Night Guant—I thought he was using DynaCorp (prob both!)Nope, its “more” Triple Canopy, as you said (see below)

We’ve lost 6 soldiers in the “new” and ‘improved” Af-Pak ‘war”, but gawd knows how many civilians…no one will ever really know. Shame on the USA.

You got it Night Guqant! Here is an article I’d already apparently (mis) read, originally from Scahill (rebelreports.org for anyone interested)

(or The Nation, which is now totally sold out, so I cancelled my scubsciption, which was a gift, and anyone else should do the same. Ask for The Progressive or another mag! Its somewhat better)

“... Now, it appears that the Obama administration has decided on its hired guns of choice: Triple Canopy, a Chicago company now based in Virginia. It may not have Blackwater’s thuggish reputation, but Triple Canopy has its own bloody history in Iraq and a record of hiring mercenaries from countries with atrocious human rights records. What’s more, Obama is not just using the company in Iraq, but also as a U.S.-government funded private security force in Israel/Palestine, operating out of Jerusalem….

.... according to federal contract records obtained by AlterNet, the Obama administration has also paid Triple Canopy millions of dollars to provide “security services” in Israel. In February and March, the Obama administration awarded a “delivery order” to Triple Canopy worth $5.5-million under State Department contract SAQMPD05F5528, which is labeled “PROTECTIVE SERVICES - ISRAEL.” According to one government document, the contract is scheduled to run until September 2012.The contract is classified as “SECURITY GUARDS AND PATROL SERVICES” in Israel. The total value of the contract was listed at $41,556,969.72. According to a January 2009 State Department document obtained by AlterNet labeled “Sensitive But Unclassified,” the Triple Canopy contract is based out of Jerusalem….

...Triple Canopy, according to an internal State Department report, also worked under the program in Haiti, though that task order is now listed as “closed.” In State Department documents the WPPS program is described as a government initiative to protect U.S. officials as well as “certain foreign government high level officials whenever the need arises.” The State Department spent some $2-billion on the WPPS program from 2005-2008

Anyone who hasnt read this, REALLY SHOULD! I cant post it all here…http://pineriverspirit.blogspot.com/2009/04/obamas-blackwater-chicago-mercenary.html

Triple Canopy must have been started by Viet vet special forces or something—-you know, they refer to deep jungle as Triple Canopy….maybe ones with ‘high body count” medals…gawd…

Obama’s mercenary corporation of choice is Triple Canopy who have extensive connexions and relations with Israel. Though Xe/Blackwater are still in the area with more work in Afghan-Pak area of war. That includes Drug War too.

With so many passed how many more “turning points” will Iraq have, also when will Afghanistan have some?

Its called Stealth Bush…gold-plated crap.

The US has actually increased the number of mercenaries and private profiteers, who could continue to conduct a “war”, with the abdication of the US media, for years. DynaCorp.

Obama really has no legal basis for escalating the “war” in Af-Pak either, nor extending it into Pakistan…but the media will keep reporting on Palin/Jackson/Warner

You’re right, Night-Guant, dumb inarticulation from Bush, smat articulation from Obama.

Religious faith from Bush, POlitical Hope from Obama. Religion from Bush, zionism from Obama.  Security from Bush, Change from Obama.  Neoconservatism from Bush, neoliberalism from Obama.

Different rhetoric, essentially the same policies.

No Mandinka he said all “combat” troops which doesn’t include all of them. Even if it really does. I don’t see them gone in 2011 or 2012 either.

The technique is called parsing of words. Where you are very careful how you phrase what you are saying without fully committing to what most others think you are saying. Combat won’t cover advisers, logistics, security teams, police/USA liasion teams, defense battalions for the 4 mega bases and the leviathan city-state cum embassy “Fortress American” on 105 sq acres of Iraq land. And you thought Guantonamo was stealing land from the Cubans!

That city slicker Ivy Leaguer trying to put one over on us with fancified speech. Bush hit us with dumb, Obama with sophisticated verbal sleight of hand.

The author may think its a turning point but all I see is the clock ticking. Barak committed to have ALLLL the troops out in 16 months.
Its 10 months and counting till they all are out of there Tic Tock

Folktruther, July 2 at 5:00 pm #

you’e probably right, Iherit, now that I think back.  it was the late 1960’s that I saw the sign.  The leather shop probaly got it from Ochs.
********************************************

I just loved Phil Ochs!  He’s one of my two favorite folk-singers of all time.  The other, of course, is Pete Seeger.

