"Part of the American Landscape"

Washington Post reports overseas reaction to horrific Virginia Tech shootings:

In a special report on BBC 24 Monday evening, a commentator, Gavin Hewitt, said mass murder on school campuses had become "part of the American landscape." The network showed video footage of Columbine High School in Colorado and the Amish shooting in Pennsylvania, and noted that the powerful U.S. gun lobby had blocked gun restrictions that Europeans regard as simple common sense. "Even after today's horrific tragedy, laws are unlikely to change," Hewitt said.

More on how people abroad see the violence of America.

Why the World Bank staff is fed up with Wolfowitz

Circling the Wolfies

Republic? What Republic?

A Robert Greenwald film for the ACLU


Habeas Corpus?? Big deal, we don't have that right anyway (or so says the Attorney General of the United States).

Then there's this Pulitzer prize winning report by the Boston Globe's Charlie Savage:

"President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.

...Far more than any predecessor, Bush has been aggressive about declaring his right to ignore vast swaths of laws -- many of which he says infringe on power he believes the Constitution assigns to him alone as the head of the executive branch or the commander in chief of the military.

Many legal scholars say they believe that Bush's theory about his own powers goes too far and that he is seizing for himself some of the law-making role of Congress and the Constitution-interpreting role of the courts.

...Bush has also said he can bypass laws requiring him to tell Congress before diverting money from an authorized program in order to start a secret operation, such as the ''black sites" where suspected terrorists are secretly imprisoned.

Congress has also twice passed laws forbidding the military from using intelligence that was not ''lawfully collected," including any information on Americans that was gathered in violation of the Fourth Amendment's protections against unreasonable searches. Congress first passed this provision in August 2004, when Bush's warrantless domestic spying program was still a secret, and passed it again after the program's existence was disclos \ed in December 2005. On both occasions, Bush declared in signing statements that only he, as commander in chief, could decide whether such intelligence can be used by the military.

In October 2004, five months after the Abu Ghraib torture scandal in Iraq came to light, Congress passed a series of new rules and regulations for military prisons. Bush signed the provisions into law, then said he could ignore them all. "

I guess I was mistaken about that "Separation of Powers" thing too.

What, Me Worry??

Iraqi Insurgents are not just al Qaeda

Despite the administration's repeated assertions that the war in Iraq must be continued because it is the central front in the War on Terror, the Washington Post reports increasingly tense relations between Sunni Insurgents and al Qaeda in Iraq:

"The Sunni insurgency in Iraq has long been fractious, in part because secular nationalists, tribal leaders and former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party and army have rejected al-Qaeda's tactics, particularly beheadings. But the emerging rift represents the Sunni groups' most decisive effort since the 2003 invasion to distance themselves from al-Qaeda in Iraq."

"...Insurgent leaders, in interviews in person or by telephone, offered different explanations for their split. Many said their link to the al-Qaeda groups was tainting their image as a nationalist resistance force. Others said they no longer wanted to be tools of the foreign fighters who lead al-Qaeda. Their war, they insist, is against only the U.S. forces, to pressure them to depart Iraq."

This is further evidence that the war in Iraq is not reducible to the so-called War on Terror, and ending the Iraq war is not equivalent to capitulation to al Qaeda as the administration continues to claim in their last-ditch efforts to justify their misbegotten and unwinnable war in Iraq. Rather, ending the occupation is a recognition that ultimately it must be the Iraqis who have the last word about what happens in their country. The price of continuing to deny that is the continuation of unconscionable bloodshed.

Cheney: hippies and Democrats undermining War on Terror

Vice President Cheney speaking to a Heritage Foundation audience:

"In the early 1970s, the far left wing turned the Democratic Party away from the confident Cold War stance of President Truman, President Kennedy, and Senator Scoop Jackson. The result, as we know, was ...the beginning of a long period in which the American people largely declined to trust the Democratic Party in matters of national security... Today, as the United States faces a new kind of enemy and a new kind of war, the far left is again taking hold of the Democratic party's agenda. The prevailing mindset, combined with a series of ill-considered actions in the House and Senate over the last several months, causes me to wonder whether today's Democratic leaders fully appreciate the nature of the danger this country faces in the war on terror -- a war that was declared against us by jihadists, a war in which the United States went on offense after 9/11, a war whose central front, in the opinion and actions of the enemy, is Iraq. "

"...Opponents of our military action there have called Iraq a diversion from the real conflict, a distraction from the business of fighting and defeating Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda network."

