It’s interesting to note that, at long last, the mainstream media is hinting that the words ‘al Qaeda’ has simplistically become a metaphor for those that are fighting the US in Iraq and elsewhere and that ‘al Qaeda’ is not, as they have pushed for years, a specific organisation that is led and organised by the equally metaphoric and very dead ‘Osama bin Laden’.
Michael Cooper and Larry Rohter of ‘The New York Times’ today wrote: “As he campaigns with the weight of a deeply unpopular war on his shoulders, Senator John McCain of Arizona frequently uses the shorthand “Al Qaeda” to describe the enemy in Iraq in pressing to stay the course in the war there.” It’s a step in the right direction for the mainstream media to at last concede that ‘al Qaeda’ is indeed merely ‘shorthand’ for those that battle against US occupiers of various countries in the Middle East and Central Asia.
In much the same way as the Americans invoked the words ‘al Qaeda’ to denote those that raise their hands against them in defense of their lands, the Israelis today refer to all Palestinians that are fighting for their lands back as ‘terrorists’. The Israelis tried for a while to cast Palestinian fighters into the ‘al Qaeda’ mould but it was quickly revealed that those the Israelis ‘captured’ turned out to be Israeli intelligence patsies. They have occasionally tried it on since but haven’t of late been silly enough to actually insist that ‘al Qaeda’ is active with Palestinian fighters.
AUSTRALIANS AT WAR
THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY is a compelling factual history of neoconservatism and its influence on US Foreign Policy in the Middle East during the first decade of the twenty-first century. Click on image above for details.
16 comments:
The next step is to get them to spell it properly -- "Al-CIA-Duh"
I wish that McCain's use of "Al Queda" to describe the militants in Iraq signaled his acknowledgement that Al Queda wasn't real, but it appears quite the opposite. Mc Cain, the Republican Presidential Candidtae, wants to retroactively form a link between our presence in Iraq and a reason for being there. He knows that the phony war is the thing that's most likely to get his party kicked out of D.C. this November, and is desperately trying to save himself. No doubt, he is also getting notes from top campaign contributors to say things like "Bomb Iran."
Now how much longer before the media reports al qaeda is really a creation of the CIA, created to replace the fallen Soviet empire as the main justification for half trillion dollar defense budgets?
from what i've read al-qaeda actually means toilet and it seems to me that that is exactley where these lunatics have led the world.straight to the shithouse.
Too many cooks spoil the broth, I reckon!
G'day Damian,
Yes, the blanket use of a term to justify and excuse. Glenn Greenwald has a good column on the matter:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/04/19/pollack/index.html
An extract:
Absolutely. Poor John McCain can't be expected to be accurate in describing the identities and goals of all our Enemies while on the campaign trail. That's far too complex to bother the shallow American voter with. So it's "perfectly reasonable" -- that's really the phrase Pollack used -- to just call them all "Al Qaeda," because it's not as though that term packs any sort of emotional punch or is likely to mislead people in thinking about whether we should withdraw. It's just convenient shorthand for "Arabs who think that we shouldn't be occupying Muslim countries" and, notwithstanding the fact that it's completely false, there is no reason whatsoever to object to McCain's efforts to mislead Americans into thinking that Iraqi insurgents are the same people who attacked us on 9/11. They're all just Al Qaeda - so sayeth our Great Middle East scholar Kenneth Pollack.
I'm hesitant to criticize the article because it at least examines McCain's increasingly reckless and exploitative use of the term "Al Qaeda" when defending the war in Iraq. And it also notes that McCain did the same thing with Iran, previously and repeatedly linking the Iranians to "Al Qaeda" only to retract the claim. So that's progress, at least.
And as to McCain, questions about his activities as a POW are being aired:
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn04192008.html
Could the US end up with a more dangerous president than Bush?
Exactly Bob. McCain is simply more of the same; the same propaganda, the same rhetoric, the same lies, the same senseless Islamophobia, the same warmongering and the same self-righteous arrogance. Why would the American people want more of what they're having now?
Anonymous: "Mc Cain, the Republican Presidential Candidtae [sic]".
Actually, he is one of two Republican Presidential Candidates - Congressman Ron Paul is the other candidate - an official candidate will not be chosen for another 5 months at the September convention. InsaneMcCain could well implode & be dragged off by the boys-with-nets before then.
Note - both Democratic candidates are also pro-war (Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, etc etc), pro-expanded government, and none (other than Dr. Paul) have any idea how to solve our extreme financial crisis.
Anonymous: "Mc Cain, the Republican Presidential Candidtae [sic]".
Actually, he is one of two Republican Presidential Candidates - Congressman Ron Paul is the other candidate - an official candidate will not be chosen for another 5 months at the September convention. InsaneMcCain could well implode & be dragged off by the boys-with-nets before then.
Note - both Democratic candidates are also pro-war (Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, etc etc), pro-expanded government, and none (other than Dr. Paul) have any idea how to solve our extreme financial crisis.
Hi DAmian.
McCain is yet another stooge for the elite to futher their agenda.Did you see the list of the MCCAin supporters? It is enlightening. Dear old Kissinger, I thought he was dead.And Sol there betwixt slumming it as a Telstra dealer.
