Gosh, three posts about President Brainless in one day – I can’t remember the last time that happened.
So I know we all just can’t wait to find out how that White House Correspondents Association dinner went last Saturday, can we? I mean, that Rich Little is just so damn hilarious these days, right?
Well, I’ll let Greg Mitchell and Joe Strupp of Editor and Publisher provide the exceedingly painful details here, and included is a link to a story about Laurie David asking Karl Rove to reconsider his position on global warming, which to me is one of the most well-intentioned but nonetheless stupid things one person can do (and Sheryl Crow, being a stand-up broad, stood up for her bud).
What was Laurie David thinking? Is she so surprised that Rove took the opportunity to bait her in the most confrontational way possible? When has any member of Bushco shown any interest in a dialogue about anything?
Also (and more importantly), congratulations to all award winners including Joan Ryan of the San Francisco Chronicle (and by the way, the quote from her on this site’s banner page came from a great column she wrote at the height of the Terri Schiavo fiasco). I’ll keep checking to find out if and when her column will return – I don’t have an answer yet, and until I do, I’ll keep her link active in the right column on the home page.
Oh, and one more thing...just to refresh our memories, here is Stephen Colbert’s performance from last year (and let’s not forget that Don Imus ascended to the conservative media pantheon based on his performance at this farce in 1996, insulting the Clintons in the most guttural way possible).
I’m not sure I should ask what it says about Bushco’s murderous incompetence that many of us shrug our shoulders when we hear that both the FDA and EPA are dangerously under funded when it comes to enforcing laws to protect our food, drugs and the environment (as noted here). And, as noted here, the problem has the potential to grow much worse.
This story pertains to the known contamination at a Georgia peanut butter plant and a California spinach farm that led to the deaths of three people and the sickening of hundreds of others, all due to the cause cited previously.
And what did the Repugs do in response when they ran the now-mercifully-over 109th Congress?
Why, they passed some monstrosity called H.R. 4167, "The National Uniformity for Food Act of 2005" (and of course, Dubya signed it into law – more information available here). This bill effectively removed state and local governmental authority to regulate the food supply, no doubt getting that pesky “big government” off the backs of caring, concerned corporate citizens like ConAgra who, as noted here, donate overwhelmingly to the Republican Party over the Democrats.
Update 4/24/07: Please ignore my comment in response to the anonymous commenter, who is absolutely right - I misread the summary of actions on the govtrack link. Totally my bad on that one...
(By the way, I dare a Republican to tell me again that their party advocates states rights. I absolutely dare them.)I still do, just not pertaining to this issue.
Oh, and while a Repug sympathizer is trying to do what I just asked,Also, I’d like to ask also whether (any Repug sympathizer) or not you/he/she/them/it intends to hold Tommy Thompson’s feet to the fire, so to speak, as he is running for your party’s presidential nomination; it seems, according to this story, that though he is now part of a coalition trying to encourage spending more money on food inspection, he had a chance to advocate for that when he was health and human services secretary, but failed to do so, particularly concerning ephedra, a drug masquerading as a food supplement.
As Bill Maher noted a few weeks ago, it’s getting just about impossible to keep track of all of the scandals, abuse of government power and overall incompetence and stupidity originating from Bushco on a day-to-day basis (he said he downloads the latest ones every day to his i-Pod, and it’s hard to tell if he was joking or not).
In addition to Abu Gonzales hanging onto his job like he’s the last passenger onboard the Titanic and his fingertips are slipping off the life preserver, we also have the latest FEMA report stating that their disaster plan won’t be ready for the 2007 hurricane season (I mean, gosh, it’s only been about a year and a half since Katrina, and I guess these things take time; sure they do), and Paul Wolfowitz using his influence to get his squeeze hired from the World Bank to the State Department where she pulled in more money than Condoleezza Rice (who runs State, after all – here is an update to this post), we have something of lesser importance at the moment that was pointed out here by Hendrik Hertzberg in The New Yorker.
Update: Speaking of FEMA, I wonder if this has anything to do with their lack of preparedness?
Before I get to it, though, I should remind us of the fact that, more and more, every state wants to move up its primary in the election cycle so its votes will carry more weight in naming the candidate of the major political parties (with the “Super Tuesday” primary in the south as the first shot fired in this battle). That’s an admirable instinct, and it’s also an attempt to encourage voter participation beyond the typically anemic numbers of the past (the subject of a whole other rant, so I’ll hold off on that for now).
However, if we keep going as we are, we could be faced with a situation where the state primaries are grouped and “front-loaded” to the point where they’re ending in the spring of the election year while the two major party candidates slug it out with attack ads into November (and only someone who is truly a masochist would prefer a spectacle like that). Another more important negative of this, as noted by Hertzberg, is that the accelerated election cycle means accelerate pitches for money from the candidates, at earlier time intervals and asking for greater quantities (and I don’t even think a masochist wants to see that).
Now that we have this context, I’m going to “set the wayback” here for 2000, during the Bush/Gore presidential election. As it turns out, former Republican Party chairman Bill Brock had an idea that could have prevented all of this, as follows…
The closest anyone has come to cutting the Gordian knot of the primaries was a little-known effort in 2000. A group of Republican grandees led by Bill Brock, a former senator from Tennessee and national party chairman, spent months hammering out what was dubbed the Delaware Plan, which, beginning in 2004, would have mandated four sets of primaries, a month apart, beginning with the small states (twelve of them, including New Hampshire) and ending with the largest (which would pick a majority of the total delegates). Brock said recently that he had developed the plan in consultation with friends in the other party (“Such things were possible, once upon a time,” he said), and was fairly sure that the Democrats would have followed suit. But, because the Republicans couldn’t have proceeded without a floor fight at their Convention, the Bush camp, determined to avoid any hint of discord, shot the whole thing down at the last minute. Various other ideas—revolving regional primaries, for example, or randomly chosen primaries at two-week intervals—continue to float around. Eventually, though, Congress will probably have to take the lead in sorting out the mess.
And how much do you want to bet that someone will file suit in response to whatever Congress tries to do in response to this?
So just remember that, when you get frustrated out of your mind with the length of the presidential campaign next year and amount of times that you’re hit on by someone for some dough (to say nothing of the level of stupidity and mendacity in the dialogue between the candidates and the brainless media punditry), remember that we had an opportunity to change things before Dubya and Turd Blossom utterly poisoned the well of bipartisanship, making a hash of this as they have with everything else.
Bloc Party ("The Prayer" - so glad those days are over)...
...Happy Birthday to now-white-haired Peter Frampton (covering Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun")...
...Happy Birthday also to Glen Campbell (the theme from "True Grit," the movie where he got whacked in the head with a shovel by veteran movie bad guy Jeff Corey - Glen had some trouble, and I hope he's gotten himself straightened out)...
...and Happy Birthday to the one and only Jack Nicholson (this is the climactic courtroom scene from "A Few Good Men" - sound is loud and video is OK, but it captures the drama well enough, though since this movie, I've had no rooting interest for Tom Cruise at all).
Kevin Ferris was at it again last Friday, and I’m only getting to this now because the whole blogging thing has a bit of “a spanner in the works” for yours truly at the moment, at it may not get resolved for about a week.
