The Unsatisfied Mind

Tom DeLay, a blight on Texas

Read a list of the scandals and investigations involving Tom Delay:

From rigging the outcomes of Texas congressional elections by suppressing the strength of Hispanic and African-American voters, to misrepresenting children’s charities; from exploiting Indian tribes, to misusing federal agencies to further GOP political goals, it seems that there is nothing that Tom DeLay won’t do (and no one he won’t abuse) to achieve his political goals. Can any Member of Congress who has spent the last two years rubberstamping DeLay’s agenda make a genuine claim to have served the American people?

Hopefully, DeLay will hang himself.

A different point of view

Tonight on Channel 13 in Houston, the newscaster, I think Shara Fryer, reporting on two Texan soldiers required to stay in Bhagdad pending investigations into their participation in the torture of Iraqi prisoners, called the activities at Abu Ghraib a "prison scandal".

From below, Rooney on the "prison scandal":

The day the world learned that American soldiers had tortured Iraqi prisoners belongs high on the list of worst things that ever happened to our country. It's a black mark that will be in the history books in a hundred languages for as long as there are history books. I hate to think of it.

From ex vice-president Gore:

The abuse of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib flowed directly from the abuse of the truth that characterized the Administration's march to war and the abuse of the trust that had been placed in President Bush by the American people in the aftermath of September 11th.

-snip-

Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki told Congress in February that the occupation could require "several hundred thousand troops." But because Rumsfeld and Bush did not want to hear disagreement with their view that Iraq could be invaded at a much lower cost, Shinseki was hushed and then forced out.

And as a direct result of this incompetent plan and inadequate troop strength, young soldiers were put in an untenable position. For example, young reservists assigned to the Iraqi prisons were called up without training or adequate supervision, and were instructed by their superiors to "break down" prisoners in order to prepare them for interrogation.

To make matters worse, they were placed in a confusing situation where the chain of command was criss-crossed between intelligence gathering and prison administration, and further confused by an unprecedented mixing of military and civilian contractor authority.

The soldiers who are accused of committing these atrocities are, of course, responsible for their own actions and if found guilty, must be severely and appropriately punished. But they are not the ones primarily responsible for the disgrace that has been brought upon the United States of America.

Private Lynndie England did not make the decision that the United States would not observe the Geneva Convention. Specialist Charles Graner was not the one who approved a policy of establishing an American Gulag of dark rooms with naked prisoners to be "stressed" and even - we must use the word - tortured - to force them to say things that legal procedures might not induce them to say.

These policies were designed and insisted upon by the Bush White House. Indeed, the President's own legal counsel advised him specifically on the subject. His secretary of defense and his assistants pushed these cruel departures from historic American standards over the objections of the uniformed military, just as the Judge Advocates General within the Defense Department were so upset and opposed that they took the unprecedented step of seeking help from a private lawyer in this city who specializes in human rights and said to him, "There is a calculated effort to create an atmosphere of legal ambiguity" where the mistreatment of prisoners is concerned."

Indeed, the secrecy of the program indicates an understanding that the regular military culture and mores would not support these activities and neither would the American public or the world community. Another implicit acknowledgement of violations of accepted standards of behavior is the process of farming out prisoners to countries less averse to torture and giving assignments to private contractors

President Bush set the tone for our attitude for suspects in his State of the Union address. He noted that more than 3,000 "suspected terrorists" had been arrested in many countries and then he added, "and many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this way: they are no longer a problem to the United States and our allies."
George Bush promised to change the tone in Washington. And indeed he did. As many as 37 prisoners may have been murdered while in captivity, though the numbers are difficult to rely upon because in many cases involving violent death, there were no autopsies.

How dare they blame their misdeeds on enlisted personnel from a Reserve unit in upstate New York. President Bush owes more than one apology. On the list of those he let down are the young soldiers who are themselves apparently culpable, but who were clearly put into a moral cesspool. The perpetrators as well as the victims were both placed in their relationship to one another by the policies of George W. Bush.

How dare the incompetent and willful members of this Bush/Cheney Administration humiliate our nation and our people in the eyes of the world and in the conscience of our own people. How dare they subject us to such dishonor and disgrace. How dare they drag the good name of the United States of America through the mud of Saddam Hussein's torture prison.

Nice f__king "scandal".

Is Trent Lott a piece of shit?

Sen. Trent Lott spoke Monday about the abuse depicted in Iraqi prison photos.

Lott said while he is upset by the sexual abuse shown in some photos, he feels some physical abuse may be warranted if it saves American lives.

"Frankly, to save some American troops' lives or a unit that could be in danger, I think you should get really rough with them," Lott said. "Some of those people should probably not be in prisons in the first place."

When asked about the photo showing a prisoner being threatened with a dog, Lott was unmoved.

"Nothing wrong with holding a dog up there unless it ate him," Lott said. "(They just) scared him with the dog."

