'CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY' - In Wide Release October 2nd /// "It's a crime story. But it's also a war story about class warfare. And a vampire movie, with the upper 1 percent feeding off the rest of us. And, of course, it's also a love story. Only it's about an abusive relationship. /// "It's not about an individual, like Roger Smith, or a corporation, or even an issue, like health care. This is the big enchilada. This is about the thing that dominates all our lives — the economy. I made this movie as if it was going to be the last movie I was allowed to make. /// "It's a comedy." — Michael Moore [ctrl-click to launch movie trailer]. Caption & Image Credit: mmflint
Moore Gaining More Through "Capitalism"
As much as Michael Moore hates capitalism (you know - Product, Price, Place, and Promotion), he sure keeps going back to the well to churn out more product which he can sell to his loyal, fearful, and hateful hoards.
In his latest project titled "Capitalism: A Love Story", Michael leaves no doubt how much he loves the money he makes by never straying from his basic formula. A Documentary style, smattered with dubious "FACTS" and a confrontation from Michael Moore, himself, the true love story of this latest (or any, for that matter) effort.
With Michael Moore, he is not happy unless he has a villain(s) upon which to heap disgust and insult as he sets himself up as the showman arbiter of a proper social justice. Politically, socialism is always the answer for Moore as he drags in the capitalist cash from his little, yet very profitable film enterprise!
U.S. director Michael Moore (L) and his wife Kathleen Glynn pose for photographers on the red carpet at the 66th Venice Film Festival September 6, 2009 [ctrl-click to launch movie trailer]. Image Credit: Tony Gentile
This excerpted and edited from Reuters -
Michael Moore's "Capitalism" economical with facts By Deborah Young - Mon Sep 7, 2009 8:22pm EDT
Simplifications are Moore's stock-in-trade, and his documentaries are not known for their impeccable research and objectivity. But here his talent is evident in creating two hours of engrossing cinema by contrasting a fast-moving montage of 50s archive images extolling free enterprise with the economic disaster of the present. Given the desperate state of the world economy, this provocative film should find attentive audiences along with many angry detractors who will give it free publicity.
As in his previous films, Moore is himself the chief character, offscreen narrator and investigator. Wearing his inseparable baseball cap and T-shirt, he pretends wide-eyed surprise as his interview subjects recount personal dramas related to America's economic meltdown. These are genuinely moving stories: a couple whose farm is in foreclosure, a family that discovers the father's company has taken out a lucrative insurance policy and earned $5 million on his premature death, tearful workers whose factory is suddenly shut down, commercial airline pilots so underpaid they live on food stamps.
Moore has assembled a collection of nearly unbelievable horror stories to illustrate why capitalism and democracy do not go hand in hand. ---- The second half of the film is even more chilling in suggesting, through interviews with a number of worried members of Congress, that the country's $700 billion bailout was legalized bank robbery, a "financial coup d'etat" run through Congress just before elections and engineered principally by Goldman Sachs and Henry Paulson.Though it blames all political parties, including the Democrats, for caving in with the bailout, the film is careful to spare President Barack Obama, who remains a symbol of hope for justice. His support for the workers who stage a sit-in at their factory is paralleled to Franklin D. Roosevelt's call for a new bill of rights -- never implemented -- guaranteeing universal health care. Reference Here>>
Over the next few weeks to months, we will see how much stomach our movie-going society has for Socialism as we discuss the Public Option and Triggers when the Obama Administration and our Democrat Party led Congress tries to shove socialized universal health care down our collective tax-payer throats with impossible promises and 51 Senator "Yes" vote reconciliations.
As far as Michael Moore's "Capitalism: A Love Story" ... the Paramount Vantage/Overture project opens in limited release on September 23 in New York and Los Angeles. With any luck, due to political overload caused by health care and other Obama Administration and Democrat Party leadership agendas, the movie will go straight to DVD/Blu-ray after the first week due to lack of interest!
Retrospective on Michael Moore by Cox & Forkum: "Blowing Smoke"
Barack Obama - President Obama asks supporters to declare their support for his three core principles for health care reform, and to share their personal stories to help build support for the reforms that are so desperately needed. [ctrl-click to launch video] Learn more at http://my.barackobama.com/healthcare
"Madoffing America" - The Marketing Of ObamaCare
The atmosphere here in America is laden heavy with the feel of Caveat Emptor ... let the buyer beware.
