DU became a powerful forum fighting a bad war, NOW we can fight - and win this time - to avoid one

[karynnj]

Last edited Thu Jul 23, 2015, 03:58 PM - Edit history (1)

DU grew in the days when people united to fight against the neo cons who led us into a terrible war that this has major ramifications. It is very likely true that in reality, nothing could have prevented that war.

Now, President Obama, working with 5 other countries, has a deal that could prevent Iran from getting a nuclear bomb. Now, in addition to preventing Iran from getting a nuclear bomb, it stops the neo cons who have been agitating for a military strike for years in their tracks. This deal helps the world avoid a war.

That simple truth was expressed in some accounts of the last "talks" among the foreign ministers and top negotiators who got the deal. They got together one last time and went around stating what it meant to them personally. They went in alphabetical order of country name - so Kerry was last.

Afterward, each minister made remarks about the collaboration. Kerry, who spoke last, recalled going off to war as a young man, the traumatic experience of Vietnam, and his commitment, when he returned, to end that war. The diplomacy with Iran, he told his peers, was one time that he could prevent the horrors of war.

At the end of Kerry’s comments, his eyes welled up, his aide said. Others teared up, too, including the Iranians. Then everyone applauded.

( Thanks, MBS) http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/27/tehrans-promise )


Everybody needs to look at the agreement. There are many things you can watch to understand it - Obama's news conference - http://www.c-span.org/video/?327122-1/president-obama-news-conference-iran-nuclear-deal Obama was on Jon Stewart yesterday - http://www.rollingstone.com/tv/news/watch-jon-stewarts-final-barack-obama-daily-show-interview-20150722 Kerry and the fantastic former MIT professor of nuclear physics, Secretary Moniz were on several talks shows explaining it last Sunday - http://www.democraticunderground.com/11094615

This is the time to call your Senators and representatives - even if you think they are against it or already for it. You KNOW that the other side has ramped up their efforts - and you know what happens if they hear just one side. Also, if your people are doing town halls - GO TO THEM.

Let's give peace a chance!!

[Fearless]

1. The target is Scott Walker and his like minded idiots

[karynnj]

3. No, this is more immediate - we need to win over more Senator and Congressmen

If enough of us - in their districts - contact them, it changes their view of how much risk there is to vote with the President.

This is the next 60 days. The Republican primary, which we don't vote in, is long after that. All of our candidates benefit from the world being more peaceful. This is a huge major shift in foreign policy - one that should resonate with almost every Democrat and most Independents. This helps our candidate - if we get this done -- even if only by overriding a veto.

I will contact my representatives, though I assume they are for it ... and I realise my Junior Senator is rather busy outside the state!

[blm]

7. No - the FIGHT is all over, especially in media and lawmakers' offices.

RWers are already spending many millions in ads and lobbying against this deal.

DUers are spending most of their time and energy on early primary battles and mostly over contrived bullish!t and are completely disinterested in showing any support for this deal or any inclination to fight for the deal.

Kerry appeared on FIVE Sunday political shows and the only threads here at DU were about a comment Kerry made about the Trump-McCain kerfluffle.

Not ONE recap thread about the Iran deal appearances.

This is NOT the DU that does GREAT, important work, anymore.

[Initech]

2. The absolute last thing this country needs is another war.

Jeb Bush and Scott Walker would be a bigger threat to the world than Iran or Syria ever could be.

[karynnj]

4. Than work on this now to make it harder for them to initiate a war if the country makes the

mistake of electing them.

Better yet, work for it and then use it and other accomplishments to make the case that the Demaocrats are better for the country - it works no matter who our nominee is.

[blm]

15. Don't be shy - share that view with other DUers. ; )

There is an unbelievable lack of response to Obama's requests for action on this - the primaries are taking up all the oxygen and ink here and at other Dem sites.

[annabanana]

5. Chuckie Schumer's staff in NY & DC offices

are beginning to recognize my voice when I call them.

[karynnj]

6. Some have said it is a good sign that Schumer is still quiet on this nt

[blm]

8. That's my girl!!!!

((LOVE YOU!))

[MBS]

12. : ) good for you. n/t

[Agony]

21. Do you know where Kirsten stands on this?

I haven't called either yet but will tomorrow...

