"Surge" Propaganda

They'll Break the Bad News on 9/11
By Frank Rich
The New York Times

BY this late date we should know the fix is in when the White House's top factotums fan out on the Sunday morning talk shows singing the same lyrics, often verbatim, from the same hymnal of spin. The pattern was set way back on Sept. 8, 2002, when in simultaneous appearances three cabinet members and the vice president warned darkly of Saddam's aluminum tubes. "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud," said Condi Rice, in a scripted line. The hard sell of the war in Iraq — the hyping of a (fictional) nuclear threat to America — had officially begun.

America wasn't paying close enough attention then. We can't afford to repeat that blunder now. Last weekend the latest custodians of the fiasco, our new commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and our new ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, took to the Sunday shows with two messages we'd be wise to heed.

The first was a confirmation of recent White House hints that the long-promised September pivot point for judging the success of the "surge" was inoperative. That deadline had been asserted as recently as April 24 by President Bush, who told Charlie Rose that September was when we'd have "a pretty good feel" whether his policy "made sense." On Sunday General Petraeus and Mr. Crocker each downgraded September to merely a "snapshot" of progress in Iraq. "Snapshot," of course, means "Never mind!"

The second message was more encoded and more ominous. Again using similar language, the two men said that in September they would explain what Mr. Crocker called "the consequences" and General Petraeus "the implications" of any alternative "courses of action" to their own course in Iraq. What this means in English is that when the September "snapshot" of the surge shows little change in the overall picture, the White House will say that "the consequences" of winding down the war would be even more disastrous: surrender, defeat, apocalypse now. So we must stay the surge. Like the war's rollout in 2002, the new propaganda offensive to extend and escalate the war will be exquisitely timed to both the anniversary of 9/11 and a high-stakes Congressional vote (the Pentagon appropriations bill).

General Petraeus and Mr. Crocker wouldn't be sounding like the Bobbsey Twins and laying out this coordinated rhetorical groundwork were they not already anticipating the surge's failure. Both spoke on Sunday of how (in General Petraeus's variation on the theme) they had to "show that the Baghdad clock can indeed move a bit faster, so that you can put a bit of time back on the Washington clock." The very premise is nonsense. Yes, there is a Washington clock, tied to Republicans' desire to avoid another Democratic surge on Election Day 2008. But there is no Baghdad clock. It was blown up long ago and is being no more successfully reconstructed than anything else in Iraq.

When Mr. Bush announced his "new way forward" in January, he offered a bouquet of promises, all unfulfilled today. "Let the Iraqis lead" was the policy's first bullet point, but in the initial assault on insurgents now playing out so lethally in Diyala Province, Iraqi forces were kept out of the fighting altogether. They were added on Thursday: 500 Iraqis, following 2,500 Americans. The notion that these Shiite troops might "hold" this Sunni area once the Americans leave is an opium dream. We're already back fighting in Maysan, a province whose security was officially turned over to Iraqi authorities in April.

In his January prime-time speech announcing the surge, Mr. Bush also said that "America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced." More fiction. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's own political adviser, Sadiq al-Rikabi, says it would take "a miracle" to pass the legislation America wants. Asked on Monday whether the Iraqi Parliament would stay in Baghdad this summer rather than hightail it to vacation, Tony Snow was stumped.

Like Mr. Crocker and General Petraeus, Mr. Snow is on script for trivializing September as judgment day for the surge, saying that by then we'll only "have a little bit of metric" to measure success. This administration has a peculiar metric system. On Thursday, Peter Pace, the departing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called the spike in American troop deaths last week the "wrong metric" for assessing the surge's progress. No doubt other metrics in official reports this month are worthless too, as far as the non-reality-based White House is concerned. The civilian casualty rate is at an all-time high; the April-May American death toll is a new two-month record; overall violence in Iraq is up; only 146 out of 457 Baghdad neighborhoods are secure; the number of internally displaced Iraqis has quadrupled since January.

Last week Iraq rose to No. 2 in Foreign Policy magazine's Failed State Index, barely nosing out Sudan. It might have made No. 1 if the Iraqi health ministry had not stopped providing a count of civilian casualties. Or if the Pentagon were not withholding statistics on the increase of attacks on the Green Zone. Apparently the White House is working overtime to ensure that the September "snapshot" of Iraq will be an underexposed blur. David Carr of The Times discovered that the severe Pentagon blackout on images of casualties now extends to memorials for the fallen in Iraq, even when a unit invites press coverage.

Americans and Iraqis know the truth anyway. The question now is: What will be the new new way forward? For the administration, the way forward will include, as always, attacks on its critics' patriotism. We got a particularly absurd taste of that this month when Harry Reid was slammed for calling General Pace incompetent and accusing General Petraeus of exaggerating progress on the ground.

General Pace's record speaks for itself; the administration declined to go to the mat in the Senate for his reappointment. As for General Petraeus, who recently spoke of "astonishing signs of normalcy" in Baghdad, he is nothing if not consistent. He first hyped "optimism" and "momentum" in Iraq in an op-ed article in September 2004.

Come September 2007, Mr. Bush will offer his usual false choices. We must either stay his disastrous course in eternal pursuit of "victory" or retreat to the apocalypse of "precipitous withdrawal." But by the latest of the president's ever-shifting definitions of victory, we've already lost. "Victory will come," he says, when Iraq "is stable enough to be able to be an ally in the war on terror and to govern itself and defend itself." The surge, which he advertised as providing "breathing space" for the Iraqi "unity" government to get its act together, is tipping that government into collapse. As Vali Nasr, author of "The Shia Revival," has said, the new American strategy of arming Sunni tribes is tantamount to saying the Iraqi government is irrelevant.

For the Bush White House, the real definition of victory has become "anything they can get away with without taking blame for defeat," said the retired Army Gen. William Odom, a national security official in the Reagan and Carter administrations, when I spoke with him recently. The plan is to run out the Washington clock between now and Jan. 20, 2009, no matter the cost.

Precipitous withdrawal is also a chimera, since American manpower, materiel and bases, not to mention our new Vatican City-sized embassy, can't be drawn down overnight. The only real choice, as everyone knows, is an orderly plan for withdrawal that will best serve American interests. The real debate must be over what that plan is. That debate can't happen as long as the White House gets away with falsifying reality, sliming its opponents and sowing hyped fears of Armageddon. The threat that terrorists in civil-war-torn Iraq will follow us home if we leave is as bogus as Saddam's mushroom clouds. The Qaeda that actually attacked us on 9/11 still remains under the tacit protection of our ally, Pakistan.

As General Odom says, the endgame will start "when a senior senator from the president's party says no," much as William Fulbright did to L.B.J. during Vietnam. That's why in Washington this fall, eyes will turn once again to John Warner, the senior Republican with the clout to give political cover to other members of his party who want to leave Iraq before they're forced to evacuate Congress. In September, it will be nearly a year since Mr. Warner said that Iraq was "drifting sideways" and that action would have to be taken "if this level of violence is not under control and this government able to function."

Mr. Warner has also signaled his regret that he was not more outspoken during Vietnam. "We kept surging in those years," he told The Washington Post in January, as the Iraq surge began. "It didn't work." Surely he must recognize that his moment for speaking out about this war is overdue. Without him, the Democrats don't have the votes to force the president's hand. With him, it's a slam dunk. The best way to honor the sixth anniversary of 9/11 will be to at last disarm a president who continues to squander countless lives in the names of those voiceless American dead.

Photo Credit: Frank Rich. (Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times)

Technorati tags: Frank Rich, New York Times, Iraq, United States Armament and Defense, Politics, U. S. Government, Bush, news, commentary, op ed

Vice President Cheney Tells Congressional Committee He's Not "Within The Executive Branch"

This is so absurd I don't know how to react: laugh out loud or slam my head against the wall.

Vice President Exempts His Office from the Requirements for Protecting Classified Information:

The Oversight Committee has learned that over the objections of the National Archives, Vice President Cheney exempted his office from the presidential order that establishes government-wide procedures for safeguarding classified national security information. The Vice President asserts that his office is not an “entity within the executive branch.”

As described in a letter from Chairman Waxman to the Vice President, the National Archives protested the Vice President's position in letters written in June 2006 and August 2006. When these letters were ignored, the National Archives wrote to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in January 2007 to seek a resolution of the impasse. The Vice President's staff responded by seeking to abolish the agency within the Archives that is responsible for implementing the President's executive order.

In his letter to the Vice President, Chairman Waxman writes: "I question both the legality and wisdom of your actions. ... [I]t would appear particularly irresponsible to give an office with your history of security breaches an exemption from the safeguards that apply to all other executive branch officials."

A fact sheet prepared by Chairman Waxman describes other instances in which the Vice President's office has sought to avoid oversight and accountability.

Technorati tags: Henry Waxman, Dick Cheney, Congress, Executive Orders, Executive Branch of Government, news

Reflections ...

... Good ones, from a young friend, with her permission, reposted here:

In a culture where the loss of life is less valuable then the worth of the stock market

In a culture where rights and justice are discarded with loose trash

In a culture where diversity and debate have taken a back seat to plush politiking

In a culture where a woman's right to choose is equated with murder

In a culture where health care is a privilage and not a right

In a culture where apathy has strengthened its iron fingers around the necks of so many

In a culture where the few "haves" decide the fate of the "have-nots"

In a culture where fear dominates foreign policy and legitmacy

In a culture where military spending is more important than public education and the restoration of a country

In a culture where religion is used as a tool of hate to divide our nation

In a culture where violence is encouraged

In a culture where dissent is considered evil

In a culture where literacy and learning are dangerous

In a culture where nature and the environment are simply replacable commodities

In a culture where economic power is used to stiffle social justice

In a culture where citizenship means national id cards, chips, and tracking devices

In a culture where food is engineered and created with little knowledge of its origin

In a culture where our elders are cast aside and rendered useless

In a culture where a cell is considered more valuable than the life of a woman or man

In a culture where hate, racism, and ignorance dominate the air waves

In a culture where money controls the media

In a culture where wars are fought like video games and diplomacy is considered a useless tactic..........


We find ourselves hopeless and waiting,

Wondering where the next answer will come from

A hidden prize in a sugar cereal

A fortune cookie

While the news keeps spinning

Lives are taken with each exhale

And the fortunate sit waiting, perched in high towers

Billows of smoke from Cuban cigars

Plastic smiles and hidden agendas....

Original Post

Technorati tags: Poetry, United States, American Culture, American Politics, op ed

Press for Truth ... Include Anti-War Candidates in Presidential Debates

9/11: Press for Truth



"Released September 8th; a video from the families who fought to create The 9/11 Comission -- and succeeded

Headline: LA Weekly reported Mahmmud Ahmed (Top ISI Official) ordered the transfer of funds from Pakistani banks to Florida, where it was picked up and distributed by Mohammed Atta to the 9/11 hijackers via money orders throughout the United States to sponsor the attacks.

This documentary presents the many-faceted events that led up to, and then scrutinizes, the 9/11 Comission hearings. Massive injustices and mis-representations are brought to light and "exposed" by respected members of the mainstream American media, and from the families themselves in the narrative of events that shaped most greatly our world today;

"9/11: Press for Truth"

The families present their 2 1/2 year struggle to create an investigation and inquiry into the events of 9/11 -- which was at first heavily resisted and even explicity prohibited by the President and Vice-President. For an example of contrast in funding; the internal disruption of a Clinton-Lewisnki "sex scandal" the event was awarded a budget of 100 million dollars in total. Initially the 9/11 Comission was only alotted 3 million dollars and their time-limit was severly cut beyond the expecations of those who brought it into existence."

From Downsize DC:

Subject: Include the anti-war candidates in all presidential debates

"The War in Iraq is the second biggest expansion of the federal government during the Bush administration. It is also the most disastrous. The war in Iraq is also is the biggest issue of the day. But some in the Republican Party want to stick their heads in the sand and pretend the problem doesn't exist.

We want to make them choke on that sand.

So far there is only one Republican candidate for President who is daring to oppose the war in Iraq -- Congressman Ron Paul. As we saw after the FoxNews debate, the Big Government crowd in the Republican Party wants to silence the anti-war viewpoint by silencing Ron Paul.

Ron Paul has been excluded from the June 30th presidential forum in Des Moines, Iowa. Because candidates who will speak against war provide an educational function that must be heard by the public, we would like to ask you to CONTACT the organizers of this debate with a CIVIL EXPRESSION OF YOUR RIGHTEOUS OUTRAGE AT THIS EXCLUSION.

Please send the following message to the organizers of the Iowa debate . . .

'Please give us a real Presidential debate, not an echo chamber. Please reverse your policy of excluding the only anti-war Republican candidate from your debate. Please take immediate action to include Congressman Ron Paul.'

Personalize it. Firmly, but politely, tell them what you think. You can send your message here.

It is our position, as part of our educational mission, that all anti-war candidates in all races must be heard in all debates, so citizens can benefit from a full airing of all views on this most important of all issues.

We are legally non-partisan. We are temperamentally anti-partisan. We dislike political parties, and all mindless partisanship. Therefore, we don't want to make it look like we're just picking on the Republicans, or just coming to the defense of Ron Paul. Quite the contrary . . .

We also think the Democrats' position on the war stinks too. The Democrats have consistently failed to do the right thing. They talk against the war, but they fail to take the only direct and responsible action available to them to actually stop the war.

Congress has a Constitutional right to de-authorize the war. The Democrats have a majority with which to pass such a resolution. But they have not done this. Instead, they try to avoid the real issue by attacking the funding of the war -- an issue on which they lack the votes to bring about real change.

Congressional Democrats are frauds, and they too deserve to feel a little pain for their bad faith. Please also send a message to Congress urging them to de-authorize the War in Iraq."

Must Read:

• Think Progress � REPORT: The Right Wing Domination Of Talk Radio And How To End It


• The FBI's Post-9/11 Helping Hand to Osama bin Laden:

  "Larisa Alexandrovna: New reports suggest Osama bin Laden may have chartered Saudi flight out of U.S. after 9/11."

Technorati tags: Downsize DC, anti-war, 9/11 Truth

The Ravages of War

A Student, a Teacher and a Glimpse of War
By Nicholas D. Kristof
The New York Times

MALEHE, Congo

I’m taking a student, Leana Wen, and a teacher, Will Okun, along with me on this trip to Africa. Here in this thatch-roofed village in the hills of eastern Congo, we had a glimpse of war, and Leana suddenly found herself called to perform.

Villagers took what looked like a bundle of rags out of one thatch-roof hut and laid it on the ground. Only it wasn’t a bunch of rags; it was a woman dying of starvation.

The woman, Yohanita Nyiahabimama, 41, weighed perhaps 60 pounds. She was conscious and stared at us with bright eyes, whispering answers to a few questions. When she was moved, she screamed in pain, for her buttocks were covered with ulcerating bedsores.

Leana, who had just graduated from medical school at Washington University, quickly examined Yohanita.

“If we don’t get her to a hospital very soon, she will die,” Leana said bluntly. “We have to get her to a hospital.”

There was nothing special about Yohanita except that she was in front of us. In villages throughout the region, people just like her are dying by the thousands — of a deadly mixture of war and poverty.

