Team America

So I take it we just entered another war? U.S. forces, along with Britain, France, Canada and Italy, struck targets along the Libyan coast today calling it "Operation Odyssey Dawn." Apparently Gaddafi calls it an act of colonial, crusader aggression, but whatever.

I don't know what to think. I mean, I'm probably thinking the same thoughts I had exactly eight years ago when we invaded Iraq: I don't like war.

There must have been some time in U.S. history when wars were few and far between, but when we get them stacked one after another like this, we (the public) at least have the benefit of a little more skepticism, a little more wisdom, a little more sense of what questions we should be asking. I hope.

For example, do the Libyans want us to intervene in their country? In the lead up to the Iraq war, we were told we'd be greeted as liberators. Remember that? But the famous toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein was completely staged psyops -- the people you see hanging around in that film footage are mostly members of the U.S. Marines and the international press.

But the Libyan uprising started without us. The blood was already flowing when the Libyans themselves begged the rest of the world for help. Doing nothing would be the same as supporting Gaddafi, who in case it must be said, is a rich, brutal dictator with a loyal army ready to kill with no restraint.

Despite that reality, the public hasn't been sold this war based on any fabricated fear factor. No lies about WMDs or fables about defending our own freedom. It seems to be about helping oppressed people. But the skeptic in me knows that aim has kind of been the most common justification for all our military action in the last 60 years.

Most of which haven't gone so well. Sitting around watching Gaddafi slaughter his people won't go so well either.

So the military action today is the first easy step. But then what? We can depose Gaddafi, but how do we identify all the other baddies? What stops them from becoming the new despots of a new Libya? And is it our responsibility to fix any new problems that arise? Do we then move on to Bahrain or Yemen? Or will we be satisfied as long as the Libyan oil keeps flowing?

I hope that, along with the new governments of Egypt and Tunisia, this is the start of a new more democratic Middle East. I hope this war isn't another painful blunder, and my god, I hope we have an exit strategy.

Keeping Secrets

Over the weekend, WikiLeaks released over 75,000 secret US military reports covering the war in Afghanistan. Go read them now. I'll wait.

Good. I actually only read a handful of them myself. I'm mostly relying on the MSM exegesis to tell me that insurgents are using heat-seeking missiles, our coalition forces are killing a lot of civilians, Pakistan has some dirty ties to the Afghan Taliban, the Taliban is resurgent, and war is a terrible thing.

Apparently it is debatable whether these facts are top secret or nothing new.

However, on the topic of government leaks in general, I think I learned plenty from Secrets: a memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon papers by Daniel Ellsberg:

It is a commonplace that "you can't keep secrets in Washington" or "in a democracy," that "no matter how sensitive the secret, you're likely to read it the next day in the New York Times." These truisms are flatly false. They are in fact cover stories, ways of flattering and misleading journalists and their readers, part of the process of keeping secrets well. Of course eventually many secrets do get out that wouldn't in a fully totalitarian society. Bureaucratic rivalries, especially over budget shares, lead to leaks. Moreover, to a certain extent the ability to keep a secret for a given amount of time diminishes the number of people who know it. As secret keepers like to say, "Three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead." But the fact is that the overwhelming majority of secrets do not leak to the American public. This is true even when the information withheld is well known to an enemy and when it is clearly essential to the functioning of the congressional war power and to any democratic control of foreign policy. The reality unknown to the public and to most members of Congress and the press is that secrets that would be of the greatest import to many of them can be kept from them reliably for decades by the executive branch, even though they are known to thousands of insiders.

Maybe this is why it's good that these documents were leaked -- somebody was trying to keep them hidden from us. And the more the "experts" keep saying that these documents are too complicated for civilians to comprehend, the more determined I am to keep on reading them.

By the way, if anybody comes across the memo explaining what the hell we're doing in Afghanistan in the first place, please send me a tweet.

Palm Reading

Some call it her telepalmer. Others call it her palm pilot. I call Sarah Palin's reliance on tiny talking points scrawled on the palm of her hand simply pathetic.

I know she has trouble keeping facts straight, and I was not surprised that she literally depended on the "first dude" for governing Alaska, but cheat sheets are for dumb high school kids! Did Palin really think she was going to get away with this? That nobody would notice this?


