"A great day for Iraq."

That's a quote from a US general, commenting on new uniforms for Iraqi military that visually differ from the old ones so insurgents can't conceal themselves as soldiers. You gotta read the entire article, and if you're not teared up (with either laughter or sadness) by the end, you're not a human being.

I have my limits

For years, I've posted tales of the miseries Iraqis have undergone because of our invasion and occupation of their country. But tonight, at one o'clock a.m., PDT, I found myself unable to keep at it, unable to click at the bottom of page one of this report about the hundreds of bodies found in the Tigris River, unable to bear more ugliness and depravity. If you can, feel free, but don't tell me what appears. I'm going to sleep--like most Amerkcans.

"Why do they hate us?"

Hmm. I wonder. Could it be because of this?

They're finally getting it

Our troops in Iraq are asking--of themselves now, but, hopefully, of their commanders, including their commander-in-chief--"Why are we here? Who is the enemy?"

Job has nothing on the Iraqis

Now we learn that the Tigris River is poisonous--dead fish and dead birds floating along, covering the banks of the river north of Baghdad. And of course the river is a main source of drinking water for Iraqis--and flows south.

WTF?

Some posts ago I wondered "who's on first?" Now, with this latest madness among the Iraqi power structure, I wonder, "who's at bat?"

Pot and kettle

During the first three days of October, seventeen US soldiers have been killed in Iraq. Now that's an horrific average daily death toll--more than twice the average over the three-plus years of the war--but an even more horrific raw figure. Seventeen dead GI's. If a helicopter carrying that many troops went down outside of Atlanta, Georgia (or somewhere), the event would bounce every other story off the front page, at least for one news cycle.

But not over the last few days. The seventeen GI died unnoticed, the news of the carnage swamped by stories of Congressman Foley's folly.

Not that I'm not enjoying watching the Republicans twist and squirm, but in truth the left-wingers, including all AirAmerica radio hosts, have given time to only that one story, mimicking the right commentators during the Clinton scandal. So--Al Franken, Randi Rhodes, all you folks--don't for a moment think you've got the high ground on yellow talk. You're no different from the Limbaugh's and Hannity's. You're all in the entertainment business, pure and simple.

I missed my calling

I shoulda been a headline writer, so I could come up with lines like this. Wonderful.

If you wrote a novel with these developments

you'd be ridiculed as a sci-fi author. An eleventh-hour scandal about a Republican Congressman, soliciting sex from a teenage intern while heading up House's Internet solicitation committee; a growing unrest about foreign wars; a hard-headed president, with hard-headed advisors, resisting all. And now, we learn that the Senate is up for grabs, headed for a dead heat which, of course, would leave any significant political votes in that chamber tied--and with Cheney, the most hard-headed of all, able to cast the deciding vote.

Condi, you're a lying bitch

This monster has been given a free ride for too long. Now, less than a day after she denied meeting on July 10, 2001, with Tenet and Cofer Black about an imminent al Qaida attack, it turns out, oops, that meeting did indeed happen.

A new movement

Take a minute or two, and make your whole day.

McCain, as in Abel

This essay nails it. The "maverick" senator from Arizona is no moderate, no maverick. He's dangerous, and he's a media darling. Sound like some sitting president you know?

Who's on first?

When Iraqi police attempt to assasinate the governor of a province, you gotta ask yourself.

Flipping burgers

That used to be the job reserved for the high school dropout, the lowest rung on the service-industry poll. Well, if you scroll down (or, if you can handle reading) this lengthy analysis of how "free trade" is wrecking the American job market, you'll find this paragraph.

"According to Norm Augustine, former CEO of Lockheed Martin, even McDonald jobs are on the way offshore. Augustine reports that McDonald is experimenting with replacing error-prone order takers with a system that transmits orders via satellite to a central location and from there to the person preparing the order. The technology lets the orders be taken in India or China at costs below the U.S. minimum wage and without the liabilities of U.S. employees."

The prospect of leaving my newly-arrive grandchild a third-world (or lower) economy is truly frightening--as is this article.

You know you've got construction problems

When a ceiling light fixture fills with fecal matter seeping through the floor above.

In case you wondered...

Here's what's going on in Iraq lately. The author of this blog, an Iraqi journalist, keeps track of the ongoing carnage throughout the country, not just the latest car bomb in Baghdad. It makes for tough reading, but it's necessary to get a true picture of how ugly it is, day after day, in that sorry nation.

The looming debacle

Here's why I got out of the stock market.

The Congress nobody wanted

Yesterday I suggested that Democrats may not want to take control of Congress, to allow the Republicans to stew in their own juice. Now, it seems, some Republicans don't want to control Congress either.

Who's in charge?

I thought we had a free press in America (not really, lately, but I still enjoy saying it), but now I know different. Newsweek has dropped both its cover and its cover story about the lost war in Afghanistan. Too tough for its American readership, but not too tough for the rest of the world. Could it be that Newsweek as self-editing on the eve of the midterm elections? Oh, no. Say it isn't so.

Should the Democrats lose the mid-term elections on purpose?