Instead of spending a few hundred dollars trying to save Yohanita, who might die anyway, we could spend that money buying vaccines or mosquito nets to save a far larger number of children in other villages.

And yet — how can you walk away from a human being who will surely die if you do so?

So we spoke to Simona Pari of the Norwegian Refugee Council, which has built a school in the village and helped people here survive as conflict has raged around them. Simona immediately agreed to use her vehicle to transport Yohanita to a hospital.

The village found a teenage girl who could go with Yohanita and help look after her, and the family agreed that it would be best to have her taken not to the local public hospital but to the fine hospital in Goma run by Heal Africa, an outstanding aid group with strong American connections (www.healafrica.org).

Now, nearly four days later, Yohanita is on the road to recovery, lying on a clean bed in the Heal Africa Hospital. Leana saved one of her first patients.

What almost killed Yohanita was starvation in a narrow sense, but more broadly she is one more victim of the warfare that has already claimed four million lives in Congo since 1998. Even 21st-century wars like Congo’s — the most lethal conflict since World War II — kill the old-fashioned way, by starving people or exposing them to disease.

That’s what makes wars in the developing world so deadly, for they kill not only with guns and machetes but also in much greater numbers with diarrhea, malaria, AIDS and malnutrition.

The people here in Malehe were driven out of their village by rampaging soldiers in December. Yohanita’s family returned to their home a few months later, but their crops and livestock had been taken. Then Yohanita had a miscarriage and the family spent all its money saving her — which meant that they ran out of food.

“We used to have plenty to eat, but now we have nothing,” Yohanita’s mother, Anastasie, told us. “We’ve had nothing to eat but bananas since the beginning of May.” (To see video of our
visit and read blogs by Leana and Will, go to nytimes.com/twofortheroad.)

I’m under no delusion that our intervention makes a difference to Congo (though it did make quite a difference to Yohanita). The way to help Congo isn’t to take individual starving people to the hospital but to work to end the war — yet instead the war is heating up again here, in part because Congo is off the world’s radar.

One measure of the international indifference is the shortage of aid groups here: Neighboring Rwanda, which is booming economically, is full of aid workers. But this area of eastern Congo is far needier and yet is home to hardly any aid groups. World Vision is one of the very few American groups active here in the North Kivu area.

Just imagine that four million Americans or Europeans had been killed in a war, and that white families were starving to death as a result of that war. The victims in isolated villages here in Congo, like Yohanita, may be black and poor and anonymous, but that should make this war in Congo no less an international priority

Photo Credit: By Will Okun

Technorati tags: Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times, Africa, Congo, Starvation, Food, Shortages, Medicine, Health, news, commentary, op ed

ONE Vote '08: Save Lives, Secure Our Future

Trouble viewing this video? Click Here.

Technorati tags: TheOneCampaign, poverty, one.org, Matt Damon, Bono, news, activism

Another Giant Snow Job

Snow Responds To Potentially Illegal Use Of RNC Accounts: Clinton Did It Too

Only Clinton didn't do it. Does the mainstream press question Snow's false assertion? Of course not. Do they ever question baseless assertions?

Think Progress sets Tony straight here:

"In 1993, President Clinton’s then-Assistant to the President John Podesta issued a staff memo clearly stating that all administration e-mails dealing with official business had to be 'incorporated into an official recordkeeping system,' stressing that no “e-mail document that is a Presidential record should be deleted.'

The Clinton administration’s policy also made clear that personal and political e-mail accounts — which are generally exempt from the Presidential Records Act — could not be used for official business. Indeed, the Bush administration has seemingly implemented a policy opposite of the Clinton administration’s.

Read the full memo HERE.

See Snow video HERE.

TRANSCRIPT:

Q Waxman’s committee has put out an interim report on the issue of the RNC emails showing, they say, that there was more use of those emails than the White House suggested, indicating possibly widespread violation of the Presidential Records Act. It’s, like, 140,000 emails of Rove’s, so the White House Counsel’s Office is aware that official business was being conducted through this party (inaudible) system? Can you respond to all that and what –

MR. SNOW: Look, I can’t respond specifically to things that the committee may have put out. But those email accounts were set up, A, on a model based on the prior administration, which had done it the same way, in order to try to avoid Hatch Act violations. And we’ll just — we’ll leave it at that. I mean, these were designed precisely to avoid Hatch Act violations that prohibit the use of government assets for certain political activities.

Photo Credit: Tony Snow. (AP/Gerald Herbert/salon.com)
Document Credit: Podesta memo. (thinkprogress.org)
(Hat Tip to Al for the Title of this Post and the "heads up")

Technorati tags: Tony Snow, Illegal RNC emails, Bill Clinton, John Podesta, Rove, Waxman, news, Thinkprogress.com

NPR : Political Left Launches Its Own Attack

From NPR's Mara Liasson:

Political Left Launches Its Own Attack

And guess who is their strongest secret weapon?

Click here to find out.

Technorati tags: Politics, NPR, Left-wing Bloggers, Hillary Clinton, Democratic Party, Republican Party, 2008 Presidential Election

Hillary, You and I -- Not for You and Me

Carmela Got Gold Jewelry. Hillary Wants a White House.
By Maureen Dowd
The New York Times

Would Carmela, she of the pans of baked ziti and casseroles of veal parm, ever deny the omnivorous Tony onion rings?

Nah.

But the Carmela-Tony pact was a lot less strict than the Hillary-Bill pact.

Besides, this is a Hillaryized Carmela, or a Carmelized Hillary, so Bill Clinton must munch carrot sticks in their diner scene.

Actually, Hillary’s probably playing Tony, since she’s the one studying the songs on the jukebox and checking out a cruel-looking stranger at the counter.

Either way, the Clintons joined forces yesterday in a comic sendup of that last scene of “The Sopranos,” complete with a Journey soundtrack and an exchange about how Chelsea would be joining them once she got past her parallel-parking problems.

The satire was a video on Hillary’s Web site to whip up attention for the winner of her online contest to choose a campaign song.

Unfortunately, the winner, “You and I,” is definitely not for you and me. (I look forward to Obama’s new campaign ditty, “I Am Thou.”) It doesn’t bode well for the cultural health of the country that Hillary picked a song by Celine Dion, who combines the worst of Vegas and Canada.

It was an acid flashback to the cultural wasteland of Bill Clinton’s reign, when instead of Pablo Casals, we got Kenny G.

During the 1992 campaign, young Clinton aides obsessed on how they could get the boss to change from Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop (Thinking About Tomorrow)” to something hipper and less baby-boomer middlebrow. Even Christine McVie, one of the band’s singers who wrote the song, said it might be better as a jingle for an insurance company.

Maya Angelou, the poet of the first Clinton inaugural, is back as well. With the campaign trying to shore up support among affluent, educated, over-35 women — women like Hillary — Ms. Angelou offers a taped testimonial to Hillary on the campaign Web site, saying that people “have profound affection for you, ever since you stood up as a woman and said: Yes, I’m a woman. Phenomenal woman. That’s my mother and all your mothers and my grandmothers and all your grandmothers. And my great-grandmothers and yours. And great-greats and great-greats and all you women here, along with Hillary Rodham Clinton and me!”

She said that she was proud that Hillary, who has dropped the “Rodham,” “gives herself the authority to be in her own skin, to be who she is.”

But Ms. Angelou gets it exactly backward. Hillary never seems at ease in her own skin, and she always gives herself too much authority.

A Los Angeles Times article notes that the paradox of the race is that voters want a Democrat to win, but when they are offered a head-to-head contest between Hillary vs. Rudy, John McCain or Mitt Romney, many switch allegiance to the Republicans. There is, the article said, “a sour aftertaste from controversies of her White House years with President Clinton.”