Oddly, her crib notes consisted of her core beliefs -- the revealed phrases were "Energy," "Tax," and "Lift American Spirits" -- but why would she even need these reminders for a fluffy Q&A session at the tea baggers' convention?

Actually, I don't care what her excuse is, because her interview on Fox News Sunday was even more disturbing. Chris Wallace, winner of The Dorkmonger's prestigious Porkpuller Prize for weakest effort in journalism, asked Palin "How hard do you think President Obama would be to defeat in 2012?"

PALIN: It depends on a few things, say he played — I got this from Buchanan — say he played the war card. Say he decided to declare war on Iran or decide to really come out and do whatever he could to support Israel–which I would like him to do. That changes the dynamics of what we can assume will happen between now and three years. Because I think if the election were today, Obama would not be elected.

WALLACE: You’re not suggesting that Obama would cynically play the war card?

PALIN: I’m not suggesting that, I’m saying if he did, things would dramatically change if he decided to toughen up and do all that he can to secure our nation and secure our allies. I think people would shift their thinking a bit.

So Sarah Palin, the loser and the quitter, who is not in the military nor holds any public office, gets Fox air-time to openly discuss which country we should bomb next for political gain?

I get a sick feeling in my gut. As the NIAC blog put it, this is deja-vu all over again. We're hearing a warmonger ratcheting up the rhetoric to attack a country that has not attacked us. Such an attack would actually stir up Iranian nationalism and benefit their hard-line government.

Also, it would kill lots of innocent people including children. Is this the kind of divine intervention you're seeking, Mrs. Mooseburger?

Sarah Palin thinks she's earning her foreign policy cred. Never mind the mere detail that the president cannot declare war -- this is not good policy. This is Bush's old doctrine of preventive war. It will not help us. It will not make us more secure physically or financially. This is the sickest, most morally corrupt form of politics.

I wish I could blow this all off and truly believe that this dangerous dingbat will not be elected president one day. I wish I could believe that the American public is not thirsty for more war. However, a recent poll by the Daily Kos is not reassuring: 53% of self-identified Republicans think Sarah Palin is more qualified than President Obama.

There is, though, one sure-fire way that Obama could lose all my support: he could start taking advice from Sarah Palin.

Trillion Is the New Billion

The New York Times has a nifty treemap to help us visualize Obama's 2011 budget proposal. I can't seem to hack that app onto my own blog, so you'll have to click that link to get a look at it. Green squares indicate an increase in spending for a function. Orange squares indicate a decrease in spending.

The 2011 budget is only $100 billion more than Bush's final budget. But here's the crazy thing I'm hearing from analysts: Obama's budget includes Iraq and Afghanistan war funding. Bush's budget did not. How the hell did Bush get away with that? Not including funding for wars that he knew would continue for another 5 or 10 years?

Bush funded the wars, as well as the prescription drug program, through $8 trillion in supplementals. These accounting tricks are not subject to the congressional oversight process. The Bush Administration claimed this was necessary because they could not predict the costs of a protracted war on terror. However, Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) noted that "both the Korean and the Vietnam Wars were almost entirely financed through the regular appropriations process - not emergency supplementals."

On the campaign trail, Obama said he would end the abuse of supplemental budgets for war, and he is keeping that promise.

Anyway, back to the chart on NYT, did you notice what kind of funding has been decreased? Unemployment insurance programs, education for the disadvantaged, school improvement, Indian education, railroads, mass transit, Corps of Engineers, Federal Housing Administration loan programs, civil and criminal prosecution and representation, and space operations to name a few. It takes a mighty leap of logic to say President Obama is a socialist creating a welfare state.

Looks more like the US is equal parts welfare and warfare. We need to keep our debt in perspective. Some of our allies are in even worse debt traps. It's been going on for a long time. So when Republicans open their mouths to complain about this budget, we must realize it's all choreographed knee-jerking.

Replacing War with Peace

President Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo today. There was no way he could ignore the controversy of accepting a peace prize as he escalated a war, and indeed, that topic and the notion of just war were the center of his speech:

But perhaps the most profound issue surrounding my receipt of this prize is the fact that I am the Commander-in-Chief of a nation in the midst of two wars. One of these wars is winding down. The other is a conflict that America did not seek; one in which we are joined by forty three other countries - including Norway - in an effort to defend ourselves and all nations from further attacks.

