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| ---> Love for Sale and Conservatives are Buying!!! |
| 01.27.05 (6:36 am) [edit] |
I'm herewith resigning as a member of the liberal media elite.
I'm joining up with the conservative media elite.
They get paid better.
First comes news that Armstrong Williams got nearly a quarter of a million from the Education Department to plug No Child Left Behind.
The families of soldiers killed in Iraq get a paltry $12,000. But good publicity? Priceless.
Mr. Williams helped out the first President Bush and Clarence Thomas during the Anita Hill scandal. Mr. Williams, who served as Mr. Thomas's personal assistant at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission when the future Supreme Court justice was gutting policies that would help blacks, gleefully attacked Professor Hill, saying, "Sister has emotional problems," and telling The Wall Street Journal "there is a thin line between her sanity and insanity."
Now we learn from media reporter Howard Kurtz that syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher had a $21,500 contract from the Health and Human Services Department to work on material promoting the agency's $300 million initiative to encourage marriage. Ms. Gallagher earned her money, even praising Mr. Bush in print as a "genius" at playing "daddy" to the nation. "Mommies feel your pain," she wrote in 2002. "Daddies give you confidence that you can ignore the pain and get on with life."
Genius? Not so much. Spendthrift? Definitely. W.'s administration was running up his astounding deficit paying "journalists" to do what they would be happy to do for free - just to be friends with benefits, getting access that tougher scribes are denied. Consider Charles Krauthammer, who went to the White House on Jan. 10 for what The Washington Post termed a "consultation" on the inaugural speech and then praised the Jan. 20th address on Fox News as "revolutionary," said Media Matters, a liberal watchdog group.
I still have many Christmas bills to pay. So I'd like to send a message to the administration: THIS SPACE AVAILABLE. I could write about the strong dollar and the shrinking deficit. Or defend Torture Boy, I mean, the esteemed and sage Alberto Gonzales. Or remind readers of the terrific job Condi Rice did coordinating national security before 9/11 - who could have interpreted a memo titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States" as a credible threat? - not to mention her indefatigable energy obscuring information undercutting the vice president's dementia on Iraq.
My preference is to get a contract with Rummy. It would be cost effective, compared with the latest $80 billion he needs to train more Iraqi security forces to be blown up. For half a mil, I could write a doozy of a column promoting Rummy's phantasmagoric policies.
What is all this hand-wringing about the 31 marines who died in a helicopter crash in Iraq yesterday? It's only slightly more than the number of people who died in traffic accidents in California last Memorial Day. The president set the right tone, avoiding pathos when asked about the crash. "Obviously," he said, "any time we lose life it is a sad moment."
Who can blame Rummy for carrying out policies of torture? We're in an information age. Information is power. If people are not giving you the intelligence you want, you have to customize to get the intelligence you want to hear.
That's why Rummy also had to twist U.S. laws to secretly form his own C.I.A. A Pentagon memo said Rummy's recruited agents could include "notorious figures," whose ties to the U.S. would be embarrassing if revealed, according to The Washington Post. Why shouldn't a notorious figure like Rummy recruit notorious figures?
I could write a column denouncing John McCain for trying to call hearings into Rummy's new spy unit, suggesting the senator is just jealous because Rummy's sexy enough to play James Bond.
The president might need my help as well. He looked out of it yesterday when asked why his foreign policy is so drastically different from the one laid out in Foreign Affairs magazine in 2000 by Ms. Rice - a preview that did not emphasize promoting democracy and liberty around the world. "I didn't read the article," Mr. Bush said.
Why should he? Robert McNamara never read the Pentagon Papers. Why should W. bone up on his own foreign policy?
Freedom means the freedom to be free from reading what you promise voters and other stuff. I could make that case - if the price was right. - http://www.nytimes.com/2005/0...
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| ---> 'Controlling the Oil in Iraq Puts America in a Strong Position to Exert Influence ...' |
| 01.25.05 (5:29 am) [edit] |
[b]Noam Chomsky: 'Controlling the Oil in Iraq Puts America in a Strong Position to Exert Influence on the World'[/b]
Given the impossibly high praise lavished upon him - "One of the finest minds of the twentieth century" (The New Yorker); "Arguably the most important intellectual alive" (The New York Times) - it is hard to know what to expect when Noam Chomsky enters the room, a beam of pure white light perhaps, or at least the regal swish of academic royalty. Or the whiff of sulphur. He has also been called a man with a "deep contempt for the truth" (The Anti-Chomsky Reader) and an appeaser of Islamic fascism (Christopher Hitchens), among some of the milder criticism.
So it is a surprise when a smiling, slightly stooped man with a diffident air strolls into his office in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, pours himself a coffee and apologises for keeping me waiting.
As has often been remarked, Professor Chomsky is modesty personified, quietly spoken and generous with his time, diligently answering the thousands of e-mails sent to him every week, a laborious task that eats up seven hours a day; usually signing off simply with "Noam". "He recognises no hierarchies," says Chomsky's long-time assistant, Bev Stohl. "He is what people who love him say he is, a man who cares deeply for others."
Of all that has been said about him, Bono's quip "rebel without a pause" fits as well as anything. At 76, and despite a recent struggle with cancer, Chomsky seems to have increased his prodigious output. Bookshelves across the world groan with his political writings, his voice can be heard in radio interviews every week and apart from e-mailing and extensive blogging he gives hundreds of speeches in dozens of cities every year.
"This is how it has been since 9/11," he says. "That had a complex effect on the U.S. which I don't think is appreciated abroad. The picture is that it turned everyone into flag-waving maniacs, and that is just nonsense. It opened people's minds and made a lot of people think, 'I'd better figure out what our role is and why these things are happening'."
Chomsky's views on America's role in the world are well-known, thanks to four decades of relentless political activity marked by his forensically detailed demolition of the U.S. official line. From the Vietnam War, which he argued was fought to halt the spread of independent nationalism, not communism, to the twin tower attacks, which he said were rooted in the "fury and despair" caused by U.S. policies, and his famous charge that every post-war American president would have been hanged under the Nuremberg Laws, Chomsky has been the acid in the belly of the U.S. beast, using what Arundhati Roy calls his "anarchist's instinctive mistrust of power" to eat at its swaggering self-assurance.
Still, he says, he is amazed at how the invasion of Iraq has turned out in what he believes "should have been one of the easier military occupations in history". He says: "I thought the war itself would be over in two days and that the occupation would immediately succeed. It was known to be the weakest country in the region. The U.S. never would have invaded otherwise. The sanctions had killed hundreds of thousands and compelled the people to rely on Saddam for survival, otherwise they probably would have overthrown him.
"The country is obviously going to fall apart as soon as you push it. And any resistance is going to have no outside support, a trickle but nothing significant. But, in fact, it is proving harder than the German occupation of Europe in the Second World War. The Nazis didn't have this much trouble in Europe. But somehow the U.S. has managed to turn it into an unbelievable catastrophe. And it is partly because of the way they are treating people. They have been treating people in such a way that engenders resistance and hatred and fear."
The long-awaited Iraqi elections are to be held next Sunday but Chomsky calls talk about a sovereign, independent, democratic Iraq a "poor joke". He says: "I don't see any possibility of Britain and the U.S. allowing a sovereign independent Iraq; that's almost inconceivable. It will have a Shia majority. Probably as a first step it will try to reconstitute relations with Iran. Its not that they are pro- Khamenei [Iran's Supreme Leader], they'll want to be independent. But it's a natural relationship and even under Saddam they were beginning to restore relations with Iran.
"It might instigate some degree of autonomy in the largely Shia regions of Saudi Arabia which happens to be where most of the oil is. You can project not too far in the future a possible Shia-dominated region including Iran, Iraq, oil-producing regions of Saudi Arabia which really would monopolise the main sources of the world's oil. Is the U.S. going to permit that? It is out of the question. Furthermore, an independent Iraq would try to restore its position as a great, perhaps leading power in the Arab world. Which means it will try to rearm and confront the regional enemy, which is Israel. It may well develop WMD to counter Israel's. It is inconceivable that the U.S. and the UK will permit this."
Chomsky believes comparisons of Iraq and Vietnam are mistaken, primarily because Vietnam was not ultimately a defeat for American strategic aims. "Vietnamese resources were not of that much significance. Iraq is different. It is the last corner of the world in which there are massive petroleum resources, maybe the largest in the world or close to it. The profits from that must flow primarily to the right pockets, that is, U.S. and secondarily UK energy corporations. And controlling that resource puts the U.S. in a very powerful position to exert influence over the world."
One of the more surprising post-9/11 developments has been Chomsky's falling out with erstwhile left colleagues, notably the writer Christopher Hitchens, who accuses Chomsky of "making excuses for theocratic fascism" and exercising "moral equivalency" in his discussions of 9/11 and U.S. imperialism. "In some awful way, Chomsky's regard for the underdog has mutated into support for mad dogs," Hitchens said.
Chomsky says: "I don't care what sort of ranting and tantrums people have. What does that mean, to equate 9/11 with U.S. crimes? You can't even equate 9/11 with what they call the other 9/11 south of the border. In 9/11 1973, in Chile, the president was killed, the oldest democracy in Latin America was destroyed, the official number killed was 3,000 people. The actual number is probably double that. In per capita relating to the U.S. that's 100,000 people. It set up a brutal, vicious dictatorship, a virus that spread through much of the rest of Latin America and helped induce a tremendous wave of terror.
"How does that compare with 11 September, 2001? If you want to count numbers and social consequences it is much worse. But it doesn't make sense to compare them. They are atrocities on their own. And the ones we are concerned with primarily are the ones we can stop.
"When Britain and the U.S. invaded Iraq, it was with the reasonable expectation that it was going to increase the threat of terror, as it has. This means they are again contributing to terror of the 9/11 variety which is likely to hit the US, which could be awesome. Sooner of later, jihadist-style terror and WMD are going to come together and the consequences could be horrendous. So if we care about jihadist-style terror we don't want to be contributing to it."
Dealing with terror, Chomsky believes, requires a "dual programme" along the lines of "what the British did in Northern Ireland". He says: "The terrorist acts are criminal acts so you apprehend the guilty, use force if necessary and bring them to a fair trial. They want to appeal to the reservoir of understanding for what they're doing, even from people who hate and fear them. If they can mobilise that reservoir they win. We can help them mobilise that reservoir by violence or we can reduce it by dealing with legitimate grievances.
"Every resort to violence has been a gift to the jihadists. Respond with violence which hits civilians and you're giving a gift to Osama bin Laden; you're giving him the propaganda weapon he wants so he can say, 'We have to defend Islam against the Western infidels trying to destroy it. We're fighting a war of defence'.
"If you want to mobilise that constituency that is the way to intervene. But there is another way and that is to pay attention to the legitimate grievance. That's intervention too." - http://www.truthout.org/docs_...
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| ---> An Interesting Juxtaposition |
| 01.24.05 (6:32 am) [edit] |
I come late to the discussions of the Inaugural Speech, what with a school holiday, a dead car battery, a snow storm and now a sick kid, I've been playing catch-up to the words of our President and the responses thereto of the world.
In brief a couple of observations: the speech itself left me cold; no matter what observers say, I find Bush's speeches at best a series of platitudes. This one was especially tinny. On the matter of substance, I've found no review/critique that says it better than Eric Hobsbawm, http://www.commondreams.org/v... who puts the US understanding of democracy into its proper context of "megolamania and messianism derived from its revolutionary origins". Hobsbawm is a superb historian, a smart thinker and a very good writer. Reading this only reinforced my primary reaction to the week's events. I realize the inauguration has already been much discussed, but there was one thing that struck me, and I haven't seen anyone yet approach it... - http://www.dailykos.com
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| ---> The Misadventures of a Mental Midget |
| 01.23.05 (10:25 am) [edit] |
George W. Bush was sworn in and sworn at during his presidential inauguration Thursday, in a ceremony that mixed pomp and pageantry with police and protesters. As Bush swore once again to "faithfully execute the office of the President" and to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States;" the presidency, the Constitution and the United States are in deep, dire trouble at home and around the globe.
As Bush struts and swaggers his way once again through Washington and the world as a self-anointed "wartime president," many millions of Americans and more millions worldwide question the wisdom of the administration's killing and costly military misadventure in Iraq. While Bush and his corporate cronies in the oil and high-tech weapons industries cast a covetous eye on Iran as a possible military target during a second Bush term, pratfalls in the Iraq war make the current administration look more and more like "the gang that couldn't rule straight."
On three successive days recently, news stories painted a clear picture of a Bush League crew running aground on the leaking, creaking Ship of State.
On Jan. 13 came the big story that Americans not deluded by the administration's "weapons of mass distraction" knew all along: The phantom WMDs that were touted as a main justification for the American invasion of Iraq have not been found, despite an expenditure of billions of taxpayer dollars and the lives of nearly 1,400 American troops and thousands of Iraqi civilians.
Such a cruel waste of troops and treasure in pursuit of a chimerical campaign of carnage in Iraq should have brought some humility to the arrogant administration of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and all the rest. Instead, their cocksure conceit continued unabated and unabashed. "Based on what we know today, the president would have taken the same action because this is about protecting the American people," purred White House media mouthpiece Scott McClellan.
One wonders who will protect the American people from the militaristic machinations of the Bush administration as the war in Iraq makes this nation less safe and less free.
On Jan. 14, the day after the story about the futile search for Iraqi WMDs hit the news, The New York Times carried a small story saying that, since 1998, the military has discharged 20 troops with much-needed knowledge of Arabic. The GIs were gay and had run afoul of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policies from the Clinton administration. The misguided policy continues under the Bush team that rode to the White House on the pale horse of fear of gay marriage.
Also on Jan. 14, newspapers reported that America's wartime president told media scribes in the nation's capital that "I'm not a regretful person." That's easy for him to say. The mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, and brothers and sisters of those Americans and Iraqis killed and maimed in Bush's war no doubt have regret to spare. Whether for or against the war, they have lost a loved one for no more reason than a campaign for oil and empire.
The words of a Mississippi mother with twin sons in the Iraq war zone should be required reading for the no-regrets, "What, me worry?" denizen of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Writing in The Nation's Nov. 22 issue, Priscilla Ammerman said she e-mailed Mr. Bush, asking him to do a little "soul-searching" about the war: "I asked him to ask himself if he thought this war was worth the sacrifice of his twins, because I sincerely felt it was not worth the sacrifice of mine."
Ammerman's fears are not unfounded, but still the Bush administration heads heedlessly into a quagmire in Iraq. A Jan. 15 story in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution detailed the dilemma of a military that "is being stretched thin and worn out" by the war.
While the coronation of George Bush was greeted with both cheers and jeers on the streets of Washington, his continuing war in the Middle East is a reminder of the wise words of warning in an anti-war speech given by Dr. Martin Luther King in 1967 when he scorned "those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight." - http://onlineathens.com/stori...
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| ---> Support Our Troops: Bring Them Home!!! |
| 01.23.05 (7:04 am) [edit] |
We must withdraw our military from Iraq, the sooner the better. The reason is simple: Our presence there is a disaster for the American people and an even bigger disaster for the Iraqi people.
It is a strange logic to declare, as so many in Washington do, that it was wrong for us to invade Iraq but right for us to remain. A recent New York Times editorial sums up the situation accurately: ``Some 21 months after the American invasion, United States military forces remain essentially alone in battling what seems to be a growing insurgency, with no clear prospect of decisive success any time in the foreseeable future.''
And then, in an extraordinary non sequitur: ``Given the lack of other countries willing to put up their hands as volunteers, the only answer seems to be more American troops, and not just through the spring, as currently planned. . . . Forces need to be expanded through stepped-up recruitment.''
Here is the flawed logic: We are alone in the world in this invasion. The insurgency is growing. There is no visible prospect of success. Therefore, let's send more troops? The definition of fanaticism is that when you discover that you are going in the wrong direction, you redouble your speed.
In all of this, there is an unexamined premise: that military victory would constitute ``success.''
Conceivably, the United States, possessed of enormous weaponry, might finally crush the resistance in Iraq. The cost would be great. Already, tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, have lost their lives (and we must not differentiate between ''their'' casualties and ''ours'' if we believe that all human beings have an equal right to life.) Would that be a ``success''?
In 1967, the same arguments that we are hearing now were being made against withdrawal in Vietnam. The United States did not pull out its troops for six more years. During that time, the war killed at least one million more Vietnamese and perhaps 30,000 U.S. military personnel.
We must stay in Iraq, it is said again and again, so that we can bring stability and democracy to that country. Isn't it clear that after almost two years of war and occupation we have brought only chaos, violence and death to that country, and not any recognizable democracy?
Can democracy be nurtured by destroying cities, by bombing, by driving people from their homes?
There is no certainty as to what would happen in our absence. But there is absolute certainty about the result of our presence -- escalating deaths on both sides.
The loss of life among Iraqi civilians is especially startling. The British medical journal Lancet reports that 100,000 civilians have died as a result of the war, many of them children. The casualty toll on the American side includes more than 1,350 deaths and thousands of maimed soldiers, some losing limbs, others blinded. And tens of thousands more are facing psychological damage in the aftermath.
Have we learned nothing from the history of imperial occupations, all pretending to help the people being occupied?
The United States, the latest of the great empires, is perhaps the most self-deluded, having forgotten that history, including our own: our 50-year occupation of the Philippines, or our long occupation of Haiti (1915-1934) or of the Dominican Republic (1916-1924), our military intervention in Southeast Asia and our repeated interventions in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala.
Our military presence in Iraq is making us less safe, not more so. It is inflaming people in the Middle East, and thereby magnifying the danger of terrorism. Far from fighting ''there rather than here,'' as President Bush has claimed, the occupation increases the chance that enraged infiltrators will strike us here at home.
In leaving, we can improve the odds of peace and stability by encouraging an international team of negotiators, largely Arab, to mediate among the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds and work out a federalist compromise to give some autonomy to each group. We must not underestimate the capacity of the Iraqis, once free of both Saddam Hussein and the U.S. occupying army, to forge their own future.
But the first step is to support our troops in the only way that word support can have real meaning -- by saving their lives, their limbs, their sanity. By bringing them home. - http://www.commondreams.org/v...
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| ---> The Traitorous Bushies Prepare for Neo-Imperial Military Coup d'Etat??? |
| 01.23.05 (5:51 am) [edit] |
[b]Commandos Get Duty on U.S. Soil as Antiterror Efforts Expand[/b]
Somewhere in the shadows of the White House and the Capitol this week, a small group of super-secret commandos stood ready with state-of-the-art weaponry to swing into action to protect the presidency, a task that has never been fully revealed before.
As part of the extraordinary army of 13,000 troops, police officers and federal agents marshaled to secure the inauguration, these elite forces were poised to act under a 1997 program that was updated and enhanced after the Sept. 11 attacks, but nonetheless departs from how the military has historically been used on American soil.
These commandos, operating under a secret counterterrorism program code-named Power Geyser, were mentioned publicly for the first time this week on a Web site for a new book, "Code Names: Deciphering U.S. Military Plans, Programs and Operation in the 9/11 World," (Steerforth Press). The book was written by William M. Arkin, a former intelligence analyst for the Army.
The precise number of these Special Operations forces in Washington this week is highly classified, but military officials say the number is very small. The special-missions units belong to the Joint Special Operations Command, a secretive command based at Fort Bragg, N.C., whose elements include the Army unit Delta Force.
In the past, the command has also provided support to domestic law enforcement agencies during high-risk events like the Olympics and political party conventions, according to the Web site of GlobalSecurity.org, http://globalsecurity.org/ a research organization in Alexandria, Va.
The role of the armed forces in the United States has been a contentious issue for more than a century. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which restricts military forces from performing domestic law enforcement duties, like policing, was enacted after the Civil War in response to the perceived misuse of federal troops who were policing in the South.
Over the years, the law has been amended to allow the military to lend equipment to federal, state and local authorities; assist federal agencies in drug interdiction; protect national parks; and execute quarantine and certain health laws. About 5,000 federal troops supported civilian agencies at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City three years ago.
Since Sept. 11, however, military and law enforcement agencies have worked much more closely not only to help detect and defeat any possible attack, including from unconventional weapons, but also to assure the continuity of the federal government in case of cataclysmic disaster.
The commandos here this week were the same type of Special Operations forces who are hunting top insurgents in Iraq and Osama bin Laden in the mountainous wilds of Afghanistan and Pakistan. But under the top-secret military plan, they are also conducting counterterrorism missions in support of civilian agencies in the United States.
"They bring unique military and technical capabilities that often are centered around potential W.M.D. events," said a senior military official who has been briefed on the units' operations.
A civil liberties advocate who was told about the program by a reporter said that he had no objections to the program as described to him because its scope appeared to be limited to supporting the counterterrorism efforts of civilian authorities.
Mr. Arkin, in the online supplement to his book (codenames.org/documents.html), http://codenames.org/document... says the contingency plan, called JCS Conplan 0300-97, calls for "special-mission units in extra-legal missions to combat terrorism in the United States" based on top-secret orders that are managed by the military's Joint Staff and coordinated with the military's Special Operations Command and Northern Command, which is the lead military headquarters for domestic defense.
Mr. Arkin provided The New York Times with briefing slides prepared by the Northern Command, detailing the plan and outlining the military's preparations for the inauguration.
Three senior Defense Department and Bush administration officials confirmed the existence of the plan and mission, but disputed Mr. Arkin's characterization of the mission as "extra-legal."
One of the officials said the units operated in the United States under "special authority" from either the president or the secretary of defense.
Civilian and uniformed military lawyers said provisions in several federal statutes, including the Fiscal Year 2000 Defense Department Authorization Act, Public Law 106-65, permits the secretary of defense to authorize military forces to support civilian agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in the event of a national emergency, especially any involving nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.
In 1998, the Pentagon's top policy official, Walter B. Slocombe, acknowledged that the military had covert-action teams.
"We have designated special-mission units that are specifically manned, equipped and trained to deal with a wide variety of transnational threats," Mr. Slocombe told the Senate Armed Services Committee. "These units, assigned to or under the operational control of the U.S. Special Operations Command, are focused primarily on those special operations and supporting functions that combat terrorism and actively counter terrorist use of W.M.D. These units are on alert every day of the year and have worked extensively with their interagency counterparts."
Spokesmen for the Northern Command in Colorado Springs and the Special Operations Command in Tampa, Fla., the parent organization of the Joint Special Operations Command, declined to comment on the plan, the units involved and the mission.
"At any given time, there are a number of classified programs across the government that, for national security reasons, it would be inappropriate to discuss," said Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman. "It would be irresponsible for me to comment on any classified program that may or may not exist."
But the Northern Command document that mentions Power Geyser is marked "unclassified." The document states that the purpose of the Department of Defense's contingency planning for the inauguration is to provide "unity of D.O.D. effort to contribute to a safe and secure environment for the 2005 inauguration."
The Northern Command missions include deterring an attack or mitigating its consequences, and coordinating with the Special Operations Command.
In a telephone interview from his home in Vermont, Mr. Arkin said the military's reaction to the disclosure of the counterterrorism plan and its operating units reflected "the silliness of calling something that's obvious, classified."
