Aw Jeeze! It's True...I Should Have Said...

"Since Eliot Spitzer is a Republican at heart"...I apologize.

Two Heartening News Stories Republican bullies are having to rethink their positions because of public outcry. 1) New York Governor Eliot Spitzer assumed that since he’s a Republican, he could announce he planned to issue driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants and it was a fait accompli. Not so fast, Guv. Last night the New York Times issued a breaking news aviso: “Gov. Eliot Spitzer is abandoning his plan to issue driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, saying that opposition is just too overwhelming to move forward with such a policy.” 2) And this morning, the New York Times reported, “Federal agents investigating the Sept. 16 episode in which Blackwater security personnel shot and killed 17 Iraqi civilians have found that at least 14 of the shootings were unjustified and violated deadly-force rules in effect for security contractors in Iraq, according to civilian and military officials briefed on the case.” The Bush administration decided to use as many guns-for-hire thugs as bonafide soldiers in Iraq in order to pretend the US has a military, but that’s not working out. Blackwater mercenaries are unprincipled shoot-and-ask-questions-later trigger-happy snotnose hoodlums who have been trained by religious fanatic Erik Prince and his mob in North Carolina. Once again, a bunch of Republican bullies made decisions the way fascist governments make decisions—unilaterally and secretly. The NYT says, “Some officials have expressed pessimism that adequate criminal laws exist to enable them to charge any Blackwater employee with criminal wrongdoing. Spokesmen for the Justice Department and the F.B.I. declined to discuss the matter.” New Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey is sitting on a powder keg on this one. As the NYT says, “The case could be one of the first thorny issues to be decided by Michael B. Mukasey, who was sworn in as attorney general last week. He may be faced with a decision to turn down a prosecution on legal grounds at a time when a furor has erupted in Congress about the administration’s failure to hold security contractors accountable for their misdeeds.” North Carolina Democrat David Price has put forth legislation to extend American criminal law to contractors serving overseas. Price says the Justice Department has to hold someone accountable for the shootings. “Just because there are deficiencies in the law, and there certainly are, that can’t serve as an excuse for criminal actions like this to be unpunished. I hope the new attorney general makes this case a top priority. He needs to announce to the American people and the world that we uphold the rule of law and we intend to pursue this,” Price said. As much fun as it must have been to run the United States as though it were the Third Reich, Repubs are now like Wile E. Coyote realizing he’s not riding a magic carpet but sitting on an anvil hurtling to earth. YIKES!

Musharraf and Bush, Twins at Heart

President Bush has no more idea about what’s involved in the so-called democratic process than does Pakistan’s president General Pervez Musharraf. Bush says the democratic process must continue in Pakistan. But for the past seven years Bush has done his best to halt the democratic process in the United States. In fact, if President Bush could get away with it, he would run the US the way Musharraf is running Pakistan—by fear, by military force and by totalitarian rule So, let’s get something straight: President Bush is not only pro-Musharraf, he’s envious of the man’s way of doing things. Musharraf and Bush totally understand each other. And the main thing they are on the same wavelength about is duplicity. Although duplicity may not be the preferred modus operandi in the lives of most Americans, it is the preferred MO with the Bush administration and with most people in Pakistan. Americans may find it hard to understand that Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister who seems to be leading a movement against Musharraf, are actually working together. Eventually Musharraf and Bhutto will have co-rule in Pakistan. This has been understood since Bhutto started making noises about returning to Pakistan. Were this not true, she would not have dared to come back. George W. Bush may not know anything about the Middle East’s culture or history. And he may care to know nothing, but he learned duplicity at his mother and father’s knee. Double-talk, double-speak and duplicity are so ingrained in President Bush’s core that he is incapable of saying “freedom” without meaning “oppression”. The only Republican presidential candidate who comes even close to being as duplicitous as President Bush is Rudy Giuliani. Should Giuliani become our next president, it will be as though George W. Bush had a third term.

The World’s Theater of the Absurd

If you’re looking for theatricals during the writers’ strike, take a gander at the goings-on in Pakistan and the fulminations of the Bush administration about the goings-on in Pakistan. Early this morning, we heard via a special advisory from the New York Times that General Musharraf had placed Pakistan Opposition Leader Benazir Bhutto under house arrest. The special news story was complete with pictures of Ms. Bhutto being manhandled. George W. Bush was quoted in the story saying that Pakistan had to return to its path toward democracy. And Bush’s demand that Musharraf not sit in Bush’s presence wearing his uniform because it indicated Musharraf was both head of state and head of the military was quoted. By the way, that statement is a perfect metaphor for George W. Bush who himself claims to be head of the United States and Commander in Chief of the US military at the same time but typical of Bush’s duplicity, he won’t be upfront about it and wear a uniform. And it also is perfect for Bush to insist that Pakistan espouse the principles of democracy, while Bush himself espouses the principles of totalitarianism and tries to run the US as a dictatorship. But hardly had the presses cooled from cranking out the news about Bhutto’s arrest than a news story came out that, in fact, the hoopla had been choreographed in advance and agreed to by both sides. The New York Times just reported: “Outwardly, the stand-off today appeared to deepen the confrontation between the two, making Ms. Bhutto an opponent of General Musharraf rather than a partner with him in the transition to democracy that she and her American sponsors who helped negotiate her return to Pakistan envisaged...Behind the scenes, however, the strategies for both sides for the day were probably worked out in advance, analysts said, in order to give each side a face-saving way to avoid a potentially bloody clash on the streets.” And furthermore, the NYT said, “In another sign of what seemed like behind-the-scenes co-ordination between Ms. Bhutto and the authorities, Ms. Bhutto’s voice came over official Pakistani television at 4 p.m. this afternoon as she made a long speech setting out her demands. A still picture of her appeared on the screen while she spoke...But Ms. Bhutto and General Musharraf are described by Western diplomats as continuing to negotiate a power-sharing deal that was envisaged when she returned to Pakistan from self-imposed exile abroad last month.” In other words, the whole house-arrest bullshit was bullshit. Just as George W. Bush’s bullshit about democracy is bullshit. What continues to amaze is that any of these morons think we believe any of their bullshit. But the worst of it is that while the writers’ strike is going on, the Theater of the Absurd being produced by the world’s governments is so badly done, badly written, badly produced and badly executed.

The Prez is Stark Naked...Does He Know It?

No. President Bush thinks he still wears the impermeable, impregnable, cover-up-cover-all new clothes fashioned for him by Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, Karen Hughes, Donald Rumsfeld, Mary Matalan, Dan Bartlett and Dick Cheney. But all those masters in the art of flim-flam have flown the coop. Only Dick Cheney, the most ham-handed of the sorcerers remains. This morning, when Bush got out of bed and slipped on his all-purpose cloak of arrogance, confidence, intimidation and narcissism, nothing stood between him and his awful nakedness. Or, as the New York Times put it: “President Bush suffered the first veto override of his seven-year-old presidency Thursday as the Senate enacted a $23 billion water resources bill despite his protest that it was too expensive. It was the first in a decade that Congress has passed a bill over a presidential veto.” The NYT went on to crow, er...say: “The vote was 79-14 to pass the bill. Enactment was a foregone conclusion, but it still marked a milestone for a president who spent his first six years with a much friendlier Congress controlled by his Republican Party. Now he confronts a more hostile, Democratic-controlled legislature, and Thursday's vote showed that even many Republicans will defy him on spending matters dear to their political careers...The House voted 361-54 to override the veto Tuesday. Both votes easily exceeded the two-thirds majority needed in each chamber to negate a presidential veto.” Will Bush eventually recognize that he’s naked as a jaybird, unmanned, powerless, limp-dicked, and gormless? No. That’s the way it is with the gormless.

Congress Can Do It! Bush Must Be Shocked!

House Republicans joined Democrats yesterday and overrode the Prez’s pork-barrel water projects program. As the New York Times says this morning, "The vote on the water measure was 361 to 54, far more than needed to reject the veto. If the Senate follows suit, it will be the first time Mr. Bush has had a veto overturned." The important moment will be when the Senate overrides President Bush’s veto the first time. In the Senate, there has been an aura of invincibility surrounding our insane leaders. As though it were unthinkable, unheard of, and impossible for Republicans to cross the aisle to rebuke or contradict the fascist regime now controlling the White House. But when the Senate overrides a veto and sees that the sky did not fall in, the dissidents were not murdered in their beds and the world did not end, it will be a monumental day. And from that moment on, overriding vetoes will be, if not a daily occurrence and popular in the US Senate, at least it will be a possible and very probable course of action. When the House quashed Bush’s veto on the water projects measure, it approved a $215 billion bill to pay for health, education, labor and veterans programs despite a veto threat. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), who helps map out the Democrat’s spending strategy, was quoted in the NYT saying: “The president is appealing to a very small conservative base of people, his last few friends in the country, to say, ‘I am conservative’...but the problem is, he is playing with American lives while he sends his message to his friends.” And those few friends have less clout and less political power as each day passes. Bush said he “would not withdraw from Iraq, even if Laura and Barney are the only ones supporting me.” As it turns out, yesterday’s vote shows that the Prez, Laura and Barney are not enough. He is not a dictator and/or king after all.

Writers’ Strike Hits Daily Show & Colbert Hard

Comedy Channel’s “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” both rely on topical, up-to-the-minute writing. The strike by the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture &Television Producers, which placed their members on picket lines this morning, puts TDS and Colbert into rerun. That’s okay for a week, but after that, those shows are stale and unwatchable. Viacom, the daddy of MTV Networks cable channels and the Paramount movie studios, says it's not worried. It’s got tons of movies to play in all their timeslots and they are geared up to replace their shows with movies FOREVER. Which effectively says: “We’re okay. But screw you and your writers, TDS and Colbert.” Sitcom writers for scheduled TV shows will actually be ahead of the game in a strike. One of the big issues is residual payments. And the writers will be getting residuals for reruns during a strike. Reality shows are not affected by the strike and will no doubt clog all channels even more than they do now. Will the outcome of this strike give viewers better television? No. It will give writers more money. And the writers hope it will even-out the amounts paid to big-time writers and less-successful writers who get paid for writing a show here and there. But the myth that the owners of channels and their producers give viewers what they want will continue. Television viewers do not get what we want. We get what companies like Viacom want to give us. That is to say, we get hundreds and hundreds of channels from which to choose hundreds and hundreds of bad television shows. And in order to watch one hour of these badly written, badly conceived, boring and gratuitously violent shows, we have to sit through, or fast-forward through, eighteen minutes of commercials. Not to mention, we are shown, willy-nilly, the cleavage of all women on all shows, no matter whether it’s appropriate and no matter if that cleavage would never be tolerated in actual business situations. Yes, I will miss The Daily Show. (Nevermind Colbert...he wore thin after one week.) But since I am offered increasingly crappy dramas on TV, I won’t watch reruns of first-runs because I never watched most of the hideously awful first-runs. I’ll watch more Spanish Telenovelas to work on my Spanish, and I’ll watch the reality shows I can tolerate. I’ll watch movies, reruns of old Law & Order and Monk shows. I’ll download whatever podcasts are available and listen to more music. And maybe I’ll knit more. But will I sorely miss anything on the Fall TV schedule? Only TDS. I wish this strike would improve the quality of the shows on TV. I wish this strike would lessen the number of commercials we have to suffer though. But it won’t do either.

Election Hokum Gets Choreographed

Watching the Democrat candidates on talk shows, in debates and ratcheting up the hoopla is like watching one of the so-called reality shows. And the reality shows have as much in common with reality as a zircon is like a diamond. When a newspaper mentor of mine wanted an article to have more pizzazz, he’d say: Conflict is the soul of good writing. As soon as it appeared Hillary Clinton was a shoo-in for the Democratic candidacy, all handlers, PR people, editors and TV producers responded by doing a close-order Rockettes routine. One step back, slide to the right, hand on hip, waggle right finger, sing “Woman Trouble”. Suddenly, all candidates and talking heads, who the day before had agreed with Hillary, got snarky and then pounced. The end result, of course, is that conflict has not been introduced. Only party-line cant has been introduced. And the confrontational tone is as boring as the shoo-in stories had been except that now everyone sounds programmed and phony. The only real question is: Who is Hillary going to choose as her running mate?

Studs Terkel Editorial in NYT Nails Wiretaps

This morning, Studs Terkel had an editorial in the New York Times about the history of the US executive branch’s “dragnet interceptions”. He remembers a lot. He was born in 1912. Terkel is most famous for his oral histories of just folks, such as the people he interviewed for his book “Hard Times”, which is about the depression in the 1930’s. When his latest book (“My American Century”) came out this past May, Terkel was Jon Stewart’s guest on The Daily Show. He was 95 on May 16th and was the same funny, sharp, insightful raconteur he’s always been. Although he said he’s deaf as a post now. Terkel had open-heart surgery when he was 93 and I believe he was one of the oldest, if not the oldest person to ever come through that kind of operation and be able to tell about it. When I was a kid in the 40’s, we listened to Studs on Chicago’s WGN. I remember commercials on WGN for performances of Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” that Terkel used to do with Win Stracke in Chicago. Terkel was blacklisted by the McCarthy hearings and wasn’t allowed to work in television for years. But he continued working in radio. He was a mainstay on Chicago’s WFMT from 1952 until 1998. Studs Terkel’s real name is Louis Terkel. He was reading “Studs Lonegan” at the time he was acting in a play with another actor named Louis. The director wanted to keep the two Louis’s straight and started calling Terkel “Studs”. His last professional acting job was in “Sacco and Vanzetti”, which opened this past March. This morning Studs Terkel says in the New York Times: “I am a plaintiff in one of those lawsuits (against American telephone companies who wiretapped Americans), and I hope Congress thinks carefully before denying me, and millions of other Americans, our day in court...Congress is moving in a haphazard fashion to provide a ‘get out of jail free card’ to the telephone companies that violated the rights of their subscribers. Some in Congress argue that this law-breaking is forgivable because it was done to help the government in a time of crisis. But it’s impossible for Congress to know the motivations of these companies or to know how the government will use the private information it received from them.” He ends his column by saying: “I have observed and written about American life for some time. In truth, nothing much surprises me anymore. But I always feel uplifted by this: Given the facts and an opportunity to act, the body politic generally does the right thing. By revealing the truth in a public forum, the American people will have the facts to play their historic, heroic role in putting our nation back on the path toward freedom. That is why we deserve our day in court.”

