No not them, although they probably are. No this time I'm talking about me. I have been accused of being unChristian and lacking in forgiveness. Of this, yea I'm guilty.

When this stupid war was being considered initially, I had some hopes that congress would at least refuse to declare it. Then they go and vote to abdicate their constitutionally mandated responsibilities, and let the Idiot-n-Thief have the option. I was more than a little pissed. I said publicly that I thought that every congresslut who voted to give the Insane Horse Wiggler their power should be taken to the back of the hill and have a bullet put in their heads. I figured that if that was done, the next group that begged and campaigned to be given the job would understand that once they got the job, they would be expected to do it.

I still feel that way. Oh sure, I'm sure that I would miss several of the dems who stupidly voted away their power but, that was their choice. Now, I am reading/hearing many of the congresswhores saying that they were misled. They are saying that the White House lied to them. So, if I have this straight, I'm supposed to believe that several career politicians are shocked, shocked I tell you, that career politicians in the WH would lie to them. They must think I'm as stupid as Dumbya.

Rather than doing the right thing and staying in session however long it took to accurately assess the threat to the nation and act accordingly, these assholes chose to take political cover under what they thought was a safe vote. In doing so, they exposed the entire nation to the fraudulent plans of the Evil Bastards In Charge (EBIC). As a result, 2k+ of our comrades-in-arms are no longer with us. A sickening number of patriots are missing limbs, senses, abilities, families, and the will to live. I will not even try to discuss the damage done to the Iraqi nation/people.

So no, I'm not in much of a mood to forgive. I still believe that if all who voted for the idiocy of ignoring the Constitution were summarily executed, the next group would be a lot more careful about doing their jobs. It's harsh, but it would still be fewer deaths than have been suffered among those who joined the military in good faith that the procedures laid out in the Constitution would be followed and any action they were required to be a part of would have been thoroughly investigated and justified. Instead, they get excuses.

Yea, I'm guilty of intolerance for those who undertake extreme measures (multi-year political campaigns) to get a job and then offer excuses for not doing it.

I don't see me getting over it.

CAFKIA

Here just a few minutes ago, the old "Breaking News" banner flashes on MSNBC, while the wife and I are almost watching Imus. Not that I'm all enamored with Don, but he is a Marine after all.

Don says, "well this isn't breaking news, since NBC doesn't know anything more than you or I do about this story". Don proceeds to bring on Pumpkinhead Russert, who basically says the same thing.

What Liberal Media?

GE owns NBC, and MSNBC - who are making many of the weapons systems used by our military and those militaries around the world.

I'll leave you to figure that out.

Semper Fidelis

Victor Davis Hanson writes today that, yes, 2000 soldiers have died in Iraq, but A) that’s really not that many; B) Americans only care about that number because we’re soft and; C) it’s all the media’s fault.

I admire some of Hanson’s earlier books. I read The Soul of Battle in a class once and thought his description and defense of Sherman was brilliant. In the past few years, though, I have watched him sliding into blather; he has become a self-contradicting waterboy for a crowd of hawks who, well, might not have fucked up so much if they’d actually read some of his earlier works. (Or Barbara Tuchman’s. Or Liddell Hart’s. Unfortunately, the only strategy that concerns them is political. Thucydides may be a stranger to them, but Machiavelli they turn to as to an old friend.)

What was brilliant about Hanson’s writing was that he showed readers how the so-called “butterfly effect” worked historically. An acquaintance of mine—who, like Hanson, has spent some time teaching in a military academy’s history department—lamented V.D.H.’s lost focus to me in a recent e-mail, writing that “what is sad these days is how much (Hanson) has lost one of his early insights, namely, that he unintended and unexpected consequences often have greater historical impact over the longer run.” This is being generous, actually. I think what is sad is that Hanson has decided to continue to serve as the Bushies’ academic Aquarius at the expense of any semblance of intellectual integrity. I hope that, whatever he has gained from his foray into Republican advocacy, it was worth the cost of his credibility and scholarly reputation.

(Much more after the flip)

Continue reading "The Soul of Victor Davis Hanson"

by Jeff Huber

Harry's out and Fitzgeralds' indictments should be in shortly. The American political scene is on the cusp of a profound shift. As Fallen Monk and I discussed in an earlier post, there is reason to be apprehensive about Mister Bush at the helm of state without his chief handlers around to tell him which way to steer.

