Sooner Blue

 

..... you will always be a champion of our hearts .. you gave it the gallant fight but the odds caught up to you. I'm reminded of Dan Fogelberg's song "Run for the Roses" -- "It's the chance of a lifetime in a lifetime of chance."

 

In case somebody doesn't follow horse racing, Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro was euthanized after complications from his breakdown at the Preakness in May. He shattered his right hind leg, an injury so severe that most horses would have been put down right away. Doctors operated several times on both legs over eight months.

 

Sadly, he recently developed laminitis in both front feet .. a death knell for horses. It just wasn't fair. He fought so hard ...

 

But Barbaro’s legacy has a chance to be long-lasting. He delivered the very important message that we care about the health and safety of our horses. Attention has been brought to the need to ban early training (before the horse's bones are mature), it's not fair to the horse to start heavy training at two-three years old.

 

Just days before Barbaro was humanely put down, the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act was reintroduced in Congress. While we're worrying about this one magnificent horse, more than 100,000 horses were slaughtered last year in the US and shipped to Europe and Japan for human consumption.

 

Each one of these animals suffered extreme inhumane conditions while being transported and cruelty during the slaughter process.

 

Surely a nation that can show so much care and concern about the life and death of one racehorse, should be able to muster the compassion to pass legislation that would end this cruelty to our fellow creatures.

 

Horse slaughter is a profoundly inhumane industry. Discarded show horses, broken down racehorses, Premarin foals (another travesty!), wild horses and carriage horses are crammed inside double-deck livestock trucks built for smaller animals .. with not enough head room .. and they're in there 36, 72 hours with no water or food.

 

I won't even tell you what happens at the slaughterhouse and processing plants .. it will haunt you if you have a soft heart for animals.

 

None of this horse meat they are slaughtered for is eaten in the US .. nor are the companies owned by Americans. They are all foreign-owned and they are subsidized by the US government to the point of $5 million a year.

 

It all goes against America's love affair with the horse .. the horse is a part of our culture. We settled the West by horseback .. the horse helped us survive and is a part of us. We need to make sure the horse is treated with respect.

 

And you can do something -- Please write and ask your representatives in congress to vote for the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act. It's time to permanently ban the slaying of our horses for dinner tables in Italy, France, Belgium, and Japan.

 

To find your federal legislators, try:
Congress.org: www.Congress.org
USA Senate: www.senate.gov
USA House of Representatives: www.house.gov

 

A sample email:

 

"Please vote for the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act.

 

Horse slaughter is a profoundly inhumane industry. These animals suffer extreme cruelty and inhumane conditions in the transportation and slaughter process.

 

It's time to respect the important role the horse played in our history and permanently ban the slaying of our horses for dinner tables in Italy, France, Belgium, and Japan."

 

We don't have to slaughter these beautiful animals for food, there are many animal rights groups who find homes for them in retirement farms .. or with loving private owners who have a pasture for them to live out their days peacefully.

 

 

"BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Iraqi officials claimed Monday that at least 200 militants were killed in a fierce battle between U.S.-backed Iraqi troops and a religious cult allegedly plotting to kill pilgrims at a major Shiite Muslim religious festival, while bombings and mortar attacks targeting Shiites elsewhere killed at least 15 people.

 

Defense Ministry spokesman Mohammed al-Askari said the Iraqi troops killed 200 terrorists, wounded 60 and captured 120 in the operation, lowering previous counts based on what he said were the most recent figures he had received.

 

Ahmed Deaibil, a spokesman for Najaf province, and Brig. Gen. Fadhil Barwari earlier had put the figure at 300 militants killed and as many as 20 captured, including fighters from Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Lebanon."  Jan 29, 8:42 AM (ET)

 

 

This story might change over the next few days. We'll have to wait and let the dust settle to see what actually happened .. but, it sounds like good news.

 

CNN said the Iraqi soldiers were drawn from both Sunni and Shia communities .. that they fought on the same side is a very good sign, even though US troops had to take over for them at the end, air power, etc.

 

At least the Iraqis stayed and fought .. didn't run away like before. Maybe it's sinking in that we won't be there to cover their arses forever.

 

Who were these guys in the date palm orchard .. who were they allied with? All we know is "previously unknown group called the Army of Heaven." They sure were well-equipped with automatic weapons, sniper rifles and rockets .. even had anti-aircraft missiles.

 

It's interesting that they were from Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Lebanon.

 

CNN just said it was basically a cult surrounding one man who claimed to be the Mahdi -- an Islamic prophet who disappeared down a well thousands of years ago and is destined to rise again to bring on the apocalypse. Sort of like how Christians believe in the second coming of Jesus.

 

Anyway, they say the cult leader was killed.

 

Wouldn't it be stupid for the cult militants to gather together in large groups? More targets closer together and all. Sounds like they said, "ok guys, let's all meet up at this big date farm so we can plan to assassinate Shiite clerics and pilgrims during the Ashura festival. No one will know we are there .. we'll all wear brown uniforms to blend in .. our enemies won't catch on."

 

It looks like they had planned to murder thousands of pilgrims, because they couldn't just send a few terrorists to do the job .. they needed to coordinate a full scale attack.

 

Anyway, it's good news when the story is about "US backed Iraqi forces" .. says that the Iraqis were mainly responsible for this put down of our enemies.

 

I hope this is a major morale boost for Iraqi soldiers .. hopefully another step closer in getting them to take over responsibility for their country, with our troops at most in a support role.

 

But .. allow me to hold on to a modicum of skepticism though .. this IS the same government who fed us all that BS about Pvt. Jessica Lynch .. how she 'fought to the last bullet' to avoid being captured (which she said later wasn't true) .. and her dramatic rescue by US special forces (which was staged).....

 

Daffy Does Doom
By MAUREEN DOWD, New York Times columnist
WASHINGTON
Dick Durbin went to the floor of the Senate on Thursday night to denounce the vice president as “delusional.”

It was shocking, and Senator Durbin should be ashamed of himself.

Delusional is far too mild a word to describe Dick Cheney. Delusional doesn’t begin to capture the profound, transcendental one-flew-over daftness of the man.

Has anyone in the history of the United States ever been so singularly wrong and misguided about such phenomenally important events and continued to insist he’s right in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary?

It requires an exquisite kind of lunacy to spend hundreds of billions destroying America’s reputation in the world, exhausting the U.S. military, failing to catch Osama, enhancing Iran’s power in the Middle East and sending American kids to train and arm Iraqi forces so they can work against American interests.

Only someone with an inspired alienation from reality could, under the guise of exorcising the trauma of Vietnam, replicate the trauma of Vietnam.

You must have a real talent for derangement to stay wrong every step of the way, to remain in complete denial about Iraq’s civil war, to have a total misunderstanding of Arab culture, to be completely oblivious to the American mood and to be absolutely blind to how democracy works.

In a democracy, when you run a campaign that panders to homophobia by attacking gay marriage and then your lesbian daughter writes a book about politics and decides to have a baby with her partner, you cannot tell Wolf Blitzer he’s “out of line” when he gingerly raises the hypocrisy of your position.

Mr. Cheney acts more like a member of the James gang than the Jefferson gang. Asked by Wolf what would happen if the Senate passed a resolution critical of The Surge, Scary Cheney rumbled, “It won’t stop us.”

Such an exercise in democracy, he noted, would be “detrimental from the standpoint of the troops.”

Americans learned an important lesson from Vietnam about supporting the troops even when they did not support the war. From media organizations to Hollywood celebrities and lawmakers on both sides, everyone backs our troops.

It is W. and Vice who learned no lessons from Vietnam, probably because they worked so hard to avoid going. They rush into a war halfway around the world for no reason and with no foresight about the culture or the inevitable insurgency, and then assert that any criticism of their fumbling management of Iraq and Afghanistan is tantamount to criticizing the troops. Quel demagoguery.

“Bottom line,” Vice told Wolf, “is that we’ve had enormous successes, and we will continue to have enormous successes.” The biggest threat, he said, is that Americans may not “have the stomach for the fight.”

He should stop casting aspersions on the American stomach. We’ve had the stomach for more than 3,000 American deaths in a war sold as a cakewalk.

If W. were not so obsessed with being seen as tough, Mr. Cheney could not influence him with such tripe.

They are perpetually guided by the wrong part of the body. They are consumed by the fear of looking as if they don’t have guts, when they should be compelled by the desire to look as if they have brains.

After offering Congress an olive branch in the State of the Union, the president resumed mindless swaggering. Asked yesterday why he was ratcheting up despite the resolutions, W. replied, “In that I’m the decision maker, I had to come up with a way forward that precluded disaster.” (Or preordained it.)

The reality of Iraq, as The Times’s brilliant John Burns described it to Charlie Rose this week, is that a messy endgame could be far worse than Vietnam, leading to “a civil war on a scale with bloodshed that will absolutely dwarf what we’re seeing now,” and a “wider conflagration, with all kinds of implications for the world’s flow of oil, for the state of Israel. What happens to King Abdullah in Jordan if there’s complete chaos in the region?”
Mr. Cheney has turned his perversity into foreign policy.

