Comments on Informed Comment: Bush Turns to Fear-Mongering Creation of "Islamic...

You're giving the Bush admin way too much credit f...

2006-09-12T15:54:00.000-04:00

You're giving the Bush admin way too much credit for coherency. Remember, these were the guys who didn't know and/or didn't care that there were two kinds of 'Islaofascists' in Iraq before the invasion.

This whole gang has been about fear from the begin...

2006-09-08T15:51:00.000-04:00

This whole gang has been about fear from the beginning -- even before 9/11. Say you’re Dick Cheney and you’ve got a war to start… You start to pressure the limp-wristed wimps at CIA to do their jobs and dig up the WMD evidence you know is there. Two years, and they're still empty-handed. Hopeless. Even when hand-picked defectors provided by Ahmad Chalabi are set right in front of them, all they do is discredit them. Those crypto-liberals at CIA need to be taught a lesson. And that’s what you do.

When you consider what your analysis shows – that ...

2006-09-07T19:08:00.000-04:00

When you consider what your analysis shows – that the real aim of the GWOT is to establish & maintain an American presence on the Eurasian landmass and to control the spigot of oil that not only feeds our economy but even more so the European Community, Japan, and China – then you can see that Iraq truly is a new Vietnam. Why were we in Vietnam? The USA needed to establish its dominance in Asia and Indo-China was then the most unsettled area. The countries of the region (Laos, Cambodia, India. China, etc.) were still determining their borders up to the start of the Vietnam occupation. Of course who were we really confronting in Vietnam? China, of course. And hence the importance of North Korea in the “axis of evil” nonsense since North Korea justifies a continued American military nuclear presence not far from Beijing. We are in Iraq and all the other areas mentioned because we are really confronting the Chinese first and the Russians second. This is the big game of the 21st Century. But our “leaders” have to lead us down to defeat again in a pack of lies. Take any book or good magazine article from the late 60s and early 70s, search and replace the word “Vietnam” with “Iraq” and you’re reading today’s news.

Bush Turns to Fear-MongeringNo doubt, but is "turn...

2006-09-07T01:13:00.000-04:00

Bush Turns to Fear-Mongering

No doubt, but is "turns" the word? When has he played it any other way?

In 1980, when Ronald Reagan was campaigning agains...

2006-09-06T21:58:00.000-04:00

In 1980, when Ronald Reagan was campaigning against George Bush Snr for the Republican Party ballot, Reagan's camp ran an advertisement which claimed:

"A coalition of multinational corporate executives, big-city bankers, and hungry power brokers... want to give you George Bush... their purpose is to control the American government."

Was this "coalition" ultimately successful in their goal? It certainly looks that way.

Short memory? Mendacity!Thank you for posting up t...

2006-09-06T20:47:00.000-04:00

Short memory? Mendacity!

Thank you for posting up the picture (a bit ago) of Rumsfeld chummily shaking hands w/S. Hussein. I wish we had one---does one of you know what the timeline would be---of the senior Bush signing checks to him, or maybe old paystubs from when we were training Bin Laden. These folks (Cheney, Bushes, Rumsfeld, Vulcans) are not just appeasers, they have been massive enablers.

Can't forget hypocrisy! or demagoguery.

And they can't let us remember-- for example, how successful our previous attempt at regime change was in Iran. How well Pinochet turned out. Who helped recruit ultra-wackos to fight the USSR.

...to our shame.

....Thank you Dr. Cole for your ongoing work, and to anyone who might be near Boston, if you don't know about these folks, check them out:

http://www.bostondialogue.org/

I attended their open-to-all-faiths Iftar dinner last year and it was a Very Good Thing. Maybe if more of us band together we can reduce the building wave of prejudice.

If the graphic is what i think it is, it's from a ...

2006-09-06T19:32:00.000-04:00

If the graphic is what i think it is, it's from a German website, BGR. That may be a German government agency, i can't tell. i've used the same graphic in class presentations in the past few months.

i've always found it amusing to watch Bush talk about the new rising evil in the world (and North Korea). It's pretty hard to link NK to anywhere else in the world, or at least it used to be. Now Iran, Syria, North Korea, and Venezuela are joining hands based entirely on the fact that they are anti-Bush and anti-American interests.

My question for George W. Bush:"Sir, many people a...

