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.

On Their Terms

I was glad I caught the Rachel Maddow show tonight:

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It's even clearer now how Osama bin Laden provoked and baited us. Well, I thought it was easy to see in 2004, but apparently most of the country thought it was a good idea to reelect Bush. But I digress. We're fighting these wars on al Qaeda's terms running off to whatever impoverished and unstable country they're hiding out in.

The interview with Evan Kohlmann (about 7:40 into the above video) was the really insightful part. Anybody (me included) can point out what's wrong with our homeland security tactics, but Kohlmann points out what we could be doing differently in the Muslim world. For example, we could do proper intelligence work and continuously draw attention to the fact that more Muslim civilians die at the hands of al Qaeda than Americans do.

By the way, if you're keeping score on how many Muslim countries we're entangled in, don't count out Iraq just yet. The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has plans to double in size. What was it that bin Laden said about "bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy"?

Purity Pledge

When I first heard that the GOP was considering a purity pledge for candidates, I assumed they were reacting to recent sex scandals. But no, the list of ten resolutions is just the same old laundry list we've been hearing for years:

1. We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill;
2. We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run health care;
3. We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;
4. We support workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing card check;
5. We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;
6. We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;
7. We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat;
8. We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;
9. We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and
10. We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership.

The first item on the list was enough to make me roll my eyes and clutch my suddenly throbbing skull. Republicans keep telling us they're all about the smaller national debt, and yet, in reality, they are notorious for throwing debt on top of debt.

Number two and number nine on the list kind of go together. The government won't be running health care and our current system already rations in a truly American way. Number three on the list? I thought cap and trade was a market-based approach.

But let me skip to number six. We can't define victory in either war, and anyway we've been told the withdrawal from Iraq is already underway. Our only existing cause in that occupation is to support Iraq's mythical democracy. But the real foolishness is that part about the President -- the commander-in-chief -- abdicating his role and obeying military commanders who want more troops. This is a frightening recipe for permanent war, and it's officially part of the Republican plan. It's totally ineffectual for fighting terrorism, and oh yeah... see pledge number one up there? Can't fight a war without money, honey.

Number eight on the pledge list is another non-surprise. Republicans are really determined to reinforce that whole "party of no" image! It's all about what they oppose. There are no new ideas. In fact, the GOP's biggest innovation might be this whole pledge thing.

It's pure politics, and it's insane. Why elect somebody whose loyalty is to a party and not their country or constituents? We hear a lot of controversy over the pledge of allegiance lately, but I believe there should only be one mandatory pledge. Every day, every elected official should put their hand over their heart and pledge allegiance to the people.

Deadly Serious

I'm not sure how much longer we can look forward without looking backward. After years of following the criminality of American CEO's and politicians, I should be drained of any outrage. But then my outrage is suddenly refueled when I read this report by Jeremy Scahill, an expert on the private military contractor Blackwater:

A former Blackwater employee and an ex-US Marine who has worked as a security operative for the company have made a series of explosive allegations in sworn statements filed on August 3 in federal court in Virginia. The two men claim that the company's owner, Erik Prince, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. The former employee also alleges that Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe," and that Prince's companies "encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life."

You should really read the entire article and the two sworn statements linked within. However, I'll summarize some of the allegations against Blackwater founder and owner, Erik Prince:

• Operated a web of companies to obscure money laundering and evade taxes.
• Smuggled illegal weapons into Iraq for profit.
• Destroyed incriminating videos, emails and other documents.
• Did nothing to stop the excessive and unjustified deadly force against civilians.
• Views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe.
• Ignored the assessments done by mental health professionals and deployed "unfit men" obsessed with killing "ragheads."
• Knowingly hired two persons previously involved in the Kosovo sex-trafficking ring to serve at relatively high levels in the company.
• Failed to stop the ongoing use of prostitutes including child prostitutes by his employees.
• Murdered, or had murdered, one or more persons who have provided information, or who were planning to provide information, to the federal authorities about the ongoing criminal conduct.

