r3vliberty

Thanks for letting everyone know on your way out the door, Ike.
Sure would have helped if you had actually tried to do something about it then, since it manifested itself long before your days in office.

Anne Flaherty from AP News writes:

Members of Congress have as much as $196 million collectively invested in companies doing business with the Defense Department, earning millions since the onset of the Iraq war, according to a study by a nonpartisan research group.

The review of lawmakers’ 2006 financial disclosure statements, by the Washington-based Center for Responsive Politics, suggests that members’ holdings could pose a conflict of interest as they decide the fate of Iraq war spending. Several members earning money from these contractors have plum committee or leadership assignments, including Democratic Sen. John Kerry, independent Sen. Joseph Lieberman and House Republican Whip Roy Blunt.

The study found that more Republicans than Democrats hold stock in defense companies, but that the Democrats who are invested had significantly more money at stake. In 2006, for example, Democrats held at least $3.7 million in military-related investments, compared to Republican investments of $577,500.

Overall, 151 members hold investments worth $78.7 million to $195.5 million in companies that receive defense contracts that are worth at least $5 million. These investments earned them anywhere between $15.8 million and $62 million between 2004 and 2006, the center concludes.

It is unclear how many members still hold these investments and exactly how much money has been made. Disclosure reports for 2007 aren’t due until this May. Also, members are required to report only a general range of their holdings.

Larry Chin, of Online Journal, flaunts the hollow facade of the neoliberal elite cadre and their complete dependency on the millisecond flashes of long-term memory of their audience.

Neoliberal elite Zbigniew Brzezinski, one of the leading architects of the “war on terrorism” across the Middle East and the Eurasian subcontinent (and whose book The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives laid the groundwork for 9/11) has adopted a politically expedient wolf-in-sheep’s clothing role.

His much-publicized criticisms of Bush-Cheney’s “mismanagement” of Iraq (whose latest piece, The Smart Way Out, serves as a primer on the current neoliberal war policy) has garnered raves from those who are misguided or ignorant enough to believe that Brzezinski is, in any way, “antiwar.”

Are you feeling up to a Strangelovian wet dream?

The disaster unfolding in Washington is like nothing the earth has ever seen. The highest form of government ever produced by man is putting the final stages of planning on freedom’s demise, and yet the freest people in the history of the world believe that they are powerless to change anything, as they watch excitedly from the sidelines, screaming patriotic hymns to Clinton and McCain. The planners and their stooges ultimately believe in their own ability to carry forward the grand “success” stories of Iraq and Afghanistan into the rest of the Muslim world. The illusion that they can destroy select areas of the rest of the world without destroying us, helps to calm the delirious worry-free psyches of an immoral society, ready to kill the world to save their own sorry asses.

Juan Cole has an informative collection of translations that explain the fallout of the resulting mutiny in Basra of the Puppet Regimes inept matchstick men. I find it hard to believe that this wasn’t tucked away in the back of his mind somewhere before he decidifieded to embark on his first reign of terror on his own people.

The induction of Badr Corps fighters (the paramilitary of ISCI) and those of the Da’wa Party into security positions came in the wake of the firing of thousands of officers and troops who had refused to obey orders to fire on the Mahdi Army militiamen in Baghdad and the southern provinces. They were accused of mutiny.

One of the stories he notes, from McClatchy, deals with the coinciding Sadr City airstrikes and quotes one Sadrist as saying;

“We realized what kind of government we have: They are like foxes,” Abu Amir said. “The Americans are our enemies, not our friends. Maliki is an agent of the Americans. “

Not to worry though… the beacon of journalistik integrity has got the story covered.

BAGHDAD — Iraqi security forces fanned out into the suburbs and ports of Basra on Wednesday, as life in that southern city slowly began to return to normal, with government offices reopening and residents venturing more confidently into the streets.

Witnesses said that Iraqi forces now controlled central Basra and its northern border, and that they had begun moving into militia strongholds north of the city.

But sporadic violence continued three days after the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr ordered his Mahdi Army to stop its armed resistance to the American-supported Iraqi assault, and demanded concessions from the government in return.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled broadcast.