Yes, my questions distract from your rants. And yes, they really aren't on-topic. But I was posing my questions to Rla based on his post. They were meant to challenge what he said, not branch off somewhere else. So blame Rla. Or don't blame either of us. (I for one don't blame Rla, I just don't agree with what he said, at least in terms of how I understood it. But in a thread this long people tend to meander a bit.)

And of course you decided to bring the Constitution into this, as though you were playing some kind of trump card. Does the Constitution prohibit the kind of policy you have knocking Obama et al. for following? I think you may have allowed some doubts about your ability to make that case to enter your mind because now you are making claims about extra-judicial murders in those countries being their policy. Well if that were true then of course we would have a question of the law. Are they true? I don't think that you have presented any evidence, at least in this thread, that they are. Now you will probably affect tremendous surprise at my statement and shout that of course you have been providing mountains of evidence all along here, and repeat posting of articles speaking of people getting killed. Well people get killed in wars all of the time, including civilians, which is a pretty good argument on the side against wars (not that there are never good arguments for their necessity, but they need to be awfully good to counter the concern about all that killing). And while a lot of wars may be wrong, and all involve killing, that in itself does not make them illegal, or mean that the killing involved is all extrajudicial murder. It simply doesn't. The Constitution was developed by a Convention of men led by the general who had led the new U.S. to its independence and who became our first President. That Constitution specifically and clearly provided for an armed forces and framework for how the government would control them and how it would go to war. What the Constitution did not do was specify when the country should go into war or use the armed forces in military action and when it should not. The Founders were not fools, they left that kind of decision-making to the future presidents and congresses. (And I doubt that they anticipated that future presidents and congresses would be above mistakes or even moral wrongs when it came to the question of war.)

That is my statement, regardless of whether it is distorted or how it is distorted.

Well most people would call it normal life.

How do I read around "black ops"? You get that from me not talking about that before you just now brought it up on this thread? I am no expert on it but quote a character from that great movie, "Hannah Montana, the Movie", I haven't been living under a rock. Now if you want to talk about it fine. You raise some valid and important points. You also make some wild claims and implications. If we can stick to the former and dispense with the latter then I would probably fine such a discussion very productive. If we can discuss it sensibly.

And what is actually happening, rla, is that a very small handful of POWERFUL PERSONS to include "Wiley" Gates are unilaterally assuming what our national goals are going to be, and they are working to further assure that we are kept out of that process ....

Look at what this OBAMA-ITE Holbrooke is telling OUR Congress right above here, rla ...

"Our most vital national security interests are at stake," Holbrooke told the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

end quote

There is your CONSENSUS, rla ....

It has already been arrived at ....

Of course, we peons have no clue as to what those MOST VITAL NATIONAL SECURITY INTERESTS ALLEGEDLY AT STAKE really are ....

Nor are we intended to, rla ....

If we were asked our opinion as citizens, we might head off in some entirely new and different direction that would take a lot of money away from people like Holbrooke and "Wiley" Gates to devote it to more peaceful and HUMANITARIAN pursuits ........

And so ...

I hear you, Brother...

"Afghan police: 11 insurgents killed in south"

By AMIR SHAH, Associated Press Writer

13 MAY 2009

KABUL – Overnight fighting between Afghan police and insurgents in southern Afghanistan left 11 militants dead, officials said.

Meanwhile, a NATO pilot was injured after his jet crashed following takeoff in the same region.

Insurgents attacked the police post in Paktika province Wednesday evening and fighting raged for several hours, said Gen. Dawlat Khan, the provincial police chief.

Eventually, international forces called in an airstrike to help the officers.

Eleven militants but no police were killed in the fighting, he said.

In the southern Kandahar province, meanwhile, a British jet crashed on takeoff Thursday due to mechanical failure, said Lt. Cmdr Christopher Hall, a spokesman for the NATO-led force.

The pilot was wounded after ejecting from the aircraft in Kandahar airfield, he said.

"There were no other passengers on board."

"At present we are not aware of any other casualties," Hall said.

There was no suggestion of Taliban involvement, he said.

U.S. and NATO-led troops rely heavily on the aircraft for support while conducting operations in Afghanistan's rugged southern province, where a lack of roads makes movement of support troops difficult.

The area is also the heartland of the Taliban-led insurgency where thousands of new U.S. troops will join the fight later this year.

In another incident, police officers were again the target of an attack Thursday morning, when a suicide car bomber struck a police station in Kandahar province's Spinboldak district.

