Another world is not only possible, she's on her way. Maybe many of us won't be here to greet her, but on a quiet day, if I listen very carefully, I can hear her breathing. -- Arundhati Roy
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Here's where you can comment or query. There's no guarantee of a response, but the crew do their best.
Find the appropriate team member below.
Query - Nell will look at all comments in support of or correcting any facts offered in YWA. She will also consider any questions about topics covered, or any specific topic of interest that isn't being covered.
Positive - Dudley will accept and review positive general comments from all well wishers.
Negative - Snidely will accept and review negative general comments from all naysayers.
Crapola - Horse will receive all lunatic ravings and hateful tripe. Because, frankly, somebody has to do it.
Favorite Forum Quotes
"So, just to get this straight once and for all: We don't hate you. We're not jealous of you. As a matter of fact, we are worried. Worried because of the effects your country's actions will have on our countries, and worried because, frankly, we just don't recognize the US anymore." - Snow (from Munich)
What a huge stinking shadow government olive green repturd pile of fragging disinformationalistic fusterclucked crap. -Anonymous
This is becoming a chore, and I am seriously allergic to chores.
I don't know where YWA will eventually end up, but I'll figure something out.
In case you weren't around last evening, tblog went on the fritz big time. Nobody's posts who uses this host were available; tbloggers thought they'd lost all their work; I went crawling back to blogger. The sad news is there.
Since the tblog administrator seems to be MIA, I wasn't sure anyone would be here to get the site up and running again. And since I had been considering dealing with the annoying problems of blogger again, just to be able to access my archives (tblog suddenly seems to have them filed in an inaccessible black hole somewhere), I figure yesterday's scare is a signal to get out while the getting's good.
Although tblog is much easier on my nerves for blogging, blogger always seems to be available to the reader. I'll keep this account open as a backup. And I'll try to think of this as a good thing, and not a problem. Two homes for YWA - like having a summer home on Cape Cod. Or something.
In the case of future blog problems, the current link to find YWA will be on my website's news page, which I've got to go change to blogger right now.
Apologies and thanks for hanging out with me. It would be more fun in the islands.
Is he crying out for attention, or what? He couldn't have timed his ignorant, thoughtless party dress any better.
The gaffe comes as Queen Elizabeth is due to host a reception for survivors of the Holocaust on January 27 before representing the nation at the Holocaust Memorial Day National Event, marking the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp.
[...]
His prior 'scandals' include allegations of drug use, alcohol abuse and cheating on tests.
[...]
Prince Harry is due to train at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst later this year.
Minister of State Adnan Janabi, a key aide of interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, has resigned to protest being detained and handcuffed by US troops at a checkpoint outside the Green Zone, where government offices and the US embassy are barricaded. It was revealed last week that Janabi was giving envelopes with $100 in them to journalists who covered the press conferences of the Iraqi National Accord, a party mainly made up of ex-Baathists that probably has little popularity in Iraq.
According to the Al Furat newspaper, 53 political parties and organizations as well as 30 individuals have asked their names to be dropped from the election lists in a bid to show their rejection of elections under US occupation.
Two aides to Iraq's top Shi'ite leader Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani have been killed in separate attacks apparently aimed at inflaming sectarian conflict among Iraqis already divided on whether Jan. 30 polls should go ahead.
Gunmen killed the director of a Baghdad election center Thursday, another in a series of attacks targeting election officials and candidates as the vote set for January 30 approaches.
[...]
Also on Thursday, the Democratic Islamic Party announced Iraqi presidential candidate Mithal al-Alousi was targeted for the second time in two weeks.
A new FBI computer program designed to help agents share information to ward off terrorist attacks may have to be scrapped, the agency has concluded, forcing a further delay in a four-year, half-billion-dollar overhaul of its antiquated computer system. Since the attacks, Congress has given the FBI a blank check, allocating billions of dollars in additional funding. So far the overhaul has cost $581 million, and the software problems are expected to set off a debate over how well the bureau has been spending those dollars.
[...]
The bureau recently commissioned a series of independent studies to determine whether any part of the Virtual Case File software could be salvaged. Any decision to proceed with new software would add tens of millions of dollars to the development costs and render worthless much of a current $170-million contract.
Requests for proposals for new software could be sought this spring, the officials said. The bureau is no longer saying when the project, originally scheduled for completion by the end of 2003, might be finished.
Apparently the program was also considered by the Justice Department, which deemed it unusable for them as well.
The designer of the program is Science Applications International Corp (whose programs are used by Halliburton and the U.S. Navy), which has gotten a number of government contracts in Iraq, including one to "rebuild Iraq's mass media".
So, the FBI is having problems with the SAIC program, the Justice Department nixed it, and lo and behold, the Defense Department also had some problems with another program SAIC was to develop.
March 25th, 2004
Defense contractor Science Applications International Corp. has agreed to pay $484,500 to settle allegations it violated the False Claims Act when designing a computer system program for the U.S. Department of Defense.
[...]
The federal government alleged that SAIC repeatedly misrepresented its progress on the project.
[...]
The government also alleged it overpaid for SAIC's services and that SAIC's actions delayed the government's implementation of the system.
In a scathing report yesterday, the Pentagon's inspector general sharply criticized contracts issued last year to San Diego's SAIC for reconstruction and humanitarian work in Iraq.
[...]
In particular, defense auditors highlighted problems with SAIC's work to create a free and independent Iraqi Media Network, or IMN, that was ostensibly to be modeled on Britain's BBC.
The Defense Contracting Command awarded the $15 million contract to SAIC on March 11, 2003, without an acquisition plan or competitive bidding. By the end of September, however, SAIC's costs under the contract had escalated to $82.3 million.
Read that last article. There are some real humdingers in it.
I wonder how this company keeps getting contracts.
SAIC has been awarded seven contracts by the Defense Department to provide experts and advisers on development of representative government in Iraq; restore and upgrade the country's broadcast media; and provide a group of Iraqi expatriates to assist coalition officials working in the country. The value of the contracts, which were obtained by the Center for Public Integrity under the Freedom of Information Act, was blacked out in copies provided by the Defense Department. A Pentagon FOIA officer said keeping the information secret "was an appropriate way to avoid substantial competitive harm to the contractor" and was "due to the sensitive nature of the Iraqi contracts."
[...]
The Pentagon has steadfastly refused to release any specific information on SAIC's media reconstruction work, which has been dubbed the Iraqi Media Network. What little information that has leaked out about the SAIC effort has come mainly from disgruntled employees and press freedom advocates, who have charged the company has bungled the job badly. One report said SAIC had ordered equipment that was incompatible with existing systems in Iraq. [...] There have also been widespread complaints from press freedom organizations about the SAIC effort, including charges of military censorship and cronyism.
[...]
David Kay, the former U.N. weapons inspector who was hired by the CIA to track down weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, is a former vice president of SAIC. Kay left SAIC, where he oversaw homeland security and counterterrorism work, in October 2002.
Christopher "Ryan" Henry left a senior position at SAIC in February 2003 to become principal deputy undersecretary of Defense for policy.
[...]
Executive vice president for Federal Business and director Duane P. Andrews served as assistant secretary of Defense from 1989 to 1993, when he joined SAIC.
The Associated Press describes Science Applications International Inc. (SAIC) as "the most influential company most people have never heard of." The Asia Times calls it "the most mysterious and feared of the big 10 defense giants."
[...]
SAIC might best be described as "the-company-of-what's-ha ppening-now" in defense and intelligence. If it's important and it's happening, it's likely that SAIC has piece of the action. The company's ranks overflow with former or retired government person, many from the military and intelligence agencies. Much of SAIC's work is highly classified.
At any given point in time, SAIC's board of directors represents a Who's Who of former military and intelligence officials.
[...]
Long before the shooting began SAIC was already at work on Iraq.
[...]
[William] Owens also served as president, chief operating officer and vice chair of SAIC. And, Owens is a member of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's internal think-tank, the Defense Policy Board.
SAIC is also a sub-contractor under Vinnell Corporation, another big defence contractor that has long been in charge of training for the Saudi National Guard, hired to reconstitute and train a new Iraqi army.
SAIC is also somehow involved in the electronic voting business.
"The American vote count is controlled by three major corporate players, Diebold, ESS, and Sequoia. There's a fourth, SAIC, Science Applications International Corporation, coming on strong. These companies, all four of them, are hard-wired into the Bush power structure and they have been given God knows how many millions of dollars by the Bush regime to complete a sweeping computerization of voting machines that were just used in the 2004 election.
Four main corporate entities are responsible for the proliferation and implementation of this "black box" voting technology: Diebold, ESS, Sequoia, and Science Applications International (SAIC). These ostensibly competitive businesses interconnect with one another and with major corporate sponsors, especially the famed Carlyle Group, of the Bush administration. Their people are his people, so to speak. And vice versa.
SAIC was hired to investigate the reliability of Diebold machinery in Maryland.
Aviel Rubin, a professor at Johns Hopkins University's Information Security Institute, was asked to review the Diebold code accessible on the company's website and used by its machines. Rubin and his colleagues found numerous security issues with the code, including the use of a consumer version of Microsoft Access as the database in which votes were stored, a product that has few security measures. The report, which garnered front page news in a number of newspapers, was released only days after Maryland had purchased 11,000 Diebold DRE machines at a price of $55.6 million. Maryland then had the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) review Rubin's findings. SAIC verified Rubin's concerns, reporting that they had "identified several high risk vulnerabilities of the managerial, operational, and technical controls for [Diebold's] AccuVote-TS voting system." The SAIC report continued, "If these vulnerabilities are exploited, significant impact could occur on the accuracy, integrity, and availability of election results."
I don't know if there's a competition thing going on there, or if there is anything at all untoward in it. A number of articles on the electronic voting fiasco hint that SAIC is involved in some shady way (and given what else we know, I guess that's a pretty safe bet).
At the urging of the White House, Congressional leaders scrapped a legislative measure last month that would have imposed new restrictions on the use of extreme interrogation measures by American intelligence officers, Congressional officials say.
[...]
The Senate had approved the new restrictions, by a 96-to-2 vote, as part of the intelligence reform legislation. They would have explicitly extended to intelligence officers a prohibition against torture or inhumane treatment, and would have required the C.I.A. as well as the Pentagon to report to Congress about the methods they were using.
But in intense closed-door negotiations, Congressional officials said, four senior members from the House and Senate deleted the restrictions from the final bill after the White House expressed opposition.
[...]
In interviews on Wednesday, both Senator Susan Collins of Maine, a Republican negotiator, and Representative Jane Harman of California, a Democratic negotiator, said the lawmakers had ultimately decided that the question of whether to extend the restrictions to intelligence officers was too complex to be included in the legislation.
[...]
In addition to Ms. Collins and Ms. Harman, the lawmakers in the conference committee negotiations were Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, and Representative Peter Hoekstra, Republican of Michigan.
A US National Guard unit has defied a Pentagon request that sought to stop television news crews filming six flag-draped soldiers' coffins arriving in Louisiana.
The Pentagon has barred US media from filming the coffins of US service members arriving at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.
But the Louisiana National Guard allowed a CBS news crew on Wednesday to film the arrival of six soldiers' coffins at the Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base in Belle Chasse, near New Orleans, Louisiana.
[...]
The six soldiers, who had served in the Louisiana National Guard, all died last Thursday after their armoured vehicle struck a roadside bomb in Baghdad.
[...]
Despite the Pentagon request, Lieutenant-Colonel Pete Schneider, a spokesman for the Louisiana National Guard told CBS: "What we thought was, we're going to do what the family asked us to do."
I'm afraid Mr. Ho Williams is going to get all the nasty attention, and the pimps are going to skate free. As always.
What gives a delicious twist to the story is that it exposes Williams, a black conservative, as a homophobic sexual hypocrite and closet case who didn't practice what he was preaching. Williams was trotted out on CNN and other cable nets repeatedly last year during the gay marriage controversy to trash those who argued that marriage equality for same-sex lovers was a "civil right," an argument which Williams' pigmentation--in the eyes of TV news producers--gave him standing to make. As originally reported by New York magazine back in 1998:
"Armstrong Williams, the conservative talk-show host who instigated a firestorm last week by asking the senator from Mississippi whether homosexuality is a sin, is being sued for sexual harassment by a former employee who happens to be male. Last year, Stephen Gregory -- the former YMCA personal trainer whom Williams promoted to executive producer of his show -- alleged in his suit that the boss grabbed his buttocks and penis, tried to kiss him, and climbed into his hotel-room bed asking for "affection" while they were traveling together. Williams immediately held a press conference to denounce Gregory's allegations as "false, baseless, and completely without merit."
After the man who was suing him produced affidavits from other men on whom Williams had pressed his unwanted attentions, Williams was forced to admit his denial was a lie, and settled the lawsuit--which alleged 50 seperate incidents of rejected physical advances--for $200,000.
But, let's not lose sight of the other part of this current equation.
"Perhaps the most fascinating Williams TV appearance took place in December 2003, the same month that he was first contracted by the government to receive his payoffs. At a time when no one in television news could get an interview with Dick Cheney, Mr. Williams, of all 'journalists,' was rewarded with an extended sit-down with the vice president for the Sinclair Broadcast Group, a nationwide owner of local stations affiliated with all the major networks. In that chat, Mr. Cheney criticized the press for its coverage of Halliburton and denounced 'cheap shot journalism' in which 'the press portray themselves as objective observers of the passing scene, when they obviously are not objective.'
"This is a scenario out of 'The Manchurian Candidate.' Here we find Mr. Cheney criticizing the press for a sin his own government was at that same moment signing up Mr. Williams to commit.
Business lobbyists and their political allies have created a perception that America’s legal system has run amok. They point the finger at consumer and patient lawsuits, which they imply are concocted by “greedy trial lawyers.” They argue that lawsuits have detrimental effects on society and the economy, and effectively suggest that people should turn the other cheek when their rights are violated. President Bush and Vice President Cheney mimic these erroneous claims and make attacks on the legal system a central part of their campaign stump speeches. “See, everybody is getting sued,” says the President, and the lawsuits are “junk and frivolous.”
But Public Citizen’s examination of public records finds that for the most part it is businesses rather than consumers and their lawyers doing the suing, and that businesses are far more often guilty of filing frivolous pleadings than the trial lawyers they demonize.
· Businesses file about four times as many lawsuits as individuals represented by trial lawyers.
[...]
· Businesses are far more likely than individual tort plaintiffs to be sanctioned for frivolous litigation.
[...]
Oddly enough, Vice President Cheney, who frequently attacks lawyers in his speeches, typifies the hardball litigation stance of corporate America. During Cheney’s five- year tenure as its CEO,the Halliburton corporation filed over 150 lawsuits, seeking money from othercorporations,individ uals, and insurance companies.
George W. Bush and his administration have been doing everything in their power to “sanitize” Pennsylvania Avenue on January 20th by trying to banish thousands of people holding Impeach Bush signs and banners. But they have not succeeded.
Not only will ImpeachBush members cover the parade route, but we will have the opportunity to sit in bleachers prominently arranged at 4th St. and Pennsylvania Ave. NW. We are joining with the antiwar movement, which has obtained a permit to build bleachers and hold a mass rally along the Inaugural route at 4th St. and Pennsylvania Ave. NW. This is the first time in Inaugural history that the antiwar movement has secured access to build bleachers along the parade route.
George W. Bush and the presidential motorcade will have to drive right in front of the bleachers and mass rally. Military family members whose loved ones are in Iraq, members of the Arab-American and Muslim communities, and people from all walks of life will hold signs reading “Bush Lied: Thousands Died,” “Impeach Bush,” “Save the Bill of Rights,” among other slogans.
Hm. I wonder.
Buses and car caravans are coming from more than fifty cities. People are flying from the West Coast to join us at 4th St. and Pennsylvania Ave. Volunteers are making signs, posters, handing out leaflets, answering phones and doing the one hundred and one other tasks to make this an effective mobilization.
If you are unable to come to Washington DC but want to help by making a much-needed contribution, we are in urgent needs of funds to cover the many costs. We have grown stronger only because of the continued generosity and commitment of ImpeachBush/VoteToImpeach .org members.
Our famous son can't take all the bad press here at YWA.
Prince Harry apologized Wednesday night after a tabloid newspaper printed a picture of him wearing a Nazi soldier's uniform to a costume party.
Early editions of Thursday's issue of "The Sun," showed Prince Harry - the second son of Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana - clutching a cigarette and a drink and wearing a swastika armband.
Asked to comment on the photo, the 20-year-old prince issued a statement saying he is "very sorry if I caused any offense or embarrassment to anyone... It was a poor choice of costume and I apologize."
The Queen's former assistant press secretary, Dickie Arbiter, said he was "astounded" to hear that "a member of the Royal Family, albeit a young member of the Royal Family, can be so incredibly stupid, given that he has had a first class education."
Maybe another famous British son is doing better...
The son of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher pleaded guilty on Thursday to a role in a foiled mercenary plot in west Africa under a plea bargain to avoid prison.
[...]
Thatcher, who has lived for the past eight years in South Africa, was arrested in Cape Town last Aug. 25 on charges of funding a foiled coup in Equatorial Guinea.
[...]
The Cape High Court agreed to a deal for Mark Thatcher to pay a fine of 3 million rand ($500,000) or face five years in jail in South Africa, in addition to a further 4-year prison sentence suspended for five years.
Prosecutors said Thatcher was free to leave South Africa.
"There is no price too high for me to pay to be reunited with my family and I am sure all of you who are husbands and fathers would agree with that," Thatcher said on the steps of the court after the hearing.
A mocking banner strung from the third storey of an office block opposite the courthouse read "Save me mummy." It was not clear who placed it. On the steps outside the court one man chanted "Shame on you, shame on you."
Thatcher also agreed to assist South African investigations into the plot against the government of Equatorial Guinea, a tiny country flush with newly-found oil wealth.
The plea bargain drew an angry reaction from the youth wing of South Africa's ruling African National Congress.
"This is indeed an abomination and miscarriage of justice," a league statement said, adding that Thatcher had got away with "nothing more than a slap in the wrist."
The Supreme Court transformed federal criminal sentencing on Wednesday by restoring to judges much of the discretion that Congress took away nearly 20 years ago when it enacted sentencing guidelines and told judges to follow them.
The guidelines, intended to make sentences more uniform, should be treated as merely advisory to cure a constitutional deficiency in the system, the court held in an unusual two-part decision produced by two coalitions of justices.
[...]
From now on, Breyer said, writing for the majority in this portion of the decision, judges must consult the guidelines and "take them into account" in imposing sentences. But at the end of the day the guidelines will be advisory only, with sentences to be reviewed on appeal for "reasonableness."
Bush administration hard-liners have been considering launching selected military strikes at insurgent training camps in Syria and border-crossing points used by Islamist guerrillas to enter Iraq in an effort to bolster security for the upcoming elections, according to former and current administration officials.
Some former and serving U.S. intelligence officials who have usually been opposed to any expansion of U.S. military activities in the region are expressing support for such strikes.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad will travel to Russia on January 24 for talks with President Vladimir Putin, sources said, amid reports that he is shopping for a missile that can strike anywhere in Israel.
One former senior CIA official, usually an administration critic, said, "We should send a cruise missile into south-side Damascus and blow the Mukharbarat headquarters off the map. We should first make clear to them that they are the target."
But are the hawks likely to get their strikes?
Former CIA Syria expert, Martha Kessler doesn't think so. "I don't think the administration can afford to destabilize another country in the region," she said.
Kessler pointed out that Syria has tried, often in vain, to cooperate with the United States, only to be either snubbed or ignored.
According to Kesssler, Syria offered to station U.S. forces on its soil before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003. The Syrians have also opened their intelligence books that identify assets in Europe, including front companies, to the administration in an attempt to help track down al-Qaida.
But Kessler said a chief reason for not moving against Damascus is that any strikes would "destabilize Lebanon," where the Lebanese Hezbollah movement awaits orders from Iran before launching retaliations against Israeli attacks.
"Damascus is not the heartbeat of this Iraqi insurgent movement," she said.
However, one administration official said, "We have got one hell of a problem."
To prevent more harm, we should support: 1) a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Fallujah, allowing unrestricted access for independent relief agencies such as the Red Crescent; 2) an independent investigation into violations of international law in Fallujah, as called for by Louise Arbour, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on Nov. 16; and 3) a campaign to deny any further supplemental budget requests that may, in fact, fund war crimes.
Join us in working to make respect for individual and collective rights, as expressed in international law and the U.S. Constitution, a central theme of our community's relations with the rest of the world.
Jim McDermott, M.D., represents the 7th District in Congress. Richard Rapport, M.D., is in the neurological surgery department at Group Health. Other authors are 17 area doctors and medical professionals.
As you might imagine, Congressman McDermott is regularly charged with being a "traitor". Check out some of his other stands and maybe send him a supportive message.
To: Allies for Humanitarian Legal Action for Iraq Please see Embargoed Press Statement, Petition, with Title page ADD. on Attachment.
Thank you for any help or advise to support this legal action to stop the massacre and breeches of Geneva Conventions in Falluja and elsewhere in Iraq. This petition, a legal complaint, is the beginning, emergency needed action. The hospital and medical aide petition is first emergency need and includes possible exposure to 'DU' weapons used on hospital and clinic bombing. The petition will also include soldiers who are suffering irreparable harm under order to commit these violations.
Los Angeles-based Humanitarian Law Project/International Educational Development (HLP/IED and San Francisco-based Association of Humanitarian Lawyers (AHL), who filed petition have solid evidence, including photos, of breeches of International Law that govern members of The Organization of American States, of which USA is a member.
Karen Parker JD, attorney for petitioners is the Humanitarian Lawyer who successfully sued the USA on behalf of the people of Grenada. She is the foremost International Legal Expert on Weaponry and Humanitarian law.
We believe this is the right action to take that can halt these atrocities and war crimes in Iraq.
Final Press Release Wording Attached and Letterhead which will be added for press copy.
[...]
We request our Trusted Congressional Representatives support to speak out to stop U.S. War Crimes and that Jay Inslee and Dennis Kucinich will be prepared to speak out. Congressman Jim McDermott's office is standing by to help.
There will be financial help needed for legal work. Emergency Filing expense was $5,000. paid out of AHL that was saved for 'DU' Petition. The 'DU' Petition will be $10,000. to file, should you know of any resources, emergency grants, etc., for help to aide needed legal actions.
I can tell you one reason why BubbleHead has to talk about his relationship with God so much...kings are God's representatives on earth.
"I fully understand that the job of the president is and must always be protecting the great right of people to worship or not worship as they see fit," Bush said.
"That's what distinguishes us from the Taliban. The greatest freedom we have or one of the greatest freedoms is the right to worship the way you see fit.
"On the other hand, I don't see how you can be president at least from my perspective, how you can be president, without a relationship with the Lord."
Well, then Bubbleboy, I don't think you do understand your job. Because, that would seem to say that anyone who didn't believe in "the Lord" could not be president of this country.
We can not worship, if we see fit. But we have to believe.
Bush has often said that he is a religious man who supports freedom of religion, but yesterday may be the first time he has so clearly suggested in his use of words that he harbors the feeling that these two principles are to some degree in conflict.
You don't use the "other hand" construction for two concepts that complement each other. And his suggestion that someone is not qualified to be president unless they are religious is sure to spark some further discussion.
Just did. Or, I guess, my blogoranting can't really be considered discussion. Anybody want to discuss?
"I think people attack me because they are fearful that I will then say that you're not equally as patriotic if you're not a religious person," Bush said. "I've never said that. I've never acted like that. I think that's just the way it is."
Say what?
Well, DoubleDumb, you've said it now, then, haven't you?
Bush also notes that he has the power of "the bully pulpit, which I use and like using, frankly."
We hadn't noticed.
Go on, admit all your character flaws.
Most of the time, Bush is not particularly forthcoming when he meets with reporters, preferring to take a defensive course in which he relies heavily on statements recycled from prepared scripts.
But it appears that he's a little more relaxed and loquacious when he talks to the Washington Times, the newspaper widely considered conservative in outlook and founded in 1982 by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, a self-proclaimed messiah.
Self-proclaimed messiah and buddy to Poppy Bush.
ABC News's Note reports that Bush's next interview comes this afternoon, when he and the first lady sit down with Barbara Walters. It's Bush's first broadcast interview since the election, and will be on ABC's "20/20" on Friday.
I'm sorry I'm going to have to leave the watching of that to those with stronger stomachs.
