Buck Turgidson McCain

More straight talk from Turgidson, er, McCain:

"The Protocols of the Elders of Haight-Ashbury"

As in, you know, the totally secret (but widely known among conservatives) hippy-left conspiracy to take over the world and force everyone to do bong hits and eat brownies and make love not war and call up call up Tommy Chong and ask for Dave and shit, which is the whole reason why we're so fucked up now, or so The Editors at the Poor Man Institute tell me Jonah Goldberg says.

But let's dig that one more time:

"The Protocols of the Elders of Haight-Ashbury"

All I can say to writing like that is Far Fucking Out. Bong hits aside, I am in awe of The Editors.

And these people in the picture, they can crash at PAF's place any day.

Wolfowitz rides again

BBC:

Former World Bank chief Paul Wolfowitz has been appointed head of an influential panel advising the US government on arms control.
Mr Wolfowitz was ousted from the Bank last year over a scandal involving payments to his girlfriend, who was also a bank employee at the time.

He has long been a controversial figure in US and international politics.

As the Pentagon's number two after Donald Rumsfeld, he was one of the leading architects of the war in Iraq.

Juan Cole:

Hiring Paul Wolfowitz to advise the State Department on arms control is like hiring Lindsay Lohan as a driving instructor.

Hillary and Bill spin Obama and Iraq

Stephen Zunes on the flap between Hillary and Obama over their Iraq war positions:

Obama believed that Iraq may have been able to develop chemical and biological weapons and he certainly carried no pretense about the nature of Saddam Hussein’s regime, referring to the late Iraqi dictator as “brutal” and “ruthless” and acknowledging that “The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.” At the same time, he recognized that “Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors.” Furthermore, Obama noted how he recognized “that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained.”

That same month in Washington, however, Senator Clinton was insisting incorrectly that Iraq was “trying to develop nuclear weapons” and that Iraq’s possession of biological and chemical weapons was “not in doubt” and was “undisputed.”

Senator Clinton then went on record insisting that the risk that Saddam Hussein would “employ those weapons to launch a surprise attack against the United States” was enough to “justify action by the United States to defend itself,” specifically by authorizing President Bush to launch an invasion of Iraq at the time and circumstances of his choosing.

...Meanwhile, back in Chicago, Obama was observing how “even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.” He also recognized that “an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of Al Qaeda.”

In summary, on the most critical political question of the decade, a freshman state senator from Illinois was able to figure out what an experienced member of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee could not - that Saddam Hussein was no longer a threat and that an invasion of Iraq would harm America’s national security interests. Over the next few weeks, Democratic voters will have the opportunity to decide whether which of these two leading candidates has the best judgment to lead this country during this next critical period.

I'll vote for Hillary only if she is the last Democrat standing.

You and what army?

William Arkin:

The Army once again missed its benchmarks for recruiting in 2007. And, as it struggles to fill the ranks in wartime, it's lowering the "quality" of recruits it will accept.

That sets our Armed Forces up for long-term problems on the battlefield. But it also speaks to a far greater question about our country's willingness to truly support our troops.

A new study from the National Priorities Project, a Massachusetts-based research organization, found that the percentage of recruits entering the Army with a high school diploma dropped to a new low in 2007 and was nearly 20 percentage points shy of the Army's goal. The study additionally found that average scores on the army qualification test are dropping.

...The National Priorities study underscored that lower and middle-income families are supplying the lion's share of recruits. Our military is increasingly less representative of our society. And I think one of the drivers behind that trend is that Americans are fundamentally uncomfortable with the tenor of the war against terrorism.

The flag waiving and the slogans and the eye-watering reverence for the troops is still on display. But the patriotism is mostly hollow. The country is clearly not behind the kinds of wars being waged to defeat terrorism. And increasing the size of the Army or throwing more money at the Pentagon is not going to address this fundamental problem.

Bush wants to lock us into long-term military occupation of Iraq

npr:

President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki issued a joint letter in November. On the surface, the "Declaration of Principles" appears as a mutual "expression of friendship," as it has been characterized by administration officials.

