Our insistence on memorializing only our own dead (and usually only those "brave soldiers" we love to cherish so much) is a big part of the reason we have not yet transcended the ridiculous jingoistic, us-vs-them mentality of nationalism. And it is such an easy way to keep away the awful truth of our own murderous actions.

Sorry, America . . . until we set aside a special "Memorial Day" to remember all the victims of US imperialism and barbarism, I'm not impressed.

"Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them!" - Albert Einstein

I agree with both Seventhson's comment as well as a comment made yesterday on this site for another article: This day was set aside to MOURN and LAMENT the dead of war not to honor anybody. There is no honor in death, it is as common as dirt and not as useful.

For any Christian believers out there, there is only one "honorable" death, Jesus Christ's because it had a purpose: to redeem us all from death, for the purpose of everlasting life. The rest of death is a waste, counter to G~d's original plan.
So much for the christian warrior mindset.

A little "fore-taste" or "look into the near future" based on U.S. history, which certainly has not fundamentally changed or improved, are a few educational resources I provided links for in a post for an article posted at CD May 23rd or 24th, but instead of posting the link to that other post, I'll just re-post the resource links, while also some of the text that I wrote for the post.

Regarding U.S. "National Security", people really need to view the following 7-minute video of John Stockwell, perhaps from his Oct. 1987 lecture and who is a former CIA agent of 13 years service, including during the period that GHW Bush was CIA director.

The video goes with the ICH article by John Stockwell, which has an embedded copy of a .WMV (Windows Media) video for which there's a link for downloading the file, and every time I see .WMV as an alternative format for videos, it always says that these are of higher quality; in case that's of any news to any readers of this post.

"America's Third World War

How 6 million People Were killed in CIA secret wars against third world countries",

ADE Video 2006, edited and directed by Kurt Nimmo,

posted by him, Nov. 27, 2006

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9VxnCBD9W4

The ICH article, the page, is part 1 of 2 and provides a link for the second part. ICH assigns a title for the

"THE SECRET WARS OF THE CIA:
by John Stockwell

A lecture given in October, 1987"

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4068.htm

QUOTE: "John Stockwell, former CIA Station Chief in Angola in 1976, working for then Director of the CIA, George Bush. He spent 13 years in the agency. He gives a short history of CIA covert operations. He is a very compelling speaker and the highest level CIA officer to testify to the Congress about his actions. He estimates that over 6 million people have died in CIA covert actions, and this was in the late 1980's."

It's all, i.e., always, been (and continues, I'll add for my 2 cents) done "in the name" of U.S. National Security, John Stockwell says about these extremely criminal CIA cover operations, of which, he says, there estimatibly are thousands of major cases, and many thousands more of minor cases.

In the video he says that while the U.S. was claiming that it was fighting against the USSR in third-world Asia, this was a lie; the U.S. was really fighting against the rather totally defenceless indigenous populations who ... not only had no means of really defending themselves, they really had no desires to attack or harm the U.S.

A documentary film that goes strongly well with the above from John Stockwell is "War on Democracy" by John Pilger, and there's a full, single-clip video at Google, a little over an hour and a half in length, while the apparently same length is provided at Youtube in 10 clips or so and posted there by user 1GangRelated. I thought to recall the user having changed to 1GangRelated1 or 1GangRelated2, but just did a search of Youtube and the clips still come up under or for user 1GangRelated.

Actually, checking for the channel page at Youtube, the user did change to 1GangRelated1 even if the Youtube search showed 1GangRelated for user. "War on Democracy" is one of the user's playlists.

http://www.youtube.com/user/1GangRelated1

Yet another good set of clips at Youtube for all of this above CIA covert op's, ... topic are the sets of clips provided by users TheNewPatriot and CIACoupsOfTerrorism for the video, "Secrets of the CIA".

http://www.youtube.com/user/TheNewPatriot

http://www.youtube.com/user/CIACoupsOfTerrorism

The latter user's Youtube channel provides a few playlists on the CIA, and I didn't see the above set of clips mentioned in the playlist with 15 video clips, but doing a search of the channel turns up the clips for "Secrets of the CIA". The playlist with 15 clips includes "The Secret Government: CIA Operations", which is a presentation by Bill Moyers, I believe for PBS.

