Archives 2006

2005

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Very interesting statements from the US and Iraq concerning the timing of the execution of Saddam Hussein.
Major problem with the "surge" idea (It's really properly called "escalation.") of increasing the number of US troops in Iraq, is that it's already been tried.
It was called "Operation Together Forward".  Remember that old wheeze?  It was the military operation whose name was so wretched that I assumed it could only have been named by Democrats.  And it was an absolute fucking failure.

The truth or falsity of the following charges are nowhere near as important as the fact that the charges are being made:
The Iranian government is “openly supporting terrorism in Iraq to stop a fledgling democratic process, trying to turn out a democratic government in Lebanon, flouting the international community's desire for peace in Palestine -- at the same time as denying the Holocaust”
Ominously, the US is also planning to move a second aircraft carrier group to the gulf and there was recently what appears to have been a very provocative raid in Iraq where "...two... Iranians [who] were in this country [Iraq] on an invitation extended by Iraq’s president, Jalal Talabani, during a visit to Tehran earlier this month" were seized in a raid and later released.  At least four other Iranians are being held.  Wonder what sort of building was raided and on what, if any, evidence?
Update: Apparently, the building raided was a compound belonging to Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, one of Iraq’s most powerful Shiite political leaders, who met with President Bush in Washington three weeks ago.
Earlier reports indicated that the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani was supporting an American plan to politically isolate Muqtada al-Sadr.  How did that plan work out?  Well, er, not so much, actually.  In fact, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a supporter of the American plan, appears to be backing off from it.
Mutiny in Anbar Province?  Reports that a "US military base is exposed to daily heavy tactical attacks and attempts to storm the walls of the base by Iraqi resistance." has apparently resulted in the "American VI Battalion" refusing orders to leave their base.  Not sure what to make of this as a battalion is a component of a brigade, which is a component of a division.  Could be an independent battalion, I suppose.  Today in Iraq repeats the story, but Juan Cole does not.
Hat tip to Beatrice.
No, the American people didn't vote for an end to "partisan gridlock," they voted for an end to Republican policies.  All of the sudden, Republicans are showing a great interest in bipartisan politics and policies.  Funny, where have these folks been the last six years!?!?!
President and neocons and buddies in the press up to their old tricks.  Examination of recent speeches and actions strongly indicate Bush Administration preparing for war with Iran.  An editorial was censored, editorial writer decides to publish it anyway, with all of the censored words represented as strings of "x's".  Very informative piece on how information prejudicial to launching war with Iran being squelched.  Major papers reprint pro-war testimonial over and over again, ignore equally valid statements with opposite view.
White House Year in Review reprints a particularly worrisome quote where Bush comments on the situation in Iraq:
"I understand how some Americans have had their confidence shaken," President Bush said yesterday in Cleveland. "Others look at the violence they see each night on their television screens, and they wonder how I can remain so optimistic about the prospects of success in Iraq. They wonder what I see that they don't."
Ponies, perhaps?
Summary of recent events: Joint Chiefs of Staff unanimously oppose "surge" option, President in state of denial, public support for "surge" option is at 11%
Pachacutec of firedoglake explains why Bush is "Not My President" and incidentally, makes a good case to not impeach him.  Essentially, that Democrats have better and more urgent things to do to fix the problems he's caused. 
LeftCoaster needles Fred Hiatt of the WaPo for scribbling a worshipful op-ed on SecState Condoleezza Rice, but if you strip off all of what he says and just look at her quotes, it's pretty clear that Bush is not the only one brimming with hubris and living in a fantasy world.
Blast from the past: Review of SecState Rice's "diplomacy" with Hezbollah in August 06
Both Bush and Rice were dispassionate about the carnage in the region, savoring instead what they insist are important geopolitical gains.
It was never clear of course, just what these "gains" were.
Bush Administration injecting itself into the business of censoring op-eds published by ex-
officials. 
Flynt Leverett, a former government official who worked at the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of State, and on the National Security Council staff of the George W. Bush administration, is now a senior fellow and Director of the Geopolitics of Energy Initiative at the New America Foundation.
This man can't publish an op-ed on the US relationship with Iran?!?!  Why the heck not!?!?!
Bush says: "Americans fully understand the importance of success; they're wondering whether we have a plan to succeed [in Iraq]."
Actually, Americans are "wondering" no such thing.  If the President has to run around and conduct a "listening tour," that seems to me to be a pretty dead giveaway that he doesn't have a plan. 
Juan Cole examines the possible replacement of a Democratic Senator due to his severe health problems:
This scenario is undemocratic in so many ways it is hard to count them. The idea that a Republican governor elected by a few thousand shivering voters (South Dakota's population is 754,844) could overturn the results of an overwhelming national popular vote by fiat should make the blood boil of everyone who cares about equity in the Republic.
The president signaled
Wednesday that neither the study group's pessimistic assessment nor the bleak situation in Iraq nor the results of the midterm elections have shaken his belief that victory in Iraq is possible.
New York Times Magazine does a very lengthy (25 kilobytes) piece on Open Source Spying which examines how wikis and blogs can contribute to producing a collective intelligence that can solve problems faster and better than the old top-down, hierarchical organizations that won the Cold War.  Very interesting point is that for wikis and blogs to really capture the active partcipitation of members, they require a critical mass of initial active members and written pieces to really start things off.  
The article presents a very non-conspiratorial view of the US Government's failure to head off 9-11.  This is a highly questionable thesis, but it does not by itself disqualify the article's views on intel and the role that wikis and blogs can play in improving it.
BTW, the example of a few weeks back is a marvelous illustration of how NOT to do it!
And speaking of groups of people "getting it," we get a marvelous visual presentation on how Hezbollah has learened the visual lessons of last year's "Cedar Revolution" in Lebanon.
Oh, as to the idea that the ISG Report is going to lead to any major changes in policy towards Iraq?  Ain't gonna happen.
Detaled commentary covering the details that the ISG did not see fit to report on. 
Michelle Malkin, the gruppenfuhrer to Ann Coulter's obergruppenfuhrer, has received an invitation to visit Iraq along with the former head of CNN News, Eason Jordan.  Sounds like a great idea!  Malkin could improve her reporting by taking actual, y'know, facts into account when she opines about the place.  You can write to Malkin and politely encourage her to go for it.
Why does the left blogosphere exist in the first place?  It's precisely because of the hit job on Barack Obama as perpetrated by the "kewl kidz" and "queen bees" of the mainstream press.
But you'll have to excuse us hotheads for reacting strongly when we see these things because the last time the media decided to have "fun" and tell "jokes," this way, enough people believed them that it ended up changing the world in the most dramatic and violent way possible. We are in this mess today at least partly because these people failed to do their duty and approached their jobs as if it were a seventh grade slumber party instead of the serious business of the most powerful nation on earth.
It's just not funny people. It's not funny at all.
Listing of Republican accomplishments over the past year.  Keep in mind, these are not "accomplishments" as listed by bloggers or Democrats, these were proudly outlined by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist:

"We passed legislation securing the right to prayer in U.S. military academies.

"We passed legislation protecting the Mount Soledad Memorial Cross.

"We passed the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act, which allows for the 10- fold increase of FCC fines for indecency violations.

And so on and so forth.  With everything in this country that's absolutely screaming for time and attention from the US Congress and Senate, these items were things that Frist felt should be headlined?!?!?
Two posts make one wonder, just what the heck has the Bush Administratin been doing for the past several years!?!
First, very, very few of the people in Iraq's  Baghdad embassy even speak or read Arabic.  Knowledge of the people the US has been working with and fighting against for many years is paifully, painfully limited.
Second, the ISG Report is far from useless, but it's a report that will show it's usefulness in driving the conversation forward over the next few weeks.  It makes so many good, useful recommendations, one has to wonder, why haven't any of these ideas already been tried?!?!  What are these guys waiting for?!?!
Excellent piece on the various foreign policy philosophies.  Conservatives have identified muscular unilateralism ("Do it our way of we'll kick your ass!!") and isolationism (Which abruptly ceased to exist 65 years ago with the Pearl Harbor att
ack).  Yglesias identifies a third way, a "positive-sum game" or "a win-win solution."  Liberals looks for ways in which all the participants come out ahead.
Neither President Bush nor Senator John McCain count as members of the reality-based community.  They want to fight it out on the basis of reality vs fanasy solutions to the problem?  Um, well, okay, sure, let's do it!
Hoo boy!  I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall at THIS meeting!!  Bush had a meeting with Democrats at which he rambled on about how he was the greatest, most bestest president evuh and how Harry Truman was also misunderstood and underestimated and how everybody realized later tha Truman was right and people should just siddown an' shuddup and let him do his thing.  Senate Majority Whip-elect Richard Durbin made the mistake of introducing reality (*Shudder* *Horrors*) to the talk (Truman had the NATO alliance behind him and negotiated with his enemies at the United Nations).
Bush, Durbin said, "reacted very strongly. He got very animated in his response" and emphasized that he is "the commander in chief."
The ISG Report does not involve any choices that lend themselves to any kind of nuance.  Bush is offering a straight yes-or-no, up-or-down choice.
Jor-El tries unsuccessfully to convince Kryptonians to leave Krypton:
Oooh…big mistake…suggesting that everybody get the hell out of Dodge on some series of giant space arks is not going to pacify these neoconservatives, who clearly see that suggestion as “cut-and-run.”  “So this is how you plan to solve the dilemma you created…by flight…spacecraft?” scoffs one Council member.  (You tell him, Councilman!  Stay the course!)
Various appraisals of the Iraq Study group's (ISG's) conclusions.  DailyKos and Speaker
-to-be Nancy Pelosi  / Congressman Murtha  / Company C, 1st Battalion, 37th Armored Regiment  / Robert Gates and Senator Feingold / Arab News  Services /  Columnist David Broder and the wonderfulness of bipartisan consesus / GW Bush
[Contented sigh] Sigh!  It's just so pleasant and heartening and cheering to read things like this.  Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont is scheduled to take over the Judiciary Committee.
He related a conversation where he was recently asked if President Bush should be "worried" that he was now to be Chair of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee. The crowd started cheering.

"No, no" he said, calming the crowd, as if to be prepared for a softening of his rhetoric.

"No, he shouldn't be worried. He should be terrified."

The crowd went nuts!!
Media Matters has a good round-up of the Webb-Bush exchange in which Bush was haughty and arrogant  towards Virginia's new Senator Jim Webb.  Oh, and Bush knew perfectly well that Webb's son was almost killed in an ambush the day before!!
John Bolton resigns as UN Ambassador.  Hopefully, that will disrupt the march to war with Iran.  Bush made it clear that he was very disappointed with the US Senate.
Nearly 500 days after Hurricane Katrina and collateral damage to the levees of New Orleans caused untold damage and suffering, Traveler's Insurance is trying to pull out of Southern Louisiana. Theories?   The desire for gentrification (Let's kick the African- Americans out), the theories of Grover Norquist (Expensive projects should be left up to private industry) to a sheer blindness to human needs as opposed to private profits.
As Atrios remarks: "The stupid!  It burns!" Jonah Goldberg compares the Iraq War to World War II and concludes America has the better deal today.   Never mind the fact that Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan actually did threaten US national security (Meaning that war was not a complete wase of people and resources) and never mind the fact that once the Allies were firmly in control of Normandy, the fall of Germany was pretty much a matter of time and yes, of "staying the course" (Nobody came up with the term because nobody disputed the need).  Once Japan had lost Guadalcanal, their defeat was, again,  pretty much a matter of  time, of "stay the course."  There's simply no valid comparison.

