In case you're tempted to miss Karl Rove

The Progressive's Matthew Rothschild:

Karl Rove went out the way he came in.

Arrogant, conniving, thieving-a Mayberry Machiavelli, as one former Bush appointee put it so aptly.

Rove was a dirty trickster from the very beginning, and we should have listened to Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose. They warned us about him a long time ago.

Early in his career, he even reportedly bugged the office of his own candidate, and then told the press that his opponent had done it.

He sicked the FBI on Jim Hightower to torpedo that populist from gaining higher office.

And, of course, he finagled the election in Florida in 2000, and he designed the plan to disenfranchise millions of people in 2004 by raising the phantom of widespread voter fraud.

He then encouraged Republican state legislators to place hurdles on the path to the voting booth, with onerous voter ID laws, and he encouraged the U.S. attorneys file fraudulent charges against Democrats so as to throw the election to Republicans.

And he made sure that U.S. attorneys who didn’t play ball got the heave ho.

All the while, he did more than any single individual-with the possible exception of Roger Ailes-to poison the political climate in this country.

By relying on the rightwing base, and by feeding its reactionary appetites, Rove made the Republican Party barely recognizable to old, main line, main street, or libertarian party members. That is why, even today, the candidates for the Republican nomination take turns genuflecting before such idols as creationism and spewing bile at immigrants, gays and lesbians, and women who need abortions.

Rove also was there, in the White House, when Bush and Cheney wheeled out their propaganda apparatus, almost five years ago to the day, to bamboozle the Congress and the American people into the Iraq War.

So spare me the buddy-buddy farewell of boy George and pudgy Karl.

They can reminisce in Texas only too soon.

But behind bars would be a more fitting place.

Another assessment of Rove's career from the Nation's John Nichols.

Watch Video of young Rove as junior Nixon campaign operative in 1972 (Rove interview begins at about 4:00 into video). Rove was part of the Nixon campaign's efforts to appeal to younger voters by appearing hip, happening, now. No, really. Take a look, and try not to blow coffee out your nose laughing.

The Surge is working

If by that you mean killing more Iraqis and Americans. If you mean creating conditions of stability, facilitating reconstruction and fostering reconciliation, um, not so much.

More telling Iraq numbers from Tom Engelhardt.

UPDATE:
The LA Times reports:

Administration and military officials acknowledge that the September report will not show any significant progress on the political benchmarks laid out by Congress.

Moyers, Fine, and Nichols on impeachment

video here.

No Such Thing

as class in America.

Sunni Surge in Anbar shows Iraqis will determine future of Iraq

Gareth Porter for Inter Press Service:

The dramatic change in Anbar, in which Sunnis have replaced U.S. forces and largely Shiite troops in providing security against al Qaeda, is likely to be a primary theme in Petraeus’s report on the surge next month. It has also become the favourite theme of war supporters, from right-wing columnist Charles Krauthammer to the duo of Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack.

But the new situation in Anbar cannot be attributed to U.S. military operations or presence in the province. After five years of unsuccessful U.S. military operations in Anbar, the U.S. military’s agreements with Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar represents an acknowledgment that it was dependent on the very Sunni insurgents it once considered the enemy in Iraq to reduce al Qaeda influence in the province.

The apparent success of Petraeus’s shift from relying on U.S. military force to relying on Sunni troops to take care of al Qaeda could be used as an argument against continuation of the U.S. military presence in Anbar.

Recognition that there is a far more effective alternative to U.S. military operations to reduce al Qaeda’s influence would be a major blow to George W. Bush’s argument against a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops, which has relied increasingly on the threat of an al Qaeda haven in Iraq.

It would also contradict the rationale for the Democratic Party leadership’s inclusion in troop withdrawal legislation of a major exception for U.S. troops fighting terrorism in Iraq — a reference to al Qaeda in Anbar Province.

Scary

The New Yorker's Jane Meyer on Uncle Sam's secret gulag and what can happen to those who are "disappeared" by the CIA.

A New Strategic Timeline for Iraq: 2009??

Here is Michael Gordon of the NYT on the new Joint Campaign Plan developed by Gen. Petraeus and Amb. Crocker, which foresees an active role for US troops in Iraq through 2009:

While Washington is mired in political debate over the future of Iraq, the American command here has prepared a detailed plan that foresees a significant American role for the next two years.
The classified plan, which represents the coordinated strategy of the top American commander and the American ambassador, calls for restoring security in local areas, including Baghdad, by the summer of 2008. "Sustainable security" is to be stablished on a nationwide basis by the summer of 2009, according to American officials familiar with the document.
The detailed document, known as the Joint Campaign Plan, is an elaboration of the new strategy President George W. Bush signaled in January when he decided to send five additional American combat brigades and other units to Iraq. That signaled a shift from the previous strategy, which emphasized transferring to Iraqis the responsibility for safeguarding their security.

Slate's Fred Kaplan finds this strategy "confusing in concept and highly impractical." Stephen Biddle, one of the team who developed the strategy, suggested that its chances of success might be no more than about ten percent.

What it will do with near one hundred percent certainty is postpone America's day of reckoning in Iraq until a Democrat occupies the White House and the militaristic jingoes, fair-and-balanced commentators and Republican spinmeisters will then be in a position to claim that Democrats, peaceniks and leftists (not to mention feminists, homos, and academics) "lost" the war.

One "stab in the back", coming up.

No such thing

as class in America.

For three decades, the richest 10 percent of Americans have been growing even richer much faster than everyone else. Over the past five years, real wages for all the rest of American workers have been almost flat.

douche·bag

Need I say more?

more.

Smile

you're on candid camera.

Nobody Expects a Drive-by Evangelist

So last night my family and I attended a neighborhood pot luck picnic in a little pocket park (a glorified street median, really) near our house: all families and kids and the American fucking dream with baked beans and potato salad and lemonade. And out of nowhere comes this dude in a mini-SUV (maybe a Kia?) driving in circles around our little pocket park, going so fast his tires squealed around each corner. During these bizarre maneuvers, he's leaning out the window screaming at us to "Repent!", "Stop using birth control", "Accept Jesus" and so on. Maybe we looked like the disciples of Satan out there picnicing with the neighborhood kids, some out-of-control sinners who, if not quickly talked out of our evil ways, would soon to be smoking crack and fornicating madly (but not without protection) with all genders and ages up and down the block. Or maybe this guy was a rogue sky pilot who was so overcome with the holy spirit (or something) that he mistook a quiet neighborhood picnic for a festival of sin.

In any case, as he circled madly four or five times around us he refused to stop and talk, or even to slow down for the sake of the neighborhood kids, which made me wonder why he thought a message of possible salvation delivered in that way might be effective. Would Jesus brake for children?

