This video from the USA is called Cheney: I never linked Iraq with 9/11. Oh really?
From London daily The Morning Star:
Almost past belief
(Sunday 26 November 2006)
THERE are times when the phrase mind-boggling simply isn’t adequate to describe the reaction to one or other item of news.
This is just such a time. The news that shattered and partially dismantled Iraq has paid out over $40 billion in so-called “reparations” is bad enough.
But to find out to whom that vast sum has been or is about to be paid to is so shattering as to be almost incredible.
That a country which has been illegally invaded, which has lost over 650,000 of its population, which has been carved up between the oil transnationals and the states that host them and which has had a puppet government foisted on it which has no more relation to democracy than fly in the air should have to pay reparations is, in itself, ludicrous.
That the companies which are claiming large slices of that $40 billion should include Kentucky Fried Chicken is appalling.
But that the list should include Halliburton, the scandal-plagued oil company that US Vice-President Dick Cheney used to run and which has been coining it ever since the war started, firstly by winning the contract to put out the oilfield fires that the US started and latterly by multibillion dollar “reconstruction” contracts to rebuild what the US and Britain demolished in the course of the war, is utterly beyond the bounds of reason.
After that, the news that Bechtel, which recently announced that it is leaving Iraq after three years of work there, during which it pocketed a cool $2.3 billion should have the unmitigated gall to join the queue for reparation handouts, merely puts the icing sugar on the cake.
And it is not just companies that are hitching themselves to this vulture-dominated bandwagon.
The government of Kuwait has already been awarded over $273 million and is now picking up another $335 million.
‘Coalition of the willing’ in Iraq smaller and smaller: here.
Dear Kitty. Some blog 
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php?id=202
Sunday, November 26th, 2006
Cut and Run, the Only Brave Thing to Do …a letter from Michael
Moore
Friends,
Tomorrow marks the day that we will have been in Iraq longer
than we were in all of World War II.
That’s right. We were able to defeat all of Nazi Germany,
Mussolini, and the entire Japanese empire in LESS time than
it’s taken the world’s only superpower to secure the road from
the airport to downtown Baghdad.
And we haven’t even done THAT. After 1,347 days, in the same
time it took us to took us to sweep across North Africa, storm
the beaches of Italy, conquer the South Pacific, and liberate all
of Western Europe, we cannot, after over 3 and 1/2 years, even
take over a single highway and protect ourselves from a
homemade device of two tin cans placed in a pothole. No
wonder the cab fare from the airport into Baghdad is now
running around $35,000 for the 25-minute ride. And that doesn’t
even include a friggin’ helmet.
Is this utter failure the fault of our troops? Hardly. That’s
because no amount of troops or choppers or democracy shot
out of the barrel of a gun is ever going to “win” the war in Iraq. It
is a lost war, lost because it never had a right to be won, lost
because it was started by men who have never been to war,
men who hide behind others sent to fight and die.
Let’s listen to what the Iraqi people are saying, according to a recent poll conducted by the University of Maryland:
** 71% of all Iraqis now want the U.S. out of Iraq.
** 61% of all Iraqis SUPPORT insurgent attacks on U.S. troops.
Yes, the vast majority of Iraqi citizens believe that our soldiers
should be killed and maimed! So what the hell are we still doing
there? Talk about not getting the hint.
There are many ways to liberate a country. Usually the
residents of that country rise up and liberate themselves. That’s
how we did it. You can also do it through nonviolent, mass civil
disobedience. That’s how India did it. You can get the world to
boycott a regime until they are so ostracized they capitulate.
That’s how South Africa did it. Or you can just wait them out
and, sooner or later, the king’s legions simply leave (sometimes
just because they’re too cold). That’s how Canada did it.
The one way that DOESN’T work is to invade a country and tell
the people, “We are here to liberate you!” — when they have
done NOTHING to liberate themselves. Where were all the
suicide bombers when Saddam was oppressing them? Where
were the insurgents planting bombs along the roadside as the
evildoer Saddam’s convoy passed them by? I guess ol’ Saddam
was a cruel despot — but not cruel enough for thousands to risk
their necks. “Oh no, Mike, they couldn’t do that! Saddam would
have had them killed!” Really? You don’t think King George had
any of the colonial insurgents killed? You don’t think Patrick
Henry or Tom Paine were afraid? That didn’t stop them. When
tens of thousands aren’t willing to shed their own blood to
remove a dictator, that should be the first clue that they aren’t
going to be willing participants when you decide you’re going to
do the liberating for them.