Lott was reminded that at least one prisoner had died at the hands of his captors after a beating.

"This is not Sunday school," he said. "This is interrogation. This is rough stuff."

Lott said while he still supports the war in Iraq, he is angry about what he calls bad pre-war intelligence. Lott blames the CIA leadership.

"I believe that George Tenet has to take a lot of the responsibility," Lott said. "If he stays or goes is up to the president. Final analysis -- I think it's time for him to move on. If it were my call, (I'd say,) 'Thanks for your service. See you later.'"

Ends justify the means, I guess.

60 Minutes last night
60 Minutes was really strong last evening. Rooney was amazing.

Our darkest days up until now have been things like presidential assassinations, the stock market crash in 1929, Pearl Harbor, and 9-11, of course.

The day the world learned that American soldiers had tortured Iraqi prisoners belongs high on the list of worst things that ever happened to our country. It's a black mark that will be in the history books in a hundred languages for as long as there are history books. I hate to think of it.
-snip-
The guards who tortured prisoners are faced with a year in prison. Well, great. A year for destroying our reputation as decent people.

I don't want them in prison, anyway. We shouldn't have to feed them. Take away their right to call themselves American - that's what I’d do. You aren't one of us. Get out. We don't want you. Find yourself another country or a desert island somewhere. If the order came from someone higher up, take him with you.

In the history of the world, several great civilizations that seemed immortal have deteriorated and died. I don't want to seem dramatic tonight, but I've lived a long while, and for the first time in my life, I have this faint, faraway fear that it could happen to us here in America as it happened to the Greek and Roman civilizations.

Too many Americans don't understand what we have here, or how to keep it. I worry for my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren. I want them to have what I've had, and I sense it slipping away.

Have a nice day.

The look in Rooney's eyes said it all. He is truly worried, like, I believe, most of the population of the country. I have a feeling that things are going VERY BAD, and I think that the only way we can start to fix what is wrong is to get W. and his band of mindless idiots out of power. Can the world really handle four more years of this puppet's administration? Will it be too far lost after another term?

On another note, one of the stories was about the "I have a dream" program for helping children go to college. As soon as a discussion started regarding the standardized testing required by the "No child funded" er, "left behind", the program in Houston went to an interruption by commercial for about 45 seconds, then picked up again.

However, I went to the 60 Minutes website and found the transcript, and there didn't seem to be anything bad said, other than the tests were "dreaded" (italics are, best as I can tell, the missing text):

The Kellys have recruited dozens of volunteers to tutor the kids after school. But the acid test of whether all this is working is the dreaded standardized exam.

“We have a program they've been going to on Saturdays, learning to take the test,” says Kathy.

“Eighty percent of the dreamers in the last test results tested at or above the national level,” adds Tom. “Eighty percent. Phenomenal.”

And it doesn't stop there. The Kellys also run something of a finishing school for the kids at a nearby country club.

Weird.

Government waste courtesy of our government.

Read it, get pissed.

Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 wins Palme d'Or at Cannes

I just realized something. As you may know, there is a chance that Moore's film will not be seen prior to the presidential election this November. Moore says that he would like to see it released on July 4, and there is speculation that it might be released in August.

I would like to humbly suggest a strategy that has the potential to be more powerful, more deadly, than the frenzy that will be whipped up when the film is released officially:

Make sure that the screener DVD for the movie is encoded and released into the wild of the Peer-to-Peer sharing networks.

Further, make sure that it is released both as a divx/.avi and as an svcd so that it is easily burned to a cd that can be played on the vast majority of new-generation dvd players.

The quality does not have to be perfect. It has to be viewable. It has to be audible. Even if a "screenie" was poached and released, the movie will still be out there.

If this was to happen, thousands of people would have it posted to their shares within a week. Hundreds of thousands would view it before it ever saw the darkness of the cinema. Further, there would be two bursts of media attention to the movie: the first, when it is discovered that the movie was leaked, and a second burst when the movie is officially released in theatres.

Don't be surprised if you start seeing the movie pop up in your client searches. And don't forget, I called it.

A good article explaining why Douglas Feith, third civilian in command at the Pentagon, is incompetent:

Gen. Tommy Franks in Bob Woodward's Plan of Attack: Franks calls Feith "the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth."

I love it. The article is really good.

More fucking Halliburton (from atrios):

Empty flatbed trucks crisscrossed Iraq more than 100 times as their drivers and the soldiers who guarded them dodged bullets, bricks and homemade bombs.

Twelve current and former truckers who regularly made the 300-mile re-supply run from Camp Cedar in southern Iraq to Camp Anaconda near Baghdad told Knight Ridder that they risked their lives driving empty trucks while their employer, a subsidiary of Halliburton Inc., billed the government for hauling what they derisively called "sailboat fuel."

