War and Peace

A Bill Moyers Essay

December 11, 2009

"The Merchant of Death is Dead"

BILL MOYERS: Many people are perplexed that Barack Obama flew to Oslo this week to receive the Nobel Peace Prize so soon after escalating the war in Afghanistan. He's now doubled the number of troops that were there when George W. Bush left office. The irony was not lost on the president, and he tried to address it in his acceptance speech...Rest of Transcript

Red Cross assists landmine victims in Afghanistan

An Afghan man and a child with artificial legs are seen at the International Red Cross Orthopedic (ICRC) rehabilitation center on December 10, 2009 in Herat, Afghanistan. The aims of the ICRC rehabilitation center are to educate and rehabilitate landmine victims and others with deformities to help them return their former lives. According to the UN mine information network, 62 people on average are killed or injured by mines each month in Afghanistan. UPI/Hossein Fatemi

There are Thirteen More Photo's at the UPI site link with descriptions on the right hand side for each as you view them.

ICBL International Campaign to Ban Landmines

Landmine Survivors Network

Adopt-A-Minefield Landmine Clearance and Support

"THE GOOD SOLDIER"

On November 6, 2009, the JOURNAL broadcasts THE GOOD SOLDIER, a film which follows four veterans — one from World War II, two from Vietnam, and the fourth from Iraq — as they reveal how the experiences of battle changed their lives. Watch a preview below.

Premier:


November 6th PBS Bill Moyers Journal {visit the Journal Link as it has more backlinks for Veterans.}

As America prepares to observe Veterans Day and President Obama weighs sending more troops to fight in Afghanistan, BILL MOYERS JOURNAL broadcasts a powerful documentary about the impact on soldiers of learning to kill – or be killed. THE GOOD SOLDIER follows four veterans – one from World War II, two from Vietnam, and the fourth from Iraq – as they reveal how the experiences of battle changed their lives.

Find out more about the film and theatrical release locations and dates at The Good Soldier

"THE GOOD SOLDIER" Trailer:

Dick Armey and "His" Tax-Supported Healthcare

If you missed this on friday, The Bill Moyers Journal you may want to at least catch his essay for this week. The rest of the show would do well to watch as well, on the Death of Conservatism, the State of Unions and a read of 'Young Workers: a Lost Decade'.

September 18, 2009
A Bill Moyers essay on the protests in Washington, D.C. and whose funding opposition to health care reform.

Bill Moyers Essay Sept 18th

Gingrich became Speaker of the House and Armey the House Majority Leader.

But they did nothing about health care except let its costs soar while their corporate backers reaped huge profits. Since then costs have more than doubled and are escalating now at twice the rate of inflation. There were around 39 million americans without health care coverage then. There are more than 46 million now.

And Dick Armey? He retired from his government job to lead an advocacy group called FreedomWorks, which aims to torpedo healthcare reform once again. Curiously, they refuse to disclose their corporate donors. They say they want to protect against "aggressive attacks on companies who people have claimed are donors but aren't even donors." Got that?

But here's the catch. Something these marchers who came to Washington at Armey's urging could hardly be expected to know. For most of his adult life, their leader has benefited from just the kind of government, tax-supported healthcare he's fighting to keep them from having, too.

When Dick Armey taught economics at the University of North Texas for 13 years his health insurance was administered by the state and supplemented by the taxpayers.

When he was elected to Congress, he was covered by the federal employees' health benefit plan. And when he retired from Congress eighteen years later, he was insured by that plan until he turned 66 and Medicare, another government program, kicked in. All the time he's been making some half a million dollars a year working for FreedomWorks and raking in lobbyist fees amounting to what he recently called "a darned handsome pile of dough."

You can't blame him for keeping his government health plan. It's great. It gave him a lot of options, dozens of private insurers to choose from, and with eight million members in it, the federal government's got the muscle to negotiate some of the best premiums and drug prices in the country. That's not all. Taxpayers subsidize these federal health insurance plans by as much as 75% of the premium cost. Beneficiaries -- including members and retired members of congress like armey -- pay their share of the premiums with pre-tax dollars.

Not bad.

Now get this: Dick Armey thought so much of that federal health plan - the cadillac of coverage --that he tried to keep it as his primary carrier, instead of that other federal program, medicare.

Mr. Armey wanted an option. A government option. How about that?

