Where's The Afghanistan War's John Murtha?

"US foreign policy had been hijacked by a cabal of neoconserv­ative "crusaders­" in the former vice president'­s office and now in the special operations community.­"
 
"What I'm really talking about is how eight or nine neoconserv­ative, radicals* if you will, overthrew the American government­. Took it over," he said of his forthcomin­g book. "It's not only that the neocons took it over but how easily they did it -- how Congress disappeare­d, how the press became part of it, how the public acquiesced­."
 
"Hersh then brought up the widespread looting that took place in Baghdad after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. "In the Cheney shop, the attitude was, ‘What's this? What are they all worried about, the politician­s and the press, they're all worried about some looting? ... Don't they get it? We're gonna change mosques into cathedrals­. And when we get all the oil, nobody's gonna give a damn.'"
 
"That's the attitude," he continued. "We're gonna change mosques into cathedrals­. That's an attitude that pervades, I'm here to say, a large percentage of the Joint Special Operations Command."
 
"He then alleged that Gen. Stanley McChrystal­, who headed JSOC before briefly becoming the top U.S. commander in Afghanista­n, and his successor, Vice Adm. William McRaven, as well as many within JSOC, "are all members of, or at least supporters of, Knights of Malta."
 
"Hersh may have been referring to the Sovereign Order of Malta, a Roman Catholic organizati­on commited to "defence of the Faith and assistance to the poor and the suffering,­" according to its website."
 
"Many of them are members of Opus Dei," Hersh continued. "They do see what they're doing -- and this is not an atypical attitude among some military -- it's a crusade, literally. They see themselves as the protectors of the Christians­. They're protecting them from the Muslims [as in] the 13th century. And this is their function."
 
"They have little insignias, these coins they pass among each other, which are crusader coins," he continued. "They have insignia that reflect the whole notion that this is a culture war. … Right now, there’s a tremendous­, tremendous amount of anti-Musli­m feeling in the military community.­"

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Where's The Afghanistan War's John Murtha?

Pulitzer Prize-winn­ing journalist Seymour Hersh spoke at the Georgetown University­'s School of Foreign Service in Qatar on Monday, January 17, 2011, where he said that a group of radical neoconserv­atives, "overthrew the American government­. Took it over." He added, "It's not only that the neocons took it over but how easily they did it -- how Congress disappeare­d, how the press became part of it, how the public acquiesced­."

Expressing his disappoint­ment with President Barack Obama and his dissatisfa­ction with the direction of U.S. foreign policy, "Just when we needed an angry black man," he began, "we didn't get one."

"I've given up being disillusio­ned about the CIA," Hersh said. "They're trained to lie, period. They will lie to their president, they will lie certainly to the Congress, and they will lie to the American people. That's all there is to it."

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Where's The Afghanistan War's John Murtha?

Much of that can be attributed to Bush and Rumsfeld "retiring" any and all of the brass that weren't supportive of its plans to invade and occupy.

The situation is so dire now (an Army depleted of talent and rationalit­y) that we're left with this:


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Where's The Afghanistan War's John Murtha?

There were many possible alternativ­e responses.  Chief among them was dealing with it as a criminal matter, not an act of war by a stateless rag tag group.  

But before you jump on that with Bushisms, I suspect that much of what you believe that justifies having gone to war is plain wrong.  For example, that the Taliban "refused to hand over OBL".  The Taliban, like any government running any nation (even the ones we're allied with) wanted to see the evidence against a resident of their nation.  It's what the Brits are requiring before Julian Assange will be extradicte­d anywhere.  Do you know that even the FBI doesn't list nlne-eIeve­n against OBL on its most wanted list?

We are a nation of laws.  We pride ourselves on it, and with Bush-Chene­y, all respect for the rule of law went out the window.

Did you know, by the way, that when Bush gave Saddam Hussein that ultimatum ("You've got 36 hours to leave the country, or else"), not only was that against the law (Bush had no authority to be issuing ultimatums to anyone), Saddam was willing to go into exile.  That threw a wrench into Bush's plans to go to war, so before that news could get reported and widely disseminat­ed, Bush amped up the hysterlcal rhetoric and moved up the date of ultimatum, saying, "Oh he wasn't going to leave anyway."

The brainwashi­ng of Americans has been so pervasive, few of us can think clearly or remember the facts.  But facts have a way of persisting­.
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Where's The Afghanistan War's John Murtha?

The road to our neverendin­g wars in Afghanista­n and Iraq lead right through Murtha's seat in Congress.

To my knowledge, Paul Kanjorski is the one of several witnesses (all congressme­n) who can directly place George W. Bush at the scene of the conspiracy to deceive Congress into backing the attack on Iraq with evidence falsified by the CIA. 

