The Man in Black

Farewell, Johnny Cash. We're a poorer people for your passing.


Well, you wonder why I always dress in black,
Why you never see bright colors on my back,
And why does my appearance seem to have a somber tone.
Well, there's a reason for the things that I have on.

I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down,
Livin' in the hopeless, hungry side of town,
I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime,
But is there because he's a victim of the times.

I wear the black for those who never read,
Or listened to the words that Jesus said,
About the road to happiness through love and charity,
Why, you'd think He's talking straight to you and me.

Well, we're doin' mighty fine, I do suppose,
In our streak of lightnin' cars and fancy clothes,
But just so we're reminded of the ones who are held back,
Up front there ought 'a be a Man In Black.

I wear it for the sick and lonely old,
For the reckless ones whose bad trip left them cold,
I wear the black in mournin' for the lives that could have been,
Each week we lose a hundred fine young men.

And, I wear it for the thousands who have died,
Believen' that the Lord was on their side,
I wear it for another hundred thousand who have died,
Believen' that we all were on their side.

Well, there's things that never will be right I know,
And things need changin' everywhere you go,
But 'til we start to make a move to make a few things right,
You'll never see me wear a suit of white.

Ah, I'd love to wear a rainbow every day,
And tell the world that everything's OK,
But I'll try to carry off a little darkness on my back,
'Till things are brighter, I'm the Man In Black.

Maureen Dowd's Latest Column

This woman hates everyone, and is usually a relatively insipid columnist. But lately, she's been ripping Duhbya a new one, and for all the right reasons:

"I've actually gotten to the point where I hope Dick Cheney is embroiled in a Clancyesque conspiracy to benefit Halliburton. Because if it's not a conspiracy, it's naïveté and ideology. And that means our leaders have used goofball logic and lousy assumptions to trap the country in a cockeyed replay of the Crusades that could drain our treasury and strain our military for generations, without making us any safer from terrorists and maybe putting us more at risk.

On 9/11's second anniversary, seven in 10 Americans still believe Saddam had a role in the attacks, even though there is no evidence of it, according to a Washington Post poll. That is because the president has done his level best to conflate 9/11 and Saddam and did so again in his speech on Sunday night.

Iraq never threatened U.S. security. Bush officials cynically attacked a villainous country because they knew it was easier than finding the real 9/11 villain, who had no country. And now they're hoist on their own canard.

By pretending Iraq was crawling with Al Qaeda, they've created an Iraq crawling with Al Qaeda.

As Donald Rumsfeld finished up an upbeat talk at the National Press Club here yesterday, brushing off hecklers and calling the global war on terror "well begun," cable began airing fresh Flintstones video of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri encouraging the Iraqi and Islamic fighters to "bury" American troops and send them to their mothers in coffins.

The Bush team's logic before the war was infuriatingly Helleresque, and it still is.

Mr. Rumsfeld, who was so alarmed about Saddam's W.M.D. before the war, is now so nonchalant that he said he did not even bother to ask David Kay, who runs the C.I.A.'s search for W.M.D. in Iraq, what progress he'd made when meeting with him in Iraq last week."

We're Not Happy Campers - whole article.

Of course, waaaaay back in my early LJ posts before we actually invaded, I said about the same thing. Told you so, you pea-brained "press"! Geez friggin' Louise, you'd think this was all a surprise to the pundits.

Better is Molly Ivins's column:

"Great, anybody who opposed this war in the first place was accused of lack of patriotism, and now anybody who points out that it's not going well is guilty of defeatism. If you raise your hand and ask where the weapons of mass destruction we were told were the reason for this war are, you're instructed to just Get Over It.

Well, I ain't gonna take it anymore. I am not shutting up for Bill O'Reilly or anyone else. I opposed our unprovoked, unnecessary invasion of Iraq on the grounds that it would be a short, easy war followed by the peace from hell. I predicted every terrorist in the Middle East would be drawn to Iraq like a magnet. I was right, and I'm not going to apologize for it.

I also realize the future in Iraq is a lot more important than any petty "I was right" vindication. I don't know if the glass in Iraq is half-empty or half-full, but what is clear is that the situation is deteriorating. That's why the Bush administration has changed course 180 degrees and is now asking for help from the United Nations.

But naturally, we're not supposed to mention that the administration has reversed itself -- no, no. As Paul Wolfowitz, who now has all the credibility of Ken Lay, explained, the new U.N. resolution "didn't sort of emerge out of nowhere a few days ago. It's been on our agenda ever since the fall of Baghdad."

He said the bombing of U.N. headquarters was "a breakthrough -- a sad one. The bombing, I think, changed the atmosphere in New York, and it looks like we can move forward in that area."

Right. The United Nations changed its position, we didn't change ours. How dumb do they think we are? I am tired of being asked to swallow lies by this administration. For $87 billion bucks, the least we deserve is some candor. I want to know who was responsible for the whole weapons of mass destruction fiasco, and I want to see some accountability for it -- resignations and firings. In May of this year, President Bush said, "We found the weapons of mass destruction." No, we didn't. We have yet to find any evidence of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons in Iraq. "

How dumb do they think we are? - full column.

Yes, folks, the US administration is full of shit and making the world a more dangerous and polluted place to live. Get a clue.

Democracy works best when the citizenry engages their brains and understands their own self-interest - like breathing, not getting killed, and making a living wage.

Ang

Race to the Bottom

US politics gets uglier by the day, even by the hour, as the fascist wing realizes it is losing out in public opinion. In Texas, the statehouse is threatening a forced redistricting of the entire state, effectively removing 5 or 6 elected representatives from office, just as soon as they can arrest 11 AWOL senators, drag them back to Austin and physically lock them in their offices so they can claim a quorum for their anti-democratic voting.

California appears to be coming out of its drug haze and realizing that, gee, maybe the recall wasn't such a good idea. Bustmante leads Ah-nold the Idiot, and Gray Davis's numbers keep rising. The AFL-CIO just came out strongly against the recall. You mean saying old lines from second rate movies won't solve the budget problem? Whoda thunk it....

There are now more soldiers dead since end of hostilities was declared than were killed during the invasion, and there is no end in sight. Duhbya seems to think that the UN owes him to come pull his ass out of the fire by sending in *their* men and women to get their asses shot off - but all under US command and direction. Oh, right.

That's a tough one, actually. I don't think anything less than a strong UN presence can restore something resembling normalcy to Iraq and alleviate the ghastly conditions Iraqis are being forced to live under. OTOH, I really don't want to see the Unelected Fraud and his band of goons foist the real work off onto the UN, particularly after having shit all over the rest of the world to create this debacle in the first place. They are playing chicken with people's lives - c'mon and help, now. You don't want to see this little girl die of starvation due to our brutality, do you?

Fucking fascist bastards...

Ang

From the introduction of "Big Lies"

"The most basic liberal values are political equality and economic opportunity. Liberals uphold democracy as the only form of government that derives legitimacy from the consent of the governed, and they regard the freedoms enumerated in the Bill of Rights as essential to the expression of popular consent. Their commitment to an expanding democracy is what drives liberal advocacy on behalf of women, minorities, gays, immigrants, and other traditionally disenfranchised groups.

Liberals value the dynamism and creativity of democratic capitalism, but they also believe in strong, active government to protect the interests of society. They understand that markets function best when properly regulated, and they also know that unchecked concentrations of private power encourage environmental pollution, financial fraud, and labor exploitation. Liberals see a broad social interest in ensuring real opportunities and decent standards of living for everyone, while requiring basic responsibility from everyone.

Those who regard such ideals as naive today should remember that America in the 20th century was built on liberal policy, from the Progressive Era through the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the GI Bill, and the Great Society. The modern economy -- a private enterprise system that relies on government safeguards against depression and extreme poverty -- is the legacy of liberal leadership, from Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson to Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson. (And more recently Bill Clinton, who erased Republican deficits that were sending the economy into a spiral of recession and began to pay down the national debt.) Liberal policies made America the freest, wealthiest, most successful and most powerful nation in human history. Conservatism in power always threatens to undo that national progress, and is almost always frustrated by the innate decency and democratic instincts of the American people.

If Americans have a common fault, however, it's our tendency to suffer from historical amnesia. Too many of us have forgotten, or never learned, what kind of country America was under the conservative rule that preceded the century of liberal reform. And too many of us have no idea whose ideas and energy brought about the reforms we now take for granted.

If your workplace is safe; if your children go to school rather than being forced into labor; if you are paid a living wage, including overtime; if you enjoy a 40-hour week and you are allowed to join a union to protect your rights -- you can thank liberals. If your food is not poisoned and your water is drinkable -- you can thank liberals. If your parents are eligible for Medicare and Social Security, so they can grow old in dignity without bankrupting your family -- you can thank liberals. If our rivers are getting cleaner and our air isn't black with pollution; if our wilderness is protected and our countryside is still green -- you can thank liberals. If people of all races can share the same public facilities; if everyone has the right to vote; if couples fall in love and marry regardless of race; if we have finally begun to transcend a segregated society -- you can thank liberals. Progressive innovations like those and so many others were achieved by long, difficult struggles against entrenched power. What defined conservatism, and conservatives, was their opposition to every one of those advances. The country we know and love today was built by those victories for liberalism -- with the support of the American people.

Whether they now describe themselves as liberal or not, most Americans remain strongly progressive in their views about taxation, healthcare, education spending, Social Security, environmental protection, and corporate regulation. In fact, despite conservative political advances in recent decades, survey evidence gathered by pollsters of all persuasions suggests that Americans are still more liberal than conservative."