He assumes that the more people think he’s crazy, the saner he must be. In Dr. No’s nutty world-view, anti-Americanism is a compliment. The proof that America is right is that everyone thinks it isn’t.

He sees himself as a prophet in the wilderness because he thinks anyone in the wilderness must be a prophet.

To borrow one of his many dismissive words, it’s hogwash.

 

"WASHINGTON - The Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman on Sunday dismissed criticism that a resolution opposing a troop buildup in Iraq would embolden the enemy and estimated perhaps only 20 senators believe President Bush "is headed in the right direction."

 

"It's not the American people or the U.S. Congress who are emboldening the enemy," said Democratic Sen. Joe Biden, a White House hopeful in 2008. "It's the failed policy of this president — going to war without a strategy, going to war prematurely."[..]

 

 

This whole emboldening-the-terrorists thing is such a crock .. as if insurgents are sitting home watching senators debate and war protestors march on CNN so they can get "emboldened" enough to rig a car bomb. Believe me, they're going to do that no matter what, even whether we're there or not .. because they're fighting each other as fiercely as they're fighting us.

 

Seems to me that the thing insurgents hate is peace, not war. Peace talks, cease-fires, diplomatic solutions. etc. This forces them to compromise and give up ground. They would rather have more war because it destabilizes society .. average citizens become radicalized, which in turn means more recruits for the insurgents and the death squads.

 

Anyway, 21,000 troops are not going to make that big a difference, even in Baghdad. It would take several HUNDRED thousand more to actually "win" that war, for us to be in control.

 

And when we do finally leave, no matter what we do, no matter if it's in 6 mos. or 6 years, their Civil war will STILL blow up again. Remember, their rivalries and tribal hatreds go back 1500 years. That's why, as bloody as it's going to be, we need to let them settle it themselves. Like some Democrats are saying, just withdraw to guard the borders .. to keep foreigners out .. and let the Iraqis have at it.

 

Or, how about this? -- we fix the problems with US port security and borders security with all the money we'd be saving if we withdrew, with all the troops we'd be bringing home. That way we could really get serious about TRUE Homeland Security .. not this BS that Bush and Cheney are trying to feed us.

 

Another thing that really gets my goat -- Cheney on CNN telling Wolf Blitzer that America "doesn't have the stomach for the fight" .. when he was a five-deferments coward himself during Vietnam.

 

75% of the American people are against this war and feel that we've already lost it. The Vietnam War wasn't lost on the battlefield, it was lost first in the public and then in Congress, who cut off funding.

 

Seems the Iraq war is following the same pattern .. though on a much quicker timeline and with much fewer casualties.

 

And don't forget -- the North Vietnamese resolve was never shaken.

 

 

Some people are hoping that the biggest story coming out of the Libby trial will be that Dick Cheney committed treason by willfully disclosing, or orchestrating the disclosure, of Valerie Plame’s identity to reporters for political reasons.

 

Some Democrats in Congress are paying very close attention to certain testimony .. maybe day-dreaming about drafting Articles of Impeachment to bring against Cheney as soon as the Libby trial is over.

 

From the LA Times:

"WASHINGTON — In the first such account from Vice President Dick Cheney's inner circle, a former aide testified Thursday that Cheney personally directed the effort to discredit an administration critic by having calls made to reporters in 2003.

 

Cheney dictated detailed "talking points" for his chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and others on how they could impugn the critic's credibility, said Catherine J. Martin, who was the vice president's top press aide at the time.[..]

 

 

Now treason is a very serious specific charge .. they'll have to back it up by naming the enemies to which Cheney gave aid and comfort, and two witnesses to an overt act.

 

It came out in the Libby trial on Friday that the CIA briefer who was responsible for Cheney’s daily briefings, warned both Cheney and Libby that leaking Plame’s identity could cause several agents to be subject to "imprisonment, torture and death."

 

The CIA front company that Plame worked for--Brewster-Jennings--posed as an energy consulting firm and Plame’s outing could cause CIA agents to die or be nullified in their quest to seek out WMDs.

 

That's pretty close to treason .. but we'll have to just wait for the Libby trial to play out, there may soon be more witnesses to Cheney’s "treason."

 

Ari Fleischer will testify Monday. He suddenly quit the WH when Plame was outted. And wasn't he the one carrying that memo around during the infamous Air Force One flight? Can't wait for Monday's testimony.

 

And since Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald gave Ari immunity, wouldn't that suggest that Fitz is looking for bigger fish to fry than Libby? Maybe Libby is the bait and Fitz is out to get Cheney.

 

Be still my heart! Karl Rove has received a subpoena to testify! They say he might not cooperate .. might even have to be declared a hostile witness. Rove is a slippery customer, Fitz had him on the stand in five grand jury appearances and couldn't entrap him...

 

With Rove and Cheney testifing, it would be wonderful if they were cornered into giving testimony that might bring this around to what Fitz probably wanted in the first place--that there was a deliberate conspiracy to seek revenge against Joe Wilson by outing his wife as a covert CIA operative.

 

Maybe once Libby is taken care of, Fitz will work his way up the food chain. He might even skip Rove and instead zoom in on Cheney .. who of all of them, seems to most exposed by his own staff's testimony.

 

Fitz is a very competent little bulldog of a prosecutor. His MO is: Turn who you can .. play the rest off each other .. bring small-fry in on sure-fire charges .. call all players as witnesses, making them choose allies .. force major players to plead the fifth, make deals or resign.

 

He got the Gov. of Illinois that way .. it took years and years, but he got him.

 

I saw "All the President's Men" again the other day .. a fascinating time capsule of what excellent investigative journalism was like 30 years ago. Two reporters, Woodward and Bernstein, took down a corrupt Nixon presidency. It reminded me that Watergate was all about the Cover-up .. the investigation started out slow with little steps, then snowballed.

 

So could Plamegate .. which is also a Cover-up.

 

Hey, this trial may come to naught .. my dreams of seeing Rove and Cheney frog-marched out of the WH may never come true ..

 

But gosh, right now this is so much fun! Pass the popcorn!

 

Hey now, interference by the vice president into a Congressional investigation is obstruction of justice .. no matter which way you slice it.

 

Jan. 25, 2007 at 10:27PM
Vice President Dick Cheney tried to stall a Senate investigation into flawed intelligence on Iraq, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said Thursday.

 

Rockefeller is chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. In an interview with McClatchy Newspapers, he said Cheney leaned on the former chairman, Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., in an effort to delay the committee from reaching any conclusion. There was "constant" pressure on Roberts, Rockefeller said. [..]

 

 

Gah! What does a guy have to do? Shoot someone in the face?

 

Do you mean to tell me that they lied to us about the need to invade Iraq?!

 

Is it possible that they knew there were no real links between Saddam and 9/11?

 

Could they possibly have known that Osama bin Laden was an enemy of the secular government in Iraq?

 

Could they have been aware that the UN inspection teams were confident that the WMD programs had been destroyed through ten years of relentless inspections?

 

I'm shocked! Shocked!

 

And it becomes even more clear why Cheney and Rove were so intent on trying to shut up and discredit Joe Wilson....

 

My first reaction to Rockefeller's disclosure -- Isn't it refreshing to have a Congress that does its job and doesn't just follow marching orders from the Executive Branch?

 

Second reaction -- Senator Rockefeller, why are we just now finding out about this?

 

So you say, "We just had to go along with the Administration." No you didn't, Senator! How many people have died and suffered because Congress members didn't speak up? No excuses Senator. Like Sen. Hagel said, "If you wanted a safe job, go sell shoes."

 

No one can convince me that Iraq wasn't about oil all along. Osama's 9/11 gave them their foot in the door. (I wonder what they were cooking up before 9/11 happened?) Think back about how quickly they turned away from Afghanistan and toward Iraq .. as soon as they had the troop levels they thought they needed. Mission Accomplished.

 

When JudicialWatch.org finally got a court order to see documents from Cheney's secret 2001 energy meetings, all the seeds were there.

 

CHENEY ENERGY TASK FORCE DOCUMENTS FEATURE MAP OF IRAQI OILFIELDS

 

 

Wags are calling Cheney George Bush's impeachment insurance. I know our forefathers made allowances for screw-ups like George W. Bush when they crafted the Constitution .. but did they anticipate someone even worse than the screw-up, like Cheney, at the helm?

 

Hmmm .. maybe that's why we have the "right to bear arms"....

 

WASHINGTON Thu Jan 25, 1:33 AM ET
John Kerry, who fell 118,601 Ohio votes short of the White House in 2004, said Wednesday he will not run for president in 2008.[..]

 

 

Gah! Just 118,601 votes.

 

BTW--did you know he was in Vietnam?

 

Did you know Bush wasn't? Nor Cheney? Nor Wolfowitz? Shall I go on?

 

How disgusted I was when the Swift-boaters went after Kerry .. smearing someone who served this country in combat. Don't bother me with your pissy facts-twisting -- he was there. Bush and Cheney weren't .. every dang last one of the politicians in the current WH found a way out of serving in Vietnam.

