NSA and Fourth Amendment: From "shall not" to "maybe, maybe not"

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause..." 4th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution

The Boston Globe reports today that the electronic eavesdropping law they want to make permanent allows the government to engage in spying without any warrant or oversight as long as, in the case of a phone tap, it is "reasonably believed" that one of the parties is overseas, and the "intended" target is not the American. So, even assuming the best of motives, if you are an AP reporter with the mother of all breaking stories coming from Iraq which spells trouble for the administration, watch your back. Bad things happen to reporters in Iraq. At a minimum the damage control operation will have real-time info.

The Fourth Amendment recognized that searches were sometimes required in the name of the law, but requires authorities to obtain warrants from judges and have "probable cause." What the Founders sought to limit were pure fishing expeditions, and harassment. It could be argued that when massive numbers of "transactions" are processed, as Mike McConnell, Director of National Intelligence calls them, then an audit of search results and keywords would substitute as the oversight intended by warrants.

I'm not so sure such massive data mining operations aren't counterproductive. If you know, for example, that Terrorist A is going to call Terrorist B on such and such a day on a cellphone terminating somewhere on a Philly cell tower network, then that is a search that is limited in scope. If you are looking for "patterns" and sweeping every conversation that includes the words "Bush sucks," you are probably wasting the taxpayer's money, which would be better spent training all those Arabic translators that we're so short of, and training the potential Arab-American agents that the CIA is turning away in favor of Midwestern guys who stand out like sore thumbs in any Middle Eastern bazaar. On other words, good old fashioned spy work (yes, like Valerie Plame did, before she was exposed!)

Any Congress that accepts "reasonably believed to be overseas" is a Congress that might be interested in a bridge I've got to sell. Of course people won't understand what has really happened until your million dollar marketing plan suddenly seems to be getting out-guessed by a company headed by that Young College Republicans prick you used to know, and you'll never be able to prove a thing.

Yalies for Impeachment of Bush and Cheney Sign-in and discussion

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-Violated the oath of office to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, specifically the Sixth Amendment right of American citizens, in criminal matters, to be told of the charges against them, to counsel, and a to speedy and public trial by a jury of their peers. The rights of foreign nationals may be debated, but the rights of Americans are not open to debate. They are stated clearly in the Constitution, and "enemy combatant" precedents obviously cannot apply to a vaguely defined "war on terror" intended to have an infinite horizon. Jose Padilla was detained and tortured for 4 1/2 years in violation of his rights, and the administration to this day claims the authority to do so to any American it accuses of terrorism.

-A corollary charge, they have sought to overturn the Bill of Rights of the Constitution by the transparent device of claiming wartime powers which would last forever.

-Violated the oath of office to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, specifically the Fourth Amendment right to freedom from search without a warrant, in the NSA warrantless surveillance scandal. The media assists the administration in twisting the issue to be whether or not the government can spy, when in fact the government has always been authorized to spy on anyone as long as it does so within the law, with a warrant obtained before or even after the fact. Referring to this, former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean says Bush is the only president in history who has openly admitted an "impeachable offense."

-Lied to Congress and the American people to draw the country into the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

-Given secrets to the enemy in wartime by ordering the public identification of American intelligence agent Valerie Plame, which constitutes treason, because Plame was engaged in tracing weapons of mass destruction before they reached American shores

We, the undersigned, call upon the U.S. Congress to perform its duty under the Constitution to remove from office those who have committed such high crimes and misdemeanors, and to commence impeachment proceedings against first Richard Cheney, then George W. Bush.

Back to YaliesForImpeachment.org

More Elephants in the Room

Another reminder that the American media and "opposition party" are ignoring scandals that could help put this administration away. Remember the August 2004 NYC Financial District terror alerts (conveniently just before the election?) Yep, they blew another agent's cover. From the New Zealand Herald "Outing of spy stuns security experts"

"The revelation that a mole within al Qaeda was exposed after Washington launched its "orange alert" this month has shocked security experts, who say the outing of the source may have set back the war on terror....Reuters learned from Pakistani intelligence sources at the weekend that computer expert Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan, arrested secretly last month, was working under cover to help the authorities track down al Qaeda militants in Britain and the United States when his name appeared in newspapers around the world."

Another piece on this from the awesome Christian Science Monitor: "Did US blow cover on Al Qaeda mole?"

And the best Cheney dirt has yet to be "discovered," trading with the enemy, no less. Washington Post, "The Profitable Connections of Halliburton":

"During Cheney's tenure at Halliburton the company did business in all three countries [Iraq, Iran, Libya.] In the case of Iraq, Halliburton legally evaded U.S. sanctions by conducting its oil-service business through foreign subsidiaries that had once been owned by Dresser....During the 2000 campaign, Cheney told ABC News that "I had a firm policy that we wouldn't do anything in Iraq, even arrangements that were supposedly legal." But, Mayer writes, "under Cheney's watch, two foreign subsidiaries of Dresser sold millions of dollars worth of oil services and parts to Saddam's regime."

Deadly Procrastination

I'm pissed cuz I'm not getting paid for this, and I should be studying for my CCNA (the Cisco mother of a test.) But you guys cannot design legislation enough to fight your way out of a wet paper bag, so We the People will show you, AGAIN, how to do your $150,000 a year jobs (not including great bennies.)

The Real War on Terror and Iraq Troop Support Act (or something like this, real cornball, but the Republicans do it) must meet 3 requirements:

- It must have TEETH. That means cutting funding. The Democrats know full well that Bush cannot be "shamed" into anything, and the new tack of having him sign "waivers" is the biggest horse's ass idea to come out of the party in a long time. The man has no shame. That's why we're in Iraq in the first place.

-It must meet the troops' needs as they redeploy out of Iraq and into Afghanistan, and home.

-It must put regional diplomacy first, so people who speak the language will want to rat-out the terror cells, because the United States got off its high horse and said I'm sorry about a few things. We can't find them by ourselves, because they all look and sound alike to us.

Re-draft the Iraq War Powers resolution to revoke the authorization to make war in Iraq, and to order the president to start drawing down manpower. Back it up by cutting money for everything except force protection. If he does not, then he will be clearly outlaw in the eyes of most of the American people, and proceedings can begin for his impeachment.

The Democrats are just pretending to not know what to do. If they wanted to immunize themselves from "not supporting the troops" by cutting off money for the war, they'd word the resolution to say "full funding for troops in the field, with further authorization required for increases in overall manpower." Duh.

They would also say to the Republicans: You want to go there? Each week we'll Swift Boat you on:

-Hillbilly armor

-360 tons of lost HMX explosives

-Veterans benefits

Want to argue about who didn't support the troops?

The Democrats know what to do, but it's easier to sit on your fat ass collecting your pay than drawing fire from the right wing nut-jobs they'll be sending your way when they see you are WINNING, who'll probably be waiting outside your office with a loaded gun for a potshot at you. Tough shit. Let them taste a tiny fraction of what our boys face every minute of every day in Iraq. It'll smack some sense into them.

Jack Murtha and Jim Webb are on the right track, but the Harry Reid-Nancy Pelosi-dick-around gang keeps covering ass for the "members" who are "hesitant" to be "perceived" as "not supporting the troops." Excuse me while I heave. Every day wasted on the "waiver" idea is another day another family somewhere will get that dreaded knock on the door, by men in spiffy uniforms. Yesterday: Sgt. Chad Allen Toll free numbers for all congressmen:
(800) 862-5530 or (800) 833-6354 Or e-mail this post to them!

We Are All Jose Padilla

Dear Americans,

I write this to you in outrage as an American. It has been revealed that Jose Padilla, an American-born citizen with the same rights as you or I, who was never charged with a crime upon his arrest, given a jury trial, or any of his birthrights under the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, has been tortured to the point of insanity during his time of detention, most of it incommunicado by order of George W. Bush, president of the United States.

As the federal government has declared the prerogative of depriving Americans of their Fourth Amendment, it is nothing less than my duty to declare that I have not relinquished my Fourth Amendment, or my Bill of Rights, be it for the War on Terror or any other war. In the event of an arrest in which I am guaranteed the rights that are mine by birth as an American, I will go peacefully, as my confidence does and always has lain in my great system of government and jurisprudence. In the event of arrest in which the intention is to declare me "enemy combatant," to be held without benefit of my American rights, I am bound, by the blood of all those who died on soil bearing names like Omaha Beach, Utah Beach and Juno, to resist with all the force at my disposal.

I will not fail the courage of forefathers who sacrificed fighting forms of government which claimed the very same prerogative which George Bush now openly and arrogantly claims. This is one of the forms of tyranny addressed by the American Revolution. I know full well my country's history, and my generation will not fail in its turn.

The politicians will make light of this momentous revelation on Padilla, and feign ignorance of the import. But We the People understand full well the meaning. Now we are all Jose Padilla. The press has belittled the importance of the historic Padilla case and feigned ignorance of the import as well. But our rights will not be made a mockery of. It is now the government which should be on trial, not Jose Padilla.

The allegations against Padilla have changed many times. It is clear that the Padilla case is intended to establish the designation "enemy combatant" once and for all against a free people in the first war which by definition has no end.

The federal government is now outlaw by virtue of the Padilla case. Contrary to his many incorrect assertions that his highest duty to is to "protect the American people," the president's highest duty, according to his Oath of Office, is to uphold, protect, and defend the Constitution. The president has betrayed this solemn Oath. We remind all officers of the United States of their oath to the Constitution, not to the president.

I am granted great privilege by history and coincidence of birth to be alive and an American at this time of great peril to my Constitution, which embodies the greatest hope against darkness and tyranny yet devised by the mind of political man. It is a privilege to be alive to participate in her defense, that future generations may breath the air of freedom that I have breathed. No president has attempted what George Bush has attempted, unlimited authority not only to detain American citizens, but to torture to the point of incompetence as well, without charge, without trial, without counsel. In the words of our forefathers, don't tread on me. We the People call upon loyal officers to do their duty, to arrest George Bush for the crime of high treason.

Ralph Lopez
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Yale Class of '82

Anyone Say Nice Shot?

Looks like the Democrats are finally getting it, that they can just change the War Powers Resolution that they gave Bush in the first place, and it is a pile of steaming crap that the commander-in-chief has sole authority in a war. I wrote it back on January 8th, and emailed it to all those assholes. Better late than never.

The Constitution is clear and unambiguous on one point: Only the Congress can declare war. Therefore, Congress can undeclare war. In addition, Article One and Article Two of the Constitution delegate respective powers during a war. So not only is re-drafting the resolution the only way to rein in a recalcitrant executive branch. It would even pass legal muster.

Anyway, I just wanted to take credit. And Jim, you can contact me about that response to the state of the union speech. I figure that's good for a consulting fee. You said: "Not one step back from the war against international terrorism...But an immediate shift toward strong regionally-based diplomacy."

Now haven't I been saying that we should apologize to Iran for how we screwed them over under the Shah, and ask them step up to the plate in Iraq?

They're supplying the Shiites with bombs? You mean to tell me if some invader from across the sea took over my next door neighbor, and we are all related back through a thousand years when Iran was the Persian empire, and I'm not going to send him bombs? And I think I'm next? You must be kidding me. Only Americans expect people to be good and hold still while we bomb them.

Iran has the key. They're all cousins.

OK Jim, I'll just take a beer at some good bar in DC. You don't gotta pay me. Even if I gave you the idea, no one could have delivered it as perfectly and beautifully as you did. That's why you're the senator, and me just a writer. Cheers.

GOP Marching Orders: Conflate Iraq with War on Terror

At least they are being honest. Reps. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., and John Shadegg, R-Ariz., wrote in a recent letter to Republicans:

"If we let Democrats force us into a debate on the surge or the current situation in Iraq, we lose. Rather, the debate must be about the global threat of the radical Islamist movement,"

In other words, do everything you can to confuse the war in Iraq with the greater war on terror.

Bush is losing Afghanistan because of Iraq. Against the best advice of the best minds on the subject like the CIA's Michael Scheuer, he did not declare war on Al Qaeda but on a tactic, terrorism, and used 9/11 to go after the guy he thinks tried to kill his daddy. The Republican letter is the clearest statement yet on what their strategy is, has always been, and always will be: Equate Iraq with the war on terror, and pretend the blunder that is on par with Hitler's opening of a second front against the Russians never happened.

The only way Democrats can win and unite the country is to split Iraq and the war on terror into the two distinct issues that they are, and point out that our presence in Iraq is actually LOSING the war on terror. Where once we had the world united behind us, against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, northern Pakistan, and in cells around the world, we have given militant Muslims who were appalled by 9/11 more reason to hate us, and to start thinking that maybe we deserved it after all. These are the very Muslims we needed to turn against Al Qaeda. Will the Democrats hammer the message all the way home? Or simply allow themselves to be blamed for not having the spine to stay in Iraq until something good happens there?

It's important, because as long as Bush's twisting of reality survives, we as a nation will always be divided, at each other's throats long after we have pulled out of Iraq. And Bush will have done what bin Laden never could. And divided, laboring under a thick fog on the battlefield laid down by the Bush administration, the real war on terror can never be won.

Re-Draft the Iraq War Authorization! Stop the "Surge!"

please circulate

Ok this is getting crazy. For Joe Biden to say that because Bush is commander-in-chief he can make war without end is patently ridiculous. There is no way the Founders, who explicitly gave war-making powers to Congress, envisioned an Executive whose war-making no one could stop. RE-DRAFT THE IRAQ WAR AUTHORIZATION! We shouldn't have to do Biden's job for him; it can be written in a way which gives troops now present in Iraq all the supplies they need while putting a brake on authorized manpower. The commanders on the ground have spoken, and true to form Bush has replaced them with yes-men. I have updated the toll-free numbers to your congressman on my website. (800) 862-5530 or (800) 833-6354.

We must remind these idiots that the Constitution gives them all the tools they need to rein in this out-of-control president, including impeachment. At this rate of casualties, 2 more years in Iraq means a couple thousand more young guys dead, and Iraq not one iota more stable for it. Article I and Article II of the Constitution make the president the "commander-in-chief" of the Army and Navy," but specifically empowers Congress to "make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces."

Show your congressman that you understand your Constitution better than they do. Pass this around.

http://ralphlopezworld.com

Merry Christmas Call Campaign

I'm trying to get into the spirit but this choral music is only annoying me knowing that three more families are going to have a real shitty Christmas. Air America reports 3 American dead in Iraq yesterday. I'm sitting in the Harvard Coop and the singers are really good, but I'm sorely tempted to start shouting "Jesus wants us to bomb Iran!" at the top of my lungs and scream at all these people Christmas shopping to wake the fuck up. Then I sink a little thinking that it's not their fault. In these parts nearly everyone hates George Bush. I'd be preaching to the choir and some little old lady would pipe up and start going off on him even louder than me. It's happened. Something about the Shrub sets people off on tantrums either way. For or against. The Uniter not Divider.

The Defeat-o-crats are letting themselves be set up to be blamed. These guys are professional punching bags. The Bush surge strategy is nothing more than a closing gambit to keep Iraq together just long enough to get out of office and make sure someone else is in office when it falls apart. Then they write history that the Democrats lost Iraq. That's the whole plan, and it's going to cost how many guys their lives?

Those families of the ones killed today will be getting the news right about now that they are going to be having a real shitty Christmas too. And there's still six days to go until Christmas.

Harry Reid just announced that he's not going to walk and chew gum at the same time, that the number one issue in the new term is ethics. Nothing about Iraq. Nothing about the Military Commissions Act, or Jose Padilla, which amounts to an override of the Bill of Rights. Nothing to start blunting the set-up to be the Defeat-o-crats, such as redrawing the War Resolution to get out of Iraq, surround the Pakistani tribal areas where the Pakistani government is having a love-fest with the Taliban, and going on the political offensive to "stop making terrorists faster than we can kill them," in the words of a Delta Forces soldier quoted by Air America's Laura Flanders. Those Delta Force liberals.

The problem is that our own safety depends on throwing George Bush on the tender mercies of all the people he hurt. Nothing less than charges as a war criminal may be able to bring outraged Muslims back to the fold of moderation. And now what does he want to do? He wants to bomb Iran. Yesterday's Air America interview of Scott Ritter is a must-listen, on how the Iranian people actually still LIKE Americans, after all we have done to them, even if they don't like George Bush. That could change real fast with fresh footage flooding Al Jazeera of Iranian women and children with their faces blown off. I'll post the MP3 of the interview as soon as AAR archives it.

The phone numbers (free calls) to your congressmen are still on the front page of the main website. Make your Christmas present to the troops a couple of phone calls to your congress-people telling them to cut the shit and get them the hell out of there. As many calls as we can manage between now and Christmas.

New Senator Hands Bush His Ass at Reception, Pelosi Democrats Faint at the Sight of Blood

Here's what happened, since media reports aren't giving an accurate picture. Newly-elected senator Jim Webb was at a White House reception for new senators and he purposely avoided the receiving line, because he did not want his picture taken with Bush. Bush tracked down Webb, a veteran with a son in Iraq, later in the party anyway. He chummed up to Webb in that frat boy way of his and asked: "How's your boy?" Webb said: "I'd like to get them out of Iraq," to which Bush replies, "that's not what I asked." Then Webb says: "How my boy is, is between my boy and me."

Poor George. He doesn't get the answer he wants so he gets testy. "That's not what I asked." Bush could have improvised and said well we all want them to come home, and left it. But no. He gets mad at Webb for not kissing his ass. True to form, the Pelosi Democrats are taking Bush's side. Bush can't fathom how a father might not be in the mood for happy talk not knowing if his son might be laying wounded at that very moment. And knowing that the man who put him in harm's way is standing right in front of him.

Webb didn't ask to talk to Bush. Bush came to him. These moments are important because it's the beginning of saying the emperor has no clothes. If only we had a way to sweep these "impeachment is off the table" Pelosi clowns out and replace them with a hundred Jim Webbs, not one more 22-year-old just starting out in life would have to die in a civil war where both sides hate us. America would be safer, and the war on terror would be well on its way toward being won.

Here's the difference between the Harry Reids-Rahm Emmanuels-Joe Bidens of the Democratic party, and Jim Webb: Jim Webb is a MAN. You could think a horse is pretty much a horse, until you stand a thoroughbred racer next to an old nag. Then the difference becomes painfully apparent. The slick politicos of the Democratic party are going to start looking like what they are standing next to blunt straight-talkers like Webb. And the sooner the American public sees the difference, the better.

Democrats: What to do Now

The election of Hoyer over Jack Murtha for majority leader is a worrisome smoke signal that the Democrats in congress are going to play the centrist, bipartisanship card in order to keep their asses fat and happy without having to do much work. This is the time to understand how the right-wing base works. When they put their boys in place, they're not done. They're just getting started.

If their representative doesn't nominate someone right-wing enough for a big job, they start with nasty phone calls. Forget emails, a phone call ties up the lines and makes it hard to get business done. Ditto for faxes. An email you can just delete. If you only have time for an email, it's better than nothing, especially one worded in a way that makes clear what a cheap, two-bit traitor to the cause he is.

Right wingers skip the reasoning part. They know what makes these political animals tick. Votes, contributions, exploratory committees for primary challenges, and threats of bodily harm. Somehow they wind up getting their way. Just remember, they tell their congressmen, at office meetings, town hall meetings, anyplace they show up in public, over the phone with everyone taking turns calling them, and through old fashioned paper letters: if you aren't up to doing what you were elected to do, we'll find someone who is. It's called representative democracy, and it's beautiful.

Democrats are playing the can't-walk-and-chew-gum-at-the-same-time game. Either we LOOK FORWARD with a positive agenda, or we LOOK BACK with investigations. But when Republicans had congress they pushed their agenda AND tried to impeach Clinton. Yes sir, they could do it both. What's with this Attention Deficit Disorder in our guys?

It's not either-or. That's the set-up for the yaboos, a carefully-crafted talking point agreed upon by both sides to snooker the slobs into thinking, well, shucks, I reckon I don't want to look BACKWARDS, do I? Backwards is like, no good.

Fulfilling your constitutional duty is not looking backwards. It is looking forward to a restoration of our hard-won republic, and rights which men died for. Tip: the right-wing base has the toll-free numbers of a dozen or so key legislators stuck on the refrigerator beneath one of those little magnets. So they're handy for a burst of outrage after reading the morning paper. If they were in power, they would say things like, Don't you sucker punch us with this looking forward or backward crap. You can do both. We want investigations of the criminal wrongdoings of the Bush administration. And we want you to roll back those damned billionaire tax cuts. A few of us are planning a trip to your office to elaborate if you don't change your tune. What day is good for you?

Limber up your dialing finger, get ready to use it. It gets easier as you go, then it gets fun. The challenge is for citizens to organize in ways that shadow the role of the evangelicals in the right-wing base, who use church-based study committees and telephone banks to pressure their congressmen. It could be a couple of friends or neighbors calling yourselves a local committee to coordinate talking points and phone calls.

Any strong action against the Bush adminisration is branded as coming from the "left" of the party, and go-along-to-get-along, mild Democratic reforms as the "center." But a majority of Americans believe Bush should be impeached if he lied about the Iraq War, and a majority want our troops out of Iraq, like, yesterday. We ARE the center.

Right-wingers don't worry about pissing off their representatives, like liberals do, afraid they won't get their agendas prioritized. This is the heart of the matter: right-wingers are under no illusions as to who is the employer in this situation, and who is the employee. They don't just tell their congressmen to jump. They tell them how high. Over and over.

Dump Pelosi, Murtha for Speaker

What ran through my mind as I watched Republicans-Rummy coming apart at the seams was: what took so long? Sure, I feel great like everyone else but this doesn't answer for the thousands of American lives and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives that are only the most visible damage of the rapidly closing Bush years. Americans finally came around. But wow, that stretch of bloodlust was a frightening spectacle. By now, at the very least, ten times the number of innocent people that died on 9/11 have died from us trying to set it right. Yes, now I am afraid of these people. I've seen what they can do.

They can take a ghost of a threat (a friend of mine says "they DID find some powder" to justify invading Iraq, and I like this person!) and watch bombs being dropped on civilian neighborhoods for Shock and Awe, and think well at least when we kill innocent babies it's an accident, but they do it on purpose in terror attacks, as if the dead would say, no problem, I know it was an accident.

Howard Zinn says a better word than "accidental" is "inevitable." If you know that civilian casualties happen 100 percent of the time when you bomb residential neighborhoods, then it's the same as doing it on purpose. You become the terrorist.

Did Americans come around soon enough to undo the damage of the Bush years? The country is bankrupt, global warming is closing in, the Constitution is in shreds since the Military Commissions Act, and there is still plenty of time for the Democrats to start the Bipartisanship Shuffle, which comes out anytime they don't have the stomach for the fight they are getting paid good money to fight.

First step: dump Pelosi. Jack Murtha for Speaker. She should be disqualified on grounds that, when she ruled out impeachment on 60 Minutes, she had no right to speak for the entire institution. Did you hear me, congressman-in-my-district? I don't give a damn what Nancy Pelosi said. You just worry about doing your own job.

Which brings me to the second step. What happened under the radar in this campaign was that a whole farm team of Democratic candidates was created, most notably with the veteran candidates of Fighting-dems.org. These are candidates who took their opposition to the Iraq War as their point of departure and then began softening up the Republicans, attacking them on Iraq from their vantage point of unassailable patriotism, and blasting the perception that being anti-Iraq War was the same as being anti-American.

It was a hastily assembled charge by political newbies but it worked, changing the political landscape so that Tuesday's victory by the Democratic party was possible. They were cut down almost to a man except for Sestak, Murphy, Carney, Waltz, and Webb who all made it to the top. Mission accomplished.

With Ned Lamont proving that a powerful incumbent like Lieberman can be knocked off in his own primary, the Pelosi faction should be careful about cutting and running behind "bipartisanship." Partition Iraq, bolster Afghanistan, secure the ports and do the rest of the 9/11 commission recommendations. Do the First Hundred Minutes Agenda or whatever they are calling it. Then start the subpoenas flowing, get ready to start asking rude questions about Halliburton, the NSA, Jose Padilla, plans for secret detention centers for American citizens, bundles of hundred-dollar bills being tossed around like footballs in Iraq, Pat Tillman, no-bid contracts for Katrina, and whether George Bush REALLY did not know that there were different kinds of Muslims, like Sunni and Shiite.

The farm team, the new wave of citizen-candidates like Lamont and the Fighting Democrats, will be waiting if the new Democratic leadership does not deliver. We took the Hill but a lot of good men went down. The casualty rate was appalling. But the job got done, and in politics, you get to get up and play all over again.

Ho hum why can't these Democrats fight? What's worse, a botched joke or a botched war?

First of all, Kerry never should have apologized except to say he's sorry for Republicans continuing to twist his meaning and and therefore continuing to insult the troops in a way he never meant. That said, a party that knew how to fight would OVERNIGHT crank up ads reminding voters of the 360 tons of high explosives in Iraq lost by the Bush administration which are being used against our troops to this very day, of hillbilly armor, and of Dubai ports, until people barely remember that it was a botched joke that started the whole thing.

Announcer: "Republicans are attacking John Kerry for flubbing a joke...a mistake which has cost no soldier his life or has made the nation less secure, BUT..."

I'm not writing the rest, it should be clear in the mind of any half-competent consultant ninconpoop in Rahm Emmanuel's office, and they're getting paid and I'm not.

Many Democrats have already scattered and joined the chorus against Kerry, which only lends credence to the Republican distortion. You don't have to campaign with the guy, but why reinforce the false talking points of the enemy? This is a time to close ranks. Kerry's initial refusal to apologize was excellent. But if he were a battlefield commander he'd call a halt in mid-charge leaving everyone confused and wondering what to do just as the bullets were flying thickest.

Last, remember when Rudy Guiliani actually DID blame the troops for our problems in Iraq? My God what the Republicans would have done with that one had the shoe been on the other foot. I haven't seen a single attack using that.

Blunt the Republican attack, use it as a hook for your own issue, pour fire into the opening. Come alive down there the general's watching! Over!

http://ralphlopezworld.com

Blame Clinton? North Korea acting exactly as experts predicted, the "spiral vs. deterrence" theory

In the first year of any program in international relations there is one book all students are required to read: "Perception and Misperception in International Politics" by Columbia professor Robert Jervis. It's as basic as the Merck Manual if you are a scientist. The book explores, at great length, how aggressive national behavior intended to deter can backfire, and set off a "spiral" of aggression. In a nutshell it explains why countries like North Korea and Iran are not the same as Hitler, and George Bush is no Winston Churchill.

The "spiral vs. deterrence" model shows us why right-wing attempts to blame Clinton for all this are a joke. The end results of Bush's foreign policy were entirely predictable. As long as we kept our focus on Afghanistan, no one was afraid of us. When Bush went off the deep end and invaded Iraq, everyone rushed out to get a "Bush deterrent." Whether you get deterrence or a spiral depends on whether the world respects you, or is afraid of you.

For a good short outline on spiral vs. deterrence see this MIT professor's lecture notes.

Here is a link to Jervis's classic. And here is a blog post I wrote back in March, on just this issue.

Join the How to Get Out Of Iraq Debate

It's always true: the people lead the politicians, not the other way around. Bush equates the division of Iraq into a loose confederation of semi-autonomous states to "failure," but our own Constitution never would have been ratified without the recognition and powers reserved to the thirteen original colonies. The concept of federations taking into account regional differences is nothing new or sinister. Iraqi politicians have been talking about it from the start. The debate is better referred to as "confederation" rather than "partition." Iraq is already in reality three different states that must be cobbled to co-exist as one loose unit, rather than one state which would be split into three. "Partition" invokes carving up something that is whole, a bad connotation. Remember George Bush is the man who up until two months before the invasion did not know that Iraq consisted of Sunni and Shia.

There are two main challenges that require the engagement of an administration that can do something other than order bombing:

- Cut a deal for the oil-poor Sunni region that would assuage their fears of being left behind

- Usher in regional alliances to counterbalance Shia-Iran hegemony

Iraq is now a terrorist playground because power is distributed among hundreds of tribal and militia fiefdoms whose boundaries are blurry and fluid. In this environment the Al Qaeda foreigners can move about at will, train, and learn the limitations of American tactics and weapons in "live fire" exercises. True states with security apparati that consolidate large regions are a precondition for identifying and isolating non-indigenous Al Qaeda fighters. As it so often happens, the truth is exactly the opposite of what George Bush says: pulling out of Iraq would make problems for the terrorists. Whatever comes after, Iraq could not be a better terrorist haven than it is now.

And if Al Qaeda claims victory when we withdraw, so what? Bush is a good enough poltician to know how to counter that spin if he wanted to. Claim victory right back: Saddam is gone and Iraq is a functioning confederation. We're not going home, we're going to Afghanistan, where the whole world supports us. Meet you there. Bring it on.

The most thoughtful thread I have found that explores the confederation solution is at the Washington Post blog for the article "Partition Debate Splits Iraq." You can see right away some smart people participate in this blog. Anyone can add their comment. The people lead.

It's all really quite simple. Either we pull out of Iraq with the best partition plan in place we can manage so we can re-start the real war on terror, or we wait until we have created enough terrorists to carry out multiple successful attacks here in America, in which case we WILL pull out of Iraq, because we'll need the army RIGHT HERE. George Bush probably wouldn't mind having the army to command against us. Remember how badly he wanted to revoke Posse Comitatus after Hurricane Katrina?

We think Bush's policy of staying the course in Iraq is crazy, but in another way it makes quite a bit of sense. See Richard Clarke's "Ten Years Later."

Were we to re-focus the war on Afghanistan and the global terror cells, we might stand half-a-chance of convincing on-the-fence Muslims that we are engaged in a righteous cause against the people who attacked us. Their religion accommodates a concept of revenge that is narrow in scope. But no amount of jaw-boning about spreading democracy in Iraq will convince them we are not there to steal their oil, convert them to Christianity, and use their women as prostitutes. Bush says we cannot afford to pull out of Iraq. But the rest of the country outside his small, rich, undeployed faction, cannot afford to stay.

More posts on a real plan for Iraq here.

Fighitng Dems ad "Back on Track"

watch ad (if one don't work try another):

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This online ad "Back on Track" was written and produced by Ralph Lopez independently of the candidates the ad supports. He is solely responsible for its contents. If you would like to bring this ad to television in your community in support of Fighting Democrats listed at www.fighting-dems.org, please contact Ralph Lopez Media at ralphlopez2002@hotmail.com. Community television producers are especially welcome. Many thanks to the artists on whose images this work is built, who bore witness to the event and the outpouring of world support that followed. Artistic credits available upon request.

Talking points dispatch for 9/12

The president turned a national day of quiet mourning into a Fear-Fest to justify his terrible decision to invade Iraq. Complete with a door from a destroyed fire engine as a prop. Potential recruits to Islamic radicalism will see the mighty United States unnerved by this band of outlaws, and will be even more pumped up to join. A ragtag bunch of jihadists immediately vault to equal footing with the mighty German army and the Soviet divisions. In their caves they must have been glued to the TV set eating popcorn and feeling pretty good about themselves.

Al Qaeda is a criminal organization with a political agenda that appeals to frustrated, downtrodden people. They should be treated with no more respect than that. For Bush to compare them to the great ideological contests between capitalist democracy, Nazism, and communism is to grant them a prestige that no amount of Al Jazeera advertising could have bought.

"If we yield Iraq to men like bin Laden," Bush said, "our enemies will be emboldened, they will gain a new safe haven, and they will use Iraq's resources to fuel their extremist movement. We will not allow this to happen."

Once again the Backward Reality Machine. Our counterproductive stay in Iraq DOES embolden our enemies. Their safe haven is Pakistan and, now, Afghanistan.

We defeated the German army in 4 years. Why couldn't we defeat a bunch of ragged-ass barefoot criminals in 5? The Nazis had scientists, submarines, and crack fighter pilots. Al Qaeda's only secret weapon is George Bush.

Straw Man Watch: "Whatever mistakes have been made in Iraq, the worst mistake would be to think that if we pulled out, the terrorists would leave us alone. They would not leave us alone." BUT WHO thinks this, Mr. President? Name me one person who "thinks" the terrorists would leave us alone if we pulled out of Iraq. Introduce him to me. I'll talk to him and tell him different. The war on terror isn't over when we pull out of Iraq; it's just beginning to be won.

"The safety of the American people depends on the outcome of the battle in Baghdad." And if you believe that, I've got some nice land in Florida I want to sell you.

Cut-and-paste a couple random comments from Eshaton's unusually canny readers to round it off:

"Just to remind everyone that al Qaeda was unwelcome in Iraq while that awful Saddam was in charge. Ya know, it occurs to me that old Saddam might have been a pretty good ally in the fight against radical jihadism."
fourlegsgood, irritated | Homepage | 09.12.06 - 1:38 pm | #

"Amazing... what al-Qaeda could not ever do on its own with Saddam in power, the Bush Administration will do for them, at its own expense: Install a Shiite Theocracy in Iraq. It's all ironical an' shit."
watertiger | Homepage | 09.12.06 - 1:38 pm | #

GOOD STUFF: A letter by one Roger Goulet in today's Boston Globe, on Dick Cheney's argument that because of the war in Iraq "there has not been another attack on the United States." There is a Latin name for this ancient logical fallacy, "post hoc ergo propter hoc," or "false cause." The writer found it in an old college textbook. I remember this one! Irving Copi's "Introduction to Logic." Professor Copi gives the example of "the savage's claim that beating his drums is the cause of the sun's reappearing after an eclipse."

OTHER READING;

"Afghan role changing, quarry still elusive" by Charles Sennott, The Boston Globe 9/12/2006

"In a tiny hamlet here, a story is told and retold of the suffering of a local baker, Shah Mohammed, who was imprisoned in Guantanamo. He has become part of the local lore that shapes the image of America as a brutal empire and fuels the hatred that inspires militants..."This is not the same Shah Mohammed that he was before. People are angry. Why did they do this to an innocent man?""

