The men and women of our armed forces will remain deployed over the holidays, their separation from their families compounded by taking fire and making do without critical necessities.
Although we as a country are divided over this war, we should not be divided on the matter of supporting our troops. Supporting them does not mean giving up your right to patriotic dissent, nor does it mean falling in line behind a president or a policy with which you do not agree. What it does mean, however, is giving respect to men and women who made a commitment to put their lives on the line for this country: they should not be blamed for the job they are sent to do.
I encourage everyone this holiday season to do something for at least one of the soldiers deployed in Iraq. If you know someone personally over there, write them a letter. Ask them what they need--many soldiers are lacking for basic necessities like toothpaste, batteries, and gloves. Ask them if there are any other soldiers they know who aren't getting any mail from home.
If you don't know anyone over there, you can still help out. Through Kintera.org, you can sponsor a USO care package, and anysoldier.us has an absolutely fantastic site with the names and addresses of soldiers who've agreed to act as a conduit for distributing donated goods and packages.
If you've traveled by plane and participate in any kind of frequent flier program, you can donate your frequent flier miles so that soldiers given leave can afford to get home to their families. The Army flies them back to Germany or the States, but they must foot the bill for their own transportation home--and are usually given very little notice in which to get affordable tickets. If you have frequent flier miles to spare, you can help.
If anyone else knows of any links along these lines, feel free to pass them along in the comments.
On blogs like Billmon, there is an occasional poster who goes by the nick of "Pedro". It may or may not be his real name; not only have I never asked, but it's never struck me as relevant--his postings are invariably insightful and incisive, and coming as they do from a non-American perspective, they offer a chance to see past the ethno-centric blinders even the most broad-minded of us wear.
Tonight he posted something I thought needed to be more widely read, and with his permission I've reprinted it here. It's longish, so follow the link below:
- There is no such thing as a war against terrorism, capitalized or not. The term "war" is often used rhetorically ? war on drugs, war on corruption ? to signify a concerted effort. Americans, however, tend to enjoy military enterprises. Therefore, the US administration chose to take its own metaphor literally and sent actual soldiers all over the place to fight windmills. They can do nothing about it. Terrorism has existed for ages and will always exist. It is borne out of either despair or deranged minds - look, for instance, at the white supremacist terrorist cell found recently in Texas. Countries fight terrorism with good intelligence and well-trained police forces. Multinational terrorism, additionally, requires cooperation with other countries.
- Terrorists can't destroy a country, much less the most powerful country in the world. Terrorists are terrorists precisely due to their incapacity to beat you militarily. The only victory they can hope to achieve is to convince you by fear to behave in self-defeating ways. If you look at it from this perspective, in the present case the terrorists are winning. Americans are in panic, they are giving up their own civil rights, freedom of the press is moribund, debt is mounting and the country is deeply divided. Furthermore, the United States have lost most their moral high ground, have alienated their friends and are universally viewed with scorn. Mr Bin Laden, contrarily to the US administration, has long-term goals. He believes if you shoot yourselves repeatedly on the foot it will eventually turn into a gangrene. You are enthusiastically trying to help him prove his point.
- Since we are into myth-bashing, there is no such thing as a conflict of civilizations or a war being waged against Western civilization. Nobody hates "our freedoms" or "our democracy". This is getting tiresome. You might ask, which Western civilization? Italy, perhaps? Germany? Argentina? Why aren't the terrorists bombing, say, Denmark? As far as I can tell, Denmark is a highly developed country with a hateful amount of freedom and democracy. The conflict is between the United States, an imperial power, and Muslim radicals who oppose them and want them out of their land. More specifically, it is a conflict between two factions of simple-minded warlike religious fundamentalists, both equally viewing themselves as guardians of Good and enemies of Evil, both using a strikingly similar rethoric. Each move on one side fuels the other side. It is Israelis vs. Palestinians in a planetary scale. Most of the world just stand in the sidelines, perplexed. Common people, Muslims included, just want to live in peace.
- There is also the myth of moral behavior. Individuals have morals; countries have interests. Lying, for instance, is frowned upon at the individual level, but is usual - and sometimes even required - at government level. Americans tend to believe their country always acts morally. They are dead wrong. The United States has always done simply what was judged best for its own interests. Other countries, of course, do exactly the same. The problem here is that, since the average American is both highly idealistic and ill-informed, his country's imperial pursuits have to be disguised, for internal consumption, under a cloak of righteousness. Others are not fooled by that, which gives rise to a gap of perception. Although personally I don't believe so, invading Iraq may yet prove to be the right move in geopolitical terms ? after all, many of Mr Reagan's blunders eventually turned into successes. However, to pretend ? and to actually believe - it was done for humanitarian reasons is ridiculous.
- My impression is that 9/11 gave the neocons in the US administration a great pretext to test their own theories of world domination. They are driven by greed and/or religious fundamentalism, but in order to succeed they must keep the American people in a permanent state of fear. This is not such a difficult task, given the earnest help of the American media and the fact that Americans are naturally prone to be suspicious of foreigners. However, what is really remarkable is that this whole mess is not furthering the American empire a single inch. You already had an empire, you know. It was based on cultural, economical and political leverage. Although its underlying aim, as it is proper of empires, was to extract economical benefits from other countries, it was nonetheless benign ? which means it could probably have gone on forever. What the present US administration is doing right now is trade the whole deck of cards for a single ace: military dominance. Let's not call it immoral, since morality never had anything to do with it. It is simply stupid.
Via the Houston Chronicle:
U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft on Friday cleared Texas to use a new Republican congressional redistricting plan for the 2004 elections -- a devastating blow to Democrats and minorities fighting the plan.Just blogging the link for now. To recap what I said about this earlier this month:Republican officials praised the decision, but opponents blasted it as the action of a highly partisan Justice Department that "hijacks" minority voting rights for political gain.
[....]
Republicans claimed that the old map was unfair because it gave the Democrats a 17-15 majority in the state's congressional delegation when Republicans were winning statewide. Democrats said it was fair because five Democratic incumbents won in districts that vote Republican in statewide elections.
The new map likely would give Republicans a 22-10 majority after next year's elections. Democrats and minority groups say that new majority was created by splitting minority voting communities illegally to disenfranchise black and Hispanic voters.
Given the degree to which the Republicans control all three branches of government, and the tactics they've shown themselves willing to use to get themselves elected, it should come as no surprise to see what they're willing to do to ensure they stay in power. The latest in this litany of tactics is creative redistricting--in which Republican-controlled State legislatures redraw the boundaries of the voting districts to ensure that demographic data solidifies or increases their hold on the State's seats.While the Colorado Supreme Court closed the door on that state's GOP attempts at unethical redistricting, it looks like Texas is a lost cause unless one of the court cases prevails.Normally, redistricting is done once every ten years, immediately following the Census. However, the GOP has been taking advantage of its stranglehold on State legislatures to push through off-schedule redistricting--essentially, changing the rules mid-term simply because they have the power to do so. This became fairly well-publicized for a short time when Texas Democrats fled to a neighboring state to break the quorum required to conduct the vote. Unfortunately, most of the publicity centered around portraying the Democrats as pulling a partisan stunt, instead of highlighting the extremely unethical nature of what the GOP was trying to do.
Most of you probably skimmed over anything relating to the Medicare bill that was recently signed into law. It's pretty odious--and it's rather telling that two-thirds of our senior citizens, the ones it's arguably supposed to benefit, think so.
I finally got around to catching up on the White House transcripts for the last week, and found yet another example of the WH press gang growing a pair to pass around amongst themselves. Much of the December 8th press briefing was devoted to questions about this bill, and they were pretty pointed questions that Scott McClellan kept pointedly avoiding.
One of the biggest complaints about this bill is the so-called "doughnut hole" in coverage: when a person's annual drug expenses reach $2,250, Medicare would cease coverage until those expenses reached $5,100, at which point it would kick back in--but that $2,850 gap in between would still be 100% out of pocket. The Medicare bill Bush just signed, in what the administration is pleased to call a "consumer protection measure", prohibits buying additional coverage to plug that gap, and prohibits using Medicaid to fill in the costs that Medicare doesn't cover--a practice often used by low-income seniors to stay above water.
This is bad enough--it gets worse. Not for nothing has this bill been called a Christmas gift for drug companies: it prohibits the government from negotiating bulk discounts for drugs that it buys, instead relying on a fixed industry "average" price. And this average is based on--you guessed it--the average of prices charged by companies that are surveyed.
There's plenty more, and the WH press gang was relentless about it. Some of the better excerpts...
Q Right. But, still, seniors will get stuck -- seniors who have drug costs that run just below catastrophic coverage, or even over, will still get with this $2,800 out-of-pocket expense because they will not be able to buy Medigap insurance to plug that hole. And I'm wondering why the President saw fit to support that particular provision.Check out the quotes in bold at the end for a great example of McClellan in action. Don't want to answer the question that was just asked? Pretend you were asked a different one and answer that?MR. McCLELLAN: Again, why I said; because it's a consumer protection measure that I just outlined to you. And under this legislation, seniors are going to see great savings for their prescription drug coverage. Seniors --
Q But they could see more, though, if they could buy that insurance.
MR. McCLELLAN: Seniors who have no coverage right now will be able to join a Medicare-approved plan that will cut their yearly drug cost in half, nearly in half, in exchange for a $35 monthly premium. In many instances, the savings are going to be far greater than that. Seniors with no drug coverage and monthly drug cost of $200 would save more than $1,700 on drug costs. Seniors with no drug coverage and monthly drug cost of $800 would save nearly $5,900 on drug cost. So this is a lot of savings in low-income seniors in particular.
Q I understand the savings, but there is still this doughnut hole, as people like to call it, that they can't get coverage for. And I'm just wondering why the President would see fit to not allow them to get coverage for it.
MR. McCLELLAN: You asked specifically about the Medigap policy and stories that ran over the weekend, and what I addressed was the consumer protection measure that was put in the Medicare legislation, for the reasons I stated.
Q How is a consumer protected by being denied the choice to purchase a product in the free market that he or she thinks will help them?
[....]
Q So protecting seniors by prohibiting them from buying what they want to buy on the open market?
MR. McCLELLAN: We don't want seniors to be overcharged or have duplicative coverage.
Q But, Scott, isn't it true that this is a deterrent measure, that if you feel that if you allow seniors to get this Medigap coverage, that they'll over-use the system, or if you make it difficult for them to go above the $2,250 yearly benefit, that they are less likely to reach that benefit level?
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I think I just explained the way that we view this provision within the legislation.
Q Yes, but the way that you explained it doesn't make any sense at all.
MR. McCLELLAN: Sure it does. It's a consumer protection initiative.
Q No, it doesn't, because this is a free market White House that believes that Americans should be able to buy whatever they want on the open market, and you're saying that they can't.
[....]
