Emma Berry

Archive for the ‘War’ Category

Sam  Stein wrote in the Huffington Post that Hamid Karzai in a rare U.S. media appearance continued to press for the removal of the vast majority of U.S. private contractors by the end of this year:

“One of the reasons that I want them disbanded and removed by four months from now is exactly because their presence is preventing the growth and development of the Afghan security forces — especially the police force — because if 40, 50,000 people are given more salaries than the Afghan police, why would an Afghan … man come to the police if he can get a job in a security firm, have a lot of leeway without any discipline? So naturally our security forces will find it difficult to grow. In order for our security forces to grow these groups must be disbanded.”

Karzai’s campaign against U.S. contractors is, undoubtedly, compelled by his own domestic political concerns. The killing of innocent Afghanistan civilians has not only deeply soured the country’s view of America’s mission, but damaged Karzai’s standing as well. . .”

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EMMA’S COMMENT:

First of all, I misjudged Mr. Karzai in a previous post when I suggested that he might be trying to shakedown the U.S. government for more money. Hamid Karzai’s question is the very one that Americans should be asking our elected officials--that’s right, the ones we send to Washington and pay their salaries and health care–those officials.

WHAT ABOUT THE DEMORALIZATION OF OUR OWN U.S.  SOLDIERS?

Our servicemen start out at $1,294 a month.   On average Security Contractors [hired guns]  earn between $4,000 and $10,000 a month–that’s what they are paid by the Wall Street Security firm, but the Wall Street corporation gets more money than that.  Remember Wall Street corporations are middle men organizations.  They are always more expensive than civil servants.  There’s those pesky investors who want their cut–and many of them are in Congress.  Why should we pay these greedy crooks 4 to 10 times per month per soldier that we pay our real soldiers?  It is despicable!

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ANOTHER ADDENDUM FROM EMMA
If elected officials were really interested in reducing the debt, instead of cutting welfare stamps to poor children, they would start keeping their nose out of the business of other nations and start using our taxpayer dollars for the people in the USA.

THE AMERICAN PEOPLE NEED TO START ASKING A LOT OF QUESTIONS AND WE SHOULD NOT STOP UNTIL WE GET ANSWERS. SPECIFIC ANSWERS–NOT THE  VAGUE BS THAT WE’VE BEEN HANDED FOR THE PAST 30 YEARS!   For example, in the sentence below we see the words “the United States”;  well, that is B.S.  it was NOT “the United States”!    It was some individual in Washington or some department such as the State Department acting on “behalf” of the USA.  WHO WAS IT?

“Federal law bans U.S. soldiers from participating in Colombia’s war against left-wing rebels and from training army units with ties to right-wing paramilitaries infamous for torture and political killings. There are no such restrictions on for-profit companies, though, and since the late 1990s, the United States has paid private military companies an estimated $1.2 billion, both to eradicate coca crops and to help the Colombian army put down rebels who use the drug trade to finance their insurgency.”

Hamad Karzai

Yesterday I posted Karzai tells Security Contractors to take a Hike.

This was the rather astounding story that Karsai was demanding  that private security contractors cease operations in the country within four months.  I speculated that perhaps it was just Karzai’s shakedown of the USA to get more money–Either pay me off or I’ll make your private security contractors leave.

Well well well, today we have news that is behind this demand.  A close adviser to President Hamid Karzai, arrested last month on charges of soliciting a bribe, was also under investigation for allegedly providing luxury vehicles and cash to presidential allies and over telephone contacts with Taliban insurgents, according to Afghan officials familiar with the case.

The Afghan officials also said that it had been Karzai himself who intervened to win the quick release of the aide, Mohammad Zia Salehi, even after the arrest had been personally approved by the country’s attorney general. The new account suggests that the corruption case against Salehi was wider than previously known and that Karzai acted directly to secure his aide’s release.

It looks now like it may be a deal that  Karzai may have made with the Attorney General or perhaps even with the Taliban to protect him (Karzai) in case there is a coup.  And that was the reason for Karzai’s demand to remove all the private security contractors in four months.  Karzai was  getting a shakedown from either his attorney general or the Taliban. Either is possible.

Things are likely more unstable in Afghanistan that we may realize.  But there is no doubt that the USA is propping up yet another corrupt government that is unpopular with the people.  As a nation we have a long history of doing this which is odd since we are supposed to be a nation “of the people, by the people and for the people.”

It will be interesting to see how this, yet another cloak and dagger game from the middle East, plays out.

