Rumsfeld’s Delirium

Function: noun
: a mental disturbance characterized by confusion, disordered speech, and hallucinations
Merriam-Webster's Medical Dictionary, © 2002 Merriam-Webster, Inc.


Only a mental state like this could possibly justify the accusations and inflated moral superiority demonstrated in the recent speech by Donald Rumsfeld, where he portrayed the administration’s critics as “moral or intellectually confused” in reference at what threatens the nation’s security and accused them of lacking the courage to fight back.

Hence he and the Bush cronies are the only ones who can defend our Nation. This of course implies that more than 2/3 of Americans are cowards, morally confused and intellectually deprived individuals. A very stupid remark indeed.

In another part of the same speech he called the lessons of history, including the failed efforts to appease the Adolph Hitler regime in the 1930s.
What the heck has Hitler to do with the present situation? Is he trying to say that Iran or perhaps the loose lot of terrorists dispersed throughout the World is equivalent to the ambitions of the former dictator?

Perhaps Rumsfeld in his fever forgets that we are the ones who are fueling the anger of many of those terrorists. Sure, there has been and it’ll always be some idiots ready to blow-up planes or embassies, regardless of what we do or don’t do, but, after invading a country that never attacked us, does he wonder how that part of the World sees us? Not to mention the recent out of proportion attack on Lebanon by Israel, who many consider just an extension of the U.S.

Continues his tirade by adding “Those who know the truth need to speak out against these kinds of myths and lies and distortions being told about our troops and about our country,” The truth? The truth is right there in front of us. As far as we know all the abuses have been well documented, to the point of causing several military courts to look into it.

Finally Rumsfeld regrets that “too many in this country want to “blame America first” and ignore the enemy.” Nobody is trying to ignore the enemy Donald, all those who are against the present policy, are as dedicated to fight a real enemy as you are, perhaps more.

The difference is that the people in general have enough intellectual capacity, in spite of your remarks, to differentiate between “real enemies” and manufactured ones.

I resent the remarks of this guy and like many others, including high ranking members of the Senate and the House, I believe it’s time for him to go and make room for someone with a clean slate, a clear mind and a more balanced approach to the present mess.

War on Terror? On Iraq? Neither?

A sad state of affairs is surrounding the political scene these days, especially with the primaries around the corner and most spectators looking into the crystal ball for the next presidential campaign.

On the one hand, Bush and his cronies have no choice but to come back to the same answers, meaning the war on terror is the same as the war in Iraq. Those who are still able to use their brain however do not equate the Iraq issue with the terror that is displayed by fanatics, so-called freedom fighters and others, willing to go to any extreme to show their displeasure with Washington politics, the U.S. and the Western World in general. All polls in the U.S. indicate that.

About two thirds of the population, finally, is tired of the same rhetoric and the war in Iraq. No surprise here. You can fool some of the people some of the time but you can’t fool all of the people, all the time.
The problem many will have to consider when deciding whom to vote for is more of a partisan issue than that of a logical choice.

Hard core Republicans, with many of them I’m sure opposing this unnecessary war, will have to decide if any future candidate of their choice will confront this administration and try to force them to, for once, tell the truth, get out of Iraq and still look like tough red blooded Republicans.

Democrats, which have representatives that acted mostly in a sheepish way so far, have a better choice, since, while the future performance of any elected candidate has yet to be tested, they have very little to loose. At best, a new Congress, if they get the leverage, could confidently confront the neo-con agenda squarely and without hesitation. At worst, even if they fail on any intent to change the course of history, they can come up winners for speaking out.

For Republicans is a half-baked proposition. If they keep control of both houses, few people will be happy if everything stays the same. If they loose such control, they can always go back to the old book, blaming the newly elected Democrats for whatever other failures may occur.

Democrats on the other hand will have comfortably a win-win show this time. If they get to control Congress, they can try to revert the damaged caused so far by Bush and Co. If something goes wrong after that, they can always blame the past actions on Republicans, Bush and others, for their trickery, lies and half-truths leading to the present. If things improve, they will have a huge advertising banner for their aspirations in 2008.

Welcome the new era in American politics, where a bunch of erratic extremists and foreign dictators are basically influencing who we will have to vote for. Sad, very sad.

El Precio de Coimas, Mordidas o Bribes

En el término que mas le acomode, la cuestión de haber recibido dinero a cambio de favores tuvo finalmente las consecuencias que se esperaban en Las Vegas. Dos funcionarios de los varios que están bajo la mira Ver Nota Relacionada, Dario Herrera y Mary Kinkaid Chauncey, fueron sentenciados hoy por un juez a cuatro años y dos años y medio de prisión respectivamente. Además deberán pagar ciertas sumas como restitución por sus acciones.

