Thursday, August 31, 2006
This is What Fascism Looks Like
In Iraq the US military is interested in “winning hearts and minds” through public relations efforts, but not efforts directed at the Iraqi people (at least not this time). No, the military is interested in “winning the hearts and minds” of the American people. Why do I occasionally get the feeling from this administration that We the People are being treated like an enemy population?
I guess I like to highlight Ann Coulter’s amazing remarks as proof that television and print media (she’s widely syndicated) have amazingly low standards for right-wingers.
And speaking of low standards for right-wing media…
Iran is getting a lot of attention recently, especially from right-wingers who are bent on a “pre-emptive” strike. This would be based on our sterling intelligence that they are developing weapons of mass destruction, I’m sure. Or maybe it’s just based on the suspicion. Details, details.
This is all part of our War on Terror, a war that has undergone a subtle rebranding into the “War on Islamic Fascism.” I have lost count of the number of World War II analogies ignorantly and facilely thrown about by right-wing commentators. You see, this war is like World War II, apparently, a good war, a war we must win at any cost, even if we have to redefine what fascism is. This is necessary for the American people to believe so we won’t question the premise or motives of those waging the war, namely, the Bush Administration.
No, we must all be united behind our president, regardless of whether he is waging this war effectively, regardless of whether he is even really fighting the war he describes, regardless, in fact, of whether or not he is actually doing irreparable harm to the continued existence of our nation. This is to say nothing of our supposed moral authority in occupying a nation (Iraq) whose people, in poll after poll, have indicated that they want US troops out in months.
It is all linked, my friends. The president has literally made a living out of conflating Iraq with September 11th, and he is doing it still. It is little wonder that half of America still thinks Saddam Hussein planned 9/11 and was actually harboring weapons of mass destruction. Pretty soon half of America will be thinking that Adolf Hitler actually survived WWII and just changed his name to Ahmadinejad and moved to Iran.
Of course, Ahmadinejad, unlike Hitler, is hardly capable of the military endeavors WWII Germany was. And Ahmadinejad, unlike Hitler, hasn’t invaded neighboring countries, or rounded up 6 million Jews and murdered them (along with millions of others). No, Ahmadinejad’s crimes amount to violating the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and rattling his saber in the direction of Israel while funding small guerrilla groups to harass and terrorize Israel.
I have discussed this before. Pakistan has violated the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and sheltered terrorists. Saudi Arabia is a hotbed of terrorism, and the princes of Saudi Arabia don’t even hold tightly controlled elections like Iran. Algeria is a dangerous autocratic state and another haven of Islamic fundamentalism. Somalia and Afghanistan are chaotic nations rife with violence and Islamic fundamentalism. There are many nations with stable governments that are also havens for terrorists, like Egypt and, apparently, Britain.
Seeing as the occupation of Iraq has turned out so well I must ask the question: how many more Iraqs are we prepared to have? And what moral authority do we have to ceaselessly invade other nations, bringing ruin to millions and killing tens of thousands, in our determination to fight terrorism with tanks and bombers and armies?
This War on Islamic Fascism is the furthest thing from a set-piece war against Germany or Japan. And when the President comes to you and tells you that (largely because of the hundreds of billions we have spent in our wars) we no longer have the money to pay for Medicare or Social Security you shouldn’t be surprised. Of course, he has already done that.
No, this war also requires that we amend the Bill of Rights, without which the Constitution would never have even been ratified by a majority of the original states. Now we must do away with the troublesome fourth amendment, if necessary by executive fiat. And if the president is caught doing this based solely on his own good judgment we must tolerate it. If anyone points this out and calls it a crime they can be accused of being a left wing lunatic, like Congressman John Conyers.
Of course, John Conyers has never committed felonies, like our current administration, by explicitly ordering the warrantless surveillance of Americans in direct contravention of the law. John Conyers never ordered the invasion of another country on pretenses that were proved false, nor did he subsequently bungle its occupation to the tune of about $400 billion dollars and growing. John Conyers never lied about everything from paying attention to polls to weapons of mass destruction reports that didn’t exist. John Conyers never appointed an Arabian Horse Show Association director to be the head of FEMA, nor did he then appear shocked as FEMA proved unable to help Louisiana evacuate and rescue the citizens of New Orleans.
