{"id":1052,"date":"2005-09-09T09:21:14","date_gmt":"2005-09-09T13:21:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/wordpress\/?p=1052"},"modified":"2005-09-09T09:21:14","modified_gmt":"2005-09-09T13:21:14","slug":"the-fog-of-bush","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=1052","title":{"rendered":"The Fog of Bush"},"content":{"rendered":"

Claudia Rosett and the equally challenged<\/a> WSJ<\/em> editorial page have finally rolled out analyses<\/a> of<\/a> Volcker’s UN report that have likely been stewing in their hoppers since Katrina shook the press corps from hibernation. <\/p>\n

Powell, in an interview with ABC News, believes lower-level intelligence collectors and analysts failed him and the country<\/a>: <\/p>\n

“There were some people in the intelligence community who knew at that time that some of these sources were not good, and shouldn’t be relied upon, and they didn’t speak up. That devastated me,” he said.<\/p>\n

Ambassador Karen Hughes<\/a> returns to public life determined<\/a> to convince the world<\/a> that George is not a deceitfull, murderous sloth. Were those new shoes Condi was wearing<\/a>?<\/p>\n

About 40%<\/a> of Americans<\/a> salute this garbage, some of whom believe God struck down New Orleans because people there engaged in the same behaviour that defined most of George’s over-privileged life.<\/p>\n

The “legal” oil-for-food programme accomplished its criminal goals. WMD were not used against coalition troops in 2003, nor was there a powerfull, nationalist force in place to repel the invasion thanks to sanctions that intentionally destroyed an entire generation of Iraqis. The United States put boots in Iraq knowing those barriers had been eliminated. <\/p>\n

The State as Criminal, Victim and Executioner: Notes on Iraq<\/strong> (pdf<\/a>)<\/p>\n

The Economist<\/em> summed up the consequences of the U.N.?s sanctions policy: ?Slowly, inexorably, a generation is being crushed in Iraq. Thousands are dying, thousands more are leading stunted lives, and storing up bitter hatreds for the future.? (8 April 2000 cited in Rai 2002: 179)<\/p>\n

Sanctions have also created an anomic criminal climate inside Iraq, what Cordesman and Hashim (1997) have described as ?the calamitous decline in social and moral mores?, evidence of which most visibly came to light with the wholesale looting of Baghdad once US troops had occupied the city in April 2003. This was something of which the Security Council was well aware. In 1999 the Security Council?s Humanitarian panel reported that sanctions had created a climate of:<\/p>\n

Juvenile delinquency, begging and prostitution, anxiety about the future and lack of motivation…the development of a parallel economy replete with profiteering and criminality, cultural and scientific impoverishment, disruption of family life? (UN Annex II: 1999)<\/p>\n

The sanctions programme has also led to increased corruption within Iraq, officials and professionals resort to bribery in an effort to make ends meet; although in some respects the government?s rationing system was remarkably equitable (and served to increase the population?s dependence on the regime) (Cockburn and Cockburn, 2002: 120, 123.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Rosett, the WSJ<\/em> editorial cabal, and any number of Americans can argue that wasn’t the intent of the programme but they can hardly dispute that the United States took full advantage of its “success” when they launched a pre-emptive strike against a defenceless country. Annan’s worst crime was taking a part in the collective punishment of an innocent citizenry for their ruler’s crimes. He is being punished for not endorsing the plan to finish them off.<\/p>\n

And this is old stuff. I only bring it up because conditions that enabled the pre-emptive strike against Iraqis bear such a striking resemblance to societal factors in play when the decision was made to abandon thousands of African Americans in New Orleans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Claudia Rosett and the equally challenged WSJ editorial page have finally rolled out analyses of Volcker’s UN report that have likely been stewing in their hoppers since Katrina shook the press corps from hibernation. Powell, in an interview with ABC … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-gY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1052\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}