The Obama Adminstration has fired a top US diplomat at the UN for the heinous crime of insisting that the manifest and widespread fraud in the recent Afghan elections be vigorously investigated.

Peter Galbraith -- the deputy UN special envoy for electoral matters -- was technically fired by the United Nations, specifically by UN Secretary General Bai ki-Moon. But as the Guardian points out, "the recall of Galbraith would have required the agreement of the Obama administration."

Galbraith clashed with UN and US officials over his insistence that the fraudulent election of putative Afghan President Hamid Karzai be subjected to "a full and robust investigation," the Guardian notes. Galbraith had been particularly critical of a decision by the so-called Afghan Independent Election Commission to reverse an earlier decision to throw out multitudes of obviously fraudulent votes. The reversal came after heavy political pressure from Afghanistan's true masters in Washington.

As the paper notes, the sacking of Galbraith comes hard on the heels of reports that Obama and NATO have decided to keep Karzai in office -- even if the vote probe showed that he won less than 50 percent of the vote, which legally would require a run-off with his opponent, Abdullah Abdullah.

In other words, the White House has decided to bite the bullet and keep the corrupt and ineffectual oil man that George W. Bush installed in office over the conquered land -- no matter what the Afghan voters might want. And Galbraith's continued insistence on actually investigating the vote fraud -- which mirrors almost exactly the manipulations in Iran over which Obama and his war partners shed so many salt tears scant weeks ago -- is now highly inconvenient. And so he is out.

But deep in the Guardian story comes the real money shot:

The exit of Galbraith would appear to further reduce Obama's scope for manoeuvre in Afghanistan at a time when he is facing calls from his military commander, General Stanley McChrystal, for up to 40,000 more soldiers.

One by one, the White House and Pentagon -- whatever their internal disputes, if any -- are closing the doors on any option other than a disastrous and literally murderous escalation of some kind on the "Af-Pak" front. We noted here a few days ago the machinations of the militarists to ensure that the civilian government remains firmly on board the war wagon. Today's action by the White House -- its clear acquiescence in the very public decapitation of a U.S. official pushing for the truth about the puppet regime in Kabul -- was entirely the free choice of the civilian government, and dovetails exactly with the militarist agenda.

So despite all the recent hand-wringing amongst the Establishmentry about "conflicts" between the military and civilian sides of the government, it looks like the White House and Pentagon are, as usual, singing from the same hymn sheet.

And the song being sung is, as always, that perennial old favorite from days of yore: "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition."

Comments (14)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Leahn Novash said:

Not that different from the US You know, I read all this fuzz about the Afghan election and I am always forced to remind that it isn't that all different in the US itself. There is a lot of vote fraud both in illegally preventing people to vote and in the vote count itself (diebold, anyone?). Wasn't that far ago when YOUR election was decided on The Supreme Court, with a recount being refused, and a certain person was elected president regardless of the will of the voters?

report abuse vote down vote up

October 01, 2009
Votes: +0

Jerry Baker said:

	"O Tempora! O Mores!" The "New York Post" refers to Zapatera's daughters as "Goths." However, I think the historian Gibbon had some empathy for the "barbarian" Goths, just as Tacitus had sympathy for the Caledonian battle-chief "Calgacus." "Galbraith," whose surname means "Foreign Briton," in Gaelic, seems to be a descendant of those ancient Caledonians
	report abuse vote down vote up

October 01, 2009 | url
Votes: +0

Yankee 30 said:

	... disposable = throwaway Only when the sky is full of suns will these people know the power of equality.
	report abuse vote down vote up

October 01, 2009
Votes: +0

Ovid said:

Those Galbraith boys! Those Galbraith boys don't always get along so famously with Big Brother! See, for example, Brother James' article written in 1993 when the pertinent documents were declassified: http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/Essay_- _Did_the_US_Military_Plan_a_Nuclear_First_Strike_for_19 63 P.S. That the Pentagon gets its way doesn't mean there is no conflict. Sometimes they have to spank the civilians, or even introduce them to a lone nut!

report abuse vote down vote up

October 02, 2009
Votes: +0

Jerry Baker said:

	Thanks for the link, Ovid. Your username reminds me of Shakespeare's "As you like it," where some urban people were living as Arcadian-type shepherds, among the sheep. Someone remarked that the poet Ovid "lived among the goats." "Goats" was a pun on "Goths," among whom Ovid had once lived. In their own language, the Goths called themselves "Goten," and I suppose in Latin it was "Goti."
	report abuse vote down vote up

October 02, 2009 | url
Votes: +0

Sean O'Neil said:

	... Latin Lenin? Goti goatee?
	report abuse vote down vote up

October 02, 2009
Votes: +0

Jerry Baker said:

