Arguments7

10/17/07

[**** -separates dates]

10/17/07

Where are the ongoing versions of a proud and defiant Bush Republican defending the Messiah against the throngs? I am thus still left with impressions from the rationally supported opposing views...

Voters unhappy with Bush and Congress

Wed Oct 17, 2007 7:21am EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Deepening unhappiness with President George W. Bush and the U.S. Congress soured the mood of Americans and sent Bush’s approval rating to another record low this month, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Wednesday.

Bush’s job approval rating fell to 24 percent from last month’s record low for a Zogby poll of 29 percent. The number of Americans who believe the country is on the wrong track jumped four points to 66 percent.

***

Published on Saturday, September 29, 2007 by Huffington Post

America Used To Be Really Goddamn Awesome

by Bob Cesca

I’ve been captivated by Ken Burns’ The War this week and it struck me how awesome America used to be.

And now, 50 years later, in our lives and times, we get President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard B. Cheney.

The Bush Years have been a monumental, cataclysmic failure on most fronts due to its inattention to what has, historically, made American great. The president and his thinning ranks of fawn-eyed Hannities don’t understand this yet. They don’t understand it mostly because they’re too ignorant — blinded by sloganeering — to the very basic reality that Bush Republican style government, in practice, is about as successful and practical as a paper condom. It always has been.

Nowhere is this more apparent than when they compare the Bush Wars to World War II. It’s a desperate notion, one that seeks to conflate our current president with greatness he doesn’t deserve and an historical legacy he will never achieve. It’s also meant to inflate our current “enemies” to Hitler status, and thus proving the case for war.

The comparison is pure horseshit. (Say nothing of the fact that it elevates Bin Laden or the late Saddam or the present Ahmadinejad to a level of villainy they also don’t deserve.)

How will the Ken Burns of the future portray the Bush Wars? I imagine that a large part of a future documentary about these times will detail what Rick Perlstein sublimely referred to this week as the destruction of America’s character.

Whoever the future Ken Burns might be (hopefully, it’ll be Ken Burns), he or she will have to dig deep into the destruction of our national character and detail the stories of torture and secret detention facilities; outsourced corporate thugs murdering foreign civilians; government scare tactics without substance — it’ll be a documentary in part about your non-military friends and family who supported this president’s war but who sacrificed nothing in its execution.

So here we are in late 2007. The president believes that history will vindicate his efforts to destroy the American character and to bring about the ascendancy of neo-conservatism. After all, he fancies himself the new McKinley — or is it George Washington? Is he Lincoln this week or Truman? Is he still fighting the Vietnam War or is it World War II? Korea or the Civil War? Goddamn him and his marble-mouthed horseshit. That’s exactly why it has to be up to you and me to write the history — the truth — now. It won’t be a proud endeavor because there has been little to be proud of, but we have to make sure that future Americans know exactly what happened in the Bush Years and in the Bush Wars.

The pendulum keeps swinging further to the right and seldom in our generation has it swung all the way back. When a president can look you in the eye and say he’s going to veto healthcare for children, and his people are fine with that; and when the same sales pitch for Iraq is being employed for Iran — and it’s working, what else can you say about that fucking pendulum?

Bob Cesca is a writer, director and producer, and the founder of Camp Chaos, an animation studio based near Philadelphia.

***

Published on Sunday, September 16, 2007

The Banality of Evil Revisited

by Bud McClure

Hannah Arendt was exactly right in 1963 when she had an epiphany while writing about Adolph Eichmann, realizing in a profound moment of clarity that the great evils in the world are not the work of a few sociopaths, but are committed by ordinary people who accept what they are told by their government and then proceed to normalize whatever actions they might take. Sadly, under the right circumstances, we are easily persuaded to do the bidding of the state when it comes to killing.

Bush is only a co-conspirator in this ongoing drama along with the plotters and planners, the technicians and bureaucrats, the generals and soldiers who all go about their daily duties unfazed by the consequences of their actions doing just what they are told to do. Meanwhile our elected officials sit in leather bound chairs pontificating about trivia. They wonder aloud whether or not troop levels should be reduced by a few thousand soldiers over the next year, all the while raiding the treasury to continue funding this immoral war. Even John Boehner, the house minority leader, dismissed the bloodletting and human carnage as insignificant to the greater mission of the state.

And what about the rest of us, those who championed this war from the outset and those of us who knew better? What is our responsibility for this evil? Decades from now will our grandchildren wonder how we could have allowed this carnage and will they question why we stood by and did nothing?

Bud McClure is a professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota Duluth and can be emailed at bmcclure@d.umn.edu.

***

Published on Monday, September 17, 2007 by The Independent/UK

It Is The Death of History

by Robert Fisk

2,000-year-old Sumerian cities torn apart and plundered by robbers. The very walls of the mighty Ur of the Chaldees cracking under the strain of massive troop movements, the privatisation of looting as landlords buy up the remaining sites of ancient Mesopotamia to strip them of their artefacts and wealth. The near total destruction of Iraq’s historic past - the very cradle of human civilisation - has emerged as one of the most shameful symbols of our disastrous occupation.

***

Bill Maher

New Rule: Stop Saying Iraq is Another Vietnam, it’s Another Enron

Posted September 27, 2007 | 02:07 PM (EST)

Iraq is Enron, and President Bush is Ken Lay. He’s fighting a war with phony accounting tricks. The Bush administration fudged the numbers to get us into Iraq, and cooked the books to keep us there. “The surge” is simply another in a long series of inflated stock quotes. This past weekend Marcel Marceau passed away at age 84. Doctors say he went quietly. Thus proving that evil thrives when good men stay silent. And just like with Enron, the good men and women who are blowing the whistle on Iraq contractor fraud are being vilified, fired, demoted, and those are the lucky ones.

***

Published on Friday, September 21, 2007 by “http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20892483/site/newsweek/page/0/”

The Age of Irresponsibility
How Bush has created a moral vacuum in Iraq in which Americans can kill for free. by Michael Hirsh

Imagine a universe where a man can gun down women and children anytime he pleases, knowing he will never be brought to justice. A place where morality is null and void, and arbitrary killing is the rule. A place that has been imagined hitherto only in nightmarish dystopian fiction, like “1984,” or in fevered passages from Dostoevsky-or which existed during the Holocaust and Stalinist purges and the Dark Ages. Well, that universe exists today. It is called Iraq. And the man who made it possible is George W. Bush.

The moral vacuum of Iraq-where Blackwater USA guards can kill 10 or 20 Iraqis on a whim and never be prosecuted for it-did not happen by accident. It is yet another example of something the Bush administration could have prevented with the right measures but simply did not bother about as it rushed into invading and occupying another country.

***

Published on Wednesday, September 5, 2007 by “http://www.suntimes.com/news/greeley/541985,CST-EDT-GREEL05.article”

True or False: Can Bush Tell Difference?

by Andrew Greeley

Is President Bush able to distinguish truth from falsehood? Is he too caught up in the double-talk generated by his spin masters to grasp the difference? After reading his talk to the VFW last week, I think that at this stage of his presidency he is utterly incapable of honest communication with the rest of the country.

Objectively, his claim that the United States can win in Iraq, his comment that the Iraqi prime minister is a good guy and his history of the Vietnam War go far beyond the boundaries of truth.

***

Limbaugh: Service members who support U.S. withdrawal are “phony soldiers”

During the September 26 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Rush Limbaugh called service members who advocate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq “phony soldiers.”

***

Second Retired British General Slams US
By Tariq Panja
The Associated Press

Sunday 02 September 2007

London - A second retired British general slammed the United States over its Iraq policy, saying in a newspaper interview published Sunday that it had been “fatally flawed.”

Maj. Gen. Tim Cross, the most senior British officer involved in the postwar planning, said he had raised serious concerns about the possibility of Iraq falling into chaos but said former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dismissed the warnings.

“Right from the very beginning we were all very concerned about the lack of detail that had gone into the postwar plan and there is no doubt that Rumsfeld was at the heart of that process,” Cross said in the Sunday Mirror newspaper.

The comments come a day after the release of critical comments made by the general who led the British army during the Iraq invasion.

Retired Gen. Sir Mike Jackson also singled out Rumsfeld for criticism, saying his approach to the invasion was “intellectually bankrupt,” according to quotes excerpted from his autobiography and published by The Daily Telegraph Saturday.

***

Ex-Commander in Iraq Cites Leadership Crisis in US

The Associated Press

Saturday 22 September 2007

Corpus Christi - Retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez said Saturday there is a “crisis in national political leadership” and that partisanship is preventing a strategy that would help the U.S. take on the threat of Islamic extremism.

***

Published on Sunday, September 23, 2007 by the San Diego Union-Tribune (California)

Generals Opposing Iraq War Break with Military Tradition

by Mark Sauer

The generals acted independently, coming in their own ways to the agonizing decision to defy military tradition and publicly criticize the Bush administration over its conduct of the war in Iraq.

What might be called The Revolt of the Generals has rarely happened in the nation’s history.

In op-ed pieces, interviews and TV ads, more than 20 retired U.S. generals have broken ranks with the culture of salute and keep it in the family. Instead, they are criticizing the commander in chief and other top civilian leaders who led the nation into what the generals believe is a misbegotten and tragic war.

The active-duty generals followed procedure, sending reports up the chain of command. The retired generals beseeched old friends in powerful positions to use their influence to bring about a change.

When their warnings were ignored, some came to believe it was their patriotic duty to speak out, even if it meant terminating their careers.

It was a decision none of the men approached cavalierly. Most were political conservatives who had voted for George W. Bush and initially favored his appointment of Donald Rumsfeld as defense secretary.

But they felt betrayed by Bush and his advisers.

***

Ex-Commander Says Iraq Effort Is “a Nightmare”

David S. Cloud reports in Saturday’s edition of The New York Times that a former top commander of American forces in Iraq: “In a sweeping indictment of the four-year effort there called the Bush administration’s handling of the war ‘incompetent’ and said the result was ‘a nightmare with no end in sight.’”

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“Many in the US Military Think Bush and Cheney Are Out of Control”

101607

In an interview with der Spiegel, Gabriel Kolko says: “They are rebelling against Bush and Cheney. Washington Post reporter Dana Priest recently said in an interview that she believed the US military would revolt and refuse to fly missions against Iran if the White House issued such orders.”

***

“http://www.macleans.ca/article.jsp?content=20070920_100442_7900&source=srch&page=1”

How George Bush became the new Saddam

COVER STORY: Its strategies shattered, a desperate Washington is reaching out to the late dictator’s henchmen.

Patrick Graham | Sep 20, 2007 | 10:04 am EST

***

Published on Sunday, September 23, 2007 by the Sunday Telegraph/UK

Country Music Deserts George Bush

by Tim Shipman in Washington

Country music has thrived for years as the soundtrack to redneck America, supplying the Republican heartlands with a diet of knee-jerk jingoism that has included flag-waving anthems supporting the war on terror.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/wp-content/photos/0923_02.jpg

But as the US death toll rises in Iraq and public patience with the conflict - and with George W. Bush - diminishes, many anti-war songs are emerging from Nashville, Tennessee, home of the genre.

***

Published on Saturday, September 15, 2007 by the Boston Globe

Bush’s War of False Pretenses

by Derrick Z. Jackson

President Bush told the nation Thursday night that General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker have “concluded that conditions in Iraq are improving, that we are seizing the initiative from the enemy, and that the troop surge is working.”

Never mind that 1,099 US soldiers died from September 2006 to August 2007, the highest 12-month total and disproportionately accounting for 29 percent of the 3,780 recorded fatalities since the March 2003 invasion. The lowest number of monthly fatalities in that period was 70 in November, according to Iraq Coalition Casualty Count ( icasualties.org/oif/).

***

Published on Saturday, September 15, 2007 by TruthDig.com

The Illusion of Progress in Iraq

by Joe Conason

Following two days of carefully staged theatrics on Capitol Hill and cable television, the essential facts about Iraq remain unchanged. Despite the big charts and the blustering fanfare highlighted by Fox News, neither Gen. David H. Petraeus nor Ambassador Ryan Crocker could convincingly claim that the American military escalation in Iraq is achieving its original goals.

***

Iraqi Oil Spoils
The New York Times | Editorial

Monday 15 October 2007

The quickening pace of oil deals between Kurdish regional leaders and foreign companies is another sign that Iraq is spinning out of control and the Bush administration has no idea how to stop it.

***

A Surge, and Then a Stab
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times

Friday 14 September 2007

To understand what’s really happening in Iraq, follow the oil money, which already knows that the surge has failed.

Now here’s the thing: Ray L. Hunt, the chief executive and president of Hunt Oil, is a close political ally of Mr. Bush. More than that, Mr. Hunt is a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, a key oversight body.

The smart money, then, knows that the surge has failed, that the war is lost, and that Iraq is going the way of Yugoslavia. And I suspect that most people in the Bush administration - maybe even Mr. Bush himself - know this, too.

All in all, Mr. Bush’s actions have not been those of a leader seriously trying to win a war. They have, however, been what you’d expect from a man whose plan is to keep up appearances for the next 16 months, never mind the cost in lives and money, then shift the blame for failure onto his successor.

In fact, that’s my interpretation of something that startled many people: Mr. Bush’s decision last month, after spending years denying that the Iraq war had anything in common with Vietnam, to suddenly embrace the parallel.

Here’s how I see it: At this point, Mr. Bush is looking forward to replaying the political aftermath of Vietnam, in which the right wing eventually achieved a rewriting of history that would have made George Orwell proud, convincing millions of Americans that our soldiers had victory in their grasp but were stabbed in the back by the peaceniks back home.

What all this means is that the next president, even as he or she tries to extricate us from Iraq - and prevent the country’s breakup from turning into a regional war - will have to deal with constant sniping from the people who lied us into an unnecessary war, then lost the war they started, but will never, ever, take responsibility for their failures.

***

http://www.vanityfair.com/services/referral?messageKey=85f70fa46e90a51cc0c97d5793738a47

No, He Is Not the Paris Hilton of U.S. Presidents

by Graydon Carter October 2007

Is it possible that for the past seven years we’ve gotten President George W. Bush wrong? Is it possible that that effortless stupidity and inexplicable arrogance that have become his hallmark are all just an act? Like Borat—only dumber? Is it possible that Bush figured he could accomplish more for the commonweal if he didn’t come off as just another responsible, competent world leader? Perhaps he believed that if he assumed the guise of a strutting, bumbling, dim-witted ass, everyone would give him a wide berth, much the way drivers slow down when they see a car swerving madly up ahead. Genius, right? Think about it. Perhaps Bush was Rove’s brain! Perhaps the vice president actually does report to the president. Perhaps Bush doesn’t go to bed at 9:30, but instead, like Castro, works through the night in some candlelit aerie in the West Wing, his Promethean intellect humming away as he dots the i’s and crosses the t’s of his devilishly clever master plan. Maybe he’s not the incurious, isolated simpleton the press makes him out to be. (See Todd Purdum’s “Inside Bush’s Bunker,” in this month’s issue.) Perhaps the president has been playing chess while the rest of us have been playing checkers.

Stay with me here. Let’s say he “bungled” the Katrina evacuation and recovery on such an epic scale not because he was incompetent—nobody could be that incompetent—but rather as a tough-love gesture to force the good people of Louisiana and Mississippi to stand on their own two feet. Let’s say he trampled on 30 years of legislative safeguards for our air, land, and water not to pay off the polluting interests that put him in office, but rather as a means of galvanizing America’s environmental movement. Let’s say the quotidian ineptitude across myriad government departments—not enough flu vaccine, passport and visa backlogs, and so forth—is not a hands-on way of demonstrating the administration’s “starve the beast” theory, that we would be better off with less government, but an attempt to teach the convenience-obsessed American public the virtue of patience.

Pure genius, I tell you. Bush makes the dollar weaker so Americans can’t afford to holiday abroad. Result: they see more of their own country. By vetoing stem-cell research and making it ever more expensive for his fellow citizens to get decent health care, the president is in truth asking us to read his lips. Message: Get healthier, America! And by consistently making such a fool of himself, he has selflessly given us someone to laugh at during these troubling times, the way screwball comedies did during the Great Depression. (See James Wolcott’s “The Simple Life—White House Edition.”)

The ineptitude is on such an Olympian scale that you really have to marvel at the man’s dedication and execution. Take the billions in cash that went missing in Iraq—someone certainly did. Following the 2003 invasion, the Coalition Provisional Authority received $12 billion in cash from the New York Federal Reserve—that’s 363 tons of money. What happened to it? Well, some was passed out to Iraqi ministries and functionaries in order to prime the Iraqi economy. But as Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele report this month in “Billions over Baghdad,” more than $9 billion in cash simply vanished. How could this happen? As with so many other aspects of this war, the job of auditing the disbursement and accounting of the money was outsourced. You would think a job like this would go to one of those giant Washington firms like SAIC or Halliburton. Nope, not this one. In a commendable nod to the little guy, the Pentagon awarded the contract to NorthStar, a company so small, Barlett and Steele discovered, that its mailing address is a post-office box in Nassau. Plus, its only “office” is a split-level home in La Jolla, California, that houses several legally registered companies—none accustomed to handling billions of dollars in cash in a war zone, to be sure. One has the stated purpose of selling “furniture, home furnishings, and flooring.” Don’t tell me the Bush administration isn’t pro small business.

Perhaps the reason for our crushing deficits is not so that the super-rich can get super-richer by paying less in taxes. (See Michael Shnayerson’s “Talk of the Town.”) Perhaps instead it’s a macro lesson for the rest of us in the value of personal thrift. Perhaps Bush really is spying on us to protect our privacy. Perhaps he has taken away our civil liberties only in order to get us to appreciate them, much the way we notice hot water only when the boiler breaks down. Perhaps the war in Iraq—which pretty much the whole shortsighted world has likened to jamming your hand into the middle of a hornet’s nest—was, in fact, the result of a necessary deal hammered out with al-Qaeda in the aftermath of 9/11: Look, we give you a recruitment poster for generations of future terrorists; you leave America alone—or at least until I’m out of office. The fact is, nobody, but nobody, could have been so consistently ignorant, stubborn, and just plain stupid over a seven-year period, unless there was something else going on behind the scenes. Or could they have been?

Graydon Carter is the editor of Vanity Fair. His books include What We’ve Lost (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) and Oscar Night: 75 Years of Hollywood Parties (Knopf).

***

The Promotion of Failure in Bush Administration
By Keith Olbermann
MSNBC Countdown

Wednesday 12 September 2007

Transcript from Crooks and Liars.

To this day, millions of Americans believe we invaded Iraq because of 9/11.

33 percent still believe there was some interconnection between Saddam Hussein and the nightmares here and in Washington and in Pennsylvania.

Iraq, of course, had nothing to do with 9/11. Then. Six years later, that has changed.

Iraq has distracted us from punishing those responsible for 9/11.

If another 9/11 comes, our focus on Iraq will surely have been central to that nightmare.

How did we get here? What consequences have been paid by those who brought us here?

In our number one story tonight, no one person is to blame. And only some of those who are, recognize it.

***

Hired Gun Fetish
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times

Friday 28 September 2007

Sometimes it seems that the only way to make sense of the Bush administration is to imagine that it’s a vast experiment concocted by mad political scientists who want to see what happens if a nation systematically ignores everything we’ve learned over the past few centuries about how to make a modern government work.

Thus, the administration has abandoned the principle of a professional, nonpolitical civil service, stuffing agencies from FEMA to the Justice Department with unqualified cronies. Tax farming - giving individuals the right to collect taxes, in return for a share of the take - went out with the French Revolution; now the tax farmers are back.

And so are mercenaries, whom Machiavelli described as “useless and dangerous” more than four centuries ago.

***

On Bonuses and Leaving Iraq
The New York Times | Editorial

Tuesday 16 October 2007

There are new signs that an American military in distress is reshaping itself to cope with the destructive fallout of Iraq - and to look beyond it, even as President Bush insists on dispatching Americans to go on fighting and dying there. Young officers have been offered big cash bonuses to stay in an Army struggling to retain them. The Marines, meanwhile, are trying to move out of Iraq and into Afghanistan, a more popular mission where they could focus on America’s real enemies - al Qaeda and its allies, the Taliban - instead of trying to police a civil war.

***

Published on Sunday, October 14, 2007 by The New York Times

The ‘Good Germans’ Among Us

by Frank Rich

“Bush lies” doesn’t cut it anymore. It’s time to confront the darker reality that we are lying to ourselves.

Ten days ago The Times unearthed yet another round of secret Department of Justice memos countenancing torture. President Bush gave his standard response: “This government does not torture people.” Of course, it all depends on what the meaning of “torture” is. The whole point of these memos is to repeatedly recalibrate the definition so Mr. Bush can keep pleading innocent.

By any legal standards except those rubber-stamped by Alberto Gonzales, we are practicing torture, and we have known we are doing so ever since photographic proof emerged from Abu Ghraib more than three years ago. As Andrew Sullivan, once a Bush cheerleader, observed last weekend in The Sunday Times of London, America’s “enhanced interrogation” techniques have a grotesque provenance: “Verschärfte Vernehmung, enhanced or intensified interrogation, was the exact term innovated by the Gestapo to describe what became known as the ‘third degree.’ It left no marks. It included hypothermia, stress positions and long-time sleep deprivation.”

***

Published on Thursday, October 11, 2007 by The Associated Press

Jimmy Carter: US Tortures Prisoners

WASHINGTON - The U.S. tortures prisoners in violation of international law, former President Jimmy Carter said Wednesday, adding that President Bush makes up his own definition of torture.

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Outsourcing Torture

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Chris Hedges, writing for Truthdig.com, says: “The Bush administration has called for the respect of human rights in Burma, a pretty safe piece of posturing, but it remains silent as Egypt’s dictator, Gen. Hosni Mubarak, unleashes the largest crackdown on public opposition in over a decade. Our moral indignation over the shooting of monks masks the incestuous and growing alliance we have built in the so-called war on terror with some of the world’s most venal dictatorships.”

***

Published on Friday, September 14, 2007 by

“http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iraq14sep14,1,3979621.story?coll=la-headlines-world”

Poll: Civilian Death Toll in Iraq May Top 1 Million
A British survey offers the highest estimate to date.

by Tina Susman

BAGHDAD - The figure from ORB, a British polling agency that has conducted several surveys in Iraq, suggested that the total number slain during more than four years of war was more than 1.2 million.

***

Published on Sunday, September 16, 2007 by the Observer/UK

Greenspan Admits Iraq was About Oil, As Deaths Put at 1.2 Million

by Peter Beaumont and Joanna Walters in New York

The man once regarded as the world’s most powerful banker has bluntly declared that the Iraq war was ‘largely’ about oil.

Greenspan’s damning comments about the war come as a survey of Iraqis, which was released last week, claims that up to 1.2 million people may have died because of the conflict in Iraq — lending weight to a 2006 survey in the Lancet that reported similarly high levels.

The Lancet survey was criticized by some experts and by George Bush and British officials. In private, however, the Ministry of Defense’s chief scientific adviser Sir Roy Anderson described it as ‘close to best practice’.

***

Published on Wednesday, September 19, 2007 by Pak Tribune (Pakistan)

US Caused More Deaths in Iraq Than Saddam, Says Anti-War Tribunal

ISTANBUL - The World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI), a grouping of NGOs, intellectuals and writers opposed to the war in Iraq, on Friday accused the United States of causing more deaths in Iraq than ousted president Saddam Hussein.

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The Nightmare Is Here

The New York Times columnist Bob Herbert writes that more than four years into the war in Iraq, huge numbers of Iraqi children are finding themselves orphaned, homeless and malnourished.

***

Billions over Baghdad

Between April 2003 and June 2004, $12 billion in U.S. currency—much of it belonging to the Iraqi people—was shipped from the Federal Reserve to Baghdad, where it was dispensed by the Coalition Provisional Authority. Some of the cash went to pay for projects and keep ministries afloat, but, incredibly, at least $9 billion has gone missing, unaccounted for, in a frenzy of mismanagement and greed. Following a trail that leads from a safe in one of Saddam’s palaces to a house near San Diego, to a P.O. box in the Bahamas, the authors discover just how little anyone cared about how the money was handled.

by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele October 2007

Also on VF.com: “http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/10/iraq_qanda200710”

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http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=3653848

Records Show Bush Pledging Iraq Invasion With or Without U.N. Backing

Pre-War Transcript Reveals Bush Erroneously Optimistic About Post-Saddam Iraq

***

By Ernesto Ekaizer

El Pais Spain

Tuesday 25 September 2007

Spanish Notes Reveal Bush Was Hell-Bent on War, Despite Claiming “I’ve Not Made Up My Mind”

Think Progress

Today, the Spanish newspaper El Pais published a transcript of a discussion between President Bush and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar in February 2003 in which Bush told Aznar that the U.S. would go to war with Iraq to disarm Saddam Hussein with or without a UN resolution:

“We must take him right now. We have shown an incredible degree of patience until now. There are two weeks left. In two weeks we will be militarily ready.”

Though Aznar asked Bush to “have a little patience” and urged, “It is very important to have a [UN] resolution,” Bush pushed for war throughout the meeting, telling the Spanish Prime Minister, “We will be in Baghdad by the end of March.”

Just a few days later, Bush insisted to the American public that war with Iraq was not a certainty:

BUSH: “I’ve not made up our mind about military action. Hopefully, this can be done peacefully.” [3/6/03]

BUSH: “We are doing everything we can to avoid war in Iraq. But if Saddam Hussein does not disarm peacefully, he will be disarmed by force.” [3/8/03]

Prior to going to war, Bush insisted he would get U.N. authorization. He said, “no matter what the whip count is,” the U.S. would go to the UN and “call for a vote.” But it’s clear Bush was never going to let the U.N. get in the way of his quest for war.

To this day, Bush has continued to insist that the “the United States did not choose war - the choice was Saddam Hussein’s.” In fact, as this conversation with Aznar illustrates, Bush had made his decision long before exhausting all other options.

***

Published on Wednesday, August 29, 2007 by “http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39051”

Israel Warned US Not to Invade Iraq after 9/11

by Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - Israeli officials warned the George W. Bush administration that an invasion of Iraq would be destabilising to the region

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Report Says Hussein Was Open to Exile Before 2003 Invasion

By Karen DeYoung and Michael Abramowitz

The Washington Post

Thursday 27 September 2007

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Published on Thursday, September 27, 2007 by The Bangor Daily News (Maine)

God, Machiavelli, & Mercenaries

by Pat LaMarche

I spent most of Monday studying the Uniform Code of Military Justice. That’s a code of behavior that applies to half the U.S. armed combatants in Iraq - the poorly paid half - our soldiers. It doesn’t apply to the 160,000 or so contractors whose inflated incomes depend on this war continuing. Oh, and it doesn’t apply to God.

Maybe the rush to war didn’t give the administration time to sort this all out in advance. Hurrying often has unanticipated consequences. But jeepers, the president and the vice president both went to Yale. Didn’t they have to read Machiavelli at Yale? OK, we’ll let Cheney off the hook because he flunked out, but Bush must’ve read it.

Nicolo Machiavelli wrote in 1505, “And experience has shown princes and republics, single-handed, making the greatest progress; and mercenaries doing nothing except damage.”

Pat LaMarche of Yarmouth, Maine is the author of “ Left Out In America: The State of Homelessness in the United States.”

***

Published on Sunday, October 7, 2007 by “http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article3035925.ece”

Out of America
Privatising the Iraq war has created a trigger-happy mercenary army that is, as yet, subject to no laws

by Rupert Cornwell

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who will guard the guardians? Or, when discussing the conduct in Iraq of America’s largest and most notorious private security contractor, Blackwater, who will protect us from the protectors? The ancient question raises the most profound issues of power and the accountability of power. But as far as Blackwater goes, the shocking and deeply scary answer - at least until now - has been: nobody.

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Checkbook Imperialism: The Blackwater Fiasco

By Robert Scheer
truthdig

Tuesday 18 September 2007

Please, please, I tell myself, leave Orwell out of it. Find some other, fresher way to explain why “Operation Iraqi Freedom” is dependent upon killer mercenaries. Or why the “democratically elected government” of “liberated” Iraq does not explicitly have the legal power to expel Blackwater USA from its land or hold any of the 50,000 private contractor troops that the U.S. government has brought to Iraq accountable for their deadly actions.

Were there even the faintest trace of Iraqi independence rising from the ashes of this failed American imperialist venture, Blackwater would have to fold its tents and go, if only in the interest of keeping up appearances.

***

Published on Sunday, September 23, 2007 by The Toronto Sun

Hired Guns, Loose Cannons

by Eric Margolis

There are 180,000 to 200,000 U.S.-paid mercenaries in Iraq _ or “private contractors” as Washington and the U.S. media delicately call them. They actually outnumber the 169,000 U.S. troops there. Britain pays for another 20,000. At least half are armed fighters, the rest support personnel and technicians. Without them, the U.S. and Britain could not maintain their occupation of Iraq.

***

Published on Thursday, September 20, 2007 by The Progressive

Blackwater and Oil Show Administration’s M.O. in Iraq

by Ruth Conniff

Jeremy Scahill, author of the book Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, was on CNN September 17 after the news broke that the military contractor had been kicked out of Iraq for its role in the deaths of 8 Iraqi civilians.

The story of Blackwater, Scahill explained, is the story of the Bush war in Iraq. “Bush failed to build a coalition of willing nations” at the beginning of the war, Scahill told CNN. So instead the President build a “coalition of willing corporations” or war profiteers, including Blackwater.

What Scahill calls the “mercenary component” of this corporate cabal is completely unaccountable-operating a shadow war in which the finances and even the body counts of private contractors go unreported to Congress or the press.

And if Bush has, as Scahill says, overseen “the greatest privatization of warfare in history,” he has also led us into a war in which profiteers-from thugs and looters to multinational corporations-are fighting over the spoils, to the detriment of American citizens and the Iraqi people.

***

Published on Thursday, September 20, 2007 by “http://www.metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp?id=11803”

Victory Now Certain!

by Jack Lessenberry

“The strategy we’re following this time is the proper one, and is producing results. Repeated successes.”
-Gen. William Westmoreland, before Congress, April 28, 1967
“I believe that this is indeed the best course of action to achieve our objectives in Iraq.”
-Gen. David Petraeus, before Congress, Sept. 11, 2007

Yes, citizens, if you aren’t a limp-wristed nervous Nellie, if you aren’t a member of the defeatist hate-America-first club, it ought to be perfectly clear that our policy of Vietnamization is succeeding. Within a few months or maybe decades, the Iraqi forces ought to be able to defend Saigon on their own. Provide policing services in Hue and Da Nang, and control the oil derricks on the central highlands and the Plain of Jars. Yes, victory is already glowing at the end of the tunnel, and every loyal American should be able to see it. Sigh. Comrades, one of the worst things about being older and having paid attention all these years is seeing succeeding generations of morons make the same mistakes, again and again, with less excuse. Now I know what the reply from those who defend our current orgy of useless killing will be: Iraq is not Vietnam. It would be a stupid mistake to compare the two situations. They are entirely different. Yes, indeed they are. Our involvement in the Vietnam War made far more sense, and had in some ways a bit of nobility about it, at least at the beginning. South Vietnam, our client state at the time, actually asked us for help. We did not launch an unprovoked attack on South Vietnam, invade and overthrow its government, as we did with Iraq. Washington also did not go into South Vietnam so that private contractors could make a financial killing. “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: The Iraq war is largely about oil,” Alan Greenspan, nobody’s idea of a leftist, says in his new book.

***

More generals confess to mistakes

Sep 18, 2007 10:11 AM (3 hrs ago)

by Rowan Scarborough , The Examiner (AP)

Marine Gen. Peter Pace, the outgoing Joint Chiefs chairman, admits mistakes in planning for post-Saddam Iraq.

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - The number of top generals willing to admit mistakes in planning for post-Saddam Hussein Iraq is increasing. The most recent mea culpa came right from the top — Marine Gen. Peter Pace, the outgoing Joint Chiefs chairman, who last week gave his most extensive answer to the question of what he would have done differently in 2003.

***

Published on Monday, October 8, 2007 by CommonDreams.org

The Big Lie: ‘Iran Is a Threat’

by Scott Ritter

Iran has never manifested itself as a serious threat to the national security of the United States, or by extension as a security threat to global security. At the height of Iran’s “exportation of the Islamic Revolution” phase, in the mid-1980’s, the Islamic Republic demonstrated a less-than-impressive ability to project its power beyond the immediate borders of Iran, and even then this projection was limited to war-torn Lebanon.

***

Published on Sunday, September 16, 2007 by the Sunday Telegraph/UK

Bush Setting America Up for War on Iran

by Philip Sherwell in New York and Tim Shipman in Washington

Senior American intelligence and defense officials believe that President George W Bush and his inner circle are taking steps to place America on the path to war with Iran, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt Pentagon planners have developed a list of up to 2,000 bombing targets in Iran, amid growing fears among serving officers that diplomatic efforts to slow Iran’s nuclear weapons program are doomed to fail.

***

SY HERSH SAYS CHENEY WANTS TO BOMB

The plans to bomb Iran are not final, but appear to be well past the fanciful stage, according to a long “http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/10/08/071008fa_fact_hersh” by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker:

“They’re moving everybody to the Iran desk,” one recently retired C.I.A. official said. “They’re dragging in a lot of analysts and ramping up everything. It’s just like the fall of 2002”—the months before the invasion of Iraq, when the Iraqi Operations Group became the most important in the agency. He added, “The guys now running the Iranian program have limited direct experience with Iran. In the event of an attack, how will the Iranians react? They will react, and the Administration has not thought it all the way through.”

***

Published on Monday, September 24, 2007 by Salon.com

Turning Ahmadinejad Into Public Enemy No. 1

Demonizing the Iranian president and making his visit to New York seem controversial is all part of the neoconservative push for yet another war.

by Juan Cole

***

Published on Thursday, September 27, 2007

Bush, Oil — and Moral Bankruptcy

by Ray McGovern

It is an exceedingly dangerous time. Vice President Dick Cheney and his hard-core “neo-conservative” protégés in the administration and Congress are pushing harder and harder for President George W. Bush, isolated from reality, to honor the promise he made to Israel to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. On Sept. 23, former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski warned pointedly:

“If we escalate tensions, if we succumb to hysteria, if we start making threats, we are likely to stampede ourselves into a war [with Iran], which most reasonable people agree would be a disaster for us…I think the administration, the president and the vice president particularly, are trying to hype the atmosphere, and that is reminiscent of what preceded the war in Iraq.”

***

I May Have Gone Insane

By William Rivers Pitt

Wednesday 19 September 2007

We dance round in a ring and suppose,

But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.

- Robert Frost, “The Secret Sits”

The joke: people say Bush and his people want to raze the core nature of the country itself by wrecking the Constitution, and they’re correct. People say Bush and his people are enriching their friends beyond dreams of avarice at our actual expense, by way of war-inflated oil prices; war-captured Iraqi oil infrastructure; the orgiastic plunder of Treasury money through calamitously unsound tax cuts for Bush’s pals; and through an Iraq war profiteering scam so unutterably corrupt that it bends the very light. That, and more besides, is what people say, and they’re correct.

But all that, along with everything else the Bush crew has done, just isn’t enough for them. What Bush and his people really seek, at bottom, is to destroy the basic definition and literal existence of reality itself. They want to destroy reality, rebuild it according to their own blueprint, so the sum and substance of this new reality will accept as axiomatic the idea that lying, stealing and wholesale carnage are badges of integrity and moral clarity. In other words, our comprehensively understood reality today would be replaced by whatever madcap anti-reality currently exists within the walls of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

I warned you.

One thought says reality itself has been detonated with calculated premeditation by Bush and his people. The other thought remembers what it was like before anything like the first thought was even remotely conceived of. Each thought, I think, will nurture and protect the other once the three of us are all settled in, and I will continue to retain the ability to function.

***

History Will Not Absolve Us
By Nat Hentoff
The Village Voice

Tuesday 28 August 2007

Leaked Red Cross report sets up Bush team for international war-crimes trial.

If and when there’s the equivalent of an international Nuremberg trial for the American perpetrators of crimes against humanity in Guantánamo, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the CIA’s secret prisons, there will be mounds of evidence available from documented international reports by human-rights organizations, including an arm of the European parliament-as well as such deeply footnoted books as Stephen Grey’s Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program (St. Martin’s Press) and Charlie Savage’s just-published Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy (Little, Brown).

***

Dept. of Misdirection: With Iraq a Disaster, GOP Goes Crazy Over a Newspaper Ad

Posted September 17, 2007 | 07:04 PM (EST)

Does anybody really believe the problem with the war in Iraq is too much questioning of those in authority, too much bluntness, and not enough deference to those who have been in charge of the war for the last four years?

That’s apparently the feeling of all the conservative talk-show hosts and GOP presidential candidates who came down with the vapors over the MoveOn ad that had the temerity to question Gen. David Petraeus. Tens of thousands of dead civilians, nearly 4,000 dead American soldiers, half a trillion dollars spent, and the squandering of America’s moral authority -- none of that seems to have ruffled their feathers very much. But the ad? Now that has got them royally steamed.

***

Fed’s Ex-Chief Attacks Bush on Fiscal Role

Edmund L. Sanders and David E. Sanger report in the New York Times that “Alan Greenspan, who was chairman of the Federal Reserve for nearly two decades, in a long-awaited memoir, is harshly critical of President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and the Republican-controlled Congress, as abandoning their party’s principles on spending and deficits.”

***

Widespread Accounting Failures Discovered at Pentagon

The Associated Press reports that a review the news agency conducted has determined that the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security’s “financial records are so disorganized and inconsistent that they have repeatedly earned ‘disclaimer’ opinions, meaning that they simply cannot be fully audited.”

***

Published on Tuesday, September 18, 2007 by “http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/09/18/EDCLS7TH4.DTL”

The Lies of Alan Greenspan

by William Greider

Alan Greenspan has come back from the tomb of history to correct the record. He did not make any mistakes in his 18-year tenure as Federal Reserve chairman. He did not endorse the regressive Bush tax cuts of 2001 that pumped up the federal deficits and aggravated inequalities. He did not cause the housing bubble that is now in collapse. He did not ignore the stock market bubble that subsequently melted away and cost investors $6 trillion. He did not say the Iraq war is “largely about oil.” Check the record. These are all lies.

***

Published on Tuesday, October 9, 2007 by “http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071022/resnikoff”

Corporations Versus Democracy

by Ned Resnikoff

The most important issue to young people in the 2008 campaign is one that no presidential candidate will discuss. In fact, even touching on this subject is taboo for anyone with aspirations to Congress or the White House. Anyone who has the temerity to mention this political third rail will almost certainly lose the campaign.

The issue is the curtailing of corporate power, and as long as corporations continue to finance major candidates, it will remain unspoken. No one running for office wants to be blacklisted by corporate lobbyists in Washington.

That’s a shame, because this issue is connected to almost every other problem facing America today. As long as corporations have no incentive to avoid polluting, we will continue to poison this planet at an alarming rate, and as long as corporate lobbyists hold an inordinate amount of influence in Washington, there will be no substantive solutions to problems like income inequality or our woefully inadequate healthcare system.

The unchecked power of American corporations does not just affect America, either. It is our corporations that are exploiting developing nations by employing their people at low wages in inhuman working conditions. The environment, obviously, is a global issue. And while some may scoff at the idea of the United States waging war for economic reasons, it is difficult to ignore the mounting evidence that we invaded Iraq, at least in part, to bring profit to American oil companies and defense contractors. What country is next? Iran?

***

Capitalism in Crisis

Bill Moyers Journal

Airdate: Friday, September 28, 2007, at 9 p.m. EDT on PBS

(Check local listings at http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/about/airdates.html.)

Bill Moyers interviews investment industry giant John Bogle on the crisis in American capitalism.

Is there a crisis in American capitalism? Investment industry giant John Bogle says that as more and more money managers take control over corporations on Wall Street, Main Street is paying the price. Named by Fortune magazine as one of the four “Giants of the 20th Century,” Bogle tells Moyers: “The evidence is quite compelling that today corporations are run in a very important way to maximize the returns of its managers at the expense of its stockholders.”

JACK BOGLE

Michael C [who used his full name, but I don’t want to get him fired]: “Thanks for the link to Moyers’ “http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/09282007/profile.html”. I work for a financial services company and I see things every day that leave me shaking my head. From the creation of esoteric investment vehicles to the efforts put into labyrinthine and opaque corporate structures – if the creativity and labors of the financial industry were to be harnessed and directed to useful purposes, what a fine world we might have.

***

Published on Wednesday, October 3, 2007 by “http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/03/opinion/03dowd.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin”

Sinking in a Swamp Full of Blackwater

by Maureen Dowd

“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster,” Nietzsche said. “And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”

We’re gazing into the abyss all right, and Blackwater is gazing back.

Besides having an army for hire, brave kids who are paid to fight so that most Americans are not personally touched by war, we have the real mercenaries. And they’re a spooky cadre, careening outside the laws of Iraq, the United States and the military.

President Bush continues to preach that we must defeat the “dark ideology” of extremists with “a more hopeful vision.”

But the compromises W. makes to slog on in Iraq, be it with warlords, dictators or out-of-control contractors, are spreading a dark stain on America’s image.

***

Published on Tuesday, October 2, 2007 by “http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/opinion_columnists/article/0,2777,DRMN_23972_5712141,00.html”

Delusion of Exceptionalism

by Paul Campos

Nationalism is perhaps the most interesting delusion of modern times. Its power is illustrated by the fact that lots of otherwise sensible people are unapologetic nationalists, even though nationalism requires its adherents to subscribe to various bizarre beliefs.

For example, the nationalist believes that while other nations act invariably on the basis of self-interest, his country is historically unique, in that it makes great sacrifices for the good of others. This thesis has been put forth with complete seriousness by many a well-credentialed supporter of the Iraq war, such as the historian Francis Fukuyama, who argues that the invasion of that country represented a kind of “virtuous imperialism.”

Try this thought experiment: Imagine Nicolas Sarkozy defending French foreign policy by pointing out that France is “inherently good,” or Vladimir Putin claiming the right to imprison suspected terrorists for life without trial, because the Russian security forces can be trusted not to make mistakes.

Yet when similarly absurd nonsense is spouted by apologists for “American exceptionalism” - basically, the doctrine that the rules don’t apply to us, because we’re special - it’s treated with the utmost respect by supposedly serious people.

In short, when a political leader claims he is the head of a unique nation, anointed by history or even God himself to be a light unto the world, we tend to consider him either an amusing crank or a dangerous lunatic.

Unless that leader happens to an American president - then he’s merely stating a self-evident truth.

Paul Campos is a professor of law at the University of Colorado.

***

Published on Monday, October 15, 2007 by “http://www.thestar.com/comment/article/266411”

Sun Sets Early on the American Century
Even hard-headed realists in the U.S. power elite fear the Iraq war has crippled America’s ability to lead

by Philip S. Golub

The disastrous outcome of the invasion and occupation of Iraq has caused a crisis in the power elite of the United States deeper than that resulting from defeat in Vietnam 30 years ago. Ironically, it is the very coalition of ultranationalists and neo-conservatives that coalesced in the 1970s, seeking to reverse the Vietnam syndrome, restore U.S. power and revive “the will to victory” that has caused the present crisis.

There has been no sustained popular mass protest as there was during the Vietnam War, probably because of the underclass sociology of the volunteer U.S. military and the fact that the war is being funded by foreign financial flows. However, at the elite level the war has fractured the national security establishment that has run the United States for six decades. The unprecedented public critique in 2006 by several retired senior officers over the conduct of the war, plus recurrent signs of dissent in the intelligence agencies and the state department, reflects a much wider trend in elite opinion.

Not all critics are as forthright as retired general William Odom, who tirelessly repeats that the invasion of Iraq was the “greatest strategic disaster in U.S. history”; or Col. Larry Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former chief of staff, who denounced a “blunder of historic proportions” and has recently suggested impeaching the president; or former National Security Council head Zbigniew Brzezinski, who called the war and occupation a “historic, strategic and moral calamity.”

Most public critiques from within the institutions of state focus on the way the war and occupation have been mismanaged rather than the more fundamental issue of the invasion itself. Yet discord is wide and deep: Government departments are trading blame, accusing each other of the “loss of Iraq.” In private, former senior officials express incandescent anger, denounce shadowy cabals and have deep contempt for the White House. A former official of the National Security Council compared the president and his staff to the Corleone mafia family in The Godfather. A senior foreign policy expert said: “Due to an incompetent, arrogant and corrupt clique we are about to lose our hegemonic position in the Middle East and Gulf.”

“The White House has broken the army and trampled its honour,” added a Republican senator and former Vietnam veteran.

None of these, nor any of the other institutional critics, could be considered doves: Whatever their political affiliations (mostly Republican) or personal beliefs, they were - and some are still - guardians of U.S. power, managers of the national security state, and sometimes central actors in covert and overt imperial interventions in the Third World during the Cold War and post-Cold War.

As a social group, these realists cannot be distinguished from the object of their criticism in terms of their willingness to use force or their historically demonstrated ruthlessness in achieving state aims. Nor can the cause of their dissent be attributed to conflicting convictions over ethics, norms and values (though this may be a motivating factor for some). It lies rather in the rational realization that the war in Iraq has nearly “broken the U.S. Army,” weakened the national security state, and severely, if not irreparably, undermined “America’s global legitimacy” - its ability to shape world preferences and set the global agenda. The most sophisticated expressions of dissent, such as Brzezinski’s, reflect the understanding that power is not reducible to the ability to coerce, and that, once lost, hegemonic legitimacy is hard to restore.

The signs of slippage are apparent everywhere: in Latin America, where U.S. influence is at its lowest in decades; in East Asia, where the United States has been obliged, reluctantly, to negotiate with North Korea and recognize China as an indispensable actor in regional security; in Europe, where U.S. plans to install missile defence capabilities in Poland are being contested by Germany and other European Union states; in the Gulf, where old allies such as Saudi Arabia are pursuing autonomous agendas that coincide only in part with U.S. aims; and in the international institutions, the UN and the World Bank, where the United States is no longer in a position to drive the agenda unaided.

Transnational opinion surveys show a consistent and nearly global pattern of defiance of U.S. foreign policy as well as a more fundamental erosion in the attractiveness of the United States: The narrative of the American dream has been submerged by images of a military leviathan disregarding world opinion and breaking the rules. World public opinion may not stop wars but it does count in subtler ways. Some of this slippage may be repairable under new leaders and with new and less aggressive policies. Yet it is hard to see how internal unity of purpose will be restored: It took decades to rebuild the U.S. military after Vietnam and to define an elite and popular consensus on the uses of power.

The invasion and occupation of Iraq is not the sole cause of the trends sketched. Rather, the war significantly accentuated all of them at a moment when larger centrifugal forces were already at work: the erosion and collapse of the Washington Consensus and the gradual rise of new gravitational centres, notably in Asia, were established trends when President George Bush went to war. Now, as the shift in the world economy towards Asia matures, the United States is stuck in a conflict that is absorbing its total energies. History is moving on and the world is slipping, slowly but inexorably, out of U.S. hands.

For the U.S. power elite this is deeply unsettling. Since the mid-20th century U.S. leaders have thought of themselves as having a unique historic responsibility to lead and govern the globe. Sitting on top of the world since the 1940s, they have assumed that, like Great Britain in the 19th century, they were destined to act as hegemon - a dominant state having the will and the means to establish and maintain international order: peace and an open and expanding liberal world economy. In their reading of history it was Britain’s inability to sustain such a role and America’s simultaneous unwillingness to take responsibility that created the conditions for the cycle of world wars and depression during the first half of the 20th century.

The corollary of this assumption is the circular argument that since order requires a dominant centre, the maintenance of order (or avoidance of chaos) requires the perpetuation of hegemony. This belief system, theorized in U.S. academia in the 1970s as “hegemonic stability,” has underpinned U.S. foreign policy since World War II, when the United States emerged as the core state of the world capitalist system. As early as 1940 U.S. economic and political elites forecast a vast revolution in the balance of power: The United States would become heir to the economic and political assets of the British Empire.

A year later, Time magazine publisher Henry Luce announced the coming American Century: “America’s first century as a dominant power in the world” meant that its people would have “to accept wholeheartedly our duty and our opportunity as the most powerful and vital nation and exert upon the world the full impact of our influence as we see fit and by such means as we see fit.” By the mid-1940s the contours of the American Century had already emerged: U.S. economic predominance and strategic supremacy upheld by a planetary network of military bases.

The postwar U.S. leaders who presided over the construction of the national security state were filled, in William Appleman Williams’s words, with “visions of omnipotence”: The United States enjoyed enormous economic advantages, a significant technological edge and briefly held an atomic monopoly. Though the Korean stalemate (1953) and the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons and missile programs dented U.S. self-confidence, it took defeat in Vietnam and the domestic social upheavals that accompanied the war to reveal the limits of power. Henry Kissinger’s and Richard Nixon’s “realism in an era of decline” was a reluctant acknowledgment that the overarching hegemony of the previous 20 years could not and would not last forever.

But Vietnam and the Nixon era were a turning point in another more paradoxical way: Domestically they ushered in the conservative revolution and the concerted effort of the mid-1980s to restore and renew the national security state and U.S. world power. When the Soviet Union collapsed a few years later, misguided visions of omnipotence resurfaced. Conservative triumphalists dreamed of primacy and sought to lock in long-term unipolarity. Iraq was a strategic experiment designed to begin the Second American Century. That experiment and U.S. foreign policy now lie in ruins.

Historical analogies are never perfect but Great Britain’s long exit from empire may shed some light on the present moment. At the end of the 19th century few British leaders could even begin to imagine an end to empire. When Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee was celebrated in 1897, Britain possessed a formal transoceanic empire that encompassed a quarter of the world’s territory and 300 million people - twice that if China, a near colony of 430 million people, was included. The city of London was the centre of an even more far-flung trading and financial empire that bound the world. It is unsurprising that, despite apprehensions over U.S. and German industrial competitiveness, significant parts of the British elite believed that they had been given “a gift from the Almighty of a lease of the universe forever.”

The Jubilee turned out to be “final sunburst of an unalloyed belief in British fitness to rule.” The Second Boer War (1899-1902) fought to preserve the routes to India and secure the weakest link in the imperial chain, wasted British wealth and blood and revealed the atrocities of scorched-earth policies to a restive British public. The world war that broke out in 1914 bankrupted and exhausted all of its European protagonists. The long end of the British era had started. However, the empire not only survived the immediate crisis but hobbled on for decades, through World War II, until its inglorious end at Suez in 1956. Still, a nostalgia for lost grandeur persists. As Tony Blair’s Mesopotamian adventures show, the imperial afterglow has faded but is not entirely extinguished.

For the U.S. power elite, being on top of the world has been a habit for 60 years. Hegemony has been a way of life; empire, a state of being and of mind. The institutional realist critics of the Bush administration have no alternative conceptual framework for international relations, based on something other than force, the balance of power or strategic predominance.

The present crisis and the deepening impact of global concerns will perhaps generate new impulses for co-operation and interdependence in future. Yet it is just as likely that U.S. policy will be unpredictable: As all post-colonial experiences show, de-imperialization is likely to be a long and possibly traumatic process.

Philip S. Golub is a journalist and lecturer at the University of Paris VIII.

***

The American Dream in Reverse
The New York Times | Editorial

Monday 08 October 2007

For the first time since the Carter administration, homeownership in the United States is set to decline over a president’s tenure. When President Bush took office in 2001, homeownership stood at 67.6 percent. It rose as the mortgage bubble inflated but is projected to fall to 67 percent by early 2009, which would come to 700,000 fewer homeowners than when Mr. Bush started. The decline, calculated by Moody’s Economy.com, is inexorable unless the government launches a heroic effort to help hundreds of thousands of defaulting borrowers stay in their homes.

***

Conservatives Are Such Jokers
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times

Friday 05 October 2007

Ronald Reagan thought the issue of hunger in the world’s richest nation was nothing but a big joke. Here’s what Reagan said in his famous 1964 speech “A Time for Choosing,” which made him a national political figure: “We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry each night. Well, that was probably true. They were all on a diet.”

Today’s leading conservatives are Reagan’s heirs. If you’re poor, if you don’t have health insurance, if you’re sick - well, they don’t think it’s a serious issue. In fact, they think it’s funny.

On Wednesday, President Bush vetoed legislation that would have expanded S-chip, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, providing health insurance to an estimated 3.8 million children who would otherwise lack coverage.

In anticipation of the veto, William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, had this to say: “First of all, whenever I hear anything described as a heartless assault on our children, I tend to think it’s a good idea. I’m happy that the president’s willing to do something bad for the kids.” Heh-heh-heh.

Most conservatives are more careful than Mr. Kristol. They try to preserve the appearance that they really do care about those less fortunate than themselves. But the truth is that they aren’t bothered by the fact that almost nine million children in America lack health insurance. They don’t think it’s a problem.

***

Published on Sunday, October 7, 2007 by “”

Orwell in 2007

by Robert Weiner

In 1984, the novel that most baby boomers read in high school, George Orwell creates a theoretical modern-day government with absolute power — a state in which government, called the Party, monitors and controls every aspect of human life to the extent that even having a disloyal thought is against the law.

