“Unspeakable”: An MSF Nurse Recounts the Attack on MSF’s Kunduz Hospital

[Octafish]

In the Intensive Care Unit six patients were burning in their beds

RAWA.org, MSF.org

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) nurse Lajos Zoltan Jecs was in Kunduz trauma hospital when the facility was struck by a series of aerial bombing raids in the early hours of Saturday morning. He describes his experience:

“It was absolutely terrifying.

I was sleeping in our safe room in the hospital. At around 2am, I was woken up by the sound of a big explosion nearby. At first I didn't know what was going on. Over the past week we'd heard bombings and explosions before, but always further away. This one was different, close and loud.

At first there was confusion, and dust settling. As we were trying to work out what was happening, there was more bombing.

After 20 or 30 minutes, I heard someone calling my name. It was one of the Emergency Room nurses. He staggered in with massive trauma to his arm. He was covered in blood, with wounds all over his body.

At that point my brain just couldn't understand what was happening. For a second I was just stood still, shocked.

He was calling for help. In the safe room, we have a limited supply of basic medical essentials, but there was no morphine to stop his pain. We did what we could.

CONTINUED (WARNING: disturbing images and info)...

http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/2015/10/04/unspeakable-an-msf-nurse-recounts-the-attack-on-msf-s-kunduz-hospital.html

Heman Nagarathnam, MSF head of programmes in northern Afghanistan, offered a vivid account of what happened:

'The bombs hit and then we heard the plane circle round. There was a pause, and then more bombs hit. This happened again and again. When I made it out from the office, the main hospital building was engulfed in flames. Those people that could had moved quickly to the building’s two bunkers to seek safety. But patients who were unable to escape burned to death as they lay in their beds.'

The Telegraph, Oct. 4, 2015

Two physicians were among those killed in the raid, per this report.

About RAWA:

RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, was established in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1977 as an independent political/social organization of Afghan women fighting for human rights and for social justice in Afghanistan. The founders were a number of Afghan woman intellectuals under the sagacious leadership of Meena who in 1987 was assassinated in Quetta, Pakistan, by Afghan agents of the then KGB in connivance with fundamentalist band of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar . RAWA’s objective was to involve an increasing number of Afghan women in social and political activities aimed at acquiring women’s human rights and contributing to the struggle for the establishment of a government based on democratic and secular values in Afghanistan. Despite the suffocating political atmosphere, RAWA very soon became involved in widespread activities in different socio-political arenas including education, health and income generation as well as political agitation.

Medecins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders:

http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/article/afghanistan-msf-staff-killed-hospital-partially-destroyed-kunduz

[djean111]

1. And we will have "an investigation" that leads nowhere, and keep on doing the same damned thing.

Yeah, we are The Leader.

[Octafish]

5. Working as we speak to blame the doctors for harboring terrorists.

Afghan official: Hospital in airstrike was ‘a Taliban base’

By Tim Craig
The Washington Post, Oct. 4, 2015

KABUL — The acting governor of Afghanistan’s northern Kunduz province said Sunday that Taliban fighters had been routinely firing “small and heavy” weapons from the grounds of a local hospital before it was apparently hit by a U.S. airstrike over the weekend.

In an interview, Hamdullah Danishi said the Doctors Without Borders compound was “a Taliban base” that was being used to plot and carry out attacks across the provincial capital, Kunduz city.

“The hospital campus was 100 percent used by the Taliban,” Danishi said. “The hospital has a vast garden, and the Taliban were there. We tolerated their firing for some time” before responding.

Early Saturday, in an airstrike that outraged the United Nations and humanitarian groups across the world, at least 22 people were killed and 37 others critically wounded during sustained bombardment near the hospital.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/afghan-official-hospital-in-airstrike-was-a-taliban-base/2015/10/04/8638af58-6a47-11e5-bdb6-6861f4521205_story.html

A true Leader brings democracy with ideas, not bombs.

[MH1]

16. It sounds like he is accusing MSF of being complicit with the Taliban.

How could the Taliban be doing what he accuses, without MSF knowing and accepting it?

That is a very serious charge against MSF.

I think it is probably bullshit but hope to hear MSF's response.

In any case that doesn't justify bombing a hospital. There have to be other strategies to dislodge terrorists from a hospital, than just bombing the hospital, doctors, patients and all. What happened makes no fucking sense.

[Octafish]

20. Right. Guess he has to, otherwise they'd have picked somebody else for the job.

Last edited Sun Oct 4, 2015, 05:08 PM - Edit history (1)

Here's MSF's response:

Statement on Kunduz Hospital Bombing

October 04, 2015

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) issued the following statement today from Christopher Stokes, MSF General Director, on the bombing of MSF's hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan:

"Under the clear presumption that a war crime has been committed, MSF demands that a full and transparent investigation into the event be conducted by an independent international body. Relying only on an internal investigation by a party to the conflict would be wholly insufficient.

"Not a single member of our staff reported any fighting inside the MSF hospital compound prior to the U.S. airstrike on Saturday morning. The hospital was full of MSF staff, patients and their caretakers. It is 12 MSF staff members and 10 patients, including three children, who were killed in the attack. We reiterate that the main hospital building, where medical personnel were caring for patients, was repeatedly and very precisely hit during each aerial raid, while the rest of the compound was left mostly untouched.

We condemn this attack, which constitutes a grave violation of International Humanitarian Law."

http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/article/statement-kunduz-hospital-bombing

[MH1]

24. I agree with the MSF statement, but I think there is a place for US investigation.

Very quickly, there needs to be a change in the relevant command chain(s) for our forces in Afghanistan.

Obama needs to announce that it is just not acceptable that a hospital was bombed by our personnel. Whoever is ultimately deemed culpable after a thorough investigation, the general in charge in that theater needs to be replaced. At a minimum.


On edit, thank you for posting the statement.

[atreides1]

26. A US investigation that's already been determined!!!

And what will a US investigation accomplish? Not one damn thing...if the US military can look the other way as Afghan boys are used as sex slaves by Afghan military and police, the investigation will be a white wash and the US will either agree with the Afghans or come to no conclusion at all!

[questionseverything]

27. truth n/t

[MH1]

28. To determine how it happened, in detail, to prevent it in the future,

as well as punishing any criminal acts or negligence.

Believe it or NOT, not all US military people are just itching to burn hospital patients in their beds.

Oh yeah I know that some people actually do believe that every US military person is a inhuman piece of shit that would absolutely do this intentionally.

But more rational people would like to know where the failure was that allowed this to happen.

And I doubt that any external investigation will find out what really happened, because they won't have access (and shouldn't) to technical operational data of our military. They'll just find out that yes, the U.S. did this (assuming that is true and it sure sounds like it right now).

I did not say there shouldn't be an external investigation. By all means that should happen. But internally we'd damn well better get to the bottom of what happened, in terms of communications, operational data, and training.

But the FIRST thing to happen should be to re-assign the relevant commander(s) stateside pending the outcome of our INTERNAL investigation. And that should happen within days - as soon as they can get their replacements in theater.

[atreides1]

77. Got news for you

I wore the uniform, for 13 years! The one lesson, of many that I came away with was that the US military sucks at admitting mistakes!

From Wounded Knee, to My Lai...the US military has played the cover it up and blame somebody else game!

The failure was in believing anything the Aghans say, if we dig deeper I'll bet we'd find that MSF wasn't playing the baksheesh game with the local government officials.

And with the official excuses coming from the Pentagon that keep changing, you want to trust them go ahead, not me, not anymore!!!

[KingCharlemagne]

50. Whom u going to believe, MSF or a bunch of homicidal

thugs and their puppets?

[uhnope]

109. so you're calling NATO "homocidal thugs and their puppets"?

[KingCharlemagne]

121. NATO are homicidal thugs. WTF is NATO doing in central

Asia, anyway? The puppets are the puppet regime NATO is propping up against the will of the Afghan people. See Vietnam for more on how that works.

[uhnope]

58. he might just be trying to explain the error. US military will not bomb in this situ unless there

is both corroboration on the ground as well as tracer fire spotted from the air. Word is that tracer fire was spotted coming from the compound.

Don't get me wrong--if this place was registered as a MSF hospital, this is a snafu of horrible proportions.

[Jesus Malverde]

91. "Don't get me wrong"

Hard not too. If I want to hear the latest pentagon spin on any topic, your consistently a reliable source.

[uhnope]

94. that's rich coming from a Kremlin fan

[dixiegrrrrl]

35. Sorta sounds like the Afghani people called in the airstrike, maybe.

We will have to find out if US knew there was a hospital there.

[Octafish]

46. People in the hospital phoned US and Afghan authorities while attack went on.

One report I read said the attack lasted nearly 30 minutes. It was the major hospital in that town, caring for all wounded, civilian, Taliban, whomever. It is heartbreaking.

