Lies, Damned Lies And Rice
Harley Sorensen, Special to SF Gate
Monday, February 14, 2005
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2005/02/14/hsorensen.DTL
The lies never stop. They lie not only to you and me, but also to their friends and colleagues, Republicans as well as Democrats.
I speak (as you might guess) of those masters of deceit in the Bush administration. A few months ago they told our senators and representatives that their bogus Medicare prescription drug bill would cost $400 billion over the next 10 years. Now that the bill has become law, they've revised their estimate: Now it's $724 billion.
Two questions: Why is the difference in estimates important, and why do I call the drug bill "bogus"?
The bill barely squeaked through Congress. The biggest objection to it was its cost. In the end, it passed only because it was deemed, at $400 billion, affordable. Had its cost been higher, it almost certainly would have failed.
What is bogus about the law? Three things: It prohibits the importation of drugs from Canada and other countries; it prohibits the government from negotiating with drug companies for lower prices; and it provides benefits for everyone, regardless of income or financial status. Do the heirs of Sam Walton really need our help buying their prescription drugs?
That drug law should be repealed immediately. It's not an effort to help seniors at all. In fact, it's nothing more than a scam designed to enrich pharmaceutical companies. Sen. John McCain, the one Republican who acts like a Republican, calls it "outrageous." He's right.
By the way, almost immediately after the drug benefit bill became law, the price of prescription drugs went up. These people have no shame.
In vaguely related news, the Queen of Chutzpah, our lovely secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, has just completed a whirlwind tour of the known world in which she tried to convince everyone she met to fear and loathe the nation of Iran.
From all appearances, the Bushies are developing plans to take over Iran and kill a lot of beautiful Persian women and handsome Persian men in the process. The reason (which has nothing to do with oil, wink-wink) is that Iran has a nuclear energy program that could evolve into weapons production, making Iran as much as a threat to the United States as other nations with nuclear weapons, say, like Pakistan or Israel.
The Bush propaganda campaign against Iran is under way. At the moment, it lacks one Iranian leader who we can learn to hate, but you can be assured one will be identified soon. Already we're being told that Iran is stubbornly pursuing its nuclear energy program, in spite of our wishes to the contrary.
The American press, compliant to the end, will dutifully spread the Bushies' propaganda. The liberals in the media, fearful of being called unpatriotic, or worse, liberal, will give the Bushies the slant they crave. The conservatives in the media will cheerfully continue on their flag-waving, apple-polishing way. They'll parade their red, white and blue "patriotism" much like a hooker with a cross around her neck parades her virtue.
To prove to the world how virtuous they are, the Bushies will soon go to the United Nations and ask for its cooperation in letting us throttle Iran. Their request will be couched in terms making it impossible for the U.N. to comply. When the U.N. rejects the insincere entreaty, the Bushies will badmouth it, and then declare that circumstances have become so dire that America must once again go it alone.
And then the bombs will burst in air, and the rockets will red glare.
I dearly hope I am wrong in my predictions, but it seems that history, and the pathological predilections of the Bush administration, make an attack on Iran inevitable.
But we were talking about Condoleezza Rice.
The thing I admire most about her, I think, is her brazenness. When Sen. Barbara Boxer pointed out Rice's dishonesty at a committee confirmation hearing, Rice stiffened and, with as much self-righteousness as I've ever seen in a person, attacked Boxer for questioning her integrity.
(Bill Clinton tried to affect the same kind of self-righteousness when he told us he did not have sex with "that woman," but Clinton is an amateur compared with Rice when it comes to righteous indignation.)
Rice is as brazen and as cagey as her boss. She put her brazenness to work again over the past fortnight by urging our former allies in Europe and elsewhere to put the past behind us. It's time to move on, she said.
You gotta love it! For four years the Bushies been sticking it to the rest of the world, and now that they want some help they're asking the people they dissed to "get over it."
The image this brings to my mind is a cartoon image of a bank robber pleading his case before a judge. The robber is saying something like, "We can't wallow in the past, Your Honor. It's time for us to put the past behind us. I recommend you dismiss the charges, so we can all start over with a clean slate."
Why is it that only the guilty want the past forgotten?
Rice displayed her caginess when a reporter asked about the possibility of a pre-emptive U.S. strike against Iran. Her response: "The question is simply not on the agenda at this point in time."
"Point in time"? In other words, we're not going to attack Iran at this moment, but circumstances change ... and perhaps at a future "point in time," like maybe 10 minutes from now, we'll have a new agenda and be forced to go to war again.