James Madison warned, “If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.” With the mightiest military and strongest technology on Earth, democracy can stand up to terrorism without becoming the mirror of our enemies.

Robert Weiner was a Clinton White House public affairs director and spokesman for the U.S. House Government Operations Committee.

***

Published on Saturday, September 29, 2007 by “http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_rise_of_the_havenots”

The Rise of the Have-Nots
The American middle class has toppled into a world of temporary employment, jobs without benefits, and retirement without security.

by Harold Meyerson

Last week over lunch, a friend in his 30s prodded me to explain how my generation, the boomers, had botched so many things.

***

Published on Sunday, October 14, 2007 by “http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39642”

Maternal Mortality Shames Superpower US

by Haider Rizvi

United Nations - Despite its enormous wealth and highly advanced technology, the United States lags far behind other industrialised countries — and even some developing ones — in providing adequate health care to women during pregnancy and childbirth.

The U.S. ranks 41st in a new analysis of maternal mortality rates in 171 countries released by a group of U.N. public health experts on Friday. The survey shows that even a developing country like South Korea is ahead of the United States.

***

Ohio, Florida Laws Could Dampen Democratic Voting

By Greg Gordon

McClatchy Newspapers

Wednesday 26 September 2007

Washington - Ohio and Florida, which provided the decisive electoral votes for President Bush’s two razor-thin national election triumphs, have enacted laws that election experts say will help Republicans impede Democratic-leaning minorities from voting in 2008.

***

GOP Says They’ll Continue Racist Voter Suppression Tactics

By Steven Rosenfeld

AlterNet

Thursday 27 September 2007

In 2004, Republicans used a Jim Crow-era tactic to target the voter registrations of a half-million likely Democratic voters - often minorities - for Election Day challenges in nine states, a national voting rights group has charged in a new report.

***

Five Myths About Sick Old Europe
By Steven Hill
The Washington Post

Sunday 07 October 2007

In the global economy, today’s winners can become tomorrow’s losers in a twinkling, and vice versa. Not so long ago, American pundits and economic analysts were snidely touting U.S. economic superiority to the “sick old man” of Europe. What a difference a few months can make. Today, with the stock market jittery over Iraq, the mortgage crisis, huge budget and trade deficits, and declining growth in productivity, investors are wringing their hands about the U.S. economy. Meanwhile, analysts point to the roaring economies of China and India as the only bright spots on the global horizon.

But what about Europe? You may be surprised to learn how our estranged transatlantic partner has been faring during these roller-coaster times - and how successfully it has been knocking down the Europessimist myths about it.

1. The sclerotic European economy is incapable of leading the world.

Who’re you calling sclerotic? The European Union’s $16 trillion economy has been quietly surging for some time and has emerged as the largest trading bloc in the world, producing nearly a third of the global economy. That’s more than the U.S. economy (27 percent) or Japan’s (9 percent). Despite all the hype, China is still an economic dwarf, accounting for less than 6 percent of the world’s economy. India is smaller still.

The European economy was never as bad as the Europessimists made it out to be. From 2000 to 2005, when the much-heralded U.S. economic recovery was being fueled by easy credit and a speculative housing market, the 15 core nations of the European Union had per capita economic growth rates equal to that of the United States. In late 2006, they surpassed us. Europe added jobs at a faster rate, had a much lower budget deficit than the United States and is now posting higher productivity gains and a $3 billion trade surplus.

2. Nobody wants to invest in European companies and economies because lack of competitiveness makes them a poor bet.

Wrong again. Between 2000 and 2005, foreign direct investment in the E.U. 15 was almost half the global total, and investment returns in Europe outperformed those in the United States. “Old Europe is an investment magnet because it is the most lucrative market in the world in which to operate,” says Dan O’Brien of the Economist. In fact, corporate America is a huge investor in Europe; U.S. companies’ affiliates in the E.U. 15 showed profits of $85 billion in 2005, far more than in any other region of the world and 26 times more than the $3.3 billion they made in China.

And forget that old canard about economic competitiveness. According to the World Economic Forum’s measure of national competitiveness, European countries took the top four spots, seven of the top 10 spots and 12 of the top 20 spots in 2006-07. The United States ranked sixth. India ranked 43rd and mainland China 54th.

3. Europe is the land of double-digit unemployment.

Not anymore. Half of the E.U. 15 nations have experienced effective full employment during this decade, and unemployment rates have been the same as or lower than the rate in the United States. Unemployment for the entire European Union, including the still-emerging nations of Central and Eastern Europe, stands at a historic low of 6.7 percent. Even France, at 8 percent, is at its lowest rate in 25 years.

That’s still higher than U.S. unemployment, which is 4.6 percent, but let’s not forget that many of the jobs created here pay low wages and include no benefits. In Europe, the jobless still have access to health care, generous replacement wages, job-retraining programs, housing subsidies and other benefits. In the United States, by contrast, the unemployed can end up destitute and marginalized.

4. The European “welfare state” hamstrings businesses and hurts the economy.

Beware of stereotypes based on ideological assumptions. As Europe’s economy has surged, it has maintained fairness and equality. Unlike in the United States, with its rampant inequality and lack of universal access to affordable health care and higher education, Europeans have harnessed their economic engine to create wealth that is broadly distributed.

Europeans still enjoy universal cradle-to-grave social benefits in many areas. They get quality health care, paid parental leave, affordable childcare, paid sick leave, free or nearly free higher education, generous retirement pensions and quality mass transit. They have an average of five weeks of paid vacation (compared with two for Americans) and a shorter work week. In some European countries, workers put in one full day less per week than Americans do, yet enjoy the same standard of living.

Europe is more of a “workfare state” than a welfare state. As one British political analyst said to me recently: “Europe doesn’t so much have a welfare society as a comprehensive system of institutions geared toward keeping everyone healthy and working.” Properly understood, Europe’s economy and social system are two halves of a well-designed “social capitalism” - an ingenious framework in which the economy finances the social system to support families and employees in an age of globalized capitalism that threatens to turn us all into internationally disposable workers. Europeans’ social system contributes to their prosperity, rather than detracting from it, and even the continent’s conservative political leaders agree that it is the best way.

5. Europe is likely to be held hostage to its dependence on Russia and the Middle East for most of its energy needs.

Crystal-ball gazing on this front is risky. Europe may rely on energy from Russia and the Middle East for some time, but it is also leading the world in reducing its energy dependence and in taking action to counteract global climate change. In March, the heads of all 27 E.U. nations agreed to make renewable energy sources 20 percent of the union’s energy mix by 2020 and to cut carbon emissions by 20 percent.

In pursuit of these goals, the continent’s landscape is slowly being transformed by high-tech windmills, massive solar arrays, tidal power stations, hydrogen fuel cells and energy-saving “green” buildings. Europe has gone high- and low-tech: It’s developing not only mass public transit and fuel-efficient vehicles but also thousands of kilometers of bicycle and pedestrian paths to be used by people of all ages. Europe’s ecological “footprint,” the amount of the Earth’s capacity that a population consumes, is about half that of the United States.

So much for the sick old man.

--------

Steven Hill, director of the New America Foundation’s political reform program, is writing a book comparing Europe and the United States.

***

Published on Monday, September 24, 2007 by The American Prospect

The Bubble Economy

The financial meltdown is the logical consequence of deregulation. Will we reverse field in time to prevent another 1929?

by Robert Kuttner

We have all been here before. _ Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young

The federal reserve is still struggling to contain what is already the most severe credit contraction since the Great Depression. Yet in all of the press coverage, commentators have scarcely acknowledged that this old-fashioned panic is a child of deregulation. During the past decade, the financial economy has repeated the excesses of the 1920s _ too much borrowing to underwrite too many speculative bets with other people’s money, too far beyond the reach of regulators, setting up the entire economy for a crash.

***

Published on Monday, August 27, 2007 by “http://select.nytimes.com/2007/08/27/opinion/27krugman.html”

A Socialist Plot

by Paul Krugman

Suppose, for a moment, that the Heritage Foundation were to put out a press release attacking the liberal view that even children whose parents could afford to send them to private school should be entitled to free government-run education.

They’d have a point: many American families with middle-class incomes do send their kids to school at public expense, so taxpayers without school-age children subsidize families that do. And the effect is to displace the private sector: if public schools weren’t available, many families would pay for private schools instead.

So let’s end this un-American system and make education what it should be - a matter of individual responsibility and private enterprise. Oh, and we shouldn’t have any government mandates that force children to get educated, either. As a Republican presidential candidate might say, the future of America’s education system lies in free-market solutions, not socialist models.

O.K., in case you’re wondering, I haven’t lost my mind, I’m drawing an analogy. The real Heritage press release, titled “The Middle-Class Welfare Kid Next Door,” is an attack on proposals to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Such an expansion, says Heritage, will “displace private insurance with government-sponsored health care coverage.”

And Rudy Giuliani’s call for “free-market solutions, not socialist models” was about health care, not education.

But thinking about how we’d react if they said the same things about education helps dispel the fog of obfuscation right-wingers use to obscure the true nature of their position on children’s health.

The truth is that there’s no difference in principle between saying that every American child is entitled to an education and saying that every American child is entitled to adequate health care. It’s just a matter of historical accident that we think of access to free K-12 education as a basic right, but consider having the government pay children’s medical bills “welfare,” with all the negative connotations that go with that term.

And conservative opposition to giving every child in this country access to health care is, in a fundamental sense, un-American.

Here’s what I mean: The great majority of Americans believe that everyone is entitled to a chance to make the most of his or her life. Even conservatives usually claim to believe that. For example, N. Gregory Mankiw, the former chairman of the Bush Council of Economic Advisers, contrasts the position of liberals, who he says believe in equality of outcomes, with that of conservatives, who he says believe that the goal of policy should be “to give everyone the same shot and not be surprised or concerned when outcomes differ wildly.”

But a child who doesn’t receive adequate health care, like a child who doesn’t receive an adequate education, doesn’t have the same shot - he or she doesn’t have the same chances in life as children who get both these things.

And insurance is crucial to receiving adequate health care. President Bush may think that lacking insurance is no problem - “I mean, people have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room” - but the reality is that the nine million children in America who don’t have health insurance often have unmet medical or dental needs, don’t have a regular place for medical care, and frequently have to delay care because of cost.

Now, the public understands the importance of health insurance, even if Mr. Bush doesn’t. According to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll, an amazing 94 percent of the public regards the fact that many children in America lack health insurance as either a “serious” or a “very serious” problem.

So how can conservatives defend the indefensible, and oppose giving children the health care they need? By trying the old welfare queen in her Cadillac strategy (albeit without the racial innuendo that made it so effective when Reagan used it). That is, to divert public sympathy from people who really need help, they’re trying to change the subject to the supposedly undeserving recipients of government aid. Hence the emphasis on the evils of “middle-class welfare.”

Proponents of an expansion of children’s health care have, as they should, responded to this strategy with facts and figures. Congressional Budget Office estimates show that S-chip expansion would, in fact, primarily benefit those who need it most: the great majority of children receiving coverage under an expanded program would otherwise have been uninsured.

But the more fundamental response should be, so what?

We offer free education, and don’t worry about middle-class families getting benefits they don’t need, because that’s the only way to ensure that every child gets an education - and giving every child a fair chance is the American way. And we should guarantee health care to every child, for the same reason.

***

Rick Jacobs

“My Children Can’t Afford Another Republican Presidency”

Posted September 24, 2007 | 04:08 PM (EST)

***

US Assets & Dollars: Falling in Favor

Max Fraad Wolff, 10.16.2007

***

Conservative Honesty

Bill Scher, 10.16.2007

***

Bush: The Destroyer of Christians

Frank Schaeffer, 10.16.2007

***

We Can Do Better Than This

Sen. Bernie Sanders, 10.16.2007

The decline of the middle class combined with growing income inequality is a national scandal -- which Congress must address.

***

Shayana Kadidal

Mukasey Will Suck (And He Hates Us)

Posted September 17, 2007 | 10:52 PM (EST

Are we the only ones who are ready to retch at the constant stream of praise for the president’s choice for attorney general?

***

“Childrens do learn,” Bush tells school kids

Wed Sep 26, 2007 1:46pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Offering a grammar lesson guaranteed to make any English teacher cringe, President George W. Bush told a group of New York school kids on Wednesday: “Childrens do learn.”

***

Published on Friday, September 21, 2007 by “http://www.reuters.com/”

Mandela Still Alive After Embarrassing Bush Remark

JOHANNESBURG - Nelson Mandela is still very much alive despite an embarrassing gaffe by U.S. President George W. Bush, who alluded to the former South African leader’s death in an attempt to explain sectarian violence in Iraq.

***

Michael Roston

Bush Claims He “Got A B In Econ 101”

September 20, 2007 11:09 AM

In a Thursday morning morning press conference at the White House, the President engaged in a little bit of grade inflation about his academic record.

“You need to talk to economists,” he answered when asked if there was a risk of recession in the US economy. “I think I got a B in Econ 101. I got an A however in keeping taxes low, and being fiscally responsible with the people’s money.”

President Bush as an undergraduate at Yale did not in fact receive a grade of B in his economics course. Bush received a grade that would correspond with a C-.

***

Published on Thursday, September 27, 2007

Bush Fiddles While World Burns

by John Atcheson

This week, Bush is hosting a global warming summit composed of the world’s sixteen largest greenhouse gas emitters. Unlike the UN meeting held earlier in the week, it is not intended to actually deal with global warming. It’s designed to kick the problem down the road to the next administration, while creating the illusion of progress - just like his Iraq policy.

***

Published on Friday, September 21, 2007 by “http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/332531_thomas21.html”

Bush Not Interested In His Report Card

by Helen Thomas

As if there were any doubt, a new book titled “Dead Certain” asserts that President Bush is deeply convinced that he did the right thing by invading Iraq. The book, by Robert Draper, national correspondent for GQ magazine, is important, as the president — who does not like to “navel gaze” — uses his interviews with the author to explain himself and some of the public perceptions of his presidency.

***

Published on Monday, September 3, 2007 by McClatchy Newspapers

Sour Americans Hungry for Change as Election Approaches

by Steven Thomma

DES MOINES, Iowa - A year before they choose a new government for the post-Bush era, Americans are desperate to change the country’s course.

According to opinion polls and interviews with political experts and voters, the U.S. population is more liberal than at any time in a generation, hungering to end the Iraq war, turn inward and use the federal government to solve problems at home.

***

Published on Tuesday, October 9, 2007 by Reuters

Scientist: Greenhouse Gas Emissions Hit Danger Mark Sooner Then Expected

by Michael Perry

SYDNEY - The global economic boom has accelerated greenhouse gas emissions to a dangerous threshold not expected for a decade and could potentially cause irreversible climate change, said one of Australia’s leading scientists.

Tim Flannery, a world recognized climate change scientist and Australian of the Year in 2007, said a U.N. international climate change report due in November will show that greenhouse gases have already reached a dangerous level.

Flannery said the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report will show that greenhouse gas in the atmosphere in mid-2005 had reached about 455 parts per million of carbon dioxide equivalent — a level not expected for another 10 years.

***

Richard M. Nixon

Presidential Nomination Acceptance Speech

Republican National Convention

Miami Beach, Florida

August 8, 1968

For 4 years this administration has had the support of the loyal opposition for the objective of seeking an honorable end to the struggle.

Never has so much military and economic and diplomatic power been used so ineffectively and if after all of this time and all of this sacrifice and all of this support there is still no end in sight then I say the time has come for the American people to turn to new leadership not tied to the mistakes and the policies of the past. That is what we ought to do America.

Look at our problems abroad. Do you realize that we face the stark truth that we are worse off in every area of the world tonight than we were ...

***

Bush Gets Away With Lies, Lies and More Lies in History-Illiterate America
By Larry Beinhart
AlterNet

Monday 27 August 2007

George Bush and other Iraq War supporters have argued that if we withdraw from Iraq the result will be like the killing fields of Cambodia - an odd comparison considering that the US has direct responsibility for that holocaust.

Here are the facts:

· The killing fields were real. The genocide against their own people was committed by the Khmer Rouge.

· The Vietnamese - the Communist Vietnamese - were the people who went in and put a stop to it.

· The United States then supported the Khmer Rouge.

Here’s how that came to happen.

The United States got involved in the war in Vietnam in an attempt to keep South Vietnam from going communist. Which it would have if nationwide elections had been held as promised.

Cambodia is next to Vietnam. It was ruled by Prince Sihanouk. He attempted to be neutral. Both sides abused that neutrality.

The North Vietnamese send arms, support and men through Cambodia on the “Ho Chi Minh Trail” to go around South Vietnamese and American forces. They also used Cambodian ports.

The United States, which was not at war with Cambodia, officially or unofficially, secretly sent armed forces into Cambodia to interrupt North Vietnamese use of that route. In 1969, Nixon began a campaign of carpet bombing sections of Cambodia. Ultimately about 750,000 Cambodians were killed by the bombings (though the numbers are hard to verify.)

In 1970, while Sihanouk was out of the country, visiting Europe, the USSR and China, Lon Nol took over the country in a right wing coup.

There are two stories about American involvement. The first is that we supported the coup, the second (in Tom Weiner’s Legacy of Ashes, The History of the CIA) is that it took the CIA and the United States by surprise. Recently declassified documents support Weiner’s view.

In either case, once Lon Nol took power, the US supported him. In return, Lon Nol ended the neutrality, closed the ports to the communists and demanded that the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese leave the country, and let US forces openly, though secretly, operate in Cambodia.

There was resistance to Lon Nol. Some of it was certainly a spontaneous matter of national sentiment. Some of it was certainly fomented by various communist interests.

Sihanouk, in China, then allied himself with the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia communists, which conferred new legitimacy on them.

Civil War broke out. Lon Nol was both corrupt and inept. In spite of American financial and military support, he lost.

America left Vietnam in 1973.

The Khmer Rouge took the capital of Cambodia in 1975. They were one of the most horrendous regimes in history. They practiced a kind of class genocide, “re-educating” and murdering anyone who educated or Westernized, as well as minority groups.

In 1978, Vietnam, by then fully Communist, invaded Cambodia to put a stop to the Khmer Rouge and drive them out. They installed a more moderate and sane regime.

The United States, the UK, and China then supported the remnants of the Khmer Rouge. With their help the conflict continued for another ten years.

When George Bush, or anyone else, uses the Cambodian holocaust as a warning of what might happen if America withdraws from Iraq, remember the facts.

1. Part of the holocaust in Cambodia is directly attributable to American bombing. The 750,000 dead. (Comparable to the number of Iraqis killed by American forces in this war.)

2. The civil war that led to the victory of the Khmer Rouge came about, at least in part, because of America’s support of Lon Nol.

3. The “enemy,” the Vietnamese Communists, were the ones who put a stop to the Khmer Rouge.

4. The United States supported the Khmer Rouge - after their murders, after the genocide. That support helped a civil war continue for another decade. More death, more destruction.

--------

Larry Beinhart is the author of Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin. His novels include Wag the Dog, on which the film was based, and The Librarian which Rolling Stone described as “John Grisham meets Jon Stewart.”

***

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/arts/stories/2007/09/02/2_EICH02.ART_ART_09-02-07_E4_Q37O8DG.html?sid=101

BOOKENDS

Desert campaign a nightmare for emperor

Sunday, September 2, 2007 3:39 AM

By Bill Eichenberger

In his introduction to Napoleon’s Egypt, historian Juan Cole writes that his new work “concerns the political, military and cultural encounter of the French and Egyptians in the late 18th century.”

The seemingly innocuous statement, it turns out, isn’t all that innocuous, because Cole has chosen one word -- encounter -- very carefully.

The French invasion and subsequent occupation of Egypt wasn’t, in Cole’s estimation, a “clash of cultures.”

“Clashes,” he argues, “are produced by struggles over power, not by cultures, which are themselves often shaped and altered by mutual interaction and conflict.”

Readers with only a passing interest in history will be familiar with Adm. Horatio Nelson’s glorious triumph against the French fleet on the Nile River, although far fewer are versed in the particulars of Napoleon’s campaign to conquer Egypt and other parts of what is now the Middle East. (Cole’s subject has long been neglected by historians.)

Relying heavily on eyewitness accounts from memoirs and letters of generals, officers, soldiers and historians, Cole follows Napoleon’s ill-advised and ill-fated excursion into the caldron of the region -- from the future emperor’s departure from France in May 1798 through his secret fleeing of Egypt in 1799. (The French army, abandoned by its leader, didn’t exit the country for two more years.)

The French, in Cole’s recounting, were breathtakingly cavalier about the entire adventure.

A combination of ignorance and arrogance led the French to billet soldiers in mosques and to destroy sacred burial grounds to complete construction projects that Napoleon ordered.

The general was fresh off military successes in Spain and Italy, and was at the helm of one of the most sophisticated and well-armed forces in the world. But he didn’t bother to bring canteens for his soldiers, who died by the hundreds (perhaps even by the thousands) marching across the desert from Alexandria to Cairo.

Cairo fell rapidly and easily (notwithstanding the soldiers who died of dehydration), but almost immediately the French were faced with a nascent insurgence. Peasants would poison water wells along their route of travel; bedouins would attack supply lines and disappear into the desert.

At the time of the French invasion, Egypt was ruled by governors (called beys) of the Ottoman Empire, and Napoleon was quick to brand the beys as rebels and single them out as thorns in France’s side.

Many French officers, according to Cole, “had so imbibed Bonaparte’s propaganda about the beys as rebels against the sultan that they could not even imagine that Muslim solidarity and fury at infidel depredations might create an anti-French jihadi movement in the Hejaz.”

As the insurgents -- of all stripes -- gained traction, French brutality increased.

“In early March, the French besieged Jaffa,” Cole writes, “and brought dishonor on French arms by the massacre they conducted there when it fell to them on the 8 March. Even worse was the execution, ordered by Bonaparte, of several thousand unarmed Ottoman prisoners of war.”

Cole tells his story through Napoleon’s official accounts as well as his personal letters. But he also tells it through the eyes of ordinary soldiers and from the point of view of Egyptians such as Sunni cleric and historian Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti.

“Napoleon had intended his own memoir of the invasion and occupation to substitute for the suppressed archive,” Cole writes of the emperor’s order to burn state papers concerning the catastrophic mission.

Yet history has a way of asserting itself, and Cole’s sources allow for a well-rounded accounting of events.

Bill Eichenberger is Dispatch book critic.

***

Arianna Huffington

New Books By Alan Greenspan and Naomi Klein: One is Prophetic, One is Pathetic

Posted September 25, 2007 | 08:50 PM (EST)

***

The Big Con: The True Story of How Washington Got Hoodwinked and Hijacked by Crackpot Economics

by: Jonathan Chait

ISBN-13/EAN: 9780618685400; $25.00

ISBN-10: 0618685405

Hardcover; 304 pages

Publication Date: 09/12/2007

Description:

A brilliantly revealing look at how a small group of economic hucksters have taken over the American political system and perverted our nation’s policies

American politics has been hijacked. Not by “neocons” or “theocons,” but by a fringe group of economic extremists obsessed with radical ideas that favor no one but themselves and their business interests. With dark and engaging wit, Jonathan Chait shows how over the last three decades these canny zealots have gamed the political system and the media so that once unthinkable policies—without a shred of academic, expert, or even popular support— now drive the American agenda, regardless of which party is in power.

Why have these ideas succeeded in Washington? How did a subset of fringe radicals take control of American policy and sell short the country’s future? And how do they continue to do so despite repeated electoral setbacks? Chait tells the outrageous and eye-opening story, expertly explaining just how politics and economics work in Washington. Through vivid portraits of self-interested politicians and pseudo-economists, and in wry analysis of their bogus theories, Chait gives us the tools to understand what’s really behind economic policy debates in Washington: a riveting drama of greed and deceit.

***

Broken Government

How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches

John W. Dean - Author

$25.95 add to cart view cart

Book: Hardcover | 6.14 x 9.25in | 352 pages | ISBN 9780670018208 | 11 Sep 2007 | Viking Adult | Adult

The former White House counsel faults Republican mismanagement for the current state of the government

John Dean has become one of the most trenchant and respected commentators on the current state of American politics and one of the most outspoken and perceptive critics of the administration of George W. Bush in his New York Times bestsellers Conservatives Without Conscience and Worse Than Watergate.

In his eighth book, Dean takes the broadest and deepest view yet of the dysfunctional chaos and institutional damage that the Republican Party and its core conservatives have inflicted on the federal government. He assesses the state of all three branches of government, tracing their decline through the presidencies of Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II. Unlike most political commentary, which is concerned with policy, Dean looks instead at process— making the case that the 2008 presidential race must confront these fundamental problems as well. Finally, he addresses the question that he is so often asked at his speaking engagements: What, if anything, can and should politically moderate citizens do to combat the extremism, authoritarianism, incompetence, and increasing focus on divisive wedge issues of so many of today’s conservative politicians?

With the Democrats now in control of both the House and Senate, the stakes for the 2008 presidential election have never been higher. This is a book for anyone who wants to return government to the spirit of the Constitution.

***

Could You Pass The New Citizenship Test?

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/national/Ten_Questions.pdf

http://www.uscis.gov/files/nativedocuments/100q.pdf

***

“All truth passes through three stages.

“First, it is ridiculed.

“Second, it is violently opposed.

“Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”

-Schopenhauer

****

11/20/07

It’s hard to ignore the unified field theory of human history as it makes us each the repository of all knowledge, experience, inspiration, and hope. That puts us between yesterday’s most famous US speech at Gettysburg and his call for a day of thanksgiving on Thursday.

Seven score and 4 years ago the first Republican praised our nation for its conception, dedication and proposition. We are now engaged is the great futile war of our last Republican. It is rather for us the living that we here highly resolve that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom—and that Democratic government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

***

Winner Of The First-Ever National Press Club Award For Humor November 19, 2007

Breaking News

Bush Issues “Thankfulness List”

Pre-Thanksgiving Radio Address

In a special pre-Thanksgiving radio address broadcast from the White House, President George W. Bush asked his fellow Americans to join him in giving thanks for the following things:

“My fellow Americans, let’s be thankful for global warming, because as these winter months approach, it makes the world such a nice, toasty place.

“Let’s be thankful for all of the food on our tables, unless some of it is from China.

“Let’s be thankful that Pakistan will have free and fair elections, and maybe someday we will, too.

“Let’s be thankful for the iPhone, except for those losers who actually paid full price for it.

“Let’s be grateful that I didn’t take out a subprime mortgage on the White House like Mr. Cheney told me to.

“Let’s be thankful that nuclear weapons haven’t fallen into the hands of the wrong people, like Nancy Pelosi or Rosie O’Donnell.

“Let’s be thankful that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s writers are on strike, and hopefully will stay that way for the rest of my term in office.

“Let’s be thankful that even though my approval numbers are falling, they’re still higher than my grades at Yale.

“Let’s be thankful that Osama bin Laden dyed his hair in his last video, because that made him look really gay.

“Let’s be thankful for Guitar Hero III, which really helps you get through those long Cabinet meetings when they’re going on and on about the economy.

“Let’s be thankful that our military commanders have nothing bad to say about the war in Iraq until after they’re retired.

“Let’s be thankful that in nine months it will be August and then I can go on summer vacation again.

“And finally, my fellow Americans, let’s be thankful that, even though Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize, I’m still a lock for the Nobel War Prize.”

Elsewhere, a new poll shows that 50% of Americans oppose issuing a driver’s license to illegal aliens, while 100% oppose issuing one to Britney Spears.

***

Winner Of The First-Ever National Press Club Award For Humor November 4, 2007

Breaking News

Bush Gives Musharraf Tips on Eliminating Democracy

‘Benefit From My Experience,’ President Tells Pakistani

In what he described as “an emergency mission to help a key ally in the war on terror,” President George W. Bush flew to Islamabad today to give General Pervez Musharraf tips on how to eliminate democracy.

Mr. Bush said he scheduled the trip just hours after General Musharraf declared a state of emergency in Pakistan and suspended elections “because when it comes to eliminating democracy, I thought my friend Pervez could benefit from my experience.”

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Mr. Bush said that while he commended General Musharraf’s impulse to eliminate democratic institutions, he felt that the military strongman was going about it the wrong way: “When you’re getting rid of democracy, the last thing you want to do is tell people you’re doing it.”

Mr. Bush said that eliminating such things as privacy, freedom of speech and the constitution had to be done “very quietly and stealthy-like.”

“If I had gone on TV one day and just ended democracy like Pervez did, I would have caught holy hell from Maureen Dowd,” Mr. Bush chuckled. “You’ve got to be crafty about these things.”

Mr. Bush chalked up Mr. Musharraf’s decision to disclose the elimination of democracy as a “beginner’s mistake,” adding, “I’ve had six-plus years of practice at this.”

He also criticized the Pakistani dictator’s firing of the chief justice of the Supreme Court: “Trust me, if you’re going to get rid of elections, a Supreme Court could come in handy.”

Elsewhere, President Bush eulogized Washoe, the chimp who had a 250-word vocabulary, issuing this official statement: “Me miss Washoe. Me sad Washoe dead.”

***

Winner Of The First-Ever National Press Club Award For Humor October 14, 2007

Breaking News

Supreme Court Gives Gore’s Nobel to Bush

Stunning Reversal for Former Veep

Just days after former Vice President Al Gore received the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts on global warming, the United States Supreme Court handed Mr. Gore a stunning reversal, stripping him of his Nobel and awarding it to President George W. Bush instead.

For Mr. Gore, who basked in the adulation of the Nobel committee and the world, the high court’s decision to give his prize to President Bush was a cruel twist of fate, to say the least.

But in a 5-4 decision, the justices made it clear that they had taken the unprecedented step of stripping Mr. Gore of his Nobel because President Bush deserved it more.

“It is true that Al Gore has done a lot of talking about global warming,” wrote Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority. “But President Bush has actually helped create global warming.”

Even as Mr. Gore was being stripped of his Nobel, he received strong words of support from Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who said that the former vice president’s Nobel win “shows that he is devoting his life to the right thing and should definitely stay the course.”

In an interview with reporters in Iowa, Sen. Clinton said that “Al Gore should remain dedicated to the cause of global climate change, at least through November of 2008.”

Sen. Clinton suggested that Mr. Gore could further research the source of global warming by immediately boarding a rocket ship to the sun.

Elsewhere, in his first major proposal on global warming, President Bush today declared war on the sun.

Elsewhere, President Bush made his first official comment on the situation in Myanmar, telling reporters, “I will support whichever side is easier to pronounce.”

***

Calling All Neocons: If Not You, then Who, If not Now, then When?

Unqualified Offerings

October 27, 2007

Notwithstanding the lavishness of the new U.S. Hilton Embassy compound in Baghdad, The State Department cannot find 50 qualified internal volunteers to staff it. So, they are going to order diplomats there, something not done since Vietnam. Cernig has some suggestions for avoiding such heavy-handed measures, namely, recruiting the patriotic neocons who know we are “winning” and that news from Iraq is mostly good.

***

***

Published on Sunday, November 18, 2007 by The Toronto Star

Invaders and Allies Ignore Iraq’s Humanitarian Crisis

by Haroon Siddiqui

Those who were most gung-ho about the invasion and occupation of Iraq have been the least helpful in mopping up the mess there. Those least enthusiastic have ended up bearing the greatest burden.

***

Ex-Commander in Iraq Cites Leadership Crisis in US

The Associated Press

Saturday 22 September 2007

Corpus Christi - Retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez said Saturday there is a “crisis in national political leadership” and that partisanship is preventing a strategy that would help the U.S. take on the threat of Islamic extremism.

***

Generals Opposing Iraq War Break With Military Tradition

By Mark Sauer

San Diego Union-Tribune

Sunday 23 September 2007

The generals acted independently, coming in their own ways to the

agonizing decision to defy military tradition and publicly criticize

the Bush administration over its conduct of the war in Iraq.

What might be called The Revolt of the Generals has rarely

happened in the nation’s history.

In op-ed pieces, interviews and TV ads, more than 20 retired U.S.

generals have broken ranks with the culture of salute and keep it in

the family. Instead, they are criticizing the commander in chief and

other top civilian leaders who led the nation into what the generals

believe is a misbegotten and tragic war.

The active-duty generals followed procedure, sending reports up

the chain of command. The retired generals beseeched old friends in

powerful positions to use their influence to bring about a change.

When their warnings were ignored, some came to believe it was

their patriotic duty to speak out, even if it meant terminating their

careers.

It was a decision none of the men approached cavalierly. Most were

political conservatives who had voted for George W. Bush and initially

favored his appointment of Donald Rumsfeld as defense secretary.

But they felt betrayed by Bush and his advisers.

***

Jeffrey Feldman

How 4 Words From Basra Will Change Everything

Posted November 17, 2007 | 11:38 AM (EST)

A recent article about British troops leaving Basra (the second largest city in Iraq) suggests that the Iraq debate is about to experience a seismic change--a shift in the way every American talks and thinks about the most pressing issue of our time.

The change can be summed up in 4 simple words:

troops leave, violence drops

As the deafening hubbub of propaganda drowns out every attempt to talk real policy change on Iraq, this simple descriptive formula--troops leave, violence drops--cuts through it all.

***

“Flawed Policy Wrapped in Illusion”

By Congressman John Murtha

Sunday 18 November 2007

Two years after calling for a redeployment of US forces from Iraq - President Bush refuses to provide the American people with a responsible exit strategy.

***

Bennet Kelley

President Bush Is Losing The Cold War Peace

Posted November 18, 2007 | 09:56 PM (EST)

History has a voice. Through its participants, monuments and anniversaries, it can both inspire and haunt us. As President Bush pushes his national security agenda on Capitol Hill, a perfect storm of anniversaries hovers over it like Banquo’s ghost asking the question of whether President Bush and his fellow travelers in Congress have squandered our victory in the Cold War by embracing the tactics of our vanquished enemy.

***

Published on Tuesday, August 28, 2007 by “http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/michael_tomasky/2007/08/sinking_ship_leaves_rat.html”

Sinking Ship Leaves Rat

by Michael Tomasky

***

Published on Sunday, September 23, 2007 by The Toronto Sun

Hired Guns, Loose Cannons

by Eric Margolis

Munich - Private armies have a very sinister reputation in

Europe. Memories still linger of Germany’s post First World War army

veterans, the Stahlhelm, and Nazi Brownshirts, who battled Communist

street toughs in Munich and Berlin.

Europeans remember Italy’s fascist Blackshirts and, most recently,

Serb neo-fascist gangs like Arkan’s Tigers and the White Eagles who

committed some of the worst atrocities in Bosnia and Kosovo.

There are 180,000 to 200,000 U.S.-paid mercenaries in Iraq _ or

“private contractors” as Washington and the U.S. media delicately call

them. They actually outnumber the 169,000 U.S. troops there. Britain

pays for another 20,000. At least half are armed fighters, the rest

support personnel and technicians. Without them, the U.S. and Britain

could not maintain their occupation of Iraq.

***

Published on Saturday, September 22, 2007 by The Nation

Blackwater: Hired Guns, Above the Law

by Jeremy Scahill

***

I May Have Gone Insane

By William Rivers Pitt

t r u t h o u t | Columnist

Wednesday 19 September 2007

It must be clearly understood, however, that I do not discount the

very real possibility that I have, finally and for all time, gone

insane because of all this. My theory is not proven beyond doubt; my

suspicions grow stronger by the hour, but I could simply be this

barking madman no longer able to recognize reality even when it is

staring me in the eye. I’m pretty sure of my footing, but the truth is

that if I did go over the high side somewhere along the line, I’d be

the last person to figure that out.

Therefore, I’m going to wrap myself in the words of F. Scott

Fitzgerald, if only to replace what once was my comforting little joke

before the metamorphosis flipped everything upside down on me. “The

test of a first-rate intelligence,” said Fitzgerald, “is the ability

to hold two opposing ideas in the mind at the same time and still

retain the ability to function.”

I make no claim to any sort of first-rate intelligence, but I’m

going to try to hold these two thoughts in my mind for as long as

possible. One thought says reality itself has been detonated with

calculated premeditation by Bush and his people. The other thought

remembers what it was like before anything like the first thought was

even remotely conceived of.

***

Published on Sunday, September 23, 2007 by the Washington Post

War Costing $720 Million Each Day, Group Says

by Kari Lydersen

CHICAGO _ The war is costing $720 million a day or $500,000 a minute, according to the American Friends Service Committee group’s analysis of the work of Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard public finance lecturer Linda J. Bilmes.

***

Report Puts Hidden War Costs at $1.6T

By JEANNINE AVERSA, AP Economics Writer

Tue Nov 13, 6:21 PM ET

WASHINGTON - The economic costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are estimated to total $1.6 trillion — roughly double the amount the White House has requested thus far, according to a new report by Democrats on Congress’ Joint Economic Committee.

***

Rep. Louise Slaughter

A Story Ignored: Body Armor Executive Indicted for Massive Fraud

Posted November 7, 2007 | 09:32 AM (EST)

Two weeks ago, I learned of the indictment of David H. Brooks, the founder and former CEO of Point Blank Solutions, Inc., and its COO Sandra Hatfield for insider trading, fraud, obstruction of justice, and tax evasion to the tune of nearly $200 million dollars.

Point Blank Solutions, Inc., formerly DHB Industries, is a leading U.S. manufacturer of body armor for our troops and law enforcement, manufacturing more than a million Interceptor body armor units that have been standard issue to our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan for the last several years.

The downfall of David H. Brooks is, at its heart, a story that combines the worst elements that have come to define the Bush administration; combining corruption reminiscent of Enron, questionable sole-source contracts awarded to companies unable to produce the lifesaving equipment need for war, and greed and excess on an unconscionable scale. The consequence of these dealings has been disastrous for our troops in harms way , too many of whom, without enough or properly manufactured body armor, ended up paying the ultimate price.

***

U.S. Plan Envisioned Nuking Iran, Syria, Libya

By Spencer Ackerman - November 5, 2007, 1:00PM

Despite years of denials, a secret planning document issued by the U.S. military’s nuclear-weapons command in 2003 ordered preparations for nuclear strikes on countries seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction, including Iran, Saddam Hussein-era Iraq, Libya and Syria.

A briefing (pdf) on the document obtained by the Federation of American Scientists, showed that the document itself was created to flesh out a 2001 Bush administration revision of long-standing nuclear-weapons policy, known as the Nuclear Posture Review.

***

Published on Monday, November 5, 2007 by “http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.tucker05nov05,0,6883863.story”

Interrogation Abuses Undercut Our Moral Authority in Eyes of World

by Cynthia Tucker

Does it matter what the rest of the world thinks of the United States? Does it matter that our recent foreign policy has frayed alliances and created enemies? Since we remain the world’s only superpower, with the biggest and best military, should we care about our reputation?

Yes, we should. Despite what Vice President Dick Cheney and neocon Norman Podhoretz think, we can’t shoot and bomb our way out of this war. While military force is sometimes an appropriate response to terrorists, the U.S. also needs to cultivate friends and admirers. Among the weapons at our disposal, soft power and the light touch are still among the most effective for keeping us safe.

That’s one of the reasons the Bush administration’s tacit support for torture is such foolish policy.

***

Published on Wednesday, November 7, 2007 by “http://www.minutemanmedia.org/SMITH%20110707.htm”

Lies Make the War Go Round

by Daniel M. Smith

Question: When is truth relative?

Answer: In war - especially counterinsurgency - always.

With photographers in tow, armed helicopters overhead, and a heavily armed escort, generals and politicians can stroll down selected streets without helmets or flak vests, declaring that security has improved.

To one battalion of the 1st Infantry Division assigned to Baghdad’s Sadiyah neighborhood, this is a lie. “The higher-ups…only go to the safe places, places with a little bit of gunfire” (Washington Post, October 27). The administration hypes these snapshots of “progress” by trumpeting the post-” troop surge” fall-off in Iraqi and coalition fatalities - which is real - but conveniently omitting the cost: some 40,000 (not 29,000) additional troops.

The very dangerous Baghdad that these 1st Division “grunts” see is a world - and 20 deaths - apart. When they arrived fourteen months ago, Sadiyah bustled with business and traffic. Today, after continuous assaults on Sunni residents by Shi’a militias and intimidation by a Shi’a police brigade, street life is largely limited to starving dogs and American patrols - reminiscent of Kipling’s refrain: “only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noon-day sun.”

The irony is that the Bush administration, like the British in World War I, did not have to get mixed up in the maze of contradictions and civil unrest that are rife in Iraq and the entire Gulf region. Introducing foreign occupation forces into the mix simply compounds the opacity of motives and alliances that, in turn, can tip the balance of power in contested areas in unpredictable ways.

***

Published on Monday, November 5, 2007 by The Guardian/UK

The Iraq War Has Become a Disaster That We Have Chosen to Forget

With the media subdued, governments have not been held to account for the biggest political calamity of our time

by Madeleine Bunting

‘You think you are innocent, but you’re not,” said the British Muslim suicide bomber in the Channel 4 television drama Britz last week. As the compelling actor Manjinder Virk recited her suicide statement to camera, she went on: thousands of women and children are dying every day in Iraq and Afghanistan, and yet the governments responsible have been returned to power.

Her assertion sticks in the mind because it goes straight to the heart of how we choose to forget, choose not to understand; and how from such choices it becomes possible to imagine our innocence.

***

Olbermann: On Waterboarding and Torture

By Keith Olbermann
MSNBC Countdown

Monday 05 November 2007

Olbermann: Bush may not observe the rules, but the country abides by them.

It is a fact startling in its cynical simplicity and it requires cynical and simple words to be properly expressed: The presidency of George W. Bush has now devolved into a criminal conspiracy to cover the ass of George W. Bush.

***

Published on Monday, September 24, 2007 by Salon.com

Turning Ahmadinejad Into Public Enemy No. 1

Demonizing the Iranian president and making his visit to New York seem

controversial is all part of the neoconservative push for yet another

war.

by Juan Cole

***

Powell: Iran Far From Having Nuke

AP | November 19, 2007 08:34 AM

Iran is far from acquiring a nuclear weapon, and despite U.S. fears about its atomic intentions, former Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday.

***

Experts: Danger of nuclear-armed Iran may be hyped

By Warren P. Strobel | McClatchy Newspapers

Posted on Sunday, November 11, 2007

WASHINGTON — A hostile country led by anti-American ideologues appears close to developing its first nuclear weapon and, as a U.S. election approaches, the president and his advisers debate a pre-emptive military strike. Newspaper columnists demand action to stop the nuclear peril.

The country was China, the year was 1963 and the president was Lyndon Baines Johnson.

Now it is Iran that is said to may be bent on acquiring nuclear arms, and President Bush who has declared that “unacceptable.” Some U.S. officials and outside commentators are again pushing for a pre-emptive attack.

But the White House and its partisans may be inflating the dangers of a nuclear-armed Iran, say experts on the Persian Gulf and nuclear deterrence. While there are dangers, they acknowledge, Iran appears to want a nuclear weapon for the same reason other countries do: to protect itself.

***

November 7, 2007

The Tunnel at the End of the Light

by Leon Hadar

The recently published memoir of the late Arthur Schlesinger, the renowned American historian and former aide to U.S. presidents, recalls that whenever officials in Washington had pointed to signs of progress toward peace in the Middle East, Israeli diplomat Abba Eban would caution them that when it comes to that part of the world, one should be reminded that “There is a tunnel at the end of the light.”

***

Veterans Without Health Care

The New York Times | Editorial

Friday 09 November 2007

Although many Americans believe that the nation’s veterans have ready access to health care, that is far from the case. A new study by researchers at the Harvard Medical School has found that millions of veterans and their dependents have no access to care in veterans’ hospitals and clinics and no health insurance to pay for care elsewhere. Their plight represents yet another failure of our disjointed health care system to provide coverage for all Americans.

The new study, published in the American Journal of Public Health, estimated that in 2004 nearly 1.8 million veterans were uninsured and unable to get care in veterans’ facilities. An additional 3.8 million members of their households faced the same predicament. All told, this group made up roughly 12 percent of the huge population of uninsured Americans.

***

Surge Seen in Number of Homeless Veterans
By Erik Eckholm
The New York Times

Thursday 08 November 2007

Washington — More than 400 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have turned up homeless, and the Veterans Affairs Department and aid groups say they are bracing for a new surge in homeless veterans in the years ahead.

***

Study: 1 Out of 4 Homeless Are Veterans

KIMBERLY HEFLING | November 7, 2007 11:24 PM EST |

WASHINGTON — Veterans make up one in four homeless people in the United States, though they are only 11 percent of the general adult population, according to a report to be released Thursday.

***

The Enemy Within: Finding American Backs to Stab

By William J. Astore

TomDispatch.com

Tuesday 06 November 2007

The world’s finest military launches a highly coordinated shock-and-awe attack that shows enormous initial progress. There’s talk of the victorious troops being home for Christmas. But the war unexpectedly drags on. As fighting persists into a third, and then a fourth year, voices are heard calling for negotiations, even “peace without victory.” Dismissing such peaceniks and critics as defeatists, a conservative and expansionist regime - led by a figurehead who often resorts to simplistic slogans and his Machiavellian sidekick who is considered the brains behind the throne - calls for one last surge to victory. Unbeknownst to the people on the home front, however, this duo has already prepared a seductive and self-exculpatory myth in case the surge fails.

The United States in 2007? No, Wilhelmine Germany in 1917 and 1918, as its military dictators, Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and his loyal second, General Erich Ludendorff, pushed Germany toward defeat and revolution in a relentless pursuit of victory in World War I. Having failed with their surge strategy on the Western Front in 1918, they nevertheless succeeded in deploying a stab-in-the-back myth, or Dolchstofllegende, that shifted blame for defeat from themselves and Rightist politicians to Social Democrats and others allegedly responsible for losing the war by their failure to support the troops at home.

The German Army knew it was militarily defeated in 1918. But this was an inconvenient truth for Hindenburg and the Right, so they crafted a new “truth”: that the troops were “unvanquished in the field.” So powerful did these words become that they would be engraved in stone on many a German war memorial.

***

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html

“It is a fascinating story and a deeply moving one. And it is a story that should make people pause and think—think not only about the Germans, but also about themselves.”

—Ernest S. Pisko, Christian Science Monitor

“Among the many books written on Germany after the collapse of Hitler’s Thousand Year Reich, this book by Milton Mayer is one of the most readable and most enlightening.”

—Hans Kohn, New York Times Book Review

“Once again the German problem is at the center of our politics. No better, or more humane, or more literate discussion of its underlying nature could be had than in this book.”

—August Heckscher, New York Herald Tribune

An excerpt from

They Thought They Were Free

The Germans, 1933-45

Milton Mayer

But Then It Was Too Late

“This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.

“The dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway. “

Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to. Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about—we were decent people—and kept us so busy with continuous changes and ‘crises’ and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the ‘national enemies,’ without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants to think?

“To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic German’ could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.

“How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men? Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice—‘Resist the beginnings’ and ‘Consider the end.’ But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings.

Pastor Niemöller spoke for the thousands and thousands of men like me when he spoke (too modestly of himself) and said that, when the Nazis attacked the Communists, he was a little uneasy, but, after all, he was not a Communist, and so he did nothing; and then they attacked the Socialists, and he was a little uneasier, but, still, he was not a Socialist, and he did nothing; and then the schools, the press, the Jews, and so on, and he was always uneasier, but still he did nothing. And then they attacked the Church, and he was a Churchman, and he did something—but then it was too late.”

“And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic.

It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.

“But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

“And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.

On this new level you live, you have been living more comfortably every day, with new morals, new principles. You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany, could not have imagined.

“Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair.

“What then? You must then shoot yourself. A few did. Or ‘adjust’ your principles. Many tried, and some, I suppose, succeeded; not I, however. Or learn to live the rest of your life with your shame. This last is the nearest there is, under the circumstances, to heroism: shame. Many Germans became this poor kind of hero, many more, I think, than the world knows or cares to know.”

“Once the war began,” my colleague continued, “resistance, protest, criticism, complaint, all carried with them a multiplied likelihood of the greatest punishment. Mere lack of enthusiasm, or failure to show it in public, was ‘defeatism.’ You assumed that there were lists of those who would be ‘dealt with’ later, after the victory. Goebbels was very clever here, too. He continually promised a ‘victory orgy’ to ‘take care of’ those who thought that their ‘treasonable attitude’ had escaped notice. And he meant it; that was not just propaganda.

***

The Federalist No. 51

The Structure of the Government Must Furnish the Proper Checks and Balances Between the Different Departments

Independent Journal

Wednesday, February 6, 1788
[James Madison]

To the People of the State of New York:

The great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.

***

Gangster Giuliani: The GOP’s Worst
By Margaret Kimberley
Black Agenda Report

Thursday 08 November 2007

If a potential Giuliani presidency in any way resembles a Giuliani mayoralty, then the country would be in for a truly awful time.

***

Jason Linkins

The Huffington Post

Fox Attacks...Decency: Network Preaches ‘Moral Values’ In Between Clips Of Soft Porn

November 8, 2007 12:29 AM

Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly has always been reliably quick to decry what he sees as a toxic American culture. Just this past Monday, O’Reilly took to the airwaves to attack the makers, and sellers, of rap music, saying, “Some very large American corporations are responsible for that corrosive entertainment.” Naturally, what was lost on O’Reilly was that some of the people he was defaming were his very own paymasters.

***

Published on Sunday, November 18, 2007 by The Independent/UK

A World Dying, but Can We Unite to Save It?

Pollution in the seas is now speeding global warming, says a devastating new climate report.

by Geoffrey Lean in Valencia

Humanity is rapidly turning the seas acid through the same pollution that causes global warming, the world’s governments and top scientists agreed yesterday. The process — thought to be the most profound change in the chemistry of the oceans for 20 million years — is expected both to disrupt the entire web of life of the oceans and to make climate change worse.

The warning is just one of a whole series of alarming conclusions in a new report published by the official Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which last month shared the Nobel Peace Prize with former US vice president Al Gore.

Drawn up by more than 2,500 of the world’s top scientists and their governments, and agreed last week by representatives of all its national governments, the report also predicts that nearly a third of the world’s species could be driven to extinction as the world warms up, and that harvests will be cut dramatically across the world.

***

STILL NOT PERSUADED ON GLOBAL CLIMATE DESTABILIZATION?

It seems obvious. Who cares whether we’re 100% certain that smoking causes lung cancer? Even if we only suspect it, shouldn’t we stop promoting it to children? But no, said the tobacco industry successfully for decades, the facts were not in.

Similarly – who cares whether we’re 100% certain that we’re poisoning our planet and headed for catastrophic climate destabilization? Even if we’re only 20% sure, shouldn’t we do all we can to clean things up and burn less fuel?

Especially when so much of what we’d need to do – like replacing our lightbulbs and driving more fuel-efficient vehicles – would cost us less, not more, and increase our national security?

***

Published on Saturday, September 22, 2007 by Inter Press Service

Canada: Losing Water Through NAFTA

by Stephen Leahy

TORONTO - Under the North American Free Trade Agreement, Canada lost

control over its energy resources. Now, with “NAFTA-plus”, it could

also lose control over its freshwater resources, say experts.

Canada’s water is on the trade negotiating table despite widespread

public opposition and assurances by Canadian political leaders, said

Adèle Hurley, director of the University of Toronto’s Programme on

Water Issues at the Munk Centre for International Studies.

***

Dean Baker |

The Social Security Scare Squad

111907

“Halloween has come and gone, but the Social Security Scare Squad (SSSS) refuses to take off their masks. This group of ghouls will not stop until they have substantially dismantled and/or privatized the nation’s most important social program.”

***

“http://ssa.gov/OACT/TR/TR07/”

“http://ssa.gov/OACT/TRSUM/trsummary.html”

“http://ssa.gov/OACT/TR/TR07/trTOC.html”

“http://ssa.gov/OACT/TR/TR07/II_conclu.html” \l “wp86802”

2007 OASDI Trustees Report

E. CONCLUSION

Social Security’s combined trust funds are projected to allow full payment of scheduled benefits until they become exhausted in 2041. At that time annual tax income to the trust funds is projected to equal about 75 percent of program costs. Separately, the OASI and DI funds are projected to have sufficient funds to pay full benefits on time until 2042 and 2026, respectively. By 2081, annual tax income is projected to be about 70 percent as large as the annual cost of the OASDI program.

***

Jeffrey Robbins

Pining for the Days of Honest Hypocrisy

Posted September 22, 2007 | 07:34 PM (EST)

I’m currently teaching a course entitled “One Nation Under God?” that

focuses on religion and politics in U.S. history.

In short, believe what you will, but under no circumstances should you

allow that line between church and state to be crossed. Today it seems

that the private religion of our leaders is paraded in public. The

irony is this leaves us even more confused about what they really

believe and to what extent it informs their politics. It is also an

open invitation for the kind of pandering that does a great disservice

to both our religion and our politics.

