Columnist – John Sammon
Never once in my journalistic career have I ever attacked the work of another political columnist. Until now.

On Veterans Day my local newspaper ran a lone editorial on its editorial page written by David O’Brien, a professor of faith and culture at the University of Dayton. The editorial extolled the sacrifices made by our troops. There are reasons I must respond.

The editorial contains falsehoods, exaggerations and half-truths. Secondly, it’s the only opinion given, with no rebuttal. Thirdly, if we are unwilling to learn from past mistakes, or say we never make them, we will repeat them.

O’Brien starts out saying we gather on Veterans Day with heavy hearts mourning our fallen troops and I whole-heartedly agree. No argument there. But then he says, “We put aside our complaints about “Bush’s War” or “Obama’s War” and acknowledge our shared responsibilities.”

We put aside our complaints?

Who are we?

I never put aside my complaints. I opposed the war in Iraq from day one. I’m sure there are others, so it isn’t a case of “we.”

To get Americans to support war in Iraq, Bush lied that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction as he put it “such as the world had never seen,” and maintained that an attack on America using such weapons was imminent. That means like next week. So it was “Bush’s war.” Obama inherited it.

“Shared responsibilities?”

We failed in our shared responsibilities, especially the media, to ask tough questions of the president requiring him to make a truthful case, and instead were swept along on a drumbeat of pro-war fervor in the wake of 9-11 fuelled by deceptions.

O’Brien continues, “After 9-11, we launched our war on Afghanistan, then after extended debate, we invaded Iraq.”

Extended debate?

What is your perception of the word “extended?” I would describe it instead more as a “rubber stamp” fed by falsehoods and distortions, with anyone questioning it labeled a traitor. The Founding Fathers expected presidents to ask Congress for a Declaration of War to maintain some control over the Oval Office, a requirement presidents for the past 60 years have chosen to ignore as they continually extend their power.

O’Brien says, “Later, a majority of us decided that preemptive war in Iraq was the right choice.”

He neglects to also mention that today a sizeable portion of the population don’t consider the war in Iraq worth the cost.

He then says, “We accepted a surge of troops in Iraq and welcomed subsequent news of progress.” As Ronald Reagan would have once said, “there you go again” David, with the “we” statement. I was skeptical of the benefits of the “surge,” flooding parts of a country with troops when you’re dealing with a highly mobile insurgency. Its results can be debated, but there were critics in the military who labeled it “The Pillsbury Doughboy.” You push them out of an area, and like pushing the Doughboy in the stomach, they bulge out the back, simply moving and setting up shop somewhere else.

A surge is like a tide that comes in and out. Assuming it was successful, will it be so permanently?

O’Brien then says, “Those of us who opposed these wars (he finally acknowledges me) blamed presidents and politicians.”

Who else you gonna blame? Lindsay Lohan? I didn’t have a vote on whether to go to war.

“Occasionally we demanded withdrawal, but we proposed no persuasive alternative strategies,” O’Brien continues.

Was Cindy Sheehan’s opposition, the mom who opposed the war after her son was killed, “occasional?”

There you go again with the “we” David. If I had proposed an alternate strategy, would the Joint Chiefs of Staff listen? When you say “we,” we who? There is no alternate strategy to a wrong war, other than not fighting it. Just before the war in Iraq was launched, United Nations Weapons Inspectors were in the country looking for and not finding the alleged weapons of mass destruction. Bush and company basically told the UN “you’re too late, there are weapons, get out of the way.”

I should say at this point I did not oppose the strike on Afghanistan because that country harbored the culprits from 9-11. I opposed Iraq because it was wrong and would weaken our efforts in Afghanistan, which it did.

O’Brien then says, “ending American wars is never easy (I agree),” and he lists past wars, but then adds “our shameful withdrawal from Vietnam.”

President Dwight D. Eisenhower considered an open-ended land war in Asia unwinnable and apparently O’Brien has never heard of the deceptions revealed in the Pentagon Papers in which the government was lying to its own people. This is all documented.

Do I also need to remind readers that the “shameful withdrawal” was carried out under the conservative Republican Administration of Gerald Ford, who had inherited it from the disgraced Richard Nixon, who had earlier pledged to get us out? Perhaps the best way to answer “shameful withdrawal” is to quote anti-war activist and folk singer Pete Seeger, who was labeled a communist because of his views.

“Was Abraham Lincoln a traitor because he opposed the Mexican War?” Seeger asked. “Was Mark Twain a traitor because he opposed the Spanish American War?”