MCCain's credentials as a family name are dubious. He is the third generation navy, but just what idd Daddy get up to while the latter was Admiral?http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:3BeYs1_QkpEJ:www.counterpunch.org/stclair1126.html+aDMIRAL+mCcAIN+INVESTIGATION+INTO+uss+LIBERTY&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=au&client=firefox-a
According to Ennes book quoted in this article dear Daddy Admiral MCCain failed to send on protective manoevre orders to the USS LIBERTY:
"On June 6, the Joint Chiefs sent Admiral McCain, father of the senator from Arizona, an urgent message instructing him to move the Liberty out of the war zone to a position at least 100 miles off the Gaza Coast. McCain never forwarded the message to the ship..."Leaving her the sitting target for the false flag attack . In the investigation that followed Admiral MCCain presided over the NAVY white wash . June 1967. Incompetence or deliberate? Idiot or traitor? So often the question.
SO mad son McCain wh0 wants a war without end and no defeat like Vietnam for his ounctry again (sounds a bit like Nukem MCCathy an d Korea)is being put forward.
I presume the USS Liberty survivors don't expect justice from him, too embarassing for Daddy.
"....The inquiry was headed by Rear Admiral Isaac C. Kidd. Kidd didn't have a free hand. He'd been instructed by Vice-Admiral McCain to limit the damage to the Pentagon and to protect the reputation of Israel...."
Now that is a traitorous action to the dead and wounded and his own country.
"...None of this made its way into the 700-page Court of Inquiry report, which was completed within a couple of weeks and sent to Admiral McCain in London for review.
McCain approved the report over the objections of Captain Merlin Staring, the Navy legal officer assigned to the inquiry, who found the report to be flawed, incomplete and contrary to the evidence
..."
MCCain junior was soon caught(nov 1967) and imprisoned by...vietkong for five years. I wonder if Ho Chiny chin Minh kept that close personal relationship with David Ben Gurion described in the latter's memoirs..Offered him Northern Vietnam as a homeland, how sweet.That five years after the USS Liberty attack by Israeli forces was probably the most dangerous for the ISraeli-American Arms deals that were about to start(1968) than any other time.
Except perhaps the 48 hours after 911.
McCain in the Whitehouse is like having Pollard's son running for president married to Jackson's daughter with Morganthau's child on the way, but worse.
Simply more of the same convenient arms(MIC)/banking/industry alliances as always using service men and their collateral damage to make money and power theirs. Ah well.
Iran will be immediate methinks.
The big question is :"what would Obama do?"
so long
annie
Annie, 'what would Obama do' is indeed the big question! But I think it's more what Obama won't do that is worrying Republicans and especially the neocons. And, given that, the chances of some kind of military attack against Iran while Bush is still President is very high; and even higher still if it looks like Obama might get up as the Democrat candidate. Most Americans have had enough of the Middle East and, as you say, McCain is just more of the same, so, if it looks like Obama getting a shoe in then Bush might opt to do somethiing himself rather than risk losing an opportunity.
Frightening isn't it?!
HI Damian , I find this latest Israeli spy arrest very interesting. Someone they have had on the books for decades.
I suspect a few Kennedy revelations to counter eh?
That "a Alqaida" (those rubbish propaganda tapes are quite enlightening)tape should say not fair to blame Israel for 911 is surely a spoof.
the tape with the star of David on the curtain behind was amusing, and one with the "intelli" groups logo added the same time as the Alqaida logo was also a ripper.
Iran .........so hard to pick. clearly China 's direction-with us or agin us- is a decider.I doubt Putin would do anything that is not decicive and that needs China. Will they give Darfur?
The endgame is approaching slowly and the slower it comes the fewer pieces the US seems to have.I would say their demise began to accelerate near the time of the Jackson -Morganthau alliance, and Boeing MIC bilions etc . I still wonder what hre real reason for killing Kennedy was, both of them.Perhaps they stood in the way of too many ambitions.I sure hope this doesn't blow back on Jews like the Balfour did in Germany after WW1 when it all hits the fans.
Annie
Hello Annie. Sorry for the delay in responding; I've got a bit tied up at work.
Israel, of course, has never stopped spying on all and sundry. Larry Franklin for example, an ex-Pentagon wonk working for Doug Feith, was caught at it only a little while ago, which puts the lie to Israels assertion that they haven't spied on the US since 1985.
The Chinese as a nation are a fairly mercenary lot inasmuch that they don't care who they deal with. Essentially they have always been very insular in their outlook toward the rest of the world. As a result they have little interest in what goes on elsewhere in the world as long as no-one bothers them!
G'day Annie,
"The endgame is approaching slowly..."
-=*=-
Thanks for the tip about USS Liberty, quite a 'good' read.
In stuff elsewhere, I've argued that our salvation could lie in the hands of a (new) lobby, one to 'work on' our representatives (anywhere in our so-called democracies, i.e. the Anglo-sphere; US, UK, Aus + Israel).
The idea would be to get, bind, our representatives to actually represent us, we the sheople® - as opposed to representing anyone but us, usually meant here is the M/I-plex, or industry or developers - any and all such sheople's enemies - as our representatives currently do, obviously to our deep and enduring detriment.
