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And, yes, I DO take it personally: 02/25/2007 - 03/04/2007
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"Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it."
- Noam Chomsky
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And, yes, I DO take it personally

Saturday, March 03, 2007

Now, HERE'S a classy lady

THIS is how you respond to those who, as my grandmother used to say, "aren't fit to join in polite company..."

elizabeth edwards in response to she-who-must-not-be-named...

When Miss Coulter spoke about John at the conservative convention in Washington yesterday, she used a word that she intended as a nasty and derogatory suggestion. John and I have long ago shrugged off the vile words of this person.

Although her words did not hurt us, they may have hurt some in the gay community. We are all sick and tired of anyone supporting or applauding or introducing hate words into the national dialogue, tired of people thinking that words that cause others pain are fair game.

John gave a graduation speech at NC State several years ago, and in it he said that none of us can stand by when words of bigotry and division are used. It is only when the rest of us stand up and say that this is not acceptable that we drum out the hate-mongers from amongst us.

(thanks to pioneer111 at daily kos...)

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A reprehensible and disgraceful choice

i'm beginning to despair about our democratic leadership ever getting their collective heads out of their collective asses...
Lieberman, a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, was tapped by the Democrats to deliver the party's weekly radio address.

lieberman should be marginalized in every way possible, not given the spotlight and a bully pulpit... what ARE they smoking in those leadership caucus rooms, anyway...?

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Please, please, I beg of you!

no more about ann coulter... the amount of bandwidth that woman has sucked up in the last 24 hours is unconscionable... we complain over the media's obsession with anna nicole and then we go and do the same thing with someone who, in her own twisted way, is equally unworthy of any attention, much less the time spent blogging...

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The disingenuousness (or is it plain stupidity?) of the New York Times

no matter how many times they make positive suggestions to the bush administration, they always get a swift kick in the ass as a thank-you... it must be masochism...
It is time for the Justice Department to stop issuing rote denials that are becoming increasingly hard to believe about the suspicious firing of eight United States attorneys. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should appoint an impartial investigator to get to the bottom of this unfolding scandal.

oh, yeah, right... like george's consummate legal liar is going to appoint a special investigator to investigate HIMSELF...! and, even if he did, an IMPARTIAL one...?!?! you have GOT to be kidding...! if they're going to make suggestions they know don't have a snowball's chance in hell of being implemented, they could at least respect readers' intelligence and say so...

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It's time the courts stopped allowing the CIA to remain unaccountable

if you've followed the el-masri story, you will remember the circumstances surrounding his kidnapping and extraordinary rendition... put yourself in his shoes... i can... having lived in macedonia for months at a time over the interval of the past four years, i can easily not only imagine it, i can visualize the very area because i've been there... at the time of his apprehension, i was spending the holidays in the states, but returned little more than a month after he was snatched, a case study in six degrees of separation...
A German citizen who says he was kidnapped and abused by the Central Intelligence Agency cannot seek redress in court because his lawsuit would expose state secrets, a United States Court of Appeals ruled yesterday in Richmond, Va.

There is substantial evidence that the plaintiff in the suit, Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, was subjected to the C.I.A.’s practice of extraordinary rendition, in which terrorism suspects are seized and sent for interrogation to other countries.

[...]

Anthony D. Romero, the executive director of the A.C.L.U., said that the court’s decision had been “truly unbelievable” and that his group was “very seriously looking at all the avenues before us” for an appeal to the full appeals court or to the United States Supreme Court.

“Actions like this are reminiscent of third world countries,” Mr. Romero said. “It’s just not tenable to have the C.I.A. unaccountable for its most egregious violations of human rights.”

again, put yourself in his shoes... wouldn't you be crying out for justice, or even mere acknowledgment of who did what...? our government has been so unaccountable for so long and the courts are so inured to it, justice has ceased to be an operative word in our "justice" system...

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Is winning a competition to design a weapon of inconceivable destruction really "winning?"

appalling...
The Bush administration announced yesterday the winner of a competition to design the nation’s first new nuclear weapon in nearly two decades and immediately set out to reassure Russia and China that the weapon, if built, would pose no new threat to either nation.

If President Bush decides to authorize production and Congress agrees, the research could lead to a long, expensive process to replace all American nuclear warheads in the next few decades with new designs.

why are we doing this when...?
The potentially expensive initiative faces an uncertain future and has generated much criticism from skeptics who argue that a new design for the nuclear arsenal is unneeded and is a potential stimulus to a global nuclear arms race.

“This is a solution in search of a problem,” said Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, a group in Washington.

and...
[Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California] cited a report in December saying plutonium pits have a lifespan of at least 85 years, leading critics to question whether the new weapons are necessary.

here we are, well into the 21st century, still building obscene weapons of incomprehensible destructive power, and we characterize the group chosen to create a new design as "winners..." how obscene is THAT...?

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Friday, March 02, 2007

Remember the case of the "Denver 3?"

god, some of this stuff takes FOREVER to work its way through the system... but, guess what...? it's coming out just exactly the way we thought it would...
A former White House official who ordered three activists expelled from a 2005 Denver public forum with President Bush says it was White House policy to exclude potentially-disruptive guests from Bush's appearances nationwide.

The former official, Steve Atkiss, revealed the policy today in an interview after two volunteer bouncers identified him and a current White House staffer, Jamie O'Keefe, as the officials who ordered the so-called "Denver Three" activists sent away.

[...]

Today's revelations by volunteer bouncers Casper and Klinkerman showed that the decision to eject the activists "was made at the highest levels of the White House," suggesting a policy of excluding potentially-disruptive critics at events nationwide, ACLU legal director Mark Silverstein said after the men were deposed in Denver's federal courthouse.

now...
U.S. District Judge Wiley Daniel now must guide the legal case.

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Hunter on Iraq: This is a situation that is impossible to win. (But he's not saying what you think.)

i've read hunter's posts for a couple of years now, and i respect his ability to articulate very complex perspectives in an intelligent and logical way... however, i find the following to be among the most despairing, defeatist things i have ever read from him or any other progressive writing on iraq, and i'm not sure i can put into words the depths or even the sense of those feelings... i've excerpted below what i found to be the parts of his post i have the most difficulty with... i'll offer them to you, and if you have any thoughts, i'd be happy to hear them... as for me, i'm going to let the whole thing simmer on the back burner for a while, let the emotional adrenaline work its way out of my system, eat a decent dinner, and maybe come back to this later...
Let me offer some grim predictions as to the outcome of American involvement in Iraq:

1) There are going to be American troops in Iraq for the next ten years, though the numbers will be substantially reduced.

2) There are going to be permanent American bases in Iraq, just as the neoconservatives had desired.

3) Iraq is going to continue to be in a period of instability for years, and become a true haven for terrorism and religious strife, and there is very little we can do about it.

[...]

America made this mess, and America bears responsibility for the bloody aftermath -- whatever that aftermath turns out to be. If leaving the current troop levels in place could truly prevent another 100,000 Iraqi deaths, then it would be our duty to do it. If Petraeus' plan had a reasonable chance of working, it would be our obligation to try. A miserable truth, yes, but a moral truth nonetheless.

[...]

I suspect the odds of a complete troop withdrawal from the country to be vanishingly small.

[...]

[A] Vietnam-style abandonment of the country seems extraordinarily unlikely. American forces may retreat to fortified bases in the country and leave most day to day operations to the Iraqis, but I find it hard to conceive that any president, Republican or Democrat, would abandon the already-built major bases in an extremely turbulent portion of the world threatening at constant collapse, unless circumstances crumbled so badly that even those positions became utterly untenable.

It would require a metaphorical abandonment of the country: impossible for this president, unlikely for others. It would require a physical abandonment of the country: equally unlikely. It would require a reshaping of Mideast policy such that those bases, located in the middle of a region of unstable nations, were considered less liability than strategic advantage: absurdly unlikely, regardless of whatever future American policy morphs into.

[...]

Short version: this is a situation that is impossible to win. Having Democrats in charge doesn't change that, and the answers on how to fail the least catastrophically are not easy. That is, after all, the definition of quagmire.

what he seems to be saying, if i am understanding him correctly, is that, owing to the disaster we have created, there cannot be other than a lose-lose outcome, and he is laying out what he believes to be the MOST likely and the LEAST disastrous of the possible scenarios... am i getting that right...? anyway, comments appreciated...

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Friday photoblogging: 96% full moon, last night, March 1

for over an hour late morning yesterday, the skies opened up here with a genuine deluge... it rained less torrentially until mid-afternoon, and, by evening, it had cleared off enough to have another sensational buenos aires sunset... the moon has been approaching full, and this is a photo i took of it last night, shining through a high, thin overcast outside my kitchen door...

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Circling the drain at 29 (or so you'd think)

how can this man remain in office...?
Mr. Bush’s job approval remains at one of its lowest points, with 29 percent of all Americans saying they approve of the way he is doing his job, compared with 34 percent at the end of October. Sixty-one percent disapproved, compared with 58 percent in October, within the margin of sampling error.

what's keeping americans from picking up rakes and hoes and storming the white house...? even his own party members are running in the other direction...
Mr. Bush’s approval rating dropped 13 percentage points since last fall among Republicans, 65 percent of whom now say they approve of the way he is handling his job as president, compared with 78 percent last October.

please, lord, make them go away...

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Dear Lord, make the bad men stop!

and buhdydharma at kos wants to know what nancy pelosi's plan is for making it happen...
I want our soldiers to stop dying, I want...after four years of war....an actual CHANGE in Iraq. I want the Taliban defeated in Afghanistan. I want war with Iran "OFF THE TABLE." I want Torture to stop now. I want our frikkin Troops and our frikkin Vets to get what they need. I want the Constitution to be Restored, I want Gitmo closed, the MCA abolished, The Patriot Act abolished or severely rolled back. I want my President to stop opening my mail, listening to my calls and reading my e-mail. I want Diplomacy back and Reason back. But mainly Nancy...I want our soldiers to stop dying.....for No. Freaking. Reason.

[...]

So I want to support you, I don't want to get frustrated and mad and start writing nasty things about you or threatening you....I WANT TO HELP! I DON'T want to believe that you don't have a plan, that you are flying by the seat of your pants. I want to be sure that you are not still just playing defense, just reacting to every thrust and feint that Bushco throws out. I want to support you and get behind you and your PLAN and have the Dems be effective and pass legislation and show America and the world that the Dems really ARE the adults, are the good guys. I want to help and support and work with you to accomplish all of the things listed above and more. I really, really do.

uh, yeah... i'd have to say i go along with that...

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Romney to Giuliani: I'm more far right than you are

and he's going to be on tv with pat robertson to prove it...
ABC News reports that in an interview taped for the Christian talk show The 700 Club and set to air March 6, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney smeared contender Rudy Giulani, saying, "He is pro-choice, he is pro-gay marriage, and anti-gun. That's a tough combination in a Republican primary."

oh, by all means... see who can "out-extreme" the other... it makes for compelling television...

(thanks to raw story...)

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Endless war is a terminal disease

matt taibbi in rolling stone via alternet...
After four years of Iraq, we still can't talk about peace in public! This evil bullshit has been buried in the commercial media's descriptive campaign language seemingly forever by now, but it may be time -- in the wake of this Iraq disaster -- to start thinking about where it comes from and what effect it may have on the national psyche.

[...]

A country that feeds itself through the manufacture of war technology is bound to view peace, nonviolence and mercy as seditious concepts. It will create policies first and then people to fit its machines, finding wars to fight and creating killers to fight them. If that's true of us, and I think it is, our troubles won't be over even if someone brings the Iraq war to an end. We'll be treating the symptom and not the disease. And the reason our elections are a sham is that the disease is never on the table.

no argument here... i keep reading the blogs of my esteemed colleagues - markos moulitsas and john aravosis to name two - who repeatedly make this kind of statement: "i'm not against war, i'm against THIS war..." markos, in a lengthy front-page post, excoriated dennis kucinich for his pacifist views and for spouting new age jargon...
"Higher evolution of human awareness"? "Transform consciousness"? "Paradign [sic] shift"? What the hell is this crap? I expect this kind of crap out of Deepak Chopra (or Tom Cruise), not a serious presidential candidate.

[...]

Clearly, Kucinich resides in a higher plane of existence than I do. But my plane is on the planet earth. I want my president to reside here as well.

And by the way, the "Department of Peace" already exists. It's called the "U.S. Department of State".

i hold no brief for kucinich, but i, like matt, believe that the stranglehold the defense industry has on the u.s. and the resulting glorification of all things military, is most definitely a debilitating disease... pursuing an endless war, the undeniable objective of the bush administration, may well be a terminal one...

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Thursday, March 01, 2007

An alternative to getting mired in the muck

so, how about a change of pace... is this cool or what...?



A close up of the Sun in extreme ultraviolet light taken by STEREO's [Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory] Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUVI). Featured are magnetic loops filled with million degree Celsius material. Credit: NASA/NRL.

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“You know what? If the Democrats don’t use their power.........."

russ feingold...
“You know what? If the Democrats don’t use their power, when we’re in the majority in both houses, we’re going to start owning this war. It is George Bush’s war, but if we don’t get serious we’re going to start owning this war.”

translation: "we better start kicking some serious ass, cuz we're really starting to look like some serious wimps, and that probably ain't the kind of image we wanna create, capiche...?"

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A blue-ribbon wingnut conference

White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, a former Fox News Channel anchor, ... [s]peaking at the Omni Shoreham Hotel's Regency Ballroom in Washington DC ... said, "We didn't create the war in Iraq. We didn't create the war on terror."

who is this "WE," white man...?
Other speakers scheduled to speak at the [34th annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC)], which will run through Saturday, include Vice President Dick Cheney, Fox News Channel anchor Sean Hannity, Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), former Congressman Tom DeLay (R-TX) and controversial columnists Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin.

the fact that a senior white house official, working directly for the president of the united states, would allow himself to appear in this kind of company is appalling... (i'm speaking of dick cheney, of course...)
Senator John McCain (R-AZ), a 2008 presidential candidate, is being criticized for skipping out on the conference.

[...]

"It was a classical McCain move, dissing us by going behind our backs," said William J. Lauderback, the executive vice president for the American Conservative Union...

if mccain can hang out with jerry falwell and james dobson, what's the matter with hannity, coulter, and malkin...?

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Brent Budowsky proposes Max Cleland as Secretary for Veterans Affairs

why is my forehead so flat...? because of the number of times i smack it with the palm of my hand and say, "DAMN, why didn't I think of that...?"
It should be the mission of a lifetime and Democrats and Republicans should call on President Bush to do it:

Make Max Cleland Secretary of Veterans Affairs and it will send a powerful message of support to our troops and vets.

If Max Cleland is named, within hours the treatment of every wounded soldier will improve because every official will know
that the new sheriff is in town.

Max Cleland is the most qualified person in America for the job. Never again will wounded troops be punished by early morning inspections that are represensible and sick. Never again will wounded troops be threatened with retribution if they take their case to Congress or the press.

brent, you hit the nail precisely on the head... max would be the all-time perfect choice and what a great use of his talents, to say nothing of the long overdue respect and recognition, particularly after the sliming he took a few years ago... again, my hat's off to you... a wonderful idea...!

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Maj. Gen. Weightman takes the Janis Karpinski dive

or, more accurately, was thrown under the same bus that ran over janis karpinski...
The Army said Thursday that the two-star general in charge of Walter Reed Army Medical Center has been relieved of command following disclosures about inadequate treatment of wounded soldiers.

Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman, who was commanding general of the North Atlantic Regional Medical Command as well as Walter Reed hospital, was relieved of command by Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey.

it's the same story as abu ghraib... go after the poor sap who was probably trying to do his best with inadequate resources, a constantly-declining budget, and a massively increasing workload, instead of the worthless s.o.b.'s up the chain of commmand who put him in that situation...

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"...if Pelosi ever goes beyond complaining that Cheney is impugning her 'patriotism' "

that's a mighty big "IF..."
Vice President Dick Cheney says he stands by his accusation that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s plan for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq would “validate the al-Qaeda strategy.” And he apparently thinks he got the better of this latest war of words.

However, if Pelosi ever goes beyond complaining that Cheney is impugning her “patriotism” – while Cheney counters that he is only questioning her “judgment” – she might point out that it is the Bush administration that has “validated” al-Qaeda’s 9/11 strategy over the past five years.

Captured al-Qaeda documents reveal that Osama bin Laden’s principal goal in the 9/11 attacks was to lure the United States into a clumsy counterattack in the Middle East that would alienate Muslims, help al-Qaeda recruit more jihadists and bog down the American military in a no-win war.

one thing nancy could do is go visit robert parry's archives on consortium news and carefully read his articulate and well-documented reporting on the crimes and lies of the bush administration... then she should set her staff doing due diligence and assembling the mass of documentation parry references and distilling it into a comprehensive briefing, complete with executive summary and press releases, on the monstrosities we elected to govern our country... THOSE would be the democratic talking points, repeated endlessly by every house democrat every time he or she makes a public statement... let's cut the crap and stop tolerating bush and his gang... we need STEELY RESOLVE...! we need ACTION...!

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"Incompetent, foolish, dubious in all of its aspects"

this guy must have missed the orientation class on sucking-up...
Ambassador Timothy Carney told NPR radio that the US policy to exclude Iraqis from governing the country in the two years following the invasion was "an enormous foolishness" which contributed to the deterioration of security and lengthened the conflict in the country.

"We don't need to go into detail on that, but I think words such as incompetent, foolish, dubious in all of its aspects are the most charitable way to look at that period," he said.

Carney went to Iraq shortly after the March 2003 invasion to manage the country's industry and minerals ministry, but quit after two months and became an outspoken critic of US occupation policy.

"The major failing of policy and operations in 2003 was the failure to invite Iraqis into our councils. We actually thought we could govern this country," he told NPR.

"It was enormously costly in terms of time, and consequently in terms of our and Iraqi blood and the blood of many of our allies."

"What an enormous foolishness that was."

Carney, recently named by the White House to return to oversee rebuilding of the country, said he was appalled by the deterioration in the security situation since he was first there.

ok, now, here's the quiz... the next thing we will hear about this is...

a) carney will say that his remarks were "misconstrued"
b) tony snow will interpret carney's remarks in a positive and constructive way
c) george bush will be asked about carney's remarks but won't respond
d) when asked for comment, john mccain will blame donald rumsfeld
e) carney will henceforth be prohibited from talking to the media
f) there will be no mention of this in the conservative media and weblogs
g) all of the above

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Threats, arrogance, and bluster wither in the cold light of day

macho, testosterone-fueled foreign policy is, finally, taking some hard knocks, and, in the process, further eroding u.s. credibility…
American intelligence officials are publicly softening their position, admitting to doubts about how much progress the uranium enrichment program has actually made. The result has been new questions about the Bush administration’s decision to confront North Korea in 2002.
“The question now is whether we would be in the position of having to get the North Koreans to give up a sizable arsenal if this had been handled differently,” a senior administration official said this week.
The disclosure underscores broader questions about the ability of intelligence agencies to discern the precise status of foreign weapons programs.

the entire strategic foundation of darth and the neocons is washing away like a sandcastle at high tide… when you characterize a country as part of an “axis of evil,” you’ve essentially painted yourself into a corner… it seems fairly hypocritical to engage with a country on which you’ve pasted that label, and, then, when you try and extricate yourself from that predicament, your defenders have to make ridiculous statements like this
“The question isn’t whether the axis of evil is dead; it’s alive as it was yesterday,” said Daniel P. Serwer, a vice president at the United States Institute of Peace and a former diplomat who served as executive director of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group.

but, no matter how you slice it, you still have to come to grips with the truth…
“The administration appears to have made a very costly decision that has resulted in a fourfold increase in the nuclear weapons of North Korea,” Senator Reed said in an interview on Wednesday.

heckuva job, darth… heckuva job, neocons…

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Dick’s still hard but Condi’s gone soft

while dick continues to wolf down ideological viagra, what’s happened to our favorite, ferragamo-wearing dominatrix…?



the nyt asks
Has the Bush administration gone soft on its foes?

…said Daniel P. Serwer, a vice president at the United States Institute of Peace and a former diplomat who served as executive director of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group… said,. “[I]t’s absolutely clear to me that you have to talk to who you have to talk to, in order to get things done.”

careful, condi… dick ain’t a pretty sight when he’s pissed off… more interesting to me, however, is who’s twisting condi’s arm…? she may have academic smarts, but in the 6-plus years she’s been sucking up to george (see previous post), she hasn’t exactly demonstrated much of a capacity for either intelligent or forceful action… could it be…?
At a dinner and lecture on Tuesday night at the Library of Congress, it looked like a reunion of the pro-engagement crowd. Seated at the front was former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, along with the new deputy secretary of state, John D. Negroponte; also in attendance was Robert L. Gallucci, the former chief United States negotiator during the North Korean nuclear crisis of 1994.
It was a veritable bevy of advocates of realpolitik, headlined by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, who told the audience, “America must be prepared to talk to our enemies.”

a-HA…! why, it’s that sly old fox, james baker, again… funny how he just keeps turning up… it looks like poppy is doing everything he can possibly do to save george’s sorry ass from total and absolute disgrace… i wouldn’t be at all surprised either if it wasn’t baker who maneuvered behind the scenes to get dick out of town… it was probably easier to stage-manage some of this stuff while darth was ensconced in his “high-tech” trailer, jetting around the middle east…

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Assuming, of course, you’re the kind of boss who doesn’t WANT to be sucked up to

it is to laugh… the following is excerpted from a regular newsletter i receive from booz allen hamilton on strategy and business… senior vice president for booz allen, you may remember, was the most recent position held by mike mcconnell, the recently-confirmed director of national security… perhaps mike could wrangle a few minutes with george and go over the key points of the article…
Not one [presidential] profile has ever included a desired behavior that reads “effectively sucks up to management the president.” Although given the dedication to fawning and sucking up in most corporations presidential administrations — and how often such behavior is rewarded — it probably should. Almost every company president says it he wants people to “challenge the system,” “be empowered to express their opinion,” and “say what they really think,” but there sure are a lot of companies presidential administrations that are stuck on sucking up.

Not only do companies presidents say they abhor such comically servile behavior, but so do individual leaders their subordinates. Almost all the leaders presidents I have met say that they would never encourage such a thing in their organizations administrations. I have no doubt that they are sincere. Most of us are easily irritated, if not disgusted, by derrière kissers. Which raises a question: If leaders presidents say they discourage sucking up, why does it dominate the workplace Bush administration? Keep in mind that these leaders presidents are generally very shrewd judges of character. They spend their lives sizing people up: taking in first impressions and recalibrating them against later impressions. And yet, they still fall for the super-skilled suck-up. They still play favorites.

(as you can see, i’ve taken the liberty to make a few changes…)

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Bellinger continues to cover Condi's ass

after huffing and puffing yesterday about the eu report on secret cia flights and threatening the eu with the loss of u.s. cooperation on intelligence efforts, bellinger tipped the rest of his hand...
The State Department's top lawyer said Wednesday that the United States would refuse to extradite CIA officers who face kidnapping charges in Italy, warning that European criminal prosecutions of U.S. agents were harming transatlantic counterterrorism efforts.

[...]

"If we got an extradition request from Italy, we would not extradite U.S. officials to Italy," Bellinger told reporters in Brussels, where he was meeting with European Union officials.

Bellinger's statement was the first time that a U.S. government official has directly addressed the Italian criminal investigation, which is expected to produce the first overseas trial of CIA officers involved in a covert counterterrorism operation.

but, once again, let's not forget just whose ass he's covering... yep... his boss, who claims that extraordinary rendition kidnapping is perfectly legal...
Rendition is a vital tool in combating transnational terrorism. [...] Renditions take terrorists out of action, and save lives. In conducting such renditions, it is the policy of the United States, and I presume of any other democracies who use this procedure, to comply with its laws and comply with its treaty obligations, including those under the Convention Against Torture.

despite the insistence of others that it's certainly anything but...
"The practice of disappearing people -- keeping them in secret detention without any legal process -- is fundamentally illegal under international law," said Joanne Mariner, director of the terrorism program at Human Rights Watch in New York.

eventually, hopefully within my lifetime and preferably much sooner, condi, her boss, and the rest of the criminal gang will be brought to account...

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It depends on what your definition of "competent" is

ok, so jose padilla is "competent" to stand trial...
A federal judge found Jose Padilla competent to stand trial on terrorism conspiracy charges Wednesday, granting a significant victory to the government in the high-profile criminal case of a United States citizen who was initially designated an “enemy combatant” and held without charges.

but "competent," in padilla's case, may not mean much...
The threshold for legal competency is low, requiring a criminal defendant to have the capacity, on a basic level, both to understand the proceedings and to communicate with his lawyers. Most incompetency claims in federal court are denied, said Christopher Slobogin, an expert in law and psychiatry at the University of Florida, and most defendants found incompetent are clearly psychotic.

interesting... incompetent = psychotic... also interesting...
Judge Marcia G. Cooke ... asked the government ... “If the defendant refuses to discuss vast sections of his case, is that in and of itself not inability to assist counsel?”

[...]

“It doesn’t make sense that if the root of the defendant’s hesitancy to talk” was his treatment in the brig, [John C. Shipley, an assistant United States attorney] said, that the brig would be the only thing he discussed with his lawyers.

i suppose it all depends on who you're talking TO...

then, stepping outside of the need to stay "fair and balanced," the nyt gives us this...

The government’s arguments at the hearing sounded ridiculous and shameful. Prosecutors said Mr. Padilla always seemed fine to his jailers, but it was his jailers who did things like standing on his bare feet with boots so they could shackle him. The brig psychologist testified that he had spoken to Mr. Padilla only twice, once when he was first detained, and two years later — through a slit in his cell door.

When a psychologist testified for the defense that Mr. Padilla was “an anxiety-ridden, broken individual,” the prosecution said her tests were invalid — because the jailers had kept Mr. Padilla handcuffed throughout.

We will probably never know if Mr. Padilla was a would-be terrorist. So far, this trial has been a reminder of how Mr. Bush’s policy on prisoners has compromised the judicial process. And it has confirmed the world’s suspicions of the United States’ stooping to the very behavior it once stood against.

imho, i don't think the "world's suspicions" needed any confirming...

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Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Iraq meltdown: why do we have to rely on the foreign press to get U.S. news?

from the guardian...
An elite team of officers advising US commander General David Petraeus in Baghdad has concluded the US has six months to win the war in Iraq - or face a Vietnam-style collapse in political and public support that could force the military into a hasty retreat.

[...]

"We don't have the numbers for the counter-insurgency job even with the surge. The word 'surge' is a misnomer. Strategically, tactically, it's not a surge," an American officer said.

[...]

According to a British source, plans are in hand for the possible southwards deployment of 6,000 US troops to compensate for Britain's phased withdrawal and any concomitant upsurge in unrest.

[...]

Steven Simon, the national security council's senior director for transnational threats during the Clinton administration, said a final meltdown in political and public backing was likely if the new strategy was not quickly seen to be working. "The implosion of domestic support for the war will compel the disengagement of US forces. It is now just a matter of time," Mr Simon said in a paper written for the Council on Foreign Relations.

"Better to withdraw as a coherent and at least somewhat volitional act than withdraw later in hectic response to public opposition... or to a series of unexpectedly sharp reverses on the ground," he said.

i don't know about you, but the image that comes to mind is the famous photo of one the last u.s. choppers leaving from the roof of an apartment building during the hasty evacuation of saigon...


Vietnam civilians try to board an Air America helicopter on an apartment rooftop in Saigon, April 29, 1975. This is perhaps the most famous image from the Fall of Saigon. It was taken by Hubert van Es, a Dutch photographer working for United Press International. The building in the photo is frequently referred to as the US Embassy, but in fact is an apartment building several blocks away that was one of several pick-up points for the American evacuation.

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StopIranWar.com

wes clark and his pac and votevets' jon soltz have teamed up to make this video talking about how critical it is to keep us from going to war with iran...

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Look out, George! James Baker's coming back for another shot.

and you thought that flipping off the iraq study group report got him out of your hair once and for all...
"The newly launched National War Powers Commission will be chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker, fresh off leading the Iraq Study Group, along with another former top diplomat, Warren Christopher," reports Neil King, Jr. for the [The Wall Street Journal's 'Washington Wire']. "The panel enter a debate almost as old as the republic, but also one that is particularly salient now as Democrats in Congress ponder whether to curtail funding for the Iraq war or even to repeal the 2002 measure authorizing it."

you didn't really think you could diss daddy's consigliere and get away with it, now did you...?

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Why is THIS still being moved as "NEWS?"

as of wednesday afternoon, yahoo news and the ap are still moving this as news...
Group: Gore a hypocrite over power bill

Al Gore, a leading voice in the fight against global warming, is being called a hypocrite by a conservative group that claims his Nashville mansion uses too much electricity. But a spokeswoman for Gore said the former vice president invests in enough renewable energy to make up for the home's power consumption.

The next day, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research put out a news release saying Gore was not doing enough to reduce his own consumption of electricity.

yes, the story now carries gore's response, but, considering it was never "NEWS" in the first goddam place, i'd like to know why, as of wednesday, 3:50 p.m. est, it still is being carried in the top 7 yahoo news stories, particularly with such a sensationalist and misleading headline...



and, oh yeah, it also doesn't bother to mention keith olbermann's excellent debunking...



if the democrats had organizations around the country working 24/7 on new, sensational, and largely vacuous ways to smear national republican figures, i would bet, along with atrios, they wouldn't have 1/100th the media exposure...

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Take THAT, xenophobic wingnuts (and Lou Dobbs)

markos brandishes a study reported by the la times...

item...

A study released Tuesday by the Public Policy Institute of California found that immigrants who arrived in the state between 1990 and 2004 increased wages for native workers by an average 4%.

item...
Another study released Monday by the Washington-based Immigration Policy Center showed that immigrant men ages 18 to 39 had an incarceration rate five times lower than native-born citizens in every ethnic group examined.

i find this remarkably affirming news... as someone who has spent (and continues to spend) a great deal of time in latin america, i have seen both sides of the immigration issue... i know just how serious these folks are when they sacrifice family, their way of life, their culture, their traditions, their language, and their countries to take a shot at having a better life... they don't go to the u.s. to fool around, they go to work hard, earn some money, and send it back home...

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US to EU: how DARE you question our illegal activities!

shooting the messenger... tried and true... if somebody catches you with the goods, impugn their credibility and threaten them with consequences... it works on the dems, why not the eu...?
A senior U.S. administration official on Wednesday warned that ongoing inquiries into secret CIA activities in the European Union may undermine intelligence cooperation between the United States and European nations.

[...]

John Bellinger, legal adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, called the European Parliament report "unbalanced, inaccurate and unfair" and called on the EU governments to challenge the suggestion that Europeans need to be concerned about secret CIA flights.

"I can understand concerns about specific incidents but we should not somehow suggest that all intelligence activity is something illegal or suspicious," he said.

Germany, Italy and several other EU countries have been carrying out their own inquiries into secret CIA activities in Europe, probes Bellinger said "have not been helpful with respect to necessary cooperation between the United States and Europe."

"I do think these continuing investigations can harm intelligence cooperation, that's simply a fact of life," Bellinger told reporters after meeting legal advisers to EU governments in Brussels.

even though it was only a few posts ago that i dredged this up, let's revisit condi for just a moment, shall we...?
Rendition is a vital tool in combating transnational terrorism. [...] Renditions take terrorists out of action, and save lives. In conducting such renditions, it is the policy of the United States, and I presume of any other democracies who use this procedure, to comply with its laws and comply with its treaty obligations, including those under the Convention Against Torture.

pay particular attention to the part where she says, "i presume of any other democracies who use this procedure," implying, of course, eu cooperation in this illegal activity... oh, and, btw, it IS illegal...
"The practice of disappearing people -- keeping them in secret detention without any legal process -- is fundamentally illegal under international law," said Joanne Mariner, director of the terrorism program at Human Rights Watch in New York.

hmmmm... well, then...

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Iraq's oil law "will re-imprison the Iraqi economy"

more on iraq's oil law, the reason we went into iraq in the first place... of course, like everything else these days, it comes with the customary dose of cognitive dissonance...

inter press service news agency...

[The new oil law] specifies that up to two-thirds of Iraq's known reserves would be developed by multinationals, under contracts lasting for 15 to 20 years.

This policy would represent a u-turn for Iraq's oil industry, which has been in the public sector for more than three decades, and would break from normal practice in the Middle East.

According to local labour leaders, transferring ownership to the foreign companies would give a further pretext to continue the U.S. occupation on the grounds that those companies will need protection.

[...]

On Feb. 8, the labour unions sent a letter in Arabic to Iraqi President Jalal Talbani urging him to reconsider this kind of agreement.

"Production-sharing agreements are a relic of the 1960s," said the letter, seen by IPS. "They will re-imprison the Iraqi economy and impinge on Iraq's sovereignty since they only preserve the interests of foreign companies. We warn against falling into this trap."

[...]

The first draft was seen only by the committee of the Iraqi technocrat who penned it, nine international oil companies, the British and the U.S. governments and the International Monetary Fund. The Iraqi parliament will get its first glimpse next week.

[...]

There's no other country in the Middle East with the kind of oil reserves that Iraq has that would consider signing a production-sharing agreement," [Ewa Jasiewicz, a researcher at PLATFORM, a British human rights and environmental group that monitors the oil industry] said. "It's a form of and that's why those countries haven't signed these because it's not in their interests."

and why would we expect anything less than THIS from the new york times...?
And oil, Iraq’s principal resource, must be equitably shared without regard to geography, religion or ethnic group. An oil law should be one of the benchmarks Washington insists on as a condition of continued support.

what...? you expected them to say they were AGAINST it...?

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Wow...! The "endless war" is scheduled to end!

whaddaya know...
In a Dec. 6 memo to top civilian and military folks, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England outlined the Pentagon's eight priorities for this fiscal year, and No. 1 was "Win the Global War on Terror," or GWOT.

[...]

In a Feb. 15 memo, England spotted a key fact that most everyone in this town has overlooked. "At noon on Jan. 20, 2009," he wrote, "many of the civilian Department of Defense (DOD) leadership positions will transition to a new Administration Team. This change, coupled with the normal rotation of military leadership, could disrupt many of the management process changes currently underway in the Department."

So "to ensure that warfighters and taxpayers receive maximum benefit from on-going initiatives," England suggested, "it would be highly desirable to complete current projects by the summer/fall of 2008."

There's a handy "notional" grid with the memos, with the eight priorities down the left side and quarterly milestones for 2007 and 2008 across the top. Little triangles denote the "expected milestone conclusion date."

Sure enough, the GWOT looks to be over around October 2008, a month before. . . .

pulling off this little piece of chicanery would certainly be stooping no lower than bush has stooped throughout his presidency...

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Meanwhile, the government continues to violate our right to privacy

well, gee whiz... it looks like the total information awareness program that was killed by congress back in 2003 wasn't dead after all...
The Department of Homeland Security is testing a data-mining program that would attempt to spot terrorists by combing vast amounts of information about average Americans, such as flight and hotel reservations. Similar to a Pentagon program killed by Congress in 2003 over concerns about civil liberties, the new program could take effect as soon as next year.

ah, but we don't have to wait until next year...
But researchers testing the system are likely to already have violated privacy laws by reviewing real information, instead of fake data, according to a source familiar with a congressional investigation into the $42.5 million program.

and, in point of fact, the tia program never completely shut down...
ADVISE [Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight and Semantic Enhancement] has progressed further than the program killed by Congress in 2003, Total Information Awareness, which was being developed at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Yet it was partly ADVISE's resemblance to Total Information Awareness that led lawmakers last year to request that the GAO review the program. Though Total Information Awareness never got beyond an early research phase, unspecified subcomponents of the program were allowed to be funded under the Pentagon's classified budget, which deal largely with foreigners' data.

oh, but wait... there isn't just ONE program, there's TWO...
The Disruptive Technology Office, a research arm of the intelligence community, is working on another program that would sift through massive amounts of data, such as intelligence reports and communications records, to detect hidden patterns. The program focuses on foreigners. Officials declined to elaborate because it is classified.

omg... the "disruptive technology office..." whoever dreamed THAT one up created an instant classic...
The Disruptive Technology Office, or DTO, is a funding agency within the United States Intelligence Community. It was until recently known as Advanced Research and Development Activity (ARDA).

ARDA was created in 1998 after the model of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) by the Director of Central Intelligence and the Department of Defense, and took responsibility for funding some of DARPA's projects. ARDA evaluates proposals and funds speculative research, particularly in the fields of data mining, video processing, and quantum computing.

There has been speculation that the DTO is continuing research efforts started under the Total Information Awareness program (TIA) in DARPA's Information Awareness Office (IAO). [1] Data-mining activities within the U.S. Department of Defense are controversial and have met with public and congressional disapproval.

Although ARDA's budget is presumably classified as part of the intelligence budget, the New York Times quoted an unnamed former government official saying the agency spent about $100 million a year in 2003. The Associated Press reports that ARDA had a staff of only eight in 2004. Neither report can be verified and are only speculation.

i learn something every day...

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More cognitive dissonance on torture: Jose Padilla

from the wapo...

sanford e. seymour, the brig's technical director...

Limited by a court ruling to what he had discussed with a psychologist evaluating Padilla's competence for trial, Seymour's testimony was sketchy but ran contrary to some of Padilla's most serious allegations.

"I told him I knew of no physical abuse," Seymour testified.

forensic psychologists for the defense...
A forensic psychiatrist and a forensic psychologist hired by the defense last week testified that when asked for information about the brig or the subjects he may have been interrogated about there, Padilla gets tense, exhibits facial tics and "shuts down."

"He would say, 'Please, please, please don't make me do this,' in a very plaintive manner," Angela Hegarty, the forensic psychiatrist, testified.

One of the lawyers, Andrew Patel, testified that even "softball" questions about the case could elicit pop-eyed revulsion from his client, and that he has been unwilling even to listen to the taped conversations at the core of the case against him.

"We tried everything we could imagine" to get him to help them review the evidence, but Padilla refused, Patel testified.

brig psychologist...
While defense lawyers have argued that the isolation and other aspects of his treatment have made Padilla unable to help his attorneys, a brig psychologist who talked to Padilla at the beginning of his detention in June 2002 and then again nearly two years later, noted "no remarkable changes" in his demeanor.

"He was responsive to me," said Craig S. Noble, a brig psychologist, who spoke with Padilla through openings the cell door. "He smiled."

he smiled... see...? what more do you need to know...?

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Cognitive dissonance as wide as the Grand Canyon

take yer pick...

the cia...