...but hey, you do what you want...you will anyway.
SAVANNAH, Ga. -- A Fort Stewart veteran of the 2003 invasion of Iraq refused to deploy for a second combat tour days after telling commanders he was seeking conscientious objector status.
[...]
Lt. Col. Cliff Kent, a Fort Stewart spokesman, said Benderman is considered absent without leave because he had orders to deploy to Iraq while the Army processed his conscientious objector claim. Kent says the Army has not decided whether to bring charges against Benderman.
On Friday, January 7, 2005 Sergeant Kevin Benderman, stationed with the 2-7 Infantry Battalion at Ft. Stewart, Georgia, refused an order from the Command Sergeant Major of his unit Samuel Coston to deploy to Iraq and requested a General Courts-Martial.
[...]
The 2-7 Chaplain, Captain Matt Temple in a letter addressed to Benderman today stated that: "It is unfortunate that you have chosen the course of action you have taken. You should have had the moral fortitude to deploy with us and see me here in Kuwait to begin your CO application. To expect me to complete an interview with you within 48 hours of a major deployment was unreasonable and quite inconsiderate of my own time. I would have gladly helped you once we got here. As an NCO in the US ARMY, I expected a greater display of maturity from you. Furthermore, for you to have media personnel contacting me at my personal email address without first acquiring my permission was very unprofessional of you. You should be ashamed of the way you have conducted yourself. I certainly am ashamed of you. I hope you will see your misconduct as an opportunity to upgrade your character and moral behavior for your own good and the good of your fellowman." Benderman said the letter disgusted him, stating "Nothing in my career as a professional soldier has prepared me to respond to something like that letter from the Chaplain."
[...]
Benderman has also garnered the support of an American icon and war hero, Colonel James "Bo" Gritz, USA (Ret.), who profiled Benderman for three days running on his radio show "Freedom Call". Gritz has labeled previous charges by the Army in connection with Benderman’s refusal to deploy and statements to the press "ridiculous," savaging the officers of 2-7, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and President Bush on the air while calling Benderman "a hero" and his immediate superiors "weenies." One of the most decorated soldiers in U.S. Army history, Gritz led the only raid on a prisoner of war camp during the Vietnam War at Son Tay, North Vietnam.
On Monday afternoon, Benderman says he is still in the dark as to what the Army plans for him. "I have learned nothing from anyone in my chain of command informing me on the disposition of my case, despite my attempts to communicate with them. Perhaps tomorrow," he said.
[...]
In further developments this weekend, it has been confirmed that Specialist J.R. Burt and Specialist David Beals, also of 2-7 attempted suicide rather than deploy to Iraq, and an additional seventeen soldiers in 2-7 Infantry Battalion have gone AWOL for the same reason. Army sources who have been granted anonymity because they feared retaliation stated that both Burt and Beals are being harassed and mistreated on the Psychiatric Ward of Winn Army Hospital by unit commanders and a civilian, Dr. Capp who in apparent violation of state law is reported as informing them of the harsh punishments they may expect should they refuse deployment. In addition, SFC Johnson, 2-7 platoon sergeant for Spec. Beals reportedly told him recently "…when I get you to Iraq, I’m going to get you killed," in the presence of several witnesses who say this incident was a catalyst in Beals’ attempted suicide.
More personal information, as well as Sgt. Benderman's statements and a message from his wife are available through links in the sidebar at Project for the Old American Century. (Scroll down to "Voice from the Military".)
Michael Georgy of the Scotsman reports from Baghdad that interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi admitted on Tuesday that "pockets" of Iraq won't be able to vote on January 30 because of poor security. I suspect the pockets amount to about 3 million persons.
[...]
Jordan's ambassador to the US, Karim Kawar, is among the few officials in the region or in Washington to admit the truth: The January 30 elections in Iraq have no real validity. He estiamtes that 40% of the country won't be able to vote.
An election in which the names of the candidates in the various lists are still not known 18 days before the polls open is a sick joke, not an election. What could it possibly mean, to vote for anonymous politicians?
And hey, there were a number of Americans who claimed to be willing to vote for an anonymous politician rather than for Bush.
It's kind of interesting that the candidates are anonymous to avoid being killed by the guerillas. So, do they think the guerillas will leave them be once they have an office?
The elections are like all the other Wizard of Oz spectacles put on by the Bush administration in Iraq since April 9, 2003 -- the appointment of Garner, the appointment of Bremer, the appointment of an Interim Governing Council, the capture of Saddam, the "transition to sovereignty," etc., etc. Each of these was supposed to be some magical turning point and the beginning of sunshine and rainbows, and instead the situation has deteriorated every single month for the past nearly two years.
I think that I’ve discovered a previously undisclosed National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD) relating to nuclear weapons.
Moreover, I worry that it lays the groundwork to build new nuclear weapons and resume nuclear testing.
The source? National Nuclear Security Agency (NNSA) Policy Planning Director John Harvey’s biography! Prepared for a recent CISAC conference, Harvey’s biography lists his role as “point for NNSA … on the drafting and implementation of National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD)-28 on Nuclear Weapons Command, Control, Safety, and Security.”
I’ve never seen another reference to NSPD 28. Steven Aftergood doesn’t have it on his comprehensive list of NSPDs. [He just put it up, with a very generous link to ACW.]
The directive must have been signed sometime between June 2003-April 2004. That would exclude the classified stockpile plan reduction plan which, again according to John Harvey, was signed in May 2004.
I keep avoiding the subject. If you want someone who is fixated on it and will answer pretty much any conceivable question you have, I hope you are reading Talking Points Memo. Or Jonathan Schwartz provides a number of links to explanations.
I'll take up the issue of what "young people" think about the SS fiasco for a short post here, though, because I've just read a couple of posts on the subject from those two sources. The first is from Josh Marshall at TPM:
Do reporters respond when the president tells flagrant lies?
(No, it's not a trick question.)
Today the president said: "Most younger people in America think they'll never see a dime [from Social Security]. Probably an exaggeration to a certain extent. But a lot of people who are young, who understand how Social Security works, really do wonder whether they'll see anything."
[...]
So here, for instance, he states that young people think they'll never collect Social Security benefits. Then he says that's "probably an exaggeration to a certain extent." And then he goes on to say that it's precisely the young people who are knowledgable about Social Security who think this. The clear implication, the meaning he intends to convey, is that this dire prediction is at least more true than not, when in fact, as we've noted, to the extent we can know anything about the future, it's not even close to being true.
The other is from Jonathan Schwartz at A Tiny Revolution:
In any discussion about Social Security, you constantly hear about a 1995 poll finding that more 18-34 year-olds believed in UFOs than believed Social Security would exist when they retired. This is always brandished as proof that we have to do something about Social Security.
I agree completely -- the ultimate arbiter of all public policy must be what 18-34 year-olds believe.
Therefore:
We must immediately start preparing our defenses against UFO attack!!!!!
WE CANNOT WAIT A SECOND LONGER TO DEAL WITH THE UFO CRISIS!!!!!!!!!
Dude, relax. I'm sure it's in our Star Wars plan somewhere.
Stop me if you've heard this one: a high-ranking Bush administration official makes a tragic mistake, gets caught, and finds himself promoted. The latest example is Robert Joseph.
There’s a personal risk, too, for Bush if he picks the “Salvador option.” He could become an American version of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet or Guatemala’s Efrain Rios Montt, leaders who turned loose their security forces to commit assassinations, “disappear” opponents and torture captives.
Like the policy that George W. Bush is now considering, Pinochet even sponsored his own international “death squad” – known as Operation Condor – that hunted down political opponents around the world. One of those attacks in September 1976 blew up a car carrying Chilean dissident Orlando Letelier as he drove through Washington D.C. with two American associates. Letelier and co-worker Ronni Moffitt were killed.
With the help of American friends in high places, the two former dictators have fended off prison until now. However, Pinochet and Rios Montt have become pariahs who are facing legal proceedings aimed at finally holding them accountable for their atrocities. [For more on George H.W. Bush’s protection of Pinochet, see Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege.]
One way for George W. Bush to avert that kind of trouble is to make sure his political allies remain in power even after his second term ends in January 2009. In his case, that might be achievable by promoting his brother Jeb for president in 2008, thus guaranteeing that any incriminating documents stay under wraps.
President George W. Bush’s dispatching Florida Gov. Jeb Bush to inspect the tsunami damage in Asia started political speculation that one of the reasons was to burnish Jeb’s international credentials in a setting where his personal empathy would be on display.
This isn't just a story about a self-serving pundit "entrepreneur," or the erosion of public trust in the media, or hypocrisy, or using covert propaganda to sell controversial Bush programs like Medicare reform and NCLB, or the misuse of taxpayer dollars, or the undermining of the American people's trust in the public sector.
It is the story of the conservative movement and its well-oiled marketing machine; a packaging and distribution system of ideas that has been shaping American public opinion for more than a quarter century. It is also one of the most important stories behind the 2004 election.
[...]
While the leaders of the conservative movement like to boast that the power of their movement lies in the power of its ideas, the ideas of today's conservative movement are the same old failed policies from years gone by, spit-shined and with user-friendly names. The power of the conservative movement is not in its ideas, rather it is in the marketing of these ideas, primarily through effective packaging, promotion and distribution.
For all the truth in this and other articles about "the left" needing to get good and slick in the advertising department in order to reach the other half of America, I don't think I'd like living in that version, either. A country where people are willing to remain ignorant and be manipulated by slick promos and feel-good slogans? Where the "ideas" don't count - just the packaging? No thanks. I'm looking for a place where people want to understand what's really happening to them and to the rest of the world in their name.
During my last trip I interviewed several IP’s [Ed.: Iraqi Police] who complained of lack of weapons, radios and vehicles from the occupation forces. Their complaints were centered on the fact that the resistance had better weapons than the police.
Later in my room we watched a press conference on the television with the so-called interim prime minister Iyad Allawi. A journalist asked him if it was true that the cell phone service would be cut on the 15th of this month because of the upcoming “elections.”
He dodged the question…deferring it to the ministry of defense.
[...]
Of course the gas crisis continues to worsen. Most of the stations in Baghdad are closed. Rather than cars filling their tanks, strands of razor wire and empty fuel tanker trucks sit in many of them.
[...]
Iraqis are reminded daily of the 70% unemployment with the gas shortage driving the costs of everything through the roof. Even petrol is 1000 Iraq Dinars (ID) per liter on the black market, which unless you are willing to endure 12-24 hours waiting in a line, is the only way to get your tank filled.
When I was in Iraq one month ago it was 300 ID per liter. Imagine what you would do if in your country you had 70% unemployment, were without a job, and the cost of fuel rose 333% in one month, thus driving the costs of everything from food to heating oil up?
Speaking of the gas crisis, this morning a pipeline between Kirkuk and the Beji refinery was exploded, and several lines southwest of Kirkuk were also destroyed.
[...]
Keep in mind that Yusufiyah, just south of Baghdad and in the “triangle of death” was recently the scene of large scale US/UK military operations to rid the area of resistance fighters. Looks like those operations were about as successful as Fallujah, where fighting also continues on a near daily basis.
Dozens of federal and local law enforcement agencies and military commands are planning what they describe as the heaviest possible security. Virtually everyone who gets within eyesight of the president either during the Jan. 20 inauguration ceremony at the U.S. Capitol or the inaugural parade down Pennsylvania Avenue later in the day will first go through a metal detector or receive a body pat-down.
Thousands of police officers and military personnel are being brought to Washington from around the country for the four-day event. Sharpshooters will be deployed on roofs, while bomb-sniffing dogs will work the streets. Electronic sensors will be used to detect chemical or biological weapons.
[...]
Parade performers will have security escorts to the bathroom, and they've been ordered not to look directly at President Bush or make any sudden movements while passing the reviewing stand.
Don't even look at him! Why not just make everybody kneel and put their heads down?
"It's going to be very different from past inaugurals," said Contricia Sellers-Ford, spokeswoman for the U.S. Capitol Police, which is responsible for the Capitol and grounds.
Yeah, I guess. We never had a coronation before.
Anti-war protesters with the A.N.S.W.E.R Coalition have complained that large sections of the parade route have been set aside for Bush's political contributors and supporters and will be closed to the general public.
That was a given.
Thousands of performers - marching bands, color guards, pompon dancers, hand bell-ringers, drill teams on horseback and Civil War re-enactors - will be bused early in the morning to the Pentagon parking lot across the Potomac in Virginia. While performers disembark and go through metal detectors, bomb-sniffing dogs will search the buses.
Then everybody will get back on the buses for a trip to the National Mall, where they will spend most of the day in heavily guarded warming tents. Participants have been warned that they will not be allowed to leave the tents except to go to portable toilets accompanied by a security escort.
Other instructions given performers include a warning not to look directly at Bush while passing the presidential reviewing stand, not to look to either side and not to make any sudden movements.
Boy! This is going to be a great time!
The anti-abortion Christian Defense Coalition, which is also planning a demonstration, has threatened to sue the government because the Secret Service recently added crosses to its list of objects that are banned from the parade route.
Bummer.
"I think it's censorship no matter how you look at it," said the Rev. Patrick Mahoney, director of the defense coalition.
You gave him his mandate. Maybe you should have checked a little closer into who you were voting for. And pay a little more attention to reality next time. And notice how it feels to have your views censored.
Besides weapons, other items on the banned list include coolers, folding chairs, bicycles, pets, papier-mache objects, displays such as puppets, mock coffins, props and "any items determined to be a potential safety hazard."
Congress allotted hundreds of millions of dollars for the weapons hunt, and there has been no public accounting of the money. A spokesman for the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency said the entire budget and the expenditures would remain classified.
[...]
[A] small group of Iraqi scientists still in U.S. military custody are not being held in connection with weapons investigations [...]
Three people involved with the ISG said the weapons teams made several pleas to the Pentagon to release the scientists, who have been interviewed extensively. All three officials specifically mentioned Gen. Amir Saadi, who was a liaison between Hussein's government and U.N. inspectors; Rihab Taha, a biologist nicknamed "Dr. Germ" years ago by U.N. inspectors; her husband, Amir Rashid, the former oil minister; and Huda Amash, a biologist whose extensive dealings with U.N. inspectors earned her the nickname "Mrs. Anthrax."
None of the scientists has been involved in weapons programs since the 1991 Gulf War, the ISG determined more than a year ago, and all have cooperated with investigators despite nearly two years of jail time without charges. U.S. officials previously said they were being held because their denials of ongoing weapons programs were presumed to be lies; now, they say the scientists are being held in connection with the possible war crimes trials of Iraqis.
Jan Pronk, the special UN envoy to Sudan, said on Tuesday arms were flooding into the troubled western region, violence was spreading beyond camps for the homeless, banditry was increasing and rebel groups were launching attacks in the area of oil facilities.
The renewed fighting comes just days after Khartoum signed a peace deal with rebels in the south.
[...]
Darfur has been caught up in an armed conflict since 2003, resulting in the death of some 70,000 people. About 1.7 million people have also been driven from their homes.
The horror that is Darfur, where ruthless and heinous attacks by government supported marauders (ah, death squads) to smash a popular uprising, isn't nearly as exciting as a tsunami. I imagine the people living there might be wishing for a natural disaster, devoid of politics, to capture the attention of aid donors worldwide. Too bad for them.
The WHO's top crisis envoy, David Nabarro, estimated that 70,000 people in Darfur had died since March from disease or malnutrition.
"We still are not able to get the resources we need collectively to mount the response that is required to bring death rates down to the level that is acceptable," Nabarro told journalists Friday.
Aid agencies had only received half of the 300 million dollars needed to cope with disease, malnutrition, poor shelter and sanitation for the 1.4 million displaced in the region and another 200,000 refugees in neighbouring Chad Chad.
"When you are dealing with an issue where you can sense the suffering, the despair and hopelessness of so many people, and you perceive that there is a potentially receptive international community, it's amazing that we still can't seem to get the money that is required," Nabarro said.
"It's covered well in French newspapers, in Japanese newspapers and other countries in Europe and the United States," he added, pointing to the high degree of political attention.
"But the conversion of information reaching the politicians into resources that come to us isn't adequate, and the price is measured in death."
Although the mortality rate had fallen back to the levels recorded in June, up to 10,000 people were still dying a month in Darfur, an excessively high death rate even for a humanitarian crisis, according to the WHO.
The British charity Save the Children says it will evacuate all staff from Sudan’s Darfur region. Two of the charity’s workers were killed by a land mine in October and two others were killed in a road ambush this month.
Save the Children, which had been serving some 250-thousand children in the area, said the risks to aid workers in Darfur had become unacceptable. Government-backed militias have been fighting a rebel insurgency in Darfur for nearly two years. The Sudanese government denies that it is backing the militias.
[...]
The United States says the violence in Darfur amounts to genocide. Nearly two million people have been displaced by the unrest and scores of villages have been burned to the ground.
And "official" makes it so. Now they can put that search expense money into elections security, I guess.
The search for elusive weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has officially ended, the Washington Post says.
The daily reported on Wednesday that officials who served with the group charged with hunting banned weapons said insecurity in Iraq and a lack of new information had led them to fold up the effort shortly before Christmas.
[...]
The Post said the findings of an interim report that Duelfer submitted to the US Congress in September will stand as the ISG's final conclusions, according to a senior intelligence official.
[...]
The report found that Iraq had no stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons and its nuclear programme had decayed before the US-led invasion in 2003, in findings contrary to pre-war assertions of the Bush administration.
Congress allotted hundreds of millions of dollars for the weapons hunt, and there has been no public accounting of the money. A spokesman for the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency said the entire budget and the expenditures would remain classified.
A US soldier was killed in action in the volatile western province of Al Anbar on Tuesday, the military announced in a statement.
"A soldier assigned to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force was killed in action on January 11, while conducting security and stability operations in the Al Anbar province," the military said.
Nor does ABC give further information that "security and stability operations in Al Anbar province" is code for "continued fighting in Falluja". Must allow Americans to think that mission has been accomplished.
Reuters follows the same script, releasing the military's official statement, adding this silly, but true, closing line:
U.S. troops often come under attack from insurgents who want them to leave Iraqi soil.
Speaking of the relatively new "hot" spot, The Australian doesn't sugar coat the news that two bombs in the last two days have killed more Iraqi soldiers.
Mosul was plunged into all-out war between US forces and insurgents in early November.
Indeed. And the "operations" in Falluja still constitute war, too. No matter how they avoid saying so.
The United States said Monday that it would release documents to the independent panel investigating the United Nations' Iraq oil-for-food program, after the inquiry's chief complained about lack of cooperation from the United States government.
[...]
In an interview with The New York Times last week, Mr. Volcker said, "I hate to make a sweeping statement, but we get better cooperation from many other countries than we do from the United States."
The U.S. Commerce Department's Boulder labs on Broadway house the "atomic clock" and employ 1,700 workers. Two years ago, the feds announced plans to fence in most of the 217-acre site — which was given to the government by Boulder citizens and which has been used as public open space for five decades.
Boulder residents and (we now know) many federal scientists reacted with disbelief and pointed questions: Why is this fence necessary? Who really wants to blow up the atomic clock? How much will this "security" cost?
The Commerce Department didn't answer. But it did hold obligatory public hearings in which federal bosses told the riff-raff that the fence was a fait accompli. As for why the fence was needed, well, it was needed because they said it was. Nyah, nyah, nyah.
[...]
A local group called FightTheFence.org was so frustrated by the feds' secrecy last February, it filed a federal Freedom of Information Act request for all documents pertaining to the proposed fence. By last September, the group was so angered by the non-responses (most of the released documents were critical notes to the department's bosses) that it sued the government for allegedly violating FOIA.
In March, the Camera also sought meaningful answers, wielding the sword of the Freedom of Information Act. Since then, the Commerce Department has given the Camera seven parcels of documents, totaling about 1,000 pages. But virtually none of the documents actually answers any vital question.
[...]
On one page only one three-sentence paragraph was fully released. The feds say the redaction is legal because the censored material relates "solely to the internal rules and practices of an agency."
It's a brave new world with such falsehood in it. A dubiously necessary security fence cannot — on the face of it — relate "solely to internal rules and practices." But this is how the government answers a citizen's questions: with nonsense and contempt.
It might be legal, but I'm not sure it's a good idea....
The Supreme Court is considering whether spies recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) can sue the U.S. government for promises of payment that were allegedly broken.
[...]
Two former Soviet-bloc diplomats recruited to spy for the CIA during the Cold War say the agency later reneged on promises to compensate them for the dangerous missions they performed. The husband and wife team are bringing this case under the assumed names of John and Jane Doe out of fear they could be assassinated if their identities are exposed.
[...]
Lower courts have allowed the case to go forward. But lawyers for the U.S. government argue such lawsuits would compromise national security by exposing intelligence secrets. And they cite a 130 year-old Supreme Court decision that prevented a spy working for the government of President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War from suing over alleged promises unfulfilled. At that time, the high court ruled espionage agreements are by nature secret contracts and therefore cannot be enforced in court.
On November 3, just hours after Democratic vice-presidential hopeful John Edwards made a national announcement that he and John Kerry were not going to concede until all the votes were counted, Kerry grabbed the spotlight and conceded -- before all the votes were counted.
Kerry took the money and ran. Seems he couldn't stick around because he and the missus were spending Christmas at a holiday extravaganza in Sun Valley as personal guests of California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who just weeks before had fired up the Republican Convention at Madison Square Garden by declaring that "America is safer with George W. Bush as president."
[...]
It would be another two months before Kerry got around to emailing his millions of stunned, exhausted, and much poorer supporters to let them know that, although he was committed to "ensuring that every vote in this election is counted," alas, he wouldn't be joining the protest of the Ohio Electors.
The Green called attention to the $51 million war chest Sen. Kerry was left with after the election. Kerry has come under fire for not contributing the money to other 2004 Democratic congressional candidates.
“Sadly, John Kerry seems to be trapped under the pile of 51 million dollars that is preventing him from getting up and standing up,” Cobb told RAW STORY.
That’s “the highest amount of money a presidential candidate has ever been left with so far” after an election, he added.
Kerry, given the opportunity to exercise his right for a recount as a candidate that received a large percentage of the vote, declined to do so. As such, the Green Party and others raised $150,000 to pay Ohio to conduct the count.
"Democrats are questioning why he sat on so much money that could have helped him defeat George Bush or helped down-ballot races, many of which could have gone our way with a few more million dollars," said Donna Brazile, campaign manager for Al Gore's 2000 presidential race.
[...]
Three former Kerry campaign aides, also demanding anonymity out of concerns about alienating their former boss, said they were surprised and disappointed to learn that he left so much money in the bank.
[...]
His final report is not due until next month, but officials close to Kerry said he has $15 million to $17 million in that account, with no outstanding debts, after giving the DNC about $23 million and state parties about $9 million since the mid-October report.
[...]
"He's going to have to give some of it up for 2005 and beyond," Brazile said. "The party will demand it."
WASHINGTON - Sen. John Kerry, who has $45 million left from his record-breaking Democratic campaign, hinted on Tuesday that he may try again for the presidency.
[...]
In his first extensive interview since his Nov. 2 defeat, Kerry was asked by the Fox News affiliate in Boston about running again in 2008 and reminded the questioner that Ohio is still counting votes from 2004.
He then said, “It is so premature to be thinking about something that far down the road. What I’ve said is I’m not opening any doors, I’m not shutting any doors.” Kerry added, “If there’s a next time, we’ll do a better job. We’ll see.”
[...]
The Democrats have no clear front-runner for the 2008 nomination. Kerry has a distinct financial advantage over any rival based on his fund raising.
Kerry had roughly $45 million left in his primary campaign fund as of mid-October and could use that as seed money for another presidential bid. In addition, he had about $7 million on hand in a legal and accounting compliance fund that he could use for legal expenses in a 2008 campaign.
That report of soldiers blasting a couple of Iraqi police and some civilians in response to a roadside bomb explosion is being denied by the military. I guess having to admit to dropping a 500-pound bomb on the wrong house the day before was all the crow they were willing to eat.
A U.S. spokesman denied on Monday that American soldiers killed five civilians in a hail of gunfire after a roadside bomb exploded near American troops, and an Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman who initially issued the report backed away from the claim.
The U.S. military spokesman, Lt. Col. James Hutton, said the weekend bombing apparently targeted American soldiers but instead killed a civilian and two men wearing Iraqi police uniforms. He said coalition troops then came under small-arms fire that killed two Iraqi civilians.