(Update: I'm linking to Ferris' page instead of the McCain column because the Inky may have pulled it for some reason - some reflex of journalistic integrity may have kicked in somehow.)Never mind - I found the original link.
(Also, on a somewhat related note, I didn’t go over the Area Votes in Congress last week because only the Senate was in session, and the only two bills passed were on stem cell research and something else having to do with fetal cell tissue that was supposed to be some kind of a compromise; I’ll plan to get to the latest on that this week.)
Back Channels It's a matter of honor John McCain raises the bar for discussion of Iraq. By Kevin Ferris Inquirer Commentary Page Editor
John McCain's speech last week about the war on terror may not win him the White House. And it's too soon to tell whether the strategy he's endorsed can turn things around in Iraq.
No speech can “turn things around” in Iraq. The idiocy underlying a statement like that is almost too insulting to merit a response.My bad here...
But the speech, at the Virginia Military Institute, raises the bar for discussion of the war by presidential candidates. Not because of his assessment of progress being made, or his outline of the consequences of failure, or even his attack on the war's critics. Those were all on point and eloquent.
Says you, of course (and I wonder if his words were as "on point and elouquent" as those spoken during that ridiculous Iraq photo-op of his on April Fools' Day, appropriately enough?).
What sets McCain apart is simply how he frames the debate: as a matter of honor. Coming from a war hero with 50 years of service to his country, that makes a huge difference.
Oh, here we go. Cue the fight song, Hollywood war movie footage and the rockets red glare, OK?
No, I’m not trying to cheapen patriotic heroism by that last sentence; anyway, McCain, by his relentless, shameless pandering to the right (whether it’s Jerry Falwell and Liberty University noted in the video at the end, Alabama Governor Bob Riley on Martin Luther King Day of all occasions – Riley being a member of an organization that excluded African Americans – or McCain’s unflinching support for Dubya’s denial of due process to “enemy combatants”…and yes, Ferris, this is actually a bad thing) has already done that better than I ever could.
At VMI, he spoke of Gen. David Petraeus' honor to lead troops who show such "courage and resolve." The duty of finding a way forward that "best honors their sacrifices." Most important, he explained why he was obligated to give the current strategy a chance to succeed: "To do otherwise would be contrary to the interests of my country and dishonorable."
And of course, Ferris here is referring to “the surge”; you know, that thing in Iraq that Petraeus discussed at a Republican caucus, in which the Repugs expressed lukewarm support at best and Petraeus promised results by August, and some of the “moderate Repugs” said in response that if it didn’t succeed, they would “pull the plug.”
By the way, smooth move to discuss this without the benefit of input from the Dems, General (because, as we know, the Dems are the only ones who play politics with the lives of our soldiers, right – snark).
Honor is a recurring theme in McCain's writings and speeches.
When he accepted a Profile in Courage Award in 1999 for backing campaign-finance reform, which hadn't yet passed, he spoke of the importance of honor in his life.
I wonder how much “honor” McCain felt when he broke the law he helped originate with the great Russ Feingold of Wisconsin by helping to raise some “soft money” for Adjutant General Stan Spears of South Carolina?
"When I was a young man," McCain said, "and all glory was self-glory, I responded aggressively and often irresponsibly to anyone who questioned my honor. I still remember how zealously a boy would attend the needs of his self-respect.
"But as I grew older, and the challenges to my self-respect became more varied and difficult, I was surprised to discover that while my sense of honor had matured, its defense mattered even more to me than it did when I believed that honor was such a frail thing that any empty challenge could threaten it."
Over time, he said, he had learned "to dread dishonor above all other injuries."
Concerning McCain’s own sense of honor, I would ask that you consider this Common Dreams article by James Carroll (written before there even was an Iraq war or 9/11), particularly the following…
McCain as the beloved icon of personal honor has reinforced a general American reluctance to face the national dishonor of American war-making, and he himself shows little or no ability to think deeply on this most crucial subject. That is why McCain's responses to contemporary questions of military policy, from Kosovo to the Missile Defense Shield, are so shockingly hawkish, far more appropriate to a young fighter jock than to a would-be statesman. He is an icon of escalation.
Back to Ferris...
He supported campaign-finance reform because it was a way to restore honor to a process that the public viewed as tainted by the relentless pursuit of money.
"I believe public service is an honorable profession," McCain said. "I believed that when I entered the Naval Academy at 17, and I believe it still. . . . But the people whom I serve believe that the means by which I came to office corrupt me. That shames me. Their contempt is a stain upon my honor, and I cannot live with it."
I think another stain on McCain’s honor would be his involvement with rogue financier Charles Keating in the ‘80s (noted here), who almost single-handedly destroyed the savings and loan institutions in this country (remember the S&Ls?). To be fair to McCain, though, he was a minor player in that mess relative to Alan Cranston and Dennis DiConcini of the Senate, for example, and I honestly believe there was a time when he sought to redeem himself over that mess, though he’s gone horribly off course on a whole range of other issues since then, most notably Iraq of course.
In his books, McCain writes about trying to measure up to what he learned from his father and grandfather, both admirals, and from the men with whom he served in Vietnam, especially his fellow POWs.
In Character Is Destiny, he tells how Americans were tortured for military information, for details about one another, for statements against their country or their mission. If they would just speak, they were told, the pain would stop - and no one would know they had talked.
McCain writes, "But the men I had the honor of serving with always had the same response. I will know. I will know.
"That, dear reader, is good character. And I hope it is your destiny, your choice, your achievement, to hear the voice in your own heart, when you face hard decisions in your life, to hear it say to you, again and again, until it drowns out every other thought: I will know. I will know. I will know."
Perhaps McCain heard that voice as he prepared his VMI speech. He could have bowed to the polls, backed away from this administration and its war. He didn't.
He will find that he should have done so, because the majority of the American people, quite rightly, have had enough (57 percent is pretty decisive to me).
And by the way, as long as Ferris and his ilk are building up Dubya’s Majorly Fracked Up Iraq War as some sort of noble cause, it would be nice if these apologists could communicate exactly what it is that our fine service people are supposed to be doing over there.
Our people are trying to keep from getting killed from an ever-more-emboldened insurgency while the Sunnis and the Shi’ites beat the hell out of each other. And it would be nice if Iran and Syria would actually try to help stop it – regardless of the rationale for this failed war, it is their area of the world, after all – but I guess they’re more concerned with making us look bad than trying to police themselves.
That figures perfectly, and that mindset is something that certainly was understood by the previous administration, and (but for some highly inglorious moments) Colin Powell early in this one.
Instead, he countered the withdrawal wave engulfing Congress. He warned of the results of failure for Iraq, the region, and the United States. He pointed out the "first glimmers of progress" from the troop increase and counterinsurgency strategy - though "the hour is late and . . . we should have no illusion that success is certain." He blasted Democrats for their cynicism, their cheers while voting to endorse defeat, and their refusal "to offer an alternative strategy that has some relationship to reality."
