Sen. Kerry Should Apologize

Sen. Kerry Should Apologize

In 2004, I can't tell you how frustrated I became - more and more by the day - by Senator Kerry's slowness to tap into the pulse of the people. My blog was filled with advice to Senator Kerry to speak out on the Iraq war with force and convincing reason - and to defend himself against the Swift Boat political operatives.

This time, I'm afraid it doesn't matter what his intent was in making that lame joke. He can try to defend it 'til the cows come home and the stupid (but unstoppable) media machinery gears will keep on rolling right over him until he offers a heartfelt apology.

Listening to his rationalizing about his unfortunate choice of words, refusing to apologize, I could imagine many people out there seeing him as

- still angry having lost the election with the knowledge that he lost, in good part, because he would not speak out strongly and early enough on the Bush-made miserable mess that was (and still is) the Iraq war. Politically, I think that it's too late for him to grouse about it now.

- just as stubborn as Bush when he's wrong.

- for many who could not afford college for themselves or their kids, his arrogance probably made them see him as an elite bumbler who wouldn't know a poor, struggling person if he stepped on one.

- for military families, sadness to see the 2004 Democratic candidate make a joke against Bush at their families' expense. I'm sure they never expected someone like Kerry [for whom many say they voted in 2004 Dem primaries because of his "gravitas"] to do something like that.

He needs to apologize and clarify. My hope is that, if he can create a speech that includes an apology - and then if he can proceed to focus on the real issue at hand, which is underhanded and institutionalized methods of military recruitment of our youth at a time when a Bush-administration-generated abuse of the military may cause the military to be weakened a la "shake and bake" [aka conscription, which is fatal to military performance and unsettling to politics], then perhaps we can really get somewhere. Kerry is an expert, unfortunately, at being in a seemingly endless war where the enemy is invisible and the goals are not clearly delineated and the military is demoralized. He could turn this media hype around to America's advantage - and I hope he can and will do so.





By the way, there could not have been a sicker or a more disrespectful joke made at the expense of our troops and their families than Bush making a JOKE of the absence of WMD in Iraq. I'm sure you remember his disgusting attempt at humor - a video of him groping around the oval office and under his desk looking for WMD. He never paid politically for that, and I wonder why Kerry would have to politically pay for something far less insulting?

Bill O'Reilly (from the woefully unbalanced Fox News network) has actually made a comment with which I agree:

"I don't believe John Kerry meant to demean any American military member. I just don't. I think that fair-minded people know that that would be political suicide for the senator. He wouldn't do it" ("O'Reilly Factor," 10/31). [source: National Journal]

You've got to love James Carville's snappy wit:

"It is much easier to say, I botched a joke, than to say, I botched a war."

Ask a Democratic politician seeking office on November 7th who's been to the Iraq war. Tammy Duckworth, a major in the Illinois Army National Guard who lost her legs in the Iraq war and is now the Democratic candidate for the open 6th District seat in Illinois, said had this to say:

“Nobody needs to tell me the quality of the men and women I served with in Iraq. I know....What our troops need isn’t more political rhetoric and either party playing games with this. What our troops need is a plan for how to get them out of Iraq safely, responsibly, while providing the Iraqis with the security forces that they need. If you really want to support the troops then let’s come up with a measurable plan for how to get out troops out of Iraq.”

Bill Kristol's Full of Baloney on Election 2006

Bill Kristol's Full of Baloney on Election 2006

If any Republican wins on November 7, it surely will not be because of the Bush Republicans' great leadership on the Iraq war. It will be because of local politics.

On today's Fox News Saunday panel, the neoconservative cult's favorite journalistic representative William Kristol extended his fantasy that the upcoming election is to be a referendum on whether America is committed to winning the war in Iraq or whether they're not committed to winning the war. I think you'd have to be insane, at this juncture, to believe that this ridiculously false choice is what the referendum on Iraq will boil down to.

Americans want their nation to have a good and strong international reputation, credibility, and successful outcomes in all the efforts the U.S. government responsibly carries out. The troubling thing to voters is the fact that we've lost our standing as the influential superpower we once were and that the preemptive attack on Iraq was entered into impulsivley and irresponsibly. The proof of it lies in the fact that, out of the ever-changing [20+] rationales handed to the American people about going into Iraq, not a one of them has ever emerged as clear, justified, or accurate. We've been abused by stovepiped, cherry-picked intelligence and intentional misleading. We've been partisan rubber-stamped and voo-dooed to death on the Iraq war.

So, maybe Mr. Kristol isn't too far off. Maybe this election will be about whether or not we want to "win" as a united nation of people who want America to succeed. It's going to take a change - not a change in semantics about Republican war propaganda, but a substantial change toward a regaining of the good faith in a nation that was once a superpower in every sense of the word - not just a brute force fighting blindly against an enemy we can't see with no clear plan for victory.

The film character Rambo comes to mind - begging the U.S. government to give him a war he could win. I'll bet he'd have a lot to say about the war that William Kristol was dreaming of [see PNAC] until his fairy tale came real with the worst President in U.S. history at the helm. Why does Mr. Kristol think so many 2006 GOP candidates are running away from any connection with Bush this season?



Rambo would oust the Bush Republicans on election day 2006.

My Online Encounter with Michael Schiavo

My Online Encounter with Michael Schiavo

You never know who you're going to get the opportunity to chat with when you belong to an online community.

Last July, Michael Schiavo bashed U.S. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave at a campaign event for "inserting herself in the wrenching national debate" over the prolonged death of his wife, Terri Schiavo.

This week, Rep. Musgrave had authorities physically remove Mr. Schiavo from a public campaign rally, a long-practiced and extremely undemocratic George W. Bush tactic.

Musgrave could make a three ring circus out of Mr. Schiavo and his family, but she couldn't take public accountability for doing so. Instead, like a coward, she asked others to remove the man from her queen-like sight.

Who knew I'd get an opportunity to tell Mr. Schaivo directly that I'm sorry for what he had to go through - then and now -and that he would send an acknowledgment back?

That's precisely what happened yesterday at Daily Kos.

Seymour Hersh Keynotes at S.U. Nuclear Iran Symposium

Seymour Hersh Keynotes at S.U. Nuclear Iran Symposium


There was a symposium hosted by the Law School at Syracuse University on Friday where an esteemed and knowledgeable panel gathered to discuss why Iran wants to be a nuclear power; whether Iran has a legal right to become a nuclear power; the regional ramifications of such newly acquired technology; the U.S. policy of preemption; the capability of the U.S. military to take action against Iran; the extent to which the U.N. Charter would allow a U.S. preemptive strike, or military action by any country, in the absence of Security Council authorization; and the various actions that countries other than the U.S. might take in confronting a nuclear Iran.




Seymour Hersh was the keynote speaker at the afternoon session where, immediately after he spoke, there was a subsequent panel discussion about U.S. options titled: From Preemptive Military Action to Diplomacy and the Use of Sanctions. A hypothetical situation was proposed in which the U.S. and the global community learn that Iran has developed weapons-grade nuclear material, and panelists were asked to debate the range of legal and policy options that the U.S. has in confronting Iran.







