Bush's Response to Bird Flu

A Must See Movie

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men - not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular. - Edward R. Murrow

Good Night and Good Luck is a must see movie with rave reviews. It is not a docu-drama or anything close to an accurate portrayal of Edward R. Murrow, as Jack Shafer at Slate points out. The movie symbolically portrays the abuse of power being played out by the Bush Administration and models heroic action presumably in hopes news media will step up to the plate.
The mainstream media could use some pointers on courage these days. Bloggers have been trying to pick up the role, but their reach is still limited compared to especially the TV news.
The most interesting part of the movie was Murrow's stirring closing comments in each 30 minute TV show. The last closing comment was at some media conference whose significants slipped by me. But what he said reminded me of Gore's speech a recent media conference. I'd love to find the quote sometime, but I'll attempt to paraphrase.
Television can be an effective means of education, if the media chooses to do so. Most of what it does has a way of distancing it's audience from reality, dulling it's senses to important topics, stimulating emotional and irrational responses to subjects that call for a reason and thoughtful response.
The movie is very well done, moves quickly and is quite entertaining. What bothers me about it is as an independent film, it is in only one theater in town. This movie deserves a much broader audience. I have to wonder if there are other reasons why it's relegated to the artsy theater in town. Maybe it's message is apparent to the conservative movie houses and it is being rejected for political reasons.
For whatever the reason, it's not receiving the attention it deserves. I suspect blogosphere will help beat the drums.

Judy Miller Flames Out

Today in the NY Times, Judy Miller pretty effectively destroys her credibility by recounting her unbelievable testimony to the grand jury. Thanks to DemfromCT at The Next Hurrah for the pointer and summary comments.

NY Times

In a notebook belonging to Judith Miller, a reporter for The New York Times, amid notations about Iraq and nuclear weapons, appear two small words: "Valerie Flame."


Ms. Miller should have written Valerie Plame. That name is at the core of a federal grand jury investigation that has reached deep into the White House. At issue is whether Bush administration officials leaked the identity of Ms. Plame, an undercover C.I.A. operative, to reporters as part of an effort to blunt criticism of the president's justification for the war in Iraq.


Ms. Miller spent 85 days in jail for refusing to testify and reveal her confidential source, then relented. On Sept. 30, she told the grand jury that her source was I. Lewis Libby, the vice president's chief of staff. But she said he did not reveal Ms. Plame's name.


And when the prosecutor in the case asked her to explain how "Valerie Flame" appeared in the same notebook she used in interviewing Mr. Libby, Ms. Miller said she "didn't think" she heard it from him. "I said I believed the information came from another source, whom I could not recall," she wrote on Friday, recounting her testimony for an article that appears today.

[...]

NY Times - Judy Miller

Mr. Fitzgerald asked me to read the final three paragraphs aloud to the grand jury. "The public report of every other reporter's testimony makes clear that they did not discuss Ms. Plame's name or identity with me," Mr. Libby wrote.


The prosecutor asked my reaction to those words. I replied that this portion of the letter had surprised me because it might be perceived as an effort by Mr. Libby to suggest that I, too, would say we had not discussed Ms. Plame's identity. Yet my notes suggested that we had discussed her job.

I'm going to make a big pot of coffee and read. Take a look at the pieces, and leave your thoughts here. Mine are that Libby was responsible for the aluminum tubes story, and Judy is still protecting him.

[UPDATE]: Okay, having read through everything a few times, I see nothing that makes me trust the NY Times, Keller, Abramson or Miller more now than a few hours ago before this went on-line.

Now, it seems to me, the NY Times credibility is on the line. Ms. Miller needs to be fired so she can go to work as a Republican hack she's always been. After continuing to protect Libby with jail time and the risk of a perjury charge, she deserves a sweet salary, don't you think? That is, of course, if she doesn't get indicted and have to make a second stop in the barred Country Club.
Libby's letter too seems as lame. How can anyone not believe he's sending her final instructions to report to the Grand Jury? Are these guys so stupid they can't cover their tracks any better?

Seems a Bit Early for 2008, But....

Contrary to some speculation, I think it's highly unlikely Gore will run for President in 2008. He's on a crusade alright, but as a media mogul using the internet to stimulate a new marketplace of ideas. Hillary Clinton and John Edwards have been rubbing shoulders with world leaders as if they are running. And I've been getting emails every week from John Kerry. He's traveling, speaking and making appearances in support of Democratic candidates as if he's running.
Now we have a possible contender on the Republican side. Newt Gingrich has all but declared his candidacy for President in 2008. But he may have ulterior motives for announcing so soon.
The Next Hurrah

In the absence of a leader who, by threatening to deprive people of future clout, can discipline Republicans, such exposure risks having Republicans abandon the Neocon project entirely. Without someone who can exact revenge on politicians for falling out of line (even during a future Administration), disciplinary commitment to the Neocon project will be lost.


So Newt, a reasonably credible candidate, stepped up and promised there would be hell to pay if people bailed on the Neocons wholesale. Either I--or some other Neocon--will be running in the 2008 election, he promised. In either case, someone will be promoting "his ideas." So politicians better not question the fundamental assumptions of Neocon power unless they're prepared to defend themselves, against a pretty good debater no less.