I've lately read a couple of essays (can't find them just now to link to) proposing that Democrats ought not take control of Congress in 2006, so that the ongoing misery and madness of the Republicans may continue unabated for two more years. This, the theory goes, would so demolish them that a wholesale revolt in 2008 would sweep in the Democrats to govern for the next decade or more. Further, the Democrats would avoid having to make the tough choices that are necessary to clean up the Republicans' mess of wars, deficits and so on, at least until they had a free hand to do so, while able to blame the Republicans for the mess, without equivocation.

As awful a prospect as it seems right now, it does have at least one redeeming feature. It lets Bush fester in the warmaking of his own making, in particular, to wallow in a decision whether to allow Iran to continue enriching uranium, after North Korea succeeded in getting the bomb. He would thereby have made two ruinous wars (Iraq and Afghanistan) and failed to disarm two of three of the members of the "axis of evil" he declared when he took office.

It's a breathtaking prospect. Two more years of madness, followed by a true takeover of the nation by peaceloving, fairminded souls who would govern in the best interests of all Americans, of all citizens of the planet.

Nevermind. I was crazy to imagine such a thing could happen, in 2008 or ever. So--elect a Democratic Congress six weeks, and impeach Bush/Cheney as soon as possible. It's already too late, but it would sure save the ratings of CNN.

Right on

Tom Tomorrow has got it right, absolutely. If Bush wants to call it a war on terror, the terrorists are surely winning. They're surely inflicting more terror on us than we are on them.

Chavez the publicist

Ya gotta love it.

A bit of history

Nothing new here, but an illuminating insight into "why they hate us."

Faith-based initiatives?

So, Bush, what do you do when your church doesn't agree with you? Follow its teachings, or "stay the course" of your political mentor, Rove? Who would Jesus bomb?

Chavez rocks

Here's an incomplete, incompetent translation of Hugo Chavez's remarks at the UN General Assembly. Here's a more complete, competent one. Just compare the first few lines and you'll notice significant differences, including the Chomsky references.

The press in the US, and Democrats like Pelosi too, are villifying Chavez for his "sulfur" remark. I for one found it amusing, as did several of the delegates to the UN, who could be heard laughing in the background. And if you read the entire text of the well-presented translation you'll see that the sulphur references, in context, are solidly metaphorical, speaking of the stench of the demon who'd spoken from that podium the day before.

Declaring war

What do you think? Should we declare war? And on what?

Rove's a genius

I've got to admit it, much as it hurts. You see, here's what he's lately attempting--after years of manipulating a majority of us on other matters. He's got his minions, with one voice, conflating our soldiers' ongoing miseries in the Iraq occupation, with honorable sacrifice in support of the "global war on terror." This will, if successful, not only isolate us peaceniks as traitors but concurrently completely reverse the effect of bad news from Iraq. Now, deaths of American soldiers will be no longer be hidden. They'll lose their nature as outrageous waste and be trumpeted as necessary tragedy.

Rove's campaign is already underway, as can be seen in this AP dispatch, in which the Army spokesman, as part of the revelation that deaths of American troops increased lately, appeared to connect that fact with the announcement by al Qaida in Iraq's recent call to arms. In the past, the two wouldn't be connected, for fear of being evidence of al Qaida's effectiveness. But now, the connection serves the administration's purpose of showing Iraq to be part of the "global war on terror," and the soldiers' deaths as heroic losses in that cause.

Goldwater for President

I just watched an HBO special about the life and politics of Barry Goldwater. Although most of my life I've been far left of his position on issues of government involvement in issues of social welfare, and certainly I've opposed his bent toward military might, I always believed in the truthful, principled posture he maintained about limited government in the citizen's personal affairs. Goldwater opposed the intrusion of government in issues of abortion, homosexuality, religion and the like. Once, in 1964 when he was running against Lyndon Johnson for President, he came to Tucson for a fundraiser and I heard a local interview of him on radio. I even recall where I was when I heard the interview, driving down Broadway near Park Avenue, headed west. Here's what I recall hearing:

"Senator Goldwater, what is your position on the question of legalizing marijuana?"

"Well, I'm a conservative, and on that issue my position is clear. I think that unless the government can demonstrate an evil--a tangible, danger--from any behavior, I think government should keep the hell out of it. That goes for marijuana use, or any other thing that hasn't shown to be dangerous."

That's as close as I can get to a direct quote, and my recollection is borne out by the positions Goldwater was shown on the HBO special to have held on similiar issues. Maybe now he'd be called a Libertarian, but back then he was a true conservative. And what the special pointed out at the end was this: Goldwater's views about conservative government didn't change throughout his life. What changed was the Republican Right. It's now a bunch whose beliefs Goldwater abhored. Intrusive, driven by religiosity and small-minded. All of which leads me to say: Goldwater for President.

A sick society

You want to know what's propping up the US economy? Check out this article. And no wonder so much money's being spent on health care, with the billions of dollars being spent on advertising for drugs, health insurance and treatment of various illness, many of which have been created by advertising. Take ED (erectile dysfunction) for example. Ten years ago we didn't know it was a disease. It may have been for some men a condition, probably mostly situational, but it hardly warranted as much attention as the television audience is exposed to.