The U.S. has not changed. Perhaps the dark operations aren't being conducted by the CIA ops branch of division, whatever it's called, anymore, due to having attracted too much attention, etcetera; but the U.S. replaced much of that with the N.E.D., and surely other means to accomplish the same sort of hell it's long been secretly committing.

We learn through all of such critical secret (once secret) history of the U.S. and its dark aspects that we can't trust what it reports about war zones and much that's related.

In my following post is a copy (with the link to the source article page) of the following article. This is history that I believe surely most people did not know about, or knew very, very little about; and the article's short, fully fitting in a CD post, but packed with examples that illustrate that even the Bush-Cheney administration introduced little that was new for the U.S. government.

"The Reagan Revolution
from the book
The Praetorian Guard
by John Stockwell" (former CIA agent)

(url broken over two lines)

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/05/23
#comment-1211800

I have a hard time believing your statistics. Most other estimates I have seen and heard over the years count deaths of at least one million. The latest estimate I have heard from foreign sources is 1.257 million. I guess if you just use OFFICIAL US figures you WOULD come up with a number less than 10% of what most ESTIMATES ARE CURRENTLY reporting. SO IT IS A NO-BRAINER TO ADJUST YOUR ESTIMATES ACCORDINGLY WHICH WOULD MAKE YOURS ACTUALLY OFF BY 900,000!

Millions dead in Iraq and Afghnistan. Today we can 'mourn' all those brave lads with hotdogs and beer.
All those brave lads who lost their lives for the benefit of EXXON, CITIGROUP and General Mayhem.

I use http://icasualties.org/Iraq/index.aspx as IBC under counts civilians by about 15 to 1.

We know that the Generals told us right from the beginning of the Ist Gulf War that "we do not do body counts". This went on through the economic sanctions but the U.N. gave us the body counts of Iraqi children starving to death.And the sanctions began to unravel so Bush jr.invaded Iraq It was the body counts that got people to rebel against the Vietnam War.The pictures of the civilians and soldier's suffering and deaths motivated people to protest the war. This is why there were no body counts of civilians even though this is against the Geneva Convention, during the Gulf war and Afghanistan. Reporters did not take pictures of the horror either at least not like they did during Vietnam and flash them on our T.V.every night. We were not even allowed to see the soldiers coffins that were returned home from the Middle East Wars.Remember when a member of the Bush Administration said that you cannot win wars by being sensitive.I hope that President Obama will end the wars or at least truly obey the Geneva Conventions , if he does not have the courage to end the wars.

"genie May 25th, 2009 6:23 pm

... I hope that President Obama will end the wars or at least truly obey the Geneva Conventions , if he does not have the courage to end the wars."

Your hope will be lost in both terms that you hope Obama will act correctly on or about. This is unfortunate, but is certainly obvious when reading [enough] about everything that's been happening, is presently happening, and what we most definitely need to understand is going to be happening as we progress forward in time.

It's fine to hope, but it should be well-based hope, and while I don't wish to be a spoiler of good dreams, well, we nevertheless need to be realistic; and being that we can [understand] that hoping that Obama will act honourably certainly is a "pipe dream", a "pipe" that's open on both ends and therefore can't retain any (internal) substance. So the dream easily and quickly shall dissipate (disappear) and be lost to ... "no man's land".

To see that the Obama administration really has no intention of withdrawing from Iraq, besides having no intentions of providing wholly due and enormous reparations, this is not difficult; while to accept that this unfortunately is clearly reality is more difficult, being difficult to accept. Only if we accept that, however, will people become more actively against the continuation of the war on Iraq; and yes, it is continuing. To be able to see that it [is] a war that is continuing only requires some serious reading from serious reporters and analysts. Some whining Americans refuse to accept that it [is] war, saying it's only occupation and very much saying this on the basis that Congress didn't declare that the U.S. is at war; but that's a hegemon's argument, for the U.S. is not the sole party to decide when what it does is war, or not. The people that the U.S. launches its military, i.e., war, machine upon have more right to say whether the U.S. is warring on them, or not.

Furthermore, what did Bush state when asked about the Constitution because of all of his administration's dictatorial, ... war-making, etcetera? He said that the Constitution is "only a piece of paper"; as the Reagan administration also stated, according to the copy of the related article by John Stockwell linked in one of my earlier posts in this CD page (and he wouldn't lie about something like this, if about anything at all).

