Hillary Comes Out as the Candidate of the War Party

[Octafish]

"And one more thing. A President has a sacred responsibility to send our troops into battle only if we absolutely must, and only with a clear and well-thought-out strategy. Our troops give their all. They deserve a commander-in-chief who knows that." -- Hillary Clinton, June 2, 2016

Hillary Comes Out as the War Party Candidate

by DIANA JOHNSTONE
CounterPunch, JUNE 3, 2016

EXCERPT...

Whenever Hillary speaks, one must look for the lies. The biggest lies in this speech were lies of omission. No mention of her support for the invasion of Iraq, no mention of the disaster she wrought in Libya, no mention of her contribution to pursuing endless death and destruction in the Middle East.

SNIP...

The Washington Post noted that the state of California’s “defense industry and military bases lend a backdrop for her speech.” Indeed! Hillary Clinton is quite simply catering to the military-industrial complex, as she has been doing throughout her career. She is catering to the arms industry, which needs to keep the American people scared of various “threats” in order to continue draining the nation’s wealth into their profitable enterprises. She needs the support of military men and women who believe in all those threats invented by intellectuals in think tanks and editorial offices.

This is the core of the “national-security-minded” electorate that Hillary is targeting. She warned that Trump would jeopardize the wonderful bipartisan foreign policy that has been keeping us great and safe for decades.

In reality, such “national-security-minded” leaders as Dick Cheney and Clinton herself have led the United States into wars that create chaos, inspire enemies and endanger everybody’s national security. Despite the geographically safe position of the United States, it is that bipartisan War Party that has created genuine threats to U.S. national security by prodding the hornets’ nest of religious fanaticism in the Middle East and provoking nuclear-armed Russia by aggressive military exercises right up to its borders.

The basis of Hillary Clinton’s world view is that notorious “American exceptionalism” which Obama has also celebrated. If we don’t rule the world, she suggested, “others will rush in to fill the vacuum”. She clearly cannot conceive of dealing respectfully with other nations. The United States, she proclaimed, is “exceptional – the last best hope on earth.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/06/03/hillary-and-the-military-industrial-complex/

Seeing how it's been "money trumps peace" for most of the past 53 years, I believe it's long past time to turn our swords into plowshares.

[EndElectoral]

1. Yes, in lieu of her horrific IWR AUMF vote, the above quote jumps out at one as hypocritical

[rhett o rick]

7. I would disagree that it's hypocritical. It's clearly Hillary-speak. "We will only fight wars if

they are necessary." Think about what that means. Apparently by her standards the Iraq War was necessary. "I am against fracking that is not safe." What does that mean? No fracking is safe. She means per her standards not by ours.

[JRLeft]

21. It's a way to be on both sides of every issue.

[Cooley Hurd]

2. So, I'm at a party...

...invariably, someone asks "who brought the beers?"

Irrelevant since someone eventually does.

But, then, someone asks, "who brought the facts and the truth?"

Always happy to answer, "Octafish did!"

Welcome to this party, again, my friend!!

[rhett o rick]

9. What you said

I like this party, what with beer and facts and truths.

[JackRiddler]

43. Here's another vote for Octafish!

[madokie]

61. We here at DU

are Blessed with having Octafish with us, no doubt

Theres a few others that also stand out and its all those awesome minds that keeps me coming back

[Cooley Hurd]

65. Me too!!!

[Octafish]

72. You are a real pal, Cooley Hurd!

Someone was making fun of my posting style: boring, long-winded, not appropriate for today's web, etc. etc. etc. All true.

Another poster said it reminded him or her of "performance art."

At first, I thought, "You have no clue."

Then I realized it was true: It is what I do on DU -- I try to cram as much into each post and use every interaction possible as a teaching moment. Who knows when the links will be dead? Who knows when the archives go zzzt?

As some ancient Chinese philosopher said: Ars longa. Vita brevis.

And like family, real friendship is forever.

[JEB]

73. You are an excellent teacher.

Always putting forth the information and encouraging people to discover things for themselves.

[Octafish]

79. Thank you, JEB! DU is pioneering a new Journalism.

Thousands learning something important and sharing it with others all over the planet.

Other than knowledge as its own reward, there's no bigger pay off than Democracy.

PS: Thank you for the kind words, JEB. You know what I say to you and all my real Friends on DU: You mean the world to me.

[pangaia]

78. "Ars longa. Vita brevis"

Chinese? That looks like Latin too me.

Love all your posts !!!
Thanks for all the time and thought....

[Octafish]

81. Hiya, pangaia! It's from Firesign Theatre...

"As some Chinese philosopher said, 'Just dig a hole that's deep enough and everyone will want to jump in.'" -- Newsman Ray Hamburger, Everything You Know Is Wrong

My 2-cents got added to make clear how short our time here really is. The site started after the BFEE stole 2000. That seems, to an old geezer like me, just the other day.

Yet, 2000 was 16 years ago. And, despite all the warmongering, criminality, banksters and treason, it's gone by like lightning.

The year 2000 also year was 37 years -- about twice as long -- after the year in which President Kennedy died. Only a blink, really.

Again, seems like the other day. That's why I so much appreciate my friends on DU, pangaia! You really mean the world.

[seekthetruth]

3. Why can't so many people see...

....the futility of this American exceptionalism bull?

Hasn't anyone stopped to think that the major powers of the world at one time slipped into obscurity? We're no different. And to say that is absolutely not unpatriotic.

It just seems to me Clinton represents a sugar coated, rah rah, America first mentality while Sanders voices concern over just how fucked this country really is......

[Octafish]

64. I'm so old, I remember the Peace Dividend.

It was all the money we were supposed to have after the Cold War ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Bush 1 and Clinton 1 wasted that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Now we have wars without end against an enemy that can't be destroyed.

The idea of terrorism? Who thought that one up? George Herbert Walker Bush when CIA director in 1979. And so the mad spiral continued, holding the fort long enough for Putin and Xi to get their houses of enemies in order for the return of business as usual.

1980 campaign:

Agents for Bush

by Bob Callahan*
Covert Action Information Bulletin, Number 33 (Winter 1990)

EXCERPT...

Bush and Terrorism

The Bush presidential campaign not only set the tone for the role and structure of the intelligence apparatus in the new Reagan administration, it also took up a new foreign policy theme which would reap huge political dividends in the years to come. This new theme was terrorism/counterterrorism.

In July 1979 George Bush and Ray Cline attended a conference in Jerusalem where this theme was given its first significant political discussion before leaders of Israel, Great Britain and the United States.

It would take an enormously important event to keep a major American presidential candidate away from campaigning on the Fourth of July weekend. For George Bush, the Jerusalem Conference on International Terrorism was such an event. The Jerusalem Conference was hosted by the Israeli government and, not surprisingly, most of Israel’s top intelligence officers and leading political (figures) were in attendance. (6)

Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin rose to the podium on July 2, 1979 to provide the conference with its opening address. By the summer of 1979, even Menachem Begin was willing to join in the bashing of his old Camp David friend, Jimmy Carter – a practice which had become almost endemic by the fall of 1979.