33-year-old Dario Herrera was sentenced to four years and two months at a camp in Littleton, Colorado. Former colleague, 68-year-old Mary Kincaid-Chauncey was sentenced to two years and six months at a camp in Victorville, California.See Related Note (in Spanish)

Lesson From the Recent Terror Plot

One more time, from jolly Old England, the news of a terrorist plot takes center stage with the arrest of some individuals, allegedly planning to explode planes on flight to the U.S. with a very complicated scheme, by which they would assemble the explosives on board and detonate them with a cell phone or something like that.
In fact, I wouldn’t even call this news, since destroying a plane in flight (or the attempt to do so) has been in the books of whackos for some time now. Perhaps what is new is the method they were going to use. I don’t know.
In any case, my point is that, this incident should, once and for all, teach us an important lesson. We can’t avoid terrorist attacks by invading other countries.
While we are busy in Iraq and Afghanistan, this characters can really be anywhere in the World and, save some insider information, luck or plain old vigilance there is little more anyone can do to avoid being hurt by frantic and delusional psychopaths.
That’s why, one more time, I think the best we can do is to leave the politics of the region alone. I know this doesn’t sit well with those dreaming of more markets and plenty of oil, but the losses we may suffer hurt me more than the benefits, if any, from our military ventures.
To me, the life of just one of our soldiers, taken from home to fight this ghost army, is much more valuable than the life of a thousand suicide bombers.
Pretty soon, the number of Americans lost in Iraq and Afghanistan will supersede that of 9/11, and all we’ve accomplished is to revert Afghanistan to an all-time poppy growing land and witness Iraqis killing each other in sectarian feuds. Not to mention the fact that fanatics are using our actions to justify theirs. Is it worth it? I don’t think so.
On the lighter side, soon we will have to travel in our underwear to avoid unnecessary searches. Well, there will always be cavity search. Ouch!

The Repetitive Lou Dobbs

His round face and paternalistic attitude seems to bode well with a lot of CNN viewers. In some ways it reminds me of another round face, Rush Limbaugh. Both proclaim to be the owners of the patriotic drum beating mostly for the conservative right.

However, while Rush is a certified lunatic and a rude individual when someone doesn’t agree with him, at least he is what it is. No false pretense. He happens to be an individual who owns the truth (much like Bush) and doesn’t matter what your opinion is, he’s always right. Right?

Dobbs on the other hand is part of a news organization that, having to balance points of view from all sides, delivers his segment adapting real news to his personal perspective. Nothing wrong so far. The problem lies with the fact that his intellectual ego gets in the way and he really start to believe that he knows better, to the point now of giving advice to Bush in his column.

In the first place, Bush will take no advice from him, if for no other reason just because he already has enough bad advice as it is. Secondly, once again, Dobbs hammers on his favorite pet peeve, immigration, a theme he’s all but exhausted. Finally, Dobbs piles up the present problems from Iraq to North Korea, just to make noise and put down the President’s advisors.

Those who take the time to read my Blog, mostly in Spanish, know very well how I feel about the present administration, but I’m not Lou Dobbs, I’m just a guy out there whose opinion count very little and have no influence in public matters. Dobbs on the other hand has a following on CNN, however tilted to the right, and as paid journalist in a respected media outlet, should move on and stop hammering on the same issues over and over again.

We got it Lou, you are against illegal immigration, not so sure about legal immigrants either, and in your ideal little world, a big fence, lots of troops and massive deportations would do the job. We go it!
Get your staff to work on something else now. What are you going to do after the Israel/Hezbollah conflict?
Please, don’t go back to the same old immigration script.

Five years after 9/11- Pandora‘s box.

September 11, 2006 will mark the fifth anniversary of the tragedy that brought down the Twin Towers in New York. Should we feel safer now? Should we believe the developments after that incident, such as the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq are producing positive results? Should we trust the government when pointing fingers at Al Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden and others, declaring that all those and supposedly many others in the Muslim world are our potential enemies? Was the loss of life worth it? How about the loss of credibility the U.S. has suffered all over the World? Do we have more friends than before, or more enemies? Finally, who benefits from all this carnage?

This are some of the many questions people have in their minds, when pondering the events started with 9/11. The answers are not easy to come by and largely depend who you ask. For the neo-cons (the Rumsfeld’s, Cheney’s and others) their response is always positive and upbeat. They keep repeating the same mantra (War on terror) as the only possible explanation in the menu of answers. And they don’t care whether their answer matches any result. It is the way it is because they say so. Bush is no exception when he keeps hanging on to the same responses without making room for any other possibility.

Let’s see. Before 9/11 there was a failed arrangement with the Taliban - then in power in Afghanistan - to construct a very profitable pipeline in that country. Since the neo-cons are nothing but part of the powerful petroleum industry, among other obscene capital ventures, one must wonder if 9/11 wasn’t really “convenient” at the time. Blame the Taliban, make Al Qaeda the criminal party and invade Afghanistan. Sounds plausible.

