The Unsatisfied Mind

Wiped out

There is no possible way, after watching the debate, that you could come to the position that W. is anything but a fraud.

Kerry just decimated the fraud president that we have right now. If we lose this election, then this country is lost.

W's War

An open letter that has been making the rounds, WSJ Reporter Farnaz Fassihi:

From: [Wall Street Journal reporter] Farnaz Fassihi
Subject: From Baghdad

Being a foreign correspondent in Baghdad these days is like being under virtual house arrest. Forget about the reasons that lured me to this job: a chance to see the world, explore the exotic, meet new people in far away lands, discover their ways and tell stories that could make a difference.

Little by little, day-by-day, being based in Iraq has defied all those reasons. I am house bound. I leave when I have a very good reason to and a scheduled interview. I avoid going to people's homes and never walk in the streets. I can't go grocery shopping any more, can't eat in restaurants, can't strike a conversation with strangers, can't look for stories, can't drive in any thing but a full armored car, can't go to scenes of breaking news stories, can't be stuck in traffic, can't speak English outside, can't take a road trip, can't say I'm an American, can't linger at checkpoints, can't be curious about what people are saying, doing, feeling. And can't and can't. There has been one too many close calls, including a car bomb so near our house that it blew out all the windows. So now my most pressing concern every day is not to write a kick-ass story but to stay alive and make sure our Iraqi employees stay alive. In Baghdad I am a security personnel first, a reporter second.

It's hard to pinpoint when the 'turning point' exactly began. Was it April when the Fallujah fell out of the grasp of the Americans? Was it when Moqtada and Jish Mahdi declared war on the U.S. military? Was it when Sadr City, home to ten percent of Iraq's population, became a nightly battlefield for the Americans? Or was it when the insurgency began spreading from isolated pockets in the Sunni triangle to include most of Iraq? Despite President Bush's rosy assessments, Iraq remains a disaster. If under Saddam it was a 'potential' threat, under the Americans it has been transformed to 'imminent and active threat,' a foreign policy failure bound to haunt the United States for decades to come.

Iraqis like to call this mess 'the situation.' When asked 'how are thing?' they reply: 'the situation is very bad."

What they mean by situation is this: the Iraqi government doesn't control most Iraqi cities, there are several car bombs going off each day around the country killing and injuring scores of innocent people, the country's roads are becoming impassable and littered by hundreds of landmines and explosive devices aimed to kill American soldiers, there are assassinations, kidnappings and beheadings. The situation, basically, means a raging barbaric guerilla war. In four days, 110 people died and over 300 got injured in Baghdad alone. The numbers are so shocking that the ministry of health -- which was attempting an exercise of public transparency by releasing the numbers -- has now stopped disclosing them.

Insurgents now attack Americans 87 times a day.

A friend drove thru the Shiite slum of Sadr City yesterday. He said young men were openly placing improvised explosive devices into the ground. They melt a shallow hole into the asphalt, dig the explosive, cover it with dirt and put an old tire or plastic can over it to signal to the locals this is booby-trapped. He said on the main roads of Sadr City, there were a dozen landmines per every ten yards. His car snaked and swirled to avoid driving over them. Behind the walls sits an angry Iraqi ready to detonate them as soon as an American convoy gets near. This is in Shiite land, the population that was supposed to love America for liberating Iraq.

For journalists the significant turning point came with the wave of abduction and kidnappings. Only two weeks ago we felt safe around Baghdad because foreigners were being abducted on the roads and highways between towns. Then came a frantic phone call from a journalist female friend at 11 p.m. telling me two Italian women had been abducted from their homes in broad daylight. Then the two Americans, who got beheaded this week and the Brit, were abducted from their homes in a residential neighborhood. They were supplying the entire block with round the clock electricity from their generator to win friends. The abductors grabbed one of them at 6 a.m. when he came out to switch on the generator; his beheaded body was thrown back near the neighborhoods.

The insurgency, we are told, is rampant with no signs of calming down. If any thing, it is growing stronger, organized and more sophisticated every day. The various elements within it-baathists, criminals, nationalists and Al Qaeda-are cooperating and coordinating.

