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A Conservative on "Inaugurating Endless War" ...

01.26.05 (5:01 am) [edit]

Where Woodrow Wilson was going to make the world safe for democracy, George W. Bush is going him one better. President Bush is going to make the whole world democratic. As he declared in his inaugural address, http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPO... our "great objective" is "ending tyranny" on earth.

And how does the president propose to achieve it?

"[i]So, it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world[/i]."

The president is here asserting a unilateral American right to interfere in the internal affairs of every nation on earth, without regard to whether these nations have threatened us or attacked us. Their domestic politics are now our concern, because if they are not democratic, we are not secure.

Let it be said: This is a formula for endless collisions between this nation and every autocratic regime on earth and must inevitably lead to endless wars. And wars are the death of republics.

President Bush also plans to badger and hector foreign leaders on the progress they are making, or failing to make, in attaining U.S. standards of liberty and freedom:

"[i]We will persistently clarify the choice before every ruler and nation: The moral choice between oppression, which is always wrong, and freedom, which is eternally right. ... We will encourage reform in other governments by making clear that success in our relations will require the decent treatment of their own peoples[/i]. ..."

One awaits with anticipation the next visit of the Saudi crown prince. And as there are at least 50 autocracies or tyrannies in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, questions arise.

If President Musharraf refuses to yield dictatorial powers, will Bush sanction Pakistan, and risk his overthrow and the transfer of his nuclear weapons to pro-Taliban generals sympathetic to al-Qaeda?

If Beijing declares its treatment of dissidents to be none of Bush's business, will Bush impose sanctions and enrage a regime ruling 1.3 billion people with whom we have $200 billion in annual trade?

When a Chinese fighter crashed a U.S. reconnaissance plane and Beijing held its crew hostage, Bush meekly apologized. Now, he's going to take these xenophobic Chinese communists to the woodshed?

If President Putin tells Bush the oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky will stay in prison and he will decide how elections are run in Russia, what is Bush going to do? Isolate him and drive Russia into the arms of China, as we have already done with our sanctions on Burma?

If the Saudis reject democracy, are we going to stop buying their oil? Somewhere, Osama is praying that Bush will undermine the Saudi monarchy, as another democracy-worshiper, Jimmy Carter, helped to undermine the Shah – after whom we got the Ayatollah.

President Bush is championing a policy of interventionism in the internal affairs of every nation on earth. But did we not learn from 9/11 that intervention is not a cure for terrorism, it is the cause of terrorism?

Clearly, the president does not understand this, or believe it. For in his inaugural, he describes 9/11 as the day "when freedom came under attack." But Osama bin Laden did not dispatch his fanatics to ram planes into the World Trade Center because he hated our Bill of Rights. He did it because he hates our presence and our policies in the Middle East.

President Bush says we have no other choice than to end tyranny on earth because the "survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands." But this is ahistorical.

The world has almost always been a cesspool of despotisms, but America has always been free. We have retained our liberty by following the counsel of Washington and staying out of foreign wars that were not America's wars. It has been when we intervened in wars where our vital interests were not imperiled – crushing the Philippine insurrection, World War I, invading Iraq – that America has come to grief.

Occupying the Philippines led us to intervention in Asia, war with Japan and, soon after, wars to defend the South Korean and Indochinese remnants of the Japanese empire. Wilson's war gave us the Versailles peace treaty that tore a defeated Germany apart and imposed unpayable debts on her people, leading directly to Hitler.

The invasion of Iraq has reaped a harvest of hatred in the Arab world, cost us 10,000 dead and wounded and $200 billion, and created a new training ground and haven for terrorists to replace the one we cleaned out in Afghanistan.

In declaring it to be America's mission in the world to end tyranny on earth, President Bush is launching a crusade even more ambitious and utopian than was Wilson's. His crusade, too, will end, as Wilson's did, in disillusionment for him and tragedy for his country.

[b]By Patrick J. Buchanan[/b], http://www.antiwar.com/pat/?a...

Climate Change: Countdown to Global Catastrophe

01.25.05 (5:12 am) [edit]

[b]Report warns point of no return may be reached in 10 years, leading to droughts, agricultural failure and water shortages[/b]

The global warming danger threshold for the world is clearly marked for the first time in an international report to be published tomorrow - and the bad news is, the world has nearly reached it already.

The countdown to climate-change catastrophe is spelt out by a task force of senior politicians, business leaders and academics from around the world - and it is remarkably brief. In as little as 10 years, or even less, their report indicates, the point of no return with global warming may have been reached.

All on the same planet. Global warming is reaching the point-of-no-return, with widespread drought, crop failure and water shortages the likely result, according to a new international report. (AFP/NASA/File)

The report, [i]Meeting The Climate Challenge[/i], http://www.ippr.org.uk/public... is aimed at policymakers in every country, from national leaders down. It has been timed to coincide with Tony Blair's promised efforts to advance climate change policy in 2005 as chairman of both the G8 group of rich countries and the European Union.

And it breaks new ground by putting a figure - for the first time in such a high-level document - on the danger point of global warming, that is, the temperature rise beyond which the world would be irretrievably committed to disastrous changes. These could include widespread agricultural failure, water shortages and major droughts, increased disease, sea-level rise and the death of forests - with the added possibility of abrupt catastrophic events such as "runaway" global warming, the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, or the switching-off of the Gulf Stream.

The report says this point will be two degrees centigrade above the average world temperature prevailing in 1750 before the industrial revolution, when human activities - mainly the production of waste gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2), which retain the sun's heat in the atmosphere - first started to affect the climate. But it points out that global average temperature has already risen by 0.8 degrees since then, with more rises already in the pipeline - so the world has little more than a single degree of temperature latitude before the crucial point is reached.

More ominously still, it assesses the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere after which the two-degree rise will become inevitable, and says it will be 400 parts per million by volume (ppm) of CO2.

The current level is 379ppm, and rising by more than 2ppm annually - so it is likely that the vital 400ppm threshold will be crossed in just 10 years' time, or even less (although the two-degree temperature rise might take longer to come into effect).

"There is an ecological timebomb ticking away," said Stephen Byers, the former transport secretary, who co-chaired the task force that produced the report with the US Republican senator Olympia Snowe. It was assembled by the Institute for Public Policy Research in the UK, the Center for American Progress in the US, and The Australia Institute. The group's chief scientific adviser is Dr Rakendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The report urges all the G8 countries to agree to generate a quarter of their electricity from renewable sources by 2025, and to double their research spending on low-carbon energy technologies by 2010. It also calls on the G8 to form a climate group with leading developing nations such as India and China, which have big and growing CO2 emissions.

"What this underscores is that it's what we invest in now and in the next 20 years that will deliver a stable climate, not what we do in the middle of the century or later," said Tom Burke, a former government adviser on green issues who now advises business.

The report starkly spells out the likely consequences of exceeding the threshold. "Beyond the 2 degrees C level, the risks to human societies and ecosystems grow significantly," it says.

"It is likely, for example, that average-temperature increases larger than this will entail substantial agricultural losses, greatly increased numbers of people at risk of water shortages, and widespread adverse health impacts. [They] could also imperil a very high proportion of the world's coral reefs and cause irreversible damage to important terrestrial ecosystems, including the Amazon rainforest."

It goes on: "Above the 2 degrees level, the risks of abrupt, accelerated, or runaway climate change also increase. The possibilities include reaching climatic tipping points leading, for example, to the loss of the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets (which, between them, could raise sea level more than 10 meters over the space of a few centuries), the shutdown of the thermohaline ocean circulation (and, with it, the Gulf Stream), and the transformation of the planet's forests and soils from a net sink of carbon to a net source of carbon." - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

Climate Change: Countdown to Global Catastrophe

01.25.05 (5:10 am) [edit]

From the Ground Up ... by Howard Dean ...