It's telling, though, that Newt is the one taking this position. Cheney had intimated he might run at different times in the past; he's not an option any more. But I suspect that Newt may over-estimate his insulation from the Plame Affair. Newt was there with Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby when they were harrassing CIA analysts to fix the intelligence. And he was allegedly at some of the get-Wilson meetings. If this turns into a full-blown conspiracy case, Newt may be one of those indicted, or at the very least, named as un-indicted co-conspirator.


Newt's announcement today, I suspect, was an attempt to ensure the Neocons retained a strong leader and disciplinarian with probable future access to power. What does it say then, that he may be implicated as well?

A Different Kind of Democrat

A lot has been said about the Democrats inability to win. Some however see the Republican Party as self-destructing and so they are not worried. Given the Dems track record, including the 2000 and perhaps the 2004 Presidential race, they can't win even if they win! Clearly, the Dems have lost one of their base constituences, the big labor rank and file.
Paul Hackett has tapped that group and a few others, in a big way in Ohio. He nearly beat a solid Republican candidate in the Red State's core congressional district a month ago.
Basie!

Even with well-funded Congressman Sherrod Brown already in the race, Iraq Veteran/former Congressional candidate Paul Hackett has decided to jump in the race for the Ohio's Democratic Senate nomination.

Who is this upstart, and why has he been so effective in Ohio? (Thanks to MyDD for this link.)
The Ohio Insurgency

From the beginning of his quixotic campaign in a special election for U.S. Congress this summer, Paul Hackett relished taking swings. His rhetoric was scorched-earth: “I don’t like the sonofabitch that lives in the White House,” he told USA Today, “but I’d put my life on the line for him.” He declared in a debate that the biggest threat to America is “the man living in the White House,” and he slammed President Bush and Vice President Cheney as “chicken hawks.” He described Bush’s infamous taunt to Iraqi resistance fighters—“Bring ’em on”—as “the most incredibly stupid comment I’ve ever heard a president of the United States make. He cheered on the enemy.” The flame-throwing rhetoric belies an analytical attorney with an (often) understated persona; apologetic, however, Hackett is not.


“I said it, I meant it, I stand by it,” he said when I asked if he regretted any of his comments. “Bush is a chicken hawk, okay? Tough shit.” As for the SOB barb, Bush “talks the tough talk. He should appreciate that.”


A major in the Marine Corps Reserve fresh from a tour in Iraq, Hackett proved to be that rarest of modern political animals, a fighting Democrat. Storming through a deep-red district with freshly minted veterans from his Marine unit, smacking down the religious right, ripping into President Bush, he transformed what was supposed to be a sleepy exercise to fill a safe GOP seat into a rowdy brawl that blindsided the national Republican and Democratic establishments. While he lost the election in a 52-to-48 percent squeaker, he scored decisive wins in the white, lower-income, high-unemployment rural areas that Democrats long ago abandoned—and took one-third more votes in the district than John Kerry had pulled in just eight months earlier. His near upset would turn the state that handed George W. Bush his 2004 victory into a much-discussed bellwether for 2006 and 2008. Could Ohio be signaling a shift in the political winds, at last? MORE

Atrios wants to see a a healthy debate as long as they don't nuke each other good for the Democratic Party. Perhaps so, but I think Brown and the Ohio Democratic Party is in for an ass-kickin' surprise.

The CIA is Not To Blame for the Iraq War

Contrary to the Bush spin machine, the CIA didn't screw up the intelligence anymore than most other western nations. Most of the west thought Iraq had WMDs. However, the UN inspectors correctly confirmed there were none. Like what was going on in the DoD Office of Special Plans, courageously parodied by Lieutenant Karen Kwiatkowski from the inside, there were neo-con plants who were squeezing the information into Bush desired outcomes. WMD info came forth, no matter how weak it was, concerns about making the peace fell to the back table, ignored. (Hattip to Atrios at Eschaton)
In fact, the CIA predicted the fiasco the Iraqi war has become. Here is the proof.
NY Times

...two classified reports prepared for President Bush in January 2003 had predicted that an American-led invasion of Iraq would increase support for political Islam and would result in a deeply divided Iraqi society prone to violent internal conflict. Those reports were by the National Intelligence Council, the high level group responsible for producing the government's most authoritative intelligence assessments.

[...]
It described as "seriously flawed, misleading and even wrong" most of the conclusions reached by the C.I.A. before the invasion of Iraq about President Saddam Hussein's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs. But Mr. Kerr offered praise for prewar intelligence reports on issues other than Iraq's weapons programs, saying that they "accurately addressed such topics as how the war would develop and how Iraqi forces would or would not fight." Mr. Kerr also praised what he called perceptive analysis by intelligence agencies on the issue of ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda, a subject on which the agency clashed with the White House by concluding that there were no substantive links. Mr. Kerr said the agency had also accurately "calculated the impact of the war on oil markets" and "accurately forecast the reactions of the ethnic and tribal factions in Iraq." He credited what he called "strong regional and country expertise developed over time" within American intelligence agencies, as opposed to what he said had been heavy reliance on "technical analysis" for what proved to be misleading or inaccurate information about Iraq's weapons programs. MORE

FEMA's Housing Assistance Department

The latest debacle at FEMA is unfolding now. FEMA is in the housing business. Imagine that, a Republican administration has the unprecidented job of taking care of almost a million homeless indigent people. And of course, they think they can come up with a better way. Let's see how they are doing:
washingtonpost.com

The numbers are nearly unprecedented in this country: In the wake of hurricanes Rita and Katrina, perhaps 500,000 to 900,000 people are homeless and likely to remain so for months, if not years. Some have been financially wiped out; others cannot afford to repair their damaged homes. Still others cannot return to the Gulf Coast because their jobs no longer exist. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has made huge efforts and spent billions of dollars trying to assist those with nowhere to go.