 

Savaging our war veterans is one of the nastier campaign tactics Karl Rove brought to this WH. In all previous campaigns both sides respected a candidate's military service.

 

Don't get me started on Turd Blossom .. this is about Kerry deciding not to run.

 

Thank you John, for not running .. let's just try and forget all your gaffs .. your convoluted explanations of how you voted FOR an $87 billion war appropriation "before I voted against it" .. your windsurfing photo ops .. your botched jokes.

 

And I say that as someone who voted for him in 2004 .. I worked my butt off for him once he won my party's nomination.

 

But, in my defense, I would have voted for a one-eyed billy-goat if the alternative was another four years of Bush. My vote was definitely a vote against Bush rather than a vote for Kerry.

 

Turns out Kerry is a lot better than what we got.

 

Anyway, his announcement isn’t a big surprise .. nobody but the GOP wanted Kerry to run. The polls had him in the single digits .. let's hope he took them seriously. I'd hate to think that he is stubborn and tin-eared enough to run anyway.

 

But .. let me daydream a little .. consider what might have been had Kerry won in 2004.

 

We would have begun an earlier withdrawal from Iraq .. more of our kids might still be alive. But, outside of that, his power would have been hobbled by a Republican Congress .. who would have had a good foil to gang up on if they weren't dragged down by Iraq. So .. maybe a Kerry presidency might have left the GOP in charge of Congress after the 2006 elections .. and put them in a good position to win the White House in 2008, since Kerry would probably run again.

 

So ..be careful what you wish for ...

 

 

From the Washington Post:
Disguises Used in Attack on Troops
Gunmen Infiltrated Secured Iraqi Site, Killing 5 Americans

 

BAGHDAD, Jan. 21 -- The armored sport-utility vehicles whisked into a government compound in the city of Karbala with speed and urgency, the way most Americans and foreign dignitaries travel along Iraq's treacherous roads these days.

 

Iraqi guards at checkpoints waved them through Saturday afternoon because the men wore what appeared to be legitimate U.S. military uniforms and badges, and drove cars commonly used by foreigners, the provincial governor said.

 

Once inside, however, the men unleashed one of the deadliest and most brazen attacks on U.S. forces in a secure area. Five American service members were killed in a hail of grenades and gunfire in a breach of security that Iraqi officials called unprecedented.

 

The attack, which lasted roughly 20 minutes, came on a day when the United States lost at least 20 other troops, including a dozen in a helicopter crash, making it the third most lethal day for American forces in Iraq.[..]

 

 

So who sent this message? Al-Qaeda? The Mahdi Army? The Revolutionary Guards?

 

Someone on the inside is definitely helping the insurgents. The uniforms and money spent indicates someone with time to spare .. if the Mahdi Army is this slick, Heaven help our vulnerable troops. Bush's latest escalation is going to play right into the insurgents' hands .. leaving many more of our kids shredded in the streets.

 

The story the local officials told was that a convoy of SUVs with tinted windows and passengers dressed as US and Iraqi soldiers, who spoke some English, passed through checkpoints. Now I just don’t buy this.

 

Even if they spoke some English and they fooled one checkpoint or two .. how could they fool all the checkpoints all the way to the provincial headquarters?

 

Even stranger, no one chased the attackers. When asked why, the Iraqi police said they thought it was American-on-American violence and wanted to stay out of it. How lame is that excuse!

 

It's interesting that no Iraqi soldiers, policemen or officials were hurt in the attack.

 

Also, the Pentagon now admits that a shoulder-fired surface-to-air rocket is what brought down the Black Hawk helicopter last Saturday .. which killed 12.

 

Then there was another helicopter shot down. Two in three days .. very scary. There are lots of helicopters flying around Baghdad and the whole of Iraq. If the insurgents get this technology in any numbers, Heaven help our troops. That was a key reason the Russians took such heavy losses in Afghanistan.

 

No matter how long we stay, Iraq is their country and 70 per cent of them don't want us there .. all they have to do is wait us out. Because no matter what the policy is, who the president or prime minister is .. they know that some day we are going to leave.

 

Aren't we?

 

 

Here's one recap of the president's State of the Union address:
1. The New Equation in Iraq: Fight All Muslims, Everywhere, All the Time
2. Balanced Budget Baloney
3. Health Care on Life Support
4. Border Disorder
5. No Private School Left Behind
6. Flipping on Energy Conservation
7. No Flopping on Global Warming
8. Black Allies in the Gallery, Not on the Floor
9. Use the Troops for cover
10. No Red Meat for Red Staters

 

 

Bush's speech was subdued .. rather lifeless. Even he looked bored.

 

Letterman said the speech was so boring that Pelosi and Cheney were making out. Can't wait for Jon Stewart's review.

 

To amuse myself, I imagined that Bush was Charlie McCarthy and Cheney was sitting behind him pulling strings .. that way Dick has of talking out of the side of his mouth would make him a good ventriloquist ..

 

There were only two exciting moments the entire night--first, when they did that zoom in on Condi Rice's scary evil-eye scowl .. and second, Sen. Jim Webb. He was amazing. he was presidential .. and gave a damn good speech too. Sometimes you forget what someone intelligent and thoughtful sounds like.

 

I like that Webb respects our military. Those brave men and women put their lives on the line for us .. and have the right to expect in return that the government they serve should use sound judgment and common sense and not abuse their service.

 

It was nice that Bush made a big deal over Pelosi being the first woman to be seated behind a president during the SOTU. Then I got to thinking that taking over 200 years to make this happen was not actually something to be proud of.

 

Erase the deficit in 5 years? The look on Hillary's face was priceless...

 

I guess the Big Easy has been passed off as someone else's problem.

 

And Bush didn't once mention the sanctity of marriage .. or flag burning. That must have really been tough on the right-wing evangelicals .. no pet 'values' issues mentioned .. no protections for flags or fetuses or stem cells.

 

He wants to tax employer based healthcare. This is a tax increase for a good majority of people. Tax on health insurance may just do the trick in ticking off the last of the middle class Republicans who still support him. Wonder what they said about it on Faux News?

 

It was kind of creepy how he kept mentioning Iran .. in the same way he mentioned Iraq and yellow cake in 2003. That guy is lethal to those in the military. You don't send several aircraft carriers half-way around the world for nothing.

 

One morning next Spring we'll probably wake up to hear that "a border incident" forced us to launch the 188th on Tehran...

 

Most obnoxious line--"This is not the fight we entered in Iraq, but it is the fight we are in." Who wrote that one for him, Rummy?

 

Bush really is clueless. He still thinks the whole Iraq deal will turn itself around and he'll be vindicated and his critics will be wrong .. and he'll go into the history books as the greatest president of the modern era.

 

Mrs. Cheney did not look too happy .. probably all that good news coming from the first day of Scooter Libby's trial. I can't wait for the testimony to start .. the opening arguments have been so much fun. I am rooting for Scooter BTW .. no way should he take the fall for Rove.

 

I thought the Subway guy was awesome .. but he should have gotten a lifetime bus/subway pass instead of a one year deal. He's George's new black friend .. since they might be getting ready to throw Condi under the train.

 

Scariest thought all night--they had Attorney General Alberto Gonzales squirreled away somewhere so that, if the Capitol's roof collapsed and wiped out the President, VP, Speaker, President Pro Tem, and the rest of the cabinet, Gonzales would become our prez.

 

And if you were playing a drinking game where you had to chug every time the camera showed Hillary with a pissed look on her face .. boy, you must be hung over this morning.

 

 

 

What will it take to wipe that smirk off of AG Gonzalez’s face?

 

Gosh, I never thought I'd miss Attorney General John Ashcroft .. it just seems quaint now that he spent $8000 of taxpayer's money to cover up bare-breasted statues in the Justice Department because he was offended .. said he was fed up with having his picture taken in front of a giant semi-nude woman.

 

No one knows how offended the statues were .....

 

Yes, he was batty alright, but at least he was honest about it .. he never tried to be sneaky or tricky about his flakiness.

 

So just in case you missed it, here is your current Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee last Thursday .. being questioned about whether the US Constitution grants habeas corpus rights of a fair trial to every American.

 

"Responding to questions from Sen. Arlen Specter at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Jan. 18, Gonzales argued that the Constitution doesn’t explicitly bestow habeas corpus rights; it merely says when the so-called Great Writ can be suspended.[..]

 

GONZALES: There is no express grant of habeas in the Constitution. There is a prohibition against taking it away. But it's never been the case, and I'm not a Supreme --

 

SPECTER: Now, wait a minute. Wait a minute. The constitution says you can't take it away, except in the case of rebellion or invasion. Doesn't that mean you have the right of habeas corpus, unless there is an invasion or rebellion?

 

GONZALES: I meant by that comment, the Constitution doesn't say, "Every individual in the United States or every citizen is hereby granted or assured the right to habeas." It doesn't say that. It simply says the right of habeas corpus shall not be suspended except by --

 

SPECTER: You may be treading on your interdiction and violating common sense, Mr. Attorney General.[..]

 

 

I think "treading on your interdiction" is lawyer-talk for "about to step on your own dict."