"Yet the evidence is flatly to the contrary. And the critics conveniently disregard the words of bin Laden himself. 'The most serious issue today for the whole world," he said, "is this third world war [that is] raging in [Iraq].' He calls it 'a war of destiny between infidelity and Islam.' He said, 'The whole world is watching this war,' and that it will end in 'victory and glory or misery and humiliation.' And in words directed at the American people, bin Laden declares, 'The war is for you or for us to win. If we win it, it means your defeat and disgrace forever.' This leader of al-Qaeda has referred to Baghdad as the capital of the caliphate. He has also said, 'Success in Baghdad will be success for the United States. Failure in Iraq is the failure of the United States. Their defeat in Iraq will mean defeat in all their wars.' "

"Obviously, the terrorists have no illusion about the importance of the struggle in Iraq. They have not called it a distraction or a diversion from their war against the United States. They know it is a vital front in that war, and it's where they have chosen to make a stand. Our Marines are fighting al Qaeda terrorists in Anbar province. U.S. and Iraqi forces recently killed al Qaeda terrorists in Baghdad, who were responsible for numerous bomb attacks. Iraq's relevance to the war on terror simply could not be more plain. Here at home, that makes one thing, above all, very clear: If you support the war on terror, then it only makes sense to support it where the terrorists are fighting us. (Applause.)"

PAF bites his tongue hard and resists the urge to say to Mr. Cheney what he said to Senator Leahy.

There are a number of things wrong with the Vice President's justification for continuing his war, so many it's hard to know where to begin. So here's a couple of points to start with.

First, in a deliberate and cynically ahistorical misrepresentation, Cheney suggests that the primary significance of the Iraq war is and has been about al Qaeda and the "War on Terror", and we know this to be false. Iraq had nothing to do with al Qaeda until the US occupation of Iraq created a big, juicy, red-white-and-blue target right in the neighborhood which would be almost irresistable to any self-respecting jihadist. Further, Cheney's war has created a colossal public relations windfall for al Qaeda throughout the Islamic world by appearing to confirm Osama's primary propaganda claim that the US is seeking military domination of the Middle East as part of an aggressive war against Islam. To the extent that the Iraq war represents an opportunity for al Qaeda, it is an opportunity which the Vice President and his comic sidekick have created for them and delivered to them on a platter. Cheney's war has been good for al Qaeda, so it is seriously twisted for the Vice President to blame the war's critics for al Qaeda's good fortune.

But al-Qaeda linked jihadists are a relatively small part of the insurgency in Iraq, which is primarily a struggle of Sunni nationalists against an occupying army (layered on top of a low-grade sectarian civil war). Despite what Osama says, the war in Iraq is not primarily about him and his jihadist allies, and the Vice President is wrong to allow Osama to take credit for a struggle in which he and his allies have played a marginal role. Although we face defeat in Iraq, this political reality has everything to do with the fact that most Iraqis don't want us there, and has almost nothing to do with al Qaeda, which has no popular base of support in Iraq. Of course Osama will try to claim this as a victory for propaganda purposes. And the Vice President, for his own political purposes, is defining this struggle in the very terms which Osama wants him to, and making it easier for Osama to claim victory when Cheney's unnecessary, criminal and tragically doomed war finally comes to an end.


Oh, and one more thing, Mr. Vice President: go fuck yourself.