***

Published on Wednesday, November 7, 2007

The Legacy of Franz Jagerstatter

by John Dear

Two weeks ago, on October 26, 2007, an astonishing event happened in the Catholic Church. Anti-war hero Franz Jagerstatter was beatified, (that is, officially recognized as “blessed” by God), in the Cathedral in Linz, Austria. This event, ignored by religious and mainstream media in the U.S., was for me, one of the most political and best events in the institutional Church in recent decades, and a real sign of hope. The church was declaring publicly that nearly all Catholics of Austria and Germany, including Joseph Ratzinger, now the Pope, were wrong, that this uneducated farmer was right, and that we are all called to live and practice the radical nonviolence of the peacemaking Jesus. The political implications of this event for Catholics around the world are staggering, and very exciting.

***

sophistry

Definition: (noun) A plausible but misleading or fallacious argument

“Judgment is more than skill. It sets forth on intellectual seas beyond the shores of hard indisputable factual information.”

-Kingman Brewster, Jr.: 6/17/1919-11/8/1988, US educator and diplomat, president of Yale University (1963-77), Address at University of Exeter as US ambassador to Great Britain 26 Oct 78

Teach thy tongue to say ‘I do not know,’ and thou shalt progress.

Maimonides (Moses ben Maimon) (Rambam), 1138–1204, Jewish philosopher

****

12/7/07

More reflections on the passing days and the significant history each carries with it. From this day that will live in Infamy forever, we continue to endure an Administration that will do the same. Ironically, the day also gave birth to the best antidote for George the Godfather: Noam Chomsky, 12/7/1928- , US linguist, political analyst, author. Norman Mailer in his book Armies of the Night described him with “an air of gentle but absolute moral integrity.”

A small quote from last Saturday reminds us of the First Republican’s predicting the sorrow of the Last Republican’s 7 years of delusions and diversions.

“The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last, best hope of earth.”

Abraham Lincoln, 12/1/1862, State of the Union address

No wonder book titles like The Squandering of America are successful.

From last Friday’s birthdays, we get the clue that wisdom comes as much from the humorists as the statesmen.

Jonathan Swift, 11/30/1667 - 10/19/1745, Anglo-Irish author, satirist, his masterpiece was Gulliver’s Travels (1726), the story of a man journeying through a series of exotic places and meeting all kinds of strange creatures, including a race of miniature people, a race of giants, scholars who think so much that they constantly run into each other, immortals who can’t remember anything, wise and virtuous horses, and a disgusting race of beings called Yahoos, which he eventually realizes are humans.

Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens), 11/30/1835-4/21/1910, US writer, humorist,

“The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in Heaven.”

“Look at you in war...There has never been a just one, never an honorable one, on the part of the instigator of the war.”

David Alan Mamet, 11/30/1947- , US playwright,

“People may or may not say what they mean... but they always say something designed to get what they want.”

Sir Winston (Leonard Spencer) Churchill, 11/30/1874 - 1/24/1965, English prime minister (1940-45, 51-55), author

“The statesman who yields to war fever...is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.”

-

Monday, too, deserves to be toasted:

Joseph Conrad (Jozef Teodor Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski), 12/3/1857 - 8/3/1924, Polish born English novelist.

Colonialism and corporations represent “the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of the human conscience.”

“The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.”

“The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.”

And Wednesday also gives us its gift:

“To misuse one’s talent, to be cavalier about it, to set it aside because of fear or sloth is unpardonable.”
James Lee Burke, 12/5/1936- , mystery novelist

Otherwise, objective sources, and others, continue documenting the fallacies of the bunkered, bumbling, buffoons in the Whitewash House.

Winner Of The First-Ever National Press Club Award For Humor November 27, 2007

Breaking News

Cheney’s Doctors Detect Signs of Heart

Sudden Appearance of Major Organ Confounds Experts

In a stunning development that has confounded medical experts around the world, doctors examining Vice President Dick Cheney said today that they have detected signs of a heart.

The vice president was rushed to the hospital over the weekend after complaining of chest pains, but no one in Mr. Cheney’s inner circle suspected that a human heart was the cause.

“We had been operating under the assumption that he didn’t have one,” said chief of staff David Addington, who said that Mr. Cheney also has not had a soul since 1995, when it was purchased by the Halliburton Company.

At George Washington University Hospital, doctors struggled to contain their excitement about what appeared to be the medical anomaly of the century: the sudden appearance of a human heart in a 66-year-old man.

“It is too early to say conclusively,” said Dr. Carol Foyler, head of the team of doctors who examined the vice president. “But so far the beating and pumping sounds we are hearing in the vice president’s chest cavity are very much consistent with his having a heart.”

Dr. Foyler stressed that if the sounds emanating from Mr. Cheney’s chest are those of a human heart, “This will contradict everything we thought we knew about Dick Cheney.”

At the White House, spokesperson Dana Perino said that the sudden appearance of a heart in Dick Cheney’s chest had motivated President Bush to schedule an MRI of his head.

Elsewhere, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass) said that writing his memoirs would be “challenging,” adding, “I can’t even remember what I did last night.”

***

Winner Of The First-Ever National Press Club Award For Humor December 2, 2007

Breaking News

Huckabee Chooses Jesus as Running Mate

Move to Shore Up Evangelical Base

In a bold move that could dramatically alter the playing field of the 2008 G.O.P. presidential race, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee today named Jesus Christ as his vice-presidential running mate.

Governor Huckabee has made an increasing number of comments about his relationship with Jesus in recent debates, but few Republican insiders expected him to announce that he was anointing Christ as his vice-presidential pick.

“This could be huge for Huckabee,” said Stenson Partridge, a veteran G.O.P. consultant. “Among Republican voters, Jesus Christ is even more popular than Ronald Reagan.”

The Reverend Pat Robertson, a supporter of former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, said he was “blindsided” by the news of Huckabee’s decision: “I talked to Jesus last night and He didn’t mention anything about it.”

At a raucous Huckabee rally in Davenport, Iowa today, supporters of the former Arkansas governor could be seen holding signs reading “HUCKABEE/CHRIST ’08.”

It is “highly unorthodox” for a presidential candidate to select a vice presidential running mate who is a prominent figure in the Holy Bible, says Davis Logsdon, dean of the School of Divinity at the University of Minnesota.

But according to Mr. Logsdon, if the Huckabee-Christ ticket makes it all the way to the White House, it could be historic in more ways than one: “If Huckabee is elected and then something happens to him while in office, we would be looking at our first Jewish president.”

***

Winner Of The First-Ever National Press Club Award For Humor December 4, 2007

Breaking News

Kim Jong-Il Kicks Iran out of Axis of Evil

Nukeless Nation ‘Not Evil Enough,’ Says Korean Madman

One day after a National Intelligence Estimate revealed that Iran halted its nuclear arms program in 2003, North Korean president Kim Jong-Il ejected Iran from the Axis of Evil, calling them “not evil enough.”

A visibly furious Kim called a press conference in Pyongyang today to excoriate the Iranians as “evildoer wannabes” and “pussies.”

“I can’t tell you how many times Mahmoud Ahmadinejad looked me in the eye, told me he was developing nuclear weapons, and cackled like a madman,” Kim said. “That man does not deserve to cackle.”

Kim added that when Iran was admitted into the Axis of Evil in 2002, “they knew the rules: no nukes, no membership.”

The National Intelligence Estimate, Kim said, showed that Iran was not holding up their end of the bargain: “They said they were enriching uranium and all the while they were going all Libya on my ass.”

In the first step towards formally removing Iran from the evil organization, the North Korean strongman said he was “un-inviting” Mr. Ahmadinejad from the Axis of Evil’s winter golf outing in Scottsdale, Arizona.

In a terse statement from Mr. Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president said he would agree not to attend the outing but wanted his deposit back.

As for who would take Iran’s place in the Axis of Evil, Kim said there was no shortage of candidates: “Right now we’re looking at Venezuela, Syria, and Rupert Murdoch.”

***

58 Percent of Military Families Want Troops Home Within a Year

120707

Faye Fiore reports for The Los Angeles Times, “Families with ties to the military, long a reliable source of support for wartime presidents, disapprove of President Bush and his handling of the war in Iraq, with a majority concluding the invasion was not worth it, a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll has found.”

***

Our Troops Must Leave Iraq

120407

Walter Cronkite and David Krieger say: “The American people no longer support the war in Iraq. The war is being carried on by a stubborn president who, like Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon during the Vietnam War, does not want to lose. But from the beginning this has been an ill-considered and poorly prosecuted war that, like the Vietnam War, has diminished respect for America.”

***

$1 Billion in Military Equipment Missing in Iraq

120607

Laura Strickler, CBS News, “Tractor trailers, tank recovery vehicles, crates of machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades are just a sampling of more than $1 billion in unaccounted-for military equipment and services provided to the Iraqi security forces, according to a new report issued today by the Pentagon Inspector General and obtained exclusively by the CBS News investigative unit.”

***

Nonstop Theft and Bribery Are Staggering Iraq

120207

Damien Cave reports in Sunday’s New York Times that there is a growing sense that Iraq has slipped to new depths of lawlessness as “Some American officials estimate that as much as a third of what they spend on Iraqi contracts and grants ends up unaccounted for or stolen, with a portion going to Shiite or Sunni militias.”

***

Iraq, Now and Forever

120407

Bob Hebert writes for The New York Times: “Most of the time we pretend it’s not there: The staggering financial cost of the war in Iraq, which continues to soar, unchecked, like a rocket headed toward the moon and beyond. Early last year, the Nobel-Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz estimated that the “true” cost of the war would ultimately exceed $1 trillion, and maybe even $2 trillion. Incredibly, that estimate may have been low.”

A report prepared for the Democratic majority on the Joint

Economic Committee of the House and Senate warns that without a

significant change of course in Iraq, the long-term cost of the wars

in Iraq and Afghanistan could head into the vicinity of $3.5 trillion.

The vast majority of those expenses would be for Iraq.

Priorities don’t get much more twisted. A country that can’t find

the money to provide health coverage for its children, or to rebuild

the city of New Orleans, or to create a first-class public school

system, is flushing whole generations worth of cash into the

bottomless pit of a failed and endless war.

“The No. 1 reason that the war in Iraq should end,” said Senator

Charles Schumer, chairman of the joint committee, “is the loss of life

that is occurring without accomplishing any of the goals that even

President Bush put forward.”

But “right below that,” he said, is the need to stop squandering

incredible amounts of money that could be put to better use - helping

to “make people’s lives better” - here at home. That colossal and

continuing waste, he said, “should cause anxiety in anyone who cares

about the future of this country. I know it causes me anxiety.”

***

Rudd Pledges to Withdraw Australian Troops From Iraq

The Guardian UK: “Australia’s incoming prime minister, Kevin Rudd, today pledged to withdraw the country’s 550 combat troops from Iraq by the middle of next year.”

***

Iraqi Lawmakers Protest US Guards

113007

Ann M. Simmons reports for The Los Angeles Times, “Dozens of Iraqi lawmakers walked out of parliament Wednesday to protest what they view as overly aggressive and humiliating treatment by US soldiers as representatives enter Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, where the legislature is located.”

***

Published on Monday, December 3, 2007

Operation Iraqi Freedom Exposed: Bush Negotiates Permanent Presence in Iraq

by Marjorie Cohn

The revelation that Bush will sign an agreement for a permanent U.S.

military presence in Iraq before his term is up confirms the real

reason he invaded Iraq and changed its regime.

It was never about weapons of mass destruction. It was never about

ties between Saddam and al Qaeda. And it was never about bringing

democracy to the Iraqi people. These claims were lies to cover up the

real motive for Operation Iraqi Freedom: to create a permanent

American presence in Iraq. With Bush’s November 26, 2007 announcement

that the United States and Iraq were negotiating a permanent “security

relationship,” his lies have been exposed.

This isn’t the first time Bush has tried to turn Iraq into an

investment haven for U.S. oil companies. He used to tout the “Iraqi

oil law,” which would transfer control of three-quarters of Iraq’s oil

to foreign companies, as the benchmark for Iraqi progress.

***

Published on Tuesday, November 27, 2007 by USA Today

McClellan Admission Evokes Memories of Nixon Era

by DeWayne Wickham

This trail is starting to look familiar. When an excerpt from the

soon-to-be-released book by former presidential press secretary Scott

McClellan revealed that President Bush and Vice President Cheney

instructed him to tell journalists that top White House aides played

no role in the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson, I had an eerie feeling

that the nation had been down this path before.

In discussing a 2003 press briefing during which he told reporters

that Karl Rove, the president’s political adviser, and Lewis “Scooter”

Libby, Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, had nothing to do with

the leak, McClellan says he was misled.”There was one problem,” he

wrote of what he told journalists that day. “It was not true. I had

unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the

highest-ranking officials in the administration were involved in my

doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice president, the president’s chief of

staff (Andrew Card) and the president himself,” McClellan writes.

***

Paul Abrams

Rove: “Congress Pushed Bush to War in Iraq Prematurely”

Posted November 25, 2007 | 08:56 PM (EST)

You are not going to believe this, well, actually you will...

According to Karl Rove (on Charlie Rose), the Bush Administration did

not want Congress to vote on the Iraq War resolution in the fall of

2002, because they thought it should not be done within the context of

an election. Rove, you see, did not think the war vote should be

“political”.

Moreover, according to Rove, that “premature vote” led to many of the

problems that cropped up in the Iraq War. Had Congress not pushed, he

says, Bush could have spent more time assembling a coalition, and

provided more time to the inspectors.

If you are like me, you have stopped reading/listening, and are

rushing to get your anti-emetic.

Rove’s history of dissembling is reflected in the Bush Administration’s entire approach to public policy and public information. Bush, through Rove, should be attacked for trying to escape responsibility and

accountability. And, it would help to make some historical references

to rulers whose tenure was so dismal that they could not allow

historians to provide objective analyses, and thus try to write the

history themselves.

As might have been predicted, Rove raises “historical revisionism” to

new depths, what may become known as “hysterical Rovisionism.”

***

Arianna Huffington

Karl Rove’s Shameless, Remorseless, Soulless Attempt to Rewrite History

Posted November 28, 2007 | 12:50 PM (EST)

I went on Countdown last night to talk about what Keith Olbermann

called Karl Rove’s “attack on history.”

During an interview with Charlie Rose, the erstwhile Boy Genius pulled

out his bucket of whitewash and audaciously claimed that “one of the

untold stories” about the war in Iraq is that the Bush administration

had been “opposed’ to Congress holding the vote authorizing the

president to use military force in Iraq just a few weeks prior to the

2002 elections because “we thought it made it too political.”

Too political? For Karl Rove? That’s like saying something was too

bloody for Count Dracula.

It was a satiric tour de force worthy of Jonathan Swift or Stephen

Colbert -- but Rove wasn’t joking. He actually expected us to buy his

load of b.s. Watching Rove, two things were perfectly clear: his

disdain for the truth and his contempt for the American people know no

bounds.

Rove’s appearance was the work of a shameless, remorseless, soulless

political animal taking the first steps on what will no doubt be a

high profile and lucrative march toward historical revisionism. He

knows that he stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the fanatics

responsible for the worst foreign policy disaster in American history

-- not exactly the best thing to put on your post-government resume --

so he is hell-bent on replacing reality with the latest incarnation of

The Big Lie.

The evidence that it was President Bush and Vice President Cheney --

and not Congress -- who were hungry for war is overwhelming. For

starters, we have Bush’s own words before the vote, when he explicitly

told Congress that “it’s in our national interest” to get the vote

“done as quickly as possible.” And the insistence of then-Secretary of

Defense Rumsfeld that “delaying a vote in Congress would send the

wrong message.” And the words of then-Senate Majority Leader Tom

Daschle who says that when he asked Bush in September 2002 why there

was such a rush for a vote on Iraq the president “looked at Cheney and

he looked at me, and there was a half-smile on his face. And he said:

‘We just have to do this now.’”

And there is the insider evidence provided by Richard Clarke, who

wrote that within hours of the 9/11 attacks, this administration had

its heart set on heading into Iraq. And from Paul O’Neill, who made it

clear that invading Iraq had been Bush’s goal before he had even

learned where the Oval Office supply closet was.

Let’s remember, this was the time when the administration had pulled

together the White House Study Group (which included Rove himself)

with the express mission of marketing the war. These people weren’t in

the mood to wait, they were in the mood to sell, sell, sell. The

Downing Street Memo showed that by July of 2002 they were already

fixing the intel to sell the war. By August 2002 the White House was

already using Judy Miller and the New York Times as prime advertising

space. And by September 2002, Condi Rice was already warning of

smoking guns turning out to be mushroom clouds, and Cheney was using

aluminum tubes to make the case that Saddam was “actively and

aggressively seeking to acquire nuclear weapons.”

So the record is irrefutable: the drumbeat of war coming from the

White House couldn’t have been louder. And no amount of 5-years-down

the road spinning by Karl Rove is going to change that truth

***

Bloggers Index

December 03, 2007

Things Karl Rove Just Remembered

Sean Carman

1. President Bush never wanted to invade Iraq. He was forced into it

by that paragon of indomitable political power, the

Democratically-controlled Senate.

2. The Civil War was instigated by the North, to impose an

industrialized economy on the South’s happily slave-based agrarian

one.

3. Watergate was invented by the liberal media as retaliation for the

great success of Nixon’s law and order presidency.

4. By campaigning to establish the League of Nations, President

Woodrow Wilson caused the onset of World War II.

5. If Strom Thurmond had won on the segregationist Dixiecrat ticket,

we wouldn’t have had all of these problems we’ve had over the years.

6. America won the Vietnam War.

7. Putting a man on the moon was Richard Nixon’s idea.

8. John F. Kennedy’s presidency is mainly remembered for the doom and

gloom of Kennedy’s hopeless vision for America.

9. In the 1960s, joy and artistic creativity died a quiet death in

America, especially at the failed “Woodstock” outdoor rock concert.

10. Slaves on southern plantations greatly appreciated their

subjugated state, because it provided a roof over their heads and

three meals a day.

***

David Fiderer

Chris Matthews Rewrites History about the Clintons and the Origins of

the Iraq War

Posted December 3, 2007 | 12:16 PM (EST)

On last Wednesday’s Hardball, Chris Matthews asked a rhetorical

question that no one answered. So I will.

“I don’t remember him speaking out against the war back

in 2001, 2002 and 2003, do you?”

I sure do. A few minutes on a fee-based search engine jogged my

memory. Here are few clippings:

“Clinton Splits With Bush on Iraq,” The Washington Post March 13, 2003

“Former president Bill Clinton, who has generally supported the Bush

administration’s Iraq policy in recent remarks, called on his

successor yesterday to accept a more relaxed timeline in exchange for

support from a majority of the United Nations Security Council

members. ..[T]he former president has publicly espoused an approach

substantially different from the administration’s public stance.”

“Deadline for war - Give the inspectors more time, urges Clinton” The

Daily Telegraph March 13, 2003 “Bill Clinton yesterday urged the Bush

administration to give Hans Blix as much time as he wants to complete

weapons inspections in Iraq. The former president broke ranks with his

successor...Mr Clinton said war might yet be avoided if Saddam Hussein

were given more time to disarm. “

“Clinton recommends U.S. patience on Iraq,” Reuters, February 11,

2003. “Former U.S. President Bill Clinton said in an interview

broadcast on Tuesday the United States should exercise patience in its

standoff with Iraq to help build allied support for a potential

strike.”

Hardball, February 12, 2003,when Chris Matthews asks “Christopher

Hitchens, are you upset that President Clinton has emerged as a critic

and perhaps a mild-mannered critic of the policy of this

administration on the eve of war?”

Let me spell it out for anyone who doesn’t get it. If you say the

country should not go to war until certain conditions are met, or if

you say there is insufficient basis for going to war, then you are

against going to war. (Nobody is ever indifferent). This concept holds

true if you’re referring to war with Iraq, Iran or Mexico. Bill

Clinton’s position, which was identical to that of Hans Blix, was that

we should exhaust all opportunities for inspections prior to any

military action. And if, five days before the invasion, Clinton said

that we should proceed with inspections and diplomacy instead of

artillery fire, then he was against the war from “the beginning.” It’s

the simplest type of syllogism.

In order to make Senator Clinton look dishonest,

Matthews and Kornblut bypass the text of the resolution, which imposed

certain conditions prior to any military action - conditions Bush

subsequently ignored. Matthews and Kornblut buy into the Republican

narrative - that our knowledge about the WMD threat and Bush’s

intentions never really changed between October 2002 and March 2003.

Both of these phony implications - “If you voted for the resolution,

you voted to go to war” or “We all relied on faulty intelligence.” -

are commonplace deceptions used by Republicans, along with the

Washington press corps, to evade culpability. It’s time to set the

record straight.

On October 11, 2002, the day Hillary Clinton and others in the Senate

voted on the Iraq war resolution, certain things were known, and other

things were not known.

On October 11, 2002, everyone knew:

1. The text of the resolution, which stated that prior to any military

action the President must first determine that reliance on peaceful

means will not protect the security of the US, or enforcement of UN

Security Council Resolutions,

2. The US and its allies were negotiating a UN Security Council

resolution to compel new intrusive inspections in Iraq,

3. The publicly disclosed Key Judgments from the National Intelligence

Estimate, and

4. That the neocons were talking about regime change and disparaging

the idea of inspections.

On October 11, 2002 almost no one knew:

5. The extent to which George Bush was or was not bluffing about regime change,

6. That Colin Powell’s power and authority would be neutralized by

Cheney and Rumsfeld,

7. The extent to which Cheney and Rumsfeld had short-circuited the

institutional integrity of the Pentagon and the CIA, and

8. The extent to which the NIE was based on cooked intelligence

In other words, almost no one knew the extent to which the Bush

administration was undercutting all of our administrative and

constitutional checks and balances. Even today, we don’t know the

extent of it.

So on October 11, 2002, almost no one could be expected to foresee that:

9. Bush would flagrantly abuse the discretion afforded him under terms

of the joint resolution, specifically, his refusal to attempt to

reconcile the inspectors’ intelligence with the NIE, prior to the

invasion, and

10. That Bush’s agreement to proceed with the inspections process was

a sham from the beginning.

And what was Hillary Clinton in the months after her vote?

“Hillary Clinton tells Irish TV she is against war with Iraq,” Irish

Times, February 8, 2003

“Hillary Clinton prefers ‘peaceful solution’ in Iraq,” Associated

Press March 3, 2003

“[Clinton said the US] should continue its attempts to build an

international alliance rather than going to war quickly with

Iraq...[I]nspection is preferable to war, if it works, the New York

Democrat said.”

On March 18, 2003, everyone (who was willing to look) knew with

substantial certainty that:

11. UN inspections had discredited the NIE,

12. The White House made no effort to reconcile the inspectors

findings with their prior intelligence assumptions,

13. The White House offered nothing substantive to refute the

inspectors’ findings,

14. Hans Blix said the inspectors, who found nothing that presented

even a remote danger to the US or Europe, could complete their work in

a matter of months,

15. George Bush had promised to call for another Security Council vote

to invade, and (”Everyone will show their cards,”) and totally

disregarded that promise a few days later,

16. Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and others said their

was insufficient basis for launching a war at that time

17. Most of our allies were - including Britain - also advocating more

time for the inspections to be completed, and

18. And that mainstream media never seriously considered or reported

Numbers 11 through 16 above.

Put another way, Number 18 meant that, at a time in the world when a

journalist’s professionalism and integrity counted most, Helen Thomas

stood virtually alone in the Beltway press corps, courageously asking

hard questions while surrounded by cowards. Tim Russert’s sycophancy

stands out because he repeatedly lied about the inspectors.

To this day, Chris Matthews forgets about the elephant in the room. He

interviewed White House speech writer Michael Gerson, John McCain, and

George Tenet, each of whom repeated the canard that they believed at

the time of the invasion that Saddam had WMD. Matthews never

referenced the reports by Blix and ElBaradei, which prove that their

“beliefs” were based on a reckless indifference to the truth.

When interviewing Tenet on May 7, 2007 Matthews said,

“Most Americans were for this war for two reasons: one, payback -- it

was even in our country music, ‘Remember How You Felt?’ -- and the

fear of a nuclear weapon, that they actually had a delivery system,

this balsam wood plan they were going to use to bring over here and

attack us with.”

And you know why they believed that? Because Chris Matthews and

glossed over information that put us all on notice. On March 7, 2003,

ElBaradei said, “The IAEA has yet to come across evidence of a nuclear

weapons program. “After three months of intrusive inspections, we have

to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a

nuclear weapons program in Iraq.”“

We knew enough on March 7, 2003, months before Joe Wilson spoke out or

David Kay’s inspectors began snooping around. You know why we knew?

Because the administration offered nothing in rebuttal and because

their reliance on such a crude forgery showed that they were

incompetent. It’s plain common sense which Matthews and others failed

to consider then or now.

To bring things back full circle, Bill Clinton made a comment that was

90% accurate, Hillary Clinton made comments that were 100% accurate,

yet they are accused by the media chronically feeding us doubletalk.

Arianna and Keith Olbermann perfectly dissected Karl Rove’s

transparent and ugly lies about the beginning of the Iraq war. But at

the end of the day, it’s the historical whitewashing by Chris Matthews

and Tom Brokaw that poses a far greater danger to our political

discourse. Not because it maligns the Clintons, but because it

obstructs our ability to look at cause and effect or any individual’s

responsibility. And because it remains the conventional wisdom.

***

Michael Vlahos
Fighting Identity: Why We Are Losing Our Wars

Posted November 25, 2007 | 10:30 PM (EST)

***

Sam Stein

White House Obstructing Plame Investigation

December 3, 2007 11:11 AM

The Bush Administration is actively blocking Congress’ investigation

into the outing of once-covert CIA agent Valerie Plame, according to

House Oversight Committee chairman Henry Waxman.

***

Manual Details Abuses of Guantanamo Detainees

120407

The Washington Post’s Josh White reports: “As the Supreme Court prepares to hear arguments this week on the rights of enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the public is getting another peek at how detainees have been treated there.”

***

Tribunal Rejected Intelligence on Detainee

120507

Carol D. Leonnig, of The Washington Post, writes: “Just months after US Army troops whisked a German man from Pakistan to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2002, his American captors concluded that he was not a terrorist. ‘USA considers Murat Kurnaz’s innocence to be proven,’ a German intelligence officer wrote that year in a memo to his colleagues. ‘He is to be released in approximately six to eight weeks.’ But the 19-year-old student was not freed.”

***

The President’s Cynical Budget War

120607

The New York Times: “President Bush’s lame-duck attempt to repair the Republican Party’s threadbare fiscal reputation is an increasingly reckless game. In the latest exercise of irresponsibility for political gain, Mr. Bush reportedly wants to slash counterterrorism funding for front-line police and firefighters.”

***

Bush, While Citing Threats, to Cut Anti-Terror Funds

120107

The Associated Press has obtained budget documents which show that the Bush administration intends to drastically cut funding for counterterrorism operations across the country. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-California) criticized the plan, saying that “This administration runs around the country scaring people and then when it comes to putting their money where their mouth is, they say ‘sorry, the bank is closed.’”

***

Published on Tuesday, November 27, 2007 by Inter Press Service

Political Hacks Find Ascendency In Bush’s Iraq

No Second Acts, Except in Iraq

by Bill Berkowitz

Given the Bush administration’s penchant for cronyism _ rewarding

partisan political operatives with political appointments _ it was not

surprising to see Manuel Miranda reappear. What was surprising _

particularly to several Democratic senators _ is that despite his

unsavoury record regarding democratic practices, and once having been

characterised as having “one foot in the political graveyard”, Miranda

is now the director of the Office of Legislative Statecraft at the

U.S. Embassy in Iraq.

His work includes giving instruction on democratic principles to Iraqi

lawyers and lawmakers.

Miranda, who worked as judicial-nominations counsel for then-Senate

Majority Leader Bill Frist, was “forced from his job in early 2004

after an internal Senate investigation determined he and a junior aide

had swiped 4,670 documents, memos and e-mails” from Democratic Party

staffers, the Washington Post recently reported.

While acknowledging the operation, Miranda insisted that he had broken

no laws because the committee had no internal password protection at

the time when he looked through and printed out other aides’

electronic files.

Although Miranda’s charge in Iraq appears rather nebulous, he has in

the past shown a well-honed disregard for democratic principles and

practices. A veteran of the Karl Rove school of slash and burn

politics, Miranda’s back-story doesn’t bode well for Iraq’s troubled

legal system.

Bill Berkowitz is a longtime observer of the conservative movement.

His column “Conservative Watch” documents the strategies, players,

institutions, victories and defeats of the U.S. Right.

***

White House Invokes Secrecy in Abramoff Lawsuits

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Pete Yost, reporting for The Associated Press, says that “The Bush administration is laying out a new secrecy defense in an effort to end a court battle about the White House visits of now-imprisoned lobbyist Jack Abramoff. In a court filing Friday night ... the Justice Department, citing a Cold War-era court ruling, declared that the contents of the ‘Sensitive Security Records’ cannot be publicly revealed even though they could show whether Abramoff made more visits to the White House than those already acknowledged.”

***

Published on Monday, December 3, 2007

Fact-Based Intelligence Prevails on Nukes and Iran

by Ray McGovern

An honest National Intelligence Estimate (NIE)(.pdf file) on Iran’s

nuclear program has been issued and its Key Judgments were made

public. The main points of the NIE:

“We judge that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program_”

“We assess with moderate confidence Tehran has not restarted its

nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007.”

“We do not have sufficient intelligence to judge confidently whether

Tehran is willing to maintain the halt of its nuclear weapons program

indefinitely_”

“We judge with moderate confidence Iran probably would be technically

capable of producing enough highly enriched uranium sometime during

the 2010-2015 time frame.”

“We judge with high confidence that Iran will not be technically

capable of producing and reprocessing enough plutonium for a weapon

before about 2015.”

Having reached these conclusions, it is not surprising that the NIE’s

authors make a point of saying up front (in bold type) “This NIE does

not (italics in original) assume that Iran intends to acquire nuclear

weapons.”

This, of course, pulls out the rug from under Cheney’s claim of a

“fairly robust new nuclear program” in Iran, and President Bush’s

inaccurate assertion that Iranian leaders have even admitted they are

developing nuclear weapons.

Apparently, intelligence community analysts are no longer required to

produce the faith-based intelligence that brought us the Oct. 1, 2002

NIE “Iraq’s Continuing Program for Weapons of Mass Destruction” _ the

worst in the history of U.S. intelligence.

***

Matt Littman

Did President Bush Threaten World War III Knowing Iran Had Halted Its

Nuke Program?

Posted December 4, 2007 | 01:03 PM (EST)

Politicians choose their words carefully. Bill Clinton’s famous

concern for the definition of “is” stands as but one example.

At a press conference on October 17th, President Bush said, “I’ve told

people that if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems

like you ought to be interested in preventing (Iran) from having the

knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.”

At the time, that seemed the oddest choice of words: “the knowledge

necessary to make a nuclear weapon.”

Were we going to attack Iran if they knew how to make a nuke, rather

than if they had built and were prepared to use it?

That seems a pretty low bar. Why such a low bar?

Now, we may know why the President set such a low threshold for

starting a war. He may have already known that Iran halted its nuclear

weapons program four years ago.

Did he know? Did he threaten Iran while keeping this information a

secret from us?

***

Lionel Beehner
Bush Still Bending the Truth about Iran

Posted December 4, 2007 | 11:58 AM (EST)

In President Bush’s press conference on Iran today, he said the

turning point in recent U.S.-Iranian relations was the election of

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the summer of 2005. I beg to differ.

Let’s review Iranian actions up until that election. After 9/11, the

Ayatollah condemned the attacks and candlelit vigils broke out in

Tehran. After the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan toppled the Taliban

government, American and Iranian diplomats met together in Bonn, with

a handful of representatives from other UN members, to form a new

government and constitution for Kabul. “None was more [helpful] than

the Iranians,” said James Dobbins, the American special envoy to

Afghanistan at the time, writing in the Washington Post . “The

original version of the Bonn agreement ... neglected to mention either

democracy or the war on terrorism. It was the Iranian representative

who spotted these omissions and successfully urged that the newly

emerging Afghan government be required to commit to both.”

Iran also cooperated with the United Nations to repatriate nearly one

million Afghan refugees residing on its soil and--working with United

States, Russia, and India--provided support to the Northern Alliance.

As Flynt Leverett of the Brookings Institution told the Council on

Foreign Relations, “I think at least some Iranian officials were

hoping [this] could get leveraged into a broader strategic dialogue,

but that channel was effectively foreclosed when President Bush in his

2002 State of the Union address labeled Iran as part of the ‘Axis of

Evil.’”

An overture from Iran for comprehensive bilateral talks, reportedly

signed off at the highest levels of government, was offered to U.S.

officials in May 2003 shortly after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Some experts say the proposal, conveyed via a Swiss emissary, amounted

to a “grand bargain” that would have included offers of negotiations

over Iran’s support for terrorist organizations and recognizing

Israel’s right to exist. During recent congressional hearings,

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she did not “remember ever

seeing any such thing” as national security adviser, her position at

the time of the overture. But former Deputy Secretary of State Richard

L. Armitage recently told Newsweek that it appeared at the time that

the Iranians “were trying to put too much on the table” for serious

negotiations to occur.

In other words, contrary to President Bush’s claim, the White House

rebuffed Iran’s advances pre-Ahmadinejad to let bygones be bygones

and, like Libya, start a new relationship based on cooperation rather

than conflict. The question is: Why? And did Bush’s “axis of evil”

speech and subsequent rebuff of Iranian hand maybe hasten the election

of a hardliner like Ahmadinejad? We may never know. But interestingly,

the following year, outgoing Secretary of State Colin Powell met with

Iran’s foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi, in November at an

international conference on Iraq at the Red Sea resort of Sharm

el-Sheikh. Nothing of substance was reportedly discussed as Powell was

seen by the Iranians as a lame duck with no real power. Yet Powell

predicted then that normal U.S.-Iranian relations would be restored

“in due course.” Not so long as this administration continues to

manipulate intelligence and fashion its foreign policy based on

hyped-up predictions of a nuclear-armed Iran bent on terrorizing the

rest of the world.

***

Intelligence Community Learned From Iraq Debacle

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Melvin A. Goodman writes for The Baltimore Sun: “The current estimate should enable congressional leaders to be more courageous in defeating any measure that argues the case for military action against Iran based on a nuclear weapons program that was stopped four years ago. The estimate puts the US intelligence community in line with the official views of European and Russian leaders, as well as with international arms inspectors.”

***

Bush May Still Bomb Iran, Despite NIE

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Matthew Rothschild writes for The Progressive, “When the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran came out earlier this week, a lot of people jumped to the conclusion that Cheney and the hardliners have lost, and so we can all breathe a sigh of relief. Well, I’m not exhaling at the moment.”

***

Bush Goes Private to Spy on You

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Bush administration to launch new government agency that will rely on private contractors for domestic surveillance. Tim Shorrock reports for CorpWatch, “A new intelligence institution to be inaugurated soon by the Bush administration will allow government spying agencies to conduct broad surveillance and reconnaissance inside the United States for the first time.”

***

Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act: A Tutorial in Orwellian Newspeak

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“Political language has to consist largely of euphemisms ... and sheer

cloudy vagueness.”

- George Orwell

Robert Weitzel says, “HR 1955: the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 recently passed by the House, a companion bill is in the Senate, is barely one sentence old before its Orwellian moment: It begins, ‘AN ACT - To prevent homegrown terrorism, and for other purposes.’”

Those whose pulse did not quicken at “other purposes” have

probably not read George Orwell’s essay, “Politics and the English

Language,” or they voted for the other George both times.

Orwell’s jeremiad on the corruption of the English language and

its corrosive effect on a democracy was written two years before his

novel “1984” spelled out in chilling detail the danger of Newspeak,

which renders citizens incapable of independent thought by depriving

them of the words necessary to form ideas other than those promulgated

by the state.

In the service of some self-serving “other purposes,” will

“extremist beliefs” become any belief the temporary occupants of the

White House consider antithetical and threatening to their political

agenda?

***

Published on Monday, November 19, 2007 by The Baltimore Sun

Here Come the Thought Police

by Ralph E. Shaffer and R. William Robinson

With overwhelming bipartisan support, Rep. Jane Harman’s “Violent

Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act” passed the

House 404-6 late last month and now rests in Sen. Joe Lieberman’s

Homeland Security Committee. Swift Senate passage appears certain.

Not since the “Patriot Act” of 2001 has any bill so threatened our

constitutionally guaranteed rights.

The historian Henry Steele Commager, denouncing President John Adams’

suppression of free speech in the 1790s, argued that the Bill of

Rights was not written to protect government from dissenters but to

provide a legal means for citizens to oppose a government they didn’t

trust. Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence not only

proclaimed the right to dissent but declared it a people’s duty, under

certain conditions, to alter or abolish their government.

In that vein, diverse groups vigorously oppose Ms. Harman’s effort to

stifle dissent. Unfortunately, the mainstream press and leading

presidential candidates remain silent.

***

Waxman, Mukasey and Ten Million Missing Emails

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Matt Renner reports: “a government watchdog group now says that ten to twenty million White House emails which may contain information about the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson’s covert CIA status, have been destroyed by the Bush administration. In a report from April, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) detailed a massive hole in the White House email records. The report, titled ‘Without a Trace: The Missing White House Emails and the Violations of the Presidential Records Act,’ accused the Bush administration of destroying ‘more than 5 million’ emails and failing to attempt to recover them.”

***

Published on Sunday, December 2, 2007 by The Sunday Times/UK

US Says It Has Right to Kidnap British Citizens

by David Leppard

AMERICA has told Britain that it can “kidnap” British citizens if they

are wanted for crimes in the United States.

***

Published on Tuesday, November 27, 2007 by Rocky Mountain News (Colorado)

Tom Tancredo, America’s Worst Congressman

by Paul Campos

America’s worst congressman, Tom Tancredo, caused quite a stir

recently when he aired a television ad for his presidential campaign.

The ad features a man in a hooded sweatshirt detonating a backpack

bomb in a shopping mall, then cuts to scenes of carnage from terrorist

attacks in Europe.

“I approve this message because someone needs to say it,” Tancredo

announces. You’ll get no politically correct mealy-mouthed

prevaricating from Tancredo. If you’re looking for some good

old-fashioned nativist fearmongering, he’s your man, or more precisely

your GOP presidential candidate.

***

Published on Sunday, December 2, 2007 by The Daily Camera (Boulder, Colorado)

Endangered Truth: Exposing the Administration’s Lies on Science

by Clay Evans

It’s long been a right-wing canard that the federal Endangered Species

Act is, if you’ll pardon the term, a political animal. Wacko

environmentalists, the theory goes, just want to steal land out from

under honest, hard-working Americans, and they use the existence of,

say, the piebald socialist toad (Namus madeupicus) to accomplish their

nefarious purpose.

Well, everything is political - just not always in the way you might expect.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reversed a handful of

rulings that denied endangered-species protection after an

investigation found that a former Bush administration official, Julie

McDonald, pressured scientists to change their conclusions for

political reasons.

McDonald, who served as the deputy assistant secretary overseeing the

agency, resigned in May. Without naming McDonald, the investigation

found that the decisions had been “inappropriately influenced _

revising the seven identified decisions is supported by scientific

evidence and the proper legal standards.”

***

Business Lobby Presses Agenda Before ‘08 Vote

120207

Robert Pear of The New York Times reports: “Business lobbyists, nervously anticipating Democratic gains in next year’s elections, are racing to secure final approval for a wide range of health, safety, labor and economic rules, in the belief that they can get better deals from the Bush administration than from its successor.”

***

Published on Monday, December 3, 2007 by The New York Times

Innovating Our Way to Financial Crisis

by Paul Krugman

The financial crisis that began late last summer, then took a brief

vacation in September and October, is back with a vengeance.

How bad is it? Well, I’ve never seen financial insiders this spooked -

not even during the Asian crisis of 1997-98, when economic dominoes

seemed to be falling all around the world.

This time, market players seem truly horrified - because they’ve

suddenly realized that they don’t understand the complex financial

system they created.

***

Published on Monday, December 3, 2007

Cut the Corporate Welfare Umbilical Cord

by Ralph Nader

Large bundles of home mortgages are bundled into securities which are

then transformed into even more abstract and complex risk packages.

The greater the risk that these packaged securities entail, the

greater the profits.

Until, that is, the deck of cards start falling to real ground, which

is what began to happen this year, and next year will be worse in both

these key sectors of the economy, with its overall effect on the

general economy.

In the meantime, the muscle of the financial industry’s lobby is

making sure no regulatory framework passes Congress or even is given

no-holds-barred public hearings in the Senate and the House.

The sheer arrogance of this financial business suckled by government

dispensed welfare is not restricted to the U.S.

Let’s drop the enduring myth that these big time, very well-paid

speculators are free-wheeling capitalists broadening markets for

low-income people. They are wasters of capital (largely using other

people’s money as with worker pension funds.) not their own stakes.

Such even wilder speculation, generated through even more complex

speculative instruments in a super-sonic computer age, will continue

until people, who pay the final bills, organize as voters and

consumers to make their supreme government cut the corporate welfare

umbilical cord that extends from Washington, DC to Wall Street.

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His most

recent book is The Seventeen Traditions...

The seventeen lessons cover listening, family table, health, history,

scarcity, equality, education, discipline, simple enjoyments,

reciprocity, independent thinking, charity, work, business,

patriotism, solitude, and civics.

***

National Debt Grows $1 Million a Minute

120307

The Associated Press reports: “like a ticking time bomb, the national debt is an explosion waiting to happen. It’s expanding by about $1.4 billion a day - or nearly $1 million a minute. What’s that mean to you? It means almost $30,000 in debt for each man, woman, child and infant in the United States.”

Even if you’ve escaped the recent housing and credit crunches and are

coping with rising fuel prices, you may still be headed for economic

misery, along with the rest of the country. That’s because the

government is fast straining resources needed to meet interest

payments on the national debt, which stands at a mind-numbing $9.13

trillion.

And like homeowners who took out adjustable-rate mortgages, the

government faces the prospect of seeing this debt _ now at relatively

low interest rates _ rolling over to higher rates, multiplying the

financial pain.

So long as somebody is willing to keep loaning the U.S. government

money, the debt is largely out of sight, out of mind.

A major economic slowdown, as some economists suggest may be looming,

could hasten the day of reckoning.

The national debt _ the total accumulation of annual budget deficits _

is up from $5.7 trillion when President Bush took office in January

2001 and it will top $10 trillion sometime right before or right after

he leaves in January 2009.

Some economists liken the government’s plight to consumers who spent

like there was no tomorrow _ only to find themselves maxed out on

credit cards and having a hard time keeping up with rising interest

payments.

“The government is in the same predicament as the average homeowner

who took out an adjustable mortgage,” said Stanley Collender, a former

congressional budget analyst and now managing director at Qorvis

Communications, a business consulting firm.

“The first day the Chinese or the Japanese or the Saudis say, ‘we’ve

bought enough of your paper,’ then the debt _ whatever level it is at

that point _ becomes unmanageable,” said Collender.

A recent comment by a Chinese lawmaker suggesting the country should

buy more euros instead of dollars helped send the Dow Jones plunging

more than 300 points.

The dollar is down about 35% since the end of 2001 against a basket of

major currencies.

Foreign governments and investors now hold some $2.23 trillion _ or

about 44% _ of all publicly held U.S. debt. That’s up 9.5% from a year

earlier.

“The basic facts are a matter of arithmetic, not ideology,” said

Robert L. Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a

bipartisan group that advocates eliminating federal deficits.

There’s little dispute that current fiscal policies are unsustainable,

he said. “Yet too few of our elected leaders in Washington are willing

to acknowledge the seriousness of the long-term fiscal problem and

even fewer are willing to put it on the political agenda.”

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com, said, “We’re

going to have to shell out a lot of resources to make those

interest payments. There’s a very strong argument as to why it’s vital

that we address our budget issues before they get measurably worse,”

Zandi said.

“Of course, that’s not going to happen until after the next president

is in the White House,” he added.

***

Published on Saturday, November 17, 2007 by The Ms. Foundation for Women

Words Matter: What the McCain Debacle Reveals about Politics in ‘08

by Sara K. Gould

It’s all too familiar. At a campaign event on Tuesday, a woman in the audience stood up and asked Senator John McCain, “How do we beat the bitch?”

Laughter ensued…

A man in the audience said, “I thought she was talking about my ex-wife.”

More laughter ensued…

And Senator McCain said, “That’s an excellent question.”

That’s right. A woman presidential candidate is referred to as a bitch and it’s an excellent question.

***

Rambo and the GOP

By Bob Herbert

The New York Times

Saturday 01 December 2007

I don’t know if children should be allowed to watch the Republican

presidential debates.

There’s so much talk of violence and mayhem as the solution to our

ills. The candidates seem so eager to flex their muscles and engage

the nation in conflict: Let’s continue the war in Iraq. Let’s show

them what we’re made of in Iran. Let’s round up those immigrants and

ship ‘em back where they came from.

It’s like watching adolescent boys playing the ultimate video

game, with no regard for the consequences. Rudy, the crime-fighter and

terror maven, says he’s tougher than Mitt, who actually had illegals

working on his property. Mitt begs to differ and says he’d like to

double the size of the Guantánamo prison.

Are we electing a president or a sheriff?

Republicans, far more than the Democrats, go out of

their way to present themselves as 21st-century Rambos - a childish,

cartoonish posture that solves nothing and can easily lead to tragedy

in a world that is in fact quite dangerous.

***

Republicans Form a New Plot to Rig the 2008 Election

By Johann Hari

Seattle Post-Intelegencer

Friday 30 November 2007

In the long, hot autumn of 2000, the world was shocked by the

contempt for democracy shown by the Republican Party. They knew their

man had lost the popular vote to Al Gore by half a million votes. They

knew the majority of voters in Florida itself had pulled a lever for

Gore. But they fought - amid the confetti of hanging chads - to stop

the state’s votes being counted, and to ensure that the Supreme Court

imposed George W. Bush on the nation.

Today, that contempt for democracy is on display again. In

California right now, there is a naked, out-in-the-open ploy to rig

the 2008 presidential election - and it may succeed.

***

Rick Jacobs

CBS News Catches Republicans in Dirty Trick

Posted December 4, 2007 | 12:37 AM (EST)

CBS Weekend News broadcast a solid view of desperate Republicans who

know that they cannot win the 2008 presidential election unless they

resort to dirty tricks. As I have written here since August,

Republican operatives, many with ties to Rudolph Giuliani, have been

attempting to place on the June 2008 California primary ballot an

initiative that would change the way electoral college votes are

allocated from the traditional “winner take all,” to a proportional

system that allocates electoral college votes by congressional

district.

***

Forget the Green Technology - the Hot Money Is in Guns

113007

Naomi Klein writes for The Guardian UK: “why is ‘homeland security’, not green energy, the hot new sector? Perhaps because there are two distinct business models that can respond to our climate and energy crisis. We can develop policies and technologies to get us off this disastrous course. Or we can develop policies and technologies to protect us from those we have enraged through resource wars and displaced through climate change, while simultaneously shielding ourselves from the worst of both war and weather.”

***

Bill Curry

Fiddling as the Planet Warms

Posted December 3, 2007 | 11:00 AM (EST)

Ten years ago I got caught unaware during a TV debate on global

warming. Midway through the show, the industry funded science denier I

was debating unveiled a new argument. It was so daft I mistook it for

a joke, thus appearing disrespectful when I meant to be congenial;

proof again you can’t be too careful on TV.

The global warming debate was already a decade old then. In 1988 the

UN had drawn worldwide attention to it by forming the

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (IPCC) Many scientists were

skeptical but as data poured in the doubters dwindled to a lonely but

well heeled band, mostly in the pay of the oil and gas crowd.

At first they claimed global warming wasn’t real. Later they switched

to saying it’s real, but it isn’t man made. By the time of our debate

they were testing a bold, new pitch: Global warming -- it’s real, it’s

man made... and it’s good for you! As I said, the first time I heard

it I laughed.

I still hear global warming may improve life for those shoveling too

much snow; that it will cut heating bills and extend growing seasons.

I wonder: when we achieve the world’s longest growing season, will we

be acing out Sudan or Chad? I love sunshine as much as the next guy,

but it’s a lot less useful absent water and topsoil.

The energy industry’s most effective argument is that moving to

renewable energy hurts our economy. It’s a lie. The short term

transition cost is well below even the medium term cost of our

continued denial.

The move to sustainable economics is the greatest revolution since the

industrial age, far surpassing the impact of the more celebrated

information technology boom. We profited handsomely by leading the

last change. We’ll pay as dearly for lagging behind this one.

If you can’t see the lost opportunity cost, then simply consider the

rising price of oil or the potential price of terrorist attacks. This

much must be clear: the fight against global warming and the fights

for energy independence and national security are one fight.

By around 2000 the energy industry was running out of bad arguments.

It must have seemed a real Deus ex Machina when the Supreme Court

appointed George Bush president. Who but he -- and maybe Cheney -- had

the courage to get to the root of their problem (the facts) by letting

industry lobbyists rewrite science in official government reports?

All the propaganda and official deception has put the country in a

trance. At the Stop and Shop recently a man told me only bureaucrats,

not scientists, believe in global warming, and that he likes his

truck. Nothing like an informed citizenry. I silently saluted Bush and

Rush and Fox and Mobil for all their fine work.

***

Published on Tuesday, November 27, 2007 by Reuters

World Must Fix Climate In Less Than 10 Years: UN

by Raymond Colitt

BRASILIA - Unless the international community agrees to cut carbon

emissions by half over the next generation, climate change is likely

to cause large-scale human and economic setbacks and irreversible

ecological catastrophes, a United Nations report says on Tuesday. The

U.N. Human Development Report issues one of the strongest warnings yet

of the lasting impact of climate change on living standards and a

strong call for urgent collective action.

***

Scientists Beg for Climate Action

120607

The Associated Press’ Seth Borenstein reports, “For the first time, more than 200 of the world’s leading climate scientists, losing their patience, urged government leaders to take radical action to slow global warming because ‘there is no time to lose.’”

***

Germany Takes Dramatic Step on Climate Change

120507

Mariah Blake, The Christian Science Monitor, says, “This week, delegates from more than 180 countries are gathered in Bali for a United Nations-sponsored conference, where they will try to hash out a road map for a post-Kyoto climate treaty. Meanwhile, Germany is forging ahead and adopting what experts here say is the most comprehensive climate-protection package ever enacted worldwide.”

***

AN ENERGY SOLUTION

Here’s something interesting: In 1900, the American industry was able

to deliver electricity with 6% efficiency. Meaning that 94% of the

theoretical energy that could be derived from burning fuel was lost

along the way. This being America, we got better at it every year.

By the end of the Eisenhower administration, in 1959, efficiency had

climbed to 32%. Two-thirds of the energy potential was still being

wasted, but it was still an awful lot better than it had been, and the

upward trend was inexorable.

Except that then it stopped. As my friend Tom Casten asks - his

Recycled Energy Development group recently raised $1.5 billion - “Can

anyone name another industry still operating at 1959 efficiencies?

Does any other industry throw away two thirds of its raw materials?”

Moreover, energy recycling belies the claims of those who insist we

can’t do anything about climate change without wrecking the economy.

As energy efficiency rises, costs fall, resulting in a bigger bang for

the energy consumer’s buck.

Sound too good to be true? Tell that to Denmark, which produces more

than 55 percent of its power capacity through energy recycling. The

U.S. rate, by contrast, languishes in the single digits. As a result,

we use more than twice as much energy to produce a dollar of GDP as

Denmark does.

***

Doctors Endorse Single-Payer

120507

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Stacey Burling reports: “The Philadelphia-based American College of Physicians - the nation’s second-largest physician group - endorsed a single-payer health-care system yesterday.”

***

Estimate of AIDS Cases in US Rises

120307

David Brown, The Washington Post, writes: “New government estimates of the number of Americans who become infected with the AIDS virus each year are 50 percent higher than previous calculations suggested, sources said yesterday.”

“Only the grand scale and technocratic impersonality of the crimes conceived and directed by the ruling elite acting under cover of state authority distinguish them from garden variety killers.”

-Darrell Hamamoto

“The corporations don’t have to lobby the government any more. They are the government.”

-Jim Hightower

“Political discussion in the United States is usually restricted to the moderate to conservative range that precludes discussion of class conflict. If “class warfare” is mentioned, it is because a conservative wants to suggest that certain matters should be kept off-limits in American political discussion”

-Steve Brouwer

“And in the general hardening of outlook that set in … practices which had been long abandoned - imprisonment without trial, the use of war prisoners as slaves, public executions, torture to extract confessions … and the deportation of whole populations - not only became common again, but were tolerated and even defended by people who considered themselves enlightened and progressive.”

-George Orwell, 1984

“Americans cannot escape a certain responsibility for what is done in our name around the world. In a democracy, even one as corrupted as ours, ultimate authority rests with the people. We empower the government with our votes, finance it with our taxes, bolster it with our silent acquiescence. If we are passive in the face of America’s official actions overseas, we in effect endorse them.”

Mark Hertzgaard

“Television is to news what bumperstickers are to philosophy.”

