[source: Newsmaker Transcript of Rep. John Murtha, Interviewed on NBC's "Today Show", December 5, 2005]

REPRESENTATIVE JOHN MURTHA DIFFERS WITH THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION ON WHAT WOULD CONSTITUTE SUCCESS IN IRAQ.

"The way I measure success, and where I differ with this administration: economic progress -- none. I spoke on the floor and said the most important part of this war is the economic progress -- getting people back to work. Unemployment now is between 40 percent and 60 percent. Electricity is below pre-war level. Energy supply below pre-war level, oil production -- that was supposed to pay for it. Oil supply was supposed to pay for it."

Martín Rizzi said:

[source: Newsmaker Transcript of Rep. John Murtha, Interviewed on NBC's "Today Show", December 5, 2005]

REPRESENTATIVE JOHN MURTHA DIFFERS WITH THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION ON WHAT WOULD CONSTITUTE SUCCESS IN IRAQ.

"The way I measure success, and where I differ with this administration: economic progress -- none. I spoke on the floor and said the most important part of this war is the economic progress -- getting people back to work. Unemployment now is between 40 percent and 60 percent. Electricity is below pre-war level. Energy supply below pre-war level, oil production -- that was supposed to pay for it. Oil supply was supposed to pay for it."

Although the consensus opinion is that the administration handled the reconstruction poorly, there has yet to be a more sophisticated discussion over what we've done poorly. Partly, I would assume, this is because we're still stuck on the sophomoric sophistry; don't "cut and run," we'll stay until there's a "victory," etc.

Until there is an understanding of how poorly we handled the economics of Iraq and how that is continuing to drive the insurgency, then we will continue to misunderstand what an appropriate solution is to the problem. One of the driving forces behind the insurgency is economics. The fact is that the people of Iraq were better off economically under Saddam.

Is there any mystery to why there is an insurgency? Factional infighting has contributed to the violence, but even without these other problems the handling of the reconstruction was so poor that it alone would have created tremendous resentment among the Iraqis. Problems include: Bush's insistence on handing the reconstruction contracts to foreign interests thus cutting Iraqis out of their own reconstruction, selling off state owned interests to foreign corporations, firing almost all the state employees, rewriting the constitution to lower the tax rates for corporations doing business in Iraq, making it hard for the Iraqi government to change these rules, delaying elections to allow all these changes, and massive graft. All in all, the handling of the reconstruction was an example of rapacious capitalism at its worst.

http://www.harpers.org/BaghdadYearZero.html

The handling of the reconstruction was criminally stupid, but what's especially disconcerting is that the problems were all anticipated and the pre-war planning, which was quite good, was ignored in favor of neocon utopia.

http://captaintrips.gnn.tv/blogs/2946/Following_Fallows_Blind_Into_Baghdad

Source: NYTimes]

{NEW YORK TIMES} BREAKS CHENEY'S ALIBI WHILE BUSH'S NANNY CONDI SPINS AROUND THE WORLD PARSING THE verbs rendition and torture, former and current U.S. government officials admitted to the {New York Times} that Ibn al Shaykh al-Libi had made false statements under coercion while a rendition program prisoner in Egypt.

In February 2002, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) had expressed skepticism about the al-Libi intelligence, partly because it could have been coerced.

Bush, Cheney, Colin Powell, and other officials repeatedly cited al-Libi's information as "credible."

A Dec. 9 {New York Times} article, titled "Qaeda-Iraq Link U.S. Cited Is Tied to Coersion Claim -- Inmate Asserts that Harsh Treatment Led to False Story ,Officials Say," reports that American officials had not previously acknowledged either that al-Libi had made false statements, or that he had contended that his statements had been coerced.

Former and current government officials have now told the {Times}:

"While he made some statements about Iraq and al-Qaeda when in American custody, it was not until he was handed over to Egypt that he made the most specific allegations, which were later used by the Bush Administration as the foundation for its claims that Iraq trained Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons."

Officials reported that he withdrew his claims about ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda in January 2004, after he had been returned to American custody.

