Cut through U.S. Press Corps shallowness to Discover Substance in the 46th’s Presser…

And my disappointment

I read the White House transcript and found these nuggets (promises) in President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr’s responses in the March 25, 2021 press conference (excerpt).

I

mmigration (and immigrant) Challenge

Root Causes: 

“The reason they’re coming (in January through March) is that it’s the time they can travel with the least likelihood of dying on the way because of the heat in the desert. .
“…[T]hey’re coming because of circumstances in-country — in-country.

“The way to deal with this problem — (is to put) together a bipartisan plan … to deal with the root causes of why people are leaving (their countries).”

“Is it … because of earthquakes, floods, lack of food, because of gang violence…; (likely) … because of a whole range of things.  

“… I’ve asked the Vice President of the United States … to be the lead person on dealing with focusing on the fundamental reasons why people leave Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador in the first place.”

D

omestic Challenges 
In cold type, the president seemed to reserve his most passionate words for domestic challenges.

“I meant what I said when I ran. And a lot of you still think I’m wrong, and I respect that. I said, ‘I’m running for three reasons:

• To restore the soul, dignity, honor, honesty, transparency to the American political system;
• To rebuild the backbone of this country — the middle class, hardworking people, and people struggling to get in the middle class; and
• To unite the country

“… I’ve not been able to unite the Congress, but I’ve been uniting the country, based on the polling data. We have to come together. We have to.
…[F]rom my perspective, … it’s about …getting out there, putting one foot in front of the other, and just trying to make things better for people — just hardworking people. … Basic things.

“I’m of the view that the vast majority of people, including registered Republicans, by and large, share … that same view, that same sense of … what’s appropriate.”

“I want to change the paradigm. …
[R]eward work, not just wealth.
[C]hange the paradigm”

1. “[W]e’re going to invest in American workers and American science.”

In the 1960s we invested “a little over 2 percent of our entire GDP in pure research and investment in science; today it’s 0.7 percent. I’m going to change that. We’re going to change that. … (and) make sure we invest closer to 2 percent.

“[W]e’re going to invest in medical research — cancer, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, the things — industries of the future — artificial intelligence, quantum computing, biotech. [W]e’re going to make real investments. China is out investing us by a long shot, because their plan is to own that future.”

“I see stiff competition with China…We’ve got to prove democracy works.”

2. [W]e’re going to reestablish our alliances. (… …not anti-Chinese…).

3. We’re going “to rebuild the infrastructure — both physical and technological infrastructure … — so that we can compete and create significant numbers of really good-paying jobs. …China is investing three times more in infrastructure than the United States is.” 

“There’s so much we can do that’s good stuff, makes people healthier, and creates good jobs.”

“

Infrastructure (is) the place where we … significantly increase American productivity, at the same time providing really good jobs for people. But we can’t build back to what they used to be…; global warming has already done significant damage.” [R]oads that used to be above the water level — … now have to be rebuilt three feet higher.

Areas of concern

• · “Bridges: More than one third of our bridges — 231,000 of them — need repairs. Some are physical safety risks or preservation work.

• · Roadways: One in five miles of our highways and major roads are in poor condition. That’s 186,000 miles of highway.

• · Aviation: 20 percent of all flights … weren’t on time, resulting in 1.5 million hours lost in production.

• · Wells and Water lines: Six to ten million homes in America still have lead pipes servicing their water lines. More than 100,000 wellheads are not capped, leaking methane. … [W]e can put many pipefitters and miners to work capping those wells.

• · Schools and residences: In many schools, the kids can’t drink the (tap) water out of the fountain. Many schools are still in the position where there’s asbestos? Many schools haven’t adequate ventilation.

Many homes, buildings, office complexes with leaking windows or porous connections waste billions of barrels of oil over time because they can’t hold in the heat or the air conditioning.

My disappointment

B

ecause of the inferiority, poor character and caliber of the U.S. press corps, there was

• No mention of the America’s made-in-Washington globetrotting violence—relentless wars with impunity, relentless hostility, provocation, occupations against sovereign nations and peoples.
• No mention of America’s all-consuming war economy, the enrichment of war industrialists and politicians who pander to war industrialists.
• No mention of America’s disgracefully neglected (cavalierly accepted) tent cities, refugee camps, America’s people without permanent shelter, the homeless citizenry among whom are “thanks-for-your-service” U.S. military veterans   
• No questions addressing the compelling need to change the caliber, character, and ethos of U.S. leadership.

