“The above figure represents U.S. military spending since the start of Fiscal Year 2001. Every minute the United States spends another $589,802 on the military, 51.3% of the discretionary federal budget.”
When I just checked it, it was up to 504 billion and counting. Watch money being pissed away on better ways to kill poor and innocent folk. View the Military Spending Clock.
Found a few good things you can read for free online. Sometimes it’s hard to find good stuff.
Rall makes a good case for trying Bush as an attempted murderer for the CIA’s assassination attempt of an alleged rival of Hamid Karzai. You really should read the whole thing yourself. It’s priceless. Here’s a good piece of it:
You and I, faced with such information, might have had Hekmatyar picked up for questioning. We might put him and his pals on trial for conspiracy and, if he were found guilty, thrown in prison. But the guys in the White House aren’t like us. They’re gangsters. Gangsters are above the law. Gangsters don’t bother with judges and juries. They pay off judges; they have their enemies whacked.
And so your illegitimate gangster government, less than a month after it attempted to overthrow the democratically-elected government of Venezuela, sent up one of those unmanned Predator drone planes. Some dude punched a button on an iMac at an undisclosed location in the Virginia suburbs and fired a Hellfire missile at Hekmatyar’s car convoy on a road just outside Kabul. “I believe some others were killed in the strike, but the target escaped,” an unnamed U.S. official told Reuters. Hekmatyar’s spokesman and son-in-law Ghairat Baheer in Islamabad said: “He is in Afghanistan…but there was no attack.”
Experts speculate that the missile hit a group of cars that had nothing to do with Hekmatyar.
Have you ever noticed how government sources are all anonymous these days? I think it is a calculated decision so that people cannot follow up with further questions to said sources. I don’t think Rall goes far enough. I think there is enough evidence from many things that Bush has done (ie. executing people, killing innocents, graft, corruption, election fraud, assassination) to have him tried for murder or worse.
I really enjoyed reading this article in the Washington Post on the frustrations that American soldiers are experiencing trying to fight Afghan guerrillas. These well-fed, kevlar-wearing American soldiers sound like a bunch of spoiled crybabies. It really tickled the funny bone to hear them cuss and complain about ‘adversaries’ who don’t wear uniforms and pesky ‘rules of engagement’ that prevent them from shooting whoever they like.
The soldiers demonstrated the casual racism and hatred common to the US military by reducing the Afghan people to ‘Habibs’ as they quaintly call them. This is the ‘gook’ or ‘jap’ of the new conflict.
I enjoyed hearing how stupid most of our hired killers are. It confirms personal experience. I know that with people like this there is hope for a future without American military oppression because despite the overwhelming technological and financial advantages of the US in the end decisions will be made by macho morons like these.
Then he posed the ultimate question to the group. “When have we completed our mission in Afghanistan?”
No one had an answer.
I can’t believe I waste my taxes on crap like this. We need to have the military building roads or doing something useful.
From here:
Wrong! This may be the best opportunity you’ll ever get to directly make a difference. Jurors not only have the duty to decide guilt or innocence, but also the “equity”, or “inequity”, of the law for which the defendant is accused. This means you have the RIGHT to acquit a defendant based upon YOUR ideas of right and wrong, fairness, and your own conscience. If you feel that the laws against marijuana possession are unjust and unfair, and you are summoned for jury duty to determine the fate of someone accused of possession, then it is your RIGHT to vote for acquittal, regardless of the judge’s instructions.
I know people think the word ‘fascist’ gets tossed around frequently by people of the libertarian/anarchist persuasion, and I am especially guilty of this. However, in this case it is appropriate. What else would you call a group who rule in the name of the people but who hatch plans to murder Americans in order to further a political, nationalist agenda?
According to the book in this article, beginning in 1959 the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US Military drew up plans which “included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.” The goal, of course, was to overthrow the dangerous communist leader, Fidel Castro.
America’s top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: “We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba,” and, “casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation.”
Code named Operation Northwoods, these plans also involved blaming any potential disasters occurring during the launch of the first American manned space flight on Castro.
These signed plans were presented to President Kennedy’s defense secretary, Robert McNamara, by Army Gen. Lyman L. Lemnitzer in March 1962. Apparently they were rejected by the civilian leadership. However, the military continued to mastermind ‘pretext’ plans to lead a US overthrow of Cuba through 1963.
The thing that really gets me is that Americans today are naive or stupid enough to believe anything the government, especially the military tells them. The military and intelligence bureaucracies in general are pyramid organizations controlled by corrupt Machiavellian-types. They operate in secret without public accountability. We know that they consume trillions of dollars in public funds, but we never know what they do. Now we know a little more of what they’re up to. A little more that can be added to the long litany of criminality that we do already know about: assassinations, lies, deception, inhumanity, injustice, and corruption. Who knows what will come out in another 40 years? Is there any reason to believe anything has changed? Given the recent history of crimes suggested in the Enron scandal, the Florida election fraud, and the botched coup in Venezuela, I don’t think so.
Found at Etheltheblog via Buzzflash:
Senate Panels to Investigate Pricing of Energy: Bush’s pals at Enron worked hard to lift money from Californian taxpayers. I think Bush can say goodbye to winning California in 2004.
Rummy effectively offered up a scapegoat today in order to keep scrutiny off Army Secretary Thomas White. White, glad to have the heat off and glad to still have his cushy job, has this to say: