The U.S.S. Hannity takes a broadside in to its red herring magazine:



<snip>



Arrrrrrgh mateys....we're takin' on water!!.....arrrrrrgh......

http://www.lewrockwell.com/kwiatkowski/kwiatkowski179.html

Oh that Hannity.

Loveable lug he is!!

Post that one you know where, and blood would shoot out the mods' eyes!!

Flown over with helicopters and killed everything in sight?

Hilarious

from the "other" forum a post by americon about hannity had me rolling

I can't see Sean or Rush pushing Rudy when they have Romney, Tancredo etc.

Is Ron Paul still running?

That one got 'im a stern finger wagging from the Tink!



Yup.

Are the links to his sites not working?

You mean I have to LOOK for him?

Man, you gotta get him on Imus......

Arturo, I don't think the mainstream "conservatives" will be pushing Tancredo. He is obviously to the left of Paul, but not quite far enough. Sean, Rush, etc. could definitely support Romney however. I have noticed in the last few months that a lot of mainstream news organizations have tried to deflect from Romney's liberalism (socialism) by trying to make it a religious thing. I've seen headlines such as "Will America Elect a Mormon?" as if that is the issue. Apparently he is a favorite of the corporate media.

I don't even know what left and right is anymore. I have never seen a candidate I approved of more than about 50%. I envy those that fit into one of the mainstream ideologies and have candidates that at least echo their sentiments, even if they don't win elections.

Tancredo seems too one-issue to me. Worse yet I think he's too zealous in the wrong direction on that issue. In a peaceful world Paul might get my vote in the primary, but I think he's a bit naive about the reality of world affairs. Then again maybe so am I.

I see it this way: on one side is centralized, command-and-control government and on the other is freedom and liberty.

It is that simple.

Also, Ron Paul believes in a strong military. However, he doesn't believe in being the world's rent-a-cop.

If only we even got the rent payments.

We did in GWI, where the neighboring regimes supported the restoration of sovereignty to the pre-existing regime in Kuwait.

Naturally, that changed when we were attacking the sovereignty of Iraq.

I was thinking about GWI, but then GWI just ended up a half-assed event that left Iraq to starve and Saddam to endure.

The setup.....


Is the US State Department still keeping April Glaspie under wraps?

By Kaleem Omar

12/25/05 "Jang" -- -- It is now more than fifteen years since that fateful meeting on July 25, 1990 between then-US Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie and President Saddam Hussein that the Iraqi leader interpreted as a green light from Washington for his invasion of Kuwait eight days later.

The US State Department, which is said to have placed a gag order on Glaspie in August 1990 prohibiting her from talking to the media about what had transpired at that meeting, is apparently still keeping her under wraps despite the fact that she retired from the American Foreign Service in 2002. .

In all the years since her meeting with Saddam Hussein, Glaspie has never spoken about it to the media, never appeared as a guest on a TV talk show, never written an article or a book about her time as the US’s top diplomat in Baghdad. The question is: why? What has she got to hide?

April Catherine Glaspie was born in Vancouver, Canada, on April 26, 1942 and graduated from Mills College in Oakland, California in 1963 and from Johns Hopkins University in 1965. In 1966 she entered the United States diplomatic service, where she became an expert on the Middle East. After postings in Kuwait, Syria and Egypt, Glaspie was appointed Ambassador to Iraq in 1989.

Glaspie’s appointment followed a period from 1980 to 1988 during which the United States had given substantial covert support to Iraq during its war with Iran.

Before 1918 Kuwait had been part of the Ottoman province of Basra, and thus in a sense part of Iraq, but Iraq had recognised its independence in 1961. After the end of the Iran-Iraq War (during the course of which Kuwait lent Iraq $ 14 billion), Iraq and Kuwait had a dispute over the exact demarcation of its border, access to waterways, the price at which Kuwaiti oil was being sold, and oil-drilling in border areas.