A country can HELP another people overthrow a tyrant (that’s
what the French did for us in our revolution), but after you help
them, you leave. Immediately. The French didn’t stay and tell us
how to set up our government. They didn’t say, “we’re not
leaving because we want your natural resources.” They left us
to our own devices and it took us six years before we had an
election. And then we had a bloody civil war. That’s what
happens, and history is full of these examples. The French
didn’t say, “Oh, we better stay in America, otherwise they’re
going to kill each other over that slavery issue!”
The only way a war of liberation has a chance of succeeding is
if the oppressed people being liberated have their own citizens
behind them — and a group of Washingtons, Jeffersons,
Franklins, Ghandis and Mandellas leading them. Where are
these beacons of liberty in Iraq? This is a joke and it’s been a
joke since the beginning. Yes, the joke’s been on us, but with
655,000 Iraqis now dead as a result of our invasion (source:
Johns Hopkins University), I guess the cruel joke is on them. At
least they’ve been liberated, permanently.
So I don’t want to hear another word about sending more troops
(wake up, America, John McCain is bonkers), or “redeploying”
them, or waiting four months to begin the “phase-out.” There is
only one solution and it is this: Leave. Now. Start tonight. Get
out of there as fast as we can. As much as people of good heart
and conscience don’t want to believe this, as much as it kills us
to accept defeat, there is nothing we can do to undo the
damage we have done. What’s happened has happened. If you
were to drive drunk down the road and you killed a child, there
would be nothing you could do to bring that child back to life. If
you invade and destroy a country, plunging it into a civil war,
there isn’t much you can do ’til the smoke settles and blood is
mopped up. Then maybe you can atone for the atrocity you
have committed and help the living come back to a better life.
The Soviet Union got out of Afghanistan in 36 weeks. They did
so and suffered hardly any losses as they left. They realized the
mistake they had made and removed their troops. A civil war
ensued. The bad guys won. Later, we overthrew the bad guys
and everybody lived happily ever after. See! It all works out in
the end!
The responsibility to end this war now falls upon the Democrats.
Congress controls the purse strings and the Constitution says
only Congress can declare war. Mr. Reid and Ms. Pelosi now
hold the power to put an end to this madness. Failure to do so
will bring the wrath of the voters. We aren’t kidding around,
Democrats, and if you don’t believe us, just go ahead and
continue this war another month. We will fight you harder than
we did the Republicans. The opening page of my website has a
photo of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, each made up by a
collage of photos of the American soldiers who have died in
Bush’s War. But it is now about to become the
Bush/Democratic Party War unless swift action is taken.
This is what we demand:
1. Bring the troops home now. Not six months from now. NOW.
Quit looking for a way to win. We can’t win. We’ve lost.
Sometimes you lose. This is one of those times. Be brave and
admit it.
2. Apologize to our soldiers and make amends. Tell them we
are sorry they were used to fight a war that had NOTHING to do
with our national security. We must commit to taking care of
them so that they suffer as little as possible. The mentally and
physically maimed must get the best care and significant
financial compensation. The families of the deceased deserve
the biggest apology and they must be taken care of for the rest
of their lives.
3. We must atone for the atrocity we have perpetuated on the
people of Iraq. There are few evils worse than waging a war
based on a lie, invading another country because you want what
they have buried under the ground. Now many more will die.
Their blood is on our hands, regardless for whom we voted. If
you pay taxes, you have contributed to the three billion dollars a
week now being spent to drive Iraq into the hellhole it’s become.
When the civil war is over, we will have to help rebuild Iraq. We
can receive no redemption until we have atoned.
In closing, there is one final thing I know. We Americans are
better than what has been done in our name. A majority of us
were upset and angry after 9/11 and we lost our minds. We
didn’t think straight and we never looked at a map. Because we
are kept stupid through our pathetic education system and our
lazy media, we knew nothing of history. We didn’t know that
WE were the ones funding and arming Saddam for many years,
including those when he massacred the Kurds. He was our guy.
We didn’t know what a Sunni or a Shiite was, never even heard
the words. Eighty percent of our young adults (according to
National Geographic) were not able to find Iraq on the map. Our
leaders played off our stupidity, manipulated us with lies, and
scared us to death.
