Semantics Can’t Mask Bush’s Chicanery
After his latest shenanigans, I’ve come to the conclusion that George Bush is the first US president to march backwards. First we had weapons of mass destruction. Then, when they proved to be a myth, Bush told us we had stopped Saddam’s “programmes” for weapons of mass destruction (which happened to be another lie).
Now he’s gone a stage further. After announcing victory in Iraq in 2003 and “mission accomplished” and telling us how this enormous achievement would lead the 21st century into a “shining age of human liberty”, George Bush told us this week that “thanks to the surge, we’ve renewed and revived the prospect of success”.
Now let’s take a look at this piece of chicanery and subject it to a little linguistic analysis. Five years ago, it was victory - ie success - but this has now been transmogrified into a mere “prospect” of success. And not a “prospect”, mark you, that has even been glimpsed. No, we have “renewed” and “revived” this prospect. “Revived”, as in “brought back from the dead”. Am I the only one to be sickened by this obscene semantics? How on earth can you “renew” a “prospect”, let alone a prospect that continues to be bathed in Iraqi blood, a subject Bush wisely chose to avoid?
Note, too, the constant use of words that begin with “re -”. Renew. Revive. And - incredibly - Bush also told us that “we actually re-liberated certain communities”. This, folks, goes beyond hollow laughter. Since when did armies go around “re-liberating” anything? And what does that credibility-sapping “actually” mean? I suspect it was an attempt by the White House speech writer to suggest - by sleight of hand, of course - that Bush was really - really - telling the truth this time. But by putting “actually” in front of “re-liberate” - as opposed to just “liberate” - the whole grammatical construction falls apart. Rather like Iraq.
For by my reckoning, we have now “re-liberated” Fallujah twice. We have “re-liberated” Mosul three times and “re-liberated” Ramadi four times. The scorecard goes on. My files show that Sadr City may have been “re-liberated” five times, while Baghdad is “re-liberated” on an almost daily basis. General David Petraeus, in his pitiful appearance before the US Senate armed services committee, was bound to admit his disappointment at the military failure of the equally pitiful Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in Basra. He had not followed Petraeus’ advice; which was presumably to “re-liberate” the city (for the fourth time, by my calculation but with a bit more planning).
Indeed, Petraeus told senators that after his beloved “surge” goes home, the US will need a period of “consolidation and evaluation” - which is suspiciously close to saying that the US military will be, as the old adage goes, “redeployed to prepared positions”. Ye gods! Where will this tomfoolery end?
In statistics, perhaps. By chance, as Bush was speaking this week, my mail bag flopped open to reveal a letter from my old American military analyst friend, George W Appenzeller. He gently (and rightly) corrects some recent comparative figures I used on US casualties in Korea, Vietnam and Iraq. “In previous wars,” he writes, “the US army has not reported to the public the number of wounded who are treated and immediately released back to duty. They have reported these casualties in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars”.
So here are a few Appenzeller factoids (glossed by Fisk, so the responsibility is mine!). The correct ratios for wounded in action vs killed in action for Iraq and Afghanistan is 8.13 to 1; for Korea, it’s 7.38 to 1 and for Vietnam it’s 6.43 to 1.
The true number of US wounded in Iraq until 18 March this year was 13,170, of whom 8,904 were so badly wounded that they required air evacuation to hospitals outside Iraq. The number of killed in action in Iraq is 3,251. (The other 750 died in accidents or of sickness.) But this does not include the kind of figure that the Pentagon and Bush always keep secret: an astonishing 1,000 or more Western-hired mercenaries, killed in Iraq while fighting or killing for “our” side.
But now I’ll let George Appenzeller speak in his own words. “There are widely ranging estimates, but roughly 450,000 individuals … fought on the ground in Vietnam … At the height of the Vietnam war there were 67,000 ground combat troops there. That is roughly the number of ground combat troops the US presently has deployed in Iraq. Interestingly enough, that is also about the number of ground combat troops the US had fighting at any one time in the Korean war.
“The US army now has a much leaner and meaner organisation than in the past with a higher proportion of combat troops to total troops. All those American civilian truck drivers and Bangladeshi cooks have freed up troop slots that have gone to the combat arms.”
No, Iraq has not yet reached Korea and Vietnam proportions. The three-year Korean war resulted in 33,686 US battle deaths and about 250,000 US wounds, an average of 94,562 casualties per year. The American phase of the Vietnam war lasted 14 years and resulted in 47,378 US battle deaths and 304,704 US wounds, an average of 25,149 casualties per year and an average of 66,792 during the four years of 1966-1969, the height of American fighting.
The Iraq war has lasted five years and has resulted in 3,251 battle deaths and 29,395 wounds, an average of 6,529 casualties per year. “Thus, the average number of killed and wounded during the Korean war was three times the total number of killed and wounded in the five years of the Iraq war. The average number of killed and wounded during each of the most difficult years of the Vietnam war was twice the total for the five years of the Iraq war.”
