Iraq War // Current TV

US empire could collapse at any time with more actions like these by Veterans for Peace!

On Thursday December 16th 2010, snow fell as 131 people were arrested in a Civil Disobedience at the White House protesting the continuing wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan and in Iraq. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Chris Hedges provides an extraordinary anti-war soliloquy which is inter-cut with interview of Veterans of the recent wars and with Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the top secret Pentagon Papers. This action was organized by the Veterans Peace http://www.veteransforpeace.org/ Stop These Wars http://www.stopthesewars.org/ Read an interview with Chris Hedges just after the speech on the RawStory. And another Interview on Democracy Now where he discusses his most recent book, "Death of the Liberal Class" http://www.democracynow.org

America's military and economic empire could collapse at any time, but predicting the precise day, week or month of its potential demise is unattainable, according to a former New York Times war correspondent who spoke with Raw Story. "The when and how is very dangerous to predict because there's always some factor that blindsides you that you didn't expect," Pulitzer-winning journalist Chris Hedges said in an exclusive interview. "It doesn't look good. But exactly how it plays out and when it plays out, having covered disintegrating societies, it's impossible to tell." He explained that he learned this lesson as events unfolded around him in the fall of 1989. Then, members of the opposition to the Soviet Empire told him that they predicted travel across the Berlin Wall separating East from West Germany would open within the year. "Within a few hours, the wall didn't exist," he said. Hedges was one of the 131 activists were arrested in an act of civil disobedience outside the White House yesterday, even as Obama was unveiling a new report citing progress in the Afghanistan war. Speaking to Raw Story on Wednesday night, he said the signs of US collapse are plain to see and compared the country's course through Afghanistan to Soviet Russia's. "We're losing [the war in Afghanistan] in the same way the Red Army lost it," he said. "It's exactly the same configuration where we sort of control the urban centers where 20 percent of the population lives. The rest of the country where 80 percent of the Afghans live is either in the hands of the Taliban or disputed." "Foreigners will not walk the streets of Kabul because of kidnapping, and journalists regularly meet Taliban officials in Kabul because the whole apparatus is so porous and corrupt," he said. One day after this interview was conducted, reports hit the global media noting the CIA's warning to President Obama, that the Pakistan-supported Taliban could still regain control of the country. Hedges predicted that President Obama's war report released Thursday would "contradict not only [US] intelligence reports but everything else that is coming out of Afghanistan." His prediction came startlingly true: the CIA's own assessment was said to stand in striking contrast with President Obama's report. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, however, insisted that the US controlled more territory in Afghanistan than it did a year ago. 'A corporate coup d'état in slow motion' Hedges said he attended the protest and planned to get arrested because he is against the corporate powers that have enveloped the nation. "We've undergone a corporate coup d'état in slow motion," he said. "Our public education system has been gutted. Our infrastructure is corroding and collapsing. Unless we begin to physically resist, they are going to solidify neo-feudalism in this country." "If we think that Obama is bad, watch the next two years because these corporate forces have turned their back on him," Hedges warned. Hedges, author of "Death of the Liberal Class," said that his vision of America is one with a functioning social democracy, which stands in stark contrast to the nihilism of the corporate state. "American workers, as they are repeatedly told, will have to become competitive with prison labor in China," he said. "That's where we're headed, and all the pillars of the liberal establishment are complicit in this." "At least if you get sick in the UK, you don't go bankrupt or die," he added. Hedges said that another pressure point is the US dollar, which he pointed out had been dropped by Russia and China in favor of modified ruble/renminbi exchanges. "A few more deals like that, and our currency becomes junk," he said. Hedges continued, "As long as we have relative stability, these lunatic fringe movements can be held at bay, but if we don't undertake serious structural reform, which we're not doing, then it is inevitable that we will come to a tremendous crisis - economic and political as well as environmental."

Iraq Veterans Against The War Operation Recovery 678.986.0617 http://www.ivaw.org

This is a zgraphix production. Produced by Jeff Zavala. http://zgraphix.orgOn Thursday December 16th 2010, snow fell as 131 people were arrested in a Civil... more

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Richard Holbrooke, U.S. Special Rep. for Afghanistan and Pakistan, has died, a senior administration official confirms.