But at our core we are a good people. We may be slow
learners, but that “Mission Accomplished” banner struck us as
odd, and soon we began to ask some questions. Then we
began to get smart. By this past November 7th, we got mad and
tried to right our wrongs. The majority now know the truth. The
majority now feel a deep sadness and guilt and a hope that
somehow we can make make it all right again.
Unfortunately, we can’t. So we will accept the consequences of
our actions and do our best to be there should the Iraqi people
ever dare to seek our help in the future. We ask for their
forgiveness.
We demand the Democrats listen to us and get out of Iraq now.
Yours,
Michael Moore
http://www.michaelmoore.com
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At 12:11 AM 27/11/06 +0100, you wrote:
> > http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php?id=202
> >
> >Sunday, November 26th, 2006
> >Cut and Run, the Only Brave Thing to Do …a letter from Michael Moore
Michael Moore is a great entertainer, he is funny, and reaches many Americans who might not otherwise listen to an anti-war message.
However his own politics are extremely weak, and he cannot at all be called “anti-imperialist.” Instead, he opposes the war from the standpoint of strengthening the US empire, and so he argues against the Iraq war as a “mistake,” and this blurs his analysis in many ways. For instance, he speaks of the U.S. ruling class as “we” and he makes various racist insinuations concerning the Iraqi people:
> >The one way that DOESN’T work is to invade a country and tell
> >the people, “We are here to liberate you!” — when they have
> >done NOTHING to liberate themselves.
So he is saying that the Iraqi’s don’t even deserve to be liberated because they had been complacent with the Saddam Hussein dictatorship! He obviously has not looked into the history of Iraq, but can ignorantly make such an insulting remark about an entire nation! Of course there had been a huge resistance to the Hussein government, and indeed thousands were killed (usually after being tortured) by that regime for their political opposition.
But then on the other hand, he appears to take at face value Bush’s double-speak “We are here to liberate you!” rather than revealing that the Bush’s “liberation” meant bringing Iraq into the American economic sphere.
Moore’s view, apparently, is that the war would have been a good thing except for the Iraqi people’s failure to “appreciate” liberation. A mixture of complete ignorance and racism! In the following paragraphs (below) he further reveals his ignorance.
> >A country can HELP another people overthrow a tyrant (that’s
> >what the French did for us in our revolution), but after you help
> >them, you leave. Immediately.
And now he’s saying it might have been alright if the U.S. had just overthrown the regime and then left. But again, he never asked what the Iraqi people wanted in the first place; HE would rather decide what they need. So he ignores the right of nations to self-determination, is oblivious to the character of U.S. imperialism, and tells us not IF but HOW the US should invade other countries. Right.
> >There is
> >only one solution and it is this: Leave. Now. Start tonight. Get
> >out of there as fast as we can.
Yes. Why couldn’t he just have said that, and not justified it with disrespect (and ignorance) toward the people of the country that Bush invaded?
> >The Soviet Union got out of Afghanistan …. A civil war
> >ensued. The bad guys won. Later, we overthrew the bad guys
> >and everybody lived happily ever after…..
It almost sounds like he is being facetious, but I cannot find an actual hint here (or in his other writings) of opposition to the US/NATO war in Afghanistan! In that case, it’s no wonder he can’t oppose the Iraq war on a principled basis, but instead just bemoans the fact that the U.S. is losing that war. He has consulted neither with the people of Iraq nor Afghanistan, but offers military advice on HOW and WHERE imperialist wars should properly be fought. 😦
> >The responsibility to end this war now falls upon the Democrats.
Which is why it will continue. Yet Moore continues to expect the Democrats, who have been major supporters of the war since the beginning (and could have stopped it at any time), to “see the light.” Hardly.
> >1. Bring the troops home now. Not six months from now. NOW.
> >Quit looking for a way to win. We can’t win. We’ve lost.
Again, he reveals his point of view. No, “WE” haven’t lost. The US empire has lost, and for us that should be a victory! But of course the Iraqi people have also lost (in many many ways) but that is not a critical point in the arguments of Moore.
In summary, I would say that Michael Moore is a great film-maker and entertainer. He is able to reach some Americans who are politically unaware. But his politics fall within the framework of the Democratic party (which he supports) and his humorous “wisdom” is an affront to those on the left.
– Jeff
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