Hi. A personal note. My club, the Ash Grove was burnt down by arson on November 11th, 1973, exactly 2 months after Allende died and the fascist general Pinochet violently took over Chile with the aid, direct and covert, of Henry Kissinger and the Nixon administration. People with the same mind set performed the dirty deed on the club. The date, September 11th, has many levels of importance.
I became active in opposing the coup, helped Phil Ochs with his big concert for Chile, in Madison Sq. Garden, put on concerts with Quilapayun, Inti-Ilimani, Los Parra, Daniel Viglietti, many others. Pinochet's death, to me, is important because Latin America is changing so profoundly and for the better on every level he instituted, and his death will provide a platform for the accounting. Ed http://select.nytimes.com/2006/12/11/opinion/11herbert.html?th&emc=th The Time Is Now By BOB HERBERT NY Times Op-Ed: December 11, 2006 On Wednesday, as if the release of the Iraq Study Group report needed some form of dramatic punctuation, 11 more American G.I.'s were killed in this misbegotten war that just about everyone, except perhaps the president, now sees as a complete and utter debacle. Senator Gordon Smith, a Republican from Oregon who supported the war, delivered an emotional speech on the Senate floor Thursday evening in which he said: "I, for one, am at the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way, being blown up by the same bombs day after day. That is absurd. It may even be criminal. I cannot support that anymore." If the U.S. is ultimately going to retreat in Iraq, he said, "I would rather do it sooner than later. I am looking for answers, but the current course is unacceptable to this senator." The primary value of the Baker-Hamilton report is that it embodies, in clear and explicit language, the consensus that has emerged in the U.S. about the current state of the war. It's not so much a blueprint for action as a recognition of reality. "The level of violence is high and growing," the report says. "There is great suffering, and the daily lives of many Iraqis show little or no improvement. Pessimism is pervasive." With the situation in Iraq deteriorating, and support for the war in the U.S. having all but collapsed, the only real question on the table is how long the U.S. is going to drag out its inevitable pullout of combat forces. And the inevitable moral question that is inextricably linked to that slowly evolving set of circumstances is how to justify the lives that will be lost between now and the final day of our departure. There is something agonizingly tragic about soldiers dying in a war that has already been lost. The scale of the debacle is breathtaking. According to the study group: "In some parts of Iraq - notably in Baghdad - sectarian cleansing is taking place. The United Nations estimates that 1.6 million are displaced within Iraq, and up to 1.8 million Iraqis have fled the country." Americans, including the members of the study group, continue to insist that the key to an American withdrawal over the next couple of years is the improvement of Iraqi security forces to the point where they can successfully step into the breach. That is a complete fantasy, as a reading of the study group's own assessment of the Iraqi forces will attest. The study group found that, among other things, the Iraqi Army units "lack leadership ... lack equipment ... lack personnel ... [and] lack logistics and support." "Soldiers are given leave liberally and face no penalties for absence without leave," the report said. "Unit readiness rates are low, often at 50 percent or less." The report went on: "They lack the ability to sustain their operations, the capability to transport supplies and troops, and the capacity to provide their own indirect fire support, close-air support, technical intelligence and medical evacuation." Other than that, they're fine. So what's next? The Bush administration has lost all of its credibility on the war. What is needed now are leaders with the courage to insist, perhaps at the risk of their reputations and careers, that it is wrong to continue sending fresh bodies after those already lost, to continue asking young, healthy American troops to head into the combat zone, perhaps for their third or fourth tour, to fight in a war the public no longer supports. In a foreword to "The Best and the Brightest," David Halberstam's chronicle of the Vietnam fiasco, Senator John McCain wrote: "It was a shameful thing to ask men to suffer and die, to persevere through god-awful afflictions and heartache, to endure the dehumanizing experiences that are unavoidable in combat, for a cause that the country wouldn't support over time and that our leaders so wrongly believed could be achieved at a smaller cost than our enemy was prepared to make us pay. "No other national endeavor requires as much unshakable resolve as war. If the nation and the government lack that resolve, it is criminal to expect men in the field to carry it alone." The United States lacks that resolve when it comes to Iraq. It is time to pull the troops out of harm's way. *** http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15852.htm How Many More Will Die For Bush's Ego? By