Unfortunately, those efforts have so far been wasteful, ham-handed and oddly self-defeating. Over the past several weeks the agency has rented overpriced cruise ships on which few evacuees wanted to live; has promised to spend billions on trailer parks destined to become dead-end "FEMAvilles" far from urban centers and jobs; and is still paying $8.3 million a day in hotel bills.


Although it took a surprisingly long time, the agency has come to the obvious conclusion that helping evacuees to rent the estimated 1 million empty apartments across the southeastern United States will provide a better long-term solution than hotels or trailers. Nevertheless, the agency -- or, more likely, the administration -- remains oddly reluctant to use existing programs, most notably the Department of Housing and Urban Development's Section 8 housing vouchers, the traditional tool used to help poor Americans rent apartments. Although not ideal in every way, HUD vouchers get paid directly to landlords, reducing the possibility of fraud, and they are designed to vary in cost to account for rental markets in various cities.


Rather than use them, FEMA has invented its own housing subsidies. Those who qualified for HUD assistance before the hurricane will receive vouchers, but they are less flexible than Section 8 vouchers, making it harder for evacuees to move, pay utility bills and cover higher rents in more expensive cities. Meanwhile, those receiving a housing subsidy for the first time have simply been paid a lump sum of $2,358 for three months' rent. FEMA has said it will be possible to receive further aid -- up to 18 months' rent -- but the criteria for doing so are disturbingly vague. Barbara Sarda, a housing expert at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, points out that to be successful, welfare and poverty programs -- which these are, whether FEMA wants to say so or not -- must have clear criteria that can be easily implemented by officials on the ground. This plan does not.


FEMA is right, of course, to be careful of how much it promises, and to be wary of creating anything that looks like a gigantic new housing subsidy program. But that is precisely why it is so strange that, instead of expanding an old program on a temporary basis, the administration has insisted on coming up with a new one, both flawed and open-ended, from scratch. Could it be because this administration, which was trying to cut Section 8 funding before the floods, simply doesn't want to admit that traditional anti-poverty programs sometimes work?


(c)2005 The Washington Post Company

All of a sudden, the Republicans are fighting the NIMBY phenomena in the suburbs. And of course they wouldn't want to endorse Section 8, time proven form of housing assistance. They instead want a Republican version run by FEMA. It shows all the makings of a disaster.

Bush Alone

Finally, after five years of disaster, there is growing concensus. What has been obvious for most of these five years to some of us, is dawning on the rest. Even the conservative right wing has changed it's tune. They all are saying, "the Bush Administration is a failure," a miserable disaster in both foreign and domestic policy. If there is one concession, it is a poor one, but one that makes political hay these days. As Sean-Paul Kelley from the Agonist sees it:

So at last it seems we have come to that point in the life of one George W. Bush when everything 'W' has tried to do fails, and miserably at that. In the past he had Daddy's friends or connections in the oil business or the SEC or somewhere to come bail him out. Today, however, he is alone. No one can solve his problems for him. We all sit, mute, and watch the disaster unfold in slow motion. And we all will be made to suffer for it.

Zbigniew Brzezinski in the International Herald Tribune makes an articulate summary of the foreign policy disasters that will plague American for decades to come.

Terrorists are not born but shaped by events, experiences, impressions, hatreds, ethnic myths, historical memories, religious fanaticism and deliberate brainwashing. They are also shaped by images of what they see on television, and especially by their feelings of outrage at what they perceive to be a brutalizing denigration of their religious kin's dignity by heavily armed foreigners. An intense political hatred for America, Britain and Israel is drawing recruits for terrorism not only from the Middle East but from as far away as Ethiopia, Morocco, Pakistan, Indonesia and even the Caribbean.


America's ability to cope with nuclear nonproliferation has also suffered. The contrast between the attack on the militarily weak Iraq and America's forbearance of the nuclear-armed North Korea has strengthened the conviction of the Iranians that their security can only be enhanced by nuclear weapons.


Moreover, the recent U.S. decision to assist India's nuclear program, driven largely by the desire for India's support for the war in Iraq and as a hedge against China, has made the United States look like a selective promoter of nuclear weapons proliferation. This double standard will complicate the quest for a constructive resolution of the Iranian nuclear problem.


Compounding U.S. political dilemmas is the degradation of America's moral standing in the world. The country that has for decades stood tall in opposition to political repression, torture and other violations of human rights has been exposed as sanctioning practices that hardly qualify as respect for human dignity.


Compounding U.S. political dilemmas is the degradation of America's moral standing in the world. The country that has for decades stood tall in opposition to political repression, torture and other violations of human rights has been exposed as sanctioning practices that hardly qualify as respect for human dignity.


Even more reprehensible is the fact that the shameful abuse and/or torture in Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib was exposed not by an outraged administration but by the U.S. news media. In response, the administration confined itself to punishing a few low-level perpetrators; none of the top civilian and military decision-makers in the Department of Defense and the National Security Council who sanctioned "stress interrogations" (torture, in other words) was forced to resign, nor to face public disgrace and prosecution. The administration's opposition to the International Criminal Court retroactively now seems quite self-serving.


