Author: Brandon

Scott Horton’s one-hour interview with the courageous Dahr Jamail, reporting from Iraq, is now available on WeekendInterviewShow.com. Among the highlights: Iraq’s shortages of water, fuel and electricity, the situation on the ground being so dangerous that Jamail cannot go outside every day, dogs eating corpses in the streets, 70% unemployment, rampant kidnappings, media suppression, US war crimes too numerous to count, and the upcoming “election”, where there is only one candidate.

If you can listen to this and still be pro-Iraq war, there is something genetically wrong with you.

Today (Saturday), at 4PM central time, Scott Horton will be interviewing Dahr Jamail, who’s near-daily reports from Iraq, as well as hard-news articles make for the most indispensible reading on the occupation. From his Nov. 19 entry;

Later Abu Talat comes to my hotel to see me. He is distraught, crying while he recounts the story. After listening to the tape he recorded inside the mosque during the atrocity, he says…

“I am in a very sad position. I do not see any freedom or any democracy. If this could lead into a freedom, it is a freedom with blood. It is a freedom of emotions of sadness. It is a freedom of killing. You cannot gain democracy through blood or killing. You do not find the freedom that way. People are going to pray to God and they were killed and wounded. There were 1,500 people praying to God and they went on a holiday were people go every Friday for prayers. And they were shot and killed. There were so many women and kids lying on the ground. This is not democracy, neither freedom.”

Listen to the show live on the internet, from 3-5 PM central time.
Don’t miss this one!

As the US government seems to be having some trouble permanently pacifying the population of Fallujah, perhaps they could enlist their old pal Saddam Hussein for help. He’s an expert at pacifying a population using US and British supplies and training. Using a nominal number of US and British supplied weapons of mass destruction, Hussein could easily do a quicker, more efficient job than Allawi. Mr. Allawi only knows about killing people up close and personal-like. Remember that time when he produced a pistol and murdered a few blindfolded “militants” for the amusement of some surly policemen? That’s where his talents lie. Hussein, on the other hand, ruled the Iraqi population for years, and the way he did it was brilliant. He just phonied up a war against Iran, using nationalism and morality – you know, “we is good, they is bad” … come to think of it, just the way most politicians manage to phoney up wars. As soon as that war ended, Hussein immediately dummied up yet another war, this time against Kuwait. I mean this fella Hussein just has a natural talent for pacifying populations by creating enemies that are worse than he is. At best this fool Allawi is a talented executioner. If he were really smart, he would find a reason to have a war with Syria, perhaps to make the world safe for democracy. That one’s been used before, but people have a short memory.
Only the dumbest politicians attack their own populations when there are much better ones abroad. Since Allawi lacks the natural talent, Hussein is the go-to guy.

They’ve tried the rest, now try the best.

Drudge has linked to a story in the Washington Times, picking up a rather interesting UPI report:

“Newly declassified documents revealed the United States planned as recently as 1998 to drop nuclear bombs on North Korea if the country attacked South Korea.
As part of “scenario 5027,” 24 F15-E bombers flew simulation missions at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina to drop mock nuclear bombs on a firing range between January and June 1998…”

Indeed! Swell thing it is for the people of NK that Jong-Il decided not to invade. Instead, he decided to develop nukes himself. Some random, probably useless thoughts:
Hasn’t the US nuked enough people in that region? Why does the plan use the annoying word “scenario”? Why would those F-15E “Strike Eagles” need bombing runs? What with the awesome destructive power of the modern nuke, you’re going to destroy the entire civilian population anyway, no matter where the damn things land. Who cares if you miss the mark by a few dozen feet? I’m no scientist, but wouldn’t the fallout from those bombs damage South Korea significantly as well? (Including the 30,000 US troops along the border with the North)

The UPI report goes on to say:

“The declassified documents also said the U.S. had kept nuclear weaponry in South Korea until at least 1998, despite officially claiming it had withdrawn all nuclear warheads in 1991.”

Yet another reason the “crazy” Kim Jong-Il would want nukes of his own. So, in a very significant way I guess, the US, in its tireless efforts to “protect” the South, is actually responsible for creating a good deal of the danger that exists in the region. How about that!
you know, come to think of it, as long as you’re trying to protect those poor bastards, given the situation as it stands now, there are only two choices.

1. Disarm and remove all trace of American presence in the region. Renounce any responsibility for protecting South Korea.

2. Nuke those Northern bastards right now. Don’t pass go, don’t collect $200, right frickin’ now. And, for God’s sake, make damn sure none of them are left alive, because that can become a problem down the road (when they repopulate the region and decide they have a problem with you wiping out their ancestors and all). This option would have the added bonus effect of giving the rest of the world a demonstration that the US is still willing, in this day and age, to use these weapons against anyone, at any time, for any reason, or come to think of it, for no reason at all.

Today, on the Weekend Interview Show, Scott Horton will be talking to the brilliant Alexander Cockburn, publisher of the great lefty newsletter CounterPunch. Cockburn has received high praise from the none other than the Frumster, (that’s a much better link than the one to his dreary homepage, believe me)who called Cockburn an “anti-American of the far Left”.
I made a mental note many years ago, it reads “Read anything by anyone whom David Frum considers “anti-American”. This note has served me well ever since.
The second hour of the show will be devoted to heroic whistleblowers. Sibel Edmonds will be among the guests.
The show will run from 4PM to 6PM ET. It can be heard live on the internet.

All through this mess, I’ve been wondering, whenever someone makes an observation like “we are in danger of losing this war”, how exactly they would define winning this war. I suspected that the more blood had been spilt, the greater the chance that “we” had “won”.
Now, thanks to William L. Anderson, I finally know what “victory” is. Anderson reports that Victor D. Hanson recently gave a lecture, during a Hillsdale College cruise on the Rhine and Moselle rivers. The subject of the lecture was “What Would Patton Say About the Present War?” Hanson’s definition of victory:

“…we shall not be through with Islamic fascism until the governments of Iran and Syria cease their support, al-Qaedists are killed or in cuffs, and the greater Middle East autocracies are terrified of offering succor to terrorist offshoots. Anything less as our goal and we will be in a perpetual quagmire of reactive warfare.” Continue reading “Finally, a Definition of Victory!”