Somebody hold me. Conventional wisdom seems to hold that W and Big Dick could not possibly be crazy enough to invade Iran, and if they were, Congress would stop them. Snap out of it! Bu$hCo has NO use for Congress. Is that not clear enough yet? Sy Hersh has another heart stopping article in th New Yorker for your perview. BTW, he's the reporter who got it ALL right about the bogus reasons Bu$h was pushing for the invasion of Iraq, Abu Graib, and the chaos that has insued. Never again can we allow this to happen. We know how this movie ends and this maladministration needs to be stopped.
“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.”
That theme was echoed by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national-security adviser, who said that he had heard discussions of the White House’s more limited bombing plans for Iran. Brzezinski said that Iran would likely react to an American attack “by intensifying the conflict in Iraq and also in Afghanistan, their neighbors, and that could draw in Pakistan. We will be stuck in a regional war for twenty years.”
Great. Just great. Will members of Congress, in both parties, get a grip and deal with this?
If Iraq isn't as disillusioning as Vietnam, it's because the majority of dying is being done by the Iraqis and this country refuses to acknowledge the moral consequences of the slaughterhouse it's helped create. So writes Lew Rockwell in "None Dare Call It Genocide" (via Antiwar):
The US has unleashed bloodshed in Iraq that is rarely known even in countries we think of as violent and torn by civil strife. It is amazing to think that this has occurred in what was only recently a liberal and civilized country by the region’s standards. This was a country that had a problem with immigration, particularly among the well-educated and talented classes. They went to Iraq because it was the closest Arab proxy to Western-style society that one could find in the area.
It was the US that turned this country into a killing field. Why won’t we face this? Why won't we take responsibility?...
Such blindness is always inexcusable, but perhaps more understandable in a time when information was severely restricted, when technological limits actually prohibited us from knowing the whole truth at the time. What excuse do we have today?
None.
Thanks to Jack for this. Ru$h Limpballs is at it again. The coward who escaped serving in Vietnam over an anal problem is now calling soldiers who oppose the war, "phoney soldiers" Gen. Wes Clark takes issue with that. Do you?
Rush Limbaugh: Am I a Phony Soldier?
According to Rush Limbaugh, Jon Soltz, Iraq war veteran and chairman of VoteVets.org, is a "phony soldier." Today, Media Matters reports that Rush Limbaugh said that those troops who come home and want to get America out of the middle of the religious civil war in Iraq are "phony soldiers."
The question is, would Rush make these outrageous and offensive comments to Jon's face?
I want McConnell and all the chest thumpers to rush to the floor of the Senate and pass ammendments condeming Ru$hbo. Phonies.
Here we go again with the latest casualty in the Bu$h wars. How many people are gonna loose their jobs because of the tender sensibilities of the Bu$h minions? From CNN.com
About 300 people crowded into a classroom Wednesday night, with another 200 or so spilling into the hall, to discuss a column that read simply -- "Taser this: F**k Bush." The debate centers around whether this is a case of First Amendment rights, or a case of abusing those free speech rights with an irresponsible, offensive remark.
The Board of Student Communications, made up of six students and three faculty members, was there to question David McSwane, editor-in-chief of The Rocky Mountain Collegian.
It was a chance for students, faculty and community members to talk about the column, which has inflamed tempers since it was published on September 21.
The board will meet privately Thursday to discuss whether to punish McSwane, according to board
Good lord! CNN even ran a disclaimer noting that they were not associating themselves with the student's remarks. Somebody hold those quivering babies! Thanks for the tip on this, Jon.
Bill O has been taking his clown show on the road a lot lately. After his lunch at a soul food restaurant with Al Sharpton last week he was shocked! Shocked, I tell you that black folks think for themselves and don't say FM when ordering tea. Good, lord. If that wasn't pathetic enough, his pal Juan Williams, of NPR and Fux Newz, joined him in condeming the "culture wars" for all of his problems. Get a load of this from " Media Matters
On the January 4 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, National Public Radio (NPR) senior correspondent and Fox News contributing political analyst Juan Williams said of talk show host David Letterman's treatment of guest Bill O'Reilly during the January 3 edition of CBS' Late Show with David Letterman: "It's like someone inviting you into their house and you find out you've been invited in by, you know, John Wayne Gacy, the clown killer." Referring to Letterman's interview of O'Reilly, which Williams further labeled a "knife fight," Williams said, "I'm surprised you don't have a black eye this morning."
His radio show was a conversation with Fox News contributor Juan Williams, author of a book about the coarseness of some black culture. Williams defended O'Reilly during a Tuesday appearance on "The O'Reilly Factor."
"It's so frustrating," Williams said. "They want to shut you up. They want to shut up anybody who has an honest discussion about race."
I do indeed wish those assclowns would just shut up already.
It is beyond troubling that a well-paid body of representatives tasked with doing the essential business of the American people would instead waste taxpayer time and money on such a childish, inappropriate act as publicly denouncing a citizen advocacy group for exercising its right to free speech.