The Israelis were angry with Carter because his administration had recently released its Annual Report on Human Rights wherein the Israeli Government was taken to task for abusing the rights of the Palestinian people on the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Israel’s new anti-Carter tone was mile, however, compared to the rhetoric of the two separate U.S. delegations which attended the conference. The first delegation was led by the late Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson of Washington. It included the noted black civil rights leader Bayard Rustin; Ben Wattenberg of the American Enterprise Institute; and Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter of Commentary Magazine. The members of this delegation were registered Democrats, yet all became very active in neo-conservative politics during the Reagan years.

The Republican delegation was led by George Bush. It included Ray Cline and two important members of Bush’s Team B form his CIA days – Major General George Keegan, a Bush supporter who had served as intelligence chief for the United States Air Force; and Harvard professor Richard Pipes. (7)

Looking for a mobilizing issue to counter the Carter-era themes of détente and human rights, the Bush people began to explore the political benefits of embracing the terrorism/anti-terrorism theme.

As Jonathan Marshall of the Oakland Tribune explains: “At the conference, Ray Cline developed the theme that terror was not a random response of frustrated minorities, but rather a preferred instrument of East bloc policy adopted after 1969 when the KGB persuaded the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to accept the PLO as a major political instrument in the Mideast and to subsidize its terrorist policies by freely giving money, training, arms and coordinated communications.(8)

In Ray Cline’s imagination, terrorism had now hardened into a system – an international trouble making system. Richard Pipes elaborated on the Cline hypothesis. “The roots of Soviet terrorism, indeed of modern terrorism,” Pipes states, “date back to 1879….It marks the beginning of that organization which is the source of all modern terrorist groups, whether they be named the Tupamaros, the Baader-Meinhoff group, the Weathermen, Red Brigade or PLO. I refer to the establishment in 1879 of a Congress in the small Russian town of Lipesk, of an organization known as Narodnaya Volya, or the People’s Will.”(9)

According to Philip Paull, who wrote his master’s thesis on the subject of the Jerusalem Conference, “If Pipes was to be believed, the Russians not only support international terrorism, they invented it!”(10)

The Bush/Cline/Pipes definition of terrorism was of course both expeditious and powerfully political. “Left out of their equation,” Jonathan Marshall comments, “was any mention of terrorist acts by CIA-trained Cuban exiles, Israeli ties to Red Brigades, or the function of death squads from Argentina to Guatemala. Soviet sponsorship, real or imagined, had become the defining characteristic of terrorism, not simply an explanation for its prevalence. Moreover, there was no inclination whatsoever to include, under the rubric of terror, bombings of civilians, or any other acts carried out by government forces rather than small individual units.” (11)

Within days after the conference the new propaganda war began in earnest. On July 11, 1979, the International Herald Tribune featured a lead editorial entitled "The Issue is Terrorism," which quoted directly from conference speeches. The same day Congressman Jack Kemp placed selected quotes from the conference in the Congressional Record. In his syndicated column of July 28, 1979, former CIA employee William F. Buckley blasted two of his favorite targets in one single mixed metaphor: “No venture is too small to escape patronage by the Soviet Union,” Buckley stated, “which scatters funds about for terrorists like HEW in search of welfare clients.” Then in August, George Will, who also attended the conference, wrote about it in the Washington Post.

Before the year was out Commentary, National Review, and eventually New Republic writers would all church out yard after yard of copy on this theme. Soon after, Claire Sterling, who had also attended the conference, would create the first "bible" of this new perspective with the publication of her highly controversial book, The Terror Network.(12)

With the help of George Bush and Ray Cline, the Jerusalem Conference had managed to start a propaganda firestorm.

In the following decade, the theme of terrorism/counter-terrorism would grow increasingly important to George Bush. He would become the ranking authority on this subject in the Reagan White House. Indeed, it would be Bush’s own Task Force – the Vice President’s Task Force on Combatting Terroris, -- which would eventually provide Oliver North back channel authorization through which he would bypass certain dissenting administration officials in his ongoing management of the Reagan/Bush Secret War against Nicaragua.(13)

CONTINUED...

PDF: https://archive.org/details/GeorgeBushTheCompanysMan-CovertActionInformationBulletinNo.33

It seems that before the collapse of the USSR, the CIA did see the writing on the wall. Which is why they didn't "predict the collapse." Good for War Inc!

[ReasonableToo]

68. Thanks for this info. This is why we can't have nice things.

Like single payor, good wages, good education, good infrastructure. The MIC can't thrive under a peace dividend era.

Sad for US. Sad for the world.

[LonePirate]

4. Is Counterpunch on the list of sites like FR and JW which cannot be used as sources on 6/16?

[DemocratSinceBirth]

8. Hmmmm.

[rhett o rick]

13. Ahhh to be able to censor those which you don't agree with. And you have that in

the Hillary Group but somehow it's not enough to just reaffirm each other over and over, it's more fun to alert, lock, hide, censor, ban, etc. Such a conservative trait. Progressive love to argue and discuss issues. Conservatives love to exercise their power to censor and ban.

[reformist2]

17. If Hillary gets the nom, say goodbye to free speech around here.

We must all fall in line to support Hillary and her policies - even if said policies are right wing and unacceptable to most self-respecting Democrats. No thanks.

[reddread]

36. given the traumas and troubles experienced at Pacifica in the 90's

free speech will be in trouble everywhere.

[BlueStateLib]

40. I don't have free speech around here now

[sheshe2]

39. Censor.

*85% BS own this board. Locked and loaded. You are the ones that ban.

the Hillary Group but somehow it's not enough to just reaffirm each other over and over, it's more fun to alert, lock, hide, censor, ban, etc. Such a conservative trait. Progressive love to argue and discuss issues. Conservatives love to exercise their power to censor and ban.

We know who alerts and locks and censor, ban etc.

[rhett o rick]

44. Clinton supporters control MIRT and they decide who gets banned with under 100 posts.

Clinton supporters dominate the host forum and lock Sanders supporter OP's and let Clinton supporter OP's slide. Most of the alerts are from Clinton supporters even though they are a small minority. The Admins openly support Clinton and can ban anyone they choose and take anyone off the jury pool they choose. How many Clinton supporters have gotten banned? And now there is the secret FFR to shut down Sanders supporters.

This message board is owned and run by Clinton supporters. Don't try to pretend that they don't help the Clinton supporters here.

It's cool, if they don't want us, we will leave. And then you'll have to bully each other. LOL.

[-none]

57. ^^^This^^^

This site will see a significant drop in hits if Hillary get the nod. Defiance will not be tolerated.

[peace13]

51. When you refer to a presidential candidate as BS...

....you...are part of the problem.

[Miles Archer]

58. That pretty much nails it

The "Call It, Skinner" movement is salivating daily about June 16th.

And to his credit, I am still impressed that he didn't "call it" when this band of anuses masquerading as human beings stepped up and handed him their list of demands.