I see fascism in many places in the world, but, unfortunately, I also see it in my own country, as others have mentioned. I see the leaders of an entire political movement branding administration critics as “cowards” and terrorist sympathizers, from House Majority Leader Boehner to the writers at the National Review. I hear our president warn us not to engage in “irresponsible debate.” I read the National Review as its writers flirt with fascism by conditionally extolling crude violence as a solution to petty crime: “I witnessed a hue and a cry in a northern market, in which a thief was chased and then beaten. It was crude and vicious, no doubt, but more effective than, for example, the British police in their suppression of petty crime” (Theodore Dalrymple). Ah yes, if only those damned socialist British police would recognize the efficacy of violence in suppression of petty crimes. Or how about Andrew McCarthy in the same issue: “Even more inconvenient for Bush-bashers is the role of coercive interrogation tactics. It now seems clear that the audacious British plan was stopped in the very late stages…because Pakistani authorities arrested top suspect Rashid Rauf and subjected him to questioning that, to put it mildly, did not involved Miranda warnings or other enlightened practices.” See? Torture works. Let’s do it. McCarthy doesn’t say that explicitly, he just suggests that “it doesn’t make sense” for a total ban on questioning techniques that provoke pain or discomfort on the victim.
The writers at the National Review are echoed at The Weekly Standard, whose most prominent writers have endorsed the use of torture, as I’ve written about before. None of the major right-wing political journals seem to have a problem with erasing the fourth amendment, either, or waging war after war in throughout the Middle East, or in slandering critics of this plan.
Beating the war drums against foreign enemies? Check. Silencing dissent and exerting some control over domestic media? Check. Endorsing brutal measures to fight crime? Check. Ending freedoms at home (in the name of national security, of course)? Check.
This is what fascism looks like. Bill Buckley and his ilk have never given up their adoration for fascism. They’re obliged to question the worst, like Hitler, but that never stopped them from celebrating and defending August Pinochet and Roberto D’Aubuisson in the eighties, among many others. Brutality can be so effective, don’t you see? And don’t the noble ends justify the questionable means?
Thursday, August 24, 2006
Mr. McCarthy
How’s that approval rating looking, Drinky? Not so good. Awww. They said he might have gotten a little bump recently.
Kudos to Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, who has recently revealed a muscular new alternative energy plan.
There are some interesting pieces over at Huffingpost and Alternet about the Democratic Party being run by elitists on the DLC.
Ignorant voters in America.
Orifice once again explores new depths of McCarthyism, stating that if democrats win in November it might be a “victory for terrorists.” This is par for the course with Orifice. Olbermann skewers Orifice’s ridiculous lies about WMDs recently here, also.
Amnesty International accuses Israel of war crimes after an analysis of Israeli strikes on Lebanon in the recent conflict.
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
The Federal Court Ruling
Bush’s much-hyped aid amount to Lebanon equals…wait for it…wait for it…less than one day’s spending in Iraq. Gee, Drinky, ya think you can spare it? We give over three billion every year to Israel. You think we might be able to spare a little more for a country that just took 2.5 billion dollars in damage.
Today is August 22nd, the day neocons have decided Iran will start World War III. Look out! Everyone run for your lives!! It’s the 22nd!!! Aaaaaaaaaaaah!!!
The latest issue of Time, echoing the obedience of NBC, CBS, and ABC, makes barely a mention of the recent court ruling the NSA warrantless wiretapping program illegal. The JonBenet Ramsey case, of course, gets over a thousand words of coverage. Hillary Clinton has a novel’s worth of words devoted to her. Unbelievable. Greenwald has, as usual, a brilliant post up today about the Federal Court ruling in Detroit.
Drinky finally admits Iraq had nothing to do with September 11th.
Media Matters give David Gregory a rough ride over letting John McCain lie his ass off on Meet the Press.
Dailykos has a good post up about the questionable memory of Joementum.
Death and Destruction
McCain lies on Meet the Press. I really tire of this bullshit. Every major poll for six months in this country has said the same thing: the majority of people in this country want a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, and they want it within a year or so. McCain goes on a major news program and just says that the sun rises in the west and sets in the east. There is no way he could just be mistaken. Every major poll in America has said the same thing for six months.
Incompetence, waste, and broken promises in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Is this surprising from the president who trumpeted the No Child Left Behind Act and then abandoned it?
An Iraq timeline. Ahhh, the old quote from Rumsfeld is great: “stuff happens.”
