Sozadee Archives

Sozadee Has Been Moved

2009-09-14T09:14:00.000-07:00

The new Sozadee is under construction.

Comments at this site are closed.
They have been moved to the new site.

Sozadee Has Become a Challenged Site of Late

2009-09-13T10:20:00.001-07:00

It's slowwwwwwwww! 20+ seconds loading!

Something has afflicted my site in the last two to three weeks. My staff of writers has deserted. Do they feel responsible? Will My readers be next? What has caused this calamity? Please don't tell me it's my content or my ponderous writing?

I'm asking for help among sympathetic readers. Not having a clue, I need a few.

Sozadee has moved to a new location!

Cherry-Picking Among Presidential Pearls Cast Among Swine

2009-09-10T22:51:00.001-07:00

Joe Wilson (and company) spurned Barrack Obama’s casting about for bipartisan support; I trust they were in the minority.
I could not be happier if I agreed 100% on all issues with my President. I don't. But, I am a quantum-bunch happier with Prez Obama than I was his predecessor. BHO, after all, can deliver a rousing good speech, even a moving speech, and for that reason alone his art is worth viewing or reading (preferred!). And that's before you even consider its substance. I expect general agreement among my readers on this point. I would ask any dissenters how often they took the trouble to TIVO any presidential speeches during the first eight years of the 21st century.

As I write this, I am recalling how rigorously I parsed George Bush's 2nd address to a joint session of Congress. That came nine days after the 9-11 attacks. That speech marked the beginning of my disillusionment with George Bush. I mention this because there could have been a similar disenchantment with Obama's speech last night. That fear was dispelled today when I was able to read Barack Obama's words in my own voice. He's still my main man.

Even so, I'm only being an equal opportunity critic if I spotlight Obama's best moments. I do so below and I also presume to nudge some corrections in his text. If an unreasonably long column results, I would say in its defense that what follows is only 22% of the length of the original text.

Here, then, are the pearls I enjoyed from last night's speech, along with indicated caveats:

.....I am not the first President to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last. (Applause.) It has now been nearly a century since Theodore Roosevelt first called for health care reform. And ever since, nearly every President and Congress, whether Democrat or Republican, has attempted to meet this challenge in some way....

Our collective failure to meet this challenge -- year after year, decade after decade -- has led us to the breaking point. Everyone understands the extraordinary hardships that are placed on the uninsured, who live every day just one accident or illness away from bankruptcy. These are not primarily people on welfare. These are middle-class Americans. Some can't get insurance on the job. Others are self-employed, and can't afford it, since buying insurance on your own costs you three times as much as the coverage you get from your employer. Many other Americans who are willing and able to pay are still denied insurance due to previous illnesses or conditions that insurance companies decide are too risky or too expensive to cover.

We are the only democracy -- the only advanced democracy on Earth -- the only wealthy nation -- that allows such hardship for millions of its people …..

… the problem that plagues the health care system is not just a problem for the uninsured. Those who do have insurance have never had less security and stability than they do today. More and more Americans worry that if you move, lose your job, or change your job, you'll lose your health insurance too. More and more Americans pay their premiums, only to discover that their insurance company has dropped their coverage when they get sick, or won't pay the full cost of care …..

…. there's the problem of rising cost. We spend one and a half times more per person on health care than any other country, but we aren't any healthier for it. This is one of the reasons that insurance premiums have gone up three times faster than wages. It's why so many employers -- especially small businesses -- are forcing their employees to pay more for insurance, or are dropping their coverage entirely. It's why so many aspiring entrepreneurs cannot afford to open a business in the first place, and why American businesses that compete internationally -- like our automakers -- are at a huge disadvantage …..

Finally, our health care system is placing an unsustainable burden on taxpayers. When health care costs grow at the rate they have, it puts greater pressure on programs like Medicare and Medicaid. If we do nothing to slow these skyrocketing costs, we will eventually be spending more on Medicare and Medicaid than every other government program combined. Put simply, our health care problem is our deficit problem. Nothing else even comes close. Nothing else. (Applause.)

….. There are those ~~on the left~~ in the center who believe that the only way to fix the system is through a single-payer system like Canada's -- (applause) -- where we would severely restrict the private insurance market and have the government provide coverage for everybody. On the right, there are those who argue that we should end employer-based systems and leave individuals to buy health insurance on their own.

..... Well, the time for bickering is over. The time for games has passed. (Applause.) Now is the season for action. Now is when we must bring the best ideas ~~of both parties~~ together, and show the American people that we can still do what we were sent here to do. Now is the time to deliver on health care. Now is the time to deliver on health care .....

My guiding principle is, and always has been, that consumers do better when there is choice and competition. That's how the market works. (Applause.) Unfortunately, in 34 states, 75 percent of the insurance market is controlled by five or fewer companies. In Alabama, almost 90 percent is controlled by just one company. And without competition, the price of insurance goes up and quality goes down. And it makes it easier for insurance companies to treat their customers badly -- by cherry-picking the healthiest individuals and trying to drop the sickest, by overcharging small businesses who have no leverage, and by jacking up rates.

Insurance executives don't do this because they're bad people; they do it because it's profitable. As one former insurance executive testified before Congress, insurance companies are not only encouraged to find reasons to drop the seriously ill, they are rewarded for it. All of this is in service of meeting what this former executive called "Wall Street's relentless profit expectations."

Now, I have no ~~interest in~~ worries about putting insurance companies out of business. They provide a no legitimate service, ~~and~~ even though they employ a lot of our friends and neighbors. I just want to hold them accountable. (Applause.) And the insurance reforms that I've already mentioned would do just that. But an additional step we can take to keep insurance companies honest is by making a not-for-profit public option available in the insurance exchange. (Applause.) Now, let me be clear. Let me be clear. It would ~~only be an option for those who don't have insurance~~ be an option for all who choose it.

..... And here's what you need to know. First, I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits -- either now or in the future. (Applause.) I will not sign it if it adds one dime to the deficit, now or in the future, period. And to prove that I'm serious, there will be a provision in this plan that requires us to come forward with more spending cuts if the savings we promised don't materialize. These cuts will come from drastic cuts in our occupational forces in Iraq and our expeditionary forces in Afghanistan. (Applause.) Now, part of the reason I faced a trillion-dollar deficit when I walked in the door of the White House is because too many initiatives over the last decade were not paid for -- from the Iraq war to tax breaks for the wealthy. (Applause.) I will not make that same mistake with health care.

..... Now, add it all up, and the plan I'm proposing will cost around $900 billion over 10 years -- less than we have spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and less than the tax cuts for the wealthiest few Americans that Congress passed at the beginning of the previous administration. (Applause.) Now, most of these costs will be paid for with money already being spent -- but spent badly -- in the existing health care system. The plan will not add to our deficit materially. The middle class will realize greater security, not higher taxes.

..... But know this: I will not waste time with those who have made the calculation that it's better politics to kill this plan than to improve it. (Applause.) I won't stand by while the special interests use the same old tactics to keep things exactly the way they are. If you misrepresent what's in this plan, we will call you out. (Applause.) And I will not -- and I will not accept the status quo as a solution. Not this time. Not now.

There you have it. The last portions of President Obama's speech were suitably moving, and don't require mirroring here. Readers are encouraged to read the original.

As I said above, the 44th President of the United Sates does not have me in his pocket, but he does have me in his corner.

Do Not Throw Van Jones Under My Bus

2009-09-09T08:01:00.000-07:00

"We're asking questions progressives like but we're giving answers that conservatives should like."

Anthony "Van" Jones is an environmental advocate, civil rights activist, attorney, and author who served from March 16 to September 5, 2009 as Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) in the United States.

Why was his term so brief?

Well, it turns out he has offended Republican sensibilities. The GOP alleges that

he is a self-admitted ex-communist
he is a truther
he called them out by using a common expletive which references posterior anatomy.

I'll take these up in turn.

In 1992, while still a 24 year-old law student at Yale, Jones participated as a volunteer legal monitor for a protest of the Rodney King verdict in San Francisco. He and many other participants in the protest were arrested. The district attorney later dropped the charges against Jones. It was during these tumultous post-Rodney King jail-time days that Jones said,

I met all these young radical people of color -- I mean really radical, communists and anarchists. And it was, like, 'This is what I need to be a part of.' .... I spent the next ten years of my life working with a lot of those people I met in jail, trying to be a revolutionary ... I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th, and then the verdicts came down on April 29th ... By August, I was a communist.

Well, big freaking deal. 24 years old, Jones was one year away from completing his law degree. I was a not-nearly-as-young white guy living and working in Los Angeles county during those same days of the Rodney King aftermath. Those were crazy days and I was crazy then, too. Bought and carried loaded guns wherever I went. Also, by the mid-1990's, Marxism-Leninism was as about as relevant as any other political cult. Try Ayn Rand?

Charge number two is that Jones' signature appeared on a 'truther' petition. Jones, a long with other signers attest that the statement they signed was different than the one which eventually was published.

I can see that. Not everyone understands that there's a big difference between arguing on the one hand that Bush and Cheney deliberately allowed the 9-11 attacks happen so that they could attack Iraq and Iran and - OTOH - arguing that the 9-11 attacks occurred out of the sheer incompetence/negligence of George Bush. The most plausible explanation for the first eight years of the 21st century is moronic and incompetent complicity on the part of the GOP.

Besides I have never put much credence in conspiracy theories spawned by the question of cui bono. That goes for the grassy knoll theorists as well as the truthers. Classify them all as fruitcakes and let God sort them out. As Bill Maher says,
Bottom line, Van Jones believes, as I do, that George Bush just wasn't bright enough to be a successful conspirator.

Finally, the is the GOP charge that Van Jones was impolitic:
I post not to praise Jones, nor to excuse him. I post this to exonerate him.

Van Jones is a fighting Progressive of varsity potential. I can't wait until he gets suited up and back in the arena.

Step Back from Mission Creep in Afganistan - Part III

2009-09-04T07:55:00.000-07:00

The dogs are barking out a warning in the middle of the night. Will they arouse anyone in Washington?

A principal aide to Britain's defense minister resigned on yesterday, attacking Prime Minister Gordon Brown's stay-the-course counter insurgency (COIN) policies on Afghanistan and accusing European allies of not pulling their weight.

Eric Joyce knows what he's talking about.

He is not some Labor Party hack who worked his way up through union ranks. Joyce, a decorated Army Major, is one of the few Labour MPs with military experience.

In his letter of resignation addressed to the Prime Minister, Major Joyce said,

As you may know, I told Bob Ainsworth some weeks ago that I intended to step down as Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to the Defence Secretary before the start of the new parliamentary term.

.... I ... now feel that I can make my best contribution to the Labour effort in parliament by concentrating on helping, as a regular back-bencher, to show that Labour remains sound on matters of Defence.

.... Our continuing success in helping people from all parts of society become more prosperous, while helping the least well-off most, is built upon that .....

We are now, I think, once again at a critical time for Labour and Defence.

The Conservatives, of course opportunistically, think they can convince the public that we have lost our empathy with the Defence community. We must not allow this to happen.

I do not think the public will accept for much longer that our losses can be justified by simply referring to the risk of greater terrorism on our streets.

Nor do I think we can continue with the present level of uncertainty about the future of our deployment in Afghanistan.

I think we must be much more direct about the reality that we do punch a long way above our weight, that many of our allies do far too little, and that leaving the field to the United States would mean the end of NATO as a meaningful proposition.

The British people have a proud history of facing such realities. They understand the importance of the allied effort in Afghanistan/Pakistan and I think they would appreciate more direct approach by politicians. We also need to make it clear that our commitment in Afghanistan is high but time limited.

It should be possible now to say that we will move off our present war-footing and reduce our forces there substantially during our next term in government.

We also need a greater geopolitical return from the United States for our efforts.

For many, Britain fights; Germany pays, France calculates; Italy avoids. If the United States values each of these approaches equally, they will end up shouldering the burden by themselves.
....
I believe the next election is ours to win, thanks greatly to your personal great economic success. But we cannot win unless we grip defence....

What is the significance of Major Joyce's departure?

First and foremost it registers on the Richter scale declining British public support for the U.K.'s boots on the ground in Afghanistan. Their casualties are intolerably high. and their treasury is intolerably low.

Secondly, it registers concern for the future of NATO unity. NATO, is after all, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Its original purpose was to counter balance of the Soviet Union. A somewhat weaker, but strident and autocratic police state under Putin is currently ascendent. Are we to risk the Atlantic Alliance to founder in a war of choice among the remote desert mountains in Afghanistan?

As I've said before, our British cousins always hear the barking dogs in the middle of the night before my more insulated fellow Americans do.

Step Back from Mission Creep in Afganistan - Part I

2009-09-01T06:34:00.001-07:00

Two months shy of the 1st anniversary of Bush's invasion and occupation of Iraq, Teddy Kennedy's prophetic speech on this monumentally mistaken policy, aired on C-SPAN. Senator Kennedy opened by stating the importance of debate and criticism in our Republic:

The citizens of our democracy have a fundamental right to debate and even doubt the wisdom of a president's policies. And the citizens of our democracy have a sacred obligation to sound the alarm and shed light on the policies of an Administration that is leading this country to a perilous place.

I believe that this Administration is indeed leading this country to a perilous place.

Virtually no one who I can think of among Republican Senators has offered equally constructive criticism of President Obama's policies in Afghanistan.

Last Friday in the Wall Street Journal, Progressive Senator Russ Feingold stepped into the role of the loyal opposition left vacant by the entire Republican Party. His article was entitled, The Road Home From Afghanistan: Why a flexible timetable to withdraw U.S. troops will best advance our national security interests. He said, in part,

After nearly eight long years, we seem to be no closer to the end of the war in Afghanistan ….

We went into Afghanistan with a clear mission: to destroy those who helped to perpetrate the horrific 9/11 attacks. I voted to authorize sending our forces there because it was vital to our national security, and I strongly criticized the previous administration for shortchanging that mission in favor of a misguided war in Iraq.

…. But I cannot support an open-ended commitment to an escalating war in Afghanistan when the al Qaeda operatives we sought have largely been captured or killed or crossed the border to Pakistan.

Ending al Qaeda's safe haven in Pakistan is a top national security priority. Yet our operations in Afghanistan will not do so, and they could actually contribute to further destabilization of Pakistan. Meanwhile, we've become embroiled in a nation-building experiment that may distract us from combating al Qaeda and its affiliates, not just in Pakistan, but in Yemen, the Horn of Africa and other terrorist sanctuaries.

….. We also ignore the lessons of history by pursuing a drawn-out military mission in Afghanistan. The experiences of the Soviets and the British make it painfully clear just how elusive a military victory in Afghanistan can be. That alone should give us reason to rethink an open-ended military presence in Afghanistan.

….. Announcing a flexible timetable for when our massive military presence will end would be one of the best things we could do to advance our national security interests in Afghanistan. By doing so, we would undercut the misperception of the U.S. as an occupying force that has propped up a weak, corrupt and unpopular government, while at the same time removing a tremendous strain on our troops and our economy.

While we have many important goals in Afghanistan, we must be realistic about our limited ability to quickly change the fundamental political realities on the ground. The recent presidential election shows there will be no easy solution to the sectarianism, corruption and warlordism that plague that country. We should seriously question putting so many American lives at risk to expand, through military force, the reach of a government that has failed to win the support of its own people.

Instead of increasing troop levels in Afghanistan, we should start talking about a flexible timetable to begin drawing those levels down. It is time to ask the hard questions—and accept the candid answers—about how our military presence in Afghanistan may be undermining our national security.

Like Teddy Kennedy, Russ Feingold calls for an open debate of critical foreign policy issue facing America.

The Party of Loyal Opposition, Republican Party, is bereft of constructive ideas and incapable of offering plausible alternatives. It always falls to Progressives, who understand history, to correct the wayward course of our ship of state.

The Reich-Wing's Unwritten Constitution

2009-08-31T08:07:00.001-07:00

Despite a pretended insistence on a strict interpretation of the Constitution, certain Republicans harbor a myth that change is unconstitutional or, at the very least, against the American tradition. IMO, that's why some loosely-bound people have taken shots at Progressive leaders, going all the way back to Theodore Roosevelt. Policies and legislation should be debated on their merits. Instead, this shibboleth is promulgated that change itself is un-American.

I think this mythology is dangerous in an armed society.

Exhibit No. 1 is this carefully rehearsed exchange.

This is bigger than just John Voight.

The Torture Game

2009-08-29T21:22:00.000-07:00

Anyone can play!

The Star-Spangled Banner has already been sung.

Click here to start the game!

You have the rest of the weekend, right?

The Kennedy Healthcare Reform Bill Explained

2009-08-27T07:23:00.001-07:00

for the Politically Illiterate

Call it whatever you want to:

Public Health Insurance
Government-Run Insurance
Obamacare?
Socialized Medicine

Whatever. It's time we had it.

'Nuff said.

2009-08-26T07:13:00.001-07:00

Be back tomorrow.

Lt. William "Rusty" Calley: One of Our Own War Criminals

2009-08-25T09:22:00.000-07:00

The Lieutenant is not exonerated, but he is contrite.
But, because contrition itself is rare, it should be noteworthy.

On 16 March 1968, U.S. soldiers gunned down hundreds of civilians in the Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai. The Army at first denied, then downplayed the event, saying most of the dead were Vietcong. But in November 1969, journalist Seymour Hersh revealed what really happened and Calley was court martialed and convicted of murder.

The My Lai Massacre was one of the darkest moments in the Vietnam War. 2nd Lt. William “Rusty” Calley had ordered his platoon to kill everyone in the South Vietnamese hamlets of My Lai and My Khe. Initially 26 American soldiers were charged, but only Calley was convicted. He admitted on the witness stand that he personally executed civilians and received a life sentence for the murders of 22 people.

Calley always claimed that he was acting on direct orders from his company commander, and many Americans believed that he was scapegoated for the massacre. His sentence was later reduced by President Richard Nixon and he served three years under house arrest.

Despite many invitations from national news media, Calley had never before spoken publicly about it until last Wednesday, when he was invited to speak before the Kiwanis Club of Greater Columbus (GA).

His remarks would not have been on my radar, except that blogger Dick McMichael was in attendance and narrated it on his Dick's World site.

McMichael says that Lt. Calley made only a brief statement, but agreed to take questions from the audience. At one point with his voice breaking, Lt. Calley said,

There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai ... I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry.

During the Q&A, McMichael asked Lt. Calley for his reaction to the notion that a soldier does not have to obey an unlawful order, that in fact, to obey an unlawful order is to be unlawful yourself.

The ex soldier replied,

I believe that is true. If you are asking why I did not stand up to them when I was given the orders, I will have to say that I was a 2nd Lieutenant getting orders from my commander and I followed them - foolishly, I guess.

I should add (as I recall), beginning when the U.S. Military command first questioned Lt. Calley, he has never denied his part in the massacre.

I post Lieutenant Calley's statement as an object lesson in integrity; there are a number of them to be extracted.

Who Let Abdel Baset al Megrahi Go?

2009-08-23T07:08:00.000-07:00

And why does this mass-murdering terrorist get off to go 'Scot-Free'?

Abdel Baset al Megrahi is a former Libyan intelligence officer.
On 31 January 2001, he was convicted, by a panel of Scottish Judges sitting in a special court at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, of 270 counts of murder for his part in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, on 21 December 1988. Megrahi was sentenced to life imprisonment. Suffering from terminal prostate cancer, with less than three months to live, he was allowed to walk yesterday.