Hutton said three civilians also were wounded, "most likely from insurgents," and a third man wearing a police uniform was wounded. There were no U.S. casualties, he said.
How lucky.
Hutton said it was believed the three men in police uniforms were not actually Iraqi police. Afterward, four police officers responsible for the area arrived at the scene and were detained on suspicion they might have been involved in the attack, he said.
For two men at opposite ends of the political spectrum, the relationship between the 43rd and 42nd presidents has grown surprisingly warm and personal over the last six months. Clinton endorsed Bush's approach to the tsunami catastrophe, defending him against criticism about his initial response as well as raising cash alongside the president's father. Friends and aides say the two men enjoy each other's company and, as fellow pros, respect each other's political talents.
The rapid thaw started with the unveiling of Clinton's official portrait in the White House in June, when Bush told his speechwriters he wanted to deliver something "very praiseworthy, warm, funny and short." During Clinton's recent health crisis, Bush called twice to share what one of the former president's aides called "good, funny conversations." And in November, at the opening of Clinton's presidential library in Little Rock, Ark., both the president and his father delivered praise that Clinton reveled in. Clinton even pulled aside Karl Rove, the architect of Bush's election success, to congratulate him.
Sure, Bubblehead and Bubblenose are about par as far as scruples go, but how many rabid Bush supporters are going to go along with this? Will they turn on their mascot? Will the blame Clinton for everything talk die off?
[...] OK'ed and then defended the detention of hundreds of "material witnesses" of Arab descent -- even though it would later be determined that none -- that's right, none -- of the detainees had anything to do with the terrorist attacks of 2001.
[...] "defended the need for government agencies to aggregate large amounts of personal information in computer databases for both law enforcement and national security purposes."
[...] responsible for the badly botched prosecution of al-Qaeda terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui, who has yet to be brought to any type of justice even though he was arrested three-and-a-half years ago. Under his leadership, the Justice Department pursued a theory that Moussaoui was "the 20th hijacker" -- despite zero evidence to support that claim. However, that argument has been used as an excuse to deny the American public from information that might prove what really happened to Flight 93 on 9/11.
BECAUSE of the cost of the war in Iraq and the mounting federal deficit, the Office of Management and Budget has ordered the Pentagon to make major budget cuts over the next six years. According to the Pentagon, these could come to more than $55 billion and will affect almost all major weapons programs. Like most reports about reductions in Pentagon spending, however, there is less to it than meets the eye.
First, the overall size of the Pentagon budget would not come down very much. A large amount of the money that is supposedly being cut is in fact only being transferred from the Air Force and Navy budgets to the Army's, which is scheduled to increase by $5 billion a year. The overall military budget will continue to rise; from 2006 through 2011, the Pentagon will still spend more than $2.5 trillion, not counting the costs of the war in Iraq, which now exceed $200 billion.
Second, the proposed savings will take some time to translate into actual budget reductions. For example, in its 2006 budget, which will be sent to the Congress next month, the Pentagon plans to cut budget authority - which includes spending, borrowing and contractual obligations - by $5.9 billion. But because so much of that money was scheduled to be spent toward the end of the decade, the actual reduction in 2006 alone will be only about $1 billion. Most of the money that will be spent on new weapons next year has already been authorized by Congress.
Third, many of the reductions are not real cuts. For example, the Navy still plans to buy 30 Virginia-class nuclear submarines for some $60 billion, but rather than buying two a year for the next six years, as had been planned, the Pentagon will buy only one per year. This will "save" about $5.3 billion in the next six years, but simply pushes the cost to the following years.
It's payback time in the nation's capital. Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., lost his post as chairman of the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs this week for the worst possible reason: He spoke out loudly against cuts in veterans programs at a time when House GOP leaders - and President Bush - were touting the party's wartime support for the troops.
Even though the heads of eight veterans groups, including the VFW and the American Legion, recently wrote to House Speaker Dennis Hastert that it would be a "tragedy" if Mr. Smith were removed, the long-time champion of veterans is now off the committee altogether.
North Jersey article (subscription: use the BugMeNot link in the sidebar to bypass registration)
The electoral group headed by Iyad Allawi, the interim Iraqi prime minister, on Monday handed out cash to journalists to ensure coverage of its press conferences in a throwback to Ba'athist-era patronage ahead of parliamentary elections on January 30.
After a meeting held by Mr Allawi's campaign alliance in west Baghdad, reporters, most of whom were from the Arabic-language press, were invited upstairs where each was offered a "gift" of a $100 bill contained in an envelope.
Many of the journalists accepted the cash - about equivalent to half the starting monthly salary for a reporter at an Iraqi newspaper - and one jokingly recalled how Saddam Hussein's regime had also lavished perks on favoured reporters.
Why hasn't Osama bin Laden's terror network executed an attack on U.S. soil since 9-11?
Simple, says Dr. Jack Wheeler, creator of an acclaimed intelligence website dubbed "the oasis for rational conservatives": The U.S. has threatened to nuke the Muslim holy city of Mecca should the terror leader strike America again.
[...]
"There has been a rumor floating in the Washington ether for some time now that George Bush has figured out what Sword of Damocles is suspended over Osama bin Laden's head. It's whispered among Capitol Hill staffers on the intel and armed services committees; White House NSC (National Security Council) members clam up tight if you begin to hint at it; and State Department neo-cons love to give their liberal counterparts cardiac arrhythmia by elliptically conversing about it in their presence.
"The whispers and hints and ellipses are getting louder now because the rumor explains the inexplicable: Why hasn't there been a repeat of 9-11? How can it be that after this unimaginable tragedy and Osama's constant threats of another, we have gone over three years without a single terrorist attack on American soil?"
[...]
Writes Wheeler: "So far, Osama has decided not to see if GW is bluffing. Smart move."
[...]
Part of Bush's rationale for invading Afghanistan and Iraq – obviously never expressed publicly – was to convince Osama that his threat to nuke Mecca was real. Osama hates America just as much as ever, but he is laughing no more."
Somehow I don't think that's as reasonable as that bin Laden is on the CIA payroll. Or even that our security agencies are actually able to thwart attacks.
They took prints of all my fingers, two pictures of my face in profile, and then photographed my iris. I was now eligible to go into Falluja, just like any other Fallujan.
But it was late by then, somewhere near 5pm (the curfew is at 6pm). After that anyone who moves inside the city will be shot on sight by the US military.
The approach to the checkpoint was covered in pebbles so we had to drive very slowly. The soldiers spent 20 minutes searching my car, then they bodysearched Tariq and me. They gave me a yellow tape to put on to the windscreen of the car, showing I had been searched and was a contractor. If I didn't have this stripe of yellow, a US sniper would shoot me as an enemy car.
How easy will it be to counterfeit a yellow tape? Will you want to drive with one, tempting an 'insurgent' to shoot you for your 'legal' car?
Falluja used to be a modern city; now there was nothing. We spent the day going through the rubble that had been the centre of the city; I didn't see a single building that was functioning.
The Americans had put a white tape across the roads to stop people wandering into areas that they still weren't allowed to enter. I remembered the market from before the war, when you couldn't walk through it because of the crowds. Now all the shops were marked with a cross, meaning that they had been searched and secured by the US military. But the bodies, some of them civilians and some of them insurgents, were still rotting inside.
[...]
Fallujans are suspicious of outsiders, so I found it surprising when Nihida Kadhim, a housewife, beckoned me into her home. She had just arrived back in the city to check out her house; the government had told the people three days earlier that they should start going home. She called me into her living room. On her mirror she pointed to a message that had been written in her lipstick. She couldn't read English. It said: "Fuck Iraq and every Iraqi in it!"
"They are insulting me, aren't they?" she asked.
[...]
I tried to figure out who these four men were. It was obvious which houses the fighters were in: they were totally destroyed. But in this house there were no bullets in the walls, just four dead men lying curled up beside each other, with bullet holes in the mosquito nets that covered the windows. It seemed to me as if they had been asleep and were shot through the windows. It is the young men of the family who are usually given the job of staying behind to guard the house.
[...]
The US military destroyed Falluja, but simply spread the fighters out around the country. They also increased the chance of civil war in Iraq by using their new national guard of Shias to suppress Sunnis. Once, when a foreign journalist, an Irish guy, asked me whether I was Shia or Sunni - the way the Irish do because they have that thing about the IRA - I said I was Sushi. My father is Sunni and my mother is Shia. I never cared about these things. Now, after Falluja, it matters.
Cardinal Pio Laghi visited Bush at the White House on March 5, 2003, to relay the pope's position that dialogue, not arms, should be used to resolve the crisis over Iraq, which the United States accused of harboring weapons of mass destruction.
"When I went to Washington as the pope's envoy just before the outbreak of the war in Iraq, he (Bush) told me: `Don't worry, your eminence. We'll be quick and do well in Iraq,'" Laghi told Italian Catholic TV station Telepace, which was broadcasting the pontiff's annual address to diplomats.
When the United States went to war in Iraq, Laghi called the attack on Baghdad "tragic and unacceptable."
"Unfortunately, the facts have demonstrated afterward that things took a different course — not rapid and not favorable," the prelate told Telepace. "Bush was wrong."
As you know, however, Cardinal, it's the first time in his life.
You're all idiots. And hypocrites.
Pope John Paul II, who opposed the U.S.-led war in Iraq and the Bush administration's policy of preventive war, criticized on Monday the "arrogance of power," which he said should be countered with reason and dialogue.
Don't worry, Cardinal. His Holiness the Pope and His Slowliness the Dope can still agree on some things.
[The Pope] listed first his opposition to abortion, artificially assisted procreation, human embryonic stem cell research and cloning, calling anything that "violates the integrity and dignity of the embryo . . . ethically inadmissible." He also spoke out indirectly against gay marriage, saying that the family was threatened by laws that "challenge its natural structure" as a union of a man and a woman.
[...]
"Recourse to arms and violence has not only led to incalculable material damage, but also fomented hatred and increased the causes of tension," the pope said. "The arrogance of power must be countered with reason, force with dialogue, pointed weapons with outstretched hands, evil with good."
The quest for peace was one of four challenges the 84-year-old leader of the world's 1 billion Roman Catholics said faced the world this year.
Uh-huh. Like the Catholic Church has ever been anti-war. Like they've never "fomented hatred and increased the causes of tension" in the world. Like they've never participated in holy wars or inquisitions and torture. Like they don't wield power like a racist copper.
Besides, all those "counters" are being met. One in the right hand, the other in the left. That's how they pretend to justify the arrogance of power. Just like the holy church.
The pope also called for a "vast moral mobilization of public opinion" to fight hunger and urged political leaders in wealthy countries to be particularly responsive. In addition to his plea for peace, he spoke out for individual freedom and put religious liberty "at the very heart" of it.
Individual freedom with exceptions (see abortion, artificially assisted procreation, and gay marrriage above).
With this in mind, it becomes clear that perhaps the most important part of the new Levin Opinion is footnote 8, which reads: “While we have identified various disagreements with the August 2002 Memorandum, we have reviewed this Office's prior opinions addressing issues involving treatment of detainees and do not believe that any of their conclusions would be different under the standards set forth in this memorandum." In other words, despite its admirable and considerable repudiation of the 2002 OLC Opinion, the new OLC Opinion does not in any significant way affect what the CIA has already been specifically authorized to do.
[...]
Thus, for example, the President's February 7, 2002 "humane treatment" directive was carefully worded to apply only to the Armed Forces—not to the CIA. Similarly, in recent months the Senate has twice voted to prohibit the CIA, and all U.S. personnel, from engaging in cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment—but on each occasion, the Administration has resisted, and that language has been stripped from the bills in conference (even after the 9/11 Commission recommended it). Note, as well, that in yesterday's hearing Judge Gonzales was very careful to qualify his statement that “[it] has always been the case that everyone should be treated — that the military would treat detainees humanely, consistent with the president's February order.” ...
"The relationship between today's President Bush and El Salvador's conservative ARENA party government is one of mutual gratitude. Consider it payback."
The inheritors of the death-squads franchise (Central American division) have a lot of affinity for the Bushies, considering that so many of the latter are veterans of the Iran-Contra scandal: Eliot Abrams is now doing to the Middle East what he did to Central America in the 1980s. Current Bush administration officials Richard Armitage, John Poindexter, Roger Noriega, and Otto Reich are all alumni of Death Squad U.
Nothing quite says democratic success story like "Special Forces teams to advise, support and possibly train Iraqi squads, most likely hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen, to target Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers."
Read this excellent post by Tim Dunlop at The Road to Surfdom - it's difficult to just maintain the chronology of insanity, much less insert humor into such a mess, but Tim does it:
In this instance, the GOP has drummed the word "reform" into everyone's heads to the point where our side is trying to come up with our own solution (to a problem that doesn't exist). To cede this point to the Republicans is a trap and it'll only end up with a compromise which will put cracks into SS that will never heal.
If you hear a Republican use the word "reform", respond with "bullshit". They're not trying to fix Social Security, they're trying to slowly kill it. If your ultimate goal is to destroy a program, you're not a reformer, you're an anarchist. I dunno about you, but I don't think the best way to fix something is to destroy it. You wouldn't take a car with engine trouble to the junkyard or a sick relative to Dr. Kevorkian, so why the hell would anyone think the best way to fix an (arguably) broken program like Social Security is to bankrupt it?? (BTW, that's a rhetorical question. If you leave it unanswered, then you don't have to worry about a tit-for-tat policy debate.)
The Republicans position on Social Security isn't conservative and it isn't reform. It's anarchy. The sooner we can make Americans understand this, the sooner they'll understand every other bit of lunacy that's come coming from the right like "reshuffling" the tax code, deregulation, tort reform, etc...
It's our whole culture. If you have nothing to hide, then you'll submit to any indignity or loss of privacy or liberty.
TRURO, Mass., Jan. 7 - In an unusual last-ditch move to find clues to the three-year-old killing of a freelance fashion writer, police investigators are trying to get DNA samples from every man in this Cape Cod hamlet, all 790 or so, or as many as will agree.
[...]
Sgt. David Perry of the Truro Police Department and other law enforcement authorities here say that the program is voluntary but that they will pay close attention to those who refuse to provide DNA.
"We're trying to find that person who has something to hide," Sergeant Perry said.
LA MARQUE, Texas - Ten students between the ages of 11 and 12 were strip-searched as officials at their charter school tried to find a missing $10 bill.
[...]
"Nobody objected to it. Most of the kids didn't mind because they wanted to get their name cleared," [Principal Wilma Green] said.
US forces have been preventing almost 300 truck drivers from crossing the border into Syria after unloading their shipment in Iraq.
[...]
[Muhammad Radun, head of Syria's Arab Organisation for Human Rights] thinks the drivers are being held back because US forces hold the drivers responsible for a series of recent explosions in the Rabiah area in west Iraq.
He said: "We suspect the US troops are keeping the drivers in Iraq in connection to the attacks. They are now interrogating the drivers but they are not responsible for the attacks."
The US military was unable to comment.
One of the drivers, Jihad Sadiq, said: "An explosion rocked a police centre only 50m away from us. We are in a dangerous zone, between the Americans and Iraqi police.
"We have been held in the chilly weather for seven days. We have nothing any more; no money, water or food. We don't know what to do
"We have families and children waiting for us."
"They gave no reasons behind our capture. Whenever we talk to the Iraqis, they say speak with the Americans. When we talk to the Americans, they say speak to the Iraqis. No one is answering us."
AOHR's Radun said he believed the stalemate was a matter of diplomacy.
"The Syrian government has done nothing to help the situation because they do not want to antagonise the Iraqi government," he said.
"All we want to do now is bring the situation to the attention of other human rights groups across the world and receive their backing as our own government is not helping us."
The Washington Post also reports that the police chief of Baiji, a city north of Baghdad, barely escaped being assassinated on Monday. When the police fired back at the attackers, they killed at least one innocent bystander. His family vowed revenge. About 142 national guardsmen in Baiji have resigned in the face of death threats from guerrillas.
Iraq's US-backed interim government is to spend over $2.2 billion on its security forces, a sum that represents some 11% of the country's total budget.
Speaking at a Baghdad news conference on Tuesday, interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said Iraq needed to equip the police and army with "new modern weaponry that will enable them to protect the country".
"We have therefore decided to earmark $2.2 billion for this purpose." The sum represents about 11% of the total projected expenditures for 2005 of $19.5 billion.
"This sum will grow gradually. The army will be the lynchpin of the security forces [...]"
If there is a redneck left out there who doesn't realize that he or she is getting shafted up the wazoo by the pretender to the throne - that the whole scary Homeland Security deal is a farce created to keep them on their knees to the emperor's every whim, then send that person this link:
D.C. officials said yesterday that the Bush administration is refusing to reimburse the District for most of the costs associated with next week's inauguration, breaking with precedent and forcing the city to divert $11.9 million from homeland security projects.
Federal officials have told the District that it should cover the expenses by using some of the $240 million in federal homeland security grants it has received in the past three years -- money awarded to the city because it is among the places at highest risk of a terrorist attack.
[...]
The $17.3 million the city expects to spend on this inauguration marks a sharp increase from the $8 million it incurred for Bush's first.
[...]
"We want to make this the best possible event, but not at the expense of D.C. taxpayers and other homeland security priorities," said Gregory M. McCarthy, the mayor's deputy chief of staff. "This is the first time there hasn't been a direct appropriation for the inauguration."
A spokesman for Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, which oversees the District, agreed with the mayor's stance. He called the Bush administration's position "simply not acceptable."
"It's an unfunded mandate of the most odious kind. How can the District be asked to take funds from important homeland security projects to pay for this instead?" said Davis spokesman David Marin.
[...]
Inauguration officials said they plan to spend $40 million on the four-day celebration, which will include fireworks, the swearing-in, a parade and nine balls. Those expenses -- which do not include security and other public services -- are being funded by private donors.
OMB and DHS spokesmen said they could not provide an estimate of what the inauguration will cost the federal government.
The federal government - that would be your tax money.
Perhaps those private donors could cough up the $11.9 million for security. They're so keen on throwing the most expensive inaugural ever. And let's not forget to add in the $66 million to the "federal government" for giving all federal employees in D.C. the day off. (Some Demwit is asking for them to be given an extra half day on January 19.)
And ask that redneck friend of yours to give you another reason for taking money away from D.C.'s Homeland Security funds to provide for the coronation other than one of the two following:
a) the emperor doesn't give a good goddamn about the subjects' security - it comes a poor second to his ego;
b) the emperor (and/or the emperor's ministers) has any terrorists who could actually threaten the security of America on his payroll and knows when and where they will strike - indeed, directs it.
Although I have plenty to complain about organized labor, American workers need to start from scratch and return organized labor - not a corrupt labor organization - to power.
The afl-cio, courted by Republican and Democratic administrations, became part of the Washington consensus. But, in the 1980s, that consensus began to fall apart when the Reagan administration drastically cut the nlrb's funding--causing huge backlogs of cases--and when its appointee to the board chipped away at employees' bargaining rights and at penalties for unfair labor practices. Bill Clinton tried to undo some of the damage, but George W. Bush has resumed Reagan's approach. Since becoming a majority in 2003, his appointees to the nlrb have taken business's side in more than 25 controversial cases. None of these rulings was earthshaking, but together, they presage an erosion of workers' ability to organize.
[...]
American workers are, of course, the principal victims of labor's decline. (Union workers enjoy a 15.5 percent advantage in wages over nonunion workers with comparable skills and are 18.3 percent more likely to have health insurance.) But our democratic system as a whole is also a victim. Unions are an interest group, but one whose scope and concern allows it to speak for the public interest. And, because of its numbers and electoral influence, labor has been able to check the often narrow interests of Washington's powerful business lobbies. Without labor's clout, it's unlikely that Medicare would have been enacted in 1965 or that the minimum wage would have been raised repeatedly over the last 50 years.
With labor's power ebbing, business has increasingly been able to dominate public policy issues, from taxes to environmental protection to Social Security. That might not bother Bush, Tom DeLay, and Karl Rove. But it's not a good thing for the rest of us.
And I don't expect we're ever going to be witness to the worst of it.
Follow up to my previous post:
Prosecutors unveiled new graphic photographs and videos from Abu Ghraib prison on Monday as they tried to portray the soldier accused as the ringleader of the abuse scandal there as a sadistic thug who punched detainees for sport, posed smiling next to the bloody face of a detainee and bragged about forcing an Iraqi woman to let him photograph her naked.
[...]
But prosecutors called soldiers who testified that Specialist Graner had laughed and joked as detainees moaned, screamed and begged him to stop beating them.
A source close to the case said prosecutors had discovered more than 2,000 e-mail messages that Specialist Graner had sent home, sometimes attaching pictures of detainees and boasting about how he had disciplined them, suggesting one had been "a real upper body workout." In none of those e-mail messages did he mention being ordered to commit any of the abusive acts, the source said.
[...]
Asked to explain photos of detainees masturbating, Private Frederick said Specialist Graner "said it was a present for our birthday."
[...]
Explaining a new video that shows a detainee writhing as Private Sivits tries to cut off a pair of handcuffs, he said Specialist Graner had attached them so tightly, the detainee's hands were turning purple. "I personally thought he was going to lose his hands," he said.
Didn't see anything wrong with that either. Maybe Mr. Bush could explain it to him. (I wonder if Marvin's Angels would have been willing to have those hands replaced.)
The jury, all men, listened intently to the testimony. Specialist Graner betrayed little emotion inside the courtroom but smiled and joked outside. Walking in Monday morning, he told reporters: "We're going to find out what kind of a monster I am today."
The lawyer for Charles Graner, the alleged ringleader of the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, yesterday compared heaping naked Iraqi prisoners in a tangled pyramid to choreographed displays by high-school cheerleaders.
"Don't cheerleaders all over America form pyramids six to eight times a year? Is that torture?" Guy Womack asked a 10-member military jury in Fort Hood, Texas.
Now there's a guy who could give lawyers a bad name.
Dick.
I think that's the most appropriate thing I can say here.
Unfortunately, there's more.
[H]e also defended the tethering of prisoners on a leash as a legitimate method of control.
"You're keeping control of them. A tether is a valid control to be used in corrections," he said. "You've probably been at a mall or airport and seen children on tethers - they're not being abused."
The client.
The client and his girlfriend.
Look like cheerleading camp to you?
Womack said the soldiers took the photographs "because no one did anything they thought was wrong".
And that is what is so disturbing.
Major Michael Holley, the chief prosecutor, said Graner beat a prisoner with a baton until the Iraqi begged for death, and forced men "to simulate fellatio".
Didn't think either of those things was wrong?
No, I just don't know why they hate us.
Update 1/11:
"You're keeping control of them. A tether is a valid control to be used in corrections," [Womack] said. "In Texas we'd lasso them and drag them out of there."
He says that he is proud of his service to his country, but takes no pride in what is happening in Iraq now. In addition, Benderman states that while he signed a contract with the military to ‘defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic,’ he says now that “I am ashamed to be associated with this mess, and I certainly did not join the Army to kill women, children and old men. I just don’t see how these innocent people could be a threat to the constitution of the United States: an American soldier should not be ashamed of what they do.”
Project for the Old American Century has a statement from Sgt. Benderman:
First a brief forward from POAC co-editor Jack Dalton. I received an email a few moments ago from Kevin’s wife Monica. In it she has told me a total of 22 people in Sgt Benderman’s unit have refused to deploy to Iraq. 17 have gone AWOL and 2 have attempted suicide. The status of the remaining 3 is unknown at this time. We at the POAC fully support the decision to refuse deployment to Iraq which has been made by Sgt Benderman, and the others in his unit.
I am Sgt Kevin Benderman and:
These are the chronological events that led me to conclude that I had no other choice than to refuse the deployment order to Iraq.
The reason we hold truth in such respect is because we have so little opportunity to get familiar with it.
--Mark Twain
Why does insanity twist the great answers? Because only tormented persons want truth. Man is an animal like other animals - wants food and success and women, not truth. Only if the mind, tortured by some interior tension, has despaired of happiness - then it hates its life-cage and seeks further, and finds, if it is powerful enough.
But instantly, the private agony that inspired the search muddles the finding.