The group, MoveOn.org, took out a paid advertisement (albeit underpaid, though it has since paid full price) in The New York Times. We will reserve judgment as to how appropriate it is to call Gen. David Petraeus a name — Betray Us — at a time when a serious discourse on Iraq and the efficacy of the Bush/Petraeus “plan” to keep our soldiers mired in a civil war is necessary. It goes without saying that the MoveOn ad, though it attempted to stoke serious questions about what the general was expected to tell Congress, has instead served Republicans well, drawing attention away from the actual debate and allowing quislings like Kentucky Senators Mitch McConnell and Jim Bunning to hide behind some emotional, nostalgic defense of Petraeus as the ultimate American solider when, in fact, he has appeared to be something of a White House lackey.
This episode shows nothing if not that our representatives, who have failed us so profoundly on the Iraq war, operate in a world of denial and fear of the majority of Americans, who are moving ever closer to throwing the switch on these swine.
[. . .]Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Ca., attached an amendment condemning the 2004 attack ads against John Kerry by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which were quickly unmasked as egregious lies. The swift-boating, now a verb, was a savage attack on a decorated veteran. But the Republican shitbags running the show then could happily swallow that business because it won them a presidential campaign.
Well, isn't this special? This is exactly what happens when one party, the GOP, is running the show and packing the courts with incompetent and/or corrupt hacks. God only knows how much more corruption will be unearthed in the coming months and years. The Interior Department is so badly corrupted that two employees there filed personal lawsuits to recover the missing billions Big Oil was not paying in taxes. Here is part of what the independant investigation found:
Prepared by the Interior Department’s inspector general, Earl E. Devaney, the report said that investigators found a “profound failure” in the agency’s technology for monitoring oil and gas payments.
It suggested that the agency was too cozy with oil companies and that internal critics had good reason to fear punishment.
“It demonstrates a Band-Aid approach to holding together one of the federal government’s largest revenue-producing operations,” Mr. Devaney concluded.
In one case, senior officials decided that it would impose a “hardship” on oil companies to demand that they calculate the back interest they owed after having been caught underpaying. The agency itself was years behind in billing the companies, because its computers could not perform the calculations.
When asked about this matter by investigators, the agency’s associate director, Lucy Querques Denett, responded, “How do you define hardship, just because they have a lot of money?”
The report was the latest result of a long series of investigations into the troubled federal program for collecting oil and gas royalties. Last year, Mr. Devaney told a Congressional hearing that “short of a crime, anything goes at the highest levels of the Department of the Interior.”
Is Bu$hCo really THIS isolated from reality, or do they simply think we and the entire world are stupid enough not to see the irony in his calling for human rights and decency before world?
Most people knew that the Iraq *war* supporters in Congress were just blowing smoke when they claimed they were waiting until September when the Petraeus Report (beytray us? hahaha) came out before their patients wore out with Bu$h and his war. We were right in not believing them.
The veteran Virginia senator was supposed to provide the exit ramp for other GOP senators seeking to abandon the president. Then why did he -- and so many of his colleagues -- vote against the Webb amendment?
The entire ugly, awful incidents in Jena, LA have made me so depressed I could barely stand to read/hear about it. 50 years after Arkansas schools were forced to integrate, the same type of slimy creatures, again, mostly southern, rear their ugly heads. This American Prospect article is a good one
The enduring white-brown-black, urban-rural, Northern-Southern, rich-poor divides are exposed here -- abysses that keep America from truly realizing its dream of equality for all. For those of us who live in urban centers where ethnic segregation, while common, at least appears self-imposed, the idea of a modern day "whites only" drinking fountain is shocking.
But our shock only further proves our denial. The children of Northeastern privilege go to Ivy League or small liberal arts schools, take courses in African American history, and pat each other on the back for knowing a few financial aid-strapped immigrant upstarts, while Southern frat boys beat their chests at the big game and remember their black nannies with patronizing fondness, though they would never bring a black girl home. This is our America. It is a place where overt racism -- like the kind we are seeing displayed so dramatically in Jena -- has mostly died out (at least publicly), but the complex dynamics of opportunities, relationships, and power still play out along an often denied, though undeniable, color line.
Just consider some of the statistics. According to Human Rights Watch, one in 10 black men in their 20s and early 30s is in jail or prison. Thirteen percent of the black adult male population has lost the right to vote because of felony disenfranchisement. The nationwide college graduation rate for black students is a pathetic 43 percent, according to the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, a full 20 percent lower than that for white students. According to sociologist Dalton Conley, the average black family has only one-eighth the net worth of the average white family. Taken together, these discrepancies paint a grim picture of the enduring gap -- culturally, economically, psychologically -- between the lives of black and white youth in this country.
Again, the GOP is using race (and immigrant bashing) in a despicable way to shore up their *base.* Sick.
What took the WH so long? I can't remember the last time there was an election and the GOP didn't use some obvious code word or symbolism to stoke racism. Here's the latest
People who live in glass houses...
