Joe Conason over at Salon has an interesting take on Obama's "end of war in Iraq" speech, where he says the things the president couldn't say:The president was right not to say those things at this point in time, but we need to remember that those things are true. The revisionist history being played by Bush-backers like Ari Fleischer needs to be tempered with these truths."What the president could not utter, under any circumstances, is an accurate description of the war, the occupation and the ruinous reasoning that led to them.
He could not say, for instance...
-that the Iraqis are broadly resentful of the U.S. presence in their country and have wished to see us go for years.
-that the predictions of the war’s proponents, both within and outside government, proved to be entirely wrong
-that U.S. prestige and influence in the Mideast have declined sharply, or that our capacity to criticize human rights violations in other countries -- ruled by thugs like Saddam -- has suffered lasting damage due to our own illegal and brutal mistreatment of detainees in Iraq
-that the war and occupation resulted in historic levels of corruption, wasting hundreds of billions of dollars on ghost projects, phony public relations scams, and crooked Iraqi politicians and American contractors
- that the misconduct and irresponsibility of the previous administration’s officials..., and many others who botched the occupation so lethally, were a disgrace to the United States.
-that imperial overstretch in Iraq inflicted lasting damage on our soldiers and our military infrastructure -- what he called the steel in our ship of state -- and that our standing has been diminished in the eyes of the world
-that the most lasting consequence of the invasion of Iraq, to date, has been to strengthen Iran
Instead he fulfilled his duty as commander in chief by copiously praising the troops and noting, correctly, that patriots on both sides of the war debate honor those who served and suffered in Iraq."
This chart is clear. We know we have a long way to go, but we are on the road to recovery.Delete
“On my last day in Iraq,” veteran McClatchy News correspondent Leila Fadel wrote August 9, “as on my first day in Iraq, I couldn’t see what the United States and its allies had accomplished. … I couldn’t understand what thousands of American soldiers had died for and why hundreds of thousands of Iraqis had been killed.” ...Or Health Care!“Since the Iraq War began,” Matthew Rothschild, editor of The Progressive wrote, “aerospace and defense industry stocks have more than doubled. General Dynamics did even better than that. Its stock has tripled.”
An Associated Pressaccount published July 23 observed: “With the military fighting two wars and Pentagon budgets on a steady upward rise, defense companies regularly posted huge gains in profits and rosier earnings forecasts during recent quarters. Even as the rest of the economy tumbled last fall, military contractors, with the federal government as their primary customer, were a relative safe haven.”...
The element of “risk,” so basic to capitalism, has been trampled by Pentagon purchasing agents even as its top brass rattle their missiles at supposedly enemy governments abroad. If this isn’t enough, in 2004 the Bush administration slipped a special provision into tax legislation to cut the tax on war profits to 7 percent compared to 21 percent paid by most U.S. manufacturers.“As of summer, 2007, there were more ‘private contractors’ deployed on the U.S. government payroll in Iraq (180,000) than there were actual soldiers (160,000),” Scahill said. “These contractors worked for some 630 companies and drew personnel from more than 100 countries around the globe. … This meant the U.S. military had actually become the junior partner in the coalition that occupies Iraq.”
And each Blackwater operative was costing the American taxpayers $1,222 per day. The Defense Department remains, of course, America’s No. 1 Employer, with 2.3 million workers (roughly twice the size of Wal-Mart, which has 1.2 million staffers) perhaps because America’s biggest export is war.
“Who pays Halliburton and Bechtel?” philosopher Noam Chomsky asked rhetorically in his Imperial Ambitions. “The U.S. taxpayer,” he answers.
“The same taxpayers fund the military-corporate system of weapons manufacturers and technology companies that bombed Iraq. So first you destroy Iraq, then you rebuild it. It’s a transfer of wealth from the general population to narrow sectors of the population.”...
As Stiglitz and Bilmes remind us, “The money spent on Iraq could have been spent on schools, roads, or research. These investments yield high returns.”
On the other hand, maybe Americans want to keep paying to operate 2,000 domestic and foreign military bases and spend more money on armies and weapons of death than all other nations combined. Maybe they like living in the greatest Warfare State the world has ever known.
My hunch, though, is a lot of Americans haven’t connected the country’s looming bankruptcy with the greedy, gang from the military-industrial complex out to control the planet, its people and its precious resources.
