Who Said There Was No Plan for Post-Invasion Iraq?

Based on observations of the chaos that broke out after "Mission Accomplished," just about everyone who didn't have their heads in the sand.

Now we know for sure:

There is no one on the Joint Chiefs of Staff who has visited Iraq more often than Gen. Mike Hagee, whose term as Commandant of the United States Marine Corps ends Monday.

[snip]

Hagee says he asked his boss again and again who would take charge of those cities. He wanted to know what the plan was for Phase IV — military terminology for the phase that follows the end of major combat operations. Phase IV is, in other words, what comes after "mission accomplished." Hagee says that he sent his questions up the chain of command, as they say in the military — and never heard back.

Never heard back.

The Commandant of the Marine Corps asked a question. And never heard back.

Subpoena.

Investigate.

Impeach.

The Rehabilitation of Judith Miller

Maybe spending a little time in jail did her good.

Miller said many Americans don't understand how their access to information and the freedom of the press have been affected in the past few years.

"We are less free and less safe," she said, explaining that there is a "growing secrecy in the name of national security."

But then again, maybe not.

The blurring of entertainment and news and the relaxing of journalistic standards can be seen in online bloggers who are critical of people without giving them an opportunity to respond or who don't post corrections when they learn that what they have posted is wrong, she said.

"I'm worried about bloggers," she said. "(A post) starts as a rumor and within 24 hours it's repeated as fact."

While she advocates a federal shield law to protect mainstream journalists from divulging their sources, she doesn't favor extending that to bloggers who don't follow the standards and ethnics [sic] of the journalism industry.

Pot, meet Kettle.

I wonder if she's in favor or shield laws being extended to so-called journalists who don't follow the standards and ethics of the journalism industry?

Feeling Better

I've always found it amazing what the body's attempt to expel something foreign does to us. Not only can an infection knock us down for varying lengths of time, but the recovery process can be amazingly fast in most cases.

Anyway, I'm feeling better - although very tired - today. Thankfully I didn't have to go to my doctor.

But thinking about going to the doctor got me to thinking about our healthcare system and by coincidence today's news had a story about the "Big Three" automakers meeting with BushCo. today. High on the list of topics to be discussed under the general heading of competitiveness, is the cost of health insurance that the car manufacturers have to carry in the US that their competitors operating overseas do not. They claim that their portion of medical insurance coverage for employees adds about $1,000 to the cost of each vehicle.

This would be a great opportunity for Bush to do something that might add the slightest of luster to his shredded legacy. A Republican making a start towards a single payer system in the US would be an incredible way for Bush to help level the competitive landscape for all US manufacturers as well as to rid us of the stigma of having so many citizens with no access to health care.

But there's no way that will happen. Perhaps it was just my fevered mind playing tricks on me.

Feeling Like Crap

I've come down with a wicked cold somehow.

Sneezing, coughing, runny nose, itchy and watery eyes; the whole works.

Stay back, I don't want to give this to anyone. Please go visit someone in my blogroll, hopefully I'll be feeling better tomorrow.

Bleh.

11:11/11/11

It seems inconceivable to me that with soldiers dying in Iraq and Afghanistan every day that Veterans Day - for most people - is still just an excuse to have a day off from school and, in rare instances, from work. The lessons of past wars seems to be lost on people today.

Maybe I'm just more sensitive to it than most considering that nobody in my circle of friends has ever served in the military and very few of their parents did either.
Much like our illustrious Vice President, they had other priorities.

Young men and women are struggling to recover from the most horrific of injuries incurred in what will probably prove to be this generation's Vietnam and all around me today and yesterday were signs touting "Veteran's Day Sales" and people who were mindlessly taking advantage of some early November warm weather and a day off. Everywhere I went the atmosphere was more holiday than memorial.

I stopped by an American Legion Post this afternoon - a final stop for a funeral for a friend's mother whose husband had been a member. Other than family and friends, there were few members in sight and I wondered what they must think of the situation we find ourselves in.

Maybe I'm just more sensitive to it than most.

But I remember what it's like to miss holidays and birthdays and my daughter's first steps while far away. I remember what it's like to mourn the loss of brothers-in-arms when something goes awry in peace or war. I remember what it's like to ring the doorbell of a fellow soldier's wife so that I could tell her that her husband wouldn't be coming home any more.

Maybe I'm just more sensitive to it than most.

But this year there is some hope as well. Hope that wasn't there last year when it seemed that "stay the course" would be the epitaph of our military and perhaps of our country. It remains as true today as it was on Monday before the elections that there is no good or easy way out of the quagmire we've created for ourselves in Iraq.

But it is true now that at least the adults have started taking control of things in Washington. Perhaps next November, while there will certainly be more Veterans that there was today and more dead and wounded as well, perhaps there will not be that dread that more will be joining the ghosts of the past that were all around us today.

But maybe I'm just more sensitive to it than most.

A New World?

Somehow, on our (almost) nightly walk tonight, the air seemed fresher and cleaner; the stars shone brighter, even through the clouds, the coyotes - howling in the valley - sounded freer.

It's Now Official - Both Houses Taken

Details here on George "Macaca" Allen conceding the race in Virginia.

Congratulations to Jim Webb!

Blogger's been up and down all day. Which is okay, I'm taking a break today.

Both Houses

This has been a total BushCo. smackdown.

Rumsfeld GONE!

Breaking on MSNBC.

Ex-head of CIA Robert Gates nominated as replacement.

Democracy Spread at the Point of a... Blog?

While I certainly can't claim to be anything other than a bit player in the blogosphere, it is certainly good to see that all of our efforts, combined, and especially those of the big bloggers whom the rest of us orbit is having a national impact. The 2004 Presidential race was probably too early in the evolution of the "big blog" for there to be a truly national effect, but it seems that this off-year election was perfectly timed to be the first.

What better subject for bloggers and their web of contacts and readers than voting problems?

Here's the NYT on the subject this morning:

Blogs of all political stripes spent most of yesterday detailing reports of voting machine malfunctions and ballot shortages, effectively becoming an online national clearinghouse of the polling problems that still face the election system.

And in a new twist this year, many bloggers buttressed their accounts of electoral shenanigans with links to videos posted on the video Web site YouTube.

And a final feel-good report on the bloggers themselves should make us all feel a little bit better about ourselves, while once again showing the shallowness of the MSM:

Constantine Stavropoulos, the owner of the cafe, said he had closed its doors for the “blog party,” which the network [CNN] periodically broadcast and streamed online. He said he expected the bloggers — an attractive bunch, he said — to linger long after the votes were in.

“Bloggers look a lot better than I thought they would,” Mr. Stavropoulos said.

Bush Talks to Democrats - Through Iraq

If you've wondered how BushCo. would react to the change in Republican fortunes in Congress, you'll have to go to Iraq to get an answer. Before the last votes have been counted, this misadministration has sent this message to Iraqis:

The United States ambassador sought on Wednesday to reassure Iraqis that U.S. policy would not dramatically alter after Democrats seized control of the U.S. House of Representatives in midterm elections.

Not all Iraqis are on board, though.

"I hope this will change the Bush policy in the Islamic world and especially in Iraq," said 48-year-old engineer Suheil Jabar, a Shiite Muslim. "We hope American foreign policy will change and that living conditions in Iraq will improve."

As everyone said last night, and as I wrote in my last post: "now comes the hard part."

A New Day

The House changed hands in a big way with Dems picking up seats at the high end of projections (33 so far). The Senate remains to be called with two races still too close to call (Virginia and Montana). But there's no doubt that things went our way last night.

Now comes the hard part.

But it feels good!

Early Results

So far (10:10 pm), so good.

Keep your fingers crossed, and if you're on the West Coast and haven't voted yet, get out there and VOTE!

I agree with Chris Matthews (something that happens so seldom) that one of the first thing Democrats need to do should this continue to develop so well is to make a clear, unambiguous statement of their plans for the war in Iraq.

Tomorrow we may wake up to a new country, but just because we've supported the Democrats throughout these past several, horrible years doesn't mean we won't hold them to account with as much fervor as we've shown the Republicans

We're still watching.

Can We Get U.N. Election Observers?

Some of the early reports of "irregularities" leave me feeling like I live in some third-world country that can't even hold an election without handholding from the outside world.

In the Washington, D.C., area, NBC affiliate News4 reported on its Web site that it had received e-mail from a viewer in Virginia who said he received a phone call from so-called volunteers threatening voters with arrest if they cast ballots.

[snip]

Meanwhile, programming errors and inexperience with electronic voting machines frustrated poll workers in hundreds of precincts early Tuesday, delaying voters in Indiana and Ohio and leaving some in Florida with little choice but use paper ballots instead.

