[Peace-discuss] From the week's news

[John W.]

I see that SOMEONE agrees with me about Charlie Gibson:

"Day after day McCain's escorts shielded Palin from any impromptu exchanges
with the press, until the eagerly awaited 3-part interviews with ABC's
Charles Gibson began last Thursday. *I'll root for anyone against an uppity,
patronizing network interviewer and so I was in Palin's corner when ABC's
Gibson went after her about the Bush Doctrine, which he made sound as though
it was something you learned in school along with the Gettysburg address.
 No one knows what the Bush doctrine is, least of all President Bush. He's
spent seven long years trying to define it.* Basically the Doctrine says
it's okay for employees or subcontracted agents of the US Government to
kidnap people, lock them up in wire or concrete hutches for years at a time,
regularly electrocuting them and beating their genitals until they go mad.
Small wonder Sarah Palin didn't want to get too specific..."


On Sat, Sep 13, 2008 at 10:07 PM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at uiuc.edu> wrote:

"Move over, Sarah Palin! You only want to shoot wolves from helicopters.
> Real men like Obama want more helicopter gunships to mow down Afghan kids
> from the air."
>
>
> [The following is from Alex Cockburn <http://www.counterpunch.org/>.
>  --CGE]
>
> ...Ignoring  Obama's solemn appeals for unity, America has become joyously
> divided. Evangelicals, braced by Palin's Christian faith, have risen spryly
> from the bed of their indifference to McCain, a man whose relationship to
> the Holy Spirit is remote. Now their champion is an accredited
> bible-thumper, in whom the Holy Spirit burns as brightly as  natural gas
> flares over the Arctic tundra.
>
> Liberals, particularly women, maddened at the spectacle of attractive
> Governor Sarah embodying everything they loathe, flood the internet with
> frantic oaths and seize on every particle of gossip from Alaska suggesting
> that Palin is a hypocrite, a mismanager, a would-be burner of books, a bad
> mother and untrue to her man.  Those scoffing only a few short weeks ago at
> the National Enquirer's "mere unverified gossip" about John Edward's affair,
> now hasten to the supermarkets to snatch up the Enquirer's latest
> allegations about Palin and her family.
>
> As the political news circuits began to buzz with news of improved polling
> numbers for McCain-Palin in the battleground states, Obama's ascent towards
> the status of a Sure Bet is stalled. After the triumphs of Denver the
> candidate relapsed into the nerveless mode of early August. He had the poor
> judgment to go on the cable news show of Fox's Bill O'Reilly and make the
> extraordinary statement that the so-called Surge in Iraq had "succeeded
> beyond our wildest dreams". He calls for 10,000 more troops for Afghanistan.
> Move over, Sarah Palin! You only want to shoot wolves from helicopters. Real
> men like Obama want more helicopter gunships to mow down Afghan kids from
> the air.
>
> At a stroke, with that deadly concession about the success of the surge,
> Obama handed McCain the opportunity, in their upcoming debates, to
> congratulate his Democratic opponent for acknowledging McCain's superior
> political and military judgment. Simultaneously Obama foolishly threw over
> the side the reports of journalists on the spot like CounterPunch's Patrick
> Cockburn who have been describing how the present lowering of violence in
> Iraq owes little to the surge in US troops, as opposed to changes in local
> political conditions. It certainly confirms my view that Obama rarely has
> the stomach to stand his ground, when challenged from the right with any
> vigor...
>
> Day after day McCain's escorts shielded Palin from any impromptu exchanges
> with the press, until the eagerly awaited 3-part interviews with ABC's
> Charles Gibson began last Thursday. I'll root for anyone against an uppity,
> patronizing network interviewer and so I was in Palin's corner when ABC's
> Gibson went after her about the Bush Doctrine, which he made sound as though
> it was something you learned in school along with the Gettysburg address.
>  No one knows what the Bush doctrine is, least of all President Bush. He's
> spent seven long years trying to define it. Basically the Doctrine says it's