[blm]

22. I haven't heard any confirmed stance, but, I think she's for it.

.

[steve2470]

9. k&r nt

[annabanana]

10. DESERVES MANY KICKS

Also..

Call your Senator and Rep

[blm]

11. kicking…..as long as it takes

.

[Octafish]

13. Detroit tee vee is airing a PAC-type anti-Peace ad saying deal is bad because Iran is a big threat.

It is amazing, how much money the pro-war folks have. They must be worried if peace breaks out, they won't have as much as they'd like. Ask the little economist Tyler Cowen, who's worried his Big Money chums might have to one day actually work for a living.

The Pitfalls of Peace

The Lack of Major Wars May Be Hurting Economic Growth

Tyler Cowen
The New York Times, JUNE 13, 2014

The continuing slowness of economic growth in high-income economies has prompted soul-searching among economists. They have looked to weak demand, rising inequality, Chinese competition, over-regulation, inadequate infrastructure and an exhaustion of new technological ideas as possible culprits.

An additional explanation of slow growth is now receiving attention, however. It is the persistence and expectation of peace.

The world just hasn’t had that much warfare lately, at least not by historical standards. Some of the recent headlines about Iraq or South Sudan make our world sound like a very bloody place, but today’s casualties pale in light of the tens of millions of people killed in the two world wars in the first half of the 20th century. Even the Vietnam War had many more deaths than any recent war involving an affluent country.

Counterintuitive though it may sound, the greater peacefulness of the world may make the attainment of higher rates of economic growth less urgent and thus less likely. This view does not claim that fighting wars improves economies, as of course the actual conflict brings death and destruction. The claim is also distinct from the Keynesian argument that preparing for war lifts government spending and puts people to work. Rather, the very possibility of war focuses the attention of governments on getting some basic decisions right — whether investing in science or simply liberalizing the economy. Such focus ends up improving a nation’s longer-run prospects.

It may seem repugnant to find a positive side to war in this regard, but a look at American history suggests we cannot dismiss the idea so easily. Fundamental innovations such as nuclear power, the computer and the modern aircraft were all pushed along by an American government eager to defeat the Axis powers or, later, to win the Cold War. The Internet was initially designed to help this country withstand a nuclear exchange, and Silicon Valley had its origins with military contracting, not today’s entrepreneurial social media start-ups. The Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite spurred American interest in science and technology, to the benefit of later economic growth.

War brings an urgency that governments otherwise fail to summon. For instance, the Manhattan Project took six years to produce a working atomic bomb, starting from virtually nothing, and at its peak consumed 0.4 percent of American economic output. It is hard to imagine a comparably speedy and decisive achievement these days.

SNIP...

Living in a largely peaceful world with 2 percent G.D.P. growth has some big advantages that you don’t get with 4 percent growth and many more war deaths. Economic stasis may not feel very impressive, but it’s something our ancestors never quite managed to pull off. The real questions are whether we can do any better, and whether the recent prevalence of peace is a mere temporary bubble just waiting to be burst.

Tyler Cowen is a professor of economics at George Mason University.

SOURCE: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/14/upshot/the-lack-of-major-wars-may-be-hurting-economic-growth.html?_r=0

Certainly some in Wall Street on the Potomoca don't mind if what makes his living possible leads to the death of others, but what they hey! It's only people. Ask the last Bush to steal office:

[font color="green"]"Money trumps peace." -- George W Bush, pretzeldent, April 14, 2007[/font color]

[blm]

14. EXACTLY what's at stake. GOP and war profiteers will fight this deal FIERCELY and too many

Dems here at DU and other Dem sites are too preoccupied with bs distractions contrived for the primary to comprehend that simple truth.

[Octafish]

16. Normally I agree with you, blm. Take the beneficiaries of secret government warmongering...

CIA moonlights in corporate world

In the midst of two wars and the fight against Al Qaeda, the CIA is offering operatives a chance to peddle their expertise to private companies on the side — a policy that gives financial firms and hedge funds access to the nation’s top-level intelligence talent, POLITICO has learned.

In one case, these active-duty officers moonlighted at a hedge-fund consulting firm that wanted to tap their expertise in “deception detection,” the highly specialized art of telling when executives may be lying based on clues in a conversation.