But he couldn't get out of medicare without losing his Social Security (they're hitched together -- you give up one, you give up both), so he's suing to divorce the two ... And now he says he's happy to buy his health insurance on his own - and why not? He's got that pile of dough. And there's the rub.

Dick Armey is the epitome of those people with power and privilege who are insured against the vicissitudes of life, and want no government assistance for any suffering ... Except their own.

And all those members of congress sitting there during the president's speech last week? Joe Wilson, included. They; too have Cadillac federal coverage subsidized by tax dollars.

That's no lie.

The pure hypocrisy of many, Armey, entertainers like Beck and much of FOX and others, who are rallying the citizen to oppose anything and everything should not even be brought into the public discussion, let alone on the public airways, it's not debate, it's propaganda!

TeaBags in DC and Afghanistan: McClatchy's Nancy Youssef

Yesterday, 9.12.09, in Washington, we had this: Tea Party Protesters March on Washington extending their purely political use of the tragedy of 9/11. I'll guess not one at the podium or with the megaphones, nor any in the crowd, even mentioned this: 5 U.S. troops among 50 killed in Afghan violence Sat Sep 12, nor much was said about all the soldiers who've died, or are physically and mentally injured from the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. I'll guess also nothing was mentioned about the monetary, in billions and billions, cost of these still operational theaters of occupation!

A friend at facebook also asked the same I've {many have} wondered these past eight years:

is wondering where all those folks who are now expressing outrage about profligate government spending were during the eight years of the Bush Administration?

During the Bush years, the US national debt went from 5.7 trillion to 10.6 trillion. :(

I answered with this:

They were Yelling and Screaming that those who 'Protest' against their 'dear leaders' policies, policies of death and destruction done In Our Names, were not only UnPatriotic but UnAmerican as well as Enemy Sympathizers and every other label of negativity they could muster up!!! They haven't changed the rhetoric, words nor yelling, they've have now embraced {their own definitions} being UnPatriotic, UnAmerican and become the Enemies of the Nation and our Constitution!!
Starting even before their 'dear leaders, cheney/bush' left town!!

Afghanistan with McClatchy DC Pentagon correspondent Nancy Youssef.

September 11, 2009

The JOURNAL takes a hard look at the state of affairs in Afghanistan with McClatchy DC Pentagon correspondent Nancy Youssef.

BILL MOYERS: But first, we turn to another big decision bearing down on the President, what to do in Afghanistan. A conflict Americans can no longer put out of mind or out of sight.

Once again, we have been reminded that war is not a video game. The photo of an American marine dying in Afghanistan created a controversy that threw the press into conflict with the Pentagon and the young marine's family - and it threw those of us in the press into conflict with ourselves.

Snip

As THE ECONOMIST nagazine noted last month, resentment against the Karzai government, NATO forces and westerners in general is growing. "...it seems clear," the magazine reported, "that the international effort to bring stability to Afghanistan... is failing."

And yet, consider this open letter to President Obama from some of the very same armchair warriors whose claim of expertise supported President Bush's decision to invade Iraq. They were wrong then - wrong time and again - but their tragic errors haven't stopped them from demanding that President Obama now escalate the war in Afghanistan.

Once again, their enthusiasm for war is as great as their distance from the actual battlefield.

Their letter lands as European leaders are calling for an international conference to assess the deteriorating situation and the commander of our forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, delivers a review to the White House. It's a report many believe sets the stage for an even greater expansion of the war.

But recently, the "McClatchy" news service reported that some top pentagon officials fear that without a clear definition of our mission there, further escalation will be in vain.

As a reality check, with me now is one of the reporters on that story, recently returned from Afghanistan.

Nancy Youssef is the Chief Pentagon Correspondent for "McClatchy" news. She covered the war in Iraq for four years, including two as Baghdad Bureau Chief.

Nancy Youssef, welcome to the JOURNAL.............Rest of Transcript Here

I posted this Quagmires: 8yrs. After 9/11 a few days ago with more reports about Afghanistan and Iraq, a discussion aired on the PBS News Hour and another report/discussion from MSNBC.

Essay on Health Care Reform

September 4, 2009
A Bill Moyers essay on health care reform.



Articles from the Essay
Josh Marshall's article

Henry Giroux's article

Bill Moyers Journal

BILL MOYERS: The editors of THE ECONOMIST magazine say America's health care debate has become a touch delirious, with people accusing each other of being evil-mongers, dealers in death, and un-American.

Well, that's charitable.

I would say it's more deranged than delirious, and definitely not un-American.