The Next 815 Days

Mr. Hersh, whose article appear in the pages of the magazine The New Yorker, came to the podium with an admittedly anti-feel-good message. He began by stating the fact that there are 815 days left with President George W. Bush as president, and each day that passes is an opportrunity lost. In his words, "We have a real problem." Any plan to deal capably with a nation like Iran would have to:

- assume rationality in leadership
- assume the intelligence used has not been stovepiped or subject to manipulation
- assume good faith in leadership

The spectre of strategic disaster in Iraq overshadowed those assumptions. You could get a sense of near-complete acquiescence in that "connect" throughout Grant auditorium as Mr. Hersh stated his professional belief that, between 9/11 and the Iraq war, American leadership was taken over by what he called a "cult" of about 8 or 9 major players - all neoconservatives. He asked what happened to Congress; to our military; and to the U.S. press in those days between 9/11 and Iraq when those 8 or 9 people took over America's direction on foreign policy? When speaking about the obvious bad news coming from Iraq on a daily basis and the President's ongoing "we're winning" vibe, Hersh referred to the old Richard Pryor joke about adultery that culminated in the punch line: "Who you gonna believe? Me or your lying eyes?"


On Iraq

Mr. Hersh spoke briefly about the U.S. military Generals - some of whom he says have spoken to him off the record. Mr. Hersh said, "I hate to see bright and good Generals forced to tap dance" on Iraq. His conclusion about President Bush (to whom he refers as the worst President in recent history) is that there is nothing more dangerous for our country than a revolutionary who is incapable of changing course. Mr. Hersh firmly averred that he believes Bush is incapable. Bush has stated that he believes, in 10-20 years, history will have proven him 'right.' He likely believed in the existence of WMD in Iraq. He sees himself as a President who's 'doing the right thing.' To protect his own historic integrity, Bush thinks that he must stay the course. All that - and maybe God's talking in his ear, Mr. Hersh wryly added. Mr. Hersh strongly recommended that whatever we do, we should "take Bush literally."


There are only so many comparisons one can make between Vietnam and Iraq - two completely separate wars. Mr. Hersh applied one direct comparison, and that is that we don't "see our enemy" in Iraq, just as we didn't see them in Vietnam.

There is no current plan for an exit from Iraq. He has heard secretly from top military sources that, should things get really bad there, that the military would likely "boogie" North over the mountains into Turkey. It would be too dangerous to exit from the South.


Creating a New Caliphate

When it comes to Iran, we don't really know what Iran has in the way of nuclear weaponry. The intelligence that is available is not reliable enough to make declaratory statements with any certainty. What is certain, however, is that a cast of extremist figures in the Middle East such as Beirut's Hassan Nasrallah and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran, have become political "rock stars" [My note: Compare Bill Clinton's political 'rock star' status in the U.S.]

We are, whether we admit it or not, creating another Caliphate with our foreign policy. Bush won't talk to people he doesn't like, and that bodes fatally for diplomacy. Prefacing his opinion with the hope that it does not turn out to be so, Mr. Hersh said that his instinct tells him that the U.S. will eventually use a military option to attack Iran.

Mr. Hersh believes America had much more to do with the Israel attack on Lebanon than we were led to believe and now there's a real threat to the pro-Western Lebanese political factions with Hezbollah, hurting anti-Syrian groups like March 14th who had been on the rise. He reiterated something I heard again and again at last month's Clinton Global Initiative - that the ongoing Israel/Palestine conflict is the key to the extremism in the Middle East. The only recent "progress" is that the Gaza strip has been sent back to the Stone Age. Even though many who are economically able in the Middle East are still willingly choosing to send their youth to America for a solid education, hope is diminishing in that part of the world.


The Closing Story - A Chilling Tale

Mr. Hersh finished with a chillingly compelling story about his days as a writer telling the story of the My Lai massacre - and he added that "only in America" would he get a journalistic award for a piece like that. There was a young soldier who'd participated in some of the slayings of the Vietnamese villagers and had witnessed a two-year old [a sole survivor who'd been protected by his now dead-mother] being "plugged" in the back of the head while trying to run away. That soldier came home without one of his legs - convinced that God would take retribution upon and curse all who participated in the massacre. What Mr. Hersh was leading up to was a later visit to that soldier's home - a ramshackle home in Virginia in which he lived with his mother. He had clearly not had the opportunities in life that most of the people sitting in Grant auditorium on Friday had had. The mother greeted Mr. Hersh and made a statement to the effect that when she'd sent her son away, she'd sent a soldier to Vietnam and they'd sent her home "a murderer." Imagine the remainder of that young man's life - his personal outlook and mental health.

Mr. Hersh contrasted and compared that experience with writing, some 40 years on in his illustrious career as an investigative journalist, with the story of Abu Ghraib. He spoke of photos of horrific torture obtained from the least expected of sources - a mother of a mentally depressed and struggling U.S. soldier. The gravely concerned mother had called NPR and, by chance, had been allowed to slip in her phone number over the airwaves of the radio show. The soldier involved was a daughter - a female volunteer who had come home from Iraq changed for all she'd seen and all she had done. There were photos on her personal laptop that most of us have never seen - perhaps never will see. We may remember the one now-infamous photo of the Belgian shepherd dogs being "sicced" on the naked Iraqi detainee. These photos offered to Mr. Hersh once he contacted this soldier's mother were of the same man - only in this particular series of photos, one could see that the dogs went much further. There were pictures of them tearing at the man's flesh; of his blood all over his body; of hands suturing the fresh gashes made by the attack dogs. The young soldier was finding life to be a haunting battle. She'd tattooed her body in increments, a tattoo here one day - a tattoo there the next day - from her legs all the way up to her neck - almost as if, according to her mother, she'd wished she could completely "change her skin." Mr. Hersh's point was that we are just beginning to see the effects of mental illness on the troops coming back from Iraq.

NY-25: Of Earmarks, Values, and the Rotten Rubber Stamp

NY25: Of Earmarks, Values, and the Rotten Rubber Stamp

Dan Maffei, the Democratic challenger for James Walsh's long-held Congressional seat, has asked why our district has stayed in recession for the last 20 years if the appropriations of which he boasts [the kind of earmarks that were at the heart of recent lobbyist scandals] have meant so much. Maffei has also pointed the contrast between Rep. Walsh's ability to 'turn on the federal spigot' and the heavily-weighted negative offset of steep cuts in areas of social spending such as Medicare, Medicaid, and student loans that have been approved by the "Bush agenda rubber-stamp" Republican Congress and have been signed into law - with Rep. Walsh's support an overwhelming 9 out of 10 times. While seeing his own pay raised each year, he voted to permanently reduce taxes on multimillion dollar estates, holding the federal minmum wage initiative hostage in what many see as a Congressional double-cross.

Don't we have the right to expect more of our representatives than the promise of fat earmarks dedicated to selected projects with a decades-long faltering Upstate economy and an anti-social "drown-'em-in-the-bathtub" Bush agenda trade-off? Shouldn't we dare have the imagination to hope for more?

Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne recently observed that "the entire Democratic ticket, led by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Eliot Spitzer, the party's candidate for governor, is expected by just about everyone to sweep the state" in November. How will this translate in the race for Jim Walsh's Congressional seat? It's now conventional wisdom among pundits that the Bush administration and the Republican leaders who have made the mistake of employing partisan pack-mentality when voting with the publicly unpopular Bush agenda will have a surprising effect on local races. Mr. Dionne quotes Dan Maffei:

Maffei sees the immediate trend toward Democrats powered by frustration with President Bush and the Iraq war. But it is also rooted in long-term factors: the economic troubles of many Upstate communities, the area's "libertarian" leanings on cultural issues and the homelessness felt by many moderate Republicans in the face of a national party increasingly dominated by conservatives.

