US Will Defend Blackwater, Count On It

Today, the Washington Post wrote: “The Iraqi government on Monday said it had revoked the license of Blackwater USA, an American security company involved in a shootout in Baghdad that killed at least nine people, raising questions over which nation should regulate tens of thousands of civilian hired guns operating in Iraq.” On May 27, 2007, the Washington Post wrote: “The Interior Ministry, which regulates security companies for the Iraqi government, has received four previous complaints of shooting incidents involving Blackwater in the past two years, according to Hussein Kamal, undersecretary for intelligence affairs. But in an interview before last week's shootings, Kamal said Iraqi authorities have been hampered by a Coalition Provisional Authority order granting contractors immunity from the Iraqi legal process. “Blackwater obtained a one-year operating license from the Interior Ministry in 2005, according to a scanned copy of the document provided by the company. After The Washington Post reported in June that the company was effectively operating outside of Iraqi law, Blackwater approached the Private Security Company Association of Iraq to request assistance to obtain a license, according to the trade group...’We have a license renewal in process with the Ministry of Interior,’ Martin L. Strong, a Blackwater vice president said.” The point is, of course, that a regulation known as Order 17, which was established under the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority headed by L. Paul Bremer and is still in effect, granted American private security contractors immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts. And all Blackwater mercenaries sign a contract that holds Blackwater harmless. The contract language is explicit. It releases the company from "any liability whatsoever" even if it is "the result of negligence, gross negligence, omissions or failure to guard or warn against dangerous conditions." No one is overseeing the actions of the mercenaries in Iraq because the White House likes it that way. These thugs can operate in any way they see fit, and that is what they do. It’s difficult to find out exactly how many mercenaries are in Iraq. But the estimate has always been that there are as many civilian hired guns as there are US troops in Iraq, which is to say, there are 160,000 armed hooligans looting, killing and marauding in Iraq. This morning, the New York Times said, “About 126,000 people working for contractors serve alongside American troops, including about 30,000 security contractors.” Close enough. And all of these hoodlums are hired by the US State Department and have been granted immunity by the US State Department and Department of Defense. The US could not fight the Bush administration’s war in Iraq without the mercenaries because the US has no military to speak of. However, the Bush administration thought it could easily invade Iraq with a minimum of troops, take over Iraq’s oil and be greeted as liberators The US Department of Defense and the Pentagon immediately realized what any fifth grader could have told them: Iraq didn’t want to be attacked, over-run, invaded and occupied and Iraq fought back with whatever means it had. Ergo, the US State Department hired a bunch of thugs to pretend they were the US military which the US did not have. And Paul Bremer gave the thugs immunity. Iraq Ambassador Ryan Crocker loves Blackwater. They protect his lily-livered ass while he gives elegant soirees for US Congressmen in his safe compound in Baghdad in order to bamboozle them into prolonging the war in Iraq until FOREVER. General Petraeus loves Blackwater mercenaries because they can perform all the nasty illegal attacks on insurgents/Iraqi citizens/whatever that Petraeus would like for US troops to carry out, but can’t officially order the military to do. The only way the US can stay in Iraq is if the mercenaries stay in Iraq. The Bush administration will spend far more time and money defending Blackwater criminals than it has ever spent on proper gear and armaments for our troops.

THIS JUST IN! BLACKWATER OUT!

AP report from Baghdad by Bassem Mrque and Qassim Abdul-Zahra: “Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul-Karim Khalaf said eight civilians were killed and 13 were wounded when contractors believed to be working for Blackwater USA opened fire in a predominantly Sunni neighborhood of western Baghdad. ‘We have canceled the license of Blackwater and prevented them from working all over Iraqi territory. We will also refer those involved to Iraqi judicial authorities,’ Khalaf said.” The AP report goes on to say “Tens of thousands of foreign private security contractors work in Iraq - some with automatic weapons, body armor, helicopters and bulletproof vehicles - to provide protection for Westerners and dignitaries in Iraq as the country has plummeted toward anarchy and civil war. “Monday's action against Blackwater was likely to give the unpopular government a boost, given Iraqis' dislike of the contractors.” And why would the Iraqis dislike the contractors? All they do is murder, rape and commit mayhem at will. As the AP story says, “Many of the contractors have been accused of indiscriminately firing at American and Iraqi troops, and of shooting to death an unknown number of Iraqi citizens who got too close to their heavily armed convoys, but none has faced charges or prosecution.” Katy Helvenston, the mother of late Blackwater contractor Steve Helvenston, who died in 2004 during the ambush in Fallujah said, "There have been so many innocent people they've killed over there, and they just keep doing it...they have just a callous disregard for life." More from the AP story: “The question of whether they could face prosecution is legally murky. Unlike soldiers, the contractors are not bound by the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Under a special provision secured by American-occupying forces, they are exempt from prosecution by Iraqis for crimes committed there. “The secretive company, run by a former Navy SEAL, is based at a massive, swampland complex. Until the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, it had few security contracts. “Since then, Blackwater profits have soared. And it has become the focus of numerous controversies in Iraq, including the May 30 shooting death of an Iraqi deemed to be driving too close to a Blackwater security detail.” And more from the AP story: “The wartime numbers of private guards are unprecedented - as are their duties, many of which have traditionally been done by soldiers. They protect U.S. military operations and diplomats and have guarded high-ranking officials including Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Baghdad. “They also protect journalists, visiting foreign officials and thousands of construction projects.” Ah, but the former Navy SEAL (Erik Prince) who owns, runs and is the mastermind behind Blackwater USA is a far-right Christian fanatic. And the Prince family has blessed, anointed and bankrolled “Focus on the Family” religious fanatic James Dobson. And James Dobson regularly meets with President George W. Bush. And since the Blackwater mercenaries are committing their atrocities in the name of Jesus, doesn’t that make it all right? Apparently, George W. Bush, the fascists in the Bush administration, General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker think it’s fine and dandy. But the Iraqis don’t think it’s fine and dandy. And they’ve kicked Blackwater USA out. Here’s a bet you can take to the bank: Petraeus and the other hoodlums in the White House will bring Blackwater, USA back into Iraq. You got a problem with that, America?

OJ and GWB

The similarities between O.J. Simpson and George W. Bush are astounding. However, there is one major difference. OJ had extraordinary success in pro football as a young man. Bush was an abject failure at everything he attempted as a young man. OJ was born July 9, 1947. GWB was born July 6, 1946. Neither man can admit they were wrong. Both men believe they are justified in doing anything they can conceive of doing. Both men believe they are above the law, or that no law applies to them. Both men lie as easily as they draw breath. Both men are grandiose, narcissistic, addiction-prone, egomaniacal and delusional. Both men have gotten away with committing heinous crimes. Both men belong in jail. Now that OJ has committed more crimes and has been charged with six felonies, he may finally go to jail. Then again, he may slither his way out of it once more. Slime-god George W. Bush will definitely get away with his crimes. He’s looking forward to making money on the lecture circuit after his presidency is over. His topic will be: I Did It!

There Must Be a Fancy Name For It!

I think C.G. Jung called the experience of going under anesthesia and feeling you were being told the secret of the universe, “The Cosmic Consciousness of the Everlasting Now”. So there must be a name for the experience of suddenly being electrified by the thought “What the hell am I doing here?” If no name has been attributed to that galvanizing jolt of clarity, let’s call it the “Oh Shit! Fuck This!” moment. The entire nation of the United States needs an OSFT flash of pure sanity. That we all can just sit here and calmly listen to George W. Bush use the word “success” when describing the woeful failure of his stupid surge in Iraq is apathy carried to the extreme of being comatose. What would happen if we all were hit with OSFT at the same moment? I remember being seized by OSFT a half-century ago. For reasons I needn’t go into I was working at the most mind-numbing job in Rock Island, Illinois, far from family, friends, husband, child, and I was semi-somnolently going from one day to the next. Suddenly, at 1:00 in the morning OSFT rocked me to my core. Within an hour, I was on my way back to New York. Of course, a true OSFT cannot be manufactured. It just happens. But we, as a nation, at least need to come to grips with the fact that the Bush administration, General Petraeus, Ambassador Crocker, the neocons and all the warmongers in the world would be powerless if the people in the United States simply shook off their lethargy and told our government, ENOUGH ALREADY! DO OUR BIDDING OR SHIP OUT!!!!! And that we can do, OSFT or no OSFT!

Explain to Me, Please!

The United States has at least 120,000 mercenaries in Iraq. These thugs are costing the US as much as $1000/a day per thug. Blackwater USA, the fanatic fundamentalist right-wing crusading religious organization based in North Carolina that trains mercenaries, has trained its gun-for-hire troops frighteningly well. Why can’t these mercenaries be left in Iraq, overseen by 40,000 real US soldiers? This would keep the US troop level in Iraq at 160,000. And then the US could bring home 120,000 US soldiers and leave the thugs to fight the war in Iraq that George Bush, General Petraeus, and Ambassador Crocker love so much. I can’t see a downside to this idea. Right now, the mercenaries not only are fighting side-by-side with real US soldiers, but also they are guarding Iraq’s oil wells. The news this morning is that the oil law agreement in Iraq between Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis has collapsed. That means the mercenaries are still free to oversee the smuggling of oil out of Iraq. This smuggling (by the US) has been made simple and easy because the US has failed to install the meters on the wells that would prevent smuggling, and US hoodlums are guarding the wells. It all looks positive and good. The mercenaries get to plunder, maraud and kill, which they have been trained to do. The US gets to continue smuggling oil from wells guarded by the mercenaries. Ambassador Crocker gets to continue having little PR soirees in his secure and protected compound in Baghdad guarded by Blackwater, USA gangsters. General Petraeus can keep on playing soldier and being called honorable, which he isn’t. And George W. Bush can start dressing up like a mercenary and feel as though he’s a man who has balls, which he isn’t and doesn't have. And US soldiers get to come home. What’s not to like?