01.24.05 (6:11 pm) [edit]

Over the past 30 years, Republicans have become the majority party in America by building a terrific grassroots organization. If we are to take our country back for ordinary working Americans, Democrats will have to match or exceed the Republicans’ ability to motivate voters.

Grassroots organization really has to be based on two-way communication. In our presidential campaign we started with no money, no base, but a great number of enthusiastic grassroots activists. We ceded decision making power to local folks and let them run things in their areas as they saw fit. This turns out to have been our single most important innovation, and it is the only one that wasn't copied by any of the other campaigns, either Democratic or Republican. Everything else, the small-donor programs, the house parties, the interactive Web sites and organizing was used by others. The reason that the most important piece wasn't copied is because it requires real a change in thinking by people who run for office and their consultants, not just adopting new techniques or technology.

Letting go of central control is what gives voters real power. When I used the phrase "you have the power" during the campaign, I meant that by working together, Americans could overcome the forces of the right wing and reassume their constitutional role in running the country. What I didn't understand was that "you have the power" was more than that. It didn't apply only to people's ability to change America, it also applied concretely to their ability to make everyday decisions about how they would cause that change.

In our campaign, Americans without any previous political experience made decisions about when to leaflet, what to say in the leaflet, where to leaflet and how to organize. They organized and ran hundreds of organizations such as African-Americans for Dean, Latinos for Dean, Punx for Dean, Irish Americans for Dean, etc., which sprang not from a central "outreach" desk in Burlington, but spontaneously all over the country, finding each other on the Web, and creating a national organization from local ones.

The idea of a decentralized campaign terrifies most politicians who have gotten used to putting out ideas and letting others respond. We discovered that the path to power, oddly enough, is to trust others with it.

The true mark of a modern campaign will be to listen to Americans and let them shape campaigns instead of simply allowing them to respond.

Our campaign was far from perfect, and we did not win. But our organization today is almost 600,000 strong that we know of, and there are more people in the organization today than there were on the day I dropped out of the presidential race. People still meet monthly in about 500 locations across America to talk about how to bring reform, and then they act on their plan locally.

I wish I could tell you that this was all because of my leadership and charisma; that is not so. The reform movement lives because it isn't mine. Our people know that they have the power in their own communities, linked across the country, to elect reform-minded people. They did exactly that on six months notice all across the country in places like Utah, Alabama, and Idaho, not just New York and Ohio.

If Democrats use this model, we will effectively leapfrog the Republicans, who despite their discipline and organization, are still a top-down, control and command organization.

------------------------- ------------------------- ------------------------- -----

[i]Howard Dean, former governor of Vermont, is the founder of Democracy for America, a grassroots organization that supports socially progressive and fiscally responsible political candidates[/i]. - http://www.truthout.org/docs_...

MILITARY COUP D'ETAT? Pentagon's Secret Spy Unit Broadens Rumsfeld's Power!

01.23.05 (6:33 am) [edit]

The Pentagon, expanding into the CIA's historic bailiwick, has created a new espionage arm and is reinterpreting U.S. law to give Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld broad authority over clandestine operations abroad, according to interviews with participants and documents obtained by the Washington Post.

The previously undisclosed organization, called the Strategic Support Branch, arose from Rumsfeld's written order to end his "near total dependence on CIA" for what is known as human intelligence. Designed to operate without detection and under the defense secretary's direct control, the Strategic Support Branch deploys small teams of case officers, linguists, interrogators and technical specialists alongside special operations forces.

Military and civilian participants said in interviews that the new unit has been operating in secret for two years -- in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places they declined to name. According to an early planning memorandum to Rumsfeld from Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the focus of the intelligence initiative is on "emerging target countries such as Somalia, Yemen, Indonesia, Philippines and Georgia." Myers and his staff declined to be interviewed.

[b]Read the entire article[/b]: http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

WELCOME TO 1984

01.23.05 (6:23 am) [edit]

"[i]Two and two are four." "Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane[/i]."

WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.
--George Orwell, from his novel 1984 (1949)

Fifty-six years after George Orwell published 1984, his magnificent polemic against totalitarianism, the big lie is king in America. That's the main lesson of the November election. Count me among those out-of-step blue-staters who find it literally unbelievable that 51% of the American voting public still wanted George Bush to be their president. No other successful American politician has ever written so much of his playbook in "Newspeak," the language that Orwell invented. In Bushworld bloody mayhem in Iraq equals "freedom," "Clear Skies" initiatives guarantee more air pollution, and "compassionate conservatism" is just another way of saying that hatred is as American as shiny new SUVs.

When the year 1984 rolled around, free men and women around the world congratulated themselves for having dodged the universal totalitarianism that Orwell had predicted would prevail by then. But now we are closer than ever to making Orwell's horrific vision come true.

The first step was to dumb down the public enough that the language of George Bush would actually sound plausible, a task now largely accomplished by television in general and Fox News in particular. A cowering press is also essential; a quivering mass of overpaid pontificators has been put in place by a 35-year-long assault on serious journalism that began in the 1970s with Vice President Spiro T. Agnew's attacks on "nattering nabobs of negativism" and now continues every day from behind the microphones of legions of deranged right-wing radio talk-show hosts. One result: The standard debate on Washington chat shows now ranges from center-right to extreme right.

Thanks to the genius of modern technology--and the Patriot Act--most of the full-time surveillance Orwell predicted of all human communication is now not only possible but legal. Osama bin Laden hasn't yet been able to replicate 9/11, but the silent damage he has inflicted on American freedom is almost as pernicious as the effects of a dirty bomb.

Another pillar of fascism is corporate control of the government. In return for gigantic contributions to Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, George Bush, and friends, lobbyists for banks, drug companies, oil companies, health care providers, and every imaginable type of polluter are on the verge of achieving near-perfect control of the legislative process.

Not surprisingly, Bush's own campaign mimicked the behavior of its corporate masters to harvest votes. According to new Republican National Committee chair Ken Mehlman--a 38-year-old bachelor who will only discuss his sexual orientation off the record--the Bush campaign "acquired a lot of consumer data.... Based on that, we were able to develop an exact kind of consumer model that corporate America does every day to predict how people vote--not based on where they live but how they live."

Finally, we have the ultimate example of Newspeak--"moral values," which provided the Bush campaign with the perfect euphemism for another essential tactic of fascism: the scapegoating of minorities. I don't know if the voters who came out to vote in favor of antigay initiatives Bush operatives placed on the ballot in 11 states played a decisive role in Bush's victory. But I do know there was nothing new about the Republican decision to use gay baiting to garner the votes of bigots. That tradition was inaugurated 25 years ago, when an organization called Christians for Reagan paid for a barrage of commercials throughout the South. "Militant homosexuals parade in San Francisco.... Flexing their political muscle, they elect a mayor," the announcer intoned. "Now the march has reached Washington.... Carter advocates acceptance of homosexuality." The national press barely noticed those ads, but they helped Reagan carry every Southern state except Georgia. - http://www.advocate.com/html/...

Bush & Neo-Con Nazis Ordered Kids to be Sodomized, Murdered, Tortured, etc. ...

01.23.05 (6:15 am) [edit]

[b]SECRET FILM SHOWS ABU GHRAIB TEENS SODOMIZED [/b]

http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?noframes" title="http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?noframes" target="_blank"http://www.rumormillnews.com/...;read=52534

Iraqi women beg to be killed as American soldiers sodomize their children http://stream.realimpact.net/... (link is an .rm file, the bit about mothers and children starts about 1:31), according to journalist Seymour Hersh http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... who reports seeing unreleased footage http://daily.nysun.com/Reposi...:ArticleToMail&Type=text/ html&Path=NYS/2004/07/08& ID=Ar00500 from Abu Ghraib. The question remains unanswered as to why he'll talk about it in a speech, but not publish it in the New Yorker. It's also worth asking, if these allegations are true, who else has seen this footage and why is it not being reported?

http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/34356" title="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/34356" target="_blank"http://www.metafilter.com/mef...

