Friday, January 25, 2008
Bush Administration Tries New Old Ploy
And today, I don’t mind saying, I TOLD YOU SO!
This morning, the New York Times reported: “With its international mandate in Iraq set to expire in 11 months, the Bush administration will insist that the government in Baghdad give the United States broad authority to conduct combat operations and guarantee civilian contractors specific legal protections from Iraqi law, according to administration and military officials.”
Not only is the Bush administration negotiating to lock-in a US presence in Iraq for the foreseeable future plus guaranteeing that the US will protect Iraq from outsider and insider attacks. In addition, the Bush administration is demanding that Blackwater, USA be exempt from any and all prosecutions regarding its unlawful and criminal behavior in Iraq.
On September 18, 2007, the Ratbang headline was: “US Will Defend Blackwater, Count on it”.
I said, “No one is overseeing the actions of the mercenaries in Iraq because the White House likes it that way. These thugs can operate in any way they see fit, and that is what they do. It’s difficult to find out exactly how many mercenaries are in Iraq. But the estimate has always been that there are as many civilian hired guns as there are US troops in Iraq, which is to say, there are 160,000 armed hooligans looting, killing and marauding in Iraq. This morning, the New York Times said, “About 126,000 people working for contractors serve alongside American troops, including about 30,000 security contractors.”
“Close enough.
“And all of these hoodlums are hired by the US State Department and have been granted immunity by the US State Department and Department of Defense. The US could not fight the Bush administration’s war in Iraq without the mercenaries because the US has no military to speak of. However, the Bush administration thought it could easily invade Iraq with a minimum of troops, take over Iraq’s oil and be greeted as liberators
“The US Department of Defense and the Pentagon immediately realized what any fifth grader could have told them: Iraq didn’t want to be attacked, over-run, invaded and occupied and Iraq fought back with whatever means it had.
“Ergo, the US State Department hired a bunch of thugs to pretend they were the US military which the US did not have. And Paul Bremer gave the thugs immunity.
“Iraq Ambassador Ryan Crocker loves Blackwater. They protect his lily-livered ass while he gives elegant soirees for US Congressmen in his safe compound in Baghdad in order to bamboozle them into prolonging the war in Iraq until FOREVER. General Petraeus loves Blackwater mercenaries because they can perform all the nasty illegal attacks on insurgents/Iraqi citizens/whatever that “Petraeus would like for US troops to carry out, but can’t officially order the military to do.
“The only way the US can stay in Iraq is if the mercenaries stay in Iraq.
“The Bush administration will spend far more time and money defending Blackwater criminals than it has ever spent on proper gear and armaments for our troops.”
And today I say, should this draft agreement on military-to military relations in Iraq be approved, the next president (whether he or she is a Democrat or a Republican) will be locked-in to keeping an American presence in Iraq to fight Iraq's Civil War FOREVER!.
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4 comments:
Elect me and I assure you we will be locked into no such thing, built as it is out of word puzzles. There is no legitimate government in Iraq and so agreements might as well be on toilet paper.
(I'm running for president in my imagination. I figure it's a better playtime diversion than treating the campaign like a football game, as many people do.)
Elect me and I assure you we will be locked into no such thing, built as it is out of word puzzles. There is no legitimate government in Iraq and so agreements might as well be on toilet paper, but that's not really grounds for breaking our word. What matters more is that the United States has no legitimate government, and I am willing to break the word of our illegitimate government.
(I'm running for president in my imagination. I figure it's a better playtime diversion than treating the campaign like a football game, as many people do.)
Why doesn't Bush just crown Cheney the King and get it over with? He's already as much said that he the power to do whatever he likes.
The Senate needs to revoke their authorisation to go into Iraq. That's the legal basis for all of his claims to extraordinary authority.
The "legal" basis of all of Bush's claims of extraordinary authority is whatever seems a convenient excuse at the moment, combined with, among other factors, the enthusiastic support of some leading Democratic congressunits, and the unenthusiastic support of most of the others (including John Conyers).
Iraq was coming regardless of 9/11, and semi-dictatorship was coming regardless of Iraq. The domestic spying, "signing statements", etc., etc., etc., were all in the works from Day One.
Revoking authorization would be a silly, consequence-free exercise.
What should be done is a complete cut-off of funds for anything but withdrawal from Iraq. Then Bush would likely leave the troops in place in a enormously ugly way, perhaps even pre-emptively cutting off the funding he already has. Then Bush and Cheney should be impeached and ousted. But that would require a much better Speaker of the House than Nancy Pelosi.
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