Defense Department records show that Kellogg Brown and Root, a Halliburton subsidiary, has been paid $327 million for "theater transportation" of war materiel and supplies for U.S. forces in Iraq and is earmarked to be paid $230 million more. The convoys are a lifeline for U.S. troops in Iraq hauling tires for Humvees, Army boots, filing cabinets, tools, engine parts and even an unmanned Predator reconnaissance plane.

KBR's contract with the Defense Department allows the company to pass on the cost of the transportation and add 1 percent to 3 percent for profit, but neither KBR nor the U.S. Army Field Support Command in Rock Island, Ill., which oversees the contract, was able to provide cost estimates for the empty trucks. Trucking experts estimate that each round trip costs taxpayers thousands of dollars.

Seven of the 12 truckers who talked to Knight Ridder asked that they not be identified by name. Six of the 12 were fired by KBR for allegedly running Iraqi drivers off the road when they attempted to break into the convoy. The drivers disputed that accusation.

In addition to interviewing the drivers, Knight Ridder reviewed KBR records of the empty trips, dozens of photographs of empty flatbeds and a videotape that showed 15 empty trucks in one convoy.

This Post at Respectful of Otters is really cool. It is a summary of an article about an intervention program with absolutely phenomenal results (quoted from Respectful of Otters):

Controlled studies show that it results in 54% fewer juvenile arrests and 69% fewer juvenile convictions and probation violations. And for every dollar it costs, four dollars are saved in future costs. Why aren't tough-on-crime conservatives all over it?

Probably because it doesn't involve more cops or more juvenile detention centers or harsher punishments or religious indoctrination. Instead, it's all about nurses.

The program started in my hometown - my mother is now the program coordinator; yay Mom! - and has since spread to 22 other states. It's a simple concept: "high-risk" prospective parents get visited at home by a nurse, beginning as early in pregnancy as possible and continuing until the baby is two years old. The nurses provide prenatal care, support, advice, and parenting education. It's a voluntary program, but more than 90% of parents approached recognize a good deal when they see one.

In a 13-year follow-up of the program, researchers found that it reduced child abuse and neglect by 79 percent. Treated mothers (most of them teenagers) had 33% fewer additional pregnancies. The kids, at age 15, were not only less likely to commit crimes (as cited in the first paragraph), but had 58% fewer sexual partners. As someone who has read a lot of intervention studies, let me assure you that these numbers are phenomenal. They're almost unheard-of. This is a program that works, and it has snowball effects long after the active intervention is over.

It also languishes in obscurity, with barely enough funding to keep the doors open. The registered nurses (who, keep in mind, have a 79% effectiveness rate at preventing the extremely expensive social problem of child abuse) get paid salaries more appropriate for nurse's aides. They cast apprehensive eyes towards Albany every time the Republican governor is looking for new ways to trim the budget. Strangely enough, budget-trimming time never seems to affect the prison guards at the Supermax prison down the road.

No matter how much "compassionate conservative" rhetoric comes out of the White House, we remain a country much more comfortable with punishment than prevention. We're also more comfortable with quick fixes than with long-term social changes, and more comfortable with the rhetoric of personal responsibility than we are with creating a genuine social safety net.

How else to explain the chronic neglect of a program that effectively fights some of our most pernicious and recalcitrant social problems? We do, genuinely, deplore child abuse and adolescent promiscuity and juvenile crime - and yet there is somehow never enough money and resources for programs to prevent them, even when those programs have been proven to pay for themselves.

Simply amazing stuff.

Arianna Huffington's Contract for a Better America (from her new book Fanatics & Fools)

1. Achieve energy independence
2. Prescribe a cure for the health-care epidemic (universal health care)
3. Treat lost jobs as social calamity, not a lagging economic indicator
4. Truly leave no child behind (equal access to good schools, health care, clean water and air, etc.)
5. Break down the barriers and create new opportunities in education
6. Call a truce in the drug war
7. Secure the homeland first
8. Be a leader, not a bully
9. Restore integrity to the political process (Campaign Finance Reform)
10. Put people above corporate profits

Don't these seem like common sense? But the Bush administration has taken steps to block or go in the opposite direction of every single fucking one of these.

Old but good

I hesitate to quote an entire post from a blog, but it IS Josh Marshal, and he writes so well I did not think I should dillute any of his points:

This is a passage from Tuesday's Washington Times, which is itself an excerpt from Bill Sammon's new insider account of the Bush presidency, Misunderestimated: The President Battles Terrorism, John Kerry and the Bush Haters. (emphasis added by JM)

---

"I get the newspapers — the New York Times, The Washington Times, The Washington Post and USA Today — those are the four papers delivered," he said. "I can scan a front page, and if there is a particular story of interest, I'll skim it."

The president prides himself on his ability to detect bias in ostensibly objective news stories.