Bush Quotes bin Laden; Calls for Rumsfeld to Resign Miss Point

The Democratic leadership, and some Republicans, are focusing on Get Rumsfeld "me-too-ism" as a way of proving anti-Iraq war credentials. But is getting rid of Rumsfeld enough? Focusing on Rumsfeld sends the message that the Iraq invasion was a good idea, but it was badly executed. This leaves in place the central Bush premise that, in the end, the invasion was justified and will make us safer in the long run.

Missing from Democrats' talking points are the plain facts that the invasion was a "gift" to bin Laden, according to CIA analyst Michael Scheuer, and that it "appeased" Al Qaeda, according to top bin Laden lieutenant al-Zawahari. As long as the president has become fond of quoting Al Qaeda, let's quote them a little more:

"We thank God for appeasing us with the dilemma in Iraq after Afghanistan. The Americans are facing a delicate situation in both countries. If they withdraw they will lose everything and if they stay, they will continue to bleed to death." - al-Zawahari in 2003 after the invasion of Iraq

The Democrats are ignoring a wonderful opportunity to turn Bush and Cheney's "appeaser" attacks against them. In his latest Fear Offensive in which he quoted bin Laden the president said: "The question is: Will we listen? Will we pay attention to what these evil men say?"

How slow and perfect a pitch must it be before the Democrats take the swing?

The truth is there was no good way to occupy a simmering powder keg of ethnic hatreds the size of California. Should have used more troops? What troops? We're having trouble keeping the ones we have there now, some going on their third and fourth rotations.

Democrats love the Rumfeld debate because it saves them from taking a stand. It's easy to say the war was badly managed. It's harder to say that it was wrong from the start, and then push for a partition plan, which is the only plan that makes sense for getting out of Iraq. It's harder to explain that it was George Bush who cut-and-ran, from the central front in the war on terror, Afghanistan and northern Pakistan, and exploited 9/11 to make his Halliburton buddies ultra-zillionaires.

Republicans love the Rumsfeld debate because it is a way to distance themselves from Bush, although it doesn't really. It merely makes Bush and Rumsfeld into a good-cop-bad-cop routine.

The problem isn't Rumsfeld. The problem is George Bush, and his counter-productive and morally repugnant interpretation of pre-emptive war. Knocking off Rumsfeld might be a good way of showing the administration is not invincible, but by itself it will not beat Bush's successful strategy of terror alerts, foiled plots, and new levels of fear-mongering that are coming with the Fall elections. Only the truth can strip Bush of his Protector-in-Chief iconography. As long as the Democratic leadership consists of spineless, craven cowards who fear the reaction of the Pit-Bull-Right to the truth, these truths will never make the front page. The tragedy is how pathetically this compares to the daily bravery of our young soldiers in the field, who deserve much better.

Rumsfeld and Bush: the "Appeasers"

Talking points target: Rumsfeld calls Bush critics "appeasers." Now didn't I just see that word somewhere? Oh yes:

"We thank God for appeasing us with the dilemma in Iraq after Afghanistan. The Americans are facing a delicate situation in both countries. If they withdraw they will lose everything and if they stay, they will continue to bleed to death." - al-Zawahari in 2003 after the invasion of Iraq

In other words, George Bush APPEASED Al Qaeda with the invasion of Iraq, which took the heat off Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, where we were winning. This Zawahari quote is in Michael Scheuer's book, "Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror" (Scheuer is the former chief of CIA's bin Laden Unit. You can see the quote in this "searchable" copy of the book at Amazon.com)

More talking points on this "appeaser" business:

- The invasion of Iraq took the fight AWAY from the enemy, not TO them. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.

- The invasion of Iraq was a "gift" to bin Laden:

"But on March 2003 bin Laden - to his astonishment - got his longed-for gift, complements of America, when the United States invaded Iraq." - from Scheuer's "Imperial Hubris," see "searchable book" page here.

- And when Bush accuses truth-tellers of saying the "soldiers died in vain": I say, only God can say who has died in vain, not George Jesus Bush:

"You saw me before I was born.
Every day of my life was recorded in your book.
Every moment was laid out
before a single day had passed." - Psalms 139:16

In other words, no one ever dies in vain.

Old Democrats, Hillary, Short-Circuit Lamont Iraq Message

This is going to be short because I have to make the rent, and no one is paying me to write these damned posts.

Ned Lamont and the New Democrats are saying what has to be said. Hillary and the Old Democrats doing everything to undermine it. Hillary, not only unlikely to win any match-up with Jeb Bush in 2008, but about the only Democrat guaranteed to lose it, never dares utter the truth that Lamont and the New Dems are trying to make heard: Iraq is not the central front in the war on terror; it in fact hurts the war on terror. Afghanistan is the central front, and the Paki border, and places like Londonistan. It's global.

If Clinton and the national party just shut up and said nothing it would be better. Lamont surely knew he was on his own from the start. What he may not have expected was the back-stabbing. Hillary, when asked to comment on attacks on Lamont as the "Al Qaeda" candidate, said "I just think we have to be united as a country." Ick. She wants to be president?

Today George Bush said pulling out of Iraq "would be a defeat for the United States in a key battleground in the global war on terror." Instead of taking the shot Bush opened himself up for, Phil Singer, spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, responds with Kerry's old boilerplate "the White House's Iraq policy has been a tragic failure."

Sure, it has failed, we ALL know THAT, but the commander-in-chief just says hang in there. We'll eventually win. So why don't you Bush-haters just go away?

This stuff only makes the New York Times, but the rest of the nation's media takes its cues from it, and it shapes the coverage.

Cheney now says the election of Ned Lamont would "embolden Al Qaeda types." I'm tired of saying it over and over again. This is starting to feel like August 2004, when Kerry absolutely, definitely would not GO THERE. Then lost. Embolden Al Qaeda types?

Betraying (not "outing", this is not about gender) Intelligence Officer Valerie Plame and her covert networks tracking WMD emboldened Al Qaeda types, as did losing 300 tons of HMX explosives in Iraq (remember that one?) As did fighting against the establishment of a 9/11 Commission, as does fighting its recommendations now. The Bushies link every attack and foiled plot to us having too many civil liberties. They do everything to keep us safe except the work. (SEE THE LOPEZ 12 STEPS FOR WINNING THE WAR ON TERROR.)

It's all on this website. Steal this research!

Ned Lamont can't say all these things himself. He needs a party behind him to respond to attacks while he drives home the positive agenda.

Think of what happens when any Democrat dares criticize the commander-in-chief on an important point, like whether or not Bush let bin Laden go at Tora Bora. Republicans pounce like a pack of wild dogs.

It's not that Old Democrats can't do any better. It's against their interests for Lamont to win. If Lamont shows that a powerful Democrat like Lieberman can be knocked off for his complicity in the Bush regime, any one of them could be next.

It's not the media's fault. Sure, they're perpetuating the voters-trust-Republicans-more-on-national-security line, but that's because the national Democratics are saying nothing to replace it. When you give me nothing to write by deadline, I'll have to write whatever. Meanwhile, ten thousand miles from where politicians plot the impact of each word on their political careers down to the nanometer, another 21-year-old watches his life end, scared and alone.

Lamont Shows Majority Still Has a Voice

Now that the train to restore America's long-abused middle-class has resoundingly left the station, the test of how Democrats have matured politically will be how well they attack Republican hypocrisy while staying on-message with the Six for '06 Agenda, which was stolen from this website by the Democratic leadership, thank you very much.

Make no mistake, the Hillary-Billary-Rahmmanuel-Reid Axis didn't suddenly decide to do the right thing. It was FORCED on them, not least by the writing on the wall represented by the Lamont tidal wave that peaked last Tuesday.

Almost two years ago we and other Americans called for primary challengers to the "Lame Democrats," and our prayers were answered. Lamont in CT, Tasini against Billary Inc. And now we have the greatest bunch of straight-talking, ass-kicking candidates poised to take over congress that this country has seen in a long time, patriot-FBI-whistleblower Colleen Rowley, Bob Bowen, Eric Massa, Tammy Duckworth, and the rest of the blunt, war veteran, take-no-shit-from-these-NeoCon-bastards crew, the Band of Brothers (bandofbrothers2006.org).

The Loser "Centrists," and the lawyer-DLC-consultant-strategists who deep down don't care who wins as long as their millions are safe, talk as if a winning campaign isn't supposed to talk and chew gum at the same time. You don't attack because - oooo! - they call us angry and negative, no ideas! You don't get specific on issues because - oooo! - they say we are going to raise taxes! Until now, the Democratic party has been one masterly exercise in how to lose elections without looking like you are trying to. Who cares? It's not their kids bleeding in the sand. And the corporate money contributions keep rolling in to both sides just the same. The most important constituent to these fat, amoral slugs is their Beamer mechanic.

To Ned and Jon Tasini and the Band of Brothers. You guys have made me proud to be an American again. You can't even know what that means.

The Joe Lieberman-Hillary Axis isn't the "center," because WE are. That's a fiction whose lifespan is about up. Bill Clinton took over the party by jerking the wheel hard to the right while fishtailing left on social issues, making the NARAL SUV surburban soccer moms the center of gravity. With a deft move from the podium Bill kicked half the country over the ledge so he'd only have to worry about the other half. The half with money. Some more, some less. But some. And since reporters love to bandy about labels like "centrist," "moderate," and "left-wing" because it saves them from doing real work so they can get to the bars and start the serious drinking that much sooner, the only way to counter the spin will be to repeat the positions, exactly as Lamont has been doing.

Stop waste and fraud in healthcare so more people can be insured? That's "left-wing?" Make top colleges affordable for everyone? That's the radical fringe? Well, I reckon you better mark me down as one, what a kick in the head.

"The Six for '06 agenda is a carbon copy of my New Contract for America, which I have been emailing to Democratic honchos for years. Ask Tom Vallely, Kerry's Dog Soldier campaign buddy over at the Kennedy School. And a real nice guy. The high point for any activist is to get his ideas stolen. That's what you work for; that's the measure of success. And you, my small but influential audience, have done it again, whatever you are doing.

Ever since John Kerry decided to go with calling Iraq a "distraction" from the real war on terror in the first presidential debate, splitting Iraq off from the "central front" status the Republicans badly need it to have in peoples' minds, you have been shaping the debate.

It's too bad Kerry waited until two months before the election to take a position on the war. Like I said in my book, while George Bush spent a year honing his attack to a razor's edge, Kerry spent a year coming up with one.

The Six for '06 puts national security where it belongs: First. During '04 Bill Clinton advised Kerry to focus on the party's "strengths" on domestic issues. Knowing full well, as anything but a dumb politician, that nothing matters until you are out front on national security. Wiley Old Bill helped set Kerry up, I think, because he drools at the chance for all that Washington nightlife all over again, likker and wimmin, and this time Hillary too busy to care. YEEHAW!

The Republican-"Centrist" Fear Machine lost no time tarring Lamont's democratic victory as a danger to the nation, with a good old fashioned August, pre-election terror alert thrown in. Dick Cheney, (Joe Lieberman's new best buddy! Take note, ad-makers!) said Lamont's win reflects a "pre-9/11 mindset." He said Al Qaeda "clearly are betting on the proposition that ultimately they can break the will of the American people in terms of our ability to stay in the fight and complete the task."

In other words, the same old shit.

George Bush is right. We DO live in a dangerous world, contrary to "those" naive enough to believe there aren't people out to hurt us. I don't know anyone who says that, but they must be out there, because George keeps saying they are.

What he doesn't say is the danger is a direct result of his policies. Before the occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan was well on the way toward stabilization, with all of NATO onboard. Al Qaeda was on the run, even if Bush did let top leadership escape at Tora Bora. Then came the invasion that proved to Muslims that we were not out to avenge 9/11, but to steal oil, build permanent bases, and humiliate Muslim men. If I read in the paper that foreigners have occupied my country and are killing and raping American women, I guarantee you I'd be planting IEDs in the middle of the night, too.

The blunder of Iraq is on the magnitude, militarily, of Hitler opening the second front in the East against the Russians. We'd all be speaking German right now if Hitler had contented himself with half the world instead of all of it at once. Even if you agree with the disgusting, un-American proposition of unprovoked, "pre-emptive" war, just as Hitler's war was lost the minute he took on the Russian winter, our war on terror is lost as long as we stay in Iraq, which prevents redeploying to the Afghan-Paki border to hunt down the people who, um, actually attacked us.

Democrats give aid and comfort to the enemy? Uh, Dick? Joe? George? Betraying (not "outing", this is not about gender) Intelligence Officer Valerie Plame and her covert networks tracking WMD is what gave aid and comfort to the enemy, as did losing 300 tons of HMX explosives in Iraq (remember that one?) As did fighting against the establishment of a 9/11 Commission, as does fighting its recommendations now. The Bushies do everything they can to keep us safe, except for one thing: the work. (SEE THE LOPEZ 12 STEPS FOR WINNING THE WAR ON TERROR.)

There will always be conventional war. It will start and it will stop. What George Bush's Amazing Invisible Enemy can do to my Constitution is my main concern. Once you give up a right, you never get it back, except by force. I'm still hoping this country can avoid that kind of trouble. The best start is for us to agree that if there is another wave of terror attacks, it will be George Bush's fault. No one opened up that second front but him. He did it against the advice of absolutely everyone, including his own father and James Baker III. SIGN THE THE IMPEACH BUSH IN THE EVENT OF ANOTHER ATTACK PETITION

And now, here is my original New Contract for America. Compare it to the Six for '06 Agenda. The key is to get away from the endless litany of politicians promising everyone everything welfare workfare car-care affordable housing ad naseum that is the usual Democratic spiel. Folks can't remember all that. And accomplishing even a few of the Six for '06 would put the country way ahead of where it is now.

Ralph's New Contract for America (abridged, full post from last year here)

-Distinguish Iraq from Real War on Terror - We are properly at war in Afghanistan and in the mountainous border regions of Pakistan, and Iraq is exactly the quagmire bin Laden wanted. It draws resources away from the hunt for Al Qaeda and from the critical stablization of Afghanistan. Redeploy to Afghanistan and the Paki border. Then we mop up, make peace with the Muslim world (an apology for the Shah of Iran might go over well,) and put the genie back in the bottle. Get back to the good old days when armies fought each other and left civilians mostly out of it. Hell, some guys just LIKE to fight.

-Save American Retirement Security - Time magazine says more and more people who worked twenty or thirty years for the same company are losing their pensions. Recently-passed laws allow corporations to renege on their pension promises.

-Restore college opportunity, by enabling students to go to any college they an get into on a need-blind basis. Yes, I'll take credit for this idea, which I've been pushing since my first days as a candidate in the early 90s.

-Environment - A "Marshall Plan" within the first hundred days of a non-Republican majority to start down the path of clean, sustainable energy independence.

-Be the Pro-Constitution Party. Again, if Bush can't give us safety without shredding the Constitution, we'll find someone who can.

-Worker training and re-training to smooth job transitions after lay-offs. We are the only Western industrialized nation without it. Why?

-Don't Get Bogged Down on Health Insurance. Sure, progressives are for it, and the Bush Faction is against it, but the details should be kept to, if you are working full-time, you get health insurance, and you start paying for it by recovering the $10-$20 billion wasted on Medicare and Medicaid by over-billing. Then you start rewarding doctors for preventing as well as curing. You'll see a lot of docs getting their patients into olive oil and alfalfa sprouts.

-IMPORTANT: All of the Above Means NOTHING without a paper voting trail in every American precinct. - a no brainer.

A Blogger's Appeal to Connecticut Democrats

Dear Connecticut Democrats,

As Ned Lamon's historic campaign to unseat Senator Joe Lieberman draws to a close, the considerable forces of the Democratic Establishment, including those in the media, have settled on one last-ditch defense: the idea that this should not be a "one issue" race based on Lieberman’s alliance with George Bush on the issue of the Iraq War.

Put aside for a moment the callousness of this type of spin, which treats the thousands of unnecessary American deaths in Iraq as 'just' one issue to be given equal weight with all the others. I’d like to take a moment of your time, on the eve of the primary on August 8th, to ask you to consider if Joe Lieberman truly represents Democratic party values on many issues besides the Iraq War.

The talking point making the rounds among Joe Leiberman's establishment supporters is that Senator Lieberman, not withstanding Iraq, is a pretty good all-around Democrat. But is he?

– In 2004 Joe Lieberman voted for Republican-sponsored "tort reform" the Orwellianly-named “Class Action Fairness Act,” which gave George Bush his first victory of his second term, and closed the door to many class-action lawsuits of the type which had previously held automobile companies, tobacco companies, and asbestos manufactures liable for fraudulent practices and other wrongdoing. Sen. Harry Reid, who opposed the bill, said: "The real world effect of this law will be that when a phone company systematically bills customers for services they had cancelled, or a plumbing company routinely overcharges customers by $10, those practices will not be brought to light."

-In 2005 the Republican Bankruptcy Bill made it harder for individuals (but not corporations) to declare bankruptcy, most notably in the one-third of bankruptcy cases which are primarily due to sudden, catastrophic medical illness. Lieberman spoke for it and against it, voted for cloture (cutting off debate and moving the bill toward passage) and then voted against the bill.

– In 2005 Lieberman abstained in a close vote which saw the passage of CAFTA, the Central America Free Trade Agreement, even though 27 Republicans withstood immense pressure from the White House to stand with organized labor and the environment. Of course Lieberman was a reliable supporter of NAFTA, which started the flight of jobs to low-wage countries lacking any meaningful labor rights.

The fact of the matter is that the Democratic Establishment is frightened of a Lamont victory in next Tuesday’s primary. Why? Because it would signal that elected Democrats cannot continue to ignore the interests of their own constituents in matters regarding corporate privilege.

A Lamont victory tells Democratic power brokers that they cannot continue to vote to ship American jobs overseas in the name of "free trade", cannot vote with the telecommunications giants on the issue of net neutrality, in short, cannot talk one way and act another simply because Democrats have nowhere else to go.

For too long, powerful Democrats have been on the same corporate campaign contribution gravy train as Republicans. Yet they feel safe because the alternative to voting for them is thoroughly unacceptable.

In Ned Lamont we have a clear and courageous example of how the primary system is supposed to work. Put simply, primaries are there to keep elected politicians true to the principles on which they were first elected. Without vigorous and robust primaries, politicians become institutions unto themselves, barely different from those whom they were sent to Washington to oppose.

In mounting a dead-serious challenge to Joe Lieberman, Ned has already made history, and perhaps shortened our ill-conceived occupation of Iraq by years. And perhaps, thus, saved countless young American lives. On Tuesday, August 8th, please make Ned Lamont your Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate. Connecticut, a nation's tired eyes are upon you.

Ralph Lopez
blogger at
http://ralphlopezworld.com/

pls. post, circulate

Apocalypse Now

Now that the Middle East is blowing itself all to hell thanks to George's Excellent Adventure in Iraq, the Christo-fascists, our equivalent of Islamo-fascists, are all a-twitter that the Rapture is a-comin'. Folks in Coastapedia don't know what's going on out there.

While I was waiting for a flight in a Dallas airport restaurant some weeks ago, a few obnoxious waitresses with what seemed to be a combined IQ of 140 all hurried to the C-Span screen breathless and excited anytime the Middle East came on. They didn't seem the type to take an interest in international affairs otherwise (not because they were waitresses; because they were dumb and their manners gave them away. One kept looking over at me pointedly whenever she said to a customer at another table: "Can I get you anything ELSE, sir?" If you want to work at a place where people don't sit for long periods of time over a muffin and a cup of coffee, don't work at an airport. They're waiting for a flight, and that's the only thing that gets them into your overpriced dump in the first place.)

Then it dawned on me: these people are LIKING this stuff.

Confirming my suspicion, Bible Belt radio was gushing with talk of Ezekial and Daniel and the connnections made in certain verses between Syria and Iran. I can report that on the road between Artesia and Mescalero, I heard one AM Holy Roller say we should "rejoice" in the events. Some people are selling their possesions. I haven't decided what it means to the big picture, but the most powerful and influential part of Bush's base loving this shit can't be good.

That would be the Ralph Reed-Pat Robertson wing of the Protestant religion, much to the chagrin of the many kind-hearted, true-spirited believers who make up the rest of Christianity. The Bush Base which turns out at elections is among the most twisted corruptions of a good religion that the world has ever seen. In a hundred years people will still wonder how teachings of "love one another" were once contorted to the conclusion that Jesus would have bombed Iraq.

So let's cut right to the chase: it's clear by the Hannity-Bill O'Reilly Ministry of Propaganda that we are fixing to bomb Iran, a country that was never our enemy until the CIA overthrew its democratically-elected president in 1953. Even then, Iranians, by and large, did not blame the American people but the American government. The foreign policy of which, a case can be made, had been hijacked by "Mad Dog" John Foster Dulles, secretary of state, and his brother Allen. Dulles ordered the overthrow of president Mohammed Mossadeq despite the fact that his boss, Dwight Eisenhower, liked the guy, and once said he would like to give Mossadeq "ten million bucks." Back then, though, anyone who did a stupid thing like nationalize their own oil, to keep it from getting stolen by foreigners, was in for a bad end.

If you really want to understand 9/11, you start with Stephen Kinzer's "All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror" (2004.) I thought I understood Middle East politics, but I really didn't until I read this book.

Iran has promised to unleash 40,000 suicide bombers against us if attacked, as it has every right to. It's funny how Americans are offended if a country doesn't hold still while we bomb it. You're not playing FAIR! Now HOLD STILL!

The doctrine of asymmetrical warfare says that, when an enemy is coming at you with tanks and F-16's against your rubber sandals and rocket launchers, you hit back any way you can. We have been matching Apache helicopters and A-10 Warthogs against slingshots and AK-47s for so long, it's a wonder there are any Jihadis left to fight.

Now, 50 years after the Europeans gave away a chunk of land that didn't belong to them in order to satisfy a debt that did, we're facing waves of fanatics who've stood about as much humiliation as they can stand. Call me naive, but I always wonder, why isn't Israel smack in the middle of Berlin? I always thought it was the losing side that had its cities razed and its lands carved up, ever since the Edamites slew all the Hippotites who slew all the Batamites ad infinitum. How did we get from Germany losing the war, to Israel being on land that has been Arab since before the Ottoman Empire? I know about the Covenant, but I'll get with that when you throw all the white Americans from Texas-to-California out of their houses and give it back to the Spanish, or better yet, when we ALL have to give it back to the Indians, which, judging by what we've done to the environment, might not be a bad idea.

The endgame of Bush's Permanent War is pretty clear. Generate enough terrorist attacks to suspend the Constitution, so that military force can be used to defend new Green Zones in America, lush islands of Halliburton money made the dirty way on one side, with the rest of us on the other, including the poor slobs who believed they'd be raptured right out of it all.

Sign the Impeach Bush in Case of Terrorist Attack Petition

The Lopez 12-Step Program for Winning the War on Terror, 2006

1. Realize Al Qaeda turns von Clausewitz on his head. There are no standing armies to attack, no tank formations, no air bases. Al Qaeda's source of strength is popular support, which increases or decreases as a direct result of US foreign policy actions. Rather than a traditional military hierarchy, Al Qaeda is a "network." Al Qaeda 2.0. There is no head to cut off. It can only be starved from the bottom, politically.

2. Isolate Al Qaeda in the Arab world by announcing a shift in US policy which redresses grievances held since our 1953 overthrow of democratically-elected Iranian president Mohammed Mossadeq. Apologize for it. Don't worry, even if you don't understand, the Middle East will, and it will make a difference.

3. Get off the oil junk. The former head of the CIA's bin Laden unit, Michael Scheuer, identifies our addiction to oil as the root cause of Middle Eastern terrorism. Slap a windfall profits tax on oil companies, and use the proceeds to finance a Marshall Plan for U.S. Energy Independence. Attack any resistance from the oil companies as unpatriotic and heedless of the national security. Play hardball with these bastards. We need to cut back consumption by, say, 75%. Sure, we need oil for some things, but non-energy efficient light bulbs isn't one of them.

4. Follow up with a concerted push against our corrupt allies in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, and the rest, to allow their people political rights. Don't argue with them. Just tell them, if you guys keep beating heads at peaceful democratic protests, there go your spare F-15 parts. Do it again, there goes $10 million of your military aid. How do you like me now?

5. Announce our timetable to leave Iraq.

6. With the political initiative firmly underway, go on the military offensive. Take 50,000 troops, seasoned with experience in Iraq, and position them at strategic passes in the Pakistani mountains and tribal areas. Make a giant noose. Take no bullshit from the Pakistani government. You are either with us or against us. Make them see the light. See what happened to that government in Afghanistan? That can happen to you.

7. Drop the cream of Special Operations Forces inside the noose and let them do their thing. Believe me, if the damned politicians would let them, they'd find the terrorists.

8. Prepare the world for the imminent capture of Bin Laden. Tell them look, we're giving you downtrodden people a chance, now let's start fresh. You know this guy attacked us and in your religion, we are entitled to justice. THIS WAR IS OVER. We can all be friends. Now lets go solve the problem that's going to kick ALL our asses: global warming.

9. No more blank check for the Israeli government to crush Palestinian civilians. They may be our friends, but when your friend is wrong, you tell him. Even if he is your friend.

10. Institute a universal draft, Israeli-style, that gets us old guys (up to 52, I say) into combat gear, since we may need long-term peacekeeping in Afghanistan. Which should be made into a shining model of democracy, even if it takes until our grandchildren's time to do it. It's not fair that the young guys do all the fighting while our fat asses stay safe. This should also go a long way toward making future wars obsolete, when congressmen have to hump a pack and drop and do twenty. Wouldn't that be beautiful?

11. Check the last chapter of my book American Dream for my idea on how to rebuild the World Trade Center. The symbolism is important, it takes too long to describe here.

12. Now we're hunting terror cells around the world, mopping up with the cooperation of governments and people who know where they are, who have the inside scoop. We'll still have battles with the hard-cores, but their recruitment will dry up. AMERICANS ARE THE GOOD GUYS AGAIN! Eventually the violence will fade, and we can pre-occupy ourselves with the task of building a sustainable human society, based on a stable Earth population.

Base the big carrots and sticks of a New U.S. Foreign Policy on world carbon and pollution reduction, along with zero population growth, since once we control man's footprint on the planet, fifty percent of the environmental problem solves itself. This in turn means implementing rudimentary social security systems in Third World countries along with basic healthcare, especially for children, since having more children than can be claimed by appalling infant mortality rates is the default social security system in these parts of the world, where the elderly can only rely on family support. Also high on New Foreign Policy priorities should be a global war on slavery and child prostitution, with the full force of U.S. sanctions coming down on countries which do not comply.

The Constitution will have survived, and we can get back to drinking, making babies, eating carousing and just living our lives. Heck, life is supposed to be FUN and we shouldn't be worrying about this shit. But for awhile we have to, because the road we're on now leads to NOWHERE.

An Open Letter on the High Cost of College, to the Band of Brothers Candidates

To Mike Lyon
Executive Director, Band of Brothers 2006
http://bandofbrothers2006.org

Dear Mike and the Band of Brothers,

I am a blogger who runs a political website, http://ralphlopezworld.com.

I write to you and the Brothers to ask you to consider refining the second key value of the Band of Brothers, "Expanded education opportunity," to include the words "including universal access to college for American students, free of obstacles born of financial need."

I have been arguing for this since my first run for state representative in my home state of Massachusetts, and I still believe it is a winner that cuts across class and party lines. Whether you are making 90 Grand a year or 35 Grand, you can hardly imagine how you will deal with the record-high cost of college, especially if your youngster (or - heavens! imagine paying for two or three!) is very bright and qualifies for a prestigious private institution.

Every report indicates that this is the first time since World War II that top colleges increasingly reflect family wealth in their student bodies rather than personal merit. Many prestigious colleges lament that they do not have the financial means to enable every student who is deserving of admission to attend. I reference one article on the problem at the end of this letter. There are many.

College is no one's welfare hand-out. You must earn it, and once in, you must perform to the standards of the school. It has always dismayed me that prominent politicians from Bill Clinton to George Bush on down propose programs that tinker at the margins, like making more or less of tuition payments tax deductible, but never dare to think big.

Why not say we support a national initiative that will enable any student to go to any college he can manage to get into if he or she is works hard enough? That should be well within reach of the world's wealthiest democracy. It's good economics, it's good education, and it's just plain fair.

I think that if the Brothers can agree to the insertion of this particular plank in the Key Values, it will attract voter and media attention to counter the charge that "Democrats have no ideas", which of course is bunk. The problem is we have too many, which is a good thing, except it makes it difficult for the voters to wrap their minds around one big identifying issue.

Whatever else these candidates think, they might say, at least I know that they want to make it so I don't have to worry about how to send these kids to college. Especially the smart one, who at 12 says he wants to go to Colgate, (or Amherst, or...) How in the heck am I going to afford Amherst? Worse, how do I tell them that, no matter how hard they work, even if they are admitted, they might not have the money to go? How do I explain to my children that this is not how the "land of opportunity" works?

To me this is a conservative, all-American issue. The Republicans talk about opportunity in their dishonest, hypocritical way ("opportunity" means opportunities for Halliburton) but they never do anything about restoring REAL opportunity. The beauty of this issue is it puts Republican hypocrisy squarely in our sights: How can you be for "opportunity" if it doesn't start with the first rung on the ladder of success, college? You shouldn't be excluded from a top school because your parents aren't poor enough to qualify for special programs, but not rich enough to afford $60,000-a-year.

This has a personal resonance for me. Though from a family of modest means, I had the privilege of going to a top Ivy school, because people before me, in the Civil Rights Movement, worked and fought to open doors for the benefit of people they would never know. My experience at Yale allowed me to realize my full potential, and it pains me to have seen my country move in the opposite direction since that time. I feel some responsibility for keeping doors open to Americans of all classes that were open for me, sometimes, I have realized after studying the Civil Rights Movement, at a cost in blood.

The plank I am proposing is general enough that there are many ways to get there, yet the goal is clear. With the tax-breaks-for-millionaires and windfalls-for-Halliburton-and-oil-companies economic policies that the incumbents now have in place, we should be in no mood to tolerate Republican cries that this would cost too much. Let them say it. The cost of Bush's Iraq war is topping $2 trillion. According to the Pentagon, we are spending the equivalent of a full year's room, board, and tuition at Yale every 25 seconds. I think we should engage this debate on where the money is going in this country, so we can draw a sharp distinction for the voters between what is, and what could be, in terms of a concrete goal. (I love to think of the ads we could write for this. Yes, I'm champing at the bit for battle...)

We have the Iraq issue, I think, firmly in hand now. They are on the run. What we need, in addition to the common sense agenda outlined in the Band of Brothers Key Values, is one big signature DOMESTIC issue to fire the imaginations of Americans, and the media. I learned in my not-so-successful political career (I never actually won!) that you get farther by hammering home a few big ideas people can remember, than by trying to recite a litany. If voted on and/or approved by the Band of Brothers, I would be happy to make available my research, and to work with campaign communications teams to sharpen talking points related to the issue.

Thank you for your time in reading this, and victory to all of you.

Warm Regards,

Ralph Lopez
author, proprietor of Citizens' Talking Points
http://ralphlopezworld.com

Article: "Darwinian Admissions"
http://www.salon.com/it/feature/1999/01/18feature.html

cc: The Council of Independent Colleges
http://www.cic.org/


APPENDIX
From the Band of Brothers values website:
http://www.bandofbrothers2006.org/2005/12/our_values.php

"Band of Brothers 2006 is premised on the basic idea that all Americans should be given the same opportunities to succeed. We support policies that promote American Values:
• Basic health care coverage for all Americans
• Expanded education opportunity
• Responsible use of our Military
• A foreign policy that promotes US leadership with NATO, the UN, and our allies in the war on terror
• Overhaul, reform, and simplify the tax system
The Band of Brothers 2006 campaign will focus on exposing neo-conservative agendas and policies that are in conflict with great American traditions.
• Values and Patriotism – Clarity on which values are to be honored and which values are under siege.
• Corporate Responsibility – Reinforce the sensibilities of the middle class while illustrating how neo-conservative agendas encourage corruption and greed in big corporations.
• Exposing Bush – Put the spotlight on policies that benefit the 1%, on Republican base strategy, payoffs, and cronyism.
• Foreign Policy – Not contesting the need to fight the war on terror, but illustrating that the Bush foreign policy makes it more difficult and costly.
• The Economy – Serious discussion on low income growth, increasing inequality, rising health care cost, cuts in public services, and a deepening middle class squeeze.

Band of Brothers. Together, we can."

Happy 4th of July Weekend

Hamdan thought his goose was cooked. A conservative court no less. Some of these men (though many are innocent) are hardened fighters, no wimps, who gave no quarter and expected none. Hamdan's lawyer reported that his client was "awestruck" that the court would "give a little man an even chance."

The Supreme Court decision on military tribunals is the light of democracy. Not the invasion of Iraq. Never in a million years did a guy like Hamdan think a "little guy" would get a fair break in this world of powerful and ruthless men.

Behold America. It's not perfect, but yes, it is a great country.

Before the Nuremburg Trials some people were in favor of saving the expense,and summarily hanging Nazi war criminals or lining them up along a wall and having them shot, just like they would have done to us. But our message to the world was: We're not like them.

What rights did the prisoners at Gitmo win? The right to see the evidence against you. The right to be present at your trial. Real controversial stuff.

George Bush has been checked in his drive to do whatever he wants to anyone of us, including locking us up on his say-so and throwing away the key. The system works. Whatever truly increases our security, like securing ports and chemical plants, he's not interested in. Iraq is a trainwreck. Whatever increases his power in the name of 9/11, he pursues with a vengeance.

