Rahm Emanuel to Resign

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/6/21/academy_award_winning_filmmaker_oliver_sto...

Excerpt:

JUAN GONZALEZ: But let’s take a look at that clip of Kirchner.

OLIVER STONE: Were there any eye-to-eye moments with President Bush that day, that night?

NÉSTOR KIRCHNER: [translated] I say it’s not necessary to kneel before power. Nor do you need to be rude to say the things you have to say to those who oppose our actions. We had a discussion in Monterey. I said that a solution to the problems right now, I told Bush, is a Marshall Plan. And he got angry. He said the Marshall Plan is a crazy idea of the Democrats. He said the best way to revitalize the economy is war and that the United States has grown stronger with war.

OLIVER STONE: War. He said that?

NÉSTOR KIRCHNER: [translated] He said that. Those were his exact words.

OLIVER STONE: Was he suggesting that South America go to war?

NÉSTOR KIRCHNER: [translated] Well, he was talking about the United States. The Democrats had been wrong. All of the economic growth of the United States has been encouraged by the various wars. He said it very clearly. President Bush is—well, he’s only got six days left, right?

OLIVER STONE: Yes.

NÉSTOR KIRCHNER: [translated] Thank God.

JUAN GONZALEZ: That was former President Kirchner. And these comments of President Bush that he says about the United States growing strong through war, I don’t think that’s ever been reported anywhere.

OLIVER STONE: Well, it goes to the heart of the issue. And, you know, we know it, but we sound jaded when we say it. But why do we all—why does America go to war? I went to Vietnam. We went—right after that, we didn’t—I made three movies about it. And then we went back to Panama. We invaded Panama, Grenada, then we went into Iraq twice and now Afghanistan. I don’t get it. And there has to be a reason for all this corporate march to war. Why do—and the press supports it. And we saw it in Iraq most vividly. It was very depressing to be a Vietnam veteran at that time. And now we’re seeing it again with Iran and with Afghanistan, the support of this war. I don’t—there’s no sense to it, because we don’t resemble the Afghani or the Vietnam average person. Our soldiers have to go. If they’re going to go there, they’ve got to stay. That’s all there is to it. They’ve got to become citizens of Afghanistan. That’s the only way they’re ever going to make it. They’re not. There’s no way we’re going to say, and they know it. And as long as they know we’re leaving, I don’t see any victory, any exit, any exit strategy at all.

OLIVER STONE: I don’t get it. I think—I mean, we trashed Vietnam, I mean, completely. We didn’t even recognize it for so many years after the war. We did the same thing to Iraq. I wouldn’t want to live in Iraq. I mean, they call it democracy? That’s not democracy. It’s the same thing over and over. Why? Why does—I see all the—I don’t watch TV as much as a lot of people, but what I see is people all get on the air, they talk about our discretionary spending, they talk about the Tea Party people, they talk about education, cutting this, this—I don’t get it. Why, if the majority of our discretionary spending is Pentagon—it’s like a trillion dollars, with a shadow budget in there, a trillion dollars a year, that’s most of the discretionary spending in this country—why is it going to war? If we’re in such bad shape, why are we not taking care of ourselves? Why is Obama embracing this?

And why is Clinton down in Latin America, when I’m there, trying to separate these countries? And we’re still doing the same thing. We’re trying to divide one country from the other. She goes to Bolivia—she goes to Ecuador. She goes to Argentina. She tries to separate them. She’s trying to pull Brazil away from Venezuela. It doesn’t work. They’re together in this. This is the first time—I repeat, Amy—the first time in our lifetime that I’ve seen these so many countries in Latin America together, with the exception of Peru and Colombia.

Prevent WWIII. No strike against Iran. Reverse the Patriot Act (which is not patriotic at all). No New nuclear power plants and close the existing ones. Give us clean energy without the bugging and control of our infrastructure. No mind control. No mafia control. We need some different leadership here, NOW!

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/6/21/academy_award_winning_filmmaker_oliver_sto...

AMY GOODMAN: Your latest book is on Pakistan—you’ve written many—the book called The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power. What do you think of Obama’s war now in Afghanistan and what’s happening in Pakistan?

TARIQ ALI: Look, if you look at Obama, that on all the other foreign policy shows he basically continued with Bush’s policies. Let’s be blunt about this. In Afghanistan, he went beyond Bush. He escalated the war. He went along with this policy of the surge. And he ordered more drone attacks on civilians in Pakistan in his one year in office than Bush had done during his last term. So, for the people of that region, Obama’s presidency has been a total disaster. And it’s not working. If you read the reports coming out of Afghanistan, they’re losing more people. There are more casualties. More Afghan civilians are being killed. They have a puppet leader, Karzai, who’s developing his own sort of dynamic, because he’s grown very wealthy through corruption and thinks that he has genuine support. Puppets sometimes have these illusions. And he can’t be got rid of, because they’ve got no one to replace him. So they are really stuck in Afghanistan. And if—and they’re deficient, as we know, within the US military-political establishment on this war. And the ones who are saying that this is an unwinnable war are absolutely right. It’s a stalemated war. They can’t win it unless they destroy half the population of the country.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And the impact on Pakistan of the continued drone attacks and the continued secret war going on in Pakistan?

TARIQ ALI: Well, this is it. They’ve been—the drones have been killing civilians. I mean, I point out that the day that the tragedy happened in Tehran and that young woman Nehda was killed—accidentally, it so happens, but she was killed, which was terrible and a tragedy—we had a moist-eyed president in the White House talking to the media on what a terrible tragedy that was, and the same day, a drone attack in Pakistan killed fifteen innocents, mainly women and children, who didn’t even make it onto the news bulletins. So that is what people see. And then, why are they surprised that people are so hostile to the United States in that part of the world?

http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0621/white-house-claim-rahm-quit-ludicrous/

NOT TRUE.

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A White House official told Fox News early Monday that a Sunday report in a British newspaper claiming Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel was soon to leave the White House was "ludicrous."

The British Telegraph claimed Obama's top aide was considering departing amidst tension between his "compromise" approach and the idealistic approach of others in Obama's inner circle.

"It is well known in Washington that arguments have developed between pragmatic Mr Emanuel, a veteran in Congress where he was known for driving through compromises, and the idealistic inner circle who followed Mr Obama to the White House," the Telegraph wrote. "His abrasive style has rubbed some people the wrong way, while there has been frustration among Mr Obama's closest advisers that he failed to deliver a smooth ride for the president's legislative program that his background promised."

But the White House threw cold water on the story Monday, saying through an anonymous "senior official" that it was "ludicrous" and "not worth looking into."

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