He returned as a hero to Tripoli to an enthusiastic crowd waving Scottish flags(lower right).

Who, then, are the Scots who let this mass killer walk?

They are Alex Salmond, First Minister of Scotland, and Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish justice minister.

On 18-August, Salmond pre-endorsed MacAskill's decision, promising the Justice minister would

... take a decision shortly in the interests of justice ... I’m absolutely confident that if there’s one person in Scotland I trust to take the right decision for the right reasons it’s Kenny MacAskill .... The most important thing for all of us...is that the person taking that decision will do so on the basis of evidence he’s received and advice he’s received.

Announcing the release, Justice Secretary MacAskill said the country’s justice system was based on both judgement and compassion. In a 20-minute statement explaining his decision, Mr MacAskill claimed releasing Megrahi was an expression of unique Scottish “values":

In Scotland we are a people who pride ourselves on our humanity. It is viewed as a defining characteristic of Scotland and the Scottish people.

The perpetration of an atrocity and outrage cannot and should not be a basis for losing sight of who we are, the values we seek to uphold, and the faith and beliefs by which we seek to live.

That's crap.

Let me explain myself.

In my book of justice, (as I have said), in an open and democratic society,

There is no place for the death penalty.
Absent the death penalty, there is no place for mercy and compassion for political assassins. Before last week, I thought that was self-evidently obvious for convicted terrorists.

If there was any question about Megrahi's guilt or innocence, that should have and could have been resolved by pursuing processes of appeal as provided by Scottish law. Instead, government by men intervened when these two stooges squandered their 15 minutes of fame.

In the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, 11 people on the ground in Lockerbie and all 259 passengers and crew members were killed. Megrahi's original sentence was only 27 years. That's one year for every ten people he killed. When he walked, he had served eight years? One year for every 33 he killed?

Terrorists and political assassins should be sentenced to rot to death in prison. And that's what Abdel Baset al Megrahi was doing when he was released.

Happy (40th) Anniversary!

2009-08-22T07:48:00.000-07:00

To My Trophy Wife!

Congratulations to us for our non-stop mariner & marital Companionship of four decades! At the risk of appearing too self-absorbed, I just have to take a little time out for a acknowledgment of time passing...

We have sailed together on many boats and waters. But the seas have always seemed tranquil because our love has always proved to be unquestionably sea-worthy...I'm not sure about those final lines: I'm not aware of the temperature falling. And every day, the cool morning dew completely evaporates between the time Ballou and I retrieve the papers and you greet us at the door with your first smile and your perfectly uncombed hair.

The Health Insurance Industry: A Growing Parasite on the National Economy

2009-08-19T08:01:00.001-07:00

Health insurance industry employment outpaces health providers and all-industry growth rates.

Ross Eisenbrey of the Economic Policy Institute think tank comments,

Economist Paul Krugman and many others have suggested that the health insurance industry has a lot to do with the excessive cost of U.S. health care. As Krugman describes the industry, an important part of its business model is collecting premiums while denying deserving claims and seeking out reasons to exclude patients from coverage they need. It takes a lot of extra employees to do this socially questionable work, and the industry's employment has grown like a weed over the past 10 years.

From August 1997 to August 2007, employment in the health insurance industry grew an astounding 52%, from 293,000 to 444,000.1 During the same period, employment among physicians, nurses, and others who provide health services or work to support them grew half as fast, by 26%, from 10,387,000 to 13,042,000. Employment in the economy as a whole grew even more slowly, by only 12% over the same 10-year period (see figure). The ratio of health insurance industry employees to health service providers grew from 28 insurance employees per 1,000 provider employers, to 34 per 1,000.

Is this not another dot which needs to be connected?

Thom Hartmann: A Modest Proposal

2009-08-18T08:40:00.001-07:00

In 1729, Jonathan Swift anonymously published A Modest Proposal

For Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public.

This was a satirical essay suggesting the impoverished Irish might ease their economic troubles by selling children as food for rich gentlemen and ladies.

Today, 280 years later, Thom Hartmann publishes a modest proposal which is not at all satirical.

Dear President Obama,

I understand you’re thinking of dumping your “public option” because of all the demagoguery by Sarah Palin and Dick Armey and Newt Gingrich and their crowd on right-wing radio and Fox. Fine. Good idea, in fact.

Instead, let’s make it simple. Please let us buy into Medicare.

It would be so easy. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel with this so-called “public option” that’s a whole new program from the ground up. Medicare already exists. It works. Some people will like it, others won’t – just like the Post Office versus FedEx analogy you’re so comfortable with.

Just pass a simple bill – it could probably be just a few lines, like when Medicare was expanded to include disabled people – that says that any American citizen can buy into the program at a rate to be set by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) which reflects the actual cost for us to buy into it.

So it’s revenue neutral!

To make it available to people of low income, raise the rates slightly for all currently non-eligible people (like me - under 65) to cover the cost of below-200%-of-poverty people. Revenue neutral again.

Most of us will do damn near anything to get out from under the thumbs of the multi-millionaire CEOs who are running our current insurance programs.

Sign me up!

This lets you blow up all the rumors about death panels and grandma and everything else: everybody knows what Medicare is. Those who scorn it can go with Blue Cross. Those who like it can buy into it. Simplicity itself.

Of course, we’d like a few fixes, like letting Medicare negotiate drug prices and filling some of the holes Republicans and AARP and the big insurance lobbyists have drilled into Medicare so people have to buy “supplemental” insurance, but that can wait for the second round. Let’s get this done first.

Simple stuff. Medicare for anybody who wants it. Private health insurance for those who don’t. Easy message. Even Max Baucus and Chuck Grassley can understand it. Sarah Palin can buy into it, or ignore it. No death panels, no granny plugs, nothing. Just a few sentences.

Replace the “you must be disabled or 65” with “here’s what it’ll cost if you want to buy in, and here’s the sliding scale of subsidies we’ll give you if you’re poor, paid for by everybody else who’s buying in.” (You could roll back the Reagan tax cuts and make it all free, but that’s another rant.)

We elected you because we expected you to have the courage of your convictions. Here’s how. Not the “single payer Medicare for all” that many of us would prefer, but a simple, “Medicare for anybody who wants to buy in.”

Respectfully,

Thom Hartmann

This is Thom's best shot. Now it's our turn to support this modest proposal with our own letters to the President. Our man in the White House needs our help!

The Moral Matrix: Beyond "Left" & "Right"

2009-08-16T11:33:00.000-07:00

Political ideas are often expressed using the right-left model. That separation originally referred to the seating (if indeed they ever took their seats) of the chamber members in the French Parliament after the 1789 Revolution.

Think about that for a moment: how adequate is that old cask in containing the new wines of the 21st century?

Stephane Dubois is a Frenchman living in the United States. (A latter-day Alexis de Tocqueville?) Dubois has devised a Moral Matrix to address this problem. Instead of a single left-right dimension, the Matrix has two dimensions that combine to create four quadrants which locate political Systems,
and the Ideologies which support them.

It's possible to put too fine a point on some of these ideological distinctions as well as their locations. Some delineations are really superficial. The size of each "system" and "ideology" obviously reflects a need to attain symmetry graphically and not to represent their comparative popularity.

Which brings me to Dubois' Moral Matrix Test. Dubois has unscientifically collected 556,409 responses internationally. The various national results are interesting if not instructive.

In the United States:

It would have been of greater interest for this site to have mapped out responses from several of our dis-United States, which had significantly-sized samples. Maybe next year. For now, visitors at this site have to be satisfied with a country-by-country comparison.

Since cycling through this Moral Matrix site is cumbersome and slow, I have selected some national political cultures to display simultaneously. In light of the current American socialism-adverse obsession, I have decided to sequence these in an appropriate order. Some readers might be surprised.

Our neighbors to the north:

Here's Sweden:

Here's China

Here is Germany:

Here are the Israelis:

Here are the Aussies:

The European Union:

The United Kingdom:

Contrast Taiwan's score with China's:

Highest on the socialism scale is France:
Of interest is that Canada's socialism index is closest to the USA's. Also, Taiwan's political culture rates vastly higher on the socialism scale than does China's.

Closer to home, closer where American political parties are located on Moral Matrix' cultural Map:

Even closer to home, here is where I placed on my national political map when I took the Moral Matrix Test:
Frankly, I was surprised. For one thing, I never considered voting for Ford! And I voted for John Kerry, pinching my nose with my fingers, only because the MSM had disqualified Howard Dean!

Moral Matrix stipulates that there is wide disagreement about what constitutes "capitalism". That said, Capital Republicanism is described

as a moderate form of Conservatism; Capital Republicans are in favor of a Capitalist market economy and a strong moral order (abortion-control, tradional family values, strong military, etc.

Capital Democratism is described as

...a form of Moderate Liberalism; Capital Democrats are in favor of a Capitalist market economy and a looser moral order , e.g., legalized abortion, acceptance of alternative lifestyles, environmental issues, gun-control, etc.

I expected to land among the Social Democrats:

...a moderate form of Socialism; The Social Democratic current came into being by a break within the Socialist movement in the early 20th century. One reformist group of Socialists rejected the idea of a Socialist revolution, and instead tried to achieve the Socialist ideals through Democratic means.

Social Democrats are in favor of a highly regulated Capitalist market economy, but with a strong and large government.

Social Democracy is often considered the most commonly embraced political ideology in the world.

As opposed to Social Republicanism:

a moderate form of Authoritarianism.

Republicanism describes what is more commonly called a representative democracy; it restricts the term "democracy" to refer only to direct democracy.

For these reason, the primary difference between the Social Democracy and Social Republicanism is that latter's attachment to preserve existing class structures and delineations.

All I can say is that everything hinges on how the questions in a poll are phrased. I venture to guess that most of my readers will surprise themselves if they take this short survey: I'm betting they will land in my neighborhood.

Readers are invited to take the test and record their results in the comments below. Alternatively, if they make a copy of their map and mail it to me, I'll present it right here!

Petro
has emailed
this in.
I can't say
I'm that
surprised
at the mark
he leaves!

Woodstock Nation - Happy 40th!!

2009-08-16T00:04:00.001-07:00

In the summer of '69, there were three days of peace and music.

We couldn't make it there, but others were there for us.

Not Everyone Deserves a 2nd Chance

2009-08-14T23:38:00.001-07:00

That's Squeaky Fromme on the left and Leslie Van Houten on the right.
In 1969, both were members of the Charley Manson gang.

Under the influence of Manson at the age of 20, Van Houten invaded the home of Rosemary LaBianca on the night of August 10, 1969 and fatally stabbed her 16 times. Van Houten was sentenced to death on March 29, 1971. Retried a couple of times and finally sentenced to life imprisonment.

Squeaky Fromme never killed anyone. On the morning of September 5, 1975, Fromme tried to shoot President Gerald Ford with a .45 cal automatic but her gun did not have a round in the firing chamber. She was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Today, after three decades behind bars, Squeaky Fromme walked.

Leslie Van Houten, also 60, remains in prison. I am not writing this column about Van Houton. For detailed treatment of her circumstances, I recommend John Waters, Leslie Van Houten: A Friendship.

In Squeaky Fromme's case, her release is a miscarriage of justice.

In a democracy, political killings are distinguished from common murders. That’s why many of them are called assassinations. The killing of a political leader, a witness in a court trial, writer or a journalist is a blow against the nation itself and its constitution. It is intended to silence the victim, to deny society of his/her further contribution in words or deeds. Such anti-democratic atrocities deserve paramount attention from all of us and all of our institutions. They should be punished to the fullest extent permitted under law, short of capital punishment.

And that applies to attempted/unsuccessful assassinations.

To liberate Squeaky Fromme today, when fools are allowed to carry side arms to raucous town meetings and confront political leaders is insane. The message will not go unnoticed in the twilight shadows and swamplands of America.

Tea-Baggers and Town-Hallers In My 'Hood!

2009-08-14T09:34:00.001-07:00

Actually, Tea-Drinkers and Town-Howlers!

While I've been preoccupied
and off the streets,
my friends and neighbors
have taken to the streets.

Stuff has happened. I've been preoccupied with a family emergency. My 1995 Infinity J-30 suddenly proved not to live up its name. 14 years and 99,000 is not my idea of infinity. I'm trying to convene a death panel, but Trophy Wife wants to keep Jay around on life-support for another six months. Ballou, my Trophy Doberwoman has trashed the the back seats, rendering Jay unsaleable. But this week, Jay has been diagnosed as being undependable. For me, Jay has been a beautiful British racing green companion - up until yesterday. But today, she is a clunker waiting to clunk. Cash for Clunkers, is what I say: you get zippo for a clunk.

But things meanwhile, things are happening!
I recognize the people in these shots, and they're beautiful!

I'm told the local crowd in favor of single-payer healthcare outnumbered the shills for for-profits, 8-1!

How Liberalism Created Neo-Conservativism

2009-08-11T06:19:00.000-07:00

Book Review or Bait 'n Switch?

Synopsis:

This book shows the growth of a political movement through the eyes of one of its important players.Wattenberg examines the Neo-Con agenda and finds much to admire, despite the bad reputation they have been laboring under.

I guess I'll make this...

. . . A bait 'n switch!

Besides, I can't really review what I haven't read or preview what I will never read...

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Ben Wattenberg

www.thedailyshow.com

Jon Stewart's 'blurb' is enough to kill off this tome.

On Corporate Sponsorship of Astro-Turf Healthcare Protests

2009-08-10T10:24:00.001-07:00

Today, Michelle Malkin is casting herself as whining,

We’ve endured a week’s worth of Democrat demagoguery about how opponents of Obamacare are nothing but corporate shills for evil health care corporations...

She should prepare herself to endure more of the truth...

...because health insurance corporation spokesmen, in taking due pains to show up at town meetings with their "home-made" signs,

are neglecting to shuck their uniforms.

Gog and Magog

2009-08-08T20:11:00.000-07:00

Suspending My Disbelief!

I don't involve myself in fringe politics or conspiracy theories. You won't find me discussing the pros and cons of troofers, birthers, deathers, Holocaust deniers, UFO abductees, Atlantean Conspiracy theorists, and the like. So I'm not altogether feeling good about introducing this evening's column by saying I don't effing believe half of what follows. I've seen the words in Google headlines for the last week maybe, but never bit on reading anything beneath the headlines until I saw the always level-headed Juan Cole devoting a few column inches to it. Looking around further, I have finally decided I have to suspend my disbelief, and at least air this for the ~~hysterical~~ historical record.

Gog et Magog concerns a brief event alleged to have occurred leading up to Bush and Cheney's illegal invasion of Iraq. It seems that with less than a month before his invasion, in February 2003, George Bush phoned up French President Jacques Chirac in a last ditch effort to get the French to join the "Coalition of the Willing". In itself, that's not news to any one.

What's new and news, to me any how, was Bush's argument. According to an interview Chirac gave French journalist Jean-Claude Maurice and included Maurice's Si Vous le Répétez, Je Démentirai published only this year, Bush argued that

Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins...

My Biblical literacy is less than most of my readers, or I would have recognized this reference from The Book of Revelations. Chirac, the story goes, did not give a thought about complying with Bush and joing in with the invasion. Instead he was stunned as to "how someone so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs" could be the head of a modern state. Apparently Chirac's Bibilical scholarship was challenged too, for he had his staff consult Thomas Romer, a theologian at the University of Lausanne, who analyzed Bush's weird appeal.

In addition to the New Testament passage, Dr. Romer explained that the Old Testament book of Ezekiel contains two chapters in which God rages against Gog and Magog, sinister and mysterious forces menacing Israel. Jehovah vows to smite them savagely, to “turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws,” and slaughter them ruthlessly.

Dr. Romer recounted Bush’s strange behavior in Lausanne University’s review, Allez Savoir in 2007. A French-language Swiss newspaper, Le Matin Dimanche, printed a sarcastic account titled: “When President George W. Bush Saw the Prophesies of the Bible Coming to Pass.” France’s La Liberte likewise spoofed it under the headline “A Small Scoop on Bush, Chirac, God, Gog and Magog.”

But the story has largely been hidden by the ever-discrete MSM, presumably as part of their code of silence which preserves professional secrets among statesmen. After all, Si Vous le Répétez, Je Démentirai translates as "if you repeat it, I will deny it."

In these pages, I have been accused of being afflicted with Bush Derangement. I'm not sure what exactly that means. Certainly it can be said that, in attributing responsibility for all of the calamities which have afflicted upon my once great country in this young 21st Century, I have never given George Bush the benefit of doubt.

But the thought that Bush was motivated to invade Iraq because he was stricken with a couple of Biblical passages, strains even my credulity. I guess you could say that, like Andrew Sullivan, I am left agog.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell

2009-08-08T13:25:00.000-07:00

Neighbors in my hood are very discrete.

People never ask me about who comes to visit. And, of course I would never ask my next door neighbor about her overnight guests.... What would be the point?

She would never tell.

Besides, what could she say?

Time Out for a Public Service Announcement

2009-08-06T07:45:00.000-07:00

The attentive reader will have noticed that the title of this column did not include the phrase, "Government Service". That's because my largely American readership does not like the word "government". I didn't want to turn people off by committing a party-foul. It's a cultural thing.

Therefore, even though the subject is 'government', I employ the euphemism of 'public'. After all, doesn't every close student of current politics appreciate how much better "public health insurance" and "public option"
sound as opposed to the alternate phrasing preferred by the Party of NO?

But this is almost beside the point of today's column.

The real point is that my favorite blogging acquaintance de jour, Stimpson Writes, has generously introduced to all of us a wonderfully timely and important resource, Government Is Good.

I, in turn, will do as much as I can to promulgate awareness of this site and its Unapologetic Defense of a Vital Institution.
At first glance, this site seems to me to be where I should spend my reading time while I should be working.

Happy B-Day Mr. President

2009-08-04T22:57:00.001-07:00

Time-out for a Cool Change!

POTUS #44's birth certificate was issued 48 years ago. That's a day worth celebrating.

But I'm going to chill.

Tomorrow is another mid-week twilight "Beer Can race" on the water, just off the shores of Lake Sozadee and I'm thinking it will be an especially welcome opportunity for a Cool Change!

All things are joined by waters, troubled or not.
As we observe our President's birthday, we are learning that we must rededicate ourselves to the struggle for the future against our past. The process doesn't become any easier. Results just become more critical.

Who Was Tommy Douglas?

2009-08-04T00:10:00.000-07:00

You learn somethin' everyday!

Officially launched on April 5, 2004, The Greatest Canadian was a television program series by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) to determine who is considered to be the greatest Canadian of all time, at least among those who watched and participated in the program. More than 1.2 million votes were cast. Wayne Gretzky was not selected.

The top 10 finishers were:

Tommy Douglas (yeah! Who was he?)
Terry Fox (athlete, activist, humanitarian)
Pierre Trudeau (Prime Minister)
Sir Frederick Banting (medical scientist, co-discoverer of insulin)
David Suzuki (geneticist, environmentalist, broadcaster, activist)
Lester Bowles Pearson (Prime Minister, former United Nations General Assembly President, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate)
Don Cherry (hockey coach, commentator)
Sir John A. Macdonald (First post-Confederation Prime Minister)
Alexander Graham Bell (Scottish-born scientist, inventor, founder of the Bell Telephone Company, which later became the American Telephone and Telegraph Company)
Wayne Gretzky (hockey player)

Tommy Douglas, was not just the Premier of Saskatchewan, but the father of Canadian Medicare. Jerome Doolittle of Bad Attitudes informs me:

For more than 50 years, his staunch devotion to social causes, rousing powers of speech and pugnacious charm made Tommy C. Douglas an unstoppable political force. From his first foray into public office politics in 1934 to his post-retirement years in the 1970s, Canada’s ‘father of Medicare’ stayed true to his socialist beliefs — often at the cost of his own political fortune — and earned himself the respect of millions of Canadians in the process…

Tommy Douglas’s legacy as a social policy innovator lives on. Social welfare, universal Medicare, old age pensions and mothers’ allowances — Douglas helped keep these ideas current, watching as more established political parties eventually came to accept these once-radical ideas as their own.

