Patrick Gower has been running around telling everyone who will listen that a vast majority of NZers support troop deployment in Iraq.
I don’t think such a poll is valid because the vast majority of NZers have no idea other than the propaganda the NZDF pimp through a compliant and ill resourced domestic media.
If you ask most NZers what they think our 140 odd soldiers are doing in Iraq, they’ll all give you the same spin line ‘we are there to train Iraqi army’.
That’s a lie. As discussed on last nights Waatea 5th Estate, the truth of what our soldiers are really doing is far murkier than the Prime Minister and the NZDF are telling us.
We have GCSB and SIS agents working alongside the NZDF intelligence units in Iraq and when we were in Afghanistan, these units were actively used by the CIA and US Army to help target drone strikes.
The fear is that is exactly what we are also now doing in Iraq.
If we are helping target drone strikes, how many times have NZDF forces and affiliates in Iraq done that? How many casualties have occurred and have any civilians been killed?
There is a long history of the NZDF manipulating compliant media in this country, they did it effectively in Afghanistan and they are doing it again in Iraq.
We are part of the killing chain of American military power. We are lying to ourselves if we honestly believe our troops are over there simply training forces, based n what we know from Afghanistan, we are targeting drone strikes and airstrikes.
We may not be pulling the trigger in Iraq, but we certainly are helping with the aim.
This Government has lied about our involvement in Iraq and refused to bring this deployment to Parliament for a vote. That’s simply not good enough.
If you ask a NZer to put their lives in danger for our ‘National Interest’, it better be for honourable and just reasons, not as the price we pay for being inside the 5 eyes club. We have obligations as a global citizen, but do those obligations extend to cleaning up America’s latest failed adventure?
There’s no clear path to victory, there’s no clear exit strategy and there is no measure for success.
The Government must stop misleading us, and the media demand better answers because to date we’ve been kept in the dark here.
Love the picture Martyn,
John Key is NOW a war mongerer and a COMMON FUND BROKER AGAIN for US interests and their pentagon is now confirmed – as he is now spending insane amounts of borrowed money and mortgaging our youths future once again, on a US past “Money for Oil” war policy of the 1990’s.
NOW THE US WAR SHIP POLICY IS TAKING ON A DARK SIDE EH MARTYN?
Key is adapting this policy and portraying it and LYING YET AGAIN portraying it simply as a necessary “MORAL” war.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/05/19/1053196528488.html
Oil wars Pentagon’s policy since 1999
By Ritt Goldstein
May 20 2003
A top-level United States policy document has emerged that explicitly confirms the Defence Department’s readiness to fight an oil war.
According to the report, Strategic Assessment 1999, prepared for the US Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defence, “energy and resource issues will continue to shape international security”.
Oil conflicts over production facilities and transport routes, particularly in the Persian Gulf and Caspian regions, are specifically envisaged.
Although the policy does not forecast imminent US military conflict, it vividly highlights how the highest levels of the US Defence community accepted the waging of an oil war as a legitimate military option.
Strategic Assessment also forecasts that if an oil “problem” arises, “US forces might be used to ensure adequate supplies”.
Although Strategic Assessment 1999 predicts adequate US energy supplies, it also finds that supply shortages could “exacerbate regional political tensions, potentially causing regional conflicts”.
The Bush Administration has stated that providing for US energy needs is a priority.
Strategic Assessment was prepared by the Institute for National Strategic Studies, part of the US Department of Defence’s National Defence University. The institute lists its primary mission as policy research and analysis for the Joint Chiefs, the Defence Secretary, and a variety of government security and defence bodies.
According to the report, national security depends on successful engagement in the global economy, so national defence no longer means protecting the nation from military threats alone, but economic challenges, too.
The fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s brought an end to the US’s ideological basis for potential conflict. In 1992 Bill Clinton urged that “our economic strength must become a central defining element of our national security policy”.
Since then, members of the Bush Administration have promoted the need for the consolidation of the Cold War victory.
In what many may see as an apparent parallel to present events, Strategic Assessment 1999 drew attention to pre-World War II Britain’s pursuit of an approach where control over territory was seen as essential to ensuring resource supplies.
However, the Defence Department policymakers behind Strategic Assessment also appear to recognise the potential consequences of such policies.
The authors warn that if the great powers return to the 19th century approach of securing resources, of conquering resource suppliers, the world economy will suffer and world politics will become more tense.
And imagine the battle field experience gained by ‘ our boys’ over there to take advantage of our Army’s new multi billion dollar toys. And I heard, via a GI Joe, that there’s some great new small arms machinery in that allocation. I.E. Close quarters gear. Call me a conspiracy theorist if you must but it’s a thing that makes me go Hmmm ?
But I think we’re ok. Any invading army would take two steps onto our soil and promptly die laughing.
Even if true and the public opinion polls support our presence in Iraq, that will last only until the first body bags start coming back to New Zealand. And if Key decides to swan off to his son’s baseball game like he did last time, instead of attending a soldier’s funeral, then the only polls that will be climbing will be Labour-Greens.
The whole Iraq mess was predicated on a lie (weapons of mass destruction) dreamt up by US neo-cons. For us to be pulled into another military quagmire for no other reason than to secure US oil interests in that country beggars belief.
Then again, prime time tv shows us how to cook kumara in herbs, or renovate a bathroom, or which prospect will be selected by an eligible sperm-donor or egg-carrier, or which manufactured talent will win the latest “talent” contest, but heaven forbid that current affairs will raise questions why our troops are deployed in the middle east.