LA Times Writer Calls Bush & Cheney Psychotic

Today, LA Times columnist Rosa Brooks called for mental health professionals and the courts to order the hospitalization of Bush and Cheney due to mental illness. Brooks says, “On Tuesday, Bush insisted on the need ‘to defend Europe against the emerging Iranian threat.’ Huh? Iran is now a major threat to Europe? The Iranians are going to launch a nuclear missile (that they don't yet possess) against Europe (for reasons unknown because, as far as we know, they're not mad at anyone in Europe)? This is lunacy in action.” We don’t need to impeach Bush and Cheney, Brooks says. Bush and Cheney need to be treated for their madness and laws already exist for the courts to act. In Washington, Brooks says, “the appropriate statutory law is already in place: If a ‘court or jury finds that [a] person is mentally ill and . . . is likely to injure himself or other persons if allowed to remain at liberty, the court may order his hospitalization.’" As far as I know, this is the first time that anyone in the mainstream media has suggested in print that President Bush and Vice President Cheney are mentally ill and that the courts have the power and the duty to have them committed to a mental institution. I see George W. Bush as afflicted with congenital mental defects, which were known to those who decided his madness would be a great asset to the Republican Party. Putting W in the loony bin would be a belated, though appropriate mercy for him. However, I believe Dick Cheney has been driven mad by his detestably passive-aggressive spiteful and hate filled horror-wife Lynne. And, of course, he’s physically ill and over-medicated. Not that Cheney can be rehabilitated. He can’t. But I’m willing to see him as a man who at one time had all his marbles but lost them due to circumstances. But GWB was mentally ill from birth due to his parents and his parents’ parents and his parents’ parents’ parents’ parents. Those who foisted him on the American people should be jailed, but that’s another case for the courts and too wearying and futile to even contemplate. The New York Times reported this morning that four current and two former Blackwater employees “have described a grating sense among many of the Blackwater guards, especially those with years of experience, that the killings on Sept. 16 were unjustified.” Also, the NYT said, “Richard J. Griffin, the State Department official who oversaw Blackwater USA and other private security contractors in Iraq, resigned Wednesday.” That’s putting it nicely. Griffin was canned. Not that a respected newspaper declaring our Prez and VP to be insane is good news. And not that Blackwater thugs admitting that Blackwater thugs commit murders is good news. Still, seeing the bald-faced truth in print has the effect of reading good news and I feel better for it.

The Latest Bush Warning

The New York Times reports this morning: "President Bush is planning to issue a stern warning Wednesday that the United States will not accept a political transition in Cuba in which power changes from one Castro brother to another, rather than to the Cuban people.” So the Prez of the United States says the US will not accept Raul Castro as Cuba’s leader. So what? What’s Bush going to do? Send war ships to invade Cuba? Having no army at his disposal, the Prez has recently deployed more war ships to the western coast of Iran to show the Iranians he means business. Maybe he plans to do the same thing with Cuba. One wonders why? But asking that question of the Bush/Cheney regime has never proved fruitful because there is only one answer and it is insane. They do these things to prove they (and their supporters) have balls. That’s it. That’s all there is, Do you realize that the Department of Defense and the Pentagon have been switching US Navy personnel over to the Army to beef up our military in Iraq? When the sailors’ tour of duty as soldiers is over, they go back to being Navy personnel. Then another contingent from the Navy is deployed to Iraq to be soldiers for awhile. This is the US military that is going to attack Iran? Our Army is non-existent and the White House is using guns-for-hire thugs and Navy personnel to act like soldiers in Iraq. This is what is going to defend Americans from terrorism or from retaliatory attacks? God help us! And at the height of all the bombastic nonsense coming out of the Bush administration warning the world not to fuck with the United States, the Prez says the US will not accept Raul Castro as Cuba’s leader. Who cares? Not Raul Castro, that is certain. The real threat to the United States is not terrorism or the proliferation of nuclear capability. The real threat is that some little country will call Bush/Cheney’s bluff and reveal the men behind the curtain have NOTHING but NOTHING with which to defend the US. No military. No plans. No strategy. NOTHING. As Phil Peters, an expert on Cuba at the non-partisan Lexington Institute said about the Bush administration and Cuba: “Succession has already happened. They can no longer have a policy that keeps them waiting for Castro to die when the rest of the world has moved on.” The entire world has moved on re Iraq. The entire world knows the US has nothing to back up its threats. The entire world knows the men behind the curtain are dickless creeps. The only problem is, these dickless creeps are determined to provoke some annoyed nation into kicking our ass.

The Far-Right Righteous Right’s Values

Here’s a conference name you gotta love: The Values Voter Summit. The far-right religious fanatic conservatives had a meeting in Washington, DC on Saturday called The Values Voter Summit to decide which candidate was righteously pure enough to be backed by their righteously pure selves. Five thousand seven hundred seventy five votes were cast in a straw poll. The votes were allowed to be cast online as far back as August: Mitt Romney got 27.6 percent; Mike. Huckabee, 27.1 percent; Ron Paul, 15 percent; Fred D. Thompson, 9.8 percent. Rudy Giuliani less than 2 percent and John McCain finished last among the nine candidates. The Values Voter Summit was held because the far-right religious fanatics are very worried that candidates won’t be sufficiently hardline on the abortion issue, which, according to Values Voters, is the biggest issue facing the United States government. It’s this cast of characters that thinks the murders committed by Blackwater USA in Iraq and Afghanistan are fine and dandy because the Blackwater founder is a far-right religious fanatic. In addition, it’s this cast of characters that believes it’s fine and dandy for the US to torture prisoners. It’s good to know what values voters value, at least.

Bush Takes Insensitivity to a New Level

Children's healthcare advocates were 13 votes short of the two-thirds majority needed to override the Prez’s veto of a bill to provide health insurance to 10 million children. That Bush, the Bush administration and the Republicans who rubber stamp the current administration would vote against a bill to ensure health care for a million children by claiming it costs too much money is unfortunate and callous. That this crew of Republicans has bankrupted the United States, put Americans into indentured servitude for the foreseeable future to pay for an illegal and unnecessary war but won’t spend money for the health care of children is uncivilized and merciless. And that is their right. However, President George W. Bush went on television and bragged that this particular veto proves he is still relevant and that he intends to use his veto power until the end of his term to confirm that he has power. And that behavior is childish, vicious, mean, nasty, cruel and arrogant. But the Prez being proud and boastful about using his veto power to prove he has cojones, perfectly sums up the George W. Bush presidency. It’s a thumbnail example that will go down in the history books, alongside the picture of Bush not knowing what to do when he heard about the 9/11 attacks, the Mission Accomplished photo and the stage-prop plastic turkey he supposedly shared with the troops in Iraq.

Bush/Cheney Warn They Will Start WWIII

The New York Times reported this morning: “President Bush issued a stark warning on Iran on Wednesday, suggesting that if the country obtained nuclear arms, it could lead to “World War III.” For some reason that is totally unclear to me, the President and Vice President of the United States are itching to start World War III. Why they would want to end life on earth is a mystery. They are insane of course. The White House has decided to make Iran the fall guy in the Bush administration’s plan to start a nuclear war in the Middle East. If Iran obtains nuclear arms, Bush/Cheney plan to mount a nuclear attack on Iran and, like the mother who kills her child for crying, they will say “Look what you made me do!” Another thing that is totally unclear to me is how the Bush administration can castigate other countries for committing the exact same sins it commits. The US signed a Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty in 1968. And yet, under the Bush administration, the US has not only increased its stockpile of nuclear arms, but the US has also been devising new nuclear weapons and has been stockpiling them. The current White House says torture is not a good thing. But the US merely changed its definition of torture and continues to torture political prisoners in horrendous ways. The current White House tries to export the concept of democracy to other countries while it practices fascism and freely and notoriously violates the concepts of democracy at home. The man who cannot (or stubbornly will not) pronounce nuclear correctly, George W. Bush, is mentally challenged and probably does not understand that a nuclear war would end life on earth or at the very least make life on earth a living hell, even for rich Republicans. But what is the excuse of the Republicans in the Bush administration who are not insane neocons? I cannot help wondering if there are secret meetings going on in Republican homes and caucus rooms hatching plots to assassinate our leaders.