"Bush Republicanism," Maffei says, "is not for them."

Mr. Dionne compares the political environment in Upstate New York to be far more Midwestern in nature than what is seen in downstate politics. Values are important to Upstate citizens. Values, to the Upstate New Yorker, means more than the two issues one automatically thinks of in the the national political 'Conservative values' vein: Life and Gay marriage. Values encompass every walk of life and require not merely lip service, but serious contemplation, moral leadership, and righteous action by our representatives.

When citizens see their representatives scrambling on a national level to bring tax cuts to the richest while voting for bills like the bankruptcy bill (now law) to protect the predatory lenders and banks - putting the crush on families who experience serious illness and job loss - don't we have to ask what values really means to those who are making our laws?

I'm hoping for real change in Upstate New York politics this November. I want my son to go to college and come back home to a thriving economy and burgeoning opportunity in Upstate New York. I don't want my neighbors to have to lose their family businesses that are unique and treasured to Upstate citizens. I also want a leader who will answer my pleas for sanity in our foreign policy. I'll be voting for Dan Maffei.

Frank Rich on Obama & Dems: No More Human Weather Vanes

Frank Rich on Obama & Dems: No More Human Weather Vanes

In a column about the Liberal love affair with the decidedly impressive freshman Senator Barack Obama, Frank Rich speaks frankly (no pun intended) about the Democrats' fatal malady - putting up "another Democrat who won't tell you what day it is before calling a consultant, another human weather vane who waits to see which way the wind is blowing before taking a stand."

Says Frank:

If the Democratic Party is to be more than a throw-out-Bush party, it can't settle for yet again repackaging its well-worn ideas, however worthy, with a new slogan containing the word "New." It needs a major infusion of steadfast leadership. That's the one lesson it should learn from George Bush. Call him arrogant or misguided or foolish, this president has been a leader. He had a controversial agenda - enacting big tax cuts, privatizing Social Security, waging "pre-emptive" war, packing the courts with judges who support his elisions of constitutional rights - and he didn't fudge it. He didn't care if half the country despised him along the way.

According to Mr. Rich, a Democrat with a snowball's chance in hell of winning will need to "stick up for core principles when tested and get others to follow him." It seems that Senator Obama is being groomed as a poster-child [and pollster-child] for what Mr. Rich labels as "the party of terminal timidity and equivocation." Mr. Rich will still need to be convinced that Barack Obama is battle-ready and firm in his convictions in the hard-knock political arena. Let's hope the Democratic party has learned from past mistakes and isn't in too much of a rush to lose 2008.

__________

In an Adam Nagourney/Jeff Zeleny article in today's NYT, an Obama campaign advisor named Steve Hildebrand was quoted to have said the following regarding the reaction of Iowa Democrats to the party's rising young star: “The reaction that Obama got in Iowa was like nothing I’ve ever seen before with another politician.” Not that it is untrue, but Mr. Hildebrand has a professional stake in saying so, of course.

I am not paid a dime to give my opinion. I can state with certainty, keeping close association with a good number of Democratic grassroots activists in Iowa, that Senator John Edwards strikes the most common chord with Iowa Democrats for 2008. But you don't need my witness for proof. The WaPo's Chris Cillizza wrote about the Hawkeye State Surprise last June.

______________

Bloomberg political chief Al Hunt has what I see as the wisest quote. He says, if American politicians were stocks, that Sen. Obama "would be a Warren Buffett investment: great long-term value."

____________

In a NY Sun article by Josh Gerstein, there is a quote from former Democratic chairman from South Carolina Richard Harpootlian that doesn't quite complete an intellectually rational circuit when it comes to the mostly unpredictable phenomenon known as American politics.

Admitting that he is not excited about any prospective Democratic candidate [whew - there's a real vote of confidence in your party's leaders], Mr. Harpootlian says that he doesn't think Sen. Obama can win the nomination, particularly because he has "never served in executive office." Mr. Harpootlian is surely not a big fan of Sen. Clinton as a presidential candidate, judging by this quote [found on a Hillary Clinton-dedicated website]:

"We all believe she's wonderful. But we also believe that if she's the nominee, it sets up perfectly for the Republicans to win the White House for another four years...Do we really want to rehash Whitewater and all the stuff we had before?"

In Josh Gerstein's current article about Sen. Obama, Mr. Harpootlian says,

"He's a tremendously talented young man but I think he's a little green at this point .. I'm sure it's flattering to hear this talk, but I think he needs to stay in the Senate awhile…He's got to get re-elected first. That was John Edwards's problem the last time around."

I think Mr. Harpootlian is not only hypercritical of all three potential presidential candidates, Obama, Clinton, and Edwards, but he is also wrong in this statement because national politics, especially today, is not about how much time you've spent in Washington, D.C. The majority of Americans feel that our nation is headed in the wrong direction and that the D.C. leadership culture is not working for their best interests. It's more about who you are and how long the public has had to get to know you that determines how well you'll do in elections. Politics does not require a set list of prerequisites. For all we know, it could very well turn out that the public decides that they like Sen. Obama well enough to understand he didn't recently fall into D.C. out of some pumpkin patch - that he spent many years in Illinois politics - and that he's ready to lead the country. Perhaps his entrance into D.C. politics has not been lengthy enough to have hurt him. The political culture is changing rapidly with the sharp downward turn in public confidence in the federal government.

Remember this: The fact that former Senator John Edwards is not in D.C. with a Congress that is receiving 16% approval ratings today may be far more of a winning political strategy than Mr. Hartpoolian realizes.

Being articulate and interesting to listen to is definitely a delightful anti-Bush concept - perhaps it's refreshing to those citizens who long desperately for a more intellectual discussion of issues - but does it equate to readiness for leadership of the free world? Voters will have to decide, but I'm afraid that in a race for POTUS, voters will decide against someone so very new to them and so very young, regardless of how articulate and intelligent he may be. When I say "I'm afraid," I mean it. We have witnessed far too many Democratic losses over the past decade. We can no longer believe that it is not a great fault in the Democratic party's strategy that has strengthened the great right wing machinery's death-grip on the American mind and the voting booth. The MSM uber-hype over Sen. Obama has me greatly concerned. One exciting convention speech does not a world leader make. I firmly believe that Sen. Obama has the potential for greatness, but it takes time to build trust and confidence in any one American citizen who would be in the running for POTUS - especially in the post-9/11 and post-Bush 43 world. Voters will always have the last say, but we all know too well what uber-hype can do. Look at the Howard Dean campaign for one example. America was just getting to know him and the MSM stroked him like their furry little pet kitten one moment and flattened him the next over his [and his supporters'] enthusiam - as if enthusiasm was a crime. The Democratic party did not want to risk a man of such strong conviction in 2004 and wound up with Sen. Kerry, a candidate who, as much as you may like him, would not defend himself or his convictions when the time was right and ripe for him to do so.

It would be my wish for Mr. Harpootlian - and all of us - to become excited about a Democratic candidate. My point is that the MSM is still a tool that reaches millions of Americans who never read blogs or the alternative media. What they - in conjunction with the Democratic strategists - pump out as hype still has a major effect on our political successes and failures.