 

Source

White House • Speeches and Remarks East Room “Remarks by President Biden in Press Conference” March 25, 2021,1:27 P.M. EDT, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/03/25/remarks-by-president-biden-in-press-conference/

 

 

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Perpetual Aggressors, plunderers and predators never intend to “learn” lessons — any more than they genuinely “support the troops" and are “thankful” for their “service”; or possess any internalized ethic, manifested in actions, of genuine “thoughts and prayers.”

Legislative Branch’s careless acquiescence is the Executive Branch’s careless Killing sprees
Another 21st century war anniversary passes

Iraq 2021: The situation deteriorated further after the United States (and partners’) bombing of Iraq left people, human relations, and essential infrastructures in tatters. As desperate “Iraqis looted and destroyed state institutions,” U.S. military personnel stood by protecting only Iraq’s “the Ministry of Oil.”

U

SA in Iraq: a Historical view

U.S. sanctions in the 1990s “led to an increase in crime, theft, and prostitution.” Though the Iraqi government’s monthly distribution of basic rations “prevented mass starvation in Iraq,” these rations failed to curb “malnutrition.”

U.S. sanctions ‘caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, decimated the health of several million children; destroyed a whole economy; made a shambles of a nation’s education and health care systems; reduced a sophisticated country, in which much of the population lived as the middle class …; and in a society notable for its scientists, engineers, and doctors, established an economy dominated by beggars, criminals, and black marketers.’”

Estimates are “that at least 500,000 children died between 1990 and 2003 because of malnutrition and lack of basic services.

“When asked by a journalist about the price of half a million Iraqi children for the sanctions,” the U.S. Secretary of State in the William “Bill” Jefferson (Blythe) Clinton administration, Madeleine Albright, “infamously replied that ‘the price is worth it’ in order to exert pressure on [former U.S. ally] Saddam Hussein’s regime to disarm.”

While the United States sometimes killed Iraqis directly through bombardment and the imposition of sanctions, it also turned a blind eye to the death of Iraqis at the hands of Saddam Hussein through the support of his regime and prolonging of his wars. In these instances, it was not only an illiberal state that was killing its own citizens, but also a liberal state eliminating the lives of imperial subjects in the name of national security, democracy and freedom, and the protection of global peace.

Through support of Saddam Hussein, the prolonging of regional Middle East wars, and direct military interventions — “the United States has created conditions of death and dispossession for Iraqis inside Iraq (and in far flung places).”

Because of United States’ “imperial entanglement in Iraq, Iraqis have lived in the shadow of wars and authoritarian brutalities for decades. Violence has constituted the rhythm of everyday life in Iraq, rather than being an interruption of it. The intervention of the United States in Iraq has produced a volatile situation, and rendered Iraqis disposable human beings whose suffering and death has warranted little attention “ in U.S. mainstream media and within the general population.

Practices and policies “legalized” by U. S. officials and their partners “have unequally distributed life and death, claiming the power (of exceptionalism) to kill populations outside U.S. national territories.”

The imperial encounter between Iraq and the United States has made life deeply precarious for Iraqis. For decades, Iraqis have lived with fear for their own and their family’s lives, the loss of loved ones and their homeland.” They have suffered severe “economic hardship, and the destruction of the very fabric of their social lives.”

U

SA Twenty-first Century in Iraq
Men Deciders of War

From the dawn of the 21st Century to the present, U.S. belligerents’ torment the people of Iraq:

U.S. Presidents / Vice Presidents 

• 1. George W. Bush / Richard B. Cheney (2001-2009)

• 2. Barack H. Obama II / Joseph R. Biden Jr. (2009-2017)

• 3. Donald J. Trump / Michael R. Pence (2017-2021)

• 4. Joseph R. Biden Jr. / Kamala D. Harris (January 20, 2021 incumbent)

107th through 117th U.S. Congresses

Before being seated in the U.S. vice presidency (January 2009-January 20, 2017) and U.S. presidency (January 20, 2021 – present), Joseph R. Biden Jr. had been entrenched in the U.S. Senate for nineteen consecutive Congresses: 93rd – 111th (1973 – 2009).

In 2002 (October), the 107th U.S. Congress handed power to President George W. Bush to launch, at will, “any military attack” against the sovereign nation of Iraq; and on March 20, 2003, the Bush regime set off a devastating bombing assault against the people of Iraq.

The U.S. Congress’ surrender of its exclusive authority to declare war, by enacting “the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force” (the legal basis for war against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s “alleged weapons of mass destruction”) …, “has been stretched to cover many other, sometimes marginally related uses of force, not only in Iraq; but also ‘in Syria and elsewhere.’”