“He’s turning into more of a charismatic leader than a terrorist mastermind. [...] Some of his lieutenants are the ones to worry about. [...] You can make the argument that we’re better off with him (at large), [...] Because if something happens to Bin Laden, you might find a lot of people vying for his position and demonstrating how macho they are by unleashing a stream of terror. [...] -- AB “Buzzy” Krongard, who stepped down six weeks ago as the CIA’s third most senior executive
"Killed, he will be a martyr, maybe even more powerful. [...] Even if we would have arrested him in Tora Bora, it would have been already too late because he had already brought down the World Trade Centre. After this 'magnificent' act, his ideology had already metastased." --Steve Simon, former head of the Transnational Threats division of the US National Security Council, now an analyst with Rand Corporation
The contest to see who is the most generous has just been accelerated. Georgie's nemesis has trumped him.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Sunday he had set up a fund for victims of the tsunami that left more than 150,000 dead, and displaced millions in southern Asia.
With the slogan "one bolivar for Asia," Chavez encouraged the viewers of his Sunday television and radio show, "Alo, Presidente," to make donations in the local currency, the bolivar, at two state-owned banks.
"It is not enough for our country to make a donation," Chavez said during the program which resumed broadcast after a month-and-a-half-long hiatus. "I want us to turn this (donation drive) into a national cause."
Chavez said he would make a first donation of $150,000, with the money coming out of a human rights prize he received from a foundation named after Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.
Hysterical. Particularly amusing is the idea of having a human rights award named after Qaddafi. A fashion award, maybe. But, Mr. Chávez wouldn't be in the running for that one.
At any rate, will our Brat King raise his measley personal ten grand offer, or will he let the lefty demon deal it a tsunamical blow like that?
P.S.
"Get some devastation in the back."
-- Sen. Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN), quoted by the AP, to a staff photographer taking a picture of him before leaving tsunami-stricken southern Sri Lanka.
Jonathan Schwartz at A Tiny Revolutioncites the legal code defining a terrorist organization and compares it to the talk about U.S. sponsored death squads in Iraq.
If the US is seriously thinking of reintroducing death squads into Iraq (they used to be called Saddam Fedayeen; are they now to be Wolfowitz Fedayeen?), then it really is time to try to get the US Department of Defense back out of Iraq before it completely ruins the country. The Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz/Feith notion of dealing with some terrorists in Fallujah was to displace and damage the entire city (notably not a tactic the British used against the IRA in Belfast, but then the Irish are at least Europeans). If the DoD now introduces death squads, it is likely the prelude to a military coup (Iraqi Special Operations troops who have a license to kill would have an advantage in plotting a take-over of the country.)
I think that would suit our original purpose quite well.
With no fanfare, the U.S. House has passed a controversial doomsday provision that would allow a handful of lawmakers to run Congress if a terrorist attack or major disaster killed or incapacitated large numbers of congressmen.
[...]
GOP House leaders pushed the provision as part of a larger rules package that drew attention instead for its proposed ethics changes, most of which were dropped.
[...]
Usually, 218 lawmakers - a majority of the 435 members of Congress - are required to conduct House business, such as passing laws or declaring war.
But under the new rule, a majority of living congressmen no longer will be needed to do business under "catastrophic circumstances."
Instead, a majority of the congressmen able to show up at the House would be enough to conduct business, conceivably a dozen lawmakers or less.
[...]
Rep. Brian Baird (D-Wash.), one of few lawmakers active on the issue, argued the rule change contradicts the U.S. Constitution, which states that "a majority of each (House) shall constitute a quorum to do business."
"Changing what constitutes a quorum in this way would allow less than a dozen lawmakers to declare war on another nation," Baird said.
This is a question that's been showing up on the blogosphere, as here in a reader's comment to Josh Marshall.
Apparently, it's not a bad question to ask.
Snow was shaking his head at Williams' indiscretion, and Chavez was upset and joked that she had received bupkis from the White House. Prior to going on air, she had complained that ArmstrongGate had caused some people to assume that she and other conservative commentators were also riding this gravy train. Since the story broke on Friday, she said, several people had asked her how much she had received from the Bush administration. She was pissed at Williams for conduct that was raising questions about the whole cadre of rightwing pundits. During our non-debate on Williams, I noted that it was a waste of taxpayer money to pay Williams for supporting the Bush administration, which he seemed quite willing to do for free. And I wondered aloud how this contract had come to be.
After our segment finished, Chavez and I headed to the green room, and there he was: Armstrong Williams. He was waiting to go on air to defend himself.
[...]
And then Williams violated a PR rule: he got off-point. "This happens all the time," he told me. "There are others." Really? I said. Other conservative commentators accept money from the Bush administration? I asked Williams for names. "I'm not going to defend myself that way," he said. The issue right now, he explained, was his own mistake. Well, I said, what if I call you up in a few weeks, after this blows over, and then ask you? No, he said.
Does Williams really know something about other rightwing pundits? Or was he only trying to minimize his own screw-up with a momentary embrace of a trumped-up everybody-does-it defense?
FOX News repeatedly describes the death squads as "getting them before they get us." and "The El Savador death squads were somewhat problematic, but highly effective." The squads are composed of "highly intelligent above average men"
Actually, when John Negroponte was recently appointed as ambassador to Iraq, we all kind of knew that it meant something ugly. I wonder we didn't just all realize that it was literally going to be a replay of his time in Central America. After all, this administration is nothing if not obvious.
[...] RAND Corporation's International Security and Defense Policy Director, James Dobbins, a leading figure in the military-intellectual complex, [...] -- in an article just out in the super-establishment review Foreign Affairs -- argues that "the Bush administration has already lost the war. Moderate Iraqis can still win it, but only if they wean themselves from Washington and get support from elsewhere. To help them, the United States should reduce and ultimately eliminate its military presence, train Iraqis to beat the insurgency on their own, and rally Iran and European allies to the cause."
In another significant blow to Iraq's upcoming elections, the entire 13-member electoral commission in the volatile province of Anbar, west of the capital, resigned after being threatened by insurgents, a regional newspaper reported Sunday.
[...]
An Iraqi at the commission's office in Anbar said the members had resigned and had gone into hiding.
At an elementary school in Tikrit, about 90 miles north of Baghdad, a rocket landed behind a school, narrowly missing a building crowded with children taking exams. The Um Omara school is a designated polling place, residents said.
Considering that the "insurgents" want to stop the election and are attacking polling places, is it a good idea to have them at schools?
Update 1:15pm: This note on the recent murder of the governor of Baghdad, and on what's happening in Falluja, comes from Dahr Jamail, who has just returned to Baghdad (where he says they get electricity about 4 hours a day).
Another Bradley Fighting Vehicle was destroyed today in Baghdad…as the resistance is using larger bombs for their attacks. Two soldiers died in the blast, with four wounded.
[...]
But the details on the killing of the governor from an eyewitness escaped the news. The convoy was hit by a well coordinated attack. There were two groups of fighters who manned cigarette stands which line the streets of Baghdad, awaiting the governor. In addition, there were gunmen on the tops of nearby shops…the convoy was attacked, and the governors car escaped…only to be chased down by a car full of gunmen who finished the job. The only civilians who were shot were hit by the random firing from the governor’s guards.
The demolition of Fallujah continues. Two of my sources inside the city, who live in different neighborhoods, report that the military is now burning homes. Apparently, they are finding booby traps, so they are piling furniture up in the homes, dousing it with fuel, and burning it.
Nevertheless, another Marine was killed there
[...]
So, as usual, the horrible catastrophe that is occupied Iraq is getting worse by the day.
Eventually, an administration willing to embrace torture to fight terror was going to embrace terror as well: especially an administration populated by moral monsters like John Negroponte, who had embraced terror before, and gotten away with it.
Death squad activity is terrorism. Its purpose is never merely the assassination or kidnapping of a small number of leaders, but always the cowing of entire populations.
This case is no different. Note the language carefully:
One military source involved in the Pentagon debate agrees that this is the crux of the problem, and he suggests that new offensive operations are needed that would create a fear of aiding the insurgency. "The Sunni population is paying no price for the support it is giving to the terrorists," he said. "From their point of view, it is cost-free. We have to change that equation."
The target isn't a few dead-enders or foreign terrorist; the target is "the Sunni population," which needs to be taught a lesson.
Didn't we shock and awe them enough already?
Falluja hasn't taught them anything? Well, we have another chance in Mosul.
It's deplorable that such a shameful chapter in our history is lauded as a success but unfortunately it is not surprising. In fact, El Salvador is indeed a model of how to successfully quell an uprising that has widespread popular support: with enough force, terror and lawlessness most populations can be made to give up.
This may well be more a trial baloon rather than an actual plan at the moment but it's still very significant because it indicates the direction of this administration -- crushing the obviously growing insurgency through very bloody means. Unsurprisingly, Ayad Allawi is reportedly among "the most forthright proponents."
Yup, we're "giving consideration" (read: already doing) to setting up hit teams of Iraqi Kurds and Shi'a to capture or kill "insurgents." This'd include operations inside Syria by U.S. Special Ops, and, most chillingly, the murder of "sympathizers" of the insurgents. But, hey, at least Saddam won't be doing the killing and torture, right?
Yes. The world is better off with Saddam Hussein behind bars.
The deputy police chief of Baghdad and his son, also a police officer, were shot dead Monday, and a suicide car bomb detonated inside a police station courtyard, killing at least four policemen, the latest violence ahead of the country's landmark election.
[...]
In a separate attack Monday, a suicide car bomb exploded in the courtyard of a police station in southern Baghdad Monday, killing at least four policemen and injuring 10 others, police and witnesses said.
The elections are set for the 29th. It's an interesting situation. The different sects and factions just can't seem to agree. Sunni Arabs are going to boycott elections. It's not about religion or fatwas or any of that so much as the principle of holding elections while you are under occupation. People don't really sense that this is the first stepping stone to democracy as western media is implying. Many people sense that this is just the final act of a really bad play. It's the tying of the ribbon on the "democracy parcel" we've been handed. It's being stuck with an occupation government that has been labeled 'legitimate' through elections.
We're being bombarded with cute Iraqi commercials of happy Iraqi families preparing to vote. Signs and billboards remind us that the elections are getting closer...
Can you just imagine what our history books are going to look like 20 years from now?
"The first democratic elections were held in Iraq on January 29, 2005 under the ever-watchful collective eye of the occupation forces, headed by the United States of America. Troops in tanks watched as swarms of warm, fuzzy Iraqis headed for the ballot boxes to select one of the American-approved candidates..."
It won't look good.
There are several problems. The first is the fact that, technically, we don't know the candidates. We know the principal heads of the lists but we don't know who exactly will be running. It really is confusing. They aren't making the lists public because they are afraid the candidates will be assassinated.
Another problem is the selling of ballots. We're getting our ballots through the people who give out the food rations in the varying areas. The whole family is registered with this person(s) and the ages of the varying family members are known. Many, many, many people are not going to vote. Some of those people are selling their voting cards for up to $400. The word on the street is that these ballots are being bought by people coming in from Iran. They will purchase the ballots, make false IDs (which is ridiculously easy these days) and vote for SCIRI or Daawa candidates. Sunnis are receiving their ballots although they don't intend to vote, just so that they won't be sold.
Yet another issue is the fact that on all the voting cards, the gender of the voter, regardless of sex, is labeled "male". Now, call me insane, but I found this slightly disturbing. Why was that done? Was it some sort of a mistake? Why is the sex on the card anyway? What difference does it make? There are some theories about this. Some are saying that many of the more religiously inclined families won't want their womenfolk voting so it might be permissible for the head of the family to take the women's ID and her ballot and do the voting for her. Another theory is that this 'mistake' will make things easier for people making fake IDs to vote in place of females.
All of this has given the coming elections a sort of sinister cloak. There is too much mystery involved and too little transparency. It is more than a little bit worrisome.
Elsewhere Sunday, Iraq's most influential Sunni group said it will abandon its call for a boycott of the elections if the United States gives a timetable for withdrawing multinational forces.
I don't believe the U.S. really has a political left. It just has personalities who consider themselves leftists and make an identity gig of it. If we really had a left, then I could walk out this door to a leftist party headquarters and take political action. It's not like I can call up the local chapter of the Rifondazione Comunista, as in Italy. It's not like I can stop by the newsstand and buy a copy of Liberazione. Americans kid themselves about having choices. Hell, they won't even dare call themselves leftists. They've backed off into calling themselves "progressives." That is totally gutless. What is the alternative to “progress?” The Stone Age? I think the U.S. has a cottage culture industry called the left. And it has a body of middle class professionals and semi-professionals who cannot bring themselves to associate with Republicans, so they call themselves “liberals”. But liberals are too comfortable. So they deny reality. They are not going to do anything so long as they are comfortably insulated in the middle class. They are not going to wade into that hate filled ditch of political action, real political action that requires sacrifice, to battle for America’s soul---not as long as they are still living on a good street, sending their kids to Montessori and getting their slice of the American quiche. I guess what I'm saying is that until we get a real left in this country, one capable of creating change through radical action, one willing to risk everything for what they believe, we should not be talking about what our pseudo-left should be doing. Our pseudo-left is doing exactly what it should be doing. Posturing, bickering amid itself and boring the hell out of the rest of America.
As much as liberals screech in protest, few understand the depth and breadth of the Rightist Christian takeover underway. They catch the scent but never behold the beast itself.
[...]
Christian Reconstruction strategists make clear in their writings that homeschooling and Christian academies have been and continue to create the Rightist Christian cadres of the future, enabling them to place ever-increasing numbers of believers in positions of governmental influence. The training of Christian cadres is far more sophisticated than the average liberal realizes. There now stretches a network of dozens of campuses across the nation, each with its strange cultish atmosphere of smiling Christian pod people, most of them clones of Jerry Falwell's Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. But how many outsiders know the depth and specificity of Reconstructionist political indoctrination in these schools? For example, Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, Virginia, a college exclusively for Christian homeschoolers, offers programs in strategic government intelligence, legal training and foreign policy, all with a strict, Bible-based "Christian worldview." Patrick Henry is so heavily funded by the Christian right it can offer classes below cost. In the Bush administration, seven percent of all internships are handed out to Patrick Henry students, along with many others distributed among similar religious rightist colleges.
Gonzales is "inextricably tied" to Enron, casting doubt on his ability to impartially handle the biggest corporate fraud in history. As the described in the press even now:
Gonzales also has connections to scandal-ridden energy giant Enron. He is a former partner in the Houston law firm Vinson and Elkins, which represented Enron. He also received $6,500 in campaign contributions from the company when he ran for re-election to the Texas Supreme Court.
Indeed, Gonzales got rich off of Enron as a corporate partner at Vinson & Elkins, which is the law firm that was sued for crafting these deals.
Remember, the federal government's case against Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling is still ongoing. Gonzales owes his fortune and much of his early political future to Ken Lay, so making him the nation's top law enforcement officer while the federal government prosecutes Lay presents an obvious conflict of interest. Also, we cannot trust the investigation and enforcement of rules against the future "Enrons" to a corporate lawyer who was possibly contributed to the Enron debacle in the first place.
E-mails have been pouring into Ken Salazar's old digs at the Colorado Attorney General's Office. Many are from supporters sending congratulations and good wishes.
But others express dismay.
The writers are wondering what on earth the Democratic senator is doing buddying up to the likes of Alberto Gonzales. Is this the first sign of a Ben Nighthorse Campbell-style defection to the Republican ranks after using the Democratic Party to get elected?
After all, when Salazar introduced President Bush's nominee for U.S. attorney general - a guy opposed by retired generals, veterans groups, civil rights organizations, even the Mexican American Political Association - it was one of his very first official acts as a senator.
[...]
Sure, Gonzales would be the first Latino to head Justice. But this guy brings plenty of smelly baggage to the job.
Among other things, he was a partner in the Texas law firm that represented Enron and Halliburton, both under federal investigation. He said he "spent hours grilling" Bernard Kerik and recommended him for secretary of homeland security.
[...]
So what does Salazar see in this guy?
"I'm particularly moved by his historical upbringing," the senator said, "the fact that he came from a place with 11 in his family all cramped into two rooms, his father with only a second-grade education." He went on to graduate from Harvard Law School, to become a justice on the Texas Supreme Court, to advise the president. Salazar said he was impressed with "the fact he's overcome those kinds of very significant obstacles to become a successful lawyer."
Doesn't matter what character of lawyer - just that he got to be one. Doesn't matter how he succeeded (I don't know - but I do know that his success in the past decade has been in being a "yes man" to George Bush) - just that he got so far up the ladder.
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was inaugurated as President of Brazil; the United States snubbed the celebration of Brazil's first leftist, working-class president by sending the U.S. trade representative, Robert Zoellick, whom Lula dismissed as "the subsecretary of a subsecretary of a subsecretary," after Zoellick warned that Brazil would be exporting its products to Antarctica if it didn't support President Bush's economic policies.
Robert B. Zoellick, the United States trade representative, had warned that the administration would decide by this week whether to sue the Europeans for what he called their "immoral" opposition to genetically modified food that was leading to starvation in the developing world.
We just continue to march forward with all the evils of our past and present revealed and unchallenged as the way of our future. No longer hidden, we can now be the world's brute openly and without apology.
John Bolton, one of the most powerful hawks in the Bush administration and a robust opponent of Britain's "softly-softly" approach to Iran over its nuclear programme, has lost his job at the State Department.
Condoleezza Rice, who will be confirmed as secretary of state at congressional hearings next week, rebuffed pressure from conservative hardliners, believed to include Dick Cheney, the vice-president, to promote Mr Bolton as her deputy.
Instead, he will leave his post as under-secretary of state for arms control and international security after Dr Rice chose other candidates for her new team.
Mr Bolton, a tough-minded, Yale-educated lawyer, was not available for comment. He is expected to return to the private sector or academic world, although there is speculation that he might join Mr Cheney's staff.
[...]
Mr Bolton believed that Teheran should be isolated by United Nations sanctions and, if it would not back down, confronted with the threat of military action. He was also uncompromising about North Korea, describing life in the Stalinist dictatorship as a "hellish nightmare". Pyongyang responded by calling him "human scum".
It was apparently Mr Bolton's abrasive approach as much as his unflinching politics that prompted Dr Rice to choose Robert Zoellick, the US trade representative, as her deputy instead.
[...]
Her choice reflects the fact that Dr Rice wields far greater influence in the administration than her predecessor, Colin Powell.
[...]
By contrast, President Bush has unstinting trust in the loyalty and political instincts of Dr Rice, for four years his National Security Advisor.
[...]
"There is a change in emphasis and approach, but don't think this means that the administration is going to go soft on Iran and North Korea," said a senior Republican political operative at the State Department. "It means that Condi wants her own people in place and the President trusts her go get the job done."
Telegraph article (subscription: use "BugMeNot" in the left sidebar to bypass registration)
You just can't have too many friends around you in Washington these days.
American troops opened fire after their convoy was struck by a roadside bomb at a checkpoint south of Baghdad, killing two policemen and three civilians, police said Sunday, a day after the U.S. military acknowledged five people were killed when it bombed the wrong house during a search operation in northern Iraq.
The owner of the house, Ali Yousef, said 14 people [seven adults and seven children] were killed when the 500-pound GPS-guided bomb hit at about 2 a.m. Saturday in the town of Aitha, 30 miles south of Mosul.
[...]
The U.S. military later released a statement saying it regretted the loss of "possibly innocent lives'' in the strike
[...]
American commanders recently have said they were changing tactics in the way they respond to roadside bombings. Rather than pushing on after the blast, they now stop and try to engage the perpetrators, who may have detonated the explosives remotely.
A sailor injured aboard a nuclear submarine that ran aground about 350 miles south of Guam died Sunday, the Navy said. Twenty-three other crew members were being treated for injuries.
The USS San Francisco was headed back to its home port in Guam after sustaining severe damage on Saturday. The incident was under investigation, said Jon Yoshishige, a spokesman for the Pacific Fleet based at Pearl Harbor.
[...]
There were no reports of damage to the 360-foot submarine's reactor plant, which was operating normally, the Navy said. Officials said there was no information on what the submarine struck.
There have been some distressing problems with tblog lately. If things aren't showing up correctly (or not showing up at all) it's not a problem on your end.
I'm not able to figure out why the heading and links to anything on my server blitzed out, but maybe it will reappear. One never knows. The whole caboodle was down all day yesterday.
Some day I may have to actually pay for premium blogging, instead of going on the cheap with the free stuff, but I don't know that even that would help. It might get the attention of somebody running the site. The fact that the archives quit working here at tblog is a real bummer (you can only get as many as show up on the current page - which I set to 20 to facilitate rapid loading but have recently changed to 30 so I can at least see a couple days' posts). A number of tblog users are squealing about this, but none of us can seem to raise a web author or manager.
I am thinking about going back to blogger, but I dread the number of times that sucker goes wonky.
Maybe it's a sign. Maybe it's time to quit blogging.
Well, I always have to be hit over the head. Signs are much too subtle for me these days.
For the moment, I'll keep trying to figure out what the hell's wrong.
Apologies.
M
Ooops Apologies to tblog this time. It appears to be a problem with my server, which happens to be the U of MO, and I have no way to contact them today. Probably somebody over there is on the case even as I type. (Yeah, sure.) Anyway, by Monday, when all the professors start squawking, the problem should at least be tackled.
This is wilder than I even imagined. From start to finish. What a joke.
Juan Cole posts:
Nancy Yousef of Knight Ridder reports from Baghdad that campaigning for the January 30 elections has worsened ethnic tensions. Her interviews with university students reveal that the Shiites she talked to are determined to vote, where the Sunnis are afraid to do so, having received death threats.
Speaking of death threats, she reveals that 2 members of Nasser Chadirchi's 48-person Arab nationalist list have resigned on receiving such threats, and that the others are afraid to reveal their names. He estimates that each candidate needs 8 bodyguards if the person is to actively campaign.
Left I also looks at the situation (links embedded in the post):
The entire country is under martial law. Election "observers" will be "observing" the election from another country (via telescope, presumably). The names of the candidates are being kept secret, as are the location of the polling places. The entire election commission in one of the largest cities in the country resigned. Up to a million exiles may be voting in the election, including second-generation exiles born in other countries. People who have been out of the country for most of their lives (or all of their lives, in the case of the second-generation) are able to vote, even though they haven't been back to the country in the two years since it's been "liberated" and have no intention of ever going back. Indeed, it seems likely that more people living in America will vote than in the entire "Sunni Triangle."
Most international experts assessing the fairness of Iraq's elections will monitor the Jan. 30 vote from the safety of neighboring Jordan, but a few observers will head to Baghdad and perhaps other Iraqi cities if security permits, U.N. and other officials said Thursday.
[...]
"We believe we can run a very effective operation to assess how well-run the election was even if there are not huge numbers of electoral observers on the ground," said Canada's chief electoral officer, Jean-Pierre Kingsley, who hosted a meeting in Ottawa this week of international election experts to discuss the Iraqi election.
[...]
"We will be very careful deploying people in known hazardous situations," he said. "We have not ruled out going into Iraq or parts of Iraq."
Assessing an election required much more than being on the ground on election day, Kingsley said.
"We're talking here about an (Iraqi) electoral commission that is known to be independent, that is well-oriented, that has support from U.N. personnel on the ground," he said. "This is very different than when you have a suspect electoral body."
Uh-huh. If the electoral commission is so trustworthy, why have independent international monitors at all? In fact, if they're not going to be on the ground in Iraq, I don't know why they need to leave the comfort of their own homes.
"The presence of international observers adds an extra layer of credibility to any electoral process," U.N. election chief Carina Perelli said. "Therefore, what we can do is urge, call for, and plead for international groups to come to the fore.
"We not only welcome the Canadian effort but we urge other groups to come to the front and to send observers to this process."
The Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe said Wednesday it will not send observers to Iraq, and the European Union also reportedly opted out.
Clearly they need more help. I'm thinking of sending in a proposal. Anybody want to get together with me and monitor the Iraqi elections from the Bahamas?
Even amidst all the Pentagon propaganda re-released as news, all the false assumptions, distortions and outright lies, it's hard to not understand what's actually going on in Iraq if one is paying a bit of attention.
This one is from the L.A. Times:
At five heavily guarded entry points to the city [Fallujah], military interrogators are selectively asking returning residents whether they have heard of the upcoming election and, if so, which, if any, candidates they support.
First a foreign occupying army levels your city. Then they tell you that you can't be in your own hometown without I.D cards issued by them and that there will be fingerprinting and retina scans. Then they claim it's so that there can be "elections" free of coercion. Then their military interrogators question you on your vote as you try to return to what's left of your house.