____________

I totally disagreee with Chuck Todd and Democratic strategist Steve Elmendorf in their opinion that, if Obama were to enter the presidential race, that, along with Sen. Clinton, it would "suck up all the oxygen" in the Democratic political room. That's rather unimaginative and an insult to all Democrats out here in America who desire and welcome a wealth of diverse voices in the Democratic primary presidential race. If anyone were to accomplish the task of political oxygen-sucking, however, I think most Democrats would agree the person to do it would not be Sen. Obama, but instead would be none other than Albert Arnold Gore Jr. When you consider the change in the dymanics of the race for 2008 that former Vice President Al Gore's entry would bring about, I believe that the possibility of an Obama entry pales by comparison.

Look at Buffalo, NY!!

Look at Buffalo, NY!

This place is a disaster. I don't think I've seen one tree or bush that was not affected by the freak snowstorm that occurred on Friday the 13th [of October]!

See Phil Fairbanks' Buffalo News story.

The following photos were taken today at Mount Calvary Cemetary in the city of Buffalo.

The people of Buffalo need FEMA's help as soon as possible.

Douglas Turner of the Buffalo News has a suspicion that politics is playing a role in if and how fast disasters are declared and FEMA is activated by the Bush administration.

It took President Bush only two days to declare Hawaii a major disaster after Gov. Linda Lingle asked him to.

At the time of this writing, it's eight days since metropolitan Buffalo was devastated by a freak storm and Buffalo still was waiting for the prime declaration by the president.

Storm costs will reach three times the cited damage in Hawaii from an earthquake.

What happened in Richmond, Va., might be an object lesson. Six weeks ago, Richmond Mayor Douglas Wilder asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency for help after the Virginia capital was slammed by the tail of Tropical Storm Ernesto.

Wilder said parts of neighborhoods were wiped out. Wilder is still waiting for FEMA's help.

What can be the difference between Hawaii on the one hand, and Buffalo and Richmond on the other? It can't remotely be that Buffalo and Richmond each have black Democratic mayors. Could it be that Virginia has a Democratic governor and New York has a lame-duck Republican governor whom Bush never much liked?

Iraq is FUBAR and They Can't Credit God

Iraq is FUBAR and
They Can't Credit God

At the Nation, Tom Engelhardt's point about Bush and current Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki is short and sweet. The fact that the Bush administration has not been able to set up an Iraqi government that has both legitimacy and that meets America's desires is not lost on those who have paid any amount of attention to the 3 1/2-year long disaster of a war.

The news headlines today might as well have have been written three years ago. President Bush should have adjusted his strategy as soon as he knew that we would not be greeted as liberators.

- Democrats Urge Bush to Change Course on Iraq
- Major Change Expected In Strategy for Iraq War

The fact that he waited so long - so stubbornly - and that he'd insinuated that his critics were just as good as traitors at every turn has been a constant reflection of his poor leadership skills.

Long undecided about which way to turn - only looking dogmatically and blindly ahead - Bush is now faced with a severe deficit of public support and no easy choices. The choices may have been far better ones for America and Iraq had he acted responsibly, quickly, and with accountability three years ago - or had he not rushed and lied us into the war to begin with. Alas, we know we cannot go back in time.

When all else fails, it's easy to blame (or credit) God for the good you claim you've tried to do..and have miserably failed to do.
Top US general Peter Pace defended the leadership of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, saying it is "inspired by God." Violent Islamic jihad is also "God-inspired." It doesn't make those who claim to be God-inspired righteous when innocent people are in the targets - or when they are caught in the crossfire in a war on terror..especially a completely unnecessary war like the war in Iraq.

Robert Scheer writes:

An occupation initially advertised as a “cakewalk” war to disarm a tyrant is now, according to our politically desperate president, a fight for the soul of the world—good versus evil, democracy versus tyranny.

But the carnage we have visited upon Iraq represents nothing of the sort. We are not building democracy, we are creating mayhem.

The evidence arrives daily in the form of dozens, sometimes hundreds, of mutilated bodies. But even the few ghastly images that actually make it onto the television actually underestimate the horror. And it is getting worse, not better: The killing of innocents is now 10 times higher than a year ago.

I am more inclined to look up to the Heavens and cry, "My God, what have they done?" than to believe God was in Rumsfeld's ear telling him what was righteous and moral for our country or for humanity. Moses sent us God's message and His commandment of 'Thou Shalt not Kill' probably meant what it said. When Jesus told us to love our enemies, it was a political statement, and it meant, at best, don't kill them. If I'm not mistaken, there was also a commandment about the sin of lying, and lies were systematically told to the American people by Rumsfeld and others to get them to accept an immoral war of choice with which even the Roman Catholic Pope could not abide. General Pace claims that Rumsfeld "leads in a way that the good Lord tells him is best for our country." I think it's ludicrous, at this stage of the game - simply ludicrous - for the good General to expect that faithful and responsible people of America will swallow this whole and not see it for the bitter pill that it is.

National Character Counts: Bush Stumps for Philanderer

National Character Counts: Bush Stumps for Philanderer

Pennsylvania Congressman Don Sherwood may have a record of accomplishment in the House of Representatives, but according to the WaPo's Dana Milbank, he also has a police record - a record of wicked infidelity and a penchant for kinky violence against women.

While representing the good people of the 10th District, the married congressman shacked up in Washington with a Peruvian immigrant more than three decades his junior. During one assignation in 2004, the woman, who says Sherwood was striking her and trying to strangle her, locked herself in a bathroom and called 911; Sherwood told police he was giving her a back rub.

During "National Character Counts Week", Bush might have been just as well off stumping for child predator Mark Foley. (Oops- Mark Foley's no longer in the running, is he?)

National character obviously doesn't count to the Republican leadership nearly as much as retaining their naked, raw manly-man power.

NNSA Conversion Would Mean Less Highly Enriched Uranium

NNSA Conversion Would Mean Less Highly Enriched Uranium

I found this interesting news at the Student-Operated Press website. The Bush administration is making efforts to minimize the use of highly enriched uranium in civil applications around the world. Now if they could just find the diplomatic smarts to stop (idiotically) pissing off every kook in the world who has access to the highly-enriched uranium that still has the potential to exist, we might actaully get a feeling of enhanced security. Putting a gag over Bush's impulsive mouth whenever he goes to speak might be a good start.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has successfully converted a research reactor at the University of Florida from the use of highly enriched uranium to low enriched uranium. This conversion comes on the heels of a reactor conversion at Texas A&M University that was announced last week. By the end of this year, NNSA will have converted six U.S. and international research reactors.

As a part of its nonproliferation mission, NNSA converts research reactors in the U.S. and around the world from operating on highly enriched uranium (HEU) to low enriched uranium (LEU) fuel. LEU is not suitable for use in a nuclear weapon and is not sought by terrorists or criminals. The conversion is part of the Bush administration’s efforts to minimize the use of highly enriched uranium in civil applications around the world.

“Decreasing the use of highly enriched uranium in the United States and around the world is a priority for this administration,” said Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman. “Converting this domestic reactor at University of Florida and the one last week at Texas A&M University further demonstrates our commitment to limiting the spread of nuclear material.”

Jonathan Alter on Barack Obama

Jonathan Alter on Barack Obama

Barack Obama was not a member of the U.S. Senate when he opposed the war in Iraq. Both John Edwards and Hillary Clinton were in the Senate, and if there's one thing we all should understand, it's that it's a whole lot easier to say "No" when you are not directly responsible as an elected representative for the security of hundreds of thousands of constituents and when you're a representative from a state with key military bases.

