Thank You
Dear Editor: Betty Eliason Child Care Center would like to send a big thank you to the Tribal Youth Center for their recent, generous donations of a projector, a waxer, and a large quantity of art supplies. We very appreciate your thoughtfulness and generosity.
Tammy Thom for
Betty Eliason Child Care Center
Board, Staff and Children
Syria
Dear Editor: This is an open invitation to anyone in America who can, to explain exactly why they are upset about the Syrian government’s latest alleged use of chemical weapons against their bad guys. Or are concerned that some 100,000 or so people (no doubt more, and no doubt primarily women, kids and old folks) have been killed in that nation’s “civil war.” Or that any of this justifies a further extension and expansion of U.S. active military embroilment in yet another goat-rope in that part of the world.
Have any of your sources of knowledge, truth and understanding on talk radio, the corporate media, or the Internet bothered to differentiate between Syria’s alleged use of “weapons of mass destruction,” and what your own country has done in this realm? Just as a friendly reminder, your government used (and still uses there and elsewhere) depleted uranium in its “liberations” of Iraq and Afghanistan, etc. Before that, there was the matter of chemical/biological warfare in the form of a dandy little Dow Chemical profit generator called “Agent Orange,” in a place called Vietnam. And then, of course, there is Hiroshima and Nagasaki: the only time in history humans have used nuclear bombs against anybody, let alone non-combatant civilians.
No doubt you may have also conveniently forgotten that the only confirmed use of so-called “officially banned” WMDs in the Middle East involved the at-the-time-our-main-boy Sadaam Hussein’s chemical warfare against Iranian soldiers (and some recalcitrant, rebellious Kurds) during the course of his “holy war” against the Great Satan in Tehran, bought and paid for by (guess who?) yours truly. You have probably also blotted out the fact that those weapons were personally delivered to Sadaam by that apparatchik of America’s greatness, indispensability and exceptionality: one Don Rumsfeld, previously of artificial sweetener CEO fame and subsequent DoD infamy as one of the principal architects of your nation’s failed so-called “war” against so-called “terrorism.”
As to the “proof” the White House now claims it has that Syria has in fact (again) used chemical weapons: is this the same White House that had “proof” (never delivered to we, the people) that, again, that same bad, bad Sadaam had all those weapons of mass destruction that it used to justify its attack upon, invasion, “liberation,” and occupation of Iraq? Is it the same White House that – according to then-Secretary of State and My Lai graduate Colin Powell – claimed that it had “proof” that al-Qaeda was responsible for 9/11 (again, never delivered), thereby validating a similar enterprise in Afghanistan? Or the same White House that breathlessly announced the attack upon UhhMerriKans in the Tonkin Gulf way back in ’64 – and never even bothered to prove it – thus successfully launching The Last Bad War: Vietnam?
All these questions are further inspired by recent reports that “almost 100,000” folks have been killed in Syria’s civil war, and that that (and stopping further carnage) will ultimately emerge as America’s ultimate justification for military activity in yet another attempt to re-fight and this time win all the Lost Crusades, and make the world safe for Christianity, Democracy, and, above all, the transnational corporation and bank. Given the millions of Iraqis (again, primarily women, children, and the elderly) who have died (or wished they had) as a result of America’s first attack upon Iraq and our subsequent post-OPERATION DESERT STORM Sanctions, and then their “liberation” in 2003, and then the chaos that has followed in due course and is now uncontrollably rampant, what’s a hundred (or few hundred) grand Syrians?
That being as it may, if nothing else, of course, this all is a sure-fire way of ensuring that cash-flow to that Fourth Branch of the government, the “Fatherland Security/Military-Industrial Complex,” continues unabated. Given the frank distastefulness everybody in D.C. has about somehow pegging, let alone paying the REAL present and future cost of an invasion, “liberation,” and occupation of Iran, a “dress rehearsal” against Syria will probably keep all the key players (contractors, lobbyists, generals and politicians) happy. At least for now.
At least long enough to, above all, help further divert Americans’ attention away from revelations of yet further assaults on their privacy and freedoms by the biggest and most successful gang of terrorists on this planet: the government of the United States of America, and its owners and operators.
May all be well, with all that you love.
Jeff Moebus, Sitka