"I'm not revealing what they're doing or the methods of their contingency planning," he said. "I don't compromise any sensitive intelligence operations by revealing sources and methods. I don't reveal ongoing operations in specific locales."
Mr. Arkin's book is a glossary of more than 3,000 code names of past and present operations, programs and weapons systems, with brief descriptions of each. Most involved secret activities, and details of many of the programs could not be immediately confirmed.
The book also describes American military operations and assistance programs in scores of countries, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. The murky world of "special access programs" and other secret military and intelligence activities is covered in the book, too. Some code names describe highly classified research programs, like Thirsty Saber, a program that in the 1990's tried to develop a sensor to replace human reasoning. Others describe military installations in foreign countries, like Poker Bluff I, an electronic-eavesdropping collection station in Honduras in the 1980's.
Many involve activities related to the survival of the president and constitutional government. The book, for instance, describes Site R, one of the undisclosed locations used by Vice President Dick Cheney since the Sept. 11 attacks.
Site R is a granite mountain shelter just north of Sabillasville, Md., near the Pennsylvania border. It was built in the early 1950's to withstand a Soviet nuclear attack.
The book also describes a program called Treetop, the presidential emergency successor support plan, which provides survivors of a nuclear strike or other attack with war plans, regulations and procedures to establish teams of military and civilian advisers to presidential successors.
A White House spokesman declined to comment on the continuity of government activities cited in the book.
People who advocate that the government declassify more of the nation's official documents said the book would fuel the debate over the balance between the public's right to know and the need to keep more military and intelligence matters secret in the campaign against terror.
"This is part of an ongoing tug of war to define the boundaries of public information," said Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy. "There has been a steady withdrawal of information from the public domain in the present administration, and a reluctance to disclose even the most mundane of facts." - http://www.nytimes.com/2005/0...
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| ---> The Bushies Scrap 'Coalition of the Willing' List (It Was A Bad Joke Anyway!) |
| 01.22.05 (7:13 am) [edit] |
[b]White House Scraps 'Coalition of the Willing' List (It Was A Bad Joke Used to Dupe the American Sheeple)[/b]
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House has scrapped its list of Iraq allies known as the 45-member "coalition of the willing," which Washington used to back its argument that the 2003 invasion was a multilateral action, an official said on Friday.
The senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the White House replaced the coalition list with a smaller roster of 28 countries with troops in Iraq sometime after the June transfer of power to an interim Iraqi government.
The official could not say when or why the administration did away with the list of the coalition of the willing.
The coalition, unveiled on the eve of the invasion, consisted of 30 countries that publicly offered support for the United States and another 15 that did not want to be named as part of the group.
Former coalition member Costa Rica withdrew last September under pressure from voters who opposed the government's decision to back the invasion.
On Friday, an organization from Iceland published a full-page advertisement in the New York Times calling for its country's withdrawal from the coalition and offering apologies for its support for U.S. policy.
The United States, backed by major allies, including Britain and Italy, invaded Iraq in March 2003 on the premise that Saddam Hussein posed a grave threat because he possessed weapons of mass destruction, or WMD.
The Bush administration acknowledged this month that it has abandoned its search for WMD without finding any biological, chemical or nuclear weapons.
Secretary of State-designate Condoleezza Rice, who was national security adviser to President Bush at the time of the invasion, told a Senate panel this week that the administration had made some bad decisions in Iraq.
Nearly 1,370 members of the U.S. armed forces have been killed and another 10,500 have been wounded in Iraq since the invasion.
Unofficial estimates put the civilian Iraqi death toll at between 14,000 and 100,000. - http://www.washingtonpost.com...
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| ---> Bush, Cheney Team Up to Soften American Dupes for War on Iran |
| 01.22.05 (6:42 am) [edit] |
Two very different messages about the future of U.S. foreign policy were broadcast to the world on Inaugural Day Thursday, and listeners everywhere could be forgiven for feeling confused about their import.
On the one hand, George W. Bush's lofty rhetoric about his administration's commitment to bring democracy, liberty and freedom to every country where tyrants rule naturally grabbed the most attention; after all, he is the president.
Even as the speech was much criticized by normally friendly critics – probably more than the White House had anticipated – as being hopelessly ambitious and unrealistic, the idealism that it expressed was widely praised and unquestioned.
On the other hand, Vice Pres. Dick Cheney's dark words of warning against Iran on MSNBC's "Imus in the Morning" television show conveyed something altogether different, both in tone and substance, even if they were relegated to the inside pages.
"You look around the world at potential trouble spots, (and) Iran is right at the top of the list," the vice president intoned, noting that Washington's chief concern with Tehran had less to do with democracy or even terrorism but rather with its "fairly robust new nuclear program."
And while Cheney stressed that Washington still hoped Europe's efforts to persuade Tehran to abandon any ambitions to obtain a nuclear weapon would succeed, he grimly observed that Israel might well decide to attack Iran's nuclear facilities, presumably before the Bush administration, "and let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterwards."
"We don't want a war in the Middle East, if we can avoid it," he concluded as cheerfully as he could – at least until he was caught up short by the cowboy-hatted Imus, who reminded him that the U.S. already has a war there.
To former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, Cheney's remarks sounded "like a justification or even an encouragement for the Israelis" to carry out an attack.
He noted that, coinciding with Bush's idealistic address, they underlined that the administration was "really very unclear regarding its genuine strategic doctrine."
For neoconservatives, who have long used the velvet glove of pro-democracy rhetoric to hide the steel fist of what has consistently been a U.S.- and Israel-centered Machtpolitik, Cheney's warning came as the perfect topper to Bush's inaugural speech, much of which was borrowed from right-wing Israeli leader Natan Sharansky's new book, The Case for Democracy.
After biting their tongue about making Iran the next target of U.S. military power after Iraq through most of 2004 so as not to jeopardize Bush's re-election, they have been noisily pushing Tehran as the chief candidate for Public Enemy Number One in Bush's second term.
Just the day before the inaugural, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, who doubles as chairman of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), had told an audience at the neoconservative Hudson Institute that the administration considered Iran to be a much bigger threat than North Korea.
"I don't think George W. Bush thinks he got re-elected to preside over the theocratic regime getting nuclear weapons," he confidently asserted, although he also admitted that there were "big practical questions" as to how to stop it.
Both Cheney's and Kristol's remarks followed the publication earlier in the week of a much-noted article in the New Yorker magazine by prize-winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, which maintained that Washington has been infiltrating Special Operations Forces (SOFs) into Iran from Iraq and Pakistan since last summer precisely to seek out Tehran's secret nuclear facilities and other weapons targets in preparation for possible combined air and ground strikes.
The article, which the Pentagon said was "riddled with errors" that it declined to further identify, also reported that Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, whose Middle East views accord closely with Israel's extreme right and whose office is widely blamed for corrupting the intelligence process leading up to the Iraq war, has been working with Israeli planners and consultants on a target list.
It asserted that he and other hard-liners in the Pentagon, Cheney's office and the White House fervently believe that a major military blow against Tehran will topple the regime.
"The minute the aura of invincibility which the mullahs enjoy is shattered, and with it the ability to hoodwink the West," one unnamed Pentagon consultant told Hersh, "the Iranian regime will collapse" like the regimes in Romania, East Germany and the Soviet Union because of popular hatred for the ruling theocracy.
Hersh's article was greeted with unrestrained joy by neoconservative publications, such as the New York Sun, the New York Post and the Jerusalem Post, as evidence that the administration, hopelessly split over Iran policy during the Bush's first term largely because of the State Department's and the CIA's desire to gain Tehran's cooperation on Afghanistan and Iraq, has finally opted for confrontation.
For regional specialists, such as Gary Sick, an Iran expert at Columbia University, however, both the Hersh article and Cheney's grim mutterings are "deja vu all over again."
"In Iraq, we listened to the exiles who said we'd be greeted with flowers and candies so it would be 'cakewalk,' but it turned out not to be quite that way," said Sick, who served on the National Security Council under former President Jimmy Carter and later wrote a book, All Fall Down, about U.S. policy in Iran.
"I can't believe there are people who want to repeat that process now," he added.
Sick and other regional specialists insist that the assumptions apparently being made by administration hawks about the nature of the government, its goals in Iraq, and how a U.S. or Israeli military strike would affect internal Iranian politics are all deeply flawed.
"The ramifications of a military strike are going to be all negative," according to Kenneth Pollack, a former CIA analyst now at the Brookings Institution, who supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He said it would likely rally the population behind the regime and provoke serious retaliation both in Iraq and beyond.
Even the "big practical questions" acknowledged by Kristol represent formidable hurdles to ensuring the destruction of Iran's ability to build a bomb, according to Pollack. Anticipating Cheney, he asserted at a Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) forum last week that "we would all like the Israelis to take care of this problem, (but) they can't."
Central and eastern Iran, where most of the facilities are believed to be situated, is beyond the range of their fighter jets. So in order to reach their targets, the bombers would have to fly over U.S.-occupied Iraq, thus making Washington complicit.
Worse, "(a)ny bombing raid that tries to take out so many sites will be will be of no value unless it's followed up on the ground," Sick told IPS. "My guess is that neither Cheney nor anyone around him really looks forward to putting boots on the ground in Iran."
Moreover, while there is "quite a lot of real respect for the United States and for Bush in Iran today, if there were an American attack, all of that would just vanish overnight," he said, pressing a more hopeful view of Cheney's and the administration's intentions.
"I think this is actually a campaign to intimidate Iran," he said. "It's holding out a palpable threat that if you don't cooperate this is what is going to happen to you." - http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?...
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| ---> Bush's Inaugural Obscenity |
| 01.21.05 (11:56 am) [edit] |
It goes without saying that the Internet will quickly be filled with incisive, appropriately critical assessments of George Bush's Inaugural sham.
How could it be otherwise?
Sure, there are gullible simps and brain-laundered propaganda patsies among us, but we're not a nation of fools.
Too many Americans have been shafted, in one painful way or another, by Dubya's corporate/financial, elitist masters. Despite constant neo-con efforts to smokescreen that exploitative abuse, each day brings greater popular clarity about where our common citizenry's steadily worsening status originates.
Seniors understand that Big Pharma's vile greed intolerably bilks them with outrageously overpriced prescription drugs.
Parents from coast to coast angrily appreciate that a private-profit medical/insurance hierarchy prices them out of affording adequate healthcare for their dangerously jeopardized children.
Workers see wages stagnate, benefits disappear, and safe and clean shop floor conditions vanish as union-busting policies that comprise the ruthless heart of rightwing Republicanism run rampant under Bush administration aegis.
Women watch with growing alarm as their basic reproductive rights are threatened with disastrous extinction. They understand, too, that any redress of longstanding unfairness between the sexes -- particularly in the realm of equal pay for equal toil -- becomes a virtual impossibility while reactionary, patriarchal "values" promulgated by the Bush White House prevail.
Gays, racial minorities, believers in faiths other than fundamentalist Christianity, the foreign born, principled dissidents, etc., all have warranted basis for fearing witch-hunting pogroms that shape the secret, sinister dreams of ultraconservatives looking for any excuse -- real or completely fabricated -- to get tough with their "enemies".
In Everytown, USA, grievously sad funerals are held for young soldiers returned in aluminum caskets from Iraq. Even as their heartbroken family members accept folded flags and pious "gratitude" for their sacrifice, a potentially revolutionary consciousness asserts that their deaths were entirely without valid justification.
No weapons of mass destruction were ever found. Bush lied; they died. For oil, and for global Wall Street hegemony.
Bush's Inaugural address reputedly went through fourteen editings, and yet it emerged as a completely insipid mishmash of contrivance and cliches.
Its poisonous centerpiece was an Orwellian deceit involving repeatedly substituting the word "freedom" for U.S. imperialism's profiteering desire to force its self-serving will on peoples abroad preemptively characterized as terrorists or tyrants for the resistance their sovereign self-determination will necessarily compel them to mount.
Bush's duplicitous words uttered while shamefully evoking both God and goodness were a complete mockery of right and wrong. As if moved by the darkest black magic, righteousness and evil totally traded places before a grandiose lectern in Washington, D.C. on January 20, 2005.
Think about this:
American "liberators" get blown to bits in unarmored Humvees scurrying about Iraqi roadways. Meanwhile, the man responsible for that debacle parades down Constitution Avenue in a limousine bearing enough bulletproof glass and metal to qualify as a wheeled battleship.
Nothing more graphically symbolizes the travesty of the poor having to fight and die in rich men's dirty wars while the latter suffer no untoward consequence.
At least until the entire house of bloody cards collapses, ala Vietnam, and as Iraq will likewise inevitably do.
George Bush presides over a nation where nothing is as claimed.
And where very nearly everything is soul-devouringly wrong.
Steadily worsening social and economic injustice permeates our land, bringing a world record gap between haves and have-nots. The rural heartland is utterly devoid of opportunity for graduating high school classes. In urban cores, countless kids don't graduate at all.
The American Dream is fast becoming the Nightmare on Main Street.
Rust weakens the rivets and bolts of our former greatness.
Against this backdrop of decay, no remedial attempt that serves public welfare and the common good is even perfunctorily made.
America under George Bush is analogous to the Titanic steaming headlong toward an iceberg.
Every aspect of the political Right's agenda is geared for saving the upper crust luxuriating in first-class privilege, while we the masses in steerage are to be set cruelly adrift, buffeted by cold, stormy inequity.
A myopic helmsman who also will not listen commands our ship of state.
Who can rationally argue that a mutiny -- a re-assertion of government of, by and for the people -- is not called for at this perilous moment?
Who dares claim it wouldn't be the greatest, most imperative patriotism imaginable? - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...
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| ---> Nobody With Brains Likes Or Respects Bush (i.e. Most of the World) |
| 01.20.05 (9:00 pm) [edit] |
[b]Bush Bad for Global Peace, US Image, World Believes [/b]
As George W. Bush prepares to be sworn in for his second term as U.S. president, a strong majority of the world's people are concerned his tenure is likely to produce more setbacks to the cause of world peace and security, according to a major international poll released Wednesday.
The survey of nearly 22,000 people in 21 countries, conducted by GlobeScan with the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) of the University of Maryland for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), found that pessimists about Bush's impact on global security outnumbered optimists by more than a two-to-one margin.
”The research makes very clear that the re-election of President Bush has further isolated America from the world,” said Doug Miller, GlobeScan's president. ”It also supports the view of some Americans that unless his administration changes its approach to world affairs in its second term, it will continue to erode America's good name, and hence its ability to effectively influence world affairs.”
Fifty-eight percent of the respondents predicted that Bush's re-election would be bad for international peace and security, compared to only 26 percent, concentrated primarily in India (62 percent), the Philippines (63 percent), and Poland (44 percent), who insisted it would be good.
The mammoth poll, which was conducted in each country during December, also found that 42 percent of respondents worldwide said Bush's re-election had made them feel worse about the U.S. public, compared to 25 percent who said it made them feel better, and 23 percent who said it made no difference.
Global sentiment also appeared to be overwhelmingly negative about U.S.-led military operations in Iraq.
Overall, 70 percent of respondents said they were opposed to their countries contributing troops to the operation. In no country -- including those, like Poland, that are in fact contributing troops in Iraq -- did either a majority or plurality of respondents say they thought their country should contribute troops.
”This is quite a grim picture for the U.S.,” said PIPA director Steven Kull, who noted that overwhelming sentiment against sending troops to Iraq suggested not only that Bush was highly unlikely to sign up any new volunteers for his dwindling ”Coalition” in Iraq, but also that ”in the future the prospects for getting foreign participation in any U.S.-led military operations that is not sanctioned by the United Nations or some other multilateral body are very poor.”
The poll, which covered Washington's closest allies in Western Europe and East Asia, as well as several South American countries, Mexico, South Africa, Lebanon, Russia, Turkey, Australia, South Africa, China and India, comes amid indications of growing concerns about Iraq, in particular, at home.
The Los Angeles Times Wednesday released its own poll that found that the percentage of U.S. citizens who believe Iraq was ”worth going to war over” has sunk to a new low of 39 percent, down from 44 percent last October, one month before the presidential elections. Fifty-six percent now believe the war was a mistake.
Consistent with the findings of the international poll, the Times survey also found that nearly twice as many people now believe that the war in Iraq ”destabilized” the Middle East than those who believe the region has been stabilized, and that two-thirds of the public believe that the image of the U.S. has been ”hurt” by the U.S. intervention.
Only 10 percent said Washington image had improved, while the remainder either had no opinion or said it had no impact.
The Globescan-PIPA poll was generally consistent with another survey the two groups released last September on global attitudes about the U.S. presidential election.
Carried out in 35 countries in July and August, that poll found that Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry was favored over Bush by pluralities or majorities in 30 countries and by an average of 46 to 20 percent.
Consistent with latest poll, Kerry was favored by the greatest margins in Europe, predominantly Muslim countries, and South America, while Bush actually bested Kerry in only three countries -- Philippines, Poland, and Nigeria. In India, Bush and Kerry were virtually tied.
In the latest poll, the countries that felt most negative about Bush's impact on global security included Turkey (82 percent), Argentina (79 percent), Brazil (78 percent), Germany (77 percent, France (75 percent), Indonesia (68 percent), although the survey was carried out before U.S. relief operations after last month's tsunami, Canada (67 percent), Lebanon and Britain (64 percent), and Chile (62 percent).
Asked whether Bush's re-election made them feel worse about the U.S. public, respondents from Turkey (72 percent), France (65 percent), Brazil (59 percent), and Germany (56 percent) were the most negatively affected, while only in the Philippines (78 percent) and India (65 percent) did majorities say it made them feel better.
Anti-U.S. attitudes, however, generally trailed behind the negative attitudes expressed for Bush in the new poll.
Asked whether they felt ”mainly positive” or ”mainly negative” about U.S. influence in the world, Filipino respondents were by far the most positive -- 88 percent, while majorities ranging from 52 percent to 56 percent also described U.S. influence as ”mainly positive” in Poland, India, South Africa, and South Korea.
On the other hand, majorities in 12 countries -- ranging from 50 percent in Chile and Britain to 64 percent in Germany and 65 percent in Argentina -- described U.S. influence as ”mainly negative, while pluralities in Lebanon, China, and Japan agreed.
”I'm quite confident that there's never been any period where you could find such high levels of negative feelings towards the U.S. in polling data,” Kull told IPS, noting, however, that the combined polls do not yet show that a majority worldwide sees the U.S. as having a negative influence on the world.
”That suggests there may be some underlying openness to repairing relations with the U.S.,” he added.
Italy was found to be the most pro-U.S. Western European country, with nearly half of respondents insisting that Washington's influence was still mainly ”positive”.
In Britain, Washington's closest ally, the margin was 44 percent positive versus 50 percent negative; in Australia, it was 40-52, only slightly more positive than France where the margin was 38-54.
Overall, the poll found that those with higher education and income levels tended to be somewhat more negative about Bush's re-election and to feel worse about U.S. influence. Muslims were much more likely to be negative on both counts than Christians.
In addition to the 21 countries surveyed, a poll of 1,000 U.S. respondents was also carried out. Fifty-six percent of Americans considered Bush's re-election positive for world security, and 71 percent assessed the U.S. as having a mainly positive influence.
Countries least eager to contribute troops to Iraq included Mexico where no respondent favored the idea, Russia (2 percent), Argentina (3 percent), Turkey (6 percent), and France, Lebanon, and Chile (9 percent). Support for troop contributions ran highest in countries that have contributed troops: Australia (37 percent), Philippines (36 percent), South Korea (34 percent), Britain (31 percent) and Italy (28 percent).
With the exception of the Philippines (500), Brazil (800), and Poland (943), more than 1,000 respondents were surveyed in each country. Nation-wide polls were conducted in all of the industrialized nations polled, while polling was combined to urban centers in Brazil, Chile, China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, South Africa, and Turkey. - http://www.commondreams.org/h...
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| ---> OAF OF OFFICE |
| 01.20.05 (7:41 pm) [edit] |
Watching John Kerry lip-synch the oath of office, I couldn't help wondering, 'what if.'
Here on stage in Washington was the winner-class warmed and protected by cashmere and tax cuts against the strange, nipple-chilling cold. Hell had frozen over.
Our President said, "It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation." Well, no, it isn't.
Our President said, "We will widen retirement savings and health insurance." No, he won't.
Our President said, "America will not pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their chains." Yes, he will.
Our President said, "And our country must abandon all the habits of racism." Oh, sure.
He doesn't believe a single word he's saying. And all over America, everyone knows he's lying and America is truly relieved.
America doesn't want to give up the habit of racism. Karl Rove doesn't. Jeb Bush doesn't. If not for challenging hundreds of thousands of voters in Black precincts of Ohio and other swing states, if not for purging thousands more from voter rolls for the crime of voting while Black, you wouldn't be president now, would you, Mr. President?
You won't "pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their chains," unless they are chained by your buck-buddies in Saudi Arabia.
You'll "support democratic movements" so long as the citizens of Venezuela don't get carried away and decide that democracy means they can choose a leader you don't like.
And you'll "widen Social Security and health insurance"? Who are you kidding? I just got a doctor bill for $5,200 … should I send it to you at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?
You said, "You have seen that life is fragile, and evil is real, and courage triumphs." What you meant was, "Courage is fragile and real evil triumphs." Indeed your entire campaign was about American cowardice: "they" are coming to get us. Americans, scared for their lives, soiled their underpants and waddled to the polls crying, "Georgie, save us!"
Franklin Roosevelt said in his inaugural, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." But he didn't have Dick Cheney creating from his bunker a government which is little more than a Wal-Mart of Fear: midnight snatchings of citizens for uncharged crimes, wars to hunt for imaginary weapons aimed at Los Angeles, DNA data banks of kids and grandmas, the Chicken Little sky-is-falling social security spook-show, and shoe-searches in airports. Fear is your only product.
In another world, in which all votes are counted, J.F. Kerry would have gathered most of those arcane chits called "electoral votes" and would have taken that oath today.
But, dear Reader, there's one cold statistic Kerry voters must face. The fact that Republicans monkeyed with the votes in swing states doesn't wash away that big red stain: 59 million Americans marched to the polls and voted for George W. Bush.
If Osama doesn't scare you, THAT should.
Because if 59 million Americans agreed with George Bush that every millionaire's son, like him, shouldn't have to pay inheritance taxes; that sucking up to Saudi petrocrats constitutes a foreign policy; that killing Muslims in Mesopotamia will make them less inclined to kill us in Manhattan; that turning over social security to the casino operators that gave us Enron, WorldCom and world depression is smart economics; then, fine, Mr. Bush deserves the job. But most Americans, bless'm, don't actually believe any of that hokum. YET MOST STILL VOTED FOR HIM!
What we witnessed on November 2, 2004 was a 59-million strong army of pinheads on parade ready to gamble away their social security so long as George Bush makes sure that boys kill each other, not kiss each other; who feel right proud that our uniformed services can kick some scrawny brown people in the ass in some far off place when we're mad and can't find Osama; who can't bring themselves to vote for a guy with a snooty Boston accent who's never been to a NASCAR tractor pull and who certainly thinks anyone who does is a low-Q beer-burping blockhead. And they are.