Now for much more blood, the civilian variety. According to George, “About 1,600,000 were killed in the Korean war, 365,000 (according to American authorities) and four million (according to the Vietnamese government) during the American phase of the Vietnam war, and who knows how many in Iraq. No fewer than 250,000, certainly.”
Not that long ago, Bush claimed that civilian fatalities in Iraq were “30,000 more or less” - again, note the “more or less” - but I can see why these statistics matter even less for him. It’s not just that we don’t care a damn about Iraqi lives. We are going to care even less about Iraqi civilian casualties when we walk backwards, when we are renewing and reviving and re-liberating all over again.
Robert Fisk’s new book, ‘The Age of the Warrior: Selected Writings’, is published by Fourth Estate
© 2008 The Independent
And when do we get to see Iran re-liberated? After it is re-nuked?
Bush’s cowboy-drawl “semantics” were the very thing that caused us to be nationally dumb enough to elect him. Some people even thought some of the folksy verbal Bushisms were “cute”, and that “Texas talk” was the clearest truth.
Now the Republicans think they will repeat the performance with the guy who opens every other sentence with “My friends,…
I’m for the one who now frequently mentions the word “blunder”—applied to what we have done, not only in Iraq, but also in economic policy.
“See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.” – George W. Bush, Greece, NY, May 24, 2005
Not only does this fossil-fueled criminal régime repeat the propaganda over and over, one needs a glossary to accompany the propaganda.
Here are a few examples.
“Healthy Forests” means to cut them down
“No Child Left Behind” means to leave kids behind without a dime
“Clear Skies initiative” means more pollution
“Coalition of the Willing” means coalition of the billing and coerced
“Smoking gun” means they have no evidence
“Trickle-down economics” means Piss-on-you
“Compassionate” means they aren’t
“Conservative” means they aren’t
“Moral” means immoral
“Majority” means minority
“Right” means wrong
and
“Clean Coal” is just a lie.
‘Re-elect the re-Nazis. Vote.’
Daniel David Good Day.
Obama ‘08.
Oh Boy-here come the attacks! Cool!
DD, counting lieberman as the RepubLikud he is, do dem’s have a majority????? Republiscum killed Wellstone to prevent a dem majority i thought/think,
But here on CD dem’s take it in the mouth, endlessly attacked-which amounts to support for the RepubLikud….
I’m not educated but this seems odd. Thoughts?
Remission Accomplished?
Mr. Fisk;
in the article you mention Western Merceneries ( around 1000) as addition to the regular army for the conflict in Iraq.
How would you describe the todays army people used ? There is not a draft in these days because all the military people are volunteers, professional solders for salaries and bonuses. What do you call these people ? GI’s,regular army, but not merceneries ? Most NATO countrie use only soldiers for payment. Sincerely, Vitny.
What can you expect from a thing like this Bush, raised in the US, where the media, business, advertising, and the government, and just about everything else, daily bombards everyone with lies and cute euphemisms?
There’s a great case to be made that the US government should be manned by humans who have never been in the nation.
The blindness and ignorance of the leaders is unfathomable.
fccm said:
“Conservative” means they aren’t”
Conservative means authoritarian, the opposite of liberal.
Conservatives are Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Pol Pot, Pinochet, Genghis Khan, Cheney and Bush.
Liberals are Jesus, Gandhi, Buddha, MLK, Schweitzer, Einstein and Lennon.
Conservatives have successfully demonized liberals. We prefer to be called “progressives” or even the old, frugal, careful meaning of the word “conservative”.
“The modern conservative is engaged in one of humankind’s oldest exercises, finding a moral justification for greed”
Bertrand Russel
Direct democracy is the only democracy that works. Would be conservative dictators need not apply. The referendum is the way to direct democracy.
hi mikepeters (Good Day to you to),
Lieberman barely, barely makes the “majority” and he has been useful for that in terms of agenda, hearings, appointees, committee chairmanships, etc. But he does lean with the Republicans about war, due to Israel. I think I’m grateful for him in 2007-08, and I’m hoping, of course, that the Senate gets a bigger Dem majority in the November election—to relegate Lieberman to less “importance.”
As for Dems getting it in the mouth on CD, yes we do. But it’s still a good place to try as hard as we can to think up sensible things to say. Some will not be convinced of anything but imaginary third parties though. And yet, we’ll keep typing and hoping, as you say, OBAMA 08! ( I really do believe he has potential to change politics in America by changing the Democrats themselves. We’ll see.)
Can we re-regurgitate?
History repeating itself. A confused nation relearning non-lessons.
In 1942, the German’s reported a long string of successes by their 6th Army as it moved toward’s Stalingrad and tried to take the city. Then they had to announce the destruction of the army.
“How on earth can you “renew” a “prospect”, let alone a prospect that continues to be bathed in Iraqi blood, a subject Bush wisely chose to avoid?”
Same way you can bomb a belief.
The Democrat’s rhetoric is as twisted and hollow as Bush’s.
Bush tells you about the ‘re-liberation’ of communities that were never announced as being lost. Bush talks about the ‘revival’ of the prospects of success when those prospects were never announced as being deceased.