War is a crime. And connected people profit from it.

[uhnope]

57. It was a horrible mistake.

Like so many other mistakes in war, like shooting down airliners

[uhnope]

64. do you think this horrible mistake means the US should not fight ISIS?

pls explain

[cwydro]

2. I hope the president is very proud.

I'm ashamed for our country.

This is inexcusable.

[Octafish]

10. He's become used to killing from a swivel chair.

Obama Appoints Dr. Drone to Head CIA

by Matthew Rothschild
by The Progressive, Tuesday, January 08, 2013

Pres. Obama just made a hideous appointment.

He replaced the disgraced David Petraeus at the CIA with John Brennan, Dr. Drone.

This is a hideous appointment.

Brennan, as Obama’s counterterrorism czar, has overseen the massive proliferation of our drone warfare.

He’s called it “ethical and just,” and he even went so far as to say that the United States hadn’t killed a single civilian in over almost a year’s span of drone attacks.

That might be because he and the Administration claimed that any adult male killed by a drone was de facto a member of a terrorist group.

In any event, the drone attacks actually have killed hundreds and hundreds of innocent people – and not just men -- in Yemen, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, enflaming hatred against us. The next issue of The Progressive is carrying an article by a reporter who went to North Waziristan and actually talked to family members who lost loved ones to drones.

One man, Wakil Khan, lost his wife and three children. “May God curse the U.S.A. because they don’t differentiate between the innocent and the guilty,” he said.

SNIP...

Johnsen, the author of “The Last Refuge: Yemen, Al-Qaeda, and America’s War in Arabia,” quoted one Yemeni as saying: “Each time they kill a tribesman, they create more fighters for Al Qaeda.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2013/01/08/obama-appoints-dr-drone-head-cia

[cwydro]

33. I think Obama is easily led.

Perhaps as much as Bush was.

I so hope we get a president with his/her own mind and a strong character in the next election.

[ronnie624]

98. We will get a status quo-politician,

who will continue the long-standing policies of dominating key resources in the Middle East.

Period.

The situation will change, only when there has been deep, meaningful reform to our political power structure.

[flamingdem]

3. This is horrifying on so many levels. Please donate to their organization

at this link:

https://donate.doctorswithoutborders.org/onetime.cfm

[Octafish]

11. Thank you!

There is a difference in how the money is used, compared to other, more famous organizations.



88.7 cents/dollar goes toward car. Less than 1-percent goes to management, which is how it should be.

[FlatBaroque]

13. Phenomenal organization

with exemplary finances.

This is a horrifying development. The Sino-Russian reaction should be carefully considered.

[Octafish]

15. The asshats and emoticon brigade have soiled their Depends at the thought of peace.

Putin and Xi have become chums of late.

http://thediplomat.com/2015/05/at-russias-military-parade-putin-and-xi-cement-ties/

Western Warmongers must really be hard up, otherwise they would do all they could to work together. Seeing how they don't, it's a good bet that's World War III on the horizon.

Some will survive, I hope.

[FlatBaroque]

17. Some will certainly survive

The templates for post transition economies and society are being furiously developed at a grass roots level. I suppose it is possible that the crumbling empire will get wiped out entirely, but I have faith that our evolution is not nearly complete. It's a little scary but I think our questions will be answered and our curiosities satisfied in the not too distant future.

[Octafish]

19. Frank Carlucci, BFEE, has gone into the luxury lifeboat line...

The Really Creepy People Behind the Libertarian-Inspired Billionaire Sea Castles

The stinking rich are planning billion-dollar luxury liners that keep the land-based Americans they've plundered at a safe distance.

AlterNet / By Mark Ames
June 1, 2010

What happens when Americans plunder America and leave it broken, destitute and seething mad? Where do these fabulously wealthy Americans go with their loot, if America isn't a safe, secure, or even desirable place to spend their riches? What if they lose faith in their gated communities, because those plush gated communities are surrounded by millions of pissed-off Americans stripped of their entitlements, and who now want in?

The first such floating castle has been christened the " Utopia"--the South Korean firm Samsung has been contracted to build the $1.1 billion ship, due to be launched in 2013. Already orders are coming in to buy one of the Utopia's 200 or so mansions for sale- -which range in price from about $4 million for the smallest condos to over $26 million for 6,600 square-foot "estates." The largest mansion is a whopping 40,000 square feet, and sells for $160 million.

SNIP...

Both Thiel and Milton Friedman's grandson see democracy as the enemy--last year, Thiel wrote "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible" at about the same time that Milton Friedman's grandson proclaimed, "Democracy is not the answer." Both published their anti-democracy proclamations in the same billionaire-Koch-family-funded outlet, Cato Unbound, one of the oldest billionaire-fed libertarian welfare dispensaries. Friedman's answer for Thiel's democracy problem is to build offshore libertarian pod-fortresses where the libertarian way rules. It's probably better for everyone if Milton Friedman's grandson and Peter Thiel leave us forever for their libertarian ocean lair--Thiel believes that America went down the tubes ever since it gave women the right to vote, and he was outed as the sponsor of accused felon James O'Keefe's smear videos that brought ACORN to ruin.

SNIP...

While neither Bush nor the Bin Ladens are principals in the Frontier Group, its founding director, Frank Carlucci, is a name they know well, and you should too. Carlucci ran the Carlyle Group as its chairman from 1989 through 2005, right around the time that the wars started going undeniably bad, and floating castles started to look like a viable plan. But Carlucci's past is much weirder and scarier than most of us care to know: whether it's his strangely timed appearances in some of the ugliest assassinations and coups in modern history, or serving as Carter's number two man in the CIA, and Ronald Reagan's Secretary of Defense, if Frank Carlucci (nicknamed "Creepy Carlucci" and "Spooky Frank&quot is the founding director of a firm that's building floating castles, it's a bad sign for those of us left behind.

I'll get into Carlucci's partners in the Frontier Group in a moment, but first, let's reacquaint ourselves with Frank Carlucci. From an early age, Carlucci learned the importance of getting to know the right people in the right places. He studied at Princeton in the mid-1950s, where as luck should have it, Carlucci roomed with Donald Rumsfeld. Both Carlucci and Rumsfeld shared a passion for Greco-Roman wrestling at Princeton, and both went on to serve in the Navy after Princeton. Their paths would split and merge several times over the next few decades, even as they remained close personal friends throughout their lives. In the late 1950s, Carlucci briefly served as an executive at a lingerie manufacturer, Jantzen (the Victoria's Secret of its day), but quickly left to join the State Department.

CONTINUED...

http://www.alternet.org/story/147058/the_really_creepy_people_behind_the_libertarian-inspired_billionaire_sea_castles

It is my hope -- and one major objective of posting on DU -- that we never need use them.

[FlatBaroque]

23. Carlucci must be a wild eyed conspiracy theorist

if Frank Carlucci (nicknamed "Creepy Carlucci" and "Spooky Frank&quot is the founding director of a firm that's building floating castles, it's a bad sign for those of us left behind.

[uhnope]

60. funny, I recall you justifying Russia's war on the Ukraine quite a bit.

Are you also against Russian involvement in the fight against ISIS (let's call it that)? How does that go along with your "thought of peace"?

[Octafish]

63. Yeah? Show where.

Here's what I have written:

Return of the Evil Empire

I do remember bringing up how Victoria Nuland and her PNAC crowd are going to profit from war in Ukraine. One example:

How Ukraine Commemorates the Holocaust

Even tied it into one Democratic candidate for President's record on the issue.

Bernie Sanders doesn't have a PNAC bone in his body or PNAC skeleton in his closet

So, show where I was "justifying Russia's war on the Ukraine quite a bit." Hell, show anywhere where I justify anybody's war on Ukraine or anywhere or anyone, for that matter, uhnope.

[uhnope]

65. are you also strongly opposed to Russia's war on ISIS? yes or no?

[Octafish]

68. So, you can't show where I wrote what you accused me of saying?

Got it.

[uhnope]

70. LOL. So you oppose war when the West does it.

Got it.

[Octafish]

72. I remember when posts like yours would lead to getting banned.

LOL.

[uhnope]

74. yeah, banning dissidents who ask inconvenient questions sounds like something you'd favor

[Octafish]

75. No. Banning disinformationists who work to smear DUers.

Show where I posted anything like what you wrote I said. Show.

[Jesus Malverde]

92. emoticon brigade

Jesus

[librechik]

4. Why is anyone surprised? Remember how we bombed Al Jazeera

in Bagdad. They called the US embassy frantically saying hey, it's us, quit bombing!

Yeah, we know, was the unspoken answer. The bombing continued.

[Octafish]

12. Remember when we bombed CNN? Their boss got fired for saying it looked on purpose.

Lots of violence toward the Press:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8113530

[librechik]

14. exactly. The US is not a heroic force of the people anymore (if it ever was)

They are a global empire without checks and balances. Why wouldn't The Empire destroy the first responders? They've been doing it since Alexander.

