This is stunning. A newly declassified document,one forced to be declassified, reveals that the U.S. government knew perfectly well, concretely, that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction in 2003 or any ties to Al Qaeda. So, the whole, entire basis for the Iraq War was a complete and total lie. But, we killed over a million Iraqis! This does it. It is time to call for the arrest of George W. Bush. Nobody should be able to kill that many people and get away with it, The dead deserve justice, including over 5000 Americans.

https://newspunch.com/declassified-cia-document-reveals-iraq-war-had-zero-justification/?fbclid=IwAR0_QpA1GhZetc5mNb8VmdhusG1_z7QfkL89AbJ9pxTOedCOdDJnMckl4Gk

I tell you, I have to laugh- with tears in my eyes- at the lunacy of what is going on with the reporting on Afghanistan. For months, they've been talking about progress through 7 rounds of negotiations, but they keep saying the same thing, over and over, that the U.S. agrees, in principle, to leave, and the Taliban agrees, in principle, not to let Afghanistan be used as a base by those plottin', plannin' terrorists. 

But, how does it take 7 rounds of negotiations to arrive at that? Doesn't it seem like 1 round would be sufficient? And remember that each round went for a week. So, that's 7 weeks of negotiations to arrive at that? That's all? How did they even pass the time if that's all they came to? 

Just yesterday, the Washington Post published that very upbeat article which included this:

The agreement, which would require the Taliban to begin negotiating a larger peace deal directly with the Afghan government, would cut the number of American troops in the country from roughly 14,000 to between 8,000 and 9,000, the officials said. That number would be nearly the same as when President Trump took office.


Wow.  That's amazing. You would think the Taliban was happy with Obama's troop level if going back to it will make them start singing Kumbaya with the ones they call puppets and quislings. 

But, here is the reality check. This was published just today on the Taliban website. Read it, and then tell me whether you think reducing the US troop level from 14,000 to 9,000 is going to cause them to accept and work with the Afghan government. 

The Mujahideen of the Islamic Emirate have been engaged in executing various well-planned operations against the American and quisling armies. These deadly attacks have rendered the enemy confused and demoralized such that it continues to present conflicting stances regarding each incident. Attacks on the allied enemies in Kabul, Ghazni, Kandahar, Helmand, Logar, Zabul, Paktia, Baghlan, Faryab and other such provinces have demonstrated yet again the Islamic Emirate’s ability to target and eliminate enemy targets at its time of choosing. The attacks have further proven that the enslaved army of Kabul, whose oppression against its people continues unabated, cannot escape becoming targets for revenge. The Mujahideen in their path to avenge the Afghan nation will ensure that places previously considered secure by the quislings too will become slaughterhouses for them.

The enemy is affected by intense fear given the Mujahideen’s new strategy and successful attacks that have exposed the quislings’ inability to defend their own facilities in Kabul. Gains are being made by the Mujahideen throughout the country with the capturing of large regions and military bases. The Mujahideen also face large numbers of enemy soldiers surrendering weapons while the ones intent on continuing to fight either flee in fear or are simply killed by the Mujahideen. These are common occurrences.

The Islamic Emirate has on repeated occasions conveyed to civilians who are working with America and the quisling administration that they ought to refrain from waging war against Islam and the country; that living a peaceful life is within their best interests; protection of their life and wealth shall be guaranteed; to go forth in defense of our Islamic values; and serve Islam under the Islamic Emirate’s leadership so that their religious obligation is fulfilled and an Islamic system is established in Afghanistan.

The Islamic Emirate once again stresses to the individuals working with America and the enslaved Kabul administration the importance of abandoning their slavery to the enemy and instead aiding the Mujahideen in defending Islam and the country. Together we must save our oppressed people and Muslim country from the foreign disbelieving enemy that has occupied us for almost two decades.

So, the TSBD was a CIA front company. They had a public identity as a school book distributor to cover up what they were really doing. But, why get involved with school books?   Look at this stack here. It is 8 boxes high. Who would stack boxes of school books 8 high? First the weight of it all would crush the books on the bottom. But second, consider how dangerous it was. It could topple over and hurt somebody. There weren't any ladders there to get up to it, and we have never even seen a single forklift. So, how were they moved there in the first place. By hand? 