The Democrats talk about changing the Democrats themselves, after having constantly told us that the Democrats are always perfect and that voting Democrat was the answer to our problems.
Thanks for admitting the lies. Because if there’s a need for changing the Democrats today, that means there’s been elections prior to today where voting Democrat was a mistake.
Of course, the way to puncture propaganda is to look at facts and reality. So, here’s a question to ask … what exactly is Obama doing to ‘change’ the Democratic Party? Since its admitted that the Democrats need change, then to me this means supporting a series of primary challengers against sitting Democrats.
We know that most of the sitting Democrats are pro-war, pro-corporate Republicans. So, if you are going to see a real movement for change inside the Democratic Party, then we are going to have to see a lot of primary challenges and internal Democrat political fights as there are moves to replace these incumbent pro-war, pro-corporate Republicans.
See any of that? I don’t. Its been a very quiet year for internal Dem party challenges. Does anyone even know of a sitting Democrat that’s facing a strong anti-war primary challenge? These might be out there, but they’ve been remarkably quiet if they are, as I can’t think of one.
If Obama was serious about changing the Democrats, this is what he’d have to be doing. He’d be forced to be leading his own slate of candidates in internal primary challenges against sitting Democrats. Otherwise, its a given that the same group of Republicans, who have both D’s and R’s after their names, in Congress will block any change Obama might want.
If Obama’s no dummy, and if he really wants a changed Democratic Party, where is this? Can anyone name a single primary challenger to an incumbent Dem that Obama is actively supporting?
Instead, what you see if you look closely is Obama supporting Joe Lieberman in the last election AGAINST the progressive Democrat that the Dems in CT had backed to try to get change.
Its just more propaganda. The Dems have been reduced to simply trying to find any con or any lie to fool people into voting for them in one more election. I guess the whole line of BS about beer distributorships landed like a lead balloon, so here’s the next attempt. But, they have no shame, so even when this one and the next one and the next one are all punctured and fallen to the ground, they’ll still be pitching the next line of bull.
Look for real change. Real concrete actions that really change something. Look for actions. Pay attention to actions. Obama and the rest of the Dems are good about talking about ‘change’. But look for real actions, and you’ll find out if they mean it or now, or if its all just hot air designed to con you.
Notice how not one of our “reps” nor any members of Big Corp Media asked:
“Will the number of ‘private security contractors” be reduced to pre-whatever levels, too? Or will “we” be adding more PSCs to compensate for the minor troop de-escalation?
Side note: as we all well know, the present administration lies about every single thing. There’s no reason we should believe any stats they present, whether it’s the EPA insisting NYC air is safe and healthy, the FBI swearing their 15,000 National Security Letter Constitutional violations (per year!) were just an “accident,” or the famous “we do not torture.” Unless the KIA/WIA tally is the first exception to their “always lie” rule, we can safely assume the “real” numbers are at least 5x what we’re told.
Probably more like 10x…
“Bush’s cowboy-drawl “semantics” were the very thing that caused us to be nationally dumb enough to elect him. Some people even thought some of the folksy verbal Bushisms were “cute”, and that “Texas talk” was the clearest truth.”
———————
That’s hilarious for me to read, because to me it sounds like Obama has the same speech writers and used the same speech coaches as Bush. I’d swear that Obama speeches are just being cranked out by the same machine. And since the Wall St money that now back’s Obama used to back Bush, maybe it is.
Here’s what I mean. A Bush campaign speech was always full of lots of lines about ‘flags’ and ‘freedom’ and ‘patriotism.’ His speech coaches taught him how to deliver these lines to get cheers from his audience. But if you listened, he never was really saying anything. His speech were just one long series of these applause lines that pushed the buttons of his audience that his pollsters were telling him could be pushed. He never actually said what he’d do as President. He just talked a lot about flags and freedom and patriotism.
An Obama speech is just the same to me. Oh, the specifics and the tactics are different because the target demographics are different. But the techniques are identical. Obama gives a long series of applause lines that push the pollster tested hot buttons of the audience. All those lines about ‘hope’ and ‘change’ that sound good, but don’t really say anything.
The speech coaches have taught both Bush and Obama to slow down. Bush they gave more a cowboy drawl slow do. Obama mimics the rythyms of Martin Luther King Jr. But again, if you look past the surface difference, the techniques used by Bush and Obama are very similar.
Ask this, when Bush was making campaign speeches, what wasn’t he saying while he was saying all the fluffy talk and applause lines about the flag and such. For instance, he never went to the voters and said “I’m going to give $32 billion of your tax payer dollars to a Wall St firm that made bad investments.”
Now, what’s Obama not saying while he is saying all the fluffy talk and applause lines about hope and change and such? Don’t know, but behind him there’s a campaign war chest stuff with millions of dollars of Wall St money … just like Bush had behind him when he was up there talking about the flag.
“Unless the KIA/WIA tally is the first exception to their “always lie” rule, we can safely assume the “real” numbers are at least 5x what we’re told.”