"The Iraqi resistance is fighting to end the occupation"

Haifa Zangana, an Iraqi exile writes in The Guardian (UK):

"There is only one solution to this disaster, and that is for the US and Britain to accept that the Iraqi resistance is fighting to end the occupation. And to acknowlege that it consists of ordinary Iraqis, not only al-Qaida, not just Sunnis or Shias, not those terrorists - as Tony Blair called them - inspired by neighbouring countries such as Iran. To recognise that Iraqis are proud, peace-loving people, and that they hate occuption, not each other. And to understand that the main targets of the resistance are not Iraqi civilians. According to Brookings, the independent US research institute, 75% of recorded attacks are directed at occupation forces, and a further 17% at Iraqi government forces. The average number of attacks has more than doubled in the past year to about 185 a day. That is 1,300 a week, and more than 5,500 a month. Another way of understanding this is that in any one hour, day or night, there are seven or eight new attacks. Without the Iraqi people’s support, directly and indirectly, this level of resistance would not have happened."

Call me overly sensitive, but it seems like we've worn out our welcome.

Failure is not an option (unless we fail)

Hearts and minds? Not so much (ingrates);

Rising death rate for US troops;

Retired generals warning that the army is near the breaking point;

Can't find enough troops to sustain even a modest Baghdad-centered surge;

Can't protect the Iraqi Parliament in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone despite the troop surge targeted specifically at Baghdad;

Can't retain your most promising officers;

Can't find a Generalissimo to assume responsibility for it all...

Smells like... victory.

Wanted: Generalissimo

Thinking of a career switch?

Have you considered a career in the fast paced, rapidly growing field of US military disasters?

If you would like to be Commander-in-Chief of Operation ClusterFuck (CINC-FUCK), dial 1-800-FALLGUY now.

RNC operatives and Regent University graduates are standing by to take your call.

Uniforms and Medal of Freedom included. BYO body armor.

More war, less safe

According to National Security expert Steven Simon:

"Polls indicate that most Iraqis want the United States to pull out. Moreover, the Iraq war has fueled the jihad and apparently been a godsend to jihadi recruiters — and the process of self-recruitment — as indicated by the 2006 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on the global war on terror. More broadly, the Iraq war has had a very damaging effect on the U.S. reputation in the Arab and wider Islamic world. Authoritative opinion surveys show this as well. The continued presence of U.S. forces is thus a severe setback in the canonical war of ideas, which the Bush administration has correctly assessed as crucial to American interests."

The conclusion that the way we are waging the Global war on Terror is making us less safe is affirmed by a new study from the Oxford Research Group:

"The US-led and British-backed war on terror is only fuelling more violence by focusing on military solutions rather than on root causes, a think tank warned Wednesday.”The ‘war on terror’ is failing and actually increasing the likelihood of more terrorist attacks,” the Oxford Research Group said in its study, titled “Beyond Terror: The Truth About The Real Threats To Our World.” It said Britain and the United States have used military might to try to “keep the lid on” problems rather than trying to uproot the causes of terrorism. It said such an approach, particularly the 2003 invasion of Iraq, had actually heightened the risk of further terrorist atrocities on the scale of September 11, 2001."

And what will happen to our civil liberties, and perhaps even our republic, if another such attack should occur in the US?

Anyone??

Anyone???

Tragedy and farce

Hail, hail Fredonia, land of the brave and free.

Amen, says I.

This says

a lot of what I had wanted to say. Thanks to whoever put these powerful images to Dylan's angry and beautiful and, sadly, all too relevant song.

Liberals and academics rule.

Who knew???

"America, the crowd is told, is being ruled by evil, clandestine organizations that hide behind the veneer of liberal, democratic groups. These clandestine forces seek to destroy Christians. They spread their demonic, secular humanist ideology through front groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, People for the American Way, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the National Organization for Women, Planned Parenthood, the Trilateral Commission and “the major TV networks, high-profile newspapers and newsmagazines,” the U.S. State Department, major foundations (Rockefeller, Carnegie, Ford), the United Nations, “the left wing of the Democratic Party” and Harvard, Yale “and 2,000 other colleges and universities.” All of these groups have joined forces, LaHaye has warned, to “turn America into an amoral, humanist country, ripe for merger into a one-world socialist state.”

Chris Hedges, reporting on the conspiracist schtick of millennialist preacher, and co-author of the best-selling Left Behind book series, Tim LaHaye.