If we value inexperience over our leaders actually having been there/done that, then I suppose Jonathan Alter is 100% correct that Democratic primary voters will find Obama to be "perfectly positioned" for 2008. However, that's not at all what I witnessed in 2004 when Democratic primary voters flocked to John Kerry, who had voted for the Iraq War resolution. To the primary voters, Kerry had had a decided air of gravitas that comes only from life (and war) experience. The voters didn't use Senator Kerry's vote for the IWR against him then. Armed with plenty of real knowledge and 20/20 hindsight about the Bush administration's failures, misleadings and outright untruths, I cannot believe that Democratic voters will punish those who voted Yes to the IWR in 2008 because they will understand that it was not the Democrats who commanded this disastrous war. Many of the same Democrats who gave good faith and trust to the POTUS in 2002 are now being labeled as cowards and traitors in stump speeches by the President.

I trust that Democratic primary voters will understand that both Edwards and Clinton have been no less than repulsed by the gross inefficiency of Donald Rumsfeld, who offered many times to step down but was begged to stay by an incredibly incurious President who clearly never understood how to lead a war or the dangers of rushing your nation into an unjust and unwinnable type of warfare.

The truth is that it wasn't at all easy to vote "yes" OR "No" in October, 2002 to give the POTUS the authority to press the UN on Resolution 1551. A year had barely passed since the worst attack on American civilians in U.S. history. The cherry-picked intelligence being shouted from the Bush bully pulpit proved out to be a horrifically negligent, if not intentional misleading, but no one knew it or could prove it then. With weakness and inefficiency from CIA head George Tenet and the false stories from journalists like Judith Miller along with the rest of the pliant Oval-office stenopad-MSM, our leaders were put between a rock and a terrible place.

Collectively, we all learn from mistakes of our past. The question should be: What has Senator Edwards learned? What has Senator Clinton learned?

We'll never know what Barack Obama would have done had he been called on the floor of the Senate to look every American in the eye on the CSPAN camera and risk American lives (and his own reputation) just because he had a hunch that Bush was a dishonest broker. He never had to be there. I imagine he's glad of it because he won't have to answer for it one way or the other.

What the Democrats did in 2002 was not easy for them. Their floor statements will tell you that they were torn. Regime change in Iraq was the policy of America when President Clinton left office and it was still the policy at the time of the IWR. Would President Clinton have impulsively and inefficiently done what Bush did? I doubt it, but he wasn't POTUS at the time. He didn't have to make that decision, and I imagine he's glad of it because he won't have to answer for it one way or the other.

I know Barack Obama has a brilliant future ahead of him. I admire him. He's a fantastic orator and he shows a firm commitment to American progress. When it comes to voting for the Iraq War resolution, he could only second guess Senators like Edwards and Clinton. Even he, I'd imagine, would have the grace to understand that they were in a far different place than those outside the halls of federal leadership in those dark days.

Rove Aide Resigns in Abramoff Corruption Wake

Rove Aide Resigns in Abramoff Corruption Wake

Having passed inside White House information to ex-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Karl Rove's aide Susan Ralston has submitted her resignation. Her official title was Executive Assistant to the Senior Advisor to the President of The White House.

A White House spokeperson has said that Ms. Ralston recognized that "a protracted discussion of these matters would be a distraction to the White House." Ralston had worked for Abramoff before joining Rove in 2001. She'd allegedly facilitated more than half of Abramoff's sixty-six contacts with the Bush White House.

The old surfer song "Pipeline" by the Ventures comes to mind when I read how Ms. Ralston aided Abramoff toward his corrupt goals. One example comes from a great timeline I found at Democratic Underground:

Late 2002 – Abramoff learns from his pipeline to the White House—which includes Susan Ralston, who used to be his personal secretary and was now working directly with Karl Rove--of the impending nomination of Leonardo Rapadas to replace Frederick Black as US Attorney of the Marianas. Abramoff instructs his team to send out e-mails claiming credit for getting rid of Black who--as he said in an earlier e-mail--“has been screwing us for years”.

November 18, 2002 – Following the request of U.S. Attorney Black, a federal grand jury in Guam subpoenas the Guam Superior Court for records involving a lobbying contract with Jack Abramoff.

Placing a new GOP-friendly attorney in Black's place may have hidden Abramoff's wrongdoing a bit longer - and the fact that US Attorney Black succeeded in uncovering the slime of a snake Abramoff from under his well-protected rock likely helped to expose Karl Rove's Deputy assistant as sahe worked for the cause of corruption in our White House.

A tip o' the hat to Jeffrey Feldman/Frameshop for quickly getting the news out about this resignation. A tip to John Byrne and Washington Monthly for collecting background information.

Why Don’t We Hear About SPP?

Why Don’t We Hear About SPP?

The U.S. Department of Commerce is, for all intents and purposes, rewriting U.S. administrative law with absolutely no Constitutional justification.

What would you think if you knew that George W. Bush, while speaking from the bully pulpit about the need to build a wall across the Mexican/U.S. border, has been pushing for a commitment to a long-term goal of dramatically diminishing the the current intensity of America’s physical control of cross-border traffic and travel within all of North America?

What would you think if you knew that President Bush was promoting a system that loosens U.S. control over the screening of travelers from foreign countries at their first point of entry into anyplace in all of North America and from that first entry, the elimination of most controls over all of the temporary movement of these travelers within North America?

What do you suppose our Founding Fathers would say about erasing U.S. borders to enrich the richest in the false name of security and erase American democracy?

What do you think about a President who would keep all of this, for the most part, a secret from the American people? (Other than an unadvertised website.)

Given this President’s track record, I imagine you would not be particularly surprised at his reticence, but I’m here to tell you that you need to pay close attention, regardless of the fact that most of the whistleblowers aren’t likely from your favorite political crowd. With our common sovereignty at stake, we need to get active to stop the unconstitutional replacement of American authority for a supranational replacement created by elites. We need to be watchdogs over our own individual rights, freedoms, and our democracy.

If you think NAFTA has proven itself to be a disaster for human rights, worker’s rights, and the health of democracy in all subscribing nations and has watered down our Constitutional freedoms, then I’m sure you’ll find the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America [SPP] to have the potential to be even more dangerous.


There's a lot more information about SPP at my post from today at American Street

- - Jude

David Brooks Frames Doubt About Dems' Direction Unfairly

David Brooks Frames Doubt About Dems' Direction Unfairly

In his NYT column today that weakly attempts to divide the Democratic party, David Brooks asks,

"Can a politics that evades the modern realities of Islamic extremism and the skill-based global economy really be the basis of a majority movement? I doubt it."

It happens far too often that columnists lump a whole bunch of Democratic candidates and leaders together and draw conclusions that encompass a whole bunch of false choices.

As things go, I happen to agree with Mr. Brooks' statement above, and, being one of the bloggers who pays the closest attention to the activities of Senator John Edwards, I can tell you that he fully comprehends the "realities" of extremism. You'd have to be as blind as a bat not to notice how the divide between the East and West has reached canyon-like proportions over the past five years. For all the "attention" to extremism in the Muslim world that Mr. Brooks may attribute to the Bush administration, an overwhelming number of average Americans believe it's a wrong-eyed focus and that we're headed in the wrong direction. It's the fear-mongering, war-failing, reality-denying kind of focus to which Democratic leaders like Senator Edwards would love to apply their own "corrective lenses."