 

There must be something wrong with our system if it allows such deceitful reinterpretation of the Constitution by the dang Attorney General.

 

Shame on the Congress that confirmed such a transparent lackey as Gonzales ..  we suspected all along that his main function was/is to provide cover for Bush's loose interpretation of our Constitution. Bush probably considers him his personal attorney.

 

Another thing--now that Bush can no longer count on Congress to do his bidding, his administration is trying to protect itself by kicking out independent-minded prosecutors. In the last few weeks they've pushed out at least four US attorneys--and maybe as many as seven--without explanation.

 

US attorney Carol Lamfor was on that list .. she was the one who successfully prosecuted Duke Cunningham--a Republican congressman--on major corruption charges. The top FBI official in San Diego told The San Diego Union-Tribune that "Ms. Lam's dismissal would undermine multiple continuing investigations."

 

When the senators asked him about this, Gonzales refused to say how many other attorneys have been asked to resign .. calling it a "personnel matter."

 

Yeah right .. they are handpicking replacements for the upcoming investigation wars, stacking the deck with GOP friendly prosecutors so they can stonewall investigations into the Bush administration’s conduct. See, they can keep them there forever without the ordeal of Senate confirmation. How convenient.

 

Another interesting exchange took place between Gonzales and Ted Kennedy. Kennedy couldn’t get him to answer whether it is lawful to have Bush ASK Congress for permission to attack Iran. Gonzales never gave a straight answer .. kept dancing around this question no matter which way it was asked.

 

Brace yourselves Iranian people .. looks like we're gettin' ready to liberate the hell out of you.

 

"BAGHDAD, Iraq - At least 20 American service personnel were killed in military operations Saturday in one of the deadliest days for U.S. forces since the Iraq war began, and authorities also announced two U.S. combat deaths from the previous day.

The day's worst loss came from the crash of a U.S. Army helicopter northeast of Baghdad that killed 13 service members. An attack Saturday night blamed on militiamen in the city of Karbala killed five soldiers. Roadside bombs killed another soldier in the capital and one in Nineveh province north of Baghdad.[...]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070120/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq

Update from AP: The U.S. military on Sunday reported six more American troops killed in fighting the day before, raising the toll to 25 in the deadliest day for U.S. forces in Iraq in two years.

Look what I found the other day:

"The question, to my mind, in terms of this notion that we should have gone on and occupied Iraq is how many additional American casualties would we have had to suffer? How many additional American lives is Saddam Hussein worth? And the answer I would give is not very damn many." --From a speech delivered by then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney in 1992 to the Discovery Institute in Seattle.

Let me repeat that last part, "How many additional American lives is Saddam Hussein worth? And the answer I would give is not very damn many."

I am so sorry for the loss of all 3,047 of those brave young lives .. my heart goes out to their grieving families. I feel so helpless. All I can do is write letters to Congress and protest in the voting booth .. and on this blog. And it's not like I'm totally against all war --WWII was an honorable war.

All last week Democrats and a handful of Republicans were rushing around, denouncing Bush's plans to send almost 22,000 more troops into Iraq. All they came up with was a non-binding resolution to express opposition to the plan .. but do absolutely nothing else about it.

Yes, an avalanche of other measures were also introduced, but everyone knows that none of them has a snowball's chance in hell of passing.

And Speaker Pelosi made it clear that cutting funding for the troops is off limits, at least in the House.

So what does it all mean?

It means that the troops will go to Iraq. House members and senators up for reelection in 2008 will have their butts covered because they voiced the opposition to the war that their folks back home want to hear .. and prospective candidates for president will not have boxed themselves in with statements that could come back to bite them during their campaigns.

And no one proposed a viable alternative to the troop build-up.

In short .. politics as usual. 
 

 

"Iran offered the US a package of concessions in 2003, but it was rejected, a senior former US official has told the BBC's Newsnight programme.

 

Tehran proposed ending support for Lebanese and Palestinian militant groups and helping to stabilise Iraq following the US-led invasion.

 

Offers, including making its nuclear programme more transparent, were conditional on the US ending hostility.

 

..... One of the then Secretary of State Colin Powell's top aides told the BBC the state department was keen on the plan - but was over-ruled.

 

"We thought it was a very propitious moment to do that," Lawrence Wilkerson told Newsnight.

 

"But as soon as it got to the White House, and as soon as it got to the Vice-President's office, the old mantra of 'We don't talk to evil'... reasserted itself."

 

Observers say the Iranian offer as outlined nearly four years ago corresponds pretty closely to what Washington is demanding from Tehran now.  [..]

 

 

Cheney rejected it? I thought Bush was the President? Oh wait, sorry .. silly me.

 

Come to think of it, I read somewhere that in the beginning Bush wanted to turn Baghdad over to the Iraqis and focus on Anbar, but Cheney talked him out of it .. probably because the Saudi royals wouldn't like it.

 

Cheney refusing to "talk to evil" just knocks my socks off. What about that special trip in our Boeing 747 to make an oil deal with Kazakhstan's corrupt Karim Masimov? While Kazakhstan's people starved.

 

What about the Cheney who backed Saddam in the 80's .. selling him WMDs and Haliburton oil extraction equipment?

 

It sure looks like Cheney wanted us to monopolize world oil supplies by invading Iraq .. that he was prepared to sacrifice American lives to do this and kill thousands and thousands of Iraqi innocents. All under the guise of making Iraq a democracy. And remember that God told George Bush to bring democracy to the Middle East...

 

Well, it didn't work out as they had planned .. no control of the oil and no democracy yet. My rightie friends like to razz me and ask 'if it was about the oil why am I paying $3 for a gallon of gas?'

 

I have to explain that he war was not "about oil" in the sense that you'd get cheap gasoline .. it was "about oil" in the sense that the ME is a strategically important region due to oil. Whoever controls it is King of the Hill .. and to keep the world trading in US dollars doesn't hurt.

 

Also, the Oil Companies don't want us to have cheap gas .. they love that Profit too much.

 

Bank on this--We would not be there if Iraq had NO oil.

 

AND, we just may have the true explanation for the Surge or Escalation--the WH needs more time to get the Iraqi parliament to pass a law turning over more control of the oil to us.....

 

Anyway, it doesn't look like we'll ever control Iraq enough to repair the Infrastructure so we can get the oil out .. because Iraq was using antiquated equipment to pump their oil .. and we'd need to drill wells in the untapped sections. How are you going to do that in the middle of a civil war .. sabotage all around?

 

Hah! I just remembered how the White House told us oil revenues would pay for the war...

 

SO .. the families of our Soldiers and Marines killed since 2003 can thank Cheney for turning down an opportunity to talk with Iran .. a talk that might have eased hostilities in Iraq and even made a success of Iraqi Freedom.

 

See, if we talk to our enemies and make concessions to eliminate the conditions that prolong the war, we get fewer chances to control the oil .. fewer chances for Halliburton et al to rake in billions of dollars in contracts to rebuild Iraq's oil industry and service the US troops.

 

Instead, we got Halliburton Gone Wild .. cheating our troops and stealing from Americans. Remember the $27.4 million in overcharges for food that was never served to US troops? Halliburton was charging us for 42,000 meals a day and only 14,000 were actually served. We won't go into the filthy mess halls and rotten food .. even a Pentagon audit found dirty and unsafe conditions in four mess halls that Halliburton's KBR operated. But that's another tangent........

 

Nope, Cheney and the war-hawks had already secretly decided on war and were lining up their cronies to get the profits .. he didn't want no steenkin' diplomacy with Iran. I keep remembering his sneaky face on TV before the war .. telling us almost daily that inspections were not working .. that the UN was irrelevant...

 

This is the part of the BBC article I can't get over--"Observers say the Iranian offer as outlined nearly four years ago corresponds pretty closely to what Washington is demanding from Tehran now."

 

Excuse me for a minute while I laugh at all those righties who swore up and down that the domestic surveillance program was absolutely necessary, that it had to be kept separate from FISA, and could not be altered under any circumstances because it was an indispensable tool, used in the life and death struggle to protect us from the Islamo-facists!

 

"WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration has agreed to let a secret but independent panel of federal judges oversee the government's controversial domestic spying program, the Justice Department said Wednesday.[..]

 

 

B-b-but, Bush said he didn't need no steenkin' court approval .. just a year ago he vigorously defended his spy program as essential to national security .. said what they were doing was entirely legal .. said it was impossible to monitor certain spy traffic under FISA.

 

He maintained it was within his authority to spy on us without a warrant .. even when he could spy first and get a warrant 72 hours later.

 

But now he's changed his mind. His Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told senators in a letter yesterday that "any electronic surveillance that was occurring as part of the Terrorist Surveillance Program will now be conducted subject to the approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court."

 

Well I'll be danged. Why the flip-flop? If the program complies with the law, as Gonzalez claims, why change it?

 

And why announce it now? They usually wait till Friday afternoon to release politically embarrassing news.

 

Could it have something to do with Gonzales' appearance today before the Senate Judiciary Committee .. his first since the committee came under control of those dreaded investigatin' Democrats?