Richard Milhous Nixon, 1/9/1913 - 4/22/1994, 37th president of the United States (1969-74)

“Human beings are the only creatures who are able to behave irrationally in the name of reason.”

-(Montague Francis) Ashley Montagu (Israel Ehrenberg), 1905–99, British-US anthropologist, NY Times 30 Sep 75

The love of truth lies at the root of much humor.

-Robertson William Davies, 8/28/1913- 12/2/1995, Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist

Mistakes are costly and somebody must pay. The time to correct a mistake is before it is made. The causes of mistakes are first, “I didn’t know”; second, “I didn’t think”, and third “I didn’t care.”

--Henry H. Buckley

“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?”

- Mahatma (Mohandras Karamchand) Gandhi, 10/2/1869 - 1/30/1948, Indian Hindu political, spiritual leader

The time has come to stop beating our heads against stone walls under the illusion that we have been appointed policeman to the human race.

-Walter Lippmann, 9/23/1889 - 12/14/1974, US newspaper commentator, author

I didn’t have a clue how some folks’ minds could think something, with plenty of evidence around to show them wrong.

Suzanne Fisher Staples, 8/27/1945- , US author, Dangerous Skies

While the spoken word can travel faster, you can’t take it home in your hand. Only the written word can be absorbed wholly at the convenience of the reader.

-Kingman Brewster, Jr.: 6/17/1919-11/8/1988, US educator, diplomat, Yale University President (1963-77)

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

-Joseph (Iosif Alexandrovich) Brodsky, 5/24/1940-1/28/1996, Russian-born U.S. poet, Nobel Prize winner, 5th Poet Laureate

A map is a representation of knowledge, an archival device, a dream, an idea, an action, an emblem of human endeavor. It instigates adventure and encompasses the entirety of what is beheld.

Vincent Virga, Cartographia

Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.

-Percy Bysshe Shelley, 8/4/1792 - 7/8/1822, English Romantic poet

****

12/14/2007

Who originated the “Betrayus” line? Of course, your good buddy Rush!

As Media Matters for America has documented, Limbaugh denounced as “contemptible” and “indecent” MoveOn.org’s much-discussed advertisement -- titled “General Petraeus or General Betray Us?” -- critical of Gen. David Petraeus, but has repeatedly attacked the patriotism of those with whom he disagrees. For instance, on the January 25, 2007 broadcast of his radio show, he told his audience that he had a new name for Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE), a Vietnam veteran: “Senator Betrayus.”

More news for inquiring minds... looks like he’ll notch 4000 before Christmas!

Published on Wednesday, December 12, 2007 by “http://bangornews.com/news/t/viewpoints.aspx?articleid=157638&zoneid=117”

One Man’s Misjudgment, America’s Sour Legacy

by Pat LaMarche

Last week, I met a really smart guy who served as a Marine. Now a civilian, but forever a Marine, he sees the Iraq war as a corruption of reality simply to serve the personal desires of a failed man.

He felt that our man in charge made us believe that Sept. 11 changed things. He said that the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon hadn’t changed the United States any more than Pearl Harbor had. We’re the biggest and the strongest; we should expect to be attacked. But we should be better prepared to fend off those attacks before they happen.

I haven’t stop thinking about his words, not just because I agree that we had our guard down, but because he mentioned the possibility of a solitary incident changing us. Certainly, in the face of great trial, societies can react well or badly. We can rise to Everest-like heights by employing our strengths or sink to hell-scraping depths by wallowing in our defects.

Our country didn’t change after Pearl Harbor. We merely embraced our finest qualities: courage and a love for justice and for one another. We had a leader who saw the goodness in us and encouraged our considerable strengths and unparalleled bravery. He said that we had “nothing to fear, but fear itself.”

After the Sept. 11 attacks, while an entire globe wept on our behalf, our leader told us to quit crying and go shopping. He told us that evil lurked at every turn and we needed to be afraid. He abandoned righteousness and got us to agree that his enemy would do. He set down the mantle of justice and picked up the cluster bomb of vengeance. He employed rumor, innuendo and groundless arguments to entice us to replace centuries of unwavering courage with baseless fear.

Sept. 11 didn’t change us - but we are changed. Embracing our fear changed us. And we have paid for the change with the lives of nearly 4,000 loyal soldiers and countless foreign civilians.

***

Freedom Lost

121307

Mark Lattimer, The Guardian UK: “After the invasion of Iraq, the US government claimed that women there had ‘new rights and new hopes.’ In fact their lives have become immeasurably worse, with rapes, burnings and murders now a daily occurrence.”

***

Will Iraq’s Great Awakening Lead to a Nightmare?

121207

Retired Army Colonel, Douglas Macgregor, writes from Mother Jones: “American casualties in Iraq have declined dramatically over the last 90 days to levels not seen since 2006, and the White House has attributed the decline to the surge of 35-40,000 U.S. combat troops. But a closer look suggests a different explanation.”

***

Published on Tuesday, December 11, 2007 by “http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/Opinion/Columnists/Essays/colESSAY121107.htm”

Spinning Yarns of ‘Good News’

by Pierre Tristam

When Kuwait was liberated in 1991 — a strange concept, Kuwait having been free neither before being invaded by Iraq nor since — its citizens lined up in the streets of their capital and waved thousands of American flags as troops drove by. “Did you ever stop to wonder,” a man called John Rendon proudly asked during a speech to a government agency, “how the people of Kuwait City, after being held hostage for seven long and painful months, were able to get hand-held American and, for that matter, the flags of other coalition countries?” He answered his own question: “That was one of my jobs then.”

The first Bush administration hired Rendon to produce the television show known as the first Gulf War. With the Rendon Group, his public relations firm, Rendon won multimillion dollar contracts to make the American occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan look good, and do the same on behalf of the Afghan and Iraqi governments. Propaganda has been a lucrative business in these wars. It gave us such classics as the fabricated toppling of Saddam’s statue in Baghdad early in the war, the taxpayer-supported Pentagon effort to plant positive stories in the Iraqi press, and the more recent miniseries about the successes of the American “surge.”

The propaganda controls are clearly in effective hands today. There’s been no need, as there is in more discriminating Iraq, to plant positive stories in the domestic press. For the most part the mainstream news media here seem as willing as they were in 2003 to buy the Bush administration’s latest recasting of the Iraqi catastrophe as a country on the mend. But caveats grow as lush as date palm in Iraq. Here’s this season’s crop.

· Al-Qaida was routed. Not exactly. The semimythical invention of “al-Qaida in Mesopotamia” was never a force as potent as its Iraqi enemies. One thing Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis agree on is rejection of foreign meddling, be it bin Laden’s or Bush’s. Iraqis reviled al-Qaida before the invasion and had no connection to Sept. 11. They revile al-Qaida more today, now that Bush’s invasion made its brand of terrorism possible on Iraqi soil. Absent American troops, ironically, al-Qaida would have faced an unrestrained assault from Shiite and Sunni militants, to whom tribe comes before religion, and religion before caliphate.

That’s just as true in the rest of the Arab world. A Brookings Institution survey of Arab opinion in six countries last year showed bin Laden’s popularity never breaking 5 percent. Bin Laden’s popularity in the Middle East is itself an invention, convenient to the Bush administration’s offensive posture there, inconvenient to Arabs who must pay its price. Bin Laden is the Arab world’s Timothy McVeigh, a fringe loon, but one lucky enough to be constantly revalidated by Bush’s monomaniacal war on Islamowhatever.

· Refugees are coming back. The return of 25,000 refugees from abroad, out of a total of 2 million, is deceptive. News reports have generally neglected to mention that Syria, where most of Iraq’s refugees have gone, shut its door to them two months ago and is now requiring refugees already there to apply for visas — through the Syrian embassy in Baghdad. In other words, Syria is booting them out.

· Our friends the Sunnis. The Bush administration says the new alliance with former Sunni insurgents is a benefit of the surge’s supposed rout of al-Qaida. But those Sunni insurgents had themselves began routing al-Qaida before their alliances with American troops, and well before the “surge” peaked. The Pentagon reversed the chronology to make itself appear as the new strategy’s broker — and to obscure the deeper reason the Bush administration is aligning itself with Sunnis anew. Osama or a free Iraq are not it.

· Our former friends the Shiites. Southern Iraq is already a fiefdom under the control of Muqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite who got rid of most of the British presence and is biding his time before being rid of the American. Sunnis dread a Shiite take-over unrestrained by American occupation. So does Bush, because so do oil-rich Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the Emirates, where militant, resentful Islam is the shifty sands under those authoritarian, unelected, lavishly corrupt and American-backed sheikdoms. In Iraq, the Bush administration is rediscovering that a Sunni-dominated authoritarian regime wasn’t such a bad thing after all. Lacking that, Sunnis as a proxy force against Shiite hegemony will have to do.

Peace isn’t breaking out in Iraq. A colder, longer war is. It’s further miring the United States in the shards of the Sunni-Shiite divide. And it’s confirming once again in Arab eyes that America’s end game is control of the Middle East’s authoritarian houses of cards. If Enron were an emirate, Bush would be its principal shareholder right now, with America’s foreign policy as collateral.

Pierre Tristam is a News-Journal editorial writer. Reach him at “mailto:ptristam@att.net” or through his personal Web site at “http://www.pierretristam.com/”.

11 Comments so far

andersdl December 11th, 2007 12:33 pm

Take note students: If you want a successful career in poltics, forget the political science major. Major in drama instead.

purvis ames December 11th, 2007 12:39 pm

Hey, what are you talking about? The war is over. Everyone in Iraq is lining up at their local Starbuck’s to read the Arabic version of the Washington Times. So put on a happy face.

tumbleweed December 11th, 2007 12:56 pm

And they wonder why any intelligent American doesn’t listen to Bush??????? Why he has lost every ounce of credibility he ever had. Most of the above I had already guessed at from his previous actions. It doesn’t take a genius to read between the lines just a brain.

luckylefty December 11th, 2007 12:58 pm

We drank the Kool-Aid, we hugged the tar-baby and now we are in Br’er Rabbit’s briar patch but we ain’t Br’er Rabbit. This time we’re going to bleed.

Peace.

balakirev December 11th, 2007 1:20 pm

The surge was mostly a propaganda ploy for US consumption.

The Bush administration wants to continue funding, backing the expansion of the executive and, last, it wants the US public to buy into the neocon notion that there is a military solution to all social and diplomatic problems, including terrorism.

Of course, the US military focuses on terrorism being something other than what it is: a political weapon.

frank1569 December 11th, 2007 3:17 pm

New Orleans is back in business! The surge-calation was a huge success! Afghanistan is growing more weed than ever! Some dude actually agreed to wed one of the Loonitary Decider’s daughters - in spite of the long, twisted history of family mental illnesses!

Freedom’s Happ’n!

Bill from Saginaw December 11th, 2007 3:36 pm

The surge was entirely a propaganda ploy for US consumption.

When confronted with widespread rejection of his Iraq war policies by the American public, loss of the GOP’s control of the legislative branch in the ‘06 elections, and the Baker-Hamilton group’s call for major policy reevaluation, Bush responded by doubling down his bet and escalating the US military presence rather than even hinting that withdrawal was an option on his watch.

In your face. And it worked.

By signaling up front to all the world that the troop strength increase and accompanying counterinsurgency tactic shift plan would take three months to build up, six months to execute, and then three more months to evaluate, Bush bought himself another year to run out the clock. Because everybody knew it was temporary, each of the competing Iraqi militias, political parties, tribes, and sectarian factions (both inside and outside of the Maliki regime) temporarily took some time out to regroup, recruit, and reorganize themselves, in anticipation of the post-surge phase of the insurgency and civil war that would surely follow.

No big surprise then that statistically, the reported violence scaled back. And by simultaneously arming, paying, and legitimizing some selected (formerly hostile) Sunni tribal militias, the Anbar Awakening was ballyhooed as evidence that yes Virginia, there is light at the end of the tunnel.

I highly recommend the December issue of Mother Jones, particularly an article by Richard Dreyfuss, for a comprehensive breakdown of what the four major post-American withdrawal scenarios are for Iraq, and how Bush’s current policies (including the surge) buy short term benefit at the expense of a worsened long term end result.

From deploring all militias and calling upon them all to disarm, US policy has truly reversed itself a full 180 degrees in the last year, with scarcely a comment in the mainstream press. By aligning with Shiite and Sunni militias alike, look out for the crossfire, or worse.

Bill from Saginaw

***

Published on Tuesday, December 11, 2007 by “http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article3241904.ece”

Only One Thing Unites Iraq: Hatred of the US
The Americans will discover, as the British learned to their cost in Basra, that they have few permanent allies

by Patrick Cockburn

***

“Neocon Job”
By Keith Olbermann
MSNBC Countdown

Thursday 06 December 2007

Full text of Keith’s Special Comment

Finally, as promised, a Special Comment about the president’s cataclysmic deception about Iran.

There are few choices more terrifying than the one Mr. Bush has left us with tonight.

We have either a president who is too dishonest to restrain himself from invoking World War Three about Iran at least six weeks after he had to have known that the analogy would be fantastic, irresponsible hyperbole - or we have a president too transcendently stupid not to have asked - at what now appears to have been a series of opportunities to do so - whether the fairy tales he either created or was fed, were still even remotely plausible.

A pathological presidential liar, or an idiot-in-chief. It is the nightmare scenario of political science fiction: A critical juncture in our history and, contained in either answer, a president manifestly unfit to serve, and behind him in the vice presidency: an unapologetic war-monger who has long been seeing a world visible only to himself.

After Ms. Perino’s announcement from the White House late last night, the timeline is inescapable and clear.

In August the president was told by his hand-picked Major Domo of intelligence Mike McConnell, a flinty, high-strung-looking, worrying-warrior who will always see more clouds than silver linings, that what “everybody thought” about Iran might be, in essence, crap.

Yet on October 17th the President said of Iran and its president Ahmadinejad:

“I’ve told people that if you’re interested in avoiding World War Three, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge to make a nuclear weapon.”

And as he said that, Mr. Bush knew that at bare minimum there was a strong chance that his rhetoric was nothing more than words with which to scare the Iranians.

Or was it, Sir, to scare the Americans?

Does Iran not really fit into the equation here? Have you just scribbled it into the fill-in-the-blank on the same template you used, to scare us about Iraq?

In August, any commander-in-chief still able-minded or uncorrupted or both, Sir, would have invoked the quality the job most requires: mental flexibility.

A bright man, or an honest man, would have realized no later than the McConnell briefing that the only true danger about Iran was the damage that could be done by an unhinged, irrational Chicken Little of a president, shooting his mouth off, backed up by only his own hysteria and his own delusions of omniscience.

Not Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mr. Bush.

The Chicken Little of presidents is the one, Sir, that you see in the mirror.

And the mind reels at the thought of a vice president fully briefed on the revised Intel as long as two weeks ago - briefed on the fact that Iran abandoned its pursuit of this imminent threat four years ago - who never bothered to mention it to his boss.

It is nearly forgotten today, but throughout much of Ronald Reagan’s presidency it was widely believed that he was little more than a front-man for some never-viewed, behind-the-scenes, string-puller.

Today, as evidenced by this latest remarkable, historic malfeasance, it is inescapable, that Dick Cheney is either this president’s evil ventriloquist, or he thinks he is.

What servant of any of the 42 previous presidents could possibly withhold information of this urgency and gravity, and wind up back at his desk the next morning, instead of winding up before a Congressional investigation - or a criminal one?

Mr. Bush - if you can still hear us - if you did not previously agree to this scenario in which Dick Cheney is the actual detective and you’re Remington Steele - you must disenthrall yourself: Mr. Cheney has usurped your constitutional powers, cut you out of the information loop, and led you down the path to an unprecedented presidency in which the facts are optional, the Intel is valued less than the hunch, and the assistant runs the store.

The problem is, Sir, your assistant is robbing you - and your country - blind.

Not merely in monetary terms, Mr. Bush, but more importantly of the traditions and righteousness for which we have stood, at great risk, for centuries: Honesty, Law, Moral Force.

Mr. Cheney has helped, Sir, to make your Administration into the kind our ancestors saw in the 1860’s and 1870’s and 1880’s - the ones that abandoned Reconstruction, and sent this country marching backwards into the pit of American Apartheid.

Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland ...

Presidents who will be remembered only in a blur of failure, Mr. Bush.

Presidents who will be remembered only as functions of those who opposed them - the opponents whom history proved right.

Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland ... Bush.

Would that we could let this president off the hook by seeing him only as marionette or moron.

But a study of the mutation of his language about Iran proves that though he may not be very good at it, he is, himself, still a manipulative, Machiavellian, snake-oil salesman.

The Bushian etymology was tracked by Dan Froomkin at the Washington Post’s website.

It is staggering.

March 31st: “Iran is trying to develop a nuclear weapon ...”

June 5th: “Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons ...”

June 19th: “Consequences to the Iranian government if they continue to pursue a nuclear weapon ...”

July 12th: “The same regime in Iran that is pursuing nuclear weapons ...”

August 6th: “This is a government that has proclaimed its desire to build a nuclear weapon ...”

Notice a pattern?

Trying to develop, build or pursue a nuclear weapon.

Then, sometime between August 6th and August 9th, those terms are suddenly swapped out, so subtly that only in retrospect can we see that somebody has warned the president, not only that he has gone out too far on the limb of terror - but there may not even be a tree there ...

McConnell, or someone, must have briefed him then.

August 9th: “They have expressed their desire to be able to enrich uranium, which we believe is a step toward having a nuclear weapons program ...”

August 28th: “Iran’s active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons ...”

October 4th: “You should not have the know-how on how to make a (nuclear) weapon ...”

October 17th: “Until they suspend and/or make it clear that they, that their statements aren’t real, yeah, I believe they want to have the capacity, the knowledge, in order to make a nuclear weapon.”

Before August 9th, it’s: Trying to develop, build or pursue a nuclear weapon.

After August 9th, it’s: Desire, pursuit, want ... knowledge, technology, know-how to enrich uranium.

And we are to believe, Mr. Bush, that the National Intelligence Estimate this week talks of the Iranians suspending their nuclear weapons program in 2003 ...

And you talked of the Iranians suspending their nuclear weapons program on October 17th ...

And that’s just a coincidence?

And we are to believe, Mr. Bush, that nobody told you any of this until last week?

Your insistence that you were not briefed on the NIE until last week might be legally true - something like “what the definition of is is” - but with the subject matter being not interns but the threat of nuclear war.

Legally, it might save you from some war crimes trial ... but ethically, it is a lie.

It is indefensible.

You have been yelling threats into a phone for nearly four months, after the guy on the other end had already hung up.

You, Mr. Bush, are a bald-faced liar.

And more over, you have just revealed that John Bolton, and Norman Podhoretz, and the Wall Street Journal Editorial board, are also bald-faced liars.

We are to believe that the Intel community, or maybe the State Department, cooked the raw intelligence about Iran, falsely diminished the Iranian nuclear threat, to make you look bad?

And you proceeded to let them make you look bad?

You not only knew all of this about Iran, in early August ...

But you also knew ... it was ... accurate.

And instead of sharing this good news with the people you have obviously forgotten you represent ...

You merely fine-tuned your terrorizing of those people, to legally cover your own backside ...

While you filled the factual gap with sadistic visions of - as you phrased it on August 28th: a quote “nuclear holocaust” - and, as you phrased it on October 17th, quote: “World War Three.”

My comments, Mr. Bush, are often dismissed as simple repetitions of the phrase “George Bush has no business being president.”

Well, guess what?

Tonight: hanged by your own words ... convicted by your own deliberate lies ...

You, sir, have no business ... being president.

Good night, and good luck.

***

http://harpers.org/archive/2007/12/hbc-90001887

The President-Tyrant

BY Scott Horton

PUBLISHED December 9, 2007

The irreplaceable Fritz Stern reminds us that as a democracy with two-hundred thirty years of experience, America is better situated than most to weather the storms of a wannabe tyrant. “But that,” “http://harpers.org/archive/2007/12/hbc-90001852” “would presuppose that such a nation really understood its heritage and had a genuine historic sense.” We live now with a Government that shamelessly fabricates and alters history—both from the last two hundred years and from the last six years. It does so with a purpose—making its outrageous deeds seem perfectly reasonable and in tune with the past.

***

Published on Monday, December 10, 2007 by The Boston Globe

The US: All Power, No Influence

by James Carroll

US foreign policy is in an unprecedented state of disarray.

Humiliations abound. America’s man in Pakistan lurches toward tyranny.

Washington’s aggressive moves against Russia, from NATO expansion to

missile defense, have helped resuscitate Moscow’s paranoia - and

Vladimir Putin’s KGB instincts. At Annapolis, the effects of years of

US neglect of Middle East diplomacy were on full display. China openly

thwarts ineffectual American efforts to respond to genocide in Darfur.

Iran’s crackpot leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has made a mockery of the

Bush administration, even as the latest intelligence reversal makes

Bush’s rhetoric on Iran seem preposterous. Latin America is

contemptuous of Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, but cheers his anti-American

diatribes. Europe cannot believe what it hears from the United States

on global warming. America has all the power in the world, and no

influence. The secretary of defense put his finger on the problem,

which is the radical militarization of foreign affairs.

***

Published on Monday, December 10, 2007 by The Huffington Post

A Failure of Intelligence

by Craig Unger

Let me suggest, however, that the real problem is not repeated

intelligence failures, as conventional wisdom has it. In fact, I

believe we have the opposite problem _ namely, intelligence successes.

By that I mean successful disinformation operations, black propaganda

operations that have promoted falsehoods for decades in an

extraordinarily successful series of attempts to mislead the American

people and shape U.S. foreign policy to serve neo-conservative

ideological ends.

***The Fall of the House of Bush: The Untold Story of How a Band of True

Believers Seized the Executive Branch, Started the Iraq War, and Still

Imperils America’s Future (Hardcover)

by Craig Unger (Author)

Hardcover: 448 pages

Publisher: Scribner; 1 edition (November 13, 2007)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 074328075X

ISBN-13: 978-0743280754

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

The presidency of George W. Bush has led to the worst foreign policy

decision in the history of the United States -- the bloody, unwinnable

war in Iraq. How did this happen? Bush’s fateful decision was rooted

in events that began decades ago, and until now this story has never

been fully told.

From Craig Unger, the author of the bestseller House of Bush, House of

Saud, comes a comprehensive, deeply sourced, and chilling account of

the secret relationship between neoconservative policy makers and the

Christian Right, and how they assaulted the most vital safeguards of

America’s constitutional democracy while pushing the country into the

catastrophic quagmire in the Middle East that is getting worse day by

day.

Among the powerful revelations in this book:

Why George W. Bush ignored the sage advice of his father, George H.W.

Bush, and took America into war.

How Bush was convinced he was doing God’s will.

How Vice President Dick Cheney manipulated George W. Bush, disabled

his enemies within the administration, and relentlessly pressed for an

attack on Iraq.

Which veteran government official, with the assent of the president’s

father, protested passionately that the Bush administration was making

a catastrophic mistake -- and was ignored.

How information from forged documents that had already been

discredited fourteen times by various intelligence agencies found its

way into President Bush’s State of the Union address in which he made

the case for war with Iraq.

How Cheney and the neocons assembled a shadow national security

apparatus and created a disinformation pipeline to mislead America and

start the war.

A seasoned, award-winning investigative reporter connected to many

back-channel political and intelligence sources, Craig Unger knows how

to get the big story -- and this one is his most explosive yet.

Through scores of interviews with figures in the Christian Right, the

neoconservative movement, the Bush administration, and sources close

to the Bush family, as well as intelligence agents in the CIA, the

Pentagon, and Israel, Unger shows how the Bush administration’s

certainty that it could bend history to its will has carried America

into the disastrous war in Iraq, dooming Bush’s presidency to failure

and costing America thousands of lives and trillions of dollars. Far

from ensuring our security, the Iraq War will be seen as a great

strategic pivot point in history that could ignite wider war in the

Middle East, particularly in Iran.

Provocative, timely, and disturbing, The Fall of the House of Bush

stands as the most comprehensive and dramatic account of how and why

George W. Bush took America to war in Iraq.

***

CIA Destroyed Tapes Despite Court Orders
The Associated Press

Wednesday 12 December 2007

Washington - The Bush administration was under court order not to discard evidence of detainee torture and abuse months before the CIA destroyed videotapes that revealed some of its harshest interrogation tactics.

***

Published on Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Are Americans Really ‘Better Than That?’

by Ray McGovern

A boyish, inquisitive face with an innocent look peered out from the Washington Post’s lead story yesterday on torture. It was well groomed, pink-shirted John Kiriakou, a CIA interrogator who could just as easily pass for the local youth minister.

The report by the Post’s Joby Warrick and Dan Eggen, which describes Kiriakou’s experience in interrogating suspected terrorists, raises in an unusually direct way an abiding question: Should the United States of America be using forms of torture dating back to the Spanish Inquisition?

C.I.A.’s John Kiriakou says he is now convinced that waterboarding is torture and he is against it. He adds, “Americans are better than that.”

Sadly, that remains to be seen. With virtually all religious institutions, politicians, and educators all squandering what moral authority they have left, the Jack Bauer culture threatens to win out in the end. We cannot let that happen.

***

Published on Saturday, December 8, 2007 by Salon.com

“Missing” Evidence Is Familiar Bush Pattern

by Glenn Greenwald

The New York Times‘ revelation that “the Central Intelligence Agency in 2005 destroyed at least two videotapes documenting the interrogation of two Al Qaeda operatives in the agency’s custody” conclusively demonstrates obstruction of justice which, if Michael Mukasey has an ounce of integrity or independence, will be the subject of a serious and immediate criminal investigation. While the revelation is obviously significant, it is also is part of a long-standing pattern of such obstruction.

In April, I compiled a long list of the numerous court proceedings and other investigations which were impeded by extremely dubious claims from the Bush administration that key evidence was mysteriously “missing.” Much of the “missing” evidence involved precisely the type of evidence that the CIA has now been forced here to admit it deliberately destroyed: namely, evidence showing the conduct of its agents during interrogation of detainees.

***

Published on Saturday, December 8, 2007

White House & Press Spinning Iran’s Centrifuges

by Ray McGovern

Those who know about the centrifuges used to refine uranium tell me they must spin at an almost unrivaled velocity-almost unrivaled, because Bush administration statements are being spun at equivalent speed by White House and corporate media spiders. Without Spinmeister Karl Rove and former spokesman Tony Snow, it is amateur hour at the White House. And the theater would be as funny as The Daily Show, were the subject not so serious.

***

Published on Tuesday, December 11, 2007 by Inter Press Service

White House Fought NIE Over an Old Charge

by Gareth Porter

By November 2006, the Central Intelligence Agency had already

circulated an assessment within the intelligence community that

rejected the covert weapons programme thesis, as Hersh reported in

late November. However, Vice President Dick Cheney and his aides were

trying to exclude the CIA’s assessment from the NIE, a senior

intelligence official told Hersh.

The CIA had found no evidence for such a programme, but Cheney and the

White House were insisting, according to Hersh’s story, that the

failure to find a secret nuclear weapons programme in Iran was merely

evidence of the skill with which the Iranians were hiding it.

Cheney’s tactics bottled up the NIE until early 2007.

***

Andrei Cherny

“http://democracyjournal.org/article.php?ID=6576”

Issue #7, Winter 2008

The Word War

Whatever happened to the “War on Terror”?

Yes, we are in a “War on Terror” -- just not the one that either George Bush or some his critics are talking about. The fact of the matter is that, in the 21st century, “war” is no longer just about the clash of armies, it is about the conflict of ideas and values (similarly, “peace” is no longer just about ending military battles, as we see this week with the thrilling news of my old boss, Al Gore, accepting the Nobel Peace Prize). Similarly, “terror” is not only about terrorism - the “terror” we are fighting against in this conflict is also the everyday terrors of despair and despotism and degradation in countries around the world that end up driving people into the arms of terrorist fanatics. Taking on these threats needs to be part of the war we’re waging.

Just because George Bush hasn’t fought this battle, just because he’s used the “War on Terror” as a bludgeon to attack domestic political opposition, just because he’s made friends with dictators like Hosni Mubarak and Pervez Musharraf when he should be declaring them our enemies, just because he has taken us on the tragic detour of Iraq, just because he’s sacrificed the goodwill of all nations and the leadership of the Free World, just because he’s failed to hold America out as a special nation that doesn’t torture its prisoners and that shuts down the world’s Abu Ghraibs instead of running them, just because he’s neglected to stand with those spreading democracy and prosperity to the world’s darkest corners does not mean that we can walk away from the very real battle at the heart of the War on Terror.

***

James Boyce

Against All Odds, David Brooks Hits A New Low.

Posted December 11, 2007 | 12:47 PM (EST)

Much like a Karl Rove interview, it is easy to be overwhelmed by the

incompetency in a David Brooks “article.” As your head swirls with

wrong assertions, falsehoods and hyperbole, it occurs to you that this

person actually gets paid to write crap like this and on top of that,

there, somewhere is presumably an editor who has read it and

‘approved.’

When faced with an overwhelming choice of falsehoods and errors in his

article, “The Postwar Election” I decided to simply pull out sentences

and together we can dissect them.

“In the Middle East, the Arabs and Palestinians stumble toward some

sort of peace process.”

is insane.

“In Washington, the National Intelligence Estimate was released,

suggesting the next president will not face an imminent nuclear

showdown with Iran.”

Actually, no, what the NIE showed was that the President of the United

States is either grossly incompetent for not knowing what was in an

old NIE or lied about it. Iran is still an issue and the Middle East

is hardly a garden of eden right now

From the Gallup poll, allow me to quote:

“The Nov. 30-Dec. 2, 2007, poll asked Americans to name, in their own

words, what will be the most important issues they will take into

account when deciding whom to vote for in next year’s presidential

election. Thirty-six percent of Americans say Iraq, with the economy

(16%), healthcare (15%), and illegal immigration (10%) mentioned next

most often.”

Seemingly, we are in a golden moment where the American people know

what matters, Iraq, even if our politicians and our ‘journalists’ do

not.

The American people know that when over 170,000 men and women are

serving in uniform on the other side of the world and it’s costing us

$12,000,000,000 a month, it’s an issue that impacts every part of our

lives - if you are in Iowa and are concerned about the future, ponder

this:

The Iraq War has cost the city of Ames $54 million to date.

Imagine what a city of just over 50,000 people could do with $54

million. Just imagine.

***

Blackwater’s Bu$ine$$
By Jeremy Scahill
The Nation

24 December 2007 Issue

Gunning down seventeen Iraqi civilians in an incident the military has labeled “criminal.” Multiple Congressional investigations. A federal grand jury. Allegations of illegal arms smuggling. Wrongful death lawsuits brought by families of dead employees and US soldiers. A federal lawsuit alleging war crimes. Charges of steroid use by trigger-happy mercenaries. Allegations of “significant tax evasion.” The US-installed government in Iraq labeling its forces “murderers.” With a new scandal breaking practically every day, one would think Blackwater security would be on the ropes, facing a corporate meltdown or even a total wipeout. But it seems that business for the company has never been better, as it continues to pull in major federal contracts. And its public demeanor grows bolder and cockier by the day.

***

Gang Rape Cover-Up by US, Halliburton/KBR
By Brian Ross, Maddy Sauer and Justin Rood
ABC News

Monday 10 December 2007

KBR told victim she could lose her job if she sought help after being raped, she says.

A Houston, Texas woman says she was gang-raped by Halliburton/KBR coworkers in Baghdad, and the company and the U.S. government are covering up the incident.

***

Jay Wagner

GOP Candidates Play Fast And Loose With Facts At Debate

Posted December 13, 2007 | 08:06 AM (EST)

This is a companion piece to an analysis of Wednesday’s Des Moines Register Republican Presidential Debate.

“http://Factcheck.org”, a non-partisan organization that reviews candidate’s claims during public events, pointed to six statements made during Wednesday’s debate that were worth challenging.

***

The American Dream Is Alive and Well ... in Finland!
By Joshua Holland
AlterNet

Tuesday 11 December 2007

It’s harder for young workers to move up the economic ladder in the United States than in other wealthy countries. What happened to the American dream?

Fewer than one percent of Americans are millionaires, but almost one in three believe they’ll end up among that group at some point.

***

Published on Monday, December 10, 2007 by The Nation

Home Sweet Gone

by Nomi Prins

Behind every great bubble and its subsequent bust lies the power of

Wall Street’s trading operations. In the case of our national housing

market saga and toxic subprime fallout, it’s true that banks and

specialist lending institutions rapaciously extended credit to

ill-equipped borrowers.

But that’s not the whole story. Housing value fluctuations weren’t

just caused by lending run amok, but by the trading that enabled the

lending and made a precarious situation even worse.

***

Henry Paulson’s Priorities
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times

Monday 10 December 2007

By Bush administration standards, Henry Paulson, the Treasury secretary, is a good guy. He isn’t conspicuously incompetent; and he isn’t trying to mislead us into war, justify torture or protect corrupt contractors.

But Mr. Paulson’s actions reflect the priorities of the administration he serves. And that, ultimately, is what’s wrong with the mortgage relief plan he unveiled last week.

The plan is, as a Times editorial put it yesterday, “too little, too late and too voluntary.” But from the administration’s point of view these failings aren’t bugs, they’re features.

In fact, there’s a growing consensus among financial observers that the Paulson plan isn’t mainly intended to achieve real results. The point is, instead, to create the appearance of action, thereby undercutting political support for actual attempts to help families in trouble.

In particular, the Paulson plan is probably an attempt to take the wind out of Barney Frank’s sails. Mr. Frank, the Democratic chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, has sponsored legislation that would give judges in bankruptcy cases the ability to rewrite mortgage loan terms. But “Bankers Hope Bush Subprime Plan Will Scuttle House Bill,” as a headline in CongressDaily put it.

As Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard bankruptcy expert, puts it, “The administration’s subprime mortgage plan is the bank lobby’s dream.” Given the Bush record, that should come as no surprise.

There are, in fact, three distinct concerns associated with the rising tide of foreclosures in America.

One is financial stability: as banks and other institutions take huge losses on their mortgage-related investments, the financial system as a whole is getting wobbly.

Another is human suffering: hundreds of thousands, and probably millions, of American families will lose their homes.

Finally, there’s injustice: the subprime boom involved predatory lending - high-interest loans foisted on borrowers who qualified for lower rates - on an epic scale. The Wall Street Journal found that more than 55 percent of subprime loans made at the height of the housing bubble “went to people with credit scores high enough to often qualify for conventional loans with far better terms.”

And in a declining housing market, these victims are stuck, unable to refinance.

So there are three problems. But Mr. Paulson’s plan - or, to use its official name, the Hope Now Alliance plan - is entirely focused on reducing investor losses. Any minor relief it might provide to troubled borrowers is clearly incidental. And it is does nothing for the victims of predatory lending.

***

California Accuses Blue Shield of Illegal Cancellations

121307

Lisa Girion, The Los Angeles Times, reports, “California’s top insurance regulator has accused Blue Shield, one of the state’s largest health plans, of 1,262 violations of claims-handling laws and regulations that resulted in more than 200 people losing their medical coverage.”

***

Published on Monday, December 10, 2007 by The State (South Carolina)

Can Anyone (Any Viable Candidate, That Is) Say ‘Single-Payer’?

by Brad Warthen

Can anyone among those with a chance of becoming president say

“single-payer?” If not, forget about serious reform of the way we pay

for health care.

-especially when it’s been estimated that as much as 80% of delivered healthcare in this country is already from a single payer!! (Military, VA, Medicare, Medicaid...)

***

Published on Wednesday, December 12, 2007 by “http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20071211_from_oil_wars_to_water_wars/”

From Oil Wars to Water Wars

by Amy Goodman

The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded this week, in Oslo, Norway. Al Gore shared the prize with the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which represents more than 2,500 scientists from 130 countries. The solemn ceremony took place as the United States is blocking meaningful progress at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Bali , Indonesia, and the Republicans in the U.S. Senate have derailed the energy bill passed by the House of Representatives, which would have accelerated the adoption of renewable energy sources at the expense of big-oil and coal corporations.

Gore set the stage: “So, today, we dumped another 70 million tons of global-warming pollution into the thin shell of atmosphere surrounding our planet, as if it were an open sewer. And tomorrow, we will dump a slightly larger amount, with the cumulative concentrations now trapping more and more heat from the sun.

“As a result, the Earth has a fever. And the fever is rising. The experts have told us it is not a passing affliction that will heal by itself. We asked for a second opinion. And a third. And a fourth. And the consistent conclusion, restated with increasing alarm, is that something basic is wrong. We are what is wrong, and we must make it right.”

***

Published on Wednesday, December 12, 2007 by Associated Press

Ominous Arctic Melt Worries Experts

by Seth Borenstein

An already relentless melting of the Arctic greatly accelerated this summer, a warning sign that some scientists worry could mean global warming has passed an ominous tipping point. One even speculated that summer sea ice would be gone in five years.

Greenland’s ice sheet melted nearly 19 billion tons more than the previous high mark, and the volume of Arctic sea ice at summer’s end was half what it was just four years earlier, according to new NASA satellite data obtained by The Associated Press.

“The Arctic is screaming,” said Mark Serreze, senior scientist at the government’s snow and ice data center in Boulder, Colo.

Just last year, two top scientists surprised their colleagues by projecting that the Arctic sea ice was melting so rapidly that it could disappear entirely by the summer of 2040.

This week, after reviewing his own new data, NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally said: “At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions.”

So scientists in recent days have been asking themselves these questions: Was the record melt seen all over the Arctic in 2007 a blip amid relentless and steady warming? Or has everything sped up to a new climate cycle that goes beyond the worst case scenarios presented by computer models?

“The Arctic is often cited as the canary in the coal mine for climate warming,” said Zwally, who as a teenager hauled coal. “Now as a sign of climate warming, the canary has died. It is time to start getting out of the coal mines.”

***

Published on Monday, December 10, 2007 by The Independent/UK

BP Set To Commit ‘The Biggest Environmental Crime in History’

by Cahal Milmo

BP, the British oil giant that pledged to move “Beyond Petroleum” by finding cleaner ways to produce fossil fuels, is being accused of abandoning its “green sheen” by investing nearly £1.5bn to extract oil from the Canadian wilderness using methods which environmentalists say are part of the “biggest global warming crime” in history.

***

“To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.”

Gustave Flaubert, 12/12/1821 - 5/8/1889, French novelist

***

“Fascism not only exists in America, but it has become formidable and

needs only a Duce, a Fuehrer, an organizer, and a loosening of the

purse strings of those who gain materially by its victory, to become

the most powerful force threatening the Republic”

-George H. Seldes, foreword to Sawdust Caesar: The Untold Story of Mussolini and Fascism

****

1/27/2008

more happy birthdays

More reflections on the passing days and the significant history each carries with it... Two good excuses to celebrate birthdays today:

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 1/27/1756 - 12/5/1791, Austrian composer

Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), 1/27/1832 - 1/14/1898, English logician, mathematician, photographer, and novelist,

who gives us the ever quotable:

Alice said, “One can’t believe impossible things.”

The Queen replies, “I daresay you haven’t had much practice.”

Also saw some surprisingly good selections in the Sunday Columbus Dispatch. I didn’t get the exact links, but under the generic title, Travel Ohio...

Ohio’s Garfield spent less than a year in office, dooming his memorials to obscurity

MENTOR, Ohio -- The last U.S. president to be born in a log cabin was also the first to have a presidential library built in his honor. He also has the biggest and most elaborate tomb of any president.

Probably worth trying to see all eight!

When the wheels of justice fall off...

Lost hope

When DNA evidence goes missing, so does the chance for an exoneration

A man on Ohio’s Death Row held faint hope that a DNA test might keep him from his grave. But no one could find the evidence in the Cleveland man’s murder case.

and are derailed...

Benjamin J. Marrison commentary:

State fumbles DNA testing, failing to use key to justice

As if Brunner doesn’t have the acknowledged perfect defense associated with slander and libel, the truth of there already being little voter trust when evidence shows voting machines aren’t trustworthy:

Officials: Brunner shaking voter trust

And there’s always room for the insight of the humorists...

Mike Harden commentary:

Church shows love for Jesus in big way

Joe Blundo commentary:

Suddenly, we’re in the thick of thinness

Forgot to send you the year end tally:

A website that deserves your daily attention:

http://icasualties.org/oif/

Latest Fatality Jan. 3, 2008

American Military Casualties in Iraq

American Deaths Since war began (3/19/03): 3908

Total Wounded: 28773

TOTAL - MEDICAL AIR TRANSPORTS (HOSTILE AND NON-HOSTILE): 38,876

DEATHS US UK Other* Total

Total 3908 174 133 4215

US Military Deaths - Afghanistan

TOTAL - WOUNDED 1,472

TOTAL - MEDICAL AIR TRANSPORTS (HOSTILE AND NON-HOSTILE): 7,171

DEATHS US Other* Total

Total 476 274 750

In summary, what Bush wrought in what are now two futile wars:

4384 dead Americans ,

46,047 wounded,

+ 581 dead coalition forces,

For a total casualty list at a minimum of 51,012. Many sources, including vet’s organizations, put a more realistic and accurate number at easily over 100,000, especially with the secret “contractor” counts added in.

And with Iraqi civilian deaths now projected at 1.2 million, it makes your fearless leader one of the greatest mass murderers in history--just counting the supposed good guys and innocents!

***

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/02/scaife200802

Scandal

A Vast Right-Wing Hypocrisy

Richard Mellon Scaife, billionaire bankroller of conservative crusades, spent heavily to expose Bill Clinton’s “Troopergate” misbehavior. Now Scaife’s divorce from his second wife, Ritchie, is providing another unsavory saga—adultery! addiction! assault! dognapping!?!—as both parties let loose to V.F.

by Michael Joseph Gross February 2008

***

He whose undertakings are free from anxious desire and fanciful thought, whose work is made pure in the fire of wisdom: he is called wise by those who see.

Bhagavad Gita, Song of God, 4:16-23, 500 BC

“The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, the pessimist fears this is true.”

- James Branch Cabell, 4/14/1879- 4/14/1958, US author

“Liars share with those they deceive the desire not to be deceived.”

- Sissela Bok, PhD philosopher and ethicist

“Conceit is God’s gift to little men.”

- Bruce Barton August 5, 1886 ,July 5, 1967(1886-1967) US Congressman, advertising executive

“Like an ox-cart driver in monsoon season or the skipper of a grounded ship, one must sometimes go forward by going back.”

- John Barth , 5/27/1930- , U.S. writer, b. Cambridge, Md.

“And in the general hardening of outlook that set in … practices which had been long abandoned - imprisonment without trial, the use of war prisoners as slaves, public executions, torture to extract confessions … and the deportation of whole populations - not only became common again, but were tolerated and even defended by people who considered themselves enlightened and progressive.”

George Orwell, 1984

****

3/17/2008

beware the ides

Are you watching the HBO John Adams tribute? Or enjoying any of the other anniversaries of this week?

This spirit of American patriotism, however, without knowledge, would be little better than a brutal rage. Let us tenderly and kindly cherish, therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write. Let them all become attentive to the grounds and principles of government, ecclesiastical and civil. Let us study the law of nature; search into the spirit of the British constitution; read the histories of ancient ages; contemplate the great examples of Greece and Rome; set before us the conduct of our own British ancestors, who have defended for us the inherent rights of mankind against foreign and domestic tyrants and usurpers, against arbitrary kings and cruel priests, in short, against the gates of earth and hell.

-John Adams’ Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, written in 1765, was one of the first American arguments in favor of an informed citizenry as a check on governmental power.

***

My Lai — 40 Years Later

Saturday, Mar. 15, 2008 By AP/BEN STOCKING

— To the villagers who survived the My Lai massacre and many of the Americans who fought in the Vietnam War, all the anniversaries of the atrocity are important.

But Sunday’s anniversary — the 40th — seems especially urgent to some of the Americans who have come to commemorate it.

In My Lai, members of the Charlie Company slaughtered as many as 504 villagers, including unarmed women, children and elderly.

Frustrated U.S. troops came to My Lai on a “search and destroy” mission, looking for elusive Vietcong guerrillas. Although there were no reports of enemy fire, the U.S. troops began mowing down villagers and setting fire to their homes.

The incident shocked Americans and undermined support for the war.

The massacre reminds Lawrence Colburn and war veteran Mike Boehm of the 2005 images of torture that emerged from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

“We’re supposed to learn from the mistakes of history, but we keep making the same mistakes,” said Colburn, whose helicopter landed in My Lai in the midst of the massacre. “That’s what makes My Lai more important today than ever before.”

***

Published on Saturday, March 15, 2008

Accountability for the Iraq War

by David Krieger

We have been engaged in an illegal war in Iraq for five years - and there is no accountability.

It is beyond doubt that our leaders lied us into this war - and there is no accountability.

More than four thousand American and coalition soldiers are dead - and there is no accountability.

Tens of thousands of American and coalition soldiers are seriously wounded - and there is no accountability.

Our surviving soldiers are coming home traumatized from the war without proper medical and psychiatric care - and there is no accountability.

More than a million Iraqis, mostly civilians, have been killed in this war and countless others wounded - and there is no accountability.

More than four million Iraqis are displaced as internal or external refugees of this war - and there is no accountability.

By using so-called “depleted uranium” weapons, we are poisoning the earth, air and water of Iraq, causing serious health problems to Iraqis and coalition soldiers - and there is no accountability.

America has become a nation that tortures - and there is no accountability.

America has become a nation that spies on its citizens - and there is no accountability.

America has become a nation that hides the body bags of its soldiers killed in action - and there is no accountability.

We are spending $12 billion a month on this war - and there is no accountability.

Reputable economists calculate that this war will cost American citizens more than $3 trillion - and there is no accountability.

This war is burdening unborn generations of Americans and Iraqis - and there is no accountability.

This war has brought respect for America to its lowest ebb throughout the world - and there is no accountability.

The war in Iraq has stretched our military forces to the breaking point, making us far less able to cope with real threats to our security - and there is no accountability.

The war in Iraq has been a training ground for terrorists, making us far less safe - and there is no accountability.

Accountability means holding to account those who are responsible for a war that is illegal under international law - in this case, it means holding to account those who have been irresponsible and criminal in their behavior. It means holding to account George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell and others. It means not just their disgrace, but trials to bring them to justice.

This is not a partisan issue - it is an issue of responsibility and accountability and, at a deeper level, an issue of restoring our decency, our dignity and our democracy.

Americans must hold those responsible for this war to account.

David Krieger is president of the “http://www.wagingpeace.org/”.

****

4/9/2008

remiss

4/8/08

2008.2688297

I suppose I could call it an overwhelming curiosity. After wondering about the decimal concept, I made the chart and calculations. The first three digits take care of the day adequately, but then the 7th decimal point is only accurate to the nearest 3 seconds...

Sorry I haven’t been responding to your outrageous emails. Bush’s era is coming to an end, too bad he can only run for two terms. I’m confident that our country will continue to elect Republicans as long as there is a threat of terrorism in the world. Too bad the Republican congress screwed up so bad with over spending and corruption in office but I’m confident they will be back in charge of the House and Senate soon based on what the democrats have been doing in office.

Strange that you would call my messages outrageous. It is the White house that promised the Iraqis Shock and Awe, only to give the US shock and outrage, 7 years of continual outrage. I have just been reflecting those tragic results, as noted from a wide variety of sources. I can’t fathom how you could want more terms like the last two. I continue to marvel at your ability to breathe in the awe. I keep trying to understand it, since I think I have argued successfully that every one of your stated premises and beliefs have turned out to be unsupported, false or unjustified. Such loyalty, without being demeaning, sounds equivalent to the worst characteristics of some cults of idolatry or a rational blind spot.

Even stranger is your casual use of the word corruption. It is the fundamental basis of human interaction and the Social Contract. Systemic corruption is the obvious result of dishonesty, hypocrisy, indecency, conceit, and greed. The modern Republican has become the antithesis of the party that gave us Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. Republicanism defined by Bush is an assurance of America’s continued loss of greatness. Almost straight from any World History textbook: Rome lost…

New York Times Best Seller
Winner of the 2005 PEN Award for Nonfiction

The End of Faith provides a harrowing glimpse of mankind’s willingness to suspend reason in favor of religious beliefs, even when these beliefs inspire the worst of human atrocities.

VOCABULARY

Delusion, is commonly defined as a fixed false belief and is used in everyday language to describe a belief that is either false, fanciful or derived from deception. As a pathology it is distinct from a belief based on false or incomplete information or certain effects of perception which would more properly be termed an apperception or illusion.

Although non-specific concepts of madness have been around for several thousand years, the psychiatrist and philosopher Karl Jaspers was the first to define the three main criteria for a belief to be considered delusional in his book General Psychopathology. These criteria are:

certainty (held with absolute conviction)

incorrigibility (not changeable by compelling counterargument or proof to the contrary)

impossibility or falsity of content (implausible, bizarre or patently untrue)

These criteria still live on in modern psychiatric diagnosis. In the most recent Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a delusion is defined as:

A false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everybody else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary. The belief is not one ordinarily accepted by other members of the person’s culture or subculture.

81% in Poll Say Nation Is on the Wrong Track

By DAVID LEONHARDT and MARJORIE CONNELLY

Published: April 4, 2008

Americans are more dissatisfied with the country’s direction than at any time since the New York Times/CBS News poll began asking about the subject in the early 1990s, according to the latest poll.

In the poll, 81 percent of respondents said they believed “things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track,” up from 69 percent a year ago and 35 percent in early 2002.

Rome lost its Empire for economic, military, political, and social reasons. Many government officials were corrupt and unqualified, seeking only to enrich themselves, destroying a sense of citizenship and duty to the state. Many were choosing business riches rather than public service, caring more about pleasing themselves than the well being of other people, increasing the gap between rich and poor. The cost of education increased, making people less informed.

http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2005/01/18/scandal/

The scandal sheet

Print it out, send it to Harry Reid, or just read it and weep. Here are 34 scandals from the first four years of George W. Bush’s presidency -- every one of them worse than Whitewater.

By Peter Dizikes

Jan 18, 2005

Consider the raw materials of scandal that this administration has produced: False claims about Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction. Torture in Abu Ghraib. The virtually treasonous exposure of a CIA agent by White House officials. And those are just the best-known examples.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:George_W._Bush_administration_controversies

Those GOP Scandals Just Keep Coming

By Terrance Heath

April 1st, 2008 - 10:34am ET

“I will restore honor and integrity to the White House.”

- George W. Bush

It’s low-hanging fruit, I know, but after reading yesterday’s news, I had to chuckle to myself. Not necessarily at the misfortunes of the people involved, but at the context.

Three scandals in almost as many days is noteworthy even for the Bush administration. And I know that every White House _ Republican and Democratic _ has its share of scandals. The mix of money, power, and intrigue in Washington makes it inevitable, especially when you throw in a dash or two of temptation and human fallibility.

But three scandals breaking in as many days is big news, or it ought to be, for a president and an administration (and a party, for that matter) pledging to “restore honor and integrity” to the White House, Washington, and government self. And, yes, when you recall that these people are self-appointed exemplars of morality who were going to school the rest of us on values, it’s kind of funny.

Perhaps most ironic is that Bush won the war on terror in the spring of 2002, but didn’t have enough sense to stop and declare victory.

A couple other subjects: It is 3 a.m. right now!

And the red phone is ringing. Hillary is in the room, but doesn’t hear it, isn’t listening, and has no intention of answering it. She is demonstrating neither the experience nor judgment to acknowledge or accept the message that it brings. The loud clarion call, the writing on the wall, or the tea leaves, all demand an honest consideration of facts and recognition that the best next step she could take is graciously to remove her name as a nominee. Despite media reports, she doesn’t really win in Texas when Barack ends up getting more delegates! The current trend of her purported good results there or in Ohio owe much to the crossover Republicans successfully trying to disrupt and confuse their opposition. (Why are party declarations not required in advance of primaries, with say at least 30-60 days of pre-election registration and commitment?)

For the sake of the common good, everything many of us hope for, the Democratic Party, the Country, and, in many ways, the future of the world, now is the time to forego the ego. It’s time for her to cease this quest for power that is little different from the past 7 years of arrogance, hubris, incompetence, denial, derision, division, and delusion. Her claims and attacks have become as whining, ruthless, shameless, mendacious, and insulting as the Republicans. If she indeed would like anyone to think she has the wisdom of Solomon, that she is a leader and true believer in the ideals she espouses, she should not allow the Democrats to be cut in half, or be the one wielding the sword! A vote for her is as much like voting for McCain as those voting for Nader voted for Bush.

Devising an election system.

I made the observation some time ago that lottery computers could close for election day and become the polling places. Over the years, after all, there have been few complaints about inefficiency, fraud, corruption, hacking, etc. Further thought makes the idea seem more reasonable than satiric, although it may not work for all states.