We are being told almost daily, that the Government needs to get what the Obama Administration wants to get done in terms of (name program here) legislation immediately, otherwise (name imperative here) will befall all of us and people are suffering.
Further, the Obama Administration is responding to the information that is leaking out about some programs they are fighting for with plastered over non-truths in order to be able to give the patina of cover for the Congress as they go back to their districts during the summer recess.
Linda Douglass - In this video, Linda Douglass, the communications director for the White Houses Health Reform Office, addresses a story that makes it look like the President intends to eliminate private coverage, when the reality couldn't be further from the truth. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0XCl6OHgiM
The Obama healthcare agenda, ObamaCare, is rife with misrepresentations and lies that are designed to have people believe that what this Administration is proposing is not a single payer, a one-size fits all healhcare system, that will push out and eliminate free market solutions that exist today.
Just like Bernie Madoff, who induced investors to give his company money with promises of unbelievable returns, the Obama Administration, with the help of the Democrat Political Party leadership in Congress, are promising something they can not, and do not intend to deliver.
The principles, as outlined on the wbsite - http://my.barackobama.com/healthcare - claims the following so that we citizens can feel comfortable about the proposed Government take-over of one-sixth of our economy - the healthcare system.
Example:
The Principles
President Obama has announced three bedrock requirements for real health insurance reform:
* Reduce Costs — Rising health care costs are crushing the budgets of governments, businesses, individuals and families and they must be brought under control
* Guarantee Choice — Every American must have the freedom to choose their plan and doctor – including the choice of a public insurance option
* Ensure Quality Care for All — All Americans must have quality and affordable health care
All of the above principles are not only untrue ... they are impossible promises to deliver given the text of H.R 3200, America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 (currently 1,018 pages) passed through the House Energy and Commerce Committee on a 31-28 vote last Friday.
Obama to Jane Sturm: Hey, take a pill - Jane asks the President if her 100 year old mother (now 105) would have gotten a pacemaker under his plan. Well now that's a tough one ... that costs a lot and maybe we will have to say, just take a pill. Priceless. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-dQfb8WQvo
This excerpted and edited from the Charlotte Conservative Examiner and About.com -
Obamacare: death and taxes Hailey Wilson - Charlotte Conservative Examiner - August 4, 12:13 AM
House Democrats have narrowly pushed Obama’s Healthcare bill - H.R 3200, America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 - through a key congressional committee this past Friday. ---- The official vote [by all of Congress] should be sometime in September, leaving little time for representatives and Americans to learn what the bill is really about.
Here is a start:
This new healthcare plan will take the independence you have in deciding where and how you get your healthcare and put those decisions into bureaucratic hands.
Think about it this way: going to your doctor will be like going to your DMV—long waiting lines, substandard service and inefficient care.
There is one very important difference, however: you or your loved one will be sick, hurt or dying. The inevitable delays in government-funded healthcare mean death, pain or a worsened condition. And what is worse, the government will decide what quality of healthcare is acceptable.
Here are some of the provisions in Obama’s Healthcare bill:
Page 29: Health care will be rationed.
Page 30: A government committee will decide what treatments and benefits you get (and, unlike an insurer, there will be no appeals process)
Page 42: The "Health Choices Commissioner" will decide health benefits for you. You will have no choice. None.
Page 50: All non-US citizens, illegal or not, will be provided with free healthcare services. ---- About.com: Page 57, under section 163, there is something that would give the government power to reach into benefits recipients' bank accounts. It is called "Administrative Simplification," and Subsection 1173A of this measure, "Standardize Electronic Transactions" has a provision (a)(2)(B) that ensures that this new governmental power:
"be authoritative, permitting no additions or constraints for electronic transactions ..." (C) "be comprehensive, efficient and robust, requiring minimal augmentation by paper transactions or clarification by further communications;" and, finally, (D) enable the real-time (or near real-time) determination of an individual’s financial responsibility at the point of service and, to the extent possible, prior to service, including whether the individual is eligible for a specific service with a specific physician at a specific facility, which may include utilization of a machine-readable health plan beneficiary identification card;" ... (E) "enable, where feasible, near real-time adjudication of claims ..." (Emphasis added) ---- Page 58: Every person will be issued a National ID Healthcard.