But a closer look reveals a blueprint for how the two administrations plan to set the foundation for the future of America's involvement in Iraq.

..."The declaration of principles would appear to commit the United States to keeping the elected Iraqi government in power against internal threats," says Kenneth Katzman, a Middle East analyst at the Congressional Research Service. "I leave it to the lawyers to determine whether that's the definition of a treaty or not but it certainly seems to be — is going to be — a hefty U.S. commitment to Iraq for a long time."

Such a hefty commitment would be unprecedented in the history of American foreign policy.

935 lies and a war that won't end

Center for Public Integrity:

President George W. Bush and seven of his administration’s top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.

On at least 532 separate occasions (in speeches, briefings, interviews, testimony, and the like), Bush and these three key officials, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, stated unequivocally that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (or was trying to produce or obtain them), links to Al Qaeda, or both. This concerted effort was the underpinning of the Bush administration’s case for war.

It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to Al Qaeda. This was the conclusion of numerous bipartisan government investigations, including those by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (2004 and 2006), the 9/11 Commission, and the multinational Iraq Survey Group, whose “Duelfer Report” established that Saddam Hussein had terminated Iraq’s nuclear program in 1991 and made little effort to restart it.

In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003.

These lies continue to kill and maim people every day.

"Don't even think about it"

James Ridgeway and Jean Casella writing at Mother Jones:

Largely ignored by the mainstream candidates—as well as the mainstream media—are the latest efforts to bring the fear home by targeting "homegrown terrorism"—another new catchphrase. Only liberal Democrat Dennis Kucinich and libertarian Republican Ron Paul have warned that in the name of stopping domestic terrorist plots before they happen, Congress is in the midst of passing legislation aimed not at actual hate crimes or even terrorist conspiracies, but at talking, Web surfing, or even thinking about jihadism or other "extremist belief systems." Last October, a piece of legislation called the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 sailed through the House with near-universal bipartisan support; it is likely to reach the floor of the Senate early this year and appears certain to be signed into law.

...The bill raises the potential for government encroachments on civil rights in part through the way it defines some basic terms. The text of the bill says that "the term 'violent radicalization' means the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change." It gives no clue as to what would qualify, under this law, as an "extremist belief system," leaving this open to broad interpretation according to the prevailing political winds.

In addition, simply by designating the "process of adopting or promoting" belief systems as a target for government concern or control, the bill moves into dangerous territory. The director of the ACLU's Washington legislative office, Caroline Fredrickson, said in a statement on the bill, "Law enforcement should focus on action, not thought. We need to worry about the people who are committing crimes rather than those who harbor beliefs that the government may consider to be extreme."

...Robert Peck of the Center for Constitutional Litigation points out that some of the most significant First Amendment battles have been fought over precisely when "speech transgresses the line from mere advocacy, which is protected by the First Amendment, to incitement, which is not." Through the early twentieth century, when "incitement" was defined broadly as speech that had a "tendency" to cause illegal acts, it was used to prosecute nonviolent abolitionists, anarchists, socialists, and draft resisters. Gradually, the Supreme Court narrowed the definition, so that speech is protected unless it will "intentionally produce a high likelihood of real imminent harm."

What the Homegrown Terrorism bill does is bring back into the equation not just violent actions, and not just violent plots, but the words and ideas that may (or may not) inspire or encourage them somewhere down the road. It moves toward designating people as terrorists based not on what they do, but on what they say and what they think.

...It's the "road" the bill lays out that worries civil libertarians. "This measure looks benign enough, but we should be concerned about where it will lead," Kamau Franklin of New York's Center for Constitutional Rights said when the bill passed the House. The National Commission it creates will have broad power to conduct investigations; one commentator dubbed it the "Son of HUAC"—the House Un-American Activities Committee—because it is supposed to travel around the country, holding hearings and questioning people under oath about their ideological beliefs. Wherever it may ultimately lead, the bill seems clearly part of a growing push toward expanding domestic intelligence operations—spying that is aimed not at any Al Qaeda members who may have slipped across the border, but at U.S. citizens and legal residents. The great civil libertarian Frank J. Donner, in his book The Age of Surveillance: The Aims and Methods of America's Political Intelligence System, argued that the true goal of domestic intelligence was not to prevent or punish criminal activity, but to protect existing power structures and suppress dissent. Unlike law enforcement, which deals with illegal actions that have already been committed, domestic intelligence is by nature "future-oriented": It is not looking for criminals, but potential criminals, and it does so by relying on "ideology, not behavior, theory not practice." Anyone who thinks the wrong way could at some point act the wrong way—so they have to be watched.