Is it just me or does that list get weirder and weirder? The first couple of crimes are what we've sadly grown to expect from war profiteers, and then we get to the murderous Christian crusader and sex-trafficking parts...

Our government wants us to believe that they're simply outsourcing and privatizing military security, but the UN says it's a new form of mercenary activity. However, the U.S. is not under any law or treaty barring the use of mercenaries. I think that makes us look like some kind of banana republic.

We gave a 1.2 billion dollar contract to a company that operates with impunity and is run by a greedy, neo-Christian crusader in a volatile region that wants us out. At first I wanted to add Blackwater and Erik Prince to the long list of idiotic mistakes made by the Bush Administration, but Jeremy Scahill believes that Bush and company considered the crusader element a definite plus in the decision to hire Blackwater:

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Probably because of all the bad press, Blackwater changed their name to Xe -- which looks like a word I'd try to get away with in Scrabble. I have no idea what the name means, but I'm guessing it's short for "xenophobia."

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.

That Shoe Thrower Guy

I've been thinking about that shoe thrower guy a lot today. Well, obviously he's hard to avoid if you even turn on the TV or read the news...

But I'm pondering whether the act of throwing his shoes at Bush was a violent act or a symbolic act. If it was intended as a violent act, he kind of failed. Nobody was hurt. Bush smirked -- even looked proud of himself for dodging the projectiles. There was even a bit of laughter in the room.

My impression is that the thrower, Muntazer al-Zaidi, knew his protest would be symbolic. He had his lines prepared and had an exact purpose. On the first shoe throw, he shouted "This is a gift from the Iraqis. This is the farewell kiss, you dog." And he consecrated the second shoe with "This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq."

With this act, he evoked memories of how Saddam's statue was toppled and then beaten with shoes in the early days of the Iraq war. Even if westerners don't grasp the supreme insult of shoe throwing, we understand Bush is being equated with that dictator.

I'm sure al-Zaidi knew what he was doing. He could have been truly violent if he wanted to, but he wasn't. And the consequences for his actions? He's an Iraqi so he knew what horror he might be facing. The reports indicate that he now has a broken arm and ribs. I suspect this new Iraqi regime has no more respect for human rights than the previous one. So much for the progress we were bringing them.

But the most extraordinary thing is that al-Zaidi has, with this one brave protest, brought about more praise, admiration, and inspiration than all previous bombers and gunmen combined.

Now if Bush could only put on those shoes and walk a mile in them... nah, it's Bush we're talking about.

Midnight Madness

This really does sound like a late night Christmas bargain bonanza. I'm talking about the midnight regulations -- actually more like deregulations -- that President Bush is zealously handing out at an accelerated pace as his reign comes to an end. Each new rule is a special gift tied in a bow for one of his friends:

To the coal companies: a new rule that makes it easier for companies that mine for coal buried under mountaintops to dump rock and sludge near rivers and streams.

To a British mining company: a permit allowing them to explore for uranium just outside Grand Canyon National Park, less than three miles from a popular lookout over the canyon’s southern rim.

To the oil companies: (considering that Bush already gave them the war in Iraq, this one is more like a stocking stuffer) new regulations to develop oil shale deposits straddling almost two million acres of public lands in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.

To the industrial farms: new regulations to circumvent the Clean Water Act, leaving it up the the farms themselves to decide if animal waste discharges are harmful or not.

To big chemical companies: a decision to exempt perchlorate, a known toxin found in jet rocket fuel and our water supply, from federal regulation. Hey, if it ends up in our drinking water, just think of it as recycling... right?

To business: a new rule that makes it harder for the government to regulate toxic substances and hazardous chemicals to which workers are exposed on the job.

To fundamentalist pharmacists: a new rule that says health care providers can refuse to assist, due to religious or moral reasons, in the performance of any part of a health service program or research activity financed by the Department of Health and Human Services. Many believe this regulation might prevent some women from obtaining birth control.