With ballot details and IBM cards as handouts commonly available at multiple locations throughout a one week (or whatever) Voting Period, ahead of the closing election date and time, no one should have the excuse of not being prepared to vote, being unable to get there, or not having it mailed in. With a valid registration on file for name, address, and signature, the voter need only sign in on the log or envelop (no photo id should be needed unless provided free by the state), then hand the penciled-in bubble card to the clerk on the machine, and presto, the tentative electronic vote is entered. The printed receipt is given to the voter to keep and confirm the intended votes, and clerk finalizes the vote. The card is kept by the clerk and stored randomly as a paper back up system for possible recounts. While it may be more difficult to include the many county and local issues and offices this way, it should be easy to accommodate state and federal selections. With time for nearly all live, provisional and absentee votes tabulated during the Voting Period, when the polls close, the accurate results of the election should be almost immediate.

McCain’s saying he “mispoke” about the cooperation of al Queda and Iran after 5 years of claiming an expertise on foreign policy is just another form of incompetence and mendacity. And the “misspeaking“ was something which in fact, he didn’t recognize or correct! His unannounced Vice President Lieberman did! The repeated mistakes more likely represent a fundamental Republican intellectual disconnect between an actual comprehension of the real subtleties and details of political situations in the Middle East and his misperception that all he needs to do to become President is follow the Bush formula and keep beating the drums of hatred and continual warmongering by grouping all undefined and purported “enemies” with any convenient or familiar and inflammable name.

It remains a travesty for the so- called reputable news media to continue harping about Rev. Wright. At no time have these same non-Fox sources attempted to demand the denouncement and rejection of all the Evangelical and Christian wackos and racists out there who support the Bushie mentality. The Edmund Burke adage about good men doing nothing requires that every sincere, caring, insightful person complain and curse every time there are illegal, immoral, or unjust activities taking place, whether committed by someone in the neighborhood, community, or by the government. Any time actions don’t match ideals is the right time for all men to raise their voices.

For one to immerse themselves in the delight of war, would they have their own DVD’s of movies like “Saving Private Ryan” and “Blackhawk Down,” to relish from the armchair those glorious scenes of death and destruction over and over? Be sure to add “Body of War” to the collection. Even last week’s Frontline “Bad Voodoo” wasn’t bad: “just driving around waiting to be blown up--it’s pointless.”

PS Some mea culpa’s are more sincere than others:

John Cole writes:

“http://www.balloon-juice.com/?p=9942”: I see that Andrew Sullivan was asked to list what he got wrong about Iraq for the five year anniversary of the invasion, and since I was as big a war booster as anyone, I thought I would list what I got wrong:

Everything.

And I don’t say that to provide people with an easy way to beat up on me, but I do sort of have to face facts. I was wrong about everything.

I was wrong about the Doctrine of Pre-emptive warfare.
I was wrong about Iraq possessing WMD.
I was wrong about Scott Ritter and the inspections.
I was wrong about the UN involvement in weapons inspections.
I was wrong about the containment sanctions.
I was wrong about the broader impact of the war on the Middle East.
I was wrong about this making us more safe.
I was wrong about the number of troops needed to stabilize Iraq.
I was wrong when I stated this administration had a clear plan for the aftermath.
I was wrong about securing the ammunition dumps.
I was wrong about the ease of bringing democracy to the Middle East.
I was wrong about dissolving the Iraqi army.
I was wrong about the looting being unimportant.
I was wrong that Bush/Cheney were competent.
I was wrong that we would be greeted as liberators.
I was wrong to make fun of the anti-war protestors.
I was wrong not to trust the dirty smelly hippies.

I mean, I could go down the list and continue on, but you get the point. I was wrong about EVERY. GOD. DAMNED. THING. It is amazing I could tie my shoes in 2001-2004. If you took all the wrongness I generated, put it together and compacted it and processed it, there would be enough concentrated stupid to fuel three hundred years of Weekly Standard journals. I am not sure how I snapped out of it, but I think Abu Ghraib and the negative impact of the insurgency did sober me up a bit.

War should always be an absolute last resort, not just another option. I will never make the same mistakes again.

March 22, 2008 at 04:01 PM in “http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/iraq/index.html”,

***

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/03/what-i-got-wron.html

What I Got Wrong About Iraq

21 Mar 2008 12:24 pm

But my biggest misreading was not about competence. Wars are often marked by incompetence. It was a fatal misjudgment of Bush’s sense of morality.

I had no idea he was so complacent - even glib - about the evil that men with good intentions can enable. I truly did not believe that Bush would use 9/11 to tear up the Geneva Conventions. When I first heard of abuses at Gitmo, I dismissed them as enemy propaganda. I certainly never believed that a conservative would embrace torture as the central thrust of an anti-terror strategy, and lie about it, and scapegoat underlings for it, and give us the indelible stain of Bagram and Camp Cropper and Abu Ghraib and all the other secret torture and interrogation sites that he created and oversaw. I certainly never believed that a war I supported for the sake of freedom would actually use as its central weapon the deepest antithesis of freedom - the destruction of human autonomy and dignity and will that is torture. To distort this by shredding the English language, by engaging in newspeak that I had long associated with totalitarian regimes, was a further insult. And for me, an epiphany about what American conservatism had come to mean.

***

Published on Monday, March 3, 2008 by “http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41430”

Iraqi Refugees See No Reason, or Hope, For Return

by Maki al-Nazzal and Dahr Jamail

DAMASCUS - More Iraqis continue to flee their country than the numbers returning, despite official claims to the contrary. Thousands fleeing say security is as bad as ever, and that to return would be to accept death.

“Return to Iraq?” asks 35-year-old Ahmed Alwan, an Iraqi engineer now working at a restaurant in Damascus. “There is no Iraq to return to, my friend. Iraq only exists in our dreams and memories.”

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported September last year that there are between 1.2 and 1.4 million Iraqi refugees in Syria alone.

Most, like Alwan, do not intend to return.

“I shall never return to Iraq until the last American soldier and Iranian mullah leaves,” Alwan says. “It is their country now, not ours. The only thing that might take me back is when I decide to fight for Iraq’s real liberty.”

Iraqi refugees in Syria speak of lack of security back home, lack of services, fear of the future, mistrust of Iraqi politicians, and loss of homes. Most are simply too afraid to return.

A UNHCR report issued last month contradicts reports by mainstream media in the U.S., and claims by the Bush administration, that more Iraqis are returning to their homes than the number leaving.

***

Iraqi Widows, Orphans Left Stranded
By Kim Gamel and Bushra Juhi
The Associated Press

Monday 07 April 2008

***

Published on Saturday, March 29, 2008 by The Progressive

Bush Totally Out of It on Iraq

by Matthew Rothschild

You got to wonder how out to lunch Bush really is these days.

At the very moment that civil strife was escalating in Iraq, even as Maliki’s forces were taking a beating in Basra and bombs were raining down on the Green Zone Bush declared that the violence in Iraq was “a very positive sign” because Maliki was stepping up.

Talk about a bloody silver lining. Maliki can’t even travel without a caravan of decoy limousines, according to Patrick Cockburn of the London Independent.

The reality, however, is that the huge uptick in violence in Iraq puts the lie to all the happy talk about the surge.

For the apparent success of the surge all along was due as much to the cease-fire by Muqtada al Sadr and his militia as it was to anything else.

And now that Maliki has gone after Sadr’s forces, the violence all over Iraq is skyrocketing.

Sadr’s forces are among the most popular on the ground. And they are facing off against the rival militia forces of the SCIRI party. It’s one Shiite militia against another, and the United States has done what it said it would not do: We’re taking sides in a multi-sided civil war.

From here, things are likely to spin even further out of control, with even less political stability and even less economic activity (except for stealing oil), and even more deaths all around.

It is the surge, not the insurgency, that is in its last throes.

Matthew Rothschild is the editor of The Progressive magazine.

***

Published on Monday, March 3, 2008 by “http://bangornews.com/news/t/viewpoints.aspx?articleid=161037&zoneid=35”

The Lies of War

by Thomas Moore

Nearly 4,000 American soldiers have died since the start of the Iraq War. As we read particulars about the lives of Americans who have died or been maimed in Iraq, the bleak comparison between a life lived fully and a life cut short, lost to a cause that was misrepresented and illegal from the outset, can only overwhelm us. This is especially poignant for Mainers since, as the Bangor Daily News pointed out in a recent article, Maine’s recruitment rate for the Iraq War ranks third in the nation.

One of the best World War I war poets, “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dulce_et_Decorum_Est”, spoke out during a similar debacle in his poem “Dulce Et Decorum Est.” In the poem, Owen recounts the horror of a soldier’s death by mustard gas, describing the “white eyes writhing in his face” and the blood “gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs.” War is senseless and barbaric, Owen argues in the poem, and the romantic idea of dying gloriously for one’s country is founded on empty rhetoric.

Reread Owen’s poem. It should speak profoundly to American readers as we approach two appalling milestones: 4,000 Americans dead, five years of war. Granted, there are many among us who would willingly fight in a war that threatened our freedom and our way of life, but we are not in such a war. We were never threatened by Iraq, and Iraq had no part in the Sept. 11 attacks. The reasons for going to war were misrepresented and groundless. They were lies.

The deceptions and failures of the Bush-Cheney administration have placed young Americans in a war where lives are cut short and bodies maimed by IEDs, snipers and the myriad other dangers in a war zone. Our continued presence in Iraq perpetuates this havoc. The planning for the invasion was grossly inadequate in part because the administration showed disdain for the history of the Middle East. This, combined with revelations such as the Abu Ghraib humiliations and tortures, and more recently the cowboy tactics of the Blackwater mercenaries who are apparently subject to no rules at all, indicate a broad disregard for human life and human dignity. Those who have been humiliated seek revenge. They join terrorist groups.

***

Published on Monday, March 31, 2008 by CommonDreams.org

Delusionary, Dancing Bush

by Ray McGovern

Events of last week offer a metaphorical glimpse at the delusion pervading President George W. Bush’s White House and other enclaves of Iraq supporters in Washington. Bush and the First Lady spent last Monday clowning with the Easter Bunny (White House counsel Fred Fielding having donned the costume).

At the American Enterprise Institute war-cheerleaders, dressed as academicians, were delivering a panegyric on how peaceful and stable the situation in Iraq had become. The “surge,” they announced had nipped a civil war in the bud.

“The civil war is over,” AEI’s Fred Kagan, co-author of the surge, declared proudly. Brookings twins Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack led the cheering section.

Meanwhile, back in the southern Iraq city of Basra and elsewhere, full-blown civil war seemed about to explode. And in Baghdad, formerly protected folks were getting killed by mortar and rocket fire in what is customarily referred to as “the highly fortified Green Zone,” which has sequestered U.S. embassy and military officials as well as those of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s government.

Let me close with a remark Seymour Hersh made last year, even though it may seem flippant and in no way conveys the enormity of the danger we face in the coming months:

“These guys are scary as hell_you can’t use the word `delusional,’ for it’s actually a medical term. Wacky. That’s a fair word.”

With so much destructive power at the disposal of George W. Bush, we need to be increasingly alert to signs that additional delusionary policies are about to be executed.

***

Arianna Huffington

Petraeus’ Call for a Pause is Really Just “Stay the Course 2.0”

Posted April 7, 2008 | 01:10 PM (EST)

Have you heard the news? “The Surge” is about to end. The next phase of our 100 Year War is “The Pause.” Surge, Pause... Surge, Pause... We can’t pull out! It’s all starting to sound a bit sexual, isn’t it? But the American people are the ones getting screwed.

***

Published on Monday, April 7, 2008 by TomDispatch.com

General Entrap-Us or General Entrapped?

Democrats Should Treat Petraeus and His Surge as Irrelevant

by Ira Chernus

It was supposed to be a “cakewalk.” General Petraeus would come to Congress, armed with his favorite charts showing that the “surge” had dramatically reduced violence in Iraq. He would earn universal acclaim for his plan to “pause” troop reductions from July until after the election in November ¡ª the same plan that John McCain counts on to help him win that election.

When it comes to Iraq, though, the Bush administration’s cakewalks never seem to turn out as planned.

***

American Grand Delusions: Why the Testimony of General Petraeus Will Be Delusional

By Tom Engelhardt

TomDispatch.com

Thursday 03 April 2008

***

Bloggers IndexApril 08, 2008

The Pet Iraq

Ian Gurvitz

As General Shuck and Ambassador Jive hit Congress again for more independent testimony, one thing is certain: Given the right imagery, slogans, and catch phrases, most Americans are dumb enough to buy anything.

30 years ago, after running the “Vietnamization” and the “Hearts and Minds” campaigns, we finally capped two decades of involvement in Vietnam, 55 thousand Americans and 3 million Vietnamese dead, by hitting on “Peace with Honor.” I was never sure where the honor was in that cluster fuck of refugees storming the embassy as escape choppers flew off the roof, but I guess “you fucked up, you trusted us” and “premature evacuation” didn’t cut it.

In the five plus years since they first rolled out this product, via celebrity spokesperson Colin Powell, we’ve had “Mission Accomplished,” the “war on terror,” escalations as “surges,” (we’re suckers for the phallic shit) removing added troops as “reductions,” and now a decrease in death redefined as “stability.” (In reality, there is no “war on terror.” What the president has been waging, and it’s clear if you listen closely to that shitkicker accent, is a “War on Terra.” As in a war on the earth. I’ve never quite gotten the disdain Republicans have for things that are alive. Is it a genetic predisposition or a learned behavior?)

At the end of the day, the solution in Iraq is not military. It’s not political. It’s promotional. We just need to get the boys in advertising to start kicking around some concepts. Maybe take the down and dirty P and G approach. Something like “New and Improved Iraq! Now with 20% Less Death!”

***

Published on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 by Inter Press Service

Embarrassed US Starts to Disown Basra Operation

by Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON, Mar 31 (IPS) - As it became clear last week that the “Operation Knights Assault” in Basra was in serious trouble, the George W. Bush administration began to claim in off-the-record statements to journalists that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had launched the operation without consulting Washington.

The effort to disclaim U.S. responsibility for the operation is an indication that it was viewed as a major embarrassment just as top commander Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker are about to testify before Congress.

Behind this furious backpedaling is a major Bush administration miscalculation about Moqtada al-Sadr and the Mahdi Army, which the administration believed was no longer capable of a coordinated military operation. It is now apparent that Sadr and the Mahdi Army were holding back because they were still in the process of retraining and reorganisation, not because Sadr had given up the military option or had lost control of the Mahdi Army.

***

Published on Monday, March 31, 2008 by The Nation

The Lessons of Basra

by Robert Dreyfuss

At the start of the military offensive launched last week into Basra by US-trained Iraqi army forces, President Bush called the action by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki “a bold decision.” He added: “I would say this is a defining moment in the history of a free Iraq.”

That’s true-but not in the way the President meant it. As the smoke clears over new rubble in Iraq’s second city, at the heart of Iraq’s oil region, it’s apparent that the big winner of the Six-Day War in Basra are the forces of rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army faced down the Iraqi armed forces not only in Basra, but in Baghdad, as well as in Kut, Amarah, Nasiriyah, and Diwaniya, capitals of four key southern provinces. That leaves Sadr, an anti-American rabble rouser and nationalist who demands an end to the US occupation of Iraq, and who has grown increasingly close to Iran of late, in a far stronger position that he was a week ago. In Basra, he’s the boss. An Iraqi reporter for the New York Times, who managed to get into Basra during the fighting, concluded that the thousands of Mahdi Army militiamen that control most of the city remained in charge. “There was nowhere the Mahdi either did not control or could not strike at will,” he wrote.

***

Published on Sunday, April 6, 2008

Listen to the General (No Not Petraeus!)

by Dave Lindorff

In a couple days, Americans will be deluged with effusive, praise-filled stories in what passes for news organizations, print and electronic, in the US, quoting Gen. David Petraeus on the glories of his and President Bush’s brilliant so-called “surge” strategy in Iraq.

There will be little critical comment on his report, which will claim that the surge is working but that Iraqi’s “need to do more” to take advantage of the surge in stability to create a stable government in Baghdad.

He will claim, and the media will help him here, that the collapse of President Nouri al-Maliki’s “defining moment” attack on the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr in Basra, with 1000 of his crack troops and two leading officers defecting to the other side, and Maliki himself having to be rescued by American troops, was a minor event. He will claim that the rise in violence in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq back to pre-surge levels is of no significance-a statistical aberration.

And President Bush will ask for another $102 billion from Congress to continue funding his catastrophic war in Iraq.

Just to keep our sanity and clarity, it would be good to listen to another general, Lt. General (ret.) William E. Odom, who on April 2 testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Gen. Odom told the committee that the last time he had testified about Iraq was in January of 2007. He had been asked about the “surge”. He said, “Today you are asking if it has worked. Last year I rejected the claim that it was a new strategy. Rather, I said, it is a new tactic used to achieve the same old strategic aim, political stability. And I foresaw no serious prospects for success. I see no reason to change my judgment now. The surge is prolonging instability, not creating the conditions for unity as the president claims.”

***

Senate Panel Critiques Prewar Claims by White House
By Greg Miller
The Los Angeles Times

Sunday 09 March 2008

Washington - After an acrimonious investigation that spanned four years, the Senate Intelligence Committee is preparing to release a detailed critique of the Bush administration’s claims in the buildup to war with Iraq, congressional officials said.

The long-delayed document catalogs dozens of prewar assertions by President Bush and other administration officials that proved to be wildly inaccurate about Iraq’s alleged stockpiles of banned weapons and pursuit of nuclear arms.

***

Published on Thursday, April 3, 2008 by The Nation

Oh, What a Lovely War! So?

by Michael Takiff

“So?”

Vice President Cheney, March 19, when asked about the American public’s disapproval of the Iraq War.

“I must say, I’m a little envious. If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed. It must be exciting for you…in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You’re really making history, and thanks.”

President Bush, March 13, speaking by videoconference to American military and civilian personnel in Afghanistan.

These are not adolescents talking. This is the Leader of the Free World and his Number-Two (you figure out which is which) demonstrating their unfitness for office. Their words encapsulate all we know about the selling and conduct of the Iraq War: Cheney’s, the contempt for the decent opinion of mankind that led us to charge into war over the objection of virtually every world leader not known as Bush’s Poodle; Bush’s, the delusional thinking that led us into the Middle East, expecting a baseball-and-apple-pie democracy to pop up in response.

***

PBS on Iraq: A Compilation of Deceit

By Morgan Strong

Consortium News

Sunday 30 March 2008

There have been five agonizing years of this war in Iraq. Five terrible years of bewilderment and rage.

Commemorating that anniversary, Frontline, the PBS investigative series, allotted four-and-one-half hours over two nights to an in-depth analysis of the war in Iraq and how it came about.

What the broadcast revealed was nothing new. Others have engaged the subject as thoroughly as did Frontline. What we did see in this broadcast, however, was a compilation of the deceit, pettiness, treachery, arrogance, ignorance and stunning callousness by those who took us into this vile war.

Beyond the lies, there also were the self-delusions. How in their right minds could the people who started this war believe that a new Iraqi government, with even modest democratic tendencies, would immediately recognize Israel?

And even more farfetched, that all of the Middle East states would rejoice and happily follow suit?

What would happen to the Palestinians? Would they simply be shoved aside in this glorious new era? Did the Bush administration really think that the people of the Middle East would forgive and forget so easily?

How did these people come to govern us? How did such incompetents and ideologues gain our fealty?

***

Published on Saturday, March 29, 2008 by Mother Jones

For the Press, No Iraq Introspection

by Greg Mitchell

In the thousands of articles and television reports marking the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, nearly every important aspect of the war was probed. Fingers were pointed at the usual suspects-Rumsfeld, Bremer, and Cheney; stubborn Republicans and weak-willed Democrats, among many others-but conspicuously absent from the media coverage was any soul-searching on behalf of the press, as if there had been no major media slips or tragic omissions over the past five years. With months to plan for the commemoration, the media were ready to take stock of everything-but themselves.

***

Studies: Iraq Costs US $12 Billion per Month
The Associated Press

Monday 10 March 2008

The flow of blood may be ebbing, but the flood of money into the Iraq war is steadily rising, new analyses show. In 2008, its sixth year, the war will cost approximately $12 billion a month, triple the “burn” rate of its earliest years, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and co-author Linda J. Bilmes report in a new book.

***

Cost of War

By Bob Herbert
The New York Times

Tuesday 04 March 2008

We’ve been hearing a lot about “Saturday Night Live” and the fun it has been having with the presidential race. But hardly a whisper has been heard about a Congressional hearing in Washington last week on a topic that could have been drawn, in all its tragic monstrosity, from the theater of the absurd.

The war in Iraq will ultimately cost U.S. taxpayers not hundreds of billions of dollars, but an astonishing $2 trillion, and perhaps more. There has been very little in the way of public conversation, even in the presidential campaigns, about the consequences of these costs, which are like a cancer inside the American economy.

On Thursday, the Joint Economic Committee, chaired by Senator Chuck Schumer, conducted a public examination of the costs of the war. The witnesses included the Nobel Prize-winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz (who believes the overall costs of the war - not just the cost to taxpayers - will reach $3 trillion), and Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International.

***

Robert Hormats, author of The Price of Liberty: Paying for America’s Wars from the Revolution to the War on Terror and a former member of the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations. Hormats delivers an indictment of the fiscal incapacities and blunders of the George W Bush debacle that could be read aloud as a campaign speech by any candidate of any other party. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are being financed by deficit spending, hope of economic growth, and sale of debt to foreigners. The author may be powerful enough to ignore Dick Cheney’s craven amoral direction as documented in both The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O’Neill and Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency. My review of the latter itemizes 23 high crimes and misdemeanors committed by Dick Cheney as documented by the authors, and no review our fiscal decrepitude can be complete without understanding how Dick Cheney has bankrupted the Republic and betrayed the Nation and our troops.

***

Published on Sunday, April 6, 2008 by The Guardian/UK

$3 Trillion May Be Too Low

Our original estimate of the cost of the Iraq war was too conservative: in reality the cost for the US will be much higher

by Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes

President Bush has tried to give the impression that the $3 trillion dollar estimate of the total cost of the war that we provide in our new book may be exaggerated.

We believe that it is in fact conservative. Even the president would have to admit that the $50 to $60 billion estimate given by the administration before the war was wildly off the mark; there is little reason to have confidence in their arithmetic. They admit to a cost so far of $600 billion.

***

Published on Monday, March 10, 2008 by “http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080310_the_world_as_it_is/”

The World As It Is

by Chris Hedges

War creates a world without empathy.

We live in a world, at home and in the Middle East, hardened and distorted by hate. We communicate in the language of fear and violence. Human beings are no longer viewed as human beings. They are no longer endowed in our eyes, or the eyes of those who oppose us, with human qualities. They do no love, grieve, suffer, laugh or weep. They represent cold abstractions of evil. The death-for-death means we communicate by producing corpses. And we are all guilty, Americans, Palestinians, Iraqis and Israelis. But we are not all guilty equally.

Israel and the United States bear the responsibility for a world that has unleashed twisted killers such as Abu Dheim. It is the decades of repression in Gaza, as well as the callous occupation in Iraq, that has bequeathed to us a new generation of jihadists and gunmen who walk into libraries and spray automatic fire at people bent over books. For as the poet W.H. Auden pointed out:

I and the public know

What all schoolchildren learn,

Those to whom evil is done

Do evil in return.

The long, slow drip of collective humiliation and abuse, along with the tiny and large indignities that go into transforming human beings into fanatics, is rarely understood by those on the outside. It ticks away like a clock until it suddenly explodes in our face. Because we do not know where it came from, it strikes us as incomprehensible, irrational, the product of a demented form of humanity. These killers, however, are not formed by the Quran or Islam or a culture that is morally inferior to our own. They are formed by a 40-year occupation, by the continued expansion of Jewish settlements, by the refusal to allow the return of expelled refugees, by the use of fighter jets to bomb squalid refugee camps and by an Israeli siege of Gaza that has blocked fuel, electricity and essential supplies and created a humanitarian crisis for 1.5 million Palestinians. It is what the Israelis have done to the Palestinians, what we have done to the Iraqis, that has brought us to this impasse. We unleashed this violence and only we can end it.

***

Published on Monday, March 10, 2008 by “http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/276360”

War Profiteers Work Their Schemes in Iraq

by Dave Zweifel

American corporations have long taken advantage of the nation’s taxpayers in a time of war, and the war that our country is fighting in Iraq is no exception. Indeed, everything from war profiteering to outright cheating were major reasons Robert M. “Fighting Bob” La Follette cited in his famous opposition to the U.S. getting mired in what morphed into World War I. Fighting Bob insisted that the only benefits to joining what had been a European fight would go to the U.S. companies that deal in military equipment and supplies. They would profit on the backs of the young American men who would be sent off to kill and be killed in a war that was Europe’s business, not ours.

A few days ago the Chicago Tribune outlined just how pervasive war profiteering is some 90 years later in a war that most Americans now doubt was ever a good idea.

Thanks to recently unsealed court records, the paper detailed how kickbacks “shaped the war’s largest troop support contract months before the first wave of U.S. soldiers plunged their boots in Iraqi sand.”

And while fraud was lining contractors’ pockets, the safety of American troops was endangered, according to the newspaper.

There have been 36 people indicted so far on Iraq war contract crimes, the Justice Department has revealed. The most recent involved four supervisors from the giant military contractor KBR, plus a highly decorated Army warrant officer who took bribes to hide the supervisors’ schemes.

Some executives of KBR, a former subsidiary of the infamous Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney’s company, would allegedly approve inflated bids from subcontractors, some of which charged the government up to $45 per can of soda, the Trib reported.

The inflated bids were concealed by concocting phony business records, many of them at the Rock Island, Ill., arsenal where much of the military contracting takes place.

The fraud, of course, is on top of the highly profitable business that military contractors enjoy during wartime. To put it mildly, these contractors don’t give the U.S. and its taxpayers discounts on military equipment, food and supplies.

War is a good time to make money and that’s exactly what military contractors do.

It’s no accident that corporate America is typically among the country’s biggest hawks. There’s gold in them thar battlefields.

Dave Zweifel is editor emeritus of The Capital Times.

***

Gang Members Get Trained in the Army

“http://www.laopinion.com/home/?rkey=00000000000003359240”, News Report, Claudia Núñez, Translated by Peter Micek, Posted: Mar 09, 2008

LOS ANGELES – While hundreds of Mexican soldiers are deserting the army to join drug trafficking gangs, California is facing the opposite problem: A growing number of gang members here have infiltrated the U.S. Armed Forces in order to receive military training.
The numbers speak for themselves: In 2003 there were just 16 incidents of gang members in the U.S. Armed Forces, while in 2006 the total was 10,309, according to the study, “Gang-Related Activity in the U.S. Armed Forces Increasing,” released in 2007 by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Twenty-two official entities, including the Los Angeles Police Department, participated in the report.
The National Gang Task Force reports that from 2003 to 2006, the Army investigated more than 100 cases of crimes that involved soldiers related to the most dangerous gangs in the country.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Armed Forces Criminal Investigation Command has documented the death of at least two soldiers – killed, it appears, by other soldiers with ties to rival gangs. It also registered an increase in the amount of violent incidents between soldiers who are affiliated with gangs.
“Officials do not want this topic spoken about because it uncovers how the Army, in its rush to recruit more soldiers, has had to lower its security standards, allowing in volunteers with criminal backgrounds. We all know that a high number of soldiers has died on the battlefield and others have deserted. We don’t have enough soldiers and the Army has strict orders to increase the number of enlisted troops nationwide, even if that means recruiting criminals,” Lee maintains.
Under the so-called “moral waiver,” the Armed Forces between 2003 and 2006 permitted into the Army 4,230 convicted criminals, 43,977 people with misdemeanors on their records and 58,561 drug addicts. In 2007, another 10,000 people with criminal records were recruited by the Pentagon, according to an investigation by the Michael D. Palm Center, based in Santa Barbara, Calif.

***

Jason Linkins

Andrew Sullivan: Bush Administration Officials Will Be ‘Indicted For War Crimes’

April 6, 2008 02:14 PM

Media coverage of the disclosure of the “torture memo” authored by Bush Justice Department official John C. Yoo has been mostly a deafening silence. But on this morning’s Chris Matthews’ show, someone finally fired a shot. As we mentioned in this morning’s liveblog, credit goes to The Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan, for taking the opportunity to ensure that this matter got out into the televised discourse somehow.

SULLIVAN: The latest revelations on the torture front show the memo from John Yoo...means that Don Rumsfeld, David Addington and John Yoo should not leave the United States any time soon. They will be, at some point, indicted for war crimes.

***

Pentagon Holds Thousands of Americans “Prisoners of War”

By Penny Coleman

AlterNet

Wednesday 26 March 2008

“There are at least 60,000 of them, but they’re not on the DOD’s list of soldiers missing in action.”

Sgt. Kristofer Shawn Goldsmith was one of the many soldiers and Marines, veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, who gave testimony at last weekend’s Winter Soldier investigation. They spoke from personal experience about what the American military is doing in those countries. They gave examples of what they had done, what they had been ordered to do, what they had witnessed, how their experiences had wounded them, both physically and psychically, and what kind of care and support they have, or most often have not gotten since coming home. The panel Goldsmith was on was called “The Breakdown of the U.S. Military,” so he surprised the audience when he said that he was going to talk about prisoners of war.

He was not, however, going to talk about the three soldiers listed as missing in action on the Department of Defense website. He was referring to those who have been the victims of stop-loss, the device by which the president can, “in the event of war,” choose to extend an enlistee’s contract “until six months after the war ends.” The “War on Terror” is this president’s excuse for invoking that clause. Because that war will, by definition, continue as long as we insist that there is a difference between the terror inflicted on our innocents and the terror inflicted on theirs, American soldiers are effectively signing away their freedom indefinitely when they join the military. They are prisoners of an ill-defined and undeclared war on a tactic - terrorism - that dates back to Biblical times and will be with us indefinitely.

According to U.S. News and World Report, there are at least 60,000 of them.

***

Published on Wednesday, March 12, 2008

It’s the ‘Oh Shit!’ Moment on Iran

by Dave Lindorff

Every horror movie has that “Oh Shit!” moment, when the hero or heroes are huddled in some creepy hideout, and suddenly something happens that tells you that the monster is just around the corner, or just about to attack. In “Jurassic Park” it was the pulsing ripples in a cup of water, heralding the arrival of a T-Rex. In “Jaws” it was the deep base music, letting you know that a monstrous shark was about to attack.

Well, we just got our “Oh Shit!” moment with the just-announced resignation of Admiral William J. Fallon, the military commander of US Middle East operations.

Adm. Fallon, 63, famously said that an attack on Iran would not happen “on my watch,” and is widely believed to have already threatened, along with a number of other top generals and admirals, to quit the service if the Bush administration were to launch an air attack on Iran.

Put the pieces together. We know that the vice president is obsessed with a desire to attack Iran, and has been since before he even took office. Bush has repeatedly stressed that Iran cannot be permitted to continue with its nuclear processing (he calls it their “nukular” bomb program, though there is no evidence that the country has a nuclear bomb development program, and in fact the last National Intelligence Estimate on Iran said there was not and hadn’t been since 2003). And Fallon has now quit.

***

Stopping the New Arms Race
By Katrina Vanden Heuvel
The Nation

Tuesday 26 February 2008

The White House will do everything it can to push its reckless, European-based missile defense plan forward. Not only is there growing citizen opposition in the host countries to the proposed ten interceptor missiles in Poland and radar military base in the Czech Republic, but the system fuels a new arms race and militarism that is a far greater threat to our national security than any nuclear missile from Iran it would purportedly defend against.

As Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund and author of Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons told me last year, “President Bush is rushing to deploy a technology that does not work against a threat that does not exist.”

But even worse than this rush to deployment is the destabilizing impact it has on relations with Russia and the prospects for real security and peace.

***

Published on Friday, March 7, 2008 by The Nation

Missile Defense: ‘Longest Running Scam’ Exposed

by Katrina vanden Heuvel

In Congress yesterday, Representative John Tierney, Chair of the House National Security and Foreign Affairs Subcommittee, convened the first in a series of hearings to examine a US missile defense program that is out of control, straining relations with allies, and renewing an arms race with Russia.

This is the first comprehensive review of the program since 1993 - the year before Republicans took control of Congress - and it’s long overdue. The focus yesterday was on the extent of the missile threat - as compared to other security vulnerabilities - and whether spending more than $10 billion annually on ballistic missile defense (BMD) is justifiable from that perspective.

In his opening statement, Rep. Tierney pointed out that we have spent over $120 billion on missile defense in the past 25 years; that the annual budget is expected to double by 2013 to $19 billion; and that the current $10 billion per year is equal to one-third of the Homeland Security budget, roughly equal to the State Department budget, greater than the FEMA budget, 20 times greater than public diplomacy expenditures, and 30 times greater than Peace Corps.

***

Published on Monday, March 3, 2008 by Associated Press

Expert: White House Derelict With E-mail

by Peter Yost

WASHINGTON — For President Bush, who expresses disdain for e-mail, the White House system of electronic record-keeping is a good match.

Even if Bush used e-mail, it might get lost in the problem-plagued White House computer system.

“I don’t want you reading my personal stuff,” the president explained to newspaper editors three years ago on why he doesn’t send electronic messages.

On Capitol Hill and in federal court, a congressional committee and two private groups are pushing for information on how the White House has handled its e-mail for the past six years and whether officials there complied with records-retention laws.

***

Apr 3, 4:37 AM EDT

Memo Linked to Warrantless Surveillance

Bush Administration Shredded 4th Amendment

By PAMELA HESS and LARA JAKES JORDAN

Associated Press Writers

WASHINGTON (AP) -- For at least 16 months after the Sept. 11 terror attacks in 2001, the Bush administration believed that the Constitution’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures on U.S. soil didn’t apply to its efforts to protect against terrorism.

***

Published on Sunday, March 2, 2008 by “http://www.commondreams.org”

Shifting Ideas, Shifting Narrative: Is the Tide Turning Against the Right Wing Attack on Government?

by Donald Cohen

Finally, after 30 years of the right-wing assault on government and public purpose, the outlines of a real debate on the role of government is emerging in this year’s Presidential campaign.

The current shift in public opinion and public conversation didn’t come out of nowhere. Candidates are breaking from the conservative story line because of the political space opened up by movements and actions at the grassroots and in the workplaces. Activists for labor, housing, environmental, school, and other policies have won many victories, particularly at the local level, during the past two decades.

One indicator of shifting tides of American ideas is a walk through the popular book titles of the day. Today, there’s a new crop of intellectually rigorous books that are boldly exposing the ‘con job’ that was supply side economics, the recklessness of unregulated capitalism, and the limits of the market in addressing the basic needs of the American people. And they are articulating an economic philosophy of the public good and shared prosperity, managed responsible capitalism. These are sophisticated and smart voices speaking about government’s essential role in more than the hushed whispers of the 1980’s and 1990’s anti-government political environment.

A growing number of editorial writers have recently awoken from the nightmare of right-wing dogma. They, too, regularly comment on the need for strengthened and uncorrupted public institutions to address today’s failures of unfettered markets and weakened regulatory apparatus to protect our food supply, the safety of consumer goods and a declining middle class. As do enlightened business leaders like Warren Buffet speaking out for higher taxes to fund large scale public investment.

Despite the effectiveness of the right wing message machine, it turns out the truth survives in even the most hostile environments - the truth that the conservative mission to dismantle government and relieve big business of all responsibility for the damage and unmet needs they leave behind is actually harming people, leaving us less secure, less healthy and less certain about the survival of the planet.

***

Learning From the Cultural Conservatives

By Sara Robinson
Campaign for America’s Future

Friday 29 February 2008

Make no mistake: When the conservatives set out to take over America 30 years ago, they were working off of a well-thought-out plan.

The plan was put in place by a wide variety of thinkers - but three of the main strategists were Howard Phillips, Richard Viguerie, and Paul Weyrich, each of whom wrote important books and papers laying out the goal of creating a conservative America, and showing specifically how the movement could make that happen.

Reading these plans now, as a progressive, it strikes me: We’re now living in an America in which every institution is dominated by these guys. Every facet of our looming disaster was dictated by bankrupt conservative ideas; yet our very ability to visualize fresh alternatives has been constricted by the frames they deliberately laid around our language and discourse. Most of the country finds it hard to even contemplate or discuss our predicaments in anything but conservative terms. It’s clear they’ve done more than merely mess up our country; they’ve also, quite intentionally, messed with our minds.

As it turns out, messing with our minds wasn’t just one part of the plan; it was the essential goal of the entire plan of conquest. They used sociology, social psychology, lingusitics, and a subtle understanding of human motivation to get into our heads and change the way we processed reality itself, in ways that made it impossible to question all the other things they were up to.

“Ideas do not immediately have consequences,” wrote Eric Huebeck in his 2001 update of Weyrich’s long-followed plan. “They do not have an impact in direct proportion to the truth they contain. They have an impact only insofar as adherents of those ideas are willing to take measures to propagate those ideas.”

Or, as a more cynical conservative once put it: You gotta catapult the propaganda.

***

Glenn Greenwald

Tuesday April 1, 2008 05:15 EDT

“Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics”

***

A GRAND OLD PARTY INDEED

“This is not about morality – this is about winning,” says Allen Raymond, GOP Consultant, in his new book, “http://www.amazon.com/How-Rig-Election-Confessions-Republican/dp/1416552227/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1205109208&sr=8-1”. Publisher’s Weekly: “Raymond achieved some notoriety when he plead guilty in federal court to jamming Connecticut phone lines in a 2002 Democratic get-out-the-vote effort – small potatoes compared to what he had gotten away with for more than a decade, vividly and hilariously chronicled in this outrageous career retrospective. For 13 years, Raymond worked his way up the ranks of GOP operatives by smearing opponents and worse in campaigns across the country. . .”

***

Glenn Greenwald

Great American Hypocrites: McCain’s Old Packaging

Posted April 6, 2008 | 10:41 PM (EST)

The following is an excerpt from my new book, Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Myths of Republican Politics. The book is available for online ordering now and will be in bookstores on April 15.

It examines the deceitful, personality-based election tactics the Right uses to build absurd cults of personality around their leaders while demonizing liberal and Democratic candidates. Accompanying that, as always, is the vital role the establishment press plays in disseminating those vapid though powerful themes. This excerpt is from the chapter concerning John McCain’s candidacy and how those themes will be deployed by the right-wing/media monster to transform him into a principled, honor-bound American icon.

In every one of these critical aspects, John McCain is perfectly illustrative of the same twisted process that has infected our political discourse and converted our national elections into, using the words of John Harris and Mark Halperin, a personality-based freak show. The media depicts McCain as a moderate despite his warmongering extremism. He is heralded as a “new kind of Republican” even though, as a candidate, he is the spitting image of George W. Bush and, on the issues, a more or less reliable supporter of the defining Bush/Cheney policies. He is relentlessly painted as an independent, apolitical maverick, despite a willingness to change positions the minute that doing so is politically expedient. The press refuses to subject him to critical scrutiny because of their great personal affection for him. And he is held out as the honor-bound truth-teller despite both a public and private life that has long ceased to contain any actual acts of honor and truth-telling.

John McCain is a natural candidate, right at home in a political party led by Great American Hypocrites and with a press corps that reveres great American hypocrisy. The press adores him for the same vapid, personality-based reasons it adored George W. Bush. And McCain’s media-built and media-sustained reputation as a trans-partisan man of principle and conviction is every bit as genuine as it was in the case of Bush. If the GOP/media machinery manages to elect him, he will undoubtedly produce extremely similar -- if not worse --results.

***

Sam Stein

New Book: McCain Once Physically Attacked Fellow Congressman

April 8, 2008 09:49 AM

But how much of McCain’s legendary anger streak does the public actually know? Judging from snippets of Cliff Schecter’s new book “The Real McCain” - an advanced copy of which was obtained by the Huffington Post - the answer may be surprisingly little.

***

Sam Stein

McCain Gets Facts Wrong On Iraq Again

April 6, 2008 01:00 PM

Facts can be funny things.

Over the past several weeks, Sen. John McCain has been occasionally tripping over them in his advocacy for continuing America’s presence in Iraq. Most memorably, he repeated - three times - the assertion that Iran was arming al-Qaeda despite the fact that there is no known connection between country and the group, and that the two are clearly of different religions.

On Sunday, McCain made another Iraq-based claim that is highly debatable if not simply false.

***

March 31, 2008

Middie McCain More Moron than Maverick

Alec Sokolow

There’s an old joke. What do you call the person who graduates last from medical school? Doctor. Well, I got a new one. What do you call the person who graduates fifth from the bottom of his class at Annapolis? The Republican Party nominee for President. That’s right. Senator John McCain actually graduated 894th out of 899 middies at the Naval Academy. Only five other crew cuts achieved less than John McCain did in his class at Annapolis. And he was the son and grandson of U.S. Navy Admirals! He was a legacy, which means they probably had to keep his sorry dumb ass in the Navy!

Now, there are several ways to look at this little tidbit: he didn’t want to be there, he hated his father, he was an entitled Navy brat who knew that because of his father’s power and position he was never going to be kicked out, he was immature. But, seeing as I’m not a Dr. Phil and due to the staggering lowness of his ranking, I logically must infer something else: This man is dumb. I mean, McHale’s Navy dumb. Gomer Pyle dumb. Sit on the TV and watch the couch dumb. Fart into your own telephone to nail a friend dumb. 894 out of 899! That’s not “C” student. That’s “D” student. If the Navy graded on a curve, maybe even “D-” student. We’re talking a “special” kind of dumb. And I mean “special,” as in retarded. That’s “Run, Forrest, Run” dumb.

***

Published on Tuesday, March 4, 2008 by “http://www.reformer.com/editorials/ci_8446066”

Roosevelt: Words That Inspired

Editorial

Seventy-five years ago, our nation was in the midst of one of the most dangerous and troubled periods in its history.

When Franklin D. Roosevelt stood on the steps of the Capitol at noon, 75 years ago today, to take the oath of office as the 33rd President of the United States, a nation — and the world — was hanging on his every word. Never before or since had so much been riding on an inaugural address.

“This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper,” Roosevelt began. “So first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

With those words, Roosevelt calmly outlined the depths of the crisis facing America and appealed to Americans not to lose faith in themselves or their nation.

“Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money,” he said. “It lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.”

Roosevelt called for a greater role for government than had ever been seen before, and for more collective effort than had ever been seen before in peacetime in America. At a time when some openly speculated whether our nation would be better off under communism or fascism, Roosevelt never lost his faith in democracy.

***

The Face-Slap Theory
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times

Monday 10 March 2008

Friday’s employment report - which was so weak that it had many economists declaring that we’re already in a recession - was bad news. But it was actually less disturbing than what’s going on in the financial markets.

The scariest thing I’ve read recently is a speech given last week by Tim Geithner, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Mr. Geithner came as close as a Fed official can to saying that we’re in the midst of a financial meltdown.

***

WAYS TO MITIGATE THE RECESSION

Live beneath your means. Keep your transaction costs low. Vote Democrat.

With home prices falling, foreclosures rising, and a recession looming, there is the fear of a vicious cycle: more foreclosures leading to further home-price declines leading to worsening consumer confidence, a deeper recession, and . . . Not good.

We borrowed massively to cut taxes on the rich and then to finance an ill-conceived war, taking our National Debt up from under $1 trillion (about 30% of GDP) at the start of Reagan’s first term to $10 trillion (nearly 70% of GDP) by the end of George W. Bush’s.

We allowed the gap between the rich and everyone else – and the ranks of the uninsured – to chasm.

We watched – or, rather, didn’t watch – as Wall Street paid itself gigantic bonuses for creating securities and taking risks whose magnitude we do not yet know. (But we do know that when the CEO exited a hemorrhaging Merrill Lynch, he left with $161 million in cash and benefits.)

***

The Dilbert Strategy

By Paul Krugman

The New York Times

Monday 31 March 2008

Anyone who has worked in a large organization - or, for that matter, reads the comic strip “Dilbert” - is familiar with the “org chart” strategy. To hide their lack of any actual ideas about what to do, managers sometimes make a big show of rearranging the boxes and lines that say who reports to whom.

You now understand the principle behind the Bush administration’s new proposal for financial reform, which will be formally announced today: it’s all about creating the appearance of responding to the current crisis, without actually doing anything substantive.

The financial events of the last seven months, and especially the past few weeks, have convinced all but a few diehards that the U.S. financial system needs major reform. Otherwise, we’ll lurch from crisis to crisis - and the crises will get bigger and bigger.

***

Foreclosure Plans Benefit Banks, but Do Little for Homeowners

By Dean Baker

The Center for Economic and Policy Research

Tuesday 04 March 2008

Taxpayers foot the bill to finance bailout plans.

Washington DC - Many of the recent proposals to help homeowners facing foreclosure provide little relief for most of the families at risk of losing their home, according to a report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Under these rescues, taxpayers end up underwriting a bailout that could reap billions of dollars in profit for banks and mortgage holders.

***

Critics Say Bush Is Out of Touch on the Economy

31808

Maura Reynolds and Janet Hook report for The Los Angeles Times: “In some ways it was a throwaway line, the kind of praise a boss tosses out casually. But as the economy teetered Monday, President Bush’s words to Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson struck many as discordant and disengaged. ‘I want to thank you, Mr. Secretary, for working over the weekend,’ Bush said as he met with his economic advisors at the White House.”

***

Published on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 by The Independent/UK

USA 2008: The Great Depression

Food stamps are the symbol of poverty in the US. In the era of the credit crunch, a record 28 million Americans are now relying on them to survive - a sure sign the world’s richest country faces economic crisis

by David Usborne

We knew things were bad on Wall Street, but on Main Street it may be worse. Startling official statistics show that as a new economic recession stalks the United States, a record number of Americans will shortly be depending on food stamps just to feed themselves and their families.

***

Free trade is the serial killer of American manufacturing and the Trojan Horse of World Government. It is the primrose path to the loss of economic independence and national sovereignty. Free trade is a bright shining lie.

-- Where the Right Went Wrong

***

Americans Delay Retirement

As Housing, Stocks Swoon

Nest Eggs Shrink,

Deferring Dreams;

‘Freaked Out’ Elite

By JENNIFER LEVITZ

April 1, 2008

As the falling real-estate and stock markets erode their savings, many aging Americans are delaying retirement, electing labor over leisure in uncertain times.

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB120699498978778055.html?mod=blog

***

Loans and Leadership

By Paul Krugman

The New York Times

Friday 28 March 2008

When George W. Bush first ran for the White House, political reporters assured us that he came across as a reasonable, moderate guy.

Yet those of us who looked at his policy proposals - big tax cuts for the rich and Social Security privatization - had a very different impression. And we were right.

***

Subprime Mortgage Watchdogs Kept on Leash

31708

E. Scott Reckard, reporting for The Los Angeles Times, writes: “Freelance financial watchdogs who examined the paperwork on subprime home loans being sold to Wall Street had an inside view of the boom in easy-money lending this decade. The reviewers say they raised plenty of red flags about flaws so serious that mortgages should have been rejected outright - such as borrowers’ incomes that seemed inflated or documents that looked fake - but the problems were glossed over, ignored or stricken from reports.”

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Bear Stearns in Bankruptcy: Can You Feel Their Pain?

31708

Dean Baker writes for Truthout: “Why is the Fed, an agency of the government, using our tax dollars to keep Bear Stearns and its rich managers and shareholders above water? After all, the government supposedly doesn’t have enough money to provide kids with health care and childcare, to guarantee families decent housing or to meet a long list of other needs. Why do we have the money to lend tens of billions of dollars to Bear Stearns at below market interest rates?”

***

Bush Ignoring Most FOIA Requests

31708

The Associated Press reports: “Despite ordering improvements more than two years ago, President Bush has barely made a dent in the huge backlog of unanswered requests under the Freedom of Information Act. At the same time, an audit by the National Security Archive found that Bush has provided citizens someone to talk to about how long it is going to take to get the government records they want or to be turned down.”

***

Supreme Court Inc.

31708

Jeffrey Rosen reports for The New York Times: “Though the current Supreme Court has a well-earned reputation for divisiveness, it has been surprisingly united in cases affecting business interests. Of the 30 business cases last term, 22 were decided unanimously, or with only one or two dissenting votes.”

***

Federal Agencies: Our Rules Pre-empt Injury Lawsuits

By Janet McConnaughey

The Associated Press

Sunday 30 March 2008

***

Tainted Drugs Put Focus on the FDA

31708

According to Gardiner Harris in The New York Times, “After a contaminated medicine from China was linked to as many as 17 deaths in the United States, members of Congress clamored for changes while regulators defended their actions.”

***

Top Hedge Fund Managers Earn Over $240 Million

By JENNY ANDERSON and JULIE CRESWELL

New York Times Published: April 24, 2007

James Simons, left, earned $1.7 billion in 2006, more than any other hedge fund manager. Kenneth Griffin, right, made $1.4 billion. His earnings last year were $1.7 billion.

As one of the leading hedge fund managers, Mr. Simons makes a sum that dwarfs that of the top chiefs on Wall Street. The highest paid on the Street, Lloyd C. Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, earned $54.3 million in salary, cash, restricted stock and stock options last year. (Unlike the total for Mr. Simons, Mr. Blankfein’s reported compensation does not include gains on investments.)

Two other hedge fund managers, Kenneth C. Griffin and Edward S. Lampert, each took home more than $1 billion last year, with George Soros missing the hurdle by a hair, give or take $50 million, according to an annual ranking of the top 25 hedge fund earners by Institutional Investor’s Alpha magazine.

Yet the survey also shows that for the hedge fund elite, the rich are getting much richer in a hurry.

To make Alpha’s list, a manager needed to earn at least $240 million last year, nearly double the amount in 2005. That is up from a minimum of $30 million in 2001 and 2002. Combined, the top 25 hedge fund managers last year earned $14 billion _ enough to pay New York City’s 80,000 public school teachers for nearly three years.

With the modern gilded age in full swing, hedge fund managers and their private equity counterparts are comfortably seated atop one of the most astounding piles of wealth in American history.

Naturally, some look upon these masters of the new universe as this generation’s robber barons, using wealth to create wealth, often in secretive ways, and leaving little that is tangible in their wake.

But as hedge funds and their private equity brethren begin to emerge more onto the public stage _ playing increasingly bigger roles in art and cultural circles, tiptoeing into the Washington lobbying game, and even selling shares of their own firms to the public _ all aspects of their activities, their own compensation in particular, are raising eyebrows.

“There is some question as to what the hell they are doing that is worth” that kind of money, said J. Bradford DeLong, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley. “The answer is damned mysterious.”

Indeed, to some, it is difficult to see the value and the risks created by a hedge fund that bets billions of dollars on movements in everything from global currencies, stocks and bonds to real estate, reinsurance and complex credit derivatives. Recently, for instance, the House Financial Services Committee held hearings focusing on the potential risks to pensioners and the financial system caused by hedge funds.

***

http://www.thestreet.com/s/kass-20-surprises-for-2008/newsanalysis/investing/10396519.html?puc=_tsccom

Kass: 20 Surprises for 2008

By Doug Kass

RealMoney Silver Contributor

1/2/2008 6:11 AM EST

“Never make predictions, especially about the future.”

-- Casey Stengel.

In late December in each of the past five years, I have taken a page from former Morgan Stanley strategist Byron Wien -- and now the chief investment strategist at Pequot Capital Management -- and prepared a list of possible surprises for the coming year.

These are not intended to be predictions but rather events that have a reasonable chance of occurring despite the general perception that the odds are very long. I call these “possible improbable” events.

The real purpose of this endeavor is to consider positioning a portion of my portfolio in accordance with outlier events -- with the potential for large payoffs. After all, Wall Street research is still very conventional and based on “groupthink,” despite the reforms over the past several years.

Mainstream and consensus expectations are just that, and in most cases they are deeply embedded into today’s stock prices. If I succeed in at least making you think about outlier events, then the exercise has been worthwhile.

Almost half of last year’s predicted surprises actually transpired, up from one-third in 2006 and from 20% in 2005. Nearly one-half of the prognostications proved prescient in 2004 and about one-third in the first year of surprises in 2003.

But it wasn’t the quantity of the correctly predicted surprises that made 2007’s list a remarkable success, it was the quality, as I hit on nearly every major variant theme: the severity of the housing depression, the turmoil and writedowns in the credit markets, the curtailing of private-equity deals and the reawakening of equity market volatility.

Consider just a couple of these quotes from our Surprise List for 2007 :

“A fractured mortgage market leads to a standstill in deal-making as the capital markets (and underwriting activity) seize up.”

In early 2007, “evidence of cracks in subprime credits are ignored, with housing-related equities soaring to new 52-week highs by March 1. However, a dumping of homes on the market in the spring serves to result in a quantum increase in the months of unsold housing inventory and a dramatic drop in the average home price. ... Sales of existing and new homes take another sharp leg lower as we enter what I’ve dubbed the Great Housing Depression of 2007. Importantly, the financial intermediaries that source mortgage financing/origination begin to feel the financial brunt of the Great Mortgage Bubble of 2000-06 after years of creative but nonsensical lending behavior.”

It will be hard to do it again and beat last year’s surprises, but without further ado, here is my Surprise List for 2008.

1. The Housing Depression of 2007 morphs into the Retail Spending Depression of 2008. Stubbornly high inflation coupled with a deceleration in the rate of job growth, which turns into job losses by midyear, and an absence of innovation (a creativity void in consumer electronic products and apparel), leads to an unprecedented and abrupt drop in personal consumption expenditures.