2006-09-06T18:32:00.000-04:00

My question for George W. Bush:

"Sir, many people around the globe are confused by your comparison of violent extremists from the Middle East and Fascist Nazis from WWII. Many consider such a comparison hypocritical and deliberately mis-leading, given your own militant, nationalistic, far-right agenda.

Of course, your grandfather, Prescott Bush, was convicted of trading with the Nazis during WWII. Like many wealthy US citizens, Prescott Bush was keen to take advantage of lax post-Depression laws and investment opportunities in Germany as Hitler rose to power.

Indeed, there was a concerted effort by the some of the wealthiest US citizens to ensure that the US did not enter WWII. Many even wanted to enter on the Axis's side, rather than join the Allies. This caused President Roosevelt to warn that "among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing."

Sir, you have stripped US citizens of their civil rights, in defiance of the US Constitution. You have invaded a foreign country on the basis of lies, in defiance of international law. You have overseen the secret rendition, torture and detention without trial of prisoners, in defiance of the Geneva Convention. You have burdened generations of US children with astronomical debts while handing out tax breaks to the richest of the rich.

Is it not true, sir, that you, in fact, are the real Fascist? The real Nazi? The real Terrorist?"

Yes, I agree that Iraq and the rest is about contr...

2006-09-06T17:47:00.000-04:00

Yes, I agree that Iraq and the rest is about controlling access to the bulk of the world's oil. Yet, if that's the case, then pinning it on the demented Bush and his administration is too easy, since the Democrats almost to the person supported the war and still essentially do. That tells us that the Mideast policy is fundamentally about U.S. capitalism and its desire to gain a strategic long-term position relative to it major competitors. Obviously, control of oil is it. To wit, has anyone seen full-page ads in the NYT or elsewhere signed by some segment of major corporation CEOs taking issue with the Iraq war or Middle East policy, as so often happens when some major issue is at hand for the U.S. and things aren't going so well?

Speaking of the current administration, in Carroll's House of War, drawing on LeFeber, he recounts how Rumsfeld brought Cheney, Perle and Wolfowitz into the Defense Dept in the Ford Administration, soon to be joined by Colin Powell, Armitage and Condelezza Rice (elder Bush was named CIA Director). They were eventually known as the Vulcans, and were united by a hunger for martial dominance born of the failure in Vietnam. They were hamstrung at the time by Congress' unwillingness to fork up the money to defend the Thieu regime in its final days, followed soon by the Mayaguez fiasco in which Ford bombed and shot up Cambodia and lost 40 marines to trying to save a boat whose crew had been released and set adrift days before. Carrol notes that despite vast differences in scale and intention, the incompetent rescue attempt was an overture of things to come from Rumsfeld et al.

Yes, I agree that Iraq and the rest is about contr...

2006-09-06T17:44:00.000-04:00

Very interesting summary of the raison d'etre of B...

2006-09-06T17:43:00.000-04:00

Very interesting summary of the raison d'etre of Bushco's military adventurism--they are indeed grasping at straws trying to conjure up a modern-day boogeyman that appears to be as potent as enemies past. The other serious flaw in their argument is that, unlike communism, it doesn't translate into the Western hemisphere, and all of the Latin American intrigues that the MNCs have relied upon to maintain their power grip on these countries...although given their modus operandi, we may soon be hearing how al Qaeda has formed a partnership with Venezula and Cuba!

Correction.Your map(2006)His map(1997)

2006-09-06T14:43:00.000-04:00

Correction.
Your map(2006)
His map(1997)

I sure miss the good old days, when Bush visited a...

2006-09-06T12:58:00.000-04:00

I sure miss the good old days, when Bush visited a mosque (did he only do it once after 9/11?) and said Islam is peaceful and that he condemned hate crimes against Muslims, and when Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson said awful things about Islam, Bush actually went and publicly disagreed with them.

I guess those days are gone, he won't even say anything positive about it anymore, too worried about upsetting his "base." Muslims in America are furious, since they voted for Bush in droves in 2000 and took credit for helping him into office, only to be repaid by such a slap in the face.

Yes, and when you add events in west Africa, it's ...