Finally, complicating the sorry foreign policy record are war-related economic trends, with spending on defense and security escalating dramatically. The budgets for the Department of Defense and for the Department of Homeland Security are now larger than the total budgets of most nations, and they are likely to continue escalating even as the growing budget and trade deficits are transforming America into the world's no. 1 debtor nation.


At the same time, the direct and indirect costs of the war in Iraq are mounting, even beyond the pessimistic prognoses of the war's early opponents, making a mockery of the administration's initial predictions. Every dollar so committed is a dollar not spent on investment, on scientific innovation or on education, all fundamentally relevant to America's long-term economic primacy in a highly competitive world.


It should be a source of special concern for thoughtful Americans that even nations known for their traditional affection for America have become openly critical of American policy. As a result, large swathes of the world - be it East Asia, or Europe, or Latin America - have been quietly exploring ways of shaping closer regional associations tied less to the notions of trans-Pacific, or trans-Atlantic, or hemispheric cooperation with the United States. Geopolitical alienation from America could become a lasting and menacing reality.


That trend would especially benefit America's historic ill-wishers or future rivals. Sitting on the sidelines and sneering at America's ineptitude are Russia and China: Russia, because it is delighted to see Muslim hostility diverted from itself toward America, despite its own crimes in Afghanistan and Chechnya, and is eager to entice America into an anti-Islamic alliance; China, because it patiently follows the advice of its ancient strategic guru, Sun Tzu, who taught that the best way to win is to let your rival defeat himself.

Then there is the Uber-insider Chris Nelson in his Nelson Report reporting on the political spectrum's reaction to the Bush domestic disasters.

There is a cumulative effect to being systematically "disrespected", as Bush might say, in his characteristically dyslectic syntax. A critical, potentially fatal question now arises for political players in both parties, as also for foreign governments trying to plan their interaction with the US: is this man falling apart before our very eyes? If not physically and intellectually...and those questions are starting to be raised, see Dana Milbank in Wednesday's Washington Post, Oct. 12, pg. A-7...but politically?


One of the more revealing lines of Conservative attack against Bush's pick of the hapless Harriet Meirs for the Supreme Court is when we read senior establishment elite players like George Will or David Brooks or Bill Kristol or Charles Krauthammer laughing at the President's assertion that we should trust his judgment on how brilliant Ms. Miers really is. These former supporters sneeringly ask, in effect, "what the hell would Bush know about personal excellence!?"


This isn't just rude, it's devastating, given where it's coming from. And we have three more years with Bush in the White House. The implications of such questions even being asked, much less answered in the affirmative, are obvious, and boil down to the risk of political anarchy at home, and increasingly disconnected foreign policy, as per Brzezinski's analysis, overseas.


So the specific question for today is, what are the leadership implications? Even assuming Bush's team can come up with serious, meaningful approaches to the Delphi bankruptcy as a signal of the coming collapse of the Capitalist social contract with Labor (and what do you think the odds are on that? What are YOUR bright ideas?) how can this White House expect to enforce political discipline on a Congress just three months away from an election year, when it's everyone for themselves under the best of circumstances, and when a majority of Republicans remain incredibly uncomfortable voting for something as basic as Trade Adjustment Assistance?


Delphi this week...and GM at some point, followed by its millions of suppliers and co-dependents. It's irreversible under the current system.


The industrial middle class of America has been under attack from globalization, and self-induced failures like no national health-care, for a generation. Even if some miracle set of programs arises from some latter day FDR and his New Deal (and remember, it was WW2 which ended the Great Depression here...think on that for a minute) it will take another generation to work out for the population as a whole. And that's if we're lucky and a real Marshall Plan for America can be developed....some way to provide Americans with a European-style "state subsidy" for the social benefits which stockholder-responsive private industry can no longer provide, at a profit, in the face of globalization.

But the biggest question is not about, "How could Bush do this?", it's about "Why did we let him?" Few of us have been consistently sounding the alarm over the past five years.
Republicans have been lining up for the pork provided by the Homeland Security funds, supposedly building our national security. Too many of these funds went to places where Republican voters are many, and security risks are few. Notably absent is any coherent security for our nation's ports, nuclear facilities, water and food resources, all of which would be first and most disasterously felt in our Cities, which interesting vote Democratically. Only when Bush's latest debacle, the nomination of his personal attorney to the Supreme Court in an act that blatently drips of chronyism. Yet it's not that the Republican's complain of, it's pay off promised to the Christian Right wing that wants to build America into a Theocracy. Then there are the billions supposedly fighting the war and rebuilding Iraq, much of which actually ended up in Bush's buddies from Halliburton. Then of course, there was the trillions in tax cuts for the super rich that will eventually gut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, housing prices and pensions, the wealth and safety net for the middle and working classes.
So where have the Democrats been? Having lost too many elections in a row, they are timidly hiding from the scene when the important things happen, like the passing of the resolution in the Senate authorizing Bush to use force in Iraq, and the stealing of two elections by chronies at key positions in electoral management and finally on the Supreme Court. And what about the unprecidented undermining of the Bill of Rights represented by the so-called "Patriot Act", torture by military personnel worldwide, and extraordinary renditions of citizens of America and our allied countries. Now finally with the polls tilting and the Republican right wing in an up-roar, the Democratic leadership is finally standing up.
This is not about George W. Bush, the villiage idiot from Texas, this is about the collapse of a system of government by a country the whole world admired, sometimes begrudgingly. Even enemies came to the US to avail themselves of American edication and technology. Perhaps if we had a government full of honorable men of the left and right of the likes of Paul Wellstone and Barry Goldwater, we might have avoided this.
But no, I'm afraid the problem runs much deeper than this, this is about the collapse of the marketplace of ideas. Our citizens and even leaderships simply don't know enough to advise, consent, and govern. Instead the citizens of the US are educated by a flickering vacuum tube that flashes enticing images and sounds of trinkets, sound bites, tidbits of information and disinformation. TV conveys far too little information to educate.
This is the challenge we face. Will it require the collapse of the largest economy in the world? The history of man says it will. Man has made important evolutionary changes in the face of challenges to the survival of the species. Ice Ages have made us who we are. Can we learn enough to protect us from ourselves?

