april 6 posting + a comment...

Some comments of my own about the Iraq fiasco.

In Fall 2002, while doing some volunteer work for the Puget Sound Blood Center in Seattle, it became utterly clear to me, and to another old timer - a lovely, funny, second rung opera singer, who was also volunteered at the local zoo, and with whom I discussed the impending war as he gave me a ride home a few nite's a week - that nothing would deter the Bushwhacker from his course of action, and I began quite literally physically to quake on the inside, which I analyzed as deriving from childhood experiences of having been bombed, the consequences of loss of domicile, the disintegration of the family structures, also "intra-psychically" as one can put it, more so than having lived through some major quakes in California, although these, too, must have played their apart for the anticipation of the impending shock to the psycho-somatic system and the possibility of listing like a torpedoed ship if the bomb/quake strikes, blind-sides you in your sleep. Subsequently I engaged in an e-mail conversation with an extraordinarily fine NY analyst who had experienced the 9/11 attack, but we did not resolve my internalized events completely. Yet I am someone happen to become ultra calm during hysteria-inducing events, one benefit of being a contrarian, although having been utterly nonchalant during the Cuban Missile Crisis – in light of how close the idiots actually came to being unable to extricate themselves from their bull-headedness – turned, then, out to have been a somewhat foolhardy state of mind.

By now, well into the year 20000006 of the years of our chief cretin who made the world, the sorry details of how the war was conceived, sold, how much of the rest of the world was bullied, how everyone was lied to, who profited, are laid out there for everyone to examine, although, no doubt, there are infamies yet to be revealed. The country "as a whole", that fiction, of course, fails to take responsibility, as little as do its representatives of all kinds for what has been wrought. How sorry the great majority of the people's representatives behaved during the run-up to the war is on the congressional record. The "Last Roman Senator" is the great exception, as are representatives such as Kucinic. Then there are the various fooled major media, the intermediaries in the sales campaign, who thought that a believer such as bete noir Kenneth Pollack had it right, where those who have the brains, such as David Remnick the editor of the New Yorker, stand out for not being firm enough in mind; the exclusion of voices such as those of the chief UN weapons inspector, Ritter. By and large, the country as a whole lived up to itself. Yes, the country as a whole is responsible, if that way of looking at it even matters. The Republicans zeroed in, accurately, on Senator John F. Kerry the waffler; and it appears he lost something more than his prostate during his operation. A pretty sorry, posturing, invariably, continuously other directed elite [!] all around.
It of course takes little courage to write something of this kind from a city like Seattle, where the Bushwhacker, who received only eighteen percent of the vote in 2004, could not even get elected dog catcher, since the dear benighted burghers love their pets too dearly for that; mad dog is another matter altogether. Though, it appears, his demise will come now via the so aptly named “Scooter”....


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/06/washington/06cnd-leak.html?hp&ex=1144382400&en=cc5a0128b83c317e&ei=5094&partner=homepage


Bungling Bushevik Thieves and Liars Fall Out: "Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said he did not know what Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was talking about when she said last week that the United States had made thousands of 'tactical errors' in handling the war in Iraq"

Rumsfeld Challenges Rice on 'Tactical Errors' in Iraq

By

Josh WhiteWashington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 6, 2006; Page A21

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/05/AR2006040502269.html

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Shouldn't the Immigration Protests be a Role Model for Anti-Iraq War Protests? We Think So.

Immigration Debate Wakes A 'Sleeping Latino Giant'

By

N.C. AizenmanWashington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 6, 2006; Page A01

Drawing on fear of restrictive immigration proposals that have awakened hundreds of thousands of Latinos to political activism, organizers are using popular Spanish-language radio and networks of community organizations to mobilize protests in Washington and scores of other cities Monday.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/05/AR2006040502543.html

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Signs point to federal investigators zeroing in on DeLay

BY RON HUTCHESON
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - Rep. Tom DeLay's decision to leave Congress ends his political problems, but his legal woes may be far from over.

The former House majority leader announced his resignation three days after court documents revealed that federal investigators have uncovered evidence of corruption in his leadership office. Tony Rudy, former deputy chief of staff to the powerful Republican congressman from Texas, admitted in a plea agreement that he sold his influence to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff while he was working for DeLay.

