More evidence that Bush and Cheney intended to mislead the nation into the Iraq war

When you think in small enough chunks, everything becomes moral or amoral, never immoral. Hannah Arendt's Banality of Evil is illustrated below, with regard to the behavior of CIA briefer Michael Morell. The conduct and motives of Bush/Cheney are a different matter entirely. --

Host Chris Matthews asked Morell about a statement Cheney made in 2003: "We know he [Saddam Hussein] has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons. And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." Here's the conversation that followed: MATTHEWS: Was that true? MORELL: We were saying— MATTHEWS: Can you answer that question? Was that true? MORELL: That's not true. MATTHEWS: Well, why'd you let them get away with it? MORELL: Look, my job Chris— MATTHEWS: You're the briefer for the president on intelligence, you're the top person to go in and tell him what's going on. You see Cheney make this charge he's got a nuclear bomb and then they make subsequent charges he knew how to deliver it…and nobody raised their hand and said, "No that's not what we told him." MORELL: Chris, Chris Chris, what's my job, right? My job— MATTHEWS: To tell the truth. MORELL: My job—no, as the briefer? As the briefer? MATTHEWS: Okay, go ahead. MORELL: As the briefer, my job is to carry CIA's best information and best analysis to the president of the United States and make sure he understands it. My job is to not watch what they're saying on TV.

Continue ReadingMore evidence that Bush and Cheney intended to mislead the nation into the Iraq war

The real risk of terrorism – compared to other risks

What is the real risk of an American dying of terrorism? This article presents numbers that put things in perspective. The numbers are based off these statistics offered by the CDC.

Comparing the CDC numbers to terrorism deaths means: – You are 35,079 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist attack – You are 33,842 times more likely to die from cancer than from a terrorist attack – You are 4,311 times more likely to die from diabetes than from a terrorist attack – You are 3,157 times more likely to die from flu or pneumonia than from a terrorist attack – You are 2,091 times more likely to die from blood poisoning than from a terrorist attack – You are 1,064 times more likely to die as your lungs swell up after your food or beverage goes down the wrong pipe.

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More on endless and increasing American warmongering

Alternet gives us real numbers on the cost of endless warmongering:

President Obama and Senator John McCain, who have clashed on almost every conceivable issue, do agree on one thing: the Pentagon needs more money. Obama wants to raise the Pentagon’s budget for fiscal year 2016 by $35 billion more than the caps that exist under current law allow. McCain wants to see Obama his $35 billion and raise him $17 billion more. Last week, the House and Senate Budget Committees attempted to meet Obama’s demands by pressing to pour tens of billions of additional dollars into the uncapped supplemental war budget. What will this new avalanche of cash be used for? A major ground war in Iraq? Bombing the Assad regime in Syria? A permanent troop presence in Afghanistan? More likely, the bulk of the funds will be wielded simply to take pressure off the Pentagon’s base budget so it can continue to pay for staggeringly expensive projects like the F-35 combat aircraft and a new generation of ballistic missile submarines. Whether the enthusiastic budgeteers in the end succeed in this particular maneuver to create a massive Pentagon slush fund, the effort represents a troubling development for anyone who thinks that Pentagon spending is already out of hand.

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War on Terror: The medicine is worse than the disease

Common Dreams reports:

In their joint report— Body Count: Casualty Figures after 10 Years of the 'War on Terror—Physicians for Social Responsibility, Physicians for Global Survival, and the Nobel Prize-winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War concluded that this number is staggering, with at least 1.3 million lives lost in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan alone since the onset of the war following September 11, 2001. ... According to Gould's forward, co-authored with Dr. Tim Takaro, the public is purposefully kept in the dark about this toll. "A politically useful option for U.S. political elites has been to attribute the on-going violence to internecine conflicts of various types, including historical religious animosities, as if the resurgence and brutality of such conflicts is unrelated to the destabilization cause by decades of outside military intervention," they write. "As such, under-reporting of the human toll attributed to ongoing Western interventions, whether deliberate of through self-censorship, has been key to removing the 'fingerprints' of responsibility."

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Blank check war

From a mass emailing I received this morning from Rep. Alan Grayson:

So we had a hearing a week ago on ISIS ("we" being the House Foreign Affairs Committee), and the witnesses were three experts on U.S. policy in the Middle East, all dues-paying members of the Military-Industrial Complex. They were James Jeffrey, who was Deputy Chief of Mission at our embassy in Iraq; Rick Brennan, a political scientist at the Rand Corp.; and Dafna Rand, who was on the National Security Council staff. The White House had just released the President's draft Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) against ISIS, and I felt that I needed a good translator, so I asked them what the ISIS war authorization meant. Their answers were chilling: the ISIS war authorization means whatever the President wants it to mean. If you don't believe me, just listen to them: GRAYSON: Section 2(c) of the President's draft Authorization for the Use of Military Force reads as follows: "The authority granted in subsection A [to make war on ISIS and forces 'alongside' ISIS] does not authorize the use of US armed forces in enduring offensive ground combat operations." Ambassador Jeffrey, what does 'enduring' mean? JEFFREY: My answer would be a somewhat sarcastic one: "Whatever the Executive at the time defines 'enduring' as." And I have a real problem with that. GRAYSON: Dr. Brennan? BRENNAN: I have real problems with that also. I don't know what it means. I can just see the lawyers fighting over the meaning of this. But more importantly, if you're looking at committing forces for something that you are saying is either [a] vital or important interest of the United States, and you get in the middle of a battle, and all of a sudden, are you on offense, or are you on defense? What happens if neighbors cause problems? Wars never end the way that they were envisioned. And so I think that that's maybe a terrible mistake to put in the AUMF. GRAYSON: Dr. Rand? RAND: Enduring, in my mind, specifies an open-endedness, it specifies lack of clarity on the particular objective at hand. GRAYSON: Dr. Rand, is two weeks 'enduring'? RAND: I would leave that to the lawyers to determine exactly. GRAYSON: So your answer is [that] you don't know, right? How about two months? RAND: I don't know. Again, I think it would depend on the particular objective, 'enduring' in my mind is not having a particular military objective in mind. [More . . . ]

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