The US spends more on defense than all other countries combined even though the next biggest are allies of the US.
The US has military bases in oh so mant other countries, but why, do other countries have military bases in the US or elsewhere?
All those weapoons, money, covert operations, attacks and the US is less safe than the rest of the world.
There was a plan to invade New Zealand at one point, the US thinks just like you, 'who can we invade today'.
The CIA apparently doesn't have jurisdiction inside the US, but how can it have jurisdiction outside of the US, in other conutries!
Since World War Two, the US has overthrown, or attempted to overthrow, 40 governments as well as organising, leading or supporting the crushing of 30 nationalist movements.
American armed forces and special operations forces, such as the Green Berets, are being deployed in well over 100 countries. US nuclear missiles are still stored in seven European countries.
If you read the following it's not hard to think of a reason besides 'they hate our freedom' for the way the Arabs are acting, and it also seems very clear that force is not solving the US's problems.
Some light reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
http://www.rense.com/general51/sick.htm
http://www.rense.com/general68/guin.htm
http://www.disinfo.com/archive/pages/dossier/id293/pg1/index.html
http://www.allaahuakbar.net/us/mother_of_all_terrorists.htm
http://www.chrononhotonthologos.com/lawnotes/usbomber.htm
Experiments on orphans, radiation experiments on 829 poor pregnant Caucasian women.
kidnapping and torturing people.
IN THE 1940s, 60,000 US military personnel were used as human subjects to test mustard gas and lewisite (blister gas).
Most were not informed and never received medical follow-up. They were threatened with imprisonment if they discussed these experiments with anyone, including wives, parents and family doctors.
From the early 1960s, US forces sprayed tens of thousands of tons of herbicides (particularly Agent Orange) over three million acres of Vietnam as well as Laos and Cambodia.
This polluted Vietnam with 500lbs of dioxin, a nearly indestructible pollutant and one of the world's most toxic substances. Three ounces in the water supply could wipe out New York's population. On top of that napalm was used in wars in Korea and Vietnam and reportedly Sarin nerve gas in Laos in 1970.
In the 1990s the Pentagon admits that it exposed nearly 100,000 of its own US soldiers to trace amounts of Sarin gas in the Gulf War.
US imperialism has waged sustained economic, chemical and biological war on Cuba. In 1962, they contaminated sugar exports and infected turkeys with a virus (killing 8,000). In 1971, they infected pigs with African swine fever. In 1996, they caused a plague of pesticide-resistant plant-eating insects affecting corn, beans, and other crops.
Exporting lethal weapons
A US Senate Committee report says that from 1985 to 1989 American suppliers exported biological materials to Iraq - materials that UN inspectors later found and removed from Iraq's biological warfare programme!
These exports included plans for chemical and biological warfare production facilities and chemical-warhead filling equipment. Iraq was reported as engaging in chemical and even biological warfare against Iranians, Kurds and Shi'ites from the early 1980s. Blum notes: "Presumably, Iraq's use of these weapons against Iran is what Washington expected would happen."
Depleted Uranium, (DU) used in tank cartridges, bombs, rockets and missiles is denser than steel and can penetrate tank armour. It is radioactive (forever), upon impact forms an aerosol of fine particles that can be carried downwind for 25 miles. When inhaled or ingested it can lead to many cancers and serious diseases.
Hundreds of thousands of acres have been turned into DU weapon-testing grounds in many US states. DU has been sold to Thailand, Taiwan, Bahrain, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Greece, Korea, Turkey, Kuwait and other countries. This weapon was used in Iraq and Yugoslavia.
Cluster bombs
EACH CLUSTER bomb contains over 200 "bomblets" aided by little parachutes that disperse them to hit what the manufacturers call "soft targets". If the fail they in effect become landmines.
Up to 30 million bomblets were dropped in the Gulf War; over a million didn't explode. It has led to over 1,200 Kuwaiti and 400 Iraqi civilian deaths so far.
The Pentagon is working on newer and better cluster bombs, "...suitable for the new millennium. America deserves nothing less."