“Who wants four or eight more years of the Clintons’ marital disputes, paid for by the United States, we the people? I certainly don’t,” Carol Bendick, a 63-year-old Democrat, told the paper.

Whether Bill and Hill actually had a formal 20-year pact entailing two terms for president for her after two terms for him, as some suggested in “Her Way,” the Hillary bio by Don Van Natta Jr. and Jeff Gerth, they certainly had an understanding.

The Clintons’ “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy seems so similar to that of the Sopranos, that it could be a bit risky to play the mob couple, even for a gag.

Like Carmela, who was rewarded with jewels, watches and building permits for her husband’s infidelities with his goomahs, Hillary, too, found a way to profit from her husband’s failings and flaws.

At a lunch Carmela had with her girlfriends at Vesuvio, the women spoke admiringly of Hillary as a role model, someone who was able to turn a sow’s ear of a marriage into a silk purse.

And like Tony, Hillary is so power-hungry that she can justify any thuggish means to get the prize.

In the Clintons’ mob spoof, as a rather wooden Hillary is about to announce her song choice to a loose and funny Bill, the screen suddenly goes dark.

In the case of “The Sopranos,” this was cause for perplexity. In the case of the Clintons, it’s an unwittingly satirical moment, because if there’s one thing we know about this tough New York family, it is that they will never, ever go dark.

Where’s a black screen when you need one?

Photo Credit: Maureen Dowd. (Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times)

Related Articles:

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• Hillary Clinton Rides 'Sopranos' Coattails in Video Spoof of Finale - washingtonpost.com

Technorati tags: Maureen Dowd, New York Times, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, The Sopranos, Music, 2008 Presidential Election, Maya Angelou, news, commentary, op ed

Rudy Missing in action for Iraq Panel

Rudy's priorities are clearly not in the country's best interest:

"Rudolph Giuliani's membership on an elite Iraq study panel came to an abrupt end last spring after he failed to show up for a single official meeting of the group, causing the panel's top Republican to give him a stark choice: either attend the meetings or quit, several sources said.

Giuliani left the Iraq Study Group last May after just two months, walking away from a chance to make up for his lack of foreign policy credentials on the top issue in the 2008 race, the Iraq war...."

He cited 'previous time commitments' in a letter explaining his decision to quit, and a look at his schedule suggests why -- the sessions at times conflicted with Giuliani's lucrative speaking tour that garnered him $11.4 million in 14 months.

Giuliani failed to show up for a pair of two-day sessions that occurred during his tenure, the sources said -- and both times, they conflicted with paid public appearances shown on his recent financial disclosure. Giuliani quit the group during his busiest stretch in 2006, when he gave 20 speeches in a single month that brought in $1.7 million...."

--Craig Gordon
Newsday

Photo Credit: Rudy Giuliani. (MSNBC.COM/Newsweek)

Technorati tags: Rudy Giuliani, Iraq, 2008 Presidential Election, news, Republican Party

Bloomberg Leaving Republican Party

Smart move, Mr. Mayor. You have freed yourself from partisan party influence to tackle the issues as you see fit, rather than as the money-controlled party dictates. That is the sign of a real leader. Welcome to independence!

The New York Times reports:

Michael R. Bloomberg, a longtime Democrat who switched to the Republican Party to run for mayor of New York City in 2001, announced this evening that he is changing his party status and registering as an independent. His office released this statement at 6:05 p.m. (EST):

I have filed papers with the New York City Board of Elections to change my status as a voter and register as unaffiliated with any political party. Although my plans for the future haven’t changed, I believe this brings my affiliation into alignment with how I have led and will continue to lead our city.

A nonpartisan approach has worked wonders in New York: we’ve balanced budgets, grown our economy, improved public health, reformed the school system and made the nation’s safest city even safer.

We have achieved real progress by overcoming the partisanship that too often puts narrow interests above the common good. As a political independent, I will continue to work with those in all political parties to find common ground, to put partisanship aside and to achieve real solutions to the challenges we face.

Any successful elected executive knows that real results are more important than partisan battles and that good ideas should take precedence over rigid adherence to any particular political ideology. Working together, there’s no limit to what we can do.

Mr. Bloomberg’s decision — the first change in party affiliation by a sitting New York City mayor since 1971, when John V. Lindsay switched from Republican to Democrat — immediately set off intense speculation that he will enter the 2008 presidential race as an independent.

Mr. Bloomberg, 65, a billionaire businessman, narrowly beat a Democrat, Mark Green, in his first run for elected office, in 2001. He was re-elected by a wide margin in 2005.

The mayor was in California on Monday and today for events with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa of Los Angeles, a Democrat.

Over the past year and a half, after his decisive re-election victory, Mr. Bloomberg has taken increasingly public stands on national issues, especially gun control, climate change and urban education, but has tended to shy away from offering his views on defense and foreign affairs.

Although the mayor has insisted again and again that he has no plans to run for president, several of his top aides — especially his chief political adviser, Deputy Mayor Kevin Sheekey — have made no secret of their desire to see him enter the 2008 race.

Reaction is already starting to trickle in from the New York political world. But we’re interested in what readers have to say.

Photo Credit: New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg at New York FPC Briefing on "New York City: One Year After September 11th." (fpc.state.gov)

Technorati tags: Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, Republican Party, Democratic Party, Independents, Politics, New York, news, New York Times

How To Screw an American Out of a Job

How To Not Hire An American: MUST SEE VIDEO

"Our goal is clearly NOT TO FIND a qualified and interested U.S. worker."

Daily Kos reports:

"It's on video, believe it or not, and even presented as a selling point to peddle their services by Cohen & Grigsby Law Firm. That's right, this group of attorneys put an entire seminar on how to screw over the American worker on YouTube. Imagine that, a seminar from lawyers on how to make sure one doesn't have to hire an American worker!"

In the video attorneys explain how they assist employers in running classified ads with the goal of NOT finding any qualified applicants, and how they disqualify even the most qualified Americans in order to secure green cards for H-1b workers.

'Our goal is clearly NOT to find a qualified U.S. worker ... our objective is to get this person a green card ... so certainly we are not going to try to find a place where applicants would be most numerous.' -- Lawrence M. Lebowitz, Vice President of Marketing, Cohen & Grigsby

And on getting rid of extremely qualified applicants:

'If someone looks like they are very qualified, if necessary schedule an interview, go through the whole process to find a legal basis to disqualify them.'

From Dr. Norm Matloff:

The law on employer-sponsored green cards is similarly riddled with loopholes. Though that law requires that American workers must be sought before the employer hires a foreign worker for a job, it is routinely circumvented. I've mentioned the outrageous comments by a well-known immigration attorney:

'Employers who favor aliens have an arsenal of legal means to reject all U.S. workers who apply.'

--Joel Stewart, Legal Rejection of U.S. Workers Immigration Daily, April 24, 2000.

Here are just a few examples of fake job ads this seminar is referring to, run in the Sacramento Bee. The Bee's editor refuses to discuss the matter, and the fraudulent ads continue to run each week.

This video was amplified by the Programmers Guild and the original video clips are here.

This is what Bush and Congress via the current "comprehensive" immigration reform bill really mean by a 'shortage of skilled U.S. workers.'

Microsoft, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, and thousands of other companies are running fake ads in Sunday newspapers across the country each week.

Look at this folks, this is how bad it is.  A major selling point of law firms is all about how to screw over the American worker.

UPDATE: 06.18.07 4pm EST. It appears Cohen & Grigsby Law Firm has taken down their seminar videos. What a surprise but you can see at one time the originals were there.  We cannot put back up the originals for it's unclear if that would be a violation of copyright law, but let me assure you, they exist.