I went to an emergency meeting for foreign correspondents with the military and embassy to discuss the kidnappings. We were somberly told our fate would largely depend on where we were in the kidnapping chain once it was determined we were missing. Here is how it goes: criminal gangs grab you and sell you up to Baathists in Fallujah, who will in turn sell you to Al Qaeda. In turn, cash and weapons flow the other way from Al Qaeda to the Baathisst to the criminals. My friend Georges, the French journalist snatched on the road to Najaf, has been missing for a month with no word on release or whether he is still alive.

America's last hope for a quick exit? The Iraqi police and National Guard units we are spending billions of dollars to train. The cops are being murdered by the dozens every day-over 700 to date -- and the insurgents are infiltrating their ranks. The problem is so serious that the U.S. military has allocated $6 million dollars to buy out 30,000 cops they just trained to get rid of them quietly.

As for reconstruction: firstly it's so unsafe for foreigners to operate that almost all projects have come to a halt. After two years, of the $18 billion Congress appropriated for Iraq reconstruction only about $1 billion or so has been spent and a chuck has now been reallocated for improving security, a sign of just how bad things are going here.

Oil dreams? Insurgents disrupt oil flow routinely as a result of sabotage and oil prices have hit record high of $49 a barrel. Who did this war exactly benefit? Was it worth it? Are we safer because Saddam is holed up and Al Qaeda is running around in Iraq?

Iraqis say that thanks to America they got freedom in exchange for insecurity. Guess what? They say they'd take security over freedom any day, even if it means having a dictator ruler.

I heard an educated Iraqi say today that if Saddam Hussein were allowed to run for elections he would get the majority of the vote. This is truly sad.

Then I went to see an Iraqi scholar this week to talk to him about elections here. He has been trying to educate the public on the importance of voting. He said, "President Bush wanted to turn Iraq into a democracy that would be an example for the Middle East. Forget about democracy, forget about being a model for the region, we have to salvage Iraq before all is lost."

One could argue that Iraq is already lost beyond salvation. For those of us on the ground it's hard to imagine what if any thing could salvage it from its violent downward spiral. The genie of terrorism, chaos and mayhem has been unleashed onto this country as a result of American mistakes and it can't be put back into a bottle.

The Iraqi government is talking about having elections in three months while half of the country remains a 'no go zone'-out of the hands of the government and the Americans and out of reach of journalists. In the other half, the disenchanted population is too terrified to show up at polling stations. The Sunnis have already said they'd boycott elections, leaving the stage open for polarized government of Kurds and Shiites that will not be deemed as legitimate and will most certainly lead to civil war.

I asked a 28-year-old engineer if he and his family would participate in the Iraqi elections since it was the first time Iraqis could to some degree elect a leadership. His response summed it all: "Go and vote and risk being blown into pieces or followed by the insurgents and murdered for cooperating with the Americans? For what? To practice democracy? Are you joking?"

-Farnaz

Your president did this. For no reason at all. None.

This is from W's hometown newspaper

From the Lone Star Iconoclast:

Few Americans would have voted for George W. Bush four years ago if he had promised that, as President, he would:
• Empty the Social Security trust fund by $507 billion to help offset fiscal irresponsibility and at the same time slash Social Security benefits.
• Cut Medicare by 17 percent and reduce veterans’ benefits and military pay.
• Eliminate overtime pay for millions of Americans and raise oil prices by 50 percent.
• Give tax cuts to businesses that sent American jobs overseas, and, in fact, by policy encourage their departure.
• Give away billions of tax dollars in government contracts without competitive bids.
• Involve this country in a deadly and highly questionable war, and
• Take a budget surplus and turn it into the worst deficit in the history of the United States, creating a debt in just four years that will take generations to repay.

These were elements of a hidden agenda that surfaced only after he took office.

The publishers of The Iconoclast endorsed Bush four years ago, based on the things he promised, not on this smoke-screened agenda.

Today, we are endorsing his opponent, John Kerry, based not only on the things that Bush has delivered, but also on the vision of a return to normality that Kerry says our country needs.