The administration never fearmongers. But what will happen if we don’t follow the president’s plan for Iraq? “death and destruction on a scale that is almost unimaginable,” according to White House strategic initiatives director Peter H. Wehner.
I actually laughed out loud when I read that. I think quite a bit of death and destruction is “imaginable.” I think America spent 40 years in the shadow of death and destruction that might have plausibly wiped out life on Earth as we know it. I also know that there is a greater chance that a meteor will impact the Earth and wipe out continents than terrorists. I know that whatever happens in Iraq, one of a half-dozen nations around the world in utter chaos that I could name off the top of my head, the result will be something that has happened many, many times before in the history of the Earth, and, sadly, will happen again.
This concept that the US can’t leave a country is chaos because it will threaten the US is quite unique to Iraq. Successive US administrations (including this one) have ignored dozens of African countries over the past couple of generations as they have dissolved into civil war and anarchy, including, currently, the Congo, whose civil war has killed millions of people. NATO forces are currently fighting an uphill battle against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Sectarian violence continually wracks Pakistan and Sri Lanka and East Timor and the Sudan and Somalia, violence involving “islamofascists.” And in the countries of Egypt and Pakistan, countries with “stable” governments, terrorism is a regular occurrence. It seems to be forgotten within the administration that all but one of the September 11th hijackers was from Saudi Arabia, which is also where al Qaeda got the bulk of its donations from. In fact, the ties between Saudi Arabia and terrorists like al Qaeda are massive and well documented.
You won’t see Saudi Arabia attracting the same scrutiny from the administration as Iraq or Iran, though. They are an “ally.” And you won’t see the US invade Pakistan. Nor will administration officials hysterically claim that unless stability is restored to Somalia the result will be “death and destruction on a scale that is almost unimaginable.”
Somalia has no oil, and neither do any of the other countries except Saudi Arabia, whose government has been friendly to US interests for decades. Saddam Hussein regularly thumbed his nose at the US, along with Ahmadinejad. Their countries were no greater hosts to terrorism than Saudi Arabia or Pakistan. The difference was that their leaders were hostile to US interests in the region, interests that have traditionally revolved around oil and protecting Israel.
I’m sure Musharraf in Pakistan and the princes of Saudi Arabia make some effort to cooperate with US anti-terrorism efforts, but they have a lot more work to do than anybody else. And unstable nations that are havens for militants exist all throughout the Middle East and the world. Iraq is not unique. You would have trouble telling that to the administration, though.
Israel again.
David Sirota has an excellent piece about the revulsion many in Washington have regarding the people of the United States expressing their distaste for many in Washington. The revulsion usually comes in the form of a statement along the lines of a Nixonesque appeal to the silent majority who for some reason aren’t voting. Or an assertion that the voters are illegitimate. David Brooks, the conservative propagandist with the friendly face, who said that "Polarized primary voters shouldn't be allowed to define the choices in American politics.” See? Their polarized. Totally illegitimate. Or Peter Beinart of the New Republic, who praised the DLC because "The DLC remains an organization of politicians that believes the less beholden politicians are to grassroots activists, the better they will represent voters as a whole.” Absolutely. Better to be beholden to corporate interests. Better to govern by polls of the “voters as a whole,” polls that say that a majority of people want to get out of Iraq in a year or so and enact universal single-payer healthcare and spend less money on the military and more on education, because God knows that’s what the DLC stands for.
Conrad Burns speaks for the administration when he says that "the U.S. must show 'great patience and resolve' and stay in Iraq even if public support for the war continues to erode." Of course. What right do the people of the United States have to determine how long we stay in Iraq? We must be governed by noble leaders, who see further and better than us, and who can spend our taxpayer dollars and the lives of our sons and daughters until they determine it is not necessary anymore.
The New Republic is on a roll. Ryan Lizza writes that YouTube’s ability to broadcast politician’s public statements directly to the people might not be such a good thing. No one gets to edit their comments, so all the spontaneity is gone. Politicians are now actually afraid to shoot their mouths off without consideration, or to say one thing one day and another thing the next.
