How is it that

a decade into the "information revolution" brought on by the personal computer and the Internet, there's still so much ignorance in the United States?

Has it come to this?

Are we now a nation, a culture, in which the end justifies the means? I've been watching CNN, Faux News, even the "real networks," (CBS, ABC, NBC), extolling the marvel of the voting in Iraq. Here's their message. Even though we invaded a sovereign nation without justification, murdered thousands of innocents--ours and theirs--all is subsumed, all is forgiven, by an "election" conducted by citizens who're under our occupation. Iraq, we are told, is now exercising democracy and so we of the US can be forgiven for our violations of international law and of decency.

My take on this: If we are forgiven, then so are the worst of the world's transgressions, because even Attila the Hun believed he was bringing a better world to those he conquered.

Outrage

This NYT report on Bush's secret executive order allowing warrantless wiretaps on US citizens inside the country is outrageous enough, in particular the administration's insistence that Bush has inherent power to conduct such surveillance, unchecked by the Congress. This is another example of the "9/11 changed everything" ethic that Bush has used repeatedly to justify his ongoing illegalities.
But equally outrageous is that the Times sat on the story for a year in order, it says, to conduct "additional reporting." Number one: What chickenshits! Number two: What liars! It's clear that the NYT would have sat on the story indefinitely but for the recent lies by the administration, in particular by Cheney's minions, that the federal government had no such program, as quoted in the NYT article itself. I suspect, too, that another publication was about to go public with this information, and NYT didn't want to be shown to be what it is: a craven tool of the Bushites.

Riverbend's take on the election

Baghdad Burning's author prefers the Allawi "list" of candidates, even though they're puppets of the US, because when you're facing death a fever is just fine.

Alarming arrogance

When Bush, back in 2003, reacted to the millions of protesters of his invasion of Iraq with a shrug, and an offhand, "I respectfully disagree," I thought he'd reached the apex of arrogance. I was wrong. For months he's refused to discuss the Plamegate case on the ground that he wouldn't comment on an ongoing criminal investigation; but today, after he was questioned about the propriety of his comment that Tom Delay was innocent of the pending charges, his press secretary simply said it was his presidential prerogative to do so.

We gotta get rid of this guy.

A prediction

It's been four-plus years since the 9/11 attacks. At the time, I viewed the attacks as "the price of empire," and in the succeeding months and years I interiorly entertained my predictions about the outcome of the resultant "war on terror," including the invasion of Iraq, that Bush initiated. I didn't announce these predictions (except for one prediction--so far wrong, it turns out--about the decline of the dollar against foreign currencies), but each of my imaginings has been on target. So now, I'll articulate a prediction, so you can hold me to it.

I predict that by the end of 2006, Iraq (and likely its neighbors Syria and Iran) will have embroiled the US in such a God-awful mess that VietNam will look like a cakewalk. In the wake of today's elections, Iraq will become fragmented, will begin to look like a "failed state," to the alarm of nearby Arab states. The schism between "insurgents" and "terrorists" in Iraq, already emerging, will widen; antagonism between Shia-dominated nations and Sunni/Wahabbi nations will increase, and the US will try to straddle all of these conflicting forces, leaving our troops targets from a hundred directions.

Those of us who opposed the war are often chided for taking pleasure in seeing US failure in Iraq. Well, to be honest, I do. I want the US public--I want the world--to learn that the Bush version of democracy (you know what I'm talking about) cannot be imposed on the world by force, and should not be because of its illegitimacy. I want the Iraq experience to result in debacle so profound that we don't ever get talked into (lied into) repeating it.

I wish thousands of US soldiers didn't have to die to make this point, and I certainly feel awful about the dead and wounded Iraqis who've been made to pay this price. But, to me, if their suffering teaches the US to become a decent nation, a true leader of a fine, loving world, the price is, if not worth it, at least worth something.

A perfect model of democracy

I've been reading complaints about the Iraqi election: The rapidity of the timetable for voting, plus the danger on the streets has limited campaigning to television advertisement, which are so expensive that only financially-empowered candidates can afford them, and these ads don't address substantive issues but consist merely of clever sloganeering and attacks on the opponents.

So--we've created Iraq in our own image, right?

Vote for what you believe in

Late Senator Paul Wellstone's slogan. So to my thousands of readers in New York, vote for ABC--anybody but Clinton--in the upcoming Senate primary. And if you need more evidence, check out this hypocrisy.

Once again on dialup, and ever more frustrated

I'm away from my broadband connection and so am speechless (as they say), except to howl at my powerlessness. There's so much to comment about: today's 9/11 Commission report, the outrageous bullshit that Condi spouted about "rendition" of "enemy combatants" (What have we become?), the likelihood that the Fitzgerald inquiry may merge with other investigations to reveal, via the Plamegate matter, a vast conspiracy to lead the US to war, implicating Israeli influence on NeoCons, including Rummie, Hadley, Cheney and their ilk. (I can dream, can't I?)

I'll be keeping track, of course, but not blogging with my usual assiduousness. But take heart, I'll be back online bigtime in a couple of weeks.

Maddening, maddening

"Ten soldiers killed in Iraq today," crawls across the TV screen. The pundits, too, announce this as a news coup, a significant development. This drives me crazy. In the first place, it's flat wrong. Eleven died. But that's not what drives me crazy. Several days in the last few months ten or more soldiers have died in a single day, but didn't die in a single incident or whose deaths weren't reported in a single dispatch; and on numerous days the death toll has been seven, eight, nine. A brief survey of the above-linked website will demonstrate this.