There are many others I think the world of, such as Tom Paxton and Bruce Cockburn, but Phil had just such a wonderfully wicked turn of phrase, whether he was being a wise-guy or serious.

About JFK:
“I still can see him smiling there and waving at the crowd
as he drove through the music of the band.
And never even knowing no more time would be allowed,
That was the President and that was the man.”

And who else could make rhythmic and musical such a clumsy phrase as “The Marines have landed on the shores of Santo Domingo”? about the invasion of the Dominican Republic?

Or the classic: “Love me, love me, love me: I’m a liberal!”

you’e probably right, Iherit, now that I think back.  it was the late 1960’s that I saw the sign.  The leather shop probaly got it from Ochs.

In Iraq, Victory is just around the corner! Now it is called a turning point? What’s up next? Our government works to right the wrongs of the world, we should be proud to say with some fact, it does not right the wrongs against it’s own people with satisfaction, but everyone knows that!

As AJP Taylor has stated all wars are due to business interests.The Iraqi war is no different and the present Israeli colonization of the West Bank is directly related to the US invasion of Iraq.The big
oil multinationals will be shortly preparing to replace the defunct pipeline which existed between Mosul and Haifa with a new one ,but in order for the plan to see fruition the Palestinian Question will
have to be solved first ,more than likely through the continuation of violence in order to displace them thus protect the pipeline.The US troops may be pulling out of the cities ,but they will still be tasked with
protecting the natural resources and a conflict with Iran ,whereas Iran closes the Straits of Hurmuz would be an added incentive to promote the project even more.After all would not the sale of Iraqi oil be
considered paying Tribute by ancient standards.

Correction—NIght Guant-I see that you said mercenaries. I think your number is closer to correct. Sorry.

But we still have alot of troops , too—just re-positioned, as you know. I read that Obama could rely ONLY on mercenaries and stil have about that many “troops” there…

Night Guant—good points, but, I thought it was 130,000.

Nice fireworks, though. (the city here cant afford any this year—ok with me) Oh, those are bombs. NO fireworks! Bombs! Both!

Another important item missing from the roster of evil are the mercenaries. Some 108,000 more or less still in occupied Iraq. I don’t have a clear count as to how many are armed or trained in the use of weapons.

Also this pull back is a logical step in the pacification of the “Indian lands” of Iraq. The four bases and the immense city-state cum embassy are the nexi of control that the troops could be called out in an “emergency” to use concentrated force on the locals who can’t stand armed illegal immigrants in their land! The use of the local police and military as first strike instruments are also common of colonial rule. [That same military/police are totally relying on the USA for air support, logistics, surveillance and backup.]  The best kind of colony is one where it appears that the original owners still rule though it is just a facade.

I wonder how many soldiers are needed for security of that 105 square acre “Fortress America” embassy? Yes that is what it is called. You can bet that the placement of those bases are good for sending out forces in all four directions. Don’t forget that this pull back is Bush‘s not Obama‘s idea.

Welcome to the next phase of external imperial America. Internally we are still an inverted totalitarian state. We all wear leashes still we just don’t know how far we can run in the yard.

From “Talking Viet Nam”

Well I walked through the jungle and around the bend
Who should I meet but President Diem.
Said you’re fighting to keep Vietnam free
For good old de-em-moc-ra-cy (Diem-ocracy).
That means rule by one family
And 15,000 American troops, give or take a few
Thousand.
American.
Troops.

He said: “meet my sister, Madam Nhu
The sweetheart of Dien Bien Phu”
He said: “Meet my brothers, meet my aunts
With the government that doesn’t take a chance.
Families that slay together, stay together.”

—Phil Ochs, 1964

Now that is OLD because “All the News…” was released in 1964—45 years ago.

I didn’t get it from Ochs.  There was a leather shop in North Beach in San francisco that had a sign in the Window:

“the family that flays together, stays together.”

That was pre-Ochs, who may have got it the same way.

Steve from Los Angeles wrote:
“What’s truly amazing is how easy it is for the US government through domestic politics and our all-pervasive media/brain-washing to lull its own citizens/pod-people back to sleep. It’s as if the US population were also an occupied nation.”