Now, given the facts, as they were presented to us, we must believe that a rag-tag bunch of Al Qaeda operatives, managed to hijack four commercial airliners armed only with box cutters, flying the planes without the proper training, but great precision, slam two of those planes in the Twin Towers, another one at the Pentagon and, due to the heroism of passengers, fail on the fourth flight presumably en route to destroy the White House, going down in some remote field in Pennsylvania.

Let‘s start with the Twin Towers. Has anyone seen the implosion of a building? I have, dozens of times. Living in Las Vegas, now and then old properties are brought down by this method to make room for new ones. To me, the pictures from 9/11, look very much like those events, with precisely placed charges to avoid unnecessary debris from damaging other buildings. There is a plethora of documents from the past showing large buildings being hit by a plane and catching fire. However, none of those buildings collapsed. And they were built before the Twin Towers presumably using older technologies and materials. Why then, the Twin Towers had to collapse after the hit? Not only that, the collapse was so fast and precise that it’s hard to believe the mere fire was the culprit. What about the melting point of steel? Even if we are to believe that the structures were weakened by fire, most expert discard the fire as the cause of the destruction because airplanes don’t carry the type of flammable fuel capable to the create the temperatures needed to melt steel.

And what about the Third Tower? Nothing hit that building. There were a couple of small fires seen in windows (originated by whom or what?) and yet, it collapsed with military precision, exactly as the others did.

Back to Osama. This guy and the Taliban were involved in the past with some activities dedicated to remove the Russians from Afghanistan. Do you know who armed and trained this guys - Taliban - ? The U.S. And we also provided arms and ammunition in a very generous way. It’s well known the CIA was involved in all this. Later down the road, records show that Osama was in a hospital in Berlin and was visited by CIA operatives. Why? They themselves only know the truth of this but the fact remains that the Taliban, Osama and those fighters were indeed part of a guerrilla sponsored by the United States. Hence, back then; they weren’t our enemies but our allies.
Has Osama been used as a scapegoat for 9/11? Everything points in that direction because nobody knows even if there were associates of him on board of those planes. Some accounts indicate that at least a few of those mentioned as responsible for taking over the planes are alive and well in other countries right now.
The search for Osama has also being a failure - on purpose? - Since, in spite of all our technology, intelligence gathering and might, our government has not found the guy.

From then on (9/11) the battle cry of “War on terror“ took shape and dramatic events evolved, from the loss of many of our personal liberties to the invasion of a country that never threatened the U.S. directly.
Bottom line is, forget Osama for now, and let’s concentrate on something else: How to invade Iraq.

Many accounts exist that indicate a long time desire to move against Sadam in Iraq, even before 9/11. Now, given the hysteria created by the destruction of the Twin Towers, the moment was ripe for the invasion. Who would question the right to fight terrorism abroad instead of in our shores? Sadam is evil, he has weapons of mass destruction, he’s developing nuclear weapons, and he is harboring and plotting with Al Qaeda.

What the heck is Al Qaeda? Well, this is no longer our ally but now is a terrorist organization headed by our former friend Osama, bent on the destruction of the civilized world and most of all the U.S. - Look at what happen in N.Y.! - And we should eradicate this problem by removing a dictator - Sadam - and give that country what has needed all along: freedom, free enterprise and the warm friendship of the U.S. We will be welcomed as heroes and everything will be rosy and nice.

In 2003, our beloved leader - Bush - suited in his weekend warrior uniform, landed on a carrier to proclaim that the Mission was Accomplished. Yeah, right. Here we are 3 years later, having lost more than 2500 soldiers, thousands maimed and wounded and we still fighting and trying to establish some order in Iraq.

This corporate minded administration knew that Iraq was not a unified entity. Three clear and distinct factions have been living there for a very long time and the only reason the country was more or less stable - in their own way - was precisely because someone like Sadam, who by means of force and sometimes generous giving to appease the crowds, manage to control the Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites with an iron hand.
They knew that, among other reasons because Sadam, at one point and time, was our ally. When? Well, when we needed him to fight against Iran. We provided weapons, ammunition and logistics to accomplish the goal of repelling Iranian forces.

Now, the question is, if this administration knew that the country was divided in a very dramatic fashion, how in the world they thought a foreign army, like ours, could unify it? Waite a minute, is it that perhaps, they were expecting internal feuds to flare-up like they did and use that as an excuse to establish a more or less permanent force in the region? Could be. Machiavelic as it may seem, nothing that Bush and Co. has done indicates they are guided by the teachings of Dalai Lama.