Petraeus Is Just One More Corrupt Politician

Defenders of General Petraeus say he is a straight-shooter, a man of Integrity, and an honorable man. It may well be that at one time General Petraeus was all of those things. But any military man who will stand before Congress and say, as Petraeus did yesterday, “I believe that it is possible to achieve our objectives in Iraq over time, although doing so will be neither quick nor easy,” is a specious dissembler. What are the objectives of the Bush administration? That is to say, what are the objectives of the Bush administration today? Does anyone know? The so-called objectives have changed daily in the last year. On July 7, 2006 the Prez said he had confidence in Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki because “he represents the will of 12 million who went to the polls.” The Prez said Maliki was “a man who sets goals and understands what needs to be done”. The Prez said, “the United States will achieve its objective of ensuring that Iraq is a free country, able to govern, defend and sustain itself.” Last January when Bush said he was sending more troops into Iraq, he said the goal was “to protect the Iraqi public against attacks from insurgents and militias”. Just the other day, we were told that the Bush administration has no confidence in Maliki and that “the US goal in Iraq is to establish order”. From the time General David Petraeus replaced General George Casey on January 26, 2007, Petraeus has rubber-stamped the sly rhetoric, changed goals and lies of the Bush administration. During 2004-2005 when Petraeus was head of security in Iraq, Petraeus misplaced millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of guns because he said he didn’t think keeping track of money and arms was important. Today those arms may be in the hands of the enemy...whoever that enemy may be—the Bush administration cannot rightly decide. Is the enemy the Iraq PM Maliki? Is it the Shiites? Is it the Sunnis? Is it the insurgents and militias? Is it “Al Qaeda in Iraq”? Is it the people in the United States who think the Bush administration has betrayed the entire United States? Tomorrow, whoever the Bush administration decides is THE ENEMY, General David Petraeus will say, “Yes! That’s the enemy...we have to stay in Iraq!” General David Petraeus is just another Bush administration politician whose career is on the line.

Read Frank Rich Today

Those who refuse to pay a ransom fee to the New York Times in order to unlock Frank Rich’s Op/Ed articles can read them on BuzzFlash or Welcome to Pottersville. But in brief, Rich said the following in his “As the Iraqis Stand Down, We’ll Stand Up” column today: 1. The Bush administration is going to do a 24-7 hype all next week linking 9/11 to the war in Iraq, which link, of course does not exist. 2. Instead of focusing on 9/11/2001, Rich says to focus on 9/8/2002. That’s when “The four horsemen of the apocalypse — Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell and Rice — were dispatched en masse to the Washington talk shows.” It was on that day these warmongers began their pitch for war in Iraq, invoking Iraq nuclear weapons and Condoleezza Rice said (thanks to a White House speechwriter), "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." 3. Much of the ensuing “epic propaganda onslaught of distorted intelligence, fake news, credulous and erroneous reporting by bona fide journalists, presidential playacting and Congressional fecklessness” was concocted by WHIG “a small task force of administration brass charged with the Iraq con job.” The White House Iraq Group was composed of Karl Rove, Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin, Andrew Card, James R. Wilkinson, Nicholas E. Calio, Condoleezza Rice, Stephen Hadley, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby and Michael Gerson (Bush’s born-again speech writer). 4. “Today,” Rich says, “the spirit of WHIG lives. In the stay-the-surge propaganda offensive that crests with this week's Congressional testimony of Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, history is repeating itself in almost every particular. Even the specter of imminent "nuclear holocaust" has been rebooted in President Bush's arsenal of rhetorical scare tactics.” The old WHIG has been replaced by a “war room” which was put in place at the end of the “Rumsfeld regime” and which is “run by a former ABC News producer”. 5. “Exhibit A was last weekend's precisely timed ‘surprise’ presidential junket: Mr. Bush took the measure of success ‘on the ground here in Anbar’ (as he put it) without ever leaving a heavily fortified American base,” Rich says. And John McCain’s bogus visit to Baghdad was “a more elaborate example of administration Disneyland.” The Washington Post found out that at least one of the markets that McCain visited--the Dora market—“is a Potemkin village, open only a few hours a day and produced by $2,500 grants (aka bribes) bestowed on the shopkeepers.” Staff Sgt. Josh Campbell told WaPo, "This is General Petraeus's baby...personally, I think it's a false impression." 6. More Frank Rich: “No doubt General Petraeus, like Dick Cheney before him, will say that his own data is ‘pretty well confirmed’ by classified intelligence that can't be divulged without endangering national security. Meanwhile, the White House will ruthlessly undermine any reality-based information that contradicts its propaganda, much as it dismissed the accurate W.M.D. findings of the United Nations weapon experts Hans Blix and Mohammed ElBaradei before the war. General Petraeus intervened to soften last month's harsh National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq. Last week the administration and its ideological surrogates were tireless in trashing the nonpartisan G.A.O. report card that found the Iraqi government flunking most of its benchmarks.” 7. Rich goes on to say, “What's surprising is not that this White House makes stuff up, but that even after all the journalistic embarrassments in the run-up to the war its fictions can still infiltrate the real news”. Last week, perky (gullible and stupid) Katie Couric was in Iraq disseminating false news and using Pentagon-speak, like, "Al Qaeda in Iraq”, while never differentiating between the Bush administration’s “Al Qaeda in Iraq” and the Al Qaeda that attacked America on 9/11. We all know we’ve been lied to. We all know that Petraeus and Crocker are flacks for the Bush administration. And even though some of us really don’t want to believe it, we all really do know that the only reason 3,761 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq and that we are still in Iraq is to validate the Bush administration neocons’ wrong-headed decision to attack Iraq. So, what are we going to do about it? For us to know that the Bush administration and its generals and flacks are making up all the statistics they throw at us about Iraq, and for us to do nothing is immoral and unethical. What is our recourse? What are our options? We really have to focus on that, not on the bullshit coming out of Washington during the next week. The week of September 11th was carefully calculated as the week the corrupt and slimy Petraeus/Crocker team would hype the Iraq war even though 9/11 had nothing whatsoever to do with the US attacking Iraq. Other than, of course, serving as a convenient excuse for a war the White House had decided to wage no matter what. HOW DO WE STOP THIS?

So That’s Why We’re in Iraq

This morning, the New York Times says: “The figures that have emerged in recent government reports have seemingly provided something for everyone. The most comprehensive and up-to-date military statistics show that American forces have made some headway toward a crucial goal of protecting the Iraqi population." Further on in the article (“Hints of Progress, and Questions, in Iraq Data”) Michael R. Gordon writes, “When President Bush announced in January his decision to send more forces to Iraq, his commanders outlined a new strategy. The goal was to protect the Iraqi public against attacks from insurgents and militias.... Aha! So that’s why we’re in Iraq. We’re protecting the Iraqi public from insurgents and militias (who never would have risen up if the US hadn’t attacked Iraq in the first place). Gordon says, “The Bush administration hoped that the additional security would provide Iraqi leaders with a breathing space to move ahead with their program of political reconciliation. That has not happened. But the infusion of more American troops encouraged Sunni tribes, including former insurgents, to align themselves with American forces, providing American troops with additional allies in their struggle to establish order in Iraq.” How about that! Apparently, the US troops’ mission has shifted again. No longer are US soldiers dying because they are fighting in Iraq’s civil war (a civil war that never would have started if the US hadn’t attacked Iraq in the first place), now they are dying while trying to establish order. That is very interesting. Because my memory is that on March 19, 2003 the hapless failure sitting on the throne in the White House, George W. Bush, announced (without seeking approval from Congress) that he (that is, the neocons running the United States) had decided the US would attack Iraq. When the neocons’ plan for stealing Iraq’s oil resources didn’t work, the Bush administration shifted the US mission in Iraq to bringing democracy and freedom to the Iraqi people. When it became clear that the Iraqi people not only didn’t understand democracy but didn’t want the so-called freedom (that is, tyranny) that the Bush administration envisioned for Iraq, the US mission shifted to forcing the Iraqi people to accept the Bush administration’s gift of corruption, tyranny and occupation which it called democracy and freedom, When insurgents and militias decided to protect themselves from the Bush administration’s war, aggression and tyranny, the US mission morphed into one of trying to establish order. As a curtain-raiser to General Petraeus’s new magic act of calling defeat victory, which he will perform on Monday, the Bush administration is claiming that fewer Iraqis are dying in Iraq because US security measures have established order. Michael Gordon wrote, “According to the American military count, the August total for the 10 security districts in Baghdad was 321, down from 1,621 in December when such attacks were at a high.” The fact is, so many Iraqis have already been killed or have fled from Iraq that it’s hard to find more Iraqis to kill. The big question is: Who is protecting Iraq and the Iraqis from the Bush administration and its flunky toadying posturing lying war-loving generals like David Petraeus?

Looney-Tunes Duo Prep Their Song & Dance

General Elmer Petraeus and Ambassador Bugs Crocker are practicing the tag-team razzle-dazzle they will use on Congress next week. The General is expected to suggest withdrawing a whole brigade from Iraq by next January, if all goes well. That’s 3500 soldiers out of the 320,ooo (counting the mercenaries which doubles the number of troops in Iraq) that Petraeus may (or may not) allow to come home. And that is if all goes well. The New York Times reported this morning that Petraeus is worried about “risk”: “Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, has told President Bush that he wants to maintain heightened troop levels in Iraq well into next year to reduce the risk of military setbacks.” A senior military official said, “General Petraeus is worried about risk, and all things being equal he’d like to keep as much as he could for as long as he could,” Well I guess so! General Petraeus is very worried about the fact that he has already risked his reputation by backing the asshole in the White House. And now that everyone knows the surge is an abject failure and that the civil war caused by the US occupation of Iraq cannot be contained, General Petraeus is worried sick about risking his already damaged reputation. It’s hard to know how Ryan Crocker plans to charm and impress Congress. Crocker lives in luxury in secure, protected and opulent ease in a lovely compound in Baghdad where he gives “nice-napkin” lunches to visiting dignitaries. What he could possibly say that would have any meaning as to the war in Iraq is a mystery. But no doubt both men will appear before Congress in sartorial splendor--General Fudd will be in his uniform with gleaming medals and stars. And Ambassador Bunny will wear an ensemble of low-key but expensive threads. And both men will risk EVERYTHING the Bush administration has given them.