Technorati tags: H-1B, immigration, attorneys, labor, corruption, Department of Labor, green card, employment, news, video, youtube

UPDATE: Bush Aides' E-Mail Abuses

From Michael Abramowitz of the Washington Post:

Bush Aides' Misuse of E-Mail Detailed by House Committee

"White House aides made extensive use of political e-mail accounts for official government business, despite rules requiring that they conduct such business through official communications channels, according to new evidence disclosed yesterday by congressional investigators.

The Republican National Committee told the investigators that White House senior political adviser Karl Rove alone sent or received more than 140,000 e-mails between 2002 and 2007, more than half of which involved individuals using official ".gov" e-mail accounts, a report from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee said. The RNC said it still has copies of those e-mails.

Former Rove assistant Susan B. Ralston affirmed in a deposition released by the committee that her ex-boss used his political e-mail account "most of the time."

The White House previously acknowledged that aides to President Bush improperly used the political e-mail accounts. But the material released yesterday details for the first time how frequently they used the accounts and for what purposes.

The committee said it learned that the White House aides used the RNC accounts to discuss official matters such as appointments and grant announcements. It also said at least 88 White House officials had RNC e-mail accounts, a figure above previous administration statements that only about 50 had such accounts.

The report also said many RNC e-mails involving others besides Rove and one of his aides have been lost, either under its deletion policy or individual deletions by senior officials. "As a result of these policies, potentially hundreds of thousands of White House e-mails have been destroyed, many of which may be presidential records," the report said.

Congressional Democrats have suggested that Rove and other White House officials may have used the political accounts to avoid scrutiny of their decisions from Congress, but the report offered no evidence about their motives. Ralston said Rove believed all of his e-mails were being saved even though the RNC had a policy until 2004 of destroying all e-mails after 30 days...."

Read more.

Technorati tags: Political email accounts, RNC, Karl Rove, Congress, Democrats, Justice Department, news

When Dollars Trump Compassion

By Bob Herbert
The New York Times

You won’t see these stories on television, but Marian Wright Edelman and Dr. Irwin Redlener could talk to you all day and all night about children whose lives have been lost or ruined because they didn’t have health insurance.

This is not a situation one associates with a so-called advanced country. That you can have sick children wasting away in the United States, the wealthiest nation on the planet, because medical treatment that could relieve their suffering is withheld by men and women with dollar signs instead of compassion in their eyes is beyond unconscionable.

Ms. Edelman is the president of the Children’s Defense Fund, and Dr. Redlener is president of the Children’s Health Fund.

Both are appalled at the embarrassing fact that nine million American children have no health coverage at all. Among them are children with diabetes, chronic asthma, heart conditions, life-threatening allergies and so on. In many instances they are left untreated until it is too late.

Leaving children uninsured is a form of Russian roulette, Dr. Redlener said.

“All children should be covered,” said Ms. Edelman.

Congress and the president could do something about this right now. Of the nine million children without coverage, six million are already eligible for either Medicaid or the popular State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or S-chip, which covers children whose parents earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but too little to afford private health insurance. The bulk of the funding for S-chip comes from the federal government.

S-chip, which had strong bipartisan support when it was established 10 years ago, is currently up for reauthorization in Congress. The program should be expanded as part of a broader effort to cover as many of the six million eligible-but-uninsured kids as possible.

Eligible children remain outside of S-chip and Medicaid for a variety of reasons, including the following: because there is insufficient funding to cover them; because families do not realize their children qualify for coverage; because red tape and complicated regulations discourage families from signing up.

A number of S-chip re-authorization proposals are being developed. The best-case scenario would be legislation — costing as much as $50 billion in additional funding over the next five years — that would cover millions of additional youngsters from poor and working-poor families. This would put the U.S. on the road toward universal coverage for children.

Ten billion dollars a year is considered a pittance when it comes to funding wars and tax cuts for the very wealthy. But it’s suddenly a lot of money when the subject is the health of American children.

One of the worst scenarios has been offered by President Bush in his White House budget proposal. That calls for just $4.8 billion in new funding for S-chip over the next five years. The result, according to the Congressional Budget Office, would be a net loss of coverage for 1.4 million children.

The old expression was “taking candy from a baby.” The White House is ready to take away vitally needed medicine.

Negotiations over the reauthorization of S-chip are under way. It will be interesting to see whether the Democrats who crowed so much about their newfound power when they took control of Congress will stand tall for the kids of the poor and working poor, and whether there are enough caring Republicans to resurrect the spirit of bipartisanship from a decade ago.

As the heat gets turned up on this issue, the White House appears to be falling into its old habit of creating its own reality.

The Congressional Budget Office and most researchers have agreed on the six million figure for the number of youngsters who are eligible for government-sponsored health coverage but remain unenrolled — roughly four million for Medicaid and two million for S-chip. This has not been controversial.

Yesterday, the Department of Health and Human Services began circulating a study that tries to make the case that the total number of eligible but uninsured youngsters is a mere 794,000, an absurdly low figure.

If you can wave a magic wand and make five million poor kids disappear, you no longer have to think about caring for them.

Advocates like Dr. Redlener and Ms. Edelman don’t have that luxury.

“Kids who grow up with poor access to health care carry a high risk of having underdiagnosed and undertreated chronic illness, both physical and emotional,” said Dr. Redlener. “We know what to do. We should fully fund this effort at the $50 billion level and make coverage mandatory for all children.”

Photo Credit: Bob Herbert. (The New York Times)

Technorati tags: Bob Herbert, New York Times, Health Insurance and Managed Care, Children and Youth, Medicine and Health, Politics, US Government, news, commentary, op ed

An Hour with Michael Moore

Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) interviews Michael Moore on "Sicko," his Trip to Cuba with 9/11 Rescue Workers, the Removal of Private Healthcare Companies & Clinton's Ties to Insurance Companies: "They're into Her Pocket and She's Into Their Pocket And I Don't Expect Much From Her."

Read the transcript.

By all means, see "SICKO" starting June 29th at a theatre near you.

Until then, watch the trailer (below):

Technorati tags: Michael Moore, SICKO, Documentaries, Films, Health Care, Medical Insurance, Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!, news

BushCo Imperial Partisanship

Special Counsel Probe Into Rove's Politicization Of Government Advances:

"...The White House has admitted that roughly 20 agencies have received a PowerPoint briefing created by Karl Rove's office 'that included slides listing Democratic and Republican seats the White House viewed as vulnerable in 2008, a map of contested Senate seats and other information on 2008 election strategy.'

Politicization of the federal government has been illegal for decades. The 1939 Hatch Act specifically prohibits partisan campaign or electoral activities on federal government property, including federal agencies. But in 2005, Ken Mehlman, formerly one of Bush's top political advisers, outlined the White House's strategy of utilizing government resources for partisan gain..."

Photo Credit: Karl Rove. (ThinkProgress.org)

Technorati tags: Think Progress, Karl Rove, Office of Special Council, Abuse of Power, Bush, Bush Administration, Politics, Partisanship, news

At What Price War?

The War Inside
By Dana Priest and Anne Hull
Washington Post

"As many as one-quarter of all soldiers and Marines returning from Iraq are psychologically wounded, according to a recent American Psychological Association report. By this spring, the number of vets from Afghanistan and Iraq who had sought help for post-traumatic stress would fill four Army divisions, some 45,000 in all, an Army study found...."

(Click on Picture above for Special Report: "The Invisibly Wounded: Walter Reed and Beyond")

Technorati tags: Iraq, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Medicine, Health, Military, news, The Washington Post

It's the Policy, Stupid.

