When War Goes Off the Script

[bemildred]

A Week of Shock and Awe

It's more than a little ironic that Bush--a guy who has spent his oil-stained career mocking those who call for federal laws to mandate better gas mileage from Detroit automakers--would make a major purchase decision (we're talking about a 25,000- vehicle order here) based upon fuel economy. It's also worth noting that these Pentagon-bound Chrysler minivans will all be made in Canada, while the Humvee is made in the good old USA.

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Then we have the new crackdown in Baghdad--you know, the one that the Iraqi government announced four days ahead of the launch date. What was that all about? Clearly the Iraqi military and police wanted to make sure everyone who might be shooting at them got well out of the way beforehand. Even so, the U.S. military managed to botch the job by immediately going out and arresting, not insurgents, but a leading Sunni imam. And not just any imam, but a man who heads of one of the political parties the U.S. has supposedly been trying to coax into participating in the puppet government of Iraq. This is the kind of tactical brilliance that has turned what was supposed to be a quick war of liberation into a bitter quagmire. You almost have to think US Ambassador John Negroponte is channeling the incredibly inept L. Paul Bremer.

This was followed by news that many if not most of the prisoners at Guantanamo, far from being captured in battle, were in fact sold to US forces by Afghan warlords and other nefarious traffickers. If there were doubts about the guilt of these alleged "terror suspects" before, it should now be totally clear beyond a shadow of a doubt that the U.S. has committed a huge mistake in incarcerating these people. U.S. officials, true to form, have been quick to deny that they paid for the captives, but already, these denials have been undermined by testimony from people involved in the deals, who are reporting that millions of dollars were shipped over to Afghanistan in the weeks after 9-11 to pay to those willing to turn over suspects.

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You think it can't get more outrageous, and then the Discovery Channel weighs in Monday with a documentary on the pilgrimage to Mecca titled "The Hajj: Journey of a Lifetime." The sponsor? A toilet bowl cleaner.

CounterPunch

[TexasLawyer]

1. Great summary of the week's events

I especially appreciate his analysis of the brilliant U.S. strategy of buying, from local warlords, alleged Al Qaeda or Taliban members. Of course, the only "verification" that these guys actually were AQ or Taliban was from the warlord seller himself, who was making a bundle off of each live body he sold to the U.S.



The problem with this strategy, obviously, is that in a land composed of rival tribes and warring factions, there is no way to verify whether someone who is handed over to you for $25,000 in cash is a genuine Al Qaeda or Taliban member, or just some unlucky goatherd or loser at cards. America's heroes--the camouflage-clad goons at Bagram Airbase and other grisly detention centers--apparently found that the solution to this dilemma was to beat the crap out of the suspects until they either died or admitted they were evildoers, at which point they were shipped to Guantanamo. (Back in the days of the Salem witch trials, they had a similarly reliable approach: tie a suspected witch to a board and put her underwater. If she lived, she was a witch. If she died, she was innocent.)

[bpilgrim]

2. we're swaping Humvee's for Chrysler minivans - OMG!

"First we learned, courtesy of Edmunds, the car magazine, that the Bush administration has decided to equip the occupation forces in Iraq with Chrysler minivans, in place of GM's Humvee gas hogs. This is a low blow to General Motors, which only days earlier saw its bonds reduced to junk status by the ratings agencies largely because of the company's moronically short-sighted decision to focus on gas-guzzling SUVs like the Hummer."

REPORT: Stung by High Gas Prices, Uncle Sam Buys Minivans to Replace Army Humvees



Date Posted 05-23-2005

source...
http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/Articles/articleId=105726

:crazy:


http://images.GLobalFreePress.com

psst... pass the word

peace

[bemildred]

3. I'm sort of thinking about how fast an "up-armored" minivan goes. nt