And then the second part, there's a provision in the bill that does not allow Medicare to negotiate bulk prices, like the Veterans Administration is able to -- since they buy a lot of drugs, they get them at a discount. Yet there's specifically a provision in this bill that says that Medicare can't do that. Why would the President oppose a government agency getting a savings from the pharmaceutical industry?
MR. McCLELLAN: Why would the President support the biggest improvements in Medicare in more than three decades? Because this -- because this is about America's seniors and they have waited long enough. Congress worked hard in a bipartisan way to reach an agreement, and the President was pleased to support this -- to not only to support this legislation, but be out front advocating for the passage of a stronger and more modern Medicare program.
Someone really needs to buy McClellan a scarecrow and put it up on the podium so he'll have his very own "straw man" prop to knock down.
Take this to the bank: Medicare is going to be an issue in the 2004 election. And judging by the reactions of senior citizens, who make up the most rapidly growing demographic in the country, it's not one that's going to be kind to the Bush administration.
...because most of them aren't working for you anymore. In fact, about half of them haven't been for quite some time. Former White House Counsel John Dean takes a look at this ominous trend in his latest FindLaw column:
Friends working on the Capitol Hill, and doing business there, have been telling me for months they have never seen it so bad. More than ever, business is being done behind closed doors, and dubious deal making -- you give me this and I'll vote for that sort of arrangements -- is going on. Members of Congress are using one legislative ploy after another to write laws for the few, at the expense of the many, and much of it has been proceeding unnoticed by anyone -- especially the press.The entire article is long, but I recommend you read it all. Educate yourself on the subject, then contact your elected representatives and /demand/ accountability for this and other issues. Congress should not be a rubber stamp for the pet projects and policies of the party in power at the expense of the other half of the country.[....]
In addition, the Republican leadership, in a remarkable in-your-face partisan move, denied Democrats the right to participate on conference committees, and cut them out of the debate on the House rules for the spending bills and floor activity, which certainly did not create a sprit of goodwill. Shockingly, not only was the House GOP leadership unwilling to compromise with House Democrats, they also refused to compromise with Senate Republicans.
[....]
Daschle then made a much needed statement: "In fact," he pointed out, "the process broke down to an extent never seen before, opening the door to the worst kind of legislative abuses and special interest giveaways." Daschle explained that the appropriations process had become "an abomination, closed largely to Democrats, hidden from the light of day, written to satisfy nothing more than special interest wish lists." And how had this all happened?
Daschle further explained that notwithstanding the objections of the Senate leadership, "they were overruled by the White House and Republican leadership," opening "the door to the most ludicrous example of pork spending [for the benefit of particular legislators and their special interests], which has contributed to citizens' loss of faith in the process itself."
Out of several dozen potential examples, Daschle plucked a few to make his point: "you will find $2 million to encourage young people to play golf; a half a million dollars for halibut data collection; [and] money for a replica mule barn in LaSalle, IL." On the other hand, the conference report "cuts will result in 24,000 fewer children who will be served by title I educational programs; 5,500 fewer kids will be able to attend Head Start; [and] 26,500 fewer veterans will receive medical care."
What appears to have irritated Daschle most was "the fact that some of the most egregious provisions that were sneaked into this bill at the last minute had already been rejected by one or both House of Congress. The fact that the White House directed conferees to include them shows a contempt both for the procedures of Congress and the citizens they were designed to protect." [emphasis mine]
[....]
After detailing many of the excesses, Senator Byrd asked, "What is the use of having elections if the voters are prevented from knowing how their Senators voted on investing $328 billion of the people's money? This is wrong.The people have a right to know how their elected representatives stand on this legislation, which will affect the lives of so many. I am saddened by the Majority Leader's decision to postpone a vote on this legislation until January 20. That is no way to govern. That is no way to serve the American people."
Those of you who've been following my LiveJournal for a while know that it's become increasingly political over time--as have I. While I enjoy the built-in community that LiveJournal provides, and have no intention of abandoning it anytime soon, it's about time I separated my personal and political sites, and migrated back to a content management system over which I have more control.
There are several reasons for this:
Why SDLE?
Let's face it--for most of us right now, our government is the worst it's been in living memory. Our elected officials are no longer doing the jobs for which we elected them. The Democratic party--as a whole--is lying down on the job while our Republican Congress and President erode the freedoms on which we depend, eliminate crucial safeguards on the envionment, and turn the Great Experiment known as America into one of the most hated and feared countries in the world.
We are being lied to every single day, and we are allowing it to happen. The watchmen are proving, in spades, that they must not only be watched, but made accountable.
That's why.
Today, the media is abuzz with the headline broken by CBS last night: that the Republican chairman of the 9/11 commission announced that 9/11 was preventable--and should have been prevented.
Did I say the media is abuzz? I must have been mistaken. CNN doesn't have anything on it--not even a story buried on their second-page Politics or U.S. sections. The LA Times has nothing.. The NYT is MIA. The AP is silent. All across the SCLM, there is a deafening silence on this story--the story that the tragedy of 9/11 was preventable, and that our government /should/ have been able to prevent it.
The saddest part of this is that it's not really news. The only thing "new" about it is that now we have confirmation from the Republican chairman of the For two years questions have demanded answers. Glaring inconsistencies in the official story, the unheeded warnings of the CIA and the outgoing Clinton administration, and the inexplicable stonewalling have demanded accountability. Many of us on the left have been saying for two years that the official line of the Bush administration doesn't add up, and for this we are branded as crazy conspiracy theorists, traitors--or worse.
The notion that the Bush administration deliberately engineered 9/11 /is/ fairly ludicrous. That they had adequate foreknowledge and allowed it to happen for political and foreign policy reasons is only slightly less so, but has traction if you assume they didn't know just how bad it would be. However, there is nothing incredible or ludicrous about the assertion that the Bush administration--through a combination of hubris, short-sightedness, Bush's personal policy stances, and plain incompetence--failed to prevent a tragedy which was ultimately very preventable.
"I can think of no faster way to unite the American people behind George W. Bush than a terrorist attack on an American target overseas. And I believe George W. Bush will quickly unite the American people through his foreign policy.''Edit: the story's starting to pick up now. Fox News, that bastion of fair and balanced reporting, has a short blurb on it, although it isn't anywhere near the front page--you have to go looking. The Center for American Progress has opinion up. various local news outlets are starting to run with it.
- Henry Kissinger, 13 Dec 2000
If your local paper or affiliate doesn't have anything by tomorrow morning, I recommend you write them and demand to know why a story of this magnitude isn't being covered. We're not in tinfoil hat territory anymore, people.
Finally, the WH press crew gets some balls!
Q Why shouldn't people see [Bush's opposition to Taiwanese independence] as the administration picking and choosing its moral clarity when it comes to foreign policy, by opposing democracy here because it doesn't suit your interests in the region, especially since China is helping on North Korea? Why isn't this kind of cherry-picking your moral clarity?The hypocritical nature of the One-China policy the US has followed for so long has always bugged me on a very deep level. It bugs me even more now that we have a president whose stock in trade is claiming to want to stand up to evil around the world in the name of democracy and freedom, who nevertheless viscerally opposes the idea of the people of Taiwan declaring independence from China and determining their own destiny.MR. McCLELLAN: Well, one, this has been a longstanding policy. This policy has been in place, and what the President said today was reiterating what that policy is. He was asked a question about it, and he reiterated what our policy is.
Q My question is, why isn't that hypocritical? I mean, you're all for democracy in the Middle East and in Iraq, but the Taiwanese people see that and then America says, no, not for you, not democracy for you.
MR. McCLELLAN: There are a lot of matters you address around the world, and different circumstances require different action and strategies.
Q Well, explain that. Explain why this strategy is different, why the Taiwanese are being sacrificed for what? What is the larger good here that the President sees?
MR. McCLELLAN: You might want to go back and look at the three joint communiqus, and look at that.
Q Lay it out for the American people. They're hearing all this emphasis from the President.
MR. McCLELLAN: This is what he has said from the beginning.
Q Do you want to get 10 Americans on the street, and see if it's clear?
MR. McCLELLAN: This is what he has said from the beginning, this policy.
Q -- reporting here --
MR. McCLELLAN: I'm sure that you all in this room will do your best to educate them about what our policy has been and what our policy is, and why -- and why it is.
Q Why don't you educate us about what the President's thinking is -- why there's moral clarity when it comes to pushing democracy in some parts of the world, but not here. What is the larger interest?
MR. McCLELLAN: Wait. We support any change -- any unilateral attempt to change the status quo. That's what he's made very clear.
Q Even a democratic change?
MR. McCLELLAN: I think you need to look at that.
I'm not blind, here. I realize how volatile the situation is, and how any Taiwanese moves towards independence could very easily trigger a war in Eastasia that no one wants. But if we're going to take diplomatic lumps for doing the right thing in the name of democracy, isn't this a situation that practically begs for it?
It is a common criticism of the pro-war crowd that all we, who opposed the war, do is criticize it and point out its shortcomings. There are very good reasons for that, not the least of which being the persistent denial about the facts in which many of the pro-war crowd persist--but it is also true that few of us offer viable alternatives for what to do /now/. None of the Democratic presidential candidates seem to have a very good vision of what to do yet, and I would argue that Bush's administration appears not to either.
So let's get down to brass tacks and work together to come up with a solution. What should our primary goals be in Iraq?
As I see it, they include:
Via Josh Marshall, does anyone else see this as a problem?
President Bush named James A. Baker III, the former secretary of state, as his personal envoy to Iraq today to help the country grapple with its debt problem.And from the Jerusalem Post, again via TPM:"Secretary Baker will report directly to me," Mr. Bush said in a statement, "and will lead an effort to work with the world's governments at the highest levels, with international organizations and with the Iraqis, in seeking the restructuring and reduction of Iraq's official debt."
Baker is one of the Saudi government's chief supporters in the US. His law firm, Baker Botts, is now representing the Saudi government in the $ 1 trillion law suit filed against Saudi Arabia for its alleged role in the 9/11 attacks by the victims' families. Baker also serves as senior counsel and partner in the Carlyle investment group, which is a financial adviser to the Saudi government.Does anyone else see anything tremendously, outrageously /wrong/ with appointing this man to serve as the president's personal envoy to Iraq?
Marshall has some more quotes and references. This man is practically in bed with the Saudis.
The sad thing is, I remember the /original/ version of this adlet.
Edit: I just finished reading the page that link came from. It is all of it worth reading, but it gets funnier as it goes down the list. I was particularly amused by the entry on Ann Coulter, possibly one of the most odious human beings I've ever heard open her mouth:
I’ve come up with two possible explanations for the existence of Ann Coulter. Either she’s the insane, alternate-reality version of Eddie Izzard, from a universe where biting, clever stand-up is replaced with blood-red anger, or she is Vultron, the shrewish, mentally unbalanced version of Voltron constructed of five bitterly angry gnomes, all of whom, for some unknown reason, have shaggy pageboy haircuts.This has actually been a light year for Coulter, having eschewed her normal battery of mind-warping television and newspaper interviews, and instead sticking to writing an apologia for McCarthyism, as well as her smattering of columns blaming Democrats for her bunions. What she lacked in quantity, she more than made up for in…being evil. Treason (which, by the way, was handily outsold by Hillary Clinton’s Living History) was a redaction of history that managed to blame liberals for everything since 1945, from Communism to terrorism to not letting one of the greatest threats to the Constitution in American history do his great work – Joseph McCarthy.