The next mission creep will be the SAS deployed, if they aren’t already. Mark my words.
200% Priss I goggled with that, “Prime bullshit is all ch 4 is!
As they haven’t put one public affairs program out this year so they are being gutted by SS Joyce and his evil Ministry of Propaganda MoBIE like Joseph Goebbels did with his brainwashing MoPE&P. (Ministry of Public Enlightenment & Propaganda) in 1933.
http://holocaustonline.org/reichs-ministry-of-public-enlightenment-and-propaganda/
Well said, Priss. It looks like Kiwis have forgotten the lessons of the Vietnam War and it’s lingering horrors.
I hope Labour puts a stop to this. Our involvement in America’s military adventures should be halted immediatly. All we’re doing is putting a nice, fat target on ourselves and if ISIS didn’t know of our existence before, they sure do now!
@ ALH84001 … Andrew Little has said recently if Labour is elected government next year, the troops will be brought back home. So that’s saying a stop will be put to it.
MARY_A Yes we picked that up, so Andwer can work with NZ First as that is their policy also.
Why should we get involved in a war that these people never attacked us firstly?
We are being dragged into a was of opportunism that’s all because our Global economy as about to explode with negative interest rates and nowhere to hide.
The central Banksters are the waring bastards!
Setting this up to hide what they’ve done to our economy since 2008.
https://www.rt.com/shows/keiser-report/347578-episode-max-keiser-930/
Keiser Report from New York City, Max and Stacy discuss economic anxiety in a ‘divided America,’ in which ‘rosy averages’ bypass most. In the second half, Max interviews Chris Whalen about negative rates, outlook downgrades and central bank policies.
Check Keiser Report website for more: http://www.maxkeiser.com/
Well said Priss. Let the stain of blood be on Key’s hands. Our very own Pontius Pilate.
Quite right there Priss. Agree with your sentiments 100%.
Germans protest against drone strikes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KW6dN6FGb9k
Our boys better be careful because the US use depleted uranium warheads.
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/04/irradiated-heres-how-the-us-and-its-allies-poisoned-iraq-with-radioactive-and-chemically-toxic-weapons/
Not surprised returning soldiers return with PTSD with toxic chemicals circulating in their systems. Never mind about those residents left behind and their grossly deformed or cancer suffering babies.
I’m surprised some Kiwis think this shithole of a country is worth fighting for. I wouldn’t lift a finger for this country. Our values are shit.
Even if we were getting invaded, it wouldn’t overly concern me. Could things get any worse? I’d be interested in what an invading power would do to our country. Probably improve the state housing stock.
An invading army would probably have a better housing policy than Labour’s in the 2014 election – that ‘affordable for the middle class’ policy was a joke. Nothing to be proud of, nothing to defend.
Nationals policy on immigration IS the invading power and look what that has done to housing for the middle class.
No.
Our housing problem is because we’ve let housing become a commodity and our state housing stock hasn’t increased since 1991.
Immigrants contribute to the economy and provide an overall benefit. Blaming them for our housing problems is based on flimsy data and ignores the structural failure of our neoliberal ideology.
Framing immigration as an invasion and blaming them for our failed economic ideology will not solve the problem, it will perpetuate it.
Wow! What a brilliant and intelligent answer FATTY, I agree 100% with you on that rebuttal. I still believe that new zealanders are, like all people, capable of amazing things. Humanity does have it’s good sides and it’s always worth fighting for- i think there are many here who have excellent values, but we aren’t often the ones who get the media voice representation. I’m all for de-colonisation though;)
NZ – Going ‘Steadily’ backwards, not forwards.
We are not in Iraq to fight Daesh. Our puny little contribution could not possibly have any effect on them, other than to tell them there is a country southeast of Australia that is having an identity crisis in terms of national security interests.
No. Really. We need to get out because this is not a war about Daesh. This is a war about appeasing the military-industrial complex and we should have no part in it whatsoever.
https://willnewzealandberight.com/2016/06/21/mission-creep-in-iraq-or-something-worse/
Now to put his (own, not our) money where his mouth is, perhaps FJK should be considering sending his very own sonny boy along to join the NZ troops at Camp Taji. He’d be good entertainment value, if nothing else!
But hey, while sonny boy is safe, flaunting himself through msm at every available opportunity (just like dear old dad), FJK prefers to extend the tour of duty of other Kiwis’ sons and daughters. Disgraceful!
In 1939 I dare say you would have run the same argument about sending our troops to Europe and the Pacific. We need to be part of the coalition to stabilise the region, or we can have no complaint when the first terrorist cell trained by daesh opens fire here.
And idiots like you were saying just the same about the Vietnam fiasco. How did that turn out? We lost, and none of the evil things we had been threatened with happened.
This is nothing like a parallel with 1939. Go and learn your history more deeply – to date you are coming up with trite, simplistic trash.
The best defence is not to support or abet in any shape of form, policies or groups that set up wars. Propaganda must be countered.
During WWI Japan was our ally and escorted out troops to fight for European power brokers. Look closely at events that changed Japan’s position.
Our best position morally and practically is to remain neutral and reject the colonial coat tails wrapped around us.
Not to mention our SAS, who go places we never find out about! How do I know? I once shared an air force plane with a troop who disappeared.
Patrick Gower is a liar, and his highly questionable “poll” is bullshit too.
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