Authentic? Never Mind
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times

Rich liberals who claim they’ll help America’s less fortunate are phonies.

Let me give you one example — a Democrat who said he’d work on behalf of workers and the poor. He even said he’d take on Big Business. But the truth is that while he was saying those things, he was living in a big house and had a pretty lavish summer home too. His favorite recreation, sailing, was incredibly elitist. And he didn’t talk like a regular guy.

Clearly, this politician wasn’t authentic. His name? Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Luckily, that’s not how the political game was played 70 years ago. F.D.R. wasn’t accused of being a phony; he was accused of being a “traitor to his class.” But today, it seems, politics is all about seeming authentic. A recent Associated Press analysis of the political scene asked: “Can you fake authenticity? Probably not, but it might be worth a try.”

What does authenticity mean? Supposedly it means not pretending to be who you aren’t. But that definition doesn’t seem to fit the way the term is actually used in political reporting.

For example, the case of F.D.R. shows that there’s nothing inauthentic, in the normal sense of the word, about calling for higher taxes on the rich while being rich yourself. If anything, it’s to your credit if you advocate policies that will hurt your own financial position. But the news media seem to find it deeply disturbing that John Edwards talks about fighting poverty while living in a big house.

On the other hand, consider the case of Fred Thompson. He spent 18 years working as a highly paid lobbyist, wore well-tailored suits and drove a black Lincoln Continental. When he ran for the Senate, however, his campaign reinvented him as a good old boy: it leased a used red pickup truck for him to drive, dressed up in jeans and a work shirt, with a can of Red Man chewing tobacco on the front seat.

But Mr. Thompson’s strength, says Lanny Davis in The Hill, is that he’s “authentic.”

Oh, and as a candidate George W. Bush was praised as being more authentic than Al Gore. As late as November 2005, MSNBC’s chief political correspondent declared that Mr. Bush’s authenticity was his remaining source of strength. But now The A.P. says that Mr. Bush’s lack of credibility is the reason his would-be successors need to seem, yes, authentic.

Talk of authenticity, it seems, lets commentators and journalists put down politicians they don’t like or praise politicians they like, with no relationship to what the politicians actually say or do.

Here’s a suggestion: Why not evaluate candidates’ policy proposals, rather than their authenticity? And if there are reasons to doubt a candidate’s sincerity, spell them out.

For example, Hillary Clinton’s credibility as a friend of labor is called into question, not by her biography or life style, but by the fact that, as The Nation recently reported, her chief strategist — a man Al Gore fired in 2000 because he didn’t trust him — heads a public relations company that helps corporations fight union organizing drives.

And where do you start with Rudy Giuliani? We keep being told that he has credibility on national security, because he seemed so reassuring on 9/11. (Some firefighters have condemned his actual performance that day, saying that rescue efforts were uncoordinated and that firemen died because he provided them with faulty radios. “All he did was give information on the TV,” said a deputy fire chief whose son died at the World Trade Center. “He did nothing.” And the nation’s largest firefighters’ union has condemned his handling of recovery efforts in the weeks following 9/11.)

But he’s spent the years since then cashing in on terrorism, and his decisions about Giuliani Partners’ personnel and clients raise real questions about his seriousness. His partners, as The Washington Post pointed out, included “a former police commissioner later convicted of corruption, a former F.B.I. executive who admitted taking artifacts from ground zero and a former Roman Catholic priest accused of covering up sexual abuse in the church.”

The point is that questions about a candidate shouldn’t be whether he or she is “authentic.” They should be about motives: whose interests would the candidate serve if elected? And think how much better shape the nation would be in if enough people had asked that question seven years ago.

Photo Credit: Paul Krugman. (The New York Times)

Technorati tags: Paul Krugman, New York Times, Politics, Government, News, Media, commentary, op ed

Something Amiss in America

America Comes Up Short
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times

LONDON

Traveling through Europe recently, I’ve been able to confirm through personal experience what statistical surveys tell us: the perceived stature of Americans is not what it was. Europeans used to look up to us; now, many of them look down on us instead.

No, I’m not talking metaphorically about our loss of moral authority in the wake of Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. I’m literally talking about feet and inches.

To the casual observer, Europeans — who often seemed short, even to me (I’m 5-foot-7), when I first began traveling a lot in the 1970s — now often seem tall by American standards. And that casual observation matches what careful researchers have found.

The data show that Americans, who in the words of a recent paper by the economic historian John Komlos and Benjamin Lauderdale in Social Science Quarterly, were “tallest in the world between colonial times and the middle of the 20th century,” have now “become shorter (and fatter) than Western and Northern Europeans. In fact, the U.S. population is currently at the bottom end of the height distribution in advanced industrial countries.”

This is not a trivial matter. As the paper says, “height is indicative of how well the human organism thrives in its socioeconomic environment.” There’s a whole discipline of “anthropometric history” that uses evidence on heights to assess changes in social conditions.

For example, nothing demonstrates the harsh class distinctions of Britain in the age of Dickens better than the 9-inch height gap between 15-year-old students at Sandhurst, the elite military academy, and their counterparts at the working-class Marine School. The dismal working and living conditions of urban Americans during the Gilded Age were reflected in a 1- 1/2 inch decline in the average height of men born in 1890, compared with those born in 1830. Americans born after 1920 were the first industrial generation to regain preindustrial stature.

So what is America’s modern height lag telling us?

There is normally a strong association between per capita income and a country’s average height. By that standard, Americans should be taller than Europeans: U.S. per capita G.D.P. is higher than that of any other major economy. But since the middle of the 20th century, something has caused Americans to grow richer without growing significantly taller.

It’s not the population’s changing ethnic mix due to immigration: the stagnation of American heights is clear even if you restrict the comparison to non-Hispanic, native-born whites.

And although the Komlos-Lauderdale paper suggests that growing income and social inequality in America might be one culprit, the remarkable thing is that, as the authors themselves point out, even high-status Americans are falling short: “rich Americans are shorter than rich Western Europeans and poor white Americans are shorter than poor Western Europeans.”

We seem to be left with two main possible explanations of the height gap.

One is that America really has turned into “Fast Food Nation.”

“U.S. children,” write Mr. Komlos and Mr. Lauderdale, “consume more meals prepared outside the home, more fast food rich in fat, high in energy density and low in essential micronutrients, than do European children.” Our reliance on fast food, in turn, may reflect lack of family time because we work too much: U.S. G.D.P. per capita is high partly because employed Americans work many more hours than their European counterparts.

A broader explanation would be that contemporary America is a society that, in a variety of ways, doesn’t take very good care of its children. Recently, Unicef issued a report comparing a number of measures of child well-being in 21 rich countries, including health and safety, family and peer relationships and such things as whether children eat fruit and are physically active. The report put the Netherlands at the top; sure enough, the Dutch are now the world’s tallest people, almost 3 inches taller, on average, than non-Hispanic American whites. The U.S. ended up in 20th place, below Poland, Portugal and Hungary, but ahead of Britain.

Whatever the full explanation for America’s stature deficit, our relative shortness, like our low life expectancy, suggests that something is amiss with our way of life. A critical European might say that America is a land of harried parents and neglected children, of expensive health care that misses those who need it most, a society that for all its wealth somehow manages to be nasty, brutish — and short.

Photo Credit: Paul Krugman. (The New York Times)

Technorati tags: Paul Krugman, New York Times, Economica Conditions and Trends, Height (Stature), Social Conditions and Trends, United States, news, commentary, op ed

The Long View in Iraq

"Let's face it folks, things are not going to be measurably better in Iraq by September."