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GLOBAL POLITICAL AWAKENING: America at War: The Missing Election Issue

Americans have voted, and voted for change. Real change.

Yet the most important area requiring change is one that received virtually no attention on the campaign trail: foreign policy.

No doubt, wild spending and mounting debt threaten America's fiscal future. ObamaCare will deliver worse medical care with fewer choices at higher cost. Extreme proposals for "cap and trade" could wreck the economy. Reform is needed on more than a few domestic issues.

But the U.S. is at war. Two wars, in fact. Americans are dying.

Yet virtually none of the 435 candidates elected to the House and 37 elected to the Senate on November 2 talked about either war. Former Bush aide Peter D. Feaver explained: "The big strategic consideration is that the electorate is energized over jobs, not over the war right now."

Unfortunately, "out of sight, out of mind" appears to be the motto for most Americans. Like past imperial powers, war has become both constant and largely invisible. Military personnel die and funerals are held; service men and women are injured and families suffer. But most Americans go about their lives with little sense that their government is sending fellow citizens to kill and to die in the name of the American people.

Even more blame falls on the candidates, however. They are supposed to be debating America's future. They should be offering contrasting visions of the future. They should be debating where and how the U.S. should be at war. And whether the U.S. should be at war at all.

Unfortunately, both parties are complicit in today's welfare/warfare state. President George W. Bush and the Republican Congress demonstrated that they spend money like Democrats. In their six years together the Republicans tossed money at virtually every program. They were as bad as Lyndon Johnson and the Democratic Congress when it came to upping domestic discretionary spending. In fact, the GOP-backed Medicare drug benefit was the largest expansion of the welfare state since President Johnson's "Great Society."

READ MORE: http://globalpoliticalawakening.blogspot.com/2010/11/america-at-war-missing-election-issue.htmlAmericans have voted, and voted for change. Real change. Yet the most important... more

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Documentary Photography: Engaged Observers

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What the Afghanistan and Iraq wars are costing American taxpayer

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BillCorcoran
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Obama gets the Iraqi shoe tretment

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sbacker
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George W Bush claims waterboarding stopped UK terror attacks

So Georgie Porgie has defied us all and has managed to write a 481-page book with only a few pictures in it - well he got a 28-year-old ghost writer to do it, but who cares about minor details like that. Not that he isn't man enough to admit that it's a feat for a man like him to publish a potential bestseller: "This is going to come as quite a shock to people...that I can write a book, much less read one"...(no we are not sure what that means either, so it should be a fun read). In the book Bush makes some revealing claims about his presidency, and it's rumoured that he was given a eight figure cash advance for the book. In it, he claims that British lives were saved by "waterboarding" (an interrogation technique that simulates drowning) terrorist suspects who were plotting attacks on Heathrow airport and Canary Wharf.
When asked in an in an inertview with The Times if he authorised it to extract information from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the al-Qaeda mastermind behind the 9/11 attack, he said: "Damn right!"The 64-year-old former president also describe his close relationship with Tony Blair, but is very dismissive of public opinion in Britain about the war in Iraq. "It doesn't matter how people perceive me in England. It just doesn't matter any more. And frankly, at times, it didn't matter then," he said.When Blair faced a possible vote of no confidence in Parliament on the eve of war, Bush said he offered him the chance to opt out of sending British troops into Iraq: "Rather than lose the government, I would much rather have Tony and his wisdom and his strategic thinking as the prime minister of a strong and important ally".
But Blair told him: "I'm in. If it costs the government, fine."Bush said he still had "a sickening feeling" about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.He also claims he was "blind-sided" by the biggest financial crisis since the 1930s, saying that he focused on "kitchen-table" economics such as jobs and inflation rather than credit issues, assuming that others would warn him about it. So Georgie Porgie has defied us all and has managed to write a 481-page book with... more

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16 bombs go off in Baghdad killing 62

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CarolineS
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