Outside the Spectrum

Cave In

2007-05-27T18:35:00.000-05:00

You might be shocked to learn that democrats haved caved on the Iraq funding bill until September, though the leaders, as The Hammer pointed out, voted the right way. Did I not predict this when Nancy Pelosi, three monthes ago, told the dems in the House they would have to pas a funding bill sans deadlines if they couldn't pass the bill they were working on?

John McDumbass may think he can outflank Obama and Clinton to the right on this issue, but only a man with suspect arithmetic skills could think he could outflank a 2/3 majority of the country by taking the position of the extreme 1/3 and have it turn out to be a politically clever move. Arizona isn't exactly the reddest of the red states, either. I feel a little sorry for Arizonans, being treated like idiots by their senator (shit, Jon Kyl isn't the best, either).

Aaah, Republicans. When you go home this weekend, when leave office in a year and a half, the only thing in store for you is opprobrium.

More Torquemada

2007-03-27T15:54:00.000-05:00

ATTORNEY GENERAL GONZALES: What I know is that there began a process of evaluating strong performers, not-as-strong performers, and weak performers. And so far as I knew my chief of staff was involved in the process of determining who were the weak performers. Where were the districts around the country where we could do better for the people in that district, and that's what I knew. But again, with respect to this whole process, like every CEO, I am ultimately accountable and responsible for what happens within the department. But that is in essence what I knew about the process; was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on. That's basically what I knew as the Attorney General.

That was March 13th of this year. Of course, since then it has come out that Gonzales was at a meeting where these firings were discussed on November 27th of 2006.

“…was not involved in any discussions about what was going on” indeed. Also note, in the same USA Today article, “Internal e-mails disclosed by the Justice Department have indicated that Sampson worked closely with the White House in developing the plan for removal.” That would be Karl Rove, Harreit Miers, and maybe the president himself involved in firing prosecutors whose performance was hardly bad. And note the emails that indicated that a day after Carol Lam announced she would be pursuing Hookergate Kyle Sampson shot off an email saying that she was a “problem.”

This administration is rotten from crotch to crown.

U.S. Attorney Scandal

2007-03-20T16:03:00.000-05:00

Mr. Kyle Sampson, you DO indeed have “a real problem.”

Sweet baby Jesus. So many scandals, so little time. Kyle Sampson, who wisely resigned as soon as this scandal broke, is on the record in these emails asserting that the administration had “a real problem” with a US attorney who indicted and convicted Duke Cunningham (R-CA) of the biggest bribery case in US history and was pursuing an investigation into Hookergate, an investigation into crooked Iraq War contracts and hookers (quite a quid pro quo, eh?) involving high-ranking CIA officials. She announced the continuance of that investigation on May 10th. On May 11th Sampson indicated in his email that she was a “problem.” She was later fired.

Democrats (and some republicans) have responded with outrage and calls for an investigation and the ouster of Alberto Gonzales. Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Leahy has been adamant in his call for subpoenas of officials involved like Karl Rove and Harriet Miers. White House Counsel Fred Fielding just sent a letter to Congress saying that he would “permit” Congressional interviews of these people but that "Such interviews would be private and conducted without the need for an oath, transcript, subsequent testimony or the subsequent issuance of subpoenas.”

If I were a democrat on Capital Hill I would tell Fielding to stuff his offer and issue subpoenas. Democrats have already stated that they would insist on subpoenas and oaths, but now Senator Schumer sounds ambivalent, saying that he will “try” to make those things happen.

Presidential Screed

2007-01-29T23:11:00.000-06:00

Robert Parry of Consortium News has an excellent piece up on Alternet concerning the President’s State of the Union Speech. Some choice excerpts:

To heighten the fears of Americans, he again misrepresented the goals, capabilities and even the identities of the enemy. He blurred diverse and even antagonistic Muslim Sunni and Shiite groups, shoving them under the umbrella of "the Islamist radical movement."
"The Shia and Sunni extremists are different faces of the same totalitarian threat," Bush said. "Whatever slogans they chant, when they slaughter the innocent they have the same wicked purposes. They want to kill Americans, kill democracy in the Middle East, and gain the weapons to kill on an even more horrific scale."

That last paragraph is quite a masterpiece of either boneheaded political thinking or deliberate deception. Shia and Sunni extremists hate each other: its quite stretch to call them “different faces” on anything except some ridiculously broad category of people, like “violent people” or “violent Muslims.” Then he calls them a “totalitarian threat,” which is ridiculous. Terrorists are not members of some massive, fascist industrial state like WWII Germany. They are brigands and religious extremists. But we know “they have the same wicked purposes. They want to kill Americans” blah blah blah. Right. And Hexbollah is such a threat because they bombed a marine barracks in Lebanon 23 YEARS ago. Most of our soldiers weren’t even alive when that happened.

This administration is an ongoing, never-ending, slow motion disaster. But there are those who support it still, though they number 28%, last time I checked. Glenn Greenwald has a ruinously effective post here about the likes of Bill Kristol. Have watched Greenwald do this for a year or more, I must say, it’s starting to look too easy for him, like watching Lennox Lewis whip Tony Tucker over and over.

The Syndicate

2007-01-28T10:28:00.000-06:00

When I and a few others say that this president is neglecting the so-called “War on Terror” this is what we mean. And this. Afghanistan and Pakistan spiraling out of control, the president actually drawing troops out of Afghanistan as this happens, worldwide terror attacks rising every year, etc.

Darth Cheney explains to the curious Newsweek reporter: “We are a criminal syndicate. I don’t know why Chuck Hagel has gone off the reservation, but our code of silence, as articulated by Ronald Reagan, our omerta, stipulates that we may not point out when a member of the family is lying, wrong, or doing something illegal.”

That is what is known as a code of silence, ladies and gentlemen. According to wikipedia, when someone "witnesses or is privy to the knowledge of an illegal or embarrassing act, but puts comradery, or loyalty to the 'unit' above informing the public or the proper authorities."

The Republican Party usually operates like a criminal syndicate, as I have written before. This is what I'm talking about.

Torquemada

2007-01-20T11:51:00.000-06:00

He’s just playing with you now. It’s funny, now, to him. In the words of Mcjoan, “willfully obtuse” to the point of being impeachable. In my words, insultingly coy. What kind of theater is it to ask a ridiculous liar like him questions at all?

Apologists and War

2007-01-20T10:39:00.000-06:00

Dinesh D’Souza has a particularly repulsive book out now, blaming 9/11 on liberals, of course. The reviewer at the New York Times Book Review rightly pans it as a “national disgrace” and calls D’Souza a “childish thinker.” I couldn’t agree more, though I’m sure the members of his political movement like good friend Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh will be happy to support his every putrid argument. If you would like to purchase this slurry shit of a novel, you can also get a deal on Jonah Goldberg’s masterwork Liberal Fascism: the Totalitarian Temptation from Mussolini to Hillary Clinton here. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the Chicago Tribune for syndicating such an eminent scholar as Jonah Goldberg.

This stuff speaks for itself. I love this quote: “The legislation also prohibited some of the worst abuses of detainees like mutilation and rape, but granted the president leeway to decide which other interrogation techniques are permissible.” Oh, well, thank God we outlawed mutilation and rape. Now we can be assured that the electrodes and waterboarding will all be used decently and fairly.

Hows about that surge plan? Retired generals no likey.

How about Carter’s new book? How about the wiped off the map phrase?

Tues.

2007-01-09T16:40:00.000-06:00

Our president has engaged in Soviet-style propaganda efforts for a long time, purging the military and intelligence services of dissenters (“what is he, some kind of defeatist?”) and then “listening” to his hand-picked associates.

He gets $200 million for what?

A little window into what lies ahead when Congress begins investigating and issuing subpoenas and the administration refuses to comply with the subpoenas.

…And in the comments section of the above article, a man (?) who echoes my own thoughts:

It baffles me as a non-citizen of the USA that there are still people like Alternet who believe their democracy actually still works and that the evil within their nation has to be fought from within it. How can you fight it from within a system that is so thoroughly compromised it no longer works?

Indeed, my friend, indeed. Check out this post from Arianna Huffington. The Preznit os just off the deep end. Or check out this one about Tony Snow: nobody believes anything Sec. Snow says anymore. He is the American equivalent of Baghdad Bob. Editor and Publisher basically just rolls its eyes whenever he talks now.

Gary Hart lays it down.

Embarassment

2007-01-08T17:15:00.000-06:00

Progress? What Progress? LT General Odierno, the operational commander in Iraq, says that even with a troop surge it might take another few years. At least he’s honest. I’ll bet the president doesn’t mention any specific time period in his speech Wed. night.

Pajamas Media: you are an embarrassment. Where’s Rathergate now?

Spare Us

2007-01-06T10:27:00.000-06:00

What the fuck is your problem?

Are you honestly waiting for a plan to win the war from the most incompetent, dishonest, criminal president of all time?

Are you seriously looking to George W. Bush for leadership?

Perhaps you enjoyed his prepared response to Hurricane Katrina? Or perhaps you thought his leadership in the war thus far has been so honest and effective you just wanted more, is that it?

The president is in the midst of preparing to ask for a troop surge. Instead of “listening” to his generals, who don’t want a troop surge, he’s jettisoning them and installing generals that will ask for a troop surge. Abizaid and Casey are out, Fallon and Patraeus are in. This part of his job was always dumbshit kabuki theater. The president always claimed to listen to “the CIA” or “his generals” when in reality he chose which ones to listen to. Then he or Sec. Von Rumsfeld promoted the generals that agreed with them. Then he listened to his top generals tell him what he wanted to hear.

The joke about the president listening to “his” generals was always Soviet-style beaurocratic theater. The president picks his generals. Of course he listens to them. It’s kind of like the president’s office assuring the public the president hadn’t asked John Roberts about abortion. Of course he hadn’t. His people had read everything Roberts had ever written since he was 6 years old. They had interviewed everyone the guy had ever known. When they were getting ready for a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court they investigated Roberts so thoroughly they knew how many times he wipes his ass when he gets off the toilet. They knew his favorite sexual position and which side he sleeps on at night. They knew his Select Comfort sleep number, for fuck’s sake. They didn’t need to put him through some 1 hour interview to vet him.

SO shut up about Preznit Drinky “listening” to fucking anybody. Just shut up. Spare me the “Preznit Stumbly Wumbly is meeting with Congressional leaders to listen” bullshit, because this is ridiculous. We have seen this story before. President Coke Job McTrustfund is going to “listen” to everyone publicly telling him to please stop fucking up this country and then he’s going to mysteriously come to the conclusion that a troop surge, which just so happens to be his favorite plan, is the way to go.

I have an idea. Send Nancy Pelosi, John McCain, Barack Obama, and Trent Lott a simple little email:

President Bush’s job or yours. You choose.

woohoo

2007-01-05T16:01:00.000-06:00

So the new congress is underway, and while I’m happy Nancy Pelosi is the new speaker, I must say I’m not inspired by her leadership. She comes from pretty much the most democratic district in the nation, encompassing most of San Francisco, though her political positions are significantly rightward of her constituency. This is a disturbing dynamic that is echoed in most of the democratically-controlled districts in the nation. A majority of the country wants a pullout. A vast majority of the troops want to be out within a year. The vast majority of Iraqis want US troops out of their country in the same time period. These polls have not changed for a year. Of course, what does it matter what people want? Drinky wants a troop increase, and congressional democrats have displayed no stomach for doing what they can to stop the war: defund it.

If the war was defunded the president would have to withdraw the troops. Pelosi and other double-crossers in the Democratic Party have resorted to the sophistry of “We need to give our soldiers everything they need in the field.”

No, we need to give our soldiers everything they need to get out of Iraq, not everything they need to fight for the failed policy of a stubborn, misguided, and deceitful president against the will of America and the Iraqi people. But why champion that position when you can defy the will of your constituents, the majority of America, and the majority of Iraqis, eh, Pelosi?

False News strikes again. How do you “leak” information that was published a decade ago, Hannity? How do you characterize tacit admissions as “no evidence,” Novak?

New 23rd

2006-12-23T12:16:00.000-06:00

Efrain Rios Montt and Oscar Humberto Mejia Victores slaughtered tens of thousands when they controlled Guatemala in the 1980s. Now they face trial in Spain on charges of genocide. The Guatemalan government probably won’t extradite them, just as the Chilean government was merciful towards Augusto Pinochet, as the Argentine government was merciful towards the former generals of that junta after they left power in 1983, as the Brazilian…you get the idea. Moderate “democratic” governments have shown no desire to punish former leaders of their own country, even when they were guilty of genocide. The stench of corruption still hangs over Argentina, El Salvador, Chile, Brazil, and certainly Guatemala.

Saparmurat Niyazov was my favorite dictator. He ruled Turkmenistan with an iron fist, making himself “President for Life” in 1999 and building a cult of personality around himself that not only included pictures of himself everywhere but also included a 200 foot tall monument topped with a 60 foot golden statue of himself that always rotated to face the sun. He renamed a month of the year after himself. He got grown men to call him “The Great Leader.” He died last week at the age of 66. RIP, you delusional, psychotic bastard.

What’s special, though, is how his little energy-rich nation was treated by the other great nations of the world. They loved the crazy bastard. They needed his country’s energy. They didn’t really care about democracy in Turkmenistan, for God’s sake. Why bother. It’sTurkmenistan. After he died Russia, the EU, and the United States all basically said “We don’t really care if a democracy replaces a tyrant in Turkmenistan. We just want you Neanderthals to keep the natural gas flowing.” You see, they’re a little skittish that all those energy contracts they negotiated with the dead man might be “renegotiated.” And I can tell you, as a citizen of a nation that has tossed dozens of governments that were uncooperative, there is nothing big business detests more than renegotiating a profitable contract with some piss ant, uppity democracy that just took over from one of our puppet dictators, or, as President Roosevelt said of Somoza of Nicaragua, one of “our bastards.”

The marines involved in Haditha have been charged with murder, officially, as Rep. Murtha predicted. Of course, warbloggers and fascist lunatics like Sean Hannity roasted Murtha for daring to actually say that the circumstances around Haditha looked suspicious. As usual, Blue Texan at Glenn Greenwald’s site has the post to read on the subject.

Why is it hard to find advertisers for Air America when its ratings are huge?

He's Gone LOCO!

2006-12-22T01:00:00.000-06:00

Scarborough and mainstream journalists from the Atlantic, New Republic, and MSNBC come to the conclusion Bush is “delusional” as he dismisses the advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell, and General Abizaid and insists more troops will be sent to Iraq. General Abizaid announces he will be quitting in the near future. Next: the wheels COMPLETELY fall off the Bush Administration, the President announces he is receiving direction straight from aliens, and Elliott Abrams strangles the president in his sleep to give the GOP a chance at winning the 2008 presidential election.

Pinochet's Legacy

2006-12-21T23:25:00.000-06:00

Augusto Pinochet died recently. He was an immensely important figure in western history, though not merely because of his career. He was, in the end, just another South American strongman who ruled for eighteen years in Chile. In that sense he was very ordinary.

What was special about Pinochet was how bitterly he divided his fascist American supporters from the remainder of people who have not yet bartered their souls to Moloch. Pinochet was brought into power via a CIA-supported coup in 1973, after years of the Nixon Administration attempting to overthrow the democratically-elected government of Chile both through covert (and illegal) efforts to arm, fund, and encourage elements of the army in Chile and through overt efforts to wage economic war on Chile and ruin its economy. Chile’s economy did go south, and the army did stage a coup, and Pinochet quickly asserted his supremacy.

Judging by the preponderance of dictators in Central and South America I might normally dismiss the rise of a Pinochet in Chile as just more evidence that Latins are so poor and violent their governments devolve into dictatorships like the manifestation some kind of congenital birth defect in the Spanish-speaking world or the will of God. But Pinochet was different. America was largely responsible for his creation.