Did you ever see Three Days of the Condor starring Robert Redford? From the 1970s,  it's a good movie. In it, he plays a CIA researcher who works at a CIA front company, the "American Literary Historical Society," but what they really do is do research and intelligence gathering for the CIA. And then there are the Bourne movies, which make use of various CIA front companies. And Jason Bourne is a great character. He is right up there with Sheriff Joe Haladin from My Stretch of Texas Ground as a great screen character, in my humble opinion. But, in the case of the TSBD, what's with all the boxes? Would they go to all that trouble just for appearances? No one would. 

So, the boxes must have been useful. They must have contained things, and I don't mean books. They must have been moving some kind of contraband: drugs, weapons, ammunition. And that must be why they needed the guise of book distributing to account for all the boxes. 

But, what were the "order-fillers" doing? Well, it's likely that they had some real books there. But, did they get real orders? Again, there is no evidence of class-size orders being filled by those order-fillers and the one "mailer" Troy West. And remember that we have no evidence whatsoever of orders going out, or of parcels being ready to go out. Just read this testimony.

Mr. BELIN - Well I have a first floor map here of the Texas School Book Depository. Here is Elm Street and here is the front entrance. Here is Mr. Truly's office, and Here is Mr. Shelley's office. There is the stairway down to the basement, and there are the elevators and the back stairway. There are the toilets there. About where would you wrap mail there? Here is the Domino room and the shower. You are looking here, that is north Elm Street runs this way and Houston Street runs that way. It is shown on the diagram. Mr. WEST - Well, my place was in the west side of the other building.  

I have to laugh. It's like something out of Abbott and Costello. Belin did all that specifying and delineating only to hear Troy say he worked in another building. But, Belin just ignored it, and I think that Troy got the idea that he was expected to go along, and he did. And before that, here is how he described himself.

Mr. BELIN - What do you do for the Texas School Book Depository? 
Mr. WEST - Well, I am a mail wrapper. 
Mr. BELIN - You are a mail wrapper? 
Mr. WEST - I wrap mail all the time. 

If you were shipping books, would you describe yourself as a mail wrapper? Would you consider textbooks being sent to schools as mail?  Why wouldn't you say book wrapper? Why, if you were handling books all day long, would you refer to that as mail?

We know that Oswald was not comfortable at the TSBD. He was extremely anti-social there. And before you say that was his nature, don't; because it wasn't. If you talk to the people who knew him in Russia, he was nothing like that there. They said that he was very social, engaging, friendly, and talkative. And if you look at the photos we have of him from Russia, it shows that he wasn't like that, for instance, hugging Marina's aunt. But, Oswald was never friendly to anyone at the TSBD. And he was not friends with Frazier. He just rode with Frazier, to and from Irving, a few times, and other than that, he had no interest in getting to know him or doing anything with him, or even talking to him. So, why was Oswald that way at the TSBD? Did he have an uneasy feeling about the place? Did he have a sense that it wasn't what it appeared to be?  

And what were those "order-fillers" really doing? 

Pompeo repeated the mantra about not letting Afghanistan be used as a base for terror attacks against the United States. Let's get real about that, shall we?

Nobody in Afghanistan can do anything to terrorize the United States. They can talk about it from there because they can talk about anything anywhere. But, it's just lip-flapping.  Do you remember the old nursery rhyme, "Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never harm me"?  From Afghanistan, no one can do any harm to us. That's because: they're in Afghanistan. Whatever they might dream up, they could dream up anywhere. Even if we could make certain that no one in Afghanistan is plotting anything against the U.S., there are so many other places in the world where people can plot, that it's meaningless.

Here in Texas, we have a big problem with fire ants. You can put poison down, but they just move. They relocate. You've never done putting poison down. 

And like fire ants, if terrorists can't operate from Afghanistan to plot their attacks, then they'll go elsewhere to do it. Trying to control and stomp out terrorism by declaring one relatively small geographical location as the place that we can't let them plot from is just plain stupid- really stupid.  

So, what are they really doing when they talk this way? What they're really doing is just trying to rationalize the whole evil, monstrous, wicked war that we started. They're trying to make it sound like it actually had some moral sanctity.  It had none. And the whole claim is a lie. 9/11 was NOT hatched by Osama bin laden from a cave in Afghanistan. The whole claim is a vicious lie.