Fom Joe Conason's new book Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth. Buy it on Amazon

Ang,
who is a liberal through and through, and damn proud of it

From the introduction of "Big Lies"

"The most basic liberal values are political equality and economic opportunity. Liberals uphold democracy as the only form of government that derives legitimacy from the consent of the governed, and they regard the freedoms enumerated in the Bill of Rights as essential to the expression of popular consent. Their commitment to an expanding democracy is what drives liberal advocacy on behalf of women, minorities, gays, immigrants, and other traditionally disenfranchised groups.

Liberals value the dynamism and creativity of democratic capitalism, but they also believe in strong, active government to protect the interests of society. They understand that markets function best when properly regulated, and they also know that unchecked concentrations of private power encourage environmental pollution, financial fraud, and labor exploitation. Liberals see a broad social interest in ensuring real opportunities and decent standards of living for everyone, while requiring basic responsibility from everyone.

Those who regard such ideals as naive today should remember that America in the 20th century was built on liberal policy, from the Progressive Era through the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the GI Bill, and the Great Society. The modern economy -- a private enterprise system that relies on government safeguards against depression and extreme poverty -- is the legacy of liberal leadership, from Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson to Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson. (And more recently Bill Clinton, who erased Republican deficits that were sending the economy into a spiral of recession and began to pay down the national debt.) Liberal policies made America the freest, wealthiest, most successful and most powerful nation in human history. Conservatism in power always threatens to undo that national progress, and is almost always frustrated by the innate decency and democratic instincts of the American people.

If Americans have a common fault, however, it's our tendency to suffer from historical amnesia. Too many of us have forgotten, or never learned, what kind of country America was under the conservative rule that preceded the century of liberal reform. And too many of us have no idea whose ideas and energy brought about the reforms we now take for granted.

If your workplace is safe; if your children go to school rather than being forced into labor; if you are paid a living wage, including overtime; if you enjoy a 40-hour week and you are allowed to join a union to protect your rights -- you can thank liberals. If your food is not poisoned and your water is drinkable -- you can thank liberals. If your parents are eligible for Medicare and Social Security, so they can grow old in dignity without bankrupting your family -- you can thank liberals. If our rivers are getting cleaner and our air isn't black with pollution; if our wilderness is protected and our countryside is still green -- you can thank liberals. If people of all races can share the same public facilities; if everyone has the right to vote; if couples fall in love and marry regardless of race; if we have finally begun to transcend a segregated society -- you can thank liberals. Progressive innovations like those and so many others were achieved by long, difficult struggles against entrenched power. What defined conservatism, and conservatives, was their opposition to every one of those advances. The country we know and love today was built by those victories for liberalism -- with the support of the American people.

Whether they now describe themselves as liberal or not, most Americans remain strongly progressive in their views about taxation, healthcare, education spending, Social Security, environmental protection, and corporate regulation. In fact, despite conservative political advances in recent decades, survey evidence gathered by pollsters of all persuasions suggests that Americans are still more liberal than conservative."

Fom Joe Conason's new book Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth. Buy it on Amazon

Ang,
who is a liberal through and through, and damn proud of it

From the introduction of "Big Lies"

"The most basic liberal values are political equality and economic opportunity. Liberals uphold democracy as the only form of government that derives legitimacy from the consent of the governed, and they regard the freedoms enumerated in the Bill of Rights as essential to the expression of popular consent. Their commitment to an expanding democracy is what drives liberal advocacy on behalf of women, minorities, gays, immigrants, and other traditionally disenfranchised groups.

Liberals value the dynamism and creativity of democratic capitalism, but they also believe in strong, active government to protect the interests of society. They understand that markets function best when properly regulated, and they also know that unchecked concentrations of private power encourage environmental pollution, financial fraud, and labor exploitation. Liberals see a broad social interest in ensuring real opportunities and decent standards of living for everyone, while requiring basic responsibility from everyone.

Those who regard such ideals as naive today should remember that America in the 20th century was built on liberal policy, from the Progressive Era through the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the GI Bill, and the Great Society. The modern economy -- a private enterprise system that relies on government safeguards against depression and extreme poverty -- is the legacy of liberal leadership, from Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson to Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson. (And more recently Bill Clinton, who erased Republican deficits that were sending the economy into a spiral of recession and began to pay down the national debt.) Liberal policies made America the freest, wealthiest, most successful and most powerful nation in human history. Conservatism in power always threatens to undo that national progress, and is almost always frustrated by the innate decency and democratic instincts of the American people.

If Americans have a common fault, however, it's our tendency to suffer from historical amnesia. Too many of us have forgotten, or never learned, what kind of country America was under the conservative rule that preceded the century of liberal reform. And too many of us have no idea whose ideas and energy brought about the reforms we now take for granted.

If your workplace is safe; if your children go to school rather than being forced into labor; if you are paid a living wage, including overtime; if you enjoy a 40-hour week and you are allowed to join a union to protect your rights -- you can thank liberals. If your food is not poisoned and your water is drinkable -- you can thank liberals. If your parents are eligible for Medicare and Social Security, so they can grow old in dignity without bankrupting your family -- you can thank liberals. If our rivers are getting cleaner and our air isn't black with pollution; if our wilderness is protected and our countryside is still green -- you can thank liberals. If people of all races can share the same public facilities; if everyone has the right to vote; if couples fall in love and marry regardless of race; if we have finally begun to transcend a segregated society -- you can thank liberals. Progressive innovations like those and so many others were achieved by long, difficult struggles against entrenched power. What defined conservatism, and conservatives, was their opposition to every one of those advances. The country we know and love today was built by those victories for liberalism -- with the support of the American people.

Whether they now describe themselves as liberal or not, most Americans remain strongly progressive in their views about taxation, healthcare, education spending, Social Security, environmental protection, and corporate regulation. In fact, despite conservative political advances in recent decades, survey evidence gathered by pollsters of all persuasions suggests that Americans are still more liberal than conservative."

Fom Joe Conason's new book Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth. Buy it on Amazon

Ang,
who is a liberal through and through, and damn proud of it

The CA Recall

The LA Times published a big spread comparing the leading candidates answers to a single issue - the increase in vehicle licensing. Under the current plan, approved by the legislature and signed by Gov. Davis, fees on vehicle licensing will triple. By doing so, $4 billion in revenues will be raised. This is a small but significant portion of the $35 billion deficit in the CA state budget.

Most candidates are running with this as their main issue - if elected, I will repeal the tripling of the fee. So the Times asked each campaign: Would you really repeal this law and, if "Yes", where are you going to raise the $4 billion in funds that this measure provides?

In other words - talk is cheap. How are *you* going to manage California's fiscal crisis?

Arnold the Actor did not even bother to reply. Yup, the big Rethuglican front-runner doesn't think he has to bother giving people real answers. Loser.

The Rethuglican morons who lost the last election still hold to the same line - cut services for poor people, let the infrastructure of the state go to hell, don't tax the rich. Simon will cut all state services across the board, and the others all claim they will find the money by cleaning up government fraud and abuse. OK, good enough. How are you going to fund the enforcement and investigative agencies needed to root out the "fraud"? How do you know there is $35 billion in fraud going on such that you can balance the budget just by getting rid of it? Aren't you really saying you intend to lay more state employees off, cut services to ordinary Californians, and then finger-point at Mexican migrant labor as the source of the state's woes? Like you Rethuglicans always do? Or will you admit your dirty secret - you will pass the SAME budget measures Gray Davis is trying to get passed, with the same taxes, except now your Rethuglican buddies in the legislature will vote yes instead of stonewalling? Liars.

Huffington and Camejo propose taxing wealthy Californians and/or corporations at a higher rate. Sounds good until you realize that you can't do either without getting a super-majority in the legislature - which is what is preventing Davis from getting moderate measure passed in the first palce. So, an 8.5 for social activism, a 0 for political reality. Also, taxing companies is a sticky wicket. Some have excess profits (Enron, anyone?) but often are not CA corporations, while small businesses are just getting by in the stagnant economy, and can't cough up more until the business environment gets better.

The only candidate who had an answer with any substance was Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante. He would exempt the first $20K value of a vehicle, so as not to unduly penalize low and moderate income citizens, which would cut the revenue by $2 billion. He would then increase the alcohol and cigarette tax to make up the amount lost by exempting the first $20K value of a car. These are measures that try to address conflicting class interests in the state (c'mon folks, this is a class war between the rich and the non-rich, complicated by the usual racist, homophobic, and religious hysteria that grips Central Valley Californians. Get a clue), and has a chance of being approved by the legislature.

The real problem is the super majority (2/3) required to pass the budget. It needs to be made a strong majority (55%, the same as school bond measures) which allows budgets to be passed but not rubber-stamped. Right now, a minority of legislators can hold the entire state hostage to their ideological posturing, circumventing reasonable majority rule.

Meanwhile, the 5th largest economy in the world (if California were a nation, not a state) is unable to provide social services or get the economic engine back up to speed. Think of it this way - had California not been so badly fucked over by George W. Bush's buddy Kenny Lay and the other "energy bidness" robber barons, the *world* economy would be much stronger, the national economy would probably be growing at a good clip, employment would be higher (though not back to Clinton-era levels), and individual families would not be struggling so hard to make ends meet. California would not have lost BILLIONS down that open rat hole.

It is the economy, stupid.

Ang

FAIR AND BALANCED!

Argh! I missed the celebration of the offical "Fair and Balanced" day of blogging yesterday!

Form Joe Conason's blog on Salon: "In case you don't already know, Aug. 15 has been declared Fair and Balanced Day by freedom-loving bloggers everywhere, in response to the morally unfair and mentally unbalanced nuisance lawsuit brought by Fox News against Al Franken and his publisher."

I declare this LJ to be fair and blanced, particularly when compared to the crap that the right-wing fascist media in this country distributes. I am not in the pay of any political party, nor under the influence of religious superstition.