Bush & Neo-Cons Love Americans Like Hitler & Nazis Loved Jews

01.23.05 (6:11 am) [edit]

[b]'American terror: Bush activates plan to foment terrorism'[/b]

More than two years ago, we wrote here of a secret Pentagon plan to foment terrorism by sending covert agents to infiltrate terrorist groups and goad them into action -- in other words, committing acts of murder and destruction. The purpose was two-fold: first, to bring the terrorist groups into the open, where they could be counterattacked; and second, to justify U.S. military attacks on the countries where the terrorists were operating -- attacks which, in the Pentagon's words, would put those nations' "sovereignty at risk." It was a plan that countenanced -- indeed, encouraged -- the deliberate murder of innocent people and the imposition of U.S. military rule anywhere in the world that U.S. leaders desired.

This plan is now being activated.

In fact, it's being expanded, as The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh revealed last week. Not only will U.S.-directed agents infiltrate existing terrorist groups and provoke them into action, but the Pentagon itself will create its own terrorist groups and "death squads." After establishing their terrorist "credentials" through various atrocities and crimes, these American-run groups will then be able to ally with -- and ultimately undermine -- existing terrorist groups.

Top-level officials in the Pentagon, the U.S. intelligence services and the Bush administration confirmed to Hersh that the plan is going forward, under the direction of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- just as we noted here in November 2002. Through a series of secret executive orders, George W. Bush has given Rumsfeld the authority to turn the entire world into "a global free-fire zone," a top Pentagon adviser says. These secret operations will be carried out with virtually no oversight; in many cases, even the top military commanders in the affected regions will not be told about them. The American people, of course, will never know what's being done in their name.

The covert units -- including the Pentagon-funded terrorist groups and hit squads -- will be operating outside all constraints of law and morality. "We're going to be riding with the bad boys," one insider told Hersh. Another likened it to the palmy days of the Reagan-Bush years: "Do you remember the right-wing execution squads in El Salvador? We founded them and we financed them. The objective now is to recruit locals in any area we want. And we aren't going to tell Congress about it." Indeed, we reported here last summer that Bush has already budgeted $500 million to fund local paramilitaries and guerrilla groups in the most volatile areas of the world, a measure guaranteed to produce needless bloodshed, destruction and suffering for innocent people already ravaged by conflict.

The activation of the Pentagon terrorist operation is part of Bush's second-term expansion of the "war on terror." Despite some obfuscating rhetoric about "diplomacy," the Bush regime is pressing ahead with a hard-line strategy aimed at opening new military fronts in the "global free-fire zone." Any dissenting voices within the government are being ruthlessly purged. The Pentagon's secret forces are set for operations in at least 10 countries, and Bush insiders "repeatedly" told Hersh that "Iran is the next strategic target."

Iran has long been a focus of the small clique of "global dominationists" -- led by Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney and their acolytes -- who engineered the invasion of Iraq. This group is determined to "whack Iran," as one insider put it, and they're not at all discouraged by the debacle in Iraq; indeed, to them it's a rousing success. Their first objective -- openly stated years ago, before Bush took office -- was the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime and the planting of a U.S. "military footprint" in Iraq. This has now been done. The fact that it has plunged the Iraqi people into a hell of violence, chaos, terror and extremism is of no real concern to the clique. Their lofty rhetoric about "freedom" and "liberation" is meaningless sham, shuck and jive for the rubes. By the admission of the clique's own publications, they seek strategic control over the world's energy resources in order to preserve and expand American geopolitical and economic hegemony in the new century. Everything else -- including the security of the American people, put at increasing risk by the clique's reckless policies -- is of secondary importance.

U.S. forces are already conducting military reconnaissance inside Iran in preparation for strikes on alleged nuclear weapons facilities, Hersh reports. The Pentagon is feverishly updating war plans for a "maximum ground and air invasion of Iran," incorporating the new staging areas now available in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, while employing an Iranian terrorist group, MEK, to launch covert ops and terrorist acts against Tehran. MEK was once given sanctuary by Hussein, who used the group as a brutal enforcer against Kurd and Shiite insurgents. Now Bush, "riding with the bad boys," has embraced the MEK murderers as his own.

In their ignorance and arrogance, the Bushists will almost certainly strike at Iran -- despite the fact that even Iranian dissidents support the effort to make their nation a nuclear power and would join the mullahs in retaliation. The result will be a conflict far surpassing the horror and magnitude of the Iraq disaster.

In our original report on the Pentagon's terror scheme, we wrote: "Bush and his cohorts are plunging the world into an abyss, an endless night of murder and terror -- wholesale, retail, state-sponsored, privatized; of fear and degradation, servility, chaos, and the perversion of all that's best in us." Now the night has come. Now the United States stands openly -- even proudly -- for terrorism, torture and the Hitlerian principle of aggressive war. America has fallen into the pit -- and the hopes of the world go with it.

[b]Annotations[/b]

The Coming Wars
New Yorker, Jan. 17, 2005

Into the Dark: The Pentagon's Plan to Foment Terrorism
CounterPunch, Nov. 1, 2002 http://www.counterpunch.org/f...

Cry Havoc: Bush's Own Personal Janjaweed
CounterPunch, Sept. 7, 2004

American Dominance
Bergen Record, Feb. 23, 2003

Preparing for an attack on Iran?
Salon.com, Jan. 18, 2005

America's Death Squads
Antiwar.com, Jan. 10, 2005

Deadlier Face of Torture Emerges
The Times, Jan. 16, 2005

Pro-Government Death Squad Surfaces in Irag
Focus News, Jan. 11, 2005

Neocons turn their attention to Iran
Financial Times, Jan. 18, 2005

Bush Planned Iraq 'Regime Change' Before Becoming President
Glasgow Sunday Herald, Sept. 15, 2002

Rebuilding America's Defenses
Project for a New Century, September 2000

Statement of Principles
Project for a New American Century, June 3, 1997

Seymour Hersh: Rumsfeld's Dirty War on Terror
The Guardian, Sept. 13, 2004

Osama: A Texas-Style Republican in Islamic Clothing
Online Journal, Sept. 12, 2004

Bush Team Knew of Abuse at Guantanamo
The Guardian, Sept. 13, 2004

The Hidden History of CIA Torture
TomDispatch.com, Sept. 9, 2004

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=19597&mode=nested &order=0" title="http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=19597&mode=nested &order=0" target="_blank"http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

Bush Falls Flat on Second Term Vision

01.23.05 (6:07 am) [edit]

President Bush's second inaugural address yesterday was filled with lofty rhetoric and idealism (some noticeably liberal in orientation) yet contained no hint of the very real challenges facing the nation. Bush promised to spread liberty and democracy and eradicate tyranny but made no mention of terrorism, Iraq, al Qaeda, Iran, or North Korea. He had nothing to say for the thousands of American soldiers who have died or been wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. His domestic vision was a thinly veiled defense of wealth and power and trickle-down economics neatly wrapped in language about "ownership."

[b]- President Bush talks about freedom yet refuses to acknowledge the new dangers that his Iraq policies have created.[/b] As Bush waxed eloquently about freedom and democracy, more reports emerged of massive violence and unrest in Iraq just days before the elections. In the past few weeks, Americans have learned definitively that there were no WMD in Iraq. We have seen startling evidence that Iraq is now a top terrorist breeding ground. And we know our nation's military is near breaking point and severely overcommitted. Yet not a word from the president about how to deal with any of these issues.

