| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| rubylith |
Posted - 02/17/2009 : 4:12:49 PM
My dear friend Mike is on a ship right now on his way to Afghanistan. I hope he is ok. I hope he comes back. I hope we share another laugh together, another wild conversation about what we will do the rest of our lives. If he does not return, for I fear, a monster will be unleashed, to bring this god dammed system down once and for all. Down to it's evil fucking knees.
DOWN WITH OBAMA. DOWN WITH THAT CORPORATE BLOODSUCKER.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29242187/
Sources: Obama OKs more Afghan troops
Marines and additional Army brigade expected to deploy in coming months
The Associated Press
updated 3:56 p.m. ET, Tues., Feb. 17, 2009
WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama has signed off on an increase in U.S. forces for the flagging war in Afghanistan, defense and congressional officials said Tuesday.
The Obama administration is expected to announce by Wednesday that it will send one additional Army brigade and an unknown number of U.S. Marines to Afghanistan in coming months. One source says the total is about 17,000 troops.
That would be a down payment on a larger influx of U.S. forces that has been widely expected this year. It would get a few thousand forces in place in time for the increase in fighting that usually comes with warmer weather and ahead of national midyear elections.
This is the first time the new commander in chief has sent significant numbers of new forces into battle. Obama campaigned on a new strategy for the Afghanistan war, but he has taken his time to approve the new forces.
Identifying and narrowing the goals in Afghanistan is part of a broad U.S. government reassessment of the war effort that is under way.
U.S. commanders have said they could send an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan this year, nearly doubling the American contingent. Pentagon chief Robert Gates has said two brigades could be ready to go there by spring and a third by summer.
Earlier Tuesday, the Rand Corp. issued a report concluding that a "game-changing" strategy is urgently needed in Afghanistan to save the faltering international campaign.
"All is not lost in Afghanistan," RAND Corp. experts said in a paper released by the congressionally funded United States Institute of Peace.
© 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29242187/
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© 2009 MSNBC.com |
| 19 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| PJK |
Posted - 02/27/2009 : 10:39:48 PM
Dave, I am about 3-4 hours from DC. I am not sure if I am going or not due to my schedule, but I am thinking about it. I'll let you know closer to the date. |
| rubylith |
Posted - 02/27/2009 : 6:53:24 PM
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Kucinich_hits_Iraq_withdrawal_You_cant_0227.html
Kucinich hits Iraq withdrawal: 'You can't be in and out'
It wasn't even one year ago when Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and members of his political campaign said now-President Barack Obama "seems to think losing a war will help him win an election."
Which is what makes this week's announcement of -- and the fallout from -- President Obama's plan to withdrawal troops from Iraq so surprising. It isn't the opposition party Obama must now win over: It's his own political allies.
Sen. McCain and top Republican leaders actually support the Democratic administration's plan, while some top Democrats have openly criticized it. Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), himself a former presidential candidate, hit back Friday against a portion of Obama's plan which would leave 35-50,000 "observer" soldiers in the country.
"You can't be in and out at the same time," said Kucinich in a media advisory.
"America must determine at some point to end the occupation, close the bases and bring the troops home," he said. "We must bring a conclusion to this sorry chapter in American history where war was waged under false pretense against an innocent people. Taking troops out of Iraq should not mean more troops available for deployment in other operations.
"In February of 2007 I presented H.R. 1234, legislation that would end the war in Iraq, and the process I outlined is still necessary. We should immediately bring home American service members and contractors, convene a regional conference to prepare an international peace-keeping force and accelerate Iraq-driven reconstruction."
"As a candidate for President, I made clear my support for a timeline of 16 months to carry out this drawdown, while pledging to consult closely with our military commanders upon taking office to ensure that we preserve the gains we’ve made and protect our troops," Obama said on Friday. "Those consultations are now complete, and I have chosen a timeline that will remove our combat brigades over the next 18 months."
