Abbott and Costello Update: Who’s Iraq and What Do Al Qaeda?
By Larry Johnson on July 14, 2007 at 12:38 AM in Al Qaeda, Bush/Cheney, Current Affairs, Homeland Security, Iran
by
Larry C Johnson
Within the last week we have been told that Al Qaeda is weaker, Al Qaeda is stronger, Al Qaeda is coming, Al Qaeda is here, and that we are fighting them in Iraq so we don’t have to fight them here except, somehow, maybe, they’ve found there way to our shores. Add to this Homeland Security Chief Chertoff’s “gut feeling” that we will be attacked even though there is no credible evidence.
Forgive me for mixing metaphors, but this is like an Abbott and Costello sketch (Who’s on First) set to the Troggs’ hit, Love is All Around.
[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=bkMUmoS6B6M[/youtube]
Time to update the Troggs’ lyrics. We need someone to sing, “Al Qaeda is All Around”.
I feel it in my tummy, I feel it in my toes.
Al Qaeda’s really coming, let all your fear now show.
I just saw Ayman’s video; he’s everywhere we go
They’re coming here to kill me, something’s going to blow.
Okay, you get the drift. Aspiring songwriters, get to work.
Now let’s really compound the confusion. According to recent articles:
The leader of an Al Qaeda umbrella group in Iraq threatened to wage war against Iran unless it stops supporting Shias in Iraq within two months, according to an audiotape.
Got it? Al Qaeda is threatening Iran (damnit! I thought Al Qaeda only hated us? Are we being two timed?)
U.S. Suspects That Iran Aids Both Sunni and Shiite Militias. “We have in fact found some cases recently where Iranian intelligence sources have provided to Sunni insurgent groups some support,” said General Caldwell, who sat near a table crowded with weapons that he said the military contended were largely of Iranian manufacture.
Whoops! Iran is helping Sunni insurgents. Al Qaeda is comprised of Sunnis. Now who’s on first?
In rebuffing calls to bring troops home from Iraq, President Bush on Thursday employed a stark and ominous defense. “The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq,” he said, “were the ones who attacked us in on September the 11th, and that’s why what happens in Iraq matters to the security here at home.” . . . . The American military and American intelligence agencies characterize Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia as a ruthless, mostly foreign-led group that is responsible for a disproportionately large share of the suicide car bomb attacks that have stoked sectarian violence. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the senior American commander in Iraq, said in an interview that he considered the group to be “the principal short-term threat to Iraq.”
Now I seem to recall that the 15 of the 19 hijackers/murderers on September 11, 2001 were Saudi and not Iraqi. And that the group we now know as Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia was not part of Al Qaeda on 11 September 2001. And that a fierce gunbattle in Baghdad yesterday, which featured U.S. troops exchanging shots with Iraqi shia police and Shia militants, left 19 dead.
To recap: We are fighting them there so we don’t have to fight them here. We don’t know who “them” are. So, we’re shooting everyone (kill them all, let Allah sort it out). And, despite all of our shooting, “them” aren’t staying put. Them are on their way or are probably already here and will attack momentarily. And we know this because of the super secret gut bomb detector roiling around in Michael Chertoff’s belly.
Who’s on first? No, what’s on second.
Caption:
See? My $#I% still don’t stink.
Al Qaeda is responsible for everything. Al Qaeda is why we don’t have decent health care, up-to-date infrastructure, a plan to avert global warming, alternative energy, safe food and drugs, cheaper college education, well-tended national parks, protection for endangered species, clean water, broadband in rural areas, and a chicken in every pot. It’s true.
(A guy is sitting reading the newspaper when he hears a knock at the door)
“Knock-knock.”
—-”Who’s there?”
“Al”
—-”Al who?”
“Al Qaeda”
—-”Hey, I wasn’t born yesterday! You’re soliciting contributions to the Republican Party–go away!”
“No, I promise! I’m really with Al Qaeda, please open the door so I can murder your entire family . . . er, uh, Crusader pig!”
—-”Sure, THAT could happen, NOT! Now you just go back to Karl Rove or whoever and tell him that we’re WISE to his little tricks now.”
“Knock-knock”
—-”Who is it THIS time?”
“Land shark?”
Larry,
I heard you mention knowing about the funding of the 9/11 hijackers on Stephanie Miller.
Sen. Bob Graham said the censored portion of the Joint Congressional Inquiry was about Saudi government support for at least two of the hijackers.
If someone killed my dog, you know that I know who did it, and you see me having a cigar with the guy who killed my dog, wouldn’t it be reasonable to assume I wanted him to kill my dog?
Bush was smoking stogies with Bandar on the back porch of the White House a couple of days after 9/11.