The Times said that the current and former government officials who agreed to discuss the Al-Libi case were granted anonymity because most of the details of the case remain classified.

I was gratified to see the N.Y.Times article yesterday, because it reiterates a point that I thought important and made on a neighboring thread, "Iraq victim says U.S. torture worse than Saddam." on April 2, 2005 and then repeated on April 8, 2005.

http://www.omidyar.net/group/community-general/news/423/48/?searchterm=Al%20Libi

"I think it's worth reiterating a point I made in an earlier post; the practice of torture resulted in the false information that led to the war in Iraq.." -- Colin James Cameron

The al-Libi case is interesting because it undermines the justification that was used for extraordinary rendition; that combatants or suspected terrorists could be returned to their home countries since their were subject to laws of their own country. Al-Libi, a Libyan, was turned over to Egypt. The explanation offered in the N.Y.Times article, with cultural similarities helping in interrogation, I regard as suspect. The legal justification used for putting prisoners at Guatanomo was that it was not on U.S. soil so it wasn't subject to U.S. law. Egypt is known for its brutal treatment of political prisoners. I don't think Egypt was merely chosen for culture or convenience.

The torture issue has come up repeatedly; first with Guatanomo, then with Abu Gharib where there were prosecutions but later investigations although largely unreported revealed involvement from the administration, and again with the torture in Iraq as part of infighting between Iraqis, and with the debate over the anti-torture bill.

Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's chief of staff, revealed recently that Cheney was the driving force in the administration behind the torture, which is not surprising since he was also lobbying Congress to allow torture when the recent bill was debated.

[ http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/11/20/torture/ ]

" WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A former top State Department official said Sunday that Vice President Dick Cheney provided the "philosophical guidance" and "flexibility" that led to the torture of detainees in U.S. facilities.

Retired U.S. Army Col. Larry Wilkerson, who served as former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff, told CNN that the practice of torture may be continuing in U.S.-run facilities.

"There's no question in my mind that we did. There's no question in my mind that we may be still doing it," Wilkerson said on CNN's "Late Edition."

"There's no question in my mind where the philosophical guidance and the flexibility in order to do so originated -- in the vice president of the United States' office," he said. "His implementer in this case was [Defense Secretary] Donald Rumsfeld and the Defense Department." "

The recent revelation that there are numerous prisoner camps around the world dogged Condolezza Rice as she visited Europe recently. And I argued in my April, 2 post that extraordinary rendition amounted to privatizing and outsourcing torture.

http://www.omidyar.net/group/community-general/news/423/47/

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/torture/

Colin James Cameron said:

I was gratified to see the N.Y.Times article yesterday, because it reiterates a point that I thought important and made on a neighboring thread, "Iraq victim says U.S. torture worse than Saddam." on April 2, 2005 and then repeated on April 8, 2005.

http://www.omidyar.net/group/community-general/news/423/48/?searchterm=Al%20Libi

"I think it's worth reiterating a point I made in an earlier post; the practice of torture resulted in the false information that led to the war in Iraq.." -- Colin James Cameron

The al-Libi case is interesting because it undermines the justification that was used for extraordinary rendition; that combatants or suspected terrorists could be returned to their home countries since their were subject to laws of their own country. Al-Libi, a Libyan, was turned over to Egypt. The explanation offered in the N.Y.Times article, with cultural similarities helping in interrogation, I regard as suspect. The legal justification used for putting prisoners at Guatanomo was that it was not on U.S. soil so it wasn't subject to U.S. law. Egypt is known for its brutal treatment of political prisoners. I don't think Egypt was merely chosen for culture or convenience.

The torture issue has come up repeatedly; first with Guatanomo, then with Abu Gharib where there were prosecutions but later investigations although largely unreported revealed involvement from the administration, and again with the torture in Iraq as part of infighting between Iraqis, and with the debate over the anti-torture bill.

Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's chief of staff, revealed recently that Cheney was the driving force in the administration behind the torture, which is not surprising since he was also lobbying Congress to allow torture when the recent bill was debated.