As many of us know, former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio was convicted of insider trading yesterday, with the government making the case that Nacchio knew Qwest would fall short of its revenue targets in 2001 and thus dumped $52 million in Qwest shares between April and May of that year.
(And as I read the quotes from U.S. Attorney Troy Eid after the conviction, I just wonder how much he and the other attorneys have done to keep in Bushco’s good graces after Abu Gonzales fired the eight who weren’t – I know it’s unfair to “paint with a broad brush” like that, but I still can’t help but wonder.)
Well, before we all celebrate the demise of another corporate evildoer too much here, I would ask that we revisit this great Kos post from the Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse about what happened when Nacchio refused to turn over his company’s phone records to the NSA (indeed, the entire post carefully reconstructs the possible – probable? – payback Nacchio suffered as a result, though his lawyers will appeal this verdict).
Update: Besides, though Nacchio was convicted of insider trading, I know a certain President who was accused of the same thing but "walked" by virtue of his last name.
Concerning the 32 murders at Virginia Tech University on Monday, let’s not forget the reaction from around the globe. Many other countries, of course think we are insane for allowing these weapons of death to so thoroughly permeate our country (and let’s not forget that students and instructors from other nations were victims also, as noted here).
Also, I, like you I’m sure, am starting to hear the argument advocated with greater frequency and emphasis that more guns could have prevented the tragedy, not fewer – I touched on this earlier, but I’m coming back to it again.
I’ve never understood this argument. Never. Guns are the only item, apparently, where (as far as some people are concerned) more of them can decrease the problem they pose instead of fewer. To me, that’s like saying the way to combat a flu epidemic is to create more viruses, or the way to cut down on traffic fatalities due to people driving too fast on a congested roadway is to raise the speed limit.
And the information from this link bears out what I just said, from The Journal of Trauma (let’s look at this from the human health and life sciences perspective, OK?). I think this paragraph goes right to the heart of the matter (re: the results of a study pertaining to gun violence conducted in three major U.S. cities)…
…During the study interval (12 months in Memphis, 18 months in Seattle, and Galveston) 626 shootings occurred in or around a residence. This total included 54 unintentional shootings, 118 attempted or completed suicides, and 438 assaults/homicides. Thirteen shootings were legally justifiable or an act of self-defense, including three that involved law enforcement officers acting in the line of duty. For every time a gun in the home was used in a self-defense or legally justifiable shooting, there were four unintentional shootings, seven criminal assaults or homicides, and 11 attempted or completed suicides.
And while Repug chickenhawks like Mitch McConnell squawk predictably that what Reid said is somehow hurting our troops more than the clueless execution of something approximating a war strategy that has totally failed (and this story, linked to by Atrios yesterday, hammers the last nail into the “we’ll stand down when Iraqis stand up” coffin), the U.S. military continues to wall off portions of Iraq in an effort to stem the violence in the civil war.
Funny, but with all due respect to our service people, this sounds to me like the strategy of MBNA Senator Joe Biden, who proposed partitioning off Iraq by religious and ethnic groups last year (a weak idea, but preferable to what we have now).
A little behind on the videos I know, so here goes...
Steve Wynn And The Miracle 3 ("Amphetamine")...
...Kings Of Leon ("On Call")...
...Happy Birthday to Alan Price of The Animals ("It's My Life" on "Hullabaloo"; again, not Digby's great blog, and I think the emcee was '60s movie actor George Maharis - mounting the heads of the go-go dancers on plaques like that might be the most chauvinistic thing I've ever seen on one of these videos)...
...and happy belated birthday to Maynard James Keenan of Tool ("Sober," yet another really freaky video from these guys).
I thought this column from Paul Campos was interesting; he managed to draw a parallel between the Blacksburg massacre this week and the Iraq War (glad to give him a "prop" after I slapped him down earlier on Al Gore).
I don’t have anything particularly brilliant to add here, but I just wanted to point this out.
Also, thanks to Shaun at Kiko’s House for the photo link.
Amity Shlaes of Bloomberg News chastised John Edwards today for his proposal to make it easier for many Americans to file their taxes…
A mark of ``F'' goes to John Edwards, who offered his plan (on April 7th) in a pod cast. Edwards suggested that the 50 million families with relatively simple returns be permitted to pass the responsibility of managing those returns to the IRS.
Then the taxpayers would never even have to talk to the IRS, fill out a form, or meet an accountant.
This seems clever. The Democrat Edwards is trying to supplant Republicans in their traditional role of pandering to taxpayer hatred of tax authorities. The plan also has another kind of appeal. Edwards is playing Steve Jobs and trying to make Hillary Clinton look like a cog from IBM.
…
But the Edwards plan is pernicious because it makes the whole tax process seem all-the-more inevitable. If taxpayers never confront what they owe on a W-2 form, they will never think about what they could have done with that money in terms of investment or invention. The system gives new meaning to the word ``passive.'' Under the Edwards plan, Americans would be so accustomed to the government hand in their pocket they would never even consider the budgetary consequences of, say, Medicare.
When you can figure out what Hillary Clinton, IBM, Steve Jobs and Medicare have to do with filing your taxes, I’d appreciate it if you would let me know, because I have no idea.
Of course, Shlaes just assumes that many people in this country who would be amenable to Form 1 (the centerpiece of the Edwards proposal as noted here) are simply too dumb or lazy to ever seek to file their returns any other way should their circumstances change, and Edwards is also trying to look out for taxpayers who would be burdened with undo paperwork for comparatively simple returns (i.e., low income earners or students out of college; I don’t know if student loan payments can be deducted or by how much or what formula, but for someone just entering the work force, I can’t think of too much more to deal with on a return than that besides wages, interest and standard tax withholding).
Besides, if someone were to receive the Form 1 from the IRS with the tax liability already determined, that person could still compute their tax liability to verify the information on the form.
Speaking for myself, I’ve prepared our taxes on our own and I’ve sought the help of a preparer. And though I think Edwards has a good idea, this would necessitate a much more powerful role and higher funding appropriations for the IRS to prepare “simple” returns in the manner Edwards proposes (even for “simple” returns, the web site Edwards envisions would have to be updated as needed for changes in the tax code; I don’t believe, though, that that’s a “show stopper” under any stretch of the imagination).
But Shlaes and those in the financial services industry in general will no doubt continue to howl over Edwards’ proposal because it would eventually result in money out of their pockets in tax preparation fees and financial reporting; hence the false characterization of Edwards’ plan as “pernicious.”
And speaking of taxes, before you hear of anyone demonizing illegal/undocumented/whatever workers for a variety of reasons, keep in mind that many of them are highly conscientious when it comes to paying taxes (so they embrace the Internal Revenue Service but do all they can to get away from Immigration and Customs Enforcement – and if I were in their shoes, I’d do the very same thing).
And this story notes that most Californians favor a path to citizenship for illegal aliens (this may be the only issue where Dubya has the foggiest clue concerning the right answer…maybe).
Update: I'd forgotten this from a few days ago, but luckily, Flavia Colgan at Citizen Hunter didn't here, and that would be the encouragement from the Edwards campaign for everyone to reduce our "carbon footprints" (more info here).