Does anyone want to know anything at all about Michael Jackson? Our illustrious “news” media have provided round the clock coverage of his death - and life.  “All the minutia nonesense that’s fit to report!”

Yes, our brains are fried.

TD:

You’re right: I DO consider the idea that the Bush Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight could have pulled off the WTC as a false flag.  I think the most rational view is that 9/11 was merely THE OPPORTUNITY to roll out all the plans that they were making, and that they were looking for that opportunity.

The only causing they did of 9/11 was simply not doing their JOBS and considering Clinton’s emphasis on terror and terrorism to be all wag-the-dog bullshit they could (and did) ignore.

Bush&Co; were an opportunistic infection on the wound of 9/11—no more.

BTW, that expression of the family that slays together, stays together is from the Phil Ochs song “Talking Viet Nam Blues” from his “All The News That’s Fit to Sing”—a multiple pun on the NY Times motto and his family name, Ochs, so strongly connected with the Times.

The so-called pullback by American troops from certain Iraqi cities is like Al Capone moving his operation from Chicago to Cicero.

US sent Afghan soldiers into Iraq to attack US personnel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2licF3t49zc

Nothing new, but thought I’d share.

Some days I wish the US currency (FRN) would collapse, so the US Empire couldn’t pay the CIA and all the soldiers.

Maybe, just maybe, the banksters would not be able to fund the wars on both sides.

Paraphrasing “Apocalypse Now”—

“Oh man, the bullsh_t piles up so fast in Iraq you need wings to stay above it ... and the war is being run by a bunch of four star clowns who’ll end up giving the whole circus away.”

Life imitates art, n’est ce pas?

Fireworks a bit ironic and over the top, doncha think?

Dont forget neo-liberal industrial franchises…they will be “important” to “re-building the economy”.

Somebody will say, “we need another Marshall Plan” or"Iraqis want freedom to choose” and “the modern world” and all that happy horseshit. Starbuck’s will overcome religious fundamentalism or something like that…

http://rebelreports.com/

Jeremy Scahill

“As the airwaves and internet are flooded with reports of this new Iraqi sovereignty and U.S. withdrawal, it is important to remember a bit of history. Five years ago—almost to the day— President Bush put on an almost identical show. His proconsul L. Paul Bremer “handed over sovereignty” to the Iraqi government just before he skulked out of Baghdad on a secret flight (right after he issued an order banning Iraq from prosecuting contractors). Despite the pronouncements and proclamations and media hype, the occupation continued and real sovereignty was non-existent.

It is very doubtful that—decades from now—Iraqis will tell their grandchildren about where they were on June 30, 2009, “National Sovereignty Day.” At the end of the day, this is U.S.-style Hallmark hype and will remain so until every last occupation soldier leaves Iraqi soil.”

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jun2009/pers-j30.shtml

James Cogan

“It is fitting that today’s deadline for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq’s cities coincides with a meeting in Baghdad to auction off some of the country’s largest oil fields to companies such as ExxonMobil, Chevron and British Petroleum. It is a reminder of the real motives for the 2003 invasion and in whose interests over one million Iraqis and 4,634 American and other Western troops have been killed. The Iraq war was, and continues to be, an imperialist war waged by the American ruling elite for control of oil and geo-strategic advantage…”

Among other things ITW! (lol) Bush Jr. had a sadistic personal streak, but he certainly wasnt alone in that. Almost all US presidents have tried to flash their “power” around, running around “freeing people”.

“...The contracts will facilitate the first large-scale exploitation of Iraq’s energy resources by US and other transnationals since the country’s oil industry was nationalised in 1972. On offer are 20-year rights over six fields that hold more than five billion barrels of easily and cheaply extractable oil. In the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, where foreign companies are already operating…

...Iraq’s total oil reserves are estimated to be at least 115 billion barrels. Its reserves of natural gas are at least 3.36 billion cubic metres..”

So I guess its true, eh? “Mission accomplished”? Privitization of oil, and ‘Merkin bases forever… and dont forget—we’re not done yet~!

I have to go check and see if Obama’s website(s) say that he “got us out of Iraq”...

What you say is true, Inherit, but I didn’t miss it, I just didn’t say it.  This is more or less Standard Doctrine on Iraq, although you put it concisely and well. Gain control of Irraqi oil, then Iran oil, and use it to control world policy.  And threaten the third Axis of Evil, North Korea to put pressure on China.

