Wars without End

Bush: We'll do what the generals want, not what the people want.
Of course, the generals were pretty much to a man against the surge. But Bush fired them and got some generals that agreed.
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RFK Jr. Speaks Truth to Power in Live Earth Speech
Sunday 08 July 2007
TRANSCRIPT: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Comments at Live Earth
Now we've all heard the oil industry and the coal industry and their indentured servants in the political process telling us that global climate stability is a luxury that we can't afford. That we have to choose now between economic prosperity on the one hand and environmental protection on the other. And that is a false choice.
In 100% of the situations, good environmental policy is identical to good economic policy - if we want to measure our economy, and this is how we ought to be measuring it, based upon how it produces jobs and the dignity of jobs over the generations, how it preserves the values of the assets of our community and how it averts the catastrophe of global warming.
If, on the other hand, we want to do what they've been urging us to do on Capitol Hill which is to treat the planet as if it were a business in liquidation, convert our natural resources to cash as quickly as possible, have a few years of pollution based prosperity, we can generate an instantaneous cash flow and the illusion of a prosperous economy. But our children are going to pay for our joyride with denuded landscapes, with poor health, with huge cleanup costs and with climate chaos which is going to amplify over time and that they will never be able to pay.
Environmental injury is deficit spending. It is a way of loading the costs of our generation's prosperity on to the backs of our children. Climate change is upon us. Its impacts are going to be catastrophic and we are causing it. The good news is, we have the scientific and technological capacity to avert its most catastrophic impacts. We only need the political will.
If we raise fuel economy standards in our automobiles by one mile - we generate twice the amount of oil that is in the Arctic National Wildlife Refugee. If we raise fuel economy standards by 7.6 miles per gallon we yield more oil than we now import from the Persian Gulf. We can eliminate 100% of Persian Gulf oil.
Think about what that would do for our economy, for our foreign policy, for our global leadership, it would dramatically improve our balance of payments, reduce our national debt and make all of us more prosperous and more independent and spare us from wars in the Mid-East that are costing us, already, a trillion dollars and from entanglements with Mid-Eastern dictators who despise democracy and are hated by their own people.
Now you've heard today a lot of people say that there are many little things that you all can do today to avert climate change on your own. But I will tell you this, it is more important than buying compact flourescent light bulbs or than buying a fuel efficient automobile. The most important thing you can do is to get involved in the political process and get rid of all of these rotten politicians that we have in Washington D.C. -
Who are nothing more than corporate toadies for companies like Exxon and Southern Company, these villainous companies that consistently put their private financial interest ahead of American interest and ahead of the interest of all of humanity. This is treason and we need to start treating them now as traitors.
And they have their slick public relations firms and their phony think tanks in Washington D.C. and their crooked scientists who are lying to the American people day after day after day. And we have a press that has completely let down American Democracy. That's giving us Ana Nicole Smith and Paris Hilton instead of the issues that we need to understand to make rational decisions in a democracy - like global warming.
And so I am going to tell you this, that the next time you see John Stossel or Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity - these flat-earthers, these corporate toadies, lying to you, lying to the American public, and telling you that global warming doesn't exist - you send an email to their advertisers and tell them that you are not going to buy their products anymore.
And I want you to remember this, that we are not protecting the environment for the sake of the fishes and the birds, we are protecting it because nature is the infrastructure of our communities. And if we want to meet our obligation as a generation, as a civilization, as a nation, which is to create communities for our children that provide them with the same opportunities for dignity, and enrichment, and good health, and prosperity, and stability as the communities that our parents gave us, we've got to start by protecting our environmental infrastructure.
The air we breathe, the water we drink, the wildlife, the public lands, the things that connect us to our past to our history that provide context to our communities and that are the source, ultimately, of our values and our virtues and our character as a people and the future of our children.
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Guyana criticizes carbon credit scheme of Kyoto Protocol
Guyana's President Bharrat Jagdeo on Thursday criticized the Kyoto Protocol on climate change for failing to allow countries like his nation with pristine unharvested forests to earn carbon credits.
"The Kyoto Protocol is limited in that sense, and it's short-sighted in that it encourages bad behaviour basically among countries; if you cut down trees and you plant them back you get money, if you preserve them, you don't get anything," Jagdeo told a forum on agro-energy.
The Guyanese leader noted that Guyana would reap "miniscule" assistance under the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol when the South American country begins large-scale production of ethanol and other types of agro-based energy.
He said Guyana has decided to get into the production of bio-fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel. But "assistance is miniscule through the Clean Development Mechanism as compared to the carbon credits we could get from standing forests," said Jagdeo, a Russian-trained economist.
Carbon credits are the center of a system of credits that allows a company or country that reduces its carbon-dioxide emissions below a target level to sell the extra reduction as a credit to a company or country that has not met the target level.
Under the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, developed countries can take up a greenhouse gas reduction project in a developing country where the cost of greenhouse gas reduction projects is usually much lower.
Guyana has already set aside 80,940 ha (200,000 acres) of land in the eastern part of the country for investors to plant special varieties of sugar cane to make ethanol.
In northwestern Guyana near Venezuela, a company is planting oil palm to make biodiesel for use in that area to reduce fuel costs and at the same time clamp down on illegal fuel smuggling from the neighboring nation.
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Rep. Jim McDermott
A Black Mark, Not a Benchmark
The President called another news conference today to pretend he is making progress in Iraq. It is the beginning of another White House White Wash.
This President is bound and determined to have U.S. soldiers fighting and dying in Iraq throughout every last day of his Administration.
The Administration's interim report released today represents a black mark, not a benchmark in the President's deadly and disastrous military escalation to prop up his failed Iraq strategy.
When the Vice President said in mid 2005: "I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency," 1,000 U.S. soldiers had already died in Iraq.
When the Secretary of State said in late 2005 that the U.S. would probably not need to maintain its current troop levels "very much longer," 2,000 U.S. soldiers had already died in Iraq.When the President held a news conference in mid 2006 and predicted that "progress will be steady" toward achieving the U.S. mission there, 2,500 U.S soldiers had already died in Iraq.
When the Vice President said in early 2007: "We have, in fact, made enormous progress," 3,000 U.S. soldiers had already died in Iraq.
And as the President touted his latest vision of progress today, over 3,600 U.S. soldiers had already died in Iraq.
And we cannot forget the 26,000 U.S. soldiers who have been wounded, the 40,000 U.S. soldiers who will suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, the uncounted tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians who have been killed and the millions of innocent Iraqi civilians who have fled the country.
But this President sees progress. I see a President willing to keep misleading the American people, no matter the consequences.
We are 17 months away from a new President being sworn into office and thousands of additional U.S. casualties if we follow this President.
It will be a travesty of justice if it takes getting to the 2008 general election and the American people throwing out every Republican in order to stop this war.
It is time for the Republican Members of Congress to stand up and stand down this President's war.