I've been around DU through Kerry v Bush and the two Obama terms. I know what "Primary Season" is like on this site, and this year, we hit a new low. We descended into a cesspool of "alerting, locking, hiding, censoring, banning."

And what's most alarming is this giddy circle jerk over how, on June 16th, the "opposition will be silenced."

A 24/7 discussion of why Clinton rocks and delivers "kick ass" speeches won't be "progressive."

The difference between the Kerry campaign and the two Obama campaigns is that even though Kerry was the "first choice" among a relatively small number of people here, DU did get behind him. The initial lack of wide-spread support wasn't because he had "favorability" numbers that were in the basement...it was simply concern over whether he was the strongest candidate. DU got behind Obama in 2008, and while he managed to piss off some people who didn't get everything they wanted in his first term, DU got behind him again in 2012.

Clinton's different.

I think that in the complete and total absence of DU, the chasm between Sanders and Clinton supporters would still exist. I do believe that the discussions on DU accomplished nothing beyond making the chasm wider. There's something here I haven't seen before in this degree...anger, sarcasm, bullying, "I'll tell teacher" weasel alerts and an alarming desire to silence anyone who's "not on board" with Clinton.

She may very well end up being our candidate. Republicans see her as a "trophy" defeat...nothing would make them happier than blocking a return of the Clintons to the White House. She's probably not going to get a lot of Independent votes. And when it comes to Democrats. I do not personally know a single Clinton supporter, even among my friends who are lukewarm to cold on Sanders. It is a huge leap of faith to say that, with her polling and her baggage and the sheer anger in our country right now that she is going to "kick Trump's ass" in the GE. The only hope, as I see it, is that Trump will do something so over-the-top that he will finally implode, do something so outrageous that his supporters will no longer give him a free pass.

And what will be our reward if that happens?

Four years of Clinton.

I do believe she will make life much more comfortable for the 1%-ers, I do believe we will remain in the wars we are fighting now and enter into new ones. There is literally no evidence to suggest that we won't.

And "She's better than Trump" just doesn't do it for me.

None of that will matter on June 16th. The keys to the car get handed to the Clinton Group, and they will drive it all the way to the GE. Personally, I'd like to see an upset, as unrealistic as that may seem. She's not my President, she never will be, and the whole "the party has spoken" rhetoric...which someone posted in another thread, and I replied to, yesterday...that's never going to sell me on her being the person we need to have on our ticket.

This is politics. And on DU, GD-P has become flame bait sport fishing, and the joke stopped being funny weeks ago.

[davidlynch]

60. ^^^^ THIS ^^^^ n/t

[JonLeibowitz]

11. Why? It's a left-wing source...

[Fumesucker]

12. That's the problem with it

Only pragmatic centrist sources are welcome now on Democratic Establishment.

[LonePirate]

14. When do people link to Counterpunch except to trash Hillary?

And surely you know that if Bernie were to be elected President, he would automatically become leader of the establishment.

[Octafish]

20. Read some of the articles. You'll learn a lot.

For instance, this on the banksters:

The Paulson-Bernanke Bank Bailout Plan

by MICHAEL HUDSON
CounterPunch, Sept. 22, 2008

Saturday’s $700 billion junk mortgage bailout is the largest and worst giveaway since a corrupt Congress gave land grants to the railroad barons a century and a half ago. If it goes through, it will shape the coming century by giving finance unprecedented power over debtors – homebuyers, industry, state and local government, and the federal government as well.

SNIP...

I should add that the solution does not lie simply in creating a new regulatory system, much less a single regulatory agency. After all, it was at Wall Street’s command that the Bush Administration installed deregulators in all the key regulatory positions. This meant that regulations didn’t matter at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), at the Fed under Alan Greenspan, at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) under Mr. Cox (after William H. Donaldson resigned when the White House would not let him regulate as much as he thought necessary) or at the Department of Justice under Bush yes-men such as Alberto Gonzales. Politics and people have turned out to be more important than the law. We have seen the Supreme Court scrap the Constitution in the 2000 election – with acquiescence from the Democrats, starting with Mr. Gore’s refusal to contest Florida.

To appoint a single regulator would prevent all other regulators – and law enforcement officers, attorneys general, the SEC and so forth – from enforcing honest financial policies in the event that an incoming president should appoint another Greenspan, Gonzales or other ideological extremist averse to the idea of applying existing regulations and honest laws. Under these conditions “consolidated regulation” would mean a free ride for crooks much like J. Edgar Hoover gave the Mafia under his tenure.

My alternative solutions are as simple as Mr. Paulson’s, but of course are quite different. The public interest does indeed call for maintaining the economy’s basic credit, money-transfer, credit card and depository checking and savings functions. But not under the current venal and predatory management practices. It is this management that has lobbied so hard for deregulation, and whose industry representatives have insisted so strongly to place extremist ideological deregulators into the economy’s major positions. Therefore, the Treasury only should buy junk mortgages at current market price. The losses should be taken in order to re-even out the wealth pyramid that has become so much steeper under the Greenspan-Bernanke ploys. The banks knew full well that these mortgages lacked underlying value. The price of making use of this borrowing facility is to forfeit all equity stock to the government. The Treasury should prohibit any financial institution that sells or swaps securities to the Fed from paying any dividends to shareholders or stock options and bonuses to managers. It also should give the government priority over other creditors. Otherwise, firms that have negative equity will benefit purely at public expense, using the money to pay dividends, bonuses and exorbitant salaries.

Second, we need to restore the Glass-Steagall separation of commercial banks from risk-taking investment banks, mortgage brokers and other financial-sector flotsam and jetsam. Break up the mergers between banks and casino sell-side financial and real estate institutions. Just the opposite is occurring: On Monday, Sept. 22, the financial universe was transformed by the announcement that Mr. Paulson’s Wall Street firm, Goldman Sachs, was transforming itself into a bank holding company. The casinos are to take over the banking system as big fish eat little fish in the present financial emergency. It looks like new giants are emerging, already larger than the government in terms of the magnitude of the debts they have run up – and certainly in their earning power. Indeed, who is to say that extracting interest from the U.S. economy will not emerge as the new form of taxation?

Third, re-write the bankruptcy laws to favor debtors once again, not creditors. This means reversing the current bankruptcy code sponsored by lobbies from the credit-card companies. The interests of the five million mortgage debtors faced with foreclosure and expropriation this year should rightly be placed above the interest (literally) of predatory creditors.

Fourth, sharply increase property taxes, shifting them back off labor and sales. We need to return to the classical idea of taxing unearned and unproductive income instead of adding to the price of labor and industry. What has been freed from the tax collector by the shift of taxes off property has not lowered the cost of housing and other real estate, or corporate costs of doing business. The income “freed” has ended up being paid to the banks as interest. The government still has had to raise money – but in the form of taxes that fall on labor’s wages and industry’s profits. So labor and industry now pay twice for what they formerly paid only once. They still pay the same overall amount of taxes, but also pay an equivalent amount of interest. The financial system is crowding out the government.