It was in this context that Glaspie had her first meeting with Saddam Hussein on July 25, 1990. Glaspie herself had requested the meeting, saying she had an urgent message for the Iraqi president from US President George H. W. Bush (Bush Senior). In her two years as Ambassador to Iraq, it was Glaspie’s first private audience with Saddam Hussein. It was also to be her last. A partial transcript of the meeting is as follows:

US Ambassador Glaspie:

"I have direct instructions from President Bush to improve our relations with Iraq. We have considerable sympathy for your quest for higher oil prices, the immediate cause of your confrontation with Kuwait. (pause) As you know, I have lived here for years and admire your extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country (after the Iran-Iraq war). We know you need funds. We understand that, and our opinion is that you should have the opportunity to rebuild your country. (pause) We can see that you have deployed massive numbers of troops in the south. Normally that would be none of our business, but when this happens in the context of your other threats against Kuwait, then it would be reasonable for us to be concerned. For this reason, I have received an instruction to ask you, in the spirit of friendship - not confrontation - regarding your intentions. Why are your troops massed so very close to Kuwait’s borders?"

President Saddam Hussein:

"As you know, for years now I have made every effort to reach a settlement on our dispute with Kuwait. There is to be a meeting in two days; I am prepared to give negotiations only one more brief chance. (pause) When we (the Iraqis) meet (with the Kuwaitis) and we see there is hope, then nothing will happen. But if we are unable to find a solution, then it will be natural that Iraq will not accept death."

US Ambassador Glaspie:

"What solution would be acceptable?"

President Saddam Hussein:

"If we could keep the whole of the Shatt al Arab - our strategic goal in our war with Iran - we will make concessions (to the Kuwaitis). But if we are forced to choose between keeping half of the Shatt and the whole of Iraq (which, in Iraq’s view, includes Kuwait), then we will give up all of the Shatt to defend our claims on Kuwait to keep the whole of Iraq in the shape we wish it to be. (pause) What is the United States’ opinion on this?"

US Ambassador Glaspie:

"We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary (of State James) Baker has directed me to emphasise the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960s, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America."

(Saddam smiles)

At a Washington press conference called the next day (July 26, 1990), US State Department spokesperson Margaret Tutweiler was asked by journalists:

"Has the United States sent any type of diplomatic message to the Iraqis about putting 30,000 troops on the border with Kuwait? Has there been any type of protest communicated from the United States government?"

To which Tutweiler responded

"I’m entirely unaware of any such protest."

On July 31, 1990, two days before the Iraqi invasion, John Kelly, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, testified to Congress that the

"United States has no commitment to defend Kuwait and the US has no intention of defending Kuwait if it is attacked by Iraq."

The trap had been baited very cleverly by Glaspie, reinforced by Tutweiler’s and Kelly’s supporting comments. And Saddam Hussein walked right into it, believing that the US would do nothing if his troops invaded Kuwait. On August 2, 1990, eight days after Glaspie’s meeting with the Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein’s massed troops invaded Kuwait.

One month later in Baghdad, British journalists obtained the tape and transcript of the Saddam Hussein-April Glaspie meeting on July 25, 1990. In order to verify this astounding information, they attempted to confront Ms Glaspie as she was leaving the US embassy in Baghdad.

Journalist 1:

"Are the transcripts (holding them up) correct, Madam Ambassador?"

(Ambassador Glaspie does not respond)

Journalist 2:

"You knew Saddam was going to invade (Kuwait), but you didn’t warn him not to. You didn’t tell him America would defend Kuwait. You told him the opposite - that America was not associated with Kuwait."

Journalist 1:

"You encouraged this aggression - his invasion. What were you thinking?"

US Ambassador Glaspie:

"Obviously, I didn’t think, and nobody else did, that the Iraqis were going to take all of Kuwait."

