Monday, April 29, 2013

Winding up

Last week, I noted this quote from Josh Marshall, editor of the liberal Talking Points Memo:
"Basically everything Barack Obama has done since coming into office has been to unwind the thicket of commitments, practices and open wars begun under George W. Bush." 
Now here's Senator Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, speaking at a forum on US foreign policy over the weekend:
“You're thinking we're winding down. You think we're out of Iraq? Maybe boots and uniforms we might be, but we're probably 30,000-plus strong contractors. You think we're downsizing in Afghanistan? We are. Military. We're still 100,000-strong contractors."
In other words, basically everything Barack Obama has done since coming into office has been to wind up (and institutionalize) the for-profit thicket of commitments, practices and open wars begun under George W. Bush.

5 comments:

  1. notimetobebanned12:50 PM

    Yes but don't you find the most interesting people to be the ones to whom you can explain all of this and they activate their "you're turning me off and scaring me so I'm going to sit over here now and talk about how awful it is that Bush started this pattern so that a sexy liberal like Obama had an impossible job instead of the easy one he deserved" ?

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  2. notimetobebanned1:01 PM

    Interesting to follow what will become of the Iraq contractors. Obama pulled out because it's easier for Americans to accept more dead American soldiers than it is for them to accept American soldiers being tried in a court by sand-n******, for killing or maiming those sand-("I'm a white democract so I'm not really racist when I think of them as sand-n******")-n******.

    Obviously nobody will give a crap about a contractor being killed and it'll just never be reported anyway. But I wonder what it will seem like on the news to see a shitload of sensationalist "victimized white american kung-fu, bazooka technician contractor in satanic kangaroo court in Iraq, framed up for blowing a kid's head off due to road rage by those barbaric, corrupt, muslim iraqis", one after another after another.
    Westerners are shocked when a white westerner gets 2 lashes for vandalism, if it happens in the dark skinned east.

    Because those contractors won't be immune from Iraqi law, if the govt couldn't secure that for soldiers.

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  3. notimetobebanned1:04 PM

    There'll be a whisking-out lobby in Iraq. Where insiders trade connections to help whisk out contractors, like was done in Pakistan with that cia guy who shot a pakistani in the market or in the street.

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  4. True story. It's sick shit. Even the name transformations of Blackwater over the years to obfuscate their meddlings is disturbing.

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