Thank You Senator Specter

Oh what fun! And it’s all due to Repub Senator Arlen Specter from Pennsylvania having called Senator Craig (R-ID) to tell him he wants Craig to go back to court and withdraw his recent guilty plea in the Minnesota sex sting So now Craig has hired Billie Martin, the same lawyer who defended Falcons quarterback dog-killer Michael Vick. And Craig is gearing up to undo his guilty plea. Last night, CNN’s legal maven Jeffrey Toobin said there are two reasons Craig can use in Minnesota to vacate his guilty plea: incompetence and coercion, and neither apply. I hope Toobin is wrong. I think hearing about the last twenty years of Craig’s assignations in public bathrooms would be very entertaining. And there will be all those endless hearings and investigations into Craig’s private life. We know what Petraeus and Bush are going to say about the war in Iraq. We know what their lapdog ambassador Crocker is going to say. We know the GOP neocons want our soldiers to shed more blood for no good reason whatsoever other than to defend the Bush administration making thousands of bad decisions piled onto thousands of other bad decisions in Iraq. I look forward to hearing those same Repubs blather on about family values and that fighting unnecessary and illegal wars in order to seize other nation’s wealth is good and honorable and that although Larry Craig has been soliciting sex from strangers in public bathrooms during his entire political life, he must be vindicated because he’s a Republican. Yummiola! I can’t wait!

GOP Mantra: Enjoy Gay Sex But Deny It!

Oh, the crocodile tears from the Repubs. Oh, the sadness about Larry Craig being forced to resign. Oh, the “rush to judgment” rhetoric. The talk-shows have been full of tsk-tsk and tut-tut about all the good Larry Craig has done (and what is that, may I ask? Who knew Craig’s name until his footsie-in-the-crapper escapade?). Oh, the moaning that the Larry Craig case was purely and simply a hatchet job. Even Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) has been mentioned in the same breath with Larry Craig, as in, if-Craig-why-not-Frank? context. Here’s the thing: It’s the hypocrisy, stupid. (And I will tell you why not Barney Frank. Barney Frank has never hidden the fact that he is gay. He may not have advertised it during the first years of his political life, but he NEVER hid it or denied it.) For the past twenty years Larry Craig has spoken out against homosexuality and the sin of immorality while at the same time he was trolling for gay sex in crummy sordid public bathroom stalls. In 1999, Craig said of Bill Clinton’s sexual lapses: "The American people already know that Bill Clinton is a bad boy - a naughty boy. I’m going to speak out for the citizens of my state, who in the majority think that Bill Clinton is probably even a nasty, bad, naughty boy.” Last October gay activist Mike Rogers reported that Mr. Family Values Craig had repeatedly solicited men in public bathrooms for sex and Rogers interviewed men who attested to the fact that Craig had solicited them in public restrooms. Congressman Mark Foley (R-FL) who solicited underage Congressional pages, which makes him a pedophile, was chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, a group that targeted sexual predators and created guidelines for tracking them. It’s not the being gay that is the sin here. It’s the hypocrisy. And by the way, Larry Craig must have wanted to melt into a puddle and die when former Democrat governor of New Jersey James McGreevey, who resigned after disclosing he’d been having a gay affair, sent Craig a letter of support. So it’s the fact that Larry Craig and other watchdogs of holy writ who yammer about the evils of the unsaved while dipping their dicks where their religion says they dast not dip their dicks is what has destroyed Larry Craig, Mark Foley and televangelist Ted Haggard And mark my words, it is going to destroy Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) and Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

Paul Krugman Nailed It

“In February 2003,” Krugman wrote in the New York Times yesterday, “Secretary of State Colin Powell, addressing the United Nations Security Council, claimed to have proof that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. He did not, in fact, present any actual evidence, just pictures of buildings with big arrows pointing at them saying things like ‘Chemical Munitions Bunker.’ But many people in the political and media establishments swooned: they admired Mr. Powell, and because he said it, they believed it...Mr. Powell’s masters got the war they wanted, and it soon became apparent that none of his assertions had been true.” Krugman went on to say, “Until recently I assumed that the failure to find W.M.D., followed by years of false claims of progress in Iraq, would make a repeat of the snow job that sold the war impossible. But I was wrong. The administration, this time relying on Gen. David Petraeus to play the Colin Powell role, has had remarkable success creating the perception that the 'surge' is succeeding, even though there’s not a shred of verifiable evidence to suggest that it is.” Krugman is right. Any and all claims about any and all progress in Iraq are bogus, false and are blatant lies. Take for instance, the claim that civilian casualties are down. As Krugman pointed out, “The Pentagon says they’re down, but it has neither released its numbers nor explained how they’re calculated.” A draft report from the Government Accountability Office was leaked to the press because GAO officials were afraid they would be pressured into changing the report’s wrap-up. And that wrap-up was that agencies “differ" on whether violence has been reduced. And independent agencies found no decline. Or, as AmericaBlog put it: "Sectarian deaths are down unless you count the dead bodies”. Krugman quoted Leila Fadel of McClatchy who said, “Some military officers believe that it (the claim that civilian casualties are down) may be an indication that ethnic cleansing has been completed in many neighborhoods and that there aren’t as many people to kill.” None of the recent reports—the GAO leaked report, the National Intelligence Estimate and another leaked US report about the Iraqi government-- have found any progress regarding the surge and no sectarian reconciliation. In addition, the Iraqi government (which was put in place and anointed by the Bush administration) has been found to be rife with corruption. And yet, Krugman says, we are told that General Petraeus is a fine, upstanding officer who would never be involved in deception. Which is the same thing that was said about Colin Powell. Or, as Shakespeare’s Mark Antony said in his Juleius Caesar speech, “For Brutus is an honourable man, so are they all; all honorable men”. Nevertheless, as history has amply proven, honorable men with a career to lose will do anything. They will lie, cheat, and kill.

Robert Draper’s Looksee at the Prez

It may be that President Bush and his aides finally allowed Robert Draper to write a book about George W. Bush because Draper is a fellow-Texan and Draper said, according to the New York Times this morning, that he was writing about the Prez as ”a consequential president for history". It may even be that Draper’s intent in writing “Dead Certain”, which will be published this coming Tuesday, was to present a flattering albeit true picture of George W. Bush’s seven years as president. However, Draper agreed to share parts of his transcripts from those interviews, and the book itself, with the NYT under the agreement that they would not be published until shortly before the book is released. And the NYT has offered a few advance quick looks at the book’s content. Apparently the real George W. Bush is going to come through despite initial intentions. For example, Jim Ruttenberg’s article for the NYT (“In Book, Bush Peeks Ahead to His Legacy”) quotes Draper saying, “Sitting in an anteroom of the Oval Office, he eschewed the more formal White House menu for comfort food — a low-fat hotdog and ice cream — and bitingly told an aide who peeked in on the session that his time with Mr. Draper was ‘worthless anyway’.” Ruttenberg goes on to say, “But as Mr. Draper described it, and as the transcripts show, Mr. Bush warmed up considerably over the intervening interviews, chewing on an unlit cigar, jubilantly swatting at flies between making solemn points, propping his feet up on a table or stopping him at points to say emphatically, ‘I want you to get this’ or ‘I want this damn book to be right.’ “Draper said Mr. Bush took issue with him for unearthing details of a meeting in April 2006 at which he took a show-of-hands vote on the future of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who was among his closest advisers. Mr. Bush told Mr. Draper he had no recollection of it, but he said he disagreed with the implication that he regularly governed by staff vote. (According to Mr. Draper’s book, the vote was 7 to 4 for Mr. Rumsfeld’s ouster, with Mr. Bush being one of the no votes. Mr. Rumsfeld stayed on months longer.)” Another clear snapshot of George W. Bush is the following: “Mr. Bush acknowledged one major failing of the early occupation of Iraq when he said of disbanding the Saddam Hussein-era military, “The policy was to keep the army intact; didn’t happen.”... But when Mr. Draper pointed out that Mr. Bush’s former Iraq administrator, L. Paul Bremer III, had gone ahead and forced the army’s dissolution and then asked Mr. Bush how he reacted to that, Mr. Bush said, “Yeah, I can’t remember, I’m sure I said, ‘This is the policy, what happened?’ ” But, he added, “Again, Hadley’s got notes on all of this stuff,” referring to Stephen J. Hadley, his national security adviser.” President Bush doesn’t know what he knows or what he doesn’t know, he can’t differentiate in his mind what he did from what he didn’t do, what he said from what someone else said or who decided what. George W. Bush is an arrogant pompous little pretender with delusions of grandeur who has been allowed to think he is President of the United States. According to Draper, Bush said, “One interesting question historians are going to have to answer is: Would Saddam have behaved differently if he hadn’t gotten mixed signals between the first resolution and the failure of the second resolution?” Mr. Bush said. “I can’t answer that question. I was hopeful that diplomacy would work.” George W. Bush doesn’t even remember that he never was hopeful about diplomacy. Way, way late in the debacle in Iraq in 2005 Bush made a show of talking about diplomacy when Condi Rice was appointed Secretary of State but he and his minders never believed in diplomacy. They let Rice do the diplomacy bullshit. George Bush was hopeful about looking macho, marching into Iraq, throwing around some bombs and marching out looking macho and victorious. That’s it. Oh, and what does the president plan to do when his term is over? First, he told Robert Draper, “I’ll give some speeches, just to replenish the ol’ coffers.” (Bush’s assets are around $21 million.) “I don’t know what my dad gets — it’s more than 50-75” thousand dollars a speech, and “Clinton’s making a lot of money.” It’s true, President Bill Clinton has done well making speeches since his presidency ended. But then, people want to hear what Bill Clinton has to say.

