11 Comments so far

1. clyde paige March 16th, 2007 5:19 pm

   George Bush and Dick Cheney are coward’s. They send others to die for their lies and sleze. These are evil people other’s lives mean mothing to them so long as the money keeps flowing into their bank account’s and the idiot’s who support them keep sending the money so they can keep buying or stealing election’s,anything to stay in power. Their hand’s are dripping with innocent blood.How in the hell anyone could ever have voted for these criminal’s is beyond me.Not only should they be impeached they should be tried as war criminal’s and spend the rest of their lives behind bar’s doing hard labor.Since neither has ever done an honest days work they should last about a day.

2. russwollman March 16th, 2007 5:34 pm

   The thing is, the “leadership” long ago abandoned the deepest ideas and concepts of the common good. Perhaps that abandonment occured because the leadership is devoid of ideas which will solve the problems government is expected to solve. But these are human problems, one and all, and only on the level of education, beginning at the earliest possible time, can these problems be nipped in the bud. Once they have grown into adulthood, solution is much more difficult. People become resistant to change, especially if they are comfortable, too well-fed, and too wealthy. Laziness exacts a huge toll on human life and human affairs.

   So, in the face of this inability to help the nation in constructive ways, and since the US has a huge military and is said to be powerful, leadership chooses militaristic, imperial modes of action.That is what leadership has historically done. And unfortunately, this is what most people have come to regard as leadership: wielding a big stick without fear of using it, even if loss of human life is the result. It is simply unimaginable when you think about it: killing people for the sake of oil, for instance, or to fight an ideology you find distasteful. Killing is a sin for all time. And the result of action always returns to the actor, whether the actor be an individual or a national government.

   This has everything to do with the level of human development, spiritual development, and whether we believe that human life can rise to higher levels of peace, wisdom, internal freedom, self-sufficiency, and creativity.

   I will urge everyone reading these words to go a step further, and have a good, long look at this website:

   http://www.uspeacegovernment.org/.

   At the basis of every human life is the same intelligence which structures the universe. It is the inner experience of that knowledge which must become a part of education. Peace is the essence of life, and peace can be developed and made a part of the life of every individual. It is not longer a distant, dreamy-eyed hope, but an achievable reality which many people live right now.

   The world is as we are.

3. John F. Butterfield March 16th, 2007 8:08 pm

   The elite are never afraid to risk the lives of the children of their maids and chauffeurs as they leverage a corrupt government to spend trillions of dollars to save their billion dollar investments that would have been too risky for anyone who can’t budget a few million dollars to bribe those politicians who haven’t already made the same questionable investments to wage war on their behalf.

4. scottml March 16th, 2007 9:56 pm

   To understand what is going on (and what has always gone on) with that family, one would need to read the book the Bush Family Dynasty. Bascially, the Prescot-Bush’s always make their money this way.

5. panamahead March 16th, 2007 11:31 pm

   I would encourage the Professor to write a book about the Iraq War. Crack it wide open so more Americans can see just how unbelievably niave and clueless, Bush and Cheney think most Americans are when it comes to the behind the scenes wheeling and dealing.

   If what the Professor says in this article is even half true, then Bush and Cheney have utter contempt for all of us.

   Bush kept repeating he’d “restore diginity and honor to the White House” just before taking office. Reminds me of a girl I used to know who I knew was sinful as hell. Yet whenever you’d see her, especially with her church friends, she’d go on and on and on about following Gods righteousness.

   If their preaching about it, its a sure bet their hands are already dirty.

6. simonhhh March 17th, 2007 11:10 am

   $2.5 TRILLION accrual cost
   One only hopes that the horrendous implications of the $2.5 TRILLION accrual costing of the Iraq War for the US taxppayer (as estimated by Nobel Laureate Professor Joseph Stiglitz, Columbia, and his Harvard colleague Professor Bilmes) will finally register with American and British voters.
   It must be stated that the post-invasion Iraqi excess deaths (avoidable deaths, deaths that did not have to happen) now total ONE MILLION as of March 2007, after 4 years of war and as estimated from data from the top US medical epidemiology group in the World’s top Public Health School (the Nobel Laureate-containing Bloomberg School of Public Health) at the top US Johns Hopkins University, published peer-reviewed in the top UK medical journal The Lancet and endorsed by 27 top Australian medical experts.
   The latest 2006 Johns Hopkins data ( indicating 13.3 deaths annually per 1,000 people and an annual Iraqi pre-invasion death rate of 5.5 deaths per 1,000) yields an annual excess death rate of 7.8 per 1,000 i.e. 7,800 per million. Assuming an average population of 27 million this yields post-invasion excess deaths = 7,800 x 27 x 4 = 842,000 i.e. 0.8 million.
   However taking the 2006 Johns Hopkins data but using a Jordan/Syria comparative baseline of 4 deaths per 1,000 per year (as opposed to a baseline of 5.5 deaths per 1,000 per year for pre-invasion Iraq after 12 years of crippling Sanctions) gives an annual excess death rate of 9.3 per 1,000 i.e. 9,300 per million and post-invasion excess deaths totalling 9,300 x 27 x 4 = 1,004,400 i.e. 1.0 million as of March 2007.
   These estimates are consonant with 3 other estimates from 3 independent medical literature and UN Agency data sets.
   The vastly lower Iraq Body Count estimate is of violent deaths only (ignoring the huge civilian deaths from egregious deprivation associated with racist US Asian wars) and from media reports (notoriously unreliable as discussed in the peer-reviewed paper in The Lancet by Dr Burnham and his colleagues from Johns Hopkins) .
   The UN estimates that there are 3.8 million Iraqi refugees and WHO estimates that the “total annual per capita medical expenditure” in Occupied Iraq is merely $64 - as compared to $23 for Occupied Afghanistan, $2,389 (UK), $2,874 (Australia) and $5,711 (US) (2003 figures).
   The 1 million post-invasion Iraqi excess deaths constitutes an Iraqi Holocaust largely due to Coalition violation of the Geneva Conventions that demand that Occupiers keep their conquered subjects ALIVE.
   Three quarters of the people of Iraq are Women and Children. The Bush War on Terror is in harsh reality a War on Women and Children, and more specifically a War on Asian Women and Children.
   This on-going Anglo-American crime against humanity (1 million post-invasion Iraqi excess deaths, 3.8 million refugees) has reached the magnitude of the British-overseen 1845-1850 Irish Famine (An Gorta Mór; 1 million dead, 2 million refugees).
   We are obliged to inform everyone about gross abuses of humanity - please inform everyone you know. Will British media in general - or , as in Orwell’s 1984, do they accept that “ignorance is strength” and that “2 plus 2 does not equal 4″?
   It should be noted that Germany is proposing that the EU criminalize minimizing or ignoring of ANY genocidal or man-made holocaust event (i.e. as an extension of widespread criminalization of denial of the WW2 Jewish Holocaust in Western Europe).