I'm referring to the second definition here. The central issue we are distracted from?"Most Americans have long since accepted that the Bush administration's case for invading Iraq was flawed, if not totally false. What we didn't know until recently, was that to sell that case, members of the Bush administration, possibly including Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld - maybe even the president of the United States, were willing to do things we're accustomed to ascribing to the North Koreans or Maoist Chinese: using torture not to get good information, but to produce false confessions, to justify an unnecessary war.The evidence just keeps coming. On Thursday, Colin Powell deputy Lawrence Wilkerson, and former NBC News investigative producer Robert Windrem, offered stunning news. In Wilkerson's words:
... what I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002--well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion--its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa'ida.So furious was this effort that on one particular detainee, even when the interrogation team had reported to Cheney's office that their detainee "was compliant" (meaning the team recommended no more torture), the VP's office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods. The detainee had not revealed any al-Qa'ida-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, "revealed" such contacts. Of course later we learned that al-Libi revealed these contacts only to get the torture to stop."
And what's the latest news on al-Libi, from The Washington Post:
"A former CIA high-value detainee, who provided bogus information that was cited by the Bush administration in the run-up to the Iraq war, has died in a Libyan prison, an apparent suicide, according to a Libyan newspaper."More from Joy-Ann Reid:
"You'd think that these would be top stories, worthy of serious consideration by a press corps that so shamefully let down the American people in the run-up to the Iraq invasion. The implications of these new revelations are stunning: a sitting president, vice president and defense secretary, selling a false case to the American people about an impending invasion of a country that had done no harm to us, and then using torture to produce false confessions in order to further the lie. Instead, the vaunted press corps is fixated - almost to the point of obsession - with Speaker Pelosi."Torture itself is wrong, but using torture to knowingly produce false information to justify a war? That's beyond the pale.
"George W. Bush's Justice Department said subjecting a person to the near drowning of waterboarding was not a crime and didn't even cause pain, but Ronald Reagan's Justice Department thought otherwise, prosecuting a Texas sheriff and three deputies for using the practice to get confessions.
Federal prosecutors secured a 10-year sentence against the sheriff and four years in prison for the deputies. But that 1983 case -- which would seem to be directly on point for a legal analysis on waterboarding two decades later -- was never mentioned in the four Bush administration opinions released last week."
For those interested in the Russian/Georgia conflict, Ted Galen Carpenter at CATO has a tasty scouring for our current policy:
Let me put it this way.... if we decided the border with Mexico was a military problem, if we decided to enforce our border down there.... what the hell business is that for Russia? Would we allow them to use military transport to bring humanitarian aid to say, Tijuana? Let's go a step further.... let's say Russia also is building "missile defense" systems for El Salvador, Colombia and Venezuela."One passage in the president's statement is cause for alarm, however. He announced that he was directing Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to execute a "humanitarian mission to the people of Georgia, headed by the United States military." Bush stated that a C-17 transport plane loaded with humanitarian supplies was already on its way, and that in the days ahead U.S. military aircraft and naval forces would be tasked with delivering aid.
That is a reckless move. The supposed cease-fire that was proclaimed on Tuesday seems largely ineffectual. Without a reliable truce in place, U.S. military forces would be entering a volatile war zone. Moreover, there was no indication that Bush was asking the Russians for permission. Indeed, his statement had all the characteristics of a demand — or a dare. "We expect Russia to ensure that all lines of communication and transport, including seaports, airports, roads, and airspace remain open for the delivery of humanitarian assistance."
The arrogance of that position is breathtaking. When a major cyclone created widespread devastation in Burma earlier this year, some proponents of humanitarian aid urged the U.S. military to compel delivery even in the teeth of opposition from the Burmese junta. American leaders rejected their pleas, however, deeming such an operation to be too dangerous. Apparently that situation was considered more dangerous than barging into a war zone where the military forces of a nuclear-armed power are conducting military operations.
Washington is creating a situation in which one nervous or trigger-happy Russian soldier could ignite an extremely ugly and perilous confrontation."
MSM still won't say Bush lied, just check out the synonyms in these headlines:
"But Durbin singled out for praise Mr. Bush's request that Congress reauthorize his AIDS relief plan and double the plan's funding with an additional $30 billion over five years.
"I applauded ... his renewed commitment to the global AIDS fight," Durbin said. "Of all the things this president has done in the foreign-policy realm, it is the one thing that he can point to with pride in years to come after his presidency.""
Maybe Bono should have lobbied Bush on more issues....
"One problem with the George W. Bush administration is that it has brought a kind of plural presidency in through the back door. Vice President Dick Cheney has run his own executive department, with its own intelligence and military operations, not open to scrutiny, as he hides behind the putative president.
No other vice president in our history has taken on so many presidential prerogatives, with so few checks. He is an example of the very thing James Wilson was trying to prevent by having one locus of authority in the executive. The attempt to escape single responsibility was perfectly exemplified when his counsel argued that Mr. Cheney was not subject to executive rules because he was also part of the legislature.
