It began yesterday and kept on rolling when I was directed to yet another vile spewing Republican anti-veteran blog.
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I want to follow up on the "Dumb Terrorists" story from yesterday, and an exchange I had with Bagley of all people in the comments thread from yesterday. Bagley's point, as I understand it, was that these types of investigations and prosecutions are just as valuable if they stop dummies like these guys because it may prevent killings. Fair enough, but five years after 9/11, billions of dollars wasted and my privacy thrashed, all in the name of protecting me from terrorists here at home, I was hoping for a little more from our government tha[n] entrapping morons whose only link to Al Qaeda was through federal informants and agents who lied to them. We admitted as much yesterday when the Justice Department stated they stopped this case as soon as they had enough to prosecute these guys not for actually being tied to Al Qaeda, (which they weren't except for our phony informant) but for being stupid and sounding like they were wannabes. [my em]
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TVNewser is reporting scuttlebutt that the Fox News Channel is prepping a satiric news show to compete with Comedy Central's "The Daily Show, with Jon Stewart." According to the TV news blog on the Media Bistro website, the host of the show is radio talk show host and professional Clinton-hater, Laura Ingraham:
But seriously, to be a conservative means being born missing a funny bone, a handicap that renders them unable to perceive irony. Besides, as defenders of the status quo, it is the role of the rightwing to be the targets of satire. When they try to turn it around and take aim at the liberal establishment, they inevitably start taking potshots at minority groups or women, opening them up to charges of racism, homophobia and paternalism. As comedy goes, they might get away with it - if only it were funny.
Time will only tell whether Laura Ingraham is our next Jon Stewart - or just another Tucker Carlson flaming out in slo-mo on cable news.
Most of the mainstream media ignored the important news and fell for the bait the Bushstapo threw them. It was a brilliant day for media manipulation and spin for Karl Rove.
Yesterday two major news developments emerged. The important one was that the CIA has spied upon millions of financial transactions, which is outrageous evidence of further abuses of power by the Bush administration. They are throwing the constitution down the toilet.
But Bush's team masterfully played the media, almost totally wiping the real story off the front pages, dropping it to minor news on TV, by electing to arrest, using major entrapments, a group of silly, incompetent misfits, who might have had fantasies of being terrorists.
The reason this ragtag band of bozos was arrested was because the Bush administration needed a cover for the real news that was leaked, to the great consternation of Dick Cheney, that Bush and his people were doing even more spying in another area of our lives.
If we look at the terrorists who the Bush administration has arrested and prosecuted so far, they have two characteristics in common; most are eventually released for lack of an iota of evidence, and the ones who are held are idiots or nut jobs-- not a hardened, tough, serious terrorist among them-- NOT ONE!!
Tragically, these "terrorists" are being used by the Bushstapo to act as a foil for their further assaults on the constitution and American rights to privacy. This "terrorist arrest" was massively orchestrated with the mainstream media, with talking head experts on Terrorism jumping through hoops to describe how safe the targets are, how brilliant the arrest was.
What then, is the "more" aspect of America's latest terror-scare? The more aspect is to convince Americans that their government really, really, really needs to spy on them. Never mind the country is overflowing with these bungling buffoon-type -- if not outright mentally ill -- anti-government groups. Never mind that this particular group of people couldn't blow their noses if their brains were nuclear warheads -- be AFRAID America! Domestic terrorists lurk behind EVERY corner. Or, in this case, and for all the world to see, stand guard wearing ninja outfits.
All this, of course, fits in with the Rove election-year 2006 game plan: America and all Americans need to be AFRAID -- VERY AFRAID! The new big threat to their security isn't the guy Bush can't catch -- Usama bin-Laden and his al-Qaeda terror network -- because he is bogged down in Iraq, while the Taliban moves to retake Afghanistan. No, the REAL threat to EVERY American is a group of seven seemingly mentally ill and highly delusional "homegrown" terrorists and others just like them. People so simpleminded, unlike bin-Laden, that Bush and Rove can manufacture the ways and means to capture them.
The timing of this story, too, just happens to come as the administration has, again, been caught illegally infringing on civil liberties. This time -- spying on the peoples financial dealings.
In its entirety America, that is what this latest terror-scare is all about. Election year politics to be sure, but more than that: An excuse to justify you surrendering more of your civil liberties. Surrender them now, so Bush and Rove can keep you safe from seven, by all indications, mentally ill people in Miami. Seven people who -- yes, all seven of them -- were going to invade America through a ground invasion.
AUSTIN -- Independent gubernatorial candidates Kinky Friedman and Carole Keeton Strayhorn submitted enough voter signatures to get their names on the Nov. 7 ballot, the Texas secretary of state announced Thursday.
With the certification of 137,154 signatures for Friedman and 108,512 for Strayhorn, the race for governor begins in earnest. The independent candidates needed 45,540 signatures apiece to appear on the ballot with incumbent Republican Rick Perry, Democrat Chris Bell and Libertarian James Werner.
Friedman said that Texans are fed up with Republicans and Democrats.
"Not one but two viable independent candidates have made the ballot for the first time in nearly 150 years," said Friedman, an author and country western singer. "This tells us what we've long suspected: the two-party system has failed our state."
"We have a guy [Friedman] who is a trained comic, and who actually gives liberties to everybody else," said Kronberg, editor of the online Quorum Report. "Because Kinky is so quick to quip, suddenly everybody else has to be more graphic and more titillating. ... But Kinky is always going to be more scandalous and more outrageous."
Right-wing pundit Ann Coulter appeared on Fox News this afternoon to discuss the war in Iraq. Coulter derided the lawmakers who have called for a redeployment strategy from Iraq, questioning whether "FDR [had] to deal with this during World War II." She argued that the only type of politician she "admires" is someone like Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) because he "does want to defend America and fight the war on terrorism." Lieberman has argued "our troops must stay" in Iraq.
These are not the stereotypical librarians of the olden days, the ones who were a bit reserved but ready with a glare for anyone talking too loudly.
Instead, the employees of the Seattle Public Library have passed a resolution through their local union calling for President Bush to resign or be impeached because of the USA Patriot Act, the Iraq war and a host of other issues.
It's a resolution that doesn't mince words, and it will be introduced at the annual conference of the American Library Association that begins today in New Orleans.
The position to take is that it's not America's war at all. The issue is that it's George Bush's war. His own, personal, private obsession.
So much so that he was scheming and plotting for years, even before 9/11, to have that war. Then, after 9/11, he lied and misled us, he used members of his administration to lie and mislead, in order to convince both the congress and the American people to have that war.
Once he had the war, he and his people planned it ineptly and executed it disastrously.
It's his ineptitude and his disaster.
The Republicans will try, as they have in the past, to claim that it's everyone's war. That the Senate and House voted for it.
Fact #1 is that's not literally true. The war powers bill voted to allow the president to go to war without coming back to them if he determined that Saddam was an actual threat and there was no way short of invasion to deter that threat. There were ways. He didn't employ them. He avoided them. And went to war instead.
Fact #2 is they did so under false pretenses.
It's George Bush's war. It's not America's.
If he can win it, great. So far, George Bush has been losing it. That's right, so far George Bush has been losing George Bush's war. Not the army, not the liberals, not the media. Like Frank Sinatra, he got to do it his way.
After we accept that it was his war -- and that he lost it -- then America, led by someone better, can step forward and apologize on his behalf.
That's not cutting and running. That's America, taking the high road, to make up for someone else's mistake.
The last time New Haven saw Ned Lamont, he was rousing a ballroom of blogheads at the Omni Hotel. In the much quieter setting of a Chapel Street bookstore Wednesday, the candidate for U.S. Senate joined author David Sirota in an effort to take back the word "mainstream" from incumbent Sen. Joe Lieberman.
Afterward, Ned fled (to later return), Sirota sold books, and campaign staffers sold the connection between the book's call and Ned's answer. "David's book helped define the driving issue of this campaign: The importance of a change agent being elected," said campaign chief Tom Swan.