Yesterday, maryshelley posted in her LJ crowing about how Bush's approval rating was at 61%, and included a snarky and nonsensical statement about "the other 39%". Given the fact that these results defied every other national poll, I went looking for the souce of this claim, and found it: Talon News, which claims to be "your source for unbiased news coverage and no-spin reporting".
Ah. This must be why on their front page they describe MoveOn.org as a "Bush-bashing, liberal political interest group", and why their headlines include such examples of journalistic integrity as "'Hate Bush' Event to Feature Hollywood Elite, Liberal Activists" and "Dem Attack Dog Gephardt".
Given that it's impossible to take a site like that seriously, I went further digging for the source, and found that the story gets its numbers from the National Annenberg Election Survey's after-Thanksgiving report, detailing the polling bump Bush got from his layover in Baghdad.
Perhaps the reason why this 61% job approval sounds so suspect is because it's reflected nowhere else in any of the results, in this or any other poll. For example, this same poll reports that people think this country is on the wrong track by 51% to 41%--and this is despite the fact that the question was worded to weight people towards a positive response. Similarly, approval of the job the president is doing in Iraq (49% approve, 48% disapprove), whether it was worth going to war over (49% yes, 46% no), and his handling of the economy (50% approve, 48% disapprove) are a statistical tie.
So if the public is evenly split both on whether he's doing a good job in Iraq and on the economy, and a clear majority think the country is going in the wrong direction, just where /does/ the public think he's doing a good job?
There are other aspects of the NAES poll which are suspect, such as the question asking people to rate whether a given phrase applies to Bush, which includes six positive answers and only one negative, especially since its previous time period polled Bush higher than any other national poll except ABC/WaPo, which has a long and established track record of reporting the highest approval ratings for Bush, so far outside the national norm as to be beyond credibility.
It's undeniable that Bush took a bump in the polls after his Thanksgiving stunt--but even if you accept the numbers in the NAES poll, pointing to this as a measure of his public support is disingenuous at best. The facts on public record make it clear that this is an anomaly rather than a reflection of his support. Consider the following graphs, one of which shows Bush's approval ratings since he took office, and another which shows the approval ratings of a number of previous presidents across their terms.
Bush's father maintained a more or less steady level of approval throughout the first half of his presidency, but following the invasion of Panama took a sharp nosedive. The first Gulf War gave him another boost, but the postwar handling of the economy sunk his approval--and his presidency. Clinton not only maintained a positive approval rating, but in fact had a constant and consistent /upward/ trend--the spikes were generally downward when something bad happened or a scandal broke.
Bush, on the other hand, has a very steep and consistent decline in his approval rating the longer he goes without a major event, such as 9/11 or the Iraq war. It is notable that this trend has /never/ been upward, not even following 9/11 when his approval rating took a tremendous positive spike as the country rallied around their leader. Equally notable is the fact that his approval has yet to bottom out, suggesting that we have yet to see how low he can go.
The consistency and sharpness of this downward trend, which started when he took office and has never stopped, suggests that the longer the American public watches Bush's day-to-day governance of the country, the less they like what they see. It is only when he pulls stunts like his two-hour layover in Baghdad, or when something drastic happens to the entire country, that he takes a surge in the polls--after which his approval starts dropping right back down over time.
If you feel you need to point to briefly inflated poll numbers to justify your support for this indefensible man, by all means, feel free. But don't expect to be taken seriously.
As horrible as Dr. Wright's advocacy of killing five Muslims for every American troop killed, it begs to be put in its proper historical context. Examples via the research of posters at Eschaton:
Over the course of two days, 2,300 civilians were executed in Kragujevac as punishment after resistance forces killed 10 German soldiers and wounded 26.And:General Franz Boehme was captured on May 9, 1945, and put on trial at Nuremberg for war crimes and crimes against humanity--specifically, for the mass executions of Serbian civilians in Kragujevac and adjoining towns and villages. He committed suicide prior to his arraignment on May 29, 1947.
In March 23, 1944, a bomb exploded in Rome killing thirty-two German police. Hitler ordered Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, to execute ten Italian hostages for every German killed in the attack. Kesselring carried out Hitler’s command assembling 335 innocent civilians, ten more than required. The people were herded into Ardeatine Cave and shot in the back as they knelt among the corpses of those killed before. Following the murders, the cave was demolished with explosives in an attempt to cover up the crime, but Kesselring was subsequently convicted of two counts of War Crimes and sentenced to death.This is not historical company that we want to be keeping.Although Reich Fuhrer Hitler was able to escape justice by killing himself, his top field marshals and members of his inner circle were tried in Nuremberg, Germany for acts committed both before and during World War II.
Supporters of Bush and/or the Iraq war wonder why the rest of us are incapable of attributing altruistic or positive motives to Bush's foreign policies, or of believing that he genuinely wants to help the Iraqi people. I would argue that his actions speak much louder than his words, but his words speak pretty loudly too:
"We should not send our troops to stop ethnic cleansing and genocide outside our strategic interest. I would not send United States troops into Rwanda."Still wondering?- George W. Bush, January 23, 2000
Via Atrios, a really horrifying letter to the editor from someone I'm ashamed to count a fellow American:
Executions would halt killingsThis psycho is a /doctor/?We can stop the murders of American soldiers in Iraq by those who seek revenge or to regain their power. Whenever there is an assassination or another atrocity we should proceed to the closest mosque and execute five of the first Muslims we encounter.