The Reagan administration actually proved to be very dictatorial, tyrannical, anti-Constitutional, ..., and every U.S. presidential administration since has continued on the same theme or terms; as John Stockwell infers with his article on the Reagan administration. The GHW Bush, Clinton, and GW Bush administrations did, and the Obama administration also clearly is maintaining the U.S. on the same path.

Hope? See the following two articles, which I've provided links for a number of times at CD over the past week, but which some, perhaps many, readers didn't see.

"Extended AfPak War under Obama: Slouching towards Balkanization",
by Pepe Escobar, Asia Times, May 23 2009

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13712

"The Long War: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and more ahead",
by Tom Hayden, Tikkun, May 22 2009

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13708

"The Long War" he describes is based on U.S. officials having spoken of the war in or on Afghanistan as "the long war", but Tom Hayden's analysis is about this being very LONG; potentially, while also believably, for as many as 50 (f*cking) years.

Pepe Escobar's article, above, is related to his recent article on Pipelinestan, for which there was a copy at CD, but an easy way to be sure to get the link(s) (not sure to recall if there are one or two by him about "Pipelinestan") people can just go to his author index at globalresearch.ca. Pipelinestan relates to his above article because of Balochistan, a region in Pakistan that the U.S. elites apparently do want to really go after; and there'll be BIG TROUBLE because of this predatory criminality. Pepe Escobar says that the Balochis are fierce, historically fierce and strong fighters, ..., feared by everyone, including the Taliban, who Pepe Escobar says would run at the sight of a Balochi fighter.

ALSO SEE the following. Actually, it's for links to some recent articles by Dahr Jamail and, if I can fit it in the post, one by David Price, but these'll be posted in a follow-up post to or for this one. I'll be excerpting from some of the articles and this makes this post too long; CD allowing a max. of 1,000 words per post.

You can’t handle the truth!*

[pauses]
BUSH/CHENEY: Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Whose gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinburg? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago, and you curse the marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to.

AMERICA HAS A NEW GOD, THE MILTARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX AND THE FAKE CHRISTIANS RUNNING THIS COUNTRY AND BECOMING GOVERNMENT SPYS.

FREEDOM ISN'T FREE, THE PRICE WE PAY IS WITH OUR BLOOD AND THE BLOOD OF INNOCENT PEOPLE OF THE COUNRYS WE INVADE AND OCCUPY BECAUSE OF A PACK OF GREEDY WAR MONGERS IN WASHINGTON.

TRUST ME , I HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN 9/11, NONE US SHOULD, WE SHOULD KEEP LOOKING FOR THE REAL TRUTH OF THAT INFAMOUS DAY IN HISTRORY.

OH , AND A VERY SPECAIL THANKS TO BUSH/CHENEY FOR PUSHING THE TALIBAN INTO PAKISTAN, A COUNTRY THAT HAS NUKES.
SINCE CHENEY WANTS SO MUCH PUBLICITY , SEND HIM TO PAKISTAN TO REPORT ON WELL WELL THINGS ARE GOING OVER THERE ,I AM SURE HE CAN FORCE HIS VERSION OF THE TRUTH FROM SOME OF THE LOCALS , GIVEN A CELL , SOME WATER A TOWEL AND A BOARD.

Sahwa, btw, was also called the "Awekening Council(s)" of Sunni resistance fighters.

"Iraq: Provoking the Inevitable",

by Dahr Jamail, truthout.org, May 23, 2009

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13718

EXCERPT:

On Monday, Iraqi government security forces arrested two prominent Sunni leaders in Iraq's volatile Diyala Province. One of them, Sheikh Riyadh al-Mujami, not coincidentally, is a prominent leader in the local Sahwa (Sons of Iraq), the 100,000-strong Sunni militia that was set up by the US military to quell attacks against occupation forces and launch an effort to battle al-Qaeda in Iraq. Both of those objectives were accomplished, but these efforts are being erased by ongoing missions by Iraqi government security forces, sometimes backed by the US military, to kill or capture both Sahwa leadership and fighters. The results of these attacks against the Sahwa are already evident in an escalation in violence that has taken two forms - a dramatic increase in spectacular attacks against Iraqi civilians and increasing attacks against occupation forces.