Today we witnessed more than the coronation of some privileged little munchkin of mendacity. It is the triumphal re-occupation of our nation by nitwits who think Ollie North's a hero not a conman, who can't name their congressman, who believe that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were going steady, who can't tell Afghanistan from Souvlaki-stan. Bloated with lies and super-size fries, they clomped to the polls 59 million strong to vent their small-minded little hatreds on us all.
When I looked today at the oaf of office, I could not shake the feeling that this election was an intelligence test that America flunked. - http://www.gregpalast.com/det...
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| ---> The Crowning of Bush: The Lavish Inaugural Will Cost You a Lot ... |
| 01.19.05 (1:25 pm) [edit] |
[b]... as if it's any of your business ...[/b]
Next Thursday's lavish inauguration is payback time for the people and corporations that financed Bush's re-election campaign. Companies and executives contributed 96 percent of the $17.8 million collected as of late last week to pay for the festivities, according to a new study by Public Citizen. The inauguration has a reported price tag of $40 million.
Wall Street is the largest contributor, with $5 million so far. The finance and securities industry, which has already given Bush $21.7 million for his presidential campaign, is eagerly awaiting the green light for the enormous new business of managing individual accounts under a new Social Security setup. Wall Street would get to tailor a mutual fund for every person in the country and extract management and brokerage fees from each one.
The energy industry's $2.3 million is the second-biggest contribution. It gave Bush $5.2 million for his election campaign last year. The energy business looks forward to incentives for drilling for more oil and gas on the outer continental shelf, along the eastern front of the Rockies, and in Alaska. And under Bush it has seen profits leap ahead with sky-high prices for natural gas and gasoline.
Much of the cost of next week's binge will be borne by the citizens of the District of Columbia. Their taxes will pay for $11.9 million of the cost of the event. Included will be $8.8 million in overtime pay for 2,000 D.C. police officers, $2.7 million for out-of-town cops brought in to help out, $3 million to build reviewing stands, and $2.5 million for public works, such as health care, transportation, and firefighters.
The money for these things will come out of Homeland Security funds that were meant to increase hospital capacity and better equip firefighters. During last summer's political conventions, Congress paid both New York and Boston for local security costs.
Taxpayers across the country will foot a bill of around $66 million, the cost of giving federal workers in the capital area a day off on Thursday. It's unclear how much the government pays for half a day off before the inauguration, when it wants to clear the city so it can begin closing off streets for security purposes.
"It's an unfunded mandate of the most odious kind," a spokesman for Republican Tom Davis, chair of the House Government Reform Committee, which oversees D.C. affairs, told The Washington Post. "How can the District be asked to take funds from important homeland security projects to pay for this instead?"
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[b]If you're going (crazy) . . .
Some great package deals at the inaugural[/b]:
"Candlelight dinner," at Union Station, the Washington Hilton, or the National Building Museum: $2,500.
"Underwriter" package: Two tickets for a lunch banquet with the president and vice president, plus 20 tickets to one of the three candlelight dinners: $250,000.
"Sponsor" package: 10 candlelight dinner tickets, for a total of $100,000.
Bleacher seats on Pennsylvania Avenue to watch the parade: $15, $60, or $125 each.
A seat, at the Capitol's East Front, for the swearing-in: $250.
Mementos: "Medallion Collection," $1,190; silver cuff links, $95; crystal ice bucket and flute set, $84.95; crystal paperweight, $42.95; key chain, $7.95; button, $3.
Jefferson Hotel package: For $1 million, guests get 24-hour limousine service, spa treatments, his-and-her gold Presidential Rolex watches, fashions by the couture designer of choice, Tiffany diamonds, and for those interested, a trip to Chicago for a private tour of "Jacqueline Kennedy: The White House Years," a Field Museum exhibit.
Sofitel Lafayette Square package: For $75,000, the "Don't Mess With Texas" package treats guests to a suite filled with yellow roses, and you get sterling silver spurs bearing the inaugural logo.
Black Tie and Boots gala: For as much as $1,455 per ticket, each attendee gets to be photographed on a bull. (Sorry, but this is already sold out.)
Items banned from the inaugural for security reasons: packages, bags or backpacks; vacuum bottles; coolers; food, alcohol, and other beverages; firearms, knives, or pocket tools; explosives or fireworks; umbrellas (ponchos are permitted); strollers; animals (except service animals); laser pointers; Mace or pepper spray; pole-mounted posters or signs. Signs made of cardboard, poster board, or cloth, no larger than 20 inches by 36 inches, are allowed. Cameras are allowed but not tripods or large equipment bags. - http://villagevoice.com/news/...,mondo1,60126,6.html
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| ---> Support for War in Iraq Hits New Low ... |
| 01.19.05 (11:59 am) [edit] |
[i]Most no longer back the administration's basis for invading, but a majority say U.S. troops should stay longer to assist with stabilization[/i].
Support for the war in Iraq has continued to erode, but most Americans still are inclined to give the Bush administration some time to try to stabilize the country before it withdraws U.S. troops, the Los Angeles Times Poll has found.
The poll, conducted Saturday through Monday, found that the percentage of Americans who believed the situation in Iraq was "worth going to war over" had sunk to a new low of 39%. When the same question was asked in a similar poll in October, 44% said it had been worth going to war.
But when asked whether the United States should begin withdrawing troops after Iraq's election Jan. 30, 52% said the administration should wait to see what the new Iraqi government wanted. More than a third, 37%, said the United States should begin drawing down at least some of its troop strength.
Americans are almost evenly divided over how long U.S. forces should stay in Iraq, the poll found: 47% said they would like to see most of the troops out within a year, while 49% say they could support a longer deployment — including 37% who say the troops should remain "as long as it takes" to secure and stabilize the country.
The results suggest that while Americans have grown more pessimistic about the chances for success in Iraq, most are willing to give President Bush some time to try to turn the operation into a success.
"We are seeing lower support for the war, but I would have expected it to be even lower … given that the main rationale for the war — the weapons of mass destruction — turned out not to be there," said John Mueller, a political scientist at Ohio State University who is an authority on wartime public opinion.
Mueller noted that support for the war had been falling gradually since the United States invaded Iraq in March 2003, but that the erosion had not produced a majority in favor of early troop withdrawals.
"Support for this war is now lower than support for the Vietnam War was at the Tet offensive," Mueller said, citing the 1968 battles that were a turning point in U.S. public opinion then. "But in Vietnam [after Tet], the war continued for several years, and many people continued to support it through enormous casualties."
In Iraq, he noted, the number of U.S. casualties has been far lower than in Vietnam, a probable reason that public pressure for withdrawal has not mounted higher.
On the other hand, public support for increasing U.S. troop strength in Iraq — a proposal Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and several other members of Congress have made — is negligible, the poll found. Only 4% of respondents said they would favor increasing American forces after the Iraqi election.
Respondents to The Times poll were downbeat about the results of the war in Iraq on several counts.
Asked which side — the United States or the anti-American insurgents — was winning the war or if it was a stalemate, 58% said that neither side appeared to have the upper hand, while 29% said they believed the United States was winning and 10% said the insurgents were winning.
Respondents were divided on whether the Jan. 30 election was likely to be a turning point leading to a significant improvement in Iraq's stability: 31% said they thought it would have a positive effect, 34% said they expected no significant effect, and 27% said they thought the election would actually lead to more violence.
Respondents also were divided on whether the election would help advance democracy in the Middle East, one of the Bush administration's main goals: 47% said it would probably advance democracy, but 45% said it probably would not.
But 59% said they favored holding the election on schedule despite fears of violence on election day. Over a third, or 35%, said the vote should be postponed.
Almost half, or 45%, said they believed the war had destabilized the Middle East; 24% said they thought it had a stabilizing effect. In April 2003, 52% thought that military action against Iraq would stabilize the situation in the Middle East.
And a large majority, 65%, said they believed the war in Iraq had harmed the United States' image around the world. Only 10% said the U.S. image had been helped.
The Times poll, supervised by polling director Susan Pinkus, surveyed 1,033 adults. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. - http://www.latimes.com/news/n...,0,7592168.story
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| ---> The Scoop About Condosleezy Rice: Future Liar of the Bush State ... |
| 01.18.05 (9:56 pm) [edit] |
[b]Condi Rice gets a free-pass: a wave-n-hand-shake, a bow & a rubber-stamp. She knows going into these whitewashed hearings, that she's a "shoe-in". Do the toadies in the Senate really intend to scrutinize her lousy track record? Of course not. Barbara Boxer is the only Senator with balls-- and they shut-Boxer-up so that Bush's Best Buddy gets to fuck-up State...[/b]
"The story is going around Washington that Senate Foreign Relations chairman Richard Lugar handed Condoleezza Rice a list of names of “neocons” he wanted blacklisted from the Department of State – and that Rice assented."
[b]From Crooks and Liars[/b]: http://www.crooksandliars.com...
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| ---> The Bush Kingdom: No Accountability Rule ... |
| 01.18.05 (2:56 pm) [edit] |
"[Saddam Hussein] had a lot of time to move stuff, a lot of time to hide stuff."
– Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, 6/24/04, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5...
[i]VERSUS[/i]
Officials "familiar with the search" say "US authorities have found no evidence that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein transferred WMD or related equipment out of Iraq."
– AP, 1/18/05, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5...
[b]IRAQ – MISSING THE MOMENT:[/b] Calling November's election an "accountability moment," President Bush said last week there was no need to reprimand any administration officials responsible for the mistakes and misjudgments in planning for the Iraq war and its aftermath. "The American people listened to different assessments made about what was taking place in Iraq," President Bush said, "and they looked at the two candidates and chose me, for which I'm grateful." Exit polls from Nov. 2 showed that those who cited Iraq as the most important election issue actually voted overwhelmingly for President Bush's opponent, John Kerry. Also, a University of Maryland study from October found that the vast majority of Bush supporters incorrectly believed that WMDs or a major weapons program had been found in Iraq, and that Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda. Moreover, 58 percent of Bush supporters said the U.S. should not have invaded Iraq "if US intelligence had concluded that Iraq was not making WMD or providing support to al Qaeda." - http://www.americanprogressac...
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| ---> The Mad King George & his Neo-Con Nazis Lust for More Abortions... |
| 01.18.05 (10:58 am) [edit] |
[b]The hypocritical right-wing neo-con Nazis in Bush's New World Order lust for more abortions of innocent human beings on an extravagant scale:[/b]
Americans have been betrayed. Sooner or later, Americans will realize that they have been led to defeat in a pointless war by political leaders who they inattentively trusted. They have been misinformed by a sycophantic corporate media too mindful of advertising revenues to risk reporting truths branded unpatriotic by the propagandistic slogan, "you are with us or against us."
What happens when Americans wake up to their betrayal? It is too late to be rescued from catastrophe in Iraq, but perhaps if Americans can understand how such a grand mistake was made, they can avoid repeating it. In a forthcoming book from Oxford University Press, [i]The New American Militarism[/i], http://www.amazon.com/exec/ob... Andrew J. Bacevich writes that we can avoid future disasters by understanding how our doctrines went wrong and by returning to the precepts laid down by our Founding Fathers, men of infinitely more wisdom than those currently holding reins of power.
Bacevich, West Point graduate, Vietnam veteran, and soldier for 23 years, is a true conservative. He is an expert on U.S. military strategy and a professor at Boston University. He describes how civilian strategists – especially Albert Wohlstetter and Andrew Marshall – not military leaders, transformed a strategy of deterrence that regarded war as a last resort into a strategy of naked aggression. The resulting "marriage of a militaristic cast of mind with utopian ends" has "committed the United States to waging an open-ended war on a global scale."
The greatest threat to the U.S. is not terrorists but the neoconservative belief, to which President Bush is firmly committed, that American security and well-being depend on U.S. global hegemony and impressing U.S. values on the rest of the world. This belief resonates with a patriotic public. Bacevich writes, "In the aftermath of a century filled to overflowing with evidence pointing to the limited utility of armed force and the dangers inherent in relying excessively on military power, the American people have persuaded themselves that their best prospect for safety and salvation lies with the sword."
If Americans persist in these misconceptions, America will "share the fate of all those who in ages past have looked to war and military power to fulfill their destiny. We will rob future generations of their rightful inheritance. We will wreak havoc abroad. We will endanger our security at home. We will risk the forfeiture of all that we prize."
Bacevich understands that the problem is not how to deal with terrorism but how to deal with the hubris, laden with catastrophe, that America is God's instrument for bringing history to its predetermined destination. Being assigned such an exalted role creates the delusion that America's virtue is unquestionable and its use of preemptive coercion is infallible, a delusion that led to the "cakewalk war" that would entrench democracy in the Middle East and have the troops home in 90 days.
American hubris, which flows so freely from President Bush's mouth, explains why half the U.S. population yawns over the U.S. slaughter of Iraqi civilians and communist-style torture of Iraqi prisoners. The "cakewalk war" is now almost two years old and has claimed 10 percent of the U.S. occupation force as casualties. Yet, the delusion persists that the U.S. is prevailing in Iraq.
The new American militarism would be inconceivable, Bacevich writes, "were it not for the support offered by several tens of millions of evangelicals." Books written about "militant Islam" could equally describe militant evangelical Christianity. How did a Christian doctrine of love and peace become an apology for war?
Bacevich explains that evangelicals, aghast at Vietnam era protests of America's war against "godless communism," turned to the military as the repository of traditional American virtues. For evangelicals, end-times doctrines converged eschatology with national security. Prophecies merged America's fate with Israel's. Islam inherited the role of godless communism and became the target of the war against evil. America emerged with the "same immensely elastic permission to use force previously accorded to Israel."
America's security and the well-being of the world are threatened by America's unwarranted belief in the efficacy of force. War is ungovernable: "The shattered reputations of generals and statesmen who presumed to bring it under control litter the 20th century. On those rare occasions when war has yielded a seemingly decisive outcome, as in 1918 or 1945, it has done so only after exacting a staggering price from victor and vanquished alike. Even then, in resolving one set of problems, 'good' wars have fostered resentments or created temptations, leading as often as not to further conflict."
The new American militarism has abandoned the Founding Fathers, deserted the Constitution, and unrestrained the executive. War is a first resort. Militarism is inconsistent with globalism and with American ideals. It will end in abject failure.
The world is a vast place. The U.S. has demonstrated that it cannot impose its will on a tiny part known as Iraq. American realism may yet reassert itself, dispel the fog of delusion, cleanse the body politic of the Jacobin spirit, and lead the world by good example. But this happy outcome will require regime change in the U.S. - http://www.antiwar.com/robert...
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| ---> Forget the War, Bush Wants a Party!!! ... |
| 01.17.05 (10:11 am) [edit] |
[b]Thursday's inauguration for President Bush feels more like a coronation, writes Michael Gawenda[/b].
It is possible that the inauguration speech that George Bush gives on Thursday will match the speeches given by the three other second-term presidents sworn in while the US was at war - Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, Franklin Roosevelt during World War II, and Richard Nixon during the war in Vietnam.
All three - yes, Nixon as well - spoke of the sacrifices made by Americans, particularly the military, in the service of freedom and democracy. They were speeches designed to heal and comfort and inspire.
They could make such speeches because each was inaugurated when the wars being fought were almost over - the civil war had been won by the unionists and, in January 1945, Roosevelt knew the war against Japan and Germany was virtually over. Nixon knew his war - started by his Democrat predecessors - was lost and was on the brink of an agreement with North Vietnam that would allow him to pull out of Vietnam without explicitly admitting defeat.
The war that Bush presides over - or rather the two wars that his Administration has conflated - is, by his own admission, far from over.
The war on terrorism has only just begun, and in a candid moment several months ago Bush told a reporter that he was not sure it could be won. It remains unclear just what sort of war this is and what exactly would represent a victory.
So will Thursday's inauguration be a sombre event at a time when the US is involved in wars that could yet be lost and when the President, despite his clear if narrow victory in November, has a 43 per cent approval rating, the lowest for any re-elected president in the past 60 years?
Not a bit of it. The theme is "Celebrating Freedom and Honouring Service", and it's going to be the most expensive in US history, with most of the $US40 million ($52.6million) being spent on ... well, partying. This does not include $14 million for security.
The security is understandable, but with most of central Washington closed to traffic and in many cases pedestrians, the inauguration, which is meant to be a celebration of democracy, will be open only to those who have paid big bucks to attend one of the nine inaugural balls or the intimate dinner parties or the rock concert hosted by the Bush twins, Jenna and Barbara.
There are tickets for several rows of wooden seats set up on Pennsylvania Avenue for Thursday's parade, but that's about it for ordinary folk.
Certainly the busloads of protesters due in Washington today will get nowhere near any of the major events.
Still, given that 90 per cent of the good citizens of Washington DC voted for John Kerry and given that we can assume that the vast majority of them, at best, think Bush has been a disastrous president, they may not be too concerned that they are going to be left out of the inauguration parties. Indeed, it seems that many are so unenthused by this inauguration that they plan to leave town for the four days of celebrations.
There are some members of Congress who have complained that the $US40million party is unseemly at a time when the country is at war and so soon after the tsunami disaster that has claimed so many lives. But most of them are Democrats who know they have little support for their views in most of the country - even Bill Clinton has said that the inauguration celebrations are OK and that Bush and his supporters deserve to party.
At George Washington's inauguration in 1789 - the first inauguration of a president - he wanted to wear a suit covered in gold leaf with a special cape and ride to the ceremony on a white horse escorted by an honour guard on white horses. Like a coronation. He was talked out of this and instead wore a brown suit with gold buttons and rode to Federal Hall in New York on a brown horse. The president of the new republic was not a king.
Still, this inauguration - like most of the others before it - feels, to an Australian, more like a coronation than the swearing-in of an elected president. - http://www.smh.com.au/news/Op...
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| ---> U.S. Lowers Expectations for Once-Heralded Iraq Vote!!! Surprised??? |
| 01.16.05 (4:32 pm) [edit] |
[b]So, the Bushies lied about WMDs-- lied about Saddam Hussein-Al Qaeda links-- lied about 9/11-- lied about everything. Now the Bushies lied about how the elections were going to be a cake-walk!!! Surprised??? How many lies before Americans wake-up???[/b]
Unable to deliver on its lofty goal of bringing democracy to Iraq (news - web sites) through the Jan. 30 elections, the Bush administration is pressing a damage-control campaign to lower expectations for the vote.
With fears for a low voter turnout among Sunni Arabs due to a boycott and insurgents' intimidation, the administration no longer touts the elections as a catalyst to spread democracy across the Arab world.
Instead, U.S. officials now emphasize the political process that will follow the vote.
"Clearly, we don't see the election itself as a pivotal point," Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told NPR on Friday. "It's the beginning of a process, the process where Iraqis will write a constitution and at the end of the year will actually vote for a permanent government."
Almost two years after Operation Iraqi Freedom, a raging insurgency across mainly Sunni areas forced the White House this week to prepare the American public for elections it called "less than perfect."
For months, the Bush administration has been steadily lowering expectations over the vote, beginning with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in September warning violent areas of the country might be excluded.
And with just two weeks to go, the administration acknowledges that despite military offensives meant to provide security for the vote, the fear of bullets and bombs will keep many for the 20 percent Sunni minority away from the ballot box.
Rather than ushering in Iraq's first free and fair national elections for decades, the Bush administration has now limited its ambition for a vote it refuses to postpone.
"I think a successful election will be an election where most of the population has gotten a chance to vote, and even though we may not get the same kind of numbers in the Sunni area, we're going to have to go forward and use the results of this election to build on," Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) told PBS.
Powell has lobbied the Shi'ites, who were oppressed under former President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) by the dominant Sunnis, to include the disenfranchised Sunnis in the government after they overwhelmingly win the skewed vote.
But the top U.S. diplomat acknowledged such maneuvering also risked inflaming the insurgency.
"The insurgency is not going away as a result of this election. In fact, perhaps, the insurgents might become more emboldened," Powell said.
GIVING DEMOCRACY A BAD NAME
Critics of the administration's Iraq policy complain the elections for a 275-member assembly that should draw up a constitution and pick a transitional government are so flawed they will be illegitimate -- and counterproductive for democracy in the region.
"These elections are a joke," said Juan Cole, a professor of modern Middle East history at the University of Michigan.
"The Bush administration has created the worst possible advertisement for democracy because the perception across the Middle East is that democracy means you get a country where everything is out of control," he said.
Before the vote, the administration "has definitely gone into damage-control mode," Stephen Zunes, a politics professor at the University of San Francisco said.
"Once their original rationale (to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction) fell apart, they created very high expectations for democracy to be able to justify their takeover," he said. "Now that they have ended up with a not particularly good demonstration of democracy, they are forced to lower the public's expectations for these elections." - http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...
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| ---> The Bush Zone (with Apologies to Rod Serling) |
| 01.15.05 (10:03 am) [edit] |
[b]There is a fifth realm beyond known reality. It is a realm as vast as space and timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground of haze and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies at the pit of man's fears. This is the realm of the unimaginable. It is an area we call "The Bush Zone."[/b]
Meet Mr. and Mrs. America, faithful believers in the one true nation. They arise each morning and stand before the mirror reciting their daily mantra: "It's a grand old flag! Leader of the free world! We're no. 1!" Their iconic reflection smiles back, a warm and homemade apple pie image of the best of everything, the best medical care, the most powerful military, and the best political system of any country in the world. The mirror never lies.
But this morning, Mr. And Mrs. America, discover a warped mirror that casts a disturbing and twisted funhouse reflection of their former selves. Daily slogans are powerless against this distorted likeness, and all that they once held sacred now ripples across the glass in a deformed and misshapen wave of elongated ugliness. Mr. And Mrs. America just stepped through the looking glass and into the Bush Zone.
Submitted for your consideration: citizens of the wealthiest country in the world seek salvation via the free-market system. They organize bake sales and eBay auctions to raise money for medical therapy not covered by their profit-driven corporate HMOs, only to discover that some of that money is also needed to purchase body armor the Pentagon failed to provide to their sons and daughters in Iraq. War is never cheap, but always profitable in the Bush Zone.
Further submitted for your consideration: a President insists on free elections in his combat arena despite the risk to life and limb for Iraqis, even as his own political party strains the boundaries of legality and decency to suppress the vote of Americans at home. Democracy is only for the righteous few required to guide the many along the sacred path of destiny and empire in the Bush Zone.
This is Alberto Gonzales, lawyer on his way up, salt of the earth, minority makes good story. He is, as you have perceived, a purveyor of partisan loyalty, one of a breed who substitutes smiles for substance, venom for value, and noise for nobility. His skill is the ability to turn the objectionable into the tolerable, the illegal into legal, and define it all with the phonetics of patriotism. Mr. Gonzales sits before his inquisitors, speaking in tongues while saying nothing. He has no fear because he knows Democrats are willing ghosts without power in the Bush Zone.
Picture of a campaign paid for by $600 million dollars of private funds, a cacophonous symphony of slander, mendacious media, and clanging garbage cans of innuendo and falsehood. The prize? A lavish gala held at the picturesque white house residence of the owners of America. Attendance is by invitation only.
