kerkko.fi

TO: Doug Feith
FROM: Donald Rumsfeld
SUBJECT: Issues w/Various Countries

We need more coercive diplomacy with respect to Syria and Libya, and we need it fast. If they mess up Iraq, it will delay bringing our troops home.

We also need to solve the Pakistan problem.

And Korea doesn't seem to be going well.

Are you coming up with proposals for me to send around?

Thanks.

Before I was in the Army, I never thought I would kill anyone, and even after I was in the Army, but before I went to Iraq, I never thought I would intentionally kill a civilian. When I was in Iraq, something happened to me that I can only explain by saying that I lost my mind. At some point while I was in Iraq, I stopped seeing Iraqis as good and bad, as men, women, and children. I started seeing them all as one, and evil, and less than human. When that happened, any natural, learned, or religious morality, that normally would have stopped this, was gone. [...] I see now that war is intrinsically evil, because killing is intrinsically evil. And, I am sorry I ever had anything to do with either.

~ Steven Green

http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/images/05/28/statement.pdf

Dick Cheney's aide, Scooter Libby, was tried and convicted of obstruction of justice and perjury, sentenced to prison, and his sentence quickly commuted by President Bush. In the film, we see that Valerie Plame, under a variety of aliases, ran secret networks of informants in Baghdad and other Middle Eastern cities. When the administration blew her cover, several of her informants were killed; some reports say 70. Then the Bush spin doctors leaked the story that she was only a CIA "secretary."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/datablog/interactive/2010/oct/23/wikileaks-ir...

Iraq war veteran Ethan McCord, who is seen running with an Iraqi child in his arms in a video posted by WikiLeaks of a July 2007 massacre of civilians in Baghdad, talked to the World Socialist Web Site about the impact of this and similar experiences in Iraq.

McCord and another former member of the company addressed an open letter to the Iraqi people, in which they insisted that "the acts depicted in the video were everyday occurrences of this war: this is the nature of how US-led wars are carried out in this region."

My platoon leader yelled at me for [evacuating a wounded child from the scene]. He told me to "stop worrying about these motherfucking kids and start worrying about pulling security." So after that I went up and pulled security on a rooftop.

Our rules of engagement were changing on an almost daily basis. But we had a pretty gung-ho commander, who decided that because we were getting hit by IEDs a lot, there would be a new battalion SOP [standard operating procedure].

He goes, "If someone in your line gets hit with an IED, 360 rotational fire. You kill every motherfucker on the street." We were just sitting there looking at each other like, "Are you kidding me? You want us to kill women and children on the street?"

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/apr2010/emcc-a28.shtml

Since he stepped down as British prime minister, the West's Mideast envoy Tony Blair pocketed more than $30 million in oil revenues from secret dealings with a South Korean oil consortium, UI Energy Corporation. Despite his best efforts to keep his connection to UI secret, word is spreading like wildfire.

Blair has tried to prevent disclosures of his relationship with the South Korean oil firm. His relationship with UI Energy may precede his departure as prime minister. It is also quite conceivable that his dedication to keeping this matter confidential was meant to protect other international political figures.

Other prominent politicians on UI Energy's payroll include former Australian prime minister Bob Hawke, Congressman Stephen Solarz, former defense secretary Frank Carlucci, and US Mideast Commander General John Abizaid. These are only some of those who acknowledge association with UI Energy.

http://www.counterpunch.org/stahl03252010.html

I want you to look very closely at this picture and try and keep it in your mind's eye. This was a perfectly healthy twenty-two-year-old young man who in the service of his country got half of his head blown off. This is some American mother's son, her little boy, he may be gay or straight or transgender but his life is fucked forever. I think that is important, I think that is newsworthy. Let me tell you how newsworthy I think it is. I think that it is more important than chocolate cake recipes and comic book reviews.

How did this come to happen to this poor mother's son? It came to happen because the people in the media who are supposed to foster a public debate on such public issues as war instead used their franchise to promote articles about chocolate cake and comic book reviews. They see their free press as free to choose not to look when bad things happen. They feel no need to explain to his parents or to anyone else that the war that blew off half of this poor boy's head was based on out and out lies.

http://open.salon.com/blog/david_cox/2010/02/25/the_picture

Clare Short, Britain's former international development secretary, today accused Tony Blair of lying to her and misleading parliament in the build-up to the Iraq invasion. She told the inquiry that she had a conversation with Blair in 2002. He told her that he was not planning for war against Iraq and that the evidence has since revealed that he was not telling the truth at that point, she said.

A secret plan to foster an internal coup against Saddam Hussein was drawn up by the British government two years before the invasion of Iraq. Whitehall officials drafted the "contract with the Iraqi people" as a way of signalling to dissenters in Iraq that an overthrow of Saddam would be supported by Britain. The document was finalised on 11 June 2001 and approved by ministers.