Always have been.
A google search turned up stories like this from 2003-04, but not much lately. Maybe people just got tired of pointing it out.
Many Deaths Left Out of Iraq Story
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1607
They were always tricky with these numbers. Today you just see the sums of five years of trickiness. Here’s one example I think I remember…. A Army sergeant was diving a vehicle that was fired upon. He drove aggressively to get away from the fire, and successfully avoided being shot. Unfortunately, he crashed the vehicle doing this and died in the crash. The army counts this as a ‘traffic accident’ and thus a ‘non-combat death’. The sums you see are the result of five years of such little acts of trickiness.
ezeflyer; conservative = having something to conserve (wealth,) the more to conserve, the more conservative.
example; the bush gangsters. raytheon’s friends and family. the Gulfstream Set.
A Stinger for Every American (2nd amendment forever spacious SKIES)
More as I think of the above.
The army really can’t hide the death of a soldier. Almost all have connections to people outside the military … mothers, wives, sisters, children, friends … who all want to know the next time the soldier is coming home, or the next time the soldier will get leave, or just wait for the next phone call or email. So, when this soldier dies, the military really can’t hide fact. These units do eventually rotate home, and if there were large numbers of people missing who hadn’t been reported as having died, it would be very noticeable.
What they can hide is the details. When, where, how. They can play games with statistics and categories and what numbers they announce and how they announce them.
Because of this, I doubt there are serious numbers of un-reported deaths out of Iraq. They pretty much got to report them. They just play games with the numbers of ‘combat’ deaths and ‘non-combat’ deaths.
Now, what they can do to hide casualties is to hire mercenaries. The military doesn’t report those numbers. I’d hope Blackwater and the other merc companies tell the survivors of their casualties that they’ve lost a loved one, but those numbers never get summed up.
So, if you want to look for extra people who are dying in Iraq, you can find some of it in the ‘non-combat’ deaths reported that don’t make that 4000+ number. But I don’t think that’s 5x or 10x. You can also try to look to see what you can find for mercenary casualties. If they are hiding any bigger numbers, that’s where they more likely are to be found.
CO Marc: Thank you for the excellent post re: Obama. You’ve articulated precisely and concisely why I won’t be voting for him. Nor will I vote for Billary or the Repub.
Others will say I’m ‘wasting’ my vote. How very very sad that this is an acceptable term in a ‘democracy.’
Relax Robert. I’m sure General Petraeus and GWB will get it right one of these days. After all, how many business ventures did George Walker Bush fail at before hitting it big with the MLB Texas Rangers. The real tragedy is the American ruling class could care less(the oil is flowing), and the working folks aren’t paying attention.
Daniel Day and mikepeters,
You wonder why the CD slams Dems? How about any factual analysis of their lack of action while in the majority that shows they have remained in lockstep with Bush on the Iraq illegal action (not war, because only Congress has the Constitutional right to do this and it hasn’t.)
Please see:
http://pacificfreepress.com/content/view/2476/1/
In Defense of John Yoo
Written by Chris Floyd
Thursday, 10 April 2008
Follow the Leader: In Defense of John Yoo
by Chris Floyd
Note: I am including only the conclusion of the article here to clarify for Daniel Day and mikepeters why the Dems are so mistrusted on CD comment pages.
“…..But as we see, no Democratic leaders are calling for impeachment; in fact, time and again, they specifically and adamantly rule it out. What’s more, they are not even launching any formal, full-scale, high-profile investigations of the “torture memos” and the entire apparatus of enhanced interrogation, indefinite imprisonment and rendition that the leftist jihadis liken to the gulag — even though they control both houses of Congress and could make life a living hell for the Bush Administration and John McCain, the loyal little lapdog who hopes to follow in the Leader’s footsteps. But it is obvious that, deep down, the Democratic leaders agree with the President’s actions and policies; they recognize the deep wisdom behind the aggression in the name of liberty in Iraq, the surveillance in the name of freedom at home, and the torture in the name of civilization that the Leader has made a hallmark of our enlightened age.
How then do they differ from the honorable John Yoo? They too are countenancing, assisting and following the arbitrary will of the Leader. They too look at the murder of a million innocent civilians in Iraq and refuse to treat it as a crime. They too look at the torture of helpless, uncharged, unprotected captives and refuse to treat it as a crime. Oh, they may preen and posture, they may lay some hot and heavy rhetoric on the rubes out there; but they DO nothing. And these are crimes which they actually have the power to investigate and prosecute.
Where then is the actual moral difference between these progressive paragons and John Yoo? He is simply more honest about his bootlicking servility to abitrary, brutal – and avowedly, unashamedly unconstitutional — power, that’s all. He has the courage of his lawless convictions. What do those Democratic leaders who claim allegiance to the rule of law and the Constitution of the United States have? The cowardice of their ambitions.
Mr. Fisk, Chickens who practise chicanery and murder for money are nothing new. Would you be more comfortable if the psychotic ninny-chimp from Connecticut (not a Texan at all), began to make sense? It is murder for money, plain and simple.