Aside from the hallucinogenic character of LaHaye's description of modern American politics, demonic secularism sounds like an oxymoron to me: secular humanists don't generally hang with demons. Supernatural beings of all kinds tend to, you know, avoid us for some reason.

Repeat after me:

There is no such thing as "class" in America.

New York Times
March 29, 2007

Income Gap Is Widening, Data Shows

By David Cay Johnston

Income inequality grew significantly in 2005, with the top 1 percent ofAmericans — those with incomes that year of more than $348,000 — receiving their largest share of national income since 1928, analysis of newly released tax data shows. The top 10 percent, roughly those earning more than $100,000, also reached a level of income share not seen since before the Depression. While total reported income in the United States increased almost 9 percent in 2005, the most recent year for which such data is available, average incomes for those in the bottom 90 percent dipped slightly compared with the year before, dropping $172, or 0.6 percent. The gains went largely to the top 1 percent, whose incomes rose to anaverage of more than $1.1 million each, an increase of more than $139,000,or about 14 percent. The new data also shows that the top 300,000 Americans collectively enjoyed almost as much income as the bottom 150 million Americans. Per person, the top group received 440 times as much as the average person in the bottomhalf earned, nearly doubling the gap from 1980.

No such thing, right?

Right??

Vee haf vays...

...of telling Uncle Sam to piss off.

Mommy, this Sunni Insurgent followed me home

The Bush administration likes to scare us into staying the course by telling us that if we remove our troops from Iraq, the enemy will follow us home.

On this, as on so many other important claims made by the White House, the President is full of shit.

First, while there is an ongoing low-grade civil war in Iraq, the war being waged against US forces there is primarily a Sunni nationalist insurgency against an occupying army. Remove the occupying army and you remove the reason and the opportunity for nationalist insurgents to attack Americans. The Sunni nationalist insurgents in Iraq tolerate the presence of a small number of foreign jihadists only insofar as they contribute to the anti-ocupation insurgency. The jihadists do not have a popular base of support in Iraq. If we end the insurgency by ending the occupation -- and especially if we do so in a way which promotes accommodation between Sunnis, Shiia, and Kurds -- Iraq will not become a terrorist super-base as Bush insists.

Second, our invasion and occupation of Iraq lends credibility to Osama's narrative that the West, led by America, is waging an aggressive war against Islam.

"The war in Iraq isn't preventing terrorist attacks on America," said one U.S. intelligence official, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because he's contradicting the president and other top officials.* "If anything, that - along with the way we've been treating terrorist suspects - may be inspiring more Muslims to think of us as the enemy."

The war in Iraq is not keeping us safe from terrorist attack (London calling), so ending the war won't make us less safe. On the other hand, by prolonging the occupation we will be even more likely to provoke terrorist acts by extremists, and to increase their base of popular support worldwide, making future terrorist attacks here more, rather than less, likely.

Finally, the Iraq invasion and our overall policy of being a global asshole is making lots of people hate us, not just militant jihadists. Hard to see how that makes us safer.

* Let's pause for a moment to reflect on the reluctance of this US intelligence official to speak the truth in public. Why would that be? Might it have anything to do with the chilling effect of a career deliberately, vindictively destroyed? And who would do something like that?

Another Whack...

...at the Zombie Horse

Robert Parry is admirably direct and clear about the administration's continuing practice of telling us bald-faced lies:

"While other politicians might spin some facts in a policy debate or a tell a fib about a personal indiscretion, President Bush and Vice President Cheney act as if they have the power and the right to manufacture reality itself, often on matters of grave significance that bear on war and peace or the future of the nation...

So, on April 5, Cheney showed no hesitancy in telling Limbaugh’s listeners both an old canard about how Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was in league with al-Qaeda terrorists and a new one about how a U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq would “play right into the hands of al-Qaeda.”

Cheney surely knows that U.S. intelligence analysts have reached the opposite conclusions on both points – that there was no operational relationship between Hussein’s regime and al-Qaeda; that terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was based in a section of northern Iraq outside Hussein’s control; and that the U.S. occupation of Iraq has been a boon to al-Qaeda that the terrorist group wants to extend, not end.

