US Presidents promote war not peace....

Our latest President--Barack Obama--seems to have the same war agenda as George Bush.

Why do American's allow our tax dollars to be used to kill people worldwide so that corporations can increase their profits?

The latest on US war crimes courtesy of Pulitzer prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh.

Time to Get Real about War's True Nature: "For Eli" by Andrea Gibson

Andrea Gibson at the 2006 poetry slam, performing "For Eli"

For Eli

Eli came back from Iraq
and tattooed a teddy bear onto the inside of his wrist
above that a medic with an IV bag
above that an angel
but Eli says the teddy bear won't live
and I know I don't know but I say, "I know"
cause Eli's only twenty-four and I've never seen eyes
further away from childhood than his
eyes old with a wisdom
he knows I'd rather not have
Eli's mother traces a teddy bear onto the inside of my arm
and says, "not all casualties come home in body bags"
and I swear
I'd spend the rest of my life writing nothing
but the word light at the end of this tunnel
if I could find the fucking tunnel
I'd write nothing but white flags
somebody pray for the soldiers
somebody pray for what's lost
somebody pray for the mailbox
that holds the official letters
to the mothers,
--------------fathers,
--------------------sisters,
and little brothers
of Micheal 19... Steven 21... John 33
how ironic that their deaths sound like bible verses
the hearse is parked in the halls of the high school
recruiting black, brown and poor
while anti-war activists
outside walter reed army hospital scream
100, 000 slain
as an amputee on the third floor
breathes forget-me-nots onto the window pain
but how can we forget what we never knew
our sky is so perfectly blue it's repulsive
somebody tell me where god lives
cause if god is truth god doesn't live here
our lies have seared the sun too hot to live by
there are ghosts of kids who are still alive
touting M16s with trembling hands
while we dream ourselves stars on Survivor
another missile sets fire to the face in the locket
of a mother who's son needed money for college
and she swears she can feel his photograph burn
how many wars will it take us to learn
that only the dead return
the rest remain forever caught between worlds of
shrapnel shatters body of three year old girl
to
welcome to McDonalds can I take your order?
the mortar of sanity crumbling
stumbling back home to a home that will never be home again
Eli doesn't know if he can ever write a poem again
one third of the homeless men in this country are veterans
and we have the nerve to Support Our Troops
with pretty yellow ribbons
while giving nothing but dirty looks to their outstretched hands
tell me what land of the free
sets free its eighteen-year-old kids into greedy war zones
hones them like missiles
then returns their bones in the middle of the night
so no one can see
each death swept beneath the carpet and hidden like dirt
each life a promise we never kept
Jeff Lucey came back from Iraq
and hung himself in his parents basement with a garden hose
the night before he died he spent forty five minutes on his fathers lap
rocking like a baby
rocking like daddy, save me
and don't think for a minute he too isn't collateral damage
in the mansions of washington they are watching them burn
and hoarding the water
no senators' sons are being sent out to slaughter
no presidents' daughters are licking ashes from their lips
or dreaming up ropes to wrap around their necks
in case they ever make it home alive
our eyes are closed
america
there are souls in
the boots of the soldiers
america
fuck your yellow ribbon
you wanna support our troops
bring them home
and hold them tight when they get here

More on the True Face of the War in Iraq

Iraq has been reduced to a cartoon in many Americans' eyes, thanks to the White House, Pentagon and Corporate Media. The war is now largely depicted as al Qaeda versus the Iraqi people and the noble Coalition forces. Well, that is as skewed a picture as we used to get about Vietnam, when we were told that the war there was the evil Viet Cong versus the Vietnamese people and their noble American protectors.

The war in Iraq is far more complex than that, just as the Vietnamese war was far more complex. In Iraq, there are five main factions, 1) the Shiites with their often warring militias, 2) the Sunnis with their various tribes and militias, 3) the al Qaeda faction, which actually overlaps the Sunni faction somewhat, because al Qaeda largely draws from the Sunni population and foreign volunteers who are also usually Sunni as best as I can tell, 4) the Kurds in the north, who have several often warring factions too, and 5) the Turkomen in the north, who are opposed by the Kurds and have strong support from Turkey, which has been crossing the Iraqi border to attack Kurdish guerrillas for several months.