Another thing: All this hoopla about the Pentagon planting news in Baghdad dailies. Yup, it's a bad thing. But in the face of all the outrages we've been committing in that country--killing civilians, jailing innocents, torturing, destroying cities--how can such a story even get traction in the US?

Because it's about the media, stupid. We are at the mercy of the media in America, and that's the most maddening of all.

What's in a word?

The Downing Street memo, isn't a "memo," it's minutes of a meeting. And the "Bush-bombing-of-al Jazeera" memo isn't a memo, either. It's a transcript. I know they're off the radar right now, but with some luck they'll come back, during impeachment proceedings of Bush/Cheney, let's hope.

Withdrawal defined

With all this discussion of "withdrawal, "draw-down," and so forth, of our forces in Iraq, let us not be misled. As Tom Engelhardt points out in this lengthy piece, these various phrases disguise the following eventualities, if the NeoCons have their way: (1) Continued support of the Iraqi "forces" by US naval air power, missiles and planes, from ships in the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf, as well as the US Air Force stationed nearby, their targets called in by Iraqi forces on the ground; (2) the presence of US ground troops in at least one--probably more--permanent bases in Iraq and nearby, to rush in as needed to assist in the suppression of any violence in Iraq; (3) the control of oil and other business opportunities in Iraq by Western interests; (4) protection of the "independence" of the northern region of Iraq, "Kurdistan," to the dismay of the remnants of Iraq and of its neighbors of the region.

Make no mistake. Nothing in the current debate addresses these issues, and Bush is keeping quiet about them. But when we crazies chant--as we have for three years--"Out of Iraq!" we don't mean any of these things. We mean that the US should get out of Iraq entirely, get our troops out of harm's way and leave Iraq to the Iraqis. That's withdrawal.

Monsters

These soldiers--happen to be Brits--are more evil than the worst movie villain, as evil as evil can be. Here's the video of them shooting randomly at civilian autos, while an Elvis CD plays in the background. Imagine, for a moment, what it feels like to be subjected to automatic weapon fire, your car and person torn to shreds by huge bullets sprayed from the vehicle ahead! Think of the horror, the rage!

We've got to get our troops--all of them, Brits, Aussies, U.S.--out of Iraq to let them come home and return to humanness because this war is making some of them into monsters.

Colin Powell, the wimp

This article sums up my feelings about Powell, as well as my contemporaneous reaction to his presentation to the Security Council in the runup to our invasion of Iraq. Maybe because of my lawyer background I videotaped Powell's speech and went through portions of it afterward, especially his dog-and-pony show about the mobile labs for producing biological weapons, and it had a familiar smell to it: bullshit. I recalled at the time the U-2 overfilight photos that President Kennedy showed the nationwide TV audience to demonstrate the Soviet Union's actions in Cuba to install long-range missles. Now there was evidence! But the video graphics of Iraqi trucks equipped with laboratories?--c'mon, already.

As to Colin Powell? I've defended him heretofore as a "soldier," honor-bound not to denigrate his commander, the Commander in Chief. But I've changed my mind after these weeks of hearing from his Chief of Staff, Col. Wilkerson. Obviously, Wilkerson's statements are Powell's too, and so now it's clear that Powell is hiding behind Wilkerson's skirts to save his image.

It's time for Powell to step forward in person. Not as a soldier, not as a diplomat, but as a human being. Otherwise, I label him a coward, and so, I hope, will history.

Amen

This type of analysis of America's outrageous disparity of resource and income distribution is long overdue. Our policies, the innate greed of the capitalist system and its child, unbridled consumerism, have brought us to this point. I've lived through times when the existence of well-paid, unionized workers, a respected middle-class, and a fair apportionment of the nation's wealth were fundamental precepts. No more. Now, with a greed government at the helm, with corporate profits the aim and end of our system, we've become an indebted, impoverished nation, consuming on credit, living beyond the insecure, stingy means that we're given by a beaten-down economy, and buying and borrowing more.

Meanwhile, the poor in America have nothing and, under recent Bush legislation, will have even less in the future. Yeah, it's a human rights issue, nothing less.

Throw out the bastards, all of them...

except, maybe, Murtha, Feingold and of course Kucinich. A few others, maybe, maybe.

I've just watched Lehrer's interview of Senators Warner and Reid, a Republican and a Democrat, who hummed the same tune backing today's Presidential "speech" about Iraq, in particular, withdrawal of our troops. In essence, never.

We, the people, have got to take back America, because our representatives aren't doing our will.

We've got to start somewhere

How 'bout sending Rummie to Iraq, without a full military guard?

'Splain this to me

A college kid, a golfer on the University of Arizona, a year ago loses his entire family--both parents, his sister--when their private plane crashes on the way home from watching the kid play in a tournament. A young girl, allergic to peanuts, dies an agonizing death, seizures and great pain, after kissing her boyfriend who'd eaten a peanut butter sandwich nine hours before.

Does God have a plan? If He's omnipotent, can't He control such events? Was He too busy? If so, why bother to live a life that accords with His supposed dictates? Or maybe He just doesn't care.

Whazzup?

Uh oh

Some weeks ago we learn of the first female suicide bomber in Iraq, and now we learn of the first female European suicide bomber, a Belgian woman.

Good job, Bush. You finally succeeded at something. Creating a truly global war of terror.

Let me get this straight

We invade Iraq on various pretenses and finally settle on the "we deposed a dictator who tortured and abused his fellow citizens" rationale, only to turn the place over to a regime that tortures and abuses its fellow citizens.
Sounds like a hell of a deal for $300 billion and 17,000 killed or wounded US soldiers, eh?