In the fifth place, we need to start discussing whether we really need a banking system that behaves in the way the present one does. In recent decades banks have made loans mainly to inflate asset prices by loading real estate and industry with interest-bearing debt. What if all banks were to be organized along the lines of savings banks, with 100% reserves. This is the Chicago Plan from the 1930s (currently revived by the American Monetary Institute, which holds its annual meeting this week in Chicago, by the way). This at least would go back to basics to provide a foundation from which to re-begin to discuss just what kind of credit the economy needs and what would be the best terms on which to structure financial markets.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2008/09/22/the-paulson-bernanke-bank-bailout-plan/

That was 2008, when we could've made the banksters put the money back. Instead, we bailed them out, including making AIG whole, 100-cents on the dollar, at a cost of millions who lost their homes and trillions from the US Treasury.

BTW: CounterPunch provides a forum for authors. That's also a lot different from Fox, NYT and the rest of Corporate McPravda.

[JEB]

74. Counterpunch is not Pablum for status quo.

Always thought provoking and worth the time.

[LonePirate]

75. You're ignoring the question I asked and are answering a different one.

[rhett o rick]

16. Like CNN? Funny how the centrists (corporate Democrats) used to not like CNN

and the other major networks when they carried water for Bush and Cheney. Now they carry water for Clinton-Sachs and bingo-bango the "centrists" now embrace them. Can you spell hypocrite?

Pragmatism, the favorite excuse the Corp-Democrats use to justify ignoring those among us that are struggling.

[obamanut2012]

52. yes, should be

[Octafish]

53. No. And I've written why not before.

First they came for ConsortiumNews, and I did not speak out—

Because I did not read ConsortiumNews.

Then they came for CounterPunch, and I did not speak out—
Because I did not read CounterPunch.

Then they came for Alternet, and I did not speak out—
Because I did not read Alternet.

Then they came for DU—and there was no one left to speak for Democracy.

With apologies to Rev. Niemöller.

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) was a prominent Protestant pastor who emerged as an outspoken public foe of Adolf Hitler and spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps.

SOURCE: http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007392

OP 2015: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027005752

[Juicy_Bellows]

5. KICK

[840high]

37. Kick with you +10

[tecelote]

6. Send doctors, engineers and educators.

They will bring Democracy to a country a lot faster than drones, bombs and politicians.

[Octafish]

42. Builds trust and makes for lasting friendships, too.

Peace Corps was founded for that very reason.

[Ghost Dog]

54. You have also this beast now:

The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) is an innovative and independent U.S. foreign aid agency that is helping lead the fight against global poverty.

Created by the U.S. Congress in January 2004 with strong bipartisan support, MCC is changing the conversation on how best to deliver smart U.S. foreign assistance by focusing on good policies, country ownership, and results...

https://www.mcc.gov/about

(cf. https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/09TEGUCIGALPA489_a.html - Honduras)

[Octafish]

69. Fourth Urn's 60-percent hike in minimum wage WAS a strategic threat.

Heh heh heh.

Thank you for that link to the ambassador's greasy cable, Ghost Dog. I did not know about MCC or its role in Honduras.

For thinking about economic justice, we've become Enemies of the State of Capital -- Heroes to Democracy and the US Constitution.

[Ghost Dog]

71. See this thread, Octa,

http://www.democraticunderground.com/110850955

[Octafish]

15. That is exactly it.

So now We the Democrats are the Party of the Pentagon. And Trump's candidacy certainly ensures that for a long time to come.

Politically, the move is genius, grabbing what's been the exclusive property of the GOP since Nixon.

And no one wants the USA to be the strongest nation on earth more than me.

Reality is, of course, more complex. All the wars without end for profits without cease are bleeding the country dry.

What makes me furious: That, too, is on purpose.

[rhett o rick]

22. Those that have cheered the demise of the Republicon party don't understand that

having two viable Parties is essential for our democracy. Now we just have a whack job party and a so-called "centrist" Democratic Party. In truth the Centrists embrace the conservative agenda. Clinton-Sachs would keep min wages to $10.10 per hour like Obama if she wasn't running for president.

[wyldwolf]

18. and I hope she kicks Isis's ass from here to eternity.

[rhett o rick]

24. Boy do you not understand. ISIS was created because of us. Our government needs a boggy man to

justify defense spending and the spreading of democracy (read imperialism) around the world. Hillary didn't care about ISIS's predecessor when she voted to invade Iraq. She was more interested in the business opportunity from taking over Iraq.

She has already made attacking Iran her first priority and then I suspect Russia. She has something to prove. She wants to make Kissinger and Cheney proud.

[wyldwolf]

27. So? If a house gets infested with pests because the owners were sloppy, does that mean...

... they can't exterminate them?

I hope Hillary slaughters them.

[rhett o rick]

28. Again you don't understand. ISIS provides a great service to the neocons and the MIC

and they really don't want them to be eliminated. Clinton voted and promoted a war against the innocent people of Iraq NOT AL QAEDA. In her speech (written by Cheney) she didn't say we needed to punish al qaeda or the people responsible for 9/11, nope not a word. She said we needed to invade Iraq. She later would admit that the Iraq War provided a great business opportunity. Do you not see it's about money. She has since been dutifully rewarded and has amassed $150 million dollars. $150,000,000 is not too bad for a few speeches.

[wyldwolf]

29. I can't wait to see those rapists and child killers strung up by the Clinton administration

[rhett o rick]

30. You will have to wait forever. They will invade Iran first. It's about business opportunities.

Blind loyalty is so blind.

[wyldwolf]

31. get me the winning lottery numbers while you're at it.

[rhett o rick]

45. And that's about as deep as your side will ever get in discussing an issue.

Blindly following your authoritarian leader is sooo much easier than having to actually use your brain.

The hubris of the Clinton-Sachs side will be their downfall.

[wyldwolf]

48. more like my side doesn't believe in psychic 'progressives.'

[Ghost Dog]

56. Iran. Russia.

She said in San Diego that Iran had been "racing towards the development of nuclear weapons", parroting Netanyahu and contradicting US national intelligence estimates...

She demonized Russia as a dictatorship (and an enemy). Russia is a multi-party parliamentary democracy, albeit one which elects a strong President, like, eg. France and the USA (when Congress is onside).

I think the intention is above all to continue provoking Russia and undermining the EU.

[pacalo]

19. Get a load of all those flags.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

25. Whatever sells. Maybe she should give her rendition of God Bless America to prove her patriotism.

Patriotism is the passion of fools and the most foolish of passions. Arthur Schopenhauer.

[HereSince1628]

35. That flock of federal eagles is looking downright imperial

I think she should have gone with some other finial, although many of those things are meant to promote nationalism/jingoism

[Octafish]

70. Had to look up ''finial.''

Thank you, Doctor.

Something the imagery brought up for me:

1.) Powerful and Continuing Nationalism: Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

14 Points of fascism: The warning signs

http://www.oldamericancentury.org/14pts.htm

Additional points 2-14 also have a direct bearing.

I do not believe Ms. Clinton is a fascist, but many of her foreign policies are open to interpretation through that lens.