Evading a national security issue and putting a more efficient focus on ways to tackle the issue are two totally different ways of describing the politics surrounding the issue. After his column gives a partial description of Senator Edwards' ideas regarding how to proceed with the Iraq war, Mr. Brooks has chosen to label that offer of an alternative solution as "evasion," and I don't see the logic in that statement.

Senator Edwards has been totally up-front about our new life in the skill-based global economy. Trade agreements with foreign nations and the organizing activities of American labor will continue to evolve and find new ways to coexist as we move forward in this century.

Our nation has moved from isolation to interdependence to a new and necessary need for cooperation. It's a no-brainer that we can never go back - regardless of how much we tap nostalgia. Naturally, Senator Edwards understands this and communicates his modern positions clearly. I'd wager you could ask anyone who's ever been in a room where he's speaking and they will tell you that he's no backward-thinking dreamer, but instead a promising and hopeful symbol of America's future who inspires college students and elderly citizens alike across America toward greater and higher aims and values with a keen eye upon our current reality.

We should be moving ahead bravely with our leaders reassuring us that American workers will not be lost in the outsourcing shuffle. Mr. Brooks speaks as if supporting the American worker is a successful political exercise of the past, and that's where I'm afraid he's missing the boat. Labor is evolving, but it will never disappear, for in many small towns across America, the union hall is still at the core of our community life along with the VFW and our church basements. These are our brothers, fathers, and sisters that we're talking about.

Speaking about Senator Edwards and others as if they want to send the nation to yesteryear is disingenuous talk, especially since the fellow who currently occupies the Oval Office has set the progress and good name of our nation decades backward and has presided over an economy where Business has been encouraged, through the public policies of the Republican party, to be socially irresponsible and to ignore labor standards in foreign nations where they've moved their offices and factories. The gap between rich and poor in America is reminiscent of the pre-FDR era. Talk about sickening ways of "going Retro!"

If any political party leaders are "evading," the GOP has surely won the crown by evading an honest debate with Democrats on Iraq; they've evaded the American labor movement while allowing business to run roughshod over American livelihoods and human rights in foreign nations; and they've evaded raising the federal minimum wage for the American worker.

Loose talk that creates a false impression of a leader like Senator Edwards is deeply unfortunate, and I know David Brooks is a smart gentleman. When I see comments that reflect what I see as intellectual dishonesty, I have to ask myself why such brilliant writers would employ what I view to be such division with such weak argument.

Happy Birthday, President Carter!

Happy Birthday, President Carter!

I would like to remind Congresswoman Jane Harman, who gave credit for presiding over the end of the Cold War solely to Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bush 41 this morning on Fox News, that it was President Jimmy Carter who painstakingly laid a hopeful and firm foundation for the end of the Cold War.

I regret she forgot to mention him, especially since today is President Jimmy Carter's birthday. James Earl Carter, Jr.was born October 1, 1924, in Plains, Georgia.

Here's wishing a very 82nd Happy Birthday to President Carter and a salute to him and to his wife Rosalynn for the great work they're doing at the Carter Center in Atlanta.

The Buck Stops with Bush

The Buck Stops with Bush
Before the course of events can change in Iraq, President Bush must change.



What we have done in Iraq - the way we went about this venture - is something I'm sure that President Bush now regrets, even though he'd never admit it. We have a strategic nightmare on our hands, and we also have citizens of Iraq - not al Qaeda, but citizens - murdering one another. The children in the photo you see above are real. A U.S. soldier took this photo and I received a copy of it. Look at their faces for a while. Consider what you think we should do now that you have all the facts about the way President Bush and his administration misled us into what has turned out - because of their absolute inefficiency - as a case where a newly free citizenry has run amok with anarchic, sectarian methods to achieve power. Rather than cooperating with those Iraqis who have been voted into power by millions of purple fingers, anarchists view their elected opponents as friends of "the U.S. occupier" who rely upon (our brave, misused) American troops for the level of security necessary to keep them in power. The Bush administration is using a recipe taken straight from Osama bin Laden's favorite terrorist's 'cookbook'. Our President and his administration do not seem to understand the meaning of cooperation and diplomacy to put an end to the murder and mayhem that we so obviously have failed to abate - and have caused to increase.

There is a better way. We can see it. Many of our legislators can see it.

Do we want our legislators to keep up their partisan catfights on the floor of Congress with the majority party snuggling close to a President that hardly anyone trusts anymore? Of course we don't, but it seems the most reasonable among them has been left with no alternative. We all understand that there are precious lives at stake, and we would expect a pro-life party to act responsibly to honor each life in Iraq. Who do we blame when we go to blame our government for such an unfortunate and disastrous war product?

The buck stops with the Commander in Chief.

If the photo of these beautiful and innocent children looking to this soldier for protection has any truth to it, then we have done them a horrific injustice. We've destroyed their nation's infrastructure and caused many of them to become orphans long after we'd rid Iraq of their ethically perverted leader. Saddam Hussein's been locked up for years. He's no longer their boogie-man. While it's dandy for George W. Bush to brag about his capture, it seems totally disconnected from what we are doing in Iraq today.

We've invited, unleashed and increased the likelihood of terror being imported into Iraq by "taking the fight to Iraq so we don't have to fight them here." Our foolish President begged them to "bring it on." With the on-the-ground facts as we know them today, thanks to real-time intelligence reports, we can see that have done an immoral service to Iraqi citizens by daring terrorists to come to their homeland. The fight, for all intents and purposes, was unjustly brought upon an innocent nation. We'd have to be absolutely blind not to see it. There was no organized foreign terrorist activity in Iraq before 9/11. There was no connection between the government of Iraq and 9/11. The President readily admits it.

It's difficult to sleep at night knowing that my government has done all of this in my name. I wonder if the Commander in Chief loses any sleep at night or during his regularly scheduled beauty naps?

President Bush says that people like me are falling into terrorist propaganda by disagreeing with the awful way this action is being conducted by his administration. That's interesting, because I wouldn't begin to know what that 'terrorist propaganda' might consist of. I pay much closer attention to the way in which this action in Iraq and the overall war on terrorism is being handled, and I can see that we can do much better on all fronts for the good of our nation and the good of these children.

What we are doing in Iraq is not working. This is not the shining example of freedom and democracy in the Middle East that President Bush guaranteed, after he offered so many different and confuted rationales for going into Iraq.

To President Bush, I would recommend a good long look at this picture. Stare into the faces of these children and think about the promises you have made to them. In reality, you gave them - and America - false hope while you misled us and kept a grossly inept Secretary of Defense in power to politically protect a course that's been wrong from the start. Perhaps the problem is that, regardless of who might replace Donald Rumsfeld, the shattered premise for this war can never be altered. It's moral foundations fell apart long ago. New Congressionally-approved rules for torturing prisoners of war and turning away from the rule of law will cause further harm to the family of man, to their human rights, to freedom, to democracy, and to our chances of being a moral victor in this train wreck that we call a war. Dumping Mr. Rumsfeld will do no good unless we can take politics out of the game and look reality straight into its eye.