But I think there's a major upside to Bush being stripped of his sidemen. It will give Congress the opportunity to reclaim its constitutional authority and restore the balance of power in the Federal government.

#

As I'm overly fond of saying, the neocons didn't invent anything new; they just expanded old things to neo-proportions. So while they managed to consolidate more power in the office of the president than I've seen in my lifetime, the expansion of executive authority didn't start with them.

We can pin the post-modern presidential power phenomenon to some time around the beginning of the nuclear arms race, when for the sake of national security the president was authorized to respond in mass to a nuclear strike without the requirement of asking Congress for a formal declaration of war. Then we engaged in an undeclared conventional war in Korea under Truman, and a second one in Vietnam under Johnson.

Post-Vietnam, Congress put limits on a president's ability to conduct a prolonged undeclared war, largely by restructuring the military in a way that put sustained logistic support in the hands of the guard and reserves and limiting the amount of time a president could deploy them overseas without Congressional approval.

#

I first sniffed a bad odor about the Bush administration when Dick Cheney started talking about "restoring the office of the president." (I can't remember off hand if he said that during the 2000 campaign or shortly after the election, but it was early on.)

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up when Mister Bush said he would not approve funding for stem cell research. Does he not understand that funding appropriations have to come from Congress? I wondered. Did he mean to say he'd veto a funding bill for stem cell research? Does he understand the difference between passing an appropriation and vetoing one? Today, I conclude that no, he didn't understand the difference. I'm not real confident he understands it now.

#

I got worried about the time Mister Bush rolled out his Orwellian "Axis of Evil" mantra, and started looking into just what the Project for the New American Century had been up to while the Democrats held the White House.

A quick look at the signatories of PNAC's key documents told me we were headed for trouble: Cheney, Perle, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Bolton, and a host of other latter day imperialists who now held key positions in the Bush administration.

But Congress still seemed to have things under control, and in its early months, Mister Bush and his administration were looking like they were a fright wig away from being total Bozos.

#

Then 9-11 happened. And the bullhorn moment. Okay, I thought, the guy's growing into his job.

Afghanistan was an appropriate response, and the war went miraculously well.

Until the Iraq yak started.

As the debate over Iraq grew, some GOP Congressional Bozo went on TV and said, "Mister Bush has declared war on terrorism."

Huh? Mister Bush didn't have the constitutional authority to "declare war." Was anybody going to wave the b.s. flag on that one?

Well, Congress did, eventually. But in doing so, they fell into the neocons' trap.

Okay, the administration said, we'll let Congress vote on whether or not to let us invade Iraq. They presented Congress with a bill that would allow Mister Bush to commit active duty, guard, and reserve forces wherever and whenever he wanted to for as long as he wanted to do it.

And what was anyone in Congress to do in a time of national crisis? Say, "No, the president is not authorized to defend our country?"

So they wrote him a blank check to wage undeclared war.

Then Mister Bush confronted them with the Patriot Act, and Congress passed it for him, suspending major portions of the bill of rights without anyone asking, "Hey, doesn't this require a constitutional amendment?"

And when Mister Bush had his lawyer 'Berto write him a note that said he could ignore constitutional and treaty law on treatment of prisoners without having to ask anyone for permission, nobody batted an eye.

#

Hopefully for America, it's days of having an Emperor in the oval office are about to end.

And hopefully, America will remember that it needs to keep the executive branch of government in its box for as long as…

Let's see. How long was it between the end of Vietnam and the invasion of Iraq?

#

Read more of Jeff's commentaries at Pen and Sword

by Jeff Huber

Fredrick W. Kagan is the latest military scholar to pitch in with his "solution" to the Iraq problem. In a meandering piece modestly titled "Blueprint for Victory" the West Point professor argues that an "Iraqification" strategy will not defeat the insurgency, and that…

The obvious solution is therefore what it has been for several years: to begin to increase the size of the U.S. Army. Any such increase would not produce usable units for a year or perhaps two, and so this suggestion has been repeatedly rejected, since the premise of the CENTCOM strategy has always been that victory is just around the corner. If the Army had been increased in 2001, 2002, 2003, or even 2004, as was suggested each year, there would already be additional forces available. If the Army begins to increase now, new troops will still come on line before the end of Bush's term. We may well need them, for the challenges we face are unlikely to be resolved quickly. Weighing the costs of adding new soldiers against the costs of protracting--or, worse still--losing the war reveals the folly of depending on optimistic prognostications.