[ http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/11/20/torture/ ]

" WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A former top State Department official said Sunday that Vice President Dick Cheney provided the "philosophical guidance" and "flexibility" that led to the torture of detainees in U.S. facilities.

Retired U.S. Army Col. Larry Wilkerson, who served as former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff, told CNN that the practice of torture may be continuing in U.S.-run facilities.

"There's no question in my mind that we did. There's no question in my mind that we may be still doing it," Wilkerson said on CNN's "Late Edition."

"There's no question in my mind where the philosophical guidance and the flexibility in order to do so originated -- in the vice president of the United States' office," he said. "His implementer in this case was [Defense Secretary] Donald Rumsfeld and the Defense Department." "

The recent revelation that there are numerous prisoner camps around the world dogged Condolezza Rice as she visited Europe recently. And I argued in my April, 2 post that extraordinary rendition amounted to privatizing and outsourcing torture.

http://www.omidyar.net/group/community-general/news/423/47/

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/torture/

I wanted to clarify a point I made about al-Libi. Al-libi was captured in Pakistan, so he fell under the extraordinary rendition program, where people are picked up in various countries and put in prisoner camps in locations around the world, which is unlike battlefield combatants who are also being shipped to various locations.

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?050214fa_fact6

[source:New York Times, A28, Dec. 10]

THE NEW YORK TIMES TELLS SENATOR MCCAIN NOT TO COMPROMISE ON HIS ANTI-TORTURE AMENDMENT.

In an unsigned editorial, the newspaper takes up the case of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, the Al Qaeda operative who told Egyptian interrogators, to whom he was rendered by the CIA, that Saddam Hussein was providing terrorists with training in chemical weapons, because that's what it took to get them to stop torturing him.

The Times notes that al-Libi will probably never be prosecuted for whatever crimes he did commit, "because his case, like so many others under illegal detention, has been so compromised by his treatment that it would probably be thrown out of court."

The Times calls on the House of Representatives to back McCain's amendment and for McCain himself not to back down to the White House.

"Mr. McCain should not water down his bill to satisfy the White House or fringe Republicans in the House. If Mr. Bush cannot manage to overrule his vice president and ends up vetoing the measure, it should not be hard to override such an irresponsible act. All it would take is for Congress to vote against torture," the Times writes.

One of the reasons I started this topic was to address an issue that has become part of the debate. Recent Bush speeches have framed the issue of "victory" as pursuing the current policy.

This particular issue is about the administration's use of "framing," a concept popularized by George Lakoff, rather than the underlying policy.

Our understanding of this war has been hurt by persistent rhetoric that reinforces a caricatured picture of the enemy, and Bush has shown no signs of wanting to drop this stereotype, with continued references to an enemy that "hates our freedom." Although this stereotype is explainable in political terms; Bush is enhancing his support with his supporters, it is frequently quite wrong, and it leads to public misunderstanding of the issue.

Even more disconcerting than the use of political communication techniques to justify faulty policy is Bush's apparent belief that his opinion is superior to the intelligence on the subject -- which he reiterated again today. Ignoring good intelligence in favor of in-house intelligence that confirmed the administration's cherished beliefs is how this administration got into trouble initially. But Bush has continued to make this error, and shows no willingness to correct his ways.

Recent research on the subject of terrorism has revealed that many of the "insurgents" (to use the appropriate term) were uninvolved in terrorist activities prior to the Iraq war and were motivated to join the conflict because of their perception of U.S. policy. Operating on the belief that the current combatants in Iraq represent a preexisting group who can be defeated when their numbers run out, ignores the growing number of combatants drawn into the conflict and their motives, which center on the U.S. presence. Rather than staying a course that leads to "victory," our policy itself is spurring the insurgency and is leading away from victory.

This administration's impression management compulsion comes at the price of an ill-informed public. But the victories are only on the domestic front, since the same policies are having the opposite effect abroad, spurring recruitment for combatants in Iraq. I can't say much for a strategy of being perceived as winning rather than actually making the country safer, and I'm equally disturbed that the administration has embarked on a strategy of distorting current intelligence, especially considering the results of that strategy in the past.

