Archive for April 19th, 2008
The New York Times is reporting that the Pentagon has sought to mold public opinion starting from the buildup to the War in Iraq through a cabal of retired generals posing as “independent military analysts” on television news channels. And shocker: these retired generals have strong financial ties to the military industrial complex and to the military contractors on which they are supposed to be commenting.
The generals’ mission? To plant seeds of untruth about the War in Iraq.
The thing is that I am actually shocked. Really shocked. If we can’t trust our retired generals to give us objective, honest, sobering analysis on the state of our nation’s security, then who can we trust? I
mean, it is becoming seriously difficult not to drown in complete cynicism here!
And this whole thing reeks of one name: Donald Rumsfeld.
Citizens! We must demand a more transparent government!!! We elect (most of) these people! We can vote (most of) them out!
Moral of the story: don’t trust retired generals posing as military analysts on television news.
As some got super-duper-to-the-extreme-max richy-rich this week by hedging bets on our collective demise, thousands of cogs expect to be laid off next week thanks to Citigroup, Merrill Lynch & Co and Wachovia bungling.
Expect the trickle over and down effect in the coming months. You better make appointments with your dentist, doctor, psychiatrist and all other necessary practitioners while you still have coverage.
Remember how in the years preceding 9/11 the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan during the power vacuum and chaos that was created after the Soviets’
withdrawal?
Remember how the Taliban instituted sharia law throughout Afghanistan?
Well, if you didn’t know, now you know.
And an interesting fact that never got that much press was that after the US invaded Afghanistan in 2001 the Taliban simply moved across the border into the Northwest Tribal regions of Pakistan and opened up shop.
And this week the Taliban successfully instituted sharia law in the region.
And now the Taliban is holding Pakistan’s Ambassador to Afganistan hostage.
Umm … Is anyone else concerned with this? We should be. Without the Taliban, Al Qaeda wouldn’t have had Afghanistan as a safe haven for recruiting and training terrorists and plotting 9/11. And the Taliban is most assuredly giving asylum to Osama Bin Ladin (our real public enemy number 1).
This is a domino effect all over again. A domino effect that ended in 9/11 last time. And we don’t want history to repeat itself. Make no mistake, what is happening, or being allowed to happen, right now in the Tribal Regions of Pakistan will have direct consequences in the United States and in many Western nations.
Not that I need to remind anyone, but who should be held accountable for this disastrous policy failure of allowing the Taliban to escape and regroup and thrive? President George W. Bush.