 

Could this be an eleventh-hour ploy to avoid judicial and congressional scrutiny? Maybe by backing down they think they avoid an investigation .. avoid testing the legality of the program.

 

P-p-p-please don’t subpoena me!

 

Instead of having the power ripped out of his hands, Bush has “decided” to not reauthorize the program right now. Yeah right. Maybe he thinks this cancels the several planned hearings on the wiretaps. No hearings, no findings of illegality, and Bush keeps the authority to do this again in secret.

 

Yep, maybe Bush has replaced the program with something even more insidious and double-secret .. just up and created another hidden illegal program and shifted their illegal activity to that.

 

We'll have to pay careful attention the next few days .. wait for the hearing to ask some serious questions. Are there any other programs that have taken over any of the responsibilities of this one? Have any of the key people been moved? What happened to the equipment used to tap key data lines?

 

AND--we don't really know whether this new program complies with the letter of the law. From the Washington Post:
"In a background briefing with reporters, Justice officials declined to provide details about how the new program will work -- including whether the surveillance court has issued a blanket order covering all similar cases or whether it will issue individual orders on a case-by-case basis. Authorities also refused to say how many court orders are involved."

 

 

Never forget these immortal words: "Stop throwing the Constitution in my face," Bush screamed back. "It's just a goddamned piece of paper!"

 

 

Hmm .. I'll bet Bush wonders if he can pardon himself.....

 

Looks like the White House Correspondents want a Bush-friendly dinner this year.

 

 .. well, that ought to save on the catering bill.

 

"One Year After Colbert Flap: Are WH Correspondents Playing It Safe?
NEW YORK After last year's White House Correspondents Association dinner host Stephen Colbert drew mixed reactions to his sharp critiques of President Bush, event organizers appear to be going for a less-combative approach, choosing aging impersonator Rich Little for the pending April event.[..]

 

 

What the ..? The WH correspondent's dinner is supposed to be a ROAST of the president and the press .. always has been.

 

Yes, heaven forbid we live in a country where an entertainer has the freedom to rake a politician over the coals .. for a traditional ROAST for crying out loud. Poor Georgie, doesn't want to play by the same rules as other presidents? They made mincemeat out of Clinton during the Monica dust-up .. he took it like a man.

 

While we're worrying about our kids over there in that bloody disaster in Iraq, these guys are worried about getting just the right GOP friendly comedian for dinner .. one that wouldn't hurt poor Georgie's feelings.

 

Rich Little? That's the best they could do? But you know, he could do his Richard Nixon, come out wearing that famous scowl, have both hands up giving peace signs and say "Thank you George W. Bush .. because now I'm not the worst president anymore!"

 

Dennis Miller is the only GOP friendly comedian I can think of .. he kisses Bush butt bigtime these days. Of course he's not funny anymore .. but the White House doesn't want funny or truth, it wants agreement.

 

Best quote of the E&P article, concerning who they should have at this year's dinner after having Stephen Colbert last year--"You want someone who appeals to the Bob Novaks and the bloggers of the world."

 

How *dare* they lump Novak and bloggers in the same category!

 

Hey, maybe they could get Bush to do his skit about the WMD's being hidden in his office. We all remember that one!

 

Maybe Cheney and Rove could do a skit about how they were going to keep the House and Senate this year .. now *that* would be funny.

 

Or .. I'll bet Michael Richards is free these days .. he could do a minstrel act.

 

You just know that event organizers were torn a new one for the Stephen Colbert "fiasco" last year. I loved it when Bush was laughing at the jokes until someone explained to him that Colbert was making fun of him.

 

And I wonder if anyone remembers Colbert's joke about the Washington Press Corp acting as stenographers for the White House .. the press hardly laughed at that one.

 

My choice? .. I would give my left lung to see George Carlin host it ..

 

 

.....k-i-s-s-i-n-g.....

 

While we armchair-Americans are relaxing in front of the telly, devouring updates from week five of the Trump/O’Donnell squabble, guess what global threat gets one minute news coverage? Guess who's getting chummy? Two guys who share one common bond--the utter destruction of the United States of America.

 

"Chavez Cozy with Iranian President
The presence of Iran's President in Latin America and the warm welcome he's received there has served as a reminder to the US of the hostile alliance that's maturing on its own doorstep. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chavez, both vocal critics of Washington, have called for a cut in oil production by OPEC members.[..]

 

 

Yep, when Chavez is not offering up anti-American speeches and provocations, he is cozying up to our enemies with .. what? Offers of political support, economic aid, oil-pacts, military investments?

 

As a Democrat, let me be the first to ask the left wing of my party not to lionize Chavez. Do not trust him one whit. I cringed when Cindy Sheehan and Harry Belafonte joined Chavez in calling Bush a dangerous terrorist .. it even earned the scorn of "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart, hardly a fan of the Bush administration.

 

And I very much resent Chavez using Bush's political unpopularity as an opportunity to slam us and boost his image worldwide.

 

Chavez is a demagogue and as soon as his countrymen don't re-elect him, a  dictator. He's already shutting down TV stations because he doesn't like what they say about him. He allows "state" TV .. you know, kinda like our Fox News.

 

Gee .. an elected dictator. Sounds kinda familiar. Kidding, just kidding .. George is bad, but not that bad .. yet. The '06 elections showed that we the people still have a voice.

 

Anyway, Chavez probably wants to emulate Castro and rule unchallenged for the rest of his life. This former general may single handedly bring back the era of the military junta to Latin America. Don't laugh, it could happen.

 

Venezuela and Iran are the 4th and 5th largest suppliers of oil .. if they clamp down on production we are pretty much screwed on where we can buy foreign oil. Some would like to boycott Venezuelan oil anyway, but buying oil from the guys who are trying to kill us, the robed rulers of the Middle East, is no better.

 

Maybe it wouldn't hurt us to have OPEC cut production .. increased prices might encourage research and force us to get serious about other alternatives.

 

And the last thing we need is for Chavez to let Iran finance and train radical anti-American groups in Venezuela so they can make their way up across the porous US/Mexican border to launch terrorist attacks.

 

Okay, call me paranoid .. but these days you have to worry about things like that.

 

We could always bring our troops home to guard and control our borders....

 

 

 

 

 

Seems that part of President Bush's new strategy for Iraq is sending in 3,600 Kurdish troops -- the first time such a large number of Kurdish forces have been sent to Baghdad.

 

Hmmm .. wonder what will happen next ..

 

"Adding Kurds to troops considered risky prospect

 

01-14) 04:00 PST Baghdad -- Already a dangerous battleground for an array of forces, Baghdad could soon be flooded with another volatile element: thousands of Kurds from northern Iraq.

 

As part of President Bush's new strategy for Iraq, between 8,000 and 10,000 Iraqi troops will deploy to Baghdad from elsewhere in the country in the coming weeks, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials. As many as 3,600 of them could be Kurdish troops.
It would be the first time such a large number of Kurdish forces have been sent to the capital.

 

In the northern city of Irbil, Brig. Gen. Nazir Assem Korran, commander of the 1st Infantry Brigade, 2nd Division of the Iraqi army, said a Kurdish army brigade is undergoing intensive urban combat training.

 

....The impending deployment has raised fears among Kurds, most of whom live in a well-protected autonomous enclave, that they are being dragged more directly into Iraq's bloody and complex civil war.

 

...."I advise the Kurdish people to apply pressure on their leaders to prevent this step," said Mohammed al-Dayni, a lawmaker from a main Sunni bloc.

 

Kurdish forces, he said, "will face firm resistance from both the Sunnis and the Shiites."

 

Sheikh Abdul-Razzaq al-Nidawi, an aide to anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, agreed that Kurdish troops would not be welcome.

 

"The Kurds, frankly speaking, consider themselves superior to other Iraqis," he said. [..]

 

 

Wonder what's the quid pro quo? A Kurdistan?

 

Let me get this straight--the Kurds, the Shia, and the Sunnis all think this is a bad idea and it will only make things worse. But hey, it'll be more boots-on-the-ground numbers to bring up at press conferences.

 

So much for disarming the militias .. the Kurds are already dreaming of revenge against those who used the posion gas to wipe out entire Kurdish villages. They probably can't wait to get their hands on the ones who helped Saddam gas them -- Sunnis and former Baathists.

 

Ah well, the Sunni and Shiite might do less killing of each other and turn their attention to killing the Kurdish soldiers instead.

 

Not understanding the Middle East, Bush may think he's going to make "all" Iraqis responsible for their own security, that it's a good idea to ask all tribes to share his vision of a unified Iraq; sorry, but I'll bet Iraqis have learned to trust their local militias more than either the Iraqi or US governments.

 

All George Bush is doing is putting red ants in with the black ants ....

 

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday criticized Sen. Barbara Boxer's suggestion that, because she does not have family in harm's way, she will pay no "personal price" in the Iraq war.

 

 

I saw the exchange in question, and I understood completely the point Senator Boxer was making -- that the decisions we make here don't hurt us directly, but do hurt others .. that it is easier to make plans like this when your loved ones aren't the ones being sent in to fight.