[Dreyfuss on the development of Islamic fundamentalism]

http://www.salon.com/books/int/2005/11/28/dreyfuss/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/front/special/sala.html

[source: CBS's Face the Nation, December 11]

SPEAKING ON FACE THE NATION DEC. 11, PENNSYLVANIA DEMOCRAT JOHN MURTHA SAID THAT HE NOW HAS 72 CONGRESSMEN SUPPORTING HIS RESOLUTION. He also indicated that the freak out by Cheney and others and the attempt to discredit him and to distort his proposal had actually added to the momentum his resolution has been receiving.

``I think it wouldn't have been so intense if they hadn't gone so far out,'' Murtha said.

``For instance, for the White House spokesperson to say what he said, and for a woman to say I was a coward, I think if they hadn't gone that far, and they'd have talked about the substance of what I was saying, it might have been a lot less recognition of what I was saying.''

He also indicated that he has been receiving overwhelming support from those contacting him (80%).

``But the point was, people are way ahead of the Congress,'' Murtha said.

``They're way ahead of the administration. They want this thing -- a change in direction in this thing. So I'm convinced that even though they [the Administration] handled it badly at first, it would have still gone on. Because people -- every place I go, people tell me, 80 percent of the calls I'm getting, are supporting the position I'm taking. And most of them, I'm sure, don't know exactly what I'm saying.''

Moderator Bob Schieffer also asked about Joe Lieberman's comments about Murtha undermining the President's credibility.

``The mistakes that they've made is what undermines their credibility,'' Murtha said. ``And, of course, once we become the enemy, 70, 80 percent of the people in Iraq want us out, 50 percent, 45 percent, say it's all right to kill Americans. The surrounding area, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, say to us, There's more chance of a democracy if we withdraw or if we redeploy to the surrounding area.''

[source: CBS's Face the Nation, Dec. 11]

REPUBLICAN JEFF SESSIONS ON DEFENSIVE BEFORE MURTHA. Given "equal time" to try to rebuff Murtha, Alabama Republican Senator Jeff Sessions felt compelled to say how reasonable Murtha sounded, and how he agreed the U.S. had to move toward getting out of Iraq.

The retort he could come up with was quoting Howard Dean.

Sessions also agreed with Murtha about the need to concentrate on rebuilding electricity grids, oil production capability.

It definitely looks as if the backdown which Murtha has said is underway, is in full swing.

Just a quick comment: Bush's comments to Brian Williams illustrate how far the language manipulation thing has gone. [excerpt from Grieve in Salon]

"--[Bush is] still convinced, more or less, that Dick Cheney was right when he insisted that U.S. troops would be welcomed as "liberators" in Iraq. "I think we are welcomed," Bush said, "but it was not a peaceful welcome." -- "

George Lakoff speaks of attempts to cover a weakness with Orwellian language. In this case, "not a peaceful welcome" is a euphemism for being shot at (and blown up, etc.). It's getting a little too Orwellian for me.

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/12/13/bush/index.html

There are plenty of folks interested in "languaging" but I suppose it wouldnt have been obvious to come here to discuss languaging.

I dont wish to trivialize your discussion by introducing the following, but here goes... have you seen any of the showtime series, Sleeper Cell? From what I have seen thus far it is well done.

CNN: LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- "Long after the terrorist attacks on America, TV and film producers only tiptoed around certain hot-button issues, avoiding anything close to realism...."

A serious review of terrorism from the late 19th Century and through the 20th Century clearly demonstrates that most, if not all, terrorist acts throughout moden history were conceived, designed, and guided by the secret police authorities and were rarely or never individual acts or acts of independent "terror cells" at all.

