So have you just about had enough of the James Baker Circle Jerk just yet?
The laughable report from the blue-ribbon-in-conflicts panel sucked up all the news space.
The worst death toll of the year for US troops in Iraq came along on Wednesday, 11 dead, and The New York Times was so wrapped up in the Circle Jerk, they couldn't even cover it in the next day's paper.
Even the wire services were in non-stop Circle Jerk coverage mode.
And where did the laughable report get anyone? The chaos and violence didn't stop (though the coverage of it did) and Bully Boy's already singing "It's my illegal war and I'll pout if I want to, pout if I want to, pout if I want to . . ." Well you would pout too, if it happened to you.
If you lied a nation, a world, into war, if many of your lies had been exposed, if you were tanking so low that the polling firms may need to add negative numbers below the zero shortly, you would pout too. One moment he was strutting shipboard in front of a banner (which the White House made) that read "Mission Accomplished." The next?
America's own little Evita can no longer sing, "I'm their savior!/ That's what they call me/ So Lauren Bacall me/ Anything goes/ To make me fantastic." Sure the mainstream press still tries to pimp the war and the Bully Boy but the people aren't buying it.
So while everyone glommed on and fawned over a useless report, roadside bombs continued in Iraq, educators continued to be targeted and killed, car bombs didn't vanish nor did the daily crop of discovered corpses with signs of torture -- nothing changed. But give silly fools a chance to gas bag and and the James Baker Circle Jerk report could be turned into the Gettysburg
Address.
If you wanted a serious examination, as opposed to "Hot Sheet," factoid-filled gas baggery, you could catch Amy Goodman on Thursday with "Iraq Study Group: A Response From 'Out of Iraq' House Caucus Co-FoundersBarbara Lee and Lynn Woolsey," "Anthony Arnove On Iraq Study Group: 'Report Offers Only A Slight Correction For a Policy That Needs Fundamental Reversal'," "Iraqi-American in Najaf: Al Qaeda Would Leave Iraq Upon U.S. Troop Withdrawal"
and "Oil for Sale: Why the Iraq Study Group is Calling for the Privatization ofIraq's Oil Industry."
Best interview on a Iraq topic last week? It involved war resister Kyle Snyder who is currently traveling the West coast speaking out against the illegal war despite the fact that it would be easy to silent, there is an arrest warrant out for him. Kyle Snyder was lied to by the military recruiter, by the Bully Boy and by the US military. Trained for reconstruction, he ends up being an escort in Iraq probably because, as he's noted, there was no construction going on. In April of 2005, while on leave, he self-checks out and goes to Canada where he begins a life. Then, in October of 2006, he returned to the US and on October 31st, turned himself in at Fort Knox only to self-check out again when it turned out the military had burned him yet again.
If you don't know that story, you must not be listening to KPFA's Flashpoints. Last Thursday, Nora Barrows-Friedman interviewed Kyle Snyder again. He explained he went to Iraq thinking it would be what he was told. It wasn't. Not the job he was trained to do ("asphalt and concrete, laying foundations for schools, hospitals, roads"), not the reality on the ground where there was no reconstruction and an Iraqi who was mained for life when shot by a US soldier wasn't cause for an investigation even when a complaint was made by Kyle Snyder.
But that wasn't all. He told Barrows-Friedman:
The things that I saw there for instance, you know, when we're told that we're liberating the people of Iraq and we're doing positive things you know I expect to at least see the civilians and stuff, you know, accepting us more. And basically accepting what we're doing. But children were flipping us off, they were begging for food and water almost all the time when I was out. I had seen people killed, I had seen people injured and it's just basically what led me to leave the war in the first place were the policies that drove the war. You know, when the Bush administration in 2004 and 2005 were saying 'We're liberating the people of Iraq' like I said I expect to see some of that happening. You know, no matter what rank you are, I think that we deserve to know why we're fighting. And basically it felt like a lie. It felt like a lie. And mainly because we couldn't explain what the mission was.
This weekend has seen Courage to Resist's National Days of Action to Support GI Resistance and we've all taken part in that. Haven't noticed a great deal of coverage of it, but The Full Brobeck hardly surprises us.
But the media's still yapping about the James Baker Circle Jerk.
You think the report bothered Bully Boy too much? He's dimissed it. And as the gas baggery on it continues, things like Saturday's Shi'ite attack on Sunnis in a neihborhood of Baghdad don't get covered. Bully Boy's probably pleased as punch that words on paper from a useless panel have lulled some to sleep.
That's what the painting at the top is attempting to illustrate. We call it "Bully Boy Among Beltway Babies" -- who've tuckered themselves out from all their gas baggery while Bully Boy smirks. We were using Paul Gauguin's Night Cafe in Arles as our inspiration (and the women staring out from that painting actually does look a great deal like the Bully Boy).
As reality continued, the press got swept up in delivering standing o's for a half-baked, laughable 'report.
Information on this movement of war resistance within the military can be found at Center on Conscience & War, The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters. Appeal for Redress is collecting signatures of active duty service members calling on Congress to bring the troops home -- the petition will be delivered to Congress next month.