Frontline did an episode after 9/11 on the “war on terror” in the 80s, and one of the points they made in passing was that Casey got Bandar to arrange a carbombing in Lebanon for us.
Transcript (control F and search for Bandar)
There are real terrorists who do real bad things but when the bad things but certain actions seem tailor-made to justify taking Muslim countries oil resources, an action that makes no sense as fighting terrorism since it will only inspire more.
Larry writes: Forgive me for mixing metaphors,…
No. No, no, no, no ,no ,no, no, no.
Mazel tov on the new digs. I like. Great job, Butters.
C&L has a story about yet another scary White House proclamation. It’s a Statement of Policy from the Executive Office on the National Defense Authorization Bill of 2008.
So if it’s not Al-Quaeda, it’s those Persians.Sheesh….It’s almost Bastille Day. I envy the French their guillotine.
I read your blog every day, but don’t comment. I just can’t resist the urge to play with all the buttons.
The entire “thing” (for lack of a better word to describe this nonsense) is nothing but a farce. It’s insane. One day Iran is helping the Shia. The next day they’re helping the Sunni. One day “Al Qaeda in Iraq” is helping the Sunni. The next day they’re helping the Shia. Or killing them. Or both. The comparison to “Who’s on First?” is just so apropos. It’s a farce. And it might even be funny if it weren’t so deadly. And so twisted.
The longer this goes on the more convinced I am that it’s all a large charade being performed for our gluttonous consumption. In fact, I’m not convinced that much of the violence isn’t part of a grand psy-ops to convince us all that we have to stay there to fight the dreaded but necessary The Long War. (Has anyone trademarked that yet, by the by?) What better way to convince us all to support more military funding to ensure a permanent presence in the oil-rich Middle East? It fits the neo-con, PNAC agenda to a tee, does it not? “American global leadership”, as the PNACers call it. And a tidy little triumvirate consisting of the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Israel has everything to gain from this tragic play’s ultimate success.
“Al Qaeda in Iraq”? Who comes up with such silly nomenclature but people determined to entrench in our collective consciousness that Al Qaeda and Iraq were/are directly linked. It ensures that every time we hear Al Qaeda, it’s directly linked to Iraq. And sooner or later, the lemmings among us begin to associate the two as though they are permanently entwined. Brilliant! Who came up with that strategy? Karl Rove?!
Youtube inline insert (at least I think that’s what is supposed to be in that large empty space) isn’t making it to my browser, Andrew (IE 6 on Win98, stop laughing. it’s fast and I like it).
Folks,
We appreciate the feedback on what works and what doesn’t. We’re still trying to figure out how to embed the youtube. You’re right Chris about the space. That’s supposed to be the video.
Thanks
Hilarious Larry!
OK, here’s my version of “Al Qaeda’s All Around Us”:
Yes! Now we’re talking. I’ll see if I can get Brad Parker or Taters to record it.
LJ
Dee Lorelei write: It’s almost Bastille Day. I envy the French their guillotine.
And I envy them their national anthem, with which I blow out the windows every year at this time. As a composer myself, i gotta tell ya, this is the national anthem to beat all national anthems. Written by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle in 1792, I regret that no one thought to say on behalf of the American experiment, “look, as long as you’re in the mood, Frenchy, would you mind knocking out another for the colonies,” because the US national drinking song, pardon me, national anthem, is hell to listen to or sing.
So blow out your windows with any of the selections found here, or go for the gold here, with the full berlioz 9 minute orchestral arrangement. If you don’t get goose bumps at the chorus, check your pulse; you may not be alive.
aux armes citoyens!
Oh man, the comment I just posted, with a couple of links, went down the ramhole.
dammit!
Youtube insert visible now, thanks. I’ll try my comment again.
Dee Lorelei writes: “It’s almost Bastille Day. I envy the French their guillotine. ”
And I envy them their national anthem, which I blow my windows out with every year around this time.
Speaking as a composer, La Marseillaise is the national anthem to beat all fucking national anthems, and I regret that no American approached Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle in 1792 and said, “See here, Frenchy, as long as you’re in the mood, how about knocking out another for us in the colonies”, because it would have given us something, anything, besides this ridiculous drinking song, pardon, national anthem, we have that is hell to sing or listen to.
So blow out your own windows with any of the selections here, which include jazz and reggae arrangements, or go for the gold with the full nine minute berlioz orchestral arrangement here. If you don’t get goose bumps at the chorus, check your pulse; you may not be alive.
Aux armes, citoyens!
