LOGO: Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines. A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion. Editor, Robert Scheer. Publisher, Zuade Kaufman.   Exclusive Truthdig Merchandise - Gore Vidal signed first editions - Signed Mr. Fish prints
November 26, 2009
Log in / Register

 Choose a size
Text Size

Most Read

Still Doing God's Work on Wall Street

Obama's Thankless Thanksgiving

Obama Risks Losing His Judicial Prize

Colbert Conservatives and Military Waste

Age Trumps Youth in UC Tuition Dispute

Most Comments
Most Emailed

Reports

Ear to the Ground

A/V Booth

Arts & Culture

Digs
Financial Meltdown 101
Vetting Sarah Palin

Truthdig Bazaar
Letters of Ted Hughes

Letters of Ted Hughes

By Ted Hughes
$29.70

more items

 
Ear to the Ground

Report: U.S. Envoy and Afghan President in Election Meltdown

Email this item Email    Print this item Print   
Posted on Aug 27, 2009
USMC / Staff Sgt. William Greeson

Afghan poll workers organize ballots in Helmand province.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai got an “explosive” talking-to by U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke, according to the BBC. The meeting, which reportedly covered vote fraud and the possibility of a second election, didn’t last very long.

The Beeb reports that the dust-up took place a day after the election.

You may remember Holbrooke less for his concerns about election integrity and more for his hawkish approach to foreign affairs. His appointment to spearhead diplomacy in the region was an early sign that the Obama administration was thinking in terms of force.

There have been widespread allegations of fraud in Afghanistan’s recent election, and it remains to be seen whether the U.S. plans to do anything about it other than chastise the country’s leader.

Is America even after free and fair elections? As William Pfaff noted in a column a week ago, “The problem with U.S.-sponsored elections in Asia and elsewhere in the non-Western world, as in Afghanistan on Thursday, is that they are sponsored by the United States primarily to legitimize its own presence in the country.”  —PS

BBC:

The meeting was described as “explosive” and “a dramatic bust-up”.

Mr Holbrooke is said to have twice raised the idea of holding a second round run-off because of concerns about the voting process.

He is believed to have complained about the use of fraud and ballot stuffing by some members of the president’s campaign team, as well as other candidates.

Mr Karzai reacted very angrily and the meeting ended shortly afterwards, the sources said.

Read more

More Below the Ad

Advertisement


Elsewhere: .

Comments

Are you a Truthdig member yet? Login now, or register with Truthdig.

By Thomas Jones, August 29 at 1:28 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

History repeats itself…Iraq too.

Report this

By PSmith, August 28 at 1:26 pm #

CHOMSKY WAS RIGHT

> @ johannes, August 28 at 4:59 am #
> If the American citizen, know what you are writing, why let they happen it again and again, do they not
understand that it will come some day their way.

1. The greatest propaganda machine the world has ever known. See (4). See everything by Noam Chomsky -

“But he will not be bullied. He will not be intimidated. He is a fearless, formidable, totally independent voice. He does something which is really quite simple but highly unusual. He tells the truth.” Harold Pinter Introduces Noam Chomsky. St. Pauls Cathedral, London, 2002. -

http://tinyurl.com/6o8sqh

Harold Pinter’s Nobel Acceptance Speech - an evergreen piece of brilliant truth-telling -

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5779318336871023559

2. They don’t want to know. It is too painful. They prefer to live inside the US_Reality_Distortion_Bubble - tm Steve Jobs of Apple, and Marketing Genius. Truth? HA! 

3. “Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.” - Sir Winston Churchill.

4. Neocon Political Pedophile Grooming

LEFT, RIGHT, FURTHER RIGHT AND BONKERS RIGHT - THE US

USans are strange creatures. They have been politically pedophile groomed from birth in ways that make
Europeans shudder, aghast at the degradation and utter moral poverty inflicted on children. They live from birth in a world of false information and mindless jingoism. Every morning they raise their right arms and ‘salute the flag’. Europeans think that went rather out of style in 1945. In Nazi Germany. It is a wonder that any of them see through this charade and discern, vaguely, the outlines of an alternate view. The view that the rest of the world holds. Holds about the US in particular.

Europe has Marxist-Leninists, Trotskyites and Maoists on the (far) left. It has Socialists on the left. It has Labour just left of the middle. It has Social-Democrats in the center. Then Christian Democrats on the right. It has Conservatives on the (far) right. Then there are the (US) Democrats and Republicans on the (very far) right. And Margaret Thatcher. Mussolini is just beside her with ‘her greatest achievement’ - Tony Blair’s New Labour. 