I've been spending the last few days in a motel room with a TV that has but a few channels, and so have been subjected to many network shows (although they're not the sole source of such ads) and I'm amazed at how much advertising time is spent on health issues. And it's only going to increase as the baby-boomers age.

It's time to consider nationalizing the medical profession. "Nationalized medicine" was discussed by in the sixties, but of course it didn't stand a chance. But something's got to be done, or our spending and concern about "health" will ruin us.

Democratizing Iraq?

So this is progress--building a trench, with checkpoints around Baghdad. Why not a moat, or for that matter a Berlin (or an Israeli) wall?

D.O.A.P.

Some thoughts about the movie.

First, it will probably fire up the Bushites, maybe cause Bush to rise in the polls or at least cause a spike in the Republican base. That's probably why it's being presented to the US by the same company that bankrolled Mel Gibson's movie about Christ.

Second, I want to see it, and I think it's partly because I wanna get my rocks off without having to do the deed myself and partly because I want to see how convincingly is portrayed the deperation that leads someone to such an act. Also, I'd like to see how the aftermath is depicted.

Third, I want to see it because it feels subversive to do so. To see it and--and to want to see it.

Very interesting

One person's take on why American movies are so popular abroad. I never thought in these terms before--about literature, too--so I don't yet know whether or how much I agree. Your thoughts?

I'm amazed, actually

Today all the media sources are full of 9/11 remembrances, the politicos--Bush in particular--are in center frame of the ceremonies all day and all night. Much weeping and moaning (some of it genuine, much of it not) is heard around the country.

Given the fact that both the administration that's in charge of our nation's governance and the media that so strongly influence our national psyche are profiting from recounting that tragedy, it's amazing to me that so firmly a majority of Americans isn't swallowing all of it, especially the violence that this administration has precipitated in response to it. Perhaps as a nation we're not the gullible monsters I thought we were. Perhaps.

I'm not alone

The letter to the editor of the NewsPress that I submitted (see my 9/6 post), was published last Saturday. I received an email suggesting that the last line was over the top (that Bush was the number one terrorist), but according to this report of press reaction around the globe, I'm not alone in this thought.

A true test

of whether, short of running out of each other to kill, the sectarian violence in Iraq will cease. Al-Sistani, the heaviest Shiite cleric, has called for unity among all Iraqis and an end to the killing. If his words aren't heeded, it's going to be a long, hard slog indeed.

On a blustery Sunday afternoon

check out this site to learn (and view) what some thinkers have to say about "the meaning of life."

Thank God for the Internets

Where else, how else, could one learn in such effectively-presented detail the history of the Bush administration's lies that allowed it to invade Iraq? Ya done good, MoJo.

"Another country heard from"

on the subject of those secret foreign prisons. Ya gotta love those pesky Europeans.

If it walks like a duck

This isn't civil war?

What's in a name?

Here's the only essay I've found addressing the question of terminology of the administration's dealing with the attacks on US people and property in the last several years. Rather than adopting the GWOT lingo the writer, supported by numerous authoritative sources, contends the "global war" term is not just inappropriate but counterproductive. It turns out that, as John Kerry contended in the 2004 presidential race, the most effective way to deal with those who would attack the US by "terrorist" means is through law-enforcement and intelligence channels. It's only the Bush cabal that prefers to call it "war," and they do so for a solidly successful purpose: to become warriors and to cow the opposition--not the enemy, but the political opponents at home.

Proof positive

In case you ever doubted it, here's a headline and a lede that says it all:

"Wall Street Lower, Wage Hikes Stir Fears AP -
Stocks fell Wednesday after the Labor Department said productivity decreased and wages increased in the spring, stoking fears that wage inflation will prompt the Federal Reserve to return to a policy of interest rate hikes."

You see, neither the Federal Reserve nor investors in the stock market--large financial and capital institutions, mostly--are fundamentally at war, economically, with the workers who toil in investor-owned corporations. During the "Bush recovery" increased productivity (meaning a decrease in, or stable, number of worker hours needed to produce increasing corporate revenue) resulted in escalating corporate profits while wages didn't move in dollar terms, and actually decreased in terms of the cost per unit of production. This allowed corporations to gain profit without increasing price--without, therefore, causing price-driven inflation--and to do so on the backs of the workers' increased productivity, without, in other words, passing any of the increased profit down to the workers in the form of wage increases.

But now, with signs that wages may actually be increasing (as certainly they must, to keep up with the increasing prices of consumer goods, especially gasoline but also most other products)investors fear that the foregoing situation may no longer be extant, that workers may actually be able to participate in the increased profit of their employers' business. This, "wage inflation" may, they worry, cause the Fed to slow down corporate activity--meaning, to the worker, fewer jobs and no more pay increases--by raising the cost of borrowing.