Pinochet’s regime proceeded to slaughter several thousand dissidents and suspected leftists. Tens of thousands more were tortured over his 18 year reign. The Right in America was quick to embrace Pinochet, however, because he had overthrown a leftist President, enacted free market reforms for the economy, and was a staunch anti-Communist. The Ford Administration and Henry Kissinger were quick to send aid to the budding dictator, even to the extent that Ford violated Ted Kennedy’s bill capping aid to Chile at around 40 million. Ford doubled that and sent it anyway, in a move that would foreshadow Reagan’s illegal funding of some similarly unsavory Latin murderers. Kissinger perjured himself in front of Congress when reporting on how the Nixon Administration had aided Pinochet as part of Congress’s hearing in the mid seventies on the abuses of the CIA. The Ford Administration and the CIA in general quickly established operational relations with that of Pinochet’s dictatorship and his secret police. William F Buckley and the conservative establishment were quick to defend Pinochet, as they defended and celebrated the likes of D’Aubuisson of El Salvador, or the Contras, or, Hell, any dictatorship or motley band of cutthroats who were willing to defend property rights and fight Marxists in this hemisphere. Even, by the 1980s, as it became painfully obvious how many people Pinochet had killed and tortured and how uninterested he was in “restoring democracy” after he had run the country as his personal fiefdom for seven years and more the Right still sang his praises and defended him. Elliott Abrams, the smirking, venomous assistant Secretary of State who was the Reagan Administration’s triggerman for Iran Contra also was instrumental in justifying and arranging for Reagan’s financial assistance and trade relations with Pinochet’s government. Abrams wrote many assessments of Pinochet’s Orwellian police state that were ugly brutalizations of the truth as a defense of the Administration’s financial aid and trade relations. He would write ten paragraphs discussing what a visionary leader Pinochet was because of his Chicago-style free-market reforms, and then he might spare a paragraph at the end with an oh-so-gentle mention that Pinochet was “working towards” restoring democracy. Yeah, he was getting around to it. The Pinochet government’s human rights record was “improving”—that was Elliott’s favorite. He said that for years about El Salvador’s military government in the eighties as they slaughtered 70,000 of their own people in their counterinsurgency effort. He said that about the Contras, too. He loved that one. The ever-improving human rights record, using cooked statistics and witnesses that were the butcherers’ cousins and friends. The Reagan Administration sent massive aid to them all. Margaret Thatcher was right there by his side.

The rest of the world was not so pleased. Because of his role in overthrowing Chile’s democratically-elected government Kissinger can not travel to Chile or Spain, and I doubt he would roll the dice in England, either, where British authorities arrested Pinochet at the request of a Spanish judge. If he were to travel abroad to these countries he would be arrested. International pressure mounted on Chile through the 1980s. Even Elliott started sounding peevish in his State Department reports late in the Reagan Administration. Pinochet agreed to hold a referendum on his dictatorship in 1988. He lost. As it became clear from election returns that he was going to lose the referendum he gave an order to the Chilean Army to close the voting sites and annul the referendum. For once the other generals of the ruling junta refused. He was allowed to declare himself head of the military and “Senator for Life” in a pathetic and transparent effort to shield himself legally from prosecution for his crimes. It never worked. Neither Spain nor England recognized his diplomatic status as protecting him from charges. Eventually Spanish and Chilean courts declined to prosecute him for crimes in the last 8 years of his life because of his poor health and dementia.

As an unimportant afterward, Pinochet was later found to have secreted $27 million away that he siphoned off the government of Chile when he ruled it.

Pinochet was a murderer, a poor student who became a colorless bureaucrat of a general who devolved into a tyrant. His family has said they would not raise a tomb that could be defiled. They, at least, know where Pinochet stands in the estimation of his people and the World.

Since Pinochet left power the Right no longer had a use for him, and dictators that are no longer useful to their American masters do not meet good ends: just ask Saddam Hussein, Manuel Noreiga, Haji Suharto, or Rafael Trujillo. Thus the positive press the fiend used to enjoy in America in the 1980s began to get more critical over the last sixteen years. What was tacitly admitted in the 1980s became the entire subject of articles in newspapers and periodicals: Pinochet had been a bloody tyrant. Bravely left defending the ramparts of Castle Apologia was William F Buckley, who continued to pen apologias for Pinochet as of 1998, when Pinochet was arrested in England.

Well the worm has finally turned. The Economist, a bastion of conservative establishment thought, wrote a eulogy for Pinochet that was less than complimentary. It was pathetic in that they actually framed it as somewhat controversial that they were asserting that Pinochet was a monster when it was only controversial in the craziest 10% of America or Chile, but that’s OK. They came around, after all…33 years after he started his reign of terror, true, but they came around.

Even WFB, in a sullen, miserly way, grudgingly conceded that in some ways Pinochet had been bad. Of course, Buckley can’t admit that without lying about what Pinochet did seven times and mischaracterizing what Chile was like five more times, but one of Buckely’s ass-licking manservants over at the National Review finally tapped the vile bastard on the shoulder and informed him that defending Pinochet had become unacceptable sometime around the time Punky Brewster went off the air.

I take little pleasure in the fact that Pinochet died, as he left power years ago and was never punished for his crimes. And don’t say like The Economist that that’s a small point; tell that to the Mossad who hunted Eichmann down in Argentina decades after the Holocaust and kidnapped him to stand trial in Israel.

What is left is to ensure that Pinochet’s lackeys, enablers, and defenders suffer the fate he should have. Chile has a long way to go before justice is achieved, but there’s no statue of limitations for murder, in Chile or the United States.

We have a long way to go in America, too. The WFBs of America are free to say whatever they like, but it is a sad fact that defenders of people like Pinochet aren’t shunned and derided like Holocaust deniers and white supremacists. Anyone who aided Pinochet should be brought to justice, whether American or Chilean. In 1998 Salon published a far more fitting summary of Pinochet’s significance: “He became an object of adoration for William Buckley, the editors of the Wall Street Journal, the reporters of the New York Times, the claque of conservatives at Heritage and Cato and the Baroness Maggie Thatcher… Chileans no longer need to hold tight to the faint, fading words of Salvador Allende. They are now free to publicly remember Pinochet. To recoil in horror and disgust. To scorn and despise him. And with a bit of luck -- to see him judged and condemned.”

Indeed. I wish that the criminals who supported Pinochet could face the same fate Pinochet was willing to offer Salvador Allende as the coup was completed. Allende, the democratically elected president of Chile, trapped and under fire with his bodyguard in the presidential palace, was clearly on the verge of either surrender or extermination. Carvajal, another coup plotter, suggested that Allende be guaranteed passage out of the country if he surrendered. "He can be flown out of the country," Pinochet said, "but then, old boy, while he's flying, the airplane falls out of the sky."

That’s the Right’s hero. The same General who, in the months following the coup, ordered suspected supporters of the former president rounded up in a soccer stadium, interrogated, shot in the head, and buried in unmarked graves.

RIP, Augusto. If you had a grave I would spit on it, exhume your body, feed it to dogs, and return the coffin to the people of Chile to save “the Chilean government the price of more nails,” as you said of the people you thought should be “congratulated” for burying the disappeared two to a grave.

And Fuck you, too, William Fucking Buckley.

Cry

2006-12-12T19:46:00.000-06:00

Whiny titty baby cries about the Iraq Study Group report.

I don’t much care what the Iraqi government thinks about anything, any more than I ever really kept track of what the Vichy French government thought about anything in World War II. Pathetic, propped up governments organized and run by an occupying foreign power are contemptible, at best.The ISG has been alternatively attacked as partisan, “not serious,” “veiled surrender,” etc. Of course it is. It called the Preznit’s strategy a “failure” and recommended a withdrawal in the near future, among other things.

James Baker: surrender monkey!

The ISG

2006-12-10T12:29:00.000-06:00

So now that the Iraq Study Group has come out and Drinky has summarily dismissed their ideas and, yet, desperately latched on to a few ideas he agrees with (“the Earth is round,” “the sun rises in the East and sets in the West,” “the United States needs to do better”) I and other commentators have come to a question.

When do we get to storm the White House with torches and drag the Preznit out by his large and irregularly-shaped ears?

Steve Young points to a fact that many have noticed: among many other things, the ISG points out that the White House was systematically and purposefully under-reporting the numbers of deaths and acts of violence in Iraq. Many others have noted it as well.

Let me put this in language more plain: the President and his people were lying their asses off.

So now that “crazy” estimate from the Lancet people of civilians killed (650,000) seems a lot less crazy when you figure that the Preznit’s people guesstimated 30-60,000 dead only counting ten percent of the dead.

Ridiculous. Impeachable. This presidency has surpassed routine badness: its existence long ago became an insult to the brave soldiers and patriots who defend us, a blemish on the country, a stain on our history, a blight on the World, an affront to the Constitution, a mockery of Christianity, and an insult to God.

The ISG’s caustic analysis of the Preznit’s work is remarkable, to me, because this was a bipartisan group made of Washington insiders. Truly, excoriation in Washington only comes when the president fucks up as badly as this one has.

News

2006-12-04T18:03:00.000-06:00

The first four headlines on Yahoo this morning:

• Bush accepts U.N. Ambassador Bolton's resignation
• Annan: Iraqis worse off than under Saddam• Chavez vows more radical socialism after election win
• Video images show harsh treatment of Padilla in custody

It is NOT a good day to be Preznit Drinky.

Dec 1 Update

2006-12-01T15:58:00.000-06:00

Big Oil gears up the massive money effort to influence lawmakers. But, oh, industry doesn’t overly effect government. That’s just “free speech.” That, in fact, is $100 million dollars worth of “free” speech.

Civil War in Iraq? Not according to FOX News, but most sane political scientist beg to differ.

Condi Rice is either stupid or is lying her ass off. My bet: lying her ass off.

Errata Tuesday

2006-11-21T19:55:00.000-06:00

   Yet another poll in Iraq showing that Iraqis want the same thing—the rapid exit of U.S. troops from their country.

   W is protested in Indonesia and his father is verbally assaulted in Abu Dhabi for...well, being Drinky's father.

   More evidence that right-wing think tanks help run the country.

Robots!

2006-11-12T04:52:00.000-06:00

This just in from Driftglass--robots think we taste like bacon.

Aaaaaah! The great human-robot war has begun!

And the US vetoes another security council resolution to protect Israel from political censure even as the turmoil in the Occupied Territories continues with little coverage in the United States.

Schadenfreude

2006-11-11T11:50:00.000-06:00

The only thing sweeter than Daniel Ortega winning the elections in Nicaragua recently is listening to the Chicago Tribune cry about it.

Mwahahahahahahaha! Oh, sweet schadenfreude! Oh, yes! Yes! Or, in the words of Cartman from South Park: "mmmm, yes, the tears of unfathomable sadness, mmmm, they taste so good!" FSLN para siempre!

But that evil Daniel Ortega! He might withdraw Nicaragua from CAFTA! He might have friendly relations with (*gasp*) Hugo Chavez! Nooooooooooo!

Lush the Waterboy

2006-11-10T16:33:00.000-06:00

   Rush Limbaugh finally admitted he won’t be “carrying the water” anymore for people he doesn’t think “deserve to have their water carried.” He feels safe to say this because the GOP Party hierarchy is officially eating itself alive so no one is going to punish him for joining in.

    “Carrying the water” is Lushspeak for “lying my fat ass off” or “slandering innocent people.” It’s Lushspeak for saying that the teenage male pages who were objects of Foley’s lust (and who later testified about his advances) were vicious kids pulling a prank on a gay congressman. It’s Lushspeak for accusing the victims of sexual harassment of being liars. It’s Lushspeak for saying that a famous actor with a terminal disease who campaigned against a republican over the stem-cell issue was faking his symptoms.

    Seriously, if you listen to this clown (John McCain’s description) and are a fan you are a moral failure of a human being. He lies constantly. He lied about Michael J. Fox’s endorsed candidate voting against the bill Fox was advocating for. He lied about paying a settlement to law enforcement authorities to drop their charges against him. He advocated in the past for the stiffer pursuit and prosecution of white drug offenders and then cried foul when they came after him. These are just the things I can remember him saying in the past year off the top of my head.

   He’s sick. He tacitly admits to lying. He does it constantly, and all in the service of the GOP. He is so base as to routinely slander people to shill for corrupt politicians.

   Apparently there are 20 million people in this country who don’t mind being lied to, 20 million people who so desperately want to believe in a set of principles that they will close their minds and let craven thugs like Limbaugh lie to them and never confront their faith in him by seeking out a second source or bothering to check up on his infinite set of factual inaccuracies or remembering what he said yesterday that is the opposite of what he said today. 20 million people whose conscience doesn’t raise a red flag when their hero slanders sexual harassment victims baselessly and, in fact, in the face of all evidence.

   Is this Reagan’s legacy? An army of trolls and moral perverts who have no concern for the truth or common decency? Tens of millions of people who any nation would consider a shame to count as citizens?

2006-11-04T11:43:00.000-06:00

   So I was bored recently and reading Laura Ingraham's monumental and intellectual tome of political and cultural criticism, Shut up and Sing. I have a few truly choice excerpts:

Remember what happened to the Roman Empire after its elites no longer believed it was worth defending against the onslaughts of barbarians. (page 66)

[Talking about Michael Moore's Stupid White Men] To call the book sophmoric would be an insult to sophomores in high school and college. Don't come a-lookin' for a piece of the pie around Michael. He ate it all. (page 104).

We're the most powerful nation of all time and one that could rule the world if we wanted, but we don't want to. (page 320).

   Honestly, this book was like a master class of how to write a shitty book. I had to skim the last half of this shitburger because it was close to the worst book I have ever read, and I make a habit out of reading the demented writings of right-wing commentators.

   Seriously, just take a look at the top three. Laura honestly thinks the Roman Empire collapsed because some bisexual elite class decided not to fight for it. Her second quote is my fave: she criticizes Moore for being sophmoric by being unintentionally sophmoric. I actually reread that chapter to see if she was some kind of subtle genius but, no, she's sophmoric talking about pretty much every subject she talks about. Quote number 3 reinforces number one: Laura has no grasp of history or military strategy. Although we were straining our society and economy to the breaking point just to try to hold on to South Vietnam or Iraq somehow we could conquer the whole world if we wanted to. Even though we were fought to a standstill in Korea by Chinese infantry and a detachment of the Soviet airforce we really could have just conquered the whole world.

   This book is a 6th-grade-level screed against "elites" and it wouldn't have been published by anybody but Regnery Press.

Disaster

2006-10-17T20:38:00.000-05:00

   It’s important to not look back. Looking back means actually analyzing yourself and your behavior, and that’s bad when you’re a blackout drunk leading a nation with lies through a bloody, bungled war. It’s also important to, rhetorically speaking, fellate your interviewee as a “tough” journalist in the “no-spin” zone.

   Speaking of blackout drunks, how’s the JAR doing, Drinky? Not so good.

    Iraqi and U.S. doctors conduct a study that indicates that 650,000 civilians in Iraq have died (who otherwise wouldn’t have died) following the “allied” invasion in 2003.That’s even more than that bullshit 400,000 number Tony Blair blurted out about how many people had been found in a mass grave attributable to Saddam Hussein. That’s even more than the 290,000 Iraqis Hussein killed in his reign.

   And, like the Lancet/New England Journal of Medicine report before it, it will certainly be slandered vigorously by the right.

   As Cenk Uygur has said, this president “will live in infamy.”

Jackasses

2006-10-16T11:43:00.000-05:00

   You deserve him.

   Although I have said it before, sometimes it deserves repeating. Recently perusing the editorial page of the Chicago Tribune (that filthy rag is ubiquitous here) I noticed the usual stuff: an editorial by Charles Krauthammer, that malignant cripple, using some of the most painfully clumsy logic to justify threatening North Korea and Iran. Dennis Byrne writing his throwaway garbage--I can’t even remember what his article was about. Timothy McNulty, the public editor, writing a piece whining that an article in the last Sunday Tribune was too critical of some rich people’s houses and that rich people deserve respect, too, as well as enormous amounts of money.  Not a progressive voice to be seen: in short, the reason why I usually reserve the Chicago Tribune for cleaning up after my dog and little else.

   I couldn’t help but notice the letters to the editor from some people who had clearly been listening to Lush Limbaugh and Orifice for years. They were responding to a piece a while ago in which some law professor defined what a “liberal” was and advocated the general precepts: tolerance for dissent, progressive social values, blah blah blah. This prompted quite a few moral cockroaches to come crawling into the public eye after the article had left and begin gnawing away at the thesis of the story with high-school jokes about liberals and mischaracterizations the likes of which usually come spilling out of Mark Levin’s mouth at 3 am when he’s a bottle of whiskey into his night:

A liberal is someone who wants to salve his guilt with your money.
                         -John Knoerle
                         Chicago

A liberal is someone who believes government is responsible for his well-being from birth to grave. A liberal believes he has no personal responsibility for his own welfare or actions.
-Michael Sheridan
                         Mokena

The left does not tolerate any dissent whatsoever…The left regards the United States as evil and hence unworthy of defense, which is why the left opposes the War on Terror…The defining characteristic of the left these days is intellectual dishonesty…
                         -Mark G. Arnold
                         St. Louis

A liberal is a person who is open minded but only to his way of thinking, and he thinks that anything goes as long as it benefits him.
                             -Rita Rucin
                         Oak Lawn

And so on. The intellectual equivalent of watching four people shit their pants and then crow about how sophisticated they are. Note John Knoerle’s 11th grade, nasty little sarcasm. Note Michael Sheridan’s ridiculous, Limbaugh-like mischaracterization of those liberals. Note Mark G. Arnold’s hysterical projection of the vices of the right onto the left. Note Rita’s inadvertent sarcasm (trust me, it was inadvertent. The rest of her letter is written at the level of an 8th grader).

   These are the remaining 36% who still, after six years, give a thumbs up to Drinky, the worst president in history. These are the kind of voters who, no matter what the outcome of the mid-term elections this November, will end up sending most incumbents (and most republicans) back to office.

   They deserve the worst president in history and the worst Congress in history. They deserve to live in a country where wealthy individuals shift the tax burden onto them, where their poor friends and relatives get ground into meat to serve Thurston Howell III’s dogs, where their sons and daughters are kept fighting foreign wars against their will, where the conservative religious leaders they love are dismissed as “nuts” by their leader’s chief advisor and then cynically used for the votes they can deliver, in short, they deserve to live in a country in which there is no law but the law of the jungle--a country that is despised.

   Driftglass echoes my writing (or perhaps I echo his). As I excoriate these Sean Hannity fans, Drfitglass urges his readers to remember that America is worth fighting for. 58 percent of people in this country officially believe Preznit Drinky “purposely misled the public about evidence that Iraq had banned weapons in order to build support for war.”  A similar majority believe that terror suspects should be given due process rights. Public opinion polls usually show, to the never-ending surprise of a pessimist like me, that the majority of the American public is very frequently right in its opinions on a host of issues from the Israeli-Palestinian problem to priorities for government spending.

   Indeed Driftglass, there is hope. The GOP has written off Mike DeWine’s seat in Ohio. Bwahahahaha! Lights OUT, Mike!

   Occasionally, David Brooks says something that reveals what a great love of democracy the Bush Administration really has…

   Glenn Greenwald, brilliant as he is, finally realizes that GOP Congresspeople are all part of the same machine. God bless, Glenn.

   These are just drops in the ocean, though. A lot of progress needs to be made in this United States. I think optimists should be cautious speaking of a nation that has just officially legalized torture. I think Driftglass should be realistic hoping for a nation that, even if the election this November goes the democrats’ way, will still be run by a criminal president and a cowed and bought democrat caucus in the Congress.

Leadership

2006-10-10T20:19:00.000-05:00

Sometimes, a picture is worth a thousand words. Hat tip to Driftglass for finding this gem.

More Foley

2006-10-03T15:04:00.000-05:00

   Hastert goes “on the offensive,” because God knows you can’t be on the defensive in politics in this country (even if you should be defending yourself), and claims that the Foley scandal is being used as a tool by democrats to swing an election. Hannity jumped on board the bandwagon and painted the scandal’s timing as part of a democratic conspiracy to affect the election. These moral inbreds just can’t criticize one of their own members and then let the situation lie. It, in some way, has to be partly the democrat’s fault. I’m sure some editorials will follow blaming the scandal on Bill Clinton or the liberal culture of accepting homosexuality. Oh, wait. That’s already happened. I am not kidding. I just discovered this commentary on Thinkprogress. Unbelievable. See? When a Republican turns out to be a gay sexual predator, it’s liberals’ fault.

   Meanwhile, conservatives respond to the scandal by smearing homosexuals. I have written about this before. Smearing gays as de facto pedophiles is written into the DNA of religious conservative groups, people, and the politicians they send to Washington. It’s par for the course for them. Even relatively mild conservative commentators like Jonah Goldberg just can’t resist.

   You see, almost everything is liberals’ fault. Columbine? The result of teaching evolution in schools and allowing abortion, of course. This man isn’t some random lunatic, either. As I have previously written on this blog, Tom DeLay echoed his opinion at the time of the shootings.

  This as the scandal worsens, and ABC uncovers evidence that Foley had internet sex with a page while awaiting a vote. Reynolds, the republican who was originally informed of the situation, literally surrounded himself with a human shield of children at a recent press conference and refused to ask the children to leave so a frank discussion of the sexually-charged issue could take place. Wow. He was literally hiding behind children. That is one of the lowest political stunts I have ever seen.

This is What the Dark Side Looks Like

2006-10-02T19:43:00.000-05:00

“The Dark Side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural.” –Senator Palpatine

“There are methods of coercion … rougher than the Miranda standards of criminal and military justice systems…that have already saved thousands of American lives.” --William F. Buckley, NR October 9

The Idealist in Chief

2006-09-30T14:42:00.001-05:00

   Oh Nelly! Mark Foley, Republican Congressman from Florida, resigns over a scandal involving him in sexually explicit instant messaging conversations with pages. Apparently one or two of them felt like they were being harassed and so came forward, although the situation isn’t entirely clear right now.

   I’m not big on guilt by association, but it’s hardly an anomaly that Karl Rove was buddy buddy with Jack Abramoff. Nor is it an anomaly that the Administration lied about how many meetings Abramoff had with White House staff: Scott McClellan said three meetings. There were really 13. This is not shocking seeing as the administration repeatedly intervened on behalf of Abramoff’s clients.

   It makes financial sense for GM to hire Sean Hannity as a spokesman for a new ad campaign they’re coming out with, as he’s the second-biggest radio talk show personality in the country and has 13 million listeners. Morally, however, it’s the equivalent of hiring Joe McCarthy.

   More on the cover-up at HUD about illegally giving contracts to political supporters.

   Bob Woodward dishes the dirt on the Drinky Administration’s lack of effort in prosecuting terrorists before 9/11.

   The President of Kazakhstan is meeting with the White House today. He is a dictator who has recently crushed the democracy movement in his country, which has led our idealistic president to strengthen ties to the autocracy as part of his never-ending quest to spread democracy around the world. In Iraq, his personal democracy project, the Iraqi government has seen fit to crush free speech in an effort to strengthen the democracy.

   But our idealistic president won’t stop there. In his quest to save people from brutal tyrannies he has decided that tough language will suffice to stop the genocide in Sudan.

   It’s hard to be idealistic and to fight a War on Terra. That’s why the president needs the right to torture indefinitely-detained suspects. Thank God the Congress helped out and passed the recent detainee act.

   The Administration’s idealistic quest is also made more difficult by the left-leaning mainstream media. Katie Couric interviewed Condi Rice recently and harassed her with such hardball questions as “Is it hard for you to have a social life?” and “How does one go about asking the Secretary of State out on a date?” This is important because one of the burning questions on all our minds is “How much action has Condi Rice been getting lately?”

   More sexism from Michael Savage. There’s a healthy dollop of raging, unconcealed xenophobia in the same fricking paragraph. I would like to remind the world that MSNBC recently hired Savage despite his long history of mind-bogglingly unambiguous bigotry, only to have to fire him when (shock!) he unloaded on a gay caller with epithets.

The Darkest Blot

2006-09-30T14:42:00.000-05:00

It’s rare for the mainstream media to seriously investigate a politician who isn’t either,

a well known criminal or

someone who’s already been indicted

I have never seen an organ of the mainstream media personally and directly challenge a member of Congress on an issue that doesn’t involve corruption like CNN has done recently when, rhetorically, in got in James Inhofe’s (R-OK) face and called him a fraud. This was a royal beat down.

   Inhofe is, indeed, an anomaly. I have excoriated him on this website more than once before. In a party of propagandists, war criminals, and moral inbreds he actually stands out, which is quite an incredible feat. I would, once again, like to take this time to thank the voters of Oklahoma for sending this unregenerate idiot to the U.S. Senate.

   Jim Jeffords is leaving the U.S. Senate after a remarkable 32 year career. I never agreed with a lot, if not most, of what Jeffords had to say, but he cast some truly courageous votes in his time and is leaving the Senate with class.

   The New York Times recently came out with an editorial castigating the “compromise” military commissions legislation, saying it “will be ranked with the low points in American democracy, our generation’s version of the Alien and Sedition Acts,” an analysis I agree with and have offered before. This legislation has passed the House and a nearly identical looks to pass the Senate. Harry Reid asserted that he might want some small changes to be made to the bill but that, in general, “we want to do this.” Way to take a principled stand, Harry. He did assert he would filibuster the FISA bill being bounced around the Senate, but for the love of God, the “opposition” party in Congress is set to OK “our generation’s version of the Alien and Sedition Acts.” While Senate democrats are so terrified of being painted as soft on terror many of them cave to pressure from the united republican front and this bill looks to be enacted. As I wrote before, this is a national disgrace, or, as Patrick Leahy said, “the darkest blot on the conscience of the nation.” “Chickenshit,” in the words of one of my favorite authors, Jane Smiley. “Off the deep end,” in the words of David Corn. “The soul of our nation is in jeopardy,” in the words of Art Levine.

   Meanwhile, how does Iraq look? Not so good, as usual.

   Orifice and other right-wingers have been touting the high DOW Jones as proof that Drinky’s tax cuts are working, despite the facts. This kind of magical thinking is right in line with assertions that Drinky’s foreign policy is making America safer, despite record number of attacks on our troops abroad and an increase in terror attacks around the world every year he has been in office.

   A tip o’ the hat to right-wing lunatic Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO), who asserted that gay marriage “is the most important issue that we face today.” I would like to take this time to thank the voters from her district in Colorado for sending a politician with a diagnosable mental illness to the U.S. House.

   One small but extraordinary example of the self-censorship of the mainstream media, and another example of extraordinary media control.

Authoritarians Losing Control

2006-09-30T14:41:00.000-05:00

   Dissent endangers our troops. This has been a recurring theme in the GOP’s message, from the president counseling us against the dangers of “irresponsible debate” to Representative J.D. Hayworth on Monday telling us that things like the New York Times’ story and the public discussion are “putting lives in danger.” The Paper of Record is a favorite target of the right, and their antics are nothing new. Nixon famously threatened the New York Times, and Reagan threatened to prosecute any paper that published “national security information,” whatever that means. Don Rumsfeld has recently said that terrorists are “manipulating” the media.

   You will find this language bouncing all around the right wing, and it’s difficult not to broad-brush them as all saying the same things. Rep. Steve King (R-IA) called the torture at Abu Ghraib “hazing” and maintained that Iraq was safer than Washington, D.C.

   Tony Snow continues to try and put a happy face on the NIE, but it is not very convincing. He is joined by the entire phalanx of right-wing commentators on the radio, who uniformly defended the NIE on their radio shows with a typical display of selective quotations and amazing mischaracterizations. Michael Medved had to stop himself as he almost said that there’s nothing in the NIE that indicates the terrorists in Iraq are gaining strength, instead pulling back and retreating into generalized talking points lacking in concrete references to the NIE. The actual text of the NIE put the lie to several statements the administration has issued recently, and the tone of the text was pessimistic regarding how quickly terrorism is spreading and how Iraq has become a “cause” for jihadists. Some have pointed out that Iraq has made our war against terrorism harder, including Larry Johnson, who cites the State Department’s statistics in pointing out the exponential increase in terror attacks after the invasion of Iraq.

   The latest NIE on Iraq was completed long ago, but it seems (according to White House advisor Fran Townsend) that it won’t be declassified until well after the elections, in January of next year, of course.

   All the debate about the NIE passes over the fact that Iraqis have wanted us out of their country for over a year now. Yet another poll of Iraqis has been released, the third in the last year or so. It says what the other two also said: over 70% of Iraqis want the US out within a year, and 79% maintain that US forces are having a negative influence in Iraq. This poll, of course, will be ignored like the previous two.

   Another reason why the improving US economy isn’t benefiting a lot of workers.

   Philip Slater has a good article at the Huffington Post. So does Cliff Schecter, who surveys some of the evidence of just how committed republicans were to fighting terrorism when Bill Clinton was in office.

   Sadly enough, many democrats seem to support the “compromise” bill that will rewrite the War Crimes Act. This is disgraceful.

Catfight

2006-09-30T14:39:00.000-05:00

   Catfight! President Clinton gets combative with Mike Wallace, and Condi Rice strikes back by saying, contrary to Clinton’s remarks, "What we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years," and "We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al-Qaida.”

   This has gotten a lot of buzz on Youtube and the internet in general, unfortunately. It’s a tempest in a teacup. All the pundits taking sides and snickering and saying petty things about Wallace or Clinton remind me of 18th century French courtiers gossiping about how the king threw a plate at a servant or something.

   Of course, there is some dispute over how important terrorism was to the administration before 9/11, and Clinton was right in saying that he was criticized by many prominent republicans who speculated that Clinton’s actions against al Qaeda were motivated by a desire to distract the country from the Monica Lewinsky scandal. And Richard Clarke did leave a strategy to fight al Qaeda for the Bush Administration.

   Reverend Sheldon, previously discussed on this blog, bothers me because he and others of ilk are enmeshed with the republican power structure from top to bottom, regularly meeting and speaking with the likes of Tony Snow and Sean Hannity.

   Thank God. There’s been a lot of speculation about what the latest National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq says. Mercifully, our president has decided to selectively declassify parts of it to end all the “speculation.” That should clear the whole thing up, with the president declassifying carefully selected parts of it. I’m sure his employees at the CIA have produced a sterling intelligence analysis that is in no way influenced by what their bosses want to hear.

   John Bolton’s nomination to be the US ambassador to the UN is dead.

   Here is some interesting accounting about the cost of rebuilding Iraq.

   Swift Boat Veterans for Lies are campaigning hard to punish Jack Murtha for daring to suggest a withdrawal from Iraq and for daring to echo the opinions of his sources who told him the Haditha Incident looked like a senseless slaughter of unarmed civilians.

   Alec Baldwin has a good article on the Huffington Post.

   The torture issue isn’t going away, and many commentators have echoed my position, despite the continued defense of it by war criminals like John Yoo, who suddenly discovered new powers in the presidency once a republican occupied the office. This has been supported by a vast network of CIA prisons.