We know now that, Osama had nothing to do with Sadam. There was never a connection between the Twin Towers disaster and him and Iraq was not even close to developing strategic, chemical or atomic weapons. Did they want to have such weapons? Perhaps. After all, we do as many other countries in the World. But was Iraq a threat? Not by any measure. And the administration also knew that. Since the Gulf War, when Iraq was rebuffed from Kuwait, intense monitoring took place, by means of a so-called buffer zone where our military flew day and night and other resources such satellite surveillance and possibly undercover people inside that country. If there was ever a country that was thoroughly watched in recent times, that was Iraq.

What now? Well, Israel is our ally in the region. Hezbollah took two Israeli soldiers. Why don’t we engage Israel in this, move them forward, destroy some of Lebanon and start all over again with the fight against terrorism, this time, Hezbollah? Good idea perhaps to this mentally challenged administration. Now we can also blame Iran and Syria and maybe, just maybe, we get lucky and establish yet another front of occupation in the area.

The same as Afghanistan was eclipsed by the Iraq invasion, now Iraq is being set aside for the moment and we are all concentrated in Lebanon and Israel. And the game keeps on moving, forever searching for new enemies and evildoers. Is this administration aware of the consequences? Perhaps, but like everything else they do, they only care about what their goal is, never mind the cost of life, the suffering of millions in the region and what the American public thinks and wants. As long as they can keep the machinery in action, arms manufacturing, friendly government contractors and many others will benefit with this mess. That’s what counts for Bush and Co.

They are in the process of prying open the proverbial Pandora’s box and we, as passive onlookers, may get stuck with the content.

Horrores de Guerra

Gustavo Sierra, uno de mis periodistas favoritos por sus reportajes televisivos, estuvo en Irak, vió y vivió el drama de la invasión de ese país y describió con palabras e imágenes la tragedia del pueblo Iraquí y los horrores de la guerra.
Ahora, desde Texas, en una nota publicada en Clarín de Buenos Aires, nos presenta la otra cara del drama, jóvenes soldados, algunos hispanos, que libran una batalla diferente, la batalla de recuperación después de ser heridos de gravedad.
Haga un click en el enlace para ver el video y leer su comentario. De esto, poco vemos en las noticias locales.
Reportaje de Gustavo Sierra

Contra-revolución de Opereta

Miami está de fiesta, debido a que llegaron noticias de que Fidel Castro será operado en estos días de una afección intestinal y todos los exilados están cruzando los dedos esperando que sea la ocasión que tanto desean, que se vaya de este mundo.
En caso de que esto ocurra, Raúl Castro, hermano de Fidel, sería el sucesor indicado y los anti-Castristas están apostando a que las cosas pueden cambiar a favor de ellos.
Nunca se había visto algo semejante, una contrarrevolución hecha con palabras, desde afuera y en el confort del país más avanzado del mundo.
Durante 47 años, desde que Castro llegara al poder y más tarde decidiera que no sería otro Batista, un títere de los EE.UU., una oleada de refugiados, los primeros, poderosos y afluyentes se establecieron con su dinero e influencia en la Florida.
Con el tiempo, los refugiados que se sucedieron tuvieron tintes más políticos y por fin, cualquiera que pudiera flotar hacia este lado buscando una mejor vida. Todos, especialmente los que disponían de intereses fuertes en la isla, con la esperanza de que las cosas cambiarían.
A través de los años, este grupo de patriotas exilados, como se describen a sí mismos, estuvo dedicado fervientemente a la propaganda anticatrista, utilizando sus conexiones con el gobierno de USA y a veces con medios mezcla de terrorismo y guerrilla, como los intentos de hacer volar a Castro por el aire, destrucción de aviones comerciales y otros.
Por último y después del famoso fracaso de la Bahía de Cochinos, un aborto de invasión en el que aún hoy no terminan de apuntarse con el dedo unos a otros, se afianzó la única arma que EE.UU. estaba dispuesto a ofrecerles, un bloqueo total. Así, según las cabezas pensantes, la mala economía y las necesidades impuestas al pueblo cubano, habrían de deteriorar el control que Castro ejercía en su país y, finalmente, todo regresaría a la normalidad soñada por Miami.
Cuando nada de eso se produjo, la única esperanza es la lógica desaparición del odiado enemigo por causas naturales. Parecería que quizás esta vez se les presente la ocasión de ver sus sueños realidad.
Mientras todo eso ocurrió en las últimas cuatro décadas, los contra-revolucionarios, estuvieron a salvo en un paraíso tropical como es la Florida, recibieron una buena educación, muchos se hicieron millonarios, otros, los que llegaron originalmente quintuplicaron su antigua fortuna y, en general, batallaron desde la sala de sus casas, con aire acondicionado, televisión a color y frecuentes paseos por South Beach terminando la noche en Larios con una comida mas o menos y un pasable mojito. Así cualquiera disfruta de una buena contra-revolución. Pero tengan paciencia camaradas en armas, la hora de la repartija se aproxima!