You learn something every day....

Congress Don't Sweat No Health Insurance

2009-08-03T22:01:00.000-07:00

Why should they? They've got theirs!

Sunday's Los Angeles Times printed an article by Mark Z. Barabak and Faye Fiore entitled: "For Congress, healthcare's no worry".

The headline is absolutely true. There is NO problem at all for any member of Congress, nor for 8.5 million federal employees and their dependents, including postal service employees, each and all of whom received almost 15 billion dollars last year from we taxpayers, who subsidize the health care that the aforementioned folk received last year.

Our Congress persons get to choose from among ten or eleven different plans; they receive coverage immediately (no denial of coverage, nor having to wait before their coverage begins because of a "preexisting condition"); and best of all: we taxpayers pay the cost of three-quarters of their premiums.

No wonder the Republicans and the "Blue Dog" Dems want to maintain the status quo!

Former Congressional colleagues have moved on to become lobbyists for the For Profit healthcare insurance companies and enjoy an easy access to Congress that ordinary citizens cannot even dream of having.

And, always, money flows from the pharmaceutical and so-called "healthcare" industries into too many campaign coffers, rendering the recipients beholden to the greed of corporate executives obsessed with titrating and denying care so that the industry can make money for the stockholders and continue to pay its executives obscene amounts of money.

We need to remember that the healthcare industry used to be replete with NON-PROFIT insurance companies. It is disgraceful that the healthcare industry makes money by over-ruling physicians and denying needed procedures to individuals insured by them, often when patients are too frightened and or ill to challenge being denied, or worse, dis-enrolled.

Republicans attempt to scare Americans by fear-mongering, threatening the listener with dire (and completely untrue) warnings that healthcare reform will put something or someone in between the patient and her physician, blissfully ignoring the fact that right now we have medically untrained "Bean Counters" who routinely over-rule physicians on a daily basis, most decidedly coming between the patient and his doctor (and practicing medicine without a license).

There is one member of Congress who actually "Gets It", and who is living his convictions. Representative Steve Kagen from Wisconsin, a Democratic lawmaker who spent decades as a
practicing physician before being elected to Congress in 2006, has actually REFUSED to accept federal healthcare benefits, and plans to continue so doing until all Americans can enjoy the very same coverage as do all the other members of Congress. Kagen says,

If every member of Congress put their heads on their pillow every night like I do . . . knowing this could be the night I lose my house, we'd fix healthcare in a week.

Let's all email, fax, or telephone OUR federal lawmakers, informing them of Kagen's integrity and courage, while also urging them to open up the federal plan so that every single American can enjoy the same dependable access to healthcare that they currently enjoy. And while we're at it, let's email, fax, or telephone Dr. Kagen, a most admirable human being. And, those who "twitter", could send him some thankful "tweets".

The Iraq Disconnect

2009-08-02T22:53:00.001-07:00

Congressman Dennis Kucinich and Col. Timothy R. Reese tried to connect these two dots this week, but no one was listening.

First, Congressman Kucinich calls for a Debate on National Priorities, and speaks against the Military Funding Bill:

We are discussing a $636 billion appropriations bill which will fund the continuation of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Congress has been gripped for months by a debate surrounding health care reform, but we will only have a brief debate about spending $636 billion dollars and the wars that money will fund.
That is not enough.

We need to have a serious debate about the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan and the priorities of this nation. We need to discuss our options and we must immediately withdraw U.S. troops and contractors, not just combat troops, but all of our troops. It is time for this body to rethink the validity of funding military operations throughout the world when we have so many priorities that need to be addressed at home.

And then Congressman Kucinich cited a confidential Memo written by Col. Timothy R. Reese, Chief, Baghdad Operations Command Advisory Team, MND-B, Baghdad, Iraq. Before deploying to Iraq, Colonel Reese served as the director of the Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, the Army’s premier intellectual center. Col Reese was a co-author of an official Army history of the Iraq war - “On Point II” - which was sharply critical of the lapses in postwar planning. On Point II was part of the study of "Lessons Learned" in the aftermath of Rumsfeld's Pentagon's trainwreck.

The Reese Memo was not intended for general release but the New York Times obtained it and published it last Friday. I publish it below because I think it deserves wider attention than it has so far received. I have revised it only with selective bullet paragraphs, boldfacing and underscoring:

It’s Time for the US to Declare Victory and Go Home

As the old saying goes, “guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.” Since the signing of the 2009 Security Agreement, we are guests in Iraq, and after six years in Iraq, we now smell bad to the Iraqi nose.

Today the Iraqi Security Forces are good enough to keep the Government of Iraq from being overthrown by the actions of Al Qaeda in Iraq , the Baathists, and the Shia violent extremists that might have toppled it a year or two ago. Iraq may well collapse into chaos of other causes, but we have made the Iraqi Security Forces strong enough for the internal security mission.

Perhaps it is one of those infamous paradoxes of counterinsurgency that while the Iraqi Security Forces is not good in any objective sense, it is good enough for Iraq in 2009. Despite this foreboding disclaimer about an unstable future for Iraq, the United States has achieved our objectives in Iraq.

Prime Minister (PM) Maliki hailed June 30th as a “great victory,” implying the victory was over the US. Leaving aside his childish chest pounding, he was more right than he knew. We, too, ought to declare victory and bring our combat forces home. Due to our tendency to look after the tactical details and miss the proverbial forest for the trees, this critically important strategic realization is in danger of being missed.

Equally important to realize is that we aren’t making the Government of Iraq and the Iraqi Security Forces better in any significant ways with our current approach. Remaining in Iraq through the end of December 2011 will yield little in the way of improving the abilities of the Iraqi Security Forces or the functioning of the Government of Iraq.

Furthermore, in light of the Government of Iraq’s current interpretation of the limitations imposed by the 30 June milestones of the 2008 Security Agreement, the security of US forces are at risk. Iraq is not a country with a history of treating even its welcomed guests well. This is not to say we can be defeated, only that the danger of a violent incident that will rupture the current partnership has greatly increased since 30 June. Such a rupture would force an unplanned early departure that would harm our long term interests in Iraq and potentially unraveling the great good that has been done since 2003. The use of the military instrument of national power in its current form has accomplished all that can be expected. In the next section I will present and admittedly one sided view of the evidence in support of this view. This information is drawn solely from the MND-B area of operations in Baghdad Province. My reading of reports from the other provinces suggests the same situation exists there.

The general lack of progress in essential services and good governance is now so broad that it ought to be clear that we no longer are moving the Iraqis “forward.”Below is an outline of the information on which I base this assessment:

1. The ineffectiveness and corruption of Government of Iraq Ministries is the stuff of legend.

2. The anti-corruption drive is little more than a campaign tool for Maliki

3. The Government of Iraq is failing to take rational steps to improve its electrical infrastructure and to improve their oil exploration, production and exports.

4. There is no progress towards resolving the Kirkuk situation.

5. Sunni Reconciliation is at best at a standstill and probably Going backwards.

6. Sons of Iraq (SOI) or Sahwa transition to Iraqi Security Forces and Government of Iraq civil service is not happening, and SOI monthly paydays continue to fall further behind.

7. The Kurdish situation continues to fester.

8. Political violence and intimidation is rampant in the civilian community as well as military and legal institutions.

9. The Vice President received a rather cool reception this past weekend and was publicly told that the internal affairs of Iraq are none of the US’s business.

The rate of improvement of the Iraqi Security Forces is far slower than it should be given the amount of effort and resources being provided by the US. The US has made tremendous progress in building the Iraqi Security Forces. Our initial efforts in 2003 to mid-2004 were only marginally successful. From 2004 to 2006 the US built the Iraqi Security Forces into a fighting force. Since the start of the surge in 2007 we have again expanded and improved the Iraqi Security Forces. They are now at the point where they have defeated the organized insurgency against the Government of Iraq and are marginally self-sustaining. This is a remarkable tale for which many can be justifiably proud. We have reached the point of diminishing returns, however, and need to find a new set of tools. The massive partnering efforts of US combat forces with Iraqi Security Forces isn’t yielding benefits commensurate with the effort and is now generating its own opposition. Again, some touch points for this assessment are:

1. If there ever was a window where the seeds of a professional military culture could have been implanted, it is now long past. US combat forces will not be here long enough or with sufficient influence to change it.

2. The military culture of the Baathist-Soviet model under Saddam Hussein remains entrenched and will not change. The senior leadership of the Iraqi Security Forces is incapable of change in the current environment.

Corruption among officers is widespread
Neglect and mistreatment of enlisted men is the norm
The unwillingness to accept a role for the NCO corps continues
Cronyism and nepotism are rampant in the assignment and promotion system
Laziness is endemic
Extreme centralization of C2 is the norm
Lack of initiative is legion
Unwillingness to change, do anything new blocks progress
Near total ineffectiveness of the Iraq Army and National Police institutional organizations and systems prevents the Iraqi Security Forces from becoming self-sustaining
For every positive story about a good Iraqi Security Forces junior officer with initiative, or an Iraqi Security Forces commander who conducts a rehearsal or an after action review or some individual MOS training event, there are ten examples of the most basic lack of military understanding despite the massive partnership efforts by our combat forces and advisory efforts by MiTT and NPTT teams.

3. For all the fawning praise we bestow on the Baghdad Operations Command and Ministry of Defense leadership for their effectiveness since the start of the surge, they are flawed in serious ways. Below are some salient examples:

They are unable to plan ahead, unable to secure the PM’s approval for their actions
They are unable to stand up to Shiite political parties
They were and are unable to conduct an public relations effort in support of the Status of Forces Agreement and now they are afraid of the ignorant masses as a result
They unable to instill discipline among their officers and units for the most basic military standards
They are unable to stop the nepotism and cronyism
They are unable to take basic steps to manage the force development process
They are unable to stick to their deals with US leaders

It is clear that the 30 Jun milestone does not represent one small step in a long series of gradual steps on the path the US withdrawal, but as Maliki has termed it, a “great victory” over the Americans and fundamental change in our relationship. The recent impact of this mentality on military operations is evident:

1. Iraqi Ground Forces Command (IGFC) unilateral restrictions on US forces that violate the most basic aspects of the Status of Forces Agreement

2. Baghdad Operations Command unilateral restrictions that violate the most basic aspects of the Status of Forces Agreement

3. International Zone incidents in the last week where Iraqi Security Forces forces have resorted to shows of force to get their way at Entry Control Points (ECP) including the forcible takeover of ECP 1 on 4 July

4. Sudden coolness to advisors and CDRs, lack of invitations to meetings,

5. Widespread partnership problems reported in other areas such as Iraqi Security Forces confronting US forces at TCPs in the city of Baghdad and other major cities in Iraq.

6. Iraqi Security Forces units are far less likely to want to conduct combined combat operations with US forces, to go after targets the US considers high value, etc.

7. The Iraqi legal system in the Rusafa side of Baghdad has demonstrated a recent willingness to release individuals originally detained by the US for attacks on the US.

Yet despite all their grievous shortcomings noted above, Iraqi Security Forces military capability is sufficient to handle the current level of threats from Sunni and Shiite violent groups. Our combat forces’ presence here on the streets and in the rural areas adds only marginally to their capability while exposing us to attacks to which we cannot effectively respond.

The Government of Iraq and the Iraqi Security Forces will not be toppled by the violence as they might have been between 2006 and 2008. Though two weeks does not make a trend, the near cessation of attacks since 30 June speaks volumes about how easily Shiite violence can be controlled and speaks to the utter weakness of Al Qaeda in Iraq. The extent of Al Qaeda influence in Iraq is so limited as to be insignificant, only when they get lucky with a mass casualty attack are they relevant. Shiite groups are working with the Prime Minister and his political allies, or plotting to work against him in the upcoming elections. We are merely convenient targets for delivering a message against Maliki by certain groups, and perhaps by Maliki when he wants us to be targeted. Extremist violence from all groups is directed towards affecting their political standing within the existing power structures of Iraq. There is no longer any coherent insurgency or serious threat to the stability of the Government of Iraq posed by violent groups.

Our combat operations are currently the victim of circular logic. We conduct operations to kill or capture violent extremists of all types to protect the Iraqi people and support the Government of Iraq. The violent extremists attack us because we are still here conducting military operations. Furthermore, their attacks on us are no longer an organized campaign to defeat our will to stay; the attacks which kill and maim U.S. combat troops are signals or messages sent by various groups as part of the political struggle for power in Iraq. The exception to this is Al Qaeda in Iraq which continues is globalist terror campaign. Our operations are in support of an Iraqi government that no longer relishes our help while at the same time our operations generate the extremist opposition to us as various groups jockey for power in post-occupation Iraq.

The Government of Iraq and Iraqi Security Forces will continue to squeeze the U.S. for all the “goodies” that we can provide between now and December 2011, while eliminating our role in providing security and resisting our efforts to change the institutional problems prevent the Iraqi Security Forces from getting better. They will tolerate us as long as they can suckle at Uncle Sam’s bounteous mammary glands. Meanwhile the level of resistance to American freedom of movement and operations will grow. The potential for Iraqi-on-American violence is high now and will grow by the day. Resentment on both sides will build and reinforce itself until a violent incident break outs into the open. If that were to happen the violence will remain tactically isolated, but it will wreck our strategic relationships and force our withdrawal under very unfavorable circumstances.

For a long time the preferred US approach has been to “work it at the lowest level of partnership” as a means to stay out of the political fray and with the hope that good work at the tactical level will compensate for and slowly improve the strategic picture. From platoon to brigade, US Soldiers and Marines continue to work incredibly hard and in almost all cases they achieve positive results. This approach has achieved impressive results in the past, but today it is failing. The strategic dysfunctions of the Government of Iraq and Iraqi Security Forces have now reached down to the tactical level degrading good work there and sundering hitherto strong partnerships. As one astute political observer has stated

We have lost all strategic influence with the Government of Iraq and trying to influence events and people from the tactical/operational level is courting disaster, wasting lives, and merely postponing the inevitable.

The reality of Iraq in July 2009 has rendered the assumptions underlying the 2008 Status of Forces Agreement overcome by events — mostly good events actually. The Status of Forces Agreement outlines a series of gradual steps towards military withdrawal, analogous to a father teaching his kid to ride a bike without training wheels. If the Government of Iraq at the time the Status of Forces Agreement was signed thought it needed a long, gradual period of weaning. But the Government of Iraq now has left the nest (while continuing to breast feed as noted above). The strategic and tactical realities have changed far quicker than the provisions and timeline of the Status of Forces Agreement can accommodate. We now have an Iraqi government that has gained its balance and thinks it knows how to ride the bike in the race. And in fact they probably do know how to ride, at least well enough for the road they are on against their current competitors. Our hand on the back of the seat is holding them back and causing resentment. We need to let go before we both tumble to the ground.

Therefore, we should declare our intentions to withdraw all US military forces from Iraq by August 2010. This would not be a strategic paradigm shift, but an acceleration of existing US plans by some 15 months. We should end our combat operations now, save those for our own force protection, narrowly defined, as we withdraw. We should revise the force flow into Iraq accordingly. The emphasis should shift towards advising only and advising the Iraqi Security Forces to prepare for our withdrawal. Advisors should probably be limited to Iraqi division level a higher. Our train and equip functions should begin the transition to Foreign Military Sales and related training programs. During the withdrawal period the USG and Government of Iraq should develop a new strategic framework agreement that would include some lasting military presence at 1-3 large training bases, airbases, or key headquarters locations. But it should not include the presence of any combat forces save those for force protection needs or the occasional exercise. These changes would not only align our actions with the reality of Iraq in 2009, it will remove the causes of increasing friction and reduce the cost of OIF in blood and treasure. Finally, it will set the conditions for a new relationship between the US and Iraq without the complications of the residual effects of the US invasion and occupation.

It matters not to me that Col. Reese has also recently written a retrogressive attack against health care reform. He's wrong on health insurance but he's spot-on with his day-time job.

It seems he has put his finger on the dilemma facing all hostile occupations: when and how to let go? Reese admits that "Iraq may well collapse into chaos of other causes." If that's the fate Iraq will undergo whenever we leave, as Reese suggests, then better to leave now before we spend gazillion$ more in the interregnum. (I read somewhere that we are currently paying $25 million a month in hard cash to the Sunni Arab insurgent forces not to fight.)

I feel a little apologetic for rephrasing old arguments: if it hadn't been for Bush's unnecessary invasion and occupation of Mesopotamia, we wouldn't be saddled with maintaining Iraq on life support status indefinitely. (Speaking of life support, we have our own national health issues we have to cover.)

But I won't apologize, because Cheney himself raised the same argument in 1991.

We, the American people, have yet to face the question of when to stop paying for band-aid solutions for Bushencheney's I-wreck.

Letting Go Is Never Easy. Let's leave now. It will be just as hard to leave later.

THE WANTED Is Not Wanted

2009-08-01T01:22:00.000-07:00

Toxic TV, Run Amuck

My attentive and retentive readers know me not to be much of a TV critic. I'm not much of a fan of teevee in general. To put it mildly, I am TV-averse. If the set I'm walking by is not showing LA Dodger blue and white or Rachel Maddow black and gray, I'm switching the idiot box off.

So ... I have to anticipate the question,

What is Vigilante doing, writing a review?

Well, it's less than a review than a preview - because I will never watch this new NBC show, The Wanted. This hour-long show, now two weeks old, boasts of an ensemble team of paramilitary journalists who track down and expose accused war criminals and terrorists who have not only managed to avoid justice, but they are living in the open.

The premise involves NBC News putting together a so-called 'crack team' to track down terrorists and war criminals who are allegedly living "among us," and confronting them or helping authorities bring them to "justice." It clearly aspires to look and feel like a TV version of the Steven Spielberg film Munich, a docu-drama about a team of Mossad assassins avenging the massacre of Israeli athletes by terrorists at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

For example, pictured at the right is Mullah Krekar. His real name is Najmuddin Faraj Ahmad. founder of the extremist Kurdish group, Ansar al Islam. He is currently living openly in Oslo, Norway. Ostensibly wanted by the Kurds, he was first granted refugee status by Norway 18 years ago. Yeah, that was 1991 during the Persian Gulf War. The Mullah was featured in the opening episode of The Wanted on 20 July.

As far as Krekar's presence in Norway is concerned, it's a domestic issue for Norwegians, who want him gone. The Norwegian Supreme Court has ordered Krekar expelled from the country, but officials said international law prohibits them from extraditing him until they are convinced he will not be tortured or executed. It turns out that as soon as the Kurds can guarantee that he won't receive Abu Ghraib style treatment, they can have him back.

The following Monday (July 27), The Wanted's viewers traveled to Germany on the trail of Mamoun Darkazanli, ostensibly "Bin Laden's financier." Spanish officials indicted Darkazanli in 2003 for providing logistical and financial support to al-Qaida, and have negotiated with the Germans for his deportation.