Paul Craig Roberts 12/09/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- Last July in response to Bush-the-Evil's enabling of Israel's gratuitous slaughter of thousands of Lebanese civilians and destruction of the country's infrastructure, I wrote about "the shame of being an American." With the ongoing slaughter of our troops and Iraqi civilians in Bush's war in Iraq, it is time to revisit that theme. As the Iraqi civil war (euphemistically termed "sectarian violence") intensifies, both US and Iraqi casualties have sharply increased. Thirty-five US troops have been killed in the first week of December. Iraqis are dying at each other's hands at about 100 per day, with many more wounded by bombs. Iraqi civilians continue to suffer at the hands of the US military, with the latest news being a US air strike that wiped out two families totaling 32 people. The report from the bipartisan Iraq Study Group has made it plain as day that the US is accomplishing nothing in Iraq except the destabilization of the entire Middle East. As Middle East expert Anthony Sullivan writes in The National Interest, the ISG report "constitutes a massive repudiation of the policy of the Bush Administration." The war is lost and cannot be retrieved militarily. "Staying the course" is the path of total folly. Yet, the White House Moron says that it is better for 100 US troops and 3,000 Iraqi civilians to die every month than for him to admit that he is wrong. To date the cost of Bush being wrong is 25,000 US casualties (dead and wounded) and approximately 650,000 dead Iraqis. No one knows how many have been wounded. How many more will die before America drowns in the shame of the blood that is being shed for no other reason than the American people were so stupid as to elect a president who cannot admit that he made a mistake? The same stupid American people elected a Congress that is too corrupt to impeach a president who is a liar, a war criminal, and a tyrant. Instead, they are prepared to let Bush off with a mere "mistake," a courtesy denied to President Clinton. Lying about sex is an impeachable offense. Lying about war is a mere mistake. Are the American people, Congress, and the American Establishment going to let the death toll continue to mount day by day for the two more years it takes for Bush to become history? How do America's military families feel about the loss of loved ones for no reason except President Bush cannot admit a mistake? How do the troops themselves feel about it? On December 8, a US Marine who has spent 7 months fighting insurgents in Anbar province answered this question on lewrockwell.com as follows: "I'm sick and tired of this patriotic, nationalistic and fascist crap. . . . How do you justify 'sacrificing' your life for a war which is not only illegal, but is being prosecuted to the extent where the only thing keeping us there is one man's power, and his ego." US Marine Philip Martin says he joined the Marines to protect the US Constitution, not to serve as an imperialist storm trooper. I couldn't believe my ears when I heard talking heads worrying about Bush's "comfort level" with the Iraqi Study Group's unanimous report. Bush's comfort level? What about the comfort level of the Iraqis and Americans who are losing family members while idiot talking heads worry about Bush's comfort level with the facts! Try to imagine the impression the US gives to the rest of the world: The US cannot stop a war that is a catastrophe becoming a calamity because it would interfere with Bush's comfort level. This disastrous war is a testament to the irresponsibility of the American people and their elected representatives. There were, of course, many dissenters. But the majority were too lazy and irresponsible to take the trouble to be informed. Most Americans allowed themselves to be deceived and emotionally manipulated. The consequence of this failure of the American people has been brutal for countless people and their families in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon and for the thousands of American families who have suffered because Bush sent US troops on a fool's mission. The American people are stained with the blood of innocents. Are they still not sufficiently angry with the president who used them for his crimes to demand his impeachment? As long as Bush remains in office, the neoconservatives will demand more wars. In the current issue of "Foreign Policy," neocon Joshua Muravchik stridently insists that Bush bomb Iran before he leaves office. Muracvchik urges his fellow neocon warmongers to "pave the way" for the bombing of Iran and to "be prepared to defend the action when it comes." As Middle East expert Anthony Sullivan writes, the neoconservatives are "fifth columnists" whose "real concern is not the United States but Israel." Sullivan writes that "it is past time that neoconservatives and their movement be left to drown in the deepest reaches of the ocean." Amen! And send Bush and Cheney and Rice with them. Paul Craig Roberts , was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider's Account of Policymaking in Washington ; Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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