Gen. Abdul Raziq, the border police district commander, said four officers were wounded in the blast.

The Interior Ministry said a civilian was also wounded.

The explosion killed the car bomber but there were no other deaths, Raziq said.

Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi claimed responsibility for the attack in a phone call to The Associated Press.

Spinboldak sits in the southeast corner of Afghanistan, an area where the Taliban often wield more control than the government.

Many of the 21,000 additional U.S. troops deploying to Afghanistan this summer will spread out across the south as the U.S. tries to regain control of a war that it once thought it had won.

This week, President Barack Obama put his stamp on the bloody eight-year conflict by replacing the general in charge of the effort and installing a new ambassador.

The Obama administration hopes the leadership shake-up will help reverse the militants' momentum.

On Wednesday, a gunbattle between police and Taliban in western Badghis province left one officer dead, said Ekrammuddin Yawar, the regional police chief.

He said he had reports of Taliban deaths as well, but did not have a figure.
___

Associated Press Writer Noor Khan contributed to this report from Kandahar, Afghanistan.

McChrystal's Rise: More Secrets, Less Daylight by Tom Hayden

Keep it up, Snuf ....

Keep the information flowing ....

Is this what we Obama supporters want?

One of the major changes in the Af-Pac strategy, involving a change in command seems to me a shift to
more secrecy--more distance between the public war and the private war...With Brzezinski (Obama's major coach)
running the world, that's not surprizing...The question we need answers for is what are the implications for our
policies with China and Russia and the world's distribution of Oil and Natural Gas?

McChrystal's missions might make Abu Ghraib look like a fraternity prank in comparison.

Maybe so, but I think some questions should be asked.

How many people were actually killed in these operations? How good was their targeting? It seems clear to me that a lot of the people we have at Guantanamo are not terrorists at all, but poor saps who happened to be at the wrong place and the wrong time, perhaps folks picked up by our troops based on local enemies of these people scamming us. Did the folks carrying out this program manage to restrict their targeting to the real "bad guys" or did they manage to get a bunch of people who were little more than poor, unlucky saps? Were the killings necessary or egregious brutality when the targets could have been captured alive? Was there a lot of "collateral damage" in terms of casualties/deaths of innocent people?

I think one of the prime reasons for putting the ghoul McChrystal in there right now is so that he can prepare a series of missions to go into Pakistan to take over their nukes ....

As the United States headed toward war, the Army decided to make a change at the top.

With Frank's blessing, a new general was brought in to run the land command.

Taciturn and unflappable, Lieutenant General David McKiernan had long been one of Eric Shinseki's most trusted officers.

He had run the VII Corps Tactical Command Post during the Gulf War and spent time in Sarajevo when NATO stepped in to stop the killing in Bosnia.

McKiernan was in command of the 1st Cavalry Division during the September 11 attacks but shortly after moved to the Pentagon, where he became the Army's chief operations officer.

McKiernan had been read into Tommy Frank's ever-changing war plan at an early date.

Wearing civilian clothes and telling his staff that he was going to Germany to visit his wife's relatives, he had even made a quick trip to review the planning with Scott Wallace, the V Corps commander, and his staff.

While Franks had a strained relationship with Paul Mikolashek dating back to the Afghan war, he respected McKiernan.

With the invasion of Iraq imminent, the Army and Franks wanted its top officers in place.

McKiernan was in, Mikolashek was out.

- p.75, COBRA II: The Inside Story Of The Invasion And Occupation Of Iraq by Michael R. Gordon and General Bernard E. Trainor

I spect you're right about that, Livyjr...The US has established a set of strategically located bases in Iraq and
in Afganistan to protect the present and future oil and natural gas lines...this must be extended into parts of Pakistan
in order to be complete and to displace the control of Russia and China of these resources.

It would be to the US advantage to stop the war mongering and develop cooperative, collaborative relationships
with Russia and China. Otherwise we will continue to see the self-fullfilling prophesy of Wars and rummors of Wars....

If you will look at the juxtaposition of these two posts above here, rla, and McKiernan's credentials, you will clearly note that Obama has made a MAJOR RIGHT TURN here by replacing McKiernan with McChrystal ....

A SEA CHANGE I think they call it ....

McKiernan was a top officer in the U.S. Army chain of command ....

In the idiot's war against Iraqinam, McKiernan was the boss of the boss of David Petraeus, who is the BIG DAWG on the block now, along with Navy boat driver dude Mike Mullen ....