[DesMoinesDem]

49. There were more than that. That picture doesn't show the 2 full flags on each side.

[shanti]

80. it gives new meaning

to the phrase, "wrapped in the american flag".

[msongs]

26. yet bernie sanders votes for war, war, and more war every year and his crowd .... crickets lol nt

[Octafish]

41. Not really true, as Sanders votes for Op support, VA benefits, pay hikes...

..., Veterans education...all the Support the Troops stuff that the GOP hates to fund.

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




Take PNAC, please.

Flashback: What Neocons Told Us about Iraq

Dick Cheney

"I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency." June 20, 2005 (Source)
"I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators. . . . I think it will go relatively quickly, . . . (in) weeks rather than months." March 16, 2003 (Source)
“Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.” (Source)
"If we had to do it over again we would do exactly the same thing.” September 13, 2006 (Source)
“What we did in Iraq was exactly the right thing to do. If I had it to recommend all over again, I would recommend exactly the same course of action.” October 5, 2004 (Source)


Bill Kristol

“Very few wars in American history were prepared better or more thoroughly than this one by this president.” July 15, 2007 (Source)
"This is going to be a two month war, not an eight year war." March 28, 2003 (Source)
"There has been a certain amount of pop sociology... that the Shi'a can't get along with the Sunni... there's almost no evidence of that at all.” April 4, 2003 (Fox News w/ Bill O’Reilly)
"“The first two battles of this new era are now over. The battles of Afghanistan and Iraq have been won decisively and honorably.” April 28, 2003 (Source)
“… there are hopeful signs that Iraqis of differing religious, ethnic, and political persuasions can work together. This is a far cry from the predictions made before the war by many, both here and in Europe, that a liberated Iraq would fracture into feuding clans and unleash a bloodbath.” March 22, 2004 (Source)
“… the continuing debates over the terms of a final constitution, have in fact demonstrated something remarkable in Iraq: a willingness on the part of the diverse ethnic and religious groups to disagree--peacefully--and then to compromise.” March 22, 2004 (Source)


Paul Wolfowitz

“There's a lot of money to pay for this. It doesn't have to be U.S. taxpayer money. We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.” March 27, 2003 (Source)
On weapons of mass destruction: “There's no question in my mind that there was something there. There are just too many pieces of evidence and we'll get to the bottom of it.” August 1, 2003 (Source)
“Some of the higher-end predictions that we have been hearing recently, such as the notion that it will take several hundred thousand U.S. troops to provide stability in post-Saddam (Hussein) Iraq, are wildly off the mark.” February 27, 2003 (Source)
"It's hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam’s security forces and his army. Hard to imagine." Feb. 27, 2003 (Source)
"Peacekeeping requirements in Iraq might be much lower than historical experience in the Balkans suggests. There's been none of the record in Iraq of ethnic militias fighting one another that produced so much bloodshed and permanent scars in Bosnia along with the requirement for large policing forces to separate those militias.” Feb. 27, 2003 (Source)
“These are Arabs, 23 million of the most educated people in the Arab world, who are going to welcome us as liberators.” Feb. 27, 2003 (Source)
"The Iraqi people understand what this crisis is about. Like the people of France in the 1940s, they view us as their hoped-for liberator.” March 11, 2003 (Source)
"The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction, as the core reason." May 28, 2003

SOURCE: http://www.sanders.senate.gov/flashback-republicans-iraq-cheney-wolfowitz-kristol

Others, also, have noticed: Bernie Sanders has INTEGRITY.

But Sanders genuinely, sincerely, does not care about optics. He is the rarest of Washington animals, a completely honest person. If he's motivated by anything other than a desire to use his influence to protect people who can't protect themselves, I've never seen it. Bernie Sanders is the kind of person who goes to bed at night thinking about how to increase the heating-oil aid program for the poor. -- Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone, April 29, 2015

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/give-em-hell-bernie-20150429?page=2

Please compare with the bi-partisan PNAC crypto-fascist corporate interests bent on fracking Ukraine and making money off war four ways to Super Tuesday:

What about apologizing to Ukraine, Mrs. Nuland?

Fri, Feb 7, 2014
By ORIENTAL REVIEW

What about apologizing to Ukraine, Mrs. Nuland?

Yesterday’s leak of the flagrant telephone talk between the US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey R. Pyatt has already hit the international media headlines. In short, it turned out that the US officials were coordinating their actions on how to install a puppet government in Ukraine. They agreed to nominate Bat’kyvshchina Party leader Arseniy Yatseniuk as Deputy Prime Minister, to bench Udar Party leader Vitaly Klitschko from the game for a while and to discredit neo-Nazi Svoboda party chief Oleh Tiahnybok as “Yanukovych’s project”. Then Mrs. Nuland informed the US Ambassador that the UN Secretary General, Under-Secretary for Political Affairs Jeffrey Feltman had already instructed Ban Ki-moon to send his special envoy to Kyiv this week “to glue things together”. Referring to the European role in managing Ukraine’s political crisis, she was matchlessly elegant: “Fuck the EU”.

In a short while, after nervious attempts to blame Russians in fabricating (!) the tape (State Department: “this is a new low in Russian tradecraft”), Mrs. Nuland made her apologies to the EU officials. Does it mean that the Washington’s repeatedly leaked genuine attitude towards the “strategic Transatlantic partnership” is more worthy of an apology than the direct and clear interference into the internal affairs of a sovereign state and violation of the US-Russia-UK agreement (1994 Budapest memorandum) on security assurances for Ukraine? Meanwhile this document inter alia reads as follows:

The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the CSCE Final Act, to respect the Independence and Sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine.

The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, reaffirm their obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, and that none of their weapons will ever be used against Ukraine except in self-defense or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.

The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the CSCE Final Act, to refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.

Back to the latest Mrs. Nuland’s diplomatic collapse which was made public, it was unlikely an unfortunate misspelling. Andrey Akulov from Strategic Culture Foundation has published a brilliant report (Bride at every wedding, Part I and Part II) a couple of days ago describing Mrs.Nuland’s blatant lack of professionalism and personal integrity. He described in details her involvement in misinforming the US President and nation on the circumstances of the assasination of the US Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens in Benghazi in September 2012 and her support of the unlawful US funding of a number of the Russian “independent” NGOs seeking to bring a color revolution to Russia.

CONTINUED w/LINKS...

http://orientalreview.org/2014/02/07/what-about-apologizing-to-ukraine-mrs-nuland/

If you've time, there's great video at the link, too.

Neocons and Liberals Together, Again

The neoconservative Project for the New American Century (PNAC) has signaled its intention to continue shaping the government's national security...

Tom Barry, last updated: February 02, 2005

The neoconservative Project for the New American Century (PNAC) has signaled its intention to continue shaping the government's national security strategy with a new public letter stating that the "U.S. military is too small for the responsibilities we are asking it to assume." Rather than reining in the imperial scope of U.S. national security strategy as set forth by the first Bush administration, PNAC and the letter's signatories call for increasing the size of America's global fighting machine.

SNIP...