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Iraq Study Group's conclusions due 6 Dec.   Prospects for the group producing anything meaningful or useful are extremely dim.
In a recent intelligence assessment, senior Marine Intelligence Officer in al-Anbar
[Province, contains Fallujah & Ramadi], Col. Peter Devlin, concluded that without a massive infusement of more troops, the battle in al-Anbar is unwinnable.
TRex of firedoglake is their late-night blogger, their comic-relief guy.  He's in fine form tonight talking about the cancellation of the Bush - Nuri al-Maliki (Prime Minister of Iraq) - Abdullah II bin al-Hussein (King of Jordan) meeting.
I hate it when a three-way gets called off, don't you?  You get your hopes up, figure out what you're going to wear, pluck, tweeze, and moisturize, and then…nothing.  Not even a phone call.  You end up sitting alone on your couch with the cats and reading Flannery O'Connor, again.  (But, perhaps I reveal too much?)
------
It's okay, George.  Sooner or later, we all spend the night alone.
"The President Takes Charge on Iraq," but "We're not at the point where the President is going to be in a position to lay out a comprehensive plan at this point."  Heck, why would he be?  Afer all, the US has only been fighting in Iraq for longer now than the US fought Japan in World War II. 
Baker-Hamilton Commission complete waste of time. It's silly to pin any hopes on these turkeys.  Democrats need to come up with their own proposal.
Atrios is right.  There's simply no need to tamper with Social Security and hasn't been for a very long time.  It could probably use a few tweaks, but the US has a very long lead-time to consider them.  Democrats should  hold fast to "no private accounts."
This story's been around for awhile, but it's worth going over.  Back in the early days of the Iraq War, the Bush Administration tried to get other countries to kick in some cash to help out.   They all refused or offered nominal amounts.  The reason was, of course, massive corruption.  Money was obviously just going to fill corporate coffers.  Having an Special Inspector General could be a way to regain credibility on this score.  But Bush and his cronies have shown their true priorities by firing the SIG! 
Ernest Partridge of the Crisis Papers suggests that the reason the Republicans didn't use the Republican-owned Diebold's ownership  of the touch-screen voting machines to throw the elections to the Republicans was that people were starting to get suspicious. "One can pull a scam only a few times before the “marks” (i.e. the public) get suspicious, then angry." Only 25% of the public had confidence that their votes would be properly counted.  Nevertheless, Echidne found a few instances of potential fraud.  Kos comments further.
Poor Cliff May is utterly delusional.  The man is suggesting solutions to the Iraq War that simply don't exist.  What's worse, he's a member of the Iraq Study Group!
Devastation in Baghdad.  It's funny though, how many assessments were made that concluded that Iraqis were trying to influence the US elections right before the 2002, 2004 and 2006 elections, yet this latest rise in violence occurs after the 2006 elections.  The Iraqi civil war reaches new levels of horror.
Malachi Ritscher, Chicago anti-war activist, burns himself alive in protest of continuing conflict.  Marlene Santoyo's collection.
Here's a real "Boo-hoo! Sob! Sniffle!" moment for y'all: 
Speaker-to-be Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, has pledged to 'sever the ties between lobbyists and legislation' in the first 100 hours of running the House of Representatives in January.
And the reaction to this from politicians gobbling from the trough of campaign contributions from industry lobbyists?
Modeled on successful laws in seven states and two cities, clean elections force candidates to spend more time listening to voters than to campaign donors.
Let's all hear it now: "Awwww!!! Da po fewwas!!" History on K Street Project, which appears to be going to be at least damaged over the next few years, hopefully to be tossed on the scrap heap entirely.
Chad Castagana sent envelopes loaded with fake anthrax to several liberals.  He claimed that the hatemongers Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin and Laura Ingraham were his idols.  Malkin claims that she's as innocent as Jodie Foster was in the case of her admirer John Hinckley (Who tried to kill President Reagan).  Not so fast, says Orcinus.  Malkin bears a moral culpability for inciting hatred as she has spent years inciting her admirers to hate (not just dislike, not just disagree with, but hate) various liberal figures.
Robert Parry gives us the rundown on the Secretary of Defense nominee, Robert Gates.  Included are looks at Iran-Contra and his activities during the 80s that could open him to blackmail,
James Wolcott links us to a conservative who wants to take up a collection to keep John Bolton on as UN Ambassador.  Sure, y'all [conservatives] want to give your dimes & nickles to keep a neocon (Who's most probably a millionaire) in office, be my guest!   Actually, a commenter of hers, "My 2 Cents" had a really marvelous idea!
I'll go one step further. ... I would be willing to send money to a fund that is set up to pay for both our soldiers and the supplies they need to keep fighting the enemies of America.
To which we say "Hoo Yah!"  The Iraq War has been fought on a credit card for far too long!  It's long past time for conservatives to kick in some much-needed cash to the effort!
Rich Lowry from the National Review deliberately misreads a poll to suggest 55% of Americans favor increasing troop strength in Iraq.  Incorrect.  55% favor increasing troop strength in Iraq IF "...that meant the U.S. would finally gain control over Baghdad and stabilize the country."  As no such thing can be realistically promised, the statement doesn't mean much.
Looks like John Murtha's got the votes to be the next Democratic Majority Leader after Nancy Pelosi takes her position as Speaker of th House!  Woo hoo!!  Yee hah!!
Update: Dang!  Hoyer beats Murtha.  Oh well.
Very sad and very frightening.  The Bush Administration begins to enforce the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA) by confirming that an American citizen, Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, can be snatched from his home and detained indefinitely merely on the say-so of the President. 
Well, so much for any serious bipartisnship or cross-aisle cooperation from Bush.  John Bolton couldn't even get confirmed as UN Ambassador is a Republican- dominated committee.  Obviously, he won't do any better in a Democratic- dominated one.  There is indeed evidence that he's grown and matured on the job, but the UN is hardly an appropriate post for unschooled amateurs.
Mr Bolton is a unabashed relic of the failed neoconservative era in foreign policy which was so emphatically defeated last week.
Contact the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and let them know that you think John Bolton is the wrong man for the job or call toll free at 1-888-355-3588 via the Capitol switchboard.
Glenn Greenwald demonstrates why the oh-so-knowing and oh-so-very sophisticated and oh-so-terribly cycnical beltway pundits proved themselves to be completely wrong on Russ Feingold and his attempted censure of the president over the warrantless NSA spying program.  Their presumption was that his real goal was to get in position for the '08 campaign for president.  Well guess what?  Feingold isn't running in '08!  BTW, there's no evidence that trying to enforce the Constitution hurt the Democrats for the midterm elections, either! 
Markos Moulitsas of DailyKos says Hey, ALL of the factions of the Democratic Party won the last race!  Lets all kiss and make up.
Stephen Lendman is absolutely correct.  Saddam "The Butcher of Baghdad" Hussein, was an evil dictator, as bad as they came, but his trial, which oh-so-conveniently concluded just as US midterm elections were about to commence, was a complete farce that "gives kangaroos a bad name."  The trial and verdict have zero legitimacy.
Observations on the election results.
Bwah-hah-hah!!! "Twas the Night Before Midterms"
Classic stuff!!  Other fun mid-term stuff and some sobering stories as well. 
Emails needed!!!
Michael Ledeen is trying to claim that he always opposed the invasion of Iraq despite mounds of written evidence to the contrary.  We need to write to his editors at National Review and The Corner and ask (politely, natch) why they're supporting such a liar.
Vanity Fair has published a piece where neocons Richard Perle, Michael Ledeen and Ken Adelman all bemoan how badly the Iraq War turned out and how they just could not have foreseen the problems that would result.
Adelman throwing Rumsfeld under the bus is rich. There is no difference between them. They are both incompetent, ideological zealots who have never been right about anything.

Update: Kevin Drum correctly says this pathetic attmpt by the neocons to separate themselves from the architects of the war should be drowned in the bathtub. Iraq was their baby:
 Schadenfreude only goes so far, though.
All four military newspapers (Army Times, Navy Times, etc.) are calling on Rumsfeld to resign. It's not just the retired officers, not just officers speaking out via Congressman Murtha, now the criticism is much more direct.
These officers have been loyal public promoters of a war policy many privately feared would fail. They have kept their counsel private, adhering to more than two centuries of American tradition of subordination of the military to civilian authority.

And although that tradition, and the officers' deep sense of honor, prevent them from saying this publicly, more and more of them believe it.

Rumsfeld has lost credibility with the uniformed leadership, with the troops, with Congress and with the public at large. His strategy has failed, and his ability to lead is compromised. And although the blame for our failures in Iraq rests with the secretary, it will be the troops who bear its brunt.
The Bush Administration is reduced to making pathetically desperate arguments for preventing a terrorism suspect from talking with a civiian attorney.  Now they're claiming that the suspect will reveal "classified techniques of interrogation."  If these #$%@ techniques were so wonderfully effective, why hasn't the suspect gone on trial already?  Why hasn't the suspect already told his interrogators everything they need to know in order to properly and legally convict him?
Right-wing bloggers strike!  Owing to pressure from "conservative publications and politicians" to open up Saddam Hussein's old weapons-producing archives, one of the documens scanned and put online detailed how to build a nuclear bomb!!  So right-wing Congressmen could prove a point.  So they could "leverage the internet."  Apparently, Iran has found the documents to be quite useful.  And yes, Pennsylvania's own Rick Santorum played a role in getting the documents released!
Update: Scientists pointed out the problem two weeks ago, European diplomats pointed it out one week ago, the NYT finally got their attention.
Summary of news from Iraq  More war funding, some half a million unregistered, unaccounted-for weapons missing from Iraqi government stocks, the flattening of Fallujah led nowhere as violence has increased since then, oh and Baghdad is under seige (Guess that item got lost in the shuffle as the media is so very conerned about Kerry messing up a punchline.)
Keith Olbermann comments on the Kerry flap and why Kerry actually had a pretty good point.  Firedoglake has some very good points on how Democrats should react to mis-speaking like Kerry's.
Mark Halperin abases himself before a second-rank conservative blogger.  Seriously pathetic.

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Cheney & Bush discuss torture. Note their wording.  They're technically right that the "The US doesn't torture" but that's only because a rubber-stamp Congress has legalized it.
Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki seems to be feeling pretty confident. 
The Bush White House wrote a check they could not cash: they acted as if the Iraqis needed us more than we needed them.
The disgusting pig, Rush Limbaugh, has NOT apologized to Michael J Fox for making fun of Fox's debilitating diisease.   Earlier, Wolf Blitzer erroneously assumed Limbaugh's "apology" was real.  Keith Olbermann comments.on YouTube.
I absolutely refuse to accept Camille Paglia as a Democrat! Paglia instead falls under the category of "Concern Troll" 
...they pretend at being progressive Democrats, but at every turn seem to suggest the most obviously damaging or boneheaded or offensive thing they can.
Ann Althouse (Who once wrote a lengthy piece on a case that she very clearly knew nothing about) writes an admiring post about how Paglia "rants against post-structuralism" and how her "three-inch heels," excite Ann so much.
One of those problems that Republicans, but puzzlingly Democrats also, prefer to ignore.  Permanent bases in Iraq. Bush denied that the US was planning to build any such thing, but earlier:
Congressional Republicans killed a provision in an Iraq war funding bill that would have put the United States on record against the permanent basing of U.S. military facilities in that country
Is there any probability that the Baker Commission will produce anything useful?  Ehh, not so much.
The utter and complete moral depravity of the Republican Party / conservatives at this point.
Either the Joe Lieberman campaign in Connecticut is exceedingly, incredibly sloppy with its' paperwork, or there's something very suspicious going on here.  The Lieberman campaign lists $387,000 in "petty cash" expenditures, a full eighth of what the entire campaign spent.
George C. Jepsen, a former state Senate majority leader and Democratic state chairman who chairs Lamont's campaign, said:
"Petty cash is supposed to be used for pizza for volunteers and paper clips," he continued. "It's not intended to fund a massive field operation. "This is a throwback to a generation ago when 'street money' was completely unregulated and widely abused, so at a minimum by law they're supposed to keep detailed records of who was paid and how much, and make those records public.

"If you're doing it right and by the book, so that it's 100 percent legal, you would be cutting roughly 6,000 individual checks and keeping track of the money," Jepsen added.
Excellent 8-minute film from the (British) Guardian on Iraq.  Reminds me of some of the better anti-Vietnam War films I saw in my youth.  Editor & Publisher examines:
Then we see and hear an Iraqi soldier telling the Americans things were better off under Saddam. They had more fuel and electricity then. An earnest U.S. soldier asks, “For those two things you are willing to give up your freedom?” His Iraqi “comrade” replies, “Of course I am, these are the essentials of life.”
Interesting.  Seems the favorite "moderate," "middle  of the road" cure for the Iraq situation is to add another 100,000 troops to the Army.  Funny thing is that no one seems to have any idea as to where these extra troops are going to come from.  First the DLC suggested it, then Joe Lieberman, now "Saint" John McCain is doing so. 
US Government moves quickly to quash 196 pending habea corpus cases that have been waiting since 2004 for resolution.  The ACLU does not intend to let habeas corpus fade away quietly into the night though!
About that proposal concerning Iraq that James Baker was working on?   Fuhgeddaboudit:
Snow said Bush would take the commission’s recommendations seriously but that they were simply advisory suggestions. (emphasis added)
Riverbend, a young, modern, secular Iraqi woman, returns to blogging and goes into the Lancet report. 
The chaos and lack of proper facilities is resulting in people being buried without a trip to the morgue or the hospital. During American military attacks on cities like Samarra and Fallujah, victims were buried in their gardens or in mass graves in football fields. Or has that been forgotten already?