A senior White House official has offered this critique of Barack Obama:
As for Obama, a senior White House official said the freshman senator from Illinois was "capable" of the intellectual rigor needed to win the presidency but instead relies too heavily on his easy charm.
"It's sort of like, 'that's all I need to get by,' which bespeaks sort of a condescending attitude towards the voters," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "And a laziness, an intellectual laziness."
As you can see in our feature story over on the right, the White House's new line is that Barack Obama may be too "intellectually lazy" to run a serious presidential campaign let alone be President of the United States.
But don't think this allusion to generations of stereotypes about black men was just some stray comment.
The RNC just shot off an email building on the slur. With the headline "Razzle Dazzle", the email continues the theme that Obama is just another black fancy-pants with a slick smile and nice turn of phrase but either without the candle-power or stick-to-it-iveness to actually get things done.
While there is no way to put a price tag on the cost in human lives, the financial cost of conducting Bu$h's fiasco in Iraq is taking a terrible toll. The price tag? 720 BILLION dollars a day Thanks to Hank for the link to this WaPo article
The money spent on one day of the Iraq war could buy homes for almost 6,500 families or health care for 423,529 children, or could outfit 1.27 million homes with renewable electricity, according to the American Friends Service Committee, which displayed those statistics on large banners in cities nationwide Thursday and Friday.
The war is costing $720 million a day or $500,000 a minute, according to the group's analysis of the work of Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard public finance lecturer Linda J. Bilmes.
The estimates made by the group, which opposes the conflict, include not only the immediate costs of war but also ongoing factors such as long-term health care for veterans, interest on debt and replacement of military hardware.
"The wounded are coming home, and many of them have severe brain and spinal injuries, which will require round-the-clock care for the rest of their lives," said Michael McConnell, Great Lakes regional director of the AFSC, a peace group affiliated with the Quaker church.
The $720 million figure breaks down into $280 million a day from Iraq war supplementary funding bills passed by Congress, plus $440 million daily in incurred, but unpaid, long-term costs.
The WH and its minions think that is a small price to pay.
Enjoy this Tom Tomorrow cartoon. We all need a laugh, but people get hurt when hacks like him help reckless politicians set financial policy based on BS. Sad.
There is SO much wrong with McConnell's letter to the C-J yesterday that it's hard to know where to begin. Notice the testy and defensive language. Mitch's new found love for the Constitution, which had gone missing for the last 6 and 1/2 years while Bu$h spied on US citizens without warrants, crushed habeas corpus to name but a couple, is baaaaack! What a load of tripe.
The U.S. Constitution is short because its authors wanted to be clear, and on the question of congressional representation they couldn't have been more so: Only states get to select members of Congress, and the District of Columbia is not a state. [my note: DUH!!!]
A lot of people don't like this arrangement for obvious reasons: Voting is supposed to be a fundamental right in this country. But the way to solve that problem is not to scrap the Constitution; it's to amend it. That's the only remedy the Constitution itself prescribes. It is the only constitutional option.
Some people have accused me of opposing voting rights because I've urged the amendment process for D.C. residents who want the vote. A recent column in this paper, "McConnell and the D.C. Vote," went so far as to lump me in with earlier opponents of civil rights.
These charges are based on a willful misreading of my position, which I have clearly laid out many times. My critics also miss a crucial point: The only true safeguard against injustice in this country is the Constitution itself, and its integrity depends on the willingness of our elected leaders to defend it.
In this case, that means defending Article I, Section II, which says the House of Representatives shall be composed of members selected "by the people of the several states." The same article later carves out a separate geographical district which the Congress would control.
As Professor Jonathan Turley of George Washington University Law School, no conservative ideologue, recently wrote: "The District was … created for the specific purpose of being a non-state without direct representation in Congress." The words and intent of the Founders are clear.
I have always defended the right to vote. As the lead co-sponsor of the Help America Vote Act, my commitment to the franchise rights of all Americans should be evident to anyone who approaches this issue honestly. The NAACP even honored me for breaking with the Bush administration to fully fund HAVA in 2003.
Whew! Maybe McConnell wants us to forget that he sent his goons into mostly minority neighborhoods to "challenge" the legitimacy of their votes in past elections. Most saw that as intimidation. Next, do a Google search for "NAACP honors Mitch McConnell" and laugh at the results. Google, Senator McConnell, Help America Vote Act and you get results like this:
Recently, a letter circulated by Representatives Robert Ney and Steny Hoyer, and Senators Mitch McConnell and Chris Dodd, argued that legislation to amend the Help America Vote Act of 2003 (HAVA) to require a voter verified paper trail is "premature" and could be detrimental. It is understandable that the authors of the Help America Vote Act would be sensitive to amending that legislation. We supported it, and we still support it. But we do not support the suggestion that Congress should continue to sit by as election after election is conducted with no meaningful way to audit the results.
McConnell thinks we are all stupid. Will the Courier-Journal fact check him? Naw!