The Retail HOLDRs (RTH - Cramer’s Take - Stockpickr) exchange-traded fund declines to $80 from $94. Despite their apparent “value” today, retail stocks, especially women’s apparel, are among the worst-performing stocks in the first half of 2008.

2. Under pressure from slowing consumer spending, disappointing capital spending and higher commodities, corporate profits drop 10% in 2008. Importantly, the pattern of economic activity grows increasingly inconsistent and lumpy, providing a difficult backdrop for corporate managers and investment managers to navigate.

3. The S&P 500 Index falls by 5%-10% in 2008, and 2007’s laggards and leaders continue to be the same laggards and leaders in the coming year.

4. With a continuation of the credit and liquidity crises and an increased recognition that financial retrenchment will take years (not months), volatility pushes even higher. Daily moves of 1%-2% become more commonplace, serving to further alienate the individual investor.

5. The Federal Reserve embarks upon a series of moves to ease monetary policy in 2008. Nearly every meeting is accompanied by a 25-basis-point decrease in the federal funds rate even despite continued inflationary pressures.

Nevertheless the economy fails to revive as the Fed pushes on a string.

6. Growth in the Western European economies deteriorates throughout the year, and the markets in England and France drop at twice the rate of the U.S. market.

7. The Chinese juggernaut continues apace and, despite continued protestations of a market bubble, the Chinese market doubles again in 2008.

8. The Japanese market puts on a surprising resurgence as the world’s investors respond to compressed valuations (vis-à-vis peer regions), reasonable multiples (absolutely and against Japanese bond yields), accelerated M&A activity, share buybacks and relative strong corporate profit growth.

9. The administration’s proposal to revive the housing market falls on its face (as the housing bust accelerates), and President Bush enlists a well-placed Democrat and former cabinet member to become the U.S. housing czar, who has the primary charge to propose and administer a massive Marshall Plan for housing.

Several high-profile housing-related bankruptcies occur in 2008, including Countrywide Financial (CFC - Cramer’s Take - Stockpickr), Beazer Homes (BZH - Cramer’s Take - Stockpickr), Hovnanian (HOV - Cramer’s Take - Stockpickr), Standard Pacific (SPF - Cramer’s Take - Stockpickr), WCI Communities (WCI - Cramer’s Take - Stockpickr) and Radian Group (RDN - Cramer’s Take - Stockpickr).

10. Financial stocks fail to recover. No financial company is immune to the eroding market conditions, the spike in market volatility, the uneven direction in commodities and currency prices. Even the leader of the pack, Goldman Sachs (GS - Cramer’s Take - Stockpickr), makes several bad bets in the derivative, currency and commodity markets, and its shares begin to underperform its peers as profit forecasts move lower.

Citigroup (C - Cramer’s Take - Stockpickr) halves its dividend, and the shares briefly trade in the mid-$20s. Asset sales and writedowns leave the bank crippled, and in late 2008 (after another capital infusion by Abu Dhabi), Citi is merged with Bank of America (BAC - Cramer’s Take - Stockpickr). Its new name is its old name: CitiBank!

Bear Stearns (BSC - Cramer’s Take - Stockpickr) is acquired by HSBC (HBC - Cramer’s Take - Stockpickr) in a take-under (well below today’s price) -- as investor Joe Lewis loses nearly $350 million on his near-10% position in the brokerage firm.

Mutual fund outflows and uncertainty regarding the integrity of money market funds result in the asset-management stocks being among the worst-performing sectors in 2008. With private-equity deals at a standstill, Blackstone (BX - Cramer’s Take - Stockpickr) shares trade down close to $10 a share. Late in the year, CEO Stephen Schwarzman and his management group take the company private.

11. With the economy weakening and corporate profits tumbling, investors pay up -- real up -- for growth. The three horsemen -- Research In Motion (RIMM - Cramer’s Take - Stockpickr), Apple Computer (AAPL - Cramer’s Take - Stockpickr) and Google (GOOG - Cramer’s Take - Stockpickr) -- move into bubble status, and short interest triples as the naysayers increase their bets. Their shares double in 2008 even as most equities decline.

Technology disappoints as it becomes clear by the beginning of the second quarter that “double ordering” inflated recent revenue gains as the weakening consumers’ appetite for electronics founders. Rapidly growing biotech names are embraced as their P/Es grow high into the sky and they become the New Big Thing, and market leaders. Housing-centric equities continue to deflate and mop up the rear.

12. Although private-equity M&A activity remains moribund, 2008 is highlighted by numerous mergers of equals as a weak U.S. economy necessitates the need for a strategy that produces synergies and cuts costs. Yahoo! (YHOO - Cramer’s Take - Stockpickr) and eBay (EBAY - Cramer’s Take - Stockpickr) merge. So do Amazon (AMZN - Cramer’s Take - Stockpickr) and Overstock.com (OSTK - Cramer’s Take - Stockpickr).

13. A weakening economy will also hasten a number of divestitures. General Electric (GE - Cramer’s Take - Stockpickr) will sell NBC Universal to Time Warner (TWX - Cramer’s Take - Stockpickr), which will not sell or spin off AOL.

14. Reversing its recent strength, the U.S. dollar’s value falls by over 10% in 2008 (and gold rises to over $1,000 an ounce). Despite the weak domestic economy, foreign reserve diversification efforts and the demand for higher interest rates cause the yield on the 10-year U.S. note to move higher throughout the year.

15. The price of crude oil, insensitive to a weakening world economy, eclipses $135 per barrel after an “exogenous” event of terrorism, supply disruptions or political upheaval. The $100 level becomes the new $70! Surprisingly, energy stocks react in a muted fashion to the rip in price as, by midyear, the Democratic Party’s populist view of a windfall tax on energy companies gains increased acceptance.

16. The Internet becomes the tactical nuke of the digital age. The Web is invaded on many levels as governments, consumers and investors freak out. First, an act of cyberterrorism occurs that compromises the security of a major government (similar to the attacks this year emanating from the Chinese military aimed at the German Chancellery) or uses DoS against media and e-commerce sites.

Second, a major data center will fail and will be far worse than the 1988 Cornell student incident that infected about 5% of the Unix boxes on the early Internet.

Third, cybercrime explodes exponentially in 2008. Financial markets will be exposed to hackers using elaborate fraud schemes (like liquidating and sweeping online brokerage accounts and shorting stocks, then employing a denial of service attack against the company). Fourth, Storm Trojan reappears.

17. The hedge fund community (especially of a quant kind) is disintermediated in 2008. Outflows accelerate, abetting an already conspicuous trend of rising volatility in a market that behaves more like a commodity than ever.

18. There are several major Enron-like accounting scandals in 2008, causing investor confidence to plummet. These will come in some large financial and industrial (rollup) companies in Europe and the U.S.

19. Democrats Clinton/Kerrey and Republicans McCain/Crist represent their parties in the presidential/vice presidential contest in November. Ron Paul becomes the Libertarian candidate. In a remarkably close election (reminiscent of the Bush/Gore battle of 2000), the Democrats grab the White House.

20. The politics of trade become more fractious (even in the Republican Party) as angst about globalization escalates in the U.S., reflecting inequalities and a cyclical contraction in our domestic economy. Doha dies. And the new Big Things (and the source of liquidity for the capital markets) -- Sovereign Wealth Funds -- become targets of American politicians (and suppress U.S. equities further).

***

Major Grower Ends Crop, Lacking Workers

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Michael Rubinkam, The Associated Press, writes: “Saying the nation’s immigration system is broken, Pennsylvania’s largest grower of fresh-to-market tomatoes announced Monday he will no longer produce the crop because he can’t find enough workers to harvest it.”

***

Buckley loved debate. Unlike today’s cowardly conservatives, he debated the best minds he could entice on to a stage. He never used his opponents as props or punch lines for fixed fights. He liked them. Loving his own ideas, not just hating theirs, left room for liking them. What a long sad fall from Bill Buckley to Bill O’ Reilly. I’m not part of the crowd that says if we can just get along everything will be alright. But I am part of the crowd that thinks learning to get along better will help . . .

F... So I say again, rest in peace, Bill Buckley.

***

Published on Sunday, March 30, 2008 by The Boulder Daily Camera (Colorado)

Let Us Reason Together

by Clint Talbot

You might expect political discourse today would be more informed, sophisticated and well-reasoned than ever, at least in the United States. We’re literate, learned, savvy and used to swimming in massive volumes of information.

Thanks to the internet, anyone can easily become an authority on anything from the local library budget to the competing congressional proposals on warrantless wiretapping. More than ever, citizens are able to know what they’re talking about, to back up their assertions with facts (culled from original source material), and to state a logical, well-reasoned case for their conclusions.

So why is so much of our public discourse so detached from verifiable facts? And why is so much of it the rhetorical equivalent of a food fight? You can dunk a horse in the fountain of knowledge, but you can’t make him think.

But civic debate requires more than ideological salvos. It requires that we listen to those with whom we disagree, to examine their evidence, to consider their arguments. When a philosophical foe makes a valid point, we are obliged to admit this. Where she errs, we are called upon to explain how.

Through such careful, logical and thoughtful exchanges, the theory goes, the sounder arguments will generally prevail, and society will improve. But to an alarming degree, that is not the nature of our public discourse.

***

March 27, 2008

5:00 PM

CONTACT: Public Citizen

Press Office: 202-588-1000

Anniversary of Three Mile Island Reminds Us, Nuclear Power is Still Not the Answer

Statement of Tyson Slocum, Director, Public Citizen’s Energy Program

WASHINGTON, DC - March 27 - The anniversary of the Three Mile Island nuclear accident is a somber reminder of the fatal flaws of nuclear power and the unresolved dangers nuclear energy poses. However, despite the lessons learned from that catastrophe, the Bush administration is attempting to jump-start an industry that has been stagnant for almost three decades.

It’s almost as if the Bush administration forgot what happened March 28, 1979, when feedwater pumps failed at Three Mile Island nuclear plant near Harrisburg, Pa., leading to a partial core meltdown and the release of significant amounts of radiation. Prior to this event, mounting public concern and disastrous cost overruns led to the cancellation of most proposals for new reactors. Three Mile Island was the final blow.

Almost 30 years later, the flaws that halted interest in nuclear power have not changed. Cost, security, safety and waste proliferation are lingering problems that have yet to be resolved. Nuclear power is still dependent on taxpayer handouts for survival; plants still face safety shortcomings and lack of protection from terrorist attacks. Nuclear power is not a clean energy source, producing low- and high-level radioactive waste at every step of the process – from uranium mining to energy production.

What has changed since Three Mile Island? The nuclear industry has targeted not just ratepayers to bear the financial risk of these boondoggles, but is looking to saddle all taxpayers with the cost of guaranteeing the loans used to build new nuclear reactors.

***

Glaciers Suffer Record Shrinkage

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BBC News reports: “The rate at which some of the world’s glaciers are melting has more than doubled, data from the United Nations Environment Programme has shown.”

***

Published on Tuesday, March 4, 2008 by “http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/column/275416”

Real Patriots Don’t Waste the Nation’s Resources

by Bill Berry

The markets were up sharply last week. Wheat markets, that is.

Two University of Wisconsin-Extension agriculture agents worry that hay-shakers will take shortcuts and fail to take good care of Wisconsin’s two most precious natural resources — land and water — as they rush to cash in.

Americans didn’t become the world’s biggest energy hogs on purpose. Our behaviors today result from cheap oil and economic growth fueled by unsustainable consumption of cheap goods. But we’re capable of changing our behaviors. So in response to the bleak winter numbers of last week, here’s a short list of things we could accomplish with little pain:

* Face the facts: An economy that relies on rapacious consumption will eventually devour itself. We need a new design that thrives on community health and stability rather than boatloads of junk from China.

* Go on a diet: Obviously, there’s a lot of fat in the U.S. economy. A diet wouldn’t hurt, literally and figuratively.

* Protect our land and water resources. We also need to ensure that these resources are protected for future generations. If mandates or incentives are needed to preserve soil and protect the public’s water, then we can’t be timid.

* Take personal responsibility:

* Elect responsible leaders: Choose local leaders who embrace sustainable community policies, state leaders who are willing to reward them and national leaders who have the guts to say that new realities require simple but determined efforts to change.

Getting people to equate patriotism with responsible consumption and conservation of resources would be a big step in the right direction. Rewarding that behavior would be even bigger.

Bill Berry of Stevens Point writes a semimonthly column for The Capital Times. “mailto:billnick@charter.net”

***

Winner Of The First-Ever National Press Club Award For Humor March 19, 2008

Breaking News

McCain Concludes Fact-hiding Mission to Iraq

Mac: ‘Omission Accomplished’

Presumptive G.O.P. nominee John McCain wrapped up his fact-hiding mission to Iraq today, declaring the trip an unqualified success.

“My friends, I came to Iraq to hide the facts about the way the war is going, and in that I have succeeded,” Sen. McCain told reporters. “Omission accomplished.”

Sen. McCain praised his campaign staff for steering clear of visual evidence of recent violence in Baghdad: “Thanks to the hard work of my advance team, the surge has the appearance of working.”

The Arizona senator said that his trip to Iraq was successful in part because he was able to obscure the actual facts with new facts of his own creation.

“It’s a well known fact that Iran is training al-Qaeda,” Sen. McCain said. “And if it wasn’t a well-known fact before, it is now.”

In a speech commemorating the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, President Bush echoed Sen. McCain’s fact-hiding theme.

“As far as the war is concerned, the facts speak for themselves,” Mr. Bush said. “So I won’t mention any of them.”

Mr. Bush acknowledged that the war still presented certain challenges, but concluded on an upbeat note: “Iraq today is in better shape than Bear Stearns.”

***

Bill Clinton, Oct 25, 2004:

“If one candidate [is] trying to scare you and the other one [is] trying to get you to think, if one candidate [is] appealing to your fears and the other one [is] appealing to your hopes, you better vote for the person who wants you to think and HOPE.” Perhaps we should listen to the former president at a time that he was a bit more objective

***

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie: deliberate, continued, and dishonest; but the myth: persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 5/29/1917 - 11/22/1963, US 35th president (1961-1963)

I glance at the headlines just to kind of get a flavor for what’s moving. I rarely read the stories, and get briefed by people who are probably read the news themselves.

Incurious George, (September 21, 2003)

“They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge.”

- Thomas Brackett Reed, 10/18/1839-12/7/1902, US Congressman- Maine, 1877-1899

****

5/28/08

Put the numbers from my last SSA statement on a spread sheet and totaled each monthly check from both ages 62 and 66. My estimate is that it would take 16 years for the 66 amount to catch up to the extra money coming from starting 4 years earlier! Thus, I’m persuaded that I’ll be best off starting now. Who knows what may happen between now and age 78; I may not know the difference!

More news of a non Faux nature, here are a few more reasons to get off the rapacious, repugnant Republican bandwagon.

Memorial Day

by Bill Moyers | May 23, 2008 - 11:59am

We honor our war dead this Memorial Day weekend. The greatest respect we could pay them would be to pledge no more wars for erroneous and misleading reasons; no more killing and wounding except for the defense of our country and our freedoms.

We also could honor our dead by caring for the living, and do better at it than we are right now.

There has been a flurry of allegations concerning neglect, malpractice and corner cutting at the Veterans Administration especially for those suffering from post traumatic stress disorder - PTSD - or major depression, brought on by combat.

***

War Immemorial Day

Bill Quigley writes: “Memorial Day is not actually a day to pray for US troops who died in action, but rather a day set aside by Congress to pray for peace. Peace today is a nearly impossible challenge for the United States. The US is far and away the most militarized country in the world and the most aggressive. Unless the US dramatically reduces its emphasis on global military action, there will be many, many more families grieving on future Memorial Days.”

***

No Room on the Wall

John Cory, says: “Memorial Day is here, and with it the cheap carnival sales pitch of patriotism and sacrifice and paying the price for freedom. The sideshow of this holiday weekend will be the primary campaign pre-election blather and speeches about honoring the men and women who serve our nation. Nickel-and-dime phrase and praise, sleight of hand and tongue, to divert our eyes from the real issue of supporting our troops and veterans.”

***

On This Memorial Day

Camillo “Mac” Bica says: “For many of us who have known war, it has been years since we faced the insanity of man’s inhumanity to man. Yet, it haunts us still. Not a day goes by, I think, that we do not recall the devastating screams of a comrade who died in our arms while taking and then giving back a useless and desolate hill top in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, or wake up screaming as we relive the horror of the bloodstained streets of Fallujah.”

***

Published on Friday, May 23, 2008 by the Philadelphia Daily News

Let’s Remember to Not Start Another War

Memorial Day Is a Sad Milestone_ And a Crossroads

Editorial

As the flags are readied and the ceremonies rehearsed, no one is talking much anymore about how our soldiers have died in a “noble cause” in Iraq.

As the sixth Memorial Day of the Iraq War approaches, at least 4,070 American men and women have lost their lives in the fighting. Hundreds more have been killed in accidents, illnesses _ and, yes, suicides.

All were poorly served by the nation to which they gave the last full measure of devotion: They were sent into battle under false pretenses, without proper planning or equipment, their sacrifice treated as a low-risk business opportunity for war profiteers, their flag-draped coffins hidden from public view.

So, as we approach this sad milestone, it is insane that the same people who were so disastrously wrong before miring us in Iraq are again beating the drums for an another unnecessary military action, this time against Iran.

***

Published on Friday, May 23, 2008 by the Chicago Tribune

Mythmaking for the Next War

by Steve Chapman

At the height of the Cold War, the Soviet Union had some 45,000 nuclear warheads. At the moment, Iran has none. But when Barack Obama said the obvious _ that Iran does not pose the sort of threat the Soviet Union did _ John McCain reacted as though his rival had offered to trade Ft. Knox for a sack of magic beans.

“Such a statement betrays the depth of Sen. Obama’s inexperience and reckless judgment,” exclaimed McCain. “These are very serious deficiencies for an American president to possess.”

But if Iran is the Soviet Union, I’m Shaquille O’Neal. There is nothing reckless in soberly distinguishing large threats from small ones, and there is something foolhardy in grossly exaggerating the strength of your enemies.

As military powers go, Iran is a pipsqueak. It has no nuclear weapons. It has a pitiful air force. Its navy is really just a coast guard. It spends less on defense than Singapore or Sweden. Our military budget is 145 times bigger than Iran’s.

***

Where Are Those Iranian Weapons in Iraq?

Wednesday 21 May 2008

by: Gareth Porter, Inter Press Service

Despite the Bush administration’s warnings of Iranian-supplied weapons in Iraq, evidence of such a pipeline is scarce. The EFP discs above, used to penetrate tanks, were originally shown as evidence of Iran arming of the insurgence, which has since been discredited.

(Army Times)

Washington - The U.S. military command in Iraq continues to talk about an alleged pipeline of Iranian weapons to Iraqi Shiites opposing the U.S. occupation, implying that they have become dependent on Iran for indirect-fire weapons and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs).

But U.S. officials have failed thus far to provide evidence that would support that claim, and a long-delayed U.S. military report on Iranian arms is unlikely to offer any data on what proportion of the weapons in the hands of Shiite fighters are from Iran and what proportion comes from purchases on the open market.

***

Bush Misled US on Iraq

Michael D. Shear reports for The Washington Post: “Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan writes in a new memoir that the Iraq war was sold to the American people with a sophisticated ‘political propaganda campaign’ led by President Bush and aimed at ‘manipulating sources of public opinion’ and ‘downplaying the major reason for going to war.’”

***

A “Holey” Instrument of Peace in Iraq

by Robert Weitzel | May 22, 2008 - 6:42pm

On October 23, 2006 a U.S. soldier or marine peered through the telescopic sight of his M24 sniper rifle and trained it on the face of Nora, a five-year-old Iraqi girl. Her pretty face was close enough to kiss. Instead, he squeezed the trigger and sent a 7.62 round slamming into her skull. The medical report read, “Nora sustained an explosive bullet injury to her head that smashed the skull bones and ruptured her cerebral membrane.” Nora survived the sniper’s bullet.

During the battle for Falluja in 2004, U.S. snipers positioned themselves on rooftops covering the entrance to the only hospital still in operation, creating what locals called “sniper alley.” Iraqi men, women, and children seeking medical treatment were fired on. Ambulances delivering patients and supplies were fired on. Unlike Nora, many did not survive the sniper’s bullet.

***

Christopher Dickey

Bush’s 10 Commandments

The U.S. president’s latest pronouncements on Iran and the Arab world generated doom and gloom on his Mideast tour.

May 20, 2008 | Updated: 4:31 p.m. ET May 20, 2008

President George W. Bush concluded his Good and Evil Tour of the Middle East on Sunday with a fiery sermon in Sinai. And if he wasn’t in a position to hand down commandments like those delivered to Moses, it wasn’t for want of trying. Even a Republican congressman was overheard saying that he found Bush’s tone “arrogant.” But what really was disturbing, indeed sad to watch, was the way the president of the United States wound up wandering in the wilderness.

***

Operation Hose America

by John Young | May 22, 2008 - 9:29am

No mulligans for this war president. George Bush says he’s staying off the links so that it not appear that he’s taking lightly the sacrifices of so many.

That doesn’t mean, however, that this White House has given up its No. 1 wartime pastime: misleading us.

To that end, day after day since shortly after 9/11, it has polished up and deployed a bag of big clubs. Shiny and steely, they have lent credibility to policymakers lacking it.

We speak of retired military officers who became as central to telling the war story on TV as reporters themselves -- telling Americans that everything was as planned, that the claims leading us to war were right as rain.

***

For His Treatment of Children in the ‘War on Terror,’ Bush is a War Criminal

by Dave Lindorff | May 22, 2008 - 9:51am

Surely nothing that President Bush has done in his two wretched terms of office--not the invasion and destruction of Iraq, not the overturning of the five-centuries-old tradition of habeas corpus, not his authorization and encouragement of torture, not his campaign of domestic spying--nothing, can compare in its ugliness as his approval, as commander in chief, of the imprisoning of over 2500 children.

According to the US government’s own figures, that is how many kids 17 years and younger have been held since 2001 as “enemy combatants”--often for over a year, and sometimes for over five years. At least eight of those children, some reportedly as young as 10, were held at Guantanamo. They even had a special camp for them there: Camp Iguana. One of those kids committed suicide at the age of 21, after spending five years in confinement at Guantanamo. (Ironically and tragically, that particular victim of the president’s criminal policy, had been determined by the Pentagon to have been innocent only two weeks before he took his own life, but nobody bothered to tell him he was slated for release and a return home to Afghanistan.)

For these crimes, the president should today be impeached by the Congress and then tried as a war criminal.

After watching this Congress cower from its responsibility to defend the Constitution, I have little hope of that happening. But I do harbor the hope that once Bush has left office, some prosecutor in another country _ perhaps Spain, or Canada or Germany _ will use the doctrine of universal jurisdiction to indict him for war crimes, and, should he leave the country for some lucrative speaking engagement, arrest him, the way former dictator Augusto Pinochet was arrested by a Spanish prosecutor on a visit to the UK.

For his abuse, imprisonment and killing of children, this president should stand trial for war crimes.

Dave Lindorff’s most recent book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net.

***

Bush’s ‘War Crimes’ and Misdemeanors

by Robert Parry | May 23, 2008 - 1:53pm

Facing a tough reelection fight in 2004, George W. Bush expressed outrage over leaked photos showing U.S. military police at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison abusing detainees, who were paraded naked before female guards, threatened by attack dogs, chained in “stress positions” and forced to wear ladies underpants on their heads.

President Bush assured the American people that he “shared a deep disgust that those prisoners were treated the way they were treated.” Other administration officials pinned the blame on a “few bad apples” and dismissed the prison guards’ claim that they were told to “soften up” the detainees for interrogation.

***

Post-Traumatic Stress Soars in US Troops

David Morgan of Reuters reports: “Newly diagnosed cases of post-traumatic stress disorder among US troops sent to Iraq and Afghanistan surged 46.4 percent in 2007, bringing the five-year total to nearly 40,000, according to US military data released on Tuesday.”

***

Veterans Attest to PTSD Neglect by VA

Maya Schenwar and Matt Renner: “Recently released documents from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) are further proof that the VA has failed to adequately address the crisis in veterans’ mental health care, according to a former top VA employee turned veterans’ advocate.

***

FBI “War Crimes” Investigation at Guantanamo Shut Down in 2003

Eric Lichtblau and Scott Shane, of The New York Times: “In 2002, as evidence of prisoner mistreatment at Guantanamo Bay began to mount, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents at the base created a ‘war crimes file’ to document accusations against American military personnel, but were eventually ordered to close down the file, a Justice Department report revealed Tuesday. The report, an exhaustive, 437-page review prepared by the Justice Department inspector general, provides the fullest account to date of internal dissent and confusion within the Bush administration over the use of harsh interrogation tactics by the military and the Central Intelligence Agency.”

***

Rice’s Lies About Torture

by Dave Lindorff | May 23, 2008 - 11:12am

Is anyone surprised that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says that the Bush/Cheney administration’s authorization of torture of captives has been consistently legal and in compliance with all treaties the US has signed, including the Geneva Conventions?

After all, she was at the meetings in the White House in 2001 at which various acts of torture, ranging from waterboarding to exposure to extreme heat and cold, to enforced long periods in stress positions, and to treatments which have not been disclosed (no doubt because they are so outrageous and offensive to common decency)--meetings that were manifestly criminal in nature and in violation of international and US law.

***

Published on Thursday, May 22, 2008 by The Independent/UK

Any Change From Bush’s Fundamentalism Will Do

by Adrian Hamilton

Bush does genuinely believe that democracy is a blessing given by Almighty God to mankind and that the US is its agent and Israel its exemplar. But, as far as the rest of the world is concerned, he has made America appear quite blatantly one-sided, an ignorant and incompetent military mammoth wrecking everything in its ill-considered path.

Back in Washington, John McCain was quick to follow up Bush’s speech by demanding that Obama declare his intentions on talking to Iran and Hamas. And that may prove the tenor of the Republican attacks on the Democrat in the coming months. But outside the narrow confines of Washington, no American should be in any doubt. The world is desperate for a change of tone and course from the US of George Bush. Nothing short of a revolution will do.

***

House Aims at Pentagon “Propaganda” on Iraq War

James Rainey for The Los Angeles Times reports, “The House of Representatives moved Thursday to crack down on a Pentagon program that Democrats say planted false and overly optimistic news stories about the Iraq war, using military analysts who appeared regularly on television.”

***

Middle East: Bush and His Pathetic Record

Le Journal de Dimanche’s Gilles Delafon writes that in the Middle East, “George Bush will have failed as few American presidents have before him. His diplomatic record there belongs in the category of pure calamity - his latest visit to the Near East this week reminds us of that once again.”

***

Audit: Iraq Contracts Skirted Fraud Rules

The Associated Press: “An internal audit of some $8 billion paid to US and Iraqi contractors found that nearly every transaction failed to comply with federal laws or regulations aimed at preventing fraud, in some cases lacking even basic invoices explaining how the money was spent.”

***

Justice Scandal Dwarfs Watergate

The Anniston Star’s Markeshia Ricks reports: “Almost two months after being released from a federal prison in Oakdale, Louisiana, former Governor Don Siegelman looks noticeably healthier.... He’s got color in his cheeks, a little more weight on his body and a fierce determination to not only clear his name but to do his part to expose a scandal in the US Department of Justice that he says is bigger than Watergate.”

***

America AWOL on Cluster Bombs

Lora Lumpe, of Foreign Policy In Focus, writes: “More than 100 governments, including all major NATO allies, met on May 19 to begin two weeks of negotiations in Dublin, Ireland to finalize a global treaty banning cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians. The U.S. government will not be there, and is exerting pressure on allies to weaken the treaty.

***

Neocon A-Team: Bush, Lieberman, McCain and Rove

by Brent Budowsky | May 23, 2008 - 11:32am

Now here comes Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who opposes the greater support for veterans offered by Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) and advocated by Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), shamefully attacking Obama for not serving in the military.

Like Bush, like Lieberman, like Rove, McCain has chosen the way of the neoconservative policy and tactics. What makes a neocon a neocon is that their policies are doomed to fail because they are rigid, reactionary and extreme. What makes a neocon a neocon is that when their policies fail, they resort to name-calling and personal attacks against those who have been far wiser than they.

***

Paying for War at the Pump

Robert Scheer, of Truthdig: “What’s it got to do with the price of gas? Would some reporter with access to the Republican presidential candidate please ask John McCain why he wants to continue President Bush’s Mideast policy when it has proved so ruinous for American taxpayers? Because McCain is determined to ignore our economic meltdown and shift the debate to foreign policy, shouldn’t he have to explain why an open-ended military presence in the Mideast will make us economically and militarily more secure when the opposite is clearly the case?”

***

Let’s Be Serious

Writing for The New York Times, Bob Herbert says, “The general election is about to unfold and we’ll soon see how smart or how foolish Americans really are. The US may be the richest country on earth, but the economy is tanking, its working families are in trouble, it is bogged down in a multitrillion-dollar war of its own making and the price of gasoline has nitwits siphoning supplies from the cars and trucks of strangers.”

***

The Bushes and Hitler’s Appeasement

Robert Parry, of Consortium News: “To this day - as President Bush showed by mocking the long-forgotten Sen. Borah and then wielding the Nazi ‘appeasement’ club against Barack Obama and other Democrats - the assumption remains that the bubble will continue to protect the Bush family name. However, the evidence from dusty archives suggests that the Bush family went way beyond appeasement of Adolf Hitler to aiding and abetting the Nazis.”

***

Globalizers, Neocons, or ...?

Mark Engler, for Tom Dispatch: “Picture January 20, 2009, the day George W. Bush has to vacate the Oval Office. It’s easy enough to imagine a party marking this fine occasion, with antiwar protestors, civil libertarians, community leaders, environmentalists, health-care advocates, and trade unionists clinking glasses to toast the end of an unfortunate era. Even Americans not normally inclined to political life might be tempted to join the festivities, bringing their own bottles of bubbly to the party. Given that presidential job approval ratings have rarely broken 40% for two years and now remain obdurately around or below 30% -- historic lows -- it would not be surprising if this were a sizeable celebration.”

***

McCain’s Ethical Dilemma: Campaign Filled With Lobbyist Kingpins

May 23, 2008 08:06 AM

Thomas B. Edsall is Joseph Pulitzer II and Edith Pulitzer Moore Professor at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. From 1981 to 2006, he was a political reporter at the Washington Post. He is the author of Chain Reaction and Building Red America.

The steady disclosures of past lobbying activity by campaign aides, and the struggle to minimize firings, continue to plague John McCain’s presidential campaign -- but the reality is that these problems only get worse the deeper anyone digs. There you’ll find an anti-cigarette tax campaign on behalf of Lorillard Tobacco and a full-scale campaign to persuade the US Senate to approve use of Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste site.

McCain has sprung a trap on himself, demanding exceptionally high ethical standards for public officials, while simultaneously turning his campaign operation into a home for some of Washington’s lobbying kingpins -- men and women who specialize in just the influence peddling McCain has repeatedly deplored.

***

Big GOP Losses in Congress Likely

Steven Thomma and Margaret Talev of McClatchy Newspapers report: “Whoever wins the presidency this November, it’s all but a slam dunk they’ll be working with a Democratic Congress. And it probably will be a stronger Democratic majority with more votes than it has today.”

***

Tuesday, 5/20/2008, 11:20pm

Election 2008

Barack Obama sets milestone for number of times we hear the word “milestone”

Barack Obama reached a milestone Tuesday by capturing a majority of pledged delegates. What other, less publicized milestones have we reached by now?

12,549 - number of times John McCain has addressed a crowd of indifferent octogenarians as “my friends”

9,539 - number of complaints Bill Clinton has lodged that Obama is successful only because he was born with the advantage of being a black man in America

***

April 25, 2008

Top 10 Outrageous Quotes from McCain’s Spiritual Advisers

Katie Halper | Bio

***

Andy Ostroy

An Angry McCain Shows Just What Type of Dirty Campaign He’s Running. Somewhere Karl Rove is Smiling

Posted May 23, 2008 | 11:48 AM (EST)

Sen. Barack Obama took to the floor of the U.S. Senate Thursday over a GI Bill co-sponsored by Vietnam veterans Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va) and Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Ne). What followed was an in-your-face indication of the kind of dirty campaign Obama faces from Sen. John McCain, the GOP’s presumptive nominee.

Nice framing job, John. It’s more of the same Rovian tactics we’ve come to know and hate these past eight years. Don’t support the Iraq war, you say? Well then you must be against the troops. This sort of convoluted nuancing is straight out of Karl Rove’s playbook. What McCain was essentially saying Thursday was, “you’re against my vote? Then you’re attacking my patriotism and military record.” Additionally, the suggestion that Obama has no right to criticize McCain, or worse, discuss the merits of a veterans’ benefits bill because he himself never served in the military, is both preposterous and offensive. Does McCain need to be a trucker in order to discuss and vote on a transportation bill? Does he need to be personally insolvent in order to discuss and vote on a bankruptcy bill? Does need to have been molested as a child in order to discuss and vote on a bill protecting children from predators? His logic is ridiculous.

And what about the shameless hypocrisy in McCain’s fiery diatribe? Has he forgotten his blind, unconditional support these past five years of major war-mongering hawks like Bush, Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Pearle, who never served a day in the armed forces yet took it upon themselves to send 4000 U.S. troops to die in battle?

McCain’s temper is legendary, and he’s famous for flying off the handle at the drop of a hat. Certainly, his vitriolic reaction to Obama’s very respectful comments was overly dramatic and highly overblown. Obama did not impugn McCain’s integrity or military service. He went out of his way to recognize McCain’s patriotism, something his petulant opponent chose to attack instead. What Obama criticized concerned McCain’s position on this bill and his lack of support for it, not his personal character or service to his country. Might McCain be just a tad too sensitive? Defensive? Insecure? Angry? To use McCain’s own words ... If that is how he would behave as President, the country would regret his election.

McCain is quickly showing his true colors, despite for years presenting himself as above the fray of dirty politics. He offers himself as a candidate who wishes to run a more respectful, honest campaign, yet his actions of the past few weeks -- including the incendiary remarks about Obama and Hamas and Iran appeasement-- demonstrate that McCain’s number one strategy is to lie to and deceive Americans over the issue of Obama’s patriotism, or lack thereof. It’s clear that McCain has no problem whatsoever saying whatever he feels he needs to say to attack Obama’s character and patriotism in order to win in November.

***

George F. Will

Questions For McCain

You say ‘some greedy people’ on Wall Street ‘perhaps need to be punished.’ So, government should treat greed as a crime?

May 19, 2008 Issue

Is not a vote for you a vote for war with Iran?

What other nations should we police?

Are America’s political values threatened by any state that does not practice them?

Does your dogmatic deference to popular sovereignty put you at odds with the first Republican president, who nobly insisted that there are some things the majority should not be permitted to do_hence his opposition to allowing popular sovereignty to determine the status of slavery in the territories?

Are any contributions from these financial institutions so tainted by greed that you are returning them?

***

McCain Secured Federal Funds Aiding Developer

Reuters reports: “Presumptive Republican presidential candidate John McCain secured millions in federal funds for a land acquisition program that provided a windfall for an Arizona developer whose executives were major campaign donors.”

***

JERK AND KNEE-JERK

Roger Berkley: “Gee, it turns out that Israel is doing just what Barack Obama has advocated and John McCain has opposed. Here’s a juicy side story: the negotiations are taking place with U.S. approval. So as Bush attacked Obama in front of the Knesset, his administration was supporting peace talks between Israel and Syria, a state sponsor of terrorism (Hezbollah and Hamas). Hypocrisy from Bush and more knee jerk bad policy from the `straight talk express.’”

WARREN WANTS A DEMOCRAT

Click here for the whole article (thanks, Mark L.), but this is the nub of it:

“They say in the stock market, ‘Buy into a business that’s doing so well an idiot could run it, because sooner or later, one will,’” Buffett said. “The U.S. is sort of like that. I think the country will do fine whether it’s the Democratic or Republican candidate, but I strongly prefer the Democrats.”

McCAIN V. OTHER VIETNAM VETS

Vietnam experience from Senators Hagel (a Republican), Webb, Kerrey, Kerry and Cleland (Democrats), all of whom disagree with him on the war. “We’re gonna win this thing if it kills us,” seems to be McCain’s view. “It’s unwinnable and is killing us,” seems to be the view of the others.

“I have seen this movie before, and I know how it ends,” says Cleland, who lost three of his limbs to an errant grenade during the battle of Khe Sanh. “With thousands dead and tens of thousands more injured, and years later you ask yourself what you were doing there. To the extent my friend John McCain signs on to this, he is endangering America’s long-term interests, and probably his own election in the fall.”

***

Steve Clemons

Grover Norquist Calls for a Humbler Foreign Policy that Rejects Bush/Cheney-style Empire

Posted May 23, 2008 | 11:45 AM (EST)

I have many liberal friends who are not into Grover Norquist -- but my policy is to reach out to all parties across the political spectrum to try and balance against the incredibly destructive influence of pugnacious nationalists like John Bolton and neoconservatives like Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and William Kristol.

Grover Norquist makes an appeal to his Republican friends to get sane again on foreign policy in this video clip

***

Money Changes Everything: Kevin Phillips speaks the truth

by Alan Bisbort | May 22, 2008 - 9:21am

For those who don’t harbor burning ambitions or insatiable acquisitive streaks, money is the root of all evil. Money, these people will tell you, can’t buy happiness. While most Americans would probably agree with this sentiment _ if only as a holdover from religious training that encouraged charity and thrift as signs of virtue _ we still pursue money with a focus that borders on obsession. And those who actually do score big financially often complain that they don’t have time to “enjoy” the money they manage to amass.

For a tiny segment of Americans, money is the be-all to end-all. Money to these people means power and influence, access to exclusive clubs, secret conferences, exotic retreats, sexy companions, and, of course, politicians. For this small chunk of Americans, money begets more money, money talks and everything else walks, including laws, ethics and common decency. It’s that simple.

***

Democracy in America

Bill Moyers: “Democracy in America is a series of narrow escapes, and we may be running out of luck. The reigning presumption about the American experience, as the historian Lawrence Goodwyn has written, is grounded in the idea of progress, the conviction that the present is ‘better’ than the past and the future will bring even more improvement. For all of its shortcomings, we keep telling ourselves, ‘The system works.’ Now all bets are off. We have fallen under the spell of money, faction, and fear, and the great American experience in creating a different future together has been subjugated to individual cunning in the pursuit of wealth and power - and to the claims of empire, with its ravenous demands and stuporous distractions.”

***

Clinton Gave Voters Permission to be Racist

by Cenk Uygur | May 23, 2008 - 9:09am

Yesterday, RJ Eskow was on our show and we had an interesting discussion of why so many people in West Virginia and Kentucky admitted to pollsters that they voted based on race. This is otherwise known as racism. It’s also something that people are usually loathe to admit. So, why did 21% of the voters in Kentucky freely admit that race was an important factor in their vote?

***

The Elitism Thing

Tom Sullivan writes for Campaign for America’s Future: “When character attacks make us uncomfortable and defensive, maybe we should pay more attention and not dismiss them immediately as unfair or overblown. Like Republicans being obsessed with money. I can often identify an acquaintance as a Republican by how quickly money dominates the conversation. With the activist left, it is how quickly the topic of voter ignorance arises.”

***

The Fall of Conservatism

George Packer, of The New Yorker: “The era of American politics that has been dying before our eyes was born in 1966. That January, a twenty-seven-year-old editorial writer for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat named Patrick Buchanan went to work for Richard Nixon.

***

The recurring theme that Republicans cannot win elections without gerrymandering and voter disenfranchisement:

Voter Repression

The Winston-Salem Journal’s editorial board writes: “The US Supreme Court has effectively reinstated the poll tax that once kept minorities and the poor from voting, and it did so for no justifiable reason.”

***

US Unprepared for Massive November Election Turnout

The Louisiana Weekly’s Hazel Trice Edney reports: “Record turnouts at polling places across the nation during the Barack Obama-Hillary Clinton battle for the Democratic nomination have revealed a continuation of serious flaws in America’s electoral process that could cause a fiasco November 4, according to a nonpartisan report.”

***

Harry Shearer

Who Are We To Lecture the Burmese?

Posted May 22, 2008 | 12:25 AM (EST)

Or the Myanmarese, or whatever that horrible government prefers to call the people whose aid it’s pilfering.

That’s the question raised in Wednesday’s New Orleans Times-Picayune by columnist Lolis Eric Elie, echoing what a lot of people here in the Crescent City have been saying: gee, I wonder how a government gets to the point where it’s more interested in the preservation of its own power than in relieving the suffering of its people in the wake of a disaster.

In the wake of the Bush Administration offering all of $500,000 in relief aid for victims of the Chinese earthquake, it all makes you proud to be part of a dying empire, don’t it?

***

Aid snag sounds all too familiar

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Lolis Eric Elie

Why is everyone so mad at the government of Myanmar?

The proximate cause of the world’s disdain seems to be the refusal of that country’s government to allow more than a trickle of foreign aid to reach victims of the cyclone.

I was just about to share the world’s anger when suddenly, the scenario of an irresponsible government blocking foreign aid for desperate residents seemed a bit too close to home.

As the journal “Foreign Policy” put it, “When France and dozens of other countries pledged hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and supplies to the relief effort, their donations should have helped ease the crisis. Instead, one year after Katrina battered the Gulf Coast, none of the money given to the federal government has made its way to evacuees.”

***

Evidence of White House Meddling at EPA

Erica Werner, of The Associated Press: “The head of the Environmental Protection Agency initially supported giving California and other states full or partial permission to limit tailpipe emissions - but reversed himself after hearing from the White House, a report said Monday. The report by the Democratic staff of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee cites interviews and depositions with high-level EPA officials. It amounts to the first solid evidence of the political interference alleged by Democrats and environmentalists since Administrator Stephen Johnson denied California’s waiver request in December.”

***

Ocean Dead Zones Spread Due to Global Warming

In The Sunday Times UK, Jonathan Leake reports: “Marine dead zones, where fish and other sea life can suffocate from lack of oxygen, are spreading across the world’s tropical oceans, a study has warned.”

***

Slavery Today: A Clear and Present Danger

Matt Renner: “Slavery never ended in the United States; it continues here and across the globe, facilitated by globalization, corruption and greed. There are more people enslaved today - controlled by violence and forced to work without pay - than at any time in human history. Experts put the number of slaves at 27 million worldwide. These men and women work across many sectors of the global economy, raking in profits for the criminals who hold them against their will. The US State Department estimates that 17,500 slaves are brought into the United States every year. An estimated 50,000 slaves are forced to work as prostitutes, farm workers and domestic servants in the US.”

***

Housing Prices Fall 14.4 Percent in Sign of Continuing Slump

In The New York Times, Vikas Bajaj writes: “America’s home-buying season, when for-sale signs sprout like dandelions, is shaping up to be even worse than expected this year, with prices falling, sales slowing and few signs of a turnaround emerging.”

***

The analyst glories in that moral activity which disentangles. The analyst throws himself into the spirit of his opponent, identifies himself therewith, and not unfrequently sees thus, at a glance, the sole methods (sometimes indeed absurdly simple ones) by which he may seduce into error or hurry into miscalculation. The difference in the extent of the information obtained, lies not so much in the validity of the inference as in the quality of the observation. The necessary knowledge is that of what to observe.

Edgar Allan Poe, The Murders in the Rue Morgue

***

In that neverending quest to keep it simple, it’s still amazing to realize how many lessons your Cult Leader missed (and, of course, not attending Kindergarten isn‘t an excuse!), as he gives us the objectionable and not the objective, the sophistical and un-sophisticated, the perfectly purblind instead of perfect prescient, petulance rather than puissance, the perfunctory and not the persuasive, and the ever present smirking, arrogant, authoritarian, condescending, impatient, nauseating, exasperating oratory:

All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten

by Robert Fulghum

Most of what I really need to know about how to live

and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten.

Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain,

but there in the sand pile at Sunday school. These are the things I learned:

Share everything.

Play fair.

Don’t hit people.

Put things back where you found them.

Clean up your own mess.

Don’t take things that aren’t yours.

Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.

Wash your hands before you eat.

Flush.

Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.

Live a balanced life_learn some and think some and

draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work everyday some.

Take a nap every afternoon.

When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic,

hold hands and stick together.

Be aware of wonder.

***

Peace is not something you wish for; It’s something you make, Something you do, Something you are, And something you give away.”

Robert Fulghum

***

“[We] live in a deranged age, more deranged than usual, because in spite of great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing.”

Walker Percy, novelist, psychiatrist

Speaking of which, here’s a few more titles for the bookshelf:

The Real McCain: Why Conservatives Don’t Trust Him and Why Independents Shouldn’t by Cliff Schecter

Free Ride: John McCain and the Media by David Brock

Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics by Glenn Greenwald

McCain: The Myth of a Maverick by Matt Welch

Reclaiming Conservatism: How a Great American Political Movement Got Lost--And How It Can Find Its Way Back by Mickey Edwards

Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement by Justin Raimondo’

****

6/15/2008

Ohio Proud. The Bush Legacy. Surprising that he was able to stop at 35...

http://kucinich.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=93581

Kucinich introduced H.Res.1258 on June 10, 2008, 35 articles of impeachment against President George W. Bush, primarily centered on allegations that the administration manufactured a false case for the Iraq War.

The 35 articles alleged Bush deceived the nation to invade Iraq, failed to provide proper troop equipment, authorized illegal surveillance, and misrepresented intelligence

***

2008 Elections

John Sidney McCain’s Republican Problem

by Robin Elliot | June 12, 2008 - 9:05pm

“It’s been nice talkin’ to you,” said Thomas Gerard Tancredo when asked if he’d endorse John Sidney McCain. I guess T Ger isn’t concerned about being on the receiving end of one of J Sid’s angry backlashes.

It looks like Thomas Gerard’s not alone:

The Hill reports this morning that “at least 14 Republican members of Congress have refused to endorse or publicly support Sen. John McCain for president,” adding that “more than a dozen others declined to answer whether they back the Arizona senator.” Though some lawmakers “declined to detail” why they wouldn’t support McCain, others cited “major concerns” about McCain’s policies on energy and Iraq.

Ouch! Whatsamatta them? They no longer have man-crushes on their feisty little maverick? The Hill’s list of GOP lawmakers “who have not endorsed or publicly backed McCain”:

****

6/26/08

While it’s easy to see why someone would want to retain an attraction to a conservative political agenda, there is a vast inconsistency between current events and The Conscience of a Conservative. It doesn’t take too much effort to see that this version of the Republican GOP is not conservative and has no conscience. A similar but slightly different analysis is from Tobias:

Eisenhowers for Obama

Published on June 25, 2008

Julie Nixon Eisenhower – who backed Bush in 2004 – is for Obama.

· Read the story “http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/21/a-nixon-for-obama/”.

And Susan Eisenhower – Ike’s granddaughter and lifelong Republican – is for Obama.

I met her last week in Jacksonville at an Obama fundraiser organized in large part by a seriously wealthy Republican businessman who voted for Bush . . . twice . . . but is now persuading his Republican friends to support Obama.

· As Ms. Eisenhower “http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/01/AR2008020102621.html” in the Washington Post this past winter:

I am convinced that Barack Obama is the one presidential candidate today who can encourage ordinary Americans to stand straight again; he is a man who can salve our national wounds and both inspire and pursue genuine bipartisan cooperation. Just as important, Obama can assure the world and Americans that this great nation’s impulses are still free, open, fair and broad-minded. . . .

. . . If the Democratic Party chooses Obama as its candidate, this lifelong Republican will work to get him elected and encourage him to seek strategic solutions to meet America’s greatest challenges. To be successful, our president will need bipartisan help.

Given Obama’s support among young people, I believe that he will be most invested in defending the interests of these rising generations and, therefore, the long-term interests of this nation as a whole. Without his leadership, our children and grandchildren are at risk of growing older in a marginalized country that is left to its anger and divisions. Such an outcome would be an unacceptable legacy for any great nation.

Susan Eisenhower, a business consultant, is the author of four books, most recently “Partners in Space: US-Russian Cooperation After the Cold War.”

*F I’ve been making the case that your Republican friends only think they’re Republican.

The whole political landscape, I argue, has shifted so far right that they are now moderate Democrats. The Harvard Business School Alumni Bulletin allowed me to make that case “http://snipurl.com/2eoke”.

Yes, the hard right – the Karl Roves and the James Dobsons and the Rush Limbaughs – will do their best to destroy Obama and make him out to be something he’s not. But if the liberals and the moderates and the Eisenhower Republicans – and even some 2004 Bush Republicans like the ones I met in Jacksonville – come out and vote November 4, the country could be reborn.

If there is any ideology that fits most classic conservative situations, it starts with “personal responsibility.” But the very first item on the Bushie list is to eliminate that onus! The only thing potentially more important in the world of corporate cronyism/ elite wealth and power than limiting liability, accountability, and a day in a court of justice is getting lined up at the federal trough for subsidies, welfare, favorable laws, and tax reductions. The very purpose of a corporation is to reduce responsibility! And the idea of its sole goal being to reward shareholders is an absolute perversion. Even a tragedy as great as the Exxon Valdez can be overlooked by the activist, revisionist, loose constructionist, unoriginal intent, interpretative, to- hell- with- precedent, pull- it -out -of -your -lawless -ass right wing Supremes.

If there is anything still shocking about this two term nightmare, it’s the realization of how in only 8 years, the stench of El Diablo and his political appointees has been so widespread, far-reaching, deep, and total in permeating the agencies and institutions of the government that the destruction of this country’s ideals and greatness in so many concrete ways may take decades to correct. At the least, look at the state of discourse... In just one simple example, the Republican play book is full of unsupported beliefs, theories, speculation, superstition, and attacks on opposing personalities instead of addressing content, policy, or truth.

Hey, I’m sure the waterlogged folks in Iowa would appreciate knowing that global warming hasn’t caused their problems, it’s just another myth from the all-powerful Sierra Club.

No matter how cynical you get, it’s impossible to keep up.”
-- Lily Tomlin

Published on Monday, June 2, 2008 by Inter Press Service

Iraq Death Toll `Above Highest Estimates’

by Ahmed Ali and Dahr Jamail

BAQUBA - The real number of the dead is far higher than even the highest declared in death tolls, many Iraqis say.

A study by doctors from the Johns Hopkins School of Health in conjunction with Iraqi doctors from al-Mustanceriya University in Baghdad, published in the British medical journal The Lancet in October 2006, estimated the number of excess deaths as a result of the occupation at above 655,000.

Just Foreign Policy, an independent organisation “dedicated to reforming U.S. foreign policy” offered an updated total of 1,213,716 at the time of this writing.

On Sep. 14, 2007, Opinion Research Business (ORB), an independent polling agency located in London, produced a figure of 1,220,580 deaths as a result of the invasion.

***

Coming Late to the Table

By BOB HERBERT

Published: May 31, 2008

I guess it’s official now since we have a Bush administration insider, Scott McClellan, telling us that the war in Iraq was a monumental strategic blunder, and that it was sold cynically and deceitfully to a craven Congress and to a public still traumatized by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Some of us already knew that, Scott. Some of us knew it at the time.

In his new book, “What Happened,” Mr. McClellan even tells us that wars “should only be waged when necessary.”

Gee, Scott, some of us have known that deep in our hearts all of our lives.

Even the most cursory reading of wartime history _ take your pick: World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, any war _ would convey the message that to engage in warfare unnecessarily is insane.

***

Cult of Deception

By MAUREEN DOWD

Published: June 1, 2008

WASHINGTON

They say that every president gets the psychoanalyst he deserves. And every Hamlet gets his Rosencrantz.

So now comes Scott McClellan, once the most loyal of the Texas Bushies, to reveal “What Happened,” as the title of his book promises, to turn W. from a genial, humble, bipartisan good ol’ boy to a delusional, disconnected, arrogant, ideological flop.

Although his analytical skills are extremely limited, the former White House press secretary _ Secret Service code name Matrix _ takes a stab at illuminating Junior’s bumpy and improbable boomerang journey from family black sheep and famous screw-up back to family black sheep and famous screw-up.

How did W. start out wanting to restore honor and dignity to the White House and end up scraping all the honor and dignity off the White House?

It turns out that our president is a one-man refutation of Malcolm Gladwell’s best seller “Blink,” about the value of trusting your gut.

Every gut instinct he had was wildly off the mark and hideously damaging to all concerned.

It seems that if you trust your gut without ever feeding your gut any facts or news or contrary opinions, if you keep your gut on a steady diet of grandiosity, ignorance, sycophants, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, those snap decisions can be ruinous.

We already know What Happened, but it feels good to hear Scott say it. His conscience was spurred by hurt feelings.

In Washington, it is rarely the geopolitical or human consequences that cause people to turn on leaders behaving immorally. The town is far more narcissistic and practical than that.

The people who should be sounding the alarm for democracy’s sake, and the sake of all the young Americans losing lives and limbs, get truly outraged only when they are played for fools and fall guys, when their own reputations are at stake.