The FBI is already involved in Virginia, some news outlets are claiming that there will be close races that might not be able to be fully tabulated until Wednesday.

Only Republicans gain by suppressing the number of voters. Only Republicans.

Are we on democracy rations? Did we export it all to Iraq? They were able to vote there with nothing more than paper and pencil and a bottle of ink. What the hell have we become?

Vote for change.

Olbermann in 2008?

I'm not sure what's worse; that I would consider voting for an ex-sportscaster or that an ex-sportscaster has a better grip on history and our constitution and our place in the world than our President. Or, in fact, than many of the people currently being considered for that post. Certainly he speaks better than just about any politician I've heard over the past six years, save perhaps Bill Clinton.

Check out Keith Olbermann's pean to checks and balances here.

And Now We Wait...

I voted this morning in what the Republicans are calling "The Killing Fields" or " The Blowout Belt." The little town I live in - in fact the whole county - is heavily Republican. Lots of farmers and older folks; the median income is somewhere in the $48K range... It's definitely one of the areas where the people vote against their better financial interests by voting Republican.

There were five or six people already at the polling place, inside an old brick elementary school. The poll workers were very nice and helpful, but all of them were women and all of them were well past retirement age. Everything went smoothly and there were no problems. I doubt I will get called to witness any problems at the polls around here. I hope that the rest of the country can vote so easily today.

Hopefully the "Blowout Belt" name is accurate.

VOTE!

I'm off to vote this morning. In the sleepy little New York town I live and vote in there's not likely to be anything untoward going on at the polls. In fact, this early in the morning, there's not likely to be much going on at all. But I know that that won't be true for everyone this morning.

Yesterday I was able to talk one coworker into voting today - and she will most likely vote Democratic. Have you gotten anyone to vote who might not otherwise have done so?

Robocalling

It's nearly impossible to find instances of Democratic efforts to suppress voter turnout. It's almost universally agreed that the more people who vote, the more Democrats benefit. It's also why it's almost always Republicans who are responsible for all the challenging and intimidation of voters and why they are nearly always behind schemes like recent illegal robocalling.

There are lots of states where this is happening and several states where attorneys general or other legal and/or election officials have shut them down as illegal. This is a growing scandal and it's time to call in the FBI.

Get all the details at AmericaBlog.

Had enough?

Vote.

And Should Mehlman be Right?

All of you parents with kids in the Reserves or that are old enough to be drafted, you'll have more of this to look forward to:

The Army's National Guard and Reserve are bracing for possible new and accelerated call-ups, spurred by high demand for U.S. troops in Iraq, that leaders caution could undermine the citizen-soldier force as it struggles to rebuild.

Two Army National Guard combat brigades with about 7,000 troops have been identified recently in classified rotational plans for possible special deployment to Iraq, according to senior Army and Pentagon officials, who asked that the specific units not be named. One brigade could be diverted to Iraq next year from another assignment, and the other could be sent there in 2008, a year ahead of schedule.

You've been warned.

Had enough?

Vote.

A Pipe Dream

What's Ken Mehlman been smoking? Sure the polls have been showing a somewhat shrinking gap between Democrats and Republican, but, as George Stephanopoulis said this evening on ABC news, the Republicans had a smaller generic lead in 1994 when they swept into power with 51 seats.

In a memo released to the media, Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman touts "major gains" by the GOP, and points to signs of a "minimal change in the balance of Congress," RAW STORY has learned.

Now if the system is strong enough to withstand continued voter suppression by Republicans, we'll see what voter disgust really looks like!

Worst Case Scenario

I have two questions for anyone stopping by over the next couple of days:

1. What will happen, in general, should there be widespread attempts at voter suppression, last minute roll purges and/or outright fraud at polling places? Will there be protests and demonstrations, maybe violence? Or will voters revert to sheeple and meekly accept it all?

2. What will you do, specifically, should you be witness to any of the above at your polling place?

Leave your thoughts in the comments, talk about it, get others to think about it.

Most importantly, don't forget:

Vote.

I Wonder If He'll Vote?

Dick Cheney's going hunting again. This time on election day. I assume he'll have already voted. But given all the glitches in e-voting and the rampant voter intimidation by the GOP and the annoying robocalling by Republican campaigns, maybe he feels he doesn't have to.

This time he's taking his daughter, Mary. I wonder if she's bringing her body armor...

Nobody Could Have Predicted...

Well, actually they could. And did.

The U.S. government conducted a series of secret war games in 1999 that anticipated an invasion of Iraq would requhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifire 400,000 troops, and even then chaos might ensue.

But of course the MSM released this story on a Sunday and it likely won't survive the news cycle into the week especially not with Sadaam's verdict and the election taking all the oxygen out of the system.

“The conventional wisdom is the U.S. mistake in Iraq was not enough troops,” said Thomas Blanton, the archive’s director. “But the Desert Crossing war game in 1999 suggests we would have ended up with a failed state even with 400,000 troops on the ground.”

Why Don't the Troops Support the Troops?

I was in the Army for 14 years, including four years at West Point. During that time, as far as I could see, everybody, from the generals down to the privates, active duty, reserve and family members read The Army Times. I'm sure it was and is the same in the other four services with their respective "Times" papers. The editors and writers are very much "in the know" about what goes on in the services. In many cases they are ex-soldiers.

In short, it's pretty much impossible to get more "Support the Troops" than these papers.

That's why this is so devastating:

Just days after President Bush publicly affirmed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's job security through the end of his term, a family of publications catering to the military will publish an editorial calling for the defense secretary's removal.

That this editorial will be published just the day before the mid-term elections is particularly damning. This timing cannot be accidental. This is just a step (or two) shy of a revolt of the generals. I do not believe that I'm overstating the gravity of this.

AmericaBlog has the entire text here.

Republican Party Imploding

I can't keep up with all the scandals, missteps and crimes. But John and friends over at AmericaBlog can.

The latest? How about the RNC taking money from gay porn producers? The party where homophobia is de rigeur even if only hypocritically.

There's also the most important evangelical preacher in the country, Ted Haggard, going down in flames over his at least three year liaison with a male prostitute and use of crystal meth.

There's more Mark Foley madness.

How about Repugs closing down the only office actually doing real oversight in Iraq?

Oh, and at the urging of the Republican leadership, there were documents laying out how to make an atomic weapon put on the internet. And they were there for a long time. Until the New York Times called them on it.

There's more. Lots more.

Sweet Schadenfreude!

Had enough?

Vote.

Bush Jong Il? George W. Kim?

We should be so proud...

The United States is seen as a threat to world peace by its closest neighbors and allies, with Britons saying President Bush poses a greater danger than North Korea’s Kim Jong Il, a survey found Friday.

Comedy Break

Funniest thing I've heard in a long, long time:

Tom DeLay, the former Republican congressman from Texas and House majority leader who resigned in June under an ethical cloud, came to Long Island yesterday to promote his vision of "moral clarity" that he said should guide Americans' discussion about how to best combat terrorism.

DeLay and "moral clarity" in the same sentence? Now that's funny!

What Bush's "Democracy" Looks Like

Not that Republicans care what the rest of the world thinks of us, but... you've got to be fucking kidding me:

A military dog handler convicted for his role in the prisoner abuse scandal has been ordered back to help train the country's police.

Do we need further proof that the idiots in charge of this misadventure in Iraq should be drug from their offices in shackles and sent before the War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague?

So Nine Republicans Walk Into a Bar, Part II

How low have Republicans sunk in their dirty, no holds barred street fight to keep control of Congress? So low that some Republicans - the ones with a shred of decency left - are starting to leave the party. Yesterday it was the story of nine former Republicans running as democrats. Today we get more fallout from the Allen - Webb race in Virginia.

The headline:

Frank Schaeffer: I Should be Supporting Allen. Instead, I'm Leaving the Party

Frank Schaeffer is a relatively well-known writer and evangelical with close family ties with the Bush Family. His father, a minister, often visited with the Bushes at home and at the White House.

The bottom line:

My wife and I have reached the tipping point. We plan to go to town hall to dump our Republican voter registration and reregister as independents. I don't care anymore what party someone is in. These days, what I care about is what they're made of.

Maybe, just maybe there is hope for next Tuesday.

Vote!

That's Gonna Leave a Mark!

How do you think this will play with all the parents out there with kids not quite old enough to join the military or be drafted who might have thought their little darlings might not have to fight?



Had enough?

Vote!

So Nine Republicans Walk Into a Bar...

Seeing Republicans branded as Democrats is old hat if you can stand to watch FOX News; they have a nasty habit of showing Republicans in trouble with a 'D' after their name rather than the correct 'R.'