"My antennae are finely attuned," he said. "I can figure out what so-called 'news' pieces are going to be full of opinion, as opposed to news. So I'm keenly aware of what's in the papers, kind of the issue du jour. But I'm also aware of the facts."

Those facts are extracted from news stories each day and presented to the president by a half-dozen aides, Mr. Card among them.

"Since I'm the first one to see him in the morning, I usually give him a quick overview and get a little reaction from him," Mr. Card explained. "Frequently, I find that his reaction kind of reflects [first lady] Laura Bush's take."

Indeed, the president often cites articles that Mrs. Bush flags for greater scrutiny, even when he has not personally slogged through those stories. Mrs. Bush routinely delves more deeply into the news pages than her husband, who prefers other sections.

"He does not dwell on the newspaper, but he reads the sports page every day," Mr. Card said with a chuckle.

'A clear outlook'

Mr. Bush thinks that immersing himself in voluminous, mostly liberal-leaning news coverage might cloud his thinking and even hinder his efforts to remain an optimistic leader.

"I like to have a clear outlook," he said. "It can be a frustrating experience to pay attention to somebody's false opinion or somebody's characterization, which simply isn't true."

What strikes me about this isn't the stuff about the First Lady or the skimming of articles. It's that, at least from his self-presentation, the president seems to see his news reading largely, if not entirely, as an exercise in detecting liberal media bias. That, and he seems to see shielding himself from opposing viewpoints as a key to maintaining what he calls a "clear outlook" and what Sammon refers to as being an "optimistic leader".<

I guess we can all relate to this, can't we?

How 'frustrating' it is to have to listen to "somebody's false opinion or somebody's characterization, which simply isn't true" (i.e., information that contradicts our assumptions and viewpoints)?

It (i.e., critical thinking) really gets in the way of having a "clear outlook", right?

Now, certainly no one is perfect when it comes to subjecting and then resubjecting their viewpoints to fresh facts or challenging their assumptions with intelligently stated contrary views. I can't claim to be. But it's one thing to fall short of the mark and another to work out a system of self-rationalization and denial to ensure you come nowhere near the mark. And this is it in spades.

He doesn't even need the yes-men who "extract" the "facts" from the news articles. He's his own built-in yes-man.

How could we have ignored so many warnings, so much expert advice, so many facts staring us in the face? The president just gave you the answer.

---

As Fropuff says, "its great to know that he doesn't even LISTEN to the opposite viewpoint. must think he's doing god's will.... kind of like, oh say.... osama bin laden."

Yep.

Couldn't see this one...

According to an article in by Rick Perlstein in The Village Voice, the leader of our secular democracy met with rapture Christians prior to doing a 180 on America's policy toward the Israel/Palestinian conflict.

Some choice language (block quote from Atrios)

It was an e-mail we weren't meant to see. Not for our eyes were the notes that showed White House staffers taking two-hour meetings with Christian fundamentalists, where they passed off bogus social science on gay marriage as if it were holy writ and issued fiery warnings that "the Presidents [sic] Administration and current Government is engaged in cultural, economical, and social struggle on every level"—this to a group whose representative in Israel believed herself to have been attacked by witchcraft unleashed by proximity to a volume of Harry Potter. Most of all, apparently, we're not supposed to know the National Security Council's top Middle East aide consults with apocalyptic Christians eager to ensure American policy on Israel conforms with their sectarian doomsday scenarios.

But now we know.

"Everything that you're discussing is information you're not supposed to have," barked Pentecostal minister Robert G. Upton when asked about the off-the-record briefing his delegation received on March 25. Details of that meeting appear in a confidential memo signed by Upton and obtained by the Voice.

The e-mailed meeting summary reveals NSC Near East and North African Affairs director Elliott Abrams sitting down with the Apostolic Congress and massaging their theological concerns. Claiming to be "the Christian Voice in the Nation's Capital," the members vociferously oppose the idea of a Palestinian state. They fear an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza might enable just that, and they object on the grounds that all of Old Testament Israel belongs to the Jews. Until Israel is intact and David's temple rebuilt, they believe, Christ won't come back to earth.

Abrams attempted to assuage their concerns by stating that "the Gaza Strip had no significant Biblical influence such as Joseph's tomb or Rachel's tomb and therefore is a piece of land that can be sacrificed for the cause of peace."

Three weeks after the confab, President George W. Bush reversed long-standing U.S. policy, endorsing Israeli sovereignty over parts of the West Bank in exchange for Israel's disengagement from the Gaza Strip.

In an interview with the Voice, Upton denied having written the document, though it was sent out from an e-mail account of one of his staffers and bears the organization's seal, which is nearly identical to the Great Seal of the United States. Its idiosyncratic grammar and punctuation tics also closely match those of texts on the Apostolic Congress's website, and Upton verified key details it recounted, including the number of participants in the meeting ("45 ministers including wives") and its conclusion "with a heart-moving send-off of the President in his Presidential helicopter."