Still, we are at war, and I am responsible for the deployment of thousands of young Americans to battle in a distant land. Some will kill. Some will be killed. And so I come here with an acute sense of the cost of armed conflict - filled with difficult questions about the relationship between war and peace, and our effort to replace one with the other.

He had more to say on the moral justification of force:

I make this statement mindful of what Martin Luther King said in this same ceremony years ago - "Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones." As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King's life's work, I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence. I know there is nothing weak -nothing passive - nothing naïve - in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King.

But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism - it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.

Obama also spoke of the relationship between peace and human rights:

This brings me to a second point - the nature of the peace that we seek. For peace is not merely the absence of visible conflict. Only a just peace based upon the inherent rights and dignity of every individual can truly be lasting.

It was this insight that drove drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights after the Second World War. In the wake of devastation, they recognized that if human rights are not protected, peace is a hollow promise.

He gave some thought on the religious nature of the war we are in:

Most dangerously, we see it in the way that religion is used to justify the murder of innocents by those who have distorted and defiled the great religion of Islam, and who attacked my country from Afghanistan. These extremists are not the first to kill in the name of God; the cruelties of the Crusades are amply recorded. But they remind us that no Holy War can ever be a just war. For if you truly believe that you are carrying out divine will, then there is no need for restraint - no need to spare the pregnant mother, or the medic, or even a person of one's own faith. Such a warped view of religion is not just incompatible with the concept of peace, but the purpose of faith - for the one rule that lies at the heart of every major religion is that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

You won't find many who disagree with these ideals. I just hope he's right about this whole war thing.

From Vietnam to Afghanistan

Not to be a real downer or anything, but it's about time our country started talking about Afghanistan again. But who to listen to?

I'm not going to listen to that totally discredited war criminal Dick Cheney. He says President Obama is "dithering," but Bush and Cheney dithered around for years before asking the tough questions seven years after invading Afghanistan! And then, of course, they invaded Iraq, and the entire world wished the Bush administration had dithered before entering two simultaneous quagmires.

But there are more credible people than Cheney. We could listen to the former Marine Corps captain who recently resigned over the Afghan war saying, "I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end."

But I have the most respect for the man once called The Most Dangerous Man in America, Daniel Ellsberg. He has seen all of this -- just different names and places -- forty years ago when he was working as a military analyst and leaked a top-secret Pentagon study of US government decision-making about the Vietnam War. Now he has a lot to say about Afghanistan:


(YouTube video)

At about 14:45 into the video, Ellsberg says about the Afghan army, "no doubt you could put more money into them, but where would it go? Switzerland?" I suppose that's where a lot of drug money ends up, and with the latest news that the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade is also on the CIA payroll, Ellsberg's comment is forthright.

And his conclusion is sobering. If Obama does send more troops, if he does prolong this bloody stalemate, he will do so only to appease his political opponents who will accuse him of being weak, unmanly, and abandoning a "winnable war." We've seen it all before.

Robot Weapons

Detective Del Spooner: What if I'm right?

Lt. John Bergin: [sighs] Well, then I guess we're gonna miss the good old days.

Detective Del Spooner: What good old days?

Lt. John Bergin: When people were killed by other people.

—Memorable scene from I, Robot (2004)

The future is creeping up too quickly. Last week I read that a certain wine-tasting robot thinks humans taste like bacon. That was scary enough.

Then today I read something much more sobering. Military killer robots could endanger civilians. Sounds like they already are:

"The next thing that's coming, and this is what really scares me, are armed autonomous robots," said Prof Sharkey speaking to journalists in London. "The robot will do the killing itself. This will make decision making faster and allow one person to control many robots. A single soldier could initiate a large scale attack from the air and the ground.

"It could happen now; the technology's there."

A step on the way had already been taken by Israel with "Harpy", a pilotless aircraft that flies around searching for an enemy radar signal. When it thinks one has been located and identified as hostile, the drone turns into a homing missile and launches an attack - all without human intervention.

Last year the British aerospace company BAe Systems completed a flying trial with a group of drones that could communicate with each other and select their own targets, said Prof Starkey. The United States Air Force was looking at the concept of "swarm technology" which involved multiple drone aircraft operating together.

Flying drones were swiftly being joined by armed robot ground vehicles, such as the Talon Sword which bristles with machine guns, grenade launchers, and anti-tank missiles.

However it was likely to be decades before such robots possessed a human-like ability to tell friend from foe.

