Tag: Antiwar movement

Everyone hates at least one of them, and this is why: Michael Moore vs. Bill O’Reilly. (Be sure to read the conditions Moore stipulated for the interview at the beginning of the article – i.e., that it oughta be an honest record of what took place.) My favorite excerpt:

MOORE: So you would sacrifice your child to secure Fallujah? I want to hear you say that.

O’REILLY: I would sacrifice myself—

MOORE: Your child—It’s Bush sending the children there.

O’REILLY: I would sacrifice myself.

MOORE: You and I don’t go to war, because we’re too old—

O’REILLY: Because if we back down, there will be more deaths and you know it.

MOORE: Say ‘I Bill O’Reilly would sacrifice my child to secure Fallujah’

O’REILLY: I’m not going to say what you say, you’re a, that’s ridiculous

MOORE: You don’t believe that. Why should Bush sacrifice the children of people across America for this? …

MOORE: Right, I would not sacrifice my child to secure Fallujah and you would?

O’REILLY: I would sacrifice myself.

MOORE: You wouldn’t send another child, another parents child to Fallujah, would you? You would sacrifice your life to secure Fallujah?

O’REILLY: I would.

MOORE: Can we sign him up? Can we sign him up right now?

O’REILLY: That’s right.

MOORE: Where’s the recruiter?

O’REILLY: You’d love to get rid of me.

The tough guy goes out with a whimper. The look on O’Reilly’s face during the parts above is priceless. Watch the video (link at top of article).

Sweet merciful God, is it over yet? Tonight was pure fluff from start to finish. Ted Kennedy tried to beat a few more flecks of pixie dust from Camelot’s rugs. Howard Dean played the good party hack. Barack Obama said little of any interest, but he benefitted from what the Prez used to call the “soft prejudice of low expectations” – his speech was alright, to be sure, but you could almost hear the talking heads thinking, “Gosh, he’s so articulate!” Ron Reagan spoke about stem-cell research – or rather, heavily government-subsidized stem-cell research. Finally, our potential first African-American first lady, Teresa Heinz Kerry, spouted more liberal cliches than the backside of a Berkeley Volvo.

Say, fellas, ain’t there a war on? You’d hardly know it from the speeches tonight. Of course, you’d think the evening was nothing but Quakers and Bush-haters if you watched it on Fox News (as I did). They’re still whining about the peacenikery/vituperation that my eyes and ears somehow missed in real time. Too bad they’re lying.

American, do you realize,
That the taxes that you pay
Feed the forces that traumatize
My every living day?

The bulldozers and the tanks,
The gases and the guns,
The bombs that fall outside my door,
All due to American funds.

Read the whole thing here: Subzero Blue

Here’s a good illustration for Charley Reese’s column, featured on AntiWar.com today:

United States aircraft dropped leaflets on the rebellious Iraqi city of Fallujah on Tuesday, warning residents they will lose $102-million (about R637-million) in rebuilding funds if they do not halt attacks and allow US troops to enter freely.

Charley says:

One mistake that seems to be a permanent feature of our foreign policy is mirror-imaging. So many American politicians, most of them poorly educated and ignorant of other people and their cultures, tend to think other people are just like us. A great many are not.

Lyndon Johnson failed in Vietnam because he thought he could treat the Vietnamese the same way he treated members of the U.S. House and Senate. Johnson always used a stick and a carrot. Vote with me, and you’ll get pork-barrel rewards; vote against me, and I’ll find a way to punish you. That worked with American politicians, most of whom are nothing more than officeholders with “for sale or rent” signs on their foreheads.

Johnson told the North Vietnamese, make peace, and I’ll give you billions of dollars in American aid; don’t make peace, and I’ll bomb you. Unfortunately for Johnson, the North Vietnamese, whatever their other faults, were not for sale, nor were they willing to succumb to threats. They wanted to unify their country, and they were willing to fight as long as necessary to achieve that. As it turned out, we were not willing to fight as long as necessary to prevent it. So, despite billions of dollars, despite 57,000 dead, despite a quarter of a million wounded, Vietnam is today a unified communist country.

President George W. Bush has offered a $25 million reward for Osama bin Laden. He thought, apparently, that like most Americans, the Afghans and Pakistanis were for sale. Despite Afghanistan being one of the poorest countries in the world, the American millions have not produced a single traitor willing to rat out bin Laden.