But this is something new:

But this year President George W. Bush, the country's leading Republican, is making a last-minute campaign stop in Kansas, where at least nine candidates running on the November 7 ballot are Republicans-turned-Democrats. They include a veteran county prosecutor seeking to unseat the Republican attorney general and a former state Republican Party chairman running as the Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor.

That 'R' after their name has become radioactive.

A Burr Under Bush's Saddle

Seymour Hersh continues to show what a real journalist looks like. He can speak truth to power like nobody else.

"The bad news," investigative reporter Seymour Hersh told a Montreal audience last Wednesday, "is that there are 816 days left in the reign of King George II of America." The good news? "When we wake up tomorrow morning, there will be one less day."

The list of our government's malfeasance that he has exposed is a growing list of shame, but also a glowing beacon of the power of a free press.

Since his 1969 expose of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, which is widely believed to have helped turn American public opinion against the Vietnam War, he has broken news about the secret U.S. bombing of Cambodia, covert C.I.A. attempts to overthrow Chilean president Salvador Allende, and, more recently, the first details about American soldiers abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

His next expose?

"...there has never been an [American] army as violent and murderous as our army has been in Iraq."

Sooner would be better, Seymour.

The Buck Stops...

With someone else if you're a Republican.

Somehow it's James Webb's fault that two of George Allen's thugs beat up on a man trying to ask Allen a question.

Somehow you can vote in other than your own district - a felony - and just not cooperate with the police if you're Ann Coulter.

Somehow - at least according to the Commander-in-Chief's House Majority Leader - it's the generals' fault that BushCo.'s war is a quagmire.

Somehow it's never your fault. If you're a Republican.

Had enough?

Vote.

Drip, Drip, Drip

The truth, slowed every step of the way by BushCo., is slowly making itself known about so many different aspects of their misadministration, most especially the quagmire in Iraq. A few - too few - journalists are actually doing their jobs to get the truth out. Take this very sad story about how decisions about how we treat prisoners can affect our own soldiers:

The true stories of how American troops, killed in Iraq, actually died keep spilling out this week. On Tuesday, we explored the case of Kenny Stanton, Jr., murdered last month by our allies, the Iraqi police, though the military didn’t make that known at the time. Now we learn that one of the first female soldiers killed in Iraq died by her own hand after objecting to interrogation techniques used on prisoners.

She was Army specialist Alyssa Peterson, 27, a Flagstaff, Az., native serving with C Company, 311th Military Intelligence BN, 101st Airborne. Peterson was an Arabic-speaking interrogator assigned to the prison at our air base in troubled Tal-Afar in northwestern Iraq. According to official records, she died on Sept. 15, 2003, from a “non-hostile weapons discharge.”

Note below a journalist actually doing the hard work of tracking down facts and not just repeating the latest talking points:

But in this case, a longtime radio and newspaper reporter named Kevin Elston decided to probe deeper and filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the government. When the documents of the official investigation of her death arrived, they contained bombshell revelations. Here’s what the Flagstaff public radio station, KNAU, where Elston now works, reported yesterday:

“Peterson objected to the interrogation techniques used on prisoners. She refused to participate after only two nights working in the unit known as the cage. Army spokespersons for her unit have refused to describe the interrogation techniques Alyssa objected to. They say all records of those techniques have now been destroyed….”

We could use more reporters willing to do the hard work to get real answers.

The bigger issue remains BushCo. working desperately to hide the real results of their war based on lies. To keep up a lie you have to tell more lies; eventually you forget what lies you told to whom. Eventually lies come back around to bite you on the ass. This administration deserves every bite on the ass it's getting.

Outrage

The Republicans and their lapdogs in the media have spun up a mighty storm over John Kerry's remarks yesterday. They are in full outrage mode; I thought Rush Limbaugh was going to have a goddamn heart attack - he was jumping around, waving his arms; you'd have thought he was purposefully off his meds.

But here's what really ought to inspire outrage; in all of us: Both constructions of Kerry's remarks, what he meant to say and what it sounded like he said, are true.

Bush did just scrape by in school, getting an undergraduate degree only by the skin of his teeth and a few well placed donations to his Alma Mater by his well-heeled family. His lack of curiosity and lack of mental discipline really was a key element in our country being in the quagmire that is Iraq.

And, unfortunately, it always has been true - and still is - that the soldiers who fight our wars are, for the most part, the poor and under-educated. The rich have always been able to find a way to buy their way out of battle, from the Revolution right through to today. Those who've done well in school and gone on to university have either been able to get deferals or have been able to make their way into the Guard or Reserve as commissioned officers. Those who have wound up on the front lines, fighting the battles chosen by or committed to by the rich and powerful have always been those with fewer opportunities.

Those are the real issues that ought to inspire outrage. But the mighty Wurlitzer has been once more pulled from the closet and it's wheezing and grinding out that same old cloud of noise and distraction. Hopefully, the rest of our fellow citizens have had enough distraction. Hopefully they have learned to see through the noise and to the heart of the real issues.

Hopefully.

IOKIYAR?

Violating a citizen's rights to free speech and to be in a public place has become commonplace anywhere near Republicans. It's a disturbing trend that started with the Secret Service keeping an opinion/news cordon sanitaire around Bush. Seems it's made its way all the way to the fetid bottom of the Republican food chain.

Senator George Allen, (R) made a campaign stop in Charlottesville Tuesday morning and it was met with controversy.

As Senator Allen was exiting a ballroom, coming to talk to the media, a protestor started yelling and asking, "Why did you spit on your first wife?". He wasn't able to get near the senator as he was tackled by three men wearing Allen stickers, presumed to be staffers. He was pushed and manhandled and ended up on the floor, near windows at the Omni.

These guys were not even Secret Service, just Allen staffers. I'm sure this "protestor" can - and should - file assault charges against these thugs. But as with so many things I guess it's okay if you're a Republican.

Where Was This Guy in 2004?

After stating the obvious, that the folks who always have and still fight our wars are predominately the poor and under-educated, John Kerry was on the receiving end of White House petulance.

"Senator Kerry not only owes an apology to those who are serving, but also to the families of those who've given their lives in this," White House press secretary Tony Snow said. "This is an absolute insult."

Pretty standard fare and what we've come to expect from Tony Snowjob when he can't answer with any substance. What was unexpected - at least in light of his rather weak-kneed response to the Swift Boaters - was Kerry's response:

"This is the classic GOP playbook," Kerry said in a harshly worded statement. "I'm sick and tired of these despicable Republican attacks that always seem to come from those who never can be found to serve in war, but love to attack those who did. I'm not going to be lectured by a stuffed suit White House mouthpiece standing behind a podium."

Once again we're left to ask "where the hell was this kind of spine in 2004?"

More Republican Priorities

The Never-Ending War on Terror, Faith-Based Missile Defense and Bridges to Nowhere are draining the federal coffers. Tax cuts to corporations and the rich are ensuring that those coffers are never refilled. So, given the chance to at least try to bring a little bit of balance to the books, what does BushCo. do?

The U.S. Interior Department has dropped claims that Chevron Corp. (CVX) systematically underpaid the government for natural gas produced in the Gulf of Mexico, a decision that could allow energy companies to avoid paying hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties, The New York Times reports in its Tuesday edition.

The agency had ordered Chevron to pay $6 million in additional royalties but could have sought tens of millions more had it prevailed. The decision also sets a precedent that could make it easier for oil and gas companies to lower the value of what they pump each year from federal property and thus their payments to the government, the paper said.

To hell with our kids and grandkids, there's money to be made - by their patrons in big oil.

And We're Winning Now?

There are no issues they can talk about. American's want to know what's going to happen in Iraq and in the Never-Ending War on Terror. So the Cheerleader-in-Chief is left with this:

Speaking at a rally held at Georgia Southern University to support Max Burn's bid for Congress on Monday afternoon, President Bush insisted that "the Democrat (sic) approach in Iraq comes down to this: the terrorists win and America loses."

Finding a way forward out of the quagmire in Iraq is now losing. Staying the course is now winning.

We'll Stand Down When?

Not that you can necessarily believe anything they say, but BushCo. has been saying that we can stand down in Iraq when the Iraqis stand up for themselves. So let's just say that this once we take them at face value. You know; "fool me once... can't get fooled again."

So, when might we be able to stand down? According to General George Casey, who gets his talking points from the very top, that would be in 12 - 18 months. What about if you ask the people who are actually training Iraqi security forces?

The infiltration of Iraqi police by militias may delay the United States handover "for decades," American soldiers training the Iraqi police tell the Washington Post.

[snip]

Capt. Alexander Shaw, head of the police transition team overseeing the training of all Iraqi police in western Baghdad says, "To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure we're ever going to have police here that are free of the militia influence."

