Thoughts on Fiction-Based Reality (Scary!)

[Liberty Belle]

Thoughts on Fiction-based Reality:
Or Does the Future Stand a Chance?

Here's a strange, small tale of our times, as reported from Washington by Guy Dinmore in the sober British Financial Times (Powell gives bleak assessment of Iraq security problems). According to an anonymous counterinsurgency expert Dinmore evidently interviewed, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has a "brutally accurate" picture of the deteriorating situation in Iraq and "its potential dangers." But, writes Dinmore, "a member of an influential neoconservative policy group said that such warnings ‘stop well short of the president.'" Well, actually, not completely short, for Dinsmore then offers the following:


"According to Chas Freeman, former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia and head of the independent Middle East Policy Council, Mr. Bush recently asked Powell for his view on the progress of the war. ‘We're losing,' Mr. Powell was quoted as saying. Mr. Freeman said Mr. Bush then asked the secretary of state to leave."

Perhaps he even sent Powell -- or, as other rumors have it, a slightly lower-level official -- to the principal. This fits, by the way, with an account in the invaluable Washington insider e-service The Nelson Report. Chris Nelson wrote the following in the first week of January after various officials had returned from discouraging inspection trips to Iraq:


"There is rising concern among senior officials that President Bush does not grasp the increasingly grim reality of the security situation in Iraq because he refuses to listen to that type of information. Our sources say that attempts to brief Bush on various grim realities have been personally rebuffed by the President, who actually says that he does not want to hear ‘bad news.' Rather, Bush makes clear that all he wants are progress reports, where they exist, and those facts which seem to support his declared mission in Iraq… building democracy. ‘That's all he wants to hear about,' we have been told. So, ‘in' are the latest totals on school openings and ‘out' are reports from senior U.S. military commanders (and those intelligence experts still on the job) that they see an insurgency becoming increasing effective, and their projection that it will ‘just get worse.'"

full story at:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2131

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. From history

the Sun King also refused to receive any bad news...

Stalin was almost destroyed (morally) by German troops outside Moscow and Hitler did nto want to believe teh Russians were at the gates in 45.

This is common with psycophants who cannot deal with reality

[Eloriel]

6. New word?

Are you talking sycophants? or Psychopaths? Or was that an intentional meld of the two?

Kinda cute if it's intentional (or even if it's not), but the meaning isn't all that clear to me.

[Liberty Belle]

7. Interesting parallels, and hardly comforting.

Thanks, Nadin, for pointing out that Bush fits right in with other despots and lunatics.

[TalkingDog]

2. The madness of King George. n/t

[Pam-Moby]

3. Powell

started speaking the truth and the chimp would not stand for it. What a sick leader.

[bpilgrim]

4. What Uncle Sam Really Wants

by Noam Chomsky


The main goals of US foreign policy

1. Protecting our turf
2. The liberal extreme
3. The "Grand Area"
4. Restoring the traditional order
5. Our commitment to democracy
6. The threat of a good example
7. The three-sided world

Devastation abroad

1. Our Good Neighbor policy
2. The crucifixion of El Salvador
3. Teaching Nicaragua a lesson
4. Making Guatemala a killing field
5. The invasion of Panama
6. Inoculating Southeast Asia
7. The Gulf War
8. The Iran/contra cover-up
9. The prospects for Eastern Europe
10. The world's rent-a-thug

Brainwashing at home

1. How the Cold War worked
2. The war on (certain) drugs
3. War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery.
Ignorance is Strength.
4. Socialism, real and fake
5. The media

The Future

1. Things have changed
2. What you can do
3. The struggle continues
4. Notes

read online free...
http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/sam/sam-contents.html


http://images.globalfreepress.com

peace

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. I don't know where to start with Chomsky

Would people recommend that I look for his earliest work and then go through it all chronologically? Or is this book as good a place to start as any?

[sweetheart]

5. Hitler was like that

He was not a man to have his military plans questioned... and he
certainly was very intent on hearing that "stalingrad" was being won
and that the eastern front was just around the corner from getting
better, bringing good german democracy to all those peoples.

GOsh, the difference between the 2 types of democracy, is basically
the technology of the explosives that mass murders the civilians.

Bush is a sick fuck and belongs in a hangmans noose.