a little bit of uncle albert...
art guerrilla
by Al Martin
Clueless In Afghanistan…
The Sequel.
You may have heard about the new US campaign in Afghanistan -- dropping
propaganda canisters full of propaganda leaflets. They're supposed to be WANTED
posters for Osama bin Laden, written in the local dialect. It's supposed to be
a picture of him with a caption that says, "Have you seen this man?" The
picture, though, is a doctored photo showing him, clean-shaven and dressed in a
Western-style business suit. The Afghani peasants are having a hell of a time
with these leaflets because every time they see an American soldier, they
laugh, they point to the picture and they say, "Oh no, we haven't seen any
clean shaven Arabs dressed in JC Penney business suits that look like this,
wandering around the hinterlands of Afghanistan - but we're still looking."
The Department of Defense admitted they screwed up and gave a $1.5
million contract for the printing of these propaganda posters to "an
undisclosed printing company with close ties to the Bush Family." Of course,
they didn't put it out for bid. They admitted the flyers were mistakenly
printed, but they wouldn't reveal the name of the firm that got the contract to
print them.
The poster is absolutely hilarious. The government-media even showed a
bunch of Afghanis holding up the posters and laughing at them. Imagine looking
for an Arab without a beard and without a turban in a JC Penney business suit.
They point at the picture and say, "We sure haven't seen anyone around here
that looks like this."
The Afghani peasantry evidently didn't even understand the idea of WANTED
posters. They've never seen such a thing. They just see these leaflets falling
from the sky and they thought they were toilet paper. Now the leaflets are
winding up in every outhouse in Afghanistan.
An Afghani chieftain was interviewed, and he said they couldn't wait for
more of the leaflets to be dropped because he said, "They make great toilet
paper." They just love Western aid.
In another crony capitalism story, George Bush briefly went back to Texas
for the official unveiling of his gubernatorial portrait, an oil painting that
will hang in the state house. It's a little oil painting of him that cost
$10,000 made by some local artist who's a big fan of his and who's donated
money to him. There were many artists who have a much greater reputation than
this guy and they offered to paint it for nothing, instead of $10,000 of the
people's money. Traditionally the paintings are put out for bid, or they will
do the painting for nothing - just for the publicity. But not in Texas. A local
supporter who donated money to the Bush campaign got the job, and the painting
looks like it could have been done for $35 by anyone else. It looks like those
oil paintings in gift shops or a "paint by numbers" deal. Maybe they made him
donate the $10,000 to the Republican National Committee.
In another confirmation of a previous story posted on the Al Martin Raw
website, the FBI announced the break up of a "boiler room" (telemarketing scam)
operation which they called a "pyramid scheme" operating in thirteen states
that had bilked approximately 46,000 Americans out of an estimated $13 million
on the concept of selling partnerships to capture Osama bin Laden for the $25
million reward. The FBI said this was illegal and constituted a defacto pyramid
scheme, and the people running this scam had no intentions of ever going after
Osama bin Laden. They use a lot of retired military guys with Special Forces
credentials to tout the scheme. But this is the story that we had warned our
readers about (See www.almartinraw.com/column43.html)
Also we have another government-media confirmation of a previous Al
Martin Raw story about the JDM-31 weapons conversion system used to convert
"dumb" bombs into "smart" bombs and all the problems that system had. The
Department of Defense finally made a public admission that the JDM systems are
"substantially flawed," due to consistent failure of parts manufactured outside
of the United States. (See www.almartinraw.com/column43.html)
The new American Offensive in Afghanistan is to hand out twenty-dollar
bills. Evidently we have passed out so many twenty-dollar bills that the
Treasury ran short of them, and they actually had to ask the Bureau of
Engraving and Printing to make an expedited run of fresh twenties. How this
came to light is that the leaflets they were passing out of a clean-shaven
Osama bin Laden also had pictures of an American twenty-dollar bill on them. In
the local dialect, it says, "Please come in to see your local American military
commander. Come and be America's friend and get a twenty dollar bill."
So all these Afghani peasants are lining up to get their twenty-dollar
bills. And they're all smiling and shaking hands, saying, "Yabba, dabba, doo."
(http://www.almartinraw.com/column44.html) They're all ready to be America's
friend to get their twenty-dollar bill. The other scam in Afghanistan is that
the Afghanis are shaking down the journalists. One journalist said he paid over
a thousand dollars so "they wouldn't kill him." And that's happening with our
military's knowledge. We are actually encouraging some of the Afghani groups to
do that in order to discourage journalists from going there.
The marching orders apparently come from very high up. The US military is
telling the "Northern Alliance" (which switches allegiance every single day
depending on who's passing out the twenty dollar bills) that it's absolutely
open hunting season on journalists - except you just can't kill them. You can
do anything short of killing them. So if you want to waylay them, extort them
or take their equipment, you can do it. It's actual Department of Defense
policy - to keep journalists out of the country. It's surprising that the media
isn't making more of this DoD prohibition.
