AN OPEN LETTER TO THE NY TIMES PUBLIC EDITOR

Dear Public Editor Brisbane:
THE NY TIMES PUBLIC EDITOR
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/thepubliceditor/index.html 
The NY Times coverage of the withdrawal,
allegedly of the last troops from Iraq
and, presumptively forthcoming, from Afghanistan, elicits in me the most succinct of comments  on coverages of both events.

Looking at the current coverage,
http://query.nytimes.com/search/sitesearch?query=withdrawal+from+iraq&srchst=cse
you will note a lack of mention of
the State Department's [!] "contractor troops"
 [I have read mention of anywhere from 5 to 15,000. See the invaluable Tom Englehardt's TomDispatch
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175401/tomgram%3A_peter_van_buren,_how_not_to_withdraw_from_iraq/ 
at the One Billion Dollar [!] Embassy in the "Green Zone" that ghoulishly designated, scabrous establishment. Not only are these accounts by the various  NY Times reporters devoid of such mention, but
also, in their briefest of mention of
reasons for the war ["french fries anyone?"]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposition_to_the_Iraq_War
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_and_the_Iraq_War
none ever cites the UN or Atomic Energy commission's opposition [Hans Blix anyone or Donner & Blitzen in a One Horse Sleigh?
No Baraidis allowed!] allude to the fact that
there were no weapons of mass destruction.

At any event, even if there had been, it would
have been another instance of the 19th century
call: "That Indian has a gun." That Indian mucked with my woman, that Indian mucked with me cow! That you, the frontiersmen with your overwhelming force had thousands of guns went unmentioned. Preventive war is nothing new, that gun or in this case that that
Indian might somewhere down the line have a gun
 salves whatever if any qualms you may have
about your impulse to conquer and control, to assuage that paranoia that, dammit, that little agenbite, that continues to trouble you into continuing to attack whatever vengeance you fear your actions have provoked.
Long live the imperialist impulse!

BLOWBACK, o me Gawd!

Ditto for the Afghanistan Adventure: no mention everof its destabilization under Carter/ Brzezinski, to involve the Russian in throwing a nation of 25 million to the dogs
of war; or of Reagan/ Casey's creation of the Mujahedim [Osama bin Laden any one?]. Thus if you were reaching reading comprehension
age in 2011 and depended on the NY Times for a modicum you will be left seriously uninformed,
possibly puzzled.

One reason I write is that I have no idea to what extent you have apprised yourself of the controversy occasioned by the
then NY Times reporter Judith Miller
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller_(journalist)
 A number of stories she wrote while working for The New York Times later turned out to be inaccurate or completely false; and of how well assi the first NY Times Public Editor, Daniel Okrent, and his successor took up that issue. Jack Schaefer covered the Miller affair amusingly at his then slate.pressbox column.

Relievedly, at least, we may be spared further installments of CIA updates in the NY Times OP-Ed pages, courtesy of that ex-choir boy, Michael O'Hanlon, of the Brookings Institute.

A presidency that started with the bankruptcy of Enronended with, for all intents and purposes, with the bankruptcy
of the US!

Sincerely,

Michael Roloff  [as "Summa.Politico"]http://summapolitico.blogspot.com/

  http://www.facebook.com/mike.roloff1?ref=name
Member Seattle Psychoanalytic Institute and Society
http://www.roloff.freehosting.net/index.html

This LYNX will LEAP you to my HANDKE project sites and BLOGS
http://www.handke.scriptmania.com/favorite_links_1.html

"Degustibus disputandum est" {Theodor Wiesenthal Adorno}
"May the foggy dew bediamondize your hoosprings + the fireplug
of filiality reinsure your bunghole! {James  Joyce}
"Sryde Lyde Myde Vorworde Vorhorde Vorborde." {von Alvensleben}
"Siena me fe, disfescimi Maremma." {Dante}
"Ennui [Lange Weile] is the dreambird that hatches the egg of
experience." {Walter Benjamin, the essay on Leskov.}

http://analytic-comments.blogspot.com/
http://summapolitico.blogspot.com/

"CHRIS HEDGES".... FOR PRESIDENT

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Hedges

CHRIS HEDGES FOR PRESIDENT

BECAUSE
HE IS AS OPPOSED TO IMPERIALISM AS IS RON PAUL
HE IS A FUNDAMENTALIST CHRISTIAN
BUT OF THE GOSPEL
THAT IS OF THE BEATITUDES
BECAUSE HE IS AS ARTICULATE AS MARTIN LUTHER KING
BECAUSE HE KNOWS THAT WE CAN GAIN CONTROL
OF CAPITAL AND NOT BE AT THE MERCY
OF THE CAPITALISTS