August 17th, 2010 by Jim Garrettson

YEP AMERICAN TROOPS ARE ACTUALLY LEAVING IRAQ RIGHT NOW.

The last of them should be out within a few hours.  They are headed for Kuwait.

50,000 troops remain but they are not combat troops.

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It will be interesting to see how long it takes Iraq to rebuild from the rubble that it has been reduced to.

AND IN SUPPORT OF MS. MOHSEN, HERE IS MY PIE FOR LEVIN:

A young woman, 23 years of age threw a pie in the face of Carl Levin.  While I don’t support getting that up close and personal with a politician, I can understand Ms. Mohsen’s frustrations and the passion of his youth.  In 2006 the people of the USA elected a Democratic Congress on the MANDATE that they stop voting for George Bush’s unfunded military appropriations and bring our troops home by the end of 2008.  What did the Democratic Congress do instead?  They continued to rubber stamp Bush’s demands AND they sent an additional 100,000 troops to Iraq.

ONE STATEMENT  I WANT TO CORRECT MR MOHSEN ON HOWEVER:  “People tend to blame the war on Republicans, but we wanted to target Levin today to send a message that liberals and Democrats are just as implicated in the violence as the Republicans.”

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No Ms. Mohsen, liberals are NOT for war and a liberal has never supported war. Due to Republicans propensity for the hyperbole, one would think that a liberal is on every corner in Washington, but that is far from the truth. In our Congress we have exactly three liberals:  Dennis Kucinich, Bernie Sanders, and Russ Feingold.

Liberals are very rare in American politics.

The Democratic Party is split almost 50/50 among corporate centrist democrats like Hillary and President Obama and progressives like Howard Dean, Alan Grayson, Maxine Waters and others.  Progressives, however, are in the majority in the Democratic Party even though they are not in the majority in Congress.  That is why, in my opinion it is not wise to vote for just any Democrat. The party machine is still run by the Clintons and the DLC faction [not DNC].  This bunch believe in acting like watered down Republicans.

They need to remember what Harry Truman said:  “If you give the people a choice between a Repubican and a watered down Republican, they will choose the Republican every time.”

Multimillionaire Carl Levin ( net worth of $1,698,553 to $2,338,541)  puts on a good show like he did at a recent hearing berating Goldman employee Sparks with titillating naughty “shitty” rhetoric.  We saw Claire McCaskill, another corporate centrist Democrat and the 14th richest person in Congress with a net worth of $19.42 million being “very angry” with Goldman Sach’s CEO Lloyd Blankfein.  I couldn’t help but wonder as I watched the sideshow what role that Goldman Sachs has played not only in funding their campaigns, but also in adding to the personal wealth of their own Wall Street portfolios.  I’ll wonder the same thing when other multimillionaire self-righteous Senators question down the CEO of Massey Mining and BP and Halliburton–Yes, Senators, and what percentage of your quarterly Wall Street dividend payments are derived with these criminals? Or perhaps–and how many dollars did they contribute to YOUR campaign?

That day those hearings were little more than another example of the good cop/bad cop game that our two-party system of rich Democrats and rich Republicans have been playing for at least the past40 years with the American people.

And the result at the end of that day that I watched their side show?  Goldman stock was up slightly ($1.85, or a little more than 1%) .

While millions of American remain unemployed and cut off by Republican obstructionism, from life-sustaining benefits and all branches of the military meet and exceed their recruitment goals, it’s clear that the Republican war against the middle-class has turned “The Land of the Free” into the “The United States of Serfs and Lords.”

In the video below Dennis Kucinich spoke to our endless military adventures and their damage to the economy and our liberty.

In little more than a year the United States flew $12 billion in cash to Iraq, much of it in $100 bills, shrink wrapped and loaded onto pallets. Vanity Fair reported in 2004 that “at least $9 billion” of the cash has “gone missing, unaccounted for” $ 9 billion!

Last week the BBC reported that “the US military has been giving tens of millions of dollars to Afghan security firms who are funneling the money to warlords.,” Add to that a corrupt Afghan government underwritten by the lives of our troops.

On reporting what Obama’s  speech on the BP was lacking, John Dickerson was moving in the right direction, but perhaps did not carry his point far enough.

Quoting from Slate, Dickerson wrote:  ” . .  .The use of the language of war created the imbalance. He talked of a “battle” and “siege,” but like all the other times when war has been misused—the war on drugs, the war on poverty, the economic war Joe Biden declared last year–the action taken didn’t match the words used to describe the menace. Prudent, methodical, and secure … Wait a minute. There’s a war going on. Shouldn’t we be doing something more?”