Disgrace

2006-09-30T14:38:00.000-05:00

   Disgrace.

   Congress writes a “compromise” bill, legalizing torture while calling it a “compromise.” I agree with Glenn Greenwald in calling this bill, and the tepid and occasionally supportive language it has received from democrats, as evidence of just how “dysfunctional” and “sickly” our political institutions are.

   Congress would have the power to specifically spell out which kinds of torture are prohibited. Beyond that, the President would have the sole statutory authority to determine the “alternative techniques” that would be administered to victims. His determinations would be unreviewable, and this legislation would prohibit anyone from even raising the issue of the Geneva Conventions.

   This is administrative bullshit, a smokescreen to cover previous war crimes, and a tacit admission to the president that he can use whatever techniques he wants as long as he’s creative and can think outside the box of well-known, hardcore torture techniques like electrocutions.

   Forget about the Geneva Conventions. In fact, forget about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the U.N. Convention Against Torture, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Our nation’s word is worth horse pucky on the international stage as we’ve simply ignored the most basic laws of common decency and international governance that we allegedly agreed to follow several decades ago.

   Glenn has his excellent Salon.com article here, and Marty Lederman’s good analysis is here. The Wall Street Journal’s celebration is here. Driftglass has a winner up here.

   Terrified of being painted as “weak” on national defense, democrats in Congress made no effort to add their opinions to those of republicans like John McCain who called for a less morally repugnant bill. They watched from the sidelines. They were “as mute and neutral as stone.” They were, in short, chickenshits.

   But bad fascism was the order of the day last week. The republican bill to legalize the president’s torture program banned anything that might result in disfigurement or gross physical wounds while allowing other torture techniques that are more subtle. So sleep deprivation, stress positions, induced hypothermia, and other tools of the trade will apparently be allowed. Call it pussy fascism: we’re totally willing to torture people, just not in a way that leaves gross wounds.

   This, sadly enough, is fine with many in America like Rev. Louis Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition, a purportedly religious organization that, frankly, mixes nationalism with religion in a way that can only be found in the right wing of this country. The website is, of course, red, white, and blue. A banner proudly proclaims that “The homosexual activist movement and pedophiles” (they’re all the same, of course) “are linked together by a common goal: To gain access to children for seduction into homosexuality.”

   I’m done with these people. And why they have access to McCain is beyond me. I have, from time to time, questioned the judgment of Catholic priests, bishops, and popes, but never have I seen a Presbyterian minister as political (and as demented) as Louis Sheldon. Drifty’s blog once again comes to mind…

Sept 20

2006-09-30T14:37:00.000-05:00

  Key US allies in the War on Terra has made it clear recently that they think a less militarily intensive approach is justified.

   Robert Scheer cites an AP report that 14,000 foreign nationals are being held without charges in foreign prisons at the direction of the United States.

   Sidney Blumenthal has a good piece about the first few errant years of the Bush Administration.

   While the administration focuses seemingly exclusively on Iraq, danger grows in Afghanistan as the numbers of potential suicide bombers “waiting in the wings in Pakistan's restive Waziristan and the adjoining parts of southern Afghanistan” grow into the hundreds.

   The media continues to ignore reports of corrupt hiring practices revealed in the Washington Post regarding the reconstruction of Iraq.

Sept 18

2006-09-30T14:35:00.000-05:00

   Drinky organizes the footsoldiers of the right-wing media machine to “catapult the propaganda,” as he previously described, in a 90 minute meeting with such luminaries as Michael Medved, Sean Hannity, Neal Boortz, and Laura Ingraham.

   Maj. Leader Boehner refuses to ask Bob Ney to resign, even after the guy pleads guilty to corruption charges. You have got to be kidding me.

   Reconstruction contracts for Iraq in 2003 were handed out to political loyalists. All 18 billion dollars worth of them.

   The genocide is real. Two researchers, whose report was published in the journal Science, estimated that 255,000 people have died in Darfur.

Secretary Rumsfeld

2006-09-16T12:20:00.000-05:00

   If you are someone concerned with the state of American commentary today you have much to be concerned about.

   You have Don Rumsfeld, the most incompetent and dishonest Secretary if Defense in history, pissing on democrats and calling them terrorist “appeasers” while R. Emmett Tyrrell II of CNN and his clones in the media call them “ignoramuses” and insist that the Secretary never, in his speech, compared them to appeasers of Hitler before WWII.

   R. Emmett Tyrrell II, or Thurston Howell IV, or whatever the fuck his name is seems to be counting on the fact that his pig-ignorant audience can’t spend 30 seconds googling Rumsfeld’s speech to see for themselves. Indeed, if you actually read Rumsfeld’s speech you see a lot more there than comparing democrats to Neville Chamberlain.

   He attacks the news coverage of the war, Newsweek, CNN, and Amnesty International, in that order.

   First of all let me say this: if you ever see a politician attacking Amnesty International you can be pretty sure you’re looking at a war criminal. If you ever hear some lunatic excoriating Mother Theresa or Bono or Human Rights Watch you can be pretty sure you’re looking at a criminal.

   Rumsfeld resorts to familiar lines in his defense. The people responsible for the 600 documented cases of abuse and torture at Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, and Baghram are “a very, very small percentage of the literally hundreds of thousands of honorable men and women in all theaters in this struggle who are serving our country with humanity, with decency, with professionalism, and with courage in the face of continuous provocation,” of course. We just have a lot of “bad apples.”

   As nefarious sources like Amnesty International have pointed out, the number of documented cases pales in comparison with the number of actual cases. Several thousand prisoners, many of whom have been tortured, are being held in third-world prisons without charges under the direction of the CIA and the State Department. When the final accounting of Don Rumsfeld’s crimes are done he will look at lot closer to Adolf Hitler than to Winston Churchill.

   Don is waging a one-man war on the media, as usual. He asserted that, during Israel’s offensive in Lebanon, these enemies “doctor photographs of casualties. They use civilians as human shields. And then they try to provoke an outcry when civilians are killed in their midst, which of course was their intent.”

   See? You can’t trust news accounts of the Israeli offensive. The photographs of dismembered Lebanese children are “doctored.” The civilians murdered by Israeli strikes were all “human shields” for terrorists, no matter what you hear anyone else say.

   It is a disgrace to our nation to have a Secretary of Defense like this, one who urinates on the graves of Lebanese civilian victims of Israeli aggression, who compares war critics to Nazi appeasers, and who receives the support of syndicated columnists who are featured in every major news outlet in the country.

Lies About Terrorists

2006-09-14T16:19:00.000-05:00

   This is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.  Bionic arms that work. Welcome to Bladerunner.

   Colin Powell recently voiced his disapproval with the Administration’s plans to rewrite the War Crimes Act and enact new legislation to protect interrogators from criminal charges. There is also some indication there was concern in the Justice Department and the JAG Corps.

   Fred Barnes also reiterates after an interview with the president that bringing Osama bin Laden to justice just isn’t a big priority for him.

   The UN International Atomic Energy Commission recently complained to the Bush Administration about the deceitful analysis of Iran’s capabilities issued by the republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee. The House report was written by a single republican staffer and it was not reviewed by the full committee.

   The “liberal” media once again fail to challenge factual inaccuracies of the Bush Administration, giving a platform to people like Rush Limbaugh but failing to host a liberal voice. Tony Snow ignores the deceitful record of the administration in alleging Hussein shielded Zarqaqi.

   Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff asserted that protecting every target in the US would be too expensive, a bland generalization that cloaked the truth: We are spending half a cent on every mass transit rider for security measures while we spend $9 for every airline passenger, even as terrorists have recently targeted rail and bus riders.

   Glenn Greenwald covers the passage of the Specter Bill and a couple of others through the Senate Judiciary Committee.

More Lies

2006-09-11T12:04:00.000-05:00

   In his never-ending quest to label war critics as the best ally the terrorists have, Darth Cheney yesterday once again asserted that “suggestions, for example, that we should withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq…validates the strategy of the terrorists.”

   In other words, we should pursue the same strategy as Israel, occupying foreign lands regardless of the will of the people and continued terror attacks, because that has worked so well in the past to decrease the number of terror attacks against Israel. Cheney also stumbled through his usual coterie of lies about Saddam Hussein, WMDs, and terrorist ties.

   ON the Sunday round tables Condi Rice also continued to lie about Iraq and terror links to al Qaeda, despite the recent release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s latest report.

   Recently the president urged a renovation of the FISA bill, asserting that it is a relic from 1978 that can’t take into account new technologies: “When FISA was passed in 1978, there was no widely accessible Internet, and almost all calls were made on fixed landlines. Since then, the nature of communications has changed, quite dramatically. The terrorists who want to harm America can now buy disposable cell phones, and open anonymous e-mail addresses. Our laws need to change to take these changes into account.” Of course, when Congress renovated FISA in 2001 at his request he praised it: “The existing law was written in the era of rotary telephones. This new law that I sign today will allow surveillance of all communications used by terrorists, including e-mails, the Internet, and cell phones.”

   Hat tip to Glenn Greenwald for this extraordinary citation of rediculous dishonesty by the president.

   In a little article about a speech former President Bill Clinton gave lies a small gem: “Outside the Pageant, about a dozen protesters underscored that line of Republican attack. One protester sported a giant telephone costume, while others waved phones, to mock the Democratic opposition to some of the Bush administration's anti-terrorism measures.”

   It reminds me of Chile in the first few years of the 1970s, when right-wing protestors pelted soldiers at military parades with chicken parts, the symbolism being that the military was too “chicken” to stage a coup that the right wing wanted. They got what they wanted: Augusto Pinochet staged a coup and took power in 1973. Tens of thousands of his victims, of course, didn’t get what they wanted.

   Some people in this country want a police state, it is clear. I hope they don’t get what they want.

Bombshell

2006-09-09T21:41:00.000-05:00

   Brigadier General Mark Scheid, retiring in three weeks, recently said in an interview with the Newport News that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld “forbade military strategists to develop plans for securing a post-war Iraq.”

   Snap! You have got to be kidding me. This is a bombshell.

   Scheid was promoted to be chief of logistics war plans at the Central Command on September 10th, 2001. Central Command oversees war plans for the Middle East.

   Scheid said, during the planning for Iraq, that planners wanted a plan for occupation. “I remember the secretary of defense saying that he would fire the next person that said that,” Scheid said. “He said we will not do that because the American public will not back us if they think we are going over there for a long war.”

   This is incredible, and I can’t help but wonder if and when the GOP smear machine will kick into gear to silence the general. Either this guy is completely making this up or the Secretary of Defense is and was completely unfit for his position.

   To help cover up the mess Iraq has become, US military officials are working hard to reduce the number of civilians who die in fighting every month in Iraq—by changing the way they count.

   A good article pointed out by Sirota in his letter to Nancy Pelosi about the DLC, and another article Sirota wrote recently fulminating about the fearmongering and crass advertisements of the GOP.

   John Kerry gives a stirring speech in Boston.

"Alternative" Jails

2006-09-09T21:40:00.000-05:00

  Anya Kamanetz recently reported (again) on the detention practices of Israel, which regularly detains Palestinians for months and years without trial and without contact with their families on the orders of individual Israeli generals. They are frequently beaten, according the NGO observers.

   Anya, however, seems to have a problem with criticizing Israel. She mentions in her earlier work (in 2003) that these practices are covered by the Geneva Conventions but she fails to mention that they are also covered by UN conventions like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. She does mention “UN human rights laws” that only provide for “preventive detentions” in cases where the suspect is perceived to be an “immanent threat,” but nothing in those conventions could possibly be construed to allow preventive detentions that last months and years. Much like laws in the United States, these conventions allow holding someone for weeks without charges, nothing more.

   She then quotes extensively from defenders of the system, including a former Israeli prison guard who maintains "I think the Israeli officials bend over backwards to be fair to prisoners. I never saw one case of abuse. The conditions are as if for a prisoner of war." She also quotes from an Israeli military official who says that they are given “extra rights.”

   Good work, Anya. I’m sure if you interviewed an Iranian military official and former guard you could do a similarly good job of providing “balanced” coverage of the abuses there.

   Anya is notable because her work is featured on the Huffington Post, an ostensibly left-wing media outlet. You will sometimes also find the work of Alan Dershowitz and Bill Maher on the Huffington Post and Alternet, two men that are famous for their defense of Israel.

   There is a clear border on the limits of criticism allowed in these left wing sites. In all my considerable time reading the Huffington Post and Alternet I have never seen them give space to multiple defenders of the Bush Administration. I have, obviously, seen them extend that courtesy to Israel, which is a curious distinction.

   In her latest post she brings up the Israeli detention practices again, concluding that, “I love Israel. I support its right to exist. And I believe that democracy in Israel is compromised by the nation's treatment of Palestinians, in its justice system and elsewhere.”

  I want to say something up front. I love Anya Kamanetz. I support her right to exist. But her argument falls apart when she criticizes Israeli detentions from the point of view of it making Israel less safe. There is very little in her article explicitly stated by her about these detentions beings morally wrong, detentions that make life frightening and miserable for Palestinians who have never been convicted of a crime in any court. There is little mention of the fact that nations that use these powers (outside of Israel and the United States) are regularly excoriated by the US State Department. There is also little in either of her articles that might be construed as a blunt and honest criticism of Israel’s practices.

   No, to do that we need to venture over the Amnesty International, a place where we find the characterization of Israel’s detention practices in a very different light. Amnesty International in an August 2005 report said that “Since 2000, thousands of Palestinians have been held in administrative detention in recent years, some of them for more than three years.” Commenting on the Huwara Military Base where many detainees were held, Amnesty International reported in 2003 that “for a year no lawyers were allowed to visit detainees… Cells are overcrowded and many detainees are forced to sleep on the floor as there are not enough mattresses to go round. The few mattresses and blankets which are available are dirty and bug-infested and no soap or cleaning material is provided for the detainees to wash themselves or to clean the cells, leading to the spread of skin diseases.”

   There are a lot of human rights issues regarding Israel you won’t hear about in even the left-wing spectrum. For example, Amnesty International also reported in August of 2005 (among other times) that “Israeli authorities have taken no concrete measures to prevent the daily harassment and attacks against Palestinians and their property by Israeli settlers throughout the West Bank. The consistent failure of the Israeli authorities to prevent attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and to investigate such attacks and bring settlers to justice has created an atmosphere of impunity, which has ultimately encouraged further attacks.” This has been going for decades.

   This is indeed relevant to the United States, as Anya Kamanetz maintains. As President Bush has recently said, the CIA has held “high value” detainees for years without charges and questioned them using “alternative” techniques. He also maintained that the CIA no longer holds people in secret prisons, which is largely unverifiable, though human rights groups like Human Rights Watch have demanded to know the location of several dozen detainees who disappeared and can’t be accounted for. His claim that the CIA no longer holds detainees is probably also disingenuous, as the US has, many times in the past, rendered detainees to foreign countries where they are held without trial or charges by the foreign government, as in the case of Salah Nasser Salim Ali, to name one of many, who was rendered to Yemen and held without charges by the Yemeni government (who confessed they had no information to prosecute him with, and were simply holding him at the request of the US government). Along with many others, Salah describes torture including regular beatings and humiliation techniques like verbal abuse and surrounding him with guards and forcing him to run around in a circle until he was exhausted, after which he was beaten.

   Our prisons in Cuba, Iraq, and Afghanistan are only part of the international network of prisons the US has used over the past five years to detain suspects. This includes outsourcing the duties of prison guards and torture to proxy nations like Jordan and Yemen as well as the secret CIA prisons. As I have written recently, the US government seems very willing to outsource all sorts of military duties to foreign mercenaries from Chile to Egypt. This part of the picture is not very accurately described or emphasized in US press reports. Amnesty International estimated in April of 2005 that, worldwide, about 40 detainees were held in the controversial secret CIA prisons. They concurrently estimated that several thousand were held worldwide in the jails of foreign governments at the behest of the United States.