Gad, If I only had some musical talent… the best I can do is schllep along and pretend to look like I can carry a flat tome under my breath…. sick woman that I am somedays, no one sane would want to even try to figure out my meanings… Thanks Larry for getting this up graded, and Susan and Butters and everyone, I love ya all…. hope this will be great WE for everyone…..
oh, BTW, do all the boxes at the top of this mean something??? don’t know much about it, but looks like I might need a directions thingy or something to figure out everything available here…. should keep me out of trouble for a little bit, maybe???
And it was discarded, in its entirety, again. At least this time I had the sense to copy all before hitting the “add Comment” button.
I’m going to post again, and simply post the links as footnotes to the text, rather than try to embed them.
Dee Lorelei writes: “It’s almost Bastille Day. I envy the French their guillotine. ”
And I envy them their national anthem, which I blow my windows out with every year around this time.
Speaking as a composer, La Marseillaise is the national anthem to beat all fucking national anthems, and I regret that no American approached Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle in 1792 and said, “See here, Frenchy, as long as you’re in the mood, how about knocking out another for us in the colonies”, because it would have given us something, anything, besides this ridiculous drinking song, pardon, national anthem, we have that is hell to sing or listen to.
So blow out your own windows with any of the selections here[1], which include jazz and reggae arrangements, or go for the gold with the full nine minute berlioz orchestral arrangement here[2]. If you don’t get goose bumps at the chorus, check your pulse; you may not be alive.
Aux armes, citoyens!
[1] http://hymne-national.ifrance.com/musique.htm
[2] http://old.marseillaise.org/francais/berlioz.html
Rejected again. I’m going to try posting the text without any form of html formatting whatsoever.
Dee Lorelei writes: “It’s almost Bastille Day. I envy the French their guillotine.”
And I envy them their national anthem, which I blow my windows out with every year around this time.
Speaking as a composer, La Marseillaise is the national anthem to beat all fucking national anthems, and I regret that no American approached Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle in 1792 and said, “See here, Frenchy, as long as you’re in the mood, how about knocking out another for us in the colonies”, because it would have given us something, anything, besides this ridiculous drinking song, pardon, national anthem, we have that is hell to sing or listen to.
So blow out your own windows with any of the selections here[1], which include jazz and reggae arrangements, or go for the gold with the full nine minute berlioz orchestral arrangement here[2]. If you don’t get goose bumps at the chorus, check your pulse; you may not be alive.
Aux armes, citoyens!
[1] http://hymne-national.ifrance.com/musique.htm
[2] http://old.marseillaise.org/francais/berlioz.html
Professor, you are exactly on tartget with this one… Bandar Bush and the family are tied together at the hips… both are working together, and someday, the truth will come aout. Whether Bushco wants it to or not…
And rejected again. I’m going to post in pieces to see which part the error trapping is barfing on.
Dee Lorelei writes: “It’s almost Bastille Day. I envy the French their guillotine.”
And I envy them their national anthem, which I blow my windows out with every year around this time.
Speaking as a composer, La Marseillaise is the national anthem to beat all fucking national anthems, and I regret that no American approached Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle in 1792 and said, “See here, Frenchy, as long as you’re in the mood, how about knocking out another for us in the colonies”, because it would have given us something, anything, besides this ridiculous drinking song, pardon, national anthem, we have that is hell to sing or listen to.
So blow out your own windows with any of the selections here[1], which include jazz and reggae arrangements, or go for the gold with the full nine minute berlioz orchestral arrangement here[2]. If you don’t get goose bumps at the chorus, check your pulse; you may not be alive.
Aux armes, citoyens!
[1] http://hymne-national.ifrance.com/musique.htm
[2] http://old.marseillaise.org/francais/berlioz.html
Aux armes, citoyens!
[1] http://hymne-national.ifrance.com/musique.htm
[2] http://old.marseillaise.org/francais/berlioz.html
Chris,
How are you writing link codes? I’ll use parentheses instead of these thingies. What’re they called?
(a href=”http://www.yourlinkhere.com”>Marseillaise(/a)
My thingies didn’t appear? They look like this
Well, #@%, there’s away around that thingies!!! I’ll show you, the thingies are above the comma and period buttons on your keypad. Hmph.
Okay, the links are the fly in the ointment.
I’m going to print them without the forward slashes, which can gum up some text parsing routines. So all forward slashes here are replaced with the “+” character, okay?
1) http:++hymne-national.ifrance.com+musique.htm
2) http:++old.marseillaise.org+francais+berlioz.html
You wanna follow these links, paste ‘em into a browser and change any “+” character to a forward slash.
http://hymne-national.ifrance.com/musique.htm
http://old.marseillaise.org/francais/berlioz.html
greater/less they’re called, Leslie. Still trying to post a couple of internet addresses, as referenced in the above post, and still being rejected each time I try.
