Kurt Nimmo - It is more evidence the antiwar movement is largely a left-vs-right distraction. A new study by U-M’s Michael Heaney and colleague Fabio Rojas of Indiana University shows that the antiwar movement in the United States demobilized as Democrats took over Congress and the White House.
A small, dedicated core of people protest against Obama’s third war.
“As president, Obama has maintained the occupation of Iraq and escalated the war in Afghanistan,” said Heaney. “The antiwar movement should have been furious at Obama’s ‘betrayal’ and reinvigorated its protest activity.”
“Instead, attendance at antiwar rallies declined precipitously and financial resources available to the movement have dissipated. The election of Obama appeared to be a demobilizing force on the antiwar movement, even in the face of his pro-war decisions.”
“Since Democrats are more numerous in the population at large than are members of third parties, the withdrawal of Democrats from the movement in 2009 appears to be a significant explanation for the falling size of antiwar protests,” Heaney said. “Thus, we have identified the kernel of the linkage between Democratic partisanship and the demobilization of the antiwar movement.”
“Overall, our results convincingly demonstrate a strong relationship between partisanship and the dynamics of the antiwar movement. While Obama’s election was heralded as a victory for the antiwar movement, Obama’s election, in fact, thwarted the ability of the movement to achieve critical mass.”
Democrats and other liberal supporters of the establishment are not opposed to mass murder and wanton slaughter by the state – they merely oppose it when Republicans do it. Opposition is a partisan formality.
A corporate media poll conducted in late March on Obama’s handling of the unconstitutional attack on Libya shows that two-thirds of Democrat respondents support violating international law and pummeling the oil-rich north African country with Tomahawk cruise missiles.
Congress Democrats often howled about “Bush’s Wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan, but supported them – including the mass murder of 1.5 million Iraqis, a war criminal of immense proportion – by continuing to fund them. The number of anti-war Democrats in Congress who worked to defund the illegal occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq was miniscule.
Obama duped the so-called anti-war faction of his party during the election. He said he’d bring home the troops and close down Gitmo. During the primaries, he tried to make Hillary Clinton look like the war candidate.
Once elected as savior, Obama not only continued Bush’s war policies – in fact the war policies of the global elite – but expanded them. Troops remain in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Pentagon and the CIA stepped up the terror campaign in Pakistan. Gitmo remains open.
History repeats itself. In 1999, then president Clinton attacked Yugoslavia. Democrats and liberals cheered him on. Congress was silent. Only four Democrats objected. In the House, there was only one, Barbara Lee of California. In the Senate, just three – Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, Fritz Hollings of South Carolina, and Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico.
Both Republicans and Democrats love mass murder and military conquest. War is the health of the state, declared Randolph Bourne as the First World War unfolded. The Great War extracted a great toll – 37 million casualties. London and Wall Street bankers cooked up that devastating war and every one since, including the one now expanding in Libya as a U.S. general hints the government will soon send in ground troops and thus initiate a third war in the Arab and Muslim Middle East.
Democrats are so enthusiastic about the murder campaign in Libya, they didn’t even bother to vote on it, not that Obama gave them a chance – like Bush before him, he used the unchecked power of a unitary presidency to attack the African country. “He has proceeded in a way that is cautions and thoughtful,” said a proud Carl Levin, Michigan Democrat. “He has put the ducks in a row before he decided the United States should take the lead for a short period of time to do what only we could do.”
Ohio Democrat Dennis Kucinich stands alone in the wilderness with Rep. Ron Paul. He said Obama’s unconstitutional attack “is an act of war” and an impeachable offense. “The president made statements which attempt to minimize U.S. action, but U.S. planes may drop U.S. bombs and U.S. missiles may be involved in striking another sovereign nation. War from the air is still war,” he said in a lengthy speech on the House floor, a speech mostly ignored by fellow Democrats.
“It is hard to imagine that Congress, during the current contentious debate over deficits and budget cutting, would agree to plunge America into still another war, especially since America will spend trillions in total for the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and incursions into Pakistan,” he said.