After all this is a "Holy War" and although such a procedure is not fair or just, it might end the horror.
Machiavelli was correct. In war it is more effective to be feared than loved and the end result would be a more equitable solution for both giving us a chance to build a better Iraq for the Iraqis.
- EMORY METZ WRIGHT JR., M.D
The thing is, he may not even exist--this may be another example of astroturf, or perhaps just a lone moron who likes to use an important-sounding pseudonym to write this crap. I made a brief call to a good portion of the major hospitals in Tuscon, and not one of them had a record of a Dr. Emory Wright ever practicing or having privileges there. There's no listing for his practice in the Tucson Yellow Pages, nor in yp.yahoo.com or Verizon 411.
Update: this sick man does indeed exist. A few enterprising individuals on Eschaton turned up his licensing info; he's evidently retired and hasn't been practicing for some years.
Also, it appears the original letter has been deleted from their site, and the letters page two days later is filled with almost nothing but angry denunciations of that letter from across the board.
So, some faith in humanity restored.
Josh Marshall has posted a PDF of Terry McAuliffe's letter to John Ashcroft insisting that bribery and extortion allegations during the vote on the Medicare bill be investigated. It's worth a read, but for those of you who can't stand dealing with PDF files:
According to multiple media accounts, Congressman Nick Smith (R-MI) was offered $100,000 in campaign contributions for his son’s congressional campaign, in exchange for an affirmative vote on Medicare reform. Not only was this bribe offered to a member of Congress, it was offered on the floor of the House of Representatives, by another member of Congress. Conservative columnist Robert Novak wrote in a November 27 column, "On the House floor, Nick Smith was told business interests would give his son $100,000 in return for his father's vote. When he still declined, fellow Republican House members told him they would make sure Brad Smith never came to Congress. After Nick Smith voted no and the bill passed, Duke Cunningham of California and other Republicans taunted him that his son was dead meat."Call your elected officials and demand that they hold the Justice Department accountable on this and other issues. If you live in Michigan and are represented by Smith, call his office and offer him your support, and insist that he stand up for what's right here and testify against those in his party who tried to bribe and threaten him and his son.This is a clear violation of USC Title 18, Section 201 which addresses the bribery of public officials and witnesses. The law states, a person commits bribery if he or she "directly or indirectly, corruptly gives, offers or promises anything of value to any public official or person who has been selected to be a public official, or offers or promises any public official or any person who has been selected to be a public official to give anything of value to any other person or entity, with intent to influence any official act...:"
The Guardian has an outstanding, if extremely disturbing article on Guantanamo Bay. This needs to be required reading by everyone--it has a great deal of information and detail on the arbitrary abductions of many of the prisoners, and the conditions to which they have been treated.
If you needed any more evidence that our so-called war on terror is a miserable failure, you need to read The Guardian's article.
Today, we have a roundup of some of the various things the Bush administration in specific and the GOP in general and its supporters are getting away with as we speak. This is by no means a definitive list, but it should give you a glimpse of just how many outrages are slipping past us under the watchful eye of the so-called "liberal media".
What International Law?
Some of you may have read through my recent posts on the Bush administration's selective disregard for international law--selective rather than utter, because Bush was perfectly content to cite Saddam's defiance of UN resolutions as justification for his own defiance of UN resolutions. While this receives a certain amount of play in the foreign press, the American media has been almost completely mute on the fact that the war was, put simply, illegal. This is regrettably understandable--to accuse one's own country and head of state of criminal acts is a severe charge indeed, and even implying it would be enough to sink a journalist's career in the times we live in.
Likewise, there is no doubt that our military has and continues to commit war crimes in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. In fairness, this is rarely the fault of the grunts on the street, most of whom haven't been educated on all the details of just what kind of conduct is prohibited by international law and treaty, and don't know that the orders they're being given are illegal.
Nevertheless, there is no moral ambiguity in some of what has been done. The US military has acknowledged it has recently been seeking advice from Israel on how to conduct the occupation and counterinsurgency--a country with a thirty-five year track record of human rights abuses, which stands in violation or is the subject of thirty-four UN resolutions condemning such; a country whose counterinsurgency effort can not be called even remotely effective. Indeed, we have already taken a number of pages from Israel's book: US forces kidnapped the wife and daughter of an Iraqi lieutenant general, leaving a note demanding he turn himself in if he wanted his family released, an act which is in violation of both the Fourth Geneva Convention and US Army law; we've bulldozed the crops of farmers who are suspected of withholding information on insurgents; we've been busy returning to heavy-handed tactics which accomplished nothing of strategic counterinsurgent value.
Gitmo and the Assault on Human Rights
Everyone should have at least heard the names "Guantanamo" or "Gitmo" by now. They are short for Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, an island of legal limbo for almost seven hundred people, half of whom have been detained for almost two years, and none of whom have had any charges of any sort filed against them. Eighty-four people have already been deemed innocent and transferred to their home countries for release, while 140 more are scheduled to be released at "a politically propitious time".
International law prohibits this kind of indefinite detention without charge or counsel during a time of war, and in an effort to do an end-run around these laws, the Bush administration has invented a new category of human being out of thin air: the enemy combatant. Put simply, once the President decides that a person is an "enemy combatant", be they a foreign national or an American citizen, they have no rights under international or American law, and are entitled to no protections or due process under the Bill of Rights. Once they are in Gitmo, their status and detention are beyond challenge or accountability. The sole judge of who loses all rights by becoming an enemy combatant is the President of the United States.
