The soldiers never explained to the government when an Indian was wronged, but reported the misdeeds of the Indians

Site of Colo. Indian Massacre Honored

More than 142 years after a band of state militia volunteers massacred 150 sleeping Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians in a misdirected act of vengeance, a memorial to the tragic event was officially dedicated Saturday.

Even in 1864 there was a conservative neocon mentality. This is from the testimony of Colonel J. M. Chivington April 26, 1865

From the best information I could obtain, I judge there were five hundred or six hundred Indians killed; I cannot state positively the number killed, nor can I state positively the number of women and children killed. Officers who passed over the field, by my orders, after the battle, for the purpose of ascertaining the number of Indians killed, report that they saw but few women or children dead, no more than would certainly fall in an attack upon a camp in which they were. I myself passed over some portions of the field after the fight, and I saw but one woman who had been killed, and one who had hanged herself; I saw no dead children. From all I could learn, I arrived at the conclusion that but few women or children had been slain. I am of the opinion that when the attack was made on the Indian camp the greater number of squaws and children made their escape, while the warriors remained to fight my troops.

In fact most of the dead were unmistakably women and children and the male Indians that were killed had nothing to do with some recent attacks on white settlers. What mattered to Chivington was that something bad had happened. The bad was perpetrated by Indians. Indians were killed, whether they were or were not directly involved didn’t matter as long as some group was portrayed as the enemy and the enemy had to pay. Washington Post Scrapes Bottom Of Barrel To Find People Who Think War Isn’t “Lost”

No. Many said Anbar province was “lost” six months ago. Today, local tribes are cooperating with us to fight al-Qaeda. Iraqis, with our help, are confronting the sectarian violence in Baghdad, seeking to take back their capital so they can pursue political reconciliation.

— Stephen J. Hadley, national security adviser

And:

No. The war is not lost — no more than it was in winter 1776, July 1864, December 1945 or November 1950. The challenge is winning back hearts and minds at home, rather than in Iraq, where brave thousands join us each day to fight an evil sort the likes of which we haven’t seen in recent memory.

— Victor Davis Hanson, military historian, Hoover Institution

VH is confused again One would think that would be a fatal flaw in a war historian but to conflate the creation of the world’s first modern democracy with the middle-east that hasn’t given rise to a single democracy in fifty years ( Israel, a non Arab state being the exception) with the U.S. running interference in a civil war is apple and oranges. Again I suspect he knows better, but his ideological zeal prevents him from making honest comparisons. “Evil” we haven’t seen recently – like the Va. Tech shootings or the Oklahoma City bombing. Some people might consider a president that lied a nation into an unnecessary war a touch evil. Then there’s that reference to 1945, generally considered to be the end of WW II. Wars against state actors that had either declared war on us or attacked us. Iraq had done neither. Maybe he’s referencing 1945 as the beginning of the Information Age. Who knows, he has a tendency to throw these dates and absurd comparisons out like popcorn to pond ducks. Hadley and Hanson’s “evil” are, to keep the historical analogies going the stuff of Colonel Chivington. “They” are evil and “they” must be fought until everyone of “them” is dead. If evil is actual ideologues, committed terrorists they would be the ones that as in Colorado actually made unprovoked attacks against settlers and the general population of Iraq – not every Iraqi – man, woman or child is a terrorist – and heresy to point this out, but the insurgency is just that – people that want invaders out of their country – not the same as the perpetrators of 9-11. At this juncture one cannot claim that the innocent victims are collateral damage – the maliciousness of the Bush administration and its failures at political and economic solutions are to blame. Now as always the we need more blood crowd like Hadley and Hanson claim that the deaths of these innocent people are the price they have to pay for the march of democracy. The moral problem is that no plurality of Iraqis has before the invasion up until the present come forth to say that Bush should invade and stay. No majority of Iraqis has said that they would be willing to give up the one life alloted to them for an ill conceived neocon experiment in nation building that has become only been connected to actual jihadism against the west by the rabid Right.

The Queen of Fabrication is at it again. Rice can spin so hard and fast she would embarrass most merry-go-rounds, Rice backs off Iraq ‘imminent threat’ claim, then redefines term

“George, the question of imminence isn’t whether or not someone will strike tomorrow, it’s whether you believe you’re in a stronger position today to deal with the threat or whether you’re going to be in a stronger position tomorrow,” replies Rice. “It was the president’s assessment that the situation in Iraq was getting worse from our point of view.”

Rice’s redefinition of the term “imminent threat,” comes just over a month after former US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton appeared on CNN claiming that the President never made the argument that Saddam Hussein posed an “imminent threat.” As RAW STORY reported last month, a number of Bush administration officials used the term in the run up to the Iraq war.

Since Rice cannot keep her own spin straight it would behoove her not to try and rewrite history and put words in other people’s mouths, Rice Falsely Claims U.N. Inspectors Thought Saddam Hussein Had WMD

Chief United Nations weapons inspector Hans Blix told the U.N. Security Council that his inspection teams had not found any “smoking guns” after visiting some 125 Iraqi sites. [1/9/03]

Also Rice makes acts as though preemption against Bin Laden in Afghanistan would have been a ridiclous idea – this would be in contrast to the preemtive war against an Iraq that had nothing to do with 9-11,
“The idea of launching preemptive strikes into Afghanistan in July of 2001, this is a new fact.” Rice then said, “I don’t know what we were supposed to preemptively strike in Afghanistan. Perhaps somebody can ask that.”

They could have at least tried a cruise missile strike or that and a combination od special forces. Simple straight forward responses to threats to our national security are incomprehensible to Conservatives, yet getting us mired down in a senseless war seems to make perfect sense.

“The soldiers never explained to the government when an Indian was wronged, but reported the misdeeds of the Indians.” – Geronimo

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I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I’m not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant

Glenn Greenwald strongly suggests the possibility of A genuine political sea change? . Listing the letter signed by the entire Democratic membership of the Senate to Beltway demigod David Broder and the George Tenet’s nail in the Bush claims that the neocons invaded Iraq only as a last resort. Glenn is rightfully much wider read then this little blog and offers up reason for hope and optimism. On the other hand I’ve been up that hill before and while I couldn’t be more proud of Democrats for standing up for Senator Reid and previously Speaker Pelosi, recent turns will have more weight if they are the harbingers of a trend rather then a blip. The Tenet revelations are another matter. They might be the back on which many other truths finally get their hearing. They are the final crack in the Conservative facade – Tenet Details Efforts to Justify Invading Iraq

White House and Pentagon officials, and particularly Vice President Cheney, were determined to attack Iraq from the first days of the Bush administration, long before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and repeatedly stretched available intelligence to build support for the war, according to a new book by former CIA director George J. Tenet.

Although Tenet does not question the threat Saddam Hussein posed or the sincerity of administration beliefs, he recounts numerous efforts by aides to Cheney and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to insert “crap” into public justifications for the war. Tenet also describes an ongoing fear within the intelligence community of the administration’s willingness to “mischaracterize complex intelligence information.”