Really, it is not hard to imagine at all. Democrats and Republicans do the bidding of the global elite and the global bankster elite not only want war in the Middle East, they want the enslaving debt that invariably comes with it.
In 2003, as he prepared to attack Iraq, Bush dismissed the antiwar movement as a focus group. Democrats are not so crude. Instead, they deem their war “humanitarian,” as a previous war criminal, Bill Clinton, did as he bombed the former Yugoslavia with depleted uranium, in effect launching a nuclear war against that small country.
Showing posts with label iraq. Show all posts
Showing posts with label iraq. Show all posts
Friday, April 8, 2011
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
$8.7 Billion Of Iraq Development Money Missing
Kurt Nimmo - The Defense Department is unable to account for $8.7 billion of the $9.1 billion in Development Fund for Iraq monies it received for reconstruction in Iraq, reports Federal News Radio today.
The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) issued a report today that claims a “weakness” in the DoD’s “financial and management controls left it unable to properly account for $8.7 billion of the $9.1 billion in DFI funds.” The money vanished “because most DoD organizations receiving DFI funds did not establish the required Department of the Treasury accounts and no DoD organization was designated as the executive agent for managing the use of DFI funds,” explains the Inspector General. “The breakdown in controls left the funds vulnerable to inappropriate uses and undetected loss.”
DFI revenue is generated from export sales of petroleum, petroleum products, and natural gas from Iraq, and surplus funds from the United Nations Oil-for-Food Program as well as frozen Iraqi assets, according to SIGIR.
If you believe the money was simply lost through shoddy accounting practices, you may also be interested in a bridge I have for sale in Brooklyn. Simply put, the money was pilfered.
You may recall then Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld’s admission on September 10, 2001, that the Pentagon lost $2.3 trillion. This money was supposed to go for our “national defense” against CIA assets like Osama bin Laden and tin horn dictators like Saddam Hussein and the mental case Kim Jong-Il.
It became a non-story of little interest the next day when cave Muslims violated the laws of physics and supposedly attacked us for our freedom. It now basically resides in the corporate media memory hole.
$2.3 trillion amounts to $8,000 for every man, woman and child in America.
Nobody knows exactly where the $2.3 trillion went. But some think it was siphoned off through companies like DynCorp, AMS, and Lockheed Martin, which control the bookkeeping for federal agencies, where fraud is rampant, unchecked and very lucrative for corporate and government insiders, writes Uri Dowbenko. “The fraud is so egregious, in fact, that the sovereignty of the nation itself can be questioned when bogus accounting systems can mask the revenue streams and expenditures of federal agencies to such an extent.”
At the time the money disappeared, Dov Zakheim was the Comptroller of the Pentagon. In addition to serving as a member of the notorious Project for a New American Century, Zakheim was chummy with the military-industrial merchants of death complex. He was an executive at System Planning Corporation, a defense contractor specializing in electronic warfare technologies including remote-controlled aircraft systems.
Fraud and thievery is rampant in Iraq. In June, it was reported that tens of millions of dollars in federal property went missing or unaccounted for at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. A report from the State Department revealed that 159 of the embassy’s 1,168 vehicles, worth $18.5 million, are unaccounted for and pays nearly $270,000 per year in charges for more than 2,000 cell phones that have not been registered to authorized users, according to the Associated Press.
Money slotted for Iraq development — rebuilding what the Pentagon destroyed — has a funny way of disappearing. Between April 2003 and June 2004, $12 billion in U.S. currency was shipped from the Federal Reserve to Baghdad. More than $9 billion went missing. “The simple truth about the missing money is the same one that applies to so much else about the American occupation of Iraq. The U.S. government never did care about accounting for those Iraqi billions and it doesn’t care now. It cares only about ensuring that an accounting does not occur,” write Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele for Vanity Fair.
