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Obama airstrikes kill 22 in Pakistan
The Sunday London Times, January 25, 2009
Islamabad is the first to get a taste of the president’s ‘tough love’ policy. ... The airstrikes were authorised under a covert programme approved by Obama, according to a senior US official.
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US pours cold water over hopes of Iran deal
The London Times, January 30, 2009
The White House warned Iran last night that military action is still one of its options despite the "hand of friendship" offered by President Obama.
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In America, Speaking the Truth is a Career-Ending Event
Counterpunch, January 26, 2009
Paul Craig Roberts
The Bush regime was a lawless regime. This makes it difficult for the Obama regime to be a lawful one. A torture inquiry would lead naturally into a war crimes inquiry. General Taguba said that the Bush regime committed war crimes. President Obama was a war criminal by his third day in office when he ordered illegal cross-border drone attacks on Pakistan that murdered 20 people, including 3 children. The bombing and strafing of homes and villages in Afghanistan by US forces and America's NATO puppets are also war crimes. Obama cannot enforce the law, because he himself has already violated it.
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I Told You So----------CounterPunch, January 23, 2009
By Ron Jacobs (retitled by MW of Palitone Press)
...Since he was elected, Mr. Obama has hedged on this promise [to bring the troops home from Iraq]. Since he was inaugurated, the Pentagon and its civilian boss, Robert Gates, have hedged even more. Now, they insist, US troops should remain. ... Even if Barack Obama overrides the Pentagon and Mr. Gates ... there will still be around fifty thousand US troops in Iraq. This is because Obama's call to bring all troops home from Iraq that began his campaign somehow morphed into a call to bring home only those troops determined to be "combat troops."
Palitone Press, January 25-30, 2009
For those of us who stand outside the pathetic sham that is American two-party politics and study it objectively, the future under the faux intellectual, Barack Obama, and his cabinet of warmongers is ENTIRELY predictable (almost as if we are reading directly from "the establishment's" game plan — which, basically, we are). But trying to point this out to Americans who unquestioningly believe in that sham is like trying to talk sense to members of a cult who are excessively arrogant and self-righteous due to their cult's long history and almost universal acceptance.
The first time you try to convince members of this cult to, at the very least, investigate objectively all cult leaders — including their favorite ones — in order to discover that they are all frauds, the "cultists" look at you with smiles (or frowns) of supreme condescension, as if you are either a harmless, but deluded, blasphemer or a potential nuisance. If you continue to try to convince them, they will become annoyed and ignore you. If you persist beyond that, they will become openly hostile and shut you out completely. No amount of rational debate or proof is going to convince them to doubt their favorite leaders or their own deeply ingrained, highly partisan perceptions of reality. To them, the phrase, "open-minded, scholarly investigation," is just a trick to get them to read the "loony, biased opinions of deluded fringe groups."
"Luckily," the newest cult leader (Obama) has already started to break his promises to his devoted cultists (even if they refuse to see it), as we tried to tell them he would. Severe disillusionment among his followers is predicted for the not-too-distant future. This I welcome, as disillusionment often leads to a recognition, once and for all, that American two-party politics is, indeed, a sham — a sinister sham.
Update: According to the January 26, 2009, edition of the London Daily Mail, Fifteen percent of Americans appear to have become disillusioned with Obama already. Contrary to what most Obama supporters may think, I think these people have given him more than a fair chance. He just blew it in record time. However, I realize that he has promises to keep to the sleazy establishment that put him in the presidency. Making promises to them is like making promises to the Mafia. You break them at your own risk. That is the sham that is two-party politics.
P.S. Of course, it is always possible (actually, highly probable) that millions of liberals will either deny, ignore and/or justify Obama's broken promises throughout his entire presidency, just as millions of fanatical conservatives continued to deny, ignore and/or justify Bush's actions throughout his entire presidency. As always, in such cases, the permanent beneficiary is our massive, increasingly Orwellian federal government, that continues to function like clockwork, regardless of party.