The Bush Zone hosts a cast of characters, who like children's fertile imaginations, have no attachment to reality. A surreal traveling Medicine Show comprised of peddlers of faith and fear, sellers of superstition, martyrs and moguls who line their pockets with the lives of the innocent and faithful, all united to market the elixirs of corporate conformity and passivity, for the price of one thin nickel plus your soul. No waiting.
Picture of a Nation gazing into a warped mirror, its reflection, a blemished garden of atrophied freedoms, the acne of cowered silence, and once bright eyes dulled by corporate greed and the focus group political entertainment of talk television. In a little while, the face in the mirror will be permanently etched into the glass unless the Nation can avert its eyes from the hypnotic glare and focus on its people, principles and Constitution.
There is a way out for all of us, albeit through a locked door.
You unlock this door with the key of democracy. Beyond it is another dimension: a dimension of peace and prosperity, a dimension of free speech and civil rights, a dimension of tolerance and enlightenment. You're moving out of the land of haze and shadow, and into the wondrous journey of the people, by the people and for the people.
You've just stepped out of - the Bush Zone.
That's a signpost up ahead: your next stop: the real America!
------------------------- ------------------------- ------------------------- -----
[b]John Cory is a Vietnam veteran. He received the Purple Heart and Bronze Star with V device, 1969 - 1970[/b]. - http://www.truthout.org/docs_...
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| ---> MR. BUSH AND THE LURE OF PSEUDO-REALITY |
| 01.14.05 (2:00 pm) [edit] |
Germany's defeat in World War II was greatly accelerated by Hitler's refusal—especially in the final two years—to accept any bad news, and to accuse those trying to present such news of disloyalty, defeatism, or stupidity. Enemy forces were invariably underrated, own strength overestimated, and self-deceptions believed with such firmness that, by mid-1944, Field Marshal Rommel felt compelled to conclude that the Fuehrer was living in a [i]Wolkenkuckucksheim[/i] ("cloud cuckoo land").
Is it conceivable that the atmosphere in the White House is beginning to resemble that at Rastenburg? One of the best informed political commentators in Washington, Chris Nelson, thinks so. His influential newsletter, [i]The Nelson Report,[/i] has been keenly read inside the Beltway for the past 20 years because his information is usually reliable. In its January 3 issue Nelson wrote of the rising concern amongst senior officials that President Bush "does not grasp the increasingly grim reality of the security situation in Iraq because he refuses to listen to that type of information":
[i]Our sources say that attempts to brief Bush on various grim realities have been personally rebuffed by the President, who actually says that he does not want to hear "bad news." Rather, Bush makes clear that all he wants are progress reports, where they exist, and those facts which seem to support his declared mission in Iraq . . . building democracy. "That's all he wants to hear about," we have been told. So "in" are the latest totals on school openings, and "out" are reports from senior US military commanders (and those intelligence experts still on the job) that they see an insurgency becoming increasingly effective, and their projection that "it will just get worse[/i]."
Especially alarming is the insistence of Nelson's sources that this "good news only" directive comes from Bush himself, and that it is not the result of senior officials around him trying to mislead or insulate him. Nelson concludes that "whether self-imposed, or due to manipulation by irresponsible subordinates, the information/intelligence vacuum at the highest levels of the White House increasingly frightens those officials interested in objective assessment, and not just selling a political message."
Similar warnings about Mr. Bush have been heard before, and the disturbing signs—such as his tendency to a messianic outlook—have been apparent for years. His belief that "history has called America and our allies to action" was stated with great firmness in his first State of the Union address three years ago. The conclusion, that he sees himself as an anointed agent of divine providence, seems inescapable.
The notion that one is on the right side of "history" is dangerous in a President, however, not only because it breeds irrational belief in the correctness of one's own intuitive judgment, but also because it prompts megalomaniacal decisions and policies inimical to the political and constitutional tradition of the United States. Abraham Lincoln waged his war against the South with similar convictions as Mr. Bush wages his current global crusade, and with similar consequences. As Eric Foner has noted in his review of two recent books on Lincoln, both Presidents assumed powers that went well beyond what the Constitution seems to allow; in both cases, thousands of people suspected of assisting the enemy were arrested and held without charge and military tribunals were established to circumvent civilian courts:
[i]Leading members of both Administrations described the military conflict as an epic struggle between good and evil, inspired by the country's divinely ordained mission to spread freedom and democracy throughout the world. The Bush Administration's cavalier disregard for civil liberties has directed attention to the permissible limits on the rule of law in wartime[/i].
The historicist fallacy that "history" is an entity on a linear march has bred gnostic ideologies that find it easy to murder those who are deemed to be on its "wrong" side. Sooner or later this mindset results in the destruction of the over-expanded, over-extended bearer of the divinely appointed task. IBD's Washington bureau chief Brian Mitchell has diagnosed the "twin faults" of this mindset leading in the same self-destroying direction. The first is "a gnostic belief in our own anointing as a nation, a belief without any foundation in scripture or tradition, chosen merely because it flatters us." The second is an undeserved confidence in our ability to know and reason, which makes it easy
[i]to pass judgment on others and bear the sword against them, accounting ourselves blameless for the destruction we cause . . . We all know how well men rationalize their nonrational preferences, yet after doing our just-war calculations and obtaining an answer in favor of war, we then proceed with a clear conscience to commit ghastly acts[/i].
Reality is always more complicated than we imagine, he warns, and the farther the reality is from our own experience the less we can understand it. This is the moral basis for nonintervention, for the original refusal of the American Republic to get involved in arranging other peoples' lives.
To deal with the terrorist threat effectively and on the basis of leadership willingly accepted by those who are led, the United States should discard the pernicious notion of its exceptionalism. But instead of realizing that the threat to America is enhanced by the policy of global hegemony, President Bush is turning that hegemony into a divinely-ordained, morally mandated, open-ended and self-justifying mission of this country for decades to come. The winners are the neoconservatives, of course, who can easily tailor their long-term scenarios to fit into Mr. Bush's universe. Their mendacity—apparent in the misrepresentation of the Iraqi crisis to the American people—is now coupled with the chief executive's propensity to hear only "those facts which seem to support his declared mission." It will make the job easier for those around him who subscribe to the Straussian dictum that deception is justified, that there is no morality, and that there is only one natural right, the right of the superior to rule over the inferior. - http://www.chroniclesmagazine...
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| ---> The "Point" (for the Brain-Dead) Re WMDs Is: Bush LIED & Should Be IMPEACHED!!! |
| 01.14.05 (12:47 pm) [edit] |
[b]Bush's [i]casus belli [/i]for invading Iraq was to disarm Saddam Hussein who supposedly (we were told) had massive stockpiles of WMDs that posed an imminent threat to our national security: this was a bald-faced lie. Now, the Bushies should be held accountable. They should be impeached![/b]
For months before and after the Iraq war, top Bush administration officials insisted that Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction.
"There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies and against us," Vice President Cheney said in August 2002. Six months later, Secretary of State Colin Powell made the case, including satellite photos, to the United Nations. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld scoffed that even "a trained ape" knew it was true.
This week, The Washington Post reported that the U.S. has quietly ended its search for the weapons. Inspectors scoured Iraq and interviewed Iraqi scientists for months. They spent millions of dollars — the amount remains classified. The result was unchanged from the searchers' previous reports: They found nothing. No nuclear program. No stockpiles of biological or chemical weapons.
The end to the search puts a coda on one of the biggest intelligence failures in the nation's history, and it appears to extinguish the lingering possibility that something would turn up somewhereinside Iraq. Polls show that the administration's pre-war campaign was so effective that about 40% of Americans still believe Saddam had weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. invaded.
The most obvious and urgent lesson is this: The Bush administration needs to rethink the doctrine of pre-emption that justified the Iraq war. The U.S., according to that doctrine, doesn't have to wait for an attack like Pearl Harbor to defend itself. It only needs evidence that one is being planned.
That made more sense in the aftermath of 9/11 than in the cold new light of the Iraq war.
Not that the Bush administration was alone in its mistaken belief about Iraq's weapons stockpiles. Other intelligence agencies around the world reached similar conclusions.
In the 1980s, Saddam used chemical weapons against Iran and the Kurds in his own country. The U.N. said it could not be sure that Saddam had destroyed stockpiles of deadly weapons as he claimed after the first Gulf War. Saddam himself was making the inspectors' job difficult by leaving the impression that he was hiding something, apparently in an effort to deter Iran from thinking he was weak.
Still, cautionary voices, including within the CIA, were dismissed in the rush to war.
The fallout is already plain and getting more painful by the day. More than 1,350 U.S. soldiers have been killed. The war has cost the United States more than $100 billion and has strained relations with allies. Iraq could descend into civil war.
While it tries to salvage the situation in Iraq, the U.S. faces challenges from Iran, North Korea and elsewhere. Information about weapons programs inside these secretive regimes is at least as sketchy as it was about Iraq.
Approaches such as diplomacy, intense negotiations and weapons inspections are no panacea. But used together, with other countries, they can be valuable. The weapons debacle in Iraq shows the proper place for pre-emptive war: as a last resort, and only with rock-solid evidence. - http://www.usatoday.com/news/...
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| ---> Why We Need Social Security |
| 01.13.05 (6:20 am) [edit] |
For nearly three-quarters of a century, Americans have taken Social Security for granted. Now we had better learn how it works, what it has done, and what the true facts are regarding its future -- or else we are going to lose it.
Superficially, Social Security resembles traditional employer pensions: Americans pay into the system during their working years and receive a monthly pension during retirement. But the differences are fundamental. Social Security benefits are based on a balancing of two principles: equity and adequacy. Equity means that what you put in is related to what you get out; in other words, workers with higher wages, who pay more into the system, receive higher benefits later on. But under the principle of adequacy, the Social Security benefit formula overlooks years of low earnings (for example, when a worker may have been disabled or unemployed), and it replaces a higher proportion of earnings for the poor than for the rich. That’s why it’s our most successful anti-poverty program. In addition, Social Security benefits are indexed against inflation and protected from the ups and downs of the economy and financial markets. That’s why the program provides security for the middle class.
Privatization would do away with the idea of guaranteeing a minimally adequate income for the elderly who have worked all their lives. From their own earnings, low-wage workers would be unlikely to generate enough funds in an individual account to maintain a decent standard of living in retirement. Even middle-class workers would be at greater risk of poverty in old age. It’s intrinsic to financial markets that they yield unequal returns; many of those who did badly with their individual accounts wouldn’t have enough from other sources to live on. And markets fluctuate: Some generations would retire during one of the long downturns that periodically hit the markets, when their investments would be convertible only into paltry annuities. Those who lived into their 80s or 90s would be especially likely to outlast their individual accounts, or, if they had bought annuities at retirement, see those annuities severely eroded by inflation.
The elderly used to be an age group with an especially high rate of poverty. One of the signal achievements of Social Security, hardly noticed today, is that poverty has fallen dramatically among Americans over age 65 to just 10 percent, lower than the 12-percent rate for the population as a whole. For millions of the elderly who would otherwise be poor, Social Security is the single biggest source of income, the financial bedrock of their lives. Indirectly, their working-age children are beneficiaries of the program because the elderly no longer have to move in with them. People under age 65 also benefit from two other elements of Social Security that often get forgotten: benefits during long-term disability and survivor benefits for dependents if a worker dies before retirement. These are also important anti-poverty programs that don’t carry the stigma of welfare.
Social Security was never expected to be the sole source of retirement income for the middle class, who ideally also have employment-based retirement plans and personal savings. But if one thinks of these various sources of income as making up a “portfolio” of retirement assets, Social Security’s distinct value is even clearer. While other assets typically erode or become exhausted with advanced age, Social Security pensions keep their value because they have an annual cost-of-living adjustment. Moreover, as many employers convert from pension plans with a defined benefit to 401(k) and other plans with uncertain payouts, workers are already bearing more risk for retirement. In that context, Social Security provides a valuable hedge against the financial markets.
But what’s wrong with voluntary and partial privatization -- giving people the option of holding back 3 percent or 4 percent of their Social Security contributions to deposit in individual accounts? Although we haven’t yet seen the details of the Bush plan, these proposals typically come with sharp reductions in future benefits for younger workers who opt to remain in the system. These are really proposals to cut Social Security in which the individual-account option is an eye-catching decoy. Voluntary in appearance, these proposals would make Social Security such a bad deal that they’d trigger a run on the system: Workers, especially those with higher earnings, would likely not only opt for private accounts but demand that the entire program become optional.
Social Security works because it is a compact that extends across income groups. If the affluent leave the system, it would become a welfare program, shorn of the political clout that comes from universal participation. The result would be a self-reinforcing cycle of decline.
Social Security also works because it has been a rolling compact across generations. For decades, the basis of the program was entirely pay-as-you-go -- the taxes paid by workers went to pay for current retirees. When those workers retired, they depended on the next generation to support Social Security. Then, in 1983, Congress raised payroll taxes above the level needed for immediate benefits in order to accumulate savings for the baby-boom generation’s retirement.
These funds have been invested in Treasury bonds -- that is, the federal government itself has borrowed from the trust funds. Though opponents of the program question this practice, it’s no different from individuals investing in Treasury bonds. Ever since the founding of the republic, the federal government has paid off its debts; it must fulfill these obligations to the elderly no less than its debts to bondholders in Japan. But what this highlights is that future Social Security beneficiaries, like previous ones, ultimately depend on the next generation of workers to pay taxes and keep the system going for themselves and their children.
Republicans opposed Social Security when it was introduced, Barry Goldwater suggested making it voluntary in 1964, and ever since the 1980s, conservative think tanks have sponsored proposals to shift from Social Security to individual retirement accounts. The opponents’ biggest resource in this effort has been public skepticism about government. When a 1981 opinion survey asked how much money out of $100 in Social Security taxes went to administration, the median answer was $52, though the real figure that year was $1.30. Today, Social Security continues to deliver benefits with overhead at a fraction of what private accounts would cost, but few people understand that in this case the government enjoys a huge edge in efficiency.
President Bush and others have also sought to fan distrust in Social Security by contrasting a grim picture of the system’s future solvency with bright prospects for individual investment accounts. Their game here involves using two sets of assumptions: The Social Security projections invoked by Republicans assume a 1.7-percent future growth rate for the economy; the investment returns look back to a 7-percent historical growth rate for the stock market. But if the economy grows at 1.7 percent, the stock market can’t grow at 7 percent. And if economy grows as smartly as is being assumed for private accounts, there will be no crisis in Social Security.
The ultimate consideration is this: Social Security protects people against a variety of risks to ensure them a basic floor of income in old age and to enable many people who have struggled all their lives to look forward to a decent standard of comfort and dignity when they retire. It would be a crime to take that away from them. - http://www.prospect.org/web/p...
[b]Also refer to The Center for American Progress' site listing more information on Social Security[/b]: http://www.americanprogress.o...%3AD%3AL%3Ad1&output=xml_ no_dtd&c=biJRJ8OVF&site=c ap&oe=UTF-8&client=cap_fr ontend&proxystylesheet=ca p_frontend&b=180521&q=Soc ial+Security&btnG=Search& imageField.x=4&imageField.y=3
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| ---> Not On My Dime: Countering King George's Coronation ... |
| 01.13.05 (5:09 am) [edit] |
For many Americans, myself included, Jan. 20, 2005 will be a day of mourning rather than celebration. When G.W. Bush places his hand on the Bible held by William Rehnquist to take the oath of office -- to, for the second time, perjure himself before the American people by swearing "I will faithfully execute the office of the president of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States," -- we will turn our backs on Washington, D.C., attend one of the counter-inaugurals staged across the country or tend our own inner gardens.
Though we shudder at the prospects of four more years of Republican misrule, we won't dignify the Bush coronation -- a $50 million corporate circle jerk that perfectly captures the spirit of his administration during a time of austerity and war -- nor will we waver in our commitment to oppose all the things for which BushCo stands: preemptive war, empire, torture, oil dependency, corporate domination, global warming, land mines, expensive medical care, wiping out Social Security, religious intolerance, racism, gluttony and waste. We know that, in the fullness of time, we'll be redeemed by history.
History, however, has a bad habit of taking a while to get here. How can we hasten the process? The first step is to, rather than be cowed by the daunting tasks ahead, be emboldened by the fact that 51 percent of America is already on our side (Bush possesses a 49 percent approval rating, the lowest for an incumbent entering a second term in 50 years). Contrary to whatever unchallenged spin and outright lies the mainstream media spews on a daily basis, we who oppose Bush are stronger now than we were even a month ago. To echo a phrase used by the commander in chief: Bring it on.
The second step is to turn Jan. 20, 2005 into your own "Not One Damn Dime Day" by taking part in a 24-hour national boycott of consumer spending. No credit cards, no gas, no malls, no mini marts. Nothing. To quote the organizers, "The object is simple. [To] remind the people in power that the war in Iraq is immoral and illegal; that they are responsible for starting it and that it is their responsibility to stop it ... and to remind them that they work for the people of the United States of America ... You open your mouth by keeping your wallet closed."
The third step is to continue voting with your wallet by supporting, when possible, those enterprises that don't take part in the Republican Party shakedown. Thankfully, the website Choosetheblue.com has crunched all the numbers from the last election cycle's campaign donations. They've broken down the good guys (blues) vs. the bad guys (reds). There are some real surprises among both categories. For convenience's sake, I'm offering a digested version of their findings, though I encourage you to have a look for yourself at ChooseTheBlue.Com.
YES (Support these): Apple Computers, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, Microsoft, eBay, Sony, Barnes & Noble, National Enquirer, Dreamworks SKG, Ticketmaster, Viacom, CBS, BET, ABC, Webster Bank (91 percent of their donations went to Democrats!), Guinness, Gallo wine, Cuervo, Johnnie Walker, Smirnoff, Costco, Amazon.com, Banana Republic, Gap, Old Navy, Working Assets (phone service), New England Gas Co., Random House, Simon & Schuster, Harper Collins, Arby's, Starbuck's, Nissan and Toyota.
NO (boycott these): Target, Sears, J.C. Penney, Home Depot, Wal-Mart, Coors, Budweiser, Busch (as if), Kroger, Safeway, Shaw's, Proctor & Gamble (all products), Verizon, all tobacco companies, all cable TV companies (but particularly CNBC, MSNBC), Sam's Club, Dell Computers, Office Max, Circuit City, Clear Channel, Sinclair Network, American Express, MBNA (credit card), State Farm, Kodak, Hallmark Cards, and (sorry guys) EasyRiders magazine and all its affiliates ( Savage , Tattoo , Tailgate ), Omni Hotels, Gold's Gym, AirTran, Wendy's, Pizza Hut, Red Lobster, Outback Steakhouse, Waffle House.
Finally, if you're looking for a new team to support, try the Charlotte Bobcats' NBA franchise. Bobcat owners gave all their donations to Democrats. The Bobcats are easy to root for, since their future superstar (and shoo in for Rookie of the Year) is Emeka Okafor, UConn's classiest player in years. Become a Bobcat booster, and give the boot to the GOP. - http://hartfordadvocate.com/g...:96225
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| ---> Bush & GOP Repugs Only Want to Shove Fascism On Us (Based On Lies)!!! |
| 01.12.05 (11:30 am) [edit] |
[i][b]From Iraq to Social Security to jobs, Bush administration hallmark is deception ...[/b][/i]
Excuse me, but is that smoke in your ear?
I wouldn't go calling anyone a liar, but as we say in our quaint Texas fashion, this administration is stuffed with people who are on a first-name basis with the bottom of the deck. They've been telling us only four out of the 18 provinces in Iraq will be too unsafe to vote in. Doesn't sound that bad, does it? Unless you happen to know that about 50 percent of the population lives in those four provinces.
Will someone explain to me what earthly good they expect to do by misleading us? If, God forbid, the Iraqi election turns out to be a disaster, will we be better off for not having expected it? How long are Bush and Cheney going to sit there pretending the problem is that the media won't report the "good news" out of Iraq? Be a lot more useful if they paid attention to some of the bad news.
Resigned to the fact that Social Security will have to be dismantled because it's in such terrible, awful trouble, headed toward bankruptcy the day after tomorrow? Well, the $10 trillion in unfunded liabilities they keep talking about sure sounds like a load of trouble. Except that it's a completely phony number. Not based on what will happen in 25 years or 50 or 75, but on infinity. Forever and ever.
President Bush says "the crisis is now" and Social Security will go into the red as of 2018. Eeek, just 13 years from now -- we might actually live that long. Except... nobody else says that. The Social Security trustees, paid to be professional gloom-mongers on this subject, say it's good until 2042, and the conservative estimate by the Congressional Budget Office is 2052 -- not before Social Security goes broke, but before Social Security has to dip into its trust fund. Get a grip.
Now, in addition to the regular misleading, fudging, distorting and phony statistics games, we're getting actual covert propaganda, and dammittohell, they're making us pay for it. A quarter of a million bucks to a right-wing commentator to talk up No Child Left Behind. Why? Distributing video "news" releases to television stations made and paid for by the government, but not identified as such. It's not enough that Bush has the bulliest pulpit on earth, he has to sneak his message across with government propaganda? What the hell is this?
According to Bush, we're also having a lawsuit crisis. He got so exercised over it last week, he used the word "crisis" four times in one speech. In Texas, we have had tort deform up to our ears. Med-mal, as medical malpractice insurance is known in legislative circles, has been tort-deformed out the wazoo here -- $250,000 award caps, the whole ball of wax. Net result? Proposed rate increases for three of the state's largest med mal carriers up 16.6 percent to 35.2 percent. In Oklahoma, up 83 percent over three years for the largest med mal provider. Ohio, 10 percent to 40 percent is the range of expected rate increases by the five major carriers, etc. Doesn't work worth a damn.
Here in the National Laboratory for Bad Government, we are happy to help out by showing everyone else how not to solve problems, but it's really annoying when Bush insists on taking what didn't work here and making it nationwide.
More fun with numbers. The Bushies are crowing that their job forecast for last year was right on target. Um, which forecast? They predicted total job growth of 3.8 million, and it was actually 2.2 million. That's the difference between the total jobs in December versus the number at the beginning of the year. They also predicted the average number of jobs to increase by 2.6 million, when in fact it turned out to be 1.3 million higher than in 2003 -- that being difference between the average number of jobs in 2003 and 2004.
Too fast for you? If something goes up to eight from six, that's plus two, but the average of eight and six is seven, up one. The Bushies took the 2.2 million they predicted for last year's average job growth and pretended it was their prediction for total job growth, then said they were right when actual growth came in at 2.6 million. In other words, they were off again. (I am entirely indebted to bloggers Brad DeLong and Kevin Drum for this mathematical distinction.)
Also in the "you can't trust a word they say" category, the Natural Resources Defense Council has just released papers showing that the Defense Department and defense contractors collaborated in a backroom campaign to manipulate a federal report on the health threat of perchlorate, a toxic rocket fuel ingredient, in the water. The National Academy of Sciences is to release the report this week. What the NRDC has is evidence that pressure was put on the Academy of Sciences. Again, what good does it do to misinform people?
Not that I'm accusing anyone of lying, of course, but these people are slicker than bus station chili. Count your change when dealing with Bushies. - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...