   Columnist – John Sammon
The 10-year anniversary of 9-11 will include memorializing and flag-waving on television networks under the motto “We Won’t Forget,” but will not include any mention of our attack on Iraq in a false attempt to link that country to 9-11.

We choose to forget that part.

No mention will be made of the approximate million Iraqis killed in a war started by George Bush and Dick Cheney, who lied us into a war by claiming that Iraq under Saddam Hussein was involved in 9-11. Bush later openly admitted they weren’t.

He has never faced justice for these deceptions.

Apparently, what Americans choose to remember in the 9-11 tragedy through the media is selective.

The fanatics who did 9-11, mostly Saudi Arabians, came from a country with which we have the friendliest of relations. Let’s say for argument’s sake these nuts attacked us and will do so in the future for no other reason than they don’t like us because we are primarily a Christian country.

That still doesn’t change the fact that we attacked Iraq because we didn’t like its leader, and killed a million people not to mention the lives of U.S. soldiers lost because we falsely tried to tie Iraq to 9-11. The perpetrators of this misdeed remain unpunished, even glorified.

The observances of 9-11 will also include no objective assessment of our role in the Middle East in past history, and how it has helped to de-stabilize the region and give impetus to extremists. Let me give some specific examples of the history Americans choose to forget, or are totally unaware of.

Let’s take Iran. The United State backed the former Shah of Iran, a brutal dictator who had secret police forces imprisoning and murdering Iranians. Backing by the U.S. fueled hatred of the U.S. in that country and gave unwitting help to extremists under the Ayatollah Khomeini, which led to the taking of American hostages at the embassy there and the current hostile, authoritarian regime.

Our behavior in the Middle East has been less than wise.

How about Egypt? We supported Hosni Mubarak, a ruthless dictator now facing court trial, virtually right up until the time he was overthrown by a popular people’s street movement.

What about Saddam? We supplied equipped and encouraged him guaranteeing him we wouldn’t let him lose a war with Iran. Former Bush Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld posed for a famous picture shaking Saddam’s hand in his palace.

We choose to forget that.

We gave at least voiced support to rebel units fighting the Russians in Afghanistan during the last of the Cold War who later became the Taliban.

We choose to forget that too.

The list goes on and on.

Bush and Cheney approved the torture of prisoners and threw out the rules of the Geneva Convention, instituted a gulag of camps in which prisoners had no recourse to an attorney, and instituted illegal wiretap spying on American citizens that violated The Bill of Rights under the guise of making us safer and which was ludicrously and perversely called “The Patriot Act.”

We’ll also forget that.

Rather than acting as a peace broker in the Middle East, which occasionally we have, for example, the attempted Camp David Peace Accords between Israel and Egypt, we have pretty much given Israel a blank check to do whatever it wanted. This included pushing Palestinians out of ancestral homelands and building settlements which has heightened tensions.

Our memorializing of 9-11 will not include an overall objective assessment of this history as a whole. The idea conveyed will be that the U.S., innocent of ever doing anything unwise, was picked on for no reason by evil people.

There is some truth to this. But that is a stilted viewpoint.

What terrorists did on 9-11 is evil. They are fanatics. The heroism of responders to the tragedy and the loss and sacrifice should be remembered and honored.

But to selectively choose to remember only what we want to or to “cherry pick” history so that a one-sided viewpoint (good guys versus evil fanatics) is presented does no one any good. History is not a vacuum, or wearing blinders, but a long catalog of events, often decisions errantly made.

Our history of involvement in the Middle East has not always been wise. That will not be discussed during the remembrances of 9-11. This website, Politicalarticles.net, allows me to say this. Other websites will not and would censor what you are reading here because they are afraid or angry with ideas with which they don’t agree.

There is nothing unpatriotic about the truth, or criticizing the government of this country for its past mistakes in a volatile region. It is not unpatriotic to disagree in a so-called “Free” country.

Reference: Contradictions and Hypocrisy Haunt U.S. Policy in the Middle East

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   Columnist – John Sammon
It just makes you proud.

Think of it, the United States, the most powerful and richest country in the history of the world, has not in 10 years been able to decisively defeat a group of ragged vagabond hit-and-run insurgents some of whom don’t even have shoes on their feet.

The United States, the country instrumental in the defeat of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, and which outspent the Soviet Union into ruin during the Cold War arms race, now takes on two pigmy countries so backward some of their citizens still ride camels and live in mud huts.

The United States, the modern Roman Empire.

It just makes you proud.

