Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

Rumsfield is asking for even more billions for his wars at a recent speech to the house armed services committee (“Repeatedly, committee members questioned whether the administration was asking for enough money and suggested additions, citing specific equipment manufactured in the home states of many committee members.”). Come on, it's not hard to see how this game is going!

One of the scary things though is that anyone who actually points out “hey — something's not right here” is immediately fired. Remember all the 9/11 whistle blowers? Another good example is Beth Osborne, who was hired in 1992 (by Dick Cheney) to do a report on the civilian casualties in the first Gulf War. Because her report was “too honest”, she was fired, her report disappeared, and they re-published her report with dramatically lowered numbers.

We had a scary “what if” talk here last night about North Korea. Buchanan debunks the Kim-as-madman theory, and again points out,

Buchanan goes on to explain how Kim is winning, and this current policy by the US will erode US credibility internationally… But what if Bush plays it the other way? He's either got to surrender to North Korea's demands and admit that he's a liar and that the nation acts in a cowardly fashion, or he's got to stop the nuclear buildup. Could the following happen in six months?

1. The US makes an aggressive move on North Korea.
2. Los Angeles is wiped off the map by a nuclear attack, killing millions immediately and millions more over the next couple of months.
3. US launches an immediate nuclear retaliation.
4. China responds with its own nuclear attack on the US.
5. Goodbye world.

And don't forget Afghanistan. Yeah, we bombed the hell out of them for a while, but since then the country has collapsed back into chaos, fundamentalists are seizing power again, and they're successfully forcing US troops to retreat. al Qaeda is said to now have a dirty nuke that they're set to unleash on America within weeks.

Did anyone watch Colin Powell's ridiculous UN speech? You've got to love that the mainstream media has dubbed the “evidence” as “damning”. What evidence? At best it's circumstantial. Let's take a quick look at some of his facts:

• The UK intelligence dossier on Iraq. While presented as up to the minute secret intelligence, it's in fact a bunch of plagiarism! They just stole some newspaper articles and college papers (literally copied them — even typographical errors were included), and then made up changes to make the case more damning.
• The audio tapes (my next few points also summarize from that link). A couple of unauthenticated low-grade tapes that are brief out-of-context snippets are far from evidence, especially from a country that has numerous times fabricated evidence (even in the first Gulf War evidence was fabricated, and Saddam impersonators were hired to make fake propaganda broadcasts, and so on…).
• The satellite pictures. Have you looked at them? A bunch of blurry undated pictures have no meaning at all… Especially given that the inspectors said that the site was not the same as shown in the pictures, how do we know these aren't ten year old photos?
• Mobile manufacturing units. The only “evidence” that they have is some claims by “defectors”, and a bunch of “artists impressions”. That's not evidence. I'm sure that there are a lot of people who would tell you nasty lies about me, and drawing a picture of it doesn't make it true…
• al Qaeda links to Iraq, including training camps in the north. Fact: if the US knew where the camp was, they'd eliminate it. Even the Kurds have said the claim is ludicrous.

Well, I could go on and on and give you endless links on how the case for war is circumstantial at best, and more likely largely fraudulent. But the fact is that at this point the US has painted itself into a corner. To not now destroy Iraq, and to not follow it up by launching war in North Korea, will prove to the world things that the US can't afford to have proven.

Time for some good old fashioned killing!