Donner was writing in the late 1970s, following congressional investigations that exposed the abuses of the FBI's COINTELPRO (Counterintelligence Program), which for more than a decade had conducted surveillance and planted informants to spy on and disrupt what J. Edgar Hoover had decided were "enemies of the American way of life"—including civil rights, anti-war, student, and women's liberation groups, as well as the John Birch Society and the Ku Klux Klan. During this period, the bureau tapped phones, opened mail, planted bugs, and burglarized homes and offices. At least 26,000 individuals were at one point catalogued on an FBI list of persons to be rounded up in the event of a "national emergency." In the end, the Bureau conducted more than half a million investigations of so-called subversives and maintained files on well over a million Americans—all of this without a single conviction for a criminal act.

Plenty of people will argue that the "subversive" groups targeted during the McCarthy era or the COINTELPRO period were nothing like today's Islamic radicals—and there are, of course, differences, not least in terms of new tactics like suicide attacks and dirty bombs. But the Weather Underground set off at least a dozen bombs, which is a dozen more than the homegrown jihadists have managed so far. And just as the FBI spied on Weathermen and anti-war activists alike, it will be unlikely to distinguish between active jihadists and Muslims who are simply ardent or angry. What's more, anything that can be applied to one "extremist" group—laws, policies, law enforcement strategies, domestic intelligence operations—can be applied to others. A case in point is offered by Brian Michael Jenkins, a Rand Corporation terrorism expert who served as a consultant on the NYPD's report. In his book on terrorism, Unconquerable Nation: Knowing Our Enemy, Strengthening Ourselves, Jenkins wrote, "In their international campaign, the jihadists will seek common grounds with leftist, anti-American, and anti-globalization forces, who will in turn see, in radical Islam, comrades against a mutual foe." Once a terrorist is defined by thought and word rather than deed, there will be room for all of us in the big tent.

Bacevich: Surge to Nowhere

In only one respect has the surge achieved undeniable success: It has ensured that U.S. troops won't be coming home anytime soon. This was one of the main points of the exercise in the first place. As AEI military analyst Thomas Donnelly has acknowledged with admirable candor, "part of the purpose of the surge was to redefine the Washington narrative," thereby deflecting calls for a complete withdrawal of U.S. combat forces. Hawks who had pooh-poohed the risks of invasion now portrayed the risks of withdrawal as too awful to contemplate. But a prerequisite to perpetuating the war -- and leaving it to the next president -- was to get Iraq off the front pages and out of the nightly news. At least in this context, the surge qualifies as a masterstroke. From his new perch as a New York Times columnist, William Kristol has worried that feckless politicians just might "snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory." Not to worry: The "victory" gained in recent months all but guarantees that the United States will remain caught in the jaws of Iraq for the foreseeable future.


...Bush had once counted on the U.S. invasion of Iraq to pay massive dividends. Iraq was central to his administration's game plan for eliminating jihadist terrorism. It would demonstrate how U.S. power and beneficence could transform the Muslim world. Just months after the fall of Baghdad, the president declared, "The establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution." Democracy's triumph in Baghdad, he announced, "will send forth the news, from Damascus to Tehran -- that freedom can be the future of every nation." In short, the administration saw Baghdad not as a final destination but as a way station en route to even greater successes.