Even with human controllers, drones were already stacking up large numbers of civilian casualties.

As a result of 60 known drone attacks in Pakistan between January 2006 and April 2009, 14 al Qaida leaders had been killed but also 607 civilians, said Prof Sharkey.

The US was paying teenagers "thousands of dollars" to drop infrared tags at the homes of al Qaida suspects so that Predator drones could aim their weapons at them, he added. But often the tags were thrown down randomly, marking out completely innocent civilians for attack.

On a side note, those infrared tags are the missing piece of the CTTL puzzle that 60 Minutes never explained. The use of such tagging devices requires some human judgment. Though human judgment may be shitty and clouded by other motivations, I'll never trust a computer to make better decisions -- even one programmed with the three rules of robotics as outlined by Isaac Asimov:

Law I: A robot may not harm a human or, by inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

Law II: A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

Law III: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Though simple for a human to understand, those rules cannot be comprehended by computers without huge advances in artificial intelligence. But I'm veering off topic here. No military would even want that first law anyway.

When robots fight our wars with or without human intervention and there is not a single human casualty on our side, then what will be our incentive for peace?

Meanwhile, Cyclone Power Technologies wants to assure us that all their military robots are vegetarians. Well, that's a relief.

Ticking Time Bombs

The imminent threat of a terrorist attack was Dick Cheney's justification for torture. Terrorists are poised to set off dirty bombs and biological weapons annihilating entire US cities -- according to Cheney and the popular TV show 24. But real experts, like former Army interrogators in the war in Iraq, tell us how unrealistic a torture fantasy show can be:

“These are very determined people, and they won’t turn just because you pull a fingernail out,” he told me. And Finnegan argued that torturing fanatical Islamist terrorists is particularly pointless. “They almost welcome torture,” he said. “They expect it. They want to be martyred.” A ticking time bomb, he pointed out, would make a suspect only more unwilling to talk. “They know if they can simply hold out several hours, all the more glory—the ticking time bomb will go off!”
...
“In Iraq, I never saw pain produce intelligence,” Lagouranis told me. “I worked with someone who used waterboarding”—an interrogation method involving the repeated near-drowning of a suspect. “I used severe hypothermia, dogs, and sleep deprivation. I saw suspects after soldiers had gone into their homes and broken their bones, or made them sit on a Humvee’s hot exhaust pipes until they got third-degree burns. Nothing happened.” Some people, he said, “gave confessions. But they just told us what we already knew. It never opened up a stream of new information.” If anything, he said, “physical pain can strengthen the resolve to clam up.”

But now, after all these years of FOX propaganda, evidence is gathering that Cheney's authorization of torture wasn't really about the theoretical ticking time bombs anyway. The Bush administration tortured for political gain:

Perhaps the sharpest rebuke to Cheney's assertions has come from Lawrence Wilkerson, the retired Army colonel and former senior State Department aide to Colin Powell, who says bluntly that when the administration first authorized "harsh interrogation" during the spring of 2002, "its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qaida."

I don't know if these revelations will change public opinion, but most certainly we need to rephrase our dialog about these issues: "Pollsters should be asking if Americans support using torture to extract false confessions for political purposes, because that's what happened."

Also, somebody needs to present Cheney with this bit of logic: if torturing people led to false justifications for war, and if thousands of Americans died in that war, then didn't torture cost American lives?

Nothing looks the same in the light.

True Believers

The above picture is one of eleven cover sheets featured in the GQ article And He Shall be Judged, a damning exposé on former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

The amateurish cover sheets adorned top-secret intelligence briefings approved by Rumsfeld and featuring triumphant images from the Iraq war effort. But it's the quotes above the images that reveal way too much about Bush's crusade. Straight from the Bible they came: "Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand."

I can only see this as a cynical and crafty move by Rumsfeld:

The Scripture-adorned cover sheets illustrate one specific complaint I heard again and again: that Rumsfeld’s tactics—such as playing a religious angle with the president—often ran counter to sound decision-making and could, occasionally, compromise the administration’s best interests. In the case of the sheets, publicly flaunting his own religious views was not at all the SecDef’s style—“Rumsfeld was old-fashioned that way,” Shaffer acknowledged when I contacted him about the briefings—but it was decidedly Bush’s style, and Rumsfeld likely saw the Scriptures as a way of making a personal connection with a president who frequently quoted the Bible. No matter that, if leaked, the images would reinforce impressions that the administration was embarking on a religious war and could escalate tensions with the Muslim world. The sheets were not Rumsfeld’s direct invention—and he could thus distance himself from them, should that prove necessary.