Those crackpots on the right praying for Obama to die and be sent to hell — they're the warp and woof of home-grown nuttiness. So is the creature from the Second Amendment who showed up at the President's rally armed to the teeth. He's certainly one of us. Red, white, and blue kooks are as American as apple pie and conspiracy theories..............Rest Here

Moyers on Gun Violence 6.12.09 and.........

BILL MOYERS: Finally, you know by now that in our nation's capital on Wednesday, an elderly white supremacist and anti-Semite is alleged to have walked into the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum with a rifle and killed a security guard before being brought down himself. 88 years old!

You will know, too, of the recent killing in church of Dr. George Tiller, one of the few doctors in the country still performing late term abortions. It was evidence that violence works. His family has now announced that his Kansas clinic will not be reopened...........Rest Found Here

And a most recent arrest in a brutal double murder by members of a fringe radical anti-immigration group

Sheriff: Arizona home invaders wanted all dead

The Web site for the Minutemen American Defense lists Forde as the group's leader and Bush as its operations director. Forde is from Everett, Wash., but has recently been living in Arizona.......

Head of a minuteman group arrested for double homicide

Forde is known for being the head of the minutemen group M.A.D., where she is listed as the National Executive Director.

The photo is of Shawna Forde during an operation along the border, courtesy the website of Andrew Ong.

"If you look at her history closely, and you know what we know, she is at best a pyschopath," says Sheriff Dupnik referring to Forde during a press conference Friday.

Forde's organization is not directly connected to the more commonly known minutemen organization, Minutemen Civil Defense Corps or the Minutemen project run by Chris Simcox and James Gilchrist.......

And those with her as well as others who had contact with her, especially this organization she was an apparent high ranking officer of, had to know her as the police describe her!

And these groups form and act in the Name, and under the flag of, this Country, the United States of America!

The United States for which many of us have served to protect and defend the constitution of, with many now serving and dying in two long running occupations!

Bill Moyers Journal: Economy, March 27

Bill Moyers-James Thindwa

James Thindwa, whose campaign for economic fairness for working people in Chicago has brought him up against the city's powerful political establishment and corporate giant Wal-Mart.

""Your average person is getting up every day to go to work, and to care for a family, doesn't have a lobbyist in Washington. They don't have a lobbyist in the city council. They don't have a lobbyist at the state legislature. The community organization gathers facts for them. They call meetings. They invite people to come. They invite elected officials to come, attend those meetings, so that they can listen to the community's grievance. It makes for participation."">>>>Read Transcript & Watch

Bill Moyers-William Greider

For years best-selling author William Greider sounded the alarm about Washington's unholy alliance with Wall Street and the failure of the Federal Reserve and other regulators to take preventive measures to avoid disaster. Now, he offers some suggestions to the question everyone is asking: "What do we do now?". >>>>Read Transcript & Watch

Bill Moyers-Questions for the President What would you ask the President?

And this from the American Chronicle: Ronald Reagan: Betrayer of Main Street America!

"When it came to corporate greed, the Great Communicator [Ronald Reagan] was also the Great Enabler." - William Kleinknecht

Bill Moyers on Mideast Violence

BILL MOYERS JOURNAL



No need to add to what Moyers speaks of, just listen closely, and understand!

So Wrong For So Long

There's a reason I use the breakin line to Greg Mitchells book So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits--and the President--Failed on Iraq.

Part of that reason is an article printed in the Asian Times, I just finished reading.

The "So wrong for So long" not only can describe how our current tragic history has been evolving, and what may be coming in the short term future and beyond, in it's lack of competent leadership, it's rapidly changed policies of death and destruction of others pre-emptively for no reason or a veriaty of reasons with no foundations nor proof of existance, it's violations of human rights through arrests and torture of others on whims of suspicion or even less than that.

The 'So wrong for So long" describes how this country doesn't learn it's own lessons from it's own past in it's relative short existance.

One of those lessons is the lesson of War, especially the Wars of Choice leading into Occupations of Others and the terror those invasions and occupations bring upon them, those others haven't done a thing to deserve the total destruction of the World they once lived in and now is changed forever, with the children growing up in a World the complete opposite of what should be and shaping their lives from the experiances of that existance.

The article in the Asian Times is titled What it means when the US goes to war but could be titled with any countries name substituted or just "What it means to go to War". This is about what happens to American Soldiers sent into Invasions and Occupations of Choice, we've gone through all this before, lessons not learned, none of the lessons of!