We literally do not know a single Iraqi family that has not seen the violent death of a first or second-degree relative these last three years.
Billmon comments,
So just how fair and evenhaded is Fox News' Chris Wallace?  Not so much, actually. 
Norah O'Donnell asks a guest:
Can you promise then that when Democrats–if they retake the House of Representatives and Senate will not issue tens or hundreds of subpoenas to the White House when it comes to Katrina, Iraq and a number of other issues and essentially make the President's final two years in office a living hell if you will and mean that nothing gets done in Washington?
Hmm, how bad would two years of gridlock & paralysis be?  "Put me down for two years of gridlock, Sam!"
Habeas Corpus took a really hard hit today with the "Military Commission Act of 2006" and may not ever recover as the definitions used are so vague as to be legally meaningless.  As Digby puts it: "Today President Bush took the constitution and tore it into little pieces."  Very interesting, as Digby notes:  Where was "Saint" John McCain?
As the ACLU says:
"The president can now, with the approval of Congress, indefinitely hold people without charge, take away protections against horrific abuse, put people on trial based on hearsay evidence, authorize trials that can sentence people to death based on testimony literally beaten out of witnesses, and slam shut the courthouse door for habeas petitions." 
And who exactly, is this law actually aimed at?  The ACLU, through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, obtained documens that strongly suggest peace activists.  Four Congresspeople are fingered as havig voted for this.  Further commentary from radio talk show host Taylor Marsh.
Ned Lamont debated Senator Joe Lieberman and the REAL Republican who ACTUALLY won Connecticut's Republican primary, Alan Schlessinger.  Schlessinge distinguished himself, Lamont stayed on message and dignified and Lieberman embarrassed himself.  The above link features links to various Connecticut blogs.
Very, very interesting poll results concerning 9-11!  (Selection) 57% think Bush personally knew of intel suggesting an attack by airplanes was in the works.  The Clinton Administration does better by 10 points in whether they were paying enough attention to terror attacks. 81% think Bush is either hiding something about 9-11 or is outright lying.  Guess the ol' "Let's do a repeat of the Reichstag Fire!" idea didn't work out so well. 
The argument against the charge that Iran is running some sort of "Ho Chi Minh Trail" to Iraqi insurgents  has long been the one of "Occam's Razor," the principle of not making a theory any more complicated than it needs to be to explain something.  Iraqis use simple, easily-obtained weaponry (AK-47s & IEDs), they have all the training they need (Pre-war, a very large military establishment) and with the American occupation, all the motivation they need (Harsh pre-war sanctions, infidels who don't speak their language and don't care about their culture occupying their land, Abu Ghraib, etc.).  Nevertheless, the British decided to investgate to see if the Iranians were sending anything over anyway.  Result?  Nothing.
Does the Bush Administration want to attack anyway?  Well,
If the fallout from the Foley scandal makes it appear inevitable that the Democrats will take the House, the Iran card may be the surest one, and perhaps the only one, that the Bush administration has left to play.
An Iraqi examines the Johns Hopkins/Lancet study that estimates over 650,000 Iraqi deaths while under American occupation. 
As issues like gay marriage become less potent as campaign props and as President Bush seems eerily confident of the ability of Republicans to prevail in the midterm elections, suspicion grows that war with Iran is on the agenda. 
The Republicans refer to their right-wing religious allies as "nuts" and "goofy."  Evidence of nutsiness is in an hyserical screed from A.I.M.  Parts of it remind me of the old anti-Jewish slurs from the Nazi era:
Ominously, the Foley scandal suggests that this network has inside information about the sexual behavior of members of Congress and their staffers that can be exploited in order to create scandals at a moment's notice.
Still, Republicans have no problem working with the religious right.   Consider the many slurs put out by them and their allies in the news media to try and spin the ex-Congressman Mark Foley case.  The media make a more formal, less hysterical-sounding case, but the details of secret Democratic plots to exploit the Foley incident are remarkably similar to A.I.M.s. 
Yes, the gays are taking over!! The truly sad part is in seeing how closely Republicans work with gays while bashing them in public.
Two years ago, the British publication Lancet estimated Iraqi deaths from the US invasion at over 100,000.  These were deaths over and above what Iraq would have suffered if the evil dictator Saddam Hussein had remained in power.  Now, a new study estimates such deaths at a staggering 655,000!!  The methods used to calculate the toll were completely uncotroversial before they were used on such a controversial invasion. 
Juan Cole explains (And a quick look at Today in Iraq cofirms) how figures could contrast so dramatically with those of Iraq Body Count. (Further confirmation).
Oh, and President Bush said Wednesday: "I don't consider it a credible report." No indication as to how he reached his conclusion.  
Chris Matthews seems to feel Republicans run the more moral of the big two parties.  That's actually a very highly questionable claim.
Eric Boehlert, the author of Lapdogs looks at the performance of the press covering Foleygate (or predatorgate)
It seems obvious journalists declined to report pertinent, albeit uncomfortable, information about a high-profile Republican in hopes the awkward issue would go away.
Realization appears to be finally sinking in with the Bush Administration that the Iraq War is lost.
Former Representative Foley's sexually-suggestive emails to youthful pages now dated back to the year 2000.
Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) sketches out how she'd spend her first 100 hours as Speaker of the House if the upcoming mid-term elections go the way they should.
Bush's use of signing statements gets worrisome as he signed the military appropriations bill, but challenged 16 provisions. 
A signing statement is issued by the president as he signs a bill into law. It describes his interpretation of the bill, and it sometimes declares that one or more of the laws created by the bill are unconstitutional and thus need not be enforced or obeyed as written.
I'm sorry, but this practice is grossly unsatisfactory, blatantly unConstitutional and must be halted immediately!!!
Tony Snow explains the "just a comma" comment by Bush.  The problem with using the time when the Iraqi government was formed as a baseline is a bit difficult as it's not clear that it will be any more of a decisive turning point than any of the other "decisive turning points" of the last several years.
From Germany's declaration of war in 1941 to VE Day - 1244 days.  From the US invasin of Iraq in 2003 to today - 1298 days.  That's the true standard we should be measuring by.
Despite the best efforts of Republicans and Fox News (Yeah, I know, I'm repeating myself) the scandal of former Representative Foley stubbornly remains a purely Republican scandal.  Dennis Hastert remains in office, despite having known for at least five years that Foley had a problem with young pages. 
When you've got not just the scary, scary Democrats, but everyone from Bay Buchanan to Richard Viguerie to Michael Reagan to Tony Blankley to National Review contributors to nearly every non-Fox-affiliated media commenter calling the behavior of the GOP leadership an embarrassment and a fiasco, that pretty much by definition counts as a national consensus.
Very, very interesting to see how very, very quiet the Religious Right has been about the Foley scandal.  It's almost as if their religious values were taking a back seat to their political ambitions. 
Oh, and of course Joe Lieberman is blatantly and clearly demonstrating where his priorities are and they're not with protecting young people from predators, that's for sure.
Quotes from Republicans who are having an enormously difficult time grasping the difference between the affair between people like Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, two adults who willingly and deliberately hooked up and were fully conscious as to what they were doing and a predator like Representative Mark Foley, an adult who abused his authority as an adult and as a Congressman to intimidate young men into having sex with him.  The Republicans have an especially difficult time distinguishing between gays and pedophiles, not appearing to understand that the two aren't the same thing.  Love and rape are physically similar to each other, but emotionally, they have nothing in common and really shouldn't be confused with one another.  Foley was a rapist as his sexual partners could not be described as truly understanding and willing and Will of Will & Grace was a lover as he cared about his partners.
One-stop shopping for the latest news on predatorgate.
Firedoglake explains why predatorgate is all Joe Lieberman's fault.  Lieberman has neutered the Democratic Party so badly, the Republicans felt they had nothing to fear. 
Bill Perry and I have both posted our photoessays.
BTW, very, very interesting comments by major neocon and chickenhawk Bill Kristol on how well democracy gets along with the Iraq War.
Major, major scandal with Republican Congressman Foley and his sexual harrassment of a male, underage page.  AmericaBlog broke the story and has been producing updates on a regular basis.  The worst part of it is that apparently, senior Republicans have known about Foley's predelictions for quite awhile.

September                         back to top

Report on vigil in front of Armed Forces Recuiting Center. 
Echidne summarizes the bad parts of the bill just passed on a more-or-less party-line vote.  Just about all of the Republicans voted to do away with the 700-year-old tradition of habeas corpus (The Magna Carta was signed in 1215, habeas corpus came about in 1305)
and twelve Democrats chimed in with them.  Very worryingly, Echidne points out that the definition of "enemy combatant" is quite vague and could be used to apply to just about anyone.
Keith Olbermann, who received a letter full of fake anthrax, makes an observation about the Rupert Murdoch-owned NY Post story:
It's interesting too that Murdoch's paper was able to get a jump on this story so quickly -- nearly as quickly, as if they'd known it was coming.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi requests a closed session of Congress to discuss findings of 16 intel agencies that Iraq War has made the terrorism problem worse.  Loses by more or less straight party line vote. 
Analysis of report.
Cindy Sheehan kicks off Peace Mom book tour.
Auugh!  Bill Clinton was just cra-a-azeee in his response to being subjected to surprise, hostile questioning that, curiously enough, very strongly resembled the line of attack from the Disney/ABC miniseries "Path to 9-11."    but was Clinton's reaction really such a bad thing? 
As Jon Stewart pointed out on the Daily Show, Bush is asking Americans to regard the Iraq War as a war for civilization itself.  Stewart asks, quite reasonably, if the Iraq War is so very important, why doesn't the US have half a million troops there?  As Americablog notes, the US isn't even supplying our troops with what they need to do the job.  Senator Joe Lieberman declares that the US doesn't have enough troops in the field to do the job, but makes proposals that are curiously devoid of useful details, i.e. where are the proposed new troops going to come from!?!?
Leaders among the Neocons are all chickenhawks, people who don't put their bodies where their beliefs are while about 60% of the country opposes being in Iraq to begin with.  The only people left to fight are the economically desperate and the occasional conscientious hero.  According to ABC News, that's not nearly enough:
...other than the troops now in Iraq and Afghanistan, there are only about two or three combat brigades, seven to ten thousand troops, fully trained and equipped to respond quickly to a crisis.
Bill Clinton lets Fox News have it!!  Clinton whacks Fox News about his attempt to get Osama bin Laden vs the eight months at the beginning of 2001 when the Republicans did nothing. 

CW:     Do you think you did enough, sir?

WJC:   No, because I didn’t get him.

CW:     Right…

WJC:   But at least I tried. That’s the difference in me and some, including
all the right-wingers who are attacking me now. They ridiculed me for
trying. They had eight months to try and they didn’t.  I tried. So I tried
and failed. When I failed, I left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy and
the best guy in the country: Dick Clarke.

Clinton also calls Fox News and Karl Rove on their tactics of dividing America in order to smear Democrats  and to win elections through fear. 
Republicans release what's essentially a propaganda document in which they claim ". . . without question we are a safer nation than we were before 9/11."  It's difficult to see how they came up with that conclusion. 
A short time later, we get a National Intelligence Estimate (that was actually ready to go in April) that documents that, actually, things are much worse on the terrorism front, specifically because the US invaded Iraq.  A local columnist argues that the security situation has modestly improved.  He bases his conclusion more or less exclusively on testimony by Michael Chertoff.
Whether you argue from within a faith or from a purely naturalistic standpoint
without recourse to any higher deity or cause, torture is wrong. Always. It's wrong not because it doesn't work and leads to false and often dangerously misleading confessions. It's wrong because it violates the essence of what it means to be a human being, whether you define that essence as a gift from God or derive it from purely naturalistic principles.
Digby quotes a Soviet dissident:
Joseph Stalin's notorious NKVD (the Soviet secret police) became nothing more than an army of butchers terrorizing the whole country but incapable of solving the simplest of crimes. And once the NKVD went into high gear, not even Stalin could stop it at will. He finally succeeded only by turning the fury of the NKVD against itself [emphasis added]
Remember, Stalin was the guy whose orders led to the deaths of millions of kulaks in the 1930s.  If even such a butcher couldn't control the NKVD once they'd had a taste of torture, what is the US doing to itself?
Massachusetts Congressman Ed Markey weighs in on the torture issue, denounces  "renegade" Republicans for capitulating to Administration.
Media Matters notes how media pays attention to Republican intra-party dispute, ignores victims of torture.
Piece on Presidential lawbreaking.
"Bill Frist, the Senate Republican leader has laid down the law {on whether the US will comply with the Geneva Conventions or use torture]: it's a Rubber Stamp or nothing."
For a bill to pass, Frist said, "it's got to preserve our intelligence programs," including the CIA's aggressive interrogation techniques, and it must "protect classified information from terrorists." He said that "the president's bill achieves those two goals" but that "the Warner-McCain-Graham bill falls short."
In other words, the thumbscrews remain, the torture remains, America's image to the world must be that of a sadistic thug who cares nothing for the good opinion of the world.
Well, the kabuki dance of the "Gang of Five" or the "rebellious" Republicans is over and it's clear that they never meant to stand in the way of the Bush Administration's desire to torture prisoners of war in the first place.  By restricting what can be done to punish torturers, they make the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners meaningless.
Gee, what a surprise! The Bush Administration is trying to gin up a war with Iran and  the IAEA thinks they're lying about how far Iran is in producing nuclear weapons. The International Atomic Energy Agency:

says the report was wrong to say that Iran had enriched uranium to weapons-grade level when the IAEA had only found small quantities of enrichment at far lower levels.
Very, very disturbing that all of the sudden, after the Geneva Conventions were adopted back in 1947 and after no-one has had any problems understanding them, President Bush says that Article 3, on the treatment of prisoners, is suddenly unclear.
Video
So how's the other war doing?  How are things in Afghanistan?  Well, er, um, eh, not so hot actually...

"We are flattening places we have already flattened, but the attacks have kept coming. We have killed them by the dozens, but more keep coming, either locally or from across the border," one said. "We have used B1 bombers, Harriers, F16s and Mirage 2000s. We have dropped 500lb, 1,000lb and even 2,000lb bombs. At one point our Apaches [helicopter gunships] ran out of missiles they have fired so many. Almost any movement on the ground gets ambushed. We need an entire battle group to move things. Yet they will not give us the helicopters we have been asking for.

"We have also got problems with the Afghan forces. The army, on the whole, is pretty good, although they are often not paid properly. But many of the police will not fight the Taliban, either because they are scared or they are sympathizers."

Cindy Sheehan writes a letter to the President, first quoting an interview between him and The Today Show's Matt Lauer.  Speaking of which, Matt's former co-star, Katie Couric decided to send very mixed messages by featuring Rush Limbaugh for a segment called "Free Speech," (Which didn't feature any liberals or Democrats) wherein Limbaugh promptly declared:
that the wrong kind of free speech (i.e., criticizing the war in Iraq) undermines patriotism and drags down the morale of U.S. troops.
Oh, and the purpose featuring Limbaugh in the first place?  Why, to promote "civil discourse," naturally! 
Commentary on PT911 TV-Movie and suggested actions against it.
Folks have defended Senator Joe Lieberman because he has "stood up" on the Iraq War and "refuses to back down".  Or has he? Could it be he's just interested in saving his seat and the Iraq War was once a convenient position to take?
Some good news about the Disney/ABC propaganda film emerges.  From firedoglake:

I have frequently taken part in conference calls with DC Democrats where I and others have pleaded with big names to join us in bashing the establishment media for its right wing bias.  These media conglomerates are not our friends; they’re selling lies.  We need to point this out and campaign openly, jointly against establishment media conglomerates, we’ve argued.

We never got anywhere.  But now ABC and Disney have managed to get the big name Dems on Capitol Hill, Bill Clinton, the netroots and the grassroots all working together to expose the right wing bias of establishment media.  I really want to thank ABC/Disney for that.

The Democrats are finally waking up to the fact: The Media Is Not Our Friend!!! This is why the alternative media and the left blogosphere exist!  They exist because the major media is doing a crappy job of reporting the facts and the context for those facts.
Liberal Oasis takes serious issue with Bush's 6th Sep speech defending his going outside the Geneva Conventions in the interrogation of captured suspects. Includes links to many others who also disagree with the speech.
On the Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson/Uranium from Niger case, Mother Jones considers the part played by Richard Armitage as essentially that of a red herring. 
In other words, there's a reason the left blogosphere has been essentially ignoring the story.
The rhetoric used by the Bush Administration grows ever more extreme.  Now SecState Rice is trying to convince folks that for the Democrats of today to criticize Bush over the Iraq war is equivalent to the 1864 opponent of Abraham Lincoln to suggest leaving the South be and to leave slavery intact.
So, another Number 2 bad guy from "al Qaeda in Iraq" gets it.  Just how many Number 2's have there been?  Actually, there have been quite a few.  Blogenlust counts a total of 39 of them since Sept 2005.
I always felt during the Reagan Administration, that when Reagan slipped up and said things he didn't mean to say, that's when he was really telling the truth.  Senate Majority Leader Frist's son tells us all about how Republicans really feel about why American troops are in Iraq:
"I was born an American by God’s amazing grace," wrote Bryan Frist in an online profile. "Let’s bomb some people."
9-11 Families to press for new investigation of 9-11 attacks on 11Sep06 at  the National Press Club's Zenger Room in Washington DC at 11:00am to 12:15pm.

August                         back to top

Keith Olbermann makes an excellent, eloquent speech.

Had he or his president perhaps proven any of their prior claims of omniscience -- about Osama Bin Laden's plans five years ago, about Saddam Hussein's weapons four years ago, about Hurricane Katrina's impact one year ago -- we all might be able to swallow hard, and accept their "omniscience" as a bearable, even useful recipe, of fact, plus ego.