So this is why I never again want a "true believer" as president. Bush was too easily manipulated. Convinced he had a calling from God, he shunned diplomacy, rushed to war, and was simply reckless.

It's a miracle we didn't all die in a big mushroom cloud.

Heckuva Job, Rummy

It seems that Bush is on a "Save My Legacy" tour. As he worked the crowd at West Point on Tuesday, he gave a shout out to his old pal and former defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld:

Finally, we are transforming our military for a new kind of war that we're fighting now, and for wars of tomorrow. This transformation was a top priority for the enterprising leader who served as my first Secretary of Defense -- Donald Rumsfeld. Today, because of his leadership and the leadership of Secretary Bob Gates, we have made our military better trained, better equipped, and better prepared to meet the threats facing America today, and tomorrow, and long in the future.

Wars of tomorrow, Mr. President? Exactly how many did you and your criminal friends plan? And although I won't question the skills and training of our military, I will question any statement that they are somehow better off because of these wars. By many accounts, our military is stretched, strained, and suffering. They deserve better!

But Bush's speech leaves me with a sense of deja vu. While Bush praises Rummy, a government report blames Rummy for detainee abuses:

A report released Thursday by leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee said top Bush administration officials, including Donald H. Rumsfeld, the former defense secretary, bore major responsibility for the abuses committed by American troops in interrogations at Abu Ghraib in Iraq; Guantánamo Bay, Cuba; and other military detention centers.

The report was issued jointly by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the Democratic chairman of the panel, and Senator John McCain of Arizona, the top Republican. It represents the most thorough review by Congress to date of the origins of the abuse of prisoners in American military custody, and it explicitly rejects the Bush administration’s contention that tough interrogation methods have helped keep the country and its troops safe.

The report also rejected previous claims by Mr. Rumsfeld and others that Defense Department policies played no role in the harsh treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 and in other episodes of abuse.

Heckuva job, Rummy.

And because Christmas is coming, I'd like to offer you this fine stocking stuffer. Imagine the fun you and your children can have with this Donald Rumsfeld talking action figure!

We Are Not Toys

The Iraq Veterans Against the War recently staged Operation W.A.N.T. (We Are Not Toys). The demonstration was a peaceful attention-grabber. The veterans infiltrated an unidentified gas station and deployed a battalion of 4171 toy soldiers, together with a sign reading, "Price of Gas: 4171 U.S. Soldiers." (If video doesn't show, click here):



I see the protest as a somber response to a public that does not acknowledge the consequences of the American lifestyle and a president who has often seemed like a spoiled child-commander for toy soldiers.

We are not toys. Our soldiers are not toys. Iraqis are not toys. Look at this heart-rending picture. We need to see these consequences.


Related Post: Bang Bang! Kiss Kiss!

Recipe for Disaster

Did you hear the rumors earlier this month that President Bush wanted Osama bin Laden captured or killed by November 4? That was basically the NPR headline two weeks ago, and I thought that the goal of election day (instead of say January 20) sounded transparently cynical and political even for Bush. But when I went looking for the article today, I found it had been reworked a bit to now read Bush Puts New Focus On Bin Laden, Al-Qaida... which still sounds cynical and political to me.

Though I've stated several times that the abandoned objective to capture bin Laden was a huge failure for Bush, I believe his current hot pursuit into Pakistan is a recipe for disaster. The President's new orders allow American Special Operations forces to carry out ground assaults inside Pakistan without the prior approval of the Pakistani government.

And Pakistan is supposed to be an ally -- an ally with 173 million people, an Islamic government, a failing economy, nuclear weapons, and a new president who has suffered a "range of mental illnesses." Pakistan sounds like a new sanctuary for terrorism. The recent Marriott Hotel bombing in Islamabad might signal a new phase of the al Qaida offensive.

So why would we want to destabilize such a country further? Bush's new plan of bombing tribal regions along the borders could clearly be taken as an act of war.

I don't think this new operation is about catching Osama bin Laden or members of al Qaida. The surge in Iraq appears to be a success at this moment, so why not repeat it elsewhere? For a few more hundred billion dollars we can install a new puppet government in Pakistan. Our government will tell us we're liberating them or fighting terrorism or whatever... but nobody ever bluntly asks the American people if we want another war, another decades long commitment, another disaster on our hands.

Remembering September 11, 2001

Seven years ago today, the United States of America was attacked by al-Qaeda. The series of coordinated hijackings killed 2,974 people. Another 24 are missing and presumed dead. The overwhelming majority of these victims were civilians. The world mourned with us.

A revealing videotape showed Osama bin Laden as the mastermind behind the attacks.

The Bush administration claimed they never could have predicted the attacks. We now know this is false. The August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Brief made it clear that a terrorist attack inside the United States was imminent. But while the terrorist warnings were "blinking red," Bush was on a very long vacation at his ranch.

We know these facts now. No doubt, the public knows a lot now that Bush wouldn't tell us back then. He wouldn't tell us. He didn't want us to know. He stonewalled an investigation into the incompetence leading up to that fateful day. But eventually we got the 9/11 Commission Report... which held nobody accountable.

In the days and months after September 11, 2001, it seemed we had slipped into some kind of alternate universe where down was up, left was right, false was true, and wrong was the way we were headed.

Our government responded to the attacks by declaring a War on Terrorism, enacting the USA Patriot Act, drafting torture memos, and invading Afghanistan which was harboring al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. Bush vowed to get bin Laden "dead or alive." But soon it seemed he forgot his mission:

"So I don't know where he is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him... to be honest with you." -- George W. Bush, March 13, 2002.

He soon closed the unit responsible for capturing Osama Bin Laden. The American public didn't blink. Neither did the mainstream media. It seemed we were willing to accept anything without question.

And that's how we were led into the unrelated, unnecessary, distracting, and idiotic invasion of Iraq. The Bush administration fabricated the imminent threat of Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction. They forged a document claiming terrorists trained in Iraq and Iraq bought yellowcake uranium from Niger with the help of al Qaeda.

Indeed, the entire Iraq war was plotted before 9/11 with the main goal of controlling Iraq's natural resources.

But we went along because we were told lies, we were scared of terrorism, and we were blinded by patriotism.

There have been 4,155 U.S. Military deaths, and possibly 150,000 Iraqi civilian deaths. It's a travesty that the lives lost on September 11, 2001, have been exploited to launch this destruction.

Sadly, there are still people living in that alternate universe where the disaster of 9/11 is somehow seen as a the shining moment of the Bush administration. They cling to the notion that we were saved by George W. Bush when in reality he failed us. Yet the Republican party continues to use the tragedy for blatant propaganda and political gain. (Warning: the following video was shown at the RNC and is very offensive.)



After seven years of the War on Terrorism, we are no safer. Osama bin Laden lives on, we turned Iraq into a terrorist nation, and al-Qaeda is plotting new attacks from sanctuaries in nuclear-armed Pakistan.

And George W. Bush has never even apologized.

Is There a Draft in Here?

It looks like old-timer McCain wants to reinstate the draft. (If video doesn't show, click here.)



I know that MoveOn.org's sappy "Baby Alex" ad was mocked by just about everybody. One of the biggest criticisms was that our army is voluntary, and so of course, that means baby Alex won't have to serve unless he wants to fight. Right? Our army will always be voluntary... right?

But raising the specter of a draft changes everything. Do young people even know what it involves? Heck, do I even know what it involves? I was still a child when the draft ended in 1973, so I never saw my high school or college friends conscripted. It was something that only happened in those TV shows about the 60's.

Well, Selective Services operates a little differently than it did in the 60's:

• Before and during the Vietnam War, a young man could get a deferment by showing that he was a full-time student making satisfactory progress towards a degree; now deferment only lasts to the end of the semester. If the man is a senior he can defer until the end of the academic year.
• The government has said that draft boards are now more representative of the local communities in areas such as race and national origin.
• A lottery system would be used to determine the order of people being called up. Previously the oldest men who were found eligible for the draft would be taken first. In the new system, the men called first would be those who are or will turn 20 in the calendar year or those whose deferments will end in the calendar year. Each year after the man will be placed on a lower priority status until his liability ends.

Nobody can say for sure how these reforms will work because they haven't been tested yet. But should McCain reinstate the draft, I know two definite results. McCain will be the least popular President ever, and the Iraq war will end very quickly after the fact.