[Octafish]

18. ''War is a Racket.'' -- Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler, USMC

From before World War II:

There are 40,000,000 men under arms in the world today, and our statesmen and diplomats have the temerity to say that war is not in the making.

Hell's bells! Are these 40,000,000 men being trained to be dancers?

Not in Italy, to be sure. Premier Mussolini knows what they are being trained for. He, at least, is frank enough to speak out. Only the other day, Il Duce in "International Conciliation," the publication of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said:

"And above all, Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. . . . War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the people who have the courage to meet it."

Undoubtedly Mussolini means exactly what he says. His well-trained army, his great fleet of planes, and even his navy are ready for war -- anxious for it, apparently. His recent stand at the side of Hungary in the latter's dispute with Jugoslavia showed that. And the hurried mobilization of his troops on the Austrian border after the assassination of Dollfuss showed it too. There are others in Europe too whose sabre rattling presages war, sooner or later.

Herr Hitler, with his rearming Germany and his constant demands for more and more arms, is an equal if not greater menace to peace. France only recently increased the term of military service for its youth from a year to eighteen months.

CONTINUED...

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html

It's not a democracy when most of the people want peace and we get eight more years of war.

[malaise]

22. ^THIS^ n/t

[KingCharlemagne]

122. The US (North) was a heroic force of the people in the US Civil War. That's probably the

Only time in American history where the interests of proletariat and bourgeoisie converged, in the battle to stomp out chattel slavery.

[demmiblue]

6. I can't find the words to express how disgusted I am by this. n/t

[Octafish]

25. The accounts are unimaginable for a good person.

What is going on when We the People vote for peace and we continue to get war, election after election?

[cwydro]

107. I remember that Obama said no more war.

Or did I dream that?

[Octafish]

110. It gets easier every year to say you were dreaming.

Most people get their info off the tee vee, still; but, increasingly, people are using the web.

Both formats are great for those interested in controlling history per Orwell.

[cwydro]

111. There was some promise about closing Gitmo too.

I think that must have been another dream.

[Octafish]

113. I heard him tell a room that he was ''Left of Center.''

"A Liberal." So, I didn't think he'd side with Wall Street over the millions illegally tossed from their homes, let alone give them bonuses after losing trillions at the casino.

There's a lot of there, there. Too bad, so sad I'm made to understand.

[cwydro]

115. He lost me during the BP spill.

He allowed those criminals to fill the ocean with Corexit.

To this day, I won't eat any seafood from the Gulf.

He's responsible for a lot of ocean mammal deaths.

Now, with the drones and the bombings, he's added human deaths to his count.

No doubt he sleeps fine at night.

[Octafish]

123. Stay away from Pacific seafood, too.

Fukushima is leaking all manner of crap into the environment, including the Pacific Ocean and related food chains.

At the end of August I met a college freshman at a welcome school function. The kid is an all-A high achiever. He said he had ever heard of Fukushima. He had never heard three nuclear plants at Fukushima are in meltdown. He had not heard it mentioned in class or on television or seen it in print or reference on the radio or in his discussions online, etc. Not once.

That's why we keep up the Good Fight, cwydro. The forces of ignorance know wealth beyond measure.

[Doctor_J]

7. we're still winning hearts and minds. still being greeted as liberators

And still going to elect yet another war monger for our next president. USA! USA!

[Octafish]

29. Weird how that works.

Those who point that out in public don't get far these days. Anyone remember what Paul Wellstone was saying about war on Iraq?

He was against it.

http://www.wellstone.org/legacy/speeches/paul-wellstone-iraq-war

Who else?

[CrispyQ]

8. But patients who were unable to escape burned to death as they lay in their beds.'

Can we not end this fucking endless war?

[Octafish]

32. Unable to move, ICU patients burned in their beds.

Our tax dollars at work. Weird how we vote to end war, yet they continue.

Oh well. Did you catch the game yesterday?

[polly7]

9. So horrible.

Yet is will go on and on.

Those suffering horrific, agonizing deaths and injury being called collateral damage makes my stomach sick - every time, no matter where.

[Octafish]

42. Not collateral. They targeted hospital.

Survivors said plane kept circling around, zeroing in on hospital.

http://m.heraldscotland.com/news/13802186.Nato_and_US_knew_precise_location_of_hospital_one_before_bombing_raid_killed_19_doctors_and_patients/

Terrorists don't care who they kill.

[uhnope]

66. BS. So now NATO, the US & Afghan forces are "terrorists" who want to bomb hospitals?

Military attack planes circle while they wait confirmation of a target. Word is on this one that they got confirmation of the target from local forces and then saw tracer fire coming from the compound--this was the secondary confirmation needed. Obviously it was a huge horrible error, since MSF says the hospital and its GPS was registered with NATO.

But for you to call the people fighting the Taliban "terrorists"? You really think NATO and the US wants to bomb hospitals? WTF?

[YoungDemCA]

96. This is someone who thinks a former US President helped organize another President's assassination

So keep that in mind.

[uhnope]

97. really? thanks.

the squirreliness is strong with this one

[Jesus Malverde]

93. I saw it was an AC 130

All up close and personal, this was.

Campbell confirmed that an AC-130 gunship had been called into strike at Taliban fighters.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/afghan-forces-requested-us-airstrike-hit-hospital-gen/story?id=34255265

[Aerows]

67. It just makes me want to cry.

THIS is what we, as Americans, fund by cutting every single social safety net so our tax dollars can be funneled to atrocities? THESE are the people who we employ to "keep the peace" and advance our nation?

Glorifying violence has lead us here, and it is the wrong way to travel. Our nation's leaders just can't seem to quit walking the road to ruin, and dragging us all down the path of the damned.

[malaise]

21. It's only unspeakable when others are the perpetrators

Remember that please

[840high]

30. ...^ that

[Octafish]

43. What they do overseas, they bring home.

Like 360 spying on citizens.

Surveillance and Scandal

Time-Tested Weapons for U.S. Global Power

By Alfred McCoy
Tomgram, Jan. 19, 2014

For more than six months, Edward Snowden’s revelations about the National Security Agency (NSA) have been pouring out from the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Guardian, Germany’s Der Spiegel, and Brazil’s O Globo, among other places. Yet no one has pointed out the combination of factors that made the NSA’s expanding programs to monitor the world seem like such a slam-dunk development in Washington. The answer is remarkably simple. For an imperial power losing its economic grip on the planet and heading into more austere times, the NSA’s latest technological breakthroughs look like a bargain basement deal when it comes to projecting power and keeping subordinate allies in line -- like, in fact, the steal of the century. Even when disaster turned out to be attached to them, the NSA’s surveillance programs have come with such a discounted price tag that no Washington elite was going to reject them.

For well over a century, from the pacification of the Philippines in 1898 to trade negotiations with the European Union today, surveillance and its kissing cousins, scandal and scurrilous information, have been key weapons in Washington’s search for global dominion. Not surprisingly, in a post-9/11 bipartisan exercise of executive power, George W. Bush and Barack Obama have presided over building the NSA step by secret step into a digital panopticon designed to monitor the communications of every American and foreign leaders worldwide.

What exactly was the aim of such an unprecedented program of massive domestic and planetary spying, which clearly carried the risk of controversy at home and abroad? Here, an awareness of the more than century-long history of U.S. surveillance can guide us through the billions of bytes swept up by the NSA to the strategic significance of such a program for the planet’s last superpower. What the past reveals is a long-term relationship between American state surveillance and political scandal that helps illuminate the unacknowledged reason why the NSA monitors America’s closest allies.

[font color="green"]Not only does such surveillance help gain intelligence advantageous to U.S. diplomacy, trade relations, and war-making, but it also scoops up intimate information that can provide leverage -- akin to blackmail -- in sensitive global dealings and negotiations of every sort. The NSA’s global panopticon thus fulfills an ancient dream of empire. With a few computer key strokes, the agency has solved the problem that has bedeviled world powers since at least the time of Caesar Augustus: how to control unruly local leaders, who are the foundation for imperial rule, by ferreting out crucial, often scurrilous, information to make them more malleable.[/font color]

A Cost-Savings Bonanza With a Downside

Once upon a time, such surveillance was both expensive and labor intensive. Today, however, unlike the U.S. Army’s shoe-leather surveillance during World War I or the FBI’s break-ins and phone bugs in the Cold War years, the NSA can monitor the entire world and its leaders with only 100-plus probes into the Internet’s fiber optic cables.