   Thus, as I mentioned, the president touting the elimination of CIA prisons seems like much ado about nothing. Thousands of prisoners are held in Iraq at various camps, not to mention thousands more in the prisons of foreign countries and over four hundred more in Cuba. “Secret CIA prisons” is a sexy and interesting (if not frightening) concept, but there were never very many people held there. The thousands that comprise the vast majority of US detainees are not being given trials, nor have they for many years. Both Amnesty and Human Rights Watch have denounced the military tribunal system as unlawful, and the Supreme Court recently concurred in the Hamdan v. Rumsfeld Case.

   I tire of the obfuscations, head fakes, and ridiculous lies “We do not practice torture” of this administration, as well as their more recent efforts to immunize themselves from prosecution by trying the rewrite the law after the fact. Human Rights Watch echoes my thoughts on these issues: “If the administration really wants to insulate personnel from spurious prosecutions, perhaps it should take a page from retiring dictators like Chile's Augusto Pinochet and work to obtain an amnesty for the administration for all criminal acts committed while in office. (Or why look all the way to Chile? Perhaps the administration should study how President Bush's father gave pardons to various Iran-Contra scandalites like Casper Weinberger.)”

Our Mercenary Army

2006-09-09T21:30:00.000-05:00

   This is getting a lot of coverage, so I will return to it: ABC is running The Path to 9/11, a fictionalized docu-drama with some conversations completely made up. Disney is ABC’s parent company. I already noted that in 2003 they jettisoned a docu-drama on Reagan because of the cries from the right. In 2004 Disney refused to distribute Farenheit 9/11, even though it was made by a subsidiary, because, in the words of Michael Eisner, he didn’t want to get political: he "did not want a film in the middle of the political process where we're such a nonpartisan company and our guests, that participate in all of our attractions, do not look for us to take sides." Things change, apparently.

  Of course, the drama can’t be criticized before it’s released because it’s not in its final cut, despite the fact that ABC sent copies out to conservatives so they could pimp it on their shows. If it can’t be commented on before it’s publicly released then why did they screen it? Of course, Clinton officials were refused when they asked to see it.

   Conservative hacks who excoriated CBS back in the day are jumping on board this time around.

   This is, however, just a small part of the misinformation pumped daily into the American mainstream by the mainstream media. The only thing at stake here is Clinton’s legacy and maybe the opinions of some people in a very general way as to the effectiveness of democrats in the War on Terror. The sad truth is, however, that ignorant votes count as much as informed ones.

   Many more stories are buried and ignored by the MSM, and this collective action results in a far more severe bent to the news than active distortion, which must be minimized because of the attention it brings as well as the possible lawsuits. According to Amnesty International, for example, half of the interrogators at Abu Ghraib were civilians and many had no formal training in interrogation. Some were former Apartheid-era South African “hitmen,” as documented by the Amnesty International report. They were considered by the administration to be outside the law, as they were not bound by military codes and were exempted from prosecution for war crimes by the decree of Paul Bremer, the US-installed provisional governor of Iraq at the time. In fact, it’s estimated that half of the $46 billion dollar classified intelligence budget is handled by private contractors in general, for everything from satellite operation to the administration of urine tests.

   It might come as no surprise, recalling the massive international network of mercenaries, foreign nations, and private lenders that Reagan’s administration used to fund the contra rebels and others in Central America in the 1980s (and thus to circumvent Congressional spending limits): the Sultan of Brunei, Israel, ex-military personnel and private companies all pitched in. This has been repeated in Iraq, where mercenary companies like Blackwater are recruiting thousands in Central and South America for soldiers to serve in Iraq. Many of those are ex-military from the darkest chapters of this hemisphere’s history. US contracts have also been dispersed to people like Victor Bout, a shady Russian arms dealer implicated in selling arms to dictatorships in Africa.

   What we’re talking about here is a mercenary army of truly questionable moral character, though the problem is that might be the point. Several commentators, some anonymous, have alleged that this is a purposeful plan: relegate shady activities to private contractors largely outside the law, which also provides plausible deniability if anything bad happens.

   These are thugs, according to an anonymous former special operations officer in the Amnesty International report, and Richard Goldstone, former chief prosecutor of the U.N. International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. An anonymous intelligence officer in Kuwait, where Blackwater’s recruits are flown before their assignment, added that the Central and South American recruits are chosen because those nations have experienced “dirty wars” and “have military men well-trained in dealing with internal subversives. They are well-versed in extracting confessions from prisoners.”

   Indeed. I’m sure that the military and ex-military people coming out of Chile, Guatemala, Peru, and Colombia are very well versed in “extracting” confessions, though I pray they are not using the same techniques. “Submarining” was one of my favorites, used by Pinochet’s DINA secret police when he ruled Chile from 1973-1989. It involved shoving a victim’s head underwater (much like waterboarding) until they drowned or almost drowned, except that the “water” was frequently vats of human feces.

Kabuki Theater

2006-09-07T17:45:00.000-05:00

   Bush and Rumsfeld have lately been ratcheting up the campaign rhetoric, asserting that our perpetual war against invisible terrorists is now the exact historical equivalent of WWII, an argument I have addressed before and will not again. Rumsfeld has even compared critics to appeasers before WWII. Somehow, Islamic terror groups have morphed into one enemy with one goal, a phenomenon Glenn Greenwald has pointed out, as have I and many others.

   How much longer can this insulting, incompetent Secretary of Defense continue to open his mouth? How can this guy, who regularly lies to Congress, slander critics?

   Bush yesterday admitted was has been being reported in newspapers for months: the US has secret CIA prisons, where the detainees are interrogated using “an alternative set of procedures” of interrogation. This is as gentle a description of torture as you will hear. Based on this admission he expects Congress to approve a new law that will allow detainees to be tried in a military tribunal system, the kind of system the Supreme Court ruled was illegal recently. That’s no problem for Drinky, though. He will, as he said, simply do what he wants, and Congress can legalize it after the fact. That’s what senators like Arlen Specter are for.

   Is there any government left in Washington outside of the White House?

   Nancy Pelosi seemed amazingly uncritical of the president’s admission, instead criticizing the timing of the admission as “long overdue.” But I’m sure Orifice will still be hyperventilating tomorrow about how terrible it would be if she became the Speaker of the House.

   Human Rights Watch had a more in-depth analysis of the bill the White House submitted to Congress, noting that, in its current form, it would allow the admission of evidence the defendant couldn’t see or refute and hearsay testimony. The bill would amend the War Crimes Act to reduce the number of prosecutable crimes to “an extremely narrowly drawn list.”

   This redefinition of what constitutes torture and inhuman treatment is sickening, and it appears to be a crude ploy to retroactively legalize what has already been done. Why are we living under a demented reincarnation of August Pinochet?

   We know the answer. Buried in an article about how Drinky has lost support among southern women is this sterling quote from a Bush supporter: “There are some people, and I’m one of them, that believe George Bush was placed where he is by the Lord. I don’t care how he governs, I will support him. I’m a Republican through and through.”

   Sweet baby Jesus, would you please get out of my country. “Some people,” as is clear, so firmly anchor their support in utterly irrational religious conviction that Dear Leader can literally do no wrong, because he is anointed by God. These slope-browed, knuckle-dragging, primitively-religious quislings comprise about 36% of the population, last time I checked.

   I can’t get it out of my head. “I don’t care how he governs, I will support him.” It’s amazing. It’s completely unpretentious, unselfconscious insanity.

   I have listened to many ignorant people talk about politics in my years, and most of them irritate me. But this amazing specimen is truly extraordinary, and she is not rare. This is what happens when you mix religion and politics in the conservative world: people that, for lack of a better word, are abortions of normal people. Abominations.

   Of course, what the president has done is already illegal under multiple treaties and laws we have signed, including the Convention Against Torture and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This Kabuki Theater is ridiculous.

   In other news, CBS’s docu-drama about 9/11 reportedly falsifies some of the facts in order to blame Bill Clinton. Lefties have complained and CBS has responded tersely, saying that the editing process isn’t complete and any criticisms are premature and “irresponsible.’’ Of course, as Eric Weiner points out, when republicans were crying about a documentary CBS was going to run on Reagan in 2003 CBS quickly shunted the production over to Showtime. I doubt they will do the same this time.

   David Sirota eviscerates the Leiberman—I mean, Democratic Caucus in Washington.

   Larry C Johnson describes a sad but interesting situation. Khaleid Sheikh Mohammed, a terrorist involved in 9/11, was captured and tortured by US forces. Bush personally authorized threatening his family in order to get KSM to talk (a move Andrew Sullivan characterized as the President lowering himself to the level of a mafia boss). When confronted with the threat of the rape and murder of his family KSM said, “Do what you will. My family will be with God.”

   I’m no big fan of KSM, but does it seem a little disturbing that our intelligence and security forces resemble the KGB when questioning some subjects? Torture? Threatening to rape and murder his family?

   This is part of the descent into fascism of the United States, amusingly chronicled by David Wallenchinsky. It is amazing that these kinds of abuses were excoriated in the 2000 Republican Party Platform, as Glenn Greenwald accurately points out. Those are truly amazing. “Sending our military on vague, endless, and aimless missions rapidly saps morale…Nor should the intelligence community be made the scapegoat for political misjudgments.” It goes on. Wow. What a bunch of hypocritical bastards.

   Tony Snow has recently been echoing the president’s lie (not spin. Lie.) about the illegal warrantless wiretapping program. “Some democrats don’t want the president to be able to listen in when al Qaeda calls,” both the president and Tony Snow have lied. Greenwald and I are both exasperated by this ridiculous mischaracterization, and he fulminates about it here.

   By the way, Iraq is officially a blood-soaked, civil war torn international disaster. Civilian deaths from the Baghdad morgue: 1595 in June, 1855 in July, and 1535 in August. Sweet baby Jesus, that’s 15,940 dead people a year at the current rate, and that’s just in Baghdad. Lights out, ladies and gentleman. Iraq is officially out of control. You can call Iraq in a civil war or a May Day celebration, but it doesn’t really matter what General Abizaid and Don Rumsfeld call it anymore.

They're All the Same

2006-09-01T15:31:00.000-05:00

   As I wrote before, they’re all the same to our president. In the words of our Preznit all Muslims, whether Sunni or Shia or Persian or Arab or Hamas or Al Qaeda are “a single movement, a worldwide network of radicals.”

   He might explain that to the Sunni and Shias who are killing each other by the tens of thousands in Iraq.

   But we must be menaced by “a worldwide network” to justify the president’s extraordinary plans. We have seen this before, when Nicaragua in the eighties was transmuted from an impoverished socialist country into a Communist beachhead in Central America that might have threatened Texas with the awesome might of their military, against which the US military would have been nearly powerless. Terrorist now serve the same capacity that Communists once did, and the United States still meddles in the elections of Nicaragua.

   The administration’s efforts to shore up flagging support for their wars has proven to be, so far, unsuccessful. A majority continue to believe the Iraq War was a mistake and it has left us more vulnerable to terror attacks.

   Few presidents have used recess appointments like this one. Drinky has announced he will recess appoint a union-busting corporate lawyer for Walmart as head of the Labor Department’s Wage and Hours Division. Thanks, Drinky. Keep appointing anti-labor people to be the head of the Labor Department.

This is What Fascism Looks Like

2006-08-31T17:21:00.000-05:00

   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?

Mr. McCarthy

2006-08-24T15:39:00.000-05:00

   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.

The Federal Court Ruling

2006-08-22T09:23:00.000-05:00

   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

2006-08-22T07:34:00.000-05:00

   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

Democracy Deficit

2006-08-18T15:39:00.000-05:00

   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?

Wiretapping Rebuke

2006-08-17T16:27:00.000-05:00

   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.

Macaca Tuesday

2006-08-15T16:05:00.000-05:00

   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.

Terrorism Today

2006-08-14T12:13:00.000-05:00

   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.

Bad News All Around

2006-08-11T15:53:00.000-05:00

   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.

War Crimes and Global Warming

2006-08-09T15:20:00.000-05:00

   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.

Dumbass

2006-08-08T19:54:00.000-05:00

    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.

Lights Out, Bob

2006-08-07T21:05:00.000-05:00

   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.

HRW Report

2006-08-05T11:52:00.001-05:00

   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

2006-08-05T11:52:00.000-05:00

   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.

Iraq Testimony

2006-08-03T15:59:00.000-05:00

   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.

Lebanon and Congress

2006-08-02T16:53:00.000-05:00

   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.

It's Their Job to Lie

2006-08-01T16:40:00.000-05:00

   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.

Fantasy

2006-07-31T15:53:00.000-05:00

   Oliver North is up to his old tricks on Fox, saying that he’s not sure if Israel even bombed Qana, and “whether they did it or not” they “are going to get blamed for it.”

   You have got to be kidding me, people. How many crimes to you have to be convicted of, how many lies do you have to tell before you lose your place in the conservative media? How ridiculous do you have to be before the audience stops watching?

   Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert, maintained that “We are paying a very precious and almost unbearable loss of life, major damage to public and private property and tranquility—and we’re not prepared to give up our right to live perfectly ordinary lives.” Here we see Israeli moral relativism in all its glory. Israel’s losses of 51 civilians and military personnel is “almost unbearable.” How does he judge the 500+ civilian fatalities in Lebanon? He speaks of “major damage to public and private property and tranquility,” but how does he measure the billions of dollars in damage in Lebanon that dwarf the damage done to his country? The 500,000 to 700,000 refugees in Lebanon that are ten times the number of dislocated people in Israel? Do Lebanese civilians just not count? More Lebanese children have died than all of Israel’s fatalities put together. Is their loss bearable?

   Apparently they are bearable, as Israel’s Justice Minister said the IDF had given Lebanese ample time to leave southern Lebanon and anyone remaining could be considered a supporter of Hezbollah—and fair game. “All those now in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hezbollah,” he said, according to the BBC, on July 27th.

   Forget about trying to leave and being blocked by bombed out bridges. Forget about having nowhere to go, or having to stay behind to care for sick or injured friends or relatives who can’t be moved. As Human Rights Watch has said, most of those left behind are “unable to flee due to destroyed roads, a lack of gasoline, high taxi fares, sick relatives, or ongoing Israeli attacks. The sick and poor are those who mostly remain behind.”

    Forget about it. If you are left behind you are meat as far as Israel is concerned. What we are seeing in southern Lebanon is a free-fire zone.

   Human Rights Watch, while also documenting Hezbollah’s obviously indiscriminant attacks, has unleashed a blistering criticism of Israel’s rampantly indiscriminant firing. Peter Bouckaert, Emergencies Director for Human Rights Watch, called Israel’s justifications of its actions “fantasy.” He wrote “I have seen my share of modern wars, as a researcher at Human Rights Watch. In Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, we found many civilian casualties due to bombing campaigns. Civilians fleeing attacks were hit by mistake. In Iraq, US bombs often hit civilian homes, hours after Saddam Hussein or members of his inner circle had left, missing their legitimate targets but killing civilians. In Lebanon it is a very different picture. Time after time, Israel strikes at civilian homes and civilian vehicles attempting to flee the besieged southern border zone, killing families without any military objective in sight…Although mistakes are made in the fog of fighting, the pattern of Israeli behavior in southern Lebanon suggests a deliberate policy…our investigations have not found evidence to support Israeli allegations that Hizbullah are intentionally endangering Lebanese civilians by systematically fighting from civilian positions.”

   It reminds me of one of Noam Chomsky’s quotes: “You never need an argument against the use of violence, you need an argument for it.”

   And another: “Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it.”

Cease Fire? Nope.