Cheney In Trouble?

There are rumors flying that Cheney is on the outs in the White House. Some rumors say that Cheney has become a target of the Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald investigation.
The Next Hurrah

Clearly, there is a lot of evidence to suggest Cheney did know of Wilson's trip when it happened. Which would mean Cheney's office either buried evidence they had been briefed on the trip in February 2002. Or they buried that evidence by the time they testified to the SSCI.


This is what I think Fitzgerald may be closing in on. True, he might just have Cheney going after Wilson in response to his Meet the Press statements, and stumbling on the INR memo. That would already require enough of a conspiracy to communicate to John Bolton (or whoever discovered the information on the trip from the INR memo) that they were looking for information on Wilson.


This is what I think Fitzgerald may be closing in on. True, he might just have Cheney going after Wilson in response to his Meet the Press statements, and stumbling on the INR memo. That would already require enough of a conspiracy to communicate to John Bolton (or whoever discovered the information on the trip from the INR memo) that they were looking for information on Wilson.


But as news reports indicate Fitzgerald is closing in on Cheney and as more news of Cheney's apparent estrangement from this Administration appears, I think it's bigger than that. I think Fitzgerald may be piecing together evidence that Cheney deliberately ignored the results of Wilson's trip ... and then buried evidence he had done so.


I have no idea whether that means he's also getting close to solving the Niger forgery mystery. But if Cheney knew of Wilson and ignored his intelligence--then lashed out precisely because Wilson could prove that he deliberately ignored intelligence that proved the case for war was fraudulent, it would be damning enough.

Meanwhile, there are indications that all the President's men are at each other's throats.
Salon.com Books

Apparently, according to two journalist sources of mine, when Rove learned that he might have violated the law, he turned on Cheney and Libby and made it clear that he held them responsible for the problem they had created for the administration. The protracted silence on this topic from the White House masks considerable tension between the Office of the President and the Office of the Vice President.

If all of this is true, Cheney and Rove have been distanced by the Bush White House, that leaves Dubya and his loyal lieutenant Rice running the show. I shudder at the prospects....
Here is a great timeline on the Plame/Fitzgerald investigation.

Pessimism surrounds falling oil production in Iraq

USATODAY.com

Iraq's oil production has fallen below prewar levels to its lowest point in a decade, depriving the country's fledgling government of badly needed income and preventing the United States from achieving one of its main reconstruction goals.


Iraq's oil wells — beset by equipment problems and saboteurs — are producing about 1.9 million barrels a day in net production, lower than the 2.6 million it was producing just before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, according to the London-based Centre for Global Energy Studies (CGES).


Of the oil produced, about 500,000 barrels are consumed daily by Iraqis, while 1.4 million barrels are exported, CGES says. MORE

It just keeps getting worse. Iraq's lack of production is contributing to the world oil shortage. The Iraq war was all about oil. In the end, it gave more control over oil to Iran. And this is making the world a safer place for Americans?

Poll: Americans Favor Bush's Impeachment If He Lied about Iraq

AfterDowningStreet.org

By a margin of 50% to 44%, Americans want Congress to consider impeaching President Bush if he lied about the war in Iraq, according to a new poll commissioned by AfterDowningStreet.org, a grassroots coalition that supports a Congressional investigation of President Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003. The poll was conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs, the highly-regarded non-partisan polling company. The poll interviewed 1,001 U.S. adults on October 6-9.


The poll found that 50% agreed with the statement:


"If President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should consider holding him accountable by impeaching him."


44% disagreed, and 6% said they didn't know or declined to answer. The poll has a /- 3.1% margin of error.


Among those who felt strongly either way, 39% strongly agreed, while 30% strongly disagreed.

You can fool some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. I would love to see the 2006 elections moved up a year. We are about to see a year of disinformation in the Republican drive to shore up their crumbling fortress.

Heroes of Our Times

Heroes are getting harder to find every day. The personal and professional cost of bucking the system grows. In California, Civil Liberty lawyers shine in the corridors of the prisons.
Los Angeles Times

They exposed the state's locking up of juvenile offenders for 23 hours at a stretch in cells smeared with blood and feces. They helped spark an unprecedented federal court takeover of California's prison healthcare system after revealing that prisoners were dying because of medical neglect. They ended the practice of placing mentally ill prisoners in extreme isolation.