Despite ample evidence that Blackwater runs roughshod through the streets of Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq, they continue to defy the Iraqi governments insistance that they cease operations. This infuriates the Iraqis and leaves them humiliated. Iraqis equate the actions of Blackwater as an American problem, not that of a rogue contractor or mercenary army. It's one more chinck in the wall of how the US has blown it in Iraq. No justice, no peace.
Blackwater had been operating without a license for more than a year, though it had made an attempt to register this spring. Mr. Bolani said that the government was not moving forward with its registration, but that not being registered would not set the company apart from many other foreign security companies operating here. Only 23 foreign companies have licenses, Mr. Bolani said.
The report said that Mr. Maliki had “demanded” that the State Department drop Blackwater as a protector, “for the sake of the two nations’ reputation.”
In the Interior Ministry’s version of that day, the events began unfolding when a bomb exploded shortly before noon near the unfinished Rahman Mosque, about a mile north of Nisour Square. Embassy officials have said the convoy was responding to the bomb, but it is still unclear whether it was carrying officials away from the bomb scene, driving toward it to pick someone up or simply providing support.
Whatever their mission, and whoever was inside, the convoy of at least four sport utility vehicles steered onto the square just after noon and took positions that blocked the flow of midday traffic in three directions. But one family’s car, approaching from the south along Yarmouk Street, apparently did not stop quickly enough, and the Blackwater guards opened fire, killing the man who was driving, the ministry account says.
“The woman next to the driver had a baby in her arms,” said an official who shared the report, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to share it. “She started to scream. They shot her,” the official said, adding that the guards then fired what appeared to be grenades or pump guns into the car as it continued to move. The car caught fire.
“The car kept rolling, so they burned it,” the official said.
Blackwater is seriously endangering the safety of our troops. How can you NOT expect people to take matters into their own hands if their government is unable to and the US refuses to hold the Blackwater thugs accountable?
There is critical work to be done in Congress between all the recesses they find time to take, so what are these clowing hacks spending their time on? Number of the Day
72: Members of the U.S. Senate -- the same body that couldn't manage a vote Wednesday on habeas corpus rights for detainees or time off for troops -- who voted today in favor of a resolution condemning "personal attacks on the honor and integrity of Gen. Petraeus and all members of the United States Armed Forces."
The Senate resolution didn't name MoveOn or its "General Betray Us" ad, but the group and those aligned with it were plainly the target.
Who gets the credit for this important legislative accomplishment? Democrats Max Baucus, Evan Bayh, Ben Cardin, Thomas Carper, Bob Casey Jr., Kent Conrad, Byron Dorgan, Dianne Feinstein, Tim Johnson, Amy Klobuchar, Herb Kohl, Mary Landrieu, Patrick Leahy, Blanche Lincoln, Claire McCaskill, Barbara Mikulski, Ben Nelson, Bill Nelson, Mark Pryor, Ken Salazar, John Tester and Jim Webb and independent Joe Lieberman joined every Senate Republican in voting for the measure.
I first read about this in the Times this morning and wondered what the hell the WH has on Warner to cause him to double cross Senator Webb's ammendment to give the troops as much time at home as they serve in combat. How could any SANE person object to that? From TPM
There's been a new twist in the battle over Jim Webb's troop readiness bill: It was just announced on the Senate floor that Senator John Warner -- who had been wavering in his support of Webb's amendment -- is planning to introduce his own, nonbinding version of Webb's measure.
But here's the rub: According to a source close to Webb, Warner didn't even inform his fellow Senator that he was planning to do this. Webb was totally surprised when he heard the announcement, the source tells us.
Just a few minutes ago, Senator McCain, who's overseeing today's activities as the senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, announced on the floor that Warner would be introducing a "sense of Congress" amendment on troop readiness. A "sense of Congress" amendment is nonbinding -- it's not a law, it's an expression of Congress' opinion.
In the suit, filed this afternoon in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, Mr. Rather charges that CBS and its executives made him “a scapegoat” in an attempt “to pacify the White House,” though the formal complaint presents virtually no direct evidence to that effect. To buttress this claim, Mr. Rather quotes the executive who oversaw his regular segment on CBS Radio, telling Mr. Rather in November 2004 that he was losing that slot, effective immediately, because of “pressure from ‘the right wing.’ ”
He also continues to take vehement issue with the appointment by CBS of Richard Thornburgh, an attorney general in the administration of the elder President Bush , as one of the two outside panelists given the job of reviewing how the disputed broadcast had been prepared.
Our Senator, Mitch McConnell, Mr. "up or down vote" when the GOP was in power cannot obstruct Congress enough now that he's in the minority. Residents of DC pay taxes, send citizens to fight our wars and yet Mitch doesn't think they should have a member of Congress to represent them.
My head hurts
The drive to give the 600,000 residents of the District of Columbia a vote in Congress failed in the Senate today, falling three votes short of the 60 needed to begin debate.
But backers of the bill, which included a representative for largely Democratic D.C. and a new one for largely Republican Utah, pledged to try again, if not in this session than in a new Congress where Democratic gains could spell the difference.