Now, Petraeus has backed getting rid of McKiernan ....

A PURGE ...

There's something happening here ....

What it is is not yet totally clear ....

What is clear is that there are a lot of men who kill people for a living standing there with guns ....

And if we have a brain in our heads, we had better beware .....

When you have impunity to commit extra-judicial murder in the name of the USA, why, you can then kill anyone you choose ....

And that could be any one of us, rla .....

Well, maybe not Arneoker ....

But certainly you or I ....

And so ...

Yes, I make it a point to wear a white hat at all times--I wouldn't want to be confused with the Bad Guys...

Way back in 1980 or so, rla, I was working with an R&D firm as an engineer on methods to strip oil from oil fields where the overburden pressure had been depleted ....

Since it was our goal to patent as much of our discoveries as were patentable, demonstrating that we had done a literature search was a key requisitie to our on-going research ....

As a part of that literature search, I had access to a stack of reports from various think-tanks and government sources on the location of oil deposits in the world at that time ....

One of those reports was a fascinating study on going into the Middle East militarily to secure the oil fields and the pipelines and port facilities ....

As a combat veteran, I read that report with a great deal of interest for many reasons ....

That report made it clear to me that we were not really interested in having any cooperative agreements regarding oil and natural gas, but predominantly oil ....

We were going to have the complete control of it, if we could ....

And that was nothing new, really, rla ....

PETRO-POLITICS goes back to the end of WWI ....

Or perhaps it could be said that where we are now began with WWI and has just kept escalating to the point of where it is today ....

Much of what has happened in the Middle East militarily since 2003 is very similar to what I read about back in 1980 ....

And McKiernan was a part of that ....

Now, McKiernan has obviously been PURGED and a new era is beginning with an assassin/executioner replacing McKiernan, who was what could be called a STRAIGHT SHOOTER by "OLD" Army standards ....

In WWII, Hitler did not trust his Wehrmacht officers ....

That is why Hitler had Waffen SS units out in the field .....

As a political army, they could keep the regular German army in check if the regular Army got too squeamish about Hitler's plans for global conquest ....

And so ...

Wearing a white hat is what can make you into a "bad" guy in a hurry in this brave new world, rla ....

And so ...

If enough people start talking about these things over dinner, it will become progressively more difficult for the
powers that be to operate in secrecy... the internet is rapidly changing the equation. Promoting Openness is our best defense...

So if we were to just develop good relations with Russia (which seems intent on exploiting its role as a major supplier of fossil fuels) and China (which seems intent in controlling supplies of natural resources) everything would be hunky dory and Mullah Omar and Osama Bin Laden would be inviting Barack Obama over for tea.

In some form or other, rla .....

But it is an experiment in real time with no real way to measure the results ....

And so ...

No, Rla is right.

Talk things over dinner and you will stop America from becoming a Nazi state. Go ahead and try it and watch for the results...

That's about the size of it...except Ben Laden is most likely dead...

Okay, just go on believing all of that...

Obama Picks Up Where Bush Left Off
From My Lai to Bala Baluk
By MIKE WHITNEY

Barack Obama is aggressively stepping up the war in Afghanistan. He's intensified the cross-border bombing of Pakistan and he is doubling the number of U.S. troops to 68,000 by 2010. He's also a strong proponent of pilotless drones even though hundreds of civilians have been killed in bombing raid blunders.

On May 4, 2009, 143 civilians were killed in a bombing raid in Bala Baluk, a remote area south of Herat. Obama brushed off the incident with terse apology never intimating that the US policy for aerial bombardment would be reviewed to avoid future mishaps. Patrick Cockburn gave a summary of the incident:

I did not meet survivors but I did talk to a reliable witness, a radio reporter called Farooq Faizy, who had gone to Bala Baluk soon after the attack happened. He (had) some 70 or 80 photographs and they bore out the villagers' story: there were craters everywhere; the villages had been plastered with bombs; bodies had been torn to shreds by the blasts; there were mass graves; there were no signs of damage from bullets, rockets or grenades.

US military spokesmen denied the news reports and concocted a wacky story about Taliban militants rampaging through the village hurling grenades into buildings. It was a ridiculous narrative that no one believed. The facts have since been verified by senior government officials, high-ranking members of the Afghan military and representatives of the Red Cross. The United States military killed 143 unarmed villagers and then they tried to cover it up with a lie. None of the victims were fighters. After the bombing, the villagers loaded body parts onto carts and took them to the office of the regional governor who confirmed the deaths. The photos of grief-stricken Afghans burying their dead have been widely circulated on the Internet.