Oh, I tell you, it is a wicked world we live in, and when the spewings of authority are as false and fabricated as the spewings we are subjected to on a daily basis, it shows that the whole fabric of Society has completely lost touch with reality. Our leaders, like Pompeo, are like zombies. 



  

A new puff piece about Afghanistan just came out in the Washington Post, which is Jeff Bezo's newspaper.

U.S. preparing to withdraw thousands of troops from Afghanistan in initial deal with Taliban 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/us-preparing-to-withdraw-thousands-of-troops-from-afghanistan-in-initial-deal-with-taliban/ar-AAFc96d?ocid=spartandhp

The gist of it is that the U.S. will reduce its presence from 14,000 troops to 8 or 9000 troops in exchange for the Taliban agreeing to a ceasefire and starting direct reconciliation talks with the Afghan government. 

First, the Taliban is not going to settle for anything less than a firm and rapid timetable for the complete and total withdrawal of all foreign troops. Reducing from 14 to 9 thousand is not going to mean shit to them. 

Second, they have said a thousand times that they will not negotiate with the Afghan government. 

And yet, this article is surreal about it. It's like it's from a parallel universe.  It's like we're living in the Twilight Zone. 

The Trump administration is preparing to withdraw thousands of troops from Afghanistan in exchange for concessions from the Taliban, including a cease-fire and a renunciation of al-Qaeda, as part of an initial deal to end the nearly 18-year-old war, U.S. officials say.

© Steve Ruark/AP Soldiers carry the casket of Spec. Michael Nance at Dover Air Force Base on July 31 in Delaware. Nance and Pfc. Brandon Kreischer were killed on July 29 in Afghanistan’s Uruzgan province.

The agreement, which would require the Taliban to begin negotiating a larger peace deal directly with the Afghan government, could cut the number of American troops in the country from roughly 14,000 to between 8,000 and 9,000, the officials said. That number would be nearly the same as when Donald Trump took office.

The plan has taken shape after months of negotiations between the Taliban and Zalmay Khalilzad, an Afghan-born American diplomat who was appointed by the Trump administration last year to jump-start talks. Officials said an agreement could be finalized ahead of the Afghan presidential election in September, though they cautioned that Taliban leaders could delay and that significant challenges remain. 

Subscribe to the Post Most newsletter: Today’s most popular stories on The Washington Post

The proposal is likely to be viewed skeptically by some U.S. and Afghan officials who question the Taliban’s honesty and wonder how the United States can verify whether Taliban leaders are following through. But if approved, it would be one of the most significant steps toward ending the war, a goal that increasingly has bipartisan support.

“I would say that they are 80 or 90 percent of the way there,” said one official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss details of the emerging deal. “But there is still a long way to go on that last 10 or 20 percent.”

A Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, declined to comment about the likelihood of an initial agreement. In a brief telephone interview Thursday, he said he did not know when talks would resume.

“We are hopeful,” he said. “Things look promising that there will be a breakthrough. We hope there won’t be any obstacle, but it also depends on the seriousness of the Americans.”

Khalilzad said in a tweet Wednesday that he plans to resume his next round of talks with the Taliban in Qatar soon and that if the group does its part, an agreement will be finalized.

Additional cuts to U.S. forces would be negotiated as part of discussions involving the Taliban and the Afghan government, U.S. officials said.

Army Gen. Austin “Scott” Miller, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, is open to the proposal, two defense officials said, because he believes it would protect U.S. interests by maintaining a counterterrorism force that can strike the Islamic State and al-Qaeda. Miller, who took command in Kabul last September, previously has said that political negotiations are “absolutely” a key to ending the war.

“Neither side will win it militarily, and if neither side will win it militarily you have to move . . . towards a political settlement here,” he said in an interview with ABC News in February.

A spokesman for Miller, Army Col. Sonny Leggett, declined to comment.

U.S. officials acknowledged there are legitimate concerns that the Taliban might not break with al-Qaeda, as Washington has demanded, or stand up to the Islamic State. Still, officials may be content with a partial troop withdrawal that opens the door to additional negotiations and keeps the counterterrorism mission alive as the status quo becomes politically untenable.

