[Marxism] Obama and media non response to US death squads in Iraq

[Dbachmozart@xxxxxxx]

A Furnace  Seal'd: The Wondrous Death Squads of the American Elite
 
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Another way  station on _our plunge into  darkness_ 
(http://www.chris-floyd.com/content/view/1602/135/)  was passed last week with 
the publication of Bob  
Woodward's new book, The War Within.  Along with the usual backstairs gossip 
dished out by self-serving insiders eager  to plant their spin on events, 
Woodward revealed -- or, rather, confirmed -- the  existence of what he called 
the 
key element to the "success" of Bush's  escalation of the war crime in Iraq: a 
"secret killing program" aimed at  assassinating anyone arbitrarily deemed a 
"terrorist" by the leaders of the  foreign forces occupying the conquered 
land. 

_In a TV appearance to puff the  book_ 
(http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/09/09/iraq.secret/) , Woodward 
celebrated the arbitrary murder, by methods  
unknown, of people designated "terrorists," by criteria unknown, as "a 
wonderful  example of American ingenuity solving a problem in war, as we often 
have." The  White House acknowledged the existence of the assassination 
program, 
but  insisted that it was the "surge" of troops that was mainly responsible for 
the  drop in violence from the howling hell of 2006 to today's level, which, 
_as Juan Cole has pointed  out_ 
(http://www.juancole.com/2008/09/us-soldier-dies-bombings-in-mosul.html) , is 
still greater than some of the most horrific 
civic  conflicts of the last century. (It is a strange country indeed that can  
celebrate the creation of a blood-gushing sinkhole of violence and destruction 
 as a "success beyond our wildest dreams," to use _Barack Obama's new take on 
the  surge_ (http://www.chris-floyd.com/content/view/1599/135/) .)

Of course, Woodward, the consummate Beltway  courtier, embraces this 
bipartisan conventional wisdom about the success of the  surge. And he is 
certainly 
right, at least from one point of view, as we noted  here recently:


The "surge" --  which in addition to an influx of troops included the 
ruthless ethnic cleansing  of Baghdad, the walled ghettoization of vast swathes 
of 
the city, and the arming  and funding of violent sectarian militias across the 
land -- certainly succeeded  in extending the duration of the murder, suffering 
and chaos engendered by  America's armed and belligerent presence in Iraq. So 
it is indeed a great  "success" ...  in the same way that, say, Albert 
Speer's miraculous efforts  to keep the Nazi war machine going from 1943 to 
1945 -- 
resulting in the deaths  of millions of people, including the worst ravages of 
the Holocaust -- was a  "success." 


full --  
 
<_http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1604&It
emid=135_ 
(http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1604&Itemid=135)
 > 




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