Palin's Church May Have Shaped Controversial Worldview
Three months before she was thrust into the national political spotlight, Gov. Sarah Palin was asked to handle a much smaller task: addressing the graduating class of commission students at her one-time church, Wasilla Assembly of God.
Her speech in June provides as much insight into her policy leanings as anything uncovered since she was asked to be John McCain's running mate.
Speaking before the Pentecostal church, Palin painted the current war in Iraq as a messianic affair in which the United States could act out the will of the Lord.
"Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God," she exhorted the congregants. "That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God's plan."
Religion, however, was not strictly a thread in Palin's foreign policy. It was part of her energy proposals as well. Just prior to discussing Iraq, Alaska's governor asked the audience to pray for another matter -- a $30 billion national gas pipeline project that she wanted built in the state. "I think God's will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that," she said.
Video of Kalnins and Palin from June 8, 2008 (via wasillaag.net):
Palin's address, much of which was spent reflecting on the work of the church in which she grew up and was baptized, underscores the notion that her world view is deeply impacted by religion. In turn, her remarks raise important questions: mainly, what is Palin's faith and how exactly has it influenced her policies?
A review of recorded sermons by Ed Kalnins, the senior pastor of Wasilla Assembly of God since 1999, offers a provocative and, for some, eyebrow-raising sketch of Palin's longtime spiritual home.
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http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/03/10/iraq.cost.of.war/
Op-ed's $3 trillion Iraq war estimate doubted by Pentagon
• Story Highlights
• In Washington Post, economist figures Iraq war will cost $12 billion a month
• Pentagon spokesman says $3 trillion "seems way out of the ballpark to me"
• White House spokeswoman says she doesn't know where figures come from
• Nobel Prize-winning economist, former CFO at Commerce Department wrote piece
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Bush administration officials Monday expressed doubt about an economist's column published over the weekend saying the war in Iraq will cost the United States more than $3 trillion.
That number "seems way out of the ballpark to me," said Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell.
"I'm not an accountant. I'm not an economist. And I think that those who are have questioned the methodology of this particular survey," Morrell said.
The op-ed piece published in Sunday's Washington Post was written by Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist and Columbia University professor who served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Clinton. The co-author was Linda J. Bilmes, a former chief financial officer at the Commerce Department who teaches at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.
The two say the war is running a tab of $12 billion a month -- $16 billion including military action in Afghanistan. And, they maintain, the economic downturn resulting from it is likely to be the greatest since the Great Depression.
"That total, itself well in excess of $1 trillion, is not included in our estimated $3 trillion cost of the war," the column said. "Others will have to work out the geopolitics, but the economics here are clear. Ending the war, or at least moving rapidly to wind it down, would yield major economic dividends."
Morrell said Monday the Iraq war has cost the United States $406.2 billion through December 2007. "I think they [Stiglitz and Bilmes] throw everything in the kitchen sink into the survey, including the interest on the national debt," he said. "So it seems like an exaggerated number to us."
The wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and antiterrorist efforts abroad could cost $2.4 trillion over the next 10 years, according to an October 2007 estimate by the Congressional Budget Office. More than 70 percent would go to support operations in Iraq, and the figure included the estimated $600 billion spent since 2001, Congressional Budget Office Director Peter Orszag said in testimony before the House Budget Committee that month. That estimate also included projected interest, because the government is borrowing most of the funds required.
Stiglitz and Blimes' op-ed said that because Bush and Congress cut taxes after going to war, despite the massive deficit, the war had to be funded by more borrowing.
"By the end of the Bush administration, the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan plus the cumulative interest on the increased borrowing used to fund them, will have added about $1 trillion to the national debt."
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino refused Monday to dispute the numbers contained in the piece.
"I don't know exactly where he gets all of it," she said. "I think that some of the things that he looks into in terms of veterans care, that we're going to take care of our veterans in the future -- absolutely, those types of things have to be included, but it's very hard to anticipate, depending on conditions on the ground and circumstances, how much the war is going to cost."