NOT MATTER THAT HE CLAIMS TO BE IMPEFECT
AND THAT HE HAS ALLOWED ONE OR THE
OTHER BEAUTY TO SLIP INTO HIS
SLEEPING BAG WHILE ON ASSIGNMENT
AT THE MANY WARS HE HAS SEEN!

http://www.truthdig.com/report/category/hedges/

http://www.alternet.org/authors/5769/

VICE PRESIDENT????
CINDY SHEEHAN

Chris_Hedges

A COMMENT ON ALEX COBURN + PROF. GIBBS TAKE ON LIBYA IN COUNTERPUNCH

re: http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/11/25/the-%E2%80%9Cleft%E2%80%9D-and-libya/
 + re: http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/11/25/the-%E2%80%9Cdecent-left%E2%80%9D-and-the-libya-intervention/ 

Dear Alex,
your and Professor Gibbs' two pieces on Libya, much as I agree especially with your take, yet contains
the usual mix of 75 % truth and 25 % Corbuncle [to make a lousy pun] e.g: Gibbs:" The intervention has generated significant dangers to global security: The character of Western policy toward the Libyan despot – by first persuading Gaddafi to give up his nuclear weapons development program and then overthrowing him – has discouraged other countries from abandoning their own nuclear weapons programs. The intervention thus constitutes a setback for international efforts to curb nuclear proliferation. "

Gibbs, tendentiously I would say, elides two unrelated events - Omar the Great giving up on The Bomb + his downfall - into one,   whereas The West was getting the oil anyway and  generally prefers the solidity of an known s.o.b. to the unknown one or to many who are vying currently. Thus Gibbs asserts a falsehood and then derives, asserts non-consequences from it.

The case that you make out really rests on the assertion that the reporting was second-hand as of a certain
point [" It was the secondhand allegation of massacres that drove both news coverage and U.N. activities – particularly in the early stage, when U.N. Resolution 1970 was adopted, calling for sanctions and the referral of  Gaddafi’s closest circle to the International Criminal Court."}
and that Qaddafi never had a chance to answer either via the media or the UN. In court of course you allow even "the mad dog" his growl [about the one instance I happen to agree with one of Ronnie's assessments!], and I will have to take a slog through the voluminous reporting to check how second hand it was.

I would also say that you do yourself no favors by the calumny of the insinuation that because the
CIA may at least have been intelligent enough to consult with Juan Cole, for lack of IQ on its own part,
he nilly-willy becomes "CIA-consultant Juan Cole". Or in calling the rebel council a "jerry-rigged rebel committee in Benghazi" - how can it be anything but under the circumstances?

I miss in both your and Gibbs' assessment any relation of the  Libyan phenomenon to the one that had its inception in neighboring Tunisia, referred
to as "the Arab Spring", now lasting well into winter.

I  agree but for the qualifier "vague" and "supposed" with statements of yours such as ;  "we moved from vague allegations of Gaddafi’s supposed “genocide” or “crimes against humanity” to two separate votes in the U.N. Security Council, which permitted a NATO mission to establish a “no-fly” zone to  protect civilians, this latter protection to be achieved by “all necessary measures.” + entirely with: "Also, by late May, it was apparent that the rebels’ military capacities were modest in the extreme, that Ghadafi’s eviction was not going to be the overnight affair, confidently predicted in western capitals and in Benghazi, also that NATO’s bombardments were not having the requisite effect.

Our Bernard Henry Levy  seems to have persuaded Sarkozy that this was his main chance.
Respectfully as ever.