The Prez Is “Confidant”

Sane men would be worried, but not George W. Bush. The nation as a whole can’t stand President Bush’s guts and the majority of voters want him out, impeached, tried for war crimes or dead. In addition, the nation as a whole wants the war in Iraq to end and wants the president to bring our troops home. The President’s Secretary of Defense and oh-so-beloved architect of the Iraq war Donald Rumsfeld was forced to resign in December 2006. Bush’s assistant, “Scooter” Libby was sentenced to jail in March 2006 (a sentence later commuted by Bush which let Libby off Scot free.) Most of the president’s Justice Department resigned in disgust before Bush finally fired his lying Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales. The president’s Advisor and decider Karl Rove slithered out of the White House yesterday after resigning on August 13th. Senator John Warner (R-VA) said yesterday that he wouldn’t run for the Senate again, leaving his Senate seat up for grabs. (BTW, I was amazed to realize that Warner’s marriage to actress Elizabeth Taylor actually lasted six years {1976 -1982}--and isn’t that odd?--he always seemed so reasoned and stable.) Bush's Press Secretary Tony Snow resigned today. Idaho Republican Congressman Larry Craig is resigning today after trying to get sex from an undercover cop in a public restroom last week. Republican Congressman Mark Foley had to resign last September after House Pages ratted him out over his buggering little boys. The president’s spiritual advisor, Ted Haggard, was forced to resign as pastor of his Megachurch in Colorado last November because of “sexually immoral (as, in homosexual) behavior”. Ken Mehlman retired as Republican National Committee Chairman the end of 2006 after being outed by TV personality Bill Maher. The war in Iraq is going as badly as a war can go. That is, we have lost the war and there is no way no-how that it can ever be won. But nevermind all that. The New York Times reports today, “President Bush, appearing confident about sustaining support for his Iraq strategy, met at the Pentagon on Friday with the uniformed leaders of the nation’s armed services and then pointedly accused the war’s opponents of politicizing the debate over what to do next.” After meeting with the chiefs of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines in a briefing room known as the Tank, Bush said, “The stakes in Iraq are too high and the consequences too grave for our security here at home to allow politics to harm the mission of our men and women in uniform,” Mr. Bush said in a statement after his meeting with the chiefs of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines in a briefing room known as the Tank.” Bush is confident because he has his bought-and-paid-for ambassador to Iraq, Ryan C. Crocker (who has “nice-napkin-lunches” for American Congressman in Baghdad to promote Bush’s lovely war), and Crocker will speak glowingly about the progress of Bush's war. And Bush has his bought-and-paid-for General, David H. Petraeus, (who mislaid billions of American dollars and armaments in Iraq), and Petraeus will announce on September 10 that the president’s puny Iraq surge is going very well, that the US is winning its war and that the US must stay in Iraq and fight, fight, fight until any 18-year-old soldiers who might accidentally survive are 100-year old veterans. It’s difficult to tell if Crocker and Petraeus are insane or just corrupt and unethical. I’m betting on corrupt and unethical. Vice President Dick Cheney who joined in the talks in “the Tank” is not insane. Cheney is sick, old, on many medications and he drinks too much given the meds he takes. But the bottom line is that Cheney is corrupt, unethical, and a mean, nasty old pol who cares about no one and nothing except Dick Cheney’s power and money. But one thing is absolutely for sure, President George W. Bush is crazy as a loon and probably always has been. We, the people of the United States do not have to put up with this ridiculous state of affairs in our government. The United States Congress does not have to sit by and watch insane, corrupt and unethical people run the government. The Congress has the power to stop this travesty. The people have the power to make the Congress put an end to it. So for GOD’S SAKE, let’s demand that Congress get off its collective ass and put an end NOW to the Bush/Cheney fascist regime!!!!!!

Do You Love It, Or What?!

Remember all that money and weapons that couldn’t be accounted for in Iraq? A bunch of agencies including the Army Criminal Investigation Command, the Department of Justice, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have been looking into these discrepancies. This morning the New York Times reported that officials from these agencies said “the missing money and matériel amounted to the largest ring of fraud and kickbacks uncovered in the conflict here.” And get this: a senior American officer being investigated worked closely with General David Petraeus when Petraeus was in charge of training and equipping iraqis forces in 2004 and 2005. Of course the NYT made sure to say, “There is no indication that investigators have uncovered any wrongdoing by General Petraeus.” But guess what Petraeus’s response is. Petraeus said the Iraqi’s were ill equipped and having to deal with mounting violence, so he decided not to wait for formal tracking systems to be put in place. “The imperative to provide weapons to Iraqis was more important than maintaining impeccable records,” Petraeus said. WHAT? I mean, WHAT? Sounds like wrongdoing to me. Petraeus is the man who next month is going to decide the future of American soldiers in Iraq. This is the man who is going to say that President George Bush’s ego-war in Iraq must be fought until the last American soldier is dead. This is the man who will lie and claim that President George Bush’s puny and irresponsible little surge is making progress. And this asshole decided that knowing where money and arms were ending up in Iraq was not important. Back when Petraeus was in charge of disbursing cash to Iraqis, American contractors were told to turn up with big duffel bags to pick up their payments. Some were paid from the back of pick-up trucks. Cash was loaded onto giant pallets for shipment by plane to Iraq, and paid out to contractors who carried it away in duffel bags, for God’s sake. Back when Petraeus was in charge of disbursing weapons to Iraqis, 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols were mislaid. But Petraeus says he didn't think knowing where they had ended up was important. “We made a decision to arm guys who wanted to fight for their country,” Petraeus says. And once again the underlings are going to get rounded up and frog-marched to the hoosegow. According to the NYT: “part of the criminal investigation is focused on Lt. Col. Levonda Joey Selph, who reported directly to General Petraeus and worked closely with him in setting up the logistics operation for what were then the fledgling Iraqi security forces.” Another let me get this straight moment: We’re blaming the Maliki government for everything that has gone wrong in Iraq even though the Bush administration set up the Maliki puppet government and anointed it as the great hope for Iraq. Then General Petraeus doled out arms and money from the backs of trucks with never a thought that the stuff would get into the wrong hands. So now that nearly everyone George W. Bush has ever had confidence in has resigned under a cloud and/or is involved in some nefarious sexual assignation, we have put the fate of American soldiers in Iraq in the hands of George Bush and General Petraeus. Is that about the size of it? It is interesting though isn’t it, that this stuff about Petraeus’s malfeasance is suddenly getting attention just when he’s preparing to be center stage and handing out more baloney about Iraq.

Gonzalez Just Resigned!

So much for being backed to the hilt by George W. Bush and his fascists! The Prez bowed to the overwhelming chorus from voters and from Congress and canned his kiss-ass Attorney General Alberto Gonzales yesterday. On Saturday Bush said, regarding Iraq, “We are still in the early stages of our new operations.” Right! And Alberto Gonzales will never resign. Bush may be listening to no one but the delusions in his head. But apparently no one is listening to George W. Bush. Look for a pull-out of American troops from Iraq to begin before Thanksgiving. And by the bye, CNN is saying that Gonzales getting the ax came as a surprise to Republican insiders. Are you fucking kidding me? US News & World Report reported the following on August 26, titled, “Maybe Trading Up Soon at Justice”: “The buzz among top Bushies is that beleaguered Attorney General Alberto Gonzales finally plans to depart and will be replaced by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. Why Chertoff? Officials say he's got fans on Capitol Hill, is untouched by the Justice prosecutor scandal, and has more experience than Gonzales did, having served as a federal judge and assistant attorney general.” Gonzales was ordered to resign last Friday and he did so by telephone. The Bush PR machine geared up and decided not to release the news until Monday. Gonzales and his wife had a little face time with the Prez on Sunday. Bullshit me not about Repubs not knowing. They not only knew, they demanded that Bush fire Gonzales and Bush fired Gonzales. Resigned? Don’t be foolish! And in addition, the Bush administration has been grooming (or trying to groom) Chertoff for months for the AG job. In addition to that addition, the Democrats have been fully aware for months about this Gonzales choreographed departure and that Chertoff would be nominated as his replacement. So let’s get real about how all this is done. At least it’s been done. And just so you’re clear regarding my feelings about this news. Gonzales is an asshole flunky thug. Deaths-head Chertoff may be the worst nominee the Bush administration could put forward. Chertoff is a Bush administration whiny ninny flunky.

Congress Gets Wined and Dined In Baghdad

The New York Times reports this morning, “On a Sunday morning in early August, just hours after Congress had recessed for the summer, Representative Jan Schakowsky and five of her colleagues boarded a military jet at Andrews Air Force Base. Three flights and a Black Hawk helicopter ride later, they were lunching on asparagus soup and lobster tortellini at the home of Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker in Baghdad. “’It was a lovely lunch, a nice-napkin lunch,’ said Ms. Schakowsky, a liberal Democrat and ardent war critic from Chicago.” Like any PR event anywhere, it was a dandy little vacation for these members of Congress. And like any PR event, it didn’t cost the Congresspersons a dime since it was billed to American taxpayers. And also, like any other PR event, the purpose of the trip was to twist the arms of influential people so that they would support a venture, a group, or an idea. These trips for Congressional delegations are highly choreographed affairs known as codels, the NYT says. They are “an annual rite of summer for lawmakers...Roughly 50 lawmakers have tromped through Iraq this summer, and their impressions are having a profound effect on the debate.” Apparently the PR blitz is working. After hearing featured guest Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American military commander in Iraq give his spiel Representative Brian Baird of Washington, an early opponent of the war, has changed his mind. He now supports the war. And it’s good practice for Petraeus who will deliver another bullshit spiel to Americans in September telling us that we’re making progress in Iraq and that we have to stay there forever. The NYT article is titled: “Hear a General, Hug a Sheik: Congress Visits Iraq”. The whole idea of the Bush administration promoting its unnecessary and illegal war in Iraq as though it were a C-list movie is so ugly and crass it would be unbelievable if these trips were not promotion events sponsored by the Bush administration. American soldiers being killed in Iraq is just background noise from a bunch of extras as far as General Petraeus and the Bush administration is concerned. The main point is that the biggest mistake ever made in United States history needs to be promoted or Republicans are out of their jobs. And that is what Ambassador Crocker, the Bush administration and warmongering generals are going to do...whatever it takes. And whatever it takes includes “nice-napkin” lunches in Baghdad while our guys die. There are no words to describe how offensive, ugly, corrupt, distasteful and ghastly these PR trips to Baghdad are. HAVE THESE MEN NO SHAME?

Will Crazy George Listen?