Spokesmen for the show are exuberant. They say "The Wanted" brings together a cast with elite backgrounds in intelligence, unconventional warfare and investigative journalism. They say the show focuses on real operators, in search of real targets - all in an effort to see evil-doing individuals brought to justice.

NBC News executive producer David Corvo says,

We hope this program sheds light on an overlooked story, It is surprising how many people with serious accusations against them are living openly and avoiding any sort of judicial process.

The show's David Crane, a decorated former US intelligence official and the first American to serve as Chief Prosecutor of an international war crimes tribunal since Justice Robert Jackson at Nuremberg says,

'The Wanted' is about seeking justice for the many victims of terrorism and atrocity around the world. It will start a national conversation, an important dialog about war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and international terrorism, as well as the indifference and political cynicism that hampers international criminal law and the quest for justice. 'The Wanted' drives home the point that the rule of law is more powerful than the rule of the gun."

Roger Carstens who is recognized by the show as one of the world's preeminent authorities on counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency, says,

This is not just a show to me, It's a mission. We're just trying to make this world a safer and better place...

And Adam Ciralski, the NBC producer identified on screen as "investigative journalist", is seen strutting around and saying things like,

Norway is letting justice stand in the way of justice.

"The Wanted" obviously panders to the Reichwing impulse to see all terrorism as international and Islamic and to keep all home-grown, gun-infatuated, native-American, shooting sprees off our DHS radar screens.

Mary Katharine Ham, writing for the Weekly Standard, applauds the show:

The Left is predictably squeamish about the projection of American moral authority via flashy extra-governmental investigations, and the unfairness and psychic pain such uncouth behavior might cause murderous terrorists and the Euro-wimpy bureaucracies that harbor them. They're not nearly as concerned about terrorists and accused perpetrators [of] human rights violations living freely in Western countries with impunity.

I think NBC News is letting reality-show aesthetics get in the way of journalism.

I didn't know anything about this show until two weeks ago when I heard an inane interview on NPR featuring one of the actors. At that moment I became convinced that such a cheesy show has to have been an idiot's idea. As an American, I became instantly and deeply embarrassed.

Neither the interviewer nor the callers asked the really important questions or pointed out the only obvious point to be raised which could illuminate the truth burning and seething to be aired.

If the show's producers want to find internationally famous unindicted war criminals walking among us, they don't have to go to Norway. They can find one of the top ten in Crawford, Texas. Another in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Another in Taos, New Mexico.

Need I go on?

Moving On!

2009-07-31T08:40:00.000-07:00

The Movie!

It all started with one email!

Order the DVD for $20!

Beer Summit Conference

2009-07-30T08:03:00.000-07:00

The Good, Bad & Ugly

I'm toasting
Carolita Johnson

MIA

2009-07-28T07:03:00.001-07:00

My gigantic, intolerable, nightmarish 3-day Internet outage is finally over. I feel like I was suspended like Manny Ramirez and Michael Vick by Al Gore, the Founder of the 'Net. Talk about dropping the A-bomb on Orangeburg! WTF did I do? Even more important, what have I missed?

Why Max Baucus (DINO) Refuses to Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way

2009-07-27T23:08:00.001-07:00

Max Baucus is the Democratic (Blue-Dog Wing) Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

He represents a relatively conservative state, he isn't up for re-election until 2014. He seems more interested in negotiating with Republicans than with his own party. Baucus says he wants a bipartisan Medical Health Plan bill out of his committee.

Why is he so passionate about Bipartisanship? Is it because he is representing his constituency?

Lawmakers have two constituencies: one, the voters back home; and the other, the people and interests that finance much of their re-election campaigns. These donors often live out of state.

When Baucus ran for his sixth term last year, his campaign raised $11.6 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Nearly half of the funds came from out-of-state donors, including millions from health care and other industries overseen by Finance and Baucus' other committees.

Clicking on the chart to the right will disclose which constituency senators Baucus and Grassley are representing.

All five of his Baucus' former Senate staffers now lobby Congress for various interests. Among their clients: drugmakers Wyeth, Merck, Amgen and AstraZeneca, plus the third-largest corporation in the world, Wal-Mart.Baucus' patrons and handlers understand Baucus when he says "Sloooow" on the Public Option portion of the legislation, he actually means "Noooooo". He's only doing what he's been paid to do.

I'll Give You Socialism!

2009-07-27T18:51:00.000-07:00

Glen Beck cries Socialism:

Raping the pocketbooks of the rich to give to the poor? Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's socialism. The tougher question is this: What is America? Here's the One Thing: America is in a transition period — only no one knows what we are transitioning into. Are we capitalist? Are we socialist? Are we communist? Are we an oligarchy?

You want socialism? I'll give you Socialism:

Frank Llewellyn is the national director of Democratic Socialists of America. In Socialism And The Politics Of Fear, Llewellyn writes, that Republicans And Their Media Allies Never Really Define What They Mean By Socialism:

"Socialism" is now an active part of the Republican lexicon, among the litany of routine charges to be trotted out whenever they cannot come up with a substantive critique of policy initiatives they oppose. Beginning with a steady drumbeat from the far-right blogosphere during last year's Democratic primary campaign, Republicans have attacked health care reform and modest progressive tax reform proposals as somehow "un-American," "European," and, God-forbid, "socialist!"

When the Republicans lost the election and the Obama administration filled its Treasury positions with former Goldman Sachs executives, we socialists thought that was the end of these baseless charges. But when the Republicans found themselves with nothing to say about how to shore-up an economy in free-fall, they deemed the stimulus bill socialist - even though the architect of such policies, John Maynard Keynes, advocated a capitalist economic system.

Republicans and their media allies never really define what they mean by socialism ….. Whatever their definition of socialism is, the term is gaining currency among some Republicans as a form of blanket condemnation of the President and Democratic reform proposals. …..

….. Just, like the New Deal-era Roosevelt haters, these Republicans erroneously term a president who is trying to save capitalism from itself a socialist.

Contemporary democratic socialists want to mitigate the many adverse impacts that unregulated capitalist markets have on the lives of ordinary people by supporting intelligent democratic regulation of the economy (particularly the financial sector) and by using progressive taxation to finance high-quality public goods that can satisfy all citizens' basic needs for health care, education, unemployment insurance, and job training. We do not wish to destroy markets for consumer goods or to confiscate personal property. Rather, we want to establish efficient government regulation of financial markets so that ordinary citizens can secure stable financing for the purchase of such important personal property as an affordable home.

In other developed democracies, national health care systems are so popular that once they have been established it is politically impossible to eliminate them. In a recent Gallup poll, while only fifty-seven percent of United States residents said they were satisfied with their health care, over seventy-five percent of Canadians and Western Europeans said they would not trade their health care system for the current U. S. model. That is the real reason that Republicans are trying to sow doubt and prevent passage of a national health care bill: they want to protect the for-profit health care and pharmaceutical industries.

American socialists (and many more non-socialists, including 86 members of Congress) support HR 676, John Conyers' Medicare for All single-payer national health plan, which would replace the private insurance industry with a government agency but would preserve personal choice of physician and hospital care.

We socialists are deeply suspicious of the Democratic Party leadership proposals for health care. We worry that these proposals lack a sufficiently robust public insurance option to provide an effective check on the private insurers. Any comparative analysis of health care systems indicates that the greater the role of private, for-profit health insurance companies in the delivery of health care, the higher the cost. This is why the United States has the most expensive healthcare system in the world but trails well behind on crucial indicators of public health, such as infant mortality, longevity, and death of women in childbirth.

The insurance companies don't like the Democratic leadership plan because in theory they might have to face effective competition from a public insurance option. Democratic socialists don't trust the insurance companies enough to keep them in the health insurance market. But President Obama does, which makes it much more likely that the pay-or-play predominantly private insurance plan we distrust is likely to pass. So exactly how does that put the President in a "cabal," to use Michael Steele's word, to advance socialist goals?

This socialist-baiting is more than just name-calling. We are in the middle of a prolonged economic crisis brought on by unrestrained and unregulated capitalism. Since it arose from a crisis in the banking and housing sectors, this economic crisis in particular cannot be solved by normal market mechanisms. There is not sufficient private purchasing power to rejuvenate demand, and capital markets remain very tight. Financial institutions are unwilling to renegotiate under-water mortgages and are even reducing credit lines to borrowers with strong credit ratings.

Absent government efforts to strengthen the rights of working people and organized labor, we face the likelihood of another jobless recovery and declining wages. The devastating decline in value of pensions, retirement accounts and housing means that many near retirement age and even many not so near to retirement will not be able to retire on schedule - and certainly not with dignity and security.

If the United States fails to democratically restructure its economy, we face a future of increased inequality and poverty. But the constant drumbeat of right-wing "socialist-baiting" makes it less likely that this administration will consider the public initiatives - such as investments in alternative energy, education, and health care - that could engender productive jobs at good wages.

Reactionary forces have always utilized anti-socialism to oppose democratic reforms that constrain corporate power. Corporate America tried to red-bait Social Security, the GI Bill, and Medicare. But ordinary Americans rejected the politics of fear, and reforms passed that significantly improved the lives of average Americans. It will take Americans once again rejecting mindless anti-socialism to create sufficient support for the extensive reforms needed to address this deep and systemic economic crisis.

Let's have change we can believe in. If it be socialism, then make the most of it.

We Americans Can’t Face the Truth about Afghanistan - Yet

2009-07-21T10:06:00.000-07:00

The English, however, are always ahead of the curve.

"Hell is truth seen too late...duty neglected in its season."

- Tryon Edwards

I hate to be negative. It would be quite irresponsible of me to be deliberately negative. Every time I write about foreign lands, far from my quiet central California coast, I say to myself,

"Why me?
What presumptions do I exercise,
that I can sally forth and cast
sarcasm, skepticism and pessimism
against the wind?
Especially now
when the White House is occupied
by arguably its smartest or second
smartest resident in my life time?"

Well, I will tell you. I am seven decades old this month, and I have seen all this shit go down before.I do not think I am shouting against the wind. Denial is a peculiar American trait. We not see geopolitical hurricanes before they arrive - long after they've appeared on others' radar screens.
Lately, I've been looking over the shoulders of some Brits and observing their CRTs'. What I see squares completely with what I've been feeling for some time in my old bones.

The The U.K.’s conservative Daily Express declares the Afghanistan war lost:

….. After the losses of the past few days, this half-hearted approach has become utterly unsustainable. Britain and indeed the whole of NATO must now decide whether this fiendishly difficult bid to tame a hitherto untamable land is worth all the blood that is being spilt.

This newspaper’s assessment is that the chance of outright victory in Afghanistan vanished the moment US and British forces went into Iraq. The focus on Afghanistan was lost and the coalition against terror broke up. There is now little prospect of the rest of NATO committing wholeheartedly to the fight against the Taliban. In a war of attrition, such as is presently being fought, victory will not be achieved, but heavy losses will certainly be sustained. Our brave soldiers deserve far better than that.

….. when a military entanglement has no plan, no metrics for success and no end in sight. The Tories are just getting out ahead of the curve.

….. renowned British military historian Correlli Barnett ….. that Britain must unilaterally withdraw from Afghanistan.

Why won't an American journalist confront the Obama administration and simply ask them, "How will we know when we've won?" Unless they can answer that in tangible terms, all we're doing is condemning more troops to death…..

The obvious answer is that we do not have a Cronkite to take full measure of this Afghanistan project of Obama's and tell us what the score is.

Correlli Barnet of the Daily Mail asks another question,

Who has the guts to pull out?

We should remember, they say, that thanks to the Western occupation, five million Afghan children now go to primary school, compared with one million in 2001. Surely that makes our servicemen's sacrifice worthwhile?

Yet many of us, especially those who have worn the King's or Queen's uniform, or know about our military history, believe it is not the role of the British Armed Forces to fight and die so that foreign children can go to school. Their proper role is, or ought to be, to safeguard the wealth and security of the British people - in short, to defend the British realm.

…. The toppling of the Taliban regime in 2001 has not prevented a string of Al-Qaeda outrages, including Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005.

….. the London bombings were perpetrated by British-born Muslims with no direct connection either to the Taliban or Al-Qaeda. The truth is that Al-Qaeda is no longer an organization centered on Afghanistan, but a global franchise.

….. The Duke of Wellington once said that the real test of a general was to know when to retreat and dare to do it. A cool-headed and objective examination of the military and political evidence about the state of play in Afghanistan ought to convince HM Government that Britain must retreat from Afghanistan, and that they must now dare to announce a future date for this.

…..It would take more moral courage on the Government's part to distance Britain from President Obama's positively Bushite pursuit of 'victory' in Afghanistan, and announce a firm date for the final evacuation of British forces.

….. But without such a brave decision, British servicemen and women will go on pointlessly dying, while a more and more disillusioned nation simply wants our troops home - - not in coffins draped with the Union Flag, but marching through cheering crowds.

Simon Jenkins of the Guardian, has an answer:

Britain must tell Obama: the alliance of denial has to end.

..... Diplomacy, your hour has come. There is no way soldiers will find an exit from Afghanistan. They can deliver defeat or they can deliver bloody stalemate. They cannot deliver victory and every observer knows it. This conflict will end only when the courage being daily demanded of soldiers is also shown by politicians.

..... Obama made a serious error on coming to power. To honour his pledge to disown Iraq he felt obliged to "adopt" Afghanistan. What had begun as a punitive raid on the Taliban for harbouring Osama bin Laden morphed into a neocon campaign of regime change, counter-insurgency and nation-building. Obama rashly identified himself with this crusade and leapt from the frying pan of Iraq into the fire of the Hindu Kush.

..... Terrorism does not need bases. The 9/11 attacks were planned in Germany. The safety of Britain's streets is secured not by boys dying in poppy fields, but by sound intelligence and domestic policing. We learned last week that MI5's former head, Eliza Manningham-Buller, specifically warned the government that British security would be harmed by intervention abroad. Ministers know this. Why do they lie?

..... as it suited Bush to identify the Taliban with al-Qaida, so it should now suit Obama to do the opposite. The Taliban has never shown any interest in international terrorism, only in ridding their country of foreigners. On this truth should some eventual deal be built.

The idea of establishing a western-style democracy is dead. The dreams of Kabul's NGO groupies, to install technocrats or elevate women or eradicate poppies, have vanished in a morass of corruption and aid extravagance.

..... Only colonialists build nations, and the will for empire was never present.

..... The Canadians, who have suffered terrible losses, have shown their sovereignty by signalling their intention to leave in 2011. Why not Britain?

The denouement will come only from negotiation. For British generals and politicians to talk of fighting in Helmand "for decades" is absurd, not least as neither the British public nor the Taliban believe it. Like the Canadians, they should give a date for withdrawal, to stop wasting British lives and to isolate Obama in his wrong-headed policy.

..... Tony Blair's failure to influence Bush over Iraq was humiliating. The mix of political obsequiousness and diplomatic smugness Washington detected in Britain then is being replicated today over Afghanistan .....

Dear readers, depending on your age, here's the truth without jokes: we are ensnared in the 2nd costly military quagmire in your lifetime, and the 3rd in my lifetime.

Surge in Afghanistan

2009-07-20T09:32:00.000-07:00

The Light at the end of the TunnelDo you see what I see?

Mellow in Mid-Summer

2009-07-19T06:53:00.001-07:00

Feels Like Home

Heard this song on the car radio as my Doberwoman and I returned from the beach yesterday. I think it was Pat Donahue performing it on Garrison Keillor's show.

Here it is with Chantal's interpretation.My thoughts are about loves, family, friends, homes, and time passing.

My hopes? My hopes are that those in my small but highly esteemed readership and commentariate are well and mellow, too.

Walter Cronkite, R.I.P.

2009-07-17T22:46:00.001-07:00

My recollections and reflections pertaining to the epochal life of Walter Cronkite are fragmented and scattered tonight. Random anecdotes registered on my conscious from the car radio on my way home; like the revelation that Cronkite so defined the role of TV news anchorman in the English-speaking world that in several European countries, a good anchorman was referred to as a "Cronkiter".

In my life, one 'Cronkiter' moment stands out and casts its shadow over all the other momentous Cronkite anchorages in America's passages through the 20th century.

1968 was a pivotal year in American political history. It was an election year. President Lyndon Johnson's reelection was challenged by determined primary opponents within his own party. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr was to be assassinated on April 4 of that year; and after him, Senator Robert F. Kennedy was shot down on June 5th.

In Vietnam, The Vietcong and People's Army of Vietnam (from North Vietnam) launched what came to be known as the Tet Offensive, striking military and civilian command and control centers throughout South Vietnam. The initial attacks stunned allied forces and took them by surprise, but most were quickly contained and beaten back, inflicting massive casualties on civilians Communist forces. By April, the last vestiges of the offensive were vanquished by American forces with horrendous casualties on the Communist forces.

Up until this point in the war, Walter Cronkite had believed in LBJ's intervention in this Vietnamese civil war. Even though the Tet Offensive was an American military success, it shocked domestic opinion, already rent with anti-war demonstrations: those of my fellow Americans who had been undecided about the war were incredulous as to how our enemy could sustain such an effort after we had been told by out leaders for so long, that there was "light at the end of the tunnel".

As the Tet Offensive subsided, Walter Cronkite decided to go to Vietnam himself and seek the answers to LBJ's Vietnam puzzle. After his return, Cronkite concluded his nightly broadcast of 27 February with a uniquely personal editorial report to his network audience:

Tonight, back in more familiar surroundings in New York, we'd like to sum up our findings in Vietnam, an analysis that must be speculative, personal, subjective.

Who won and who lost in the great Tet offensive against the cities?

I'm not sure.

The Vietcong did not win by a knockout, but neither did we. The referees of history may make it a draw. Another standoff may be coming in the big battles expected south of the Demilitarized Zone. Khesanh could well fall, with a terrible loss in American lives, prestige and morale, and this is a tragedy of our stubbornness there; but the bastion no longer is a key to the rest of the northern regions, and it is doubtful that the American forces can be defeated across the breadth of the DMZ with any substantial loss of ground. Another standoff.

On the political front, past performance gives no confidence that the [South] Vietnamese government can cope with its problems, now compounded by the attack on the cities. It may not fall, it may hold on, but it probably won't show the dynamic qualities demanded of this young nation. Another standoff.

We have been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders, both in Vietnam and Washington, to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds. They may be right, that Hanoi's winter-spring offensive has been forced by the Communist realization that they could not win the longer war of attrition, and that the Communists hope that any success in the offensive will improve their position for eventual negotiations. It would improve their position, and it would also require our realization, that we should have had all along, that any negotiations must be that -- negotiations, not the dictation of peace terms.

For it seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate. This summer's almost certain standoff will either end in real give-and-take negotiations or terrible escalation; and for every means we have to escalate, the enemy can match us, and that applies to invasion of the North, the use of nuclear weapons, or the mere commitment of one hundred, or two hundred, or three hundred thousand more American troops to the battle. And with each escalation, the world comes closer to the brink of cosmic disaster.

To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion. On the off chance that military and political analysts are right, in the next few months we must test the enemy's intentions, in case this is indeed his last big gasp before negotiations.

But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.

This is Walter Cronkite. Good night.

Lyndon Johnson said, as he turned off his TV set that night, "If I've lost Walter, I've lost middle America". On March 31st, LBJ announced his withdrawal from his presidential reelection campaign.