But, to date, this government has proved little besides its own arrogance, and its own hubris.

Bill Scher notes that Rumsfeld actually did make some coherent points, not very good points, but still well worth reviewing.
The propaganda offensive is in full swing!  Cheney and Rumsfeld and Frist are going at it whole hog.  Democrats are fighting back, though. 
Pathetic!   Chickenhawk conservative not only wouldn't take any combat risks for he country, she wouldn't even die for Jesus. 
Vice President Cheney is again making, wild, unbelievable, unsubstantiated charges.  Very disturbingly, a member of the press corps goes well beyond being a mere "stenographer" and goes into being a full-blown press whore for the Bush Administration. 
AmericaBlog wonders if Cheney will now get pestered over his wild charges the same way John Kerry was pestered over some of his statements.
LiberalOasis examines Katrina relief funds and how they seem to be bottled up in "bad bureaucracy".
A particularly disgusting charge that's been traveling around the web lately is that Hitler got the idea for the Holocaust from Darwin.  This overestimates a mass murderer, besides which, Der Fuhrer was a Creationist/Biblical literalist/Intelligent Design kinda guy.
Senator Joe Lieberman responds to criticism, critic responds back.
1st Lt. Ehren Watada, 28, of Honolulu, has been charged with missing troop movement, conduct unbecoming an officer and contempt toward officials. He refused to deploy to Iraq on June 22 with his Fort Lewis-based unit.
Watada faces up to seven years imprisonment and his investigating officer has just recommended that he be court-martialled 
WaPo delivers nicely (*cough*) "fair & balanced" piece on how the Bush Administration has manfully struggled  with the political aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.  Funny thing, they only saw fit to interview Republicans for the piece!  Oh, and the Army Corps of Engineers can't even certify that the New Orleans levees will hold against another storm surge. 
Lots and lots of informative links at Today in Iraq today.  Chart depicting insurgent attacks and who those attacks are being made on; British withdraw from a base, base is promptly looted down to the ground; review of Oliver Stone's 9/11; was the plot to blow up planes over the Atlantic feasible?
Bitter disputes over articles on Republican criticism of lintel agencies not being sufficiently alarmist over Iran getting nuclear weapons.  Bill Scher annotates a NY Times piece, showing how deeply the Times is still overplaying Republican alarmism and underplaying Democratic/liberal critiques. 
We descend into the muck & mire of a right-wing website to battle errors and lies.  In this case, it's the question of "Does Hitler equal Darwin?"
Funny, I thought the Bush Administration didn't believe in rolling out new products during August, but they've started their campaign to invade Iran anyway. 
Particularly egregious example of why we simply can't trust the mainstream media to accurately inform us on dang near anything.
London's Royal Institute for International Affairs concludes that:
There is little doubt that Iran has been the chief beneficiary of the war on terror in the Middle East.
Isn't it wonderful to see that we have such effective, competent people running the War on Terror? (/snark)
Orcinus examines the utter waste and stupidity of racial profiling.  Very sad to see how many people believe profiling will ever be an effective anti-terrorist tool.
In yet another reason to distrust a government that says it needs expansive powers to fight terrorism, Jose Padilla is brought to a pre-trial hearing and the judge throws out the first charge on the grounds that it threatens to hold the defendent in double jeopardy. 
Keep in mind that the Bush Administration has had several years to compose charges against Padilla. 
The campaigns of Senator Joe Lieberman and Senator John McCain are both in trouble because they're both supporters of the Iraq War and neocon policies generally, but neither one is stupid enough to make their support for these policies openly known, obviously due to the fact that their positions are extremely unpopular.  Note: Lieberman says: "we have to demand that the Iraqi government do a better job ... at containing the sectarian violence."  Sounds good in theory, but back in June, the Iraqi government offered amnesty to the insurgents, only to be shot down by the US Government.  Military maxim: Can't assign responsibility without authority.  For people in charge to be held responsible, they need authority.
Remembering all of the overwrought hysteria over the "constitutional crisis" caused in the late 1990s by the then- President Clinton getting a bj from a woman not his wife, it's really amazing for media outlets to be fussing over how artfully-written Judge Taylor's opinion was over the fact that President Bush broke the law and violated the Constitution in non-trivial ways.  The front page of the NY Times fussed and bothered and bemoaned their assessment that the judge "stuttered and sputtered a bit more than necessary." More from Media Matters.
Israel violates cease-fire on off-chance they could eliminate Hezbollah stronghold.
The (British) Guardian is less than impressed.  Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has started a blog and they find it "tedious."
Magnificent, magnificent decision by Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, who annihilates the Bush Administration's claim of the Executive Branch's "inherent powers" claim in the warrantless NSA spying case.
How is the President likely to react?   Well, considering that he was baffled as to why 10,000 Shiites demonstrated in Baghdad in favor of Hezbollah, it's not likey he'll comprehend this "stab in the back" from an American court.
Update: The WaPo gives us an unbelievably bad editorial.
Many very deep questions about just how serious the British bomber plot was:
None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane ticket. Many did not even have passports, which given the efficiency of the UK Passport Agency would mean they couldn't be a plane bomber for quite some time.
Comment on Presidential press conference of August 14th:
There were some fresh straw-men yesterday from the president himself, who regularly takes on the made-up arguments of imaginary opponents.
----------
Bush's insistence that Hezbollah lost appears to be wishful thinking.
Dan Froomkin then quotes a number of reporters who can't quite share Bush's enthusiastic assessment that Israel won it's recent war against Hezbollah.
Andrew Sullivan issues a challenge to leftists.
Pam of Atlas Shrugs has returned from reporting in Israel (It's to her credit that she's a conservative supporter of a war and actually made it to the site.  Most conservative supporters of the Iraq War haven't gotten within a thousand miles of Iraq.) Anyway, she's at her wacky best in the video featured here. 
The blog post by Jane Hamsher asks a very serious queston, though.  Hamsher posted a picture of Joe Lieberman in blackface during the campaign with Ned Lamont in Connecticut.  She quickly took it down, but she and Ned have gotten grief for it ever since.  Question: Why hasn't UN Ambassador John Bolton gotten anywhere near the same amount of grief for doing an hour-long interview with Pam?
US Ambassador to Iraq accuses Iran of running the Iraqi resistance, oh, and they're allegedly running Hezbollah as well. Problem: The theory known as Occam's Razor says that we don't need Iranian interference to explain either Iraq or Hezbollah.  Iran is most likely irrelevant to both.  Oh, and the article that repeats the Ambassaor's allegations mentions in the sixth paragraph that he has no evidence to back up his claims. 
Also, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, is now more popular than ever.  People are even calling him the new Nasser.  Heck of a job, Georgie!
Here's a question: With the country on Red Alert, why is President Bush still on vacation?!?!?
Big, dramatic headlines, but it's not at all clear that the planned terrorist attack via Britain's airlines was anywhere near ready to go. Very, very, very important to notice:
First, what stopped this plot was law enforcement. Law enforcement. Not a military invasion of Pakistan, Iran, Lebanon, Egypt, or Iraq. Old-fashioned surveillance, development of human sources, putting pieces together, and cooperation with foreign police and intelligence services.
This is an extremely important point!    We don't need to sacrifice our civil liberties in order to stop these kinds of plots!
As has become quite normal, we learn that the Bush Administration knew about the plot long ago, but timed their announcements to come right after Lieberman's electoral defeat.
The always-idiotic phrase "Islamofascism" is causing political problems for the Bush Administration.  Gee, who'd a thunk it?
Republicans are interpreting Lamont's win on the 9th as a serious challenge to the continuation of the Iraq War.  Never mind that 60% of the country thinks the war was a mistake, Republicans and Joe Lieberman think we should "stay the course".
Ned Lamont wins Connecticut Democratic primary against Joe Lieberman!!!  Very unlikely that Lieberman would win a three-way race, but he'll try anyway.  He seems to be hoping to drag the Democratic Party down with him.
Update: Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and DSCC Chair Chuck Schumer welcome defeat of Lieberman, saying it clears the way for Democrats to come out with anti-war positions.  "The results bode well for Democratic victories in November". 
Also: Hillary Clinton does the right thing and supports Lamont.
Further update: Lieberman's website went down.  It's absolutely, positively crystal clear that it was not due to sabotage.  Rather, it was because Joe was cheap and didn't spend enough money for a service that would handle the easily-foreseeable traffic
Never ceases to amaze one:
It’s been about 48 hours since Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee issued a sweeping indictment of the Bush  administration’s casual approach to law-breaking in a report called, "The Constitution in Crisis." How’s the media reaction been?
 
[sound of crickets chirping]
Bwah-hah-hah!!! Love it! Love it! Love it!  U.S. Representative Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) referred to the Lamont/Lieberman primary in Connecticut by saying:
"What’s playing out here is that being a rubber stamp for George Bush is politically dangerous to life-threatening."
That's exactly the message pro-Lamont people are trying to send!  Lieberman is not merely conservative, he's a rubber stamp for Bush and the neoconservatives love the guy.
With Bush on vacation in Crawford TX and Karen Hughes AWOL, is it really that unreasonable to expect Administration figures to y'know, like do their jobs!?!?!
Very serious, sobering commentary, the kind of comments where both you and the author devoutly hope the author is wrong.
Credit where credit is due: Hillary Clinton lets Rumsfeld have it!  Some highlights:
Yes, we hear a lot of happy talk and rosy scenarios, but because of the Administration's strategic blunders, and frankly the record of incompetence in executing, you are presiding over a failed policy.
Yowza!   That's the kind of talk we need to hear more of from Democrats these days!!
Rumsfeld explains:
The balance between having too many [boots on the ground] and contributing to an insurgency by a feeling of occupation and the risk of having too few...
The "risk" of having too many troops is an obvious after-the-fact justification.  The reason the US didn't have and does not have enough troops has been obvious for years: to start up a draft would cause unrest a la Vietnam.  Young people would have a reason to join the anti-war movement.
Update: Another, more sobering view of the same hearings.
More reasons to not support Senator Joe Lieberman in his bid for reelection.
How volunteers can sign up to help his challenger, Ned Lamont.
Rhetoric matters!  Words are meaninful!  The right-wing and major media response to the atrocities of Abu Ghraib are being felt in Rush Limbaugh's calls for genocide. 
Until civilians -- frankly, I'm not sure how many of them are actually just innocent little civilians running around versus active Hezbo[llah] types, particularly the men, but until those civilians start paying a price for propping up these kinds of regimes, it's not going to end, folks. What do you mean, civilians start paying a price? I just ask you to consult history for the answer to that. It's not their fault, Rush, it's not their fault! No. Not saying that it is.

But as long as you're going to allow these people to hide behind baby carriages and women and children and mosques and so-called apartment buildings, and if you're going to launch military strikes at military targets, which Hezbollah is not doing -- 120 rockets into Israel yesterday. Nobody has a care in the world, nobody has one word of condemnation for that. We don't know what targets were hit, we don't know how many people died. The Israelis are not parading their victims around on TV for propaganda purposes. As long as we are going to pussyfoot and patty-cake around, we're not going to get anywhere, we're not going to make any real progress. (emphases added)
As others point out, Limbaugh's statement has a good deal in common with bin Laden's:
As for what you asked regarding the American people, they are not exonerated from responsibility, because they chose this government and voted for it despite their knowledge of its crimes in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq and in other places.

July                         back to top

Further thoughts on Bush's July 28th Press Conference: Dan Froomkin of the WaPo picks out and comments on the really scary parts of Bush's presser. 
Bush responded to specific questions with rambling theoretical discourses that seemed very detached from the situation at hand.
Mary Shaw Philadelphia's Amnesty International representative, comments:
[The bad guys] ...hate the U.S. government's persistent meddling in the affairs of Arab nations. No one should be surprised at the insurgency in Iraq, a country that we attacked in an unprovoked war of aggression in defiance of the United Nations Security Council. They are responding to a violent ongoing occupation. They are responding to the destruction of their country by U.S. forces over the past three years that leaves them still today with a serious lack of jobs, a serious lack of clean water, unreliable electrical power (if any), and virtually no security.
She also makes a number of charges about Israel & the Palestinians.
A representative from the Bush Administration claimed about the situation between Israel & Hezbollah: "...we've all got to work very, very quickly to put in place a durable cease-fire" Really?  "...very, very quickly..." huh?  Is that why SecState Rice was playing a piano recital a few days back and President Bush was meeting with the contestants of American Idol? 
BTW: "Lebanese support for Hezbollah to keep arms shot up from 58% to 87% this past week"
The war of Israel against Hezbollah does not appear to be going well! Why anybody ever thought airpower was useful agaist guerrilla forces, I'll never know. 
We've essentially got a World War II army trying to take out a 4th Generation foe, kind of like the French trying to take out the German Army at Sedan (1870).
Harper's did a very good piece on Wal-Mart and how it works (Description of current issue of Harper's, article not on-line.)
LeftCoaster reviews Paul Weyrich's lyrical views of smallness in the world of business that, golly gee willikers, doesn't appear to account for Wal-Mart!  Funny how that is!
Awful curious how, if the Iraq War were such a hugely important issue, why Joe Lieberman campaign website doesn't mention it and how he didn't have a speech to make after Iraq Prime Minister al-Maliki spoke and how the Bush twins are 24 years old, in splendid physical shape and yet haven't signed up to fight in the war.
Update: Frank Rich of the NY Times points out the reason Iraq is such a ratings loser:
Americans don’t like to lose, whatever the season. They know defeat when they see it, no matter how many new plans for victory are trotted out to obscure that reality.
Gee, what a surprise!  President Bush sexually harrasses a fellow head of state and the media ignores it.  Amazing how these things happen!
Also, author of Lapdogs is interviewed and details how media studiously ignores his book and desperately tries to make it look like Bush & Co are doing something, anything about Israel vs Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Bonus - SecState Condi plays the piano! And Bush meets with American Idol contestants.  Not that they had anything better to do, of course.
Q. But Hezbollah is a terrorist organization taking orders from Syria and Iran. Doesn't Israel have the right to defend itself against terrorists who just want to drive the Jews into the sea?