It is unfortunate that Tenet also tries to justify torture of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, and others. There is no reason to believe that proven interrogation techniques that do not involve torture wouldn’t have gotten the same information. It is also in my opinion a mistake to focus exclusively on Tenet and the CIA. The State Department has its own intelligence gathering department and they claimed there was no compelling evidence that Saddam was trying to acquire or make nuclear weapons,

Ten months before the president’s speech, an intelligence review by CIA Director George Tenet contained not a single mention of an imminent nuclear threat—or capability—from Iraq. The CIA was backed up by Bush’s own State Department: Around the time Bush gave his speech, the department’s intelligence bureau said that evidence did not “add up to a compelling case that Iraq is currently pursuing what [we] consider to be an integrated and comprehensive approach to acquiring nuclear weapons.”

Who are the winners in the middle-east because of the neocons blind zealotry? Who Wins in Iraq?
Who Wins in Iraq? 2. Moqtada al-Sadr

Four years into the American occupation of Iraq, tens of thousands of people are dead and a nation is imploding. And Moqtada al-Sadr, the young, rabble-rousing cleric few people had even heard of when the invasion began, can now plausibly claim to be the most powerful man in the country. Sadr’s power covers the whole spectrum of political possibility: He commands as many allies in the Iraqi Parliament as any single party; and his armed followers permeate Iraq’s security forces, control the streets throughout eastern Baghdad and the Shiite south, and fill the ranks of many of the death squads that terrorize the country’s Sunni minority.

Who Wins in Iraq? 3. Al Qaeda

Before the United States invaded Iraq, al Qaeda was on the ropes. The United States and its coalition partners had rousted it from Afghanistan and toppled the Taliban, while a global manhunt was steadily shutting down jihadist cells from Morocco to Malaysia. Perhaps equally important, many Islamists, including fellow jihadists, harshly criticized bin Laden for having rashly attacked a superpower and, in doing so, causing the defeat of the Taliban, the only “true” Islamic regime in the eyes of many radicals.

Then the invasion of Iraq breathed new life into the organization. On an operational level, the United States chose to divert troops to Iraq rather than consolidate its victory in Afghanistan and increase its chances of hunting down bin Laden.

Who Wins in Iraq? 6. Arab Dictators

As the United States has become mired in bloody chaos in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Egypt have wound up back in the Bush administration’s good graces. But it’s not because they’ve become more democratic. Saudi Arabia has not changed. The Egyptian regime is backsliding, becoming increasingly intolerant of dissent as it nears the inevitable end of the 25-year rule of President Hosni Mubarak and braces for a difficult succession. Nevertheless, the two countries have been rehabilitated, or at least relabeled: Sadly, they are now what passes for “moderate.” As Franklin D. Roosevelt might have put it in more frank language, they are still the same S.O.B.s, but they are once again “our S.O.B.s.”

The last one resonates with me. Over the years since 9-11 the one thing that consistently makes my head spin in disbelief is the boiler plate references in just about every major Bush speech where he claims to be spreading democracy. This administration is obviously a believer in the Big Lie – there are so many from strange lies about Bush’s participation in a varsity rugby team that didn’t exist to imminent mushroom clouds to why he took a pass on obeying FISA law that we need a central clearing house to hold all them all; but the one that is most glaringly false, insulting and exploitive of the goodness of the American public is the one about spreading Norman Rockwellish middle American democracy and values to all the world’s remaining authoritarian regimes. One hallmark of the Bush legacy will be his singular failure at fostering the slightest tiniest wave of democracy anywhere up to and including his contempt for democracy here at home.

The Case Against George W. Bush

But 30 years later, President Bush asserted that FISA hampered intelligence gathering in the war on terror, so as commander in chief he could ignore it. Actually, the FISA court overwhelmingly grants presidential requests (19,000 approvals since 1978 versus 5 rejections) and can grant approvals after wiretaps commence. But if President Bush still thought FISA too burdensome, he should have asked Congress to amend it. Since he didn’t, he must obey it. After the 2006 elections, he reversed himself, announcing he would comply with FISA, but what about all the years he flouted it?

The Constitution plainly states the president shall “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” The president must obey and uphold the law, not take it into his own hands. Case law on this is clear. When during the Korean War President Truman wanted to seize U.S. steel mills to keep them running despite a strike, the Supreme Court said no, noting in its decision that the president was commander in chief of the Army and Navy, not the country.

Atrios in describing the problem with the pretend Beltway moderate like Broder also describes why there will probably not be an impeachment, More Broder

The establishment is the permanent ruling class of Washington, our betters who know better. It is their rough agenda which is sold as “centrism” even when it has no actual relationship with the political center in a meaningful way. Democracy’s messy, in Broder’s world, and passionate voters are problematic. It is up to the Wise Old Men of Washington to implement the agenda, and the job of the voters to bless them for it.

While I think Democrats at the federal level are catching up this is the reason that liberal bloggers are seen as out of the mainstream, the media embraces Matt Sludge and Democrats sometimes sputter even when they’re on solid moral and political ground. After you’re bombarded with the conventional beltway wisdom for years some of it makes its way into your thinking, especially if you’re actually in Washington for a while. Then you slowly start the terrible habit of risk avoidance – avoiding offending the Broders, Matthews, Kondrackes, Russerts, Wills and Broders.

“I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I’m not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.” – Robert McCloskey

Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people

If a married Republican wants to call a madam and arrange for massage that is his personal business or at least the business of a small circle of people that would include his wife and the hired help as it were. Some people might, on a personal level may think its sleazy and I would tend to agree, but in ordinary circumstances has little to do with good governance. On the other hand when USAID Administrator and Director of Foreign Assistance Randall Tobias paints a public picture of himself as yet another example of Conservative perfection and propriety, U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator Tobias Defends Emphasis on Abstinence and tries to justify absurdly unrealistic AIDS prevention based on abstinence while carrying on trysts with prostitutes while married is yet another case of RepubliSpeak – do as I say not as I do. Being holier then thou is a tough job, but it is after all a task that conservatives assigned to themselves.

In book, ex-CIA chief assails Cheney on Iraq invasion

“There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat,” Tenet writes in a devastating judgment that is likely to be debated for many years. Nor, he adds, “was there ever a significant discussion” about the possibility of containing Iraq without an invasion.

Back when Tenet got his Medal of Freedom many people thought that while it was deserved, it was also a kind of payoff for being the administration’s fall guy for intelligence on Iraq. I wondered at the time whether Tenet would ever write a book and what his side of the story might be. While he drops the blame bomb back where it belongs in Bush and Cheney’s lap, he still claims that he believed that Saddam did possess some WMD capabilities. Tenet might still be hedging on that part of the pre-war equation. Tenet hung on to his job with administration changes in large part because he and Bush were either on the same page about Iraq or Tenet was willing to lean in that direction to please his new boss. That doesn’t make Tenet a bad guy, as a matter of course most people at some level acquiesque to their bosses style and POV. Spy chief’s book to spill Bush’s Iraq secrets

Tyler Drumheller, the former head of the CIA’s European division, told Mr Tenet on the eve of General Powell’s speech not to rely on the evidence of Curveball, an Iraqi informant handled by German intelligence who was deemed to be a mentally unstable alcoholic.

