America's Priorities

I saw this on Facebook yesterday and had to post.

You wouldn't think this is an actual, accurate description of the state of our spending and our priorities in America today but it is.

This is what spending more--far more--on "defense" in this nation gets you.

Forget that we Americans paid into Social Security with our own money, from our paychecks. All that was spent and is still being spent on other things, instead of back to us on Social Security, for which it was created.

Instead, we keep making and buying bombs and guns and bullets and tanks and weapons of war.

Our priorities, America's priorities, are seriously screwed up, without question.

So what are we going to do about it?

American History 101, 2000 - 2014

Quote of the day---indisputable

“The greatest purveyor of violence in the world : My own government, I can not be silent.”

― Martin Luther King Jr.

Here's your 9/11 Memorial

 

At the national memorial in New York, I hope they also include a copy of the Presidential Daily Briefing from August, 2001, telling then-President George W. Bush of Osama bin Laden's plans to attack the US.

 

Seriously.

 

It should be there.

 

He completely, totally and utterly ignored it.

 

 

Great satire

As is with all satire, great because there's so much truth to it:

Americans must never forget

Timeline Photos

 

Remember this?

Ten years ago today, then-President George Bush delivered his now notorious, premature speech in which he declared American operations had ended in Iraq.

Mission not so accomplished. 

 

Far from it.

Read more here: http://on.msnbc.com/ZAcsYl

 

By: Hardball with Chris Matthews

On the travesty that is the George W Bush Presidential Museum and its opening today (guest post)

I had the misfortune to wake up to a twisted bit of logic from Ed Gillespie on "Morning Joe" today. When the very best thing you can say about the Bush presidency is 'his personal approval rating always exceeded his job approval rating,' you know something's wrong. And neither Joe or Mika called him on it. Yes, I'm sure Dubya throws a hell of a backyard barbecue, but I require competence and a steadfast adherence to logic and facts from my president - and George W. Bush displayed none of those qualities during the eight years he served as chief executive.

Ed and Joe got together to discuss the opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas today and spent most of their time glossing over the impact his administration had on our country. I expect that the coverage of the event on most networks (yes, even the "progressive" ones) will largely ignore the legacy of the Bush years and simply focus on who's there, what documents are archived and what President Obama's speechwriters might find to say that's positive about the former president during the building's dedication. It's a sham.

What I remember is that George W. Bush put Dick Cheney in charge of the country's counter-terrorism task force and he spent the next nine months refusing to meet with Richard Clarke. I remember them ignoring warnings that the system was "blinking red" and that 2,977 Americans died. I remember it only took six days for the Bush administration to draft a 12-page Memorandum of Notification authorizing the CIA to create secret prisons and torture anyone they felt might give them information. We suffered a horrific wound on September 11, 2001 - and on September 17, 2001 we responded by abandoning our morals. George W. Bush did that.

I remember that our professed "Christian" president ignored all evidence from the IAEA, millions of people around the world protesting and a personal plea from the Pope to launch a war that killed 100,000 Iraqis, 4,000 Americans and wounded another 31,000. George W. Bush did that.

I remember the 1,464 victims of Hurricane Katrina - and that FEMA's director should have been fired following the botched response to Hurricane Frances. I remember the 30,000 stranded in the SuperDome. “A 2-year-old girl slept in a pool of urine. Crack vials littered a restroom. Blood stained the walls next to vending machines smashed by teenagers. ‘We pee on the floor. We are like animals,’ said Taffany Smith, 25, as she cradled her 3-week-old son, Terry. [Los Angeles Times, 9/1/05] “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.” George W. Bush said that.

I remember the Bush presidency as one of the most destructive periods of this American experience. I remember the estimated six trillion dollars wasted on unnecessary wars - and nearly twelve trillion dollars the economic collapse cost taxpayers. When you eliminate restrictions on predatory lending, capital requirements, and allow Wall Street to police themselves, bad things are going to happen - and they did. George W. Bush did that.

I remember George W. Bush for pulling out of the Kyoto Protocol, the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the International Criminal Court Treaty. I remember Valerie Plame. I remember 1,020 days spent on vacation. I remember him saying "intelligent design" should be taught to school kids because evolution is just a "theory" (completely missing the point that a scientific theory is accepted as an explanation based on observation, experimentation, and reasoning). I remember George W. Bush, but sadly we live in what Gore Vidal referred to as the "United States of Amnesia." There is nothing to celebrate today - this is a day to remember that all of our recent troubles can be traced to just one guy: George W. Bush. "They misunderestimated me."