I’ve tried standard html tagging on the words “here” and “here” in the post above, and that was simply thrown away, so I’m trying a number of other methods, in an effort to see what the error trapping is barfing on.
http://hymne-national.ifrance.com/musique.htm
Hey, There’s one. I’ll try the other now.
http://old.marseillaise.org/francais/berlioz.html
Well shit, there’s the other. i have no idea why these addresses were rejected earlier, although Andrew might!
Anyway, the first address corresponds to the [1] in my post above and the second address coresponds to the [2] in the same post. Enjoy. God, that was a lot of work.
Need preview button after all, I think, and need composition window to retain comment until actually succesfully posted, Andrew. Thanks!
Curiosity compels me to try both addresses at once, as I tried before:
http://hymne-national.ifrance.com/musique.htm
http://old.marseillaise.org/francais/berlioz.html
Andrew, as a test, I just posted both addresses, just as seen in above pair of posts, with a single blank line between them and nothing else; the resulting post was simply disappeared. A-ha! Hope this helps.
At least Abbott and Costello were funny. These guys are sad. I like the new blog setup.
“Casey got Bandar to arrange a carbombing in Lebanon for us.”
That really does not prove anything about 9/11, if that is where you are trying to go with this. The U.S. has arranged lots of things like this in foreign countrys. That does not mean they have also arranged attacks against Americans.
By the way, the U.S. engaged Iyad `Allawi to arrange some car bombings in Baghdad, one of which killed and maimed a bunch of school kids on a school bus. They worked with the Ba`th party to help them murder and disappear a bunch of people they did not like, mainly Communists (some of whom, by the way, were Iraqi Jews - lots of Iraqi Jews were Communists back in the pre-2003 days when Iraqi politics was about ideology and not sectarian or ethnic identity), and some of whom were members of the “wrong” wing of the Ba`th party.
Such is the war of - oh, excuse me - on - terrorism.
This comment section is great - so much better in so many ways than the other one. MUCH better usability for starters.
Some of the features do need further testing and correction. (It
DOESN’T work on MY machine, and mine is the one that matters, so there!
PS the text formatting buttons are gone, and so suddenly is the automatic preview feature. Wha hoppen?
I refreshed and now they’re back.
Guess there’s a bit more work to do.
Setting aside the fun of playing with all the cool new features, this post brings up something that I noticed from the beginning of the selling of the Iraq thing, and that is that this administration, for all their reputation for informational discipline, can NEVER get their lies straight from one day to the next. They also cannot coordinate their lies from one person to the next. I don’t know why that was not obvious to more people. Seriously, Bush would say one thing on Monday, and Rummy would say something that pretty much contradicted it on Tuesday, and then on Thursday Colin Powell would say yet a third contradictory thing.
In general, the average seven year old is better at lying convincingly than this gang ever has been, and yet they managed to deceive an entire nation into invading a country that posed no threat to anyone at all in a venture that was guaranteed to result in a spectacular, if very prolonged, defeat for the United States.
shirin, all, re: the amer. gvt. being ready to kill americans. pls. feel free to check out “operation northwoods.” c. 1962. written by our joint chiefs of staff. all, repeat all were on board with it.
re: creating causus belli so we could invade cuba. also, see what the widely respected in intel circles james bamford has written about this.
re ww1. pls. check out on amazon.com the conservative thomas fleming’s “the illusion of victory.” luisitania was carrying munitions to britain. germany tried to take out ads in 50 us newspapers. wilson admin. put the arm on 49 of em. ad never ran, but for one iowa paper. jpmoragan, who had loaned beaucoup bucks to brit. and france got his war.
re ww2. pls. check out robert stinnett’s day of deceit. fdr knew. (shirin, anyone. if you want to raise heck for the bushies ressearch prescott bush financing the nazis and still doing 10 1/2 months AFTER pearl harbor! i know some here know it, but some don’t and most americans don’t know it. and i know about all the other americans in bed w the nazis, including the fdr’s bff’s the harrimans.)
f*ck shirin, we blew away our own president in the middle of the day in a public square in dallas in 1963 and covered it up to the present dayl. ditto his brother in ‘68 in los angeles. and it wasn’t sirhan sirhan. l.a. county coroner said the shot that killed him was fired about 2 inches behind his right ear. sirhan was always in front of him. i wish that every american had in their library the thomas fleming book on woodrow wilson and ww1 and david talbot’s book out about jfk and rfk. “brothers. the hidden history of the kennedy years.” and shirin/all you get quadruple bonus points when you find out where lbj was the night before the assassination (22 nov. 1963) and what lbj said to his mistress when he came out of the meeting. and i wish that every american would adopt at a minimum reagan’s favorite russian proverb, “trust, but verify.” and stop acting like a bunch of 40-50-60-70-80 year “political virgins.” the consequences are to damn profound.