As reported in the Boston Globe here, the Senate prevented the Democrats from allowing Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices for senior citizens. The 55-42 vote in favor of the measure fell short of the 60 votes needed to take up the measure on the Senate floor.
Here is the vote on the measure, with the usual culprits doing the dirty work (including John Cornyn of Texas who, along with Kay Bailey Hutchison, ignored their constituents and utterly caved in to the pharmaceutical industry).
As the Globe story notes, though, Max Baucus, Senate Finance chairman and the bill's sponsor, said he will reintroduce an identical or similar measure. This isn’t dead yet, people.
And by the way, this seems to be an appropriate story for linking to this AFL-CIO site where you can tell your own stories if you’ve experienced “the health care hustle.”
I would like to personally thank Dale Larson, the publisher of the Bucks County Courier Times, for filling up this morning's front page with photos of the lone shooter (as far as we know, hopefully) in the Virginia Tech massacre. This life form is shown in combat poses aiming the guns he used to conduct the worst mass slaughter seen in this country in nearly 80 years.
We have a young child growing up in our house, Mr. Larson. We had to hide the newspaper from his sight so it wouldn't scare him. Doesn't that make you proud?
Of course, the Courier Times is hardly blameless in this matter. CNN and other sites I'm sure have photos plastered all over the place from Cho Seung-Hui that he sent to NBC before he offed himself along with all of the other victims of his crimes on Monday.
When NBC determined what was contained in the package, it should have been sealed and turned over in its entirety to the Virginia State police as evidence in an ongoing murder investigation.
Another lifetime ago as a journalism student at Temple University, I enrolled in a class called "Law and Ethics in Mass Communications." I can't recall back that far to determine what our instructor would say about this now, but at the risk of patting myself on the back, I believe he would echo what I just said.
Of course, there were standards back then, and journalism was respected and practiced as a craft (and this was the rule, not the exception). But in this day and age, I find I must remember to remind myself that maintaining high ratings to generate the highest possible ad revenue easily trumps any standards of decency and common sense.
And no, I'm not going to publicize this murdering animal with a photo accompanying this post.
Update 1: Finally, a person on TV who makes sense on this story!
Update 2: My bad; the New York Times reports the following...
(Upon receiving the package) NBC quickly contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the state police in Virginia. Officials from the New York field office of the F.B.I. went to Rockefeller Center to pick up the originals.
And by the way, Brian Williams, he of this post, is quoted as follows...
“This was a sick business tonight, going on the air with this,” he said.
Yeah, but you went ahead anyway, didn't you? You can't blame bloggers for this one!
I knew something like this would come eventually, but its arrival is no less disgusting.
As you can read here, The Supremes overturned a ruling today from the 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals that found the so-called "partial birth" abortion ban signed into law in 2003 to be unconstitutional.
The ruling majority, including Anthony Kennedy writing for the court, just undercut a woman's right to choose in the severest way possible (and God forbid that a woman in this country has something go catastrophically wrong with her pregnancy, including something affecting her own health, because in their infinite barbarity, Scalia, Roberts, Thomas, Alito and Kennedy said today that she must carry the child to term regardless of the consequences - the ban makes no exception for the health of the mother).
This takes you to an announcement from Planned Parenthood in light of this awful ruling.
That's about it for today - I'm too disgusted to post anything else.
And of course, leave to the Philadelphia Inquirer to use the Blacksburg, VA massacre to grant a forum to Alan Caruba of something called The National Anxiety Center to claim that more guns would have saved lives, not fewer ones.
Well, at least Caruba didn’t question the courage of the victims as John Derbyshire did as noted by Time’s Ana Marie Cox here (via Atrios).
The only reason – and believe me, I mean when I tell you that the only reason – why I’m giving Caruba even the slightest acknowledgment here is because he uses the horrific verdict in Parker v. District of Columbia, which overturned D.C.’s 30-year-old handgun ban, as a basis for his argument (a ruling which, as acknowledged by Paul Helmke of Handgun Control, Inc. here, ignored all prior case law to reinterpret the Second Amendment – here’s a related New York Times story).
Here is Caruba’s nonsense…
A recent U.S. Court of Appeals ruling in the case of Parker v. District of Columbia restored Second Amendment rights to the citizens of the District and, by extension, to every citizen of these United States. Not since 1976 had residents of the District had the right to defend themselves with force of arms.
Senior Judge Laurence H. Silberman (stating the majority opinion) wrote: "In sum, the phrase 'the right of the people,' when read intratextually and in light of Supreme Court precedent, leads us to conclude that the right in question is individual."
I realized that that name was familiar, though I couldn’t place it immediately; hmmm, Laurence H. Silberman, Laurence H. Silberman…
And then I remembered who he was.
Judge Laurence Silberman, along with former Senator Charles Robb of Virginia, headed the WMD Study Commission in 2004, which was intended to whitewash any negative findings from the 9/11 BakerKean-Hamilton commission for purposes of doing all it could to secure the presidential election and thus continue the Iraq war (Cheney described Silberman’s report as “enormously helpful” according to Bob Woodward in “State of Denial” – I’m not inclined to blame Robb so much the way Woodward recounts what happened).
So, it looks like Judge Laurence H. Silberman will secure a unique place in the history of both American politics and jurisprudence. First he does all he can to perpetuate the utterly and tragically failed Bush-Cheney regime, particularly in Iraq, and then he does all he can to repeal a measure to prevent untold senseless carnage in the District of Columbia in general and our nation’s capital in particular.
It may not be possible to truly measure in any real sense the blood on this man’s hands.
As I said, posting is going to slow down for a time due to other stuff going on, but I just had to note this story in USA Today yesterday where U.S. National Intelligence Director John Mike McConnell (smirk…no, Negroponte is now Deputy Secretary of State, people) asked Congress to “modify” (read: totally gut and make useless) the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978.
(And why, I ask you, should we trust Bushco to do ANYTHING right at this point and not oppose this merely by default?).
Short of that, I should note that McConnell asked for the following, as pointed out in the story…
•Permit all forms of "electronic surveillance" and eliminate requirements that restrict monitoring to specific categories such as "radio" and "wire" intercepts.
Doesn’t sound too terrible yet, but it gets better (and you knew it would).
•Allow the FBI, the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies to intercept foreign phone calls and e-mails routed through U.S. carriers, even if the senders and recipients are based abroad. Currently, one party must be based in the USA.
Oh, isn’t that just great? The world is pissed off at us enough as it is, but suppose, say, a call was made from England to Canada that we intercepted and wrongly interpreted to mean that a plane was going to be commandeered at Pearson International Airport in Toronto and flown towards the nuclear reactor at Limerick, Pa. and our Strategic Air Command ended up shooting down an unarmed passenger jet under those pretenses. Can you say “extremely ugly diplomatic incident involving possibly the only two nations friendly to us left on earth”?
Apparently, this administration still somehow hasn’t learned the lesson that we must find it in ourselves to play nice with the rest of the world.
Oh, to be governed by grownups again…
•Provide for the first time immunity from lawsuits to communications companies that aid government investigators, retroactive to Sept. 11, 2001.