If President Bush wanted to be a better leader (rather than a bitter leader), he would cease his constant efforts to run down his fellow countrymen and find a way to work out of the political matrix. He would actually take the advice of his Generals. He might actually listen and debate the actual merits of the arguments he's receiving on a regular basis from Democrats and Republicans who are trying so hard to reach President Bush with reason, yet only find that he's locked himself away in a box of hubris, defensiveness, and political bravado that is doing no one any good.

Before the course of events in Iraq can change for the better for children like the ones in the photo above and for this country, President Bush is going to have to change. The buck stops there.

Apollo's Story - A Boy Gets a Second Chance in War-torn Uganda

Apollo's Story - A Boy Gets a Second Chance in War-torn Uganda

We need to spend more on humanitarian relief and education, and far less on building walls, guns, bunker busters, ABM systems, space war technology, and daisy cutters. In northern Uganda, as many as 30,000 children have been kidnapped and forced to serve as soldiers in a nightmarish civil war that the world has largely ignored. These innocent children are brutalized and mutilated, forced to commit atrocities, and given as sex slaves to military commanders. This targeted abuse of children is unacceptable. [see Firecrow's story at Daily Kos].

Read Apollo's story. He's an orphan and a former abductee and child-soldier who lost every single person and thing that had meant anything to him in this world. When it came time for something positive and hopeful to come his way, he had no one to congratulate him, and he made sure to take the time to congratulate himself. The IRC has done a great job in telling many stories like Apollo's. You can read more of them by linking here.

Sep 2006 - I am Apollo, 18 years old, both an orphan and a former child soldier. My original home is in the Pader district of northern Uganda. Now I am residing at an internally-displaced persons (IDP) camp due to the Lord’s Resistance Army insurgency.
When I was abducted by rebel soldiers at the age of 16 years, I was made to carry the wounded and other big loads that were not fit for my age. I would cry within my heart for fear of being killed, get tired since the march was very laborious, and had sleepless moments because of the severe pains all over my body.

New abductees were not allowed to drink water. Many perished and rotted like mushrooms. I am lucky to have survived.

I was not allowed to eat food for five days after I was abducted, yet had to carry heavy weapons. Many recruits died including my beloved brother, Otema.

On many occasions when we were escaping from the Uganda Peoples Defense Force (UPDF) soldiers and gunship helicopters, I would knock my legs against stones and tree stumps and fall down with the patient I was carrying. Immediately the rebels would come and beat me with the barrels of guns and big sticks which have been put in fire. I felt partly dead and paralyzed in some parts of my body, like my hands, neck and chest.

I was made to be an attendant to the brigade commander. I was supposed to bathe him daily and this gave me a lot of burden because however much I bathed him he was never contented with my service. He would call for his bodyguards and instruct them to discipline me by severe caning.

At times we would enter ambushes laid by the UPDF, which killed many inexperienced abductees. Other abductees would throw down their baggage to escape from the bullets and the UPDF soldiers. We had been told that once you are caught by the UPDF, you are killed there and then. But once you throw away your baggage you face the death penalty when you reach the base. I have seen a number of my fellow abductees being brutally murdered for such acts.

I got involved with the International Rescue Committee's ORACLE project after I returned from captivity in the bush in 2003.

I had nobody to help me go back to school because my sister, who was paying my school fees, was killed the day I was abducted. The rebels used the new and young recruits to kill my sister. These were inexperienced children who used clubs to beat her ‘til death. So when I returned home I thought only of very bad things like hanging myself or joining the armed forces, since I had earlier bush experience.

I received a letter from the IRC saying that I am most wanted in the IRC Kitgum office to fill out a form for education sponsorship. Since I am somebody who likes studies so much, I said to myself, "‘My God, congratulations! Congratulations!"

After filling out the form, I was enrolled at a high school in Pader district. I forgot about joining the armed forces and I started concentrating on studies as a way forward for the betterment of my life.

The IRC supported me by paying school fees and giving me a school uniform, pens, pencils, books, and a mathematical set and ruler. When I sat for my exams I passed with first marks and I was the third best performer in the Pader district despite the atrocities I saw while in captivity.

___________

Apollo works with the IRC in camps for Ugandans displaced by the conflict as a peer educator and HIV/AIDS counselor. He has been offered a place in a secondary school science program and plans to study biology, chemistry and mathematics. He says the IRC helped him overcome the trauma of his captivity and gave him hope and courage.

The IRC's ORACLE project, supported by the U.S. Department of Labor, protects children and young people from the exploitation of child labor by providing educational opportunities that help them meet their needs and goals.

Former Senator John Edwards is visiting Uganda on a humanitarian mission. From Sept. 28th - Oct. 3rd, Senator Edwards is traveling to Uganda with the International Rescue Committee. The group will look at the dire humanitarian needs of Uganda's massive displaced population, estimated at 1.5 million. The delegation will also examine the conditions facing the displaced as they begin to return home to long-neglected villages that have largely been out of humanitarian reach. I am hoping to hear about the trip upon Senator Edwards' return.

A writer named Maccabee at Daily Kos has written a diary about a cabbie he met who came from Uganda with some insightful views.

Bush: A President Securely in Denial

Bush: A President Securely in Denial

By taking strong and very wrong steps after 9/11, President Bush has sought to bury his administration's utter failure to stop the 9/11 attacks with macho rhetoric in which he runs down his fellow countrymen more than he criticizes the terrorists themselves.

Today in his wretched speech to the Reserve Officers Association in Washington D.C., he said some things that showed how much in denial he really is, if he actually believes his own words.

He said,

You do not create terrorism by fighting terrorism.

With this statement, Bush shows that he's totally in denial about the fact that we have created the kind of extremism in the Middle East and beyond that leads to hard-line, anti-West leaders being democratically elected. With the April NIE facts in front of his face, he stubbornly denies the bitter truth about the ways that the Iraq war has created the widest East/West divide seen in centuries. Worse, he lashes out at his own countrymen for facing the bare and unvarnished facts.

Iraq is not the reason the terrorists are at war against us. They're at war against us because they hate everything America stands for.

This line - the tired "they hate us for who we are" - is a very old one that only the most ignorant or stubborn of Bush supporters believe anymore. Why? Because most intelligent people see that Bush squandered the world's good will after he impulsively attacked Iraq and made a disaster of it to boot. A recent Pew study on global attitudes showed a steep incline in the percentage of residents in Middle Eastern nations who have a very low opinion of America. More of those people would support a war against us today than in 2001. So, you see, not only the terrorists hate us now. Thanks to the immoral disaster known as the Iraq war, just about every decent person hates us. If Bush was succeeding, the results would reflect more trust from average citizens in those Middle Eastern nations.

Bush said this about the NIE analysis of the threat we face from terrorists and extremists and about those who make the obvious case that, by our unjust attack and subsequent occupation of Iraq, we are clearly less secure. Bush said:

This argument buys into the enemy's propaganda that the terrorists attack us because we're provoking them. I want to remind the American citizens that we were not in Iraq on September 11th, 2001.

This is where we are required, as mentally healthy human beings who are perfectly capable of reason, to remind Bush that Iraq had no connection to 9/11. He admitted it himself, yet he's happy to score a cheap round of applause from ignorant people for stupid comments like that. A booming majority of Americans now know that there were no terrorists in Iraq on 9/11.