American soldiers in Iraq daily face "atrocity producing situations", from patrols, convoys (which race along like freight trains of death), home raids, detentions and military checkpoints: the essence of war, after all, is death. Using the experiences of soldiers on the ground, Chris Hedges strips away the myths of glory and honor and discovers the uncommon "moral courage" that the veterans he quotes have exhibited by telling the truth about their war.

And moral courage it is, when for the health and sanity of the individual, that individual must let go of what's deeply hidden and speak out on what they have seen or taken part in, in the hell on earth War, man's destruction of others, man's terrorizing others to force their ideologies and beliefs on them, or simply to strip them of their individual dignity and material wealth and countries resources.

They confront the grave, existential crisis of all who go through combat and understand that we have no monopoly on virtue, that in war we become as barbaric and savage as those we oppose.

This is an extremely important read for the Uneducated and Unexperianced of War and Occupation, and for those who have but choose denial to cope, how all that one has grown to learn, in many area's of ones young life, is quickly stripped away in the reality of what man does to fellow man.

These are the already grown children, sent off to engage in these Wars, think of the experiances of the young children living in these theaters of war, this is how they are learning the lessons of the world they were born into, and growing up in as it continues, they can't be taught differant, they can hear about beauty and peace, tolerance and love, but they exist in a hell created around them, with all the fears and terror it brings, that man rages on other men.

Last night, in case you missed it, Greg Mitchell was one of the guests on the Bill Moyers Journal on PBS

If you did miss it, or would like to re-visit, you can watch it here as well as read the transcript

A few clips from the discussion:

GREG MITCHELL: Right. Well, that's — again, it's different coming from the chief White House spokesman than coming from me — you know, for better or worse. But you know, I — that's what I mean. I think what's troubling to me is the response to that. The media has not responded by saying, "Boy, we really got caught out here, and we really need to look at what we did wrong. And we're, you know, we need to report on what the mistakes we made and what we — you know, what we've really learned now."

Now a few days ago the Senate Intelligence Committee finally released a report about the lies the administration fabricated, and more, in the reasoning to invade an innocent country, Iraq. Bush knew Iraq claims weren't true. And what have the media placed front and center as most important, what Hillary Clinton will do now that this Historic Presidential Campaign has passed the torch of leadership to Barrack Obama, even half the time frothing over Hillary could and should have been used to report on the Intelligence Report and our Soldiers at War, but for myself even more should be reported! The PDF of the Report

JONATHAN LANDAY: What's disappoints me is that here was an opportunity, once again, but a very large opportunity for major news organizations to do the mea culpa they never did, to admit that they indeed failed to do what they're supposed to do, failed to be the watchdogs they're supposed to be.
And yet we saw exactly the opposite for the most part. And I was just I was left breathless by some of the things that I heard where you heard correspondents say, "Well, we did ask the tough questions. We asked them to the White House spokesmen," Scott McClellan and others. And you say to yourself, "And you expected to get real answers? You expected them to say from the White House podium — 'Yeah, well, there were disagreements over the intelligence, but we ignored them'" when the President made his speeches and the Vice President made his speeches. No, I don't think so.

They blew it once again this past week, and will blow it in the coming weeks!

JOHN WALCOTT: You know, if Fox News's mission is to defend Republican administrations then they're right, they didn't fail. One of the things that puzzles me about all of this, in Scott's book is this notion that it was the liberal media. I'm not — I don't understand what liberal versus conservative has to do with this. I would have thought that conservatives would be the ones to ask questions about a march to war. How much is this gonna cost us? What's the effect of this gonna be on our military, on our country's strength overseas?
I don't think it's a liberal conservative question at all. I think that's, frankly, a canard by Scott

I highlighted the passage above because that's what I've felt right from the beginning even though it was so called conservatives beating the drums louder and louder for invasion and occupation, but I've been answered over and over with the fact that Conservatism, as it once was, is dead, none existant, undefined, in this new century. What's replaced it can only be described with a word from the past, Facism, for the many resemblances to.