That prospect--of the Fed's increase of interest rates--will do two things that stock investors fear: (1) It will diminish corporate profit; and (2) it will make bond interest-rates more attractive as an investment. The market's negative reaction to pay increases for workers is therefore classically anti-worker and is built into the system. Even if, in theory, such pay increases should lead to greater consumer spending--and hence a well-founded continuation of economic recovery--it is now the case that such increases will likely only go to lending institutions which, by way of credit-card debt and increased mortgage payments due to the flurry of mortgage refinancing, have been the source, for the last five years, of most of consumers' cash availabilty.

So--it's bad news for Wall Street that the workers are finally getting a pay increase. Except, perhaps, for the brief periods when workers actually gained wages in tune with increasing productivity, it always has been.

Here's something I didn't know

The US is going to turn over to Iraq its "operational control" of Iraq's military force in a day or so. What I didn't know is that the US military has all this time been in control of Iraq's military. I thought we'd turned over to Iraq its "full sovereignty" more than a year ago, didn't you?

Letter to the editor

Herewith is a letter I sent to the SB News-Press this evening. Nothing new in it, just thought I'd shake the readership up a bit. Not easy to do with a 250-word limit. If you stumble across it in the paper, let me know since I rarely read the thing and I'd like to cut it out for my memoirs.

To the editor:

Bush’s "war on terror" has doomed Americans to endless conflict, the continuation of which benefits both the terrorists and the Bush administration. The terrorists of course gain from our ongoing turmoil; but so does Bush, as evidenced by his reliance on repeated chants of fear come midterm-election time, in the hope that Americans will once again vote for his party out of reaction rather than for the opposition through reason.

Indeed, the administration’s chants have lately taken an insidious, demonic twist, with Bush/Cheney/Rummie drawing parallels between this conflict and World War Two and calling those of us who demand our troops’ withdrawal from Iraq "appeasers"; while Condi likens us to those who opposed engaging the South in the Civil War.

Enough.

A handful of crazed men attacked us before 9/11, twenty more on 9/11. A few hundred men trained to do so, perhaps a thousand, five thousand tops. But now, because of Bush’s rampant warmaking, those who aspire to kill Americans number in the hundreds of thousands and are spread around the globe. His policies have ensured that their enmity will last lifetimes: the lifetimes of the children of thousands of the people he’s killed—and the lifetimes of our children, too.

The resultant eternal, world-wide “war on terror” is therefore more the product of Bush’s actions than it is of Osama bin Laden’s; and so it is correct to say, as many Americans—and others—have concluded, George W. Bush is the world’s most dangerous terrorist.

Where Liberals and Libertarians meet

Okay, I know I've linked to Justin Raimondo's Antiwar.com blog before, but his latest essay about fascism is too good. If you're too busy, I present herewith the money quote:

"There is a fascist threat to America, all right, but it isn't coming from overseas. It isn't hiding in the caves of Wahhabistan, but lurking in Washington's corridors of power. The same people who warn us of a "fascist" threat coming from abroad are the main purveyors of authoritarianism on the home front. And that is what life is like in the Bizarro World of America in the year A.D. 2006, where the most militant fascists of all style themselves the leaders of a new "anti-fascist" popular front."

Is state warfare terrorism?

A debate has long raged about the distinction between bombing done by state-owned and directed machines and non-state explosions, and more specifically between bombing that theoretically targets an armed enemy (but incidentally kills innocents) and bombing that targets innocents. Certainly, if the latter is done by a state, it's as much "terrorism" as if done by a nonstate, which is why our bombings of Dresden and Tokyo (not to mention Hiroshima and Nagasaki) were clearly acts of terrorism. The targets were not militarily significant, the purpose of the bombings being to break the political will of the people.

So the question is one of intent, right? If one intends to kill civilians for the purpose of changing a nation's course of action, it's terrorism; whereas if one intends to inflict military damage, but incidentally kills civilians, it's not.

So what about bombing that purports to target a military objective (or, even, an objective that has "military significance" such as a roadway or a radio station or a bank or an oil depot). Or for that matter, what about bombing that targets a neighborhood in which both civilians and enemy activists live?

Here's how Howard Zinn sees it.

The repeated excuse, given by both Pentagon spokespersons and Israeli
officials, for dropping bombs where ordinary people live is that terrorists
hide among civilians. Therefore the killing of innocent people (in Iraq, in
Lebanon) is called accidental, whereas the deaths caused by terrorists (on
9/11, by Hezbollah rockets) are deliberate.
This is a false distinction, quickly refuted with a bit of thought. If a bomb is deliberately dropped on a house or a vehicle on the grounds that a ``suspected terrorist" is inside (note the frequent use of the word suspected as evidence of the uncertainty surrounding targets), the resulting deaths of women and children may not be intentional. But neither are they accidental. The proper description is
``inevitable."

I of course agree, and Zinn's analysis calls to mind a legal principle, under US law, that defines intent as including the notion that one can intend a result--can be held to have intended it--if the result is so likely as to be undeniably predictable. If one shouts fire in a crowded theatre and some is killed in the stampede, one is as guilty of murder as if the victim were shot in the face. You get the drift.

