Congressman Ron Paul today released the following statement on President Obama’s speech from the Oval Office last night:

“The President’s announcement that all U.S. combat troops have left Iraq is no more believable than the ‘Mission Accomplished’ declaration was in 2003.

“Once again, we are being told the mission has been accomplished and our brave men and women are coming back home. Though the people are hopeful they remain skeptical, and rightfully so.

“The biggest problem is that success in Iraq is undefinable since the mission was never defined. The reasons given for the invasion were based on misinformation. Now, the war has cost us hundreds of billions of dollars and this has contributed significantly to our economic woes.

“Forty-four hundred Americans are dead, thirty thousand severely wounded, and more than a hundred thousand are suffering from serious health problems related to Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. This alone should tell us that it was not worth the investment and the needless sacrifice of our young people and the taxpayers.

“It is deceitful to imply we will avoid hostilities with this new policy. We still have to contend with:

* the 50,000 troops carrying weapons remain in Iraq
* the 100,000 contractors that remain with more expected to go to Iraq
* the 9,000 special ops personnel trained in assassinations that remain in Iraq
* a huge embassy, bigger than the Vatican, that will remain
* Dozens of military bases that will stay
* Al Qaeda organizations that did not exist before the war
* Muqtada al Sadr, a strong nationalist who has gained much political power
* The fact that Iran benefits tremendously with the Shiites now in power in Iraq and is a close ally of al Sadr

“Osama bin Laden wins by ‘proving’ that America has an agenda of occupation in the Middle East. And, we continue to walk into his trap and hand him up his best recruitment tool in his efforts to incite hatred and terrorism against the United States.

“What’s worse, President Obama made it clear last night that the troops and resources leaving Iraq will not come home to defend our country or ease our economic woes. They will instead be diverted to Afghanistan, perhaps also Pakistan and, I fear, even Iran.

“From my viewpoint we are the losers in this fool’s errand of endless war. Tragically, this new policy is not one of peace but merely a charade that will severely undermine our national security and continue us down the path to bankruptcy—a threat that we best not long ignore.” (Read more from eon.businesswire.com)

The United States may still be in the Afghanistan and Iraq region for another ten years, according to Gen. George Casey.

“The types of conflict that we are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I think are likely to be fighting here for a decade or so, are focused on the people,” Casey, the army’s Chief of Staff, said Friday night at the Aspen Institute’s Ideas Festival.

“We are not going to succeed in either place by military means alone. You are only going to succeed when the people perceive there is a government represented by their interests, when there is an economy that can give them a job to support their families, when there are educational systems that can educate their family. All those things are essential to the long term success of the military operation.” (Read more from politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com)

I think the dollar will collapse before then.

I’ve been reading alternative news sources for a few years now and feel like most of what I encounter are elaborations of what I already know. This wonder documentary, however, really covered a lot of new ground, mostly about the recent history of neo-conservatism and their ideological roots. I highly recommend it. I’ve bullet pointed the main/most interesting points from each of the three parts, stressing the history of neo-conservativism, as that was what interested me most.

* The cold war rise of neo-conservatives & radical islamists.

* Both philosophies preach that ends justify the means.

* Leo Strauss supports spreading myths that would fill Americans with identity and purpose. He seems disgusted by the American left because it’s liberalism ushers in what he perceives as moral depravity. America, he contends needs a great myth (manifested in defeating an evil enemy) to fill people with virtue and purpose. He supports lying to establish this myth because it’s done for the greater good. Many present-day neo-cons are his students.

* Neo-cons supported organization called Team B to spread myths about Soviet power, contradicting CIA findings (much like the administration contradicted CIA findings before the Iraq war).

* When William Casey became head of CIA, he began pressuring CIA to exaggerate Soviet Threat along the lines of Team B.

* Neo-cons supported rise of Christian politics.

* Both radical Islamists & neo-cons considered the fall of the Soviet Union (which was a house of cards all by itself), as an endorsement of their violent ideology.

* Radical Islamists pursue war against corrupt regimes in the Middle East, but fail to win popular support.