   Bush etal should be indicted on war crimes and crimes against humanity. Bush and Cheney the most impeachable individuals in US history

7. starjack March 17th, 2007 12:22 pm

   While this article offers an excellent dissection of the lies and hypocrisy of the Bush Administration’s warmongering, the introduction about Iranians giving their children “keys to paradise” is way out of context and sounds horribly cynical without the framing circumstances.

   That long war had been started by Saddam Hussein who was then acting with the encouragement and support of the US Government. For eight years, US-supported Iraqi jets bombed Iranian cities. Just after the revolution, the Iranian military was still equipped primarily with American planes and equipment acquired by the Shah; but without the maintenance to keep these planes, tanks, and other hi-tech equipment running they were quickly run-down and useless.

   Iranian families, especially in the western provinces, were decimated by Iraqi attacks. The ideals of martyrdom — consistent with Shi’ite reverence for the murdered grandsons of the prophet Muhammed (peace be upon him) — offered some comfort to families losing loved ones in these attacks. There are cemeteries filled with millions of soldiers and civilians killed by George H W Bush’s stooges in Baghdad.

   Iran was fighting the invasion the best they could with second-rate arms, but massive losses were inevitable — unless you accept surrender as an option. But Iran was under an unprovoked attack, and Iranians were indeed dying in defense of the homeland.

   While death was raining down on the Iranians what could they do to comfort children threatened with death, or loss of family? These stupid, plastic keys, and whatver assurance they could glean from the reverence of holy martyrs offered a sense of hope and validation, that through the horror of the attacks and the very real possibility of death at any time, if indeed they were to die they would be guaranteed comfort and joy in the hereafter.

   The problems and shortcomings of such cold comfort are many and self-evident to the western mind, raised on skepticism. And even to religious Muslims it is clearly a poor substitute for peace and security, but under those circumstances can you offer any better hope and comfort to those terified children?

   I’ve walked through a small part of a vast Martyrs’ Graveyard, seen the posters honoring the dead, and flown over ruins of dead towns where those children died clutching their keys. Their memory desesrves better than being used as a cynical devise to be compared to the abuse of a government misled by the son of a Bush who authorized and oversaw their murders.

8. MollyJ March 17th, 2007 7:04 pm

   Starjack, just as the Iranians whose leaders gave their soldiers the plastic keys has a context, so does the patriot-and-God-talk thatlaunches young people to fight on our side.

   The notion of asking people to risk life and limb and die is something that has been done with nobility in the past. The comfort of every grandmother, mother, daughter sister who lost a son, grandson, brother, father in WWII is that the cause was so noble. That same nobility was tarnished in Viet Nam and again in Iraq. Leaders who ask their young to go to war need to be damned sure that the cause is worth dying for.

   That truth exists in all cultures and is equally vile in all cultures when violated.

9. Lobo Gris March 18th, 2007 1:39 am

   MollyJ March 17th, 2007 7:04 pm

   “Leaders who ask their young to go to war need to be damned sure that the cause is worth dying for.”

   That could be easily guaranteed but I’m sure won’t be.

   All that is needed is a law for an immediate draft of all lawmakers immediate military age relatives into a combat arms branch of the Army or Marines with a guarantee of serving in combat anytime the U.S. enters into armed conflict.

   If it is that important and worth the sacrifice then our leaders should be willing to be among the first to do so, right?

   Lobo Gris

10. MollyJ March 18th, 2007 7:28 am

    While Farenheit 9/11 had its’ imperfections, this is one point Michael Moore made well.

    Of course not.

    Of course the rich and connected WILL NOT go in harms way; that is for the poor and the uneducated.

11. bnxanoniweti December 12th, 2007 9:03 am

    titxehyvurisy…

    exwuwepuwawa…

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