[Peace-discuss] Arch-triangulator

[C. G. Estabrook]

   The Horror of Obama's Just-Released 
   Two-Minute "Economy Video"
   By Paul Street - Sep 18, 2008

Now here is something truly terrible from the Democratic presidential candidate on the financial crisis and more -- a short Obama "economy video" that concludes with him actually saying that "the outworn ideas of the left and the right" won't solve our economic problems: http://my.barackobama.com/economyvideo. As if "the left" has somehow been in any sort of influential position vis-a-vis the U.S. economy and financial sector. It's sheer Orwellian nonsense as the arch-triangulator tries to present himself as the rational stabilizer steering the reasonable course down the middle, between the dangerous extremes of right and left. 

But the most seriously offensive thing in his video message is when Obama repeats his his truly horrific campaign stump line that we have to "stop spending billions each month rebuilding Iraq when we should be re-building our country." 

1. "We" are NOT "re-building Iraq." We have assaulted Iraq in a criminal, immoral, mass-murderous, and brazenly imperialist invasion and occupation that has killed more than a million Iraqis and caused the exile and maiming of many millions more. According to respected journalist Nir Rosen in the December 2007 edition of the mainstream journal Current History, "Iraq has been killed, never to rise again. The American occupation has been more disastrous than that of the Mongols who sacked Baghdad in the thirteenth century. Only fools talk of solutions now. There is no solution. The only hope is that perhaps the damage can be contained." See Nir Rosen, "The Death of Iraq," Current History (December 2007), p. 31. 

The mayhem caused by the U.S. since March 2003 comes on top of an earlier military assault, the 1991 "turkey shoot" called Desert Storm, with its "highway of death" and Uncle Sam's massive use of cluster bombs and depleted uranium and with the green light given to Saddam to slaughter Kurds and Shiites we had initially encouraged to rebel. The current mass-murderous occupation also comes after more than a decade of deadly U.S.-opposed "economic sanctions" that killed more than a million Iraqis... 

2. We owe Iraq re-building and much more. Sorry, "Progressives for Obama" (PFO).  We owe Iraq massive REPARATIONS towards rebuilding and more. Paying that would be part of rebuilding our own souls. 

I keep thinking "hey, I can hold my nose and do the tactical voting thing in a contested state" and then smack, "he does it again ... another vicious hit. It's beyond words. 

When will it get too grotesque even for the PFO people?

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