"I feel strongly about D.C. voting rights," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). Noting that there are "a lot of other things crying for attention" in the Senate, he said he chose to bring the issue to the floor because D.C. residents were fighting and dying in Iraq without a voice in Congress.
"This is fairness," Reid said. "It's the right thing to do."
Although the bill passed the House, President Bush had threatened to veto it.
Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) strongly opposed the measure, calling it "clearly and unambiguously unconstitutional" and saying the remedy for disenfranchisement of the district's residents is to amend the Constitution to make D.C. a sta Ote.
Mitch is still the reliable Bu$h rubber stamp, who threatened to veto the bill if passed.
In a blistering 14-page letter today (pdf), House oversight committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) charged that the inspector general for the State Department Howard Krongard has been actively impeding probes into waste and corruption in Iraq and elsewhere. The basic allegation, as Waxman simply puts it, is that "you believe your foremost mission is to support the Bush Administration, especially with respect to Iraq and Afghanistan, rather than act as an independent and objective check on waste, fraud, and abuse on behalf of U.S. taxpayers." In other words, Waxman is charging that he's a hack, and the worst kind, too -- one that can do real damage.
Waxman has a litany of examples of Krongards' alleged hackishness, but one is particularly colorful.
There have been allegations that the contractor First Kuwaiti used forced labor building the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. So Krongard looked into it.
Only he had a peculiar method, according to Waxman's investigation. First, he insisted on doing the report entirely by himself and shut out his staff. And instead of seeking out the source of the allegations, he allowed the contractor to choose the employees that he'd interview. He ultimately interviewed six employees.
Mercenary "armies" are illegal under the Geneva Conventions, considered "quaint" by the Bu$h administration. Here is a video that gives a few of the known details about the company. Our tax dollars support this operation.
For crying out loud. Will the Bu$h administration and its minions never tire of lying and spinning? And will their GOP supporters EVER tire of falling for the same old BS time and time again? Walter Pincus of the Washington Post reports:
A week ago today, Gen. David H. Petraeus started his rounds on Capitol Hill, reporting that security in Iraq was improving to the point that a small number of troops could begin coming home by year's end.
But 10 days ago, his commanders in Baghdad began advertising for private contractors to work in combat-supply warehouses on U.S. bases throughout Iraq because half the soldiers who had been working in the warehouses were needed for patrols, combat and protection of U.S. forces.
"With the increased insurgent activity, unit supply personnel must continue to pull force protection along with convoy escort and patrol duties," according to a statement of work that accompanied the Sept. 7 request for bidders from Multi-National Force-Iraq.
Aren't there enough unemployed Iraqi men available to do the job???
It really IS too much to bare hearing doughy, pampered white men pontificate on the "need" for more soldiers to fight and die and be maimed to prop up the fantasy nightmares of the neocon "vision thing." Haul it off to Iraq, neocons! The military is so desperate they will even take YOU at this point. Glenn Greenwald, at Salon, kicks neocon ASS! Disgusting:
Fred Kagan yesterday went to National Review -- home to countless tough guy warriors like him who fight nothing -- to argue against Senator Webb's bill. There is no need to give our troops more time away from the battlefield, Kagan types. Besides, doing that would be too administratively difficult ("this amendment would actually require the Army and Marine Corps staffs to keep track of how long every individual servicemember had spent in either Iraq or Afghanistan, how long they had been at home, how long the unit that they were now in had spent deployed, and how long it had been home"). If troops want more time at home, Kagan says, there is an easy way to achieve that: "win the war we're fighting." Of course, that would not even work, because Kagan and his friends at the Weekly Standard and the American Enterprise Institute have many more wars planned beyond Iraq for other families' sons and daughters to fight. For that reason, Kagan actually had the audacity several months ago to type this:
The president must issue a personal call for young Americans to volunteer to fight in the decisive conflict of this generation. [my bold]
That's the history of our country for the last six years at least. The Fred Kagans and his dad and his brother and his wife and his best friend Bill Kristol sit back casually demanding more wars, demanding that our troops be denied any relief, demanding that the President call for other families to volunteer to fight in their wars -- all "as an intellectual or emotional exercise," as Webb put it.
That's all revolting enough. But to then watch Fred Kagan sit around opposing Senator Webb's attempts to relieve some of the strain on our troops -- all because it would require too much paperwork to figure out and because they haven't yet won Fred Kagan's war and thus deserve no breaks -- is almost too much to bear. But it is worth forcing oneself to observe it, as unpleasant as it might be, because within this ugly dynamic lies much of the explanation for what has happened to our country since the 9/11 attack, and the personality type that continues to drive it today.
I think this country is heartsick at the devastation this *war* has needlessly caused the actual warriors.
I'm getting nervous that Big Dick is just crazy enough to start a war with Iran. You cannot make this stuff up.
— While scrutiny this week focused on the debate over troop strength, President Bush also used the occasion to turn up the pressure on Iran, using his speech on Thursday to stress the need to contain Iran as a major reason for the continued American presence in Iraq.