How can something like that be reported just like that, in passing, without much comment? Military interrogators questioning refugees about which candidate they plan to support. If it happened anywhere else in the world, everyone would recognize it for what it was.
People do recognize it for what it is. Some Americans don't. And some just refuse to admit what it is.
Support our troops.
God knows they need something. Maybe a little insight into reality.
"It's kind of bad we destroyed everything, but at least we gave them a chance for a new start," said Navy corpsman Derrick Anthony, 21, of Chicago.
Maybe a freaking lick of common sense would be helpful.
As he navigated his Humvee through rubble-strewn streets, Lance Cpl. Sunshine Yubeta articulated a question key to the Marines' mission here.
"I wonder," said the 23-year-old from Madras, Ore., nodding toward several sullen-looking men on a corner, "if they hate us or like us."
I hope that was rhetorical. On the other hand, if it weren't, maybe it's actually a sign of hope that the ignorant grunts are actually starting to wonder about what's obvious to everyone else on the planet (except the wingnuts back home, of course).
This is how the LA Times is reporting on Falluja - headline:
After Leveling City, U.S. Tries to Build Trust: In Fallouja, Marines are on a 'hearts and minds' campaign to woo residents and help keep rebels from returning.
How nuts. Again, as Zeynep asks, how can something like that be reported without any comment? Is anybody using their brain?
Wait, before you answer that...
Outside the Humanitarian Assistance center tents, Iraqis stand for hours to receive water and food packets stamped with a U.S. flag and the words "A Food Gift From the People of the United States of America." Hands are marked to prevent a return for seconds.
And...
Iraqis gather here not only for aid but for a chance to work in the assistance program, a job that pays about $8 a day.
Gee, Lance Cpl Yubeta, I wonder if they like you.
Maybe it just takes a few years of maturing - or maybe it's a Red State / Blue State thing.
In many ways, the "hearts and minds" tactics are straight from the Marine Corps' "Small Wars Manual," written in the late 1930s to preserve information about successful campaigns against insurgents in South America and elsewhere.
In preparation for Iraq, officers were ordered to reread the manual, particularly the section on insurgencies. One rule it discusses is maintaining moral superiority in the minds of the populace by stressing that the fighting was the insurgents' fault. Amid the destruction here, it is not an easy rule to follow.
"It's hard to look these people in the eye after blowing everything up," said Staff Sgt. Travis McKinney, 31, of Vallejo, Calif. "These people were just victims."
Indeed. To maintain moral superiority, you have to have it.
Left I comments on one of the bizarre quotes in the article:
"'Any time we can interact with these people is good,' said Sgt. James Regan, 29, of San Antonio. 'They can see us for what we are. I asked one of them, 'When was the last time the mujahedin gave you water or food?' Never.'"
And when was the last time the mujahedin dropped a 500-pound bomb on your house, or burned it down, or destroyed the water and electricity and sewage systems in your city? Oh yeah, that was "never" also. Jesus. Do these people hear themselves?
Jurors at a court martial at a Texas military base have acquitted an army sergeant of manslaughter charges in the drowning death of an Iraqi civilian but convicted him of assaulting the man.
Sergeant First Class Tracy Perkins was accused of forcing Zidoun Fadel Hassoun to jump in the Tigris river in Baghdad as punishment for violating a curfew in Samarra in January 2004.
But the defense argued it wasn't clear that the Iraqi civilian had died in the incident.
Army criminal investigators questioned during the four-day trial at the Fort Hood base admitted they lacked the resources to fully probe the alleged death.
The defense also argued that the nature of hostilities in Iraq meant US troops needed to find effective ways to deter crime.
The "crime" in this instance was that the teenager was out on a delivery with his cousin some time shortly before the army's curfew. I guess an effective way to deter further curfew violation wouldn't have been to say, "Hey, kid, it's almost curfew time. Get home or come with us." No, of course not. We don't speak their language. Wouldn't have been very effective in English.
And I guess an effective way wouldn't have been to take the boys into custody overnight and release them the next day.
No, clearly, the best option was to force them into the river. It's not our fault the kid couldn't swim.
And, hey, it was effective. That kid won't be breaking any curfews in the future. And his cousin and everybody who heard the story probably watched their time carefully afterward.
Or found a gun and joined the insurgency.
Update 01/10/05:
Lt. Col. Nate Sassaman [...] gave the two soldiers instructions on what to tell investigators, Maj. Robert Gwinner told a panel of jurors on Thursday in Fort Hood, Texas.
[...]
Perkins, 33, was convicted Friday of two counts of aggravated assault, assault consummated by battery and obstruction of justice. He was acquitted of involuntary manslaughter and making a false statement.
[...]
According to Lt. Col. Jonathan Withington, public affairs officer at Fort Hood, Gwinner testified that Sassaman told the two soldiers, "When talking to investigators, leave out the part that you put people in the river. Only tell them you saw two people on the side of the river."
Gwinner was Sassaman's executive officer in Iraq.
[...]
Both [Sassaman] and Gwinner testified under immunity from prosecution, Withington said.
Sassaman, who is back from Iraq, could not be reached for comment at his Fort Carson office or at his home. He was given a letter of reprimand last spring for his involvement.
We are writing to urge you to immediately terminate - and recover funds from - the contract between your administration and the journalist Armstrong Williams. According to media reports, $240,000 in taxpayer funds were transferred to Mr. Williams in exchange for his agreement to promote the Administration's "No Child Left Behind" initiative on his broadcasts [...] These payments [...] constitute a clear violation of the "Publicity and Propaganda" laws recently passed by Congress.
[...]
In addition to recovering these funds, we would urge you to disclose if any other journalists have been paid by your Administration to skew their media reports in favor of your initiatives, proposals or political messages.
[...]
In addition to the illegality of these actions taken by your Administration, we believe that the act of bribing journalists to bias their news in favor of government policies undermines the integrity of our democracy. Actions like this were common in the Soviet Union, but until now, thought to be long extinguished in our country.
These revelations [...] are the latest - and most disturbing - in a series of actions by your Administration to manipulate public opinion through covert propaganda. On May 19, 2004, the GAO found that your Administration illegally spent taxpayer funds on covert propaganda by paying Ketchum Incorporated to produce fake news stories promoting the image of the new Mediare law. This week, the GAO found that fake news stories produced by the Office of National Drug Control Policy also violated the "Publicity and Propaganda" clause. In addition, on November 19, 2004, the GAO launched a new inquiry into the legality of the Department of Education's contract with Ketchum to produce fake news stories and create favorability rankings of journalists.
The only thing I would take exception to is the fact that after all they are saying, they're still addressing the letter to "Honorable" George W. Bush.
Williams told USA Today that he understood how people might find the arrangement problematic, but "I wanted to do it because it's something I believe in." The newspaper also quoted the top Democrat on the House Education Committee, Rep. George Miller of California, as saying that the contract is "a very questionable use of taxpayers' money" that's "probably illegal." Miller said he will seek an investigation.
A letter posted today on the Poynter Institute's Romenesko site said: "If secretly taking a quarter million of taxpayer dollars to flack the administration on a contested political issue isn't a blatant violation of journalistic ethics, what does it take?"
Recall that the U.S. Army shut down a military doctor's website after he reported on the mess tent bombing in Mosul. Here's the notice that remains on Maj. Cohen's website:
Dear Family, Friends, Colleagues, Loyal Readers, New Readers, and Everyone else that finds this site interesting,
I have some very unfortunate news. Levels above me have ordered, yes ORDERED, me to shut down this website. They cite that the information contained in these pages violates several Army Regulations. I certainly disagree with this. However, I have made a decision to turn off the site pending further investigation as to whether or not I have violated these Army Regulations.
As many of you can tell from reading the pages within this site, I LOVE being an Army Physician. Nothing gives me greater professional fulfillment than to be able to take care of these courageous men and women who risk their lives fighting for America's freedom. Additionally, working alongside the brilliant doctors, nurses, medics, and other soldiers like those of the 67th CSH makes me so proud to be an American and a Soldier. A part of me really wants to continue this website to provide our families and friends information about what we are doing here. I have been emotionally overwhelmed with the quantity of supportive emails I have received from people who enjoy reading our site. Give me some time to process this turn of events.
I apologize to anyone that has found this site offensive or inappropriate.
I also apologize to those who have enjoyed reading our posts and now are unable to continue.
His email address is there as well.
The Pocono Record had a December 26 article about the website before it was shut down. Apparently Dr./Maj. Cohen had some dreams of becoming the first Jewish president of the U.S. I think he can pretty well abandon them now.
Of course I don't know, but some of the problem the Army had with his website could have been a pre-bombing post where he called the base at Mosul "one swimming pool short of a country club."
Iraqi trade union leader Hadi Salih, International Secretary of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions, was tortured and killed in his home in Baghdad Tuesday night--but a Nexis search reveals not a word has yet appeared in the U.S. Press.
[...]
Iraqi trade union sources believe that the atrocity was carried out by remnants of Saddam Hussein’s secret police, the Mukharabat," said the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions in a statement.
On a visit to Europe last year, Salih "outlined the problems facing Iraqi trade unionists including lack of funds, the continued implementation of anti-union laws brought in by the Ba’athist dictatorship and attacks from US forces on IFTU offices."(emphasis added)
U.S. Labor Against War issued a statement on Salih's murder which said in part: "In the past three months, IFTU members and rank-and-file workers have been murdered and kidnapped as they tried to carry out normal union activity, or simply do their jobs.[...] On the night of December 26, the building of the Transport and Communications Workers in central Baghdad was shelled. Together with the assassination of Hadi Salih, these horrifying crimes are making Iraq as dangerous a place for union activists as Colombia."
[...]
" The Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions calls for the end of the occupation and the US war. "
[...]
The Allawi government is largely hostile to trade unionists of what ever stripe--and so is the U.S. occupying force. As David Bacon of the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union reported to a December conference of the International Labor Communications Association on receiving an award for an article, originally published in his union's newspaper, about his fact-finding trip to Iraq: "We assumed that if workers in the US could look at Iraq and see workers and human beings, they could understand better the economic purpose of occupation. They could see it is intended to implement privatization and the administration's neoliberal agenda. That's something many workers in the US already know about and understand. Seeing the occupation in that light, they could understand better why it was in our mutual interest, as Iraqis and Americans, to oppose the war."
Virginia's the State in the news today, I guess. Aside from its Rethug proposal to make women report miscarriages to the police and its offering of Claude Allen, The Washington Timesreports another zealot proposal...
The legislature will consider a state constitutional amendment to uphold marriage as the union of a man and a woman, by reaffirming the traditional definition of marriage.
[...]
Lawmakers also will consider creating a special driver's license plate for supporters of traditional marriage. The license plate would feature two interlocked golden wedding bands over a red heart.
[...]
Both measures have a good chance of passing Virginia's Republican-controlled General Assembly, which begins its session Jan. 12. The legislature overwhelmingly has approved previous efforts to support traditional marriage.
[...]
The legislature must approve the amendment two years in a row before sending the measure to the voters.
[...]
"It would probably be better policy if everyone on both sides agreed that maybe you can put your sports team or your college on your license plate," he said. "There's nothing wrong with putting a bumper sticker that advocates a political position, but the state approving political statements of any type maybe ought not to be on a license plate."
[Gov. Mark Warner, a Democrat] said he thinks a constitutional amendment is not necessary because of the existing bans on same-sex "marriages," even though he is against such unions.
Something tells me both measures are shoe-ins and Governor Warner is on his way out the door.
The appointment of Claude Allen as Bush's new chief domestic policy advisor is another triumph for the Republican theocrats. A reactionary black kapo, Allen is one of the darlings of the "family values" ultra-conservative religious right led by James Dobson and his Focus on the Family.
Recruited by Karl Rove as his watchdog on then-HHS secretary Tommy Thompson (who had a much-exaggerated reputation as a "moderate"), Allen--a visceral political homophobe-- was a former top aide Sen. Jesse Helms, and in 1984 accused Helms' Democratic challenger, then-Gov. James Hunt, of having links to "queers," "radical feminists," socialists, and unions (Hunt was, in fact, a bible-quoting right-wing Dem).
As Health and Human Services Commissioner for very conservative Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore, Allen bent public health priorities to the religious right's agenda and led a state-sponsored anti-safe sex crusade that he had cooked up with the abstinence-only Institute for Youth Development, whose mission is to teach children to fear rather than understand sex, and says that condoms don't work to prevent AIDS. [...]Allen led an HHS witch-hunt that investigated all of the AIDS service organizations (like Gay Men's Health Crisis) whose members staged a demonstration that disrupted Tommy Thompson's speech to the international AIDS conference in Barcelona, and purged several ASO's (like San Francisco's Stop Aids Project) whose politics and science-based sex ed Allen didn't like. Allen has regularly been on POZ magazine's list of the AIDS community's top enemies[...]
[...]
Also in his Virginia years, Allen was notorious for his opposition to abortion--which he took to extreme lengths.[...] Allen worked to defeat legislation that provided health insurance for children of the working poor, largely because the program covered abortion services for rape and incest victims under the age of eighteen.
"The Coalition Provisional Authority made some horrendous judgments and complicated our presence here tremendously.
"Now it's a different time and different set of judgments that need to be made. I need to understand it, so I can make the judgments. That's why I'm here, to see and hear firsthand what the dynamics are."
So it's all the fault of the CPA, is it? If they'd handled things right, everything would have been okay, I suppose.
Despite the violence, U.S. and Iraqi officials have remained adamant that the vote will go forward, both because the transitional law requires it by the end of January and because a delay might be seen as a victory for the insurgents.
Kerry echoed that sentiment, saying that the "elections will happen. It's something that has to happen."
And then we can start blaming the new government.
In Baiji, an insurgent hotbed in north-central Iraq, the entire city council resigned Wednesday, joining the electoral commission that had stepped down earlier, said Saad Nazzal, the mayor.
"The government is committed to holding the elections on schedule," Dr. Allawi said, trying to cut off calls from within his own cabinet to delay the voting until the violence around the country is tamed. "We know some Iraqis fear voting, but we have to overcome those fears."
Dr. Allawi spoke two days after what some officials have described as an anguished phone call with President Bush, in which the prime minister expressed worries that the campaign by the insurgents was undermining the likelihood of a peaceful and legitimate vote.
President Bush has said publicly that he is opposed to putting off the election, and White House aides said he and Dr. Allawi had agreed to hold fast. Still, many in Washington interpreted the phone call from Dr. Allawi as an effort to test the waters, and to determine if Mr. Bush would brook a delay.
White House officials would not discuss the 15-minute conversation between Mr. Bush and Mr. Yawar in anything more than generalities, sidestepping questions about whether the two men had discussed the merits of moving forward on Jan. 30 or delaying.
Yet the fact that Mr. Bush felt the need to discuss the matter with Iraq's leaders twice within 48 hours suggested a new level of concern in the White House that the movement for delay within the Iraqi cabinet must be cut off. Because Mr. Bush insists that Iraqis are now fully in control of their own country, White House officials say, the president has to move cautiously so as to not appear to be interfering in Iraq's internal politics.
Tom Engelhardt has a somewhat lengthy article, well worth the read, as it covers a lot of information concisely summarizing our road to torture and infamy since 9/11, and weaving the tsunami into the mix.
Excerpt:
Fighting for [you fill in the blank]. That sums up our present Bush moment. In fact, little that this country does from diplomacy to torture to foreign aid is any longer imaginable absent the military. We are a nation whose public face -- however we may still think of ourselves -- is no longer a civilian one, not just in Iraq but in the world at large. This is essentially because, if the Bush people could be said to have a religion, it would not perhaps be fundamentalist Christianity so much as a deep and abiding belief in the ability of a militarized superpower to impose its views and desires on the world through military strength alone.
Militarism in America has long been a strange bird, since our society lacked most of the normal trappings of a militarized state. But it's an even stranger creature post-9/11. After all, the militarists driving policy are a group of men almost none of whom were ever in the military (no less saw service in a war) and many of their policies have been opposed by honorable (and horrified) military and intelligence officials who recognize madness, stupidity, and illegality when they see it and have little interest in having their names or services dragged through the imperial mud. (Hence all those leakers to the press.)
Apologists for the administration would like us to forget all about the Kerik affair, but Bernard Kerik perfectly symbolizes the times we live in. Like Rudolph Giuliani and, yes, President Bush, he wasn't a hero of 9/11, but he played one on TV. And like Mr. Giuliani, he was quick to cash in, literally, on his undeserved reputation.
Once the New York newspapers began digging, it became clear that Mr. Kerik is, professionally and personally, a real piece of work. But that's not unusual these days among people who successfully pass themselves off as patriots and defenders of moral values. Mr. Kerik must still be wondering why he, unlike so many others, didn't get away with it.
And Alberto Gonzales must be hoping that senators don't bring up the subject.
The principal objection to making Mr. Gonzales attorney general is that doing so will tell the world that America thinks it's acceptable to torture people. But his confirmation will also be a statement about ethics.
As White House counsel, Mr. Gonzales was charged with vetting Mr. Kerik. He must have realized what kind of man he was dealing with - yet he declared Mr. Kerik fit to oversee homeland security.
Did Mr. Gonzales defer to the wishes of a president who wanted Mr. Kerik anyway, or did he decide that his boss wouldn't want to know? (The Nelson Report, a respected newsletter, reports that Mr. Bush has made it clear to his subordinates that he doesn't want to hear bad news about Iraq.)
Either way, when the Senate confirms Mr. Gonzales, it will mean that Iokiyar remains in effect, that the basic rules of ethics don't apply to people aligned with the ruling party. And reality will continue to be worse than any fiction I could write.
Representative John Cosgrove has recently introduced a bill to the Virginia legislature that will make it a misdemeanor crime for any woman who's experienced a miscarriage - at any stage of gestation - to fail to report that miscarriage to local law enforcement personnel within twelve hours.
Our friend Maura is trying to call attention to this important issue; she's written about the bill here. As she explains, the information a woman will be forced to provide to law enforcement will include (but will not be limited to) her social security number, her race, her educational background, her marital status, the extent of her prenatal care, and her full reproductive history.
Right.
To the cops.
That's right folks. Another step in the Righteous Republican Right's political mandate to return women in the United States to chattel.
On December 27, the Voice of America broadcast news of a UN report on proliferation: the international community “is approaching a point at which the erosion of the non-proliferation regime could become irreversible and result in a cascade of proliferation.” At least 40 nations have the technology to build nuclear weapons at relatively short notice.
But the VOA only mentions two of those nations as dangers: Iran and North Korea. What about the other 38? Apparently, in this age of a “what-me-worry” president, we just aren’t supposed to worry.
At the tail end of its news item, the VOA adds this: “Nuclear issues will be discussed next year in New York, during the review of the Non-Proliferation Treaty—the legal cornerstone of non-proliferation efforts. Under terms of the pact, non-nuclear states are bound not to acquire nuclear weapons while the five declared nuclear states (the United States, France, Britain, China and Russia) pledge to disarm. The four-week session in May will bring the 187 signatories together to debate whether the treaty needs to be revised and strengthened to meet the nuclear challenges in the years ahead.”
But neither the VOA, nor any U.S. news media, have reported the important news about that meeting in May: the Bush administration is going to New York not to strengthen the NPT, but to destroy it.
Do you want to know why? You could study every news outlet in the USA and not get an answer. You have to go to Japan, where the Kyodo News Agency reported a few days ago: “The United States plans to suggest that a 2005 international conference to review the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty should invalidate a document adopted at a 2000 meeting in which five nuclear powers committed to an ‘unequivocal undertaking’ to a nuclear-free world, according to U.S. government and congressional sources.”
In other words, the U.S. wants to scrap the very heart of the NPT, the deal that says if all you non-nuclear nations stay that way, we nuclear nations will move steadily toward getting rid of our nukes. If the treaty were permanent, we’d be stuck with that deal. That’s why the U.S., under the Clinton administration, insisted that the treaty be reviewed and subject to change every five years.
Now the Bushies are planning, not merely to change it, but to make it meaningless.
[...]
The NPT is an international treaty signed by the president and ratified by the Senate. Most of us thought that made it law. How silly of us. It’s not “a binding guideline or anything like that,” the anonymous official explained. The idea that the U.S. should move toward nuclear disarmament is now “outdated,” so it must go.
[...]
Now that no other country has nuclear capability even remotely close to ours, why should we let all those little countries tell us what nukes we can or cannot have? When George W. was planning the invasion of Afghanistan, he reportedly said: “At some point, we may be the only ones left [in the coalition]. That’s okay with me. We are America.” No doubt his attitude about nukes is pretty much the same.
[...]
All this fits the Bush pattern of nuclear irresponsibility, which Lawrence Korb recently described in the Boston Globe. In the last four years, the U.S. withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, kept the Senate from ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, refused to commit itself to halting future tests, and began work on two new nuclear weapons.
[...]
“A U.S. government official described the final accord adopted during the 2000 NPT review conference as a ‘simply historical document’ and pointed out the need to adopt a new document reflecting drastic changes in international security conditions, including the Sept 11 terrorist attacks in 2001.”
That's right, folks. 9/11 changed everything. Bush hit the trifecta.
May 1, as the NPT meeting in New York begins, will be a day for massive demonstrations to warn the wold of the coming nuclear tidal wave. It will be a day to say “No” to Bush’s brainless nuclear bully approach and “Yes” to a nuclear-free world. It’s not too early to begin sounding the alarm. Those of us who care about the safety of America and the world can’t wait for the mainstream news media to do it. We have to take care of that business ourselves.
Summaries on recent nuclear weapons and arms control issues here.
An internal CIA investigation concluded that former CIA Director George Tenet and other top officials failed to allocate adequate resources to combat terrorism before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and should be held accountable, intelligence officials told The New York Times.
CIA Inspector General John Helgerson directed some of his sharpest criticism at Tenet and James Pavitt, the former deputy director of operations, according to a report in Friday's edition of the newspaper. Both left the agency last year. During their tenure, the agency was blamed for intelligence failures involving Iraq and the Sept. 11 attacks.
Last month, President Bush awarded Tenet the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor.
As if to exonerate Rumsfeld regarding his response to the unarmored troops in Kuwait, a tank has been blown up in Baghdad, killing seven U.S. soldiers.
[December 8, 2004] And if you think about it, you can have all the armor in the world on a tank and a tank can be blown up.
If I were to think of one person who personifies democratic dignity, it would be the man with three recent ethics admonitions. Dipshit.
Worried the challenge might cast Democrats as whiners, many from the party including Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. played minor roles in the showdown, or none at all.
Underscoring that, after the challenge forced the House and Senate to convene separately to consider the Ohio problems, the House rejected the protest by 267-31. The Senate vote was 74-1, with Boxer the only vote in support.
"This announcement shall be a sufficient declaration of the persons elected president and vice president of the United States for the term beginning Jan. 20, 2005," Vice President Dick Cheney, who presided over the session, read without emotion when the final votes were tabulated.
Since the only emotion Oil Slick Dick has ever shown is anger, I wouldn't have expected there to be any other reading.
Well. There you have it. Your official announcement.
For the first time in FDA's history the FDA's Chief Counsel is actively soliciting private industrial company lawyers to bring him cases in which the FDA can intervene in support of drug and medical device manufacturers.
Please have a look at my earlier post today, Willful ignorance, if you haven't already. And then note this (thanks to Jonathan Schwarz at A Tiny Revolution for providing the information):
[Presidential Secretary] ‘Abd said key Regime members “habitually” concealed from Saddam unpleasant realities of Iraq’s industrial and military capabilities and of public opinion. Fear of the loss of position motivated this deception, which continued until the final days of the Regime.
Asked how Saddam treated people who brought him bad news, ‘Ali Hasan Al Majid replied, “I don’t know.” ISG assesses that ‘Ali Hasan Al Majid has never known any instance of anybody bringing bad news to Saddam.
Okay, in case you don't want to read my earlier post, here's the pertinent part:
Our sources say that attempts to brief Bush on various grim realities have been personally rebuffed by the President, who actually says that he does not want to hear “bad news.”
Rather, Bush makes clear that all he wants are progress reports, where they exist, and those facts which seem to support his declared mission in Iraq...building democracy. “That's all he wants to hear about,” we have been told. So “in” are the latest totals on school openings, and “out” are reports from senior US military commanders (and those intelligence experts still on the job) that they see an insurgency becoming increasingly effective, and their projection that “it will just get worse.”