The war that we entered into under false pretenses, weapons of mass destruction that weren’t, to a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq that wasn’t. In fact, al-Qaeda wasn’t in Iraq until we blundered them there by starting the war.

Americans, some of them, like to say, “they started it, they attacked us” (meaning 9-11). But when they say “they,” they can’t mean Iraq. Even Bush finally admitted it. And it wasn’t directly the Taliban, though they provided safe havens for the conspirators, who were in fact mostly Saudis.

Now, none-other than Leon Panetta, the new defense secretary, says we’re going to focus on al-Qaeda and less on fighting Iraqis and Afghans. If the original focus wasn’t the right one, then we must have been wrong. That’s their sly way of admitting they were wrong, without admitting it.

Too bad for a million dead Iraqis caught in the crossfire, but like senators in the old Roman Empire would have rationalized, mistakes have to happen. Or to quote Stalin, when you chop down a tree, splinters fly. Of course, it’s tough to be a splinter.

John Pilger’s ‘The War You Don’t See’ — Atrocities & War Crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan

The War You Don’t See (trailer) from John Pilger on Vimeo.
Watch the film online (worldwide excluding Australia) for $4.99

The media obediently went along with all this and for good measure avoided showing American servicemen coming home in caskets to complete the deception. To their everlasting shame the media network sycophants sucked up to the drumbeat flag waving and failed in their patriotic duty to ask tough questions of officials and hold them accountable.

It just makes you proud.

Panetta added that the new focus will no longer be on surging around impoverished countries with a huge army and using overwhelming high-tech military force. He said instead we would defeat al-Qaeda, but he didn’t specify (they never do) what exactly he meant by defeat. Does that mean there will no longer be any members of the terror organization walking free on the loose? They’re all in jail or dead?

Does that mean al-Qaeda representatives will sign a formal surrender document?

Most reasonably sane people would agree there isn’t much likelihood of either of those scenarios happening. The American people who are paying for it have a right to know what exactly we’re trying to do.

What is meant by defeat? We don’t know. Neither apparently does Panetta. Nobody knows.

The American people don’t care. Like the media.

It just makes you proud.

Nobody will ask Penetta what he means by defeat, no one will ask him to be more specific. That’s because it’s not a war of specifics. It’s a war of allusions, a war of spoken asides, vague assurances casually given and forgotten and never clarified, of alleged progress made, of ground occupied, of the some-day hoped-for ability of the regimes we set up in power to survive.

It’s all vague.

In the meantime, the war goes on, a war between the most powerful country in the history of the world, the richest, and a ragtag group of insurgents in one of the poorest regions of the earth. This is a war that’s not really a war beyond ideologies because there are no front lines or capital cities to capture and the other side doesn’t really have a uniformed army with the equipment of a formal army.

Like a train that runs down a track driverless of its own accord, the pseudo war seems to have a life of its own. The American people don’t demand of their so-called leaders explanations about what we’re trying to do in these countries. Nobody knows. We don’t ask and they don’t tell.

Instead they make vague asides, like Penetta did, using the word “defeat.” What constitutes defeat? We don’t know. Obama used the word “progress.” Exactly what progress have we made? We don’t really know, and you yourself don’t know because you can’t explain it, and if you did know, you could.

Don’t say it’s killing Bin Laden. That’s too simple and doesn’t account for a million Iraqis killed.

It’s a war of shadows with real dead, but also references too vague to allow for the sunlight of reason, like the runway train, with no one in charge, going down the track. We watch it go by and hope things will work out.

This war is a war not only to defeat them in a way our government doesn’t know and can’t explain, it’s as much a war to reassure you, and keep you compliant. They use the word “withdraw,” they say they’ll “withdraw” troops. They pull out 10,000, but leave 50,000. New troops take their places. Over time, you forget about the promise, that really wasn’t a promise meant to be kept at all, but an offhand, sort of easily discarded cheerful-positive-sounding not-really-serious half-believed subterfuge.

Even now they’re asking the Iraqis and Afghans if we should stay.

Nobody cares. Nobody asks. The bureaucrats just keep getting away with it because it’s the kind of war where you can not care and unless somebody you personally know is killed, you ignore it and go about your everyday business.

This war and the lead-up to it represent the Watergate that wasn’t investigated, the Vietnam that wasn’t protested.

It’s not your business. You didn’t make it your business.

You wave the flag on July 4.

It just makes you proud.

   Columnist – John Sammon
Eight heavily armed men dressed in camouflage show up at a door and knock. A servant answers the door.