The Dueling Banjos Wing of the Republican party is positively foaming at the mouth, clueless that the rights upheld are their rights too. They would love nothing more than kangaroo courts with hooded judges to try these prisoners, stupidly unaware that someday, they could be the ones on the wrong side of the bar.

A conservative court! On this July Fourth, 2006, I have never been prouder to be an American.

"Justices, 5-3, Broadly Reject Bush Plan to Try Detainees" (New York Times)

World's Dumbest Terrorists

(Bloggers: On Your Marks)

Since we know Bush has been publicly crowing about finding and shutting-down terrorist financial connections since almost the day after 9/11, today's little skit against the New York Times seems aimed not so much at protecting "secret" programs as at turning Americans against their own Freedom of the Press. The NSA warrantless surveillance scandal gave us the Bush M.O.: use ridiculous arguments that leave everyone rolling their eyes except the vital Red State swing vote that never, ever reads a major newspaper, and gets everything they know from Fox News. Broadband is expensive and anyhow, who has the time? What with two-and-a-half jobs just to make ends meet in the Bush Tax-Breaks-for-Halliburton-Millionaires Economy?

The job for bloggers is to dig up video, audio, and news ink that shows just how stupid the Bushies believe us to be. To get things started, here's a photo of the high-profile FBI raid of the Muslim charity the Holyland Foundation in Richardson, Texas back in 2001. Which we are not supposed to remember until it's Great Victories in the War on Terror Day, rather than Bad-Guy Newspapermen Who Love Al Qaeda Day. Google like crazy until we have the video and audio clips of Bushies hollering that they will attack terrorist financial networks, like THIS ONE. Post it here. Swamp the Internets (sic) with it, so that even poor slobs in Cucamunga County, Ohio, or wherever, will have to see that they are being played for suckers, just like the rest of us poor slobs.

This smells like a set-up: at the next terrorist attack, Bush (through Cheney) can say it's the fault of the Free Press, and cook up evidence of a terrorist so dumb, he didn't know the U.S. was watching for him until he read it in a paper. Sort of like that gang of Goobers in Florida which was supposed to bring down the Sears Tower. My main gripe? Jeez, if you're going to insult my intelligence, I expect you to put a little more thought into it. First Faris, the guy who was supposed to bring down the Brooklyn Bridge with a blowtorch, then Jose Padilla, who was going to blow up a dirty bomb in New York until he was - oops! - actually going to blow up gas mains in an apartment building. We pay good tax money for these guys to keep us scared in the War on Terror. I want my money back.

Like always, incumbent Democrats grovel and cower, which only dignifies arguments which rightfully should be getting Republicans laughed out of the Capitol Building. Calls to investigate the "damage" done by the NY Times? Great! Why don't we hear calls to investigate the damage done by the betrayal of Valerie Plame? Who was a real, live intelligence officer doing real work on tracking weapons of mass destruction? Whose blown cover may yet make it easier for our enemies to attack us, unlike the blown cover that just tells us what we already know: that the Bushies are busy gathering little bits of dirt on EVERY ONE OF US, in case it might ever come in handy? Conspiracy? You steal two elections, start an unprovoked war, make all your buddies filthy rich beyond imagination...naaw, there's no conspiracy...

``Unless they were pretty dumb, they had to assume" their transactions were being monitored..." -Victor D. Comras , former US diplomat in charge of efforts at the UN to combat terror financing, ("Terrorist funds-tracking no secret, some say" Boston Globe)

Goddammit

please circulate

Iraq Debate: What Fighting Democrats Would Say

This will be short and sweet. It doesn't take much to see that Democrats are wasting their chance to hammer back on Iraq, and take down the talking points Republicans have been using from the start to generate support for the Iraq war:

-The choice is to stay in Iraq or "cut and run and wait for them to regroup and bring terror back to our shores." ( Dennis Hastert)

-A timeline sends the message to the terrorists that if they persist long enough, they can take over the country.

-If we had left Iraq when the cut-and-runners wanted us to, we wouldn't have killed Zarqawi.

SHARP, CLEAR REBUTTALS:

-It's not cutting and running, it's getting the war on terror BACK ON TRACK, by securing the victory in Afghanistan, focusing on bin Laden, and getting our troops out from the middle of a civil war. Our presence in Iraq is LOSING the war on terror, not winning it.

-We are not fighting terrorists "there" so they won't "regroup" and come to "our shores." We are creating MORE of them by being there, who can then come here. Our moral standing in Afghanistan is unassailable, since they harbored the people who attacked us. Our immoral presence in Iraq negates this and loses the battle for hearts and minds.

-Saying a timeline would encourage the insurgency gets it EXACTLY BACKWARDS. The OCCUPATION encourages the insurgency, not talk about ending it. A timeline sends a message to terrorists that we have the WILL to take the battle to Al Qaeda, attacking cells around the world and recognizing the global nature of the threat. Not wasting resources fighting people who legitimately want us out of their country and away from their oil.

-Who cares if we killed Zarqawi? There is already another Zarqawi in place, and there will be another and another and another for as long as we are in Iraq. Was getting the Iraq bad-guy-of-the-month worth the life of a single one of our troops? Not to me.

-The best way to honor the sacrifices of our troops is for us, safe here at home, to be MANLY enough to acknowledge mistakes and get the war on terror back on track. And whether or not a man has died in vain is for God to decide, not George Jesus Bush.

It's clear the American people are ready to hear these things, if only the "opposition" will articulate what the people are already thinking. Polls show Americans have made the leap to understanding they can support the troops without supporting the mission, which is why this is less prominent in Republican talking points. But Democrats in their mealy-mouthed cowardice, with rare exceptions, are refusing to take it the rest of the way. Understandable. It's not their kids who are dying. Oh yes, guess who just asked us for a timeline? Two key members of the Iraq government, including the Kurd representative.

Am I getting paid 120 grand plus benefits to come up with these points like the politicians who are, and aren't? No, and it isn't rocket science anyway. My reward is not having to see my sons and brothers go to that vile, disgusting war and come back either dead or shells of what they used to be. How vile? One photo they have shown in basic training, according to the Atlantic Monthly, is of what's left of one soldier after a hit from a roadside IED. The article says no part of him across the side of a Humvee is bigger than a cigarette pack. A couple of guys always puke. FOR GOD'S SAKE GET OUR CHILDREN OUT OF THERE!


"You know who wants us to stay in Iraq right now? Al Qaeda wants us there because it recruits people for them. China wants us there. North Korea wants us there. Russia wants us there." --Congressman John Murtha

Ho Hum

Reaction to Zarqawi: Indifference at the Orwell
"Goldstein" Moment

In any sane democracy the public reaction to the
killing of Zarqawi would be massive indifference. The
best course would have been to never have created
Zarqawi in the first place. Zarqawi was a nobody
before we gave him the platform of the Iraq occupation
on which to carve out his bloody moment of glory. In
this self-regenerating insurgency we have created, it
will not stop our troops from getting killed or bring
peace to Iraq.

Is the killing of a psychopath whom we gave an
environment in which to thrive supposed to balance the
killings in Haditha, or the thousands of civilian
casualties (up to 100,000 according to the Lancet
Report, most through aerial bombardment, contrary to
perceptions that most are by sectarian suicide bombs?)
Or balance the now-emerging torture of innocent men
at Guantanamo? The timing is suspicious,
since it distracts attention from awareness that the
Haditha killings may just be the tip of the iceberg.

The Deliverance Wing of the Republican Party, whose
upbringing taught them no rules on the conduct of
civil discourse, now contend that the "liberals" are
gleeful at the Haditha killings, because it helps the
anti-Iraq War cause (Hey wait! I'm not even that
liberal!) Those who gleefully cheered the bombing of
a Third World country that had not attacked us, accuse
others of enjoying carnage.

If their little war hadnever been started, there would have been no Haditha
killings. Saddam Hussein would still be in charge of
his dysfunctional, simmering powder keg of a nation,
our troops would have secured Afghanistan and the
Afghan-Paki frontier IN FORCE, with perhaps the
capture of bin Laden to show for it, and a vast
majority of Muslims would still think Americans the
greatest and most righteous people on earth. People
who only attack those who attack them first. Muslims
may have problems with our government's Middle Eastern
policies, but by and large, not with us. With the
help off informants disgusted at bin Laden's methods,
we would be rolling up the war on terror.

Yes, Saddam Hussein would still be killing people, but
maybe not even at the rate the war is doing so now.
30,000-100,00 innocent civilians since the invasion
would be a pretty good clip even for old Saddam (who
also now justifies it because he was a "war"
president.) With our credibility secure and our
intentions untarnished, we would be positioned to deal
with Saddam and our tyrannical allies in Saudi Arabia
and the Persian Gulf monarchies as we saw fit.

The Dueling Banjos Wing on Fox News now presses us on
whether or not we are happy that a killer like Zarqawi
is dead. Aren't you happy? Aren't you happy? My
answer is, I couldn't care less, because the
insurgency is a lobster that will grow another claw
once one has been hacked off. There are now hundreds
of Zarqawis waiting in the wings to take over,
probably happy this one is dead so they can have their
chance at glory by butchering the oil-stealing,
permanent base-building, baby-killing Americans.
People who blow themselves up with belt bombs, and
itch to be chosen for the next mission, do not fear
the fate of Zarqawi.

I refuse to participate in Bush's little morality play ("justice" has been
brought to Zarqawi) because we long ago lost sight of
who the good guys are. Since Zarqawi's death will not
stop my brothers from getting killed in Iraq, or the
insurgency from growing, my reaction is not happiness,
but indifference. In Orwell's 1984, an audience
conditioned to hating the villain-of-the-moment starts
booing in a movie theater at the mention of his name.
Anyone who is not cheering loudly enough is suspect.
What we have now is a pure "Goldstein" moment.
Meanwhile the war goes on forever and the population
submits to the authoritarian state.

Never mind for now how someone killed by two
five-hundred pound bombs manages to have his face
fully recognizable and only a little bloody. We won't
go there, and assume that Bush didn't have Zarqawi in
the equivalent of cold storage for just such a tiime,
when the shooting of two-year-olds and old men in
wheelchairs may be dangerously pricking the American
conscience. Trot out the villain to show this is all
worth it. Is it? No. Things are as they have always
been: The war on terror was lost the minute Bush
invaded Iraq, according to the former chief of the
CIA's bin Laden unit Michael Scheuer. It will
continue to be lost as long as we are there, the
victory in Afghanistan is unsecured, bin Laden is
free, and Bush is president.

Robert Fisk is a photographer who regularly puts his own life at dire risk to bring us the truth of war. And the truth of war is that war is ugly. Every Iraqi child is as precious as any of ours, and when civilians die it doesn't matter if it's an accident. If you know for every combatant killed, civilians will inevitably be killed too, then you're responsible for the killing. Which is why it is obscene beyond comprehension that, unprovoked, we started bombing this barefoot Third World country.

A fave right-wing talking point is that Saddam broke a UN resolution and that's that, but if we went by this criteria we would have bombed Tel Aviv years ago. I think at last count various Israeli governments have broken, like, 164 of them.

I direct you to these in pictures in the firm belief that most of my fellow citizens are not monsters, and would stop what is being done in their name in Iraq if they knew the truth outside the sterile, tidy world of FOX NEWS. The Lancet Report concludes that most of civilian casualties in Iraq, contrary to popular belief, are not due to suicide bombs, but from aerial bombardment.

War is a disgusting business, and no one hates it like soldiers. But while on active duty, in BushLand, soldiers can get court-martialed for saying "Bush is mo military leader." On Memorial Day, in addition to getting good and likkered up at my friend's barbeque next door, I devote this blog to remembering all civilians hurt and all our troops hurt in the Iraq Occupation, and exhort you all to speak out against it, because our boys couldn't speak for themselves under threat of jail by the guy who really should be in jail as a war criminal, George W. Bush. How's that drive coming, George?

ROBERT FISK IMAGES (WARNING: GRAPHIC)

Obscene

Time Magazine, two-page photo spread of soldiers helping wounded buddy, and a harrowing account of the daily Marine grind in Ramadi:

"Lance Corporal Phillip Tussey pauses on the edge of a small alley. With another Marine covering him, he makes a dash to cross the five yards of open ground. He doesn't get more than a couple of steps when a shot rings out. He's cut down mid-stride, hit in the thigh..."

The word "impeachment" is mentioned prominently no fewer than twice in blurbs about rock stars opposed to Bush (Springsteen and Neil Young.) The combat photos are most important since people don't seem to get how ugly, demeaning, and futile war is until it hits them in the face in full color. The soldier being dragged off the battlefield is limp, helpless-looking. Somehow his boots make a sad image.

The biggest difference between this and Vietnam, (besides that Vietnam may have been vaguely necessary IF you take the view that we needed to check a Russian-Chinese communist expansion; no such forgiveness this time, why Studs Terkel calls it "this incredibly obscene war") is that Vietnam came with a Six O'Clock News reality check to help us balance, on a regular basis, what we were fighting for against whether it was worth it. I can check Time Magazine for weeks and not see a single photo reminder that real soldiers are getting really killed in Iraq. That has been banned by the Defense Department.

Time even printed the Green Day lyric "Sieg heil to the president gasman."

Is there some agreement high up among those who print these magazines that it's time to hint that it's ok to think this way? I wonder if you can draw a graph showing the number of times the word "impeachment" comes up in the popular press, no matter what the context, and the correlation to the likelihood of it happening. A sort of subliminal conditioning, like the word "Pepsi" spliced into a movie in milliseconds, leading to Pepsi sales at the snack counter shooting up due to unexplained sudden urges for carbonated water (this was actually done, and supposedly outlawed.)

Have the media finally decided that the Bushies are not just coming after US, but THEM too? After Bush's military takeover of the CIA with the coming confirmation of General Hayden, and with Alberto Gonzales openly declaring that they will prosecute reporters who use "classified information" which harms the "national security?" This is what is breath-taking. Usually a president tries to keep that kind of repression under wraps, to do it quietly and not until he has to. But Bush struck pre-emptively against the First Amendment, came out and picked a fight with reporters they weren't even looking for. Like shoving a guy in a bar then turning your back on him to show he is a ball-less eunuch who won't do anything about it. The point is to humiliate so people lose respect. So far the press hasn't said a word to Gonzalez's challenge, so it stands. The time to howl bloody murder and impeachment is now. Later doesn't matter. Once a woman always a woman.

Today's elephant in the room: as long as Hayden is active duty he is directly under the chain-of-command beneath the commander-in-chief. And when push comes to shove, a 30 year Air Force man in uniform does not disobey a direct order. He should at least resign his commission.

"National security?" That's what Nixon called the Pentagon Papers, and it turned out they only showed that the Vietnam War was being run by a bunch of incompetent fools.

Quote of the day:

"Think about it if you wake up Wednesday morning, Nov. 8, and George Bush is our president because you voted for Nader. Is that what you want to happen?"
--Joe Lieberman in 2000. Lieberman is threatening a third-party candidacy which would insure the election of a Republican in response to a Democratic primary challenge by Ned Lamont

Lies, Damned Lies,...

A key tool of tyranny is to consistently make the majority feel that they are in the minority, Bush's "real Americans know what I mean" strategy, Nixon's "silent majority."

From a new ABC News poll,

"Phone-Records Surveillance Is Broadly Acceptable to Public" — "Americans by nearly a 2-1 ratio call the surveillance of telephone records an acceptable way for the federal government to investigate possible terrorist threats, expressing broad unconcern even if their own calling patterns are scrutinized."

Does this mean we're doomed because we're surrounded by idiots? Maybe not, look at how they loaded the questions (full questionnaire HERE):

-"What do you think is more important right now - (for the federal government to investigate possible terrorist threats, even if that intrudes on personal privacy); or (for the federal government not to intrude on personal privacy, even if that limits its ability to investigate possible terrorist threats)?

-"It’s been reported that the National Security Agency has been collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans. It then analyzes calling patterns in an effort to identify possible terrorism suspects, without listening to or recording the conversations. Would you consider this an acceptable or unacceptable way for the federal government to investigate terrorism?

The first question may as well read: "Would you shoot that dog if it kept Momma from being thrown out the window?" And the NSA "analyzes calling patterns in an effort to identify possible terrorism suspects, without listening to or recording the conversations"?? Why not just print the whole White House press release?

Notice the questions never mention whether the intrusion on "personal privacy" is the legal kind, or the illegal kind.

There have always been legal ways to intrude on personal privacy in the investigation of wrongdoing. It's called a WARRANT.

If they are collecting records then trolling through them, that is a SEARCH, and that is what the FISA court was created to oversee.

Not that the FISA court is itself a bastion of civil liberties. The fact is, we don't know. The court's proceedings, although recorded, are secret. From its inception in 1978 through the end of 2004, 18,761 warrants were granted, while only five were rejected. It should give pause that such a friendly court wasn't friendly enough for the Bush administration, and they felt they had to go around it. Leave for another day the question of whether secret courts are consistent with democracy in the first place.

It doesn't take much to see where the kind of unchecked power the Bush administration seeks might come in handy: in its relentless drive to find out who government whistleblowers are. The administration would apparantly like to keep a monopoly on the ability to leak classified information to the press, as in the case of Valerie Plame. On the other hand, it has made clear that it fully intends to prosecute officials who reveal embarrassments like the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo, or evidence that many such prisoners may be guilty only of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I wonder how the poll would have turned out if they had asked this question: "Is it always necessary for the government to trample Fourth Amendment constitutional rights in order to conduct effective terror investigations?"

Or how about: "when conducting terror investigations, should the government stay within the law?"

Or: "Do you think the power to conduct warrantless intrusions on personal privacy could ever be abused by the government?"

Or my favorite: "If it turns out that the president clearly violated established law in his conduct of alleged terror investigations, should he be impeached?" Mark me down for "yes."

Also read BREAKING NEWS: "The Spies Who Shagged Us" by Greg Palast (On Choicepoint Inc.)

Joe Biden is a Loser

I found Joe Biden's Democratic fundraising letter sliming up my Hotmail inbox, and it's a perfect example of how these Vichy Democrats can still screw it up for us in November. Biden embraces the premise that the war on terror is a fight between those who hate "freedom" and those who don't. Biden gave the RNC enough ammunition for a half-dozen attack ads in tight races.

While rummaging around the dumpsters behind the White House I found this marked-up version of the letter with Karl Rove's notes on it (in italics):

Dear Democrat,

The problem is that George Bush doesn't have a plan for keeping us safe. Instead, his administration has offered nothing more than stubborn ideology, rank incompetence, and outright failure.

[Note: incompetence? These liberals say they know invading Iraq was the right thing to do but they would have done it better - armchair quarterbacking! - let them try it. ANY war could have been done BETTER. The point is we had the guts and they wouldn't have...K.R., writing from my new job in the pantry.]

I still believe the single most important thing we can do in government is to keep our citizens safe. Tough talk isn't enough. It takes bold leadership and careful stewardship, but the American people are thirsting for something more than Republicans in Washington can deliver. It's up to Democrats like you and me to get our country back on track.

[note: He's sounding like George, fer Chrissakes! Most important thing is to keep us safe. Yea! They still haven't caught onto the Oath of Office which says the most important thing is to uphold and defend the Constitution. Someone send Joe box tickets to a good ballgame, through the backdoor. We surely appreciate his forgetfulness. K.R.]

May 7 marks just six short months before the mid-term elections and our best opportunity to change direction in America. To build a solid foundation for the home stretch, the DSCC has set a goal to raise $150,000 before this date. If you are committed to electing a Democratic Senate, help put us over the top by making a contribution today.

Click here to make a secure online contribution of $50, $75, or more. There are just six months before Election Day. We need your help before May 7.

George Bush says he makes decisions based on his instincts. Too many times, we've seen that his instincts just aren't good enough. The facts bear witness to 5 years of failed leadership.

[Hey! Our prezdent has GREAT instincts! Didn't he just win an election based on peoples' gut fear of gays getting married?]

In Iraq, a dictator is gone, and that's a good thing. But we may be on the verge of trading him for chaos and a haven for terror. Osama bin Laden remains at large, despite tough rhetoric from the White House. The failed response to Hurricane Katrina - a natural disaster we knew was coming - raises serious concerns over how we would deal with another surprise terrorist attack.

[If Saddam being gone is a good thing, then the chaos is worth it. Stay the course! It'll go away! First he says it's a good thing then he says but it's bad because of the chaos. Just like George said about Kerry in 2004, one of our best lines: coming down squarely on all sides of the Iraq war!]

The hardest fact of all is this: we do not have a strategy to protect America, or leadership in Washington that can put us back on track.

[The hell we don't! Go on the offense! All the time! Nuke Iran!]

Democrats have a plan for real security that focuses on two overriding and connected challenges. We must win the struggle between freedom and radical fundamentalism, and we must keep the world's most dangerous weapons away from its most dangerous people. But we can't succeed in either of those tasks when Republicans in Washington are solely focused on exercising our military might and marginalizing diplomacy.

[They hate us for our freedom, that's right! You can't DO diplomacy with people like that! Dangerous weapons, that's right! "Can't succeed in either of those tasks when Republicans in Washington are solely focused blah blah?" Oh man if I couldn't message better than this I would've lost my job years ago.]

The only way to protect our country is to change the balance of power in Washington. And the best way you can help do just that is to support the DSCC's campaign today. The DSCC is the only organization in Washington solely committed to electing a Democratic Senate that will hold this administration accountable and put an end to its failed agenda.

[Biden hold us accountable? That makes me feel pretty safe, he didn't even raise hell after the Valerie Plame thing, a genuine covert operative on WMD. None of them did, really, make folks understand how bad what I did was. That was close, WHEW!...guess I won't be going to jail after all.]

Click here to make a secure online contribution of $50, $75, or more. There are just six months before Election Day. We need your help before May 7.

The American people are starting to see the administration's policies of military preemption and stubborn ideology are not making us more secure. Only a Democratic Senate can put a stop to these failed strategies.

[Ideology; you want to see ideology? Look at Al Qaeda, they want to cover women from head to toe! Anyway who cares? This guy is talking way over Joe Sixpack's head...]

For too long George Bush has lead solely through the example of our power. It's time to start also leading through the power of our example. With your help today, we can bring change to Washington in November and put our great nation back on the right track.

Sincerely,

Joe Biden

[Hmm, "power of our example," not bad for Joe, though the only example I see from him is preening and puffing for the cameras like a pompous asshole every chance he gets. We got footage of George CUTTING BRUSH and shooting small animals like a REAL MAN! THAT'S an example! I was hoping for a challenge, this is taking candy from a baby.

Wrap-up, no slammers on how we managed to let bin Laden get away, when we had him trapped and the guys were begging us for ground troops, or for pissing away everything in Iraq, or for making ragheads around the world fucking hate us. For bombing the hell out of whole families just to kill a couple of insurgents in Iraq, what the fuck? Is this a war or isn't it? He doesn't even mention a plan for getting out of Iraq so we can throw everything into getting that bastard bin Laden in Pakistan, or wherever the hell he is, which is what I would do to get this war over with, except the boss says keep it going. Says he likes the dress-up in combat gear part.

No slam even on why we don't do shit about security unless it gets us more power to fuck with people, like with back-door wiretaps.

If our sons-of-bitch governments in Saudi and those dirt holes ever caught wind of us really wanting to do democracy, we'd be screwed. THAT IS THE FUNNIEST PART FOR ME! The dipshits don't even see that if we wanted to do democracy, we'd have started with them!

Hey, I cannot help that I have these gifts that I have, to know the depths of people's stupidity and fear. I am Karl Rove. I am one fat boy who can fuck you up, and God help you if I remember you were one of the ones calling me fat boy. OK boys, take notes, here's your first attack ad:

"Even Democrats like Joe Biden know that the war on terror is a struggle for our way of life, between "freedom and radical fundamentalism." In our fight against terror, Biden says the removal of Saddam was a "good thing." Now Democrats are asking you to trust them with protecting America..."]

Related links:


"Attacking Republicans on National Security," Polis
http://polispolis.blogspot.com/2006/03/dump-lame-democrats.html

A New Contract for America; Fight Al Qaeda, Not Iraq Polis
http://ralphlopezworld.com/contract.html

Fighting Democrat candidate Jeff Lattas (AZ)
"We should have never invaded Iraq based on the false and misleading evidence that Iraq was an immediate threat to our country. While I was assigned to the Pentagon (1994-1998), before the weapon inspectors were expelled from Iraq, I had extremely high level access to intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction..."
http://www.jefflatas.com/iraq.html

Fighting Democrat candidate Jim Brandt (CA)
"The greatest potential harm that has been done to America has been the creation of a "Homeland security" apparatus that sucks up tax money while forcing every American to live in a state of quasi-official suspicion, and yet has done little to protect us from the realities of terrorism in the 21st century..."
http://www.friends4brandt.com/Home.aspx?tabid=83


Fighting Democrat candidate Tom Kovach (PA)
"Here is our clear plan for Iraq:
Step 1: Begin an immediate withdrawal of troops in Iraq. If half of the Iraqis approves of violence against U.S. troops, the other half has become dependent on them. An Iraqi democracy will never grow out of a foreign occupation, and the Iraqi government has already asked our troops to leave.
Step 2: All U.S. troops will now have well-defined and well-planned missions, and will be redeployed when these are complete.
Step 3: Immediately spend all reconstruction funds in Iraq as a gesture of goodwill toward the Iraqis. Much of the resentment from the Iraqi people comes from the money going to U.S. contractors and not local Iraqi communities.
Step 4: End the construction of permanent military bases in Iraq. This will show to the Iraqis that we do not intend to have a permanent occupation.
Step 5: Continue to provide humanitarian assistance by protecting non-governmental organizations (NGOs) through U.N. troops.
Step 6: Work through the United Nations to reach an appropriate consensus with the international and Muslim communities on how to best help Iraq.
Step 7: Create U.N. Resolutions allowing for peacekeepers in a well-defined peacekeeping mission whenever the Iraq civil war ends.
http://www.kovachforcongress.com/

More great Fighting Democrat candidates, look up your state and HELP!
http://www.bandofbrothers2006.org/congress/

Keep a Close Eye on the Psycho

So it looks like we're going to win elections in November and maybe take control of the House. The question remains, Can we wait that long? By then Bush's terrorist incubator in Iraq will have produced results: another attack on America. If Bush bombs Iran, they have guaranteed, as is their right, retaliation. Since they can't really fly over here and bomb us back, Iran has promised us 40,000 suicide bombers, in waves, to hit us anywhere they can. Thanks, George.

The work to be done between now and November is to make good and goddamned sure that, if this happens, the connection is solid and blame gets pinned where it belongs: at the feet of George Bush's Excellent Adventure in Iraq. The best trained and cunning of al-Zarqawi's boys that we have produced, and the cream of the Revolutionary Guard, will come over the border from Canada and Mexico with a few losses but there's no way to catch all of them. Bush got to land on an aircraft carrier and play dress-up, got to strut around with a sock rolled up in his codpiece even though he's never heard a shot fired in anger, and he ran the other way when he had the chance to put on combat gear for real.

Right, this kind of talk demoralizes the troops, so shut up. Except 72% of the troops want out of Iraq like, yesterday. I have a feeling these Fighting Dem vet congressional candidates aren't going to do a John Kerry and roll over when attacked on their patriotism, which is the only attack the right-wingers have left. No damned people who follow a damned right-wing draft-dodger are going to question my patriotism! - I want to hear in a Fox News soundbite.

From now until November it has to be made perfectly clear that this post-9/11 pretension to unlimited executive power, from locking up American citizens and putting them through military tribunals, to power to snoop without check or audit, is about to be nipped in the bud. The symmetrical, shining beauty of declaring a war without end that puts the president outside the Constitution is clear for all to see. It's like the perfect Catch-22 in Joe Heller's savage WW II novel. The only way you can get out of flying more missions is if you are crazy. But if you ask to not fly more missions, because you might die, that is rational and means you must not be crazy.

We can lock you up without a trial for as long as we have the war on terror. How long will the war on terror be? Until I say there is no more war on terror.

If we can make it to November without an attack to scare the sheep among us into giving up the rest of our rights, we stand a good chance of putting the country back on track of finding and obliterating Al Qaeda, stabilizing Afghanistan, saving pensions, making college affordable, and once and for all getting going on the real emergency: global warming. The polar bears are fucking DROWNING, dude. What is it that you don't understand?

That's why this is such a dangerous time. Bush is history, and he knows it. He must be working overtime putting in calls to bin Laden to get him to bail his ass out again, so he can finish his power grab at the Constitution, and make the Constitution history before he is. Before the people decide the Decider has got to go. It's his only chance. Then he can start locking up the pissants who ask embarassing questions and hoist him in effigy, so he can get through his prime years without jail, or being committed as a certified psychotic. What do you need, Osama? Here, I'll bomb the shit out of Iran for you. Will that give you what you need to attack me? Let me feel the love.

Gaming Our Way Out of the Bush Years: Fight Al Qaeda, not Iraq

My suggestion for a Democratic slogan: Fight Al Qaeda, not Iraq.

Ok so I'm lazy. I re-read this and decided it still fits. We can look forward to a future apart from Bush, since the bastard will be lucky to get out of office without being impeached, never mind keep his Republican majority. Every dead soldier flown back from Iraq is testament to his mastery of fear, greed, bloodlust, and ignorance as the dominant human traits, and he IS very good at it. To make something happen on this fine Easter you first have to start to "vision" it, the way you're supposed to vision yourself in a job you want, to get your lazy ass up and make it happen. Air America just reported that the fastest growing religion in America is non-religion - the American Atheist Society or some-such (the second-fastest is Islam.) Imagine, the disgusting hypocrisy of the Bush religious base is driving people standing back, on the sidelines, to say, if that's religion, then I'm against all of it. Bush is making the job of honest evangelizers harder. All these people care about is who would Jesus have bombed next. I ain't no philosopher, but there's something wrong with that, man.

RE-POSTED FROM AUGUST 10, 2005
Gaming Our Way Out of the Bush Years

We are now headed down a hole toward a future in which any of us could get SHOT SEVEN TIMES in the head for wearing a warm coat, and have the cops say it was regretful but "necessary." There is no end in sight as long as we grab the war on terror by the wrong end, and believe we can win it militarily. But right-wingnuts make a good point when they say Democrats offer no alternative vision to abolishing civil liberties and staying the course in Iraq. This lets the Karl Roves of the country make speeches claiming Bush wanted to chase the terrorists while liberals wanted to have group therapy with them. It sticks because nothing compelling takes its place.

So how about: start pulling troops from Iraq, redeploy about half of them to Afghanistan to stabilize that country, get serious about hunting down bin Laden in the Afghan-Pakistan border regions (Remember him? He's the guy who attacked us...) and do the 12 Steps to break the oil habit. Of which there isn't much left anyway. When EVEN CHINA is pulling ahead of us on conservation and wind energy, you know it's time to do something.

The crying shame of how Bush handled 9/11 is that we were so unified he could have rammed through legislation to have us off the oil junk in 10 years. We could then renounce the corrupt Saudi dictatorship rather than donate a share of every gallon that goes into your SUV to financing America-hating madrassas. Bush is right: we should spread democracy to combat the ideology of hate. But we should start with our friends Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the other Gulf monarchies, not Iraq.

Instead of coming up with new and exciting ways to snoop into our business, which won't work anyway, we can listen to CIA Al Qaeda analyst MIKE SHEUER when he suggests most of the terrorism problem disappears the minute there is a fair Israeli-Palestinian settlement. With the PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH now onboard, real safety may be within reach, Post-Bush. The Presbyterians want to pressure Israel to stop building settlements and bulldozing Palestinian homes by calling for divestment in companies like Caterpillar tractor, which provide the hardware.

Another third of the problem disappears when we get the hell out of the Arabian Peninsula where we have no business beyond getting the next oil fix . We are sweating, slobbering addicts who shake when the needle nears empty in our Humvees. This is the disgusting habit for which the victims of 9/11, which I call the Mossadeq Blowback, paid with their lives. (Mohammed Mossadeq, the democratically-elected prime minister of Iran who the CIA overthrew in 1953. Author and New York Times journalist Stevie Kinzer writes that "it is not far-fetched to draw a line from Operation Ajax through the Shah's repressive regime and the Islamic Revolution to the fireballs that engulfed the World Trade Center in New York." It just so happens I wrote an essay on this for my night class; when insomnia really hits HERE IT IS for reading in bed. It is sure to cure insomnia.)

An apology to Iran for our support of the bloody Shah Reza Pahlavi will show the Muslim world that the "good" Americans are in charge again, and even though they want to be nowhere near the Afghan-Paki frontier when we start dropping divisions there to obliterate Al Qaeda, they can trust us to not go into their countries bombing the hell out of everything on the off-chance we might kill a terrorist. An official, high profile apology (Clinton did to Guatemala) will show them we have found the great heart of America again.


After we impeach Bush for harboring traitors and giving aid and comfort to Al Qaeda, because he double-crossed agents who specialized in double-crossing Al Qaeda, we can start winning this war. The key is for a critical mass of intelligent right-wingers to realize we have been following the kind of leader who is confident, harbors no doubts, and is about to get every one of his men killed in an ambush. Every army has them. There are dead men in every war who know who they are. Only an idiot would think a few random bag searches will stop determined and coordinated suiciders. We're headed toward a society divided along ethnic profile lines, something bin Laden would thoroughly approve of.

Right-wing-nuts say this kind of talk is foolishly naive, but where have they gotten us? Terror attacks are on the increase. Al Qaeda has more recruits than it can handle. London shows Jihadists can strike at will in any Western city. Every CIA and military expert with any integrity, like Richard Clarke and Mike Scheuer, says we are following the wrong course. Get out of Iraq, secure Afghanistan, where we have international support for our mission, hunt bin Laden, and spread democracy in the Middle East by pulling the blank checks from Israel and the tyrannical sheikdoms. It's not so hard, guys, we still get to kill people. But the right people.

