Perhaps this video shows the tip of the iceberg

[Catherine5]

While many disparage the notion of the Cold War as having been contrived, but unquestioningly accept its replacement in the public psyche, the so-called "war on terror", I feel just the opposite. The Cold War was very real, but all this hot war on perceived threats to North America in the Middle East as far as Pakistan and Afghanistan is completely off-"Base" - a little pun!

You'll understand that allusion if you watch this 10-minute film. Despite being by the BBC, little attention predictably has been accorded it in the U.S. Perhaps due to the lack of curiosity and questioning, almost amounting to denial, of anything but the official American government party line regarding terrorism.

There is a debate beneath the video with varying quality of comments, but perhaps adding perspectives, just in case anyone cares to pursue the topic. [One commenter even asserts that South America was a target, though I find that not credible.
Whereas, back to the Cold War paradigm, I see MP moves on Church properties as a serious and of course proven threat.....]

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread489502/pg1

[joasia]

Interesting. I've know this for a while. Did you notice the images, in the smoke, when they were bombing the mountains? Check out time line 6:48 (front face image). And most interesting...time 6:51, left profile. There is a distinct image of a nose and you can see a turban-like form and moustache, beard and large ear lobe.

I heard that the term Al Queda means something like toilet.

[Pravoslavnik]

For some reason I am unable to download and play videos on my computer. Probably just as well, but I do have a comment about the initial post regarding the current American "war on terror" in comparison with the historical realities of the "Cold War." I agree with Catherine on this subject.

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 One of the most astonishing things about the past eight years of American history (since the 9/11 Al Qaeda attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon) is how little open discussion and analysis has occurred in the American media about the origin and objectives of the 2001 Al Qaeda attacks on the U.S.  Rather than carefully analyzing and deliberating about the nature of the problem (Al Qaeda), and rational responses, the Bush administration very consciously and deliberately used the 9/11 attacks as a [i]pretext [/i]for implementing geopolitical strategies that were formulated long before Bush ever took office.  The public was also very consciously manipulated and deceived in this regard, as Dick Cheney, himself, has recently admitted.

 As the sordid historical details of the Bush White House have become increasingly available to the public, it is clear that the "Vulcans" group in the administration of George W. Bush --including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Condoleeza Rice-- had a [i]pre-existing[/i] goal of invading Iraq and overthrowing Saddam Hussein [i]prior to 2000[/i].  There were even published position papers and statements issuing from the Vulcans in the 1990s about the "Wolfowitz Doctrine"-- including the concept of pre-emptive warfare to overthrow the Baathists in Iraq.  According to former U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, Donald Rumsfeld was talking about some pretext for invading Iraq in Bush Cabinet meetings s early as January of 2001-- [i]eight months prior to the 9/11 attacks[/i].

    What happened, in effect, is that the U.S. was drawn by the Vulcans (Wolfowitz, Cheney, and Rumsfeld) into a worldwide jihad initiated by Osama Bin laden on 9/11.  But this was not done primarily as a response to Al Qaeda.  Rather, the Bush administration consciously used the 9/11 attacks as a false pretext for implementing the Wolfowitz Doctrine and invading Iraq as part of the so-called "war on terror."   The evidence shows fairly clearly at this point-- including the findings of the 9/11 Commission-- that Al Qaeda had no military or diplomatic linkage to the Baathists in Iraq prior to 2003.

     Of course, after the collapse of the Baathist regime-- and Donald Rumsfeld's disastrous insistence on total "de-Baathification" of the provisional Iraqi government, Al Qaeda did begin to establish an active presence in Iraq-- along with the various insurrectionist groups indigenous to the country.  The Bush-Cheney rhetoric then shifted to the notion that "it is better to fight the terrorists over there (Iraq) than here," or some such gibberish used retroactively to justify the invasion of Iraq as part of a global "war on terror."  Precisely what Osama Bin laden wanted-- active participation of the U.S. in a global jihad!  The Bush administration was also exquisitely cautious about never using the term "insurrection" or "civil war" to describe what was actually occurring in Iraq after 2003 in response to the power vacuum created by the U.S. invasion.