Now why do you suppose Bushco would want to do this? To do all the data mining it wanted on any person or group it didn’t like, maybe, and reward the companies that allow it?
•Require that legal challenges to foreign surveillance operations be heard by a secret FISA court rather than in an open federal court as is now the case.
More secrecy – God, these people disgust me in the extreme! This and at least one other provision here would never survive a court challenge anyway.
•Give investigators one week rather than the current 48 hours to perform surveillance before seeking approval from a FISA court judge.
See the third bullet about data mining.
•Let investigators keep information unrelated to the reason for the surveillance, provided it was collected "unintentionally" and contains "significant foreign intelligence." Current law requires such information be destroyed.
Asked at a May (2002) congressional hearing how the DOJ defines "content" when it comes to electronic communications, Assistant Attorney General Viet Dinh reported, "We consider non-content to be the 'to' and the 'from.' The subject line is content." Nice that they're paying attention, but it does appear that the DOJ acts as the only check on itself, here.
I submit that “unintentionally” obtained “non-content” is pretty much useless boilerplate language that doesn’t mean anything in this context anyway, based on Dinh’s standard. And now McConnell wants to capture even that.
More importantly, though (as Lithwick and Turner note), McConnell and our intelligence services are left to police themselves absent any and all accountability.
If you think these proposals from McConnell to basically eliminate FISA under the guise of “modifying” it are garbage like I do, contact Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin and tell him (of course, this is assuming he’s stopped quaking in his boots as a response to Dubya’s veto threat regarding the Iraq Supplemental – I’m so not filled with confidence on this, but it’s worth a shot).
Paul Krugman's latest in Monday’s New York Times had to do with how "the base," if you will, for the Democrats has been driving the presidential candidates on the Iraq war first and foremost (certainly Obama and Edwards, but maybe not HRC so much among the field) as well as issues such as health care (certainly applicable to Edwards). The Repug candidates, on the other hand, have been busy sucking up to their supporters as well, though they don't constitute the majority of the country (and they never have, really, though they've wielded their clout with the assistance of other Republican constituencies, primarily bona fide fiscal conservatives).
And on Iraq, all of the name Repug presidential contenders are tethered to Dubya at the moment. However, I believe that may change before the 2008 presidential campaign is mercifully over.
This revelation occurred to me a day or so ago, so it probably occurred to at least one other person as well, but I'm going to post it here in an effort to take credit for it, so there (amplified, I think, by this CNN story which shows the Repug field tightening up a bit).
I predict that, in a craven attempt to capture the Repug nomination for President next year, Rudy Giuliani will depart from the other contenders and no longer support Dubya on the Iraq war.
Oh, it's not that Rudy is such an enlightened guy, really, or that he loves our troops so much. It's just that I believe he sees "the handwriting on the wall" whereas the other candidates don't.
I think Giuliani will do this, first and foremost, because he will never win over the fundie zealots who do whatever Dobson, Robertson, Falwell and their ilk tell them to do. And since they're the only ones who still think the Iraq war is a good idea, what good are these people to him?
The person who will get the vote of these life forms is Mitt Romney. And just take all of that talk about how the evangelicals think that the Mormons are pagans and toss it right out the window - they'll tumble for Mitt anyway. And do you know why? Because Romney is the only person in the field who reminds them of The Sainted Ronnie Reagan, that's why (Roger Simon isn't the only one with a "man crush" on this guy). And Romney's positions on Iraq and the economy, for example, echo the hard line "the base" wants to hear.
All Giuliani has to do when it comes to seeing the drag of the Iraq war on a candidate is to look at John McCain. Sure, McCain has done well to cut Giuliani's lead among Republicans by giving that speech at the Virginia Military Institute pledging his undying support for Dubya's Best Iraq War Evah, but Rudy knows that it will be a whole different landscape in the general election if he gets the nomination.
Besides, as Jim Sleeper noted here a little while ago, Giuliani loves big, dramatic moments, No sane person would have ever wished for 9/11, but as long as it occurred, Giuliani made the most of it. And as the mayor of the city that suffered the most on that awful day, his decision to refocus the legitimate war on terror some other way would have a "Nixon Goes To China" quality to it.
(By the way, Big Tent Democrat refutes Sleeper here, particularly on the excerpt below…
“He forced New York, that great capital of “root cause” explanations for every social problem, to get real about remedies that work, at least for now, in the world as we know it.”
I don’t completely understand what Sleeper is getting at here and I don’t even think he’s factually correct, but how his column about Giuliani could actually be seen as an endorsement by some is something I don’t understand.)
So there you have it - Rudy will split with Dubya, and it will allow him to squeak through and win the Repug nomination next year, which, sadly, will be a good move for the campaign against either Obama, Edwards or Hillary.
Remember, you heard it here first. And if I turn out to be wrong, I'll disavow all knowledge of this post :-).
P.S. – Here’s more ammunition for Rudy; he could probably adopt (i.e., steal) some of what is being discussed here, namely, the idea of fighting a single organized enemy (though that might be too difficult for many of his supporters to comprehend).
Good final words the other night involving Monica Goodling, someone I haven't had time to discuss, though others have - enjoy (and yes, that is Scott McClellan looking much more relaxed as he's consoled by Dana Carvey)...
Local area czar of self-importance Simon Campbell of Lower Makefield, PA, he of the web site Stop Teachers Strikes, spread more disinformation today about Patrick Murphy in the Bucks County Courier Times, alleging that Patrick is completely beholden to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a charge which is flat wrong in addition to being patently stupid (witness Patrick's recent vote against the budget, for example).
I also happened to find out that Campbell, while not busy propagandizing about teachers and unions, has also found time to start a blog (who hasn't these days :-) to advocate for his causes.
I probably shouldn't extend to him the courtesy of a link, but I'm doing so to point out something. Others are more knowledgeable about this sort of thing than I am, but Campbell really should have content with his links. Anybody can link randomly to other news sites, but the trick is to stick your neck out, so to speak, by stating your case and letting people agree or disagree with you, or is not doing so Campbell's own acknowledgement that his cases are really weak?
(By the way, this is my 2,000th post - no fanfare please; well, if you really insist...)
According to this New York Times article, Shaha Ali Riza, the squeeze of Paul Wolfowitz (now head of the world bank and an architect of our misery in Iraq), was involved in some questionable dealings herself concerning Iraq in 2003 (and this news comes on the heels of the following revelation, as noted in this Times of London story)…
Ms Riza has seen her salary rise by more than $60,000 since her move to the State Department, where she is still paid by the bank and earns more than the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice.
I mean, hey, I’m by no means Condi’s biggest fan, but how can some state department functionary earn more than the secretary of the department? But then again, that’s Bushco for you.
Anyway, back to 2003…
It seems that Riza, who had worked for the World Bank, was recruited by Wolfie in ’03 to take a job at the Defense Department, where Wolfie was still toiling under Rummy before the former bailed out for the World Bank himself. When she signed on at DoD, it was through the consulting firm SAIC, because, as we know, the federal government can’t do anything right and we must allow private contractors to run the show at all times (fine upstanding folks all, including Halliburton, as we know).