In Hungary on Thursday, President Bush gave a speech comparing the 1956 Hungarian Revolution with his war in Iraq. Few people have accused Bush of knowing much about history, but one might have hoped his writers would have at least looked up the revolt on the internet before making such an absurd analogy. Followed through, Bush is actually advocating the insurgency against our troops.
(Miami -WABC, June 22, 2006) - A federal law enforcement official said seven people were arrested Thursday night in connection with a plot to attack the Sears Tower in Chicago as well as other buildings in the United States, including an FBI office in Miami.
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Why can't our president learn how to respectfully refer to foreign dignitaries in public?! Honestly! If I were tasked with introducing, or even speaking about Bush, in a public appearance, in his presence, I would refer to him by his proper and appropriate title, no matter how much I wanted to call him a stupid fucking jackass!
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At the risk of destroying my own spirit, I too would introduce that insufferable manchild as "The President of the United States" in public -- assuming there was no way I could escape performing the task...
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The national science academies of 67 countries warned parents and teachers to ensure that they did not undermine the teaching of evolution or allow children to be taught that the world was created in six days.
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Yeah, just forget that global warming nonsense, now that the National Research Council has concluded that the Earth is the warmest it has been in at least 400 years. The council also slapped down industry-subsidized skeptics of global warming, and stated that much of the recent warming is the result of human activity, something that Cowboy George still disbelieves to this day, thinking instead that Mother Nature has been warming the globe. [my em]
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Sen Rick Santorum (R-Pa) and Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) held a press conference yesterday to announce that weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq, only to have their claims flatly disavowed by the U.S. Department of Defense.
Santorum and Hoekstra were talking about the degraded and inoperable remnants of Saddam's pre-1991 chemical weapons program that are turning up at various sites around Iraq. Their allegations are based on the U.S. government's own Iraq Survey Group. The very same report convinced President Bush that Iraq did not have WMD.
The DOD flatly disavowed the Congressmen's WMD claims. ThinkProgress: "Fox News' Jim Angle contacted the Defense Department who quickly disavowed Santorum and Hoekstra's claims. A Defense Department official told Angle flatly that the munitions hyped by Santorum and Hoekstra are "not the WMD's for which this country went to war."
The U.S. Army, aiming to make its recruiting goals amid the Iraq war, raised its maximum enlistment age by another two years Wednesday.
People can now volunteer to serve in the active-duty Army or the part-time Army Reserve and National Guard up to their 42nd birthday, officials said.
Older recruits must pass the same physical standards and medical examination as younger ones, the Army said. However, those between 40 and 42 will face additional cardiovascular screening, Bobick said.
Every Democratic legislator should be, if necessary, electro-shock trained to never use the term "war" to describe the disaster in Iraq. It's an occupation, a horror story, a testimony to vast incompetence and failed leadership.
And let's dump the "war on terrorism" language too. This language, invented by right wing language gurus, is misleading and only causes us to pursue useless efforts.
You can fight terrorism. You can fight drug abuse. You can put together resources to fight cancer. But when it comes to groups spread across the the planet, in many countries, you can't declare war. You might have skirmishes. But you need to think of different kinds of strategies, more like the ones used to take on organized crime-- the Mafia, Columbian drug smugglers.
The stupid, politically motivated mislabelling of the problem as a war has caused us to waste thousands of US lives tens of thousands of Iraqi lives and hundreds of billions of dollars. Bush and his rubber-stamp republican liars and fools (one, the other or both) have idiotically taken us down a path that has no hope of resolving the problem of terrorism.
Democrats who gullibly continue to use the languaging that the Republican spinmeisters crafted to frame things to meet their political needs are being duped and helping the Republicans. The Democrats must take control of the language "war." They must refuse to respond to journalist questions that use that framing.
Let the media attend. Let them learn and understand how the right wing language experts have been using them, so they can tell the difference between being real reporters and media dupes of the right wing. Some media people will continue to use the right wing "language" since they're part of the right wing echo chamber team. Some will see what's really going on and start functioning as real, independent journalists. It will be interesting to see which "journalists" actually "get it."
WASHINGTON - The Falun Gong follower who heckled Chinese President Hu Jintao at a White House ceremony has reached a deal with prosecutors under which all charges against her will be dropped, her attorney announced Wednesday.