The lies never stop.
Harley Sorensen is a longtime journalist. His column appears Mondays. E-mail him at harleysorensen@yahoo.com
======================
Predators, Snipers and the Posse Comitatus Act
CounterPunch - October 17, 2002
http://www.counterpunch.org/nimmo1017.html
by KURT NIMMO
If you live in Falls Church, Virginia, and you see a funny looking
aircraft circling over your neighborhood don't be alarmed. It's just the
Pentagon looking for the sniper. CNN says Rummy wants to help out, so he
has approved "military reconnaissance" of undetermined origin to snoop
around the Washington area. CNN says the Pentagon has not disclosed what
kind of equipment will be used. Yet earlier in the day I saw a report
indicating the military will use General Atomics Aeronautical Systems
Predator UAV drones. They even showed video footage of the damn things.
Rummy just shot another big hole in the Posse Comitatus Act. It's looked
like Swiss cheese for years, ever since the military was "enlisted" to
combat evil drug dealers. You know, drug dealers who sell CIA certified
heroin and cocaine on the streets of American cities. According to CNN,
the Pentagon is not really trashing the Posse Comitatus Act because
there is no "direct involvement" between the cops and the military.
Maybe the copywriters over at CNN need to read up on the Posse Comitatus
Act. "Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly
authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any
part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to
execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more
than two years, or both." Of course, Rummy does not need Congress to
tell him what to do. His "guidelines," recently published in the New York Times,
demonstrate what he thinks about Congress and the American people.
Predator drones are "part of the Army or the Air Force," even if guys in
cammies and helmets toting M16s are not accompanying the cops as they
look for the sniper. Well, a lot of cops are wearing cammies and helmets
and toting M16s these days, so maybe the point is moot. I'm sure David
Koresh didn't see a lot of difference between ATF agents and Nazi storm
troopers. Or did the father of Elian Gonzalez. Or do a lot of dark
skinned people in America's inner cities. But never mind. I'm digressing.
It's October. That means the Pentagon may have to fly its drones in bad
weather -- and the Predator does not do well in rain, wind, snow, or
cold temperatures. Predators crash, too, although the Pentagon does not
release such embarrassing statistics. A French journalist reported a
while back that a UAV drone was inadvertently thrown off course over
Kosovo. It seems a French officer used the same radio frequency on which
the UAV was operating. He interrupted the connection between the
aircraft and its ground control station. The drone ended up in the hands
of the Serbs, who were likely ecstatic. In 1998, the Pakistanis were
thankful as well when two of Clinton's cruise missiles went off target
and landed in their front yard unscathed. It was a benefit bestowed to
Pakistan's missile program which, at the time, was under US embargo.
Think of all the air traffic over Washington. Think about all the
telephone wires, high power lines, microwave towers and cell phone
repeaters. Rummy's idea of catching the sniper with the help of a drone
is an accident waiting to happen. Maybe Rummy didn't think this one
through. Then again, maybe he did. Maybe this is yet another hole shot
through the Swiss cheese that is the Posse Comitatus Act. Maybe if Dubya
and Rummy keep blurring the lines a lot of us will no longer be able to
tell the difference between cops and soldiers. Maybe we will finally
believe this is what needs to be done to protect us from vicious
terrorists. Maybe we will give up the fourth, fifth, and sixth
amendments to the Constitution in order to fight terrorism. Maybe we
will give up the third amendment for good measure--you know, the one
prohibiting "peacetime quartering of troops in private dwellings without
owners' consent" (well, the Pentagon will have to base those UAV
stations somewhere). Then again, if Dubya has his way, peace will soon
become a curious anachronism.
The absurdity of the whole sniper affair is stunning. For instance, last
week Ari Fleischer remarked to reporters in the White House briefing
room that "the cost of one bullet" was much preferable to war against
Iraq. He was talking about taking out Saddam by way of assassination,
something the CIA and military intel have done for decades -- from
Pegasus to Phoenix and beyond. In 1997, responding to Freedom of
Information Act requests, the CIA released its notorious "Operation
PBSUCCESS" assassination manual, used in the 1954 coup to oust -- and
kill -- the elected president of Guatemala. So-called conservatives have
talked about assassination and mass murder for years -- killing people
they disagree with by single bullet or multiple bunker-buster munitions.
They now say the CIA must be allowed to get back into the murder and
torture business. Some of us think they never got out of the business.
