GemFireAir
The Power of Sex, War, And Money | Part Two: WAR
marty kleva
November 3, 2006



Whether they call themselves Russians, Israelis, Lebanese, Arabs, or Americans, we would do a lot better were we to distinguish the individual person from the government that orders their life.

Were you and I to go to Iraq, we would find all kinds of humanity, some kind-unkind, quiet-loud, gentle-brutal, civilian-military, both Iraqis and Americans of secular and religious persuasion, and zealots of religion, government and military genre.

When a person does not know how to act from their own integrity, but only takes orders, then the person becomes a robot at the mercy of whichever monstrous giant runs them, whether it be a religious belief, a military regime, a dictator, or even our own once, but no longer, democratic government.

Learning to think for ourselves and not allowing others to raise our fear, a fear based on their values, may achieve some progress in the evolution of mankind. When we allow the zealots of all kinds, from the gamut of religions to any other belief systems to determine our actions, we then have donated our personal power to them and we have allowed their constructed fears to become ours, their terrorist hearts to inflict terror on ours.

Stand back from that maddening crowd and consider that whether you or I believe we are right and they are wrong, right or wrong cannot exist alone, but are interminably fused together like molten lava, and it will be together that we descend into the bowels of terror. The picture of fear and terror may be different in Iraq than it is in America, but they are based in the same origins. These origins are more than ancient, and go back further in time than even the Bible. Most people participating are puppets at the end of the moneylenders’ string and don’t even know it.

Presently, with the wars the Bush administration is already engaged in and the one’s they are planning to start, it is very clear that there is far more behind the reality of what is being told and admitted to the American people than anyone could ever imagine. One even hears that the governor of the Alto region of Paraguay told a Paraguayan news agency that there are indications that Mr. Bush has purchased a 100,000 acre ranch near the border with Brazil and Bolivia that is reported to be near Paraguay’s largest underground water reserves.

One need not only rely on instinct to conclude, there’s something smelly and rotten besides fish in Denmark upon discovery that the President has signed into law the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that removes the safety and protection of the Constitution from the American people, leaves the definition of ‘torture’ up to this radical administration, and does away with OUR right of habeas corpus – the ancient writ that allows a person being held captive by a government to be informed what the charges are and to have a judicial resolution of them – within the limitation of judicial review.

I can say it no better than MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, who in my estimation is deserving of GemFireAir’s Second Granting of the “Woodsman Award”, the first being awarded to Lou Dobbs!

Of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, Mr. Olbermann says:

“We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom to a man who has said it is unacceptable to compare anything this country has ever done to anything the terrorists have ever done.

We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom to a man who has insisted again that "the United States does not torture. It's against our laws and it's against our values" and who has said it with a straight face while the pictures from Abu Ghraib Prison and the stories of Waterboarding figuratively fade in and out, around him.

We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom to a man who may now, if he so decides, declare not merely any non-American citizens "unlawful enemy combatants" and ship them somewhere - anywhere - but may now, if he so decides, declare you an "unlawful enemy combatant" and ship you somewhere - anywhere.

And if you think this hyperbole or hysteria, ask the newspaper editors when John Adams was president or the pacifists when Woodrow Wilson was president or the Japanese at Manzanar when Franklin Roosevelt was president.

And if you somehow think habeas corpus has not been suspended for American citizens but only for everybody else, ask yourself this: If you are pulled off the street tomorrow, and they call you an alien or an undocumented immigrant or an "unlawful enemy combatant" - exactly how are you going to convince them to give you a court hearing to prove you are not? Do you think this attorney general is going to help you?”

Is this enough or do we need more? Do we yet get the picture? Well here’s more.

Beginning on Jan. 14, 2007, the government must give us permission to leave-or re-enter-the United States.

According to Mark Nestmann, President of The Nestmann Group:

“The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (HSA) has proposed that all airlines, cruise lines-even fishing boats-be required to obtain clearance for each passenger they propose taking into or out of the United States.

It doesn't matter if you have a U.S. passport-a “travel document” that now, absent a court order to the contrary, gives you a virtually unqualified right to enter or leave the United States, any time you want. When the DHS system comes into effect next January, if the agency says “no” to a clearance request, or doesn't answer the request at all, you won't be permitted to enter-or leave-the United States.