Bush is in total denial about where the arguments are coming from and, by his brand of deliberately insulting rhetoric, he shows that he really doesn't give a damn why they're making them. He wouldn't dare to debate the actual merits of the argument in front of any crowd, so instead he falsely asserts that those who make the argument are appeasers who fall into Osama bin Laden's trap. That's laughable, in a very sad way, when you think about who it was who actually fell into Osama bin Laden's trap - into Osama's hopes for big American attacks on Muslim nations.

Who actually fell asleep at the wheel when former President Clinton's administration soundly warned the Bush administration about a dangerous and gathering threat from al Qaeda? Who moved Richard Clarke out of the way and practically ignored his warnings for eight of the most crucial months in America's history?

When Afghanistan was the place - and Hamid Karzai was the fine leader who needed our help so badly and we had a chance to control the Taliban's extremist activity there and to capture teh mastermind behind teh 9/11 attacks on 3000 Americans, what did we do? We took our eye off the ball and attacked Iraq - a nation having nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11.

Every time he runs down his fellow countrymen for offering healthy criticism, he looks like those people that his own party leaders call "haters." Why does George W. Bush hate American Democratic voters? Why does George W. Bush hate ths majority of Americans who now believe that the war in Iraq was not worth the cost in blood and treasure?

One more look at this statment:

This argument buys into the enemy's propaganda that the terrorists attack us because we're provoking them.

We're not supposed to be "provoking them," Einstein. We're supposed to be defeating them. A terrorist couldn't touch us if they were defeated.

It's clear that Bush and his administration has no clue how to defeat terrorists while winning hearts and minds in the Muslim world...just as his administration had no clue how to protect us from the 9/11 attacks.

A Democratic president in 2008 will likely inherit the Iraq disaster from a Republican administration who left it for someone else because they failed to defeat extremism - and grew it like a field of wild weeds instead.

If Bush really believes what he's saying today, he needs some serious psychiatric help because he's in the kind of denial of which only good drugs can pull him out. Why? Because today we understand that Bush and his administration had blown off warnings for a stronger troop presence in Iraq, just like his administration blew off the blatant warnings that al Qaeda was ready to attack us on 9/11.

I'm sure you'll recall Bush, in previous speeches, telling us that the Generals would decide how many troops we needed. He led us to believe that the troops levels were satisfactory. We now know it wasn't true at all. How can we trust this person or his advisors? Historians will surely look back and see how misled and misinformed the American people have been and how wrong they were to have placed as much trust as they did in these socially sick and professionally incapable people.

Torture is at the Root of Jihad and Radicalization

Torture is at the Root of Jihad and Radicalization

Do these three Senators who have claimed to have "stood up" against George W. Bush and against torturing prisoners of war look proud of themselves now that they have passed a law that fails our nation's 217-year old high standards to refuse to copy the brutal standards of unciviled groups of thugs and murderers? When he first ran for Congress in 1982, John McCain's opponent had challenged him as an "out-of-state carpetbagger." McCain replied, "The place I've lived longest is Hanoi." That response allegedly silenced his opponent. Twenty-four years later, he has voted to rip away basic rights from America's prisoners of war. It appears that he has traded away some of his integrity and more of our Constitutional protections on the gamble that his party will look "strong." As someone who cares about the strength of our rule of law, and understanding that only through a breakdown of that rule of law could America be undone, I aver that McCain and the Rubber Stamping Republicans are not "strong" - they are "wrong."

Bob Geiger says,

...it now looks like we're going to have a law passed that, barring intervention from the courts, will leave it to George W. Bush to interpret what types of interrogation techniques violate the Geneva Conventions.

And just how scary is that?

I'll let you decide just how scary a proposition this is. I'm shivering.

From an editorial at the New York Times:

'Our democracy is the big loser.'

There are arguments with no solid moral foundations being presented by the rightwing to rationalize the abandonment of the Geneva Convention rules and the abandonment of basic human rights. Having had an Uncle who was a tortured prisoner of war and a surviving victim of the Bataan Death March who passed down pearls of wisdom to his family about the whole experience, I find that using those prisoners and their experience in support of torture and in the defense for the abandonment of the rule of law and basic morality in America is far more frightening than the threat posed by any extremists.

We may win some battles by throwing out a code of justice, but we will have lost this war and the freedom of our human souls if we have lost our moral authority.

Torture is at the root of jihad and radicalization. If we argue that giving terrorists a taste of their own medicine is a war-winner for America, than we are surely on our way to the kind of radicalization that destroys our American freedoms. It would create for us a whole new brand of American jihadists. That is not the America that I wish to see us become, and I would wager that the majority of justices on our U.S. Supreme Court would agree with me on that.

We have rightwing intellectuals getting bitterly partisan about some of our current intelligence community led by John Negroponte:

"Some, at least, of our intelligence experts are antiwar moonbats.."

and turning out little gems of "wisdom" like this one:

The NIE doesn’t say that the war in Iraq is counterproductive but that must be what a significant part of our intelligence apparatus believes.

..and making incredibly light of the rational analysis of the best information contained in the NIE:

"The NIE doesn’t say that the war in Iraq is an impediment to our war on terror. It‘s like a palm reading, it doesn’t really say anything at all."

Judging from what we now know about what the "palm readers" of the rightwing "read into" the NIE in October of 2002 about WMD in Iraq, I think it's quite bold of them to judge harshly about the common sense analysis of more recent NIEs.

Senator who uses the experience of a prisoner of war to warn American that we risk losing the war of ideas and increasing the divide between East and West, doing irreparable harm to America and the world in ways the rightwingers who are hyperfocusing on what they call "Islamofascists" are obviously not thinking clearly about for all their irrational anger and dependence on public fear to maintain a grip on power. Watch:



Human rights activist Vladimir Bukovsky was tortured for nearly twelve years in Soviet prisons. Last December, he wrote a WaPo op-ed titled "Torture's Long Shadow." In it, he relied upon his knowledge gained by his unfortunate experience to warn us against "reinventing the wheel" on the legal issue of torture:

".. if Vice President Cheney is right and that some "cruel, inhumane or degrading" treatment of captives is a necessary tool for winning the war on terrorism, then the war is lost already."

We are failing our own high standards in a decision by a one-sided and wrong-minded Congress that will soon have us back in the Supreme Court where this nightmare of a bill will surely be undone.

Keith Olbermann Video Shows Bush Admin Actions Pre-9/11

Keith Olbermann Video Shows Bush Admin Actions Pre-9/11
At Raw Story David Edwards has provided us with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann's fantastic video of the Bush administration's pre-9/11 actions and failures. A transcript is also provided. Don't miss it. Keith and staff have done a thorough job.

At American Street, Barbara O'Brien has wisely gathered a collection of selected excerpts from writings and coverage over the past few years that convinces her that "every ball that could have been dropped, was dropped" by he Bush administration pre 9-11:

I have never said that President Clinton was blameless, or that there wasn’t more he could have done. But the elevation of the hapless and clueless George W. Bush into some kind of Demigod of National Strength has got to be one of the most pathological events in American history. For generations historians will be looking back on our little era and asking, “How could so many people have been so blind?”

..and I'd be remiss if I didn't include Barbara's advice for Democrats:

I think the time is ripe for Democrats to pull a Karl Rove and mount an attack directly on Bush’s alleged “strength.” It’s past time to dismantle the Big Lie that George W. Bush is an effective leader against terrorism.

Whatever else happens, please help keep this issue out in the light. Don’t let the VRWC cover it up again. Don’t let the lies continue.