A better question might be: Where are the decent men in Washington who should be putting a stop to this disaster?
Does anyone know if combat death totals include any of those seriously injured soldiers, that die outside of Iraq/Afghanistan, after medical evacuation? If not, the death total may be much higher than reported.
dear daniel david
maybe you didnt hear about this but but bush wasnt elected - people did not fall for texas talk or bushisms - he lost the election… remember?
FCCM: Good posting. I think the word most damaged by Bush is FREEDOM. He loves to act like he’s a benevolent dictator, blessed by Divine Right of King to bestow freedom on the lands at his will and pleasure… meanwhile, every place his wand touches turns to anything but freedom.
EZE: Good one.
WILMOOR: Good comeback line.
CO MARC: Excellent analysis in your 4:04 posting. Gee, if I watched Wizard of Oz with you decades ago bet you’d pre-empt the plot line, revealing WHO was behind the curtain!
fccm April 12th, 2008 1:12 pm
Loved your post!
RE: FISK
It took Bush’s LATEST shenanigans for Robert Fisk to conlcude that Bush is marching us backwards? Mr Fisk: would you entertain the possiblitiy that you might be dysfunctionally slow on the uptake?
Be honest now, Bob: You need to change jobs.
Daniel David: Are you coming apart at the seams? How can you seriously suggest that Bush’s cowboy drawl semantics fooled anybody — except those who were even dumber than the cowboy himself?
If the people of this country were dumb enough to alow it go to war based on a President’s folksy pseudo-twang, wouldn’t they be even more easily fooled by the high-polish, cliched campaign speechs of Clinton and Obama?
DANIEL: If you’ve started to smoke something when you post, don’t do it. Keep any smoking time separate.
The several Obama speeches I watched left me with these impressions.
First -he’s been blessed with a pleasing speaking voice.Second-he uses many of the same cadences as the typical evangelical preacher-but he keeps the intonations and volume at a less threatening level. Third-as with most presedential candidates-the content is so vague as to be nearly meaningless.I personally can’t vote for him because he wants to increase the military budget.
Parenthetically-do you think there were quiet negotiations when Mayor Bloomberg’s name was being bandied about as a candidate?Did he offer enough of his personal fortune-or did he want consideration on the cheap?
You people seem to think that what we are accomplishing should be “quick and easy.”
Talk to any returning vet, and you’d hear a different story.
Our cause IS noble.
The world IS a better place with the likes of Saddam and his gang of thugs dead.
It takes time, and lots of it.
You people think if you send over a boatload of “crisis coulselors”, you could TALK these animals into behaving….
Sure, we’ve made mistakes..I’ll be man enough to admit it…OOHH…does the term “man enough” ruffle a few feathers in your circles? Try lending some help vice sitting there and whining and typing. I wish I knew how many of you folks are veterans. Then you COULD talk.
I’m a vet, and proud of it, and the only reason I’m here and not there helping our Noble cause is I’m too damn old to be back, but if I could I would, by golly!!!
Try watching FOX NEWS and get a true picture, if you’ve got the guts. But what would your friends think if they saw you tuned into FOX NEWS. Like him or not, Bill Orielly and the gang tell it like it is. (not to mention the “eye candy” females who know a bit about visual presentation; that’s just another plus.)
Try putting your testicles back on, if you can find them, that is. Those boys feel pretty good down there. My wife enjoys the fact that the only pussie in our home has four legs and loves “Meow Mix”. Can your woman say the same?
Just lookin’ out for you fellas…..try not to call names, it’s not only childish, it’s quite ‘feminine’…
your friend, banjoman
banjoman April 13th, 2008 5:05 am
I can’t tell if your being Eye-ronic, or not. Please confirm…
… if youre not, may I ask why you don’t have two pussies in your house: is your wife a MAN!!!???
banjoman April 13th, 2008 5:05 am
… if not:
“My wife enjoys the fact that the only pussie in our home has four legs and loves “Meow Mix”. ” So your wife is a MAN then?
…of course not, pissdoff, we are normal, regular people, and what SHE has neither of us ever refer to as that. I was speaking of our feline, mouse catcher, but credit your astuteness, if that is a real word, (lack of a better term at the moment)
Did you turn on FOX news this morning? Try it there once PAL; if you’re a regular guy, you’ll like what you hear AND see. If you’re a gal, like the kind living in, say… N. Hampton, Mass, you’ll still like it. Their ratings are surprizingly very high in that neck of the woods. Go figure.
If you DON’T like it, well, perhaps you need to re-examinine yourself. You sound like an OK guy to me…just like the hardhats I work with…they have good senses of humor and always try to catch a guy with “foot in mouth”…good, clean fun, that’s all…try Fox(Y) news there Buddy
They, and only they, were the ones who reported on that hate spewing Rev? Wright.
They most likely swung our election here in the Keystone state to our babe Hillary. I was actually considering supporting Obama in the fall, but not any more.
If I don’t like the movie, I get up and leave…there were little kids in that church, his included..What do they think?