In other words, Kagan urges that we increase the U.S. footprint in Iraq through at least 2008.

I've always had mixed opinions about Kagan. I agree with much of what Professor Kagan has written, especially his criticism of Donald Rumsfeld's network-centric warfare concepts.

But at the end of the day, Kagan always says something to remind me that he's one of them.

#

If you didn't know it already, the appearance of his article in Bill Kristol's The Weekly Standard should tip you off that Fred Kagan is a dyed-in-the-wool neoconservative. In fact, you'd be right to say that neo-conning is the Kagan family business.

Fred's father Donald Kagan is a Yale historian who became a "staunch neoconservative" in the 1970s. Just prior to the 2000 election, Donald and Fred co-authored While America Sleeps , a "frightening story" of post Soviet era threats that called on America to increase arms spending.

Brother Robert Kagan , also a scholar, was a founding member of the Project for the New American Century. With fellow PNAC founder Bill Kristol, Robert wrote the 1998 New York Times article " Bombing Iraq isn't Enough " that asserted:

If Mr. Clinton is serious about protecting us and our allies from Iraqi biological and chemical weapons, he will order ground forces to the gulf. Four heavy divisions and two airborne divisions are available for deployment. The President should act, and Congress should support him in the only policy that can succeed.

Fred Kagan is himself a resident scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, a prominent conservative think tank.

#

When the insurgency in Iraq clearly became unmanageable, neocons like Kristol and the Kagans who pushed for the invasion began distancing themselves from Donald Rumsfeld, who was also a member of the PNAC cabal. That things have gone so badly, their argument goes, is because of Rumsfeld's mishandling of the war. At no time will they suggest that maybe the invasion itself was a bad idea, or that unnecessary wars of occupation are the worst possible way of conducting foreign policy.

So we'll continue to hear talk from right wing intellectual elites about "we should do this or that" to solve the Iraq situation that will amount to nothing more than the "stay the course" mantra.

It's a sad fact that military academia is almost exclusively populated by people who make a living promoting war as a superior tool of national power. You'll find very few professors at our service academies and war colleges who will argue that a half trillion dollars a year in defense spending is, perhaps, a trifle excessive. That sort of thing doesn't put one on the fast track to a department chair or a cushy fellowship with a conservative think tank.

The Frederick Kagans of this country not only want to deny the possibility that they were wrong about Iraq. They have a vested interest in ensuring that America maintains a foreign policy of aggressive military intervention, and perpetuates itself as an imperialistic oligarchy.

#

Read more of Jeff's commentaries at Pen and Sword

This piece may, or may not strike some ire in many people. I don't give a shit. It has been a lifetime struggle for me, deciding what was the best route to take. Myself, I always seem to come back to the one which worked best and most consistantly.

Steven Tuck is a disabled Army Veteran, injured in a 1987 parachute accident (his chute failed to open in a training event), used morphine for years for the chronic pain as a result of the accident. Steve also used medicinal marijuana. He also grew his own, and supplied some for other medical cannabis patients in Humboldt California, where he lived. Steve fled to Vancouver, Canada in 2001 as one of the 'pot war refugees'. My wife and I met Steve in Vancouver in August of 2001, while on our honeymoon.

On 07 October 05, Steve was grabbed from a Canadian hospital by Canadian authorities, then driven to the border with a urinary catheter STILL ATTACHED - where he was turned over to US authorities. He was incarcerated in a Seattle jail for 5 days with only Ibuprofen, and without having his catheter removed, or inspected by a Doctor.

Steve was released from the Seattle jail last week on Thursday to seek medical treatment, but he must return to Humboldt County, CA - where he must face his original state charge, filed in 2001.