I hope this bothers you as much as it does me. This president is consulting not with experts, not with academics, but with deeply irrational fundamentalists on this decision. It is sickening.

Read this carefully. Please.

Read every work of this article. Digest it. Understand the implications of it. I honestly cannot believe that this man is in charge of this country.

This quote is from Brad DeLong's mention of Mark A. R. Kleiman's post summarizing Slate's Fred Kaplan's recent article. The blockquote below is from Brad's site, which was taken from Mark's site. I reproduce it here.

Apparently, Bush had three opportunities, long before the war, to destroy a terrorist camp in northern Iraq run by Abu Musab Zarqawi, the al-Qaida associate who recently cut off the head of Nicholas Berg. But the White House decided not to carry out the attack because, as the [NBC News] story puts it: "the administration feared [that] destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam."

The implications of this are more shocking, in their way, than the news from Abu Ghraib. Bush promoted the invasion of Iraq as a vital battle in the war on terrorism, a continuation of our response to 9/11. Here was a chance to wipe out a high-ranking terrorist. And Bush didn't take advantage of it because doing so might also wipe out a rationale for invasion.

The story gets worse in its details. As far back as June 2002, U.S. intelligence reported that Zarqawi had set up a weapons lab at Kirma in northern Iraq that was capable of producing ricin and cyanide. The Pentagon drew up an attack plan involving cruise missiles and smart bombs. The White House turned it down. In October 2002, intelligence reported that Zarqawi was preparing to use his bio-weapons in Europe. The Pentagon drew up another attack plan. The White House again demurred. In January 2003, police in London arrested terrorist suspects connected to the camp. The Pentagon devised another attack plan. Again, the White House killed the plan, not Zarqawi.

When the war finally started in March, the camp was attacked early on. But by that time, Zarqawi and his followers had departed.

This camp was in the Kurdish enclave of Iraq. The U.S. military had been mounting airstrikes against various targets throughout Iraq—mainly air-defense sites—for the previous few years. It would not have been a major escalation to destroy this camp, especially after the war against al-Qaida in Afghanistan. The Kurds, whose autonomy had been shielded by U.S. air power since the end of the 1991 war, wouldn't have minded and could even have helped.

But the problem, from Bush's perspective, was that this was the only tangible evidence of terrorists in Iraq. Colin Powell even showed the location of the camp on a map during his famous Feb. 5 briefing at the U.N. Security Council. The camp was in an area of Iraq that Saddam didn't control. But never mind, it was something. To wipe it out ahead of time might lead some people—in Congress, the United Nations, and the American public—to conclude that Saddam's links to terrorists were finished, that maybe the war wasn't necessary. So Bush let it be.

In the two years since the Pentagon's first attack plan, Zarqawi has been linked not just to Berg's execution but, according to NBC, 700 other killings in Iraq. If Bush had carried out that attack back in June 2002, the killings might not have happened. More: The case for war (as the White House feared) might not have seemed so compelling. Indeed, the war itself might not have happened.

One ambiguity does remain. The NBC story reported that "the White House" declined to carry out the airstrikes. Who was "the White House"? If it wasn't George W. Bush—if it was, say, Dick Cheney—then we crash into a very different conclusion: not that Bush was directly culpable, but that he was more out of touch than his most cynical critics have imagined. It's a tossup which is more disturbing: a president who passes up the chance to kill a top-level enemy in the war on terrorism for the sake of pursuing a reckless diversion in Iraq—or a president who leaves a government's most profound decision, the choice of war or peace, to his aides. (emphasis mine)

So, just to make sure you get it: Bush did NOT kill Zarqawi in order to protect the single flimsy piece of evidence that he had to justify war with Iraq. Let me say that another way. A top-level enemy in the war on terror was spared so that W. could attack Iraq, a country, while stained with a vile leader, with not a single tie to al Queda in order to satisfy a personal vendetta.

What a sick, sick man-child.

Good site you should peruse

Center for American Progress has a database that compares what conservatives have said versus publicly available facts. It will keep you depressed for days:)

More Lyrics
One of the best songs ever written. Every line in this song is applicable to the current situation. Bush and his cronies have to go.

Masters of War by Bob Dylan


Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build the big bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks

You that never done nothin'
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it's your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly

Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain

You fasten the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
As young people's blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud

You've thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain't worth the blood
That runs in your veins

How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I'm young
You might say I'm unlearned
But there's one thing I know
Though I'm younger than you
Even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul

And I hope that you die
And your death'll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I'll watch while you're lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I'll stand o'er your grave
'Til I'm sure that you're dead



Copyright © 1963; renewed 1991 Special Rider Music

Words of wisdom, circa 1991

Leave it to Axl to spell it all out over a decade ago (from Garden of Eden, Use Your Illusion 1):

Most organized religions make
A mockery of humanity
Our governments are dangerous
And out of control
The garden of Eden is just another graveyard
Said if they had someone to buy it
Said I'm sure they'd sell my soul

Juan Cole Has it Correct

I usually will not do this, but I think that this blog post is worthy of the full quote. Juan Cole has pretty much got it correct: the war is a debacle on every level, the responsibility for this debacle is squarely on this administration, and the leader of this adminstration spends his time ignoring information and deceiving the public and the world.