The assassination of Robert F. Kennedy and the election of Richard Nixon "saved" the Vietnam War for another seven years.

The GOP -vs- (Her Honor) Sonia Sotomayor

2009-07-17T09:11:00.000-07:00

What was at stake for the Republicans?

They appeared to be tilting (once again!) at windmills of their own making.

But there is always method - be it twisted or perverted - to their madness. I always say, if you want the truth out of any Republicant, the onliest one you can go to is Pat Buchanan.

And Uncle Pat's the guy who Rachel Maddow dialed up last night:

The Good Ol' Party is still mired in 20th Century.

Natalya Estemirova, R.I.P.

2009-07-15T23:22:00.000-07:00

Human rights activist shot dead in
Russia

An award-winning Russian human rights activist was murdered today after dedicating much of her life to investigating abuses by the Chechen regime.

Natalya Estemirova was shot twice in the head at close-range after she was bundled into a car in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya.

The activist, who was one of Anna Politkovskaya's key collaborators, was found dead near the city of Nazran in Ingushetia. A single mother in her early 40s, Estemirova had collected evidence of human rights abuses in Chechnya since the start of the second war there in 1999.

As well as the murdered Politkovskaya, she worked with Stanislav Markelov, a prominent lawyer and another opponent of rights abuses in Chechnya, who was shot and killed on a Moscow street in January.

Estemirova took part in a rally to protest his murder, reading out one of the numerous threats he had received for his campaigns against disappearances, false imprisonments and rights abuses.

A year after Politkovskaya was gunned down in her Moscow apartment building in 2006, Estemirova became the first recipient of an award in her name for work for the leading Russian rights group Memorial.

As she received the Anna Politkovskaya prize, she said: "Nothing has been done to investigate the crimes that have been committed in Chechnya since 2000.”

The Memorial rights group said in a statement today that Estemirova “was forcefully taken from her house into a car and shouted that she was being kidnapped” at 8.30 am (0330 BST) in Grozny.

“Chechen authorities had expressed dissatisfaction with her work more than once,” Memorial said. The group’s statement did not give any indication of who might have carried out the abduction.

Concerns have grown in the last weeks about the stability of the Caucasus after Ingushetia’s leader Yunus-Bek Yevkurov was seriously wounded in a car bombing on June 22.

Security forces are being killed in clashes with militants on an almost daily basis and ten Chechen police officers were killed in a militant ambush in Ingushetia last week.

Memorial and Human Rights Watch had earlier this month issued a report accusing Chechen security forces of punishing families of alleged militants by burning down their homes.

The authorities have failed to secure any convictions over the 2006 killing in Moscow of Politkovskaya, who exposed abuses by Russian security forces in Chechnya and vehemently criticised the Kremlin. Also unsolved are the January murders of young journalist Anastasia Baburova and Mr Markelov, who were gunned down in central Moscow as they left a news conference.

Source

Happy Bastille Day!

2009-07-14T09:48:00.001-07:00

I have always observed Bastille Day in a wide variety of ways.

Back in my radical days 1960's I used to have a huge back yard party around a punch bowl full of an elixir which I dubbed my Bastille Day Massacre. It was suitably named. this traditional observance lasted a few years until Trophy Wife put her foot down: it was always our furniture that was getting busted up.

Long story short, today I have less irreverent, more solemn feelings.

The French Embassy (somewhere) explains it thus:

Bastille Day, or the Fourteenth of July, is the symbol of the end of the monarchy and the beginning of the Republic. The national holiday is a time when all citizens celebrate their membership to a republican nation. It is because this national holiday is rooted in the history of the birth of the Republic that it has such great significance.

… The people of Paris rose up and decided to march on the Bastille, a state prison that symbolized the absolutism and arbitrariness of the Ancien Regime.

The storming of the Bastille, on July 14, 1789, immediately became a symbol of historical dimensions; it was proof that power no longer resided in the King or in God, but in the people, in accordance with the theories developed by the Philosophes of the 18th century.

On July 16, the King recognized the tricolor cockade: the Revolution had succeeded.

For all citizens of France, the storming of the Bastille symbolizes, liberty, democracy and the struggle against all forms of oppression.

To me, this grand anthem communicates a sense of arrival, of self-deliverance from the forces of tyranny. In a sense, in 2009, I feel I'm just short of such a destiny. Here, in America, I feel we are in a state of limbo. We have bit more of a path to navigate. We have walls which still have to be torn down.
Be that as it may, let's celebrate Bastille Day for its Audacity of Hope!

Joyeux Quatorze Juillet!

What Bothers Me about Sarah Palin...

2009-07-12T21:25:00.000-07:00

Has very little to do with the ex-governor of Alaska.
But it has a lot to do with the current senior Senator from Arizona as well as the mounted posse with whom he rides around.

Not long ago, in the company of two bloggers whose respect I dearly covet, I swore up and down with my hand on my copy of Barack Obama's Audacity of Hope, that I would never, ever post on Sarah Palin.

So, this column is really about the superannuated warmonger who headed last year's Republican ticket. I'm really only going to post a couple of excerpts from writers who really hit their nails into the pustule of what's been bothering me, going forward, through 2009 and beyond. They both make the same point, but their spot-on eloquence demands my sharing.

First, Joe Conason, in Salon, answers the question that's been roiling around in my head for these last several months:

Who cares about Palin now that it's half a year after she lost her bid to become the 1st woman Vice-President?

..... Plainly there is no reason why anyone should care, except for one small nagging concern. It is worth remembering that these are the same people who chose Palin, a manifestly unqualified and incompetent politician unable to string together a series of coherent sentences, as the potential presidential successor to a 72-year-old cancer survivor. So it would be refreshing and salubrious to see the perpetrators of that contemptuous and cynical tactic held accountable for endangering the country.

..... McCain, Schmidt, Davis and Salter chose to listen to Kristol, almost always a political mistake with consequences ranging from the merely absurd to the utterly dire. (The latter category includes the invasion of Iraq, with an astronomical cost in lives and treasure that should be charged to him and his magazine, as he used to boast.)

Enormous as Kristol's errors in judgment surely were, at least he can plausibly claim to be loyal. If anything he is too steadfast, still insisting that Palin deserves to be considered a serious candidate for the presidency and that her qualifications for that position are comparable to those of Barack Obama.

..... Rarely is anyone in Washington, from politicians to operatives to journalists, held accountable for the damage they inflict on the body politic. Those who banged the drum for disastrous war flit from one editorial page to the next; those who insisted on ruinous deregulation return as economic advisors to the president. The men who told us that Sarah Palin should be next in line of succession to the presidency may quarrel among themselves now, but they will all be back with yet more stupid advice -- and we can only blame ourselves if we listen.

Secondly, the inimical Andrew Sullivan on his Daily Dish:

..... McCain knew full well that Palin was unqualified to be commander-in-chief at this period of time; and he knew there was no way she could ever learn enough to do the job. So his decision to pick her was pure cynicism and irresponsibility. The MSM knew full well that there were very serious questions about this unknown person’s background, lies, mental stability, and secrecy - but they were so terrified of being called biased they refused to do the proper vetting.

The Republican establishment has long condescended to the pro-life, anti-gay, de facto soclialist, de iure capitalist heartland voters - and they cynically believed they had found a formula to get them to vote for McCain on ground of pure class resentment and sex appeal to older white males ..... I agree with Richard Cohen this morning:

Naming Palin to the GOP ticket — a top-down choice by McCain — was the most reckless decision any national politician has made in the longest time, and while it certainly says something about McCain, it says even more about his party. It has lost its mind.

The reason we need to get to the truth of what happened is that these people nearly took this country off a cliff. They need to be held accountable. They need to be removed from their positions of power. We cannot move on until they are. And John McCain should retire from public life. After that decision, nothing he says can be taken seriously on the national or international stage.

That's the point I have been trying to isolate and frame: it's not about Palin.

Honduras, Si! Zelaya, No! (Part II)

2009-07-11T09:37:00.000-07:00

Last week, when I published Honduras Si, Zelaya No, my usually liberal commentariate sat on their hands in mute silence. Clearly, they are uncomfortable with any criticism of Obama. I have also broken knuckles in both hands, pounding on the walls of closed minds in a couple of Pro-Zelaya Diaries on the Daily Kos. But, as Blomberg reports, the Honduran power struggle fairly splits Democrats, Republicans.

In the meantime, I have seen nothing which encourages me to move off of my original anti-Zelaya position.

Admittedly, Miguel A. Estrada is a conservative attorney. But everything (again) I have read indicates that his chronology, Honduras' Non-coup: Under the country's Constitution, the ouster of President Manuel Zelaya was legal, published yesterday is accurate and reliable. Excerpts:

Something clearly has gone awry with the rule of law in Honduras -- but it is not necessarily what you think. Begin with Zelaya's arrest. The Supreme Court of Honduras, as it turns out, had ordered the military to arrest Zelaya two days earlier. A second order (issued on the same day) authorized the military to enter Zelaya's home to execute the arrest. These orders were issued at the urgent request of the country's attorney general. All the relevant legal documents can be accessed (in Spanish) on the Supreme Court's website. They make for interesting reading.

What you'll learn is that the Honduran Constitution may be amended in any way except three. No amendment can ever change

the country's borders
the rules that limit a president to a single four-year term and
the requirement that presidential administrations must "succeed one another" in a "republican form of government."

In addition, Article 239 specifically states that any president who so much as proposes the permissibility of reelection "shall cease forthwith" in his duties,

Article 239 — No citizen that has already served as head of the Executive Branch can be President or Vice-President.

Whoever violates this law or proposes its reform, as well as those that support such violation directly or indirectly, will immediately cease in their functions and will be unable to hold any public office for a period of 10 years.

and Article 4 provides that any "infraction" of the succession rules constitutes treason. The rules are so tight because these are terribly serious issues for Honduras, which lived under decades of military rule.

As detailed in the attorney general's complaint, Zelaya is the type of leader who could cause a country to wish for a Richard Nixon. Earlier this year, with only a few months left in his term, he ordered a referendum on whether a new constitutional convention should convene to write a wholly new constitution. Because the only conceivable motive for such a convention would be to amend the un-amendable parts of the existing constitution, it was easy to conclude -- as virtually everyone in Honduras did -- that this was nothing but a backdoor effort to change the rules governing presidential succession. Not unlike what Zelaya's close ally, Hugo Chavez, had done in Venezuela.

..... The attorney general filed suit and secured a court order halting the referendum. Zelaya then announced that the voting would go forward just the same, but it would be called an "opinion survey." The courts again ruled this illegal. Undeterred, Zelaya directed the head of the armed forces, Gen. Romeo Vasquez, to proceed with the "survey" -- and "fired" him when he declined. The Supreme Court ruled the firing illegal and ordered Vasquez reinstated.

Zelaya had the ballots printed in Venezuela, but these were impounded by customs when they were brought back to Honduras. On June 25 -- three days before he was ousted -- Zelaya personally gathered a group of "supporters" and led it to seize the ballots, restating his intent to conduct the "survey" on June 28. That was the breaking point for the attorney general, who immediately sought a warrant from the Supreme Court for Zelaya's arrest on charges of treason, abuse of authority and other crimes. In response, the court ordered Zelaya's arrest by the country's army, which under Article 272 must enforce compliance with the Constitution, particularly with respect to presidential succession. The military executed the court's order on the morning of the proposed survey.

..... As noted, Article 239 states clearly that one who behaves as Zelaya did in attempting to change presidential succession ceases immediately to be president. If there were any doubt on that score, the Congress removed it by convening immediately after Zelaya's arrest, condemning his illegal conduct and overwhelmingly voting (122 to 6) to remove him from office. The Congress is led by Zelaya's own Liberal Party (although it is true that Zelaya and his party have grown apart as he has moved left). Because Zelaya's vice president had earlier quit to run in the November elections, the next person in the line of succession was Roberto Micheletti, the Liberal leader of Congress. He was named to complete the remaining months of Zelaya's term.

It cannot be right to call this a "coup." Micheletti was lawfully made president by the country's elected Congress. The president is a civilian. The Honduran Congress and courts continue to function as before. The armed forces are under civilian control. The elections scheduled for November are still scheduled for November. Indeed, after reviewing the Constitution and consulting with the Supreme Court, the Congress and the electoral tribunal, respected Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga recently stated that the only possible conclusion is that Zelaya had lawfully been ousted under Article 239 before he was arrested, and that democracy in Honduras continues fully to operate in accordance with law. All Honduran bishops joined Rodriguez in this pronouncement ......

Watching the on-line comments on Honduras news items, the comment from Hondurans is decidedly anti-Zelaya. That's not a scientific poll, admittedly. But I'm totally fatigued by global statements that the 'rest of the world' agrees that Zelaya should be restored to power. The rest of the world is not paying attention.

Reich-wing, Weimar Republicans may be correct half as often as broken watches. This is one such instance.

Old & New Media: Arianna Huffington Sets Me to Thinking

2009-07-10T09:49:00.000-07:00

Nothing new about that!

But here are some unvarified fragments of her words about media at the Guardian's Activate 09 Conference:

Old media has Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). It can't focus on anything for longer than a standard newscycle. Therefore most things fail to change.

New media has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). It gets hold of something, and just can't let it go. This means that things are more likely to actually change...

The vested interests fighting reform and the past which they represented are very well organised, and the future that they resist is very poorly organized ….

The government tried to control the message, but there were so many people taking pictures with camera phones that they failed …. I'm interested in how technology can be a countervailing force ….

You consume old media sitting on a couch. You consume new media galloping on a horse….

I want to shift the debate from how to save newspapers to how to save journalism….

Data alone is not enough. Data needs to go viral…..

The blogosphere is now the most vital news source in our country. Rightly or wrongly, I've veered away from the reading of books and magazines. (Those floppy and irksome objects that fold up in your lap when you reach for your coffee or beer).

I like the interactive and liberating blogosphere where random and spontaneous thoughts are expected and accepted, and where passion reigns. Old journalism resembles stenography repeating the narrow conventional wisdom, without any semblance of passion. Bipartisanship or non-partisanship is pursued by the old journalism as if it represented some kind of state of perfect objectivity or Byzantine symmetry. Such a goal is un-attainable. It's not worth pursuing. The late great Hunter S. Thompson had it down perfectly in his Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail:

The only thing I ever saw that came close to Objective Journalism was a closed-circuit TV setup that watched shoplifters in the General Store at Woody Creek, Colorado. I always admired that machine, but I noticed that nobody paid any attention to it .... So much for Objective Journalism. Don't bother to look for it here -- not under any byline of mine; or anyone else I can think of. With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market quotations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.

There are two or more sides to every question. I like a logical fearless presentation of ideas on one side of the question. If I want to examine the other side(s), I know where to go to find them. Reading, viewing, and listening to partisan reporting gives me an opportunity, ultimately, to discern fact from fiction. The passionate interactive interchange of versions of reality to be found on the Internet informs me also of the vitality of fact(s).

But use of the Internet falls short of its potential. Few political consumers reach out and walk in the shoes of those who disagree with us. Way too infrequently. Of those commenting in my pages, I can think of only two or three with whom I expect to find lively disagreement: The Commentator, Petro-Sexual, and Wizard. Of these, only Wizard stays long enough to cobble together some coherence in his alternate 'reality'.

I make an effort to reach out to Righty and independent sites, whenever I have something to say with enough energy and time to deliver it. Again, Wizard's site is one of my favorites.

But too often I am confronted with having to "join" a blog, because "membership" is a prerequisite for participation in conversation. Another objective barrier to spontaneous dialogue is "comment moderation", wherein the site's Administrator has to pass on a reader's response's propriety before it appears in a thread. That leads to disjointed conversation, because I cannot view the last comment offered for publication before I compose mine. Secondly, I cannot view my comment immediately after posting; thus, a glaring error is missed which could have been corrected by deleting and reposting.

Finally, a major disappointment. My tripping across the 'Net to new and unfamiliar blogsites, is really a gift of my time. It all too often is not received as such. Righties, especially, interpret my comment as "trolling". Does that mean I'm trying to hook them up? I never figured that epithet out. All I'm trying to communicate is that, "Hey! I'm out here and I have a different point of view." What I get, usually, is a verbal slam upside the face. Occasionally, a reasoned reply. Rarely do I get what I'm really looking for which is a visit in return.

The newest thingies on the Internet is the Twittering and the Face-Booking. I haven't figured out what to call one who twitters. Would it be a 'twit' or a 'twat'? When I figure I'm willing to be called whatever it turns out to be, I might try Twittering. Just not yet.

I've been trying Face-Booking for about a week. My first impression is that it's crap. I haven't figured out how it supports embedded HTML links; naked links are hideous, esthetically. But FaceBook does offer a way to allocate your time and multiply your contacts on the Internet without fragmenting your blogging. You just have to be careful as to how many minutes you burn and how many "friends" you allow into your "virtual" Book.

I'll see how it goes.

George Soros on Barack Obama

2009-07-09T08:11:00.001-07:00

Creditable job, short of perfect, well short of perfect.

Robert S. McNamara

2009-07-06T23:49:00.000-07:00

(June 9, 1916 – July 6, 2009) ~~R.I.P.~~

What are the lessons of Vietnam and Iraq? These are the two catastrophic wars in the history of American foreign policy, so it is critically important to ask that question. Even if we can't remember the answer longer than 1½ generations.

What I have learned is that it is not the generals and their uniformed subordinates who are responsible for the massive killing, maiming and burning in unnecessary wars. Not the uniforms. It is the suits and ties in the Pentagon, the White House, and within the august corridors of Congress. From each generation, they are self-recruited as among the 'Best and the Brightest'.

As far as Vietnam is concerned, McNamara was present at its conception. (Pretty much so, anyway.) Present at JFK's elbow in 1961, he's rightfully pegged by history as The Architect. He was a second-tier technocrat. He had been president of Ford only a month when Kennedy offered him the post as secretary of defense.

Names are indelibly burned into my mind. Not only McNamara, but there was McGeorge Bundy (NSC). And there was ubiquitous Dean Rusk, Secretary of State: a bloodless, tireless man who would endlessly repeat his answer to the last question he was asked.

All of them - the architects - are gone now, except Henry Kissinger.

I can't improve on a comment made by a listener of Talk Radio News Service named Bennett who recalls that, in part,

.... Unlike Mr. Rumsfeld, McNamara admitted he was wrong. He told President Johnson numerous times that we did not know enough to escalate. It was Johnson’s own desire to look as tough on Communism as Goldwater to politically neutralize the Republicans. The Vietnamese foreign minister was almost right in his accusing McNamara of not knowing history and the final mistake was not learned by McNamara or do our leaders today seem to understand it. Our country was founded in a guerrilla war. We won two major battles, Saratoga and Yorktown. Lost all the others. No standing army in history has ever defeated a guerrilla force. The only exceptions to this is when the military power fought a war of annihilation. That is our choice when fighting unconventional foes. We must make a conscious decision to become genocidal war criminals or get out. There are no other political or military options. I do not know if we would have been better off if Mr. McNamara had decided to get rich and stay at Ford. He saved thousands of lives with safety improvements in a few months .... Sent 58,000 Americans to their deaths and ruined a million more American lives. Cost millions of lives of our enemies. The man worked by numbers and those are his numbers....

Robert McNamara does not sit in the first tier of seats of our America's great unindicted war criminals. His incomplete mea culpa, along with LBJ's, places him in a row behind Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, George Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Doug Feith.