Modern equipment for U.S. soldiers, with technology that saves lives, is expensive, she noted.
"I don't think anybody is arguing that our men and women who are out there on the battlefield shouldn't have access to the MRAP [mine resistant ambush protected] vehicles," she said. "Those vehicles are very, very expensive. But they have helped save lives and prevent injuries. And that's just one example of the many things that we are spending money on."
Morrell noted the Pentagon still has a $105 billion war request for Iraq and Afghanistan pending in Congress.
"We here in this building are certainly doing our part to try to calculate as best we can, for the Congress, for the American people, what we think this is going to cost, even as the Congress has failed to provide us with the money we need to fight the war," he said.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada also addressed the piece in his floor remarks on the budget Monday.
"Seven years into the Bush administration, tax breaks for big business and the super-wealthy have combined with a $12 billion per month war in Iraq and cuts to investments in our workforce and infrastructure to create a budget deficit of more than $400 billion and a national debt that has grown by $3 trillion," Reid said. "The result? An economy that is failing millions of American families."
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Don't want to argue as well but I personally don't see any positive impact for this war other than enriching military contractors.
They make billions selling bombs, vehicles, planes, missiles, etc. If there is any positive...for me, it is clouded by;
3,990 fatalities,
29,395 wounded, and the
$400 Million dollars per DAY
that MAYBE could be used better here. These fatalities and wounded numbers will keep growing per day too. Want to thank our troops?
Giving them more bombs or better guns is good...BUT bringing them to safety of their home and their family is better. JMHO.
__________________
Dario :) Austin, TX USA
"Pictures in your mind are memories" - Kathryn O., 3.5 years old
http://www.susquehanna.edu/crusader/article.cfm?IssueID=23&SectionID=2&ArticleID=1072
Winter Soldier Jon Turner on DN-FCK the Corps
http://www.prwatch.org/node/7785
Winter Soldier: Eyewitness Accounts of the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
Submitted by John Stauber on Tue, 09/23/2008 - 19:28.
Two years ago, public revulsion against the Bush Administration's unnecessary and disastrous attack and occupation of Iraq resulted in the Democratic Party taking control of the U.S. Congress. But Nancy Pelosi and the new political leadership backed down before President Bush and refused to withhold funding for the war, while rhetorically denouncing it and thus playing to anti-war voters. The liberal lobby group MoveOn spent tens of millions of dollars on anti-war advertisements and door-to-door canvassing events as part of its partisan campaign to blame the war on the Republicans, while letting Democrats off the hook for giving Bush all the money he wanted to continue the occupation into next year.
Today, as the 2008 election approaches, worry over Iraq has slipped down the public's list of concerns while more immediate economic issues and the spectacular collapse of the Wall Street investment banks take center stage. However, one anti-war organization has proven especially tenacious, independent and committed to immediately bringing home troops from Iraq and making good to the Iraqi people, while taking care of the soldiers who fought the war. That organization is the Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) composed of about a thousand soldiers who have recently served or are still serving in the U.S. military.
IVAW has provided the courageous and true leadership that partisan lobbies like MoveOn lack, opposing the war-funding politicians of both parties. When the Democrats nominated Barack Obama in Denver, IVAW was there in the streets demanding a meeting with Obama's people to press for an immediate end to the occupation. During the Republican Convention, as John McCain was talking from the stage in St. Paul he was confronted by a lone soldier, IVAW's Adam Kokesh, calling from the balcony and waving a sign of protest against the war. TV cameras briefly broadcast Kokesh's protest, but quickly pulled away from the young soldier in the black IVAW tee shirt calling out to McCain.
Last March the IVAW spent its own money and time to organize an historic event, the Winter Soldier hearings held outside Washington DC, where soldiers testified to the atrocities and war crimes they witnessed or personally committed while in Iraq and Afghanistan. The emotionally moving and carefully vetted truth telling lasted for days. Thanks to Aaron Glantz, Aimee Allison and others at Berkeley radio station KPFA, the IVAW testimony was broadcast live and is today available free online for anyone to hear.