---

The Mideastization of the US, or: Rumsfeld Must Resign

The Bush administration keeps talking about bringing democracy to the Middle East, but a key element in democracy is always the accountability of public officials to the public. That is why we have elections, that is why we have a division of powers, that is why Congress can impeach the executive and the Supreme Court could order Nixon to hand over his tape recordings. When high officials commit improprieties, they must resign. When they run a loose ship and it founders on the shoals of scandal, they must resign. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz must resign. It is the only way the United States can recover even a shred of credibility in the wider world, at a time when this country desperately needs the esteem and the cooperation of allies and friends.

Not only would their resignations begin to restore credibility to the United States, it would be an important step toward resolving the Iraqi crisis. The Bush administration has been paralyzed in going forward in Iraq by Rumsfeld's foot-dragging on Iraq. He insists on trying to run the place himself. Putting a private army of unaccountable commandos in there was his idea. Empowering corrupt expatriates like Ahmad Chalabi was his idea. Using disproportionate force and disregarding civilian casualties were his ideas. Trying to keep Defense Department control of the $18 billion in reconstruction aid was his idea. Most of the ways in which Iraq as an enterprise has gone badly wrong are the result of his ideas. Removing him will allow the State Department to do its job in Iraq starting July 1, without continued disastrous maneuvering from Rumsfeld.

The Bush administration has from its inception stood against accountability. When Ambassador Joe Wilson blew the whistle on the phony Niger yellowcake story that Bush put in his state of the union address to stampede us all into war, someone high in the Bush administration took petty revenge by revealing that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a covert CIA operative. Plame's specialty was attempting to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction. When the Bush administration revealed her name to the public, it compromised all her contacts in all the countries she had ever worked, and set back the fight against proliferation. This action was high treason. Bush could demand that the individual responsible come forward. He has not done so.

When no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, no Bush administration official was asked to resign. The main purveyor of false intelligence on Iraqi WMD was Vice President Dick Cheney. He has not been asked to step down, even though he was largely responsible for taking the country to war based on a falsehood. Scooter Libby, David Wurmser and John Hannah were up to their necks in hyping bad intelligence on Iraqi WMD. None of them was asked to step down. They were supplied the bad intelligence by Undersecretary of Defense for Planning Douglas Feith and his rogue Office of Special Plans. No one associated with this scam has been asked to resign.

It is clear where the buck stops with regard to torture by the US military. It stops with the Secretary of Defense (and with the President, but he in any case is facing accountability in November). Moreover, Rumsfeld is not an innocent bystander in all this. His policies have consistently aimed at creating spaces for prisoners to be outside any judicial jurisdiction, so that anything can be done to them with impunity. I remember seeing a news conference where a British journalist complained about the US practice of hooding prisoners as a form of torture. Rumsfeld absolutely ridiculed her. "Hooding?" He asked sarcastically. The torture of POWs at Abu Ghuraib was not carried out by a handful of rogue MPs. It was the result of ordinary practices of US military intelligence, practices that just haven't usually been photographed. Rumsfeld set the tone in which military intelligence felt justified in behaving this way.

Democracy is about more than elections. Most Middle Eastern countries already have elections. Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, all of them hold regular elections. They have parliaments, parties, campaigns. Two things make them nevertheless not democracies. The first is that their presidents manipulate the elections so that there is never any doubt that they will win the election and that their party will dominate parliament (even if space is made for minority parties to win a few seats). Second, their regimes have no accountability to the public. No one in Hosni Mubarak's government has ever had to resign because he performed his duties poorly. He might have to resign because he fell out with the president. But if he is buddy buddy with the head of state, then he can do no wrong.

You really wonder whether the Bush plan to Americanize the Middle East isn't being turned on its head. We now have an unaccountable government not elected in accordance with the will of the majority of Americans, which victimizes critics like Joe Wilson and engages in torture. Bush and Co. are emulating the worst aspects of the military governments of Egypt and Yemen. They have no credibility to push the latter toward democracy.

Bush says he is annoyed with Rumsfeld for not informing him about those photographs of tortured Iraqi prisoners. I personally find it difficult to believe that Rumsfeld did not brief him on them at a time when Gen. Richard Myers was discussing the timing of their release with Dan Rathers! But if this is true, it demonstrates that Bush is not really president. He has allowed Cheney, Rumsfeld and others to usurp his presidency, hide key information from him, manipulate him, and tell him what to do. Bush says he won't fire Rumsfeld. That gives the Democrats one more thing to run on.