Let’s face it – we have become a secular and materialistic society. The two kinds of people we have real trouble believing actually exist are people of true religious faith and people to whom honor means more than money.

This shouldn’t be such a hard thing to understand.

"Counterterrorism Evolves" highlights the many faults with the US law enforcement and intelligence gathering agencies prior to 9/11. One includes the structure of institutions such as the FBI:

"[P]erformance in the Bureau was generally measured against statistics such as numbers of arrests, indictments, prosecutions, and convictions. Counterterrorism and counterintelligence work, often involving lengthy intelligence investigations that might never have positive or quantifiable results, was not career-enhancing." (page 74)

Still, the FBI had plenty of power to thwart foreign terrorists:

"In 1986, Congress authorized the FBI to investigate terrorist attacks against Americans that occur outside the United States. Three years later, it added authority for the FBI to make arrests abroad without consent from the host country." (page 75)

Unfortunately, there was a definite lack of focus only a year before 9/11:

"Although the FBI’s counterterrorism budget tripled during the mid-1990s, FBI counterterrorism spending remained fairly constant between fiscal years 1998 and 2001. In 2000, there were still twice as many agents devoted to drug enforcement as to counterterrorism." (page 77)

Overall, one gets a sense that the commission still believed that the FBI and others still didn’t have enough power. Continue reading “Notes on Chapter 3 of the 9/11 Report”

A Jordanian company has vowed to pull out of Iraq in response to the demands of kidnappers who hold two of it’s employees. A Saudi Arabian company did likewise a few weeks ago. I can’t help but wonder if these companies aren’t feeling a sense of relief to have a legitimate excuse to get out of Iraq. With operating costs so high due to the need for massive security, it is possible that the companies are making very little or losing money in Iraq, as well as placing all their personnel at extreme risk. Collier Lounsbury writes that even Halliburton might be losing money in Iraq.

In a demonstration of just how much territory they control, an Iraqi rebel group has announced that they will close the vital Jordan-Baghdad highway in 72 hours:

Militants bent on disrupting the supply chain to the U.S. military threatened Tuesday to cut the highway linking Iraq to Jordan in 72 hours and said it would hit at Jordanians as well as Americans.

The threat, from a group calling itself “The Group of Death,” was made in a video obtained by Associated Press Television News. The video showed seven men wearing black clothing and masks armed with rocket-propelled grenade launchers and rifles.

The group’s warning comes amid a wave of kidnappings of foreigners, mainly truck drivers, entering Iraq from neighboring countries to deliver supplies and other cargo needed for this war-ravaged nation’s reconstruction effort.

A militant who read a statement on the tape criticized Jordan, Iraq’s western neighbor, for letting trucking firms enter Iraq to support the U.S.-led coalition.

“We consider all Jordanian interests, companies and businessmen and citizens as much a target as the Americans,” the speaker said.

You might remember that the insurgency successfully cut off US military supply routes before, to the point that Bremer and the rest of the Fortress Green Zone occupants were eating MREs. Clearly, the guerillas are slowly isolating the Americans by driving businesses out of Iraq, assassinations and attacks on collaborators, and relentless attacks on US military positions. Consider this bit from Knight Ridder’s Tom Lassiter:

“After more than a year of fighting, U.S. troops have stopped patrolling large swaths of Iraq’s restive Anbar province, according to the top American military intelligence officer in the area…. In the wreckage of the security situation, [Army Maj. Thomas] Neemeyer [the head American intelligence officer for the 1st Brigade of the 1st Infantry Division, the main military force in the Ramadi area] said, U.S. officials have all but given up on plans to install a democratic government in the city [Ramadi], and are hoping instead that Islamic extremists and other insurgent groups don’t overrun the province in the same way that they’ve seized the region’s most infamous town, Fallujah…

“‘The only way to stomp out the insurgency of the mind,’ [Capt. Joe Jasper, a spokesman for the 1st Brigade] said, ‘would be to kill the entire population’… Pointing to a neighborhood outside the town of Habbaniyah, between Fallujah and Ramadi, he said, ‘We’ve lost a lot of Marines there and we don’t ever go in anymore. If they want it that bad, they can have it.’ And then to a spot on the western edge of Fallujah: ‘We find that if we don’t go there, they won’t shoot us.'”

“If they want it that bad, they can have it.” How long before this line is in a Bush or Kerry speech?