Article: Propaganda

The article "Iraq Passes Bill on Baathists" at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/12/AR2008011201122.html
is troubling. What is this bill about? "The legislation seeks to redress the first order issued by the Coalition Provisional Authority in 2003, the controversial decision that drove thousands of Baath Party members from their
jobs and alienated them from Iraq's political process. That decision, along with a move to disband the Iraqi army, is widely believed to have fueled the Sunni
insurgency that proved so deadly in the following years."

Regarding Baathists it states "The assessment of Iraq's progress probably also will rely heavily on political developments such as Saturday's vote in parliament. Although the agreement was widely praised, some Iraqi legislators saw the bill as motivated by the same punitive spirit that they felt guided the initial purge of Hussein's government after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003."

Who will get their jobs back? The quick answer is next to no one as "It remains unclear how many former Baath Party members would be eligible to return under the new legislation. Ali al-Lami, spokesman for the current de-Baathification commission, estimated that 3,500 people from the third-highest Baathist rank, or Shubah members, would be allowed to apply for pension payments but would still be kept from their jobs. About 13,000 people
from the fourth rank, known as Firqa members, would be eligible to return, but he expected that many would not.
"Most of them are either working outside the country and they don't want to go back to Iraq, or they're afraid somebody will take revenge on them or they got
involved with the militant groups," Lami said. "Because for two years, we have been demanding that they come to the de-Baathification commission, but there was no response."

When the Coalition Provisional Authority first implemented this there were concerns that driving out experienced Baathist governmental operatives would cause problems for the country. That fear is largely ignored now as even the greatest government drone ever couldn't make and implement policies within the existing environment of sectarian hatred in Iraq.

So you just wonder is this meeting a benchmark or propaganda? The timing was suspicious because it suddenly passes when Big bro 43 "in Bahrain on an eight-day trip through the Middle East, and some Iraqi officials described the agreement as an important boost for the prospects of reconciliation between the country's marginalized Sunni Muslim minority and its Shiite Muslim majority, which now dominates Iraqi politics....
Bush hailed the agreement as "an important sign that the leaders in that country must work together to meet the aspirations of the Iraqi people."

We think it's a pile of dung and so do the Iraqis as --The problem is that the new leaders have gone in the direction of revenge and vengeance, rather than going into healing those wounds," said Izzat Shabender, a Shiite who is on the de-Baathification committee in parliament. "Even if this law is passed, it cannot achieve the goal-which is opening a new chapter with the Baathists. . . . It's got nothing to do with reconciliation. The culture of reconciliation does not exist in the heads of the Iraqi leaders."

This is from a Shiite whose natural instinct is to slaughter Sunnis and vice versa. They have been hating each other for so long that subterfuge regarding their animosity towards each other usually is so heavy that a good or bad word about their foe is seldom uttered.

Another farce that W is trying to foist upon us is his relations with other Middle East countries such as Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Big bro 43 is selling his chums, who provided 15 of the 19 9/11 jihadists, 20 billion dollars worth of our military equipment-if Congress agrees.

Why? They hate us! And they own many of our assets including CitiGroupbecause of 43's connections with them.

The article "Saudi Arabia-U.S. Relations Item of Interest -A Combustible Mix: Politics, Terror, Oil and the Future of the U.S.-Saudi Relationship" at
http://www.saudi-us-relations.org/newsletter2004/saudi-relations-interest-07-13a.html
states "So, the next generation of Saudis far from remembering the United States with gratitude and Americans with affection, will remember us as the occupiers of Iraq and the supporters of Israeli brutality in the West Bank and Gaza."

So you just wonder is this funding of Saudi Arabia good, bad or indifferent to US' interests or merely propaganda?

Are the Saudis going to help us? The article "Bush Complains Over Oil Prices" at
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/A0327D9F-8805-4396-A175-2DC2DD4C33E9.htm
shows that Saudi Arabia doesn't care about the rising US oil prices or containing Iran.

It states "Oil prices are very high, which is tough on our economy," Bush said on a visit to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday."

How couldn't the Saudis immediately work to reduce oil prices after that piercing analysis?

"Hashem Ahelbarra on George Bush's visit Opec officials have said the group's ability to lower oil prices was limited."

W is selling them 20 billion dollars worth of US military and can't do anything to them. That means the Saudis will keep on taking US carrots and there is no stick for W to employ against them!

We are getting raped by OPEC but can't the Saudis at least pretend to cooperate with us against Iran?

"The sale appeared to be part of Bush's effort to persuade Saudi Arabia to help contain Iran and offset what he has branded a danger to the oil-rich region and to the world's security.

Ratcheting up the rhetoric, Bush declared in a speech in Abu Dhabi earlier this week that Iran was "the world's leading state sponsor of terror"....

While Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia has voiced concern over the rise of Shia Iran, it is opposed to another war after the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq that has strengthened the government in Tehran."

That is a nuanced stance, but Saudi Arabia could at least pretend to whole-heartedly cooperate with 43 in gratitude for the weapons-that is if this hypocritical scam was anything other than a propaganda exercise.

43 goes on about Iran denying that Israel exists. Saudi Arabia does not recognize the existence of the state of Israel either. Why does Saudi Arabia get to buy all of this military equipment if it disagrees with the US in such a pivotal matter?

Words have lost their meaning with this evil, current GOP group in power.

And because no one knows actually what the blowback factor will be in the sale of US military equipment to Saudi Arabia, and because his chums in Halliburton and his Poppy's company Carlyle can never get enough money W's boys are planning $30 billion in military assistance to Israel. This amounts to a more than 25 percent increase over the next 10 years.

We've pissed away so much to Saudi Arabia, but that isn't the only place we've been exploited from. What about Pakistan and all of the aid we've given to
Musharraf? That has all gone for naught.

Not only there, but next door in Afghanistan, all is not well. In the forgotten failureof the US in the initial theatre of GWOT, not even simple math adds up.
We have the most troops there, but W is managing to get
our allies disgusted with us. The British complain that they have responsibility in a violent part while we have the more peaceful east.

The article "Allies Feel Strain of Afghan War" at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/14/AR2008011402722.html
shows how too many US diplomats act as badly as W.
Unfortunately, as the US spokesperson exhibits hubris as "The American rejoinder, spoken only in private with references to British operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan, is that superior U.S. skills have made it so." only results in alienating our friends.

In Iraq British Blair's military leaders accused the US of being too barbaric in their methods against insurgents. W can't even keep our greatest all happy because GWOT is so divisive.

Every theatre, Iraq, the Middle East, Pakistan and Afghanistan in GWOT has been an abysmal failure. W can't allow that to be the presentation to his red staters.
My high school math fails me. If you have a few equations that yield the same result ( a=b, c= b,d =b ) then all are equal. For W everything equals failure so he resorts to propaganda. Therefore failure equals propaganda.