What war?

Just returned from a family trip. For the last few days, my main source of news was the cable TV in our room. Heard all about Lindsey Lohan and Mr. Dog Fighter Man, but not a word about Iraq. I mean nothing. It was like I entered some kind of alternate universe where the war just wasn't happening and no one's lives were being disrupted or destroyed.

Imagine my surprise, then, to return home and find that my country is still neck-deep in a brutal, stupid war in Iraq, and it generates more bad news every damn day.

Neocon OG David Wurmser leaving Cheney gang?

Robert Dreyfuss reports:

Vice President Cheney is losing a trusted aide: David Wurmser, Cheney’s chief adviser on Middle East affairs and perhaps the Bush administration’s most radical hawk. According to multiple sources, Wurmser will leave the office of the vice president (OVP) in August for the private sector, where he will start a risk-consulting business.

...In the 1990s, David and Meyrav Wurmser joined Richard Perle and Douglas Feith to author the famous “Clean Break” paper that they presented to Netanyahu, in which they called for strong Israeli action to force regime change in Iraq and Syria and to redraw the map of the Middle East. Before joining the Bush administration in 2001, David Wurmser worked at the American Enterprise Institute and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

In the Bush administration, David Wurmser and a colleague, Michael Maloof, founded the predecessor organization to the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans, where they sought to develop intelligence linking Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to Al Qaeda. That work, carried out under Feith’s supervision, has been widely discredited, and a recent report from the Pentagon’s own inspector general declared that their conclusions were not supported by the underlying intelligence. Wurmser also spent time as an aide to John Bolton at the State Department before joining Cheney’s OVP as his chief Middle East specialist.

PAF says: Sayonara, asshole.

War, Lies, and Videotape

Aside from the annoying soundtrack, this is a great video compilation. Thanks to Juan Cole for posting this.

postcard from PAF

Huh?

Washington Post reports on dismissal of Valerie Plame's lawsuit:

A federal judge yesterday dismissed a lawsuit filed by former CIA officer Valerie Plame and her husband against Vice President Cheney and other top officials over the Bush administration's disclosure of Plame's name and covert status to the media.

U.S. District Judge John D. Bates said that Cheney and the others could not be held liable for the disclosures in the summer of 2003 in the midst of a White House effort to rebut criticism of the Iraq war by her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. The judge said that such efforts are a natural part of the officials' job duties, and, thus, they are immune from liability.

"The alleged means by which defendants chose to rebut Mr. Wilson's comments and attack his credibility may have been highly unsavory," Bates wrote. "But there can be no serious dispute that the act of rebutting public criticism, such as that levied by Mr. Wilson against the Bush administration's handling of prewar foreign intelligence, by speaking with members of the press is within the scope of defendants' duties as high-level Executive Branch officials."

What's wrong with this picture? Could it be that there is a fundamental difference between engaging in public debate to rebut critics and conspiring to violate the law by deliberately outing a covert operative for purposes of political retribution, and then committing perjury to cover up the first criminal act?

Naaa. Unsavory, maybe, but within the normal job desription of the Vice President's office. I'm glad we cleared that up.

Good thing we have this separation of powers thingy so that our various branches of government can keep one another in check. Otherwise, you know, there could be abuses and the potential for unchecked and unaccountable concentrations of power.

Jon Stewart notes

some, um, subtle irony in the Administration's War on Terror. Courtesy of Crooks and Liars.

The view from Weimar?

Bob Burnett, writing at Open Democracy, about the deep clulessness of the American public and the Republican strategy to capitalize on our militant stupidity.

The president's persistence has worked with a large proportion of the American public: a poll published on 23 June found that 41% of Americans "believe Saddam Hussein's regime was directly involved in financing, planning or carrying out the terrorist attacks on 9/11, even though no evidence has surfaced to support a connection."

...The Bush inner circle, looking back on the Nixon presidency, sees George W Bush's Iraq posture as a calculated political stance that will have three positive consequences. First, it will pass the final resolution of the conflict to the next president; if chaos prevails, it will be blamed on the forty-fourth president, not on Bush. Second, it will solidify Bush's manufactured image as a single-minded, principled commander-in-chief who never relented in his battle against America's terrorist enemies. Third, it will strengthen the claim of Republicans to be the war party; the sector of American politics that will never countenance surrender, that believes that American military might can prevail in any circumstance given adequate political will. The White House's key figures contend that Bush's conduct of the Iraq war will - in the long run - help Republicans.

Whether the calculation is correct, and the president's Iraq policy helps his party, remains to be seen. What is clear is that Bush's endgame is to continue the war in Iraq at its current level until he leaves office on 20 January 2009.

PAF notes with some concern that this strategy hinges on successfully scapegating anti-war forces, and what remains of the American left, for the debacle in Iraq. In other words, it entails propagating a "stabbed-in-the-back" narrative in order to sustain the mythology of American martial potency and moral infallibility on which the Republicans are staking their future. So we're talking about sharpening the culture of compulsory militaristic hyper-nationalism in an environment where many of the constitutional contraints on executive power have been undermined and civil liberties are eroded.

I'm trying to remember why I called this blog premature anti-fascist.

Halliday: A long view of Middle East politics

Fred Haillday, distinguished British scholar of the Middle East, puts the Iraq debacle in longer-term context:

For all the dangers of speculating on the long-run significance of recent events, it is at least plausible to say that the United States invasion of Iraq in that year, with all its consequences within Iraq and the region, may prove to be as important an event as 1967 and, in some respects, on a par with the reordering of the region after 1918. It has already set in train six major processes, which will take years to work themselves through:

• the wholesale discrediting of the US, its allies, particularly Britain, and any campaign for the promotion of democracy in the Arab world;
• the unleashing across the middle east, and more broadly within the Muslim world, of a revitalised militant Islamism, inspired if not organised by al-Qaida, which has used the Iraq war greatly to strengthen and internationalise its appeal;
• the shattering of the power and authority of the Iraqi state, built by the British and later hardened by the Ba'athists and the fragmentation of Iraq into separate, antagonistic, ethnic and religious zones;
• the explosion, for the first time in modern history, of internecine war between Sunni and Shi'a in Iraq, a trend that reverberates in other states of mixed confessional composition;
• the alienation of all sectors of Turkish politics from the west and the stimulation of an authoritarian nationalism there of a kind not seen since the 1920s;
• the fomenting, albeit in slow motion and with some constraints, of a new regional rivalry, between two groupings: Iran and its allies (including Syria, Hizbollah and Hamas), versus Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan - a rivalry made all the more ominous and contagious by Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons.