2006-07-31T10:34:00.000-05:00

   When Israel announced its suspension of bombing after the Qana attack I wondered why they were bothering. They have never shown much concern for civilian casualties or the ensuing international condemnation before, even after the Marwaheen Massacre. My intuition raised a small red flag. Hezbollah halted its bombardment of Israel after the cessation went into effect.

   Apparently my intuition was correct (if I can say that without sounding too pompous). Israel resumed bombing hours after the incident. So much for the suspension of bombing.

   Hezbollah has retaliated by firing 157 really ineffective rockets at Israel, resulting in 0 fatalities, one “moderate” injury, and 12 “slight” injuries.

   The international isolation of the US and Israel is becoming painfully obvious to commentators in the US, even the conservative ones. It is dismissed as unimportant, of course, but it can’t be ignored. I overheard Laura Ingraham awkwardly acknowledging it even as she mischaracterized it (only Arab countries are angry at the US) and dismissed it (“these were the same people who protested us when Reagan was president and he was building up our military”). Way to knock down the straw man, Attention Deficit. You are the master of your own little fantasy world.

   Kofi Annan expressed irritation when he reminded his audience at the UN that his earlier proposal for a cease-fire was rejected (by a US veto). Javier Solana, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, said that “nothing can justify” the Qana strike. Jacques Chirac issued a statement saying that “France condemns this unjustified action.” Britain’s foreign secretary described the strikes as “absolutely dreadful” and “quite appalling,” saying that “we have repeatedly urged Israel to act proportionately.”

   Arab countries, as you might expect, were even more direct. Syria’s president labeled the Israeli strikes “state terrorism.” King Abdullah of Jordan called the attack “criminal aggression.” Iran and Egypt condemned the attack. The United Arab Emirates called the attack an “ugly massacre.” All of the aforementioned European and Arab countries have called for an immediate cease-fire, against the wishes of the US and Israel. Human Rights Watch labeled the attack a “war crime.”

   More ominously, the armed wing of Abbas’s Fatah faction in Palestine said it would target the United States and other Western countries in retaliation. "From now on we consider the United States and certain other Western countries our target," said a statement from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades.

   So this foreign policy strategy President Bush has is making us safer? I beg to differ.

   Tony Blair is taking some heat for his decision to allow US planes loaded with bombs bound for Israel to refuel on British soil. He is also attracting criticism for his decision to side with President Drinky and not support an immediate cease-fire, which the majority of Britains and Europeans in general support.

   Meanwhile, all is not quiet on the southern front. 30 Palestinians have been killed over the past three days in an Israeli incursion into the Gaza Strip. A few Israelis have been injured by retaliatory rocket fire from Palestinian militants.

   The oil spill in Lebanon caused by an Israeli strike is the worst environmental disaster in the history of the Mediterranean. The beaches of six nations, including Israel and Lebanon, are threatened.

Correction: The Marwaheen Massacre may have been the result of a fighter aircraft strike instead of a helicopter strike.

2006-07-30T11:35:00.000-05:00

The slaughter continues in Lebanon, with a devastating strike by Israel killing over 50 people in Qana in southern Lebanon, 27 of them children. This prompted international condemnation of the attack. Lebanese mobs, angry at the inaction of the UN, stormed the UN building in Beirut and smashed it up. The Israeli Army said a new wave of Hezbollah rockets hit Nahariya, Kiryat Shemona, and Mallot, although no one was injured. There are over 450 people confirmed dead in Lebanon, although up to several hundred more are thought dead. 51 Israelis have died, most of them soldiers. A massive oil spill caused by an Israeli strike on a Lebanese power plant (but one that supplied power to Hezbollah, of course) has covered the Lebanese coastline in sludge. I guess the tourism season is over.

Israeli forces have killed the leader of Islamic Jihad in Nablus. Troops came to arrest him while he was playing football with his friends and relatives. Apparently there was some resistance. Islamic Jihad has been responsible for all 12 suicide bombings in Israel over the past 17 months, killing 71 people.

This strange story caught my eye: a relatively conservative pastor of a megachurch refused to preach on political issues. 1,000 people in his congregation left.

It is a great story. His concerns about mixing politics with religion began on the 4th of July when he visited another megachurch and saw images of the US flag and military units mixed up with the cross on the main screen of the church as the chorus sang God Bless America. He asked himself “What just happened? Fighter jets mixed up with the cross?”

Another interesting little story: the UN is urging the US to give the District of Columbia a voting member of Congress, as the current situation appears “Inconsistent with international law.” Hah! That’s right America! Stop picking on little DC!

A nice little piece working Hannity over.

Greg Palast with a good interview with Hugo Chavez.

Finally, how many “liberals” can Rupert Murdoch buy?

Pundits and Happiness

2006-07-28T16:29:00.000-05:00

   Winning hearts and minds, cowboy style. US foreign policy mobilizes the region as Israel claims the international community is giving it a green light. Meanwhile, Secretary Rice ignores the entreaties of her counterparts asking for support of a cease fire resolution in Iraq.

   “Staying the course” in Iraq is the GOP’s national security message. You know, the course that has seen three times as much money spent on rebuilding Iraq as was spent by the United States under the Marshall Plan to rebuild all of Western Europe, with Iraq in utter chaos and the power and water systems still at pre-war levels.

   The coal industry mobilizes its propagandists against global warming.

   Democratic insiders recoil at the idea of impeding free-trade iniatives to secure American workers’ share of the profits.

   I suppose I have an obligation to report this: Ann Coulter calls AL Gore a “total fag.”

   Neocon pundits still dominate the airwaves, even after their predictions about Iraq proved so ridiculous. I would love to have that job security. That means you, Charles Krauthammer.

   And finally, the happiest countries in the world? Six if the top ten are in Europe, if you count Iceland as European. The small nations of Bhutan and Brunei also round out the top ten, along with Canada.

Israel Continued

2006-07-26T16:12:00.000-05:00

   Israel continued its offensive in Lebanon, focusing its energies on the Hezbollah stronghold of Bint Jbail. One refugee described the heavy bombardment as “worse than a nightmare. I saw dogs and cats on bodies that couldn’t be taken from bombed-out houses…Everything is finished.” The Israeli military has reportedly suffered several casualties in the offensive.

   This devastation was echoed in towns like Nabatiye, a Hezbollah stronghold with many Hezbollah-associated businesses. Several Hezbollah-associated businesses were struck (including a bank), as well as many that weren’t associated with Hezbollah: many houses, a gas station and a parking garage.

   The coverage of the carnage isn’t quite so honest on Fox, of course. I wonder if in their coverage of “all” of the sides, they have ever had an advocate like this on their program. Or how about this one. Israeli bombs struck a UN outpost, one of several that have been hit, killing four UN peacekeepers. Kofi Annan castigated the Israeli government for its “apparently deliberate targeting.” Israel claimed it was a mistake, even as the Irish Foreign Ministry said it had contacted the Israeli military repeatedly to warn them they were striking very close to UN installations in the region.

ME Violence

2006-07-25T20:59:00.000-05:00

   A brutal little story I first heard on alJazeera. At first I didn’t believe it, but the story was picked up by the Jerusalem Post: IDF Chief of Staff Halutz ordered that 10 buildings be leveled in Beirut for every rocket attack on Haifa.

    Have I not spoken of Israel’s conscious, cold-blooded calculation to inflict several times the injury they suffer in loss of life and destruction of infrastructure on the civilians of their neighbors? Have I not?

    Israel continues its destruction in the West Bank and Gaza: as dozens have died during the period of Israel’s Lebanon offensive Israel has also arrested half of the government of the Palestinian Authority and destroyed many of Palestine’s government buildings, including the foreign ministry in Gaza and nearly every government building in Nablus.

Some Illusions...

2006-07-25T16:16:00.000-05:00

   Republican Senator Worm has decided to submit a bill that will allow Congress to sue the president over his use of signing statements. This is after the American Bar Association has concluded that the president has sidestepped his constitutional authority to either “sign a bill, veto it, or take no action.” Bush has issued over 700 signing statements, more than all other presidents in history put together. I have previously written about the nature of some of these signing statements, which amount to little more than the president saying he will not enforce a law if he feels it impinges on his “constitutional” authority.

   The US war machine grinds onward: the Air Force has approved $11 billion for more of the F-22 fighter aircraft, the most expensive fighter aircraft in history. The Institute for Defense Analysis recommended the sale, even though the president of the IDA enjoys a particularly lucrative conflict of interest.

   Some illusions never die. Despite the fact that the WMDs in Iraq were never found, or were sample amounts or small amounts in degraded form left over from the Gulf War, 50% of US adults still think Iraq had WMDs when we invaded. 64% still think Saddam Hussein had strong links to al Qaeda. I would like to thank Fox News and Sean Hannity for making Americans to most delusional people on Earth regarding the war we are fighting.

   More anti-American sentiment from the speaker of the Iraqi parliament. Funny how democracy doesn’t always turn out like you planned, isn’t it?

   Conservatives in Ohio reply to calls for an increase in the minimum wage with the old story of how increasing the minimum wage will lead to unemployment.

   The dumbest senator in the Senate is on the warpath against the concept of global warming again, even going so far as to compare people who raise concerns about global warming to Nazis.

   War in the Middle East? Afghanistan in chaos? No problem. The president is meeting with the cast of American Idol, after which he will take fifteen days of vacation in August. Hey, Tony Snow! Let’s hear it about what a lazy president Jimmy Carter was again (you know, the president who took the least amount of vacation days of any president in modern US history).

   Speaking of the Middle East, how about that stilted coverage in the New York Times? Despite the fact that some defenders of Israel have lauded her for her “restraint,” Human Rights Watch has reported the use of cluster munitions in Lebanon in populated areas.

The Butcher's Work

2006-07-24T15:22:00.000-05:00

   The Butcher’s Work continues. Speaker of the Iraqi Parliament Mahmoud al-Mashhadani castigated the US war effort as “the work of butchers” done “under the slogan of democracy.” Josh Bolten, the president’s chief of staff, as part of their unending efforts to put a happy face on the disastrous and unpopular war, described the speaker as appreciative of the “sacrifices Americans have made.” In other words, Bolten lied his ass off.

   As a part of this effort to put lipstick on a pig, the White House released a fact sheet that was simply saturated with lies. This issue is linked to the upcoming confirmation hearings on Ambassador Bolton. It would do us well to remember the advocates of Bolton last year, like the Wall Street Journal, who ignored the evidence against him and took time to smear Bill Clinton, of course, with a lie.

   Orifice continues his peddling of conservative lies. Bob Geiger has a decent deconstruction of the incredibly fair and scientific polls of Fox News and Hannity here.

   Israel and our administration (through Secretary Rice) have made it clear that there must be no ceasefire for now. Israel maintains that it must be allowed to continue to hammer Lebanon to destroy Hezbollah…in other words, to somehow accomplish what they failed to do after twenty years of occupation. The US and Israel, in the face of the mounting humanitarian disaster (previously described on this blog) have belatedly decided to send relief to the war zone…but to continue to hammer it. Secretary Rice maintains that after this Israeli bombrdment peace will be “sustainable,” magically enough, for the first time in the modern history of the Middle East.

   I have previously asked the question “how disproportionate must the slaughter be before the US or Israel decides enough is enough?” The current conflict has resulted in ten times as many Lebanese dead as Israelis. It turns out that my question has been answered by the unknown amount of relief that is going to be sent to Lebanon by the US and Israel. I’m sure these politicians think that this relief will salve the weeping wounds of Lebanon and legitimize the aggression as it has happened so far, but this thinking is what has sustained the violence in the Middle East for generations. James Zogby echoes my opinion here.

    Israel still isn’t allowing the UN to ship relief into the area, a curious decision. I can’t help but wonder if the decision is based on spite, seeing as Israel has been the target of more Security Council resolutions than any nation in history. The efforts of conservatives to discredit the UN as an impediment to their desire to trample international law are in close alignment with those desires in Israel.

Fascism on the March

2006-07-21T23:42:00.000-05:00

   The head of NATO’s security forces in Afghanistan describes the country as “close to anarchy,” criticizing private security forces as “poorly regulated” and “all too ready to discharge firearms.” Ahh, the free market at work.

   Europe effectively has and is evacuating its citizens from war-torn Beirut; the US bungles the operation and then the right criticizes the evacuees for even needing help. Meanwhile, US media coverage of the conflict is bent hard right. The United States speeds up bomb delivery to Israeli so it can use them to pound Lebanon as the Lebanese Prime Minister vows that the Lebanese Army will resist an Israeli invasion.

   The stated policy of the Executive Branch to ignore congressional law at will raises its ugly head again as the Executive Branch refuses to estimate how much the Iraq War will cost. I have said it before, I will say it again, this movement refuses to acknowledge that Congress or the American people have any real right to know or provide input as to what is going on the sphere of foreign relations.

   The most bigoted and pig-ignorant member of the Senate once again opens his mouth, this time to attack Al Gore and the concept of global warming. Thank you, Oklahoma, for sending yet another jackass to the US Senate.

   The White House transcript of the president’s NAACP speech gets edited.

   Good news on the NSA wiretapping program: a federal judge has dismissed the government’s state secrets claim.

   The Butcher of the Honduras has stonewalled the CIA’s efforts to produce a National Intelligence Estimate for Iraq, as the situation there is so bad. Honestly, how long and how badly can this administration beat up on intelligence gatherers to keep a positive face on its policies?

   Tony Snow has repeatedly bumbled about during his press briefings, handling pointed questions with hostility, as I have written previously. He repeats the pattern again. Then he sinks to just lying about another troublesome issue.

   Limbaugh continues to lead the legions of inbred born-again zealots in their assault on the concept of science.

   Neal Boortz once again simply spouts unabashed bigotry: “it is perfectly legitimate, perhaps even praiseworthy, to recognize Islam as a religion of vicious, violent, bloodthirsty cretins.”

   I’m not even sure it’s even worth it to criticize a man whose audience must be composed of three-toed troglodytes and mullet-coiffed, proud, confederate-flag-waving patriots, but there are a billion Muslims, you Nazi, and they are not all the same. They are not an “inferior” religion, Adolf, and there is no American flag big enough for you to hide your elephantine slander behind.

   Chris Matthews kisses Trent Lott’s ass. We know Chris LOVES his conservatives, but Trent Lott, Chris? Have you no shame? The unreconstructed secessionist? The KKK sympathizer? The man who compared homosexuals to alcoholics and kleptomaniacs?

   Even the National Review turned on Lott back in 2002, though the Brutus carrying the dagger was, amusingly, the black republican Deroy Murdock. I suppose that Bill Buckley thought it might be ironic to send his house nigger to stab Lott in the back; it certainly was amusing to me to read an article written by an African-American who excoriates Lott for racism while gushingly describing his affection for Ronald Reagan, one of the masters of the Southern Strategy. Ha! That one was priceless. Thanks, Bill.

   I actually sympathized with Trent a little, back in 2002. Here he was, a cultured southern gentleman from Mississippi. Of course he’s racist. Then Buckley gives space in his magazine for a lunatic to stab Lott in the back: a gay, black republican, undoubtedly one of the most conflicted and hysterically-Stockholm-Syndrome-ridden individuals on the planet, a man who should be committed. Jesus, Buckley. Why didn’t you just send a homeless guy with a gun to shoot Lott?

   For what? Because racism is any worse than fascism? What is your litmus test for a republican, Buckley?

   Honestly, for a fascist you really lack spine. How do you have the gall to say, regarding a dictator like Pinochet, “Chile was happy to have produced one in its hour of need,” but you don’t have the courage to defend a Mississippi senator with the typical southern prejudice? Saying that “Chile was happy” to have Pinochet is the equivalent of shitting your pants in public: it’s so embarrassing and disgusting I am not going to draw any more attention to it.