[Catherine5]

Here's a wonderful article with which I strongly agree regarding Iraq. It's from Middle East specialist, Juan Cole's Informed Comment column, June 22, 2008.
I edited out superflous details, though it may be still too much detail for some readers here. But if you can get through this, I think it reflects the picture of how the US government can get away with terrible things due to the abysmal lack of interest by the public in any foreign affair. Now that there is not enmity with the Soviet Union, suddenly a very unpleasant face of this country shows itself. Forgive if this is too long or bothersome, but I am certain all the same applies to the current war against Afghanistan as well, and shows the reality of how dark American officials are today now that there is no Cold War in operation. At that time, they were standing up against Communism where Europeans were weak-kneed and cowardly.

But in recent decades, demons have the upper hand in directing Western nations' leaders, policymakers and much of the public which lets them get away with these grievous deceptions. I could tell much of this myself by intuition, but this lays out a good case based on solid facts and figures. So thorough coverage that one commentator sarcastically suggested it was too much for the average American of today. Instead just repeat a wrong but simple fact 100 times to brainwash people as it is about the most they can absorb.
It's true: TV watching and today's poor education, and lack of curiosity about the other side of the world has dulled down the average mind tragically.

The first comment I moved up from a lower position, as it relates to Pravoslavnik's comment about the machinations of Bush Admin. officials like Rumsfeld.

"The Real State of Iraq

American television loves natural disasters. The Burmese cyclones that may have carried off as many as 200,000 people offered the cameras high drama.

The floods in Wisconsin, Iowa and Missouri along the Mississippi River, which have wiped out thousands of homes, have been carefully detailed hour by hour.

But American television is little interested in the massive disaster blithely visited upon Iraq by Washington.

By now, summer of 2008, excess deaths from violence in Iraq since March of 2003 must be at least a million... Some 310,000 of those were probably killed by US troops or by the US Air Force, with the bulk dying in bombing raids by US fighter jets and helicopter gunships on densely populated city and town quarters.

In absolute numbers, that would be like bombing to death everyone in Pittsburgh, Pa. Or Cincinnati, Oh.

Only, the US is 11 times more populous than Iraq, so 310,000 Iraqi corpses would equal 3.4 million dead Americans. So proportionally it would be like firebombing to death everyone in Chicago.

The one million number includes not just war-related deaths but all killings beyond what you would have expected from the 2000-2002 baseline. That is, if tribal feuds got out of hand and killed a lot of people because the Baath police were demobilized or disarmed and so no longer intervened, those deaths go into the mix. All the Sunnis killed in the north of Hilla Province (the 'triangle of death') when Shiite clans displaced from the area by Saddam came back up to reclaim their farms would be included. The kidnap victims killed when the ransom did not arrive in time would be included. And, of course, the sectarian, ethnic and militia violence, even if Iraqi on Iraqi, would count. And it hasn't been just hot spots like Baghdad, Basra, Mosul and Kirkuk. The rate of excess violent death has been pretty standard across Arab Iraq.

As for the Iraqis killed by Americans, like the 24 civilians in Haditha, the survivors are not going to be pro-American any time soon. The US can always find politicians to come out and say nice things on a visit to the Rose Garden. But the people. I don't think the people are saying nice things... behind our backs.

The wars of Iraq-- the Iran-Iraq War, the repressions of the Kurds and the Shiites, the Gulf War, and the American Calamity, may have left behind as many as 3 million widows. Having lost their family's breadwinner, many are destitute.

It should be remembered that independent observers have busted the Pentagon for grossly under-reporting attacks and casualties. If someone shows up dead and they aren't sure exactly why, it isn't counted as political violence, just as an ordinary murder. Attacks per day are measured by whether the mortar shell scratches any US equipment when it explodes. If not, it didn't happen. McClatchy estimated a year and a half ago that attacks were being underestimated by a factor of 10.

By the way, isn't is a little odd that the death rate fell in the month of the Great Mosul Campaign? I conclude that either it can't have been much of a campaign or someone is cooking the death statistics.

In these situations, typically 3 persons are wounded for every one killed. In Iraq, I suspect it is higher, because US bombings and guerrilla bombings are such a big part of the violence. But let us be conservative.