George Bernard Shaw mentioned that "ghoti" could be pronounced "fish." Hi, Sean-- Shaw pronounced: "gh" as in "rough" "o" as in "women" "ti" as in "caution" I once knew a Sioux City Swede, named "Mari Andersson," who told me that she found out in Sweden that she was a descendant of "Theodoric," a Goth who had once ruled Italy, at Ravenna. I expressed skepticism, but perhaps I shouldn't have. Maybe some Goths went to Sweden, when Theodoric was overthrown, because the Swedes and Goths always claimed to be the same people. The farm couple in Grant Wood's painting "American Gothic" look somewhat like Swedes, to me. I once knew a Dan O'Neil, when I lived in Cambrige, Mass., in the 1950s. He looked very much like Sir Neil O'Neil, who died in the Battle of the Boyne, in 1689. Dan was a graduate of the Merchant Marine Academy, at King's Point. He seems to have disappeared in Mexico in a way that reminds me of the disappearance of Ambrose Bierce, around 1915. Even Joe Flanagan, who was his best friend when I knew him, can't locate him. Maybe he just ignores everyone's letters, or maybe he isn't alive. The Kings Point Alumni Assn. says it has lost contact with him, too. Regards, Jerry Baker

report abuse vote down vote up

October 03, 2009 | url
Votes: +0

Yankee 30 said:

	alliteration is fun How about 'Teflon Don' John Gotti?
	report abuse vote down vote up

October 03, 2009
Votes: +0

Jerry Baker said:

Victoria Gotti just published a book. The New York Post is publishing excerpted installments of it, and business blogger Gary Weiss is highly critical of them. He characterizes her narrative as self-serving, for the Gottis. Weiss' 2006 book. "Wall Street versus America," identifies the shady dealing that led to last year's crises. A whole Chapter (13) is devoted to Bear Stearns, the bellwether of the Wall Street failures that got the bailouts. For further information, see Gary-Weiss.blogspot.com My blog's URL is http://reykr.livejournal.com

report abuse vote down vote up

October 03, 2009 | url
Votes: +0

Jerry Baker said:

	This is the URL of Gary Weiss' REAL blog. http://garyweiss.blogspot.com/ The one I put in the last entry is wrong. It leads to a site used by anonymous persons to post denunciations of Weiss. It's close enough to Weiss' real address to "pull in" people looking for Weiss' blog.
	report abuse vote down vote up

October 03, 2009 | url
Votes: +0

Sean O'Neil said:

	... Jerry, that bit about Shaw and ghoti is funny! thanks.
	report abuse vote down vote up

October 04, 2009
Votes: +0

Jerry Baker said:

My email address, in case I ever lose access to the System. A few minutes ago, I got a message, "Internet Explorer cannot find the web site." Fortunately, it regained its sight, but it might happen again. So, here's my email address. glbaker50613(at)yahoo.com The email address of my old friend Fran Kane, of Exeter, NH just turned up defunct. She was a good friend of Dan O'Neil, who somehow disappeared in Mexico, as I've mentioned before. Even if she'd died, her husband John, I think, would surely have kept her email address. Could they both have gone up in a UFO, of the kind described in John Fuller's 1965 book "Incident At Exeter"? Curiously, Fuller mentioned and quoted me in another book he published that same year, titled, "Games For Insomniacs."

report abuse vote down vote up

October 04, 2009 | url
Votes: +0

Ovid said:

... Jerry Baker: Thanks for all that fascinating learning and trivia. I picked "Ovid" as a name because he once wrote "Treason never prospers, because if it prospers none dare call it treason." Someone in the State Department wrote that on a memo in 1913, right after Woodrow Wilson took office, much to the dismay of the Navy. At that time the fleet sailed around South America to let Captains meet with and reassure all those South American leaders used to Dollar Diplomacy so they wouldn't worry about all that talk about self-determination. There have always been plenty of ways to let friends and allies and even enemies know that a President can say what he will, but take it all with a grain of salt.

report abuse vote down vote up

October 09, 2009
Votes: +0

Jerry Baker said:

Re: "None dare call it treason." There was a paperback book with that title, published around 1964. A little less than a decade later, there was a different book, with the title, "None dare call it conspiracy." If water is discovered on the moon, an atomic-powered electric generator could be put there, and water separated into its constituent parts, namely hydrogen and oxygen, which, used in combination, are rocket fuel. If the moon were a refueling station, the amount of these elements needed for a blast-off would be a small fraction of that on the earth, where the force of gravity is 6 times that of the moon. Some historian, perhaps Norman Graebner, an old professor of mine at Iowa State and later at Virginia, published a thesis that our nation's chief objective in the Mexican War was to get San Diego and San Francisco for Naval bases in the Pacific.

report abuse vote down vote up

October 10, 2009 | url
Votes: +0