Now, you may not agree with the use of medicinal cannabis. I do. I have Stage 3 Rheumatoid Arthritis. My hands are starting to take the shape of those normally associated with RA - fingers all curled, knuckles swollen and red. I hobble and limp when I walk, due to my fucked up spine, and a hip that needs replacing. Last year my shoulder quit working, and I couldn't wipe my ass. I couldn't even reach the top of my head with my right arm.

I take a couple 3 handfulls of pills a day, including an injection. From my perspective - dialing in the drug coctail for the past 4.5 years has been a real bitch - what with the diarrhea attacks, the 60-80 pound weight gains from steroid use (those are fun to pare off in your mid-late 40's, especially when you can't walk or exercise so well), sleepless nights in excruciating pain. Excruciating Pain. Chronic. 24/7/365. It never ends.

So, I know what Steven goes through. I had about 5 months of RA treatment under me, when we met him. I was a mere rookie then, far as pain goes. But I had been living with pain for years - I just had no clue as to what caused it. See, living without health insurance is a real touch and go situation. You get things fixed that require it, and the rest waits... Back to Steven and I. Steven's spine is compressed, he has suffered some internal organ damage from the parachute accident. The morphine only does so much good. I can attest to that from a very personal perspective. My best friend - Marine, was working in the copper mine in White Pine, Michigan. He was on a mine rescue operation and coming down a ladder (serrated steel type). His feet went out from under him, and down he went, on his back, feet in the air on a steel platform from about 30 feet.

Well, he imploded 3 discs in the lumbar area. He's had 5 spinal fusions, and 10 major spinal surgeries. He's had a morphine pump installed for 8 years now. That almost killed him - first installation gave him Spinal Menengitis, cost him 45% of his hearing and now has Meneire's Disease. Boy, thank you VA. Anyway, Terry does okay with his pump and instant release morphine pills. However, an occasional cannabis cookie - and he is able to not take the instant release morphine tabs at all during the course of the day. He also says quite plainly..."I have the best day that I've had in years, and to me that's worth more than anything".

I feel the same way with the RA. I get up in the mornings and it takes me a good 2-3 hours before I can move with any semblance of fluidity. I keep my hands mobile by playing the guitar, mandolin and banjo. I also wash the dishes the old fashioned way - in a sink with hot, soapy water. Works wonders for stiffness. I also can eat a cookie, or take a toke and it makes the day go by easier. What's the big issue?

Drug companies would stand to lose billions, upon billions if it was legalized. And, thats only the start. On Monday, the FBI announced that the government is arresting one marijuana user every 41 seconds ­ more than ever before. The 771,605 marijuana arrests last year set an all-time record ­ and exceeded the 590,258 arrests for all violent crimes combined. And 89% of the marijuana arrests were for simple possession, not sale or manufacture. This is wildly out of sync with the priorities of most Americans.

So, why'd the government arrest Steven Tuck? Because he shoved it in their faces every chance that he got. They don't like that very well. Well, you now get a small glimpse of how they treat you if you believe in an herb which was put on this planet by the God which they supposedly believe in. That which they have outlawed, that which they have made illegal to even study.

The hops plant, Humulus Lupulus, belongs to the Cannabaceae family (the same genus as Cannabis sativa/indica, or marijuana). Used by some people as a sedative-hypnotic, hops are most familiar as a beer ingredient, where they add a bitter taste and act as a preservative. Hops are traditionally used for relaxation, sedation and to treat insomnia, depressions and menopause symptoms. They are also used to ease muscle spasms and to stimulate the digestive system.

Hops flavor, bitter, and preserve beer. They promote appetite and sleep and reduce anxiety. Recently research has looked at anti-cancer and anti-viral effects.

Similar weed like experience was reported when smoking hops.

Gee. Find that interesting? I could produce volumes of information on medicinal cannabis. I just figured I'd put one of the more generic, and overlooked ones out there for you to ponder.

Betcha didn't know that beer was made with a direct descendent of the pot plant did you? I even gave this information to a recently retired state trooper, who told me that I made it up. I called him a brainwashed fucking moron, and dumped his beer in his lap. He's since changed his mind about the facts.

Funny what facts will do to some people, no matter how ignorant they appear.

Semper Fidelis

Via The Editors we hear about apparently another contractor massacre:

The mob grew more frenzied as the gunmen dragged the two surviving Americans from the cab of their bullet-ridden lorry and forced them to kneel on the street.