This is How the Pullout Will Be Sold

Not unlike the US pullout from Viet Nam, the Bush administration will yell, “We won”, and start withdrawing troops. This morning’s Washington Post reports: “The U.S. military believes it has dealt devastating and perhaps irreversible blows to al-Qaeda in Iraq in recent months, leading some generals to advocate a declaration of victory over the group, which the Bush administration has long described as the most lethal U.S. adversary in Iraq.” As far as Iraq is concerned, the White House, Pentagon and US military have never been concerned about whether their version of events was based on fact or fiction. Whether, indeed, the US has delivered irreversible blows to al-Qaeda, or delivered no blows at all is not the point. The White House will sell the story that “the most lethal U.S. adversary in Iraq” has been vanquished. And then the Bush administration's bought-and-paid-for generals will “advocate a declaration of victory”. And the Bush administration has saved face. Which is what our staying in Iraq has been about. The same White House that doesn’t give a rat’s ass about seeing to it that children receive proper medical care, also does not give a rat’s ass about the devastation the Bush regime has visited on the Iraqi people. Nor has this WH ever cared about bringing freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people. It’s all about selling the Bush administration’s version of events. WaPo pointed out that many generals, analysts and US officials are saying that claiming victory over al-Qaeda in Iraq is premature. One senior US official, “who declined even to be identified by the agency he works for said ‘the data are insufficient and difficult to measure’.” But that is hardly the point. The White House version of events that will signal a major pullout of troops from Iraq has now started. And do not for one minute imagine that Dick Cheney will allow those troops to come home. No. They will be redeployed to Afghanistan to a war that is not carrying as much negative baggage as Cheney and George W. Bush’s war in Iraq. WaPo claims “The expanded presence of U.S. troops in combat outposts in many parts of Baghdad has also put pressure on AQI (WH code for al-Qaeda 1, since there are other al-Qaeda presences in other parts of the world), but a major test of gains against the organization will come when the U.S. military begins to turn security in those areas over to Iraqi forces next year.” That is not really the major test. The major test will be if and when the US is forced to pull Blackwater USA thugs out of Iraq. We have 168,000 Blackwater mercenaries fighting alongside our troops in Iraq. Should the Iraqi’s suit against Blackwater for wanton murder of Iraqis force the US to end its unholy alliance with Blackwater, the US will no longer be able to even float the fiction that the US military is winning or holding its own in Iraq. WaPo’s tagline tells the whole story about the Bush administration’s war in Iraq. WaPo says: “While a victory declaration might have the ‘psychological aspect’ of discouraging recruitment to a perceived lost cause, the White House official said, advantages overall would be minimal. ‘I recognize that there are pros to saying, “Hey, listen, the bad guys are on the run.” ‘But if AQI were later able to demonstrate residual capabilities with a series of bombings, even though it was temporary, the question becomes: How does this play out in terms of public opinion?’” Oh yes! Isn’t that the main point? Screw the Iraqis, screw all our soldiers dead and alive in Iraq, screw the American people who will pay for this Republican temper tantrum called the War in Iraq for the foreseeable future. The point is: HOW DOES THIS PLAY OUT FOR THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION IN TERMS OF PUBLIC OPINION?

Blackwater USA Sued by Iraqis

The Associated Press reported this morning: “A wounded survivor and relatives of three people killed on Sept. 16 when employees of the private security company Blackwater USA opened fire on Iraqis in Baghdad sued the firm in an American court on Thursday.” The suit was filed in behalf of Talib Mutlaq Deewan and the estates of Himoud Saed Atban, Usama Fadhil Abbass and Oday Ismail Ibraheem. The Center for Constitutional Rights, a legal advocacy group, said it filed the suit, which charges that Blackwater and its affiliates violated United States law in committing “extrajudicial killings and war crimes.” The AP report said, “United Nations officials in Baghdad called for the United States on Thursday to prosecute any unjustified killings of Iraqi civilians by private security contractors. Such killings, they said, could amount to war crimes or crimes against humanity.” That surely puts the Bush administration in a bind. Does the White House support its far-right religious fanatic friend, Erik Prince, and his thuggish guns-for-hire group Blackwater USA that the White House has bankrolled in Iraq to the tune of $832 million? Or does the Bush administration do the right thing? The lawsuit claims that Blackwater “created and fostered a culture of lawlessness amongst its employees, encouraging them to act in the company’s financial interests at the expense of innocent human life.” If the Bush administration does the right thing, that will make history since it will be the first time since the Bush fascist regime gained power that it will have done the right thing. Stay tuned.

Bush Administration & Pentagon in La-La Land

Here’s the thinking of the Pentagon, US military honchos and the Bush administration who are sitting in their safe and secure offices diddling themselves while Iraq falls into chaos, Afghanistan continues to grow poppies to supply the world with drugs, our troops continue to die for nothing in Iraq and Afghanistan—securing nothing and preventing nothing, our budget to support these futile and failed wars continues to escalate into unthinkable stratospheric figures, and George Bush and Dick Cheney continue to descend into delusional madness. According to the New York Times this morning: “The Marine Corps is pressing to remove its forces from Iraq and to send marines instead to Afghanistan, to take over the leading role in combat there, according to senior military and Pentagon officials. “While still under review, its supporters, including some in the Army, argue that a realignment could allow the Army and Marines each to operate more efficiently in sustaining troop levels for two wars that have put a strain on their forces.” The military geniuses are saying, according to the NYT, “the Marine proposal is also an early indication of jockeying among the four armed services for a place in combat missions in years to come.” Or, as one Pentagon asshole put it, “At the end of the day, this could be decided by parochialism, and making sure each service does not lose equity, as much as on how best to manage the risk of force levels for Iraq and Afghanistan.” The chief Army asshole in Iraq David Petraeus and his No. 2 Deputy asshole Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odiereno, say "Anbar Province is a significant success story in Iraq.” Oh really? Success? That’s a laugh. The NYT notes, “The Marine Corps has recently played the leading combat role in Anbar Province, the restive Sunni area west of Baghdad.” And last week, the NYT reminds us, “The Senate approved a $459 billion Pentagon spending bill, an increase of $43 billion, or more than 10 percent over the last budget. That bill did not include, as part of a separate bill, President Bush’s request for almost $190 billion for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Adding to the unreal, insane atmosphere in Washington, and even though we can blame the Repubs for all the above, the Dems are so afraid of being seen as not Republican, that they are starting to side with the Repubs to get votes. Which, of course, they won’t get because Dem voters want Dems not to be Republicans.

The Daily Show Nails the Bush Presidency

When ever has the Bush regime been called the “meta-presidency” as Jon Stewart defined it last night on The Daily Show? Never. But it’s a spot-on description. In clip after clip showing Bush during photo-ops, we see the Prez explaining that he wants to explain. Or he informs us that he wants to inform. But he never explains or informs. Rather, he quotes himself on how he intends to explain and inform. And so the circle of talking about explaining widens. The Prez explains that he told us what he was going to explain in the past. But he never explained anything in the past. He only gave us information about how he wanted to inform. Time after time we see Bush telling his audience in effect, “The reason I am here is because I want to tell you why I am here.” And then he goes on to explain that he is at whatever venue he is at because it is necessary for him to be at that venue.” Simply, “meta” is a prefix meaning “information about”. George Bush’s meta-presidency is one that gives information about information. But it never gives information. Metadata is data about data. Metadata describes how and when and by whom a particular set of data was collected, and how the data is formatted. But like the Bush meta-presidency, metadata gives no information. It gives information about information. The Jon Stewart segment last night about the meta-presidency was brilliant. If you didn't see it, watch it in replay on Comedy Central. Last night’s show is replayed many times today, but most conveniently, it’s on at 8:00 tonight.

