The Global Impact of Bush's War Crimes in Iraq: King Midas in Reverse
Walter C. Uhler
New Rule: In the next fifteen months, President Bush has to perform at least one act that doesn't make money for someone he knows.
Take "No Child Left Behind." At first it just looked like gentle empty bullshit, a way to neutralize the Democrats edge with voters on education issues. What did it even mean? And how could you be against it? Education. It was a perfect cause that would honor the legacy of any president...'s wife. Which made it even more perfect for pre-9/11 Bush. And who could it hurt? No one. It made Lady Bird Johnson's wild-flowers-by-the-highways project look like the fucking Marshall Plan.
Except, like all Bush ideas, there was more to it. To meet the requirements of "No Child Left Behind" America's public schools have ordered more than eleven million standardized tests in the last two years. (New York State alone ordered 1.7 million.) The cost of the tests -- and the testing industry, including test prep -- now exceeds two billion dollars a year. And 90% of the industry is controlled by five corporations. And the largest of them is McGraw-Hill. And the McGraw family just happens to go back 80 years with the Bushes.
Another beneficiary of No Child Left Behind? Neil Bush's educational software company. The one funded by the United Arab Emirates. The one Barbara Bush said the Katrina victims had to spend her donation on.
Which is, of course, all blood under the bridge. But when Bush does anything, there's always some profit motive behind it. Nothing is free but the hookers. So it wasn't surprising that he announced his post war plans were to replenish the coffers with speeches. But before that, he has to do one purely altruistic thing. Just one.What luck for the rulers that men do not think.
- Adolf Hitler
In another nail biter election between Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton, the newsrooms weren't reporting any winners until late in the morning the day after the election. Then they announced Rudolph W. Giuliani is to be the 44th president of the United States.
This is the scenario that the Rothschilds have scripted for you, the American sheeple. The Diebold voting machines are being programmed for these results, it matters not who you vote for. Giuliani's involvement in 9-11 will ensure the coverup continues with the next administration. Neocons are swarming all over him like flies on s___ (literally). Yes, he's the chosen one folks.
This farce will continue until the warrior class regains control of the government as outlined in P.R.Sarkar's Law of Social Cycles
For more on Giuliani see the Neocon Section
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Who runs the electronic voting machines? PDF
But the GAO report now confirms that electronic voting machines as deployed in 2004 were in fact perfectly engineered to allow a very small number of partisans with minimal computer skills and equipment to shift enough votes to put George W. Bush back in the White House. Given the growing body of evidence, it appears increasingly clear that's exactly what happened. GAO Report Revised 10/27/05 Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of HOW THE GOP STOLE AMERICA'S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008, available via http://freepress.org and http://harveywasserman.com. Their WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO, with Steve Rosenfeld, will be published in Spring, 2006, by New Press. |
Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job.
I'm just going to add a few blockquotes with a link to the story. She was drugged, raped multiple times, and held captive. Will the perpetrators pay? Nope. More snippets below the fold.
"It felt like prison," says Jones, (snip) "I was upset; I was curled up in a ball on the bed; I just could not believe what had happened."
Finally, Jones says, she convinced a sympathetic guard to loan her a cell phone so she could call her father in Texas.
"I said, 'Dad, I've been raped. I don't know what to do. I'm in this container, and I'm not able to leave,'" she said. Her father called their congressman, Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas.
She was 20 years old working as a civilian in Iraq. Oh, and when she did finally get to see the Army doctors (after the congressman called the State Department, who rescued her) the Army doctors confirmed she had been raped... in more than one fashion. Evidence. But not so much, since the rape kit was turned over to KBR security officers, where it subsequently disappeared. But then again, isn't that standard protocol when a crime takes place, the doctor at the hospital executes the rape kit to collect evidence, and then turns it over to an employee of the victim's company.
UPDATE:
As suggested, and the link provided, by Dissento, YOU can tell KBR how you feel.
h/t to borkitekt for suggesting I update this diary to include that link.
UPDATE 2:
h/t to gatu
From Jamie Leigh Jones' Journal
In regards to the missing pictures and doctor's notes that were taken in Baghdad Lynn Falanga and I both called the doctor that performed the rape kit. The doctor stated to both of us that "I have no idea which rape victim you are because so many young contractor girls were raped after drinking with the guys" she also stated that "I performed so many rape kits in the six months that I was stationed there that there would be no way to recall whom yours was."
So what is the date that this doctor will testify under oath at a Congressional hearing?
Is peace just an absence of war?
That question begs another question: What is war?
Is war a “hot” conflict with bombs raining down on civilians? Is it covert action with undercover agents fomenting unrest and electoral rebellion? Is it crippling sanctions that target unarmed and un-protected civilians who become desperate for medicine when their child is dying of dysentery or hungry for food to fend off starvation?
Is war maintaining a large standing army and an over-bloated Ministry of War even in peacetime? Is war destroying our precarious environment for the sake of a comparative few to the detriment of the many? Is war recklessly using natural resources when there is a limited supply and many people are killed or enslaved so others can have diamond engagement rings or cheap crap at Wal-Mart?
I believe there is always an undeclared war on poor people all over the world and the establishment’s goal is to use any means violent, covert, or criminal to make the poor, poorer; the rich, richer; and to eliminate an educated, healthy, and vibrant middle class that is a threat to the fascist-elite way of life but essential for true freedom and democracy.
So then what is a meaningful definition of peace? Peace is an existential state where individuals are not only free from bombs raining down on their heads and an absence of planes flying into buildings, but where every person enjoys the basic human rights of security, prosperity, a good and free education, plentiful food, accessible healthcare, clean water and a clean planet free from catastrophic global climate change and overwhelming pollution.
John Lennon, who was so wrongly taken away from us 27 years ago today, is an icon for peace who strived and struggled for a true peace with his talent and with his resources. His songs, and refrains particularly: Power to the People, Imagine, and War is Over, and Give Peace a Chance are anthems for our modern peace movement. Imagine (on which I have written before) is a manifesto to a Utopian world where true peace is the paradigm and constant war as a foreign policy tool is abolished.
It is a tragedy in our world that we oftentimes marginalize or kill our peacemakers. I often dream of where our world would be today if people like Gandhi, John Lennon, MLK, Jr., or Bobby Kennedy (a later in life convert to peace) would not have been assassinated, or what would happen if we, their survivors, had made more meaning out of their violent, meaningless and senseless deaths. Would we be closer to state of utopia (or Nutopia) that John Lennon dreamed of?
John’s widow, Yoko Ono Lennon, has been very tireless in striving for world peace and in continuing her husband’s legacy. I know that my work for peace began when I wanted to make meaning out of my son’s senseless and violent death at the hands of the war pigs.
We cannot let their deaths be in vain!
It was in the season of peace that John Lennon was killed, when instead of a frenzy of shopping and an orgy of eating, we should all be reflecting on elevating the situation of our less fortunate brothers and sisters to bring peace to our part of the world that will have a ripple effect that spreads worldwide.
At the request of Yoko, let’s make today a day of reflecting on true peace. Take a few moments at 11:15 (your local time) and remember John and what he gave the world and what his legacy should be.
Imagine peace, then go out and make peace.
Please visit Imagine Peace sometime today for inspiring videos and downloadable artwork.
"People before Politics"
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