But he's in the room with them. He's there. Forever.

Manny Ramirez Day!

2009-07-03T11:31:00.000-07:00

The Dude of Swing is Back

When Manny Ramirez was suspended eight weeks ago, the Dodgers had a 6½ -game lead in the National League West. Now the lead is seven. But that's hardly the whole story.

With Manny, in the first 29 Games, the Dodgers were the best team in Baseball. They are still the best team in MLB, but just barely:

Dodgers (50-29)
Red Sox (48-30)
Yankees (45-32)
Rangers (42-35)
Angels (42-34)

Without him, they played 29-21: good enough to be the best team in their division. Maybe good enough to stay there for the rest of ther season. Definitely not good enough to get through October.

I'm glad he was suspended for PED's. And I'm glad he's back!

Honduras, Si! Zelaya, No!

2009-07-03T08:34:00.001-07:00

I have to believe,
up to this point in time anyways, that
Mr. Obama & Ms. Clinton
answered their
3 A.M. phone calls
from the wrong sides of their respective beds.

I have read from a variety of sources since this so-called "constitutional coup d'etat" occurred. My current position has not moved beyond my initial tentative impulses.

A correspondent on Beautiful Horizons, Tambopaxi, gives a succinct summation of my evolving thinking: S/He writes:

... I gotta go against conventional wisdom pronounced by all, including Obama (whom I support on most other things), the OAS ... et al, on the Honduran coup. References to rule of law, due process, and so on, are all well and good, and valid only so far as all parties to a given dispute are willing to adhere to said rules, processes, and so on. Zelaya violated several Constitutional articles expressly written to prevent his kind of referendum initiative. As well, he ignored Constitutional and legal actions taken by the Honduran Supreme Court, the Electoral Tribunal and the Congress there to force him to comply with the Constitution and the law. In short, Zelaya went rogue and went off the legal reservation in his push to keep himself in office. Absolutely no one, including the OAS, or the USG (Obama) can assert that Zelaya would have submitted himself to the due process of impeachment, which he certainly deserved. On the contrary, had the other branches of government been foolish enough to play by the rules that Zelaya flaunted, they would very soon have been subjugated to executive authority as has happened in Venezuela (and will happen soon in Ecuador, I'm afraid).

I lived in Honduras two times for a total of seven years. While I wouldn't qualify Honduran politicians as the most honest or visionary of their kind, I think they got it right this time in

establishing rules to prevent Presidential dictatorships we see springing up elsewher in the region

acting on those rules to try and head off Zelaya's move toward continuance (and almost assuredly consolidation) of power; and

having the courage to act swiftly and decisively - and by exactly the same rules used by Zelaya - to get this rogue out of the country.

I know none of the above is politically correct in this day and age, but unfortunately, Chavez, Correa, Morales, Ortega - and pretty quick here, Uribe - are all using politically correct rules (Constitutions) to keep themselves in power indefinitely, suborn democratic institutions, and abuse the democratic rights of their countrymen. This is morally and politically wrong, and it's injurious to long term development interests of the region. Somehow, in contrast, little backward Honduras got it right both in terms of its Constitution and in terms of being willing to get down and play dirty just like the bad guys. It ain't pretty, it ain't clean, but Honduras showed someone like Chavez that if you play by the very same rules, you can whip them at their nefarious game...

I read that Zelaya was Latin America's least popular leader. Only 25 percent of the nation supported him. Survey found that 67 percent of Hondurans would never vote for him again. A huge majority of the country -- including the two major political parties (including Zelaya's), the Christian churches, the other branches of government and the armed forces -- do not want him as president. People were agreed to put up with him until his term ran out and he left power in in January 2010. And then he pulls this so-called non-binding plebiscite to override his constitutional terms limits? With ballots flown in from Venezuela?

Come on, People!

Dick Cheney Is Back - Testifying in His Own Defense

2009-06-29T23:12:00.000-07:00

But not under oath, of course….

Yesterday, Cheney told The Washington Times' America's Morning News radio show that America cannot withdraw from Iraq yet:

But what … concerns me: that there is still a continuing problem. One might speculate that insurgents are waiting as soon as they get an opportunity to launch more attacks.

I hope Iraqis can deal with it. At some point they have to stand on their own. But I would not want to see the U.S. waste all the tremendous sacrifice that has gotten us to this point…

This is consistent with what Cheney said last year. On 10 April 2008, Cheney was on Sean Hannity’s radio show and fear-mongered about the consequences of withdrawing from Iraq. He told Hannity,

For us to walk away from Iraq I think would have at least that bad an effect, probably worse, because if al Qaeda were to take over big parts of Iraq, among other things, they would acquire control of a significant oil resource. Iraq has almost 100 billion barrel reserves, producing 2.5-3 million barrels of oil a day. If you take a terrorist organization like al Qaeda and give it that kind of revenue, there's no telling the amount of trouble they could get into.

Ten days earlier Cheney had told Virginia Republicans that withdrawing US troops from Iraq would be 'an act of betrayal.'

The only way to lose this fight is to quit. That would be an act of betrayal and dishonor, and it's not going to happen on our watch.

What's going on here is nothing short of thinly disguised attempts to save his sorry ass legacy.

When Americans were understandably scared out of our minds in the aftermath of the 911 attacks, our incompetent government lost their minds.

Talk about not being able to handle that 3 a.m. call (in the form of hijacked airliners)!

Dick Cheney and his puppet president, Bush, totally freaked out, striking about blindly and randomly. In his 'post 9/11 mind set', Cheney did a complete flip-flop and decided on invading Iraq.

Cheney had better judgment in the aftermath of Operation Desert Storm, (Gulf War I). In 1991, Cheney's mind was cool and collected when he wisely counseled against following up the Liberation of Kuwait with an invasion of Iraq:

Once you get to Baghdad, it's not clear what you do with it. It's not clear what kind of government you put in place of the one that's currently there now. Is it going to be a Shia regime, a Sunni regime, a Kurdish regime? Or one that tilts toward the Baathists, or one that tilts toward Islamic fundamentalists? How much credibility is that going to have if it's set up by the American military there? How long does the United States military have to stay there to protect the people that sign on for that government, and what happens once we leave?

Three years later, Cheney interviewed at the A.E.I., level-headedly counseled that invading Iraq was not rationally in the national interests of the United States. He said we would find ourselves in a Quagmire:
Nevertheless, after 911, the once-cerebral Cheney became the impulsive Cheney. Invading Iraq became the way for America to prove its military potency, "because Afghanistan was not enough" of a target. Moreover, he assured us on the eve of the invasion that "we would be received as liberators". Nine months later he told us, "There's overwhelming evidence there was a connection between al Qaeda and the Iraqi government". Four years ago this month he told us that in Iraq "they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency."

Well, this is the record of willful deceit and fraud which Cheney wants to obscure by kicking the Iraq can further down the dusty road toward continuous and indefinite occupation. He wants and expects President Obama to invest even further in his geo-political ponzi scheme. After all is said and done, he and his puppet president have squandered:

4,321 American lives. (That's counting five soldiers shot down today in Baghdad, but not counting the life-altering injuries sustained by our WIA's.)

3,000,000,000,000 of our treasury (Not counting the fact that as a nation, we are fucking broke).

Our two century-plus record of not starting international wars (not counting countless interventions in Banana republics)

Our reputation of adherence to international laws and covenants (including the use of torture of prisoners)

As long as our world-renown international war criminal can manipulate his followers to house, feed and tender to the beast which he has bequeathed our current and future generations, the more he can hope to delay any reckoning with his responsibility for I-Wreck.

I cannot understand how any public appearance by this liar is not greeted with thrown shoes and cat-calls of "Guilty".

I do not want to hear another minute of self-serving public testimony from this war-mongering perp which is not received under oath.

The Obama Method

2009-06-23T09:14:00.001-07:00

First he did it to Boehner, now Ahmadinejad.

Excerpted and boldfaced from Jonathan Chait, senior editor at The New Republic:

The thing that people haven't figured out about President Obama's conduct of foreign policy is that it's the same as his conduct of domestic policy. Obama believes in the power of negotiation and public dialogue to split his adversaries--Republicans at home, Islamists abroad--and strengthen his own position. Obama's speech in Cairo to the Muslim world was simply the foreign analogue of his dealings with the GOP.

Obama's method begins with attempts to find common ground, expressions of respect for the adversary's core beliefs, and profuse hope for cooperation. In his iconic 2004 speech to the Democratic National Convention, Obama famously announced that Democrats, too, "worship an awesome God." In his Cairo speech, Obama pointed to the contributions and freedoms of American Muslims. In both speeches, Obama signaled cultural respect by adapting the other side's own rhetorical formulations--invoking "a belief in things not seen" (2004) or calling the Middle East the region where Islam "was first revealed" (Cairo).

This rhetoric removes the locus of debate from the realm of tribal conflict-- red state versus blue state, Islam versus America--and puts it onto specific questions--Is the American health care system fair? Is terrorism justified?-- where Obama believes he can win support from soft adherents of the opposing camp.

Naturally, Obama's pacific expressions tend to alarm the more hawkish elements of his own camp, who interpret his idealistic rhetoric as naivete or weakness .....

Democratic partisans think the enemy is vicious and must be met with uncompromising force. That's exactly how conservative foreign policy hawks feel about the world. Unsurprisingly, the right-wing foreign policy critique of Obama today sounds eerily like the partisan Democratic critique of Obama during the primary.

..... in his Cairo speech, Obama touted the historic role of Muslims in the United States. Conservative pundit David Frum complained:

One of the most disturbing things about the Cairo speech is the persistent misrepresentation of history. It is really absurd to say that Islam for example has 'always been a part of America's story.'

Obama probably realizes that Muslims have played a marginal role in American life throughout most of its history. He also probably believes that the U.S. economy in the 1970s suffered primarily from oil shocks and irresponsible monetary policy rather than from the absence of a Reaganesque cheerleader for entrepreneurship. But Obama's method entails small acts of intellectual dishonesty in the pursuit of common ground.

Critics such as Krugman and Frum are correct that surrendering intellectual ground comes at a cost. Our most successful presidents articulate clear, forceful public rationales for their beliefs --think of Roosevelt or Truman excoriating reactionary Republicans at home, or Truman, Kennedy, or Reagan standing up to the Soviets internationally. It is a mistake, however, to view Obama's strategy as an act of submission.

Consider how Obama explained his approach toward Iran during a recent interview with Newsweek:

Now, will it work? We don't know. And I assure you, I'm not naive about the difficulties of a process like this. If it doesn't work, the fact that we have tried will strengthen our position in mobilizing the international community, and Iran will have isolated itself, as opposed to a perception that it seeks to advance that somehow it's being victimized by a U.S. government that doesn't respect Iran's sovereignty.

This is a perfect summation of Obama's strategy. It does not presuppose that his adversaries are people of goodwill who can be reasoned with. Rather, it assumes that, by demonstrating his own goodwill and interest in accord, Obama can win over a portion of his adversaries' constituents as well as third parties. Obama thinks he can move moderate Muslim opinion, pressure bad actors like Iran to negotiate, and, if Iran fails to comply, encourage other countries to isolate it. The strategy works whether or not Iran makes a reasonable agreement.

The results remain to be seen. But it eerily resembles the way Obama has already isolated the GOP leadership. Obama began his presidency by elaborately courting the opposition party. Republicans in Congress believed that, by flamboyantly withholding cooperation, they could deny Obama his stated goal of bipartisan harmony and thus render him a failure. Instead, they wound up handing Obama the alternative victory of appearing to be the reasonable party. Polls showed that the public, by overwhelming margins, believed that Obama was trying to work with Republicans and that Republicans were not reciprocating.

Likewise, by defusing the complaint among Islamists that the United States disrespects their religion, Obama can more easily force the Iranian leadership to negotiate on the terms of its stated goals. American Prospect editor Mark Schmitt wrote in 2007 that this is actually,

a hard-nosed tactic of community organizers ..... One way to deal with that kind of bad-faith opposition is to draw the person in, treat them as if they were operating in good faith, and draw them into a conversation about how they actually would solve the problem."

This apparent paradox is one reason Obama's political identity has eluded easy definition. On the one hand, you have a disciple of the radical community organizer Saul Alinsky turned ruthless Chicago politician. On the other hand, there is the conciliatory post-partisan idealist. The mistake here is in thinking of these two notions as opposing poles. In reality it's all the same thing. Obama's defining political trait is the belief that conciliatory rhetoric is a ruthless strategy.

Iran: A River (of Green) Runs Through It

2009-06-19T06:41:00.000-07:00

Here is your source for real-time information.

Israel Admits to Its True Path

2009-06-18T07:35:00.000-07:00

. . .is to deny Palestinians the possibility
of a nation-state with territorial integrity
on the West Bank.Israel's foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, rejects the idea of a freeze on Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

Lieberman admits that Israel does not have

any intention to change the demographic balance .... we think that as in any place, babies are born, people get married, some pass away and we cannot accept this vision about an absolutely complete freezing of settlements .... I think that we must keep the natural growth .... This approach is very clear and also we had some understandings with the previous administration [of George W. Bush] and we try to keep this direction.

From the horse's mouth....

Source

Waters Run Through It

2009-06-14T23:05:00.000-07:00

With Apologies to Robert Redford and Norman

Each of us here today will, at one time of our lives, look upon a loved one who is in need, and ask the same question,

We are willing to help, Lord, but what, if anything, is needed?

It is true: we can seldom help those closest to us. Either we don't know what part of ourselves to give or, more often than not, the part we have to give is not wanted.

And, so it is these we live with and should know who elude us. But we can still love them. We can love completely, without complete understanding.

Long ago, rain fell on mud and became rock. Half a billion years ago.

But even before that, beneath the rocks, are the Words of God. To Him, all good things, wind on the water, and sailing as well as salvation, come by Grace. And grace comes by art, and art does not come easy.

Now, nearly all those I loved and did not understand in my youth are dead. …. But I still reach out to them.

Of course, now I'm too old to be much of a sailor and now I never sail the big waters alone, because some friends think I shouldn't.

But when I am alone in the half light of the channel, all existence seems to fade to a being with my soul and memories.

And the sounds of the big Pacific surf and a four-count rhythm and a hope that a steady 15-knot breeze will rise.

Eventually, all things merge into one. And water runs through it.

The oceans were delivered by the world's great floods and run over the rocks from the basement of time.

On some of the rocks are timeless rain drops; under the rocks are The Words and some of the words are Theirs.

I am haunted by water.

First they came for the abortionists . . .

2009-06-11T07:42:00.001-07:00

Fox News doesn't care.

But I do.

I didn't used to care much about abortion. Always was against abortion, sort of. Always said I was against it except & unless a prospective mother, armed with professional advice from her chosen physician, wanted it for whatever private reason.

That means, of course, that I was pro-choice.

Now I am pro-abortion. I believe in abortion on demand. Early abortion. Mid-term abortion. Late-term abortion. Free abortion. Tax-paid abortion. In some cases, retroactive abortion.

President Barack Obama Went to Cairo & Walked the Extra Mile.

2009-06-05T22:23:00.001-07:00

No 44 has gone further than any other President in his attempt to untie the historical knot in the Middle East.

Of course, he did not go far enough. The task of reversing historical trends in this area of the world would overwhelm even the best political leadership America can find.

Yesterday the world heard from the mouth of our new President that America wants to take a new path. But, as Mr. Obama himself noted, a speech does not - itself - make history.

I do so recognizing that change cannot happen overnight. No single speech can eradicate years of mistrust, nor can I answer in the time that I have all the complex questions that brought us to this point. But I am convinced that in order to move forward, we must say openly the things we hold in our hearts, and that too often are said only behind closed doors. There must be a sustained effort to listen to each other; to learn from each other; to respect one another; and to seek common ground.

It was a noble and eloquent effort that fell short. Still, I give Barry an A- in this attempt:

America's strong bonds with Israel are well known. This bond is unbreakable. It is based upon cultural and historical ties, and the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied.

. . . . the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust. . . . Denying that fact is baseless, ignorant, and hateful. Threatening Israel with destruction - or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews - is deeply wrong, and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve.

On the other hand, it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people - Muslims and Christians - have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than sixty years they have endured the pain of dislocation. Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead. They endure the daily humiliations - large and small - that come with occupation. So let there be no doubt: the situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable. America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own.

For decades, there has been a stalemate: two peoples with legitimate aspirations, each with a painful history that makes compromise elusive. . . . .

. . . . . Israelis must acknowledge that just as Israel's right to exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine's. The United States does not accept the legitimacy of ~~continued~~ existing Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to ~~stop~~ be vacated.

. . . . . America will align our policies with those who pursue peace, and say in public what we say in private to Israelis and Palestinians and Arabs. . . . privately, many Muslims recognize that Israel will not go away. Likewise, many Israelis recognize the need for a Palestinian state. It is time for us to act on what everyone knows to be true. Too many tears have flowed. Too much blood has been shed.

So, our gifted President deserves very high marks. But even he falls short of honors.

The existing Israeli settlements in the West Bank prevent the establishment of a self-sustaining Palestinian state. The status quo will not hold. The effects of the eight-year Busheney era of procrastination, prevarication and provocation have left us with what sailors call a hatchet bowline. That's a knot that can only be loosened with a hatchet.

The saddest two words in the English language are "too late".

The Virtual World

2009-06-04T07:22:00.000-07:00

I have it on good authority and inside information that Vigil is about to allow his attention to be diverted away from international and national affairs. The object of his diversion is again the so-called Volvo Ocean Racing Game.

As my opening post on this blog, I'd thought I'd offer a foto of Vigilante when he's in his "virtual world" ...

Hope I'm getting off on the right footing here...

The Bush-Cheney Truth Commission

2009-06-02T09:32:00.000-07:00

Senator Leahy says the American People should not turn the page before they read it.

Senator Leahy has

proposed the idea of a truth and reconciliation commission to investigate abuses during the Bush-Cheney Administration -- so they never happen again. These abuses may include the use of torture, warrantless wiretapping, extraordinary rendition, and executive override of laws:

The full text of the petition reads:

I hereby join Senator Patrick Leahy's call for the establishment of a truth and reconciliation commission, to investigate the Bush-Cheney Administration's constitutional abuses so we make sure they never happen again. These abuses may include the use of torture, warrantless wiretapping, extraordinary rendition, and executive override of laws.

A truth and reconciliation commission should be tasked with seeking answers so that we can develop a shared understanding of the failures of the recent past. Rather than vengeance, we need a fair-minded pursuit of what actually happened. The best way to move forward is getting to the truth and finding out what happened -- so we can make sure it does not happen again.

I have signed this petition and will urge all I know to sign it.

As far as I am concerned, it does not go far enough. The span of inquiry should be expanded to cover the abuse, misuse and manipulation of intelligence and the CIA in order to stampede our once-great country into an unnecessary war with Iraq.

That, it itself - starting wars - is the paramount war crime. And it needs to be addressed.

As recent as yesterday, Cheney has tried to correct his sorry record. If he feels the necessity to do it, he needs to do it under oath.

Letting War Criminals Walk . . .

2009-05-29T09:30:00.001-07:00

and letting their mind-sets prevail.

Just a quick comment.

At work yesterday, I fought off sleep listening to NPR's Intelligence Squared. (Don't hit the link, please, until you hear me out.) It was an Oxford-style debate on the question:

Resolved: Is Diplomacy With Iran Going Nowhere?