This new technology is both omniscient and omnipresent beyond anything those lacking top-secret clearance could have imagined before the Edward Snowden revelations began. Not only is it unimaginably pervasive, but NSA surveillance is also a particularly cost-effective strategy compared to just about any other form of global power projection. And better yet, it fulfills the greatest imperial dream of all: to be omniscient not just for a few islands, as in the Philippines a century ago, or a couple of countries, as in the Cold War era, but on a truly global scale.

CONTINUED...

http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175795/tomgram%3A_alfred_mccoy,_it's_about_blackmail,_not_national_security/

Warmoney trumps the Pope even.

[malaise]

47. And that is why empires collapse

The internal and external contradictions can no longer be hidden.
It's almost comical watching M$Greedia and the hacks twisting and contorting as they try to explain away the bombing of the hospital while condemning the Russians for doing what they continue to do for over one decade. But remember when it's the West, it's collateral damage or the bad guys were using the building.

[Octafish]

55. My neighbor's eyes got big as saucers when I mentioned the difference in warmaking effectiveness.

Russia has gone in and is kicking the asses of the "ISIS Terrorists" formerly allied with Saddam's Iraqi army licketty-split, while we were formenting alliances with former Al Qaada in various guises and forms in order to make war on ISIS slowly and painfully. One logical conclusion is that the Pentagon has been hijacked by warmongers intent on continuing wars the world over in order to make a buck, which also serves to keep a lid on the rubes at home wondering: "What's wrong with this voting machine?"



Now the real chickens
are coming home to roost.

[malaise]

56. One logical conclusion is that the Pentagon has been hijacked by warmongers

^...THIS...^

[azmom]

31. I'm so sick of war. This is just

horrendous.

[Octafish]

45. Mom, they make big money off war.

It's the official grease of progress, per Doctor Cowen:

The Pitfalls of Peace

The Lack of Major Wars May Be Hurting Economic Growth

Tyler Cowen
The New York Times, JUNE 13, 2014

The continuing slowness of economic growth in high-income economies has prompted soul-searching among economists. They have looked to weak demand, rising inequality, Chinese competition, over-regulation, inadequate infrastructure and an exhaustion of new technological ideas as possible culprits.

An additional explanation of slow growth is now receiving attention, however. It is the persistence and expectation of peace.

The world just hasn’t had that much warfare lately, at least not by historical standards. Some of the recent headlines about Iraq or South Sudan make our world sound like a very bloody place, but today’s casualties pale in light of the tens of millions of people killed in the two world wars in the first half of the 20th century. Even the Vietnam War had many more deaths than any recent war involving an affluent country.

Counterintuitive though it may sound, the greater peacefulness of the world may make the attainment of higher rates of economic growth less urgent and thus less likely. This view does not claim that fighting wars improves economies, as of course the actual conflict brings death and destruction. The claim is also distinct from the Keynesian argument that preparing for war lifts government spending and puts people to work. Rather, the very possibility of war focuses the attention of governments on getting some basic decisions right — whether investing in science or simply liberalizing the economy. Such focus ends up improving a nation’s longer-run prospects.

It may seem repugnant to find a positive side to war in this regard, but a look at American history suggests we cannot dismiss the idea so easily. Fundamental innovations such as nuclear power, the computer and the modern aircraft were all pushed along by an American government eager to defeat the Axis powers or, later, to win the Cold War. The Internet was initially designed to help this country withstand a nuclear exchange, and Silicon Valley had its origins with military contracting, not today’s entrepreneurial social media start-ups. The Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite spurred American interest in science and technology, to the benefit of later economic growth.

War brings an urgency that governments otherwise fail to summon. For instance, the Manhattan Project took six years to produce a working atomic bomb, starting from virtually nothing, and at its peak consumed 0.4 percent of American economic output. It is hard to imagine a comparably speedy and decisive achievement these days.

SNIP...

Living in a largely peaceful world with 2 percent G.D.P. growth has some big advantages that you don’t get with 4 percent growth and many more war deaths. Economic stasis may not feel very impressive, but it’s something our ancestors never quite managed to pull off. The real questions are whether we can do any better, and whether the recent prevalence of peace is a mere temporary bubble just waiting to be burst.

Tyler Cowen is a professor of economics at George Mason University.

SOURCE: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/14/upshot/the-lack-of-major-wars-may-be-hurting-economic-growth.html?_r=0

The fact we vote overwhelmingly for peace and wars built on lies continue without end demonstrates the nation is run by fascist warmongers.

[pecwae]

34. My BIL,

retired GP, donates time to MSF. He's horrified. Although he did not personally know any of the medical personnel at Kunduz presently, he has been in Afghanistan in years past.

Please, donate if you possibly can. It's one of the most useful organizations out there.

[Octafish]

49. Thank you!

What the organization does:

We are Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). We help people worldwide where the need is greatest, delivering emergency medical aid to people affected by conflict, epidemics, disasters or exclusion from health care.

http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/about-us

These are times when many, if not most, US doctors' first question after stating "We don't take Medicaid" is "Who's your insurance provider?"

Your BIL lives by the Oath, pecwae.

[Rex]

36. When will people understand...the MIC lives way way way way way above the law.

It outranks all three branches of government and is more essential then foodstamps for the families of 30 million hungry children.

[Octafish]

51. Privatizing the Unspeakable

EXCERPT...

Privatizing the Apocalypse

How Nuclear Weapons Companies Commandeer Your Tax Dollars

By Richard Krushnic and Jonathan Alan King
TomDispatch.com, Sept. 22, 2015

EXCERPT...

In 2012, a report from a high-level committee chaired by former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General James Cartwright concluded that “no sensible argument has been put forward for using nuclear weapons to solve any of the major 21st century problems we face [including] threats posed by rogue states, failed states, proliferation, regional conflicts, terrorism, cyber warfare, organized crime, drug trafficking, conflict-driven mass migration of refugees, epidemics, or climate change. In fact, nuclear weapons have on balance arguably become more a part of the problem than any solution.”

Not surprisingly, for the roster of corporations involved in the U.S. nuclear programs, this matters little. They, in fact, maintain elaborate lobbying operations in support of their continuing nuclear weapons contracts. In a 2012 study for the Center for International Policy, “Bombs vs. Budgets: Inside the Nuclear Weapons Lobby,” William Hartung and Christine Anderson reported that, for the elections of that year, the top 14 contractors gave nearly $3 million directly to Congressional legislators. Not surprisingly, half that sum went to members of the four key committees or subcommittees that oversee spending for nuclear arms.

In 2015, the defense industry mobilized a small army of at least 718 lobbyists and doled out more than $67 million dollars pressuring Congress for increased weapons spending generally. Among the largest contributors were corporations with significant nuclear weapons contracts, including Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and General Dynamics. Such pro-nuclear lobbying is augmented by contributions and pressure from missile and aircraft companies that are primarily non-nuclear. Some of the systems they produce, however, are potentially dual-use (conventional and nuclear), which means that a robust nuclear weapons program increases their potential market.

The continuing pressure of Congressional Republicans for cuts in domestic social programs are a crucial mechanism that ensures federal tax dollars will be available for lucrative military contracts. In terms of quality of life (and death), this means that underestimating the influence of the nuclear weapons industry is singularly dangerous. For the $35 billion or more the U.S. taxpayer will put into such weaponry annually to support the narrow interests of a modest number of companies, the payback is fear of an apocalyptic future. After all, unlike almost all other corporate lobbies, the nuclear weapons lobby (and so your tax dollars) put life on Earth at risk of rapid extinction, either following the direct destruction of a nuclear holocaust or a radical reduction in sunlight reaching the Earth’s surface that would come from the sort of nuclear winter that would follow almost any nuclear exchange. At the moment, the corporate-nuclear complex is hidden in our midst, its budgets and funds shielded from public scrutiny, its project hardly noticed. It’s a formula for disaster.

SOURCE: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176047/tomgram%3A_krushnic_and_king%2C_the_corporate_nuclear_complex/#more

Thank you, Rex! "Outranks" is just the word for the situation. "Extortion" sounds like gangsters -- like a "Racket."

[Rex]

59. War is the ultimate racket.

Our sick love for money and power outranks human lives and we see it daily.

[riderinthestorm]

37. War crime

[Octafish]

53. That's what Doctors Without Borders said, too.

Medecins Sans Frontieres accuses US of war crime after Afghan hospital air raid

Ali M. Latifi and W. J. Hennigan
Sydney Morning Herald, Oct. 5, 2015

EXCERPT...

"Under the clear presumption that a war crime has been committed, MSF demands that a full and transparent investigation into the event be conducted by an independent international body," the organisation said in a statement on its website. "Relying only on an internal investigation by a party to the conflict would be wholly insufficient."

SNIP...

The charity "is disgusted by the recent statements coming from some Afghanistan government authorities justifying the attack on its hospital in Kunduz", the organisation's general director, Christopher Stokes, said.

"These statements imply that Afghan and US forces working together decided to raze to the ground a fully functioning hospital – with more than 180 staff and patients inside – because they claim that members of the Taliban were present. This amounts to an admission of a war crime."