Al Qaeda is the most difficult to figure out, because there are many, many contradictions about al Qaeda. First of all, the United States created and organized the forerunners of al Qaeda, the Mujadhedeen warriors fighting the old Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and al Qaeda itself, the term of which is often translated as "the Base", was actually apparently created from the "database" of Mujadhedeen members on computer lists.

Al Qaeda, their leader bin Laden (or so we are led to believe) and the CIA actually had some kind of ongoing murky relationship in the 1990's, the CIA utilizing al Qaeda "soldiers" against the Serbs in Kosovo during the NATO-led actions against Yugoslavia. In fact, there is confirmed evidence that the CIA and Pentagon were supporting elements of al Qaeda even a few weeks befor 9/11, as noted in this 2005 report:

Both the CIA and German intelligence (BND) supported the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), a terrorist organization with links to Al Qaeda.

This report by the German TV ZDF Network, reviewed by Mira Beham, is revealing in many regards.

First the report corroborates earlier analysis on the role of the BND and the CIA in supporting the KLA, several years prior as well as in the wake of the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia.

Second, it further documents and confirms the KLA's links to Al Qaeda and the role of the latter in the Kosovo conflict:

"What German journalists and their Dutch colleagues at VPRO Radio Television investigated has a long tradition. Since the beginning of the 1990s the BND has maintained contacts with the KLA, which was then considered to be a terrorist organization. Although we have to admit that the KLA has stronger ties with the CIA than the BND. Commander Hoxha had ties with the CIA, the BND and with the Austrian military intelligence service which has devoted great attention to this region and has very good connections with the KLA."

Despite its links to organized crime and Al Qaeda, the KLA rebel army had been skillfully heralded by the Western media in the months preceding the 1999 NATO bombings as broadly representative of the interests of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. Its leader Hashim Thaci had been "designated" (by US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright) as chief negotiator at the Rambouillet peace talks.

The fact of the matter is that the Atlantic Alliance had been supporting a terrorist organization. The KLA was not supporting the rights of ethnic Albanians. Quite the opposite..........

Macedonia August 2001: Central to an Understanding of 9/11

The reference in the report to Macedonia is crucial to an understanding of 9/11 and the war on terrorism, because it confirms that US military advisers had integrated a terrorist paramilitary organization linked to Al Qaeda, barely a few weeks before 9/11.

Moreover, it also confirms that US paratroopers were sent in to save the Al Qaeda sponsored fighters and their US military advisers.

"Samedin Xhezairi, also known as Commander Hoxha, joined the Kosovo Liberation Army when armed conflict in Kosovo began, fighting in three operation zones. He was a fighter in Chechnya, trained in Afghanistan and acted as the commander of the Mujahideen 112th Brigade operating in the summer of 2001 in the region of Tetovo [Macedonia]. In August of the same year 80 members of the 3/502 battalion of U.S. paratroopers evacuated him from Aracinovo [Macedonia], together with his Albanian extremists and 17 instructors of the U.S. private military company MPRI which was training the Albanian paramilitary formations."

In other words, the US military was collaborating with Al Qaeda, which according to the Bush administration was involved in the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon.

Yet, the US military was working hand in glove with "enemy number one" barely a few weeks before 9/11, and we are led to believe that the Bush administration is committed to waging a battle against Al Qaeda. Michel Chossudovsky, 15 February 2005

(source)

There was no viable al Qaeda presence in Iraqi territory before America invaded Iraq in 2003. There was only the maniacal Zarqawi, who had recently set up a training camp in northern Kurdistan, which was under the protection of the United States military and beyond Sadam Hussein's reach. Bush had been informed about Zarqawi's presence by the Pentagon, who wanted to take him out, but Bush refused their request, repeatedly. Why?

Al Qeada moved into Iraq proper only after we invaded, and the Pentagon itself revealed somewhat later that they actually began building up Zarqawi's mystique and influence through their propaganda mills to, to put it bluntly, scare everybody. Now that's amazing!

When did the CIA and American military actually sever their well-hidden ties with al Qaeda, if they ever did?

So just what is al Qaeda exactly and who directs and supports it? Bin Laden, you might say, but he is either holed up in a cave or village several thousand miles away OR DEAD. And there is actually powerful evidence that the real bin Laden has been dead since December, 2003. Benazir Bhutto actually said so, rather matter-of-factly, in an interview with David Frost just before she was slain.