And to the rest of us, he leaves debt, two wars/occupations, a shitty economy, an imperiled planet, and a government that spies on its citizens. They always say "it's the thought that counts," but be thankful for gift receipts...

I thought I read that it was easy to undo these midnight regulations, but the process is not simple. From a Rolling Stone article on Bush's Final FU, the Congressional Review Act (CRA) may be the best hope for overturning these rules, but it's not easy:

But even this option, it turns out, is fraught with obstacles. First, the CRA requires a separate vote on each individual regulation. Second, the act prohibits reviving any part of a rule that has been squelched. Since Bush's rules sometimes contain useful reforms — the move to limit the Family and Medical Leave Act also extends benefits for military families — spiking the rules under the CRA would leave Obama unable to restore or augment those benefits in the future. Whatever Obama does will require him to expend considerable political capital, at a time when America faces two wars and an economic crisis of historic proportions.

So what should the world give Bush for Christmas? An Iraqi journalist already gave him a gift with sole (if video doesn't show, click here):



Too bad he missed, but hey, it's the thought that counts.

Walk of Shame

President Bush has 46 days left in the White House, and he's desperately trying to recast his legacy. I've watched parts of his recent exit interview, and although nearly everything he says boils my blood, I haven't commented because at this point, writing long essays on his failures is like kicking a corpse. Luckily, Jon Stewart is up to the task (if video doesn't show, click here):

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Barack Obama Interview
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However, now that Jon Stewart has fired me up, I think I am going to kick the corpse just a little bit... Bush made this one particularly wistful remark that I can't let pass: "I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess." What?

Let me just address the president personally (because I'm certain he reads this blog)...

Sorry Mr. President, but I've been paying attention, and I remember that major Senate committee report last June which concluded that you and your aides built the public case for war against Iraq by exaggerating available intelligence and by ignoring disagreements among spy agencies about Iraq’s weapons programs and Saddam Hussein’s links to Al Qaeda. In other words, you lied to us about the intelligence, and if the information had been different, you still would have lied because you were determined to go to war. Maybe you should read the report. Maybe you'll put a copy in your library. Whatever you do, you can't successfully rewrite history because too many people are watching you.

However, now it's time to keep an eye on little brother Jeb Bush because he's prattling on about setting up a "shadow government" which sounds vaguely treasonous. Between the Bushies and McCain, they've certainly done some damage to the Republican party.

The good news though? That McCain-Palin t-shirt you wanted to buy your grandpa for Christmas is now 75% off! Image via erin m on flickr:

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!

War By Remote Control

So this must be the secret high-tech weapon that Bob Woodward was talking about last week:


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Well, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are no secret now. The startling evidence has been sitting on YouTube for a few months available to anybody who knew what to search for. I think the government clearly wanted this information out. Intentionally leaking these videos to insurgents is the psychological part of counter-terrorism.

Of course, I am relieved that this technology has brought stability to Iraq, but I am also worried that this powerful weapon introduces a new era of war and nation building. What little country can prevail when the USA says it's time for a regime change? Or when the USA says our corporations need another nation's natural resources? Our imperialist leaders will tell us we're doing it for democracy, but that's bullshit.

Can McCain at least stop saying that it's "the surge" that worked?

Exploding Gift Baskets

Ever since Bob Woodward released The War Within, an inside look at the war in Iraq, everybody has been speculating about the secret weapon he claims is responsible for the current period of stability. Certainly the cash we've been paying the insurgents has something to do with the success, but in a recent 60 Minutes interview, Woodward revealed something much more sophisticated:

"This is very sensitive and very top secret, but there are secret operational capabilities that have been developed by the military to locate, target, and kill leaders of al Qaeda in Iraq, insurgent leaders, renegade militia leaders. That is one of the true breakthroughs."