-SNIP-

In those dark hours after the World Trade Center attacks, Americans rallied together with a new sense of patriotism. We were ready to follow Bush’s lead through any travail.

He let us down.

When he finally emerged from his hide-outs on remote military bases well after the first crucial hours following the attack, he gave sound-bytes instead of solutions.
He did not trust us to be ready to sacrifice, build up our public and private security infrastructure, or cut down on our energy use to put economic pressure on the enemy in all the nations where he hides. He merely told us to shop, spend, and pretend nothing was wrong.

W's hometown paper is endorsing Kerry. Think about that.

I have a fifth that says that W won't win Texas by more than 11%. I'm starting to feel better about that wager.

In some ways, I love the British press

I WISH our writers were more like this. This is Ewen Murray rating the players on the American side:

Tiger Woods	9	Tiger only hunts alone. It's the way he has been brought up. His game is very poor when you consider how effective it was in seasons gone by. He is still a fabulous player and has many golden moments ahead of him. He gelled with Chris Riley, his old college mate, only for Riley to say, "I don't want to play this afternoon as I am drained from this morning, and anyway, I don't understand foursomes play." Really! Poor Hal. What an awful problem to deal with.
Phil Mickelson	9	Phil is America's most popular player by a long way. He tried with Tiger, but Woods would not let it work. He is honest, and is a very decent human being. More majors next year, with Toms we saw him at his best.
Davis Love	10	A class act in every way. A fine American captain in the making. I never thought I would be happy to see one of my best pals', Darren miss a four footer. Neither player deserved to lose their match, and it will go down in history as everything the Ryder Cup stands for.
Jim Furyk	9	A quiet unassuming man with an excellent golf game. Showed Howell no mercy. Like Love, son of a well respected golf professional and his breeding put him well ahead of many of his teammates.
Kenny Perry	7	His swan song on the Match will be remembered for what he is. A decent player.
David Toms	7	He should be remembered like Perry, although he will have more appearances. A dollar man with very little pride.
Chad Campbell	8	Another one in the comfort zone. This is one of our games' top players', but dollars will do. Will retire at 35 with millions of greenbacks. No heart, no ambition. Sad really.
Chris DiMarco	10	Showed he cared. 11 more like him and Sutton would have been proud. Ugly swing, but he would do for me anytime. Huge heart.
Fred Funk	4	Lovely man, popular with the fans. Not playing in the Open revealed all. How much? OK I 'll play. Hopeless for a team.
Chris Riley	5	Read above Tiger Woods summary. A fistful of dollars, and a new family two weeks before the Ryder Cup. Let me play in my hometown of Las Vegas, I can win more cash there.
Jay Haas	9	A class act, and no surprise Sutton picked him. I rather wished Harrington had not holed the 25 footer on the 18th. He deserved better.
Stewart Cink	7	The only U.S. Ryder Cupper that had won in three months prior to the event. Limited ability, but makes the most of it, but just another American that benefits from the world rankings. 10th in the world?. I don't think so.

Total Humor. Total truth. I can't imagine how much it would sting if I were Chris Riley or Stewart Cink.

Ouch.

Let's try not to forget this:

Bush deliberately did not attack a known terrorist in order to bolster his case for war in Iraq:

But NBC News has learned that long before the war the Bush administration had several chances to wipe out his terrorist operation and perhaps kill Zarqawi himself — but never pulled the trigger.

In June 2002, U.S. officials say intelligence had revealed that Zarqawi and members of al-Qaida had set up a weapons lab at Kirma, in northern Iraq, producing deadly ricin and cyanide.

The Pentagon quickly drafted plans to attack the camp with cruise missiles and airstrikes and sent it to the White House, where, according to U.S. government sources, the plan was debated to death in the National Security Council.

“Here we had targets, we had opportunities, we had a country willing to support casualties, or risk casualties after 9/11 and we still didn’t do it,” said Michael O’Hanlon, military analyst with the Brookings Institution.

Four months later, intelligence showed Zarqawi was planning to use ricin in terrorist attacks in Europe.