Driftglass has a good “Sunday Morning Coming Down” post up. Highlighted are the ridiculous comments of Joementum, one and only candidate of the Bullshit Moose Party. The war in Iraq isn’t a civil war because the army and the government are united, according to Joe. Of course, the army and the government were united in Guatemala and El Salvador’s civil wars in the eighties and no one in Washington or anywhere else doubted that there were actually civil wars that were going on in those countries, with death rates that were actually less than that of Iraq’s if the current year’s death rates keep going. Joe was a freshly-elected senator in Washington in the eighties who actually participated in the discussions as to whether to send aid to the blood-soaked military governments of those countries. Joe is actually unaware of this, as he has blacked out all memories of the eighties and all civil wars, from the Boer War to the Indonesian civil war of the 1960s, that involved a united government and military either slaughtering its own people or being powerless to stop its people from slaughtering each other. Joe has also blacked out the civil wars of Somalia in the 1980s and the current civil war in the Congo where the military and civilian forces were united but unable to control
Friday, August 18, 2006
Democracy Deficit
Some things get me really angry. They are occasionally things you might not think would get me angry, things that have a meaning beyond the superficial. This is one of them. NBC, ABC, and CBS last night had a total of 15 minutes of coverage of the JonBenet Ramsey story while they virtually ignored the verdict of the NSA case: 3 minutes was the total airtime on that story, with NBC and CBS devoting about 26 seconds each.
As Noam Chomsky has said, any dictator would admire the discipline of the US media. Stupid tabloid news gets huge airtime; one of the most controversial and important legal cases of the decade gets barely a mention. This is what you get when the media is run by corporations whose bottom line is profit: tell the people what they want to hear. Ignore the rest. And by all means, interpret news in a way that is most beneficial to the administration.
More news from the reconstruction of Iraq.
Mark Green has a good article on the democracy deficit at home.
Some belligerent nations (that also happen to sit on a lot of oil) like Iran and Venezuela must be excoriated and singled out for possible punitive action. Some belligerent nations, like China, don’t merit a response. They’re too big, and their national resources are thus largely beyond serious consideration for seizing through invasion or through political pressure to allow US companies to do the work.
Of course, Iran harbors terrorists. But, then again, so does the United States.
The point is that US foreign policy is determined by the national interest as judged by the current administration, not high-minded ideas of democracy promotion delivered as ex post facto rationalizations of decisions made for material and political gain. Do we really want this administration to determine US foreign policy (among other things) as they have done in the past?
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Wiretapping Rebuke
The justice system, moving ever so slowly and timidly towards reining in the conservative government, has ruled that the NSA warrantless wiretapping program is illegal, and the Federal judge issued an injunction to halt to the program. Some choice language from the ruling: “There are no hereditary kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution.”
Of course, this is not enough. This is the stilted system in which we live, that when the government does something blatantly illegal the perpetrators are not immediately arrested but instead citizens have to sue the government as plaintiffs, dodging the “state secrets” dismissal motions, to get the government to stop, much less arrest the people doing the crime. If you or I were caught breaking the law we would be immediately arrested and booked, maybe released on bail, and our arguments as to why the lawbreaking was justified could wait until our court date. To date no one has been arrested in the NSA wiretapping scandal.
So first the justifications for invading Iraq were WMDs and terror links. That didn’t work out so well. The Administration mentioned Iraq’s violations of UN Security Council resolutions, but when the UN wouldn’t authorize an invasion the US invaded anyway. Then the justification became democracy building. Despite the elections in Iraq, though, the violence continues and is increasing. So now the Administration is considering giving up on that, too.
Senator Orrin Hatch: the democrats getting elected is just what the terrorists want. Honestly, how many Joe McCarthy retreads are running the Republican Party?
The Deputy Prime Minister of England on President Bush’s policies: “crap.”
You can always count on Michael Medved to either lie or host a liar on his show. Today Medved has a Bush Administration official on who claimed that “hundreds” of Israelis had died from Hezbollah rockets. It’s a lie. 154 Israelis died in the recent conflict, most of them soldiers in close combat in the south of Lebanon.
National Review editor Rich Lowry is slowly coming to realize that Iraq may be another Vietnam. Amazingly enough, he says it is liberals who have been “serially wrong” about Iraq being another Vietnam, which makes sense if you understand that Iraq will not be another Vietnam until Rich Lowry says it is.
The Pentagon has commissioned a pair of secret studies about military failures in Iraq, the results of which, according to one of the authors, “won’t be pretty.”
My, how the worm has turned. Joe Scarborough, former republican congressman and current conservative host of his own MSNBC show, questions the president’s intelligence and concludes that Bush is not the leader America needs right now. Welcome to the “reality-based community,” Joe.