Page 72: All private healthcare plans must conform to government rules to participate in a Healthcare Exchange.
Page 84: All private healthcare plans must participate in the Healthcare Exchange (i.e., total government control of private plans)
Page 95: The Government will pay ACORN and Americorps to sign up individuals for Government-run Health Care plan.
Page 102: Those eligible for Medicaid will be automatically enrolled: you have no choice in the matter.
Page 124: No company can sue the government for price-fixing. No "judicial review" is permitted against the government monopoly. Put simply, private insurers will be crushed.
Page 127: The AMA sold doctors out: the government will set wages.
Page 145: An employer MUST auto-enroll employees into the government-run public plan. No alternatives.
Page 126: Employers MUST pay healthcare bills for part-time employees AND their families.
Page 167: Any individual who doesn’t have acceptable healthcare (according to the government) will be taxed 2.5% of income.
Page 170: Any NON-RESIDENT alien is exempt from individual taxes (Americans will pay for them).
Page 195: Officers and employees of Government Healthcare Bureaucracy will have access to ALL American financial and personal records.
Page 239: Bill will reduce physician services for Medicaid. Seniors and the poor most affected."
Page 241: Doctors: no matter what speciality you have, you'll all be paid the same (thanks, AMA!)
Page 253: Government sets value of doctors' time, their professional judgment, etc.
Page 265: Government mandates and controls productivity for private healthcare industries.
Page 272: Cancer patients: welcome to the wonderful world of rationing!
Page 280: Hospitals will be penalized for what the government deems preventable re-admissions.
Page 298: Doctors: if you treat a patient during an initial admission that results in a readmission, you will be penalized by the government.
Page 317: Doctors: you are now prohibited for owning and investing in healthcare companies!
Page 318: Prohibition on hospital expansion. Hospitals cannot expand without government approval.
Page 335: Government mandates establishment of outcome-based measures: i.e., rationing.
Page 341: Government has authority to disqualify Medicare Advantage Plans, HMOs, etc.
Page 354: Government will restrict enrollment of SPECIAL NEEDS individuals.
Page 425: More bureaucracy: Advance Care Planning Consult: Senior Citizens, assisted suicide, euthanasia.
Page 425: Government will instruct and consult regarding living wills, durable powers of attorney, etc. Mandatory. Appears to lock in estate taxes ahead of time. Reference Here and Here>>
There is more ... a lot more (and will be updated here from time to time) and it is not pretty.
Single Payer as articulated by now President Barack Obama at an AFL-CIO union meeting.
People are up in arms, showing up in record numbers at politician summer recess community meetings and having their voices heard. Last weekend, 10,000 people showed up at one of these gatherings in Ohio and the press reported that only 200 citizens were in attendance.
The Democrat Political Party leadership have drafted up some talking points to confront this display by condemning it as a manufactured response organized by "Big Insurance" companies, yet AARP, one of the biggest insurance marketers, is on record in supporting the Obama Administration's efforts - no matter what.
We, at MAXINE, are reminded of an anthem song produced by Bob Marley and the Wailers - "Get Up, Stand Up ... Stand Up For Your Right! [ctrl-click to launch music video] - don't give up the fight!" The time is now to not be duped by the efforts of our one-party leadership scheme and its efforts to nationalize healthcare, no matter how minimal their intrusion. Medicare and Medicaid are government programs that have failed, and all the Democrat leadership wants to do is give all of us this type of program as our only option.
Be very aware of the efforts of the one-party leadership represented by the Obama Administration and the Democrat Political Party led Congress to convince us to invest in their healthcare (big, bigger, biggest government control) ponzi scheme ... their Madoffing of America.
Cap and Trade C-Span Debate -- Representative John Boehner - Ohio, reading Representative Waxman's 300+ page amendment (Ctrl-Click to launch video). Image Credit: C-SPAN
Obama Wants HIS Government To Help You Sell ... Your House
The man who worries about being able to address, and make more efficient, the 7% of all electricity usage here in this country with the push to change the efficiency standards in the manufacturing of CFL and Neon light bulbs, now wants to be able to have a say in how one is able to sell their largest personal asset, their home.
