L. Reichard White - Antiwar.com Blog

Is THIS why they hate us?

AMY GOODMAN: A former US Marine who killed two unarmed Iraqis is running for a congressional seat in North Carolina… Ilario Pantano has said he has no regrets about fatally shooting the two at point-blank range after detaining them near Fallujah in April 2004.

JUSTIN ELLIOT: These two Iraqi men had been searched. They didn’t have any weapons. And he was — Mr. Pantano was having them search their own car when he opened fire, and shooting as many as fifty or sixty rounds at them. And that includes reloading his M-16 rifle.

AMY GOODMAN: Despite his admission, the military cleared Pantano of wrongdoing in 2005. He is now in a tight race with incumbent Democrat Rep. Mike McIntyre in North Carolina’s 7th Congressional District. –From Murder to Congress?

Do you think this sort of thing might be why they hate us?

Blackout?

Can YOUR card do this?

AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you how war fits into this. I mean, you co-wrote the book with Linda Bilmes, The Three Trillion Dollar War. How does war fit into our problems with the economy?

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Well, war fits in because you’re creating a liability, you’re spending money. And when we went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, we already had a deficit. And so, these wars were the first wars in America’s history financed totally on the credit card. So, you’re creating a liability, but you’re not creating an asset. So that’s the kind of spending that does weaken the economy, because it’s one-sided. … The numbers now are much more like four to six trillion.

AMY GOODMAN: And yet, across this country, as the debates for various congressional and Senate seats[go], war is almost never raised [as an issue]. –Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz: Foreclosure Moratorium, Government Stimulus Needed to Revive US Economy

Blackout??

PRECEDENT? According to a "Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting" two week study, during the lead-up to the Iraq war, a period of particularly intense debate (Jan. 30 to Feb 12, 2003), U.S. mainstream media, ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS Evening News, conducted 393 interviews about the pending war. Only three of those interviews were with peace leaders.

OOPS! Again.

…allegedly "hacked" software, in the case of the CIA, is now being used to guide killer drones to their targets, according to IISI’s legal pleadings, despite the fact that the modified software doesn’t function properly… –CIA Drone-Code Scandal Now Has A Big Blue Hue

Mass murder: Monkey see monkey do?

JUAN GARCÃ‰S: "… Hitler asked his generals to be ready to invade Poland, and to exterminate the population in those territories, because German population should replace this population. Some generals say, "My FÃ¼hrer, there will a provoking of cry in the world. Thousands of people will be killed, and there will be blame for us." And the answer from Hitler was, "Why? Twenty years ago was a massacre of Armenians. More than one million Armenians were massacred by the Turkish, in the Turkish Empire. Who remembers now the Armenians?" So, the forgiveness of the first big massacre in the twentieth century was the pretext for encouraging a second wave of massacre that was in World War II." –Another 9/11 Anniversary: September 11, 1973, When US-Backed Pinochet Forces Took Power in Chile

That’s why they MUST be prosecuted!

You know who they are.

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Who’s JUAN GARCÃ‰S, you ask?

AMY GOODMAN: Our next guest, Juan GarcÃ©s, was a personal adviser to Salvador Allende. Juan GarcÃ©s was with the president when revolting troops bombed the presidential palace and found himself the sole survivor among Allende’s political advisers when the coup had run its course.

More than twenty years later, Juan GarcÃ©s has led a legal effort to sue Augusto Pinochet for crimes against humanity in the Spanish courts. Juan GarcÃ©s is now focused on getting the Spanish courts to investigate for the first time the crimes against humanity committed under General Franco’s dictatorship.

Intended consequences?

The U.S. militaryindustrialcongressional complex has stumbled upon yet another gonzo way to turn huge masses of people against the United States Government — and "we the people," because "we" support it.

Piggy-backed on the chronic collateral murder of innocent men, women and children in foreign lands by illegal — not to mention mistaken and inexact — drone attacks, this one is really impressive:

FERYAL ALI GAUHAR: "…the base for the drones, where they’re housed before they are automated, is in Pakistan…. I just happened to stumble across a contractor-and that’s not the Blackwater contractor-the contractor who built the base… he was there at the time of the flooding… he actually mentioned to me that the River Indus… was breached on the left bank deliberately in order to protect the base, which is on the right bank. And the breaching caused, consequentially, the inundation of an entire district, which resulted in the displacement of millions, not thousands, but millions, because we have 170 million people in the country, and this particular district is one of the most densely populated…"

AMY GOODMAN: "And this is a base that is used, run by US military, to run its drone attacks?"

FERYAL ALI GAUHAR: Oh, absolutely…. –Activists Go on Trial in Nevada for Protesting Obama Admin Drone Program

Droning On. And On & On & On

Unfortunately, that’s not just Mr. Obama’s speeches – – –

AMY GOODMAN: "…the Obama administration’s drone war in northwest Pakistan is continuing. There have been at least nine drone attacks this month, the latest killing five people in North Waziristan Sunday. The United States has carried out at least sixty-three drone strikes inside Pakistan this year, killing an unknown number of civilians."

KATHY KELLY: …the United States is, at an alarming rate, moving into robotic warfare, kind of a mission creep, that could lead us into perpetual war. … children are among those who are being killed. And this is happening with such regularity in Pakistan and Afghanistan. … It’s clear that targeted assassinations, these arbitrary killings, extrajudicial killings, are not allowed and that citizens have a duty, a responsibility, to prevent it….

There certainly is a constant construction. Our friends at the Nevada Desert Experience tell us that the cement trucks are arriving every day, … in Ellsworth, South Dakota, Whiteman, Missouri, those bases are now developing the technology so that drone attacks can be operated by people inside of those bases, and also, of course, at Hancock Field, where people in Syracuse are demonstrating on a daily basis. –Activists Go on Trial in Nevada for Protesting Obama Admin Drone Program

It’s not here, it’s there. It’s not us, it’s them. It’s not murder, it’s collateral damage.

And it could NEVER happen here.