* Straussians compared to Marxists. Conceal their agenda. Lie to promote their vision of the world. They consider the Christian right’s emphasis on social issues combating the moral depravity they perceive. They consider themselves warriors against liberal social corruption.

* Algerian generals infiltrate and radicalize radical Islam to use them as enemy.

* Radical Islamist ideology fails because there is no end to the list of enemies. One group concludes that the whole world (except for their group) is unfaithful and must be killed.

* Rise of Christian right causes many defectors who elect Clinton. Neo-cons begin propaganda against Clinton including this story and this one, which I posted here on lost republic. Was I overzealous? Paranoid?

* One neo-con writes a book entitled “The Death of Outrage” blames America’s moral corruption for failing to impeach Clinton.

* Radical Islamists failed to gain popular support in the years which followed the victory in Afghanistan. They attempted to regain support by striking at the West.

* This fit the neo-con plan of replacing the Soviet enemy with the Islamic one.

* Bin Laden began calling his organization Al Quaeda AFTER he realized that was how American’s referred to him.

* Neo-conservatives return to power under Bush W. They exaggerate Islamic radial threat similar to how they exaggerated the Soviet threat. They work from the Straussian philosophy that America’s purpose is to fight evil. I think they are like adolescent boys who find meaning in their lives and feel manly when they send better men off to war.

* So much of the sleeper cell hype is complete nonsense. The government “experts” who interpret much of the evidence in the legal cases against sleeper cells are extraordinarily creative nonsense, in which every gesture, scribble, and photo is an elaborate secretly coded message.

* Both the radical Islamists and neo-cons continue to benefit from the Straussian idea of creating a false mythology.

* All studies show dirty bomb (radiation bomb) would do zero damage. Despite this, its mythology grows.

* Politics of fear, ie. insisting on preparing for the worst-possible case scenario, began with ecology movement. (I can understand why they saved this controversial statement for the end of the three-hour documentary.) Ecology movement considered it government’s duty to prepare for the worst, regardless of evidence. This is the same principle which shaped the war on terror, the “preventive paradigm.”

A couple months ago this viral video showing some very trigger happy helicopter pilots in Iraq caused quite a stir. It was released through Wikileaks.

The army has since detained the soldier who leaked the video.

Wikileaks has made more headlines recently:

Wikileaks founder in hiding, fearful of arrest
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has gone into hiding, fearful of arrest by U.S. authorities, an Icelandic parliamentarian confirmed Friday. . . .

Authorities are interested in locating Assange following reports that an Army intelligence analyst, Bradley Manning, recently transferred a huge volume of classified files to Wikileaks. Manning is now in military custody. . . .

Jonsdottir also added to widespread speculation in recent days that Wikileaks was about to release a new video, this once showing an alleged “massacre” of Afghan civilians in a U.S. airstrike.

She called it “worse than the Iraqi one,” referencing the video Wikileaks previously released showing a U.S. helicopter attack on Iraqi citizens that caused an international uproar. . . .
(Read more from blog.washingtonpost.com)

The strange and consequential case of Bradley Manning, Adrian Lamo and WikiLeaks
Kevin Poulsen and Kim Zetter of Wired reported that a 22-year-old U.S. Army Private in Iraq, Bradley Manning, had been detained after he “boasted” in an Internet chat — with convicted computer hacker Adrian Lamo — of leaking to WikiLeaks the now famous Apache Helicopter attack video, a yet-to-be-published video of a civilian-killing air attack in Afghanistan, and “hundreds of thousands of classified State Department records.” . . .

This is a very comprehensive article about Wikileaks’ recent controversies. The Government attitude toward Wikileaks caught my eye:

In 2008, the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Center prepared a classified report (ironically leaked to and published by WikiLeaks) which — as the NYT put it — placed WikiLeaks on “the list of the enemies threatening the security of the United States.” That Report discussed ways to destroy WikiLeaks’ reputation and efficacy, and emphasized creating the impression that leaking to it is unsafe.