Pete Domenici Has a Diagnosed Brain Disease

Senator Pietro "Pete" Domenici (R-NM) is 74 years old. He has served as a senator since 1973, the longest tenure in New Mexico’s history. Last Thursday, Domenici announced that he's been diagnosed with frontotemporal lobar dementia (sometimes called Pick's Disease for the doctor who first diagnosed it in 1972). It's a fairly rare brain disease. Only 100,000 to 200,000 people in the US have it, as contrasted with the 4.5 million people afflicted with Alzheimer's. There is no cure for frontotemporal lobar dementia. The salient characteristic is that as it progresses—and it can progress very fast--it impairs insight and judgment, something patients themselves cannot recognize. What made Domenici seek a medical opinion? We don’t know. How long has Domenici been afflicted with a brain disease? We don’t know. The New York Times reported this morning that Domenici’s spokeswoman, Courtney M. Sanders, said: “He’s had the condition, been aware of it, for some time. I can’t say precisely how long.” Nor would Ms. Sanders say what led to the diagnosis, what symptoms the senator had or what indicated that the disease had progressed. Domenici wants to serve out his term. It ends in January, 2009. I love this bit from the NYT news story: “Ms Saunders said that Mr. Domenici had regular examinations by a doctor at Johns Hopkins, and that a checkup in April detected no signs of progression. At that point, he was planning to run for re-election, but changed his mind after the examination in September.” Oh great! Domenici has been getting regular examinations at Johns Hopkins to monitor his brain disease for God knows how long. Six months ago, there was no sign of progression. But in September there obviously was progression because Domenici suddenly let us in on his secret. The man has a degenerative brain disease that is progressing. The tip-off that this disease is spiraling downward is impaired judgment which patients can’t recognize themselves. So someone had to tell Domenici that his brain disease is progressing. But nevermind that. Domenici wants to soldier on through January 2009. Dr. Jason Karlawish, an associate professor of medicine and medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania has weighed in on this news story, He says, “Just because he (Domenici) has a diagnosis doesn’t mean he’s not capable of doing his job.” But Dr. Bruce Miller, a neurologist at the University of California, San Francisco, and a leading expert on frontotemporal dementia, called it “a very tough disease,” and said it could progress rapidly, twice as fast as Alzheimer’s...In a study we did, the average person, from the time of diagnosis, lived only about three and a half years." Neither doctor is Domenici's doctor. In 2006, Domenici pressured New Mexico’s United States Attorney David Iglesias to speed up indictments of Democrats in federal corruption investigations. When Iglesias said there would be no indictments handed down, Domenici said (and subsequently admitted he said it), “I’m very sorry to hear that” and within a month Iglesias was fired by the Bush administration. Was that due to Domenici’s mental impairment, or just normal Domenici behavior? We don’t know. And obviously, mental disease and psychiatric disorders in the Republican Party have not kept people like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and others too numerous to name from holding public office. But Pete Domenici has made a public announcement that he has a diagnosed brain disease that will impair (and maybe already has impaired) his judgment. Pete Domenici must resign NOW.

Our State Dept. Is Going to Monitor Blackwater

Oh hahahahahahahahaha! And hahahahahahahahaha! The US State Department is the outfit that hired the Blackwater thugs and has paid the Blackwater company $600 mil during last year alone for their guns-for-hire criminals to be sent to Iraq. And NOW that the thugs have been proven to be marauding and killing whatever moves in Iraq, the New York Times reported today that the US State Department said on Friday it is “seeking to retain its relationship with Blackwater USA while trying to bring the company’s armed guards under tighter control” and that it “would now send its own personnel as monitors on all Blackwater security convoys in and around Baghdad.” Oh well, that makes everything fine and dandy. Now both the fox and his father are sitting squarely in the center of the hen house where they can monitor the movements of the nasty foxes outside the henhouse who don’t seem to be there anymore because they are sitting squarely in the center of the henhouse. What are the chances that the US State Department will exercise any control at all on their anointed and highly paid Blackwater hirelings? Slim and none. And Slim has left town.

Rest Easy, Comedians, Craig Will Stick It Out

Urged on by the Crapo/Specter team in the Senate--you can’t make up names like that--Michael D. Crapo (R-ID) and Arlen Specter (R-PA)—Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) has reneged on his vow to leave the Senate if he could not get his guilty plea in Minnesota reversed. A Minnesota judge has ruled that Craig’s guilty plea re soliciting sex from an undercover police officer in a restroom of the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport last June will stand. But now Craig says he’s staying in the Senate until his term ends in January 2009. And every comic in the US has breathed a sigh of relief. What if the Repubs suddenly started acting like ethical, mature, responsible, honest human beings? What if the Republicans stopped being hypocrites who sneak around with prostitutes and enjoy gay sex while decrying the moral decay of people who sneak around with prostitutes and enjoy gay sex? Well, never fear all you comics...Craig is staying in the Senate. And he won’t be leaving until George W. Bush’s term ends. (Will they walk out of Washington hand-in-hand? What a lovely photo-op that would be.) So...no matter how grim the Bush administration makes the headlines from now until January 2009, we’ll still have Larry Craig to lighten our mood. Because neither the Repubs nor the Dems are going to let this die down. There are investigations to mount, and allegations of prior Craig dalliances in public bathrooms to be divulged, pored over and dissected ad infinitem. The big clowns in Washington, DC—George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, David Petraeus, Ryan Crocker, and honorary DC clowns David Brooks, Erik Prince, James Dobson and Newt Gingrich have a new leader: Larry Craig. Carry on Larry. You get the Ratbang Clown of the Day award.

Erik Prince Defends His Hoodlums

Blackwater USA founder Erik D. Prince told a Congressional committee yesterday that his company’s employees in Iraq were not “trigger-happy mercenaries”, but were “loyal Americans doing a necessary job in hostile territory.” He said he was proud of his employees. He said the Blackwater guards had “strictly followed rules of engagement set by the State Department, which call for gradual escalation of force before any shots are fired.” However, the New York Times reports this morning that the House committee staff “found that Blackwater employees had fired their weapons 195 times since early 2005 and in a vast majority of incidents used their weapons before taking any hostile fire. The report also said that in most cases Blackwater guards fired from fast-moving vehicles and immediately fled the scene of any confrontation.” The latest outrageous Blackwater incident occurred on September 16th. The NYT says it started out as a family errand: “Ahmed Haithem Ahmed was driving his mother, Mohassin, to pick up his father from the hospital where he worked as a pathologist. As they approached Nisour Square at midday on Sept. 16, they did not know that a bomb had gone off nearby or that a convoy of four armored vehicles carrying Blackwater guards armed with automatic rifles was approaching. Interviews with 12 Iraqi witnesses, several Iraqi investigators and an American official familiar with an American investigation of the shootings offer new insights into the gravity of the episode in Nisour Square. And they are difficult to square with the explanation offered initially by Blackwater officials that their guards were responding proportionately to an attack on the streets around the square.” Near the end of his testimony, which lasted nearly three hours, Erik Prince made a thought-provoking statement. He said, “If the government doesn’t want us to do this, we’ll go do something else.” Oh really? What would that be? It was revealed during the hearing yesterday that the Blackwater company charges the United States government $1222 for each day of work for each of its mercenaries. In 2001, Blackwater took in less than $1 million in federal government contracts. But last year, Blackwater made nearly $600 million in federal money, most of it with contracts with the State Department. Committee Chairman Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) said it appeared the State Department was acting as “Blackwater’s enabler”. What “something else” does Erik Prince have in mind if the State Department cancels his contracts? Is the fanatic religious right-wing faction in the Republican Party prepared to pay Blackwater USA $600 million a year to start the religious war in the United States that the Prince family and James Dobson have predicted will happen if Republicans aren’t kept in office? That doesn’t seem likely. But then, what other service could Prince provide that would utilize his Blackwater thugs? Perhaps one of the seven United Arab Emirates needs a few thousand guns-for-hire at $1222 a day.