Why might the HSA deny you permission to leave-or enter-the United States? No one knows, because the entire clearance procedure would be an administrative determination made secretly, with no right of appeal. Naturally, the decision would be made without a warrant, without probable cause and without even any particular degree of suspicion. Basically, if the HSA decides it doesn't like you, you're a prisoner-either outside, or inside, the United States, whether or not you hold a U.S. passport.”

So while fighting over “Who’s on first and What’s on second” takes up time and energy, it also distracts the players from the fact that the real game being played is Grand Chess, and not baseball.

For American citizens however, the game is WAR on the home-front. The purpose of the game is to accrue money and power at the hands and expense of the masses — that’s us. If we pay attention to those who declare war and those who fight it, we might question if there is anyone in the present senior administration who has ever had combat duty, or who have had actual military experience? Except for Colin Powell, who quit the administration after the disgraceful lies he delivered to the American public and the world at the U.N. about the WMD that Iraq never had, I do not find a one. Correct me if I am wrong. And we will not forget the questionable military record of George Bush . . . every American ought to be well aware of that by now.

So how is it then that this president, along with Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, insists on picking fights with so many other nations?

They hate us you say — and they want to kill every one of us in our beds.

Now that is surely a most irrational statement and the greatest generalization to believe in these days. Don’t misunderstand. I am sure that there ARE those who may wish to do so, but ALL Iraqis, ALL Iranians, ALL North Koreans? The Lebanese? The Afghanis?

One must also wonder why, if the 9/11, reputed high-jackers were ALL Saudis, then why is it that we have not also attacked Saudi Arabia? Could it be that it would get too close to the involved friendships and close financial ties the Bush family and Dick Cheney have with the Saudi sheiks?

There were NO Iraqis on those planes that attacked the WTC, nor were there Iranians, or Lebanese, etc. but there were reported to be Saudis. Osama bin Laden’s family is Saudi, and he is still alive. George Bush has been heard and publicly quoted to say that he doesn’t know where bin Laden is, and he “can’t be bothered” about it.

These words speak greater truths than the reasons that have come from both this administration and those in Congress, Democrat and Republican alike who have supported this war against Iraq from the beginning.

The Iraqis did nothing against our country! And bully and miscreant that he is, neither did Sadaam Hussein. We could stop right here. But the proponents want us to believe that because most Iraqis are Muslim, in their hearts they would have wanted to kill us anyway. Considering the decimation that we are responsible for delivering to the people of Iraq, I have no trouble understanding why now they might not be able to separate me and you from the actions of our government and military to wish us dead, if only to have us go away!

There are plenty of people who may wish us dead, but saying so and wishing it, does not make it so. Only the individual and collective fear in our own mind makes it seem real. We have done a good job in allowing ourselves to believe a well-planned and implemented campaign to impugn the enemy to be any and all Muslims.

In fact we have been duped to do the dirty work of a few financial and political elite to gain control of a portion of the world that is the antithesis of our Western world. Read “The Grand Chessboard” by Zbigniew Brezinski former National Security Advisor to President Carter and find the game plan all neatly laid out to a public that refuses to believe it. What has happened is the latest in a string of Hoaxes played upon the American people and inflicted upon the rest of the world to get us to enter a war.

There is no honor to fight a war against people who have no viable defense so that their natural resources can be stripped from them. There is no integrity in that. In fact it is morally decrepit.

Some G.I.’s and retired senior generals have been trying to tell us that they see how we have been duped into believing this Commander and Chief and his cronies. Once in Iraq, they have seen first-hand how other American soldiers are using Iraq for a joy ride and committing crimes on innocent civilians for the fun of it, for the rush of power it gives them. That makes them and the commanding officers nothing less than common thugs using the American flag as a cover for criminal offenses.

Abu Ghraib was no joke, but an example of hideous torture and humiliation of people at the whims of American soldiers drunk on their newfound delegated power. The videos and photos we have seen show just how enjoyable it was for those American soldiers to degrade their prisoners; to see how far they could go and how much outrageousness could be gotten away with.

We soon learned how the boundaries of torture and abuse of renditioned prisoners were expanded to include “waterboarding” — something that Dick Cheney has no problem with. Has he tried it?

Using sexual humiliation and life threatening terroristic tactics against prisoners of war is not new. But it is against many written codes of behavior during war. However this administration has conveniently decided to ignore those once agreed upon rules of engagement. George Bush has demonstrated that there are no rules written which he will follow.