To me, both the Bush/Cheney/Rummie cabal with, inter alia, its "shock and awe" campaign over Baghdad, and , Osama and his buddies with their shock and awe over NYC and DC on 9/11, are terrorists. And so, to me, the "war on terror" includes war on both forces.

Cats in a gunnysack

What's next in this sorry land? If they can't agree on a flag, what can they agree on?

ROTFLMAO

For the uninitiated, that's "Rolling on the floor laughing my ass off."

Which is what happened to me when I read to the end of this article about the handover of Abu Ghraib prison to the Iraqis. At the beginning, I thought, "What bunch of lackeys the Iraqis are--spewing the US party line about how the American abuses have been brought to light through an investigative media." But then I learned what I already knew. The empty structure represented an empty gesture.

No, really?

The keystone cops at their best.

"A much-anticipated ceremony to transfer operational command from U.S-led forces to
Iraq's new army was postponed on Saturday at the last minute amid confusion, a U.S. military spokesman said, citing poor planning. "

My cup of tea

Not. I don't listen to--can't abide a moment of--this recent style of "music" but I gotta tell ya, when I read lyrics like this next to the compelling video, I become a believer. I just wish I could understand the lyrics as they're sung, but I do recall my father having the same complaint about the music I listened to as a kid.

Getting it right

This NYT essay says what I believe about "centrist" Democrats and explains why I left the party for the Green Party ten years ago. I do indeed feel disempowered as a Green, but so long as Clinton Democrats (both Clintons) are thought of as heroes, I'm staying put.

Rocky for President

Watch the speech by Rocky Anderson, the mayor of Salt Lake City, here, or--because it's quite long (however, it's all good)--read it here.

Returning to the madness

I've been offline for about ten days, touring the State of Maine without access to the Internet. Didn't even watch TV, except to view the endless reporting of the JonBenet matter (won't that case ever die?) and so it was a shock to me to learn that yesterday eight US soldiers were killed in Iraq. Eight in one day!

After I get back to SB, I'd better not leave again for a while because you folks aren't to be trusted with our troops.

Update: Make that eleven soldiers. Eleven!

Willie would be proud

"First thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."

Now let's see...

We invaded Iraq in March 2003 and have occupied it for three and a half years. And now, maybe, Bush convenes a group (just a group, not an entirely learned group) to tell him whazzup? And when he doesn't hear good stuff about his policies, he gets "frustrated"?

You gotta read the entire story about the meeting to understand what a rock-head is our president. When you do, you'll learn this: It doesn't mean you're smart or learned if you're president; you're just well-heeled, well-born, and lucky.

Enough is enough

Somebody--not me, I'm chicken--wrestle this guy to the ground, or better yet, run him off the road and into the ditch.

War in space?

The top U.S. Air Force General has predicted future attacks on our satellites in orbit and has called for a program that allows us to guard them by making sure foreign governments' launches aren't threatening. The general's name is Chilton. Where have I heard that name before?

If it's not a civil war, what is it?

Baghdad's population is about half that of Los Angeles. In attacks on a Shiite area of the city yesterday, 62 people were killed and about 140 injured by bombs and rockets launched from somewhere inside the city limits. Can you imagine the headlines in the LA Times, or, for that matter, any US paper if such a thing happened in LA or any major US city? We'd be inundated with reports on CNN and Faux News about the battle, and, believe me, they'd find a phrase for it. If not civil war, it would surely be labeled something catchy. The city wouldn't be called "restive" or "troubled" or "in transition," that's for sure.

It's absolutely clear to me

Based on this AP story about the questions our troops in Iraq are asking their commanders, questions about the legitimacy and efficacy of the US military mission, that what we need to do is to make it crystal clear to our troops that our continued presence there is counterproductive, is enflaming the very people we're supposed to be helping. We need to grow louder in our message to get out of Iraq now. Now! Not one more death at our hands, not one more death of our troops. Not one more!

We must have been getting to them

Our repeated references to the Bush/Cheney regime as fascist has finally caused Rove to preempt the word fascist, inserting it in in the form of "Islamofascists," in Bush's latest speeches. Damn. The MSM has glommed onto the reference now, and so our years of unheeded uses of the word fascist now sound weak and copy-catty. And so it goes.

Unless perhaps we can come up with our own word. "Capitalist-fascist"? Too cumbersome. "Religiofascist"? Better, but it misses the mark. Any ideas?

Okay, I've decided

The ideal ticket, to me, would be Gore/Spitzer in 2008. As to the latter, check out these ads. Powerful stuff. And, I gotta admit, as a fellow windmill-jouster, I've always liked his style as Attorney General of New York.

You can't make this stuff up

American forces busted into a building and arrested five men for alledgedly plotting to kill Iraqi's Prime Minister. Where did this happen, you ask? At the Ministry of Health. And who are these men, you ask? Why, none other than bodyguards for the Minister of Health.

Now what?