Obama added, "Let me say this as plainly as I can: by August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end."
Congressman Kucinich has been a leading opponent of the Iraq war policy even well before many of his Democratic colleagues in the House of Representatives came to agree with his position. |
| rubylith |
Posted - 02/27/2009 : 09:01:09 AM
YES! Are you going?!?? We should meet up, how far is D.C. from you?? |
| PJK |
Posted - 02/27/2009 : 06:34:03 AM
Thought of you Dave. Are you going to the March at the Pentagon on March 21st? |
| rubylith |
Posted - 02/26/2009 : 09:44:40 AM
Obama’s War Machine Needs $800 Billion For 2009
After Iraq “withdrawal,” tens of thousands of U.S. troops will remain
Obamas War Machine Needs $800 Billion For 2009 260209top
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Barack Obama’s election promise to bring “change” to Washington and reverse the juggernaut of the Bush war machine has proven to be nothing more than a cruel hoax, emphasized by his recent actions on Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq and his latest demand for a total of around $800 billion in war funds and subsidiary costs just to cover the rest of 2009.
“According to the US defense officials, Obama needs USD 75.5 billion for 2009 to cover the cost of the additional troops deployed in to Afghanistan this year and an another USD 130 billion for the rest of fiscal 2009,” reports Press TV.
An additional $534 billion is required for the Defense Department, added to another figure of $65.9 billion that has already been approved by Congress, bringing the total figure to over $805 billion dollars.
The demand to refill the war coffers arrives in the same month as Obama’s announcement to send at least 17,000, and eventually perhaps as many as 30,000, extra troops to Afghanistan - over seven years after the U.S. invaded in 2001.
Obama has also recently beefed the U.S. military role in Pakistan beyond that pursued by the Bush administration and “expanded the covert war run by the Central Intelligence Agency inside Pakistan,” according to the New York Times, with an increase in missile attacks by drone aircraft.
All this within just one month of Obama’s inauguration on the back of an election campaign won on the basis of changing the warmongering policies of the Bush administration!
Meanwhile, despite public pronouncements by Obama that a plan to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq is in progress, the details of the agreement actually establish a permanent presence of a sizable occupying force in perpetuity.
Despite his pre-election promises it’s interesting to note that the new WhiteHouse.gov website, in the “foreign policy” section, contains nothing whatsoever about Obama’s plans for Iraq. That’s probably because he will simply be following the exact same course undertaken by the Bush administration in publicly stating an intention for withdrawal while privately ensuring that tens of thousands of U.S. troops will remain in Iraq in perpetuity for the reason they were sent there in the first place - to safeguard a U.S. geopolitical foothold in the middle east and maintain control over whatever puppet government is installed.
As Chris Floyd points out in his article today, “The hypocrisy – the literally murderous hypocrisy – of claiming that this plan “leaves Iraq to its people and responsibly ends this war,” as Obama asserted in his State of the Union speech, is sickening. It does no such thing, and he knows it.”
In reality, after the “withdrawal” of U.S. troops in 19 months, “Mr. Obama plans to leave behind a “residual force” of tens of thousands of troops to continue training Iraqi security forces, hunt down foreign terrorist cells and guard American institutions,” reported the New York Times.
A senior military officer spelled it out more plainly to the Los Angeles TImes, “‘When President Obama said we were going to get out within 16 months, some people heard, ‘get out,’ and everyone’s gone. But that is not going to happen,’ the officer said.”
“By implementing his war continuation plan, Obama will complete the work of Bush and his militarist clique,” writes Floyd, and in doing so send, “an apparently endless stream of American troops to die — and, in even greater numbers, to kill — in a criminal action that has helped bankrupt our own country while sending waves of violent instability and extremism around the world. It will further enfilth a cesspool of corruption and war profiteering that has already reached staggering, world-historical proportions.”