So when Bill Maher jokingly suggested "exploding gift baskets," and Woodward told him he was "close," I realized that this recent Wired article might have some merit:

I'm going to make a wager about what I think Woodward is talking about, and I'll be curious to see what Danger Room readers have to say. I believe he is talking about the much ballyhooed (in defense geek circles) "Tagging, Tracking and Locating" program; here's a briefing on it from Special Operations Command. These are newfangled technologies designed to track people from long distances, without the targeted people realizing they are being tracked. That can theoretically include thermal signatures, or some sort of "taggant" placed on a person. Think Will Smith in Enemy of the State. Well, not so many cameras, maybe.

I think we need to learn everything about this new weapon before the police state really kicks in. And please, would the next person who interviews Bob Woodward ask him how long until this new weapon is used against American citizens?

Bush Seven Years Ago Today

On September 20, 2001, Bush addressed members of Congress and the American people for the first time since the attacks on September 11. The speech introduced the principles of the Bush Doctrine, and today reads like a collection of Bush's greatest hits:

the war on terror
either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists
they hate our freedoms
I ask your continued participation and confidence in the American economy

Also, he did a little name dropping with Iraq. He was not yet implying an Iraqi link with the attacks, but he would get to that in time. In fact, it only took a few months of innuendo to deceive the American people. The Christian Science Monitor reported on the shift in public opinion:

Polling data show that right after Sept. 11, 2001, when Americans were asked open-ended questions about who was behind the attacks, only 3 percent mentioned Iraq or Hussein. But by January of this year, attitudes had been transformed. In a Knight Ridder poll, 44 percent of Americans reported that either "most" or "some" of the Sept. 11 hijackers were Iraqi citizens. The answer is zero.

By August 2003, the misconception was widespread. A Washington Post poll indicated that about 70% of Americans believed Saddam Hussein was involved in the attacks. Sadly, in 2008, an important VP candidate is still spreading these lies for political gain.

She also holds the childish belief that terrorists hate us for our freedom, when in reality, they hate us for our airstrikes (if video doesn't show, click here):

Nature or Nurture

I found this image at Something Awful. The photos were taken from a 1980's Farsi Alphabet book for children. The owner of the book received it at age 2 or 3 while visiting Iran toward the end of the Iran-Iraq War. You may remember that was when the US was on Saddam's side.

Anyway, though I've never seen a children's book quite like this, I'm not going to pretend to be shocked. I've seen the Palestinian kid's show with the impostor Mickey Mouse promoting jihad. I've seen the sing-along DVDs glorifying suicide bombing. I'm also aware that the CIA was behind the violent images in Afghani textbooks when the US wanted to indoctrinate Afghan children with their duty to fight the Soviets:

In 1986, under President Ronald Reagan, the U.S. put a rush order on its proxy war in Afghanistan. The CIA gave Mujahideen an overwhelming arsenal of guns and missiles. But a lesser-known fact is that the U.S. also gave the Mujahideen hundreds of millions of dollars in non-lethal aid; $43 million just for the school textbooks. The U.S. Agency for International Development, AID, coordinated its work with the CIA, which ran the weapons program.
...
"The U.S. government told the AID to let the Afghan war chiefs decide the school curriculum and the content of the textbooks," says CBC'S Carol Off. "What discussions did you have with the Mujahideen leaders? Was it any effort to say maybe this isn't the best for an eight-year-old's mind?"

"No, because we were told that that was not for negotiations and that the content was to be that which they decided," says Goutier.

So children learn to count with bullets, to color in pictures of guns, and to sing about suicide missions. Adults brainwash them to fight their dirty wars. We do it to American children too (for profit even!) with toys like GI Joe.

What better way to keep the continuum of violence except to nurture it?

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.

Cringeworthy

So last night after watching some of the convention analysis I switch over to The Tonight Show -- I'm so glad it's back after a two week hiatus because of the Olympics -- and I see that McCain is on. And damn it, I watch the interview for one minute and I can't believe what I'm hearing. Here is the cringeworthy clip (if the video doesn't show, click here):



When McCain is confronted with any awkward question, anything he can't deal with honestly, he pulls the "POW card." I know it's a comedy show, but is McCain's POW status really a punchline? He's turning it into one.