Killing one of the men with a rifle round fired into the back of his head, they doused the other with petrol and set him alight. Barefoot children, yelping in delight, piled straw on to the screaming man's body to stoke the flames.

This was reported yesterday, Oct 22nd, in only one paper, as far as I can tell. The event is reported to have occurred Sept 20th, and the story was repressed by CENTCOM, perhaps because the story so closely resembles the attack on Halliburton contractors in Fallujah in early 2004.

Perhaps fearful of public reaction in America, where support for the war is falling, US officials suppressed details of the Sept 20 attack, which bore a striking resemblance to the murder of four other contractors in Fallujah last year.

The article is actually quite US-friendly, carefully mentioning the Bu$hCo party line about foreign fighters.

Duluiya, located in the notorious Sunni triangle, is much smaller than Fallujah but no less violent, even if events here rarely make the news.

The violence here seems to encapsulate the growing difficulties the US military is facing in trying to defeat the insurgency. Pinned down by a constant stream of hit-and-run attacks from former Saddam regime loyalists, American soldiers are unable to focus their attention on the foreign extremists who pose a far more dangerous threat to the future of Iraq.

The isolated towns east of the Tigris supply the foreign fighters and their allies and provide a haven where they can regroup after American offensives on their urban strongholds. If the Americans do not close off these boltholes, it seems unlikely the war can be won.

Whether the fabled “foreign fighters” are really militarily significant in the Iraqi resistance is a moot question, because the US military lacks concrete intelligence and any truly effective means of collecting it. There’s that language problem, as well as the cultural awareness difficulties that prevent truly good merging with any Iraqi elements that might be predisposed to help us. The Iraqis consider this “collaboration” and they’ve found an effective means of punishment: kill the collaborator and his family.
If we can’t offer them safety they won’t help us. If they won’t help us and remain neutral, then we’ve lost.

Lt Col Gary Brito, the battalion's [ed: 1st/15th Infantry] commanding officer, said that in recent months the number of roadside bombs targeting his men had increased by a third - even though journeys out of base have been cut back. They are having a more devastating effect too.

"Before only two out of 10 used to be effective," he said. "Now four or five have a catastrophic effect, blowing away a vehicle or causing casualties." In the past few months at least four American soldiers in this battalion alone have been killed. Another 39 have been wounded.

Time to fold up the tents and plan a fighting withdrawal.

It’s Sunday morning; time for the weekly talking head fantasy shows wherein paid representatives of the Bu$hCo malAdministration lie to their paid shills in the electronic media. I don’t much bother with these shows. It’s all crap, anyway, and the travesty just sours my stomach. What’s the point of watching “journalists” nod sagely as the latest lies are spewed forth and said “journalists” ignore obvious inconsistencies in the public record in their haste to move on to the next scripted question?

But, as the title states, this will be a tough Sunday. So much to overlook, lie about, spin away, and ignore.

Ms Miers not only has no judicial qualifications, is an ardent admirer and supporter of our Imperial Resident, and has been exquisitely overpaid for unspecified legal work, but she’s also the recipient of incredible largess from the state of Texas.

Then there’s the Plamegate mess. Most noteworthy: The Facsist Party pushback which is full of lies and Media Matters performs a perfect hip throw here, for those of you interested in political jiu jitsu.

There’s the DeLay mess. Where to go? So much has been written. We all understand corruption. Who among us hasn’t slipped $10 to a headwaiter for a better table or comped someone for a favor? It’s the same thing, only the numbers are bigger, and the favors slightly excessive. When a guy gets paid multiples of $10,000 to make sure women in an American protectorate can continue to be kept in sexual slavery things may have gone a bit too far.

Best talking point of the day? How much has Bush’s “political capital” been hurt by the recent run of “bad luck” he’s experienced as fate conspired to tear away the curtain of invulnerability and exposed his wonderful wardrobe?

So, today being Saturday, I went late for my therapy (no jokes, please) and had a nice riistafel take-away dinner from a good oriental restaurant nearby. I got some Opor Ayam, which is a nice chicken curry with coconut garnish, Nasi Goreng, a wickedly hot fried rice, some shrimp with peanut sauce, and some Pisang Goreng , sweet banana strips sautéed in butter, just for some sweetness. Indonesian is sometimes hotter than Thai food, but in a good riisstafel restaurant you can always get something to cool the mouth after the chillies and peanuts.