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Air Force colonel publicly rebukes US Supreme Court justice http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/apr2006/mili-a06.shtml

Discontent grows against Kurdish nationalist regime in northern Iraq http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/apr2006/kurd-a06.shtml

Turkey: Twelve dead and hundreds injured in Kurdish protests http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/apr2006/turk-a06.shtml

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Robert Scheer |"Anti-Christian Conspirators" Slay DeLay
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0405-28.htm

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See "U.S. Occupation Assistance: Iraq, Germany and Japan Compared," March 23, 2006: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33331.pdf

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The Media's Chance At Redemption
by Russ Baker, TomPaine.com
The mainstream press is still playing catch-up on important Iraq stories like the Manning memo.
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/04/06/the_medias_chance_at_redemption.php


Global Warmers
by Frank O'Donnell, TomPaine.com
As the situation grows more dire, who's to blame for congressional inaction on key global warming issues?
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/04/06/global_warmers.php

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They were, of course, worrying about entering the infamous "quagmire" -- the word many Americans had applied to Vietnam as the war there dragged on and on and on. Three years after the fall of Baghdad, with the Bush administration well into their Iraqi version of the quagmire, a couple of letters closer to the ultimate ABCs of political life, are now making their appearance. And little wonder.

Both of these probably began their journey from the political Internet into the mainstream in mid-February when, of all people, conservative icon William F. Buckley raised them both in a near-tombstone op-ed published in the National Review and entitled

It Didn't Work . With that single piece, you could promptly add "D" and "F" to the Iraq alphabet.

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Cutting and Running in Baghdad

By Robert Dreyfuss

Too late, the urgency of the crisis in Iraq, and the sheer ugliness of its civil war, seems finally to be dawning on the Bush administration. As usual, President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and their stalwart secretaries of state and defense, are johnnies-come-lately in their ability to understand how far gone Iraq is. Perhaps, as has been the case in the past, that is because they continue flagrantly to disregard what they are told by analysts in the U.S. intelligence community. Before, during, and after the invasion of Iraq, with a rising sense of alarm, the CIA, the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), and other agencies warned the Bush-Cheney team that the destruction of Iraq's central government could tumble the country into a civil war. In 2004, of course, the president famously dismissed such CIA warnings as "just a guess." Well, guess what, Mr. President? It's civil war. And it isn't pretty.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=74912

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http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/14262634.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

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I mean the outrage over the politically incorrect and in part questionable opinions of a philosopher, which have been elevated to the level of an "affair". Put bluntly, from the perspective of a non-Frenchman: it probably says something about a society when intellectual tiffs – debates in Le Monde, a Dossier on the "New Reactionaries" in the Nouvel Observateur etc. – take precedence over the primary, real issue, which requires a cool sociological analysis of its causes. Assuming you agree, shouldn't we talk first about the suburbs before we address

Alain Finkielkraut ?

A fine idea! It was entirely predictable that there would be revolts in the suburbs at some point – thanks, incidentally, to reports and documentaries by people outside the Paris intellectual circles. This representation of reality, however, remained as unimportant to our society as the reality itself. In short, we wrote off the suburbs long ago and simply concentrated on keeping their inhabitants quiet. For more than a quarter of a century, people have been cooped up in cement agglomerations that were originally meant to be social and did represent a sanitary improvement on existing housing.

http://www.signandsight.com/features/687.html

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New NYT Website Beats Print Version (Slate)
Jack Shafer: Hello, New York Times ? I'd like to cancel my subscription today. I'm canceling because the redesign of your Web site, which you unveiled yesterday, bests the print edition by such a margin I've decided to pocket the annual $621.40 I currently spend on home delivery.

http://www.slate.com/id/2139278/

jack shafer is getting soft headed....

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Homeland official arrested in online sex sting

Agency's deputy press secretary held for soliciting for a child on Internet

Updated: 12:50 a.m. ET April 5, 2006

MIAMI - The deputy press secretary for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was arrested Tuesday for using the Internet to seduce what he thought was a teenage girl, authorities said.

Brian J. Doyle, 55, was arrested

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12159118/

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ATLANTA (Reuters) - In a sleazy hotel room, "Brittany," then aged 16 and drugged into oblivion, waited for the men to arrive. Her pimps sent as many as 17 clients an evening through the door.