From Reuters:

Ninety-three children and 25 adult women are among a list of 140 names of Afghans who villagers say were killed in a battle and U.S. air strikes last week, causing a crisis between Washington and its Afghan allies.

The list, obtained by Reuters, bears the endorsement of seven senior provincial and central government officials, including an Afghan two-star general who headed a task force dispatched by the government to investigate the incident.

Titled "list of the martyrs of the bombardment of Bala Boluk district of Farah Province", it includes the name, age and father's name of each alleged victim.

The youngest was listed as 8-day-old baby Sayed Musa, son of Sayed Adam. Fifty-three victims were girls under the age of 18, and 40 were boys. Only 22 were men 18 or older. ("List of 140 Afghan Killed In US Attack Includes 93 Children", Reuters)

Neither Obama nor anyone in his administration has acknowledged that 93 children were killed by American bombs.

Military operations in Afghanistan have increased under Obama especially in the south where the Taliban are most heavily concentrated. The fighting has spread into Pakistan where President Asif Ali Zardari has been pressured into deploying his troops the Swat Valley to fight militants despite growing public disapproval. Nearly 850,000 people have been forced from their homes in the last few weeks to seek shelter in the south. For the most part, the humanitarian crisis has gone unreported in the western media, but Obama knows what is going on and is sticking with the same policy. Hundreds of thousands of people are now living in tent cities without food or clean water because of the escalation in the violence. It's a disaster.

OBAMA PICKS A GENERAL: Enter the assassination squads

This week, General David McKiernan was replaced by Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal as Commander of US Forces in Afghanistan. Here's how the Washington Post summarized McChrystal's qualifications for the job:

"McChrystal kills people. Has he ever worked in the counterinsurgency environment? Not really," said Roger Carstens, a senior nonresident fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a former Special Forces officer....

Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the former Special Operations chief who is President Obama's new choice to lead the war in Afghanistan, rose to military prominence because of his single-minded success in a narrow but critical mission: manhunting. As commander of the military's secretive Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) for nearly five years starting in 2003, McChrystal masterminded a campaign to perfect the art of tracking down enemies, and then capturing or killing them. He built a sophisticated network of soldiers and intelligence operatives who proceeded to decapitate the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq and kill its most notorious leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.("High-value-target hunter takes on Afghan war" Washington Post)

Obama chose McChrystal because of his "black ops" pedigree, which suggests that the conflict in Afghanistan is about to take a very ugly turn. According to Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, McChrystal ran the "executive assassination wing" of the military's joint special-operations command. (JSOC) The experts believe that he will breeze through congressional confirmation hearings because many Senators believe that his counterinsurgency theories helped the surge in Iraq to succeed. There's some truth to this, too. But it would be more accurate to say that the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad helped to reduce the violence. That is the truth about the surge; it's a public relations moniker for ethnic cleansing.

McChrystal's appointment suggests that Obama supports the idea that hunter-killer units and targeted assassinations are an acceptable means of achieving US foreign policy objectives. Obama supporters should pay close attention; this is a continuation of the Rumsfeld policy with one slight difference, a more persuasive and charismatic pitchman promoting the policy. Other than that, there's no difference.

Obama knows of McChrystal's involvement in the prisoner abuse scandal at Baghdad's Camp Nama, just as he knows of his role in the cover-up in the friendly-fire death of ex-NFL star and Army Ranger Pat Tillman. None of this matters to Obama. What matters is winning; not principle, ideals, human rights or civilian casualties. Just winning.

FROM MY LAI TO BALA BALUK

On March 16, 1968, the US military was involved in a similar incident which soured the public on Vietnam and eventually helped bring the war to a close. Barack Obama was only seven years old when Charlie Company--led by platoon leader second Lieutenant William Calley--entered the small hamlet of My Lai and proceeded to slaughter 347 unarmed civilians. This is Sam Harris's account of what took place on that day 40 years ago:

"Early in the morning the soldiers were landed in the village by helicopter. Many were firing as they spread out, killing both people and animals. There was no sign of the Vietcong battalion and no shot was fired on Charlie Company all day, but they carried on. They burnt down every house. They raped woman and girls and then killed them. They stabbed some women in the vagina and disemboweled others, or cut off their hands or scalps. Pregnant woman had there stomachs slashed open and were left to die. There were gang rapes and killings by shooting or with bayonets. There were mass executions. Dozens of people at a time, including old men, women and children, were machined-gunned in a ditch. In four hours nearly 500 villagers were killed." (Sam Harris from his book "The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason")

The only difference between My Lai and Bala Baluk is the degree of savagery. In both cases the guilt can be traced directly back to the White House.