Wang Wenyi faced a misdemeanor charge of intimidating, coercing, threatening and harassing a foreign official for interrupting the April 20 event in which President Bush welcomed Hu to the White House. She could have faced six months in jail and a $5,000 fine.
Wang, 47, said she is prohibited from confronting any foreign officials over the next year. The case will be continued until then, and if she has not committed any felonies - including confronting foreign officials - the charges will be dropped, said Channing Phillips, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office.
Hamas has made a major political climbdown by agreeing to sections of a document that recognise Israel's right to exist and a negotiated two-state solution, according to Palestinian leaders.
NASA managers have rejected last-ditch pleas from their top safety officer and chief engineer to scrap next month's shuttle launch, saying that they will press ahead despite potentially catastrophic risks.
The head of the US space agency, Dr Michael Griffin, overruled warnings that there was a "relatively high" chance the shuttle's external fuel tank could shed some of its solid foam coating when it launches on 1 July, carrying seven crew including Briton Piers Sellers, an Edinburgh University graduate.
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Around 1,000 fans arrived for the Ivory Coast tie in their traditional bright orange trousers - but bearing the logo and name of a Dutch brewery.
To protect the rights of the official beer they were denied entry, so the male fans promptly removed the trousers and watched the game in underpants.
EDINBURG - Political consultant and ad producer Carey Lee Cramer is expected to testify today defending himself against charges he sexually molested two young girls.
Cramer, who gained national notoriety with an anti-Al Gore commercial in 2000, is facing several counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child.
Cramer's commercial showed a young girl picking daisy petals and ends with a nuclear blast, a remake of a 1964 ad by Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson's campaign against Republican Barry Goldwater. Cramer's ad made national news, though he refused to identify who financed the commercial. One of the girls in the ad stands as his accuser now.
Every time the media - or a Democrat - uses the phrase "War in Iraq" they are promoting one of Karl Rove's most potent Republican Party frames.
There is no longer a war against Iraq.
Our military machine is tremendously good at fighting wars - blowing up infrastructure, killing opposing armies, and toppling governments. We did that successfully in Iraq, in a matter of a few weeks. We destroyed their army, wiped out their air defenses, devastated their Republican Guard, seized their capitol, arrested their leaders, and took control of their government. We won the war. It's over.
What we have now is an occupation of Iraq.
The distinction between "war" and "occupation" is politically critical for 2006 because wars can be won or lost, but occupations most honorably end by redeployments.
If Democrats can succeed over the next three months in making it clear to average Americans that the "War In Iraq" ended in 2003, and that we're now engaged in an "Occupation Of Iraq," then Democratic suggestions to end or greatly diminish the occupation will take on a resonance and cogency that will both help them in an election year, and help to bring our soldiers to safety and Iraq to stability.
On the other hand, if Democrats are perceived as pushing for America to "lose the war in Iraq," they will be vilified and damned by Republicans and many swing voters, and could thus lose big in 2006.
If the Democrats don't shift the discussion from "war" to "occupation," the Republicans will succeed in painting them as being "in favor of losing a war," which will destroy their electoral possibilities.
Instead, every time a Republican or a member of the press uses the Rove slogan "War in Iraq," Democrats need to correct them by saying, "You mean the Occupation of Iraq..."
SAN FRANCISCO. June 20, 2006 - Two California soldiers shot to death in Iraq were murdered by Iraqi civil-defense officers patrolling with them, military investigators have found.
The deaths of Army Spc. Patrick R. McCaffrey Sr. and 1st Lt. Andre D. Tyson were originally attributed to an ambush during a patrol near Balad, Iraq, on June 22, 2004.
But the Army's Criminal Investigation Division found that one or more of the Iraqis attached to the American soldiers on patrol fired at them, a military official said Tuesday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the military did not plan to release the report until Wednesday.
Soldiers who witnessed the attack have told her that two Iraqi patrolmen opened fire on her son's unit. The witnesses also said a third gunman simultaneously drove up to the American unit in a van, climbed onto the vehicle and fired at the Americans, she said.
"Nothing is clear. Nothing is clear," she said. Her son was shot eight times by bullets of various calibers, some of which penetrated his body armor, she said. She believes he bled to death.
"I really want this story to come out; I want people to know what happened to my son," she said. "There is no doubt to me that this (ambushes by attached Iraqi units) is still happening to soldiers today, but our chain of command is awfully reckless; they don't seem to give a damn about what's happening to soldiers."
PRESS RELEASE -- Secretary of the Air Force, Office of Public Affairs
Release No. 010606
June 20,2006
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Because of historical lineage, the 16th Special Operations Wing flag will transition to Cannon, and Hurlburt Field will regain its designation as the 1st Special Operations Wing.
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Hurlburt Field will continue as the headquarters of Air Force Special Operations Command and will also be the home of the 1st Special Operations Wing.
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... noting that three of the top potential Republican candidates are admitted adulterers...
TOKYO, June 20 -- Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi announced today that he will withdraw 550 troops from Iraq, ending a landmark mission that became Tokyo's largest military-related operation since World War II.
On Monday, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki announced that Iraqi troops would take over security next month around the southern city of Samawah, where the Japanese and other forces are stationed. Officials here have repeatedly said that the Japanese -- whose withdrawal has been anticipated for months -- had been awaiting that decision before finalizing withdrawal plans.
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Kerry: No, what it does is provide the only opportunity for success. Stay the course is not a plan. And what this administration wants is to have a fake debate, as usual. There, there, you hear the drumbeat on every television show from every commentator, cut and run, cut and run, cut and run, cut and run. That's their phrase.
They've found their three words, they love to do that, and they're gonna try to make the elections in November a choice between "cut and run" or "stay the course." That's not the choice. My plan is not "cut and run." Their plan is "lie and die." And that's what they're doing...Our plan is very simple. It's re-deploy to win the war on terror. Change to succeed...
At least the battle lines are drawn and clear. It's Jack Murtha vs. Karl Rove. They are the front men who represent the moral and political choices the American people will make in the 2006 elections.
Pennsylvania congressman Murtha is an authentic and sincere man who knows the horrors of war firsthand. The former Marine put his own life at risk in Vietnam, where he was wounded and decorated. Murtha is calling for a new course in Iraq, a change in direction that will save the lives of countless Iraqis and American troops.
Rove is the supreme cynic, the total utilitarian. He believes in nothing and craves only power. Rove is nakedly amoral, a perfect reflection of the men he serves. When the Vietnam War came his way, Rove chose to duck and dodge, cut and run. He is a physical coward who shamelessly uses the lives of Americans dying in Iraq to slur his political opponents.
We are seeing a dress rehearsal of the Busheviks' fall campaign, another grab-bag of lies. They will do anything to retain control of Congress as they continue on the path of unobstructed destruction of the ideals our nation once stood for.
These serial criminals and career incompetents fear the very thought of one house of Congress with subpoena powers that would compel them to testify under oath. The vile Rove knows George W. Bush's presidency, his ultimate political dirty trick, will be exposed as the corrupt fraud it is.
No presidency in memory has had such a compliant, loyal and acquiescent bunch of lap dogs in Congress. The White House raids the Treasury and gives the lard-ass Republicans on Capitol Hill all the pork-barrel projects they want. In return, GOP lawmakers let the White House get away with murder -- literally.
During the Vietnam War, Rove managed to get a series of student deferments as he jumped from college to college confusing the local draft boards. Rove was usually working on political campaigns and not attending classes as a full-time student as his deferments required. He dodged the draft, but never got a degree. Rove did, however, become a master of deception.
Jack Murtha is an honest, decent man who has served his country honorably as a Marine and member of Congress. He cares deeply about our troops and knows the futility of the conflict in Iraq, which can never be won militarily.
Karl Rove believes in fear and smear. He cares nothing about the morality of the war and the fate of those fighting there. He just wants to win in November.
The American people have a clear choice on the war and our nation's future: Jack Murtha or Karl Rove.
But unlike Abu Ghraib, where low-level enlisted personnel were allowed to take the fall, it is vital that we understand that what happened in Haditha, while certainly an atrocity for which the troops involved bear responsibility, was an overarching failure of leadership that goes all the way to the Oval Office.
Which suggests a significant lack of leadership on the part of officers on the ground and, as I think many Americans now believe, at the Defense Department going all the way to the top of the food chain with Donald Rumsfeld. Somehow these Marines thought it had suddenly become a free-for-all, where all bets were off and all rules of conduct were suspended. Ultimately, accountability for that can only be assigned to people in positions of leadership.
Then there's the White House, the Republican-controlled Congress and the Defense Department who started this war, went into it without a plan to win the peace and are responsible for creating a new generation of troops who have endured multiple deployments and undoubtedly operate with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) now and will for a long time to come.
he Republican Congress talks a lot about supporting the troops but has done little to provide the massive funding necessary for the untold number of PTSD cases we will have in our country for a generation. The second part of that GOP one-two punch, is that they've done zero to bring the White House back to reality and to get our troops the hell out of there so we can avoid having young men and women, stretched to the limit on their third and fourth tours in combat. Indeed, they just voted in principle last week to keep our troops there indefinitely.
There is indeed a problem in our military -- but it goes from the top down, not the other way around. It comes from an administration that likes to use men and women in uniform for Bush's public-relations stunt du jour, who started this war on a whim, who offer nothing but "stay the course" to our 130,000 boots on the ground and who appear to advocate keeping our honorable, but worn-out troops in Iraq forever.
The truth is, if George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld wanted to show a fraction of the honor they expect from our troops, they would all do the right thing -- and resign.
"Frontline" delivers a devastating look tonight at the efforts of Vice President Dick Cheney to gain control of the war on terror after 9/11. In doing so, the show purports, he compromised the integrity of America's intelligence system.
To many, Cheney is the dark side of the Bush administration, and this program will only cement that judgment. "Frontline" chronicles the brutal campaign by two consummate political in-fighters -- Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld -- to decimate the CIA, politically emasculate Secretary of State Colin Powell, and construct a near-limitless concept of executive power during war. While many of these strands are familiar, they have not been assembled as effectively before on television to present a coherent picture of what happened after 9/11.
"The Dark Side" is, in a sense, CIA payback for its treatment. The program is dominated by legions of former CIA officers, some of whom left over the agency's treatment by the White House, and they detail what they view as Cheney's efforts to find the intelligence to fit the war he wanted against Saddam. Virtually no one, in contrast, appears from the Cheney-Rumsfeld camp to defend the two men's actions.
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Russert: If your analysis is not correct, and we're not treated as liberators, but as conquerors, and the Iraqis begin to resist, particularly in Baghdad, do you think the American people are prepared for a long, costly, and bloody battle with significant American casualties?
Cheney: Well, I don't think it's likely to unfold that way, Tim, because I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators.
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Chances are, maybe even by the time you read this, the two American soldiers, captured by the Mujahideen Shura Council in Iraq, will be dead, probably in some horrible way, probably with their bodies dumped like all the horribly murdered Iraqis in the blood and gore-strewn landscape that are the markers of Iraqi liberation...
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What if we get pictures of the soldiers, nude, cowering, screaming in a corner, shitting themselves on the filthy floors of a makeshift cell, as their captors hold snarling dogs on leashes just out of bite range of the soldiers?
What if we learn that their captors decide that the soldiers can offer intelligence that can be of use to al-Qaeda and, in order to get that information, the captors put the nude soldiers into rooms that are heated to hellish temperatures, followed by rooms that are impossibly cold with colder water tossed onto them? What if the soldiers are made to stand for days on end? Put into stress positions that fuck up their muscles and limbs? Denied sleep? Had loud music played into their cells? Kept in isolation and fed bread and water for days, weeks on end?
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And what about the good right-wing punditry? Would Rush Limbaugh look at the photos of the nude, cowering Americans and say it looks like fraternity hazing or some such shit? Would others dismiss it as a media fabrication? Or would they just pathetically overlook everything done in our American names to Iraqis, Afghanis, and others, calling madly for the heads of the captors, not even thinking about the irony of such a statement?