2006-09-06T12:48:00.000-04:00

Yes, and when you add events in west Africa, it's clearly the Global War for Oil, with Cheney as Oilfinger. Oh, and there're muslims in west Africa too. Hmmm...
War Crimes for Oil. Perhaps Oil Crimes is a better sound byte. If a really big "enemy" is wanted, radical climate chaos presents a global foe of greater potential power than all the nations' militaries combined--including nukes.

These brief sentences, "Over the past 200 years, human activity has increased carbon dioxide to well outside the natural range and we have no analogue for what will happen next.

"We have a no-analogue situation. We don't have anything in the past that we can measure directly,"
from this short report, http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0905-06.htm cryptically tells us the climate change we humans are forcing has no precedent, although we do know what has happened in the past resulting from natural forcing--melted ice caps, destroyed ecosystems and mass extinctions. That sounds like a huge challenge to prevent; sort of like the planet using climate as a weapon to rebalance itself by ridding itself of the polluters causing the problem.

By denying climate chaos, Cheney and company don't need to face up to the really big "enemy," one the military-industrial-complex and its allies big oil have no weapons to combat and thus no way to make money from the "war." Indeed, any serious effort defending against increasing the severity of the "war" would necessitate the demise of both those "institutions," which would be wholy in the interests of Humanity, but not in the interest of those very few sitting behind Cheney, Bush, and the rest of "our" war criminals. When Cheney said "Our lifestyle is non-negotiable," he really meant the lifestyle of the two above named institutions. And the history of US imperial behavior proves this to be true.

Could you please give the reference for the strate...

2006-09-06T12:16:00.000-04:00

Could you please give the reference for the strategic ellipse? Thanks for your great work

Very good.This analysis implies the Bush regime is...

2006-09-06T11:48:00.000-04:00

Very good.This analysis implies the Bush regime is fascist. It seeks world supremacy based on military and economic superiority and the control of world resources by a corporate, authoritarian nation-state. That was Hitler's world view. It is the core of the fascist ideology. Welcome folks to the new political reality.

Meanwhile, the people who live on the northern hal...

2006-09-06T11:45:00.000-04:00

Meanwhile, the people who live on the northern half of that ellipse, who aren't muslim either, are more than happy to continue making money off of the west and refit their own military.

After all, Lockheed-Martin is happy to sell the best DARPA comes up with to our friends, aren't they?

Strategery at work!

After absorbing Bush's portrait of armaggedon, my ...

2006-09-06T10:59:00.000-04:00

After absorbing Bush's portrait of armaggedon, my mind conjures up a scenario akin to the Spanish conquistadors rather than Hitler and Lenin.

Thousands of dhows sailing up the Hudson, the Saint Lawrence, the Patomac, and the Missisippi. All filled with Islamo fascists dedicated to converting the population to some form of Islamic fundamentalism. And us, like the indigenous cultures of South America, unable to thwart the onslaight.

Two items.1. Reuters has the details of a "peace t...

2006-09-06T10:06:00.000-04:00

Two items.

1. Reuters has the details of a "peace treaty" between Pakistan and Islamic militants, a story first reported last night by ABC news.

and

2. Report: Taliban Taking
Over Again

by Sanjay Suri

LONDON - The Taliban have regained control over the southern half of Afghanistan and their frontline is advancing daily, a group closely monitoring the Afghan situation said in a report Tuesday.

This map looks like a neat synthesis of Barnett an...

2006-09-06T09:07:00.000-04:00

This map looks like a neat synthesis of Barnett and Spkyman. I strongly disagree with the analysis, though.

So it's the energy, stupid! And energy is what pr...

2006-09-06T06:46:00.000-04:00

So it's the energy, stupid! And energy is what propels our economy. It is in our National Interest to protect our access to energy (whereever it may be located) and be in a position to maintain our superpower status and most powerful economy in the world. We are King of the Hill and must do what we have to to maintain our position. (Bush National Security Strategy.)

That map looks awfully simular to Zbigniew Brzezin...

2006-09-06T06:38:00.000-04:00

That map looks awfully simular to Zbigniew Brzezinski's map "Global Zone of Percolating Violence"

The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives

Your map(2006)
His Map(1997)

AMEN! or should I say AMEEN!Nice summary of Bush's...

2006-09-06T05:24:00.000-04:00

AMEN! or should I say AMEEN!

Nice summary of Bush's attempt to create a coherent enemy. He's working with the empty concept of "Islamic Fascism" and is trying to stuff anything he can into it.