Paul Gimigliano, a spokesman for the CIA ... said, renditions "are a key, lawful tool in the fight against terror, and have helped save lives by taking terrorists off the street. They are conducted with care, they are closely reviewed, and they have produced valuable intelligence that has allowed the United States and other nations to foil terrorist plots."

human rights watch...
"The practice of disappearing people -- keeping them in secret detention without any legal process -- is fundamentally illegal under international law," said Joanne Mariner, director of the terrorism program at Human Rights Watch in New York.

george bush...
"There are now no terrorists in the CIA program," the president said, adding that after the prisoners held were determined to have "little or no additional intelligence value, many of them have been returned to their home countries for prosecution or detention by their governments."

anonymous intelligence sources for the wapo...
Intelligence officials told The Post that the number of detainees held in such facilities over nearly five years remains classified but is higher than 60. Their whereabouts have not been publicly disclosed.

marwan jabour, an accused al-qaeda paymaster...
When Jabour arrived [at a villa in a wealthy residential neighborhood of Islamabad], he saw as many as 20 other detainees, including the 16-year-old son of an Egyptian sheik, who had been captured in Pakistan. Dozens of al-Qaeda suspects swept up in the years after Sept. 11, 2001, have been through the house, according to accounts by former prisoners and U.S. intelligence officials with knowledge of the facility.

condoleezza rice...
For decades, the United States and other countries have used "renditions" to transport terrorist suspects from the country where they were captured to their home country or to other countries where they can be questioned, held, or brought to justice. [...] Rendition is a vital tool in combating transnational terrorism. [...] Renditions take terrorists out of action, and save lives. In conducting such renditions, it is the policy of the United States, and I presume of any other democracies who use this procedure, to comply with its laws and comply with its treaty obligations, including those under the Convention Against Torture. Torture is a term that is defined by law. We rely on our law to govern our operations. The United States does not permit, tolerate, or condone torture under any circumstances.

marwan jabour...
Jabour said he was often naked during his first three months at the Afghan site, which he spent in a concrete cell furnished with two blankets and a bucket. The lights were kept on 24 hours a day, as were two cameras and a microphone inside the cell. Sometimes loud music blasted through speakers in the cells. The rest of the time, the low buzz of white noise whizzed in the background, possibly to muffle any communication by prisoners through cell walls.

[...]

He was, however, chained up and left for hours in painful positions more than 20 times and deprived of sleep for long periods. Sometimes he would have one hand chained to a section of his cell wall, making it impossible to stand or sit.

we knew condi was lying well before she first said the u.s. does not torture... the cognitive dissonance gap is so wide it rivals the grand canyon...

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Tuesday, February 27, 2007

A shadow battle against the shadow government that wants war with Iran

robert parry, as usual, offers a first-rate analysis and summary of the ugly disease that took us into iraq and is poised to strike iran...
One intelligence source told me that Joint Chiefs chairman, Gen. Peter Pace, has explored the possibility of resigning if Bush presses forward with air attacks against Iran, a war strategy that might be done in coordination with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Though Pace has given no public signal on resigning, he has undercut Bush’s case for an expanded Middle East war by challenging the administration claims about Iran’s alleged sponsorship of attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq and by telling Congress that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have eroded American military capability to confront another crisis.

[...]

One intelligence source directed me to a paragraph in Seymour Hersh’s new article in The New Yorker, referring to Bush’s order for hair-trigger preparations on going to war with Iran so he can attack within 24 hours.

[...]

By creating such a tight time frame for action, Bush would negate the possibility for the Pentagon brass and Congress to mount any serious opposition to a presidential order on Iran, even if they are convinced Bush’s actions will be catastrophic.

The tradition of the U.S. military is to implement presidential orders regardless of doubts. Perhaps months later, a dissenting commander might quietly resign.

That practice and the 24-hour window may help explain why several U.S. generals are pondering now how to stop Bush from blindsiding them with a new war. One of their tactics appears to be leaking indications of their strong opposition to the press.

[...]

But one source told me that the resistance – from the Pentagon, Blair and even Democrats in Congress – appears to be having an effect on Bush’s decision-making. This source said he believed Bush had planned to launch an attack on Iran, possibly as early as this week, but was getting “weak knees.”

[...]

But one source told me that the resistance – from the Pentagon, Blair and even Democrats in Congress – appears to be having an effect on Bush’s decision-making. This source said he believed Bush had planned to an attack on Iran, possibly as early as this week, but was getting “weak knees.”

if bush is getting "weak knees," it will be the first time that anything has come between his fantasy world and reality...

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Oh, you "wouldn't start with suspicion," would you?

Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) said today that he is upset that critics have been questioning the administration’s intelligence on Iran, calling the reaction “unwarranted.” Lieberman said the “danger point” learned from the criticism is that the media and politicians reacted with “suspicion.” “I wouldn’t start with suspicion,” Lieberman said.

i posted this on lieberman yesterday...
he is a miserable, rotten, son-of-a-bitch, and, trust me, i'm being quite restrained... a truce on the iraq debate until the end of summer...? joe lieberman is a poisonous toad masquerading as a human being...

restraint, however, was not a factor for my friend and regular commenter, brother tim...
I'd liken him more to a snake than a toad. I've said it before, he has only two allegiances: his wallet and Israel; in that order. That treasonous bastard is a Neo-con, and just as dangerous to this country as anyone in the Bush Administration.

(thanks to think progress...)

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OMG! The U.S. is going to TALK to Iran and Syria?

look what happens when darth leaves town... everything goes straight to hell...
US officials will take part alongside Syria, Iran and other regional states in a planned March meeting in Baghdad on Iraq's future, a senior US official said Tuesday.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack confirmed the meeting, expected to take place next month, and would not rule out possible bilateral contacts between US envoys and their Syrian and Iranian counterparts.

"The Iraqi government has convened this meeting of its neighbors plus the permanent members of the (UN) Security Council," McCormack told reporters.

"It is an opportunity for all states attending to enunciate their positive vision for Iraq and to play a responsible role in Iraq's future, contribute to that, including Iran and Syria," he said.

who would have thunk it...?

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Uh-oh! McConnell departs from Bushco's revealed truths

so, the new intelligence chief, like a debutante at the ball, tries to show the world that he's worthy of his new post, and what happens...? he blows it right off the bat...
McConnell meanwhile characterized security in Iraq as "moving in a negative direction" and said that the term "civil war" aptly describes elements of the conflict there.

"Unless efforts to reverse these conditions gain real traction during the 12-18 month time frame ... we assess that the security situation will continue to deteriorate at rates comparable to the latter half of 2006," McConnell told lawmakers on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

McConnell said "the term 'civil war' accurately describes key elements of the Iraqi conflict" including the hardening of sectarian divisions and population "displacements."

oh my, oh my... now it's a CIVIL WAR, is it...? eliza dolittle, he ain't... where's 'enry 'iggins when we need him...?

oh, and btw... he was appearing before the senate armed services committee to further hype the iran threat... why won't the bastards just give it a rest...?

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"It is absolutely devastating to me to see what we're doing and what we have become."

u.s. troops, serving on german military bases, want out...
On military bases across Germany, many are now seeking a way out through desertion or early discharge.

When he goes underground, he won't tell his mom. "John," a rangy young soldier with arresting eyebrows, has planned each step carefully. He will spend his leave from an Army base in Germany at home in the northeastern United States, snowboarding, visiting friends, and hanging out with his teenage siblings.

Then he'll disappear. When the military police call his mother and stepfather, the hard-line Bush supporters will be able to say honestly that they don't know where their son is.

[...]

"I knew when I came back that I couldn't do this anymore. I couldn't be the tool to enforce policy that I thought was fundamentally wrong, if not a little evil," says Sgt. Bob Evers, a 14-year Army and Navy veteran now living in the Bavarian hamlet of Schnackenwerth. "It is absolutely devastating to me to see what we're doing and what we have become."

i spent most of my army time in vietnam on a wide-eyed learning curve that hasn't stopped to this day... i was fortunate in many ways, particularly in that i never had to fire a weapon, and came back in one piece... i served the rest of my time stateside before taking an early out to return to college... i had a good friend who served for a time as a medic in hawaii... seeing the human destruction arriving daily from s.e. asia, he took the conscientious objector route, and, after much bureaucracy, it was upheld... i sometimes wonder how my life would have been different had i escaped across the border into canada, to work at a job on vancouver island that my uncle had all lined up for me... very different would be my guess...

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Darth's "undisclosed location" - a high-tech customized trailer

so THAT'S where he hides out... equipped, no doubt, with state-of-the-art hazmat gear...
US Vice President Dick Cheney said the suicide bombing at the gate of a US air base he was visiting in Afghanistan on Tuesday made a "loud boom" and drove him briefly into a bomb shelter.

Speaking to a small group of reporters inside his high-tech customized trailer in the belly of the cavernous military plane taking him to his next stop Oman, Cheney said he had heard a "loud boom" when the attack occurred.

there's only one "cavernous military transport plane" that comes to mind, and that's the c17...