According to American soldiers interviewed by the paper, despite extensive evidence of police ties to the militias which they have turned over to Iraqi officials, "no one has ever been criminally charged or even lost their jobs."

As always, the truth on the ground is always something different than the story we get from BushCo.

Priorities

We already know that conservative priorities - at least those espoused by the current gang of thieves - are, at best, misplaced. The latest word on investment to mitigate global warming which all but the GOP faithful acknowledge is going to be a huge problem within the next 25 to 100 years, provides the latest illustration.

In the United States, annual federal spending for all energy research and development — not just the research aimed at climate-friendly technologies — is less than half what it was a quarter-century ago. It has sunk to $3 billion a year in the current budget from an inflation-adjusted peak of $7.7 billion in 1979, according to several different studies.

[snip]

President Bush has sought an increase to $4.2 billion for 2007, but that would still be a small fraction of what most climate and energy experts say would be needed.

Federal spending on medical research, by contrast, has nearly quadrupled, to $28 billion annually, since 1979. Military research has increased 260 percent, and at more than $75 billion a year is 20 times the amount spent on energy research.

Emphasis is mine.

Our grandchildren will be living in a world warmer, with more violent weather; they'll be starving from the loss of cropland, many in refugee camps having been driven out of coastal areas by rising sea levels. But damn it, they'll have the best weapons money can buy.

Have Republicans Made Us Safer?

They've ignored the security of our ports and chemical manufacturing sites. But at least at airports, the weak spot exploited by the 9/11 terrorists have been secured, right?

Screeners at Newark Liberty International Airport, one of the starting points for the Sept. 11 hijackers, failed 20 of 22 security tests conducted by undercover U.S. agents last week, missing concealed bombs and guns at checkpoints throughout the major air hub's three terminals, according to federal security officials.

The tests, conducted Oct. 19 by Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents, also revealed failures by screeners to follow standard operating procedures while checking passengers and their baggage for prohibited items, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Wrong.

It's in their own commercials; Osam bin Ladin is still on the loose. Our ports are riddled with security holes, the major oil and chemical companies have congress in their pockets ensuring they don't have to pay to upgrade their security. And airports - the very place where 9/11 started - have fared no better.

Remember as you walk into the voting booth; you are not safer today and it's Republicans' fault.

Cheney: Torture is "a No-Brainer"

If you voted for this pack of rabid dogs, you own this:

Vice President Dick Cheney has confirmed that U.S. interrogators subjected captured senior al-Qaida suspects to a controversial interrogation technique called "water-boarding," which creates a sensation of drowning.

Cheney indicated that the Bush administration doesn't regard water-boarding as torture and allows the CIA to use it. "It's a no-brainer for me," Cheney said at one point in an interview.

If you are strictly a utilitarian - without regard for what's right - you might be tempted to say, "what the hell, at least we're preventing more attacks," You would be wrong.

The U.S. Army, senior Republican lawmakers, human rights experts and many experts on the laws of war, however, consider water-boarding cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment that's banned by U.S. law and by international treaties that prohibit torture. Some intelligence professionals argue that it often provides false or misleading information because many subjects will tell their interrogators what they think they want to hear to make the water-boarding stop.

You might also be tempted to think that these techniques are only used on those "damned foreigners." You would be wrong.

Legal scholars have said that clauses in the recently signed Military Commissions Act allow the President to declare anyone - citizen or not - as an "enemy combatant" for an exceptionally wide array of reasons.

Everything these guys have touched has turned to shit; including our Constitution.

Tactics vs Strategy

When the President starts talking about tactics the war is already lost.

Tactics are what field commanders study and practice. Tactics is the science of how to move individuals or units around on the battlefield to best meet - at the highest levels - strategic goals. Politicians - and most especially the President - should be talking about broad-stroke strategy. It's the job of the generals to translate those strategies into tactical orders for their subordinate commanders. Eventually those orders are translated right down to the soldier walking behind an M-16, driving a tank or flying a helicopter.

When Bush starts talking tactics, there are only a couple of possible reasons. The first is that we already know he has trouble saying "strategy;" anyone remember "strategery?" The second possibility is that he doesn't know the difference between strategy and tactics; not a comforting proposition, but one that wouldn't surprise me in the least (although you'd think his handlers would brief him more thoroughly). The final possibility is one that's even scarier than the second: think Johnson and Nixon and Viet Nam.

The thought of Bush leaning over a map of the Iraq and discussing where to place units, what targets should be hit and how infantry squads should move from house to house is frightening beyond belief.

The vast majority of citizens, politicians and - most especially - media talking heads have never served and know little to nothing about military matters. So the idea of the President talking about "tactics" rather than "strategy" does not frighten them as much as it should. But then that's a huge part of why we've found ourselves in this situation in the first place.

Bush Poses With Latest Summer Footwear

"Stay the Course."

That is so yesterday. In fact, Bush was never for stay the course... or maybe he was for it before he was against it.

"No Timetable for Iraqi Withdrawal."

We can't let the terr'ists know when we're going to leave, they'll just wait us out. We can't just "cut and run." Or that was the story yesterday. Today, well, maybe leaving isn't such a bad thing.

U.S. officials said Tuesday Iraq’s government has agreed to develop a timeline for progress by the end of the year, and Iraqi forces should be able to take full control of security in the country in the next 12 to 18 months with “some level” of American support.

Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, also said he felt the United States should continue to focus on drawing down the number of American forces in the country, adding that he would not hesitate to ask for more troops if he felt they were necessary.

Maybe more like "cut and walk."

UPDATE: Seems BushCo. is even changing its mind on what to call the "insurgents" in Iraq. Not terr'ists," not even insurgents any more. Nope.

Both men spoke in unusually conciliatory terms about the Sunni insurgents who have been the main source of attacks on American troops until recently, referring to them as “the resistance.” General Casey called them “the Sunnis who fight us and claim to be the honorable resistance of Iraq,” and said that American officials have begun talking with them, along with the Iraqi government.

Now they are honorable. The people who they incited with an illegal invasion and occupation, who are killing our soldiers - 89 this month so far, now they are honorable.

To quote John Aravosis at AmericaBlog:

"Had enough yet?"

Pay No Attention to That War Behind the Curtain!

So the spin this week will be about the economy. The spin machine says it's not really about taking attention away from Iraq. No, really.

With his party facing a difficult midterm election, President Bush is focusing on the positive this week: a growing economy he is using to try to persuade voters to keep Republicans in power in Congress.

White House advisers say Bush is not trying to change the subject from a deteriorating situation in Iraq, and that he will continue to talk about Iraq and the war on terrorism as the Nov. 7 election nears. But Bush advisers said they think the president should get more credit for recent positive economic news.

Of course this is about diverting attention from Iraq, and Afghanistan and North Korea. But if Democrats were a little more on the ball, they could make this a dangerous thing for BushCo. to talk about, too.

The 800 pound gorilla in the room on the economy is the cost of the war. Yes, the DOW is over 12,000 right now; gas prices are down. But none of this says anything about the damage to future budgets and to the economy of the massive outlays for the failed Iraq war. Billions of dollars every month, emergency allocations every couple of months to keep paying for the war. None of which is in the current or the proposed budget. Military equipment is being destroyed and worn down by continuous operations. More soldiers are needed and the National Guard and Reserve, while they are on active duty, are paid for out of the Federal Budget.

Keep talking about the economy, 'Dub. That's going to catch up with you, too.

UPDATE: Added link to article about the cost of the war.

Smacking God Upside the Head

Not that I believe that there is one, but...

I've been through a lot of crap over the past five years and many well meaning friends have said things to me like, "god never gives you more than you can handle." My reply - when I had the strength for snark - was that if "I ever meet that son of a bitch I'll smack him right upside the head."

This article only confirms my instincts:

The top US general defended the leadership of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, saying it is inspired by God.

"He leads in a way that the good Lord tells him is best for our country," said Marine General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

I'll save some strength for a good smack for both General Pace and Rummy, too.

US Exporting "Terror Weapons"?

An article on The Raw Story about unusual injuries seen in the Gaza Strip led me an article on Defense Tech. So let me connect the dots:

Doctors in Gaza are finding some strange injuries after Israeli attacks:

Doctors in Gaza have reported previously unseen injuries from Israeli weapons that cause severe burning and leave deep internal wounds, often resulting in amputations or death.
The injuries were first seen in July, when Israel launched operations in Gaza following the capture of an Israeli soldier by Palestinian militants.

Doctors said that, unlike traditional combat injuries, there was no large shrapnel found in the bodies and there appeared to be a "dusting" on damaged internal organs.