The Pentagon drew up a second strike plan, and the White House again killed it. By then the administration had set its course for war with Iraq.

“People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to execute the president’s policy of preemption against terrorists,” according to terrorism expert and former National Security Council member Roger Cressey.

In January 2003, the threat turned real. Police in London arrested six terror suspects and discovered a ricin lab connected to the camp in Iraq.

The Pentagon drew up still another attack plan, and for the third time, the National Security Council killed it.

Military officials insist their case for attacking Zarqawi’s operation was airtight, but the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam.

The United States did attack the camp at Kirma at the beginning of the war, but it was too late — Zarqawi and many of his followers were gone. “Here’s a case where they waited, they waited too long and now we’re suffering as a result inside Iraq,” Cressey added.

And despite the Bush administration’s tough talk about hitting the terrorists before they strike, Zarqawi’s killing streak continues today.

Think about that. W did not attack in order to make sure that there would be support for his fraudulent war.

We now have over 1000 American deaths, 200 billion spent, and a Vietnam quagmire that will be a danger to America and the western world probably until my childern die.

Bush did this.

And the best part is, Dick was a CEO

From Brad DeLong:

Unbelievable. Cheney needs a better staff:

ABC 7 News - Cheney: Economic Stats Miss EBay Sales: CINCINNATI (AP) - Indicators measure the nation's unemployment rate, consumer spending and other economic milestones, but Vice President Dick Cheney (website - news - bio) says it misses the hundreds of thousands who make money selling on eBay. "That's a source that didn't even exist 10 years ago," Cheney told an audience in Ohio. "Four hundred thousand people make some money trading on eBay."

Cheney needs a staff who will tell him that the $2.0 billion or so in eBay's domestic revenues are already included in the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis's estimates of GDP.

These people get more and more surreal as time goes on. These people LEAD this country right now. Oh, and that 2 billion from Ebay? Spend that every two days in Iraq.

Finally, how much of a slut do you have to be to make sure that you name a company who's CEO is a major contributor to the Repubs?

Im on break....

For the next few days, the real world calls. Besides, there isn't anything going on right now anyway.

Good commentary on all the major speeches during the RNC

Read the whole thing, by Kevin Kelton from the Washington Dispatch. But I want to hit on psycho Zell's speech/rant:

Ah, but that was all just the preamble to day three: shock and awe. Or, in the case of keynote speaker Zell Miller, shock and “aw, did he really say that?!” I know the conventioneers ate it up. But I watched at home with a small group of independent voters, and I gotta tell you, I haven’t seen an audience reaction like that since the first act of “Springtime For Hitler.” Maybe bubba in the sticks thought that was great oratory, but serious voters in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida might have been asking a few questions along the way. Questions like:

• Why is this guy talking about Wendell Wilkie and a peacetime draft? (Answer: It seems he’s glad that Wilkie lost but angry that John Kerry is trying to win.)
• Why is this guy ranting about soldiers and the press and freedom of speech? Is free speech an issue in this election? (Answer: No.)
• When the heck did “flag burning” become an issue in this election? (Answer: It isn’t.)
• If it’s “the soldier” who gives us the right to free speech and the freedom to debate our government’s policies, hasn’t Kerry – a former soldier of some valor – earned those same rights? (Answer: Not in Zell’s America.)
• Didn’t that great democratic senator Bobby Kennedy campaign against a sitting president during a time of war? Didn’t a great republican senator, Barry Goldwater, campaign against that same sitting president earlier in that war? Didn’t Ronald Reagan campaign against a sitting president while 52 hostages were being held in Iran in an act of war? Didn’t they all show a “manic obsession to bring down our commander-in-chief?” Isn’t that what happens every four years, and has for 214 years? Isn’t that called democracy, and isn’t that what our soldiers are fighting for? (Answers: yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.)
• Didn’t Sen. Kerry actually vote for large pentagon appropriation bills 16 out of 19 times (for an 85% pro-weapons record)? (Answer: Yes.)
• On 2 of the 3 times when Sen. Kerry voted against funding some weapons systems, wasn’t it on the advice of then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney? (Answer: Yes.)
• Was that $87 billion that Kerry once voted for before he voted against all going to body armor for our troops? (Answer: No. $320,000 went to body armor. $8 billion went to Halliburton.)
• If that body armor was so vital to our troops, why did President Bush threaten to veto the same bill if it was paid for by millionaires? (Answer: What good is greasing Halliburton if rich CEOs have to pay for it?)
• Would a decorated Vietnam veteran and 20-year senator really leave post 9/11 America to be defended by spitballs? (Answer: What do you think?)
• Man! What did John Kerry ever do to this guy? (Answer: Nothing.)
• Then why is he so angry at Kerry for running for president? (Answer: Uh…because he has grandkids?)
• Wait a second…did he say “a peacetime draft?” (Answer: Uh-ohhh…)

