[Peace-discuss] From the week's news

[E. Wayne Johnson]

Au contraire,
It is generally well accepted that the "/Bush Doctrine/" is an extension 
of US Imperialism to
include preventive measures as a pretext for military intervention in 
other sovereign countries.

John W. wrote:
> 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 
> <mailto: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...
>
>            ###
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss
>   
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/archive/peace-discuss/attachments/20080914/d37fc870/attachment.htm