The article, from The Guardian, goes on to speculation that perhaps Israel is using a new class of weapons called Dense Inert Metal Explosives (DIME). Israeli sources refuse to comment on the types of weapons in its arsenal or being used in any operations, but other Isreali sources claim that "... no one in Israel ever developed such a Dime weapon. It doesn't exist at all."

Notice that Isaac Ben-Israel, a professor at Tel Aviv University and a retired Israel air force general who was involved in weapons development, only says that they have never developed such a weapon. However, the United States - Israel's biggest supplier of arms and munitions - has developed just such a weapon.

The U.S. military is working on a small, precise bomb that could hit targets "previously off limits to the warfighter."[snip]

Dense Inert Metal Explosive (DIME) is one of the Air Force Research Laboratory’s responses to the challenge of fighting in an urban environment without hurting innocent bystanders in the process.

So, how can I ask the question posed in the title to this post? Well that hangs on the one sentence I snipped out of the above quote from Defense Tech:

The problem is, it might cause cancer.

Even that admission is a bit candy coated. In the same article, there is the following result for testing the effects of the tungsten that is the dense metal that gives these new weapons their name:

In a study designed to simulate shrapnel injuries, pellets of weapons-grade tungsten alloy were implanted in 92 rats. Within five months all the animals developed a rare cancer called rhabdomyosarcoma, according to John Kalinich's team at the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute in Maryland.

Read that carefully - go check out the whole article, there's a link there to the full study: 100% cancer development.

100%.

And we've likely exported either the actual weapons or the technology to Israel. Which is using it on the Palestinians. If these don't qualify as biological weapons, I'm not sure the term has meaning any more. If our government exported or transfered these weapons to Israel - and you just know that the Israelis would use them - knowing the results of this study, then they - no WE are guilty of exporting "Weapons of Mass Destruction," biological weapons, call them what you will.

Another criminal act by our criminal government.

Another impeachable offense by this administration.

Another stain on the rapidly tattering reputation of our once great nation.

'Beginning of the end of America'

Maybe the most important thing you will read today.

For, on this first full day that the Military Commissions Act is in force, we now face what our ancestors faced, at other times of exaggerated crisis and melodramatic fear-mongering:

A government more dangerous to our liberty, than is the enemy it claims to protect us from.

This is not hyperbole, this is not hysteria. This is political criticism at its best at the most dangerous of times.

Read this. E-mail it to friends and family. Print it out and post it where it will be read.

Think Thomas Paine.

"these are the times that try men's souls"

Our Republic Dies Not with a Bang But with a Yawn

Keith Olbermann has - with too little notice - done yeoman's work letting us know just how horrible the Military Commission's Act really is. His previous article laid out how all but one of the ten articles of the Bill of Rights are rendered obsolete by the Act. His latest is an interview with Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law professor at George Washington University.

A teaser, but go read the whole thing:

OLBERMANN: Does this mean that under this law, ultimately the only thing keeping you, I, or the viewer out of Gitmo is the sanity and honesty of the president of the United States?

TURLEY: It does. And it’s a huge sea change for our democracy. The framers created a system where we did not have to rely on the good graces or good mood of the president. In fact, Madison said that he created a system essentially to be run by devils, where they could not do harm, because we didn’t rely on their good motivations.

Now we must. And people have no idea how significant this is. What, really, a time of shame this is for the American system. What the Congress did and what the president signed today essentially revokes over 200 years of American principles and values.

I don't know about any of you, but I'm none to sanguine as to the "sanity and honesty" of Bush. As bad as they are, in comparison, Foleygate doesn't matter, Ney doesn't matter, Abramoff is a piker, honestly Iraq isn't as important as this story.

But as Olbermann says, the raping of our Constitution has been greeted with a national yawn.

BushCo. Owns This

Here's what going to war based on lies has gotten us. Here's what "Support the Troops - Repbublican Style" has gotten us. Here's what "staying the course" has gotten us.

The military reported 10 U.S. troops killed in bombings and combat a day earlier, raising to 69 the number of U.S. troops killed in October.

And we're just over half-way through the month.

Maybe this will help Tony Snow the next time he has trouble answering the question of whether or not we're "winning."

For the U.S. military, October’s death toll is on a pace that, if continued, would make the month the deadliest for coalition forces since January 2005, when 107 U.S. troops died.

The war’s deadliest month for U.S. forces was November. 2004, when 137 troops died.

At least 2,780 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

That would be "no," Tony.

"Nothing could be further from... American values... than the Military Commissions Act"

No word yet on whether Shrubby made any signing statements to the it, but he signed it. This bill, described by the ACLU as "one of the worst civil liberties measures ever enacted in American history," is the latest in the effort to build the imperial presidency.

While civil libertarian groups and some Democrats have decried this law, Americans are strangely quiet about the trampling of their rights. No matter the original targets, such laws are almost always more broadly applied than originally pitched.

"The president can now, with the approval of Congress, indefinitely hold people without charge, take away protections against horrific abuse, put people on trial based on hearsay evidence, authorize trials that can sentence people to death based on testimony literally beaten out of witnesses, and slam shut the courthouse door for habeas petitions," said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero.

The intended targets are supposedly Islamic terrorists, but there is absolutely nothing in the law to keep them from applying it to you.

This quote from Benjamin Franklin cannot be repeated too often:

They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security.

Refugee Crisis

When we see a headline like the one above, Americans think of Darfur or The Sudan. Some failed, third-world nation where rebels threaten and murder and drive people from their homelands. In this case, well...

Thousands of Iraqis are fleeing the country every day in a “steady, silent exodus” and a spike in sectarian violence has stopped others from returning to their homeland, the U.N. refugee agency said on Friday.

Right-wingers are always trying to equate the level of violence in Iraqi cities to that in major US metro areas. That argument, on it's face, is specious. Throwing in a steady stream of refugees to the mix only further puts the lie to that argument.

While Nero Diddles

In case the non-stop talk about Foley-Gate should make you forget, Keith Olbermannn reminds us of the passage of the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

This is probably the most horrific act of constitutional rape since... well, since ever. The constitution states that habeas corpus can only be suspended in case of rebellion or invasion, but our craven congress critters have once more given the boy king what he wants in his Never Ending War on Terror.

The president has now succeeded where no one has before. HeÂ’s managed to kill the writ of habeas corpus. Tonight, a special investigation, how that, in turn, kills nothing less than your Bill of Rights. Because the Mark Foley story began to break on the night of September 28, exploding the following day, many people may not have noticed the bill passed by the Senate that night.

Read the rest - find out how this one law rescinds the whole of our Bill of Rights (except for the Third Amendment, but really, who even knows what that one is?). Pass it on to everyone you know.

It's important that we not forget.

There Goes the "Parent Vote"

UPDATE: See story behind the headline.

This AP Breaking News headline on MSNBC should completely alienate any remaining Republican voters with kids coming up on draft age:

U.S. Army making plans to keep current Iraq troop level through 2010

David Frum is MAD

Not that anyone should be particularly surprised at my assessment of Frum's mental capacity, but his opinion piece in today's NYT certainly confirms it.

He makes four main suggestions about what BushCo. should do in response to the - most likely failed - North Korean nuclear test. All of which are foolish on their face:

1. Step up the development and deployment of existing missile defense systems.

This is just what our overstretched military budget needs. We are "eating the seedcorn" as it is, blowing through a couple of billion dollars per week in Iraq and Afghanistan. Spending more on a system that has failed every operational test is sheer idiocy. Any hope of stemming a nuclear arms race in the area would be dashed by just the announcement of such a program.

2. End humanitarian aid to North Korea and pressure South Korea to do the same.

While there is some merit to using some of this aid as a carrot and a stick, from a strictly ethical point of view it seems a callous thing to do to punish the already starving people of North Korea in this case. Not that this has stopped us - or the rest of the world - in the past. And should this cause a popular uprising in the DPRK, the collapse of Kim's regime will destabilize the entire region even more with a flood of refugees and the potential loss of control over whatever nuclear devices have actually been assembled. If a collapse is somehow avoided, there would be strong incentive for Kim to sell the technology or the actual devices for much needed hard currency.

3. Invite Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore to join NATO — and even invite Taiwan to send observers to NATO meetings.

A sure-fire way to alienate China and lose any hope of gaining their leverage over North Korea. Additionally, this could potentially drive the North and China closer together in military cooperation against a suddenly united South East Asian theater, leading to a truly nuclearized North Korea. And anything that upsets the delicate balance over Taiwan, especially during a crisis, should be avoided at all costs.

4. Encourage Japan to renounce the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and create its own nuclear deterrent.