Regarding Iraq, the Shiites, Sunnis and the very strangely affiliated al Qeada forces (or at least a tier of them) in Iraq all want American occupation forces out of their country. Al Qaeda, because of its utterly vicious penchant for slaughter, has angered many Sunnis who might otherwise sympathize with them, while the Shiites have never much liked al Qaeda. The non-al Qaeda Sunnis, who were fighting the Shiites, al Qaeda and the American military all at once, agreed to a bargain with what they tend to consider the Devil, the US Military, and signed on to the "Awakening Councils" to gain time and money and to concentrate on the other two foes. But now indications are that the Awakening Councils are starting to unravel, as noted in this video.



The United States, no matter how you cut it, is considered a brutal, deadly occupation force, which it absolutely is, and the vast majority of Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites all want America out. A recent poll of Iraqis showed that 70% want the U.S. to leave right now. The Iraqi government may say another thing, because they are largely divorced from the Iraqi people, some of them being utter American puppets, and are all hunkered down in the Green Zone, requiring troops and body-guards to go anywhere in the Red Zone.

Sunnis and Shiites have both set their intention to get rid of the Americans in their varying ways and strategies, whether it takes a year or decades, so to think that somehow the United States can defeat several thousand poorly understood al Qaeda fighters, if they have that many personnel in the first place, and all will live happily ever after is utterly delusional. We are, in actuality, still diametrically opposed by millions of Iraqis. There is no light at the end of this tunnel.

Questions for Bush, Cheney and US

Yesterday Dick Cheney said invading Iraq was the right thing to do and he is not bothered that over 70% of the US population disagrees with him. George Bush continues to say that invading Iraq to take Saddam Hussein out of power was an intelligent move.

Why hasn't the corporate media called these buffoons are their lies?

Remember back to the day of the invasion. Some of us were able to be glued to the television coverage before the bombing began. It was reported that a few hours BEFORE the invasion, Saddam Hussein offered to step down and go into exile with his sons and family. The Bush Cheney cabal basically said Saddam's offer was "too late" and they invaded Iraq anyway at the cost of over 1 million lives of innocent Iraqi civilians, US military casualties, and untold numbers of wounded soldiers and civilians.

This 3 trillion dollar war that has wrecked so many lives and the US economy, and created the largest humanitarian crisis in the world today, was easily avoided. We did NOT have to illegally invade Iraq to oust Saddam from power and continue monitoring and searching for WMD.

Why did we invade Iraq? This question remains unanswered to this day.

How can anyone forget that Saddam Hussein OFFERED to go into exile right before the invasion? Why haven't Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice been asked WHY they did not accept Hussein's offer to leave Iraq and continue with their illegal, immoral invasion?

Why haven't all of these war profiteering criminals been impeached?

Now that you know (or remember) that Saddam Hussein offered to leave Iraq BEFORE we invaded...what do you think should be done about the reckless, immoral actions of our Bush administration to continue with their plan to invade Iraq?

The Travesty of the American Mainstream Media

The Winter Soldier Investigations have received a great amount of media coverage from the independent media and press, as well as from the international media, but NOT FROM THE AMERICAN MAINSTREAM, CORPORATE MEDIA. I went to the websites of ABC, NBC, CBS, NPR, FOX NEWS and CNN, and, as of 9:00 AM this morning, when I did searches on every one of these sites, not one hit came up about the Winter Soldier event happening right now, only about the decades old Vietnam Winter Soldier, or more bizarre still, hits came up about a character named Winter Soldier from a Captain America Marvel comic book. Amazing! A media event of international significance, trumped, so to speak, by a comic book about a fantasy super hero.

But isn't that what the whole mass media, Congress and the White House are trying to hold together, a fantasy scenario about the cartoonish War on Terror, fueled by stereotypes, lies and paranoia about Middle Eastern Moslems and Arabic peoples every bit as pernicious as the stereotypes against the Jews by the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s, all driven beneath the surface by sadism, greed and power and whipped into high gear by the Right Wing's decades of experience in propaganda techniques and False Flag Operations?

Listen to Phyllis Bennis of The Institute for Policy Studies address this topic:

MORE TESTIMONIES FROM WINTER SOLDIER

Turkey-shooting Iraqi civilians, terrorizing women and children, the new Action Army:



The floating rules of engagement:



To go to the Information Clearing House webpage for streaming live video and audio starting again tomorrow, click here.

Also check out KPFA Radio's The War Comes Home Project at http://www.warcomeshome.org/ for full coverage of the four day event.