 

Boy, did the WH jump on it .. but here's what Boxer actually said:

 

"In the Thursday hearing, Boxer told Rice: “Who pays the price? I’m not going to pay a personal price. My kids are too old and my grandchild is too young. You’re not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, with an immediate family. So who pays the price? The American military and their families. And I just want to bring us back to that fact.”

 

That they're spinning it as insulting single working women is laughable.

 

It's obvious that Boxer did not attack single women but actually hit on one of the main problems of this war -- that too few are being asked to sacrifice for our liberty and our way of life.

 

It was White House spokesman Tony Snow who started the spin, suggesting that Boxer’s comments were anti-feminist.

 

If Condi were sincerely upset, she would have said something when the exchange happened. More likely, she was given instruction to get as many miles out this as she can.

 

The WH has got to be desperate to try to make a mountain out of this ant hill. But they have to jump on this .. they have nothing else. They have to take the focus off the serious issues at hand.

 

BTW-- guess who almost agrees with Boxer? Rush Limbaugh, of all people. I read that he was ranting about how the liberal press always says that America is "tired of the war," that America is "war weary" .. he thinks it's because most Americans are not in a military family and war doesn't affect them personally .. that no American who is not a military family with someone in the war could really care about what's happening in Iraq.

 

That's another load of Limbaugh crap, because the three thousand-plus dead and tens of thousands wounded, maimed and disabled do deeply affect most Americans who have half a heart.

 

Poor Rush, he has to really reach for reasons that he's in the one-third minority .. for reasons why two-thirds of us are against this war.

 

Post-Bush speech...
Poll: Americans oppose Bush Iraq plan 2 to 1...

 

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Americans oppose President Bush's plan to send additional troops to Iraq by a two-to-one margin, according to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll released Friday.

 

Two-thirds of Americans also say Bush has no clear plan for Iraq....

 

Nearly half those who saw the speech say their minds were not changed, while the rest are evenly split over whether they'd be more or less likely to support his policies....

Asked their positions on sending more troops to Iraq, 66 percent said they oppose the move, while 32 percent said they favor it.[..]

 

 

Here's more polls showing America's disappointment in Bush:

 

 

It doesn't seem to bother Bush one bit that we the people are not backing him. During hearings yesterday a senator asked Defense Secretary Robert Gates to wait 10 days before implementing the president's plan to escalate the war in Iraq so that the Senate can determine "if the American people are behind it."

 

Gates said he'd pass the message along to Bush, but he made it clear that the answer would probably be no. "Quite honestly," he said, "I think [Bush] believes that sometimes the president has to take actions that contemporaneously don't have the broad support of the American people because sometimes he has a longer view."

 

Well, we already knew Bush would go ahead and do what he dang well pleases ..

 

AND:
Sen. Jim Webb decided to ask Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice if the president thinks he has the authority to launch an attack against Iran "in the absence of a direct threat without congressional approval." Rice declined to answer:

 

"Senator, I'm really loathe to get into questions of the president's authorities without a rather more clear understanding of what we are actually talking about. So let me answer you, in fact, in writing. I think that would be the best thing to do."

 

What? Can they *really* be considering duking it out with Iran?!! Maybe they think attacking Iran and Syria would be another slam-dunk .. requiring no troops and comparatively little money. Just drop bombs from 20,000 feet...

 

But Iran is not Iraq, Iran is a well-defended country. Think of Hezbollah, only with *real* weapons .. such as surface-to-surface, surface-to-ship missiles, and most of them mobile, hidden away in the mountains. I've read that missiles in the mountains are very difficult to locate and take out.

 

And yeah Condi .. like I should listen to you and your boss, who have proven to be so unreliable and incompetent.

 

Some people say that most recent administrations have claimed the authority to launch military action without congressional authorization. Other people say Bush absolutely does not get to make that decision by himself .. that he can do what he thinks is necessary inside the borders of Iraq, but for anything in Iran or Syria, he is *required by law* to get the permission of Congress.

 

Then they argue back and forth about the War Powers Act .. and throw around terms like "repel invasions" .. "launch attacks" .. "invade" .. "make war" ..

 

To me it's very clear -- attacking another nation (that didn't attack us first) is very clearly an act of war .. and declaring war is very clearly the duty of Congress.

 

Ah well .. it also very clearly seems to be out of our hands, we'll just have to wait and see what Bush does next. Can you say "nukular"?

 

 

That's what everybody, even Republicans, is saying about Bush's speech last night.

 

...nothing new here, move along folks, nothing to see .. enjoy the scenery and don't worry if blood mixed with oil is bad for your car...

 

So Bush gave his speech and proposed nothing really new. No new military tactics .. just more troops to help clear and hold neighborhoods. If one of those neighborhoods is Sadr City--which covers about half of Baghdad--and we send US troops in there with "new rules of engagement" that place fewer "restrictions" on what they can do .. well, sounds like a full-out war against Muqtada al Sadr and the Mahdi Army.

 

Yet, there are those who think Sadr is strongly ANTI-Iranian and attacking him will only strengthen Iranian interests.

 

Bush's speech had no new plans to reduce sectarian clashes, just a list of what we expect the Iraqi government to do .. something about Prime Minister Maliki accepting responsibility for his own country. Yeah, like that's going to happen.

 

Can you honestly say that placing the Shia in charge of Iraq is worth one more American life?

 

And Maliki won't be long for this world if we go gangbusters into Sadr City. That he is still alive shows us he's in cahoots with Sadr.

 

I won't hold my breath waiting for the Interior Ministry to "increase transparency and accountability" .. or "transform National Police into a professional force." I've talked to too many troops returning from Iraq.

 

Bush also issued the standard warning that Iran and Syria are on notice. Nothing new there .. but it's getting scary. I feel that his White House is itchin' to attack Iran, but we have used up most of our military might in Iraq.

 

Look, it's not like I want the president to fail in Iraq, because I care deeply about the 150,000 American men and women we have in the Middle East. They are going to fight their hearts out .. just like they've been doing all along. But how many have we lost in the last year? And we're still spinning our wheels in the same place in the sand as a year ago...

 

We can only hope that Bush is giving himself an excuse to pull out. Maybe after we start the 2nd Battle of Baghdad, and are about to move into Sadr City, all set to go house to house .. Maliki will get cold feet and say "no way." Bush will wait a little while, then give a speech announcing that we're bringing the troops home because the Iraqis aren't willing to take the next step .. are not willing to hold up their end of the bargain.

 

I can dream, can't I?

 

Seriously, this is the most complicated mess we've ever gotten into. There isn't just one conflict going on in Iraq, there are several, and we have little effect on any of them. There is the sectarian struggle among Iraqi ethnic and tribal groups .. Iraqis fighting each other.

 

We can't resolve their struggle for political, or military, dominance. Nor can we determine which group will control or share resources. That's an internal struggle which can only be decided, violently or politically, by the Iraqis.

 

There is the "insurgent" struggle .. Iraqis fighting us and our allies. They are traumatized by what we've done to their country and want us the hell out of there.

 

There is the Jihad struggle .. "foreign" fighters and groups like al Queda who want all Westerners dead. This is the battle we should concentrate on .. but we can't. We've stirred the pot too much. We can't distinguish the combatants .. they are intermingled with the combatants from all the other struggles.

 

I hope we've learned that the solution to all world problems is not might and force, shock and awe. That has failed miserably .. and last night Bush ordered up more of it.

 

Several prominent Republicans are speaking out .. Sen. Chuck Hagel said Bush's plan to send more troops to Iraq is "a dangerously wrongheaded strategy" and will "drive America deeper into an unwinnable swamp at a great cost."

 

Sen. John Warner of Virginia, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, expressed his own reservations, saying he would spend some time "mulling Bush's proposal in the coming days."

 

Warner has witnessed the strife in Iraq firsthand. "Young men and women in uniform should not be caught in the crossfire of a civil war started with who should have succeeded Muhammad in 650 A.D.," he said.

 

Republican Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell was on CNN insisting that we're-fightin'-'em-there-so-we-don't-have-to-fight-'em-here .. I doubt the people of London and Madrid would agree.

 

I will save the dollar cost of the war--a quarter-million dollars every minute--for another post. Think of all the border guards and policemen we could buy with that money....

 

 

Let me get this straight -- our tax dollars are funding fat pensions for convicted congressmen?

 

Lawmakers who have been convicted of serious crimes keep collecting the payments?

 

Duke Cunningham can get a pension from Congress while he is in prison .. is already collecting $64,000 a year while in prison?

 

Bob Ney can get a pension from Congress while he is in prison? $29,000 a year after age 60?

 

Dan Rostenkowski is getting a pension from Congress after he did 15 months in prison? $125,000 a year?

 

James Traficant is serving eight years in a Minnesota prison and gets an estimated $40,000 pension?

 

David Durenberger pleaded guilty to fraud, served a year's probation and still receives an estimated $86,000 a year?

 

And if former Congressman Foley ends up being convicted in connection with his lewd Internet exchanges with minors, he will still get his $32,000 a-year pension?

 

And, yes, the amount grows with the cost of living each year. According to the National Taxpayers Union, in the last 25 years, 20 law-breaking congressmen went on to still get federal pension benefits.