This is, in Abdelrahman Munif's words, very much a quaking era. People, within the region and without, are alert to the distant thunder; they do most certainly await the morrow with dread. As should all of us. "Mission accomplished" indeed.

This war will continue to haunt us long after the date when US forces withdraw from Iraq, if they ever do.

Neither al Qaeda nor Iran behind Iraqi Insurgency

Juan Cole provides analysis of a very suggestive figure:

Ned Parker of the LA Times reports that of 19,000 "insurgents" held by the US military in Iraq, only 135 are foreigners. Think about that when you hear Bush say that the US is fighting "al-Qaeda" in Iraq or that "al-Qaeda" would take over Iraq if the US left. The foreigners just are not that important to the guerrilla war. Only .7% of detainees are foreigners, and unless they run faster than Iraqis, that is likely their percentage share in the "insurgency," too.

The US is fighting Iraqis in Iraq, who are nationalists of various stripes, whether religious or secular. They are Sunni. They haven't given fealty to Bin Laden and are not "al-Qaeda." So you'd think after all the ink spilled on Iranian and Hizbullah contributions to the troubles in Iraq, that they'd be prominent among the foreign fighters, right? Wrong. It is not clear that the US has any Iranians at all in custody. There was a big deal made at the NYT about one Lebanese Hizbullah guy who may have been a freelancer.

So if they aren't from Iran, where are they from? Saudi Arabia--- 45%! Only 15% are from "Syria and Lebanon," and I'll bet you that all but one of those are Sunni. 10% are from North Africa, which is only about 14 guys. North Africa is Sunni.

That is, the numbers Parker pulled out of a US officer in Iraq demolish the entire image that the Bush administration and the Washington press corps has been presenting of the war.Foreign "al-Qaeda" is almost irrelevant to it. Iran is entirely trivial to it. The Baathist, Allawi-dominated Syrian government is trivial to it. The Lebanese Hizbullah may not be involved at all, as an organization. Certainly it is not involved in any significant way.

Which country is providing a lot of foreign suicide bombers? US ally Saudi Arabia. Has any general or Bush administration official called a press conference to denounce Saudi Arabia? No. Has Joe Lieberman threatened it with a war? No. Everything is being blamed on Iran because powerful American special interests want to get Iran, regardless of the facts. There isn't any significant cadre of foreign "al-Qaeda" fighters in Iraq if this is all we could capture. They can't take over the country because they are such a tiny group.

Everything Bush and Cheney have said about the nature of the war and the supposed dangers of a US withdrawal is transparent falsehood.

Confronting Iran: for Oil and Empire

Robert Dreyfuss on what's driving the administration in their confrontational policy toward Iran:

President Bush may or may not order a massive aerial bombardment of Iran later this year. Or he may wait until 2007. Or he may simply escalate a risky confrontation with Iran through covert action and economic sanctions. But whatever the next act in the crisis, don’t be fooled by the assertion that the problem is Iran’s pursuit of nuclear arms.
Iran is a decade away from gaining access to the bomb, according to the administration’s own National Intelligence Estimate, and despite all the talk about the ugliness of the theocratic regime in Tehran, the likely showdown is, at bottom, driven by the geopolitics of oil. With one-tenth of the world’s petroleum reserves and one-sixth of its natural gas reserves, Iran sits in a strategic geographical position that makes it the cockpit for control of the entire Middle East. It straddles the Persian Gulf’s choke points, including the Strait of Hormuz; it has important influence among Shiites throughout Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf states; and it borders highly contested real estate to the north, from the Caucasus to the Caspian Sea to Central Asia.
The logic of the Bush administration is inexorable. Its ironclad syllogism is this: The United States is and must remain the world’s preeminent power, if need be by using its superior military might. One of the two powers with the ability to emerge as a rival —China— depends vitally on the Persian Gulf and Central Asia for its future supply of oil; the other—Russia—is heavily engaged in Iran, Central Asia, and the Caucasus region. Therefore, if the United States can secure a dominant position in the Gulf, it will have an enormous advantage over its potential challengers. Call it zero-sum geopolitics: Their loss is our gain.

Of course, the idea of the Persian Gulf as an American lake is not exactly new. Neoconservatives, moderate conservatives, “realists” typified by Henry Kissinger and James A. Baker, and liberal internationalists in the mold of President Carter’s national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, mostly agree that the Gulf ought to be owned and operated by the United States, and the idea has been a cornerstone of U.S. policy under presidents both Republican and Democratic. Its adherents justified it in the past, however thinly, because of the exigencies of World War II and then the Cold War. But if the administration’s goals are congruent with past U.S. policy, its methods represent a radical departure. Previous administrations relied on alliances, proxy relationships with local rulers, a military presence that stayed mostly behind the scenes, and over-the-horizon forces ready to intervene in a crisis. President Bush has directly occupied two countries in the region and threatened a third. And by claiming a sweeping regional war without end against what he has referred to as “Islamofascism,” combined with an announced goal to impose U.S.-style free-market democracy in southwest Asia, he has adopted a utopian approach much closer to imperialism than to traditional balance-of-power politics.

By inaugurating a war of choice against a nation that had not attacked the United States, and by justifying his actions under a new doctrine of unilateral, preventive war, Bush shattered the U.S. establishment’s policy consensus while alienating America’s closest allies, angering its rivals, and provoking a storm of anti-Americanism in the Muslim world. Now, like a high-stakes blackjack player doubling down, the president is letting the world know that he is ready to do it all over again in Iran.

Cheney pushing for another war

The Guardian (UK) reports:

The balance in the internal White House debate over Iran has shifted back in favour of military action before President George Bush leaves office in 18 months, the Guardian has learned. The shift follows an internal review involving the White House, the Pentagon and the state department over the last month. Although the Bush administration is in deep trouble over Iraq, it remains focused on Iran. A well-placed source in Washington said: "Bush is not going to leave office with Iran still in limbo." The White House claims that Iran, whose influence in the Middle East has increased significantly over the last six years, is intent on building a nuclear weapon and is arming insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The vice-president, Dick Cheney, has long favoured upping the threat of military action against Iran. He is being resisted by the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and the defence secretary, Robert Gates. Last year Mr Bush came down in favour of Ms Rice, who along with Britain, France and Germany has been putting a diplomatic squeeze on Iran. But at a meeting of the White House, Pentagon and state department last month, Mr Cheney expressed frustration at the lack of progress and Mr Bush sided with him. "The balance has tilted. There is cause for concern," the source said this week.

Nothing says "clusterfuck" like losing three wars simultaneously. Is there a Guiness Book of World Records entry for this kind of thing?