The Sahwa played a critical role in the reduction of overall violence in Iraq. When the US decided to pay off the resistance (to the tune of $300 per month per fighter) that was effectively shredding occupation forces from late 2003 until mid-2006, the number of US military personnel being killed began to decline, and has, until recently, continued to decline. The Sahwa were also effective in finding and eliminating al-Qaeda in Iraq, so the fact that we are now seeing a renewing of horrific attacks against the Shia should not come as a surprise as the Sahwa continue to leave their security posts around the country.

...

As several of my previous articles for this web site have been outlining, the ongoing attacks by the Maliki government against the Sahwa continue to destabilize the situation in Iraq and allow overall violence to increase with each passing week. We are seeing Sahwa fighters leave their posts in ever-increasing numbers; the US military is literally redrawing the boundaries of cities in order not to move their bases outside of them to respect the Status of Forces Agreement, and there is no sign from the Obama administration that there will ever be a full withdrawal from Iraq, nor reparations made to the people of Iraq.

END OF EXCERPT

"Anthropological Intelligence supports Military Occupation: Engineering "Trust of the Indigenous Population"
How Some Anthropologists Have Learned to Stop Worrying and Start Loving the Army",

by Dahr Jamail, truthout.org, May 16, 2009

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13643

EXCERPT:

Anthropologist Audrey Roberts works for Human Terrain System (HTS), a Pentagon program. Referring to the information produced by HTS scholars, she says, "If it's going to inform how targeting is done - whether that targeting is bad guys, development or governance - how our information is used is how it's going to be used. All I'm concerned about is pushing our information to as many soldiers as possible. The reality is there are people out there who are looking for bad guys to kill. I'd rather they did not operate in a vacuum."

In a recent article on this site I have described HTS as comprising American scholars, primarily in the field of anthropology, along with sociologists and social psychologists, embedding themselves with the US military in the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Their brief is to enable the military to make better decisions by helping it to understand the social mores and customs of the cultures it is occupying.

As a program that is likely to have a long tenure, it deserves further examining. The US military would like the US public to believe it is a benevolent program, but it does not require a crystal ball to recognize the insidious reality. HTS teams actively engage in targeting the "enemy" in Iraq and Afghanistan. Team members often wear military uniforms and body armor, and even carry weapons. Like Ms. Roberts, they are not overly concerned about the fact that the "intelligence" they produce is instrumental in capturing and killing people. The social scientists who choose to employ themselves within HTS clearly are not having a moral struggle with the fact that they are allowing their knowledge to be used as a weapon of war.

The military's benign description specifies that HTS will "improve the military's ability to understand the highly complex local social-cultural environment in the areas where they are deployed." Proponents of the program go as far as to claim that its goal is to help the military save lives.

Those who know better, like US Army Lt. Col. Gian Gentile, will tell you, "Don't fool yourself, these Human Terrain Teams, whether they want to acknowledge it or not, in a generalized and subtle way, do at some point contribute to the collective knowledge of a commander, which allows him to target and kill the enemy in the Civil War in Iraq."

...

Corporate media coverage of the program conveniently does not indicate that HTS ignores basic anthropological principles of ethics, such as voluntary informed consent, issues of secrecy, and doing no harm, among others. ...

As Price wrote recently, the media stance does not bode well for the future, or for President Obama. "The real bad news for American foreign policy is that given President Obama's commitment to "soft power" and his open endorsements of counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan, we can expect more of this uncritical coverage on HTS as a crucial tool needed for America's occupations in foreign lands. I am left to wonder how anthropologist Ann Dunham, Barack Obama's mother, would have reacted to her son's reliance on such clearly unethical anthropological means to achieve political ends so aligned with neocolonialist goals of occupation and subjugation?"

END OF EXCERPT

Links to two more articles will be posted in a follow-up of or for this post.

"Iraq: Laying the Groundwork for Violence",
by Dahr Jamail, truthout.org, May 7, 2009

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13532

EXCERPT:

Throughout history, those who collaborate with the occupiers of their country tend to end up hung out to dry, or dead. The occupation of Iraq is no different - collaboration and the poison fruits that come of it are on full display for the history books once again. Only now, the rapidity with which this is happening is staggering.

On May 5, the Iraqi military killed Basim Mohammed and detained his brother. Mohammed was a member of the Sahwa, the 100,000-strong Sunni militia composed mostly of former resistance fighters that the US created in order to use them to battle al-Qaeda in Iraq, as well as paying them off to draw down the number of attacks against occupation forces.