Next came the night’s cleanup hitter, Vice President Cheney. Gave a good speech; I like his natural speaking style -- speak softly and carry a big shtick. In this case, the shtick is John Kerry’s alleged promise to wage a “sensitive” war on terror. Which may seem funny to anyone who hasn’t already seen clips of both Cheney and Bush using the word “sensitive” to describe their war strategy. (Cheney has used it several times.) And since most voters under thirty get their news from “The Daily Show,” and Jon Stewart has shown those clips over and over, I’m guessing the republicans lost the under-30 vote before Cheney’s sensitive side left the stage.

Then came the headliner: George W. Bush, to give what many called the most important speech of his life. The last time Bush gave “the most important speech of his life,” the 2003 State of the Union address, his poll numbers actually went down afterward, a feat not seen since…well, since Wendell Wilkie. Will he have better luck this time?

My prediction is, yes, Bush will register a modest bounce of some kind in some poll someplace over the weekend, and everyone will call it a huge success. Mission Accomplished. Then Kerry will come back swinging, the red meat will turn rancid, the gap will narrow again, and suddenly everything will come down to the debates.

If I’m wrong, the president’s poll numbers will shoot up, he’ll build on that lead during the anniversary of 9/11, and John Kerry will wish he was back in the jungles of Vietnam.

If I’m right, the RNC may just go down in history as the biggest “self-inflicted wound” of the 2004 presidential campaign.

My feeling is that the RNC could not have gone any better than it did for the Democrats. Every major speaker came across as angry, hateful, and completely out of touch with the realities that America faces now. The tiny percentage of undecided voters who watched this unfold cannot possibly be convinced that W. and his minions are on the right track.

Not to mention that every single speech that I heard included demonstratable falsehoods, including the president's.

(From the AP)

President Bush glossed over some complicating realities in Iraq, Afghanistan and the home front in arguing the case Americans are safer and his opponent cannot deliver.

On Iraq, Bush talked of a 30-member alliance standing shoulder to shoulder with the United States, masking the fact that U.S. troops are pulling by far most of the weight. On Afghanistan and its neighbors, he gave an accounting of captured or killed terrorists, but did not address the replenishment of their ranks or the still-missing Osama bin Laden.

-snip-

He took some license in telling Americans that Democratic opponent John Kerry "is running on a platform of increasing taxes."

Kerry would, in fact, raise taxes on the richest Americans but as part of a plan to keep the Bush tax cuts for everyone else and even cut some of them more. That's not a tax-increase platform any more than Bush's plan for private retirement accounts is a platform to reduce Social Security benefits.

And on education, Bush voiced an inherent contradiction, dating back to his 2000 campaign, in stating his stout support for local control of education, yet promising to toughen federal standards that override local decision-making.

"We are insisting on accountability, empowering parents and teachers, and making sure that local people are in charge of their schools," he said, on one hand. Yet, "we will require a rigorous exam before graduation."

On Iraq, Bush derided Kerry for devaluing the alliance that drove out Saddam Hussein and is trying to rebuild the country. "Our allies also know the historic importance of our work," Bush said. "About 40 nations stand beside us in Afghanistan, and some 30 in Iraq."

But the United States has more than five times the number of troops in Iraq than all the other countries put together. And, with 976 killed, Americans have suffered nearly eight times more deaths than the other allies combined.

-snip-

Nowhere did Bush mention bin Laden, nor did he account for the replacement of killed and captured al al-Qaida leaders by others.

He attacked Kerry for voting against an $87 billion package for Iraq and Afghanistan operations that included money for extra sets of body armor and other supplies, mocking his opponent for saying the issue was complicated. "There's nothing complicated about supporting our troops in combat," Bush said.

But the bill in question was not solely about supporting troops and Kerry's campaign said he ultimately voted against it because, among other reasons, it included no-bid contracts for companies.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, who tracks the accuracy of campaign rhetoric at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication, said Bush overstepped on a few claims about Kerry.

"The speech distorts Kerry's positions by suggesting that he opposed Medicare reform when he instead favored an alternative, and opposed tax cuts for all when he in fact supported the middle class cuts and opposed cuts for those making more than $200,000," she said.

And on Bush's second-term domestic initiatives, she was not surprised to find missing dollar signs.

"One expects acceptance speeches to make grand promises without specifying the ways that the money will be raised to pay for them," she said. "This speech is no exception."

Would we expect anything different?

Protesters during W's disasterous "speech"

Two so far.

Some choice quotes:

Free governments in the
Middle East will fight terrorists instead of harboring them, and that helps
us keep the peace. So our mission in Afghanistan and Iraq is clear: We
will help new leaders to train their armies, and move toward elections, and
get on the path of stability and democracy as quickly as possible. And
then our troops will return home with the honor they have earned.

Unless, of course, you are John Kerry.

Do I forget the lessons of September 11th and
take the word of a madman, or do I take action to defend our country?
Faced with that choice, I will defend America every time.

Because we acted to defend our country, the murderous regimes of
Saddam Hussein and the Taliban are history, more than 50 million people
have been liberated, and democracy is coming to the broader Middle East.

Even though there was no (none, zero) connection between al Qaida and Saddam, W. attacked Iraq. This has been shown countless times, in multiple reports, investigations, and eyewitness accounts.

Oh, and we weren't told that we were attacking Iraq in order to liberate the populace. We were going to war to stop a country that posed an immediate threat to the USA with weapons of mass distruction.

I'm ill right now.

Cool article on New Scientist

Something other than the systematic destruction of our democracy by the Right for a change.

An interview with Jamie Whyte, discussing many of the "thought" fallacies that religous and other pseudo-scientific kooks fall victim to:

In your book you are quite harsh on religion. Aren't people entitled to their faith?

This is one of my favourite errors. An interesting change has happened, at least in the west. It used to be that people would argue for a particular religious dogma or a clear religious doctrine. That is no longer what happens. The world is increasingly dividing into those who have "faith" and those who don't. It doesn't really matter what the faith is. That is why you now get "faith groups" coming together from all kinds of different religions. The weirdest manifestation of this new tendency is when people say: "I'm not a Christian but I believe in something." Then I say: "Of course, I believe in many things, like there is a chair there and a table. What are you talking about?" And they reply: "Well, you know, something more." But what "more"? What they mean is something more than we have any good reason to believe in.

That really seems to get to you!

What amazes me is that they like to set themselves up as having a slightly finer sensibility than you or me but in fact they are completely intellectually irresponsible. They used to come up with very bad arguments for their faiths but at least they felt that there was something they should provide. Now mere wilfulness has triumphed. This is what I describe as the egocentric approach to truth. You are no longer interested in reality because to do that you have to be pretty rigorous, you have to have evidence or do some experimentation. Rather, beliefs are part of your wardrobe. You've got a style and how dare anybody tell you that your style isn't right. Ideology is seen as simply a matter of taste and as it's not right to tell people that they've got bad taste, so it's not right to tell them that their opinions are false. I'm afraid that the cast of mind of most people is the opposite of scientific.

There's something close to that that you also hate. When people say "there is an awful lot we don't understand" and use that as an argument for believing in something...

The mystery fallacy: it's a mystery therefore I can think whatever I want.

Pretty good read.