The C-17 measures approximately 174 feet long with a 170-foot wingspan. The aircraft is powered by four fully reversible Pratt & Whitney F117-PW-100 engines (the commercial version is currently used on the Boeing 757). Each engine is rated at 40,900 pounds of thrust. The thrust reversers direct the flow of air upward and forward to avoid ingestion of dust and debris.
The aircraft is operated by a crew of three (pilot, copilot and loadmaster). Cargo is loaded onto the C-17 through a large aft door that accommodates military vehicles and palletized cargo. The C-17 can carry virtually all of the Army's air-transportable, outsized combat equipment. The C-17 is also able to airdrop paratroopers and cargo.

Maximum payload capacity of the C-17 is 170,900 pounds, and its maximum gross takeoff weight is 585,000 pounds. With a payload of 130,000 pounds and an initial cruise altitude of 28,000 feet, the C-17 has an unrefueled range of approximately 5,200 nautical miles. Its cruise speed is approximately 450 knots (.77 Mach).

The design of this aircraft lets it operate on small, austere airfields. The C-17 can take off and land on runways as short as 3,000 feet and as narrow as 90 feet wide. Even on such narrow runways, the C-17 can turn around by using its backing capability while performing a three-point star turn. Maximum use has been made of off-the-shelf and commercial equipment, including Air Force standardized avionics.

and, as you can see, there's plenty of room for darth's "high-tech customized trailer..."



this article may have revealed more than darth's security contingent would like the world to know...

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It's all part of provoking a confrontation

and proving who's the big dog...
Former chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said Monday the United States, Europe and the U.N. Security Council are "humiliating" Iran by demanding that it suspend uranium enrichment before any negotiations and then dictating its rewards.

He said the package of economic and political incentives put forward in June 2006 by the U.S. and key European countries, which was later endorsed by the council, did not mention the key issue of security guarantees for Iran or adequately address the possibility of U.S. diplomatic recognition if Tehran renounces enrichment.

"The first incentive, I think, is to sit down with them in a direct talk rather than saying to them 'you do this, thereafter we will sit down at a table and tell you what you get for it,'" Blix said. "That's getting away from a humiliating neo-colonial attitude to a more normal (one)."

"People have their own pride whether you like them or don't," he told a media briefing ahead of a daylong conference on "Weapons Threats and International Security" organized by The Century Foundation, a Washington-based research institute on domestic and international challenges.

hearkening back to yesterday's post on chomsky...
[I]ndependence is not tolerated. [...] International affairs is very much run like the mafia. The godfather does not accept disobedience, even from a small storekeeper who doesn't pay his protection money. You have to have obedience otherwise the idea can spread that you don't have to listen to the orders and it can spread to important places.

because, after all, as both arthur silber and chomsky note...

arthur...

We see our success, and our power on the world stage, as inherently tied to superior moral virtue. We are so successful because we are uniquely virtuous, and our national power confirms our morality, in relation to which all other peoples and all other countries can only suffer in comparison.

chomsky...
It's a principle that anything our leaders do is for noble reasons. It may be mistaken, it may be ugly, but basically noble. And if you bring in normal moderate, conservative, strategic, economic objectives you are threatening that principle. It's remarkable the extent to which it's held.

and, because it's US doing it, it HAS to be right...

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Condi finally accomplishes what we went to Iraq for in the first place

as i pointed out last week, she clearly had her priorities straight when she hit ground in baghdad...
Rice, in Surprise Baghdad Visit, Presses Leaders for
Progress


The secretary of state said she told Iraq's leaders to
quickly finalize an oil law... .

according to a long article in today's nyt, she got what she went there for...
The Iraqi cabinet approved a draft of a law on Monday that would set guidelines for nationwide distribution of oil revenues and foreign investment in the immense oil industry.

but, as per usual, they neglected to connect the passage of the law with the pressure condi put on them last week, nor, in the u.s. media's preferred context-free reporting style, did they bother to mention the unbelievably favorable terms under which foreign investment would be made... for that, we have to turn to the foreign press, in this case, the uk independent...
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.

about as close as the nyt came to any of the above context was this...
“I think the devil is going to be in the details,” said Fadel Gheit, an analyst with Oppenheimer & Company in New York. “Oil companies need governments that will honor the contracts they sign and they need a safe environment to operate,” he added.

While Mr. Gheit said he expected American and British oil companies to receive preferential treatment in the awarding of contracts, other analysts said Iraqis would be suspicious of awarding preferential deals to American companies.

“Iraqis are extremely protective of their resources,” said Rochdi A. Younsi, an analyst at Eurasia Group, a political risk consulting firm. “Given the level of anti-American sentiment, any major American oil company perceived to take advantage of their relations in government would be seen as being part of the so-called conspiracy to take over Iraq’s natural resources.”

however, if you go back and re-read the snippet from the independent, it looks very much like the "conspiracy to take over iraq's natural resources" is now an accomplished fact...

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Pricing Giuliani by the comment, Dana Milbank scores a direct hit

everybody who attends a giuliani campaign speech should have a hard copy of this article close at hand...
The Republican presidential candidate and former New York mayor was charging $100,000 per speech before he announced two weeks ago that he was quitting the motivational lecture circuit. Now he can look forward to a year or more of talks like he gave yesterday to the Hoover Institution in the Willard ballroom -- earning nothing but applause.

Had America's Mayor charged the going rate, the 46-minute, 34-second speech would have cost the conservative think tank $2,147.46 per minute, including:

· $5,368.65 for jokes about the weather.

· $21,899.94 for his views on education.

· $9,019.32 for his thoughts on taxes.

Instead, the Hoover fellows got all this free, and more! Giuliani threw in bonus thoughts on foreign policy, such as "We clearly won the Cold War" (that two-second snippet had a market value of $71.58), and "We've never been a perfect country, we're never going to be a perfect country, but we're a good country, so we don't like war" ($214.74 for this six-second gem).

On the other hand, the value-conscious consumer apparently will have to pay full freight if Giuliani is going to say something controversial. The candidate said not a peep about abortion or gay rights. He skipped any mention of Iraq until a questioner asked him.

Finally pressed on Iraq, his two-minute, 28-second answer (a $5,297.04 value) included mentions of immigration, Social Security and class-action lawsuits. "I ran a hospital system, the second- or third-largest in the country. . . . We were paying out $500 million in claims, and settling claims that we just had to settle for amounts of money I would never thought you should give, and I'm a lawyer. That's what I really know about, even more than foreign policy."

Had they been paying customers, the Hoover fellows, drinking Cakebread Chardonnay and Swanson Merlot at noon, may have asked for a small rebate when Giuliani, explaining his switch from Democrat to Republican, cited "Churchill's statement: If you're not a liberal when you're 20 you have no heart, but if you're not a conservative by the time you're 40 you have no brain."

"There is no record of anyone hearing Churchill say this," reports the Churchill Centre.

A national political reporter for the Post, Milbank writes Washington Sketch, an observational column about political theater in the White House, Congress and elsewhere in the capital. He covered the 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns and President Bush's first term. Before coming to the Post as a Style political writer in 2000, he covered the Clinton White House for the New Republic and Congress for the Wall Street Journal.

it would be very easy to do what my colleagues and i used to do in those endless meetings common to the corporate world... we would each have a sheet of paper listing the most common jargonese currently in use by the oh-so-savvy up-and-comers, arranged like a bingo score card... each time one of us heard jargon being used, he'd put a check in the appropriate box... the first one to complete a row would smile and silently mouth the word "bingo..." if nothing else, it helped the meetings to go a little faster...

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Monday, February 26, 2007

A passionate, articulate plea to Americans to WAKE TF UP!

i have only excerpted a small portion of what may be the most passionate, informed appeal for action i have read in a long time... read this and then go read the rest...
1. The criminal and immoral nature of an attack on Iran in the present circumstances and in the foreseeable future must be identified and stated with all the force imaginable, without qualification, in virtually every interview, every television appearance, and every news story that any politician (or any other public figure) takes part in, beginning tomorrow. THE INSANITY AND CRIMINALITY OF SUCH AN ATTACK MUST BE MADE NATIONAL TOPIC NUMBER ONE, UNTIL THIS ADMINISTRATION FULLY AND COMPLETELY DISAVOWS ANY AND ALL SUCH INTENTIONS AND PLANS -- AND UNTIL THE MAGNITUDE OF PUBLIC OPPOSITION CONVINCES US THAT THEY MEAN IT.

