Seymour Hersh article is now online ---->>>

The article's up - and very scary.




An earlier discussion is here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=5460751&mesg_id=5460751

and KO! Seymour Hersh needs to be all over the TV this week! This is damn scary! :hide:


...and, He really thinks he won in 2004!

<snip>

He continued, “We want to draw down our forces, but the President is prepared to tough this one out. There is a very deep feeling on his part that the issue of Iraq was settled by the American people at the polling places in 2004.” The war against the insurgency “may end up being a nasty and murderous civil war in Iraq, but we and our allies would still win,” he said. “As long as the Kurds and the Shiites stay on our side, we’re set to go. There’s no sense that the world is caving in. We’re in the middle of a seven-year slog in Iraq, and eighty per cent of the Iraqis are receptive to our message.”

Fantasy Land.

What can we do when the CINC has lost objectivity due to excessive reliance on faith?

Seems our Constitution was based on the idea that the President maintained his senses with judgment based on reason not faith.

The succession can be put in motion if the President is declared unable to perform his duty.

Not to say it is likely, but there is a provision that hinges on what might underly a president's inability to perform.

I was really looking forward to this. This oughta be good! :woohoo:

When I read the article all I could think was "VERY SCARY!" :hi:

reduce troop strength for the US midterm election (we are making progress) and remove all ground "combat" forces by the presidential election (mission accomplished, again).

Minimizing the political importance of the war seems to be where we the GOP is headed.

and economic sanctions that hit innocents especially hard, with not a peep out of the American people--maybe largely because of the handling of it all by the war profiteering corporate news monopolies--but, anyway, the precedent is there. Antiseptic killing by distant bomber pilots, and other forms of assault, can safely be ignored and kept out of "the news," if ground troops are not involved.

I hadn't thought of our bombing capability. I was wondering what the Cartel's plan was (which I am beginning to suspect that Murtha was a shill for)--and it's getting clearer. Get the oil, via ironclad contracts with unjust terms (that the savvy Sunnis would never agree to) from the Kurds and the Shias. Bomb any village or neighborhood that the Kurds and the Shias want bombed. Let the Kurds and Shias gang up on the more educated and westernized Sunnis (who have already been cut out of the oil deal), and wipe them out. And the Kurds and the Shias will be safe (from us) as long as they don't nationalize their oil. Iraq was so impoverished by the UN sanctions that, for a while, ordinary Kurds and Shias may be content with slight improvements. If Iraq follows the model of other western-created Arab states, whatever wealth the Cartel permits them to have will soon be concentrated in a few hands and new dictators will arise--just the sort of government that the Bush Cartel prefers to deal with.

Bush's religious beliefs are not a concern to me. He is not in charge. He is being handled by people who know how to feed him delusions of grandeur, and utilize his simple, primitive thought processes, to control him--and how to prop him up, and drug him or whatever they do, to enable him to speak his lines. I think he is a bully and a war criminal, but only dimly aware of the details of his own and his junta's crimes--they can't trust him with the details--and I think that his religious beliefs are completely irrelevant to what is happening. Massive thievery is what is happening--and also, the complete subversion of the U.S. Constitution, and the destruction of our democracy.

Bush is an empty suit, a prop. That's the scary part--that our government is being run by a cabal of rightwing, fascist, corporate war profiteers that have NO beliefs in anything and no loyalty to us or desire for the common good. They are thieves and looters. And, in Bush, they found someone whom they could install and use of their puppet. His alcoholism and religion--and stunted personality, and limited intelligence--made him an easy tool.

I think the Neo-cons and PNAC-ers are also largely window-dressing. I don't think the real powers in this cabal have any interest in governing, or creating or running an Empire. That takes some skill and some thought for the long term, and indeed, some loyalty. Everything they do speaks of chaos and looting. They are not into creating anything, not even a fascist state. Our government, for them, is just a sham--a way for rich men to get richer. It gives them an aura of legitimacy which they would discard in a minute if it suited them. They have absolutely no belief in its principles.