It was not the fake casus belli that made Colin Powell’s blood boil. What really got Powell disgusted was that W. and Dick Cheney used him, tapping into his credibility to sell their trumped-up war; that George Tenet failed to help him scrub his U.N. speech of all Cheney’s garbage; and that W. showed him the door so the more malleable Condi could have his job.

Tenet was privately worried about a war buildup not backed up by C.I.A. facts, but he only publicly sounded the alarm years later in a lucrative memoir fueled by payback, after Condi and Cheney tried to cast him as the fall guy on W.M.D.

McClellan did not realize the value of a favorite maxim _ “The truth shall set you free” _ until he was hung out to dry by his bosses in the Valerie Plame affair, repeating the lies Karl Rove and Scooter Libby brazenly told him about not being the leakers.

“Clearly,” McClellan says, sounding like the breast-heaving heroine of a Victorian romance, “I had allowed myself to be deceived.” He felt “something fall out of me into the abyss.”

And that was even before “the breaking point,” when he learned the worst about his idol _ that the president who had denounced leaks about his warrantless surveillance program, who had promised to fire anyone leaking classified information about Plame, was himself the one who authorized Dick Cheney to let Scooter leak part of the top-secret National Intelligence Estimate.

“Yeah, I did,” Mr. Bush told his sap of a press secretary on Air Force One. His tone, the stunned McClellan said, was “as if discussing something no more important than a baseball score.”

He recalled the first time that he had begun to suspect that W. might be just another dissembling pol: when he overheard his boss, during his 2000 bid, ludicrously telling a supporter that he couldn’t remember, from his wild partying days, if he had tried cocaine.

“He isn’t the kind of person to flat-out lie,” McClellan said, but added, “I was witnessing Bush convincing himself to believe something that probably was not true.” He’d see a lot more of it over the next six years before Bush tearfully booted him out.

W.’s dwindling cadre hit back hard. In Stockholm, Condi _ labeled “sometimes too accommodating” by the author _ scoffed: “The president was very clear about the reasons for going to war.”

She’s right. He was very clear about it being because of W.M.D. Then he was very clear about it being to rid the world of a tyrant. Then he was very clear about it being to spread democracy. When that didn’t work out, he was very clear about it being that we can’t leave because we can’t leave.

He was always wrong, but always very clear.

***

JON STEWART ON LARRY KING

Dean Reinemann: “Larry brought up the subject of the primaries and asked Jon if America was ready for a woman or a black president. Jon looked at him quizzically and said, ‘This is such a non-question. Did anyone ask us in 2000 if Americans were ready for a moron?’ ”

*F Ouch. Bush is hardly a moron. He wanted the rich – in particular the oil guys – to do well and they have (phenomenally well). He promised to appoint more Justices like Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia and he did. He didn’t want to work terribly hard and he hasn’t. He wanted to show that government can’t do things very well, and he has. Morons are not usually so successful in getting what they want.

***

Published on Monday, June 2, 2008 by TomDispatch.com

Presidential Bloodlust

The Movie-Made War World of George W. Bush

by Tom Engelhardt

Above all, of course, you couldn’t mistake the bad guys of those old films. They looked evil. If they were “natives,” they also made no bones about what they were going to do to the white hats, or, in the case of Gunga Din (1939), the pith helmets. “Rise, our new-made brothers,” the evil “guru” of that film tells his followers. “Rise and kill. Kill, lest you be killed yourselves. Kill for the love of killing. Kill for the love of Kali. Kill! Kill! Kill!”

I was brought back with a start to just such evil-doers of my American screen childhood last week by a memoir from a once-upon-a-time insider of the Bush presidency. No, not former White House press secretary Scott McClellan, who swept into the headlines by accusing the President of using “propaganda” and the “complicit enablers” of the media to take the U.S. to war in 2002-2003. I’m thinking of another insider, former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez. He got next to no attention for a presidential outburst he recorded in his memoir, Wiser in Battle: A Soldier’s Story, so bloodthirsty and cartoonish that it should have caught the attention of the nation _ and so eerily in character, given the last years of presidential behavior, that you know it has to be on the money.

From the moment the attacks of September 11, 2001 gave him his “calling” as a “wartime” president, he has been deeply embroiled in acting out his cartoonish version of the role of the century. In fact, he has often seemed like little more than an overgrown boy plunged into his own war movie and war-play memories.

Let’s remember that, soon after 9/11, this President launched his “crusade, this war on terrorism” with an image of a poster from some generic Western of his childhood. (”Bush offered some of his most blunt language to date when he was asked if he wanted bin Laden dead. `I want justice,’ Bush said. `And there’s an old poster out West_ I recall, that said, Wanted, Dead or Alive.’”) For years, he visibly glowed when publicly dressing up in a way that was redolent of the boy version of war (that is, doll_ er, action figure) play. While Abraham Lincoln never put on a uniform and an actual general, Dwight D. Eisenhower, put his in the closet in his years as president, Bush uniquely and repeatedly appeared in public togged out in military wear, looking for all the world like a life-sized version of the original 12-inch G.I. Joe action figure _ whether “landing” a jet on the aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, and stepping out in a nifty flight suit, or appearing before massed hooah-ing troops in specially tailored jackets with “George W. Bush, Commander In Chief” carefully stitched across the breast.

Evident above all, from September 14, 2001 _ when he climbed that pile of rubble at “Ground Zero” in New York City and, bullhorn in hand, to “USA! USA!” cheers, wiped out the ignominy of his actions on the actual day of the attacks _ was just how much he enjoyed his role as resolute leader of a wartime America. While his Vice President and top advisors were grimly, if eagerly, preparing to whack Saddam Hussein and taking the opportunity to create a permanent commander-in-chief presidency, the President was visibly having the time of his life, perhaps for the first time since he gave up those “wild parties” of his youth.

A rivulet of telling details about his behavior has flowed by us in these years. We know from Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, for instance, that, after 9/11, Bush kept “his own personal scorecard for the war” in a desk drawer in the Oval Office _ photos with brief biographies and personality sketches of leading al-Qaeda figures, whose faces could be satisfyingly crossed out when killed or captured. In July 2003, frustrated by signs that the Sunni insurgency in Iraq wasn’t going away, he impulsively offered this bit of bluster to reporters (as if he were the one who would take the brunt of future attacks): “There are some who feel like the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is, bring `em on.”

In those moments when he spoke or acted spontaneously, there are plentiful clues that Bush took deep pleasure in finding himself in the role of commander-in-chief, and that he has been genuinely thrilled to do commander-in-chief-like things, at least as once pictured in the on-screen fantasy world of his youth.

On and off throughout these years, you could glimpse just what a cartoon-like white-hat/black-hat persona he imagined himself to be playing. This was true whether he was in his blustery tough-guy mode, as when, in September 2007, he arrived in Australia publicly proclaiming that the U.S. was “kicking ass” in Iraq; or when, as commander-in-chief, he regularly teared up with genuine (movie) emotion as he handed out medals, some posthumous, for bravery; or even when he discussed his own wartime version of “sacrifice” _ he claimed to have given up golf for his war. As he told Mike Allen of Politico.com: “I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander-in-chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the families to be as _ to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.”

The Washington Post’s Dan Froomkin has pointed out that even Bush’s callow sacrifice of golf wasn’t real _ he kept on playing _ but that hardly matters. What’s crucial is that all this real life play-acting still moves, even thrills, him.

***

McCain’s McClellan Nightmare

By FRANK RICH

Published: June 1, 2008

THEY thought they were being so slick. When the McCain campaign abruptly moved last Tuesday’s fund-raiser with President Bush from the Phoenix Convention Center to a private home, it was the next best thing to sending the loathed lame duck into the witness protection program.

But for the McCain campaign, any “Mission Accomplished” high-fives had to be put on hold. That same evening Politico.com broke the news of Scott McClellan’s memoir, and it was soon All Iraq All the Time, for the deceitful origins of the war in Iraq are the major focus of the former press secretary’s tell-all.

There is no news in his book, hardly the first to charge that the White House used propaganda to sell its war and that the so-called liberal media were “complicit enablers” of the con job. The blowback by the last Bush defenders is also déjà vu. The claims that Mr. McClellan was “disgruntled,” “out of the loop,” two-faced, and a “sad” head case are identical to those leveled by Bush operatives (including Mr. McClellan) at past administration deserters like Paul O’Neill, Richard Clarke, John DiIulio and Matthew Dowd.

So why the fuss? Mr. McClellan isn’t a sizzling TV personality, or, before now, a household name beyond the Beltway. His book secured no major prepublication media send-off on “60 Minutes” or a newsmagazine cover. But if the tale of how the White House ginned up the war is an old story, the big new news is how ferocious a hold this familiar tale still exerts on the public all these years later. We have not moved on.

Americans don’t like being lied to by their leaders, especially if there are casualties involved and especially if there’s no accountability. We view it as a crime story, and we won’t be satisfied until there’s a resolution.

That’s why the original sin of the war’s conception remains a political flash point, however much we tune out Iraq as it grinds on today. Even a figure as puny as Mr. McClellan can ignite it. The Democrats portray Mr. McCain as offering a third Bush term, but it’s a third term of the war that’s his bigger problem.

***

THEY’RE LYING TO US . . .

Tom Cuddy: “That Kevin Phillips link last Thursday was a great read. I remember when a lot of these statistical tweaks were made. They were all reported on and we were warned by some that the changes were made with a purpose in mind. But like a lot of issues, they were forgotten. Our national policies are routinely adjusted based on unreliable comparisons to earlier economic reports which used different criteria for their measurements. That’s why a lot of Americans know that the official unemployment figures, GDP numbers, and inflation are out of touch with reality. Unemployment figures especially are useless because of the revolution of the last 20 years in which employers now use part-time and 1099 workers to a far greater degree. In the construction industry, where I have been for the last thirty five years I can say with conviction that fewer than 20% of on site construction workers are employees. Count the 1099 guys and illegals who have been axed and you would get a truly gruesome image of how far construction employment has fallen. Yet I read that by some ridiculous correction, construction employment is actually slightly on the rise! In the words of Joe Pesci in my favorite movie, ‘My Cousin Vinnie,’ that’s B.S.”

***

France best, U.S. worst in preventable death ranking

By Will Dunham

Tue Jan 8, 12:21 AM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - France, Japan and Australia rated best and the United States worst in new rankings focusing on preventable deaths due to treatable conditions in 19 leading industrialized nations, researchers said on Tuesday.

If the U.S. health care system performed as well as those of those top three countries, there would be 101,000 fewer deaths in the United States per year, according to researchers writing in the journal Health Affairs.

Researchers Ellen Nolte and Martin McKee of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine tracked deaths that they deemed could have been prevented by access to timely and effective health care, and ranked nations on how they did.

They called such deaths an important way to gauge the performance of a country’s health care system.

***

Conservatives Betrayed: How the Republican Party Hijacked the Conservative Cause,

Richard Viguerie, Chairman of “http://conservativehq.com/home”

***

To add to your book list, here’s another 4 trillion reasons to decry what the Bush Mafia has done:

Forgive Us Our Debts The Intergenerational Dangers of Fiscal Irresponsibility

By Andrew L. Yarrow, Vice President and Director of the Washington Office, Public Agenda

Yale University Press

(In bookstores between mid-April and early May. Pub Date: May 15, 2008)

In this immensely timely book, Andrew Yarrow brings the sometimes eye-glazing discussion of national debt down to earth, explaining in accessible terms why federal debt is rising (and will soon rise much faster), what effects it may have on Americans if debt is not brought under control, why our government borrows, and what it will take to pay it all back. The picture Yarrow paints should concern all Americans.

TRIVIA: Today’s the birthday of children’s book author Walter Farley, born in Syracuse, New York (1916). From an early age, there was nothing he wanted more in the world than his own horse. Unfortunately, his parents couldn’t afford one, so he spent all his time reading and writing about horses.
Between the ages 11 and 15, he wrote dozens of short stories with titles like “The Winged Horse,” “My Black Horse,” “Red Stallion,” and “The Pony.” He later said they were all rough drafts for the novel that he finally finished while he was a student at Columbia University, which he called The Black Stallion (1941). It’s the story of a boy and a wild stallion who survive a shipwreck and become friends on a deserted island.
The book was so popular that Farley went on to write 20 novels about the horse, including The Black Stallion Returns (1945), The Black Stallion Revolts (1953), and The Black Stallion’s Ghost (1969).
****

7/21/2008

Historic Visit Shocker

Winner Of The First-Ever National Press Club Award For Humor. July 21, 2008

Breaking News

McCain Makes Historic First Visit to Internet

Will Spend Five Days at Key Sites

In a daring bid to wrench attention from his Democratic rival in the 2008 presidential race, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) today embarked on an historic first-ever visit to the Internet.

Given that the Arizona Republican had never logged onto the Internet before, advisors acknowledged that his first visit to the World Wide Web was fraught with risk.

But with his Democratic rival Barack Obama making headlines with his tour of the Middle East and Europe, the McCain campaign felt that they needed to “come up with something equally bold for John to do,” according to one advisor.

McCain aides said that the senator’s journey to the Internet will span five days and will take him to such far-flung sites as Amazon.com, eBay and Facebook.

With a press retinue watching, Sen. McCain logged onto the Internet at 9:00 AM Sunday, paying his first-ever visit ever to Mapquest.com.

“I can’t get this [expletive] thing to work,” Sen. McCain said as he struggled with his computer’s mouse, causing his wife Cindy to prompt him to add that he was “just kidding.”

Having pronounced his visit to Mapquest a success, Sen. McCain continued his tour by visiting Weather.com and Yahoo! Answers, where he inquired as to the difference between Sunnis and Shiites.

Sen. McCain said that he had embarked on his visit to the Internet to allay any fears that he is too out-of-touch to be president, adding that he plans to take additional steps to demonstrate that he is comfortable with today’s technology: “In the days and weeks ahead, you will be seeing me rock out with my new Walkman.”

****

7/27/2008

summer daze

There’s always the possibility that some glimmers of light will get past the filtering system around the cave...

And the original source material is often as interesting as the summaries.

TOBIAS

From Kabul to Kansas

McCain’s Egregious Comment

Published on July 25, 2008

Did you watch Obama’s speech in Berlin today? I did – along with 200,000 cheering Germans (versus 120,000 who turned out for Kennedy’s “Ich Bin Ein Berliner” and 40,000 who turned out for Reagan’s “Tear Down That Wall”). The world YEARNS for a leader like this . . . and giving the world the hope that it yearns for will be immensely good for American security, American prosperity, America’s standing in the world, and America’s pride.

If the last eight years have shown anything, it’s that whom we elect President matters.

Consider these two contrasting columns:

Obama’s Overseas Success: What’s His Secret?

By M.J. Rosenberg

July 23, 2008

I think I have read every word Barack Obama uttered on his visits to Israel and Palestine and I’m struck by his ability to navigate this tricky issue with such dexterity. After all, everybody is just waiting for him to trip up on the Arab-Israeli issue. Joe Lieberman, the Israeli media, the right-wing pro-Israel organizations are just waiting to pounce on some misstep.

It didn’t happen, just as it didn’t happen in Afghanistan or Iraq.

And here’s why. He knows his stuff. I worked on Capitol Hill for 20 years and I can tell the difference between a staff driven politician and one who knows what he’s talking about. The staff driven pol (McCain is an example) is always capable of the big blunder. He does not mix up Shiites and Sunnis because he “misspoke;” he really doesn’t know the difference. Same on the economy, he studies a memo and works to assimilate it. But there is no depth.

The sad fact is that most of our politicians are like that. On the Arab-Israeli issue, all they know is that they need to sound pro-Israel. So they end up mouthing the most superficial pieties. They are afraid to talk about the Palestinians because they might say the wrong thing.

They pander and pander, knowing that they won’t get into trouble by just sucking up.

Not Obama.

He is pro-Israel and he supports the two-state solution. He is for keeping Jerusalem undivided but supports resolving Jerusalem’s status in negotiations. He acknowledges the Iranian threat to Israel but does not endorse a military response to deal with it.

So what’s Obama’s secret. He’s smart. He reads. He knows his sh*t. And that is why the Republicans who are counting on him to lose this election through some verbal blunder are going to be disappointed.

I’m not saying that McCain cannot win. He can. But he’ll have to win it. Obama is not going to hand this election to him by stumbling.

I just talked to a friend who saw Obama in Israel. I asked him what his friends in the Israeli media are saying. “What are they saying? They are saying that he’s the next President. And they think he’s the smartest American politician they have seen yet.”

Me too.

McCAIN IN KANSAS

The Egregious John McCain Interview

By Robert J. Elisberg

John McCain made news last week for an interview with the Kansas City Star, noteworthy for an egregious comment.

When asked if his Democratic opponent for president was a Socialist, Sen. McCain -- apparently channeling red-baiting of the glorious 1950s -- shrugged and said, “I don’t know.”

Honest.

If Sen. McCain is that unperceptive with a man he works with, why should anyone trust the Republican with total strangers? At least George Bush could look in people’s hearts. On the other hand, if John McCain actually knows that Barack Obama really isn’t a Socialist, well... what does that say about his renowned integrity?

It’s a remarkable quote, and understandable why it got all the attention in Dave Helling’s interview.

But that wasn’t the egregious comment.

Because Sen. McCain continued disingenuously, “All I know is his voting record, and that’s what people usually judge their elected representatives by.”

Forgetting for a moment that that’s not remotely true -- since people judge their representatives by countless things, like their smile, their lapel pin, their spouse, the crude jokes they tell, whether they’d like to share a beer, and how disingenuous he is -- by Mr. McCain’s logic, he might be a Communist mole. Or an escaped ax murderer. Or a mime. Because if all we know for sure about a representative is his voting record, then John McCain, too, could be anything.

(While I’m aware there was some satire above, I apologize for suggesting that John McCain could be a mime.)

But that wasn’t Sen. McCain’s egregious comment, either.

In attempting to smear Sen. Obama with red paint, Mr. McCain commented that his opponent’s voting record “is more to the left than the announced socialist in the United States Senate, Bernie Sanders.”

Blanket statements generally play havoc with the full truth -- as did John McCain. In fact, checking VoteView, made up of actual political scientists, Sen. Obama is only 10th most liberal - behind, among others...Bernie Sanders. Oops. In Congressional Quarterly, an actual, official record of government, it reported Barack Obama voted with George Bush 40% of the time, putting him in the middle of Democrats. Oops. By the way, the rating John McCain likely refers to is from the National Journal, which doesn’t rank McCain himself -- because he missed over half the key votes. Oops.

Yet that wasn’t Sen. McCain’s egregious comment, either.

Because Dave Helling asks the senator about the Minutemen, a rifle-toting posse pushing for a wall across the U.S.-Mexican border. Since the vigilantes are based in McCain’s home state of Arizona, Helling inquires if they’re a “good thing... do they help in the immigration fight, or not?”

After another shrug, John McCain starts in, “I think they are citizens who are entitled to being engaged in the process. They’re obviously very concerned about immigration.” Then again, that also describes the American Nazi Party. And it doesn’t address the question. So, Dave Helling tries again, “Are they helpful?” To which the senator answers, “I think that’s for others to judge.”

John McCain is running for president -- and he doesn’t think it’s for him to judge what’s helpful dealing with immigration??? He’s supposed to be guiding that very judgment. Not dodging it. Besides, who are these mystical “others” who are entitled to judge, but not the would-be president? Anyway, the Senator continues his answer, “I don’t agree with them. But they certainly are exercising their legal rights as citizens.” Of course, when a 61-year-old librarian, Carol Kreck, was exercising her legal rights by carrying a “Bush=McCain” sign to one of the senator’s open meetings, his security detail had her ejected.

But still, no, that too wasn’t Sen. McCain’s egregious comment.

You see, near the end, John McCain starts to point out issues on which Barack Obama changed his positions. Dave Helling finally interrupts the speech, and in a soft, “Okay, okay, I know, but let’s be honest here a moment” voice, says politely:

“You flip-flop a little bit, too. You flip-flop on drilling a little bit. On tax cuts....You were against the tax cuts, now you’re talking about making them permanent. Isn’t there flip-flopping on both sides?

To which the engineer of the Straight Talk Express acknowledges -- “Actually, no.”

“No.” Period. That’s as emphatic as it gets. Never mind that seconds before, he explained changing his position on drilling! Adding, “I haven’t changed my position on any other issue.” Only to then explain - seconds after insisting there’s “No” flip-flopping on his side - that his changed position on tax cuts was because, “We had to restrain spending, that’s the main reason I voted against them.”

Here’s a good linguistic tip: just because you have a reason you changed your opinions doesn’t mean you didn’t change your opinions.

But “No,” there is no flip-flopping on his side. None. Honestly, there was more flip-flopping in that single answer by John McCain than most people see at the dolphin show at Seaworld.

And...even that wasn’t the egregious comment.

This was the egregious comment –

After Sen. McCain explains his gas tax holiday suggestion, Dave Helling points out, “A lot of experts say this is not a good idea.”

And this is how John McCain defends criticism of the detailed facts and specifics of his economic plan: “A lot of experts are driven to work in chauffeured limousines. A lot of experts live in Georgetown and walk to work.”

Yipes.

I mean...yipes. That may be. But...they’re still experts. And he’s said he’s not.

Further, I’ll bet cash money that most economic experts don’t have chauffeured limousines. Name four. Most don’t live in Georgetown, but across America. Though John McCain himself is chauffeured in a limousine.*

And again -- they...are...experts. Even if they bicycle to work.

Of course, sometimes you have to put things in perspective. After all, John McCain’s economic expert was Phil Gramm, who explained there’s only a “mental recession” in our “nation of whiners.” But now he’s been fired, so perhaps Sen. McCain is left without guidance.

In the end, it might be hard to say which of these comments is the most egregious. But what’s most noteworthy is not which one -- but that all these egregious comments weren’t said over the course of weeks ... but in 6 minutes and 7 seconds.

*In addition to being chauffeured, John McCain and his wife own nine homes and a private jet. Which is fine. Part of me desperately wishes I owned a private jet. It’s not his extravagant lifestyle I mainly object to, or even his carbon footprint. It’s the deception. Like George W. Bush, he will pretend he is just an ordinary guy – unlike his elitist opponent, the egghead who got good grades, where McCain and Bush ranked – far more affably – at the bottom of the class.

***

“http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0922915865/ref=pd_ecc_rvi_1/102-8123938-9404104”

War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America’s Most Decorated Soldier (Paperback)

by “http://mail.google.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/104-6457825-0449537?%5Fencoding=UTF8&search-type=ss&index=books&field-author=Smedley%20D.%20Butler” (Author)

Product Description

General Smedley Butler’s frank book shows how American war efforts were animated by big-business interests. This extraordinary argument against war by an unexpected proponent is relevant now more than ever.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

152 of 159 people found the following review helpful:

Decorated Marine General Cannot Be Ignored, August 17, 2003

By Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States) - See all my reviews

EDITED from 17 Aug 03 to add book links.

This book is a real gem, a classic, that should be in any library desiring to focus on national security. It is a very readable collection of short essays, ending with a concise collection of photographs that show the horror of war--on one page in particular, a pile of artillery shells labeled “Cause” and below is a photo of a massive pile of bodies, labeled “Effect.”

Of particular interest to anyone concerned about the current national security situation, both its expensive mis-adventures abroad and its intrusive violation of many Constitutional rights at home, is the author’s history, not only as a the most decorated Marine at the time, with campaign experience all over the world, but as a spokesperson, in retirement, for placing constitutional American principles over imperialist American practice.

The following quotations from the book are intended to summarize it:

“I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil intersts in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.” [p. 10]

“War is a racket. ...It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.” [p. 23]

“The general public shoulders the bill [for war]. This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.” [p. 24]

General Butler is especially trenchant when he looks at post-war casualties. He writes with great emotion about the thousands of tramautized soldiers, many of who lose their minds and are penned like animals until they die, and he notes that in his time, returning veterans are three times more likely to die prematurely than those who stayed home.

This decorated Marine, who understands and documents in detail the exorbitant profits that a select few insiders (hence the term “racket”) make from war, proposes three specific anti-war measures:

1) Take the profit out of war. Nationalize and mobilize the industrial sector, and pay every manager no more than each soldier earns.

2) Vote for war or no war on the basis of a limited plebisite in which only those being asked to bear arms and die for their country are permitted to vote.

3) Limit US military forces, by Constitutional amendment, to home defense purposes only.

There is a great deal of wisdom and practical experience in this small book--Smedley Butler is to war profiteering what S.L.A. Marshall is to “the soldier’s load.” While a globalized world and the complex integration of both national and non-national interests do seem to require a global national security strategy and a means of exerting global influence, I am convinced that he is correct about the fundamentals: we must take the profit out of war, and restore the voice of the people in the matter of making war.

The Fog of War - Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara

Why We Fight

Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin

Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth’

Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush’s War on Iraq

American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America

The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People

The Lessons of History

The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past

***”http://www.wanttoknow.info/warisaracket”

War Cover-up
Top U.S. General on Cover-up of Forces Behind War

That war is a racket has been told us by many, but rarely by one of this stature. Though he wrote the landmark book War is a Racket in 1935, the highly decorated U.S. General “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler” (two Congressional Medals of Honor) deserves to be heralded for this timeless message, which rings true today more than ever. Below is an engaging two-page summary.

WAR IS A RACKET – by General Smedley Butler

War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

In the World War [World War I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted huge gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows. [Please note these are 1935 U.S. dollars. To adjust for inflation, multiply all figures X 10 or more]

WHO MAKES THE PROFITS?

The World War cost the United States some $52 billion. That means $400 [over $4,000 in today’s dollars] to every American man, woman, and child. The normal yearly profits of a business concern in the U.S. are 6 to 12%. But war-time profits, that is another matter – 60, 100, 300, and even 1,800% – the sky is the limit. Uncle Sam has the money. Let’s get it. Of course, it isn’t put that crudely in war time. It is dressed into speeches about patriotism, love of country, and “we must all put our shoulders to the wheel,” but the profits jump, leap, and skyrocket – and are safely pocketed.

Take our friends the du Ponts, the powder people. The average pre-war earnings of the du Ponts for the period 1910 to 1914 were $6 million a year. Now let’s look at their average yearly profit during the war years, 1914 to 1918. $58 million a year profit we find! Nearly ten times that of normal times, and the profits of normal times were pretty good. An increase in profits of more than 950%.

Take one of our steel companies. Their 1910-1914 yearly earnings averaged $6 million. Then came the war. And, like loyal citizens, Bethlehem Steel promptly turned to munitions making. Did their profits jump? Well, their 1914-1918 average was $49 million a year! Or, let’s take United States Steel. The normal earnings during the five-year period prior to the war were $105 million a year. Then along came the war and up went the profits. The average yearly profit for the period 1914-1918 was $240 million. Not bad.

They sold your Uncle Sam 20 million mosquito nets for the use of the soldiers overseas. Well, not one of these mosquito nets ever got to France!

There were pretty good profits in mosquito netting, even if there were no mosquitoes in France. When the war was over some 4 million sets of equipment – knapsacks and the things that go to fill them – crammed warehouses on this side. Now they are being scrapped because the regulations have changed the contents. But the manufacturers collected their wartime profits on them.

If anyone had the cream of the profits it was the bankers. Being partnerships rather than incorporated organizations, they do not have to report to stockholders. Their profits were as secret as they were immense. How the bankers made their millions and their billions I do not know, because those little secrets never become public – even before a Senate investigatory body. It has been estimated that the war cost your Uncle Sam $52 billion [X 10 or more for inflation]. Of this sum, $39 billion was expended in the actual war itself. This expenditure yielded $16 billion in profits. That is how the 21,000 billionaires and millionaires got that way. This $16 billion profits is not to be sneezed at. It is quite a tidy sum. And it went to a very few.

WHO PAYS THE BILLS?

Who provides these nice little profits of 20, 100, 300, 1,500 and 1,800 per cent? We all pay them – in taxation. But the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill. If you don’t believe this, visit the American cemeteries on the battlefields abroad. Or visit any of the veteran’s hospitals in the United States. On a tour of the country, I visited 18 government hospitals for veterans. In them are a total of about 50,000 destroyed men – men who were the pick of the nation 18 years ago. Mortality among veterans is three times as great as those who stayed at home.

Boys with a normal viewpoint were taken out of the offices, factories, and classrooms and put into the ranks. There they were remolded. They were made to “about face,” to regard murder as the order of the day. They were put through mass psychology and entirely changed. We trained them to think nothing at all of killing or of being killed. Then, suddenly, we discharged them and told them to make another “about face!” This time they had to do their own readjustment. We didn’t need them any more. Many of these fine young boys are eventually destroyed, mentally, because they could not make that final “about face” alone.

Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. This was the “war to end all wars.” This was the “war to make the world safe for democracy.” No one mentioned to them that their going and their dying would mean huge war profits. No one told these American soldiers that they might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here. No one told them that their ships might be torpedoed by submarines built with United States patents. They were just told it was to be a “glorious adventure.”

HOW TO SMASH THIS RACKET!

Well, it’s a racket, all right. A few profit – and the many pay. But there is a way to stop it. You can’t end it by disarmament conferences. You can’t eliminate it by peace parleys at Geneva. Well-meaning but impractical groups can’t wipe it out by resolutions. Three steps must be taken to smash the war racket: 1) We must take the profit out of war; 2) We must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war; and 3) We must limit our military forces to home defense purposes.

I am not a fool as to believe that war is a thing of the past. I know the people do not want war, but there is no use in saying we cannot be pushed into another war. Woodrow Wilson was re-elected president in 1916 on a platform that he had “kept us out of war.” Yet, five months later he asked Congress to declare war on Germany. In that five-month interval the people had not been asked whether they had changed their minds. Then what caused our government to change its mind so suddenly? Money.

An allied commission came over shortly before the war declaration and called on the President.

Had secrecy been outlawed as far as war negotiations, and had the press been invited to be present at that conference, America never would have entered the war.

But this conference, like all war discussions, was shrouded in utmost secrecy. When our boys were sent off, they were told it was a “war to make the world safe for democracy” and a “war to end all wars.” Very little has been accomplished to assure us that the World War was really the war to end all wars. Disarmament conferences don’t mean a thing. At all these conferences, lurking in the background are the sinister agents of those who profit by war. They see to it that these conferences do not seriously limit armaments. So...I say, TO HELL WITH WAR!

***

“http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/052640.html”

On National Defense

May 26, 1940

Radio Address of the President, Delivered from the White House

Let us sit down (again), together again, you and I, to consider our own pressing problems that confront us.
There are many among us who in the past closed their eyes to events abroad --because they believed in utter good faith what some of their fellow Americans told them -- that what was taking place in Europe was none of our business; that no matter what happened over there, the United States could always pursue its peaceful and unique course in the world.

There are many among us who closed their eyes, from lack of interest or lack of knowledge; honestly and sincerely thinking that the many hundreds of miles of salt water made the American Hemisphere so remote that the people of North and Central and South America could go on living in the midst of their vast resources without reference to, or danger from, other Continents of the world.

And, finally, there are a few among us who have deliberately and consciously closed their eyes because they were determined to be opposed to their government, its foreign policy and every other policy, to be partisan, and to believe that anything that the Government did was wholly wrong.

To those who have closed their eyes for any of these many reasons, to those who would not admit the possibility of the approaching storm -- to all of them the past two weeks have meant the shattering of many illusions.

In some quarters, with this rude awakening has come fear, fear bordering on panic. It is said that we are defenseless. It is whispered by some that, only by abandoning our freedom, our ideals, our way of life, can we build our defenses adequately, can we match the strength of the aggressors.

I did not share those illusions. I do not share these fears.

Today we are (now) more realistic. But let us not be calamity-howlers and discount our strength. Let us have done with both fears and illusions. On this Sabbath evening, in our homes in the midst of our American families, let us calmly consider what we have done and what we must do.

But as this program proceeds there are several things we must continue to watch and safeguard, things which are just as important to the sound defense of a nation as physical armament itself. While our Navy and our airplanes and our guns and our ships may be our first line of defense, it is still clear that way down at the bottom, underlying them all, giving them their strength, sustenance and power, are the spirit and morale of a free people.

For that reason, we must make sure, in all that we do, that there be no breakdown or cancellation of any of the great social gains which we have made in these past years. We have carried on an offensive on a broad front against social and economic inequalities and abuses which had made our society weak. That offensive should not now be broken down by the pincers movement of those who would use the present needs of physical military defense to destroy it.

There is nothing in our present emergency to justify a lowering of the standards of employment. Minimum wages should not be reduced. It is my hope, indeed, that the new speed-up of production will cause many businesses which now pay below the minimum standards to bring their wages up.

There is nothing in our present emergency to justify a breaking down of old age pensions or of unemployment insurance. I would rather see the systems extended to other groups who do not now enjoy them.

There is nothing in our present emergency to justify a retreat from any of our social objectives -- from conservation of natural resources, assistance to agriculture, housing, and help to the underprivileged.

Conversely, however, I am sure that responsible leaders will not permit some specialized group, which represents a minority of the total employees of a plant or an industry, to break up the continuity of employment of the majority of the employees. Let us remember that the policy and the laws that provide (providing) for collective bargaining are still in force. And I can assure you that labor will be adequately represented in Washington in (this defense program.) the carrying out of this program of defense.

And one more point on this: (Also) Our present emergency and a common sense of decency make it imperative that no new group of war millionaires shall come into being in this nation as a result of the struggles abroad. The American people will not relish the idea of any American citizen growing rich and fat in an emergency of blood and slaughter and human suffering.

And, (finally) last of all, this emergency demands that the consumers of America be protected so that our general cost of living can be maintained at a reasonable level. We ought to avoid the spiral processes of the World War, the rising spiral of costs of all kinds. The soundest policy is for every employer in the country to help give useful employment to the millions who are unemployed. By giving to those millions an increased purchasing power, the prosperity of the whole (country) nation will rise to a much higher level.

But there is an added technique for weakening a nation at its very roots, for disrupting the entire pattern of life of a people. And it is important that we understand it.

The method is simple. It is, first, discord, a dissemination of discord. A group --not too large -- a group that may be sectional or racial or political -- is encouraged to exploit (their) its prejudices through false slogans and emotional appeals. The aim of those who deliberately egg on these groups is to create confusion of counsel, public indecision, political paralysis and eventually, a state of panic.

Men can lose confidence in each other, and therefore lose confidence in the efficacy of their own united action. Faith and courage can yield to doubt and fear. The unity of the state (is) can be so sapped that its strength is destroyed.

All this is no idle dream. It has happened time after time, in nation after nation, (during) here in the last two years. Fortunately, American men and women are not easy dupes. Campaigns of group hatred or class struggle have never made much headway among us, and are not making headway now. But new forces are being unleashed, deliberately planned propaganda to divide and weaken us in the face of danger as other nations have been weakened before.

These dividing forces (are) I do not hesitate to call undiluted poison. They must not be allowed to spread in the New World as they have in the Old. Our moral, (and) our mental defenses must be raised up as never before against those who would cast a smoke-screen across our vision.

For more than three centuries we Americans have been building on this continent a free society, a society in which the promise of the human spirit may find fulfillment. Commingled here are the blood and genius of all the peoples of the world who have sought this promise.

We have built well. We are continuing our efforts to bring the blessings of a free society, of a free and productive economic system, to every family in the land. This is the promise of America.

It is this that we must continue to build -- this that we must continue to defend.

It is the task of our generation, yours and mine. But we build and defend not for our generation alone. We defend the foundations laid down by our fathers. We build a life for generations yet unborn. We defend and we build a way of life, not for America alone, but for all mankind. Ours is a high duty, a noble task.

****

9/25/2008

Just more evidence accumulates- like:


“You Fool, You Idiot...”
Fox News
by Pamela Troy | September 24, 2008 - 2:25pm
Does anyone remember what happened on Hannity and Colmes last week?
On September 10, a few days before our stock market meltdown, Writer Robert Kuttner was being interviewed by Alan Colmes about his new book, Obama’s Challenge: America’s Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency, when Hannity, plainly incensed about Kuttner’s bleak view of the American economy waded in with his rhetorical fists flying, exclaiming “Stop it. Stop it. This is — this is garbage you’re spewing here.”
I’m happy to say that Kuttner gave as good as he got.:
HANNITY: You said the economy is in dire straits.
KUTTNER: It is in dire straits. You want to deny that, you fool?
HANNITY: You fool, you idiot.
KUTTNER: You’re going to deny that the economy is in dire straits?
HANNITY: For the first time — sir, sir, unemployment in this country...
KUTTNER: Sir, sir, my butt.
HANNITY: ... has been lowest than in the last four decades. Economic growth in the last quarter was 3.4 percent…”
The last time I a saw a conservative pratfall this blatant was back in 1979 when, just days before the news about the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island broke, George Will wrote an indignant piece about how the movie The China Syndrome -- a film about an accident at a nuclear power plant – was unrealistic and alarmist.
In his defense, George Will is at least an elegant writer, and has a semblance of old world courtesy. Hannity’s roughneck, “shut-up-or-I’ll-beat-the-crap-out-of-you” approach, on the other hand, ups the ante to the point where, watching the video today, you can only shake your head in wonder. It’s not just that Hannity is wrong. We’re all wrong at some point. But few of us are so arrogantly, insultingly and obnoxiously wrong in front of a national audience.
Unless, of course, we’re right wing pundits with bestselling books and/or talk radio/cable TV shows. In the years since 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq, belligerent and unrepentant wrongness seems to have become the norm among right-wing apologists. When they are proven wrong they don’t alter their viewpoint. They just file away being wrong as another injury inflicted upon them by liberal meanies. They also quickly convince themselves that liberals who were repeatedly warning against attacking Iraq or deregulating the marketplace are now pleased about being right and were therefore always rooting for the dire consequences they had been warning everyone about – like the rise of sectarian violence in Iraq, the collapse of companies like Enron and Worldcom, and all those stocks that went just a tad sour last week. The fact that liberals might have been warning against these things because liberals didn’t want them to happen is not to be considered.
I feel as though I’m in a rollercoaster, in that instant when it’s just crested the top of a slope and is about to plunge straight down. No, I’m not cheering and throwing my arms up over my head. I don’t like rollercoasters as much as I used to, and I know that unlike the old Zephyr at Pontchartrain Beach, the one we’re riding now can be genuinely lethal.
Being right doesn’t even begin to make up for what may lie ahead for us. But I confess, I do derive some comfort from watching that slender, bearded scrapper, Robert Kuttner, warning us about the fragility of our economy and calling that square-jawed bullyboy a fool.
Just before events have proven Kuttner to be correct on every count.

****

9/18/2008

So, it’s interesting to see your predictions come true. The morally bankrupt Republicans are indeed going for another 4 years of Bush! Are you still enthused about the prospects? McBush, McSame, McAncient, with wife Cindy McCocaine, and the Pale-in-comparison- to- anyone- else religious extremist? Hard for me to see a “family values” voter suddenly putting lipstick on a temperamental, foul mouthed, irrational, confused, serial adulterer, party-boy, warmonger, forked- tongue, eccentric, lying buffoon, but, oh yeah, we’ve done it before.
Great bios (or slants on them)…
Are you keeping up with the senseless obituaries? They admit 5898 of the good guys have now been killed by the Bush Messianic Crusade for Corporations (let alone the 1.3 million Iraqi civilians and ever increasing tolls in Afghanistan):
Since war began (3/19/03): 4168
Other Coalition Troops - Iraq 314
US Military Deaths - Afghanistan 597
Other Military Deaths - Afghanistan 375
Contractor Deaths - Iraq 444

***
Sarah Louise Heath Palin (born February 11, 1964) is the current governor of Alaska, Republican vice presidential candidate, a compulsive breeder, and a major lady dick.
The only thing Sarah Palin seems to enjoy more than having children is giving those children ridiculous names and inadequate sex education.
Palin served as both a city councilor and mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, a nightmare of suburban sprawl located in the armpit of the state’s two major highways. Somehow, she was elected governor of Alaska in 2006, not only becoming the first woman, but also the hottest chick ever to hold the office.
On August 29, 2008, Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain performed perhaps the greatest political mindfuck in American history by announcing that he had chosen Sarah Palin as his running mate. Palin celebrated by ovulating.
Sarah Palin is helped inordinately by the fact that no one knows anything about her or Alaska, and probably never really will. Regardless of whether she turns out to be a disastrous pick for the McCampaign, Sarah Palin is a total MILF.
Contents [hide]
1 Early life and “education”
2 Political “career”
3 2008 vice-presidential “campaign”
4 Political “positions”
5 “Personal” life
6 Pit Bull
7 External Links

[edit]Early life and “education”
Sarah Palin began her shockingly easy ascent from second place in a beauty pageant to potential second-in-command of the world’s largest nuclear arsenal from her birth on February 11, 1964, a birthday she shares with Burt Reynolds, Jeb Bush, Sheryl Crow, and TV’s Moesha, who also had her share of run-ins with unplanned pregnancy. Born Sarah Louise Heath in Sandpoint, Idaho, Palin grew up mostly in Wasilla, Alaska, a town that has also given the world porn actress April Flowers, star of such classics as Dead Men Don’t Wear Rubbers, Sodomania Slop Shots 9, and 100% Blowjobs 32, 26, 21, and, to a lesser extent, 18. As a student and basketball player at Wasilla High School, she earned the nickname “Sarah Barracuda,” presumably for her powerful jaws, bony web-like fins, and small smooth scales.
In 1984, Palin won the Miss Wasilla Pageant, a feat that sounds a lot more impressive than it is unless you’ve ever met a girl from Wasilla, few of whom have either a full set of teeth or a vacant womb. She then finished runner up in the Miss Alaska pageant, a feat that sounds a lot more impressive than it is considering the state is nearly 75% male.
After attending Hawaii Pacific University for a semester—apparently it wasn’t enough of a party school for her—Palin transferred to North Idaho College and then University of Idaho. In 1987, she received a BS in communications, with a minor in political science. That’s right, a poli-sci minor. VP candidate Joe Biden’s 30-plus-year career as U.S. senator pales in comparison, and anyone who says different is sexist.
[edit]Political “career”
After a brief stint as a local sports reporter for KTUU-TV in Anchorage, Palin decided the next logical step was politics, winning two terms on the Wasilla city council.
In 1996, she ran as a Republican for the non-partisan position of mayor, highlighting such issues as abortion, gun control, and religion, each of prime importance for a town that, at the time, consisted of fewer than 5,000 people who mostly crapped in outhouses. Palin won. (Wasilla also boasts a 1:6 citizen-to-church ratio.)
As mayor of Wasilla, Sarah Palin went to work immediately fighting big government by cutting funding to the city museum and shaking up the “Alaska old boy network” by firing the town librarian (who was, in fact, an old woman). Re-elected in 1999, Palin shook up the old boy network even further by working with Ted Stevens’ chief of staff to obtain tens of millions of dollars in federal earmarks. Term limits may have prevented her running a third time, but they didn’t stop her from totally dicking over her step-mother-in-law in the 2002 Wasilla mayoral election by endorsing her opponent. The opponent won.
Palin made an unsuccessful bid for lieutenant governor in 2002, spewed further offspring, and was then appointed by arctic dick Governor Frank Murkowski to chair the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. She repaid Murkowski by unseating him less than three years later in the Republican gubernatorial primary, running on a clean-government platform, opposed to earmarks—like the ones she garnered for Wasilla—and political nepotism—like her appointment to the Oil and Gas Commission.
Endorsed by Ted Stevens, the consummate Alaskan old boy, Palin was elected the first female governor of Alaska, “The Last Dick Frontier.” She was also the youngest governor in state history, as well as the first governor not to be inaugurated in Juneau, the state’s charming little capital, and a city she has spent her entire 20-months in office dismantling by spitefully and systematically moving the state government—by far Juneau’s largest employer—to Wasilla. Incidentally, Juneau is the only blue part of an otherwise very red state.
In her less than two-years as governor, Sarah Palin has yet to engender the type of scorn voters usually heap upon a governor closer to the five-year mark. The important thing to remember about Alaska is that nothing really goes on there, aside from melting permafrost and lots of drinking… paid for in part by the $1200 checks Palin ordered cut to every Alaskan resident. No wonder she boasts the highest approval rating of any governor in the country.
In 2006, after initially supporting it, Sarah Palin ordered work stoppage on Ketchikan’s Gravina Island Bridge, better known as the “Bridge to Nowhere.” Interestingly enough, that particular bridge to nowhere—the state has two—actually was to somewhere, namely Ketchikan International Airport. Palin did not stop construction on the road to the Bridge to Nowhere, which, when you think about it, is kind of an even bigger waste of money.
Perhaps Palin’s greatest achievement as governor was firing Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan in retaliation for refusing to fire an Alaska State Trooper, who also happens to be her ex-brother-in-law. (Pay attention now, and try to stick with us.) She had originally wanted to fire this trooper in retaliation for a child custody battle he happened to be having with her sister. The scandal has become known as “Troopergate,” which, despite not really being all that big a deal in the grand scheme of things, will most likely stick around in the news simply because everyone loves a “gate.”
[edit]2008 vice-presidential “campaign”
On August 29, 2008, Republican presidential candidate John McCain named Sarah Palin as his running mate. Palin’s selection surprised many people, especially because most speculation had centered on Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, Mitt Romney, Tom Ridge, and Joe Lieberman, none of whom have any sex appeal at all. Especially Joe Lieberman.
Reaction to Palin’s nomination was mixed, just the way you’d expect it to be: conservatives were psyched, liberals outraged, and the news networks excited to have something else to talk about after Hurricane Gustav turned out to be a big bust.
Most discussion centered around Palin’s relative deficit of experience, or surfeit of experience, depending on who you ask. Regardless, Palin demonstrated her ability to read a speech someone else had written for her off a teleprompter, and when push comes to shove, that’s really all she needs to be able to do.
[edit]Political “positions”
Sarah Palin’s political views are totally cribbed from the “Focus on the Family” website. Pro-life, unless you’re talking about the life of a criminal; limited government involvement in people’s lives, unless those people have a uterus or are gay and want to get married; and guns for whoever wants them, as many as they like, unless they look Islamic, in which case they should be detained indefinitely, preferably naked and arranged in a human pyramid.
[edit]”Personal” life
Sarah Palin describes herself as a “hockey mom,” even though only one of her five kids ever played hockey… a long time ago. Her unmarried 17-year-old daughter was impregnated by a hockey player, but that hardly counts.
Palin married her high school boyfriend Todd—a very common dick name—in 1988 when she was 24, and, if you do the math, also knocked-up. The couple has five children: Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper, and Trig. Should she birth any further issue—and she very well might—it is entirely possible she will name it Trix Rabbit Palin.
Two days after she was named as McCain’s running mate, Palin announced that her daughter Bristol was five months pregnant, would keep the baby, and marry the teenage father. After several days of being chewed over by the media, both campaigns decided to make family off-limits. Off-limits, that is, until the McCain camp decides to “mysteriously” leak a story that Malia Obama is pregnant, too.
[edit]Pit Bull
During her VP nomination acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, Sarah Palin displayed what some might call a sense of humor by asking, “What’s the difference between a pit bull and a hockey mom?” Her answer: lipstick. There are at least four funnier punch lines than that. They are as follows:
“You can’t keep a hockey mom chained to a post in your backyard with a bowl of water all day.”
“Hockey moms are still legal in some states.”
“Michael Vick.”
“Pit bulls don’t drive mini-vans. Or wear panty-liners.”
Also, here’s another Sarah Palin riddle for you that we came up with: - How can you tell if Sarah Palin is cheating on you with another guy? - Earmarks.
Come on, that’s not bad.
***
John Sidney McCain III (born August 29, 1936) is the senior United States Senator from Arizona, the presumptive Republican Party nominee in the 2008 presidential election, an angry old man, and a dick.
In the Republican Party, there are two kinds of dicks: those that support the Iraq War but were too cowardly to fight in a war when they had the chance, and, much less common, those that support the Iraq War and did fight in other wars when they had the chance. McCain is the latter kind of dick.
During the Vietnam War, McCain became a naval aviator. In a bombing mission over North Vietnam in 1967, he was shot down and badly injured. He endured five and a half years as a prisoner of war, including periods of torture, before he was released following the Paris Peace Accords in 1973. This raises the question: can one be a hero while at the same time being a dick. The answer, as McCain has shown, is: yes.
In 1982, McCain was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, and in 1986, he was elected to the U.S. Senate. During his years in the Senate, McCain has essentially been an unthinking, run-of-the-mill right-winger. He managed to establish a reputation, however, as a “maverick” who often “defied orthodoxy.” That this is true is testament to the high incidence of dicks in the media, an occupation generally considered to have among the highest of DPRs (dick prevalence rate).
In the late 1980’s, McCain became one of the “Keating Five.” Some have noted that this sounds like a band. And to the extent that taking payoffs from corrupt savings and loans officials, passing legislation that deregulated the industry and destroyed thousands of lives, and intervening in the investigation of said corrupt savings and loan officials is like playing music, then, yes, they were a band. A very good one.
In order to salvage his career, McCain recreated himself as a campaign-finance reformer. Because of a defect in the media, McCain succeeded. In 2002, the largely useless McCain-Feingold Act was passed.
McCain ran for the Republican nomination in the 2000 presidential election, but was defeated by another dick, George W. Bush. In the 2008 presidential cycle, McCain was joined in the race by a lazy dick, a Mormon dick, a evangelical dick, a libertarian former gynecologist dick and a dick named Giuliani. After the Mormon dick dropped out in February of 2008, McCain became the presumptive nominee.
Contents [hide]
1 Early life and military career
1.1 Family background and early education
1.2 Naval training, early assignments, first marriage and children
1.3 Vietnam operations
1.4 Return to United States
2 Political career
2.1 U.S. Congressman
2.2 U.S. Senator
2.3 Keating Five
2.4 A “maverick” senator
2.5 An “asshole” senator
2.6 2000 presidential campaign
2.7 2001–2008
2.8 2008 presidential campaign
3 External Links