--From the Tom Joad Facebook page today

More of our nation's priorities

Quite a contrast to Boston.

On Dubya's chosen Iraq War then and Israel's occupation now

Chris Hedges, over at Truthdig, posts a magnificent column today on the George W. Bush/Dick Cheney wildly illegal and irresponsible Iraq War they dragged us into and on Israel's oppression of the Palestinians now and why it all matters:

The Treason of the Intellectuals

Just a bit from it:

The rewriting of history by the power elite was painfully evident as the nation marked the 10th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War. Some claimed they had opposed the war when they had not. Others among “Bush’s useful idiots” argued that they had merely acted in good faith on the information available; if they had known then what they know now, they assured us, they would have acted differently. This, of course, is false. The war boosters, especially the “liberal hawks”—who included Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, Al Franken and John Kerry, along with academics, writers and journalists such as Bill Keller, Michael Ignatieff, Nicholas Kristof, David Remnick, Fareed Zakaria, Michael Walzer, Paul Berman, Thomas Friedman,George Packer, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Kanan Makiya and the late Christopher Hitchens—did what they always have done: engage in acts of self-preservation. To oppose the war would have been a career killer. And they knew it.

These apologists, however, acted not only as cheerleaders for war; in most cases they ridiculed and attempted to discredit anyone who questioned the call to invade Iraq. Kristof, in The New York Times, attacked the filmmaker Michael Moore as a conspiracy theorist and wrote that anti-war voices were only polarizing what he termed “the political cesspool.” Hitchens said that those who opposed the attack on Iraq “do not think that Saddam Hussein is a bad guy at all.” He called the typical anti-war protester a “blithering ex-flower child or ranting neo-Stalinist.” The halfhearted mea culpas by many of these courtiers a decade later always fail to mention the most pernicious and fundamental role they played in the buildup to the war—shutting down public debate. Those of us who spoke out against the war, faced with the onslaught of right-wing “patriots” and their liberal apologists, became pariahs. In my case it did not matter that I was an Arabic speaker. It did not matter that I had spent seven years in the Middle East, including months in Iraq, as a foreign correspondent. It did not matter that I knew the instrument of war. The critique that I and other opponents of war delivered, no matter how well grounded in fact and experience, turned us into objects of scorn by a liberal elite that cravenly wanted to demonstrate its own “patriotism” and “realism” about national security. The liberal class fueled a rabid, irrational hatred of all war critics. Many of us received death threats and lost our jobs, for me one at The New York Times. These liberal warmongers, 10 years later, remain both clueless about their moral bankruptcy and cloyingly sanctimonious. They have the blood of hundreds of thousands of innocents on their hands.

The power elite, especially the liberal elite, has always been willing to sacrifice integrity and truth for power, personal advancement, foundation grants, awards, tenured professorships, columns, book contracts, television appearances, generous lecture fees and social status. They know what they need to say. They know which ideology they have to serve. They know what lies must be told—the biggest being that they take moral stances on issues that aren’t safe and anodyne. They have been at this game a long time. And they will, should their careers require it, happily sell us out again.

We need to be better than that 2nd Iraq War and we need to make certain nothing like it happens again.

Speaking up now, against the oppression of the Palestinian people, even if it is by the Israelis, is merely the right thing to do.

Lies, liars and the real reason for George W Bush's chosen war

"...that's how George Bush won the war in Iraq. The invasion was not about "blood for oil", but something far more sinister: blood for no oil. War to keep supply tight and send prices skyward.

Oil men, whether James Baker or George Bush or Dick Cheney, are not in the business of producing oil. They are in the business of producing profits.

And they've succeeded. Iraq, capable of producing six to 12 million barrels of oil a day, still exports well under its old OPEC quota of three million barrels.

The result: As we mark the tenth anniversary of the invasion this month, we also mark the fifth year of crude at $100 a barrel.

As George Bush could proudly say to James Baker: Mission Accomplished!"

Links:

Full article here:  The Real Reason for the Iraq War | VICE United Kingdom

Greg Palast | Facebook

Greg Palast - Wikipedia

Bill Moyers asks a great question

It is:

"Ten years ago this week, the United States started a war that would last for eight years, claiming an estimated 189,000 lives, costing over $2 trillion and causing untold economic and emotional devastation for the Iraqi people. Is there a “conspiracy of silence” over the anniversary of our invasion of Iraq?"