By Roger Cohen
The International Herald Tribune and
The New York Times:

The Iraqi conflict is going to be with us for years if not decades. The country has become the focus of a crisis of Islamic civilization that is closer to its onset than its conclusion. Violent conflict between the now dominant Shiite community and Sunnis nostalgic for power is but one aspect of this epochal upheaval.

As in the Palestinian territories, the Iraqi struggle has been complicated by the presence of forces driven not by national goals but by the global objectives of jihadist Islamism. These jihadists, finding inspiration in their reading of the sacred texts of Islam, have embarked on a holy war against the West.

It is against such fanatics, some of whom call themselves Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, that General David Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, has just announced a major offensive. I wish Petraeus and the 155,000 troops now in Iraq luck, but I am not hopeful.

The fact is that however many bomb makers are taken out, however many cells broken, the social and religious forces driving angry young men across the Muslim world into this sort of fight are not about to abate.

A population explosion is pushing these men into societies with few jobs and scant hope for the future beyond a range of causes - from Palestine to Iraq to the perceived debauchery of modernity - capable of drawing them into a consoling, if nihilistic, zealotry.

Against this reality, exacerbated in Iraq by the whirlwind fragmentation that often occurs in multi-ethnic societies when the lid of despotism is lifted, America's September deadline for measuring the progress achieved by the addition of 30,000 troops looks almost comical.

Let's face it folks, things are not going to be measurably better in Iraq by September. They may be about the same; they could be worse. The destructive energy disaggregating the country is still building. Wars tend to end when their participants are exhausted. We are not there yet, not even close.

The other day, I met Mokhtar Lamani, a distinguished Moroccan diplomat who took on the thankless task of representing the Arab League in Baghdad. He recently quit because, as usual, the Arab League could not get its act together. Anyway, a non-Arab state, Iran, is the major regional player in Iraq. Its envoy would not even call on Lamani.

Before he left, Lamani did something useful. Each time there was a bomb or killing, he asked his staff to identify the group claiming responsibility and, if its existence could be verified, note it down. The list reached more than 300 names. "We are not talking about a civil war, but a series of civil wars," Lamani said.

These wars - bringing together global, religious, regional and national struggles - should be seen as facets of the crisis of Islamic civilization.

The United States is a big country at the apogee of its power. But there are historical forces that even very big countries cannot stop. At best, they can be contained - and it is to containment that President George W. Bush must now look. He should have the courage to admit his mistakes, but also to resist calls for complete withdrawal driven more by electoral calculus than concern for Iraqis.

The last military build-up will not be repeated. Americans have no stomach for a further "surge" and the U.S. armed forces have no capacity for one. Republicans, facing an unpopular war, are going to walk off the reservation unless the president changes course in the fall.

I see four core American interests in Iraq that cannot be abandoned. There must be no Afghan-like Al Qaeda takeover of wide areas. There must be no genocide (say a Shiite sweep against Sunnis). There must be no regional conflagration (for example, a Turkish invasion). And there must be no return to the old order (murderous Stalinist dictatorship).

To ensure this, the United States must keep a military presence in Iraq for the foreseeable future. The size of this deterrent force is up for debate, but 50,000 soldiers, or 105,000 less than today, is one talked-about figure. The timing of the drawdown will have to be discussed with Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, but it should begin soon after September.

Pulling out a lot of troops is the only way to increase pressure on Maliki to make the political compromises - on distribution of oil revenue, the constitution and de-Baathification - that will give Iraq some long-term chance of cohering. That chance will be increased if, as the United States steps down, the United Nations steps up.

Photo Credit: Roger Cohen. (The International Herald Tribune and The New York Times)

Technorati tags: Roger Cohen, The New York Times, Iraq, Al Qaeda, news, commentary, op ed

How Long Does it Take the Army to Deliver Mail?

Too Long.

Way, way too long.

Read on....

The Army News reports:

Army officials scrambled to deliver thousands of undelivered letters and packages – some with postal dates from May 2006 – addressed to soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Though the backlog was discovered in the hospital’s brigade combat center last week, Army leadership did not announce its efforts to correct the situation until issuing a press release at almost 6 p.m. EST Friday. The release was titled, “Army takes immediate action to deliver backlogged mail.”

Army spokesman Paul Boyce said late Friday that the backlog piled to some 4,500 pieces of mail because the contract employee mail clerk could not locate the soldiers or staff members to whom they were addressed, and instead left them in the mail room without further processing....

And now for the understatement of the week:

“'That was not satisfactory,' said Boyce."

Incompetence, thy name is Bush. This is yet one more example of the utter failure of the Bush government on every level and issue. Our braggart "War President" not only led us into an illegal war and resulting miasma -- he can't even assure a wounded soldier at Walter Reed that he'll get his mail within a year of when it was sent. How pitiful is that?

Technorati tags: Army Times, Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Mail, Bush Administration, news

Conflict Over Executive Privilege Looms

LegalTimes.com reports:

Congressional Democrats have always believed that the Justice Department's plan to fire eight US attorneys began in the White House, and last week they proved willing to take their investigation to its doorstep by subpoenaing two former Bush aides....

...Many legal observers say the subpoenas are more likely to force the White House to find some sort of middle ground - even if it takes a protracted legal fight to get there...."

Technorati tags: Legal Times, Congress, Executive Privilege, Democrats, Attorney Generals, US Justice Department, news

The General's Report

MUST READ

By Seymour M. Hersh
The New Yorker

"How Antonio Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghraib scandal, became one of its casualties."

The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh reports that a general who investigated US troops sexually humiliating Iraqi prisoners at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison told Pentagon officials, including former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, about the incidents before the scandal became public, but Rumsfeld, and other officials, who told Congress they were unaware about the extent of the abuse, "are lying to protect themselves."

Photo: Antonio Taguba knew his report would make him unpopular: "If I lie, I lose. And, if I tell the truth, I lose." (Photo Credit: Mary Ellen Mark / The New Yorker)

Technorati tags: The New Yorker, Seymour Hersh, Abu Ghraib, Donald Rumsfeld, Bush, Bush Administration, Antonio Taguba, Congress, news

This is Democracy?

Presidential Stone Walls
New York Times Editorial:

The template for the Bush administration’s mania for secrecy was signed by the president six years ago — Executive Order 13233, reversing the presumption of right of public access to presidential papers. This basic right of taxpayers and historians alike was embedded in the 1978 laws enacted after the Nixon administration. The reforms established a reasonable 12-year waiting period for access. But Mr. Bush’s reversal lets presidents or vice presidents (guess who?) keep their records sealed in perpetuity unless they or their heirs approve access...."

Technorati tags: Bush, Executive Orders, Secrecy, US Government, Politics, History, New York Times, editorial, op ed

Send in the clowns: An interview with Jo Wilding

ZNet reports:

"Barrister, mother, clown, activist, blogger, documentary film star, human rights observer, ambulance attendant - 32-year old Jo Wilding has quite a CV.� She also has glowing references.� Hans von Sponeck, former UN Humanitarian Co-ordinator for Iraq, praises her 'enormous courage' and 'deep sense of justice', while John Pilger called her dispatches from Fallujah 'the best and bravest eyewitness journalism'. � Over lunch in a Farringdon café�, Wilding talks about witnessing first-hand what the Guardian called 'our Guernica'...."

Technorati tags: ZNet, Jo Wilding, Fallujah, Iraq, War Crimes, interview

Scooter's Sopranos Go to the Mattresses

By Frank Rich
The New York Times

AS a weary nation awaited the fade-out of "The Sopranos" last Sunday, the widow of the actual Mafia don John Gotti visited his tomb in Queens to observe the fifth anniversary of his death. Victoria Gotti was not pleased to find reporters lying in wait.