I will post this on the much neglected "summa.politico.blog".

http://www.facebook.com/mike.roloff1?ref=name

Michael Roloff [as "Summa.Politico"]

http://summapolitico.blogspot.com/

  http://www.facebook.com/mike.roloff1?ref=name
 Member Seattle Psychoanalytic Institute and Society
http://www.roloff.freehosting.net/index.html

This LYNX will LEAP you to my HANDKE project sites and BLOGS
http://www.handke.scriptmania.com/favorite_links_1.html

"Degustibus disputandum est" {Theodor Wiesenthal Adorno}
"May the foggy dew bediamondize your hoosprings + the fireplug
of filiality reinsure your bunghole! {James  Joyce}
"Sryde Lyde Myde Vorworde Vorhorde Vorborde." {von Alvensleben}
"Siena me fe, disfescimi Maremma." {Dante}
"Ennui [Lange Weile] is the dreambird that hatches the egg of
experience." {Walter Benjamin, the essay on Leskov.}

http://analytic-comments.blogspot.com/
http://summapolitico.blogspot.com/A COMMENT ON ALEX COBURN + PROF. GIBBS TAKE ON LIBYA IN COUNTERPUNCH

MY 9/11 COMMEMMORATION

My 9/11 commemoration begins with the commemoration of the destabilization of Afghanistan by Carter/ Brzezinski
in 1979 to get the Russian Bear to enter to be bloodied by the CIA - Reagan Casey - organized counter-insurgency by the world wide Mujahedin.

Imagine a nation of 25 million being sacrificed to the whims of cold war ideology! Now if that is not a crime bordering on Auschwitz and the Vietnam War, on what order is it? And Ziggie is still proud of what he did!
imagine letting the Mujahedin then dangle in the wind of their own devices after they had done the job of inflicting
huge losses on the stupid Russian bear? Thus vengeance continues to play out among the Geopolitical Monsters both big and small;and as Noam Chomsky noted the other day:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/09/06-1
 "That Washington was bent on fulfilling bin Laden’s fervent wishes was evident at once. As discussed in my book 9-11, written shortly after those attacks occurred, anyone with knowledge of the region could recognize “that a massive assault on a Muslim population would be the answer to the prayers of bin Laden and his associates, and would lead the U.S. and its allies into a ‘diabolical trap,’ as the French foreign minister put it.”,,The senior CIA analyst responsible for tracking Osama bin Laden from 1996, Michael Scheuer, wrote shortly after that “bin Laden has been precise in telling America the reasons he is waging war on us. [He] is out to drastically alter U.S. and Western policies toward the Islamic world,” and largely succeeded: “U.S. forces and policies are completing the radicalization of the Islamic world, something Osama bin Laden has been trying to do with substantial but incomplete success since the early 1990s. As a result, I think it is fair to conclude that the United States of America remains bin Laden’s only indispensable ally.” And arguably remains so, even after his death."

Not the sort of thing that is said to educate the mourners and traumatized in New York of course,
not even by the Drone Master Nobel Peace Prize Winner, President Obama..

http://www.facebook.com/mike.roloff1?ref=name

 http://summapolitico.blogspot.com/

NEW YORK TIMES REFUSES THE TRUTH EVEN ON A COMMENT BLOG

several times at 

http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2011/09/11/us/11portraits.html?sort=oldest&offset=3#preview

It was rejected both times.  It follows the guidelines but the news or the thought it seeks

to elicit appears to be too controversial. In utter disgust with the NY Times,

very truly yours, 

http://www.facebook.com/mike.roloff1?ref=name

http://www.roloff.freehosting.net/index.html

"Remember that the United States, under President Carter and National Security Advisor Brzezinski destabilized Afghanistan in 1978/79 to draw in the Russians and that President Reagan and C.I.A. Casey organized the Mujaheddin to fight the Russians once they had been drawn into Afghanistan. Z. Brzezinski is still proud of what he did then. The Majaheddin were left dangling in the wind after they had done the job of severely decimating the Russians with American supplied arms, especially Stinger missiles, to bring down the Russian helicopters. Osama bin Laden was a CIA assett at one time - who became disenchanted and vengeful. It is more than just a shame that the Afghan people - all 25 million of them, and then the people in New York, suffer the consequences of politics on high. http://www.facebook.com/mike.roloff1?ref=name

SEIZED AT LAST: BUSH + COHORTS SEIZED OFF KENNEBUNKPORT

AND AIR LIFTED TO DUTCH SUBMARINE

THAT WILL TRANSPORT BUSH, CHENEY, AND RUMSFELD TO DEHAGUE
TO BE TRIED FOR CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY.