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2007-09-01T19:05:00.000-05:00

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Closing Shop

2007-03-17T15:41:00.000-05:00

See you around the internets.

Al Gore's Right About Global Warming. Who Says So? The Pentagon

2007-03-06T01:10:00.000-06:00

Global Warming real. Consequences catastrophic. So says Al Gore, of course. And so says a source not known for tree hugger sentimentality. The Pentagon. A secret report leaked to The Observer/UK tells the story. And when was the report leaked? 2004. And where were the US media on the story? Pretty much where they've been all along during the disastrous Bush presidency: out to lunch.

Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us

· Secret report warns of rioting and nuclear war
· Britain will be 'Siberian' in less than 20 years
· Threat to the world is greater than terrorism

Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters..

A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.

The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.

'Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,' concludes the Pentagon analysis. 'Once again, warfare would define human life.'

The findings will prove humiliating to the Bush administration, which has repeatedly denied that climate change even exists. Experts said that they will also make unsettling reading for a President who has insisted national defence is a priority.

The report was commissioned by influential Pentagon defence adviser Andrew Marshall, who has held considerable sway on US military thinking over the past three decades. He was the man behind a sweeping recent review aimed at transforming the American military under Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Climate change 'should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern', say the authors, Peter Schwartz, CIA consultant and former head of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and Doug Randall of the California-based Global Business Network.

An imminent scenario of catastrophic climate change is 'plausible and would challenge United States national security in ways that should be considered immediately', they conclude. As early as next year widespread flooding by a rise in sea levels will create major upheaval for millions.

Last week the Bush administration came under heavy fire from a large body of respected scientists who claimed that it cherry-picked science to suit its policy agenda and suppressed studies that it did not like. Jeremy Symons, a former whistleblower at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said that suppression of the report for four months was a further example of the White House trying to bury the threat of climate change....

Symons, who left the EPA in protest at political interference, said that the suppression of the report was a further instance of the White House trying to bury evidence of climate change. 'It is yet another example of why this government should stop burying its head in the sand on this issue.'

Symons said the Bush administration's close links to high-powered energy and oil companies was vital in understanding why climate change was received sceptically in the Oval Office. 'This administration is ignoring the evidence in order to placate a handful of large energy and oil companies,' he added.

Article date, February 22, 2004!

The Most Dangerous Administration Ever

2007-03-02T00:11:00.000-06:00

Back then, it was Bush administration saber rattling over North Korea, only to find out years later that ...

The United States appears to have made a major intelligence blunder over North Korea's nuclear weapons programme, one that may have exacerbated tensions with Pyongyang over the past four years and goaded Kim Jong-Il into pressing ahead with last October's live nuclear test, intelligence and Bush administration officials have said.

The blunder does not concern the plutonium-based bomb technology that North Korea used in its test and has clearly been developing for decades. Rather it concerns the assessment, in a Central Intelligence Agency report to Congress in November 2002, that North Korea was also pursuing a parallel uranium enrichment programme capable of providing the raw material for two or more nuclear weapons a year, starting "mid-decade".

That prompted the US to cut off oil supplies to Pyongyang, to which North Korea responded by throwing out international weapons inspectors and ratcheting up its plutonium bomb programme.

But now many intelligence officials doubt whether the North Koreans have a viable uranium enrichment programme, and administration officials have begun wondering if they could not have handled the North Korean crisis much more smartly if they had been in less of a hurry to get confrontational....

Now it's Bush administration saber ratting over Iran. At a time when we're already paying a steep price for Bush administration saber rattling over Iraq. Yet, evidence aside and public support to end the Iraq occupation be damned, the new Democratic majority in Congress appears paralyzed and the evil clowns at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue have two more years to screw up the world. Scared yet?

© Martin Rowson 2006, Guardian/UK

Questioning The Answers

2007-02-22T01:20:00.000-06:00

Tuesday night some of Washington's elite print and television journalists got together at the National Press Club for a friendly bull session with White House press flack Tony Snow.

There (over drinks and cocktail weenies?), they back slapped and complimented each other on the important and serious work they do, and indulged in what's become a favorite Beltway passtime. Trashing bloggers.

Tony Snow confessed to occasionally reading blogs. "It's amazing, you get this wonderful imaginative hateful stuff that comes flying out," he said.

Newsweek's Richard Wolffe chimed in. "There seems to be this sort of -- the witch hunt that's out there. A lot of the blogs are, are, are unduly devoted to media criticism which is itself kind of interesting given all the things you could comment on....

"In my humble view, the press here does a fantastic job of adhering to journalistic standards and covering politics in general," Wolffe proclaimed, arguing that bloggers "want us to play a role that isn't really our role. Our role is to ask questions and get information..."

Really? Ask questions? Get information? Oh, you mean like you and others did in the runup to the US invasion of Iraq. How did that work again? You talked to unnamed administration sources. You wrote down what the unnamed administration sources said. And your papers and magazines printed the stuff.

I discovered the extent of the "fantastic job" Richard Wolffe did during this time period by reading Glenn Greenwald's column on the Snow-press corps love fest in Salon.

Greenwald shows up Wolffe as the lickspittle stenographer he is through an outrageously unfair, sneakily underhanded technique often employed by dirty filthy stinking hippie bloggers. He quotes him -- reprints excerpts of articles Wolffe wrote back then. And to devastating effect. Then Greenwald cuts to the heart of the disease that afflicts Beltway journalism

"It is truly astonishing," he writes, "that the people who enabled the administration to spew one falsehood after the next -- and who aided and abetted the worst strategic disaster in our country's history by mindlessly passing those falsehoods along to their readers, completely failing to investigate any of it, but instead obediently validating it all with journalistic approval -- now want to sit around in the most self-satisfied way and pronounce that they are doing an absolutely 'fantastic job' and complain about the vulgar masses who disrupt their tranquility by criticizing them for being insufficiently vigilant.

"And to those American citizens who remain rather angry about the complete failure of the press to scrutinize the war-justifying claims made by their friends in the government -- and who wake up every day and devote themselves to trying to prod the press into performing its intended adversarial watchdog role so that our Government has at least some checks on what it can say and do -- people like Richard Wolffe have nothing to say other than to agree with Tony Snow that they are vulgar and hateful and to lecture them -- in his snidest and most condescending tone -- that they are just ignorant, confused, and unreasonably demanding.

"Truly, the spectacle of watching our country's leading White House journalists sitting there next to Tony Snow -- all of them oozing pomposity and self-satisfaction -- while Snow engineers the entire discussion and treats them like the friendly puppets that they are... is quite difficult to endure, but is nonetheless truly revealing."

And what can we expect from Richard Wolffe and his ilk in the future? Will he continue to puff out his chest and proclaim to the world that he's doing a fantastic job? Will he continue to "ask questions and get information" out like a postman delivering the mail? Very probably.

Even though what he and so many others should be doing as journalists is questioning the answers.

Real Treason

2007-02-18T15:16:00.000-06:00

Bush and his enablers in Congress love to talk about supporting our troops. And they're quick to demonize anyone opposing the escalation of the US military bootprint in Iraq as emboldening the enemy. Debate Bush's folly and you're a traitor. Speak out against his insane escalation plan and you're demoralizing our brave soldiers. Well, how's this for demoralizing? How's this for real treason? And guess who bears responsibility for it. Dana Priest and Anne Hull expose the criminal neglect and cynical hypocrisy of the Bush crowd in a Pulitzer-worthy report in Sunday's Washington Post.

Hillary Hits A Triple

2007-02-15T00:10:00.000-06:00

"If the administration believes that any, any use of force against Iran is necessary, the president must come to Congress to seek that authority."

Anyone who's read any of my posts on Hillary Rodham Clinton knows I consider her nomination to be a disaster not just for Democrats in 2008 but for the country.

Hillary Clinton is the most polarizing politician in America next to George Bush and Dick Cheney. That isn't going to change. Ever.

On the one hand her candidacy could cost Democrats a sure White House win two years from now. On the other--if she actually is elected president--the country will be in for four to eight years of divisiveness and bloody trench warfare from a reinvigorated right. Of that can there be any doubt?

I offer this as context (if not apology) for my praise of Hillary's Senate speech yesterday drawing a bright line against Bush administration jingoism and saber rattling over Iran.

Strategically, it was brilliant.

Just as, in a weird way, Bush is using Iran to deflect attention from the mess he's made in Iraq and his latest lunatic escalation plan, Hillary is using Iran to take focus away from her Senate vote in 2002 giving Commander Bunnypants a blank check to take the nation to war.

This is the vote Hillary steadfastly, stubbornly, arrogantly refuses to call a mistake. And it's hurting her as she maneuvers to position herself against Obama.

In New Hampshire last week, the question of Hillary's war vote dogged her at every stop, as the New York Times reports. And her refusal to clearly and honestly own up to contributing to the greatest foreign policy mistake in US history, but instead substitute a nuanced, triangulating, slippery, mush-mouthed excuse of "if I knew then what I know now, I would never have voted for it."

Hillary's hope is to make her antiwar bones by standing up to Bush on Iran. And I wouldn't bet money against this canny pol pulling it off, thereby making her 2002 vote a non-issue in the months ahead leading up to the primaries. Especially if the unpopular, distrusted, politically-wounded Bush ups the ante on Iran.

But scoring points off Bush's craziness won't make me feel any better about Hillary's candidacy. Quite the opposite. The country has seen enough of stone cold politicians who can't or won't admit error.

It doesn't need another.

UPDATE Hillary gets caught stealing home. Barely one news cycle after her Senate speech, instead of staying on message with her position on Iran, Hillary returned to the subject of her 2002 Iraq vote. And this time she upped the ante, telling those who want her to admit her "mistake" to take a hike:

“If the most important thing to any of you is choosing someone who did not cast that vote or has said his vote was a mistake, then there are others to choose from,” Mrs. Clinton told an audience in Dover, N.H., in a veiled reference to two rivals for the nomination, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina.

In a post on dKos titled "If I knew then what I should have known then," georgia10 scrutinizes Hillary's stubborness and writes this gem on why she's wrong as the party's nominee:

On that, again, Clinton is mistaken. For the 2002 Iraq vote isn't just about that one vote. It's taken on a life of its own, and every day Clinton refuses to admit her mistake is another day she paints a picture to primary voters of just what type of President she would be.

A president who in the past has failed to look forward, and in the present refuses to look back.

Shit For Brains

2007-02-11T15:44:00.000-06:00

From ThinkProgress,

Rep. Rohrabacher: Global Warming May Have Been Caused By ‘Dinosaur Flatulence’

This week, Congress held its first hearing on the landmark IPCC report on climate change. That report concluded that global warming is “unequivocal” and human activity is the main driver, “very likely” causing most of the rise in temperatures since 1950.

During the hearing, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) — one of the 87 percent of congressional Republicans who do not believe in man-made global warming — questioned the authors of the report about a period of dramatic climate change that occured 55 million years ago. “We don’t know what those other cycles were caused by in the past. Could be dinosaur flatulence, you know, or who knows?" ...

Presumably, Rohrabacher was referencing a period known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. Then, as in now, “sharp rises in temperature were initiated and driven by large spikes in greenhouse gases. … It took over 100K years for the ocean, atmosphere, and temperatures to return to their previous state. The result was a mass extinction event that took millions of years to recover from.” But scientists believe that massive methane releases from the ocean floors — not dinosaur farts — were the cause.

In sharp contrast to Rohrabacher, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) delivered an opening statement recommending mandatory caps on global warming pollution and calling out conservatives for rejecting science. “For twelve years, the leadership in the House of Representatives stifled all discussion and debate of global warming. That long rejection of reality is over, to the relief of Members on both sides of the aisle.”

And here I thought James Inhofe was the stupidest man on the Hill.

Not Exactly An Edward R Murrow Moment, Is It?

2007-02-09T23:09:00.000-06:00

This is all you need to know about American television journalism nowadays. ThinkProgress tells the dismal story of the media's obsessive, over-the-top coverage of Anna Nicole Smith's death. Even Olbermann, to his shame, devoted over 10 minutues to the sudden demise of the trashy tabloid star last night. And to think the astronaut stalker story had just about run its course. Talk about timing.

The death of Anna Nicole Smith yesterday was a feeding frenzy for the national media, and coverage of the war was drowned out: NBC’s Nightly News devoted 14 seconds to Iraq compared to 3 minutes and 13 seconds to Anna Nicole. CNN referenced Anna Nicole 522% more frequently than it did Iraq. MSNBC was even worse — 708% more references to Anna Nicole than Iraq.

The lop-sided coverage largely ignored many key developments in Iraq, including the sixth downing of a U.S. helicopter in the past three weeks, the allegations that a deputy Iraqi health minister was aiding a Shiite militia in its attacks against U.S.javascript:void(0) troops, and the death of four Marines.

ThinkProgress has collected some of the many, many lowlights of yesterday’s coverage (i.e., Larry King: “The death of Anna Nicole Smith is the number one story around the world tonight”), along with a lone highlight provided by CNN’s Jack Cafferty....

Edwards Rights A Wrong

2007-02-08T22:07:00.000-06:00

Okay, it wasn't pretty. But at least Edwards made the right call. Ultimately. From Salon,

Edwards campaign rehires bloggers Marcotte and McEwen

• After a day of infighting, the Edwards campaign reverses a decision to fire two controversial bloggers.

Alex Koppelman and Rebecca Traister

Feb. 8, 2007 | After personal phone calls to the bloggers from the candidate, the Edwards campaign has rehired the bloggers who were fired yesterday, according to sources inside and close to the campaign.

Salon reported yesterday that on Wednesday morning the Edwards camp fired Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwen, the two bloggers whose hiring had sparked an uproar by conservatives. That information was confirmed by sources in and close to the campaign. But almost as soon as the decision had been communicated to the bloggers, a struggle arose within the campaign about possibly reversing it, the sources said, as the liberal blogosphere exploded.

The campaign remained silent all day about the status of Marcotte and McEwen, and neither woman posted to the John Edwards blog yesterday. There was also radio silence from the campaign for the hours following Salon's report of their initial dismissal, after a promise from a campaign spokeswoman that there would be more information later.

Sources told Salon that much of Wednesday was spent in a series of conference calls among campaign members trying to hash out a solution to the very difficult problem of what to do with the bloggers, debating the details of their departures or the possibility of their swift reinstatement. These discussions culminated, according to sources inside and close to the campaign, in calls last night from Edwards to the bloggers, in which he asked them to come back to the campaign.

In a statement released today, with individual comments from Edwards and the two bloggers, Edwards said, "I've talked to Amanda and Melissa; they have both assured me that it was never their intention to malign anyone's faith, and I take them at their word." The statements did not address Salon's earlier report.

Jennifer Palmieri, a spokeswoman for Edwards, denied to Salon that the bloggers had been fired. However, asked if the bloggers were ever given the impression they were no longer with the campaign, Palmieri responded, "We had discussions going on for about 36 hours about how to handle this, and Edwards -- he himself had never met either one of them and felt it was important to give them time to decide how they wanted to respond, if at all."

As Palmieri was giving her statement to Salon Thursday, a source close to the campaign, who declined to be named because of the delicacy of the situation, was asserting to another Salon reporter that "they were fired," and that Wednesday was spent in a series of confused and sometimes heated conversations within the campaign, trying to hammer out details of a possible reversal of that decision for one or both of the bloggers. "There was a lot of infighting," said the source.

Kate Michelman, a senior advisor to the Edwards campaign, told Salon in reference to Edwards' statement: "I think John handled this just right. Frankly, campaigns have bumps in the road. The important thing about bumps in the road is the way a campaign handles them, whether they step up to the plate and are fair and move on and regroup. The outcome of the process is the important thing, and I think in the end John has made the right decision here."

While the Edwards campaign kept quiet on Wednesday, the blogosphere was reacting to Salon's story, often with anger at the prospect that the Edwards camp had thrown two of the blogosphere's own under the bus. Chris Bowers, a blogger at MyDD.com, wrote in one post, "While there is no way I will support Edwards with (sic) Amanda and Melissa are fired, I will immediately become a staunch Edwards supporter if they are not fired."

And Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, who was one of the driving forces behind the controversy, has released a new statement. In it, he promises that "what Edwards did today will not be forgotten" and that there will be "a nationwide public relations blitz" against the Edwards campaign for the decision to employ the bloggers.

"John Edwards has apparently decided that there is more to be gained by aligning himself with the cultural left than by standing on principle and firing the Catholic bashers on his payroll," Donohue said in his statement. "Had anyone on his staff used the 'N-word,' he or she would have been fired immediately. But his goal is to loot the pockets of the [George] Soros/Hollywood gang, and they -- like him -- aren't offended by anti-Catholicism. Indeed, they thrive on it."

Waiting For Godot (Edwards Screws Up)

2007-02-07T16:05:00.000-06:00

From Salon,

Edwards campaign fires bloggers

The right-wing blogosphere has gotten its scalps -- John Edwards has fired the two controversial bloggers he recently hired to do liberal blogger outreach, Salon has learned.

The bloggers, Amanda Marcotte, formerly of Pandagon, and Melissa McEwan, of Shakespeare's Sister, had come under fire from right-wing bloggers for statements they had previously made on their respective blogs. A statement by the Catholic League's Bill Donohue, which called Marcotte and McEwan "anti-Catholic vulgar trash-talking bigots," and an accompanying article on the controversy in the New York Times this morning, put extra pressure on the campaign.

Speculation from sources that the two bloggers might be rehired was bolstered by Jennifer Palmieri, a spokeswoman for the Edwards campaign, who said in an e-mail that she would "caution [Salon] against reporting that they have been fired. We will have something to say later...."

The Salon War Room item posted at 1:21 pm Eastern. It's now 4 pm Central and still no word from the Edwards campaign.

What to conclude? That John Edwards is a jellyfish who caves at the first whiff of criticism from notorious right-wing nutjobs? That his campaign is such a godawful mess it can't get its media act together?

However this turns out, Edwards looks bad.

You'd have thunk Edwards would have learned a lesson watching John Kerry fumble away his opportunity in 2004.

In today's world, you don't leave an attack unanswered for even half a news cycle. And, most of all, you don't leave your candidate looking indecisive.

Up Or Down Or Filibuster, The Resolution Doesn't Matter

2007-02-02T23:11:00.000-06:00

The Senate has yet to vote on a non-binding resolution condemning Bush's escalation in Iraq.

And maybe it won't.

If the White House gets its way, a filibuster enlisting all 49 Republican senators will kill the measure on the floor.

But whether a weak non-binding resolution emerges or a filibuster prevents a vote, it isn't likely to matter much. Either way, the surge will go on. And the GOP will implode.

The public is already way ahead of the country's elected leadership, both Republican and Democrat. Today 55% of Americans want a pull-out of US forces from Iraq within a year, according to the latest Rasmussen poll.

The dance of the senators is nothing more than a clumsy political two-step. But it is only the first dance. Whether a tepid, compromise resolution emerges or not, the fight over funding and oversight will go on -- and intensify.

If the White House wins and kills the resolution via filibuster (the moral righteousness of having up and down votes apparently only applying to radically conservative federal judges), it loses.

It will have spent tremendous political capital only to delay, not stop, more aggressive action down the road.

And for the GOP, a filibuster is catastrophic. It will exacerbate the split in the party and expose so-called "moderates" as spineless hacks, unwilling to put their beliefs on a subject as important as war above partisan politics.

Not a happy position to be in for 2008.

Overshadowing the debate, prospects for improvement in Iraq remain bleak. Four months from now, six months from now, the situation on the ground is likely to be as bad or worse than it is today.

If so 70% of Americans, not 55%, may be screaming for the US get out. And where will Congress be then?

Just that much closer to the next election.

How Al-Sadr Outsmarted Bush (It Wasn't Hard)

2007-02-02T00:17:00.000-06:00

So this is the mess we're surging more American troops into? Heckuva job, Commander Bunnypants. Brilliant. Tom Lasseter of McClatchy Newspapers reports.

Mahdi Army gains strength through unwitting aid of U.S.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The U.S. military drive to train and equip Iraq's security forces has unwittingly strengthened anti-American Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia, which has been battling to take over much of the capital city as American forces are trying to secure it.

U.S. Army commanders and enlisted men who are patrolling east Baghdad, which is home to more than half the city's population and the front line of al-Sadr's campaign to drive rival Sunni Muslims from their homes and neighborhoods, said al-Sadr's militias had heavily infiltrated the Iraqi police and army units that they've trained and armed.

"Half of them are JAM. They'll wave at us during the day and shoot at us during the night," said 1st Lt. Dan Quinn, a platoon leader in the Army's 1st Infantry Division, using the initials of the militia's Arabic name, Jaish al Mahdi. "People (in America) think it's bad, but that we control the city. That's not the way it is. They control it, and they let us drive around. It's hostile territory."

The Bush administration's plan to secure Baghdad rests on a "surge" of some 17,000 more U.S. troops to the city, many of whom will operate from small bases throughout Baghdad. Those soldiers will work to improve Iraqi security units so that American forces can hand over control of the area and withdraw to the outskirts of the city.

The problem, many soldiers said, is that the approach has been tried before and resulted only in strengthening al-Sadr and his militia.

[...]

"All the Shiites have to do is tell everyone to lay low, wait for the Americans to leave, then when they leave you have a target list and within a day they'll kill every Sunni leader in the country. It'll be called the `Day of Death' or something like that," said 1st Lt. Alain Etienne, 34, of Brooklyn, N.Y. "They say, `Wait, and we will be victorious.' That's what they preach. And it will be their victory."

Quinn agreed.

[...]

Al-Sadr's success in infiltrating Iraqi security forces says much about the continued inability of American commanders in Iraq to counter the classic insurgent tactic of using popular support to trump superior military firepower. Lacking attack helicopters and other sophisticated weapons, al-Sadr's men have expanded their empire with borrowed trucks and free lunches for militiamen.

After U.S. units pounded al-Sadr's men in August 2004, the cleric apparently decided that instead of facing American tanks, he'd use the Americans' plans to build Iraqi security forces to rebuild his own militia.

So while Iraq's other main Shiite militia, the Badr Brigade, concentrated in 2005 on packing Iraqi intelligence bureaus with high-level officers who could coordinate sectarian assassinations, al-Sadr went after the rank and file.

His recruits began flooding into the Iraqi army and police, receiving training, uniforms and equipment either directly from the U.S. military or from the American-backed Iraqi Defense Ministry.

The infiltration by al-Sadr's men, coupled with his strength in Iraq's parliament after U.S.-backed elections, gave him leeway to operate death squads throughout the capital, according to more than a week of interviews with American soldiers patrolling Baghdad. Some U.S.-trained units carried out sectarian killings themselves, while others, manning checkpoints, allowed militiamen to pass.

[...]

"There's been a lot of push to transition to Iraqis so you can show progress, but have you secured the area?" said Capt. Aaron Kaufman, a Washington, Iowa, native who works for a unit that acts as a liaison between U.S. and Iraqi forces in the Shiite enclave of Kadhamiya, across the river from east Baghdad. "I think the political pressure has hurt. ... You're wishing away, you're assuming away enemy activity, and you hurt yourself doing that."

[...]

Al-Sadr's militia has taken advantage of the chaos.

Iraqi soldiers, for example, often were pushed into the field by Iraqi commanders who didn't give them adequate food, clothing or shelter, said Etienne, a 1st Infantry Division platoon leader.

Etienne was on patrol one day when he saw Iraqi soldiers eating fresh vegetables and meat. The afternoon before, the same soldiers had complained that they had only scraps of food left. Who'd brought them their meal? It had come courtesy of Muqtada al-Sadr.

"Who's feeding the Iraqi army? Nobody. So JAM will come around and give them food and water," Etienne said. "We try to capture hearts and minds, well, JAM has done that. They're further along than us."

[...]

Did The Founding Fathers Set The Bar Too Low?

2007-02-01T01:46:00.000-06:00

The Founding Fathers in 1789:

"No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty-five years, and been fourteen years a resident within the United States."

Joe Biden today:

"I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy... I mean, that’s a storybook, man."

Blair Facing His Own Watergate

2007-01-30T23:38:00.000-06:00

Last month I posted a story speculating that the cash for honors scandal could bring down Blair's government. That speculation got a bit closer to reality today. How does the line go? -- "It's not the crime, it's the cover-up that gets you."

Blair Ally Arrested in Corruption Probe

• Focus of Police Shifts From Alleged Sale of Government Honors to Suspected Coverup

LONDON, Jan. 30 -- The chief fundraiser for Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labor Party was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of hampering a police investigation into whether the party offered seats in the House of Lords and other government honors in exchange for cash.

Michael Levy, a close friend of Blair's and special envoy to the Middle East, was arrested on "suspicion of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice." He was released on bail and has not been charged with a crime....

A tennis partner of Blair's who became wealthy in the music industry, Levy has been dubbed "Lord Cashpoint" by British tabloids for his central role in the scandal. He issued a statement Tuesday denying "any allegations of wrongdoing whatsoever."

Many people here see the new charge as more significant than last summer's because it suggests an effort by people close to Blair to hide an offense. "The coverup seems to be the main focus now," said Tim Knox of the Center for Policy Studies in London. "It's a serious crime, and it could be easier to prove" than the initial charges.

Appointed seats in the House of Lords, the upper house of Parliament, could be offered to donors with only a "wink, nod and a handshake," Knox said. But he said it might be much easier for police to discover that e-mails or other documents had been destroyed or hidden in an effort to thwart the investigation.

"Increasingly, this sorry affair has the whiff of Watergate about it," Edward Davey, a member of Parliament from the Liberal Democrats, the third-largest political party here, told the BBC. Suspicion of a coverup is particularly angering people, Davey said.

In all, four people have been arrested in a burgeoning scandal that has made Blair the first sitting prime minister to be questioned by police in a criminal inquiry. The next step is for prosecutors to review the police findings and decide whether to press charges.

Blair announced last fall that he would step down, but he did not say exactly when. Under pressure from his own party and with his approval ratings plunging, Blair said he would not attend his party's next conference, to be held in September.

The cash-for-honors scandal, as it is known here, has increased public disillusionment with Blair, and many people say it could force him to resign earlier than he had planned. Blair has said he did nothing wrong....

So Where Exactly Is The Divide In 'Bitterly Divided' America?

2007-01-27T00:01:00.000-06:00

The elite bloviators of America's corporate media keep pounding away at their pet narrative that the country is bitterly divided over Iraq.

Only the numbers don't back them up.

In the latest Newsweek poll, 68% of Americans say they are opposed to Bush's troop escalation in Iraq.

In a recent Gallup poll, 56% said they want US troops out of Iraq sooner rather than later -- 19% are for immediate pullout, 37% want troops out within a year. And nearly 6 in 10 say it was a "mistake" to invade Iraq in the first place, according to Gallup.

What I found most surprising is when asked if Congress should try to block the deployments, a step that would require a partial cut-off of funding, a significant 47% of respondents said yes.

So where's the bitter divide the millionaire pundits keep talking about? Look for it on K Street, not Main Street.

In real America, there's consensus.

When The Strongest Voice Against Escalation Is A Republican's

2007-01-26T14:19:00.000-06:00

This is what Sen Chuck Hagel had to say the other day about the nonsense the Decider-in-Chief is calling his "new way forward" in Iraq -- a cynically political, let's-all-clap-louder gambit to avoid facing reality by sending 22,000 more Americans into the meat grinder (enough to delay the outcome, not enough to change it). And my question is, Where are the voices of the two leading Senate Democrats who have either announced or are on the verge of announcing a run for the presidency? What are your views, Sen Clinton? And yours, Sen Obama? When have your words ever had the no-bullshit power of these?

HAGEL: I don't think we've ever had a coherent strategy [in Iraq]. In fact, I would even challenge the administration today to show us the plan that the president talked about the other night. There is no plan. I happen to know that Pentagon planners were on their way to Central Com over the weekend -- they haven't even Team B'ed this plan.... There is no strategy. This is a ping-pong game with American lives.... We'd better be damned sure what we're doing, all of us, before we put 22,000 more lives into that grinder...and I want every one of you, every one of us, 100 senators to look in that camera, and you tell your people back home what you think. Don't hide any more, none of us.

Want To Read Something Really Scary?

2007-01-25T00:05:00.000-06:00

As bad as the situation is in Iraq, it could have been much worse. Imagine if Cheney and his gang had gotten their way in having the Iraq war resolution cover the entire Middle East. That's what the Bush administration wanted in 2002, says Sen Chuck Hagel in an interview with GQ magazine. ThinkProgress has an excerpt.

... At the time, Hagel says, the Bush administration presented Congress with a resolution that would have authorized the use of force anywhere in the region:

HAGEL: [F]inally, begrudgingly, [the White House] sent over a resolution for Congress to approve. Well, it was astounding. It said they could go anywhere in the region.

GQ: It wasn’t specific to Iraq?

HAGEL: Oh no. It said the whole region! They could go into Greece or anywhere. Is central Asia in the region? I suppose! Sure as hell it was clear they meant the whole Middle East. It was anything. It was literally anything. No boundaries. No restrictions.

GQ: They expected Congress to let them start a war anywhere in the Middle East?

HAGEL: Yes. Yes. Wide open. We had to rewrite it. Joe Biden, Dick Lugar, and I stripped the language that the White House had set up and put our language in it.

Asked about his vote in support of the final Iraq war resolution, Hagel told GQ, “Do I regret that vote? Yes, I do regret that vote.”

And if you didn't catch Hagels incendiary remarks in favor of the non-binding resolution against Bush's "surge" in the Foreign Relations committee, you'll find it on C&L.

SOTU, So What?

2007-01-24T00:01:00.000-06:00

It was Bush's last chance to rally the public to the "new way forward" in Iraq after his last last chance flopped more than a week ago.

He whiffed.

There was no pied piper inspiration in this speech. No standing on the rubble with megaphone moment. No rhythm, no stirring beat for the public to march to--a public that is already running full tilt the other way. Bush repackaged and recycled the same old deceitful, simplistic, dreary rhetoric he's been pushing from the get-go.

Touting a domestic agenda that, when you cut through the smoke, lacks substance or basic honesty, Bush delayed talking about the number-one issue on the minds of Americans until nearly halfway through his speech.

Understandable. Bush's disastrous occupation of Iraq has left the US with no good options militarily.

As for diplomacy (did you get a load of Madam Supertanker's baleful countenance?), the notion that Team Bush is capable of conducting it with anything even approaching common sense is enough to provoke spasms of derisive laughter.

The US is screwed if it stays in Iraq. The US is screwed if it pulls out of Iraq in the middle of a bloody sectarian war.

And we are totally fucked because, like it or not, Bush will be the American president for two more years.

Back From The Dead After New Blogger Murdered Me

2007-01-23T00:04:00.000-06:00

I switched this site over to New Blogger on Saturday, January 13, and zap! I couldn't post.

Headlines would print. Text wouldn't.

Tried to contact blogger support. Now that was a trip. Today got an answer from a technical support genius named Nick.

Nick's advice: use a different browser to work around the glitch. (Never had a browser conflict on Old Blogger, but whatever.)

And, hey, Nick's fix works. I can publish again.

Thanks for the help, Nick of New Blogger. New posts start tomorrow.

Bush's Lies

2007-01-12T00:00:00.000-06:00

In his Special Comment tonight, Olbermann delivered the most dramatic summary yet of the lies this president has told the American people about Iraq. At the end of the program, my son remarked that the '08 Democratic candidate should make "restoring honor and integrity to the White House" a major theme of the campaign. He's right. In '08 it would even be the truth.

... Before Mr. Bush was elected, he said nation-building was wrong for America. Now he says it is vital.

He said he would never put U.S. troops under foreign control. Last night he promised to embed them, in Iraqi units.

He told us about WMD. Mobile labs. Secret sources. Aluminum tubes. Yellow-cake.

He has told us the war is necessary because Saddam was a material threat. Because of 9/11. Because of Osama Bin Laden. Al-Qaeda. Terrorism in General. To liberate Iraq. To spread freedom. To spread Democracy. To prevent terrorism by gas price increases. Because this was a guy who tried to kill his Dad.

Because 439 words in to the speech last night, he trotted out 9/11 again.

In advocating and prosecuting this war he passed on a chance to get Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi. To get Muqtada Al-Sadr.
To get Bin Laden.

He sent in fewer troops than the Generals told him to.

He ordered the Iraqi army disbanded and the Iraqi government "De-Baathified."

He short-changed Iraqi training. He neglected to plan for widespread looting. He did not anticipate sectarian violence.

He sent in troops without life-saving equipment. Gave jobs to foreign contractors, and not Iraqis. He staffed U.S. positions there, based on partisanship, not professionalism.

He and his government told us "America had prevailed", "Mission Accomplished", the resistance was in its "last throes".

He has insisted more troops were not necessary. He has now insisted more troops are necessary.

He has insisted it's up to the generals, and then removed some of the generals who said more troops would not be necessary.

He has trumpeted the turning points: The fall of Baghdad; the death of Uday and Qusay; the capture of Saddam; A provisional government; a charter; a constitution; the trial of Saddam; elections; purple fingers; another government; the death of Saddam.

He has assured us: we would be greeted as liberators with flowers; as they stood up, we would stand down. We would stay the course; we were never about "stay the course." We would never have to go door-to-door in Baghdad. And last night, that to gain Iraqis' trust, we would go door-to-door in Baghdad.

He told us the enemy was Al-Qaeda, foreign fighters, terrorists, Baathists, and now Iran and Syria.

The war would pay for itself. It would cost 1.7 billion dollars. 100 billion. 400 billion. Half a trillion. Last night's speech alone cost another six billion.

And after all of that, now it is his credibility versus that of generals, diplomats, allies, Democrats, Republicans, the Iraq Study Group, past presidents, voters last November, and the majority of the American people.

Oh, and one more to add, tonight: Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

Mr. Bush, this is madness.

You have lost the military.

You have lost the Congress to the Democrats.

You have lost most of the Iraqis.

You have lost many of the Republicans.

You have lost our Allies.

You are losing the credibility, not just of your Presidency, but more importantly of the office itself.

And most imperatively, you are guaranteeing that more American troops will be losing their lives, and more families their loved ones. You are guaranteeing it!

This becomes your legacy, sir: How many of those you addressed last night as your "fellow citizens" you just sent to their deaths?

And for what, Mr. Bush?

So the next President has to pull the survivors out of Iraq instead of you?

Good night and good luck.

And Now A Word From President Batshit Crazy

2007-01-11T00:01:00.000-06:00

Reading Bush's speech, I had to wonder if the decider had gone off his antipsychotics.

This time though he doesn't have a mob at his back carrying torches. The American people have finally parted company with this buffoon. They aren't coming back.

Some 70 percent of the public rejects Bush's plan to escalate the Iraq occupation. And that was before he opened his mouth last night.

But will Congress follow Sen Kennedy's call to assert itself and halt the so-called surge dead in its tracks? No. The air will be hot with rhetoric, but any resolution passed will be symbolic.

The "surge" is a done deal. More troops already are on their way to the sandbox, while others already there are being "stop lossed" locking them in.

Yet it's clear to the overwhelming majority of military experts (and anyone with a brain) that 21,500 more American soldiers can't and won't alter the outcome.

Bush says he's changing strategy, but what his speech was about was cynical politics--a gesture that let's him punt the Iraq disaster to the next president.

If, as I fear, Fallujah-style tactics are planned for Baghdad (house to house searches, forced relocations, razing entire neighborhoods, acting as hired guns for Shia against Sunni), the pictures from Iraq are about to get even bloodier.

None of which deters Mr Bush. He's even threatened a wider war against Iran and Syria.

Bush's speech fits Franklin's classic definition of insanity. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

You know, batshit crazy.

There's Tony Snow's Version Of 'Mission Accomplished.' Then There's The Truth

2007-01-10T00:36:00.000-06:00

At yesterday's WH press briefing, Tony Snow worked overtime to spin Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech. "I think the public ought to just listen to what the president has to say. You know that the mission accomplished banner was put up by members of the USS Abraham Lincoln, and the president, on that very speech, said just the opposite, didn’t he?" No he didn't, Tony. Not even close. And the bit about the sailors being responsible for the banner. It was a lie then, Tony. It's still a lie now.

Let's return, then, to the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, an aircraft carrier whose planes had released over a third of the three million pounds of ordnance that had just hit Iraq. It had almost reached its homeport, San Diego, the previous day, but was held about 30 miles out in the Pacific because the President, as New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd would point out, chose to co-pilot an S-3B Viking sub reconnaissance U.S. Navy jet onto its deck rather than far less dramatically climb stairs.

"That day certainly seemed like the ultimate triumphalist political photo op as well as the launching pad for George Bush's 2004 reelection campaign. British journalist Matthew Engel referred to the President then as 'the stuntman in the bomber jacket.' It was actually a flight suit, but the phrase caught something of the moment. The Tom Cruise film Top Gun -- made, by the way, with copious help from the U.S. Navy -- was on everyone's mind in what Elizabeth Bumiller of the Times called 'one of the most audacious moments of presidential theater in American history.' It seemed to confirm that George Bush was a more skilled actor-president than Ronald Reagan had ever been.

"Unlike his father, the younger Bush was visibly comfortable in the business of creating fabulous fiction. We know that Scott Sforza, a former ABC producer, 'embedded' himself on that carrier days before the President hit the deck. Along with Bob DeServi, a former NBC cameraman and lighting specialist, and Greg Jenkins, a former Fox News television producer, he planned out every detail of the President's landing, as Bumiller put it, 'even down to the members of the Lincoln crew arrayed in coordinated shirt colors over Mr. Bush's right shoulder and the Mission Accomplished banner placed to perfectly capture the president and the celebratory two words in a single shot. The speech was specifically timed for what image makers call magic hour light, which cast a golden glow on Mr. Bush.'

"So, on that thrilling day, the President landed on what was essentially a movie set. After carefully taking off his helmet in private – no goofy Michael Dukakis moments here -- he made a Top Gun victory speech, avoiding Vietnam as politicians had largely done for two decades. The speech had World War II on the brain right down to the cribs from Churchill. ('We do not know the day of final victory, but we have seen the turning of the tide…') The President cited 'the character of our military through history -- the daring of Normandy, the fierce courage of Iwo Jima…' Given his frame of reference, he probably meant from The Sands of Iwo Jima to Saving Private Ryan. Then he spoke of 'the decency and idealism that turned enemies into allies [and] is fully present in this generation.'

"He also delivered his now-infamous almost-victory line against the background of that Mission Accomplished banner, claiming that 'major combat operations in Iraq have ended.'

"Give George Bush credit: When it came to not-quite-battle footage, he proved he could don a military uniform, get in a military vehicle, and carry it off with panache. His on-deck Tom Cruise 'swagger' would be a staple of press coverage for weeks. And above all, he clearly loved landing on that deck, wearing that outfit, making that speech. He was having the time of his life.

"But even as his advance men were bringing it off, even as he was glorying in his color-coded tale of battle triumph, something was beginning to devour that moment of presidential glory. A headline that went with the CNN account of his landing that day caught this well: 'Bush calls end to major combat,' it said, but there was also a subhead, little noted at the time: 'U.S. Central Command: Seven [American soldiers] hurt in Fallujah grenade attack.' Those two headlines would struggle for dominance for the next couple of years, a struggle now long over.

"Let's consider the odd fate of the perfect fiction Bush's men put together on the Abraham Lincoln, because it was typical of what has happened to administration image-making and story-telling. Only six months later, Time magazine was already writing, 'The perfect photo-op has flopped,' and claiming that, shades of Vietnam, the President had a 'growing credibility problem.' By then, instead of preparing for a series of Top-Gun reelection ads, the President and his advance men were busy bobbing and weaving when it came to that fateful 'Mission Accomplished' banner. By then, those Iraqi grenades had multiplied into a Sunni insurrection and Fallujah had morphed into a resistant enemy city that, in November 2004, would be largely destroyed by American firepower without ever being fully subdued; and the President was already pinning the idea for creating that banner on the sailors and airmen of the Abraham Lincoln; only to have the White House finally admit that it had produced the banner -- supposedly at the request of those same sailors and airmen; and then, well … not. Long before May 1 rolled around again, 'mission accomplished' would be a scarlet phrase of shame -- useful only to Bush critics and despised Democrats...."

Text from "In the Rubble," an essay by Tom Engelhardt

Hell Just Froze Over

2007-01-09T00:26:00.000-06:00

Never thought I'd be quoting Ollie North. Never. Of course, most of Ollie's column is hogwash. What progress in Iraq, Mr North? But the part about Bush's "surge" being totally stupid isn't. Hard to believe. Bush has even lost a nutter like Oliver North. How bad is that?

More Troops = More Targets

... Adding 10,000 or 20,000 more U.S. combat troops -- mostly soldiers and Marines -- isn't going to improve Iraqi willingness to fight their own fight -- an imperative if we are to claim victory in this war. While putting 200,000 American or NATO troops on the Iranian and Syrian borders to stop infiltration might make sense, that's "mission impossible" given the size of U.S. and allied armed forces.

[snip]

A "surge" or "targeted increase in U.S. troop strength" or whatever the politicians want to call dispatching more combat troops to Iraq isn't the answer. Adding more trainers and helping the Iraqis to help themselves, is. Sending more U.S. combat troops is simply sending more targets.

The War That Wasn't For Oil, Was

2007-01-08T07:49:00.000-06:00

The motives behind our insane occupation of Iraq were as rotten as you always knew they were. The Independent/UK has the story of the great oil robbery.

Future of Iraq: The spoils of war

• How the West will make a killing on Iraqi oil riches

Iraq's massive oil reserves, the third-largest in the world, are about to be thrown open for large-scale exploitation by Western oil companies under a controversial law which is expected to come before the Iraqi parliament within days.

The US government has been involved in drawing up the law, a draft of which has been seen by The Independent on Sunday. It would give big oil companies such as BP, Shell and Exxon 30-year contracts to extract Iraqi crude and allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil interests in the country since the industry was nationalised in 1972.

The huge potential prizes for Western firms will give ammunition to critics who say the Iraq war was fought for oil. They point to statements such as one from Vice-President Dick Cheney, who said in 1999, while he was still chief executive of the oil services company Halliburton, that the world would need an additional 50 million barrels of oil a day by 2010. "So where is the oil going to come from?... The Middle East, with two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies," he said.

Oil industry executives and analysts say the law, which would permit Western companies to pocket up to three-quarters of profits in the early years, is the only way to get Iraq's oil industry back on its feet after years of sanctions, war and loss of expertise. But it will operate through "production-sharing agreements" (or PSAs) which are highly unusual in the Middle East, where the oil industry in Saudi Arabia and Iran, the world's two largest producers, is state controlled.

Opponents say Iraq, where oil accounts for 95 per cent of the economy, is being forced to surrender an unacceptable degree of sovereignty.

Proposing the parliamentary motion for war in 2003, Tony Blair denied the "false claim" that "we want to seize" Iraq's oil revenues. He said the money should be put into a trust fund, run by the UN, for the Iraqis, but the idea came to nothing. The same year Colin Powell, then Secretary of State, said: "It cost a great deal of money to prosecute this war. But the oil of the Iraqi people belongs to the Iraqi people; it is their wealth, it will be used for their benefit. So we did not do it for oil."

Supporters say the provision allowing oil companies to take up to 75 per cent of the profits will last until they have recouped initial drilling costs. After that, they would collect about 20 per cent of all profits, according to industry sources in Iraq. But that is twice the industry average for such deals.

Greg Muttitt, a researcher for Platform, a human rights and environmental group which monitors the oil industry, said Iraq was being asked to pay an enormous price over the next 30 years for its present instability. "They would lose out massively," he said, "because they don't have the capacity at the moment to strike a good deal."

Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister, Barham Salih, who chairs the country's oil committee, is expected to unveil the legislation as early as today. "It is a redrawing of the whole Iraqi oil industry [to] a modern standard," said Khaled Salih, spokesman for the Kurdish Regional Government, a party to the negotiations. The Iraqi government hopes to have the law on the books by March....

Good News If True

2007-01-07T12:32:00.000-06:00

Politicians love to talk about reform. Few ever want to do anything about it. Maybe this time will be the exception. The New York Times reports.

Leadership Tries to Restrain Fiefs in New Congress

WASHINGTON, Jan. 6 — Less than 24 hours after taking over as speaker, Representative Nancy Pelosi summoned the new chairmen of five committees with responsibility for various aspects of Iraq policy to her office to review and coordinate plans for hearings and inquiries.

The gathering on Friday would have been unthinkable when Democrats last controlled the House. In the days before the 1994 Republican takeover, all-powerful Democratic chairmen ruled their committees with impunity, doing what they wanted, when they wanted, with little regard to the views of the speaker or others in the upper ranks.

Now the new Democratic leaders of the House and Senate want to avoid a return to that era by forging a working relationship with the men and women who will actually write the bills and lead the Congressional investigations. Top lawmakers acknowledge that finding a way to keep the overarching goals of the party from clashing with the objectives of the independent chairmen will be crucial to keeping Democratic control from spiraling out of control....

Changing Times

2007-01-06T23:39:00.000-06:00

Note the ratio of Democrats to Republicans. How times have changed. Even among the Sunday gasbags set.

ABC's "This Week" Reps. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., David Obey, D-Wis. and Henry Waxman, D-Calif.; former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft; former Rep. Harold Ford Jr., D-Tenn.

CBS' "Face the Nation" House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

NBC's "Meet the Press" Sens. Joe Biden, D-Del., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

CNN's "Late Edition" Iraq's national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie; Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.; Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott, R-Miss.; House Minority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo.; Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, presidential candidate.

Loser

2007-01-05T22:48:00.000-06:00

Full disclosure: In 2004 I went door to door to get the vote out for John Kerry in Wisconsin.

But no way was he my first choice.

Howard Dean was. When his campaign faltered, I switched to Wes Clark. When Clark's campaign stumbled, I went for John Edwards. In my book Kerry was an uninspiring loser. Unfortunately, he didn't prove me wrong.

During the 2004 presidential race, Kerry's timid, lackluster campaigning--his aloofness, his failure to take on the Swiftboaters, his unwillingness to tear into Bush's cowboy posturing as c-in-c--did what I never thought possible. Made a genuine war hero with a Silver Star look like a wimp next to Commander AWOL.

2004 was all about strength and national security, stupid. Did Kerry not get the memo?

McAuliffe's insider account tells the sad tale of a pol who clearly doesn't deserve the chance to lose another race. RAWSTORY has the link.

... McAuliffe said Kerry's camp was so afraid of offending swing voters that it didn't defend his record or criticize Bush. He said he was muzzled by Kerry's aides from assailing Bush's military record.

He said the campaign also ordered speeches at the Democratic National Convention to be scrubbed of any mention of Bush's name or his record - although McAuliffe privately encouraged firebrand Al Sharpton to go ahead with his attacks on the president in his crowd-pleasing speech.

"I thought the decision of the Kerry campaign to back off any real criticism of Bush was one of the biggest acts of political malpractice in the history of American politics," he said.

Meanwhile, Republicans went on a sharp tirade against Kerry at their convention. But when Bush said in an interview on the first day that he didn't think the U.S. could win the war on terror, Kerry did not respond. The Massachusetts senator was windsurfing off Nantucket, unaware of the president's comments.

McAuliffe said Kerry later told him that was one of the biggest mistakes of his campaign. "I should have gotten off the island," McAuliffe quotes Kerry as saying.

McAuliffe said he was "flabbergasted" to learn after the election that Kerry had $15 million left that he could have spent in the final push. "It was gross incompetence to hoard that money when the race was bound to be so close," McAuliffe said.

McAuliffe said Republicans told him they were shocked that Kerry just took the attacks on his military record, but also overjoyed. He said Bush called former President Clinton while he was recovering from his heart surgery in September 2004 and said, "The Kerry campaign is the most inept group I have ever seen in politics. Don't let them ruin your reputation."

He said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., asked him why Kerry wasn't fighting back more. "My guy (Bush) is no great shakes, but your guy (Kerry) looks like a wimp," McAuliffe quotes McCain as saying.

Kerry's former running mate, John Edwards, also was frustrated with the campaign, according to McAuliffe. McAuliffe said Edwards was angered that the campaign wouldn't let him go after Bush, but Kerry disputed Edwards' claim and said he was frustrated his vice presidential pick wasn't campaigning harder.

New Sheriff In Town

2007-01-04T23:00:00.000-06:00

With Bush in the White House and a gang of look-the-other-way lowlifes controlling Congress, corporate scum bags have enjoyed free ride for the last six years. Now the gravy train has derailed. Between Patrick Leahy in the Senate targeting war profiteers and Barney Frank in the House exposing corporate scammers and carpetbaggers in the wake of Katrina, the day of writing blank checks with zero accountability is over. TPM Muckraker has the story.

New Bills Target Profiteering, Public Corruption
... Today, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) introduced a bill, simply called The War Profiteering Prevention Act of 2007, targeting fraud by government contractors supporting the occupation of Iraq and the response to Hurricane Katrina. Such profiteering would be a felony under Leahy's legislation, punishable by up to 20 years in prison and fines of $1 million or twice the gross profits of the profiteering. The bill would also clarify U.S. courts' jurisdiction to handle cases of profiteering which occur overseas.

To make it a muck-fighting twofer, Leahy also joined Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR) to introduce a bill aimed at strengthening public corruption investigations. The proposal would extend the statute of limitations for many offenses, allow federal investigators to use wiretaps when chasing state and local officials defrauding the federal government, and would boost the FBI's public integrity budget by $100 million over four years.

Neocolonialism Always Doomed To Fail In Iraq

2007-01-03T12:04:00.000-06:00

The following "Ten Laws of Colonial Warfare" is excerpted from an article written in 2004 by Eric S. Margolis, a foreign correspondent based in Toronto, Canada. Most everything Margolis wrote back then about the US presence in Iraq has proved true, while most everything the Bush administration and its supporters have said and done has proved false. Bush is a selfish jerk and horrendously bad president, but he's not stupid. He knows the "new way forward" won't work. But he's unwilling to take the hit for this disaster. Instead he's buying time with the lives of Americans to save his reputation and ego. The US can't lose militarily in Iraq. So Bush will simply use the escalation to run out the clock over the next 24 months until he can hand over the mess--and blame the "loss" of Iraq on the next administration, which he already must know is unlikely to be a Republican one.

1. Most [Iraqis] don't want ... what President Bush calls 'freedom.' They want freedom from US occupation....

2. People will accept misrule, robbery, abuse, and torture by their own fellow citizens -- but not by foreigners.

3. The occupying power will always find locals ready to cooperate and join the colonial police and army for money. Ten percent will serve loyally; 50% will do nothing. The rest will covertly fight the occupiers, provide the resistance with intelligence, or quietly sabotage the occupation.

4. Most of those who cooperate with the occupation will maintain secret links with the resistance. Massive defections will occur the minute the occupiers show the first signs of thinking about withdrawal.

5. Tribal, clan, ethnic and religious loyalties will also prove stronger than political ones imposed by the occupier. You cannot buy loyalty; you can only rent it.

6. An inevitable byproduct of colonial adventures is an unwanted, usually massive influx of people from the conquered country.

7. Colonial occupations almost always cost far more than planned and produce negative earnings for the invader. Occupying Iraq and Afghanistan now costs at least US $6 billion monthly. The costs of garrisoning and running colonies usually exceeds [sic] what can be looted from them.

8. It's always cheaper to buy resources than plunder them. The Soviets thought they would pay for their invasion of Afghanistan by stealing its natural gas. The Washington neo-conservatives who engineered the Iraq war ludicrously claimed its stolen oil would fully cover the costs of invasion and occupation.

9. Guerilla wars waged among civilians inevitably produce hatred for occupiers and corrupt the invaders. Torture, brutality, mass reprisals against civilians, and black marketeering become epidemic, even among the best-discipline[d] troops. The longer occupation troops stay on, the more they become corrupted, brutalized, and addicted to drugs ...

10. Americans make poor colonialists. They lack the historical and cultural knowledge, subtlety, patience and Third World street smarts to be first-rate colonizers, like the French or British. They lack the ruthlessness and brutality of Dutch, Japanese, Spaniards, or Russian colonialists. Or the ability to blend with the local population, as did [the] Portugese.

[text of Margolis article reprinted from March 2005 post]

Nice Job NYT. But Where Were You Four Years Ago? Two Years Ago? One Year Ago?

2007-01-02T22:53:00.000-06:00

As the newspaper of record, the paper that published the Pentagon Papers, the NYT is capable of great work. At times it has been fearless in turning over the national government's biggest rocks and bringing truth to the American people. But in its coverage of the Bush administration, particularly since 9/11, the oversight, the scrutiny, the integrity the paper's reputation was built on often has been virtually nonexistent. Lately, things have begun to change. In today's analytical piece headlined "Chaos Overran Iraq Plan in ’06, Bush Team Says," you don't have to dive too deep between the lines to find the outrage and none too subtle hint that much of US policy on Iraq remains muddled, boneheaded and driven by ego. But such reporting coming now from the newspaper that allowed Judy "Great Sources" Miller's crap into print, sat on the exposé of Bush's illegal wiretapping program, soft-peddled the Downing Street memos and who knows what else? smacks of too little, too late.

"President Bush began 2006 assuring the country that he had a “strategy for victory in Iraq.” He ended the year closeted with his war cabinet on his ranch trying to devise a new strategy, because the existing one had collapsed."

[snip]

... But the plan [for turning over responsibility for security to the Iraqis, shrinking the number of American bases and beginning the gradual withdrawal of American troops] collided with Iraq’s ferocious unraveling, which took most of Mr. Bush’s war council by surprise.

In interviews in Washington and Baghdad, senior officials said the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department had also failed to take seriously warnings, including some from its own ambassador in Baghdad, that sectarian violence could rip the country apart and turn Mr. Bush’s promise to “clear, hold and build” Iraqi neighborhoods and towns into an empty slogan.

This left the president and his advisers constantly lagging a step or two behind events on the ground.

[snip]

This year, decisions on a new strategy were clearly slowed by political calculations. Many of Mr. Bush’s advisers say their timetable for completing an Iraq review had been based in part on a judgment that for Mr. Bush to have voiced doubts about his strategy before the midterm elections in November would have been politically catastrophic.

[snip]

... Bush made it clear that he was not interested in any ideas that would simply allow American forces to stabilize the violence. Gen. James T. Conway, the Marine commandant, later told marines about the president’s message.

“What I want to hear from you is how we’re going to win,” he quoted the president as warning his commanders, “not how we’re going to leave.”

[snip]

At the State Department, skepticism about General Casey’s strategy ran deep. Philip D. Zelikow, the counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice until he resigned in December, went to Iraq in late 2005, and returned with a recommendation that the first part of 2006 be devoted to a big push — military, economic and political — to boost the soon-to-be-formed Iraqi government. His approach contradicted the commitment to reductions.

[snip]

By May 2006, uneasy officials at the State Department and the National Security Council argued for a review of Iraq strategy. A meeting was convened at Camp David to consider those approaches, according to participants in the session, but Mr. Bush left early for a secret visit to Baghdad, where he reviewed the war plans with General Casey and Mr. Maliki, and met with the American pilot whose plane’s missiles killed Iraq’s Al Qaeda leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He returned to Washington in a buoyant mood.

The visit meant that the reconsideration of strategy was not as thorough as some officials hoped.

[snip]

... Bush still insists on talking about victory, even if his own advisers differ about how to define it. “It’s a word the American people understand,” he told members of the Iraq Study Group who came to see him at the White House in November, according to two commission members who attended. “And if I start to change it, it will look like I’m beginning to change my policy.”

Understanding The Costs Of A $2 Trillion War

2007-01-01T19:49:00.000-06:00

[reprinted post from June 27, 2006]

Linda Blimes, a lecturer on public policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, has been arguing for more than a year that the real cost of the continuing US occupation Iraq is going to be measured in the trillions, not billions, of dollars.

In her search for accountability, a virtue approaching extinction in Washington, DC, she has been joined by Joseph E. Stigltiz, a Nobel laureate in economics and professor at Columbia University.

Together, Blimes and Stiglitz considered budgetary costs (outlays from the US treasury) and economic costs (larger effects on the US economy) in calculating the long-term financial impact of the Iraq war on the economy of the United States.

In their estimates, Blimes and Stiglitz relied on government numbers. "Everything we used, except for data on the costs of caring for a brain-injured person, was from government sources," Blimes insisted.

The following estimates, not factored into current Iraq war cost projections, were excerpted from an article that ran in the May-June issue of Harvard magazine].

[Budgetary costs]

___Costs of caring for more than 17,000 wounded soldiers (to date)--25 percent of whom have crippling conditions such as brain injuries and multiple amputations and will need lifelong medical attention.

___Another 25 percent have suffered major injuries, including severe burns, deafness, and total or partial blindness.

___... medical expenses of all veterans, borne by the Veterans Administration: one-third of those back from Iraq, for example, have required some mental-health counseling.

___... In the first Gulf War, 550,000 soldiers fought and 400 were wounded in a conflict that lasted only one month. Even so, 169,000 of those veterans, or about 30 percent, are still claiming veterans' disability for various ailments, cost $2 billion annually.

___The researchers used an "extremely conservative" disability estimate of one-third of veterans to calculate their Iraq projections, though, as Blimes notes, "it could become two-thirds or even all veterans. And all of these costs are there even if we pull out tomorrow. We haven't paid it yet, but we already owe it."

___Weapons replenishment will absorb $100 billion, according to the CBO. "We are going through weapons at six times the peacetime rate and are using them faster than we make them."

___Reenlistment bonuses have risen from $25,000 to as high as $150,000. "Those costs will be carried forward," [Blimes] says. "Anything like that which you put into the military--it will be hard to claw them back [down] again."

___Death gratuities, paid to families of fallen soldiers have also risen, from $12,400 to $100,000. Life insurance settlements have jumped from $250,000 to $400,000.

___Blimes and Stiglitz used two scenarios to tote up interest on the national debt. (The government has not raised taxes to pay for war, but has borrowed instead.) One would have all US troops out of Iraq by 2010 ($98 billion in interest); the other projects a small force there until 2015 ($386 billion in interest).

___In sum, the long-term budgetary outlay for Iraq comes to about $1 trillion, even after subtracting the $12-billion worth of annual air patrols in the former no-fly zone. "Nobody seriously disputes [the figure]," Blimes says...

[Economic costs]

___Mobilizing the National Guard and reserves, for example, means that many soldiers move from a civilian to a (lesser) military wage, and this shrinks the GNP.

___... 44 percent of America's local police forces are missing one or more officers to Iraq. The researchers added in the "value of a statistical life" for those killed, using a figure of $6 million per death.

___Homeland security preparedness also suffers from tying up 600,000 troops in the Iraq effort at one time or another; 40 percent of these are National Guard and reserves--"first-responder types," Blimes says. During Hurricane Katrina, 7,000 Louisiana and Mississippi National Guard members were unavailable to help because they were in Iraq. "If there were a major national disaster of terrorist attack tomorrow," Bliems says, "we would all bear the cost."

___Oil prices have increased from $29 to $60 [now more than $70] per barrel since the war began, and the researchers attributed $5 or $10, under different models, of that increase to the conflict, which has decreased Iraqi oil production and produced general instability in the Middle East.

___... given that the United States imports 4.75 billion to 5 billion barrels annually, these models imply a transfer of resources to oil producers of $25 to $50 billion per year. "Americans are, in a sense, poorer by that amount," the authors write. The oil price increase also has an indirect multiplier effect by reducing consumers' overall purchasing power.

___Other macroeconomic effects involve "counterfactuals"--what would have been the case in the absence of an Iraq war.... "What would happen [let's say] if you had spent $500 billion and bought something else?"

___That money might have gone into investments--in infrastructure like roads, for example, that would have stimulated the American economy more in the short run, and would also have long-term growth benefits.

___In the authors' "moderate" scenario, the combination of expenditure switching from civilian to war outlays ... drains $450 billion from the economy.

"It's hard to imagine any way of spending that money," Blimes says, "that would have a less positive impact on the US economy."

With so much debt hanging out there, so much Iraq spending off budget and so many costs not even admitted to, the bills for George W Bush's war will continue to roll in for decades, with potentially ruinous effect.

America's children will have every right to curse the parent fool enough to have voted to keep this corrupt little man and his posse of incompetent ideologues in power.

No Way Death Of Saddam Worth Lives Of 3,000 Americans

2006-12-31T22:17:00.000-06:00

This is George W Bush's war.

It is an obscenity.

It's lasted longer than our involvement in World War II.

It's killed more Americans than the terrorist attacks of 9/11. And resulted in the wounding of 40,000 US servicemen and women.

It's led to the slaughter of upwards of 600,000 Iraqis.

All to serve some weird daddy-hating, revenge fantasy psychodrama of the intellectual and moral midget who inhabits the White House, the incompetent misleader who 62 million American voters (to their everlasting shame) voted to return to office in 2004.

If Bush gets his way and the "sustained surge" or "one last shot" road is taken, the next 12 months are predictable.

By this time next year -- two Friedman Units from now -- we'll be talking about 4,000 dead GIs.

And Iraq will still be a fucking disaster.

U.S. death toll in Iraq reaches 3,000

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The death of a Texas soldier, announced Sunday by the Pentagon, raised the number of U.S. military deaths in Iraq to at least 3,000 since the war began, according to an Associated Press count.

The grim milestone was crossed on the final day of 2006 and at the end of the deadliest month for the American military in Iraq in the past 12 months. At least 111 U.S. service members were reported to have died in December.

Spc. Dustin R. Donica, 22, of Spring, Texas, was killed Thursday by small arms fire in Baghdad, the Defense Department said. Donica was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 509th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Airborne Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division....

All This Spin Is Making My Head Hurt

2006-12-30T00:00:00.000-06:00

WH: bin Laden Capture "A Success That Hasn't Occured Yet"

Five years after the Sept. 11 attacks, Osama bin Laden is still at large -- but that's not a failure of White House policy, says Frances Fragos Townsend. As she explained to CNN's White House correspondent Ed Henry last night:

HENRY: You know, going back to September 2001, the president said, dead or alive, we're going to get him. Still don't have him. I know you are saying there's successes on the war on terror, and there have been. That's a failure.

TOWNSEND: Well, I'm not sure -- it's a success that hasn't occurred yet. I don't know that I view that as a failure.

TPM Muckraker posted this yesterday. In the comments section, Lev Raphael nailed Townsend's flacktacular nonsense delivering what has to be the comment of the day.

So many possibilities:

It's not bankruptcy, just financial growth that hasn't occurred yet.

It's not illness, just health that hasn't flourished yet.

It's not stupidity, just intelligence that hasn't developed yet.

It's not civil war, it's just democracy that hasn't taken hold yet.

Top 10 Myths About Iraq

2006-12-29T00:01:00.000-06:00

Juan Cole dissects.

1. Myth number one is that the United States "can still win" in Iraq. Of course, the truth of this statement, frequently still made by William Kristol and other Neoconservatives, depends on what "winning" means. But if it means the establishment of a stable, pro-American, anti-Iranian government with an effective and even-handed army and police force in the near or even medium term, then the assertion is frankly ridiculous. The Iraqi "government" is barely functioning. The parliament was not able to meet in December because it could not attain a quorum. Many key Iraqi politicians live most of the time in London, and much of parliament is frequently abroad. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki does not control large swathes of the country, and could give few orders that had any chance of being obeyed. The US military cannot shore up this government, even with an extra division, because the government is divided against itself. Most of the major parties trying to craft legislation are also linked to militias on the streets who are killing one another. It is over with. Iraq is in for years of heavy political violence of a sort that no foreign military force can hope to stop.

The United States cannot "win" in the sense defined above. It cannot. And the blindly arrogant assumption that it can win is calculated to get more tens of thousands of Iraqis killed and more thousands of American soldiers and Marines badly wounded or killed. Moreover, since Iraq is coming apart at the seams under the impact of our presence there, there is a real danger that we will radically destabilize it and the whole oil-producing Gulf if we try to stay longer.

2. "US military sweeps of neighborhoods can drive the guerrillas out." The US put an extra 15,000 men into Baghdad this past summer, aiming to crush the guerrillas and stop the violence in the capital, and the number of attacks actually increased. This result comes about in part because the guerrillas are not outsiders who come in and then are forced out. The Sunni Arabs of Ghazaliya and Dora districts in the capital are the "insurgents." The US military cannot defeat the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement or "insurgency" with less than 500,000 troops, based on what we have seen in the Balkans and other such conflict situations. The US destroyed Falluja, and even it and other cities of al-Anbar province are not now safe! The US military leaders on the ground have spoken of the desirability of just withdrawing from al-Anbar to Baghdad and giving up on it. In 2003, 14 percent of Sunni Arabs thought it legitimate to attack US personnel and facilities. In August, 2006, over 70 percent did. How long before it is 100%? Winning guerrilla wars requires two victories, a military victory over the guerrillas and a winning of the hearts and minds of the general public, thus denying the guerrillas support. The US has not and is unlikely to be able to repress the guerrillas, and it is losing hearts and minds at an increasing and alarming rate. They hate us, folks. They don't want us there.

3. The United States is best off throwing all its support behind the Iraqi Shiites. This is the position adopted fairly consistently by Marc Reuel Gerecht. Gerecht is an informed and acute observer whose views I respect even when I disagree with them. But Washington policy-makers should read Daniel Goleman's work on social intelligence. Goleman points out that a good manager of a team in a corporation sets up a win/win framework for every member of the team. If you set it up on a win/lose basis, so that some are actively punished and others "triumph," you are asking for trouble. Conflict is natural. How you manage conflict is what matters. If you listen to employees' grievances and try to figure out how they can be resolved in such a way that everyone benefits, then you are a good manager.

Gerecht, it seems to me, sets up a win/lose model in Iraq. The Shiites and Kurds win it all, and the Sunni Arabs get screwed over. Practically speaking, the Bush policy has been Gerechtian, which in my view has caused all the problems. We shouldn't have thought of our goal as installing the Shiites in power. Of course, Bush hoped that those so installed would be "secular," and that is what Wolfowitz and Chalabi had promised him. Gerecht came up with the ex post facto justification that even the religious Shiites are moving toward democracy via Sistani. But democracy cannot be about one sectarian identity prevailing over, and marginalizing others.

The Sunni Arabs have demonstrated conclusively that they can act effectively as spoilers in the new Iraq. If they aren't happy, no one is going to be. The US must negotiate with the guerrilla leaders and find a win/win framework for them to come in from the cold and work alongside the Kurds and the religious Shiites. About this, US Ambassador in Baghdad Zalmay Khalilzad has been absolutely right.

4. "Iraq is not in a civil war," as Jurassic conservative Fox commentator Bill O'Reilly insists. There is a well-established social science definition of civil war put forward by Professor J. David Singer and his colleagues: "Sustained military combat, primarily internal, resulting in at least 1,000 battle-deaths per year, pitting central government forces against an insurgent force capable of effective resistance, determined by the latter's ability to inflict upon the government forces at least 5 percent of the fatalities that the insurgents sustain." (Errol A. Henderson and J. David Singer, "Civil War in the Post-Colonial World, 1946-92," Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 37, No. 3, May 2000.)" See my article on this in Salon.com. By Singer's definition, Iraq has been in civil war since the Iraqi government was reestablished in summer of 2004. When I have been around political scientists, as at the ISA conference, I have found that scholars in that field tend to accept Singer's definition.

5. "The second Lancet study showing 600,000 excess deaths from political and criminal violence since the US invasion is somehow flawed." Les Roberts replies here to many of the objections that were raised. See also the transcript of the Kucinich-Paul Congressional hearings on the subject. Many critics refer to the numbers of dead reported in the press as counter-arguments to Roberts et al. But "passive reporting" such as news articles never captures more than a fraction of the casualties in any war. I see deaths reported in the Arabic press all the time that never show up in the English language wire services. And, a lot of towns in Iraq don't have local newspapers and many local deaths are not reported in the national newspapers.

6. "Most deaths in Iraq are from bombings." The Lancet study found that the majority of violent deaths are from being shot.

7. "Baghdad and environs are especially violent but the death rate is lower in the rest of the country." The Lancet survey found that levels of violence in the rest of the country are similar to that in Baghdad (remember that the authors included criminal activities such as gang and smuggler turf wars in their statistics). The Shiite south is spared much Sunni-Shiite communal fighting, but criminal gangs, tribal feuds, and militias fight one another over oil and antiquities smuggling, and a lot of people are getting shot down there, too.

8. "Iraq is the central front in the war on terror." From the beginning of history until 2003 there had never been a suicide bombing in Iraq. There was no al-Qaeda in Baath-ruled Iraq. When Baath intelligence heard that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi might have entered Iraq, they grew alarmed at such an "al-Qaeda" presence and put out an APB on him! Zarqawi's so-called "al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia" was never "central" in Iraq and was never responsible for more than a fraction of the violent attacks. This assertion is supported by the outcome of a US-Jordanian operation that killed Zarqawi this year. His death had no impact whatsoever on the level of violence. There are probably only about 1,000 foreign fighters even in Iraq, and most of them are first-time volunteers, not old-time terrorists. The 50 major guerrilla cells in Sunni Arab Iraq are mostly made up of Iraqis, and are mainly: 1) Baathist or neo-Baathist, 2) Sunni revivalist or Salafi, 3) tribally-based, or 4) based in city quarters. Al-Qaeda is mainly a boogey man, invoked in Iraq on all sides, but possessing little real power or presence there. This is not to deny that radical Sunni Arab volunteers come to Iraq to blow things (and often themselves) up. They just are not more than an auxiliary to the big movements, which are Iraqi.

9. "The Sunni Arab guerrillas in places like Ramadi will follow the US home to the American mainland and commit terrorism if we leave Iraq." This assertion is just a variation on the invalid domino theory. People in Ramadi only have one beef with the United States. Its troops are going through their wives' underwear in the course of house searches every day. They don't want the US troops in their town or their homes, dictating to them that they must live under a government of Shiite clerics and Kurdish warlords (as they think of them). If the US withdrew and let the Iraqis work out a way to live with one another, people in Ramadi will be happy. They are not going to start taking flight lessons and trying to get visas to the US. This argument about following us, if it were true, would have prevented us from ever withdrawing from anyplace once we entered a war there. We'd be forever stuck in the Philippines for fear that Filipino terrorists would follow us back home. Or Korea (we moved 15,000 US troops out of South Korea not so long ago. Was that unwise? Are the thereby liberated Koreans now gunning for us?) Or how about the Dominican Republic? Haiti? Grenada? France? The argument is a crock.

10. "Setting a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq is a bad idea." Bush and others in his administration have argued that setting such a timetable would give a significant military advantage to the guerrillas fighting US forces and opposed to the new government. That assertion makes sense only if there were a prospect that the US could militarily crush the Sunni Arabs. There is no such prospect. The guerrilla war is hotter now than at any time since the US invasion. It is more widely supported by more Sunni Arabs than ever before. It is producing more violent attacks than ever before. Since we cannot defeat them short of genocide, we have to negotiate with them. And their first and most urgent demand is that the US set a timetable for withdrawal before they will consider coming into the new political system. That is, we should set a timetable in order to turn the Sunni guerrillas from combatants to a political negotiating partner. Even Sunni politicians cooperating with the US make this demand. They are disappointed with the lack of movement on the issue. How long do they remain willing to cooperate? In addition, 131 Iraqi members of parliament signed a demand that the US set a timetable for withdrawal. (138 would be a simple majority.) It is a a major demand of the Sadr Movement. In fact, the 32 Sadrist MPs withdrew from the ruling United Iraqi Alliance coalition temporarily over this issue.

In my view, Shiite leaders such as Abdul Aziz al-Hakim are repeatedly declining to negotiate in good faith with the Sunni Arabs or to take their views seriously. Al-Hakim knows that if the Sunnis give him any trouble, he can sic the Marines on them. The US presence is making it harder for Iraqi to compromise with Iraqi, which is counterproductive.

Last Place To Be In A Civil War: In The Middle

2006-12-28T01:08:00.000-06:00

What exactly is the "surge" in US forces supposed to accomplish? Escalation puts more American targets in the middle of rampant sectarian violence in a vain effort to prop up a fiction, a government that exists only in the Green Zone under the protection of American guns. Once again the fantasies being kicked around in Washington appear disconnected from reality.

Sectarian Ties Weaken Duty’s Call for Iraq Forces

BAGHDAD, Dec. 27 — The car parked outside was almost certainly a tool of the Sunni insurgency. It was pocked with bullet holes and bore fake license plates. The trunk had cases of unused sniper bullets and a notice to a Shiite family telling them to abandon their home.

“Otherwise, your rotten heads will be cut off,” the note read.

The soldiers who came upon the car in a Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad were part of a joint American and Iraqi patrol, and the Americans were ready to take action. The Iraqi commander, however, taking orders by cellphone from the office of a top Sunni politician, said to back off: the car’s owner was known and protected at a high level.

For Maj. William Voorhies, the American commander of the military training unit at the scene, the moment encapsulated his increasingly frustrating task — trying to build up Iraqi security forces who themselves are being used as proxies in a spreading sectarian war. This time, it was a Sunni politician — Vice Prime Minister Salam al-Zubaie — but the more powerful Shiites interfered even more often.

“I have come to the conclusion that this is no longer America’s war in Iraq, but the Iraqi civil war where America is fighting,” Major Voorhies said.

A two-day reporting trip accompanying Major Voorhies’s unit and combat troops seemed to back his statement, as did other commanding officers expressing similar frustration.

“I have personally witnessed about a half-dozen of these incidents of what I would call political pressure, where a minister or someone from a minister’s office contacts one of these Iraqi commanders,” said Lt. Col. Steven Miska, the deputy commander for the Dagger Brigade Combat Team, First Infantry Division, who oversees combat operations in a wide swath of western Baghdad.

“These politicians are connected with either the militias or Sunni insurgents.”

Whatever plan the Bush administration unveils — a large force increase, a withdrawal or something in between — this country’s security is going to be left in the hands of Iraqi forces. Those forces, already struggling with corruption and infiltration, have shown little willingness to stand up to political pressure, especially when the Americans are not there to support them. That suggests, the commanders say, that if the Americans leave soon, violence will redouble. And that makes their mission, Major Voorhies and Colonel Miska say, more important than ever.

They added that while political pressure on the Iraqi Army is great, the influence exerted on the police force, which is much more heavily infiltrated by Shiite militia groups, is even greater.

Shiites, led by militia forces and often aided by the local police, are clearly ascendant, Colonel Miska said.

“It seems very controlled and deliberate and concentrated on expanding the area they control,” he said.

The Sunni forces are being bolstered by support from insurgent strongholds in the West. The Shiite militias are using neighborhoods in the north, specifically Shuala and Sadr City, as bases of operation. There is also increasing evidence that militia members from southern cities like Basra are coming to Baghdad to join the fight.

“I believe everyone, to some extent, is influenced by the militias,” Colonel Miska said. “While some Iraqi security forces may be complicit with the militias, others fear for their families when confronting the militia, and that is the more pervasive threat.”

Looking at a map he had his intelligence officers create, which highlights current battle zones and details the changing religious makeup of neighborhoods, Colonel Miska noted just how many different forces, each answering to different bosses, currently occupied the battlefield.

“Who would design this mess?” he said. “It is like an orchestra where everyone is playing a different song.”

His main focus, he said, is trying to establish some kind of unity of command.

As it stands, the police and military answer to different ministries, and within the police force the bureaucracy is divided even further between the regular police and the national police. On top of that are about 145,000 armed men who work as protection detail for the Facilities Protection Services, with minimal oversight, according to United States military officials.

There are also thousands of Shiite militia members and Sunni insurgents posing as security forces.

Colonel Miska tried to define where American forces fit in the tangle of competing interests, which is only further complicated by the complicity and direct participation of top government officials.

“When they are conducting armed aggression against the population, that is where we try and step in and stop it,” he said, adding that when the groups fight one another, “We sit back and watch because that can only benefit us.”

Some days, the line between militia and insurgent clashes and attacks on the population is a blurry one....

The Decline And Fall Of The American Empire

2006-12-27T01:26:00.000-06:00

Military Considers Recruiting Foreigners

Washington - The armed forces, already struggling to meet recruiting goals, are considering expanding the number of noncitizens in the ranks - including disputed proposals to open recruiting stations overseas and putting more immigrants on a faster track to US citizenship if they volunteer - according to Pentagon officials.

Foreign citizens serving in the US military is a highly charged issue, which could expose the Pentagon to criticism that it is essentially using mercenaries to defend the country. Other analysts voice concern that a large contingent of noncitizens under arms could jeopardize national security or reflect badly on Americans' willingness to serve in uniform....

Six years of George W Bush not only have brought disaster to the Middle East, they have brought the finest all-volunteer military in the world to the brink of ruin. In launching a preemptive invasion of Iraq, followed by endless occupation, Bush has violated the principles of the Powell Doctrine, putting unsustainable stress on a US military that relies on massive firepower and technological superiority to win quickly and with minimum casualties. Bloody wars of attrition do not fit the profile. In addition, Bush's lies to the American people needed to sell the war have fatally demaged US credibility and demolished the myth that US foreign policy is benign or its military policy defensive. The Iraq misadventure, egged on by the ravings of neoconservatives, has shown the US to be dangerously imperialist, and set in motion a grim process likely to result in humiliating defeat in that country and, possibly, a much wider war in the most dangerous region on earth. In green lighting proposals to recruit foreign nationals to fill the ranks, the Pentagon not only is acknowledging the dire state of an all-volunteer military that has taken decades to built; it may be signaling a plan to maintain a large and aggressive military bootprint in Iraq for many years to come.

Entire Island Disappears. Senator Inhofe Accuses Magician

2006-12-26T14:37:00.000-06:00

Global warming a giant liberal hoax, Oklahoma Republican and outgoing chairman of the Senate's environment committee James Inhofe still insists. David Copperfield responsible, lawmaker says. Demands famed illusionist "reappear" vanished land mass.

Disappearing world: Global warming claims tropical island

Rising seas, caused by global warming, have for the first time washed an inhabited island off the face of the Earth. The obliteration of Lohachara island, in India's part of the Sundarbans where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal, marks the moment when one of the most apocalyptic predictions of environmentalists and climate scientists has started coming true.

As the seas continue to swell, they will swallow whole island nations, from the Maldives to the Marshall Islands, inundate vast areas of countries from Bangladesh to Egypt, and submerge parts of scores of coastal cities.

Eight years ago, as exclusively reported in The Independent on Sunday, the first uninhabited islands - in the Pacific atoll nation of Kiribati - vanished beneath the waves. The people of low-lying islands in Vanuatu, also in the Pacific, have been evacuated as a precaution, but the land still juts above the sea. The disappearance of Lohachara, once home to 10,000 people, is unprecedented.

It has been officially recorded in a six-year study of the Sunderbans by researchers at Calcutta's Jadavpur University. So remote is the island that the researchers first learned of its submergence, and that of an uninhabited neighbouring island, Suparibhanga, when they saw they had vanished from satellite pictures.

Two-thirds of nearby populated island Ghoramara has also been permanently inundated. Dr Sugata Hazra, director of the university's School of Oceanographic Studies, says "it is only a matter of some years" before it is swallowed up too. Dr Hazra says there are now a dozen "vanishing islands" in India's part of the delta. The area's 400 tigers are also in danger.

Until now the Carteret Islands off Papua New Guinea were expected to be the first populated ones to disappear, in about eight years' time, but Lohachara has beaten them to the dubious distinction....

The Scandal That Threatens To Bring Down Tony Blair

2006-12-25T00:47:00.000-06:00

This could do Labour in. Really. The Independent UK reports,

No 10 'in panic' as Yard extends 'cash for honours' inquiry

The UK's elections watchdog is to decide whether Labour has broken the law over cash for honours, and will advise police on whether a case should go to court....

Amid panic in Downing Street, police are understood to have widened their inquiry and to be examining several aspects of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act (PPERA) which the party is believed to have flouted. Sources close to the inquiry believe the case for a prosecution is getting stronger.

The Independent on Sunday has learnt that police are "taking very seriously" evidence that several parts of the Act may have been breached. Scotland Yard is specifically looking at whether, if loans were made on non-commercial terms, Labour failed to disclose the "benefit", besides other possible breaches....

As leader of the Labour Party, Mr Blair could be culpable under the law, along with Matt Carter, the former general secretary and registered treasurer of the party. Penalties under the Act include prison terms of up to a year. Mr Blair's police interview focused on his decision to nominate four millionaire donors to the Labour Party for honours. The police wanted to know why he thought the millionaires, who also lent money to Labour, were suitable for positions in the Lords.

Under the 1925 Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act, the police are investigating allegations that millionaire Labour donors and lenders received peerages in return for huge donations and loans to the Labour Party in the months before....

Downing Street officials including Ruth Turner, John McTernan, director of political operations, and Jonathan Powell, Mr Blair's chief of staff, are expected to be reinterviewed by the police about gaps in evidence.

The police are considering whether the loans were given on commercial terms. If not, Labour should have publicly disclosed the "benefit" of receiving loans on favourable financial terms. Other political parties, including the Liberal Democrats, have disclosed the financial benefits of receiving loans on favourable terms.

Hell, They're Not Hungry. They Just Have 'Low Food Security'

2006-12-24T12:01:00.000-06:00

When the USDA released its annual survey on hunger in the America this November, something was missing from the report. The word "hunger." Instead, the term "low food security" had been substituted. Wonder what euphemism the Bush administration has coined for homelessness. From Reuters,

More Americans hungry, homeless in 2006 ...

More Americans went homeless and hungry in 2006 than the year before and children made up almost a quarter of those in emergency shelters, said a report released on Thursday by the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

"The face of hunger and homelessness right now ... is young children, young families," said the conference's president, Douglas Palmer, the mayor of Trenton, New Jersey.

The survey of 23 cities found civic and government groups received, on average, 7 percent more requests for food aid in 2006 than in 2005, following a 12 percent jump in 2005.

Requests for shelter rose by an average of 9 percent in 2006, with requests from families with children rising by 5 percent. More than half the cities said family members often had to split up to stay in different shelters.

As the numbers who could not buy their own food grew, more than half the cities, including Los Angeles and Boston, said groups spread resources farther by giving less food to individuals or cutting the number of times people could receive help. The group estimated 23 percent of requests for emergency food assistance simply went unmet.

Franklin Cownie, the mayor of Des Moines, Iowa, who worked on the study, said he was troubled that more than a third of the adults asking for food aid were employed.

"If you look at the data, you'll find folks that have jobs that don't have enough money to feed themselves," he told reporters.

People remained homeless for an average of eight months in 2006, the report said. Trenton had the longest span, with those in poverty spending an average of 22 months in cars and shelters or on the street.

The survey relied on census statistics along with data that city officials collected from local agencies....

The New GOP Brand: The Party Of Bigots

2006-12-23T00:00:00.000-06:00

Consider the plight of the Grand Old Party. What once was The Party of Smaller Government (TM), The Fighter for Lower Taxes (TM), The Crusader for Responsible Spending and Balanced Budgets (TM), The Defender of Personal Liberty (i.e., freedom from government interference) (TM) and The Trusted Keeper of a Strong, Vigilant National Defense (TM) is a brand no more. Six years of George W Bush, his nutjob vice president, an ever-decreasing circle of deluded, hardline advisors, and a complacent, corrupt Congress have seen to it. In spades. The old GOP brand is history. Taking its place is The Party of Narrow and Fearful Minds (TM) led by a collection of yahoos: xenophobic bigots, nativist know-nothings, gay bashers, deniers of scientific evidence, etc. The brave new leaders of the GOP are no longer the Bob Doles, Jim Leaches, John Danforths, Arlen Specters or Chuck Hagels of yore. Today's Republican headliners are Tom Tancredo and "Tex" Sensenbrenner on immigration, Marilyn Musgrave on the supreme threat of gay marriage and James Inhofe on global warming as some kind of colossal liberal hoax. To top it off there's now Represenative Virgil Goode of Virginia setting a rhetorical cross on fire on Keith Ellison's lawn. Somewhere Everett Dirksen, Barry Goldwater and (even) Richard Nixon are weeping.

NYT Runs White House Censored Op-Ed

2006-12-22T14:06:00.000-06:00

Leverett and Mann submitted their op-ed to the CIA prior to publication and the agency cleared it (no state secrets spilled). But the White House stonewalled. Could politics be at play here? Really? RAW STORY pulls the mask off the portions redacted by the White House.

The Military Genius Of George W Bush

2006-12-21T22:56:00.000-06:00

Steve Bell, Guardian/UK

Bush In The Bunker: 'The New Way Forward'

2006-12-20T23:24:00.000-06:00

After the ISG's ~~photo op~~ presentation at the White House earlier this month, Lawrence Eagleburger told reporters he couldn't recall Bush asking a single question. He shouldn't have been surprised. Bush doesn't do questions. Neither does Cheney. Why should they? They know the answers. And the administration's contempt for the ISG was made crystal by the anonymous spokesperson who remarked, "Jim Baker can go back to his day job." Sidney Blumenthal digs into Bush's pysche to explain why the president's new way forward in Iraq will be no less reckless than the old.

A battered group of neocons delivered the president his latest war plan, letting him reject the grave warnings of the Iraq Study Group and deny that we're losing the war.

... The opening section of the ISG report is a lengthy analysis of the dire situation in Iraq. But Bush has frantically brushed that analysis away just as he has rejected every objective assessment that had reached him before. He has assimilated no analysis whatsoever of what's gone wrong. For him, there's no past, especially his own. There's only the present. The war is detached from strategic purposes, the history of Iraq and the region, and political and social dynamics, and instead is grasped as a test of character. Ultimately, what's at stake is his willpower.

Repudiated in the midterm elections, Bush has elevated himself above politics, and repeatedly says, "I am the commander in chief." With the crash of Rove's game plan for using his presidency as an instrument to leverage a permanent Republican majority, Bush is abandoning the role of political leader. He can't disengage militarily from Iraq because that would abolish his identity as a military leader, his default identity and now his only one.

Unlike the political leader, the commander in chief doesn't require persuasion; he rules through orders, deference and the obedience of those beneath him. By discarding the ISG report, Bush has rejected doubt, introspection, ambivalence and responsibility. By embracing the AEI manifesto, he asserts the warrior virtues of will, perseverance and resolve. The contest in Iraq is a struggle between will and doubt. Every day his defiance proves his superiority over lesser mortals. Even the Joint Chiefs have betrayed the martial virtues that he presumes to embody. He views those lacking his will with rising disdain. The more he stands up against those who tell him to change, the more virtuous he becomes. His ability to realize those qualities surpasses anyone else's and passes the character test.

The mere suggestion of doubt is fatally compromising. Any admission of doubt means complete loss, impotence and disgrace. Bush cannot entertain doubt and still function. He cannot keep two ideas in his head at the same time. Powell misunderstood when he said that the current war strategy lacks a clear mission. The war is Bush's mission.

No matter the setback it's always temporary, and the campaign can always be started from scratch in an endless series of new beginnings and offensives -- "the new way forward" -- just as in his earlier life no failure was irredeemable through his father's intervention. Now he has rejected his father's intervention in preference for the clean slate of a new scenario that depends only on his willpower.

"We're not winning, we're not losing," Bush told the Washington Post on Tuesday, a direct rebuke of Powell's formulation, saying he was citing Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and adding, "We're going to win." Winning means not ending the war while he is president. Losing would mean coming to the end of the rope while he was still in office. In his mind, so long as the war goes on and he maintains his will he can win. Then only his successor can be a loser....

Bush's Very Own Baghdad Bob

2006-12-19T11:58:00.000-06:00

Truth is the first casualty of taking a job at this White House. What I'd like to know is: How does does Bush's press toady look himself in the mirror in the morning without gagging?

Tony "Snow Job" Snow Tells Another Whopper

Washington, D.C. - White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said Monday (with a straight face) that no "big disagreement" exists between President Bush and Colin Powell, despite Powell's comments Sunday that labeled Iraq a 'civil war' and said the US is losing there.

Former Secretary of State Powell said on on CBS's "Face the Nation," that the "The United States is losing the war in Iraq."

"That's his characterization of the situation," Snow told reporters Monday, adding that Powell and the president agree on the goals a new Iraq strategy must pursue.

"He also made it clear that, in his view, that the proper -- that he suspected that the president was going to pursue a strategy that would, in fact, attack the kinds of problems that we're discussing -- political reconciliation, building capability among the Iraqis, the recognition that the Iraqis, themselves, ultimately had to have responsibility for taking care of things, and that, again, whatever you did, you had to make sure that the military had a clear mission. I don't see any big disagreement."

Snow also downplayed Powell's description of the situation as a "civil war," a label that the administration has repeatedly rejected.

Powell: We're Losing

2006-12-18T23:43:00.000-06:00

Looks like Colin Powell isn't happy with the decider's "new way forward." So where was Powell 3 1/2 years ago? Sorry, I just can't get past that UN speech he made and the legitimacy he gave to the entire Iraq disaster. If Powell didn't know, he should have. From his appearance yesterday on CBS's Face the Nation.

"I agree with the assessment of Mr. Baker and Mr. Hamilton .... [The situation in Iraq is] grave and deteriorating, and we're not winning, we are losing. We haven't lost. And this is the time, now, to start to put in place the kinds of strategies that will turn this situation around."

“I am not persuaded that another surge of troops into Baghdad for the purposes of suppressing this communitarian violence, this civil war, will work.”

"Let's be clear about something else ... [t]here really are no additional troops. All we would be doing is keeping some of the troops who are there there longer and escalating or accelerating the arrival of other troops."

"The current active Army is not large enough and the Marine Corps is not large enough for the kinds of missions they're being asked to perform."

On talking with Syria and Iran:

"Are Iran and Syria regimes that I look down upon? I certainly do. But at the same time I've looked down on many people over the years in the course of my military and diplomatic career and I still had to talk to them."

What's Spanish For 'The GOP Is Imploding'?

2006-12-17T23:02:00.000-06:00

It isn't just Bush who's wrecking the Republican Party. It's the Republican Party that's wrecking the Republican Party. The RNC expected to create a perpetual majority in large part through the strong support of a growing, GOP-friendly Hispanic population. But then Republicans had to go all medieval on immigration. Mad dog members like Tom Tancredo and "Tex" Sensenbrenner couldn't help themselves. Prosecute illegals as felons. Build a fence. Shoot on sight. You know, Hate-mongering 101 stuff. Talk about eating your own seed corn. Jonathan Singer explains,

Tin Eared Republicans Still Don't Get it on Immigration

On November 7, Hispanic voters around the country helped deliver new Democratic majorities in Congress by giving close to 70 percent of their support to the Democrats -- up 10 to 15 points from just two years ago ...

... particularly in the Southwest ... this boost in support for Democrats and corresponding decrease in backing for Republican candidates made the difference on election day [and] this week Democrat Ciro Rodriguez rode the wave of Hispanic support to secure an unforseen upset victory over Republican Henry Bonilla, who was the only Mexican-American Republican* in Congress.

... the nativist actions and rhetoric of the Republican Party over the past two years has fostered a real change within the voting patterns of Hispanic voters across the country, just as the embrace of an anti-immigrant initiative by California's Republican Governor Pete Wilson in 1994 firmly placed Hispanics in the Democrats' majority coalition in the state. Yet Republicans still don't seem to understand this ...

And it's going to cost them.

Deaf, Dumb And Blind To History

2006-12-16T00:08:00.000-06:00

What good is a Listening Tour when you're unwilling to hear, refuse to ask questions and are blind to analysis or opinion you don't already agree with? Professor Juan Cole discusses the lunacy of Bush's "new way forward,"

... On Bushes and Bonapartes

So Bush's response to the clear public demand for a change of course and a disengagement ... is to run to Henry Kissinger's apron strings. And what does the Butcher of Chile and Indonesia urge? That Bush should put another 40,000 US troops into Iraq!

The problem is that Iraq is a 500,000 troop problem. Another 40,000 are just going to anger locals. And, apparently, they would be sicced on the Shiite Mahdi Army in hopes of permanently crippling the Sadr Movement headed (in part) by Muqtada al-Sadr. And maybe they'd be used in a new offensive against the Sunni Arab guerrillas.

Let me explain why it won't work. It won't work because Iraqis are now politically and socially mobilized. This means that they have the social preconditions for effective political and paramilitary action (they are largely urban, literate, connected by media, etc.) And they are politically savvy and well-connected. They are well armed, gaining in military experience, and well financed through petroleum and antiquities smuggling and through cash infusions from supporters abroad. The Mahdi Army fighters can be defeated by the US military, as happened twice in 2004. But they cannot be made to disappear, as they were not in 2004. That is because they are an organic movement springing from the Shiite poor, and are the paramilitary arm of a large social movement with a national network and ideology.

[snip]

In 1905-1907, the Iranian public mobilized to demand a constitution and parliament from the autocratic Qajar monarchy, which the then shah granted shortly before his death. His son and successor, Mohammad Ali Shah, hated the whole idea of constraints on his absolute power, and he tried to get rid of the parliament and the constitution. He simply provoked a national revolution against himself in 1908-1909, with major crowd and paramilitary action in Azerbaijan in particular, and ended up having to flee the country.

To give another Iran example, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi tried to crack down militarily on the mobilized urban crowds demonstrating against him in 1978, and even formed a military cabinet. But hundreds of thousands were coming out for well-organized demonstrations. When the military fired on peaceful protesters in Tehran, it simply enraged the whole country further. By January of 1979 the shah, despite his powerful army, had had to flee to Egypt.

I am not saying that popular protests cannot be crushed. They can and have been. I am saying that when you have a whole country that is politically mobilized and has substantial resources, a crack-down is likely doomed unless it is almost genocidal (Saddam's use of chemical weapons in 1988 and of helicopter gunships against civilians in 1991 are examples, as is Truman's use of the atomic bomb against Japan).

The US is not going to commit the half a million troops it would take to have a chance of winning in Iraq. Nor is it going to use genocidal methods to strike absolute terror into the hearts of the Iraqi people.

The Iraq situation has gone beyond the point where 40,000 troops can retrieve it. And that is if we even had 40,000 troops to put into Iraq and keep them there any length of time, which we do not.

In fact, since most of the "coalition of the willing" troops have now left (Italy, Spain, etc.), one of the two US divisions would only be putting the number of Coalition soldiers back up to what it was earlier in the Occupation, when things were also not going well.

The fact is that if provincial elections were held today, the Sadr Movement would sweep to power in all the Shiite provinces (with the possible exception of Najaf itself). It is increasingly the most popular political party among Iraq's Shiite majority. For the US to cut the Sadrists out of power in parliament and then fall on them militarily would just throw Iraq into turmoil. It would increase the popularity of the Sadrists, and ensure that they gain nationalist credentials that will ensconce them for perhaps decades.

The "surge" tactic is being generated by Rupert Murdoch's Weekly Standard and by Frederick W. Kagan and Bill Kristol, i.e. by the same plutocratic American Enterprise Institute (Likudnik Central) that brought you the Iraq War with champagne toasts in the first place.

Kagan has a recent book on Napoleon. Napoleon's most prominent characteristic was his willingness to waste his troops' lives lightly. On his return from Palestine in 1799, he even had some poisoned because they were ill with plague and he did not want to risk transporting them back to his HQ in Cairo. He took 54,000 men to Egypt in 1798; about half came back. His Russia campaign saw a similar dynamic, on a much larger scale.

Bush is the Napoleon of our age, trampling on whole peoples, a Jacobin Emperor mouthing the slogans of liberty and popular sovereignty while crushing and looting those he "liberated." And Kagan and Kristol (playing Talleyrand 1798) and Emperor Bush are readying a further slaughter of our US troops, 24,000 of whom have been killed or wounded, and of innocent Iraqis, 600,000 of whom have been killed by criminal and political violence since spring of 2003....

Take My Media, Please

2006-12-15T00:17:00.000-06:00

Six years ago the media spent months morphing Al Gore into some kind of Eddie Haskell. Two years ago Kerry's elitism was target du jour--remember the Philly Cheesesteak dust up? Now it's Hillary's and Barack's turn. Is Hillary human? Are Barack's wardrobe choices, um, metrosexual? What about that weird middle name? When media kewl kids get all jokey, and try to out-trivialize each other, bad things happen. Digby explains,

[Y]ou'll have to excuse us hotheads for reacting strongly when we see these things because the last time the media decided to have "fun" and tell "jokes," this way, enough people believed them that it ended up changing the world in the most dramatic and violent way possible. We are in this mess today at least partly because these people failed to do their duty and approached their jobs as if it were a seventh grade slumber party instead of the serious business of the most powerful nation on earth.

I don't know what is wrong with them and their social construct that makes them so susceptible to this, or why they fail to see how this bias toward phony Republican machismo distorts political reporting, but it's a big problem for this country. Whatever their psychological or political motivations, we cannot take the chance that these narratives will go unchallenged again. Bad things happen. Wars. Torture. Dead people.

Why Baker-Hamilton Matters

2006-12-14T00:02:00.000-06:00

Baker-Hamilton has savaged George W Bush and his imbecilic Iraq policy. So of course, Commander Codpiece is in a petulant rage and has deep-sixed the ISG report. But as Gary Kamiya argues in Salon, the real value of Baker-Hamilton is long-range.

A bombshell with a long fuse

• The Iraq Study Group report may be DOA. But it shows the Washington establishment is finally confronting reality in the Middle East.

The Iraq Study Group's report is two things at once. On the one hand, it is a political intervention, a last-minute attempt to salvage a situation that may already have slipped out of control. On the other, it is a call for the United States to radically change its policies in the Middle East.

[snip]

... The report is not just a decisive rejection of Bush's Iraq adventure but an explicit call for the United States to break with its entire approach to the Middle East, in particular its pro-Israel tilt and its refusal to deal with Iran and Syria. Perhaps even more significant is the fact that the authors are a gang of plodding, blue-chip, ultra-mainstream centrists. It is too early to say that a paradigm shift in the Washington establishment's thinking about the Middle East is really taking place, but the ISG report strongly suggests that it is.

Democrat Ciro Rodriguez Beats Bonilla In TX-23

2006-12-13T00:01:00.000-06:00

Seven-term incumbent Henry Bonilla (TX-23) is out. Wow. Huge upset. And no one saw it coming. This is a significant election, one that should have Republicans very, very worried. As the Hotline reports,

Rep. Henry Bonilla’s (R-TX 23) loss last night confirms one of the Bush administration’s greatest fears: that a hard-line position on illegal immigration could cause Republicans long-term damage among the growing Latino vote.

Bonilla was a strong supporter of the tough-on-immigration measures sponsored by the Republicans. He voted for the construction of the 700-mile border fence, and supported Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner’s bill penalizing workers who hire illegal immigrants.

Based on the election results, it appears Latino voters – even among his previous supporters – turned on him and supported ex-Rep. Ciro Rodriguez (D). In Maverick County (95% Hispanic), Bonilla won a miniscule 14% of the vote. By contrast, Bonilla carried the county in his comfortable 2004 win, and President Bush even performed respectably here in 2004 when he won 40%.

Val Verde County (76% Hispanic) has traditionally been a solidly pro-Bush, pro-Bonilla county. Bush carried it with 59% of the vote in 2004. But Bonilla barely carried it, only winning 51% there against Rodriguez.

By contrast, the majority-white counties in the district remained strongly pro-Bonilla. Medina County (45% Hispanic) overwhelmingly voted for Bonilla, giving him 68% of the vote. That’s not much of a dropoff from Bush’s 70% performance there in 2004.

On the day of the election Bonilla’s spokesman Phil Ricks expressed confidence that Hispanics were supportive of Bonilla’s stance on border security. “If you’re a legal citizen, you’re not in favor of illegal immigration. If you go through the process legally, illegal immigration insults you,” he said.

Hispanic voters didn’t see things the same way. And if Bonilla – the only Mexican-American Republican in Congress – takes this much of a hit among Latinos, Republicans have much to be concerned about looking ahead to 2008.

The 'Beat The Press' Hit Piece On Bloggers: My Conversation With Emily Rooney Of WGBH-TV Boston

2006-12-12T00:20:00.000-06:00

If you've seen this segment of "Beat the Press," you already know it was a nasty hit piece attacking several leading progressive bloggers by name and the progressive blogging community as a whole.

If you haven't, you need to watch it.

Also, if you're unfamiliar with the background, you can get up to speed by reading the original NYT piece by Danny Glover of the National Review, the article that started the broughhaha, here, and by linking to some of the responses the original article provoked (I've tried to arrange them chronologically) here, here and here.

Of course, what makes the WGBH program absurd is that the most shocking charges made during the segment were based on a satirical post by Jonathan Singer written in response to Glover. So the facts as alleged weren't facts at all. They were snarks. Bogus. So obviously bogus it would have been immediately apparent to a reporter bothering to do even minimal fact checking. Which, apparently, journalism professor John Carroll did not.

To its credit, Greater Boston, of which "Beat the Press" is a regular Friday feature, published a correction on its blog on Monday,

The staff of Greater Boston made an error on the Dec. 8 “Beat The Press” program in reporting on bloggers accepting money from political campaigns. Reporter John Carroll quoted a My DD posting which claimed that My DD founder Jerome Armstrong was the person behind several online pseudonyms. That was not the case. The posting was meant as satire, and the individuals referred to are actual bloggers. We should have checked those facts, and we regret not doing so. We will run a correction on tonight’s program (Dec. 11), and discuss the story on Friday’s “Beat The Press.”

But when I compared the correction to the muck so casually thrown about by the panelists (establishment journalists all) during Friday's show, I thought it inadequate to the insult. So yesterday I called the show's moderator, Emily Rooney, in order to get her comments to include in the article.

Ms Rooney graciously returned my call and we had a civil yet (in diplomatic-speak) frank exchange of views of between five and 10 minutes duration.

What became quickly apparent, at least to me, was the gulf (chasm?) that exists between bloggers and Serious Journalists and Commentators who deem themselves arbiters of journalistic standards, ethics, et al.

This is what Ms Rooney believes.

Some 90% of the comments received in response to the correction were vituperative and "ugly." I'm sure some of them were. But 90%? Read the comments (link above). They seem pretty tame to me. My take: Members of the media elite do not take kindly to being criticized by a crowd of plebs with access to a large online audience. To me Rooney's complaint is a variation of Deborah Howell's full-throated howl against bloggers' comments earlier this year.

Rooney's on-air snark against bloggers that "not that they have great credibility anyway" is an opinion while comments calling Mr Carroll an "idiot" are "personal" attacks. Rooney asks me if I don't see the difference. My take: I don't. I see sophistry and hair-splitting. Rooney is indulging in a blanket attack against an entire class rather than an individual -- so, by definition, her attack isn't personal. But it is no less pejorative and snide.

Rooney argues the taped, selectively-edited interview with blogger David Kravtiz used to support the smear that leading progressive bloggers named in the segment are "kept" and "on the take" (narrator Carroll's words) is open to interpretation and can be viewed as separate from the overall tone of the hit piece. My take: Baloney. This is a facile, Tony Snow "no it isn't, so there" kind of defense. That Carroll used the clip to support his animosity and preestablished premise that bloggers are corrupt is clear; that it was taken out of context, that Kravitz was not responding to what Singer wrote, is also, in retrospect, clear. Which means the motive to include the interview was to mislead -- and that makes its use at best disingenuos and at worst unethical.

Rooney agrees the incident is embarrassing but is surprised at the avalanche of comments. My take: After reviewing the clip several times, I'm not.

Rooney still thinks blogs lack credibility. My take on the circularity of her argument: ARRGGGGGH!

In the era of the internets, Rooney and Carroll are discovering it isn't easy sitting astride a high horse.

Especially when you've mounted the thing facing the wrong end.

UPDATE Kos has a terrific article slicing and dicing journalism professor John Carroll and highlighting the divide between old and new media.

'Serious' Journalists Launch Attack On Bloggers On Boston TV Show

2006-12-11T17:25:00.000-06:00

Trouble is the Serious Journalists, one in particular, based the attack on "facts" that turned out not only to be inaccurate but bogus. Something Mr Carroll, the attack's leader, could have figured out with a simple, two-minute Google search. The controversy has spilled over into the blogosphere and Serious Journalists are red faced with embarrassment. Ultimately the story is silly, but Establishment Journalism's fear and loathing of bloggers isn't. I'm doing an expanded post on the incident for tomorrow.

This Can't Be Good

2006-12-10T07:57:00.000-06:00

Does "Yo" Blair never tire of having his country kicked to the curb by the Bush administration? From the Independent/UK,

CIA is undermining British war effort, say military chiefs

• Confidential report speaks of 'serious tensions' in the coalition over strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan

British intelligence officers and military commanders have accused the US of undermining British policies in Iraq and Afghanistan, after the sacking of a key British ally in the Afghan province of Helmand.

British sources have blamed pressure from the CIA for President Hamid Karzai's decision to dismiss Mohammed Daud as governor of Helmand, the southern province where Britain deployed some 4,000 troops this year. Governor Daud was appointed in mid-year to replace a man the British accused of involvement in opium trafficking, but on Thursday Mr Karzai summoned him to Kabul and sacked him, along with his deputy.

"The Americans knew Daud was a main British ally," one official told The Independent on Sunday, "yet they deliberately undermined him and told Karzai to sack him." The official said the Defence Secretary, Des Browne, was "tearing his hair out".

Meanwhile, a confidential assessment of the situation in Iraq, seen by the IoS, has reported "serious tensions" in the American-British coalition. American commanders in the country are believed to oppose the British strategy for handing over Maysan and Basra provinces to Iraqi control as part of an exit strategy.

The disclosures come only days after differences between the US and Britain were on display during Tony Blair's visit to Washington, and the Iraq Study Group issued a report containing withering criticism of President George Bush's policies. With British commanders warning that they may not be able to succeed in Afghanistan unless forces in Iraq are drawn down, cracks in the transatlantic alliance are likely to widen.

The disagreements have come into the open after the summary sacking of Britain's protégé, Governor Daud. Although rival delegations from Helmand were in Kabul last week, one calling for his removal and the other demanding that he stay, a diplomatic source said Mr Karzai had listened to advice from "other powerful Western players".

Mr Daud, who had survived several Taliban assassination attempts, was seen as a key player in Britain's anti-drugs campaign in Helmand. He was also the architect of a deal under which British forces moved out of the town of Musa Qala, where they had been involved in fierce combat with Taliban fighters. But the Americans publicly criticised truces in Musa Qala and other Helmand towns, saying they effectively gave in to the Taliban.

A British diplomatic source said yesterday: "We backed Mohammed Daud because he was an honest man and a progressive man, so obviously this is very disappointing. However, it is also true that he was under tremendous pressure and his position was getting weakened. Where does this leave our policy? Well, we shall have to wait and see."

The British commander of the Nato force in Afghanistan, Lieutenant-General David Richards, has also come in for American criticism as "too political". The American supreme commander of Nato, General Jim Jones, has let it be known, according to sources, that General Richards "would have been sacked if he had been an American officer".

General Richards, for his part, has been frustrated that his call for extra Nato troops to form a strategic fighting reserve has been largely unheeded.

While the tensions between Britain and the US have burst into the open in Afghanistan, they have been simmering in Iraq. The confidential assessment of the situation there says American commanders want the British to be far more robust in confronting Shia militias in the south.

3,000 US Soldiers Dead In Iraq By Year's End?

2006-12-09T00:47:00.000-06:00

In the first nine days of December, 37 US soliders made the ultimate sacrifice, bringing the total of US military deaths in the 3 1/2 year old conflict and occupation to 2,927. If the current pace of Americans killed per day (4.11) continues throughout the month, the number of US troops killed in Iraq will top 3,000 before the start of 2007.

Screwing Up Hillary's 'Perfect' Plan To Become President

2006-12-08T14:39:00.000-06:00

Arianna Huffington's opinion piece in the LA Times seems, at times, catty, bitchy and gleeful. But it gets it right in describing Clinton's attempts to position herself for 2008 as transparently hamfisted and unprincipled. The emergence of Barack Obama complicates Hillary's triangulation dance (the woman moves with all the grace of Seinfeld's Elaine). Not only is Obama, the media's flavor of the month, stealing her spotlight, the possibility that in critical early primaries he could jump into the lead in a divided field works against Clinton's frontrunner status, while his appeal to minority voters poses a genuine threat to her support base. Which is so unfair considering all the hard work the senator has put in tacking to the right. You know, supporting the Iraq war, cheerleading a flag burning amendment, chiseling away at abortion rights, and attacking that number-one scourge of modern society, violent video games.

Hillary's too vane to be president

• It didn't matter much that Sen. Clinton is a fickle leader -- until Obama came along.

WHILE THE country is urgently engaged in finding a way out of the quagmire in Iraq, Hillary Rodham Clinton is busy holding private dinners for key Democrats from primary states and remaining curiously silent on the subject of Iraq. Indeed, as she has transformed herself over the last few years from first lady to presumptive presidential front-runner, the profile that has emerged is that of a politician more comfortable following than leading.

There are politicians with great instincts as leaders — those who recognize not just the crises directly in front of them but those around the corner as well. (And these leadership instincts come from the gut, not from a multitude of consultants, strategists and pollsters.) And then there are politicians with great instincts as followers — those who are the first to stick their fingers in the air and notice even the slightest shift in the wind of popular opinion.

Clinton is in the latter category: She is the quintessential political weather vane.

[snip]

After joining the Senate, the world's most exclusive club, she set out to do everything her head — and her consultants — told her was right. She sharpened the points of her triangulation strategy, decorating her rhetoric in red state-friendly shades. She was careful, oh so careful, and aimed to please, never saying anything that would get her in trouble.

She quietly and methodically began building her campaign team — surrounding herself with a gaggle of advisors and consultants, raising millions of dollars (and lining up a top-flight finance director to help her raise millions more), reaching out to power brokers in her home state. She even hired a netroots pro to harness the energy of the Internet and win over the blogosphere.

With Democrats on the rise, her perfect plan seemed to be working out perfectly.

And then, suddenly, came a rumbling in the distance. A rumbling caused by Barack Obama. Indications are that before the year is out, he will officially be in the race.

All at once, a surge of enthusiasm and support for Obama is threatening to ruin all of Clinton's perfect plans. She thought she had the momentum, but it's Obama who has the wind at his back.

If there is a lesson for my daughters and for politically minded girls and women everywhere, it's that you might as well speak your mind and do what is in your heart because you never know what unforeseen forces are headed your way....

Susan Collins, A Moderate? Yeah. Like Joe Lieberman Is A Democrat

2006-12-07T23:19:00.000-06:00

Senator Susan Collins may talk like a moderate But she doesn't vote like one.

Trent Lott, clearly no moderate and carrying heavy baggage from his tone deaf "tribute" to avowed racist Strom Thurmond, owes his return to Senate leadership to this "moderate" senator.

Collins, along with John Warner of Virginia, switched her support from Lamar Alexander to Lott for the post of minority whip tipping the election to him by one vote.

And Collins has consistently voted with the radical right of her party on issues ranging from Iraq to the appointment of Sam Alito to the Supreme Court.

The media is bullshitting the public with meaningless labels. In the GOP, there are no moderates. Hell, there aren't even many conservatives anymore. The party is overrun by right-wing nutters.

Gore To Bush On Iraq: 'It’s Not About You'

2006-12-06T12:09:00.000-06:00

It's about us and the mess the country finds itself in. There's sure enough blame to go around. The country rushed to lionize Bush in the aftermath of 9/11 (huge mistake); the media played cheerleader for the Iraq war (anything for ratings); the news establishment kept the lid on the administration's lies (thank you New York Times, Washington Post, et al.); and a know-nothing electorate voted Bush a second term (rubes). Gore calls on Commander 31 Percent to be a real man and do what's right for the nation, rather than petulantly digging in his heels in pursuit of some cockeyed vision of vindication or a legacy other than that of Worst President Ever. But will Bush listen to the ISG or Gore or anyone who isn't a toady? Absolutely. No. Way. Think Progress has the video,

This morning on NBC, former Vice President Al Gore called Iraq the “worst strategic mistake in the history of the United States.”

He urged President Bush “to try to separate out the personal issues of being blamed in history for this mistake and instead recognize it’s not about him. It’s about our country and we all have to find a way to get our troops home and to prevent a regional conflagration there.”

Don't Start A Second War Before You've Finished The First

2006-12-05T16:58:00.000-06:00

In Afghanistan, Nato continues to encounter heavy resistance from a resurgent Taliban. Nearly four years ago the US had the Taliban and al-Qaeda on the run and on the ropes, but then let them slip away when Bush diverted troops and equipment to ramping up for his invasion of Iraq. Pretty much off the American public's radar since 2002, Afghanistan threatens to become a big bad news story again in 2007. Remember the Soviet Union's unhappy fate. Afghanistan has a reputation as a graveyard for foreign armies. And it's deserved.

Taliban repel British assault in south Afghanistan

GARMSER, Afghanistan (Reuters) - British Marines attacked a Taliban-held valley in southern
Afghanistan on Tuesday but withdrew after a ferocious counterattack that withstood air strikes and artillery fire, witnesses said....

The fierce resistance illustrated the challenges facing the NATO troops in Afghanistan where they are trying to subdue well-armed Taliban and other militants bolstered by profits from a record opium crop, according to Afghan and foreign officials.

Major Andy Plewes, who led the Royal Marines of Zulu Company 45 Commando, on the assault, said the soldiers had expected resistance: "What we didn't know was how strong it was."

"We don't currently have enough forces in the area to hold ground completely and that has to be done by Afghan security forces," he told a Reuters reporter with the Marines.

The 32,000-strong force NATO-led International Security Assistance Force took over command of the war against the Taliban from U.S.-led forces in October and has launched a string of offensives....

BARRAGES OF AIR STRIKES

The Taliban withstood barrages of air strikes from Apache helicopters, 500 pound bombs dropped by B1 bombers and withering cannon fire from A-10 attack jets before the British finally withdrew after a 10-hour battle.

The Taliban fighters, who say they have the expertise to defeat the strongest army, had dug sophisticated networks of trenches often leading from compound to compound.

This year has seen the worst fighting since U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban's strict Islamist government in 2001....

Wonder if the Brits bother to read Kipling nowadays.

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains
And the women come out to cut up what remains
Just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.
--- Rudyard Kipling

2,900

2006-12-04T02:35:00.000-06:00

The US military death toll in Iraq hit another century mark with the deaths of 9 more American soldiers who were killed in roadside bomb attacks over the weekend.

Leahy: Bush Should Be 'Terrified'

2006-12-03T13:51:00.000-06:00

Odum over at Daily Kos provides this tidbit.

And finally there was our Senior Senator, Patrick Leahy. For those who've heard Senator Leahy speak, you know that his delivery can vary quite a bit. It can be easy to tell when he's tired, physically or mentally - so Leahy on the stump doesn't necessarily mean the same thing twice. But Leahy of late has had a fire in his belly, the likes of which we haven't seen in a while. His sadness at the loss of comity and the discarding of basic Constitutional values under the Bush GOP has turned into outrage, and he has been consistently riveting in front of a crowd in recent months.

But since the election, that outrage has turned into inspiration, and it's an inspiration he passed on to the crowd tonight. Like the speakers before him, Leahy was funny, thankful, exuberant... but there was an edge that was very serious. He related a conversation where he was recently asked if President Bush should be "worried" that he was now to be Chair of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee. The crowd started cheering.

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

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

And the room exploded.

According to Odum, Leahy assured the crowd that, unlike "some in the administration," he'd "actually read the Constitution," and went on to promise that no judges nominated to the federal bench who would ignore that Constitution would ever get past his committee.

2007 promises to be an interesting year.

Putting Bush's Presidency Back Together Again? Not Likely

2006-12-02T15:30:00.000-06:00

You can count on it, Mr Bush. You are going down in history as the Worst President Ever. Sure, $500 million for your presidential library (snark) and think tank (double snark) will buy you lots of spin from a gaggle of ~~The Willing To Be Paid-Off~~ Serious People Whose Opinions Must Be Respected. But you're delusional if you think it'll be enough to erase the reality of the disasters you have wrought. (Find a list of Bush's misaccomplishments here.)

Robert Fisk: Like Hitler and Brezhnev, Bush is in denial

More than half a million deaths, an army trapped in the largest military debacle since Vietnam, a Middle East policy already buried in the sands of Mesopotamia - and still George W Bush is in denial. How does he do it? How does he persuade himself - as he apparently did in Amman yesterday - that the United States will stay in Iraq "until the job is complete"? The "job" - Washington's project to reshape the Middle East in its own and Israel's image - is long dead, its very neoconservative originators disavowing their hopeless political aims and blaming Bush, along with the Iraqis of course, for their disaster.

History's "deniers" are many - and all subject to the same folly: faced with overwhelming evidence of catastrophe, they take refuge in fantasy, dismissing evidence of collapse as a symptom of some short-term setback, clinging to the idea that as long as their generals promise victory - or because they have themselves so often promised victory - that fate will be kind. George W Bush - or Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara for that matter - need not feel alone. The Middle East has produced these fantasists by the bucketful over past decades.

In 1967, Egyptian president Gamel Abdul Nasser insisted his country was winning the Six Day War hours after the Israelis had destroyed the entire Egyptian air force on the ground. President Carter was extolling the Shah's Iran as "an island of stability in the region" only days before Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic revolution brought down his regime. President Leonid Brezhnev declared a Soviet victory in Afghanistan when Russian troops were being driven from their fire bases in Nangahar and Kandahar provinces by Osama bin Laden and his fighters.

And was it not Saddam Hussein who promised the "mother of all battles" for Kuwait before the great Iraqi retreat in 1991? And was it not Saddam again who predicted a US defeat in the sands of Iraq in 2003? Saddam's loyal acolyte, Mohamed el-Sahaf, would fantasise about the number of American soldiers who would die in the desert; George W Bush let it be known that he sometimes slipped out of White House staff meetings to watch Sahaf's preposterous performance and laugh at the fantasies of Iraq's minister of information.

So who is laughing at Bush now? Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, almost as loyal a retainer to Bush as Sahaf was to Saddam, receives the same false praise from the American president that Nasser and Brezhnev once lavished upon their generals. "I appreciate the courage you show during these difficult times as you lead your country," Bush tells Maliki. "He's the right guy for Iraq," he tells us. And the Iraqi Prime Minister who hides in the US-fortified "Green Zone" - was ever a crusader fortress so aptly named? - announces that "there is no problem". Power must be more quickly transferred to Maliki, we were informed yesterday. Why? Because that will save Iraq? Or because this will allow America to claim, as it did when it decided to allow the South Vietnamese army to fight on its own against Hanoi, that Washington is not to blame for the debacle that follows? "One of his frustrations with me is that he believes that we've been slow about giving him the tools necessary to protect the Iraqi people." Or so Bush says. "He doesn't have the capacity to respond. So we want to accelerate that capacity." But how can Maliki have any "capacity" at all when he rules only a few square miles of central Baghdad and a clutch of rotting ex-Baathist palaces?

About the only truthful statement uttered in Amman yesterday was Bush's remark that "there's a lot of speculation that these reports in Washington mean there's going to be some kind of graceful exit out of Iraq [but] this business about a graceful exit just simply has no realism to it at all." Indeed, it has not. There can be no graceful exit from Iraq, only a terrifying, bloody collapse of military power. The withdrawal of Shia ministers from Maliki's cabinet mirror the withdrawal of Shia ministers from another American-supported administration in Beirut - where the Lebanese fear an equally appalling conflict over which Washington has, in reality, no military or political control.

Bush even appeared oblivious of the current sectarian map of Iraq. "The Prime Minister made clear that splitting his country into parts, as some have suggested, is not what the Iraqi people want, and that any partition of Iraq would only lead to an increase in sectarian violence," he said. "I agree." But Iraq is already "split into parts". The fracture of Iraq is virtually complete, its chasms sucking in corpses at the rate of up to a thousand a day.

Even Hitler must chuckle at this bloodbath, he who claimed in April 1945 that Germany would still win the Second World War, boasting that his enemy, Roosevelt, had died - much as Bush boasted of Zarqawi's killing - while demanding to know when General Wenck's mythical army would rescue the people of Berlin. How many "Wencks" are going to be summoned from the 82nd Airborne or the Marine Corps to save Bush from Iraq in the coming weeks? No, Bush is not Hitler. Like Blair, he once thought he was Winston Churchill, a man who never - ever - lied to his people about Britain's defeats in war. But fantasy knows no bounds.

Send In The Clowns

2006-12-01T15:24:00.000-06:00

Was it only two weeks ago that Washington's gasbags were proclaiming Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi to be a flop -- and tut-tutting she'd lost control of the House Democratic caucus? It's so hard keeping up with Beltway wisdom.

Pelosi Picks Reyes to Head Panel on Intelligence

WASHINGTON, Dec. 1 — Incoming House speaker Nancy Pelosi today named Representative Silvestre Reyes of Texas to become next chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, ending weeks of closed-door lobbying and public posturing among top candidates for the post.

By choosing Mr. Reyes, a Vietnam veteran and former Border Patrol agent who has served on the committee since 2001, Ms. Pelosi passed over the panel’s top Democrat, Rep. Jane Harman of California, with whom Ms. Pelosi has long feuded....

Ms. Pelosi had privately criticized Ms. Harman for not more aggressively challenging the White House on issues such as the faulty intelligence leading to the war in Iraq and the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program. In a statement released today, she made it clear that she expects Mr. Reyes to make oversight of such controversial programs a priority....

A Real Journalist On American Journalism

2006-11-30T18:46:00.000-06:00

On Calling Bullshit

By Dan Froomkin, from a post on Watchdog Blog.

Mainstream-media political journalism is in danger of becoming increasingly irrelevant, but not because of the Internet, or even Comedy Central. The threat comes from inside. It comes from journalists being afraid to do what journalists were put on this green earth to do.

What is it about Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert that makes them so refreshing and attractive to a wide variety of viewers (including those so-important younger ones)? I would argue that, more than anything else, it is that they enthusiastically call bullshit.

Calling bullshit, of course, used to be central to journalism as well as to comedy. And we happen to be in a period in our history in which the substance in question is running particularly deep. The relentless spinning is enough to make anyone dizzy, and some of our most important political battles are about competing views of reality more than they are about policy choices. Calling bullshit has never been more vital to our democracy.

It also resonates with readers and viewers a lot more than passionless stenography. I’m convinced that my enthusiasm for calling bullshit is the main reason for the considerable success of my White House Briefing column, which has turned into a significant traffic-driver for The Washington Post’s Web site.

I’m not sure why calling bullshit has gone out of vogue in so many newsrooms — why, in fact, it’s so often consciously avoided. There are lots of possible reasons. There’s the increased corporate stultification of our industry, to the point where rocking the boat is seen as threatening rather than invigorating. There’s the intense pressure to maintain access to insider sources, even as those sources become ridiculously unrevealing and oversensitive. There’s the fear of being labeled partisan if one’s bullshit-calling isn’t meted out in precisely equal increments along the political spectrum.

The return of Democrats to political power and relevancy gives us the opportunity to call bullshit in a more bipartisan manner, which is certainly healthy. But there are different kinds of bullshit. Republican political leaders these past six years have built up a massive, unprecedented credibility deficit, such that even their most straightforward assertions invite close bullshit inspection. By contrast, Democratic bullshit tends to center more around hypocrisy and political cowardice. Trying to find equivalency between the two would still be a mistake – and could lead to catty, inside-baseball gotcha journalism rather than genuine bullshit-calling.

If mainstream-media political journalists don’t start calling bullshit more often, then we do risk losing our primacy — if not to the comedians then to the bloggers.

But here’s the good news for you newsroom managers wringing your hands over new technologies and the loss of younger audiences: Because the Internet so values calling bullshit, you are sitting on an as-yet largely untapped gold mine. I still believe that no one is fundamentally more capable of first-rate bullshit-calling than a well-informed beat reporter - whatever their beat. We just need to get the editors, or the corporate culture, or the self-censorship – or whatever it is – out of the way.

Quick, Which Liberal Commie Pinko Senator Just Said, 'Stay The Course Is Gone'

2006-11-29T10:00:00.000-06:00

Sen John Warner (R-VA)
Oh, that liberal commie pinko senator. From the Carpetbagger Report....

"'Stay the course' is gone. We’re going to try and devise some new strategies, hopefully with the President’s concurrence,” the senator said. "Our soldiers, sailors and airmen should not be in there, risking their lives, losing their lives to stop a Civil War"......

It's not going to be the left that puts the final nail in the coffin of this reckless administration. It'll be the right that swings the hammer.

Bush: Al-Qaeda To Blame For Iraq's Violent 'New Phase'

2006-11-28T17:21:00.000-06:00

In Estonia today America's decider-in-chief was busy labeling the escalating violence in Iraq a "new phase," while insisting it is not a civil war. And anyway, Bush proclaimed, al-Qaeda is the cause of it. So there.

The Decline And Fall Of American Journalism

2006-11-27T22:44:00.000-06:00

Is the Washington Post an official organ of the US occupation-backed Iraqi government or is it an independent American news organization with the duty to report the real situation on the ground?

You'd think one wouldn't have to ask such a question. But you'd be wrong.

Think Progress has the video clip of national security reporter Dana Priest's stunning, head-scratching admission on Hardball with Chris Matthews exposing what passes for integrity among senior editors at her newspaper.

MATTHEWS: It seems to me the President’s afraid that people will begin to think it is a civil war and not the way he wants to define it, which is we gotta fight them there before they fight us here.

PRIEST: Well, I think one of the reasons the President resists that label is because it equates almost with a failure of U.S. policy. I will say for the Washington Post, we have not labeled it a civil war. I have asked around to see why not or see what’s the thinking on that and really our reporters have not filed that. We try to avoid the labels, particularly when the elected government itself does not call its situation a civil war. I certainly — and I would agree with General McCaffrey on this — absolutely the level of violence equals a civil war.

Guess it's time to convene another one of those distinguished panels on ~~journalism~~ blogger ethics.

UPDATE Atrios rearranges Ms Priest's statement. Hilarious.

"I will say for the Washington Post, we have not labeled it sex. I have asked around to see why not or see what’s the thinking on that and really our reporters have not filed that. We try to avoid the labels, particularly when the elected government itself does not call its hummer sex."

Don't Play Chess With This Man

2006-11-26T15:05:00.000-06:00

The US was trying to check the power of Muqtada al-Sadr even before Viceroy L Paul Bremer shut down the fundamentalist cleric's newspaper and issued threats to capture or kill him.

But instead of taking down al-Sadr, the US in a series of ill-timed, blundering moves enhanced the cleric's prestige and influence to the point that his 30-member government faction may be the linchpin of support keeping Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's regime in power.

Last week, in a move no one apparently saw coming, al-Sadr sprang a political trap ensnaring both al-Maliki and the US occupation.

Speaking through faction spokesmen, al-Sadr put out the word that members of his faction would boycott parliament if al-Maliki meets with Bush in Jordan next Wednesday as scheduled.

This puts the Prime Minister and the US occupation in a double-bind.

If al-Maliki doesn't meet with Bush, the US is seriously embarrassed and al-Maliki looks utterly powerless as head of state. If al-Maliki does meet with Bush, he looks like a US puppet, plus his government could collapse.

Either way, al-Sadr wins.

Juan Cole paints the bleak picture.

As hopeless as the US position in Iraq was before, it's even more hopeless now.

How About A Nice Big Glass Of STFU?

2006-11-25T08:15:00.000-06:00

... to the first idiot who said, "It doesn't really matter anymore who the President of the Unites States is."

Saddam's WMD Revealed: Slingshots, Crossbows And Molotov Cocktails

2006-11-24T14:41:00.000-06:00

The NYT reports,

As the world worried about Saddam Hussein’s quest for nuclear and biological weapons, he took time out to discuss with his top advisers the merits of a decidedly more primitive arsenal: slingshots, Molotov cocktails and crossbows.

In a previously undisclosed video, apparently shot in the months before the American-led invasion in 2003, Mr. Hussein, the Iraqi dictator, beams as military officers display and demonstrate low-tech weapons spread on a table in a ceremonial room. Whether the episode shows genuine preparation for an insurgency or was merely a bizarre propaganda exercise is unclear.

In the video, Mr. Hussein, wearing a double-breasted gray suit, aims a slingshot, shoots an arrow at a door using a crossbow (as aides scamper out of the way) and swings a mock gasoline bomb over his head with a rope. He urges his aides to get such weapons into the hands of Iraqis.

“Let’s use all the methods we can,” he tells his generals. “These methods can be made at home.”

Later he says, “Let’s talk to the minister of industry to see if we can mass produce this.” Tariq Aziz, Mr. Hussein’s close adviser and deputy prime minister, pipes in, “This can be shown to our group of people, who can introduce it to the others.”

Phebe Marr, a historian of Iraq, says that what is most striking about the video is the archaic and impotent nature of the weapons Mr. Hussein appears to be taking seriously. “This stuff is medieval,” she said....

A Fine Thanksgiving Mess In Iraq

2006-11-23T11:39:00.000-06:00

2,871 US troops dead ... 21,500 wounded ... between 100,000 and a half million Iraqis slaughtered. And so it goes.

An Unrivaled Record Of Misaccomplishment

2006-11-22T23:24:00.000-06:00

Name one president who's done half as much to harm the United States of America as George W Bush. Just try.

• Starting an unnecessary war and then botching it
• Losing a major American city
• Continuing the nonstop pollution of the environment
• Breaking the budget and borrowing the nation into massive debt (mostly from the Chinese)
• Usurping the United States Constitution
• Trashing the all-volunteer military
• Attempting to undermine Social Securuty, America's most successful government program
• Vetoing stem cell research (his only veto)
• Turning the US into a global pariah

Neocon Postmortem

2006-11-21T00:00:00.000-06:00

If you didn't catch this C&L clip, you missed a memorable cable news TV moment. The despair of these neocons is palpable and a sight to behold. I thought David Frum was going to cry.

The full CNN transcript is here.

Beware The Pod People

2006-11-20T14:02:00.000-06:00

Conservative pundit Bill O’Reilly apparently is off his meds. Again. Here Bill-O rants about iPods, yes, iPods, on the Radio Factor.

American society is changing for the worse because of the machines… In the past to flee the real world people usually chose drugs or alcohol… now you don’t have to do that, Now all you have to do is have enough money to buy a machine…

I don’t own an iPod. I would never wear an iPod… If this is your primary focus in life - the machines… it’s going to have a staggeringly negative effect, all of this, for America… did you ever talk to these computer geeks? I mean, can you carry on a conversation with them? …I really fear for the United States because, believe me, the jihadists? They’re not playing the video games. They’re killing real people over there.

HT: GamePolitics

What The Washington Pundit Class Refuses To 'Get'

2006-11-19T01:58:00.000-06:00

The NYT's Frank Rich spells it out,

It’s Not the Democrats Who Are Divided

ELECTIONS may come and go, but Washington remains incorrigible. Not even voters delivering a clear message can topple the town’s conventional wisdom once it has been set in the stone of punditry.

Right now the capital is entranced by a fictional story line about the Democrats. As this narrative goes, the party’s sweep of Congress was more or less an accident. The victory had little to do with the Democrats’ actual beliefs and was instead solely the result of President Bush’s unpopularity and a cunning backroom stunt by the campaign Machiavellis, Chuck Schumer and Rahm Emanuel, to enlist a smattering of “conservative” candidates to run in red states. In this retelling of the 2006 election, the signature race took place in Montana, where the victor was a gun-toting farmer with a flattop haircut: i.e., a Democrat in Republican drag. And now the party is deeply divided as its old liberals and new conservatives converge on Capitol Hill to slug it out.

The only problem with this version of events is that it’s not true. The overwhelming majority of the Democratic winners, including Jon Tester of Montana, are to the left of most Republicans, whether on economic policy or abortion. For all of the hyperventilation devoted to the Steny Hoyer-John Murtha bout for the House leadership, the final count was lopsided next to the one-vote margin in the G.O.P. Senate intramural that yielded that paragon of “unity,” Trent Lott. But the most telling barometer is the election’s defining issue: there is far more unanimity among Democrats about Iraq than there is among Republicans. Disengaging America from that war is what the country voted for overwhelmingly on Nov. 7, and that’s what the Democrats almost uniformly promised to speed up, whatever their vague, often inchoate notions about how to do it.

Even before they officially take over, the Democrats are trying to deliver on this pledge. Carl Levin and Joe Biden, among the party’s leaders in thinking through a new Iraq policy, are gravitating toward a long-gestating centrist exit strategy: a phased withdrawal starting in four to six months; a loosely federal Iraqi government that would ratify the de facto separation of the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds and fairly allocate the oil spoils; and diplomacy, diplomacy, diplomacy to engage Iraq’s neighbors, including Iran and Syria, in securing some kind of peace.

None of these ideas are radical, novel or much removed from what James Baker’s Iraq Study Group is expected to come up with. All are debatable and all could fail. At this late date, only triage is an option, not “victory.” There’s no panacea to end the civil war that four years of American bumbling have wrought. But the one truly serious story to come out of the election — far more significant than the Washington chatter about “divided Democrats” — is that the president has no intention of changing his policy on Iraq or anything else one iota.

Already we are seeing conclusive evidence that the White House’s post-thumpin’ blather about bipartisanship is worth as little as the “uniter, not a divider” bunk of the past. The tip-off came last week when Mr. Bush renominated a roster of choices for the federal appeals court that he knew faced certain rejection by Democrats. Why? To deliver a message to the entire Senate consonant with the unprintable greeting Dick Cheney once bestowed on Patrick Leahy, the senator from Vermont. That message was seconded by Tony Snow on Monday when David Gregory of NBC News asked him for a response to the Democrats’ Iraq proposals. The press secretary belittled them as “nonspecific” and then tried to deflect the matter entirely by snickering at Mr. Gregory’s follow-up questions.

Don Imus has been rerunning the video ever since, and with good reason. The laughing-while-Baghdad-burns intransigence of the White House makes your blood run cold. The day after Mr. Snow ridiculed alternative policies for Iraq, six American soldiers were killed. It was on that day as well that militia assailants stormed the education ministry in Baghdad in broad daylight, effortlessly carrying out a mass abduction of as many as 150 government officials in some 15 minutes. Given that those kidnappers were probably in cahoots with a faction of the very government they were terrorizing, it would be hard to come up with a more alarming snapshot of those “conditions on the ground” the president keeps talking about: utter chaos, with American troops in the middle, risking their lives to defend which faction, exactly?

Tony Blair Agrees Iraq A 'Disaster'

2006-11-18T00:34:00.000-06:00

Last throes? Making progress? Doesn't sound like the poodle believes the official spin anymore. But, of course, it's not the fault of the occupation. It's those al-Qaeda fighters, Sunni insurgents and Iran-backed Shia militants who are to blame. If only the silly wogs would cooperate. The Times Online/UK writes,

Tony Blair went close last night to admitting that the invasion of Iraq had been disastrous. Challenged in an interview on Al-Jazeera’s new English-language channel that the Western intervention in Iraq had “so far been pretty much of a disaster”, he gave a brief agreement before swiftly moving on.

He said: “It has, but you see what I say to people is why is it difficult in Iraq? It is not difficult because of some accident in planning, it is difficult because there is a deliberate strategy, al-Qaeda with Sunni insurgents on one hand, Iranian-backed elements with Shia militias on the other, to create a situation in which the will of the majority for peace is displaced by the will of the minority for war.”

Mr Blair’s frank remarks came on the day that one of his most loyal ministers was reported to have described the war as “his big mistake in foreign affairs”. Margaret Hodge was said to have accused Mr Blair of espousing “moral imperialism”, remarks that she denied through an aide but which were recalled by people who attended the private meeting at which she was alleged to have made them.

Mr Blair was speaking to Sir David Frost on the first edition of his Frost Over the World programme on Al-Jazeera International, which was launched on Wednesday. His appearance is a boost for the network, which was once denounced as propaganda by Donald Rumsfeld, the former US Defence Secretary, and is perhaps best known in Britain for broadcasting tapes from Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

After his apparent admission that the intervention had been a disaster, he insisted: “We are not walking away from Iraq. We will stay for as long as the Government needs us to stay.

“And the reason for that is that what is happening in Iraq, as in Afghanistan, as elsewhere in parts of the Middle East, is a struggle between the decent majority of people, who want to live in peace together, and those who have an extreme and perverted and warped view of Islam, who want to create war. In those circumstances, our task has got to be to stand up for the moderates and the democrats against the extremists and the sectarians. They are testing our will at the moment, and our will has not to be found wanting.”

Mr Blair also rejected as absurd suggestions that his readiness to work with Iran and Syria in the search for Middle East peace amounted to appeasement. He repeated his appeal to the two countries described by President Bush as part of an “axis of evil” to become partners for peace.

He said that he had a message for Tehran and Damascus: “If you are prepared to be part of the solution, there is a partnership available to you. But at the moment, and this is particularly so in respect of what Iran is doing in supporting terrorism throughout the Middle East and acting in breach of its nuclear weapons obligations, you are behaving in such a way that makes such a partnership impossible.”

Mrs Hodge, a Trade and Industry Minister, also allegedly told a branch meeting of the Fabian Society that she had doubted Mr Blair’s approach to foreign affairs since 1998. According to the Islington Tribune newspaper, she singled out Mr Blair’s “moral imperialism” — exporting British attitudes and ideas to other countries — for criticism. She had accepted the Prime Minister’s argument about the dangers posed by Iraq before the March 2003 invasion because “he was our leader and I trusted him”.

She is said to have told the meeting later: “I hope this isn’t being reported.”

The Islington Tribune said that Eric Gordon, its editor, sat in on the meeting of Islington Fabian Society, which was held last Friday at the London Resource Centre in Holloway Road. Mark Blunden, a reporter for the paper, said that Mr Gordon had taken a shorthand note of the alleged remarks and that the story had been checked thoroughly.

There were no questions over her future particuarly after Mr Blair’s remarks. Downing Street sources said that Mrs Hodge had denied using the remarks attributed to her and they appeared ready to accept that, despite the view of others who were there. Sacking Mrs Hodge would have drawn greater attention to her remarks, ministers said.

Pitching A Shutout

2006-11-17T00:37:00.000-06:00

How big was the election wave of 2006 that knocked the GOP on its ass? Yesterday, the Georgia secretary of state declared Democrat Rep John Barrow (GA-12) the winner over Republican challenger Max Burns. Barrow beat Burns by less than 900 votes. Okay, there could still be a recount. But as things stand, Republicans failed to win a single race against a Democratic incumbent in last week's election. Not one. No US House seats, no US Senate seats, no governorships. Nada. Of the remaining undecided House races, none of the seats were held by Democrats going into the election. Now when's the last time that happened? Quite possibly, never. Until now.

Date Rape At The White House

2006-11-16T00:02:00.000-06:00

The White House's kabuki-like tableau of political cooperation played out in front of news cameras this week lasted as long as it took Bush and Cheney to rip off those blue ties they'd worn to the Reid-Durban meet and greet.

Team Bush doesn't do bipartisanship.

Just one day after pledging to "work with the Congress in a bipartisan way," Bush was back to being Bush.

He renominated the abusively divisive John Bolton as ambassador to the UN. (With the continued opposition of outgoing Republican Senator Lincoln Chafee, the effort is doomed.)

He resubmitted the names of six radical conservatives for confirmation to federal judgeships that had been stalled by Democrats of the 109th Congress. (None are expected to be taken up before adjournment.)

He declared that, under the Constitution-shredding Military Commissions Act already passed by this Congress, legal immigrants in the US can be held by presidential fiat indefinitely without access to American courts.

He pressed for swift passage of the so-called 2006 Terrorist Surveillance Act in yet another grab for unitary power.

He's planning, according to the Guardian UK, to send 20,000 more US troops to Iraq in a "final push for victory" despite the unlikelihood of such a push achieving "victory"; the reality that there aren't 20,000 fresh troops to send to the sandbox; and a wave of public anger against Bush's war that swept congressional Republicans out of power last week.

And in a stunningly petty, in-your-face gesture, he renominated Kenneth Tomlinson as chairman of the agency that directs US overseas broadcasts, even though Tomlinson's nomination remains dead in the water due to serious allegations of misconduct.

This is Bush's idea of compromise?

GOP wingnut Grover Norquist no doubt had Bush's real attitude to cooperation in mind when he dismissively referred to the concept of bipartisanship as just "another name for date rape."

Last Man Standing

2006-11-15T01:21:00.000-06:00

Christopher Shays is now the last Republican House member from New England.

Way With Words

2006-11-14T07:46:00.000-06:00

Conservative direct mail guru Richard Viguerie, describing Tom Delay, came up with this gem:

"When Tom and his bunch first ran, they campaigned against the cesspool in Washington. After a while they looked around and said, 'Hey, this isn't a cesspool, it's a hot tub.'"

Phased Withdrawl Or Nothing

2006-11-13T00:18:00.000-06:00

Could Democrats really be so dumb as to sign on to this crap? WaPo writes,

While Baker has been testing the waters for some time to determine how much change in Iraq policy will be tolerated by the White House, Hamilton perhaps faces the now even-more-difficult challenge of cajoling Democrats such as former Clinton administration chief of staff Leon E. Panetta and power broker Vernon E. Jordan Jr. to sign on to a plan that falls short of a phased troop withdrawal, the position of many congressional Democrats.

Americablog nails it,

This is a trap. Democrats cannot - can not - own the administration's current course in Iraq. If Democrats buy off on a policy that they know is not the right policy, then they will be buying off on future failure in Iraq. They will own Bush's bad policy. And that is insane. If the bipartisan group can't come up with a real plan, a good plan, the best plan, then let the Republicans in the group come up with their own wacky plan that will fail. The Democrats can issue a dissent that respectfully says they disagree, and why. And when all hell breaks loose over the next two years, the Dems can say "I told you so."

The last thing Democrats need is to hand George Bush some bipartisan approbation of his failed Iraq policy so that, in the future, he can say we all own Iraq, warts and all. We all don't own Iraq, it's his disaster, his failed state. And nothing we try is going to work because it's already too late - Iraq is lost. Bush had his chance, and he failed....

Oh yeah, one final rather important point. Check out the first line of that paragraph - James Baker is testing the waters as to how much change in Iraq policy the White House will tolerate. Excuse me? So, that means the guy running this panel isn't going to give his honest advice - he's only going to give the closest to honest the White House will let him give. That is totally messed up, incredibly dishonest, and it's the very reason we're in this predicament to start with. Generals being afraid of giving honest advice, top advisers to Bush being afraid to tell him the truth. It will be a total travesty if Baker only agrees to what the White House is willing to hear, and Lee Hamilton feels obliged to agree to whatever the Republicans want. Then what is the point of this entire exercise?

Overwhelmingly--and well ahead of the DC political elite and punditocracy--Americans concluded that Bush's Iraq occupation and nation building stunt is a bloody, unmitigated disaster--and while they aren't for immediate pullout, they do want US troops out based on some kind of timetable. That's what Americans voted for last Tuesday. It's why Democrats now control both the House and Senate. Abandoning that mandate would be betraying them.

General Suck Up

2006-11-12T17:18:00.000-06:00

Clown? Ass-kissing sycophant? Marine? You decide.

Asked by one interviewer last week whether the United States is winning the war in Iraq, General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, replied: "You have to define 'winning.'"

Before delivering that weaselly bit of analysis, Pace last month, appearing at a change of command ceremony, thoroughly sucked Rummy's tool with a speech that would have made your average obsequious toad blush.

PACE: "[Rumsfeld] leads in a way that the good Lord tells him is best for our country. [He is] a man whose patriotism focus, energy, drive, is exceeded by no one else I know ... quite simply, he works harder than anybody else in our building."

Yeech.

Apropos of whether the US is winning in Iraq, the New York Times reports: "The Pentagon is developing plans that for the first time would send entire National Guard combat brigades back to Iraq for a second tour, the Guard's top general said in the latest sign of how thinly stretched the military has become."

Not exactly the smell of victory in the morning there, general.

When Assholes Attack

2006-11-11T01:36:00.000-06:00

So K-Street insider James Carville wants Howard Dean replaced as head of the DNC.

"Suppose Harold Ford became chairman of the DNC?" Carville sputtered following Tuesday's victories. "How much more money do you think we could raise? Just think of the difference it could make in one day...."

TNR, resorting to the hoary old "some say" gambit, attempted to turn this molehill into a mountain.

Wrote Ryan Lizza of TNR's The Plank, "Some big name Democrats want to oust DNC Chairman Howard Dean, arguing that his stubborn commitment to the 50-state strategy and his stinginess with funds for House races cost the Democrats several pickup opportunities."

At least TNR had the decency to post Dean's rapid-response reply, blasted out in an email from Dean spokeswoman Karen Finney:

"After the Republicans have admitted to a thumping, why is it that the only one complaining on the Democratic side is James Carville, who today in addition to trashing Howard Dean, praised the RNC, the outfit that brought us the racist ad that defeated Harold Ford, James' supposed candidate for Chair?

"Perhaps he's not aware that under Dean in this midterm election the DNC has raised record cash --- all hard dollars -- including three times as much from major donors, eight times as much online and made a $30 million investment in the '06 cycle, three times as much as the DNC put into the last midterm. Not to mention we made an $8m overhaul of our voter file which was successfully used in 47 states and through the 50 state strategy invested in states like Pennsylvania, Kansas, Indiana and Montana where we had critical victories on Tuesday."

On top of all the money, of course, there's that small matter of a historic victory after years of historic losses.

Carville, who may be guilty of an act of incredible treachery against the party he espouses to support, should STFU. For a horse's ass like him, an impossibility.

GOP Can't Get Even Get Culture War Right

2006-11-10T14:58:00.000-06:00

The effects of Bush's Iraq war will be biting the US in the ass for a generation. And it looks like Bush and Rove's culture war could be biting the Republican Party in the ass for about as long. Thoughtful analysis from Chris Bowers,

Cultural Supremacist Message Could Haunt Republicans for a Generation

After spending an entire month looking over the demographics of the two major coalitions in early 2005, on April 15, 2005 I drew the following conclusion:

The quickest way to summarize the developing demographic trends of the two coalitions is a white Christian coalition versus a non-white and / or non-Christian coalition. The voting habits of non-whites and white non-Christians are rapidly approaching parity, just as the voting of white Protestants and white Catholics are doing the same. Further, race and religion are now far better at determining how someone will vote than region, income, union membership, or pretty much anything else you could name.(...)

In the interim, which will form the majority of the rest of our lives, the role of progressives and of the Democratic coalition will be to bring about an end to the current order of identity as visualized by large segments of the country and the world. We will win where identity ends, and our children will thank us for it. Maybe there is a clash of civilizations, a clash we need to end. Maybe that is our role in the world.

Every since I wrote that article, I became convinced that pluralism was a core value of progressivism, and that the "battle of civilizations" was a core value of conservatism. I became equally convinced that in order for progressives to succeed in the electoral realm, we needed the country to side with us on this binary opposition. Now, looking over demographic shifts in the two coalitions from 2004 to 2006 based on national exit polls of the two elections, that seems to be exactly what happened. (see 2004 exit polls and 2006 exit polls)

In 2006, Democrats made gains across the board because of Iraq, Katrina, Social Security, Corruption, et all. However, the true dagger came from Latinos who, to the tune of a shocking thirty points, shifted to Democrats more than any other demographic group in the country. This almost certainly because of the hateful, harsh, anti-immigration rhetoric from the conservative base, and refused to even listen to its leaders like Bush and McCain who wanted to adopt a more open approach. This shift accounted for between 25% and 30% of the entire shift to Democrats nationwide, and did not net Republicans any "backlash" gains whatsoever. Considering Latino population growth, that is the sort of dagger that will stick in and cause wounds to fester for a long, long time. It is also probably one of the main reasons why Democrats did so well among both Catholics and the youth vote.

Pluralism won out over the "battle of civilizations" this time around. Democrats won because the nation turned away from conservative ideas of cultural supremacy and turned toward progressive ideas of pluralism. The war on Latinos and Asians (the anti-immigration message), the war on non-Christians (which they called the war on Christmas), the war Muslims (which they call the war on terror), the war on the GLBT community, the war on poor African-Americans in New Orleans--this all failed for the conservative Republican base. Their general war on pluralism did not produce any sustainable backlash for them, but instead turned key, growing demographics towards Democrats. That not only played a key role in how Democrats won the 2006 elections, but in giving us momentum for many elections to come. If conservatives persist on running on a message that denounces the key demographic changes in this country, they can expect to quickly become reduced to a near-permanent minority in our national politics....

Tell That To The Families

2006-11-09T00:58:00.000-06:00

US military deaths in Iraq reached 2,836 yesterday, with 21 GIs killed in the first eight days of November. Half a world away, right-wing media kingpin and FOX News founder Rupert Murdock last week characterized US military fatalities in Iraq as "minute."

Wipe Out

2006-11-08T02:16:00.000-06:00

Thirty or more seats in the House. As many as six seats in the Senate. Control of one house assured, control of both houses very much in play and increasingly likely. Seven governorships picked up. Nine state legislature chambers. That and not one Democratic incumbent senator or representative or governor going down to defeat. Not one. This is more than a midterm correction. This is a wipe out.

The Man Who Got The Party Started

2006-11-07T00:01:00.000-06:00

If the trends hold and Democrats win back control of the House and come close, or possibly even succeed, in doing the same with the Senate, there's one man who deserves a lion's share of the credit. When Howard Dean became DNC chair and forced the party kicking and screaming into a 50 state strategy, powerful elected Democratic senators and representatives, plus assorted power brokers, consultants, DLCers and other triangulators and salami slicers that have led the party to defeat in election after election, went ballistic. Fight where? In every state? In every county? Can't be done, they said. Utter suicide, they warned. But now, in 2006, as state after state and district after district suddenly turned competitive, and Democrats had viable candidates in place to take advantage, the nay sayers have started singing a different tune. In fact, many are now scrambling to claim they wrote the sheet music. Don't let them. If we'd danced to their rhythm instead of Howard's, we'd still be where we were in 2004. Out in the cold.

[UPDATE Speaking of rhythm, did you see Rahm Emanuel doing that spasdic victory jig with Nancy Pelosi? Worse even than the performance of the fictional Elaine on Seinfeld and the real Tucker Carlson on Dancing with the Stars. And dancing that ugly ain't easy.]

Losing The Other 'War On Terror'

2006-11-06T07:11:00.000-06:00

US intelligence assessment warns western-backed central government of Afghanistan may be headed for collapse. Is there nothing that Team Bush can't FUBAR?

C.I.A. Review Highlights Afghan Leader’s Woes

HERAT, Afghanistan, Nov. 4 — A recent Central Intelligence Agency assessment found that the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, had been significantly weakened by rising popular frustration with his American-backed government, American officials say.

The assessment found that Mr. Karzai’s government and security forces continued to struggle to exert authority beyond Kabul, said a senior American official who spoke only on the condition of anonymity. The assessment also found that increasing numbers of Afghans viewed Mr. Karzai’s government as corrupt, failing to deliver promised reconstruction and too weak to protect the country from rising Taliban attacks.

“The ability to project out into the countryside, perceptions of corruption in the government,” said the official, listing Afghan complaints. “The failure to deliver the services.”

The assessment, which was conducted before Mr. Karzai’s visit to Washington in late September, echoes the frustration that has gathered force in Afghanistan since the spring, and American officials in Washington and Kabul are expressing increasingly dire warnings regarding the situation here. Ronald E. Neumann, the American ambassador in Kabul, said in a recent interview that the United States faced “stark choices” in Afghanistan. Averting failure, he said, would take “multiple years” and “multiple billions.”

“We’re going to have to stay at it,” he said. “Or we’re going to fail and the country will fall apart again.”

Officials from the United States Agency for International Development, the government’s main development arm, said they were rushing $14 million in assistance to southern Afghanistan, where a recent NATO offensive routed the Taliban, but suicide bombings continue to damage public confidence.

“We’ve spent about $800,000 on displaced people,” said Leon S. Waskin, the agency’s mission director in Afghanistan. “We’re planning to start a program to repair agricultural infrastructure and damaged houses.”

The C.I.A. declined to comment on its assessment. In addition to that report, the National Security Council began a classified, interagency review of American training and reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan this summer after violence increased.

While that review has not been completed, officials said it was expected to include a request for additional financing. Over the past year, the Bush administration reduced financing for Afghanistan by 30 percent and proposed the withdrawal of up to 3,000 American troops. At least 143 American and NATO troops have been killed in the Taliban resurgence this year, 55 more than died in all of 2005, and the planned withdrawal was canceled.

Gordon D. Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said the interagency review covered anti-Taliban and counternarcotics activities as well as efforts to counter extremism and to integrate the central government with local and provincial governments.

“We are proud of the progress that has been made in the last five years, but know there is more to do,” he said. “The United States is committed to the people of Afghanistan for the long term.”

Mr. Neumann, who has been the ambassador here for just over a year, laid out a full menu of tasks that he said the American-led effort needed to accomplish in Afghanistan, including reviving the country’s economy, building roads and power plants and improving security. He said plans drafted in 2002 to train the army and police force needed to be revamped and expanded.

Mr. Neumann, a decorated Vietnam veteran whose father served as the American ambassador to Afghanistan from 1966 to 1973, said country’s security forces had to be better supplied. “We have a war, not in all parts of the country, but we have a war,” he said. “So we have to build a much better equipped army and a much better-equipped police.”

Training the police represents an even larger challenge than strengthening the army, Mr. Neumann said. “The police need a whole huge, major effort,” he said. “That wasn’t what the program was designed to do when we were at peace.”

The senior American official said Afghans widely saw the force as corrupt and failing to provide security.

A sharp increase in suicide attacks and roadside bombings over the past two years has persuaded many Afghans that security has sharply deteriorated under Mr. Karzai. The tactics appear to have migrated from Iraq, according to the official, probably via the Internet and people traveling between the countries.

“There’s not been a tradition of the suicide bombers,” the official said. “Psychologically, this has had a major impact.”

Taliban commanders continue to use parts of Pakistan as a haven to plan attacks in Afghanistan, American officials said. But popular support for the Taliban now exists inside Afghanistan as well.

The Taliban fighters appear to be attracting support from disaffected Afghans, and they are also coercing Afghans to join them.

“How much of this is support for the Taliban?” the senior American official asked. “How much is coerced? How much of it is gun for hire? How much of it is a young man who has nothing else to do and this sounds pretty exciting? Our analysis is that there’s some degree of all of those.”

Taliban fighters and drug traffickers appear to be using the same criminal networks, the official said.

“What we think is happening is that there are links at the local level,” the official said. “There is certainly the use of the networks — networks of informants, networks of smuggling routes, communications, finances.”

Some Taliban fighters are currying support among farmers by promising to protect the opium crops from government eradication efforts, the official said.

One reason the central government has trouble exerting control beyond Kabul, the official said, is that it has little means of connecting to the country’s strong village councils.

To extend its authority, Mr. Karzai’s central government is dependent on Afghanistan’s provincial and district governments — the equivalent of state and county governments in the United States — that remain weak or dominated by corrupt local officials.

“There’s no transmission belt that goes between Kabul and the local government,” the official said. “You lost a whole generation of education and bureaucrats and people that can take a government plan and make it real on a local level.”

Mr. Neumann said creating such a link was an enormous challenge, but one the United States must face. A representative government and stronger army, he said, are the only means to prevent the country from disintegrating into rival factions as it did during the 1990s.

“Ultimately you’re going to succeed with a policy of building an army in a country with a participatory government,” he said. “Or the country is going to fragment again.”

Recruiting The Stupid

2006-11-05T15:57:00.000-06:00

Army Recruiters Tell Students Iraq War Is Over To Get Them To Enlist

The US Army has been cutting basic intelligence standards for recruits for more than a year. Question: would you want to serve with, and possibly have to trust your life to, a soldier so doltish and uninformed he'd believe for a second that the conflict in Iraq was over? ABC covers the latest outrage.

Nov. 3, 2006 — An ABC News undercover investigation showed Army recruiters telling students that the war in Iraq was over, in an effort to get them to enlist.

ABC News and New York affiliate WABC equipped students with hidden video cameras before they visited 10 Army recruitment offices in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

"Nobody is going over to Iraq anymore?" one student asks a recruiter.

"No, we're bringing people back," he replies.

"We're not at war. War ended a long time ago," another recruiter says.

Last year, the Army suspended recruiting nationwide to retrain recruiters following hundreds of allegations of improprieties.

One Colorado student taped a recruiting session posing as a drug-addicted dropout.

"You mean I'm not going to get in trouble?" the student asked.

The recruiters told him no, and helped him cheat to sign up.

During the ABC News sessions, some recruiters told our students if they enlisted, there would be little chance they'd to go Iraq.

But Col. Robert Manning, who is in charge of U.S. Army recruiting for the entire Northeast, said that new recruits were likely to go to Iraq.

"I would not disagree with that," Manning said. "We are a nation and Army at war still."

Manning looked at the ABC News video of his recruiters.

"It's hard to believe some of things they are telling prospective applicants," Manning said. "I still believe that this is the exception more than the norm. … I've visited many stations myself, and I know that we have many wonderful Americans serving in uniform as recruiters."

Yet ABC News found one recruiter who even claimed if you didn't like the Army, you could just quit.

"It's called a 'Failure to Adapt' discharge," the recruiter said. "It's an entry-level discharge so it won't affect anything on your record. It'll just be like it never happened."

Manning, however, disagrees with the ease the recruiter describes.

"I would believe it's not as easy as he would lead you to believe it is," he said.

Sue Niederer, whose son, Seth, joined the Army in 2002, said she was all too familiar with recruiters' lies.

"They need to do anything they possibly can to get recruits," Niederer said.

Seth was sent to Iraq and was killed by a roadside bomb.

Niederer said she was not surprised by what ABC News had found. She believes it's still a widespread problem. She said that recruiters told Seth he wouldn't be put into combat.

"Ninety percent [are] going to be putting their lives on the line for our country," she said. "Tell them the truth. That's all. Just tell them the truth."

Something To Email To Every Low Information Voter You Know

2006-11-04T23:24:00.000-06:00

Howard Dean talks about a new direction for America.

And The World's Scariest World Leader Is...

2006-11-03T12:13:00.000-06:00

World leader Kim Jong-il comes off as a second tier threat compared to world leader and decider-in-chief George W Bush. Only the terrorist Bin Laden is seen as more dangerous. So says the British public in a recent poll. Amazing what six years of boneheaded diplomacy and nearly four years of preemptive war can accomplish. The Guardian UK tells the story.

British believe Bush is more dangerous than Kim Jong-il

· US allies think Washington threat to world peace
· Only Bin Laden feared more in United Kingdom

America is now seen as a threat to world peace by its closest neighbours and allies, according to an international survey of public opinion published today that reveals just how far the country's reputation has fallen among former supporters since the invasion of Iraq.

Carried out as US voters prepare to go to the polls next week in an election dominated by the war, the research also shows that British voters see George Bush as a greater danger to world peace than either the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, or the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Both countries were once cited by the US president as part of an "axis of evil", but it is Mr Bush who now alarms voters in countries with traditionally strong links to the US.

The survey has been carried out by the Guardian in Britain and leading newspapers in Israel (Haaretz), Canada (La Presse and Toronto Star) and Mexico (Reforma), using professional local opinion polling in each country.

It exposes high levels of distrust. In Britain, 69% of those questioned say they believe US policy has made the world less safe since 2001, with only 7% thinking action in Iraq and Afghanistan has increased global security.

The finding is mirrored in America's immediate northern and southern neighbours, Canada and Mexico, with 62% of Canadians and 57% of Mexicans saying the world has become more dangerous because of US policy.

Even in Israel, which has long looked to America to guarantee national security, support for the US has slipped.

Only one in four Israeli voters say that Mr Bush has made the world safer, outweighed by the number who think he has added to the risk of international conflict, 36% to 25%. A further 30% say that at best he has made no difference.

Voters in three of the four countries surveyed also overwhelmingly reject the decision to invade Iraq, with only Israeli voters in favour, 59% to 34% against. Opinion against the war has hardened strongly since a similar survey before the US presidential election in 2004.

In Britain 71% of voters now say the invasion was unjustified, a view shared by 89% of Mexicans and 73% of Canadians. Canada is a Nato member whose troops are in action in Afghanistan. Neither do voters think America has helped advance democracy in developing countries, one of the justifications for deposing Saddam Hussein. Only 11% of Britons and 28% of Israelis think that has happened.

As a result, Mr Bush is ranked with some of his bitterest enemies as a cause of global anxiety. He is outranked by Osama bin Laden in all four countries, but runs the al-Qaida leader close in the eyes of UK voters: 87% think the al-Qaida leader is a great or moderate danger to peace, compared with 75% who think this of Mr Bush.

The US leader and close ally of Tony Blair is seen in Britain as a more dangerous man than the president of Iran (62% think he is a danger), the North Korean leader (69%) and the leader of Hizbullah, Hassan Nasrallah (65%).

Only 10% of British voters think that Mr Bush poses no danger at all. Israeli voters remain much more trusting of him, with 23% thinking he represents a serious danger and 61% thinking he does not.

Contrary to the usual expectation, older voters in Britain are slightly more hostile to the Iraq war than younger ones. Voters under 35 are also more trusting of Mr Bush, with hostility strongest among people aged 35-65....

'Adjusting To Situation On The Ground,' Bush Abandons Kidnapped GI To Sadr's Militia

2006-11-02T00:31:00.000-06:00

CNN's Jack Cafferty rips Bush for literally abandoning an American soldier held captive in Iraq because the Iraqi Prime Minister told US to. So much for Bush's great love for the military. In the segment, Cafferty proves he's a journalist. Oh, and Paula Zahn proves she's an idiot.

Student Attacked By Senator Allen's Goons Responds

2006-11-01T08:11:00.000-06:00

The Richmond Times-Dispatch posted this letter from Mike Stark, the student Allen's thugs roughed up. The letter was delivered late yesterday to an NBC affiliate station that had videotaped the incident.

My name is Mike Stark. I am a law student at the University of Virginia, a marine, and a citizen journalist. Earlier today at a public event, I was attempting to ask Senator Allen a question about his sealed divorce record and his arrest in the 1970s, both of which are in the public domain. His people assaulted me, put me in a headlock, and wrestled me to the ground. Video footage is available here, from an NBC affiliate.

I demand that Senator Allen fire the staffers who beat up a constituent attempting to use his constitutional right to petition his government. I also want to know why Senator Allen would want his staffers to assault someone asking questions about matters of public record in the heat of a political campaign. Why are his divorce records sealed? Why was he arrested in the 1970s? And why did his campaign batter me when I asked him about these questions.

George Allen defends his support of the Iraq war by saying that our troops are defending the ideals America stands for. Indeed, he says our troops are defending our very freedom. What kind of country is it when a Senator's constituent is assaulted for asking difficult and uncomfortable questions? What freedoms do we have left? Maybe we need to bring the troops home so that they can fight for freedom at George Allen's campaign events. Demanding accountability should not be an offense worthy of assault.

I will be pressing charges against George Allen and his surrogates later today. George Allen, at any time, could have stopped the fray. All he had to do was say, "This is not how my campaign is run. Take your hands off that man." He could have ignored my questions. Instead he and his thugs chose violence. I spent four years in the Marine Corps. I'll be damned if I'll let my country be taken from me by thugs that are afraid of taking responsibility for themselves.

It just isn't the America I know and love. Somebody needs to take a stand against those that would bully and intimidate their fellow citizens. That stand begins right here, right now.

W. Michael Stark

Senator Allen Staffers Assault Law Student At Rally

2006-10-31T23:38:00.000-06:00

Today at a political rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, staffers working for Senator George Allen's campaign attacked and roughed up a law student doing nothing more than asking uncomfortable questions the candidate would prefer to avoid--questions about Allen's sealed arrest record and sealed divorce record. When querried about the incident, Allen is said to have replied to a CNN reporter, "Things like that happen." Yeah, George, at a 1930s Nazi American Bund rally, they happen. Law student and former marine Mike Stark says he's pressing charges.

Link to video through local tv station website.

101

2006-10-30T18:26:00.000-06:00

101 dead American soldiers in October ... 2,814 since since the invasion ... 2,674 since Commander Codpiece's little Mission Accomplished romp on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln.

The Forever War

2006-10-29T12:38:00.000-06:00

The coaltion body count in Iraq for October stands at 103, the highest monthly toll for US and coaltion forces since January 2005. In the face of growing violence against civilians and rising casualties among US troops, "Last Throes" Cheney says things are going "remarkably well"; Bush blathers on, mouthing new talking points while remaing confident of "victory"; and, as to staying the course, Rumsfeld (having not gotten the memo containing the latest spin that Bush has never been about staying the course) remarks, "of course, we're staying the course." Welcome to the moonbat, lunatic world of the Forever War.

Joe Lieberman Will Say Anything

2006-10-28T14:59:00.000-05:00

You know Holy Joe will say anything to hold on to power. Will low information voters buy it? Answer on Nov. 7.

Mean Jean Schmidt Is Confused

2006-10-27T08:58:00.000-05:00

Mean Jean Schmidt (R-OH02) is crying foul that her Democratic opponent, Victoria Wulsin, is running an ad containing a video clip of Schmidt's infamous speech on the House floor where she called Congressman John Murtha, a decorated marine, a coward.

Schmidt is whinning that Wulsin is breaking a House rule that prohibits members from using the broadcast of House floor proceedings in campaign ads.

"Her continued violation will land her in serious trouble with the House Ethics Committee," Schmidt's spokesman Matt Perin said in a release...."

A flaw in the batty congresswoman's logic is that the rule doesn't apply to Wulsin because she isn't a member of Congress. Not yet, anyway.

Olbermann: Tony Snow Can't Count

2006-10-26T13:34:00.000-05:00

So Bush's mouthpiece could only find 8 times the Preznit used the phrase "stay the course." Looks like poor Tony needs help using "the Google." With a simple search of the White House's own press release directory, he'd have turned up 160 results for the "stay the course" mantra, says Crooks & Liars. C&L has the video of Olberman's hilarious putdown.

[transcript]

OLBERMANN: You have probably forgotten this, it stuck about as well as did "the New Coke"…

But just last year, the Pentagon tried to change the language. We were no longer fighting a "War on Terror" — we were fighting a "Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism".

But despite Donald Rumsfeld's endless repetition of his new phrase, the effort failed because the Commander-in-Chief refused to call the "Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism" anything but "The War on Terror".

Now in our fourth story on the Countdown — that message miscommunication is happening in reverse.

On Monday, the White House "fired" the under-producing catch-phrase "stay the course".

And apparently nobody told the Secretary of Defense.

The problem becomes when you can't make adjustments, even about the language of making adjustments.

The White House Press Secretary is now revising his revisionist history on the phrase and still coming up short. First saying that the President never said "stay the course" then yesterday, saying this to Fox News:

Well sure, to be fair, the President did say "Stay the Course" eight times.

So there they are, the eight — and only eight — times President George W. Bush ever said the phrase "Stay The Course"

[video of Bush saying "Stay the Course" 29 times]

And now you know tomorrow's headline from Mr. Snow.

"I never said he only said it eight times; I said we could only find eight times."

Evidently, somebody at the White House needs a little help with "The Google."

'I Never Had Sex With That Man'

2006-10-25T12:52:00.000-05:00

Wow, just how many closeted gay Florida Republicans are out there? Or, more to the point, not out there? Today's Huffington Post is running this story under the headline, "21 Year-Old Fmr Katherine Harris Staffer Says He's Slept With GOP Candidate Crist...Says Crist Also Has Long-Term Lover..."

[Flordia GOP Candidate for Governor] Crist Denies Trysts

A young rising star in the Republican Party has boasted to witnesses of his sexual relationship with Charlie Crist, the frontrunner in the Florida governor's race who has repeatedly denied that he is gay.

The GOP staffer, 21-year-old Jason Wetherington, told friends at separate social functions in August that he had sex with Crist, according to two credible and independent sources who heard Wetherington make the claim first-hand.

Wetherington, who recently worked as a field director for U.S. Senate candidate Katherine Harris and currently works for state representative Ellyn Bodganoff's reelection campaign, also named a man whom he said is Crist's long-term partner, a convicted thief named Bruce Carlton Jordan who also recently worked for Harris in her long-shot Senate bid.

Jordan made headlines recently when the Miami Herald learned that the felon was working as Harris's travel aide. The newspaper noted that Jordan, 42, was reported to be close friends with Charlie Crist, whom he convinced to attend an annual Florida Funeral Directors Association meeting in 2003.

Jordan was charged in 2003 with stealing thousands of dollars from two organizations for whom he worked, including the Tallahassee-based Florida Funeral Directors Association, where he served as executive director. He completed a 60-day jail sentence in February and will be on probation until the year 2011, according to state records.

When the Herald questioned Crist about Jordan this past August, the frontrunner in the governor's race told the newspaper that he doesn't remember the man. "I don't know who Bruce Jordan is," he said at the time. "It doesn't mean I haven't met him. I don't know who you are speaking about."

I asked Crist during a phone interview on Monday morning if he had ever had sex with Jordan.

"No," he said. "I don't recall the name...."

I also asked him about Wetherington's claim to sources that he'd had sex with Crist. "That's ridiculous," [Crist] said. "Completely false."

Then I asked him if he'd ever in his life had sex with a man.

"Never," he said....

Link to article by Bob Norman originally published by Broward-Palm Beach New Times 2006-10-19