Adolf Hitler is lined up right beside (HA!) the Neocons. Just east of Mussolini and Margaret Thatcher. The (ultra-far) right.

Notice where the Democrats and Republicans are. Six inches apart and off the scale for any hope of governing, were they in Europe. They would be right beside Jean-Marie Le Pen in France and Jorg Haider in Austria; would be fascists.

Why would I care? Imagine that you grew up and were ‘educated’ to believe that between the Democrats and Republicans is the ‘middle ground’. You would have no clue that you had been steered to regard the far right as ‘moderate’ and ‘normal.’

Consider that ‘education’ the Neocon political pedophile grooming of children - namely YOU.

To a European, this is self-evident. As obvious as night and day. But in the US - as rare as hen’s teeth.

Report this

By C.Curtis.Dillon, August 28 at 5:02 am #

If we really want to “dust up” Karzai, announce that NATO will be removing all troops within the next 6 months and he can try to negotiate with and fight the Taliban by himself.  I think he might just listen to that as the Taliban would most likely march him into the local Kabul soccer stadium and issue a single bullet into his head.  Karzai only has legitimacy with NATO around and he knows this all too well.  Those warlords who “support” him would bail in a heartbeat once NATO leaves.

Report this

By johannes, August 28 at 4:59 am #

Dear Mister PSmith,

If the American citizen, know what you are writing, why let they happen it again and again, do they not understand that it will come some day their way.


Salutation

Report this

By PSmith, August 28 at 4:04 am #

KARZAI GOES ROGUE

Our scene is set in an alien land where we are ‘battling to defend freedom’. (*) Only the locals think it means turning them, their wives, their children and their grandparents into hamburger in mass quantities, which they resist, mightily. - The Doors - Apocalypse Now Intro -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b26BD5KjH0

The US’s trained old poodle appears to have learned some new tricks. Hamid Karzai, aka US Stooge, aka the Unocal Mayor of Kabul is showing distressing signs of independence.

We should expect a ‘coup’ any day now and remember the fate of the Diem brothers in Vietnam in 1963. -

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB101/index.htm

If Richard Holbrooke doesn’t like it it must because he was planning to fix the election for a new stooge to replace Karzai. Richard Holbrooke the US butcher who oversaw the ‘El Salvodor Option’ in El Salvador. And then repeated the process in Iraq. And now in Afghanistan - the use of US-trained death squads to murder, torture and commit genocide, until the locals sue for surrender.

John Pilger - Torture is _so_ American - School of the Americas -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5L1VdlktOw

For the Afghans the suggestion was that it was better to keep their present corrupt leader because they have already looted the treasury. Whereas the new men will be hungry to do so anew.

Say. Wait a minute. Does that apply to the Neocons versus the Democrats. Neocons - $35T (T as in Trillion) looted so far. Banking - $27T, War profiteers and fraudsters - $3-4T, every other Neocon and his dog. - $X G (G as in Gazillion - many Trillion more).

“There are only two ways to win an insurgency. Ethnic cleansing. Or genocide.” “The surge - mass. civilian. slaughter”—US aerial bombing—Pepe Escobar -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1q0WU-o_KHc

“God, I love the smell of napalm in the morning.” -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPXVGQnJm0w

It isn’t really going to get any better. But we won’t recognize it. Until the last helicopter leaves the roof of the US embassy. Again. Call for Captain Willard. Fade out - The Doors - Apocalypse Now Intro -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b26BD5KjH0

(*) tm Rarl Kove

Report this

By johannes, August 28 at 4:03 am #

Holbrook is the men who can glue wather and air to gether, but after he is gone home their is left behind something ugly and stinking, he is placing time bombs, for the future wars.

solutations

Report this

By UGG Boots sale, August 28 at 3:13 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

So when Dicky Holbrooke finished “dressing down” our buddy Hamid, Dicky went
out for a double vodka martini and a tea chaser. Diplomacy Amerikan style

Report this

By skulz fontaine, August 27 at 9:48 pm #

So when Dicky Holbrooke finished “dressing down” our buddy Hamid, Dicky went
out for a double vodka martini and a tea chaser. Diplomacy Amerikan style.

Report this

Add Your Comment

Posts by unregistered readers are moderated. Posts by members
are published immediately. Why wait? Register today!







Number of characters remaining: 4000

Notify you when others comment on this article?


Are you a human?
Retype the word you see here.


Please read and abide by our comment policy.
By submitting this comment, you agree to this site's terms and conditions.

 
 

 
Join the Liberal Blog Advertising Network
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion. Editor, Robert Scheer. Publisher, Zuade Kaufman.
Copyright © 2009 Truthdig, L.L.C. All rights reserved.