State Department on Hot Seat Re Blackwater

A 15-page report by Congressman Henry A. Waxman’s (D-CA) House Oversight Committee, says the Bush State Department covered up and ignored misconduct by Blackwater USA mercenaries. The founder of Blackwater, religious fanatic ex-Navy SEAL Erik Prince, is scheduled to appear before Waxman’s committee today. The New York Times reported this morning that “Employees of Blackwater USA have engaged in nearly 200 shootings in Iraq since 2005, in a vast majority of cases firing their weapons from moving vehicles without stopping to count the dead or assist the wounded, according to a new report from Congress.” The LA Times says, “The detailed allegations, which the committee said were backed by thousands of documents, depict a security firm that almost routinely opens fire in Iraq's streets, occasionally attempts to cover up its transgressions and is frequently protected from censure and prosecution by its State Department overseers...The memo describes incidents in which Blackwater guards eagerly rushed to battles involving U.S. soldiers; plowed their armored trucks into civilian vehicles for no apparent reason; and left scenes of violence without assisting wounded civilians.” This is the private militia contractor in Iraq that the Bush administration most favors. In fact, the White House loves Blackwater so much that the State Department has paid Blackwater more than $832 million to guard US diplomats and to fight the Bush administration’s war in Iraq. The NYT says, “The committee report places a significant share of the blame for Blackwater’s record in Iraq on the State Department.” The Washington Post reported this morning “Blackwater security contractors in Iraq have been involved in at least 195 "escalation of force" incidents since early 2005, including several previously unreported killings of Iraqi civilians...In one of the killings...Blackwater personnel tried to cover up what had occurred and provided a false report. In another case, involving a Blackwater convoy's collision with 18 civilian vehicles, the firm accused its own personnel of lying about the event.” WaPo goes on to report, “The State Department has made little effort to hold Blackwater personnel accountable beyond pressing the company to pay financial compensation to the families of the dead, In a case involving a drunken Blackwater employee who killed a security guard to one of Iraq's vice presidents last Christmas Eve, U.S. government personnel helped negotiate a financial settlement and allowed the employee to depart Iraq.” Blackwater paid the dead man’s family $15,000. In another fatal shooting a State Department official in Baghdad told Blackwater to pay the victim’s family $5000 and wrote in a memo, “I hope we can put this unfortunate matter behind us quickly.” The NYT says, “Blackwater has dismissed 122 of its employees over the past three years for misuse of weapons, drug or alcohol abuse, lewd conduct or violent behavior, according to the report. It has also terminated workers for insubordination, failure to report incidents or lying about them, and publicly embarrassing the company. One employee was dismissed for showing signs of post-traumatic stress disorder.” Many otherwise intelligent Republicans have held their noses and supported George W. Bush and the neocons in the White House simply because they are Republicans. Presumably, they believe that eventually the White House will be inhabited by a president who not only is a Repub but also is sane and is not a religious fanatic. However, now that the far-right zealots have taken over the US State Department and are polluting the military in Iraq with their amoral behavior and jihad-like tactics re ethnic cleansing, it’s time for thinking Republicans to stand up and to call a halt on the religious fanaticism that abounds in the Bush administration. This blog will repeat over and over and over the fact that religious fanatic madman James Dobson’s entire career as a rightwing hate-spewing zealot has been bankrolled by the Erik Prince family. And James Dobson counsels George W. Bush on all matters political and religious. The Prince family started Blackwater USA in order to have a militia at its beck and call when Dobson and his believers force their version of Christianity on the United States und Morgan die Welt. Let me say that I do not believe for one minute that Bush, Prince and Dobson would be successful in their fanatic scheme. However, the fact that they have a scheme and a military force like Blackwater USA to back them up, and the fact that their military force is already marauding and killing in Iraq like crusaders on a mission, should be sending shivers of horror through every Republican in America.

NYT’s Rich and Dowd Both Slam Hillary Today

That makes it official. Hillary Clinton will be the Dem candidate in 2008. Frank Rich asks: “Is Hillary Clinton the New Old Al Gore?” And Maureen Dowd tackles the topic "The Nepotism Tango". Given my personal liking of Rich and loathing of Dowd, the former’s article seems reasoned and cogent and the latter’s is snarky and superficial. Rich foresees trouble for a Dem victory in the 2008 election because Hillary Clinton has already been anointed a shoo-in for Prez and the Dems always snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Which was the pattern in the 2000 election. Rich says, “Mrs. Clinton wouldn't repeat Mr. Gore's foolhardy mistake of running away from her popular husband and his record, even if she could. But almost every answer she gave last Sunday was a rambling and often tedious Gore-like filibuster. Like the former vice president, she often came across as a pontificator and an automaton — in contrast to the personable and humorous person she is known to be off-camera. And she seemed especially evasive when dealing with questions requiring human reflection instead of wonkery.” Rich signs off by saying, “Like today's G.O.P., the Democrats back then (1948-Truman vs. Dewey) were saddled with both an unloved incumbent president and open divisions in the party's ranks on both its left and right flanks. Surely, the thinking went, the beleaguered Democrats couldn't possibly vanquish a presidential candidate from New York known for his experience, competence, uncontroversial stands and above-the-fray demeanor... You don't want to push historical analogies too far, but it's hard not to add that the campaign slogan of that sure winner, Thomas Dewey, had a certain 2008 ring to it: ‘It's time for a change.’” Dowd says, “The town (Washington, DC) is divided into two camps: those who think that, after 16 years of Hillary pushing herself forward, the public will get worn out and reject her, and those who think that, after 16 years of Hillary pushing herself forward, the public will get worn down and give in to her.” Dowd quotes from Bill Sammon’s new book, “The Evangelical President”. One of the president’s aides told Sammon: “She’s (Clinton) going to be essentially saying, ‘Elect me president after I’ve spent the last 16 years in your face. And you didn’t like me much when I was there last. Give me eight more years so I can be a presence in your life for 24 years.’” Dowd says, “Others do not underestimate her relentlessness. As Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of The New Republic, once told me: ‘She’s never going to get out of our faces...She’s like some hellish housewife who has seen something that she really, really wants and won’t stop nagging you about it until finally you say, fine, take it, be the damn president, just leave me alone.’” Dowd continues, “That’s why Hillary is laughing a lot now, big belly laughs, in response to tough questions or comments, to soften her image as she confidently knocks her male opponents out of the way. From nag to wag.” You can’t blame Op/Ed columnists for writing about anything but the news when last week’s news was the same-old-same-old. George W. Bush made another gaffe in a speech, even though his speeches are scripted and his teleprompter gives him phonetic spellings of hard words like Iraq. At a made-for-TV event in front of fourth and fifth graders from New York’s P.S. 76, Bush urged Congress to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind program. He said, “Childrens do learn.” Interestingly, even though the blunder was caught on tape and played and replayed hundreds of times, the official White House transcript reads that Bush said, “children do learn”. Also last week, the Bush administration defended to the skies its star Blackwater, USA mercenaries in Iraq who murder women, children, Iraqis and everyone who get in their way; Defense Secretary Robert Gates asked Congress to approve nearly $190 billion in 2008 for the Bush administration’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; and Bush plans to veto the bill for health insurance for children. Same-old-same-old.