Journalist 1:

"You thought he was just going to take SOME of it? But how COULD YOU?! Saddam told you that, if negotiations failed, he would give up his Iran (Shatt al Arab Waterway) goal for the ‘WHOLE of Iraq, in the shape we wish it to be.’ You KNOW that includes Kuwait, which the Iraqis have always viewed as a historic part of their country!"

(Ambassador Glaspie says nothing, pushing past the two journalists to leave)

"America green-lighted the invasion. At a minimum, you admit signalling Saddam that some aggression was okay - that the US would not oppose a grab of the al-Rumalya oil field, the disputed border strip and the Gulf Islands (including Bubiyan) - territories claimed by Iraq?"

(Again, Ambassador Glaspie says nothing as a limousine door closes behind her and the car drives off.)

Two years later, during the American television network NBC News Decision ‘92s third round of the Presidential Debate, 1992 presidential candidate Ross Perot was quoted as saying:

"...we told him (Saddam) he could take the northern part of Kuwait; and when he took the whole thing we went nuts. And if we didn’t tell him that, why won’t we even let the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee see the written instructions for Ambassador Glaspie?"

At this point he (Perot) was interrupted by then President George Bush Senior who yelled:

"I’ve got to reply to that. That gets to national honour!...That is absolutely absurd!"

Absurd or not, the fact of the matter is that after April Glaspie left Baghdad in late August 1990 and returned to Washington, she was kept under wraps by the State Department for eight months, not allowed to talk to the media, and did not surface until just before the official end of the Gulf war (April 11, 1991), when she was called to testify informally before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about her meeting with Saddam Hussein.

She said she was the victim of "deliberate deception on a major scale" and denounced the transcript of the meeting as "a fabrication" that distorted her position, though she admitted that it contained "a great deal" that was accurate.

The veteran diplomat awaited her next assignment, later taking a low-profile job at the United Nations in New York. She was later shunted off to Cape Town, South Africa, as US Consul General. Nothing has been heard of her since her retirement from the diplomatic service in 2002. It’s almost as if she has become a non-person.

Copyright: The News International, Pakistan

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11376.htm

also:
Official US version of the meeting (cable sent from USE Baghdad giving Glaspie's account of the meeting, forwarded to White House

I keep hearing about the "green light", but there was no such thing for an invasion. The US wanted them to solve their own problems PEACEFULLY. Taking a single quote out of context is just TOO standard for sites like Infoclearinghouse.

I also included the official cable, which is in PDF format. It is an after-action report by April Glaspie.
Saddam was a thug, there is no doubt, but he was recruited and trained by the CIA in 1959.
He fought a war with Iran by proxy for the US. He was taken out for a whole host of reasons, including undercutting the price of crude in the Middle East. Saddam threatened Saudi hegemony of OPEC.

Greg Palast wrote a great book called Armed Madhouse, detailing the whole plan. He even included the State Department's own documents. He interviewed Hugo Chavez and Big Oil executives. When they threatened him with a lawsuit, he said 'be my guest, I have you guys on tape'. Subsequently, all the threats ceased.

Greg Palast Interview

Our foreign policy is based on an eighty-year old plan, developed in the City of London, then continued by the Anglo-American establishment in this country.

Man, 54 minutes. Thank God I got dsl. It's wonderful that Palast loves America so much he left and went to work for the BBC. As a left-wing muckraker he was sort of interesting after the Dems lost the election.

Refering to Big Oil sounds like 60s radicals whining about the Military-Industrial Complex and the 80s radicals whining about Big Bidness and "greed".

I'll have to listen to more later. 10 minutes in.

Yeah..

He was a darling of the Left until he exposed the Peak Oil scam and who really funds the environmental movement. He is now hated by Right and Left.

I find it hard to hate muckrakers for doing what they do. For a large part they're exposing reality as it has always existed, and acting as if it were somehow a new thing. Sometimes they outright lie, but more often they just sensationalize. What they sensationalize and how much is what separates them. It's nice to see Palast has gone after a lefty sacred cow, but I'm not sure if he did that with any more honesty than the rest of his stuff.