2. In every statement about an attack on Iran, no opponent of this administration can accept any of the terms of debate chosen by the administration. Such opponents must argue on completely different terms. If you argue within the framework they prefer to any extent at all, you will lose -- and the next global war may begin.

[...]

If I were an influential blogger active in Democratic politics, I would inform every presidential candidate and would-be candidate that, until and unless they stop using this kind of gutter language about leaving "all options on the table," THEY WILL RECEIVE NO SUPPORT FROM ME AT ALL. I would urge everyone else to similarly refuse to support them. If that eliminates all the candidates you have at the moment, THEN FIND BETTER ONES. Alternatively, do everything you can to convince the candidates you have to become BETTER ones themselves.

[...]

Most Americans have never heard an alternative point of view -- because almost no one in national life has an alternative point of view. [...] And consider a related point: most of you reading this are seriously engaged with political issues to one degree or another. But in many ways, that kind of involvement is a luxury unknown to most Americans. The great majority of Americans spend all their days, and often sleepless nights, worrying about very basic concerns: how to pay next month's rent, how to afford the medical care that one of the children needs very badly, whether they can afford to go to the movies -- or if they have to save that money for food next week. I think a lot of you who may read this forget how many Americans live. I don't forget it, in large part because I've lived with those kinds of concerns myself for the last few years, and continue to live that way now.

Most Americans rarely think about politics at all; they can't afford to, in any sense of that phrase. When they very briefly pay attention, they simply absorb the ideas that predominate on television or radio, or in newspapers they may occasionally glance at. Today, virtually everything they hear or read tells them that Iran is the "greatest threat" we face, and that an Iran with nuclear weapons is "intolerable" and "unacceptable." None of that is true...

needless to say, the very same rationale can be applied to the run-up to the current iraq disaster and those who supported it...

(thanks to crooks and liars...)

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Oh, by all means, let's not UPSET Joe Lieberman

to think that the people of connecticut elected this guy, and now he's blackmailing not only his former party, but also the entire goddam country... if there is a definition of a treasonous bastard, it would have to be joe lieberman...
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Lieberman is making it clear he does not want Iraq-related amendments attached to a bill scheduled for floor action this week that would implement unfulfilled recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. Democratic leaders seemed inclined today to hold off introducing Iraq-related amendments to the bill, possibly to avoid upsetting Lieberman and moving him closer to switching party affiliations, which would swing the Senate back to GOP control.

[...]

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed today, Lieberman expressed his desire not to have a debate over Iraq, saying “let us declare a truce in the Washington political war over Iraq until” the “end of summer.”

As Glenn Greenwald notes, Lieberman wrote “almost exactly the same op-ed, on the same Wall St. Journal page, more than a year ago,” in effect arguing “that it is therefore our duty as Americans (still) to keep our mouths shut and be led to Victory.”

he is a miserable, rotten, son-of-a-bitch, and, trust me, i'm being quite restrained... a truce on the iraq debate until the end of summer...? joe lieberman is a poisonous toad masquerading as a human being...

(thanks to think progress...)

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Some unanticipated drama as we await a verdict

it's astounding to me how the judge can issue explicit instructions to a jury to refrain from reading, listening to, or watching news reports, and a juror goes ahead and does it anyway... at least it wasn't declared a mistrial...
CNN reports that one female juror was dismissed from the case, and that they will now proceed with only eleven jurors, so no mistrial was called. The dismissed juror is reportedly a white woman in her seventies, and is curator at a museum.

According to CNN, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald wanted an alternate juror brought in, and objected to continuing with only eleven jurors, but Judge Walton overruled.

MSNBC also reported that Libby was seen smiling in the courtroom throughout the discussions between the judge and lawyers. Shuster speculated that the body language of one of the alternates suggests she was hostile to the defense.

so, we continue to wait...

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"The deep hatred and contempt for democracy among western elites"

i spend a great deal of time trying to assemble the pieces of the "big picture" in my head... sometimes i don't think i've done too badly, but then i read chomsky, who never fails to toss me a dozen or so pieces i didn't have... there are damn few people that have the ability to do that, and i hold them in high esteem... unfortunately, particularly after reading chomsky, i am so overwhelmed with the vastness and complexity of the larger pattern, i often just want to throw my hands up in the air and go back to watching reruns of law and order...

here, chomsky is describing u.s. foreign policy in relation to palestine and israel...

[I]ndependence is not tolerated. [...] International affairs is very much run like the mafia. The godfather does not accept disobedience, even from a small storekeeper who doesn't pay his protection money. You have to have obedience otherwise the idea can spread that you don't have to listen to the orders and it can spread to important places.

[...]

There was a free election in Palestine, but it came out the wrong way. So instantly, the United States and Israel with Europe tagging along, moved to punish the Palestinian people, and punish them harshly, because they voted the wrong way in a free election. That's accepted here in the West as perfectly normal. That illustrates the deep hatred and contempt for democracy among western elites, so deep-seated they can't even perceive it when it's in front of their eyes. You punish people severely if they vote the wrong way in a free election.

[...]

I suspect one of the reasons why Jimmy Carter's book has come under such fierce attack is because it's the first time, I think, in the mainstream, that one can find the truth about the road map. I have never seen anything in the mainstream that discusses the fact that Israel instantly rejected the road map with U.S. support. They formally accepted it but added 14 reservations that totally eviscerated it. It was done instantly. It's public knowledge, I've written about it, talked about it, so have others, but I've never seen it mentioned in the mainstream before.

he then turns his formidable analytical skills to iraq...
It's very hard to predict the Bush administration today because they're deeply irrational. They were irrational to start with but now they're desperate. They have created an unimaginable catastrophe in Iraq. This should've been one of the easiest military occupations in history and they succeeded in turning it into one of the worst military disasters in history. They can't control it and it's almost impossible for them to get out for reasons you can't discuss in the United States because to discuss the reasons why they can't get out would be to concede the reasons why they invaded.

We're supposed to believe that oil had nothing to do with it, that if Iraq were exporting pickles or jelly and the center of world oil production were in the South Pacific that the United States would've liberated them anyway. It has nothing to do with the oil, what a crass idea. Anyone with their head screwed on knows that that can't be true. Allowing an independent and sovereign Iraq could be a nightmare for the United States. It would mean that it would be Shi'ite-dominated, at least if it's minimally democratic. It would continue to improve relations with Iran, just what the United States doesn't want to see. And beyond that, right across the border in Saudi Arabia where most of Saudi oil is, there happens to be a large Shi'ite population, probably a majority.

[...]

To bring up these issues would open the question why the United States and Britain invaded. And that question is taboo.

It's a principle that anything our leaders do is for noble reasons. It may be mistaken, it may be ugly, but basically noble. And if you bring in normal moderate, conservative, strategic, economic objectives you are threatening that principle. It's remarkable the extent to which it's held. So the original pretexts for the invasion were weapons of mass destruction and ties to al-Qaida that nobody but maybe Wolfowitz or Cheney took seriously. The single question, as they kept reiterating in the leadership, was: will Saddam give up his programs of weapons of mass destruction? The single question was answered a couple of months later, the wrong way. And quickly the party line shifted. In November 2003, Bush announced his freedom agenda: our real goal is to bring democracy to Iraq, to transform the Middle East. That became the party line, instantly.

see what i mean...? it's very difficult for to read chomsky and not be hit over the head repeatedly with what i perceive to be the de facto truth of what he has to say...

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Sunday, February 25, 2007

What we DO know is bad enough and now we're finding out even more

seymour hersh...
“We are simply in a situation where this president is really taking his notion of executive privilege to the absolute limit here, running covert operations, using money that was not authorized by Congress, supporting groups indirectly that are involved with the same people that did 9/11.”

given the insistence of the bush administration on the unfettered power of the executive under the aumf and the bogus theory of the unitary executive, none of this should be surprising... i've said all along that, given the horrors of what we DO know, what we DON'T know will be truly mind-boggling...

(thanks to think progress...)

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