The other so called networks tried to cover it up through omission.
Tune in, then let me know how you like it. Even your hard core Feminazis watch FOX news, and if they deny it, they’re fibbers.
yourfriend, Banjoman
CO Marc
People in the passed have tried to get families to come forward and say their son didn’t make it home. The US regime put a stop to it real fast. As soon as the chopper landing gear gets off the ground in Iraq with hurt or dying troops the US military says the person dies in the country the chopper lands. Remember the up to 500 a month that were coming back brain dead or missing most of their body parts. There are reports of patrols in Iraq that find a safe place to hide and pay off the locals not to rat them out and make BS reports on the radio of where they are patrolling to HQ. THe US controls very little of Iraq but from a bomber. It is the same in Afghanistan.
Thank you banjoman for the clear depiction of what humanity is up against as it deals with the questions of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. B-man’s offering shows the feeling level that Bush taps into and commentators here say Obama is also touching.
B’s rational flies out the window of course with “ask any returninig Vet” - of course the rational, like Bush/Cheney with Iraq, will change the label for the same re-cycling behavior as attempts are made to reconcil language with facts on the ground.
B narrative here and in other posts reveals the chronic sympathetic fight/flight state that leads him to the degradation of women and the femanine, and the constant seeking of sexual titilation, even while posting comments. I engage his comments and highlight this because these are the type of people who are spreading “depleted” unranium into the atmosphere and rationalizing it as “a noble act”.
But what to do? One place to look is Wilhelm Reich and his move beyond Frued and the mapping of secondary drives. When engaged with someone like Bush and Banjoman look for words such as “guts” in how they attack. This will reveal the area where sympathetic para-sympathetic reciprocity is hindered. Any converstaion not addressing this hinderence will end up with endless rationals with the dance remaining in it’s monotnase beat.
“Guts” - thrid and/or second chakra/nerve plexus: self-esteem, creative energy, abitlity to organize to do. “If I wasn’t too old…”, oh, so if I’m hearing you correctly you have a feeling of wanting to do something but you don’t feel you can do it…would you clarify for me, I would really like to know: what are you feeling, and what would you like to do?
Here’s someone who proclaims heterosexual activity, yet also states he has that form of sex without recognizing his partners “pussie”/vagina - “only pussie in our home has four legs” - again belies the lack of the basic biological action of reciprocity - expansion/contraction flexion/extention cycles.
The point here isn’t to shame (B even says “not to call names”, he knows deep down it will only invoke “childish” defense patterns which gaurd the expansive warmth of femininity, that which he loves to hate to long for) but to help show the profound extent to which humanity, especially within this “noble” Nation is emeshed within the sadomasachistic dance, with perhaps a glimpse of a way to change our steps. And we all could benefit from a change of our routine - the Bushes and the Banjomans who use the Constitution as toilet paper, as well as those who use the Constituion as a paper weight of 10,000lbs.,thus too heavy to pick up.
Thanks for sharing Banjoman, through that act indeed you are a friend.
I find CoMarc’s point about the lack of challenges to incumbents a very important one. He is right on. Obama needs members of congress to get in so he can’t try to unseat them. Therefore, he is controlled by the process and the result is to be determined by the process, not by him. The people are the only ones who can do this, and they won’t. Why?
Banjoman, if you think the war is a “noble cause”, why aren’t you for McCain? Or was that Obama consideration just a lie?
Do you really think all those dead Iraqis’ families think this is a “noble cause”? What about our 4,200 American family members? What do they think?
It’s fine for you to watch Fox News and think Hannity, O’Reilly and the other guys who never put on a uniform speak for you, but they don’t speak for me.
Hey Puck Twain,
I actually feel a bit guilty that I can live in this wonderful land and not be able to go back in and join the fray, so to speak.
I AM too old, too blind, and a tad overweight, and have four small children at this late age and a woman who all depend on me. My loving wife gave up her carreer and forsake her education to get there to stay home and be a “mommy”. They need me here.
Sure, we have to give up some luxuries and even some non-luxuries, but it will show up in the way our children will turn out. It already has.
I really enjoy your analysis. You sound like a real intellectual who I could never keep up with in lots of subjects. But, I wouldn’t mind sharing a beer or two with you. I think it’d be kind of fun.
My Pappy told me once (he got tird and went home years ago) that although “your intelligence CAN limit your education, your education can NEVER limit your intelligence”.
Pretty “well put” for an old coal miner who attended the 8th grade 4 times because that’s as high as you could get.
I agree with “not much” here at Common Dreams, and you folks seem to eat me alive.
I just have a feeling that, for some reason, my posts seem to strike an open wound with you.
For the record, I am familiar with the sympathetic vice the para- sympathetic, and I didn’t even have to stay in a Holiday Inn express last night. (just a joke, there Twain, just a joke.)
This place feeds on dissent. I’m sure they get a good meal on the likes of me.
I repeat……YOUR friend, Banjoman
Being as this thread was about semantics: using your logic you have just accused some readers on CD of behaving like felines.