Dubya and clan have created a moral climate where murder is simply a
political option -- and, lately, the preferred political option. Instead
of negotiation and containment, they insist on "pre-emption," which is
simply another word for killing the other guy before he even thinks
about killing you -- or maybe before he can extend the dreaded olive
branch. Perhaps most insane and irresponsible, Team Dubya has managed to
demolish the taboo surrounding the unthinkable use of nuclear weapons in
the name of geopolitical expediency. It seems Dubya and Crew want the
entire world to believe America is a nation filled with Washington
Beltway snipers. America has a rep known around the world - everywhere,
that is, except in America. Corporate media generated distraction and
deception is an artform in the good old U.S. of A. History, as Henry
Ford opined, is bunk.
Fact is, US politicians like mass murderers. In the recent past, the US
befriended and supported -- both overtly and covertly -- sundry
murderers and demented thugs. Here's the short list -- Mohamed Suharto
(2 million killed in Indonesia, 250,000 in East Timor), Ferdinand Marcos
(not only killed thousands in the Philippines, but also looted more than
$35 billion), Augusto Pinochet Ugarte (had the democratically elected
president of Chile murdered; thousands of political opponents killed and
disappeared; 250,000 people gaoled, tortured, or exiled), Anastasio
Somoza Debayle (50,000 killed in Nicaragua; 120,000 exiled and 600,000
made homeless), and Pol Pot (3 million killed, or between a quarter and
a third of Cambodia's population). Oh, and let's not forget Saddam
Hussein, acquaintance and yes-man of various US presidents until 1990
when he misunderstood his marching orders. He has gassed and killed his
own people with US assistance.
The Washington sniper is small potatoes. More people are killed each
week from unsafe working conditions, uninspected food, medical
malpractice, and entirely legal (and profitable) drugs such as tobacco
and alcohol. But then, of course, those are mundane and wholly
non-sensational crimes when compared to a sniper who it now appears
received his training -- or, at least, his inspiration -- from the US
military. All told, the Washington sniper may turn out to be yet another
unexpected instance of blowback, if not politically at least culturally.
But never mind. I think I hear a Predator buzzing outside my window.
Kurt Nimmo is a photographer and multimedia developer in Las Cruces,
New Mexico. He can be reached at: nimmo@zianet.com
Harley Sorensen, Special to SF Gate
Monday, February 14, 2005
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2005/02/14/hsorensen.DTL
The lies never stop. They lie not only to you and me, but also to their friends and colleagues, Republicans as well as Democrats.
I speak (as you might guess) of those masters of deceit in the Bush administration. A few months ago they told our senators and representatives that their bogus Medicare prescription drug bill would cost $400 billion over the next 10 years. Now that the bill has become law, they've revised their estimate: Now it's $724 billion.
Two questions: Why is the difference in estimates important, and why do I call the drug bill "bogus"?
The bill barely squeaked through Congress. The biggest objection to it was its cost. In the end, it passed only because it was deemed, at $400 billion, affordable. Had its cost been higher, it almost certainly would have failed.
What is bogus about the law? Three things: It prohibits the importation of drugs from Canada and other countries; it prohibits the government from negotiating with drug companies for lower prices; and it provides benefits for everyone, regardless of income or financial status. Do the heirs of Sam Walton really need our help buying their prescription drugs?
That drug law should be repealed immediately. It's not an effort to help seniors at all. In fact, it's nothing more than a scam designed to enrich pharmaceutical companies. Sen. John McCain, the one Republican who acts like a Republican, calls it "outrageous." He's right.
By the way, almost immediately after the drug benefit bill became law, the price of prescription drugs went up. These people have no shame.
In vaguely related news, the Queen of Chutzpah, our lovely secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, has just completed a whirlwind tour of the known world in which she tried to convince everyone she met to fear and loathe the nation of Iran.
From all appearances, the Bushies are developing plans to take over Iran and kill a lot of beautiful Persian women and handsome Persian men in the process. The reason (which has nothing to do with oil, wink-wink) is that Iran has a nuclear energy program that could evolve into weapons production, making Iran as much as a threat to the United States as other nations with nuclear weapons, say, like Pakistan or Israel.
The Bush propaganda campaign against Iran is under way. At the moment, it lacks one Iranian leader who we can learn to hate, but you can be assured one will be identified soon. Already we're being told that Iran is stubbornly pursuing its nuclear energy program, in spite of our wishes to the contrary.
