Referring to proponents of Obama’s plan to draw down troops in Iraq and focus on Afghanistan, Kissinger writes in today's WaPo:

Above all, they argued, the war was lost, and withdrawal would represent the least costly way to deal with the debacle.

Nobody (on Obama's side) is arguing the war was lost. Quite the contrary, "they" argue that Iraq, as declared by high-ranking Iraqi officials such as the Prime Minister, needs to take care of her own security now. It’s not just the least costly way to deal with Bush/McCain’s debacle, it’s also the most sensible.

Kissinger continues his divorce with reality across the fold.

"When you control oil, you control nations.  When you control food, you control people."   This quote is attributed to Henry Kissinger, who has created his share of killing field and is, by many, considered to be a war criminal.
http://video.google.com/...

We're experiencing what it means to be "controlled by oil."  This post is about something we can't live without: Food

Where does one even begin?  

Before it's possible to understand the scope of this, I'm going to take a moment and give background.

Do you know who Monsanto is? They are a chemical corporation which made Agent Orange and after that, PCBs, with which they drowned the town of Anniston, Alabama for decades, even after knowing for sure that PCBs were highly carcinogenic.  They make organophosphates, including glyphosate (Round-up) - which are highly neuro-toxic.

With this background in illness and killing, Monsanto then began "doing" your food.  It genetically engineers food.

But before you say "Oh, that's good because genetic engineering is making food better, adding vitamins, growing bigger crops, ..." I have bad news for you.  Please go to http://www.responsibletechnology.org and listen to Jeffrey Smith's lecture on how genetic engineering works and what it does to organs.  

It might be that none of them can (or could) travel outside of their respective countries of national residence for fear of arrest and indictment by foreign (read here European) governments.  This, and more, is laid out at the following link:

http://www.slate.com/...

On June 13, 1966, Miranda rights were born.

On June 13, 1967, Thurgood Marshall was appointed to the Supreme Court.

On June 13, 1971, The New York Times began publishing the Pentagon Papers.

When I plotted out the first two weeks' worth of June's diaries, I said to my wife, "Damnit! Why couldn't [these events] have happened on different days?"

Any one of these events would have invited a thorough diary examining the factors involved in the various decisions, the ramifications of those decisions and the impacts of those decisions on our society.

I hope, and trust, that those Front Pagers who remember one or more of today's honored events happening will write something about it, because the significance of each event cannot really be overstated.

And because they cannot be overemphasized, because they are such dramatic, society-changing events, there was no need for me to do my usual opening intellectual strip-tease. (Totally doing it tomorrow, though.)

Today's the South Dakota Democratic primary, and there would be no better place for Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama to announce this choice for his running mate: former South Dakota Senator George S. McGovern.

McGovern was right about Vietnam and Iraq. He spoke out in 1965 for recognition of the Cuban government, saying that sanctions wouldn't work to bring down the Castro regime. He advocated opening relations with China years before Henry Kissinger made his secret trips for President Richard Nixon. He's been a ceaseless advocate for ending poverty and hunger around the world, something that was recognized by President John F. Kennedy when he gave McGovern the reins of the Food for Peace office. He tried to warn the American public about Nixon's role in the Watergate affair even before the 1972 election, but the voters didn't listen.

A major-party Presidential nominee who aims to change the trajectory of American politics suddenly becomes enamored of inviting a former White House occupant -- once the candidate's bitter rival for the nomination -- to take the second slot on a dream ticket. The 'dream' is to rapturously unify a divided party -- quelling doubts about a candidate who represents a leap of faith that many of the party faithful may be unwilling to make.

A powerful former high-ranking public servant lurks behind the prospective veep, reportedly demanding almost co-presidential powers on his liege's behalf -- and a strong role for himself. Ultimately the dream evaporates, as the nominee demurs at proposals to cede vast swaths of the President's Constitutional authority to a vice president who will function as "chief operating officer."

Senator McCain has a problem, a problem so monumental that it might well derail his presidential campaign before it even gets to the Republican convention.  It has to do with Senator McCain’s stated foreign policy strategy of not talking to America’s enemies.  This may seem logical to Senator McCain today, but if President Nixon has held the same rigid view on foreign policy, Senator McCain almost certainly would not be with us today.

[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]

It’s always been extremely interesting to me that Senators Clinton and Obama proclaim with varying degrees of intensity that the United States is going to leave Iraq, not that in fact we’ve lost the war. One would think in the natural order of things leadership would state the obvious fact we’ve lost, thus we are leaving, but employing logic has never been a strong American political trait.

Reality will ultimately intrude into the tragedy of the Iraq war, someday, and when that day finally arrives the Age of Non-Partisanship heralded by Senator Obama will face its ultimate test, for no matter the truth the reptilian lizard brain of the Republican Party--vomited forth just last week as Bush sneered at the realists as "appeasers"—will endlessly scream we never would have lost if you hadn’t proclaimed us losers!  We lost because we gave up from wimp loser liberals!

I just got a phone report from my friend Dody about today's demonstration in moneyed Kent, CT, where war criminal Henry Kissinger and his wife Nancy were hosting a Republican fundraising lunch (actually at the $1000 a plate level, it's probably a "luncheon"). The bash starred another Nuremberg Trial prospect, George W. Bush himself, as diaried here on Sunday.