Liberal Hawks Fly with the Neocons

The recent PNAC letter to Congress was not the first time that PNAC or its associated front groups, such as the Coalition for the Liberation of Iraq, have included hawkish Democrats.

Two PNAC letters in March 2003 played to those Democrats who believed that the invasion was justified at least as much by humanitarian concerns as it was by the purported presence of weapons of mass destruction. PNAC and the neocon camp had managed to translate their military agenda of preemptive and preventive strikes into national security policy. With the invasion underway, they sought to preempt those hardliners and military officials who opted for a quick exit strategy in Iraq. In their March 19th letter, PNAC stated that Washington should plan to stay in Iraq for the long haul: "Everyone-those who have joined the coalition, those who have stood aside, those who opposed military action, and, most of all, the Iraqi people and their neighbors-must understand that we are committed to the rebuilding of Iraq and will provide the necessary resources and will remain for as long as it takes."

Along with such neocon stalwarts as Robert Kagan, Bruce Jackson, Joshua Muravchik, James Woolsey, and Eliot Cohen, a half-dozen Democrats were among the 23 individuals who signed PNAC's first letter on post-war Iraq. Among the Democrats were Ivo Daalder of the Brookings Institution and a member of Clinton's National Security Council staff; Martin Indyk, Clinton's ambassador to Israel; Will Marshall of the Progressive Policy Institute and Democratic Leadership Council; Dennis Ross, Clinton's top adviser on the Israel-Palestinian negotiations; and James Steinberg, Clinton's deputy national security adviser and head of foreign policy studies at Brookings. A second post-Iraq war letter by PNAC on March 28 called for broader international support for reconstruction, including the involvement of NATO, and brought together the same Democrats with the prominent addition of another Brookings' foreign policy scholar, Michael O'Hanlon.

CONTINUED...

http://rightweb.irc-online.org/articles/display/Neocons_and_Liberals_Together_Again

That's from Rightweb. They're full of facts, for those who take the time to read and learn. One name to pay attention to is Victoria Nuland, our woman in Ukraine, who is married to PNAC co-founder Robert Kagan, who endorsed Clinton just the other day. Robert Kagan's brother is Frederick Kagan. Frederick Kagan's spouse is Kimberly Kagan.

Brilliant people, big ideas, etc. The thing is, that's a lot of PNAC and the PNAC approach to international relations means more wars without end for profits without cease, among other things detrimental to democracy, peace and justice.

Bernie has none of that. So, When the vote is for war or peace on Iraq, Bernie voted to stay out of war.

[rhett o rick]

46. How sad. Your desperation is showing. Hillary Clinton voted to invade Iraq and kill maybe

a million people. Innocent people, not that it matters to you. Tell us what war Sen Sanders voted for? Maybe he voted to support our troops once they've been sent to war by the neocons like Clinton-Sachs.

[felix_numinous]

32. K&R For Peace

Ok Octafish i nearly lost it on the 'lets make peace' thread, then I see yours on The Candidate of the War Party. I think the planet isn't all that's heating up.


Here's to hoping we can all keep cool You are doing a great job of that.

[Octafish]

59. No time for hate. Not enough time for peace as it is.

The world is moving toward peace. Getting the leadership to follow is proving the difficult part.

To Move the World: JFK's Quest for Peace

Hardcover – June 4, 2013

An inspiring look at the historic foreign policy triumph of John F. Kennedy’s presidency—the crusade for world peace that consumed his final year in office—by the New York Times bestselling author of The Price of Civilization, Common Wealth, and The End of Poverty

About the book by Jeffrey D. Sachs (Author)

The last great campaign of John F. Kennedy’s life was not the battle for reelection he did not live to wage, but the struggle for a sustainable peace with the Soviet Union. To Move the World recalls the extraordinary days from October 1962 to September 1963, when JFK marshaled the power of oratory and his remarkable political skills to establish more peaceful relations with the Soviet Union and a dramatic slowdown in the proliferation of nuclear arms.

Kennedy and his Soviet counterpart, Nikita Khrushchev, led their nations during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the two superpowers came eyeball to eyeball at the nuclear abyss. This near-death experience shook both leaders deeply. Jeffrey D. Sachs shows how Kennedy emerged from the Missile crisis with the determination and prodigious skills to forge a new and less threatening direction for the world. Together, he and Khrushchev would pull the world away from the nuclear precipice, charting a path for future peacemakers to follow.

During his final year in office, Kennedy gave a series of speeches in which he pushed back against the momentum of the Cold War to persuade the world that peace with the Soviets was possible. The oratorical high point came on June 10, 1963, when Kennedy delivered the most important foreign policy speech of the modern presidency. He argued against the prevailing pessimism that viewed humanity as doomed by forces beyond its control. Mankind, argued Kennedy, could bring a new peace into reality through a bold vision combined with concrete and practical measures.

Achieving the first of those measures in the summer of 1963, the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, required more than just speechmaking, however. Kennedy had to use his great gifts of persuasion on multiple fronts—with fractious allies, hawkish Republican congressmen, dubious members of his own administration, and the American and world public—to persuade a skeptical world that cooperation between the superpowers was realistic and necessary. Sachs shows how Kennedy campaigned for his vision and opened the eyes of the American people and the world to the possibilities of peace.

Featuring the full text of JFK’s speeches from this period, as well as striking photographs, To Move the World gives us a startlingly fresh perspective on Kennedy’s presidency and a model for strong leadership and problem solving in our time.

SOURCE: http://www.amazon.com/Move-World-JFKs-Quest-Peace/dp/0812994922

Thank you for the kind words, felix_numinous! Your friendship means the world.

[jwirr]

33. Wow talk about wrapping yourself in the flag.

[Octafish]

55. It is an amazing image.

Great optics. The concept is complicated.



"There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people." -- Howard Zinn

[Miles Archer]

63. No, I don't agree with that at all.

It's like the cowbell. She needs more flags.



She needs to stand in the middle of this photo:

[Arazi]

34. +1 eom

[Octafish]

89. Hillary’s Foreign Policy Speech: Queen Galadriel Before Her Magic Mirror (Gary Leupp)

Hillary’s Foreign Policy Speech: Queen Galadriel Before Her Magic Mirror

by Gary Leupp
CounterPunch, June 6, 2016

EXCERPT...

In last week’s speech she was more circumspect. “We need to take out (ISIL’s) strongholds in Iraq and Syria,” she declared, “by intensifying the air campaign and stepping up our support for Arab and Kurdish forces on the ground. We need to keep pursuing diplomacy to end Syria’s civil war and close Iraq’s sectarian divide, because those conflicts are keeping ISIS alive. We need to lash up with our allies, and ensure our intelligence services are working hand-in-hand to dismantle the global network that supplies money, arms, propaganda and fighters to the terrorists.”

SNIP...