If the tide were turned, and those same tactics were to be used on our American soldiers, we would be the first to be outraged, and rightfully so, but can we expect anything different after we have acted so vilely? We should be wary of the very ancient adage that says, “As above, so below.” and in modern terms translated, “What goes around, comes around.”

One need only to look for the innumerable accounts that our American soldiers home from past wars never told, and will not tell, not because they didn’t happen, but because the recounting of them would be too horrible to relate, and would be beyond the horror of being there and experiencing it again by the telling.

Without exception, every soldier who has ever entered a battle and seen the horrifics of war has been exposed to the effects of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). No amount of training can prepare a human being for that.

Which war, among the hundreds that have been fought, was worth it — and for whose benefit were they really fought? Add to that the millions of people who have been killed, According to a report, “approximately 35 to 40 million soldiers have died in the wars of the Twentieth Century alone, nearly three quarters of them in the two World Wars.” Have their deaths accomplished anything? Have we yet reached an end to warring?

In a report from the British newspaper the Independent, it is said that Mr Bush’s War on Terror has caused a minimum of 20 times the 9/11 deaths, and up to a maximum of 60 times 9/11 deaths. Also, it has "directly killed a minimum of 62,006 people, created 4.5 million refugees and cost the US more than the sum needed to pay off the debts of every poor nation on earth.”

Finally, let’s get to the core of the matter and ask the question: Where does war begin?

What fuels it and perpetuates it?

In actuality, we need go no further than our own self to find the answer. If we were to do an honest assessment and look inside, we might find the ultimate monster at the core of waging war on others, for it may very well correlate to our American way of life.

Take into consideration that our modern culture lives and breathes on the projection of illusion. We want to look the best, Be the greatest, Have the most, Be the first to make something and the last to consume it. Without realizing it we are consuming ourselves. By our excellence, we have even fooled ourselves with the projection of our pursuit of greatness. The administration cannot admit to how poorly their campaign to take over Iraq has gone. The president continues to say we’re doing very well, while his advisors such as former US Secretary of State James Baker says, Iraq is in a “helluva mess”.

The President is an angry man, so are many of his cabinet. Just look at their faces to see the suppressed anger and the zealot’s fire in their eyes. They are out for blood, and they don’t mind spilling that of young American men and women to fill the coffers of their corporate colleagues and friends.

If our aim was originally to free the Iraqi people, then one must wonder why it is that in the middle of this chaos we continue to build a $787 million dollar American embassy that is the size of a city and whose construction continues to be “on schedule”?

Having its own built-in surface-to-air missile emplacements, a Starbucks and Krispy Kreme outlet, a beauty parlor, a swimming pool and a sports center, it is projecting a staff of 3500. And now we know the real meaning of Mr. Bush’s “stay the course”.

Iraq is a battle zone, a civil war between factions of Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds. Add to that 145,000 American military soldiers plus thousands in a private army paid for by the American corporate presence. All this being the result of lies by the U.S. president and his cabinet blaming 9/11 on Sadaam Hussein and WMD that have never been found because they never existed. Iraq was a tough enough place to live under Sadaam Hussein, and what we have now created may be far worse if we are to believe the people themselves, for the conditions of civil war are on the verge of erupting into a state of brutal chaos.

Riverbend, a young Iraqi woman writes about conditions in a blogspot "Baghdad Burning."



The DPC has uncovered Oversight Outrages that include:

> Halliburton allowed our troops in Iraq to shower, bathe, and sometimes brush their teeth with water that tested positive for ecoli and coliform bacteria.

> Halliburton tripled the cost of hand towels, at taxpayer expense, by insisting on having its own embroidered logo on each towel.

> Halliburton employees dumped 50,000 pounds of nails in the desert because they ordered the wrong size, all at taxpayer expense.

> Halliburton actively discouraged cooperation with U.S. government auditors, sent one whistleblower into a combat zone to keep him away from auditors, and put another whistleblower under armed guard before kicking her out of the country.

> Halliburton sent unarmed truck drivers into a known combat zone without warning them of the danger, resulting in the deaths of six truck drivers and two soldiers. Halliburton then offered to nominate the surviving truck drivers for a Defense Department medal — provided they sign a medical records release that doubled as a waiver of any right to seek legal recourse against the company.

> Government auditors at the Defense Contract Audit Agency have identified more than $1 billion in ‘questioned’ Halliburton costs.

