[Peace-discuss] [Fwd: FW: General Treachery]

[E. Wayne Johnson]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	FW: General Treachery
Date: 	Thu, 22 Oct 2009 05:55:47 -0500
From: 	Sandie C <sandiec99 at hotmail.com>
To: 	Shelli Dawdy <stubbornfacts1776 at gmail.com>
CC: 	Ryan Underwood <runderwo at mail.win.org>, E Wayne Johnson 
<ewj at pigs.ag>, RJHarris2010 Campaign <rjharris2010 at hotmail.com>
References: 	<3881-2200910422102725442 at earthlink.net>


a fascinating article on the war!/sc
**
** <http://www.scrosnoe.com>** <http://www.scrosnoe.com>** 
<http://www.scrosnoe.com>** <http://scrosnoe.blogspot.com>** 
<http://scrosnoe.blogspot.com>** <http://scrosnoe.blogspot.com>*Sandra 
Crosnoe
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From: aacoddington at earthlink.netTo: ladyaxiom at yahoo.com; 
WinBlows at lavabit.com; chooks at ncez.net; gm.shoemaker at gmail.com; 
markowsley at compuserve.com; mstar at charter.net; sandiec99 at hotmail.com

CC: toby.coddington at us.army.mil
Subject: General Treachery
Date: Thu, 22 Oct 2009 06:27:25 -0400


General Treachery

by Jeff Huber <http://original.antiwar.com/author/huber/>, October 22, 2009

<http://original.antiwar.com/huber/2009/10/21/general-treachery/emailpopup/> 
<http://antiwar-talk.com>
The long war generals are still trying to shoehorn President Obama into 
going along with their agenda, and they’re not being a bit subtle about it.

Gen. Ray Odierno, U.S. commander in Iraq, says he may not be able to 
meet President Barack Obama’s promise to withdraw troops from that 
country. In an Oct. 20 article from right-wing media maven Rupert 
Murdoch’s /Times/ of London 
<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article6881581.ece>, 
Odierno notes that things aren’t going so well in Iraq: increased 
violence levels, bickering in parliament, a "bloody campaign" brewing in 
the months ahead from al-Qaeda and other militant groups, a possible 
postponement of elections, Anbar province getting out of control again.  
Tut, tut.  It sounds like the surge wasn’t so successful after all.

Odierno, who is part of the long war 
<http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091102/hayden> cabal that includes 
Central Command chief Gen. David Petraeus and Joint Chiefs chairman Adm. 
Mike Mullen, is on record 
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/13/AR2009021301648_pf.html> 
as wanting to keep 30,000 or more troops in Iraq until 2014 or 2015.

Elsewhere we have Gen. Stanley McChrystal, another long warrior 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/magazine/18Afghanistan-t.html>, 
attempting to get 40,000 or more troops into Afghanistan for a 
nation-birthing campaign that could last 20 years or more.

Professor Andrew Bacevich 
<http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/10/21/795433/-Night-Owls,-Early-Birds-and-Expats-Open-Thread>, 
a retired Army officer, notes in the November issue of /Harper//’s/ that 
Odierno thinks the insurgency in Iraq may drag on for another five, ten, 
or fifteen years.  "Events may well show that Odierno is an optimist," 
Bacevich writes.

Violence may be down, Bacevich notes, "but evidence of the promised 
political reconciliation that the surge was intended to produce remains 
elusive. America’s Mesopotamian misadventure continues."

Bacevich says Iraq is "bizarrely trumpeted in some quarters as a 
’success’ and even more bizarrely seen as offering a template for how to 
turn Afghanistan around."

That trumpeting has been the result of propaganda operations on the part 
of the Pentagon and its military-industrial allies.  The military’s 
ability to manipulate the media is firmly established at this point.  
The right-wing press and broadcast outlets have always been military 
friendly, but now the mainstream media has become little more than a 
steno pool that repeats military public affairs press releases verbatim.

Bacevich, fortunately, is as brutally honest about Afghanistan as he is 
about Iraq.  He calls Afghanistan "The war we can’t win," and says, 
"Fixing Afghanistan is not only unnecessary, it’s also likely to prove 
impossible. Not for nothing has the place acquired the nickname 
Graveyard of Empires."  Lamentably, voices like Bacevich’s are hard to 
come by.  (Even sorrier is that his /Harper’s/ article is behind a 
subscription firewall.)

Much of what we see in the media these days deifies our generals.  
Thomas E. Ricks is notorious for his hagiographies of Odierno and 
Petraeus.  The recent hoopla over Stanley McChrystal has been 
disgraceful, most notably the /60 Minutes/ puff piece and an October 18 
/New York Times Magazine/ profile by Dexter Filkins. As Yale professor 
of literature David Bromwich 
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-bromwich/war-fever-at-the-emtimese_b_327159.html> 
notes, the /Times/ seems to have gone gaga over McChrystal and his 
campaign to pile drive the president into going puppy dog for his 
general’s wishes.  "The conclusion draws itself," Bromwich says. "The/ 
New York Times/ wants a large escalation in Afghanistan."

The most frightening moment in the Filkins article comes at the end, 
where McChrystal promises an Afghan governor, "We’ll stay as long as we 
have to until our Afghan partners are completely secure, even if that 
means years." Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Mullen have made 
similar remarks for the record.

Who are they to be making promises like that?

Our "partners" Iraq and Afghanistan are crooks and liars.  Odierno 
admits that Iraq’s parliament is a zoo and we’ve seen over the past few 
months what a hobo Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai is. Even Gates admits the 
corruption in Afghanistan will continue 
<http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-10-21-voa4.cfm> regardless of the 
election results.

Yet the information blitz continues.  Bad Taliban. Everyone in the 
military is mad at Obama.  We were on the verge of winning in Vietnam 
when the bad news media and Congress pulled the rug out from under us, 
don’t do it again. Must.  Stay.  Course.

We’re witnessing an open revolt by our top military officers against a 
sitting president and the citizens who elected him.  Our press, the 
fourth pillar of our democracy that is supposed to guard against such 
treachery, is aiding it.  We’ve seen this sort of thing happen before, 
not very long ago, when the /New York Times/ helped Dick Cheney sell us 
the invasion of Iraq by publishing its story on the Nigergate hoax 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/08/world/threats-responses-iraqis-us-says-hussein-intensifies-quest-for-bomb-parts.html> 
that cited anonymous "officials" more than 20 times.

In a /Voice of America/ 
<http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-10-20-voa13.cfm> article published 
the same day (Oct. 20) that Odierno said he may not be able to withdraw 
troops on schedule, Obama assured Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki 
that we /will/ withdraw our troops on schedule.  Al-Maliki prances back 
and forth like a dancer in search of a friendly lap — he wants us out of 
his country one minute but he’s willing to renegotiate 
<http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-10-20-voa13.cfm> the Status of 
Forces Agreement the next.

Who’s going to win this battle?
aacoddington at earthlink.net <mailto:aacoddington at earthlink.net>
EarthLink Revolves Around You.


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