As you say, this was utterly unsane, the kind of megalomania that Eric Hobsbawm, the British historian, maintains is common to imperialism.  Worse, 9/11 was not only used to kick it off, it was ocrchestated by Bushite elements to do so, although you consider all the evidence and reasoning by the 9/11 truthers around the world paranoid.

It would only take a few people, led by Cheney, who were ‘witting’ of the false flag operation.  And they would be bound togehter afterward by mass murder. The same tactic that crime families use to make junior executives “make their bones.” 
Remember what they say, Inherit:

“families that slay together, stay together.”

Marie Cocco wrote: “The problem with Iraq is that there really is no state. Iraqis can reach agreement but they can’t make it stick,” Hiltermann says. “There are all these fractures. The Americans will have to provide that glue, still.”

There is no sovereign state in Iraq because Iraq is militarily occupied by a foreign power—the United States government. Sovereignty and foreign military occupation are mutually exclusive states of being—you’re either in one state or the other state, but you can’t be “a little bit sovereign” while being “a little bit occupied” by a foreign military power—like the old joke about being “a little bit pregnant.”

What’s truly amazing is how easy it is for the US government through domestic politics and our all-pervasive media/brain-washing to lull its own citizens/pod-people back to sleep. It’s as if the US population were also an occupied nation.

“It was a lie—and the more I saw them, the more I hated lies.” ~ Captain Willard (narrating), “Apocalypse Now”

Wow! FT is actually getting closer and closer to having a real understanding.  He’s wrong because he doesn’t go far enough.

As is Cocco, pretty much everyone here knows we didn’t invade Iraq because of 9/11, Saddam having nukes, other WMDs, or his threat to our security and the security of the region.

We invaded Iraq for 3 reasons, only one of which is control of Iraqi oil.

1) G.W. Bush has a sick competition in his own mind with his daddy and he had to out-do him. The neo-cons around him, many of them placed there by Daddy for TOTALLY different reasons, saw that and played off it—particularly the Dark Lords of the Sith, Donald Rumsfeld and Richard Cheney.

2) Control of Iraqi oil was the short-term goal.
a) to ensure the supply to the US.
b) to provide a source of income to US oil companies that could be sold to the public as beneficial by “trickle down”.
c) to give the fossil fuel companies ammunition to stave off the environmental movement—wind, solar, and, of course T.Boone Pickens’ natural gas industry’s battle with Oil.

3) A long-term muscular presence in the Middle East on the theory that if the four biggest and baddest military bases in the world were US bases in Iraq, the USA would now be able to DICTATE policy and not have to say “pretty please” to people that Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, et al think “we are better than…”  IOW, their deep subliminal racism that Arab Moslems are inferior to European-stock Christians (and Jews—but the right-wing Christians are “first among equals”).

This would put us in a much stronger position vis-a-vis OPEC boycotts and economic pressure (labeled “blackmail”) by the local nations.

And, of course, in Bush’s and his pals’ minds, this meant they could FORCE the issue of peace for Israel, rather than do it the RIGHT way.  IOW replace the threat of OPEC’s and the Arab League’s extortion with the much BIGGER extortion by us due simply to our military might.

What was it the Grand Muff Tarkin said in the first Star Wars? “Matters in this quadrant will no longer be guided by fate but will be decided by this battle station!” (the Death Star).  These 4 bases were to be the foundation of the Bush/Rumsfeld/Cheney Death Star to decide matters conclusively in this quadrant.

It was idiotic, financially insane, diplomatically moronic AND illegal, and, finally, criminal in the sense of Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes.

THAT is what FT missed—it was far more than just Iraq’s oil—and far more evil.

Personally, I hope it’s not a phony withdrawal and is instead the REAL withdrawal by Obama to keep his promise.  We shall see.

As is customary with the pseudo-Progressive media, the most vital point is not discussed.  The whole invasion was an attempt to control Iraqi oil and US and Western oil companies are now entering bids for developing it.  To the intense opposition of the Iraqi people.  US troops and mercenaries must stay in Iraq to protect the oil companies against the Iraqi people.

Shuffling troops around serves the same purpose as a cat in a litterbox.  It shuffles things around to conceal what it has done.