Obama believes that civilian casualties are an unavoidable part of achieving one's policy goals. The end justifies the means. He has strengthened the Bush policy, not repudiated it. So much for "change".

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com

Who Runs America?
The Impotent President
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

What do you suppose it is like to be elected president of the United States only to find that your power is restricted to the service of powerful interest groups?

A president who does a good job for the ruling interest groups is paid off with remunerative corporate directorships, outrageous speaking fees, and a lucrative book contract. If he is young when he assumes office, like Bill Clinton and Obama, it means a long life of luxurious leisure.

Fighting the special interests doesn't pay and doesn't succeed. On April 30 the primacy of special over public interests was demonstrated yet again. The Democrats' bill to prevent 1.7 million mortgage foreclosures and, thus, preserve $300 billion in home equity by permitting homeowners to renegotiate their mortgages, was defeated in the Senate, despite the 60-vote majority of the Democrats. The banksters were able to defeat the bill 51 to 45.

These are the same financial gangsters whose unbridled greed and utter irresponsibility have wiped out half of Americans' retirement savings, sent the economy into a deep hole, and threatened the US dollar's reserve currency role. It is difficult to imagine an interest group with a more damaged reputation. Yet, a majority of "the people's representatives" voted as the discredited banksters instructed.

Hundreds of billions of public dollars have gone to bail out the banksters, but when some Democrats tried to get the Senate to do a mite for homeowners, the US Senate stuck with the banks. The Senate's motto is: "Hundreds of billions for the banksters, not a dime for homeowners."

If Obama was naive about well-intentioned change before the vote, he no longer has this political handicap.

Democratic Majority Whip Dick Durbin acknowledged the voters' defeat by the discredited banksters. The banks, Durbin said, "frankly own the place."

It is not difficult to understand why. Among those who defeated the homeowners bill are senators Jon Tester (Mont), Max Baucus (Mont), Blanche Lincoln (Ark), Ben Nelson (Neb), Many Landrieu (La), Tim Johnson (SD), and Arlan Specter (Pa). According to reports, the banksters have poured a half million dollars into Tester's campaign funds. Baucus has received $3.5 million; Lincoln $1.3 million; Nelson $1.4 million; Landrieu $2 million; Johnson $2.5 million; Specter $4.5 million.

The same Congress that can't find a dime for homeowners or health care appropriates hundreds of billions of dollars for the military/security complex. The week after the Senate foreclosed on American homeowners, the Obama "change" administration asked Congress for an additional $61 billion dollars for the neoconservatives' war in Iraq and $65 billion more for the neoconservatives' war in Afghanistan. Congress greeted this request with a rousing "Yes we can!"

The additional $126 billion comes on top of the $533.7 billion "defense" budget for this year. The $660 billion--probably a low-ball number--is ten times the military spending of China, the second most powerful country in the world.

How is it possible that "the world's only superpower" is threatened by the likes of Iraq and Afghanistan? How can the US be a superpower if it is threatened by countries that have no military capability other than a guerilla capability to resist invaders?

These "wars" are a hoax designed to enrich the US armaments industry and to infuse the "security forces" with police powers over American citizenry.

Not a dime to prevent millions of Americans from losing their homes, but hundreds of billions of dollars to murder Muslim women and children and to create millions of refugees, many of whom will either sign up with insurgents or end up as the next wave of immigrants into America.

This is the way the American government works. And it thinks it is a "city on the hill, a light unto the world."

Americans elected Obama because he said he would end the gratuitous criminal wars of the Bush brownshirts, wars that have destroyed America's reputation and financial solvency and serve no public interest. But once in office Obama found that he was ruled by the military/security complex. War is not being ended, merely transferred from the unpopular war in Iraq to the more popular war in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Obama, in violation of Pakistan's sovereignty, continues to attack "targets" in Pakistan. In place of a war in Iraq, the military/security complex now has two wars going in much more difficult circumstances.