A. First of all, the US Congress designated Hezbollah as a terrorist organization despite the fact that they had not carried out a single terrorist attack in over a decade, and when they did it was in response to Israeli occupation. Hezbollah is a major political party in Lebanon. It runs candidates for office and generally wins a respectable minority of seats. It operates schools, charities, ambulance companies and social services, often picking up the slack for Lebanon's weak government.
Realized a long time ago that our President wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, but wow!  The extreme simplicity of his views reminds of the old black & white westerns of the 1950s.
Hillary Clinton & the DLC put out their plan.  For progressives, it's DOA.  It's an extremely uninteresting plan that won't get voters out of their easy chairs on election day and then, even if Clinton wins the presidency, it's not at all clear that she'll do anything diferently from what the current president is doing.
Noted Neocon David Frum concludes Iraq War is hopeless.  Joe Lieberman does not agree. 
Discussion as to the meaning and significance of the term "chickenhawk".
Ann Coulter "theorizes" that former President Clinton might be a "latent homosexual."  That's not the worst of it.  The worst of it is that an MSNBC newsreader announced Coulter's plainly libelous comment as though she were referring to a respectable, trustworthy figure! 
Media Matters has contact info for MSNBC so we can ask them what their problem is.
Arr-rasm-frasm!!  Israel was supposed to take Pam of the blog Atlas Shrugged off our hands for a little while, but then apparently got a look at her blog and said "Yikes!" and cancelled her trip.  Pooey!
UPDATE:  Yay!  Pam made it to Israel after all! Downside: Israel will probably have to cancel the "Law of Return" for everyone.  As Tbogg says: "Worlds. Slowest. Train. Wreck."
GW Bush and SecState Rice have been pursuing and extremely lazy, lackadaisical, leisurely attempt to see to peace in the Middle East. 
Not surprisingly, Washington seems to have expected Israel to wipe out Hezbollah all at once, in one grand slam.  What's even less surprsing is that the idea didn't work.
Jews for Justice for Palestinians puts out a statement:
WE WATCH WITH HORROR the collective punishment of the people of Gaza. Everything reasonable must be done to secure Corporal Gilad Shalit’s safe release but nothing Israel is doing contributes to that aim. Instead, it is using its enormously superior military might to terrorise an entire people.

DESTRUCTION OF THE FRAGILE Gaza infrastructure will not release Shalit. Bombing power stations and cutting off fuel supplies deprives people of electricity, refrigeration, pumped drinking water and sewage disposal services. It holds hostage hospital patients on life support systems, or undergoing dialysis. It brings the threat of epidemics and starvation.

AS GIDEON LEVY WROTE in the Israeli daily Ha’aretz, this is “not only pointless, but … blatantly illegitimate”. Gilad Shalit has become a pawn in the Israeli government’s ongoing battle to topple the democratically-elected government of the Palestinians.

More at LeftCoaster.


World O'Crap details a conservative who tries to make smart people sound dumb:

I note here what is to me a mystery. It is that people with lower IQs somehow tend, in our age, to have a greater apprehension of the meaning of things and the reality of life, than do our high-IQ professionals, who often seem, in areas outside their immediate field, startlingly dim. I don’t know why intellectuals–or cerebralists or eggheads or IQ hegemonists–seem to miss the most obvious things, floating on untethered by common sense. If you talk to a brilliant scholar at a fine university about social policy, chances are he will say with honest perplexity that he cannot understand–really cannot understand–why people would not want men to marry men, or women women. I wish there were a name for this, for the cluelessness of the more intellectually accomplished, the simpler but truer wisdom of those who are often less lettered and less accomplished.

Um, so let's see here, smart people are stupid because they don't condemn gay marriage and stupid people are smart because they do?
Update: The writer of the above comment was Peggy Noonan, former speechwriter for the elder George Bush and for whom the tagline "Peggy Noonan's deep thoughts" is always good for a laugh.

Britain's The Guardian totes up the physical damage to Lebanon:
With countless homes wrecked, 55 bridges destroyed and numerous roads made impassable, factories, hospitals and airports hit and fuel storage facilities destroyed, estimates of the reconstruction cost already run into billions of dollars.
Also, fascinating look at "The Aesthetics of Fascism"
And a lengthy examination of motivations.
Bwah-hah-hah!!  Love it!  The Joe Lieberman campaign has no idea what it's dealing with in the blogs and is desperately flailing about trying to understand what's whackin' 'em upside the head.
Lawyer and blogger Glenn Greenwald writes a very, very highly recommended column examing the differences between language in the left blogosphere and language used by the other side.  Howard Kurtz, the WaPo Media person for the right-wing side (Dan Froomkin is their left-wing representative.) can only respond wanly that "If you got the email I get, you’d know that passions run high on both sides."
Well, yes they do, but lefty bloggers aren't calling for anybody to be shot or hung.  As Greenwald says, this rather critical distinction appears to escape journalists these days. 
Recommendation: Please contact your local newsmedia and ask them about this.  Why isn't the media concerned about violent right-wing speech?
To conservatives: "Let's you and him fight!" Saying by Wimpy to Popeye and the villain of the moment.
Lots of quotes on Mideast situation.
And for all the skeptics about the PNAC out there.
Video: War is not a game
Lots of accusations being thrown around that Iran and Syria are behind the "troubles" in Lebanon & Israel.  Problem: No actual proof is being presented that anything is true.  It's all based on fuzzy, unverified guesswork.  Plausible, likely guesswork, but still just guesswork.
A commenter notes that:
the big difference between this crisis and similar past episodes is how completely off balance the Israelis seem to be – lurching from reaction to reaction without any clear plan or strategy.
firedoglake has breaking news - Ambassador Joe & Valerie (Plame) Wilson have filed a civil suit against VP Cheney, "Scooter" Libby and our good friend Karl Rove (We still want to see him do the ol' frog- marching bit).
U.S. Will Give Detainees Geneva Rights
Good.  'Bout frickin' time.
Unfortunately,  Balkinazation  makes it clear that compliance from the Bush Administration is really not very likely.  Looking at how the Bush Administration interprets the word "humane" reminds me of Bill Clnton and the word "is."
Very interesting!  "FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11."
Also: "Al-Qaida, literally 'the database,' was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians."
The Bush Administration does not appear to have understood the concepts of "What goes up must come down" or "Action produces an equal reaction."  They appear to have thought that they could continue on indefinitely.
NY Times columnist David Brooks wrote that “Even today many Democrats who privately despise the netroots lie low, hoping the anger won’t be directed at them.”
The American Prospect replies:
"...there isn't a single person named, much less quoted, who can be seen as representative of this very, very ominous trend that Brooks's keen sense of sociology has enabled him to spot..."
Well, it turns out that
the alleged plot by Muslim extremists to bomb the Holland Tunnel in New York City was nothing more than chatter by unaffiliated individuals with no financing or training in an open forum already monitored extensively by the United States Government
Commenting on the very peculiar reaction of right-wing bloggers to the news  that the Bush Administration has leaked important national security info.  Funny how no one is calling it treason or demanding that such people be executed.
Oops!  Remember that guy that everybody blamed for the mess in Iraq?  Zarqawi,  I think his name was? And how his successor was just as e-e-evill?  Well, turns out his successor is in an Egyptian jail "where he has been held for seven years."
Dang!  Gotta invent a whole new evil mastermind now!
Reporter Nir Rosen on Zarqawi:
The Americans created Zarqawi, sort of the Zarqawi myth. Right at the beginning, they refused to accept the fact that the Iraqis had liberated or supported popular resistance so they had to blame everything around foreign fighters for the sake of the American [public].
Very, very ominous.  Very bad news for the US occupation of Iraq.  Iraq is a country that takes the medieval concept of honor very seriously and the US just rubbed Iraq's nose in the dirt.  A soldier has raped an Iraqi girl, killed her and her family.  There is no Status of Forces agreement between the US and Iraq, meaning Iraq has no legal recourse to what's been done.  The only authority US troops are answerable to is their military chain of command.  Mercenaries or "contractors," don't even have that.
Various items, good, in between and flat-out bad.
Very important news!  Appears that 9-11 was NOT the provocation for the Bush Administration to begin massively spying on Americans as AT&T was contacted by the NSA well before that happened. 
NewsMax, one of the sources on which Malkin relied in accusing the Times of evil-doing for having published the whereabouts of Cheney and Rumsfeld's vacation homes, itself published this article more than 9 months ago, entitled "Cheneys Head to Maryland Shore" (h/t Agitprop):

Vice President Cheney is buying a house in posh St. Michaels, Maryland

That didn't stop rightwingers from accusing the NY Times of trying to direct al Qaeda towards the homes of Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld  For instance, Powerline published a piece hysterically entitled "A GPS for Assassins?"
Billmon sees it as Karl Rove trying to fire up the Republican base for the mid-term elections a few months from now.  DailyKos has a marvelous rant on the issue and NY Times Editor Bill Keller responds.
A European evaluation team has examined the 460 detainees at Guantanamo and has declared that perhaps 70, at the outside most, a little over 100 of them are guilty of anything and should continue to be kept in custody.
Keep in mind that several years after they were captured, only 10 persons have been indicted for anything. 
An angry feminist talks about the Bush Administration's
"cod-piece swinging" foolishness and reminds Democrats that single women favored John Kerry 2-to-1, but didn't vote much because the Democrats were busy trying to capture the militaristic, white, male vote.
Why exactly was Pennsylvania hit so hard by this week's rainstorms?  PhillyIMC blames a combinatio of Global Warming and poor land management.

June                         back to top

Comments on the War on Terror (WOT).  Is America winning?  What exactly does it mean that the Republicans make the claim that Iraq is the "central front" in the WOT? Back during World War II, it was meaningful to say that Okinawa was the "central front" in the War in the Pacific because the loss of Okinawa severely hurt Japan's ability to continue fighting and enabled American B-29 bombers to more easily hit Japan.  Would the loss of Iraq impact worldwide terrorist activities in the same fashion?  It's not at all clear that it would.
Good news!!! The heavily-
Republican-leaning Supreme Court made a decision that confirms the rule of law!!!  Waa-hoo!!! (Yeah, isn't it sad that we're now celebrating what should be bland, ordinary news?)
Grannies for Peace from both New York and Philadelphia come to downtown Philly!  Update
Several grannies arrested as they failed to leave upon being ordered to do so.
Sure are a lot of folks going crazy with wild accusations of treason. 
We've got some folks making fun of a guy because he believes in astrology.  Are they really sure they want to do that?
People finally seem to be catching on to the fact that the Bush Administration never had an exit strategy for Iraq becase they have no intention of ever leaving.
Billmon points out that the US press corps has pretty much paintd itself into a corner...
These were "major" events only because the Pentagon and the White House billed them as such, and the journalistic herd dutifully followed. But now that the line -- i.e. "major setbacks" -- has been established, it can't be contradicted, not without making the herd look both stupid and gullible. And so we have the mysterious phenomena of major setbacks that don't appear to have reduced the combat effectiveness of the insurgency by one iota.
Sounds like Iraqis are getting pretty tired of having US troops around. 
Senator Santorum politicizes dubious intel - again!  Update.
First Army officer to Refuse Iraq Deployment.   Lt. Watada refused Iraq deployment today (June 23rd)
Examination of VP Cheney's speeches on Iraqi insurgents being in "last throes."
Ahmadinejad vs Bush?  Who's more popular?  Oh please, as if there's any contest!  Ahmadinejad currently enjoys a 70% approval rating among Iranians.  And yes, he's done it by "Standing up to Bush / America."
Digby comments on Joe Klein describing GW Bush:
From day one, DC nerds like Klein have had massive man-crushes on Junior, describing him as "loose-hipped" and "swaggering" and showing all manner of strange obsession with his masculine body language. Klein seems to barely be able to contain his squeal as he writes about Bush’s "strut" and his "full jaunty"  (which sounds suspiciously like "full monty" — giving full rise, as it were, to speculation about what Klein was thinking about when he came up with it.)
To ignore or to criticize right-wing fruitcakes, that is the question.  We come out in favor of criticism.
Seems Pennsylvania's Senator Specter did indeed write a bill that would not only legalize warrantless NSA spying on American citizens, it would provide a blanket amnesty to that lawbreaking.  The sad part is that Specter is still head and shoulders above most Senators, who mostly ignore the whole issue.
Original, nautical meaning of the oft-used phrase "cut and run."  Not the meaning that Bush and Rove give it at all.

Wow!  "Austrian right-wing populist Joerg Haider called President Bush a war criminal."  Hard to argue with that one. 

War on Terror weighed and found wanting.  Bush Adminisration judged on results and given failing grade.  Iraq mentioned as having made things worse.

Media is baffled!  Bush was supposed to get a bounce.  Where, oh where is the eagerly-awaited Bush bounce?!?!
UPDATE: Reality begins to sink in that there never was much of a bounce.

Commentary on how Republicans intend to handle mid-term elections.

Not in 100% agreement with Markos here.    Agree that DLC folks / political consultants are cowards to not want to go on record with their criticisms of the bloggers, the Dean fans, etc. but not sure I'd blame Polman for featuring them anyway.  'Course, it'd be nice to see a bit of snark in there about what cowards they were.

Looks like Karl Rove may not do the frog-march after all.  Lots of questions, though and hope springs eternal.

Permanent or "enduring" bases in Iraq put the lie to the idea that the US plans to leave Iraq anytime in the next few decades.  Quotes trace evolution of explanations concerning bases.

Gee, that made a whole lot of difference!  Iraq after Zarqaw, is unsurprisingly, pretty much like Iraq during Zarqawi. 
Also, SecDef Rumsfeld is indulging in 12-year-old boy "Death Star"-type fantasies concerning how to deal with foreign foes.
Very interestng commentary on  running down Zarqawi. The idea that he was responsible for anywhere close to 10% of the attacks appears to be hugely exaggerated. 

Concerning the taking of blame for the complete disaster that was Hurricane Katrina:

...the press was sure beating up on Mike Brown, to which the president replied, 'I'd rather they beat up on him than me or Chertoff' "
The sender adds, "Congratulations on doing a great job of diverting hostile fire away from the leader."

What the #$%&@ kind of leader alllows a subordinate to take the blame for his own screw-up?!?!?
Reminder of just what the leader managed to accomplish.

Net neutrality dies a very regretted and mourned death in the House.  Senate vote is upcoming. This could mean the end of the Internet as we know it.  CNet does a roundup.

Senator Specter's proposed new bill on warrantless NSA spying is worse than no bill at all.