That would mean 3 million Iraqi wounded in the past five years.

Equivalent to 33 million Americans wounded, that is, the entire state of California crippled or in bandages.

As for the displaced (i.e. homeless), they amount to a startling 5 million persons. There were 1.8 million internally displaced in January of 2007, and by December it had risen to 2.4 million. There are 2.3 million externally displaced, 2 million of them in Jordan and Syria.

In fact 5 million displaced persons is almost the entire population of nearby countries such as Jordan or Israel! 5 million is about the number of Jews in Israel, for instance. In absolute numbers, that is how many Iraqis are living in some other country or some other province, having lost their homes.

Some 1.4 million Iraqis are stuck in Syria, many becoming increasingly penniless. Another 500,000 to 800,000 have been displaced to Jordan, which has now closed its borders to them...

The US has done diddly squat for these millions of people upon whom it has visited a world class catastrophe, neither allotting meaningful amounts of aid nor admitting more than a token number as immigrants. Sweden has admitted 40,000 Iraqis, nearly 4 times what the US even plans to.
40% of Iraq's middle class is outside the country.

Very few of the refugees abroad have returned, only a few thousand. Only 12% of the returnees say they are going back because they think it is safe now, according to UN border polls.

The refusal of the refugees to return makes me suspicious of the good news stories about security improvements in Iraq.

5 million displaced Iraqis would be like 55 million displaced Americans, or the equivalent of everybody in California and New York combined

American commentators peculiarly lack a social dimension to their analyses. So if PM Nuri al-Maliki sends some troops up to Mosul and the guerrillas there lie low for a while, that is "progress" and "good news." Well, maybe it is, I don't know.

I do know that the apocalypse that the United States has unleashed upon Iraq is among the greatest catastrophes to befall any country in the past 50 years. It is a much worse disaster over time than the Burmese cyclone or the Mississippi floods.

You won't see it on television very much these days.

Even if it gets better, it won't get better very fast for all those millions wounded, widowed, orphaned, and displaced; as for the 1 million dead. Maybe it will get better sooner for the politicians in the Green Zone. They are the sort of people that the think tanks in Washington seem to care about.

Posted by Juan Cole @ 6/22/2008 "

COMMENTS:

"I found a photo of Donald Rumsfeld surveying a mass grave scene. The US had supplied Hussein with weapons and WMD precursors and technology, in which Rumsfeld had a direct role, knew about Saddam Hussein’s Kurdish genocide as it was happening, and continued to consider Hussein as an ally. There is a reasonable possibility that Rumsfeld was surveying the gravesite of people whose deaths he enabled."

At 6:27 AM, Anonymous said...
"Well said. I said from the outset that they just want to turn Iraq into a big parking lot for their oil tankers and at this rate, that is exactly what they are achieving. Where is the outrage of the fabled "world community" when you need it? If Saddam had presided over a disaster of this magnitude, even I would have been pro-war!!!"

At 6:43 AM, said...
"The mad, murdering mayhem visited upon Iraq by the NeoCons, Cheney and Bush the Clueless will come to light one day, and it will be the shame of us all.

The complicity of the media in keeping this atrocity under wraps will also come to light - but by then it will be too late for the hundreds of thousands of civilian dead and the millions of displaced.

What we will be able to savor is the revenge visited upon us by those who have had their family members tortured, murdered and obliterated by the U.S. If the goal of this foray into the Middle East really was to spread freedom and democracy, in a "fight against terrorism," then it can only be judged a total failure: we have created innumerable terrorists, and we have not spread freedom nor democracy."

At 7:09 AM, said...
There is more:
A million widows and five million orphans with no support.
The most corrupt system in the world.
The highest unemployment rate in the world at 60%, even higher than the Gazan, despite enormous human and natural resources.

But the American people want to believe the [lies] they are being fed. It maintains the illusion that they are civilised or even caring....