Ang

I Wonder

The snarfy Washington Post "journalist" who mocked Europeans for not being able "to take the heat" was so proud of his/her/their air conditioning and sealed buildings.

I wonder how many people in those kinds of buildings when the power went out across a huge chunk of the US yesterday were wishing they could open windows and turn on ceiling fans to keep cool. When my husband's building lost power last week, they had to leave because the temperatures rose to higher than the outside - no windows to open, no natural air currents.

And no power means no ice for your water, no way to run electric fans, and a whole host of other conveniences people take for granted.

The technologies that make living in hot, humid climates comfortable are heavily dependent upon large amounts of "cheap" energy.

Ang

Just Too Disgusting

The Washigton Post has an editorial making fun of the people in France who are dying becuse of the heat.

The bastard who wrote it is mocking Europeans for not having sealed buildings with air conditioning and saying that Americans can take high temperatures, what's wrong with those wussy Europeans?

Well, if the US had been suffering through a month of record temperatures with no rain, gee, we'd be in pretty bad shape ourselves, AC or no AC, don't you think?

Also, as usual, there is no mention of the fact that the oil, gas & coal burned in America to make our ACs run so nicely is demonstrably adding to the greenhouse effect - which is what is triggering weather abnormalities around the globe.

Yes, politics matter. It matters that we get politicians in office who do not believe it is their God-given, Xtian right to rape the earth and rob their neighbors and kill the heathens they can't convert.

Oh, and another soldier dead in Iraq, more civilians killed there, and still no end to the floundering malaise of joblessness in America.

Ang

Just a Thought

If the real backers of al-Quaeda are members of the Saudi royal family, and if the reason we can't *say* this officially and then open a can of Whup-Ass on them is because they control oil, doesn't it seem logical that the research and scientific might of America, not to mention the proper patriotic attitude, should be to go hammer and tongs at replacing oil as the primary energy source?

Oil Independence = National Security

Forget the Greens. This is a national security issue. Dependence on imported oil makes the US, Europe and Japan vulnerable because we can't afford to cut the Saudis off, declare them a pariah state, and let them rot in splendid isolation.

Oil Independence = National Security

Ang

What a Joke

So the Austrian weight-lifter is running for California governor.

What are the odds that he'll get it? Pretty good. The state is in hideous condition because of the Rethuglican fuck-over during the Enron price-gouging on energy, and what will happen? They will be rewarded with the governorship of the largest state because Ahn-nold will bring out stoopid people who just think it's cute to vote for the Terminator.

Just when I think the population is beginning to clue in to just how badly the Rethuglicans are screwing them, the public rejoices in the presence of another ass-hole fascist to vote for.

Ethical people will not use the bogus recall action to be rid of their political enemies, and the scum from the bottom of the sewage tank won't hesitate a second to use it at any opportunity. We have a "recall" process, people - it's called regular elections.

Diane Feinstein got it right when she said:

Additionally, it is now becoming apparent that there may well be dozens of candidates on the recall ballot, most of whom have no background or knowledge of the state’s enormous portfolio of issues -- whether it be the $99 billion budget, the numerous pieces of legislation awaiting signature or veto by the governor, or the thousands of pending appointments to critical judgeships and important state posts.

Indeed, few of these candidates know much about the law enforcement needs of the state or the security risks we face in the war against terror.

Few understand the myriad of challenges facing California’s public schools.

And, I would hazard a guess that if you asked these candidates what the Healthy Families program is, how it is funded, and how it benefits the state, the vast majority would have no idea what you are talking about. And that’s not to mention the enormously complicated Medicaid issues that face the state.

It matters who runs a bureaucracy. There are a lot of nuts and bolts to be managed. I'll take bland over incompetant, or fascistic, any day.

Ang

Mailer, again

Damn, this guy just gets better. In the most recent New York Review of Books online, there is an excellent exchange between Robert Tiersky and Norman Mailer on Mailer's previous article for NYRB, "White Man Unburdened."

The original article: The White Man Unburdened

The exchange about the article: Bush & Terror: An Exchange with Norman Mailer

Here are the last three paragrpah's of Mailer's reply, which may be some of the finest political writing about what is at stake to appear in print. The emphasis is mine:

"Maybe we will do well to learn to live with terrorism as a chronic condition, an ongoing upheaval to all sorts of good hopes, plans, and projects. All the same, until it reaches the numbers of our annual automobile accidents (more than 40,000 mortalities), can we recognize that there may be worse things in store for our Republic than projected weapons of mass destruction (which are, after all, never easy to deliver), and one of them is the shameless exploitation of American perception? A blinded democracy is soon on its knees begging for a leader to show the road.

At present, the specter of fascism settling upon us remains just that, an exaggeration, a specter, but will we escape it if we are struck by economic miseries? That is the time when we will need to be at our best rather than gulled in thought and dulled in language by our reigning Doctors of Advertising Sciences. Tiersky concludes his letter by suggesting that the real bottom line on the Bush administration, whatever its admitted low maneuvers, may be that it is still trying to do the job of searching genuinely to provide us with security.

The answer may be that there are more important things to safeguard. What does it profit us if we gain extreme security and lose our democracy? Not everyone in Iraq, after all, was getting their hands and/or their ears cut off by Saddam Hussein. In the middle of that society were hordes of Iraqis who had all the security they needed even if there was no freedom other than the full-fledged liberty offered by dictators to be free to speak with hyperbolic hosannas for the leader. So, yes, there are more important things to safeguard than security and one of them is to protect the much-beleaguered integrity of our democracy. The final question in these matters suggests itself. Can leaders who lie as a way of life protect any way of life?"


Precisely. At what cost "security"? What are we doing to ourselves as a people?

Ang

Rethuglican Politics in CA

OK, George Bush's buddy Kenny DeLay conspired to game the energy market in California, throwing the state in fiscal crisis because of skyrocketing energy costs. There is reasonable evidence to show that this one company, Enron, messed up California's tech economy, which relies on electricity, so badly that the length, depth and tenacity of the national recession can be credited to it.

So, the Rethuglican energy whores fuck over the state (punishing it for so decisively rejecting Duhbya Shrub in the last election. You DO remember that the majority of voters nation-wide voted against him, don't you?) and ruin its economy for the next ten years. Now, they have the gall to fund outside pollsters & profiteers to scrounge a fraction of signatures to force a recall election on a legitimately elected leader (unlike their own bully-boy president).

Here's the fun part - because of the way California recall election laws stand, Issa, the guy who bank-rolled the recall effort, can be elected governor with FEWER VOTES than it took to force the recall! All he has to do is out-poll the rest of the four or five Rethuglicans who decide that for a few thousand signatures and $3,500 dollars (shit *I* could do that!) they wanna be Gov. A few hundred thousand voters out of millions can appoint this guy governor.

Yes, a simple majority of votes will throw Davis out, and a simple plurality of votes will bring Issa in. Democrats cannot risk running candidates for fear of legitimizing the recall. The number of signatures needed for recall is less than the core of Republican-only voters. This isn't a recall - it is the Republican party rallying its loyalists and taking advantage of convoluted election laws to force themselves on the state.

Welcome the Bush Dynasty's kinder, gentler America, where oppositional thinking is labeled traitorous, where money means more than the law, and where *your* sons and daughters will be marched off to far corners of the earth to be killed. Not their kids, of course.

Ang

Say "Hi" to Strom...

Uday and Qusay Hussein, it appears, are DEAD.

If this is true, the world is a better place. Hey, you two psychopathic murderers, be sure to say "Hi" to Strom Thrumond in Hell as you go by. You two are going to a deeper circle, so I doubt you'll have much time for a chat.

Of course, now we've had three retaliation killings by their supporters. Or was it by the shi'ite resistence? Angry Kurds? Free floating mercenaries?

I hope the news is true and they are dead. I also hope their father is already dead. Even so, there is still no valid justification for this war, there is something really grotesque about going after individuals to rub them out (that's the modus operandi of dictators against oposition), and the deaths of these two, no matter how deserved, does not replace a multi-national peace-keeping force to bring civil order back to the country.

That would be the only good outcome to theis whole mess.

Ang

But let's have perspective

What IS relevant is the continual lies of the US Administration about the justifications for the Iraq War.

Point blank - The Bush White House LIED (as in "knowingly told a falsehood that matters") about the threat that the Hussein regime posed to the US in particular and to the world in general. They lied and bullied and blustered their way into an invasion which has left Saddam Hussein's whereabouts unknown, hundreds of US troops dead, over a thousand more US service men and women significantly wounded, and MILLIONS (that's six, count 'em, six zeroes) of Iraqis dead, or wounded, or in danger of robbery, murder, disease, hunger and general suffering.

I am quite happy that Hussein is out of power. Miserable, butchering, torturing bastard. I sincerely and unrepentantly hope he is dead, and that he died a lingering, agonizing death, like so many of the people he ordered murdered suffered.

This does not change the fact that this war was conducted in violation of international law, that it was done based on lies, and that is is now costing lives every day because this adminsitration has NO PLAN for actually stabilizing and normalizing the country. Shit, we can't even do this in Afghanistan!

I am reading more and more reports of how badly our troops are being supported. How badly POWs are being treated. How high-handed the US command is being with local populations.

Nation-building is a long, thankless job under the best of conditions. It is what Iraq would have faced with the death of Hussein. But the Bush White House forced this war because they thought they could get a quick win and boost their polls. They honestly believed that Iraq would remain intact, they could kill Hussein, and then leave the Ba'athists in control. Easy win, score one for the Unelected Fraud!

But reality is a messy thing, and there are some predicaments Poppy Bush's friends and influence can't buy you out of.