He added that the claim "utterly contradicts the initial attempts of the US government to minimise the attack as collateral damage".

CONTINUED...

http://www.smh.com.au/world/medecins-sans-frontieres-accuses-us-of-war-crime-after-afghan-hospital-bombed-20151004-gk16zi.html



Going by how they treat whistleblowers who bring this up, like Private Manning and WikiLeak's Assange, I think those responsible also see what they've done as a "War Crime." Without ever being held to account, they seem to also say they don't care if we know or not.

[Skittles]

38. all you people who thought the escalation was a grand idea

F*** YOU

[Octafish]

54. Well said.

From the great DUer bigtree in 2009:

Pressure to Escalate Afghan Occupation May Result in Obama Re-Focus Away from Nation-Building

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6605618

War really is great for business. Other than that, it is hell on earth.

[Blue_Tires]

39. Greenwald is predictably euphoric over the whole incident

https://twitter.com/Wilson__Valdez/status/650774893064142849

Shit like this evidently gets him off sexually -- Naturally he gives less that a shit about the lives lost when he can strut, celebrate and score his anti-American political points all day...

[Comrade Grumpy]

40. Greenwald notes the irony. I don't see anything about sex in his tweet.

Oh, Greenwald gives you a mad. So you lash out. Okay. I hope you feel better now.

[Skittles]

41. or, maybe he was just right all along

[malaise]

48. He was right

and so were many of us

[Blue_Tires]

99. Or maybe he's been in bed with Putin all along

mutual interests and all that...

[Fumesucker]

44. Telling what your reaction to this horror is

A chance to bash the ~real~ villain, someone who said mean things about a politician.

[bullwinkle428]

52. A Limbaugh-esque reaction for sure - getting your underwear in a twist about

someone making a few "anti-American" comments. Oh, you forgot to call Michael Moore "fat"!

[uhnope]

61. Please explain how this horrible mistake reflects on your view of the war against ISIS

Are you saying the war against ISIS should be stopped?

[Octafish]

69. Way to conflate things.

I'd ask what you say I said, but answering you is a moment of time that's wasted. But, you know that.

[uhnope]

73. I'm not conflating. I'm asking if you think the US should not fight ISIS/Taliban. Simple question.

go for it

[Octafish]

76. Time Waster.

In this thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027229447#post63

Show.

[uhnope]

78. LOL. Seems that you love the fact that this mistake makes the US military look bad.

Since you won't answer a simple question about the war you are posting so much about, we can only make assumptions based on your pattern of posting.

Correct me if I'm wrong:
It seems that you love the fact that this mistake makes the US military look bad, and you are reveling in the misfortune. It seems you don't actually oppose the war on ISIS/Taliban, you just the oppose the West fighting this war, or any war. It seems you want to give as much exposure to every grisly detail of this mistake so that you can beat the drum of how bad the US/NATO/the West is. That's how it seems, tell me if I'm wrong

[mike_c]

79. First, I prefer the term "war crime" instead of "mistake."

Mistakes are just so 2002.

Second, it has never been clear to me what threat ISIS poses to the U.S. I don't agree that simply being violent and brutal toward the dictatorial regimes we've kept propped up in the middle east is sufficient justification to go to war against them. I cannot escape the sneaking suspicion that there have to be numerous brush fire wars all around the world simultaneously in order to absorb the products of the MIC and keep the U.S. economy afloat. Violence and destruction are are major exports, and without victims consumers there'd be little left to generate revenue.

I not only think the "war against ISIS" should be stopped-- I think it should never have started. ISIS is by and large an American construct, rising from the ashes of Iraq in response to U.S. interference and regional destabilization.

Bombing hospitals that treat civilians is a war crime:

Art. 18. Civilian hospitals organized to give care to the wounded and sick, the infirm and maternity cases, may in no circumstances be the object of attack but shall at all times be respected and protected by the Parties to the conflict.

(snip)

Art. 19. The protection to which civilian hospitals are entitled shall not cease unless they are used to commit, outside their humanitarian duties, acts harmful to the enemy. Protection may, however, cease only after due warning has been given, naming, in all appropriate cases, a reasonable time limit and after such warning has remained unheeded.

The fact that sick or wounded members of the armed forces are nursed in these hospitals, or the presence of small arms and ammunition taken from such combatants and not yet been handed to the proper service, shall not be considered to be acts harmful to the enemy.

Art. 20. Persons regularly and solely engaged in the operation and administration of civilian hospitals, including the personnel engaged in the search for, removal and transporting of and caring for wounded and sick civilians, the infirm and maternity cases shall be respected and protected.

[uhnope]

80. of course it was a mistake

What could the US possibly gain from intentionally bombing a MSF hospital? C'mon.
I'm not saying that they don't still bear responsibility.

[mike_c]

81. mistaken or intentional, it's clearly a crime against humanity to bomb a civilian hospital....

The planes bombed, then circled back and bombed again and again. They intended to hit that target. U.S. forces knew the exact coordinates of the hospital. Targeting the hospital might have been an error, but bombing it was spot on, intentional, and repeated. We're not talking about misdirected munitions here. It was intentional, and accurate.

A war crime.

[uhnope]

82. you admit targeting the hospital might have been in error

so what's your point? It's not a war crime when it's an act that goes awry under normal operations of war, is it? Unless gross negligence can be shown, perhaps.

Yes, the plane circled and bombed. That's what they do. Yes the bombing of the building was intentional and accurate--are you saying it's a war crime to bomb any building intentionally and accurately? It's unclear.

[mike_c]

83. yes, it is still a war crime....

Sheesh. What part of the Geneva Conventions don't you understand? We bombed a civilian hospital whose location was well known. The "mistake" was some dimwit's criminal decision to target a hospital-- it was targeted repeatedly, not hit with wayward munitions and not "collateral damage" as the military's first lies had it. Oops. We targeted a hospital by "mistake." Too bad we can't get a do-over, because it is ALWAYS a war crime under Articles 16-20 to bomb civilian hospitals. There is no immunity for war crimes committed "mistakenly."

[uhnope]

84. you keep making contradictory statements

This in itself is a self-cancelling statement:

The "mistake" was some dimwit's criminal decision to target a hospital

Again, you seem to be saying it was not a mistake at all. Do you believe that? Why? And what do you think would be the reason for the US/NATO to bomb a hospital on purpose?

Also, are you sure about this:

There is no immunity for war crimes committed "mistakenly."

?
I actually doubt that. The Geneva Conventions you quoted doesn't mention that. I know that every instance of accidental civilian deaths in war is not counted as a war crime. In regular US law there could be charges for gross negligence (which perhaps could be shown in this case).

[Puzzledtraveller]

62. Amazed at how little attention this has got.

As it it should be a huge story worthy of the outrage we show about other news items. Dare I say if this happened under a republican it would be everywhere. It really makes me sick how we become soft on shit like this just because our man is at the wheel.

[Octafish]

71. Thank you for putting it to words, Puzzledtraveller.

The fact that the Empire is now piloted by a fellow with a D for party affiliation seems to have put discussion of his actions off limits for many. Hypocrisy, like UBS Wealth Management, is Buy Partisan.

PS: Good to read you, Puzzledtraveller. Long time, no viddy.

[Puzzledtraveller]

85. Thank you Octafish.

I brace for flames every time I dare to post such on DU. I expect to be lambasted most times or be accused of being a saboteur. In fact when I saw their was a reply to this I avoided looking at it for a while expecting it to be someone excoriating me.

[Dont call me Shirley]

86. The murdered and the injured....

Top brass need to be FIRED! Their actions are criminal. END WAR NOW!

[Octafish]

87. Agree 100-percent. This is Year 13 in Afghanistan.

US repeatedly bombs hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan

By Thomas Gaist
World Socialist Web Site, 5 October 2015

EXCERPT...

While US military officials have tried to excuse the atrocity against the MSF hospital as “collateral damage” resulting from the targeting of Taliban fighters allegedly occupying buildings that were part of the same compound as the medical center, both MSF staff members and other witnesses have reported that there was no fighting in the hospital compound.

It appears far more likely that the attacks were intentionally ordered by officers with the US-led force, in order to send the message that medical personnel suspected of giving treatment to anyone opposing the US military are acceptable “collateral damage” or even legitimate targets.

US authorities have been aware of the exact location of the facility for years, MSF operations chief Bart Janssens told Al Jazeera. The precise coordinates of the hospital were re-confirmed with US military representatives as recently as September 29, according to MSF spokesperson Vickie Hawkins.