The level of control that was passed by Congress early Friday morning of this last week (June 26, 2009) in the form of an energy efficiency bill (CAP & TRADE) had a 300+ page amendment be attached to it at the last minute, just before the vote ... allowing NO time for the congressmen to read what they were actually voting on, sound familiar?
The House Minority Leader, Republican John Boehner wasn't happy with the way the people's representatives were being railroaded and he decided to use the only power he had to get some of the word out about the destructive nature to personal freedoms of the CAP & TRADE bill as it was written.
"I hate to do this to all of you, I do, but when you file a 309 page amendment at 3:00 in the morning, someone needs to work on it," Boehner told his colleagues. "I want to make sure everyone understands what's in this 300 page amendment."
A press statement put out by Boehner's office confirmed he was launching the House equivalent of a Senate filibuster.
"We expect it may take a while, but Members of Congress, and - more importantly - the American people have a right know what the House is voting on," the statement said.
What John Boehner was able to do in sixty short minutes is to highlight many of the most damning aspects of this bill designed to aid in the reduction of CO2 and/or help the environment.
This excerpted and edited from Newsvine "Comments" -
Boehner protests last-minute climate amendment Comment by, Lisa Schneider - Posted #1.2 - Fri Jun 26, 2009 10:22 PM EDT
I watched Rep. John Boehner for the entire thing. ---- This "amendment", if not the whole CAP & TRADE Bill, will ruin our country ... I am an independent, having voted for Obama, and unless you watched his entire hour going through this amendment, then you have no clue how bad it is ... it is bad.
Just to give you a taste: ---- Carbon credits will be commodities and traded as such on the open market (not too unlike bundled sub-prime mortgages to unsuspecting investors).
Every single licensed contractor in this country will have to go through an additional licensing process so they know how to meet the new green codes, and all building materials used by the contractor will need to meet those green codes too.
Imports will be regulated forcing other countries to either not import or meet our guidelines ... hello trade warfare ... amendments try to force other countries to abide by our regulations.
No citizen in the United States (or anyone else) will be able to sell their home to another citizen of the United States (or anyone else) until they pay to bring the older home up to new green code standards ... complete overhaul of appraisal industry will be needed to properly evaluate home values within strict Government guidelines for valuation/regulations.
The list goes on and on ... extends from home lending to well, everything. Think of it like this ... if you emit methane as a natural digestive process, the Government will be watching and there will be a price to pay.
If you value your freedom, thank Representative John Boehner for reading this amendment and making sure we knew as much as possible about it ... then call your Senators and literally beg them to vote no. Reference Here>>
In a public relations campaign launched in the Palestinian Authority, the Hamas terror organization is claiming victory over Israel's withdrawal and promises to terrorize Haifa and Tel Aviv until Israel is defeated and Palestine restored to the Arabs. They are taking credit for the Israeli withdrawal, saying that Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip defeated by the "resistance," not as the result of "useless negotiations." Caption and Image Credit: Hyscience
Hamas Leadership Dispenses Terror That Cuts Two Ways
The biggest tell on a government and its attitude toward its people in a crisis situation is how it responds to the protection and care of the citizenry.
Hamas has finally poked the beehive of Israel to where the government of Israel had to respond with a damaging force where the Hamas leadership knew that Israel would not tolerate having rocket bombs being shot into their national boundaries any longer.
After Israel dropped bombs on the launching points from where the Hamas initiated rocket bomb activity had been traced, collateral damage in sued and injuries to the citizens who lived under Hamas rule needed a response. The appropriate response would be to allow a quick first medical response in order to allow the injured but living to remain living.
This excerpted and edited from Pajamas Media – Revealing Silence at the Gaza-Egypt Border Why does Hamas victimize its own people? And why doesn't the media call them on it? January 2, 2009 - by Richard Landes
At about 1:10 on Sunday, December 28, 2008, the BBC anchor Peter Dobbie found out, along with his audience, that there were 40 Egyptian ambulances ready to evacuate wounded, and lorries full of medical goods sent by Qatar to restock Gazan hospitals, waiting at the border crossing in Egypt. (According to another source there were also 50 Egyptian doctors ready to go into the Strip to help.) Since Dobbie and his audience had heard the repeated complaint from the people in Gaza that the hospitals were overwhelmed by the injured and desperately lacking in supplies, one would have expected the border to be full of purposeful activity. Instead, nothing was happening. The Gazan side lay silent.