The LA Times this morning says, “The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is expected to advise President Bush to reduce the U.S. force in Iraq next year by almost half, potentially creating a rift with top White House officials and other military commanders over the course of the war.” The New York Times this morning quotes Senator John Warner (R-VA) saying: “President Bush should start bringing home some troops by Christmas to show the Baghdad government that the U.S. commitment in Iraq is not open-ended.” The NYT added, “The move puts John Warner, a former Navy secretary and one-time chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, at odds with the president, who says conditions on the ground should dictate deployments.” Of course our delusional president won’t listen to anyone. That’s a given. But a better question is: What would make George Bush listen to anything other than the voice of God he says he hears and obeys? Right now, it suits the GOP to pretend that George Bush is at the helm of our ship of state and to pretend that the president knows what he’s doing when he insists the United States must stay in Iraq until the next millennium. But since the futures of all Republican Senators depend on the puppet in the White House changing his mind, it’s a challenge for the most creative mind to come up with a scenario for that event. Because George W. Bush has so many mental disabilities (that is, delusions, narcissism, paranoia, debilitating anxiety, manic/depression and/or schizophrenia, mother-obsession, father-hate, addiction problems, sexual identity confusion, and distrust of psychiatrists and psychiatry), he is incapable of changing his mind or admitting he ever was wrong. The Bush handlers had thought that staying in Iraq would be an issue that would resonate with voters. The opposite has turned out to be true. But it never occurred to the Bush administration that Crazy George would be called on to change his mind before leaving office. When a robot has not been equipped with any command other than “forward”, what do you do if you want the robot to stop? 1) You let it go forward until its batteries die. 2) You let it destroy itself by running into a wall. 3) You knock it over. It looks like the Bush handlers have opted for solution No. 2.

The Forget the US Attacked Iraq Ploy

We’ve been told that the blame game is not productive regarding Iraq. We’ve been told that we need to focus on supporting our troops and winning the war. We’ve been told that yammering about who got us into this war is not going to solve the problems the US now has because it is in this war in Iraq. Here’s the lede paragraph in this morning’s New York Times article, "'Free Iraq' Is Within Reach, Bush Declares": “President Bush delivered a rousing defense of his Iraq policy on Wednesday, telling a group of veterans that ‘a free Iraq’ is within reach and warning that if Americans succumb to ‘the allure of retreat,’ they will witness death and suffering of the sort not seen since the Vietnam War.” That is why the high-toned injunction against blaming the Bush administration for the war is ridiculous. The Bush administration has now wiped from its memory banks the fact that it caused the situation in Iraq and the Bush administration is currently working on wiping from the world’s memory banks the fact that Iraq has already witnessed the kind of death and suffering that the Bush administration is insanely saying will happen in the future if we pull out. George W. Bush and the neocons in his administration lied and without benefit of a declaration of war by Congress, caused the US to senselessly and needlessly attack Iraq. Whether we stay in Iraq or leave today, the Iraqi’s have already witnessed death and suffering worse than the quagmire the US created in Vietnam. The death and suffering President Bush alludes to as being in the future has already happened. And it has already happened because idiots elected a warmongering puppet as president and allowed his handlers to start a war in Iraq. A Free Iraq is not within reach now or in 20 years and using American soldiers to fight and die in Iraq’s civil war (for which the Bush administration is also to blame and which the Bush administration claims is not gong on) for the next ten years will do nothing to lessen the death and suffering that Iraqis have already witnessed. It is not productive to forget that the greed, avarice and blood lust of the Bush administration fomented and caused the situation in Iraq. The Bush administration can do nothing, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, to lessen the death and suffering it started in Iraq. Now only the Iraqi people can stop it. The US can only lessen the death and suffering of Americans by making a firm deadline for getting out of Iraq and by starting that pullout immediately, Do not ever forget who started this war in Iraq. Do not ever forget that the Iraq War had nothing to do with bringing freedom or democracy to Iraq. Do not ever forget that the Bush administration lied in order to make war on Iraq. Do not ever forget that moment when Secretary of State Colin Powell stood in front of the UN and told bald-faced lies in order to start this war. The blame game is very productive. Because when Americans truly remember how this mess got started, they will put into motion the impeachment of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and their trial for war crimes can begin.

Ratbang No Shit! Edition

The New York Times re the Space Shuttle Endeavor and it’s foam hole: “It has become increasingly clear that the shuttle’s design, which puts a huge external fuel tank insulated with foam above a fragile spacecraft, is fundamentally flawed.” A new CIA report says “the C.I.A. carried out no comprehensive analysis that put into context the threats received in the spring and summer of 2001.” Re Iraq, Maliki and George W. Bush, the NYT says, “Anyone who follows events in Iraq can plainly see the plan is not altogether working.” Re the Black Hawk helicopter that went down, killing 14 soldiers onboard, the Washington Post said, “Since the conflict began, 63 helicopters have gone down, including 36 struck by enemy fire. Over January and February of this year, seven military helicopters and one carrying private security contractors were taken down by insurgent fire, killing a total of 28 people. The incidents prompted the military to reevaluate flight plans and tactics used to prevent anti-aircraft fire.” The lawyer for million-dollar Atlanta Falcons quarterback, dog killer and liar Michael Vick said we should remember "Michael is a father, he's a son, he's a human being -- people oftentimes forget that." WaPo writer Sally Jenkins says, “Pardon, but if anybody forgot his humanity, it was Vick. Not us.” The LA Times says, “the credit crisis that has hit home mortgages and shaken worldwide financial markets is turning into a political albatross for President Bush and Republican presidential contenders, piling atop an unpopular war in Iraq and eroding traditional GOP claims of being good stewards of the economy.” Instead of getting into a fight, GOP pollster McHenry has some advice for members of his party: Shut up.

Frank Rich Tells Why Rove Bugged Out

Interestingly, in Frank Rich’s Op/Ed piece in the New York Times today, he not only pinpoints why Rove resigned, but he also identifies the reason most Democrats missed it. Rich says that no GOP candidate gave a tribute to Rove and “the conservative commentariat was often surprisingly harsh.” “It is this condemnation of Rove from his own ideological camp — not the Democrats' familiar litany about his corruption, polarizing partisanship, dirty tricks, etc. — that the White House and Mr. Rove wanted to bury in the August dog days.” And it was that condemnation from the right that “crystallized the monochromatic whiteness at the dark heart of Rovian Republicanism”, Rich said. The Republican Party may be overwhelmingly white as only a Rotary Club in 1954 could be white, Rich says, but the population of the United States is edging toward nonwhites being in the majority. The Republican Party, as exemplified by Karl Rove is an anachronism. It’s a relic. And the exquisite moment when this was shown to the world, Rich said, was George Allen's (R-VA) "macaca" moment a year ago. During Allen's re-election campaign, Allen not only insulted a campaign worker from Jim Webb's campaign by calling him a monkiey, but he welcomed him "to America" and to"the real world of Virginia". The incredible racism and arrogance of the GOP was caught on YouTube and it was played over and over and over. Just as the Republican Party’s whiteness is a relic, YouTube has made reinventing history in the print medium a relic. Rich credits Ryan Sager, a young conservative New York Sun commentator with giving the best description of the GOP: "The face of the Republican Party in Iowa is the face of a losing party, full of hatred toward immigrants, lust for government subsidies, and the demand that any Republican seeking the office of the presidency acknowledge that he's little more than Jesus Christ's running mate." “That face,” Rich says, “at once contemptuous and greedy and self-righteous, is Karl Rove's face. Unless someone in his party rolls out a revolutionary new product, it is indelible enough to serve as the Republican brand for a generation.” And that is why Rove had to go. The GOP sees its own face when it sees Karl Rove and that logo is not going to fly in 2008.

So There’s This “Secret Court”

And this Secret Court has been asked by the American Civil Liberties Union to release a bunch of orders issued earlier in 2007 about the National Security Agency’s wiretapping program. And now, according to the Washington Post, this secret US intelligence court “has ordered the Bush administration to register its views about a records request by the American Civil Liberties Union”. WaPo says, “The move is highly unusual, because the court -- which approves warrants for electronic surveillance within the United States by intelligence and counterterrorism agencies -- operates in almost total secrecy and has made only one ruling public in its 29-year history.” That ruling was made public in 2002 when a new surveillance guideline proposed by the Justice Department was rejected by this court. But the court’s rejection was overturned later in 2002 by a special appeals court. And what are the chances that the ACLU will get the documents it has requested? Slim to none is David B. Rivkin, Jr.’s assessment. Rivkin was a Justice Department official in the Reagan administration and now is a partner at Baker Hostetler. Rivkin says it’s not clear whether the secret court has the authority to release documents over the objections of the executive branch. "The order is unusual, and the request is also unusual," Rivkin told WaPo. "But I would be amazed if that request were granted in the end." But the interesting thing is that the ACLU made its request and that the request is being taken seriously. The request in itself is very important. The request is as important as the result of the request. Every day more information comes to light about the Bush administration’s Injustice Department. Only when US voters realize how close the current administration is to being a Third Reich in the United States, can they make the changes necessary to return the United States of America to a democracy. Yesterday, the New York Times reported that, “Notes taken by Director Robert S. Mueller III of the F.B.I. say that Attorney General John Ashcroft was ‘barely articulate,’ ‘feeble’ and ‘clearly stressed’ shortly after a hospital-room meeting in March 2004 in which two top White House aides tried to persuade him to sign an extension for eavesdropping on Americans without warrants...In providing corroboration for (former deputy attorney general James B. Comey) Mr. Comey’s version of events, Mr. Mueller’s typewritten entries served to rebut the suggestion of some Bush administration officials who have privately dismissed Mr. Comey’s account of the hospital standoff as an overwrought and one-sided description.” We are being flooded with information on the magnitude of malfeasance in the Bush administration and that is very good.

AP Finally Gets Rumsfeld Letter

This morning, the Washington Post says the Associated Press had to make “multiple” Freedom of Information requests before getting to see former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation letter. The letter was sent on November 6, 2006. That was a day before the election that gave Congress to the Democrats. The letter is stamped “The President Has Seen” with a handwritten date “11/7/06. Election day. The Prez announced the resignation a day after the election. WaPo says, “Asked why the president did not announce Rumsfeld's resignation as soon as he learned of it (Deputy White House press secretary Dana Perino) Perino said that Bush was wary of influencing the ongoing vote. "I know that one of the things that the president wanted to avoid was the appearance of trying to make this a political decision," she said. "And that was very important to him, and I think that the American people can appreciate not playing politics with such an important decision." Have you noticed how often the Bush flacks claim to be privy to the thoughts in the minds of the American people? They feel sure the American people “can appreciate”, “will understand”, “will support”, “feel strongly” and the like. When, in fact, the Repubs are clueless about the desires of the American people. Not only are they clueless, they have no desire to know what Americans think. They only want to pontificate on what they think Americans should think. But in the above instance, Perino is right. The American people do appreciate that playing politics on important decisions is a crummy tactic. And the American people believe it's a tactic that never should be used by leaders in government. Yet, while claiming not to play politics, the Prez was playing politics. The other most-used ploy in the Bush administration is to claim something that is false is true, and something that is true is false. The US doesn’t torture people. Yes, it does. There is no civil war in Iraq. Yes, there is. The surge in Iraq is working. No, it isn’t. Bush is not considering a draft. Yes, he is. The president does not routinely take prescription medicine. Of course he does. He couldn’t get through a day without his scrips, meds, and little pharmaceutical helpers. The thing that is very helpful, though, is knowing that whoever or whatever is programming the Prez is totally consistent. If the president makes a statement, the opposite always is true.

