Oct 01, 2009
Now this just simply could not be made up in that Frankenstein
laboratory where the cuckoos on the right wing cook up their witches
brew of batshit crazy allegations to levy against Barack Obama. There
are scores upon scores of issues where Obama should be rightly taken to
task for continuing Bush-era "war on terror" policies, preemptively
immunizing torturers, refusing to fight for Single Payer health care,
hiring a team of hawks and neoliberal crooks to manage foreign policy
and the economy, among many many others. At the same time, there are
racist astroturf loons that appear to have recently landed on earth
from planet Fiction and are navigating their way through the country,
speaking in tongues, led by snakeoil salesmen like Glenn Beck.
But the headline in today's Wall Street JournalOp-Ed
by former senior White House advisor Karl Rove is in a category all its
own: "Obama Can't Outsource Afghanistan." The article is ostensibly
about how Obama is delegating decision making on everything from
Afghanistan to the CIA/torture investigation to others:
Mr. Obama's hands-off approach to the war seems to fit his
governing style. Over the past year, he outsourced writing the stimulus
package to House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, washed
his hands of Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to reinvestigate
CIA interrogators, and hasn't offered a detailed health-care plan.
Um, excuse me Karl, how about outsourcing an entire war to
politically connected war companies? Remember those eight years? While
Rove may be using the term "outsource" in a general way, let's remember
this fact: never, ever in US history have more government and military
activities been outsourced to private corporations than they were the
day Bush and Rove left 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and Obama moved in. For
Rove-or any Bush-era official-to have the audacity to blast anyone for
outsourcing anything is like a bigger-scale version of Republican
Senator David Vitter lecturing the losers exiting Scores "gentlemen's
club" about the moral evils of prostitution.
The real article that should come below a headline "Obama Can't
Outsource Afghanistan" would never be written by Rove. Such an article
would denounce the actual scandal of Obama's continuation of the
Bush-Cheney-Rove policy of radically outsourcing the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq to corporate criminals like Armor Group, DynCorp,
Blackwater, KBR, Triple Canopy, Lockheed Martin and many, many others.
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Jeremy Scahill
Jeremy Scahill is an investigative reporter, war correspondent, co-founder of The Intercept, and author of the international bestselling books "Dirty Wars: The World Is A Battlefield"(2014) and "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army" (2008). He has reported from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Nigeria, the former Yugoslavia, and elsewhere across the globe. Scahill has served as the national security correspondent for The Nation and Democracy Now!, and in 2014 co-founded The Intercept with fellow journalists Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and investor Pierre Omidyar.
Now this just simply could not be made up in that Frankenstein
laboratory where the cuckoos on the right wing cook up their witches
brew of batshit crazy allegations to levy against Barack Obama. There
are scores upon scores of issues where Obama should be rightly taken to
task for continuing Bush-era "war on terror" policies, preemptively
immunizing torturers, refusing to fight for Single Payer health care,
hiring a team of hawks and neoliberal crooks to manage foreign policy
and the economy, among many many others. At the same time, there are
racist astroturf loons that appear to have recently landed on earth
from planet Fiction and are navigating their way through the country,
speaking in tongues, led by snakeoil salesmen like Glenn Beck.
But the headline in today's Wall Street JournalOp-Ed
by former senior White House advisor Karl Rove is in a category all its
own: "Obama Can't Outsource Afghanistan." The article is ostensibly
about how Obama is delegating decision making on everything from
Afghanistan to the CIA/torture investigation to others:
Mr. Obama's hands-off approach to the war seems to fit his
governing style. Over the past year, he outsourced writing the stimulus
package to House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, washed
his hands of Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to reinvestigate
CIA interrogators, and hasn't offered a detailed health-care plan.
Um, excuse me Karl, how about outsourcing an entire war to
politically connected war companies? Remember those eight years? While
Rove may be using the term "outsource" in a general way, let's remember
this fact: never, ever in US history have more government and military
activities been outsourced to private corporations than they were the
day Bush and Rove left 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and Obama moved in. For
Rove-or any Bush-era official-to have the audacity to blast anyone for
outsourcing anything is like a bigger-scale version of Republican
Senator David Vitter lecturing the losers exiting Scores "gentlemen's
club" about the moral evils of prostitution.
The real article that should come below a headline "Obama Can't
Outsource Afghanistan" would never be written by Rove. Such an article
would denounce the actual scandal of Obama's continuation of the
Bush-Cheney-Rove policy of radically outsourcing the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq to corporate criminals like Armor Group, DynCorp,
Blackwater, KBR, Triple Canopy, Lockheed Martin and many, many others.
Jeremy Scahill
Jeremy Scahill is an investigative reporter, war correspondent, co-founder of The Intercept, and author of the international bestselling books "Dirty Wars: The World Is A Battlefield"(2014) and "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army" (2008). He has reported from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Nigeria, the former Yugoslavia, and elsewhere across the globe. Scahill has served as the national security correspondent for The Nation and Democracy Now!, and in 2014 co-founded The Intercept with fellow journalists Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and investor Pierre Omidyar.
Now this just simply could not be made up in that Frankenstein
laboratory where the cuckoos on the right wing cook up their witches
brew of batshit crazy allegations to levy against Barack Obama. There
are scores upon scores of issues where Obama should be rightly taken to
task for continuing Bush-era "war on terror" policies, preemptively
immunizing torturers, refusing to fight for Single Payer health care,
hiring a team of hawks and neoliberal crooks to manage foreign policy
and the economy, among many many others. At the same time, there are
racist astroturf loons that appear to have recently landed on earth
from planet Fiction and are navigating their way through the country,
speaking in tongues, led by snakeoil salesmen like Glenn Beck.
But the headline in today's Wall Street JournalOp-Ed
by former senior White House advisor Karl Rove is in a category all its
own: "Obama Can't Outsource Afghanistan." The article is ostensibly
about how Obama is delegating decision making on everything from
Afghanistan to the CIA/torture investigation to others:
Mr. Obama's hands-off approach to the war seems to fit his
governing style. Over the past year, he outsourced writing the stimulus
package to House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, washed
his hands of Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to reinvestigate
CIA interrogators, and hasn't offered a detailed health-care plan.
Um, excuse me Karl, how about outsourcing an entire war to
politically connected war companies? Remember those eight years? While
Rove may be using the term "outsource" in a general way, let's remember
this fact: never, ever in US history have more government and military
activities been outsourced to private corporations than they were the
day Bush and Rove left 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and Obama moved in. For
Rove-or any Bush-era official-to have the audacity to blast anyone for
outsourcing anything is like a bigger-scale version of Republican
Senator David Vitter lecturing the losers exiting Scores "gentlemen's
club" about the moral evils of prostitution.
The real article that should come below a headline "Obama Can't
Outsource Afghanistan" would never be written by Rove. Such an article
would denounce the actual scandal of Obama's continuation of the
Bush-Cheney-Rove policy of radically outsourcing the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq to corporate criminals like Armor Group, DynCorp,
Blackwater, KBR, Triple Canopy, Lockheed Martin and many, many others.
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