The ultimate course for Iraq is something closer to what Obama’s presidential rival John McCain conceded - that U.S. troops will remain in the country for 100 years and probably beyond, long after Barack Obama leaves the White House and long after his empty mantra of “change” washes away like a footprint in the sand. |
| rubylith |
Posted - 02/18/2009 : 11:54:36 AM
"We are a fucking virus with shoes" - Bill Hicks
haha
Check out this radio interview I did last night if you want...
http://truthmovement.com/news/guests/davecahill2.17.09.html |
| Hopeful Rolling Waves |
Posted - 02/18/2009 : 08:43:00 AM
It's like the Agent says in the Matrix. The 'human' should be classified as a virus. |
| dan p. |
Posted - 02/18/2009 : 03:13:34 AM
you're upset because your friend is being sent off to a desert and it's possible he'll die there. you should be upset. that's scary. i hope he comes back alive.
that being said, you labor under a delusion which is very common. you rail against war, greed, corruption, mendacity, ignorance and violence. the problem is, evil isn't the disease, it's a symptom. the disease is called human. all of these awful things, as bad as they are, are the human way. this is not a phase. shackled in our skins and trapped in our minds, we can't escape any of it any more than we can outrun our own shadows. you would turn to someone else to lead, but they still exist within a collection of systems with other humans. in the same way that the nature of one ring is evil because it was made by sauron, human systems are susceptible to human flaw, and no one that breathes is incapable of betrayal.
you can turn to whomsoever you like, but you're trapped. we all are. hell is other people. |
| Arthen |
Posted - 02/18/2009 : 02:56:22 AM
quote:
Originally posted by Ranting Thespian
You know, if everyone in the world was a Buddhist, there would be world peace.
Buddhists have skeletons in the closet too:
"Conze has argued [...] that 'some of the success of the [Tibetan Buddhist] Gelug-pa [sect] was due to the military support of the Mongols, who, during the seventeenth century, frequently devastated the monasteries of the rival Red sects. The long association of Japanese Zen Buddhism with military prowess and aggressive imperialism has already been noted... [...] and Trevor Ling has argued that South-East Asian Buddhist kingdoms were as militarily aggressive and self-seeking as any others. Walpola Rahula [describes] a war of national independence in Sri Lanka in the second century BC conducted under the slogan 'Not for kingdom, but for Buddhism'"
"The Social Face of Buddhism" by Ken H Jones, p285-286
The only way there will be world peace is if everybody's gone.
|
| Ranting Thespian |
Posted - 02/18/2009 : 01:05:29 AM
You know, if everyone in the world was a Buddhist, there would be world peace. |
| Arthen |
Posted - 02/17/2009 : 11:23:52 PM
We need to get out there and start fighting and killing to end the fighting and killing!
|
| PJK |
Posted - 02/17/2009 : 10:13:25 PM
quote:
STOP WARS...Listen to TR!
Well said! (or TR3  ) |
| Hopeful Rolling Waves |
Posted - 02/17/2009 : 9:57:38 PM
STOP WARS...Listen to TR! |
| rubylith |
Posted - 02/17/2009 : 8:12:35 PM
Well no matter what, in the end, I love all you guys. We gotta stick together and resist peacefully to the bitter end. |
| PJK |
Posted - 02/17/2009 : 7:59:12 PM
I understand your frustration Dave, REALLY I do. The same kind of frustrations is what drove radicals like Amilear Cabral & Franz Fanon to become revolutionaries. It is why MLK Jr was starting to become more and more radical, because there was so much frustration, so much unjustice and no one was listening to "peaceful" ways to change it.
I don't feel the same frustration level that you do but I understand it. I know how the system works or doesn't work, I grew up with politics. I have a picture above my computer of my father shaking President Johnson's hand in the White House.
I agree our political system is corrupt, it is also hugely complicated. I disagree with your take on Obama, you couldn't put God in office and get miracles to happen less than two months into office. The challenges Obama faces are the most difficult of any President in my life time. I thnk things can get better, but will never be great.