Thoughts on Zarqawi.  Juan Cole points out that:

There is no evidence of operational links between [Zarqawi's] Salafi Jihadis in Iraq and the real al-Qaeda; it was just a sort of branding that suited everyone, including the US.
Further commentary on Zarqawi.
BTW: The American liberal left progressives have NO reason to favor Iraqi insurgents considering their views on gays and women. 

And how goes the Glorious, oops, sorry,  Global War on Terror? Not so hot, actually.  Apparently, the people of Somalia prefer security and stability to endless violence.  Gee, who'd a thunk it?

Remember folks, Ann Coulter IS the Republican Party
and her buddies in the Bush Administration know it!
Update: Senator Hillary Clinton finds her voice and objects!  Well, sort of anyway, she finds it "unimaginable that anyone in the public eye could launch a vicious, mean-spirited attack" like that. 

Democrats now have their issue!  Republicans again want to privatize Social Security!!  This was a proposal that utterly failed to inspire any enthusiasm from the electorate.  To Republicans, we say go for it!!

Gee, I wonder why it is that the rest of the world thinks the US has no use for the Geneva Conventions?  Could it be because Rumsfeld wants to strip mentions of it out of the Army Field Manual!?!?!?!

Robert F Kennedy Jr exposes massive fraud in the 2004 election, which many of us were aware of shortly after it happened. (The report is 32 kilobytes, not including footnotes, so it's well worth it to pick up the paper copy of the magazine) There was a demonstration outside of the Capitol Building during the certification of the count which a few hundred people attended. 

May                         back to top

Photos of Tombstone Display by Rich Gardner
And by Monique Frugier

Today in Iraq summarizes recent news:  Oil facilities disrupted, Riverbend compares Moqtada al-Sadr to GW Bush, US General snipes at Rumsfeld, many more items.

Summary of the news of the day.  Lots and lots going on! Still more on the current Iraq situation. 

Excellent overview of the establishment media over the last 15 years.  How they've consistently backed Republicans and bashed Democrats and how the old "Clinton zipper problem" has made a return, stinking of the sewer.  Of course, the problem is far more on the side of the media than it ever was on the side of the Clintons.

The concept of civil war and sectarian strife is well-described by Iraqi Sami Ramadani, a political refugee from Saddam Hussein’s regime and senior lecturer at London Metropolitan University:

“It is not withdrawal that threatens Iraq with civil war, but occupation…The occupation’s sectarian discourse has acquired a hold as powerful as the WMD fiction that prepared the public for war. Iraqis are portrayed as a people who can’t wait to kill each other once left to their own devices. In fact, the occupation is the main architect of institutionalised sectarian and ethnic divisions; its removal would act as a catalyst for Iraqis to resolve some of their differences politically.”

Toensing describes the “insurgency” as “roughly 20,000 Sunni Arab[s].” However, no uprising can last without popular support, and three and a half years after Baghdad fell, the legitimate resistance to our illegal occupation is alive and well.
Well, it's about #$%@& time!!!  Bush finally admits that his "Bring 'em on" statement of July 2nd 2003 was a really dumb thing to say.  Further commentary on PRAWNBlog.  The blog Today in Iraq has the full quote, has frequently used it as a heading for casualty reports  and has a few comments on why the statement was so horribly offensive and insulting to our soldiers in Iraq.
More on the NY Times story on the marriage of the Clintons.  Lots of links to email addresses of folks to complan to.  NY Times needs to hear lots and lots of criticism!!
So how are things going with the occupation of Iraq three years after major combat was finished and the occupation began? Not so hot, actually.  In Ramadi, a city of 400,000 along the main highway running to Jordan and Syria, 70 miles west of Baghdad, an Iraqi officer explains:
"We just go out, lose people and come back," said Iraqi Col. Ali Hassan, whose men fight alongside the Americans. "The insurgents are moving freely everywhere. We need a big operation. We need control."
We seriously need to beat up on the NY Times!  The Times published a largely fact-free article which was continued from the front-page (With  picture) above the fold.  Absolutely chock-full of  anonymous charges, innuendo and comments about the Clinton marrage (As though that's anybody's business!), the piece is a throwback to the feeding frenzy over President Clinton's "bimbo eruptions". The addresses to write to are here.
But...but I thought Afghanistan was a victory!  Wasn't it?  Wasn't the Taliban driven out and the Afghanis "liberated"?
Guess the Taliban didn't get the memo.
Oh, and more anti-Iranian propaganda.
Professor Juan Cole examines the latest baseless propagandistic charges against Iran (Suggesting that Iran is treating non-Islamic religious groups in much the same way the Nazis treated gays, Jews and gypsies, by making them wear identifying marks.) and notes how similar the anti-Iran statements are now to how the anti-Iraq statements were phrased a few years ago.
Various updates
Uruknet, an Italian website, publishes a very lengthy piece (30 kilobytes) containing several articles and pictures of the latest status in the Iraq War.  They conclude American soldiers are in the process of withdrawing to several very large bases in Iraq (The American "Embassy" in Baghdad is 104 acres - equal to about 95 football fields.)
Also, Uruknet reprints an examination of the video released by the Pentagon concerning the attack on 9-11 and finds it "Eminently Ignorable."
Looks like Haditha will join My Lai and Srebrenica in the history books.  Representative Murtha, a 28-year veteran of the Marine Corps, has many close contacts within the Pentagon, so he should be considered as speaking for officers who don't feel free to speak for themselves.  As Billmon puts it:
It's not entirely fair to blame these guys for being enthusiastic killers -- after all, that's what the Marines train them to be and what we pay them to be. But when you put their ferocity together with the thinly disguised signals being broadcast by the pro-war media, and the growing racial and religious hatred of the "sand niggers," and the repeated rotations, nightmarish conditions, poor equipment and insufficient manpower plaguing the U.S. military in Iraq -- i.e. the Donald Rumsfeld experience -- it's a surprise we haven't seen more atrocities like My Lai . . . I mean, Haditha.
Glenn Greenwald has more on the right-wing reaction.
So just how practical and realistic is Bush's new border control plan?  Well.....
The White House is dodging questions about which Guard units will be tapped, who will command them, and other details. Many Guard combat units are still trying to recover from lengthy deployments to Iraq where the fatalities – 20 percent of total U.S. deaths – and the wounded unable to return to duty have left key vacancies in unit rosters. Moreover, equipment damage is so severe that a significant number of combat and transport vehicles cannot be repaired but will have to be replaced.
Molly Ivins, a  Texas native, weighs in.
Lawyer-blogger Glenn Greenwald examines Senator Specter's attempt to constrain and rule on the warrantless NSA spyng program.  Thanks to pressure fellow conservatives, Specter's bill is basically worthless.
Now we know why the Bush Administration was using the NSA to carry out warrantless spying, they wanted to check up on what reporters were getting from their confidential sources!  And no, the public doesn't approve.
Further thoughts on warrantless NSA spying.
Liberal Oasis examines the crucial question about the new warrantless NSA spying program.  "Does the program work to catch bad guys?  Is it effective?"  The answer (No surprise to people on the left side of the aisle) appears to be a resounding "No."
Oops! Well, it turns out that this story is, er, "not so much."  It was puzzling that the left blogosphere was not jumping all over the story.  Turns out there was a reason for that.
YAYY!! YIPPEE!! YAHOO!!  *Sob* There IS a Santa!!!
Karl Rove has been indicted!!!
A poll taken by the WaPo seemed awfully premature to me.  In the news lifecycle of the story, it seemed to me that the poll on the latest warrantless NSA spying scandal (Not the one that Senator Feingold wants to censure Bush for, that's the old warrantless NSA spying scandal.)  occurred just as America was rubbing the sleep out of it's eyes, long before more than about 2% of the polling sample could be reasonably well-informed about it. 
In other words, the poll is worthless and deliberately so.
Yee-hah!!  Booga-booga!! Yippee!!  Grab some popcorn folks!  A former NSA staffer promises more, bigger and better scandals yet to come!!  He promises we ain't seen nothin' yet!
American Prospect draws some very useful distinctions between blog wars and blogswarms along with several sensible observations on better netiquette.
Very interesting statemet from Ann Coulter:
Democrats have declared war against Republicans, and Republicans are wandering around like a bunch of ninny Neville Chamberlains, congratulating themselves on their excellent behavior. They'll have some terrific stories about their Gandhi-like passivity to share while sitting in cells at Guantanamo after Hillary is elected. [emphasis added]
Hmm, conservatives feeling a little guilty over the excesses of the past five years, maybe?
It's difficult to overstate how incredibly, amazingly unConstitutional this is, how completely and utterly contrary to the designs and desires of our Nation's Founding Fathers this is.  President Bush's wiretapping goes vastly beyond anything that anybody predicted before.  Original USAToday story.
Wow!  Turns out even Republicans don't like it!
We need to raise a MAJOR stink about this!!
Bwah-ha-ha!  Update on Richard Cohen's whinefest and his new friends
Glenn's comment about anger on the left:
After all -- although Beltway pundits find this notion to be oh-so-distasteful and overblown -- a majority of Americans believe that Bush "intentionally misled" the nation into invading Iraq.
Don't you think they're angry about that?
Because Michelle Malkin showed a complete and utter lack of decency, right-wingers are now trying to get lefty bloggers to sign a pledge saying they'll demonstrate a modicum of decency. 
Nice try, fellas, but that's not a  problem that effects the left blogosphere.  You want to sign meaningless, useless pledges, go right ahead. 
The DLC comes up with typically idiotic ideas for improving on US foreign policy post-Bush.
Billmon suspects the dumping of Porter Goss is a Rumsfeld/DoD plot to fold the CIA into the Pentagon.
Markos of DailyKos slams Hillary Clinton as a typical "Clinton Democrat" whose "Third Way" politics have been an utter failure. 
And therein lie Hillary Clinton's biggest problems. She epitomizes the "insider" label of the early crowd of 2008 Democratic contenders. She's part of the Clinton machine that decimated the national Democratic Party. And she remains surrounded by many of the old consultants who counsel meekness and caution.
Right-wing talk show host sees the light and agrees that Bush is the Worst.  President. Ever! 
I watched and tried to justify the looting in Iraq after the fall of Saddam. I watched and tried to justify the dismantling of the entire Iraqi army. I tired to explain the complexities of building a functional new Iraqi army. I urged patience when no WMDs were found. Then the Vice President told us we were in the “waning days of the insurgency.” And I started wincing again. The President says we have to stay the course but what if it’s the wrong course?
Kind of mind-boggling to consider the sheer and utter hypocrisy in The Boston Globe's depiction of President Bush as running roughshod over democratic principles in the US.  He's not exactly telling American citizens that he's tossing the Constitution aside, but he very clearly seems to be preparing the way for a total overthrow.  Karl Rove's possible upcoming indictment is being described as long overdue.  The US is defending itself in Geneva against numerous accusations of human rights abuses.  And then we have VP Cheney's meeting with many known human-rights violators, after which he accuses Russia of not respecting human rights and democratic values!!!  My head is spinning.
My, my, my!!  Very, very interesting situation with Porter Goss, the abruptly-former CIA Director. Jane Hamsher poins out:
Everyone on TV seems to be buying the line that the Goss resignation has been planned for weeks.  No natural curiosity about the fact that it takes effect immediately, or that there is no replacement, or that he had a meeting scheduled this afternoon he didn’t show up for.
Laura Rozen of War and Piece has more.
The Peace Action - Delaware Valley blog takes a look at the "only full-time international affairs analyst consulted by Karl Rove, George W. Bush's closest advisor," Michael Ledeen.  Bottom line, don't believe a word this guy says.  Ledeen is extremely enthusiastic to invade and/or nuke Iran and has zero qualms about doing so. 
Steven Colbert does the The Daily Show for Comedy Central (Available on basic cable) and did a "pro-Bush tribute" at the White House Correspondent Dinner last night and oooooh!! Colbert Report right after It's pretty brutal (There are numerous spots where you don't hear much laughter from the audience) and it reportedly led the Bushes to give "him quick nods, unsmiling, and handshakes."
The final scene is one where Helen Thomas stalks Colbert to ask him "Why did the US go to war with Iraq?"  Atrios brings up an extremely good and relevant point about that.
UPDATE: The press corps is NOT amused.  Major media is doing its best to ignore Colbert.  Obviously, he struck way too close to home.
Further UPDATE: DailyKos and The Poor Man examine Richard Cohen's "So not funny" column.  Cohen completely misses the point of Colbert's routine.