In other words, exactly what the U.S. Government wanted to happen in order to destroy WikiLeaks has happened here: news reports that a key WikiLeaks source has been identified and arrested, followed by announcements from anonymous government officials that there is now a worldwide “manhunt” for its Editor-in-Chief.
(Read more from salon.com)

Iceland Passes WikiLeaks Law
The Icelandic parliament has approved a package of broad protections for journalists, making the island nation perhaps the safest place in the world to afflict the comfortable and speak truth to power.

Icelandic leaders wanted to create a haven for journalists and whistle-blowers and sought assistance from WikiLeaks, the website that recently released video of U.S. forces gunning down civilians and journalists in Iraq.
(Read more from truthdig.com)

The Army has detained a 22-year-old soldier in Baghdad in connection with the leak of a military video that shows Apache helicopters gunning down unarmed men in Iraq, including two journalists, defense officials said Monday.

Army Spc. Bradley Manning of Potomac, Md., now being held in Kuwait pending the results of an investigation, was the third suspected leaker known to have been apprehended under the Obama administration. (Read more from myantiwar.org)

5th April 2010 10:44 EST WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad — including two Reuters news staff.

http://www.collateralmurder.org/

A US federal judge dismissed all charges Thursday against five Blackwater Worldwide security guards accused of killing unarmed Iraqi civilians in a crowded Baghdad intersection in 2007. (AP) (Read more from www.ynetnews.com)

Members of Congress invested nearly 196 million dollars of their own money in companies that receive hundreds of millions of dollars a day from Pentagon contracts to provide goods and services to U.S. armed forces, say nonpartisan watchdog groups.

. . . .

Lawmakers charged with overseeing Pentagon contractors hold stock in those very firms, as do vocal critics of the war in Iraq, says the Centre for Responsive Politics (CRP).

Senator John Kerry, the Democrat from Massachusetts who staked his 2004 presidential bid in part on his opposition to the war, tops the list of investors. His holdings in firms with Pentagon contracts of at least five million dollars stood at between 28.9 million dollars and 38.2 million dollars as of Dec. 31, 2006. Kerry sits on the Senate foreign relations panel.

Members of Congress are required to report their personal finances every year but only need to state their assets in broad ranges.

Other top investors include Representative Rodney Frelinghuysen, a New Jersey Republican with holdings of 12.1 million – 49.1 million dollars; Rep. Robin Hayes, a North Carolina Republican (9.2 million – 37.1 million dollars); Republican Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr. of Wisconsin (5.2 million – 7.6 million dollars); and Rep. Jane Harman, a California Democrat (2.7 million – 6.3 million dollars).

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the Democrat and former governor of West Virginia who chairs the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, invested some 2.0 million dollars in Pentagon contractors, CRP says.

Other panel chiefs who invested in defence firms include Sen. Joseph Lieberman, the Connecticut Independent who presides over the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and Rep. Howard Berman, the California Democrat who heads the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

In all, 151 current members of Congress — more than one-fourth of the total — have invested between 78.7 million dollars and 195.5 million dollars in companies that received defence contracts of at least 5.0 million dollars, according to CRP.

These companies received more than 275.6 billion dollars from the government in 2006, or 755 million dollars per day, says budget watchdog group OMB Watch.

The investments yielded lawmakers 15.8 million – 62 million dollars in dividend income, capital gains, royalties, and interest from 2004 through 2006, says CRP. (Read more from commondreams.org)

This is a great little interview. The part at the end about Obama eviscerating the anti-war movement is especially interesting.

My dear liberal friends,

These wars are Obama’s now. If you hated Bush for bringing us these wars, what do you say now about Obama?

Cindy Sheehan, the famous anti-war protester who used to set up camp outside George Bush’s Crawford Ranch, is at it again. This time she’s on Martha’s Vineyard, and the war that’s got her all riled up has a new Commander In Chief.

“The reason I am here is because … even though the facade has changed in Washington D.C., the policies are still the same,” Sheehan said. (Read more from therobalution.com)

I think he predicts 9/11.