Looking Backwards: A Prerequisite to Looking Forward

I've been away from the blogging world a bit here. Been thinking about accountability lately, 'cuz it's a feature of the upcoming GDAE Podcast... the 5th episode should be finished in a couple days.

One concept I'm pushing relates to Obama's desire to "Look Forward," which has become his and Joe Biden's montra in the context of whether their administration will hold criminal actors of the Bush administration accountable. The concept is, if we want to look forward to living in a nation of laws, we need to enforce those laws. That means holding people, like David Addington, John Yoo, Condoleezza Rice and George Bush accountable for their actions.... actions that happen to have occurred in the past.

So, help me advance this concept that, sometimes, looking backwards is a prerequisite setting things right for the future.

Psssst... Do Something

• Contact the Broadcast Media
  
• Contact the Newspapers
  
• Contact the US Senate
  
• Contact the House of Representatives

Sources:

Condi Must Go

The "must see" video that will help send Rice to prison.



Here are the Clinton and Obama campaign contacts:

Obama Campaign Contact

Clinton Campaign Contact

Source: Brave New Films.

Mid-East Surrender Negotiations

I hear that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is going to Israel for more so-called peace negotiations. Media reports express concerns that Hamas might play a "spoiler role." While I disagree with the sectarian (religioous) aspects of Hamas, and Israel for that matter, they have built social support structures, like health clinics, which have earned Hamas legitimacy where other corrupt "leaders" have failed.

While atrocities have been committed on both sides, it remains undisputed that Europeans came to the region following World War II and imposed themselves on a place now called "Israel and the occupied territories." The sixty-year imposition has, at its core, been an assault on the dignity of the indigenous people of the region. Sixty years of ebb and flow, but with a constant sea level rise that has increasingly drown the Palestinian lives, sometimes to the point of desperate violent reaction.

Imagine your wife, sister or daughter experiencing the indignity of giving birth in public, a fairly common occurrence due to the Israeli system of checkpoints. Imagine the death of the infant, which likely would not have occurred in a hospital setting. Imagine the number of checkpoints growing, not just at boarders but within your neighborhood, making a trip to the market a regular assault on your dignity. Imagine your grandfather being slapped in the face by a haughty 20 year old foreign soldier at a checkpoint, because your grandfather had scolded the soldier for laughing and making fun the fact that he could touch your female body during a "security" search.

Imagine the family property, held for generations, having a road or wall cut through it, settlements built on it or simply being taken away. Imagine one wall of your town home being bashed through by Israeli soldiers from one neighboring town home, and then your other wall being bashed through into the other neighboring home as part of a house-to-house search. Imagine an Israeli soldier bashes in your television for fun in the process. Imagine they take over your living room to watch a soccer game for a break, and make your entire family stay in a bedroom for the duration. Imagine uncountable, creative indignities of all stripes being imposed on you, your friends and family for sixty years. You are subhuman.

Imagine, a legitimate election brings people to power who have provided health care in your community where no one else has, who resist the indignities described above, whose leaders risk assassination in their legitiamate struggle. Then imagine a foreign power places an economic embargo on your country because they don't like the result of your democratic election. Imagine the foreign power begins to fund, arm and train the political party that lost the election. Imagine their power is so great that they control the media; your story is not heard and a distorted story is widely accepted by average people around the world. Imagine that the embargo results wide-spread power outages, ruining the little food you have in your fridge and the antibiotics in an unprepared medical clinic. Imagine this leads to the death of your lover who had an infection from a shrapnel wound caused by a helicopter rocket attack that killed your younger brother. Imagine the smell of human waste due to the intentional destruction of the sewer lines by the occupying foreign power. Imagine this also leads to the contamination of your water, which must now be boiled, a process that is increasingly difficult due to a lack of fuel associated with the years-long siege. Imagine the taste of the water. Imagine that the boiling process only kills the bacteria, but doesn't remove the toxins that are highly suspected of making people ill and causing the death of the weak or old. Imagine having to give that water to your child because your choice to do otherwise has been taken away by a foreign power.

Crushing indignities that justify resistance. A tightening squeeze that has become so brutal that brother fights brother out of frustration over resistance strategies, none of which have a chance of working in the face of global superpower dominance. Imagine you know your suffering is due, in large part, to the super power's "national security" objective of controlling oil that happens to be located in the middle east.

