Letter Never Sent

The scapegoating of John Walker Lindh is really fucked up. I think to the right-wing he represents anyone who opposes US foreign policy and therefore an example must be made of him:

Also, after the video aired, Pelton was interviewed by CNN about his impressions of Lindh.

At one point, he said of Lindh: “His goal was not to fight against America. He got caught up in a war when it started shortly after Sept. 11. So I don’t think he deliberately went to fight against American interests…. At no time during my conversation with him did he give me negative opinions about America or say anything bad about our country.”

He also recalled that once U.S. Special Forces realized Lindh was an American, “one of the Green Berets guys offered to shoot him.”

These Green Beret sickos need to cut down on the bloodthirst. We need to have these psychopaths doing something useful like building roads or something.

American elections dictate timing of an attack:

There is an opportunity to strike in the autumn of next year, officials say, but waiting until then risks the fighting spilling over into 2004, leaving President Saddam Hussein’s fate unresolved at the start of a presidential election year, something that Republican political strategists are loath to contemplate.

Despite Mr Bush’s early rhetoric against Saddam, his room for manoeuvre has always been limited by the calendar. Reports of an invasion being launched this autumn were always likely to be wide of the mark. Americans go to the polls in early November for the critical mid-term elections and Republican strategists do not want their quest to regain control of the Senate wrecked by the unpredictability of war.

Although Mr Bush enjoys the tacit support of many leading Democrats for taking on Saddam, that could change in the ruthlessly partisan atmosphere likely to prevail in 2004. Mistakes and reverses in a war that left thousands of Americans dead could hurt Mr Bush in a presidential campaign, especially if exploited by a canny Democrat who presented criticism as patriotism.

The Department of Defense had a article mentioning the release of license plates in Virginia to support the ‘forever war’:

New Virginia License Plate Exhorts Citizens to ‘Fight Terrorism’

WASHINGTON, July 2, 2002 – Virginians soon will be able to sport vehicle license plates bearing a Pentagon-shaped logo and the words “Fight Terrorism” emblazoned in red letters in remembrance of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on America. …

Arlington County Chief of Police Edward A. Flynn said the logo was discovered among items the public left as part of an informal memorial erected near the damaged Pentagon as police processed evidence in the days just after the attack.

The Arlington police were impressed with the logo’s “simplicity and power to evoke those terrible days,” Flynn said

Reminds me of the same irrationalism and emotionalism played upon by the Nazi’s. ‘Let us fight to protect the Homeland!’ The use of the word homeland is evocative of the Nazi tendency to think in terms of the ‘Fatherland’.

These terrorists must not be trying very hard. The 4th of July is almost halfway over and we have two very lame possible terrorist attacks. One was a plane crash in which 6 people are in critical condition. (It’s not clear at all if this is terrorism related. Just a plane crash and a crowd.) The information is still coming out.

And in what looks like something that could be politically motivated, someone opened fire at the ticket counter of El Al airlines in Los Angeles. Only one person died there besides the gunman. Some other people are badly wounded. Supposedly, the shooter was a ‘white guy with a ponytail’. Those arab terrorists are getting really crafty… yawn.

Frankly, I’m disappointed in the terrorists. One park ranger and a part-time fireman created more havok and damage than this. I guess the CIA needs to reteach sabotage techniques to these people. Sheesh.

The inept hired guns in the US military are doing their best to make more and more people hate the United States. According to this article, US planes bombed a wedding and killed upwards of 40 people and injured many others. Most of the victims were women and children.

In Kandahar, one survivor, Abdul Qayyum, told reporters at the Mir Wais Hospital that the Americans came to the area demanding to know “who fired on the helicopters.”

“I said ‘I don’t know’ and one of the soldiers wanted to tie my hands but someone said he is an old man and out of the respect they didn’t,” he said.

Afghans often fire weapons during weddings in celebration.

Hospital officials said a number of wounded were being brought to Kandahar. Most of the dead and injured were women and children, they said.

“We have many children who are injured and who have no family,” nurse Mohammed Nadir said. “Their families are gone. The villagers brought these children and they have no parents. Everyone says that their parents are dead.”

This was at the bottom of the page on the Washington Post site. I guess if you’re an arab and you get mass-murdered by errant US bombs it doesn’t make big news anymore.

UPDATE: According to MSNBC, as many as 400 people were killed. That is absolutely insane. So, the death toll as it stands is American dead: 2,600 Afghan dead: 5,000.

From the BBC:

Russia has overtaken the United States to become the world’s leading conventional arms exporter for the first time, increasing deliveries sixfold over the last five years. Russian exports rose 24% in 2001

Of course, the U.S. coincidently removed its arms embargo against India which currently receives 80% of its weaponry from Russia. Maybe they are threatened by the idea of Russia dominating the global arms industry. The Russians always had a very robust and effective educational system when it came to science and engineering. A seldom reported fact, the CIA often purchases Russian made helicopters because American made helicopters are widely held to be unsafe. Remember all those recent military helicopter and plane accidents? American-made. The CIA refuses to use the American military’s helicopters.

Today the Bush administration expelled an Iraqi diplomat of the UN, Abdul Rahman I. K. Saad, who they say had been spying. One of the many shadowy, unnamed U.S. officials made this accusation:“He was engaging in activities that are incompatible with being a diplomat. He was spying. We found sufficient evidence, overwhelming evidence.”

What’s the evidence? Where is it? This is getting old. Groundless accusations just for political purposes. And U.S. officials are never giving their names so they can’t be held accountable for lies and erroneous information. They popup like mushrooms long enough to spread rumor and then they vanish. This is adept propaganda.

Rumsfeld was trying to get everyone mentally prepared for the US invasion of Iraq. The Bush administration has already iterated its strike first, investigate later policy. Everyone knows this won’t happen until right before the 2004 election season. Just watch and wait. It’ll happen then or I’m a monkey’s uncle.

Iraq issued a statement Sunday that it was ready to prove that it had no secret program to develop nuclear weapons or possessed chemical or biological weapons.

“They’re lying,” Rumsfeld said. “They have them and they continue to develop them,” he told reporters at an airport press conference in Kuwait City.

Rumsfeld is such a mouthy little bitch. I’d love to beat him in a game of air hockey though he probably cheats.

You know the Army has the ‘Green Berets’ and the ‘Special Forces’ and the Navy has the ‘Seals’ and the Air Force has the…uh..’Rescue Rangers’ or something. Anyway, the jar heads over in the Marines have been feeling left out in all the laudatory media coverage and would like to have their own very special, elite, shock troops. You might ask, what took them so long to hop on the bandwagon? Well, the Marines believe that every Marine is an elite fighter. A Marine creed is “Every Marine a rifleman.” So this new Marine unit will be like the elite of the elite, I suppose. Anyway, I don’t buy all this ‘Special Forces’ crapola. I think it mainly operates as propaganda. I mean, how hard is it to be elite when you belong to the military of the country which spends trillions of dollars on war? Let’s be honest, most of these guys went into the military because they didn’t know what else to do after they got through sleeping through high school. All the guys who had it together in school and went into the military joined ROTC and went on to become pencil pushing military bureaucrats. I guess you have to make up all sorts of elite groups and medals to make up for the pathetic pay and living on welfare while your family waits for you to come home for a few weeks at a time.