Yellow Dog

Some sort of sick self-fulfilling prophecy:

From the Washington Post:

"Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for the next generation of 'professionalized' terrorists, according to a report released yesterday by the National Intelligence Council, the CIA director's think tank.

"At the moment," NIC Chairman Robert L. Hutchings said, Iraq "is a magnet for international terrorist activity."

Before the U.S. invasion, the CIA said Saddam Hussein had only circumstantial ties with several al Qaeda members. Osama bin Laden rejected the idea of forming an alliance with Hussein and viewed him as an enemy of the jihadist movement because the Iraqi leader rejected radical Islamic ideals and ran a secular government.

Iraq New Terror Breeding Ground (washingtonpost.com)

In today's New York Times:

To the Editor:

I am a Vietnam infantry veteran. I recently woke up to the reality of being a pawn.

War is not glorious. If it were, the children of our leaders would be there.

War does not bring peace. If it did, after all these thousands of years, we would live in a peaceful world.

At best, war is the failure of leaders to solve problems. At worst, war is a vast money-generating machine that has no regard for life.

The military does what it is told to do by politicians. The only protection it has is "we the people."

Let's protect our troops. Our politicians have failed.

Arnold Stieber
Grass Lake, Mich.

This letter is especially meaningful in light of the recent news bulletin that no weapons of mass destruction, the justification of our war in Iraq, were found:

"What all our loss and pain and expense in the Iraqi invasion has actually proved is that the weapons inspections worked, that international sanctions - deeply, deeply messy as they turned out to be - worked, and that in the case of Saddam Hussein, the United Nations worked. Whatever the Hussein regime once had is gone because the international community insisted. It was all destroyed a decade ago, under world pressure.

This is not a lesson that many people in power in Washington are prepared to carry away, but it is what the national adventure in the reckless doctrine of preventive warfare has to teach us.

Bush lied. Our soldiers died.

TJan. 10, 2005The New York Times > Opinion > Editorial: Bulletin: No W.M.D. Found

This article by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is a breath of fresh air, which is what we need amidst Bush's dangerous environmental policies, which stink. In fact, in another AP newsstory today, it was reported that the debate about perchlorate contamination in drinking water is getting more heated as environmentalists object to a report claiming the widespread toxin is far less dangerous than was thought; this report downplaying the amount of toxins in our drinking water was heavily influenced by the Bush administration. Clean drinking water--who needs it? And to think that RFK could have been Kerry's pick as head of the EPA. We all lost there, and not just Democrats, but pretty much anyone who drinks water and wants it to be free of poisonous toxins. Thanks again, Bush voters!

Here's RFK:

"All indications are that Bush's second term will proceed as the first with respect to energy, the environment and efforts to auction off our natural landscapes at fire-sale prices. And they won't wait for Inauguration Day to continue rewarding corporate polluters with special exemptions, rule changes and loosened laws.

As the nation moves forward in tackling our environmental challenges – and we must – it's important to remember that all faiths teach us to protect our environment. In that sense, we can consider safeguarding the water we drink, the air we breathe, the wildlife and wild places we cherish, and the natural heritage owed to our children as the most important of the moral values that reportedly weighed heavily in this year's presidential race."

Bush's record so far on the environment can only be considered immoral.

AlterNet: EnviroHealth: Nature: A Real Moral Value

"They're so majestic," says Laurie Howard of the National Wild Horse Association. "They're free. You go out and see them running in the wild. It takes your breath away."

Well, Laurie Howard, nothing takes a mustang's breath away quite like a bullet in the back of the head. Being a "Dog" and all, I've probably been inadvertently slipped some horse meat at some point; however, it seems like we could draw the line at eating Wild American Mustang, which most people would agree is about as un-American as eating fried bald eagle on the 4th of July.

Not everyone agrees though. Republican Senator Conrad Burns of Nevada snuck a last-minute Rider #142 into the appropriations bill which George Bush (not a real cowboy, but plays one on TV) signed into law on December 8. Gail "Kill it and Drill it" Norton and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) are free to rid the west of about 9,000 of the scrappy horses this year.

Yee-haw! The ranchers are happy (more grass for cows). The French, Japanese and Belgians are happy (some who apparently eat horse meat... probably not the entire horse, just that one little tiny tender part the size of a 6 oz. fillet), and the GOP-run Bureau of Land Management is happy to have fewer horses to... er, manage on our national lands, having determined that slaughtering and auctioning off our national heritage is the most efficient way to tend it.

Thanks again, Bush voters... it's dinner time. Come and get it!



More info here.

The Salvador Option

For some mysterious reason Iraqi insurgents want the U.S. out of their country, and Rumsfeld and his band of Reagan era Iran-Contra rejects can't figure out what to do about it. For crying out loud, what does an occupying military need to do in order to be greeted with smiles and flowers these days? Torture didn't work. Randomly raiding houses didn't work. Bombing homes of innocent families didn't work. Killing hundreds of women, children and elderly men while cleansing Fallujah didn't work. With all of those honorable tactics proving futile in winning the hearts and minds of the ungrateful Iraqi people, the monkeys in charge put their innocent little heads together and came up with a great idea: Death Squads! Yeah, that worked great down in El Salvador! Dust off those secret old Central American strategeries, George. We have the players all in place, and it's time to unleash the murdering thugs!

Now, NEWSWEEK has learned, the Pentagon is intensively debating an option that dates back to a still-secret strategy in the Reagan administration’s battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s. Then, faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the U.S. government funded or supported "nationalist" forces that allegedly included so-called death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers [family members]. Eventually the insurgency was quelled, and many U.S. conservatives consider the policy to have been a success—despite the deaths of innocent civilians and the subsequent Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal. (Among the current administration officials who dealt with Central America back then is John Negroponte, who is today the U.S. ambassador to Iraq. Under Reagan, he was ambassador to Honduras.)

Let freedom reign! Thank you Bush voters for restoring honor and dignity to the Whitehouse. Make sure you get some new patriotic magnetic "flair" for the back of your Hummers!




MSNBC - ‘The Salvador Option’

This article in the Boston Globe perfectly captures the hypocrisy of Americans who mourn the innocent victims of the tsunami disaster but fail to even acknowledge the innocent victims of the Iraq war, 14 of whom were killed in their homes last night as the U.S. bombed the wrong target (there we go again, winning the hearts and minds).

"No flags have been flown at half-staff for Iraqi civilians. There have been no moments of silence in Congress. There have been no speeches by Bush mourning "the tens of thousands of children who are lost." Americans have not been asked to think of the "tens of thousands more who will grow up without their parents or their brothers or their sisters."

Let us do what we can for the victims of the tsunami. But no matter how much we weep for them, no matter what donations we spare, the offerings will not spare us from history's judgment, if not God's. Lugar said his heart goes out to the victims of the tsunami. No hearts have gone out to Iraqi civilians in this heartless coverup.

Powell said of the tsunami, "The power of the wave to destroy bridges, to destroy factories, to destroy homes, to destroy crops, to destroy everything in its path is amazing." He said, "I have never seen anything like it in my experience."

Yes, he has. It was in Iraq. The tsunami was us."

Boston.com / News / Boston Globe / Opinion / Op-ed / The 'tsunami' victims that we don't count