Why did our government want Riza? Well, as Times reporters Steven R. Weisman and David E. Sanger note…
It was not clear why the Pentagon specifically asked for Ms. Riza to travel to Iraq. At the time, however, the World Bank did not have a relationship with Iraq. Normal bank rules do not allow the bank to provide economic assistance to an area under military occupation.
Ms. Riza’s trip raised concerns among some bank officials, who said they did not know under whose auspices she had traveled to Iraq at a time when it was against bank policy for its officials to go there.
Bank officials said, however, that after the ouster of (Saddam) Hussein, the Bush administration tried to get the bank to help assist in the redevelopment of Iraq and that it was trying to involve the United Nations in the occupation to provide a rationale for the bank’s assistance.
“The bank was under a lot of pressure at the time to do something in Iraq very quickly,” said Jean-Louis Sarbib, a former vice president for the Middle East and North Africa at the bank. “Shaha went to Iraq, I believe, with a U.S. delegation to talk to civil society groups and, in particular, women.”
And Sarbib notes later in the story that he didn’t know anything about Riza’s trip.
Gee, Wolfie and Dubya didn’t have to go to so much trouble to try and use Riza to get the U.N. to play a bigger role. All they had to do was allow the U.N. weapons inspectors to continue doing their jobs before the 2003 invasion instead of throwing them out. I’m sure the U.N. would have been just fine with that.
But of course, had they allowed them to stay and find nothing, then that would have removed Bushco’s original pretext for the pre-emptive war. And Wolfie and Dubya, among others, simply could not allow that, right?
Update 4/20/07: This is a neat related video from avaaz.org (hat tip to Atrios - and once again, the "thumbs up" sign in Iraq means "F.U." here).
This is all sooo last weekend, I know, but I have to put in my two cents on Smerky’s latest assault on respectable journalism here.
I’m chiming in also because of our hero’s little “cowardly critics” jibe, aimed at yours truly I suppose, assuming I’m high enough on the blogger food chain, as it were, which I’ll admit is debatable, but that’s OK. But even if I’m not, Media Matters for America certainly is, and Roger Ailes has an appropriate response here, via Atrios (and no, we’re not talking about that Roger Ailes).
And going after Media Matters for this post is what Smerky is really up to here, make no mistake, though, first, he must note all of his oh so impressive experience in talk radio and tell us every other stinking thing he’s ever done to communicate how much better he thinks he is than us.
Oooo, I’m soooo scared, Smerky! Can’t you just feel me quaking in fear as I type this?
Our esteemed blogger/journalist/columnist/barking radio head/unquestioning shill and lickspittle for the freeper agenda then attempts to respond to the three citations from Media Matters; the first is “the sissification of America,” according to Smerky.
Oh, and political correctness is just absolutely going to lead to the death of America, as we all know. We should just read Smerky’s book and find out the reason why, of course!
And isn’t it funny but yet pathetically sad how Smerky can take it upon himself to speak for Nicholas Berg even though O'Reilly and other winger "fellow travelers" think it's appropriate to berate Berg's father Michael, who advocates the opposite of what they do, of course (though I think Michael Berg and Cindy Sheehan, though fundamentally right, are acting partly out of a grief impulse that I pray I, for one, never have to experience, but is their right to do so).
In the next citation, Smerky says that Muslim men who were observed praying near a food stand at Giants Stadium engaged in “a form of terrorism in itself” (of course, Smerky’s real concern here is that it might make Poppy Bush wait too long to get a soda and a hot dog).
I have a question: just how crazed are we supposed to get in this country in the process of imagining every conceivable threat before we do something stupid against a person we don’t like that ends up being legally actionable? Hey, if worse comes to worst, you notify security and let them handle it.
Finally, we have Smerky’s response to his words that could be interpreted to mean that he’s telling Asian women to stay home instead of educate themselves or else they won’t be able to instill lessons of success in their kids (or something like that..??).
I think our hero here is more guilty of confused thinking than anything else, though a reasonable person could assume that he’s playing to a stereotype. Basically, he just shouldn’t touch this issue unless he’s going to admit the role that the extended families play for people of cultures that don’t share a white Protestant or northern European ethnicity (yes, many of us have extended families also, but it’s different when your ancestry goes back relatively further than many Asian Americans).
Yes, the three Smerky citations weren't as incendiary as the other nonsense cited by Media Matters; Smerky is usually more clever than goons like Michael Savage and Glenn Beck. However, I don't think someone who has said that single-parent families pose a greater threat to our safety than guns and has openly heckled Roger Waters at a concert because Waters objected to the loss of habeas corpus rights suffered by "enemy combatants" is entitled to cry "oh, help me, I'm a rich, white conservative who's being repressed by that bad liberal media again."
Go write another self-pitying book about all of this, Smerky. I’m sure you’ll make lots more money from your gullible admirers.
By the way, on a wholly other note, I can see a point where I might have to slow down blogging activity for a little while - I'm not sure exactly how long. This is due to other stuff going on that I'll try to take care of as soon as I can.
The most important consideration now, of course, regarding the tragic shootings at Virginia Tech University is to support the victims and their families and friends as best as we are able. As the investigation and further events unfold, we will know more about anything we may be able to do or not do, whatever the case may be.
However, I could not help but notice the results of the CNN Quick Vote question which asked, “Do you think gun control laws are an effective way to curb violence?,” and 56 percent of those who responded said no. I think that’s pretty sad, because it’s an admission that we’re going to walk away yet again in the face of another abominable tragedy (and indeed, with the shooter’s face plastered on the CNN site, we seem to be in the mode now where we commiserate with each other around the water coolers and coffee machines talking about this dead lunatic before we move onto the latest piece of celebrity trash, noting perhaps near the unique twist here that the shooter is of Asian descent).
Here is what John and Elizabeth Edwards had to say…
We are simply heartbroken by the deaths and injuries suffered at Virginia Tech. We know what an unspeakable, life-changing moment this is for these families and how, in this moment, it is hard to feel anything but overwhelming grief, much less the love and support around you. But the love and support is there. We pray that these families, these students, and the entire Virginia Tech community know that they are being embraced by a nation. There is a Methodist hymn that gave us solace in such a moment as this, and we repeat its final verse here, in hopes it will help these families, as it helped us:
In our end is our beginning; in our time, infinity; In our doubt there is believing, in our life, eternity, In our death, a resurrection; at the last, a victory, Unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.
Our dearest wish is that this day could start again, with the promise of these young people alive. Knowing that cannot be, our prayer is for God’s grace and whatever measure of peace can be reached on this terrible day.
John and Elizabeth Edwards
Also, I’m not going to use this tragedy as an argument for one-gun-a-month as the law of the land and making “straw” purchases illegal (as you’ll see, Virginia currently has a one-gun-a-month law on handguns on the books). Those should be federal laws currently in place anyway.
However, I did review Virginia’s gun laws based on this from Handgun Control, and I discovered the following (CNN reports that a source familiar with the investigation said that the weapons found were a 22-caliber semi-automatic and a 9 mm Glock, both with the serial numbers filed off).