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In case you haven't noticed, modern American politics is marked by vicious partisanship, with the great bulk of the viciousness coming from the right. It's clear that the Republican plan for the 2006 election is, once again, to question Democrats' patriotism.
So what's our bitter partisan divide really about? In two words: class warfare. [...]
But if the real source of today's bitter partisanship is a Republican move to the right on economic issues, why have the last three elections been dominated by talk of terrorism, with a bit of religion on the side? Because a party whose economic policies favor a narrow elite needs to focus the public's attention elsewhere. And there's no better way to do that than accusing the other party of being unpatriotic and godless.
Thus in 2004, President Bush basically ran as America's defender against gay married terrorists. He waited until after the election to reveal that what he really wanted to do was privatize Social Security.
So what should we do about all this? I won't offer the Democrats advice right now, except to say that tough talk on national security and affirmations of personal faith won't help: the other side will smear you anyway.
But I would like to offer some advice to my fellow pundits: facereality. There are some commentators who long for the bipartisan days of yore, and flock eagerly to any politician who looks "centrist." But there isn't any center in modern American politics. And the center won't return until we have a new New Deal, and rebuild our middle class.
Is the "Khalilzad Cable", the full text of which was published by the WaPo today, the present war's equivalent of the Vietnam War's "Pentagon Papers"?
The "Khalilzad cable", which was sent from Viceroy Khalilzad to Secretary of State Condi Rice just "hours" before the surprise trip that Bush made to Baghdad on June 12, reveals how stunningly unsuccessful all the US's efforts to stabilize Iraq and build effective, pro-US new security forces there have been. Equally significantly, it also reveals the degree to which Zal Khalilzad, the US Viceroy in Baghdad, is aware of this situation-- despite all of Bush's earnest public avowals that things are going ahead very well in Iraq.
That's why it deserves to have the same impact within the US policy elite that the Pentagon Papers had in their day.
So okay, at the next press briefing at the White House or the State Department, let's hear some of those reporters asking the Prez, or Condi, or their flaks: "So really, how are things going in Baghdad? And do you judge that Ambassador Khalilzad is an experienced and well-informed judge of the situation there?"
My judgment from all the above-- assuming the cable as leaked and published is genuine (and I assume the WaPo would have done much to authenticate it before they published it)-- is that things are even more precarious for the US position in Iraq than I had previously thought... It seems to me that Khalilzad and his staff there are hanging on by a hair. And what's more, he seems to understand this-- and to be eager to warn Condi about just how bad things are... And this, apparently even after he'd gotten the good news about the killing of Zarqawi and Maliki's completion of forming his government...
Poll: Americans' Global Image Slips Again
We now rank lower than Libya, but higher than North Korea.
Documents Found With Zarqawi Vindicate Bush
Praise his handling of Iraq, economy, Katrina, Texas Rangers, Harken Energy.
Report: Seventeen Glasses of Beer a Day May Prevent Prostate Cancer
And standing up.
The February Le Moyne College/Zogby International survey of U.S. troops serving in Iraq found that 72 percent of them thought the United States end its operations in that country by the end of 2006.
On the day when the 2,500th American died in the Iraq quagmire, the Senate was asked to approve the sentiment of the troops who say that it is time for them to get out of the middle of a foreign civil war.
The vast majority of senators decided to do the bidding of the president who deceived them about the "case" for war and who then played politics with national security and the lives of the young men and women who wear the uniform of the United States.
Only six members of the chamber charged with serving as the ultimate check and balance on the fools' missions of failed presidents chose to support the troops. Boxer, Byrd, Feingold, Harkin, Kennedy and Kerry will, of course, be vilified by Rove regenerated attack machine for having done so. It will be suggested that they sent the wrong message to the troops by voting as they did.
At the end of the day on which the American death toll topped 2,500, however, the only message the six senators sent to the troops was this: We agree with you.
Is the badly outnumbered American expeditionary force in Iraq in trouble? Is it in danger of being trapped? With all our firepower, are we looking at the possibility of some kind of a military defeat?