Tony Snow insists there is no civil war in Iraq right now. As for the thousands of civilians in Iraq that died last month, he insists that there are “A number of sectarian violence operations” going on in Iraq. As to what is the difference between a civil war and “a number of sectarian violence operations” that results in 3,400 dead civilians in one month, only Tony Snow knows. For the sake of comparison, 3,400 dead civilians a month amounts to 40,000 or so dead every year, at the current rate. In the civil war in El Salvador 70,000 or so civilians died in ten years of fighting in the eighties. Half that died in the same ten year civil war in Nicaragua.
Finally, the ever-brilliant James Wolcott delivers a stinging rebuke of the conservative establishment’s pervasive racism. Add to that some choice quotes from Bill Bennett (though it would, of course, be “ridiculous…you could abort every black baby in America and it would reduce the crime rate”) and Dennis Prager and Rush Limbaugh (“the NAACP should have riot rehearsal. They should get a liquor store and practice robberies”) and Conrad Burns (“It’s hard” to live in DC with all those “niggers”) and Trent Lott and Jesse Helms…you get the idea.
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Macaca Tuesday
Chuck Roberts of CNN apologizes for suggesting that Lamont was the al-Qaeda candidate. Kudos, Chuck.
They love us. They really love us.
Hannity has a nuclear meltdown. Is it me, or does Orifice seem a little stressed lately?
W is so popular right now the Mayor of Salt Lake City is planning on protesting his arrival.
Fox News hosts a “private investigator” who criticizes Islam for being only 1400 years old. Their next guest will be a homeless man raving about aliens.
Senator (this guy is actually a senator!) George Allen (R-VA) derisively calls an American of Indian descent working for his opponent a “macaca,” or monkey. Allen’s campaign manager later dismissed the issue with an expletive, saying Allen has “nothing to apologize for.” Allen later apologized. Nice, senator, real nice. Where are you from again? The Confederacy is over, Senator. You can’t treat the brown people like that anymore, even if they work on your plantation.
Typical right-wing hypocrisy.
This is an incredible post over at Huffingpost.com about the devastation in Lebanon.
Joe Klein, the Tom Friedman of Newsweek.
Recently LGF scooped the press. Eric Boehlert scoops them back.
Rep. John Murtha with some pithy words.
Monday, August 14, 2006
Terrorism Today
Suspects were jailed on terrorism charges today, suspected of plotting to blow up a bridge in Michigan.
A fragile cease-fire went into affect today in the Middle East.
CNN suggests Lamont might be the “al-Qaeda candidate.” Thank you, CNN.
Bush calls the liquid bomb threat a “new means of attack,” seemingly unaware of a 1995 plot that was thwarted that would have used the same means.
Friday, August 11, 2006
Bad News All Around
The UN Human Rights Council today condemned Israel for its indiscriminant attacks, but made no direct mention of Hezbollah attacks.
How’s that Job Approval Rating doing, Mr. President? Not so well.
How’s that War on Terror going? Not so well, according to 84% of a panel of experts surveyed by Foreign Policy and the Center for American Progress.
Ken Mehlman lies again.
O’Rielly has a psychotic break.
The Bush Administration submits amendments to the War Crimes Act to retroactively absolve US personnel of authorizing humiliating and degrading treatment of detainees.
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
War Crimes and Global Warming
The Bush Administration is shortchanging funding for renewable energy? No!
Israel is threatening to blast any moving vehicles in southern Lebanon.
The Huffington Post has a good summary of war crimes committed by the Bush Administration.
The former leaders of the 9/11 Commission realize their investigation was stonewalled and bent by the administration.
Tucker Carlson denies that existence of scientific consensus as to why the world is getting warmer.
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
Dumbass
Listening to the political commentary of Ehud Olmert is like listening to Sean Hannity.
Ehud Olmert snapped at European countries yesterday, telling them to stop “lecturing” him about civilian casualties, maintaining that “European countries attacked Kosovo and killed 10,000 civilians. 10,000!”
Apparently Olmert thinks that if he kills less than 10,000 civilians in Lebanon than he’s doing a good job.
First things first, Dumbass: NATO forces never killed anywhere near 10,000 civilians in Kosovo. Human Rights Watch estimated at least 500 documented cases. NATO admitted up to 1,500. Over ten thousand Albanians were killed in the conflict, most of them at the hands of Serbs.