The meal was great. This gave me heartburn, though.

LONDON (Reuters) - Forty-five percent of Iraqis believe attacks on U.S. and British troops are justified, according to a secret poll said to have been commissioned by British defense leaders and cited by The Sunday Telegraph.

The paper said the poll, conducted in August by an Iraqi university research team, was commissioned by the Ministry of Defense.

Sitting here in a boarded up house, waiting for yet another hurricane, undoubtedly caused by the global warming these guys pretend doesn’t exist, and they found a way to ruin a perfectly good dinner.

Mission Accomplished.

FBI and INS agents have arrested a naturalized Moroccan who claimed to be a Lebanese refugee in the 1970s when he came to the US. The man, arrested in Brooklyn this week, had created such a tangled legend that the Feds aren’t even really sure what his real name is, and he has been charged as “FNU, LNU” (first name unknown, last name unkown) along with a string of aliases.

The man was hired by The Titan Corp, a major scammer, I mean contractor, to work as an interpreter with US military units in Iraq, where for over 2 years he handled information with a high security content.

According to a criminal complaint filed (with no fanfare or press release) last Thursday in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, the interpreter, who had been granted a "high-level clearance to access classified information," has been charged with making a variety of false statements to FBI and Department of Defense officials as well as the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Jeepers, the guy was arrested, held without bail pending arraignment, charged in a criminal complaint with no press conference. Based on past experience I’d have expected the FBI to have arranged a conference in Yankee Stadium to accommodate all the lapdog presstitutes. I mean, the 5 month Quantico school for FBI agents has a 2 week block of instruction solely devoted to obtaining advantageous TV coverage on every single arrest. This is big. Really big. An Arabic person sneaks into the US, gets a fake ID, bamboozles the INS into giving him a green card and then naturalization papers, goes to work for a politically powerful DOD contractor, gets access to US military secrets for over 2 years. Shouldn’t we expect a major case expose, with at least a Deputy Assistant Attorney General flown in from Washington to make the announcement?

While in Iraq, the interpreter, who is believed to be 45 and of Moroccan descent, fraudulently accessed "classified information of the United State Military" while assigned to various units, including "an intelligence group in the 82nd Airborne Division."

I guess if we hadn’t been busy the last 4 years dumping Arabic translators because they were homosexuals, but still loyal and willing patriots, we might not have been bitten by yet another Bu$hCo security failure.

The Smoking Gun has more details, as well as photocopies of the 12 page complaint. And a hand salute to Buzzsflash for the tipoff.

On Monday, October 17th Gail Davidson and Howard Rubin along with Jason Gratl and Micheal Vonn representing B.C. Civil Liberties stepped into courtroom 55 of the BC Supreme Court in Vancouver with the hopes of lifting the publication ban which, since December of 2004 August, has kept the case out of the public eye. After a relatively short session of 45 minutes they emerged successful. "I don't know that I would call it a victory quite yet," said Ms. Davidson, "but it is at least a step in the right direction. People deserve to know what is happening here."

What is happening is that Ms. Davidson and Lawyers Against the War have laid charges against George Bush Jr; accusing him of aiding, abetting, and counseling the commission of torture. This charge is based on the abuses of the prisoners held at the U.S. prisons in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and Abu-Ghraib, Iraq including Canadian minor Omar Khadr, who has been held in Cuba since 2001. [my em]

[. . .]

That's going on in Canada. There are charges pending in Germany as well. Can't wait until indictments are sworn here too.

Hat tip: Cathie. Cross-posted at the Brain.

Meanwhile, in some alternate universe where the rules of law, decency, and common sense apparently do not apply, the Army – OUR Army, the one we entrusted to some madmen with no plan other than brute intimidation, we’re busy marching to freedom.

Professor Cole nails it cold -

Some years ago, Americans were aghast and horrified when news broke that a mortuary here in Florida was dumping bodies into a waste ground, rather than interring them with what our culture considers decent Christian reverence. While I don’t personally hold with this burial/interment ritual, I am sensitive to the desires of others to treat the departed with a degree of respect and, according to their individual religious preferences, the expectation of resurrection.