Now it occurs to me that not only would such a process work, it has already been demonstrated to work - namely, the M-W 'exposed' Israel Lobby. Too bad they choose to lobby *for* murder for spoil. (Dishonourable) criminals!
BTW, your endgame, I assume, is the long anticipated attack by parts if not the whole of USrael on Iran. The endgame, as I see it, is the excess-CO2 induced climate catastrophe, what I term as the greedastrophe®. While USrael fiddles - murdering for spoil - the world is burning up - or down, or wherever the hell the greedastrophe is dragging us. Just how clever is that?
Hi Phil
I think lobbys and think tanks are very dangerous unless their funding is transparent and their experts are only quoted while also mentioning their financial backers and tank ideology. I am getting a bit sick of the ABC using Neocon/LIkud/MIC based think tanks without a product warning that other deadly substances have to have.
End game? different for each of the enterprising groups isn't it? As it always has been. While removal of Saddam from Iraq was a common point for so many groups, a stable Pax America there is the wish of only one of those.Hence the problem.
Same with attacking Iran. Supporting the actual attack is a common denominator for many but the reason is so different isn't it? And hence the actual result can be skewed from what some of the nasty little plotters wish with a little tweek here and there.
So end game ......is not the attack upon Iran per se, but how it is tweeked.Those who see this uncertainty are the main ones putting on the brakes.
So for whatever reason, blessed be the peacemakers.
blessings
Annie
G'day Annie,
1st on terminology, your 'ABC' is my AusBC, to distinguish from the (negative-qualifier) US model, and your 'lobbys and think tanks' are very dangerous precisely because on the one hand their 'business models' largely stem from the same negative-qualifier source, but more importantly on the other hand, are engaged in nefarious activities such as influence-peddling and (criminally) gaming the system. Another descriptor for such processes is corrupt, the opposite of both what's needed and what I have in mind. My sort'a think tank would operate out in the open - like these blogs do, and would pursue honourable objectives (based on a proper morality model[1]), in contrast to those run by the 'black-hats' I mentioned above[2]. And my sort'a lobby would be in the business of trammelling[3] our representatives, in the sense of returning them to the straight and narrow.
Jump straight to your "end game ......is not the attack upon Iran per se," wheras there are obviously wheels within wheels, not all parties need the same objectives, just so long as they all proceed in the same direction. All the airy-fairy feel-good reasons are furphies, including terrorism. No-one goes to war unless they think it will pay them to do so. Israel doesn't pay (much if anything); its payoffs are two, more land and water ("Greater Israel"), and security provided by its captive thug. That thug thinks it will be paid in oil, and no matter how bloody it gets[5]. I can't see any peacemakers having any effect; Fallon objected and was given the boot. The Pentagon itself has blood on its hands, Fallon is more likely to have objected for practical reasons rather than moral.
That's not to say that there is no honour at all, either in the Pentagon, the M/I/C-plex + venal MSM, or the larger population. Finding it or engaging it is another thing, though, since the pushed-paradigm propaganda that swamps us all (also via the AusBC) pushes hardest at honesty and honour.
But it is in fact to the honourable 'over there' as everywhere that I make my pitch: no more lies, cheating, theft or murder. So my proposed peace-lobby is of concerned citizen-voters, enough of whom banded together could make a difference - hopefully all the difference we need, to save our once jewel-like planet.
-=*end*=-
Ref(s):
[1] Try nomoreofthesame.blogspot.com/2007/03/chezphil-morality.html
[2] Black-hats' think tanks often operate in secrecy, and are often concerned with slightly less than legal, let alone moral objectives - shall we say. This gives rise to a word lampooned by these very same immoral operators, namely 'conspiracy,' here used by the dictionary definition (i.e. secret plan to commit a crime; plot [POD]). Not all effects can remain hidden and so it is with PNAC, say. Then a bigish quote, see [4]. Key sentence, worth a repeat: "There is no such thing as a neoconservative who is not allied with Israel."
[3] trammel verb (trammelled, trammelling; US trammeled, trammeling) [with OBJ.] deprive of freedom of action: those less trammelled by convention than himself. [Oxford Pop-up]
[4] «The more likely explanation for the U.S. invasion of Iraq is the neoconservative Bush regime's commitment to the defense of Israeli territorial expansion. There is no such thing as a neoconservative who is not allied with Israel. Israel hopes to steal all of the West Bank and southern Lebanon for its territorial expansion. An American colonial regime in Iraq not only buttresses Israel from attack, but also can pressure Syria and Iran not to support the Palestinians and Lebanese. The Iraqi war is a war for Israeli territorial expansion. Americans are dying and bleeding to death financially for Israel. Bush's "war on terror" is a hoax that serves to cover U.S. intervention in the Middle East on behalf of "greater Israel."»
[Paul Craig oberts
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19789.htm]
[5] Q: Why do crims try to rob banks? A: Because that's where the money is. Agree or provide disproof: despite any/all hoo-ha, the US would not be in Iraq, would not covet Iran, if it weren't for the (bloody!) oil.
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