Mr. Sunshine: William Kristol

Uber-neocon William Kristol writes in the Washington Post why history will favorably judge the Bush presidency:

George W. Bush's presidency will probably be a successful one. Let's step back from the unnecessary mistakes and the self-inflicted wounds that have characterized the Bush administration. Let's look at the broad forest rather than the often unlovely trees. What do we see? First, no second terrorist attack on U.S. soil -- not something we could have taken for granted. Second, a strong economy -- also something that wasn't inevitable. And third, and most important, a war in Iraq that has been very difficult, but where -- despite some confusion engendered by an almost meaningless "benchmark" report last week -- we now seem to be on course to a successful outcome.

PAF vaguely remembers this kind of euphoric sense of well-being from the 1970s. But Kristol isn't stoned, he's just full of shit (as he has been all along). Let's take his major points one at a time:

1) No terrorist attack on US soil. While none has been successful since 9-11, Bush's policies have alienated and radicalized huge swaths of the Muslim world, and led to the widespread metastasization of terrorist cells across the world, making future attacks on US soil more rather than less likely. As if that weren't bad enough, the original al Qaeda is making a comeback and poses an increasing threat to the US. The fact that we've been lucky so far doesn't mean the threat has diminished.

2) The economy is great. Sure: for rich people, defense contractors, and right-wing think-tank mavens funded by right-wing rich people and defense contractors. Looking at, you know, the broad forest, we see that levels of economic inequality in this country are at near-record levels. But things look great from Richistan.

3) Iraq. Please. Even the admninistration's own report claims no progress on the crucial political benchmarks which are the only real paths toward a successful resolution of this increasingly monstrous disaster. Americans and Iraqis are dying every day to preserve a status quo in which Americans and Iraqis die every day. Is that progress, or a treadmill?

What a shameless charlatan this man is. Have some more pie, Bill.



UPDATE: David Corn on why Bush is a loser and William Kristol is a monumental douchebag.

UPDATE2: Further Douchebaggery.

Badda-Bing

Johann Hari describing right-wing battle-bot Mark Steyn among the paying customers on a cruise for supporters of National Review:

He is wearing sunglasses on top of his head and a bright, bright shirt that fits the image of the disk jockey he once was. Sitting in this sea of grey, it has an odd effect - he looks like a pimp inexplicably hanging out with the apostles of colostomy conservatism.

Not necessarily unconstitutional

At least, not according to the very scary Mr. Yoo

Progress in Iraq

A new ad aimed at Republican Senator Mitch McConnell and his support for the President's strategy (whatever that is). The ad was produced by Americans Against Escalation in Iraq.

Thanks to AMERICAblog for originally posting this.

The necessary counterpoint to the administration's mantra of "progress" in Iraq is their imputation of "desperation" to stubbornly intensifying insurgent attacks: see the Year(s) of Lying Desperately compiled by Hairy Fish Nuts.

Meanwhile, back in Waziristan

Time reports:

U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded al-Qaeda has rebuilt its operating capability to a level not seen since just before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, The Associated Press has learned.

The conclusion suggests that the network that launched the most devastating terror attack on the United States has been able to regroup along the Afghan-Pakistani border despite nearly six years of bombings, war and other tactics aimed at crippling it.

Sadly No , mocking right-wing battle-bots, Fox viewers, and the White House: "Oh. But, um. . .would that be the Afghan-Pakistani border in Anbar province?"

Because, you know, al Qaeda is in Iraq and we're really not all that concerned about Osama.

More here, from Michael Gordon no less.

truth to (stupid) power

A group of high school graduates designated as Presidential Scholars are not overawed by the majesty and mystique of the Presidency, and have the courage to speak truth to power, directly, straightforwardly, handing a note to President Bush which reads as follows:

“As members of the Presidential Scholars class of 2007, we have been told that we represent the best and brightest of our nation. Therefore, we believe we have a responsibility to voice our convictions. We do not want America to represent torture. We urge you to do all in your power to stop violations of the human rights of detainees, to cease illegal renditions and to apply the Geneva Convention to all detainees, including those designated enemy combatants.”

Bush's reaction?

Mari described Bush’s reaction to the letter: “He read down the letter. He got to the part about torture. He looked up, and he said, ‘America doesn’t torture people.’ And I said, ‘If you look specifically at what we said, we said, we ask you to cease illegal renditions. Please remove your signing statement to the McCain anti-torture bill.’

“At that point, he just said, ‘America doesn’t torture people’ again.”

In fact, after Bush signed the bill that outlawed the torture of detainees last year, he quietly issued a “signing statement” reserving the right to bypass the law, as he has more than 1,100 times, issuing more signing statements than all other U.S. presidents combined.

Uncomfortable coincidence

Battle-bot Lieberman and pals introduce anti-Iran amendment to the Defense Authorization Act.





US Navy sends a third carrier battle group to join armada near the Persian Gulf.

un·fucking·believable

The invaluable McClatchy News Service reports:

Bush again links al-Qaida in Iraq, 9/11

Struggling to stem growing opposition to his Iraq policy even among Republicans, President Bush contended anew Tuesday that the perpetrators of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States are the same as al-Qaida in Iraq, a violent insurgent group that didn't exist until after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

It was the second time in two weeks that Bush has made the link in an apparent attempt to transform lingering fear of another terrorist attack in the United States into backing for the buildup of U.S. troops in Iraq.

"Al-Qaida is doing most of the spectacular bombings, trying to incite sectarian violence," Bush told a business group in Cleveland, Ohio. "The same people that attacked us on September the 11th is a crowd that is now bombing people, killing innocent men, women and children, many of whom are Muslims."

Al-Qaida in Iraq didn't emerge until 2004. While it is inspired by Osama bin Laden's violent ideology, there's no evidence it is under the control of the terrorist leader or his top aides, who are believed to be hiding in tribal regions of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan.

Moreover, the two groups have been divided over tactics and strategy.

While U.S. intelligence and military officials view al-Qaida in Iraq as a serious threat, they say the main source of violence and instability is an ongoing contest for power between majority Shiites and Sunnis, who dominated Saddam Hussein's regime.

In his speech, Bush cited the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks as the motivation behind the continuing war in Iraq. "They will kill a Muslim, a child or a woman at a moment's notice to achieve a political objective," Bush said. "They are dangerous people that need to be confronted, and that's why since September 11 our policy has been to find them and defeat them overseas so we don't have to face them here at home again."

I suspect the president is intellectually incapable of making this kind of distinction between Osama and the original al Qaeda who were directly responsible for 9-11, and the franchise al Qaeda in Iraq which the President's own policies brought into being and which is more interested in asserting Sunni salafist power in Iraq than in attacking the USA. I think George is just too fucking dim to get his mind around this. Cheney, on the other hand, is not stupid. He lies baldly, deliberately and repeatedly.