The Iraqi government has decided to shut down a splinter group of Kurds in northern Iraq? Now, does the US get involved in that? Or do we simply supply troops in the southern areas to free up the Iraqi forces to move against these Kurds? Stay tuned.

If you're a fan of James Taylor

You might--you will--enjoy this fella; and if you do--you will--you might check out his website, which you can link to from the YouTube site.

Sometimes I wonder...

Am I so far ahead of the reality curve that when I read observations like this--that bin Laden and Bush have a symbiotic relationship--I react with a "well, duh" and am amazed that it's not apparent to lefty pundits, even if it's not apparent to the great unwashed. I've blogged about this regularly, for months, and only now does it get expression in a major post? Maybe it's just that the author, Parry, pieced together a bunch of incidents whereas my observations arose as the facts did, one obvious episode at a time.

Point is: These two despots need each other, feed each other. Even the Israelis' incursion into Lebanon, our "proxy war," could not have started without sanction from Washington, and (except for the excesses of the Israelis, perhaps) benefits Bush and, of course, bin Laden and terrorists everywhere. But you see?: Even by stirring up the Middle East as Bush has, he benefits. True, his approval numbers are in decline, but he doesn't care. All he wants to do is to help his party carry the midterm elections so he can avoid Congressional investigations/impeachment hearings and serve out his final two years in peace.

Looks like he's gonna get his wish, I might add. Bin Laden will see to it.

Compassionate conservatives?

Have they lost their minds?

"Congress appears ready to slash funding for the research and treatment of brain injuries caused by bomb blasts, an injury that military scientists describe as a signature wound of the Iraq war."

What a crock

Here's our military's response to al-Maliki's expression of outrage over the attack in Sadr city. Disgustly transparent bullshit. (I know, I know. Mixed metaphor or something.)

Whaddya know!

An insightful piece about Iraq's present situation (in particular, the unspoken standoff and conundrum facing al-Sadr and the US) written by an MSM writer, a longtime reporter for AP. I actually learned something about Iraq today, besides body counts and press releases.

Morgue humor or grim reality?

How to tell a Shiite corpse from a Sunni corpse.

"Some of the bodies are impossible to identify," Dr Falih Hassan said at the morgue. "But we can tell the victim's religion: if they have been beheaded they are Shia, if they have been killed by an electric drill or hammer blows to the face they are Sunni."

For the fighters roaming Baghdad, the logic is simple. Hassan Alami, 25, a Shiite from Sadr City, said the holes drilled in the Sunni heads were to "destroy their stupid minds". The Sunnis are said to behead their victims because this was how Muhammad dealt with apostates.

The source of these quotes, and more of the appalling article, are here, but the link that's supplied doesn't work.

Am I alone in this?

I've been following the MSM reports on the Israel/Lebanon horror, and reading the blogs and Internet news sources too, and I've not yet seen this observation: That the US policy, announced by Condi Rice, to turn to the UN for solution (a process that will mean debate and delay), is the height of cynicism; that in view of Bush/Cheney's disdain for that body when it gets in their way, their intention to depend on it now is simply a way to pass the buck and pass the time while allowing Israel to accomplish its (and the U.S.'s) military aims in the region, namely, to kill as many anti-Israeli-occupation Arabs as possible.

I'll let you know if I find some similar expression in the media, but it's possible it's so obvious that it goes unsaid.

Caprice

How else to explain the death at age 51 of leukemia of this amazing physical specimen? Or the survival of Lance Armstrong of testicular cancer, and his winning of multiple Tours de France thereafter. There's no evident meaning or rules for all of this, and if not evident, then the belief that there's meaning or rules is either (a) dependent on faith of some kind, or (b)false.

No wonder religion's so popular. It's hard to live a life that acknowledges that there are no rules or meanings. Damn hard. But to leap to faith?

I guess you gotta be there, but never having had such faith I don't know what that feels like. Is it pleasant? Is it soothing? Doesn't it ever feel silly?

What have we wrought?

Riverbend tells us.

It's enough to make you sick of politics

Actually, more than enough. A recent letter from "key Democratic Senators" to Bush about the Iraq war and occupation was said to herald a new unity among Democrats on the topic. Well, it's true several Democrats signed the letter (our Boxer, but not our Feinstein, however, and not Hillary and of course not Lieberman), but the letter itself said nothing new. Rhetoric about the past and an amorphous proposal for the future of our occupation. A weak, spineless expession of a weak, spineless party. If I didn't despise the Republicans so much, I wouldn't ever vote for a Democrat.

Class war

This ploy by the House Republicans--tying an increase in the minimum wage to reduction of the federal estate tax--is too much. When are the poor and middle class in America going to rebel against the monsters who're running this country?

This can't be true

Bush is expanding Gitmo, building a new prison there? And the builder is Halliburton? No. Not possible.

This Shiite cleric

expresses my sentiments exactly.

You know you've got problems

when a commanding general of your armed forces won't give his full name for fear of reprisal from insurgents. (Scroll down to last paragraph of this AP story.)

Once again, words fail

to capture the quality and intensity of the outrage I experienced as I read this Marine Corps article about the "second biggest building in Iraq."