We have seen in this campaign how former President Clinton rushes to the defense of presidential candidate Clinton. Will that pattern of protection be continued into the new presidency, with not only his defending her but also her defending whatever he might do in his energetic way while she’s in office? It seems likely. And at a time when we should be trying to return to the single-executive system the Constitution prescribes, it does not seem to be a good idea to put another co-president in the White House."
From Timothy Noah at Slate:
However, if Clinton thought that his collaboration in keeping the Reagan-Bush secrets from the American people would earn him some bipartisan help from the Republicans, he was mistaken.
Clinton saw his prized domestic agenda, including Hillary Clinton's health care reform, defeated; his party lose control of Congress in 1994; the House vote to impeach him in 1998 for lying about an extramarital sexual relationship; and George H.W. Bush's oldest son steal the 2000 election from Clinton's Vice President, Al Gore.
Now, as Campaign 2008 begins to unfold, a similar dynamic is in place.
George W. Bush has engaged in a variety of acts that appear to be illegal, extra-legal or unconstitutional, while the Clintons are again signaling that they have no intention of holding the Bush family accountable.
"If Bill Clinton is right - that his wife's first act as President would be to ask him and George H.W. Bush to go on an around-the-world goodwill mission - Hillary Clinton is making it clear that she has no intention of holding George W. Bush accountable for any wrongdoing.
There is no way that George H.W. Bush would help the Clintons on the diplomatic front if they were taking action against his eldest son.
So, the stage seems set for another Bush-Clinton revolving door where the Bushes get a free pass as they leave in exchange for the Clintons hoping against hope that the powerful family will show them a little respect and maybe a touch of mercy.
Or, as the Clinton friend suggested to me last week, maybe their real hope is that the Bushes won't reveal what they've learned from the Secret Service records detailing where the Clintons have gone and with whom."
Then there is this article from WND:That's a lot of baggage for the ol' lady....
"Let the facts speak for themselves. In seven years, Bush has not once balanced the budget, nor presented a balanced budget to Congress. He took office with a $236 billion surplus, which he quickly turned into a $413 billion deficit. The projected deficit for 2008 is still $180 billion, not counting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, or the money we are borrowing from the Social Security Trust Fund.
Bush's record of fiscal profligacy continues. The federal budget in 2001 was $1.9 trillion; today, it's $2.7 trillion. Under Bush and a Republican Congress, the national debt has soared from 5.8 trillion to $9 trillion – 25 percent of which is owned by China, Japan and the UK. It took 42 presidents 224 years to build up $1 trillion of foreign-held debt. It's taken George Bush just seven years to accumulate $1.22 trillion."
"Mr. Reagan, like Mr. Bush, had gone through his share of second-term blues, including scandal (Iran-contra) and a hit to his job approval. But Reagan rebounded in his final year-plus in office – in part by cutting deals with Congress (and the Soviet Union) – and ended his presidency with job-approval ratings above 60 percent. Perhaps not coincidentally, he pulled off a rare feat: He was succeeded by his vice president, George H.W. Bush. 
The current President Bush has shown no such inclination to compromise with the Democrats lately, instead using or threatening to use the veto pen early and often, particularly on spending bills. On Tuesday, Bush signed one, Defense appropriations, and vetoed one, the Labor-Health-Education appropriations bill, on the grounds that it was $10 billion over budget and funded 2,000 special projects.
Bush went after Congress in a speech Tuesday in Indiana: "Their majority was elected on a pledge of fiscal responsibility, but so far it is acting like a teenager with a new credit card."
Bush went 5-1/2 years before his first veto, but his apparent goal now is to reestablish his bona fides as a fiscal conservative, after spending big earlier in office."
Good luck with that 60% approval rating, George.
Conservative first-lady Phyllis Schlafly has some major complaints about George W. Bush and the Mexican Immigrant/Border problem. We've now made it far easier for them to come here illegally, literally by the truckload, and it's all thanks to George W:Bush thumbed his nose at the U.S. House of Representatives, which voted 411-3 on May 15, and again July 24 by voice vote, to prohibit the entry of Mexican trucks. White House pressure prevented a vote in the U.S. Senate."
and there's more:
"...Sept 14, the first anniversary of the overwhelming, 283-138 passage in the House of the Secure Fence Act. The Senate subsequently passed it 80-19, and President Bush signed it into law on Oct. 26 in front of TV cameras.This law ordered the government to build an 854-mile fence along our U.S.-Mexico border. After one year, the Bush administration has built only 18 miles.