Ehud Olmert snapped at European countries yesterday, telling them to stop “lecturing” him about civilian casualties, maintaining that “European countries attacked Kosovo and killed 10,000 civilians. 10,000!”
Apparently Olmert thinks that if he kills less than 10,000 civilians in Lebanon than he’s doing a good job.
First things first, Dumbass: NATO forces never killed anywhere near 10,000 civilians in Kosovo. Human Rights Watch estimated at least 500 documented cases. NATO admitted up to 1,500. Over ten thousand Albanians were killed in the conflict, most of them at the hands of Serbs.
Monday, August 07, 2006
Lights Out, Bob
Criticizing the worst presidential administration in history? That is not acceptable to the Heritage Foundation. Would you just look at these sons of bitches maintain ideological discipline? I love it when propaganda outlets like Heritage say they are “fair” or “research-oriented.” They will all tell you that they aren’t told what to say. That may be true; they are just fired when they say the wrong things.
California, please vote this criminal
out of office. Does he actually have to descend to the level of literally whipping women in public before you dumbasses get rid of him?
This is what happens when oil companies work in Alaska.
You are simply the dumbest president in history, Preznit Drinky.
Months after beginning a desperate smear campaign that included insulting Rachel Maddow, Bob Ney has decided he will not seek re-election. Lights out, Bob.
Alan Dershowitz understands that sometimes civilians deserve to get their legs blown off—to teach them a valuable lesson.
Hey! CNN! How about you not take Israeli estimates of Hezbollah killed at face value, especially considering we’re talking about people like Haim Ramon giving the estimates, you fucking bastards.
Saturday, August 05, 2006
HRW Report
Breaking news from the Middle East: The US and France have agreed to a peace plan for the Middle East crisis. This will be the draft of a new UN Security Council resolution.
Human Rights Watch has just released a report castigating the Israeli government for “a systematic failure by the IDF to distinguish between combatants and civilians” caused by strikes with “limited or dubious military gain” targeted using questionable intelligence. HRW’s description of these strikes ranges from “the IDF consistently tolerated a high level of civilian casualties for questionable military gain” all the way to describing Israel striking civilian areas “with no apparent military target” and “return strikes on rescuers” that suggests “war crimes.”
The report is excellent and worth reading. Some pithy sentences: “To date, the chief cause of civilian deaths from the Israeli campaign is targeted strikes on civilian homes in villages of Lebanon’s South… According to the Lebanese Ministry of Social Affairs, the IDF destroyed or damaged up to 5,000 civilian homes in air strikes during the first two weeks of the war.” Oh, but, you must understand, Israel is doing its best to avoid civilian casualties.
Kenneth Roth, the director of Human Rights Watch, writes an excellent article on the subject. The obligations to respect international humanitarian law, including to refrain from deliberate or indiscriminate attacks on civilians and to take all feasible precautions against civilian casualties, persist regardless of the conduct of one's opponent.
HRW also criticizes the Israeli government for their “investigation” of the Qana Massacre. I honestly am not aware of a developed nation that conducts so many whitewashes of its own behavior.
News from Orange County: a man found babbling and rolling around naked on a neighborhood street eventually led police to a massive marijuana stash, including “Five pounds of the weed packaged for sale, $10,000 in cash, a 3-foot-tall hookah and a cache of martial arts weapons were found at the house.” Boo-yah! That’s pretty much all you need, baby.
An article about the administration’s shallow efforts to foster democracy in Lebanon.
Middle East and Secretary Lunatic
Has anyone noticed recently that the Middle East seems to be out of control?
Israel resumed its operations in Lebanon. A bomb hit some workers unloading refrigerated vegetables and killed about 28 of them. Two houses that were leveled by Israeli air strikes buried “more than 50” people, according to security officials. Five more Lebanese were killed in air strikes on the northern coast of Lebanon where Hezbollah has little control or presence.
Hezbollah retaliated with 200 poorly aimed rockets, killing four in Israel.
The bloody, day-to-day calculus of this struggle doesn’t change, as I have written before. Over 80 Lebanese civilians died today, compared to four Israelis killed. Several Hezbollah fighters also died and between three and six Israeli soldiers.