Assassinations
BLUM CLAIMS that the CIA have been involved in 36 assassination plots since world war two, including Nasser, Castro, Che Guevara, Michael Manley, Ayatollah Khomeini, Qaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Milosevic and even, in 1965, Charles de Gaulle.
War criminals
BLUM SUGGESTS many US Presidents, generals etc for war criminals singling out Ronald Reagan for "Eight years of death, destruction, torture and the crushing of hope inflicted upon the people of El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Grenada by his policies; and for his bombings of Lebanon, Libya and Iran. He's forgotten all this, but the world shouldn't."
He also nominates Henry Kissinger. "...(who successfully combined three careers: scholar, Nobel peace laureate and war criminal), behind interventions in Angola, Chile, East Timor, Iraq, Vietnam and Cambodia."
Harbouring and supporting terrorists
US-BACKED Cuban exiles are amongst the world's most prolific terrorist groups. In 1997, for example, there was a spate of hotel bombings in Havana directed from Miami.
There are numerous air and boat hijackings. Even when perpetrators are brought to trial they are acquitted.
The US harbours state terrorists - government ministers and Generals - from Guatemala, El Salvador, Haiti, Chile, Argentina, Honduras, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Iran and former Yugoslavia. That doesn't include those the US flew to safe havens in third countries.
In Afghanistan Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to Jimmy Carter in 1979, said that the US began aiding the Islamic fundamentalist Mujahidin six months before the Russians made their move, even though he believed - and told Carter - that "this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention".
Did he regret this action which armed "terror" groups who have gone on many missions including against the USA?
"Regret what? ...an excellent idea," he told Le Nouvel Observateur in 1998. Blum notes that the edition sent to the US didn't include this interview.
A US diplomat in Pakistan in 1996 admitted: "This is an insane instance of the chickens coming home to roost. You can't plug billions of dollars into an anti-Communist jihad, accept participation from all over the world and ignore the consequences.
"But we did. Our objectives weren't peace and grooviness in Afghanistan. Our objective was killing Commies and getting the Russians out".
Backing dictators
ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI said in 1979, "I encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot.... The question was how to help the Cambodian people(!). Pol Pot was an abomination. We could never support him. But the Chinese could." A million Cambodians died under Khmer Rouge rule.
The School of the Americas (SOA) trained tens of thousands of Latin American military and police in counter-insurgency, infantry tactics, military intelligence, anti-narcotics operations and commando operations.
Under pressure, the Pentagon released seven Spanish-language training manuals used at the SOA until 1991. The New York Times said: "Americans can now read for themselves some of the noxious lessons the United States Army taught ... during the 1980s.
"A training manual recently released by the Pentagon recommended interrogation techniques like torture, execution, blackmail and arresting the relatives of those being questioned."
Bombs, spies and interventions
THE US has bombarded 26 countries since World War Two - China, Korea, Guatemala (three times), Indonesia, Cuba, Congo, Peru, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Grenada, Lebanon, Libya, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Iran, Panama, Iraq, Kuwait, Somalia, Bosnia, Sudan, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia.
And they have intervened in France, 1947; Italy, 1947-70s; Philippines, 1945-53 and 1970s-1980s; Albania, 1949-53; Eastern Europe, 1948-56; Germany, 1950s; Costa Rica, mid-1950s, 1970-71; Haiti, 1959 and 1987-94; Guyana, 1953-64; Thailand, 1965-73; Ecuador, 1960-63; Algeria, 1960s; Brazil, 1961-64; Peru, 1965; Dominican Republic, 1963-65 and Ghana, 1966.
Then there was Uruguay, 1969-72; Chile, 1964-73; Greece, 1967-74; South Africa, 1960s-1980s; Bolivia, 1964-75; Australia, 1972-75; Portugal, 1974-76; East Timor, 1975-99; Angola, 1975-1980s; Jamaica, 1976; Honduras, 1980s; Seychelles, 1979-81; South Yemen, 1979-84; Chad 1981-82; Grenada, 1979-83; Suriname, 1982-84; Fiji, 1987; Bulgaria, 1990-91; Albania, 1991-92. Now there's Peru, Mexico, Venezuela and Colombia, all 1990s - the present.