According to Handgun Control, Virginia is to be commended for performing a state background check on gun buyers in addition to a federal one, and gun owners are held accountable in the event that a gun is accessible to a child under 14 years of age. However, the following are blemishes on the state’s record of gun safety…
- There is no state requirement that gun owners register their firearms.
- State law authorizes that a record be kept of handguns sold by licensed gun dealers for only 12 months.
- There is no requirement that a gun purchaser receive any safety training.
- Police aren’t allowed to limit carrying concealed handguns.
- No background check is required for secondary or private sales.
And of course (and this echoes the sad performance of the PA legislature), cities are not allowed to enact stronger gun laws than the state.
I have a feeling that we’ll be hearing shortly arguments along the lines of, “oh, it looks like handguns were used and they’re already regulated in Virginia, so gun control doesn’t work.”
Uh, no.
After the most important part of this tragedy passes, Virginia should look at the totality of its record concerning gun safety and realize that it has issues that need to be addressed that could prevent further mass killings (or maybe not, but since when did inaction ever solve anything?).
I have to get this out of the way – please indulge me on this if you will.
In this story from today’s Philadelphia Inquirer, the paper states that the nor’easter (the weather front that came through this area on Sunday with a deluge of rain) was “not as bad as feared.”
Perhaps not in the immediate Philadelphia area, but New Jersey got socked, as noted in this excerpt…
New Jersey took a bigger hit.
Acting Gov. Richard J. Codey declared a state of emergency yesterday as flooding forced more than 1,400 residents from their homes. A man died, trapped by floodwaters in his car in Woodbridge, and a 79-year-old man died in Belleville, apparently from drowning.
In Cumberland County, about 30 families were evacuated from the Cedar Crest mobile home park in Vineland to escape the surging Blackwater Branch Creek and given shelter in an elementary school, said Anthony Gioielli, county public safety director. No injuries were reported.
But South Jersey was "not as severely impacted" as other parts, Codey said. It "will dry out before the rest of the state."
Given this account, let me tell you a bit about my day yesterday.
I drove north on I-95 into New Jersey and traffic slowly started to crawl as I approached Route 1 (and by the time I’d heard a state trooper on the radio say “If you don’t have to travel to Trenton today, don’t,” it was too late). I was unable to exit and Route 1 and head north, so I continued on 95 as it turned into 295 south (and don’t ask how a road that’s labeled north can change to south unless you know something about this area – it is kind of weird, I’ll admit), with a top speed of about 5 mph until I exited as Sloane Avenue and tried to head north from that direction. When I saw that I could not do that because traffic was so hopelessly snarled due to flooding detours, I picked up 295 south again, took a break on the way, and then picked up 73 North towards the Tacony-Palmyra bridge, having given up any hope of getting to work yesterday; at this point, I was merely trying to get out of New Jersey. But 73 was a parking lot also due to flooding, so I exited to 38 East (?) back towards 295, picked that up, then exited at 541 toward the New Jersey Turnpike, drove that route to the PA connector bridge, and finally got out of New Jersey that way before arriving home about a half hour later.
I was on the road for over four hours yesterday. It was the worst driving experience I’d encountered in 13 years, matched only by the time I was stuck on Route 202 in the western suburbs during an ice storm, at which point I was very nearly forced to evacuate my car altogether.
I also heard on the New Jersey traffic yesterday that 50 major highways in that state were impacted to one degree or another by the flooding, so my guess is that there were hundreds of other motorists in the same situation I was.
“Not as bad as feared”? Perhaps. But it was still pretty damn bad anyway.
I had been working on a post that I'd planned to submit earlier after one of the most hellacious driving experiences of my life due to the flooding in New Jersey today, but then I heard of the awful shootings at Virginia Tech University today on CNN (and the generic bubbleheaded brunette anchorperson wondering "where was campus security" while 32 people - latest count - were being slaughtered; I'm sure that campus is enormous, which makes that a particularly stupid concern given the scope of this tragedy).
Update: I apologize for being too rough on the CNN anchor; apparently there were shootings in a dormitory that preceded more shootings elsewhere on the campus by about two hours, and I believe she was asking about that.
So I'm sorry, but in light of this awful event, I don't think it's appropriate to yak about politics and the media today, even though this is going to put me behind on a few topics, including Smerky's latest nonsense.
Let's just keep the victims and all concerned in our thoughts and prayers, if we have that inclination, particularly if we know of anyone who has friends or family members in attendance at the university.
I started this in March, and to follow up, here's more from Bob Woodward’s “State Of Denial,” the third book in his "Bush At War" series.
And to make it easier to go back and read prior posts related to Woodward's book, I set up an index page of sorts here.
Like you, I’ve read and heard the mea culpas from Paul Bremer, the former head of the Iraq Coalition Provisional Authority, saying that we could have accomplished what we set out to do had more troops been deployed at the beginning of the war (though Bremer, as noted here, almost immediately backpedaled on that when he uttered those words in 2004).
Well, instead of providing the excerpt where Bremer faced off with Jay Garner, I thought I’d include the following, where Frank Miller, an intelligence official contacted by Condoleezza Rice to oversee security issues and find out what was going on, traveled to Iraq in March before Bremer left to give you an idea of the confusion that seemed to be everywhere.
(pp. 289-292)
Rice was hungry for data and intelligence. She wanted to know what was really happening Over There. She kept telling Frank Miller, “Get me more. Bring me more.”
In March 2004, she sent Miller to Iraq to find out what things were really like. He went as her representative, but he tried to downplay his NSC credentials. Not helpful, he thought. He wanted to avoid polished-up presentations calibrated to impress and perhaps mislead visitors from Washington. He never asked to meet with (Paul) Bremer (head of the Coalition Provisional Authority). He didn’t think it would be useful, but he also didn’t want to risk being turned down. Such was Bremer’s perceived independence from NSC oversight.
Miller was struck by how the CPA had become a hermit city, ensconced in the Green Zone. He explained to one CPA official how he planned to fly around the country to visit with the U.S. military division commanders who were in charge of the tens of thousands of U.S. troops.
“Wow,” the CPA official said. “I wish we could do that. I wish we could see the country.”
It was telling, Miller thought. There was a sense of lethargy, like a bunch of basketball players passing a ball back and forth, back and forth, all reluctant to take a shot. It’s March and the turnover (to Iraqi leadership) is set for June, he thought. Quit passing and launch one at the basket.
Miller and the two people he’d brought with him – retired Army colonel Jeff Jones from the NSC, and an active-duty Army colonel from the Joint Staff – linked up with the 1st Armored Division in Baghdad where the deputy commander, a one-star general named Mark Hertling, was an old friend of Miller’s from his Pentagon days. The group joined a Humvee patrol through an area just south of the notorious Shi’ite Baghdad slum, Sadr City. Screaming poverty, Miller thought – no fresh water, few working sewers. People were living in hovels and throwing trash and human waste in their front yards.
American soldiers in Sadr City and elsewhere now seemed to be acting as much as engineers as infantrymen, setting up water distribution points and improving some roads. But the only money to fund these ad hoc projects came from the military’s emergency funds, called the Commander’s Emergency Response Program (CERP). Miller made a note that they would need to expand and expedite these CERP funds - walking around money for the battalion and brigade commanders – as they were the only expenditures that seemed to have a visible impact on the population.