A real journalist, someone with a smell for revealing anomalies, would have immediately recognized this as an important story to follow up on. After all, Dobbie had not hesitated to interrupt and challenge Israeli spokesmen on precisely the issues at stake: the disproportion between Israeli-caused fatalities and Israeli-suffered fatalities, the inevitable suffering of innocent civilians when such a bombing campaign takes place in so densely populated an area. “The math doesn’t work,” said Dobbie, implying what commentators emphasized elsewhere — the “disproportionate use of force” the Israelis were employing.
So here was a perfect issue with which to challenge Hamas spokesmen: If they were so distraught at the loss of life of their own people, why didn’t they take care of them? What on earth would possess Hamas not to avail themselves of what they pleadingly told the world they so desperately needed? As the honest and courageous Egyptian blogger Sandmonkey put it, “My head hurts.”
Alas, the BBC did nothing of the sort. The next six hours saw nothing but canned footage repeating Palestinian complaints, voiced not only by Hamas spokesmen and BBC reporters, but UN officials like Chris Gunning and human rights advocates, and, of course, others in the Western MSM. ---- Too bad. Had the BBC behaved like real journalists instead of parroting Palestinian narratives, they might have taken the “golden” (read excremental) thread that leads out of the labyrinth and straight to the “real story.”
That story, of course, is the dreadful Palestinian strategy, taken to new heights by Hamas in the early 21st century — play the victim card at any cost. In this case, create a genuine humanitarian crisis. ---- Hamas initially offered two reasons for not allowing the wounded out: 1) the roads were too dangerous to venture out on, and 2) they were composing a list of the wounded. ---- Then Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum, speaking to Khaled Abu Toameh, denied the Egyptian allegation that Hamas was to blame, “claiming that many of the wounded rejected an Egyptian offer to receive medical treatment in Cairo in protest against Cairo’s ‘support’ for the IDF operation. ---- On the contrary, as Ma’an News Agency reported, Hamas would allow no passage of wounded until the border was completely open. ---- And of the 600 wounded (according to Palestinian sources) all of them, suffering in a ludicrously crowded and understaffed hospital, refused to go to Egypt?
Although the reasons are hollow, they do tell us about Hamas priorities, and the overwhelming message of this refusal is that helping their own civilians survive ranks very low on their scale, well below revenge and public relations concerns. Indeed, as with Israel, so with Egypt: they hold their people hostage to maximalist demands.
Some say Hamas doesn’t care about their people. The evidence suggests far worse. They actively seek the victimization of their own people. Indeed, the enormous resources they have expended on the constant, if largely ineffective, barrage of rockets on Israeli civilians is actually quite staggering. Not only have they lavished much of their meager resources to this vicious and gratuitous activity, but, as a result of those attacks, guaranteed that their borders would be closed and their people would continue to suffer — hostages to their hatred. Thus, the phony excuses offered for the border snafu disguise something far more sinister: Hamas wants the crisis; they want civilians dying dramatically in wretched hospitals.
On the face of it, it seems absurd that a government would actively victimize its own people. What advantage in making an already miserable people suffer even more?
There are two major explanations here. First, Hamas, like many other Palestinian groups, is addicted to violence against Israel. Anything they can do, no matter how small, to make Israelis suffer, they will do, whatever the cost. ---- But the second explanation is far more disturbing, because it involves the media. Hamas only gains a real advantage to having Palestinians suffer if they, who do so much to inflict that suffering, can blame it on Israel.
It would be absurd for Hamas to stand in front of the world and say, “Look at how much we make our own people suffer; join us in hating Israel.” So the game is intensely hypocritical. It depends on getting public opinion, both in the Arab-Muslim world and in the West, to accept a scapegoating narrative — the Palestinian Guernica — that deflects responsibility.
And the pathetic thing is that it works. Reference Here>>
The truly odd thing to all of this is that this scapegoating narrative of suffering has a parallel application.