The Prison Law Office, a nonprofit group of lawyers who labor in the shadow of San Quentin Prison, has in recent years scored a string of court victories felt in nearly every corner of California's teeming prisons. "There is almost no aspect of California corrections, adult or juvenile, that is not subject to a court order, and almost all of those are the result of suits brought by the Prison Law Office," said Barry Krisberg, president of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency.


Although its lawyers are underpaid by law firm standards and represent wildly unpopular clients, the group has become a litigation powerhouse so successful that the state in recent years has chosen to fold rather than fight it. MORE

US Military Stressed Beyond The Limit In Iraq

Anyone still wonder if Bush did much anything right in propagating the war in Iraq, read on:
Los Angeles Times

Straining to find ground troops to maintain its force levels in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon has begun deploying thousands of Air Force personnel to combat zones in new jobs as interrogators, prison sentries and gunners on supply trucks.


The Air Force years ago banked its future on state-of-the-art fighter jets and billion-dollar satellites. Yet the service that has long avoided being pulled into ground operations is now finding that its people — rather than its weapons — are what the Pentagon needs most as it wages a prolonged war against a low-tech, insurgent enemy.


Individual branches have spent decades carving out unique roles within the U.S. military, and Air Force officials insist that the redeployment of its personnel is temporary. Nonetheless, the reassignments come as another sign that the Pentagon is struggling to meet the demands of what military officials have begun calling "the long war."


As part of the effort, more than 3,000 Air Force personnel are being assigned new roles. And they are being dispatched to combat zones for longer tours of duty — as much as 12 months rather than four. MORE

Bush has used up the military so much that he has to put pilots on the ground!

Bush said God told him to invade Iraq

Newsday.com: BBC

US President George W. Bush allegedly said God told him to invade Iraq and Afghanistan, a new BBC documentary will reveal, according to details released on Thursday.


Bush made the claim when he met Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas and then foreign minister Nabil Shaath in June 2003, the ministers told the documentary series to be broadcast in Britain later this month.


The US leader also told them he had been ordered by God to create a Palestinian state, the ministers said.


Shaath, now the Palestinian information minister, said: "President Bush said to all of us: 'I'm driven with a mission from God.


'God would tell me, 'George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan'.'


"And I did, and then God would tell me, 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq...' And I did.


"'And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, 'Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East.' And by God I'm gonna do it'," said Shaath.


Abbas, who was also at the meeting in the Egyptian resort of Sharm al-Sheikh, recalled how the president told him: "I have a moral and religious obligation.


"So I will get you a Palestinian state." MORE

Almost one year ago, a NY Times article outlined what Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and a treasury official for the first President Bush, reported that Dubya thought he was on a Messianic mission that God had directed.

Bartlett, a 53-year-old columnist and self-described libertarian Republican who has lately been a champion for traditional Republicans concerned about Bush's governance, went on to say: ''This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy. He believes you have to kill them all. They can't be persuaded, that they're extremists, driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he's just like them.

Now we hear the Palestinian leadership reports the same story. If it's true, Bush is preparing Israel for the Rapture and Apocalypse.

Bush's Veil Over History

New York Times

SECRECY has been perhaps the most consistent trait of the George W. Bush presidency. Whether it involves refusing to provide the names of oil executives who advised Vice President Dick Cheney on energy policy, prohibiting photographs of flag-draped coffins returning from Iraq, or forbidding the release of files pertaining to Chief Justice John Roberts's tenure in the Justice Department, President Bush seems determined to control what the public is permitted to know. And he has been spectacularly effective, making Richard Nixon look almost transparent.


But perhaps the most egregious example occurred on Nov. 1, 2001, when President Bush signed Executive Order 13233, under which a former president's private papers can be released only with the approval of both that former president (or his heirs) and the current one.
Before that executive order, the National Archives had controlled the release of documents under the Presidential Records Act of 1978, which stipulated that all papers, except those pertaining to national security, had to be made available 12 years after a president left office.


Now, however, Mr. Bush can prevent the public from knowing not only what he did in office, but what Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush and Ronald Reagan did in the name of democracy. (Although Mr. Reagan's term ended more than 12 years before the executive order, the Bush administration had filed paperwork in early 2001 to stop the clock, and thus his papers fall under it.)


Bill Clinton publicly objected to the executive order, saying he wanted all his papers open. Yet the Bush administration has nonetheless denied access to documents surrounding the 177 pardons President Clinton granted in the last days of his presidency. Coming without explanation, this action raised questions and fueled conspiracy theories: Is there something to hide? Is there more to know about the controversial pardon of the fugitive financier Marc Rich? Is there a quid pro quo between Bill Clinton and the Bushes? Is the current president laying a secrecy precedent for pardons he intends to grant? MORE

I would presume Bush has lots to hide. What he plans to do in the future, especially regarding pardons is the least of it. We can't learn from history unless we know what it is. Without disclosure, Presidents truly become above the law. There is no way to hold them accountable for illegal acts. Republicans will certainly not want to disclose Bush shenanigans when it will cost them at the polls.
Just how are we supposed to function as a democracy? An informed populous is to educate itself about government and give advice and consent to those that govern. We do that by voting and consulting with our representatives. If the Presidential papers become secret, just how do we know what we are getting?
Truly, Gore was right, our very way of life is in grave danger.