In reality, the war's effects are precisely the inverse of those that Bush and his lieutenants expected. Baghdad has become a strategic cul-de-sac. Only the truly blinkered will imagine at this late date that Iraq has shown the United States to be the "stronger horse." In fact, the war has revealed the very real limits of U.S. power. And for good measure, it has boosted anti-Americanism to record levels, recruited untold numbers of new jihadists, enhanced the standing of adversaries such as Iran and diverted resources and attention from Afghanistan, a theater of war far more directly relevant to the threat posed by al-Qaeda. Instead of draining the jihadist swamp, the Iraq war is continuously replenishing it.

Look beyond the spin, the wishful thinking, the intellectual bullying and the myth-making. The real legacy of the surge is that it will enable Bush to bequeath the Iraq war to his successor -- no doubt cause for celebration at AEI, although perhaps less so for the families of U.S. troops. Yet the stubborn insistence that the war must continue also ensures that Bush's successor will, upon taking office, discover that the post-9/11 United States is strategically adrift. Washington no longer has a coherent approach to dealing with Islamic radicalism. Certainly, the next president will not find in Iraq a useful template to be applied in Iran or Syria or Pakistan.

According to the war's most fervent proponents, Bush's critics have become so "invested in defeat" that they cannot see the progress being made on the ground. Yet something similar might be said of those who remain so passionately invested in a futile war's perpetuation. They are unable to see that, surge or no surge, the Iraq war remains an egregious strategic blunder that persistence will only compound.

Record number of US troops in Afghanistan

The Pentagon’s announcement here Tuesday that it is dispatching some 3,200 marines to Afghanistan underlines both Washington’s mounting concern about the strength of the Taliban insurgency and the growing sense here that the central front in its nearly six-and-a-half-year-old “war on terror” has moved back to its South Asian roots.

The deployment, which will take place over the next three months, will bring the total number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan to a record level of some 30,000 — still significantly less than the 160,000 in Iraq but nonetheless an implicit admission that U.S. and NATO forces have not been able to subdue the largely Pashtun rebels.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Pakistan's Taliban are mounting their own surge.

Why the world loves America

“If you don’t violate someone’s human rights some of the time,” revealed an American counter-terrorism official in 2004, “you probably aren’t doing your job.”

Professor Anita Inder Singh writing in the Guardian/UK

Some historical perspective from a former president

Not.

Classic British understatement

from the Guardian/UK:

Open attacks on the business elite are seldom heard from mainstream White House candidates in America, despite skyrocketing CEO pay, rising income inequality, and a torrent of scandals in corporate boardrooms and on Wall Street.

And why is that, boys and girls? Because there is no such thing as class in America.



Nu-uh.

And so that's not why US business elites are not scared of John Edwards.

Nope.

Zombies in Jesusland: I am Legend

PAF goes to the Movies

Just back from seeing Will Smith in I am Legend. In some ways this film was well executed, thrilling and clever; in other ways it was anticlimactic, preachy and downright offensive.

The premise of the film is as follows: an attempt (by a female scientist) to genetically engineer a virus to kill cancer appears successful at first, but then kills 90 percent of those exposed to it as it spreads rapidly through New York where just about everyone is exposed, and then on to the rest of the world. One percent of people are resistant to the virus and do not get infected, including (miraculously) our hero, the Will Smith character, who happens to be both a combat-equipped army officer and a world-class scientist.

What about the other nine percent, you might wonder. Silly you. They're turned into light-fearing flesh-eating mutant zombies with superhuman strength who prowl the night sniffing out the blood of survivors to devour -- natch. While the uninfected one percent of the inhabitants of Manhattan might still have left some neighbors for Will, the zombies seem to have eaten everyone except Will and his dog. Partly horrified, I am also secretly cheered by the implication that Donald Trump has met his match.

So far I'm totally along for the ride. Perfectly happy to suspend disbelief this far. Partly because I grew up with movies like Omega Man which scared the shit out of me and thrilled me as a kid, partly because the scenes of a depopulated, dilapidated New York are so vivid and persuasive, and partly because Will Smith does a really fine job with the role of tormented, lonesome survivor (putting Omega Man's Charleton Heston to shame).