The extensive terrorism leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1905 and 1915 were run by the Okrana secret police. The burning of the Reichstag was ordered by Herman Goering. Abu Nidal was run by Western intelligence agencies for the purpose of discrediting Palestinian political ambitions. The nominally left-wing "Red Army Faction" terrorism in Europe in the late 1970s and in the 1980s, was authored by the right-wing fascist P2 Lodge as part of the so-called "Strategy of Tension" The prototype of "Islamic fundamentalism" is The Moslem Brotherhood, which was designed in the Library of London, and applied as a covert control mechanism to British colonial Egypt.

History offers innumerable further examples of the fact that "terrorism" has been run - usually, if not always - by the police and secret military agencies. TV shows like "Sleeper Cells" are produced to futher perpetuate the synthetic myth of "militant Islamic fundamentalism" conditioning the masses to irrational hatred and fear and to usher in the Orwellian nightmare that has already appeared on the monitors of the mass-population. They are also intended to blur even more the increasingly faint boundries between news, entertainment, and historical reality.

[Source: The Observer, Sunday, December 11, 2005, London.] NEW REVELATIONS IN PADILLA CASE: KEY WITNESS WAS TORTURED INTO FABRICATING TESTIMONY ABOUT `DIRTY BOMB' PLOT THAT NEVER WAS.

The Observer published new revelations about yet another case of a kidnapping and torture of a Muslim, who was compelled to testify about his non-existent ties to Al Qaeda and to the Jose Padilla plot to smuggle uranium into the United States to build and detonate a dirty bomb.

The man, a 27-year-old Ethiopian named Binyam Mohammed, was living in England for years, but went to Pakistan to recover from a drug problem in 2001.

In April 2002, he was detained as he was returning to England, and was then kidnapped by Americans and taken to Morocco, where he was subjected to more than three years of intense torture, during which time he ``confessed'' to being part of the Al Qaeda plot with Padilla.

Mohammed told his British lawyer Clive Stafford Smith that his admissions were all false, that he never met Padilla, and could not have been in secret meetings with Al Qaeda leaders, because he did not even speak Arabic.

When revelations about the rendering and torture of Mohammed came out, the case against Padilla was shattered.

Mohammed himself, however, was flown to Guantanamo Bay in September of this year, and has been informed he will be tried before the military tribunal on charges he was part of the Al Qaeda terror plots.

The Observer story went into great and gruesome detail about the kinds of torture that Mohammed was subjected to by American, British, and Moroccan interrogators.

The Observer quoted unnamed senior CIA officials, who said the Agency was in ``deep crisis'' over the rendering/torture policy, and that many senior officers were leaving the CIA, rather than face certain criminal prosecution later, when the full ugly story comes out.

offering a mild counterpoint as I am not much in a mood to disagree with you on the covert support of terrorism meant to create the climate of fear and stereotypes... some shows (and other art forms) do move in the direction of subtlety that has other values...

representing "complexity" for example, within Islam is something of value... and I think thats something the show endeavors to do...

I do not know if it makes much difference to history what the masses think or what good nudging the masses from one illusory virtual view to another one would do. The virtue of this new TV show is that only some moslems are portrayed as blood-thirsty fanatics with the good-guy black moslem non-fanatics out helping homeland security arrest these deluded nutcases from setting off their biological bombs and other weapons of mass destruction they carry around with them.

This is a plot line that is absolutely Clockwork Orange when the masses have already been brainwashed to think that the country they live in is being attacked by islamic extremists a story line that is right out of the TV screen in the novel "1984". and the way that Hollywood spectacle movies seemed to become the model for the 911 attacks and the way in which the war on terorism became a TV show and innumerable shoot-the-Arabs 3-D realistic video games reveals the psych-ops character of news/entertainment and vindicates that prescient and prophetic journalist, the great George Orwell who told about of the degradation of language and thought-control rooted in fear. How clearly he beheld this savage passage of AngloAmerican history!

Eurasia is at war with Oceania. Eurasia has always been at war with Oceania.

So.... better not to assume anything.... so I will ask. Would it be better for the masses to break free from the brainwash? Would it make a difference? What would it take?

Has anyone learned anything from Animal Farm or 1984 or homage to Catalonia? What is the evidence of that? Is there a sense of collective learning, especially when certain lessons need to be re-learned again and again?