Career DOJ attorney has had enough of Bush's justice

John S. Koppel writing in the Denver Post:

As a longtime attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, I can honestly say that I have never been as ashamed of the department and government that I serve as I am at this time.

The public record now plainly demonstrates that both the DOJ and the government as a whole have been thoroughly politicized in a manner that is inappropriate, unethical and indeed unlawful. The unconscionable commutation of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's sentence, the misuse of warrantless investigative powers under the Patriot Act and the deplorable treatment of U.S. attorneys all point to an unmistakable pattern of abuse.

In the course of its tenure since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has turned the entire government (and the DOJ in particular) into a veritable Augean stable on issues such as civil rights, civil liberties, international law and basic human rights, as well as criminal prosecution and federal employment and contracting practices. It has systematically undermined the rule of law in the name of fighting terrorism, and it has sought to insulate its actions from legislative or judicial scrutiny and accountability by invoking national security at every turn, engaging in persistent fearmongering, routinely impugning the integrity and/or patriotism of its critics, and protecting its own lawbreakers. This is neither normal government conduct nor "politics as usual," but a national disgrace of a magnitude unseen since the days of Watergate - which, in fact, I believe it eclipses.

...the DOJ Inspector General's Patriot Act report (which would not even have existed if the administration had not been forced to grudgingly accept a very modest legislative reporting requirement, instead of being allowed to operate in its preferred secrecy), the White House-DOJ e-mails, and now the Libby commutation merely highlight yet again the lawlessness, incompetence and dishonesty of the present executive branch leadership.


...The sweeping, judicially unchecked powers granted under the Patriot Act should neither have been created in the first place nor permanently renewed thereafter, and the Act - which also contributed to the ongoing contretemps regarding the replacement of U.S. attorneys, by changing the appointment process to invite political abuse - should be substantially modified, if not scrapped outright. And real, rather than symbolic, responsibility should be assigned for the manifold abuses. The public trust has been flagrantly violated, and meaningful accountability is long overdue. Officials who have brought into disrepute both the Department of Justice and the administration of justice as a whole should finally have to answer for it - and the misdeeds at issue involve not merely garden-variety misconduct, but multiple "high crimes and misdemeanors," including war crimes and crimes against humanity.

I realize that this constitutionally protected statement subjects me to a substantial risk of unlawful reprisal from extremely ruthless people who have repeatedly taken such action in the past. But I am confident that I am speaking on behalf of countless thousands of honorable public servants, at Justice and elsewhere, who take their responsibilities seriously and share these views. And some things must be said, whatever the risk.

This guy just jumped on a grenade for us. Can you doubt that he is a marked man in the ledgers of Cheney and Rove? Koppel shows precisely the kind of moral courage so sadly lacking in Powell, Tenet, and others who stayed quiet and kept their jobs even though they knew better. Now we'll lose Koppel to the private sector because, you know, disloyal trouble-makers like that don't belong in public service. Damn.

Thanks to Crooks and Liars for posting a link to this remarkable statement.

So Bedevere, How's our strategy going?

Let's go to AEI and ask the Neocon architect of the surge!

Ahem:
And then, who jumps out of the rabbit?

Keeping Scooter Quiet

The Poor Man Institute sums up the situation with this gem of comic paraphrasing: "If the Scoot stays mute, you must commute". Fucking brilliant.

Crooks and Liars ponders a possible scenario. Representative John Conyers wonders too:

“What we have here - and I think we should put it on the table right at the
beginning - is that the suspicion was that if Mr. Libby went to prison, he might
further implicate other people in the White House, and that there was some kind of relationship here that does not exist in any of President Clinton’s pardons, nor, according to those that we’ve talked to … is that it’s never existed before, ever,” Conyers said.

Out of Iraq: The New York Times

Continuing to sacrifice the lives and limbs of American soldiers is wrong. The war is sapping the strength of the nation’s alliances and its military forces. It is a dangerous diversion from the life-and-death struggle against terrorists. It is an increasing burden on American taxpayers, and it is a betrayal of a world that needs the wise application of American power and principles.

A majority of Americans reached these conclusions months ago. Even in politically polarized Washington, positions on the war no longer divide entirely on party lines. When Congress returns this week, extricating American troops from the war should be at the top of its agenda.

NYT editorial, 7/08/07

A little context (of the "about fucking time" variety) from Ezra Klein.

Postcard from PAF

Sunset at Green Lakes State Park, digitally photographed and processed using the HDR technique.

This is such a spectacular little spot; we're very fortunate to have it as a state park rather than another site for a phalanx of McMansions. Thank you, FDR.

Fouad Ajami attempts to defend Libby

and gets handed his lunch.

Ajami has been a meretricious neocon mouthpiece for too, too long. It's refreshing to see him treated with all the respect he deserves.

Impeach Cheney

House Resolution 333 and a variety of supporting documents are available on the web site of Representative Dennis Kucinich, here.

If you are so moved, you can sign an electronic petition in support of HR 333 here.

An Impeachment FAQ is available from After Downing Street, here.

Democrats.com has ten reasons to impeach Cheney. PAF has one: restore the republic.

UPDATE: A skeptical view of impeachment prospects from James Ridgeway.

Jon Stewart on Dick Cheney

Watch the video. Laugh through your tears.

Is this justice?

Scooter sends a check.

ma·lign

Writing in the most recent New Yorker, Hendrik Hertzberg describes Cheney as:

...the most influential public official in the country, not necessarily excluding President Bush, and his influence has been entirely malign. He is pathologically (but purposefully) secretive; treacherous toward colleagues; coldly manipulative of the callow, lazy, and ignorant President he serves; contemptuous of public opinion; and dismissive not only of international law (a fairly standard attitude for conservatives of his stripe) but also of the very idea that the Constitution and laws of the United States, including laws signed by his nominal superior, can be construed to limit the power of the executive to take any action that can plausibly be classified as part of an endless, endlessly expandable “war on terror.”

More than anyone else, including his mentor and departed co-conspirator, Donald Rumsfeld, Cheney has been the intellectual author and bureaucratic facilitator of the crimes and misdemeanors that have inflicted unprecedented disgrace on our country’s moral and political standing: the casual trashing of habeas corpus and the Geneva Conventions; the claim of authority to seize suspects, including American citizens, and imprison them indefinitely and incommunicado, with no right to due process of law; the outright encouragement of “cruel,” “inhuman,” and “degrading” treatment of prisoners; the use of undoubted torture, including waterboarding (Cheney: “a no-brainer for me”), which for a century the United States had prosecuted as a war crime; and, of course, the bloody, nightmarish Iraq war itself, launched under false pretenses, conducted with stupefying incompetence, and escalated long after public support for it had evaporated, at the cost of scores of thousands of lives, nearly half a trillion dollars, and the crippling of America’s armed forces, which no longer overawe and will take years to rebuild.