I suspect you’re confused after watching too much FOX.
Your friend,
PS why don’t you rename yourself BANJO STRING -
Vinty wonders:
Mr. Fisk;
in the article you mention Western Merceneries ( around 1000) as addition to the regular army for the conflict in Iraq.
How would you describe the todays army people used ? There is not a draft in these days because all the military people are volunteers, professional solders for salaries and bonuses. What do you call these people?
**********************
You need to think of this in retail merchandising terms. See, the regular army, air force, navy, and marines, are the big box discount mercinaries and Blackwater et al are the speciality-mall-boutique-niche mercinaries. That’s why they wear specialty outfits like black ski masks and bubba highway trooper mirrored shades and drive asround in Escalades and Navigators and escort diplomats and other governhment brass. It’s a style statement and one must always remember to “dress for success” as one practices the second oldest profession.
Kind of like the Nazis in WWI had the Wehrmacht (reglar army) and the Waffen SS (special troops usually at the disposal of the gestapo and its “final solution” subsidiary. Let’s just say that Blackwater etc, are the future shock storm troopers.
Seeing as fine a mind as Fisk disect the mangled gibberish of George W. Bush, village imbecile, is a little like watching a Ferrari (complete with trailer hitch) towing a double-wide mobile home. It can be done but what a waste.
What the heck….I probably enjoy a good old “cat fight” as much as you do.
As far as the “banjo string” name, well, then wouldn’t I be even MORE “in tune” with the truth than ever before, huh there, pizzdoff?
FOX(Y) News is there for you. And it’s free. Get some courage and try it.
y.f. Banjostringman
The Big Picture
They all just puppets doing what they are told, Bush, Cheney and the rest by powerful forces behind just about everything that happens.. War, famine, disease and Financial upheavals like we are experiencing today.. At the core of It is the race for power and the right to determine the destiny of the human race for profit.
Some people feel it is their God given right because their were born a member of the financial elite.
The live in a environment that supports their believes, surrounded by enormous wealth and the power and Influence that it buys. They truly believe themselves superior!
They think , For look at them running around trying to survive while we suck way the blood of labor through taxes and inflation. What fools their are and they deserve their fate.
Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom (1913)
“Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men’s views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the Field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.”
Banjoman- Good to know you get your monthly Homeland Security stipend for trolling CD for the Bush junta…
Seriously though, your over the top John Wayne ‘I’M A REAL MAN’ Republican Veteran schtick is starting to get annoying.
Everyone who has been on CD for the past week now KNOWS you are a knee jerk BUsh apologist. So please start saying something new, instead of just regurgitating the Bushco company line.
Banjoman,
There is no more fundamental a right than the right of a people to defend themselves, by any means, against a brutal invader and occupier and the vile traitors who cooperate in any way with the invader. OK?
CoMarc, I am with you. I am very distrubed by the idea that if I could miraculously preview the outcomes with McCain, Clinton or Obama (separately) would there be any difference?
I don’t particularly doubt that McCain would get us into deep doo-doo fastest because he would do the inevitable (maintaining and enlarging war–as requested by the military industrial complex) quicker but when all parties are purchased by the same interests how can the outcomes be different.
And I am seriously thinking of withholding my vote in the Presidential election but that begs the question of how to make a real difference. I think Molly Ivins always said that getting big money out of elections was the key but there is little authentic real will for that.
How to make a real difference?
Mollyj- Stop shopping? Buy local. Reduce, reuse, recycle. Give up the car, take a bus. Start a home business in the neighborhood or community.
Deny these thugs the means to their ends.
Wake from the ‘American Dream’ seeing it for the nightmare it really is.
Thank God Ralph Nader is running. At least
we will have somone to tell us the truth.
The Democratic party’s failures are their own
fault, they cannot blame Ralph this time.
Obama has yet to raise an issue, We know where
Hillary is coming from, and we stii don’t know
who the contributors are to Billary’s Charity
Ranch are in Arkansas along with the Arab
donators to his Library. Did I read that he has
500 billion in his Charity? The list please!
“The Iraq war has lasted five years and has resulted in 3,251 battle deaths and 29,395 wounds, an average of 6,529 casualties per year.”
Too many conflicting numbers. When was that count done?
“The US troop deaths: 4,032, and the injured: 92,615.”
Source: John McLaufglin on the McLaughlin Group (PBS 4/11 08).
Banjoman is not funny. He and his fellow “freedom” lovers killed a million innocent people in Iraq. He’s had his day (and made a mockery of it) and now, like Lady MacBeth, must somehow remove the blood stains from his hands. Good luck to him as history inches him further and further into shame as a matter of historical fact. No more of this coy, laughy Republican bullshit.
Fanonian2 says:
“It took Bush’s LATEST shenanigans for Robert Fisk to conlcude that Bush is marching us backwards? Mr Fisk: would you entertain the possiblitiy that you might be dysfunctionally slow on the uptake?
Be honest now, Bob: You need to change jobs.”
Uh, you don’t know who Robert Fisk is, do you?