For the Affirmative: Liz Cheney & Daniel Senor

Against the Motion: Nicholas Burns & Kenneth M. Pollack

Burns and Pollack did a sub-par performance, IMO, defending Obama's 'new way forward' policy. I was on pins and needles waiting in vain for two shoes to be dropped or thrown.

The Shoes?

Before you can ask if 'diplomacy is working' you have to ask 'what diplomacy'? There are no diplomatic relations between Tehran and Washington. Is it not patently clear that the proper question is:
What will it take to open diplomatic relations with Tehran and Washington?
If one does not recognize a government diplomatically, that is tantamount to denying the legitimacy of that government. Until you recognize a government by opening an embassy, you cannot be considered to be carrying on diplomacy with it.

Instead of establishing diplomatic relations with Tehran, the participants assumed the only appropriate goal of any negotiations with Tehran had to do with nuclear proliferation. Wrong and inverted priority, IMO. Non-Proliferation is a critically important goal in American foreign policy, I concede. But, theoretically and legally speaking, Iran has as much a right to possess nukes as does Israel. No one in the room wanted to take U.S. military options off the table; in fact everyone affirmed quite the contrary. Therefore, I conclude the Busheney doctrine of preventive war was still ensconced in the highest strata of America's foreign policy thinking.

Thirdly, Liz Cheney's feckless review of Iranian-American non-diplomatic relations was allowed to stand. Artistically, she omitted the 1953 CIA called Operation Ajax, conducted from the US Embassy in Tehran, which organized a coup to overthrow Moussadeq. This has poisoned the well in U.S. - Iranian relations.

But finally, and most outrageously: at the beginning of the debate, the Moderator publicly acknowledged the presence of former Vice-President Cheney. There was applause. There was no booing. No shouts of "War Criminal".

At the end of this civil debate, I turned off my radio in disgust. The civility of this debate convinced me more than anything else: the additional photos from Abu Ghraib need to be released. The world, including my fellow Americans, need to see what Busheney have wrought.

If the perps get to walk, they should not be allowed to walk in peace.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor!

2009-05-26T06:31:00.001-07:00

A Slam-Dunk for SCOTUS!

President Obama elevates Federal Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court!

More fluent in Spanish than in English, Sotomayor started school at Blessed Sacrament in Soundview. Then she moved on to Cardinal Spellman in Wakefield. In 1972, she made a huge leap to Princeton University, an Ivy League school that had started accepting women undergraduates only in 1969.

She aced the place, graduating summa cum laude and going on to Yale Law School, where she was an editor of a law journal. She moved on from there to work as a trial lawyer in the Manhattan district attorney's office, as an attorney in private practice and then as a federal judge.

The first President Bush, a Republican, appointed to Sotomayor to Manhattan Federal Court in 1992. President Clinton, a Democrat, elevated her to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in 1998.

Memorial Day, 2009

2009-05-25T18:14:00.001-07:00

My Favorite Part of Obama's Notre Dame Speech

2009-05-19T08:34:00.000-07:00

...is his ending.

Mr. Obama was observing that he was speaking in South Bend on the 55th Anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education SCOTUS decision. He goes on to explain that progress in civil rights also required demonstrations, jailings and bloodshed.

The President then went on to recall Eisenhower's appointment of the Civil right Commission and how it drafted 12 resolutions which formed the essence of the Civil Rights Act of 1964:

There were six members of this commission. It included five whites and one African American; Democrats and Republicans; two Southern governors, the dean of a Southern law school, a Midwestern university president, and your own Father Ted Hesburgh, President of Notre Dame. (Applause.) So they worked for two years, and at times, President Eisenhower had to intervene personally since no hotel or restaurant in the South would serve the black and white members of the commission together. And finally, when they reached an impasse in Louisiana, Father Ted flew them all to Notre Dame's retreat in Land O'Lakes, Wisconsin -- (applause) -- where they eventually overcame their differences and hammered out a final deal.

And years later, President Eisenhower asked Father Ted how on Earth he was able to broker an agreement between men of such different backgrounds and beliefs. And Father Ted simply said that during their first dinner in Wisconsin, they discovered they were all fishermen. (Laughter.) And so he quickly readied a boat for a twilight trip out on the lake. They fished, and they talked, and they changed the course of history.

I will not pretend that the challenges we face will be easy, or that the answers will come quickly, or that all our differences and divisions will fade happily away -- because life is not that simple. It never has been.

But as you leave here today, remember the lessons of Cardinal Bernardin, of Father Hesburgh, of movements for change both large and small. Remember that each of us, endowed with the dignity possessed by all children of God, has the grace to recognize ourselves in one another; to understand that we all seek the same love of family, the same fulfillment of a life well lived. Remember that in the end, in some way we are all fishermen .....

The full transcript can be found on Fox News.

Don Rumsfeld Played Pious Bush with Scriptures

2009-05-17T13:06:00.000-07:00

All Americans with a scintilla of intellectual integrity (yeah, I'm addressing Republicans who voted for BushenCheney in 2004 when you should have known better) should read Frank Rich's NYT column today, Obama Can’t Turn the Page on Bush, in its entirety. Today, I just want to key on two or three paragraphs:

Robert Draper .... author of Dead Certain .... reports that Rumsfeld’s monomaniacal determination to protect his Pentagon turf led him to hobble and antagonize America’s most willing allies in Iraq, Britain and Australia, and even to undermine his own soldiers.

But Draper’s biggest find is a collection of daily cover sheets that Rumsfeld approved for the Secretary of Defense Worldwide Intelligence Update, a highly classified digest prepared for a tiny audience, including the president, and often delivered by hand to the White House by the defense secretary himself. These cover sheets greeted Bush each day with triumphal color photos of the war headlined by biblical quotations.

Today, GQ publishes seven covers of Rumsfeld's Secretary of Defense Worldwide Intelligence Updates. Readers are recommended to follow the link to GQ's Slide Show. Otherwise, these screen-shots need clicking for expansion:

Frank Rich Continues:

What’s up with that? ... Rumsfeld is not known for ostentatious displays of piety. He was cynically playing the religious angle to seduce and manipulate a president who frequently quoted the Bible. But the secretary’s actions were not just oily; he was also taking a risk with national security. If these official daily collages of Crusade-like messaging and war imagery had been leaked, they would have reinforced the Muslim world’s apocalyptic fear that America was waging a religious war.

The real point being, Bush the - fundamentalist sap that he was - was being played by Rumsfeld. Rich concludes:

I’m not a fan of Washington’s blue-ribbon commissions, where political compromises can trump the truth. But the 9/11 investigation did illuminate how, a month after Bush received an intelligence brief titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.,” 3,000 Americans were slaughtered on his and Cheney’s watch. If the Obama administration really wants to move on from the dark Bush era, it will need a new commission, backed up by serious law enforcement, to shed light on where every body is buried.

Rich is right. Obama must be made to understand that in order to move on, he must dig up and air out these cadavers from their unmarked graves.

Jeff Buckley

2009-05-15T07:12:00.001-07:00

It's Friday, and he's made me late to work.

Because I had to stay with him until the very end.
When I am at my very end, on my last Friday, I will not regret the days I was late to work. Being late to work can be a good thing.

The Cheney Legacy

2009-05-13T08:09:00.000-07:00

Lawrence Wilkerson
is a retired
United States Army Colonel
and former chief of staff to
United States Secretary of State
Colin Powell.

Last night
he was interviewed on
Rachel Maddow's show.

Why Gitmo Should Remain Open: Exhibit One

2009-05-12T09:24:00.000-07:00

Mas Selamat Kastari

The dude who's sneering at us from the 2003 photo to the right is Mas Selamat Kastari, the suspected Singapore leader of the radical Islamist group, Jemaah Islamiah. Jemaah Islamiah is blamed for attacks including the 2002 Bali bombings, which killed 200 innocents.

Mas Selamat Kastari is also the alleged mastermind of a plot to hijack a plane and crash it into Singapore's Changi Airport.

Since the bombings, Mas Selamat has been in and out of custody.

In February 2003, tip-offs by the Singapore authorities had led Indonesian police to monitor Mas Selamat’s movements after he arrived in Indonesia. They tracked him to Tanjung Pinang in Bintan, arresting him just after he arrived by ferry from Dumai in Riau.

After Mas Selamat was released in August 2005, the Singapore police made another request to their Indonesian counterparts to track him again.

In January 2006, they found him at a neighborhood mosque in Sengkaling, East Java. Mas Selamat was handed over to Singapore the following month.

But Mas Selamat escaped the maximum security Whitley Road Detention Centre in Singapore while on a toilet break on Feb 27, 2008. He was recaptured on April 1st. (No fooling!)

How to keep dangerous jokers like Mas Selamat locked up? A netizen from Singapore's Online Community, SgForums, suggests:

Build a high-security prison on an isolated island. It would have a natural barrier - the sea - so detainees will not be able to go far.

What a concept!

We already have such a perfect facility. Of course its international reputation has been defamed by the abuses of the Busheney abuses. I'm talking torture here.

But instead of ending Gitmo, we should be setting about mending it:

Internationalize it: staff it with a multi-national guards.

Make it transparent: subject facilities to un-announced visits by the International Red Cross or the like.

Humanize it: reasonable diet, sanitized quarters, etc.

Seal it: No visitors or internet privileges. (It's a prison!)

Assume indefinite custody: no "enhanced interrogation". Kid gloves counseling, maybe. But inmates might hope to talk their way out through open, on-site hearings attended by an attorney and presided over by some sort of judicial figure.

All this needs work and refinements. Many of my readers will find fault with this and call it a half-baked scheme, which it is.

But there seems to be a liberal stampede to raze Guantanamo and/or give it back to the Cubans. It's a resource we are going to need. We're going to be catching a lot of bad guys around the world, hopefully. Not just us, the USA, but all of the countries holding on to their stature as part of the global economy. I'm speaking of Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Columbia Phjiilipnes, Nigeria and others. These polities do not have stable politics or secure prisons. And American courts do not have jurisdiction over combatants or bombers caught overseas. Needed is a international destination-certain for these bad boys and girls to be sent to for protective custody. Gitmo will serve better for this purpose than the Hague.

We just have to internationalize the security and make treatment of inmates residents transparent to the International Red Cross, Amnesty International and other interested parties. Maybe the U.N. can provide a constabulary presence. (That's a detail.) Make Gitmo a secure, escape-proof resort. No golf or swimming, of course. Just an extended stay, until guests can convince their therapists that they are too mellow to raise hell.

Think of the possibilities. There are quite a number of terrorist perps in captivity around the world. Their captors are often unstable, failing states. Not wanting to risk prisoners escaping, their option might often be just to take 'em out back and shoot them. By opening up L'Hotel Guantanamo, think of the lives we could be saving!

So, I say I say mend Gitmo, don't end it.

Fragging in the American Occupational Army in Iraq

2009-05-11T21:32:00.000-07:00

A Brief History & Perspective

Fragging:

A term from the Vietnam War, used primarily by U.S. military personnel, most commonly meaning to assassinate an unpopular officer of one's own fighting unit, often by means of a fragmentation grenade, hence the term. Fragging incidents have been seen far less often in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Today, five American service members were killed at a counseling center on an American military base in Baghdad on Monday, gunned down by a fellow soldier who was later taken into custody. The killings appear to be the single deadliest episode of soldier-on-soldier violence among American forces since the United States-led invasion six years ago.

The suspect had been disarmed after an earlier incident at the center but returned with another weapon. As well as those who were killed, three other military personnel were wounded.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, said the shootings occurred “in a place where individuals were seeking help” for combat stress. The violence, he said, was a tragic reminder of the need for greater “concern in terms of dealing with the stress” and also “speaks to the issue of multiple deployments” as well the need for finding ways of “increasing dwell time,” so that military personnel spend more months at home between deployments.

It is time to review the previous record with respect to fragging within the ranks of the American Occupational forces:

Most recently, in September 2008, an American soldier was arrested after the shooting deaths of two comrades at their patrol base near Iskandariya, about 25 miles south of Baghdad. The soldiers had been assigned to a unit based at Fort Stewart, Ga. The case is currently in military court.

In June 2005, two officers serving with the New York Army National Guard at a base near Tikrit died after an antipersonnel mine was placed next to a window, and a supply specialist was charged in the deaths. The supply specialist was acquitted in military court last year.

In April 2005, Sgt. Hasan Akbar, of the 101st Airborne Division, was sentenced to death for a grenade attack on fellow soldiers in March 2003 in Kuwait, at the beginning of the American-led war in Iraq. Sergeant Akbar, who was the first American since the Vietnam era to be prosecuted on charges of murdering a fellow soldier in wartime, was convicted of premeditated murder and attempted premeditated murder after he threw grenades into tents and then opened fired on soldiers. He killed two officers and wounded 14 soldiers at Camp Pennsylvania.

The death toll from today’s shooting was the highest for American service members in a single attack since April 10, when a suicide truck bombing killed five near the police headquarters in the northern city of Mosul.

Prosecuting Torture

2009-05-11T06:45:00.000-07:00

Is Time Really Running Out?

Elizabeth de la Vega says no! Don't Panic!

It turns out that, on all of the various charges, the statute of limitations is actually between eight years and never.

It pays to at least scan her entire argument here, but here are her salient points with my emphasis added:

When the highest officials of our nation flung open the gates of law and morality and let the wild dogs of torture run, they set in motion a constellation of potentially-indictable federal crimes .... the Attorney General must not rule out prosecutions for these violations .....

So Many Crimes, but How Much Time?

Won't it be too late if we wait much longer? Absolutely not. There's a lot of misinformation out there on this topic, mainly as a result of gross oversimplification of the law. However, notwithstanding anything you may have heard - about charges disappearing in 2010 and all hope being lost after 2011 - time is not running out to prosecute Bush administration officials either for torture itself or for the many crimes they committed to keep their program alive throughout their tenure .....

Obviously, if the rampage of prisoner abuse that the Bush White House triggered in the fall of 2001 - along with the ongoing concealment of the program - were a "case," it would not involve a simple set of facts. On the contrary, it encompasses a huge universe of evidence - eight years' worth - and scores of possible defendants. There is a raft of possible federal crimes and each would have to be analyzed separately, first to make a charging decision and then to determine the statutory indictment deadline.

....I do not know if these former White House officials are finally listening to attorneys who give them legal advice they don't want to hear. But if they are, they well know by now that their defense can never rest.

The Bottom Line

I'm trying to emphasize that people should not throw in the towel prematurely. Keep up the pressure, absolutely, but brace yourselves for the long haul.

Most important, in the near-term, think twice about fueling the inaccurate impression that it's game-over in eighteen months in order to create a sense of urgency, when it is the gravity of these crimes that should be paramount. And gravity and urgency are not the same thing. Many powerful people from across the political spectrum would be utterly delighted if the millions of Americans now pushing for accountability gave up in despair in a year or two because they mistakenly believed that prosecutions were no longer possible. But it is self-defeating in the extreme for those who want Bush, Cheney et. al. held responsible for their actions to foster this misconception. A widespread false belief that prosecutions are a limited-time offer provides a ready excuse for ultimate inaction to any and all who wish to "move on" as if eight years of torture were merely an unpleasant incident on the sidewalk. At the same time, people who don't know options still remain will be helpless to argue otherwise. In the world of criminal prosecutions, this is not a short story; it's a sprawling Icelandic saga. And - as any attorney who has prosecuted complex federal cases could tell you - it will be many years, if ever, before legal time limits will bar the hearing of this horrific epic in a US criminal court.

Elizabeth de la Vega is a former federal prosecutor with more than 20 years of experience. During her tenure, she was a member of the Organized Crime Strike Force and chief of the San Jose Branch of the US attorney's office for the Northern District of California.
Her pieces have appeared in a large variety of print and online publications. Most notedly, she is the author of the authoriative United States v. George W. Bush et al.

Manny Ramirez

2009-05-09T07:35:00.000-07:00

Mannywood is busted! And am I disgusted!?

Manny Ramirez will be missing from the Los Angeles Dodger's line-up for the next 50 games. In his presence for the first 29 games, Ramirez

Batted .348
Knocked in 20 RBI's
Homered 6 times
Attained a 641 slugging percentage
Lifted the Dodgers to a 21-8 record, the best in baseball

It seems to be woefully out of place and of questionable taste to write about baseball in a week of Sturm und Drang raining down over my local homeland. It's just that sometimes you just got to write what's in your head even though it may pale next to the real important stuff. I just have to exorcise the superficial and the superfluous in order just to move on.

Manny Ramirez' mere presence transformed a mediocre line-up into a slam-dunk contending offense. He was not just a guy who happened to be hitting 350 at the moment; he is a lifetime 350 hitter destined for the hall of fame. Because opposing managers knew what he would do if they allowed their pitchers to challenge Ramirez on any given at bat, they had to pitch around him and throw unvarnished strikes to those Dodgers batting in front or in back of him. Ramirez simply made every other Dodger palpably more formidable.

The Facts:

On Nov. 15, 2005, Major League Baseball and the players association reached agreement on a plan that significantly strengthens penalties for steroid and other illegal drug use. Under a regime of random testing, the agreement specified penalties for steroid use to be 50 games for a first offense, 100 games for a second and a lifetime ban for a third.

Ramirez tested positive for HCG, or human chorionic gonadotropin. The brand names are Chorex, Novarel, Ovidrel, Pregnyl and Profasi. HCG helps men produce male hormones such as testosterone, which helps increase the production of sperm, the site says. Men with fertility problems — which can be a side effect of steroid use — may have HCG prescribed.

A 50-Game suspension will cost Ramirez $7.65 million in forfeited salary. I think that comes to about a third of Ramirez' salary for missing a third of the Dodgers' season.

My Take:

Ramirez was is one of the most natural hitters I've watched. Fluid and relaxed. He's stepping up to the plate, not to run up the pitch count, but to apply wood to rawhide; to hit the ball into play. Manny's looking for the first pitch in his roundhouse. Striking out does not noticeably mitigate his enjoyment of the game. It's part of the game, isn't it? Beyond the winning and the losing, the play's the thing. His approach to the game was equally infectious for the team in the club house and the fan base in the Los Angeles market.

2009 was going to be a magic year.

Only now am I emerging from one of the 12 steps of denial - the one of disbelief. The Boston Globe’s Bob Ryan can’t believe the news, either.

If there’s a profile of a banned substance abuser — and I’m not sure there is — Manny does not fit it ... Sudden change in body configuration? Nope. Big surge in power output? Nope. Manny never even hit 50. He did have a homer jump from 26 in 1997 to 45 in 1998, but that was after hitting 31 in 1995 and 33 in 1996. He was a maturing young slugger; that’s all. I think. But Manny has otherwise been a consistent power hitter for the last dozen years. There have been no red flags.

My job for the last decade has taught me that the greatest optimists are to be found among thieves and cheaters: they are the ones who don't believe they will ever be caught.

There's no question in my mind that MLB's anti-doping regime has to stand. Otherwise we will be paying zombies to compete against each other and eventually we will have zombies for high school athletes.

For myself, born with Dodger-blue blood in my veins, I have to hope players and fans will come to treat this event as just another injury-enforced absence: just adjust the roster, offensive plan, and marketing strategy. Just show up and play the game as Juan Pierre plays it. He's the talented, non-power hitting left fielder who has been playing behind Ramirez. Pierre always arrives at the park earliest, and is the last to depart. And in between he leaves all of himself out on the field. More should be written about Juan Pierre. Hall-of-Fame announcer Vin Scully opened Thursday night's broadcast appropriately:

Hi everybody, and a very pleasant Thursday evening to you, wherever you may be. The Dodgers and the city of Los Angeles and all of California and for that matter, all of baseball, still shocked and stunned over the suspension of Manny Ramirez. We’ll have more to say about that a little bit later on, but no one man stops baseball.