To its disgrace, most of the mainstream corporate media ignored the hearings. The hard facts of the Iraq war, the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed, the millions driven from their homes, the thousands of American dead and tens of thousands wounded, are simply not deemed appropriate and newsworthy by American news media. Indeed, the U.S. media has pushed Iraq to the back pages and off the TV tube.
Not to be deterred, the IVAW continues to organize local and regional Winter Soldier hearings. I will be speaking at one hearing in Madison, Wisconsin, this Saturday, September 27, addressing the propaganda role of the U.S. media as a cheerleader for war. Available at the conference, hot off the printing presses, will be a new book that is the official account of IVAW's brutally honest and deeply moving testimonies. Winter Soldier, Iraq and Afghanistan was written by the Iraq Veterans Against the War and independent author and journalist Aaron Glantz.
This book reflects the IVAW belief often expressed by executive director Kelly Dougherty that "the only way this war is going to end is if the American people truly understand what we have done in their name." It's filled with gut wrenching personal stories and histories from the women and men who fought the war and still fight in the occupations. A collection of testimonies, the book is itself one single testimony to the powerful truths of soldiers facing up to a war millions would rather ignore and that the corporate media and political establishment does not want to honestly discuss. This is a very important book, one that every American should read and share. America owes an unpayable debt to its soldiers, especially its anti-war soldiers in the Iraq Veterans Against the War who do not back down to political gamesmanship from either political party.
John Stauber, founder of the Center for Media and Democracy, is an unpaid advisor to Iraq Veterans Against the Warhttp://www.prwatch.org/pentagonpundits
The Pentagon's Pundits
In early 2002, the Pentagon began cultivating retired military officers who frequently serve as media commentators, so that they would help make the case for invading Iraq. The pundit program continued -- promoting the Bush administration's stance on the Guantanamo Bay detention center, warrantless wiretapping and other hot-button issues -- until the New York Times exposed its existence in April 2008. The Times had obtained 8,000 pages of documents through a Freedom of Information Act request. Shortly after the Times story ran, the Pentagon made the same documents available on its website
However, the documents released by the Pentagon were formatted in such a way that text searches could not be performed on them. This made systematic analysis of the information nearly impossible. The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), a non-profit organization with a mission of exposing media spin and government propaganda, worked to make this information fully accessible to anyone with Internet access.
The Pentagon pundit documents
CMD has made text-searchable versions of the Pentagon pundit documents available:
- on SourceWatch, CMD's collaborative encyclopedia of the people, issues and groups shaping the public agenda; and
- on Scribd.com a document-sharing website.
Note that the easiest way to search for a term across all of the Pentagon pundit documents is to go to this page on Scribd.com and use the "Search within the Pentagon pundit documents Group" option in the left sidebar.
Reporting on the Pentagon's pundits
The following are CMD reports on and analyses of the Pentagon pundit program and documents:
- Daniel Haack, "Jed Babbin: The Pentagon's Most Prolific Pundit," August 19, 2008.
- Diane Farsetta, "Cracking the Pentagon Pundit Code," August 11, 2008.
- Diane Farsetta, "Pentagon Pundits, Media Reform and Talking Back to Bill O'Reilly," June 10, 2008.
- John Stauber, "Pentagon's Propaganda Documents Go Online, but Will the TV Networks Ever Report this Scandal?," May 6, 2008.
- Diane Farsetta, "What the Pentagon Pundits Were Selling on the Side: Propaganda Meets Corporate Lobbying," May 2, 2008.
- Diane Farsetta and Sheldon Rampton, "Pentagon Pundit Scandal Broke the Law," April 28, 2008.
- John Stauber, "Pentagon, TV Networks Fear Debating Iraq Propaganda Scandal - Stauber vs. Zelnick on NewsHour," April 25, 2008.
- John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, "Embedding Military Propagandists into the News Media," April 22, 2008.
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