“Excuse me sir, we’re working our way through college. Would you like to buy an encyclopedia?”

The servant disappears into a hallway and a bearded man appears. Bin laden.

“Would you like to buy an encyclopedia, the Saudi updated version?” the college student asks.

Bin laden nods. He reaches into his robe like he’s going for a gun.

“Get interested in this.” The college students open fire.

BLAM!

“Take that!”

BLAM!

“How about another?”

BLAM!

“How about one on the layaway plan?”

BLAM!

“Hey Marcel, watch this.”

BLAM!

“You want leaded or unleaded?”

BLAM!

“One Lump or Two?”

BLAM!

Evidently, Bin laden thought he could out-draw eight Navy Seals who already had their guns out. It would have been nice if he could have been taken alive to stand trial and demonstrate the rule of law Americans like to say they’re so fond of.

Thus opens a new phase in the soon-to-be 25th unresolved year in the war on terror, the Upscale Condo Mansion Gated Community Raid. Navy Seals disguised as college students go to exclusive residential neighborhoods and dispatch a miserable wretch.

Meanwhile, George Bush, the world’s other arch terrorist, claims credit for the operation. He feels like donning his old National Guard uniform that he wore to avoid service in Vietnam, the uniform he seldom wore because he skipped Guard meetings. Or better yet, the flight suit he paraded around in when he posted that dopey “Mission Accomplished” sign on the aircraft carrier, years before thousands of U.S. servicemen were killed.

Bush, who with his lord-high inquisitor fat-boy Dick Cheney, killed a million Iraqis to get even with Bin Laden and his handful of wretches for 9-11 even though Iraq had nothing to do with it.

Bush, who validated torture and wiretap spying on Americans and setting up an American Gulag Archipelago of secret torture camps in foreign countries and threw out the Geneva Convention to which America for decades had adhered. There would be no trials like the Nuremburg trials to demonstrate the rule of law by the civilized countries of the world.

Bush and Cheney with the apathy of the American people operated under the principal that to combat terror, you have to abandon democratic ideals and act more like the terrorists.

Such a man deserves praise.

And isn’t it fascinating in a Freudian way that the operation to get Bin laden was partly code-named Geronimo after the famous Chiracahua leader of the 1880s. Native American Indian activists were angered the government compared Bin laden to Geronimo. I get it, our government leaders, most of them paunchy white boys in their 60s, grew up watching John Wayne movies.

They can’t help compare today’s Middle Eastern terrorists with Indians. Subconscious and psychologically, it reminds them of snug safe days as five-year-olds when the world was simple, when they curled around a TV set with a cup of hot coco watching Wayne dispatch Indians and bad guys, the annihilation of our native population complimentarily called by racist America as the “Winning of the West.”

Gopher Killed: Will Ferrell Brutally Spoofs George Bush on Bin Laden

There are similarities between the Indian Wars of the 1870s and today’s struggle against terrorists. In both cases, the government spent billions of dollars and involved millions of troops going after perceived ignorant savages who never numbered more than a few thousand. In an eerily reminiscent echo of the present, in 1875, Kiowa, Comanche, Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors were imprisoned in a prison in Ft. Augustine, Florida, erased from memory without trial or attorney, not even 100 miles from Guantanamo.

The Bin laden operation was also code-named “Neptune.” This ties in nicely because in a further bizarre twist Bin laden, who spent his life on sand dunes, was buried at sea. The fish probably felt like throwing him back.

And look at the now-famous picture of the big-shots in the Pentagon White House War Room watching the Bin laden raid results. Obama looks like a college kid who wandered into the room, which is what his Republican detractors and even some of his white subordinates probably consider him to be, a college kid on an ethnic studies scholarship temporarily occupying the White House. Hillary Clinton’s hand is to her mouth as though readying to chew her nails, as though she’s watching a favorite soap opera.

By the looks on their faces you’d think they were planning D Day.

Is this the same country that took on Nazi Germany and Japan, the most powerful military power in the history of the world terrified of a bunch of wretches who 50 years ago would have been stealing sheep?

It’s to Obama’s credit that he didn’t pose with the body for photos. You can tell a lot about the immorality of a society in the way they pose with bodies for propaganda purposes, like we did with the sons of Saddam Hussein, or even the Abu Ghraib Prison dungeon S&M pictures where the bound bodies were still alive.

As we celebrate and Obama says “We won’t forget,” how come our memory is selective?

It begs the question. Is America incapable of doing wrong? Do Americans ever study the history of events that lead up to the current situation?

Is America operating in a vacuum, or an ivory tower?