Don't underestimate the power of baby Alex's mom and all the other moms who won't sacrifice their child for an unnecessary war.

Recklessness

On Tuesday I wrote a quick post about the South Ossetia War. I said I hope the presidential candidates are listening to the experts on the situation, and then I added that it was a scary thought that Bush is still president. I wanted to expand on that thought.

I don't think Bush listens to experts. He never listened to the CIA in 2002 when they said Saddam Hussein was not an imminent threat. He didn't listen to General Eric Shinseki when he famously said that the military would need "several hundred thousand" troops to secure Iraq. However, he does listen to Cheney, but what really worries me is that Bush bases way too much on blind faith. Here is an example of an evangelical preacher he studies:

If you debate for even one second when God has spoken, it is all over for you. Never start to say, "Well, I wonder if He really did speak to me?" Be reckless immediately— totally unrestrained and willing to risk everything— by casting your all upon Him. You do not know when His voice will come to you, but whenever the realization of God comes, even in the faintest way imaginable, be determined to recklessly abandon yourself, surrendering everything to Him. It is only through abandonment of yourself and your circumstances that you will recognize Him. You will only recognize His voice more clearly through recklessness— being willing to risk your all.

That quotation is from the widely-read devotional My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers (1874 - 1917). It's not the kind of advice I want my president following.

So of course I'm worried about this new crisis involving Russia, Georgia and Ossetia. The truth is already a casualty in this war. The majority of Americans believe that the Russian army invaded Georgia first. If that's not true, then the mainstream media is misleading the public -- again -- just like in the run up to the Iraq war.

And just to complicate matters more, John McCain is now stepping in and sending his own delegation to Georgia which will certainly confuse our foreign policy further. In fact, McCain is so confused himself that he believes the Georgian conflict is the "first serious crisis" in the post-Cold War era.

I can't decide what's worse: Still-President Bush, or Pretend-President McCain?

Geography Lessons

War: God's way of teaching Americans geography.

If you're trying to follow developments in the South Ossetia war, I hope you're not completely relying on the major networks, because we all know their coverage is utter rubbish. They automatically frame the war in terms of our presidential election. And looking at our presidential candidates, it's become painfully clear that after all these years we still don't know how to handle Russia.

I prefer not to listen to the bellicose posturing of McCain. I prefer to listen to those with some practical experience with the former Soviet Union... like Henry A. Kissinger and Richard Holbrooke. I hope the candidates are listening. Also, I hope still-President Bush is listening. I keep forgetting he's still the one in charge. That's a scary thought.

Bang Bang! Kiss Kiss!

A guy walks into a bar on Pennsylvania Avenue and spots George W. Bush and Dick Cheney having drinks.

So the guy introduces himself and says, “Wow, this is a real honor. What are you guys doing in here?”

Cheney says, “We’re planning WW III. And the guy says, “Really? What’s going to happen?”

Cheney says, “Well, we’re going to kill 10 million Iranians and one blond with big boobs.”

The guy exclaims, “A blond with big boobs! Why kill a blond with big boobs?”

Cheney turns to Bush, punches him on the shoulder and says, “See, dummy! I told you no one would care about the 10 million Iranians!”

Jokes always have an element of truth. This one, a little too much.

The big news today is that there were only 13 Iraq-related U.S. deaths last month. But go over to McClatchy.com and do a search on "Round-up of daily violence in Iraq," and you'll see a more complete picture. On July 28 alone, female suicide bombers killed at least 51 people and injured 95 others. Four more people were killed by a roadside bomb. And I get the distinct feeling we don't really care. We scroll past these headlines. They're just numbers to us. Heck, we don't even look at the numbers.

But going back to the above Bush joke, there is a darker element of truth: U.S. leaders provoking world wars. Think it's not true? From Think Progress:



That's Seymour Hersh, a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist for The New Yorker, revealing that Bush administration officials recently held a meeting in the Vice President’s office to discuss ways to provoke a war with Iran. Or in other words, this is the how-to on launching a false flag attack.

Hersh: There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war. The one that interested me the most was why don’t we build — we in our shipyard — build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats. Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up. Might cost some lives.

And it was rejected because you can’t have Americans killing Americans. That’s the kind of — that’s the level of stuff we’re talking about. Provocation. But that was rejected.

So I can understand the argument for not writing something that was rejected — uh maybe. My attitude always towards editors is they’re mice training to be rats.