It would be funny, the plan blowing up in the Chimp's face - except there are people suffering needlessly because of it. There are children missing homes, water, food, parents, limbs. There are service men and women who are maimed for life. There is a great and noble nation, beggared. There are angry people who see this and only wish to return the favor - pain, destruction, death.

Iraq needs the UN to come to its aid, to protect its resources and patrimony, and to honestly set it on the path to independent nationhood.

The US needs to get rid of the neo-fascists in the White House, and look to setting its own house in order.

Ang

Told You So

Waaaaay back In LJ posts from a few months ago, I talked about how the US military would trample the forces of Saddam Hussein, and that we would get bogged down in a ghastly mess (Quagmire is too polite a term for it, how 'bout fuck-up?). I also spoke about how the reasons given for the war were false - Iraq was NOT an immediate threat to us, there were no ties to al Qaida, etc.

I was right, as was every commentator who said the same thing. We were derided in various forums, threatened with violence and harm for "undermining the President", and generally treated as enemies. OK, answer me this - why are service men and women dying in Iraq? Why are they being shot, bombed, and grenaded? Why are Iraqis by the millions at risk for disease and death due to the destruction of the war?

Because Duh-bya Shrub wants to be Prezzie for another term. Because the rabid, neo-fascist (No, Virginia, they are not conservatives, they are fascists.) mob that terrorizes the Congress and the nation have not yet reduced us to the condition of Franco's Spain, or of Pinochet's Chile. Because the richest sliver of population in the world wants MORE, MORE, MORE. That is why soldiers and civilians are suffering in Iraq right now.

The major media are finally getting some balls back and are saying what the ordinary thinking person has been screaming since last year - This war is a PR campaign by Bush & Rove.

Oh, and in other news, more people lost their jobs last month. It's the economy, stupid.

Ang

The White Man Unburdened

I usually find Norman Mailer a very annoying author, but his recent article in The New York Review of Books is spot on. The closing paragraph is brilliant:

Democracy, more than any other political system, depends on a modicum of honesty. Ultimately, it is much at the mercy of a leader who has never been embarrassed by himself. What is to be said of a man who spent two years in the Air Force of the National Guard (as a way of not having to go to Vietnam) and proceeded—like many another spoiled and wealthy father's son—not to bother to show up for duty in his second year of service? Most of us have episodes in our youth that can cause us shame on reflection. It is a mark of maturation that we do not try to profit from our early lacks and vices but do our best to learn from them. Bush proceeded, however, to turn his declaration of the Iraqi campaign's end into a mighty fashion show. He chose—this overnight clone of Honest Abe—to arrive on the deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln on an S-3B Viking jet that came in with a dramatic tail-hook landing. The carrier was easily within helicopter range of San Diego but G.W. would not have been able to show himself in flight regalia, and so would not have been able to demonstrate how well he wore the uniform he had not honored. Jack Kennedy, a war hero, was always in civvies while he was commander in chief. So was General Eisenhower. George W. Bush, who might, if he had been entirely on his own, have made a world-class male model (since he never takes an awkward photograph), proceeded to tote the flight helmet and sport the flight suit. There he was for the photo-op looking like one more great guy among the great guys. Let us hope that our democracy will survive these nonstop foulings of the nest.

For the full article: The White Man Unburdened

We are governed by a man who considers warfare a legitimate campaign ad. Who does not care that service men and women are dying because he lied about WMD. Who approves of tax exemptions for people who drive Humvees, while denying poor children a pittance.

Here's an interesting site:

Cost of War

It shows how much the Iraq war is costing us to the minutes - all based on government numbers - and then shows what else that budget could be covering.

The nation and the world are being ripped to shreds by this most Uncurious George, who thinks himself ordained by God to impose his whims and wants on all of us.

Ang

One-Party, exploiting the name of God, Indivisible

Check out Paul Krugman's latest:

"In principle, Mexico's 1917 Constitution established a democratic political system. In practice, until very recently Mexico was a one-party state. While the ruling party employed intimidation and electoral fraud when necessary, mainly it kept control through patronage, cronyism and corruption. All powerful interest groups, including the media, were effectively part of the party's political machine.

Such systems aren't unknown here — think of Richard J. Daley's Chicago. But can it happen to Ithe United States as a whole? A forthcoming article in The Washington Monthly shows that the foundations for one-party rule are being laid right now.

In "Welcome to the Machine," Nicholas Confessore draws together stories usually reported in isolation — from the drive to privatize Medicare, to the pro-tax-cut fliers General Motors and Verizon recently included with the dividend checks mailed to shareholders, to the pro-war rallies organized by Clear Channel radio stations. As he points out, these are symptoms of the emergence of an unprecedented national political machine, one that is well on track to establishing one-party rule in America...."

Toward One-Party Rule - article now appears on t r u t h o u t

Yes, folks, there really *IS* a vast right-wing conspiracy, and it does matter who is running the country. George's friends, like Ken Delay, fuck you over (You do have a power bill, right?), and they walk off with the money and a slap on the wrist. Take a good look at the Enron scandel - that is how the Friends of George (the FOG) are going to rob you personally blind while they get stinking rich. They don't care about you, your house payments, your dentist bills, the price of prescription drugs, elder care for your parents, nada. This is not some highway boondoggle in Nebraska. This is the very immediate and personal robbing of the majority of people in the United States by a few fake-Xtians who think they are divinely ordained to rule.

Worried about terrorism? You should be. We aren't any more safe, and the world is getting more and more pissed with us. But, George and Uncle Dick are safe in their bunkers, so who cares if a few schmoes get killed? That will keep people all afraid and voting for more and more police actions & more and more "tough on crime" Rethuglicans. Why on earth does anyone who makes less than $1 million/year vote Republican? You are just screwing yourself.

At least Strom Thurmond is dead, that miserable, racist, corrupt bastard.

Ang

Iraq's WMD Intelligence: Where is the Outrage?

Iraq's WMD Intelligence: Where is the Outrage?
by US Senator Robert Byrd
Senate Floor Remarks - June 5, 2003

With each passing day, the questions surrounding Iraq's missing weapons of mass destruction take on added urgency. Where are the massive stockpiles of VX, mustard, and other nerve agents that we were told Iraq was hoarding? Where are the thousands of liters of botulinim toxin? Wasn't it the looming threat to America posed by these weapons that propelled the United States into war with Iraq? Isn't this the reason American military personnel were called upon to risk their lives in combat?

On March 17, in his final speech to the American people before ordering the invasion of Iraq, President Bush took one last opportunity to bolster his case for war. The centerpiece of his argument was the same message he brought to the United Nations months before, and the same message he hammered home at every opportunity in the intervening months, namely that Saddam Hussein had failed to destroy Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and thus presented an imminent danger to the American people. "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised," the President said.

Now, nearly two months after the fall of Baghdad, the United States has yet to find any physical evidence of those lethal weapons. Could they be buried underground or are they somehow camouflaged in plain sight? Were they destroyed before the war? Have they been shipped out of the country? Do they actually exist? The questions are mounting. What started weeks ago as a restless murmur throughout Iraq has intensified into a worldwide cacophony of confusion.

The fundamental question that is nagging at many is this: How reliable were the claims of this President and key members of his Administration that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction posed a clear and imminent threat to the United States, such a grave threat that immediate war was the only recourse?

Lawmakers, who were assured before the war that weapons of mass destruction would be found in Iraq, and many of whom voted to give this Administration a sweeping grant of authority to wage war based upon those assurances, have been placed in the uncomfortable position of wondering if they were misled. The media is ratcheting up the demand for answers: Could it be that the intelligence was wrong, or could it be that the facts were manipulated? These are very serious and grave questions, and they require immediate answers. We cannot - - and must not - - brush such questions aside. We owe the people of this country an answer. Every member of this body ought to be demanding answers.

I am encouraged that the Senate Armed Services and Intelligence Committees are planning to investigate the credibility of the intelligence that was used to build the case for war against Iraq. We need a thorough, open, gloves-off investigation of this matter and we need it quickly. The credibility of the President and his Administration hangs in the balance. We must not trifle with the people's trust by foot-dragging.

What amazes me is that the President himself is not clamoring for an investigation. It is his integrity that is on the line. It is his truthfulness that is being questioned. It is his leadership that has come under scrutiny. And yet he has raised no question, expressed no curiosity about the strange turn of events in Iraq, expressed no anger at the possibility that he might have been misled. How is it that the President, who was so adamant about the dangers of WMD, has expressed no concern over the where-abouts of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?

Indeed, instead of leading the charge to uncover the discrepancy between what we were told before the war and what we have found - or failed to find - since the war, the White House is circling the wagons and scoffing at the notion that anyone in the Administration exaggerated the threat from Iraq.

In an interview with Polish television last week, President Bush noted that two trailers were found in Iraq that U.S. intelligence officials believe are mobile biological weapons production labs, although no trace of chemical or biological material was found in the trailers. "We found the weapons of mass destruction," the President was quoted as saying. Certainly he cannot be satisfied with such meager evidence.

At the CIA, Director George Tenet released a terse statement the other day defending the intelligence his agency provided on Iraq. "The integrity of our process was maintained throughout and any suggestion to the contrary is simply wrong," he said. How can he be so absolutely sure?

At the Pentagon, Doug Feith (FITHE), the Under Secretary of Defense for policy, held a rare press conference this week to deny reports that a high level intelligence cell in the Defense Department doctored data and pressured the CIA to strengthen the case for war. "I know of no pressure. I can't rule out what other people may have perceived. Who knows what people perceive," he said. Is this Administration not at all concerned about the perception of deception?

And Secretary of State Powell, who presented the U.S. case against Iraq to the United Nations last February, strenuously defended his presentation in an interview this week and denied any erosion in the Administration's credibility. "Everybody knows that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction," he said. Should he not be more concerned than that about U.S. claims before the United Nations?