The coastline of south Asia has been radically altered, but the political landscape in Washington remains familiar. Behind the stentorian rhetoric about the battle between good and evil lies the neoconservative struggle to remove human rights sanctions against the Indonesian military, which is waging a vicious war against the popular separatist movement on Banda Aceh, the province hardest hit by the tsunami.
The war between the Indonesian military and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) has raged for more than two decades. A ceasefire negotiated in 2002, with the involvement of former general Anthony Zinni as US representative, was brutally broken by the military in May 2003. The Indonesian military is a virtual state within a state and is unaccountable for its human rights violations and criminal activities. After its war of ethnic cleansing against East Timor concluded with independence following diplomatic intervention, the military was determined not to lose Banda Aceh.
In its war there, the military has mimicked the language of the war on terrorism and the Iraq war, calling its operation "shock and awe", targeting the population as terrorist supporters, and expelling all international observers, including the UN, from the region. Human Rights Watch documented extensive torture and abuse.
[...]
On his tour of Banda Aceh, Powell made no determined effort to restore the cease-fire. Meanwhile, GAM reports that the Indonesia military is using the catastrophe to launch a new offensive. "The Indonesians get the message when you have no high-level condemnation of what they're doing," Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch told me. A renewed effort by Wolfowitz against sanctions is expected soon.
A small group of Democrats agreed Thursday to force House and Senate debates on Election Day problems in Ohio before letting Congress certify President Bush's win over Sen. John Kerry in November.
While Bush's victory is not in jeopardy, the Democratic challenge would legally compel Congress to interrupt tallying the Electoral College vote, which was scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. EST Thursday. It would be only the second time since 1877 that the House and Senate were forced into separate meetings to consider electoral votes.
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., signed a challenge mounted by House Democrats to Ohio's 20 electoral votes, which put Bush over the top. By law, a protest signed by members of the House and Senate requires both chambers to meet separately for up to two hours to consider it. Lawmakers are allowed to speak for no more than five minutes each.
"I have concluded that objecting to the electoral votes from Ohio is the only immediate way to bring these issues to light by allowing you to have a two-hour debate to let the American people know the facts surrounding Ohio's election," Boxer wrote in a letter to Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, D-Ohio, a leader of the Democratic effort.
Boxer [will] be joined by Senators Chris Dodd, Hillary Clinton, Harry Reid, and Barak Obama. From the House [...]Congressman John Conyers [will] challenge the Ohio vote, with the support of Stephanie Tubbs Jones, Dennis Kucinich, Jesse Jackson Jr., Maxine Waters [...], Robert Scott, Mel Watt, and Jerrold Nadler.
"I will no longer represent only the White House. I will represent the United States of America and its people. I understand the difference between the two roles," President Bush's counsel told the Senate Judiciary Committee.
And, if he knows what happened to everybody else in the administration who thought they'd represent America and its people in lieu of the White House, and I'm sure he does, then he knows that he wouldn't last six months if he tried.
But, nobody really cares. The Democrats spouted a little faux fire and brimstone just to...well, I don't really know why. Because they're two-faced, slimely assholes would be my best guess.
Despite the Democratic fireworks, Gonzales' nomination was widely expected to be confirmed by the GOP-led Senate. Even his detractors praised the rags-to-riches story of the Texas-raised son of Mexican immigrants.
[...]
Democrats seized on the hearing as an opportunity to heap criticism on the outgoing attorney general, John Ashcroft.
Well, that's just real helpful.
"The previous attorney general ran the most secretive Justice Department in my lifetime," said Sen. Charles Schumer of New York. "Will you continue the John Ashcroft 'my way or the highway' approach, which often led to embarrassment?"
Gonzales sidestepped the question.
Yeah, whatever.
Update 3:30 pm: Oh, and by the way...they'll be confirming this guy without even getting all the information about him. Dog and pony show. That's all it is.
Senate Democrats say the White House has refused to give them all of the memos and documents they need to trace how that decision was made so they can review Gonzales' role and how it would affect him as the nation's top law enforcement official.
From LaBelle via this one and that one comes this:
The Nelson Report is a daily political tip sheet and analysis written for the past 20 years for the (US and Asian) corporate and government clients of Chris Nelson, a former Capitol Hill staffer and UPI reporter. (He was actually the first to break the looted explosives story before the election; Josh Marshall then posted it to his blog.) This Monday, he wrote:
There is rising concern amongst senior officials that President Bush does not grasp the increasingly grim reality of the security situation in Iraq because he refuses to listen to that type of information. Our sources say that attempts to brief Bush on various grim realities have been personally rebuffed by the President, who actually says that he does not want to hear “bad news.”
Rather, Bush makes clear that all he wants are progress reports, where they exist, and those facts which seem to support his declared mission in Iraq...building democracy. “That's all he wants to hear about,” we have been told. So “in” are the latest totals on school openings, and “out” are reports from senior US military commanders (and those intelligence experts still on the job) that they see an insurgency becoming increasingly effective, and their projection that “it will just get worse.”
Our sources are firm in that they conclude this “good news only” directive comes from Bush himself; that is, it is not a trap or cocoon thrown around the President by National Security Advisor Rice, Vice President Cheney, and DOD Secretary Rumsfeld. In any event, whether self-imposed, or due to manipulation by irresponsible subordinates, the information/intelligence vacuum at the highest levels of the White House increasingly frightens those officials interested in objective assessment, and not just selling a political message.
When I wake up in the afternoon Which it pleases me to do Don’t nobody bring me no bad news ’cause I wake up already negative And I’ve wired up my fuse So don’t nobody bring me no bad news
If we’re going to be buddies Better bone up on the rules ’cause don’t nobody bring me no bad news You can be my best of friends As opposed to payin’ dues But don’t nobody bring me no bad news
No bad news No bad news Don’t you ever bring me no bad news ’cause I’ll make you an offer, child That you cannot refuse So don’t nobody bring me no bad news
When you’re talking to me Don’t be cryin’ the blues ’cause don’t nobody bring me no bad news You can verbalize and vocalize But just bring me the clues But don’t nobody bring me no bad news
--Evillene
Mabel King as Evillene (The Wiz) Photo courtesy Neverland Valley.com
We need more. Today, I add Sgt. Kevin Benderman to my list.
01/05/05 -- Ft. Stewart Georgia, “Rock of the Marne” -- This morning Sergeant Kevin Benderman, U.S. Army awoke to face what will probably be one of the most important decisions of his life: whether or not to accept or refuse re-deployment to Iraq to participate in a war that has been increasingly questioned by the American public, and the world. A war that has been ruled illegal by United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan and has come under increasing fire from both Republicans and Democrats alike who share the same concerns as Sergeant Benderman and the U.N. Secretary General.
[...]
Benderman has a flawless military record and a list of meritorious awards.
[...]
He says that he is proud of his service to his country, but takes no pride in what is happening in Iraq now. In addition, Benderman states that while he signed a contract with the military to ‘defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic,’ he says now that “I am ashamed to be associated with this mess, and I certainly did not join the Army to kill women, children and old men. I just don’t see how these innocent people could be a threat to the constitution of the United States: an American soldier should not be ashamed of what they do.”
[...]
“I have both a professional and a moral obligation to call into question why we are still in Iraq after accomplishing the mission – in President Bush’s words – of deposing Saddam, and why U.S. military personnel are increasingly killing non-combatants. On my last deployment in Iraq elements of my unit were instructed by a Captain to fire on children throwing rocks at us.” This is not what he signed up for, Benderman said.
Both Benderman, 40, and his wife Monica realize the possible ramifications of his stand.
“We have no other choice,” Benderman’s wife said. “This is what we have to do, I have always told my children that the right thing is the most important thing, and doing it is the only thing that allows you to keep your integrity, regardless of the consequences.”
[...]
Sergeant Benderman is scheduled to undergo a psychiatric evaluation at Ft. Stewart Georgia this afternoon after submitting a request for Conscientious Objector Status from the Army.
Four Iraqis have been injured after US helicopters bombed residential buildings in the northern Iraqi city of Arbil, Aljazeera has learned.
Aljazeera's correspondent in Iraq's Kurdistan, Ahmad al-Zawiti, said the bombing on Wednesday damaged the building where students of Salah al-Din University live, in the Sidawa neighbourhood.
He said the building and other nearby houses were set ablaze, adding that some nearby cars were also damaged.
Four students were injured in the two-hour-long strike, officials said. The attack came after a US helicopter had come under fire from the same area, witnesses said.
This is one hell of a holy mess. But it looks like as long as Halliburton is making a profit, it shall continue. Iraq's a pretty big country to lay waste to, but I think we have enough bombs.
(This is the incident Juan Cole reported on here.)
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released newly obtained documents on Wednesday, one of which included a disturbing account of an interrogation in late 2002.
The commander of the US Southern Command, which is responsible for the prison at Guantanamo, immediately ordered an investigation into the FBI allegations of abuse.
And I'm sure we can count on the military to clean itself up.
Investigators will look into allegations of prisoner abuse at Guantanamo Bay described in recently released FBI documents, authorities said, as a new batch of FBI memos was released.
The U.S. Southern Command in Miami assigned Army Brig. Gen. John T. Furlow to lead the investigation, which could begin as early as this week. The military maintains that most incidents detailed in the FBI memos occurred in 2002 when the prison was just opening, and that some of the interrogation techniques labelled as "aggressive" are no longer in use.
[...]
"It will be fully investigated," Guantanamo's commanding Army Brig. Gen. Jay Hood said Wednesday, adding that recent articles about allegations have skewed the public's understanding about the mission and the troops' commitment to strict standards.
Human rights groups have called for an independent investigation into prisoner abuse at the base, where 550 or so detainees from nearly 40 countries are accused of links to Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime or the al-Qaida terror network.
The military, they say, cannot be trusted to investigate itself.
"Although more transparency is always welcome, we're way past the point where internal inquiries can be considered sufficient," said Alistair Hodgett, a spokesman for London-based Amnesty International.
Yeah, well, you deal with the investigation you get.
"I do not wish to sound alarmist. I do wish to send a clear, distinctive signal of deepening concern," Lt. Gen. James Helmly said in a Dec. 20 internal memorandum to the Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker.
[...]
"The purpose of this memorandum is to inform you of the Army Reserve's inability under current policies, procedures and practices ... to meet mission requirements associated with Operation Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom," Helmly wrote, referring to the Army’s codenames for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
"The Army Reserve is additionally in grave danger of being unable to meet other operational requirements," including soldiers in classified contingency plans for other potential wars or national emergencies, "and is rapidly degenerating into a 'broken' force," He wrote.
He added that the Reserve’s ability to regenerate its mobilized troops is "eroding daily," partially because Reserve soldiers who finish deployment in Iraq and Afghanistan are asked to abandon substantial amounts of their equipment for other troops and contractors.
Helmly also said that the Pentagon don’t issue mobilization orders “in a timely manner”, adding that at least 10,000 Reserve soldiers received as little as three to five days notice.
He also referred to "potential 'sociological' damage” by giving Reserve soldiers an extra $1,000 a month if they volunteer to be mobilized for a second time. Hemly said that this confuses “volunteers” with "mercenaries.”
In a scene that could be reminiscent of the end of the bitter 2000 presidential race, several members of the House of Representatives plan to challenge Ohio's election results today when Congress meets to confirm President Bush's reelection.
[...]
Three hundred people rallied Monday outside Boxer's San Francisco office, and her staff was given a petition with 3,000 signatures urging her to support the effort. Several hundred people attended a Tuesday night rally at Herbst Theatre, where speakers promised to either thank or shame her based on her decision.
A military doctor whose Web site chronicled the bloody aftermath of the suicide bombing of a mess tent in Iraq has shut down the site.
In an e-mail from Iraq on Tuesday, Maj. Michael Cohen, a doctor with the 67th Combat Support Hospital unit, said he received a written warning from the Army but was not told which Army regulations were being violated.
Lt. Col. Steven Boylan, a spokesman for coalition forces in Iraq, said he could not confirm the investigation into Cohen's blog. He said the Pentagon allows blogs that do not disrupt unit discipline, make statements on behalf of commanders or the Army, or reveal details that could aid attackers.
Kansas City Star article (subscription - use the easy Bug Me Not site in the left sidebar for access to sites requiring registration)
Families of four slain security contractors whose bodies were burned and dragged through the streets of Fallujah, Iraq, sued the workers' former company Wednesday.
[...]
The workers were sent into Fallujah without proper equipment and personnel to defend the supply convoy they were guarding, according to the civil lawsuit. The lawsuit alleges that one week before the deaths, Blackwater fired a project manager who had insisted that the contractors use armored vehicles.
Kansas City Star article (subscription - use the easy Bug Me Not site in the left sidebar for access to sites requiring registration)
The answer to your question is, yes. It can always get worse. You wouldn't think it logical, but you certainly have plenty of evidence.
The US military appears to have become convinced that Ansar al-Sunnah, a breakaway group from the largely Kurdish terrorist group Ansar al-Islam, has been operating from dormitories at the Salahuddin University in the Kurdish stronghold of Irbil. US special forces accompanied by Kurdish fighters and helicopter gunships struck at the dormitory on Wednesday evening.
[...]
Kurdistan Interior Minister Kerim Sinjari condemned the operation. Al-Zaman says he complained that several innocent civilians were killed by US forces in the course of it, including one woman. He said that such actions could jeopardize Kurdistan-US relations.
US news outlets continually blame Saddam for Ansar al-Islam, consisting of a few hundred Kurdish guerrillas, some of whom had fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan. In fact, however, they operated from the de facto no-fly zone that was under US control, not that of Saddam.
Well, who was left to piss off, but the Kurds? It simply had to be done.
And Cole's take...
In my view, the threat of a serious conflict between the Kurdish paramilitary and the US is imminent. Once a new government is elected, if it can be, it may take decisions that the Kurds don't like. The US will then have a choice of supporting the Kurds or the government it itself had formed.
The storm to follow the Vanity Fair article claiming Abe Lincoln was gay may be mitigated, however, by the fact that he was also the enemy of the South.
Hollywood scum contribute millions; Multi-millionaire preznit coughs up ten grand
Hollywood stars such as Sandra Bullock and Steven Spielberg, sports champion Michael Schumacher and rock heroes Linkin Park have made huge donations to the Asian tsunami disaster relief campaign.
Seven-time world Formula One champion Michael Schumacher has made the biggest donation by an individual so far offering $US10million.
"The dawning of the New Year has not been as joyful for us this year because of the catastrophe in Asia. We sympathise with the victims in their grief," Schumacher said.
Publicist Marvin Levy says the Spielberg family have pledged $US1.5 million to charities including Save the Children, CARE and Oxfam
[...]
Leonardo di Caprio has given UNICEF a donation for victims in Thailand which, according to Access Hollywood, also reached $US1 million.
[...]
Even the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), which each year sponsors the Golden Globe awards, has donated $US250,000 to Action Against Hunger, Save the Children USA, the Asian Earthquake Fund and Doctors Without Borders.
[Sandra Bullock] has given $1 million to the American Red Cross for its tsunami relief effort.
It's the second time Hollywood's girl-next-door has opened her heart and pocketbook for disaster victims. She previously gave $1 million to the Red Cross following the 9/11 terrorist strikes.
[...]
Many more stars are expected to help raise money for south Asian disaster relief later this month when the NBC Universal Television Group airs an hourlong telethon.
Jeff Zucker, NBC president, yesterday announced plans for the benefit special on Jan. 15, featuring music and celebrity appearances.
Scott McClellan, White House press secretary, told reporters traveling with Bush to Illinois that the president -- himself a multimillionaire -- has written checks to several organizations listed on a Web site set up to direct Americans to various reputable charities collecting private contributions for tsunami relief. McClellan would not identify the organizations to which Bush contributed.
[...]
President Bush [...] has contributed $10,000 from his personal funds to the relief effort, his spokesman said Wednesday.
Maybe someone should send J. Grant Swank, Jr. at MichNews.com ("Most In-depth, Conservative, Honest News & Commentary") that link. "J. Grant" aka Joseph Swank, writes:
So now the celebs’ giving tallies are "in our face" news. Not what I really wanted. Not at all.
I would strongly recommend that celebrities who contribute funds to the present world crisis — tsunami (by the way, how many of you "out there" knew that that word existed prior to several days ago?) — keep their mouths shut. And inform their agents to keep their mouths shut. And let their accountants know to keep their mouths shut.
Ray Romano makes close to $2 million an episode!
Sandra Bullock makes $20 million per movie.
Oprah has a $30 million dollar jet and owns a $50 million mansion+
[...]
Jesus told His own not to let the right hand know what the left hand was up to when dishing out goodness to the world. Very kind advice, Jesus. Thank you very very much.
[...]
Jesus asks His children for the low profile. Let one’s prayers be in secret. Let the Father alone testify to what pluses are chalked up for the day.
But now we come to these Hollywood celebs who prance and strut.
[...]
I have a political hunch at work in this celeb crisis giving. I think they are trying to shove equal weight to Hollywood in balance to the DC Bush administration. After all, was it not most of those Hollywood celebs who cheered on for JFKerry and booed GWBush? Yes it was.
And now that the floods have hit, quakes have shook, and the planet’s in an uproar, the celebs show the world — American in particular — that they can be as compassionate as the President.
It’s not going to fly with us "out here," however. Not on your life. No way.
We Red States thinking folk are not dumb flat, as the celeb colony would have us to be. And so we have a hunch that what’s in the giving hand from the celebs is not only for the destitute but for a political dent in the American political what’s-up.
But it ain’t flying, celebs. It just ain’t flying.
In recent weeks, Frist has been relentlessly preaching about the evils of judicial filibusters. Speaking to the Federalist Society on November 12, Frist said filibustering judicial nominees is "radical. It is dangerous and it must be overcome." Frist called judicial filibusters "nothing less than a formula for tyranny by the minority." When Bill Clinton was President, however, Frist engaged in the same behavior he is now condemning.
In 1996 Clinton nominated Judge Richard Paez to the 9th Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals. Conservatives in Congress held up Paez's nomination for more than four years, culminating in an attempted filibuster on March 8, 2000. Bill Frist was among those who voted to filibuster Paez.
"The war's worse, the insurgency's worse," said a senior U.S. Embassy official in Baghdad, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to talk candidly. "This is not going to be a short fight. Nobody should think it is."
The assessment reflected a new willingness among senior Iraqi and American officials to acknowledge that large tracts of the country remain beyond the control of their combined forces. More than three months ago, interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi asserted during a visit to Washington that 15 of Iraq's 18 provinces were stable and largely peaceful. Now, in interviews, he routinely refers to the situation as "our catastrophe."
[...]
In far northern Nineveh province, where, as in Anbar, lack of security forced cancellation of voter registration last month, U.S. commanders this week doubled the force struggling to control Mosul. Officials, including Allawi, have hinted that an offensive on Iraq's third largest city is in the offing.
"We're going to do better in Mosul," one Western diplomat said.
I'm not sure what that means, but I bet it's not good.
Despite the continuing heavy toll, U.S. officials insisted that the security situation in Iraq was improving.
"Frankly, I don't think the security situation is deteriorating," a senior State Department official in Baghdad told Pentagon reporters in a videoconference briefing Tuesday. "I think the security situation is actually a little better than it was, say, six weeks ago."
The US military, which still commands 18,000 troops here, has taken thousands of prisoners in Afghanistan since Operation Enduring Freedom, Washington's antiterrorism drive, began after the Sept. 11 attacks.
[...]
The US military is taking as few prisoners as possible in its campaign against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, partly to forestall more complaints about its conduct after at least eight prisoners died in custody, an American commander said yesterday.
Is anything on earth so phony and fake that Bush won’t say it to the press? In the recent campaign, Bush promised to cut the federal deficit in half by the year 2009. In Sunday’s Times, Edmund Andrews explained how the great man plans to do it:
ANDREWS (1/2/05): To make Mr. Bush's goal easier to reach, administration officials have decided to measure their progress against a $521 billion deficit they predicted last February rather than last year's actual shortfall of $413 billion.
By starting with the outdated projection, Mr. Bush can say he has already reduced the shortfall by about $100 billion and claim victory if the deficit falls to just $260 billion.
Incredible, isn’t it? Rather than cut the actual deficit in half, Bush will tackle an imaginary deficit—a projected deficit, one that never existed, one he pulled straight outta his keister.
Wait. There's more.
If you've lent even one ear to the administration's recent comments on Social Security, you have no doubt heard President Bush and his aides asserting that a $10 trillion shortfall threatens the retirement system —and the economy itself. That $10 trillion hole is the basis of the president's claim last month that ''the [Social Security] crisis is now.”
[...]
Starting last year, as the groundwork was being set for the emerging debate, the Social Security trustees took the liberty of projecting the system's solvency over infinity, rather than sticking to the traditional 75-year time horizon. That world-without-end assumption generates the scary $10 trillion estimate, and with it, Mr. Bush's putative rationale for dismantling Social Security in favor of a system centered on private savings accounts.
Read the rest of the Daily Howler post to get the real figures. Bush is financing his tax cut for the wealthy by dismantling Social Security.
Last month Media for Democracy members joined in a nationwide campaign to urge Sinclair Broadcast Group to offer a "Counterpoint" to the partisan conservative politics of its nightly newscasts. As a result, the office supply retailer Staples has decided to yank its advertising from Sinclair's 62 TV stations nationwide. Staples, Inc. attributed its decision in part to the thousands of letters of concern the company received from members of our coalition. For more info, visit the SinclairAction.com website, a project of Media Matters for America, MediaChannel.org, Media for Democracy, MoveOn.org, Working Assets, Robert Greenwald Campaign for America's Future, Free Press, and AlterNet.
[,,,] Abbie Hoffman's brother [...] is encouraging others to buy Staples stock and products as a result of their decision to pull advertising from Sinclair Broadcast Group's news programs [...] I encourage others to follow Jack's advice. While Staples has yet to pull all of its advertising from Sinclair stations, this is a step in the right direction.
Before he was forced to resign, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill broke the code that limits criticism to inside the White House only. He publicly voiced doubts about broad tax cuts and warned about looming deficits. Top economic adviser Larry Lindsey strayed when he told a newspaper that an Iraq war could cost $200 billion. These were not the main reasons for their ousters, but the White House certainly was displeased with their comments.
Congress expects the White House to request as much as $100 billion this year for war and related costs in Iraq and Afghanistan, congressional officials say.
It would be the third and largest Iraq-related budget request from the White House yet, and it could push the war's costs over $200 billion — far above initial White House estimates of $50 billion-$60 billion.
[I know it looks easy, but it's getting very difficult thinking up new ways of saying "what the fuck could that possibly mean, Kaye, you old loon?" As a great American statesman once observed: it's hard work.]
David Banach, 38, is the first person charged in a rash of recent incidents in which lasers were shined at aircraft around the country. Justice Department officials said they do not suspect terrorism in any of the cases, but said Banach's arrest shows how seriously they take the matter.
[...]
[According to his attorney, Banach] was playing with his young daughter, using the laser's narrow green beam to point at stars and illuminating trees and neighbor's houses. FBI agents and police swarmed Banach's Parsnippany, N.J., home Friday night after a green laser was pointed at a police helicopter overhead. The helicopter was carrying a charter jet pilot who was attempting to locate the source of a green laser beam that hit his flight on Dec. 29 as it prepared to land at nearby Teterboro Airport.
After being taken to an FBI office and given a lie-detector test, Banach said he had hit the jet with the beam, court documents say. During questioning by the FBI, Banach showed an agent his laser. After the agent switched it on, Banach warned him "not to shine the laser in his eyes because it could blind him," the court documents say.
U.S. military warplanes flew over Iranian air space, raising Tehran's concerns preparations are being made to knock out its nuclear facilities, according to Iranian news media reports.
The U.S. jets reportedly flew out of bases in Afghanistan and Iraq, with the latest coming Saturday when a fighter buzzed at low altitude an area in the northeastern province of Khorrasan, which borders Afghanistan.
[...]
The U.S. military was silent on the veracity of the reports. However, one source said he would not be surprised if the reports were accurate, given the building international tensions over the state of Iran's nuclear weapons program. "The circular maneuvering of the two American fighters indicated them as carrying out spying sorties and controlling the borders," said an Iranian official.
Less than a week earlier, Iranian air force chief Brig. Karim Qavami was quoted as having ordered his forces to open fire and shoot down any unidentified aircraft violating the country's airspace.