Reports are that American reconstruction money going to large corporations such as Halliburton, its subsidiaries, and Parsons have been given money for fake hospitals and schools, such things that only exist in the imagination, an imagination that has accepted American taxpayers’ money for the exchange of thin air. The report by the DPC contains innumerable cases of corporate fraud at the expense of the American people, American soldiers, and the people of Iraq.

Richard Garfield, former CPA Advisor, Columbia University, 7/28/2006 states that:

“The people who were put in charge of rebuilding the health sector didn’t know what they were doing. What I mean by that is that the individual that was put in charge of the CPA and his entire staff, among them none of them had training in public health. None of them had lived overseas. And not one of them had participated in the reconstruction of a country following a disaster or a war. We have people with those sorts of expertise in the United States, and some of them in the U.S. government. But none of them were appointed to the CPA health office.”

American soldier Kyle Snyder who served in Iraq reports:

“I signed up to be a heavy construction equipment operator, part of the 94th Corps of Engineers. I figured if I was an engineer in the United States Army I could build foundations for the Iraqi people to form their new government, to form a civilization after the bombings of 2003." When Snyder arrived in Iraq, however, he says he saw no reconstruction of Iraq. "The only reconstruction I saw was building Army bases.”

" was in Mosul. I was in Baghdad. I was in Stryker. I was in Scania. [Both, military bases.] I was in Tikrit. There was reconstruction of forward operating bases and military bases, but no city work being done."

If our aim is to reconstruct the damage we have perpetrated on Iraqi soil, then where is the money going that was slated for the construction of hospitals that don’t exist, or for rebuilding the infrastructure that supplies clean water, and provides power to Iraqi homes? It has been years, multi-billions of dollars later, but the people of Iraq have none of this. Instead they live in a situation of civil war where anti-factions have been subtly and further enticed and goaded to do away with each other; a civil war that some even say is already chaos.

Yet this administration staunchly declares to ‘stay the course’ — a course of more lies and deceit, while more American soldiers die daily, with October’s count tallying over 100. And who counts Iraqi deaths? Many believe in fact that they don’t count— those children on their way to buy some milk for their mother, the young boy doing an errand for his family, the teacher on his way to school, people dragged out of their homes and incarcerated. But again, I forget— they are the infidels who want me dead.

We have no idea the monster we are creating in the Arab world where in reality there wasn’t before. The only place the monster inhabits is within the words that are used to make us afraid, the words that we allow ourselves to believe, words spoken by those who wield the whip of terror over the world with one hand and inflict the destruction of the Constitution on the American people with the other.

In fact:

Read the words and accounts of Lt. Kevin Tillman who joined the Army in 2002 and served together in Iraq and Afghanistan with his brother Pat. Pat is well known as a professional football player who decided to give up his football career to serve his country. Pat was killed in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004 by ‘friendly fire’, a fact that was withheld by the military from Pat’s family. Kevin, who was discharged in 2005, has recently written this powerful statement:

It is Pat’s birthday on November 6, and elections are the day after. It gets me thinking about a conversation I had with Pat before we joined the military. He spoke about the risks with signing the papers. How once we committed, we were at the mercy of the American leadership and the American people. How we could be thrown in a direction not of our volition. How fighting as a soldier would leave us without a voice . . . until we got out.

Much has happened since we handed over our voice:

Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct threat to the American people, or to the world, or harbored terrorists, or was involved in the September 11 attacks, or received weapons-grade uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD, or had a need to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy, or stop an insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that can’t be called a civil war even though it is. Something like that.

Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is.

Somehow our elected leaders were subverting international law and humanity by setting up secret prisons around the world, secretly kidnapping people, secretly holding them indefinitely, secretly not charging them with anything, secretly torturing them. Somehow that overt policy of torture became the fault of a few “bad apples” in the military.

Somehow back at home, support for the soldiers meant having a five-year-old kindergartener scribble a picture with crayons and send it overseas, or slapping stickers on cars, or lobbying Congress for an extra pad in a helmet. It’s interesting that a soldier on his third or fourth tour should care about a drawing from a five-year-old; or a faded sticker on a car as his friends die around him; or an extra pad in a helmet, as if it will protect him when an IED throws his vehicle 50 feet into the air as his body comes apart and his skin melts to the seat.

Somehow the more soldiers that die, the more legitimate the illegal invasion becomes.

Somehow American leadership, whose only credit is lying to its people and illegally invading a nation, has been allowed to steal the courage, virtue and honor of its soldiers on the ground.