A "john" could even pre-book the pretty young blonde for $1,000 a night, sometimes flying in and then flying out from a nearby airport.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060404/lf_nm/crime_sextourism_dc_2

Chemical Weapons Report: Toxicity by Race and Gender exclusive: Recently declassified Defense report.

http://www.thememoryhole.org/



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Noam Chomsky | Returning to the Scene of the Crime: War Crimes in Iraq
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0404-30.htm

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Bankrupt Nation
by Adam Hughes, TomPaine.com
The new budget proposals reveal a Republican Party in denial about the nation's poor fiscal health.
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/04/04/bankrupt_nation.php

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Bush's War Hawks Edged Out of the Nest
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0404-04.htm

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Peruvians prepare to bite back


John Crabtree
4 - 4 - 2006
The institutions are discredited, the people angry. Peru on election eve is hungry for change, reports John Crabtree.

http://www.opendemocracy.net/democracy-protest/peru_3417.jsp

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Sidney Blumenthal: The fall of Tom DeLay, the most powerful Republican leader in the Congress, creates a crisis for his party and the political machine he built

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/sidney_blumenthal/2006/04/i_delay.html

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Noam Chomsky on War Crimes in Iraq

In the Vietnam era, the subject of war crimes was the last to arrive and the first to depart. When, in 1971 in Detroit, Vietnam Veterans Against the War convened its Winter Soldier Investigation into U.S. war crimes in Southeast Asia, it was roundly ignored by the media. Over 100 veterans gave firsthand testimony to war crimes they either committed or witnessed. Beyond the unbearable nature of their testimony, the hearings were startling for the fact that here were men who yearned to take some responsibility for what they had done. But while it was, by then, possible for Americans to accept the GI as a victim in Vietnam, it proved impossible for most Americans to accept him as a human being taking responsibility for a crime against humanity. There was no place for this in the American imagination, it seemed, no less for the thought that the planning and prosecution of the war were potential crimes committed by our leaders. Evidently there still is none, which is why it's important to follow Noam Chomsky back into the Iraq of recent years to consider the American occupation of that country in the context of war crimes.

The piece that follows is an excerpt from Chomsky's new book,

Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy , which is officially published on this very day. It is Chomsky at his best, a superb tour (de force) of a world in which the Bush administration has regularly asserted its right to launch "preventive" military interventions against "failed" and "rogue" states, while increasingly taking on the characteristics of those failed and rogue states itself. It will be an indispensable volume for any library. (You can check out a Chomsky discussion of it at Democracy Now!) Tom

Returning to the Scene of the Crime

War Crimes in Iraq


By Noam Chomsky

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=73753

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Bush's Paper Trail Grows
by John Prados, TomPaine.com
The Manning memo is significant because it offers more evidence the president knew his case for invading Iraq was shaky.
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/04/03/bushs_paper_trail_grows.php

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Post-Katrina dialogue on poverty fizzles

By ALLEN G. BREED
AP NATIONAL WRITER

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1110AP_Katrina_Dialogue_on_Poverty.html

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Under Rep. Buyer's surprising proposal, merely getting elected to Congress would become subordinate to the vagaries of the security clearance process. And since Congress does not have its own security vetting function, the Buyer proposal would effectively transfer to the executive branch the power to approve or deny membership on the intelligence or defense appropriations committees. See "Buyer Pushes Higher Standards for Members," news release, March 30: http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2006/03/buyer033006.html

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L.A. Times Defies the Bushevik Propaganda and Shows Us Our Wounded Soldiers: More than 17,000 American troops have been wounded in Iraq since the U.S. invasion in March 2003


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wounded/la-na-wounded-series,0,936394.special
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Libya's Return on Intelligence
Drafted By: Adam Wolfe
http://www.pinr.com

In December 2003, Libya came in from the cold. Months of discussions with British, and later American, officials led to Libya's public declaration that it would abandon its nuclear and chemical weapons programs. Washington and London hoped to use Tripoli's announcement as an example of the benefits of publicly ending chemical and nuclear weapons programs in other states. North Korea and Iran, however, were not convinced. [See:

"Libya Welcomes Weapons Inspectors in Return for Normalized Relations" ]

The timing of Libya's thawing could not have been better for Tripoli. The increased energy demand from the emerging Asian economies, geopolitical uncertainty in other oil-producing states, and the approaching maturity of Middle Eastern oil reserves have increased the value of Libya's untapped energy reserves. [See: "The Increasing Importance of African Oil" ]

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Forbes's billionaires list and the growth of inequality in Russia http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/apr2006/russ-a03.shtml

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