Category Archives: Iraq

this soldier’s my hero!

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British soldier in IraqI stole this from Iain Dale; wonder why it is that I read so many right-wing UK blogs…Iain, Guido, Boris…the only leftie blog I read over there is Bread and Circuses, and Juvenal‘s hardly party line. (some of) The Tories over there seem to be a little more human, a lot more intelligent, and a good deal more interested in debate than the right-wingers here in North America, who seem primarily interested in sending as many black people as they can to Iraq, deporting anyone particularly tan (Jessica Simpson gets a bye, but now that she’s brunette all bets are off), eliminating the minimum wage, and marrying their cousins.

Still. Smart thing this soldier said. I’d buy him a drink if he were routed through Vancouver. And can you imagine an American right-wing blog putting that up if he’d said “Republican“? I think not.

“I suppose the only thing worse than being blown up by a mortar on Sunday morning is having two senior Conservative Party figures visiting you on a Monday morning” – William Hague, accompanied by David Cameron on visiting an injured soldier in Basra, who replied:

“It’s about on a par, sir”.

British soldiers in Iraq, 1932

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conspiracy 911: the real reason it happened

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Another video from apeman, the twisted Canuckistani genius who brought Hinterland’s Who’s Who’s Crack Spider into being.

Again, I’m sticking the video and lyrics over the jump because I was told that it was kinder to the people on dialup and also because I hope this way I won’t have to do a bloody restart every time my cache fills up.

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a turning point in modern politics: just watch me

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Humanity is born free, yet everywhere it is … in thrall to the military-industrial complex using threats of terrorism to manipulate the cowed multitudes.

My question is this: why, when Pierre Elliot Trudeau imposed the War Measures Act (as a response to the kidnapping of only two individuals and with no sign of a war) did we accept this as right and good, yet when Tony Blair and George W. Bush impose similar measures (and they are both actively fighting wars…well, the poor people in their countries are; and there have been terrorist attacks in each of their countries which have killed a significant number of regular citizens) we reject it as nothing more than a cynical fascist control technique?

For me, I have an excuse: I was little when Trudeau ruled the Earth. But even then I was anti-fascist. I don’t think there’s any question about whether or not the technique if fascist: it is. The question is why did it seem right then but not now?

Is it personality-driven? Is it the charm factor? Is it because Trudeau was so obviously more intelligent than either Blair or Bush? or, come to think of it, more intelligent than the citizenry and we damn well knew it? Blair‘s no moron, though; is it because he’s so much Bush‘s catamite that he gets zero IQ points by association (or as a penalty for bad taste)? And can you imagine Stephen “RoboTory” Harper getting away with something like that? He’d be run out of Ottawa at the head of a mob armed with insulated buckets of boiling Steeped Tea™.

Pierre Trudeau‘s speech announcing the imposition of the War Measures Act is after the jump, and very interesting reading it makes, too:

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USAF firing on British troops

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This is the real thing, people: this is the leaked video of a pair of American Airforce reserve fighter pilots killing British Lance Corporal Matty Hull near Basra in Iraq. There is a time lag on the audio here, so follow the subtitles (which were added by the investigators). The video dates from March 28th of 2003, and more details about the incident and investigation are here.

…the pilots, a lieutenant-colonel and major at the time of the incident, are flying warplanes again, attached to the 190th Air Fighter Squadron, based at Boise, Idaho…

The cockpit video reveals that the pilots clearly saw the orange panels on the top of the British armoured vehicles intended to identify them as friendly forces, but ultimately decided that they were rocket launchers. When one pilot suggested a return to base, the other said: “I think killing these damn rocket launchers, it would be great.”

Even after attacking the column, the transcript shows the pilots were still unsure whether they had attacked enemy or friendly troops.

“It doesn’t look friendly,” one pilot said. Minutes later, they were told of their mistake.

“We’re in jail dude,” one pilot said. “Goddam it. Fuck me dead,” the other cries.

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Olbermann on Sacrifice in Iraq

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Here is Keith Olbermann, in possibly his strongest Special Comment to date, confronting Bush’s rumoured and doomed about-to-be policy of escalation in Iraq. Olbermann says that America has sacrificed more than enough to Bush‘s policies, and now he’s asking it to sacrifice only for his ego. Definitely a no-holds-barred statement, and much food for thought.

Again, as always, the video and the transcript are from Crooks and Liars. I only post on YouTube so that I can put it in the blog, but they, and of course Olbermann, get all the credit. It’s incomplete right now; as soon as they’ve got the whole thing, I’ll post it. In any case, it works well enough as posted.

Transcript over the jump…

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