The fact is, beginning in 1999 at her husband Bill’s orders, the NATO alliance designed as a binding military pact uniting West European countries against the Soviet Union from 1949—that should have been dissolved in 1990 when the Warsaw Pact formed in response shut down—has relentlessly expanded to encircle Russia. That’s post-Cold War Russia, with a military budget about 7% of the U.S. figure. Some NATO leaders aim to ultimately swallow Ukraine—which just happens to have been part of the Russian state from the 1670s to the Bolshevik Revolution, when it was made a soviet socialist republic until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Its economy including its munitions industry are inextricably interwoven with Russia’s; its eastern regions are peopled by ethnic Russians; it shares a 1,400 mile long border with Russia.

SNIP...

The “military action in Ukraine” that she alludes to refers to separatists’ resistance to the U.S.-backed coup in February 2014, surely supported by Russia at some level, and surely by Russian public opinion, but you notice that the Pentagon has produced precious little evidence for large scale “military actions.” And the annexation of Crimea (Russian from 1783 to 1954, when it was transferred to the Ukrainian SSR within the old Soviet Union) was only a “military action” in that the 25,000 Russian troops stationed there by treaty were deployed to secure government buildings.

SNIP...

But the expansion of NATO to include Ukraine has been a pet project of the former Madame Secretary. Clinton chose as her Under Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland, a former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, neocon and wife of the powerful neocon Republican pundit (John McCain advisor and recently declared Hillary supporter) Robert Kagan. Nuland already had a rich history of warmongering when she embarked on a plan to topple the elected government in Ukraine and replace it with one that would join NATO.

SNIP...

Had Bernie been the antiwar, anti-imperialist candidate throughout, rather than just repeating his (totally valid) tirade against Wall Street, he might have further sharpened his differences with Clinton. If he loses in California, and then betrays his following with a Clinton endorsement, he will be saying that more wars for regime change and more confrontation with Russia is worth some changes in party rules and some meaningless clauses on the party platform.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/06/06/hillarys-foreign-policy-speech-queen-galadriel-before-her-magic-mirror/

Thank you for caring about this, Arazi. Interesting times and all that rot.

[Arazi]

90. Besides climate change, it's the most important. Glad I have your back eom

[Lord Magus]

47. Lies and distortions of what Hillary actually said? Thread trashed.

[Octafish]

50. History says otherwise.

Words of wisdom:

Hillary Is the Candidate of the War Machine

by Jeffrey D. Sachs
Common Dreams, Feb. 5, 2016

There's no doubt that Hillary is the candidate of Wall Street. Even more dangerous, though, is that she is the candidate of the military-industrial complex. The idea that she is bad on the corporate issues but good on national security has it wrong. Her so-called foreign policy "experience" has been to support every war demanded by the US deep security state run by the military and the CIA.

Hillary and Bill Clinton's close relations with Wall Street helped to stoke two financial bubbles (1999-2000 and 2005-8) and the Great Recession that followed Lehman's collapse. In the 1990s they pushed financial deregulation for their campaign backers that in turn let loose the worst demons of financial manipulation, toxic assets, financial fraud, and eventually collapse. In the process they won elections and got mighty rich.

Yet Hillary's connections with the military-industrial complex are also alarming. It is often believed that the Republicans are the neocons and the Democrats act as restraints on the warmongering. This is not correct. Both parties are divided between neocon hawks and cautious realists who don't want the US in unending war. Hillary is a staunch neocon whose record of favoring American war adventures explains much of our current security danger.

SNIP...

Hillary's record as Secretary of State is among the most militaristic, and disastrous, of modern US history. Some experience. Hilary was a staunch defender of the military-industrial-intelligence complex at every turn, helping to spread the Iraq mayhem over a swath of violence that now stretches from Mali to Afghanistan. Two disasters loom largest: Libya and Syria.

Hillary has been much attacked for the deaths of US diplomats in Benghazi, but her tireless promotion of the overthrow Muammar Qaddafi by NATO bombing is the far graver disaster. Hillary strongly promoted NATO-led regime change in Libya, not only in violation of international law but counter to the most basic good judgment. After the NATO bombing, Libya descended into civil war while the paramilitaries and unsecured arms stashes in Libya quickly spread west across the African Sahel and east to Syria. The Libyan disaster has spawned war in Mali, fed weapons to Boko Haram in Nigeria, and fueled ISIS in Syria and Iraq. In the meantime, Hillary found it hilarious to declare of Qaddafi: "We came, we saw, he died."

CONTINUED w/links...

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/02/05/hillary-candidate-war-machine

Wars without end. Amen.

[Miles Archer]

66. Oh Dear God NO...More "Lies and distortions of what Hillary actually said?"

I wouldn't lose sleep over it...June 16th is coming and then there will be nothing on this Website but "the truth."

[amborin]

62. more here, on her unforgivable war crimes:

http://usuncut.com/politics/hillary-clinton-foreign-policy-record/

[laserhaas]

67. Well stated 'Octafish' - ..... Enough is Enough already.... I'm ashamed, as an American

of how our nation's elite, are war profiteer mongers

where WE are - The Empire

doing horrific things, in our name - under false pretenses

[Octafish]

83. It's the weirdest thing. On election day, I pull the lever marked 'D' for peace...

...and out pops more war. Election after Election. I think someone believes we won't notice.

For instance, Afghanistan.

Yet the war in Afghanistan still has the support of the vast majority of politicians in the United States. Across party lines and ideological differences, this war is seen as a justified conflict. Even Bernie Sanders, the leftmost candidate for the U.S. presidency, states on his website that “we entered [the Afghan] war with significant clarity of purpose and moral authority.”

While the original purpose of the war may have been clear—to unseat the Taliban, but also to spread counterterror efforts throughout the world—we have since lost the way. Though the commonly cited date of the defeat of the Taliban is November 22, 2001, we still fight on.

http://inthesetimes.com/article/18481/afghanistan-war-fourteen-years-later

President Obama said we would be out PDQ. Yet, there we are, now well into Year 15.

Sec. Clinton sided with the surge solution, which is an escalation, a term tragically all-too familiar for those who remember Vietnam.

I'm thinking we're never gonna see that Peace Dividend used for anything other than more war.

[laserhaas]

87. We are the Imperalist Empire

That we're all taught is reprehensible

The exception...I surmise...is the moral terpitude is never in question...when you are the one doing the

Bullying

[B Calm]

76. I thinks she needs about a dozen more flags behind her, that'll show em

who has the most patriotism!

[pangaia]

77. "Our troops give their all. They deserve a commander-in-chief who knows that."

Truer words were never spoken.


I will leave out my next sentence.

[Octafish]

88. Hillary Clinton’s Speech Against Trump Hypocritically Touts Her Foreign Policy Strength

Hillary Clinton’s Speech Against Trump Hypocritically Touts Her Foreign Policy Strength

byKevin Gosztola
Published on Friday, June 03, 2016 by Shadowproof, via Common Dreams

EXCERPT...

In fact, Clinton threatened to ethnically cleanse Iran if it were to attack Israel when she ran for president in 2008. “In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.”

SNIP...

Clinton quoted a number of remarks from Trump to show he is a cartoonish figure who cannot be trusted with the presidency. But Clinton herself said, when Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was killed, “We came, we saw, he died,” while pumping her fists.