That is why I turned to Buddhism. It helps me cope, helps me focus, become more grounded. It gives me inner peace because the world will never be peaceful.
Dave, your comment about people turning off the TV and going into the streets mirrors my feelings as I face teenagers in high school every day that are spoiled rotten and are totally self centered. Education is the key, IMO, to changing our world for the better, yet most families don't teach their kids to value education.
Some people like you, me, Ben and others here do see the world as it is, but most people live in their own shallow little worlds. The only time they get excited about the world is when the effects hit home,they lose a job or their house etc.
I wish I had some profound words of wisdom, but as old as I am and as educated as I am, I have yet to come up with answers to solve even the smallest problems our country faces let alone the larger ones. |
| rubylith |
Posted - 02/17/2009 : 6:29:25 PM
The same as being equated with being a "wing nut, terrorist leftist" if you didn't support BUSH, now you get called a "racist" if you don't support Obama. Now there were a lot of nuts against Bush, and there is a lot of racist scumbags against Obama. The media will use that to tarnish anyone's image that opposes America's leaders until the levee breaks and they introduce a new candidate, from the "other side of the aisle" to save the day.
Over and over and over again, history repeats. Our dollar will soon collapse and the Union of North America will be introduced with a shiny new currency. Thanks Nixon! Thanks Reagan! Thanks Bush! Thanks Clinton!
Sorry I'm just upset, don't mean to always be a downer, I just want my friend to be ok and come back, just like the millions of families here and millions over there who just want peace and for their friends and family to come back. For God's sake, if we used the money from these unjust wars we could feed and cloth the poor of the world over and over again. THATS CHANGE I CAN BELIEVE IN. How about not engaging in genocide? How about renewable energy? HOW BOUT IT!? We can do this NOW, but not with these criminals running things. It's time the American people turn off the tv, get in the streets, and demand some God dammed answers. |
| Arthen |
Posted - 02/17/2009 : 6:19:43 PM
Yeah, maybe your right Dave. But we've gotten some killer raps out of his candidacy and presidency already:
"No more war/
no more Iraq/
no more White Lies/
my President is black" |
| rubylith |
Posted - 02/17/2009 : 5:30:38 PM
The real terrorists wear $5,000 dollar suits...oh...and I have their address it's 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Washington, D.C. Al-CIAda is a myth. Named after the FBI dataBASE of the Mujahadeen, we created, funded and armed those fucks. OBL was on dialysis since 2002 (how can you go cave to cave with an I.V.?) and has been reported dead numerous times, all of his "tapes" come from the same source. Obama is accelerating the war, not to save us from the evil Al-CIAda but to accelerate the war for WORLD domination. He's a crook. He's a liar. And sometime in the future everyone that supported that schmuck is going to look back and say, "wow I was tricked by slogans like "yes we can" and "Change we can believe in" into voting for that new world order monster".
Sorry Pam I know you are a supporter. It's time to take a closer look at the man you can "your president", He is nothing more than a Wall Street lobbyist. He doesn't care about you. He doesn't care about me, and his COUSIN Dick Cheney set him up pretty good to rein as dictator of the U.S. Our country is dieing and it's all thanks to the same people that have been running our government for decades.
CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN?
T.R. for president!
Fluffy for vice!
|
| PJK |
Posted - 02/17/2009 : 4:41:57 PM
As you know I am a huge Obama supporter. Having said that, I have concerns about his position on Afghanistan. Yes, I definitely think Bush blew it big time, leaving Afghanistan and going into Iraq, but things have changed since then. For one thing, I don't think OBL is still there. Secondly, to track someone like him down, it is far more efficient to follow the money trail or better yet, the woman trail. Also, it isn't just Afghanistan, Al Qaeda is strong throughout Africa and Indonesia.
I would rather see some signs of getting out of Iraq as promised.
I think of our service men and women every day. I truly hope your friend stays safe. |
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