HERE'S A REPRINT OF A NEW REPUBLIC ARTICLE ON HOW A KERRY ADMINISTRATION WOULD HAVE WON THE WAR ON TERROR, "IDEA MAN" BY SPENCE ACKERMAN.

"Why can't we do something for once that gets these downtrodden countries to like us instead of hating us?" -President Dwight Eisenhower, in disapproval of the plan to overthrow Iranian president Mohammed Mossadeq, which was favored by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.

Breaking news corner

Breaking on Air America...soldiers in Iraq "can get into trouble for even making a joke about Bush" says comedienne Kathy Grifffin recounting her performance in Kuwait before American troops...(also see Command Sgt.-Major Charles Carlson II, soldier court-martialed for saying "Bush is no military leader")...soldiers look mostly like "teenagers" is first thing Kathy notices of audience...Republicans, is this the kind of democracy we are fighting for?...on AAR "Politically Direct" show hosted by David Bender..Sat. Apr 15, 10:15 pm

Special Forces Col. Patrick Lang on Valerie Plame "Leak"

UPDATE: APRIL 13, 2006 -Libby Blinks- Apparently not believing that Karl Rove's ruse to have the media barking up the wrong tree will work much longer, Scooter Libby's lawyers just took extraordinary pains to say that, although he may have leaked false intelligence on Iraq's WMD threat, he didn't leak the identity of Valerie Plame. Which was what Patrick Fitzgerald was originally assigned to find out. The leaked false intelligence report on WMD is a ruse because no one cares. We're fighting them "THERE" rather than "HERE" right? It doesn't matter how we got into it; that's the prerogative of presidents. The beauty of Bush's grand plan is that it works as long as the "base" perceives he is keeping them safer, however immoral the means.

Except he isn't. Libby decided he'll take the fall for helping get America into a war that those lib'rels don't understand was necessary (if Saddam didn't have a WMD now, he would have sooner or later) but he's not taking the fall if Al Qaeda manages to sneak "10-pound bags of explosive in the subway stations", because someone blew the cover of a valuable agent.

This investigation is not about leaked falsified intelligence; it's about who betrayed Valerie Plame. When the stakes are an attack on America, only the standards of the constitutional definition of treason are required to be met for a conviction: giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Forget the Covert Agents Act, which requires the leaker to have done so intentionally and to understand the covert status of the betrayed agent. Libby's court filing directly contradicts the testimony of reporters who told Fitzgerald that "Libby not only discussed the intelligence estimate but also mentioned [Plame's] employment."

Plame was Non-official Cover operative currently based at headquarters in Langley, VA. She was a counter-proliferation specialist (read: weapons of mass destruction) with contacts in the Middle East and Africa (read: she was doing the real work.) Fitzgerald's indictment states that the motive for revealing Plame's identity was to imply that Wilson "received the assignment (to visit Niger) on account of nepotism." Charging nepotism is a cheap political smear. Yes, it happens, at city hall and everywhere else, but you do not blow the cover of an important agent to prove it.

Told by his bosses to sit tight, go with the plan, and you'll be pardoned in two years, Libby said yesterday, uh uh, oh no you don't. I'm only a professional liar, not the next Benedict Arnold. - Polis

It wouldn't surprise me if George Bush weren't creating all these foreign policy crises because things are getting a little hot with the Valerie Plame thing. British Foreign Minister Jack Straw just called the idea of striking Iran with tactical nukes "completely nuts."

If we had really wanted to spread democracy across the Middle East we could have started by holding up the $2 billion we are giving to Egypt every year, where going to the polls to vote gets you a nice beating from the security forces, or maybe shot. Or by pressuring the Saudi government, where assembling on a street corner and holding signs is illegal.

Of course, once you've got democracy, you've got to live with the possibility that those sillies might not follow the rest of the script we wrote-out for them, which was to elect Thomas Jefferson and bring in Wal-Mart, and everyone lives happily ever after. News to the president: There will be no Disneyland in Iraq. The magic show has been cancelled. The Palestinians elected Hamas and in Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood just won 20% of the seats in Parliament. Now what?

Here are some excerpts from the testimony on the damage done to the national security by the exposure of Valerie Plame, from the Dorgan Senate Committee hearings. First is the testimony of former US Special Forces Col. Patrick Lang. And if you want to hear former CIA officer Larry Johnson say that this was "treason, pure and simple," here is the audio from his interview at Air America back in July.

LINK TO FULL TRANSCRIPT OF DORGAN HEARING HERE.

Statement of retired U.S. military intelligence and U.S. Army Special Service Forces Colonel W. Patrick Lang, decorated veteran of several of America's overseas conflicts, including the war in Vietnam; trained and educated as a Middle East specialist; the first professor of the Arabic language at the United States Military Academy at West Point.

"Mr. Chairman, distinguished members of the House of Representatives, it's a great pleasure to be here. And I thank you for letting me speak here today. I feel particularly strongly about this case, not so much on a personal level so much as I feel that what has happened with regard to this disclosure and follow-up is a kind of structural assault on the ability of the United States to have sound and well-respected and effective clandestine intelligence services.

"As I'm sure you know, the present war that we are engaged on, which will go on for a long time, I think, because it is, in fact, a war against a kind of tendency, a set of ideas, that moves around, that kind of war involves enemies that go into subway stations carrying 10-pound packs of homemade explosives.

"These fellows, they don't have much of a technical signature for their intelligence detection. They have no overhead photography signature: a pickup truck, something like that. They don't really have a signals intelligence signature much because they're very clever and they've gotten to be better and better at not doing the kinds of things that make them vulnerable. So in the end, what you have to have is you have to have human beings who will go and find out for you what it is they're going to do next.

"And we haven't done that very well, evidently, up until now. It doesn't seem that way to me, anyway, from the outside. But it is a peculiarity of this kind of war that that is exactly the kind of intelligence that you have to have.

"And what has happened here, I think is, as I say, an assault on the ability of the United States to do that.

"Why would that be? It's because HUMINT is about human beings. It's about one person, an American person, a case officer in the parlance of the trade, causing some foreign person to trust him enough and to trust his unit and to trust the United States enough to put his life, his fortune and, indeed, his sacred honor in many cases into the hands of this case officer and the American intelligence unit that stands behind this case officer.

"It's all about trust; it's completely about trust. It's about -- I happen to have done a good deal of this kind of work in my life. And the moment in which some person, whether he's an ambassador or a Montagnard in the hills of Vietnam with filed teeth, decides that he's going to trust you enough so that he's going to believe that you will protect him in every way in doing what he is doing, which is extremely dangerous to him and his family and to everyone else, is a magic moment, indeed. It's almost sacramental in a lot of ways, really.

"And it imposes on the case officer and the unit behind him in the United States the kind of obligations that are as serious in some ways as the seal of the confessional, really. I mean, I'm a Catholic; I understand exactly what that means.

"And the obligation to protect this person is absolute, in fact. And it's not only absolute from the point of view of morality; it's absolute from the point of view of practicality as well, because if within a practicing clandestine intelligence unit the case officers believe that their superiors will not protect the identity of their sources or their own identity, in fact, in doing things which are dangerous and difficult, then a, kind of, circle of doubt begins to spread, like throwing a rock into the water.

"And it spreads in such a way so that if an intelligence service that belongs to a particular country comes to be thought generally in the world as an organization that does not protect its own, does not protect its foreign assets, then the obvious is true in that people are not going to accept recruitment, are not going to work for you. And the smarter they are, the better placed they are, the better educated they are, the less likely they are to accept recruitment and to work for you if they believe that you are not going to fight in the last ditch to protect their identities.

"And so, this is all completely about trust.

"In a strange kind of way, the kind of people who are valuable to recruiters, foreign assets, are a kind of community. They're a community of the well-informed and the alert, and the people who have a great deal of situational awareness.

"They're often in government. They're in banking or they're in this or that. And these people pay attention to what's going on. And they know whether or not the clandestine services of a particular country can be trusted with their lives. They know that.

"And in an odd way, our former Soviet opponents in the GRU and the KGB, they're a good example of the fact that you have to do this the right way, because it was an absolutely never violated thing in the KGB that they ever gave up an agent permanently. They would struggle -- if someone was captured, imprisoned, tried, like Colonel Abel or somebody like that, they would work forever to try to get this person exchanged and get him back, because they knew that if the word got out, in fact, that they wouldn't do that, their sources of recruitment, the trust that people would have in them, would dry up and would go away.

"So when you have an instance like this, in fact, in which not just the intelligence community, but the elected government of the sponsoring government, of the major country in the world, deliberately, and apparently for trivial and passing political reasons, decides to disclose the identity of a covered officer, the word goes around the world like a shock, in fact, that, in fact, "The Americans can't be trusted -- the Americans can't be trusted. If you decide to cooperate clandestinely with the Americans, someone back there will give you up -- someone will give you up, and then everything will be over for you." So you don't do it.

"And so the very kinds of people you need to get into the heart of this galaxy of jihadi groups and people like this will make a judgment that they are not going to trust you in this way. And once that happens, then the possibility of penetrating these groups, the possibility of knowing that they're going to carry 10-pound bags of explosive in the subway stations, will go right down the drain.

"It will be done forever. It would take forever to get that back, because this is all about trust and this is a violation of trust."

Excerpts from the Statement of Former CIA Officer James Marcinkowski:

"What is important now is not who wins or loses the political battle or who may or may not be indicted; rather, it is a question of how we will go about protecting the citizens of this country in a very dangerous world. The undisputed fact is that we have irreparably damaged our capability to collect human intelligence and thereby significantly diminished our capability to protect the American people..."

"So how is the Valerie Plame incident perceived by any current or potential agent of the CIA? I will guarantee you that if the local police chief identified the names of the department's undercover officers, any half-way sophisticated undercover operation would come to a halt and if he survived that accidental discharge of a weapon in police headquarters, he would be asked to retire..."

"Great damage has been done and that damage has been increasing every single day for more than two years..."

"...the problem lies not only with government officials but also with the media, commentators and other apologists who have no clue as to the workings of the intelligence community. Think about what we are doing from the perspective of our overseas human intelligence assets or potential assets..."

"Each time there is a perceived political "success" in deflecting responsibility by debating or re-debating some minutia, such actions are equally effective in undermining the ability of this country to protect itself against its enemies, because the two are indeed related. Each time the political machine made up of prime-time patriots and partisan ninnies display their ignorance by deriding Valerie Plame as a mere "paper-pusher," or belittling the varying degrees of cover used to protect our officers, or continuing to play partisan politics with our national security, it is a disservice to this country. By ridiculing, for example, the "degree" of cover or the use of post office boxes, you lessen the level of confidence that foreign nationals place in our covert capabilities..."

"...the president could have immediately demanded the resignation of all persons even tangentially involved. Or, at a minimum, he could have suspended the security clearances of these persons and placed them on administrative leave. Such methods are routine with police forces throughout the country. That would have at least sent the right message around the globe, that we take the security of those risking their lives on behalf of the United States seriously. Instead, we have flooded the foreign airwaves with two years of inaction, political rhetoric, ignorance, and partisan bickering. That's the wrong message. In doing so we have not lessened, but increased the threat to the security and safety of the people of the United States..."

Comment from U.S. Representative Louise Slaughter (D-NY)

"I don't know if you recall "60 Minutes," when Secretary [Paul] O'Neill who went on "60 Minutes" to talk about the first meeting that he went to in the White House after the inauguration, they talked about invading Iraq and showed some document. The White House was on him like fuzz on a blanket. And the very next day they were yelling "classified, classified." And then Vice President Cheney demanded an investigation in September 2001 when he thought something had been leaked."

LINK TO PREVIOUS POST: "The Real Leak Damage: Plame Was a WMD Specialist."

MORE NEWS AND READING

The Nation, April 2006, "American taxpayers currently subsidize the offshoring of their own jobs..." ("A New Domestic and Global Strategy" by Thea Lee.)

The New Republic, Oct. 2004 "Idea Man: Kerry Would Fight Terrorism Better."

Russia "Balances" Against Bush: Gives Iran High-Speed Torpedo...Good-Bye US Naval Superiority

Add to the list of George Bush's foreign policy blunders which put us in greater danger: sparking an underwater arms race which undercuts what was previously a clear US naval superiority. Foreign Policy 101 says that when your actions make other nations feel threatened, they form alliances to "balance" against you. The Freeper Neanderthals among us may have a hard time with all these multi-syllabic words, (They hate us for our freedom, man, that's it, now SHUT UP!) but the people responsible for US foreign policy throughout most of our history understood the concept quite well.

"Bandwagoning," the flip side of the balancing vs. bandwagoning theory, happens when countries decide that your interests are their interests. When you get too strong, or your motives become questionable, however, weaker countries peel off and start balancing against you.

Russia apparently decided that the US attacking and building permanent bases in Iraq, and now openly threatening Iran, is maybe a bit too much. Sharing its high-speed "Shkval" torpedo technology with Iran in one stroke negates the clear naval superiority we have spent 50 years building. Traveling at 230 mph underwater, using "supercavitation" technology, no ship or aircraft carrier can get out of the way of these things fast enough. It's one of the few areas of weapons research in which Russia may have an edge, and we'll have to spend another $100 billion that we don't have to develop countermeasures, if there are any. Even the sight of one American aircraft carrier in smoke and flames delivers an enormous blow to American prestige.

Just one more reason why now and then it might be better to try talking to a country instead of bullying it around, which is all Bush knows how to do. Iran was never our enemy until the CIA overthrew the democratically-elected Mohammed Mossadeq in 1953 and installed that son-of-a-bitch the Shah of Iran. Saddam Hussein had nothing on our boy the Shah when it came to torture methods.

Hey, I WANT to have an empire. I WANT to be a citizen of the strongest country on Earth. And George Bush, through his inability to comprehend anything but force, is f-ing it up for me. Even those sly Roman emperors had to decide whom to attack and whom they couldn't afford to piss-off, for the moment. Bush has decided he can just afford to piss-off everyone, all the time, and that's that. I wonder how long he would have lasted as a Roman emperor.

We were right goddammit!

Time Magazine Gets the Global Warming Down...Not much to say here, except I, and the patriots at the Battle of Seattle 1999, told you so. In my book "American Dream" I said: "what is it that people don't understand?"

Even old Al Gore, Al Bore, is gittin the religion. Actually I like some of the shit Al has said lately. Even though Al shafted the Kyoto Treaty for GM, maybe there is such a thing as coming around to your better self. Old Hit Man and character assassin Al, who opened up his debate with Ross Perot in 1992 with a tidbit that Perot stood to gain financially from opposing NAFTA. Not that I ever really liked Perot, but I kind of wanted to hear about how NAFTA was good or bad for America.

Hell, America is all about sinners, and Americans love nothing more than a repentant sinner. Better late than never, Al.

Dude, the polar bears are fucking DROWNING. Global warming isn't coming. IT'S HERE....Time cover.

Redeployment: Afghanistan is the key

Redeployment: Afghanistan is the key

Democratic efforts to unite around an Iraq withdrawal plan which cannot be attacked by Republicans as "cut-and-run" overlooks a key reality: Afghanistan is about to blow. This is a result of Bush's original failure to take the fight to the enemy that attacked us, where we had, and still have, a real coalition of international support.

Christian Parenti's recent report from Afghanistan, "Afghanistan: The Other War" (which includes an account of a fairly hairy meeting with Taliban insurgents in a mountain canyon), says:

"As the empire drifts, the Taliban grow stronger. But who are the Taliban, and why are they placing bombs, attacking foreign troops, infiltrating ever deeper into Afghanistan and provoking a crisis for the international occupation?"

The Nation's Parenti writes that Lieut. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, the senior American military officer in the 'Stan, expects "the violence to get worse over the spring and summer."

The truth is that though Republicans attack proponents of Iraq withdrawal as "cowards" who want to cut-and-run (as Congresswoman Jean Schmitt referred to John Murtha after he proposed his redeployment plan) it was Bush who cut-and-ran, when he had the clear opportunity to immediately box-in bin Laden at Tora Bora with massive US ground forces, and kill him. Richard Clarke, who was named by president Bush as co-chairman of the Campaign Coordination Committee to devise a response to 9/11, urged a "rapid, no-holds-barred" retaliation in Afghanistan—including an immediate dispatch of troops to Afghanistan's borders to cut off al-Qaeda escape routes, and US forces criss-crossing the mountain regions of Pakistan, where bin Laden now hides, "breaking the crockery, if necessary." By the "crockery" Scheuer meant the Pakistani government.

Instead, Bush dilly-dallied while Al Qaeda escaped across the border by saying to the Taliban, which harbored Al Qaeda, 'You still have an opportunity to come clean with us,' according to Clarke. Thus engaging in the "naive" notion, in Bush's own words, that you can "negotiate with terrorists."

Michael Scheuer, former chief of the CIA's bin Laden unit and author of the vitally important "Imperial Hubris; Why the West is Losing the War on Terror", advocated a "savage, pre-planned response" to 9/11 aimed at decapitating Al Qaeda. There was no need to negotiate since, for many years, the Taliban had been warned repeatedly by the US about harboring the man who had bombed the USS Cole, and who swore to attack Americans on American soil. The Taliban was told repeatedly that they would be held personally responsible for any attack.

Clarke calls Bush's idea that he could negotiate with the Taliban to give up bin Laden "silly."

As long as Americans are allowed to keep Iraq as the "visual center" of the war on terror, to coin a term, the Republicans will succeed in portraying any alternative plan as "cut-and-run." This is why Dick Cheney is at such pains to continue to equate the two things, the war in Iraq, and the war on terror. It is also why the administration unveiled its brilliant strategem of declassifying thousands of documents pertaining to the possible connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. It's perfectly obvious: this keeps amateurs with no training and no context playing the game of he-said, she-said right through the 2006 elections. Never mind that there is no he-said, she-said. The 9/11 Commission Report, and the administration itself, have said there was no connection between Hussein and the 9/11 attacks. It's called muddying the waters.

The Democratic redeployment plan must say it like it is: we need those troops out of Iraq, because we're going to need them in Afghanistan, the TRUE CENTER OF THE WAR ON TERROR, where Bush badly bungled. This is a battle for the hearts and minds of the Muslim world, and Afghanistan is where we retain any semblance of moral authority, since, by the broad agreement forged as the Twin Towers smoldered, this is where the people who attacked us lived.

Iraq can be stabilized and removed from the American consciousness as the center of the war on terror by acknowledging that it is really three separate states: Shiastan, Sunnistan, and Kurdistan; by continuing to quote in campaign ads the credible heavy-hitters who say, like Nixon's Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird: "Our presence is what feeds the insurgency;" or, like Brent Scowcroft: "This was said to be part of the war on terror, but Iraq feeds terrorism;" and by diplomacy which engages the regional powers to balance and deter the ambitions unleashed by the power vacuum following the removal of Saddam Hussein.

A blogger on Democratic challenger and veteran Andrew Duck's website notes in a thought-provoking comment:

"Eventually, you might even see some interesting defense alliances occur in the American absence: say Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and even Sunnistan all being on the same side, to check Iran, Shiastan, the Palestinian Authority, and Lebanon on the other."

What definitely WILL NOT win the 2006 elections for Democrats is more talk of securing ports and chemical plants, without attacking the central premise of Bush's war, relentlessly and on-message every day, from now until election day. Bush will always get the ultimate credit for pulling the Big Trigger, until the American people see that he hit the elderly lawyer, and not the quail.

Impeach-talk: Wipe the Smile off Republicans' Faces

"Republicans, worried that their base lacks motivation to turn out for the fall elections, have found a new rallying cry in the dreams of liberals about censuring or impeaching president Bush." -NY Times, Mar. 16, 2006

If Rush Limbaugh is correct about Democratic talk of impeachment being a "gift" to Republicans because of the "backlash" it might cause in the 2006 elections, then it is only because the Dems have done such a lousy, inarticulate job of hammering Bush on the national security. Or rather, his utter, criminal betrayal of it.

The spin is out from the Lame Democrat faction that impeachment calls might fire up the right-wing base. But their refusal to take-on Bush is the only reason he HAS a base AT ALL. In 2004, when John Kerry attacked Bush (too little too late) for allowing bin Laden to escape at Tora Bora, Republicans predictably warned that Kerry had crossed the line (like they always do when the truth makes the room a little too hot.) But at those moments Kerry's numbers ticked up, not down.

The mastery of the Right in doing politics is dazzling in contrast to the complete befuddlement of Democrats every time one of them stands up and does the right thing, like call for impeachment. They have the Democrats on the defensive again with the Dubai ports scandal barely off the front pages. Impeachment calls need the support of a swift and sustained thrashing of Bush on the national security, starting with the betrayal of CIA weapons of mass destruction specialist Valerie Plame.

Sure, fighting is tougher than just getting along and putting up just enough of an opposition to get you re-elected by the local party machine. You have to respond to Bush Faction bullshit every day (Valerie Plame was just an analyst and everyone knows who she was. Bullshit), and come up with your own war plan and talking points. You must be ready for the absolutely inevitable smears and attacks on your patriotism coming your way. But this national security stuff is kind of important. By leaving bin Laden in place to coordinate things, pumping up his legions of volunteers by attacking Iraq, and leaving ports, chemical plants and nukes all over the world unsecured, Bush has almost guaranteed another terror attack. Contrast this to our troops having secured Afghanistan and the Paki frontier IN FORCE by now, with Saddam still in charge of his dysfunctional, simmering powder keg of a nation, and a vast majority of Muslims still thinking America is the greatest and most righteous nation on earth, and loving what we stand for.

This is how we should have won the war on terror. Iraq will eventually disintegrate into 3 states no matter how many of our troops are killed there. Now we know why it took a thug like Hussein to keep it together. If the Democrats do not start doing the national security thing on Bush, and doing it hot and heavy, American blood will pay. There will be plenty of blame to go around.

Polis

MORE AT http://ralphlopezworld.com

General thread

Let me have it. Use this for comments on all items.

Dump the Lame Democrats

OH REALLY...Another No-Duh moment for the New York Times, Democrats are not "capitalizing" on Republican sleaziness, law-breaking, and incompetence. Thus blowing the chance for gains in 2006 ("Some Democrats are Sensing Missed Opportunities.") Letter-to-editor-writer Robert Resnikoff of Middletown, CT explains to the political newbies that:

"the Democrats need to take a page from the Republican playbook and attack the other party on its perceived strengths. President Bush's operatives took on Senator John McCain and then Senator John Kerry on their war heroism. The
Democrats don't need to be nearly as dishonest to raise questions about President Bush on national security."

Attack perceived strengths? Oh right, this is what pols do when they actually want to WIN an election.

Democrats don't even NEED to lie about Bush bungling the capture or killing of bin Laden at Tora Bora (read the book by the CIA operative code-named "Jawbreaker.") Unless Bush bungled it on purpose, and I do not believe for one minute that this could not be the case. The war on terror has been quite good for GWB. You could also say Bush "did a Cheney" and aimed wild at Iraq instead of the bird. The hunting accident is a perfect metaphor for this whole administration. Psst! Bin Laden and the Al Qaeda high command are holed up comfortably in Pakistan, not Iraq. Mike Scheuer, top CIA analyst and "Imperial Hubris" author, wanted to put massive manpower on the border while the towers were still smoldering, to seal off the exits, then stomp one end of the Pakistani mountains to the other. "Breaking the crockery, if necessary," says Scheuer, until we found bin Laden. Which is what we oughta be doing now.

Iraq took the fight AWAY from the enemy. Bin Laden, who is like Road Runner peeking out from behind bushes and sticking his tongue out at Bush, was the duck, or whatever the hell, and Iraq was the poor lawyer Cheney blasted instead. We need to get out of Iraq, move troops to Afghanistan, and get on with finding the people who attacked us. In Iraq we just walked into the middle of a family quarrel, which you don't do because you don't know who is whom and who hates whom the most. Everyone knows that.

If you want to attack the Bush Faction on national security, we could talk about the 130 tons of HMX high explosives we discovered lost in Iraq in October of 2004, or rather, how we're finding them again...in car bombs. I no longer call them the "Republicans" because there are a lot of good Republicans now who are looking at Bush like he's crazy, which he is. I just can't believe how long it took some people to see it. The guy landed on an aircraft carrier like Jesus-with-a-cowboy-hat-and-a-sidearm.

While in Vietnam your biggest worry was a landmine or a bullet, now in Iraq we're facing bombs that can leave your brain
permanently rattled even if you don't have a scratch on you.

Or we could talk about the "F" on follow-through that the post-9/11 commission gave Bush, on things like securing harbors and chemical plants, and hiring translators.

The fact is, Bush seems uninterestesd in the war on terror, except of course, those parts that increase his power. Translators? Boring. Warrantless eavesdropping? Fight for it like hell! Plugging holes in airport security? Pu-leese. Locking up Americans? Let's do it!

My favorite ACLJew lawyer Harvey Silverglate (Harvey lives down my street) writes in the Boston Phoenix:

"Whatever else he may or may not be, Bush is strategic: what better vehicle for delivering himself sweeping, unchecked "inherent" presidential power than through an appeal to national security in an area -- electronic surveillance -- where public-opinion polls indicate that Americans are most willing to sacrifice civil liberties in exchange for perceived security?"

Like a laser as always Harvey zeroes in on it:

"If Bush wins this round, the next step will almost certainly be a claim to presidential power to engage in torture or executive detention of citizens with neither charge nor trial nor time limit"

Actually Bush ALREADY claims the right of executive detention of citizens without time limit. The trial balloon, still untested by the Roberts-Alito Supreme Court axis, is Jose Padilla. They pulled back on Padilla for now, most likely waiting for a more favorable climate (read: after an attack) to nail down the power to lock up anyone incommunicado, without a trial, indefinitely.

Hear this. It could be you. It could be anybody. There was a reason the Founders fought the Revolution, so that kings could not drag you away in the night and throw you in a dungeon.

If John Kerry had attacked Bush on national security, he would be president right now. Incumbent Democrats are throwing the fight, and acting like the gang that couldn't shoot straight. So forget those clowns. Follow our Fighting Candidates page (I changed it from "fighting Democrats" to make room for a patriotic Republican or two.) Give them money. Urge them to get behind a united agenda, my suggested one, for instance. Realize you are living in an incredible time in history. Great republics don't die every day, and you are alive to maybe stop it. Your grandchildren will ask: What did you do?

Get the Goods

"A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves" --Edward R. Murrow


Let's see, here's what I'm getting out of this whole NSA thing:

If I've got nothing to hide, then I don't mind the government checking up now and then on my phone conversations or email. In case I'm in on some terror plot that wouldn't have been uncovered - Praise the NSA! - without the president's power to poke around some. Despite all the noise about whether Bush broke the law or not (he did), no one is asking the basic question: What's so bad about that?

If you want to be safe, then just get over it, your Bill of Rights that is. It's a new 9/11 World. Why eavesdrop without warrants? To catch terrorists. Why can't we talk about it? It might tip-off the terrorists.

My contention is, that explanation alone should be enough to get the Bushies run out of town. Haven't we been debating the Patriot Act for 4 years, and issues like whether a tap should follow a cellphone? Alberto Gonzalez said that working with a judge "could possibly tip off a member of Al Qaida or someone working with Al Qaida." What gets me isn't that these guys say these things. It's that they say them with a straight face.

Senators will stand on the floor of the senate reading a list of names and numbers we are listening in on. Better yet, CSPAN will run a ticker tape along the bottom of the screen with the names of suspected terrorists. Egads, Abdul! Get off the phone! We're being tapped!

I feel like Bugs Bunny whispering to Elmer Fudd. Psst! Alberto! I think those scwewy terrorists know we do wiretaps!

How many times can the Bushies call us just plain stupid to our faces and get away with it? I'd give anything, ANYTHING, to be a fly on the wall when Karl Rover and the gang are having a few pops and a good laugh over how the reporters just lapped it up without even asking these questions. My sides would be hurting too if I'd have done it.

But to answer the original question, about why even have laws that hamstring the government's ability to poke into your lives, it goes back to the Founders' basic distrust of people, and of people in power most of all. They thought that, even more fearsome than the criminals the government chases around, was when the criminals WERE the government. They reasoned that guys with guns running around killing people could only do so much damage, but guys with an army to order around, unlimited resources, long reach, and the law on their side could do untold damage for a long, long time. The British "General Warrant," by which king's men could go through anything of yours, anytime, with only general suspicion as an explanation, enraged the colonists and was one of the causes of the American Revolution.

The Bill of Rights doctrine of Probable Cause was meant to stop baseless "fishing expeditions," that is, looking for something you could send someone to jail for, so you could, let's say, take over his business. Or his wife. Boy, those Founders thought people could be pretty crummy. Good thing the Post 9/11 World changed all that.

Now we can trust bureaucrats with armies at their disposal to always do the Right Thing. Just protect us, and never get tempted by anything else. Temptation, dirty dealing, blackmail, greed, and lust for whatever are things of the past, and if you don't think so, you're a conspiracy nut. Like those Founding Fathers.

Besides explanations like Gonzalez's (hey I'm Hispanic too, can I get a race-change operation? This is embarrassing...) the False Choice set up by Bush (a favorite tactic) says it all. THEY don't want us to have the power to snoop, quickly and efficiently. WE know there are terrorists out there who want to hurt us, so we need it. But Bush ALREADY has the power to snoop, immediately and without a warrant, and under a recent senate compromise now has 45 days to get the warrant. What he wants, REALLY wants, is the power to not have to tell ANYONE, EVER, about a given tap or records search. The Senate "compromise" allows the administration to cite "national security" in the event of an, er, delicate search. Boy that New York Times reporter turned out to be a real pervert! Women everywhere and his wife a DNC bigshot! Don't worry, he won't be bothering us much longer.

It isn't all that hard to show probable cause for a search, and the body of law behind it is amazingly evolved and nuanced. A cop cannot open your trunk on a routine traffic stop just because he thinks you are a wise-ass. If he does and he finds drugs, a conviction can be thrown out on grounds that the search was illegal. The idea is that the crime itself is not as bad as the manner in which it was uncovered, by someone with a badge and a gun whose commands you must follow or he might shoot you, and maybe get away with it.

But if the cop sees pot seeds on the dashboard, or blood on the car floor, then he has probable cause. The bottom line is there has to be a plausible reason, which someone in a separate branch of government can check and review. Bush protested that his illegal NSA survielllance was reviewed, checked, and checked again by Justice Department or other internal lawyers. That doesn't count, because they all answer to the same man. This is the bottom line Bush wants to change, with a radical, utterly brazen, and utterly wrong legal argument. I did it because I was authorized to use force. And eavesdropping is part of warfare.

It is wrong because the Constitution is quite explicit on the roles of the different branches in time of war. It makes the president the "commander-in-chief" of of the Army and Navy," but specifically empowers Congress to "make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces."

-It's called an AUDIT

So here you are rolling merrily along protecting the American People, data-mining 2 million conversations a day for key words like "Semtex," "Al Qaeda," "lawsuits," and "travel to Pakistan." (Hey, terrorists get sued like everyone else.) How do you make sure no abuses are happening? Well, if an audit court were in place, it might see the added search term "512 East 12th St." which is an address of some pesky San Jose Mercury News reporter, doing a story on the next Watergate. And a judge might ask, how did that get in there? What have "lawsuits" and "East 12th St." got to do with each other? Especially since I drink with the guy?

Admiral Bobby Inman, the first director of the NSA, said that the law could include "audit" capability. That's right, poly-ticians, a CHECK. The government probably won't get caught, since there is so much data. But they might. Which might cool the jets a little of your typical ass-licker bureaucrat eager to get in good with the next Secretary of State, and is willing to bend a few rules to get the dirt on his boss's enemies. Or on a particularly eloquent political protester.

Once you accept the premise that unlimited general surveillance makes us safer, you have renounced the Founders' carefully considered, studied, and thought-out views on human beings and society. Classical and Enlightenment scholars to a man, they read Greek, Latin, French, German, and devoured more thick books in a year than George Bush has in a lifetime. Terrorism? They lived through an enormously bloody 10-year revolution, the carnage of Napoleonic wars in which jealous and greedy princes burned fields, huts, and the peasants caught inside them just to make a point, lived in a time of intrigues in which you would kill your own brother or father to solidify your position in the castle, through battles in which 15-year-old boys were press-ganged into front lines to be cut in half by chain shot. What did they know about the way the world works? What did they know about forming a good government?

That's passe, pardner. It's 9/11 now, baby. Gimme a line of that blow.

GET SMARTER! CITIZEN'S HOMEWORK: READ THIS EXCELLENT SUMMARY ON "PROBABLE CAUSE" FROM NORTH CAROLINA WESLYAN COLLEGE

"The Fourth Amendment has two clauses. The first states that people have a right to be protected from unreasonable searches and seizures, and the second states that no warrant shall issue except upon probable cause. The roots of the second clause -- the probable cause requirement -- lie in English and American colonial history. Prior to the framing of our Constitution by the founding fathers, the government had virtually unlimited power to believe, right or wrong, that any illegal items they were looking for would be found. In England, this all-purpose power took the form of what were called general warrants; in colonial America, they were called writs of assistance. To protect against the abuses inherent in this kind of power, the Framers added a probable cause requirement...."

FOR FUN! WATCH THE 1996 "B" FLICK BUT A FUN ONE WITH KEVIN COSTNER AND GENE HACKMAN, "NO WAY OUT." IT'S A MURDER MYSTERY WITH ALL KINDS OF POWERFUL MEN IN WASHINGTON, KGB MOLES, SPYING, ASSASSINS, THE PENTAGON, AND A LOVE STORY (COSTNER, WHO ELSE?)

Bush Flunks Foreign Policy 101

Columbia's Prof. Robert Jervis put forth a theory many years ago, which is standard reading in foreign policy, that distinguishes between firmness and bullying by nations. When your opponents perceive firmness, their aggressive actions are "deterred," as in the Cold War and WWII. But when firmness turns into bullying, opponents are frightened into building their own deterrents against you, the Jervis "spiral." It's called the Spiral vs. Deterrence Theory, and Iran is behaving EXACTLY AS THE THEORY PREDICTS. It is intent on building the bomb to avoid being the next Iraq, and threatening to unleash waves of suicide bombers. By attacking Iraq, supposedly to prevent weapons of mass destruction from spreading, Bush wound up spreading weapons of mass destruction. Being president is not for simplistic thinkers. On your next vacation print out and take this long article "Why the Bush Doctrine Cannot Be Sustained" by Robert Jervis. Be warned: you might come home smarter, and ready to debate foreign policy with anyone. From the article:

"Bush calls Iraq "the central front" in the counterterrorist effort, and he rhetorically asks, If America were not fighting terrorists in Iraq, . . . what would these thousands of killers do, suddenly begin leading productive lives of service and charity? I join many observers in finding this line of argument implausible and in believing that the war was, at best, a distraction from the struggle against al Qaeda. To start with, diplomatic, military, and intelligence resources that could have been used to seek out terrorists, especially in Afghanistan, were redeployed against Iraq. In perhaps an extreme case, in June of2002, the White House vetoed a plan to attack a leading terrorist and his poison laboratory in northern Iraq because it might have disturbed the efforts to build a domestic and international coalition to change the regime, and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi later emerged as the most important insurgent in Iraq and second only to Osama bin Laden on the overall most-wanted list."

The filibuster thread

Folks: the Democrats cave and they cave, then say, if we don't cave, it might hurt us in 2006. This is the Democratic leadership whose "caving-in" strategy gave us 4 more years of George Bush. John Kerry has done a brave thing if he succeeds in mounting this filibuster. Sam Alito will uphold the president's power to to declare any of us "enemy combatant", to listen in on anyone anytime, all based on arguments as fantastically ridiculous as 'if we talk about the NSA program, the terrorists will know we're listening to them.' As if they didn't know already.

Alito is neither conservative or liberal. He is a far-right ideologue who will blindly rubber-stamp the president's power to do absolutely anything. Even if this filibuster does not ultimately succeed in blocking Alito, it will raise the stakes in this unprecedented power-grab, Bush's coup on the Constitution. The war on terror will NEVER END; that's the beauty of claiming EXTRAORDINARY WARTIME POWERS! A vote against the filibuster is a "yes" for Alito, and a vote against our constitutional form of government. Those who will give up their freedom for safety are cowards. GO TO WWW.RALPHLOPEZWORLD.COM FOR CITIZEN'S INFO...

Our occasional News Roundup - everything you need to be goddam well-informed...

Here it is, ImpeachPAC.org. ImpeachPAC supports Democratic candidates for Congress who support the immediate and simultaneous impeachment of George Bush and Dick Cheney.

On insurgent Democratic candidates, Bill Greider "The Rise of the Rebels" (The Nation.)

Tasini vs. Hillary Clinton in Democratic primary: www.tasinifornewyork.org/


James Fallows' "Why Iraq has no army" (The Atlantic Monthly) rehashes the dangerous fallacy that seems to define the what-went-wrong debate these days, the idea that there was a "right" way to occupy a country the size of California where gun control means one AK-47 per household. And whatever that right way was, we didn't do it.

Forget that every argument says we should have used more troops even though we can barely muster the number we have there now, already making the whole war sound like an unfunny version of the joke about the guy on a desert island figuring out how to open a can of beans and saying, first, we've got to find a can opener.

Forget that keeping the Iraqi army together was not an option since the Shiites wouldn't tolerate it, and the insurgency would have poked its head up one way or the other. Fallows says "Marines I interviewed consistently emphasized how debilitating the language barrier was."

Like my kid would say, uh, YEAH. It's like, a foreign country, and that's what a foreign country is, someplace where you have no understanding of the culture, language or customs. Which is why it's such a bad idea to invade in the first place.

We are stuck in a sand pit where no matter what, we are training and equipping people who would rather not have us there, who can turn around and shoot at us instead of the "bad guys". More troops? More targets. Oh yes, according to the Fallows piece, every Iraqi knows you actually need TWO AK-47s per household, "one for the house and one for traveling."


Next: What if the terrorists gave an election and won? Here's Bush's problem: you talk every day about spreading democracy throughout the region, then when they decide they like that idea, they vote in Hamas. Which is the ideologiocal kin of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, which just grabbed 20 percent of their Legislature despite clubbings and shootings by the police in Brotherhood strongholds to suppress the vote. Now what, George? Your little experiement just gave these guys a great idea: First, we win election! Then we say, no more election!

Insurgency in Iraq now numbers up to a hundred different groups, New York Times, 12/5/05 reprinted here at NavySeals.com

"The Americans are coming; we won't come back. They are coming to us on their own feet." From Jordanian clan caught in battle of ideas with jihadis, by Michael Slackman, NY Times 11/28/05

"...many Arab and Muslim men, not just jihadists, see foreign occupation as a form of emasculation," from Newsweek, The Women of Al Qaeda.

Christian Parenti (The Nation) says American soldiers patronize Iraqi women-turned-prostitutes.

"US Has Killed 100,000 in Iraq -The Lancet" by Juan Cole. [Lancet report authors] Roberts and Burnham find that US aerial bombardments are killing far more Iraqi civilians than had previously been suspected.

"He signed a confession saying whatever they wanted to hear, which is that he worked with Jose Padilla to do the dirty bomb plot. He says that's absolute nonsense, and he doesn't know Jose Padilla." --Lawyer for alleged co-conspirator of Jose Padilla, the American citizen held over three years incommunicado by the Bush administration as an "enemy combatant," New York Times 11/24/05.

Join the noise-making at 9pm sharp, just when Bush starts his State of the Union speech next month. Rally in DC the Saturday after. Bush must step down NOW! Www.worldcantwait.org


Excuse me John Roberts? What do you mean by "our money?" Roberts said: "If you want our money, you have to let our recruiters on campus." The case involved the government trying to deny federals funds to schools that don't allow military recruiters. Now just a sec, didn't every penny of that money come from the taxpayers? Your money, John? Your money? New York Times, 12/9/05.

Win website contest! Kill Americans! This from the New York Times: "An insurgent group, the Victorious Army Group, has extended a deadline for a Web design contest, according to an Internet posting. The group has set a Jan. 15 deadline for submissions of a design "worthy of the group's reputation and the reputation of the jihad and the mujahedeen," according to a translation provided by the SITE Institute, which monitors jihadist messages. The winner is promised "God's blessings" and the opportunity to fire three long-range rockets at an American military base."

Raging grannies arrested in Times Square recruiting office, demanding to enlist...www.grandmothersforpeace.org

Feingold to filibuster Patriot Act


Qaeda link said made up by detainee..."A prewar assertion by the Bush administration that Iraq was assisting Al Qaeda was based on statements made by a detainee in Egyptian custody who later said he had fabricated them to avoid harsh treatment..." Boston Globe 12/9/05.

The Real Plame Issue: Bush Killed Us

It was a pivotal moment: CNN reports on November 6th, 2005 that Senator Harry Reid's (D-NV) shut-down of the senate, after the indictment of Scooter Libby, may be a response to "activists" complaining that Democrats weren't "putting up enough of a fight," that they "lacked spine," and did not "stand up to Republicans." The real news is that such long-running disputes are spilling onto CNN. There's no telling where this kind of talk may lead.

However, there is no time for these activists (I count myself one) to break their arms patting themselves on the back for forcing some real opposition. We have seen Democratic offensives suddenly halt and wither before, then lapse into baffling, bumbling inarticulateness.

Reid's rarely-invoked rule forcing the senate into closed session, to demand answers on the use of intelligence before the Iraq War, was a shot across the bow, but no more. Judging by the amount of unused ammunition at the Democrats' feet, it doesn't look promising. Absent a widened attack, the Bushies' instinct is that this can be reduced to another tempest in a teapot. And if there is anything the Republicans possess in abundance over the Democrats, it is excellent political instincts.

Democratics have settled on the "falsified intelligence" angle as the way to attack the administration's misconduct in the Plame Affair. Sen. Reid said:

"The Libby indictment provides a window into what this is really all about, how this administration manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to sell the war in Iraq and attempted to destroy those who dared to challenge its actions..."

With this strategy, it is not so much Valerie Plame's blown cover that matters as much as the light it sheds on the run-up to the Iraq war. The Bushies are confident that this line of attack will not cause their downfall.

As long as Bush sticks to his fallback position, that he didn't really know if Saddam had WMD, but he couldn't take any chances with "protecting the American people," he will ride this storm out, counting as always on ignorance, fear, and the general bloodthirstiness of Americans after 9/11. Bombing tens of thousands of civilians and losing over 2000 soldiers is no problem, as long as we're "fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here." Who cares how we got into it?

In a nutshell this is what the Rovian gut understands, and Karl Rove's gut is not often wrong. Bush can say, the stupid lib'rals forget we had just been attacked on 9/11, and that Saddam would've gotten his hands on a nuke sooner or later, even if, uh, he wasn't even close this time.

With the betrayal of Plame itself reduced to a brush-fire, the Republican instinct understands what the Democrats do not: Americans will tolerate being lied to if they believe it was for their own good. The "fight them there rather than here" is a powerful narcotic to fearful Americans. Although it's absurd (nothing says they can't come here after the live-fire training ground we have provided in Iraq,) its pedigree is long.

During Vietnam we were told we had to fight them in Southeast Asia or we would be fighting them "on the shores of San Diego." My own dear dad went to that war, and the only reason he went, he said, was so that we, his young sons, "wouldn't have to." The real evil of this draft-dodger administration is to harness the noblest impulses of the bravest and most idealistic, and to use them for their own foul ends.

The Democrats are throwing the fight by holding back on the most damning aspect of the Plame Affair: Plame was no politically-motivated analyst working for the "thems" in a politically-motivated CIA. She was a weapons of mass destruction specialist. For most of her career Plame was non-official cover (NOC) on uncoventional weapons. NOC means the government can deny your existence if you are caught. As CNN national security correspondent David Esnor explains, a non-official cover operates "without the protection of diplomatic status...to recruit foreigners who [know] about murky international weapons deals involving weapons of mass destruction."

The intelligence networks Plame had built were an early warning system against weapons of mass destruction and other threats to our daily security. Most recently Plame worked in the CIA's Weapons Intelligence Non-Proliferation and Arms Control Center (WINIPAC.) When the administration blew her cover, it didn't betray her. It betrayed US, every man, woman, and child in America. Esnor says "the damage was most likely done" by "other nations tracking down...Valerie Plame Wilson's contacts and sources and shutting them down."

One intelligence officer after another has bravely stepped forward to put the lie to the "analyst" myth, risking career, reputation, and the well-known pathological wrath of the Bush administration. Ever the fast-friends good to have in a pinch, the Democrats apparently see and hear nothing.

One US official told Time magazine: "I'm beyond disgusted. I am especially angry about the bullshit explanations that she is not a covert agent. That is an official status, and there are lots of people in this building who are on that status. It's not up to the Republican Party to determine when that status will end for an agent." Time noted that foreign intelligence services were "known to have retraced her steps and contacts to discover more about how the CIA operates in their countries."

Another right-wing talking-point is that Plame's work could not have been secret if she reported to CIA headquarters and was married to a US ambassador. But, as one former CIA operative, Melissa Mahle, told Newsweek's Jonathan Alter, this reflects a total ignorance about the way the CIA works. And when an operative's cover is blown to other governments, Alter said "It isn't pretty." We already know the Pakistani Secret Service is riddled with Al Qaeda sympathizers, one of the reasons we haven't found bin Laden. Now they know Plame's secrets too. There may be many a slit throat in obscure Third World back alleys thanks to the loose lips of the Bush administration.

The list of former intelligence officers claiming serious damage to the national security is long and growing longer: Michael Scheuer, Larry Johnson, Jim Marcinkowski, David McMichael, Colonel Patrick Lang, Mel Goodman. Testimony from many of these intelligence officials was taken at the Dorgan (D-ND) Committee Hearings last July. Col. Patrick Lang, former director of the Defense Dept. Human Intelligence Service, went on the record saying that as a result of the Plame betrayal:

"the very kinds of people you need to get into the heart of this galaxy of jihadi groups and people like this will make a judgment that they are not going to trust you in this way. And once that happens, then the possibility of penetrating these groups, the possibility of knowing that they're going to carry 10-pound bags of explosive in the subway stations, will go right down the drain."

The Downing Street Memo showed once and for all that the White House was determined to "fix" intelligence to justify the Iraq invasion, no matter what the real intelligence said. The yawn with which this was greeted by the American public should tell the Democrats something. Americans don't care if they were lied into war. But they MIGHT care if it is now easier for "them" to get "here." What is amazing is that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has already given the Democrats more ammunition than they would need to impeach ten presidents. He made the connection between Plame and "national security" no fewer than nine times in his initial press conference, including such statements as:

-"The fact that she was a CIA officer was not well- known, for her protection or for the benefit of all us. It's important that a CIA officer's identity be protected, that it be protected not just for the officer, but for the nation's security."

-"given that national security was at stake, it was especially important that we find out accurate facts."

-"This is a very serious matter and compromising national security information is a very serious matter."

The bottom line is that George Bush and his people, by their reflexive habit of smearing all who disagree, have placed us in grave danger. In the New Warfare, one snitch giving the number of a single cargo container is worth a division of soldiers floundering around in countries they do not understand. Playing with the truth to entice a nation into war will not spark the popular outrage required to eject this administration, nor does it rise to the level of treason. But punching a hole in the intelligence shield painstakingly built to protect us, and to help gauge the intentions of our enemies, will, and does. If the Democrats do not do their duty, the wrath of the people may be aimed at them as well as at Bush, after the next attack.

cc:
robert borosage
derrick jackson
charlie savage
barry crimmins
paul hackett
editors of The Nation

Why Bush's Speech is Bullshit

Goddammit you've got to do everything for these guys. Here's what the Democrats' response should be:

"The president does not recognize the reality of what our presence in Iraq is doing to the world. It's not just about Iraq; it's about the entire Middle East, and the world, and that includes us.

"While the president is waiting for Hooterville in Baghdad, Sadr's Mahdi Army is getting the best training in the world and practicing its secret prison and torture chambers like the ones they just found. They have thorougly infiltrated the ranks of the Iraqi police and army, and are waiting only for the day the Americans stop taking bullets for them so they can have a little purge and become the Islamic regime the have always wanted, allied with Iran.

"In addition, the president's "staying the course" is sending shock waves of insurgency throughout the region, into Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Afghanistan, in the form of more frequent and more sophisticated attacks mimicking tactics perfected in Iraq. In Afghanistan, since September there have been at least nine suicide attacks showing unusual levels of coordination and knowledge of explosives.


"The time has come for the president to recognize this reality, and to recognize that our presence in Iraq is having a negative impact on the security of America, which is better served by focusing on its war against it true enemies, the fighters of Al Qaeda still controlling large regions of Aghanistan and the mountain regions of the border. The responsible course in Iraq is an orderly withdrawal to the over-the-horizon presence spoken of by our esteemed colleague, congressman Murtha. This would be accompanied by a rapid reaction force prepared to move in, in strength, should evidence of large-scale atrocities arise. We will ask the nations of the world to assist us in monitoring this.

We will assist the Iraqis in avoiding mass bloodshed as a consequence of ethnic and sectarian strife as they build their new democracy, which may recognize new geographic and political realities. Continuous peace efforts among the parties in Iraq will be brokered by the UN. And rather than place its energy into Jihad, the disaffected and the angry who would become America's enemies may show their true committment by participating in the greatest exercise in human creativity the world has ever seen, to show the world that they are indeed prepared to take control of their own destiny, minus one ruthless dictator which it is the gift of the United States to have removed." -by Polis

Alito: From Plame Distraction to Bush Liabilty?

Note: This was written before today's development: the administration has formally charged Padilla with a crime. This is a tactic to avoid a Supreme Court showdown, which leaves Bush's assertion of his powers over American citizens intact and to be tested on another day. The relevance of Padilla to the nomination of Sam Alito is diminished not one iota, as the administration is sure to revive its claims in the event of another terror attack, when a wave of national hysteria makes the climate more favorable. The question to be put to Alito remains: Do American citizens have the right to a jury trial as described under the Sixth Amendment, whatever the crime or political climate, during this war that may conceivably have no end? Or does the new war effectively abrogate this right indefinitely, thus fundamentally changing forever the rights under which Americans are born?

A strange curtain of silence has descended over the most important decision facing post 9/11 America: the fate of the Constitution and the "freedom" which George Bush claims to champion for the rest of the world. We wonder whether the constitution Bush envisions for Iraq includes a Bill of Rights for its citizens, and whether that Bill of Rights includes "the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed" as the Sixth Amendment of our magnificent document reads.

Or will this right in Iraq, as here, depend on the whim of whomever happens to be president?

Jose Padilla, an American by birth, was arrested on American soil and publicly denounced by the administration as having planned to explode a "dirty bomb." Bush claims that, as part of the war on terror, he has the authority to lock up anyone he deems a terrorist suspect, indefinitely, without trial, without a lawyer, without even formal charges. So far, the judicial branch has partially checked these un-American ambitions, and held that, at the least, Padilla is entitled to a lawyer.

In June of last year, just as the Padilla case was about to reach an important point in the appeals process, the administration released fresh allegations that Padilla had planned to use natural gas lines to blow up some apartment buildings. We'll never know if the new allegations were timed to correspond with Padilla's appeal, since Padilla, according to Bush's definition of an "enemy combatant," is not entitled to a trial.

With one hand George positions himself as freedom's ultimate champion (hey I like that fellers, "ultimate champion" thas' me!), with the other hand he directs the Justice Department to think of new ways to deny Americans birthrights which have survived social upheavel and a civil war. One of the most novel creations is the extension of traditional wartime powers to this new, non-traditional war that may never end.

One: I, George Bush, have wartime powers, since I have declared a "war on terror" (a ridiculous name since "terror" is an emotion that will always be with us. More correct would be the political tactic of "terrorism.") Two: this war will last a long, long time," as Bush takes pains to emphasize. Therefore: any citizen can be locked up by Bush forever, incommunicado, for the "protection" of the American people. This unlimited power has been challenged by, of all people, Justice Antonin Scalia. Dissenting from the majority which upheld the Bush position in the related case of Yaser Hamdi, another American "enemy combatant," Scalia said that such power "meet[s] the current emergency in a manner the Constitution does not envision..."

The nomination of Judge Sam Alito to the Supreme Court provides Democrats with their best opportunity to show they will defend their countrymen against the rapacious appetite for power that is the hallmark of the Bush administration. As the Padilla case stands now, the courts are hinting that Padilla only has the right to a military tribunal, in which he must prove his innocence rather than the government having to prove his guilt.

The question of how he stands on the Sixth Amendment was never asked of Judge Roberts, before he was confirmed to the Supreme Court. Another fight thrown by the Democrats? If the Democrats have truly found their backbone, the Borking of Alito over insufficient or ambiguous answers regarding the Padilla case can only make them heroes across a swath of the political spectrum that will frighten King George. Whose primary duty, contrary to what he is fond of saying, is not to "protect the American people," (this is nowhere in the Constitution; look it up) but "to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." This is the oath of office required of all presidents according to Article II, section 1 of the US Constitution.

"Spiro" Dick Cheney, More On...

I've been saying this for two years: the impeachment of Dubya leaves us with President Dick Cheney, hardly an improvement. So we take a page from the playbook that drummed Richard Nixon out of office. Remember? Nixon's VP was Spiro Agnew, whom no one wanted to be stuck with either. So they ran him out of town first, on tax evasion charges. The way was then clear to impeach Tricky Dick, who compared to Bush looks like a Great American. After all, even Nixon never accused his opponents of helping kill American troops. This is how we got Gerald Ford, the first vice president confirmed under the 25th Amendment, who then went on to become a mediocre but relatively benign president.

With the Libby indictment, Cheney is in even more immediate peril than Bush. The famed Washington Post article "The Profitable Connections Of Halliburton" states that: "During Cheney's tenure at Halliburton the company did business in all three countries [Iraq, Iran, Libya.] In the case of Iraq, Halliburton legally evaded U.S. sanctions by conducting its oilservice business through foreign subsidiaries that had once been owned by Dresser."

It's all in my new book. If the Dems with their new "spine" ever decide to uncork Dresser Industries, Cheney is gone. The question for impatient Americans is why he wasn't gone long ago.

A New Contract for America

A favorite talking-point of the right-wing TV and radio spin machine is that Democrats are attacking Bush on Plame etc. only because he is down in the polls and they have no plan of their own. Forget for a moment that people who attack a grieving mother like Cindy Sheehan whine like babies when someone attacks them back. Forget that these people are thin-skinned, hypocritical, and utterly vicious all at once. They have a point.

The Democrats have left themselves wide open to this charge, by having a platform with the consistency of Jello. The latest slogan is a gag-reflex-inducing repetition of the doomed Kerry campaign: "We can do better." How about "Restoring the American Dream"? Copyright Ralph Lopez.

We can do, uh, what? More of the same, but better? Just better? That really fires me up and makes me want to go vote.

A tight set of proposals will do wonders for the party of promise-you-the-moon-and-trust-us-on-how-we'll-get-there. As during the Kerry presidential campaign, the Republicans are lobbing slow softballs the Dems aren't even swinging at. Remember when Bush proposed cutting back time-and-a-half for overtime, and Kerry schlepped on with his "we can do better" canned speech? The Repubs laughed as Kerry stood at the plate with his helmet down over his eyes. How badly do you have to screw the American worker get these guys to get a pulse?

Here's my suggestion for a Democratic platform:

-Save American Pensions - Time magazine reveals that more and more people who have worked twenty or thirty years for the same company are getting their pensions yanked. At fault are recently-passed laws that enable corporations to renege on their pension promises. More than one little old lady in what was once solid middle America is collecting cans to make ends meet. We're not talking about New York bag ladies; we're talking Main Street. Did this trigger immediate and sustained calls for a congressional investigation from the Democrats? No, the silence is deafening. No wonder they are identified solely as the party of pro-sodomy baby-killers that wants to take away your guns, as Boston's little newspaper the Weekly Dig says.

-Restore college opportunity, by enabling students to go to any college to which they earn admission. Yes, I'll take credit for this idea, which I've been pushing since my first days as a candidate, in my books, and in many emails to the Kerry campaign. College "sticker shock" is a winning middle-class issue, because even parents making good money can't afford Junior's first-choice school. In addition, this is a "bootstrap" program that only leverages hard work already done. You have to get into the college first, then we help you go. In other words, this is no welfare hand-out. This is the first rung on the ladder of the American Dream.


-Distinguish Iraq from real war on terror - the task for Democrats is to articulate a position on Iraq that cannot be miscast as appeasement. We are properly at war in Afghanistan and in the mountainous border regions of Pakistan, but Iraq is exactly the quagmire bin Laden wanted. It draws resources away from the hunt for Al Qaeda and from the critical stablization of Afghanistan. This is what the former chief of the CIA's Al Qaeda unit, Michael Scheuer, says. He calls the invasion of Iraq a “never-to-be-hoped-for gift” to bin Laden. Scheuer says al-Zawahari practically cheered when we invaded Iraq, and gave thanks to God for "appeasing" Al Qaeda with the American invasion (see his book "Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror.") Now one foreign policy heavyweight after another is calling for an exit from Iraq. The most recent is former Nixon Defense Secretary Melvin Laird, who says ""Our presence is what feeds the insurgency (in Iraq), and our gradual withdrawal would feed the confidence and the ability of average Iraqis to stand up to the insurgency." Joining him is former National Security Advisor for Bush Senior, Brent Scowcroft, who says "This was said to be part of the war on terror, but Iraq feeds terrorism."

George Bush takes extreme pains to conflate the Iraq War with the war on terror, for good reason. Once separation surgery is successfully performed, he stands vulnerable to charges of bungling the war on terror. I believe that drawing down forces in Iraq must be accompanied by boosting troop levels in Afghanistan, and that we must pour troops into the Afghan-Paki border region to hunt down the people who attacked us on 9/11.

This is not appeasement or pulling back. This is pulling the steering wheel back into the right lane after George Bush has drifted onto the sandy shoulder. The right-wing attack in the face of too much truth is predictable. When you can't argue with facts, just accuse "traitors" of "undermining our troops." This time Democrats should slash back. Number one, it was George Bush who appeased bin Laden with the war in Iraq. Two, it was the Bush administration that committed treason by betraying Valerie Plame (forget this "outting" talk, this is not about Plame's sexual preference. This is a national security betrayal, pure and simple.)

Three, anytime the righties can't answer an argument, they hide behind the troops, like sissies. Another idea: if Sean Hannity is so patriotic why don't we start a public challenge to him, to enlist and go fight?

Bush's grand plan of bombing the Middle East into democracy is shot through with hypocrisy that makes Middle Easterners hate us. They have been trying to win their freedom from corrupt and dictatorial regimes for years, in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, and the Gulf states, only to face armies and police equipped with American weapons. Our addiction to oil is the cause of our unholy alliances with these governments, says Scheuer. He contradicts Bush's assertion that there is an Islamo-fascist ideology bent on taking over the world.

9/11 should not have been a surprise. It was the culmination of a steady stream of Al Qaeda attacks which included the Khobar Towers, the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the USS Cole. Each attack was preceeded by demands by Al Qaeda that the US change its policies of permanently stationing troops in the Arabian peninsula, of sending money and arms to Arab dictators, and of our lopsided support for Israel. Scheuer predicts that without changes in US policy to accompany the military campaign, we are in for "hundred years war drenched with blood on our own soil."

-Environment - A "Marshall Plan" commencing within the first hundred days of a non-Republican, filibuster-proof majority to put us on the path toward clean, sustainable energy independence. The wind, solar, geothermal, biomass, and conservation technologies necessary to set us free from Middle East oil have existed for years. All that remains is the political will to make it a reality.

-Back progressive candidates who are pro-gun-rights in red states. What's right in Manhattan is not necessarily what's right in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Our buddy Paul Hackett (for Congress!) says for a long time he thought "gun control meant being able to hit your target."

More specifically, challengers to Republicans should come out as the true defenders of the Constitution, while the Republicans are the ones who always talk about freedom but who actually hate it unless it means you are "free" to agree with them. No one ever got kicked out of a Kerry rally last year for wearing a pro-Bush T-shirt, the way Bush's thugs threw people out of Bush rallies for having the wrong bumper sticker on their cars outside. See "Life in Bush's America: Wear an anti-Bush T-shirt, get arrested, lose your job" by Tara Tuckwiller.

- speak the language of the fair playing field in a free market, not the language of big government. I've always said if we had a fair economic playing field, we wouldn't need much in the way of social programs. You could afford the rent, you could afford food, a house, health insurance. Instead of a fair playing field we have the biggest welfare bums of all, corporate welfare bums, sucking wealth from the middle to the top one percent of shareholders. Ralph Nader is the only public figure talking about it. Cut them off to pay for worker training vouchers, college tuitions, and reduction of the national debt.

It is tempting to keep adding to what could be done with a non-Republican majority in 2006, but this is a do-able list people can remember, and get excited about. If the opposition does not learn message discipline, it is doomed to lose, because when righties ask - "tell me what they stand for besides being against Bush?" - the average voter will keep drawing a blank, beyond vague promises of more of everything.

A Discussion of Plan Murtha

The details of a plan for an orderly withdrawal from Iraq are being discussed by the American people. In the Spring of 2004 I posted on my blog an imaginary interview with John Kerry in which he called for us to "pull back divisions to the borders, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and keep troops confined to bases ready to restore order if they have to..." ("The Elephant in the Room" which is a compilation of these blog posts, page 79.)

I also called for an internationalization of the peacekeeping force, with one big difference from what generally makes the rounds among policy-makers: it should, as far as possible, be drawn from Muslim nations, to take the steam out of Al Qaeda's Crusaders vs. Islam propoganda. On page 31 of the book I said that by doing so:

"the gravest humiliation to the insurgents can be removed. Armed, gibberish-speaking infidels with no knowledge of Arabic custom or religion, searching homes and patting down Muslim women is creating terrorists, and American troops are admitting it."

Congressman John Murtha's recent, now-famous speech calls for "an over-the-horizon presence of Marines" and "a quick reaction force in the region." Iraq veteran and congressional candidate Andrew Duck (Sixth District, Maryland) does not support a timetable for withdrawal of troops from Iraq. On his website, though, he puts forward a plan for success that includes transitioning to an international force, closing Guantanamo, energy independence within 10 years, and increasing literacy in the Muslim world. The following is an entry on his website in which Congressman Murtha's plan for withdrawal from Iraq is discussed.

Iraq
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on November 23, 2005 - 10:21am.

Andrew and Lea,

I think Iraq will not stay together as one country. I believe a partition of Iraq is the way to adjust to the realities there.

Iraq is really not 1 country: it is 3 countries, of 3 different peoples- the Kurds, the Sunnis, and the Shia. The history of violence and ethnic cleansing in this area is so stark that I don't think a unified government is possible-or even advisable.

Andrew, you should know this, based on your experience in the Balkans. There, Clinton used air power to split apart ethnic/sectarian groups, not put those groups together. I think something similar could be tried in Iraq: use air power to maintain general "no fly, no drive" zones between the 3 ethnic groups to stop invasions and massive attacks upon the US withdrawal- such withdrawal which should start immediately. While there are general areas of these 3 ethnic groups, there will still be enclaves of various ethnic groups found within each of the 3 new states. Their protection will be addressed through non-aligned courts, discussed next.

There will still be violence even as the US leaves: car bombings, assassinations, sabotaging of oil facilities and pipelines, will continue. To help bring this level of violence down, we could ask non-aligned countries- like Brazil and South Africa- to lend their judges to attempt to adjudicate criminal, civil violations, border disputes, and access to oil. At first, the peoples of the region are unlikely to accept any such legal assistance. But, if these judges issue rulings which are fair-even if not accepted or able to be put into effect at first- over time, the battered peoples of the region may see such legal recourse as an alternative to settling scores through violence. Also, the peoples have to realize that there will be enclaves of ethnic groups belonging to the other groups living among them: recourse to legal courts would be better than the alternative, which would be retaliatory actions against their ethnic group in the other country.

Reconstruction aid could be predicated on the resulting 3 nations (Sunnistan, Shiastan, and Kurdistan) having some modicum of a democratic framework, respect for some basic civil rights (especially rights of women), and willingness to implement the court decisions referenced above.

We can have our troops begin an immediate withdrawal, and use air power to provide general protection from invasions between the 3 new countries in the area, while assisting non-aligned countries to help with legal assistance to adjudicate disputes which will continue to be ongoing. All of this will get the Americans out now, and work to block major violence, and develope ways to gradually diminish the continuing violence there between the 3 groups.

While I'm not opposed to UN or other powers acting to intervene in the area, I don't think it's realistic that this will happen. Even if the Europeans intervene- with the prospect of obtaining control over contracts/ oil-then those powers will be colonial powers themselves, and just as reprehensible.

As for withdrawal, we should immediately start withdrawing US forces. I think we can get those forces out of the area in a very short time, as little as 1 month (if their equipment is destroyed) and perhaps even faster if the forces just drive out. Other folks believe that a 6 month withdrawal is more likely, but either way, those troops will be gone quickly.

Note: as there is concern about the safety of the Kurds vis-a-vis Turkey (since Turkey is hostile to the Kurds because of a long civil struggle in its country involving the Kurdish minority), it might be a good idea to station some US forces in Kurdistan as a block against Turkey. The Kurds are very pro-US, and the forces would be welcomed there. It's also easy to withdraw these forces into Kurdistan by merely driving there, which is only a couple of hundred miles away for a great number of them.

Finally, as Iran will grow in influence upon the American departure, we should realize that other countries will step into the vacuum to check Iran's expansion: countries like Turkey and Saudi Arabia (one could see a scenario where the Saudis make a defense arrangement with Turkey to protect them from Iran; this will result in a huge cash flow to Turkey-which is relatively poorer and could use it-and would help alleviate anger in Turkey over the developments in Kurdistan). Eventually, you might even see some interesting defense alliances occur in the American absence: say Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and even Sunnistan all being on the same side, to check Iran, Shiastan, the Palestinian Authority, and Lebanon on the other.

Thus, deterrance could occur in response to the Iranian expansion- even in the absence of American forces.

Withdraw, Partition, Deter. I think this is the formula which will work in the area.

Chris Bush
chris.bush@verizon.net
reply

Chris and the Rest,

I agree that the Europeans in the UN want no part of Bush's Iraq mess; if he could have pulled them in to get shot at instead of us he would have done so by now. But I have been saying for a long time in my blog that peacekeeping troops from predominantly Muslim nations, like Indonesia, mixed under a UN flag would do a lot to take the steam of of bin Laden's anti-Crusader message, which is one his most powerful recruiting tools. Middle Easterners are acutely aware of their history going back to the Middle Ages, and they see Iraq as the latest in a long string of attempts by the West (formerly Europe, now the U.S.
too) to take their lands and convert them. This is why you see bin Laden tee-shirts all over the Middle East.

Chris has some good ideas on how to keep Iraqis from slaughtering each other once we are gone. Iraq as a unified entity is probably a fantasy, and using air
power along the Bosnia model to keep them apart might be more realistic. The strange alliances that may emerge will be part of a natural process of power moving in to fill a vacuum, which can be good because we will have heads of state to deal with instead of the total chaos that now provides a perfect breeding ground for terrorists.

