ukraine, embracing Official Washington’s false narrative while perhaps holding back a bit on the retaliation against Russia. But that sort of timidity is what put Obama in the corner that he now finds himself.

If Obama hopes to give himself some real maneuvering room – and have a lasting influence on how the United States deals with the rest of the world – he finally has to speak truth to the American people. He finally has to find his voice as Eisenhower and Kennedy did.

[For more of Consortiumnews.com’s exclusive coverage of the Ukraine crisis, see “Neocons Have Weathered the Storm”; “Crimea’s Case for Leaving Ukraine”; “The ‘We-Hate-Putin’ Group Think”; “Putin or Kerry: Who’s Delusional?”; “America’s Staggering Hypocrisy”; “What Neocons Want from Ukraine Crisis”; “Ukraine: One ‘Regime Change’ Too Many?”; “A Shadow US Foreign Policy”; “Cheering a ‘Democratic’ Coup in Ukraine”; “Neocons and the Ukraine Coup.”]

NEW SURGE IN IRAQ

The neo-con numbskulls never give up. They have murdered thousands of American boys in their un-Constitutional invasions in the Middle East and efforts to rule the world. We’ve pissed away over $1.3 trillion on these worthless wars of choice in the last ten years. The true terrorists (Cheney, Wolfowitz, McCain, Bush, Rumsfeld, and now the drone murdering thug – Obama) failed in their Israel/Saudi Arabia propaganda effort to invade Syria. Israel and their captured politician hacks in Washington DC continue to push war with Iran.

You always hear about what a threat these countries are to us. What a fucking joke. Iraq, Libya, Syria and Iran are absolutely no threat to the United States. They do not have the capability or interest in attacking America. On the other hand, 15 of the 19 men who attacked us on 9/11 were Saudi Arabians. Who is the real threat?

Everyone remembers moron Bush landing on the aircraft carrier and declaring Mission Accomplished. How’s that working out now. Prior to 2003 oil was $25 per barrel. Al Qaeda did not exist in Iraq. Hussein, our ally against Iran from 1979 until 1990, hated bin Laden and all of the religious Muslim zealots. Now Al Qaeda has taken over Fallujah and is gaining strength in Iraq. What a neo-con success story.

There was no terrorism or bombings in Iraq prior to 2003. Almost 9,000 Iraqis died in 2013 in bombings. The cowardly American public freaked out and cowered in their basements when a couple idiots used some cookware to kill three people in Boston. These same American idiots barely look up from their iGadgets when told that 9,000 Iraqis have been blown up for no good reason. Are their lives worth less than the 3 people killed in Boston? Maybe Neil Diamond can sing a song in Baghdad to sooth the pain of Iraqis.

I’m sure idiots like McCain and Cheney think we should go back into Iraq and fix it again. Neo-cons are the dumbest, most dangerous creatures on earth. Ron Paul was right in 2003 and he is right today.

Submitted by Ron Paul
Remember Fallujah? Shortly after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the US military fired on unarmed protestors, killing as many as 20 and wounding dozens. In retaliation, local Iraqis attacked a convoy of US military contractors, killing four. The US then launched a full attack on Fallujah to regain control, which left perhaps 700 Iraqis dead and the city virtually destroyed.According to press reports last weekend, Fallujah is now under the control of al-Qaeda affiliates. The Anbar province, where Fallujah is located, is under siege by al-Qaeda. During the 2007 “surge,” more than 1,000 US troops were killed “pacifying” the Anbar province.  Although al-Qaeda was not in Iraq before the US invasion, it is now conducting its own surge in Anbar.For Iraq, the US “liberation” is proving far worse than the authoritarianism of Saddam Hussein, and it keeps getting worse. Last year was Iraq’s deadliest in five years. In 2013, fighting and bomb blasts claimed the lives of 7,818 civilians and 1,050 members of the security forces. In December alone nearly a thousand people were killed.I remember sitting through many hearings in the House International Relations Committee praising the “surge,” which we were told secured a US victory in Iraq. They also praised the so-called “Awakening,” which was really an agreement by insurgents to stop fighting in exchange for US dollars. I always wondered what would happen when those dollars stopped coming.Where are the surge and awakening cheerleaders now?

One of them, Richard Perle, was interviewed last year on NPR and asked whether the Iraq invasion that he pushed was worth it. He replied:

I’ve got to say I think that is not a reasonable question. What we did at the time was done in the belief that it was necessary to protect this nation. You can’t a decade later go back and say, well, we shouldn’t have done that.

Many of us were saying all along that we shouldn’t have done that – before we did it. Unfortunately the Bush Administration took the advice of the neocons pushing for war and promising it would be a “cakewalk.” We continue to see the results of that terrible mistake, and it is only getting worse.

Last month the US shipped nearly a hundred air-to-ground missiles to the Iraqi air force to help combat the surging al-Qaeda. Ironically, the same al-Qaeda groups the US is helping the Iraqis combat are benefiting from the US covert and overt war to overthrow Assad next door in Syria. Why can’t the US government learn from its mistakes?

The neocons may be on the run from their earlier positions on Iraq, but that does not mean they have given up. They were the ones pushing for an attack on Syria this summer. Thankfully they were not successful. They are now making every effort to derail President Obama’s efforts to negotiate with the Iranians. Just last week William Kristol urged Israel to attack Iran with the hope we would then get involved. Neoconservative Senators from both parties recently introduced the Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act of 2013, which would also bring us back on war-footing with Iran.

Next time the neocons tell us we must attack, just think “Iraq.”