Could there be a worse idea other than arming the DPRK ourselves? As soon as Japan makes such an announcement, China would make grave denouncements and perhaps move to redeploy nuclear and non-nuclear forces to counter such a perceived threat in their sphere of influence. They could conceivably even offer to post weapons on the Koreanpeninsulaa to counter the threat. I'm sure that China has learned the lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis. I doubt that BushCo. has learned a single lesson from anything in history.

Whether North Korea's test was successful or not, I can't see anything in Frum's proposals that make any kind of sense in the world we all actually live in. Of course, given BushCo.'s record, Frum is exactly the kind of advisor/speech writer that Bush and his Cold-War-Cronies have cultivated.

Language Barrier

I've figured out why North Korea seems to have completely misread U.S. reaction to their nuclear weapons program. It's a simple thing, really; Kim Jong Il had no idea what the hell Bush was talking about.

"Nookyuler" just doesn't translate into Korean.

Whadda Ya' Gonna Do Now?

I can still remember hearing the southern drawl of a drill sergeant - somehow all Army drill sergeants are from the South - after I'd gotten myself into some kind of trouble during basic training. I might have gotten tangled up in a rappel rope, or made my way half-way up a vertical wall in an obstacle course. Whatever it was, there would be Sergeant Smith, looking disgusted and asking in that sarcastic way that only a non-com could manage. "Whadda ya' gonna do now, cadet?"

I've decided that every President needs his own personal drill sergeant. Bush more than most.

When I read this morning that North Korea had likely detonated a small nuclear device, it was the first thought that went through my mind. I can't imagine what option that Bush has left; our military has been stretched to nearly the breaking point, we've alienated most of the rest of the world and previous "discussions" with North Korea have been less than foundational.

"Whadda ya' gonna do now?"

Staying the Course

Straight to hell...

The number U.S. troops wounded in Iraq has surged to its highest level in nearly two years as American GIs fight block-by-block in Baghdad to try to check a spiral of sectarian violence that U.S. commanders warn could lead to civil war.

Last month, 776 U.S. troops were wounded in action in Iraq, the highest number since the military assault to retake the insurgent-held city of Fallujah in November 2004, according to Defense Department data. It was the fourth-highest monthly total since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

I wonder if anyone in BushCo. has heard of a compass.

Time Stretches to Infinity at the Event Horizon

There had to be some reason for the GOP leadership to still be stuck to Denny Hastert like week-old gum to the bottom of a ten year old pair of wingtips. And I think I've found that reason.

The leadership actually can't help but fall towards Hastert. He's grown so large - apparently the Speaker's never met a sandwich he didn't like - that he now has his own gravity. Based on my calculations, Hastert has a gravitational field of a small black hole. Bush, Baker and Frist don't have any choice. They've been sucked in and can't escape.

Pity.

Not.

An Empire Built on Lies

A tipping point, perhaps?

The MSM - albeit in a news site blog - is finally saying what the blogosphere has been saying for years. Keith Olbermann, on MSNBC, has written what may be the defining piece of journalism of this administration. It will be roundly savaged or dismissed by the most fundamentalist right and accepted with vigorous head nodding by most of the left. But it's the reaction of the unmoved masses in the middle that may well be it's most important effect. If they read it...

A teaser, but really, you have to read the whole thing:

Mr. President, these new lies go to the heart of what it is that you truly wish to preserve.

It is not our freedom, nor our country—your actions against the Constitution give irrefutable proof of that.

You want to preserve a political party’s power. And obviously you’ll sell this country out, to do it.

This is a powerful piece and deserves wide dissemination. Pass it on.

Hat tip to the commentors at AmericaBlog for pointing me to this.

The Last Vestiges of the Old Republic Have Been Swept Away

The Imperial President is a concept to be studied no more. It is fact. Many of us have known this for a while, but even the MSM is starting to catch on.

President Bush, again defying Congress, says he has the power to edit the Homeland Security Department’s reports about whether it obeys privacy rules while handling background checks, ID cards and watchlists.

In the law Bush signed Wednesday, Congress stated no one but the privacy officer could alter, delay or prohibit the mandatory annual report on Homeland Security department activities that affect privacy, including complaints.

But Bush, in a signing statement attached to the agency’s 2007 spending bill, said he will interpret that section “in a manner consistent with the President’s constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch.”

Of course it seems that our new King George should never be allowed to speak without the Grand Vizier whispering in his ear; for the boy king is a bit of an idiot:

Bush’s signing statement Wednesday challenges several other provisions in the Homeland Security spending bill.

Bush, for example, said he’d disregard a requirement that the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency must have at least five years experience and “demonstrated ability in and knowledge of emergency management and homeland security.”

His rationale was that it “rules out a large portion of those persons best qualified by experience and knowledge to fill the office.”

Pitching a Fit

Everyone's seen it. The little brat who doesn't get what he wants in the grocery store (usually) who falls to the floor, kicking and screaming. All the other shoppers give the kid and his embarrassed parent a wide berth. As do I for fear I might place a well aimed kick at his head.

Anyway...

That's the image that came to mind when I read our Preznit's latest tantrum. He's just won't put up with a nookyular North Korea. He just won't. This on the heels of telling the whole world that he just won't put up with a nookyular Iran.

Kicking and screaming is about all he can do about either of these truly rogue states as he's squandered any chance of really working with other countries in either region and - should the now impossible diplomacy fail - he's also squandered our military; leaving us impotent to do anything about anything.

What else is left for our juvenile Commander-in-Chief but pitching a good old-fashioned hissy fit (as my mom would call it)? Is it any wonder that all the other countries are giving us a wide berth?

Fortunately there's nobody out there big enough to place a well aimed kick to our head.

What Liberal Media?

I had to borrow the title of Eric Alterman's book for this post after reading this from The Raw Story:

Fox News had copies of emails written by Congressman Mark Foley (R-FL) to a Louisiana boy, but chose not to run the story, according to a passage in an Associated Press report.

Okay, you'd expect Fox to cover Republican assess even if they were caught in the act of eating young boys they'd just diddled. But then there was this:

Meanwhile, Florida newspapers — who were leaked copies of the e-mail with the Louisiana boy last year — defended their decision not to run stories. Both The St. Petersburg Times and The Miami Herald were given copies of the e-mail, as were other news organizations, including Fox News.

Eric's fond of asking, so I'll ask: "what liberal media?"

Implosion

I've watched the implosion of the Republican leadership of the House with a mix of revulsion and schadenfreude. Suddenly the blue dress of a consenting adult doesn't seem so bad, now does it? But suddenly those on the right - especially the religious right - who frothed so righteously over Monicagate are nowhere to be seen.

Did someone say "hypocrisy?"

For all the information on this latest Republican melt-down, check out AmericaBlog. John and his co-bloggers have done a great job in covering this from the very beginning. And they are much closer to the action and have much more time to get into all the details than I'll ever have.

Best line of this scandal, so far? "The Republican leadership has been decapitated."

Wal-Mart Still Evil

Just in case you were wondering:

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is pushing to create a cheaper, more flexible work force by capping wages, using more part-time workers and scheduling more staff on nights and weekends, The New York Times reported on Monday.

A new Wal-Mart is being built just half a mile from where I work. The people in the county are very happy to have the new monstrosity, making no connection between their "always low prices" and the stagnant wages in the local economy. The article above mentions that unofficially (of course) Wal-Mart's goal is to have 40% of its workforce part-timers. That means no benefits and no retirement. That will all be paid for by you and me while Wal-Mart shovels the money into its bank accounts.

I still refuse to step foot into one of their damned stores.

"An Ordinary Death in Iraq"

Fuck Bush.

U.S. Army 2nd Lieut. Emily Perez, 23, was buried Tuesday at West Point, on a high bluff overlooking the Hudson River, alongside two centuries of fallen graduates from the United States Military Academy. She was the first combat death from the 2005 graduating class — called "the class of 9/11" because they arrived at the prestigious school just two weeks before the terror attacks. She was also the first female West Point graduate to be killed in Iraq.

She died an ordinary death in Iraq, at least by today's standards: a roadside bomb exploded as she led her platoon in a convoy south of Baghdad on Sept. 12. But what makes this death so difficult in a sea of violence is just how extraordinary this particular soldier was.

She was no relation - at least not by blood. She was however my "sister" in arms; a member of the Long Grey Line and as such as much a sister as it's possible to be without having the same mother.

"An ordinary death." Think of that phrase and what it really means.

Her blood is on Bush's hands and on the hands of all of his henchmen in this maladministration.

It can't be said too many times.

Fuck Bush.

Police Academy

There are two ways to take the title of this post: in reference to the new Iraqi Police College or to the series of movies. In fact, you should take it both ways.