This strategy of deflecting responsibility is also being used by our current Executive and Congressional leadership to diffuse the problems in our economy in the causes and attempts to right the wrongs caused by our leadership.
Further, they have a willing partner in the forces of the MSM to NOT report the story outside of the narrative template that Hamas is using in its campaign of terror in the Middle-East.
To reconstruct the questions asked at the beginning of this article:
Why does our Executive and Cogressional Leadership victimize its own people through social engineering agendas (using taxpayer money in programs that continue to fail)? And why doesn't the media call them on it?
A quote from a fund-raising email by David Brock, President of Media Matters - "Media Matters has already exposed more than 6,000 instances of conservative misinformation in just two years -- and not just from right-wing news outlets such as Fox News Channel, but from sources like CNN, The Washington Post, and The New York Times." (The site, called Media Matters, was devised as part of a larger media apparatus being built by liberals to combat what they say is the overwhelming influence of conservative commentators like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly) Image & Caption Credit: NewsBusters
Media Matters (targeted attacks) Batters Media
In a stepped up effort to control the freedom of speech and censor talk radio, Media Matters targets leading radio hosts for a smear campaign of words.
What is really sad about this effort is that the current power structure in Washington are willing soldiers in this effort to take out-of-context words (not actions or fully articulated ideas) and characterize them as a form of “Hate Speech”
Many people think that this effort is designed to be a political Left vs Right thing but the real effort is to try to control the last bastion of free media and education that remains here in these United States.
This effort by Media Matters is currently focused on “Talk Radio” but it will be only a matter of time that this ugly smear campaign will be targeting the platform it broadcasts from – the internet.
The leadership in both the House of Representatives and the Senate are already using these out-of-context attacks and reading them without further investigation on the Congress and Senate floor … what is going to stop them from labeling an effort to shut down the internet as an agenda to “Protect Our Children”?
We, at MAXINE, are becoming very suspicious of the joining-of-forces between a George Soros funded, reputation-smearing website and the lawmaking leadership in Congress.
Eventually in years to come, when these elite world governors have the technology, they will only need a workforce large enough to sustain them and their families. Everyone else will be superfluous to requirements, and if you have no useful employment for the Elite, you will starve also. The Alpha Elite, or whatever they call themselves, will be like you and me who enjoy the beach freely when no-one else is there, but feel that their freedom is being restricted if they have to share it with anyone else. For them, who have aspirations of god like proportions, the beach is the world. Anyone who is not there to serve their benefit, will have no rights to exist anywhere. Caption & Image Credit: lockstockandbarrel.org
The reason this targeting activity is happening at this time and against Talk Radio is that the leadership in Congress already control Network Television, daily major market Newspapers, our University and education systems, and most other broadcast outlets through the issuance of licenses and intimidation. Talk Radio is the last bastion of free speech … callers call in and the governmental leadership can not stop it. This effort is advertiser supported and with great success. The minute someone tries to control the outcome of the freedom of speech (see Air America) the effort fails miserably.
Heads Up! Everybody – this is only the beginning of a fascist-socialist media control effort from the funding and influence of billionaire George Soros (Chairman of Soros Fund Management, LLC and founder of The Open Society Institute).
With the current leadership in Congress – Get Use To It!
An F/A-18 Hornet approaches for landing on the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier after flight operations in this Thursday, March 20, 2003 file photo. The first Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired early Thursday against Iraqi targets Image Credit: AP Photo/FILE/Richard Vogel
YES! More Troops For Iraq
It is always confusing for a politically charged, micro-management focused, uninformed populous to rile against what a war power professional may recognize as the right thing to do at a time of conflict ... but, YES, more troops for Iraq.
General Petreaus was approved by unanimous vote by the Senate because it was the right thing to do - and now HE wants more troops because it IS the right thing to do.
The one thing that we have learned as it relates to task competency is that one leaves the decision making of each task to the trained professionals.
MAXINE has one question - When you have a pain in your jaw coming from a cracked tooth, which do you want to work on it ... Senator Kennedy, Senator Clinton ... Any Senator, or a trained and proven dentist with a going practice?
Give the General his request and let him run the war, thank you!