I differ slightly with my fellow withdraw-the-troops-now proponents in that I think we should redeploy a good number of troops coming out of
Iraq into Afghanistan, where we still have a legitimate stabililzation mission and maybe half a chance of getting European help. It is also a base from which to criss-cross the Afghan-Paki border regions looking for the people who attacked us on 9/11. This is what Michael Scheuer of "Imperial Hubris" fame says we should have done right after 9/11, while even those opposed to us would not dare say anything because every night you could still see the towers smoldering on television. Al Qaeda would be in tatters now and the world would still be on our side.

Instead, George Bush used it to make a renewed stab at empire, to undermine our constitutional rights at every chance, and to personalize the war on terror into a scheme to get the guy he thinks tried to kill his daddy. Can you believe Jose Padilla is only now being charged with a crime, after 3 years in a military prison? This is what GWB has in mind for American citizens, first dumb kids like Padilla (who probably thought he was running drugs), then radio talkshow hosts giving "aid and comfort to the enemy" by criticizing the president in wartime and the like.

The attack on Iraq has played right into bin Laden's hands, with his clearly-stated goal of destabilizing and toppling allied governments in the Middle East starting to materialize. The recent attacks in Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, as well as electoral victories by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt are all signs that bin Laden's dream is going according to plan. By attacking Iraq on the grounds that he would not allow a phantom WMD threat to "materialize," Bush has materialized a true threat: the US kicked out of the Middle East, terrorists trained in Iraq attacking us here, no access to Middle Eastern oil, and everyone in the world hating us for re-electing this guy and thinking we deserve it.

Our safest course is a clean break with Bush's Iraq war, with an apology for the civilians killed, and re-focusing on the job of destroying Al Qaeda. We need about 10,000 Arabic languages translators, not a new generation of fighter-jet pork for defense contractors. We should also force our Middle Eastern allies like Saudi Arabia to give their people the freedoms and opportunities that now belong only to our buddies, the royal families. It's a pleasure to find this thoughtful discussion on Andy's website.

Ralph Lopez
http://polispolis.blogspot.com/

Book now out on Amazon.com

BOOK NOW OUT on Amazon.com. You can read the FIRST HALF of "The Elephant in the Room" free online then buy it and spread the word if you like it. Here is an email I wrote to Micheal Moore and a few others I am trying to interest in the book.

Dear Mike, Others,

You have been chosen for Ralph's Salon, a listserve of important artists, writers, journalists and other opinion leaders who influence the events of the day. Even as George Bush is hit with the worst crises of his presidency we still cannot seem to dislodge this guy. The reason, as you know, is that lukewarm excuse for an opposition party, the Democrats. No amount of scandal and treason will unseat this president without a party to hammer it home. Yes, Nancy Pelosi or Ted Kennedy pop off to the media every now and then with tough talk, but there is no follow-through by the party. Witness:

--Even though "Scooter" Libby basically implicated Dick Cheney in the Valerie Plame scandal last week in the New York Times, no Democrat has bothered to notice. THE TIMES QUOTED Libby's lawyer saying that a blanket form waiver signed by Mr. Libby had been had been "coerced and had been required as a condition for employment at the White House."

Now let's see. Libby is Dick Cheney's chief-of-staff so he's the highest guy in the office except Darth Vader himself. The only guy who could "require" Libby to do anything, under threat of firing, is Vader. That’s the way I read it, anyway.


--The Plame scandal is still spun by the media and by Democrats as the "outing" of a CIA agent. Who cares? What's important is that this agent was undercover tracing weapons of mass destruction, a true threat to our national security.

U.S. Army Special Service Forces Colonel W. Patrick Lang SAID ON JUNE 22, 2205 before the Waxman-Dorman Hearings regarding Valerie Plame:

"So when you have an instance like this, in fact, in which not just the intelligence community, but theelected government of the sponsoring government, of the major country in the world, deliberately, and apparently for trivial and passing political reasons, decides to disclose the identity of a covered officer, the word goes around the world like a shock, in fact, that "The Americans can't be trusted -- the Americans can't be trusted. If you decide to cooperate clandestinely with the Americans, someone back there will give you up -- someone will give you up, and then everything will be over for you." So you don't do it. And so the very kinds of people you need to get into the heart of this galaxy of jihadi groups and people like this will make a judgment that they are not going to trust you in this way. And once that happens, then the possibility of penetrating these groups, the possibility of knowing that they're going to carry 10-pound bags of explosive in the subway stations, will go right down the drain.

This is not about "outing" a CIA agent. This is about the next terrorist attack. The Bushies would have been hung for treason 2 years ago had the Democrats not been so obligingly underwhelmed.

--Will Saddam Hussein's upcoming trial include our government's participation in his atrocities? On March 16, 1988, Iraqi forces launched a poison gas attack on the Iraqi Kurdish village of Halabja, killing 5000 civilians. We knew Saddam had chemical weapons, because we gave them to him. It’s called "US Chemical and Biological Warfare-related Dual Use Exports to Iraq and Their Possible Impact 113 on the Health Consequences of the Persian Gulf War,” by the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, in 1994. THE REIGLE REPORT for short. From Chapter One, part two:

“Records available from the supplier for the period from 1985 until the present show that [prior to the first Gulf war] pathogenic (meaning "disease producing"), toxigenic (meaning "poisonous"), and other biological research materials were exported to Iraq pursuant to application and licensing by the U.S. Department of Commerce.”

In other words, we gave Saddam anthrax. When Congress found out Saddam was gassing his own people it passed the Prevention of Genocide Act, which would have punished Saddam. But Reagan/Bush Sr. and special envoy to the Middle East Donald Rumsfeld had the sanctions squashed. Maybe Saddam owed us money for those Bell 214ST helicopters that we sold him, the ones he used to drop the gas. Oh yes, HERE'S A PICTURE OF THAT
FAMOUS HANDSHAKE between Rumsfeld and Saddam. Do we see that at the trial?

--There are TWO OTHER major scandals detailed in my book that have yet to be touched upon by the Democrats, the Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan scandal and the 1998 Dresser Industries scandal, in which a fully-owned subsidiary of Dick Cheney's company Halliburton was trading with Saddam even as American pilots were getting shot at by Saddam's ground defenses.

--The Boston Globe at last notes that Bush's next successful Supreme Court nominee may rule on the fate of the Sixth Amendment of the Bill of Rights, the Right of American citizens to a jury trial of his or her peers when accused of a crime. The test case is Jose Padilla, an American arrested on American soil, accused by Bush of planning a terrorist act. According to Globe reporter Charlie Savage:

"Harriet E. Miers continued the expansive interpretation of presidential powers favored by her predecessor, Alberto Gonzales, who backed Bush's authority to hold terrorist suspects without trial, as well as the White House's right to withhold more administration documents from public disclosure than in the past."

During the Roberts confirmation hearings, the Democrats, always looking out for our rights, didn't even ask Roberts about Jose Padilla. They didn’t even ask. This would be the most important reversal of fundamental rights in American history. The war on terror is the first open-ended war against an invisible enemy, which means it's not over until the president says it is, so there is no historical precedent.


There is good news. It's in the form of ordinary people running for Congress, most notably recently-returned Iraq veterans who are against the war. Tremors shook the Republican world when Democratic Iraq veteran Paul Hackett nearly beat a strong Republican in a Republican stronghold in Ohio.

Here is a choice passage on Hackett from Mother Jones magazine (also in this issue, Pat Tillman was against the Iraq invasion.)

Paul Hackett is out for one last day of pressing the flesh.

It’s August 2, Election Day, and the lanky, blond, 43-year-old Marine has taken up position outside the polling place in Loveland, a burg on the outskirts of Cincinnati, flashing his toothy smile for the early risers. Hackett is dressed smartly in a blue shirt and striped pastel tie. His khaki pants hang loosely from
his wiry, 180-pound frame.

“That’s low politics, punk!” a heavy-set man sneers as he marches toward the poll.
Hackett wheels around. “Pardon me?”

“You know, that radio ad that says, ‘You don’t know Schmidt.’” He’s talking about one of Hackett’s attack ads against Republican Jean Schmidt. The man spews a stream of epithets, and Hackett lets out a crybaby whimper: “Waaaaaaa!”

“What’s that, punk?” the big man growls.

A TV crew is setting up nearby, but Hackett doesn’t seem to care. “What’s your fuckin’ problem?” the candidate snaps. “You got something to say to me? Bring it on!” Hackett, all 6 feet 2 inches of him, is nose to nose with the heckler. “Problem?” he taunts. The man turns around and storms away.

“These guys in the Republican Party adopted this tough-guy language,” Hackett tells me, still steamed, an hour later. “They’re bullies. They’re offended when somebody takes a swing back at them.”

That is Paul Hackett. The Democratic establishment has already put another candidate in the primary, fearing Hackett may be too much of an independent thinker for their taste.

Hackett takes a strong stand against the invasion itself of Iraq and describes his plan for getting out in "The Boots on the Ground Bill of Rights." Position Paper #3 (email Paul here for paper.) Hackett says: “Iraq will steadily disintegrate—if we leave tomorrow or five years from now. Why not just admit that, say ‘mission accomplished’ or whatever you’re gonna say, and bring everybody home today.”

Hackett is also a staunch defender of the Second Amendment Right to Keep and Bear Arms, as am I. This, however, can get you into trouble with the liberal establishment.

My one recommendation to Paul would be to add Affordable College Opportunity to the bullet-point platform. I have been saying for years (see my book) that this is a middle-class swing issue. Having read my blog, Robert Borosage of The Nation (am I right Bobby? Come clean, man) picks up the theme that Democrats should “offer a contract to American students: If they graduate from high school, they will be able to afford the college or higher technical training they have earned." In other words, any school you got into, you will be able to afford, without putting your family in the poor house.

Borosage points to Newt Gingrich's Contract with America as an example of good message discipline (see page 240 of my book Robert, I said the same thing.) Hackett's platform is a winner.

It's time to take America back from the lying, thieving, slandering, personal attack machine that has ruled us since 2000. Hunter S. Thompson notes that even before 9/11 the direction of the country had taken a distinctly Fascist turn. In 1990 it became legal for police to search your home based on the consent of someone with absolutely no authority to do so (Illinois v. Rodriguez, 497 US 177 (1990.)) The tide must turn on this now, with Iraq War veterans spearheading a great wave of citizen candidates (how about it Robert?) to send the cowardly jackals in both parties scurrying to their holes with urine trickling down their hindquarters.

Condi Rice just said we could be in Iraq for 10 years or so, and maybe we’ll bomb Iran and Syria in the meantime . The game plan of this administration is clear as day: Feed the fire until we have trained enough terrorists to provoke the next big terrorist attack, bring the Army home to enforce martial law, then shut-down the Constitution once and for all. Sounds like a conspiracy theory. Good thing conspiracies never happen, eh? The Bushies have wet-dreamed over this scenario from the start. Then take the Halliburton billions and turn the greatest country the world has ever seen into your own private Texas whorehouse, all the cars, private jets, likker and young honeys money can ba'. Love that awl bidness. It's all in my book. So how about it, Mike? Gimme a link on your MichaelMoore.com website and together we'll kick these boys all the way back to Waco, Texas or wherever the hell they're from. The rest of you I could use your help too. Muchos gracias.

Sincerely,
Ralph Lopez
Cambridge, MA
author of "The Elephant in the Room."

cc:
robert borosage
derrick jackson
charlie savage
barry crimmins
paul hackett

Libby Implicates Cheney...Al Qaeda Calls Iraq a "Blessing," Again!

New York Times October 1, 2005: "[Scooter Libby's lawyer said] a blanket form waiver Mr. Libby signed at the request of investigators in January 2004 had been "coerced and had been required as a condition for employment at the White House." Reprinted here in Mikey Moore's website.

Let's see now. Libby is Dick Cheney's chief of staff so he's the highest guy in the office except Darth Vader himself. The only guy who could "require" Libby to do anything, under threat of firing, is Vader. Democrats play dead, nothing to see here move along. Just the sort of thing that inspired the title of my book, "The Elephant in the Room" NOW AT AMAZON.COM! Elephant? What elephant, boys? I don't see no elephant.

And if you didn't know Bush blew it before...

Appeasement? What appeasement? I want to put 100,000 guys in Afghanistan and the Paki tribal areas and stomp those mountians to death until they come up with bin Laden, the guy who attacked us. Now a letter from Zawahiri, captured by accident in Iraq, shows they loved the attack on Iraq which prevents us from doing just that:

"I want to be the first to congratulate you for what God has blessed you with in terms of fighting in the heart of the Islamic world, which was formerly the field for major battles in Islam's history..."

That was in today's Washington Post (reprint here.). What the psuedo-patriot flag-waver meat-heads don't understand is that when we invaded Iraq, we DID appease bin Laden. This is not news to anyone who has read Mikey Scheuer's "Imperial Hubris." The top Al Qaeda expert in the CIA for 20 years also says bin Laden was grateful. Zawahiri wrote in late 2003:

"We thank God for appeasing us with the dilemma in Iraq after Afghanistan. The Americans are facing a delicate situation in both countries. If they withdraw they will lose everything and if they stay, they will continue to bleed to death."

This is all in my book. Buy it so I have beer money! Come on, guys, say on the radio you read it at Polis!

Roberts Too Scary for Scalia?

Hey yall, read this:

PADILLA RULING, STORY FROM LA TIMES:

"A federal appeals court ruled today Jose Padilla, the so-called "dirty bomber," can be held forever in jail as an enemy combatant and never allowed to defend himself at trial, although he is an American citizen and was arrested in this country."

That could be anybody, YOU. Now we have no more rights than any terror suspect in Guantanamo. Why aren't the congressmen grilling John Roberts on how he stands on the Sixth Amendment of the Bill of Rights? During Germany's Nazi regime one perogative of the powerful was to denounce enemies to the secret police. POOF! You disappear! Problem solved! Welcome to Amerika. The appellate court ruling goes to the Supreme Court next.

The irony is that Bush's naked power-grab at the Bill of Rights is unpopular across the political spectrum. Roberts could be defeated by arousing popular sentiment on an issue most people agree on (even right-wing militia gun-nut types don't like the Patriot Act or the idea of disappearing to Guantanamo in the middle of the night...) The Democrats are throwing the fight again, playing rope-a-dope and hey at least this guy ain't Scalia. BUT GET THIS: even Scalia doesn't like the direction of this Americans-as-enemy-combatants business. In a recent dissent to the Supreme Court's ruling that another American "enemy combatant"had no right to a jury trial, (joined by liberal justice Stevens) Scalia wrote:

"If civil rights are to be curtailed during wartime, it must be done openly and democratically, as the Constitution requires, rather than by silent erosion through an opinion of this Court."

When a policy is too draconian even for Scalia, we're in trouble. Roberts could turn out to be a fascist who makes Scalia look like Rosa Parks.

Your congressmen's emails and phone numbers at this link.

CONGRESSMEN CONTACT PAGE

Hold-out Democrats on the Judiciary Committee (who'll vote on Roberts) are:

Ben Nelson D-NE, Mark Pryor D-AK, Max Baucus D-MT, Kent Conrad D-ND

Screw Reid's 'everyone vote their conscience", punish Democrats who stick us with this right-wing dork.

PLEASE CIRCULATE!

PADILLA RULING, STORY FROM LA TIMES

Fuck it...

...as long as someone seems to be reading this thing according to my hit meter I'll post something...not much but the Boston Phoenix did it's Under-Reported Media Scoops of the Year issue, this one's pretty good. Like that they didn't let out 15-45 year old men from Falluja before the turkey-shoot, and evacuated everyone else. Anyone left in the city was assumed to be enemy combatant. Bring in F-16s. Sporting little war we got here.

Also majority of civilian deaths in Iraq have been by aerial bombardment, not insurgent attacks on civilians. How would we know, remember "we don't do body counts" Rummy Rumsfeld?

Read Boston Phoenix "Project Censored" here...

Plame on Air America Radio, via hubby Joe Wilson last night, we may see a resurrection of this issue. I jotted down Wilson calling Robert Novak a "pawn in a much bigger game", and he came out for Cindy Sheehan. Blasted right-wing trolls who smear Sheehan with "she's dishonoring her dead son Casey." Wilson said the trolls talk as if they can "channel" Casey.

FROM AIR AMERICA WEBSITE
August 30, 2005:
TIME TO CALL UP THE BUSH BRIGADE
From Buzzflash:

Sign this petition, demanding that the eligible children of the extended Bush family, including the twins, serve in George's "noble war for a noble cause" or Bush must bring the sons and daughters of America home now.

"I demand that George W. Bush's daughters, and his eligible nieces and nephews, serve in Iraq to prove their support of Bush's 'noble war for a noble cause.' If the Bush family does not believe in 'sacrificing' for the war and is not willing to put their lives on the line, then Bush must bring the troops of middle class and poor Americans home now."

Read the rest.

MISSION OF MONTH: CALL SPINELESS DEMOCRATS TO SAY COME ALIVE YOU ASSHOLES DON'T JUST SIT THERE LIKE FUNGUS ON LOGS; ATTACK! SPEAK UP! IMPEACH IMPEACH IMPEACH!

ALSO, TAKE OUT PAPERS AT YOUR STATE ELECTION COMMISSION FOR CONGRESSIONAL DEMOCRATIC PRIMARIES. It's like the Ride of the Valkeries in "Apocalypse Now", Robert Duval, mostly a lot of noise, but it scares the hell out of the gooks...

Hunter Thompson's soon to be published suicide note:

"No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun _ for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax _ This won't hurt."

"The Nation" Starts to Get it

In its staid grey pages the Most Self-Important Magazine That Nobody Reads is feeling a pulse through it's grey tweed coat, like a stirring in the groin of an old man recalling headier days of battle. Two articles zero in on The Problem: lazy, scared, or greedy Democrats like the ones now letting the Rove Affair die. Prosecutor Fitzgerald will issue his report saying somethin' wrong was done but we don't know what, it doesn't fit the letter of the Covert Agents Act, so awe shucks we'd really like to do somethin' to this Rover feller but we got nothing on him. And that will be that.

And the Dems will shrug and tell us, "hey, what daya want from me?" How about some spine.

ARTICLE III, section 3 of the US Constitution states that a citizen only need either have provided "aid and comfort" to our enemies or levied war against the United States. Nothing about whether you intended to or not, as the Covert Agents Act stipulates. Blowing up part of our WMD safety shield, - the real one, human intelligence (HUMINT)- not Star Wars, certainly aids Al Qaeda. No more legal finesse is required to set Rove swinging from the highest tree. Tell your congressmen you will hold them PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE for a WMD attack on the US, if it turns out the bomb slipped in through Plame's area of responsibility, and Rove didn't pay. Democrats sitting with their thumbs up their asses is getting deadly. No one will talk to us now if they know deep cover is a joke in America.

CONGRESSIONAL EMAILS AND TOLL-FREE NUMBERS HERE.

Those Nation articles:

Alex Cockburn, "The "Stricken" President":

"Does Roberts face a gauntlet of ferocious interrogatories from Democrat senators? Hardly. The Democratic challenge to Roberts, such as it is, has mostly devolved into a pillow fight with the White House over the availability of records...Remember Clinton's tactics in the NAFTA and WTO fights? But where was the arm-twisting to keep those 15 pro-CAFTA Democrats in line?"

Ari Berman, "The Strategic Class":

[UN ambassador Richard] Holbrooke, frequently mentioned as a potential Secretary of State, urged Kerry to keep his vision on Iraq "deliberately vague,"...

Naomi Klein, "Terror's Greatest Recruitment Tool":

Hussain Osman, one of the men alleged to have participated in London's failed bombings on July 21, recently told Italian investigators that they prepared for the attacks by watching "films on the war in Iraq," La Repubblica reported. "Especially those where women and children were being killed and exterminated by British and American soldiers...of widows, mothers and daughters that cry...

Rove Affair: Democrats MIA

Folks might wonder, with all the great coverage, why the Karl Rover scandal suddenly seems to be going nowhere. In recent press conferences we've seen a strange sight: reporters actually doing their jobs. White House press secretary Scotty Moonface McSharkbait took a pummeling over his "no comment on an ongoing investigation" a few weeks ago. The usually sheep-like White House press corps finally mustered up just enough testosterone to make it hurt.

What's missing is an OPPOSITION PARTY that acts like one, when an issue like this drops into their lap. You know, a party, I guess that would be the Democrats, that sits down and games-out who's going to hit them one news cycle, and who's going to hit them the next. Do we really need to explain it? No one is driving this. Nancy Pelosi? Harry Reid? Don't they get paid extra for this sort of thing? Remember when the Republicans tag-teamed Clinton under the leadership of lead attack dog Newt Gingrich? Like that! Keep it in the news, remind folks of what's at stake. There are bombshells everywhere at the Democrats' feet; last month former CIA officer Larry Johnson, who was Valerie Plame's classmate at spook school, opened an interview on AIR AMERICA with the words "treason, pure and simple" to describe what Rover did. Johnson went on to suggest that if we are slaughtered by terrorists using a weapon of mass destruction, the White House could be partly responsible. (JOHNSON AUDIO HERE)

What do Democrats do? Get sucked into a debate over Bush's punk of a Supreme Court nominee, floated at just this time for just this purpose. STEP ONE: Bring business to a grinding halt! Dominate the news cycle! Democrats should say the safety of the American people trumps everything. No business will be conducted until we get to the bottom of this. If the Democrats do not, and we are attacked with WMD, let it be noted here and now that blood will be on their hands too. As I am fond of saying, about half of Congress from both parties sitting in jail on just general principles sounds about right to me. They failed in the war on terror. All of them.

Air America also says a real sleeper story is that more Americans are in favor of Bush's impeachment than were in favor of Clinton's.

Thirty years of Plame's patient web-weaving set to snare WMD before it got us now useless. Time magazine found irony in Rove's brand of "hardball" coming back to "haunt him," as if smear politics and high treason were the same. The real irony is that the entire Iraq Backfire was started over weapons of mass destruction, and it is to weapons of mass destruction that the Bush administration has now betrayed us.

Lighting fire under Democrat ass, and Republicans of conscience, is up to us. It is we and our children who will die as a result of letting ourselves become jaded even so far as tolerating traitors in the Oval Office. Rove should be in jail or in front of the firing squad. Bush should step down for harboring a traitor. The media spinners say that Rove cannot be convicted under the narrow provisions of the law to which prosecutor Fitzgerald wants to limit this, in his attempt to keep the dogs in the yard. But Rove may have violated more than one law. One is against "giving...Aid and Comfort [to our enemies.]" I'd say Al Qaeda, which now has Valerie Plame's number, is an enemy. That law is called ARTICLE III, SECTION 3 of the US Constitution. The crime is treason.

Here are your congressmans' PHONE NUMBERS AND EMAILS, with a nifty zip-code-based finder. August is the month congressmen go back to their districts to hear constituents. This could be the most important appointment you and your friends ever make. If the Democrats really wanted to shaft the John Roberts nomination and save Roe v. Wade, the surest way would be to not let the Rove Affair drop. My eccentric neighbor Peter has a fence festooned with pithy sayings and food for thought. His latest artwork says: "National Center for Defense Against Leaders: You're in Charge."

THE BOMBSHELLS

On July 22, 2005 Sens. Henry Waxman and Bryon Dorgan held committee hearings on the Plame Affair. Following are a few exerpts from the testimony at that hearing. LINK TO FULL TRANSCRIPT OF HEARING HERE.

Statement of retired U.S. military intelligence and U.S. Army Special Service Forces Colonel W. Patrick Lang, decorated veteran of several of America's overseas conflicts, including the war in Vietnam; trained and educated as a Middle East specialist; the first professor of the Arabic language at the United States Military Academy at West Point.

"Mr. Chairman, distinguished members of the House of Representatives, it's a great pleasure to be here. And I thank you for letting me speak here today. I feel particularly strongly about this case, not so much on a personal level so much as I feel that what has happened with regard to this disclosure and follow-up is a kind of structural assault on the ability of the United States to have sound and well-respected and effective clandestine intelligence services.

"As I'm sure you know, the present war that we are engaged on, which will go on for a long time, I think, because it is, in fact, a war against a kind of tendency, a set of ideas, that moves around, that kind of war involves enemies that go into subway stations carrying 10-pound packs of homemade explosives.

"These fellows, they don't have much of a technical signature for their intelligence detection. They have no overhead photography signature: a pickup truck, something like that. They don't really have a signals intelligence signature much because they're very clever and they've gotten to be better and better at not doing the kinds of things that make them vulnerable. So in the end, what you have to have is you have to have human beings who will go and find out for you what it is they're going to do next.

"And we haven't done that very well, evidently, up until now. It doesn't seem that way to me, anyway, from the outside. But it is a peculiarity of this kind of war that that is exactly the kind of intelligence that you have to have.

"And what has happened here, I think is, as I say, an assault on the ability of the United States to do that.

"Why would that be? It's because HUMINT is about human beings. It's about one person, an American person, a case officer in the parlance of the trade, causing some foreign person to trust him enough and to trust his unit and to trust the United States enough to put his life, his fortune and, indeed, his sacred honor in many cases into the hands of this case officer and the American intelligence unit that stands behind this case officer.

"It's all about trust; it's completely about trust. It's about -- I happen to have done a good deal of this kind of work in my life. And the moment in which some person, whether he's an ambassador or a Montagnard in the hills of Vietnam with filed teeth, decides that he's going to trust you enough so that he's going to believe that you will protect him in every way in doing what he is doing, which is extremely dangerous to him and his family and to everyone else, is a magic moment, indeed. It's almost sacramental in a lot of ways, really.

"And it imposes on the case officer and the unit behind him in the United States the kind of obligations that are as serious in some ways as the seal of the confessional, really. I mean, I'm a Catholic; I understand exactly what that means.

"And the obligation to protect this person is absolute, in fact. And it's not only absolute from the point of view of morality; it's absolute from the point of view of practicality as well, because if within a practicing clandestine intelligence unit the case officers believe that their superiors will not protect the identity of their sources or their own identity, in fact, in doing things which are dangerous and difficult, then a, kind of, circle of doubt begins to spread, like throwing a rock into the water.

"And it spreads in such a way so that if an intelligence service that belongs to a particular country comes to be thought generally in the world as an organization that does not protect its own, does not protect its foreign assets, then the obvious is true in that people are not going to accept recruitment, are not going to work for you. And the smarter they are, the better placed they are, the better educated they are, the less likely they are to accept recruitment and to work for you if they believe that you are not going to fight in the last ditch to protect their identities.

"And so, this is all completely about trust.

"In a strange kind of way, the kind of people who are valuable to recruiters, foreign assets, are a kind of community. They're a community of the well-informed and the alert, and the people who have a great deal of situational awareness.

"They're often in government. They're in banking or they're in this or that. And these people pay attention to what's going on. And they know whether or not the clandestine services of a particular country can be trusted with their lives. They know that.

"And in an odd way, our former Soviet opponents in the GRU and the KGB, they're a good example of the fact that you have to do this the right way, because it was an absolutely never violated thing in the KGB that they ever gave up an agent permanently. They would struggle -- if someone was captured, imprisoned, tried, like Colonel Abel or somebody like that, they would work forever to try to get this person exchanged and get him back, because they knew that if the word got out, in fact, that they wouldn't do that, their sources of recruitment, the trust that people would have in them, would dry up and would go away.

"So when you have an instance like this, in fact, in which not just the intelligence community, but the elected government of the sponsoring government, of the major country in the world, deliberately, and apparently for trivial and passing political reasons, decides to disclose the identity of a covered officer, the word goes around the world like a shock, in fact, that, in fact, "The Americans can't be trusted -- the Americans can't be trusted. If you decide to cooperate clandestinely with the Americans, someone back there will give you up -- someone will give you up, and then everything will be over for you." So you don't do it.

"And so the very kinds of people you need to get into the heart of this galaxy of jihadi groups and people like this will make a judgment that they are not going to trust you in this way. And once that happens, then the possibility of penetrating these groups, the possibility of knowing that they're going to carry 10-pound bags of explosive in the subway stations, will go right down the drain.

"It will be done forever. It would take forever to get that back, because this is all about trust and this is a violation of trust."

Excerpts from the Statement of Former CIA Officer James Marcinkowski:

"What is important now is not who wins or loses the political battle or who may or may not be indicted; rather, it is a question of how we will go about protecting the citizens of this country in a very dangerous world. The undisputed fact is that we have irreparably damaged our capability to collect human intelligence and thereby significantly diminished our capability to protect the American people..."

"So how is the Valerie Plame incident perceived by any current or potential agent of the CIA? I will guarantee you that if the local police chief identified the names of the department's undercover officers, any half-way sophisticated undercover operation would come to a halt and if he survived that accidental discharge of a weapon in police headquarters, he would be asked to retire..."

"Great damage has been done and that damage has been increasing every single day for more than two years..."

"...the problem lies not only with government officials but also with the media, commentators and other apologists who have no clue as to the workings of the intelligence community. Think about what we are doing from the perspective of our overseas human intelligence assets or potential assets..."

"Each time there is a perceived political "success" in deflecting responsibility by debating or re-debating some minutia, such actions are equally effective in undermining the ability of this country to protect itself against its enemies, because the two are indeed related. Each time the political machine made up of prime-time patriots and partisan ninnies display their ignorance by deriding Valerie Plame as a mere "paper-pusher," or belittling the varying degrees of cover used to protect our officers, or continuing to play partisan politics with our national security, it is a disservice to this country. By ridiculing, for example, the "degree" of cover or the use of post office boxes, you lessen the level of confidence that foreign nationals place in our covert capabilities..."

"...the president could have immediately demanded the resignation of all persons even tangentially involved. Or, at a minimum, he could have suspended the security clearances of these persons and placed them on administrative leave. Such methods are routine with police forces throughout the country. That would have at least sent the right message around the globe, that we take the security of those risking their lives on behalf of the United States seriously. Instead, we have flooded the foreign airwaves with two years of inaction, political rhetoric, ignorance, and partisan bickering. That's the wrong message. In doing so we have not lessened, but increased the threat to the security and safety of the people of the United States..."

Comment from U.S. Representative Louise Slaughter (D-NY)

"I don't know if you recall "60 Minutes," when Secretary [Paul] O'Neill who went on "60 Minutes" to talk about the first meeting that he went to in the White House after the inauguration, they talked about invading Iraq and showed some document. The White House was on him like fuzz on a blanket. And the very next day they were yelling "classified, classified." And then Vice President Cheney demanded an investigation in September 2001 when he thought something had been leaked."

LINK TO VIDEO OF HEARING HERE.

An Impeach Bush in Case of Terror Attack Petition

Watch out for an "event" the minute things get hot for the Bush White House. Like a terror attack, just the thing to get them off the hook. Talk from the "Looney Left?" Maybe. But the Looney Left didn't give away the plan to catch WMDs. A full four years after the 9/11 MOSSADEQ BLOWBACK, it's not the Looney Left that hasn't secured chemical plants or seaports. I hear right-wingers on the radio say the proof is in the pudding. Bush's policies work because we haven't been attacked again since 9/11. I'll go along with that as long as the flip side is also true: if we are attacked, it means Bush took the wrong course. You can't have it both ways. In line with this I have started the IMPEACH BUSH IN THE EVENT OF ANOTHER ATTACK PETITION.

The Cheney Problem

Ah, yes, you say, the bone in the gullet is if we impeach Bush, now you've got Dick Cheney for president. Two scenarios: either Darth Vader takes office with his wings greatly clipped, or the Rove scandal takes a turn and leads to Vader himself, via Scooter Libby. Thus making it possible to "Agnew" Cheney. During Watergate they wanted to impeach Nixon but hated the idea of Agnew even more, so they did Agnew first. On tax evasion. Leaving the way clear to run Tricky Dick out of town and for Gerald Ford, the first vice president confirmed under the 25th Amendment of the Constitution, to become president. Either way is better than what we have now.

Does Hillary Read Our Blog?

In the last presidential election we called attention to Ralph Nader's interview with Pat Buchanan in 2004, in which Nader said:

"conservatives are aghast that a born-again Christian president has done nothing about rampant corporate pornography and violence directed to children and separating children from their parents and undermining parental authority."

We, like Nader, urged Democrats not to cede the high ground in the culture wars to the Republicans, with an email campaign to Democratic cyberspace. Last month Hillary Clinton made a speech marking just such a shift in Democratic strategy. From the NY Times, "IT TAKES A VILLAGE, TO CLEAN UP VIDEOGAMES?"

Polis and the Boston Globe's Robert Kuttner on Iraq

Maybe the Boston Globe's Robert Kuttner reads Us too. Okay Bob, maybe not, but your "Exit with Honor" article on Iraq in this month's American Prospect sure as heck sounds like a blog essay I wrote and posted all over the Net about a year ago, "What a Fresh Start Means." Tell me true Bob, you have absolutely never seen this essay. We'll hash it out sometime in the Harvard Coop, buddy (Bobby and I both live in Boston though we have never met...) Believe it or not, the commonsense ideas that follow from the articles are not widespread by any means.

Kuttner, "Exit with Honor":

"The U.S. commits to leave Iraq on a date certain, say August 1, 2006. We use this yearlong period to negotiate the creation of an international peacekeeping entity...This force would include troops from moderate Muslim nations, such as Tunisia and Egypt; other nonaligned nations such as India; and traditional peacekeepers, such as the Scandinavian countries. It could be sponsored by the United Nations or as a freestanding body."