The Taliban has refused to talk with the Afghan government, which it calls a puppet regime, until it reaches a deal with the United States on its troops.

A Pentagon spokesman, Cmdr. Sean Robertson, said the Defense Department has not been ordered to withdraw forces from Afghanistan — a point that other officials describing the potential deal also stressed. Robertson declined to discuss what a partial troop withdrawal could include, saying the department does not comment on military planning.

“Our strategy in Afghanistan is conditions-based,” Robertson said. “Our troops will remain in Afghanistan at appropriate levels so long as their presence is required to safeguard U.S. interests.”

Afghan government officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the discussions, said they expected that an initial U.S. deal with the Taliban would include some U.S. troop reductions but did not know what numbers or timetable might be proposed.

The officials said they were pleased to hear that a U.S. proposal would require the Taliban to meet with them. But some expressed concerns that a partial pullout would embolden the Taliban.

“The Americans call this a peace negotiation, but the Taliban definitely perceive it as a withdrawal negotiation,” one Afghan official said.

A State Department official rejected that view, saying the United States is pursuing “peace” not “withdrawal.”

In recent weeks, U.S. visitors to Afghanistan have included Marine Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Marine Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie, the chief of U.S. Central Command; and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

The task of explaining the negotiations in Afghanistan to the American public has fallen to Pompeo. On Monday, when asked whether he expected a reduction in U.S. forces before the 2020 election, he said, “That’s my directive.” The following day, he clarified his remarks, saying that “there is no deadline” for the mission there and accusing the news media of misinterpreting his words.

The president wants to draw down forces “just as quickly as we can get there, consistent with his other mission set, which is to ensure that we have an adequate risk reduction plan for making sure that there is not terror that’s conducted from Afghanistan,” Pompeo told reporters aboard his plane en route to Thailand.

Trump said this week that he did not know whether all troops will come home from the war before the U.S. election. “We hope in the coming days that we will be able to urge the Taliban to talk,” he said.

Cutting the troop level to 9,000 would require commanders in the field to make some tough decisions on which bases to close and which missions to curtail, and on whether to scale back advising Afghan troops.

One person with familiarity with Miller’s thinking said the general is sure to want to keep open Bagram air base, from which the United States launches counterterrorism strikes in Afghanistan's eastern mountains. The military also is likely to maintain a significant presence in Kabul, where there are numerous bases, and some troops at Kandahar Airfield, the largest U.S. base in the south.

Meanwhile, U.S. officials say that German troops are likely to keep a presence in northern Afghanistan and that Italian troops will remain in the west.

But some Afghan officials fear that a preliminary deal outlining a U.S. withdrawal could weaken their negotiating position during intra-Afghan talks and eventually leave them alone to fight the battle-hardened Taliban.

One of the concerns is that gains made since the fall of the Taliban could be erased if the group, which seeks to reestablish an Islamic emirate, becomes part of a power-sharing government. Women’s rights groups are especially concerned, given the Taliban’s restrictions on women and opposition to educating girls. But the State Department says it has secured agreement with the Afghan government on “next steps on the Afghan peace process.”

In the absence of formal talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban, the militant Islamist group has been willing to meet with a delegation of Afghan leaders in Qatar in recent weeks, with the understanding that the Afghans are not acting in an official government capacity. Though the Taliban officials were reportedly welcoming, progress was not made on preserving fundamental freedoms, according to media reports citing people who attended the meetings.

The State Department declined to comment on the details of the drawdown agreement, but an official said that “any future reductions or withdrawal of forces will be conditions-based.”

State Department officials say a breakthrough hinges on an agreement on four issues: counterterrorism assurances, troop withdrawal, intra-Afghan dialogue and a comprehensive cease-fire. In March, Khalilzad said that he reached agreement on a draft containing the first two points but that a final deal would not conclude “until everything is agreed.”

Khalilzad spent the past 10 days in Kabul for consultations with Afghans in what he described to one reporter as his “most productive visit” there since becoming special envoy. Next he will travel to Pakistan and then Qatar to continue talks with the Taliban, a State Department official said.

In an another indication that a force-reduction deal may soon be reached, the Afghan government named a 15-member team Wednesday to negotiate directly with the Taliban. Meetings with the Taliban and the Afghan government would proceed after the U.S. and Taliban officials reach their preliminary deal.