Excerpts from the Boston Globe -
General seeks another brigade in Iraq By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff March 16, 2007
WASHINGTON -- The top US commander in Iraq has requested another Army brigade, in addition to five already on the way, as part of the controversial "surge" of American troops designed to clamp down on sectarian violence and insurgent groups, senior Pentagon officials said yesterday.
The appeal -- not yet made public -- by General David Petraeus for a combat aviation unit would involve between 2,500 and 3,000 more soldiers and dozens of transport helicopters and powerful gunships, said the Pentagon sources. That would bring the planned expansion of US forces to close to 30,000 troops.
News of the additional deployment comes about a week after President Bush announced that about 4,700 support troops will join the initial 21,500 he ordered in January. They are in addition to the estimated 130,000 troops already in Iraq.
"This is the next shoe to drop," said one senior Pentagon official closely involved in the war planning, who requested anonymity because of prohibitions against publicly discussing internal deliberations. "But you cannot put five combat brigades in there and not have more aviation guys, military police, and intelligence units." ---- "There is a problem in the way the administration reported the surge numbers to begin with," said Frederick W. Kagan , a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. "When they initially reported the numbers they only reported the combat strength of the brigades, and they did not count support troops" and other personnel that the operation would need.
"Petraeus has now requested what many thought would be needed to begin with," Kagan said, "but it looks like another surge."
The plan for the aviation brigade is occurring as commanders express cautious optimism that US and Iraqi forces, working together, are quelling the violence in the city and building some much-needed good will among the population. ---- But news that Petraeus wants several thousand more troops is bound to further frustrate the Democratic majority in Congress, which is intent on pressuring President Bush to start bringing troops home within months.
For the second day yesterday, the Senate debated a resolution that would require President Bush to begin a phased withdrawal of US troops within 120 days.
The resolution failed to garner enough votes to pass, but Democratic leaders have pledged to use their power to force the White House's hand, including placing limitations on federal funds for the war. ---- Despite the congressional opposition, the number of US troops committed to Iraq has steadily grown since Bush decided to send the 21,500 troops, the equivalent of five Army brigades and two Marine Corps battalions.
The Congressional Budget Office predicted last month that the total "surge" could ultimately double in size and cost once all support troops are in place. ---- The new unit would bring to four the total number of aviation brigades in Iraq. The official said American commanders would have to reassess in a few months whether they want to keep the higher number; if so, they would have to identify another brigade to relieve one of them.
Military strategists consider the aviation unit an "enabler," meaning it will help the additional combat troops who are spearheading the new Baghdad security plan and operations to secure several cities in Anbar Province where Sunni insurgents and followers of Al Qaeda have gained a foothold. ---- " Any time you deploy more combat forces you need more support forces," said Michael O'Hanlon , a defense specialist at the Brookings Institution who compiles the Iraq Index. "You need some tactical mobility to get them out of trouble." Read All>> (free subscription required)
More support forces to enable more troop forces, makes sense to MAXINE!
As stated in a speech by John Kerry, delivered on the Senate floor on Nov. 9, 1997, as recorded in the Congressional Record. "Plainly and simply, Saddam Hussein cannot be permitted to get away with his antics, or with this latest excuse for avoidance of international responsibility". Image Credit: www.john-kerry.com
Politics? Or Conscious Acts Of Treason ... For Simple Political Gain?
Good question.
Now that the Democrats are in power over the Congress --- Hypocrisy RULES to the detriment of national security issues. The Democrat Congress does not believe that the military is up to the task of victory in Iraq and chooses to castrate their efforts as opposed to supporting their mission --- and this "surge" in hypocrisy is effecting some jello-kneed / round-heeled Republicans.
Typical of the “John Kerry Party” - the Democrats are of one voice about the surge strategy in Iraq when in saying “I was for it, before I was against it”.
Excerpts from The Washington Times -
Advocates of troop surge about-face in Congress By Charles Hurt - THE WASHINGTON TIMES - January 31, 2007
For many in the Senate, they were for a surge of troops in Iraq before they were against it.
"We don't have enough troops in Iraq," Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, said in 2005.
In 2004, he told NBC's Tim Russert some things he believes "very deeply."