I'm not so much worried that Uncle Sam's forces "no longer overawe" (since I'm not convinced that militarily "overawing" people constututes a just or sustainable world order), but the rest of this indictment sounds about right to me.

Fred Thompson

Strong, independent, relentless pursuer of justice;
Or Nixon's stooge?

Need a hint?

He's got nothing

Nothing left but bullshit and boogeymen.

"If we were to quit Iraq before the job is done, the terrorists we are fighting would not declare victory and lay down their arms. They would follow us here, home," Bush told a crowd of about 1,000 gathered at a West Virginia Air
National Guard maintenance hangar.

PAF has discussed this particular canard before: here, here and here.

Still, some choose to believe:

The audience, which was crammed in a corner of a hangar draped with two-story-high American flags, included troops in uniform and the children, spouses, mothers and fathers of serving Guard members. Most said they are solidly behind the president -- who spent 20 minutes shaking hands after his remarks -- and the mission in Iraq. "I love him, and my son loves him. He gets the job done," said Donna L. Ruppenthal, of Hedgesville, W.Va., whose son is serving in Iraq. Several family members said the president's speech helped to ease their doubts about whether the war in Iraq is worth the loss of more than 3,500 soldiers. "I'm glad we came. I think it helped clear up some confusion and some misgivings about our reasons for being there," said Chris Davis, 56, who has a 26-year-old son in the Guard. "The president gave us some pride, knowing what [our son] is doing for the country."

Such a price for pride.

PAF finds WMD

This is not your bullshit fantasy WMD. This is the real deal, hidden in plain view in a hangar in Virginia, in the area around Washington, east, west, south and north somewhat (to paraphrase former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld).

Exhibition of the Enola Gay was the object of a fierce controversy in which veterans groups objected to the direct depiction of the mass suffering and death inflicted upon Japanese civilians using this very instrument. Implictly at stake in this controversy was the American self-concept as morally superior global "good guys," effectively absolving us from the responsibility for moral and political reflection on our actions and role in the world.

When I encountered Enola Gay at the Smithsonian, there was no part of the display which directly acknowledged the Japanese civilians who had seen this plane once before.

Scooter walks

Not really surprising, but it still sucks that these assholes can minimize their own accountability to the law. And we're not talking about parking tickets here: Scooter's lies were part of a systematic campaign of misinformation and intimidation designed to silence critics of Bush and Cheney's war.

The Post's Froomkin explains:

During the course of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's trial for obstruction of justice and perjury, we learned a lot about his bosses.

Incremental discoveries that didn't garner major headlines nevertheless added to what we know -- and can reasonably surmise -- about Vice President Cheney and President Bush's role in the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity, which was revealed during the course of the administration's defense of its decision to go to war in Iraq.

We know, for instance, that Cheney was the first person to tell Libby about Plame's identity. We know that Cheney told Libby to leak Plame's identity to the New York Times in an attempt to discredit her husband, who had accused the administration of manipulating prewar intelligence. We know that Cheney wrote talking points that may have encouraged Libby and others to mention Plame to reporters. We know that Cheney once talked to Bush about Libby's assignment, and got permission from the president for Libby to leak hitherto classified information to the Times.

We don't know why Libby decided to lie to federal investigators about his role in the leak. But it's reasonable to conclude -- or at least strongly suspect -- that he was doing it to protect Cheney, and maybe even Bush.

What a fucking hero. Perhaps we can look forward to a Medal of Freedom for Scooter.




UPDATE: Bush won't rule out a full pardon for Scooter.

Wolfowitz to AEI

What a surprise!

Who would have guessed that Wolfie would return to the Mothership, there to be sustained by the largesse of conservative Foundations such as Bradley and Scaife , until the opportunity arises to improve further the state of our world? What a glorious system it is which keeps such people of proven capability ready to step back into public life at a moment's notice. Feels all warm and reassuring, doesn't it? Doesn't it?

JFC

Are Americans really this stupid?

OK, OK, I guess we are.

If Chemical Ali is a war criminal

who else is guilty of complicity in those crimes?

Another tragic legacy of the Iraq War

Wounded soldiers.

Another Postcard from PAF

I photographed the historic art deco Niagara Mohawk Building at dusk. As with the image I posted previously, I mounted my camera on a tripod and took five exposures of this image (all shot at f 11 for sharpness, but exposed for varying lengths of time, bracketing the metered exposure by two stops both higher and lower). I combined those five exposures using HDR software, and then made final adjustments in photoshop.

Here's another one, similarly produced, but showing the entire building as dusk falls.





I love doing this stuff.

ma·lev·o·lent

Washington Post series on Dick Cheney

Thanks to my buddy Frank the Geezer for calling my attention to this series of reports.

Postcard from PAF

Click on image for larger view



Local joint at night, photographed and intitally processed using HDR technique, then made to suggest the feel of a painting by superimposing an identical copy as a semi-transparent layer on top of the original image, and running a Photoshop filter transformation on the layer.

Won't win any prizes, but I enjoyed doing it, and the result pleases me.

And now for something completely different

For the moment, PAF is up-to-here with fucking politics. Taking a little joy in beauty and creativity helps to recharge the batteries.

PAF loves digital photography.


I'm getting better, but still on a learning curve. Some resources that I have come to rely on include the sites of Digital Photography Review and Photo.net . Although the latter does include a fair share of stubbornly traditional photography purists and outright photo snobs, both have loads of useful information and allow exchanges of info with experienced photographers in the various discussion forums on each site. Also useful are the how-to articles at Popular Photography, especially the digital processing advice offered by Debbie Grossman.

Among the best books to help the aspiring pixel-pusher learn to use the most powerful features of the otherwise dauntingly complicated Photoshop is Katrin Eisman's Photoshop Restoration & Retouching. Also exceptionally useful is Martin Evening's Adobe Photoshop for Photographers.

What every American should know

about Iraq.

Franklin's challenge

Asked what form of goverment was being constructed inside the constitutional convention, Benjamin Franklin is reputed to have replied "A republic, if you can keep it."

NYT:

In a stinging rejection of one of the Bush administration’s central assertions about the scope of executive authority to combat terrorism, a federal appeals court ordered the Pentagon to release a man being held as an enemy combatant. “To sanction such presidential authority to order the military to seize and indefinitely detain civilians," Judge Diana Gribbon Motz wrote, “even if the President calls them ‘enemy combatants,’ would have disastrous consequences for the Constitution — and the country.” “We refuse to recognize a claim to power,” Judge Motz added, “that would so alter the constitutional foundations of our republic.”