Grilled by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the former Administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority, Paul Bremer, told Rep. Henry Waxman that if the cash had gone to “ghost employees” he would have known about it. Bremer sheepishly told Rep. Dennis Kucinich he had no idea where the money went.
Instead of launching a criminal investigation and tracking down the thieves, the SIGIR study suggests “that the Secretary of Defense create new accounting and reporting procedures to avoid such mistakes in the future. It also recommends designating an executive agent to oversee progress, establishing measurable milestones, and determining whether any DoD organizations are still holding DFI funds.”
The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) issued a report today that claims a “weakness” in the DoD’s “financial and management controls left it unable to properly account for $8.7 billion of the $9.1 billion in DFI funds.” The money vanished “because most DoD organizations receiving DFI funds did not establish the required Department of the Treasury accounts and no DoD organization was designated as the executive agent for managing the use of DFI funds,” explains the Inspector General. “The breakdown in controls left the funds vulnerable to inappropriate uses and undetected loss.”
DFI revenue is generated from export sales of petroleum, petroleum products, and natural gas from Iraq, and surplus funds from the United Nations Oil-for-Food Program as well as frozen Iraqi assets, according to SIGIR.
If you believe the money was simply lost through shoddy accounting practices, you may also be interested in a bridge I have for sale in Brooklyn. Simply put, the money was pilfered.
You may recall then Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld’s admission on September 10, 2001, that the Pentagon lost $2.3 trillion. This money was supposed to go for our “national defense” against CIA assets like Osama bin Laden and tin horn dictators like Saddam Hussein and the mental case Kim Jong-Il.
It became a non-story of little interest the next day when cave Muslims violated the laws of physics and supposedly attacked us for our freedom. It now basically resides in the corporate media memory hole.
$2.3 trillion amounts to $8,000 for every man, woman and child in America.
Nobody knows exactly where the $2.3 trillion went. But some think it was siphoned off through companies like DynCorp, AMS, and Lockheed Martin, which control the bookkeeping for federal agencies, where fraud is rampant, unchecked and very lucrative for corporate and government insiders, writes Uri Dowbenko. “The fraud is so egregious, in fact, that the sovereignty of the nation itself can be questioned when bogus accounting systems can mask the revenue streams and expenditures of federal agencies to such an extent.”
At the time the money disappeared, Dov Zakheim was the Comptroller of the Pentagon. In addition to serving as a member of the notorious Project for a New American Century, Zakheim was chummy with the military-industrial merchants of death complex. He was an executive at System Planning Corporation, a defense contractor specializing in electronic warfare technologies including remote-controlled aircraft systems.
Fraud and thievery is rampant in Iraq. In June, it was reported that tens of millions of dollars in federal property went missing or unaccounted for at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. A report from the State Department revealed that 159 of the embassy’s 1,168 vehicles, worth $18.5 million, are unaccounted for and pays nearly $270,000 per year in charges for more than 2,000 cell phones that have not been registered to authorized users, according to the Associated Press.
Money slotted for Iraq development — rebuilding what the Pentagon destroyed — has a funny way of disappearing. Between April 2003 and June 2004, $12 billion in U.S. currency was shipped from the Federal Reserve to Baghdad. More than $9 billion went missing. “The simple truth about the missing money is the same one that applies to so much else about the American occupation of Iraq. The U.S. government never did care about accounting for those Iraqi billions and it doesn’t care now. It cares only about ensuring that an accounting does not occur,” write Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele for Vanity Fair.
Grilled by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the former Administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority, Paul Bremer, told Rep. Henry Waxman that if the cash had gone to “ghost employees” he would have known about it. Bremer sheepishly told Rep. Dennis Kucinich he had no idea where the money went.
Instead of launching a criminal investigation and tracking down the thieves, the SIGIR study suggests “that the Secretary of Defense create new accounting and reporting procedures to avoid such mistakes in the future. It also recommends designating an executive agent to oversee progress, establishing measurable milestones, and determining whether any DoD organizations are still holding DFI funds.”