The Sahwa, who were supposed to be given government jobs either in security or in civil services, have been betrayed. ...

The obvious solution would be for the Obama administration to pressure its client government in Baghdad to fulfill promises to incorporate the Sahwa into its ranks, as well as applying pressure to Prime Minister Maliki to lay off targeting the Sahwa and its leadership.

Instead, Sahwa members like Mohammed are being killed and their family members detained, and the attacks continue. ...

Let us be clear - the US military knew, when the Sahwa were formed back in mid-2006, that most of the members were either former resistance fighters or members of al-Qaeda. Promises were made to these men that if they took the $300 monthly paycheck and promised to stop their attacks against occupation forces, they would be granted amnesty from any Iraqi government reprisal. The latter was necessary because ....

Sahwa leaders are complaining about this, to little or no avail. ...

Violence across the country continues unabated. On the same day the Iraqi military killed Basim Mohammed, nearly 40 Iraqis were killed, 31 of them “suspected militants” (read Sahwa members) killed by the Iraqi military in Diyala province.

In the last 72 hours, most of the violence is due to Iraqi government operations that are in full swing to take out as many Sahwa members as possible.

END OF EXCERPT

Based on the three articles I've now provided links for and by Dahr Jamail, in this and my immediately prior post in this CD page:

The use of HTS and what the U.S. did in enticing the (Sunni) Sahwa, aka Awakening Councils, in Iraq reminds (myself anyway) of how the U.S. has historically operated, including with the diabolically twisted use of the U.S. Peace Corps, of which the volunteers were kept [uninformed] about the real purpose. However, it also reminds of the USA's Salvador Option in Latin or Central America, and its Phoenix program in Vietnam; and all of these involved CIA covert ops, and always for [evil] purposes. The key elements are [covert ops] and for only [evil] purposes.

I feel confident in saying that if we learn about these latter "tidbits" of history, then we can and should have a very good idea of what's ahead for humanity, presently.

Again, an earlier post of mine in this CD page has a link for an article by John Stockwell, a former CIA agent who's a 13-year veteran of clearly very serious, critical experience and he relates crucial knowledge to us.

Using the link in my other post in this page and for my other post that has a link to and a full copy of the John Stockwell article on the Reagan administration, there's also another post of mine in the same page and that one is for links to a video for what I guess is a clip from a lecture provided by John Stockwell. And along with the link for that video is a link to a 2-part article by J.S. at ICH, an article entitled "The Secrets Of The CIA", which certainly should be treated as [must read] information.

We need to "connect the dots", but must first know what they are. Like when wanting to know what picture a puzzle provides when pieced together or assembled and we don't have an image to tell us what the picture consists of, we need the pieces and must then assemble them together.

I was surprised that the Iraqi resistance would accept to be part of the U.S. occupation even if the U.S. was offering a monthly pay check and figured they'd come to realise that there really was no good intentions in their regard about this "deal". After all, the objective of acquiring control and privatisation of Iraq's energy resources wasn't going to cease, [ever], and the U.S. elites really don't like to share, only accepting to share with the "allies" of NATO and Israel, for the most part; but also with governments of resource-rich countries that accept to act as proxies for the "interests" of the western and, esp. U.S., elites.

The Awakening Councils were [suckered]. They fell for the baiting that the U.S. pretended to be honestly intended, with no bad tricks attached, .... They fell for it and thereby walked right into a trap that surely [was] set up "just for them"; for "taking them out", reducing their force capabilities, ....

They should have seen that this would be ahead for them, but evidently were rendered short-sighted due to their desperation caused by the extreme poverty that was, in turn, caused by the 13 years of criminal economic sanctions and then this new war of the U.S. and its "coalition of the ... [coerced]"; and the USA's new proxy government in Baghdad.

They forgot to seriously, critically look or think [ahead]. Their hopes, due to their desperation, short-sighted them.

Hope? Sure; but be careful about it.

For emphasising the article, to read it, here's the link for the prior background article by Dahr Jamail and hyperlinked in his article about anthropologists, etcetera, being used with the USA's or Pentagon's HTS program in Iraq and Afghanistan, linked in an earlier post of mine in this CD page.

"Occupying Hearts and Minds", by Dahr Jamail, Apr 30, 2009

http://www.truthout.org/043009R

EXCERPT:

One of the definitions of the word "occupation" is: the action, state, or period of occupying or being occupied by military force.