[b]- Handouts for the wealthy disguised as opportunity and ownership for the masses is no vision of democracy. President Bush's domestic agenda amounts to little more than stale, trickle-down economics.[/b] Over the past four years, Bush has systematically shifted retirement and health care costs and risks onto individuals while making sure financial services and health care providers get billions in new fees and services. His plan for privatizing Social Security will leave the elderly at the mercy of financial markets, while private financial management firms will collect an estimated $940 billion windfall in new fees. And his permanent tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 percent of earners will shift even more of the tax burden onto middle class workers.

[b]- Progressives should stand strong against conservative policies and show Americans that there's a better way to do business.[/b] Progressives have a better way to manage the economy, tackle big challenges abroad, and promote the national interest. By focusing on community, fairness, and equal opportunity for all, we can show Americans a different path to success and assert a stronger set of principles for moving the country forward.

[i]Daily Talking Points [/i]is a product of the American Progress Action Fund. - http://www.americanprogressac...

Some in Black Tie; Others, Body Bags

01.23.05 (5:55 am) [edit]

As the families of bomb-flattened Fallujah huddle in make-shift refugee camps, drinking from sewage-filled streams, Iraqi policy mastermind Paul Wolfowitz fastens the last stud into his starched collar.

As the Iraq Survey Group ends its search for WMD, concluding that there was no imminent mushroom cloud or even a smoking gun, Condi Rice draws herself a hot bath.

As Sgt. Kevin Benderman, an Army mechanic with nine years of service, refuses a second deployment to Iraq, saying, "You just don't know how bad it is," Colin Powell pours himself a drink.

As Specialist Charles A. Graner, miscreant and major-domo of Abu Ghraib, shuffles off to prison, Donald Rumsfeld straightens the black tie of his tux.

As the 9/11 widow tucks her children into bed, wondering why the recommendations made in "The 9/11 Commission Report" weren't implemented, Tom Ridge tightens his cummerbund.

As prisoners charged with no crimes, and given no recourse, languish in the hellhole of Guantanamo Bay, torture apologist Alberto Gonzales clicks his cufflinks into place.

As Dan Rather retires in disgrace over forged documents, former CIA Director George Tenet, proponent of forged documents about Iraq's nonexistent nuclear program, adjusts the Medal of Freedom around his neck.

As the working mother in Chicago wonders how to keep her child from being left behind now that her special-ed program has been cut, Armstrong Williams polishes his shoes.

As Valerie Plame walks away from a distinguished career as a CIA "operative," destroyed when her identity was revealed by columnist Robert Novak, Mr. Novak walks to his limo.

As Osama bin Laden chuckles in his cave to see America's fortunes sink in the morass of Iraq and as fresh recruits to his cause multiply like flies, Dick Cheney pops the cork on a bottle of Dom Perignon.

As America's trade gap surges and the red ink in the national debt bleeds to a record level, Treasury Secretary Paul Snow finishes shaving and dabs at a spot of blood on his chin.

As the Republican Congress gets ready to underfund everything from Head Start to veterans' benefits, Speaker Dennis Hastert checks his profile in the mirror.

As Pfc. Francis Obaji, oldest son of an immigrant Nigerian family, is zipped into a body bag for the sad journey home, Laura Bush zips up her Oscar de la Renta gown.

And as his corporate pals slide their millions across the table to dance at his ball, forgetting for a moment the bottom line that forces them to ship jobs overseas, George W. Bush pulls on his snakeskin boots. - http://www.startribune.com/st...

What Is Wrong With Torture (For the Neo-Con Nazis)

01.20.05 (9:30 pm) [edit]

The war in Iraq has given birth to an issue that may one day be seen as more important than the war, the question of torture. Just as H.J. Res. 114, by which Congress authorized the war, was the key vote for that conflict, so now the vote whether to confirm White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General will very likely be the key vote in regard to torture. At the recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the nomination, the senators seemed almost as interested in flattering one another as in examining the nominee. The former committee chair, Senator Orrin Hatch, did not thrust a lighted cigarette into the ear of Senator Patrick Leahy. Senator Joseph Biden did not "waterboard" Senator John Cornyn - that is, he did not strap Senator Cornyn to a board and thrust his head under water, holding him there until he believed he was being drowned. Senator Arlen Specter did not force Senator Russ Feingold to eat his lunch from a toilet. Senator Biden did not strip Senator Mike DeWine naked, attach a leash to his neck and force him to crawl around the hearing-room floor. Senator Specter did not kill Senator Edward Kennedy and then pose for a photograph next to his corpse, making a thumbs-up sign.

On the contrary, the senators showered one another with compliments. Senator Hatch held up Senator Specter, the new chairman of the Judiciary Committee, as "one of the best lawyers we've had serve in the United States Senate." Senator Biden agreed, calling Senator Specter "the finest constitutional lawyer in the country - maybe not the country, but in the Senate (laughter)." Senator Leahy called Senator Hatch "one of the most experienced lawyers ever to serve." The senators praised Gonzales, too. His "beautiful family" (Specter), including his mother-in-law, was introduced and feted.

And yet the acts mentioned above, all performed by U.S. forces upon prisoners in Iraq or elsewhere, were the actual substance of the hearing. Under the President served by Gonzales, torture has become endemic, and the lines of connection between the nominee's advice and those acts were clear and undeniable. In a memo to the President, Gonzales advised that the Geneva Conventions did not apply either to Al Qaeda or Taliban soldiers in Afghanistan. He opined that if the conventions were set aside by the President, any soldiers accused under the US War Crimes Act might defend themselves against the charges of having committed war crimes under US Code Section 2441 of American law. He wrote the President, "Your determination [that the Conventions didn't apply] would create a reasonable basis in law that Section 2441 does not apply, which would provide a solid defense to any future prosecution."

In other words, his advice was to throw out international law so that torturers could escape the consequences of U.S. law. He solicited and participated in the preparation of a memo in the Justice Department that redefined torture only as the kind that might destroy bodily organs or kill the victim. That same memo stated that the President alone has the power to make rules for the treatment of prisoners, although the Constitution declares that "Congress shall have power to make rules concerning captures on land and water." He oversaw an interdepartmental discussion in which waterboarding and other forms of torture were condoned.

The senators' language regarding torture reflected, with exceptions, the horror of the matter as dimly as their flowery praise of one another. None, it is true, went as far as to suggest that restrictions on the abuse of prisoners were "unilateral disarmament," as a recent Wall Street Journal editorial did. Most of the senatorial defenders of Gonzales's record concentrated on denying his responsibility for one or another of the damning memos. More striking were the arguments against torture by those skeptical of the nomination. Two dominated. One was that torture hurts the image of the United States in the world. In the words of Senator Lindsey Graham, "I can tell you that it is a club that our enemies use, and we need to take that club out of their hand." Or in the words of Senator Herb Kohl, "winning the hearts and minds of the Arab world is vital to our success in the war on terror," and "Photographs that have come out of Abu Ghraib have undoubtedly hurt those efforts." The second argument was that enemy forces would torture U.S. forces in retaliation. In Biden's words, "This is about the safety and security of American forces." Even Gonzales, who declined at every opportunity to repudiate the policies that had led to the torture, was ready to agree that Abu Ghraib had harmed the image of the United States.

But are these the fundamental reasons that torture is unacceptable? Can this nation now understand pain only if it is experienced by Americans or, through some chain of consequences, it rebounds upon the United States? Have all the people in the world but Americans become invisible to Americans?