Imagine your grandmother telling stories of a time when Jews and non-Jews lived side by side in what is now a crippled society, never to fully recover. Imagine that "hope" means capitulation to a 60-year series of indignities, a geographically discontinuous "state" in shambles led by a puppet regime composed of those people who sold out to the occupying powers. The foreign powers will have secured the best land, will control the water, and will insist that their citizens be allowed to remain on land that was stolen by anyone's definition. Imagine the foreign powers will lift their heads high, puff out their chests, smile for the cameras in a hollow victory of securing peace.

It's not peace that's being negotiated between Israel and the Palestinians. It's surrender. We don't need peace negotiations. We need justice negotiations.

Rice: No Plans for War in Iran

The Associated Press reports that

The U.S. is not preparing for war against Iran and Vice President Dick Cheney supports that policy, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says, taking a swipe at a U.N. official who says he's worried about "crazies" who want to start bombing.

Actually, the US is already at war with Iran, as described below.

The AP reporting makes it sound more like Rice is taking a swipe at Cheney. The fact that Rice needs to single out Cheney exposes the Vice President as a major source of the administratin's lack of credibility. In Rice's words:

The president of the United States has made very clear what our policy is. That policy is supported by all the members of his Cabinet and by the vice president of the United States.

Of course, this isn't the first time the President has said, according to Rice, "The president has made clear that we are on a diplomatic course," regarding Iran. He said the same thing about Iraq, yet had already decided to initiate a war of aggression on Iraq. This is documented in the Downing Street memo of July 23, 2002. It also shows the US gave little thought to post-invasion Iraq:

C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.

Yet Bush regularly gave the American public the false impression that he was following a "diplomatic course" well aftr July 23, 2002, as documented in the Mother Jones Timeline. For example:

December 1, 2001: According to Bob Woodward, Rumsfeld orders [General] Franks to begin work on an Iraq war plan. Bush will meet with military leaders regarding the plan on a regular basis starting late December, despite public assurances that the administration is seeking a diplomatic solution to its showdown with Saddam.

We know there's a plan to attack Iran, because it has been exposed by Seymour Hersh through the establishment media, and of course stated more clearly in the alternative non-establishment media. According to Hersh [1]:

This is not wild speculation. It's simply a fact that the planning has gone beyond the contingency stage, and it’s gone into what they call the operational stage, sort of an increment higher. And it's very serious planning, of course. And it's all being directed at the wish of the President of the United States.

The Washington Post also reported that the "U.S. has drawn up plans for launching tactical nuclear strikes against Iran." [2] According to Hersh, US military leaders have since forced the Bush administration to take this option off the table. It has not, however, necessarily been taken off of Israel's table of military options.

But the "planning" debate is a distraction. According to Retired Colonel Sam Gardiner, US military operations have already been initiated against Iran:

The issue is not whether the military option would be used, but [rather] who approved the start of operations already?.... It's a very serious question about the constitutional framework under which we are now conducting military operations in Iran. [2]

In other words, the US is already conducting military actions against Iran. This is substantiated, in part, by the proxy "terrorist" military actions led by the CIA against Iran. ABC News reports [3]:

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has hired a Pakistani terrorist group that has carried out a series of deadly terrorist attacks inside Iran, ABC News has reported on Wednesday (April 3, 2007).

It is also consistent with advanced military "spikes" in advance of the "official" war of agression against Iraq. The Downing Street memo of July 23, 2002, demonstrates this fact, and the fact that the timing of the Iraq war was planned with electoral politics in mind:

The [British] Defence Secretary said that the US had already begun "spikes of activity" to put pressure on the [Iraqi] regime. No decisions had been taken, but he thought the most likely timing in US minds for military action to begin was January, with the timeline beginning 30 days before the US Congressional elections.

So, the establishment media story is that US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, is assuring the World that the delusional Dick Cheney is on board with a "diplomatic" approach to Iran. However, this little smoke screen can't hide the fact that the US is already conducting military actions against Iran.

Contact The Media (LINK):

Tell the media you want more coverage of what's really happening in Iran. Ask them to interview Sam Gardiner and Seymour Hersh.

Sources:

1. DemocracyNow, April 12, 2006 Seymour Hersh: Bush Administration Planning Possible Major Air Attack on Iranmo.

2. DemocracyNow, April 17, 2006, Retired Colonel Sam Gardiner on Iran War Plans: "The Issue is Not Whether the Military Option Would Be Used But Who Approved the Start of Operations Already."

3. Downing Street Memo, To: DAVID MANNING, From: Matthew Rycroft, Subject: IRAQ: PRIME MINISTER'S MEETING, 23 JULY, Date: July 23, 2002, as originally reported in the The Sunday Times, May 1, 2005.