For example, Ronald Reagan, everybody’s icon and hero, backing right-wing death squads in South America that killed millions. Or giving Israel a blank check to run wild and dispossess Palestinians which fueled the current conflict and gave Bin laden the opportunity to prominence he never should have attained. Or supporting Saddam Hussein with military equipment and guarantees leading him to miscalculate he could invade Kuwait and we wouldn’t do anything about it.

Or meddling in the internal affairs for economic or natural resources gain (oil) of a dozen other countries.

Or Bush killing a million Iraqis over false weapons of mass destruction to get even with Bin laden. We love the Saudis even though the 9-11 plotters including Bin laden were Saudis.

Today, we’ve largely forgotten the Viet Cong. We have friendly relations with North Vietnam. Our tourists go there. See, we do forget in a sense. Over time.

WHY DO WE FORGET WHERE AMERICA HAS BEEN WRONG?

Has America ever been wrong?

We’re never wrong, and even if we are, it’s not wrong. That’s called being a patriot. Ask Bush and Cheney.

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High Crimes & Misdemeanors: Why Condoleezza Rice Should Be in Jail For Life – (Part 1)

The only two countries George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice and the rest of their torture regime can travel to right now are Israel and Saudi Arabia. Apartheid Israel cannot survive without America’s patronage, while the fascist, uncivilized Saudi Arabian monarchy needs America to extract and consume its oil — in order to continue bribing its lazy citizens. Even traveling to Britain, the number one ally is potentially dangerous.

Amnesty International insists that “Anywhere in the world that the ‘Bushies’ travel, they could face investigation and potential prosecution for their responsibility for torture and other crimes in international law, particularly in any of the 147 countries that are party to the U.N. convention against torture.”

And, the guilty are afraid.

Bush canceled a trip to Geneva in February amid threats by human rights groups that they’d pursue legal charges against him for sanctioning torture.

Propelling prisoners’ heads into concrete walls by means of towels wrapped around their necks, savage beatings with fists and rifles that left prisoners crippled, hanging prisoners by the arms with their arms strung up behind them, depriving prisoners of sleep for weeks on end, which has been thought the worst torture possible for 500 years, causing prisoners to freeze — sometimes to death, and waterboarding are but a partial list of the torture methods ordered by the Bush regime.

Abu Ghraib comes to mind. [ SEE HERE ]

In the “Preliminary Memorandum of the Justice Robert H. Jackson Conference on Federal Prosecutions of War Criminals,” law school Dean Lawrence Velvel, the founder of the Jackson Conference, details the full spectrum of tortures performed in wholesale combinations — not one torture by itself — on detainees around the world. His Preliminary Memorandum is a precursor to a formal legal complaint to be filed with the Justice Department this spring. [ SOURCE:GLOBALRESEARCH ]

The above mentioned are the real reasons why the failed ‘Bushies‘ are out in force, lying and spinning — since Obama “executed” of Osama Bin Laden last Sunday.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson says he’d like to waterboard Donald Rumsfeld.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Also joining in are the usual vultures, racists, charlatans, shysters and hypocrites.

Confused dimwit Sarah Palin, McCain’s racist running mate of 2008 is in full “cartoon-combat” mode, reports MMFA: “Palin Was For Killing Terrorists In Pakistan Before She Was Against It.” [ SEE VIDEO BELOW ]

Unhinged bigot Pam Geller, a sufferer of terminal Islamophobia — allowed her overriding hatred of President Obama to take her to new and scary places as she reported that the military defied an order from Obama to abort the mission to kill Osama bin Laden. She had, in effect, accused unspecified members of the military of treason. [ READ MORE ]

President Obama’s scheduled visit to “Ground Zero” today, to meet with 9/11 families has been summarily denounced by right-wing Republican media as a “disgusting political victory Lap!”

Fox News’ in house-baboon, Glenn Beck notched it higher – calling the trip “disgusting,” “obscene,” and “grotesque.”

In lockstep with his constituency, war criminal Bush declined to join Obama at ground Zero.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Smells like FASCIST HATE in the air!

Bestselling author Carolyn Myss sums it up most eloquently: “Obama is dealing with an aggressive covert and fascist Operation in Congress, in the media and on the streets.”

Osama Bin O’Reilly: “I Want The President Of The United States To Have The Power” To Waterboard [ TORTURE, LYNCH ]

References:

1. The Torture Apologists: Efforts to justify torture after the killing of Osama bin Laden are cynical and destructive. (A New York Times Editorial)

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