Which Campaign Has Hired Karl Rove?

That a latter-day Machiavelli like Karl Rove would putter around the house with his wife and 18-year-old son is a picture that won’t scan. In the first place, Karl Rove is not marriage oriented, to put it delicately. In the second place, Rove and his second wife and their son would have to be introduced to each other before they could have a...I’m searching for the phrase...relationship? No. Bond? No. Family life? God no! Convenient understanding? Maybe. I’m betting Rove will work sub-rosa for Romney. If Romney emerges as the candidate, Rove will officially announce his role. It’s not as though Rove needs to share ideologies or religion with his employer. Or that Rove even needs to have minimal knowledge about an employer’s business. Karl Rove will go where the money is. And he’s a quick study. But I believe Rove has a kingmaker addiction and I believe that jones must be fed. Giving up all those White House perks is a wrenching thought. It would make any politician weepy and emotional. And according to the press coverage yesterday, taking leave of all that power caused Karl Rover to tear up with sorrow. But life goes on and there are millions of dollars lying around in would-be candidates’ war chests. Whether Rove hooks up with Romney or not is arguable. But the idea that he will spend even five minutes with his or any family and away from hatching plots, scheming and threatening to destroy real or perceived enemies is ridiculous.

I Don’t Get It! (Times 3)

1) This morning, the Associated Press tells us that the damaged tiles on the space shuttle Endeavour reveal that "a three-and-half-inch gouge penetrates all the way through thermal tiles on the shuttle's belly." And the Quote of the Day is from the chairman of the mission management team John Shannon, who said, "We have really prepared for exactly this case, since Columbia (the space shuttle that exploded during re-entry 20 years ago because of the same problem)...We have spent a lot of money in the program and a lot of time and a lot of people's efforts to be ready to handle exactly this case." I don’t get it! Why didn’t we spend a lot of money, time and effort to solve the problem, not spend a lot of money, time and effort in expectation of having the problem all over again? 2 An NYT editorial this morning calls China “irresponsible” for threatening to sell US dollars “which might lead to a mass depreciation of the US dollar... Such warnings may be an unsurprising response to some of the intemperate language coming from Capitol Hill. Nevertheless, they are playing with fire,” the NYT said. I don’t get it! Why is China irresponsible when it was the Bush administration that sold the United States, lock-stock-and-barrel, to China? From China’s point of view, it would be irresponsible not to threaten to sell US dollars. Who’s irresponsible? The Bush administration, of course, and once again. 3) George Bush’s political advisor and hatchet man Karl Rove says he’s stepping down on August 31 to “spend time with his family”. Rove’s words are a close second for Quote of the Week. "I just think it's time," Rove said. "There's always something that can keep you here, and as much as I'd like to be here, I've got to do this for the sake of my family." Amidst the chorus of hahahahahahaha’s heard across the nation, one can only say, I Don’t Get It! What protects Rove as a private citizen? Can’t he be subpoenaed to testify now that he has no executive privilege protection? Or has Rove joined the Threaten Bush Club? Hmmmmm. I don’t get it.

General Ratbang Policies...BTW and FYI

You may have noticed, or not, that I don’t do back-and-forth dialogues with commenters. I say my piece and you say your piece and that’s it. However, my email address is available in my Profile and I have been known to respond to emails. Ergo, if you have a question in your comment, I won’t respond unless you have a blog with an email address in your Profile. And if your question is mean-spirited, silly or stooopid, I probably won’t respond by email either.

WaPo’s E.J. Dionne Explains It To You

An article in this morning’s Washington Post by E.J. Dionne, Jr., “Why the Democrats Caved”, tells the sad facts regarding the surveillance bill that the Dems joined with the Repubs to vote in last Saturday night. “Shortly before noon last Saturday, about 20 House Democrats huddled in Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office to decide what to do about a surveillance bill that had been dumped on them by the Senate before it left town. Many of the Democrats were furious,” Dionne said. “They believed they had negotiated in good faith with Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence. They sought to give the Bush administration the authority it needed to intercept communications involving foreign nationals in terrorism investigations while preserving some oversight.” However, the Bushies held the line re giving McConnell and Attorney General Gonzales more power, which restricted the role of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The Dems lacked the votes to pass a bill more in line with House approvals and the Dems gave the Bushies what they wanted. Dionne went on to say, “At one point, according to participants in the Pelosi meeting, the passionate discussion veered toward the idea of standing up to the administration -- even at the risk of handing President Bush a chance to bash Democrats on ‘national security,’ as is his wont...Several members from swing districts -- including Reps. Heath Shuler of North Carolina and Patrick J. Murphy of Pennsylvania -- expressed openness to having Congress stay in town to fight if important constitutional issues were at stake.” The bill, according to David Wu (D-OR), “makes Alberto Gonzalez the sheriff, the judge and the jury.” Dionne says, “The episode was the culmination of a shameful era in which serious issues related to national security and civil liberties were debated in a climate of fear and intimidation, saturated by political calculation and the quest for short-term electoral advantage...Politically, Republicans won this round in two ways. They got the president the bill he wanted and, as a result, they created absolute fury in the Democratic base. Pelosi has received more than 200,000 e-mails of protest, according to an aide, for letting the bill go forward. “The entire display was disgraceful because an issue of such import should not be debated in a political pressure cooker. It's not even clear that new legislation was required; Holt, for one, believes many of the problems with handling interceptions involving foreign nationals are administrative in nature and that beefing up and reorganizing the staff around the FISA court might solve the outstanding problems.” Dionne quoted Rep. Rush D. Holt (D-N.J.): “What bothered me is that too many Democrats allowed that fear to turn into a demand for some atrocious legislation." “If legislation was needed,” Dionne said, “there were many ways to grant necessary authority while preserving real oversight. The Democrats got trapped, and they punted. The Republicans have never met a national security issue they're not willing to politicize. This is no way to run a superpower.” Well, first, the US is no longer a superpower. The Repubs have seen to that. And there have been plenty of mistakes on both sides of the aisle while the Bush administration stripped the United States of its good reputation and rendered it impotent. Articles like Dionne's show us clearly how the Dems give away the store due to Repub bullying and due to fear of losing votes. But the bottom line is that the winner of this less-than-super nation’s election in 2008 will be whichever political party can show it has learned from its mistakes.

Retired Colonel Weighs In on Tillman Case

This morning, the New York Times published an Op/Ed article by retired Colonel and MSNBC military analyst Jack Jacobs. After mentioning that his own units in Viet Nam were “occasionally victims of errant rifle fire, mortar rounds and bombs,” Colonel Jacobs says, “Sadly, Corporal Tillman’s death comes with another unhappy legacy: a ludicrous change in the Army regulation that deals with reporting casualties. With this change, the Army now requires a formal, independent investigation into the death of every American in a hostile area." In theory, Jacobs says, “The rule sounds commendable. Life is precious, and if one is cut short in combat then we owe the soldier and his family as full a report as possible. Having experienced more than enough combat, I understand this sentiment. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s the motivating force behind the revised regulation. In my view, the provision is there for one reason and one reason alone: to put in place a protocol to prevent commanders from lying about the cause of their soldiers’ deaths.” And, what’s wrong with that? Jacobs asks. “Well, it’s beyond insidious", Jacobs says, "because it is an admission that the Army has determined it can’t trust anyone in the combat chain of command — that the actions of General Kensinger (Lt. Gen. Philip R. Kensinger Jr was responsible for the cover-up) are the rule, not the exception, and that this kind of malfeasance among soldiers is expected to be so common that it requires regular policing.” Dear Colonel Jacobs: The reason the military is expected to lie is because the Commander in Chief of the military, George W. Bush, lies every time he opens his mouth. And in addition to that fact, which is a verifiable fact, the commanders in the military under George W. Bush have continually lied about every aspect of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. You see, Colonel Jacobs, the recent change in Army regulations has been occasioned by the fact that the executive branch of the United States government and the military always lie. Ergo, it is rightly assumed that as long as the military Commander-in-Chief is George W. Bush, lying and distorting the truth will be the modus operandi of every quote and every news release that comes out of the United States executive branch and/or the military. Colonel Jacobs ends his article by saying, “We don’t need better regulations. We need better leaders.” That is true, Colonel Jacobs. But the advent of the US getting better leaders is still far in the future and may not happen at all. Therefore, we have to rely on regulations.

What’s Wrong With Dems Fighting Terrorism?

If that were what was behind the Democrats joining the Repubs in Congress last weekend to approve eavesdropping without warrants on international communications, then there would surely be nothing wrong with it. Terrorism is a threat and it is not to be taken lightly. But that was not what was behind the Dems cave-in on a Bush administration policy that had always stuck in the Democrats' craw. The 16 Democrats who joined 43 Republicans (and one Indie) to approve the bill, 60 to 28, did so in order not to be perceived as being “soft on terrorism”. In other words, need we say, the Dems approved of George W. Bush’s further terrorism on Americans so that they would not lose votes. And do not sit there and correct me by saying this bill was about INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS. That is baloney! Any and all surveillance programs that are okayed by Congress will be used against American citizens no matter what the fine print says. And that is what was wrong with the Dems joining hands with the Repubs to approve this latest bill on surveillance. The Dems just sold out for votes.

The Fact Is...