Torture is not wrong because someone else thinks it is wrong or because others, in retaliation for torture by Americans, may torture Americans. It is the torture that is wrong. Torture is wrong because it inflicts unspeakable pain upon the body of a fellow human being who is entirely at our mercy. The tortured person is bound and helpless. The torturer stands over him with his instruments. There is no question of "unilateral disarmament," because the victim bears no arms, lacking even the use of the two arms he was born with. The inequality is total. To abuse or kill a person in such a circumstance is as radical a denial of common humanity as is possible. It is repugnant to learn that one's country's military forces are engaging in torture. It is worse to learn that the torture is widespread. It is worse still to learn that the torture was rationalized and sanctioned in long memorandums written by people at the highest level of the government. But worst of all would be ratification of this record by a vote to confirm one of its chief authors to the highest legal office in the executive branch of the government.

Torture destroys the soul of the torturer even as it destroys the body of his victim. The boundary between humane treatment of prisoners and torture is perhaps the clearest boundary in existence between civilization and barbarism. Whether the elected representatives of the people of the United States are now ready to cross that line is the deepest question before the Senate as it votes on the nomination of Alberto Gonzales. - http://www.truthout.org/docs_...

The Idiot King Georgey-Poo's Gross "Coronation": Bring On The Togas!!!

01.17.05 (12:14 pm) [edit]

The $40 million being spent by 'private entities' is being supplemented by over $17 million for security, allocated from Washington, D.C.'s Homeland Security monies. That's double what was spent for security four years ago.I've been thinking about Imperial Rome, togas, the movie "Animal House," and the Bush Inauguration. We are all going to be in for quite a show on January 20th when George W. Bush is sworn in to begin his second term as President.

You see, we have just gone through the most expensive presidential election in our nation's history. To the victors belong the spoils, so... when the going gets tough, the tough party hearty. This will be the biggest and most expensive inaugural ever. In the past, the inauguration has set the tone and theme of the coming administration. This one will be no different.

The "W's" of the Bush administration, like the "Delta's" of "Animal House," are on "double secret probation"--being held collectively responsible for their past actions. The "W's" have been strongly criticized by the world's heads of state and their central bankers (plus almost half of America's electorate) for their fiscal/financial and bellicose policies. These critics of the "W's" expect changes and (dare I say it) a more fiscally responsible agenda in this second Bush administration. What kind of message will this inaugural bash send to them and to us?

We are told that the inauguration costs are to be borne by private contributions. Thus far the inaugural committee has raised about half of the estimated $40 million cost of the four-day celebration. Over 40 entities have each contributed $250,000, while over 60 more entities have contributed $100,000 apiece. Virtually all have benefited from the policies of the first Bush administration--Wall Street investment firms, energy companies, defense contractors, health care and pharmaceutical interests, and high-income individuals. Several contributions are from entities currently under investigation for fraud, or for overcharging the Federal government.

Are these "donations" a thank-you for services already rendered by the "W's," or a down payment on Uncle $ugar's largesse yet to come? What is the multiplier expected by the donors--10X, 100X, 1,000X, 10,000X for each buck contributed? We are talking about the really big beltway players here--those who have a lot to gain (and even more to lose) in the coming four years. At the very least, such generosity towards the investiture festivities will buy them access.

The $40 million budget of private contributions for the celebrations does not reflect the costs of security. When D.C. Mayor Williams sought reimbursement for the projected $17+ million of the city's extra security costs for the events, he was told to underwrite them from the quarter of a billion of Federal Homeland Security Grants that the Capital City has received over the past three years. Add to those the marginal costs from Uncle $ugar's own security details and you are talking a very large number of taxpayer dollars which are subsidizing all the hoopla. D.C.'s marginal security expenses for W's BUSHBASH II are almost double those from the BUSHBASH I of four years ago--which totaled about $8 million.

This Presidential investiture of 2005 bears little resemblance to the simple swearing-in ceremonies of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison. The program of events seems more in tune with the galas of ancient Rome marking a new emperor. Those Uber-Romans used such events to wine and dine the patricians and to divert the plebians' attention from their daily travails. It would appear that the "W's" (like the "Delta's") answer to having their backs to the wall for their past sins is: "TOGA PARTY!!!"

Given the divisiveness in this nation after Campaign 2004, plus the worldwide animosity towards the US/us due to the "W's" NeoCon foreign policy (and dubious fiscal policy), we should draw upon the words of Abraham Lincoln from 1865: "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." Instead, I fear that we shall hear, "TOGA! TOGA! TOGA!"

I'm Fred Cederholm and I've been thinking. You should be thinking, too. - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

A Bush-Neocon Parting of the Ways?

01.12.05 (1:52 am) [edit]

[b]Patrick J. Buchanan poses a hopeful scenario:[/b]

Last Thursday, word spread across Washington that U.S. trade rep Robert Zoellick would become Condi Rice's No. 2 at State.

This was followed by word that State's super-hawk, John Bolton, whom neoconservatives had touted for No. 2, would be leaving "for the private sector."

In a Friday[i] Washington Post [/i]piece, "Wolf at the Door," http://www.washingtonpost.com... Al Kamen reported the "buzz" that Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz had gone to see the president to tell him Wolfowitz would be leaving Defense. Wolfowitz hastily denied the report.

Friday's [i]Washington Times [/i]carried a report http://washingtontimes.com/na... that neocon Stephen Cambone, Rumsfeld's intelligence chief, "is thinking about private-sector employment."

The neoconservative hour may be coming to an end in the Bush era. Reason: The cakewalk war they plotted long before 9/11, on which their dreams of Middle East empire and reputations hang, has gone awry.

[b]The entire article[/b]: http://www.antiwar.com/pat/?a...

GOP Congressman: Iraq Pullout Should Be Considered ...

01.10.05 (11:47 am) [edit]

U.S. Rep. Howard Coble, a Greensboro Republican and close ally of President Bush, says the United States should consider pulling out of war-ravaged Iraq.

Coble is one of the first members of Congress to suggest a withdrawal publicly.

The 10-term congressman said in an interview with the News & Record of Greensboro that he's "fed up with picking up the newspaper and reading that we've lost another five or 10 of our young men and women in Iraq."

Support among Coble's 6th District constituents has also waned, his office said.

The dean of the state's congressional delegation said he arrived at his position only after many months of searching in vain for evidence that the Bush administration had a post-invasion strategy to deal with the transition to Iraqi self-government.

Coble, who has represented the 6th District since 1984, says he voted to give Bush sweeping war-making powers assuming the administration had a post-invasion strategy.

"If there was, I wish someone would tell me what it is or show it to me," he said. "I'd like to see it."

The congressman said he thought Bush was correct in attacking Iraq, and that he and most of his constituents still believe it was the right decision because "we've done a lot of good over there."

That includes capturing Saddam Hussein, "the international terrorist, the tyrant, the snake," he said.

But a troop withdrawal should be an option if the Iraqi government is unable or unwilling to "shoulder more of the heavy lifting" for its own security, Coble said.

There has been little or no indication that the Iraqi government can do that, he said.

"What we have are Iraqis killing Iraqis and American troops," Coble said. "All I'm saying is that a troop withdrawal ought to be an option. It ought to be placed on the table for consideration.

"I'm going to keep talking about this," he said.

Coble, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security, said he may broach the idea to the panel.

The congressman from Greensboro said he is aware that few members of Congress have said openly that the country should consider withdrawing from Iraq. Republican Rep. James A. Leach of Iowa may be the only other GOP congressman to call for a pullout, he said.

Leach said on the House floor more than a year ago that the United States should begin a withdrawal that would be complete by the end of 2004.

Although many Democrats in Congress have sharply criticized the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq, as well as its conduct of the war, most say the United States must stay until the Iraqi government is strong enough to defend itself.