"It's disgusting that people are still obsessed with Gotti and the mob," she told The Daily News. "They should be obsessed with that mob in Washington. They have 3,000 deaths on their hands." She demanded to know if the president and vice president have relatives on the front lines. "Every time I watch the news and I hear of another death," she said, "it sickens me."

Far be it from me to cross any member of the Gotti family, but there's nothing wrong with being obsessed with both mobs. Now that the approval rating for the entire Washington franchise, the president and Congress alike, has plummeted into the 20s, we need any distraction we can get; the Mafia is a welcome nostalgic escape from a gridlocked government at home and epic violence abroad.

But unlikely moral arbiter that Mrs. Gotti may be, she does have a point. As the Iraq war careens toward a denouement as black, unresolved and terrifying as David Chase's inspired "Sopranos" finale, the mob in the capital deserves at least equal attention. John Gotti, the last don, is dead. Mr. Chase's series is over. But the deaths on the nightly news are coming as fast as ever.

True, the Washington mob isn't as sexy as the Gotti or Soprano clans, but there is now a gripping nonfiction dramatization of its machinations available gratis on the Internet, no HBO subscription required. For this we can thank U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton, who presided over the Scooter Libby trial. Judge Walton's greatest move was not the 30-month sentence he gave Mr. Libby, a fall guy for higher-ups (and certain to be pardoned to protect their secrets). It was instead the judge's decision to make public the testimonials written to the court by members of the Washington establishment pleading that a criminal convicted on four felony counts be set free.

Mr. Libby's lawyers argued that these letters should remain locked away on the hilarious grounds that they might be "discussed, even mocked, by bloggers." And apparently many of the correspondents assumed that their missives would remain private, just like all other documents pertaining to Mr. Libby's former boss, Dick Cheney. The result is very little self-censorship among the authors and an epistolary gold mine for readers.

Among those contributing to the 373 pages of what thesmokinggun.com calls "Scooter Libby Love Letters" are self-identified liberals and Democrats, a few journalists (including a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine) and a goodly sample of those who presided over the Iraq catastrophe or cheered it on. This is a documentary snapshot of the elite Washington mob of our time.

Like the scripts for "The Sopranos," the letters are not without mordant laughs. Henry Kissinger writes a perfunctory two paragraphs, of which the one about Mr. Libby rather than himself seems an afterthought. James Carville co-signs a letter by Mary Matalin tediously detailing Mr. Libby's devotion to organizing trick-or-treat festivities for administration children spending a post-9/11 Halloween at an "undisclosed location." One correspondent writes in astonishment that Mr. Libby once helped "a neighbor who is a staunch Democrat" dig his car out of the snow, and another is in awe that Mr. Libby would "personally buy his son a gift rather than passing the task on to his wife." Many praise Mr. Libby's novel, "The Apprentice," apparently on the principle that an overwritten slab of published fiction might legitimize the short stories he fabricated freelance for a grand jury.

But what makes these letters rise above inanity is the portrait they provide of a wartime capital cut adrift from moral bearings. As the political historian Rick Perlstein has written, one of the recurrent themes of these pleas for mercy is that Mr. Libby perjured himself "only because he was so busy protecting us from Armageddon." Has there ever been a government leader convicted of a crime — and I don't mean only Americans — who didn't see himself as saving the world from the enemy?

The Libby supporters never acknowledge the undisputed fact that their hero, a lawyer by profession, leaked classified information about a covert C.I.A. officer. And that he did so not accidentally but to try to silence an administration critic who called attention to the White House's prewar lies about W.M.D. intelligence. And that he compounded the original lies by lying repeatedly to investigators pursuing an inquiry that without his interference might have nailed others now known to have also leaked Valerie Wilson's identity (Richard Armitage, Karl Rove, Ari Fleischer).

Much has been said about the hypocrisy of those on the right, champions both of Bill Clinton's impeachment and of unflinching immigration enforcement, who call for legal amnesty in Mr. Libby's case. To thicken their exquisite bind, these selective sticklers for strict justice have been foiled in their usual drill of attacking the judge in the case as "liberal." Judge Walton was initially appointed to the bench by Ronald Reagan and was elevated to his present job by the current President Bush; he was assigned as well to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court by the Bush-appointed chief justice, John Roberts. Such credentials notwithstanding, Judge Walton told the court on Thursday that he was alarmed by new correspondence and phone calls from the Libby mob since the sentencing "wishing bad things" on him and his family.

In Washington, however, hypocrisy is a perennial crime in both parties; if all the city's hypocrites were put in jail, there would be no one left to run the government. What is more striking about the Libby love letters is how nearly all of them ignore the reality that the crime of lying under oath is at the heart of the case. That issue simply isn't on these letter writers' radar screen; the criminal act of perjury isn't addressed (unless it's ascribed to memory loss because Mr. Libby was so darn busy saving the world). Given that Mr. Libby expressed no contrition in court after being convicted, you'd think some of his defenders might step into that moral vacuum to speak for him. But there's been so much lying surrounding this war from the start that everyone is inured to it by now. In Washington, lying no longer registers as an offense against the rule of law.

Instead the letter writers repeat tirelessly that Mr. Libby is a victim, suffering "permanent damage" to his reputation, family and career in the typical judgment of Kenneth Adelman, the foreign-policy thinker who predicted a "cakewalk" for America in Iraq. There's a whole lot of projection going on, because to judge from these letters, those who drummed up this war think of themselves as victims too. In his letter, the disgraced Paul Wolfowitz sees his friend's case as an excuse to deflect his own culpability for the fiasco. He writes that "during the spring and summer of 2003, when some others were envisioning a prolonged American occupation," Mr. Libby "was a strong advocate for a more rapid build-up of the Iraqi Army and a more rapid transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqis, points on which history will prove him to have been prescient."

History will prove no such thing; a "rapid" buildup of the Iraqi Army was and is a mirage, and the neocons' chosen leader for an instant sovereign Iraq, Ahmad Chalabi, had no political following. But Mr. Wolfowitz's real point is to pin his own catastrophic blundering on L. Paul Bremer, the neocons' chosen scapegoat for a policy that was doomed with or without Mr. Bremer's incompetent execution of the American occupation.

Of all the Libby worshipers, the one most mocked in the blogosphere and beyond is Fouad Ajami, the Lebanese-American academic and war proponent who fantasized that a liberated Iraq would have a (positive) "contagion effect" on the region and that Americans would be greeted "in Baghdad and Basra with kites and boom boxes." (I guess it all depends on your definition of "boom boxes.") In an open letter to President Bush for The Wall Street Journal op-ed page on June 8, he embroidered his initial letter to Judge Walton, likening Mr. Libby to a "fallen soldier" in the Iraq war. In Mr. Ajami's view, Tim Russert (whose testimony contradicted Mr. Libby's) and the American system of justice are untrustworthy, and "the 'covertness' of Mrs. Wilson was never convincingly and fully established." (The C.I.A. confirmed her covert status in court documents filed in May.)

Mr. Ajami notes, accurately, that the trial was "about the Iraq war and its legitimacy" — an argument that could also be mustered by defenders of Alger Hiss who felt his perjury trial was about the cold war. But it's even more revealing that the only "casualty of a war" Mr. Ajami's conscience prompts him to mention is Mr. Libby, a figurative casualty rather than a literal one.

No wonder Victoria Gotti denigrated "that mob in Washington." When the godfathers of this war speak of never leaving "a fallen comrade" on the battlefield in Iraq, as Mr. Ajami writes of Mr. Libby, they are speaking first and foremost of one another. The soldiers still making the ultimate sacrifice for this gang's hubristic folly will just have to fend for themselves.

Photo Credit: Frank Rich. (Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times)

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