Hopefully, Manny will be back. Hopefully, when and if he's back, he will lift us back into contention.

But, whatever happens, the game is on.

Jesusita Fire

2009-05-08T09:03:00.001-07:00

Day 3?

It seems to have been burning weeks or more.

Yesterday, this was one fire in Mission Canyon. Today it is two fires inside Santa Barbara, threatening Goleta to the west and Montecito to the east. Thousands of people have evacuated. I have close friends who, I hope, have escaped with their clothes on their backs. I could not enter Elings Park to exercise Ballou because it is closed to everyone except the Fire Department. Air quality is abysmal. Water pressure is down. This event is effecting everyone in the community and, when over, will have changed Santa Barbara forever.

Red Sunset over Santa Barbara

2009-05-06T21:24:00.001-07:00

The Jesusita Fire

Locals in my hood are expected to greet each other, especially on the weekend with,

Ho-Hum... Another day in paradise.

Well, for the last two days, Paradise has hosted a visit from hell. Hellacious, 50-knot winds bearing a firestorm.

Some call it a flaming dagger aimed at the heart of the city.

Too much for this old man: check the boat, knock down a few Coronas with friends in the harbor, and locate a couple of serviceable flashlights in the house, before crawling onto the bed and watching Mannywood and the Dodgers. Let my Dobie do what she does best: answering the door.

Blue Dawn over Afghanistan?

2009-05-06T07:52:00.000-07:00

In a right-wing cult classic movie of the 1980's,
Red Dawn, a Cuban-Russian coalition waged a counter-insurgency (COIN) war against the American people.

Because between them, they did not have enough troops to effectively occupy America, they attempted to make up the difference with air strikes. The only realistic element in the movie's scenario was that the would-be Russian and Cuban occupiers were ultimately unsuccessful.

That's what Obama's trying to do with Bush's legacy in Afghanistan.

Obama simply cannot accomplish anything tangible in Afghanistan using a fraction of the number of troops the Russians used decades before when their COIN effort ended in bloody and costly failure. He cannot get substantially additional troops from European allies. He certainly can't make up the difference in American troops. In light of our over-extended military forces, not to mention our straining economy, it should be apparent that there is not that much more "there" to throw at the Afghani insurgents.

Clearly, the use of air power to replace boots on the ground encourages the use of bombs, missiles and other attacks by war planes that directly increase the risk to civilians. In counterinsurgency operations, from a strictly military standpoint the excessive killing of civilians is counterproductive. It increases opposition to the forces who employ the weaponry that unnecessarily places civilian lives at risk.

If we can't do it right with enough ground troops, why are we - and how long will we persist in - trying to do it ineffectively? Obama's Afghanistan policy is unsustainable.

The Kentucky Derby

2009-05-03T08:47:00.000-07:00

Such miracles don't happen in Politics.

Am I right? Or, am I right?

I join Bill Plaschke in mid-column on Mine That Bird this morning:

Mine That Bird was a 50-to-1 nag who arrived here in a trailer pulled across the country by a Ford pickup truck driven by his trainer.

Bennie Woolley Jr. was a hobbled trainer who this year had as many motorcycle wrecks (1) as victories.

Mark Allen was a cowboy co-owner whose truck broke down on the drive here from New Mexico.

Borel was a jockey who never even sat on the horse until six days ago.

When Saturday's 135th Derby began with some of the best horses in the world, Mine That Bird was arguably the worst.

After a quarter of a mile, he was absolutely the worst, 19th out of 19, in last place.

After a half mile, still last.

After three-quarters of a mile, still last.

"My heart sunk," co-owner Dr. Leonard Blach said.

"I about quit watching," Allen said.
.....
Borel found the rail. The rest of the field lost its breath. A nation of viewers rubbed their eyes.

From 19th place to 12th place to the lead down the stretch, Mine That Bird thundered past millions of dollars of horses and a whole bunch of history in becoming the most unlikely of Derby champions.

A champion who was originally purchased for $9,500.

A champion who had not won a race in seven months.

A champion who prepped for his moment of glory by finishing fourth in something called the Sunland Derby, on a track somewhere in New Mexico.
....
A horse handled by a bunch of black-hatted cowpokes straight out of "Blazing Saddles"?

A horse ridden by a former Derby-winning jockey who took this ride only because he couldn't get a better mount?

Borel wasn't surprised when the horse started like something out of a parking-lot pony ride.

"I didn't think I would win," he said.

But then when the competition -- missing late-scratched favorite I Want Revenge -- didn't run away from him, he began thinking.

"I was just chilling," he said. "But the other horses weren't going that much faster than him."

So Borel, who charged to victory with a late rush on the rail on Street Sense in 2007, decided to make a move and -- surprise, surprise -- the horse was ready to move with him.

"I asked him and he kept getting closer to them and then I thought, 'God, he's going to get here!' " he said.

He began that move on the rail, darted around a couple of horses, then moved back to the rail for the final push, and you think you were stunned?
....
Not only did none of them win it, Mine That Bird's run was so quick, so furious, he won by nearly seven lengths.

In the end, it was so easy, Borel turned and pointed repeatedly to the stands before reaching the finish line.

He said he was recognizing his fiancee, Lisa Funk, probably because she was the only one who always believed the horse could win?

"Um, no," she said.

Borel was so stunned, afterward he wouldn't leave the track, as if he thought the victory would disappear when he did.
.....
That is the true beauty of the Kentucky Derby, the element makes it so endearingly cool even for folks who wouldn't know a stirrup from a bit.

It's America's one sporting championship where you can actually just "give it a shot," and still hit. Because of the size of the field and the trickiness of the track, it is a championship where the best doesn't always win, where money doesn't always rule, where two minutes can change lives and careers.

It's nice to know there still exists a place where greatness -- like Mine That Bird on a cloudy, glowing Saturday -- can come streaking out of the pack.

As Borel summed it up: "I didn't know he would gimme the response he gimme."

Neither did anyone else, and wasn't that a hoot?

Roses raining on us all.

It's a hoot! Look at these and watch for the movie!

A Two-State Solution for Palestine?

2009-05-03T06:45:00.000-07:00

Give it up!

Israel's hard-liners dream of turning Jordan into a Palestinian state (where the population is already 65 percent Palestinian) and keeping the West Bank as a buffer state with the Jordan River as the final frontier.

Blame it on the Iranians! Iran's theocracy serves as a Nazi-Germany surrogate. As long as that existential threat to Jews hangs over the region, there is no reason Israel should make concessions to the Palestinians, now increasingly influenced by Hamas, one of Iran's clients, along with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Even if conditional aid to Israel were politically possible in the United States, which it most certainly is not, Jewish settlements in the West Bank - now some 300,000 Jews in 140 settlements - that straddle the region's water aquifer have made it physically impossible to establish a "viable and contiguous" Palestinian state.

Does anyone see a road map here?

All the future portends are pockets of Palestinian 'reservations'.

Specter = Lieberman

2009-05-02T10:11:00.001-07:00

News to no one:

Arlen Specter is not guided by any enduring principles.

In 2001, when Senator Jim Jeffords from Vermont left the Republican Party, Arlen Specter rose from the floor of the Senate to propose a Senate rules change to prevent this from happening again in the future. A Senator's "organizational" vote, Specter said, belongs not to him but to the party which elected him.

12 minutes:

Specter is garbage, and should be accepted as such.

Last night the Dodgers won 1-0 because Russell Martin held up on ball four with the bases loaded: an excellent outcome to a beautiful game.

In politics, beauty is illusory. Only results count. Democrats already have garbage - Lieberman - in their party. One more bag won't hurt them.

Tipperary

2009-05-01T08:19:00.001-07:00

Frivolous yacht race meets life and death struggle.

Wednesday night's race was another ~~light~~ no- wind struggle. Well, I always say there's always some wind. The problem arises when there's not enough wind to contend with current.

But Wednesday night's race from start to finish was a doldrums drifter. Boats were so close together for so long and so slow that you could talk to each other, without VHS.

15 minutes into the race a sea lion pup swam around the fleet, and then hitched a ride on our boat. Now, isn't that slow - even for a sailboat race? He (gender assumed) plopped up on our stern swim platform, for a bask in the failing sunlight. All the boats around us were greatly amused.

Our stowaway abandoned yacht after about 20 minutes to swim around the fleet looking for a more comfortable roost. Within five minutes he came back and boarded us again. After deliberation, we decided to name him Tipperary. He definitely made like he wanted to ascend into the cockpit, but couldn't master the steps on the folding ladder. We offered ol' Tip some Coronas but all we had was cold. He/she would have preferred it warm, me thinks.

Tip stayed with us into the slip. Against all advice - I couldn't resist - I patted him (with gloved hand) on the pate as we left the Marina.

Because Tip was obviously a sick puppy, all of us reported his presence to the local Marine Mammal Center and the Harbor Patrol. Between them, he was rescued later that evening. Our predominant fear is that his behavior is attributed to Domoic Acid Poisoning. I wish a Tip a full recovery and a long life, but that's without any knowledge of his prognosis. Whether he makes it or not, I feel warm that he picked our rescue-friendly stern for some of his last moments. That's probably close to what I'd pick for myself, too, if allowed such an option.

We finished this particular race in last place. But the 1st-rate company aboard made that bearable ...

Needed on the Torture Issue:

2009-04-25T08:21:00.000-07:00

Real World Facts and Real World Understanding

Back in December 2007, when I wrote "Torture is Wrong, Illegal and It Doesn't Work", I mentioned that "the FBI agent who reportedly had the best chance of foiling the 9/11 plot, Ali Soufan, the only Arabic-speaking agent in New York and one of only eight in the country, and who has since resigned from the FBI, could and should tell people the truth of how the CIA's tactics were counterproductive."

Well, guess what?! He finally did so yesterday!!!

"My Tortured Decision" is how former FBI Agent Soufan titled his New York Times op-ed, speaking out to specifically refute a number of Dick Cheney's lies about how torture "worked". The truth, according to Soufan, is quite the opposite:

My Tortured Decision
By Ali Soufan
FOR seven years I have remained silent about the false claims magnifying the effectiveness of the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding. I have spoken only in closed government hearings, as these matters were classified. But the release last week of four Justice Department memos on interrogations allows me to shed light on the story, and on some of the lessons to be learned.

One of the most striking parts of the memos is the false premises on which they are based. The first, dated August 2002, grants authorization to use harsh interrogation techniques on a high-ranking terrorist, Abu Zubaydah, on the grounds that previous methods hadn't been working. The next three memos cite the successes of those methods as a justification for their continued use.

It is inaccurate, however, to say that Abu Zubaydah had been uncooperative. Along with another F.B.I. agent, and with several C.I.A. officers present, I questioned him from March to June 2002, before the harsh techniques were introduced later in August. Under traditional interrogation methods, he provided us with important actionable intelligence.

We discovered, for example, that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. Abu Zubaydah also told us about Jose Padilla, the so-called dirty bomber. This experience fit what I had found throughout my counterterrorism career: traditional interrogation techniques are successful in identifying operatives, uncovering plots and saving lives.

There was no actionable intelligence gained from using enhanced interrogation techniques on Abu Zubaydah that wasn't, or couldn't have been, gained from regular tactics. In addition, I saw that using these alternative methods on other terrorists backfired on more than a few occasions -- all of which are still classified. The short sightedness behind the use of these techniques ignored the unreliability of the methods, the nature of the threat, the mentality and modus operandi of the terrorists, and due process.

Defenders of these techniques have claimed that they got Abu Zubaydah to give up information leading to the capture of Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a top aide to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and Mr. Padilla. This is false. The information that led to Mr. Shibh's capture came primarily from a different terrorist operative who was interviewed using traditional methods. As for Mr. Padilla, the dates just don't add up: the harsh techniques were approved in the memo of August 2002, Mr. Padilla had been arrested that May.

One of the worst consequences of the use of these harsh techniques was that it reintroduced the so-called Chinese wall between the C.I.A. and F.B.I., similar to the communications obstacles that prevented us from working together to stop the 9/11 attacks. Because the bureau would not employ these problematic techniques, our agents who knew the most about the terrorists could have no part in the investigation. An F.B.I. colleague of mine who knew more about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed than anyone in the government was not allowed to speak to him.

It was the right decision to release these memos, as we need the truth to come out. This should not be a partisan matter, because it is in our national security interest to regain our position as the world's foremost defenders of human rights. Just as important, releasing these memos enables us to begin the tricky process of finally bringing these terrorists to justice.

The debate after the release of these memos has centered on whether C.I.A. officials should be prosecuted for their role in harsh interrogation techniques. That would be a mistake. Almost all the agency officials I worked with on these issues were good people who felt as I did about the use of enhanced techniques: it is un-American, ineffective and harmful to our national security.

Fortunately for me, after I objected to the enhanced techniques, the message came through from Pat D'Amuro, an F.B.I. assistant director, that "we don't do that," and I was pulled out of the interrogations by the F.B.I. director, Robert Mueller (this was documented in the report released last year by the Justice Department's inspector general).

My C.I.A. colleagues who balked at the techniques, on the other hand, were instructed to continue. (It's worth noting that when reading between the lines of the newly released memos, it seems clear that it was contractors, not C.I.A. officers, who requested the use of these techniques.)

As we move forward, it's important to not allow the torture issue to harm the reputation, and thus the effectiveness, of the C.I.A. The agency is essential to our national security. We must ensure that the mistakes behind the use of these techniques are never repeated. We're making a good start: President Obama has limited interrogation techniques to the guidelines set in the Army Field Manual, and Leon Panetta, the C.I.A. director, says he has banned the use of contractors and secret overseas prisons for terrorism suspects (the so-called black sites). Just as important, we need to ensure that no new mistakes are made in the process of moving forward -- a real danger right now.

Former Agent Soufan is to be applauded for speaking out after seven years, something even FBI Director Mueller has not really found the courage to do (although Mueller was forced recently to truthfully admit that no attack on America has been disrupted as a result of intelligence obtained through "enhanced techniques").

Agenda Overload and the Harry Chiti Option

2009-04-24T22:34:00.001-07:00

Who was Harry Chiti?

Sometimes in baseball, a team will trade off a player to another team without specifying a player it expects in return. This is referred to trading for “a player to be named later”: the team receiving the specified player will propose a short list of players to sacrifice in return. This practice had to inevitably result in a player eventually being traded away to another team for himself.

That happened to Harry Chiti.

The Mets acquired him from the Cubs in 1962 for a player to be named later. Later, Chiti was sent back to the Cubs as that player to be named later.

This obscure event strikes me as epitomizing ambivalence, indifference and indecisiveness.

In a sense, I also find the event as personally applicable. I feel like I am trading for a Harry Chiti everyday.

As a huge change from posing as a political pundit, I find myself focusing a good deal on yacht racing these days. That’s racing both on the real wet ocean and the make-believe dry, Internet-based Volvo Ocean Racing Game (VORG) -- which takes place in real-time and parallel with the real Volvo Ocean Race.

Unlike baseball, real and virtual yacht racing involves an infinite number of opportunities to make and reverse decisions.

In baseball, there is time available between plays to contemplate the next play in the context of the game and give appropriate signs to the pitcher, fielder, batter, or runner. Only a finite number of choices are available while play pauses and then resumes.

A yacht race offers continuous action and infinite choices as to course angles and sail trim. Even though a sailboat race might appear boringly slow and static, everything in this nautical sport is always in ‘play’. In boat racing, when nothing appears to be happening, things are happening, and their observation is pivotal. Is the water dark over there? What are other boats doing? Why are they doing it? Should we be doing it? Especially, on my (real/wet) boat, where crew have so little to do that they think they can afford to offer Harry Chitises to the helmsman every freaking moment.

In my VORG virtual racing, Harry Chiti punctually re-appears every morning at 2:00 am, when the real-time weather is updated. As soon as I rub the ground glass out of my eyes, he appears on my monitor. “Trade me!” he whispers to me insistently, “Trade me!”. Out of the 200,000 plus virtual boats lurking out there on the Internet, there are 75 boats I track with my charts. They are not only the critical standards by which I measure my progress. (Am I edging forward or falling back?) More importantly, they offer me innumerable examples – good and bad – to follow or avoid.

But the Harry Chiti Option is usually the one I select. After an agonizing ninety minutes of nocturnal analysis, I realize I am returning to bed without having changed anything. More accurately, in the 85th minute I reversed the change I made in the 5th minute. After all is said and done, I return to my bunk leaving Harry Chiti at the helm.

Agenda Overload:

Maybe that’s why I have not been posting on politics anymore.

In the post-Busheney world - in the wake of eight years of the most ruinous and negligent policies imaginable - we are faced with only catastrophic choices. Open wounds abound: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraqistan. Intractable world-wide crises wait in the wings: earth warming and global economic collapse. What of the self-inflicted damage to our own once-great republic such as torture, illegal spying on citizens, and politicization of our justice department. Shall we investigate, indict, prosecute and convict?

The Harry Chitis among us scream out, “Let bygones be bygones”. I hope Barack Obama is not going to sell out to them.

Easter Message

2009-04-12T07:15:00.000-07:00

For my Easter Message, I have selected a passage from an article read several weeks ago.

It is by Wade Graham, an author in environmental science, policy and politics. I am selecting this passage because it is appropriate for Eastertime in terms of content, and because it Graham achieves in it a level of eloquence I don't often find.

In The Independent, Graham is writing of the Gardens of Santa Barbara and The Search for an American Eden: Love, Sex, and Garden Magic.

He concludes by describing the penultimate garden, Lotusland. The designer of Lotusland, he says uniquely did not "fetishize the views of distant peaks", but instead "looked down or in, not up, as she carefully framed not mountains but intricate, surreal compositions of light and color and textures of plants and stones". And that,

Walking through Lotusland is remarkably like walking through the insides of someone’s head, each garden room a fantasy or a dream, a mental space ....

The sum is beyond category, in the sense that it transcends canons of style or period and rejects anxieties of influence, borrows from many sources, and recombines them into something utterly new, because each moment is utterly passionate and personal. The result is garden magic; it suffuses the place. Here, in a garden made by a Polish immigrant in a long-running opera of self-creation, is a fully formed, completely American style: free, individuated, and intelligent, relentless in its gathering of bits of everything in the world, botanical and cultural, immersed in history but ultimately free of it, garden magic untethered.

Happy Easter, friends, bloggers, and aspirant writers!

Al Qaeda -vs- the NRA (Pittsburgh Sequel)

2009-04-08T07:26:00.001-07:00

22-year-old Richard Poplawski is the trigger-man this time. He opened fire with a high-powered rifle and an AK-47.

Poplawski was anti-semitic, anti-government, anti-police and convinced there is a plot afoot to take away the arsenal of guns he had amassed. Poplawski's posts are here, authored under the handle, "Braced For Fate." (Oops! They have been taken down.)

Edward Perkovic, who described himself as Mr. Poplawski's lifelong best friend, said

He was really into politics and really into the First and Second amendment. One thing he feared was he feared the gun ban because he thought that was going to take away peoples' right to defend themselves. He never spoke of going out to murder or to kill.

More of this is to come. Perhaps to your previously 'quiet neighborhood'. And mine.