Sunday, November 23, 2008

Gates and the Urge to Surge

By Ray McGovern
November 23, 2008

It may become a biennial ritual. Every two years, if the commander-in-chief (or the commander-in-chief-elect) says he wants to throw more troops into an unwinnable war for no clear reason other than his political advantage, panderer-in-chief Robert Gates will shout “Outstanding!”

Read on.
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2 comments:

knowbuddhau said...

BRAVO! O brother! my Brother, how I love what you write. Only you, Mel Goodman, and few others are seeing through the megaphone-shaped masks, the personas, presented for public viewing like Hallowe'en masks worn year round.

Have NSA feudalists assumed total control of our Commons, abusing the power of myth by using it to power weapons-grade propaganda?

What is the true face of our government? Janus-faced: two faces, one common goal, namely "full-spectrum dominance."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-clemons/scoop-mccain-and-obama-ca_b_145827.html
"A senior Obama campaign official shared with The Washington Note and Huffington Post that In July 2008, the McCain and Obama camps began to work secretly behind the scenes to assemble large rosters of potential personnel for the administration that only one of the candidates would lead....

"This kind of out-of-sight coordination is rare between battling presidential camps ...[End]

Is it? Or the conversion of Our Common Weal into private property in the context of a feudal holy war, "the exchange of allegiance for a grant of land (fief) between two people, usually men, of noble status." [Ency Brit 2008]

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/discuss/4041/#55291
[Obama is] either being, or about to be, run like any other asset by the same fiends who've been jacking us into this Waste Land, and sticking us with the bill, for centuries now." I, knowbuddhau, said that.

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/110708c.html
Ray McGovern has seen presidents be propagandized with "the particular brand of "shock and awe" that can be induced by ostensibly sexy intelligence to color reactions of briefees, including presidents. [He has] seen it happen."

Our mythos shapes the political-economic cosmos in which we enact the theater of life. Acting within the same mythos that intended the feudal Newtonian cosmos that grew the social Darwinian psychos who now confuse the Commons with fiefs won"t get us any nearer the Promised Land.

What are the true intentions of our next president: Change, or full-spectrum dominance? I suspect we'll be offered progressive crumbs from the Table, as Nancy "No Impeachment" Pelosi did, while ensuring no real challenges mount against our feudal lords and ladies.

My fervent hope is that Obama will cast away the vipers dripping "bipartisan" poison in his ears. Or is it too late already?

Mon Nov 24, 10:00:00 AM 2008
Anonymous said...

I suspect there's more afoot in the coordinated effort inside the beltway to keep Robert Gates in power at the top of the Defense Department power heirarchy in the Obama administration - more than simply Gates' personal ego-driven career desires , and more than partisan retrenchment by leftover hawks from the George W. Bush regime - the factors that Robert Parry alludes to.

Gates, a CIA career man before he left Washington for academe at Texas A & M, bridges a gap that goes back to the Carter/Reagan election. Robert Gates carried water for Bill Casey and a right wing faction within the CIA that worked behind the scenes to manipulate the timing of the end of the Iranian hostage crisis in the GOP's favor. He was rewarded for having backed the right horse that electoral season with a series of promotions within the spook service throughout the years of Iran-Contra skullduggery, continuing on into the presidency of George H W Bush (the first real spy known to have been elected US President).

After rotating into the private sector at A & M during the Clinton administration, Gates rotates back to replace Don Rumsfeld when Rummy finally went a bit wobbly on the Bush/Cheney Iraq agenda. Rather than putting a military guy in charge of the Pentagon, George W instead chose a veteran spy. Why?

Well, there was a certain symmetry to it. With the creation and rise of the Department of Homeland Security as the nation's first domestic spook force operating on American home turf - an agency top heavy with military people from NSA and DIA - why not finalize the fusion process (and dramatize the complete purge of CIA civilians resistant to partisan pressure) by putting Mr. Gates in charge over at the Pentagon?

There.

The lines between civilian control of the military and military control of the civilian sphere, the distinction between foreign intelligence gathering and domestic intelligence gathering, the difference between professional independence versus naked partisanship inside the national security establishment, are finally blurred beyond meaningful recognition.

Mission accomplished, as Little George would say.

And in the process, by bringing back a guy who knows where some very old skeletons are closeted, you help keep a lid on any temptation within the ranks of either the institutionalized spy structure, or the professional military command, to possibly blow whistles about black ops improprieties committed in the past - like maybe about 9/11, domestic wiretapping, or other bits of clandestine derring-do that might better be left unmentioned when the new Commander-in-Chief comes to town, if you get my drift.

Bill from Saginaw

Mon Nov 24, 06:45:00 PM 2008

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