The language in Mr. Bush’s speech reflected an intense and continuing struggle between factions within his administration over how aggressively to confront Iran. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been arguing for a continuation of a diplomatic approach, while officials in Vice President Dick Cheney’s office have advocated a much tougher view. They seek to isolate and contain Iran, and to include greater consideration of a military strike.
Mr. Bush’s language indicated that the debate, at least for now, might have tilted toward Mr. Cheney. By portraying the battle with Iran as one for supremacy in the Middle East, Mr. Bush turned up the language another, more bellicose, notch. “If we were to be driven out of Iraq, extremists of all strains would be emboldened,” Mr. Bush said. “Iran would benefit from the chaos and would be encouraged in its efforts to gain nuclear weapons and dominate the region.”
Continue reading here
If our military is all but broken now, how on earth will we deal with other threats? Congress better be alert.
All is not quiet on the American military front over Iraq strategy. Notice the area I "bolded" about Senator McConnell's role in all this. Is that considered ethical? I thought this was supposed to be an independent assessment by General Petraeus, so why is he lobbying congress? Read the entire piece here Thanks, June!
In sharp contrast to the lionisation of Gen. David Petraeus by members of the U.S. Congress during his testimony this week, Petraeus's superior, Admiral William Fallon, chief of the Central Command (CENTCOM), derided Petraeus as a sycophant during their first meeting in Baghdad last March, according to Pentagon sources familiar with reports of the meeting.
Fallon told Petraeus that he considered him to be "an ass-kissing little chickenshit" and added, "I hate people like that", the sources say. That remark reportedly came after Petraeus began the meeting by making remarks that Fallon interpreted as trying to ingratiate himself with a superior.
That extraordinarily contentious start of Fallon's mission to Baghdad led to more meetings marked by acute tension between the two commanders. Fallon went on develop his own alternative to Petraeus's recommendation for continued high levels of U.S. troops in Iraq during the summer.
The enmity between the two commanders became public knowledge when the Washington Post reported Sep. 9 on intense conflict within the administration over Iraq. The story quoted a senior official as saying that referring to "bad relations" between them is "the understatement of the century".
The article continues. . .
In a highly unusual political role for an officer who had not yet taken command of a war, Petraeus was installed in the office of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, in early February just before the Senate debated Bush's troop increase. According to a report in The Washington Post Feb. 7, senators were then approached on the floor and invited to go McConnell's office to hear Petraeus make the case for the surge policy.
Fallon was strongly opposed to Petraeus's role as pitch man for the surge policy in Iraq adopted by Bush in December as putting his own interests ahead of a sound military posture in the Middle East and Southwest Asia -- the area for which Fallon's CENTCOM is responsible.
The CENTCOM commander believed the United States should be withdrawing troops from Iraq urgently, largely because he saw greater dangers elsewhere in the region. "He is very focused on Pakistan," said a source familiar with Fallon's thinking, "and trying to maintain a difficult status quo with Iran."
It's hard both to believe and to stomach the reaction to the Petraeus report (as well as to the MoveOn.org advertisement). It's as if the MSM players actually see themselves as "actors" in a drama with their lines and stage instructions already written. I mean, did anyone really think that Petraeus was going to say anything other than "things are a little bit better, let's stay the course" even though we know very well from the GAO and other sources that this is nonsense? And really, has this administration ever said anything but "things are a little better, let's stay the course" during this entire debacle? And yet everyone reports this as if suffering from amnesia that destroys the memory of everything that's been said and done in all of American history up until the general appeared. Again, is there anything more pathetic than the way journalists swoon for generals -- well, perhaps it's for presidents who dress up in flight suits with large protective cups around their private parts -- but still. And yes, I think the MoveOn.org advertisement is counterproductive, since the case is so much stronger than a silly pun could have communicated. But seriously, who has been getting soldiers killed for no good reason for the past five years and is now insisting on the right to continue to do so rather than admit the colossal nature of their error? Hint: It's not MoveOn. Anyway, as I said, read the coverage and ask yourself how these people take themselves seriously. I study (and teach) this stuff for a living and I can't even fully explain it.
NEW YORK The Op-Ed by seven active duty U.S. soldiers in Iraq questioning the war drew international attention just three weeks ago. Now two of the seven are dead.
Sgt. Omar Mora and Sgt. Yance T. Gray died Monday in a vehicle accident in western Baghdad, two of seven U.S. troops killed in the incident which was reported just as Gen. David Petraeus was about to report to Congress on progress in the "surge." The names have just been released.
[. . .]
One of the other five authors of the Times piece, Staff Sergeant Jeremy Murphy, an Army Ranger and reconnaissance team leader, was shot in the head while the article was being written. He was expected to survive after being flown to a military hospital in the United States.
As we all know, GW Bu$h has no trouble sleeping at night.