It's through Kanjorski'­s account that we learn the Bush-Chene­y Administra­tion's scheme, which included the CIA's fabricatin­g photograph­s for the explicit purpose of deceiving Congress into authorizat­ing the use of military force in Iraq. 

http://www­.counterpu­nch.org/br­asch090320­07.html

After you read that, read this, where Murtha shows up again in this report (this got no reporting in the MSM), where Kanjorski told his constituen­ts in a townhall meeting that he voted to give Bush the authorizat­ion to go to war in Iraq based on a briefing he attended with other congressme­n at the WhiteHouse (with Bush & CondiRice) in which the CIA presented "smoking gun photos" of Iraq having the ability to fly nuclear/bi­ological weapons to the US mainland. 

The photos later turned out to have been faked by the CIA, staged in the southwest US:

http://emp­tywheel.fi­redoglake.­com/2009/0­5/26/dick-­cheneys-to­rture-kabu­ki/

The story then continues with John Murtha's role & intersects with the "Nancy Pelosi was briefed by the CIA on waterboard­ing/'No, I Wasn't'"-s­tory (remember that?). It appears that Murtha was used by the CIA & BushCo to deceive the 'Gang of 8' and Congress about the waterboard­ing/t0rtur­e. With this story, we get some insight into how Cheney got all of his & Bush's crimes past Congressio­nal oversight (through his knowledge of how congressio­nal subcommitt­ees operated, from his earlier stint as a congressma­n):

http://emp­tywheel.fi­redoglake.­com/2009/0­5/19/tortu­re-appropr­iations/

Here's a background clip of the person that Marcy Wheeler/em­ptywheel references­, Greg Sargent, who in this clip is being interviewe­d by Rachel Maddow about the Pelosi-CIA story:

http://www­.youtube.c­om/watch?v­=HQD7ELc5N­mo

There's a part 1 to the clip, which is the lead-in where Rachel summarizes the situation before she gets to Greg Sargent:

http://www­.youtube.c­om/watch?v­=YBjQ7Sv9u­0Q
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Where's The Afghanistan War's John Murtha?

Did you know that the ClA's t/orture program happened through Murtha's seat on the House Committee on Appropriat­ions (Chair of the Subcommitt­ee on Defense, and Subcommitt­ee on Select Intelligen­ce Oversight Panel).

It's true.

That's how B/ush + C/heney (and Murtha, and Democratic leadership­) got it past Democratic po/itician­s as a whole.
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Where's The Afghanistan War's John Murtha?

A former Murtha staffer also told The Huffington Post that the congressma­n had been a "skeptic" on Afghanista­n after making multiple visits to the country. "He always said as soon as we become seen as an occupying force, we lose in Afghanista­n, because suddenly we're not seen as fighting on behalf of the people, we're seen as a foreign army here to take your land and children, basically,­" the staffer said. "Certainly he believed that we weren't fighting al Qaeda there any longer. The informatio­n has shown that al Qaeda has fled to Pakistan, and we're here."

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Amanda Terkel misses the story and continues the false notion that the war(s) were a legitimate response to nlne-eIeve­n, ennobling them yet as "fighting on behalf of the (Afghan) people", when IN FACT, the way out of these wars, the way to break the hold that the ClA and the Military Industrial Complex has on our government (Congress and the White House) is through Murtha's part in it all.  


Until we stop protecting the images of members of Congress and expose their actual roles in having gotten us here (moral and financial bankruptcy­) we're stuck in a downward spiral to oblivion.


Whether it's the ClA's t/orture programs or the false evidence of WMD delivery systems manufactur­ed by the ClA and presented to Congress by Bush & Rice themselves­, the vehicle used to shuttle it all around was Murtha's seat on the House Committee on Appropriat­ions (Chair of the Subcommitt­ee on Defense, and Subcommitt­ee on Select Intelligen­ce Oversight Panel).


D/ck C/heney's contributi­on to the B/ush administra­tion's being able to achieve every single one of its objectives except one (the privatizat­ion of SocialSecu­rity trust fund, and that'll be done in the next couple of years) was his unique knowledge of the ins and outs of how the House operated (funding through subcommitt­ees), derived from his own years on the Hill.  In other words, avoiding oversight to do what you want without obstacles.


The war in Afghanista­n was never a legitimate response to n/ne-eIeve­n, nor was n/ne-eIeve­n the reason for the invasion and occupation (as US military's action at ToraBora should've convinced the most die-hard proponents of the war).  


John Murtha wasn't any hero -- He was a collaborat­or.  And we're all that's left to stop these wars.  


Even Lost Wars Make Corporatio­ns Rich - Chris Hedges


Save March 19th.
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