It cannot be ruled out that the hospital was destroyed deliberately by officers emboldened by aggressive new rules of engagement laid out in the 1,000-plus page US Defense Department Law of War Manual (LOWM) released by the Pentagon earlier this year, which authorize US commanders to attack civilian infrastructure and populations based on their own calculations of “military necessity.”
Among countless sweeping authorizations for use of military force, the LOWM contains expanded authority for US commanders to attack targets despite the presence of “human shields.”

So broad are the LOWM’s authorizations for “Conduct of Hostilities” that, even if it were conclusively shown that US commanders deliberately targeted the hospital, the US military could easily interpret the intentional destruction of the Kunduz hospital as “legal,” so long as the responsible commanders testify that they assessed the operations to be “militarily necessary” at the time.

CONTINUED...

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/10/05/afgh-o05.html

I think the officers thought they wouldn't get caught. And if they were found out, no one would hold them to account.

[Dont call me Shirley]

88. Chronic war criminals are fearful people who feel they must prepare for the backlash from the

crimes they commit upon others.

[bullwinkle428]

89. People need to go to fucking prison over this.

Oh, for those brushing this off, rest assured I'm sending more money to MSF.

[Octafish]

90. The Radically Changing Story of the U.S. Airstrike on Afghan Hospital: From Mistake to Justification

Glenn Greenwald points out that the US and Afghan governments are "evolving" their story. Guess who is at fault for the bombing?

Kunduz MSF/DWB Hospital, afire.



The Radically Changing Story of the U.S. Airstrike on Afghan Hospital: From Mistake to Justification

by Glenn Greenwald
The Intercept, October 05, 2015

When news first broke of the U.S. airstrike on the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, the response from the U.S. military was predictable and familiar. It was all just a big, terrible mistake, its official statement suggested: an airstrike it carried out in Kunduz “may have resulted in collateral damage to a nearby medical facility.” Oops: our bad. Fog of war, errant bombs, and all that.

SNIP...

But there’s something significantly different about this incident that has caused this “mistake” claim to fail. Usually, the only voices protesting or challenging the claims of the U.S. military are the foreign, non-western victims who live in the cities and villages where the bombs fall. Those are easily ignored, or dismissed as either ignorant or dishonest. Those voices barely find their way into U.S. news stories, and when they do, they are stream-rolled by the official and/or anonymous claims of the U.S. military, which are typically treated by U.S. media outlets as unassailable authority.

In this case, though, the U.S. military bombed the hospital of an organization – Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)) – run by western-based physicians and other medical care professionals. They are not so easily ignored. Doctors who travel to dangerous war zones to treat injured human beings are regarded as noble and trustworthy. They’re difficult to marginalize and demonize. They give compelling, articulate interviews in English to U.S. media outlets. They are heard, and listened to.

SNIP...

As a result of all of this, there is now a radical shift in the story being told about this strike. No longer is it being depicted as some terrible accident of a wayward bomb. Instead, the predominant narrative from U.S. sources and their Afghan allies is that this attack was justified because the Taliban were using it as a “base.”

CONTINUED...

https://theintercept.com/2015/10/05/the-radically-changing-story-of-the-u-s-airstrike-on-afghan-hospital-from-mistake-to-justification/

PS: Thank you, bullwinkle428.

[uhnope]

95. Glenn Greenwald.

riiiigght

[Octafish]

100. It was GREENWALD who called out Bush and Cheney on ILLEGAL N.S.A. Spying back in 2007.

If the rest of the press had carried half as much water as Greenwald, these two would have long ago been in front of a Grand Jury.



Here's what Greenwald wrote on the subject of NSA abuse by them, when the story broke in 2007. In his story, Greenwald raised questions about the Comey visit to Ashcroft that have still to be answered -- six long warmongering profiteering years later:

Comey’s testimony raises new and vital questions about the NSA scandal

The testimony yesterday, while dramatic, underscores how severe a threat to the rule of law this administration poses.

BY GLENN GREENWALD
WEDNESDAY, MAY 16, 2007 06:16 AM EDT

The testimony yesterday from James Comey re-focuses attention on one of the long unresolved mysteries of the NSA scandal. And the new information Comey revealed, though not answering that question decisively, suggests some deeply troubling answers. Most of all, yesterday’s hearing underscores how unresolved the entire NSA matter is — how little we know (but ought to know) about what actually happened and how little accountability there has been for some of the most severe and blatant acts of presidential lawbreaking in the country’s history.

SNIP...

The key questions still demanding investigation and answers

But the more important issue here, by far, is that we should not have to speculate in this way about how the illegal eavesdropping powers were used. We enacted a law 30 years ago making it a felony for the government to eavesdrop on us without warrants, precisely because that power had been so severely and continuously abused. The President deliberately violated that law by eavesdropping in secret. Why don’t we know — a-year-a-half after this lawbreaking was revealed — whether these eavesdropping powers were abused for improper purposes? Is anyone in Congress investigating that question? Why don’t we know the answers to that?

Back in September, the then-ranking member (and current Chairman) of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Jay Rockefeller, made clear how little even he knew about the answers to any of these questions in a letter he released:

For the past six months, I have been requesting without success specific details about the program, including: how many terrorists have been identified; how many arrested; how many convicted; and how many terrorists have been deported or killed as a direct result of information obtained through the warrantless wiretapping program.

[font size="6"][font color="red"]I can assure you, not one person in Congress has the answers to these and many other fundamental questions.[/font size][/font color]

CONTINUED...

http://www.salon.com/2007/05/16/nsa_comey/

Instead, six years and who-knows-how-many lives later, Bush and Cheney and the rest of their election thieving warmongering bankster oilmen posse continue merrily on their way, unpunished for lying America into war and making huge profits in the process.

Unlike CIABCNNBCBSFoxNutwork, it was Greenwald who stood up to Cheney and Bush. He covered the story and asked "Why?"

That's why I say what you said doesn't really mean anything, uhnope. Especially.

[uhnope]

103. pls tell us more about history

I heard you know interesting things about presidential assassinations and how one president has assassinated another president. Could you tell us more about that?

[Octafish]

104. Ask George HW Bush about that. He told the FBI he was in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

Whoever told you that I said one president ordered the assassination of another is wrong. I have asked why was George Herbert Walker Bush in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963?

Poppy Bush warned FBI -- AFTER -- JFK assassinated.

In the hour of the death of President John F. Kennedy, Texas oilman George Herbert Walker Bush named a suspect to the FBI in a "confidential" phone call. He then added he was heading for Dallas. Skeptics need not take my word for it, that's what Poppy told the FBI:



Here's a transcript of the text:

TO: SAC, HOUSTON DATE: 11-22-63

FROM: SA GRAHAM W. KITCHEL

SUBJECT: UNKNOWN SUBJECT;
ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT
JOHN F. KENNEDY

At 1:45 p.m. Mr. GEORGE H. W. BUSH, President of the Zapata Off-Shore Drilling Company, Houston, Texas, residence 5525 Briar, Houston, telephonically furnished the following information to writer by long distance telephone call from Tyler, Texas.

BUSH stated that he wanted to be kept confidential but wanted to furnish hearsay that he recalled hearing in recent weeks, the day and source unknown. He stated that one JAMES PARROTT has been talking of killing the President when he comes to Houston.

BUSH stated that PARROTT is possibly a student at the University of Houston and is active in political matters in this area. He stated that he felt Mrs. FAWLEY, telephone number SU 2-5239, or ARLINE SMITH, telephone number JA 9-9194 of the Harris County Republican Party Headquarters would be able to furnish additional information regarding the identity of PARROTT.

BUSH stated that he was proceeding to Dallas, Texas, would remain in the Sheraton-Dallas Hotel and return to his residence on 11-23-63. His office telephone number is CA 2-0395.

# # #

Gee. Why was Poppy Bush in Dallas when JFK was assassinated?

Could it be, he was on official business? I suspect he was on Secret Government business. After all, his eldest son bragged during his Texas Air National Guard and Harvard grad school days that his daddy was CIA.

Here's an FBI document from the same week of the assassination in which FBI Director J Edgar Hoover briefed one "Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency." Some strange coincidence there, wot?



Here's a transcript of the above:

Date: November 29, 1963

To: Director
Bureau of Intelligence and Research
Department of State

From: John Edgar Hoover, Director

Subject: ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY
NOVEMBER 22, 1963

Our Miami, Florida, Office on November 23, 1963, advised that the Office of Coordinator of Cuban Affairs in Miami advised that the Department of State feels some misguided anti-Castro group might capitalize on the present situation and undertake an unauthorized raid against Cuba, believing that the assassination of President John F. Kennedy might herald a change in U. S. policy, which is not true.

Our sources and informants familiar with Cuban matters in the Miami area advise that the general feeling in the anti-Castro Cuban community is one of stunned disbelief and, even among those who did not entirely agree with the President's policy concerning Cuba, the feeling is that the President's death represents a great loss not only to the U. S. but to all of Latin America. These sources know of no plans for unauthorized action against Cuba.