The never-before-revealed policy comes to light as the CIA and other intelligence agencies are once again under fire for failing to “connect the dots,” this time in the Christmas Day bombing plot on Northwest Flight 253.

SNIP...

But the close ties between active-duty and retired CIA officers at one consulting company show the degree to which CIA-style intelligence gathering techniques have been employed by hedge funds and financial institutions in the global economy.

The firm is called Business Intelligence Advisors, and it is based in Boston. BIA was founded and is staffed by a number of retired CIA officers, and it specializes in the arcane field of “deception detection.” BIA’s clients have included Goldman Sachs and the enormous hedge fund SAC Capital Advisors, according to spokesmen for both firms.

CONTINUED...

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/32290.html#ixzz0eIFPhHBh

Sometimes a fortune rests on a mere scrap of information, jawohl.

Stratfor: executive boasted of 'trusted former CIA cronies'

By Alex Spillius, Diplomatic Correspondent
9:08PM GMT 28 Feb 2012
The Telegraph

A senior executive with the private intelligence firm Stratfor boasted to colleagues about his "trusted former CIA cronies" and promised to "see what I can uncover" about a classified FBI investigation, according to emails released by the WikiLeaks.

Fred Burton, vice president of intelligence at the Texas firm, also informed members of staff that he had a copy of the confidential indictment on Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.

The second batch of five million internal Stratfor emails obtained by the Anonymous computer hacking group revealed that the company has high level sources within the United States and other governments, runs a network of paid informants that includes embassy staff and journalists and planned a hedge fund, Stratcap, based on its secret intelligence.

SNIP...

Mr Assange labelled the company as a "private intelligence Enron", in reference to the energy giant that collapsed after a false accounting scandal.

CONTINUED...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9111784/Stratfor-executive-boasted-of-trusted-former-CIA-cronies.html

Then, there's Booz Allen, NSA's go-to private spyhaus, vacuums and filters the right stuff for Carlyle Group, a buy-partisan business which always seems to know where and what to bomb and make a buck.

The Knights of the Revolving Door

When War is Swell: the Carlyle Group and the Middle East at War

by JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
CounterPunch, Weekend Edition September 6-8, 2013

Paris.

A couple of weeks ago, in a dress rehearsal for her next presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton, the doyenne of humanitarian interventionism, made a pit-stop at the Carlyle Group to brief former luminaries of the imperial war rooms about her shoot-first-don’t-ask-questions foreign policy.

For those of you who have put the playbill of the Bush administration into a time capsule and buried it beneath the compost bin, the Carlyle Group is essentially a hedge fund for war-making and high tech espionage. They are the people who brought you the Iraq war and all those intrusive niceties of Homeland Security. Call them the Knights of the Revolving Door, many of Carlyle’s executives and investors having spent decades in the Pentagon, the CIA or the State Department, before cashing in for more lucrative careers as war profiteers. They are now licking their chops at the prospect for an all-out war against Syria, no doubt hoping that the conflagration will soon spread to Lebanon, Jordan and, the big prize, Iran.

For a refresher course on the sprawling tentacles of the Carlyle Group, here’s an essay that first appeared in CounterPunch’s print edition in 2004. Sadly, not much has changed in the intervening years, except these feted souls have gotten much, much richer. – JSC

Across all fronts, Bush’s war deteriorates with stunning rapidity. The death count of American soldiers killed in Iraq will soon top 1000, with no end in sight. The members of the handpicked Iraqi Governor Council are being knocked off one after another. Once loyal Shia clerics, like Ayatollah Sistani, are now telling the administration to pull out or face a nationalist insurgency. The trail of culpability for the abuse, torture and murder of Iraqi detainees seems to lead inexorably into the office of Donald Rumsfeld. The war for Iraqi oil has ended up driving the price of crude oil through the roof. Even Kurdish leaders, brutalized by the Ba’athists for decades, are now saying Iraq was a safer place under their nemesis Saddam Hussein. Like Medea whacking her own kids, the US turned on its own creation, Ahmed Chalabi, raiding his Baghdad compound and fingering him as an agent of the ayatollahs of Iran. And on and on it goes.

Still not all of the president’s men are in a despairing mood. Amid the wreckage, there remain opportunities for profit and plunder. Halliburton and Bechtel’s triumphs in Iraq have been chewed over for months. Less well chronicled is the profiteering of the Carlyle Group, a company with ties that extend directly into the Oval Office itself.