As pointed out in the link below: ""Big media’s culpability in the run-up to the war was explored in a documentary that originally aired onBill Moyers Journal in 2007. Buying the War investigated the media’s pro-war cheerleading in the months preceding the March 19, 2003, invasion. " You can see it here:



Full article here:

The 'Conspiracy of Silence' on the 10th Anniversary of the Iraq War

America's 2nd Iraq War, our war of choice

The local KCMO Vet on the 2nd Iraq War

Link to original post:  I Dare You Watch This Clip From A Dying Veteran

The Iraq War, by the numbers

Number of years since the U.S. invaded Iraq: 10

Number of Iraqi civilians dead as a consequence: At minimum, between 123,000 and 134,000

Number of Iraqis internally displaced or who fled the country: 2.8 million (that’s one in 12 Iraqis)

Number of U.S. troop casualties: 4,484

Number of coalition troop casualties: 4,803

Number of U.S. troops wounded: 32,223

Number of non-Iraqi contractors killed: at least 463

Number of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder diagnoses in U.S. service members: 103,792

Number of bombs dropped in Shock and Awe Campaign: 4,845

U.S. financial cost so far: $1.7 trillion

Amount owed to U.S. veterans in benefits: $490 billion

Predicted cost to U.S. over next four decades: $6 trillion

Cost of U.S. reconstruction efforts: $60 billion

Amount of reconstruction effort funds wasted: over $8 billion

Halliburton overcharges classified by the Pentagon as Unreasonable and Unsupported: $1.4 billion

Number of WMDs discovered: 0

Sources: Costs of War Project, Congressional Research Services, News Sentinel, Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction .

With thanks to Matt Payton's Tumble-o-rama for bringing this to our attention.

The Letter--from the local Iraq Veteran to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney

The previous post pointed out that a local, Kansas City, Missouri veteran wrote a letter to now former-President George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney.  Herewith, the entire letter:

A Message to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney From a Dying Veteran

To: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney

From: Tomas Young

I write this letter on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War on behalf of my fellow Iraq War veterans. I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq. I write this letter on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been wounded and on behalf of those whose wounds, physical and psychological, have destroyed their lives. I am one of those gravely wounded. I was paralyzed in an insurgent ambush in 2004 in Sadr City. My life is coming to an end. I am living under hospice care.

I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives who have lost spouses, on behalf of children who have lost a parent, on behalf of the fathers and mothers who have lost sons and daughters and on behalf of those who care for the many thousands of my fellow veterans who have brain injuries. I write this letter on behalf of those veterans whose trauma and self-revulsion for what they have witnessed, endured and done in Iraq have led to suicide and on behalf of the active-duty soldiers and Marines who commit, on average, a suicide a day. I write this letter on behalf of the some 1 million Iraqi dead and on behalf of the countless Iraqi wounded. I write this letter on behalf of us all—the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief.

You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.

Instead, this war has cost the United States over $3 trillion. I especially did not join the Army to carry out pre-emptive war. Pre-emptive war is illegal under international law. And as a soldier in Iraq I was, I now know, abetting your idiocy and your crimes. The Iraq War is the largest strategic blunder in U.S. history. It obliterated the balance of power in the Middle East. It installed a corrupt and brutal pro-Iranian government in Baghdad, one cemented in power through the use of torture, death squads and terror. And it has left Iran as the dominant force in the region. On every level—moral, strategic, military and economic—Iraq was a failure. And it was you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, who started this war. It is you who should pay the consequences.

I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.

Your positions of authority, your millions of dollars of personal wealth, your public relations consultants, your privilege and your power cannot mask the hollowness of your character. You sent us to fight and die in Iraq after you, Mr. Cheney, dodged the draft in Vietnam, and you, Mr. Bush, went AWOL from your National Guard unit. Your cowardice and selfishness were established decades ago. You were not willing to risk yourselves for our nation but you sent hundreds of thousands of young men and women to be sacrificed in a senseless war with no more thought than it takes to put out the garbage.

I joined the Army two days after the 9/11 attacks. I joined the Army because our country had been attacked. I wanted to strike back at those who had killed some 3,000 of my fellow citizens. I did not join the Army to go to Iraq, a country that had no part in the September 2001 attacks and did not pose a threat to its neighbors, much less to the United States. I did not join the Army to “liberate” Iraqis or to shut down mythical weapons-of-mass-destruction facilities or to implant what you cynically called “democracy” in Baghdad and the Middle East. I did not join the Army to rebuild Iraq, which at the time you told us could be paid for by Iraq’s oil revenues.