An informant who has furnished reliable information in the past and who is close to a small pro-Castro group in Miami has advised that these individuals are afraid that the assassination of the President may result in strong repressive measures being taken against them and, although pro-Castro in their feelings, regret the assassination.

The substance of the foregoing information was orally furnished to Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency and Captain William Edwards of the Defense Intelligence Agency on November 23, 1963, by Mr. W. T. Forsyth of this Bureau.

# # #

I do remember that GHWB was head of the CIA when the Church Committee was looking into the CIA assassination programs. He made things all friendly-like and turned what had been a serious hunt for truth under previous DCI Colby into another dog-and-pony show that was big on show and light on facts.

Regarding Dallas: Now I don't know if Poppy was a trigger man, was only there to watch what happened or what just happened to be there. I do know Poppy Bush has never explained these memos. He's never even admitted where he was the day JFK was killed.

Seeing how he would go on to become President, as would his dim son, I believe it's vitally important that we learn the Truth.

Why? The United States and the world haven't been the same since November 22, 1963. And not a single major player in the nation's mass media have stepped up and demanded a real investigation. So, it's up to us, We the People.

What's more, Poppy Bush sheltered mass-murdering jet-bombing terrorists like Luis Posada Carriles.

BTW: Your facetious question reveals important history that is ignored by the nation's mass media, uhnope. The assassination of President Kennedy and the roles of the nation's military and secret services should be something you and everyone should know more about. The assassination has everything to do with why today's world might makes right and money trumps peace.

[uhnope]

108. thank you. Also, is there a UFO coverup going on?

Please help us know about that

[Octafish]

112. That should be obvious, even to an ignoramus.

Disinformation from crap artists are regularly put on tee vee to confuse, distract and divert those interested in the subject.

Like what you post, you help shut down discussion of UFOs -- and other dimensions, alien life, the edge of reality -- by ridiculing those who are interested in them. On the other hand, important information, such as the fact that military and civilian aircraft have disappeared during UFO encounters are largely unknown. Those interested in learning about stuff that scares the Air Force and other members of the armed forces around the world may want to GOOGLE Frederick Valentich, Felix Moncla and Robert Wilson, or Thomas Mantell for example of brave people who have lost their lives in connection with UFOs.

Capt. Mantell's death is one important reason why the Pentagon considered UFOs "serious business" in 1947.

"The phenomenon reported is something real and not visionary or fictitious." -- Gen. Nathan Twining, US Air Force Materiel Command, Sept. 23, 1947.

What UFOs actually are -- or who or what created or controls them -- I do not know. I am interested in finding out, however. What's more, I encourage others to learn and tell me what they know. That's the scientific and democratic thing to do.

BTW: You remind me of people who stalk me from conservative web sites. Like them, you insinuate my interests are worthy of ridicule. That is both unscientific and undemocratic. That also is why I find your attempts to discredit me asinine and the mark of a very small mind, uhnope.

[uhnope]

114. thank you for the info. Can you tell us about vaccines and whether children should be vaccinated?

[Octafish]

116. So now you want to denigrate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.?

What I find more interesting from the perspective of crimes of the national security state is how RFK Jr. and his sister, Rory Kennedy, stated in a public audience interview with Charlie Rose that their father, US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy considered the Warren Commission a "shoddy piece of workmanship." That show has never aired. I wrote about it on DU at the time:

Mass Media ignoring 'RFK Believed in Conspiracy' shows corrupt nature of America's Press



Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his sister Rory Kennedy told Charlie Rose that their father, the Attorney General of the United States, Robert F. Kennedy, believed there was a conspiracy behind the death of his brother, President John F. Kennedy. For the first time in almost 50 years, members of the slain president's family were on the record about their father's thoughts about the assassination.

The story made news, as it were, for a day or two -- it was on page 8 here in Detroit (try finding it using The Free Press or Detroit News web site search engines) -- and apart from several threads on DU, that's about it as coverage goes. The Charlie Rose interview was part of a program put together by the media and good people in Dallas to celebrate JFK's life.

What bothers me about the media coverage is the constant attack, not on the government's lousy investigation of the assassination and its attendant cover-up, but, rather, the attack on anyone who brings up the subject of conspiracy in the death of the president, even when it's children of attorney general who also was the brother of the slain president.

Check out this condescending piece of opinion from the Dallas Observer:

Not Even Charlie Rose Could Rein in RFK Jr. in Dallas Last Night. Also: Conspiracy Theories!

By Betsy Lewis Sat., Jan. 12 2013 at 11:01 AM

It got weird when he went into a historical lecture about his father's investigation into the JFK assassination. He was speaking about it as if he had been part of it, then cited a book called The Unspeakable by Jim Douglas (sic - actually "JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters" by James Douglass) as being the best book on the subject, then kept referencing things from the book. He was losing the audience, so he burst out, "My father believed that the Warren Report was a shoddy piece of craftsmanship," to the delighted applause of the mostly Baby Boomer audience.

Whenever Charlie Rose would ask about the family, RFK Jr. would evade the question until he heard either delighted Boomer applause or delighted Boomer laughter. One of his responses to a family question was an unrelated story about World War II. A lady behind me who must have recently Netflixed The Iron Lady kept saying, "Here here!" for the benefit of us unfortunate people around her.
Some of the strangest RFK Jr. outbursts with the biggest applause were:

"We're becoming a national security state!" (applause, "Here here!&quot

"Corporations want profits!" (applause, "Here here!&quot

"Corporations are great things, but we'd be nuts to let them run our government!" (applause, "Here here!&quot

"Nationalism in Africa! The end of colonialism!"

At this point, I don't think anyone knew what the hell he was talking about. It was something about the Kennedy family airlifting President Obama's father out of Kenya to begin a new life in America.

RFK Jr.: "Yes."

CONTINUED...

http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/mixmaster/2013/01/charlie_rose_live_the_kennedy.php

Me, I don't believe any of that stuff was "out there." Why writer Betsy Lewis chooses to believe what the media tell her is true I'll guess lies in allegiance to a pay check.

Likewise for the lack of coverage given the story in the national media, where the same few corporations that swore up and down there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, both in 1990 and 2002, now want no part of "conspiracy talk" during the 50th anniversary observance. So far, as far as I'm aware, the Charlie Rose program has not aired.

What's more telling is what didn't get noted in the nation's corrupt mass media at all: The fact that Attorney General and later Senator Robert F. Kennedy also was assassinated. Some think that was a coincidence, because the mass media told them so. One thing's for certain, the questions still surrounding the deaths of two liberal icons doesn't get discussed at all today in our supposedly "free press."

That's what his son and daughter, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Rory Kennedy, reported in an interview with Charlie Rose last weekend in Dallas.



It's also what author and Salon founder David Talbot reported, when he called Robert F. Kennedy the "first conspiracy theorist" in 2007.

Here's why the news from Robert and Rory is so important:

The important issue is that he and his sister reported their father -- the president's principal counselor and the nation's chief law enforcement officer -- privately thought a conspiracy was behind the assassination of President Kennedy.

RFK called the Warren Commission report "shoddy workmanship."

Attorney General Kennedy knew about the Ruby-Mafia connections immediately, which is vital when considering the Mafia were hired by Allen Dulles and the CIA during Eisenhower's administration to murder Fidel Castro -- an operation which the CIA failed to inform the president and attorney general.

The interview with Charlie Rose marked the first time members of the immediate Kennedy family have voiced the attorney general's doubts about the Warren Commission and its lone gunman theory.

Those are the facts we learned Friday, Jan. 11, 2013.

[uhnope]

117. thank you. Can tell us if the moon landings were faked or, alternately, there are secret moon bases?

[Octafish]

118. You sound like the people who stalk me from the conservative websites.

Topic: Career conspiracy fabulist Octafish proud of his voter fraud

http://conservativecave.com/index.php?topic=99014.0

They act smart, too.

[uhnope]

119. why do you spend so much time on conservative websites?

Is it because your anti-western, anti-US-govt thinking overlaps with RW thinking?

[Octafish]

120. Like a teeny, tiny echo Dude.

I think I found out where Octafish gets his "information"

http://www.conservativeunderground.com/forum505/showthread.php?66702-I-think-I-found-out-where-Octafish-gets-his-quot-information-quot

[Octafish]

105. Those are the FBI's own documents.

Any more questions really should be directed toward former President Bush by a Grand Jury and Special Prosecutor.

Oh. Wait a second. Poppy Bush is why there are no Special Prosecutors around when you need one.



From Project Censored 1993:

5. IRAQGATE AND THE SILENT DEATH OF THE WATERGATE LAW

EXCERPT...

As the year 1992 drew to a close, the media seemed unconcerned with the Bush administration's covert, as well as overt, attempts to kill the Iraggate investigation. These also involved the demise of the Watergate Law, which had assured independent investigations of criminal acts by top officials. The law, which provided for appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate top level members of the administration, expired on December 15, 1992.