But then Jesus comes in through the back door. Will Smith's character has just lost his dog and only companion to the zombies, is losing the will to live and is about to be consumed by zombies when (miraculously) he is saved by a beautiful latin woman accompanied by a child. She appears to him in a scene in which the first thing Will sees after regaining consciousness is the cricifix hanging from her rearview mirror (hint, hint). Later, she tells Will that God has sent her to him for a reason, to save humanity from the viral zombie pestilence. Will tells her she's full of shit, that no loving God would tolerate anything so catastrophically cruel, but she persists. Ultimately, Will finds a cure for the zombie virus, but then sacrifices himself (hint, hint) to the zombie hordes so that the woman and child can escape to carry the cure to a colony of survivors in the mountains of Vermont and sustain decent, non-flesh-eating human life. But not before he tells her that she was right about God and must help humanity carry on without him.

So a halfway decent flesh-eating zombie flick turns into a Christian morality tale about the self-destructive hubris of human reason and science opening the gates of hell and bringing catastrophe upon it, only to be redeemed by divine intervention, a reassertion of faith and self-sacrifice to cleanse the sins of science. Add into the mix that the site of this modern Gomorrah was NYC, and that the symbol of secular hubris run amok was a prominent female scientist, and you have another adventure in Jesusland, cleverly packaged as a hyper-violent post-apocalyptic zombie tale.

Movie trivia: Spiritual advisor and necrophilia consultant was Mike Huckabee.

Why not 'President McCain'?

How's this for starters:



And this:



And this:



This guy is dangerous.

The very idea that US troops could indefinitely occupy Iraq and 'contribute to stability', that these occupying troops would somehow magically be 'out of harm's way,' is delusional. So is the notion that it was not the invasion itself but the poor execution which is the root of our problems in Iraq, and in the Muslim world more generally. And none of this would be helped by bombing Iran.

I think I'd prefer Huckabee.

Surging to victory? Bullshit.

The Center for American Progress debunks the right-wing triumphalism about the surge:

In an address to the nation one year ago today, President Bush outlined a "new strategy" for Iraq that would entail an increase in U.S. security operations with the goal of giving the Iraqi government "the breathing space it needs" to "make reconciliation possible." Though violence in Iraq diminished in the tail end of 2007, the year since Bush's announcement of his escalation strategy has been the deadliest of the war for the U.S. military. Unfortunately, the hard fought gains of American troops have not been sufficiently accompanied by "progress on any of the key political benchmarks so critical to bringing Iraq together and producing lasting stability." In October, the Government Accountability Office assessed that of the eight political benchmarks set forth by Bush and Congress, the Iraqi government had only "met one legislative benchmark and partially met another." In his speech, Bush warned that "America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks." But now that the goals have been largely unmet, the administration is downplaying their importance. In December, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said, "I no longer think of them so much as benchmarks as the pieces that they are now presenting as what they need to do over the next year." Earlier this week, however, Bush claimed that "the Iraqis are beginning to see political progress that is matching the dramatic security gains for the past year." But if anything, "the political situation has gotten worse."

KEY MEASURES NOT MET: Last year, Bush promised that "Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis." This has not happened. Instead, "the oil bill has not even had a first reading in parliament, a year after it was drafted." Bush also declared that "the government will reform de-Baathification laws, and establish a fair process for considering amendments to Iraq's constitution." Neither of these goals have been met either. Though the de-Baathification law "came up for discussion," it "was met with angry protests from Shiite lawmakers." Last month, the head of the parliament's constitutional review committee requested a three-month delay for revising the document -- "the fourth time the target date for revision of the document, approved in a referendum in 2005, has been deferred." The delay of the constitutional revision has hindered progress on other issues. Bush also said that Iraqis would "hold provincial elections" last year, but they have not come to pass. "New provincial elections have been postponed pending agreement on a law setting out the relationship between national and regional governments." Currently, there are "no provincial elections in sight."