Now here's a good idea

In the midst of Israel's bombing of Lebanon, the US delivers bombs to Israel. Precisely the way to win the hearts and minds of Arab Muslims in the region.

Who's on first?

Wouldn't you love having your kid killed while deployed in this cauldron? Fighting neighborhood militias and death squads, and lions and tigers and bears? I mean, WTF? (To you cybernoncognesisi that's What the Fuck?)

All's well

Sure, the Middle East is ablaze, the Earth is warming alarmingly, the poor are getting poorer while the rich are...you get the drift.

But all is well in the world. Why? Because the last two major golf tournaments, the Womens' US Open and the Mens' British Open, were won by the sound, fine favorites, Annika Sorenstam and Tiger Woods. The pretenders, Mickelson, Wie and their ilk are still back in the pack. Annika and Tiger rule, and so I may sleep tonight.

It's no surprise to me

that the biggest of the MSM, the Associated Press, is biased in favor of the US government's positions on various reports. Now, as demonstrated in this study, we can see how subtle, but dominant that bias is.

In my next life

I want this gig.

Can you guess who said this?

After criticizing Israel's assault on Lebanon, he told assembled Western officials: "Just get your hands off Iraq and the Iraqi people and Muslim countries, and everything will be all right," and
"What has been done in Iraq is a kind of butchery of the Iraqi people."


Another report of the remarks included these telling statements.

"If a reconciliation project is going to work it has to talk to all the people," he said. "It must go through our Iraqi beliefs and perceptions. What we need is reconciliation between Iraqis only, there can be no third party."

To underscore his distaste for US forces in Iraq, he related an anecdote about how US soldiers keep people waiting in lines at checkpoints for hours because they insist on resting their bomb-sniffing dogs.

"The sleep of American dogs is more important than people being stopped in the street for hours," he said, evoking chuckles among Iraqi delegates.

The author of these statements? Speaker of the Iraqi's parliament, that's who.


Could it be that our puppets are beginning to pull their own strings?

Call me stupid

but there was a lot in this essay about money that I didn't know.

Our fearless leader

or should I say stupid leader?

Drown them in blood

Okay, I've decided: I want all of them--the Iraqi "army" and "police," the Iraqi insurgents and "terrorists," its civilians and innocents, the Sunnis and Shias and Turkomans and Kurds--all of them to die. I want the Israelis and Hamas and Hizbollahs (sp?) and Iranians and Syrians and Lebanese to die. I want the Egyptians and Saudis and Afghanis to die, as well as all Indians and Pakistanis and Chinese and Koreans (North and South) and Indonesians and Phillipinos and--you've got my drift. (Lately, I include in the list the Venezuelans, the Chileans, the Bolivians and Brazilians and Cubans, maybe the Mexicans, too.)

Wouldn't it be wonderful if there were no people on Earth, no nations, that didn't oppose the US version of the world? We'd be free to suck oil from wherever we wanted, to cut down timber, net all the fish, mine all the minerals, exploit all the workers. We could drive our SUVs at whatever speed we wanted, borrow all the money we needed, buy anything we desired.

Yup. That's what I want. Maybe then I can stop blogging. I'll be too busy buying and spending and speeding.

A query

I'd like my (numerous) readers to tell me of one thing--one thing--that's improving (a) in America, and (b) on Earth. Just asking.

My thoughts on Al Gore's candidacy for President

are captured precisely here.

The sad story of Mr. Wilson

This AP story of a Ramadi man is touching, tragic. "Destroying a village [in this case a city] in order to save it," just like in VietNam.

In the middle of the piece is an illuminating quote. After telling of Mr. Wilson's plight (and, presumably, the thousands of other Iraqis who've abandoned the city), the writer says, "In the vast scale of suffering and displacement the country has experienced, Mr. Wilson's departure is the tiniest of blips. But it's a vivid symbol of the hardships faced by the U.S.-led coalition and the elected Iraqi government in restoring peace and quiet for the countless other Mr. Wilsons of Iraq."

Hardships faced by the coalition?

Condi's free pass

Our Secretary of State was asleep at the switch during pre-9/11 when she was, supposedly, our security chief; she was the mouthpiece for Bush in the Iraq warmup (recall her "mushroom cloud" reference?), and since then has been a main shill for Bush's failed policies, including in this outrageous appearance on TV. Note how she continues to conflate the madness in the Middle East with 9/11, hoping that the sheeplike American media and citizenry will continue to endure Bush's "policies" in Iraq and his blind support of Israel as part of his "war on terror." Indeed, her terming of criticism of those policies as "grotesque" is grotesque.

It's time we called her the militaristic whore she is, an evil force in our international relations, and stop giving her allowances because of her race/gender. If you think I'm off base here, just consider how her recent words would be treated by the media--especially the liberal media--if uttered by Rummie or Cheney. There's be a howl of protest. But when spoken by Condi, they raise barely a ripple.