> okay for employees or subcontracted agents of the US Government to kidnap
> people, lock them up in wire or concrete hutches for years at a time,
> regularly electrocuting them and beating their genitals until they go mad.
> Small wonder Sarah Palin didn't want to get too specific...
>
> We have the debates ahead and six weeks in which Americans  can recover
> from the intoxication of their first date with Governor Sarah and ponder
> whether they really want Republicans in the White House for 12 straight
> years. Popular though the Palin pick may have been, she'd need truly magical
> powers to have elicited an immediate Yes on that big question...
>
> McCain NOT crippled upon POW release
>
> Did you catch the previously unknown footage of McCain on Thursday night by
> a Swedish TV station? It was from March 14, 1973, when McCain was released
> by the Vietnamese. This was not the tortured cripple of the "returning hero"
> clips and photos we've been seeing. He looks pretty spry, albeit with a
> slight limp.Here's the  link to the news coverage on SVT's "Rapport"
> http://svt.se/play?a=1244518
>
> We were sent it from Stockholm by CounterPuncher Horst Schröder ...
> Schroder correctly adds:
>
>    "I assume such a news coverage would be totally impossible on US TV,
> especially the critical reflections on the USA's war in Vietnam, and the
> juxtaposition of McCain's heroic bombing raids with the suffering of the
> bombed Vietnamese on the ground. But then, of course, the main Swedish TV is
>  public, not privately owned. Not to say that we do not get some propaganda,
> but nothing like what's dished up in the USA. I follow the major papers and
> some TV on the web, and I fail to understand how the people put up with
> this. If Goebbels still were around, he would eat his heart out with envy.
>
>    "As far as I am concerned no one who flies up in the air carpetbombing a
> helpless civilian population, is a hero. McCain and others make out like
> these were Red Baron dog fighter times, or WW II RAF pilots who ran a much,
> much higher risk. The real heroes – if one wants to call them that ­­– in
> this totally immoral war were the grunts who actually had to meet the
> "enemy". The same of course goes for the "heroic" bomber pilots in the
> present immoral wars in Afghanistan/Pakistan and Iraq.
>
>    "It is really depressing from our perspective, that such a large part of
> the US voters seem to be addicted to this kind of false heroic myths, to
> such a degree that one can build a whole election on some bomb raids 40
> years ago committed on a hapless population by a greedy foreign power. It
> may well be that McCain felt at the time that he was doing the right thing,
> and felt proud of it. But it is depressing that 40 years later he still is
> proud of it, instead of regretting what he has doen and hang his head in
> shame. Even more depressing that close to half the voters lap this up.
>
>    "And most depressing of all that even Obama and the Dems feel they have
> to pay lip service to this immoral hogwash and constantly debase themselves
> in worship of McCain the Hero.
>
>    "Woe is us."
>
> Woe indeed.
>
> The Real John McCain
>
> Our friend from Stockholm, quoted above, asks how come the US mainstream
> press hasn't look closely at McCain's conduct as a POW. That's a no-brainer
> and even ABC's Charlie Gibson could probably muster a truthful answer if he
> had to sit in Guantanamo for a couple of minutes. But most of the so-called
> "alternative media" has been nervous on this topic too. Somehow they think
> it's dangerously counterproductive to assail so-called "heroes", even if the
> heroism consisted of raining high explosive on peasants from 30,000 feet.
>
> Not CounterPunch, I'm proud to say. We've run Doug Valentine's
> investigations and other testimonies. And now, in our latest newsletter,
> released today, we take a long hard look at McCain the man: violent,
> deceitful, devoid of ethical principle. And that's not us talking. That's
> people who have known him well. Read the new stories by Doug Valentine,
> Jeffrey St Clair and myself. If the press had really homed in honestly on
> McCain instead of licking his boots for twenty years, he'd have been toast
> long, long ago...
>
>        ###
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