April                         back to top

The last budget bill that was passed did so in an unConstitutional manner.  The House & Senate versions did not agree. 
The President, despite warnings that the bill did not represent the consensus of the House and Senate, simply shrugged and signed the bill anyway.  Now, the Administration is implementing it as though it was the law of the land.
So Congressman Conyers is bringing the President to court over it.
The CIA announced a two-part test for its' agents, active or retired to publish anything:
"First, material submitted for publication cannot contain classified information," CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano wrote in an e-mail. "Second, it cannot impair the individual's ability to do his or her job or the CIA's ability to conduct its mission as a nonpartisan, nonpolicy agency of the executive branch."
The first requirement is thoroughly traditional and expected, the  second  requirement is causing a lot of discord and comments of "Stalinism"
Hilarious!  Right-wingers try to claim their books are more popular than the left's books are.  Would help if the numbers were on their side. Digby is very annoyed by the whole "pissing match" and points out that right-wingers have always manipulated the numbers.
UPDATE: Instapundit acknowledges correct numbers, as does another right-wing blogger.
Yee-hah!! House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi delivers it to the Bush Administration!!
We have two oilmen in the White House. The logical follow-up from that is $3 a gallon gasoline. There is no accident. It is a cause and effect.
Harper's Magazine is not at all impressed with the idea of the "Nuclear Bunker Buster."
Were the effectiveness of bunker busters to be demonstrated, the weapons might conceivably be worth the risk and expense. But in fact, even a cursory consideration of the science shows that bunker-busting nuclear weapons are a wasteful and dangerous delusion.
Fever dreams, Newt Gingrich and the alleged liberal, Joe Klein (Who wrote Primary Colors as "Anonymous".)
Analysis of how the US Navy might fare against Iranian anti-ship missiles in the Straits of Hormuz.  Conclusion:
If we attack Iran, Bush and Rumsfeld will be essentially betting that our Navy can fend off whatever missile and/or other attacks Iran can muster against our massive Carrier groups. And perhaps they will be right. Perhaps our defenses will be more than adequate to prevent the catastrophe of one or more US Carriers being sunk by Iranian forces. However, based on this Administration's track record, would you be willing to bet the lives of our sailors that they'll get it right this time?
Echidne and The News Blog both comment on "Mr. Prissy Pollypants" Daniel Henninger's incredibly stupid column on liberal blogs.  Basically, Henninger is trying to suggest that blogs aren't credible sources of information because readers sometimes use impolite words.
Nearly five years later, New York developers still haven't decided what to build at the 9-11 Ground Zero site.  The prospect of a Democratic takeover later this year is concentating minds, though.
Wow!  Which would be worse?  A nuclear conflict over Iran's nukes (Which won't be ready for at least 10 years.) or a pre-emptive coup by the CIA?  Of course, the Democrats are being totally useless, so they're inconsequential.
Orcinus discusses the latest Michelle Malkin flap (He used to be her editor) and finds disturbing parallels between her action in publishin the home phone numbers of some critics and the Rwandan genocide that took place during the Clinton Administration. 
Bad news for the DLC and Democratic Party "centrists" ("Hello there, Hillary!"), good news for progressive Democrats and the Democratic Party as a whole.  Polls show that progressives are winning in the Democratic Party, DLCers are losing!
Glenn Greenwald points out "the destination to which our country has descended in five short years"
Horrifying!
Evidence just keeps piling up that the Bush Administraton intends to go to war against Iran. 
Again, this is tinfoil hat stuff, connecting some very vague dots. A few years ago I would have dismissed it as conspiracy mongering of the worst kind...
Washington Post wrote what seemed like a pretty good article on liberals/ lefties and their blogs, primarily because it isn't focused on just the President.  The subject makes it very clear that her condemnation is far more sweeping.      Echidne disagreed with that thought and considered it a lousy article.  Echidne feels "...the article isn't as bad as it could be." but has a few problems with the overall approach.  Glenn Greenwald notes that the author knew nothing about blogs before writing the article.
Battle of the newspapers!  First, the Washington Post publishes "A Good Leak" about Lewis Libby's leak of intel to Judith Miller (A highly deceptive leak using cherry-picked data, "L'il Debbie" defends it starting here.) then the New York Times followed with "A Bad Leak" that not only gives the WaPo article's conclusions a WWF-style smackdown, but essentially repeats what the left blogosphere has been saying ever since the WaPo article came out!  Good for the NY Times!!
Secretary of State Conodoleezza Rice and Equatorial Guinea President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo bring Bush Administration hypocrisy on democracy into sharp focus. 
Billmon gives us a very scary and highly credble picture of a US nuclear first strike on Iran. 
Good quote:
Most states are as single-minded and relentless in the pursuit of their interests as your average Renaissance pope – like sharks, in other words, although not as warm and cuddly.
Also included: Saudi Arabia asks for help from Russia to defend it aganst the US.
The Washington Post has now descended completely into 1930s Soviet Pravda-type hackery. 
Bush clearly hates Foreign Service officers.  Afte all, they engage in that "truth-telling" stuff he despises so much!
Not only is the US trying to toss out the legitimately-elected Prime Minister, Things aren't looking so hot for the story that the US is in Iraq to spread freedom and democracy.  the US isn't even spending a decent amount of money on building democratic institutions.
Supreme Court decides not to hear Jose Padilla case.  AmericaBlog feels law on Padilla's detention is left vague & fuzzy.
Long article (40 kilobytes) from Asia Times on the way in which the US is conducting the "War on Terror" and some ideas as to why it's going so badly

March                         back to top

Democrats roll out their national security strategy, Bush filibusters so that media can't cover it properly and when media does cover it, they omit all of the important details!
Will we now see the Iraqi equivalent of Ngô Đình Diệm?  Diem was the ruler of South Vietnam in 1963, but the US was dissatisfied with how he was doing things and when a general wanted to kill and relace him, the US consented.  With Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the US appears to be preparing for a repeat, getting rid of an unsatisfactory leader who refuses to toe the line.  So much for the "freedom" we keep hearing so much about.
Dave Lindorff has more to add.
A soldier on the front lines in Iraq comments on the complaint that reporters aren't covering the "good news" in Iraq.
Reproduced two very important passages from two papers.  Looks to me like it's about that time, time to leave Iraq.
Lara Logan, CBS News reporter, responds to charges by Laura Ingraham and the Bush Administration that reporters aren't trying hard enough to find good news in Iraq.   One rather disturbing charge is that she claims Iraqis are  constantly going up to news teams and reporting abuses by America soldiers and that only one or two charges per week may make it onto the show.  So keep in mind that when you hear of American soldiers abusing Iraqis, multiply the number by 10 or 20.
Very interesting reactions from a wide variety of conservatives when faced with attacks from the left blogosphere. 
Also, lengthy post on the WaPo blogger.
The Washington Post recently hired a young (24), callow, smirking, right-winger who was raised and home-schooled in a luxurious and isolatd environment, very much like a certain President we all know, eh? 
Well, amazingly enough (The words "due diligence" come to mind) the blogger is a flat-out racist!  Whatever shall the WaPo do?
President Bush said Tuesday the decision about when to withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq will fall to future presidents and Iraqi leaders, suggesting that U.S. involvement will continue at least through 2008.
Here's a good one:
"I didn't want war. To assume I wanted war is just flat wrong ... with all due respect," he told a reporter. "No president wants war." To those who say otherwise, "it's simply not true," Bush said.
I don't think anyone not in his hard-core base believes that one.
Fun with numbers.
Tom Tomorrow (The cartoonist who writes and draws This Modern World.) posts a series of right-wing pundits predictions from three years ago.  Grimly hilarious. 
And yes, Bush is still speaking exclusively to friendly audiences. 
Matt Yglesias wonders:
A large number of seemingly intelligent people keep telling me that there's going to be no military strike against Iran because . . . a military strike against Iran would be a really bad idea and the Bushies would never want to put themselves in that kind of jam.
Y'know guys?  We've heard this one before.  Iraq started out in pretty much the same way.  Sorry, but Yglesias is right, this is no comfort! 
We neeed to remember the awesomely good thing about Feingold's Censure Resolution:
First, the conversation regarding President Bush’s actions on illegal domestic spying without a warrant has switched from “national security matter” to “the President broke the law — so how best do we hold him accountable.” That is an enormous change in terms of discussion, and one that will only continue as the Senate Judiciary Committee must now take up the Censure resolution.
The DCCC, the Democratic Congressional  Campaign Committee appears to be determined to "snatch defeat from the jaws of victory" by ignoring the anti-abortionists of South Dakota, y'know, the ones that absolutely terrify the Republicans?  Upon hearing the the DCCC was determined to give them a free pass on an issue that could have clobbered Republicans running in pro-choice states, Republicans everywhere broke into song and dance and cheering.  Progressive Democrats gaped in mute astonishment.
Wow!  Just...wow!  And Michelle Malkin has the nerve to call liberals "Unhinged"?
During the brief encounter, Laroca charges, the manager pointed to the bumper sticker ---- the only one on Laroca's car ---- and remarked that it was a new sticker and called it "that Al Franken left-wing radical radio station."

Laroca alleges in her suit that Fath then told her, "The country is on a high state of alert. For all I know, you could be al-Qaida."

A stunned Laroca laughed nervously at the statement, the suit alleges, and then was dealt "the final blow" when Fath fired her on the spot.
Made some commentaries on the NSA warrantless spying scandal.  There's absolutely zero question that the program is utterly and blatantly illegal.
Much as it hurts me as an American citizen to say this, the Chinese Communists are absolutely correct to point out that it's completely hypocritical for the US to be criticizing China for human rights violations while keeping detainees (Many of whom are completely innocent) at a camp in Guantanamo, Cuba and for having treated prisoners in a brutal manner in Iraq.  Back in the old days, back before Bush took office, there was a point to the US publishing an annual report on human rights.  Today, it's not clear that it serves any purpose to do so. 
So now it turns out that the same Congress that's under Republican control in both houses, the same Congress where the Intelligence Committee voted on a party-line basis not to investigate the Administration for blatantly illegal acts, the same Congress that refused to investigate Iraq War profiteering, is now to blame for not allocating sufficient money to the reconstruction of New Orleans after Katrina. 
Meet the Press features Jack Kemp arguing strongly to stick with the UAE ports deal.  MTP sorta, kinda, er, um...forgets to mention Kemp has a financial interest in that deal!  Hello!?!?  Can we say conflict of interest?
Glenn Greenwald charges that Senator Frist seems determined to change the decades-old structure of the Intelligence Commitee so as to prevent a investigation of the NSA warrantless wiretapping scandal. 
The reason? Republicans on the Committee think the wiretaps are unconstitutional!  Greenwald reviews what happened to the Ethics Committe when it tried to rein in Tom DeLay.
FireDogLake has more on the case.
LiberalOasis points out that nuclear deal with India is not a good one, in fact, the deal with Dubai to take over American ports may be a better one(!!!) 
Froomkin wonders:
By enabling India to build an unlimited stockpile of nuclear weapons, would this agreement set off a new Asian arms race?
MediaMatters examines the media's curiously muted treatment of the videotape that shows Bush was briefed and fully aware of Hurricane Katrina before it hit, breached the levees and flooded New Orleans.  Disposes of idiotic talking point that Clinton's "I did not have sex with that woman" statement was somehow more well-documented or more memorable than Bush's "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."
In a genuinely "liberal media", news organizations would be comparing Bush's response to the 9-11 attacks (Video) with his response to the Katrina warning (Video). 
A military survey, carried out between mid-January and mid-February by Le Moyne College's Center for Peace and Global Studies and the Zogby International polling firm, found that fewer than one in four soldiers in Iraq agree with the Bush Administration that American soldiers  should remain in Iraq "as long as necessary".  The article also notes a "growing number of defections from the war party's ranks"

February                         back to top

DPW still to this day maintains the Arab economic boycott of Israel.
Another extremely good point about the Dubai Ports World company is that many hundreds of people would be coming over from the Mideast to American coastal cities, they'd be getting driver's licenses, bank accounts, etc, they'd  have relatives back home who would be vulnerable to pressure from bad folks.  Big, big risks! 
Very interesting poll results taken from the troops in Iraq. 
Hilariously, Dick Morris (Who once advised Bill Clinton, appears to be oddly obsessed with Hillary and who thinks Condi Rice has a political future) backs the Bush Administration ports deal and feels "this is one area where he [Bush] has earned the right to be taken on faith."  As one might guess, Morris is referred to as a "Fox News liberal", one of those folks they keep around as comic relief. 
LeftCoaster presents a compelling theory that Iran is responsible for the bombings of the Abqaiq oil facility in Saudi Arabia and the Golden Mosque in Samarra in Iraq but as Juan Cole points out, Muqtada al-Sadr has been blaming the US and hs claims are largely believed because the US has occupied Iraq and has failed at anything even resembling reconstruction.
Firedoglake has a summary of the roules in Iraq and Saudi Arabia. 
"One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed." - William F. Buckley
"...we're never gonna be able to control them [Iraqis]. So the only solution to this is to hand over everything to the Iraqis as fast as humanly possible."- Bill O'Reilly
This situation [the bombng of multiple mosques] underlines how useless the American ground forces are in Iraq. They can't stop the guerrilla war and may be making it worst. Last I knew, there were 10,000 US troops in Anbar Province with a population of 1.1 million. What could you do with that small force, when the vast majority of the people support the guerrillas?
---------
Young Shiite nationalist leader
Muqtada al-Sadr charged that the Iraqi government and the US had failed to protect the Askariyah shrine in Samarra, and commanded his Mahdi Army militiamen
------
Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani threatening to create a paramilitary to guard Shiite shrines throughout Iraq. to protect Shiites.
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Juan Cole describes how the demolition of the Askariyah shrine affected Iraq. 
PhillyIMC post examines UAE Port scandal from number of angles - actual potential harm to US is minimal, but it's an awesome political issue for Democrats. Recent polls give them a lead -

Rasmussen has a new poll up in which -- hold on now -- Democrats in Congress are outpolling President Bush on national security. By a margin of 43 to 41 percent, Americans say they trust Congressional Democrats more than Bush when it comes to protecting our national security. And by a margin of 64-17 percent, they oppose the sale of the ports to Dubai

Granted, the larger context of the scandal is that foreign ownership of US assets is increasing. 
MediaMatters compiles an infuriating column that demonstrates that Democrats have long argued for better port security, Republicans have long sabotaged such efforts, yet TV interviewers such as Tim Russert talk about Democrat views as if they just started criticizing the Bush Administration  yesterday for obviously political reasons! 
MediaMatters also points out that there's a bit of a difference between a company that based in a foreign country and a company that's owned by a foreign country, a distinction that both the Bush Administration AND the media do their level best to blur. 
Rumors of death of NSA spying scandal appear to be greatly exaggerated.  It appears (to leftists, liberals, progressives and Democrats) to be the "gift that keeps on giving" as it not only distresses the Bush Administration, it's causing internal dissension among Republicans. 
US appears to have found a lose-losr, no-win situation:

Al-Hayat reports that the Americans have given up attempting to dialogue with the Sunni Arab Resistance, preferring instead to deal with the tribes. This attempt has not gone well. The Americans paid $20 million to set up something called "tribal militias," money that appears to have simply been embezzled.
---
Shaikh Farhan al-Sadid also emphasized that the Americans would get nowhere with security in Anbar until they talked directly to the armed resistance. [emphasis added]

This whole story just so utterly floors me that I had to put off posting on it for a day or two.  The Bush Administration wants to outsource port security to the United Arab Emirates.  Nothing against Arabs or Middle Easterners but why is such an incredibly important national security asset being outsourced to anyone?!?!?
Good news! (He says, shamelessly taking it wherever he can find it...) The blog firedoglake discusses the NSA spying scandal and how the Bush Administration's popularity affects their ability to get things done:

Early in the week, while Whittington was in the hospital having his heart attack, Cheney was up on the hill trying to strongarm members of the Intelligence Committee into killing the investigation altogether, according to the Washington Post. And Pat Roberts certainly seemed to think he had the votes to do so, at least initially. Yet when the time came, Roberts tabled the vote -- an indication that Cheney had been unsuccessful and Roberts couldn't count on the Republicans on his committee to hang together and vote the way the Administration obviously wanted them to. It was a clear sign that Cheney was extremely weakened by what was going on and couldn't overcome whatever reluctance members of his own party had in the matter.

