The corporate oligarchs who managed the Wall Street disaster and the disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are afraid of the awakening of the American people. In any organizational chart of government the chief executive, such as the Mayor, is at the top of the chart then city council and dept heads etc. There is however one line above the Mayor and all other government executives. The first three words in the US Constitution: “We the People.” The people are the final executive power and all elected and appointed public officials are subject to the people.
This having been said it is the people’s contention that the Obama stimulus money that comes to the state of Connecticut and the City of Hartford is to be used to stabilize the workforce by ceasing the lay-offs of public employees, especially the public schools. The hiring of vendors and consultants is to cease. The Obama administration has promised and put in place a transparency doctrine for the stimulus money. The people demand that the city budget and the Board of Education budget also exhibit transparency by posting the entire budget on line.
It is also time that the cost of these insane wars be exposed and visible. Another 17 Americans died in Iraq last month and 18 died in Afghanistan. Over 200 hundred were wounded. Where is the accounting for this in the mainstream media? Who among you has seen the casualty list? An American Army officer was indicted for stealing $699,000 in Iraq. The CEO of Blackwater, Eric Prince has received over $100,000,000 for his mercenary contractors. The American taxpayer has paid $500 a month to over 100,000 Sunni insurgents to not kill American soldiers. That is $50,000,000 a month. If we were not in Iraq they couldn’t kill our people and we would have saved almost a trillion dollars.
I leave you with this thought, “In a ham and egg breakfast, the chicken is involved, but the pig is committed”. Viet Nam veterans use to have a saying that paraphrased comedian Richard Pryor, “There is no justice- there is just us” The People have been committed to the meat grinder of the war and recession by our leaders and soon the chickens will come home to roost and there will be justice.
Dave Ionno
Veteran for Peace
Another story that is not getting enough play is the amount of suicides by U.S. soldiers in Iraq & Afghanistan. If I remember correctly, the number of suicides in January was greater than the casualties from combat.
One of the Iraq veterans at Operation First Casualty on Saturday in Hartford was shouting this as he walked through the crowd.
The international media’s coverage of the wars is far more truthful than that of the U.S. corporate media. Networks in other countries show the dead civilians, including babies & children. There’s still uncertainty as to whether or not President Obama will lift the blackout on coverage of American soldiers’ caskets returning to the U.S.
The economic crisis has relegated the corporate media’s coverage of Afghanistan & Iraq to mere footnotes, which is a tragedy. Dave Ionno has pointed out how these issues are related, which needs to happen more often.