Opponents of the Bush administration’s unnecessary, undeclared and illegal war in Iraq are fond of pointing to the money spent, being spent and forecast for future spending, and listing all the things the money could and should have been spent on. The fact is, people being what we are--and we include Republicans, Democrats, Independents, all adherents of all religions and all races in the category of people. People being what we are, had there been no bogus war, the mega-bucks allocated for the war in Iraq would not have been spent on any of the worthy projects on the Wish List. In the United States, our Congress would never pass a bill for a worthwhile social project carrying a $2 trillion price tag, which is the new estimate for the cost of the Iraq war. Our Congress would never pass a bill for half the cost of the Iraq war even if it funded five social projects. It would never happen. And the reason it would never happen is that the people in the United States (those who vote) would never vote in favor of $2 trillion dollars being spent on ANYTHING unless we were threatened with the imminent demise of the world as we know it. So forget the unreal dreams of what could have been done with the money spent in Iraq. The only way the people in the US would demand that $2 trillion be spent on health care, children, education or on repairing our infrastructure is if the Bush administration threatened us with being destroyed by weapons of mass destruction and mushroom clouds if we didn’t allocate the money for worthy social programs. And hahahahahaha! Who would believe that?

The Kiss of Death

President Bush is going to the bridge collapse site in Minneapolis/St. Paul today. So, let’s see...it’s been how many days since the disaster befell Minneapolis-St. Paul? Wednesday, Thursday, Friday...Saturday...um...four days. Although, the Prez did send his wife to have a look-see yesterday and to appear empathetic in his stead. She reported back that the scene was “unbelievable”. The Washington Post reported this morning, “President Bush, who is still criticized for his administration's sluggish response to Hurricane Katrina, says he will stand with Minnesota residents as they recover from this week's bridge collapse.” SLUGGISH? How about DIDN’T GIVE A FUCK! On August 27, 2005, the President knew that Louisiana Governor Blanco had declared a State of Emergency. But the President went around the country flacking his Social Security plan and other policies and then he went on vacation. Katrina made landfall in Louisiana on August 29 and the Prez went to bed without doing a damn thing or responding to Governors’ and lawmakers’ pleas for help. On August 31, while returning from vacation in Air Force One, Bush made a half-hearted and half-assed flyover along the Gulf Coast to view the scene of devastation. And we know the rest of the story. New Orleans is still in a state of emergency two years later. And the Prez still doesn’t give a fuck except insofar as how his heartless indifference will look in history books. And because of that, the Prez is going to Minneapolis today. The New York Times reported this morning that “Paul C. Light, a professor of public service at New York University, said the White House is 'so much on the defensive right now that I think their initial reaction was to say, "We just don't want to be blamed"...the president's role is to start the conversation by being above the blame, the finger-pointing,' Light said." The NYT went on to say, “In a radio address to be aired on Saturday but released by the White House on Friday, the president vowed to work closely with (Governor) Pawlenty and Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak ‘to rebuild this bridge as quickly as possible’” “Perhaps even in time for the 2008 Republican convention in St. Paul?” the NYT asked. But don’t expect the Prez to bust his ass to provide mega-bucks to rebuild the crumbling infrastructure across the US. The President’s concern for disaster victims is in the short-term only and it is the Kiss of Death as far as real and lasting aid being funded to solve America’s problems at home.

Who Said This?

“The government is continuing with its arrogance, refusing to change its stand, and has slammed shut the door to any meaningful reforms necessary for saving Iraq...We had hoped that the government would respond to these demands or at least acknowledge the failure of its policies, which led Iraq to a level of misery it had not seen in modern history. But its stand did not surprise us at all.” A quote from a diehard anti-war Democrat? No, That’s a quote from Rafaa al-Issawi, a member of the Sunni bloc in Iraq (the Iraqi Consensus Front) who railed against the Iraqi government yesterday. Pissed off and angry, Rafaa al-Issawi said that Prime Minister Maliki’s government refused to involve the Sunni bloc on important decisions and had even refused to show up for crisis talks. That is why, Issawi said, the bloc’s six cabinet ministers resigned yesterday. The six resignations included Deputy Prime Minister Salam al-Zubaie. Although a spokesman for the Sunni bloc said the Iraqi Parliament’s 44 Sunni members would continue to participate. With regard to charges by Sunnis against Shiites and vice versa, Maliki said, "The policy of threats and blackmail is an unrewarding policy." No kidding! But it goes to show that Bush & Co. has exactly what it wanted in Iraq--a government just like ours. That is to say, a dysfunctional grid-locked government led by a bunch of politically motivated hacks. And, let it be noted, a bunch of politically motivated hacks who are going off to the seashore for a month of R&R: A government EXACTLY like ours. And more importantly, the Bush administration has a perfect scapegoat for why Iraq is in the mess it’s in: It’s Maliki’s fault. In addition, the Bush administration has bought and paid for high-level experts and officials who will repeat the Bush administration's cant, like: General David Petraeus, the current talking head who is so far up Bush’s ass his words come out of Bush’s mouth; Admiral Michael G. Mullen, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman nominee; Ryan C. Crocker, ambassador to Iraq. It is said, Petraeus is the President of the United States now, not Richard Cheney. But who knows? And does it make any difference who is calling the shots from the White House? The current batch of idiots in Congress are willing to support the Bush administration’s malfeasance and fascist modus operandi, and that is what is important. At any given moment, Congress could put a stop to the dictatorship passing as government in the United States and it has chosen not to. We, the people, are to blame for the government we the people have.

Oh! Those Hidden Agendas and Subtexts!

Yesterday, Admiral Michael G. Mullen, who is the nominee for chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the US military efforts in Iraq would fail unless Iraqi leaders “did more to bring together the rival factions (Sunni and Shiite) dividing Iraq”. This morning at 6:30 ayem, the Associated Press filed the following short release from Baghdad: “Iraq's largest Sunni Arab political bloc announced its withdrawal from the government Wednesday, undermining Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's efforts to seek reconciliation among the country's rival factions. “Violence continued unabated, with 17 civilians killed in a car bomb in central Baghdad and the U.S. military announcing the deaths of three American soldiers killed by a sophisticated, armor-piercing bomb. “Meanwhile, a fuel tanker exploded near a gas station in western Baghdad, killing at least 15 people and wounding 25, police said. The blast occurred around 2 p.m. in Mansour, a primarily Sunni neighborhood on the western side of the Iraqi capital.” That means the Maliki government is powerless to “do more”, which Mullen knew all the way along. At the same time, we’re hearing mega-hype bullshit about how July was the month with fewest US soldier deaths in Iraq in 2007. But the BIG STORY is that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates hustled themselves to Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt to ratchet up support for Iraq and to foment mischief against Iran with leaders from Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. And get this for a subtext: The New York Times had a report on the statement issued by the Sharm El-Sheikh crew: “On Iran, the group’s statement included only a paragraph supporting ‘international diplomatic efforts’ aimed at reining in Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, and “reiterated the rights of all the parties” to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to ‘use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.’” Translation according to the Bush administration definition of “nuclear ambitions” and “peaceful purposes”: No country can use nuclear arms to defend itself against US aggression. On the other hand, the US can nuke the hell out of any Middle East country because the desired result would be a peaceful takeover of the Middle East by the US. And by the way, although we heard that Gates/Rice met with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia “along with his national security deputies”, isn’t it odd that President Bush’s erstwhile close buddy Prince Bandar’s name was not mentioned. Even though, as far as I know, Bandar has been head of Saudi Arabia’s national security since 2005. Who or what is more slippery than who or what in the Middle East? Them or us? My take is that no matter how much the Bush administration covers itself in Middle East oil, it will never outcon or outsmart the lowest flunky born in the Middle East.

The Mob Considers Canning Its Consigliere

The Mob has lined up its goombata to go on the record and support the Family’s Consigliere. But everyone knows the Family has decided to kick the suit to the curb. Even so, that’s not an easy thing to do. Short of whacking the slimy and incompetent gavonne, how do you fire the guy who knows where all the bodies are buried? If watching Capo Orrin Hatch yesterday on George Steph’s Sunday morning show is any indication, the Mob in the White House has instructed its soldiers to praise Alberto Gonzales to the skies, then they are gong to sell him out to the Democrats and they will let the Dems do the dirty work. Senator Hatch (R-UT) sounded like a veritable Bruce Cutler on Steph’s “This Week” yesterday. I love John Gotti’s mouthpiece Bruce Cutler, but he’s charming and smart when being evasive and slick, not irritating and shifty like Hatch. Hatch kept asking where the “evidence” was against Alberto Gonzales. Of course, when Hatch kept yammering about there being no evidence, he didn’t venture from the topic of Gonzales having fired nine U.S. attorneys in 2006. This morning, the Washington Post helpfully chronicled the damning evidence against Gonzales in a news story titled “Gonzales's Truthfulness Long Disputed” (and subtitled “Claims of Misstatements to Shield Bush Stretch Back a Decade”). Gonzales owes his entire career to George W. Bush. Shielding GWB dates back to Gonzales’s tenure in Texas as general counsel, secretary of state, judge on the Supreme Court and good buddy to GWB. The WaPo article quoted Bill Minutaglio, a University of Texas journalism professor and author of biographies of Gonzales and Bush. Minutaglio said Gonzales had kept a low profile in Texas and ‘had little practice before he came to Washington at responding publicly to stiff scrutiny’ and that ‘it’s beyond anything he had ever experienced in his life. He was ill prepared for it.’” The WaPo article goes on to say: “Democrats and some experts on the use of language say that Gonzales's gaffes are too numerous and consistent to be chalked up to misunderstandings...his answers, or his refusals to answer, have served to obscure events that would be damaging to the administration, Gonzales or Bush. One example involves the Terrorist Surveillance Program...Gonzales has testified repeatedly that there was never 'serious disagreement' among administration officials about the program and that an unusual visit by Gonzales to the hospital bed of then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft was focused on 'other intelligence activities'...Others privy to details of the surveillance activities -- including several lawmakers and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller -- have suggested that they were all part of a single NSA program. Gonzales's critics say his distinction was a lawyerly one that stretched the bounds of the truth.” More quotes from WaPo: "He's a slippery fellow, and I think so intentionally," said Richard L. Schott, a professor at the University of Texas's Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. "He's trying to keep the president's secrets and to be a team player, even if it means prevaricating or forgetting convenient things.” “Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) told Gonzales at the (Senate) hearing (in April) that much of his testimony was ‘a stretch’. and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said he was ‘taken aback’ by Gonzales's memory lapses. Last week, Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.), the Judiciary Committee's senior Republican, warned Gonzales to review his remarks, saying: ‘I do not find your testimony credible, candidly.’ “Stephen Gillers, a professor of legal ethics at the New York University School of Law, said that Gonzales's strengths "may lie elsewhere, but they are not in management." Oh yeah...the administration is going to get rid of Gonzales. But how? A fatal accident would look really bad and that option has probably been taken off the table...for now. I see Gonzales resigning, being given a Medal of Freedom and being pardoned for all past and future peccadilloes, misdemeanors and felonies instead of going to trial and being convicted. Then he has a fatal accident.

