As the week begins after Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Barack Obama laid out his foreign policy ideology, which included a critique of Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr., "We can understand that there will be war, and still strive for peace," he calls his decision on sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan his "toughest yet" of his presidency, defending his decision in a "60 Minutes" interview.

So now the Pentagon wants to turn us into even worse war criminals, and bomb a Pakistani city of 850,000.

This is supposedly to get "Al Queda".   Who, upon hearing this news, have undoubtedly already left said city and are hiding somewhere else.   All ten of them.

Warmongers rejoice!   We're gonna slaughter more civilians in the name of "The Obama Doctrine".

I'm so happy I think I'll buy myself an extra Christmas present.

In yet another example of how actual professional journalism is almost completely dead in this country (save for a few brave souls like Mat Taibbi and Jeremy Scahill) a blogger, presumably in his underwear and in his parent's basement, has discovered that the Pentagon likes to tell us stories.

Gosh, how could that be so?   Don't "reputable" news sites like the NY (Judith Miller) Times and the Washington Post act as official stenographers for the Pentagon?    Doesn't that make the Pentagon's stories legit?   I mean, these people fact-check, right?

I probably wouldn't even post this here, but I actually exchanged comments today with a diarist who seemed convinced that if the NY Times and the WaPo quote it, even though it's from the Pentagon, then it must be true!  Unbelievable.

Anyway, this blogger has discovered that whenever the Pentagon claims to have bombed and killed a bunch of Taliban, the number killed is always 30.   Not 29.   Not 31.   Thirty.  

How can this be?   Are our bombs that smart that we can program them to "kill just 30 enemy, no more, no less"?  

Well it's about time!
Just in from the New York Times:

CIA Director Leon Panetta has canceled a contract with the former Blackwater security firm that allowed the company's operatives to load missiles on Predator drones in Pakistan.

Panetta canceled the contract earlier this year and the work is being transitioned to government personnel, a person familiar with the contract said Friday. The person spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the classified program.

This is an AP article in the Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/...

Every time we learn something new about the relationship between Blackwater and the CIA, it raises more questions about the CIA’s mismanagement and Congress’ apparent inability to effectively oversee the spy agency.  Now, the New York Times is reporting that these Blackwater mercenaries were actively involved in the planning and carrying out of military-style operations.

The raids against suspects occurred on an almost nightly basis during the height of the Iraqi insurgency from 2004 to 2006, with Blackwater personnel playing central roles in what company insiders called "snatch and grab" operations

Private contractors are not governed by the same regulations and restrictions as our military and intelligence officers.  And worse, these employees have no duty to our country or Constitution, but only to their employer and their paychecks.  

According to the N.Y. Times, Blackwater operatives carried out secret C.I.A. ops in Iraq from 2004-06 against people suspected of being insurgents.

Private security guards from Blackwater Worldwide participated in some of the C.I.A.'s most sensitive activities -- clandestine raids with agency officers against people suspected of being insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan and the transporting of detainees, according to former company employees and intelligence officials.

The raids against suspects occurred on an almost nightly basis during the height of the Iraqi insurgency between 2004 and 2006, with Blackwater personnel playing central roles in what company insiders called "snatch and grab" operations, the former employees and current and former intelligence officers said.

I call it silent, and not bloodless, since it has been anything but bloodless.  To the contrary, the brutal efficiency of this Coup has resulted in countless casualties in the U.S. heartland.

It's sad to see so much confusion out there.  People don't understand how's it is possible for Obama to appoint scores of Goldman Sachs (and other Wall Street bankers) to government positions, the same people responsible for creating ponzi schemes to steal trillions of dollars from the country's coffers (the taxpayers).  How is it possible to keep the country in a perpetual state of war for the direct benefit of war profiteers?

If people reflect and take off their ideological blinders, it's possible to see that our entire government (Congress, the Executive, and the Judiciary) has already been taken over by Oligarchs here in the U.S.  And none of this happened by coincidence.  And it's going to get worse.
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Erik Prince is the American Osama Bin Laden: a CIA asset with a lot of money and gunmen working for him.

The parallels extend further than recent reports that Prince was a paid CIA agent. See, http://www.theatlanticwire.com/...

The top people at Blackwater were CIA managers that ran al-Qaeda as an Agency asset until 9/11. Before he headed a Blackwater subsidiary, Cofer Black was CIA Chief of Station in Khartoum in the mid-1990s at the time that bin Laden, Abu Zubaydeh, KSM and many of the other principal 9/11 plotters were running CIA-assisted paramilitary operations against the Serbs and Russians from bases in Sudan.  Al-Qaeda continued to operate against the Russians until 9/11, and at least five of the 19 hijackers were originally recruited and trained to fight in Chechnya.