This failure - or refusal - to obey the law makes us believe that Bush and Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff do not intend to build the fence, and is a prime example of why the U.S. people don't trust their government."
Pat Boone had the audacity to fill one of his World Net Daily columns with one of those pass-along to your Republican friends' e-mail pieces, so I'm going to go through and make some points of my own (my points will be italicized like this):Not doing it this time. If the polls are any indication, I don't know who more than half of you are anymore. (Pretty soon half us won't be Americans, not legal ones anyway thanks to your lack of border security and pimping to agri-interests) I do know something terrible has happened, and that you're really not fellow Americans any longer. (Does that mean you're going to torture us, or just wiretap us?) I'll cut right to the chase here: I quit. (Cheers from around the world) Now before anyone gets all in a lather about me quitting to avoid impeachment, or to avoid prosecution or something, let me assure you: There's been no breaking of laws or impeachable offenses in this office. (A-hem, OK) The reason I'm quitting is simple: I'm fed up with you people. (The feeling is mutual, Mr. President) I'm fed up because you have no understanding of what's really going on in the world (we have more in common than you might think, then!) – or of what's going on in this once-great nation of ours. And the majority of you are too damn lazy to do your homework and figure it out. (we really DO have a lot in common!) Let's start local. You've been sold a bill of goods by politicians (Republicrats) and the news media (FOX News and Rush Limbaugh, for example. Certainly not lefties like Phil Donohue who was fired before the invasion because NBC didn't want to be seen as anti- war. Not when your guys were doing such a good job making everybody feel patriotic enough to go to war.) Polls show that the majority of you think the economy is in the tank. (Before the war, a majority of us thought Saddam was behind 911. Thanks for taking advantage of our stupidity that you are so well aware of) And that's despite record numbers of homeowners, including record numbers of minority homeowners. (Have you seen that your free-money lending cronies are now foreclosing on these poor folks at record rates?) And while we're mentioning m minorities, I'll point out that minority business ownership is at an all-time high. (Are these minorities the ones who are here legally?) Our unemployment rate is as low as it ever was during the Clinton administration. (Heck, a lot of these folks have two and three jobs!) I've mentioned all those things before, but it doesn't seem to have sunk in. Despite the shock to our economy of 9/11, the stock market has rebounded to record levels, and more Americans than ever are participating in these markets. (Thanks to your tax cuts for the rich and record spending that the next generations will be paying for, good job!) Meanwhile, all you can do is whine about gas prices, and most of you are too damn stupid to realize that gas prices are high because there's increased demand in other parts of the world, and because a small handful of noisy idiots are more worried about polar bears and beachfront property than your economic security. (The only thing stopping your oil-rich buddies from building refineries is the fact that they want gas prices to be high, so they can make record profits like they have the whole time you've been in office. Why spend money on refineries, when that will only eat into their profits? We should be investing in new energy technologies, instead of planning more giveaways to your oil cronies) We face real threats in the world. Don't give me this "blood for oil" thing. If I were trading blood for oil, I would've already seized Iraq's oil fields and let the rest of the country go to hell. (So instead, you don't control the oil fields, AND let Iraq go to hell, nice job!) And don't give me this "Bush Lied; People Died" crap either. If I were the liar you morons take me for, I could've easily had chemical weapons planted in Iraq so they could be "discovered." Instead, I owned up to the fact that the intelligence was faulty. (One Republican I battled with before the invasion said that was exactly what we should do if we didn't find them....with all the other lies, why not? I suppose all the supporters you have left DO think we found WMDs) Let me remind you that the rest of the world thought Saddam had the goods, same as me. (Well, except for the inspectors. And here I was thinking you were smarter than everybody else!) Let me also remind you that regime change in Iraq was official U.S. policy before I came into office. Some guy named Clinton established that policy. Bet you didn't know that, did you? (And you agree with everything Clinton did, I see. Your Daddy was the one who thought it would not be prudent to invade Iraq, maybe you should have consulted with him, instead of ignoring him and his most trusted advisers like Scowcroft, Baker and Powell) You idiots need to understand that we face a unique enemy. Back during the Cold War, there were two major competing political and economic models squaring off. We won that war, but we did so because fundamentally the Communists wanted to survive, just as we do. We were simply able to outspend and out-tech them. (And when we won and had a chance to re-shape the world, we could have chosen to take the high ground, instead we tried to rule with an iron fist. Smart!) That's not the case this time. The soldiers of our new enemy don't care if they survive. In fact, they want to die. That'd be fine, as long as they weren't also committed to taking as many of you with them as they can. But they are. They want to