 

That's crazy .. they should be stripped of pension benefits the minute they're convicted of breaking the law!

 

Why isn't there a law? Why are they still getting our hard-earned tax dollars? Don't lawmakers have any shame?

 

Republican Congressman Mark Kirk drafted a bill in Congress last May. He had 24 other representatives sponsor it too. It would have been a good start at revoking the pensions of convicted politicians .. but he found out stripping retirement money from criminal members is not all that easy.

 

Things just don't work that way in Washington. Maybe members of Congress worry about their own pensions .. what would happen if they were ever charged with a crime.

 

Kirk's bill started off with 21 felonies that would revoke a pension .. soon it was whittled down to just three and it passed the House. Then the bill went over to the Senate, where it sat and it sat .. until it died.

 

Seems the Senate had its own bill last year, Senate Bill 2268, pushed by Democratic senators John Kerry and Ken Salazar. It singled out five felonies dealing with public money and bribery that would have revoked pensions. It got sent to a committee, didn't even get a vote, and died.

 

Who killed it?

 

That's difficult to tell .. because the system makes it so easy to kill and not to pass a bill. It goes to a subcommittee .. it gets puts over in this to-do pile .. it sits in that to-do pile .. nobody does anything about it .. and then the session ends and the bill is killed.

 

And leaves no fingerprints. Nobody does anything actively to kill the bill. It just dies. It looks like this is exactly what they want to happen .. they just don't want to pass these bills. So they just do nothing and nothing happens...

 

Fiscally, it's nothing but chump change .. about a million a year, a couple of hundred thousand dollars a month .. but ethically it means everything to the American people.

Read about it here:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/01/03/congressional.pensions/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

 

And maybe if enough voters complain to their congresscritters.......

 

 

No. 2 US Commander In Iraq: "Surge" Not Enough To Save Iraq...

 

"In his first wide-ranging interview, the No. 2 U.S. commander in Iraq conceded Sunday that a military "surge" escalation would not be enough to rescue Iraq, advocating economic and political changes as well, as top Democratic lawmakers in Washington stiffened their opposition to any escalation of U.S. troop strength.

 

Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno said he believed that a combination of jobs, provincial elections, anti-militia legislation and stronger Iraqi security forces could stop the nation's plunge toward all-out civil war. Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, his predecessor, spelled out the same approach before his departure one month ago.[..]

 

 

This opinion will be deemed irrelevant because it does not meet the necessary standards of loyal sycophancy. George W. Bush doesn't listen to generals on the ground .. he only listens to "god."

 

Goodbye Odierno, hope you enjoy your "early retirement" .. to paraphrase Henry II, there must be *someone* who will "rid us of these meddlesome" generals.

 

And save Iraq from what? Muslims killing each other? Nobody seems to understand that they live in the Middle Ages as well as the Middle East .. they seem to like killing each other even more than killing us.

 

Yesterday the Iraqi government said 23,000 Iraqi civilians and police officers died in that country last year. If that's not a sectarian bloodbath I don't know what is.

 

We can't force the Iraqis to sit down and make peace with one another. We can't force them to take control of their security. We can't force them to take control of their government, or balance out the power in that country.

 

Just you wait, as soon as we leave, whether it's now or in 10 years, someone like Saddam or the president of Iran will seize power. The Iraqis will get what they deserve for not taking the opportunity for freedom and democracy that we tried to give them. I guess it's more difficult than we think -- entering the 21st century from the 12th century.

 

Meanwhile, our soldiers are sitting ducks ..  "patrolling the same streets in the same way, being blown up by the same bombs day after day," (Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore.) Our military will clean up a village .. then, as soon as they leave, the insurgency returns to regain a stronghold. Iraqi security forces don't keep the village secure because they are more concerned with tribal affiliations.

 

This war is being carried out in our names, with our money, with our blood, against our will. Polls consistently show that 70% of us want it to come to an end. Now.

 

Congress is limited in what they can do to bring Bush to heel. They won't cut off funding for the war because that might prove harmful to troops already deployed. They could impose a funding cap .. like the one used to limit US military involvement in Latin America. More likely though, Congress will conduct hearings. Lots of hearings.

 

Or .. Congress could call for a series of no confidence votes on the president and the war. Democrats tried this before--a no-confidence vote on Rumsfeld--but they were in the minority and it never made it to the floor.

 

I'm reminded of that Seinfeld episode where George pisses off everybody at his workplace .. but they can't seem to fire him .. so they ask him to resign .. yet he keeps showing up every day, out of spite.

 

Is that what is going on with Bush? His party just got dumped in the elections, everybody knows his Iraq policy has failed, and everybody wants us to get out of Iraq as soon as possible .. yet he does exactly the opposite of what most of Congress, the generals, and we the people want.

 

Will he go ahead and "surge" out of spite?  And we should stop calling an escalation a "surge" .. it reminds me of what happened to the levees in New Orleans.

 

 

From the Washington Post:
"Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said yesterday that he believes top officials in the Bush administration have privately concluded they have lost Iraq and are simply trying to postpone disaster so the next president will "be the guy landing helicopters inside the Green Zone, taking people off the roof," in a chaotic withdrawal reminiscent of Vietnam."

 

 

Well duh! I've been saying that for a year.

 

Yet it is nice to see a prominent politician finally come out and say it .. and say that even the major players in the Bush administration--including Cheney--have concluded that Situation Iraq is FUBAR.

 

Well, Biden *has* thrown his hat into the presidential ring .. he needs all the TV face time he can get. Never forget that they're pols first and foremost.

 

Anyway .. now there shouldn't be much suspense about what President Bush will say in his much-delayed speech on the war....

 

So far, Bush has fired all crew members on the Titanic who told him there's an iceberg directly in front of the starboard bow .. so that tells us a little bit about the folks he has just hired and fired.

 

No, nobody should be surprised if Bush ignores the thumpin' that voters gave him in the mid-term election. And, no matter how much he rearranges the deck chairs, it's obvious that he knows there's no way to win militarily, and is just trying to hang on and somehow contain the situation until he can throw the Iraq hot potato to the next administration. Don't think so? Well, just wait until the newly retired generals start to talk.

 

Regardless, Bush is not pulling out and the human costs will escalate along with the war. More US kids are going to die for his ego and his legacy. He's like a drunken surgeon, who is losing a patient and keeps asking for more scalpels.

 

And, you know, the one voice that you never hear in the mainstream media is the voice of the Iraqi people. Over 70% of whom think the US should not be there .. they believe that the US military's presence causes more conflict than it helps avoid.

 

This is just the biggest mess in US history. The invasion of Iraq did NOT make us safer at home .. in fact we are much more vulnerable today to terrorist attacks than we were on 20 March 2003. This administration has transformed Al Quaeda from a rag-tag group of extremists on the outskirts of the Arab world into an ideology that is sweeping the entire Middle East like wildfire.

 

If only we could stop pouring more fuel on this wildfire .. part of the fuel is hatred for the American military being on their land. We shouldn't pour more servicemen and servicewomen into Iraq .. it's not the answer, it only feeds the flames.

 

Even Poppy Bush knew better than to diddle around in Iraq .. knew that the removal of Saddam Hussein would result in the escalation and continuation of the 1,400 year old family feud between the Shia and the Sunni and destabilize the entire Middle East.

 

We will never "win" in Iraq because Iraqis are never Iraqis first .. they are Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds first, Iraqis second. They value tribal loyalty above state loyalty.

 

No matter how much I whinge and moan, the war is not really a partisan issue for me. I feel no Democratic schadenfreude for the bloody predicament that the president, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and other neo-con warmongers have gotten my beloved country into. I am sick about it.

 

I just wish we had an honorable way out of it. And don't throw Iran at me .. looks like Israel might take care of that...

 

"Israel has drawn up secret plans to destroy Iran's uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons, Britain's Sunday Times newspaper said.

 

Citing what it said were several Israeli military sources, the paper said two Israeli air force squadrons had been training to blow up an enrichment plant in Natanz using low-yield nuclear "bunker busters".[..]

 

 

Everybody has fun trying to psychoanalyze George W. and Poppy .. especially their relationship. Here's a scary interview posted on Buzzflash, in which Dr. Justin A. Frank, a nationally prominent psychiatrist/psychoanalyst, talks about why George W. is in a constant tug-of-war with his father.

 

No matter which way you sway, it's an interesting read.

 

"Justin A. Frank, M.D., Author of "Bush on the Couch" Gets to the Heart of the Matter: We Have a Sociopath as President

 

"I think what he does is he turns everybody who disagrees with him into his father. It doesn’t matter whether it’s actually the concrete representation of his father, like Baker, or the voters who vote against staying in Iraq. We have become his father. We are the people he is now defying. He will turn everybody, any authority, anybody who disagrees with him, into a father figure who he’d have to defy." -- Justin A. Frank, M.D.