Viewing the promotion gravy train that results from decades of warfare, the US officer corps has responded to the "challenge to American security" from the Taliban. "We have to kill them over there before they come over here." No member of the US government or its numerous well-paid agents has ever explained how the Taliban, which is focused on Afghanistan, could ever get to America. Yet this hyped fear is sufficient for the public to support the continuing enrichment of the military/security complex, while American homes are foreclosed by the banksters who have destroyed the retirement prospects of the US population..

According to Pentagon budget documents, by next year the cost of the war against Afghanistan will exceed the cost of the war against Iraq. According to a Nobel prize-winning economist and a budget expert at Harvard University, the war against Iraq has cost the American taxpayers $3 trillion, that is, $3,000 billion in out-of-pocket and already incurred future costs, such as caring for veterans.

If the Pentagon is correct, then by next year the US government will have squandered $6 trillion dollars on two wars, the only purpose of which is to enrich the munitions manufacturers and the "security" bureaucracy.

The human and social costs are dramatic as well and not only for the Iraqi, Afghan, and Pakistani populations ravaged by American bombs. Dahr Jamail reports that US Army psychiatrists have concluded that by their third deployment, 30 percent of American troops are mental wrecks. Among the costs that reverberate across generations of Americans are elevated rates of suicide, unemployment, divorce, child and spousal abuse, drug and alcohol addiction, homelessness and incarceration.

In the Afghan "desert of death" the Obama administration is constructing a giant military base. Why? What does the internal politics of Afghanistan have to do with the US?

What is this enormous waste of resources that America does not have accomplishing besides enriching the American munitions industry?

China and to some extent India are the rising powers in the world. Russia, the largest country on earth, is armed with a nuclear arsenal as terrifying as the American one. The US dollar's role as reserve currency, the most important source of American power, is undermined by the budget deficits that result from the munition corporations' wars and the bankster bailouts.

Why is the US making itself impotent fighting wars that have nothing whatsoever to do with is security, wars that are, in fact, threatening its security?

The answer is that the military/security lobby, the financial gangsters, and AIPAC rule. The American people be damned.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

I can't believe that you think that Osama bin Laden is alive, Arneoker ....

Or that he is relevant to anything that is happening in the world today ....

He is, of course, a potent symbol that our government can use as a BOOGEY MAN to scare children with, to keep them in line .....

"IF YOU DON'T WATCH OUT, THE BOOGEY MAN IS GOING TO GET YOU AND EAT YOU ALL UP!"

And so ...

Maybe there are no bad guys Rla.

I'm older than him and I am alive. Now he could be dead, and maybe the people still running Al Qaeda are a lot more cuddly than he is. You never know.

And I'm older than you, and I'm alive, too ....

Rather than being less of a problem, Pakistan has been made more dangerous by the surge strategy.

This is exactly what extremists want. It falls perfectly into their aggressive strategy by alienating the displaced against the Pakistan Government on the basis of pain and suffering.

The West simply does not understand.

The people running al Qaida are all probably Rhodes scholars and rocket scientists, Arneoker ....

ARCH CRIMINALS, all ....

Mighty America is probably right to be cringing in its boots in abject fear of them ....

All couple of thousand of them ....

Or it it hundreds?

And so ...

Wow, Livyjr, you actually post something coherently related to the discussion and on point! Now I don't have the expertise to judge this assessment, but if true then this would clearly cast doubt on the "manhunt strategy" that McChrystal used in Iraq. This is the sort of thing I would ask him about if I were a Congressman or Senator on the committees that will conduct his confirmation hearings.

American lawyers, guns and money are what has brought Afghanistnam and Pakistan together ....

The Taliban is simply our BOOGEY MAN, our bete noir, to get our big foot into their door ...

And so ...

Well I think their threat can definitely be over-hyped. (There was a regular poster here who carried that kind of activity to ridiculous lengths at times.) But if you had read any of those articles I linked to (one of which I posted the text in another thread) you might see how some people do cringe in fear of them, apparently quite rationally.

I posted that on May 12 ....

Or are you referring to me saying that like you, I am still alive?

I meant that article. Maybe I missed it before for all of the chaff.

I used to be in the killing business, myself, Arneoker, before I folded my tent and walked away from it ....

I have seen a lot of people cringe in fear in my lifetime ....

I think that it may well be a contradiction in terms to associate cringing in fear with rational actions ...

FEAR IS THE MIND KILLER ...

People who cringe in fear are themselves dangerous and quite unpredictable, I have found ....