Rumsfeld made a public address about it - how they're not going to give
out the names of casualties without White House approval and they don't like
the way the media has handled it because it makes American forces sound
buffoonish and that none of their equipment works. This is absolutely
unprecedented for the Department of Defense not to release the list of
casualties.
Then there was the crash of the KC-130 refueling tanker. The crash was
initially blamed on "malfunction" or "linked to mechanical failure." They don't
come right out and say "faulty spare parts." And the non-combat death toll of
US armed forces continues to mount, more fallout from the rampant corruption
and fraud that exists within the defense industry and its cozy relationship
with the Department of Defense. " (See defective spare parts story
www.almartinraw.com/column42.html)
Then there's the continuing story of the crash of the three Dragonfly
surveillance drones, at the cost of another million dollars to the American
taxpayer.
Although the Deportment of Defense would not reveal the nature of the
third crash, Al Martin Raw has it on good authority that the Dragonfly flew
into a cloud of falling twenty-dollar bills.
Cue up the laugh track. Not only are we dropping American taxpayers'
money from the sky, but the surveillance drone built with another $350,000 of
the taxpayers' money proceeds to crash when it collided head-on with a falling
cloud of US taxpayers money.
The twenty-dollar bills actually come in packets, which say, "Be
America's Friend" in Arabic, and it shows Uncle Sam in a top hat with a fistful
of American twenties and all these smiling Arabs around him. He's patting them
on the head and stuffing them full of twenties.
Then there's the concept of our so-called Afghani allies who seemingly
switch sides by the day. The first actual combat casualty was a guy by the name
of Chadwick. The Department of Defense hadn't previously reported how he was
killed. It turns out that he was supposedly killed returning from a meeting
with Afghan "friendlies." He was coordinating the meeting. On the way back to
his encampment, he was ambushed by supposed "hostiles" and killed. The
Department of Defense now suspects that the Afghans who ambushed him were in
fact from the same so-called "friendly" faction he had just met with. They had
simply been paid one more twenty-dollar bill by somebody else -- than what we
had paid them.
Fox News even admitted that the White House had pressured them not to run
this story. They talked about the problem that we are having identifying the
friend one day and the foe the next day. They interviewed an unnamed sergeant
who talked about how demoralizing this is to US forces in Afghanistan. They're
not trained for it. He said that they were trained in very simple
straightforward "friend or foe" recognition by appearance, by uniform and by
weapon. This guy said that the people they're shipping over are young people
who are totally unprepared for this environment. The culture difference is so
large and the guys we're sending over are not used to being in an area of the
world where "life is the cheapest of all commodities."
It's the culture shock of it. They're not being prepared for this. He
pointed out that he and some other US soldiers had met with an Afghani tribal
leader and they were saying that we wanted this tribal leader killed. The
Afghani chieftain said, "I'll do it for $40," and the guy behind him said, "Oh,
I'll do it for $30." And he said, it became a bidding war. He said it was
absolutely surreal to him that such people actually existed.
This is a culture that is completely foreign to them and where, as he put
it, life or death literally turns on the next twenty-dollar bill. Who has the
most twenty-dollar bills?
What he said is that this is a huge problem in Afghanistan with US and
European forces, which are equally unprepared. The Department of Defense is
desperately covering up this fact because they have so much vested political
capital in our great Northern Alliance. They claim that we have been able to
build a coalition with these supposedly "friendly" Afghans. And the guy said
it's all an illusion. He said that an alliance built on Monday doesn't exist on
Tuesday. And he points to the example where these fighters from one faction are
supposedly aligned to the United States on a Monday will align themselves to
another faction opposed to the United States on a Tuesday - because they have
been paid an extra twenty-dollars to do so. When they don't get any more
twenty-dollar bills on Wednesday, they come back to the US faction. This is
absolutely incomprehensible to the average US soldier-this endless switching of
alliances over twenty-dollar bills. This is a real problem, and the morale of
US forces is seriously being affected by this.
All the US troops are coming out of Fort Campbell Kentucky, the urban
terrorist or domestic control training center. They're being told that A, B and
C are your friendlies, and D, E and F are your hostiles, but when we get there,
we see that A, B, C and D, E and F constantly switch sides - almost on a daily
basis. And no one is keeping us abreast because there is nobody, not even the
company commander, who can tell us who's a friend and who's a foe -- because
nobody knows - until an incident happens.
The guy pointed out this analogy that it's like the Chetnik Partisans in
Croatia during the Second World War. When the Germans were there, they'd wear
their hats with the Croatian Imperial eagle for the government that was aligned
with Germany. But every time the Yugoslav partisans came in, they'd turn their
hats around and on the back of their hats (they just folded backwards), they
had a red star. And that's what they would be for the day -- as long as the
partisans were there. And that's the analogy he's making with the Afghans.