And yet...and yet...the questions continue to grow, and the doubts are beginning to drown out the assurances. For every insistence from Washington that the weapons of mass destruction case against Iraq is sound comes a counterpoint from the field - another dry hole, another dead end.

As the top Marine general in Iraq was recently quoted as saying, "It was a surprise to me then, it remains a surprise to me now, that we have not uncovered weapons, as you say, in some of the forward dispersal sites. Again, believe me, it's not for lack of trying. We've been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad, but they're simply not there."

Who are the American people to believe? What are we to think? Even though I opposed the war against Iraq because I believe that the doctrine of preemption is a flawed and dangerous instrument of foreign policy, I did believe that Saddam Hussein possessed some chemical and biological weapons capability. But I did not believe that he presented an imminent threat to the United States - as indeed he did not.

Such weapons may eventually turn up. But my greater fear is that the belligerent stance of the United States may have convinced Saddam Hussein to sell or disperse his weapons to dark forces outside of Iraq. Shouldn't this Administration be equally alarmed if they really believed that Saddam had such dangerous capabilities?

Saddam Hussein is missing. Osama bin Laden is missing. Iraq's weapons of mass destruction are missing. And the President's mild claims that we are "on the look" do not comfort me. There ought to be an army of UN inspectors combing the countryside in Iraq or searching for evidence of disbursement of these weapons right now. Why are we waiting? Is there fear of the unknown? Or fear of the truth?

This nation and, indeed, the world were led into war with Iraq on the grounds that Iraq, possessed weapons of mass destruction, and posed an imminent threat to the United States and to the global community. As the President said in his March 17 address to the nation, "The danger is clear: using chemical, biological or, one day, nuclear weapons, obtained with the help of Iraq, the terrorists could fulfill their stated ambitions and kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country, or any other."

That fear may still be valid, but I wonder how the war with Iraq has really mitigated the threat from terrorists. As the recent attack in Saudi Arabia proved, terrorism is alive and well and unaffected by the situation in Iraq.

Meanwhile, the President seems oblivious to the controversy swirling about the justification for the invasion of Iraq. Our nation's credibility before the world is at stake. While his Administration digs in to defend the status quo, Members of Congress are questioning the credibility of the intelligence and the public case made by this Administration on which the war with Iraq was based. Members of the media are openly challenging whether America's intelligence agencies were simply wrong or were callously manipulated. Vice President Cheney's numerous visits to the CIA are being portrayed by some intelligence professionals as "pressure." And the American people are wondering, once again, what is going on in the dark shadows of Washington.

It is time that we had some answers. It is time that the Administration stepped up its acts to reassure the American people that the horrific weapons that they told us threatened the world's safety have not fallen into terrorist hands. It is time that the President leveled with the American people. It is time that we got to the bottom of this matter.

We have waged a costly war against Iraq. We have prevailed. But, we are still losing American lives in that nation. And the troubled situation there is far from settled. American troops will likely be needed there for years. Billions of American tax dollars will continue to be needed to rebuild. I only hope that we have not won the war only to lose the peace. Until we have determined the fate of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, or determined that they, in fact, did not exist, we cannot rest, we cannot claim victory.

Iraq's weapons of mass destruction remain a mystery and a conundrum. What are they, where are they, how dangerous are they? Or were they a manufactured excuse by an Administration eager to seize a country? It is time to answer these questions. It is time- past time - for the Administration to level with the American people, and it is time for the President to demand an accounting from his own Administration as to exactly how our nation was led down such a twisted path to war.

As predicted...

No WMDs. Not even a little one.

Spreading anarchy in Iraq. Looking more like Afghanistan with every passing day.

No Saddam Hussein. None of the wealth he looted from the country.

Afghanistan getting more and more mired.

Our allies becoming increasingly offended at cowboy, in-your-face "diplomacy".

Resentment against the US growing by the day in the Middle-east.

Al-Qaida going on strong. They're based out of Saudi Arabia, dudes. Get a clue.

The "War on Terror" being used as an excuse to take away ordinary citizen's privacy. The expansion of federal policing activities for political reasons.

The three largest economies in the world contracting and on the edge of serious recession.

The wholesale transfer of the wealth of the nation into the hands of the mega-rich.

A concerted attack to dismantle Social Security.

And the average schmoe in the street can't see further than FOX "News" flag-waving. We won! We won! We're number 1!

I hope folks like living in the late 19th century (but with remote controls!), because that is where our nation is headed - a two-tier nation of those who struggle on the bottom and those who live large on the top.

All hail the boy king.

Ang

Speech by Sen. Robert Byrd, West Virginia

The Truth Will Emerge
by US Senator Robert Byrd
Senate Floor Remarks - May 21, 2003

"Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again, - -
The eternal years of God are hers;
But Error, wounded, writhes in pain,
And dies among his worshippers."

Truth has a way of asserting itself despite all attempts to obscure it. Distortion only serves to derail it for a time. No matter to what lengths we humans may go to obfuscate facts or delude our fellows, truth has a way of squeezing out through the cracks, eventually.

But the danger is that at some point it may no longer matter. The danger is that damage is done before the truth is widely realized. The reality is that, sometimes, it is easier to ignore uncomfortable facts and go along with whatever distortion is currently in vogue. We see a lot of this today in politics. I see a lot of it -- more than I would ever have believed -- right on this Senate Floor.

Regarding the situation in Iraq, it appears to this Senator that the American people may have been lured into accepting the unprovoked invasion of a sovereign nation, in violation of long-standing International law, under false premises. There is ample evidence that the horrific events of September 11 have been carefully manipulated to switch public focus from Osama Bin Laden and Al Queda who masterminded the September 11th attacks, to Saddam Hussein who did not. The run up to our invasion of Iraq featured the President and members of his cabinet invoking every frightening image they could conjure, from mushroom clouds, to buried caches of germ warfare, to drones poised to deliver germ laden death in our major cities. We were treated to a heavy dose of overstatement concerning Saddam Hussein's direct threat to our freedoms. The tactic was guaranteed to provoke a sure reaction from a nation still suffering from a combination of post traumatic stress and justifiable anger after the attacks of 911. It was the exploitation of fear. It was a placebo for the anger.

Since the war's end, every subsequent revelation which has seemed to refute the previous dire claims of the Bush Administration has been brushed aside. Instead of addressing the contradictory evidence, the White House deftly changes the subject. No weapons of mass destruction have yet turned up, but we are told that they will in time. Perhaps they yet will. But, our costly and destructive bunker busting attack on Iraq seems to have proven, in the main, precisely the opposite of what we were told was the urgent reason to go in. It seems also to have, for the present, verified the assertions of Hans Blix and the inspection team he led, which President Bush and company so derided. As Blix always said, a lot of time will be needed to find such weapons, if they do, indeed, exist. Meanwhile Bin Laden is still on the loose and Saddam Hussein has come up missing.

The Administration assured the U.S. public and the world, over and over again, that an attack was necessary to protect our people and the world from terrorism. It assiduously worked to alarm the public and blur the faces of Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden until they virtually became one.

What has become painfully clear in the aftermath of war is that Iraq was no immediate threat to the U.S. Ravaged by years of sanctions, Iraq did not even lift an airplane against us. Iraq's threatening death-dealing fleet of unmanned drones about which we heard so much morphed into one prototype made of plywood and string. Their missiles proved to be outdated and of limited range. Their army was quickly overwhelmed by our technology and our well trained troops.

Presently our loyal military personnel continue their mission of diligently searching for WMD. They have so far turned up only fertilizer, vacuum cleaners, conventional weapons, and the occasional buried swimming pool. They are misused on such a mission and they continue to be at grave risk. But, the Bush team's extensive hype of WMD in Iraq as justification for a preemptive invasion has become more than embarrassing. It has raised serious questions about prevarication and the reckless use of power. Were our troops needlessly put at risk? Were countless Iraqi civilians killed and maimed when war was not really necessary? Was the American public deliberately misled? Was the world?

What makes me cringe even more is the continued claim that we are "liberators." The facts don't seem to support the label we have so euphemistically attached to ourselves. True, we have unseated a brutal, despicable despot, but "liberation" implies the follow up of freedom, self-determination and a better life for the common people. In fact, if the situation in Iraq is the result of "liberation," we may have set the cause of freedom back 200 years.

Despite our high-blown claims of a better life for the Iraqi people, water is scarce, and often foul, electricity is a sometime thing, food is in short supply, hospitals are stacked with the wounded and maimed, historic treasures of the region and of the Iraqi people have been looted, and nuclear material may have been disseminated to heaven knows where, while U.S. troops, on orders, looked on and guarded the oil supply.

Meanwhile, lucrative contracts to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure and refurbish its oil industry are awarded to Administration cronies, without benefit of competitive bidding, and the U.S. steadfastly resists offers of U.N. assistance to participate. Is there any wonder that the real motives of the U.S. government are the subject of worldwide speculation and mistrust?

And in what may be the most damaging development, the U.S. appears to be pushing off Iraq's clamor for self-government. Jay Garner has been summarily replaced, and it is becoming all too clear that the smiling face of the U.S. as liberator is quickly assuming the scowl of an occupier. The image of the boot on the throat has replaced the beckoning hand of freedom. Chaos and rioting only exacerbate that image, as U.S. soldiers try to sustain order in a land ravaged by poverty and disease. "Regime change" in Iraq has so far meant anarchy, curbed only by an occupying military force and a U.S. administrative presence that is evasive about if and when it intends to depart.