As one of Osama bin Laden’s top lieutenants, known as “Atiyah,” wrote two years ago, “prolonging the war is in our interest.” The letter, dated Dec. 11, 2005, and obtained by U.S. intelligence after Zarqawi’s death in June 2006, urged that Zarqawi’s jihadists in Iraq show patience and restraint in deepening their ties to Iraqi Sunni insurgents."

Even before the U.S.-led invasion – when the Bush administration was hyping Hussein’s alleged ties to al-Qaeda – then-CIA Director George Tenet told the Senate Intelligence Committee that “there are several reported suggestions by al-Qa’ida to Iraq about joint terrorist ventures, but in no case can we establish that Iraq accepted or followed up on these suggestions.”

Despite this evidence and a broad consensus within the U.S. intelligence community, Cheney keeps alive his discredited claims about a pre-war al-Qaeda role under Saddam Hussein’s regime."

And we thought this guy was full of shit!







Meanwhile, an MSNBC anchor gets some help reviewing the record of Cheney's misrepresentations about Iraq and finds it all "very confusing" because, you know, saying something like "The Vice President appears to have told us a whole string of profoundly consequentiual untruths, and continues to do so" just wouldn't be objective journalism, or something. So instead, she's objectively confused.

CBC News documentary: The Lies that Led to War

The Lies that Led to War, Part 1 (9:44)



The Lies that Led to War, Part 2 (9:57)


The Lies that Led to War, Part 3 (9:44)



The Lies that Led to War, Part 4 (9:58)

Way Out

The invaluable Juan Cole, of Informed Comment, and the University of Michigan, on how to end the Iraq war with some hope for a better and more peaceful future:

"The US repression of Sunnis has allowed Shiites and Kurds to avoid compromise... The key to preventing an intensified civil war is US withdrawal from the equation so as to force the parties to an accommodation. Therefore, the United States should announce its intention to withdraw its military forces from Iraq, which will bring Sunnis to the negotiating table and put pressure on Kurds and Shiites to seek a compromise with them. But a simple US departure would not be enough; the civil war must be negotiated to a settlement, on the model of the conflicts in Northern Ireland and Lebanon. "

Department of Infuriatingly Undead Horses

By now you might think that there would be no need to point out - yet again - that the Iraq war was premised on deliberately misleading representations of half-assed conjectures as if they were established facts, facts which justified the most serious and consequential action any nation can take. Literally hundreds of thousdands have died as a direct result of the decision to lauch this war. Why?

• Saddam had sought Yellowcake uranium to make into nuclear weapons? No. And the administration knew it. Did I mention that they knew it?


• Saddam purchased Aluminum Tubes which could only be used in centrifuges for the enrichment of unranium? Yeah, he had some tubes, but they were better suited for making standard artillery rockets of a kind which posed no threat to the US. The administration was told this repeatedly, but gave no indication that the intelligence community was at best equivocal about whether the tubes had any relation at all to WMD.


• Saddam had mobile Bio-chem Trailers for the stealthy production of WMD? Um, not so much. And the informant who said so -- the aptly code-named "Curveball" -- was an alcoholic former taxi-driver from Iraq known to be a fabricator of bullshit which he tried to sell as "intelligence". Intelligence officers issued numerous warnings about Curveball's truthfulness which were bureaucratically suppressed or ignored as the administration incorporated Curveball's fabrications into their case for war.


• Saddam was supporting al-Qaeda? Nope. And they knew it.

Many of us knew these claims were highly questionable at the time they were originally made as the justification for war. And now we know the Bushies were deliberately misleading us. What do we call that when someone deliberately misleads us?

And are they the least bit contrite? Nope.

From the Washington Post (April 6, 2007):

"Captured Iraqi documents and intelligence interrogations of Saddam Hussein and two former aides "all confirmed" that Hussein's regime was not directly cooperating with al-Qaeda before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, according to a declassified Defense Department report released yesterday.

The declassified version of the report, by acting Inspector General Thomas F. Gimble, also contains new details about the intelligence community's prewar consensus that the Iraqi government and al-Qaeda figures had only limited contacts, and about its judgments that reports of deeper links were based on dubious or unconfirmed information.