Throughout history, areas or countries occupied by military force have always resisted, and this resistance has caused the occupier to devise more suitable methods of subduing the population of the area being occupied.

END OF EXCERPT

Aka 'war', imo! War of aggression, anyway.

EXCERPT (continued):

The US military has sent shock troops, which also donned helmets and flak jackets - anthropologists, sociologists and social psychologists, with their own troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan. By the end of 2007, American scholars in these fields were embedding with the military in Afghanistan and Iraq as part of a Pentagon program called Human Terrain System (HTS), which evolved shortly thereafter into a $40 million program that embedded four or five person groups of scholars in the aforementioned fields in all 26 US combat brigades that were busily occupying Iraq and Afghanistan.

Two years prior to this, the CIA had quietly started recruiting social scientists by advertising in academic journals, offering salaries of up to $400,000. The military's goals for the HTS was to have them gather and disseminate information about Iraqi and Afghani cultures. ...

END OF EXCERPT

The CIA, again! The [evil] CIA ops, that is.

EXCERPT (continued):

This new form of psychological warfare is deeply disturbing. Throughout my five years of reporting on the occupation of Iraq, when I've asked Iraqis what they feel the most damaging aspect of the occupation is, I have been told that the occupation is "shredding the fabric of Iraqi society and culture."

END OF EXCERPT

It's war; occupation that's war. To heck with Congress not having declared war; it's war.

EXCERPT (continued):

Anthropology, in particular, has been referred to through history as the "handmaiden of colonialism," thus putting anthropologists, at least those with a moral conscience, on guard against anything that smells like exploitation or oppression of their subjects. Roberto Gonzalez, an associate professor of anthropology at San Jose State University and leading member of the Network of Concerned Anthropologists, told Time magazine that the militarization of anthropology will cause the field to become "just another weapon ... ...." Anthropology has core professional ethics standards that require voluntary, informed consent from subjects, and that anthropologists do no harm. ...

In an article titled "When Anthropologists Become Counter-Insurgents," published in September 2007, and co-authored with David Price, author of the book "Anthropological Intelligence: The Deployment and Abuse of American Anthropology in the Second World War," Gonzalez and Price wrote:

"Although proponents of this form of applied anthropology claim that culturally informed counter-insurgency work will save lives and win 'hearts and minds,' they have thus far not attempted to provide any evidence of this. Instead, there has been a flurry of non-critical newspaper accounts in .... ..."

"In fact, David Kipp of the Foreign Military Studies Office at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas describes HTS teams as a 'CORDS for the 21st Century'-a reference to the Pentagon's Vietnam-era Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support project. The most infamous product of the CORDS counter-insurgency effort was the Phoenix Program, in which CIA agents collected intelligence information used to 'neutralize' (read assassinate) suspected Viet Cong members. Between 1968 and 1972, more than 26,000 suspected Viet Cong were killed as a result, including many civilians."

END OF EXCERPT

Emphasis: "suspected Viet Cong"; [suspected], only! And they were innocent, anyway.

EXCERPT (continued):

"... During World War II and the Cold War, US military and intelligence agencies tended to use anthropologists' work to help accomplish immediate goals, ...."

Adding credence to the points made by Price and Gonzalez is the fact that one of the top ten US defense contractors, Science Applications International Corporation, which has been operating in Iraq since the beginning of the occupation, describes anthropology in its job advertisements as a "counter-insurgency related field."

...

The program is nothing new, neither for the US empire nor other empires throughout history. As far as the US empire project is concerned, there were two programs from the Vietnam era that involved anthropologists.

Project Camelot, in 1965, organized by US Army intelligence, recruited anthropologists to assess the cultural causes of war and violence. Despite the misleadingly benign sounding name, the project used Chile as a trial run while the CIA was engineering the election of Eduardo Frei as president in 1964 to prevent the election of Socialist leader Salvador Allende.

The second program from that era, known as CORDS (Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support), was formed to coordinate the US civil and military pacification programs in Vietnam. CORDS used anthropological data to map human terrain and identify individuals and groups that the military believed were sympathizers of the Vietcong, who were then targeted for assassination.

END OF EXCERPT

See my prior posts for links to critically relevant resources and, of course, it's recommended to read this above article in full.