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| ---> IT'S OFFICIAL: Bush Lied!!!!!! ... It's Impeachment Time!!!!!! |
| 01.12.05 (6:59 am) [edit] |
[b]It's impeachment time! No more "searching" for WMDs in Iraq! Bush lied! It's impeachment time![/b]
The top American weapons inspector in Iraq, Charles A. Duelfer, has wrapped up his work there, a step that ends the search for illicit weapons, an intelligence official said Tuesday night.
Mr. Duelfer issued a comprehensive report last fall that acknowledged that Iraq had destroyed its chemical and biological weapons in the early 1990's, years before the American invasion of 2003. But Mr. Duelfer returned to Iraq for further investigations after that report was issued. In an article in its Wednesday issue, The Washington Post reported that he had ended that work in late December.
The intelligence official said that Mr. Duelfer was still likely to issue several small additional statements on his findings, but that none would contradict the central conclusions that Iraq did not possess illicit weapons at the time of the American invasion.
President Bush and his top advisers had described what they said were illicit Iraqi arsenals as the central justification for going to war.
Mr. Duelfer, an adviser to the director of central intelligence, had overseen the work of the Iraq Survey Group, a 1,200-member military organization that carried out the work of searching for weapons, interviewing Iraqi officials and drawing up assessments.
That team remains in Iraq, but the main focus of its work shifted several months ago to efforts to combat the anti-American insurgency there. - http://www.nytimes.com/2005/0...
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| ---> Americans are Collabos with One of Mankind's Worst Forms of Slavery: FASCISM!!! |
| 01.11.05 (3:09 pm) [edit] |
The men who wrote the Constitution of the United States knew that we human beings have a tendency to 'not get along with each other'. They knew that if power accrued into the hands of an elite the experiment of democracy (power spread out into the realm of the people) would be over. So they created a system of checks and balances which blocked access to any one person, or any one special interest or elite gaining too much power over others. Thus our executive, legislative and judicial branches of government "checked" each other. The media was yet another "check" on the accrual of too much power as was the Bill of Rights which was written into the Constitution. The system wasn't perfect but it kept alive the possibility of true democracy. It kept alive the dream that one day "we the people" could live in a peaceful commonwealth where every person has what they need to survive and thrive.
That dream died in December 2000 when the checks and balances of our Constitution collapsed and George Bush was inserted into the Presidency of the nited States. September 11, 2001 furthered the atrophying of democracy handing the country into the hands of an emerging Corporate (and I say Christian) Fascism.
Since that time we have witnessed and have been unable to prevent the emergence of an Imperial Presidency that has the unrestricted power to declare war against any country he chooses. The Imperial Presidency has brought to an end the Constitutional mandate that 'ONLY CONGRESS' has the authority to declare war. It has furthered weakened international law and has undermined the potential of the United Nations to spread democracy throughout the earth.
The President has also gained unrestricted power to round up unlimited numbers of American citizens and incarcerate them in military brigs or concentration camps for the rest of their lives. He can keep them from ever again communicating with friends, families, and attorneys, simply on the president's certification that the incarcerated are "terrorists," as he has done with Jose Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi. The President may also now kill American citizens abroad solely on the basis of his certification that the one killed is a "terrorist". Just ask the family and friends of Ahmed Hijazi, anAmerican killed with a U.S.-fired missile in Yemen. Therefore suspending the Constitutional right: "no person shall be denied life, liberty or property without due process of law."
Ominous signs are all around us concerning the accrual of power into the hands of the Presidency. If Mr. Bush stays in office I think our future will continue to witness shrinking political rights, financial collapse and endless war. Part of the power and seduction of this administration emerges from its diabolical manipulation of Christian rhetoric. I want to flesh out the ideology of the Christian Fascism that Mr. Bush articulates. It is a form of Christianity that is the mirror opposite of what Jesus embodied. It is, indeed, the materialization of the spirit of antichrist: a perversion of Christian faith and practice.
This country, like it or not, is overwhelmingly dominated by the ideology of the Christian story. It is not so much that our founders were all Christians. Rather, they lived in an atmosphere scented throughout by Christian thought and rhetoric. Just as most of us can't imagine how to keep things cold without refrigeration; so too our founders couldn't help but think through the lens of the Christian story. And what they saw was that America had become the New Israel (the new Promised Land) of God. America has understood itself as a benevolent nation seeking only the good of all. We have understand our wealth as a blessing given to us as a sign that we are a "chosen, special people" whose larger meaning is to help the world into an era of peace, prosperity and justice. Every politician draws on this "civil religion story" which gives authority to the politicians ambition and agenda. Another way of saying this is: every nation needs sacred legitimation. It needs the authority of transcendence: of a story larger than itself . a story that connects past with present and future. An Empire needs an even broader story: one that connects with cosmic and/or historical redemption and new creation.
Martin Luther King understood this sacred American civil religion and was able to wed it brilliantly with the prophetic religious teachings of the Bible. He drew upon Biblical narratives which limited the power and authority of the elite while calling for economic redistribution of wealth. He drew upon teachings rooted in the personal morality of nonviolence and compassion. George Bush, on the other hand, also understands this sacred American 'civic gospel' and has brilliantly merged it with Biblical Holiness and Holy War traditions. These traditions call for the emergence of the Righteous Warrior who will cleanse the land of its impurity. These traditions are rooted in the personal morality of righteous zeal and obedience.
For example:
1.) Mr. Bush consistently sends signals to his right wing religious base. In last year's State of the Union he exhorted: "there's power, wonder working power, in the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people". It's a phrase from a well known Communion hymn "there's power, wonder working power in the blood of the lamb". Bush brings together the holiness zeal of Christian evangelicalism with patriotic fundamentalism. The core belief system of this 'civic gospel' goes something like this: The United States was founded as a Christian nation with free enterprise as the only economic system truly compatible with Christian beliefs. These religious values are today under attack in America. The danger is that without faith in God America will lose its blessing. Therefore, the government needs to act to protect the nation's religious heritage.
2.( Mr. Bush's teachings on terrorism: "you are with us or against us" cements for the hearer the apocalyptic world of good versus evil. There can be no neutral ground. You have to make a decision. Patriotism is now all or nothing: it is either total agreement or a slippery slope towards treason. In the Church you come to Jesus alone for salvation. In the state you obey the God-annointed leader and are thereby secured.
Renana Brooks writes (The Nation June 24, 2003: Bush Dominates A Nation of Victims):
"Bush is a master at inducing learned helplessness in the electorate. He uses pessimistic language that creates fear and disables people from feeling they can solve their problems. In his September 20, 2001 speech to Congress on the 9/11 attacks, he chose to increase people's sense of vulnerability: 'Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen. . I ask you to live your lives, and hug your children. I know many citizens have fears tonight . Be calm and resolute, even in the face of a continuing threat.' (Subsequent terror alerts .. have maintained and expanded this fear of unknown, sinister enemies.)"
The terror threat itself can only be combated with increases in military force, domestic security and curtailment of civil rights through Patriot Acts. There are no other options nor any dialogue or debate that would create an alternative way to deal with terrorism.
3.) Mr. Bush certainly sees himself as a Messiah figure. Listen to his language after 9-11: " I will not forget this wound to our country or those who inflicted it. I will not yield; I will not rest; I will not relent in waging this struggle for freedom and security for the American people." Or, in his 2003 State of the Union speech: "I will defend the freedom and security of the American people". He has become the nation. He is its embodiment. According to Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, - Bush told him: "God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them." This is Biblical language . it isn't political script. This is Bush's soul language. He understands himself as a man with a Divine mission. It also means that for him leadership is not "representing the people" rather leadership means transcending the will of the people. George Bush already knows the truth before the evidence is presented. He is guided by God and must blaze the trial even if the people are reluctant.
Iraq, for example, was a necessary war whether or not Saddam had nukes. Saddam, for Bush, was a bad guy who tried to kill "my dad". The war, for Bush, was holy and justified and necessary. Purging evil is necessary in the Holiness/Holy War tradition of the Bible. The righteous will purge evil but the unrighteous will be consumed by it. Think of an alcoholic: it's all or nothing. The whole world is all or nothing.
Like all religions the Bible has various narratives within its pages: Jesus drew on the prophetic traditions that called upon the people to change their way of life even as it critiqued and called upon the elites to decentralize their power. Jesus himself role modeled a lifestyle of service. Mr. Bush, on the other hand, draws on traditions that call for purity and cleansing. It is a language of hostility towards enemies and a strident call for obedience. It calls forth a lifestyle of the RIGHTEOUS ONE who will purge evil from the world through sacred violence.
All of this is not to say that the political world is of less importance. We know that the planning for the Iraq war was at least a decade in preparation. We know that America has had imperial designs and has intervened militarily throughout the world. And we've known for 25 years that Corporations have been savagely reducing labor rights while looting the treasury. We know that Mr. Bush is not the cause of our problems. Rather, the point I am making is that Mr. Bush is a sincere front man for an emerging fascism. His religious rhetoric is an authentic merging of Holiness Christianity with Imperial Americanism. The emphasis on security, law and order is necessary to maintain the "high calling" of the American people. The policies of fascism, in other words, are consistent with religious holiness and holy war narratives. And fascism, woven underneath Christian Holiness/Holy War traditions, is a powerful symbolic narrative that speaks to the American people as evidenced by Mr. Bush's 58% approval rating.
The coming election will not be decided because of political policy. It will not be decided in a debate over free markets versus fair markets; tax cuts or no tax cuts, Patriot Act or no Patriot Act; war with Syria or no war. None of these issues will determine the election because the candidates are all for free markets, tax cuts, domestic security and a strong global military presence. The election will be determined by the candidate who can embody the deeply felt, often unarticulated religious yearnings of the populace. Yearnings such as "who will save us, secure us, lead us??? who will connect us with a power greater than the power of others?" Bush speaks this language. Democrats are stuck in political nuance. Or, in other words, Democrats cannot speak the language of Martin Luther King who understood that social transformation requires a transcendent authority.
The problem comes down to this: Democrats, liberals, and social progressives have simply not grasped how afraid, insecure and how deeply in despair the populace is. They keep speaking as if objective analysis and idealistic vision can win the day. What Bush and Rove, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz and Pearls, Abrams and Bolton, DeLay and Rice etc, have clearly understood is that truth is subjectivity. Unfortunately, the inner person of America today is a hollowed out consumer who lacks the will power, stamina and imagination to do anything more than be overwhelmed. Therefore, a politics of crisis, a politics of fear will keep us locked into a state of conformity.
On the "civic side" of things America is being inundated with a rhetoric of insecurity. Most of Bush's State of the Union was taken up with war themes reminding us all of the horrible new world we live in post 9/11. We know that further increases in the military and police budgets are on the way; we know that the Patriot Act is going to be extended and strengthened; we know that Homeland Security will continue to be a growth industry. We know that this administration wants to break down the wall between church and state with faith-based initiatives. The world is in chaos and the Bush-men will fix it bringing us peace, prosperity, purity and purpose.
On the religion side of things apocalyptic theology is booming. This is also a worldview of crisis and insecurity. It is a theology rooted in the Holiness/Holy War traditions and it dominates the spirituality of this current administration. More to the point, this is the dominant theology of the mass media expression of Christian faith. It is a theology of despair that has given up on the possibilities of redemption.
One of the most popular fiction series making the rounds these days is the LEFT BEHIND series written by Tim LaHaye & Jerry Jenkins. Multiple millions of people are reading these books which fictionalize the end of life as we know it. It used to be that the Church could control people through the fear of eternal damnation. Today it is through fear of the future. The theology is basically this: The Bible is a code book that when rightly interpreted reveals that we are living at the end of history. History is scripted and is about to come to a catastrophic conclusion. The only hope is to accept Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior so that you can be "saved" from the future apocalypse. God will "snatch you up" (Rapture) right before a seven year series of horrible events that will see the rise of Antichrist and the rebuilding of the Jewish temple. There will be world war with most of humanity dying. At that point Jesus will return to restore law and order. This theology of despair "fits" our current culture of powerlessness and fear. From SARS to weapons of mass destruction to the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli conflict, to ecological collapse, the whole world seems to be on a "no exit" slide into an end times abyss. The theology of despair is very seductive. It is shaping the spirituality of Christians which provides a strong core from which Bush draws political strength.
And it has, at least, five political implications that affect each one of us here today. FIRST: Israel is to be exalted and defended no matter what they do to the Palestinian people. They are God's chosen people and must reside in their Biblically anointed Land for the "end time clock" to tick to its final minute. Israel has a Biblical mandate to conquer and control all of the land from the Nile River to the Euphrates. Behind the politics of oil lie the religious passion to fulfill God's will: Syria must fall.
Secondly: institutions like the United Nations are not to be trusted because they are tools of the Antichrist. The Antichrist is thought of (not as a spirituality or ideology) but as an personal embodiment of evil. The Antichrist will be a living person who will come to power at the end of history and proclaim himself to be god on earth. The theory has it that his power will be generated from within a coalition of nations. Thus . America, as God's chosen nation, will need to go it alone so as not to be duped by Antichrist. Our destiny is to take the gospel to all the nations: a benevolent gospel of therapeutic salvation for all.
Thirdly: since the world is passing away the environment is not of great importance. There is no need to worry about issues of sustainability because the world is in its final countdown. Part of the unconcern towards global warming and other ecological crisis is the religious belief that we aren't going to be around in 100 years. We're in the end times now . every moment is merely preparation for eternity. Whether Bush himself believes this or not is irrelevant. This is the religious worldview of those who exalt him and the voter-bloc to which he plays. For Bush to act for sustainability would require a major shift in his religious narrative. . As an aside this past summer the National Park Service was instructed to approve the display of religious symbols and Bible verses, as well as the sale of creationist books at the Grand Canyon National Park. In December 2003 the Park Service was ordered to develop a "more balanced" version of an 8 minute video shown at the Lincoln Memorial Visitor Center. Conservative Christians wanted the removal of footage of gay rights, pro choice and anti-war demonstrations replacing it with footage of Christian rallies and pro-war demonstrations.
Fourth: the trust that Jesus died for "my sins" is far more important than the teachings of Jesus. This fosters a domesticated therapeutic religious expression that insists that "jesus in my heart" is more important than my lifestyle. It's like the Mafia don who could order his enemies killed while he himself was celebrating the baptism of his nephew. There is a disconnect between one's inner experience of God's loving grace and embodying that experience outwardly through one's politics. This leads to a discounting of following Jesus in a lifestyle of nonviolence, economic justice and compassion. Again as an aside . while Governor of Texas Mr. Bush was interviewed by Talk Magazine concerning the impending execution of fellow Christian Karla Faye Tucker. Bush imitated Tucker's appeal for him to spare her life . pursing his lips, squinting his eyes, and in a squeaky voice saying, "please don't kill me".
Fifth: a leader who loves Jesus is to be followed as God's man for the hour. The Christian leader is God's shepherd over the American flock. As stated before Bush sees himself as a Messiah figure (annointed by God for a special redemptive purpose). When he decided on running for the Presidency he called a group of evangelical Pastors together announcing to them "I have heard the call" and then receiving from them the "laying on of hands" which corresponds to divine ordination for the task ahead. On September 14, 2001 he stated: "our responsibility before history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil". He then launched the crusade Operation Infinite Freedom against Afghanistan. Yet other messainic statements from Bush:
"History has called America to action. . The great hope of our time, and the great hope of every time, now depends on us." ..
"We must also remember our calling as a blessed nation to make the world better . and confound the designs of evil men."
"Our nation has been chosen by God and commissioned by history, to be a model of justice before the world."
*** According to Vice-President Cheney: America "has the duty to act with force to construct a world in the image of the United States."
In return for this messianic leadership evangelical Christians have returned an annointing of prayer. During the Afghanistan crusade thousands of "Presidential Circles of Prayer" and "Wheels of Prayer" were organized on the Internet, running 24 hours a day.
[b]WHEEL OF PRAYER FOR OUR SOLDIERS[/b]
Lord hold our troops in your loving hands. Protect them as they protect us.
Bless them and their families for the altruistic actions they are performing
for us in our time of need. This I ask in the name of Jesus, our Lord and Savior. Amen
This prayer was so popular and was hit so often that the website crashed within days.
Pastor Charles Stanley distributed among Marines as they entered into combat thousands of pamphlets entitled "Duty of a Christian in Time of War". With the pamphlet went a card instructing them to sign and send directly to Mr. Bush. The card says: "I have committed to pray for you, your family and your Administration." Specific prayers for the President were included for each day.
[b]CONCLUSION:[/b]
The point I'm trying to make is that we are not dealing simply with politics when it comes to the Bush administration. The progressive left, which often pays little attention to Christianity, will be making a huge mistake if they overlook the religious ideology at the core of Mr. Bush personally and the movement he represents. And we are talking about a "movement" (a movement of 'the people' not just the elites). We are seeing today the emergence of a "fascist movement". It is bankrolled and organized by Corporations, articulated through the ideology of neo-conservativism. but is fueled by the right-wing church drawing upon Holiness/Holy War Biblical narratives.
When Dave Korten (author of When Corporations Rule the World) says that we need a "new story"; he is talking about needing a transcendent authority in which we root our political culture. Human beings cannot live in societal form without a sacred narrative. Neither anarchy nor atheism can construct a house that will hold our future. The Republicans know this well. But the Democrats seem clueless.
In Biblical language the Republicans have become Pharaoh whose house is strong because of economic exploitation of the populace and military repression of the people. The populace is being asked to make bricks without straw. We are seeking a "savior" . a Moses who can rally us out of these mudpits towards the promise of a land flowing with milk and honey. Unfortunately most Democrats are simply offering Pharaoh-lite: they still will keep us in the mudpit making bricks.
What we need is a movement of spiritual justice. We need the language of those who can wed America's civil religion with Biblical prophetic narrative. We need to expand that language so that it can include the language and stories that are emerging from the antiwar, fair trade and human rights movements. Together this language can form a unique new narrative that has the power to inspire imagination and courage. A language that call forth a new coalition powerful enough to leave behind the mudpit and to enter the promise of a new beginning. A coalition that understands that "we are the ones we are looking for". Indeed, the new narrative will proclaim "God with us" not "God above us". - http://www.informationclearin...
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| ---> Victor's Spoils ... |
| 01.11.05 (1:23 pm) [edit] |
At the rate President Bush's supporters are giving money, his second inauguration threatens to stand out in the history books like the common folks' muddy boot prints on the White House furniture at Andrew Jackson's gala. The $40 million record for inaugural partying set four years ago for Mr. Bush is expected to be shattered this month. The only limits for this binge of giving are the private inaugural committee's maximum of $250,000 for corporate donors (more than 40 have pledged so far) and $100,000 for individuals (60 and counting).
Ordinary citizens might have hoped that the overriding issue in Washington - the perilous Iraq war, with its drain on the nation's blood and treasure - would dictate restraint. But plans for the four-day extravaganza roll forward with nine celebratory balls being underwritten by the usual corporate and fat-cat supplicants in the political power mill.
There's nothing new in Washington's triumphalist celebrations, festooned with price tags for access, but war usually mutes the singing and dancing. Not this year.
The inaugural's stated theme - "Celebrating Freedom, Honoring Service" - is spin-doctoring in the extreme and hardly justifies the unrestrained lucre-fest. Planners did take care to create a "Commander in Chief Ball," free to the military and their families. But that only underscores the bad taste. Officials say "freedom everywhere" is the point of the celebrations. The freedom most obviously honored is that of American businesses, eagerly writing checks to get ever closer to the election winners. - http://www.nytimes.com/2005/0...
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| ---> Cardinal Says Bush Broke Iraq Promise |
| 01.11.05 (1:05 pm) [edit] |
VATICAN CITY -- The Italian cardinal sent by Pope John Paul II last year to try to dissuade President Bush from invading Iraq said Monday the president promised that the U.S. operation would be "quick."
Cardinal Pio Laghi visited Bush at the White House on March 5, 2003, to relay the pope's position that dialogue, not arms, should be used to resolve the crisis over Iraq, which the United States accused of harboring weapons of mass destruction.
"When I went to Washington as the pope's envoy just before the outbreak of the war in Iraq, he (Bush) told me: `Don't worry, your eminence. We'll be quick and do well in Iraq,'" Laghi told Italian Catholic TV station Telepace, which was broadcasting the pontiff's annual address to diplomats.
When the United States went to war in Iraq, Laghi called the attack on Baghdad "tragic and unacceptable."
"Unfortunately, the facts have demonstrated afterward that things took a different course -- not rapid and not favorable," the prelate told Telepace. "Bush was wrong."
Laghi was the Vatican's first envoy to Washington in the 1980s and established a friendship with Bush's father, former President George H.W. Bush. - http://www.commondreams.org/h...
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| ---> Inaugural Excess: This Is the Wrong Time for a Lavish Celebration ... |
| 01.10.05 (5:04 am) [edit] |
The Presidential Inauguration Committee intends to forge ahead with its resplendent plans for the second Bush inaugural. At the risk of sounding like a Grand Old Party pooper, I'm not thrilled.
What gives me pause is the decision to spend some $40 million-plus at this moment in history. When I first began mulling over this expenditure, I thought it quite unseemly that, at a time when so many Americans and countless Iraqis have been and will be killed and maimed, we should be mounting a spectacle said to celebrate our troops, replete with nine official balls, many unofficial affairs, a youth concert, a parade, a fireworks display, etc. (and, at the Ritz-Carlton, white chocolate cowboy boots). But now, with the appalling misery in Southeast Asia added to the scene, it seems even more obvious that an extravaganza is wholly inappropriate.
Previous presidents have chosen to continue the festive inauguration tradition during wartime. Lincoln was one, although he most certainly didn't spend the 1865 equivalent of $40 million. But I prefer the example of moderation set by Franklin Roosevelt in wartime 1945: a short speech at the White House, a buffet luncheon featuring chicken salad and pound cake -- and that was it. No parade, not a single ball. FDR knew something about propriety.
President Bush, of course, has already had a big inaugural party; in 2001 he enjoyed a four-day, $40 million inauguration. How many $40 million fetes is one man entitled to, I wonder, particularly since we're only transitioning from Bush to Bush. Bill Clinton spent less on his second inauguration ($23.7 million) than on his first ($33 million), and that was, moreover, in a very different context: The economy sparkled, Clinton had won a rousing election victory, we weren't at war -- and a sizable portion of the world had not just fallen apart.
In his Christmas Day radio address, Bush admonished Americans: "We have a duty to our fellow citizens, that we are called to love our neighbor just as we would like to be loved ourselves." That sentiment would have been notably served if, on the day after the election, he had announced that his inauguration would be confined to one modest day of celebration and he had urged prospective supporters to redirect their contributions toward charities and the needs of our troops and their families.
Such a gesture could well have caused major inauguration patrons to donate for eleemosynary uses (perhaps with a discreet note so informing the inaugural committee). It most certainly would have suggested the president's sincerity about the importance of a benevolent spirit. And, in thus displaying a modest charitableness instead of what many have perceived as ungenerous arrogance, he might have made a good start on mending the rupture between himself and half the country (and much of the planet).
