The Ming Report

September, 2007

September 23, 2007 - The “outside agitators” have gone home, boarding the busses that brought them for the return to from whence they came. Al Sharpton has gone back to New York and Jesse Jackson has gone home to Chicago to continue their never ending quest for more TV time and newspaper space. The Jena Giants got whipped Friday night 38 to 12. Of course they were without their star Number 10, quarterback and strong safety Mychal Bell. He wasn’t in the lineup. It wasn’t academics that kept him out of the game, he carries a B+ average. It wasn’t an injury, at least not a physical one. Mychal Bell hasn’t been available since December 4, 2006. He is sitting in the LaSalle Parish Jail as he has been since his arrest ten months ago.

Life goes on in Jena pretty much as it had before last school year. Jonny Fryar is still President of the Jena School Board but Scott Windham is no longer the principal at Jena High. The tree that had been planted back in 1974 as a symbol of unity by a group of Jena teens, Black and White, is gone; removed by order of the School Board because it had become a symbol of something else. The few Black families in Jena still live in the Tall Timbers section, that eclectic mix of ramshackle huts, rundown trailers and neatly kept modest homes that would have been called “nigger town” a half century ago. Truth be told in many homes in Jena it is still called “nigger town” when no one outside of the family can hear.......click here for entire article

INTERESTING TIMES

September 20, 2007 - In ancient days storyteller Kai Lung described a most effective curse, a trilogy of dire fates:

            May you live in interesting times.
            May you come to the attention of those in authority.
            May you find what you are looking for.

President George W. Bush has certainly led America into interesting times indeed. Has he come to the attention of those in authority? The highest authority in our Constitutional Republic rests in its people and Mr. Bush has certainly come to their attention. All one needs to do is look to the depth of his approval ratings in the opinion polls to realize that his conduct of our interesting times has gotten the peoples’ attention. Has he found what he was looking for when he took us into Iraq?.......click here for entire article

IT’S NOT ABOUT OIL!

September 14, 2007 - If you are Ray L. Hunt you are the President and CEO of Hunt Oil Company. If you are Ray L. Hunt you have been a major political supporter of and contributor to George W. Bush. If you are Ray L. Hunt you sit on the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and have access to the real facts on the ground in Iraq. You know that the Iraqi government that the Surge was intended to prop up is ineffective and unable to do anything to unify its country. You know that it has failed in to come close to achieving agreement what President Bush promised when he announced the Surge, “to give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country’s economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis.”

If you are Ray L. Hunt you know that the President intends that Iraq will develop as a unified nation, friendly to the US and its policy objectives and that the key to that development is an agreement on the equitable disposition of oil revenues. You know that oil revenue represents 67% of Iraqi GDP and almost all of its government’s revenue. You know that without that agreement as to the disposition of oil revenue there will be no Iraq; that it will spin apart and become a chaos of tribes fighting for control of its oil resources. If you are Ray L. Hunt what do you do?.......click here for entire article

THE KISS OF DEATH

September 13, 2007 - On September 3rd President Bush flew into Anbar Province to showcase progress in the Iraqi war in advance of General Petreaus’ report to the Congress on September 10th. He met with a delegation of Sunni Sheiks newly aligned with the Americans in the struggle against Al Qaeda. The group was led by Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi. One photo that emerged from the photo-op inside the heavily fortified American base showed the President with a “What-Me-Worry” expression on his face standing behind the Sheik who wore a concerned expression. On September 10th and 11th General Petreaus testified to the House and Senate committees making the new alliance between the US and the Sunni tribes of Anbar the centerpiece of his surge strategy success story. On September 12th Sheik Abdul Sattar and two of his bodyguard were killed when a bomb planted outside his home exploded. President Bush approval has proved to be a kiss of death.......click here for entire article

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

September 11, 2007 - Bin Laden has surfaced on the eve of the sixth anniversary of the September Eleventh attacks on New York and Washington reminding us that he has not been brought to justice dead or alive. It should also remind us that in six years more Americans than were lost on that horrific day have died in an unending mission to defeat Al Qaeda, destroy the Taliban, and conquer Iraq. Bin Laden is still abroad in the world. The President’s National Security Advisor, Frances Fragos Townsend reassures us and dismisses Bin Laden as “virtually impotent”.

If we have deposed the Iraqi dictator and sponsored free and fair elections in his country; if we have deposed the Taliban and rendered Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda “virtually impotent” then what remains of the mission on which we sent our young men and women to be accomplished? We have brought democracy of a sort to the Iraqis. We have brought democracy of a sort to the Afghans. If Ms. Townsend is correct we have emasculated Bin Laden. Is it now our military’s mission to choose and support a winner in the intractable Iraqi civil war? Is it now our military’s mission to police Afghanistan to again suppress the Taliban? Have we abandoned the task of bringing Bin Laden in, dead or alive? Can we not bring the troops home?.......click here for entire article