[edit]Early life and military career
[edit]Family background and early education
McCain was born on August 29, 1936, at the Coco Solo Air Base in the Panama Canal Zone, then controlled by the United States. Both his father and grandfather were United States Navy admirals, and were in fact the first father-son pair each to achieve four-star admiral rank. Oddly, there is no similar ranking for the level of dick that one has reached. If there were such a system, and if it were, similarly, based on a possible total of five, McCain would be said to have achieved a four-dick rank.
Because McCain was born outside the United States, some mentally challenged right-wing bloggers (or, as they are known, “right-wing bloggers”) have suggested that McCain is therefore not eligible to be president. Unfortunately, they are wrong. The constitution requires only that the president be a “natural born citizen,” which the First Congress said included “the children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond sea, or outside the limits of the United States.” Therefore, John McCain is, indeed, eligible to further ruin the United States by becoming its president.
[edit]Naval training, early assignments, first marriage and children
Like his father and grandfather, McCain enrolled in the United States Naval Academy. There, he earned over 100 demerits. His reaction was that it was “bullshit.”
But it was in his off-base activities that McCain truly excelled. According to one classmate, “being on liberty with John McCain was like being in a train wreck.” It is unclear what being with McCain during his presidency would be like for the nation. Unfortunately, America has no direct experience from which to draw with a president who was a temperamental son of a distinguished military man and who in college was a temperamental fuckup who liked to party. What could possibly be so dangerous about that?
McCain graduated from the Naval Academy in 1958, ranked 894th out of 899. As historians have noted, there were five people in his class who were actually bigger fuckups than McCain, but none of them are running for president.
McCain, commissioned an ensign, spent two and a half years training as a naval aviator in Pensacola. There he earned a reputation as a party man, drove a Corvette, dated an exotic dancer named “Marie the Flame of Florida,” and, as he would later say, “generally misused my good health and youth.” But at least when it came to flying, he took his responsibilities seriously.
Just kidding. He didn’t care about those either -- he was a below average flyer, and couldn’t be bothered to read his aviation manuals. But, as many noted partying experts have asked, what good could possibly come of reading manuals? It’s not like one might have a situation in which one’s plane would quit while landing and crash into Corpus Christi Bay, or be flying too low in Spain and take out some power lines, or crash while en route to Philadelphia for an Army/Navy football game.
[edit]Vietnam operations
In December 1966, McCain was assigned to the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal, which, in 1967 was assigned to join Operation Rolling Thunder, the bombing campaign against North Vietnam. On October 26, 1967, McCain began his political career by being shot down. He was then held prisoner by the North Vietnamese for seven years. During this time, McCain was also tortured. Such barbaric treatment gave McCain a unique insight into the evil of torture. And though McCain’s war injuries left him with limited mobility in his arms, he was still able to pat himself on his back throughout his Senate career for his opposition to the practice. When the Iraq War began, and reports began to appear that the United States has used torture, including waterboarding, on detainees, McCain spoke out.
But in February of 2007, even though he had become the presumptive GOP nominee for president, McCain had still not secured the enthusiastic support of right-wing goons and thugs whose sexual inadequacy has manifested in an extreme love of torture. This group is also sometimes referred to as “The Republican Party.”
Therefore, when an Intelligence Authorization Bill came to the Senate floor that would require the intelligence community to abide by the same standards contained in the Army Field Manual, which bans waterboarding, McCain was faced with a choice: make a principled stand consistent with his avowed opposition to torture, or cowardly choose to abandon his principles and suck-up to the right-wing goons and thugs who sexual inadequacy has manifested in an extreme love of torture. McCain chose the latter.
As many whose views of foreign policy are not influenced by sexual inadequacy have noted, aside from the moral reason to not engage in torture, another is the reasonable conclusion that making practices like waterboarding legal also makes it much more likely that other countries will engage in the same practices on American prisoners of war. McCain’s son Jimmy is, in fact, in the Marine Corps. On February 14th, 2007, Jimmy returned from Iraq, meaning that McCain’s son is now safe from the increased danger of being tortured that McCain’s cowardice has placed other U.S. troops under.
[edit]Return to United States
After returning to the U.S., McCain was reunited with his wife Carol, who, in a 1969 car accident, had suffered near-death injuries of her own. This had left her four inches shorter and substantially heavier. While stationed at Jacksonville, Florida, McCain began to have extramarital affairs. As he later noted, “My marriage’s collapse was attributable to my own selfishness and immaturity more than it was to Vietnam...” That would distinguish it from his political career.
In 1979, while attending a military reception in Hawaii, McCain met and fell in love with a teacher from Phoenix named Cindy Lou Hensley, 17 years his junior, and the daughter of a wealthy Anheuser-Busch distributor. It is unclear whether the latter detail had any influence over McCain, but the ability to easily secure a keg of Bud -- the King of Beers, brewed by an original all natural process using the choicest hops, rice and best barley malt -- on short notice and at wholesale prices could possibly have seemed like an added enticement to someone who liked to party as much as McCain.
McCain divorced his wife Carol in 1980. McCain and Hensley were married that same year. Unfortunately, the wedding came too early to feature Bud Light, which was introduced in 1982, and is brewed with the finest ingredients for a refreshingly smooth taste.
McCain’s children were not happy about the wedding and did not attend, though maybe that was because they do not like the choicest hops and best barley malt. If they feel they are too good for such things, then they do not deserve the King of Beers.
[edit]Political career
[edit]U.S. Congressman
Now living in Phoenix, McCain set about finding work. In what would later turn out to be good practice for a senate career spent working wealthy players like corrupt savings and loan felon Charles Keating for favors, McCain got a job with his father-in-law. His title was Vice President of Public Relations, probably because it sounded more important than “Goodwill Ambeersador.” Here, McCain was tasked with the tough job of schmoozing business people. It was difficult, grueling work, the sort of job that often meant spending six, or even seven hours a day at the grindstone. But it was also the sort of job McCain was uniquely qualified for.
In 1982, a seat came open in Arizona’s 1st congressional district. McCain ran, and, after outspending his opponents courtesy of a $167,000 loan his wife made to the campaign, McCain eked out a win.
[edit]U.S. Senator
After Barry Goldwater retired in 1986, McCain ran for and won Goldwater’s Senate seat. Once in the Senate, McCain soon got into a quarrel with Paul Weyrich. As co-founder of the Moral Majority, Weyrich was a prominent leader of the religious right, and was angry over McCain’s defense of President George H. W. Bush’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, John Tower, whom the religious right opposed over allegations of heavy drinking and extramarital affairs.
During this time, and up until his run for the presidency, McCain was often at odds with the religious right. Though, as with the issue of torture, the bravery McCain showed in Vietnam disappeared when he was forced to choose between maintaining his principles or sucking up to the worst people in the country.
[edit]Keating Five
In the late 1980’s McCain finally distinguished himself in the Senate with the help of a man named Charles Keating. The Lincoln Savings and Loan, headed by Keating, had become embroiled in scandal and federal regulators were looking to shut it down and investigate. Keating, who had known McCain since the latter’s days as a layabout schmoozer for his father-in-law the Vice President of Public Relations for the Phoenix Budweiser distributor, began looking for a way to get the government to drop the investigation.
Between 1982 and 1987, Keating had given McCain $112,000. Of course, it is possible that Keating had given McCain this money out of the goodness of his heart with no strings attached, simply out of a heartfelt love of the democratic process. It is also possible that R. Kelly just has a healthy interest in helping 16 year-old girls negotiate the rocky shoals of late adolescence.
Directly after two meetings with Keating, McCain called Edwin J. Gray, the chief of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, which was investigating Keating, and requested that Gray ease off the investigation. Gray testified that four other Senators, all of whom were recipients of political donations from Keating, had also contacted him with the same request. These became known as the “Keating Five.”
The saddest part of the entire situation, even more sad than the 21,000 mostly elderly people who had their entire life savings completely wiped out, was that it brought the appearance of conflict upon Senator McCain. As McCain said, “The appearance of it was wrong. It’s a wrong appearance when a group of senators appear in a meeting with a group of regulators, because it conveys the impression of undue and improper influence.”
And what a terrible impression that can be. Almost as terrible as working your ass off your entire life, little by little putting enough money away for retirement, and then right before retirement finding out your life savings has been robbed from you and instead of working to try to get your money back, your own senator is busy trying to quash the investigation.
On the positive side, the physical activity and social contact that accompany many minimum wage jobs can be good for seniors. The ones who are still ambulatory, anyway.
[edit]A “maverick” senator
Rightly sensing that he had disgraced himself in the Keating Five scandal and that this would hinder his chances to fuck up the country as a hotheaded, dangerously unstable, pandering, angry, very old president, McCain set out to launder his reputation. Since the Keating Five scandal had shown him to be a financially sleazy insider, the way McCain chose to rehabilitate himself was campaign finance.
And so, in 1994, McCain teamed up with Wisconsin Democratic Senator Russ Feingold to introduce the McCain-Feingold Act, a bill that would ostensibly diminish the influence of money in politics by placing limits on so-called “soft money” donations by corporations, union and other institutions. The bill was passed in 2002 and took effect in 2003.
The effort paid off for McCain, and in just a few years the press corps, whose short-term memory falls somewhere between that of a household cat and the Rhesus Macaque monkey (Macaca mulatta), native to Afghanistan, northern India, and southern China, hailed McCain as a good government and campaign finance reformer.
How effective was the act in reducing the influence of money in politics? The answer can be found in a simple experiment that anybody can do. Try it yourself: just say the following phrase out loud: “Hey money, I want you to stop influencing politics!” There, you have now had more influence in diminishing the influence of money in politics than the “Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA, McCain–Feingold Act, Pub.L. 107-155, 116 Stat. 81, enacted 2002-03-27).”
[edit]An “asshole” senator
Far from actually being a “maverick,” the one word that would accurately describe his time in public life is: “asshole.” That McCain was able to successfully make himself be thought of as a “maverick” says as much about the press as it does about McCain. That is, one cannot understand how McCain did this without also understanding the delicate psychology of the Washington D. C. press corps.
Most Washington journalists have a deeply internalized sense of self-loathing. They see themselves as cowardly, flaccid, ineffectual, impotent wimps. In this, they’re not entirely wrong. They have always secretly admired the asshole jocks who used to push them around in high school. The journalists would console themselves with the soothing affirmation that the assholes were not as smart as they were. They were right, of course, but still, deep down the journalists secretly admired the assholes.
Along comes John McCain -- an asshole, but an asshole who is nice to them, an asshole who comes to back of the plane and jokes around with them and doesn’t make them feel unmanly. Why, sometimes, it seemed as if McCain really liked them. A few years of this, and suddenly McCain’s not a temperamental, dangerously unstable asshole, he’s a “maverick.”
But the self-esteem issues of the weakling press notwithstanding, McCain is, in fact, an asshole. An asshole who wants to be the President of the United States. As an asshole senator, he the sort of guy who says things like:
• “Only an asshole would put a budget together like this!” (to New Mexico Republican Pete Dominici)
• “I’m calling you a fucking jerk!” (to Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley)
• “Fuck you. I know more about this than anybody in the room.” (To Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn)
This is why Senator Dominici said in 2000 that “I decided I didn’t want this guy anywhere near a trigger.” It is presumed by this he meant the nuclear trigger.
McCain is also the sort of guy who would tell the following joke:
Q: Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly?
A: Her father is Janet Reno.
This is the sort of humor assholes find funny. When he told the joke, Chelsea Clinton was seventeen years old. Some say when you open an attack like this on the looks of someone who did not ask to be thrust into the public eye, you invite similar attacks in your own direction.
Accordingly, this is a photo of McCain’s freakish-looking over-plastic-surgery’d wife Cindy:
In speaking about whether he had ever witnessed McCain’s notorious temper problem, former Pennsylvania Republican Senator Rick Santorum said, “I don’t know anybody in the Senate who hasn’t. Everybody has their McCain story.”
And if America elects this temperamental, dangerously unstable, angry old asshole, America will have its own McCain story too.
[edit]2000 presidential campaign
In the summer of 1999, McCain came to the conclusion that his power to fuck up the country was too limited in the Senate. So on September 27, 1999 in Nashua, New Hampshire, McCain formally announced he was running for the presidency. The leader in fundraising, establishment party support, and expectations was another temperamental fuckup son of a military man, Texas Governor George W. Bush.
McCain decided to skip Iowa and, on the advice his political consultant, a dick named Mike Murphy, instead went straight to New Hampshire. He traveled in a bus called “The Straight Talk Express.” This is presumably because his dick consultant Murphy decided that this was a better name than the “A-Hole Limited,” or the “Dangerously UnstableMobile.”
On February 1, 2000, McCain won the primary with 49 percent of the vote to Bush’s 30 percent. Bush was in trouble and the upcoming South Carolina primary would be crucial.
The fight between Bush and McCain in South Carolina has become known as one of the nastiest and dirties fights in American electoral history. This is especially noteworthy given the fact that, by then, the Republican Party had already established itself as a particularly sleazy institution. Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush, had, in fact, won by exploiting the racist “southern strategy,” begun by Richard Nixon, and built upon by Ronald Reagan and political strategist Lee Atwater, currently in hell.
Traditionally, the racist strategy was used against Democrats. The South Carolina primary was one of the few times it was used for intra-party purposes.
Days before voting, an anonymous group began a semi-underground smear campaign against McCain. Using push polls, flyers, and emails, the group claimed that McCain had fathered a black child out of wedlock. McCain does, in fact, have a dark-skinned daughter, Bridget. She was adopted from Bangladesh. (Presumably McCain would be angry if someone were to make jokes about Bridget’s looks or ponder whether Bridget’s father had been Janet Reno, but consistency is rarely something dangerously unstable dicks are accused of.)
This was a classic use of the GOP’s “southern strategy.” The Bush campaign made what is known as a “big show” in denying any connection with these attacks, and said he would fire anybody who ran defamatory push polls. As the country later found out, Bush often says he will fire any aides found to be involved in wrongdoing. This is the sort of thing that passes for a joke in Deke House.
Of those who spread the rumors, McCain said “I believe that there is a special place in hell for people like those.” If by “those” he means people who try to cynically exploit racism for political gain, it appears that “people like those” will have to make room for one more asshole. Before the South Carolina race, McCain had said the Confederate flag was “very offensive.” But then, when he needed the votes of the racist thugs and goons there, McCain rethought his position, and came to the conclusion that the flag was a “symbol of heritage.”
Bush was able to out pander McCain among the racists and won the South Carolina primary. McCain withdrew from the race on March 9, 2000. McCain would, however, learn a valuable lesson about pandering to right-wing religious bigots: do it early, and do it completely.
[edit]2001–2008
McCain spent the years of the first and second Bush administrations making self-congratulatory shows of “independence” from the Republican party and cultivating the weakling press to keep up his image as a “maverick.” It was in these years that McCain laid the groundwork for what would be the classic McCain pattern: speak out against bad people when it doesn’t matter, cowardly cave in when it does matter.
Most of the manifestations of McCain’s “maverick” streak were confined to domestic policy. Like when he voted against the first of Bush’s tax cuts, but later voted to extend them and then said if elected president he would make them permanent. But on foreign policy, McCain has rarely done anything but parrot his fellow temperamental fuckup son of a military man, President Bush.
McCain considers “national security” to be one his strengths. Given the fact that he has yet to be right about any single fact regarding Iraq when it counted, this should tell you something about his prowess in domestic matters. For instance, McCain stated unequivocally that Iraq had substantial weapons of mass destruction, and that Iraq was “a clear and present danger to the United States of America.” McCain also claimed that U.S. forces would be greeted as liberators by the Iraqi people.
In April of 2007, after claiming that people were “not getting the full picture” of what was going on in Iraq, McCain made a stroll through an Baghdad market. He said there “are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods, today.” He did not mention that he was accompanied by one-hundred soldiers, three Blackhawk helicopters, and two Apache gunships.
Later that same month, McCain was asked about possible military action against Iran. His response was to sing “Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran” to the melody of the Beach Boys’ song “Barbara Ann.” Though this was widely criticized at the time, it should be noted, however, that deciding foreign policy based on punning lyrics to Beach Boys songs could not, at least, result in a worse situation than the one the United States finds itself in today.
[edit]2008 presidential campaign
McCain announced he was seeking the 2008 Presidential nomination of the Republican Party on the February 28, 2007. He chose a venue that was perfectly suitable to his seriousness as a leader: the Late Show With David Letterman.
Should McCain win, he would be the oldest person ever to assume the Presidency at the initial ascension to office, being 72 years old and surpassing Ronald Reagan, who was 69 years old. Reagan was later diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and there were questions of whether the disease had begun during his presidency. Though the diseases associated with old age are obviously relevant to McCain’s candidacy, he is shielded somewhat from such attacks due to the fact that McCain has been known to be dangerously unstable his entire life.
With no clear front-runner in the race, McCain won the New Hampshire primary on January 8, 2008. He followed this with victories in South Carolina and Florida, after which he became the front-runner and presumptive nominee. The fact that McCain, an unstable, angry old asshole, would find himself coasting to the nomination says much about the rest of the field he was facing. His two main rivals were Mitt Romney, a comically soulless toady whose religion, Mormonism, was once thought to be his weakness but turned out to be the only consistent fact about him, and Rudy Giuliani, who is, according to scientific studies, the most dangerous and insane man ever to run for president.
In the course of winning the nomination and attempting to unite the Republican Party around him, McCain, in accordance with the McCain pattern, has reversed himself on almost every issue on which his reputation as a “maverick” depended.
Though he once called religious bigots like Jerry Falwell “agents of intolerance,” he now eagerly gets on his knees to fellate them to completion ask for their support. Though he once self-congratulatorily denounced the practice of state-sanctioned torture, he voted against making it explicitly illegal for C.I.A. interrogators. Though he once supported a common-sense immigration reform bill co-sponsored by Ted Kennedy, when asked during a Republican debate in Los Angeles whether he would vote for his own bill, McCain said, “No, I would not.” Though he was once Episcopalian, McCain now identifies himself as a Baptist. Fittingly, McCain now supports the teaching of “intelligent design” in schools.
On February 20, 2008, The New York Times reported an affair that McCain had eight years ago with a lobbyist named Vicki Iseman, who looks strangely like McCain’s bizarre-looking wife, Cindy.
Though the media focused primarily on the sex between the then 61-year old McCain and the 33 year-old Iseman, which, really, nobody wants to think about too much, the bigger issue was the favors McCain did for his lobbyist girlfriend. McCain sent two letters to the Federal Communications Commission on behalf of one of Iseman’s clients. The intercession was considered so egregious by the FCC chairman that he rebuked McCain for it.
Predictably, the response of McCain wasn’t to come clean about the affair and the sleazy intervention, or even a pledge to stick to more traditional favors and gifts for his girlfriends, like fancy chocolates or jewelry, or a bath with rose petals, or just a hand-written “coupon” for a night in together. That can be fun. But instead, McCain attacked the Times and immediately used the entire episode as a fundraising opportunity in an email sent out to his gullible supporters.
In short, if McCain does not win the presidency, it will not be because he failed to show the requisite cowardice in ingratiating himself to the goonish and thuggish base of the Republican party. His reputation among the press as a “maverick” will, however, stand forever.
Cindy Lou Hensley McCain (born Cindy Lou Hensley on May 20, 1954) is the wife of U.S. Senator, ill-fated presidential candidate, elderly curmudgeon, and dick John McCain. She, herself, is a multi-millionaire, pill-popper—a combination sometimes referred to as a “pillionaire”—and an excellent example of why people should stop after one facelift, two max. She is also a dick.
As a potential though seriously long shot First Lady, anything and everything about Cindy McCain will be seized upon and exaggerated by the media. Like her hideously plastic appearance. And the period of her life she spent zonked out on Percocet. And that she obviously has a fetish for old balls.
McCain is chair of Hensley & Co., one of the largest Anheuser-Busch beer distributors in the nation. Essentially, this makes her a legalized drug kingpin. Of course, better that than ketchup czar, but still.
Cindy McCain wishes she were Michelle Obama so bad, it gives her sweater bullets just thinking about it.
Contents [hide]
1 Early life and education
2 Charity Work
3 Drugs
4 Role in 2000 presidential campaign
5 Intermission
6 Role in 2008 presidential campaign
7 Lucky she’s not a Democrat because…
8 External Links

[edit]Early life and education
Cindy Lou Hensley began pulling her skin tighter than a virgin’s daughter from the moment of her birth on May 20, 1954, a birthday she shares with Dr. Kevorkian, fellow maxillofacial surgery enthusiast Cher, Ron Reagan—not the President, but his son, the failed liberal talk-show host/ballet dancer—Busta Rhymes, and the fat chick from Facts of Life.
She hails from Phoenix, Arizona, a city pretty much entirely inhabited by the type of dick who likes to siphon off hundreds of billions of gallons of water from the Colorado River just to be able to play golf in the desert, in a state pretty much entirely inhabited by the type of dick who likes to vote “NO” on recognizing Martin Luther King Day as a national holiday.
The daughter of James Willis “Jim” Hensley—who, at the time of his death was one of Arizona’s richest men, alongside Judas Priest front man and longtime Paradise Valley resident Rob Halford—McCain grew up an only child in a pukingly affluent home. In fact, she was named the 1968 Junior Rodeo Queen of Arizona, a statewide competition in which the winners of a beauty pageant saddle up and ride around on the losers.
McCain attended Central High School—whose other notable alumni include the lead singer of Mr. Mister—and then University of Southern California, alma mater of such celebrated dicks as George Lucas, O.J. Simpson, and the guy who founded California Pizza Kitchen. Jamaican Jerk Pizza = Jamaican Jerk awful.
At USC, Cindy McCain pulled double dick duty as both a cheerleader and sorority sister—of Kappa Alpha Theta, the same sorority as current First Lady Dick, or “Ladick,” Laura Bush—before making the decidedly non-dick decision to decline a role in the family business in order to work with disabled children. Of course, she would eventually dick-over the disabled kids and take a seven-digit salary at her daddy’s company.
In April 1979, she met John McCain at a military reception in Hawaii. The one-night stand must have been exceptionally good, considering that the second Mrs. McCain quickly set about stealing him from the first one, a woman who had single-handedly raised his three children while he was in a Vietnamese POW camp for five years. While she was recovering from a near-fatal car crash. One can’t help but deduce from this that Cindy McCain gargles a pretty mean marble, fellatially speaking. Or, like many American wives, at least did before they got married, which they did less than a month after John finalized his divorce. His divorce from the crippled woman whose tireless activism helped spring him from said Vietnamese camp. While some flap has arisen about the 18-year discrepancy in their ages, of their May-December relationship, she maintains that John McCain isn’t old, just fine beech-wood aged
[edit]Charity Work
For a brief period in the mid-to-late 1980s, following her husband’s election to U.S. Congress, Cindy McCain devoted herself to charity work in the developing world, even going so far as to adopt a Bengali orphan. These activities will not be covered here.
[edit]Drugs
Like former First Lady Betty Ford, Cindy McCain had a little thing for prescription opioids, which she originally started taking to kill the pain of spinal surgery. She continued these pharmacological exploits to kill the pain of the Keating Five scandal (the Keating Five were kind of like the Jackson Five, only without the afros, Saturday morning cartoon show, and sex with fans while underage brothers watched from the next hotel bed). Cindy McCain obtained her various pharmaceuticals by stealing them from the volunteer international medical team she founded.
[edit]Role in 2000 presidential campaign
The most important influence Cindy McCain had on her husband’s 2000 presidential bid was divulging his love for the Star Wars trilogy. This sealed the all-important 40-year-old-dude-who-still-lives-with-his-mother, wears-sweat-pants-and-listens-to-Rush vote.
[edit]Intermission
Between her husband’s first doomed stab at the White House and what will eventually become his second, Cindy McCain became worth $100 million and bought a piece of the Arizona Diamondbacks, a team whose roster boasts the highest number of rednecks in the major leagues. She also became actively involved with the non-profit medical service Operation Smile. Apparently, she likes to hang out by the dispensary with a big bag and a suspicious look on her face.
[edit]Role in 2008 presidential campaign
Cindy McCain has been visible, if not exactly active, in her husband’s seemingly endless campaign for the 2008 election. Early on, she made several statements critical of the Bush administration. She has since been warned. Like her husband, she is opposed to the military’s use of “waterboarding,” though she does support “beerboarding,” a controversial practice of buying round after round after round until your captive finally agrees that Budweiser is actually an enjoyable beer to drink. Cindy McCain has also asserted that she would be more of a “traditional” First Lady, meaning that she would not attend Cabinet meetings, but continue her humanitarian work overseas. Also, she would start wearing pearls. The campaign has said it will wait to decide how to handle her role in Hensley & Co., though it is widely assumed that she will continue foisting her piss-tasting swill on America.
[edit]Lucky she’s not a Democrat because…
In April 2008, it came to light that a recipe for passion fruit mousse she posted the campaign website was plagiarized from the Food Network. That’s just the kind of thing Republicans would find grounds to impeach her husband over.
***
FACT SHEET: Military record of John Sidney McCain III
Both McCain III’s father and grandfather were Admirals in the United States Navy. His father
Admiral John S. ”Junior” McCain was commander of U.S. forces in Europe - later commander of
American forces in Vietnam while McCain III was being held prisoner of war. His grandfather
John S. McCain, Sr. commanded naval aviation at the Battle of Okinawa in 1945.
McCain III, like his father and grandfather, also attended the United States Naval Academy.
McCain III finished near the bottom of his graduating class in 1958.
McCain III lost five U.S. Navy aircraft
1 - Student pilot McCain III lost jet number one in 1958 when he plunged into Corpus
Christi Bay while practicing landings.
2 - Pilot McCain III lost another plane two years later while he was deployed in the
Mediterranean. ”Flying too low over the Iberian Peninsula, he took out some power lines
which led to a spate of newspaper stories in which he was predictably identified as the
son of an admiral.
3 - Pilot McCain III lost number three in 1965 when he was returning from flying a Navy
trainer solo to Philadelphia for an Army-Navy football game. McCain III radioed, ”I’ve got
a flameout” and ejected at one thousand feet. The plane crashed to the ground and
McCain III floated to a deserted beach.
4 - Combat pilot McCain III lost his fourth on July 29, 1967, soon after he was assigned to
the USS Forrestal as an A-4 Skyhawk combat pilot. While waiting his turn for takeoff, an
accidently fired rocket slammed into McCain Jr’s. plane. He escaped from the burning
aircraft, but the explosions that followed killed 134 sailors, destroyed at least 20 aircraft,
and threatened to sink the ship.
5 - Combat pilot McCain III lost a fifth plane three months later (Oct. 26, 1967) during his
23rd mission over North Vietnam when he failed to avoid a surface-to-air missile. McCain
III ejected from the plane breaking both arms and a leg in the process and subsequently
parachuted into Truc Bach Lake near Hanoi. After being pulled from the lake by the North
Vietnamese, McCain III was bayoneted in his left foot and shoulder and struck by a rifle
butt. He was then transported to the Hoa Lo Prison, also known as the Hanoi Hilton.
1973 New York Daily News labeled POW McCain III a “PW Songbird”
On McCain III’s fourth day of being denied medical treatment, slapped, and threatened with
death by the communist (they were demanding military information in exchange for medical
treatment), McCain III broke and told his interrogator, ”O.K., I’ll give you military information if you
will take me to the hospital.” U.S. News and World Report, May 14, 1973 article written by former
POW John McCain.
***
Title: John McCain And The USS Forrestal Fire
Source: judicial-inc
URL Source: http://judicial-inc.biz/82jjohn_mccain_and_the_uss_forresta.htm
Published: Mar 10, 2008
Author: judicial-inc
Post Date: 2008-03-10 01:06:57 by TwentyTwelve
Keywords: John McCain, USS Forrestal Fire
Views: 5860
Comments: 39
judicial-inc.biz/82jjohn_..._and_the_uss_forresta.htm
John McCain And The USS Forrestal Fire
USS Forrestal In 1967
132 Dead Sailors, And Countless Wounded
A Small Rocket Hit A Fuel Tank On Another Plane
Where Is The Truth Here?
I have heard five versions of the Forrestal fire, but this one makes sense.
McCain Aviation Career
McCain crashed 5 jets, plus was responsible for the Forrestal fire. Something made the plane behind McCain fired a rocket, which hit McCain’s external center fuel tank, and caused a fire. McCain panicked, and dropped two bombs into the fire.
Did He Start The USS Forrestal Fire?
Surviving crewmen and those who investigated the Forrestal fire case reported that McCain deliberately ‘wet-started’ his A-4E Skyhawk to shake up the guy in the F-4 Phantom behind his plane.
Incompetence Or A Stunt
‘Wet-starts’, done either deliberately (the starter motor switch allowed kerosene to pool in the engine and give a wet start) or accidentally, shoot a large flame from the tail of the aircraft. ‘Wet starting’ was a common practice among young ‘hot-dog’ pilots.
Zuni Rockets Were Volatile Design
In McCain’s case, the ‘wet-start’ ‘cooked off’ and launched the M34 Zuni rocket from the rear F-4 that punctured the Skyhawk’s fueltank, knocked the M-65 1000 lb bomb off it’s 500 lb rated mount, and touched off the explosions and massive fire.
The Carrier Oriskany
The USS Oriskany came along side to treat the wounded.
Wounded Flown Out
They were transferred to other ships.
McCain Left With The Wounded
When the carrier Oriskany came along side, and McCain was put in a chopper and whisked away. McCain was the only Forrestal crewman to be immediately transferred
The Forrestal Crew
I have a hunch McCain left for his own safety, because the crew wanted blood.
***

Wife of POW Navy Pilot, Who Had Husband’s Remains Sent Home By North Vietnamese in 1989, Was Lied to by U.S. Officials For Years About His Whereabouts And POW Status
Diane Van Renselaar says she still hasn’t gotten the truth about her husband from the military and lawmakers, including Sen. John McCain who she claims is ‘no friend’ of POW families and has backstabbed them every step of the way toward getting at the truth.
31 Oct 2005
By Greg Szymanski
Instead of telling Diane Van Rensaleer her husband was alive and in a slave labor camp, the lying contingent of morally irreprehensible politicians and military brass concealed his status, closing the official book on the pilot in 1978 even though credible CIA intelligence information revealed he was still alive in 1987, two years before he arrived home in a body bag.
“Larry was shot down on September 30, 1968. They closed his case in 1978. In fact, John McCain, who is a very dangerous and violent man, was the driving force behind closing all the POW files, classifying records in order to keep the truth from the families and the American people,” said Van Rensaleer this week from her home in Corte Madera, California.
“McCain is even more dangerous than Bush. I don’t want to see this man ever become President and that’s why I want this story out because he is one of the biggest liars in our government and, by no means, a friend of the POW families.
“After backstabbing all of us, hiding the truth about the POW story, I wish they would have kept him in a prison camp for life like so many others who didn’t have his military and political clout. If they lied to us about this, just think about the lies spread about 9/11 and the present-day war in Iraq?”
Van Renselaar’s story is just another in a growing number of cases, showing the deceit, deception and outright lies advanced by the Pentagon, Congress and the Executive towards POW family members seeking the truth about their loved ones.
Her long and difficult quest of searching for the truth has opened up so many cans of political worms, most high-ranking officials like McCain and “Daddy Bush” run and hide when they see her face in the halls of government.

Col. Atkins, who became a friend and close confident of Van Renselaar and other POW family members, was arrested in 1992 for his involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal, a twist of fate she said preventing him from testifying about the real truth about McCain and the POW lies advanced by lawmakers and the military.
“I know for a fact Sen. Bob Smith, who was trying to help us get at the truth in the Senate hearings on the POW issue, never got a chance to depose Col Atkins since he was arrested and then jailed for years over Iran-Contra,” said Van Renselaar, adding it “was very strange” how Atkins was left to rot in a District of Columbia jail system until at least 1999. “They didn’t want him to talk about a lot of things, but he talked to me about McCain’s CIA file and many things the senator wants kept from the American people.
“People need to know the truth about McCain. He sealed his own records, as well the records of all POW’s, so he could continue lying about his POW experience. He was never tortured, never in a dog-cell like the other prisoners and never deprived of food.
In fact, Col. Atkins, who died in 2001 of a cerebral hemorrhage, told Renselaar that when he and North acquired McCain’s CIA file it showed he was out of the system for at least two years, being in an eastern European country instead of being in solitary confinement in a Vietnam jail cell like he has told the public.
To verify Atkins’ claim, Van Renselaar said she has talked to several Vietnam POW’s in the same camp McCain was s held, including Larry Larson, who told her “without a doubt I didn’t see McCain for at least a year.”
Further, she added John Parcels, a former helicopter pilot, and his wife, Patty, who visited Vietnam after the war, said they were taken on a tour by the North Vietnamese, who showed-off with pride the ‘plush cell’ in which McCain was held as well as the memorial in his honor put up by the banks of Lake Hanoi.
“Why have the North Vietnamese honored him? What did McCain tell them and how was he really treated?” questioned Van Renselaar, adding Parcels said McCain’s prison cell was of a much higher standard then the other dog-cells prisoners were given.
“They gave him special treatment and it is documented he was even out of the country for two years instead of being in solitary confinement. He is lying about what happened and that is why he had his own POW records sealed for life. He was never tortured, never deprived of food and I’ve even learned he may even have fathered two children after having an affair with his Vietnamese nurse.
“According to my very credible Vietnamese contacts he had an affair with the sister of Nguyen Tan Thanh, a high-placed North Vietnamese official. Since they knew McCain was the son of A Navy Admiral, he was given a special nurse, Tan’s sister. I’ve been told he fathered two sons with her, one attending the University Of Colorado, Up until now, though, we haven’t been able to get their names.”
Besides what Renselaar calls McCain’s “pack of POW lies” about his real record of captivity, she recalls her husband saying McCain was not well-like by him or other pilots when they were under his direction before the Vietnam War when McCain was an operation’s officer at a Meridian, Miss., flight-training center.
“I remember my husband saying he was not well-liked and thought of as a hot dog and a punk,” said Van Renselaar. “And nothing has changed over the years. Once when POW families were outside his Senate office on Capital Hill demanding answers, he pushed his way through the crowd in a violent manner refusing to answer questions, almost knocking a POW supporter over in her wheel chair.”
***
A Conservative for Obama
My party has slipped its moorings. It’s time for a true pragmatist to lead the country.
Leading Off By Wick Allison, Editor In Chief
THE MORE I LISTEN TO AND READ ABOUT “the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate,” the more I like him. Barack Obama strikes a chord with me like no political figure since Ronald Reagan. To explain why, I need to explain why I am a conservative and what it means to me.
In 1964, at the age of 16, I organized the Dallas County Youth for Goldwater. My senior thesis at the University of Texas was on the conservative intellectual revival in America. Twenty years later, I was invited by William F. Buckley Jr. to join the board of National Review. I later became its publisher.
Conservatism to me is less a political philosophy than a stance, a recognition of the fallibility of man and of man’s institutions. Conservatives respect the past not for its antiquity but because it represents, as G.K. Chesterton said, the democracy of the dead; it gives the benefit of the doubt to customs and laws tried and tested in the crucible of time. Conservatives are skeptical of abstract theories and utopian schemes, doubtful that government is wiser than its citizens, and always ready to test any political program against actual results.
Liberalism always seemed to me to be a system of “oughts.” We ought to do this or that because it’s the right thing to do, regardless of whether it works or not. It is a doctrine based on intentions, not results, on feeling good rather than doing good.
But today it is so-called conservatives who are cemented to political programs when they clearly don’t work. The Bush tax cuts—a solution for which there was no real problem and which he refused to end even when the nation went to war—led to huge deficit spending and a $3 trillion growth in the federal debt. Facing this, John McCain pumps his “conservative” credentials by proposing even bigger tax cuts. Meanwhile, a movement that once fought for limited government has presided over the greatest growth of government in our history. That is not conservatism; it is profligacy using conservatism as a mask.
Today it is conservatives, not liberals, who talk with alarming bellicosity about making the world “safe for democracy.” It is John McCain who says America’s job is to “defeat evil,” a theological expansion of the nation’s mission that would make George Washington cough out his wooden teeth.
This kind of conservatism, which is not conservative at all, has produced financial mismanagement, the waste of human lives, the loss of moral authority, and the wreckage of our economy that McCain now threatens to make worse.
Barack Obama is not my ideal candidate for president. (In fact, I made the maximum donation to John McCain during the primaries, when there was still hope he might come to his senses.) But I now see that Obama is almost the ideal candidate for this moment in American history. I disagree with him on many issues. But those don’t matter as much as what Obama offers, which is a deeply conservative view of the world. Nobody can read Obama’s books (which, it is worth noting, he wrote himself) or listen to him speak without realizing that this is a thoughtful, pragmatic, and prudent man. It gives me comfort just to think that after eight years of George W. Bush we will have a president who has actually read the Federalist Papers.
Most important, Obama will be a realist. I doubt he will taunt Russia, as McCain has, at the very moment when our national interest requires it as an ally. The crucial distinction in my mind is that, unlike John McCain, I am convinced he will not impulsively take us into another war unless American national interests are directly threatened.
“Every great cause,” Eric Hoffer wrote, “begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” As a cause, conservatism may be dead. But as a stance, as a way of making judgments in a complex and difficult world, I believe it is very much alive in the instincts and predispositions of a liberal named Barack Obama.
Write to wicka@dmagazine.com.
***
The Neocons’ Palin Project
by Patrick J. Buchanan
09/16/2008
Will the neocons who tutored George W. Bush in the ideology he pursued to the ruin of his presidency do the same for Sarah Palin?
Should they succeed, they will destroy her. Yet, they are moving even now to capture this princess of the right and hope of the party.
Mr. Buchanan is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of Churchill, Hitler, and “The Unnecessary War”: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, “The Death of the West,”, “The Great Betrayal,” “A Republic, Not an Empire” and “Where the Right Went Wrong.”
***
John Neffinger
Posted September 16, 2008 | 08:31 PM (EST)
Hello? If McCain Had His Way, That’d Be Our Social Security Money Wall Street is Losing
***
Sam Steinstein
Bizarre McCain Remarks Appear To Reject Spain As Ally
September 18, 2008 02:12 AM
***
Troopergate Probe Appears To Be Unraveling
MATT VOLZ | September 17, 2008 09:23 PM EST |
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The abuse-of-power investigation of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was unraveling Wednesday, with most key witnesses refusing to testify, new legal maneuvering and heightened Republican pressure to delay the probe until after Election Day.
Palin initially welcomed the investigation, saying “hold me accountable,” but she has increasingly opposed it since Republican presidential candidate John McCain tapped her as his vice presidential running mate.
In a reversal of position, a key Democratic lawmaker said Wednesday he may convene the committee that is conducting the investigation into whether Palin dismissed her public safety commissioner when he would not fire a state trooper involved in a bitter divorce with her sister.
Some Republican members of the committee have asked for such a meeting, to consider delaying the probe or replacing Democratic state Sen. Hollis French as its manager. The investigation’s conclusions are supposed to be released by Oct. 10. The Legislative Council, made up of 10 Republicans and four Democrats, had unanimously approved launching the probe.
***
NY Times Poll: McCain Widely Viewed As “Typical Republican” Who Would Continue Or Expand Bush’s Policies
ROBIN TONER and ADAM NAGOURNEY | September 17, 2008 07:30 PM
Despite an intense effort to distance himself from the way his party has done business in Washington, Senator John McCain is seen by voters as far less likely to bring change to Washington than Senator Barack Obama. Mr. McCain is widely viewed as a “typical Republican” who would continue or expand President Bush’s policies, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll.
***
Once Elected, Palin Hired Friends and Lashed Foes
Associated Press
The Wasilla City Council, with Sarah Palin, the future governor and vice-presidential nominee, at the center, in a 1998 photograph. Throughout her career, Ms. Palin has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and blurred the line between government and personal grievance.
By JO BECKER, PETER S. GOODMAN and MICHAEL POWELL
Published: September 13, 2008
WASILLA, Alaska — Gov. Sarah Palin lives by the maxim that all politics is local, not to mention personal.
So when there was a vacancy at the top of the State Division of Agriculture, she appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Ms. Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the roughly $2 million agency.
Ms. Havemeister was one of at least five schoolmates Ms. Palin hired, often at salaries far exceeding their private sector wages.
When Ms. Palin had to cut her first state budget, she avoided the legion of frustrated legislators and mayors. Instead, she huddled with her budget director and her husband, Todd, an oil field worker who is not a state employee, and vetoed millions of dollars of legislative projects.
And four months ago, a Wasilla blogger, Sherry Whitstine, who chronicles the governor’s career with an astringent eye, answered her phone to hear an assistant to the governor on the line, she said.
“You should be ashamed!” Ivy Frye, the assistant, told her. “Stop blogging. Stop blogging right now!”
Ms. Palin walks the national stage as a small-town foe of “good old boy” politics and a champion of ethics reform. The charismatic 44-year-old governor draws enthusiastic audiences and high approval ratings. And as the Republican vice-presidential nominee, she points to her management experience while deriding her Democratic rivals, Senators Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr., as speechmakers who never have run anything.
But an examination of her swift rise and record as mayor of Wasilla and then governor finds that her visceral style and penchant for attacking critics — she sometimes calls local opponents “haters” — contrasts with her carefully crafted public image.
Throughout her political career, she has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and sometimes blurred the line between government and personal grievance, according to a review of public records and interviews with 60 Republican and Democratic legislators and local officials.
***
Why Experience Matters
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: September 15, 2008
Philosophical debates arise at the oddest times, and in the heat of this election season, one is now rising in Republican ranks. The narrow question is this: Is Sarah Palin qualified to be vice president? Most conservatives say yes, on the grounds that something that feels so good could not possibly be wrong. But a few commentators, like George Will, Charles Krauthammer, David Frum and Ross Douthat demur, suggesting in different ways that she is unready.
The issue starts with an evaluation of Palin, but does not end there. This argument also is over what qualities the country needs in a leader and what are the ultimate sources of wisdom.
There was a time when conservatives did not argue about this. Conservatism was once a frankly elitist movement. Conservatives stood against radical egalitarianism and the destruction of rigorous standards. They stood up for classical education, hard-earned knowledge, experience and prudence. Wisdom was acquired through immersion in the best that has been thought and said.
But, especially in America, there has always been a separate, populist, strain. For those in this school, book knowledge is suspect but practical knowledge is respected. The city is corrupting and the universities are kindergartens for overeducated fools.
The elitists favor sophistication, but the common-sense folk favor simplicity. The elitists favor deliberation, but the populists favor instinct.
All Conversations » Readers’ Comments
“I grew up in a small town with Republican values ... it never prepared me for the Vice Presidency or even a cabinet position. “
Jack, Portland, Ore.
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McCain’s Radical Agenda
By BOB HERBERT
Published: September 15, 2008
Talk about a shock to the system. Has anyone bothered to notice the radical changes that John McCain and Sarah Palin are planning for the nation’s health insurance system?
These are changes that will set in motion nothing less than the dismantling of the employer-based coverage that protects most American families.
A study coming out Tuesday from scholars at Columbia, Harvard, Purdue and Michigan projects that 20 million Americans who have employment-based health insurance would lose it under the McCain plan.
There is nothing secret about Senator McCain’s far-reaching proposals, but they haven’t gotten much attention because the chatter in this campaign has mostly been about nonsense — lipstick, celebrities and “Drill, baby, drill!”
For starters, the McCain health plan would treat employer-paid health benefits as income that employees would have to pay taxes on.
“It means your employer is going to have to make an estimate on how much the employer is paying for health insurance on your behalf, and you are going to have to pay taxes on that money,” said Sherry Glied, an economist who chairs the Department of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.
Ms. Glied is one of the four scholars who have just completed an independent joint study of the plan. Their findings are being published on the Web site of the policy journal, Health Affairs.
According to the study: “The McCain plan will force millions of Americans into the weakest segment of the private insurance system — the nongroup market — where cost-sharing is high, covered services are limited and people will lose access to benefits they have now.”
The net effect of the plan, the study said, “almost certainly will be to increase family costs for medical care.”
Under the McCain plan (now the McCain-Palin plan) employees who continue to receive employer-paid health benefits would look at their pay stubs each week or each month and find that additional money had been withheld to cover the taxes on the value of their benefits.
While there might be less money in the paycheck, that would not be anything to worry about, according to Senator McCain. That’s because the government would be offering all taxpayers a refundable tax credit — $2,500 for a single worker and $5,000 per family — to be used “to help pay for your health care.”
You may think this is a good move or a bad one — but it’s a monumental change in the way health coverage would be provided to scores of millions of Americans. Why not more attention?
The whole idea of the McCain plan is to get families out of employer-paid health coverage and into the health insurance marketplace, where naked competition is supposed to take care of all ills. (We’re seeing in the Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch fiascos just how well the unfettered marketplace has been working.)
Taxing employer-paid health benefits is the first step in this transition, the equivalent of injecting poison into the system. It’s the beginning of the end.
When younger, healthier workers start seeing additional taxes taken out of their paychecks, some (perhaps many) will opt out of the employer-based plans — either to buy cheaper insurance on their own or to go without coverage.
That will leave employers with a pool of older, less healthy workers to cover. That coverage will necessarily be more expensive, which will encourage more and more employers to give up on the idea of providing coverage at all.
The upshot is that many more Americans — millions more — will find themselves on their own in the bewildering and often treacherous health insurance marketplace. As Senator McCain has said: “I believe the key to real reform is to restore control over our health care system to the patients themselves.”
Yet another radical element of McCain’s plan is his proposal to undermine state health insurance regulations by allowing consumers to buy insurance from sellers anywhere in the country. So a requirement in one state that insurers cover, for example, vaccinations, or annual physicals, or breast examinations, would essentially be meaningless.
In a refrain we’ve heard many times in recent years, Mr. McCain said he is committed to ridding the market of these “needless and costly” insurance regulations.
This entire McCain health insurance transformation is right out of the right-wing Republicans’ ideological playbook: fewer regulations; let the market decide; and send unsophisticated consumers into the crucible alone.
You would think that with some of the most venerable houses on Wall Street crumbling like sand castles right before our eyes, we’d be a little wary about spreading this toxic formula even further into the health care system.
But we’re not even paying much attention.
More Articles in Opinion » A version of this article appeared in print on September 16, 2008, on page A29 of the New York edition.
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Related
McCain Plan to Aid States on Health Could Be Costly (July 9, 2008) Readers’ Comments
“McCain is going after my friend with chronic lymphocytic leukemia, my family members with diabetes and my grandfather with health problems.”
KGW, Los Angeles
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Blizzard of Lies
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: September 11, 2008
Did you hear about how Barack Obama wants to have sex education in kindergarten, and called Sarah Palin a pig? Did you hear about how Ms. Palin told Congress, “Thanks, but no thanks” when it wanted to buy Alaska a Bridge to Nowhere?
These stories have two things in common: they’re all claims recently made by the McCain campaign — and they’re all out-and-out lies.
Dishonesty is nothing new in politics. I spent much of 2000 — my first year at The Times — trying to alert readers to the blatant dishonesty of the Bush campaign’s claims about taxes, spending and Social Security.
But I can’t think of any precedent, at least in America, for the blizzard of lies since the Republican convention. The Bush campaign’s lies in 2000 were artful — you needed some grasp of arithmetic to realize that you were being conned. This year, however, the McCain campaign keeps making assertions that anyone with an Internet connection can disprove in a minute, and repeating these assertions over and over again.
Take the case of the Bridge to Nowhere, which supposedly gives Ms. Palin credentials as a reformer. Well, when campaigning for governor, Ms. Palin didn’t say “no thanks” — she was all for the bridge, even though it had already become a national scandal, insisting that she would “not allow the spinmeisters to turn this project or any other into something that’s so negative.”
Oh, and when she finally did decide to cancel the project, she didn’t righteously reject a handout from Washington: she accepted the handout, but spent it on something else. You see, long before she decided to cancel the bridge, Congress had told Alaska that it could keep the federal money originally earmarked for that project and use it elsewhere.
So the whole story of Ms. Palin’s alleged heroic stand against wasteful spending is fiction.
Or take the story of Mr. Obama’s alleged advocacy of kindergarten sex-ed. In reality, he supported legislation calling for “age and developmentally appropriate education”; in the case of young children, that would have meant guidance to help them avoid sexual predators.
And then there’s the claim that Mr. Obama’s use of the ordinary metaphor “putting lipstick on a pig” was a sexist smear, and on and on.
Why do the McCain people think they can get away with this stuff? Well, they’re probably counting on the common practice in the news media of being “balanced” at all costs. You know how it goes: If a politician says that black is white, the news report doesn’t say that he’s wrong, it reports that “some Democrats say” that he’s wrong. Or a grotesque lie from one side is paired with a trivial misstatement from the other, conveying the impression that both sides are equally dirty.
They’re probably also counting on the prevalence of horse-race reporting, so that instead of the story being “McCain campaign lies,” it becomes “Obama on defensive in face of attacks.”
Still, how upset should we be about the McCain campaign’s lies? I mean, politics ain’t beanbag, and all that.
One answer is that the muck being hurled by the McCain campaign is preventing a debate on real issues — on whether the country really wants, for example, to continue the economic policies of the last eight years.
But there’s another answer, which may be even more important: how a politician campaigns tells you a lot about how he or she would govern.
I’m not talking about the theory, often advanced as a defense of horse-race political reporting, that the skills needed to run a winning campaign are the same as those needed to run the country. The contrast between the Bush political team’s ruthless effectiveness and the heckuva job done by the Bush administration is living, breathing, bumbling, and, in the case of the emerging Interior Department scandal, coke-snorting and bed-hopping proof to the contrary.
I’m talking, instead, about the relationship between the character of a campaign and that of the administration that follows. Thus, the deceptive and dishonest 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign provided an all-too-revealing preview of things to come. In fact, my early suspicion that we were being misled about the threat from Iraq came from the way the political tactics being used to sell the war resembled the tactics that had earlier been used to sell the Bush tax cuts.
And now the team that hopes to form the next administration is running a campaign that makes Bush-Cheney 2000 look like something out of a civics class. What does that say about how that team would run the country?
What it says, I’d argue, is that the Obama campaign is wrong to suggest that a McCain-Palin administration would just be a continuation of Bush-Cheney. If the way John McCain and Sarah Palin are campaigning is any indication, it would be much, much worse.
» A version of this article appeared in print on September 12, 2008, on page A23 of the New York edition.
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Blog: The Conscience of a Liberal Readers’ Comments
“...our system continues to reward false statements and outright lies with a winning campaign...”
ShelJW, Los Angeles
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***Nathan Gardels
Posted September 16, 2008
Stiglitz: The Fall of Wall Street Is to Market Fundamentalism What the Fall of the Berlin Wall Was to Communism
Joseph Stiglitz was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001. I spoke with him Tuesday about the Wall Street meltdown.
Nathan Gardels: Barack Obama has said the Wall Street meltdown is the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression. John McCain says the economy is threatened, but fundamentally strong. Which is it?
Joseph Stiglitz: Obama is much closer to the mark. Yes, America has talented people, great universities and a good hi-tech sector. But the financial markets have played a very important role, accounting for 30 percent of corporate profits in the last few years.
Those who run the financial markets have garnered those profits on the argument they were helping manage risk and efficiently allocating capital, which is why, they said, they “deserved” those high returns.
That’s been shown to be not true. They’ve managed it all badly. Now it has come back to bite them and now the rest of the economy will pay as the wheels of commerce slow because of the credit crunch. No modern economy can function well without a vibrant financial sector.
So, Obama’s diagnosis that our financial sector is in desperate shape is correct. And if it is in desperate shape, that means our economy is in desperate shape.
Even if we weren’t looking at the financial turmoil, but at the level of household, national and federal debt there is a major problem. We are drowning. If we look at inequality, which is the greatest since the Great Depression, there is a major problem. If we look at stagnating wages, there is a major problem.
Most of the economic growth we’ve had in the past five years was based on the housing bubble, which has now burst. And the fruits of that growth have not been shared widely. In short, the fundamentals are not strong.
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Chris Kelly:
The Delicate Subject of John McCain’s Marbles
America’s choice is clear. Barack Obama, a messianic egomaniac who thinks he’s, like, our savior or something, or John McCain, who will defeat evil and put an end to greed. McCain will not only take on special interests and Washington insiders, he’ll fundamentally alter human nature. And without raising taxes, either. He’ll lead us to a sort of martial nirvana where all other emotions are replaced with patriotism, and turn the U.S. into a shining, selfless, bipartisan cross between heaven and Sparta. Or maybe he’s just a desperate shell of a man, babbling glorp.
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The Ugly New McCain
Wednesday 17 September 2008
by: Richard Cohen, The Washington Post
Following his loss to George W. Bush in the 2000 South Carolina primary, John McCain did something extraordinary: He confessed to lying about how he felt about the Confederate battle flag, which he actually abhorred. “I broke my promise to always tell the truth,” McCain said. Now he has broken that promise so completely that the John McCain of old is unrecognizable. He has become the sort of politician he once despised.
The precise moment of McCain’s abasement came, would you believe, not at some news conference or on one of the Sunday shows but on “The View,” the daytime TV show created by Barbara Walters. Last week, one of the co-hosts, Joy Behar, took McCain to task for some of the ads his campaign has been running. One deliberately mischaracterized what Barack Obama had said about putting lipstick on a pig - an Americanism that McCain himself has used. The other asserted that Obama supported teaching sex education to kindergarteners.
“We know that those two ads are untrue,” Behar said. “They are lies.”
Freeze. Close in on McCain. This was the moment. He has largely been avoiding the press. The Straight Talk Express is now just a brand, an ad slogan like “Home Cooking” or “We Will Not Be Undersold.” Until then, it was possible for McCain to say that he had not really known about the ads, that the formulation “I approve this message” was just boilerplate. But he didn’t.
“Actually, they are not lies,” he said.
Actually, they are.
McCain has turned ugly. His dishonesty would be unacceptable in any politician, but McCain has always set his own bar higher than most. He has contempt for most of his colleagues for that very reason: They lie. He tells the truth. He internalizes the code of the McCains - his grandfather, his father: both admirals of the shining sea. He serves his country differently, that’s all - but just as honorably. No more, though.
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Karzai ally killed in battle with foreign troops in southern Afghanistan
NOOR KHAN
AP News
Sep 18, 2008 08:29 EST
Foreign troops killed an ally of President Hamid Karzai in southern Afghanistan during an overnight gunbattle, officials said Thursday. The Afghan president said the death resulted from a “misunderstanding between foreign and local forces.”
Ruzi Khan Barakzai, the former police chief of Uruzgan province and a tribal leader and militia commander, was killed outside the provincial capital of Tirin Kot, on Wednesday night.
NATO’s International Security Assistance Force said its troops were involved in an incident in Uruzgan on Wednesday night, but did not have more details. Dutch NATO troops are based in Uruzgan.
Afghanistan is seeing a resurgence of violence, even as the U.S. and NATO have poured thousands of new troops into the country. Last year, more than 8,000 people were killed in insurgency-related attacks. The attacks have claimed more than 4,500 lives — mostly militants — this year.
The violence afflicting Afghanistan’s south and west is having a particularly negative effect on school attendance, officials said Thursday.
The lack of security and attacks on the school buildings, teachers and students have forced some 70 percent of school-aged children away from schools in these two regions, said Shigeru Aoyagi, the director of UNESCO’s office in Afghanistan.
Insurgents have attacked some 88 schools nationwide since March and the violence has forced the closing of 640 schools across the country, Aoyagi said.
Since last October, some 250 students and teachers have been killed in insurgent attacks, said Hamid Halimi, a spokesman for the education ministry.
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THE BIG WHISPER
...WHAT’S UP WITH MCCAIN...
Rejects Bailing Out AIG One Day, For It The Next... Appears To Reject Spain As An Ally... On Palin’s Plans For Female Economic Empowerment: “She Was A Point Guard On A State Championship Basketball Team”... Calls Fundamentals Of Economy “Strong” Monday, Says We’re In “A Total Crisis” Tuesday... Time’s Klein: “Sober Observers... Are Calling McCain A Liar”
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http://www.236.com/blog/w/michael_weingartner_and_lee_camp/mccains_palin_anxiety_caught_o_9008.php

September 18, 2008
McCain’s Fear of Palin