By Grady Hawkins

Donn Esmonde's column in Sunday's (yesterday's) Buffalo News reached a new low, even for our main stream media. The subject was Friday's funeral for western New York native Jonathan Cote. As everyone knows, Cote was taken prisoners in Iraq, held for 17 months before being murdered by his captors.

Esmonde's comments were an embarrassement to us all.  He demonstrated an ignorance and lack of depth that are truly staggering.

"Cote was an American classic, a military-minded James Dean," gushed Donn. But he was only warming up as he continued "With sculpted cheekbones and Colgate smile, he was a 21st century Jack Armstrong."

I wonder how many folks out there know who Jack Armstrong was?

But Esmonde pushes on with even more drivel: "Dress him in jeans and T-shirt and you had a Hollister ad...send him on a mission and-as it turns out-a hero."

This one is my favorite: "His lust for adventure... made Cote a force of nature."

This is nothing more than jingoistic pandering. Esmonde has morphed into a modern-day P.T. Barnum, a huckster selling a tragedy.

Jonathan Cote's death is indeed a tragedy.  And it forces us to ask alot of questions, and avoid the answers.

Cote was a hired soldier. Perhaps he went back to Iraq for the adventure, I don't know. But would he if the money hadn't been on the table?

Jonathan Cote and his fellow soldiers-of-fortune fly very low under the radar. They work outside the chain of command and are accountable to no one. The ordinary American soldier has little use for them. After all, its not in their contracts that they have to fight anyone.  

 They get very little help from anyone in the field. They are on their on, and very vulnerable.

And the attitude of the average Iraqi toward who they see as nothing more than a mercenary might be hard to judge. Blackwater has a horrible reputation.

An American soldier captured by insugents might have a chance. After all, he is in uniform and fighting because he has no choice. Not much of a chance, but at least a slim one.

A hired soldier will have no chance at all. Jomathan Cote knew that.  He paid the ultimate price.

I cannot imagine the grief and pain being suffered by his family.  

I don't know if his death will even mean anything. I don't know if he died in vain.

Donn Esmonde tried to create a military mythology. He failed.  Worst of all, he failed Jonathan Cote and his family.

By Bill Logal

             Once upon a time there was a bridge in Buffalo called the Peace Bridge and by chance it spanned the Niagara River and joined the City of Buffalo with the neighboring Canadian town of Fort Erie and was built so that the wealthy elite could access their summer estates at Point Abino, Ontario, and other beach front properties that sprung up on the shores of Lake Erie.  Well everything went peacefully for 7 or so decades until the Peace Bridge Authority decided to build a twin to the existing bridge to handle the increasing flow of truck traffic that was entering and exiting our great Northern neighbor Canada because of increasing trade and the interdependence of the economies of both Canada and the United States.

            Plans for a twin bridge to serve the future transportation needs of both countries brought forth extreme pain and howls from a select group of the Buffalo citizenry led by our local daily news source. Thrown into the mix of steel, concrete, nuts and bolts were insurance issues, bond writers, aesthetics, environmental issues, health and welfare of residents, labor agreements, privatization and collapsing the Peace Bridge Authority in its entirety, to mention just a few. People flowed from under the baseboards grinding a multitude of axes representing various constituencies and suddenly we found ourselves in the midst of a maelstrom with meetings and charettes held in every venue and dutifully reported by our local paper. The Buffalo Club served as the headquarters for the aesthetes as they sought grand sweeping designs, a true Signature Bridge, where people would give homage to the great foresight and artistic flair of the elite. Artvoice and its champion writer, Bruce Jackson, weighed in on the side of the peasantry, while Jeff Belt and the Millenium Group became the preppie piper leading the yuppies in fervent cheers and shouts for their politician of choice and various political figures rushed to fill the vacuum created by our mute local leaders.

            The other side of the river produced nary a hint of turbulence as Fort Erie went about its duty and worked assiduously at improving their inspection stations, truck plaza and the approaches to the bridge. The ugly old bridge has seen a lot of water flow beneath it with vehicular traffic running over it in the past ten years and it will likely see much more of the same as the debate continues.

flora nerk

           April 18, 2008, in Buffalo, NY was a glorious day, weather wise, with full sunlight in a cloudless sky and temperatures in the low seventies and what could better on such a day than sequestering oneself in the WNED studio with 3 to 400 hundred folks all primed to listen to Professor Edward L. Glaeser. So!! You ask, who the hell is Glaeser and what revelations would be revealed that would interest so many of the movers and shakers sprinkled among the intelligentsia that guide the great shitty of Buffalo.

            The event was sponsored by The University of Buffalo Regional Institute, along with The Buffalo Niagara Partnership along with The Buffalo News. Professor Glaeser usually hangs his hat in Cambridge Ma., he is a fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a deep thinking economist, if such a thing is possible. He gained the attention of the power brokers in the Buffalo region by publishing an article which appeared in an academic journal and was titled “Can Buffalo Ever Come Back? Probably not—and government should stop bribing people to stay there.” The piece was written and published in September 2007 and whoever reads arcane academic journals discussing political economy in or around Buffalo must have taken umbrage over Professor Glaeser describing our beloved City as a ‘has been’ and tragically backing his premise with the facts and figures that we have all lived with as we watched and lived with the wreckage of greatness and an allegiance to a past that had become ancient history.