The UN also reminded the world in a report today that 175 Palestinians have died during Israeli incursions into Gaza and the West Bank since the kidnapping of the Israeli soldier over a month ago.
Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi marched in Baghdad today in a show of support for Hezbollah.
Meanwhile, Preznit Drinky decided that now was a good time for a vacation.
Representative Conyers, the ranking democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, has assembled a 350 page report compiling the accumulated evidence that the Bush administration has thumbed its nose at the nation’s laws and the Constitution.
FAIR has assembled a beautiful summary of Tom Friedman’s never-ending six-month “window” for Iraq to stabilize. Friedman has finally decided that Iraq isn’t going to stabilize in the near future. Welcome to reality, dumbass. Donuts and coffee are in the back. How many Pulitzers have you won again?
Paul Krugman echoes what’s been on many of our minds for years: “centrism is for suckers.” That means you, Joementum.
Secretary Rumsfeld’s comments before Sen. Clinton deserve some exploration, because they are really incredible. The transcript’s at Raw News. I am, sadly enough, not making this up.
Senator Clinton: In Afghanistan, your Administration's credibility is also suspect. In December 2002, you said, “The Taliban are gone." In December 2004, President Bush said, the “Taliban no longer is in existence." However this February, DIA Director Lieutenant General Maples said that in 2005 attacks by the Taliban and other anti-coalition forces were up 20 percent from 2004 levels and these insurgents were a greater threat to the Afghan government's effort to expand its authority than in any time since 2001…
Secretary Rumsfeld: I don't know who said what about where the Taliban had gone, but in fact the Taliban that were running Afghanistan and ruling Afghanistan were replaced, and they were replaced by an election that took place in that country, and in terms of a government or a governing entity, they were gone - and that's a fact. Are there still Taliban around? You bet. Are they occupying safe havens in Afghanistan and other places, correction in Pakistan and other places? Certainly they are. Is the violence up? Yes. Does the violence tend to be up during the summer and spring, summer, and fall months? Yes it does. And it tends to decline during the winter period. Does that represent failed policy? I don't know, I would say not.
Are you an incompetent Secretary of Defense? Yes. Listen, ladies and gentleman, the Secretary of Defense seems to think that the increasing violence in Afghanistan is due to warm weather. The senator from New York also presented the secretary with some simple quotes: the president, for example, saying the “Taliban is no longer in existence.” The president did not say “the Taliban is no longer governing the country.” Secretary Rumsfeld said “the Taliban is gone.” He did not say “the Taliban is gone from government.”
Rumsfeld simply refuses to acknowledge errors in judgment and premature celebration.
As far as his estimation that warm weather is responsible for the upsurge in violence, in words of the secretary, “My goodness.” USA Today reports that for the first time since the invasion “Taliban-led militants regained effective control over large tracts of their southern heartland.” They have also “adopted destructive terrorist tactics seen in Iraq and have launched major attacks, this month even managing to briefly control two southern towns — unprecedented during the previous four years.” The USA Today characterization is echoed all over the place, but never fear. This is all due to a little seasonal variation in the air temperature.
Who is this idiot talking to? Honestly, I truly tire of Rumsfeld’s refusal to simply own up to his ridiculous predictions of the past, followed by blithe analysis that “some things are going bad, some things are going well. Do I have any idea how much progress we’ve made? No. Do I know how much longer this will take? Nope. Could the situation completely deteriorate? You bet. But we have very talented people working on this.”
This guy is throwing $110 billion of your taxpayer dollars every year into a country that might stabilize, or it might collapse. Whatever. We need another $110 billion, please.
Thursday, August 03, 2006
Iraq Testimony
Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Secretary Rumsfeld and Generals Pace and Abizaid discussed the situation in Iraq. They were cautiously optimistic ("Am I optimistic whether or not Iraqi forces, with our support, with the backing of the Iraqi government, can prevent the slide to civil war? My answer is yes, I'm optimistic that that slide can be prevented”) but at the same time acknowledged that the current escalation of violence was unforeseen (“Pace said he did not anticipate one year ago that Iraq would now be in danger of descending into civil war”).
Pardon me for my skepticism, but every prediction these guys have made has turned out to be crap. From Secretary Rumsfeld (We know where the weapons of mass destruction are” and it will last “six day, six weeks, I doubt six months”) to his generals, these guys have sunk hundreds of billions of dollars of your money into a country in which the violence is escalating, the electrical grid in Baghdad is still way below pre-war levels, a country whose democracy might go the way of Egypt’s “democracy,” a country whose representatives might prove to be very antithetical to US interests. Rumsfeld, Bush, and the entire conservative movement have always insisted that they know Iraq will turn around any day now, when in reality, as they occasionally admit, they have no idea.