Doublethink Dubya Says Slavery Is Not Ok, Except For His Friends

Remember when Bush made such a big deal about sanctions and new emphasis in law enforcement for human trafficking? Within days, he started back tracking. First he waived sanctions against Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Venezuela, Ecuador and Cambodia. Now it turns out Haliburton's sub-contractors have been using much the same tactics to get foriegn workers to Iraq using false pretenses.
Doublethink Dubya does it again, now you see his words in the news, later, his actions disappear from press coverage.
Chicago Tribune | U.S. cash fuels human trade

American tax dollars and the wartime needs of the U.S. military are fueling an illicit pipeline of cheap foreign labor, mainly impoverished Asians who often are deceived, exploited and put in harm's way in Iraq with little protection.


The U.S. has long condemned the practices that characterize this human trade as it operates elsewhere in the Middle East. Yet this very system is now part of the privatization of the American war effort and is central to the operations of Halliburton subsidiary KBR, the U.S. military's biggest private contractor in Iraq.

[...]
To maintain the flow of low-paid workers key to military support and reconstruction in Iraq, the U.S. military has allowed KBR to partner with subcontractors that hire laborers from Nepal and other countries that prohibit citizens from being deployed in Iraq. That means brokers recruiting such workers operate illicitly.


The U.S. military and KBR assume no responsibility for the recruitment, transportation or protection of foreign workers brought to the country. KBR leaves every aspect of hiring and deployment in the hands of its subcontractors. Those subcontractors often turn to job brokers dealing in menial laborers.


Working in tandem with counterparts in the Middle East, the brokers in South and Southeast Asia recruit workers from some of the world's most remote areas. They lure laborers to Iraq with false promises of lucrative, safe jobs in nations such as Jordan and Kuwait, even falsifying documents to complete the deception.


Even after foreign workers discover they have been lured under false pretenses, many say they have little choice but to continue into Iraq or stay longer than planned. They feel trapped because they must repay brokers' huge fees.


Some U.S. subcontractors in Iraq--and the brokers feeding them--employ practices condemned by the U.S. elsewhere, including fraud, coercion and seizure of workers' passports. MORE

What is Poverty in America

It's become politically incorrect to talk about poverty. The result of silence has been a growing underclass, largely invisible to the suburban Republicans. Perhaps, Katrina will change the rules of politically correct.
TomPaine.com

The divide between the affluent and average working American families—let’s not forget that the majority of poor families have at least one worker—is most clear when it comes to assets. The richest 5 percent of American households control nearly 60 percent of the nation’s wealth, while the bottom 40 percent have less than a percent. What’s more, low- and middle-income families are increasingly saddled with debt. Given an inability to make ends meet, not to mention the spiraling cost of housing, millions of Americans are literally mortgaging their futures.


For starters, they can’t agree on the nature and depth of poverty in the United States. Using the federal government’s official poverty measure—which is about $16,000 annually for a family of three and $19,000 for a family of four—17 percent of the nation’s children are living in poor families. That’s 12 million children, and the number is increasing.


Perhaps most stunning is that 7 percent of children—5 million—live in families with incomes of less than half the poverty level. That’s a paltry sum—less than $8,000 for a family of three and $9,600 for a family of four.


These are the official statistics. But just about everyone agrees that the feds’ current measure is woefully out of date. We measure poverty by a standard set more than 40 years ago. Data collected in the 1950s indicated that families spent about one-third of their income on food. Poverty is still measured by multiplying the cost of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s “economy food plan” by three.


Our national poverty figures obscure dramatic variation by place and race. In New Hampshire, 7 percent of children are poor, whereas in Arkansas, the figure is 25 percent. About 10 percent of white children live in poverty, while roughly 30 percent of African-American and Latino children do. Before Katrina, 38 percent of children in New Orleans were poor.

Senate in a Bipartisan Effort Defies the Whitehouse On Torture

There are some Republicans with a shade of honor, albeit belated. McCain is the closest leader they have that might be called a statesman.
Washington Post

The Senate defied the White House yesterday and voted to set new limits on interrogating detainees in Iraq and elsewhere, underscoring Congress's growing concerns about reports of abuse of suspected terrorists and others in military custody.


Forty-six Republicans joined 43 Democrats and one independent in voting to define and limit interrogation techniques that U.S. troops may use against terrorism suspects, the latest sign that alarm over treatment of prisoners in the Middle East and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is widespread in both parties. The White House had fought to prevent the restrictions, with Vice President Cheney visiting key Republicans in July and a spokesman yesterday repeating President Bush's threat to veto the larger bill that the language is now attached to -- a $440 billion military spending measure.

[...]
The Senate's 90 to 9 vote suggested a new boldness among Republicans to challenge the White House on war policy. The amendment by McCain, one of Bush's most significant backers at the outset of the Iraq war, would establish uniform standards for the interrogation of people detained by U.S. military personnel, prohibiting "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment while they are in U.S. custody.


McCain's allies included Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), a former military lawyer, and Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.). They said new detainee standards are needed to clear up confusion among U.S. troops that may have led to the mistreatment alleged at the Navy's Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba and to the abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.


The military came under condemnation throughout the world two years ago upon the release of photos showing U.S. troops humiliating and terrifying inmates at Abu Ghraib. Some low-ranking soldiers have been sentenced to prison for the abuse, but many lawmakers and others said they continue to worry about tactics that border on torture in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay.