Polis, "What a Fresh Start Means":

"A possible part of the solution is Muslim peacekeeping troops under a UN flag. The Islamic world is vast, and with units that are neither Syrian, nor Turkish, nor Jordanian, nor Indonesian, but UN, the gravest humiliation to the insurgents can be removed. Armed, gibberish-speaking infidels with no knowledge of Arabic custom or religion, searching homes and patting down Muslim women is creating terrorists, and American troops are admitting it."

Kuttner:

"The removal of American troops also means that the United States would no longer stand accused of wanting permanent bases or plundering Iraq? oil."

Polis:

"Showing the Muslim world we are not interested in attacking their religion, or stealing their oil, will be a blow that will leave Al Qaeda and the terrorists vulnerable. Neutralizing the Iraq front will allow resources to go where they belong: in hunting down the enemies who attacked us on 9/11."

Whatever.

Jeez, The Nation Too

Come on guys I'm not looking for accolades, but a link to my website from your websites would be nice if you're reading my blog and getting ideas. And help me mainstream-publish my freakin' book. Readers, did I or did I not launch www.ralphlopezworld.com last Spring with a lead feature on Democrats who vote like Republicans, "Bush-o-crats"? This time it's John Nichols of the Nation, who I have emailed, sounding familiar. Johnny, you owe me a beer (yes, I'll say anything for a free brewskie...)

Nichols on his blog:

"The Central American Free Trade Agreement, which was such a high priority for the Bush administration that the president personally lobbied Congressional Republicans on the issue Wednesday, passed the House by two votes. Those two votes came from members who can best be described as "Bush Democrats."" (italics mine)

In fairness, he put it in quotes. There's more of this stuff but I don't want to sound like a little bitch.

Jose Padilla: What Democrats Should be Asking Supreme Court Nominee John Roberts

Ever missing the obvious opportunity to exploit an unpopular Bush position, Democrats have been strangely reluctant to ask "originalist constructionalist" Roberts where he stands on the original Bill of Rights. The Supreme Court is NEARING A DECISION on the most important case in American history, because a bad decision will change what it means to be an American. Until Bush's war on terror, it was every American's right to be charged with a crime and tried by a civilian jury upon being arrested by the government. Meaning you can't just disappear American citizens, never to be heard from again.

Of course Bush wants us to trust him on who's a terrorist, the same way we trusted him that Saddam had WMD, that he was trying to obtain yellowcake uranium, and a thousand other lies. JOSE PADILLA was disappeared off the streets of Chicago by the feds in 2001 and almost 4 years later still sits in jail, incommunicado, without being charged with a crime, on the word of a president who wants us to trust him on everything. It's a trial balloon to see how sheep-like Americans will become in the face of a few terrorist punks. After all, that kind of power could come in mighty handy when some FBI whistleblower or some holier-than-thou accountant at the next ENRON decides he wants to make waves for his betters.

It's the ultimate arbitrary power: the power to make someone vanish. The Argentine Junta, Salvadoran death squads, and every other dictatorship worth its salt has used it against political opponents. Forget Valerie Plame, this is the strongest argument for the impeachment: Bush's failure to uphold his OATH OF OFFICE, which is "to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." Period, end of oath, all she wrote.

Does Al Gore Give a Damn?

The hoopla is that America now has a non-right wing TV station, Al Gore's CURRENT TV. Will this be another experiment in the kind of watered-down "centrism" that gave us four more years of George Bush? Or will it actually give us something, like unvarnished reporting on the Rove Affair? I have my doubts. Al didn't get to where he is by making waves, unless it was safe to do so. But I'm too old to say nothing can surprise me. There are constant surprises, like the courage of fallen soldier's mom CINDY SHEEHAN who's leading an "impeachment tour." If she had a TV station we'd be rid of Bush so fast it would make your head spin. Poor men kill with guns rich men kill with lies...

More Left Wing Facts

The US Department of Justice has posted a manual on 'how to be a terrorist' online. Air America Radio's Jerry Springer dug up this one. The commonsense Brits are horrified.

Soldier "Milblogger" in Iraq Shut Down...Spc. Leonard Clark maintains that his blog criticized the war in general terms too harshly, and for this reason he was demoted, his blog shut down, and he was docked pay. The Bush Brown Shirt squad has made sure you won't hear what he has to say, as they have been doing what Nazi Brown Shirts do: threaten, intimidate, and tell you to shut-up when you criticize Der Fuhrer. This is what you see when you go to Clark's website. Free speech. Prepare to hit the beach. We may have to kick the Nazis' asses all over again. This time here.

Yet a Third Plame Traitor in White House?...From the NY Times, 7-28-05: "[Washington Post reporter Walter] Pincus has not identified his source to the public. But a review of Mr. Pincus's own accounts and those of other people with detailed knowledge of the case strongly suggest that his source was neither Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's top political adviser, nor I. Lewis Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, and was in fact a third administration official whose identity has not yet been publicly disclosed."

CIA Commander: U.S. Let bin Laden Slip Away

"During the 2004 presidential campaign, George W. Bush and John Kerry battled about whether Osama bin Laden had escaped from Tora Bora in the final days of the war in Afghanistan. Bush, Kerry charged, "didn't choose to use American forces to hunt down and kill" the leader of Al Qaeda. The president called his opponent's allegation "the worst kind of Monday-morning quarterbacking.""...STORY HERE.

Bush War Training Insurgents Part II: Iraqi Army Filled with Insurgents

Well the question could have been asked a long time ago: since we don't know who the "good guys" are in the Iraqi army, how do we know we're not giving the world's best marksmanship lessons to guys who only want to use it against Americans? Along with handy tips on urban combat, modern weapons, and how American soldiers think when they fight guerrillas? Now troops like Sgt. Rick McGovern express these worries, in a report from the Washington Post: "We can't tell these guys about a lot of this stuff, because we're not really sure who's good and who isn't," said McGovern, a "tough-talking 37-year-old platoon sergeant from Hershey, Pennsylvania." We learn that most Iraqis had enlisted in the new army only for the salary -- $340 per month, big money there now.

Jonathan Schell in the Nation writes:

"The American press often discusses the political makeup of the insurgency, but no one until now has suggested that some of the very forces being trained by the United States might be longing for the return of Saddam. To the extent that this is the case -- or that these forces are otherwise opposed to the occupation -- the United States, far from improving "security," is now training the future resistance to itself."

Which is why Bush's "fight them there rather than here" sales pitch is a load of crap. This was the real centerpiece of his June speech, that invading Iraq gives jihadists a place to go, away from us. The argument is aimed at fearful simpletons who want to believe we'll be safe if we lash out at enough of the wrong people. The reality is we'd be safer if we hadn't motivated all these new jihadists in the first place, gone after bin Laden, and if we stopped tolerating Saudi support of the madrassas.

Bush called Iraq the central front in the war on terror. News for George: bin Laden is in Pakistan. With this guy's aim he couldn't hit the broad side of a barn at 20 feet.

Democrats need to start calling the American presence Iraq what it is: an incubator for terrorists, not flypaper, as the theory Bush invoked in his speech has been called. People need one nice, simple word to remember things. The Republicans are great at this. The Democrats stink. We aren't drawing them there so we don't have to fight them here. We are training them before they come here, and we are making more of them. Good going, George.

Get ready: the spittle will fly wide with Republicans saying "They are demoralizing the troops by saying they are training terrorists!" But the troops didn't start this war. Bush did. Troops don't choose where they go; they are ordered, something everyone seems to forget. And Bush ordered them there, the dumb bastard. It's not the troops training terrorists, it's Bush's war that's doing it.

During the Vietnam War politicians sold it by saying, "we'll either fight the communists in the jungles of Southeast Asia or on the shores of San Diego." It's fearmongering, and if they are going to send our children to be killed they could at least be more original. As for the farsighted experiment in starting a "March of Democracy" to attack terrorism at its roots, the simpler way is for us to stop overthrowing democratically-elected governments, and to stop supporting tyrannical regimes like Saudi Arabia's. Democracy would take hold in the Middle East if we just stopped stopping it. No war necessary for that, just good foreign policy. The war should be our troops combing the Pakistani tribal areas for Al Qaeda, and securing Afghanistan.

Iran is the closest to a true democracy of all the Islamic countries in the region. But that's exactly who the Neocons want to attack next. Bush says that all real power in Iran rests in the hands of the Mullahs. That's like saying all real power in the US rests in the hands of the corporations: it's true, but it doesn't mean we're not a democracy.

That timeline thing. A New York Times editorial basically reiterated Bush's chuckleheaded position, saying: "It makes no sense to encourage the insurrectionists by telling them that if their suicide bombers continue to blow themselves up at the current rate, the Americans will be leaving in six months or a year."

Big DUH for the NYT: Our troops are the encouragement for the insurrectionists to blow themselves up. They're not fighting democracy, they're fighting us. We have chosen sides in a civil war, the Shiite side, which is going to take it's orders from Iran anyway once we leave. Not a good place for our soldiers to be. The best thing we can do is get out and cut a deal with Iran to keep a lid on the most radical elements. They know who they are, they can do it. Believe it or not, the Iranians used to be our friends, before the CIA overthrew the great democrat Mossadeq, and put the Iranians under the bloody Shah. We may pay a terrible price for our ignorance of history.

The rebels will blow themselves up as long as we are there, not because there is no timeline. Bush doesn't understand the mindset when he says a timeline would give them hope. Mike Scheuer writes that a US diplomat, during the Afghan war against the Russians, once suggested that the Mujahadeen back-off because Gorbachov wanted to withdraw, and maybe a ceasefire would encourage him to. The commander said, "No, they will leave because we are killing them, and we will kill them until they leave." Bush only shows he doesn't know how people who are driving out foreigners think.

Sadly, none of this will matter once we get hit here again, thanks to GWB. Our withdrawal from Iraq could wind up being forced. As former counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke wrote in his imaginary look-back from the year 2011, "Ten Years Later":

"Most analysts now agree that Subway Day and Railroad Day not only caused the Senate filibuster to end, permitting the passage of Patriot Act III, but also finally triggered the withdrawal of some 40,000 troops from Iraq. The Army was needed in the subways."

Bush has badly bungled the war on terror through his own arrogance, vanity, and desire to strut around on an aircraft carrier in a flightsuit. Impeach. Now. Impeach.

Bill O'Reilly: Jail Dissidents

Taking the next step toward the fascist state Fox News talkinghead Bill O'Reilly proposed equating free speech with treason. Referring to critics of the Iraq war at Air America Radio on his show yesterday he said "So, all those clowns at the liberal radio network, we could incarcerate them immediately. Will you have that done, please? Send over the FBI and just put them in chains, because they, you know, they're undermining everything and they don't care."

Bush Tortures American without Trial

An American citizen and alleged terror suspect was tortured by the Saudi government with the apparent full knowledge of American intelligence. Abu Ali (pictured on homepage) was arrested by the Saudis in June 2003, in coordination with an FBI raid on his home in Falls Church, Virginia on the same day. The George Bush administration now stands guilty of the following counts, the facts of which are so far undisputed by the government:

-extrajudicial execution of American citizens denied their basic right to a jury trial

-the illegal imprisonment of Americans (Jose Padilla, Yaser Hamdi) under a non-existent "enemy combatant"-related authority, for which there is no true precedent since for the first time the enemy lacks visible military formations, a figure from whom to accept surrender, or any yardstick with which to deem the war over

-the torture of American citizens through foreign proxies, with the full knowledge and consent of the American government, in a presumption of guilt over innocence.

George Bush now stands in clear and stark violation of his oath of office to, above all else, "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States," the Sixth Amendment of which reads:

"In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence."

George Bush now occupies the Oval Office with no clear authority or legitimacy, as a likely traitor to the Constitution which Americans have fought for and died defending. It is incumbent upon the US Congress to order the immediate arrest and impeachment of George Bush, for the High Crime of treason. Long live the Constitution.

Cambridge, Massachusetts readers: Rep. Mike Capuano.

NewsWire

MAIN WEBSITE www.ralphlopezworld.com down for maintenance (the financial kind, for a down-and-dirty site reconstruction, for the links and info, go to http://angelfire.com/art2/americandream

The Media Told Rove? Novak on the Record

What may have struck folks as the strangest thing about the Plame affair, that every reporter has been threatened with or sent to jail except the guy who wrote the original article, Robert Novak, is starting to make sense to me. Matt Cooper has fingered Rove but Rove still has an out: the murkiness of his critical conversation with Novak on July 9, 2003. Newsweek's Howard Fineman now reports that Novak called Rove to ask:

"What did Rove make of the story, which Novak had gotten from what he later called a person who was "no partisan gunslinger," that Wilson had been sent to Niger at the behest of his wife, Valerie Plame? Rove's reply is in dispute. According to a later column written by Novak, Rove said, "Oh, you know about it." Rove's version, made public by a source close to him, is less solid: "I heard that, too." Whatever the exact words were, they were good enough to give Novak the confirmation he thought he needed."

In other words, now Rover only confirmed what Novak already knew. Since Fitzgerald is leaving Novak out of the picture, the media gets to play "he-said-she-said" forever, folks get bored, and it goes away. Vintage Rove.

But there's that pesky public record.

On Sept. 30, 2003 on Crossfire Novak said:

"In July I was interviewing a senior administration official on Ambassador Wilson's report when he told me the trip was inspired by his wife, a CIA employee working on weapons of mass destruction."

In defense of the White House Novak also said that Rove didn't call him, he called Rove. And in a July 22nd article in Newsday Novak said, referring to Plame:

"I didn't dig it out, it was given to me. They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it."

It's all there, yep. These are the quotes Democrats should be reading around the clock on the House and Senate floor, demanding the special prosecutor do his job. What kind of investigation is it when the man closest to the crime is the only one not being questioned?

The familiar shell game razzle-dazzle is also in full swing. One: it wasn't Rove, it was the media. Two: Plame wasn't really a secret agent, so no harm done. But even Time acknowledges the damage, Nacy Gibbs writing:

"Whatever the damage to Plame, there remains the cost paid by the CIA generally. In the wake of the disclosure, foreign intelligence services were known to have retraced her steps and contacts to discover more about how the CIA operates in their countries."

Foreign intelligence services, like Pakistan's, are riddled with Al Qaeda sympathizers. This is already our biggest problem in the war on terror: we don't know who to trust. Now they all think back to whoever it was they had seen having lunch that American businesswoman over the last 30 years, Plame was her name? We'll just ship those WMD parts out a diferent way. Oh that guy? He's as good as dead. It won't be spectacular. Something will just happen to him.

Larry Johnson, former counter-terrorism official at the CIA, said on the McNiel-Lehrer Newshour after the scandal broke in 2003:

"This not an alleged abuse. This is a confirmed abuse. I worked with this woman. She started training with me. She has been under cover for three decades. She is not as Bob Novak suggested a "CIA analyst." Given that, I was a CIA analyst for 4 years. I was under cover. I could not divulge to my family outside of my wife that I worked for the CIA until I left the Intelligence Agency on Sept. 30, 1989. At that point I could admit it. The fact that she was under cover for three decades and that has been divulged is outrageous. She was put undercover for certain reasons. One, she works in an area where people she works with overseas could be compromised...For these journalists to argue that this is no big deal... and if I hear another Republican operative suggesting that, well, this was just an analyst. Fine. Let them go undercover. Let's put them overseas. Let's out them and see how they like it...I say this as a registered Republican.

Then the third and last shell in the shell game, Rove will be hard to convict under the narrowly-crafted law which forbids identifying a CIA operative. Forget that law; let's try another one, that of "betraying the state into the hands of a foreign power." I'd say Al Qaeda is a foreign power. Where is that from? It's part of the legal definition of treason.

Jerry Springer Says the T Word

Jerry Springer on Air America Radio is relentlessley engaging the Bushies in the spin war over Valerie Plame, calling this so-called "leak" what it is: treason. This should mean a lot more than Rover resigning; we're talking big jail time. The newspapers hardly mention that Plame was no ordinary agent. She was charged with flushing out weapons of mass desruction. Now the Republican talking point is moving desperately to insisting that because Plame spent time in an office at CIA HQ in Langley, Virginia, she couldn't have been all that much of a secret agent. This is absurd. Maybe I'm way off and know nothing, but didn't James Bond ever go to HQ to talk to M? Does some of your fellow CIA employees knowing who and what you are mean it's an open secret to everyone? Plame and husband Joe Wilson have acknowledged shunning the Washington cocktail party circuit for reasons of professional discretion. Is Al Qaeda likely to have the resources to put a tail on everyone in Washington just to see if they head in the general direction of CIA headquarters?

Keep sending the talking points to Springer and the Air America folks, as they have almost singlehandedly forced the media to look beyond the Bush version of what this constitutes. They would have you think this is just another "leak" that brings up "freedom of the press" issues. Bullshit. Rove should go to Leavenworth for the rest of his life. If we are attacked with a WMD, it might be that much easier because of him. George Bush is doing nothing less than protecting a traitor to the national security.

Plame Game Heating Up

Things are getting HOT, Valerie Plame, London bombing, Bush record-low polls, and a full month of August with Congress not in session when anything can fill the news hole. When politicians fall. This can be our chance to impeach this Bush once and for all, especially if the Brits throw Blair out on his ass like they should have a long time ago. After all they're not the mindless morons Americans are. The Spanish set the example: you fuck up, you go. The Iraq war is backwashing to our shores, just as hero and L.A. airport terror-plot-foiler Richard Clarke said it might. Instead of staying OVER THERE - (flypaper, remember? Let's attack an irrelevant country so we can fight them "there" rather than here?)- now they are COMING here, better trained in the ways of killing than ever.

Bush could have surrounded Tora Bora with regular army divisions, decimated top Al Qaeda command and probably bin Laden, and "broken the crockery if necessary" (Mike Scheuer's words for sacrificing the current Pakistani government) crossing into the Paki mountains and tribal areas to chase down whatever sons of bitches were left. And the world would not have peeped a word in protest, with the towers still smoldering on TV. But NOOO! The spoiled rich kid had to exploit the attack to go get the guy he thinks "tried to kill [his] dad", so he could be a "war prezdent" and make his oil buddies fantastically happy, all at once! Boy is there are lot of money here! A new Halliburton millionaire a minute! For them's what showed us proper respect in the past, of course...

The Valerie Plame Kafka House Theatre -- The stage is dark, we see a man being beaten by another man as a woman helplessly looks on. Sirens..running feet...police..shouting..then instead of arresting the beater they arrest the bystander woman. Novak wrote the column but it's Judy Miller who's in jail. Never mind. The point missed by the papers is: What is an "agency operative on weapons of mass destruction?" These are Novak's words when he fingered her. The news stories are predictably bland, freedom of the press blah blah then somewhere in the middle, Oh yea, Plame was some kind of CIA operative.

Matt Cooper's article for the Time website confirms it: "Valerie Plame is a CIA official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction." Monitors? As in, finds out where they are and who's getting them before they can kill us? I thought WMD was what this whole Iraq war was about! And they're blowing up an information network? That's why this is no "leak", the spin the White House is putting out and the media is so graciously trying to perpetuate. This is high treason. There is proportion missing here. A reporter might uncover that the Army is wasting millions of dollars worth of blankets letting them mold. Then there's telling the Germans that Omaha Beach was going to be the spot on D-Day. Both "secrets" are not the same.

Even Jerry Springer at Air America tried but didn't get it right. Said this "leak" put Plame in danger. It's worse; it put US in danger, every single American. Every WMD that gets into the country now is one that Plame's network, who knows, might have caught. We are not talking jail time here. We're talking hanging or the firing squad, by all rights and in any sane world. The links to articles and hard news sources are all somewhere on this blog (http://polispolis.blogspot.com ) or at http://angelfire.com/art2/americandream

Keep the heat on, keep the facts coming to the folks at Air America! The heat under Bush is up, time to turn it up yet another notch. Tell everyone, repeat after me: Valerie Plame stopped weapons of mass destruction weapons of mass destruction weapons of mass destruction...



How Long Will Prosecutor Protect Novak?

Even the New York Times seems to be getting it when when it says of the Valerie Plame prosecution:

"[Special prosecutor Patrick] Fitzgerald has focused solely on Ms. Miller and Mr. Cooper. Mr. Cooper wrote about Ms. Plame only after the Novak column had identified her, and Ms. Miller, though she conducted interviews on the subject, has never written about it. Mr. Novak's role in the investigation, including whether he has cooperated with the authorities, remains a mystery."

So when do we get to Novak?

As for this being spun as freedom of the press issue, comparable to Watergate, I'll say it again. Plame was no ordinary "leak"; she was an undercover specialist in weapons of mass destruction. She was finding out where they were before they got to us. In a world filled with so-called national security secrets, she was the real thing. There is a difference. It is always ok to embarrass politicians. It is never ok to divulge the the beach chosen for the landing on D-Day. Someone in the Whitehouse needs to go to jail.

Bush's War is Training Terrorists

Red state yahoos like the "flypaper" theory of Iraq, which says the bottom line, whether attacking Iraq was justified or not, is that we are fighting them in the Middle East rather than here, because the war draws terrorists like flies to flypaper. I have long advocated an alternative "incubator" analogy, which says all we are doing is giving terrorists live-fire training which they can then bring to our shores (see my book "The Elephant in the Room.") Now a CIA reports says that:

Iraq may prove to be an even more effective training ground for Islamic extremists than Afghanistan was in Al Qaeda's early days, because it is serving as a real-world laboratory for urban combat...the war was likely to produce a dangerous legacy by dispersing to other countries Iraqi and foreign combatants more adept and better organized than they were before the conflict.

Richard Clarke's article "Ten Years Later" speculates that another terror attack here in the US might involve people who got their most valuable training thanks to George Bush. The larger point is that the war on terror is not for simple-minded boobs who can only grasp "fight them there rather than here." That is a product of fear and wishful thinking that wants to believe we can keep it from coming here by lashing out at enough of the wrong people.

Why They Hate Us Part 963: Guantanamo Prisoners Innocent

Contrary to what Dick Cheney says, that Guantanamo holds only the "worst of the worst" and not exactly car thieves, The Nation reveals that according to the Pentagon itself, "between 70 percent and 90 percent of [prisoners] had been swept up at random." This is a piece by Gore Vidal, "Something Rotten in Ohio," which for other reasons too is a must-read. Al Franken has said on the air on his Air America Radio show that, on one of his visits to Iraq, an American soldier at Abu Ghraib pointed to a cellblock and called the men there "maybes." As in maybe guilty. Someone gets a stick rammed up them first, then proclaimed innocent (see story below) then Bush says they hate us for our freedom, and not for anything we are doing too them. If we looked at the results of his policies only, George Bush could be called a one-man terrorist factory.

Poor George. Everyone turning against him. Colonel Douglas MacGregor on Iraq:

"We arrested people in front of their families, dragging them away in handcuffs with bags over their heads, and then provided no information to the families of those we incarcerated. In the end our soldiers killed, maimed or jailed thousands of Arabs, 90 percent of whom were not the enemy. But they are now."

TAKE ACTION!

Folks; if the information presented in this blog and website makes you want to do something, we are in a week-long campaign to make sure these facts and documentation are seen by the good folks at Air America Radio, the only free speech major media outlet left in America. Please go to their website and log-in to the commentator blogs and post this website address and some of the facts presented, and send them emails. For example the fearless Randi Rhodes is at rrhodes@airamericaradio.com Mike Malloy is at mike@mikemalloy.com

Prisoner Details Rape with Stick by American Intelligence

Harpers Magazine has published an account "by Hussain Abdulkadr Youssouf Mustafa, a fifty-one-year-old Palestinian man who plans to sue the US Government for cruel and unusual punishment." After his ordeal Mustafa was told he was innocent. This account is reproduced in the blog Prairie Weather.

An American soldier took me blindfolded, with my hands tightly cuffed, and with my ears plugged so I could not hear properly and my mouth covered so that I could only make a muffled scream. Two soldiers forced me to bend down, and a third pressed my face down on a table. A fourth soldier then pulled down my trousers. They forcibly rammed a stick up my rectum. It was excruciatingly painful.

US Troops Deaths No longer News

You may have noticed that US troop deaths in Iraq are getting buried deeper and deeper in the paper. An AP report today details violence throughout the country and then not until the eigth paragraph deigns to mention: "The US military, meanwhile, reported that five US soldiers had been killed in two days." Five in two days? In the eighth 'graph? No it's not just Iraqis getting killed; our boys are still dying at a steady rate. Turning the corner, yeah right.

Trial of Saddam Implicates Bush's Dad

A June 7th New York Times article "Desert Graves Yield Evidence to try Hussein" (here reprinted in the Der Speigel website) describes the misdeeds of the bloody tyrant:

It was late one afternoon in May 1988, in the middle of the Anfal. Mr. Askary said nearly 50 of the 150 people who died were his relatives. As he rushed to help, he came across his mother's body lying by a stream.

Which means the Reagan/Bush administration's well-documented support of Saddam at the time ought to come into play. Norm Dixon in Counterpunch:

According to William Blum, writing in the August 1998 issue of the Progressive, Sam Gejdenson, chairperson of a Congressional subcommittee investigating US exports to Iraq, disclosed that from 1985 until 1990 "the US government approved 771 licenses [only 39 were rejected] for the export to Iraq of $1.5 billion worth of biological agents and high-tech equipment with military application ...

"The US spent virtually an entire decade making sure that Saddam Hussein had almost whatever he wanted... US export control policy was directed by US foreign policy as formulated by the State Department, and it was US foreign policy to assist the regime of Saddam Hussein."

If the media does it's job, this could get interesting. Circulate this tidbit so they know that we know that they know that...

NewsWire, June 5, 2005
Congressman tiptoes around the "I"[mpeachment] word

Item: a short piece in this week's Boston Phoenix, by Congressman Barney Fag, er, Frank (remember that? Rep. Dick Armey of Texas once called him that then tried to say it was a slip of the tongue, to which Barney quipped "no one ever mistakenly called my mother Mrs. Fag...) In the article Frank all but says that in order to get out of Iraq first we need to impeach George Bush.

"We’ll be there as long as George Bush remains president, I’m afraid, because it’s not going very well, and they have gotten themselves entangled in a mess that they don’t know how to get out of" Frank said.

Then, in the last line of the piece Frank stated: "If the Democrats do well in 2006, it could cause the Republicans to think, "Maybe we don’t want this burden around our neck in 2008."

The comment coincides with a "Spring Offensive" letter-writing campaign by VoteToImpeach.org. The group says "people across the country will be able to send personal customized letters to the representatives from each of their districts and states. To send a letter, just click here."

FBI Memo corroborates Newsweek allegations of Koran desecration

A declassified FBI memo now shows that desecration of the Koran in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo has been independently confirmed and is old news going back to at least 2002. Story here.

"Military Families Speak Out" Speech Organ Shut Down Due to Right Wing Harassment

The list-serve used by "Military Families Speak Out," an anti-war organization of military families with loved ones serving in Iraq, has been forced to shut-down due to hacking and harassment for its anti-war position. An email from organizer Jeff McKenzie states:

Dear Participants in the List-serve of Military Families Speak Out,

We deeply regret that, due to recent problems with the list-serve that allowed un-authorized people to get in, get access to Military Families Speak Out members' personal email addresses and then harass them about their positions on the war; that we will be shutting down the MFSO list-serve effective immediately.

We are so very sorry for having to take this decision. We know the list serve has, for the most part, provided a safe space for MFSO members and those who support us to discuss issues and share pain and tears as well laughter and joy.

Military Families Speak Out is at MFSO.org

War is Ugly

Warning: graphic. Operation Truth is run by soldiers to take the media gloss off the war and the US government's treatment of our troops. This short video is part of a compilation of images and first-hand stories in an attempt to give the public a true picture of the war, whatever your position on it may be. Another Iraq video making the blog rounds: "Take them out, dude: pilots toast hit on Iraqi 'civilians'"

Neo-Nazis Censor Civilian Casualties Website

Click here to see what you come up with if you go to the top hit on Yahoo for "Iraq civilian casualties".

Recent casualties, what the news won't show

On Air America Radio recently a caller defended Bush's not telling us how we are going to get out of Iraq, an exit strategy, by saying if this were football you wouldn't give the opposing team your playbook. This is not a football game, shithead. These are real lives, though you wouldn't know it as a result of the media censoring the human cost. These are families shattered, shit-for-brains, children fatherless, communities left with gaping holes in them. All for non-existent WMD. This will be a regular feature here.

On Saturday, June 11th, 2005, while you were at the beach, these men lost their lives:


Sgt. Larry R. Arnold Sr., 46, roadside bomb
 

Spc. Casey Byers, 22, roadside bomb
 

Spc. Terrance D. Lee Sr., 25, roadside bomb
 

Bad Democrats

Here's where we slam Democrats who talk the talk about standing up to George Bush, then vote with Republicans anyway. You expect perpetual Bush-o-crats like Joe Lieberman, Chuck Schumer, and Landrieu to be indistinguishable from Republicans, but joning them in selling us out now are Obama, Reid, and Dodd.

CAFTA: So Where's the Party Discipline?

If this many Republicans had crossed Bush on a vote this big the way these Democrats sold-out the American worker, there'd be a few Repubs sitting in basement offices suddenly. But apparantly screwing the worker is no big deal. If you think wages are low in China, wait till Big Business gets to take jobs where people living in a cardboard box are considered the lucky ones; Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras. Run for Congress! CAFTA Vote Outs "Bush Democrats" by The Nation's John Nichols.

See "Democrats MIA," The Nation April 11, 2005 (published on Truthout.org)

So far a list of Democratic senators who have voted with Republicans on such Bush administration triumphs as drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, tort reform, and bankruptcy includes: Bayh (D-IN), Bennett (R-UT), Biden (D-DE), Bingaman (D-NM), Cantwell (D-WA), Carper (D-DE), Conrad (D-ND), Dodd (D-CT), Feinstein (D-CA), Inouye (D-HI), Johnson (D-SD), Kohl (D-WI), Landrieu (D-LA), Lieberman (D-CT), Lincoln (D-AR), Nelson (D-NE), Obama (D-IL), Reed (D-RI), Reid (D-NV), Rockefeller (D-WV), Salazar (D-CO), and Schumer (D-NY).

Rove Does Another Dan Rather, NEW PETITION BRING HOME IN 2005

About the picture link in post below this one, "Who is this woman?": Ok none of you guys got it. That's Valerie Plame. You'll be hearing a hell of a lot more about her in my new book.

Damn that Karl Rover is good. You know Afghanistan is being held together by scotch tape, the guerrillas were just waiting for the winter to be over to unleash hell, so you make it look like the shit-storm is all the "Liberal Media's" fault. Beautiful. This has nothing to do with Abu Ghraib or Afghan government troops firing into crowds. Newsweek did it. That takes the heat off Bush for having 100,000 troops in Iraq instead of stabilizing Afghanistan. Mike Sheuer, in "Imperial Hubris," called it right down the line. We're going to get our asses kicked in Afghanistan because Bush couldn't wait to whack No-WMD Saddam.

Randi Rhodes on Air America Radio is doing an especially good job of detailing how this Koran-flushing thing is old news. Exactly like the Dan Rather Bush-skipped-out-on National-Guard memo: there are tons of other corroborating sources, but the focus is on the false one. And the timing is just right.

My new book's website is slated to premier next week. It looks like some of you guys must be finding the new petition, so friggin sign it already, don't be shy. Please. Here is the petition's discussion board. There are other fine petitions like this - SIGN THEM ALL! - but the key words here are in 2005, meaning, by the end of it. This gives the politicians a fast but logistically realistic timeline. Our guys are stuck in the middle of a civil war, and it will never get better. They will only keep dying. How the politicians get us out of it is their goddamn problem. It's that simple.

Who said the following?

"A book is now more important than a weapon."

Hint: he is the inventor of a famous gun. Another chance at a free copy of my new book.

Tonight's CCTV show notes, Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan

Book countdown; Who is this Woman?

Who is this woman? Be on the look-out for more about her. Post it first and you get a free book, "The Elephant in the Room." No shit. Hey, a free book is a free book.

Book countdown

Thanks for joining us on tonight's "Progressive Talk" show on CCTV. So they are going to end the Valerie Plame inquiry, huh? Not so fast (see previous post.) Link this site, this is where you'll see it all FIRST. Action here near daily. The book countdown starts.

The Elephant in the Room by Ralph Lopez aka "Polis."

"This is the case against BushCo! Keep it by your side when you're talking to your congressman, speaking on the radio, or running for office yourself!"


“Explosive…”

“A battle plan for the future.”

“A handbook for all Democrats who never want to lose that way again.”

Prosecutor about to wind up Plame inquiry

Not so goddamned fast. NY Times reports "C.I.A. Leak Inquiry Is Near End, Prosecutor Says." Okay. So who's going to jail? I'm about to launch a website dedicated solely to pressing our "opposition party" to act like an opposition and scream their bloody heads off that there is still a traitor in the White House, re Valerie Plame. Stay tuned for my book, now in last rush stages. Politics is going to get fun again if we all do our job.

New blog on the scene

Check out the new blog MajorityViewToday!

Congress toll-free numbers

CCTV, tonight's show recap: Tell Democrats to "Lewinski the Valerie Plame issue" before we lose the filibuster and the Arctic Refuge. We will lose it all unless these spineless clowns fight back.

Your senators and congressmen, toll-free numbers connecting all offices:
1-800-839-5276
or
1-877-762-8762

Cambridge congressmen and senators:

Mike Capuano: (202) 225-5111.
John Kerry: (202) 224-2742.
Ted Kennedy: 202/224-4543.

Book done

A pretty solid draft of my book is now done, a non-fiction blogger's view of the 2004 election. Anybody out there know anyone in the publishing biz? Thought I'd ask. Email me. Thanks.

March 2 "Progressive Talk" TV show notes

These are the notes for tonight's "Progressive Talk" show in Cambridge, for those who watched. The rest of y'all look at it too. Demand the impeachment of George Bush, traitor.