The Baghdad Police College, hailed as crucial to U.S. efforts to prepare Iraqis to take control of the country's security, was so poorly constructed that feces and urine rained from the ceilings in student barracks. Floors heaved inches off the ground and cracked apart. Water dripped so profusely in one room that it was dubbed "the rain forest."

"This is the most essential civil security project in the country -- and it's a failure," said Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, an independent office created by Congress. "The Baghdad police academy is a disaster."

With the constant revelation of the complete and utter mismanagement of this war - one sold to all of us on lies - why is there not a roar of disgust from our fellow citizens? Where are the demands for troop pullouts? Have they become so brain dead on bad television and video games that they've become immune to the real carnage and the real posse of idiots in BushCo.?

Anyone want to guess how long before Mr. Stuart W. Bowen Jr. winds up in some god-forsaken, dead-end job in West Bumfuck, Iowa?

All You Need to Know About Bush's "War on Terror"

From Newsweek:

Ridge by ridge and valley by valley, the religious zealots who harbored Osama bin Laden before 9/11 — and who suffered devastating losses in the U.S. invasion that began five years ago next week—are surging back into the country's center. In the countryside over the past year Taliban guerrillas have filled a power vacuum that had been created by the relatively light NATO and U.S. military footprint of some 40,000 soldiers, and by the weakness of Afghan President Hamid Karzai's administration.

Clinton gets the "Wag the Dog" treatment when he actually tried to kill bin Laden. BushCo. gets a pass for letting him stay loose in and around territory that was supposed to have been the "central front in the War on Terror.

It's no wonder the Big Dog was pissed off.

The rest of us should be, too.

Bush Should be Relieved of Office and Impeached

This is different from the previous calls for impeachment. I believe there is real reason to believe that he and many of his closest advisers are literally and clinically insane.

Need proof?

The Pentagon's top brass has moved into second-stage contingency planning for a potential military strike on Iran, one senior intelligence official familiar with the plans tells RAW STORY.

[snip]

Adding to the concern of both military and intelligence officials alike is the nuclear option, the possibility of pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons targeting alleged WMD facilities in Iran.

What makes this truly plausible is that despite their protestations to the contrary, BushCo. knows that the military is stretched to the breaking point with Iraqi and Afghan operations. There is no slack left for ground operations in Iran; the scope of which would necessarily dwarf those in Iraq given the dispersed nature of their nuclear facilities and the near certainty that the Iranian army would fight rather than melt away like the Iraqi army did.

What option does that leave for this misadministration?

And what option does that leave all sane Americans? From The U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 4:

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

How to Make Friends and Influence People

Now that we know how BushCo. was able to persuade long-time Taliban supporter Pakistan to support the Neverending War on Terror, it makes me wonder what was said to Great Britain or Australia to get them to be part of the Coalition of the Willing.

President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan said that after the Sept. 11 attacks the United States threatened to bomb his country if it did not cooperate with America’s campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Musharraf, in an interview with CBS news magazine show “60 Minutes” that will air Sunday, said the threat came from Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and was given to Musharraf’s intelligence director.

“The intelligence director told me that (Armitage) said, ‘Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age,”’ Musharraf said. “I think it was a very rude remark.”

It's no wonder that Musharraf has been so reticent to provide real help in catching bin Laden who's made his home since the battle of Tora Bora in the hinterlands between Afghanistan and Pakistan. It's no wonder more and more of the world hates us if this is BushCo.'s idea of "diplomacy."

Global What?

They've never met a fact they couldn't find an "expert" to question. Especially on global warming which, if acted on, might interfere with their big business and oil backers. However, the facts are getting harder and harder for BushCo to question, spin or ignore.

For example, there's this story:

European scientists voiced shock as they showed pictures which showed Arctic ice cover had disappeared so much last month that a ship could sail unhindered from Europe's most northerly outpost to the North Pole itself.

[snip]

"This situation is unlike anything observed in previous record low-ice seasons," said Mark Drinkwater of ESA's Oceans/Ice Unit.

Fortunately, in a very limited sense, this is sea ice, which displaces its own mass in the water it floats on - that is, it will not cause a rise in sea level. But if sea ice is melting to such a degree, what is happening to the continental ice shelves in Antarctica and Greenland?

The doubters' stories get more and more fantastical while the facts on the ground slowly add up to the incontrovertible; human activities are warming the earth. To our eventual detriment.

Haven't We Been Saying This All Along?

Colin Powell, in the Washington Post (via MSNBC), says that his opposition to the administration's new rules for the treatment of detainees in the neverending war on terror is a "issue of morality." Powell, along with the other high-ranking military officials who've gone on record opposing these new rules, carries a lot of weight on these matters - with the public.

Apparently the BushCo.'s support of the troops doesn't extend to supporting their opinions, informed as they are by history and experience. And those are two things which they will never let taint their conduct of this disaster of a war.

What really gets me about this story, though, is that recently I've been noticing a lot of news that is new to the mainstream media, but that we in the blogosphere have been discussing for years. See some of my earlier posts about Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo - and then look at the dates.

I'm not sure whether to be angry that it's taken everyone else so long to catch up to what has been public knowledge for so long or hopeful that finally somebody is taking note. The anger is partly what drove me to stop blogging for a while. The hope is what brought me back.

Five Years

A lot can happen in five years.

Some of it good, some of it bad. In politics and the media, five years can be forever. In our personal lives it can seem like days or it can seem like centuries; all at the same time.

Like five years ago, today is cool and clear here in Upstate New York. Unfortunately, that is not all that is the same. The Great Miscommunicator still squats in our White House and we are still little safer than we were on that fateful morning.

And I suppose all those things that are still the same five years after the event that prompted me to start blogging are the reason that I haven't written here in so long. The collective effort of the blogosphere, the writing, the joining up of like-minded people, the money many of us could so little afford sent to groups and causes, the letters and e-mails and phone calls to politician; all seemingly for nothing.

I suppose we'll know better after tomorrow. Will Democrats win back at least one house of Congress? Has the national mood turned away from willful ignorance about Afghanistan, Iraq and the true sources of terrorism?

It's too soon to tell. But considering the last five years, I'm not hopeful.

Watch These Guys...

When BushCo. breaks out the legal guns, you know that something or someone must really be getting under their skin. So apparently a group of West Point graduates, which I've recently joined and which opposes the deceptive way we were taken into Iraq has really annoyed the cabal in the White House.

As has been the case from the first BushCo. campaign against Al Gore, they have not addressed the issues raised by West Point Graduates Against the War. Instead they've sent out the lawyers telling the group that they cannot use the name West Point. Because it's been trademarked.

The group has refused to back down and they continue their efforts to make the case that they - and all past and future graduates - are obligated to oppose the deceptions that made the invasion of Iraq possible because of the West Point honor code which all graduates strive to live their lives by:

"a cadet will not lie, cheat or steal, nor tolerate those who do."

BushCo. continue their distracting arm-waving. But the truth cannot always be silenced by the lawyers.

BushCo. The Cause of More 9-11 Deaths

There was, of course, the well known PDB; "bin Laden determined to attack in the US." Something close to 3,000 deaths can be placed on their non-existent consciouses.

In the immediate aftermath there ware FEMA and EPA officials telling New Yorkers that the debris and fumes coming from ground zero were safe. Just like other decisions and non-decisions, this one has had its deadly effects.

The government's point man on Sept. 11 health programs said he is worried that an autopsy linking a retired detective's death to recovery work at ground zero may be a warning sign of other life-threatening cases.

Dr. John Howard also said it will take time to determine whether there is a scientific link between deaths and exposure to toxic dust. Some epidemiologists have said it will take 20 years or more to prove such a link.

More deaths linked directly to the incompetence of BushCo. and their cronies. More reasons not to trust them in anything they do.

Not that we needed more...

Signs of Erosion

On the hill behind my house, in a bare path of dark, moist earth, there are little gullies carved into the dirt. It's been raining here lately and the water, streaming down hill has carved these little signs, left this evidence of the slow erosion of the ridge my house sits on. Depending on how much it rains and on many other factors, my house might be safe for eons. Or it could be washed down into the valley below in an instant.

Our political landscape can sometimes be read just like the a real landscape. You need only know how to read the signs, how to interpret the evidence left behind. Policies and actions that are hurtful to the body politic can leave behind small signs like those in my back yard, or they can alter the political landscape like the landslides in Hawaii this week.

One such sign - among so many lately - is this:

Not a single doctor in South Dakota will perform an abortion, which is why Dr. Miriam McCreary has come out of retirement.

Once or twice a month, the 70-year-old grandmother takes a 45-minute flight from Minneapolis, Minnesota, to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to perform abortions at the last clinic in the state willing to offer the procedure.