Chris Floyd reflects:

Although today's ruling is most welcome, it is a tragedy that we have come to this point at all: that a federal court has been forced to consider the "question" of whether a president has the arbitrary power to stick people in military dungeons without charges for as long as he likes. Why should this even be a question, a matter for debate?

Flawed, incomplete, contradictory and corrupted as it may be, the republic is a precious historical achievement. Crying shame if we were to piss it away out of blind fear and militant stupidity.

The Israel Lobby

Mitchell Plitnik and Chris Toensing provide some useful perspective here. In a nutshell, their argument is not so much that the Israel Lobby doesn't exist (it does) or isn't powerful (it is), but rather that the invasion of Iraq cannot be straightforwardly attributed to the Lobby since the main architects of the invasion -- Cheney and Rumsfeld -- were enacting a strategic plan for US military dominance of the Middle East in which the primary motivation was sustaining US global power rather than furthering the interests of Israel. While the pro-Likud neocons saw these goals as convergent, it was the project of global military supremacy that moved the big dogs, who were never themselves died-in-the-wool neocons.

What unites the neo-conservatives with their traditional Cold Warrior confréres Cheney and Rumsfeld is not Israel, however, but a common set of ideas about US power. The convergence of interests first appeared in the aborted Defense Policy Guidance of 1992. This document is the Pentagon’s classified internal assessment, made every two years, of comprehensive military strategy. In 1992, the task fell to Paul Wolfowitz, who set about conceiving a justification for maintaining the military at something approaching Cold War strength. He delegated the actual writing of the Defense Policy Guidance to his top aide Libby, who in turn passed it off to his colleague Zalmay Khalilzad.

What Khalilzad came up with stunned Washington when the draft was leaked to the press: The US was uniquely qualified to be the sole superpower, and to maintain that status, the US should actively block the rise of any possible rival. Khalilzad was specific: “In the Middle East and Southwest Asia, our overall objective is to remain the predominant outside power in the region and preserve US and Western access to the region’s oil.” The White House swiftly disowned the document, but it found an appreciative reader in Dick Cheney. “You’ve discovered a new rationale for our role in the world,” Khalilzad recalls being told by his boss. Rebuilding America’s Defenses cites the 1992 Defense Policy Guidance as its primary intellectual inspiration. When the Cheney Defense Department was reunited in the administration of George W. Bush, much of this “inspiration” made its way into the 2002 National Security Strategy. Together with Washington’s long-standing interest in Persian Gulf oil, the genealogy of PNAC suggests that the decision to invade Iraq was determined by grand ambitions for US power—not a “desire to make Israel more secure,” as Mearsheimer and Walt assert.

An extended essay in which Michael Massing reviews the controversy is here, and the original essay by Mearsheimer and Walt is here.

My friend RO sends this link to an LRB-sponsored debate about the Lobby and its influence.

When is an occupation not an occupation?

According to the Post, the military is planning for post-occupation occupation.

A reduction of troops, some officials argue, would demonstrate to anti-American factions that the occupation will not last forever while reassuring Iraqi allies that the United States does not intend to abandon the country.

We're going; but before we go, we're staying.

So the strategy seems to be to try to confuse the Iraqis by talking out of both sides of our mouths, telling them that the "occupation" of Iraq is ending and drawing down the overall numbers of US troops, while maintaining the indefinite presence of US military garrisons in Iraq. I dunno, I kinda think they'll see through this little ruse and continue to resist the occupation even after we start calling it something else.

For more on the long-term non-occupation of Iraq based on not-quite-permanent basing of US troops there, see Tom Engelhardt here.

"Cosmic Top Secret"

No really. (Scroll to bottom of linked page)

Presumably this information is not to be shared with super-intelligent disembodied life forms from another galaxy. Either that, or they've got Cheech and Chong working in the classification department.

Targeting Professors

The Washington Post reports that in addition to the now horrifyingly routine daily bombings, kidnappings, and attacks on civilians, academics and other professionals are being specifically targeted by more extreme salafist elements of the Iraqi insurgency:

Gunmen also shot three professors from Islamic University in Baghdad, killing two and wounding one, and killed the head of the Education Ministry's department of research and development as he drove to work, police said.

"It is part of the campaign to attack every positive thing in Iraq," said an Education Ministry spokesman, Basil al-Khatib, who blamed the attacks on extremists who oppose modernity and want to drive "all elite and educated people from Iraq." He complained that the national government "is not acting" to prevent further attacks against teachers, "it only talks."

At least 211 university professors and 104 officials from the ministry have been assassinated in Iraq since the war started in March 2003, Khatib said. In addition, 91 professors have been kidnapped, and their fate is unknown, he said.

PAF finds it ironic that the hatreds of the most extreme Islamists mirror the preoccupations of those in the US who insist that we must destroy "Islamofascism" and denounce those who don't think about the world in terms of this kind of simple-minded crusade.

More on the execrable Horowitz here and here.

The Pentagon doesn't want you to see this

Why do you suppose that is?

Defending Freedom

BBC:

Human rights groups have asked the US to reveal the whereabouts of 39 people who have allegedly been held in secret CIA-run prisons.

A report compiled by six human rights groups listed the names of people who remain unaccounted for after having passed through US custody.

The groups urged the US to stop using secret prisons for terror suspects.

The US last year admitted the existence of such prisons in its “war on terror” but said they were no longer in use.

President George W Bush said last September that all secret prison sites were “empty”.

The groups says they compiled their report, entitled Off the Record, from government and media sources and from interviews with former prisoners.

“It’s time for the US government to come clean,” said Clive Stafford Smith, Legal Director of Reprieve, one of the groups involved in the appeal.

“These 39 people have been missing for years, and the evidence shows they were in US custody at some point. Where are they and what has been done to them?

...Human Rights Watch and Cageprisoners are the other two organisations seeking information on the 39 “ghost detainees”.

The groups fears the missing people may have been moved to countries where they might be at risk of torture.

They say children as young as seven are among those detained. [PAF's emphasis]
“The duty of governments to protect people from acts of terrorism is not in question,” said Claudio Cordone of Amnesty International.

“But seizing men, women and even children, and placing people in secret locations deprived of the most basic safeguards for any detainees most definitely is.”

In September 2006, Mr Bush said 14 detainees had been held at secret CIA prisons that used interrogation methods that were “tough” but “lawful and necessary”.

He said the prisoners had since been transferred to the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the CIA was not holding any more terror suspects.

A secret gulag with ghost prisoners is scary enough, but children???