The administration has defended their legal invention by Presidential fiat, and the camps at Guantanamo, by claiming that they are a necessary tool in the War on Terror. This is becoming a familiar line to anyone who has followed the steady erosion of our rights since 9/11--every time we are asked to give up a measure of freedom or accept an otherwise despicable policy, it is framed as an issue of national security, with the obvious implication being that anyone who opposes these policies is soft on terror. What we are in fact opposed to is the administration's open defiance of basic human rights and fundamental American principles of justice. Seven hundred people are being held without charge, without counsel, without rights, and being thoroughly interrogated--often on the basis of nothing more than a tipoff by a neighbor who turned them in for the reward money.
Guantanamo Bay is a concentration camp. All it lacks are executions, and it may yet get those once the military tribunals start. That it is not being roundly condemned by the American people is a sign of how well this administration's scare tactics have worked.
Where's Osama? and Other Forgotten Villains
Yet have any of these excesses made us safer? For all that we've given up and accepted over the last two years in the name of defending ourselves from terrorism, are we actually any safer? Only one in four Americans seem to think so, and the more they learn, the less likely they are to support the administration's policies. Bush has pushed the country into a war that millions vocally opposed, violated international law in doing so, rent dangerous rifts in alliances which have stood for decades, run roughshod over the Bill of Rights with the odious and Orwellian "Patriot Act", spent incalculable political capital and every shred of goodwill the world held for us after 9/11, and has galvanized anti-American sentiment in the Islamic world to unprecedented levels. Indeed, we have not only given jihadis, terrorists, and insurgents of all flavor 130,000 targets to shoot at, but we have provided them with a gold-plated rallying and recruiting point, and our ongoing heavy-handed tactics and ignorance of Islamic and Arab culture ensure that we are continually creating new generations of people who have reasons to hate America.
In a desperate attempt to continue capitalizing on American sentiment towards 9/11, the administration continues to sell the Iraq war as being central to the war on terror. Nothing could be further from the truth. No credible evidence exists that Saddam Hussein had any connection to al Qaeda or to 9/11--quite the contrary, during the run-up to the Iraq war a verified audio statement by Osama bin Laden called upon Muslims in Iraq to rise up against their secular leader. We took out the Taliban in Afghanistan with ruthless efficiency, sent bin Laden into hiding, and positioned ourselves to rebuild Afghanistan as a modern, democratic country--yet ever since George Bush decided to take out Saddam, Afghanistan and bin Laden have become afterthoughts. The country is still in ruins, its hand-picked leader Karzai an ineffective puppet, the peacekeeping forces impotent and besieged, and opium production is reaching record highs. Yet Bush is now dismissing bin Laden as unnecessary to the war on terror, and seems to have left Afghanistan in the dust in what may be a chilling preview of our Iraq policy a year from now. The Weapons of Mass Destruction, the threat of which was so imminent and deadly that we had to halt the ongoing UN inspections and go to war /right now/, have failed to materialize--indeed, we're not even really looking that hard despite the absolute conviction our administration had that they existed in vast amounts.
The truth is that Iraq is a distraction which had nothing to do with al Qaeda or the stated goal of eradicating terrorism. Terrorism is not an enemy which you can seek out and meet on the field of battle, it is a tactic used by desperate, fanatical, or brainwashed individuals in an attempt to induce policy change in a more militarily powerful opponent. It is a deplorable tactic when (as is usually the case) inflicted upon civilians, but it must be understood for what it is: a tactic which grows out of root causes. Osama bin Laden could not have asked for a more valuable godsend than the foreign policies of George W. Bush, because ever since we rolled over the Taliban in Afghanistan, we have conducted our foreign policy in ways guaranteed to exacerbate and validate the recruitment points of al Qaeda and Ansar al Islam. We are playing into every American stereotype which exists in the Muslim world, when we should be working peacefully to address the real-world grievances which terrorists use and twist in order to recruit believers to their causes.
Valerie Who?
Two months ago, the media was all abuzz with talk of a scandal that could rival Watergate: a senior administration official had outed a CIA operative who worked on WMD issues, and had done so for a blatantly partisan vendetta. The Justice Department opened an investigation into the mess, which said something in and of itself: the CIA can recommend an investigation into an unauthorized disclosure of classified information, but for the Justice Department see fit to open one, there must be something credible in the allegations. Democrats, predictably, called for an independent counsel in light of the fact that Bush appointed John Ashcroft, creating an unmistakable conflict of interest. Republicans, predictably, denounced all such calls as partisan, despite their eagerness to appoint one to investigate the sex life of our last President.
Instead of a blowjob, however, we now have blowback: not only did this blow the cover of a senior intelligence operative, it also jeopardized the lives of everyone with whom she's had contact abroad, destroyed valuable intelligence assets and sources, outed a CIA front company under which she'd filed past political contributions, and set back the CIA's ability to counter the spread of WMDS to a degree that has yet to be determined.
This should be one of the biggest stories of this presidency. In terms of seriousness and damage to the country, Watergate and the Clinton impeachment can't even begin to hold a candle to it. Yet it's as if there's a total media blackout on this: nothing to see here folks, routine investigation, move along. For a few weeks, it was all over the papers--and then, nothing. I defy you to find a single article about it younger than a month which isn't on a weblog.