   But conservatives have an amazing habit of throwing one of their members under the bus when their whole movement is guilty of the same thing. It’s like some sacrificial scape-goat will carry their sins away from them and erase the long, sad history of conservative race-baiting from existence.

Violence in the Middle East

2006-07-19T17:12:00.000-05:00

   Even the Energy Secretary echoes ridiculous White House spin regarding the situation in Iraq, even as the situation in Iraq deteriorates to a level of violence never before seen in the three-and-a-half years of the US occupation.

   Over 6,000 civilians have died in the last two months, according to the UN. Six thousand. As driftglass writes, this is not sporadic violence. This is total war.

   Now might a good time to revisit the assurances of the administration that Iraq has “turned a corner,” and turned back from the “abyss.” Now might be a good time to remember Vice President Cheney’s assurance that the insurgency is in its “last throes.” How about Bill Kristol’s self-assured predictions regarding Iraq.

   President Bush issued the first veto of his presidential career today, vetoing the Castle Bill to provide funding for research using embryos that would be discarded anyway. Press Secretary Snow maintained it was a moral decision. This despite the fact that a majority of US citizens support increased funding for stem cell research. Bush’s veto was defended by Karl Rove, the president’s most important domestic advisor, with a flagrant lie: there’s “more promise from adult stem cells than from embryonic stem cells.”

   Israel continued its offensive in Lebanon today, targeting a food processing plant, and aid convoy, and the nations largest milk factories, adding to the emerging humanitarian crisis. About 500,000 Lebanese have been displaced, and are facing food, water, and medicine shortages. Ten of thousands of Israelis have also been displaced, according to the LA Times, but are not suffering from the same shortages. The death toll for the war now stands at about 295 Lebanese and 25 Israelis, mostly civilians.

   There are concrete political consequences for supporting rampant military responses in retaliation for terrorism: Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has maintained that his government is planning a cross-border military action into Iraq to hunt down Kurdish PKK guerillas (categorized as terrorists by Europe and America). The US has warned him not to, calling such action “unwise.” Erdogan shot back, “Terrorism is terrorism everywhere," Erdogan said in Istanbul. "It is not possible to agree with a mentality that tolerates country A and displays a different attitude when it comes to country B.” He dismissed the US ambassador’s warning and hinted that his military will pursue PKK militants into Iraq pending “new developments.”

News and Preznit Drinky

2006-07-18T16:37:00.000-05:00

   The long-awaited first veto of this president’s career might take place this week, as the Senate is prepared to vote overwhelmingly to expand embryonic stem-cell research. Tony Snow gives the president’s explanation here, while Thinkprogress refutes the explanation given here.

   Seeing as conservatives are so eager to jump on Cynthia McKinney when she says something controversial, I thought I might cite the Thinkprogress blog entry on Rep. Lincoln Davis, who thinks that divorce and adultery should be illegal and should disqualify the “perpetrator” from serving in Congress.

   More news on an old subject: President Bush personally blocked the Department of Justice investigation into the legality of the NSA warrantless wiretapping program.

   Also, more news on how the investigative powers of the Congress have been hijacked by partisan propagandists.

   The situation in Afghanistan continues to deteriorate.

   Tony Snow gets flustered with Helen Thomas, slanders her as some kind of terrorist shill, and flat-out denies that the United States vetoed the UN Security Council resolution calling for a cease-fire. I’m telling you, Snow deserves some kind of Pravda Press award.

   Cenk Uyger has a hilarious post over at The Huffington Post. Oh, good Lord, I am still recovering from reading it. The truly choice excerpt:

The camera is focused elsewhere and it is not clear whom Bush is talking to, but possibly Chinese President Hu Jintao, a guest at the summit.
Bush: "Gotta go home. Got something to do tonight. Go to the airport, get on the airplane and go home. How about you? Where are you going? Home?
Bush: "This is your neighborhood. It doesn't take you long to get home. How long does it take you to get home?"
Reply is inaudible.
Bush: "Eight hours? Me too. Russia's a big country and you're a big country."At this point, the president seems to bring someone else into the conversation.
Bush: "It takes him eight hours to fly home."
He turns his attention to a server.
Bush: "No, Diet Coke, Diet Coke."
He turns back to whomever he was talking with.
Bush: "It takes him eight hours to fly home. Eight hours. Russia's big and so is China."

   A retarded child? No, the President of the United States, and our face to the world. In the words of one historian speaking about Preznit Drinky, “He neither speaks nor processes information well.”

Execution

2006-07-17T19:59:00.000-05:00

   As I mentioned two days ago, the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) targeted a convoy of civilian cars leaving an area the IDF told them to evacuate. The convoy was then struck by Israeli missiles and over a dozen were killed.

   You wouldn’t know this sad story if you simply watched CNN reports, but many in the world (including me) check Aljazeera and other Arab media outlets for information.

   Human Rights Watch has picked up on this story, demanding an explanation from the IDF (which is somewhat amusing, given that Israel stages some truly amazing whitewashes that it calls “investigations,” including the one regarding the shelling of a beach in Gaza that HRW castigated Israel for all of two weeks ago).

   What drew me to this story, though, is the “defense” of this action that the Israeli military offered. A cynic might suggest that it is truly demonic for a military to demand that some law-abiding people pack up and leave their homes so that the military can devastate an area, only to kill them as they flee. The truth is that what is really cynical is to do all that and then offer a defense of the action that blandly admits that Israel doesn’t give a rat’s ass about civilian casualties. The response in question: “Israel Air Force targeted an area near the city of Tyre, in southern Lebanon, used as launching grounds for missiles fired by Hezbollah terror organization at Israel. The IDF regrets civilian casualties while targeting the missile launching area.” (emphasis mine).

   Note the language. Israel doesn’t target guerrilla fighters; Israel targets areas. I suppose I must point out it is a war crime to target areas, blithely blowing up civilians without making any apparent effort to avoid doing so.

   But the story gets “curiouser and curiouser.” HRW interviewed a journalist, the UN, and witnesses and it turns out that there were two rockets fired at the convoy, apparently by helicopters. This was not Israel shelling “an area.” This wasn’t artillery fire that destroyed the convoy in the context of Israel shelling “an area.” These were two missiles fired from a helicopter, apparently, that targeted the convoy. The convoy was not weaving through an area being bombarded by the IDF, dodging shells. They were picked off.

   I am not waiting for Israel to investigate itself with the same probity it used in investigating the shelling of the beach in Gaza. Israel’s simple calculus is to kill several Lebanese or Palestinians for every casualty they suffer, even if they have to line them up against a wall and shoot them.

   It turns out that 20 people died in that attack, 9 of them children.

Death on Monday

2006-07-17T08:25:00.000-05:00

   Kofi Annan called for a cease fire and the installation of UN peacekeepers in Lebanon, a call Israel rejected. Miri Eisin, an Israeli government spokeswoman, said: "I don't think we're at that stage yet. We're at the stage where we want to be sure that Hezbollah is not deployed at our northern border."

   In their efforts to ensure that Hezbollah was not deployed at their northern border Israel invaded Lebanon. Israel’s airstrikes continued, killing 17 civilians overnight and another 17 early in the day. Factories and power stations have been targeted. Hezbollah retaliated with rocket strikes into Haifa that killed 8.

   In Turkey the Turkish government has vowed to punish the PKK, the Kurdish Workers Party, that is apparently responsible for a raid on a Turkish army post that left 13 soldiers dead. The PKK is considered a terrorist organization by the US, Europe, and Turkey. The PKK has been active in attacks on the Turkish government before, including bombs in Istanbul recently. The PKK and the Turkish government have a long history of violence: in the 1990s the Turkish government cracked down on PKK areas in the southeast of the country, killing tens of thousands.

   Things are not going so well in Iraq. A car bomb killed 55 in a town 30 miles from Baghdad yesterday, following the suicide bomber that killed 26 in a Baghdad café and other sectarian violence, including the recent massacre (reported this morning) of another 50 or so people in a town south of Baghdad.

   Lebanon’s Daily Star editorial sounds an ominous warning. It points out that Ehud Olmert and Washington are on the same side, reminding the reader that the “bombs and missiles raining down”on their heads are “American-made,” warning that a new generation of militants is being born, and reminding the reader that “Lest we forget, it was during Israel's bloody invasion of Lebanon in 1982 that a young Osama bin Laden watched the destruction of high-rises in Beirut and first resolved to take down the towers of the World Trade Center.” Jonathan Cook,  another editorial writer at the paper, also mentions the United States as Israel’s “paymaster.” Al-Ahram (one of Egypt’s main media organizations) is regularly full of vitriol directed towards America regarding the Iraq War or Israeli alliance.

   There are and will be concrete repercussions from US political and military action in the Middle East. Perhaps if anther terrorist attack takes place on US soil Americans will not ask themselves “Why do they hate us?” They will already know.

Bush's Sleepytime

2006-07-16T12:25:00.000-05:00

   I am not the only person to remark on how disinterested Bush seems with the whole Middle East World War III thing. While President Bush enjoyed a barbeque in Germany on his visit there Thursday Lebanon continued to burn under Israeli assault. He conferred with some people in the Middle East by phone on his flight to Russia for the G8 meeting. Then he spent Saturday biking in Russia.

   James Wolcott snidely remarked “perhaps the president might make an effort not to see quite so blase, detached, and in-character.” Josh Marshall remarked that the Bush Administration has “marginalized itself” and shown “impotence and irrelevance.” Jon Stewart ran a piece at the Daily Show mocking the President’s lack of interest in Middle East questions Thursday at the barbeque in Germany.

   Is this not reminiscent of Bush’s delayed reaction to Hurricane Katrina, when it took him days to realize that the city was sinking beneath the waves? What diplomatic mission to Germany could be so important so as to pre-empt the beginning of a region-wide disaster?

   You will find no leadership from the White House on this issue. Bush’s plan since the beginning of his presidency was to ignore the peace process in the Middle East and let Israel do whatever it felt necessary. The results of that diplomacy are evident today.

   A good president would have gotten on the horn with Ehud Olmert and told him to suspend his military strikes. But, of course, this president will do no such thing, even when he finds the time to address the situation. He has voiced support for the Israeli action and even directed a veto of the UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel’s actions (and, of course, the kidnapping of the Israeli Army members).

   German media covered the president’s visit to Germany by highlighting the protestors there protesting Bush’s visit, in America we received no such information. His visit was covered by a small story buried in the depths of the Chicago Tribune, which made no mention of the inconvenient fact of the protestors.

In other news:

   When it comes to the K Street Gang, it’s just a different face, same situation.

   Presidet Putin of Russia gives President Bush a snide jab over the results in Iraq.

   A certain Judiciary Committee Chairman who is dead to me (previously referred to as “Worm”) floated his previously-mentioned sham legislation in Congress recently, a bill that was mostly written by Dick Cheney.

The War of Words

2006-07-16T11:52:00.000-05:00

   So Israel is threatening to devastate all of southern Lebanon nowadays, with the Israeli Army saying it has warned civilians to leave southern Lebanon. Hezbollah rockets struck Haifa and killed about ten people. So far about 16 Israeli civilians have perished in hundreds of rocket attacks mounted by Hezbollah over the past several days.

   On the Lebanese side the death toll is about 100. Lebanese President Emile Lahoud maintained on Sunday that Israel has used “phosphorus incendiary bombs, which are a blatant violation of international laws” against Lebanese civilians. Zeev Boim, Israeli minister of immigration and political ally of Ehud Olmet, said that the leader of Hezbollah “had better pray to Allah” because Israel was going to “wipe him out.” Saudi Arabia and Kuwait pledged a total of $70 million to help rebuild the devastated infrastructure of Lebanon.

   Meanwhile, the United States opposed a Security Council resolution of any kind and Great Britain opposed one calling for a ceasefire. Lebanon criticized the United States for obstructing the resolution proposed by Qatar calling for a ceasefire, for the protection of civilians, etc. Nouhad Mahmoud said, “It sends very wrong signals not only to the Lebanese people but to all Arab people, to all small nations that we are left to the might of Israel and nobody is doing anything.”

   It does indeed send a very bad signal to Arab nations that the UN is unwilling to even issue a ceasefire resolution. US obstructionism is disgracing both itself and the entire UN.

   Meanwhile, the Bush Administration continued its PR offensive against Hezbollah and Lebanon, insisting that “Hezbollah...is at the root of the problem” and working to convince other G8 nations to adopt a resolution “blaming Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and Syria” for the violence.

   And so the Bush Administration master plan unfolded, a plan to blame anyone for the violence except the people actually doing the vast majority of the killing.

   Indonesians protested Israel’s actions (about 85% of Indonesia’s 220 million citizens are Muslim). Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, criticized Israeli action:"Bombs are exploding, innocent people are being killed, infrastructures are being destroyed ... The powerful continue to crush the weak, but unfortunately those who hold the power in the world are keeping mum.” The Arab League unanimously condemned the Israeli action. The European Union was critical.

   Gaza has seemingly been forgotten, even as Israeli raids continue. Israel’s campaign to free its captured soldier has led to 82 Palestinians and one Israeli solider dead.

Middle East Action

2006-07-15T11:03:00.000-05:00

   Lebanon continued to suffer under the punishment of Israeli bombardment. Israeli forces used loudspeakers to tell villagers in Marwahin (a village in southern Lebanon) to leave. No reason was given. Villagers gathered in vehicles and exited the village. They were turned away from a UN peacekeeper position. Shortly thereafter, an Israeli missile struck the convoy and killed a dozen people, including women and children.

   Husan Hutait, an advisor to Lebanon’s Health Minister, put the total death toll of Lebanese at 79.

   Meanwhile, in Egypt about 5,000 protestors gathered to protest Israel’s military bombardment of Lebanon. In Jordan about 2,000 gathered. Saudi Arabia issued a statement condemning the actions of Hezbollah. Al-Ahram noted the reactions of many who believe that Israel and the United States are complicit in this behavior. They cited the example of the American occupation of Iraq as evidence that the United States is the moral equivalent of Israel.

   Dan Gillerman, the Israeli ambassador to the UN, echoed the language of President Bush, calling Hezbollah part of an “Axis of Terror” along with Hamas, Syria, and Iran.

   Meanwhile, Israel continues to bombard Gaza. The Palestinian Economy Ministry was struck. The offices of the Prime Minister and Interior Minister have also been destroyed.

   In other news, now that sanctions against Libya have been lifted major US corporations are eager to do business there. The two biggest potential investors? Bechtel and Exxon, of course.

   In this article Gary Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the International Institute of Economics, was very frank with Aljazeera: “I do think Libya will continue in its autocratic ways while no longer being antagonistic towards the West. Al-Qadhafi could become no more autocratic than the King of Morocco, whom we like a lot.”

   In the words of Ace Ventura, re-heh-eally? Please google for yourself the questionable record of the King of Morocco, the autocrat who created the ERC, a human rights commission that was supposed to investigate the human rights abuses of his father’s (Hassan II) reign. However, the commission wasn’t allowed to mention his father by name, nor was it allowed to investigate human rights violations since 1999, of which there are many.

   There is an interesting article at Al-Ahram regarding Israeli press censorship.

Correction

Thursday I mentioned “hundreds” of Palestinians had died, based on reports mostly from Al-Ahram. The number of Palestinian deaths in Gaza and the West Bank just over the past few weeks approximates the number of Lebanese dead so far, or 70 or so, according to other reports from Aljazeera and Al-Ahram. My apologies. Under Thursday’s “Further Military Action” entry substitute “dozens” for “hundreds.”

Coffins

2006-07-14T15:31:00.000-05:00

    This is the image Republicans don’t want you to see.