Mr Tenet has denied receiving such a warning and kept Curveball’s claims about the presence of mobile biological weapons laboratories in Iraq in General Powell’s presentation.

He also gave Mr Bush the go-ahead to assert in a State of the Union speech that Saddam was trying to acquire uranium yellowcake from Africa for his nuclear program – a decision the CIA chief later said he regretted.

Mr Drumheller writes in his own memoir that his former boss “was driven by the urge to prevent another attack happening on his watch (after 9/11) … and had really bought the idea that Iraq was a legitimate target”.

“He was a very good guy and we were friends. He wasn’t perfect but he did a good job,” said Mr Drumheller.

“But at the most critical juncture in his career he made some very bad decisions.”

[ ]…”But that raises the question: why didn’t he resign and say something about it?”

Like some of those retired generals Tenet didn’t speak up when he should have or if he did he didn’t make his case strongly enough. That doesn’t make Tenet one of the bad guys, but maybe serves as a lesson in letting personal politics get in the way of doing the right thing or getting caught up in a tide of crowd thinking and not listening to that inner critic. For outright audacious lies you can always rely on the Bush Whitehouse,

“The president made the decision to remove Saddam Hussein for a number of reasons, mainly the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq and Saddam Hussein’s own actions, and only after a thorough and lengthy assessment of all available information as well as congressional authorization,” the spokesman said.

from Paul Pillar – National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005 – Intelligence, Policy,and the War in Iraq

(According to several congressional aides responsible for safeguarding the classified material, no more than six senators and only a handful of House members got beyond the five-page executive summary.) As the national intelligence officer for the Middle East, I was in charge of coordinating all of the intelligence community’s assessments regarding Iraq; the first request I received from any administration policymaker for any such assessment was not until a year into the war.

The October 2002 NIE also judged that Saddam was unlikely to use WMD against the United States unless his regime was placed in mortal danger.

And of course he didn’t use them even then because he didn’t have any.

In addition, the intelligence community offered its assessment of the likely regional repercussions of ousting Saddam. It argued that any value Iraq might have as a democratic exemplar would be minimal and would depend on the stability of a new Iraqi government and the extent to which democracy in Iraq was seen as developing from within rather than being imposed by an outside power.

But when you run a faith based foreign policy you send Americans to their deaths based on what you believe , not the best analysis of professionals. Devilstower at DailyKos takes a look at Doug Feith and the Bush administration’s politicization of the intelligence community in Feith-Based Intelligence (SUPER-SIZED)

Delusional RepubliNik U.S. Rep. Rick Renzi, R-Ariz. spreads rumor about himself and then calls its ” conjecture, and false attacks”, Renzi responds to resignation rumors

U.S. Rep. Rick Renzi, R-Ariz. shunned swirling speculation Friday that he would soon resign his congressional seat in the wake of a federal investigation.

“For several weeks, I have been the subject of leaked stories, conjecture, and false attacks about a land exchange. None of them bear any resemblance to the truth, including the rumor that I am planning on resigning,” said Renzi, a Republican representing Flagstaff, Prescott and Casa Grande, in a statement.

Rick Renzi meet Rick Renzi, the guy that was spreading rumors about your resignation, Amid FBI investigation, Renzi steps down from 2 more panels

Renzi told The Hill earlier yesterday that he was “looking at” the prospect of resigning.

We’re all too familiar by now with conservative’s passion to paint themselves as poor beleaguered martyrs at any opportunity, but to spread rumors about yourself and then complain about how unfair they are reaches new heights of spin.

“Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.” – Theodore Roosevelt

You don’t even care whether you’ve got the right men or not. All you know is you’ve lost something and somebody’s got to be punished

After reading neo-con historian Victor Davis Hanson’s Is the War on Terror Over? at Real Clear Politics at first I thought that maybe I should change his nickname from Pangloss to Don Quixote. Hansen as usual wants, like Quixote to believe and see problems in the most simplistic way. Then again Hanson doesn’t possess Don Quixote’s better qualities such as a code of honor or a sympathetic nievete.

Even onetime neo-conservative Francis Fukuyama, who in 1998 called for the preemptive removal of Saddam Hussein, believes “war” is the “wrong metaphor” for our struggle against the terrorists.

Others point out that motley Islamic terrorists lack the resources of the Nazi Wehrmacht or the Soviet Union.

This thinking may seem understandable given the ineffectiveness of al-Qaida to kill many Americans after 9/11. Or it may also reflect hopes that if we only leave Iraq, radical Islam will wither away. But it is dead wrong for a number of reasons.

What is the glaringly obvious error here. Hansen is literate enough to know better, but has maliciously created a straw man and filled him with arguments that have never been made. No Democrat has ever said that by leaving Iraq that Al-Qaeda  will simply go away. Why is he even conflicting Iraq with al-Queda. There can be no other reason then to mislead his readers. The vast majority of those committing violence in Iraq are Iraqis. Who are they killing, mostly other Iraqis. Even most of the attacks by Al-Qaeda  (foreign fighters that came across the border because of Bush and Rumsfeld’s ineptitude) are directed at the Iraqis. Most of those people taken into custody by the surge are Iraqis,

In the Washington Post article however Capt. Valenti is quoted as saying that of the 18,000 detainees in the American-run prisons in Iraq, only 250 are foreign fighters. That’s a little over 1 per cent. So where have all the “terrorists” come from? Or are they all Iraqis?

Here we go again. Neocons like Hansen use the terms Iraq, Muslim, al-Qaida, and insurgents interchangeably as though they were all the same thing and they are all an imminent threat to America. This is absurd, dishonest and deeply immoral. This all leads back to another imaginary windmill of the neocon imagination the infamous Iraq as flypaper hypothesis – The reason we haven’t had another attack by Al-Qaeda is that Bush the windmill slayer is keeping them too busy in Iraq. This is like saying that someone can’t eat and watch TV at the same time. Or the extension of the flypaper theory – if we leave Iraq Al-Qaeda will follow us back to America. Hanson inadvertently refutes that argument,

First, Islamic terrorists plotting attacks are arrested periodically in both Europe and the United States. Just last week a leaked British report detailed al-Qaida’s plans for future “large-scale” operations. We shouldn’t be blamed for being alarmist when our alarmism has resulted in our safety at home for the past five years.

Hanson admits that being in Iraq has not stopped Al-Qaeda  plots and that the best tools to stop those plots are intelligence gathering – or what some might call good old fashioned police work. Keeping an eye on the bad guys and breaking up their gangs. He even dances around the fact that no one state (country) is the center of Islamic jihadism,

This inability to tie a state to its support for terrorism is our greatest obstacle in this war – and our enemies’ greatest advantage.

This is the problem with Hanson and Bush supporters in general when it comes to understanding the problem of non-state terrorism. Hanson and Bush see it as an advantage for the terrorists. It could be turned to the advantage of the U.S. and vast majority of the world who wants nothing to do with terrorists. Terrorists depend on failed and weak states, like the ones that Bush has created in Afghanistan and Iraq. I can’t speak for every liberal or the last remaining thinking Republicans, but most of them seem to have this one major objection to Bush – that because he doesn’t know what he is doing he has been weak and ineffective. Our problem with Bush and the rabid Right is that they are not only less then competent in fighting terrorism, but have made so many people victims of their incompetence – they’re the Keystone Cops of anti-terror. If we were not wasting resources and creating world wide resentment in Iraq we could direct more of our efforts toward tracking down actual terrorists instead of giving them target practice in Iraq and Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda in Iraq May Not Be Threat Here

Al-Qaeda in Iraq is the United States’ most formidable enemy in that country. But unlike Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda organization in Pakistan, U.S. intelligence officials and outside experts believe, the Iraqi branch poses little danger to the security of the U.S. homeland.

and this also from Hanson,

A germ, some spent nuclear fuel or a vial of nerve gas could cause as much mayhem and calamity as an armored division in Hitler’s army. The Soviets were considered rational enemies who accepted the bleak laws of nuclear deterrence. But the jihadists claim that they welcome death if their martyrdom results in thousands of dead Americans.

Sounds like an awful possibility. Does Hanson name one person with one quote that has said we shouldn’t try and stop that kind of thing from happening? NO of course not because there is no such person. Pangloss is just confusing his fetid imagination with what will happen if the U.S. seeks a political and economic solution to Iraq and untangle ourselves from that counter productive quagmire. Day after day, boiler plate nonsensical tirade after tirade for the neocons Iraq is the be all end all answer to stopping another 9-11. It is that thinking that leaves America open to another attack – by directing resources, planning and sacrificing American toward the windmills of their minds. Iraq didn’t attack us on 9-11, Al-Qaeda  did and the Right doesn’t seem to care the least about that cold hard fact – they even seem to have contempt for the idea that it even matters in their scatter shot war on terror, Mitt Romney, in an interview with the Associated Press referring to Bin Laden,

“It’s not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person.”

And G.W. Bush on Bin Laden,

Terror is bigger than one person…. So I don’t know where he is. You know, I just don’t spend that much time on him, Kelly, to be honest with you.

How can America trust the Right to get radical Islamic terrorism under control if they can’t decide who the enemy is or just don’t know. They have spilled more innocent blood then Al-Qaeda, that should be a clue to any rational person that they’ve become more an out of control lynch mob then defenders of justice and freedom.

Major Tetley: Other men with families have had to die for this sort of thing. It’s too bad, but it’s justice.
Donald Martin: Justice? What do you care about justice? You don’t even care whether you’ve got the right men or not. All you know is you’ve lost something and somebody’s got to be punished.

from the movie The Ox-Bow Incident (1943)
From three years ago and as true now as it was then, War College Study Calls Iraq a ‘Detour’ – Institute’s report warns anti-terror campaign may launch ‘open-ended and gratuitous conflict.’

A report published by the Army War College criticizes the Bush administration’s global war on terrorism as “unfocused” and contends that the war in Iraq is “unnecessary” and a “detour” that has diverted attention and resources from the threat posed by Al Qaeda.

The report warns that the administration’s global war on terrorism may have set the United States “on a course of open-ended and gratuitous conflict with states and non-state entities that pose no serious threat to the United States.”

The report by Jeffrey Record, a visiting research professor at the Strategic Studies Institute of the Army War College, calls for downsizing the war on terrorism and focusing instead on the threat from Al Qaeda, the terror network responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon as well as other sites around the world.

“The global war on terrorism as presently defined and conducted is strategically unfocused, promises much more than it can deliver, and threatens to dissipate U.S. military and other resources in an endless and hopeless search for absolute security,” Record wrote, concluding his 56-page monograph. “The United States may be able to defeat, even destroy, Al Qaeda, but it cannot rid the world of terrorism, much less evil.”

Record calls the war in Iraq “an unnecessary preventative war” that has “diverted attention and resources away from securing the American homeland against further assault by an undeterrable Al Qaeda.” The Iraq war was a “detour” from the war on terrorism, he said.

The Right swings back and forth between shrillness and diulsion when it comes to Iraq and terrorism. Rudy Guilani just did his best Cheney impression the other day warning us that we’re once again going to condemn the entire nation to certain death if we don’t drink the kool-aid and see terorism the way they see it. The opposite is true, terror and multiple wars might well continue an entire generation if we let the rabid Righties like Hanson keep confusing actual terrorism with their delusions. One more big bad straw man from Hanson – the only kind of enemy that the Right is capable of defeating,

This is a strange war. Our successes in avoiding attack convince some that the real danger has passed. And when we kill jihadists abroad, we are told it is peripheral to the war or only incites more terrorism.

One supposes there are a few people out there somewhere that think the danger of another 9-11 style attack is past or that capturing or killing actual terrorists incites more terrorism, but again Hanson is keeping their identities secret – that is not the official stance of the Democratic Party as far as I know. Bush and by proxy, his supporters are the ones that have let Afghanistan slip back into the hands of war lords and the Taliban and let Bin Laden get away- Not Hillary Clinton or John Kerry. Bush is the one that lied us into Iraq and let the country plunge head long into civil strife – not Harry Reid or Barrack Obama. Hanson needs to do what the Right always refuses to do, look in the mirror. There they will find America’s greatest obstacle to making America and the world safer.

“Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it”

One has to admit that Republicans are enterprising in their way. That is if one extends the definition of enterprising to finding a way to engage in the most corrupt and egregious conduct and then like a colony of parasites scramble to cover for each other. While they’re still trying to carry on business, excuse me the business of corruption as usual its a little more difficult then it used to be when they were the majority party, made the rules and dictated priorities, Congressman queried on Abramoff ties

In a burst of activity over the last eight days, FBI agents and federal prosecutors have won a guilty plea from a former congressional aide, implicated two more House of Representatives members and put the scandal surrounding onetime super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s influence-peddling back into the headlines.

The pace of the inquiry, which now has bagged a veteran congressman, a deputy Cabinet secretary, a White House aide and eight others, appears to be accelerating.

And it portends to be a major new headache for the Bush administration and congressional Republicans still reeling from a furor over the Justice Department’s firing of eight U.S. attorneys and from last fall’s election, which put Democrats back in command on Capitol Hill.

The newest figure to face serious FBI scrutiny is Rep. Tom Feeney, R-Fla., who said bureau agents have asked for details of a 2003 golf trip to Scotland that he took with Abramoff – a trip that the House ethics committee recently found violated House rules.

Last week, FBI agents raided the home of Rep. John Doolittle, R-Calif.

And on Tuesday, former congressional aide Mark Zachares pleaded guilty to helping Abramoff obtain government business and inside information in exchange for cash, gifts and job favors. Zachares was an aide to Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, when Young chaired the House transportation committee.

Congressman Rick Renzi(R-AZ) isn’t just a one dimensional will vote any way you want if you bring enough cash Republican. No sir he can make calls and twist arms and get the ideologically impure fired too, Another Dubious Firing

Congressman Rick Renzi, an Arizona Republican, was locked in a close re-election battle last fall when the local United States attorney, Paul Charlton, was investigating him for corruption. The investigation appears to have been slowed before Election Day, Mr. Renzi retained his seat, and Mr. Charlton ended up out of a job — one of eight prosecutors purged by the White House and the Justice Department.

Bush’s actions appear to be dictated by the ghosts of Leo Strauss and Elmer Fudd rather then a benevolent deity and it looks as though its an infectious condition, Laura Bush declares – “No one suffers more than their President and I do”?.

It looks like America is full of radical anti-war leftists or the majority of Americans know a pointless quagmire when they see one, Americans Agree with Harry Reid that Victory is Not Possible in Iraq

Do you think the U.S. goal of achieving victory in Iraq is still possible, or not?
Yes, victory in Iraq is still possible 36
No, victory in Iraq is not still possible 55
Not sure 9

There is a difference between being a defeatist and being a realist. Like their inability to distinguish between capitalism and greed, leave it to Bush supporters not to be able to distinguish their blood filled day dreams and doing what is best for America.

Bush: When we do the casualty counts during the “surge” should we count troop or civilian deaths from car bombs?
Unka Karl: No if we counted those it would look like we’re failing again and just a reminder that one of the signature message of this administration has been and will continue to be the denial of reality. U.S. officials exclude car bombs in touting drop in Iraq violence

Car bombs and other explosive devices have killed thousands of Iraqis in the past three years, but the administration doesn’t include them in the casualty counts it has been citing as evidence that the surge of additional U.S. forces is beginning to defuse tensions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

[ ]…Deaths from car bombings and improvised explosive devices, however, increased from 361 in December to a peak of 520 in February before dropping to 323 in March.

In that same period, the number of bombings has increased, as well. In December, there were 65 explosive attacks. That number was unchanged in January, but it rose to 72 in February, 74 in March and 81 through April 24.

Conservatives always seem to want to have their cake and claim they didn’t eat the whole thing or something like that – it is all hard to keep up with, President Bush Delivers State of the Union Address, Office of the Press Secretary, January 31, 2006

Iraqis are showing their courage every day, and we are proud to be their allies in the cause of freedom.

Fox’s Gibson: U.S. invasion “unmasked” Iraqis as “knuckle-dragging savages from the 10th century”. So Americans are dying to save the Iraqi people from the Iraqi people who are “knuckle-dragging savages”, but they are also “showing their courage every day”. The right-wing fax machine must be broken again. Remember Gibson is the press, the MEDIA.

The Queen of Fabrication, a position usually not held simultaneously with Secretary of State has been subpoenaed, House Panel Approves Subpoena for Rice

By 21-10, the House oversight committee voted to issue a subpoena to Rice to compel her story on the Bush administration’s claim, now discredited, that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa.

Rice’s memory is hardly much better then Alberto’s so whether this will be productive or not is another thing.

“Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it” – Adolf Hitler

“We must be careful about what we pretend to be”

Generally conservatives have little in the way of a sense of humor, but they are funny, conservative clown Ton Delay

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “are getting very, very close to treason,” DeLay said in a meeting with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

This is what Tom “Under Indictment” Delay said in March 11, April 28, and May 6, 1999—about President Clinton’s war in Kosovo,

“quagmire” and compared it to Vietnam

he urged the administration to withdraw them “before the body bags start coming home.”

“International respect and trust for America has diminished every time we casually let the bombs fly.” As for the current war plan, Dean complained that “no one wants us to be there” and that the president’s crusade “has made the Russians jittery and has harmed [our] standing in the world.”

“We should think very, very seriously whether we are going to take ownership of the bombing”—as though the president weren’t the nation’s commander in chief. He urged Congress to de-fund the war and “pull out the forces we now have in the region.”

It was unfair and unrealistic of the United States, he suggested, to demand that a dictator “agree to allow foreign troops … to have free rein over the entire country.”

Delay is typical of the patriotic relativity of the Right. The moral case for war is not something that has ever concerned their little minds. Political considerations are always paramount. Pam’s House Blend also remembered Delay’s previous remarks, Hypocrite… thy name is “Republican” and includes the that savior of irrelevancy Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ),

In June 1998, Kyl voted in favor of amending the National Defense Authorization Act for FY1999 to “require the President to submit Congress a plan for withdrawing United States forces from Bosnia and Herzegovina if the Congress does not so act by March 31, 1999.”

The poor state of Arizona has John “personality transplant from Bush ” McCain and Jon “two faced Kyl” Kyl. What did Arizona do to deserve these two scoundrels that wrap their garbage in patriotism I don’t know.

The Right-wing Hate Brigade and the usual platoon of Fighting Keyboarders down in Auntie’s basement are frothing at the mouth to twist the narrative from reality to fringe right wet dreams of a never ending war that they and their Decider lied America into, from the New York Post

April 24, 2007 — Fresh from his declaration that “this war [in Iraq] is lost,” Senate Demo cratic leader Harry Reid is moving quickly to hasten America’s unilateral surrender.

And to cast the Middle East into murderous chaos.

[ ]…Their blood stands to be on his hands.

and the ever virulent Riehl World View, Reid Has No Honesty at All, Tuesday, April 24, 2007 at 03:09 PM in Iraq

This is shameful behavior. Reid does indeed have blood on his hands. And as Jeff at Protein Wisdom points out in follow up to a NY Post item, Reid is performing exactly as would a dummy of the Far Left. He’s decided to allow the fringe of his party to pull his strings. Middle America will reject his party in 08 as a result.

Would that far left be the majority of Americans that just three months ago gave Democrats an historic victory based on their promise to get us out of Iraq sooner rather then forever,

Do you think the United States should or should not set a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq sometime in 2008?

Should 57
Should not 38
DK/NA 5

Which of these comes closest to your opinion? 1. Congress should block all funding war in Iraq no matter what OR 2. Congress should allow funding only for a limited period of time OR 3. Congress should allow all funding for the war in Iraq without a time limit.

Block all funding 9
Allow only w/time limit 58
Should allow all funding 29
Don’t know/No answer 4

Hey America we’re all radical leftists now. Moderate and reasonable is the new far left in other words. Senator John Kerry’s words to the apparently deranged mad man we have for a vice-president applies to The NYP, Riehl and right-wing lock stepping blogs as well, Cheney Swipes Reid on Iraq – Kerry Rips Cheney’s “Interpretative History”

“Dick Cheney’s attacks on Harry Reid are as disturbing as they are disingenuous. He is the American Idol of outlandish claims. No one has been more wrong about Iraq from day one than Vice President Cheney. The Cheney Doctrine has been a recipe for disaster in Iraq that has put American troops in unforgivable danger and made America less secure. The Vice President has only been consistent in his miscalculations and misdirection,” Kerry said.