Here's a guy pushing an Anti Imperialist Alliance. I get all flustered when someone's trying to organize it, but I will hold off judgement until I see who the Corporate Backers are :

--------------------------------------------------------------

Here, however, are some ways of transcending Left-Right concerns and forging an anti-imperial coalition.

1. Explain to Americans how other nations also seek security, that negotiation is not “un-American,” that Reagan too negotiated.

2. Work against a U.S. attack on Iran and the spread of war, which could end up wrecking world trade. Work to bring in Japan and South Korea, which depend upon Arabian Gulf oil, to publicly pressure Bush not to attack.

3. Bring in the business community. Much of it fears blowback from growing anti-Americanism abroad. The hi-tech industries in particular want peace to protect their intellectual property rights. Remember: Andrew Carnegie was a founding member of the Anti-Imperialist League.

4. The improvements to our civil defense are woefully inadequate and incompetently behind schedule. We all know the prime targets: our big coastal cities, tunnels, reservoirs, and industrial ports such as the Houston Ship Canal. We need biological defense, hospital resources, and fallout shelters much more than we need new submarines. More consciousness about these risks might make more Americans aware of the connection between our bombing of foreigners and their acts of terrorism against us.

5. Conservatives should join Leftist anti-war demonstrations, but with their own placards and banners. I have seen such at anti-war marches in Washington, and they are effective and draw attention. I wrote about this during the Kosovo war, because only Leftists make big anti-war events.

6. Each side needs to publicize the other’s anti-war resources. On the Right the conservative establishment has been very successful in suppressing anti-war views.

7. Attend each other’s meetings (though this can be counterproductive if the meetings are dominated by the extremist yahoos on the Right or America-haters on the Left).

8. Promote travel, international conferences, and foreign views, especially for the young.

9. Secure divided government so that each branch will investigate the other and help restrain its abuses of power.

10. Work for term limits, still the best way to limit Leviathan, and bring in younger, less compromised congressmen and women.

11. Remind Republicans that when they provide the president with ever more nearly dictatorial powers, it may well be a Hillary Clinton who enforces them.

There remains much that divides Left and Right. But, particularly as these designations lose their meaning, there is much that unites us as well. Opposition to American empire can serve as the banner that welcomes us into the one big tent of people opposed to war, an Anti-Imperialist League for the 21st century.

Jon Basil Utley is associate publisher of The American Conservative. He was a foreign correspondent in South America for the Journal of Commerce and Knight Ridder newspapers and former associate editor of The Times of the Americas. He was for 17 years a contract commentator on third world issues for the Voice of America. He is a writer and advisor for Antiwar.com, a chairman of ConservativesForPeace.com, and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus, where this article is republished from with permission.

http://www.gnn.tv/articles/3034/Left_Right...nce_Against_War

TT,

There are lots of Corporations muddying the waters as far a funding goes. On all sides of the spectrum, these internationals are clouding the vision and "putting out fires" to cover their ass.

See here: http://homepage.mac.com/herinst/sbeder/talk.html

And as to the "peak oil scam", we have discussed this before. Where is this "evidence" of a scam? So far, 99% of the Corporate Oil rhetoric has been to deny it because of the scare it would cause with their investors and the resulting market problems.

We know where there is more oil, we just won't drill for it. We also know where there are fields that are only profitable at certain price levels. There's also surely oil left unfound that will be found if it's worth the effort.

And all the while technology is moving forward on other energy fronts. Oil isn't going to disappear overnight, we just have to be moving off it as alternatives come online. Panic is the worst thing for everyone.

Yes, we have discussed it. It seems that the articles I posted were a moot point. Whether it is the Saudis setting production quotas, Big Oil buying up refineries, then CLOSING them domestically or heavy reserves found all over the place, it all seems to be corporate propaganda. Although M. King Hubbard was a petroleum geologist for Shell, you don't think there was an agenda there at all.