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Gang Members Coming Home From Iraq And Afghanistan With Military Training
Frank Mann - Being in a street gang is now forbidden for members of the U.S. armed forces. But you might not guess that if you were to visit U.S. military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to soldiers who have recently served there.
Jeffrey Stoleson, a Wisconsin corrections official, returned from Iraq in January with photos of gang graffiti on armored vehicles, latrines and buildings. Stoleson, a sergeant with a National Guard unit, was there for nine months to help the Army set up a prison facility outside Baghdad.
PHOTO GALLERY
Gangs in War Zones"I saw Maniac Latin Disciples graffiti out of Chicago," Stoleson said, adding that there was a lot of graffiti for Texas and California gangs, as well as Mexican drug cartels.
A Chicago Police officer -- who retired from the regular Army and was recently on a tour of Afghanistan in the Army Reserve -- said Bagram Air Base was covered with Chicago gang graffiti, everything from the Gangster Disciples' pitchfork to the Latin Kings' crown.
"It seems bigger now," said the officer, who previously served a tour in Iraq, where he also saw gang graffiti.
Now back in Chicago, the officer said he has arrested high-level gang members who have served in the military and kept the "Infantryman's bible" -- called the FM 7-8 -- in their homes. The book describes how to run for cover, fire a weapon tactically and do the "three- to five-second rushes" seen in war movies.
"It's scary," he said.
In 2006, Stoleson saw similar graffiti in Iraq during another tour of duty there. That year, the Chicago Sun-Times reported on gangs in the military -- and published several of Stoleson's photos of gang graffiti.
Congress eventually banned members of the military from belonging to street gangs. And last November, the Defense Department added the ban to its rules.
Spokesmen for the Army and Defense Department said they could not provide figures on how many soldiers have been thrown out of the military or otherwise disciplined as a result of gang membership.
Stoleson, who stressed he was not speaking for the Wisconsin Department of Corrections or the Army, said it appears the problem is worse than ever. He warned that soldiers who return to gang life back home are especially dangerous because they know military tactics that they can use against the police and the public -- as a Marine did in 2005 when he killed a police officer and wounded three others in a California ambush.
"Gang members are coming home now with one or two tours," he said. "Some were on the field of battle."
Civilian contractors in Iraq are part of the gang problem overseas, Stoleson said. He said he was involved in destroying a large quantity of drugs confiscated from U.S. contractors in Iraq.
Stoleson, who is a member of the International Latino Gang Investigators Association, said some police departments in California are now tracking whether gang members were in the military.
A second Chicago Police officer, who searches homes for drugs and guns, said gang members targeted by his team are sometimes current or former members of the armed forces. That becomes part of the team's pre-raid briefings because the suspect is an increased safety risk with military training, the officer said.
"We recently arrested a guy in the reserves for crack [cocaine]," the officer said. "He was a gang-banger."
Stoleson said that, on his previous tour in Iraq, he was friends with a soldier who associated with the Maniac Latin Disciples when he grew up in Chicago.
"We talked a lot about it. He said the military was the only way he could break free," Stoleson said.
But those aren't the people Stoleson worries about.
"My problem is the guys who go into the military to continue the lifestyle," he said.
T.J. Leyden, a former white supremacist, was one of those guys. He said he recruited fellow members of the Hammerskin Nation into the Marines when he was in the corps in the late 1980s and early 1990s and sent stolen Kevlar body armor and helmets to fellow skinheads back home.
"I wore white supremacist T-shirts, and I hung a swastika flag out of my barracks," said Leyden, who was kicked out of the Marines for drinking and fighting. "I hated America. The only reason I was a Marine was because they were the baddest of the bad."
Leyden, who lives in Utah now, said he quit the white-supremacy movement in 1996 because he was worried "my sons were becoming me."
He began working against the movement and founded Straight Talk Consulting, giving lectures to students and advising the FBI, the National Guard and other organizations about gangs in the military.