The American press, compliant to the end, will dutifully spread the Bushies' propaganda. The liberals in the media, fearful of being called unpatriotic, or worse, liberal, will give the Bushies the slant they crave. The conservatives in the media will cheerfully continue on their flag-waving, apple-polishing way. They'll parade their red, white and blue "patriotism" much like a hooker with a cross around her neck parades her virtue.
To prove to the world how virtuous they are, the Bushies will soon go to the United Nations and ask for its cooperation in letting us throttle Iran. Their request will be couched in terms making it impossible for the U.N. to comply. When the U.N. rejects the insincere entreaty, the Bushies will badmouth it, and then declare that circumstances have become so dire that America must once again go it alone.
And then the bombs will burst in air, and the rockets will red glare.
I dearly hope I am wrong in my predictions, but it seems that history, and the pathological predilections of the Bush administration, make an attack on Iran inevitable.
But we were talking about Condoleezza Rice.
The thing I admire most about her, I think, is her brazenness. When Sen. Barbara Boxer pointed out Rice's dishonesty at a committee confirmation hearing, Rice stiffened and, with as much self-righteousness as I've ever seen in a person, attacked Boxer for questioning her integrity.
(Bill Clinton tried to affect the same kind of self-righteousness when he told us he did not have sex with "that woman," but Clinton is an amateur compared with Rice when it comes to righteous indignation.)
Rice is as brazen and as cagey as her boss. She put her brazenness to work again over the past fortnight by urging our former allies in Europe and elsewhere to put the past behind us. It's time to move on, she said.
You gotta love it! For four years the Bushies been sticking it to the rest of the world, and now that they want some help they're asking the people they dissed to "get over it."
The image this brings to my mind is a cartoon image of a bank robber pleading his case before a judge. The robber is saying something like, "We can't wallow in the past, Your Honor. It's time for us to put the past behind us. I recommend you dismiss the charges, so we can all start over with a clean slate."
Why is it that only the guilty want the past forgotten?
Rice displayed her caginess when a reporter asked about the possibility of a pre-emptive U.S. strike against Iran. Her response: "The question is simply not on the agenda at this point in time."
"Point in time"? In other words, we're not going to attack Iran at this moment, but circumstances change ... and perhaps at a future "point in time," like maybe 10 minutes from now, we'll have a new agenda and be forced to go to war again.
The lies never stop.
Harley Sorensen is a longtime journalist. His column appears Mondays. E-mail him at harleysorensen@yahoo.com
======================
Predators, Snipers and the Posse Comitatus Act
CounterPunch - October 17, 2002
http://www.counterpunch.org/nimmo1017.html
by KURT NIMMO
If you live in Falls Church, Virginia, and you see a funny looking
aircraft circling over your neighborhood don't be alarmed. It's just the
Pentagon looking for the sniper. CNN says Rummy wants to help out, so he
has approved "military reconnaissance" of undetermined origin to snoop
around the Washington area. CNN says the Pentagon has not disclosed what
kind of equipment will be used. Yet earlier in the day I saw a report
indicating the military will use General Atomics Aeronautical Systems
Predator UAV drones. They even showed video footage of the damn things.
Rummy just shot another big hole in the Posse Comitatus Act. It's looked
like Swiss cheese for years, ever since the military was "enlisted" to
combat evil drug dealers. You know, drug dealers who sell CIA certified
heroin and cocaine on the streets of American cities. According to CNN,
the Pentagon is not really trashing the Posse Comitatus Act because
there is no "direct involvement" between the cops and the military.
Maybe the copywriters over at CNN need to read up on the Posse Comitatus
Act. "Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly
authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any
part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to
execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more
than two years, or both." Of course, Rummy does not need Congress to
tell him what to do. His "guidelines," recently published in the New York Times,
demonstrate what he thinks about Congress and the American people.
Predator drones are "part of the Army or the Air Force," even if guys in
cammies and helmets toting M16s are not accompanying the cops as they
look for the sniper. Well, a lot of cops are wearing cammies and helmets
and toting M16s these days, so maybe the point is moot. I'm sure David
Koresh didn't see a lot of difference between ATF agents and Nazi storm
troopers. Or did the father of Elian Gonzalez. Or do a lot of dark
skinned people in America's inner cities. But never mind. I'm digressing.