Woodward then describes how Miller came across Iraqi kids who gave him the thumbs-up sign and he was glad that they seemed grateful, not realizing that it is the Iraqi equivalent of our middle finger.
Everywhere, Miller found that the Iraqi units suffered from a desperate shortage of vehicles and communications equipment. And the Civil Defense Corps – whose first mission was to guard valuable infrastructure like banks and other buildings, thus freeing up better-trained forces for more difficult duties – was a creature of the individual U.S. military divisions that parented them. One division had a one-week training program, another a two-week program, and a third had extended it to three weeks. It was ridiculous. Earlier that year, Miller learned, a two-star general had sent a report to Defense practically begging for national standards for the new Iraqi corps, but it hadn’t happened.
Miller recorded in his notes the comment of one division commander: “What’s wrong with Baghdad?” the commander said, meaning Bremer’s CPA. “Why won’t they give us the money to do this, and to do the reconstruction projects that need to be done?” Building Iraqi units, both police and military, and rebuilding the country’s infrastructure were prerequisites to an exit strategy for the U.S. But there was too little coordination to do the job right.
Iraq looked and felt like a war zone. Attacks had climbed again, to about 1,000 a month. Every soldier Miller saw carried a weapon. A mess hall Miller was eating in was attacked with mortars. When he flew in helicopters, the door gunners flew with weapons pointed down at potential targets. Miller wore a flak jacket, and he and his two aides traveled under the watchful eye of an earnest young lieutenant of field artillery from Kansas who was assigned as his escort officer. When they moved on the ground, it was in convoys with Humvees and big sport utility vehicles, a machine gunner on top of the Humvees and the escort officer with his M-16 pointed out the window. It was good on the one hand – Miller felt pretty safe – but then he thought, “We ain’t winning any hearts and minds this way.”
The rest of the chapter describes how Miller traveled to multinational units and found situations such as the one in Basra, where the British forces were teaching the Iraqis how to patrol; the problem was that they had English maps, so they told the Iraqis to memorize patrol routes instead (walk 10 blocks to a marketplace and turn right, 5 blocks to a mosque and turn left, then turn left again to return to the station. etc.).
Also, I’m sure we remember how Faux News and other propaganda sources continually fed us the Bushco line about how the U.S. was part of a multinational force once called “the coalition of the willing.” Well, keep that in mind when you read this…
Miller moved on to meet with the Polish commander of the Multinational Force, made up of troops from 23 nations. This was the shakiest part of the coalition, but an important fig leaf to suggest that the war was a broad international effort.
The Polish division commander told Miller, “I’ve got 23 separate national units. They have 23 separate rules of engagement. I pick up the phone. I tell the colonel in charge of the Spanish brigade what to do. He picks up his phone, calls Madrid and says, “I’ve been told to do this. Is it OK?”
Miller understood that this meant the Multinational division had little or no fighting capability.
Woodward also notes the discussion between Miller and Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who was the ground commander at the time of Miller’s visit, about the non-communication between Sanchez and Bremer (this book is a case study of avoidance behavior by people in government). Bremer, for his part, warmed himself up to Dubya directly to the point where he barely dealt with Rumsfeld at all towards the end of his time in Iraq.
And as I read this, I can’t help but wonder why Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry didn’t exploit all of this confusion more thoroughly for political reasons during the year of the presidential election (not primarily important versus the safety of our people, I know, though). I can assure you that, has the shoe been on the other foot, Dubya and Karl Rove would have done no less.
(The title of this post pertains to this great movie, by the way, about a vastly superior writer to the one critiqued as follows.)
As I noted earlier, Kathleen Parker of the Orlando Sentinel has been one busy little freeper bee, as it were, buzzing all over the place and stinging with disinformation-laced invective.
Before she sounded off on Imus, though, she decided to have a literary fit of sorts over the capture of the 15 British sailors and marines by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran.
Now there is no way I will defend Ahmadinejad; he’s a kook who has been granted influence on the world stage because President Brainless decided to marginalize Khatami and other Iranians who could be moderate and work in concert with us first by his stupid declaration of that country as part of the “axis of evil,” and second, by the illegal invasion of Iraq; anyone beyond the age of approximately five years old could see that the war would be a boon to the Shi’ites who dominate the Iranian theocracy in the long run.
However, Parker waxes apoplectic in her column because Ahmadinejad was placed in a position where he could be perceived to show “mercy” to his captives by releasing them, and again, our actions in that region have ended up propping up this guy (and of course, Parker doesn’t even bother to acknowledge the argument that diplomacy played a part in the release of the captives and is thus a more beneficial, adult strategy than declaring unilateral war).
And Parker saves her fiercest rants for “the West” which has, in her view, “diminished motherhood so that women can pretend to be men.” And as Parker extends this line of thinking to all women (and positing somehow that male rape is preferable in combat to female rape…I don’t even want to imagine what is in Parker’s mind here), she offers us this…
At the point when our men can stand by unfazed while American servicewomen are raped and tortured, then we will have no cause to fight any war. We will have already lost.
Positioning women to become pawns of propaganda, meanwhile, is called aiding and abetting the enemy.
I have a couple of points I’d like to make, and before I get to the first one, I’d like to quote Parker again here…
But let's assume for the sake of argument that women, despite all evidence to the contrary, are as capable as men in any battle. If our goal is to prevail, then shouldn't we also consider other ramifications of putting women in combat and/or in positions of risk?
Those ramifications include women's unequal vulnerability to rape and injury, as well as cultural attitudes toward women that may enhance their exposure to punishment or, alternatively, make them useful to our enemies.
So what are you saying then, Parker? That women in the military shouldn’t be allowed to fight in combat? Is it less important to allow them the opportunity to serve as they see fit, fully knowledgeable of the risks and in a manner commensurate with their skill and training, than it is to hold them back lest they be made “useful to our enemies” for propaganda reasons?
I’ll tell you what, then; read about the courageous women who have served this country in the name of George W. Bush’s War For LiesTM and paid the ultimate price as a result here. Maybe if you do, it will begin to occur to you how insulting your words are to our fine service people who share your gender.
And speaking of Dubya, I’d like to come back to your closing sentence…
Positioning women to become pawns of propaganda, meanwhile, is called aiding and abetting the enemy.
If so, then Bushco is guilty as charged, and most of our corporate media, collectively, are unindicted co-conspirators (and the unraveling of the story of Pfc. Jessica Lynch is Exhibit A in support of that argument, as noted here).
So Mrs. Parker can rail against Ahmadinejad’s propagandistic farce with the British crew (which some have argued is a payback for our treatment of Iranian diplomats in Iraq – yes, some of that umbrage may be equally contrived, but we should have been prepared for Ahmadinejad’s nutty response), but when it comes to “adults (who) are too dim, brainwashed, or ideologically driven to see what’s obvious,” she should try looking long and hard in the mirror before she decides to write her next column.
Gosh, three posts about President Brainless in one day – I can’t remember the last time that happened.