DL's Justin Krebs posted this on the Open Left blog:
On this sixth anniversary, when reading books about a progressive national security strategy or the manipulation of Bush Administration intelligence would be just as appropriate, I recommend Sontag's "9-11-01," "A Few Weeks After...," and "One Year After."
From "9-11-01" -- within days of the attack:
A lot of thinking needs to be done, and perhaps is being done in Washington and elsewhere, about the colossal failure of American intelligence and counter-intelligence, about the future of American foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East, and about what constitutes a sensible military defense. But clearly our leaders -- those in public office, those aspiring to public office, those who once held public office -- with the voluntary complicity of the principal media, have decided that the public is not to be asked to bear much of the burden of reality. The unanimously applauded, self-congratulatory bromides of a Soviet Party Congress seemed to us contemptible. The unanimity of the sanctimonious, reality-concealing rhetoric spouted by nearly all American officials and media commentators in these last days seem, well, unworthy of a mature democracy.
Much was made of our national sense of unity after the attacks on 9/11, but that is how I remember it. Anyone who made the slightest criticism of Bu$h during that time was slimed, slandered, fired and their patriotism was called into question. That unity was a one way street. How very sad that we were so easily cowered.
The article is about A.A.E.I's efforts to lobby Congress to end the war in Iraq. Louisville had the largest outpouring for ending the escalation and the war in the country.
While some antiwar groups have castigated Democrats for not pushing more boldly to end the war — as has A.A.E.I. at times — Matzzie’s strategy of late stresses Democratic unity and driving a wedge between Republicans and President Bush. This was the thinking behind A.A.E.I.’s “Iraq Summer,” a three-month campaign that focused on 40 Republicans in Congress in more than a dozen states, including prominent senators like the Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, about whom A.A.E.I. ran television ads saying he had voted 15 times to support “Bush’s war.” As long as George Bush has a willingness to wield vetoes and stubborn allies in Congress to uphold them, Matzzie reasons, no legislation will get America out of Iraq. The war will only end, Matzzie told me, if a group of Republicans “walks down to the White House and says, ‘You have got to get us out of this mess.’ ”
What a totally expected letdown when General Petraeus gave his great and powerful presentation about the "Situation On The Ground" to Congress today. It was re-hashed Bu$hisms and the same canned happy talk we've heard since Bu$h declared in 2003, "Mission Accomplished." Neither Bu$h or the general has given us the truth and we all know it. It should surprise no one that Bu$h and top military commanders will kick this fiasco down the road for the next administration to deal with. Here's a flashback for you:
"I see tangible progress. Iraqi security elements are being rebuilt from the ground up ... The institutions that oversee them are being reestablished from the top down. And Iraqi leaders are stepping forward, leading their country and their security forces courageously in the face of an enemy that has shown a willingness to do anything to disrupt the establishment of the new Iraq ... There are reasons for optimism ... Momentum has gathered in recent months. With strong Iraqi leaders out front and with continued coalition -- and now NATO -- support, this trend will continue. It will not be easy, but few worthwhile things are." -- Gen. David Petraeus, Sept. 26, 2004.
Congress needs to come up with their own "Plan B" and implement it. Bu$h and his minions never will.
Whether you've been following the developments in Iraq during the past four-plus years or you've chosen to shut them out of your mind because they're just too complex or depressing, watching the documentary "No End in Sight" will leave you floored, agape and enraged.
Writer-director-producer Charles Ferguson, a political scientist and software entrepreneur making his first film, presents a clear-eyed, sobering analysis of myriad mistakes the United States has made in Iraq, starting from the original invasion in March 2003.
Ferguson doesn't really get into the philosophical reasons behind the war, and he doesn't tell you anything that hasn't already been reported. But the cumulative, comprehensive body of interviews and images is just completely damning -- exhaustive and exhausting, painful to watch but necessary.
Here’s what will definitely happen when Gen. David Petraeus testifies before Congress next week: he’ll assert that the surge has reduced violence in Iraq — as long as you don’t count Sunnis killed by Sunnis, Shiites killed by Shiites, Iraqis killed by car bombs and people shot in the front of the head.
Here’s what I’m afraid will happen: Democrats will look at Gen. Petraeus’s uniform and medals and fall into their usual cringe. They won’t ask hard questions out of fear that someone might accuse them of attacking the military. After the testimony, they’ll desperately try to get Republicans to agree to a resolution that politely asks President Bush to maybe, possibly, withdraw some troops, if he feels like it.
This is the cover of the latest issue of Leo magazine. Almost every day the C-J or Leo publishes letters to the editor that are harshly critical of McConnell on his support for the Iraq fiasco or on his lockstep support for Bu$h's long list of failed policies. Many of you will recognize the people quoted in the article (Andrew Horne, Hillbilly Jim, etc.) and be familiar with the orgs who are in deep oposition to McConnell. The Leo editor has this to say:
U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is a very powerful politician, both in Kentucky and nationally. That’s why it is rather signifigant that he is under siege from a collection of organizations because of his support for the Iraq war. McConnell is up for re-election in 2008 and he’s extremely well funded; we would not count him out. Still, the current movement against him seems to be getting legs.