Only Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, who ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination, called for a U.S. troop withdrawal to be accomplished in 90 days.

Insurgent violence against Iraqi security forces and Americans has increased as the Jan. 30 date for the country's national elections draws closer.

More than 1,200 Americans have been killed since U.S. forces first occupied Baghdad in May 2003, when Bush declared the end of major combat operations in Iraq. The number includes at least 886 killed since U.S. forces captured former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein on Dec. 13, 2003.

According to figures compiled by Coble's office, 31 military men and women from North Carolina had died in Iraq as of Dec. 11, and 279 had been wounded. - http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/...

Bush 'the King' Blows $50m on Coronation ...

01.09.05 (4:52 am) [edit]

[b]President's lavish inauguration is 'obscene' when US troops are dying in Iraq war, say critics ... [/b]

It will be one of the biggest parties in American history, but half of the country will be left out. With a price tag of up to $50 million, President George W Bush's inauguration in 11 days' time will be an unashamed celebration of Red America's victory over Blue America in last November's election.

It is going to be the most expensive, most security-obsessed event in the history of Washington DC. An army of 10,000 police, secret service officers and FBI agents will patrol the capital for four days of massive celebrations that some critics have derided as reminiscent of the lavish shindigs thrown by Louis XIV, France's extravagant Sun King.

More than 150,000 people, nearly all Republicans whose tickets are a reward for election work, will pack the Mall to hear Bush take his oath of office on 20 January. There will be nine official balls, countless unofficial ones, parades and a concert hosted by Bush's daughters, Jenna and Barbara.

Amid the official pageantry will be many huge parties laid on by companies wishing to win favour with Washington's power players. Anyone who is anyone in Republican circles will be in town. Many Democrats will be leaving. With so many big names in one place, security measures will include road blocks, anti-aircraft guns guarding the skies and sniper teams patrolling the rooftops.

Many observers say it is all too much. 'We have elected a President who seems to have quite a monarchical role. It is a bit of a coronation,' said Larry Haas, a former official in Bill Clinton's White House.

Certainly, Bush's inauguration will be an orgy of gladhanding and partying by the Republican faithful from all over the country. One Washington hotel, the Mandarin Oriental, is offering visitors four nights in its Presidential Suite for $200,000. The price tag includes a 24-hour butler, a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce or Humvee, daily champagne and caviar and a flight to the hotel in a private jet.

One highlight of the bonanza is the Black Tie and Boots Ball organised by Bush's home state of Texas, with the President as star guest. Ten thousand tickets sold out in less than 50 minutes, and are now trading privately at $1,300 each. Another is the Commander-in-Chief's Ball where Bush will honour American soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is billed as the centrepiece of the inauguration, which itself has a theme tinged with the idea of military service.

All the partying is being condemned by many commentators as in poor taste for a nation fighting a bloody war.

Carroll Wilson, editor of the Texas newspaper the Times Record, has called the cost obscene and 'a horrendous waste'. 'There's something inherently embarrassing about spending $50m on a party that will start and end in the blink of a very red eye,' he added.

The fighting in Iraq has provoked calls for the celebrations to be toned down, as they were during the two world wars when some were even cancelled. Bush's second inauguration will be the first in wartime since President Richard Nixon took office in 1969 during the Vietnam conflict.

Yet the partying is being intensified. The Commander-in-Chief's Ball is being hailed by organisers as a fitting tribute to American soldiers on active service. More than 2,000 troops and their partners, selected by the Pentagon, will take part. Most have served in Iraq or Afghanistan or are about to go there. The parades will have a stronger than normal military theme.

That angers many anti-war protesters who say the lavish celebration is inappropriate during conflict. Some conservative commentators have even joined the fray, contrasting the spending with a recent scandal over a shortage of armour for American soldiers and their vehicles.

A huge series of demonstrations is now being planned which organisers say will be much larger than the ones that marked Bush's first inauguration after the contested Florida recount in 2000. 'We want our voices to be heard,' said a spokesman for the Answer Coalition, which is co-ordinating the protests.

The huge security presence means there is likely to be little disruption, especially of the oath-taking ceremony itself. More vulnerable may be the corporate events taking place all over the city.

The $50m bill is mostly being paid by private donations from people and firms currying political favour. With a strict ban on large single donations to active political campaigns, the inauguration offers a rare chance for companies and individuals to lavish large sums of money on the President and his party simultaneously.

The big donors are split into 'underwriters', who stumped up $250,000 each, and 'sponsors', who merely shelled out $100,000. Both gain access to a variety of events that will be attended by Bush. The donors are a familiar roster of Republican supporters and big business. They include firms in the President's former business, oil, such as Exxon Mobil and ChevronTexaco, former Enron president Richard Kinder and Texas oil baron Boone Pickens, who also gave $500,000 to the anti-John Kerry campaign of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

Though the guests will be celebrating Bush's victory, some Washington insiders will also be keeping a keen eye on the jockeying for position that has already begun for the next election.

'The clock to 2008 starts ticking the second after Bush finishes his oath,' Haas said 'At that moment Republicans begin moving into position for that. Bush should enjoy his moment while he can.' - http://observer.guardian.co.u...,6903,1386178,00.html

Bush 'the King' Blows $50m on Coronation ...

01.09.05 (4:49 am) [edit]

Acts of God Versus Acts of George W. Bush

01.05.05 (6:25 am) [edit]

“[i]All I know is what I see on TV[/i].”

‑‑ Will Rogers

George W. Bush sleeps like a baby these days. Never much of a thinker, our president’s freeze-dried ideology has spared him the task of thinking up and writing down New Year’s resolutions. His goals stand as propounded – deep-rooted in his fallow mind by November’s shallow election victory.

And so it is that on the eve of 2005, in the highest office of the mightiest nation in human history, there will be no reflection on, no reconsideration, no revision of policy. George W. Bush claims he has been crowned with a “mandate,” albeit by barely fifty-percent of his subjects. And that’s that, as far as the Great Mandater is concerned.

But what about the “lesser” half of this president’s fellow citizens -- those of us who didn’t vote for the man’s coronation? It appears that we can either go along with George II or go to hell. There will be no calling Bush to account for his policies. The late Flip Wilson, a popular comedian, used to duck accountability by quipping, “The Devil made me do it.” Everyone laughed. George Bush, an Evangelical Christian, declares, “God made me do it,” and at least half of us quake.

Not even during the aftermath of devastating tidal waves does George W. break his clueless, dogmatic stride. The media reports, for instance, that the president first had announced he’ll set aside a Scroogian 30 million dollars for victims’ relief -- this on the heels of an announced 40 million “donated” by corporations to pay for his inaugural balls in January. (Let the good times roll in tie-and-tails D.C., while a tsunami rolls over Asia’s poor.) Where’s the moral balance in all this? Where’s the “compassion,” neoconservative or otherwise. Where’s the sense of decency?

In the wake of the murderous tsunami, it will never occur to George W. Bush to ask himself the difference between an “act of God,” as some have called the Asian calamity, and an “act of George,” as a friend has called the ongoing catastrophe in Iraq

Although 100,000 innocent lives have been taken by both phenomena, it is at the ghastly number of dead where the similarities break down.. For instance, the Iraq War is, without question, a direct consequence of a direct military order given by a human being -- the president of the United States -- for reasons now leniently called “mistaken.” The tsunami, needless to say, cannot be pinned to human volition at all: it is a natural disaster -- unpreventable, inexplicable, and irrevocable. If blame for setting it off is to be placed, there is no one to blame but God.

And yet, there has been a markedly different reaction to both cataclysms. Like the rest of the world’s observers, Americans are aghast at the barbarity of the tidal wave. Its aftermath has resurrected the best in our national character: genuine “compassion” accompanied by unconditional generosity.