The discussions continue even as violence across the country remains pervasive, with the Taliban controlling more territory than at any point since 2001. 

The "order-fillers" at the TSBD all had clipboards. Not carts. Not wagons. Not ladders to access the high stacks. Just clipboards. And what did they need a clipboard for? Wasn't it just something extra to carry? Why not just a slip with the books comprising the order, the number of units, and the customer? Since they had to carry the books by hand, how many could they carry at a time? And remember that this is what Oswald's clipboard had on it.

It's just obscure numbers, and the only thing you can read is "New people and progress." All the rest is gibberish. And the TSBD was a distributor of elementary school textbooks. I doubt that 3rd graders were reading New people and progress. It's just horseshit.

And remember, these were textbooks for public schools. Consumers don't buy textbooks for public school, at least, not until college level. The school provides the books to the students. Therefore, their customers had to be schools. Since schools were ordering books for classes, the orders had to be large. So, how is it possible that order-fillers were filling class-size orders when all they had to move the books were their two hands, one of which had a clipboard in it?   

I want to lay out why the TSBD was NOT a legitimate book distributing company, that it was just a facade for their real identity, which was doing espionage and other things for the CIA. It may have involved weapons, drugs, counterfeit money; who knows. But, it was a CIA front company.

1) It was supposed to be a school book distributor, meaning, it distributed books to schools, but there is no evidence of school-size or class-size orders being filled. Boxes of books are heavy, yet, the "order-fillers" had no carts or wagons to move them. 

2) The shipping department consisted of one guy, Troy West, who described himself as the "mailer." He wrapped orders in brown paper, which no one would do to a box of books. 

3) After wrapping orders in brown paper, Troy had a string tying machine with which to tie them. But, such machines were and are designed for small parcels not whole boxes of books. 

4) The whole implication is that "order-fillers" would bring one or a few books to Troy who would wrap them in paper, seal them, and then tie them. But, no one would ship books like that. Just thin paper covering books? What if the paper tears in shipping? Plus paper is porous. Someone gets water on it, the books get  ruined. We're supposed to believe they were sending books to schools that way? Again: they were not  a retailer but a wholesaler. Yet, there is no evidence of wholesale orders. 

5) Supposedly, orders were filled that morning. Everybody worked. So, how come we have never seen images of finished parcels ready to go? How were parcels labeled? By hand? We don't know. And what about postage? Since Troy described himself as a "mailer" does it mean that everything went via the U.S. Post Office?  

 6)  When asked, Troy West said that he worked in another building, but David Belin just ignored that and proceeded as though he said he worked in the TSBD. The story became that the shipping was being done out in the open on the first floor, even though a plat of the first floor shows nothing about a shipping department existing there.

There was no organization whatsoever to the way the books were stored.  And as we look at the stacks of boxes, we can 't make out titles. If you look closely, you can make out the word MATHEMATICS, but what does the rest of it say? And keep in mind that this is a good example. Mostly, it just looks like gibberish. And even if you make the claim that up close you'd be able to read it, we're talking about rows and rows of stacks and stacks of books on most of the floors of a 7 story building that's as big as a city block. Nobody would operate a business this way. 

And think about the economics of it. Troy West was the only "mailer" they had. Even if he wrapped and tied all day long, how could the profit margin on what he could do pay the salaries of 75 employees plus all the other expenses to run the business, eg, rent, utilities, supplies, etc.?  It's just ridiculous. 

The biggest question I have is: what were those "order-fillers" really doing?  

                                                                                                          

The results are in for the First-Time Filmmakers Sessions, and although My Stretch of Texas Ground didn't win, it did reach the finals. 

We are pleased to announce that the winning feature film is:

Angiò dir. by Leonardo Palmerini (which receives a boutique screening at Lift-Off's home at Pinewood Studios, with a feedback and career consultation).

Congratulations to the finalists. All will receive free Intermediate Lift-Off Membership, which includes features such as waivers to the Lift-Off Showcases, Career Road-Mapping sessions with the Lift-Off Co-Founders, Production Support, access to scripts and screenplays and much more.

It's About Choices 

My Stretch of Texas Ground 

New York Food Delivery Driver
The other side of me 

We're Like a Punk Band