Global Military Supremacy ain't cheap

Robert Dreyfuss:

How astonishing are the budgetary numbers? Consider the trajectory of U.S. defense spending over the last nearly two decades. From the end of the Cold War into the mid-1990s, defense spending actually fell significantly. In constant 1996 dollars, the Pentagon's budget dropped from a peacetime high of $376 billion, at the end of President Ronald Reagan's military buildup in 1989, to a low of $265 billion in 1996. (That compares to post-World War II wartime highs of $437 billion in 1953, during the Korean War, and $388 billion in 1968, at the peak of the War in Vietnam.) After the Soviet empire peacefully disintegrated, the 1990s decline wasn't exactly the hoped-for "peace dividend," but it wasn't peanuts either.

However, since September 12th, 2001, defense spending has simply exploded. For 2008, the Bush administration is requesting a staggering $650 billion, compared to the already staggering $400 billion the Pentagon collected in 2001. Even subtracting the costs of the ongoing "Global War on Terrorism"—which is what the White House likes to call its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—for FY 2008, the Pentagon will still spend $510 billion. In other words, even without the President's two wars, defense spending will have nearly doubled since the mid-1990s. Given that the United States has literally no significant enemy state to fight anywhere on the planet, this represents a remarkable, if perverse, achievement. As a famous Democratic politician once asked: Where is the outrage?

But we gotta have all that stuff for what General J.C. Christian calls "the Great War for the Re-Subjugation of Brown People" so that we can, you know, bring 'em Freedom. At gunpoint. Because Freedom isn't free. Or something.

Sayonara Scooter

Washington Post:

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Cheney, was sentenced today to 30 months in prison and fined $250,000 for lying to investigators about his role in leaking the identity of an undercover CIA officer.

During sentencing, Hizzoner allowed as how Libby "got off course" -- as if somehow poor Scooter had just lost his way and wandered off in what turned out to be an inappropriate direction. But neither lack of supervision nor Libby's ability to follow directions was the real problem here. In fact, there is reason to believe that Scooter was very closely following the course laid down for him by his boss, and then lying to cover for him. As is customary in these affairs, Mr. Big walks.

Permanent Bases would be Illegal

But really long-term temporary bases, that's another matter.


Gotta love them Checks and Balances.

Is Cheney the font of all Evil?

If he's not, it's not because he isn't trying.

Thoughts on Kevorkian

Jack Kevorkian has been released from prison eight years after being convicted of aiding euthenasia. The man Kevorkian was convicted of helping to die was an ALS patient.

ALS is an incurable, untreatable degenerative disease in which the motor neurons which control muscle movement deteriorate and muscles atrophy and patients become paralyzed. They become incapable of speaking, eating, and eventually breathing. The disease does not affect those parts of the nervous system which support conscious thought, so ALS patients are fully aware of the deterioration of their bodies. People may survive for a time with the benefit of feeding tubes and ventilators to do their breathing for them (most famously, perhaps, Stephen Hawking), but this disease is always eventually fatal. Most people live 2-5 years after diagnosis, trapped in a deteriorating body.

This is a cruel, remorseless, relentness disease. And there is not a damn thing the medical people can do about it. Nothing.

I know this not because I'm a medical professional (I'm not), but because I watched my mother die of ALS. Her brother also died of ALS, which means that there is some chance that the kind of ALS which killed my mother is the genetic variety. If that were true, I would have a 50/50 chance of contracting the disease myself. And if I did, then my daughter would face the same 50/50 odds.

So I have thought about this in a very direct and personal way. If I contracted this disease, I would not want to experience the progressive breakdown of my body prior to my inevitable death. Why should I, or anyone, be compelled to go through that? Why should my family have to watch it? Yet, to choose otherwise I would be obliged to make myself and anyone who chose to help me into a criminal. That means, to avoid criminalizing loved ones, friends and medical advisors, I would be forced by law to try to do this all by myself, alone, by whatever crude means I could muster. And so I ask myself, would it even be possible to do that in a way which didn't inflict further trauma and suffering on my family, forcing them to confront some ugly scene which would make the loss of a loved one that much more horrible? Would I choose to do that to my family?

Trapped, and trapped again.

For me, these are the questions that Kevorkian's punishment bring up.

I admire and appreciate what he did to minimize the suffering of others. I wish there were more like him, and that the rest of us could accept that, sometimes, for some people, death is not the worst thing that could happen. And we should tolerate, even support, those who make this choice.

More on pre-war intelligence

Walter Pincus in the Post:

On Aug. 13, 2002, the CIA completed a classified, six-page intelligence analysis that described the worst scenarios that could arise after a U.S.-led removal of Saddam Hussein: anarchy and territorial breakup in Iraq, a surge of global terrorism, and a deepening of Islamic antipathy toward the United States.

Titled "The Perfect Storm: Planning for Negative Consequences of Invading Iraq," the paper, written seven months before the war began, also speculated about al-Qaeda operatives taking "advantage of a destabilized Iraq to establish secure safe havens from which they can continue their operations," according to a report about prewar intelligence recently released by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

The report said the CIA paper also cautioned about outcomes such as declining European confidence in U.S. leadership, Hussein's survival and retreat with regime loyalists, Iran working to install a friendly regime "tolerant of Iranian policies," Afghanistan tipping into civil strife because U.S. forces were not replaced by United Nations peacekeepers and troops from other countries, and violent demonstrations in Pakistan because of its support of Washington.

Before the war, while the Bush administration was putting a spotlight on the CIA's intelligence on Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, which turned out to be wrong, it either buried or ignored the agency's more accurate assessments of the problems that could emerge in the aftermath of regime change in Iraq, the Senate report said.

I can't stop being angry about this.

Drawdown is not withdrawal, it's the strategy for normalizing imperial occupation

ABC News:

Defense Secretary Robert Gates envisions "some presence" on the part of the United States that, he said, "provides reassurance to our friends and to governments in the region, including those that might be our adversaries, that we're going to be there for a long time."

A senior official said one long-term plan would have 30,000 to 50,000 U.S. forces in Iraq for five to 10 years beyond 2009.

During that period, the bulk of the troops would be deployed to bases at strategic points throughout Iraq to respond to crisis in those areas. Camp Victory would continue to operate as the U.S. military headquarters in Baghdad.

UPDATE: from NYT

Administration officials and top military leaders declined to talk on the record about their long-term plans in Iraq. But when speaking on a not-for-attribution basis, they describe a fairly detailed concept. It calls for maintaining three or four major bases in the country, all well outside of the crowded urban areas where casualties have soared. They would include the base at Al Asad in Anbar Province, Balad Air Base about 50 miles north of Baghdad, and Tallil Air Base in the south.

“They are all places we could fly in and out of without putting Americans on every street corner,” said one senior official deeply involved in the development of Iraq strategy.

We're talking about a long-term occupation here, boys and girls; 21st century empire; unending hatred, resistance, and cycles of violence.