This may be small comfort, but they are not Nazis. They are looters. The Nazis turned a ruined country into a great industrial machine, capable of achieving their evil dreams of racial purity and a Nordic empire. The Bush cabal is doing just the opposite--it is ruining a once sound country, and squeezing it of every last dime, and haven't convinced anybody of anything. (58% of the American people opposed the Iraq war before the invasion. Feb. '03. And continue to oppose it, even moreso today. 63% of the American people oppose torture "under any circumstances." May '04. Look at the issue polls and other opinion polls! Most people hate Bush and all of his policies, and, if Diebold and ES&S hadn't intervened, he and his cabal would have been ousted in 2004.)

Our difficulty is that we have misdiagnosed the problem. We thought we could get rid of the inept Mr. Bush. Not so. They fiddled the vote with their new electronic voting systems, with its 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned by Bushite corporations. Most of us didn't have a clue that it was not this one man and his bluster and his stupidity that was the problem, but rather a cabal so powerful that it could gain control of the election system, and dictate our leaders forevermore--and insult us with this dimwit, and degrade our idea of democracy, and depress and disempower us.

So I don't think it's good to dwell on Bush, as a personality. We need to widen the lens, to Cheney, Rumsfeld, Libby, Bolton, Rice, Rove and others, and to unseen persons (heads of Diebold, ES&S, Halliburton, Bechtel, etc.), to fathom how this cabal operates, and work on a strategy for defeating it, and for restoring our democracy and getting our country back.

And let's hope that it will be a better country than we had before, and one that is less vulnerable to corporate takeover and fascist coups.

you're right: we need to keep the focus on the men in the shadows, not their storefront mannequin.

A few months ago, I was looking at a globe of the world. I twirled it a little bit, looked at Europe. Then I twirled it back and looked at the United States.

What a huge country it is, I thought. An enormous continent, filled with natural resources. Then, I looked closely at the eastern side of the country. I couldn't believe that a small group of people could hijack this enormous country, and drive it into the ground.

Just couldn't wrap my mind around that. I had to walk away from the globe and think about it for a while.

God help us all, is all I can say.

Must go to bed -- but I'm glad I was awake to catch the article by Hersh.

Hekate

The unimbedded reporters in Afganistan and Iraq working for Aljazeera have been targeted for killing by the U.S. military. Bush's hatred for unimbedded news coverage is Fascist.

law in a dozen ways by carrying out an aggressive war against Iraq, and creating the conditions for a nearly certain "ethnic cleansing" and extermination of the Sunnis to follow.

The UN might as well empanel the judges and staff for a Genocide Convention tribunal right now, as many members of the Bush Administration and those in government, military and the media who have aided and supported their criminal scheme are going to trial.

immediate change to his maddness. These villans are doing horrendous deeds in our name! It makes me sick!

of what's been done: their only mantra is stay the course, whatever the hell that means.

I don't know what we'd do without his informed and wise voice...:shrug:

This whole article explains in polite journalese that The Bush Admin is collectively insane.

We have to get these maniacs out of office.

“Johnson knew he was a prisoner in the White House,” the former official said, “but Bush has no idea.”

He's the most hated man in the world and he has no idea.

I hope you guys all have disaster kits and a plan.

up on water lately. Haven't started shooting lessons or obtained a gun, but this NE, life-long liberal dem. has started looking at the govt. very differently lately and these ideas look different than ever before...

was actually funny. I'd put something in the Amazon shopping cart, then take it out, replace it with the next most benign thing, take that out!

But, we're stocked for a two week period of sheltering or for two days of travel with all the animals. I've got a first aid kit that would supply a small M.A.S.H. unit. The next step is organizing the block and another lady in the hood is going to help with that.

I dread the next big one here at the end of the world but I dread Cheney/Rumsfeld more.

weapon purchase if I ever got that far...

But it really is getting frightening to think that I'd even consider it.

From the Hersh article..