There are so few people in the US forces, he continued, that know these
dialects and that know what these people are saying. We learn when we get there
that we need to unlearn all we've been taught about friend or foe recognition.
When we are in the company of the so-called Northern Allies, or any others that
our superiors tell us are our allies, whether we're going to be shot in the
back or not. Because of that, it substantially cripples any cooperation that US
forces can have with their so-called allies. This situation combined with the
helicopter crashes and the aircraft crashes and our guys stepping over the land
mines we had given to the Afghan Mujahideen in the 1980s and dropping bombs on
ourselves… He says it's endless, and what it does is it paralyzes our armed
forces. It's completely disorienting. We don't know where we are at any given
time because our global positioning units don't work. Or like he said, the
GPU's tell us where we are, but we don't have any reliable map to compare it
to. We're sent out on patrol to these villages and we have no idea where we are
at any given time - whether we're surrounded by friends or foes.
You could tell he was completely demoralized. He said, "What the hell are
we even doing here? We're given equipment that doesn't work half the time. We
don't know where we are half the time. We don't know which of the so-called
civilian population supports us or is hostile to us at any given moment. Our
commanders aren't telling us because they don't know.
It does remind you of Vietnam -- this concept of "what are we doing
here?"
And Washington is prepared to lie to the American people as much as
necessary saying, "we are winning the war on terrorism."
From a military standpoint, it is all a joke, but it is being done to
augment the policy of "the war against terrorism" and the larger agenda that it
entails which has absolutely nothing to do with the grunt soldier on the ground
in a place where he doesn't know what's going on and he doesn't know who's
going to shoot at him next.
The implication is that the average American soldier is paying the price
for the Bush Administration policy of a "war against terrorism" and the larger
agenda thereunto - to pump up defense spending, to squash congressional
investigations of defense fraud, to produce endless quantities of more weapons
that don't work, and more ensuing contributions to the Republican Party.
From a military standpoint, the whole thing should be named "Operation
Façade."
After the latest air crash, George Bush said, "The cause is noble and
just" - and it's just much nonsense. Like this guy said we're in a country
where there is no central government. There is no government for all practical
purposes. There is no law. There is no civil administration. There are no
public institutions. As Americans we keep looking around and thinking where is
that touchstone that we touch and feel that here's the real thing -- this is
the authority, or this is the reality at any given time. But there is no such
conventional touchstone. They're in a completely lawless society, which is
governed only by money. There is no other governance other than money.
The other illusion is that people give loyalty to certain tribal
chieftains. The tribal chieftain's only ability to maintain loyalty is his
ability to pay them. There's no loyalty based on ethnicity or based on
religion. It's an absolute free-for-all.
The only current standard of loyalty in Afghanistan is "Andrew Jackson"
(as in the currency denomination).
If you've noticed, they've also been playing up the transportation of the
al Qaida prisoners to Guantanamo. And it struck me as funny, the way the guys
looked with their heads bobbing around, muttering to themselves, pumped full of
Thorazine, saying "What in the hell's going on and where the hell are we?"
Thirteen hours earlier they came into the Kandahar prison camp, they
grabbed these guys strip them out of their robes. Put them in green POW
jumpsuits but leave their turbans ion their heads. They're blindfolded and
marched into the back of a cargo plane, which is refueled twice in flight
because they didn't want to land anywhere. They're strapped into these high
security leather restraining chairs that they use din federal prisons, pumped
full of Thorazine (they called it "high concentration sedative") blindfolded
and their heads are bobbing around. They're apparently required to feed them so
they stick into their mouths something called "hydrogenated compressed high
protein food bar" whatever that is. It looked exactly like a pressed square of
a piece of camel shit. So they're sticking this thing in the guys' mouths and
they're trying to spit it out. Then they put the hood over their heads so they
can't spit it out. Then they take them through this swampy area covered by
planks because they couldn't wheel them any other way. These are high security
restraining chairs and their heads are bobbing around and they're probably
thinking what kind of hell is this? It reminded me of those dolls you buy in
Hawaii and put on the dashboards and their heads are bobbing around. Just a
bunch of bobbing heads.
My reaction was that I felt sorry for these guys. They're showing
everybody the power of the State. It's a power play. They're making an awful
big deal out of something that shouldn't be that big of a big deal. See what
happens if you resist. You get pumped full of Thorazine, put in a green
jumpsuit and strapped into a chair and a hydrogenated food bar stuck in your
mouth. They played this all day and made such a big deal out of it. And I think
it's going to backfire on them. I think it will engender sympathy for these
poor people.