    You might be asking yourself, as I was, “What’s wrong with flag-draped coffins? There’s no nudity. The bodies are clearly being treated with reverence and care.”

    The answer, of course, is that Republicans don’t like powerful images like this that show the results of war. They kicked and screamed and have convinced every major newspaper in the country that I have read (New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Wall Street Journal, USA Today) not to show pictures of the mutilated bodies in Iraq, or those hundreds now in Gaza or Lebanon. It’s not “appropriate.” It’s appropriate to kill the people we (or Israel) have killed, but not to have the public see the bodies. As Noam Chomsky once said, “Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media.”

    Aside from a once every six months or so we just don’t see the human cost of our war. It is even “inappropriate” to see the coffins of our soldiers who have given their lives for their country.

    This is part of an effort to run a war and keep its costs distant and invisible. There is no draft, even when the administration has been forced to extend tens of thousands of soldiers’ tours of duty. The price of the war massively contributes to the national debt, but the US simply runs with a deficit year after year and postpones paying the debt into the indeterminate future. The US military has insisted it won’t keep body counts of slain Iraqis, and so that cost is invisible to Americans.

    There is a price for war, however, and it is duplicitous and vile in the extreme to conceal the costs of war from the public that is paying for it.

Shame

2006-07-13T19:29:00.000-05:00

Two Israeli soldiers "trophy pose" with a dead Palestinian.

The United States officially vetoed a UN Security Council resolution condemning the Israeli assault on Gaza and Lebanon.

Shame on our government. Shame on President Bush and that lunatic excuse for a diplomat, John Bolton. We are the shame of the United Nations Security Council and the World, today.

Let me make this unambiguous: when you provide political cover for and protect war criminals you are complicit in war crimes. There is no plausable excuse or reasonable position to be taken in defense of a nation that is reducing another nation to ruin over the kidnapping of two men, for the love of God.

This is hardly the first time the United States has done this, which makes it worse. This part of a long, shameful history of the United States defending the atrocities of Israel.

Further Military Action

2006-07-13T15:56:00.000-05:00

   Hezbolla has retaliated against Israeli bombardment by firing dozens of rockets into Israel, killing two Israelis and injuring dozens more.

   Lebanon has called for an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council. France and Russia have condemned both the capture of the two Israeli soldiers that prompted the Israeli assault and Israel’s “disproportionate” use of force. President Bush has maintained that “Israel has the right to defend itself” but also urged that Israel not do anything that would destabilize the Lebanese government. Of course, the United States has recent memories of what happens when a regional government is destabilized.

   Speaking of destabilizing governments, Israel has struck the Palestinian Foreign Ministry lately, part on it ongoing military operations in Gaza and the West Bank. Israel has already taken 120 Palestinian lawmakers and government officials. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has threatened a “long war” as Israeli military forces bombard the civilian infrastructure of Palestine, targeting power plants, civilian homes, schools, and government buildings. The Al-Arkam primary school was struck along with the Palestinian Foreign Ministry. Israel said the attacks were a reprisal for the firing of a homemade Qassam rocket into Askalon, causing no casualties or damage. On Wednesday, Zeev Boim, an aide to Olmert, urged hundreds of thousands of residents in northern Gaza to “start packing.” Avigdor Lieberman, a member of the Knesset and the head of the fourth largest political party in Irsrael, urged the Israeli military to conduct a carpet bombing campaign of Palestinian population centers.

   Olmert has refused to consider negotiation with the terrorists who have seized the Israeli soldier that started this latest military action. Israel has 10,000 Palestinian prisoners in its jails, many held without charges or trial dates.

   Meanwhile, the Israeli operations in Lebanon have widened, including attacks against “at least” five bridges, residential buildings, and an electrical sub-station. Olmert has made it clear that, "This morning's events are not a terror attack but the action of a sovereign state which attacked Israel without any reason ... The Lebanese government is responsible. Lebanon will pay the price.”

   Indeed, 54 Lebanese civilians have already paid the ultimate price, as will many more. Hundreds of thousands more will pay a price as their country’s infrastructure disintegrates under Israeli bombardment. Israel has paid very little: two captive soldiers, another half a dozen or so dead in military operations, and two dead civilians.

   Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea disagreed with Olmert’s characterization of the Lebanese government being responsible for the actions of Hezbolla: “Only when decisions are made within Cabinet or Parliament can these be regarded as the choice of the Lebanese people," Geagea said in an interview with LBCI television.

   It continues to amaze me that the abduction of two soldiers by a paramilitary force in Lebanon can justify (is Israel’s eyes) the bombardment of an entire country and scores of civilian deaths. That’s like a couple of Mexican bandits crossing the border into Arizona and killing a couple of people and the United States using that as a pretext for an invasion of Mexico.

   Israel has “abducted” 10,000 Palestinians and kept them in jail, many without due process, and will continue to do so for an indeterminate time as part of their occupation of Palestine. A few Palestinians do the same thing to one soldier and all of Gaza is attacked by Israel, resulting in hundreds of deaths and massive destruction. Because of the abduction of one soldier.

   Words fail me.

Israeli Offensive

2006-07-13T10:35:00.000-05:00

Israel broadened its war against militants Thursday, striking Lebanon in response to Hezbollah attacks. Some highlights:

“Two days of Israeli bombings had killed 47 Lebanese and wounded 103, Health Minister Mohammed Jawad Khalife said. Besides the Israeli civilian, eight Israeli soldiers had also been killed.” This is the typical calculus of the Israeli Defense Forces. As I have pointed out in the past, Israel will kill three or four or five civilians for every Israeli citizen or soldier that perishes.

“Israeli warplanes blasted craters into all three runways at the airport, located by the seaside in the Lebanese capital's Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs, forcing incoming flights to divert to Cyprus.” The justification was that Hezbollah guerillas use the airport. Israel also blockaded Lebanon’s port and plan to do the same to the main highway into and out of Lebanon.

“It was the first time since Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon and occupation of Beirut that the airport was hit by Israel. The Israelis in 1968 sent commandos to Beirut airport, blowing up 13 passenger planes in retaliation for Arab militants firing on an Israeli airliner in Athens.” Read this last sentence again. Israel targeted civilian airliners in response to some terrorists in Athens firing on one of its airliners.

Hezbollah has acquired a new rocket that can travel up to 12 miles, though what good that will do them against the massed might of the IDF I don’t know. Keep in mind this offensive against Lebanon was sparked by a couple of Israeli fatalities from a Hezbollah attack a few days ago. Israel has said it holds Lebanon responsible for the actions of Hezbollah.

Kill the New Deal

2006-07-12T16:29:00.000-05:00

   The administration is asking for another $110 billion for Iraq next year. The total cost of the Iraq War through next year will top $400 billion. Overall U.S. military spending will once again roughly equal that of every other nation on Earth put together: about $450 billion dollars a year.

   As the administration celebrates the fact that the deficit is only a little less than $300 billion this year, President Bush has announced “that the time has arrived to make cuts in such major entitlement programs as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid,” according to the Chicago Tribune. Indeed, the president said, “In the long-run, the biggest challenge to our nation's economic health is the unsustainable growth in spending for entitlement programs; mandatory programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid…To solve the problem, we need to cut entitlement spending.”

   Barry Goldwater would be proud. Conservatives have been trying to roll back the New Deal since Truman’s day. Every damned year it’s the same battle, over and over again. There’s just no money to pay for healthcare for people or aid to the poor. Nevermind that every industrialized democracy on Earth has universal health care: we, the United States of America, the richest country on Earth, simply can’t afford it.

News Countdown

2006-07-11T17:49:00.000-05:00

   How does the President of the United States become “the moral equivalent of a mafia boss?” According to Andrew Sullivan, when he threatens the wife and children of a terrorist in custody in order to get the terrorist to talk.

   Medicare Part D has some serious problems.

   Tony Snow debased himself and his office another level by (surprise) bashing Clinton in response to criticisms of the Bush Administration’s progress with North Korea. This is special because it is unheard of for a Press Secretary to insult the foreign policy of a previous administration, much less twice in as many months (readers will remember Snow’s sarcastic and ridiculous criticism of Jimmy Carter’s presidency).

   Poland, one of the former members of the “Coalition of the Willing,” rips the Bush Administration’s performance in Iraq.

   Senators Graham and Kyl sink to lows not seen “since Nixon’s reign.”

   Finally, I must make a note on this blog of Santorum’s and Hoekstra’s bizarre claims of “new” information regarding WMDs in Iraq, touted by Sean Hannity (of course) as “vindication” of the administration’s pretext for war. Every time I hear Sean Hannity speak I wonder why it isn’t against the law to lie publicly and constantly in this country.

   Hoekstra is the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, is he not? Is this the man in charge of “overseeing” the intelligence efforts of this administration? Does it need explanation why this story looks incredibly bad specifically regarding the status of congressional oversight?
Does it require further explanation to make clear that propagandists are in charge of governance is Congress?

   Another note (OK, I lied about the “finally” part): since when did cable news viewers get so old? Bill O’Reilly’s viewer’s mean age is 71! Olbermann’s isn’t that much younger. I think someone should inform Bill that his average audience member only has (mathematically) three years to live.

Moral Contradictions

2006-07-06T18:02:00.000-05:00

   More news about how the government bends news services to its will.

   San. James Inhofe’s defender Marc Morano doesn’t even find it newsworthy that “many congressional committees are highly partisan and political,” responding to criticism that Inhofe’s Senate Environment and Public Works Committee launched a partisan attack on Al Gore’s global warming reports. Morano just explicity admits that using taxpayer dollars to launch partisan attacks through a congressional committee is standard fare, so it’s OK when Inhofe does it.

   Andrew Sullivan recently (amazingly enough) both criticized Cheney’s statements about WMDs in the lead up to the War in Iraq and somehow equated that to Gore’s global warming statements. Thinkprogress helpfully points out that Cheney falsified, cherry-picked, and exaggerated the data while Gore’s work is the consensus of the scientific community fairly represented. Paul Pillar’s confession is also cited at Thinkprogress.

   Many critics are pointing out the obvious disparity in US policy regarding Iran and North Korea, two dangerous nations the president has suddenly decided must be addressed through patient diplomacy. A lot of right-wing commentators are also suddenly in love with the idea of diplomacy, praising the administration for its “patience.” My, my, how the worm has turned, eh?

   Conservatives have always had the luxury of tailoring their policy guidelines to their abilities, disregarding internal consistency, morality, or coherency. In Ford’s era, thus, they could support the bloody military dictatorships of Chile and Nicaragua while excoriating Cuba’s lesser human rights abuses. Reagan found that gentle reminders were all the military dictatorships in Guatemala, Argentina, and El Salvador needed, while the leftist government of Nicaragua was a target of the US war machine, with the CIA funneling hundred of millions of dollars through the eighties against a government whose worst excesses were a joke compared to the slaughter of Guatemala’s military dictatorship (about 100,000 executed civilians in the eighties) or El Salavador’s military excesses (more than half that of Guatemala). Conservatives blamed the left-wing rebels, though no serious international observer shared that view. In El Salvador, for example, the UN later found that only 5% of the civilian fatalities were attributable the rebels, the rest being the responsibility of the government forces and the death squads that were allied with them, the executioners that Reagan funded massively.

   Reagan’s Administration, State Department, and other agencies lied constantly about the human rights violations (or mass slaughter, as it were) of their proxies in the Central America, using their own bent analysis to bully a pliable Congress into appropriating funds for the military dictatorships they championed. When that failed, Reagan simply ignored the Boland Amendment and funneled money to the Contras anyway. Or his administration construed “humanitarian aid” to mean anything aside from guns and bullets, including vehicles, that belligerent forces needed. Ford exhibited a similar disdain for Congressional funding limits: when Ted Kennedy passed a bill limiting aid to the bloody Pinochet dictatorship in Chile (near the apex of its violence, no less) Ford simply ignored the law.

   Gentler forms of hypocrisy were present in other conservative administrations. Bush I sent troops to depose Manuel Noriega, a hypocrisy I have covered before, alleging that he was invading a nation and deposing its leader because he was a drug trafficker, an excuse for invasion that is truly novel in the annals of history. Several sovereign nations were invaded in Bush I’s term, but only oil-rich Kuwait merited a military defense, of course.

   This is not to let Bill Clinton off the hook for his policies regarding Haiti or Turkey, but no democrat since the days of Lyndon Johnson has evinced such an utter disregard for moral consistency in foreign policy as most conservative presidents since then, and no comparison has ever existed between the exhortations of the right-wing establishment versus those of the left-wing establishment. Compare the militarism and principle-free foreign policy recommendations of the National Review to that of Mother Jones and tell me which side in this political argument fuels bloody foreign policy more.

   This president, as I have written before, is not a conservative aberration in anything other than his lack of use of the veto. Ford (and two of his employees, Rumsfeld and Cheney) kicked and screamed when Congress passed FISA and laws enacting congressional oversight of covert action. He vetoed those laws but his veto was overridden by a massive majority in Congress.

   The ugliest part of the GOP has never acknowledged that those laws exist, that Congress and the American people have a right to exercise moral restraint and oversight on the foreign policy actions of the president. Ford simply ignored those laws, sending more funds to Chile than Congress allowed as Kissinger perjured himself repeatedly regarding former US actions in Chile and current abuses of the military government that they helped install. Kissinger and Ford greenlighted Suharto’s massacre in East Timor in 1975 and promised to provide political cover for his excesses, an action that subsequent observers and even US leaders have labeled “genocide.”

   Carter provided a moral respite from a rampant foreign policy, but he was excoriated by the right for his “weakness.” Reagan picked up where Ford left off and certainly surpassed him in his excesses. Reagan, as Ford did before him, covertly and overtly bent and broke the law to fund the most violent military despotisms. When caught, his officials (Elliott Abrams, Oliver North) and their cheerleaders on the right were very explicit in their contempt for the concept of congressional oversight or moral behavior in foreign policy. Oliver North was proud of what he did. Abrams literally sneered at the congressional committee investigating him, calling them “pious clowns,” among other things.

   Bush I and Clinton, while more moderate, had very low standards for their “friends.” Bush II, however, has reasserted what Reagan’s people always did: Congress has no right to supervise covert action and the President is not bound by any law when, in his judgment, the law is too restrictive. Forget about FISA, forget about half a dozen anti-torture laws and treaties the US has enacted, forget about habeas corpus for people like Hamdi and Padilla, and anyone else the administration designates an “enemy combatant,” forget about the Geneva Conventions. The President has violated these laws covertly, usually without informing Congress, and when caught has excoriated the whistle blowers and maintained that these extraordinary powers are necessary to prosecute an undeclared and potentially decades-long “War on Terror,” or, as some in the administration now aptly call it, “Long War.”

   Every conservative in government and the media has whole-heartedly approved of this extraordinary lawlessness, as they did in Reagan’s day. They have even exceeded the zealousness of Dick Cheney, advocating imprisoning journalists who publish news of illegal government programs. Bush’s ugliest flaws are those that are most vociferously supported by his brutal base.

   This is not a philosophy of government in any sense. These aren’t people who would support any president with a militaristic foreign policy. When Clinton bombed Kosovo conservatives, virtually to a man and woman, lined up and lambasted him for his reckless foreign policy. When he sent two lone divisions to Somalia to protect food shipments to starving people they wailed when a couple of dozen troops perished.

   This movement has no universal moral guidelines. They will acquire and discard reasons and justifications for actions as easily as an actor changing costumes between the acts of a play. The leadership of the Republican Party has no political philosophy beyond acquiring power and enriching themselves and their associates thereby, as well as reinforcing existing systems of government and economy that they have mastered and discrediting and destroying those they haven’t. Most conservative leaders and propagandists do not necessarily believe in small government or big government, an aggressive or restrained foreign policy, or anything else beyond balanced budgets and GOP control of government.