"Number one, we cannot fail," Mr. Kerry said. "I've said that many times. And if it requires more troops in order to create the stability that eliminates the chaos, that can provide the groundwork for other countries, that's what we have to do."
He no longer believes that now. He is among at least a dozen Democratic senators who in the past have called for more troops in Iraq but now support a resolution condemning President Bush's plan to do just that. Many Republicans who voted for the war now plan to support a no-confidence resolution, including Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, who in the past had warned that the war would be a long, tough slog and that Americans should "speak with one voice." ---- Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. has for years advocated increasing the number of troops on the ground in Iraq. But after Mr. Bush offered his proposal to do that earlier this month, the Delaware Democrat drafted a resolution rejecting the idea as not "in the national interest."
In June 2005, he said, "There's not enough force on the ground now to mount a real counterinsurgency."
"They're going to need a surge of forces," he said in another interview.
By last week, Mr. Biden had reversed his war strategy.
"The president and others who support the surge have it exactly backwards," he told reporters.
As late as last month, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was still open to the idea of a surge.
"If it is for a surge -- that is, two or three months and it's part of a program to get us out of there as indicated by this time next year -- then sure I'll go along with it," said the Nevada Democrat who voted for the war in 2002. "If the commanders on the ground said this was just for a short period of time, we'll go along with that."
After Mr. Bush laid out his plan to increase troops, the Democratic leader flatly rejected it.
"The surge is a bad idea," Mr. Reid said on CNN's "Late Edition."
Democrats say that the time for a surge has long passed and now that the war has become so bloody and so unpopular, it's time to pull the plug.
"The bottom line is that you cannot unscramble an omelet," House International Relations Committee Chairman Tom Lantos, California Democrat, said yesterday. ---- Mr. Hagel, who is considering a run for the presidency and has been one of the harshest critics of the war and the Bush administration's handling of it.
"There is no strategy," he said last week. "This is a pingpong game with American lives."
But he hasn't always opposed the war. He voted for it.
"There are no easy answers in Iraq," Mr. Hagel said on Oct. 9, 2002, before voting to authorize the war. "The decision to commit our troops to war is the most difficult decision members of Congress make.
A veteran of the Vietnam War, he also warned his colleagues that an Iraq war would be a long, tough slog.
"This is just the beginning," he said. "The risks should not be understated, miscast or misunderstood. Ours is a path of both peril and opportunity with many detours and no shortcuts."
And Mr. Hagel warned them against sowing seeds of division with hot rhetoric.
"America -- including the Congress -- and the world, must speak with one voice about Iraqi disarmament, as it must continue to do so in the war on terrorism," he said. "Because the stakes are so high, America must be careful with her rhetoric and mindful of how others perceive her intentions."
Mr. Hagel co-authored the resolution with Mr. Biden rebuking Mr. Bush and his "escalation" plan.
Sen. John W. Warner, Virginia Republican, also has drafted with others a nonbinding resolution that condemns the plan but, he said, does so more gently. Read All>>
If you are FOR having our country stand and aid the continued freedom of the 95%+ majority of the 25,000,000 liberated people of Iraq (who have also voted to be free - 3 times), sign the pledge and get active in persuading Congress to continue to support the mission of our troops.
At the web site TheNRSCPledge.com more than 30,000 people signed the pledge of non-support for individual senators and the NRSC in the first three days of its operation. Thousands of bloggers have joined on as well. We, at MAXINE, expect the numbers to grow, and the memory of the votes of next week to remain strong for years to come.
'CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY' - In Wide Release October 2nd /// "It's a crime story. But it's also a war story about class warfare. And a vampire movie, with the upper 1 percent feeding off the rest of us. And, of course, it's also a love story. Only it's about an abusive relationship. /// "It's not about an individual, like Roger Smith, or a corporation, or even an issue, like health care. This is the big enchilada. This is about the thing that dominates all our lives — the economy. I made this movie as if it was going to be the last movie I was allowed to make. /// "It's a comedy." — Michael Moore [ctrl-click to launch movie trailer]. Caption & Image Credit: mmflint
U.S. director Michael Moore (L) and his wife Kathleen Glynn pose for photographers on the red carpet at the 66th Venice Film Festival September 6, 2009 [ctrl-click to launch movie trailer]. Image Credit: Tony Gentile