The media spent so much time on this, and I found it funny. Secondly, I
felt bad for these poor guys. They'll probably show it to all the Afghans. If
you don't shape up, you'll end up like these guys - in the Ninth Circle of
Hell. Or its equivalent -- Clueless in Guantanamo.
In other news, the GAO Report estimated next year's federal budget
deficit of $353 billion. President Bush's comment was to shrug his shoulders
and say, "Well, that s the price of security."
The American people should ask him, "How does a proposed $16 billion
increase in the Department of Agriculture spending increase the nations
security?"
Particularly when its money that the Department of Agriculture said it
doesn't even want, can't use, and will most likely be wasted.
Bush's statement is a blatant lie. It's a $53 billion increase for
defense appropriations of high technology weapons, the very same missile and
fixed wing and rotary aircraft weapons systems of which the GAO states that
only 38% of them which work at any one time.
How is the nation's security increased by buying weapon systems of which
only 38% work at any time? These are weapons systems, which have inflicted more
casualties on our own forces than they ever have inflicted on any enemy.
When you add it all up, the budgetary breakdowns, over half of the
proposed spending increases, which make up the deficit, have absolutely nothing
to do with the "security" of the nation. They are simply politically popular.
And even the GAO warns that at least half of every dollar of next years' budget
deficit will be a dollar that has been completely wasted.
The Bush Administration is still trying to sucker the American people.
They had big American flags when he made the comment. It's just hard to believe
that the people can't see through this.
Then after this announcement, the Bush Administration said it wants to
cut the appropriation money for the General Accounting Office and General
Services Administration. They want to cut their "public information" budget so
they can't put out so much information detailing breakdowns of government
spending.
Maybe they can get Arthur Andersen to do the audits instead - and then
shred the documents afterward for the same price. Just like they did with
Enron.
Even the government-media is talking about "allegations of massive
document shredding" at Enron's corporate headquarters. Kenneth Lay, the CEO of
Enron, attended the Republican National Committee School of Document Shredding.
We understand that he graduated with Oliver North Summa Cum Laude.
But why do you think that George Bush Sr. takes Prozac™?
Because the truth is depressing.
After all even that paragon of truth telling, the Wall Street Journal,
reports that since September 11, 2001, there have been 1.9 million new
prescriptions for Prozac™.
America has become a nation of drinking Jack and taking Prozac. God help
us, we are following in the steps of our former leader.
The next thing we'll be doing is shredding documents and going through
the ensuing "Shredder Withdrawal Syndrome" (SWS). It's a clinically recognized
disease in the Beltway, and it's coming soon to your very own neighborhood…
Denis Morissette
> by Al Martin
>
> Clueless In Afghanistan…
> The Sequel.
>
> You may have heard about the new US campaign in Afghanistan -- dropping
> propaganda canisters full of propaganda leaflets. They're supposed to be WANTED
> posters for Osama bin Laden, written in the local dialect. It's supposed to be
> a picture of him with a caption that says, "Have you seen this man?" The
> picture, though, is a doctored photo showing him, clean-shaven and dressed in a
> Western-style business suit. The Afghani peasants are having a hell of a time
> with these leaflets because every time they see an American soldier, they
> laugh, they point to the picture and they say, "Oh no, we haven't seen any
> clean shaven Arabs dressed in JC Penney business suits that look like this,
> wandering around the hinterlands of Afghanistan - but we're still looking."
>
> The Department of Defense admitted they screwed up and gave a $1.5
> million contract for the printing of these propaganda posters to "an
> undisclosed printing company with close ties to the Bush Family." Of course,
> they didn't put it out for bid. They admitted the flyers were mistakenly
> printed, but they wouldn't reveal the name of the firm that got the contract to
> print them.
>
I have just checked the FBI Most Wanted Persons. It mentionnes Laden,
but nowhere it mentionnes he is wanted for the WTC attack...
art guerrilla
the great white north was quite droll -
>Never heard this one. When was the story printed in U.S. newspapers?
oh, the most important news hardly ever
is...
hee hee hee
...or only 20-30 years after the fact...
ho ho ho
>I have just checked the FBI Most Wanted Persons. It mentionnes Laden,
>but nowhere it mentionnes he is wanted for the WTC attack...
oh, what *did* we bomb the shit out of
pipelinestan for then ? ? ?
ha ha ha
...what *is* that 25 million (whatever it is
these days) bounty on him for ? ? ?
ak ak ak
(as a sidebar, kampers know that if you
put a 25 mill bounty on *anyone* in
amerika, there would be thousands of
people killed in the rush to collect
the money... h h h )
regardless of whatever technical language
is used in his wanted poster or legal
indictments, bin laden is THE villian
responsible for the wtc, according to
allowable gummint propaganda and the
resulting beliefs of 90% of the sheeple...
hee hee hee
ann karma-police archy
eof