From close enough, following the laws of fractals, the small clefts in the dirt behind my house look like miniature Grand Canyons. It's only a matter of the amount of dirt and rock removed. And once started, such scars grow more rapidly with each new rainfall. Such is the possibility of the erosion of more rights should South Dakota's new and still-untested abortion ban survive its almost certain Supreme Court challenge. And if more states should try the Constitutional waters with their own bans, not only womens' rights will be at risk. Emboldened by any success - or even perceived success - conservatives and the religious fundamentalists who hang from them like leeches - will press for other so-called family friendly or religiously sanctioned inroads on all of our rights.

This is dangerous territory that South Dakota has set us all upon. What has started as a series of small rivulets in the landscape of American politics could be turned into a veritable Badlands of restrictive, fundamentalist and intrusive laws and the near permanent erosion of our valuable and vital civil rights.

Recharging

It's true that I've been really busy. It's true that I've been in a bit of a funk lately. It's true that there are too many things going on in my personal life - not enough of them good.

It's not, however, true that I'm giving up on blogging.

I just need to recharge, to find a little peace. I want to write, it's just that when I get home at the end of a long day I just don't have the energy right now. And my job has changed so that I no longer have much time to myself during the day. So while I try to find a little energy and time, it may be a while between posts - as it has been of a little while.

What hasn't changed is BushCo.'s ability to bring me out of a funk with outrage. So keep dropping by. And thanks for reading my stuff for so long...

So Few Patriots in the Senate

89 - 10.

Ninety-nine votes cast.

Ninety-nine senators voting on whether to let BushCo. continue to find new ways to violate our civil rights and the rights of foreigners who may or may not have done anything wrong.

And only ten of them could find the fortitude to stand up for those rights.

And the news outlets report it as though it were nothing different than the day before. When more people can identify the members of the Simpson family than know the five guarantees of the first amendment - I suppose it's no wonder.

Ninety-nine votes cast.

89 - 10.

Other Lessons

BushCo.'s adventure in Iraq has presented the US with many lessons to be learned; many of which are military, many are diplomatic. Many will be reviewed in military "after action reports." Some others will be reviewed by the striped pants set in State. Others however will not be so obvious; there are no formal mechanisms for learning societal lessons from disasters such as Iraq. We can only hope that they will be learned.

One lesson in particular has to do with the role of religion in society.

So many people in the US think that more religion in the public sphere could only do our society good. As wrong as they may be in reality, they think that their particular set of rules would do us all good. In the abstract, and not tied to any particular sect, they could well be right. The problem, as always, is in the execution. Or, to use a more apt metaphor, the devil is in the details.

Those in the religious right in this country are notoriously unable to see beyond their next church gathering, but I can only hope that the sectarian violence in Iraq becomes an object lesson in the value of the separation of church and state. The disaster, the brewing civil war in Iraq is the future of our country should some sect or another be able to impose its will on the whole of America through the courts or the legislature.

We have to hope that lessons learned are spread far and wide through our country. Not only that it's impossible to spread democracy at the point of a sword, but that it's impossible to have a democracy at the foot of a cross or at the point of a crescent.

Bush "Unaware"

No shit.

But this is a stunning revelation:

President Bush was unaware of the pending sale of shipping operations at six major U.S. seaports to a state-owned business in the United Arab Emirates until the deal already had been approved by his administration, the White House said Wednesday.

I can't for the life of me imagine what good that admission could do for Bush. He had to have known about this... Just check out all the administration connections to Dubai Ports World; more from the same MSNBC article:

Sen. John Kerry sent a letter to Treasury Secretary John Snow, seeking full disclosure on the deal with DP World.

"As you know, the CSX rail corporation, where you previously served as chief executive officer, sold its port operations to DP in 2004," wrote Kerry, D-Mass., in a letter. "Moreover, the presidentÂ’s nominee for administrator of the Maritime Administration, David Sanborn, was DPÂ’s head of operations for Latin America while this transaction was being reviewed ..."

While House spokesman Scott McClellan dismissed any connection between the deal and David Sanborn of Virginia, a former senior DP World executive whom the White House appointed last month to be the new administrator of the Maritime Administration of the Transportation Department. Sanborn worked as DP World's director of operations for Europe and Latin America.

And thankfully even Republican lawmakers are abandoning the administration ship on this. The most straighforward bitchslap at Bush being this:

Rep. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., expressed the anger of many lawmakers when she sent Bush a one-sentence letter that read:

Dear Mr. President:
In regards to selling American ports to the United Arab Emirates, not just NO - but HELL NO!

Please, oh please let this be the beginning of the end of the miserable, horrible little man with the miserable, horrible little mind now squatting in our Whitehouse. And to be hoist on his very own national security petard would be the most wonderful irony of all.

Speaking of the Former Soviet Union...

Since they've already pilloried at least one Dem for comparing our gulag with that of the Soviets... what the hell.

Had there ever been any "truth in Pravda" or "news in Izvestia" it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to imagine we might have read something like this (substitute KGB for CIA):

CIA chief sacked for opposing torture

The CIA's top counter-terrorism official was fired last week because he opposed detaining Al-Qaeda suspects in secret prisons abroad, sending them to other countries for interrogation and using forms of torture such as "water boarding", intelligence sources have claimed.

Thanks to Eric Alterman for pointing this out in The Times.

Oh, and a big "Thanks" to our domestic media for being such idiots that we have to go to a London paper to read about this.

Bush Held Hostage?

Well, what else was I to think - at first glance - of this photo/headline combination?



But of course, it was only an article on how Shrubby-boy thinks the US is being held hostage by "foreign oil." It was only the latest re-hash of his sudden revelation, revealed during during the State of the Union Address, that the US uses too much of that "foreign oil." Which is, of course, code (everything this administration says is in code - it's like watching the former Soviet Union) for Middle Eastern oil. Here's the first paragraph:

Saying the nation is on the verge of technological breakthroughs that would "startle" most Americans, President Bush on Monday outlined his energy proposals to help wean the country off foreign oil.

You're damned right we'd be startled if anything remotely scientific or technological came out of this almospathologicallyly anti-science administration. And if it did anything to jeopardize their cozy relationship with the Arab states and big-oil the whole damned country would have a heart attack.

Then you wouldn't need any of that "foreign oil" you've come to so suddenly hate so much.

Lessons Not Learned

If Dick Cheney had not had "other priorities" he might have learned in Viet Nam that you don't leave a wounded buddy behind.

What Would Mohammed Do?

Now that Iran has called for cartoons "lampooning the holocaust," will we now see Jews around the world storming the embassies of Islamic countries? If they were to follow that up with cartoons of Jesus getting a little something on the side, would Christians fly into violent fits? Well, besides those in the South... And everyone slams atheists without fear of retribution from us.

I was going to stay away from this... it's just so stupid, but human stupidity never fails to amaze and enrage me. Who was it who said that you'd never go broke betting on the stupidity of your fellow man?



C'mon... it's a cartoon.

If the fundamentalist mullahs would allow some real education in their fellow citizens, if the governments would spend a little oil money on education and infrastructure and industry, the so-called protesters with nothing else to do but burn embassies and flags might actually have productive jobs. They might actually contribute to the betterment of their countries and the world.

A little perspective, a little common sense; is that too much to ask?

Dark Days Ahead?

If I'm honest with myself, these are dark days for liberals. Hell, if I'm brutally honest, these are dark days for anyone to the left of Genghis Khan.

The corporations - especially the oil companies and defense contractors - essentially run the lawmaking apparatus that supposedly represents we the people. The Republican controlled House passes a budget that cuts Medicaid and student loans, the court is packed with conservative Neanderthals intent on setting our rights back to the 13th century, especially for women, minorities and gays, and corporate bosses are essentially moving us back to feudalism. Conservatives have made sure that anything that might smack of "big government" is so underfunded or poorly managed that their results can only disappoint, providing even more ammunition for their argument that the private sector is the answer to everything from healthcare to halitosis.

Where does that leave us, those of us on the left, who hope for something better?

In dire straights. No doubt about it.

Returning Congress to something approaching balance, if not Democratic control seems an impossible task from out here in the hinterlands. The individual races are too hard to keep track of if you're not a professional blogger or somehow in the business. The aggregate of these races could make the difference between a new Medieval Age in America and a continuing Renaissance.

And if you think the choice is not that stark, you haven't been paying attention.

I have to admit I'm in a bit of a funk right now. Where do we go from here? Sometimes I think the answer is "Canada." And, although the conservatives just won themselves a government there, most Canadian conservatives would be considered quite liberal here. In my clearer moments I know that abandoning ship is not the answer, but those moments are fewer and fewer these days.

So there's my rant, there's my dilemma, there's my disgust. I'd welcome any and all advice, any consolation, any words of encouragement right now...