[Pravoslavnik]

Catherine,

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  Sad but true.  There has always been a certain "isolationist" streak in America, but most Americans today are abysmally ignorant of international affairs, and even of basic world geography.  This myopia is shared by our national media.  Very few young Americans even study foreign languages now.  As an example, my eldest sister studied Russian in public high school 40 years ago-- and even studied abroad in Russia after the "detante" between America and the Soviet Union in the 1970s.  Nowadays, I'm told that Russian is not even offered as an elective in the public school curriculum in our city.

[Catherine5]

Here's a new video posted in late December which rapidly sums up the situation regarding the war in Iraq, echoing some of Pravoslavnik's ideas.
This veteran soldier presents his opinions very forcefully and it's well done.
If Prav. got his video viewing ability back, he might want to watch this.

After all, if we all understand better the reality of the frankly demonic manipulation of US foreign policy and military adventurism, we can
beseech the Queen of Heaven to intercede to bring about a stop to all these wars inspired by the devil to destroy so many people's lives around the world.
Every day a new excuse comes up, now it's Yemen based on - to put it kindly - the flimsiest reasonings. The supposed Western Christmas Day bomber struck me as a fake right from the start. Just a dramatic incident, timed for maximum viewers' attention on the otherwise slack holiday news-wise, to scare the U.S. into surrendering further to oppressive measures against Americans and even more, to innocent foreigners.

Hope you can watch this, Prav, and anyone else who cares about these topics!

In case the link should not work perfectly, for easier location, the title is "US Soldiers Waking Up".

4 fairly powerful minutes; wish ones could be done to educate the public on Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran, as well about Palestinians and Israelis.

[Catherine5]

Like I implied by the title of this thread, the terrible wrongdoings of the U.S. to Iraq and its citizens have barely started to be unearthed and revealed to the world.
Finally an anonymous website got word out of the type of thing that has been happening over there.
Here is the mainstream media article describing the video released on that site.

It's why I say that this invasion of Iraq was initiated and pushed by demonic forces. Various types of devils control not just US decision makers but are now clearly shown to dominate some average American soldiers as well. Not all, but far too many. Similar problems are finally seeing the light of day in the US invasion of Afghanistan. I could see this from the start, but I'm glad that irrefutable evidence is emerging more.
The U.S. military services used to be a bastion of upright, patriotic and anti-Communist forces with conservative types of people. At least compared with the hippies of those days.
Overnight, they changed to a playpen for devils, the sad truth.

Though it's not happy news for Bright Week, we need to be aware of some of the truths out there in the world and so to pray forcefully to - in my opinion - get the US out of countries where it does not belong and is thoroughly hated, though the average media will never let on about a word of that. It takes independent videos like the first one in this thread and the one discussed here to wake up consciences.
The other problem is that Americans and Westerners have become so TV/Visual- oriented that they rarely take time to read through in-depth analyses. With almost a mass Attention Deficit Disorder, a quick picture is all they want to size up a situation. IF even that interested.

Fortunately now YouTube has made it possible to spread some realities in a way that consumers can readily grasp. For example if one checks out "USS Liberty" there are powerful though short documentaries which make very clear what really goes on behind the scenes...

By MARK THOMPSON / WASHINGTON

"The Pentagon has for years allowed the world an occasional peek through its keyhole as U.S. aircraft generated video while bombing their targets. But the military was always able to cover that keyhole when it wanted, allowing outsiders a look only when public viewing was deemed to serve the Pentagon's interests. All of that apparently changed on Monday, after at least one Pentagon insider leaked a bloody video that appeared to show the killing of two reporters by a U.S. helicopter gunship in Baghdad to WikiLeaks, an independent website.

"It's hard to recall now, in our video-saturated world, the dramatic impact of that first grainy videotape of real combat operations. U.S. Army General Norman Schwarzkopf wowed the world 19 years ago during the first Gulf War, when he swapped his maps and pointer for a large video screen. "I'm now going to show you a picture of the luckiest man in Iraq," the [ almost demonically inhuman - if you ask me ] general said as the screen showed the fellow [any old civilian who happened to be in the wrong place when the home audience needed to be impressed with American fireworks ] crossing a bridge moments before a U.S. bomb obliterated it. The effect was instantaneous, putting anyone with a TV inside the cockpit to witness death and destruction up close.