This could get interesting, verrry interesting

The prosecution (by us, not them) of the Marines who're charged with rape/murder of that teenager and her family. The Bushies are hoping like crazy that they can fry all of the accuseds to show how just America is. But they can't get DNA from the victim's body because under Islam the exhumation of a dead body isn't permissible. So, the Army prosecution (the only prosecution that our occupancy laws allows) may misfire.

Wouldn't that be the Ritz? The Muslims rise up in outrage when the rape-murdering Marines are given a light sentence (or are acquitted) because of a "technicality," when all Iraqis know--absolutely, they know--that the Marines are guilty and should pay the ultimate price.

We reap what we sow. Madness.

It's a madhouse, a goddam madhouse

During the "clamp down" of Baghdad, a group of militants who, according to a witness, were driving military vehicles, kidnapped the Iraqi Olympic committee, its body guards and various visitors who were filming the meeting.

Yup--you read that correctly. A total of more than fifty people kidnapped in the heart of curfew-closed Baghdad by armed men wearing uniforms. Or something like that. Nobody knows why, nobody knows who. And I sure wanna know--with all of our, and Iraqi, forces closing down the city: How?

Update: Some of the captives were released, but scores are still being held by the gunmen. Still--nobody knows whazzup. The word anarchy applies, so does chaos. And it's still only the middle of the summer.

I wonder how the US public would react

if this quote from the Army Chief of Staff about the current status of US involvement in Iraq was widely known.

"The challenge … is becoming more complex, and it's going to continue to be. That's why I'll tell you I think we're closer to the beginning than we are to the end of all this."

Yup, there's no light at the end of the tunnel, there's no insurgency in its "last throes," there's only an ongoing "long, hard slog" on which we've just begun to engage.

Have a nice summer.

I grind my teeth

when I read articles like this, showing the agonizing futility of our "mission" in Iraq, and our wretched incompetence in working toward it. For the last two years, at least--since all other fabricated justifications for our waste of lives and treasure in Iraq evaporated--our stated task has been to create a sound local force to secure the nation. And now we learn that all we've done is arm sects of Muslims who, of course, have decades of scores to settle.

Stay the course? What course?

Proxy wars

During the Cold War, there were plenty of these. Now we have an even more insidious form, where the purpose is merely to deflect attention from the US policies and activities in the world. Bush is remaining silent, allowing the carnage to develop between historic adversaries in the region. This is a perfect situation for Bush. He can stand back and allow CNN and Faux News cover this new war, so that our ongoing misery in Iraq falls back into the back pages and Bush once again becomes a war president.

Problem: With "traditional Democrats" (Hillary, Biden and, yes, Lieberman) supporting Israel blindly, always, they'll parrot Bush's hands-off policy. So the same schism within the Democratic party that has split it over Iraq's misery will continue, empowering the Republicans to claim they're on the side of the "angels," namely the long-enshrined Israelis.

Newsspeak

Straight out of Orwell. Note in this official Centom press release that the person whom they call a "terrorist" throughout the release was engaged in a firefight with "coalition forces" when he was killed. No terror involved, no murder of civilians, just armed resistance to the occupying forces. That's not a terrorist under any definition--except the Pentagon's. And that' s precisely how words get used, their meaning distorted, to fit the government's agenda.

An army of computer geeks

So, the wash-out rate of Army enlistees has declined dramatically, because boot camp demands have been lessened. No more miles-long marches, no more DI tirades. Instead of physically fit soldiers, we'll now be defended by nerds. Makes sense to me.

Occupation, bigtime

It's time for Americans to understand--deeply, coherently--what the US role in Iraq is. We're a victorious invading army, able to control by fiat the governance of the country, the absolute dictators of the policies enforced by the leaders we installed. When we frown on amnesty for Iraqis who killed our troops, such amnesty disappears. When we suggest no pullout time for our forces, no such time is announced. And now, when our troops rape and murder Iraqi civilians, we demand immunity for them--and the Iraqi government accedes to our demands, seeking only to view the proceedings by which the malefactors are "brought to justice."

The U.S. finds itself in a grotesquely impenetrable state. We stay because we cannot quit. We remain because no one has the courage to ask us to leave. And we have no place to go, no other place.

Welcome to America, world.

Worse than VietNam

In VietNam, we did battle with two different groups: South Vietnamese who opposed our puppet regime and sought to take over the country on their own; and North Vietnamese who supplied the former with materiel and troops. In Iraq, on the other hand, we're doing battle with Sunni insurgents, foreign fighters and now--with fury--Shia followers of various leaders who are in power in the Iraqi parliament, including the Medhi army that controls much of Baghdad. No wonder our troops are coming home bewildered. They have no clue whom or why they're killing in Iraq.

It's no surprise to me

that, as a recent Gallup poll has found, "Suggestions that the United States engage in some type of gradual withdrawal [from Iraq] increase significantly as educational level increases." I'm not talking about bigotry here, just education, because of the dumbing-down effect of most news sources. A similar poll would, I have no doubt, correlate educational level to news sources, to show that the lower the education the more likely to receive news from formulaic sources, like TV networks and news agencies.

Garbage in, garbage out.