McCain

An article in the Washington Post today (“Waiting For His Bus to Come In” by Sridhar Pappu) describes Senator John McCain’s (R-AZ) campaign as “sickly, weak, feeble, pick your choice”. Which, of course, is exactly what the onetime Republican front-runner’s campaign for the presidency has become. But that is not what the article is about. Pappu’s article is about John McCain’s self-devised, self-help, one-man, ego-rehabilitation therapy program. Through Pappu’s eyes, we see McCain going back to the site of his greatest triumph, New Hampshire, where he won the primary over George W. Bush seven years ago. “It was here”, Pappu says, “where Mr. Straight Talk Express shook hands with everyone and won over the press. It was here where he was happy.” Now, without campaign advisers, entourage, or dough because McCain’s great ego caused him to make faux pas after faux pas and doomed any hopes his supporters had for a McCain candidacy, the erstwhile Republican shoo-in is on his own. He’s just a little guy going from one small gathering to an even smaller gathering of hardcore groupies and he’s glorying in the approval and in his memories. McCain tells terrible jokes and he shmoozes. But there is no campaign. There is only a 70-year-old has-been soldier, has-been Senator, has-been candidate, has-been pooh-bah who is healing his wounds the only way he knows how. Is it sad? Is it poignant? Is it depressing? Is it embarrassing to read about John McCain booking himself into Rotary Clubs and any hall that will have him just to feed his addiction for applause and approval? No. McCain is a pragmatic man. He is doing what he has to do to live with himself, and to go on living at all. McCain is dealing with that period of time between death—in this case, the death of his hopes—and the acceptance of death. McCain’s campaign and McCain himself are sickly, weak and feeble. He has simply gone on a cross-country tour to feel like a man again. You do what you gotta do. But McCain is irrelevant. Right now, he’s dealing with the death of his hopes. Should John McCain ever try to come to grips with being irrelevant, it will require a cadre of mental health professionals being on-call 24-7.

More Lies About Progress in Iraq

Stuart W. Bowen Jr., who is head of the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, released a new report yesterday. The conclusions detailed in Bowen’s report found that of 2,797 so-called completed projects in Iraq, (costing $5.8 billion) only 435 of them (costing $501 million) were in a condition to be handed over to the Iraqis. The remainder of the 2,362 projects, which had cost US taxpayers $5.2 billion were crumbling, inoperative and had been abandoned. The New York Times reported this morning, “The United States often promotes the number of rebuilding projects, like power plants and hospitals, that have been completed in Iraq, citing them as signs of progress in a nation otherwise fraught with violence and political stalemate. But closer examination by the inspector general’s office, headed by Stuart W. Bowen Jr., has found that a number of individual projects are crumbling, abandoned or otherwise inoperative only months after the United States declared that they had been successfully completed.” Rick Barton, co-director of the post-conflict reconstruction project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a research institute in Washington was quoted in the NYT article, saying, “the lack of interest on the part of the Iraqis was the latest demonstration that they were not involved enough in its planning stages.” Barton’s remark and the title of the NYT article, “As US Rebuilds, Iraq Won’t Act on Finished Work” are misleading. The lede paragraph of the article is misleading as well: “Iraq’s national government is refusing to take possession of thousands of American-financed reconstruction projects, forcing the United States either to hand them over to local Iraqis, who often lack the proper training and resources to keep the projects running, or commit new money to an effort that has already consumed billions of taxpayer dollars.” That is hardly the problem. Many of the projects are either in no shape to be handed over in the first place, or they are handed over to Iraqis with no instructions from the builders as to how to operate them. The NYT said, “In one of the most recent cases, a $90 million project to overhaul two giant turbines at the Dora power plant in Baghdad failed after completion because employees at the plant did not know how to operate the turbines properly and the wrong fuel was used...Because the Iraqi government will not formally accept projects like the refurbished turbines, the United States is ‘finding someone at the local level to handle the project, handing them the keys and saying, “Operate and maintain it,”’ another official in the inspector general’s office said.” The actual truth of the matter is that Vice President Dick Cheney’s company, Halliburton (and its subsidiaries), and Blackwater, USA have made a fortune SUPPOSEDLY rebuilding Iraq. But in fact, the rebuilding has never occurred or the construction work has been so shoddy that the buildings could not be used. PLUS, Blackwater, USA, which is the company that provided much of the manpower for the reconstruction work, switched their employees (who are first and foremost mercenaries not builders) over to fighting the war instead of rebuilding Iraq. And since the Iraq government and the Bush administration have fallen out of love, the Iraq government is being blamed for not operating projects that were not built at all, were inoperable, or were handed over with no instructions or Read-Mes. Sounds all too much like most of our experience with computers and computer programs, but we’re talking about life, death and billions of dollars in Iraq, not machines. I suspect that telling the truth has become an actionable offense in the Bush administration. That is the only thing that would explain why everyone, from the lowest of the low toady to cabinet heads are lying every time they utter a simple declarative sentence.

The Heart of the Matter

Yesterday, by a vote of 399 to 24, the House of Representatives adopted a resolution that would limit federal spending “to establish any military installation or base for the purpose of providing for the permanent stationing of United States Armed Forces in Iraq or to exercise United States economic control of the oil resources of Iraq.” So take that, William Kristol and all you little Kristols who signed the PNAC (Project for the New American Century) manifesto and who have conspired since 1997 to control Middle East oil and to put US military bases in Iraq. Because that’s what the war in Iraq has ALWAYS been about. What a miserable flop the neocons’ warring aggression has been. The Bush administration has killed 3640 US soldiers, started a civil war it cannot win or end in Iraq, fomented terrorism where no terrorism existed before, effectively bankrupted the United States until our children’s children are old and grey, ruined the US reputation around the world and for what? Well, the US was supposed to overrun and conquer Iraq first, and then Iran, and with the help of Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia—the Bush family’s great pal, whose countrymen were responsible for bombing the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001—the US was supposed to put military bases in Iraq to control the Middle East and its oil und morgen die Welt. The New York Times reported “House Republicans offered little resistance, saying the plan essentially reflected current law and Bush administration policy. But they criticized Democrats for what they said was meaningless legislation since the administration had not called for permanent bases.” The Bush administration had not called for permanent bases because that is what it had planned for and was in the process of accomplishing without calling for permanent bases.

One of Four Things Has To Happen

Option 1) The Prez changes his mind (all on his own) about the way he has been running things in Iraq and about other major Bush administration policies. Option 2) The Republicans in the House and Senate show the Prez the wisdom of changing his mind on Iraq and other Bush administration policies. Option 3) The House and Senate override the president’s vetoes. Or what? Or, the Repubs get voted out of office for the foreseeable future. Option One is doomed. The Prez is not going to change his mind. And that is because George W. Bush does not see himself as a political figure. But rather, he sees himself as God’s stand-in for Him who punishes evil and rewards good. George Bush, as God, can’t change his mind. Option Two is doomed unless the Republicans in the House and Senate suddenly locate their balls, which is not likely. They are not going to teach the president rudimentary lessons of etiquette, let alone show him the error of his ways since 2001. So, Option Three is the only recourse. The House and Senate have to override the president’s vetoes. And that means each chamber of Congress votes on a bill vetoed by the President and passes it by a two-thirds vote over the President’s objections. Hmmm...Option Three seems a little iffy. Oh well...guess the Repubs are going to get voted out of office for the foreseeable future. Oh...there is Option Four. The Prez could be committed to a real insane asylum. I don’t think that has ever been done in US history. I like Option Four ALOT...just because.

Who Can Say What and Not

Yesterday, a friend and I were having lunch at a sushi restaurant in Center City, Philadelphia. The conversation got around to the murder rate in Philadelphia. In the wee hours on Sunday, five more people were murdered. That brings our total for 2007 up to 232. My friend said, “Of course, we’re not supposed to say this, but if guns were taken away from young black men, we wouldn’t have the highest violent-crime rate in the nation.” I agreed. And I also agreed, we couldn’t say it because we would be called racist. But last night, on CBS News, Philadelphia’s Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson, who is black, answered Byron Pitts question, “Is it an urban problem or is it a black problem?” by saying, "I can only speak for Philadelphia — and Philadelphia is definitely a black problem because of the 85 percent of the people being killed, close to 80 percent are African-American males.” Commissioner Sylvester Johnson could say it. And he did. Backtracking on Johnson’s math, he said that 85% of the people killed are non-whites: that is 198. And of that 85%, 80% are African-American males. That comes to the whopping figure of 158 out of 233 people killed in Philadelphia between January 1 and July 23, 2007 were black males. Another statistic is that since 2001, Philadelphia has had 10,000 shooting victims. Most of the gunmen are under age 25, and most of the murders have occurred in predominantly black North Philadelphia where the unemployment and school dropout rates are the highest in Philadelphia. The headline on the CBS News story about Philadelphia’s murder rate was: “Philadelphia: City Under Siege”. I live in an area of South Philadelphia that is just south of Center City. And that headline is blatantly sensational. The people in this part of town only feel under siege by the Republican Party. However, the black community in North Philadelphia is most definitely under siege. And that is one of Philadelphia’s biggest problems and it’s certainly not racist to say so. In any culture, when a group is failing by all the standards set by the community as a whole, then it is that community’s fault. But seeing the problem and confessing to culpability does not make it easier to solve the problem. I certainly have no answers. But I suspect the problem is going to have to be solved by the people who are affected most by the problem, which is the black community in North Philadelphia. How? I don’t know. And that’s the worst part of living in a city with the highest violent crime rate in the United States. We can point to where the problem is occurring and we can point to all the circumstances that are causing it and we can cluck our tongues. But we don’t have the foggiest notion what to do about the problem.