In his closing speech, McCain said terrorists "hold in contempt" international conventions "such as the Geneva Conventions and the treaty on torture."


"I know that," he said. "But we're better than them, and we are the stronger for our faith."

The Taliban Continues to Consolidate in Afghanistan

Not only is Iraq a center for terrorist training, now Afghanistan has returned to that role.
Asia Times Online

Top Pakistani and US officials are to develop a new consensus strategy to combat the renewed al-Qaeda and Taliban threat as US-led coalition intelligence is convinced that this nexus has consolidated in Afghanistan to such an extent that it is using the country as a sanctuary from which to direct global operations.


It was for this very reason that the US invaded Afghanistan in late 2001 as the Taliban had allowed Osama bin Laden to take up residence in the country, set up jihadi training camps and, among other things, plan for September 11.


Since the Taliban's almost overnight retreat in face of that invasion, they have slowly reestablished themselves in parts of Afghanistan, as well as in Pakistani territory in remote border areas. MORE

Our Democracy Has Been Hollowed Out

This is a speech that has been long over due. Finally, someone with the courage of his conviction and a sufficient bully pulpit to be heard has said it. Will mainstream media pick it up?
TomPaine.com

Al Gore was vice president of the United States. The following is the prepared text of the speech he delivered to the The Media Center's We Media conference on October 5, 2005 in New York City.


I came here today because I believe that American democracy is in grave danger. It is no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse. I know that I am not the only one who feels that something has gone basically and badly wrong in the way America's fabled "marketplace of ideas" now functions.

[...]
I thought maybe it was an aberration when three-quarters of Americans said they believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for attacking us on September 11, 2001. But more than four years later, between a third and a half still believe Saddam was personally responsible for planning and supporting the attack.

[...]
Are we still routinely torturing helpless prisoners, and if so, does it feel right that we as American citizens are not outraged by the practice? And does it feel right to have no ongoing discussion of whether or not this abhorrent, medieval behavior is being carried out in the name of the American people? If the gap between rich and poor is widening steadily and economic stress is mounting for low-income families, why do we seem increasingly apathetic and lethargic in our role as citizens?


On the eve of the nation's decision to invade Iraq, our longest serving senator, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, stood on the Senate floor asked: "Why is this chamber empty? Why are these halls silent?"


The decision that was then being considered by the Senate with virtually no meaningful debate turned out to be a fateful one. A few days ago, the former head of the National Security Agency, Retired Lt. General William Odom, said, "The invasion of Iraq, I believe, will turn out to be the greatest strategic disaster in U.S. history."

[...]
Our democracy has been hollowed out. The opinions of the voters are, in effect, purchased, just as demand for new products is artificially created. Decades ago Walter Lippman wrote, "the manufacture of consent...was supposed to have died out with the appearance of democracy...but it has not died out. It has, in fact, improved enormously in technique...under the impact of propaganda, it is no longer plausible to believe in the original dogma of democracy."

[...]
Campaign finance reform, however well it is drafted, often misses the main point: so long as the only means of engaging in political dialogue is through purchasing expensive television advertising, money will continue by one means or another to dominate American politic s. And ideas will no longer mediate between wealth and power.


And what if an individual citizen, or a group of citizens wants to enter the public debate by expressing their views on television? Since they cannot simply join the conversation, some of them have resorted to raising money in order to buy 30 seconds in which to express their opinion. But they are not even allowed to do that.


Moveon.org tried to buy ads last year to express opposition to Bush's Medicare proposal which was then being debated by Congress. They were told "issue advocacy" was not permissible. Then, one of the networks that had refused the Moveon ad began running advertisements by the White House in favor of the President's Medicare proposal. So Moveon complained and the White House ad was temporarily removed. By temporary, I mean it was removed until the White House complained and the network immediately put the ad back on, yet still refused to present the Moveon ad.


The advertising of products, of course, is the real purpose of television. And it is difficult to overstate the extent to which modern pervasive electronic advertising has reshaped our society. In the 1950s, John Kenneth Galbraith first described the way in which advertising has altered the classical relationship by which supply and demand are balanced over time by the invisible hand of the marketplace. According to Galbraith, modern advertising campaigns were beginning to create high levels of demand for products that consumers never knew they wanted, much less needed.


The same phenomenon Galbraith noticed in the commercial marketplace is now the dominant fact of life in what used to be America's marketplace for ideas. The inherent value or validity of political propositions put forward by candidates for office is now largely irrelevant compared to the advertising campaigns that shape the perceptions of voters.

[...]
...it is television delivered over cable and satellite that will continue for the remainder of this decade and probably the next to be the dominant medium of communication in America's democracy. And so long as that is the case, I truly believe that America's democracy is at grave risk.


The final point I want to make is this: We must ensure that the Internet remains open and accessible to all citizens without any limitation on the ability of individuals to choose the content they wish regardless of the Internet service provider they use to connect to the Worldwide Web. We cannot take this future for granted. We must be prepared to fight for it because some of the same forces of corporate consolidation and control that have distorted the television marketplace have an interest in controlling the Internet marketplace as well. Far too much is at stake to ever allow that to happen.


We must ensure by all means possible that this medium of democracy's future develops in the mold of the open and free marketplace of ideas that our Founders knew was essential to the health and survival of freedom. MORE