Valerie Plame article

"...a pair of top Bush officials told a reporter the name of a CIA operative who apparently has worked under what's known as "nonofficial cover" and who has had the dicey and difficult mission of tracking parties trying to buy or sell weapons of mass destruction or WMD material."

Khan article 1:

"The revelation that a mole within al Qaeda was exposed after Washington launched its "orange alert" this month has shocked security experts, who say the outing of the source may have set back the war on terror."

"Reuters learned from Pakistani intelligence sources at the weekend that computer expert Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan, arrested secretly last month, was working under cover to help the authorities track down al Qaeda militants in Britain and the United States when his name appeared in newspapers around the world."

Khan article 2

Cheney article

"During Cheney's tenure at Halliburton the company did business in all three countries [Iraq, Iran, Libya.] In the case of Iraq, Halliburton legally evaded U.S. sanctions by conducting its oil-service business through foreign subsidiaries that had once been owned by Dresser."

"During the 2000 campaign, Cheney told ABC News that "I had a firm policy that we wouldn't do anything in Iraq, even arrangements that were supposedly legal." But, Mayer writes, "under Cheney's watch, two foreign subsidiaries of Dresser sold millions of dollars worth of oil services and parts to Saddam's regime."

Toll-free numbers connecting all US senators' offices:
1-800-839-5276 or 1-877-762-8762 connecting all offices.

Huge balls till the end

Reports are that Hunter Thompson was suffering chronic pain from back and hip operations and starting to have trouble walking when he shot himself at age 67. He once ran a campaign for sheriff in Aspen, CO. in which his platform was simple but a little new: say exactly what he thought and what he was going to do. One hallmark of Hunter's writing was that he didn't care who he offended, least of all politicians, as the NYT obituary notes. RIP Hunter Thompson, truth-teller.

Excerpt from Thompson's "Kingdom of Fear, Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century":

"See you tomorrow, folks. You haven't heard the last of me. I am the one who speaks for the spirit of freedom and decency in you. Shit. Somebody has to do it. We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world, a nation of bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just Whores for power and oil, but killer whores with hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum, and that is how history will judge us . . . No redeeming social value. Just whores. Get out of our way, or we'll kill you...Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush? They are the same ones who wanted to have Muhammad Ali locked up for refusing to kill gooks. They speak for all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the American character. They are the racists and hate mongers among us they are the Ku Klux Klan. I piss down the throats of these Nazis. And I am too old to worry about whether they like it or not. Fuck them."

Most important article in American history

"Ten Years Later" by Richard Clarke (author of "Against All Enemies.") This is the alarm to rival Thomas Paine. In February Atlantic Monthly (cover photo on right.) Richard Clarke is the former counter-terrorism czar under both Clinton and Bush, and is an outspoken critic of the invasion of Iraq.

In this piece Clarke tells us how the country will look by the time Bush is done with it. Save yourselves and impeach Bush now.

EXCERPT: "Most analysts now agree that Subway Day and Railroad Day not only caused the Senate filibuster to end, permitting the passage of Patriot Act III, but also finally triggered the withdrawal of some 40,000 troops from Iraq. The Army was needed in the subways."...Ten Years Later by Richard Clarke.

Thread for potential candidates

Reserving this thread for people who want to discuss running for Congress themselves. Email me at ralphlopez[at]hotmail.com

Remember 'Not One Damn Dime Day' + Push for Dean!

...on the day of the inauguration, Thursday, Jan. 20th, BUY NOTHING! Join the campaign, gas up your car, do your food shopping the day before, etc. I am allowing myself my daily cup of coffee at my local cafe and that's it (hey some things are too cruel...) Lest you think it's a rather futile undertaking, think again. A one-day dent in the stock market will show that even if you can steal an election, 53 million pissed-off people are nothing to be sneezed at. The Wall Street thieves who want to loot social security will get the message. We are now taking pages from the Eastern European velvet revolution model, which through peaceful means such as work stoppages, boycotts, and other mass actions showed governments that, no matter what they think, true power ultimately resides with the people. It's catching on, spread it around...NotOneDamnDime.com.

Book coming along, thanks for your continued visits despite scaled back posts.

Howard Dean for DNC chair! He's our only chance for a real opposition party. The internal battle is between Democratic corporate lobbyists and lawyers who don't really care who's president as long as their Beamers are safe, and the rest of us. The Boston Globe's Peter Canellos, another mealy-mouth center-right triangulator, parrots their usual line:

"At the same time, Dean's tactics -- Internet organizing and fund-raising, staged protests, sloganeering -- come uncomfortably close to those of the political fringe."

This from a guy who doesn't know his asshole from his elbow. The translation is anything we don't like or don't understand is "fringe." So they keep right on doing what they do best: losing elections. Okay, forget Dean. Common sense says when something isn't working you try something else. Playing nice with the Neocons doesn't work. "But Clinton won!" Actually, he's most responsible of all for this mess, when he decided that moving the party to the right on economic issues was good for Bill Clinton. Problem is it wasn't good for the rest of us. Push for Dean! Go to the DNC blog and cut loose with a comment (light registration required). Thank you center-right triangulators. You're so good at politics you're about to cost us social security (ouch! My keyboard is smoking...)

Your uplifting reading for the day. Saints walk among us, and it ain't Pat Robertson. The Topos traveled at their own expense from their hometown in Mexico to help find bodies from the Tsunami, as unpaid volunteers.

Lookit lookit! Got a letter published in Boston publication The Weekly Dig, a funny alternative local..."The Plame Game" (yes my real name is Ralph Lopez.)

tsunami volunteering

Information on volunteering for tsunami relief efforts, clearinghouse at this link.

Ohio: Re-vote in black-box and 2 hour line counties

The evidence is pouring in beyond the shadow of a doubt that black voters were systematically disenfranchised in Ohio. Listen to Air America radio: witness after witness attesting to 5, 7, 10 hour lines for voting in black precincts whereas you never had to wait more than 20 minutes in a SINGLE white precinct. (AirAmericaRadio.com, Sunday evening Jan.2, Laura Flanders Show.) Think about how long it took you; have you ever waited 7 hours? Overheard conversations on cellphones by people in lines made clear that folks were reporting to other would-be voters still at home, who gave up when told the lines were not going down, or were getting worse. Election workers, both Republican and Democrat, puzzled over why there were fewer machines in these places than last year, despite record turnout expectations. There might have been 5 machines last year and now there were 2. "Black boxes," voting machines with no paper trail, also heavily concentrated in black areas.

What now? Armed revolution? Well, not so fast my stout-hearted laddies. First, the operative language in the law is the word "systematic"; any "systematic" effort to exclude any ethnic or religious group is a clear violation of the Voting Rights Act, and therefore the basis for a non-frivolous lawsuit. Should be easy to show where the long lines and black boxes were located. Then what? Simple. The only fair soluton is a re-vote in all counties affected by "black boxes" or by severe lack of voting machines. This is a reasonable and limited remedy. Say the average time for most people to vote state-wide in Ohio is a half-hour: quadruple that and say anyplace with longer than 2 or 3 hours enters the unreasonable. The entire election hinged on Ohio, so fortunately this is a fairly isolated problem, confined to certain counties and not even the whole state. In other words, it's a sensible solution for anyone who cares about democracy, be they Republican or Dem. We don't know what the outcome will be. What we do know is what happened is despicable.

Spearhead organization: Coalition Against Election Fraud. The people must lead and the politicians will follow. These folks have picked out key senators to call urging that an objection be lodged on January 6th, when the Electoral College meets to certify the vote. From the Coalition's website:

On January 6th, Congress meets to certify the Presidential election. If even one House member and one Senator object to the electoral votes of any state, this objection will be recorded: the vote will not be automatically approved. This has happened only once before -- in 1877. Its occurrence once again would draw historic attention to our shattered democracy and lead to an outcome that none of us can know.

AND IT'S FREE! Toll free numbers! Contact these Senators at 1-800-839-5276 or 1-877-762-8762 connecting all offices.

Barbara Boxer CA-D
Robert Byrd WV-D
Mark Dayton MN-D
Thomas Harkin IA-D
Jim Jeffords VT-I
Edward Kennedy MA-D
Patrick Leahy VT-D
Carl Levin MI-D
Joseph Lieberman CT-D
Barbara Mikulski MD-D
Barack Obama IL-D
Olympia Snowe ME-R
Charles Schumer NY-D

and

Mike Capuano MA-D (my own addition, Hi Mike!)

The dry legalese of this effort doesn't convey what happened; black folks coming from surgery to vote; people leaving work, giving up, coming back on their breaks, giving up again, all in a passion to vote even if it was for the first time in their lives. Our soldier-brothers are dying in Iraq because of this man Bush, not to mention 100,000 civilians and counting. Get on the phone, wear out those numbers. If the Ukranians can win their freedom, we can too. Move out.

Buy Blue

Since we know this is now total war against some of the nastiest, most self-righteous, most hypocritical right-wing nuts the world has ever seen, it's only fair that we be able to protest with our dollars. Now they are acting as if people are trying to stop them from saying "Merry Christmas" to each other. Huh? A new websites tells you which companies contribute heavily to the Republican party and what products they sell, and which companies have true values. As the website says, "If each American who voted "Blue" in 2004 spends $100 in 2005 on products of a corporation that by reason of its employees' or connected political action committees' political contributions supported "Blue" over "Red," $5 billion in revenues would be shifted to "Blue" supporting corporations! This will be noticed! Choose where you buy ... and make a difference!!!"

The website is www.choosetheblue.com The next time you hear Bush and it makes you want to throw something at the television, take a breath, go to Polis and click on this link, and study the website. Undirected anger will get us nowhere!

Be relentless

Ohio officials are playing games with the recount, keep the heat up on your congressperson. They are hoping we'll just shut up and go away. Latest news on the recount here. For the time-challenged, a nifty tool that automatically fills-in who your representatives are (once you enter your zip code) and sends a message to them in a few clicks is here. Forget the media which is not covering this; it's your congressman's job to force this into the media.

Democrats blame Moore

Some Democrats were on C-SPAN recently actually blaming Michael Moore for the loss in this election, a sign they have learned absolutely nothing. So I posted the following on the DNC blog, you can post something too it's at

http://www.democrats.org/blog/index.html

"Just wanted to protest the Democrats who were on C-SPAN actually blaming Michael Moore for their loss. These are the kind of unreflective centrist losers who are have given us 4 more years of GWB, the Terry McAuliffes, etc., and I hope that they are purged from the party leadership. It is the job of an "opposition" party to bring up inconvenient facts like Moore does and to respond to them with outrage and passion. Go Howard Dean! I worked for the Dems this time around because I so badly wanted to get rid of Bush, and as a grassroots worker I would like to stay involved. But if these corporate robots who have learned nothing keep control, I'll be out on the streets organizing for the Greens."

Air America progressive talk radio hits Boston

The Al Franken station at 1430 AM, all day and all night. You are in for a pleasant surprise, real debate! Real issues! Funny! I haven't listened to AM radio in decades but I'm hooked again, finding myself running home from work to listen to Air America.

Set compassionate soldier free

On that soldier who shot the wounded Iraqi teenager out of compassion, these "human rights" organizations ought to be ashamed of themselves for calling for his punishment. The minute I read about it one thing fled through my mind, yesterday sure enough, another article confirms what I was thinking. From the Boston Herald, the 16 year-old male was "found in a burning truck with severe abdominal wounds sustained during clashes in Sadr City." Forensic science is full of such euphemisms to mask the unspeakable. You don't want to know what "massive head trauma" means. In this case "severe" means the poor kid was gut-shot, most likely disemboweled. It's the wound every soldier dreads most. The problem is your guts are all dirty from laying on the ground so you're going to die a slow, horrible death from infection anyway, even if they can stuff them back in, which they probably can't. You'd better hope there's someone around nice enough to shoot you. The rest of your nervous system could be working just fine and you can be fully conscious for a while. The larger point is that CNN-Fox News never come close to showing how ugly war is. This is the single most important factor in keeping Bush's war afloat, otherwise most people would be against it.

I call on politicians to intervene for the release of this compassionate young man, Staff Sgt. Johnny M. Horne, who probably knew he'd be going to jail for it but was too kind to care.

Firebombing Falluja

The book is coming along well, please stand-by and I'll start excerpting it soon. In the meantime consider this blog as your source for breaking news that the media chooses not to report, this one is big as members of British Parliament are raking Blair over the coals over it, if the savvy and no-bullshit Brits can get Tony to resign than Bush starts looking a lot more vulnerable to impeachment...

Firebombing Falluja

by Mike Whitney Z Net
December 1, 2004 The United States is using napalm in Falluja. So far, the military has denied the allegations, but the proof is mounting. On Nov. 28 The Daily Mirror’s political editor, Paul Gilfeather filed a report stating: “US troops are secretly using outlawed napalm gas to wipe out remaining insurgents in and around Fallujah. News that President George W. Bush has sanctioned the use of napalm, a deadly cocktail of polystyrene and jet fuel banned by the United Nations in 1980, will stun governments around the world.” For over a week rumors have circulated in the Arab press that both napalm and other chemical weapons were used mainly in the Jolan district of Falluja, a major area of the fighting. Now, despite a US media blackout, more evidence is leaking out and causing a furor in the British Parliament. As Gilfeather reports: “Last night Tony Blair was dragged into the row as furious Labour MPs demanded he face the Commons over it. Reports claim that innocent civilians have died in napalm attacks, which turn victims into human fireballs as the gel bonds flames to flesh." MORE...

COBB 2004 RELEASE: KERRY INTERVENES IN GREEN PARTY OH RECOUNT CASE

Call Kerry to thank him. Maybe he feels bad about completely f*#%king up the election. There is some good in every man...

STATEMENT FROM THE GREEN PARTY PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN CONCERNING JOHN KERRY'S INTERVENTION IN OHIO RECOUNT COURT CASE

Today, attorneys representing the Kerry-Edwards campaign filed
papers in Delaware County, Ohio to intervene in legal proceedings in defense of Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb, Libertarian Michael Badnarik and their legal counsel, the National Voting Rights Institute, who are seeking a recount of all votes cast for president in the Ohio 2004 general election...read more

GREEN PARTY PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE SEEKS FEDERAL COURT JURISDICTION IN NEW OHIO RECOUNT CASE

11/30 -- Attorneys for Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb asked a federal court today to take jurisdiction of, and ultimately dissolve, a temporary restraining order issued by a Delaware County, Ohio judge attempting to prevent Cobb from seeking a recount of the presidential ballots cast in that county....more

Start to build the machine

Massachusetts readers, if we can't get a fair story out of Fox News we can at least expect them from the Boston Globe now and then. The Globe can't help inserting an editorial snicker about "conspiracy theories" every time it prints a vote recount piece. You know the Right, similarly offended, would trot out a full-blown letter campaign to advertisers for a few weeks just to make the point that they will be respected. Brian Mooney in today's Boston Globe: "The long list of documented problems has fueled the suspicions of conspiracy theorists, activists, and the minor presidential candidates who requested the New Hampshire and Ohio recounts..."

FYI, the Globe's flagship advertiser is Macy's. What goes a long way is a few emails or letters basically saying:

"We object to your fine store's advertising appearing next to this undemocratic crap. Perhaps you could ask the Globe to just report what's happening or not happening on the recount, without the snarky editorializing about 'conspiracies.' Thank you."

The right-wing won because they have their shit together, and we don't. It's that simple. If you want muscles, you have to start flexing them.

Macy's customer feedback page

Macy's Boston info.:

Macy's Boston
450 Washington Street
Boston, MA 02111
617/357-3000

Reading

If we're gonna get it out, let's get it all out, my brother-in-law always says before the start of a family quarrel. I wouldn't put my sentiments over the election as the following writer does, but lot of other people do, so it needs to be said. Darned funny too. "Screw You, America" by Clif Garboden in the Boston Phoenix.

Call your congressmen

Here's the best place to start practicing your new hell-raising skills with your representatives. The Right will not out-hell-raise us. See phone numbers in previous post if you are in Cambridge, otherwise look them up, fer Chrissakes. Post them on the fridge; they'll be getting a lot of use. Tell 'em Polis sent you.

OHIO RECOUNT MUST START NOW

Attorneys for Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb and
Libertarian Michael Badnarik have sent letters to each Ohio county election
director asking them to begin preparations immediately for the recount of
the presidential vote. Although a demand for a recount is usually not made until after the vote has been certified, there are concerns that waiting that long
would not allow enough time for the recount to be completed before the Ohio
presidential electors meet on December 13 in Columbus. The Ohio Secretary
of State's office has told the press that certification of the vote would
occur around December 6, allowing only a handful of days for a full recount
prior to the December 13 meeting. In letters dated November 17 and sent by overnight delivery, Cobb and Badnarik's attorneys say that "{s}uch a timeframe will not allow for a meaningful recount and will undermine our clients' rights under
applicable law, including Ohio recount law." Cobb and Badnarik will file
the recount demand jointly. For more info.

Where the anger belongs

I don't blame red-staters anymore. I blame John Kerry and the Democrats who to this day play dead before the Neocon onslaught. Bush brazenly announces he will purge the CIA of all dissenters, ie. anyone who doesn't tell him what he wants to hear. This puts us all in grave danger. It's the brazeness that's scariest: this is the kind of thing a president used to have to do in secret.

Where are our congressmen; why aren't they screaming? They may not have a vote on it, but they certainly have a say, as over anything on national policy. I believe things will not change until credible primary challenges are brought against congressmen who think their jobs are secure for life.

The Constitution charges representatives with representing. It doesn't say we elect you to 'foster unity with the party that is against my interest.' If you don't "represent," then get out. One thing I hand to the right-wingers, they have their representatives shaking in their shoes. Not only do they call to tell them to scream about something they care about, they call to tell them they aren't screaming loud enough. This is where it starts. This is where we begin to end the Era of George Bush. This is where the anger belongs. By making life hell for these silver-haired blowhards. For my Cambridge locals: Congressman Mike Capuano: (202) 225-5111. John Kerry: (202) 224-2742. Ted Kennedy: 202/224-4543. Put the numbers on your refrigerator. The Right does.

Vote Count Update from DemocracyNow

"President Bush nominated Condoleeza Rice yesterday as he continues to reshape his Cabinet for his second four-year term. But, controversy
continues to rage over the fairness of the November 2 presidential
election. Stories are still emerging from states like Ohio, Florida, North
Carolina and New Mexico of widespread problems with vote counting, voter suppression and malfunctions of electronic voting machines. Now three candidates in the 2004 presidential race are demanding recounts. And not one of them is John Kerry..." GO TO DEMOCRACYNOW.ORG ARTICLE.

Breaking news: Ohio recount certain

From a Green Party press release:

"Green Party Campaign Raises $150,000 in 4 days,
Shifts Gears to Phase II

There will be a recount of the presidential vote in Ohio.
On Thursday, David Cobb, the Green Party's 2004 presidential
candidate, announced his intention to seek a recount of the vote in Ohio.
Since the required fee for a statewide recount is $113,600, the only
question was whether that money could be raised in time to meet the filing
deadline. That question has been answered.
"Thanks to the thousands of people who have contributed to this
effort, we can say with certainty that there will be a recount in Ohio,"
said Blair Bobier, Media Director for the Cobb-LaMarche campaign."

MSNBC columnist David Shuster has backed up the story:

"This afternoon, I spoke with Blair Bobier, the attorney/spokesman for David Cobb, the Green Party's 2004 candidate for President. Bobier confirms that the press release floating on the net is legitimate. The Green Party is combining forces with the Libertarian Party to seek a statewide election recount in Ohio..."

Barking up the wrong tree

Am working on a book about this election, so please stay tuned. Posts will be a little less frequent as a result, but they will be regular. Won't speak unless I have something to say, probably a good general policy in life anyway.

The work going forward on investigating the vote is important, but folks are missing the main point: the Democrats had 4 years to fix it, to make sure 2000 never happened again, but they didn't. Reporters should be asking: Why? If the "other party" can't even insure that its voters are counted, why does it even exist? The platform means less than nothing if the other guys can always cheat. Where was the "Lion of the Left," Ted Kennedy, for 4 years? Tom Daschle? Nancy Pelosi? You'll forgive me that I'm not crying that Daschle is gone. The new blood, new Democratic challengers, need a chance.

Counting votes is the single most basic function of a democracy. Nothing else works if that doesn't.

Fox News Advertisers

For slanting news I don't think Fox is actually much worse than the other major networks, ABC/CBS/NBC; it's the news that isn't reported that's the problem. Still, it's good practice to start thinking about tweaking your buys so that you're not unwittingly supporting something you despise, and Fox is as good a place as any to start. So here are Fox New's major advertisers, according to the Infoshop.org Fox News Boycott.

Earthlink
Gateway Computers
Honda
Orbitz
Shell Petroleum

The list will grow

News

Speaking of news you'll never see on Fox, tanks appeared at an anti-war protest in LA yesterday. Here's video and photos.

Another twist in the vote fraud which the newspapers are hastily denouncing, predictably, as "conspiracy theories." They always have names but they never have answers. Presidential Votes Miscast on E-Voting Machines Across the Country.

Of interest: "I Killed Innocent People For Our Government" - Interview with Marine Sergeant Jimmy Massey. Though it now turns out there are probably more than 100,000 casualties of the Iraq invasion, Bush still sticks to the line that Saddam was worse. Still waiting to see the networks report that the "Saddam's mass graves" story was a lie, something everyone in the world knows except most Americans. After the election we know there are vicious Nazis among us who could care less about civilian casualties, but that's on them, not on us. The Judgement Day awaits us all on our "values."

"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just" --Thomas Jefferson

Election may have been hacked

Back, while we're studying options on what should come next here's some reading, "The Vote May Have Been Hacked" by Thom Hartmann. Good news is that Howard Dean may have a chance to chair the DNC, which means the Democratic honchos finally understand that their party is about to fade into total obscurity, like the Whigs. Remember, no one is coming to save us. We're on our own. There is a yawning leadership vacuum in the center, we are now officially a one-party state (sealed by Kerry's cave-in on the vote.) No one can fill that vacuum but us. Stay tuned, and start building your personal email lists. We need to use some of the tools of the Looney Right, like organized boycotts of advertisers in the major media whenever they piss us off, which is most of the time. Not spending money can be very powerful. Let's see which news outlets start to bring Bush's crimes and betrayals of national security to light, and we'll spend our money there. 51 million people wield a lot of purchasing power.

No unity

In the end George Bush followed his strategy all the way to the finish, which was to make John Kerry's trustworthiness the issue. It worked. Kerry and the Democrats made a decision early on not to raise issues which would have made mincemeat of Bush's own trustworthiness, and now we have four more years of George Bush. Valerie Plame, the compromise of the Noor Khan investigation which could have led to the capture of bin Laden, Dick Cheney's trading with Saddam Hussein as CEO of Halliburton, are all well-documented and on the public record. But it doesn't matter if you don't have an opposition party that acts like an opposition party. John Kerry spoke of holding this administration accountable, but in the end, he didn't hold it accountable.

Let's remember that Newt Gingich and the Republicans, when they were the minority party, always played hard and played for keeps. They hit on Clinton for things that pale in comparison to what GB has done, and they hammered and they hammered until they crippled his presidency and nearly took him down. Now "bipartisanship" is a code word for give the extremist Republicans what they want, as when Ted Kennedy gave George Bush one of his favorite ads, the No Child Left Behind Act.

The fact is this election shouldn't even have been close, because Bush has done things that he could have been impeached for many times over. If there is any silver lining, it would be the demise of the centrist-triangulator wing of the Democratic party who don't believe in anything but polls and not getting anyone too upset. They're not really the center; that's a fiction which really describes the right and the far-right. The center is us, and all those Republicans who voted against Bush, the fiscal conservatives who are furious at what he did to the national debt, conservative generals like Wes Clark who called this administration, quote, the "nastiest, most imperialistic administration in living memory," The center is many socially conservative Christians who don't think Bush acts very Christian. The center is now championless. We're completely on our own.

The so-called centrists think it makes you some sort of left-winger to hit back when Republicans hit below the belt, as Bush-Cheney have consistently done by trashing Kerry's war record, and by saying that critics are the equivalent of traitors, as when John Ashcroft said of critics of the Patriot Act, quote, "to those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, your words only give comfort to the enemy." The Republicans make you pay dearly for the tiniest slip of the tongue, but beyond short flurries of Democratic indignation, Republicans never have to pay for many remarks just like this. The so-called centrists confuse fighting back with going negative, and people who don't understand the difference, should not be in politics.

John Kerry showed that hard work is not enough. It has to be harnessed to a clear, consistent message. The Iraq war is not just the wrong war at the wrong time, it's just plain wrong. We don't need to fight a better, smarter war on terror, we just need to fight it, period, and get out of Iraq. We don't need a president who won't rush to war without a plan to win the peace; we just need a president who won't go to war unless he has to.

The biggest surpise for me is that I thought if Bush won this election, I'd have a negative view of America. But what I've seen just takes my breath away. We've seen 9/11 widows like Chris Britweiser step forward and speak out against George Bush, we've seen public officials like Richard Clarke, Mark Scheuer, and Paul O'Neill put their careers on the line and invite certain, vicious personal smear to warn the American public, we've seen soldiers risk jail time for refusing to "kill poor people in Iraq." We've seen film-makers like Michael Moore make films which now earn them daily death threats. We've seen many such acts of unexpected and breath-taking patriotism. I routinely hear college students on the subway speaking knowledgably about swing state arithmetic. This was unheard of years ago. But working at the polls, I also saw too many people who didn't know they had to register before they vote, even though they wanted badly to vote. So this is not the end. This is just the beginning of people really understanding their democracy.

The Democrats must retool their platform into a clear, consistent agenda, which includes a limited and carefully chosen list of items such as killing the $100 billion Star Wars pork barrel.

Star wars is a debate we can win, because even its inventors say its a waste of money. Even John McCain hates it. The money saved should go into buying whatever protection the troops are missing in Iraq, like armored Humvees, and you'd have plenty left over for other needs, like making college affordable again, no matter what college you get into. If you can make it into a prestigious but expensive private college, you should be able to go. This is another resonant issue the Democrats can own.

But highest on the agenda now should be holding Democrats accountable for not holding the Bush administration accountable for its crimes and misdeeds. And finally, bridging the cultural divide. The tools to start bridging the cultural divide have been created in this last election, with websites like Main Street Moms Oppose Bush and the Swing State Project. They put us in touch with our fellow citizens in other states, to discuss, share information, and often respectfully disagree. Reaching one person in one rural county, and discussing the issues together, I believe, is one of the single most powerful things one person can do in the next four years. George Bush won the election despite sky-high disapproval ratings, so there is still plenty to talk about.

As for holding our Democratic congressmen accountable for rolling over and playing dead in the face of administration misdeeds and possible crimes, let a thousand primary challenges bloom. If we can't win against their kind of money, we can at least give them a scare. There's nothing a politician hates like a challenge, because it means he might have to go out and debate someone.

We will not lose hope. Let's not feel sorry for ourselves because we made phone calls to voters and knocked on doors and we still didn't win. Remember, the first American Revolution didn't end with the Battle of Lexington. After that there was a ten year slog during which men had to camp out in winter with their feet wrapped in rags, at Fort Ticonderoga, and Valley Forge. Think of that. Between what they had to do and what we have to do, we have the easier job. So let's get re-organized, and get back to work.

News

Another issue ignored by Kerry and the Democrats, a full 4 years after Florida 2000, is that a paper trail for electronic voting is a no-brainer. Electronic records are good for many things, but voting is not one of them, and believing so does not make you a Luddite. If they are so reliable, then why, despite the most sophisticated and accurate systems in the world, do credit card companies make you sign a paper slip for each and every transaction, even if it's only for a dollar? Oh, that's different, that involves MONEY!

On that note:An Election Spoiled Rotten

Hep me

Anyone who wants can submit this to your hometown paper (or any paper) I'm looking for help getting it published. If they pay I'll kick you a third, no no, fair's fair. Like I said to the Kerry people, the Op/Ed floats the idea that no matter what the solution is to Iraq, a prerequisite is that Bush is gone. We need a hook to put that point on the airwaves/Sunday talk shows, and an article like this could be the hook. It's ready to go.

Thanks.


"What a Fresh Start Means"
by Ralph Lopez

Down here on the ground in the presidential campaign there is a barrier Kerry cannot seem to break: What exactly is he going to do to get us out of Iraq that Bush won't? Even in a conversation with a customer service agent for my cellphone company, I casually steer the chit-chat toward the presidential debates. I never to miss an opportunity to take the pulse of my countrymen, this one in El Paso, Texas. The very nice lady on the line tells me: "I'm a Republican girl, and the whole time I just listened for one thing from Kerry, how is he going to get us OUT OF THERE. And I didn't hear the answer." Door-to-door workers in swing states relate similar experiences.

Forget for a moment that this logic befuddles me. If a CEO runs his company into the ground, his days are numbered. No one asks what each candidate for the job would do differently. He's gone. If there's one thing we're beginning to agree on, it's that Iraq is a mess and we're in trouble. My gut is to say: why would you trust the person who got us into this mess to get us out? But that dodges the question.

In some ways the question is not fair. A candidate Kerry is not privy to the military and political intelligence on the ground that a president Kerry would be. But that's another dodge.

What makes Iraq so dangerous for America is that ordinary Muslims around the world who are not yet terrorists see proof of an attack on their religion. According to experts on Al Qaeda, such as CIA analyst and "Imperial Hubris" author Mark Scheuer, the invasion is a massive propoganda victory for bin Laden. "Capitalizing on growing anti-US animosity, Osama bin Laden's genius lies not simply in calling for jihad, but in articulating a clear and convincing case that Islam is under attack by America" he writes. In order to win the war on terror, this propoganda victory must be diluted, and its recruiting power halted or reversed.

German Defense Minister Peter Struck recently re-affirmed what many Americans suspect: the major allies want no part of combat operations in Iraq. Why would they want to be getting killed instead of us, especially after Donald Rumsfeld dissed them as "the old Europe?" President Bush is pinning his hopes on newly-trained Iraqi army and police units, but this is a classic quagmire. As in Vietnam, you're not sure if you are training a true national army, or simply funneling weapons and intelligence to the insurgents. The first order of business for an insurgency is to infiltrate the ranks of the opposing force. In a convoy ambush in Tikrit, a truck with Iraqi soldiers suddenly stopped and refused to follow. Moments later an IED exploded near an American Humvee. The Iraqis knew it was coming. Already we have seen Iraqi units refusing to fight, and their officers arrested for links to insurgents. As did the Viet Cong, the insurgents view anyone who works for or cooperates with the occupiers as collaborators. They know about "with us or against us." We cannot simply withdraw, for fear of civil war, but the longer we stay the longer we bleed. Dilemmas like these are among the reasons specialists in insurgencies are calling this one hell of a mess.

A possible part of the solution is Muslim peacekeeping troops under a UN flag. The Islamic world is vast, and with units that are neither Syrian, nor Turkish, nor Jordanian, nor Indonesian, but UN, the gravest humiliation to the insurgents can be removed. Armed, gibberish-speaking infidels with no knowledge of Arabic custom or religion, searching homes and patting down Muslim women is creating terrorists, and some American troops are admitting as much. There is no guarantee such a course will bring immediate peace. But it is the beginning of a political strategy to parallel the military one. When President Bush says, "freedom is a gift from the Almighty," he does untold damage to our cause. Although he declares that the Christian God and the God of the Koran are "the same God," the Muslim world knows it's not true. Christian theologians have also angrily denounced this remark as an incorrect Biblical interpretation.

There is no easy way out of Iraq. As Colin Powell said "you break it, you own it." Bush broke it, now we own it, and there are no good options, only less bad ones. Peter Beinart of the New Republic writes: "for the Bush administration to slam Kerry for lacking a convincing plan for victory in Iraq is like dropping him in the middle of he desert and slamming him for lacking a convincing plan for finding water."

The question we must ask is, who is best suited and equipped to navigate the way out? Bringing in the Muslim world will entail challenges in statesmanship the likes of which have rarely been faced. It will require extraordinary finesse, titanic resolve, and above all, credibility with the world. It will require "thinking outside the box" in foreign relations, and one of the most creative peace efforts in human history. CIA analyst Scheuer tells us the greatest disservice the adminisration performs is promoting the fiction that we were attacked on 9/11 for who we are, rather than what we do. He tells us Al Qaeda cares nothing for our freedom or belief in separation of church and state. The case bin Laden lays out is that we support tyrannical regimes in the Middle East in order to obtain favorable terms for Arab oil, and that we are Crusaders who want to convert them. Showing the Muslim world we are not interested in attacking their religion, or stealing their oil, will be a blow that will leave Al Qaeda and the terrorists vulnerable. Neutralizing the Iraq front will allow resources to go where they belong: in hunting down the enemies who attacked us on 9/11.


[Ralph Lopez is a novelist, political blogger, and graduate student in foreign policy. Contact: ralphlopez_2003@yahoo.com]

Footnotes:

Mark Scheuer, "Capitalizing on growing anti-US animosity...", "Imperial Hubris" front inside jacket.

"German Defense Minister Peter Struck recently re-affirmed..." New York Times 10-14-04 pg. A15

"In an a convoy ambush in Tikrit..." New York Times, October 15, 2004, "Paralyzed, A Soldier Asks Why" by Bob Herbert

"Armed, gibberish-speaking infidels...some American troops are admitting as much..." Boston Globe 3-21-04 "New US troops realistic about mission" by Vivienne Walt

"When President Bush says, "freedom is a gift from the Almighty," he does untold damage...", "Imperial Hubris" pg.3.

Peter Beinart, "for the Bush administration to slam Kerry for lacking..." The New Republic, 10-18-04, "Past Imperfect" by Peter Beinart.