Blackwater Hotheads Make Decisions in Iraq

This morning the New York Times gives a capsule version of the Blackwater, USA debacle in Iraq of September 16th. The NYT says, “Participants in the Sept. 16 security operation have been ordered not to speak about the episode. But word of the disagreement on the street has slowly made its way through the community of private security contractors...These new details of the episode on Sept. 16, in which at least eight Iraqis were killed, including a woman and an infant, were provided by an American official who was briefed on the American investigation by someone who helped conduct it, and by Americans who had spoken directly with two guards involved in the episode. Their accounts were broadly consistent.” 1) Blackwater USA mercenaries who guard American diplomats in Iraq heard an explosion and decided to evacuate the diplomats from a secure compound north of Baghdad where they were meeting and conduct them to the “Green Zone” in Baghdad. American officials can’t understand why the diplomats were evacuated rather than locking down the secure compound. The evacuation began at 11:50 AM. 2) By noon, the convoy had reached Nisour Square. Some of the Blackwater guards got out of their vehicles and took positions in the street to stop all traffic coming from the south and west. The NYT reported, “At least one guard began to fire in the direction of a car, killing its driver. A traffic policeman said he walked toward the car, but more shots were fired, killing a woman holding an infant sitting in the passenger seat.” The NYT said the Blackwater guards believed they were being fired on. An Iraqi investigation concluded that the convoy was not being fired on. But some Iraqi witnesses said the convoy might have been fired on “by commandos in nearby guard towers”. 3) After killing the family in the car, Blackwater guards fired a grenade into the car setting it on fire. 4) One or more Blackwater guards called for a cease-fire. Blackwater guards started arguing with each other about the cease-fire order. One Blackwater guard pointed his gun at another Blackwater guard. 5) This episode occurred on Sunday, September 16. By Wednesday, September 19, American investigators still had not responded to multiple requests for information by Iraqi officials investigating the incident. And now, these Blackwater thugs who draw down on each other because they are badly-trained, self-aggrandizing hoodlums who endanger the lives of our troops, our diplomats and who kill anything that moves in Iraq including women and babies, are being defended with a mammoth PR blitz by the Bush administration and its flack, General Petraeus. All the arguments for the US staying in Iraq, which may or may not make logical sense, are quickly becoming irrelevant. The US troops need to leave Iraq because no one in the Bush administration, the Department of Defense or the Pentagon has the slightest idea what they are doing. And they have no plans for an intelligent occupation of Iraq in the future. We simply need to cut our losses, get out and let the Iraqis sort out the mess the United States has made.

What a Surprise!

This morning the New York Times reports: “The American security contractor Blackwater USA has been involved in a far higher rate of shootings while guarding American diplomats in Iraq than other security firms providing similar services to the State Department, according to Bush administration officials and industry officials.” The NYT also states a bullshit total of 850 Blackwater USA mercenaries that have been employed by the US State Department to guard the US diplomats. No one except the Bush administration knows the exact number. The fact is, no one but the Bush administration knows exactly how many Blackwater thugs are fighting alongside US troops. Estimates are as low as 20,000 and as high as 50,000. The estimates for the total number of mercenaries from all private US militias in Iraq--Blackwater USA, DynCorp, and Triple Canopy, to mention three—are as high as 160,000. Only the Bush administration knows the actual number. The number of mercenaries in Iraq is a state secret. The NYT article said: “The State Department would not comment on most matters relating to Blackwater, citing the current investigation. But Sean McCormack, the department’s spokesman, said that of 1,800 escort missions by Blackwater this year, there had been “only a very small fraction, very small fraction, that have involved any sort of use of force.” Boloney! The State Department won’t make its incident reports public re Blackwater’s use of force and killings. And Blackwater has refused to provide its own data on Blackwater’s continued use of unnecessary force. The NYT went on to say, “Blackwater, based in North Carolina, has gained a reputation among Iraqis and even among American military personnel serving in Iraq as a company that flaunts an aggressive, quick-draw image that leads its security personnel to take excessively violent actions to protect the people they are paid to guard.” Blackwater USA is the brainchild of Erik Prince. Prince and his family are far-right religious fanatics. The Prince family bankrolled James Dobson, founder of “Focus on the Family. Dobson and George W. Bush have regular meetings to discuss the future of the United States. Dobson has said, “I stand in a long tradition of Christians who believe that rulers may forfeit their divine mandate when they systematically contravene the divine moral law. We may be rapidly approaching the sort of Rubicon that our spiritual forebears faced Choose Caesar or God. I take no pleasure in this prospect, I pray against it. But it is worth noting that such times have historically been rejuvenating for the faith.” Dobson wrote and Erik Prince has said he agrees that the United States was heading for “a showdown between church and state” and a “morally justified revolution”. There is no deadlier human being than one who believes he is morally justified to kill, rape, murder and maraud. Blackwater hoodlums have been inculcated with that belief from their leader Erik Prince. And Prince shares George W. Bush’s belief that God wants them to engage the Middle East in a holy Christian war. Of course George W. Bush is an idiot and a dupe. But the neocons in the Bush administration are using his jihad mentality to further their designs on controlling the Middle East and its oil. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has just said the US needs to be in Iraq for many years to come. Make no mistake; the only reason the US needs to be in Iraq for years and years is to be able to control Iraq’s oil. That’s it. That’s the reason American troops are dying.

Can the US DOD Get Any More Foul?

The Washington Post brought it to our attention yesterday, and this morning’s New York Times says, “Under a program developed by a Defense Department warfare unit, Army snipers have begun using a new method to kill Iraqis suspected of being insurgents, using fake weapons and bomb-making material as bait and then killing anyone who picks them up, according to testimony presented in a military court.” And you know who is picking up these “fake weapons and bomb-making materials”? Curious children. The idea that the baits would tempt only insurgents is insane. Innocent children, women, mothers are all picking up these baits and since the Pentagon and DOD has concluded that only insurgents would pick up the baits, therefore anyone picking up the baits is an insurgent and it’s legal to shoot them. Mind you, not everyone in the Army is shooting people who pick up bomb-making material from the ground. Deadeye snipers are sitting in wait for the sign that an insurgent has wandered into their sights. And that sign is when a person picks up a bait. “In sworn statements, soldiers testifying for the defense have said the sniper team was employing a ‘baiting program’ developed at the Pentagon by the Asymmetrical Warfare Group, which met with Ranger sniper teams in Iraq in January and gave equipment to them... Army officers involved in evidentiary hearings in Baghdad in July did not dispute the existence or use of a baiting program.” A court-martial is now under way involving one soldier accused of murdering three Iraqis. But the court-martial is not centered on the immorality of using baits to lure insurgents. Because killing under those circumstances is legal and has been authorized. The court martial focuses on the prosecutor’s allegations that the soldier planted bomb-making wire on the dead victims. I am so glad to find out the niceties of what is legal and not legal with regard to Army snipers and their authorizations. Army trained snipers can legally strew baits around for any curious Iraqi to pick up and then be shot. But after the snipers shoot the curious Iraqis, it is illegal for snipers to plant evidence on their bodies. Bad enough that Blackwater, USA thugs shot an innocent Iraqi woman and baby because they didn’t move fast enough when a convoy of diplomats came down the road. But now we have the US army luring Iraqis to pick up baits so that they can be called insurgents and then legally shot. The Bush Administration’s Progress in Iraq 1) The US decided to attack Iraq for no reason because the neocons wanted Iraq’s oil. 2) The American people weren’t crazy about another war. 3) The Bush administration changed its mission from aggression and seizing oil wells to claiming that Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction. That claim resonated with the American people. 4) The Iraqis didn’t have WMD but the Bush administration attacked Iraq anyway because it wanted Iraq’s oil. 5) The Department of Defense had no understanding of the Iraqi people or its culture and used a tiny force of US soldiers. The DOD said the Iraqis wanted the US to attack them and would welcome us as liberators. 6) The attack failed. The Bush administration was shocked the Iraqis didn’t want the US to attack them. 7) The DOD was shocked the Iraqi people fought back and had empowered militias. 8) The Bush administration changed its mission from seizing Iraq’s oil, to ousting Saddam Hussein to claiming the US had wanted to bring freedom and democracy to Iraq. 9) No one believed the freedom and democracy boloney because US soldiers were killing all Iraqis who disagreed with the Bush administration. 10) Since the US has no military, the State Department hired mercenaries to fight its war in Iraq. The mercenaries, most notably Blackwater, USA, have disgraced themselves and the US by unsupervised marauding and killing in Iraq. 11) Having brought terrorism and a civil war to Iraq (all because the Bush administration wanted Iraq’s oil), the Bush administration trotted out Generals and Republican warmongers to swear that the US must remain in Iraq forever because insurgents have taken over Iraq. 12) No one believes the Generals or warmongers because the real reason the US is in Iraq is to seize Iraq’s oil, which it has not done as yet. But given time, the US will be victorious. That is the US will get Iraq’s oil. 13) Now Iraq wants the mercenaries out of Iraq because they are committing murders. But the US can’t fight its war (that is, seize Iraq’s oil) without mercenaries. 14) And the latest dishonorable plan to come out of the Department of Defense, Pentagon and Army is that snipers have been trained to kill Iraqis when they pick up baits because the DOD claims that anyone picking up baits is an insurgent. Can the Bush administration, its DOD, Pentagon and jack-shit Generals get any lower, any more base, any more unethical, any more ugly, inhuman, and corrupt? Of course it can. It’s the Bush administration.

