Will Pitt's latest essay--The 'D' word

[HomerRamone]

about another fraudulent U.S.-controlled election...

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/013105W.shtml

The Story of the Ghost
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Monday 31 January 2005

<...>

The goals codified in 'Rebuilding America's Defenses,' the manifesto, can be boiled down to a few sentences: The invasion and occupation of Iraq, for reasons that had nothing to do with Saddam Hussein. The building of several permanent military bases in Iraq, the purpose of which are to telegraph force throughout the region. The takeover by Western petroleum corporations of Iraq's nationalized oil industry. The ultimate destabilization and overthrow of a variety of regimes in the Middle East, friend and foe alike, by military or economic means, or both.

"Indeed," it is written on page 14 of 'Rebuilding America's Defenses,' "the United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."

In the last three years, PNAC has gotten every single thing it placed on its wish list back in 2000. This is why their letter to congress last week is so disturbing. The letter reads in part:

The United States military is too small for the responsibilities we are asking it to assume. Those responsibilities are real and important. They are not going away. The United States will not and should not become less engaged in the world in the years to come. But our national security, global peace and stability, and the defense and promotion of freedom in the post-9/11 world require a larger military force than we have today. The administration has unfortunately resisted increasing our ground forces to the size needed to meet today's (and tomorrow's) missions and challenges.
So we write to ask you and your colleagues in the legislative branch to take the steps necessary to increase substantially the size of the active duty Army and Marine Corps. While estimates vary about just how large an increase is required, and Congress will make its own determination as to size and structure, it is our judgment that we should aim for an increase in the active duty Army and Marine Corps, together, of at least 25,000 troops each year over the next several years.

Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution places the power and the duty to raise and support the military forces of the United States in the hands of the Congress. That is why we, the undersigned, a bipartisan group with diverse policy views, have come together to call upon you to act. You will be serving your country well if you insist on providing the military manpower we need to meet America's obligations, and to help ensure success in carrying out our foreign policy objectives in a dangerous, but also hopeful, world.

Brush aside the patriotic language, and you have the ideological architects of this disastrous Iraq invasion stating flatly that the American military is being bled dry, and that the ranks must be replenished before that military can be used to push into Iran, Syria and the other targeted nations. The 'D' word is not in this letter, but it screams out from between the lines. All the lip service paid to the Iraq elections by these people does not contrast well with their cry for more warm bodies to feed into the meat grinder.

Lyndon Johnson was excited about voter turnout in Vietnam in September 1967. Eight years, three Presidents and millions of dead people later, that excitement proved to have been wretchedly illusory. There is no reason, no reason whatsoever, to believe that the Iraq election we witnessed this weekend will bring anything other than death and violence to the people of that nation and our soldiers who move among them. History repeats itself only when we are stupid enough to miss the lessons learned in past failures. The wheel is coming around again.

MORE: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/013105W.shtml

[theresistance]

1. Yep, this should be common knowledge by now

The PNAC said that the idea of Saddam Hussein being a "threat" wasn't the issue. Iraq simply had to be invaded to control the Middle East. Full stop.

PNAC = Pathetic Neoconservatives Are Crackpots

[whistle]

2. More Bush eyewash for the American public, by holding...

...Iraqi elections George Bush can get on his soapbox and spew out more rhetoric at his state of the Union speech about how America is making the world safe and spreading democracy. The truth is that his militaristic policies are creating less freedom at home and abroad. The economic expansion is fueled by a growing military/war budget that middle class Americans will have to payoff in new higher taxes for decades to come. The American people swallow this horse-shit that has been placed in the propaganda blender using high paid writers, journalists and public relations firms, but the light-headiness they feel is from this pina colada poisoned by the hemlock of lies and deception.

[newscott]

3. Well done Will.

Thanks for the perspective.