Hey! W is a liar, and there is purpose to the lies. Those purposes are to gain control over Iraqian oil for his cronies, and spend the government into bankruptcy, just as resulted from USSR incursion into Afghanistan. We’re not dealing with some shuffling half-wit; we’re dealing with evil.
Hey Banjostringman:
look up banjostring on the following website
YES YOU’RE REALLY IN-TUNE!
www.urbandictionary.com
Public relations seems to be America’s greatest talent. Bush should be wearing a seersucker suit with white belt and shoes when he makes any speech.
“War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength”. They must have this infamous slogan plastered all over the speechwriter’s office in the current White House. To label the Bush administration “Orwellian” is the ultimate redundancy.
Yet, there is and always has been method to his madness. In the end, the faceless, odorless, tasteless mechanics of his propaganda have swallowed whole the National Socialist PR playbook and nearly perfected The Big Lie, laser-aimed at a citizenry largely mortified by 9/11 and primed to drink the “Bush-as-Hero-President” Kool Aid. Many drank it willingly, enough to keep this criminal and his crew in power for eight long, insidiously destructive years, with a little help from Diebold.
As summarized by Ron Suskind in his seminal article on Bush, “Without a Doubt” (read it for the ultimate deconstruction of the “moron” behind the curtain) in the 10/23/04 NY Times Magazine, published just before the last presidential election to no effect on the outcome, this cabal of neocons, religious fruitcakes, corporate predators and run-of-the-mill warmongers and chickenhawks decided to install the rich but ineffectual dry-drunk GWB as their figurehead. He is the Jerry Mahoney of a tightly constructed, powerfully conceived and marketed paradigm (in the wake of 9/11), a re-cycled and re-branded geopolitical “reality”–The War on Terror–designed to fill The End of the Cold War vacuum and sustain the military/industrial/ congressional complex. This new reality was based on the poll-tested, focus group-driven ILLUSION of predominant, triumphalist Christian “faith”–read the Commander-In-Chief’s direct, personal pipeline to Jesus Christ–brilliantly blended with the elitist, realpolitik tenets of Neoconservatism, as propounded by the likes of William Kristol, Condi Rice, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz (remember this lying cockroach?), Doug Feith, Paul Kagan, and of course, the vaudeville team of Dick “Darth Vader” Cheney and Don the “Rummy”.
We’ve all been frogs slowly, relentlessly boiling to death in the steaming effluents coming out of the mouths of these con-artists: years of dead, empty rhetoric that always defied common sense, logic, facts on the ground and in front of our faces, and usually their own previous dead, empty public statements, which if proved unworkable up against actual reality, were discarded like used toilet paper and replaced with fresh new bullshit. All of this odious propaganda stream neatly and enthusiastically packaged for mass consumption by the corporate media in all their complicit zeal to “uncover the news”.
Occasionally, as with Katrina, even the propaganda machine so artfully built could not contain the hellacious reality of human suffering and celestial incompetence slamming into us day after day like the eponymous hurricane. So the likes of Anderson Cooper or Brian Williams waded into the muck and mire to “inform” us of the government’s shortcomings and callousness toward its own citizens. This lasted, what, 10 days? Then, it was back to business as usual, giving the mouthpiece prime time coverage in a deserted, floodlit square in downtown New Orleans so he could regurgitate another bucket of swill about “rebuilding” and “dealing with race” and whatever other dead, empty words he belched forth that evening that don’t even bear repeating.
The lies could be stretched from here to Mars. Every one of them had a purpose. He may himself be an imbecile, an empty suit, but that suit was filled to overflowing with the Machiavellian plans of his handlers, and those plans included a firm belief in the gullibility, fear, and malleability of an under-educated, over-stressed, soft, self-centered, and yes, bitter and bigoted electorate, except of course, those of us who read CD.
It looks from here like he’s been a huge success, if you figure the billions in profits by his cronies, the price of oil, the very real possibility that his clone Grandpa Munster can be elected to continue and expand on his core policies, the utter lack of accountability through impeachment or any other legal sanction for him or his crew, and the gross complicity and impotence of the Democrats that no dose of Cialis could reverse. Napoleon never had it so good, and look where he ended up? Not contentedly clearing brush in some ditch. Ah, the good life.
Meanwhile, those who can’t obtain power either covet it or complain about it. The wheel turns, outrageous acts seem to fall on deaf ears and blind eyes. As Mr. Fisk points out, dead words replace truth and hard statistics fall like feathers. To paraphrase the Viet Nam-era journalist Michael Herr, even those who learn the lessons of history are still condemned to repeat them. We’ve seen the enemy, and “it are us”.
Kuddo to COMarc! what could one add to his very insightful and informative comments?
Obama is all talk; his voting record is quite bad (amost as bad as McCaine’s); his support of Lieberman (A Republican all along as is Fienstein)said a lot.
Hope is the ONLY thing left: he may become a progressive once elected IF we keep his feet to the fire…
Some say that’s as likely as him turning white in Jan 09.