The report's release came on the same day that Vice President Cheney, appearing on Rush Limbaugh's radio program, repeated his allegation that al-Qaeda was operating inside Iraq "before we ever launched" the war, under the direction of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist killed last June. "This is al-Qaeda operating in Iraq," Cheney told Limbaugh's listeners about Zarqawi, who he said had "led the charge for Iraq." Cheney cited the alleged history to illustrate his argument that withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq would "play right into the hands of al-Qaeda."

[The Post goes on to explain:]
Zarqawi, whom Cheney depicted yesterday as an agent of al-Qaeda in Iraq before the war, was not then an al-Qaeda member but was the leader of an unaffiliated terrorist group who occasionally associated with al-Qaeda adherents, according to several intelligence analysts. He publicly allied himself with al-Qaeda in early 2004, after the U.S. invasion. "

Cheney is still at it.

Unfuckingbelievable.

Literally.

So we continue to beat the Zombie Horse.

Letter to Osama

Dear Osama,

Thank you for your letter. It was very thoughtful of you to write to us. As I re-read your letter the other day, it occurred to me that very possibly no one had gotten back to you. So I wanted to write and let you know that you are still in our thoughts. Here are my responses to your letter.

You say to us:

"The freedom and democracy that you call to is for yourselves and for white race only; as for the rest of the world, you impose upon them your monstrous, destructive policies and Governments, which you call the 'American friends'. Yet you prevent them from establishing democracies."

Yeah, OK, fair enough. I guess I find your views of American foreign policy to be not totally unreasonable. Our government is, as you suggest, attempting to dominate the Middle East. And they are using oppressive governments in the region, as well as direct military force, to help them do that. And their hypocrisy in doing all of that in the name of freedom is pretty breathtaking. But they are not doing it because our financial system and media are controlled by Jews, as you erroneously suggest (Osama, allow me to point out that you have been taken in by an historical hoax). Rather, our government is doing it for the somewhat more straightforward reason that your part of the world contains the great bulk of the world's oil reserves, and the capitalist system on which the wealth and power of America depends itself depends upon access to that oil. Fordism, don'tchaknow. Of course, that doesn't make it right, as perhaps we could agree.

You see you are quite wrong to suggest that we have consented to this policy and made it our own. Literally millions of us demonstrated against this war in Iraq before it ever began and continue to oppose it strongly. In fact, large numbers of us would support a post-imperial foreign policy in a more just and equitable world. So I think we could find a way to co-exist with people in your part of the world which did not rely on using military power and support for oppressive regimes to dominate you.

This is something I might be prepared to discuss with you if it weren't for that other thing.

Osama, I have to tell you that you have caused me and many others great pain by your actions, and like the Dixie Chicks, I'm not ready to make nice. I'm still very angry with you, and although I don't endorse the imperial project my government has launched under cover of their supposed "War on Terror," yet part of me will rejoice in your death if they find you. I'm not proud of that reaction, Osama, but I don't deny it.

Finally, Osama, let me thank you for your invitation to accept Islam. I don't disagree with your criticisms of our culture as fostering corruption and immorality, and I have much respect for your religion, with its traditions of compassion, social justice and equality. But I don't believe in a supernatural creator, and I am perfectly capable of making moral decisions without recourse to shariah or the ten commandments or any other supposedly divine revelations. I don't need you or Pastor Ted or anybody else with a speed dial to god to tell me how to make moral decisions. And by the way, Osama, you need to get over this:

"Who can forget your President Clinton's immoral acts committed in the official Oval office? After that you did not even bring him to account, other than that he 'made a mistake', after which everything passed with no punishment. Is there a worse kind of event for which your name will go down in history and remembered by nations?"

You tar us with serious and plausible charges of aggression and support for tyranny, and then you say our worst historical offense was failing to punish a blow job in the oval office?? Really, dude, I think you need to take this up with your therapist.




I'm glad to see that you have taken up karaoke. It's important to have a hobby, and I hear you don't get out much anymore.

Best wishes to Ayman and the kids.

sincerely,

PAF