Meanwhile, as the debate over troop reductions continues, the covert war in Iraq has expanded in recent months to Syria. A composite American Special Forces team, known as an S.M.U., for “special-mission unit,” has been ordered, under stringent cover, to target suspected supporters of the Iraqi insurgency across the border. (The Pentagon had no comment.) “It’s a powder keg,” the Pentagon consultant said of the tactic. “But, if we hit an insurgent network in Iraq without hitting the guys in Syria who are part of it, the guys in Syria would get away. When you’re fighting an insurgency, you have to strike everywhere—and at once.”

Not good. :nuke:

Thanks for posting that Stepanie.

From the article:

... Four decades ago, President Lyndon Johnson, who was also confronted with an increasingly unpopular war, was limited to similar public forums. “Johnson knew he was a prisoner in the White House,” the former official said, “but Bush has no idea.”

Unfortunately, Bush has no idea about anything; not just that he's a prisoner in the White House.

The scariest part of the article is the decision to go to an air war, apparently against the advice of the military;and the likelihood of the disastrous failure of this air war.

It sounds like the promised withdrawal of ground troops is only going to get us in deeper, while most of the media will trumpet it as the beginning of withdrawal and a mark of our success.

It will be a complete disaster, the bombings will only aid the insurgent movements and recruitment will be unstopable.

It is like Randi Rhodes said last year - Cheney is the Real President, Bush is just the traveling road show.

IS this administration determined to replicate Vietnam, play-by-play?

Now the solution to the troop withdrawal is... to indiscriminately bomb Iraqis to smithereens. Nice going. Well, let's not forget that Rummy and Cheney were officials at the Nixon administration. Old dogs, new tricks, and all that.

:shrug:

their glory. So I have no doubt they are following the Vietnam plan to the letter, if only to prove they aren't the failures everyone else on the planet knows them to be.

in Fayetteville, AR, 8PM. Tickets are free at WAC or the University Student Union.

I have my tickets and hope he speaks about this tonight!

...that “he’s the man,” the former official said.

Why does that make me think that THIS is what Bush sees visions of?

:hi:

I've often thought that the high level government cooperation in promoting the Lone Assassin fairy tale re John Kennedy was based on a "secret theory" being proffered inside government: Kennedy was killed by Castro & the USSR in retaliation for Kennedy's attempts to off Castro. Since he "had it coming", there was no sense in starting WWIII over it, so they fed the public a line for the good of world peace.

This "Bush is a religious nut" talk strikes me as a similar story. Insiders can shake their heads and cluck their tongues, but, after all, the religious voters put a religious President in power, so... :eyes:

was a referendum on the war. Good grief, somebody please tell him what's going on.

We have a delusional wacko for a CIC, a buncha' greedy sociopaths defining US policy, and criminal barbarians appearing to engage in religious cleansing.

I feel ill. :puke:

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/geted.pl5?eo20050520a1.htm

B*sh's madness and vision as democracy-bearing, heaven-sent Crusader brings to mind the folly of Don Quixote and his battle with windmills.


Bush's wars in the name of democracy should be taken as seriously as Don Quixote's battles against windmills; both are fictional and silly. While there is indeed a growing desire for freedom and democracy in the Middle East, this popular yearning is independent of the U.S. government's political agenda and military designs. In fact, Bush's increasing identification with prodemocracy movements in the region strips democracy advocates of badly needed credibility and classifies them as simply "pro-American," a euphemism for disloyalty

There is something very, very wrong with this picture

We would have all been annihilated in the curban missile crisis. No wonder the judgment coming out of the WH the past 6 years has been so
god awful (ironic as the CIC thinks he's god's chosen one).

and He must also hate his own Creation, judging by Mad King George's attitude towards global warming and environmental devastation.

Jeebus, what an arrogant ass.