The burning and desecration of Taliban bodies as a technique of intimidation in Afghanistan by US troops has backfired big time. Afghanistan clergymen are hopping mad at the US, and opposition to continued US troop presence in Afghanistan is growing.

It’s a sign of cultural blindness to not realize that others might have the same sort of respect and expectation. And a policy of this sort, apparently intended to cow a subject population, is cultural madness. As sure as I am that the decision to do this came from somewhere high up the chain of command, I’m also offering bets of 6 to 5, and pick ‘em that we’ll hear once again about a “few bad apples” and “rogue elements” among the peasantry that our troops are slowly being made into. This is more of that General Boykin insanity.

Me, I'm not sure what 20,000 troops in Afghanistan are even doing any longer. They sure aren't capturing Bin Laden or Zawahiri. As for the remnants of the Taliban, you don't need 20,000 US troops to deal with them. NATO is doing a good job in Afghanistan, and the US should bow out in favor of it until the Afghanistan government can stand alone.

When the decision was finally made to introduce NATO troops into Afghanistan I think many of us considered it a good sign. Our European allies, those who valiantly and honorably offered their assistance and support after 9/11, chose to stand with us in the battle against the Taliban. Some of those same allies loyally joined the immoral assault against Iraq, despite some massive groundswell of citizen protest in their countries. We quickly learned that a cynical malAdministration had to bribe them to do so, and most of them have since abandoned the tar baby that is Iraq.

But Afghanistan is our victory. We defeated the Taliban there, dispersed them, freed the Afghanis. Right?

When the deputy governor under the Taliban who oversaw the blowing up of the Buddhas of Bamiyan is sitting in the new parliament, it is hard to see who the large US troop presence even matters any more.

Like the little Carol Anne in Poltergeist II said, “They’re back.” Taliban influence is spreading once again in Afghanistan at the village level. And we don’t have the manpower to stop them. It’s all we can do to hang onto Kabul. Just as the Soviets learned in the 1980s.

Mission Accomplished.

An anniversary:

"Stand to your guns!" at last came in a peal through the perfect stillness from the captain's speaking trumpet; it swept fore and aft with such clear force, as though it had been spoken within a foot of the ear, and seemed to dash down into the holds, and penetrate to the very keel. The instant change this produced was magical. "Take good aim! Ready the first platoon!" Ready? Aye, every one was ready; stern, fixed rigid in soul - pliant, elastic in body. "Captains of the guns, watch the falling of the first shot, and point accordingly." Not a word was replied; even the everlasting "ay, ay, sir" was refused now. - Charles Reece Pemberton, quoted in Nelson's Trafalgar: The Battle That Changed the World, by Roy Adkins

The New America Foundation bills itself as an “independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit public policy institute that was conceived through the collaborative work of a diverse and intergenerational group of public intellectuals, civic leaders, and business executives.” Beginning in January, 1999, the Foundation has presented a bipartisan voice to discuss the many changes and threats facing America in the 21st century. Its many policy presentations have tried to create an alternative option for national policy.

Steven Clemons of the Washington Note has written an intriguing introduction to the latest public forum at the NAF. Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who served with General and Secretary of State Colin Powell for 16 years at the Pentagon and Department of State, where he was Powell’s chief of staff, spoke for over an hour, and engaged in a lengthy and illuminating question and answer session. Some of the highlights include these bombshells:

“What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made. “Now it is paying the consequences of making those decisions in secret, but far more telling to me is America is paying the consequences.”

“If you're not prepared to stop the feuding elements in the bureaucracy as they carry out your decisions, you are courting disaster. And I would say that we have courted disaster in Iraq, in North Korea, in Iran.”

The detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere was “a concrete example” of the decision-making problem, with the president and other top officials in effect giving the green light to soldiers to abuse detainees. “You don't have this kind of pervasive attitude out there unless you've condoned it.”

Next to Richard Clark, COL Wilkerson is the highest ranking Bush malAdministration official to have publicly exposed the evil and corruption in our present government. In his mind there seems to be no doubt that the excesses of Abu Ghraib and other torture scandals were implemented right at the very tippy top of the pyramid, if you get what I mean and I think you do.

"A few rotten apples" indeed.