P

arty of War: One after another U.S. Presidency and Congress

2003: U.S. invaded Iraq and overthrew Iraq’s head of state.
2007: U.S., having created a power vacuum, chaos, and tribal conflicts, poured on more thousands of troops and thus more violence against Iraq.
2008: the U.S. president agreed to but never fulfilled the agreement to withdraw all U.S. combat troops from Iraq.
2011: U.S. president promised but failed to fill the promise of withdrawing U.S. hostile forces from Iraq.

Iraq Body Count 2003-2013 total: 184,512
Iraq Body Count Documented
civilian deaths from violence to date: 185,593 – 208,667
(Latter data based on “51,607 database entries from the beginning of the war to February 28, 2017, and on monthly preliminary data from that date onwards”)  https://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/

According to the Cost of War Project at Brown University, which began its count in 2013, “the total number of people who have died from the Iraq War, including soldiers, militants, police, contractors, journalists, humanitarian workers and Iraqi civilians, had reached at least 189,000 people, including at least 123,000 civilians. That number has only grown higher throughout the years.”

2014: U.S. again reinforced “official” aggression against the people of Iraq.
2014-2017: U.S. continued engaging with “insurgents” created by U.S. provocation and practices.
2020 (January 3): U.S., as an apparent presidential parting shot, launched a missile against the Baghdad International Airport, Baghdad Governorate, Baghdad, targeting and cold-bloodedly killing leading Iranian military officer Qasem Soleimani, who had been engaged in work to combat “terrorists.”
2021: U.S. aggression in and around Persia and Mesopotamia continues to the present day. (Additional background source Wikipedia)

Costs of War
Iraq Body Count of Dead

Human costs of War: 801,000

(5-plus Western Asia area countries: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen)

Economic costs of War

U.S. Budgetary costs $6.4 Trillion

https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/figures

“The impact of this war is painfully visible in many areas, where human security has been violated: in physical harm, in psychological damage and in lack of necessities.

“A recent UNICEF report reveals that 5.6 million people, including 2.6 million children, continue to need humanitarian assistance. The continuing social and economic instability make any humanitarian assistance difficult. Even securing permission and obtaining access remain a challenge.”

The U.S. War, occupation, and relentless hostility and atroci against the people of the sovereign nation of Iraq extend further back than the 21st century (e.g., President Clinton, Sen. Biden’s Gulf (Iraq) War). 

But in the twenty-first century alone, U.S. torment of the Iraqi people has extended through ten U.S. Congresses and four U.S. Presidents (43rd-46th).

 

Sources / notes

Commentator and former British MP George Galloway’s opening monologue and poll questions remember Iraq, its land and people in the opening 21st-Century (2003 - ) and continuing criminal foreign (principally U.S. / UK) aggression against Iraq, with no belligerents in the aggression nor culprits in the foreign policy “blunder” brought to book. “The Mother of All Talk Shows” March 20 (archived), 2021, headlined “Putin & Russia; US, Trump & Biden; China; Myanmar; Anti-Protest Bill; COVID-19, Lockdown & Vaccines” https://sputniknews.com/radio-moats/202103221082414906-putin--russia-us-trump--biden-china-myanmar-anti-protest-bill-covid-19-lockdown--vaccines/

Costs of War Project October 13, 2020 “The Human Cost of U.S. Interventions in Iraq: A History From the 1960s Through the Post-9/11 Wars” by Zainab Saleh https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers /2020/History%20of%20U.S.%20Interventions%20in%20Iraq_Saleh_Costs%20of%20War_Oct%2013%202020.pdf
https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/2020/IraqHistory

Iraq Body Count December 31, 2020 “IRAQ 2020: Legitimacy, security and war crime let-offs” by Lily Hamourtziadou [Iraq Body Count 2003-2013: total 184,512] https://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/numbers/2020/

Military Times Commentary by Dr. Neta C. Crawford and Dr. Catherine Lutz March 19, 2021, “What the 18th anniversary of the Iraq War teaches us about the costs of war” https://www.militarytimes.com/opinion/commentary/2021/03/19/what-the-18th-anniversary-of-the-iraq-war-teaches-us-about-the-costs-of-war/

Iraq Body Count https://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/
https://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/numbers/2020/

Costs of War Project figures https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/figures

Statista Civilian Deaths in Iraq War since 2003 https://www.statista.com/statistics/269729/documented-civilian-deaths-in-iraq-war-since-2003/

Wikipedia Iraq War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War

Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
https://bioguide.congress.gov/search/bio/B000444

 

 

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