I’m sure our oligarchs are thrilled with the Tiger Woods scandal. There’s nothing like a trivial headline grabber to keep the public diverted while the Beltway’s media mill pump out disinformation as fast as it can.
The latest shipment to be slipped by the public in the media brouhaha over Woods is Obama’s rationales for escalating the war in Afghanistan.
In his West Point speech, Obama tried to draw a distinction between Afghanistan and Vietnam by contending that we’d fought Vietnam all by ourselves. Paul Rosenberg points out that this is a bold-faced lie. Our allies in Vietnam included:
320,000 troops from South Korea
60,000 troops from Australia
10,450 troops from the Philippines
3,890 troops from New Zealand
If my math is correct, this is a lot more than the number of “allied” troops currently in Afghanistan.
Then Obama claimed that the Taliban refused to hand over Osama in the wake of 9/11. Robert Lopez shines some light on that one. The Taliban offered to hand over Bin Laden three times. The first two times, they asked for evidence of his involvement in 9/11. The Bushites refused, citing national security. The third time, the Taliban said they would forget about the evidence if Osama could be tried in a third country. Once again, we said no because we just had to have a war.
Fortunately, the public was too busy trying to sort our Tiger’s mistresses to notice.
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5 comments:
Perhaps we should offer a time-liene corection, historically speaking.
"Back then", Woods was just emerging as an African-American golfing anomaly. We were more concerned with getting our own copy of "My Pet Goat", how many vacations W could take per year, how often he went golfing or fell from his bicycle, whether or not we would privatize social security and who perhaps Condi Rice was sleeping with (maybe).
The point is, perhaps, that we are a foolish and easily distracted bunch, and while we are eating the grapes of mirth, the dogs of war are eating our lunch.
Sorry: time "line".
A bigger (and sadder) irony this time around may be that the Afghan travesty (the Pentagon is not going to do what Obama implies)is being obfuscated by the destruction of the public option on health care and the revived and resuscitated annual debate over the "war on Christmas".
And I had no intention of being anonymous last time.
God knows, we're easily distracted. One wonders how much misery it will take to wake us up.
Armageddon?
S
One thing's f'r damned sure. However "....much misery it will take...." is exactly how much there's gonna be....and just a little bit more, too, so there's no mistake or lapsing back into semi-CONsciousness.
Of course, your tormentors are determined to keep your enforced "company" in theirs. So you're really going to have to let-go of all that false comfort and crippling CONvenience....the "ties" that bind you to them.
At least that leaves it entirely up-to-you, though....for a change.
Hokahey!
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