pls. check out the uss liberty incident. middle east country involved. like 34 americans kia and 172 wounded. 1967.
re 911. i will raise very disturbing questions if you will give me 90 seconds of your time. go to http://www.911truth.org. to store. to info cards. to something like 11 inconvient facts about 911. fits on a 5 inch by 8 inch postcard or so.
my bottom line: the mil. ind. complex is the beast that must be fed. and if amer. lives must be fed in to the maw…..tough tittie is their attitude. see brezinsk’s comment c. ‘97 in the grand chessboard about american citizens don’t do empire, need a new pearl harbor. see pnac’s c.’98 remarks about pearl harbor. note that stinnett used declassified us gvt. documents about pearl harbor, which w’s administration has reclassified!!! stuff from the 40’s!
as, i think the guy’s name was david kelly, the brit’s m.o.d. wmd expert who was likely suicided said, there are a lot of “dark actors” out there.
I about fell over when i read this, guess im not the only one thinking this might happen, I found this link over at the c-span news site. Then it takes you to The Politico site.
“Ron Paul warns of staged terror attack”
http://www.politico.com/blogs/thecrypt/0707/Ron_Paul_warns_of_staged_terror_attack.html
Oh man, all of the comments I did which had disappeared have now appeared, making me look, uh, totally crazy. Sorry!
Finally got a chance to check out the Troggs video. What fun, reynolds wrap wallpaper, flower tattoos, lots of fur trim on the clothes, woo hoo, must be the summer of love! Especially enjoyed the part where the cameraman nearly puts out that poor girl’s eye with his lens!
Well look, if the Bushies do insist “they’re” coming here, doesn’t that put the lie to their neo-con roach motel fantasy?
They want to have it both ways, and we’re letting them have it both ways.
I miss the old blog feature that allowed you to see who was commenting where? Because it made it easier to keep track of conversations.
Al Qaeda’s All Around Us has been playing in my head all morning! It’s a nice jingle. LOL. Larry, you may have a hit on your hands. Hope Taters and Brad Parker will record it. Then we can help spread it around.
yes, Leslie, I do too, I think an ever better way for it to work is somehow to show all threads that have been updated in say last 12 or so hours… even with old system, I still missed some posts cause they got lost in a different thread… esp. on busier days. Can we do something like that??? I will wait for all you tecky/geeky friends to figure out what to do with all the buttons, then when you do, post it for those of us techno nerds, who only know how to type, because they made us learn the keyboard if we wanted to grad gee ate….
I miss the “recent comments” feature too. I used it a lot. Hopefully something like that can be put up here.
“pls. check out the uss liberty incident.”
I have known about the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty and the cover up for years. Anyone who can look someone in the eye and say with a straight face that it was a case of mistaken identity is either a fool or a bloody liar.
But that still does not prove that the U.S. did 9/11, nor have I seen any really convincing evidence to show that the CIA, or Johnson, or whoever it was supposed to be who really killed JFK. I know how passionate those of you are who believe that. I am just not convinced, and at this time I do not have the time or the mental energy to grapple with it yet again.
You say
Add to this Homeland Security Chief Chertoff’s “gut feeling” that we will be attacked even though there is no credible evidence.
That is what Chertoff wanted you to hear, but not what he said. What he said, read literally, is perfectly consistent with “We currently have credible evidence of an attack on the US next month, but the information is not specific about place and time.”
Read more here.
….f*ck shirin, we blew away our own president in the middle of the day in a public square in dallas in 1963 and covered it up to the present dayl. ditto his brother in ‘68 in los angeles. ” and shirin/all you get quadruple bonus points when you find out where lbj was the night before the assassination (22 nov. 1963) and what lbj said to his mistress when he came out of the meeting….
I was a senior (very significant time in a person’s life) at an East Coast high school on November 22, 1963. At 2:30 PM, the student body was gathered in the gym for a pep rally, when one of the school bus driver’s parked outside ran in holding his transistor radio and shouted that the president had been shot. I suspected LBJ immediately. Years later, I learned that the Texas scumbag from Austin had worn a medal of honor on his lapel which he never earned. And years after that, I got to live in Austin, Texas myself, where I quickly discovered that Texas is NOT the USA. So let me guess. Where was Johnson the night before Kennedy’s assasinaton? At the Broken Spoke? With the rest of the Texas crooks and criminals?
Interesting…
interesting