Folks who've been working on the Iraq Moratorium in Cornwall, CT, the somewhat less posh rural town to Kent's immediate north, were part of a demonstration that they estimated at 60 or 70 at the start, when they tried to get close to the Kissinger residence. An arranged system of shuttles was to take folks inside the State Trooper blockade to protest, but when passengers on the first shuttle were bumrushed by the law when they tried to get out, plans were quickly adjusted.

Reports are just starting to come in at the Iraq Moratorium website on Moratorium Day #8, just two days ago. The folks in rural Cornwall, CT are still polishing their report on their Third Friday program which was addressed by a Republican State Senator, but they wanted me to pull the collective DKos coattail to another bit of news.

It appears that President George W. Bush will be holding a fundraiser in Kent, CT, the posher town to Cornwall's immediate south on this coming Friday. "Kent? I never heard of Kent. Why Kent?" I hear you ask. Because Kent is the home of the Bush bash's host, none other than Henry Kissinger!

So if you are a lurking Republican, by all means don't settle for the thousand buck tab to get in the door. For a mere ten large, you can get your photo taken with two generations of war criminals, world class war criminals I think you'd have to call them. And it all goes to help some bozo named David Cappiello, who is trying to win back CT 05 from the Democrats, in the person or first term Representative Chris Murphy.

In 1948 George Kennan, who at the time was a senior US State Department planning official, wrote:

We have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security.

To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction.

Later on, in April of 1974 President Gerald Ford, who had replaced Nixon, issued National Security Study Memorandum 200. The title was Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for US Security and Overseas Interests. President Ford signed an Executive Order making NSSM 200 official US Government Policy. It dealt with food policy, population growth and strategic raw materials. The NSSM was the work of Henry Kissinger and was secret at the time it was issued.

Five former secretaries of state, three Republicans and two Democrats,  announced their recommendation that the next presidential administration should close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba.

America's collective response?  "No shit."

Note that the recommendation is for the next administration.  No one has any illusions that the Bush administration will pay any attention to mere secretaries of state.

One of my least favorite people, Henry Kissinger, finds a truffle now and again. In an interview with Bloomberg he appeared to repudiate the current BushCo policy of no direct negotiations with Iran. In doing so he seems to be siding with most of the Democratic candidates, particularly Obama, who took some heat on this issue a couple of months ago. Before going further, please be clear that I am not praising Kissinger. This man has done more than his share to sully the reputation of the United States as a result of his inability to focus on our real interests. But, even he can stumble on a truth.

In response to a question Kissinger said,

``One should be prepared to negotiate, and I think we should be prepared to negotiate about Iran,'' Kissinger, who brokered the end of the 1973 Yom Kippur war and peace talks with the North Vietnamese, said yesterday in an interview with Bloomberg Television. Asked whether he meant the US should hold direct talks, Kissinger, 84, responded: ``Yes, I think we should.''

A BBC report on Sunday’s Russian elections reminded me of the famous George Kennan quip that “we will get nearer to the truth if we abandon for a time the hackneyed question of how far Bolshevism has changed Russia and turn our attention to the question of how far Russia has changed Bolshevism.” The reporter then substitutes the word “Democracy” for “Bolshevism” to make for a nice turn of phrase and pose what seems like a provocative question. . . but is it?

Someone at the American Conservative took the time to debunk one of the less embarrassing lies about why we invaded Iraq: to secure "strategic access" to their oil in case some future Iraqi government or other producers threaten to cut us off or dramatically increase prices.

The author points out the obvious  that if your economy depends on the sale of one product, you can't cut off the customer who uses 25% of it and expect to make money. Likewise, the more one player tries to jack up the price, the more temptation there will be for competitors to produce more to capture those added profits, and the price will go back down as demand increases.

He leaves out the other effect of high prices: it will make alternative fuel and energy sources more attractive to more people.  That would spell the end of the oil industry.  Oil can be monopolized, but any farmer can build a still and make alcohol, and low tech like windmills and solar thermal could be made by just about anybody to charge batteries for your car or run your dishwasher.  Anything that can't be monopolized is kryptonite to the economic parasites that run oil companies.

Going all the way back to the 70s and maybe earlier Plan Condor was brewing in South America. There have been documents found under FOIAs tying the USA and our CIA while run by Bush 1. The storys being told include Kissinger in many of the dealings of Op Condor. Pinochet himself is named in the 146 warrants but since he and 5 others named are dead, the active number is 140 warrants. At least one person has been arrested already, hopefully proving this isn't just for show.

Prosecutors in Italy have issued arrest warrants for 140 people over a decades-old plot by South American dictatorships called Operation Condor.

One man - 60-year-old Uruguayan former naval intelligence officer Nestor Jorge Fernandez Troccoli - has already been arrested in Salerno, south Italy.  Italy seeks Condor plot suspects

"Josh, get me Wilhelm Rehnquist."

"Mr. President, it is a privilege and an honor to serve you today, but Mr. Rehnquist has gone to that great vote-suppression paradise in the sky."

"Yeh, right, I remember appointin' that Roberts guy, the one who actually made it through Harvard on his own. Y'know, nevermind Roberts just yet. Get me Jim Baker."

...