It's October. That means the Pentagon may have to fly its drones in bad
weather -- and the Predator does not do well in rain, wind, snow, or
cold temperatures. Predators crash, too, although the Pentagon does not
release such embarrassing statistics. A French journalist reported a
while back that a UAV drone was inadvertently thrown off course over
Kosovo. It seems a French officer used the same radio frequency on which
the UAV was operating. He interrupted the connection between the
aircraft and its ground control station. The drone ended up in the hands
of the Serbs, who were likely ecstatic. In 1998, the Pakistanis were
thankful as well when two of Clinton's cruise missiles went off target
and landed in their front yard unscathed. It was a benefit bestowed to
Pakistan's missile program which, at the time, was under US embargo.
Think of all the air traffic over Washington. Think about all the
telephone wires, high power lines, microwave towers and cell phone
repeaters. Rummy's idea of catching the sniper with the help of a drone
is an accident waiting to happen. Maybe Rummy didn't think this one
through. Then again, maybe he did. Maybe this is yet another hole shot
through the Swiss cheese that is the Posse Comitatus Act. Maybe if Dubya
and Rummy keep blurring the lines a lot of us will no longer be able to
tell the difference between cops and soldiers. Maybe we will finally
believe this is what needs to be done to protect us from vicious
terrorists. Maybe we will give up the fourth, fifth, and sixth
amendments to the Constitution in order to fight terrorism. Maybe we
will give up the third amendment for good measure--you know, the one
prohibiting "peacetime quartering of troops in private dwellings without
owners' consent" (well, the Pentagon will have to base those UAV
stations somewhere). Then again, if Dubya has his way, peace will soon
become a curious anachronism.
The absurdity of the whole sniper affair is stunning. For instance, last
week Ari Fleischer remarked to reporters in the White House briefing
room that "the cost of one bullet" was much preferable to war against
Iraq. He was talking about taking out Saddam by way of assassination,
something the CIA and military intel have done for decades -- from
Pegasus to Phoenix and beyond. In 1997, responding to Freedom of
Information Act requests, the CIA released its notorious "Operation
PBSUCCESS" assassination manual, used in the 1954 coup to oust -- and
kill -- the elected president of Guatemala. So-called conservatives have
talked about assassination and mass murder for years -- killing people
they disagree with by single bullet or multiple bunker-buster munitions.
They now say the CIA must be allowed to get back into the murder and
torture business. Some of us think they never got out of the business.
Dubya and clan have created a moral climate where murder is simply a
political option -- and, lately, the preferred political option. Instead
of negotiation and containment, they insist on "pre-emption," which is
simply another word for killing the other guy before he even thinks
about killing you -- or maybe before he can extend the dreaded olive
branch. Perhaps most insane and irresponsible, Team Dubya has managed to
demolish the taboo surrounding the unthinkable use of nuclear weapons in
the name of geopolitical expediency. It seems Dubya and Crew want the
entire world to believe America is a nation filled with Washington
Beltway snipers. America has a rep known around the world - everywhere,
that is, except in America. Corporate media generated distraction and
deception is an artform in the good old U.S. of A. History, as Henry
Ford opined, is bunk.
Fact is, US politicians like mass murderers. In the recent past, the US
befriended and supported -- both overtly and covertly -- sundry
murderers and demented thugs. Here's the short list -- Mohamed Suharto
(2 million killed in Indonesia, 250,000 in East Timor), Ferdinand Marcos
(not only killed thousands in the Philippines, but also looted more than
$35 billion), Augusto Pinochet Ugarte (had the democratically elected
president of Chile murdered; thousands of political opponents killed and
disappeared; 250,000 people gaoled, tortured, or exiled), Anastasio
Somoza Debayle (50,000 killed in Nicaragua; 120,000 exiled and 600,000
made homeless), and Pol Pot (3 million killed, or between a quarter and
a third of Cambodia's population). Oh, and let's not forget Saddam
Hussein, acquaintance and yes-man of various US presidents until 1990
when he misunderstood his marching orders. He has gassed and killed his
own people with US assistance.
The Washington sniper is small potatoes. More people are killed each
week from unsafe working conditions, uninspected food, medical
malpractice, and entirely legal (and profitable) drugs such as tobacco
and alcohol. But then, of course, those are mundane and wholly
non-sensational crimes when compared to a sniper who it now appears
received his training -- or, at least, his inspiration -- from the US
military. All told, the Washington sniper may turn out to be yet another
unexpected instance of blowback, if not politically at least culturally.
But never mind. I think I hear a Predator buzzing outside my window.
Kurt Nimmo is a photographer and multimedia developer in Las Cruces,
New Mexico. He can be reached at: nimmo@zianet.com
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