Our recently elevated pledge of aid to Asia should now be helpful in that respect, as will signals such as lowering our flag for a week, sending Colin Powell to that suffering region and enlisting former presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton to raise private funds. But these are the sort of boilerplate actions that might be expected in a situation of such horrific dimensions. In a time of great suffering -- in Asia, could we be looking at, ultimately, a half-million or more dead? -- what is required is a sign of true respect and sorrow, of sacrifice of a national symbol, that will acknowledge and honor both our fighting forces and the calamity of the tsunami. The inaugural self-indulgence now planned sends a directly contrary message.
We should substantially curtail the inaugural program. By doing so, we would demonstrate due regard for the needs and sensibilities of our citizens and our world (and put to better use the money to be saved -- District police security costs alone are estimated at $15 million). It isn't too late to act. In 1985 the weather led President Reagan to cancel his parade on the day before the inauguration, thereby disappointing 200 high school bands and equestrian troupes from 50 states. The kids survived.
This is no time for Sousa and fireworks and red-white-and-blue cocktails. Some future inaugural, perhaps. - http://www.washingtonpost.com...
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| ---> Congress Passes `Doomsday' Plan ... |
| 01.10.05 (5:01 am) [edit] |
With no fanfare, the U.S. House has passed a controversial doomsday provision that would allow a handful of lawmakers to run Congress if a terrorist attack or major disaster killed or incapacitated large numbers of congressmen.
``I think (the new rule) is terrible in a whole host of ways - first, I think it's unconstitutional,'' said Norm Ornstein, a counselor to the independent Continuity of Government Commission, a bipartisan panel created to study the issue. ``It's a very foolish thing to do, I believe, and the way in which it was done was more foolish.''
But supporters say the rule provides a stopgap measure to allow the government to continue functioning at a time of national crisis.
GOP House leaders pushed the provision as part of a larger rules package that drew attention instead for its proposed ethics changes, most of which were dropped.
Usually, 218 lawmakers - a majority of the 435 members of Congress - are required to conduct House business, such as passing laws or declaring war.
But under the new rule, a majority of living congressmen no longer will be needed to do business under ``catastrophic circumstances.''
Instead, a majority of the congressmen able to show up at the House would be enough to conduct business, conceivably a dozen lawmakers or less.
The House speaker would announce the number after a report by the House Sergeant at Arms. Any lawmaker unable to make it to the chamber would effectively not be counted as a congressman.
The circumstances include ``natural disaster, attack, contagion or similar calamity rendering Representatives incapable of attending the proceedings of the House.''
The House could be run by a small number of lawmakers for months, because House vacancies must be filled by special elections. Governors can make temporary appointments to the Senate.
Rep. Brian Baird (D-Wash.), one of few lawmakers active on the issue, argued the rule change contradicts the U.S. Constitution, which states that ``a majority of each (House) shall constitute a quorum to do business.
``Changing what constitutes a quorum in this way would allow less than a dozen lawmakers to declare war on another nation,'' Baird said. - http://news.bostonherald.com/...
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| ---> Congress Passes `Doomsday' Plan ... |
| 01.10.05 (4:58 am) [edit] |
With no fanfare, the U.S. House has passed a controversial doomsday provision that would allow a handful of lawmakers to run Congress if a terrorist attack or major disaster killed or incapacitated large numbers of congressmen.
``I think (the new rule) is terrible in a whole host of ways - first, I think it's unconstitutional,'' said Norm Ornstein, a counselor to the independent Continuity of Government Commission, a bipartisan panel created to study the issue. ``It's a very foolish thing to do, I believe, and the way in which it was done was more foolish.''
But supporters say the rule provides a stopgap measure to allow the government to continue functioning at a time of national crisis.
GOP House leaders pushed the provision as part of a larger rules package that drew attention instead for its proposed ethics changes, most of which were dropped.
Usually, 218 lawmakers - a majority of the 435 members of Congress - are required to conduct House business, such as passing laws or declaring war.
But under the new rule, a majority of living congressmen no longer will be needed to do business under ``catastrophic circumstances.''
Instead, a majority of the congressmen able to show up at the House would be enough to conduct business, conceivably a dozen lawmakers or less.
The House speaker would announce the number after a report by the House Sergeant at Arms. Any lawmaker unable to make it to the chamber would effectively not be counted as a congressman.
The circumstances include ``natural disaster, attack, contagion or similar calamity rendering Representatives incapable of attending the proceedings of the House.''
The House could be run by a small number of lawmakers for months, because House vacancies must be filled by special elections. Governors can make temporary appointments to the Senate.
Rep. Brian Baird (D-Wash.), one of few lawmakers active on the issue, argued the rule change contradicts the U.S. Constitution, which states that ``a majority of each (House) shall constitute a quorum to do business.
``Changing what constitutes a quorum in this way would allow less than a dozen lawmakers to declare war on another nation,'' Baird said. - http://news.bostonherald.com/...
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| ---> Forget Iraq and South Asia, It's Party Time!!! ... |
| 01.07.05 (2:16 am) [edit] |
Jeanne Phillips, chairwoman of the 55th Presidential Inaugural Committee, was asked in a recent interview if the $40 million being spent on the festivities might be better spent on the troops in Iraq. No, not really. She and the president instead decided to dedicate the festivities to "honoring service" and throwing, for the first time, a Commander in Chief Ball to which 2,000 servicemen have been invited. That, of course, leaves out the 140,000 troops stationed in Iraq, and countless others around the world. Just how do these events benefit the troops? "I'm not sure that they do," she admitted, but she quickly repeated that "honoring service is what our theme is about."
Let the troops eat a theme. Members of the 101st Airborne Division will no doubt be pleased to learn that partygoers at nine ballrooms will be honoring them. Surely that soldier who asked Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld about a lack of armor won't feel so bad about his unfortified vehicle if 2,000 servicemen are eating canapes in his name, and arms merchants are dancing till dawn in honor of arms-bearers in Mosul.
What's surprising is that the down-to-earth president doesn't get that the world has changed since his extravaganza in 2001. The master of identifying with the common man has blown such an easy opportunity to reinforce the image he's so ardently cultivated, an image that just won him reelection despite four years of policies undertaken on behalf of the uncommon man. It's a mask he must maintain if he's to make tax cuts permanent, dismantle Social Security and pursue an ownership society for the benefit of the people who already own it — without the rest of the country catching on.
Naming the inaugural ball "Patriotic" doesn't make it so. That's especially true now that the war is overlaid with massive human suffering and deprivation in South Asia. If you were looking for the opposite of planting a victory garden, you couldn't do better than to have sitcom star Kelsey Grammer emcee the military ball. If you want to laugh at human suffering then go trip the light fantastic at the Liberty Ball. (Visiting the black hole of devastation in Sumatra, Secretary of State Colin Powell said, "I've never seen anything like it." Of course, nothing Powell says will change anything. Powell's involvement in an issue is confirmation that the president doesn't care about it.)
Even the soft-as-a-pillow interviewer Larry King saw the incongruity of all this. In the middle of a joint interview on Monday with Bush 41 and Bill Clinton, just named to spearhead private donations for tsunami victims, King said "some people are saying that maybe some of the inaugural events can be … canceled or tempered down. What do you think?" Bush the elder said: "I think life goes on. I don't think it will help anything in Sri Lanka if the balls were, you know, peeled back. That's a separate question." Any suggestion that his son was slow to respond or chintzy, added Bush, was simply "inside-the-Beltway stuff."
Life goes on; that's a truism. But inside the Beltway there was hardly a peep. This is fully Bushland now. Why is it a separate question? Given that the events are dedicated to the troops, why not give half the $40 million to them (with a chunk to the wounded at Walter Reed Army Medical Center for phone cards so they can call home) and half of it to Sri Lanka?
So why did Bush finally spring into action on the tsunami? It was his slow realization that he looked out of step with ordinary Americans, treating his base as less than they are, simply as a voting bloc. While millions of good-hearted Americans were jamming the websites of Catholic Charities, the American Red Cross and other groups with donations, Bush was still on vacation, clearing brush at the ranch. It took more than a week for him to make a personal donation.
To cancel the balls, one Republican said, would be a cheap gesture. That was like the White House's initial excuse for dragging its feet, that Bush didn't want to jump on tragedies as did his predecessor, Clinton, who Bush has officially appointed to jump on the tragedy.
But the truth is that Bush loves a cheap gesture — landing on an aircraft carrier in a flyboy suit or giving a speech like the one Wednesday on medical malpractice, in which he was surrounded by people in white jackets to signify medical good practice.
The deputy of the inaugural organization said a presidential inaugural has never been canceled, even during the world wars, so the administration isn't going to start now. But that's the inauguration itself, which is a pretty economical affair — a Bible, a platform, some seating. Balls are different. Franklin D. Roosevelt canceled three balls because of the Depression and World War II. It is hard to believe that a president who used life-size pictures of Roosevelt as a backdrop at an international speech wouldn't see the anomaly. Imagine if this were a month after the death of 3,000 Americans on 9/11. - http://www.latimes.com/news/o...,1,951200.column
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| ---> Bush's Legacy of Brutality: US troops 'laughed as Iraqi died' ... |
| 01.06.05 (5:18 am) [edit] |
[b]An Iraqi civilian has testified that US soldiers forced him and his cousin to jump into the River Tigris and laughed as his relative was swept to his death. [/b]
"He was calling my name, said: 'Help me! Help me!'" Marwan Fadel Hassoun told a military trial in Texas.
Army Sgt Tracy Perkins, 33, is on trial for an array of charges including involuntary manslaughter.
Three other soldiers have also been charged over the incident in the city of Samarra on 3 January 2004.
Mr Fadel said he and his cousin were transporting plumbing supplies from Baghdad to the city when they were approached by US troops when their truck broke down a few minutes before a 2300 curfew.
He said they were forced to the river at gunpoint.
"We started to beg them not to throw us in the water," he said through a translator.
"We said in English, 'Please, please', but it was in vain.
"The soldiers had their rifles aimed at us. They were laughing."
He said he tried to save his 19-year-old cousin by grabbing his hand, but to no avail.
The court was shown a picture of a corpse which Mr Fadel's family say they pulled from the river and buried.
[b]Body to be exhumed [/b]
"The last time I saw my son, he was a dead body," Mamoun Hassoun, the father of Zaidoun Fadel Hassoun, told the court.
The defence denies that the body is Zaidoun's, saying it believes both men made it to shore alive.
The trial of another soldier accused in the case, 1st Lt Jack Saville, has been postponed so that the body can be exhumed and examined.
Both men are charged with involuntary manslaughter, conspiracy, aggravated assault, obstruction of justice, and lying to investigators. They could receive up to 29 years in prison if convicted.
Sgt Reggie Martinez is charged with manslaughter and Specialist Terry Bowman is charged with assault. - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/am...
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| ---> Bush's Legacy of Brutality: US troops 'laughed as Iraqi died' ... |
| 01.06.05 (5:16 am) [edit] |
[b]An Iraqi civilian has testified that US soldiers forced him and his cousin to jump into the River Tigris and laughed as his relative was swept to his death. [/b]
"He was calling my name, said: 'Help me! Help me!'" Marwan Fadel Hassoun told a military trial in Texas.
Army Sgt Tracy Perkins, 33, is on trial for an array of charges including involuntary manslaughter.
Three other soldiers have also been charged over the incident in the city of Samarra on 3 January 2004.
Mr Fadel said he and his cousin were transporting plumbing supplies from Baghdad to the city when they were approached by US troops when their truck broke down a few minutes before a 2300 curfew.
He said they were forced to the river at gunpoint.
"We started to beg them not to throw us in the water," he said through a translator.
"We said in English, 'Please, please', but it was in vain.
"The soldiers had their rifles aimed at us. They were laughing."
He said he tried to save his 19-year-old cousin by grabbing his hand, but to no avail.
The court was shown a picture of a corpse which Mr Fadel's family say they pulled from the river and buried.
[b]Body to be exhumed [/b]
"The last time I saw my son, he was a dead body," Mamoun Hassoun, the father of Zaidoun Fadel Hassoun, told the court.
The defence denies that the body is Zaidoun's, saying it believes both men made it to shore alive.
The trial of another soldier accused in the case, 1st Lt Jack Saville, has been postponed so that the body can be exhumed and examined.
Both men are charged with involuntary manslaughter, conspiracy, aggravated assault, obstruction of justice, and lying to investigators. They could receive up to 29 years in prison if convicted.
Sgt Reggie Martinez is charged with manslaughter and Specialist Terry Bowman is charged with assault. - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/am...
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| ---> Bush & His Goons: Don't Torture Yourself (That's His Job) ... |
| 01.06.05 (12:29 am) [edit] |
The Associated Press headline that came over the wire yesterday said it all: "Gonzales Will Follow Non-Torture Policies."
You know how bad the situation is when the president's choice for attorney general has to formally pledge not to support torture anymore.
Alberto Gonzales may have been willing to legally justify something that was abhorrent to everything America stands for, but it's all relative. Given that Mr. Gonzales is replacing the odious John Ashcroft, Democrats didn't seem inclined to try to derail the Hispanic nominee, even though his memo fostered the atmosphere that led to disgusting scandals in Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo.
Just to get things started on the right foot, though, Mr. Gonzales planned to go the extra mile and offer the quaint, obsolete Senate Democrats a more nuanced explanation of why he called the Geneva Conventions "quaint" and "obsolete."
Before he helped President Bush circumvent the accords and reserve the right to do so "in this or future conflicts," you had to tune in to an old movie with Nazi generals or Vietcong guards if you wanted to see someone sneeringly shrug off the international treaty protecting prisoners from abuse. ("You worthless running dog Chuck Norris! What do we care about your silly Geneva Conventions?")
How are you to believe Mr. Gonzales when he says he's through with torture? His mission is clearly to do whatever he thinks Mr. Bush wants.
All gall is divided into parts, so what's next?
The Commerce Department nominee promising that giveaways to big business will be done with subtlety?
The Environmental Protection Agency nominee promising that the toxin content in water will never rise to Yushchenko level?
It's comforting to start the new year in the hands of a party that cares so much about morals and values.
Tom DeLay and oily House Republicans inaugurated their new term by gutting ethics rules just in case any of them get caught in whatever misconduct they are plotting.
Rummy continued on his oblivious, dissembling path, refusing to admit that he's tapped out the Army and broken the Army Reserve with what Lt. Gen. James Helmly, the frustrated chief of the Army Reserve, calls "dysfunctional" policies. We've gotten so numb on Iraq that when eight American soldiers and over 80 Iraqi police officers get killed, when the governor of Baghdad gets assassinated, and when our puppets plead with Mr. Bush to delay the elections, it all seems like just another week of pre-election maneuvering.
In The Los Angeles Times, http://www.latimes.com/news/p...,1,1944454.story we learn that Bush fave Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas "has accepted tens of thousands of dollars worth of gifts since joining the high court, including $1,200 worth of tires, valuable historical items and a $5,000 personal check to help pay a relative's education expenses."
A guy we pay nearly $200,000 a year can't pop for his own tires? Whatever happened to the dignity of the robe? At least we know where our possible future chief justice stands: on the side of personal corruption.
"He also took a free trip aboard a private jet to the exclusive Bohemian Grove club in Northern California - arranged by a wealthy Texas real estate investor who helped run an advocacy group that filed briefs with the Supreme Court," the paper said.
The L.A. Times reviewed the disclosures of all nine justices for the years 1998 through 2003 and found that "Thomas accepted $42,200 in gifts, making him the top recipient. Next in that period was Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who accepted $5,825 in gifts, mostly small crystal figurines and other items."
Clarence Thomas follows Antonin Scalia's lead on the law. Why not also on ethics? Justice Scalia defended taking his relatives on a ride on Air Force Two to Louisiana with Dick Cheney to go duck hunting, even though the v.p. had an important case before the court, by saying that it would have been a "considerable inconvenience" to fly commercial.
Going through a blistering confirmation hearing where his inappropriate behavior was questioned didn't teach Clarence Thomas much. Can we hope for anything better from Mr. Gonzales after he's waved through to be the man in charge of enforcing our laws? - http://www.nytimes.com/2005/0...
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| ---> Tsunami: Bush Has A (Lousy) Record of Promising Disaster Relief Money That's Never Sent |
| 01.04.05 (11:09 am) [edit] |
[b]Raining Money[/b]
The greatest outpouring of disaster relief on record has been promised for the victims of the worst natural disaster of our time, a stupendous display of good will and empathy for the huge suffering and loss in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, India, Somalia and the other devastated countries. Now, how does the world get it to those who need it?
President Bush, who embarrassed Americans with his initial offer of a piddling $15 million, should be commended for increasing the government's pledge to $350 million. Japan quickly followed suit, raising its promised amount to $500 million from $30 million. And Norway, just yesterday, announced that it is adding $160 million to its initial pledge, for a total of about $180 million, a whopping amount from a country with a gross domestic product figure that's half the size of New Jersey's.
The foremost challenge now is to ensure that the money pledged in the glow of the media spotlight gets to the people who need it. That is the job of the United Nations, which has a chance to redeem itself after the oil-for-food scandal. It must make sure that the money is not diverted into the hands of corrupt government officials or used as a political weapon by armies waging counterinsurgency campaigns in some of the most stricken areas.
Right now in Indonesia, cartons of food, water and medical supplies are stacking up in airports, not getting to the villages that were hit the hardest. Part of the problem is the Indonesian military. Complaints have already arisen about soldiers siphoning off supplies for their relatives and friends. But Indonesian government officials bear some blame. Take, for example, the remarkably callous dismissal of reports of hungry families in leveled towns made by Alwi Shihab, the country's senior disaster response coordinator: "I can guarantee you there is no starvation, except for me, because I didn't have lunch today." This is hardly the face the Indonesian government should want to present to a traumatized population.
Furthermore, the money must be sent, not just pledged. The Bush administration is notorious for promising wonderful pots of money when the cameras are rolling - the Monterey summit meeting on poverty nearly three years ago comes to mind - and then failing to follow through once the attention fades. Victims of the earthquake in Bam, Iran, a year ago are still living in tents because aid, including American aid, has fallen short. In 2002 in Monterey, Mr. Bush announced a Millennium Challenge Account to give African nations development assistance of up to $5 billion a year. We're still waiting for the account to actually hand out so much as a dollar.
Of more lasting importance than getting money to the tsunami victims is working to ensure that when the next disaster hits, fewer are killed. That can happen only if America and other rich countries spend more on development aid, not just disaster relief. Emergency aid is a Band-Aid; development aid is a vaccine. Rich countries like America and the European nations have the firm foundations necessary to help fight nature's wrath, including early warning systems and sound housing structures. Last fall, severe storms hit Haiti and Florida. Haiti lost around 2,000 lives; Florida lost about 100.
The horrific casualties inflicted by the tsunamis are the face of poverty today. So many lives could have been spared with basic things like an emergency response system or local shelters built on high ground.
The aid to the tsunami victims must not come out of the same pot used for development aid. It's clear that in the yearly lottery of disaster aid, the tsunami survivors will get the most. But that doesn't mean that the eight million people who die every year from preventable diseases like malaria should end up losers - again. - http://nytimes.com/2005/01/04...
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| ---> Traitor Bush's 'piratization' of Social Security |
| 01.04.05 (8:26 am) [edit] |
Bush is siccing the investor class on the worker class.
Which are you? If you make more of your income from work than you earn from investments, you are part of the worker class; if you make most of your income from investments, you may be part of the investor class -- unless, of course, you are retired and are no longer earning income from current labor.
Clearly the big Wall Street investment companies that contribute heavily to Bush's and other Republican political campaigns stand to gain Billions of dollars from fees and commissions if Bush manages to "piratize" Social Security. No, I did not misspell "privatize," I spelled it "piratize" because the root word here is PIRATE.
If you are middle-class or poor and support Bush's "piratization" of Social Security, you have been brainwashed and bamboozled. If you work for a living and support Bush's "piratization" of Social Security, you have been brainwashed and bamboozled.
Social Security is not broke or going broke, and Bush's "piratization" plan for Social Security will harm all but the wealthy and elite investor class. Let's discuss "insider trading": Bush will undoubtedly relax or remove the regulations barring Wall Street insiders from profiting from "insider trading," and where will the ordinary investor be then? Out in the cold, and broke.
Social Security is not in "crisis"; it is the healthiest government program ever. It is solvent and will be solvent for the next 75 years, and beyond, if the Bushites will just stop "borrowing" the money we have put into the Social Security trust fund, which is generating SURPLUSES in excess of $150 Billion a year.
For 20 years, we have been paying extra into Social Security to provide for the baby boomers' retirement years. It was Ronald Reagan, at the urging of Alan Greenspan, who increased the Social Security taxes just to provide for the coming retirement of the baby boomers. It is beyond gullibility to believe lawmakers just recently woke up and discovered the baby boom generation will start retiring soon. We have been paying extra into the Social Security trust fund for 20 years to provide for the baby boomers' retirement years.
Currently, there is a surplus of $153 billion more per year flooding into the Social Security trust fund than is being paid out to retirees.
Leading economists, and the Congressional Budget Office, tell us that even if Congress does nothing, the Social Security trust fund will not run out of funds until 2052. Even then the system will not be bankrupt and, by using then-current revenues, Social Security will be able to pay retirees 80 percent of their promised benefits. That's if Congress does nothing at all. [Source: Congressional Budget Office Report "The Outlook for Social Security"]
The "fix," if one is needed, is simple and fair. Raise the ceiling on the income taxable for Social Security. Americans at the upper income levels have benefited the most from Bush's past tax cuts and can easily afford to pay a bit back into Social Security, which they also receive at retirement.
Social Security is not only far from bankrupt, it is the most successful and most scandal-free government program ever, and the administrative costs -- less then 1% -- to run it are far below what Wall Street will charge investors for private accounts. The investment houses have profit as their goal, whereas Social Security is an insurance policy to protect Americans from the vicissitudes of the stock market.
Be warned -- we are about to be treated to the same lying prelude to destroying Social Security that we were treated to in the buildup to the Iraq war. The Iraq war buildup was done with smoke and mirrors and threats of "mushroom clouds" over Manhattan. The Bushite effort to destroy Social Security will be as full of lies and scare tactics as the buildup to invading Iraq was. Americans of all ages must be on guard against the lies the Bushites will tell, and have been telling for years.
Bush and other Republicans are being profoundly dishonest when they claim Social Security is going broke; it is not.
So, what is the problem? Bush has been "borrowing" from the Social Security trust fund in order to wallpaper over the fact that he cannot or will not balance the federal budget.
Bush has been giving tax cuts to the wealthy but has not been cutting the amount the government spends. America is spending more than it is collecting in revenue. What happens when people spend more than they take in? Most go into debt. The difference between Bush and the American people, though, is that when he wanted to give even more tax cuts to the wealthy elite -- and hide from the American people the extent to which he was mismanaging our economy - - Bush simply took the money from the Social Security trust fund. True, he left some I.O.U.s in the "box" to acknowledge what he had done -- but now he doesn't want to pay back what he has "borrowed."
So, what is his solution? He tells us Social Security is going broke and must be destroyed.
Think of it this way: You have spent more than you earn each year and have borrowed to the hilt from your neighborhood bank. Now the moment has come for you to start paying back what you owe the bank, but you still don't have sufficient finds to do so, because you are sending money to your rich Uncle and Aunt (in hopes they will mention you in their will). What can you do? If you are George W. Bush, you simply "blow up the bank" and the problem is "solved."