And they are not reliable or trustworthy when the **** is hitting the fan and you are there, caught in the middle ...

And so ..

The chaff has been coming from you to cover over the wheat I am bringing in here ...

Is fear never rational? Did you read even a part of one of those articles in my links? Do you have any idea who I am talking about?

Speaking of cringing in fear, it looks like Nancy Pelosi has been caught out with her drawers down around her knees over this business of her knowing about the BUSH-ITES torturing people ....

From what I heard on the news today, back then, Nancy didn't give a damn that the BUSH-ITES were torturing people ....

All she wanted to know was whether they were going to keep her and her possessions safe ....

And so ...

I haven't been supplying your commentary and conclusions Livyjr. Now I will give you that you have made a valid point or two, and your posting of that text from the article needs no commentary. But some of your speculation and extrapolations...have struck me as a bit...unwarranted.

That's a good question, Arneoker ....

Fear is something that is built into us, it would seem ....

So it is in and of itself neutral, neither rational nor irrational ....

Just like your check engine light on your car is neither rational nor irrational ....

It is an indication of possible trouble ....

It is your reaction to fear that would have it fall over into one or the other realm, as I see it ....

If one is reduced to cringing in fear, then I would posit that they had lost rational control of themselves, since cringing in fear is equated with a mindless condition ....

When you are cringing in fear, you have lost volition ....

And so ...

Well I would submit that fear is certainly not always irrational, and if "cringing" is always the irrational thing to do then some kind urgent reaction often is eminently rational.

I suppose they could, Arneoker ....

I certainly leave room for that possibility ....

You're a sceptic, afterall ....

Which makes you a good moderator ....

As does your sense of humor ....

And so ...

You're missing the part about VOLITION, Arneoker ...

Once something has made you irrational, such as fear, then you are no longer in control of your actions ....

So your urgent reaction is merely that - A REACTION, like peeing in your pants ....

A knee jerk ....

There is nothing rational about a knee jerk ....

And so ...

Well I would agree with you that it is important to stay in control and not let fear dominate you. You need to rationally react to the object you fear. Now such a reaction may be quite urgent, such as if a car or bus were careening, apparently out of control, in your general direction, or more to the point, a bunch of guys with guns were shooting up the general vicinity...

McKiernan may become the General Shinseki of Afghanistan
Wed, 05/13/2009 - 3:25pm By Kori Schake

The Obama Administration has just relieved the commander of the war in Afghanistan, General McKiernan. He had been in command for 11 months, during which time he agitated for more troops and greater unity of effort within the administration and among the allies. They have nominated to replace him the director of Admiral Mullen's Joint Staff, Lieutenant General McChrystal, plus the Secretary Gates' senior military assistant, Lieutenant General Rodriguez.

At Monday's press conference, Gates and Mullen were at a loss to explain the cause for McKiernan's relief. They would (both) say only platitudes about "with the new strategy, with the new team across the board, I felt it was very important for new leadership." When pointedly asked what McKiernan had failed to accomplish or what needed to be done differently than McKiernan envisioned, Gates and Mullen provided no substantive explanation. In interviews last week, Jim Jones, the National Security Advisor, listed among his accomplishments having pressed the Department of Defense to reduce their force requirements for Afghanistan.

An administration has the right to shop for military leadership that they find congenial -- someone whose approach they feel comfortable with, who has the ability to provide military advice effectively given the personalities and policies of the administration. To Gates and Mullen's credit, they have chosen a serious-minded and accomplished replacement in McChrystal.

But whatever McKiernan's shortcomings, the quality of military leadership pales by comparison to the other shortfalls in the administration's strategy: a common approach with the Karzai government to the use of military force; inadequate vision and resourcing for the essential non-military tools (diplomats and judicial advisors and agricultural experts and economists); and an unrealistic timeline on which Afghan political leaders, soldiers, and police can provide for themselves. A new military commander cannot solve these problems, and the Afghanistan war cannot be won without solving them.

The danger for the administration in having relieved McKiernan will come if their Afghanistan strategy does not produce the desired results on the expedited timeline the administration has committed itself to. McKiernan is on record as having asked for at least 10,000 more troops than the administration provided, and given his military judgment that the political objectives military force has been enlisted to help achieve would take a decade. If Afghanistan does not turn, the Obama administration will have just created this war's Eric Shinseki.

Is McChrystal Right for Afghanistan? - George Packer, New Yorker