Unlike the rest of the world, however, only a small number of Americans have shown the same selfless, “Christian” reaction to the deaths of approximately 100,000 blameless human beings in Iraq. Why, Mr. President? Why?

Much of the answer lies in America’s corporate media, primarily TV, from which most citizens get their news. During the last few days, television viewers have seen and heard on-screen, in-color, uncensored, the mayhem perpetrated by nature in Asia. “On TV we have been seeing horrifying images of parents grieving at mass grave sites,” said a National Public Radio anchor, reporting Tuesday afternoon on the havoc in Asia.

There has been none – none -- of that graphic, unfiltered, honest coverage by American corporate media (or National Public Radio, for that matter) of the war in Iraq. Never mind that an estimated 100,000 children and other noncombatants have been killed there, whole neighborhoods pulverized, and life made hell for those left standing. As the rest of the world watches, parents grieve at grave sites in Iraq, too, with horrifying regularity.

God doesn’t reign over American television. George does. The blood of the tsunami is on God’s hands. The blood of the Iraq War is on Bush’s. Acts of God are not impeachable. Acts of George are. - http://www.washingtondispatch...

Acts of God Versus Acts of George W. Bush

01.05.05 (6:23 am) [edit]

Why Bush's Foreign Policy is Not Wise, Not Sound & Very Dangerous ...

01.05.05 (5:17 am) [edit]

A nation's foreign policy is bankrupt, Walter Lippmann wrote, when its strategic assets, its arms and alliances, are insufficient to cover its liabilities – i.e., its commitments to defend critical territory and vital interests.

Japan's strike on Pearl Harbor and rapid seizure of Guam, Wake Island, and the Philippines, Lippmann wrote, revealed the bankruptcy of FDR's prewar policy. Lippmann apologized for having supported the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 that permitted Imperial Japan to gain naval parity with the United States in the Pacific.

U.S. foreign policy today is surely not bankrupt. The United States has a surplus of power to cover its vital interests. But, with his rhetoric, President Bush has been handing out promissory notes that our military and alliances cannot cover, if called in.

To the architects of this war, Iraq was to be a projection of U.S. power, a strategic base camp flanking and paralyzing the rogue states of Iran and Syria, an Arab democracy that would attract the admiration and envy of other peoples, producing a domino effect across the Middle East. Thus far, that has turned out to be a myth.

Iraq today appears as an exposed salient, a bridge too far, a war against a dispossessed Sunni minority, that we can neither win nor walk away from without its becoming the haven for terrorists it never was before we invaded. Half our army is now either in Iraq, has been through Iraq, or is on the way. U.S. Reserve and Guard units, which have provided 40 percent of the troops for the war, are no longer meeting recruitment goals.

The cost of the Afghan and Iraq wars is running at $4 billion a month. Manpower pressures on the Army and Marines show us to be nearing imperial overstretch. One by one, allies in the "coalition of the willing" are peeling off and pulling out. Even The New York Times is calling for an expansion of U.S. ground forces by 100,000.

To get the money for the new brigades, the Pentagon is cutting back the F-22 Raptor interceptor, mothballing the John F. Kennedy, one of our 12 carriers, and cutting the purchase of new destroyers.

Under the Bush Doctrine – axis-of-evil nations will not be allowed weapons of mass destruction – Iran and North Korea are on notice not to pursue nuclear arsenals. Yet Pyongyang is defying the doctrine and Tehran is testing it. No Asian ally has shown any willingness to support us in a confrontation with North Korea. No NATO ally supports a U.S. clash with Iran.

While America has the strategic striking power to devastate their nuclear facilities, we lack the ground forces to deal with an enraged counterstrike by North Korea or Iran. Should Iran retaliate by inciting the Shia to revolt in Iraq and launch attacks on our ships in the Gulf or allies on the south shore, the region could go up in flames and oil could shoot to $80 or $100 a barrel.

Our Arab allies are resisting the Bush-proclaimed "world democratic revolution." But has anyone considered what we would do if it succeeded, and revolutions brought down regimes in Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, or Saudi Arabia? How would the United States respond if our indispensable ally in the war against the Taliban, President Musharraf, fell to one of the assassins who have been seeking his death since he cast his lot with America?

Pakistan has nuclear weapons. Even more than Iran, it is a nation with a population so large and militant the U.S Army could not invade and hold the country. Yet our war in Afghanistan depends upon the survival of this one man.

Then, there is the neoconservative drive to expand NATO to the Ukraine of the Orange Revolution. But if Putin was offended by NATO's expansion into the Baltic republics, to bring in Ukraine, tied to Russia by history, faith, and geography, would be to humiliate and enrage Moscow. And for what? Can anyone believe that if eastern Ukraine broke free of Kiev and asked for support, and the Kremlin responded, we would go to war?

Then there is the Bush commitment to do "whatever it took" to defend Taiwan. Despite that pledge, Beijing continues to ratchet up the rhetoric against Taiwan and build up its naval, air, and missile forces across the strait. Everywhere, it appears, the shock and awe of Operation Iraqi Freedom seem to have worn off.

How, then, do our ledgers read? America has a surplus of power to protect vital interests. But with allies alienated and forces stretched, she does not have the power to maintain a Pax Americana or carry out the promiscuous commitments made by President Bush in his first term, as his second shall almost surely demonstrate.

[b]By Patrick J. Buchanan[/b], http://www.antiwar.com/pat/?a...

The Great Crime Spree of 2004 ...

12.31.04 (5:26 am) [edit]

[b]Rape, torture, murder, war crimes, and treason – your government at work [/b]

If 2003 was the year of the liars, as I opined last year, then 2004 was the year of the war criminals, starting with Time magazine's designated Man of the Year, criminal-in-chief George W. Bush. It was Bush who presided over the torture and abuse not only at Abu Ghraib but in U.S.-run dungeons from Guantanamo to Afghanistan – and spare me the cries of protest that he didn't know, and Abu Ghraib was an "isolated incident."

To begin with, he did know. Thanks to a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, the president's personal responsibility in this disgusting saga has been revealed, along with the existence of FBI internal memos and other material that cite a previously unknown Executive Order authorizing torture at Abu Ghraib and other prison facilities.

Bush, the Janus-faced ruler of an empire of hypocrites, loudly announces a "global democratic revolution" even as he whispers to subordinates that torture is okay: he's a liar and a criminal.

Lynndie England had her day in court: when will Bush have his?

Government, which supposedly exists to protect us from criminals, is itself a criminal organization, bigger, more destructive, and certainly better-funded than the Mafia, the Bloods, and the Crips. The essential criminality of government – not just the American government, but all government – is underscored by the news that agents of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) who had knowledge of abuses were threatened by Special Operations personnel if they revealed the illegal activities taking place at Guantanamo.

Every once in a while liberals discover this truth, and are shocked – shocked! – that what they consider the instrument of human good could so easily become the source of so much evil. It's a rude awakening, and much needed: but it may not come in time. I fear it's too late to halt the political and moral degeneration of our old republic into a decadent and cynical imperial power, like pagan Rome, where torture was a common form of public entertainment.

In these days when "moral values" are said to motivate American politics, how is it that we have a president with the morals of the Marquis de Sade?

If Janet Jackson bares her breast, there's a national outcry – and the threat of government action. But if the Pentagon, with the full backing of the president, authorizes an orgy of sadism and, yes, systematic terrorism inflicted on the "liberated" people of Iraq – 10,000 of whom now languish in U.S. torture pens – there is … silence. The only action taken by the U.S. government has been to cover up the burgeoning scandal, with full congressional complicity.

What are we becoming: this, and – ugh! – this?