Somehow those afraid to fight an illegal invasion decades ago are allowed to send soldiers to die for an illegal invasion they started.

Somehow faking character, virtue and strength is tolerated.

Somehow profiting from tragedy and horror is tolerated.

Somehow the death of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people is tolerated.

Somehow subversion of the Bill of Rights and The Constitution is tolerated.

Somehow suspension of Habeas Corpus is supposed to keep this country safe.

Somehow torture is tolerated.

Somehow lying is tolerated.

Somehow reason is being discarded for faith, dogma, and nonsense.

Somehow American leadership managed to create a more dangerous world.

Somehow a narrative is more important than reality.

Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is.

Somehow the most reasonable, trusted and respected country in the world has become one of the most irrational, belligerent, feared, and distrusted countries in the world.

Somehow being politically informed, diligent, and skeptical has been replaced by apathy through active ignorance.

Somehow the same incompetent, narcissistic, virtueless, vacuous, malicious criminals are still in charge of this country.

Somehow this is tolerated.

Somehow nobody is accountable for this.

In a democracy, the policy of the leaders is the policy of the people. So don’t be shocked when our grandkids bury much of this generation as traitors to the nation, to the world and to humanity. Most likely, they will come to know that “somehow” was nurtured by fear, insecurity and indifference, leaving the country vulnerable to unchecked, unchallenged parasites.

Luckily this country is still a democracy. People still have a voice. People still can take action. It can start after Pat’s birthday.

Brother and Friend of Pat Tillman,

Kevin Tillman

Whatever you do don’t just dismiss these soldiers because they speak out against the war, Kevin was actually in Iraq and finished his duty, he followed protocol. He did far more than I have and knows first-hand what went on. They have something important to say to us, and we do owe them our attention.

In addition, retired senior generals are speaking out. In a New York Times op-ed column, retired Major Gen. Paul Eaton has described Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as "incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically" and called for his resignation.

Retired Lt. Gen. William Odom, former director of the National Security Agency and now a Yale professor, said in a speech covered by the Providence Journal that America's invasion of Iraq might be the worst strategic mistake in American history.

An editorial calling for the removal of Rumsfeld has been released to NBC News on Friday ahead of its Monday publication date. It states, "It is one thing for the majority of Americans to think Rumsfeld has failed. But when the nation's current military leaders start to break publicly with their defense secretary, then it is clear that he is losing control of the institution he ostensibly leads."

The editorial will appear in the Army Times, Air Force Times, Navy Times, and Marine Corps Times on Monday and futher states, "Regardless of which party wins Nov. 7, the time has come, Mr. President, to face the hard bruising truth: Donald Rumsfeld must go."

The article reporting on the editorial also says that "Kenneth Adelman, who served on the Defense Policy Board with Perle, said Bush, Defense Rumsfeld and others in the administration 'turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the postwar era. Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional.'"

Finally someone who can do something about this horrendous situation is coming forth. Now what will the American people have to say about this come November 7th at the ever so proven hackable electronic polls? Who knows, if it is possible to get rid of Rummy, can George be far behind? I vote to send Rummy to all the Veterans hospitals for health care!

But I wonder, is it possible that the American public is so shell-shocked by the near three thousand dead from 9/11 that we cannot fathom the rage we have wrongfully unleashed upon the Iraqi people? And still, Osama is reportedly alive somewhere, while the C.I.A. has closed its unit focused on the capture bin Laden in July? How much money has been charged the American taxpayers to destroy and reconstruct Iraq, and how much has been spent on getting Osama? And those billions spent on Iraq — went into the coffers of the Halliburton’s and the Lockheed Martins — all affiliated with the financial elite of this Bush administration.

This is ultimately what war is all about: first creating the need for revenge by staging an event to get the attention of the people and to instill fear in them. Then, convince the people to project that fear at the end of a gun and missile against a country that cannot defend itself, and which has some very rich resources to add to the corporate booty.

This is the scenario that has been going on for eons. We have come no place from the past. Instead we have over and over dragged the past into the present and repeated history. How long are we going to fall for this game that is being played with us before we put a stop to it by deciding not to participate?

As if war is not bad enough, the combination of wars combined with the relationships of money and politics that involve the power of sex in Washington DC may be no better.

That’s for next time.

Wishing you all a good weekend,

con amore,

mek