Leyden said his informants have told him that skinheads and street gangs are still entrenched in both the regular military and the National Guard.
"The military needs to wake up," he said.
Jeffrey Stoleson, a Wisconsin corrections official, returned from Iraq in January with photos of gang graffiti on armored vehicles, latrines and buildings. Stoleson, a sergeant with a National Guard unit, was there for nine months to help the Army set up a prison facility outside Baghdad.
A soldier flashes Latin King signs.
(National Gang Intelligence Center)
(National Gang Intelligence Center)
PHOTO GALLERY
Gangs in War Zones
A Chicago Police officer -- who retired from the regular Army and was recently on a tour of Afghanistan in the Army Reserve -- said Bagram Air Base was covered with Chicago gang graffiti, everything from the Gangster Disciples' pitchfork to the Latin Kings' crown.
"It seems bigger now," said the officer, who previously served a tour in Iraq, where he also saw gang graffiti.
Now back in Chicago, the officer said he has arrested high-level gang members who have served in the military and kept the "Infantryman's bible" -- called the FM 7-8 -- in their homes. The book describes how to run for cover, fire a weapon tactically and do the "three- to five-second rushes" seen in war movies.
"It's scary," he said.
In 2006, Stoleson saw similar graffiti in Iraq during another tour of duty there. That year, the Chicago Sun-Times reported on gangs in the military -- and published several of Stoleson's photos of gang graffiti.
Congress eventually banned members of the military from belonging to street gangs. And last November, the Defense Department added the ban to its rules.
Spokesmen for the Army and Defense Department said they could not provide figures on how many soldiers have been thrown out of the military or otherwise disciplined as a result of gang membership.
Stoleson, who stressed he was not speaking for the Wisconsin Department of Corrections or the Army, said it appears the problem is worse than ever. He warned that soldiers who return to gang life back home are especially dangerous because they know military tactics that they can use against the police and the public -- as a Marine did in 2005 when he killed a police officer and wounded three others in a California ambush.
"Gang members are coming home now with one or two tours," he said. "Some were on the field of battle."
Civilian contractors in Iraq are part of the gang problem overseas, Stoleson said. He said he was involved in destroying a large quantity of drugs confiscated from U.S. contractors in Iraq.
Stoleson, who is a member of the International Latino Gang Investigators Association, said some police departments in California are now tracking whether gang members were in the military.
A second Chicago Police officer, who searches homes for drugs and guns, said gang members targeted by his team are sometimes current or former members of the armed forces. That becomes part of the team's pre-raid briefings because the suspect is an increased safety risk with military training, the officer said.
"We recently arrested a guy in the reserves for crack [cocaine]," the officer said. "He was a gang-banger."
Stoleson said that, on his previous tour in Iraq, he was friends with a soldier who associated with the Maniac Latin Disciples when he grew up in Chicago.
"We talked a lot about it. He said the military was the only way he could break free," Stoleson said.
But those aren't the people Stoleson worries about.
"My problem is the guys who go into the military to continue the lifestyle," he said.
T.J. Leyden, a former white supremacist, was one of those guys. He said he recruited fellow members of the Hammerskin Nation into the Marines when he was in the corps in the late 1980s and early 1990s and sent stolen Kevlar body armor and helmets to fellow skinheads back home.
"I wore white supremacist T-shirts, and I hung a swastika flag out of my barracks," said Leyden, who was kicked out of the Marines for drinking and fighting. "I hated America. The only reason I was a Marine was because they were the baddest of the bad."
Leyden, who lives in Utah now, said he quit the white-supremacy movement in 1996 because he was worried "my sons were becoming me."
He began working against the movement and founded Straight Talk Consulting, giving lectures to students and advising the FBI, the National Guard and other organizations about gangs in the military.
Leyden said his informants have told him that skinheads and street gangs are still entrenched in both the regular military and the National Guard.
"The military needs to wake up," he said.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)