.....Bush’s closest advisers have long been aware of the religious nature of his policy commitments. In recent interviews, one former senior official, who served in Bush’s first term, spoke extensively about the connection between the President’s religious faith and his view of the war in Iraq. After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the former official said, he was told that Bush felt that “God put me here” to deal with the war on terror. The President’s belief was fortified by the Republican sweep in the 2002 congressional elections; Bush saw the victory as a purposeful message from God that “he’s the man,” the former official said. Publicly, Bush depicted his reëlection as a referendum on the war; privately, he spoke of it as another manifestation of divine purpose.

hehe he

Bush felt that “God put me here” to deal with the war on terror...a purposeful message from God...manifestation of divine purpose

Please try to keep your war south of 54-40.

Unbelievable, who does the chimp think he is, Samuel the Prophet? But , unfortunately this kind of thing is gaining ground all over....
check this out .... http://www.therightbrothers.com/index2.php
download the song, its hilarious, but is it a parody, or is it serious?

God put him here? Sure, pass the blame on to a deity that may or may not exist.

I will believe they are pulling out of Iraq when it actually happens. I still believe that PNAC will have their way in the Middle East as far as control goes.

And why are a majority of the Iraqi troops not yet trained? I was deemed combat-ready after 9 weeks of basic training. Is there something I am missing?

Great article!

Kicked and Nominated!

:kick:

Check out Air America!

The President’s belief was fortified by the Republican sweep in the 2002 congressional elections; Bush saw the victory as a purposeful message from God that “he’s the man,” the former official said. Publicly, Bush depicted his reëlection as a referendum on the war; privately, he spoke of it as another manifestation of divine purpose.

Divine purpose works both ways, Georgie.

Scary sheeeeet. How credible is the author?

Dap

A key element of the drawdown plans, not mentioned in the President’s public statements, is that the departing American troops will be replaced by American airpower. Quick, deadly strikes by U.S. warplanes are seen as a way to improve dramatically the combat capability of even the weakest Iraqi combat units. The danger, military experts have told me, is that, while the number of American casualties would decrease as ground troops are withdrawn, the over-all level of violence and the number of Iraqi fatalities would increase unless there are stringent controls over who bombs what.

This passage makes him unfit to command:

“The President is more determined than ever to stay the course,” the former defense official said. “He doesn’t feel any pain. Bush is a believer in the adage ‘People may suffer and die, but the Church advances.’ ” He said that the President had become more detached, leaving more issues to Karl Rove and Vice-President Cheney. “They keep him in the gray world of religious idealism, where he wants to be anyway,” the former defense official said. Bush’s public appearances, for example, are generally scheduled in front of friendly audiences, most often at military bases. Four decades ago, President Lyndon Johnson, who was also confronted with an increasingly unpopular war, was limited to similar public forums. “Johnson knew he was a prisoner in the White House,” the former official said, “but Bush has no idea.”

Any President that puts religion ahead of his soldiers - who do the fighting and dying - is unfit for command. Enough is enough.

To take down the Republican party. See? There is a divine plan

Does Bush think Diebold is Gawd?

Edit: We can't pull out until we get whatever it was that Dick Cheney and the neocons HAD TO HAVE, when they invaded Iraq!

Fraud Traced to the White House

How California’s energy scam was inextricably
linked to a war for oil scheme

http://www.yuricareport.com/PoliticalAnalysis/FraudinWhiteHouse.htm

People who ignore REALITY and are pResident, are totally full of shit!

Can't get over how few DUers tune into the 400 radio stations that broadcast Amy Goodman's "Democracy Now".

And people say this isn't turning into another Vietnam. We have some of the same players running the show then (or at least involved at some level) doing the same thing now. They think they've learned over the years but, instead, they've only become just more delusional and arrogant in their ideology. They don't care about the Iraqis anymore than a crackhead cares about anything other than getting the next fix.

But, it's good to know the policy wonks of PNAC and WINEP are pushing the US foreign policy and will try to put the US military (the Air Force) under the control of the Iraqis!

What was that baseless criticism leveled at Kerry during the campaign? Oh, that our military would be under UN control. Hmm...now, who's trying to subjugate our military? Doesn't appear to be the Democrats, does it?