The House and Senate have a right to jointly contest an election. When Congress reconvenes in January, at least 14 members of the House of Representatives will challenge the validity of the 2004 election. They will request an immediate "investigation of the efficacy of the voting machines and new technologies used in 2004 election, how election officials responded to the difficulties they encountered, and what we can do in the future to improve our elections systems and administration."
To be sure, a switch in the Ohio vote won't turn the results of this election. And no, Sen. John Kerry won't be the next president. To the disappointment of those who supported him, President Bush's margin of victory was too vast for Ohio to be the post-election "swing state."
Voting irregularities and problems in Ohio, especially among its poor, working-class neighborhoods, are apparently so wide-ranging that a challenge needs to be made. An investigation into them ought to be serious and thorough. To this point, the man in charge of the Ohio vote -- the secretary of state -- has downplayed the issue and refused to authorize a recount. But be reminded he was also the chairman of the Bush re-election campaign in Ohio.
President Bush's re-election campaign yesterday asked the chief justice of the Ohio Supreme Court to throw out a challenge of the election in the state, saying the case resembles "a poorly drafted script for a late night conspiracy-theory movie."
The court filing was made as the Rev. Jesse Jackson led a rally of hundreds of people in Columbus to support the challenge and urge the U.S. Senate to debate Ohio's results on Thursday, when Congress is in joint session for the official tally of the electoral votes.
Thirty-seven Ohio voters who filed the challenge are asking Chief Justice Thomas Moyer to set aside election results. Some of the voters are suspicious of Bush's victory over Sen. John Kerry, while others say hours-long waits in black neighborhoods caused voters to leave in frustration without casting a ballot.
"In 2000, if Al Gore had just held on and fought to the bitter end, he would have been president," said Mark Lomax, a black Columbus musician challenging the vote. "I kind of have the same feeling now; whether or not you like John Kerry, that's not the issue. It's just that your vote counts."
There is strong evidence of vote theft in Ohio. That will be news to anyone who gets their news from a television or from most print media. When forced to talk about ethics, media big shots often insist that they draw no conclusions. They endlessly reported Dick Cheney's claims that Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks of September 11, 2001, but it would not have been their place to label that a "conspiracy theory." When it comes to election fraud in Ohio and other U.S. states, on the other hand, the media has jumped straight to reporting that it's all a "conspiracy theory" before ever reporting any of the facts. The Bush Administration has recently presented the media with a nutty theory that our Social Security system is broken, which the media in turn has presented to us as established fact. But to anyone who reads more than just the news that's fit to print, it's our election system that has broken down.
Some voices in the media, including the New York Times' editorial page, admit that the election system is badly broken. But they insist that it also functioned quite acceptably in November. It's broken in the abstract, as it were, but not in any concrete time or place.
As the ILCA reported on November 8th, the U.S. media has reversed its usual position on the value of exit polls. The media has always relied on exit polls to predict election outcomes and to question the accuracy of official vote counts, such as in the Venezuelan recall attempt or the Ukrainian presidential election. Exit polls in November predicted victories for Kerry in a number of swing states that swung, in the official results, dramatically for Bush. The U.S. media immediately declared the exit polls inaccurate. How they could be so far off has not been explained, and the networks' refusal to turn the raw data of the exit polls over to Congress doesn't help.
[...]
Not a one of the "alternative" media outlets named above has published anything as inexcusably self-certain and wildly false as the "mainstream" media's reports that Iraq had vast stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and plans to use them on the United States. The corporate media was wrong to cheerlead for the War on Iraq by uncritically parroting Bush Administration lies. The New York Times admitted some of its mistakes in this regard. Most media outlets did not. The same media outlets are behaving as poorly on the election fraud issue, and someday one or more of them may even acknowledge as much, but should the rest of us wait for that before speaking and acting? Or do we have a duty to fill in where the corporate news has become too corporate and not enough news?
Do most Americans know that one Ohio county barred observers from its counting of ballots on grounds of "homeland security"? That in various other precincts and counties, more votes were counted than voters signed in to vote? That in one county, thousands of first-time voters in 2004 with no signatures on file supposedly registered on the same day in the non-election year of 1977? That another county added thousands of votes for Bush and none for Kerry after 100 percent of precincts had already been added?
For that matter, how many Americans are aware that there is a recount underway in Ohio? That some counties are complying with the requirements of the recount while others are not? That Ohio's electors have cast their votes for Bush regardless of the fact that the votes are still being counted? That the U.S. Congress is expected to take up the matter of the 2004 election on January 6th, and that numerous House Members and probably some Senators will challenge the results?
"The corporate media would like us to concentrate on our holiday shopping," Fishgold said. "The labor media has a responsibility to make information known that is critical to the health of our democracy. The ILCA is using its website at ILCAonline.org to help, and the ILCA supports the January 3rd and 6th rallies."
The House Democrats' chief hope of finding a supportive senator may be Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. Her spokesman, David Sandretti, said Tuesday that she has been asked to sign the complaint "and she is considering it."
Twice in as many days, dozens of members of a faith-based community of activists breached security at the White House and Pentagon, two of the most heavily guarded buildings in the country, during nonviolent anti-war protests. Several protestors, including Virginian participants, were arrested and given spring court dates. At both sites, passers-by, including Pentagon soldiers, thanked the protesters for being there.
Twice in as many days, members of a faith-based community of activists breached security at two of the most heavily guarded buildings in the country during nonviolent anti-war protests.
[...]
The Atlantic Life Community, a close-knit group of resisters from Maine to Florida, gather in DC three times a year to reflect, pray, play and perform acts of nonviolent resistance at sites of institutional violence. This week they had come together to remember and reflect on the Massacre of the Holy Innocents, a Christian commemoration of the children killed by Herod after the birth of Jesus. "The spirit of Herod is alive and well at the White House and the Pentagon," said Bill Frankel-Streit.
The United States has dropped out of the list of world's 10 freest economies in a ranking released by the conservative Heritage Foundation.
The organisation, which promotes low taxes and limited government regulation, said on Tuesday the US was tied for 12th place with Switzerland in the 2005 Index of Economic Freedom.
Hong Kong retained its top ranking in the survey, followed by Singapore, Luxembourg and Estonia. Ireland and New Zealand tied for fifth place, followed by Britain, Denmark, Iceland and Australia in the top 10. Chile ranked 11th.
[...]
"Although its score remains unchanged from last year, and it is still classified as free, the United States - now in a tie for 12th place with Switzerland - has been 'treading water'," according to the editors, "and hence has been surpassed by countries willing to open their economies still further".
The report, compiled with The Wall Street Journal, "demonstrates that the countries with the greatest degrees of economic freedom also enjoy the highest living standards", Heritage said.
[...]
The criteria used include free trade; taxes; government intervention in the economy; monetary policy; capital flows and foreign investment; property rights; and informal market activity.
Among European nations outside the top 10, Germany ranked 18th, Italy 26th and France 44th.
I'm not making any comment on the desirability of free markets without government intervention. Just giving you the report. Because I'm pretty sure that Washington would have you believe you live in the free-est of the free with the highest standard of living on the globe.
Here's a link to a website that provides you with logins for subscription sites. You just paste the site's URL into the text box, and Bug Me Not returns a useable login ID and password. I have only used it a couple of times. If anybody uses it and finds problems, let me know, because until then, I'm going to keep a permanent link to the site in my sidebar.
In Texas, state Republican legislative leaders and party officials are considering some maneuvers of their own in light of the investigation. One proposal would take authority for prosecuting the campaign finance case away from the Democratic district attorney in Austin and give it to the state attorney general, a Republican. Another possible move would legalize corporate campaign contributions like those that figure into the state case.
Update 3:30 pm:Josh Marshallposted just before the news of the sudden change of heart regarding the issue as it was coming up for play. And then afterward, he dares to mock our Dear DeLay.
Alberto Gonzales will most likely be confirmed by Congress Thursday as our next Executioner General.
Only a passing reference in an article describing how the C.I.A. flies prisoners to other countries to be tortured, the mention here of Clinton raises a troubling choice for friends in the Democratic Party: Should they continue to use the issue of torture just to bash Bush? Or do they owe it to themselves - and to the victims of American and allied torture - to root out the entire mess, no matter whose fingerprints they find on it?
[...]
Republicans have no monopoly on American torture. In the early 1960s, the Kennedy Administration made Stress and Duress a specialty of J.F.K.'s much-beloved Green Berets, and torture became common during much of the Vietnam War. Just as in Mr. Bush's "War on Terror" - or in colonial wars throughout the ages - the explicit goal was to get information. New paradigms to the contrary, 9/11 did not change the world.
Kennedy and Johnson also led the way in having U.S. troops teach "Stress and Duress" to client armies throughout the world, notably at the School of the Americas, which has trained some of the hemisphere's worst torturers.
Nor was Gonzales the first to concoct legal arguments to help American and allied torturers ply their trade. From Camelot on, government lawyers have exhausted themselves trying to explain why Stress and Duress was not really torture, you know, but only Torture-Lite.
Thus making it very difficult for Democrats in Congress to censure Gonzales.
On November 20, 2001, the Wall Street Journal told how the Clinton-era C.I.A. snatched five suspected members of the Egyptian Jihad from Albania and elsewhere in the Balkans and flew them to Egypt. The details are nasty.
Other stories will emerge. But however often the Clintonistas cooperated in foreign torture, or even allowed the C.I.A. itself to engage in torture, they did it in a limited, carefully controlled way. Out of sight. Out of mind. And nothing they did compared to the way the infantile Bush institutionalized torture on an industrial scale, which led in time to scores of secret C.I.A. detention centers around the world, Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, and - inevitably - public exposure.
For which, in a backhanded way, we can be grateful for the Bush administration.
House Republicans suddenly reversed course Monday, deciding to retain a tough standard for lawmaker discipline and reinstate a rule that would force Majority Leader Tom DeLay to step aside if indicted by a Texas grand jury.
However, the closed-door GOP meeting made one ethics change that could make it easier for one party to block a House ethics committee investigation of a congressman.
The provision would require a majority vote of the evenly divided committee to proceed with an investigation.
[...]
The surprise dual decisions on the indictment rule and the discipline standards were engineered by Speaker Dennis Hastert and by DeLay who asked GOP colleagues to undo the extreme act of loyalty they handed him in November. Then, Republicans changed a party rule so DeLay could retain his leadership post if indicted by the grand jury in Austin that charged three of the Texas Republican's associates.
[...]
Republicans gave no indication before the meeting that the indictment rule would be changed. Even more surprising was DeLay's decision to make the proposal himself.
Jonathan Grella, a DeLay spokesman, said DeLay still believed it was legitimate to allow a leader to retain his post while under indictment. But Grella said that by reinstating the rule that he step aside, DeLay was "denying the Democrats their lone issue. Anything that could undermine our agenda needs to be nipped in the bud."
[...]
Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., said, "It's a mark of a leader to take a bullet for the team and not for the team to take a bullet for the leader. I'm very glad we decided to stick with the rules."
Hastert spokesman John Feehery said that a change in standards of conduct "would have been the right thing to do but it was becoming a distraction."
I'm interpreting this to say DeLay's cutting off his nose to spite his face - or the Democrats, in this case. Or could it be that he's gotten the Grand Jury in his pocket?
Brendan Daly, spokesman for House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, said Republicans pulled back on the discipline rule because "the issue simply became too hot for them to handle."
[...]
Rep. J. D. Hayworth, R-Ariz., agreed there was pressure on Republicans not to change conduct rules. "Constituents reacted and the House and, more importantly, the House leadership, responded accordingly," Hayworth said.
What happened to their mandate?
Update 3:30 pm:Josh Marshallposted just before the news of the sudden change of heart regarding the issue as it was coming up for play. And then afterward, he dares to mock our Dear DeLay.
Thanks for coming. Welcome to the White House. Hope you're feeling pretty excited about what's about to take place. We are excited for you -- after all, we ran together. (Laughter.) And there's nothing like winning. (Laughter.)
I want to welcome you all here; Laura and I are so thrilled you're here. We want to welcome your spouses. I particularly want to say a thanks to your spouse for having supported your run for the Congress or the Senate. Laura and I know how hard it is on a family to be in the political arena. It's the ultimate sacrifice, really: sacrifice your privacy; it's a sacrifice of time with your kids.
< -- your president on crack.> And you thought the "ultimate sacrifice" was being paid by these people. Silly you.
I hear one of the balls will be reserved for troops who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Yes, the Commander-in-Chief Ball. That is new. It will be about 2,000 servicemen and their guests. And that should be a really fun event for them.
As an alternative way of honoring them, did you or the president ever discuss canceling the nine balls and using the $40 million inaugural budget to purchase better equipment for the troops?
I think we felt like we would have a traditional set of events and we would focus on honoring the people who are serving our country right now -- not just the people in the armed forces, but also the community volunteers, the firemen, the policemen, the teachers, the people who serve at, you know, the -- well, it's called the StewPot in Dallas, people who work with the homeless.
How do any of them benefit from the inaugural balls?
I'm not sure that they do benefit from them.
Then how, exactly, are you honoring them?
Honoring service is what our theme is about.
We're partying in their honor. They should be grateful.
And I'm sure they are.
P.S. dear, it's called "soup kitchen". I understand it's kind of a foreign thing to you inaugural ball types.
Nor increasing violence, nor threat of boycots, nor razed cities, nor continuing slaughter of national guard and police, nor murder of government officials will keep us from holding those elections.
The White House condemned the assassination Tuesday of Baghdad's provincial governor, acknowledging security ''challenges'' in Iraq but sticking firm to the country's timetable for elections less than four weeks away.
[...]
Also Tuesday, a suicide truck bomber killed 10 people at an Interior Ministry commando headquarters, and five American troops were slain in three separate attacks. It was the deadliest day for the U.S. military in Iraq since a suicide bombing at a mess tent in Mosul on Dec. 21 killed 22 people
The spokesman confirmed that Bush had spoken with Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi on Monday, but said the two leaders did not discuss postponing the Jan. 30 elections.
''There was no discussion of that in the phone call none,'' [White House spokesman Scott] McClellan said.
[...]
''We condemn that in the strongest terms,'' McClellan said. ''The choice is clear for everyone in Iraq and the international community you can stand on side of freedom, democracy and peace, or you stand on the side of the terrorists,'' McClellan said.
And get your sorry, scared shitless asses to the polling places, which have not been announced because they'll be blown up if we do announce them, on January 30.
''For much of the country, the situation is secure enough to move forward on holding elections,'' McClellan said. ''There are a few areas that we're continuing to work to improve the security situation, so those areas will be able to have as full a participation as possible in elections.''
Is it just me, or does that sound like a lead-up to...if you aren't going to turn over the bad guys in your part of the country, then you will just have to miss your chance to vote, and too bad. It's up to you.
You haven't heard the last of Diego Garcia Island. The questions about what might have happened on the U.S. military base in the Indian Ocean has brought up some interesting speculation and some interesting information. Tom sends a link that eventually leads to this John Pilger article from October 2004 about Diego Garcia.
There are times when one tragedy, one crime tells us how a whole system works behind its democratic facade and helps us to understand how much of the world is run for the benefit of the powerful and how governments lie. To understand the catastrophe of Iraq, and all the other Iraqs along imperial history's trail of blood and tears, one need look no further than Diego Garcia.
Go read it. It's not a long article. And the scenario it reveals isn't unique.
Iraqi police say insurgents have shot dead the governor of Baghdad province.
[...]
Monday, at least 18 people - mostly Iraqi police and guardsmen - were killed in a series of ambushes, car bombings, and suicide attacks in Baghdad and several cities and towns to the north.
Thousands of Fallujans demonstrated on Saturday in front of the main entrance to the largely abandoned city. They demanded that US military forces leave their city and that basic services be restored so that they could return. One eyewitness reporter called in from the scene an estimate of 30,000 demonstrators. [Cole: I saw footage of the demonstration on Arab satellite television, and agree that it was a big, important demonstration, but I'd say it was only a few thousand strong; I suspect that having 30,000 people out by that gate would be a logistics problem--where did their water come from, e.g.]
Some of the placards announced that Fallujans refused to live under a military occupation. They presented a list of demands, which included the facilitation of their return to the city, speedy return of services, rebuilding of the devastated city, and monetary compensation to its inhabitants. They also protested the US military demand that returnees show identification papers. Many said that such papers got left behind in the city when they fled.
[...]
The Fallujah demonstration was big enough to be news, but I couldn't find out anything about it via Western newspapers and wire services.
We therefore call upon you To denounce the use of torture under any circumstances; To affirm, with the Supreme Court, that it is unconstitutional to imprison anyone designated as an "enemy combatant" for months without access to lawyers or the right to challenge their detentions in court; To affirm the binding legality of the Geneva Conventions and the laws of war; And to reject the practice of "extraordinary rendition," at home and abroad, by which terrorists suspects are sent to countries that practice torture for interrogation.
We believe, as you do, that the United States must be an example of moral leadership in the world community. However, the events at Abu Ghraib have gravely compromised Americas moral authority. We ask that you commit yourself as Attorney General to repairing that damage by articulating and enforcing legal policies that reject the use of torture, embrace and advance standards of international law, and honor the dignity of all of Gods creation.
DOD Civilians Push Psy-Ops Campaign on Americans: The Pentagon’s planned Office of Strategic Influence (OSI) was quickly scrapped in 2002 after reports that it intended to plant false news stories in the international media. Yet the Los Angeles Times reports that “much of OSI’s mission … has been assumed by offices through the U.S. government,” part of a “broad effort underway within the Bush administration” to mix PR with psy-ops both abroad and at home. Military officials have taken a tepid view of the strategy. Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, wrote an internal memo expressing concerns that U.S. military efforts “could suffer if world audiences begin to question the honesty of statements from U.S. commanders and spokespeople.” Myers’s warnings “have not been heeded,” however, likely because “many top civilians at the Pentagon and National Security Council” support the operations. Indeed, Pentagon officials report that “the strategic communications programs at the Defense Department are being coordinated by the office of the undersecretary of Defense for policy, Douglas J. Feith,” who Gen. Tommy Franks once described as the [expletive] stupidest guy on the face of the planet.
The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them. – George Orwell
Libertarian Justin Raimondo writes:
My good friend Lew Rockwell has recently come to this conclusion:
"Year's end is the time for big thoughts, so here are mine. The most significant socio-political shift in our time has gone almost completely unremarked, and even unnoticed. It is the dramatic shift of the red-state bourgeoisie from leave-us-alone libertarianism, manifested in the Congressional elections of 1994, to almost totalitarian statist nationalism. Whereas the conservative middle class once cheered the circumscribing of the federal government, it now celebrates power and adores the central state, particularly its military wing. … What this implies for libertarians is a crying need to draw a clear separation between what we believe and what conservatives believe. It also requires that we face the reality of the current threat forthrightly by extending more rhetorical tolerance leftward and less rightward."
Various libertarian scholars and writers – see here, here, and here – seem to be drawing the same broad conclusions. I might add, for the record, that I reached a similar conclusion a couple of years ago, except that, far from abandoning my efforts to reach out to authentic (i.e., old-style) right-wingers, this merely accelerated my efforts to split off the authentic Remnant from the neoconized conservative movement.
Libertarian Lew Rockwell's article quoted by Raimondo continues...
If you follow hate-filled sites such as Free Republic, you know that the populist right in this country has been advocating nuclear holocaust and mass bloodshed for more than a year now. The militarism and nationalism dwarfs anything I saw at any point during the Cold War. It celebrates the shedding of blood, and exhibits a maniacal love of the state. The new ideology of the red-state bourgeoisie seems to actually believe that the US is God marching on earth – not just godlike, but really serving as a proxy for God himself.
[...]
In 1994, the central state was seen by the bourgeoisie as the main threat to the family; in 2004 it is seen as the main tool for keeping the family together and ensuring its ascendancy. In 1994, the state was seen as the enemy of education; today, the same people view the state as the means of raising standards and purging education of its left-wing influences. In 1994, Christians widely saw that Leviathan was the main enemy of the faith; today, they see Leviathan as the tool by which they will guarantee that their faith will have an impact on the country and the world.
[...]
The American right today has managed to be solidly anti-leftist while adopting an ideology – even without knowing it or being entirely conscious of the change – that is also frighteningly anti-liberty. This reality turns out to be very difficult for libertarians to understand or accept. For a long time, we've tended to see the primary threat to liberty as coming from the left, from the socialists who sought to control the economy from the center. But we must also remember that the sweep of history shows that there are two main dangers to liberty, one that comes from the left and the other that comes from the right. Europe and Latin America have long faced the latter threat, but its reality is only now hitting us fully.
What is the most pressing and urgent threat to freedom that we face in our time? It is not from the left. If anything, the left has been solid on civil liberties and has been crucial in drawing attention to the lies and abuses of the Bush administration. No, today, the clear and present danger to freedom comes from the right side of the ideological spectrum, those people who are pleased to preserve most of free enterprise but favor top-down management of society, culture, family, and school, and seek to use a messianic and belligerent nationalism to impose their vision of politics on the world.
A British detainee at Guantanamo Bay has told his lawyer he was tortured using the 'strappado', a technique common in Latin American dictatorships in which a prisoner is left suspended from a bar with handcuffs until they cut deeply into his wrists.
The reason, the prisoner says, was that he was caught reciting the Koran at a time when talking was banned.
[...]
But it is clear the disturbing claim is only the tip of the iceberg. Under the rules the United States military has imposed for defence lawyers who visit Guantanamo, Stafford Smith has not been allowed to keep his notes of meetings with prisoners, and will not be able to read them again until they have been examined and de-classified by a government censor.
He cannot disclose in public anything the men have told him until it too has been been de-classified, on pain of likely imprisonment in the US.
Stafford Smith has drawn up a 30-page report on the tortures which Begg and Belmar say they have endured, and sent it as an annexe with a letter to the Prime Minister which Downing Street received shortly before Christmas. For the time being - possibly forever - the report cannot be published, because the Americans claim that the torture allegations amount to descriptions of classified interrogation methods.
[...]
Stafford Smith asks Blair in his letter 'to approach the plight of my clients with renewed vigour'. Asked by The Observer whether he planned to do this last week, a Downing Street spokesman declined to comment.
In a second letter, to the Foreign Office minister Baroness Symons, Stafford Smith suggests that Britain's complicity in abusive techniques at both Guantanamo and Afghanistan, where Begg and Belmar were held before being taken to Cuba, is wider than previously thought.
The head of the Iraqi intelligence service has estimated that there are more than 200,000 active fighters and sympathisers in the war-torn country.
[...]
"I think the resistance is bigger than the US military in Iraq. I think the resistance is more than 200,000 people," he added.
[...]
Past US military assessments on fighter numbers have been increased from 5000 to 20,000 full and part-time members in the past half year, most recently in October.
[...]
And in stark contrast to many US assessments of success in Falluja, the spy chief said the November campaign against the town was far from a military triumph.
"What we have now is an empty city almost destroyed and most of the insurgents are free. They have gone either to Mosul or to Baghdad or other areas."
Shahwani stopped short of saying that anti-US fighters were now taking control of the situation in Iraq, but warned: "I would say they aren't losing."
Defence experts have broadly accepted the new assessment as valid.
Iraq's interim defence minister has suggested that elections scheduled for 30 January could be delayed to a later date if the Sunni Muslim community agrees to take part.
Hazim al-Shaalan told journalists on Monday that the interim government had already sought help from Egypt and Arabian Gulf nations to encourage Sunni participation.
"And if such participation requires a delay to the election date, they could be delayed," he said.
Asked if the US would accept such a delay, Shaalan said he was convinced "Washington would be happy that the election operation was comprehensive with the participation of all".
The announced Saudi contribution of $10 million is probably about $0.66 cents a citizen on a per capita basis (I don't think the Saudi citizen population can possibly be over 15 million no matter what Riyadh says). The initial US offer of $35 million was about $0.09 per person. Since US per capita income is approximately 4.5 times that of Saudi Arabia ($8500 Atlas method), however, the Saudi contribution should be seen as about $3.00 per citizen on a US scale, with regard to the real per capita burden. So the Saudi was a generous initial offer in comparison to that of the US.
The USG is now pledging about $0.90 cents per person ($350 million).
The Qatar offer of $25 million is about $250 per citizen.
The Kuwait offer of $2 million is $2.00 per citizen or $1.00 per person if guest workers are counted. Either way, it is comparable to the US offer on a per capita basis, and Kuwaiti per capita income is about half that of Americans. So any way you cut it, the Kuwaitis are not being chintzy unless you want to say Americans are moreso.