By the way, the US press is reporting that Bush apologized for the torture of Iraqi prisoners at his news conference Thursday with King Abdullah II of Jordan. The moderate Saudi daily published in London, al-Hayat, however, points out that all Bush said was that he was sorry the incidents had happened. That isn't really apologizing for them, the newspaper insisted. Asharq al-Awsat did a story in which it argued that while some Iraqis appear to be somewhat mollified by Bush's statements, most in the Arab world are not. Not all Iraqis are, either. It quotes one man who complains that of 50 Iraqi parties, not one has mounted a demonstration against the US over the photos, because they are all in America's back pocket. (This allegation is not entirely true. The Board of Muslim Clerics, a fundamentalist Sunni group, did hold a demonstration at Abu Ghuraib on Tuesday).

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Bush holds none accountable, including himself. This adminstration is a failure on every conceivable level. I left out some of the links in his post, but that should encourage you to go to his site and read up.

Right from the Ass's Mouth

Via Media Matters for America, but taken from his website:

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Limbaugh on torture of Iraqis: U.S. guards were "having a good time," "blow[ing] some steam off"

Hours before President George W. Bush announced plans to address the Arab world to condemn the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. military personnel at the Abu Ghraib prison, Rush Limbaugh justified the U.S. guards' mistreatment of the Iraqis, stating that they were just "having a good time," and that their actions served as an "emotional release."

As reported by Wonkette.com Limbaugh's comments can be found on his website. From the May 4 Rush Limbaugh Show, titled "It's Not About Us; This Is War!":

CALLER: It was like a college fraternity prank that stacked up naked men --

LIMBAUGH: Exactly. Exactly my point! This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation and we're going to ruin people's lives over it and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You of heard of need to blow some steam off?

The day before, on his May 3 show, Limbaugh observed that the American troops who mistreated Iraqi prisoners of war were "babes" and that the pictures of the alleged abuse were no worse than "anything you'd see Madonna, or Britney Spears do on stage."

LIMBAUGH: And these American prisoners of war -- have you people noticed who the torturers are? Women! The babes! The babes are meting out the torture.

LIMBAUGH: You know, if you look at -- if you, really, if you look at these pictures, I mean, I don't know if it's just me, but it looks just like anything you'd see Madonna, or Britney Spears do on stage. Maybe I'm -- yeah. And get an NEA grant for something like this. I mean, this is something that you can see on stage at Lincoln Center from an NEA grant, maybe on Sex in the City -- the movie. I mean, I don't -- it's just me.

— A.S. & G.W.

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I never thought that I would be putting a RL link on my webpage. But then, I hope he discusts you to. People, he makes shit up. He does not tell the truth.

He is a flat out liar, and millions listen to him every day. Of course, I have said this before. Look below.

The conservatives are calling the straw that broke the camel's back in the Middle East a Fraternity prank. Is there no end to their dillusion? Or do they really believe this drivel?

There has been quite a bit of outrage regarding Sinclair Broadcast Group's decision to preempt Nightline on Friday with a rerun of Dharma and Greg. If you didn't know, Nightline was to spend about 50 minutes of their time broadcasting Ted Koppel reading the names of all of the soldiers killed in the Iraq war. SBG said that they were not going to air it because it was contrary to the public interest.

From opensecrets.org, by way of Berry's world:

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DAVID D. SMITH
President and Chief Executive Officer, Sinclair Broadcast Group

---$2,000 to George W. Bush on 12-8-03.

FREDERICK G. SMITH
Vice President, Sinclair Broadcast Group

---$25,000 to the Republican National Committee on 10-1-03.
---$25,000 to the Republican National Committee on 2-17-04.
---$2,000 to George W. Bush on 12-8-03.

M. WILLIAM BUTLER
VP/Group Programming & Promotions, Sinclair Broadcast Group

---$400 to the Republican National Committee on 2-14-03.
---$300 to the Republican National Committee on 12-17-03.
---$250 to George W. Bush on 2-4-04.
---$234 to the Republican National Committee on 2-19-04.

On top of this, from The Center for American Progress (partisan site, but source from this material is not them, the following is quoted directly from their website):

In September 2001, Sinclair Broadcasting required its affiliates to air messages "conveying full support" for the Bush administration. At a Baltimore affiliate, WBFF "officials required news and sports anchors, even a weather forecaster, to read the messages, "which included statements such as "[the station] wants you to know that we stand 100% behind our President." Several WBFF staffers objected on the grounds that reading the statements would "erode their reputations as objective journalists" because it made them appear to be "endorsing specific government actions."