“I could hardly believe my ears when the Vice President had the nerve to accuse Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of being uninformed. This is the same man who claimed that we would be greeted as liberators in Iraq and that the Iraqi insurgency was in its last throes, when in fact the civil war was growing. It is time for the Vice President to return to his secure, undisclosed location to rejoin his neocon friends rather than attack the Majority Leader who is fighting to keep faith with American troops.”

Fact is that Bush has already given up. All the rhetoric from him and his echoes is just raw meat for the dead enders, The United States has given up on training Iraqi troops.

“Military planners have abandoned the idea that standing up Iraqi troops will enable American soldiers to start coming home soon and now believe that U.S. troops will have to defeat the insurgents and secure control of troubled provinces. Training Iraqi troops, which had been the cornerstone of the Bush administration’s Iraq policy since 2005, has dropped in priority, officials in Baghdad and Washington said.” (McClatchy, 4/19/07)

Pappa Bush and his friends must be the new far left radicals too. The Iraq Study Gruop was their baby, The Iraq Study Group supported a phased redeployment of forces from Iraq.

The Right has a history of molding the truth like it was play dough, Ranger alleges cover-up in Tillman case

WASHINGTON – An Army Ranger who was with Pat Tillman when the former football star was cut down by friendly fire in
Afghanistan said Tuesday a commanding officer had ordered him to keep quiet about what happened.
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The military at first portrayed Tillman’s death as the result of heroic combat with the enemy. Army Spc. Bryan O’Neal told a congressional hearing that when he got the chance to talk to Tillman’s brother, who had been in a nearby convoy on the fateful day, “I was ordered not to tell him what happened.”

“You were ordered not to tell him?” repeated Rep. Henry Waxman D-Calif., chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

“Roger that, Sir,” replied O’Neal, dressed in his Army uniform.

Let me play concern troll and suggest that the Right is mistaken to think they can control the narrative. Reality has a stubborn streak and no matter how often they try to lock it away in the closet it will find away out.

Another member of the Culture of Corruption bites the dust, Lawmaker leaves panels after FBI raid

An Arizona congressman temporarily stepped down from two more House committees on Tuesday and got caught up in the probe of the firings of U.S. attorneys, less than a week after the FBI raided his wife’s insurance business.

Rep. Rick Renzi said in a statement Tuesday that he was taking a leave of absence from the House Financial Services and Natural Resources committees. He stepped down from the House Intelligence Committee last week.

Even as he insisted that he had been “the subject of leaked stories, conjecture and false attacks” about a 2005 land exchange, Renzi became entangled in the U.S. attorneys probe when his chief of staff acknowledged calling Arizona’s prosecutor’s office to discuss the matter.

Notice a trend here. When a Democrat breaks from the conservative chorus line of Pravda Drama they’re the worse thing since unsliced white bread, but when a Republican is as dirty as a field pig wallowing in the trough its all the result of those big mean Democrats picking on a poor guy just trying to get a little graft.

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” Kurt Vonnegut writing in Mother Night

The White House transcript says the president made those remarks in the state of Michigan. I believe he made them in the state of denial

As much as I admire Will Smith they did a pretty awful job on I,Robot. The questions raised by that film and book remain the same. While we’re obviously not at the level of those special effects robots, what or who is responsible when robots run a muck, Robot future poses hard questions

Increasingly, autonomous machines are being used in military applications, too.

Samsung, for example, has developed a robotic sentry to guard the border between North and South Korea.

It is equipped with two cameras and a machine gun.

The development and eventual deployment of autonomous robots raised difficult questions, said Professor Alan Winfield of the University of West England.

“If an autonomous robot kills someone, whose fault is it?” said Professor Winfield.

“Right now, that’s not an issue because the responsibility lies with the designer or operator of that robot; but as robots become more autonomous that line or responsibility becomes blurred.”

When we do get the point when robots have something like AI and one kills someone will we hold the inventor or manufacturer responsible? If the crime would ordinarily be described as a capital crime will society put to death the manufacturer for something the robot did. If not why not? Or what if the owner customizes a robot in some way does that then make the owner responsible if the robot commits a crime.

Click your heels together and repeat – conservatives are for small government, conservatives are for small government, The Plot Against the First Amendment

McNulty quickly concluded that the AIPAC case would provide the perfect opportunity for the Gonzales project—converting the Espionage Act into the equivalent of the British Official Secrets Act. The core of the extraordinary theory advanced by McNulty can be found in these words from one of its recent briefs:

The government respectfully submits that an ‘ordinary person exercising ordinary common sense’ […] would know that foreign officials, journalists and other persons with no current affiliation with the United States government would not be entitled to receive information related to our national defense.

By this theory, any receipt by an unauthorized person of classified information and correspondence concerning it is converted into an act of espionage, and thus made prosecutable.

The object of this exercise has been broadly misunderstood by many who have followed it—and particularly by Iraq War critics who delight in a perceived slap-down of AIPAC. But this is tragically short-sighted. If the prosecution succeeds, the Bush Administration will have converted the Espionage Act of 1917 into something it was never intended to be: an American copy of the British Official Secrets Act. It is likely to lead quickly to efforts to criminalize journalists dealing with sensitive information in the national security sector, as well as their sources.

Much of the media already leans Right or doesn’t say much of anything for fear of being labeled unamerican, Devastating’ Moyers Probe of Press and Iraq Coming

At the close, Moyers mentions some of the chief proponents of the war who refused to speak to him for this program, including Thomas Friedman, Bill Kristol, Roger Ailes, Charles Krauthammer, Judith Miller, and William Safire.

The Right loves to beat up on Dan Rather I can’t understand why. By his lack of aggressive reporting he played almost as big a role as the unquestioning war cheerleaders,

Instead he covered the marketing of the war in a “softer” way, explaining to Moyers: “I think we all felt from the beginning that to deal with a subject as explosive as this, we should keep it, in a way, almost light – if that doesn’t seem ridiculous.”

Many Americans across the political spectrum especially four years ago respected Colin Powell even if we disagreed with him,

The disgraceful press reaction to Colin Powell’s presentation at the United Nations seems like something out of Monty Python, with one key British report cited by Powell being nothing more than a student’s thesis, downloaded from the Web — with the student later threatening to charge U.S. officials with “plagiarism.”

Phil Donahue recalls that he was told he could not feature war dissenters alone on his MSNBC talk show and always had to have “two conservatives for every liberal.” Moyers resurrects a leaked NBC memo about Donahue’s firing that claimed he “presents a difficult public face for NBC in a time of war. At the same time our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity.”

As Moyer’s notes many of these same pundits and reporters are still with us. They have paid little for their laziness or in many cases outright blind zealotry.

There is a reason that the Right is on a rampage of hate against Senator Reid, he takes reality and shoves it in their chicken hawk faces and if there is one thing the hate mongers can’t stand it is reality, Reid: Bush in Denial Over War in Iraq

With a veto fight looming, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Monday that President Bush is in a state of denial over Iraq, “and the new Congress will show him the way” to a change in war policy.