Bush owes Social Security more than he is willing to pay back, and (in the expectation they will fund his ideological battles) he continues to give his rich corporate "aunts" and "uncles" more and more tax breaks ˆ and is betting he will be able to "blow up" Social Security.
Bush is amassing a War Chest to fund an advertising blitz that will hypnotize Americans into believing him when he says Social Security is in crisis. There is no similar effort possible among Social Security's defenders, because most of those who need and rely on Social Security cannot afford to donate huge sums to sponsor ads telling the truth: that Social Security is not in crisis and is not going broke. On the other hand, the Wall Street investment houses -- eager to gather in billions, if not trillions, of dollars in profits from fees and commissions -- are more than energized to spread Bush's deceitful message.
It is up to all of us to inform ourselves and became Fact-Checkers For Truth, and not allow Bush to get away with this horrendous deception. - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...
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| ---> Neo-Con Nazis Lust for Power: 'Guantanamo: Rummy's Buchenwald' |
| 01.04.05 (8:23 am) [edit] |
"[i]The power of the executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious, and the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist[/i]."
-- Winston Churchill
"[i]No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture[/i]."
-- U.N. Convention against Torture; article 2, section 2
The prison facility at Guantanamo Bay is the brightest star in the Bush firmament. It towers over the political landscape like a monument to human cruelty. That's why the administration chose to slap it up in full view of the world. It's their way of announcing that the fundamental rules of the game have changed.
There's no need for Guantanamo. The United States has plenty of experience concealing political prisoners from the public. The CIA has been transporting enemy suspects to hidden locations since its inception. Certainly, an increase of 600 prisoners or so wouldn't have caused much of a stir if they were tucked away in some remote corner of the earth. But, that's not the purpose of Guantanamo. Guantanamo is intended to send a message that the internationally accepted norms of justice have been rescinded. From now on, all law proceeds from Washington.
The world seems oddly bewildered by this development. Individuals have protested the particularly heinous aspects of the new system, like the use of torture, or detention without charges. But, these are just the trimmings and don't get to the heart of the matter. Guantanamo is a deliberate effort to overturn every legal protection that safeguards the individual from the arbitrary actions of the state. Simply put, it is the end of the law.
What is it that we fail to grasp about Guantanamo? Are we so blinded by the assuring narrative of democracy and personal freedom that we don't recognize the symbols of tyranny when we see them? The reality of Guantanamo is quite stark; a dull-gray world of cinder-block and wire situated beyond the reach of any law or regulation. Is their some doubt about what this really means?
Just yesterday the Washington Post reported that the "Bush administration is preparing plans for possible lifetime detention of suspected terrorists, including hundreds whom the government does not have enough evidence to charge in courts." Isn't this conspicuous power grab by the president enough to awaken even the most blase observer? Remember, these prisoners have never been charged with a crime and, yet, the administration is paving the way for permanent incarceration.
The Washington Post report comes on the heels of last week's article by the ACLU which confirmed that "President Bush issued an Executive Order authorizing the use of inhumane interrogation methods against detainees in Iraq." So, now there's a paper trail connecting the President directly to the torture that was "systematically" conducted at Guantanamo.
Torture? Permanent imprisonment without charges? These are the most fundamental violations of the law. How can we continue to ignore the gravity of this situation?
Guantanamo embodies the ethos of the Bush administration; an aggressive and inflexible dogma that regards force as the organizing principle of society. In this respect, Guantanamo is less notable as a jail than it is as a summary of a particular world view. In fact, the facility is a realization of the new world order; a chilling vision of oppression in brick-and-mortar.
Guantanamo wasn't created to address the nebulous threat of global terrorism. As Neil Lewis confirms in a Jan 1, New York Times article, "very few of the prisoners had much value." (This has been corroborated by many other sources who acknowledge that the more dangerous Al Qaida suspects have been spirited away to other locations for interrogation) Rather, it was built to broadcast the launching of a global police state, administered by the United States and in brazen defiance of universally accepted standards of justice. This explains the administration's growing hostility towards the UN. Beyond the inflammatory rhetoric, the Bush team is battling the world body to be accepted as the final authority on international affairs. Guantanamo ensures that a change in world leadership is not forthcoming. (As the Iraq war proved, 70% of Americans still support the UN as the legitimate authority on issues like military intervention)
Guantanamo is the collaborative vision of American plutocrats who are close to the administration and who affect policy decisions through their respective think tanks and lobbyists. If that wasn't true, we would have heard squeals of protest echoing from every corner of the nation. Instead, (apart from a scattering of human rights groups and the ACLU) there's been hardly a peep from the country's elites. For the most part, "the privileged few" have no problem with a system that categorically denies its victims even minimal human rights. The disparity in wealth sadly disposes many of these plutocrats to more autocratic government.
The UN has failed miserably in providing moral leadership on the issue of Guantanamo. None of the member states have stood up and openly condemned the US or suggested that it be penalized for its despotic conduct. The question of sanctions has never even been seriously considered. How can we expect change in the face of such abject cowardice?
Removing Guantanamo won't be easy. Bush has assumed absolute power over the detention of prisoners, and he won't surrender that without a fight. His supporters see the enhanced power of the executive as a critical to their long-range plans. It allows them to sidestep Congress to achieve their goals. They want a president who is free to operate unilaterally and according to his own inclinations. This means that rolling back these exaggerated presidential powers will be a daunting task.
Guantanamo is symptomatic of a much graver disease. Time and again, the administration has taken aim at the laws that protect the individual. The Homeland Security Bill, the Patriot Act and the new Intelligence Reform Bill all seriously undermine basic constitutional rights. Guantanamo follows this tendency to its logical conclusion. It offers us a glimpse of the void; a vision of the world stripped of justice. Guantanamo is not anomaly, but the full-flowering of the Bush ideology. The "shining house on the hill" is actually a ghoulish shrine to cruelty and oppression. No public relations scheme can obscure its real meaning. Guantanamo is a distress signal from a sinking republic; an early warning sign that personal liberty is under siege.
Guantanamo is the logical extension of the corporate system. It focuses on dispatching potential enemies with maximum efficiency. The prison's main architect, Secretary Rumsfeld, has tried to meet the requirements of global commerce by producing a precision model of detention; applying his Germanic sensibility for organization with a "top-down" business strategy that sidesteps all the burdensome laws of due process. He has, in fact, created the modern-day terror-camp, free from any legal encumbrances and operating with complete impunity. However horrible the crime, no one is ever held accountable at Rummy's private Buchenwald.
The Gulag at Guantanamo casts a pall over American political life. It illustrates a seismic shift in our fundamental values as Americans and a wholesale betrayal of our commitment to human rights. Concentration camps are anathema to democracy and Guantanamo is asphyxiating the promise of American justice. Institutions that once were counted on to protect the individual have been casually discarded by the perpetrators of the most despicable crimes against humanity. The Bush administration has assumed the role of Grand Inquisitor; dispensing "cruel and inhuman" punishment without remorse or hesitation. They've elevated injustice to a level of state policy. Guantanamo is a fitting testimonial to their tragic lack of compassion. - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...
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| ---> The Big Stories of 2005 |
| 01.03.05 (4:55 pm) [edit] |
[b]Here are what will be the big stories of 2005, according to my cloudy crystal ball:[/b]
The killer tsunami that struck Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and India a week ago will cause years of ongoing economic damage and human tragedy. Damage to Thailand will be quickly repaired. But Indonesia and Sri Lanka, both rent by decade-old civil wars, will particularly suffer.
The biggest problem the world faces this new year is the continuing fall of the U.S. dollar. The Bush administration's reckless spending, ruinously expensive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (now costing as much as the Vietnam War), America's galloping trade deficit and credit spending frenzy are creating the perfect economic storm.
Japan and China's central banks may give up trying to artificially shore up the U.S. dollar by buying U.S. currency and securities. A plunging dollar could cause foreign investors to start dumping U.S. securities and assets. The result: A potential worldwide financial crisis that could collapse the housing bubble, cause interest rates to soar, and send securities markets into freefall.
China's banking system is a house of cards. Uncontrolled credit expansion has fuelled China's property boom and international buying spree. Banks are swamped by bad, non-performing loans made to huge, money-losing state-owned corporations. Collapse of China's insolvent banking system would threaten world financial markets.
The U.S.-led occupation of Iraq is a disaster for all concerned. The war is slowly being lost. The big question in 2005 is if and how President George W. Bush will extricate the U.S. from this catastrophe, which is costing $6 billion US per month. The elections in Iraq four weeks from today won't resolve this huge mess.
"Terrorism" -- the insurgency against U.S. domination of the Muslim world and its resources -- will intensify even after Osama bin Laden is killed. He has created a new, powerful ideological movement that will continue to shake the Muslim world and challenge its corrupt, autocratic rulers and their foreign masters.
As the U.S. gets sucked ever deeper into its disastrous crusade against the Muslim world, it may -- possibly with Israel -- attack Iran's nuclear infrastructure, or invade Syria. An attack on Iran would leave the U.S. garrison in Iraq trapped amid a sea of hostile Shia -- as well as Sunnis.
A real, viable peace between Israel and the Palestinians seems unlikely. Israel's PM Ariel Sharon already has everything he wants, and, according to U.S. National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, has "wrapped Bush around his little finger." So why make concessions? Palestinians will remain trapped in their giant open-air prison.
Now that Vladimir Putin has crushed all domestic political and business opposition, his control over Russia is absolute. Only the courageous Chechen mujahadeen have resisted Putin's restoration of Kremlin autocracy. Putin is determined to rebuild the old Soviet Union. Watch for him to put increasing pressure on Ukraine in the wake of last week's election.
The Bush-Putin alliance will strengthen. By regaining state control of Russia's oil industry, Putin is poised to become a kingpin of world oil, even an equal to the Saudi royals -- if he can raise enough cash to tap his nation's vast but remote deposits.
The European Union, for all its growing pains, economic doldrums, and bureaucratic obesity, has replaced the United States as the world's champion of human rights and support for civilized world order. By contrast, under Bush, the U.S. has become a reactionary power devoted to protecting the status quo in league with Britain, Russia, China and India. In short, a re-run of the Holy Alliance of 1815 in which Europe's autocrats sought to protect their power and privileges, and halt the rise of bourgeois democracy.
Look for an increasingly independent-minded Europe and China to draw closer strategically as a result of the Bush administration's aggressive policies. Russia will play both sides, backing the U.S. in its "anti-terror" campaigns, and, discreetly, China, in opposing U.S. influence in East Asia. European arms may begin to flow to China in 2005.
Revolution is under way in Saudi Arabia. The U.S.-backed royal family will be increasingly besieged in 2005. As for U.S. claims it will promote democracy in the Muslim world, any honest votes there will produce pro-Islamic parties advocating opposition to Israel, higher oil prices, and eviction of U.S. influence from the region.
So no true democracy, just U.S.-implemented "guided democracy" in Iraq, meaning a Vichy regime that keeps U.S. bases, sells oil cheap, makes nice to Israel, and allows U.S. firms to exploit Iraq's wealth. - http://www.commondreams.org/v...
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| ---> Useful Idiot Bushy-boy Vacations-- AGAIN!!! |
| 01.02.05 (6:45 am) [edit] |
On the morning of the fourth day, the president spake.
The voice defending the United States from charges of being niggardly with its tsunami aid was indeed that of President George W. Bush. From the ranch at Crawford, Texas, the cowboy-in-chief went into his defensive crouch. The TV caption said "Western White House," which is to say: presidential vacation. Late December, as all of August, means vacation, come hellfire or tsunami.
The Sunday tsunami knocked out 12 nations following a 9.0 earthquake that jolted the floor of the Indian Ocean so violently that it shuttered the very rotation of our planet. Inland villages, to say nothing of the ones beachfront, were shredded clean to the bone, from Indonesia all the way west to Somalia.
The death toll has spiked above 100,000, with untold lives never to be accounted for by mankind. The ravenous sea has swallowed hundreds, and perhaps thousands, who could have been accounted for only by others who now have no one to account for them. Winds off some of the tsunamis were clocked over 500 mph, pushing avalanches of waters 40 feet high. Sri Lanka and Indonesia were double-barreled as the waves ripped the shorelines of India, Thailand and Mogadishu (the last some 3,000 miles from the epicenter).
Some 72 hours passed before President Bush changed his vacation clothes to address the catastrophe.
The first words from the wealthiest nation on earth had come from his administration promising $15 million in assistance. This initial insult in our name rose to $35 million in the face of charges from a United Nations official that America was being "stingy." Secretary of State Colin Powell rode out to counter the "stingy" charge only to have his white steed splattered with mud. Concerned Americans who see themselves as citizens of the world noted that, since the onset of this most calamitous natural disaster of our time, President Bush had remained both out of sight and silent.
Under Bush, this steel-helmet republic is spending $87B-plus to wage an unprovoked war against an Arab state whose plight under siege is hardening the hearts of Muslims against this increasingly evangelical White House. Western nations also look askance at Bush's with-us or agin'-us approach to world diplomacy. The Sept. 11 attacks offered a chance for the United States to lead a united front against terrorism orchestrated by Osama bin Laden. This time, the earthquake-tsunami afforded an opening for statecraft.
The U.S. war president could have doubled as a missionary of peace and compassion, with a respectable tsunami-aid package and a few timely words. He could have extended an olive branch to the world's largest Muslim country, in Indonesia, as well as to the Hindu-Islamic-Buddhist populations of Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, Somalia and the rest.
It is tempting to conclude that some sinister White House policy is at play here. Would Bush have reacted so slowly had the victims not been primarily brown-skinned? The answer may lie in the president's shocking immobility when his chief of staff informed him that a second jet plane had crashed into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. What the nation apparently has saddled itself with is a sitting president who, left alone, is incapable of responding rationally to unscripted events.
The Bush schedule last week called for vacation.
The American people cannot say they weren't warned about his Advanced Vacation Syndrone (AVS). Barely six months into his first term, he dropped everything - and took a month off. Most American workers, with one-week allotments, would have still been on probation. Bush's absence almost tied Richard Nixon's record for the longest presidential stay away from the White House. Even horseback-riding, underbrush-clearing, Ronald Reagan could manage only 28 days away.
The 43rd president put the vacation record out where it poses a serious challenge for his second term. Back in the spring, prior to his August slumber, Bush had spent 40 percent of his time away from the White House, according to The Guardian newspaper, which takes note of such things. Between his inauguration and the 2004 Easter weekend, Bush had reportedly spent 233 days, or almost eight months, in 33 visits to Crawford, Texas, according to CBS News, which conducts a body watch on the president, but at a mandated out-of-sight distance. Tacking on his 78 visits to Camp David and five to the family compound at Kennebunkport, Maine, The Guardian clocked 500 presidential days spent "out of the office while in office."
The friendlier Washington Post, by August 2003, had clocked Bush with 27 percent of his presidency spent on vacation. Although, to be fair, much of this time is classified as "working vacation." Work indeed intrudes on the president's vacation schedule, as it did on Aug. 6, 2001. As reported in the 9/11 Commission Report, Bush's regular August vacation was interrupted by that CIA briefing warning that Osama bin Laden was determined to attack the United States.
The threat of an al-Qaida attack did not deter Bush from his vacation in 2001. Last week he likely slumbered through the earthquake-tsunamis. Such dedication. - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...
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| ---> Useful Idiot Bushy-boy Vacations -- AGAIN!!! |
| 01.02.05 (6:44 am) [edit] |
On the morning of the fourth day, the president spake.
The voice defending the United States from charges of being niggardly with its tsunami aid was indeed that of President George W. Bush. From the ranch at Crawford, Texas, the cowboy-in-chief went into his defensive crouch. The TV caption said "Western White House," which is to say: presidential vacation. Late December, as all of August, means vacation, come hellfire or tsunami.
The Sunday tsunami knocked out 12 nations following a 9.0 earthquake that jolted the floor of the Indian Ocean so violently that it shuttered the very rotation of our planet. Inland villages, to say nothing of the ones beachfront, were shredded clean to the bone, from Indonesia all the way west to Somalia.
The death toll has spiked above 100,000, with untold lives never to be accounted for by mankind. The ravenous sea has swallowed hundreds, and perhaps thousands, who could have been accounted for only by others who now have no one to account for them. Winds off some of the tsunamis were clocked over 500 mph, pushing avalanches of waters 40 feet high. Sri Lanka and Indonesia were double-barreled as the waves ripped the shorelines of India, Thailand and Mogadishu (the last some 3,000 miles from the epicenter).
Some 72 hours passed before President Bush changed his vacation clothes to address the catastrophe.
The first words from the wealthiest nation on earth had come from his administration promising $15 million in assistance. This initial insult in our name rose to $35 million in the face of charges from a United Nations official that America was being "stingy." Secretary of State Colin Powell rode out to counter the "stingy" charge only to have his white steed splattered with mud. Concerned Americans who see themselves as citizens of the world noted that, since the onset of this most calamitous natural disaster of our time, President Bush had remained both out of sight and silent.
Under Bush, this steel-helmet republic is spending $87B-plus to wage an unprovoked war against an Arab state whose plight under siege is hardening the hearts of Muslims against this increasingly evangelical White House. Western nations also look askance at Bush's with-us or agin'-us approach to world diplomacy. The Sept. 11 attacks offered a chance for the United States to lead a united front against terrorism orchestrated by Osama bin Laden. This time, the earthquake-tsunami afforded an opening for statecraft.
The U.S. war president could have doubled as a missionary of peace and compassion, with a respectable tsunami-aid package and a few timely words. He could have extended an olive branch to the world's largest Muslim country, in Indonesia, as well as to the Hindu-Islamic-Buddhist populations of Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, Somalia and the rest.
It is tempting to conclude that some sinister White House policy is at play here. Would Bush have reacted so slowly had the victims not been primarily brown-skinned? The answer may lie in the president's shocking immobility when his chief of staff informed him that a second jet plane had crashed into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. What the nation apparently has saddled itself with is a sitting president who, left alone, is incapable of responding rationally to unscripted events.
The Bush schedule last week called for vacation.
The American people cannot say they weren't warned about his Advanced Vacation Syndrone (AVS). Barely six months into his first term, he dropped everything - and took a month off. Most American workers, with one-week allotments, would have still been on probation. Bush's absence almost tied Richard Nixon's record for the longest presidential stay away from the White House. Even horseback-riding, underbrush-clearing, Ronald Reagan could manage only 28 days away.
The 43rd president put the vacation record out where it poses a serious challenge for his second term. Back in the spring, prior to his August slumber, Bush had spent 40 percent of his time away from the White House, according to The Guardian newspaper, which takes note of such things. Between his inauguration and the 2004 Easter weekend, Bush had reportedly spent 233 days, or almost eight months, in 33 visits to Crawford, Texas, according to CBS News, which conducts a body watch on the president, but at a mandated out-of-sight distance. Tacking on his 78 visits to Camp David and five to the family compound at Kennebunkport, Maine, The Guardian clocked 500 presidential days spent "out of the office while in office."
The friendlier Washington Post, by August 2003, had clocked Bush with 27 percent of his presidency spent on vacation. Although, to be fair, much of this time is classified as "working vacation." Work indeed intrudes on the president's vacation schedule, as it did on Aug. 6, 2001. As reported in the 9/11 Commission Report, Bush's regular August vacation was interrupted by that CIA briefing warning that Osama bin Laden was determined to attack the United States.
The threat of an al-Qaida attack did not deter Bush from his vacation in 2001. Last week he likely slumbered through the earthquake-tsunamis. Such dedication. - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...
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| ---> Herr Fuhrer Bush's Bloodbath: IRAQ USHERS IN 2005 WITH DEADLY ATTACKS!!! |
| 01.02.05 (6:25 am) [edit] |
[b]Herr Fuhrer Bush is a War Criminal who should be impeached and put on trial for Crimes Against Humanity[/b].
Iraq ushered in the New Year on Saturday the same way it ended the last one -- with a string of assassinations and bombings by insurgents bent on wrecking a landmark Jan. 30 election.
Militants led by Jordanian Al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al- Zarqawi released a video of five captured Iraqi security men being executed in the street, part of a bloody campaign of intimidation aimed at scaring voters way from the polls.
A statement posted on an Islamist Web site along with the video vowed that the group would "slaughter" other Iraqis it brands collaborators for working with American-led occupation forces and the country's U.S.-backed government.
Signaling no let-up in attacks as the new year dawned, insurgents assassinated two local government officials for Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, and an Iraqi police major outside his home in the southwest part of the capital.
Iraqi police also found two beheaded bodies in western Baghdad along with a note that said they were truck drivers killed because they were working with the U.S. military.
Three roadside bombs exploded in the capital early on Saturday, with one blast killing an Iraqi trucker hauling loads for foreign contractors.
In the video from Al Qaeda Organization of Holy War in Iraq, masked militants were shown lining up five captive National Guardsmen, their hands bound behind their backs, and then shooting them from behind.
People were seen passing by during the shooting and some even stopped to watch.
"To the families of civil defense forces, the National Guard and the police we tell you to say your final goodbyes to your sons before you send them to us. Our reward to your sons is slaughter," a masked militant said in a statement.
Five men in civilian clothes were found shot dead in Ramadi, capital of restive Anbar province, earlier this week. A note said they were security men killed by guerrilla fighters.
On the video, one of the captured men who identified himself as Lieutenant Bashar Latif Jasem said his duty was to fight "terrorists entering Iraq."
When the shooting begins, the men fall to the ground but gunmen keep pumping bullets into them.
"These apostates are ... allies with (Prime Minister Iyad) Allawi's apostate government and support the American enemy," said the statement read on the tape.
"They are attacking Muslim homes in Ramadi under the pretext of preventing terrorists from entering Iraq. Anyone who follows them will face the same fate."
[b]ZARQAWI TOPS U.S. WANTED LIST [/b]
Zarqawi's group has claimed most of the bloodiest suicide attacks in Iraq since the fall of dictator Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) and has also beheaded several foreign hostages.
It has spearheaded a campaign of assassinations, bombings and ambushes against members of Iraq's new security forces, raising questions of how they will protect voters at the polls when they can hardly protect themselves.
Allawi told Iraqis in a live New Year's Eve phone-in on state television that his government would still do all it could to ensure voters' safety.
The reinforced U.S. army of 150,000 and other allied troops would be on hand, along with the new Iraqi security services, he said. Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) and other Islamist groups have this week pledged to wreck the vote as part of a holy war in Iraq.
"Iraq will be solid and strong in its political and social system, a united Iraq in a stable and secure region," Allawi said later in New Year message to the nation as the familiar sound of occasional mortar fire echoed over central Baghdad.
Violence in the Sunni north and west may keep many in Saddam's once-dominant Sunni minority away from the polls, causing complaints among their leaders that the new assembly may give exaggerated power to the Shi'ite majority -- an outcome that would complicate Washington's plans for ensuring stability.
An audiotape purported to be from bin Laden earlier this week endorsed Zarqawi as al Qaeda's leader in Iraq. The U.S. military has branded him their number one enemy in Iraq and has offered a $25 million reward for his capture.