'BITTERLY DIVIDED' SECTARIAN LINES: In the effort to decrease violence in Iraq, a key U.S. tactic has been to "to empower and arm Sunni Arab tribes and factions, provided they pledge to resist outside militants like al-Qaeda." Though this strategy -- which was precipitated by the decision of Sunni tribes to turn against al Qaeda -- has been effective in the short-term, "this approach threatens to further split Iraq and exacerbate sectarian tensions" in the long run. The new Sunni leaders whom the United States is empowering "are decidedly against Iraq's U.S.-backed, Shiite-led government, which is wary of the Awakening movement's growing influence, viewing it as a potential threat when U.S. troops withdraw." "When the U.S. military suggested that the Shiite-led Iraqi government incorporate the Sunni fighters -- many of them veterans of anti-U.S. combat -- into their own security forces, the Iraqis balked." Even U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker admits that tensions between Sunnis and Shiites have hardened on the national level, saying recently that "nothing good is coming down the line." The Center for American Progress's Brian Katulis and Peter Juul write today that "Iraq at the start of 2008 is even more bitterly divided along ethnic and sectarian lines than it was at the start of 2007, increasing the possibility that the recent declines in violence may be a temporary lull."

More from the Washington Post on how the default strategy is becoming the strategy of default.

If this is victory, I wonder what failure looks like.

Bill O'Reilly is a thug?

Who knew???

O'Reilly's a classic bully. But in his mind he's defending the constitution. Cough/choke/snort. Can you say 'delusiuons of grandeur'?

And he seemed like such a nice young man.

More on the BillO phenomenon from the New Yorker's Nicholas Lemann.

another message from Necrophiliacs for Huckabee

Bush continues to build tensions with Iran, despite loss of nuclear pretext

Juan Cole:

President Bush’s speech on Wednesday night only stoked such speculation. Bush paid lip service to the Iraq Study Group report, but cast aside its advice that he negotiate with Iran and Syria. Instead, he rattled sabers at Iran with some ferocity, accusing it of arming insurgents in Iraq and threatening it with international isolation. He attempted to rally his Sunni Arab allies, such as Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, in this effort. He said, “We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We’ll interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.” He announced that he would position another aircraft-carrier battle group in the Persian Gulf and would deploy Patriot antimissile batteries.

Then Thursday came a U.S. raid on an Iranian consulate in the Iraqi Kurdish city of Irbil. By the end of the day, rumors of war with Iran had spread to normally cautious corners of the Internet. The Washington Note wondered aloud if Bush had issued an executive order to commence military action against Iran and Syria. Was the raid a deliberate provocation and the preface to war?

And then there is this, too close for comfort and all too reminiscent of the Tonkin Gulf fiasco which LBJ used as a pretext to commit US forces to the Vietnam War.

US War Crimes and the Return of the Winter Soldier

Frida Berrigan:

The Laws of Armed Conflict and the Geneva Conventions were designed as the basis for military conduct in times of war. Three central principles govern armed conflict: military necessity, distinction (soldiers must engage only valid military targets) and proportionality (the loss of civilian lives and property damage must not outweigh the military advantage sought). Among other things, the Geneva Conventions identify grave breaches of international law as the “willful killing; torture or inhuman treatment; willful causing of great suffering; and extensive destruction and appropriation of property not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully or wantonly.” An examination of the military’s actions in the aftermath of Haditha reveals a clear unwillingness to apply these principles.

...Military prosecutors have won convictions against soldiers and Marines in more than 200 cases of violent crimes, including murder, rape and assault against Iraqi civilians, according to a July 27, 2007 New York Times analysis. In some cases, these convictions may come with severe sentences. Federal prosecutors are said to be seeking the death penalty for former Pvt. Stephen Green, who is accused of raping and murdering a 14-year-old Iraqi girl, as well as slaying her parents and younger sister. He will be tried as a civilian because he was discharged before the crimes came to light. This horrific crime is the subject of Brian de Palma’s new movie Redacted.

But seeking the death penalty for Green, sentencing Hutchins to 15 years or court-martialing Wuterich for multiple unpremeditated murders is not the same as seeking justice for war crimes. These three should be held responsible, but the scales of justice are tipped toward scapegoating the convenient foils. They have committed awful and criminal acts, but their guilt cannot be easily separated from those who are the architects of the war.