Reid, D-Nev., said the Democratic-controlled House and Senate will soon pass a war funding bill that includes “a fair and reasonable timetable” for the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops. In a speech prepared for delivery, he challenged Bush to present an alternative if, as expected, he vetoes the measure.

[ ]…Reid noted disapprovingly that in a speech last week, Bush repeatedly said there were signs of progress in Iraq in the wake of a troop increase he ordered last winter.

“The White House transcript says the president made those remarks in the state of Michigan. I believe he made them in the state of denial,” said Reid.

Bush is on record as saying his first loyalty is not to his country, its to the little voices he hears in his head.

George Soros rules the world! Bill O’Reilly loses it…
Everyone seems determined to blame the Va. Tech shootings on anyone or anything, but the killer. That being the case hate mongers like the Stalinesque O’Reilly work damn hard to whip up hate and societal divisions. The least he could do is accept a small portion of responsibility for the idea that hate and wacky conspiracy theories pass for thoughtful political analysis.

On the dogmas of religion, as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been quarreling, fighting, burning and torturing

Correntewire notes that Air Force Maj. Gen. Jack J. Catton Jr has parroted G.W. Bush’s statement, Bush: “I put loyalty to the country third on the list.”

[BUSH:] I emphasize, that is the priority for me as the President. It’s [1] my faith, [2] my family, and [3] my country.

It is tempting to just let this go. A Pentagon bureaucrat and the president of the U.S. put their religion and family before country. One assumes that they came to this list of priorities on some reflection. In Bush’s case there appears to be a conflict between his personal convictions and his oath of office as president,

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

As happens in many jobs or  official positions people take an oath to officially affirm that they will set aside their personal prejudices and preferences in order to carry out their duties.

Bill of Rights
Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

The clause pertaining to religion not only prohibits Congress from passing legislation to establish an official religion, it also prohibits showing preference of one religion any other religion – what is commonly known as the “wall” is thus established. You are free to practice your religion until it comes up against the wall so to speak. In general terms Bush is a Christian, but he is also a member of a denomination of that religion, Methodist. One could break that definition down even further by saying that Bush is a fundamentalist Methodist. By putting his faith first he is in violation of his oath as the thoughts expressed were not from some dinner table conversation, but from an official appearance. If the violation of his oath wasn’t enough he is also violated the official stance of his own faith which he says he puts first, Iraq War ‘Unjustifiable’, says Bush’s Church Head

President George Bush’s own Methodist church has launched a scathing attack on his preparations for war against Iraq, saying they are ‘without any justification according to the teachings of Christ’.

Jim Winkler, head of social policy for United Methodists, added that all attempts at a ‘dialogue’ between the President and his own church over the war had fallen on deaf ears at the White House.

[ ]..Winkler is general secretary of the Board of Church and Society for the United Methodist church, which counts the President and the Vice-President, Dick Cheney, among its members. The church represents eight to nine million regular churchgoers and is the third biggest in America.

The Methodist Church, he says, is not pacifist, but ‘rejects war as a usual means of national policy’. Methodist scriptural doctrine, he added, specifies ‘war as a last resort, primarily a defensive thing. And so far as I know, Saddam Hussein has not mobilized military forces along the borders of the United States, nor along his own border to invade a neighboring country, nor have any of these countries pleaded for our assistance, not does he have weapons of mass destruction targeted at the United States’.

Why does Bush hate America? Countdown: Cover Up Began Within Hours Of Tillman’s Death; Bush Giving Out Sensitive Info

“One of the things that did happen today that concerned me was that during Bush’s press conference he actually showed a graphic that showed 24 urban military outposts in downtown Baghdad. I would argue that showing that to the world and potentially to our enemy might compromise moral – might actually compromise operational security.”

“Our enemies aren’t stupid. They can look at that and figure out a grid coordinate and try and drop mortars on those exact locations. I mean, this is like a Geraldo moment during the invasion when Geraldo started drawing troop operation movements in the sand.

We all understand Bush’s priorities and his country is last. As Corrente noted at least he could have made his family first and his country second. When you have a faith based leader you get a Decider that decides to give mortar coordinates to the enemy.

A few months ago after the right-wing bloggers got home after a a day of buying made in China products at Wal-Mart they went ballistic over China’s space missle test. It was hardly a secret even then, U.S. knew of China’s missile test, but kept silent

But some experts outside government say that American officials might have been able to discourage the Chinese from launching the missile, had the officials been willing to enter into a broader discussion of ways to regulate the military competition in space. China had long advocated an agreement to ban weapons in space, an approach the Bush administration has rejected in order to maintain maximum flexibility for developing antimissile defenses.

“Had the United States been willing to discuss the military use of space with the Chinese in Geneva, that might have been enough to dissuade them from going through with it,” said Jeffrey Lewis, an arms control expert at the New America Foundation.

Dubbed the SC-19 by American intelligence, the Chinese antisatellite weapon consists of a solid-fuel medium-range missile carrying an interceptor that is designed to crash into enemy satellites. The weapon is fired from a mobile launcher.

The United States had already detected two previous tests of the system — on July 7, 2005, and Feb. 6, 2006. Neither struck a target. In the second trial, the missile passed near a satellite, leaving American officials unsure whether the goal had been to hit it, or simply to pass nearby. In neither case did the Bush administration complain to the Chinese, a senior official said.

How bizarre, right-wing bloggers complain so that the administration doesn’t have to. We all know that the Chinese pay tons of attention to what bloggers say. It is an awfully convenient game that Republicans play. They complain about the Chinese in every available media outlet all the while the elected officials that they support and the multinational corporations they champion are all too happy to knock down any trade barriers to doing business with China.

There I go again picking on right-wing blogs. One can’t really appreciate right-wing blogs by just reading snippets. The level of fabrication, the delusional rantings of the blogs and their commenters is a study in walking insanity. It is the kind of insanity that allows them to tie their shoes, stop at traffic signals and other basic tasks, but prevents them from lifting the veil that warps their world view. It also prevents them from seeing themselves and examining how they came to their conclusions and the discombobulated process by which they glue and tape together the most absurd imaginings about world events, Right-wing blogs discover massive conspiracy to hide WMDs in Iraq

But all of that is rendered moderate, restrained, sober and even sane by a new article she wrote for the British magazine, The Spectator (headline: I Found Saddam’s WMD Bunkers), which claims that: (a) WMDs really were found in Iraq after the invasion, (b) they were located in vast underground bunkers (c) which contained “nuclear, chemical and biological materials”, but (d) the U.S., through negligence, failed to secure those sites and, as a result, (e) the WMDs were stolen by The Terrorists and/or Syrian agents, who now have them and are actively plotting (along with China, Russia and North Korea) to use them against the West, but —

(f) because the Bush administration is so embarrassed by their failure to prevent the theft of all these dastardly weapons, and because Democrats are embarrassed by this discovery because it proves that Saddam really did have WMDs all along, they have all jointly created a vast conspiracy where they conceal the discovery of WMDs in order to cover up for their negligence.

