UPDATED:  SEP 27, 2007

                        SQUARING REPUBLICAN HYPOCRISY  

FPOTUS Clinton directly takes on the Republicans for their attacks on MoveOn’s advertisement in the New York Times on Gen. Petraeus’ report to Congress on Iraq.  The House of Representatives: 

President Clinton makes the critical point; the Republicans attacking MoveOn are the same ones who have elevated attacks on opponents’ patriotism to an art form.  His interview is a must watch for every Democrat as it is a classic demonstration of how Democrats should stand up to Republicans.  It can be found at this link: 

CLINTON INTERVIEW                       

MOVEON’S NY TIMES AD WAS CORRECT: GENERAL PETRAEUS HAS BETRAYED US
[BY ED CIACCIO]  

Is being asked whether you will “betray us” (a play on the name of Cheney/Bush’s chief propaganda tool, the multiple medal-bedecked General David Petraeus) in a full-page NY Times ad, worse than being called an “ass-kissing little chickenshit” by his commanding officer?  Is it worse than his putting his own career prospects ahead of the lives of tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers? Is it worse than his continuing to promote a disastrously failed policy based on lies and constituting war crimes, including the supreme war crime? Is it worse than his ignoring facts as well as reality, misrepresenting the truth, and lying outright with lives in the balance? 

If you answered yes to any of these questions, stop reading here. 

However, if you’ve read this far, what follows is an explanation of why denouncing the September 10, 2007 MoveOn NY Times ad is not only a waste of time and energy, but it actually plays into the distract-from-the real-issues strategy so successfully employed by Republicans over the last 13 years and which is now being pushed even harder to revive support for an unpopular war and occupation. 

Republicans seized on the MoveOn.org ad because they have nothing else to offer but foolishly repeating Cheney/Bush/Petraeus bullshit.  And, as George Lakoff points out, this paints them into the corner of defending those who HAVE BETRAYED US: Cheney, Bush, Petraeus, and the rest of the warmongers.  If you doubt they, including Petraeus, HAVE betrayed us, especially our troops stuck in Iraq, pay attention: 

Petraeus had already lied in 2004 about "progress"in Iraq in his NY Times op-ed, published just before the 2004 Presidential Election.  This purposely-timed op-ed identified him as a political tool of Cheney/Bush and a shill for their destructive, disastrous policies.  He put his career prospects above his duty as a military man, exaggerating the "progress" made in Iraq to ingratiate himself to the war criminals running our country, helping them to keep our troops in Iraq for years more.

Petraeus’ own commanding officer, CENTCOM Commander Admiral William Fallon, recognized Petraeus “…as a sycophant during their first meeting in Baghdad last March, according to Pentagon sources familiar with reports of the meeting…Fallon told Petraeus that he considered him to be ‘an ass-kissing little chickenshit’ and added, ‘I hate people like that"’, the sources say. That remark reportedly came after Petraeus began the meeting by making remarks that Fallon interpreted as trying to ingratiate himself with a superior.” (Fallon Derided Petraeus, Opposed the Surge By Gareth Porter http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39235)

As clinching proof that the Cheney/Bush/Petraeus "surge" had already been abandoned as a failure, a month BEFORE Petraeus' Congressional "performance", the provincial government in Kurdistan, defying the central Iraqi government, passed its own oil law.  It signed a production-sharing deal with the Hunt Oil Company of Dallas. Ray L. Hunt, chief executive and president of Hunt Oil, is a close political ally of George W. Bush. Hunt is also a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. As Paul Krugman comments, "Some commentators have expressed surprise at the fact that a businessman with very close ties to the White House is undermining U.S. policy." (see Paul Krugman: A Surge, and Then a Stab http://welcome-to-pottersville.blogspot.com/2007/09/paul-krugman-surge-then-stab.html) 

Petraeus' recently-revealed comments about intending to run for president some day, and his shameful Congressional "testimony" (i.e. propaganda), have cemented his stature a one of the prime BETRAYERS of our country, especially of the U.S. troops being kept for many years in the slaughterhouse of Iraq so Cheney/Bush can: 

1. control Iraq's oil, thereby controlling China, Japan, India, and Europe, our biggest economic competitors;

2. keep the mega-profits rolling into their corporatist/militarist cronies who control BOTH our major political parties and our foreign and domestic policies;

3. secure new bases in the heart of the Middle East to replace the ones Bush closed in Saudi Arabia in 2003 (as Osama bin Laden demanded) and to be a jumping-off point for aggression against Iran, Syria, Jordan and, eventually, Pakistan. 