Would it be better for the masses to break free from the brainwash? Would it make a difference? What would it take?

[Source: White House transcript, C-Span, December 12]

BUSH ADMITS THAT 30,000 IRAQIS, "MORE OR LESS," HAVE BEEN KILLED SINCE THE INVASION. President Bush gave the third of his scheduled four speeches peddling his Iraq policy before the Iraqi elections on Dec. 15.

Today he was speaking to the World Affairs Council in Philadelphia. After making some idiotic comparisons between his democracy gambit in Iraq with the American Revolution (probably after having read Lynne Cheney's lectures to fourth- and fifth-graders on Iraq), he gave a rendition of the political developments in Iraq from the founding of the CPA until the present, noting that democracy-building is not an easy or smooth process.

He intoned his "staying the course" mantra, adding that U.S. forces will be able to "stand down" as quickly as Iraqi forces can be stood up. He gave no timetables for either.

He ventured that risky undertaking of taking questions from the audience, which he rarely does.

The first questioner asked him if he had any idea how many Iraqis have been killed since the beginning of the invasion. This has been a figure that NOBODY has discussed since the U.S. launched the invasion, and obviously there has not been much of a count kept.

Somewhat taken aback, Bush did respond, ``I would say 30,000, more or less, have died as a result of the initial incursion and the ongoing violence against Iraqis.''

This wasn't the only difficulty. Another questioner asked how his administration could have linked Saddam Hussein to 9/11 when no Middle East expert could accept such an assumption.

First, Bush asked her to repeat the question, claiming not to have heard it. Then he went into a real song-and-dance about how 9/11 had changed his views on these international problems, babbling about what a dangerous man Saddam Hussein was, and how good it was to have gotten rid of that threat, and how secure America was as a result. He never gave an answer to the woman's question, but simply said "The 9/11 attacks extenuated that threat [i.e. Saddam Hussein] as far as I was concerned."

[Source: www.cq.com]

`IRAQIS ARE NOT AGAINST DEMOCRACY. THEY'RE AGAINST OUR OCCUPATION,' SAID REP. JOHN MURTHA in a Philadelphia press conference following President's Bush speech.

"The current strategy envisions an open-ended nation-building commitment by the U.S. military. Now what's wrong with that is that nation-building is something our military does not do well. Nation-building is something that, by the way the military operates is against nation-building.

"For instance, when we go into a place like Fallujah, we destroy it. We put 150,000 outside their homes. In a guerrilla war -- and that's what we're talking about in Iraq -- in a guerrilla war you have to win the hearts and minds of the people. When you put 150,000 people out of their homes, you don't win hearts and minds; you make enemies."

Alluding to Bush's failed attempt during his speech, to portray an understanding of American history, Murtha said,

"Well, it's interesting that we're here in Philadelphia today, the seat of liberty, and if they'd kept the French here after 1776 -- and you remember the Constitution wasn't until 1789 -- we'd have thrown them out. And that's what I say about what's happening in Iraq right now."

At another point, Murtha noted that, "We have the smallest standing army since 1940. Now think what I'm saying. We've had a two-and-a-half-year deployment, with the smallest army.... So the cost of the war is hurting us not only today, it's hurting us down the road. We could not -- we could not -- make a deployment to another place in the world and sustain that deployment."

A number of thoughts here: thanks to Michael for a rundown on the plot of Sleeper Cell , I don't get Showtime so I won't be watching although I'd certainly like to.

Analyzing Presidential speeches for symbolic content is something I've studied, and Bush's give me so much that I'm overloaded.

The "language thing" is something I brought up -- among the many, many issues -- which had become so pronounced at the time of writing that I felt it deserved discussion.

But rather than recommend a great body of literature on the subject which nobody will have time to read, I thought I'd comment on the attitudes on this war, particularly our attitudes on torture.

There is a remarkable naivete that marks our attitudes towards recent revelations of torture. And this goes for our attitudes towards the false intelligence, too. The astonishment and denial that mark our reactions are in themselves an indication of how quickly we forget our history, or perhaps, how little we know it.