Blum's dossier shows clearly that whether it's on nuclear, biological and chemical warfare or supporting terrorists the world's biggest threat is US imperialism.
John Sharpe, from The Socialist, paper of the Socialist Party, England and Wales section of the CWI.
Now I will admit that your not the only country with an evil government though:
HOW MANY PEOPLE WERE MURDERED BY THEIR OWN GOVERNMENTS DURING THE 20TH CENTURY?
170,000,000
More than the combined total of all other unnatural causes: wars -- accidents -- murders
Uncontrolled government is a citizen's greatest risk to life
And of course wars are always caused by Governments.
http://www.chrononhotonthologos.com/lawnotes/usbomber.htm
killing, nop not the answer.
On 8/18/06, Kyle R. Mcallister <
[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
---- Original Message -----
From: John Berry
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Sent: Wednesday, August 16, 2006 10:23 PM
Subject: Re: [Vo]: New Segway Products
>>I am sort of against the war at this point
>Bright chap eh? ;)
I prefer the dark myself.
>Your 'sort of' against the war at this point? I bet Bush is 'sort of'
>against the war at this point.
Bush had a chance to be a president worth remembering. Bush blew his
opportunity. I don't support him, nor am I a Republican. His only concern at
this point is trying to find a nice way out of the hole he has dug himself
into. To add on his endorsement of ethanol as the future alternative
fuel....that is just insanity.
>You should be generally against war (state sponsored murder) anyway but
>against this war where the US attacked a nation not threatening the US or
>anyone else >that had demonstrably no significant weapons.
There is such a thing as justifiable homicide. What about
non-state-sponsored murder via high speed airliner? Iraq was a threat to
plenty, particularly itself. No one remembers Saddam Hussein gassing his own
people? In any case, I will agree that Iraq should have been left along for
the time being. Eventually, we would have had to do something about them. It
would seem in retrospect that a more massive campaign in Afghanistan would
have been called for, and then, when the nutcase in Iran decided to start
his nonsense about manufacturing nuclear weapons (those friendly Muslims
really aren't threatening us are they?) and furthermore boasting that he
will distribute them to his Muslim brothers, we would have been in a
position to launch the right kind of war against them. That is, with far,
far greater firepower than we used in Iraq. Who knows? Perhaps this show of
force would have frightened the Iraqi leadership so much that we could have
left them alone indefinitely.
In any case whats done is done. We must now proceed from here.
>It has left the Iraqi people (the ones left) clearly worse off than they
>were before the war, killed a @#%$ load of them by any estimate, killed
>what must be >nearing as many dead US soldiers as people died in 911 (not
>that the 2 are linked in any way)
As I stated previously, war is hell.
>The US has been further disgraced by their solders being creepy, torturing
>prisoners...
And the Muslim radicals do not torture and brutally execute westerners?
(there have been plenty of non Americans fall victim)
I do not shed one tear for anyone who has been involved in the kinds of evil
that the radical Islamic groups have been involved in. I do not know if I
would advocate torturing them, although I would NOT imprison my own soldiers
for doing so. I guess in that way, your statement that we have betrayed our
own soldiers is correct...we imprison them for "mistreating" the enemy, who
would not blink an eye at doing far worse to an "infidel". Instead of
torture, straight-up execution would suffice, I think.
>Oh and it seems it will cost 1-2 trillion dollars.
A pity. This could have been used to both:
1. Solve our addiction to foreign oil
2. Fund a much less expensive but far more aggressive war against Islamic
radicals.
Following point 1 above, if that were solved first, we could attack
massively at will, and not worry about how oil shortages would affect us.
This could, however, harm the rest of the industrialized world. Therefore,
we should first make sure that all the technological nations have access to
whatever new power/fuel source we develop. This includes China and Russia,
whose people desperately need reliable, cheap energy. I believe it would
also alleviate many tensions between the U.S. and China, as a major point of
competition would be set aside by moving off oil.
>What was the point of the war again?
To kill the enemy, whoever he may be.
>Yeah I'm 'sort of' against the war in iraq too.
In that general tone then, I guess I am 'sort of' out of time...I think I
would have done better during the era of the last truly properly fought war;
WWII.
--Kyle