But the point is jejune, if you know what that means. Silly? Maybe. But potentially very lethal. Because one of the things they learned in the incident was the American public, if you get the right incident, the American public will support bang-bang-kiss-kiss. You know, we’re into it.

Warmongers going to war to maximize profits for themselves and their cronies without regard to the human lives they take. It's called stealing. It's called murder.

And that describes the disgustingly criminal state of the Bush administration. No joke.

Military-Industrial Complex

Throughout America's adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among people and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both at home and abroad.

Those were the noble goals stated by Dwight D. Eisenhower in his famous 1961 speech on the Military-Industrial Complex. I think it's important to revisit history to understand what is happening now. What was new to the American experience 47 years ago is widely accepted and rarely questioned today:

Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Thanks to the Internet, we can easily track the costs. So far this month, 255 publicly-reported defense contracts have totaled $40,916,778,410. The total so far this year is $164,176,189,156. And don't foolishly believe that these contracts are all being awarded to American companies. Bahrain Maritime and Merchantile International is being awarded a maximum $2,801,334,120 contract for supply and distribution of food and non-food products.

Of course the money spent is the easy part to measure, but our liberties and our democratic process have also been sacrificed. See my posts on domestic spying, habeas corpus, airport security, proxy wars, terrorist watch list, politicalization of the DoJ, and the cavalier attitude towards war with Iran...

And on this last topic of Iran, maybe we are finally coming to our senses. A recent RAND Research Brief presents the evidence that terrorism groups are rarely defeated by military might:

By analyzing a comprehensive roster of terrorist groups that existed worldwide between 1968 and 2006, the authors found that most groups ended because of operations carried out by local police or intelligence agencies or because they negotiated a settlement with their governments. Military force was rarely the primary reason a terrorist group ended, and few groups within this time frame achieved victory.

In another positive development, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is starting to sound a little bit like Eisenhower. Yesterday, Gates renewed his call for more spending on U.S. diplomacy and international aid, saying the U.S. government risks “creeping militarization” of its foreign policy by focusing its resources on the Pentagon.

So that's what we're calling it now? Creeping militarization? I suppose I don't mind the new wording. Just uttering the phrase "military-industrial complex" makes me feel like a radical tie-dyed hippie.

Yes, It's About Oil

In case anybody still had any doubt that this war is about oil... [click here if the video doesn't show below.]



Of course, John McCain accidentally told us the real reason for the war last month.

Like a Dog that Returns to its Vomit

The signs are clearer every day. Bush is about to attack Iran. Why can't America see it?

Rather than winding down one war, Bush is starting another. The entire world knows this and is discussing Bush's planned attack on Iran in many forums. It is only Americans who haven't caught on. A few senators have said that Bush must not attack Iran without the approval of Congress, and postings on the Internet demonstrate world wide awareness that Iran is in the Bush Regime's cross hairs. But Congress and the Media – and the demonstration in Washington – are focused on Iraq.

So here are some clues in case you still don't believe it.

• The US government has long considered Iran to be a state sponsor of terrorism, and will reportedly put Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on the terrorism list.
• Last year, the BBC reported that US contingency plans for air strikes on Iran extend beyond nuclear sites and include most of the country's military infrastructure.
• The Senate report last April by Gen. David Petraeus and Amb. Ryan Crocker was interpreted by some as an argument for going into Iran.
  
• Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has hinted that U.S. action on Iran nukes is near.
• The rhetoric and the aggressive posturing from the White House, and the MSM's echoing of the talking points are a frightening repeat of the arguments made for invading Iraq five years ago.
  

And just like five years ago, I find myself looking for some signs of sanity from voters, politicians and pundits. There are a few:

• Of the people who follow the situation in Iran, only 7% support taking military action.
• Rep. John Conyers has warned Bush that "if you do not obtain the constitutionally required congressional authorization before launching preemptive military strikes against Iran or any other nation, impeachment proceedings should be pursued."
• Last year, Pentagon officials firmly opposed a proposal by Vice President Dick Cheney for airstrikes against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps bases.
• Many journalists and academics familiar with Iran are speaking out against the notion of an Iranian threat.
  

However, Bush will never understand his previous errors. He is like a dog that returns to its vomit. He will repeat his folly. He will go back to what has made this country sick. I hope the media doesn't eat this up too.