Follow the first link, and you find the story of two Iraqis stopped by the U.S. for being out after curfew, who were then taken to the Tigris river and forced to jump in – one drowned, the other survived. The irony here is that the victims are related to a prominent Iraqi blogger, lionized by the pro-war "blogosphere" for hailing the Americans as his "liberators" – but when Zeyad blogged the death of his cousin, rightly pointing out that this wasn't exactly the sort of behavior one expects from "liberators," he was quickly dropped and even denounced by the pro-war bloggers.

At the trial, lawyers for the four accused American soldiers argued that there was no proof the drowning ever occurred – this in spite of the offer of the family to exhume the body. All charges have been dropped against two of the accused, but two others face trial in the coming year.

The second link goes to a story about "consensual" sex between Pvt. Federico Daniel Merida and 19-year-old Falah Zaggam that ended in the murder of the latter by the former: Merida gave several versions of how the crime unfolded, first saying that the young Iraqi National Guard tried to rob him, later claiming the Iraqi "forced" him into sexual relations, and eventually taking the "gay panic" defense – admitting that the sex was consensual yet averring that he, Merida, then "snapped" and killed the kid by shooting him 11 times. Merida tried to cover it up by making it appear as if his victim had fired shots.

It looks like a sentence of 25 years in prison for Merida, which seems awfully light, but if I were the Iraqi insurgency, I would broadcast the following video and accompanying headline far and wide: GI sentenced to three years in death of Iraqi teen. After blowing up a truck and finding a badly wounded 16-year-old boy in it – who had nothing to do with the insurgents – Staff Sgt. Johnny M. Horne Jr. shot the kid to "put him out of his misery." Horne, 30, of Winston-Salem, N.C., "also received a reduction in rank to private, forfeiture of wages and a dishonorable discharge."

Three years – for murder? Is that how much an Iraqi life is worth?

Where are all the "pro-life" conservatives now?

If 2004 was a year of untrammeled American criminality, the worst crimes of our government may have been rhetorical: as the president's speechwriters are crafting soaring phrases hailing the arrival of "democracy" and "freedom" in Iraq, his lawyers are constructing legal arguments justifying the torture of Iraqis and other foreigners – and immunizing the president and his minions from prosecution.

No better pitch could be made by the insurgents than to cite the slap on the wrist meted out to Horne. They need only point to Abu Ghraib, the drowning of Zaydun Fadhil, and the numerous reports of torture and worse that are pouring out of Iraq in a veritable tsunami of moral degradation to underscore the religious imperative and moral necessity of the insurgency. It is not a hard argument to make to those whose homes have been bombed out of existence and who must endure the daily depredations of an occupying army.

Constantly reminded of their ongoing national and personal humiliation, young Iraqi men are naturally drawn to the resistance, which is growing exponentially – possibly beyond the ability of the occupation force, as presently constituted, to contain it. "More troops!" the War Party cries, and the chorus of criticism coming at this administration is loudest on the pro-war right. But the visibility and ubiquity of American troops is the insurgency's prime recruiting device: the latest strategic wisdom coming from many military experts is to lower the profile of the American occupation, and at least try to give the administration's Potemkin Village "democracy" in Iraq a thin veneer of credibility.

More troops mean more targets, without necessarily ensuring more order. Rummy, who's no dummy, knows this, as does the neocon mob calling for his head. The latter, however, are less concerned about keeping order in Iraq – "creative destruction" is more the neocon style – than they are about gathering American forces for the next war, which, in my opinion, is bound to take place in and around Syria, including Lebanon, and the Kurdish regions of Iraq.

Speaking of the Kurds, much is made of the Sunni-Shi'ite division in Iraq and how it's leading to civil war, but the really big problem, which has been largely put off so far, is what to do about the burning desire of most Kurds to strike out on their own. A petition demanding independence signed by 1.7 million Kurds – more than half the Kurdish population of northern Iraq– was recently delivered to the United Nations. Its arrival heralds a fresh crisis for the Americans, who have so far managed to keep their most enthusiastic supporters, the Kurdish peshmerga, from going off the reservation. But the Israelis, whose Kurdish incursions have been detailed by Seymour Hersh, may have other ideas.

(By the way, the news that some of the Guantanamo prisoners had been wrapped by their captors in the Israeli flag must provoke even the most doggedly incurious to ask where U.S. interrogators picked up a trick like that.)

In any case, this stirring of the Kurdish pot seems to be having repercussions on the home front – or, possibly, vice versa – in light of the FBI's recent take-down of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the epicenter of Israel's powerful lobby in the U.S., and long rated as one of the most powerful in Washington. After two raids on AIPAC's D.C. headquarters, and four subpoenas issued to top officials Israel's premier lobbyist accompanied by extensive "leaks" to the media, Israel's amen corner is reeling. Their crimes, including espionage – and, in my own view, treason – were uncovered in 2004, and it looks like 2005 is going to be the year of their comeuppance.

Oh yes, it was a banner year for criminality at the highest levels of government: look at Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin, who confessed to being a spy for Israel and was "flipped" by the FBI's counterintelligence unit. Franklin, who agreed to help ferret out his confederates in top policymaking positions, is at the center of a storm that has already done considerable damage to the once mighty AIPAC – and may yet give new meaning to the "special relationship" between the U.S. and its truculent ally.

Franklin was caught red-handed relating top secret government intelligence to Naor Gilon, the top political affairs officer at the Israeli embassy, at a lunch with two high-ranking AIPAC officials. Now we learn that, having been flipped, Franklin was on the phone to Richard Perle, Francis Brooke, and no doubt others intimately involved in the neocon-Chalabi intelligence network centered in the Pentagon's "Office of Special Plans." Chalabi is accused of handing over vital U.S. secrets to Iran, and the Americans are beginning to ponder if perhaps they haven't been snookered, and not only by the Iranians.

How, one wonders, did Chalabi get his hands on U.S. signal intercepts, sensitive intelligence that only top U.S. policymakers could access? The FBI is wondering, too, and the Washington Post (Sept. 2) reports that AIPAC is the number-one suspect:

"FBI counterintelligence agents are investigating whether several Pentagon officials leaked classified information to Iraqi politician Ahmed Chalabi and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, according to a law enforcement official and other people familiar with the case. … Initially, news reports revealed that the FBI was investigating whether Lawrence A. Franklin – a mid-level analyst specializing in Middle East issues in the Pentagon office of Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy – had passed a draft presidential directive on Iran to AIPAC, and whether the group had passed the information to Israel. AIPAC is an influential lobbying group with close ties to the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

"The FBI probe is actually much broader, according to senior U.S. officials, and has been underway for at least two years. Several sources familiar with the case say the probe now extends to other Pentagon personnel who have a particular interest in assisting both Israel and Chalabi."

So the crime of treason is added to murder, torture, and other war crimes, including an extensive and ongoing cover-up: the year 2004 has been little more than one long, non-stop crime spree in the corridors of power.

What the Franklin case will show, I believe, is that the same cabal that lied us into war then turned around and stole our secrets, handing them over to Chalabi and Iran via AIPAC. A recent piece in The Forward by AIPAC-defender Edwin Black tries to portray the pursuit of AIPAC by law enforcement as the intelligence community's "war" on the neoconservatives: Black has repeatedly accused the head of the FBI's counterintelligence unit of "anti-Semitism," and apparently some of the principals in this case have a longstanding adversarial relationship. However, by Black's logic – which has led him to call for the release of convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard – any pursuit of AIPAC is, by definition, suspect. As to why AIPAC must be granted immunity from investigation, especially when it comes to such a serious charge as espionage, is not at all clear.

In any event, if 2003 was the year of the liar, and 2004 the year of the war criminal, then let 2005 be the year of justice. That is not a prediction, but only a hope. - http://www.antiwar.com/justin...