kill you, and the bastards are all over the globe. (I thought they were all lured to Iraq, so we could fight them over there? ) You should be grateful they haven't gotten any more of us here in the United States since Sept. 11. But you're not. (Of course not, we want to be bombed so you'll look bad) That's because you've got no idea how hard a small number of intelligence, military, law enforcement and homeland security people have worked to make sure of that. When this whole mess started, I warned you that this would be a long and difficult fight. I'm disappointed how many of you people think a long and difficult fight amounts to a single season of "Survivor." (Your cronies also said it would be a cakewalk and we'd be greeted as liberators, and democracy would spread through the MidEast. Well, those democracies are electing terrorists, my friend. Good plan.) Instead, you've grown impatient. You're incapable of seeing things through the long lens of history, the way our enemies do. You think that wars should last a few months, a few years, tops. (Maybe we should have avoided fighting the Iraq War. And you thought we could take over Iraq with a quarter of the troops your smart advisers suggested, with only England, Portugal, and Poland as our allies. Unless you still want to count Pakistan and "the General", you know, the country Bin Laden is hiding in, a place we can't possibly search for him because....Pakistan already has the BOMB. No wonder Iran wants one, too. Under your leadership, countries know that's the only way we won't invade. Brilliant plan.) Making matters worse, you actively support those who help the enemy. Every time you buy the New York Times, every time you send a donation to a cut-and-run Democrat's political campaign, well, dang it, you might just as well FedEx a grenade launcher to a jihadist. It amounts to the same thing. (I see, the Democrats and the media are the real terrorists, let's send 'em all to Guantanamo!) In this day and age, it's easy enough to find the truth. It's all over the Internet. It just isn't on the pages of the New York Times or on NBC News. But even if it were, I doubt you'd be any smarter. Most of you would rather watch "American Idol." (You told us to carry on like normal, don't let this war inconvenience your shopping habits, we have an economy to support. No need to sacrifice for your country, just keep on spending. Debt is good for us!) I could say more about your expectations that the government will always be there to bail you out, even if you're too stupid to leave a city that's below sea level and has a hurricane approaching. (Ah, blaming the victims, nice!) I could say more about your insane belief that government, not your own wallet, is where the money comes from. But I've come to the conclusion that were I to do so, it would sail right over your heads. So I quit. I'm going back to Crawford; I've got an energy-efficient house down there (Al Gore could only dream) and the capability to be fully self-sufficient. No one ever heard of Crawford before I got elected, and as soon as I'm done here pretty much no one will ever hear of it again. (Unless they speak Spanish) Maybe I'll be lucky enough to die of old age before the last pillars of America fall. (I hope you're still around to take most of the blame) Oh, and by the way, Cheney's quitting, too. (Did he tell you that? You still believe everything he tells you? Talk about dummy!) That means Pelosi is your new president. You asked for it. Watch what she does carefully, because I still have a glimmer of hope that there are just enough of you remaining who are smart enough to turn this thing around in 2008. (Which Republican candidate will be riding into office on your coattails, Mr. President?) So that's it. God bless what's left of America. Some of you know what I mean. The rest of you, kiss off. ('Cause that's the American Way, George W-style, bring it on!)Normally, I start these things out by saying, "My fellow Americans."
Pat Buchanan really sums up the blunders of Bush/Rove in another brilliant editorial:
Steve Chapman , of the Chicago Tribune has an interesting take on George W., from Human Events, the mostly conservative site that features Pat Buchanan (yay!) and Ann Coulter (boo.....nah, hisssss):
Robert Scheer has an interesting article about our current president up at Alternet:"George W. Bush is the imperial president that James Madison and other founders of this great republic warned us about. He lied the nation into precisely the "foreign entanglements" that George Washington feared would destroy the experiment in representative government, and he has championed a spurious notion of security over individual liberty, thus eschewing the alarms of Thomas Jefferson as to the deprivation of the inalienable rights of free citizens. But most important, he has used the sledgehammer of war to obliterate the separation of powers that James Madison enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.
With the "war on terror," Bush has asserted the right of the president to wage war anywhere and for any length of time, at his whim, because the "terrorists" will always provide a convenient shadowy target. Just the "continual warfare" that Madison warned of in justifying the primary role of Congress in initiating and continuing to finance a war -- the very issue now at stake in Bush's battle with Congress."
It's been a while since I went off on Bush, mostly because I figure that anyone left needing convincing is a lost cause. 20-30% of folks drank the Kool-Aid, and they would certainly be following Hitler if he were in George W's spot. Congress would do well to reconsider articles of impeachment....I know that would not be best for the Democratic Party, but it would be best for our country. We don't need no stinkin' king!