Democracy and Freedom cannot be force fed at the point of an occupier's gun. To think otherwise is folly. One has to stop and ponder. How could we have been so impossibly naive? How could we expect to easily plant a clone of U.S. culture, values, and government in a country so riven with religious, territorial, and tribal rivalries, so suspicious of U.S. motives, and so at odds with the galloping materialism which drives the western-style economies?

As so many warned this Administration before it launched its misguided war on Iraq, there is evidence that our crack down in Iraq is likely to convince 1,000 new Bin Ladens to plan other horrors of the type we have seen in the past several days. Instead of damaging the terrorists, we have given them new fuel for their fury. We did not complete our mission in Afghanistan because we were so eager to attack Iraq. Now it appears that Al Queda is back with a vengeance. We have returned to orange alert in the U.S., and we may well have destabilized the Mideast region, a region we have never fully understood. We have alienated friends around the globe with our dissembling and our haughty insistence on punishing former friends who may not see things quite our way.

The path of diplomacy and reason have gone out the window to be replaced by force, unilateralism, and punishment for transgressions. I read most recently with amazement our harsh castigation of Turkey, our longtime friend and strategic ally. It is astonishing that our government is berating the new Turkish government for conducting its affairs in accordance with its own Constitution and its democratic institutions.

Indeed, we may have sparked a new international arms race as countries move ahead to develop WMD as a last ditch attempt to ward off a possible preemptive strike from a newly belligerent U.S. which claims the right to hit where it wants. In fact, there is little to constrain this President. Congress, in what will go down in history as its most unfortunate act, handed away its power to declare war for the foreseeable future and empowered this President to wage war at will.

As if that were not bad enough, members of Congress are reluctant to ask questions which are begging to be asked. How long will we occupy Iraq? We have already heard disputes on the numbers of troops which will be needed to retain order. What is the truth? How costly will the occupation and rebuilding be? No one has given a straight answer. How will we afford this long-term massive commitment, fight terrorism at home, address a serious crisis in domestic healthcare, afford behemoth military spending and give away billions in tax cuts amidst a deficit which has climbed to over $340 billion for this year alone? If the President's tax cut passes it will be $400 billion. We cower in the shadows while false statements proliferate. We accept soft answers and shaky explanations because to demand the truth is hard, or unpopular, or may be politically costly.

But, I contend that, through it all, the people know. The American people unfortunately are used to political shading, spin, and the usual chicanery they hear from public officials. They patiently tolerate it up to a point. But there is a line. It may seem to be drawn in invisible ink for a time, but eventually it will appear in dark colors, tinged with anger. When it comes to shedding American blood - - when it comes to wreaking havoc on civilians, on innocent men, women, and children, callous dissembling is not acceptable. Nothing is worth that kind of lie - - not oil, not revenge, not reelection, not somebody's grand pipedream of a democratic domino theory.

And mark my words, the calculated intimidation which we see so often of late by the "powers that be" will only keep the loyal opposition quiet for just so long. Because eventually, like it always does, the truth will emerge. And when it does, this house of cards, built of deceit, will fall.

Homeland Security

The airplane tracking capabilities of the Homeland Security Office have been used for the purposes of hunting down political opponents.

Hold on here.

What the hell is going on that the Republican party feels free to make use of policing functions of the state in order to enforce their political desires on dissenting officials in the other party?

HELLO? This is outrageous. The staffers of the office were tricked into thinking there was a true emergency - that the plane was missing, possibly due to a terrorist act - when all that was happening was Tom DeLay trying to force redistricting on Texas to increase Republican power in the national congress.

Read Talking Points Memo for a quick overview of the lies being tossed about to try to get out of this mess.

I wonder just how hideous a violation of privacy and law the current administration will have to commit before ordinary Americans will object. We've had our budget surplus ripped away and handed over to the already obscenely rich. We've been engaged in a war that was waged on the basis of lies. We have a "Patriot" act passed that makes presumptive criminals of us all (Proove you're not a terrorist!). And now the police apparatus of the state has been turned on public officials who were trying to prevent manipulation of voting.

Ang

No Polemics

I just finished reading the New York Times article about the killing fields in Mahawil, Iraq, the marshes that Saddam Hussein used for disposing of the bodies of Shi'ites murdered for opposing him.

Thousands of bodies. Some of them were armed rebels taken in battle, but the evidence is showing many (if not most) were civilians who were in support of his over-throw, not combatents themselves.

The locals have taken it upon themselves to disinter the bodies and alert people to come look for lost family memebrs. They are trying to do this carefully so as to keep remains discrete, and to make them identifiable after years in the sodden ground.

Here are the true crimes of the Hussein regime, here in this killing field and in the grave sites around the nation. Though governments fight over the resources of the country, here is where the eyes of the world should be.

There need to be witnesses to these deaths, and restoration of the murdered to their kin and countrymen. As was done in Guatamala, in the Balkans, in other places where butchers would hide their deeds and disappear their enemies, forensic experts are needed to help identify the lost and give back to them their place in the world, a place the regime tried to eradicate.

If there is a single good to the war, it should be this - to take back those whom Hussein would consign to oblivion, and to tell the world the truth of his regime. One body at a time.

Ang

One-party rule

Has anyone in America grasped what is happening in Texas?

The Republican majority in Texas legislature is trying to force a mid-census redistricting of voters. Why does this matter?

There is a political tradition in America, started with the Progressives of the late 19th & early 20th centuries in an effort to reduce cronyism in the system, to redraw voting districts every ten years after each national census. The reason for this is to understand how the population has grown and where it is located, and then to divvy up voters into roughly equal sized districts for the purposes of national representation. Each Representative is repsonsible for a group of voters approximately the same size as any other Representative.

There have been cases where the courts have intervened to force a district to be redrawn because of deliberate efforts to dilute non-white votes, but otherwise the districts are done once every ten years.

The Republicans in Texas, under the instruction of the Republican-controlled Congress, are trying to force through mid-term redistricting in order to dilute Democratic party voters in potentially Republican voting districts, and to concentrate Democratic voters into fewer districts, the sum result of which is to artificially create "safe" seats for Republican candidates.

It doesn't take much. You only have to move maybe 1000 households in or out of a given district to shift the voting effects. Most elections are decided by less than a few hundred votes. The districts that result from this are "Gerrymanders" (Gerry - the name of the man who first tried this kind of redistricting, -mander, from salamander, indicating the strange, contorted shape of these districts) and cover the strangest bits an pieces of territory. Some look like octopi with a central core of voters and then long arms reaching out and penetrating surounding neighborhoods to gather in clumps of Republican faithful.

Now, let's be realistic - *both* parties will try, every ten years, to redraw the map in a way that gives them a small edge. However, that process is part of the regular political system, and the redrawing is done in public committees, with non-partisan oversight (doesn't always stop the results from *being* partisan), and with attention by the courts. The average voter has a fighting chance of being represented in a realistic manner.

This effort was done behind the scenes, and forced in the closing hours of a legislative session, to ensure that the districts would be in place for the next national election and guarantee the Chimp-in-Chief another rubber-stamp congress by making it impossible for the Democrats to vote their candidates into office. If done succesfully for this electoral cycle, they will try it across the country in the next.

The Republican party is trying to return the US to the conditions of the late 19th century, when politics was patronage, when the working class was destitute and brutalized, when people of color and women were non-persons, when destruction of the land was lauded, and when the interets of a monied elite crudely dominated the national agenda.

The very dangerous part of the social roll-back, however, is that this is not a laissez-faire government. Unlike the Gilded Age, when the national government was a very wimpy operation, there is a strong (and expanding) police apparatus in place. The IRS is being instructed to harrass the working poor. The "Patriot Act" authorizes intrusion into private lives for "reasons of security". Expressions of dissent are being labeled "un-American" (Hey, dudes, ever heard of founding fathers? They held dissent to be *sacred*.) and attacks on dissenters tacitly encouraged. The Administration simply lies, and shrugs off attempts to make it accountable for its actions.

So, less power in the workplace, less social support (kiss Social Security bye-bye, kids), less representative government, more intrusion and surveilance of your private life (the two-edged sword of the electronic age in action), more goodies form them that already has, and less for the majority of us who have barely enough or not at all.

Ang

Real Concerns

Hmm, the news in the US is starting to get a clue that, gosh, maybe the Gummint was lying about the reasons to attack Iraq. Whoda thunk it?

The Washington Post has presented several articles on the non-existence of WMDs in Iraq, and how the Pentagon is pulling the WMD units out of the country. Well, if that is true, what does it mean?

It means that the UN inspections were working and kept Hussein from developing them to the point where he could use them in war.

Isn't that what they were supposed to do? Doesn't this show that the world (acting in concert) can engage in effective, non-combative policing of dangerous states?

No, the UN is far from perfect. But, as Winston Churchill famously said of democracy, it is the worst thing except for all of the alternatives.

There is such a thing as a just war. The US invasion of Iraq was not one of them.

There was another article discussing the helplessness of US troops in Iraq to do what they want to do - get the country back on its feet, get people's lives restord to normal, make things work on the average, everyday level, like water, power, and the city buses. The average American soldier is home-town kind of person. They know how to fight, but they're happier building something. Give an American a hammer and some plywood, and they'll start putting things back together. US soldiers are beginning to resent the position they've been left in. There are (maybe) 150,000 soldiers who are supposed to maintain peace and order, and restore normal everyday operations, to a country the size and population of California.

This would be hysterically funny if it did not mean that my countrymen and women have been put into a condition of danger as an under-powered occupying force in a hostile country. If it did not mean that ordinary Iraqi civilians are being forced to live in atrocious conditions because no one was thinking about basic services. If it did not mean that the adminsitration is more concerned about conducting a religious war with the Shi'ite majority of Iraq than with unearthing the wrongs of the previous regime and building representative local institutions.