Seventhson ,

You're welcome, and thanks for the mote!

And the video with John Stockwell is as you said, awesome; but it's short and only one example. Important, but still short and one, sole example. I definitely recommend the video "Secrets of the CIA" (around 44 minutes in duration) referred to (with Youtube links provided) I think further on in the same post; and also John Pilger's "War on Democracy" (over an hour and a half in duration). "Secrets of the CIA" consists of interviews or statements by five to seven former CIA agents and maybe an official or two, perhaps including John Stockwell. John Pilger's investigative documentary film is wholly presented by him, but covers black CIA covert ops and U.S. militarisation in Central and/or Latin American countries, events over decades, and while the militarisation was for making the USA's proxy governments there, the dictatorships, etcetera, all the more murderous against the populations.

It's all true history and of obviously extremely dark, evil order.

Another person who's certainly worth learning from in related terms is Michael Levine, who's a former international operations DEA agent or officer. I'm not sure about what else he says about the CIA, but what I have learned from him, so far, is about international drug-trafficking and the CIA being "into" this line of "business", for cocaine anyway. John Stockwell also well explains this about CIA covert ops in Southeast Asia and Afghanistan, for heroin trafficking.

See, they don't go through border crossings requiring customs inspections; and neither do U.S. military planes and ships, which caused me to wonder what there was that was so special about the coffins of U.S. troops returned to the U.S. and which no one could get any sight of, not believing that the public had to be kept from seeing any pictures of the coffins arriving in the U.S. merely because of sensitivities about U.S. troops being killed. That might be the actually sole reason, but we don't have any way of verifying if it is!

Another way to consider this latter topic of CIA and international drug-trafficking, for profit, in terms of likelihood, though we know it is fact, like from John Stockwell and Michael Levine, f.e.; well, we can just consider all of the [racketeering] in Iraq and that the Bush administration definitely and clearly is not innocent of this. We can remember, f.e., the major pallets of $100 bills shipped to Iraq and which were majorly stolen, hijacked; and there's no way that that is explainable as a mere accident, [no way]! Huge pallets stacked with $100; [stacked]. More could hardly be added without causing the stack to fall over or easily fall over, which would be rather inconvenient when shipping these pallets where people could see what was on them, if the stacks fell over with mounds of $100 suddenly appearing for people who weren't supposed to know about these to clearly see these little "pieces of paper" that looked awfully like U.S. currency, cash. The pallets were surely covered up during transfer to the planes; or so I'd expect anyway.

If that huge amount of money really was supposed to be securely administered, then it [would have been]. It wasn't, because it really wasn't supposed to be. Only, taxpayers were supposed to believe the opposite, in order to not [see] that the real intent was for major robbery of their tax dollars.

[Racket]! It's an awfully common theme or denominator with the U.S. elites.

"nan◎thermite May 25th, 2009 2:47 pm

N E T _ M I N _ N O W,

...

" … there is only one "honorable" death, Jesus Christ's … The rest of death is a waste, counter to G~d's original plan."

Wow, so much for giving 'that greatest sacrifice' for our loved ones, as you clearly just don't see it worthy !"

FINE POINT, but I'll add another way to respond.

How does anyone really know what God's original plan was, given it is not known fact; it's only of the realm of faith, belief?

We can reason that there is God, and even some, while numerous enough, brilliant athiests refer to the or a Supreme Being and variably believe that He (or She) is Creator of this world, the Universe, Cosmos. However, we can't really reason that God's original plan did not include us dying, physically. That's something that always remains belief and beliefs are not facts, for we don't need to believe facts; given that facts are facts and provable or else already proven.

==============================

"netminnow May 25th, 2009 11:25 am

...

For any Christian believers out there, there is only one "honorable" death, Jesus Christ's because it had a purpose: to redeem us all from death, for the purpose of everlasting life. The rest of death is a waste, counter to G~d's original plan.
So much for the christian warrior mindset."

FOR SOMEONE who claims to be Christian, you sure do seem to overlook the fact that Jesus never said that "death is a waste, counter ...". We can understand what's noted of his teachings, words, in the Gospels as telling listeners (later, readers) much the opposite, that we have to accept death, physically, and that some of us, depending on our circumstances in life, have to or may have to accept the Way of the Cross, as he did.

=======================

"Seventhson May 25th, 2009 10:38 am

...

