The Rag Blog

On Thursday October 19th a car bomb exploded in the heart of the Colombian military headquarters in Bogotá. The so called War Academy houses the Schools of the Infantry, Artillery and Intelligence; the Superior War School; the training center for the High Military Command; and the Installations of the XIII Brigade and 5th Army Division. The damage to the installations was extensive but no one was killed and 23 people were left injured.

This attack occurred while the Colombian government of Alvaro Uribe Vélez is negotiating with the National Liberation Army (ELN) in Havana in a search for a peace formula to end the 60 year old civil war. Negotiations were progressing with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in an effort to bring about a humanitarian exchange of hostages held by the FARC for Colombian guerrillas held in government jails, as a first step of negotiating peace with the FARC.

With the complete and utter failure of America’s experiment with hubristic imperialism outside its hemisphere, with the complete collapse in confidence by the people of the government and its leaders, with the fictional war on terror losing muster, with the American people questioning the Iraq debacle in growing numbers, the masters and lords comprising the Establishment have been forced to alter direction and appease the minds of the masses. Inside the Ministry of Truth the decision has been made, therefore, to open the curtains, if only minimally, to a small manifestation of truth and fact that has for three years been kept hidden from the people and that sheds light on the Iraq War and its horrific reality.

In the upper echelons of the Establishment’s pyramid and the corporatist power structure, there has arrived a realization that Iraq is and will remain lost, a miserable failure turning more putrid every day, forever becoming a gash that will not heal, a ghost whose lack of placidity will for decades haunt the psyche of America. The Bush Crusade, once seen by the elite as a harbinger of empire and hegemonic power, an excursion becoming the genesis of perpetual wealth and richness, has instead transmuted itself into the greatest strategic disaster in the history of the Pax Americana. In the span of three years, Iraq has surpassed Vietnam, in the totality of the circumstances, as a perpetual burn whose scab will continue to be pulled off by the shame of what America did to Iraq, by the embarrassment of such apparent failure, by the geopolitical suicide it committed in Mesopotamia and by the severed image of the nation in the eyes of the world.

The Bush administration has finally been caught in its own language trap.

“That is not a stay-the-course policy,” Tony Snow, the White House press secretary, declared on Monday.

The first rule of using negatives is that negating a frame activates the frame. If you tell someone not to think of an elephant, he’ll think of an elephant. When Richard Nixon said, “I am not a crook” during Watergate, the nation thought of him as a crook.

“Listen, we’ve never been stay the course, George,” President Bush told George Stephanopoulos of ABC News a day earlier. Saying that just reminds us of all the times he said “stay the course.”

LONDON (Oct. 27)- A pair of British twin boys has been born with different skin color, a rare genetic occurrence according to experts.

“Hey, Don, since none of your plans have worked out yet and things are getting worse by the day, shouldn’t we at least begin thinking about when to leave Iraq?”

“BACK OFF, dude! Man, I am so tired of being questioned and bothered all the time just because my poor decision-making has directly led to thousands upon thousands of unnecessary deaths! Why don’t all of you bitches raise up off my nutsack?”

New countries have moved ahead of some Western democracies in the fifth annual Reporters Without Borders Worldwide Press Freedom Index, issued today, while the most repressive countries are still the same ones.

“Unfortunately nothing has changed in the countries that are the worst predators of press freedom,” the organisation said, “and journalists in North Korea, Eritrea, Turkmenistan, Cuba, Burma and China are still risking their life or imprisonment for trying to keep us informed. These situations are extremely serious and it is urgent that leaders of these countries accept criticism and stop routinely cracking down on the media so harshly.

“Each year new countries in less-developed parts of the world move up the Index to positions above some European countries or the United States. This is good news and shows once again that, even though very poor, countries can be very observant of freedom of expression. Meanwhile the steady erosion of press freedom in the United States, France and Japan is extremely alarming,” Reporters Without Borders said.

The United States (53rd) has fallen nine places since last year, after being in 17th position in the first year of the Index, in 2002. Relations between the media and the Bush administration sharply deteriorated after the president used the pretext of “national security” to regard as suspicious any journalist who questioned his “war on terrorism.” The zeal of federal courts which, unlike those in 33 US states, refuse to recognise the media’s right not to reveal its sources, even threatens journalists whose investigations have no connection at all with terrorism.

COPENHAGEN, Denmark – Former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix on Wednesday described the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq as a “pure failure” that had left the country worse off than under the dictatorial rule of Saddam Hussein.

In unusually harsh comments to Danish newspaper Politiken, the diplomatic Swede said the U.S. government had ended up in a situation in which neither staying nor leaving Iraq were good options.

“Iraq is a pure failure,” Blix was quoted as saying. “If the Americans pull out, there is a risk that they will leave a country in civil war. At the same time it doesn’t seem that the United States can help to stabilize the situation by staying there.”

War-related violence in Iraq has grown worse with dozens of civilians, government officials and police and security forces being killed every day. At least 83 American soldiers have been killed in October – the highest monthly toll this year.

Blix said the situation would have been better if the war had not taken place.

10/26/2006 – WASHINGTON (AFPN) — The “center of gravity” in the Iraq war is in America with the American people, not on the battlefield, and the media is a powerful tool that influences the people’s will, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Oct. 24.

“This is the first war that’s been conducted in the 21st century with all the new media realities of 24-hour talk radio and Sony cams and digital cameras and news constantly on television,” Secretary Rumsfeld. “But the American people have a pretty good center of gravity.

“They’ve got a good inner gyroscope,” he said. “And it may be disorienting for a time; it may blow us off course somewhat, but we tend to re-center.”

America’s wars always have had critics, but the difference in this war is the prevalence of the media, Secretary Rumsfeld said. Terrorists recognize the influence the media has, so they use their own media committees to determine how best to manipulate the American public through the media, he said.

The terrorists plan their attacks to deliberately dishearten the American people and make them think the cause isn’t right or that America makes terrorism worse, Secretary Rumsfeld said.