1. There is more oil, and there is some available at higher prices, yes. However, the pickins are getting thin. We have been burning more than we find since the early 1980s. We now burn 6 barrels for every 1 that we find. There hasn't been a field larger than 500 million barrels found since 2003.

2. I agree completely. I am not advocating panic, I am just spreading awareness so people can prepare themselves if they hadn't thought about this.



Hubbard was. And they begged him not to release his findings. Then when he did, they laughed him off the stage, and for 14 years they laughed until he was right in 1970. Then they started looking at other regions, Pruhoe bay, the North Sea, and Mexico, Indonesia, Europe, etc.

Baku, in eastern Europe, is a prime example. Have you read The Prize? This was one of the earliest oil provinces. It was one of the fronts you don't always hear about in WWII. If Hitler had reached there, we might have a giant Germany instead of multicultural Europe. As it was, he ran out of gas literally, even though he was making it at break neck speed from Coal.

Now it is a wasteland.

Rush You Tubed his Uncivil War opening monologue from last Monday.

Pretty humorous, for a Rush rant.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5ya0q1achM

I think I heard some of it, but I wasn't that impressed. Rush has gone to attacking Reps about 2/3 of his days.

Well, the RP has become a target rich environment.

I'll be the last to whine if the party splits up and reforms in some other fashion.

It already did during the Nixon administration. It's called the Libertarian Party.

But various factions peel off every few years, so they have a hard time keeping the old growth as new members come aboard.

I meant into factions that actually wanted to get elected and didn't spend all their time bragging about how they don't care what voters think or want.

Already plenty of pols pandering to voters... Room for one set on the road less traveled...

Pandering to a smaller group of voters?

And not getting elected to boot.

One man's panderer is another's true believer? There is no one truth? US can survive perhaps even thrive within several political/economic paradigms?

All valid to one extent or the other. That's why I try to position myself to be independent of the voters decision. We shouldn't pretend then that the difference between Rs and Ds makes any difference at all...

Either way as long as we don't have a king you have to get elected to make much difference. I understand that the downfall of democracy is people trying to vote themselves rich, but humans being what they are I figure the best that can be done is mitigate the damage by talking common sense and making some unpleasant deals once in a while.

Just bitching from the sidelines isn't all that helpful, though I've cast many a protest vote myself.

I've offered this explanation before. The Rs and Ds both taking the nation to ever larger, ever more intrusive gubment. In economic area Rs slightly slower. In social regulation Ds slightly slower. A plausible expectation is the majority of Americans will not move away from an increasing gubment voting stance until they see the unavoidable results of ever increasing gubment. That may not happen until the trend in increases in gubment reaches it's natural conclusion. The choice being getting there in another 50 years (Rs) or 45 years (Ds) (early 80s being just a minor detour). It could be better to get it over with sooner rather than later so we can move on to something new. Lesser of two evils combined with the those with a chance to win filter would lead to support of Senator Obama. Perhaps the libertarian vote is unintentionally working that way now...

Little downside risk for me as the successful pols running in the current system have significant capital and in the end despite what they say they will not slit their own throats...

I agree about the intrusive goverernment, but then how does a party that never gets elected do anything about that? I don't agree about just "speeding things along".

The parties getting elected aren't doing anything about it either...

The only way to unelect them is to take over a party or form a coalition party that can beat them. Protest votes won't change anything.

Fat chance of that happening. Ron Paul surely isn't helping any.

Current parties have the vast majority of the voters supporting them. Until the vast majority of voters change their mind there will be no change...

They won't just up and change their minds for no reason. You need a message and a salesman.

They will have a very good reason to change their mind once the omnipresent gubment is in place... Slick packaging is what has gotten us into the current mess... Some of you probably still believe that Rs stand for smaller gubment...