But the shooting of Harry Whittington does more than tie Dick Cheney to historic pussy Aaron Burr. It throws into high relief the utter wimpiness of Cheney.

Dick Cheney was hunting in a private where quail were almost certain to be present–somewhat better than his previous Pennsylvania killing spree, perhaps, but something no real man would do. Real men, of course, would go hunting where quail may or may not be–go hunting knowing full well that the word implies that they may not find anything. Dick Cheney had no such concerns–he was too much of a pussy to risk failure.

President Bush's spokesman quipped Tuesday that the burnt orange school colors of the University of Texas championship football team that was visiting the White House shouldn't be confused for hunter's safety wear.

"The orange that they're wearing is not because they're concerned that the vice president may be there," joked White House press secretary Scott McClellan, following the lead of late-night television comedians. "That's why I'm wearing it."

The president's brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, took a similar jab after slapping an orange sticker on his chest from the Florida Farm Bureau that read, "No Farmers, No Food.""I'm a little concerned that Dick Cheney is going to walk in," the governor cracked during an appearance in Tampa Monday.

Funny stuff, huh?  Keep in mind that McClellan made his jokes AFTER he learned that Whittington had been movd back into intensive care and that he had suffered a heart attack.  BTW, Cheney has yet to apologize for shooting the 78-year old Whittington.
Firedoglake has many posts on the incident, one of the more informative posts is this one on gun safety from both the NRA and readers.
William Engdahl writes about Peak Oil and examines the possibility of the US launching a war with Iran (Lengthy article at 26 kilobytes).

Iran a vast, strategically central expanse of land, more than double the land area of France and Germany combined, with well over 70 million people, and one of the fastest population growth rates in the world, is well prepared for a new Holy War. Its mountainous terrain makes any thought of a US ground occupation inconceivable at a time the Pentagon is having problems retaining its present force to maintain the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations.

 Engdahl presumes of couse, that the Bush Administratin is a rational actor in world affairs. 
Many posts on our local IMC and elsewhere as to the possiblity of war with Iran beginning in late March.
As to the likelihood of the US invading Iran, the blogger Arthur Silber points out that:
I underscore these points: the Bush administration was repeatedly told that Saddam was being kept "in his box," and that the best policy was one of aggressive inspections and the avoidance of war. The Bush administration was repeatedly told that the prospects for Western-style democracy in Iraq were very bleak, and that Iraq's economy and infrastructure would require the expenditure of massive amounts of U.S. funds if they were to recover. The Bush administration was repeatedly warned that, in the aftermath of an invasion, it was highly probable that violence would be directed against the American forces -- and that violence would also ensue between the various factions within Iraq.

Not only did the Bush administration misrepresent and lie about all of this to the American public and to the world: it did not make any plans at all to deal with even one aspect of these momentous problems. [emphasis in original]
Question 1: Would it be insane to invade Iran? 
Answer: Yes.
Question 2: Will the sheer insanity of invading Iran prevent the Bush Administration from doing so?
Answer: I wish I could say yes.
Bush makes very highly questionable assertion about thwarting a plot in LA in 2002. 
Also, it looks like the Abramoff-Bush relationship was more extensive than Bush Administration has admitted.  
And it appears that Cheney authorized Libby to leak Plames name to reporters. 
In an utterly unsurprising and entirely predictable move, it now appears that al Qaeda foiled US electonic surveillance by using couriers to deliver messages.  Furthermore:
But despite the huge amount of raw material gathered under the legislation, the FBI has not captured one major al Qaeda operative in the United States. 

----

"The problem is not the legislation but lack of intelligence and analysis," another source said. "We have a huge pile of intercepts that never get translated, analyzed and thus remain of no use to us.
[emphasis added]
Republicans are all a-twitter about how terribly rude those uppity folks were at Coretta Scott King's funeral.  Lawsy!  It's as if they don't appreciate all that the Republican Party has done for them!
Article at PhillyIMC details first day of Gonzales' testimony on NSA spying case.
US is considering pulling out of Iraq without having achieved peace first.
Glenn Greenwald will be a major "Reality-based" (i.e. liberal) source for the NSA spying story, which Attorney General Gonzales will be testifying on starting 9:30am 6 February.  AmericaBlog and firedoglake will also be major sources.  And no, obviously, the SuperBowl did not suffer an attack.
Not that there was ever any serious question about it, but it's now confirmed positively and absolutely, Valerie Plame Wilson was covert.  Meaning, it WAS illegal to out her.
A look at Gonzales' upcoming testimony on the NSA spying scandal.  Also includes links to a warning that the SuperBowl might suffer a terrorist attack and a few disturbing links on a possible attack on Iran (AmericaBlog asks: "With what Army?")
Blogger Bob Geiger provides statistical proof that the US is losing the War on Terror.
Also, blogging the SOTU speech.

January                         back to top

Alito makes it onto Supreme Court by 58-42 vote.  Democrats do much better at keeping his vote total down and preventing defections after getting clobbered on the cloture vote by 72-25. 
Digby finds many encouraging silver linings in the cloud that is the Alito confirmation. 
Firedoglake updates us on the NSA spying scandal.  Very notable developmnt: NY Daily News actually engages in (gasp) actual  factchecking!!
Can ya believe it?!?!
MediaMatters produces an excellent article in which they look at the hysterical frenzy over the non-scandal of Whitewater, which produced no indictments of either Bill or Hillary Clinton and compares it to the sedate, relaxed coverage of the real, genuine Constitutional crisis produced by the NSA spying scandal. 
So democracy is the magic elixer that's going to fix all of the problems in the Middle East and elsewhere, eh?  Well, er, maybe not so much.  Bush gives a press conference concering the Hamas victory in which he's PLAINLY uncomfortable.  Dan Froomkin of the WaPo provides commentary.  The rest of the press conference gets a look.
The left blogosphere has clearly had enough and is engaging in a sustained pushback.  A new site is up on Chris Matthews' comments, demanding an apology and telling readers how to contact advertisers for his show.  And Jane from firedoglake relates the latest doings on the ombudsman controversy over at the Washington Post.
Gee, it's awfully funny how the Bush Administration rejected loosening the standards for FISA searches back in 2002 when the illegal non-FISA searches were taking place. 
Amazingly, some people think that the anti-war left supports Hillary Clinton for president.  Not when her advisors say things like this:
Republican attacks are already leading Democrats to rally around her, at a time when the senator is facing criticism from pockets on the left on several issues, chiefly her support for the war in Iraq. "If a person is defined by their friends and their enemies [!!], she has all the right enemies," said one Democrat who is close to Mrs. Clinton. [emphases added]
Enemies!?!?  We're considered enemies? Nuh-uh!  No WAY is this woman getting any support from US!
Comprehnsive piece on Abramoff and the media confusion between "fair" and "balanced".
The Justice Department, in an attempt to bat back the torrent of legal opinions declaring the NSA wiretapping program unlawful, has released a full-throated defense of the program.
--------
[The Administration's argument]...simply reprises arguments the Congressional Research Service report demolished weeks ago.
Deborah Howell, the ombudsman of the Washington Post, is doing an absolutely crappy job of representing the public in the job that another paper calls its' "public editor".  Firedoglake uncovers some rather interesting info.
This is just absolutely amazing!!  Apparently, the Army is issuing body armor that is below the standards of commercially available armor and it's trying to prevent soldiers from using the commercial brand!!!
Al Gore's speech, in which he calls for President Bush to be impeached, was featured on page A9 of the 17th of January Philadelphia Inquirer but was widely commented on all over the left blogosphere.
Washington Post and the truth.  Sad to see a once-great paper sink so low. E.J. Dionne lets 'em have a blast, though.
Network meets the 00s
Abu Munther sits sporting a black blazer and a white turtleneck, even though the ski-mask is still a mandatory part of the wardrobe, and he’s performing the role of the host of this setting.
-----------
We are shown a montage of JAS’s ‘Greatest Hits,’ which run the gamut from blowing up Humvees in Ramadi to firing-off C5K missiles in Samarra. We are shown about twenty such operations, including one in which an observation tower within a US base is blown-up in broad daylight.
Oops!  US planes hit a Pakistani village where they had no right to bomb in the first place and the bad guy wasn't anywhere in the vicinity. 
Also, Media Matters examines media coverage of the Alito hearings.
Hat tip to Ethan X!  I've sent the Patriot Daily version of his suggested article to our conseervative buddy (Who's started a newsgroup where liberals and conservatives can exchange articles.  Very unimpressive offering from their side today.)
Patriot Daily documents that Bush is trying to criminalize dissent.  Recounts a number of familiar events from the presidential campaign of 2004. 
Conversation with a conservative.  The two of us had a very extended (34 klobytes) email conversation.  I didn't get permission to reproduce it, so I've listed only the other guy's first name and last name initial. 
One irritant: I got called a "Bush hater" at the end.  I'd say that on a scale of 1 to 10 and 1 was "Bush is the greatest ever!" and 10 was "Yes, I'm looking forward to seeing the man wearing chains in front of an official inquiry", I'd say I didn't really go further than about 6 or 7 until the "Mission Accomplished" speech.  By that time, the sacking and looting of Baghdad made it clear that his intentions were not honorable and it was also clear that there were no WMDs.  My estimation has been 9 or 10 ever since, with ever more outrages and lies piled on top of the others.
Michael Berube demonstrates that radical-turned-rightwing
-concervative David Horowitz has a well, um, an, er interesting view of how to deal with facts and reality. 
If Judge Robert Bork was considered "outside the mainstream" of judicial thought and Alito heaps extravagant praise on Bork, doesn't that make Alito outside the mainstream as well?
Jane of firedoglake takes a look at Alito and the "Concerned Alumni of Princeton".  Same blog does summary of Senators' statements.  Liberal Oasis has a whole round-up of articles.
Prisoners in Guantanamo being force-fed through their noses.  Surprise, surprise!  They're suffering complications from the force-feeding.
Liberal Oasis is normally pretty down on Democrats and usually talks about blown opportunities and missed chances.  It's been quite cheerful about Democrat's response to the Alito Supreme Court nomination.  It also points out that Justice Sunday III looks like a real bust.
Orcinus takes a lengthy (20 kilobytes) look at the "balance vs fairness" problem: 
Specifically, many of us -- not just journalists -- were indulging in a classic logical fallacy, namely, the "false middle," or the argumentum ad temperantiam: "If two groups are locked in argument, one maintaining that 2+2=4, and the other claiming that 2+2=6, sure enough, an Englishman will walk in and settle on 2+2=5, denouncing both groups as extremists."

I don't know if the balance that I used to see ever existed. But in the 1990s, when it became clear that a lot of people on the right were declaring that 2+2=6, and a lot of people in the media were reporting their claims without batting an eye, any balance I had seen before began to vanish -- and it has not returned.
Buzzflash takes a view of the James Risen book that, in all likelihood, prompted te NY Times to publish the NSA spying story (The Times has denied this). 
BTW, Glenn Greenwald points out about the NSA spying case that:
The fact that information is labeled "classified" by the Government does not mean it is truly classified. As I noted a couple of days ago, it is actually illegal (see Sec. 1.8) to classify information for the purpose of concealing unlawful acts by the Government (such as the President ordering that the law be violated when eavesdropping).

It is also worth remembering that this Administration has a history of improperly classifying information which exposes Government wrongdoing, such as the time when it classified the Taguba Report, which detailed government abuses in Abu Grahib, only to then -- once the report was leaked -- feign ignorance about why this plainly un-secret document was classified by the Administration.
Editor & Publisher compares the current calls for impeaching Bush to the calls for impeaching Clinton back in 1998.  60 papers called for Clinton's removal.  The Philadelphia Inquirer then spluttered that: "He should resign, because his repeated, reckless deceits have dishonored his presidency beyond repair."
Oh, this is pathetic!!  The President requested $18 billion almost two years ago to rebuild Iraq, money that should have been spent within a few months.  Would doing that have prevented the ensuing guerrilla war?  Highly unlikely, but it assuredly would have made the job of the insurgents harder and the guerrilla war would have taken longer to get off the ground.  Bush is now giving up and declares that there won't be any more money spent on reconstruction after what's available is used up.
Bush's latest description of the NSA spying program sounds so innocent.   So why did Gonzales and Card find themselves unable to persuade acting Attorney General Comer that everything was kosher?   See especially Comer's very impressive legal resume.


Feingold Resolution

13Mar06 Senator Russ Feingold formally proposed censuring President Bush for the NSA warrantless wiretapping scandal.  Here's the text of the resolution and a link to a site by which you can contact your Senators & Representatives.  
UPDATE [14Mar06] Unfortnately, it's very puzzling to see Democrats wimping out.  We need to call and e-mail still more!! 
UPDATE [15Mar06] Reasons to cheer, but very disappointing to see so few Democrats jumpng on the bandwagon. Of course, a majority of voters are in favor of the resolution. 
UPDATE [18Mar06] firedoglake has posted a "Lions & Lemmings" chart [since taken down] depicting those who support the resolution and those who have come out in outright opposition to it.  Sadly, five days after Feingold's resolution came out, only eight six Senators have put themselves firmly on one side or the other.  Jane has some harsh words for Demoratic strategists who think they're being so clever.  Now that the Bush Administration has apparently raised the stakes, we presume we'll continue to hear from the Democrats what we've heard so far, i.e., [crickets chirping].
UPDATE [23Mar06] Waffling, indecisive, finger-to-the-wind Democrats are between a rock (Feingold recently appeared on The Daily Show, here's a text piece from them) and a hard place (A letter from the Republican National Committee) that ends:

The world is watching. Using every tool at our disposal to fight terrorists should not be a partisan issue. Democrats should to be focused on winning the War on Terror, not undermining it with political axe-grinding of the ugliest kind.

In other words, Democrats are traitors and people who want to surrender the country to al Qaeda because they'd like to conduct surveillance of terrorists legally, in ways that respect the Constitution.  Moderate, wishy-washy Democrats are asking to get smacked around big-time as they must choose between accomodating a law-breaking President at the cost of our Constitution or get called traitors.  Democrats who are looking to occupy "the middle ground" are looking to a shrinking, ever-diminishing patch of ground.