In November 2006, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a nonprofit legal and educational organization, filed a criminal complaint, asking a German federal prosecutor to open “a criminal prosecution that will look into the responsibility of high-ranking U.S. officials for authorizing war crimes in the context of the so-called war on terror,” according to a CCR statement. On behalf of 12 Iraqi citizens whom the U.S. military detained and tortured at Abu Ghraib, the complaint names former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and other high-ranking U.S. officials. The German court dismissed the case in April 2007, ruling that a U.S. court should hear the charges. But CCR-along with other groups-have filed similar charges in Sweden, Argentina and France.

...While these projects inch forward, soldiers are taking matters into their own hands. In March 2008, Iraq Veterans Against the War will convene new Winter Soldier hearings, modeled on the February 1971 meetings in a Detroit Howard Johnson’s. In the shadow of the My Lai massacre revelations, the hearings provided a platform to more than 125 Vietnam veterans to describe the atrocities they participated in and witnessed. This effort could once again give the United States a chance to listen to soldiers and Marines as they break the silence, hold themselves and each other accountable and demand the same from the architects of the war.

Breakfast in America

Authorities Find Grisly Scene in Texas

Please don't tell Mike Huckabee.

To destroy al Qaeda in Iraq, end the Occupation

Only the presence of U.S. forces allows the group called "al Qaeda in Iraq" (AQI) to survive and function, and setting a timetable for the occupation to end is the best way to beat them.

...Several sources we reached in the Sunni community agreed that AQI, a predominantly Sunni insurgent group that did not exist prior to the U.S. invasion -- it started in 2005 -- will not exist for long after coalition forces depart. AQI is universally detested by large majorities of Iraqis of all ethnic and sectarian backgrounds because of its fundamentalist interpretation of religious law and efforts to set up a separate Sunni state, and its only support -- and it obviously does enjoy some support -- is based solely on its opposition to the deeply unpopular U.S.-led occupation of Iraq.

Raed Jarrar and Joshua Holland

Edwards: no more occupation

"Only John Edwards among the top three Dems would effectively end the occupation of Iraq within a year of taking office," writes Joshua Holland at Alternet.

Both Clinton and Obama have bought into the dangerous idea that the U.S. must maintain forces in Iraq to protect U.S. bases -- yes, they're actually saying that we need to leave soldiers to guard the bases that the U.S. built to house the troops occupying Iraq -- to fight "al Qaeda in Iraq," and to help train Iraqi forces. Obama has said that he envisions a less expansive mission than Clinton does, and would contemplate basing some of his "residual forces" outside the country. Both of the candidates are reluctant to say exactly how many troops would be needed to accomplish the job, but independent estimates range from at least 20,000 to as many as 75,000 soldiers. John Edwards stated the obvious when he told the New York Times: "To me, that is a continuation of the occupation of Iraq."

Only two candidates have proposed a complete pullout of U.S. troops: Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. But John Edwards has come very close to their position, saying that he'd only train Iraqi troops outside of Iraq and leave no troops to "guard U.S. bases." And, while he'd keep a rapid-response force in the region, it too would remain outside the country's borders. Unlike Obama and Clinton, he's put a hard number on what he thinks is necessary to keep in-country -- only a single "brigade of 3,500 to 5,000 troops to protect the embassy and possibly a few hundred troops to guard humanitarian workers." He'd pull the rest out within ten months.

Meanwhile, back in Jesusland

Huckabee will save America from the Necrophiliac Agenda

Johann Hari writing for the Independent:

In Huckabee’s hokey breast, the old-style evangelical populism of William Jennings Bryan -the perennial Democratic candidate for President at the turn of the last century - has been reborn. And, like Bryan, he is a barking theocrat. He insists the world was created 6,000 years ago, and he ain’t descended from no monkey. He drawls, “Science changes with every generation with new discoveries, and God doesn’t. So I’ll stick with God.” In the 1990s he suggested quarantining HIV victims, and he openly compares homosexuality to necrophilia and bestiality.

Yikes. More on your post-Iowa Republican front-runner here.

Further reflection on the politics of necrophilia: Maybe that is what Nixon had in mind when he said to Hunter Thompson, "Fuck the doomed". Wouldn't put it past him.