In July 2003, Sinclair Broadcasting refused to allow WMSN TV – its FOX affiliate in Madison, WI – to air a DNC advertisement that featured a clip of President Bush making the false claim "Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa" in his 2003 State of the Union Address. Three other Madison stations, including ABC, NBC and CBS, readily agreed to air the ad. The Madison CBS affiliate, WISC, said the advertisement was "no worse than any other political ad."

In March, it was discovered that the Bush Administration was producing "television news stories, written and paid for by the government, which have the appearance of legitimate news segments delivered by independent reporters," and distributing them to local newscasts as a way of promoting administration policies – including its ill-conceived Medicare prescription drug law. On the broadcasts, a public relations professional named Karen Ryan pretended to be a reporter. Among the stations which aired the administration propaganda as news: WPGH in Pittsburgh "the Sinclair Broadcasting station that fired much of its news staff in favor of feeds from a centralized newsroom in Baltimore."

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Disgusting. There is more, follow the links.

From The Daily Show, Janine Garofalo interviewed tonight.

Actually, I thought that she came across a bit hyper-active and radical. One of the great advantages of being a liberal today is that the facts are on your side, especially when it comes to the Bush administration. We don't need to be outrageous, just outraged.

I know that her show (as well as Randi Rhodes) is meant to be a bit extreme, as a sort-of counterpoint to Rush Limbaugh. The balance required to be interesting and entertaining when discussing politics from a liberal point of view is difficult, especially when your conservative competition can pound the issues into black and white, for-or-against, oversimplified talking points. I am glad that Air America is here, but I am worried that Janine came across as a bit extreme, that's all.

By the way, if you are not privy to the hate that Rush spews, Digby has quite a shock for you.

Remember, millions of people listen to this waste every day. And we wonder why this country is polarized.

After reading The Mismeasure of Man by Steven J. Gould years ago, and observing my own experience with individuals who lack an outrageous IQ score yet still manage to attain the highest levels of scholarship (read: me), I am one of the first to argue that IQ is not a perfect measure of intelligence.

However, this is telling (from here, by way of Matthew Yglesias):


Here's the average IQ by state according to the Ravens APM; the most accurate measure of innate intelligence in my opinion:

AVG IQ AVG Income '00 Electoral
(1) Connecticut.....................113 $26,979 Gore
(2) Massachusetts................111 $24,059 Gore
(3) New Jersey..................... 111 $26,457 Gore
(4) New York........................109 $23,534 Gore
(5) Rhode Island.................107 $20,299 Gore
(6) Hawaii.......................106 $21,218 Gore
(7) Maryland.....................105 $22,974 Gore
(8) New Hampshire................105 $22,934 Bush
(9) Illinois.....................104 $21,608 Gore
(10) Delaware....................103 $21,451 Gore
(11) Minnesota...................102 $20,049 Gore
(12) Vermont.....................102 $18,834 Gore
(13) Washington..................102 $20,398 Gore
(14) California..................101 $21,278 Gore
(15) Pennsylvania................101 $20,253 Gore
(16) Maine.......................100 $18,226 Gore
(17) Virginia....................100 $20,629 Bush
(18) Wisconsin...................100 $18,727 Gore
(19) Colorado.....................99 $20,124 Bush
(20) Iowa.........................99 $18,287 Gore
(21) Michigan.....................99 $19,508 Gore
(22) Nevada.......................99 $20,266 Bush
(23) Ohio.........................99 $18,624 Bush
(24) Oregon.......................99 $18,202 Gore
(25) Alaska.......................98 $21,603 Bush
(26) Florida......................98 $19,397 Bush
(27) Missouri.....................98 $18,835 Bush
(28) Kansas.......................96 $19,376 Bush
(29) Nebraska.....................95 $19,084 Bush
(30) Arizona......................94 $17,119 Bush
(31) Indiana......................94 $18,043 Bush
(32) Tennessee....................94 $17,341 Bush
(33) North Carolina...............93 $17,667 Bush
(34) West Virginia................93 $15,065 Bush
(35) Arkansas.....................92 $15,439 Bush
(36) Georgia......................92 $18,130 Bush
(37) Kentucky.....................92 $16,534 Bush
(38) New Mexico...................92 $15,353 Gore
(39) North Dakota.................92 $16,854 Bush
(40) Texas........................92 $17,892 Bush
(41) Alabama......................90 $16,220 Bush
(42) Louisiana....................90 $15,712 Bush
(43) Montana......................90 $16,062 Bush
(44) Oklahoma.....................90 $16,198 Bush
(45) South Dakota.................90 $16,558 Bush
(46) South Carolina...............89 $15,989 Bush
(47) Wyoming......................89 $17,423 Bush
(48) Idaho........................87 $16,067 Bush
(49) Utah.........................87 $15,325 Bush
(50) Mississippi..................85 $14,088 Bush


Stunning, isn't it? Obviously, ones intelligence does not directly predict voting behavior (no single variable does), but what does this say about the effectiveness of Bush's messaging?