Nearly two dozen troopers from the Iraqi National Guard may have been abducted by insurgents in the west of the country, according to an account by a Guard officer Monday.
Also Saturday, an unidentified sniper shot dead a Lebanese national inside Baghdad's Green Zone, the seat of the Iraqi government and the U.S. and British embassies, Lebanon's foreign ministry said. It said in a statement the 24-year-old worked for a Kuwaiti company. - http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...
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| ---> Herr Fuhrer Bush's Bloodbath: IRAQ USHERS IN 2005 WITH DEADLY ATTACKS!!! |
| 01.02.05 (6:25 am) [edit] |
[b]Herr Fuhrer Bush is a War Criminal who should be impeached and put on trial for Crimes Against Humanity[/b].
Iraq ushered in the New Year on Saturday the same way it ended the last one -- with a string of assassinations and bombings by insurgents bent on wrecking a landmark Jan. 30 election.
Militants led by Jordanian Al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al- Zarqawi released a video of five captured Iraqi security men being executed in the street, part of a bloody campaign of intimidation aimed at scaring voters way from the polls.
A statement posted on an Islamist Web site along with the video vowed that the group would "slaughter" other Iraqis it brands collaborators for working with American-led occupation forces and the country's U.S.-backed government.
Signaling no let-up in attacks as the new year dawned, insurgents assassinated two local government officials for Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, and an Iraqi police major outside his home in the southwest part of the capital.
Iraqi police also found two beheaded bodies in western Baghdad along with a note that said they were truck drivers killed because they were working with the U.S. military.
Three roadside bombs exploded in the capital early on Saturday, with one blast killing an Iraqi trucker hauling loads for foreign contractors.
In the video from Al Qaeda Organization of Holy War in Iraq, masked militants were shown lining up five captive National Guardsmen, their hands bound behind their backs, and then shooting them from behind.
People were seen passing by during the shooting and some even stopped to watch.
"To the families of civil defense forces, the National Guard and the police we tell you to say your final goodbyes to your sons before you send them to us. Our reward to your sons is slaughter," a masked militant said in a statement.
Five men in civilian clothes were found shot dead in Ramadi, capital of restive Anbar province, earlier this week. A note said they were security men killed by guerrilla fighters.
On the video, one of the captured men who identified himself as Lieutenant Bashar Latif Jasem said his duty was to fight "terrorists entering Iraq."
When the shooting begins, the men fall to the ground but gunmen keep pumping bullets into them.
"These apostates are ... allies with (Prime Minister Iyad) Allawi's apostate government and support the American enemy," said the statement read on the tape.
"They are attacking Muslim homes in Ramadi under the pretext of preventing terrorists from entering Iraq. Anyone who follows them will face the same fate."
[b]ZARQAWI TOPS U.S. WANTED LIST [/b]
Zarqawi's group has claimed most of the bloodiest suicide attacks in Iraq since the fall of dictator Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) and has also beheaded several foreign hostages.
It has spearheaded a campaign of assassinations, bombings and ambushes against members of Iraq's new security forces, raising questions of how they will protect voters at the polls when they can hardly protect themselves.
Allawi told Iraqis in a live New Year's Eve phone-in on state television that his government would still do all it could to ensure voters' safety.
The reinforced U.S. army of 150,000 and other allied troops would be on hand, along with the new Iraqi security services, he said. Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) and other Islamist groups have this week pledged to wreck the vote as part of a holy war in Iraq.
"Iraq will be solid and strong in its political and social system, a united Iraq in a stable and secure region," Allawi said later in New Year message to the nation as the familiar sound of occasional mortar fire echoed over central Baghdad.
Violence in the Sunni north and west may keep many in Saddam's once-dominant Sunni minority away from the polls, causing complaints among their leaders that the new assembly may give exaggerated power to the Shi'ite majority -- an outcome that would complicate Washington's plans for ensuring stability.
An audiotape purported to be from bin Laden earlier this week endorsed Zarqawi as al Qaeda's leader in Iraq. The U.S. military has branded him their number one enemy in Iraq and has offered a $25 million reward for his capture.
Nearly two dozen troopers from the Iraqi National Guard may have been abducted by insurgents in the west of the country, according to an account by a Guard officer Monday.
Also Saturday, an unidentified sniper shot dead a Lebanese national inside Baghdad's Green Zone, the seat of the Iraqi government and the U.S. and British embassies, Lebanon's foreign ministry said. It said in a statement the 24-year-old worked for a Kuwaiti company. - http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...
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| ---> Herr Fuhrer Bush's Bloodbath: IRAQ USHERS IN 2005 WITH DEADLY ATTACKS!!! |
| 01.02.05 (6:23 am) [edit] |
[b]Herr Fuhrer Bush is a War Criminal who should be impeached and put on trial for Crimes Against Humanity[/b].
Iraq ushered in the New Year on Saturday the same way it ended the last one -- with a string of assassinations and bombings by insurgents bent on wrecking a landmark Jan. 30 election.
Militants led by Jordanian Al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al- Zarqawi released a video of five captured Iraqi security men being executed in the street, part of a bloody campaign of intimidation aimed at scaring voters way from the polls.
A statement posted on an Islamist Web site along with the video vowed that the group would "slaughter" other Iraqis it brands collaborators for working with American-led occupation forces and the country's U.S.-backed government.
Signaling no let-up in attacks as the new year dawned, insurgents assassinated two local government officials for Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, and an Iraqi police major outside his home in the southwest part of the capital.
Iraqi police also found two beheaded bodies in western Baghdad along with a note that said they were truck drivers killed because they were working with the U.S. military.
Three roadside bombs exploded in the capital early on Saturday, with one blast killing an Iraqi trucker hauling loads for foreign contractors.
In the video from Al Qaeda Organization of Holy War in Iraq, masked militants were shown lining up five captive National Guardsmen, their hands bound behind their backs, and then shooting them from behind.
People were seen passing by during the shooting and some even stopped to watch.
"To the families of civil defense forces, the National Guard and the police we tell you to say your final goodbyes to your sons before you send them to us. Our reward to your sons is slaughter," a masked militant said in a statement.
Five men in civilian clothes were found shot dead in Ramadi, capital of restive Anbar province, earlier this week. A note said they were security men killed by guerrilla fighters.
On the video, one of the captured men who identified himself as Lieutenant Bashar Latif Jasem said his duty was to fight "terrorists entering Iraq."
When the shooting begins, the men fall to the ground but gunmen keep pumping bullets into them.
"These apostates are ... allies with (Prime Minister Iyad) Allawi's apostate government and support the American enemy," said the statement read on the tape.
"They are attacking Muslim homes in Ramadi under the pretext of preventing terrorists from entering Iraq. Anyone who follows them will face the same fate."
[b]ZARQAWI TOPS U.S. WANTED LIST [/b]
Zarqawi's group has claimed most of the bloodiest suicide attacks in Iraq since the fall of dictator Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) and has also beheaded several foreign hostages.
It has spearheaded a campaign of assassinations, bombings and ambushes against members of Iraq's new security forces, raising questions of how they will protect voters at the polls when they can hardly protect themselves.
Allawi told Iraqis in a live New Year's Eve phone-in on state television that his government would still do all it could to ensure voters' safety.
The reinforced U.S. army of 150,000 and other allied troops would be on hand, along with the new Iraqi security services, he said. Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) and other Islamist groups have this week pledged to wreck the vote as part of a holy war in Iraq.
"Iraq will be solid and strong in its political and social system, a united Iraq in a stable and secure region," Allawi said later in New Year message to the nation as the familiar sound of occasional mortar fire echoed over central Baghdad.
Violence in the Sunni north and west may keep many in Saddam's once-dominant Sunni minority away from the polls, causing complaints among their leaders that the new assembly may give exaggerated power to the Shi'ite majority -- an outcome that would complicate Washington's plans for ensuring stability.
An audiotape purported to be from bin Laden earlier this week endorsed Zarqawi as al Qaeda's leader in Iraq. The U.S. military has branded him their number one enemy in Iraq and has offered a $25 million reward for his capture.
Nearly two dozen troopers from the Iraqi National Guard may have been abducted by insurgents in the west of the country, according to an account by a Guard officer Monday.
Also Saturday, an unidentified sniper shot dead a Lebanese national inside Baghdad's Green Zone, the seat of the Iraqi government and the U.S. and British embassies, Lebanon's foreign ministry said. It said in a statement the 24-year-old worked for a Kuwaiti company. - http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...
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| ---> Herr Fuhrer Bush's Bloodbath: IRAQ USHERS IN 2005 WITH DEADLY ATTACKS!!! |
| 01.02.05 (6:23 am) [edit] |
[b]Herr Fuhrer Bush is a War Criminal who should be impeached and put on trial for Crimes Against Humanity[/b].
Iraq ushered in the New Year on Saturday the same way it ended the last one -- with a string of assassinations and bombings by insurgents bent on wrecking a landmark Jan. 30 election.
Militants led by Jordanian Al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al- Zarqawi released a video of five captured Iraqi security men being executed in the street, part of a bloody campaign of intimidation aimed at scaring voters way from the polls.
A statement posted on an Islamist Web site along with the video vowed that the group would "slaughter" other Iraqis it brands collaborators for working with American-led occupation forces and the country's U.S.-backed government.
Signaling no let-up in attacks as the new year dawned, insurgents assassinated two local government officials for Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, and an Iraqi police major outside his home in the southwest part of the capital.
Iraqi police also found two beheaded bodies in western Baghdad along with a note that said they were truck drivers killed because they were working with the U.S. military.
Three roadside bombs exploded in the capital early on Saturday, with one blast killing an Iraqi trucker hauling loads for foreign contractors.
In the video from Al Qaeda Organization of Holy War in Iraq, masked militants were shown lining up five captive National Guardsmen, their hands bound behind their backs, and then shooting them from behind.
People were seen passing by during the shooting and some even stopped to watch.
"To the families of civil defense forces, the National Guard and the police we tell you to say your final goodbyes to your sons before you send them to us. Our reward to your sons is slaughter," a masked militant said in a statement.
Five men in civilian clothes were found shot dead in Ramadi, capital of restive Anbar province, earlier this week. A note said they were security men killed by guerrilla fighters.
On the video, one of the captured men who identified himself as Lieutenant Bashar Latif Jasem said his duty was to fight "terrorists entering Iraq."
When the shooting begins, the men fall to the ground but gunmen keep pumping bullets into them.
"These apostates are ... allies with (Prime Minister Iyad) Allawi's apostate government and support the American enemy," said the statement read on the tape.
"They are attacking Muslim homes in Ramadi under the pretext of preventing terrorists from entering Iraq. Anyone who follows them will face the same fate."
[b]ZARQAWI TOPS U.S. WANTED LIST [/b]
Zarqawi's group has claimed most of the bloodiest suicide attacks in Iraq since the fall of dictator Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) and has also beheaded several foreign hostages.
It has spearheaded a campaign of assassinations, bombings and ambushes against members of Iraq's new security forces, raising questions of how they will protect voters at the polls when they can hardly protect themselves.
Allawi told Iraqis in a live New Year's Eve phone-in on state television that his government would still do all it could to ensure voters' safety.
The reinforced U.S. army of 150,000 and other allied troops would be on hand, along with the new Iraqi security services, he said. Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) and other Islamist groups have this week pledged to wreck the vote as part of a holy war in Iraq.
"Iraq will be solid and strong in its political and social system, a united Iraq in a stable and secure region," Allawi said later in New Year message to the nation as the familiar sound of occasional mortar fire echoed over central Baghdad.
Violence in the Sunni north and west may keep many in Saddam's once-dominant Sunni minority away from the polls, causing complaints among their leaders that the new assembly may give exaggerated power to the Shi'ite majority -- an outcome that would complicate Washington's plans for ensuring stability.
An audiotape purported to be from bin Laden earlier this week endorsed Zarqawi as al Qaeda's leader in Iraq. The U.S. military has branded him their number one enemy in Iraq and has offered a $25 million reward for his capture.
Nearly two dozen troopers from the Iraqi National Guard may have been abducted by insurgents in the west of the country, according to an account by a Guard officer Monday.
Also Saturday, an unidentified sniper shot dead a Lebanese national inside Baghdad's Green Zone, the seat of the Iraqi government and the U.S. and British embassies, Lebanon's foreign ministry said. It said in a statement the 24-year-old worked for a Kuwaiti company. - http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...
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| ---> The Mad King George's Inaugural's 'Wretched Excess' Inappropriate for Nation at War |
| 01.02.05 (6:16 am) [edit] |
About the only thing we won't see when George W. Bush is sworn in on Jan. 20 to officially begin his second term is the president himself swooping low along Pennsylvania Avenue in an S-3B Viking, reprising his "Mission Accomplished" May 1, 2004 landing aboard the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln as initial combat in Iraq was winding down.
But there will be plenty of pomp and pageantry associated with the inauguration, a $40 million exercise in wretched excess that seems oddly inappropriate at a time when American soldiers continue to die in a war the Bush administration clearly expected would be over by now.
The $40 million will come from private donors, and from ticket sales. It will fund nine balls, three candlelight dinners, a parade, a youth concert and a fireworks display in addition to the official swearing-in at noon Jan. 20 on the West Front of the Capitol. But that doesn't mean taxpayers will be completely off the hook for the garish gala. Nearly $3 million in federal funds have been allocated to the inauguration, to cover security and related costs for the first presidential inauguration since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C.
Bush, who never misses an opportunity to remind us he is a "wartime president," should use this inaugural to show the country he knows what that means. He could, for instance, take a cue from Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose inaugural celebration in 1945, as World War II raged on, was a decidedly low-key affair.
Roosevelt - who, in fairness, was in poor health at the time - delivered a short speech at the White House and held a luncheon for 1,000 guests. Neither parades nor balls accompanied Roosevelt's resumption of the presidency for a fourth term.
What an eloquent statement that would make on this Jan. 20. But don't look for it to happen. After all, Bush's big-money pals have forked over some heavy cash for the three-day affair - that's right, lead-up events begin on Jan. 18 - and they clearly want to party.
More than a dozen corporations or individuals have ponied up $250,000 to help fund the inaugural events, including Exxon Mobil, Occidental Petroleum, Chevron Texaco, former Enron president Richard Kinder, and the Georgia-based Southern Co. Nearly a dozen other entities, including Greensboro, Ga.-based Linger Longer Development Co., have contributed $100,000 to the inauguration.
The $250,000 donors can attend as many as eight of the nine inaugural balls. The one ball that won't be open even to them is the Commander-in-Chief Ball, to which 2,000 troops,who are either heading out to, or returning from, Afghanistan or Iraq, have been invited - free of charge.
The Commander-in-Chief Ball is all in keeping with the theme of the inaugural, which is "Celebrating Freedom, Honoring Service."
"We are trying to focus on our wonderful people in the military and their families and the sacrifices they are making so we can have this very ceremony,'' Jeanne Phillips, who is chairing the celebration, told the Dallas Morning News recently.
That's really nice. But I wonder whether the "wonderful people in the military and their families" might not rather have the $3 million in federal funds being spent on the inaugural going to up-armor a few Humvees in Iraq. Or maybe they'd like to see some of the $40 million in corporate and fat-cat dollars going into a trust fund for kids who've lost parents in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Come to think of it, if Bush really wants his inaugural to focus on this country's soldiers, maybe he ought to go where they are. Maybe he ought to load his family into an unarmored Humvee for the 10-mile trip from Baghdad International Airport to the city. Maybe he ought to take the oath of office in a field hospital, surrounded by the blood and death that are the stark reality of the war.
And, as an aside, the inaugural festivities ought to give pause to the vast array of conservative voters who put Bush in office. A lot of those folks should watch TV coverage of the event, and should start wondering why the crowds at the various balls don't look much like the folks lining up for the Wednesday night potluck supper down at the First Baptist Church.
Finally, Mr. President, just as strapping into a flight suit doesn't necessarily make you a fighter pilot, an inauguration - no matter how many flags wave or how many marching bands play - doesn't necessarily make you a leader. - http://onlineathens.com/stori...
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| ---> The Mad King George's Inaugural's 'Wretched Excess' Inappropriate for Nation at War |
| 01.02.05 (6:12 am) [edit] |
About the only thing we won't see when George W. Bush is sworn in on Jan. 20 to officially begin his second term is the president himself swooping low along Pennsylvania Avenue in an S-3B Viking, reprising his "Mission Accomplished" May 1, 2004 landing aboard the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln as initial combat in Iraq was winding down.
But there will be plenty of pomp and pageantry associated with the inauguration, a $40 million exercise in wretched excess that seems oddly inappropriate at a time when American soldiers continue to die in a war the Bush administration clearly expected would be over by now.
The $40 million will come from private donors, and from ticket sales. It will fund nine balls, three candlelight dinners, a parade, a youth concert and a fireworks display in addition to the official swearing-in at noon Jan. 20 on the West Front of the Capitol. But that doesn't mean taxpayers will be completely off the hook for the garish gala. Nearly $3 million in federal funds have been allocated to the inauguration, to cover security and related costs for the first presidential inauguration since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C.
Bush, who never misses an opportunity to remind us he is a "wartime president," should use this inaugural to show the country he knows what that means. He could, for instance, take a cue from Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose inaugural celebration in 1945, as World War II raged on, was a decidedly low-key affair.
Roosevelt - who, in fairness, was in poor health at the time - delivered a short speech at the White House and held a luncheon for 1,000 guests. Neither parades nor balls accompanied Roosevelt's resumption of the presidency for a fourth term.
What an eloquent statement that would make on this Jan. 20. But don't look for it to happen. After all, Bush's big-money pals have forked over some heavy cash for the three-day affair - that's right, lead-up events begin on Jan. 18 - and they clearly want to party.
More than a dozen corporations or individuals have ponied up $250,000 to help fund the inaugural events, including Exxon Mobil, Occidental Petroleum, Chevron Texaco, former Enron president Richard Kinder, and the Georgia-based Southern Co. Nearly a dozen other entities, including Greensboro, Ga.-based Linger Longer Development Co., have contributed $100,000 to the inauguration.
The $250,000 donors can attend as many as eight of the nine inaugural balls. The one ball that won't be open even to them is the Commander-in-Chief Ball, to which 2,000 troops,who are either heading out to, or returning from, Afghanistan or Iraq, have been invited - free of charge.
The Commander-in-Chief Ball is all in keeping with the theme of the inaugural, which is "Celebrating Freedom, Honoring Service."
"We are trying to focus on our wonderful people in the military and their families and the sacrifices they are making so we can have this very ceremony,'' Jeanne Phillips, who is chairing the celebration, told the Dallas Morning News recently.
That's really nice. But I wonder whether the "wonderful people in the military and their families" might not rather have the $3 million in federal funds being spent on the inaugural going to up-armor a few Humvees in Iraq. Or maybe they'd like to see some of the $40 million in corporate and fat-cat dollars going into a trust fund for kids who've lost parents in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Come to think of it, if Bush really wants his inaugural to focus on this country's soldiers, maybe he ought to go where they are. Maybe he ought to load his family into an unarmored Humvee for the 10-mile trip from Baghdad International Airport to the city. Maybe he ought to take the oath of office in a field hospital, surrounded by the blood and death that are the stark reality of the war.
And, as an aside, the inaugural festivities ought to give pause to the vast array of conservative voters who put Bush in office. A lot of those folks should watch TV coverage of the event, and should start wondering why the crowds at the various balls don't look much like the folks lining up for the Wednesday night potluck supper down at the First Baptist Church.
Finally, Mr. President, just as strapping into a flight suit doesn't necessarily make you a fighter pilot, an inauguration - no matter how many flags wave or how many marching bands play - doesn't necessarily make you a leader. - http://onlineathens.com/stori...
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| ---> Bush Should Get F***ed!!! |
| 01.01.05 (4:19 pm) [edit] |
[b]'There is nothing to celebrate this Inauguration Day'[/b]
In past Inauguration Days we as a country celebrated who we are as a people and where we elected a president where no question surrounded as to how he was elected. That was not the case in 2000 and certainly not in 2004. There is no cause to celebrate any inauguration especially this year, when so many lives were lost by our military over in Iraq. Well over one thousand men and women gave their lives to defend the many freedoms this country has to offer and one of those freedoms is the right to vote and have every vote counted. There is no victor or cause for celebration when so much blood has been spilled and where a presidential election is questioned.
These men and women who came home to us with our American flag draped over their coffins which we are not allowed to see thanks to Pres. Bush sacrificed their lives for our very freedoms. The flag meant more to them. It was not a piece of cloth to wave for anyone’s political gains. Our men and women in the armed services also were not props to be used by Pres. Bush as he flew onto a carrier and claimed in front of a banner that stated, “Mission Accomplished” After that little stunt we saw an increase of military deaths month to month. Just last week as we celebrated Christmas a military base of ours was attacked by a suicide bomber that claimed the lives of twenty of our soldiers.
There is nothing to celebrate when an estimated 100,000 innocent Iraqis are now dead thanks to the lies put forth by Pres. Bush. Their lives must mean something to us as a civilized people. There is nothing to celebrate when included in those numbers are mothers, fathers, children living ordinary lives until our bombs rained down upon them where they became the victims of terrorism at the hands of Pres. Bush. Imagine if you will, you are a small Iraqi child doing your homework, when our bombs rain down upon your home and you see your mother killed, your father killed or you are killed. A civilized nation should never preemptively strike the safety and security of any child’s home and lie about the reason for doing so.
Now as we hear of well over 100 thousand people killed by the tsunami waves over in Asia, now is not the time to strut our stuff. Especially when so little aid is given to them by this country. The first amount pledged by this country was $15 million, then it was raised to $35 million, but clearly that is not enough. When we hear of this inauguration costing as much as $40 million, it is time to send those funds over to Asia to help these people and for Pres. Bush to privately take the oath of office without any such fan fare. No parade should be held for a man who was responsible for the taking of innocent lives in Iraq and the deaths of well over one thousand of our soldiers.
People who are planning on attending these festivities should donate whatever moneys they were planning on spending for hotel rooms, ball gowns, tuxes, air plane flights and the like to the people of Asia or any aid going to Iraq for the devastation their president caused. Will they do so? In all honesty, they will not. So, they will strut their stuff as hundreds of thousands of people perished from the face of this Earth.
As Pres. Bush takes the oath of office, there are still countless people suffering in this country and it happened under his watch. There is no cause to celebrate when so many go without health care, having to choose between taking medications and eating, being laid off of a job that was sent overseas, finding themselves homeless, sleeping on the streets and the list is endless. Many will continue to suffer as he cuts domestic spending in favor of tax breaks for to his wealthy friends, the corporations they own or to bolster military spending filled with so much pork barrel spending.
America, must never celebrate when so much death, destruction, devastation is being felt by so many and where most of what is being felt is caused by the man who will take the presidential oath of office on January 20, 2005. His name is George W. Bush.
With all that I have said, I will leave you with a quote found in Pres. Clinton’s first inaugural address where he stated, "[i]Where there is suffering, there is duty. Americans in need are not strangers; they are citizens, not problems, but priorities. And all of us are diminished when any are hopeless[/i]." This too can be said about those suffering around the world. They should be our priority and not our problem. - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...
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