—Cary Stemle
Although the destruction of our Constitutional form of government has been in the works for decades now, it is amazing that the job took just 6 1/2 years to complete under the reign of GW Bu$h and the 109th Congress. Virtually every member of the "old guard" in government needs to be booted out so we can start over.
Tomorrow is here. The game is over. The crisis has passed -- and the patient is dead. Whatever dream you had about what America is, it isn't that anymore. It's gone. And not just in some abstract sense, some metaphorical or mythological sense, but down in the nitty-gritty, in the concrete realities of institutional structures and legal frameworks, of policy and process, even down to the physical nature of the landscape and the way that people live.
The Republic you wanted -- and at one time might have had the power to take back -- is finished. You no longer have the power to keep it; it's not there. It was kidnapped in December 2000, raped by the primed and ready exploiters of 9/11, whored by the war pimps of the 2003 aggression, gut-knifed by the corrupters of the 2004 vote, and raped again by its "rescuers" after the 2006 election. Beaten, abused, diseased and abandoned, it finally died. We are living in its grave.
[. . .]
So whatever we can do, we must do it ourselves. If we have no power or influence, if we cannot take large actions, then we must take small ones. Every word or action raised against the overthrow of the Republic will find an echo somewhere, from one person to another to another to the next -- each isolated, individual voice slowly finding its way into a swelling chorus of dissent.
It might be too late. It might not work. But failure – and much more horror -- is guaranteed if we don't even try.
As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn once wrote – in a context that is growing less dissimilar all the time: -- it is impossible that evil should not come into the world; but take care that it does not enter through you.
David Addington is clinically insane, which makes him the perfect *go-to* man for Big Dick's (and his underling, W) legal opinions. You cannot make this s**t up!
If there's a villain in Jack Goldsmith's account of his time in the Justice Department, it's David Addington, Dick Cheney's legal alter ego. Addington, who became the vice president's chief of staff after Scooter Libby resigned following his indictment, served as Cheney's eyes and ears in the legal battles within the administration over warrantless surveillance, coercive interrogations and indefinite detentions. His style of argument, as recounted by Goldsmith, isn't exactly a subtle one.
[W]hen Goldsmith tried to question another presidential decision, Addington expressed his views even more pointedly. “If you rule that way,” Addington exclaimed in disgust, Goldsmith recalls, “the blood of the hundred thousand people who die in the next attack will be on your hands.”
Jane Mayer's profile of Addington introduced him as a zealot for unchecked presidential power during wartime. Barton Gellman and Jo Becker's series on Cheney added crucial detail, including Addington's role in functionally authoring White House opinions denying al-Qaeda detainees Geneva Conventions protection.
Read all about it! It will shock no one that Bu$H is a serial liar, conniver, and con-artist. The most ignorant, wasteful man alive cons himself into believing that history will be kind to him. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Not gonna happen. Here's some *insight* into the mutt-in-chief:
When President Bush is asked what he plans to do when he leaves office, he often replies curtly: “I don’t have that much time to think beyond my presidency” or “I’m going to sprint to the finish.”
President Bush at the White House earlier this year with the author Robert Draper.
But in an interview with a book author in the Oval Office one day last December, he daydreamed about the next phase of his life, when his time will be his own.
First, Mr. Bush said, “I’ll give some speeches, just to replenish the ol’ coffers.” With assets that have been estimated as high as nearly $21 million, Mr. Bush added, “I don’t know what my dad gets — it’s more than 50-75” thousand dollars a speech, and “Clinton’s making a lot of money.”
He has a sociopathic longing to be absolved from his crimes. It will not be forthcoming.
In her interview with Bill Moyers, lifelong activist Grace Lee Boggs, a champion of labor and civil rights, says:
Well just don't expect the system to catch up, the system is part of the system! What I think is that, not since the 30s have American have the American people, the ordinary Americans faced such uncertainty with regard to the economic system. In the 30s, what we did, was we confronted management and were able, thereby to gain many advantages, particularly to gain a respect for the dignity of labor. That's no longer possible today, because of the ability of corporations to fly all over the place and begin setting up all this outsourcing. So, we're gonna have people are finding other ways to regain control over the way they make their living.
Well, something has to give. I've never seen this country so apathetic in the face of so much corruption.
This Huffington Post entry is depressingly on target. Bu$h and the GOP have smashed our governmental institutions and principals and have laid this country to waste.
Three disturbing facts from this week's news cycle: Larry Craig likes to take a "wide stance" when, depending on whose version you believe, either doing his business or looking to get busy; Katrina fall guy Michael Brown now works in the private sector as a disaster response advisor (Best advice: "Don't do what I did!"); and the Government Accountability Office has so little faith in the honesty of the Bush administration, it felt the need to leak its negative assessment of progress in Iraq to prevent it from being watered down by the White House. In my mind, these stories have all blended together, with President Bush calling a news conference to announce: "Heck of a blow job, Craigie."