We could be moving toward an American Dunkirk. In 1940 the defeated British Army in Belgium was driven back by the Germans to the French seacoast city of Dunkirk, where it had to abandon its equipment and escape across the English Channel on a fleet of civilian vessels, fishing smacks, yachts, small boats, anything and everything that could float and carry the defeated and wounded army to safety.
Obviously, our forces in Iraq will not be defeated in open battle by an opposing army as happened in 1940, but there is more than one way to stumble into a military disaster. Fragmented reports out of Iraq suggest we may be on our way to finding one of them. Defeat can come from overused troops. It does not help that one by one, the remaining members of the Coalition of the Willing give every appearance of sneaking out of town.
The Internet is alive with pessimistic stories and opinions about what may be happening, one of which informs its readers, "Military commanders in the field in Iraq admit in private reports to the Pentagon the war 'is lost' and that the U.S. military is unable to stem the mounting violence killing 1,000 Iraqi civilians a month. Even worse, they report the massacre of Iraqi civilians at Haditha is 'just the tip of the iceberg' with overstressed, out-of-control American soldiers pushed beyond the breaking point both physically and mentally."
The shortage of troops, which three years ago was a restraining factor, has become a potential disaster, with the ever-rising level of hostility to the American presence. To stay the course, to win, to realize our objectives, we need a half-million soldiers to pacify that country. If the force levels remain the same for another year and a half, this small, exhausted and overused American force may become so unglued that staying in Iraq will be come impossible. There may be no choice but retreat.
A half-million pair of boots on the ground can only be gotten by conscription. The chances of reactivating the draft for Iraq are nil. If our political leaders have to choose between a new conscription and risking a defeat, there is no question about what they will do.
Air evacuation would mean abandoning billions of dollars of equipment. There is no seaport troops could get to, so the only way out of Iraq would be that same desert highway to Kuwait where fifteen years ago the American Air Force destroyed Saddam Hussein's army.
After slashing the city's anti-terrorism funds, Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff now apparently thinks angry letters from New Yorkers are the real safety threat.
When a Daily News reporter attempted to deliver scores of messages protesting the cuts to Chertoff's Washington office, he was promptly turned away.
The letters, faxes and printed e-mails "would put all the employees here, including the secretary, at risk," said a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman when the delivery was attempted Friday.
She cited the 2001 scare caused by anthrax-laced letters.
Chertoff was not in any immediate danger. He was safe in a Moscow hotel during an official visit.
It's almost dead solid meteorological summer and the crossing of the solstice seems to have inaugurated a season of good news/bad news for George W Bush, the Democrats, Iraq, you, me, pretty much everybody. Allow me to illustrate.
The good news is we've uncovered a new tactic of Al Qaeda: asymmetrical warfare. The bad news is the three guys at Guantanamo Bay who introduced it aren't able to tell us where to send the royalty checks.
The good news is Abu Musag Al Zarkawi is dead. The bad news is 72 virgins in heaven just filed a restraining order.
The good news is Michael Chertoff has determined New York City is without any national monuments and therefore safe from terrorism. The bad news is Michael Chertoff gets to determine anything.
The good news is failure is not an option. The bad news is it's a factory installed standard feature.
The good news is President Bush got to look Nouri Al Maliki eye to eye. The bad news is Nouri Al Maliki has to sleep with a chicken foot under his pillow to counter the curse of the evil eye.
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I worry about people who think like this coming back into society. That kind of thing cannot be considered gallantry on the battle field. It's ugly and dirty and ultimately is going to blow back on some of these guys. I hope the Republicans are prepared to spend as much on VA mental health as they've spent filling their right wing cronies' bank accounts because a lot of these guys are going to need help. Our troops are in danger of losing their humanity in a war being fought for bogus political reasons. Some of them are going to have a hard time living with that.
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It's a good deal for senior ground commanders, who get career boosts by dint of assignment to the war zone that used to be a relatively peaceful country, ruled by a dictator whose fangs had been pulled by 12 years of sanctions and UN weapons inspections. For the younger ground commanders at company level, and the EM [enlisted men], of course, it's just toughski shitski, so suck it up, troop.
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