Monday, July 13, 2009

Solomon: Escalation Scam: Troops in Afghanistan, McCain Organizing Honduran Coup Leaders Visit

From: earthactionnetwork@earthlink.net

http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/commentaries/3923

Escalation Scam: Troops in Afghanistan

By Norman Solomon
Zspace: Jul 11, 2009

The president has set a limit on the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
For now.

That's how escalation works. Ceilings become floors. Gradually.

A few times since last fall, the Obama team has floated rising numbers for
how many additional U.S. soldiers will be sent to Afghanistan. Now,
deployment of 21,000 more is a done deal, with a new total cap of 68,000
U.S. troops in that country.

But "escalation" isn't mere jargon. And it doesn't just refer to what's
happening outside the United States.

"Escalation" is a word for a methodical process of acclimating people at
home to the idea of more military intervention abroad -- nothing too sudden,
just a step-by-step process of turning even more war into media wallpaper --
nothing too abrupt or jarring, while thousands more soldiers and billions
more dollars funnel into what Martin Luther King Jr. called a "demonic
suction tube," complete with massive violence, mayhem, terror and killing on
a grander scale than ever.

As war policies unfold, the news accounts and dominant media discourse
rarely disrupt the trajectory of events.. From high places, the authorized
extent of candor is a matter of timing.

Lots of recent spin from Washington has promoted the assumption that
President Obama wants to stick with the current limit on deployments to
Afghanistan. Soon after pushing supplemental war funds through Congress,
he's hardly eager to proclaim that 68,000 American troops in Afghanistan may
not be enough after all.

But no amount of spin can change the fact that the U.S. military situation
in Afghanistan continues to deteriorate. It would be astonishing if plans
for add-on deployments weren't already far along at the Pentagon.

Meanwhile, the White House is reenacting a macabre ritual -- a repetition
compulsion of the warfare state -- carefully timing and titrating each dose
of public information to ease the process of escalation. The basic technique
is far from new.

In the spring and early summer of 1965, President Lyndon Johnson decided to
send 100,000 additional U.S. troops to Vietnam, more than doubling the
number there. But at a July 28 news conference, he announced that he'd
decided to send an additional 50,000 soldiers.

Why did President Johnson say 50,000 instead of 100,000? Because he was
heeding the advice from something called a "Special National Security
Estimate" -- a secret document, issued days earlier about the already-
approved new deployment, urging that "in order to mitigate somewhat the
crisis atmosphere that would result from this major U.S. action . . .
announcements about it be made piecemeal with no more high-level emphasis
than necessary."

Forty-four years later, something similar is underway with deployments of
U.S. troops to Afghanistan.

Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Tuesday
that no limit has been set. Speaking to the Center for Strategic and
International Studies, he sounded an open-ended note: "There is not a
ceiling on troop levels in Afghanistan."

Mullen's comment was scarcely reported in U.S. media outlets. It has become
old news without ever being news in the first place.

The war planners in Washington are bound to proceed carefully on the home
front. News of further escalation will come "piecemeal" -- "with no more
high-level emphasis than necessary."

Norman Solomon, co-chair of the national Healthcare NOT Warfare campaign, is
the author of many books including "War Made Easy: How Presidents and
Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death." For more information, go to:
www.normansolomon.com

From: Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives

***

Posted by: "Walter Lippmann" walterlx@earthlink.net walterlx

McCain Organizing Visit to Washington of Honduran Coup Leaders

EVA GOLINGER
GRANMA: July 8, 2009

Republican Senator John McCain, the former U.S. presidential candidate, is
behind a visit to Washington by representatives of the de facto Honduran
government. McCain, known for his hard-line stance against Venezuela,
Bolivia and other countries in the region considered to be
"anti-imperialist," organized a "press conference" for the coup leaders at 3
p.m. on Tuesday, July 7, at the prestigious National Press Club in the U.S.
capital.

According to a press release sent out on July 6, "members of the Honduran
national congress, together with representatives of the private sector and
former members of the Honduran judicial corps, will give a press conference
in Washington, D.C. to talk about recent events in Honduras. The press
conference will take place on Tuesday, July 7, 2009, at 3:00 p.m., in the
Murrow Room of the National Press Club. The delegation will be traveling to
Washington to participate in several days of meetings with U.S. politicians
to clarify any misunderstandings about the Honduran constitutional process,
and to talk about the next steps to follow to ensure the safeguarding of the
country's democratic institutions."

The press release announcing the coup leaders' visit to Washington was sent
out by The Cormac Group, a lobbying group in Washington. The main clients of
this group are multinational corporations like AT&T, DirecTV, Time Warner,
the National Football League (NFL) and Bacardi USA, run by the anti-Castro
Cuban mafia in Miami. The Cormac Group's founder, John W. Timmons, was a
lawyer for Senator McCain and the legislative director of his trade agenda.

John McCain is chief of the executive board of the International Republican
Institute (IRI)*, an entity considered to be the international arm of the
Republican Party in the United States and one of the four "key groups" of
the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). The IRI played a key role in the
April 2002 coup d'état against President Hugo Chávez in Venezuela,
financing, advising and then applauding the groups and individuals involved.
The IRI has also been one of the top financiers and advisors of
organizations and movements that have carried out Eastern Europe's so-called
"color revolutions."

In the last year, the IRI has been working in Honduras with more than $1.2
million in NED funds to influence political parties and "support initiatives
to implement political positions during the 2009 campaigns. The IRI is to
place special emphasis on Honduras, a country that has presidential and
legislative elections in November 2009."

In March 2009, during a presentation by an IRI representative on the
agency's work in Honduras, reference was made to the coup d'état being
plotted against President Manuel Zelaya. During the presentation, the IRI
spokeswoman explained the IRI's position against President Zelaya, and then
talked about the "coup": "The current president, Manuel Zelaya and his
panas, the leftists of Latin America, have caused a lot of political
destabilization in the country. Zelaya is an imitator of Hugo Chávez, and of
Hugo Chávez's social revolution. He has spent a large part of his
administration trying to convince the Honduran people, very practical and
centrist people, that the Venezuelan road is the path that must be taken.
Zelaya's leftist tendencies are intensifying existing problems. Corruption
is worse than ever, crime has increased more than ever. Drug trafficking and
violence are passing through the Mexican border. And there is a real feeling
in the country that there is internal destabilization, which is new in
Honduran history. People thought that coup d'états were from 30 years ago,
until now (she laughs and audience laughs), again."

There is no question about the relationship between the business sectors and
Republicans with the coup leaders in Honduras. But we may also ask: why did
the Department of State allow the coup leaders into the United States? Why
weren't their visas revoked? Or is it that, despite all that has been said,
the current government in Washington is still maintaining a relationship
with the criminals who violently kidnapped a democratically-elected
president and forced him into exile, in order to then repress his people and
violate democratic norms and principles?

*For more information on the role of the International Republican Institute
in the Honduran coup d'état, see http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php .

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