Iraq is better off without Hussein - there can be NO argument on that point. None. Iraq is also better off without the fumbling attempts of the Bush administration to monopolize the oil production and the airfields while imposing a kinder, gentler authoritarian regime. It should be reasonably clear to any moderately intelligent person that this war was done to threaten "lesser" nations into (outward) compliance with US wishes, to secure oil, and to provide photo-ops for the Chimp-in-Chief. As long as Halliburton controls the oil and the Pentagon controls the airfields, the rest of the country can go hang. The Administration is already whining and pouting and wanting the UN and the EU to come in and do the hard work of rebuilding the nation (with the US controlling lucrative construction contracts, n'est ce pas) and provide all that icky, mushy humanitarian shit like caring for children maimed by cluster bombs.

My nation is being used for the personal gain of a small sliver of men at the very top of the socio-corporate heirarchy, and they are doing so with utter disregard for the dignity and welfare of Americans and of the other human beings who inhabit the world. They attack those who disagree with them hysterically, demanding that everyone agree to their vision of the world and how things should be, denying the validity of contrary opinions, using threats and force when desired to impose their will.

Rather like the regime they just defeated.

Ang

Speech by Sen. Robert Byrd, West Virginia

Remarks by U.S. Senator Robert C. Byrd
US Senate Chamber
May 6, 2003

In my 50 years as a member of Congress, I have had the privilege to witness the defining rhetorical moments of a number of American presidents. I have listened spellbound to the soaring oratory of John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. I have listened grimly to the painful soul-searching of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon.

Presidential speeches are an important marker of any President's legacy. These are the tangible moments that history seizes upon and records for posterity. For this reason, I was deeply troubled by both the content and the context of President Bush's remarks to the American people last week marking the end of the combat phase of the war in Iraq. As I watched the President's fighter jet swoop down onto the deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, I could not help but contrast the reported simple dignity of President Lincoln at Gettysburg with the flamboyant showmanship of President Bush aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln.

President Bush's address to the American people announcing combat victory in Iraq deserved to be marked with solemnity, not extravagance; with gratitude to God, not self-congratulatory gestures. American blood has been shed on foreign soil in defense of the President's policies. This is not some made-for-TV backdrop for a campaign commercial. This is real life, and real lives have been lost. To me, it is an affront to the Americans killed or injured in Iraq for the President to exploit the trappings of war for the momentary spectacle of a speech. I do not begrudge his salute to America's warriors aboard the carrier Lincoln, for they have performed bravely and skillfully, as have their countrymen still in Iraq, but I do question the motives of a deskbound President who assumes the garb of a warrior for the purposes of a speech.

As I watched the President's speech, before the great banner proclaiming "Mission Accomplished," I could not help but be reminded of the tobacco barns of my youth, which served as country road advertising backdrops for the slogans of chewing tobacco purveyors. I am loath to think of an aircraft carrier being used as an advertising backdrop for a presidential political slogan, and yet that is what I saw.

What I heard the President say also disturbed me. It may make for grand theater to describe Saddam Hussein as an ally of al Qaeda or to characterize the fall of Baghdad as a victory in the war on terror, but stirring rhetoric does not necessarily reflect sobering reality. Not one of the 19 September 11th hijackers was an Iraqi. In fact, there is not a shred of evidence to link the September 11 attack on the United States to Iraq. There is no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was an evil despot who brought great suffering to the Iraqi people, and there is no doubt in my mind that he encouraged and rewarded acts of terrorism against Israel. But his crimes are not those of Osama bin Laden, and bringing Saddam Hussein to justice will not bring justice to the victims of 9-11. The United States has made great progress in its efforts to disrupt and destroy the al Qaeda terror network. We can take solace and satisfaction in that fact. We should not risk tarnishing those very real accomplishments by trumpeting victory in Iraq as a victory over Osama bin Laden.

We are reminded in the gospel of Saint Luke, "For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required." Surely the same can be said of any American president. We expect, nay demand, that our leaders be scrupulous in the truth and faithful to the facts. We do not seek theatrics or hyperbole. We do not require the stage management of our victories. The men and women of the United States military are to be saluted for their valor and sacrifice in Iraq. Their heroics and quiet resolve speak for themselves. The prowess and professionalism of America's military forces do not need to be embellished by the gaudy excesses of a political campaign.

War is not theater, and victory is not a campaign slogan. I join with the President and all Americans in expressing heartfelt thanks and gratitude to our men and women in uniform for their service to our country, and for the sacrifices that they have made on our behalf. But on this point I differ with the President: I believe that our military forces deserve to be treated with respect and dignity, and not used as stage props to embellish a presidential speech.

THE KENNEBUNKPORT HILLBILLY

After reading all the bullshit articles about how tough and manly and presidential the Chimp-in-Chief looked getting flown out to the aircraft carrier, and after reading Byrd's speech to the Senate, I couldn't help but dig up this little ditty about the real man who is sitting in the Oval Office.

(SUNG TO THE TUNE OF THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES)

Come and listen to my story 'bout a boy name Bush.
His IQ was zero and his head was up his tush.
He drank like a fish while he drove all about
But that didn't matter 'cuz his daddy bailed him out.

DUI, THAT IS. CRIMINAL RECORD. COVER-UP.

Well, the first thing you know little Georgie goes to Yale.
He can't spell his name but they never let him fail.
He spends all his time hangin' out with student folk.
And that's when he learns how to snort a line of coke.

BLOW, THAT IS. WHITE GOLD. NOSE CANDY.

The next thing you know there's a war in Vietnam.
Kin folks say, "George, stay at home with Mom."
You're not a commoner to risk with getting scarred.
We'll buy you a spot in the Texas Air Guard.

CUSHY, THAT IS. COUNTRY CLUBS. NOSE CANDY.

Twenty years later George gets a little bored.
He trades in the booze, says that Jesus is his Lord.
He said, "Now the White House is the place I wanna be."
So he called his daddy 's friends and they called the GOP.

GUN OWNERS, THAT IS. FALWELL. JESSE HELMS.

Come November 7, the election ran late.
Kin folks said "Jeb, give the boy your state!"
Don't let those colored folks get into the polls.
He put up barricades so they couldn't punch their holes.

CHADS, THAT IS. DUVAL COUNTY. MIAMI-DADE.

Before the votes were counted five Supremes stepped in.
Told all the voters "Hey, we want George to win."
Stop counting votes! was their solemn invocation.
And that's how George finally got his coronation.

RIGGED, THAT IS. ILLEGITIMATE. NO MORAL AUTHORITY.

Y'ALL COME VOTE NOW. YA HEAR?

The political front

Didn't think I'd forget about this, now, did you?

The Chimp-in-Chief and his handlers are spinning the "victory" in Iraq as though it was V-E day and bringing down the Berlin Wall all wrapped into one.

Meanwhile, the US economy continues to choke and flail.

I sit here and I scratch my head at the complete lack of any critical judgment on the current administration's brutalizing of the country and of the rest of the world. There really is no answer to the Media Whores who refuse to ask substantial questions, or to a citizenry who would prefer to be bullies than to have a future.

There was no need for the deaths of the US soldiers, and even less need for the deaths of the Iraqis, soldier and citizen alike. The administration can't make up its mind whether it wishes to abandon it all or be dictatorial overlords, suppressing religion, freedom of speech and self-determination. Of course, they get to do that at home, so perhaps the appeal isn't so strong to do so overseas.

Hey, any sign of those WMDs? No? Didn't think so.

The US attacked another nation for the purpose of giving the Chimp nice photo-ops for his re-election campaign. Think about it. Oh, and to enrich Uncle Dick & cohorts some more.

We are facing the most venal, most criminal, most self-interested administration in US history, and my average countryman is cheering them on to rape, pillage and plunder. When the last yahoo is downsized and tossed out on the street with no job, no medical insurance, no pension, no social security, no welfare, and no unemployment benefits, the moron will look around - and blame Clinton. 'Cuz Prince George is a good Christian who'd never do us wrong and wants America to stand tall.

Americans are SO fucking stupid.

Ang

All quiet on the protest front

Ah, yes, the yipping poodle-dogs of war seem to think that winning a ridiculous ground war against a pitiful and demoralized people somehow proves that they were right and war opponents were wrong. "We won!" you gloat.

I never said we would lose on the battle field, did I? Though I did make the case that our soldiers are in an increasingly untenable situation, being too few to police the nation, but unable to leave for fear of utter social entropy and implosion.

And now the administration is sabre rattling against Syria. Umm, guys? Would you like to pay attention to the domestic economy for a few minutes? Ah, but why should they since that is a losing election issue and killing dark-skinned people who pray to weird gods makes us feel manly and virile, like we just fucked a good looking chick or something.

The US has committed an incredible violation of international law, and all the average moron in America can comprehend is "But we *won*!" It will be interesting to see what happens in the next six months, as the true results of our incursion become known. Not that you will make a connection since you have no historical sense beyond the news clips on FOX from the last two hours.

This is so wrong on so many levels, with repercussions that won't be felt for months and years, and the average Yahoo Murrikan is Too Fucking Stupid to understand. And too self-obsessed to care. Now, now, does your dick feel bigger, harder, and more appreciated now that you've watched FOX news misreport everything and you can think your nation will simply butcher whomever they wish? Do you have a single clue that this act of military masturbation does nothing to address terrorism, international instability, or the proliferation of bio and chemical weapons? Does it occur to you that because the UN has been doing its job over the last decade, Saddam did not have these horrific weapons to use against my soldiers?

No, of course not. That would take thinking, and why think when you can listen to the talking heads preach violence against what ever offends you?

How's your job security, by the way? Received a raise lately? Have your benefits increased? Is the real, material well-being of you and your family more secure now than it was a month ago? A year ago? Before the chimp took power?