But, that's just the beginning of the strange network that binds together a group of CIA alumni, Blackwater, and al-Qaeda.  MORE, below . . .

Looks like Mr. Obama is finally going to earn that Nobel Prize of his.  In one of the more devious moves in recent presidential history, the big O has sent out nearly the entire US army to lamely wander the deserts in Afghanistan.  

    Can anybody explain why Bush/Cheney Accountability is NOT happening?

    Jeremy Scahill blows the lid off "Blackwater’s Secret War in Pakistan" in an article just published in The Nation. This story brings together an amazing array of bad actors: Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Stanley McChrystal and Blackwater. It should come as no surprise, then, that the outcome of this team working together is a jaw-dropping tale of war crimes that continue to be carried out.

The entire story should be read . . . .

Jim White at Firedoglake.com

Bold text added by the diarist

     Quotes from Scahill's article, commentary and more below the fold, but I SERIOUSLY urge you to read Scahill's article in it's entirety first.

#1 China Executed Two People Involved in the Melamine Scandal

BEIJING — Two milk producers were executed in China on Tuesday for selling more than three million pounds of contaminated milk powder in connection with a food-safety scandal that killed six infants and rocked the country last year.

More than 300,000 children were also sickened after consuming milk products contaminated with the industrial chemical melamine. The scandal caused panic among Chinese parents, weakened the nation’s dairy industry and provoked a global recall of Chinese-made dairy products.

Authorities described the two men who were executed, Zhang Yujun and Geng Jinping, as among the biggest culprits of the scandal. Mr. Zhang was found guilty of selling more than 1.3 million pounds of tainted milk powder from July 2007 to August 2008, and Mr. Geng was convicted of selling more than 1.9 million pounds of contaminated product. Nineteen other people were tried and sentenced in January for their roles in the scheme. Fifteen of them were imprisoned for terms ranging from 2 to 15 years. One received a suspended death sentence, and three received life sentences.

I don't write the headlines, I just read them.

The Hill is reporting this evening on yet another inexplicable, but all-too-common capitulation to real politik, but this one sticks in the craw (H/T GottaLaff):

Former press secretary to President George W. Bush Dana Perino was appointed as a member of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) Wednesday evening.

The board governs all government sponsored, non-military international broadcasting outlets, such as Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, and Alhurra. The BBG is a nine member, bipartisan panel.

Perino is also a part-time contributor to Obama bête noire, Fox News.

Breaking From the NY Times...

Top executives at Blackwater Worldwide authorized secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi officials that were intended to silence their criticism and buy their support after a September 2007 episode in which Blackwater security guards fatally shot 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, according to former company officials.

Blackwater approved the cash payments in December 2007, the officials said, as protests over the deadly shootings in Nisour Square stoked long-simmering anger inside Iraq about reckless practices by the security company’s employees. American and Iraqi investigators had already concluded that the shootings were unjustified, top Iraqi officials were calling for Blackwater’s ouster from the country and company officials feared that Blackwater might be refused an operating license it would need to retain its contracts with the State Department and private clients, worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

Ft. Hood has exposed a terrible wound in the fabric of America, but that wound was there long before a lone gunman named Major Hasan decided to go postal on his fellow soldiers.  Our ethical and moral values have been obliterated since September 11, 2001.

Racism is on the rise.  Religious fundamentalism of the kind that justifies the slaughter of innocents and torture and inhumanity has reared its ugly head.  Violence has become more and more the solution too many of us Americans employ to address our grievances and our anger.  How many thousands have died as a result of the actions our government took in 2001 - 2009?  How many more have suffered irreparable injuries to their bodies and minds?  How much hatred has been engendered because our former President chose to make war the first and only option to any problem?

Yet we continue to fight those wars.

(cont.)

Update!! Amy Goodman and Jeremy Scahill discuss the ruling this morning on DemocracyNow!

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Jeremy Scahill, Democracy Now! correspondent and one of the bravest journalists out there, who exposed Blackwater (now called Xe) through his book, Blackwater : The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, has a column out at The Nation about cases brought by Iraqi victims against Xe and Erik Prince.

According to a report from "Global Researcher," the US guvmint has let a contract to what looks like a Blackwater-type operation in Somalia.

Read on.

National Militias are no joke...even when they put out trash riddled with errors like you can view in the video embedded in Dave Neiwert's article. This is where freedom of speech needs to be revoked, when the President of the United States is directly threatened...