"But the tables were turned on Monday, when WikiLeaks posted a video that showed the U.S. military in a less favorable light. WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange said his organization got the videotape of "the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people" and verified its authenticity from "a number of military whistle-blowers"; the videotape was ultimately confirmed as genuine by U.S. military officials. There was as much irritation inside the Pentagon at whoever leaked the videotape as there was for WikiLeaks' posting of it.

"The video showed U.S. firepower on brutal display, this time from the gunsight of an AH-64 Apache helicopter, as the crew converses casually about those they are about to kill. It appears to show the pilots mistakenly identifying a man carrying a camera - 22-year-old Reuters photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen, along with his driver, Saeed Chmagh, 40 - as armed insurgents, and then blowing them and 10 others to smithereens in July 2007.

"The crews of the two Apaches can be heard speaking about a handful of men, saying some are armed with AK-47s and one with a rocket-propelled-grenade launcher, although it's not clear from the video as released that such weapons are being carried. For alleged insurgents carrying weapons while a U.S. attack helicopter circles overhead, the men seem remarkably nonchalant, strolling unhurriedly along a Baghdad street. After getting command approval to attack the armed group, an initial volley from an Apache's 30mm cannon blows some of them apart. An Apache crewman says, "Ha, ha, ha - I hit 'em." Another comment: "Look at those dead ----[deleted the semi-swear word. Impression one gets is that to this American military guy that every non-American is a non-human]." When a wounded man is seen crawling for cover, a [shockingly bloodthirsty] Apache crew member hopes he [the wounded man] reaches for a gun to justify shooting [the wounded Iraqi] again. "All you got to do is pick up a weapon," he says.

"Suddenly a van appears and Iraqis hop out to help the man. The helicopter crew seeks and receives permission to fire on the vehicle. In the ensuing barrage, two children inside the vehicle are apparently wounded, and their father, a Good Samaritan who had stopped to take the wounded man to the hospital, is allegedly killed. When U.S. ground troops arrive later, they discover the youngsters. "Well, it's their fault," a member of the Apache crew says, "for bringing kids into a battle." Initially, the U.S. said the dead were all insurgents and had been killed in battle, but the video as released seems to offer no evidence of hostile intent by those on the ground.

"While it may be true that a camera never lies, it certainly can be misleading. The video is harrowing, and a viewer armed with nothing more than 20/20 hindsight can feel the knot in his stomach tighten as death draws near on Baghdad's outskirts. But viewed in isolation, lacking any insight into what else was going on in that neighborhood on that particular day, what may have seemed at the time to be a justified military action looks wanton and possibly against the rules of war.

"Several hours after WikiLeaks posted the video, the Pentagon fired back with large pieces of its own 2007 investigations into the attack. It concluded that the Reuters employees had joined up with several armed insurgents on a day that had been filled with attacks on U.S. troops in the vicinity. One knelt to take a photograph, without wearing any vest or other apparel indicating he was a reporter. From the Apache, the camera was mistaken for an RPG launcher. The Apache crews had "neither reason nor probability to assume that neutral media personnel were embedded with enemy forces," a probe concluded.
Reuters, in a statement, didn't criticize the Pentagon, instead saying that its employees' deaths "were tragic and emblematic of the extreme dangers that exist in covering war zones." But Assange said the attack was unjustified. "If those killings were lawful under the rules of engagement," he told reporters at the National Press Club in Washington, "then the rules of engagement are wrong."

"WikiLeaks is a nonprofit organization that went online in 2006. Since then, it has irritated governments and companies around the world by posting information on its website; a 2008 U.S. Army report warned that it could pose a threat to national security. WikiLeaks has no official headquarters and has had its information posted on a Swedish server that practices so-called bulletproof hosting to protect its sources. It generates the bulk of its $600,000 annual budget from contributions by individuals, human-rights groups, assorted other nongovernmental watchdogs and press organizations.

"After decrypting the Apache video, WikiLeaks posted it on Collateral Murder, a site whose name indicates its assessment of the attack. U.S. military personnel, speaking privately, have a different view. "Sounds like propaganda to me," a Central Command official said. Unfortunately, propaganda can also turn out to be true."