Wearing a uniform does NOT (and should not EVER) protect anyone from criticism.  If he lied (and he did, repeatedly), HE dishonored his uniform; MoveOn's ad, which asked if he WOULD betray us, did not (by then, he already had betrayed us).  Complaints about "insulting a man in uniform" who defends war crimes remind me of the words of Marlon Brando's Col. Kurtz character in Coppola's Apocalypse Now: "They train young men to drop fire on people. But their commanders won't allow them to write fuck on their airplanes because it's obscene! " 

The whole, tiresome cliché of "respecting the uniform" must be retired or we will never grow up as a people and a nation in the 21st century.  Gen. Westmoreland disgraced his uniform when he lied before Congress in 1967 to support President Lyndon Johnson's failing policies in Vietnam.  He was justifiably discredited for that.  How is what Gen. Petraeus did any different?  Should we kneel in deference to everyone in a uniform?  Col. Oliver North in his Marine Corps uniform as he lied about Iran-Contra?  Lieut. William Calley during his trial for the My Lai massacre?   

Calley was partially responsible for the murder of over 300 Vietnamese villagers; Cheney, Bush, and, by his complicit support, Petraeus, are responsible for the violent deaths of over ONE MILLION Iraqis, in addition to the deaths of over 3,700 U.S. troops and the horrible maiming of tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands, more. 

These are the brutal facts which Democrats as well as Republicans, not to mention the other corporate whores who pretend  to "report" the news in this country, WILL NOT face, and which we ALL MUST keep repeating because they are the truth.  And the following "inconvenient truths" must NEVER be forgotten: 

1. Committing what Nuremberg Trials Chief Prosecutor (and U.S. Supreme Court Justice) Robert Jackson, referring to Nazi Germany's 1939 invasion of Poland, called "the supreme international crime" under which all other war crimes are contained (see Aggressive War: Supreme International Crime http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/110904A.shtml), Cheney/Bush waged an unnecessary war of aggression against Iraq, a nation severely weakened by the 1991 Gulf War and the following 12 years of murderous sanctions under Bush I and Clinton, and which never posed any threat to the U.S. or any of its own neighbors.  Justice Jackson declared, in an eerily prescient statement, "If certain acts in violation of treaties are crimes they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us."

2. Following the Holocaust, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg called the waging of aggressive war "essentially an evil thing . . . to initiate a war of aggression . . . is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." Cheney/Bush, and, by complicit extension, all those who support their monstrous "supreme international crime" (Including Petraeus), are guilty of this "accumulated evil " by their numerous war crimes, crimes against humanity, and serious violations of U.S. and international laws, including the U.S. Constitution, the U.N. Charter (former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan declared the Iraq War illegal), and the Geneva Conventions.

3. Documented destruction of Iraq's civilian infrastructure (including hospitals and water-treatment facilities, which is now causing a cholera epidemic in northern Iraq) under the 12 years of the Bush I-Clinton sanctions as well as Cheney/Bush's war of aggression; already-documented use of weapons such as depleted uranium (which will cause fatal cancers in our troops as well as Iraqis and birth deformities in future generations of Americans and Iraqis whose parents were exposed to it), napalm (Mark-77 firebombs), white phosphorous, and cluster bombs; killings of Iraqis by U.S. and British troops in retaliation for coalition casualties; and torture are ALL war crimes and crimes against humanity.  Compare these acts to asking whether Gen. Petraeus will betray us.

4. Rewriting Iraq's constitution and all its laws, especially to favor U.S. corporations, as L. Paul Bremer did under Cheney's orders, violates the Geneva Conventions.

5. As a result of the illegal, unprovoked war crime of the U.S. invasion, Iraq is now suffering ethnic cleansing as Sunnis and Shias are forced to flee to respective sectarian enclaves.  Over 2 million Iraqis are refugees inside Iraq, and more than 2 million others have fled to already-overcrowded Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon, causing what the U.N. refugee agency calls a major humanitarian crisis.

6. More than ONE MILLION Iraqis, including over 500,000 children, died as a result of the Bush I-Clinton sanctions.  More than ONE MILLION have died of the violence following Dick Cheney & George Bush's 2003 "liberation" of Iraq.  TWO MILLION unnecessary, preventable Iraqi deaths (in a nation of 26 million) in 15 years under three U.S. Presidents constitute genocide. 

So don't waste any more time and energy talking about NY Times ads.  Talk about war crimes, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and polluting the environment with birth defect-causing toxins.  Talk about putting these war criminals away for life.  Talk about justice, the only sure way to peace.

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