GLORY BE! NYT Has Ended TimesSelect!!!

Why the New York Times started such a stupid enterprise in the first place is unfathomable. Even the NYT, who bowed down to the fascists in the White House and became their PR arm for far too long for fear of reprisals, surely could not have believed the American public would be too frightened of reprisals to find ways to reprint the TimesSelect entries for free. And we did. Perhaps the NYT thought the snob appeal of the rich paying for the right to something the worker-bees wouldn’t or couldn’t pay for would make TimesSelect successful. It didn’t. Whatever the reason may be for the NYT starting TimesSelect, the NYT stopped holding columnists hostage and charging a ransom for their writing because it wasn’t bringing in enough money. Good! Now, back to reading Frank Rich from the NYT online, the way God intended.

So Bush & Co. Calls This Winning?

Salient points in the Associated Press news story, “Blackwater Resumes Guarding U.S. Envoys in Iraq” by Andrew Kramer, in this morning’s New York Times: 1. “American diplomats on Friday resumed travel in convoys escorted by Blackwater USA, the private American security contractor, three days after the Iraqi government banned the company following a shooting in which at least eight Iraqis were killed.” 2. ”American Embassy officials have declined to give details of an investigation of the shooting on Sunday in Baghdad’s Nisour Square, but a preliminary report by Iraqi officials found that Blackwater guards had fired at Iraqis in their cars without provocation...The ministry concluded that the shooting had begun when a Blackwater guard fired at a car that did not stop quickly enough, killing the driver, a passenger and a baby.” 3. “Violence continued to displace Iraqis. Between 50 and 100 Sunni families fled their homes in the Baghdad neighborhood of Washash around midnight on Friday after being threatened by members of the Mahdi Army, a Shiite militia, according to an Interior Ministry official.” 4. “After a senior leader of the Mahdi Army was killed in an ambush several hours earlier, militiamen began moving through the area with loudspeakers, telling people to leave, said Sheik Abu Hasan, one of those displaced. American forces came to the area, he said. Though they did not stop the flight, they helped the families reach the Sunni Arab neighborhood of Adel in safety. The ministry official said that four Sunni women from the neighborhood were killed... ‘We had no other choice but to leave our houses at once,’ Sheik Abu Hasan said. ‘What shocked us a lot was that as soon as we reached the main streets, we saw Iraqi and American forces who were showing and directing us to the highway.’ 5. “Also on Friday, in a sign of mounting turmoil amid Shiite groups in the south, two aides to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most revered Shiite cleric, were assassinated in Basra and Diwaniya, in the latest of a string of attacks on the cleric’s followers.” And, if the above is proof that the Bush administration not only is making progress in Iraq but that the Bush administration’s policies in Iraq will eventually win the war, one has a couple questions: 1. Why are there so many American diplomats in Iraq that they travel in fucking CONVOYS protected by Blackwater USA hoodlums? 2. Why are the lives of American diplomats more important than the lives of Iraqis that the Bush administration claims to be bringing freedom and democracy to? 3. If there is no civil war in Iraq, how come Shiites are fighting Sunnis, Sunnis are fighting Shiites, US soldiers are helping Iraqis flee the country and Blackwater mercenaries are keeping order by murdering anyone who gets in the way of American diplomats? 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. WHY ARE THE LIVES OF AMERICAN DIPLOMATS SO MUCH MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE LIVES OF IRAQIS THAT BLACKWATER HOODLUMS ARE PAID $1000 PER DAY TO MURDER IRAQIS WHO GET IN THEIR WAY?

Bush Administration Defending Blackwater

As we knew it would. This morning the New York Times says: “On Wednesday, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq complained of killings of Iraqis “in cold blood” by American armed contractors. He said Sunday’s shooting was the seventh such case involving Blackwater...Iraq’s government is threatening to throw Blackwater out of the country, a move that would have a striking impact on American operations inside the country... For years, government officials and members of Congress have debated what has become in Iraq the most extensive use of private contractors on the battlefield since Renaissance princes hired private armies to fight their battles. The debate flares up after each lethal episode in Iraq, but there has been no agreement on how to police the private soldiers who roam Iraq in the employ of the United States government.” The Washington Post says (“Blackwater's Security Force in Iraq Given Wide Latitude by State Dept” by Steve Fainaru) “Blackwater USA, the private security company involved in a Baghdad shootout last weekend, operated under State Department authority that exempted the company from U.S. military regulations governing other security firms, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials and industry representatives...The State Department allowed Blackwater's heavily armed teams to operate without an Interior Ministry license, even after the requirement became standard language in Defense Department security contracts. The company was not subject to the military's restrictions on the use of offensive weapons, its procedures for reporting shooting incidents or a central tracking system that allows commanders to monitor the movements of security companies on the battlefield.” And yet, every talking head from the military, every White House-scripted government official and Republican toady the Bush administration can put on TV is saying the Iraqis cannot be believed, Maliki cannot be believed, they are all lying, and the mercenaries in general and Blackwater mercenaries in particular are doing a necessary and stellar job in Iraq. As WaPo points out, “A one-paragraph subsection to a 2004 edict issued by the Coalition Provisional Authority, the now-defunct U.S. occupation government, granted contractors immunity from the Iraqi legal process. This edict is still in effect. Congress has moved to establish guidelines for prosecuting contractors under U.S. law or the Uniform Code of Military Justice, but the issue remains unresolved.” And the issue will remain unresolved because the Bush administration cannot continue to fight its illegal and unnecessary war in Iraq without mercenaries. And the Blackwater USA mercenaries are particularly prized by the Bush administration’s State Department, Defense Department and Pentagon because Blackwater USA guns-for-hire are deadly, unprincipled, and amoral thugs. The fact that the Bush administration loves Blackwater USA should come as no surprise since the Bush administration is comprised of deadly, unprincipled and amoral thugs.

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!