SOURCE: http://www.ringnebula.com/project-censored/1993/1993-story5.htm

How many people do you know who know what "Iraq-gate" is?

For DUers and the interested, the late William Safire detailed how: Poppy Bush helped arm Saddam's Iraq

Get it while you can. I've noticed a lot of this history is disappearing from the DU servers and the rest of the Web. Once those of us who know it are gone, do you think Corporate McPravda and LAckademia will cover it for future generations? Going by the past 52 years, I doubt it.

BTW: Poppy's dim son, George W Bush, "selected" to the presidency by a 5-4 vote of the Supreme Court, failed to protect the American people after he was warned taht "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the US" warnings and then lied America into war on countries that had nothing to do with Bin Laden. You did know that, didn't you, uhnope?

[Octafish]

106. Merchants of Death

Wall Street and War Inc. are where the really Big Bucks go to get made.

Sometimes a fortune rests on a mere scrap of information, like in a "Fistful of Dollars."

CIA moonlights in corporate world

In the midst of two wars and the fight against Al Qaeda, the CIA is offering operatives a chance to peddle their expertise to private companies on the side — a policy that gives financial firms and hedge funds access to the nation’s top-level intelligence talent, POLITICO has learned.

In one case, these active-duty officers moonlighted at a hedge-fund consulting firm that wanted to tap their expertise in “deception detection,” the highly specialized art of telling when executives may be lying based on clues in a conversation.

The never-before-revealed policy comes to light as the CIA and other intelligence agencies are once again under fire for failing to “connect the dots,” this time in the Christmas Day bombing plot on Northwest Flight 253.

SNIP...

But the close ties between active-duty and retired CIA officers at one consulting company show the degree to which CIA-style intelligence gathering techniques have been employed by hedge funds and financial institutions in the global economy.

The firm is called Business Intelligence Advisors, and it is based in Boston. BIA was founded and is staffed by a number of retired CIA officers, and it specializes in the arcane field of “deception detection.” BIA’s clients have included Goldman Sachs and the enormous hedge fund SAC Capital Advisors, according to spokesmen for both firms.

CONTINUED...

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/32290.html#ixzz0eIFPhHBh

Then there's the signature tradition of playing both sides off the middle, like selling rifles to both the Allies and the Central Powers during World War I, or the bounty hunters in "For a Few Dollars More" getting one inside to work out.

Stratfor: executive boasted of 'trusted former CIA cronies'

By Alex Spillius, Diplomatic Correspondent
9:08PM GMT 28 Feb 2012
The Telegraph

A senior executive with the private intelligence firm Stratfor boasted to colleagues about his "trusted former CIA cronies" and promised to "see what I can uncover" about a classified FBI investigation, according to emails released by the WikiLeaks.

Fred Burton, vice president of intelligence at the Texas firm, also informed members of staff that he had a copy of the confidential indictment on Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.

The second batch of five million internal Stratfor emails obtained by the Anonymous computer hacking group revealed that the company has high level sources within the United States and other governments, runs a network of paid informants that includes embassy staff and journalists and planned a hedge fund, Stratcap, based on its secret intelligence.

SNIP...

Mr Assange labelled the company as a "private intelligence Enron", in reference to the energy giant that collapsed after a false accounting scandal.

CONTINUED...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9111784/Stratfor-executive-boasted-of-trusted-former-CIA-cronies.html

Then, there's Booz Allen, NSA's go-to private spyhaus, vacuums and filters the right stuff for Carlyle Group, a buy-partisan business which always seems to know where and what to bomb and make a buck, but the lines between sides turned out be fuzzy and amorphous nebula-like -- like in "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly."

The Knights of the Revolving Door

When War is Swell: the Carlyle Group and the Middle East at War

by JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
CounterPunch, Weekend Edition September 6-8, 2013

Paris.

A couple of weeks ago, in a dress rehearsal for her next presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton, the doyenne of humanitarian interventionism, made a pit-stop at the Carlyle Group to brief former luminaries of the imperial war rooms about her shoot-first-don’t-ask-questions foreign policy.

For those of you who have put the playbill of the Bush administration into a time capsule and buried it beneath the compost bin, the Carlyle Group is essentially a hedge fund for war-making and high tech espionage. They are the people who brought you the Iraq war and all those intrusive niceties of Homeland Security. Call them the Knights of the Revolving Door, many of Carlyle’s executives and investors having spent decades in the Pentagon, the CIA or the State Department, before cashing in for more lucrative careers as war profiteers. They are now licking their chops at the prospect for an all-out war against Syria, no doubt hoping that the conflagration will soon spread to Lebanon, Jordan and, the big prize, Iran.

For a refresher course on the sprawling tentacles of the Carlyle Group, here’s an essay that first appeared in CounterPunch’s print edition in 2004. Sadly, not much has changed in the intervening years, except these feted souls have gotten much, much richer. – JSC

Across all fronts, Bush’s war deteriorates with stunning rapidity. The death count of American soldiers killed in Iraq will soon top 1000, with no end in sight. The members of the handpicked Iraqi Governor Council are being knocked off one after another. Once loyal Shia clerics, like Ayatollah Sistani, are now telling the administration to pull out or face a nationalist insurgency. The trail of culpability for the abuse, torture and murder of Iraqi detainees seems to lead inexorably into the office of Donald Rumsfeld. The war for Iraqi oil has ended up driving the price of crude oil through the roof. Even Kurdish leaders, brutalized by the Ba’athists for decades, are now saying Iraq was a safer place under their nemesis Saddam Hussein. Like Medea whacking her own kids, the US turned on its own creation, Ahmed Chalabi, raiding his Baghdad compound and fingering him as an agent of the ayatollahs of Iran. And on and on it goes.

Still not all of the president’s men are in a despairing mood. Amid the wreckage, there remain opportunities for profit and plunder. Halliburton and Bechtel’s triumphs in Iraq have been chewed over for months. Less well chronicled is the profiteering of the Carlyle Group, a company with ties that extend directly into the Oval Office itself.

Even Pappy Bush stands in line to profit handsomely from his son’s war making. The former president is on retainer with the Carlyle Group, the largest privately held defense contractor in the nation. Carlyle is run by Frank Carlucci, who served as the National Security advisor and Secretary of Defense under Ronald Reagan. Carlucci has his own embeds in the current Bush administration. At Princeton, his college roommate was Donald Rumsfeld. They’ve remained close friends and business associates ever since. When you have friends like this, you don’t need to hire lobbyists..

Bush Sr. serves as a kind of global emissary for Carlyle. The ex-president doesn’t negotiate arms deals; he simply opens the door for them, a kind of high level meet-and-greet. His special area of influence is the Middle East, primarily Saudi Arabia, where the Bush family has extensive business and political ties. According to an account in the Washington Post, Bush Sr. earns around $500,000 for each speech he makes on Carlyle’s behalf.

One of the Saudi investors lured to Carlyle by Bush was the BinLaden Group, the construction conglomerate owned by the family of Osama bin Laden. According to an investigation by the Wall Street Journal, Bush convinced Shafiq Bin Laden, Osama’s half brother, to sink $2 million of BinLaden Group money into Carlyle’s accounts. In a pr move, the Carlyle group cut its ties to the BinLaden Group in October 2001.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/09/06/when-war-is-swell-the-carlyle-group-and-the-middle-east-at-war/

This barely scratches the surface. The reality is that underneath what shows for public navigators is one enormous iceberg made from blood-red ice, invisible to the proles and serfs who are doing their best to keep afloat in a frozen sea of austerity, endless war and debt servitude. And these are, by far, the wealthiest times in human history.

Note some interesting ties to the subject this on that General Walker fellah. The guy's almost forgotten these days, but was the rage in Dixie and of the rightwing nutjobs at the John Birch Society, founded by Fred Koch.

From 2005: Know your BFEE: War Profiteers

PS: What have you contributed to DU, uhnope? I can't remember anything of interest.

[AuntPatsy]

101. Horrifying!

[Octafish]

102. Death, misery and destruction from a war built on lies.

And Democrats help the traitors and warmongers responsible escape justice.

Government Nanny Censoring "Conspiracy Theories" Is Also Responsible for Letting Bush Era Torture and Spying Conspiracies Go Unpunished

Washingtons Blog, Oct. 7, 2010

EXCERPT...

Prosecuting government officials risks a “cycle” of criminalizing public service, (Cass Sunstein) argued, and Democrats should avoid replicating retributive efforts like the impeachment of President Clinton — or even the “slight appearance” of it.

SOURCE w links n details: http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2010/10/main-obama-adviser-blocking-prosecution.html?m=1

The United States of America continues its flight down a fascist hole dug Nov. 22, 1963.