All of this while Afghanistan charts a similar descent into the Abyss, and Secretary Rumsfeld refuses to offer a frank acknowledgement of the situation. Pay no attention to the country we left to the Taliban, ladies and gentleman.
Our staunchest ally, Britain, seems to be less optimistic than our military leaders about Iraq.
Conservative blogs, Fox News, and right-wing talkers like Michael Medved have advanced the conspiracy theory that the Qana massacre wasn’t really Israel’s fault. Unbelievable. Thinkprogress has a good deconstruction of this.
President Ahmadinejad once again suggests that the destruction if Israel would solve the Middle East crisis.
Media Matters has a good deconstruction of David Horowitz’s latest book, an effort to smear George Soros.
Despite the US media calling the Mexican election for Felipe Calderón, a review of the evidence suggests voting fraud. Let the ballot counting run its course.
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
Lebanon and Congress
Hezbollah fighters have resisted the Israel incursion into southern Lebanon. 8,000 Israeli troops are reportedly involved. Hezbollah has fired about 200 rockets into Israel over the past day, killing one Israeli.
Israeli forces partially destroyed the Dar al-Hikma hospital in Baalbek in the course of fighting with Hezbollah militants. It’s unclear whether the militants were using the hospital for cover or not. It is a violation of the Geneva Conventions to fire on or destroy hospitals. It is also a violation of those conventions to use hospitals for cover or to fire from that location. Ehud Olmert denied that the hospital was a hospital, saying "there are no patients there and there is no hospital, this is a base of the Hezbollah in disguise." Hezbollah agreed that there were no patients in the hospital. That doesn’t mean the building isn’t a neutral site, though. The point of the convention against striking hospitals is to ensure that injured people can receive life-saving medical treatment. Damaging a hospital (empty or not) can prevent people from accessing that treatment.
Israel and President Bush continued to insist on a peacekeeping force being in place before a cease-fire, to the consternation of Europe and the Arab League. France has refused to send peacekeepers into a war zone still active with fighting.
On the domestic front, Preznit Drinky submitted a bill to Congress that would authorize the detainment of US citizens indefinitely and without access to civilian courts. I have no further comment.
Roy Blunt, GOP majority whip in the House, said that if he remains as majority whip no global-warming legislation will pass the House. We just don’t know enough to doing anything meaningful, he lied.
I just don’t know how to describe this one. The Washington Times has followed the lead of Powerline to condemn Rep. Dingell for failure to condemn Hezbollah, which he actually did a sentence or two after the one they quoted. Unbelievable.
I have no problem with the advice in the US 101st Airborn’s battalion headquarters in Ramadi ("be polite, be professional, and have a plan to kill everyone you meet"). I just think that this is an excellent example of the precarious position our troops are in.
Susan Dudley is the new head of the Office of Management and Budget.
The Swift Boat smear machine is back in gear, this time targeting John Murtha. Good Lord, look at the internal discipline in the militant military veteran group. Larry Bailey, President of the Veterans for “Truth” organization, said Murtha is being targeted because in May Murtha said the investigation into Haditha would show that Marines had killed Iraqi civilians in cold blood. Bailey said those remarks were “without any due process.” Piling on in the effort to smear Marines “without any due process,” AOL News reported today that “Evidence collected on the deaths of 24 Iraqis in Haditha supports accusations that U.S. Marines deliberately shot the civilians.”
I have heard Orifice getting the noose ready for Murtha for daring to report on what his contacts inside the military were telling him: that the evidence points to cold blooded murder in Haditha. Bailey said that “We decided to get back together and put together a new organization to hold John Murtha accountable for what he said.” To watch this veterans group in action is to marvel at their arbitrary vindictiveness.
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
It's Their Job to Lie
House Majority Leader John Boehner: it’s my job to lie.
Powerline edits audio clip to lie to readers? No! I would never believe that! You have got to be kidding me. This is grade school stuff. This is the crudest deception I’ve heard of since…John Boehner.
Thinkprogress slams Bush for refusing to acknowledge the stress his policies have put the US military under.