I would not be writing this letter if I had been wounded fighting in Afghanistan against those forces that carried out the attacks of 9/11. Had I been wounded there I would still be miserable because of my physical deterioration and imminent death, but I would at least have the comfort of knowing that my injuries were a consequence of my own decision to defend the country I love. I would not have to lie in my bed, my body filled with painkillers, my life ebbing away, and deal with the fact that hundreds of thousands of human beings, including children, including myself, were sacrificed by you for little more than the greed of oil companies, for your alliance with the oil sheiks in Saudi Arabia, and your insane visions of empire.

I have, like many other disabled veterans, suffered from the inadequate and often inept care provided by the Veterans Administration. I have, like many other disabled veterans, come to realize that our mental and physical wounds are of no interest to you, perhaps of no interest to any politician. We were used. We were betrayed. And we have been abandoned. You, Mr. Bush, make much pretense of being a Christian. But isn’t lying a sin? Isn’t murder a sin? Aren’t theft and selfish ambition sins? I am not a Christian. But I believe in the Christian ideal. I believe that what you do to the least of your brothers you finally do to yourself, to your own soul.

My day of reckoning is upon me. Yours will come. I hope you will be put on trial. But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness. 

Veteran from KCMO pens letter to Bush, Cheney

From The Huffington Post yesterday and TruthOut earlier:

Tomas Young, Dying Iraq War Veteran, Pens 'Last Letter' To Bush, Cheney On War's 10th Anniversary

Days after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Tomas Young, then a 22-year-old from Kansas City, Mo., made a decision repeated by many other Americans around the country: He was going to enlist in the military in hopes of getting even with the enemies who had helped coordinate the deaths of nearly 3,000 men, women and children.

Less than three years later, Young's Army service placed him not in Afghanistan -- where then-President George W. Bush had told the nation the terrorist plot had originated -- but in Iraq. On April 4, 2004, just five days into his first tour, Young's convoy was attacked by insurgents. A bullet from an AK-47 severed his spine. Another struck his knee. Young would never walk again, and in fact, for the next nearly nine years, he would suffer a number of medical setbacks that allowed him to survive only with the help of extensive medical procedures and the care of his wife, Claudia.

The incident turned Young into one of the most vocal veteran critics of the Iraq War. He has, however, saved his most powerful criticism for what he claims will be his last. Young says he'll die soon, but not before writing a letter to Bush and former Vice President Cheney on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War.

From Young's letter, published on TruthDig:

I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.

Young goes on to attack the "cowardice" of Bush and Cheney for avoiding military service themselves, and to encourage them to "stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness."

(Read Young's entire letter here.)

Young was the subject of the 2007 documentary "Body of War," which was about his recovery process and the Iraq War. At a February screening of the film, Young told the audience that he planned to end his life in April.

According to the Ridgefield Press, Young announced that he would stop taking all nourishment and life-extending medications at that time. He's since said that the deterioration to his body from the injury and ensuing complications would make it physically impossible for him to commit suicide in any other way.

"It's time," he told the audience over Skype, while seated beside his wife. "When I go I want be alert and aware."

Young spoke more about his decision in a recent interview with journalist and Iraq War critic Chris Hedges.

“I made the decision to go on hospice care, to stop feeding and fade away," he said. "This way, instead of committing the conventional suicide and I am out of the picture, people have a way to stop by or call and say their goodbyes. I felt this was a fairer way to treat people than to just go out with a note."

For the rest of Hedges' interview with Young, click here. For the rest of The Huffington Post's coverage on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War, click here.

On the 10th Anniversary of George W Bush's Iraq War

President George W. Bush lied to us, ladies and gentlemen.

As did his Vice President Dick Cheney and now-former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, at minimum.

And the worst thing about it is that at least 4,488 Americans soldiers died because of it while a minimum of 32,021American soldiers were wounded. Added to that are the estimated 122,000+ Iraqis that were killed, let alone those wounded and/or made homeless.

It was and is a huge tragedy and debacle, besides being against our own, internal, national laws as well as against external, international laws.

It should never have happened and many, many lies were told and deceptions created in order to have it take place.

It happened. It took place.

And it took place on our watch.

We should absolutely explore who was responsible for it happening.

We should explore who lied.

And we should prosecute those that did, without question.

More than anything, we must make certain it and nothing remotely like it ever takes place again.

That's why this is so vitally important.

Links:  Iraq Body Count

Casualties in Iraq 

Casualties of Iraq war go beyond those who died in action

U.S. lacks mechanism to accurately track troops wounded in Iraq

Surely we''re not THIS stupid

Surely not.

Surely we're not that stupid.

But we are if we believe Jeb:

Jeb Bush on 2016 run: 'I don't think there is any Bush baggage at all'