Bribery and Extortion: On the Domestic Front
Sadly, this is par for the course in the GOP these days. The recent passage of the Medicare bill, which was denounced by members of both parties as a giveaway for special interest groups, occurred under highly questionable circumstances. The bill was set to be narrowly defeated in the House, but passed--after a three hour roll call, the longest in Congressional history. The purpose of this extended roll call was to allow the President to be roused from bed, and for he and other Congressional leaders to make phone calls and put pressure on GOP Congressmen to vote the party line. In the end, they succeeded in changing two votes--enough to pass the bill.
Yet many GOP Congressman stood their ground, and in one of those cases, House Republicans may have violated Federal law and Congressional ethics rules. According to Nick Smith, a Republican Congressman from Michigan, fellow Republican House members offered to see to it that his son would receive a $100,000 donation if he would change his vote. This carrot then changed to a stick with the threat to derail his son's campaign.
The above link delves into this with a thoroughness that makes it unnecessary for me to belabor the point any further. In short, this is open-and-shut bribery: if Smith takes this to the authorities and has the integrity to testify against his own party members, people will go to jail.
GOP Gerrymandering
Given the degree to which the Republicans control all three branches of government, and the tactics they've shown themselves willing to use to get themselves elected, it should come as no surprise to see what they're willing to do to ensure they stay in power. The latest in this litany of tactics is creative redistricting--in which Republican-controlled State legislatures redraw the boundaries of the voting districts to ensure that demographic data solidifies or increases their hold on the State's seats.
Normally, redistricting is done once every ten years, immediately following the Census. However, the GOP has been taking advantage of its stranglehold on State legislatures to push through off-schedule redistricting--essentially, changing the rules mid-term simply because they have the power to do so. This became fairly well-publicized for a short time when Texas Democrats fled to a neighboring state to break the quorum required to conduct the vote. Unfortunately, most of the publicity centered around portraying the Democrats as pulling a partisan stunt, instead of highlighting the extremely unethical nature of what the GOP was trying to do.
Two rulings were issued yesterday that were relevant to this--on a high note, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that the GOP Legislature violated the State Constitution when redrawing the maps off-schedule. While this sets no precedent for other states, it is sure to be watched--and is a victory in and of itself.
On the downside, a Federal panel quashed the subpoenas ordering House Majority Leader Tom DeLay to testify in the court challenge of the Texas redistricting case. The degree to which the GOP leadership has orchestrated these end-runs around the law is of vital importance to these cases, and more pressure needs to be applied to our elected representatives to publicize this ongoing injustice.
Tweaking the Ballots
Another tactic in the ongoing GOP attempts to end-run or change laws it finds inconvenient: did you know that George Bush almost ended up being a write-in candidate in a number of states? The Republican National Convention is being held later than usual in 2004, on September 2nd--ostensibly to avoid conflict with the Olympics. The fact that they're holding it in New York to allow them to exploit 9/11 sentimentality for political purposes seems to have escaped the national attention span, and would probably go unremarked and unreported--were it not for the fact that Alabama, California, Illinois, and other states have filing deadlines before September 2nd.
Faced with either moving the date of their Convention away from 9/11 or accepting that Bush would miss the filing deadline in these states and have to run as a write-in candidate, Republicans opted instead for a third choice: they either pulled strings to get themselves exempted from the law, or rammed through legislation to change the deadlines. Fortunately, at least one state has yet to capitulate to this kind of manipulation of our system: Illinois.
Electronic Voting Fraud: The Diebold Controversy
None of this may matter, however, if the current generation of Diebold electronic voting machines begin to see widespread use. The scenario sounds like something out of the fevered imaginations of conspiracy theorists: the CEO of the company contracted to supply the nation with electronic voting machines declares at a fund-raiser that he's dedicated to delivering his state's votes to the incumbent. The machines his company produces leave no paper trail, have no provision for a recount, has countless security holes and methods for abuse, and undergo demonstrably substandard QA testing. The company has ruthlessly exploited the DMCA to issue cease and desist orders to websites that posted a leaked Diebold memo, which provided definitive proof of some of the worst allegations against the company and its software.
Yet these are the facts--and the only thing more shocking than these facts is that more people aren't outraged enough about it.
Part of the problem, unfortunately, is that the Bush administration, the GOP as a party, and many of their supporters are guilty of /so/ many crimes, ethics violations, or plain old moral bankruptcy that it's difficult to mount a coherent narrative against them that does justice to the full extent of the outrage. It's difficult to know where to begin when there are levels of corruption and criminal misconduct that I haven't even begun to touch on in the foregoing. And unfortunately, most of these issues--while crucially important--are too complex to distill down into a bite-sized, simple talking point that can be used to counteract the lies or draw attention to that which goes unreported.
But don't let that daunt you. We have to start somewhere.
Via CNN:
A man who said he was angered by his son's teenage friends driving up and down his road, spinning their wheels and honking the horn, is charged with fatally shooting one the boys and wounding another, authorities said.Wrong. Speeding up and down a road didn't cause him to lose his life. Some asshole who decided to take the law into his own hands and fire a gun at some joyriding teenagers caused him to lose his life.[....]
Mellon, 44, fired three shots from a 9mm pistol, hitting Beck in the head. The car rolled 200 yards from the house and into an embankment.
[....]
"Speeding up and down a road caused one of (the boys) to lose their life," said Capt. Bobby Steen of the sheriff's office said. "There are a lot of questions that have to be answered. Something had to have happened. Maybe he just wanted to scare them."
What the fuck is this cop doing publicly making excuses for a murderer? When you fire a warning shot to "scare" someone, you don't usually do it by shooting three times and getting two head shots.