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EMMA’S COMMENTS

USA WARS = FAILURE

USING WAR AS A METAPHOR IS A MEANINGLESS CLICHE

Dickerson’s comments didn’t go far enough. War no longer works as a rhetorical metaphor because war is fast becoming synonymous with defeat in the minds of Americans. We have Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, the War on Drugs, the war on Poverty–all dismal failures.

Smart politicians will leave the metaphor of war–including their campaign “war rooms” out of their vocabulary altogether.

If any one believes that this kind of disgusting behavior on the part of US military personnel is making the world a “safer” place for American citizens, they need their heads examined.

An Alaska-based soldier is under investigation for a video on his Facebook page that taunts smiling Iraqi children by asking if they’re gay, if they engage in certain sex acts and if they would grow up to be terrorists. Spc. Robert A. Rodriguez, who is based at Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks, was ordered to remove the video from his site, Army spokesman Maj. Bill Coppernoll said Monday.

Raleigh, N.C., television station WRAL first reported the video after another soldier stationed at Fort Wainwright shared it with friends in North Carolina, who took their concerns to the station.

WRAL aired part of the video and quoted from Rodriquez’s Facebook page before the site was made private.

Above the Facebook video posting, which was titled, “future gay terrorist!,” is written, “i got bored in iraq … so I kept myself entertained!”

GO HERE TO SEE THAT VIDEO ON HUFFINGTON POST

If you think this is an isolated incident of US Military personnel teasing Iraqi children here is another video of a different incident:

The media is reporting on President Obama’s nuclear summit and all the work that he is doing with nations all over the world.  This is good and I am glad; however, I have a concern that I have previously reported on that is a lot closer to home.

You can bet your Texas boots that if you elect me as your US Representative that I will see to it that the Amarillo Pantex facility which is a threat–not only to all Texans but to the entire United States and the world is addressed and corrected.

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HOW IS THE PANTEX FACILITY A THREAT?

1.  The Pantex facility assembles and disassembles nuclear weapons and warheads in the same area where HUGE amounts of plutonium are also stored. Plutonium does not break down.  Plutonium is the most toxic element on the planet.  One atom of plutonium can create enough cancer to kill a human being.

Plutonium is used as the core of most nuclear weapons and warheads.  When these weapons are disassembled at the Pantex plant, the plutonium is stored somewhere ON THE GROUNDS OF THIS FACILITY.  This is as unsafe and unacceptable as it would be to clean clothes with gasoline near a gas hot water heater.

Plutonium needs to be stored far away from the place where these nuclear warheads are being disassembled and by far away, I mean several hundred miles.  Yes, there is danger in transporting plutonium, but there is a larger danger in  having it so near to the area where these nuclear weapons are assembled and disassembled.

In early 2005 a W-56 warhead, with a yield of 1,200 kilotons, almost 100 times the destructive power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima (15 kilotons) was almost detonated in Amarillo Texas at the Pantex plant. The Project on Government Oversight watchdog group said the “near miss,” which led the Energy Department to fine the plant’s operator $110,000, was caused in part by technicians at the plant being required to work up to 72 hours per week. [The Bush administration, true to their irresponsible behavior,  notified Congress of this almost two years later on December 18 of 2006, a month after Democrats had taken over the majority in Congress and while Congress was on Christmas break.]

Had that war head accidentally detonated, along with the storage of plutonium store there, we would have had an unimaginable dirty bomb that would have killed most of the population of the USA and Mexico.  The people in Texas, Okalahoma, New Mexico, Colorado would likely have been vaporized.  More recently on January 10, 2010, Pantex had a full three hour shut down because of a security breach.  Turns out some duck hunters had trespassed on the property.

2. The Pantex facility need trained, armed US military to guard this plant 24/7.  Currently among the privatized security that we have guarding this facility is a one David Grisham who also happens to be the leader of an evangelical Christian hate group called Repent Amarillo. They are in the business of threatening and intimidating the citizens of Amarillo, Texas who disagree with their narrow restricted viewpoint of God. They model themselves after a militia and many of them wear camouflage gear as “soldiers of god”. Their targets include liberal Christians, Muslims, environmentalists, and even breast cancer events such as “The Race for the Cure”.

The group is associated with Raven Ministries and its leader is David Grisham, a security guard at Pantex, a nuclear-bomb facility in Amarillo. Hummmm. The leader of a Christian hate group in Amarillo, Texas works as a security guard in a nuclear bomb facility. How safe does that make you feel, my fellow Americans?