She blasted “Donald’s bizarre fascination with dictators and strongmen who have no love for America,” and later added, “I’ll leave it to the psychiatrists to explain his affection for tyrants.” However, as journalist Glenn Greenwald has cataloged, she has been a “stalwart friend” of some of the “world’s worst despots.”

In 2009, Clinton said while she was secretary of state, “I really consider President and Mrs. Mubarak to be friends of my family.” She referred to Bashar al Assad in 2011 as a “reformer,” to argue Gaddafi was worse.

SNIP...

The former secretary of state vehemently supports Israeli military occupation and a foreign policy toward Palestine, which dehumanizes its people. She also does not believe there is anything illegal about a right-wing military coup in Honduras, which she stood by and allowed to go unchallenged when she was in charge of the State Department.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, and UAE donated millions of dollars to the Clinton Global Initiative between 2001 and 2014. Powerful individuals, including leaders of tyrannical governments in the Persian Gulf, do not typically donate this kind of money to a politician’s personal foundation without expecting something in return for their investments.

CONTINUED...

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/06/03/hillary-clintons-speech-against-trump-hypocritically-touts-her-foreign-policy

Going along to get along with a long line of commanders.

[MrMickeysMom]

84. Clever words of omission, aren't they?

I think she's omitted a number of things...

1) Why it was never important to follow the rule of law over national security documentation with exposure of what should have been secure but was not for 3 over months?

2) Why, after Sanders offered his transcripts to Wall Street executives (by throwing nothing out of his hands) and his tax records, has she omitted the transcripts of her paid Wall Street speeches as promised?

3) Why, after all the death and destruction of men, women and children caused by a decision to trust George W Bush, she didn't see the fall out in what is still happening with these endless wars and refugees who are dying daily from that decision making?

4) Why she ever voted to invade Iraq when she had the same access to decision making tools that Sanders did, which explains why he voted AGAINST the invasion into Iraq?

5) Why has she accepted so much money from the prison industrial complex, the military industrial complex and Wall Street?

6) Why she thinks telling Wall Street to "cut it out" was an effective strategy for changing their behavior (I guess I'd know about this one more by viewing the transcripts)

Not holding my breath here, either...

[Octafish]

85. ''Shenanigans.''

Three Little Words: WikiLeaks, Libya, Oil

Lots of oil.

"Libya has some of the biggest and most proven oil reserves — 43.6 billion barrels — outside Saudi Arabia, and some of the best drilling prospects."

http://www.medialens.org/index.php/component/acymailing/archive/view/listid-3-alerts-precis/mailid-74-three-little-words-wikileaks-libya-oil.html

Mohammad Gaddafi shared the oil wealth with the Libyan people, not just the one-percent Wall Street types.

For over four decades, Gaddafi promoted economic democracy and used the nationalized oil wealth to sustain progressive social welfare programs for all Libyans. Under Gaddafi’s rule, Libyans enjoyed not only free health-care and free education, but also free electricity and interest-free loans. Now thanks to NATO’s intervention the health-care sector is on the verge of collapse as thousands of Filipino health workers flee the country, institutions of higher education across the East of the country are shut down, and black outs are a common occurrence in once thriving Tripoli.

-- http://www.globalresearch.ca/libya-from-africas-wealthiest-democracy-under-gaddafi-to-us-nato-sponsored-terrorist-haven/5482974

While little reported in the USA, Libya's former leader also used the wealth to better life throughout the poorest nations of Africa.

''War on Libya is War on Entire Africa.''

In 2010 Gaddafi offered to invest $97 billion in Africa to free it from Western influence, on condition that African states rid themselves of corruption and nepotism. Gaddafi always dreamed of a Developed, United Africa and was about to make that dream come true - and nothing is more terrifying to the West than a Developed, United Africa.
-- http://www.reunionblackfamily.com/apps/blog/show/7869956-war-on-libya-is-war-on-entire-africa-

Wall Street-on-the-Potomac prefers to do business with those it can relate to: greedy types.

Hillary, the Banksters Committed 'Fraud,' Not 'Shenanigans'

William K. Black
Huffington Post, 02/04/2016

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in her debate with Senator Sanders minutes ago, said that she went to Wall Street and told them to stop their "shenanigans." The context was that she was being asked to respond to the complaint that she was too close to on Wall Street billionaires. She had every incentive, therefore, to demonstrate how tough she would be on Wall Street.

In that context, the best she could muster was the pusillanimous "shenanigans." Here is a typical definition of that word with examples.

1. : a devious trick used especially for an underhand purpose
2. 2a : tricky or questionable practices or conduct --usually used in pluralb : high-spirited or mischievous activity --usually used in plural

Examples of SHENANIGAN
1. students engaging in youthful shenanigans on the last day of school
2. an act of vandalism that went way beyond the usual shenanigans at summer camp

Hillary cannot bring herself to use the "f" word in the context of Wall Street CEOs leading the largest and most destructive fraud epidemics in history - frauds that made them spectacularly wealthy. A few minutes later, Bernie said that "fraud" was Wall Street's business model.

SNIP...

Here is the reaction of another prominent official to the plight of the homeowners:

"Along with innovation came complexity, and complexity is the enemy of transparency. I had high school friends and grade school friends that got put into mortgages by unscrupulous brokers. Some lost their houses, and I spent time with them and looked at what they had been conned into accepting--they didn't understand what they were signing on for. It was despicable."

"Despicable." The person I am quoting is Hank Paulson, former head of Goldman Sachs, and Secretary of the Treasury under President Bush. Paulson is not by nature someone with great sympathy for the poor. Hillary urges us to believe that because she started as a lawyer for an NGO she has established that she is a person of exceptional empathy. But her 2007 speech to Wall Street was a direct test of character that she failed. Hank Paulson, the leader of the "Vampire Squid," won the test of reality and human sympathy and Hillary lost -- and it wasn't close.

Hillary could easily have gotten the issue correct by talking with Miller and Madigan to get the facts. Both AGs are leading endorsers of Hillary's campaign. Hillary did not investigate, she did not even take the step that Hank Paulson did and check with friends with real experience with foreclosures.

Hillary simply believed the banksters' myths about the crisis. She pronounced sentence on the people losing their homes who were the victims of the banksters' frauds. She implicitly cast the banksters as the victims of the homeowners. The best she could muster was to note that the banksters should have vetted the loans more carefully. What courage.

SOURCE: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-k-black/hillary-the-banksters-com_b_9164930.html

It's the weirdest thing, MrMickey'sMom: We hear ours is a democracy, yet when push comes to shove, the Traitors who lie America into war -- and their cronies the Warmongers, Banksters and War Criminals -- walk free and We the People get to pick up their tab and get to live under Austerity and the ever present surveillance.

[MrMickeysMom]

86. Excellent, as usual from you... and to think...

The willingness to go along with such stupidity is working so well within the established Democratic party, non dare call it as they secretly see it when those people's jobs depend on never crossing that line.

You can almost see it on the faces of some of these clowns as they present this stuff (or don't) from their ivory towers.