Watching the Bush team pass from prewar deception to postwar deception reminded me that the attitudes of those who live with contemporaneous events are often less informed than those who view from history. For many people, the well circulated plants (by Lincoln Group or whomever) about "dirty bombs" are better known than the facts of the war. And the public's shock at hearing of torture or false intelligence is long overdue; we should have been complaining about these things for decades since they've been happening in Central and South America as a part of U.S. policy since shortly after the CIA was created.

It's only "our" history that we don't know, and telling someone these facts leads them to reject everything, in a profound bout of dissonance. But this point supports another point: some of the abuses we are seeing now only represent a continuation of our past; it's not unusual, it is part of systemic forces that continue to play out. In this case, we still have elements within the government who think that conducting war every time it can be plausibly justified as in our interests is OK, and moreover, the government can sell a lie and succeed even when the lie is revealed.

The Iraq war intelligence wasn't the greatest intelligence blunder; the Soviet intelligence was. And we haven't even noticed that we were incredibly and terribly wrong about the Soviet union. Rather, we went straight from intelligence failure into credit claiming, giving Ronald Reagan credit for ending the Cold War (must have been that "tear down this wall" speech). In both cases the lie has gone full circle, although we did notice there were no WMDs, we didn't notice we were wrong about the Soviets.

In both cases there was intense demagogic rhetoric, although we came to accept it as justifiable during the cold war -- a measure of its success. It's also a measure of how reality and our self image deviate that we treat the torture issue as so novel, even though we've been exporting torture through the School of the Americas for many years.

Another issue that has been sold all too efficiently is the "Democratizing" -- as it always is. The obvious problem; that it was a fallback position after no WMDs were found, hasn't gained much attention. We can't argue with Democratization any more than apple pie. What should be noticed is that the entire structure of the so-called setup for Democracy was contrived to protect our economic interests. Yes it's Democracy alright, a "consumer Democracy" with corporations having already carved out a big chunk of the country and corruption pandemic. But what is really disturbing about the bait and switch to Democratization is that we have forgotten our history once again; our record of Democratizing follows a well worn path. We only support governments (despotic or not) that acquiesce to our economic interests (or rather, our corporation's economic interests). The storyline about Democracy is like those on torture and poorly justified wars, we buy the line before and after the event.

http://www.soaw.org/new/newswire_detail.php?id=983

http://www.ccmep.org/2004_articles/general/091004_the_hidden.htm

http://home.att.net/~Resurgence/CIAtimeline.html

Even tho I may not be able to read all the "languaging" references, I'm still interested, and may have read a few.

As for Democratizing, of course it's easy.... right? We're doing it, so they can easily choose to do it! Thats ths slipshod argument without any reference to: we're not quite doing it, and in some ways we're doing it less and less (well). But we like thinking of ourselves in this way.

"Democratizing, of course it's easy.... right?..." "...But we like thinking of ourselves in this way"

WHAT is so great about democracy anyway? ....if the great unwashed masses are to be mal-informed and miseducated and brainwashed and desensitized and bestialized and increasingly kept ignorant, democracy could actually be the very worst form of government. Couldnt it?

Except for all the other forms? (Isnt that the line?)

I guess the funnier thing is the sense that you can democratize someone. Forcibly. Eat your spinach. And like it.

"Except for all the other forms? (Isnt that the line?)"

Yes. That is the line. And, like many another truism and article of "common knowledge", isnt it merely a hollow saying?

Having the Television-informed opinions of the masses as the guide of a society's survival imperative seems to promise low prospects of success.

"I guess the funnier thing is the sense that you can democratize someone. Forcibly. Eat your spinach. And like it"

At this time the nations are in economic agony desperately needing good government far more than they need democracy.

Question: What were more desireable : Good government by national leader with the interests of his or her country at heart, or bad government by statistical vote tallies?

IMO the reason democracy is so popular in powerful circles today is because they presume to control the outcome of elections with money, media, murder, and electoral fraud.