Sorry, America . . . until we set aside a special "Memorial Day" to remember all the victims of US imperialism and barbarism, I'm not impressed."

YES, they should be included in our thoughts in "Memorial Day" commemorations; definitely. To exclude them is to be either sadly and very ignorant, or narcissistic, hypocritical, hegemonic, imperialist, colonialist, supporter of criminal, immoral invasions, genocide, etcetera. Whichever the case is, for each individual who [neglects] to very [carefully] keep the victims of the West's wars [on] humanity in mind, it's certainly something to stop doing. If we don't care enough about them, then to hell with us.

I just finished reading Dahr Jamail's article of April 30th at Truthout.org, "Occupying Hearts and Minds", which is linked in a prior post of mine in this CD page. In that post I had said that it's certainly recommended to read the whole piece, but now I'll say that doing this should be considered a [must]. For people who really want to know what the hell is going on in the GWoT wars, it is a [must] to fully read this article of his on the Pentagon's HTS, Human Terrain System, program in Iraq and Afghanistan, colonialistically, ... employing highly, or else totally, unethical anthropologists, etcetera, to try to win these wars with the committance of yet another evil the U.S. is "throwing into the mix" of its evil measures employed to try to win wars that have always been totally criminal to begin with.

While the war on or in Afghanistan was one many people were fooled about in terms of legalities, in part because of much support from the UNSC, too much of its support anyway; the war nevertheless always was criminal. It wasn't only immoral; it was also criminal and this could be proven in a human court of law of real justice, because there are facts proving that it's always been a criminal war. In my f*cking [humble] opinion, anyway!

All of the articles by Dahr Jamail that I provided links for in this CD page should be read, perhaps especially the two on the Pentagon's HTS, using anthropologists, etcetera.

Otoh, all of the resources I provided links for in this CD page are rather critically relevant. It's just that these two articles of his on this above topic are surely [news] for by far most people; surely (I think). It was news to me when first coming across these recent articles of his anyway.

I hadn't read of this HTS, etcetera, before. I had read about "Salvador Option in Iraq" at www.BRusselsTribunal.org , where there [used to be] a whole index page on the topic, including copies of articles by different authors, or serious excerpts from their articles, along with the links to the original pieces; and where there at least still are some articles by Max Fuller, who had provided potent (say) analysis and reporting on the "Salvador Option in Iraq" topic. But this is the first set of articles in which I've read of HTS and the anthropologists, sociologists, and psychologists or socio-psychologists in Iraq and Afghanistan (anywhere, really).

Most people probably hadn't read or heard of the "Salvador Option in Iraq" topic, either. I certainly never saw any mention of it at CD, anyway; except for my own posts. Part of what that topic involved was John Negroponte being sent to Iraq, the man the U.S. had employed as a diplomat or ambassador to support the original and hellish Salvador Option in Central or Latin America. However, and based on what I recall (a little) from Max Fuller's articles, the "... Option in Iraq" began early on; recalling to at least have had the impression that he described this happening in 2003, I guess early into the "occupation" of Iraq.

Dahr Jamail doesn't refer to the Salvador Option in any terms, while referring to two U.S. programs employed in Vietnam, the Phoenix program and another diabolical one. But this doesn't necessarily mean that "Salvador Option in Iraq" hasn't happened or been used (always secretly) since March 2003. Has it happened? Well, I only know what I read about, and it certainly wouldn't be a new sort of measure for the U.S.

Max Fuller had some [mind-blowing] analyses and reporting on that "... Option in Iraq" topic, and I think that one or more of those articles of his weren't only posted at the above BRusselsTribunal website. He had one or more at www.globalresearch.ca, but I don't recall which articles those were.

Again, with all of these resources I've provided links and references for in this CD page, if we carefully learn from them, then we should be able to see much more clearly what's ahead and won't be fooled into believing that the Obama administration really has any intention of withdrawing from Iraq any ... year soon.

Emphasis: Expect ... [LONG WAR(S)]. And by the time these are over, expect body counts of victims much higher than they've already reached, today.

"The Long War: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and more ahead",
by Tom Hayden, Tikkun, May 22 2009

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13708

Very, very [long] war.

People who still don't [see] that this is WORLD WAR that the U.S. and its coalition of the coerced and possibly some willing, by now; now such people are blind, even if not physically.