Of course, you can't think, so you can't figure that much out, either. You'll just blame someone else.

Ang

Gobble-gobble

And Turkey has made the first move in preparing for its own invasion of northern Iraq. Hey, if the US can unilaterally invade a country for reasons of national self-defense, then why can't other nations do so as well?

Turkish Leaders Sending Military Observers to Kirkuk Link to a NYT article.

"URGUP, Turkey, April 10 — Turkish leaders said today that they were sending military observers to monitor Kurdish forces in the Iraqi city of Kirkuk, while American officials worked to discourage Turkey from any steps more provocative than that.

On a day of potentially critical developments for the stability of northern Iraq, Turkey's foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, said that he had sought fresh assurances from Secretary of State Colin L. Powell that coalition forces would control Kirkuk.

"We have reminded them of their guarantee," Mr. Gul pointedly told reporters, referring to American vows that the oil-rich northern Iraqi cities of Mosul and Kirkuk would not be controlled by Iraqi Kurds, as seemed to be the case today.

Mr. Gul added that Mr. Powell, who placed a telephone call to him, pledged to send American forces into Kirkuk within hours. Mr. Gul said that Turkish leaders felt "no reason for any concerns" about the solidness of that promise.

But in other comments throughout a tense day in Turkey, Mr. Gul and Turkish leaders also made clear that Turkey would be willing to send its own troops into northern Iraq if it felt that such an action was vital to Turkish interests." (more in the full article)

OK, kids, listen up. We set a bad example. On what grounds shall we oppose Turkey moving to defend its own domestic stability? Of course, if Turkey invades, well, kiss NATO good-bye, and the EU begins to be threatened. Not that Bush-baby and his pack of thugs, neo-imperialists, and cronies would mind seeing international unions and organizations crumble, oh no. All the less to get in our rapacious way, my dear.

The US needs to get the fuck out of Iraq, and the UN needs to step in (and into Afghanistan, too) and give the populations of the countries a fighting chance to establish ordinary lives. Hell, the UN should go into the West Bank and make the "settlers" (squatters, thieves, invaders) get the fuck off of the Palestinians' property. Returning those few hundred square miles of land to its rightful owners would go a very long way to clearing up a great deal of the trouble in the region.

But right now Turkey is the big issue, because it has already said it will invade if it feels threatened. The world is never as simple as it looks from the end of a gun or the inside of a Bradley.

Ang

We won the battle

I don't really think we can dignify the police action in Iraq as a "war". Though it serves as an excellent opening salvo in the neo-imperialist imposition of the rule of Halliburton.

Robert Fisk's latest

"Yes, they all say the war will be over soon. There will be a homecoming no doubt for Corporal Breeze and I suppose I admired his innocence despite the deadly realities that await America in this dangerous, cruel land. For even as the marine tanks thrashed and ground down the highway, there were men and women who saw them and stood, the women scarved, the men observing the soldiers with the most acute attention, who spoke of their fear for the future, who talked of how Iraq could never be ruled by foreigners.

"You'll see the celebrations and we will be happy Saddam has gone," one of them said to me. "But we will then want to rid ourselves of the Americans and we will want to keep our oil and there will be resistance and then they will call us "terrorists". Nor did the Americans look happy "liberators". They pointed their rifles at the pavements and screamed at motorists to stop – one who did not, an old man in an old car, was shot in the head in front of two French journalists.
"

The war-supporters are gloating now. I ask them - do you know what is going on in Afghanistan right now? Do you know that the Taliban is resurgent, Al-Qaeda travels freely, and the country outside of downtown Kabul is in a condition of anarchy? Ah, yes, such is the fallout of our last little adventure in this part of the world.

Now Rummy is eyeing Syria, and will offer the argument that obviously the weapons of mass destructions we KNOW Saddam had (How do we know? Because we sold them to him!) must have been smuggled into Syria. And when we lay waste that ancient nation (and find nothing), well, we will just have to go blast apart Iran, because them weapons have to be somewhere, and we know all them A-rabs are just the same (except for the loyal leaders of Saudi Arabia who would never do us harm. We'll just ignore where Osama bin Laden gets most of his funding...) and so on in a vast shell game.

But, by God, in the name of God, we WON! We won! We won! No, fools, we and the rest of humanity have lost.

Ang

Maybe I'm just dense

...but why would the military want to brag about killing thousands of Iraqis in the heart of Baghdad?

Umm, wouldn't that mean you've killed a significant portion of civilians? doesn't that mean you are conducting a bloody fight in the most densely populated area of the country?

The Iraqi regime is just a pack of thieves, liars and thugs. There can be no doubt. We on the left have been saying this for YEARS. Long before Gulf War I, we were saying that Hussein was a criminal, butchering dictator. He should have gone years ago, not been catered to by the military-industrial complex.

Even so, is it so difficult to understand that the average Iraqi-in-the-street, no matter how much s/he may loathe Hussein, might not be exactly happy that the US has invaded? That's patriotism. You know, like the way the Republicans say anyone who dares to criticize Dubya in a time of war is a traitor? How come that holds in the US, but if it happens in Iraq it is just another example of the imposition of dictatorial rule?

Sauce for the goose and all that, y'know.

Anyway, I can hate my imposed leader and still love my country. I can think Dubya deserves to be deposed, and be willing to take up a rifle to kill someone who tries to invade. Why is it so difficult to see that the same applies to the average Iraqi?

So, why are we bragging about killing people, some of whom are loyalists to Hussein, some of whom are patriots repelling an invading force, and some of whom just were in the wrong place at the wrong time and got killed? I should think we would be glad for our defeat of Hussein's special forces, but should be sorrowed at the rest. No. We just crow about the body counts.

Where else did we brag about high body counts? Are we counting the US & Kurdish soldiers one of our yahoo "Top Guns" killed up in Northern Iraq? I mean, they're dead - why not count them?

We've won the war, folks. It is *over*. What is left is the mop-up in Baghdad. There is no more Iraqi army to speak of. There are some isolated units that will be targeted and wiped out. This went even faster than Gulf War I. Of course, we've been starving and harassing the nation for the last ten years, and we made sure that the chemical and bio weapons were destroyed before we went in, and they have never rebuilt from the last war. I should fucking hope we would win this in short order.

Now we only have the rise of a new pan-Arabism to deal with, the rise of Islamic militant activity, and continued destabilization of Asia Minor. Cheney & Bush-baby think they are going to roll into Syria and Iran, I believe. Iran, which has the only democratically elected government in the region. Sigh.

Anybody checked in on how the US-sponsored nation building in Afghanistan is going? No? Really? Gee, I'm so surprised.

Ang

Ah, yes, with open arms

Try reading Robert Fisk's many brilliant articles in The Independent for an unvarnished look at the Iraq war. This is the reporter who first told the world about Saddam Hussein's use of gas and chemical weapons in the war against Iran back when Hussein was our good buddy. He was smeared by the Brits back then, and then it was shown to be true. He also reported on the NATO bombing of Albanian civilians in the Kosovo war. NATO smeared him then, and then had to retract their statements when he physically dug up the bomb remains with his own hands and showed the serial numbers on the casings. Now, he is proving cruise missiles in Baghdad markets and cluster bombs in civilian villages. He is, of course, being smeared - but he has the physical evidence.

The Guardian UK has much more balanced reporting than anything in the US.

The Washington Post has some decent US mainstream reporting on the war. Still too much concerned with having dramatic imagery than solid reporting, however.

The worst thing I have read was in the New York Times this morning, however: Barrage of Fire, Trail of Death. An article describing the ground level reality of the US first incursion into Baghdad. A few more assaults like this and there won't be many open arms for the "liberators".

Warfare IS killing human beings. That is it. There is nothing "clean" or "efficient" about it. It is killing people on either side until one side gives up. Modern warfare means that pitched battles are grossly one sided, not that they are better than non-modern methods.

What is coming out - mostly in international reporting - is the over-whelming evidence of systematic and horrific human rights abuses by the Hussein regime. The warehouse of bodies. Boxes of torture records. All the fortified torture centers (for each neighborhood! How thoughtful...). As if there wasn't clear evidence of all of this back when he was our "friend". As if we haven't, don't and shan't continue to turn a blind eye to exactly the same kind of activities by dictators who are our "friends". As if the neo-imperialists wouldn't be perfectly happy to have such things happen world-wide, as long as they could be in charge.

Hussein is ghastly. But those who have cozened him for decades are worse.

Where oh where are the purported weapons of mass destruction? Where are the stockpiles of nerve agents, bio-weapons, atomic materials? Gee, perhaps the weapons inspections did their job and functionally disarmed the bastard. International non-combative intervention worked. Now, if we could only have prevented George Bush I from fortifying Hussein in the first place and ensuring his despotic grip on the country, perhaps an indigenous opposition could have been in place to take advantage of the UN intervention.

And the neo-imperialists sit in Kuwait and divvy up the spoils, declaring who the new government shall be (Until someone we like can be "elected") - a motley gathering of shysters, warlords, and unsavory characters who are little differentiated from Hussein himself. Indeed, most are his former allies and co-conspirators in the authoritarian regime, the very people we used to use to keep Hussein in power, and who ended up fleeing because they angered the dictator. Gee, I wonder what the brutalized population is going to think of this game of musical chairs - same chairs, same tune, different people trying to sit, same long term outcome. Except that wholesale oil prices may be lower.

And, finally, the real war (this little police action is nothing to be get all hot-n-bothered about) is poised to begin. Who shall set the terms of "peace" in Iraq? The US and its corporate (oil) interests, or the EU and it corporate (Trade & oil) interests, or the UN and its anti-Western-domination, no more IMF & World Bank interests?

Is anyone watching North Korea in all this? Or Pakistan?

Ang