As Glenn and others have said there is little doubt that twenty years or more we’ll still get wingers that swear they have proof that Saddam had WMD and planned to use them against the U.S. Denial ain’t just a river as they say.

“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.” – Thomas Jefferson

“On the dogmas of religion, as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been quarreling, fighting, burning and torturing one another, for abstractions unintelligible to themselves and to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind.” – Thomas Jefferson

We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future

From a Rolling Stone article called Back to Leaving Iraq: The Grim Truth a group of national security experts beat Senator Reid to the punch back in March of this year.
Zbigniew Brzezinski: National security adviser to President Carter

If we are willing to engage with all of Iraq’s neighbors — including Iran — in a regional effort to contain the violence, the best we can hope for is an Iraq that is politically passive but hostile toward America.

Gen. Tony McPeak (retired): Member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Gulf War

Iran’s influence will have been increased geometrically. We’re already the losers in this, and now we become the big-time losers.

And this

The war in Iraq isn’t over yet, but — surge or no surge — the United States has already lost. That’s the grim consensus of a panel of experts assembled by Rolling Stone to assess the future of Iraq. “Even if we had a million men to go in, it’s too late now,” says retired four-star Gen. Tony McPeak, who served on the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Gulf War. “Humpty Dumpty can’t be put back together again.”

When the administration decided to invade Iraq is the same day they guaranteed that Iran for better or worse would have more influence in the region.

Nir Rosen: Author of In the Belly of the Green Bird

There is no best-case scenario for Iraq. It’s complete anarchy now. No family is untouched by kidnappings, murders, ethnic cleansing — everybody lives in a constant state of terror. Leaving aside Kurdistan, which is very different, there’s nobody in Iraq who is safe. You can get killed for being a Sunni, for being a Shia, for being educated, for being part of the former regime, for being part of the current regime. The Americans are still killing Iraqi civilians left and right. There’s no government in Iraq; it doesn’t exist outside of the Green Zone.

Michael Scheuer: Former chief of the CIA’s Osama bin Laden unit; author of Imperial Hubris

There isn’t any upper limit to how many people could get killed. Depending on how long the war lasts — a million casualties?

Senator Reid is only wrong if one interprets what he says in a very narrow way. That the war is lost in military terms. Losing is terms of being able to stay in Iraq and carry on a very basic mission composed of policing and killing is possible even for a military that Bush has so abused – We’re still capable of inflicting terrible damage on anyone – which is a good thing when used properly. But that is not the supposed to be the ultimate goal in Iraq. The goal as defined by Bush is to achieve peace and have a U.S. military presence. That scenario is the one that is lost. The political victory. We’re going on year five; are American families willing to continue losing brothers, sisters and spouses to maybe someday turn the situation around in a way that reaches a point where all parties are ready for even an uneasy peace. Is it really in our interest to continue down that path. Will the end justify the means. Are we as a country willing to do things or continue to do things that are morally questionable to achieve those ends. GOP’s Cornyn: Reid’s “War Is Lost” Comment Playing To “Antiwar Left”

CORNYN: I think this is just crass politics. Senator Reid is playing to the worst elements of the antiwar left. That’s part of unfortunately his political base. But I think, you know, we need to be more responsible. We need to try to not make this a partisan issue.

Actually, Reid is expressing an opinion held by pluralities of Americans. It’s not easy to gauge public opinion on this question — because few if any polls ask bluntly whether people think the war is completely lost already — but these numbers strongly suggest that Reid’s position is a far more mainstream position than the one held by Bush and the GOP:

As Greg Sargent and many others have pointed out if Reid is guilty of some kind of treachery (on the subject treachery – we have a president that lied us into Iraq and was so bent on invading that he betrayed a CIA agent) then since most Americans now favor a time table for withdraw and don’t think a military victory can be achieved that makes most Americans traitors by the rabid Right’s definition. Finally let’s be clear about the import of Senator Reid’s comment. It was made in the larger context of how he and most American see what is going on, Media outlets reported that Reid said Iraq war “is lost,” but failed to note his further comments

REID: This war is lost, and that the surge is not accomplishing anything, as indicated by the extreme violence in Iraq yesterday.

[…]

I was like the odd guy out yesterday at the White House, but I at least told him what he needed to hear, not what he wanted to hear. And more people have to start telling George Bush what he needs to hear, not what he wants to hear. I did that. My conscience is clear, because I believe the war, at this stage, can only be won diplomatically, politically, and economically.

Sure the fringe Right war-bloggers disagree, they think that all wars are won by simply continuing to kill until everyone is either dead or tired of killing and dying. Note that Bush and the Right never ever offer up any evidence that that taking a route that is more centered on political, diplomatic and economic solutions will not work. They just keep giving us the Friedman treatment – where we’re always turning corners, every six months its just another six months. Its the WMD and al-Quida story all over again. It is not the reality that matters it is what they believe. If Bush has done such a bang up job and the Right are such experts on “winning” – just tell us how, when and at what cost. In January the voters saw the progress so far and decided it was not that great.

T.E. Lawrence wrote this about England’s involvement in the middle-east in 1920, A Report on Mesopotamia

The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. It is a disgrace to our imperial record, and may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are to-day not far from a disaster.

Vatican decides not to believe in limbo any longer. Remember the brouhaha over the liberal blogger that made some remarks critical of not Catholics, but official church policy. How is it that reactionaries like Bill Donohue can work themselves into a lather about that yet has no problem with the Catholic hierarchy condemning unbaptized babies to hell for a few centuries then limbo for a few centuries and finally deciding that OK fine they can go to haven.

The Political Corruption of the Prosecutorial Function

In the period 1933-35, the conservative German legal theorist Carl Schmitt prepared a road map for the destruction of the liberal democratic constitution of Weimar Germany and the insertion in its place of an authoritarian dictatorship. The cornerstone of the Schmitt plan involved the restructuring of the legal profession, the law courts and the prosecutorial service. (I discuss this process in greater detail elsewhere.) A key element in the Schmitt plan was the political subordination of the prosecutorial service. Any notion of professional autonomy and independence was to be destroyed, and the prosecutor was to recognize that he was a tool of the Executive, doing the bidding of the Executive. In short order the persecution of the Executive’s political and social enemies (based on political and social profiling) was the order of the day, and persons close to the center of power were shielded from any prosecutorial inquiry. The rise of a one-party totalitarian state was accomplished in a manner of only a couple of years. And the subordination of the prosecutors – or to use the German term, Gleichschaltung – was a key element in its ascendancy.

History is only a great teacher when we listen, Bush Rebuffs GOP Pressure For Gonzales to Step Down

Bush expressed “full confidence” in Gonzales through a spokeswoman and praised his “fantastic” service, in hopes of quashing speculation that the attorney general would be pushed out.

” We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.” George Bernard Shaw

updated 02-23-07