 

http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/interviews/049#

 

From ABC News, January 5:

"ABC News Survey Shows That Knowing Then What It Knows Now, 2002 Senate Would Vote Against Giving President War Powers

 

....And as President Bush prepares to announce his new strategy for Iraq, which may include a surge in troops, the attitude of the Senate towards the war -- and whether its members regret their overwhelming 77-23 October 2002 vote to authorize the president to use force in Iraq -- is critically important.

 

....For any Senate vote to switch from 77-23 in favor to essentially 57-43 against is quite remarkable, and far more so for a decision as significant as the one to go to war.

 

The issue was brought home last month by Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., who delivered an emotional address on the floor of the Senate, saying he regretted having voted for the war.

 

"I, for one, am at the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way, being blown up by the same bombs day after day," Smith said. "That is absurd. It may even be criminal. I cannot support that any more." [..]

 

 

Polls show that 7 in 10 Americans agree with Sen. Gordon Smith.

 

Well, better late than never .. but it kinda makes you wonder about the 43 who still think it was a good idea.

 

But we really shouldn't be too hard on those senators .. they were lied to. Their questions were met with dire warnings of mushroom clouds and smoking guns .. the commander-in-chief told them he knew things they didn't know.

 

Never mind that the weapons inspectors said over and over again that there were no WMD's .. and no evidence suggesting there were WMD's hidden anywhere in Iraq. Bush ordered them out of the country and continued with his/Cheney's/Rumsfeld's war plans.

 

We were all lied to. Remember the mood of the times .. we were frightened and still healing from 9/11. We wanted someone in charge to 'fix it.' And remember how the Bush White House leaned hard on the patriotic theme .. if we were against anything they wanted to do, we were flayed and called unpatriotic.

 

 

Also remember how we respected Colin Powell .. his speech to the UN was very powerful and had over sixty references to WMD's. All lies. But even he was duped.

 

So, maybe we can let some of our yes-voting senators off the hook. What we should ask now--are they remorseful enough to deny Bush any more of our kids' lives?

 

 

Will Sadr sell Saddam's noose? Keep an eye on ebay.....

 

From The Arab Times, in Kuwait city:
"Kuwaiti in talks to buy Saddam's 'noose'

Businessman ready to pay any amount of money

 

KUWAIT CITY: A well-known Kuwaiti businessman is negotiating hard to own the noose which hung ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to death.

 

Reliable sources say the businessman's representatives have asked the Iraqi Ministry of Interior Affairs to sell the rope to them.

 

The businessman is apparently ready to pay any amount of money for the noose. According to sources, it is with Shiite leader Muqtada Al-Sadr and the businessman's representatives are negotiating with him.

 

The businessman had earlier purchased the vandalized statue of Saddam Hussein which stood at Al-Firdous Square in Baghdad. Sources say he obtained the statue through American representatives and exhibits the head of the statue in his diwaniya (sitting room)."

 

 

Wonder which "American representatives" sold him Saddam's statue head? And to have it in his sitting room. Remember how big that statue was?

 

Now he wants to pay any sum necessary to buy the rope that was used to hang Saddam. He's negotiating with the Iraq Ministry of the Interior? And why are we not surprised that Moqtada al Sadr has the rope?

 

I understand why there is such a market for Saddamiana .. but disturbed that a character like al Sadr has that market cornered.

 

Yep, this artifact sale sure won't help smooth over the little cultural snags currently bedeviling Iraq. The events surrounding Saddam's execution were a big 'F-you' to Iraq's Sunni Arabs, revenge for all the Shia they've been killing in Baghdad. Iraqi Police said 47 tortured bodies were found dumped across Baghdad yesterday, some beheaded.

 

You know, Bush might have a secret bid in on this noose .. thinking how macho it would look in the display case next to Saddam's pistol.

 

Because the execution of Saddam Hussein was supposed to be the end-all and be-all slam-dunk of Bush's heroic, cowboy legacy.

 

.. and no one could ever dare question his vision again!

 

It's official. Nancy Pelosi is now the Speaker of the House. Just think of it--since the VP is first in line, she's second in line to the presidency. The closest a woman has ever been .. one heartbeat and a pacemaker malfunction away.

 

Pelosi, maybe even more than Sen. Hillary Clinton, has taken women in politics in the United States to a new level .. breaking through the "marble ceiling" as she called it in her speech yesterday. "The sky is the limit for our daughters and granddaughters," she said.

 

It just occurred to me .. doesn't it just roll off the tongue so nicely .. President Pelosi.

 

It's interesting, and sad, that the US is behind many other countries in giving women strong positions with political clout equal to their male counterparts. Women have had power in the political systems of Great Britain, Germany, Canada, India and Sri Lanka .. and they proved to be adept at both politics and governance.

 

So .. with Pelosi’s ascension, America has truly entered the realities of 21st century world politics. Perhaps a bit late .. but better late than never…

 

Yes, history was made when Nancy Pelosi gaveled the house to order and officially became not only the  the first woman, but also the first Italian American to hold the position of Speaker of the House.

 

At first I wondered why Denny Hastert could not bring himself to hand the gavel to her .. why House Minority Leader John Boehner made the symbolic transfer. Then somebody said it wasn't House custom for the outgoing Speaker to pass the gavel to the incoming one .. that Pelosi had handed the gavel to Hastert at the opening of the 109th Congress.

 

John Boehner tried to be game and say nice things about the history of the moment in his speech .. but his smile was spectacularly fake, he tripped over his words and his voice dripped insincerity. When the camera cut to Boehner while Pelosi was speaking, his facial expression looked like he was swallowing bile.

 

But she was radiant .. nothing was going to spoil her big day. She looked so happy, with genuine expressions of excitement. The other side of the aisle just looked bored .. or maybe they were mourning entitlements.

 

I liked the womanly touch of having all the children come up to the speaker's platform to see the gavel. Women have a different outlook on how to run things. It's nice to see a more family oriented view.

 

Okay, Democrats .. time to get to work, you've got a lot of cleaning up ahead of you .. and show us what you can do for the working class.

 

But don't think I won't be watching you every bit as closely as I watched the Republicans. Democrats won't get a pass from me. I'll have no problem holding your crooked feet to the fire.

 

Since it's a toss-up as to the female Democratic politico Republicans love to hate the most -- Nancy Pelosi or Senator Hillary Clinton -- let the Republican pissing and moaning begin!

 

From P.W Singer, writing at DefenseTech:
"Not one contractor of the entire military industry in Iraq has been charged with any crime over the last 3 and a half years, let alone prosecuted or punished. Given the raw numbers of contractors, let alone the incidents we know about, it boggles the mind.

 

...Amidst all the add-ins, pork spending, and excitement of the budget process, it has now come out that a tiny clause was slipped into the Pentagon's fiscal year 2007 budget legislation. The one sentence section...[states that the UCMJ] "is amended by striking 'war' and inserting 'declared war or a contingency operation'." The measure passed without much notice or any debate.

 

...With the addition of just five words in the law, contractors now can fall under the purview of the military justice system. This means that if contractors violate the rules of engagement in a warzone or commit crimes during a contingency operation like Iraq, they can now be court-martialed.[..]

 

 

If the "clause was slipped into the Pentagon's fiscal year 2007 budget legislation," it pretty much had to be an anonymous Republican doing it .. because Democrats didn't have the power to do something like that. I wonder who did it and didn't want it known publicly?

 

Sen. Lindsey Graham could have done it. He's a former JAG and is on the Budget and Armed Services Committee .. and he's on record for being concerned about contractor abuses.

 

And isn't it ironic that whoever it was would want to be anonymous for such an honor .. for trying to do the right thing.

 

Another thing you should know about--it seems that oil companies working in Iraq are immune to prosecution.

 

I kid you not. Executive Order 13303 quietly passed in May 2003, exempts from all prosecution of any sort--The Development Fund for Iraq and just about anything related to oil.

 

Here it is, easy enough to read:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/05/20030522-15.html

 

This should be a national scandal and the average American apparently knows nothing about it. I heard on CNN that 40 cents of every dollar flowing to Iraq is going to contractors. Let's see .. so far the war has cost $350 billion ..

 

And there are over 100,000 contractors--names like Parsons, DynCorp, Custer-Battles and Blackwater--working in Iraq, Kuwait and the surrounding area. They can so easily milk and bilk the American taxpayer.

 

Oh, I'm sure many of the people who work for these companies are honest and hardworking .. it's the owners who are friends of the GOP.

 

Hundreds, if not thousands, of millions of dollars have lined the pockets of defense contractors .. and they use a lot of that money to run their own political machine ..

 

Also ponder that Dick Cheney's old company Halliburton has profiteered more than any other from the disaster that is Iraq. The formerly bankrupt Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root continues to receive hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts .. even after they were found to have overcharged some $60 million for fuel deliveries to the US military.

 

President Roosevelt said, "I don't want to see a single war millionaire created in the United States as a result of this world disaster."

 

Harry Truman referred to war profiteering as 'treason'. When he heard rumors of such profiteering, he got into his Dodge and, during a Congressional recess, drove 30,000 miles paying unannounced visits to corporate offices and worksites. He also chaired a Senate committee to investigate shady wartime business practices.

 

We desperately need leaders like this today .. leaders who will look out for our best interests.