Disclosures make mockery of Obama’s vows to rein in U.S
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war measures President Barack Obama’s well-publi cized May 23 speech to the nation was aimed at moderating the present U.S. dictum that the country is and should remain in a never-ending state of war— that is, the undeclared, undefined “war on terror.”
This “war,” codified since 9-11 in the Patriot Act and the associated Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, has been routinely reaffirmed and expanded in scope by the Obama administration. It has been routinely employed to justify endless National Security Agency, FBI, and a myriad of other public and private government-funded spy operations that violate with impunity democratic rights and civil liberties at home and justify real wars abroad in which the Pentagon and privatized mercenary Blackwatertype death squads murder oppressed people around the world. Indeed, close to half of the U.S.-paid armed forces operating in Afghanistan today—hun dreds of thousands of trained killers and their back-up operatives—function as private mercenary armies.
Judging that perhaps some embar rassing excesses have been committed in this “perpetual” state of war, Presi dent Obama suggested that the “Autho rization for Use of Military Force” mea sures approved by Congress after the Sept. 11, 2001, bombings committed by Egyptian terrorists, might be modified a bit to avoid “keeping America on a per petual wartime footing.”
He added, “Unless we discipline our thinking and our actions, we may be drawn into more wars we don’t need to fight, or continue to grant presidents unbound powers more suited for tradi tional armed conflicts between nation states.” The latter, as we all are supposed to understand, are being “phased out.” We can only assume, therefore, that the trillion-dollar annual military budget will be largely restricted to America’s “non-traditional” daily wars, conducted around the world largely in secret!
The Obama speech was laden with te dious and moralizing platitudes devoid of a single specific measure to remedy UPS takebacks rejected — 2 Obama’s climate plan — 3 Turkey / Texas abortion — 4 Release Lynne Stewart! — 5 Autonomism / Mumia — 7 Books: Celia Sanchez — 10 TV workers in Greece — 11 SYRIA
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