GREG MITCHELL: You'd have to see whether the press this time would use the phrase "taking care of Iran." Now, what does that mean? Even if you do bomb Iran, what does that do? What is the aftereffect? What is the overall effect of it? What does it do to, you know, how many people do you kill? What happens in the wreckage afterwards? So if it's the media is — which it didn't do with Iraq — does it in this case then people will have a better understanding of what we're letting ourselves in for if we do attack Iran.
JOHN WALCOTT: That's an excellent point because the failures before the war on Iraq are probably matched by the failure to ask this question about invading Iran. Is it really gonna be easy? Are we really gonna be greeted with flowers and chocolates, as liberators, which is what the defectors told us? And one of the things this Administration has never been able to get through its head is the old saying that the enemy has a vote, that the enemy, whatever you do, they will respond in some way. And the Iranian-

Can the World, and our National Security, become worse than it is today, in the near future? Yes, invaded or bomb Iran and watch the Hatreds and Growth of Enemies result from!!

A Country like ours should be Leading by Example, making friends not enemies, helping others not destroying them, setting examples of moral and human tolerance and dignity not joining those who torture and control, trying to live as we preach, not condemning others when doing the same.........................................................................!

Setting the Example that can be Admired and Followed!

Failing the Troops - Bill Moyers

Once upon a time kids asked their fathers, "What did you do in the war, daddy?" It's a question the next generation could ask all of us, who stood by as our government invaded Iraq to start a war whose purpose and rationale keep shifting and whose end is nowhere in sight, and who look now with nonchalance upon the unseen scars of those who are fighting it.

That's it for THE JOURNAL.

We'll be back next week.

I'm Bill Moyers.

A victim of the war within Suicides of Houston Army recruiter and his wife leave questions of struggle that endured after Iraq

Bill Moyers Journal Transcript of Video.

Moyers: 'Democracy in America Is a Series of Narrow Escapes,

and We May Be Running Out of Luck'

For all of America's shortcomings, we keep telling ourselves, "The system works." Now all bets are off.

The following is an excerpt from Bill Moyers' new book, "Moyers on Democracy" (Doubleday, 2008).

Democracy in America is a series of narrow escapes, and we may be running out of luck. The reigning presumption about the American experience, as the historian Lawrence Goodwyn has written, is grounded in the idea of progress, the conviction that the present is "better" than the past and the future will bring even more improvement. For all of its shortcomings, we keep telling ourselves, "The system works."

Now all bets are off. We have fallen under the spell of money, faction, and fear, and the great American experience in creating a different future together has been subjugated to individual cunning in the pursuit of wealth and power -and to the claims of empire, with its ravenous demands and stuporous distractions. A sense of political impotence pervades the country -- a mass resignation defined by Goodwyn as "believing the dogma of 'democracy' on a superficial public level but not believing it privately." We hold elections, knowing they are unlikely to bring the corporate state under popular control. There is considerable vigor at local levels, but it has not been translated into new vistas of social possibility or the political will to address our most intractable challenges. Hope no longer seems the operative dynamic of America, and without hope we lose the talent and drive to cooperate in the shaping of our destiny.

You can read the rest of the excerpt Here

The Two Giants of Truthtelling, One on One

Bill Moyers talks with MSNBC host Keith Olbermann

December 14, 2007


Click on pic or Click Here

BILL MOYERS: One of my closest friends always watched your nightly sportscast. And he remembers to this day, just got a word from him this morning, he remembers your saying about hockey is the most boring sport he's ever seen. And you went on to say, "Nevertheless, here without further comment are the game results for whatever they're worth." But you don't do that with politics. You don't-- you don't just give the scores. You have some strong things to say about politics.

KEITH OLBERMANN: It became necessary.

BILL MOYERS: Why?

KEITH OLBERMANN: I was sitting on a plane in Los Angeles reading in August of 2006 about Don Rumsfeld talking to the veterans and talking about how every-- everyone who was in opposition to the Iraq War policy, the so-called war on terror, even to some degree the Bush administration, was the equivalent in his mind to the Nazi appeasers of the 1930s. And he went on at length about how, you know, here's the-- we're doing the Churchillian role. And I thought, you know, sir, I took history classes. Your group is not Churchill. Your group is Neville Chamberlain because Neville Chamberlain minimized and marginalized anybody who disagreed with him. Reading this ridiculous remark and waiting to see somebody respond to it. And no one did. I'm thinking, well, you know, somebody with a platform ought to be talking about this. Somebody with a-- with an avenue to respond should be-- oh, yeah, I have a platform.

Snip

Keiths book: Truth and Consequences: Special Comments on the Bush Administration's War on American Values

Get rid of the Barbies and Kens, plastic faces and bodies with empty heads, get Back to Real Journalists, like the Two above, and Real Investigative Journalism!