This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Tag: Rag Blog

  • Why do I do this to myself.

    Recently I have been on two different conversations that have me banging my head against the wall.

    The first one was a re-post on Facebook article by a guy by the name Scott Bonn. The standard claims, the UN did not approve, violated international law, we needed the UN’s approval for it to be legal, and accusations of war crimes.

    So I posted on the person’s post and she said that she was friends with the guy and that I would get a reply from him. I was thinking that I might get a decent reply: mistake one. He responded when I posted about the UN’s resolutions that supported us being in Iraq all the way until 2008. Which he replied.

    The resolution was to “inspect” not to bomb and kill tens of thousands of its citizens! An invasion requires a UN authorization which the Bush crowd sought but, when denied, they conveniently said they didn’t need it. The invasion also violated the Nuremberg Charter as an aggressive act of war and the occupation, torture and killing violated the Geneva conventions. Ask any other expert on the international laws of war and they will tell you the same. Thank you.

    So my douche bag dectector is going off big time, but I wanted to reply to this “expert” to see what his sources would be if I listed the UN resolutions regarding Iraq. I even gave him direct links to the UN resolutions right off the UN’s website. Also reminded him about the cease fire and that Afghanistan was a UN approved operation. So I was thinking maybe that just maybe I might get a response to these Resolutions. Mistake 2.

    Doesn’t justify an invasion. Plain and simple under international law.

    Yea, that counters everything, just reply back with a comment that all but says: “I am right because I say so”.

    I message the person to say that I am hardly impressed with her new “friend” and she was less then impressed as well about the exchange.

    Then there was another one were I was directed to this link after I used Iraq as a example of a working counter-insurgency place. The person that I replied to was making a comment that only a operation like the one in Sri Lanka.

    The article starts off with the again standard claim that there is a Civil War raging in Iraq

    Bombings took the lives of 62 Shiite pilgrims, mostly in the holy city of Karbala, but also in Diyala province. Sunni Arab guerrillas are still attempting to destabilize the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki by provoking Shiite-Sunni feuds and spreading a feeling of instability that interferes with investment and reconstruction. .

    The second I saw Diyala providence got my attention right away. For those that do not know I was stationed in Iraq from 2008-2009. So considering that I went on over 165 missions in this area, I wanted to know what he was trying to paint that place as.

    All these years after George W. Bush’s insane war of choice against Iraq, that country remains mired in civil war, as social scientists define it:

    Ugh, no it was not really as bad as he claims it is. You can read my thoughts on this on that link.

    Also his confidence in US and the Iraqi populations is less then stunning.

    The bad news is that there is no early prospect of this civil war ending, and security improvements have leveled off in recent months.

    All this is not to say that the 47,000 US troops still in the country should remain (at all!) If Arabic-speaking, Iraqi Shiite troops and police could not stop a truck bombing in Karbala, US troops wouldn’t have a prayer of doing so. This level of violence cannot in fact bring down the Iraqi government. But it can keep Iraq from attracting foreign investment and keep the population nervous, and so is an element of destabilization.

    Bush and the Neoconservatives’ shining beacon on a hill has in fact become a nearly 8 year long civil war, with no end in sight.

    But then again this is the same guy that said this.

    There are rumors that the Israeli government may declare a unilateral cease fire Saturday. They had better. Because if they ruin the Obama inauguration by splashing the bloody bodies of dead Palestinian children all over the press during the next few days, no Americans, even the most pro-Israeli, are going to forgive them.

    Why do I do this to myself thinking that I get a real conversation.

    ADDED:

    I just got this a reply.

    Of course there’s a civil war: that’s what the neocons wanted and that’s why there was no post-war planning. The Israel Lobby neocons pretend to be about spreading democracy whereas they actually are about destabilization. Michael A. Ledeen wrote in his 2002 book The War Against the Terror Masters: “First and foremost, we must bring down the terror regimes, beginning with the big three: Iran, Iraq, and Syria.” “Stability is an unworthy American mission…. We do not want stability in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and even Saudi Arabia…The real issue is not whether, but how best to destabilize.” Of course, fomenting civil wars and destabilizing the Muslim enemies of Israeli expansionism has been a longtime Israeli strategy. This policy was enunciated in February 1982 by Israeli strategist Oded Yinon writing in the World Zionist Organization magazine Kivunim. The idea was to dissolve Israel’s enemies into powerless mini-states. Yinon relished the Iraq-Iran War which he hoped would lead to civil war and fragmentation of Iraq, Israel’s most feared enemy. It did not. However, the Zionist neocons then lied us into the unnecessary invasion of Iraq in 2003 which did foment a civil war. Similarly, the current US/Israel-pushed Hariri tribunal is aimed at destabilizing Lebanon. That’s what the neocons want.

    **FACE PALM**

  • A thousand words indeed.

    Every once in a while I read the Rag Blog but stopped doing so as much because they just seem to copy whole articles and nothing else. But this one caught my eye. Here is the photo.

    Wounded Vet
    Wounded Vet

    I want you to look very closely at this picture and try and keep it in your minds eye. This was a perfectly healthy 22-year-old young man who in the service of his country got half of his head blown off. I think that’s important, I think that’s newsworthy. Let me tell you how newsworthy I think it is. I think that it’s more important than chocolate cake recipes and far more important than comic book reviews. It is more important than who fell and who’s swell at the winter Olympic games.

    It is far more important than any self-serving load of crap banged out by pseudo doctor Amy. It is more important than American Idol or Lost or any other mindless goat droppings the public chooses to chew on. This is some American mother’s son, her little boy, he may be gay or straight or transgender but his life is screwed forever.

    I was agreeing with this and most people here have said through words and actions over the past years. So I thought maybe that this was going to be one of few post that I agreed with. But that was quick to change.

    How did this come to happen to this poor mother’s son? It came to happen because the people in the media who are supposed to foster a public debate on such public issues as war instead used their franchise to promote articles about chocolate cake and comic book reviews. They see their free press as free to choose not to look when bad things happen. They feel no need to explain to his parents or to anyone that the war that blew off half of this poor boy’s head was based on out and out lies.

    It goes in to the usual statements on why everything we do and have done is beyond pardonable. But the thing that me upset is what is not being said. Like who is this person? What is his name? This author spend the first two paragraphs about how we are forgetting out those that are injured in this war. But seems to be perfectly happy letting this be a John Doe that to me seems is being used as just another prompt in his article. There is nothing about any of the issues or challenges that this Vet is facing or even if people can find was to help. Oh and there was the standard death count at the bottom of the article. Classy, just another way to show faceless death of our service members.

    Or unverifiable claims about civilian deaths. in a article that is suppose to be about why the media is ignoring our wounded Vets. Yes this is all in the same article.

    Because not content to ignore the current victims they support more crimes and call for more wars. Several years ago in Iraq parents waited for their children at a bus stop. An errant coalition missile struck the bus stop and blew the elementary school age children to pieces. Needless to say this wasn’t widely reported but the parents in a frenzy began fighting over the body parts of their children.

    You really think that things like that would not be noticed much less ignored the Press. Also because of the dateless event you can be ambiguous as you want to be leaving your detractors trying to prove a negative.

    So once again another service member gets used as a media prompt.