The Libyans are giving about $0.36 per person, and their per capita income (purchasing power parity method) is a little over $6,000. That is about 1/7 of the US per capita income, so their contribution burdens the Libyans the same way a roughly $2.50 per person contribution would burden Americans. Remember, the USG is currently giving ninety cents a person.
The Turks have offered 18 cents a person. But their per capita income is only about $3000 per year, or a tenth that of an average American, so this plege is equivalent to an American one of $1.80. That is, the Turks are giving twice what Americans are if everything is taken into account.
The Australian pledge of $28 million is about $1.35 per person.
It is obvious that if we take their populations and actual per capita income into account, the offers made by these governments are generally more generous than that of the United States. A lot of Middle Eastern countries have small populations, so even if they gave a lot per capita, it would look small in absolute numbers. Apparently US pundits don't know things like the citizen population of Kuwait or the per capita income of Libya, and can't be bothered to look them up.
Juan Coleposted that in response to a Tucker Carlson TV interview calling the Middle Eastern countries cheap. Although I'm not surprised we are still using a tragic event (in human terms) to argue about who's more generous, it is obvious that the U.S. government - and George Bush in particular, who came out of his daydream about the upcoming coronation three days after the fact just long enough to up the original chintzy aid offer, and then went back to "clearing brush" (damned brushy land he owns - I wonder what he's clearing it for) - has no real concern for the situation except as it affects the government's image.
Addendum: Now he's asking American citizens to be generous.
A growing body of evidence suggests that the meritocratic ideal is in trouble in America. Income inequality is growing to levels not seen since the Gilded Age, around the 1880s. But social mobility is not increasing at anything like the same pace: would-be Horatio Algers are finding it no easier to climb from rags to riches, while the children of the privileged have a greater chance of staying at the top of the social heap. The United States risks calcifying into a European-style class-based society.
[...]
The past couple of decades have seen a huge increase in inequality in America. The Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think-tank, argues that between 1979 and 2000 the real income of households in the lowest fifth (the bottom 20% of earners) grew by 6.4%, while that of households in the top fifth grew by 70%. The family income of the top 1% grew by 184%—and that of the top 0.1% or 0.01% grew even faster. Back in 1979 the average income of the top 1% was 133 times that of the bottom 20%; by 2000 the income of the top 1% had risen to 189 times that of the bottom fifth.
Thirty years ago the average real annual compensation of the top 100 chief executives was $1.3m: 39 times the pay of the average worker. Today it is $37.5m: over 1,000 times the pay of the average worker. In 2001 the top 1% of households earned 20% of all income and held 33.4% of all net worth. Not since pre-Depression days has the top 1% taken such a big whack.
[...]
Everywhere you look in modern America—in the Hollywood Hills or the canyons of Wall Street, in the Nashville recording studios or the clapboard houses of Cambridge, Massachusetts—you see elites mastering the art of perpetuating themselves. America is increasingly looking like imperial Britain, with dynastic ties proliferating, social circles interlocking, mechanisms of social exclusion strengthening and a gap widening between the people who make the decisions and shape the culture and the vast majority of ordinary working stiffs.
No, this isn't from a socialist website. It's from The Economist.
"There is only one traffic law in Ramadi these days: when Americans approach, Iraqis scatter. Horns blaring, brakes screaming, the midday traffic skids to the side of the road as a line of Humvee jeeps ferrying American marines rolls the wrong way up the main street. Every vehicle, that is, except one beat-up old taxi. Its elderly driver, flapping his outstretched hands, seems, amazingly, to be trying to turn the convoy back. Gun turrets swivel and lock on to him, as a hefty marine sargeant leaps into the road, levels an assault rifle at his turbanned head, and screams: 'Back this bitch up, motherfucker!'
"The old man should have read the bilingual notices that American soldiers tack to their rear bumpers in Iraq: 'Keep 50m or deadly force will be applied.' In Ramadi, the capital of central Anbar province, where 17 suicide-bombs struck American forces during the month-long Muslim fast of Ramadan in the autumn, the marines are jumpy. Sometimes, they say, they fire on vehicles encroaching with 30 metres, sometimes they fire at 20 metres: 'If anyone gets too close to us we fucking waste them,' says a bullish lieutenant. 'It's kind of a shame, because it means we've killed a lot of innocent people.'"
This is the third instance in as many days of something crossing my path about the way American soldiers treat the Iraqi people in which it is shockingly clear that the soldiers are screaming English orders to people who don't understand them and then shooting them when they don't obey. Insane.
Wolcott comments:
There's a Peter Cook-Dudley Moore routine, one of their woolgathering dialogues, where Dud asks Pete, "So would you say you've learned from your mistakes?" and Pete replies: "Oh yes, I'm certain I could repeat them exactly."
That seems to have been the Bush administration's approach to Iraq. Take the mistakes of Vietnam and repeat them exactly.
And at that you can't say they haven't succeeded.
Maybe this is as good a time as any to provide the link to Stan Goff's open letter to GIs in Iraq: Hold on to your humanity. You might forward it to any soldiers you know.
A suicide car bomber targeted a police checkpoint on a road leading to the headquarters of the political party of the Iraqi interim Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi, in Baghdad yesterday, just minutes before party leaders had been due to hold a news conference to unveil candidates for the election set for January 30.
At least two people were killed and 23 wounded.
Dr Allawi was not near the scene of the attack and was safe, a government official said.
Three vehicles were seen burning at the checkpoint on Zaytoun Street, which leads to the National Accord party headquarters.
[...]
On Sunday, two suicide bombers detonated a car bomb alongside a bus carrying Iraqi national guards to a base in Balad, 80 kilometres north of Baghdad, killing 29 people and igniting angry sectarian accusations between the city's Shiite population and its Sunni police force.
[...]
In the nearby city of Sharqat, guerillas on Sunday blew up the government building that was intended for use as a polling centre. Reuters reported that all 12 members of the election committee in Baiji, to the north, resigned after receiving death threats.
The Under Mars website contains almost 1,000 photos sent in by military personnel in Iraq. It provides a completely unfiltered view of life on the ground, with neither the Pentagon nor the press getting to decide what is shown.
The photos include soldiers posing, horsing around, taking leaks, catching some Z's, attending religious service, and on maneuvers. Others capture sunsets, weapons caches, sandstorms, tanks, blown-up tanks, locals, palace interiors, and found jewelry. One very striking photo shows a soldier with Psalm 21 23 written on his helmet.
The most controversial photos start in Gallery 52 and run for several pages. We see the broken, bloodied bodies - and body parts - of Iraqis. This photo and this one show that someone has stuck a glow-stick in the skull of one dead man.
The thumbnail versions of most images contain a caption written by the person who sent the picture (the front page of Under Mars asks personnel to send photos "along with any note you'd like included with them."), such as "plastic surgery needed," "ok ok, i got it, you a dead iraqi, i love shardes [charades]," "damer [Jeffrey Dahmer] buffet," and "does this death make me look fat."
That's from MemoryBlog. The link is here. Each of the photos described in this blog are provided with an embedded link. (The link for Under Mars is also provided.) There are a few of the photos offered directly in the MemoryBlog post. Gruesome and cold-hearted.
The Justice Department released a rewritten legal memo on what constitutes torture, backing away from its own assertions prior to the Iraqi prison abuse scandal that torture had to involve "excruciating and agonizing pain."
The 17-page memo omitted two of the most controversial assertions made in now-disavowed 2002 Justice Department documents: that President Bush, as commander in chief in wartime, had authority superseding U.S. anti-torture laws and that U.S. personnel had several legal defenses against criminal liability in such cases.
The new document said torture violates U.S. and international law.
So, when do you suppose anybody is going to be brought before a U.S. or international court to answer for torturing prisoners and detainees in Iraq and Gitmo?
Thanks to a FOIA request from the Sunshine Project, a fascinating document has now come to light. In June 1994, the US Air Force Wright Laboratory wrote a proposal titled "Harassing, Annoying, and 'Bad Guy' Identifying Chemicals." While listing the categories of chemical weapons they planned to develop, the military scientists wrote:
Chemicals that effect [sic] human behavior so that discipline and morale in enemy units is adversely effected [sic]. One distasteful but completely non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behavior.
The Air Force Lab was quite serious about the proposal, listing a timetable and estimate of expenses for the overall project.
Total cost through fiscal year 2000: $7.5 million
Having enemy soldiers throw down their guns and start humping each other: Priceless
It's business as usual at the web sites of the American Family Association, the Family Research Council, the Christian Coalition, Focus on the Family, Concerned Women for America, and the Coral Ridge Ministries.
These powerful and well-funded political Christian fundamentalist organizations appear to be suffering from a compassion deficit. Organizations which are amazingly quick to organize to fight against same-sex marriage, a woman's right to choose, and embryonic stem cell research are missing in action when it comes to responding to the disaster in southern Asia. None of their web sites are actively soliciting aid for the victims of the earthquake/tsunami.
In fact, there is no mention of the giant earthquake and tsunami that devastated southern Asia. There are no headlines about the dead, injured or the tremendous damage; there are no urgent appeals for donations; there are no phone numbers to call; there are no links to organizations collecting money and providing aid for the victims.
Evidence presented to the commission investigating the train bombings on March 11 in Madrid in which 191 people died and 1,700 others were injured confirms that a conspiracy of lies was used to justify the Iraq war and deceive the Spanish people.
The evidence emerged when current Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero testified at the Spanish Congressional Commission of Inquiry into the Madrid bombings. Zapatero confirmed allegations first published in the Spanish daily El Pais on December 13 that the former Popular Party (PP) government led by José María Aznar ordered the destruction of computer records dealing with the key period between the Madrid train bombings and the general election held three days later that it lost to Zapatero’s Socialist Workers Party (PSOE). El Pais reported that a specialist computer company was paid $12,000 to erase the computer records, including back-up security copies.
[...]
Since then, it has emerged that Aznar and his cabinet office in fact erased all records covering their eight years of government. According to the New York Times, a Spanish official said every file had been wiped out on the hundreds of computers at the presidential complex, known as the Moncloa Palace. “Not a single trace of any files was left behind,” the official said. “Zero, nothing.”
[...]
The only conclusion that can be drawn is that Aznar and his government not only lied about what they knew about the authorship of the Madrid bombings, but that they also systematically lied about the illegal war in Iraq and rushed to destroy their records after their surprise election defeat by the PSOE on March 14 to hide the truth.
Or there was something even bigger going on. But, I thought there were people who could recover most anything from a computer, erased or not.
Zapatero has said that his government has “no intention to ask for responsibilities” for the destruction of government records. The PP should forget its own political partisanship, he added, and unite in a cross-party pact against international terrorism to which everything else has to be sacrificed and which should become a model for Europe and the world.
Sounds like Spain has two parties conspiring between themselves to pull the wool over the peoples' eyes, just like we have in this country.
Zapatero continued, “My government wants to create, put forward and support a major agreement against international terrorism[...]similar to the 2000 Anti-terrorism Pact against ETA that the PSOE proposed and Aznar’s government accepted and implemented. Whilst the pact was ostensibly aimed at clamping down on ETA, it sanctioned the suppression of civil liberties and an extension of police powers.
El Pais reports that Zapatero believes the PP has been suffering from “political frustration” over the last few weeks which he puts down to Aznar’s appearance at the commission, Foreign Minister Moratino’s accusation that Aznar had supported an attempted coup in Venezuela and the PSOE decision to reform the Judiciary Law. It is “a feverish outburst that will pass,” he added.
Ah yes, there is only the ruling party vs. the people.
James C. Dobson, the nation's most influential evangelical leader, is threatening to put six potentially vulnerable Democratic senators "in the 'bull's-eye' " if they block conservative appointments to the Supreme Court.
In a letter his aides say is being sent to more than one million of his supporters, Dr. Dobson, the child psychologist and founder of the evangelical organization Focus on the Family, promises "a battle of enormous proportions from sea to shining sea" if President Bush fails to appoint "strict constructionist" jurists or if Democrats filibuster to block conservative nominees
Dr. Dobson recalled the conservative efforts that helped in the November defeat of Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the Senate minority leader who led Democrats in using the filibuster to block 10 of Mr. Bush's judicial nominees.
"Let his colleagues beware," Dr. Dobson warned, "especially those representing 'red' states. Many of them will be in the 'bull's-eye' the next time they seek re-election."
He singled out Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Mark Dayton of Minnesota, Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico and Bill Nelson of Florida. All six are up for re-election in 2006.
David DiMartino, a spokesman for Mr. Nelson of Nebraska, said the senator was already an opponent of abortion rights and had never supported a filibuster of one of Mr. Bush's appellate nominees.
"Dr. Dobson knows that," Mr. DiMartino said. "The senator and Dr. Dobson have discussed it before. The fact that the media has the letter before the targeted senators indicates his intention has more to do with the media than with persuading anybody in the Senate."
Why yes, surprised folks, it appears that they did know Prozac tended people to violence and suicide.
Shares in Eli Lilly & Company fell yesterday after an article in a medical journal suggested that the drug company had long concealed evidence that its well-known antidepressant, Prozac, could cause violent and suicidal behavior.
[...]
The F.D.A. was reviewing the papers, which had been missing for more than 10 years[...]
[...]
Representative Maurice Hinchey, a Democrat from Kingston, N.Y., and a vocal opponent of the government's drug approval process, said yesterday that he had some of the documents cited by the journal article. The congressman, who is a member of the Appropriations Committee, which oversees federal agencies including the F.D.A., said the documents date back to the 1980's and include memos between Eli Lilly employees.
They "clearly show a link between Prozac and actions of violence perpetrated by people taking the drug against themselves and against others," Mr. Hinchey said. "The documents we have show that the company was instructing its employees to hide this information. We're seeing evidence here that it was a conscious act on the part of the company."
The Bush administration is preparing plans for possible lifetime detention of suspected terrorists, including hundreds whom the government does not have enough evidence to charge in courts, The Washington Post reported Sunday.
Citing intelligence, defense and diplomatic officials, the newspaper said the Pentagon and the CIA had asked the White House to decide on a more permanent approach for those it would not set free or turn over to courts at home or abroad.
As part of a solution, the Defense Department, which holds 500 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, plans to ask the U.S. Congress for $25 million to build a 200-bed prison to hold detainees who are unlikely to ever go through a military tribunal for lack of evidence, defense officials told the newspaper.
The new prison, dubbed Camp 6, would allow inmates more comfort and freedom than they have now, and would be designed for prisoners the government believes have no more intelligence to share, The Post said.
Okay, I'm signing off for this, the first day of 2005. (According to our ridiculous Gregorian calendar view of time.)
I've been "down in the back" for three days, and sitting in one place is not pleasant. Unfortunately, I am addicted to chronicling the insanity of our political times.
I want to thank all of you, sincerely - all my readers, new, long-time, critical, accepting, dedicated, and sporadic - not so much for reading You Will Anyway, but for caring enough about our strange world and what's beneath the surface to investigate what's going on.
Thank you all for being.
A special thanks to all of you who encourage me, whether it be notes and emails or website links to YWA or wonderful comments on your own blogs, like this:
New Blogs to read. All the new bloggers in Montana, new blogs from friends, and some downright insightful progressive viewpoints. (For the record, I think that You Will Anyway is one of the absolute best progressive blogs anywhere, and I sincerely hope that it takes its place alongside the big boys of Atrios, Pandagon, etc ...)
I apologize for the horn-tooting aspect of posting that comment which I found at A Chicken Is Not Pillage (a blog I read regularly and which you can always access from a link in the left sidebar of YWA), but it caught me by surprise, and I am very grateful to the blog author, Wulfgar, for plugging YWA unsolicited (and over the top, in my own mind). YWA will never make it anywhere near the "big boys", but it won't matter, because I'd write it even if nobody ever read it. I have to.
But, you don't have to read it, and so, please accept my thanks for being here. And for being. I believe that the energy exchanged in my writing of the words and your reading of them is a subtle but powerful energy, apart from the text or context of the issues, that connects us all, and, I believe, is taking us into the next realm of human existence as we morph into or recognize ourselves for what it is we truly are.
Some times it doesn't look like the human race is evolving at all, but devolving. And I have a feeling the next few years are going to look even worse.
Your words of support and encouragement really are what keeps my head above the often times raging waters.
So...
Thank you for being. Many thanks, and many blessings,
Tom asked recently about the U.S. military base in the Indian Ocean. Talk Left has some information, with a comment from a reader:
The official US Navy website for Diego Garcia says the avg height above sea level is 4' and that the wave surged to a 6' height but operations were not affected. Really? Gonna be a lot of drowned detainees if they were housed in the same conditions as Gitmo. Sure hope the nuclear weapons bunker entrances were higher than 6'. We'll never know. We'll just trust the Navy to be truthful. LOL.
LOL is right. And, about my concern that the "Warning Center" says it had no way to warn people in that area, Talk Left has this about our base there, which apparently is used for secret detentions:
"One of the few places in the Indian Ocean that got the message of the quake was Diego Garcia, a speck of an island with a United States Navy base, because the Pacific warning center's contact list includes the Navy. Finding the appropriate people in Sri Lanka or India was harder." (NYT, 28 Dec 2004, emphasis added)
Bush yesterday defending the amount of aid that the U.S. will provide to Tsunami victims noted that it was being upped to "35 billion." Needless to say he meant "million." Also needless to say, the SCLM generously corrected this rather glaring error without comment -- only a single entry on Google News, from a readers forum on China Daily(?!), even mentions it.
A minor mistake, sure. But does he either know or care about the difference?
I'm guessing that he neither knows or cares. He's on vacation.
And, speaking of not knowing or caring....when first any offer was made ($15 million), I remarked that it was only a promise, and we're known to renege on those. Eg: AIDS and global food aid. Zeynep has some more examples:
Speaking by telephone from his home in Vermont, Mr. Leahy, who is the ranking Democrat on the foreign operations subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee, urged that a portion of the largely unspent $18 billion for Iraq reconstruction be re-directed for Asian relief efforts.
That's great, let's just roll the money from an earlier unkept obligation... Maybe some of the money promised but also not delivered to the earthquake victims in Bam (one account has only $17 million delivered out of a promised one billion) could be included while we're at it.
It has recently been discovered that US and Iraqi forces have been using a method of demolishing houses in Felluce (Fallujah) that Israelis have also used on Palestinian homes.
An Iraqi soldier told an Agency France Press (AFP) reporter that they set the houses on fire where they encounter pro-insurgence publications or materials. Ismail Ibrahim Shaalan, a 50 year old resident of Fallujah, explained that he saw some soldiers set houses on fire on December 14th even though there were no clashes. A US soldier also admitted that, in some situations, they use “alternative precautions” like “setting fires and bombing” for houses that are presumed to shelter insurgents. US Sergeant John Cross also said that if they are unable to enter a place, they apply alternative methods.
[...]
There are big X letters painted in red on the walls of the houses that have been searched by US troops. Others are either partially burned out or completely ruined.
[...]
Many of those who returned to Fallujah are picking up the pieces of what is left of their ruined homes and the corpses of their relatives.
[...]
The Halil family is one family that was forced to move out of their home by US soldiers and then found it in ruins when they returned to their home ten days later. US Major Naomi Hawkins says the Halil family can apply to the governor’s office or Bagdat (Baghdad) and receive $100 to repair their home.
I have learned from numerous sources, including several people close to Brent Scowcroft, that Bush has unceremoniously and without public acknowledgment dumped Scowcroft, his father's closest associate and friend, as chairman of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. The elder Bush's national security advisor was the last remnant of traditional Republican realism permitted to exist within the administration. But no longer. At the same time, Vice President Dick Cheney has imposed his authority over Secretary of State-designate Condoleezza Rice, in order to blackball Arnold Kanter, former undersecretary of state to James Baker, and partner in the Scowcroft Group, as a candidate for deputy secretary of state.
[...]
Bush has borne resentment against his father's alter ego since before Scowcroft privately rebuked him for his Iraq follies more than a year ago -- an incident that has not previously been reported. Bush "did not receive it well," said a friend of Scowcroft's.
[...]
Despite his belief that the younger Bush's policies were disastrous, Scowcroft publicly supported him for reelection mainly out of loyalty to the father.
The rejection of Kanter is a compound rejection of Scowcroft and James Baker -- the tough, cunning, results-oriented operator who as White House chief of staff saved the Reagan presidency from its ideologues, managed the elder Bush's successful campaign in 1988, and was summoned by the family in 2000 to rescue George W. in Florida. When all else failed (the voters, for example), Baker arranged the outcome that put Bush in the Oval Office. In the 1995 memoir of his years as secretary of treasury and state, Baker observed that in the Gulf War the administration's "one overriding strategic concern was to avoid what we often referred to as the Lebanonization of Iraq, which we believed would create a geopolitical nightmare." In private, Baker is scathing about the current occupant of the White House, people who have spoken with him have recently related to me. Now the one indispensable creator of the Bush family political fortunes is repudiated.
Those Republican elders who warned of endless war are purged. And those who advised Bush that Saddam was building nuclear weapons, that with a light military force the operation would be a "cakewalk," that capturing Baghdad was a "mission accomplished," and that the Iraqi army should be disbanded, are rewarded.
And the people pulling the strings in America are not invested in America. They are invested in multinationals and military defense contracts. So, why should they care?
The Bush administration's foreign policy may be costing U.S. corporations business overseas--according to a new survey of 8,000 international consumers released this week by the Seattle-based Global Market Insite (GMI) Inc.
Other problem brands included Exxon-Mobil, AOL, American, Chevron Texaco, United Airlines, Budweiser, Chrysler, Barbie Doll, Starbucks, and General Motors.
Oops. Well, okay. That's a different story. Is Condi diversified from Exxon?
The latest poll found that more than two thirds of European and Canadian consumers have had a negative change in their view of the United States as a result of U.S. foreign policy over the last three years. Nearly half believe that the war in Iraq was motivated by a desire to control oil supplies, while only 15 percent believed it was related to terrorism.
[...]
Half of the entire sample said they distrusted U.S. companies, at least in part because of the U.S. foreign policy. Seventy-nine percent said they distrusted the U.S. government for the same reason, while 39 percent said they distrusted the American public.
[...]
Nearly two thirds of European and Canadian consumers also said they believe U.S. foreign policy is guided primarily by self-interest and empire-building, while only 17 percent believe that the defense of freedom and democracy is its guiding principle.
What are they saying? That we're only fooling ourselves?
Hundreds of Pakistanis staged rallies against President Pervez Musharraf in a day of protests after he reneged on his pledge to quit as army chief.
The rallies were held in major cities and towns across the country on Saturday, where speakers denounced Musharraf for breaking his pledge to hang up his army uniform by the end of 2004.
Described as a black day, protesters wore black armbands and waved black flags to symbolise their disapproval.
[...]
It was the Islamic alliance itself which in 2003 backed constitutional changes giving Musharraf extra powers - a deal they made in return for his pledge to quit the military by the close of 2004.
However, in November 2004, Pakistan's parliament enacted a controversial law allowing him to backtrack, and Musharraf said in Thursday's address that the constitution allowed him to keep both his military and civilian roles until 2007.
[...]
Musharraf toppled prime minister Nawaz Sharif in October 1999. He appointed himself president in June 2001 and won a heavily criticised referendum in April 2002, followed by a parliamentary vote of confidence in December 2003.
Coleen Rowley, the Minneapolis FBI agent whose outspoken criticisms triggered a furor over lapses in the government's pre-Sept. 11 counterterrorism efforts, retired from the bureau Friday.
Rowley ended her 24-year FBI career just 11 days after turning 50, a milestone that made her eligible for a full pension.
Though she has traversed the country speaking about ethics, integrity and civil liberties since gaining celebrity, Rowley said she has no immediate plans.
She said, however, that she would like to be considered for appointment to the new federal Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. The new law overhauling the nation's intelligence apparatus directs the Department of Homeland Security to create the board to ensure that counterterrorism investigations and arrests do not infringe on people's rights.
"Although it's widely presumed to not be very effective, because they don't have subpoena powers," she said.
But it would give her a chance to use her background as a constitutional law adviser at the bureau, she said. She has written articles about the importance of preserving civil liberties in the nation's anti-terrorism climate.
First of all, kudos to Ms. Rowley for speaking out.
Secondly, I guess it would be a logical career move to go to an agency that won't have any real power, but can make noises like it's upholding civil liberties.