And it looks like McCain is leading in the polls despite surveys that say 76% of Americans think the country is on the wrong track. It's the unlikeliest political comeback in history.

I think part of this comeback is because voters believe McCain has more foreign policy experience... but a big part of his experience is being wrong. Do you think the surge he supported is working? The Seattle Times explains why our current strategy in Iraq is in danger of collapsing.

And did McCain promise the President of Georgia that the U.S. would intervene if they went to war with Russia? The answer isn't clear, but one of his foreign policy advisers is a paid lobbyist for the Georgian government!

And let's not forget that John McCain wants to bomb Iran.

If McCain can continue to frighten the American public about threats from Russia and Iran, then he will win on a "war president" platform. That's more than just cringeworthy.

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.

Anthrax Answers?

Government officials asserted yesterday that Bruce Ivins acted alone to perpetrate the anthrax attack that killed five people, but others believe the evidence is inconclusive. (If video doesn't show, click here.)



Gerald Posner raises the question about how Ivins could have weaponized the anthrax. This mystery alone is one critical reason for the public to scrutinize the government's conclusions.

However, as I wrote about earlier this week, there is another reason for scrutiny over the entire anthrax case. The media's reporting on the attack was used to advance Bush's plan for a war in Iraq. Some people, notably Glenn Greenwald, Jay Rosen and Dan Gillmor, want ABC News to answer vital questions about the sources behind the initial reports connecting Saddam Hussein to the anthrax attacks. Bloggasm has an exclusive interview with Greenwald asking him about ABC's responsibility in the matter:

“I think first of all that this is a basic principal of journalism, that if you get a story wrong, you explain what happened that led to the bad reporting,” Greenwald told me. “That’s what the New York Times did to explain how they got those Judy Miller stories wrong. When people get stories wrong, the credibility of the journalistic outlet depends upon them explaining what happened. If Brian Ross wants to say, ‘our sources acted in good faith, they just got it wrong,’ then he needs to explain the basis of that.”

Yesterday, Brian Ross, ABC's lead reporter on the anthrax stories in late 2001, explained what happened and what it means now: "Our sources were current and former government scientists who were all involved in analyzing the substance in the letter." He says that Ivins was not one of those scientists. He also denies that his reports contributed to the case for war. "The people who say the White House lied to us to build a case on Iraq or something doesn't hold." He says that the White House denied it was bentonite from day one.

I find it strange enough that Ross doesn't believe the Bush administration lied to us to start a war... but his other claims also lead me to wonder why is he a reporter if he believes his own reports are so ineffectual that they don't influence the public? I remember the hype, and I remember the fear. Every claim that went unchallenged and uncorrected added to the public's anxiety. You can't convince me that those reports didn't matter.

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.

World Domination

Full-Spectrum Dominance sounds like something from an apocalyptic science fiction movie, but it's not. It's an actual concept by the U.S. military to achieves control over all elements of the battlespace including the physical space (air, surface and sub-surface) as well as the electromagnetic spectrum and information space.

At the center of the information-space battle is the Arabic-language television network al-Hurra. Last Sunday, 60 Minutes did a report on the ineptitude of the project. (If the video doesn't show, click here.)



Coincidentally, the Washington Post also has a two part series on al-Hurra.

What did Americans get for $350 million? Enough laughs for a TV bloopers show:

One news anchor greeted the station's predominantly Muslim audience on Easter by declaring, "Jesus is risen today!"
...
"Many people just didn't know how to do their job," said Yasser Thabet, a former senior editor at al-Hurra. "If some problem happened on the air, people would just joke with each other, saying, 'Well, nobody watches us anyway.' It was very self-defeating."
...
In 2004, when an Israeli airstrike killed the spiritual leader of Hamas, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, virtually all Arabic news channels interrupted their regular programming. Al-Hurra continued with a cooking show.

Meanwhile, al-Qaeda is conducting online chats in their own propaganda coup. You can read some of the questions and answers here (PDF).

Somehow I don't think any amount of U.S. money, PSYOPS, or mass persuasion is going to win the ideological war.