Even Pappy Bush stands in line to profit handsomely from his son’s war making. The former president is on retainer with the Carlyle Group, the largest privately held defense contractor in the nation. Carlyle is run by Frank Carlucci, who served as the National Security advisor and Secretary of Defense under Ronald Reagan. Carlucci has his own embeds in the current Bush administration. At Princeton, his college roommate was Donald Rumsfeld. They’ve remained close friends and business associates ever since. When you have friends like this, you don’t need to hire lobbyists..

Bush Sr. serves as a kind of global emissary for Carlyle. The ex-president doesn’t negotiate arms deals; he simply opens the door for them, a kind of high level meet-and-greet. His special area of influence is the Middle East, primarily Saudi Arabia, where the Bush family has extensive business and political ties. According to an account in the Washington Post, Bush Sr. earns around $500,000 for each speech he makes on Carlyle’s behalf.

One of the Saudi investors lured to Carlyle by Bush was the BinLaden Group, the construction conglomerate owned by the family of Osama bin Laden. According to an investigation by the Wall Street Journal, Bush convinced Shafiq Bin Laden, Osama’s half brother, to sink $2 million of BinLaden Group money into Carlyle’s accounts. In a pr move, the Carlyle group cut its ties to the BinLaden Group in October 2001.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/09/06/when-war-is-swell-the-carlyle-group-and-the-middle-east-at-war/

This barely scratches the surface. The reality is that underneath what shows for public navigators is one enormous iceberg made from blood-red ice, invisible to the proles and serfs who are doing their best to keep afloat in a frozen sea of austerity, endless war and debt servitude, thanks to the banksters and warmongers' ability to use the USA PATRIOT Act to their advantage.

This time, like all the time, I totally agree with you, blm. What is it they say at Liberty U? "Their backs are up." And it's piss-ant crapola divide-and-conquer par-tay.

[blm]

23. Here's what Hans Blix said - this will piss off the BombIran crowd, too.

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/qa-hans-blix-iran-deal-remarkably-far-reaching

[JI7]

17. when is kerry going before congress to speak about this ?

[karynnj]

18. Tomorrow at 10 am - Senate Foreign Relations - I think it's an open session

He has been in many closed door briefings this week. The SFRC is with Moniz and Lew.

[mylye2222]

19. Thank You..

I will not be able to watch but I am looking forward to the transcripts.

I wondrr how many Corporate Dems are going to vote no... Menendez for sure will...

[mylye2222]

20. Kicked for visibility!

[brer cat]

24. K&R

This is getting lost on DU with the primary wars crowding almost everything else out. We need this deal.

[MBS]

25. I'm writing to my senators and congressman today

Please contact your own, even if you think they are already likely to support the Iran deal.
If they ARE supporters of the Iran deal, it helps them to know that their constituents are on their side.
If they are opposed to the Iran deal-- especially if they are hawkish Democrats (I'm thinking of YOU, Sens. Menendez and Schumer. . )-- they need to know that their constituents are not pleased.

The right-wing opponents of the deal will continue to be loud and vehement.
Let's drown them out.

We can't let the warmongers win.

[blm]

27. "We can't let the warmongers win." It really is THAT crucial.

.

[annabanana]

26. Another kick.. because (now on CSpan3)

Kerry's being subjected to the expected toadish nonsense at the hearing. Our reps ALL need to hear from us now.

Now on C Span 3:

http://www.c-span.org/networks/?channel=c-span-3

[Agony]

28. Schumer and Gillibrand are undecided

I talked to both of their offices today and staff told me in both cases that they are considering the details of the agreement at this point.

Gillibrand posted this on the 14th…
"
July 14, 2015

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand today issued the following statement on the announcement of the Iran nuclear agreement:

“I strongly supported and helped pass the sanctions that were put in place that brought Iran to the table, but sanctions alone won't work. The best outcome for the national security interests of the United States and Israel is a strong, verifiable deal that prevents Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Now that the deal is complete, it is Congress's duty to look long and hard at the details. I want to read all of the details, especially on the verification components, before making a determination whether this is a good deal.”

"

I am betting that brinksmanship will prevail, they got 60 days and I bet they use all of it.