 General Says Surge  is Working

By Grady Hawkins and Alex Blair

Rolla, Missouri (alt press)

Brigadier General Amos T. Halftrack, commanding officer at camp Swampy, Missouri, stated here during a press conference yesterday that "the surge is working."

Halftrack was of course refering to the 30,000 American troop increase in Baghdad last year.

"Our red, white, and blue- blooded boys are doing a great job buying time for this fledgling Iraqi democracy," Halftrack said.

The General also told reporters that units from one  of his parachute infantry regiments is now patroling with Iraqi soldiers in Sadr City in the eastern part of Baghdad.  Sadr city is a hotbed of militias hostile to both the Iraqi government and occupying American soldiers.

The commanding officer of one of these small units is Lt. Sonny Fuzz. Some of the names of the men in his command have been released. They include pvts. Beetle Bailey, Killer, Zero, Plato, and a Corporal Yo. Halftrack admitted that the men had come under enemy fire but would not release any details at that time.  Casualty reports would be forthcoming, as soon as the families had been notified.

None of the men's hometown's or other details have been confirmed by the Defense Department.

The Alt Press will have a reporter embedded with this outfit as soon as possible.

By Grady Hawkins

A report just published by the Pentagon's National Defense University chacterises the occupation of Iraq as " a major debacle" and its "outcome in doubt".

It also lays most of the blame on then Secretary of Defense Donald Von Rumsfeld.

Also singled out for criticism are Condi Rice and her primary henchman, Steve Hadley.

Tell us something we all didn't know!

As the lunacy and stupidity of the war in Iraq continue to unfold, my view of the Von Rumsfeld-Rice-Cheney trio seems to be evolving.

Initially, It seemed to me that they were using the global war on terror as an excuse to expand the power of the executive branch to that of a dictator,  expanded the Empire and loot the U.S. treasury. This would be accomplished by turning the mainstream press into a propaganda machine whose patriot police would reduce the legislative branch to thumb-sucking enablers.  I thought they were brilliant, ruthless, calculating,and very dangerous. They manipulated a president who had no clue into doing everything they envisioned. And it worked.

But now I'm not so sure.

They did indeed do everything I described, but could it be for the wrong reason?

Could it be they were just plain stupid?

Stupid, arrogant, and drunk with power and hubris and dreams of a New American Empire?

Tell me what you think.

I'm not certain as to which scenario I prefer.  Is it better to be neo-conned by pros or led around by the nose by accidental executive branch tourists?

Neither prospect does the American people much credit. 

By Grady Hawkins

The notion that our American Empire is the exception to history has long been a theme of the propagandists that control the thoughts and actions of both our leaders and ordinary citicens.

One example that comes to mind is the American crusade against the non- existant International communist conspiracy in Viet Nam. Years before the French had failed  to protect her Empire in Indo-China against the Viet Minh and was humiliated. The United States would not, could not repeat that defeat. The United States of America was the exception to History. Losing a war to a rag-tag Asian (gook) military was unthinkable. American generals were so certain of victory that they were not intersted in help from anyone.  Even their South Vietnamese client's own Army of the Republic of Viet Nam (ARVN) was shuffled off to the side. American soldiers, tactics, and firepower would grind their Viet Cong and North Vietnamese enemies into the jungle muck. 

Victory, glory, and promotion would all belong to the Americans and Americans alone. 

South Viet Nam would be free. Even if it didn't want to be.

But the unthinkable did happen. The cost was thousands of dead and mangled American soldiers and countless Vietnamese. In April, 1975 it all came to a tragic end. The last American helicopter lifting off the roof of the abandoned U.S. embassy in Saigon.  North Vietnamese armor, artillery and Infantry brushing aside any ARVN resistence and sweeping into the city.

And now we have another American embassy to consider. Its a world away and generation removed. The new American embassy in Baghdad, Iraq. 

This embassy has become a $600 billion dollar boondoggle. Its cost overruns have become remarkable even by Iraqi standards, where billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars have been squandered, lost, and stolen.

Critics have called this compound the most expensive air-raid shelter in history. 

Conscript labor from all over the Empire have endured slave wages and third world working conditions on this modern day pryamid. They have managed to produce shoddy and sloopy and expensive constuction to the bewilderment of Inspectors. 

American employees working and living inside the so-called "Green Zone" (it seems the rest if Iraq must be considered the "Red Zone") have been enduring the hospitality of their Irqai hosts for weeks on end. Rocket attacks and mortar barages are escalating to the point that folks are forced to remain inside their (hopefully) blast-proof offices. 

Few details concerning the embassy itself are being revealed. The State department is keping information very close to its diplomatic vest.

 The British and former Soviet empires both failed in their attepts to play The Great Game in Asia. But neither of them had an embassy like this one. It is the exception. 

And American exceptionalism is now the way of the world. Forget that chopper lifting off the roof of that other embassy in that other country.

That was just an exception