COL Wilkerson offers an apologia for Mr Powell, perhaps because of his many years of close association, saying, “He's not happy with my speaking out because, and I admire this in him, he is the world's most loyal soldier." While I respect COL Wilkerson for his belated public candor I disagree with his assessment of Powell. A soldier's loyalty is owed to the nation and to the constitution, not to individuals. Powell's actions in covering up the My Lai massacre, as well as his disgraceful and thoroughly debunked dog and pony show in front of the UN will remain dark stains on his record throughout history.

The full video of the forum is here and is over an hour long. I haven’t seen the entire thing yet. The most serious criticism begin around the 26 minute mark. The question and answer portion begins at around 48 minutes.

A partial transcript is available here

Via military.com we learn that the troops don't have enough movie theaters, and have to make their own films.

(Noisy, but work safe.(

http://www.metropulse.com/articles/2005/15_30/discomfort.shtml

The following is a column by me that was published in our local alt weekly a while back. It seems appropo now so I am posting it here. As is my tradition on meanderthal, the link above is to the newspaper site but I will post the entire text as I submitted it. Obviously, there may be some differences but, this is the way I am comfortable doing it.

Thirty years ago, I was in the United States Navy. I was in a corner of the Navy known as the Naval Security Group. I will not explain it any further than to say that we did stuff that required me to have a high level clearance. I held a top secret security clearance for almost the entire time (just shy of ten years) I was in the Navy, excepting only that time on the front end while the required background investigation was still being completed.

When I was first granted the clearance, I was made to read and sign several documents that outlined my responsibilities in reference to the information I would be made privy to and, what punishments could/would be visited upon me should I violate the agreements by disseminating the information to unauthorized individuals.

The hard and fast rule in the intelligence community is “Need To Know“. What that means is that the mere fact that I had a top secret clearance did not mean that I could look at anything classified top secret or below. What it meant was that I was allowed access to such information as was necessary to do my job, ONLY. Essentially, if I had a friend who worked on a different project who also had a top secret clearance and, if I shared information from my project with him, I could have been and likely, would have been prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Just having the same or greater level clearance was/is not enough. To get access to information on a given classified project, the individual must have a valid "Need to Know" in addition to having the necessary clearance. So an unauthorized individual would be someone who did not have the necessary clearance and/or someone who did not have an officially established necessity for the information.
It is also important to note that simply confirming the veracity of a piece of classified information to an unauthorized individual was considered to be essentially the same as disseminating the information. So not being the first source on a bit of information is no defense if you could be considered a confirming source.

All of this was made clear to me as an 18 year old fresh from having been nowhere and done nothing. Fresh from East Knoxville and West High School, they made me understand my responsibilities with the information I was being allowed access to in a very real and tangible way.

Why am I telling you this? You needed the background to understand my coming allegation. Karl Rove knew exactly what he was doing. Not only that but, Karl Rove knew exactly what could happen to him for doing what he did. I know he knew because a too-young-to-shave, hick kid from East Knoxville was made to know 30+ years ago. You do not get official access to highly classified information without going through some version of what I went through.

So Karl Rove knew the score. He knew the risks. He knew the possible punishments. Yet he chose to release information that would put the nation at risk. He chose to literally risk the lives of CIA resources for political gain. He did it because he figured he could ride out any wave of public scrutiny. He thinks that the public attention span is short enough that his endangering the nation will shortly be moved off of the front pages by something good, bad, or mundane happening to an attractive White female (or child I suppose).

Is he right?

Information gathering doesn't work like James Bond movies. It is a dynamic structure with a foundation that is a diverse number of types, and locations, of information sources. It's form is a host of information analysts who build on that foundation and others who build upon the work of the previous analysts and others who build upon their work and on and on. It is a nearly unbelievable number of seemingly inconsequential facts that eventually are made to coalesce into a coherent picture by some mid level intelligence analyst. Their work will be a small part of some much larger picture that some other shadowy figure is working on. When Karl Rove outed Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA resource, he destroyed a lot of work. He not only made sure that every thing she had had access to in her cover job would be modified, he not only ensured that every contact she had made would be scrutinized and, perhaps, “sanitized” by other nation's intelligence agencies, no, he also denied the benefit of what she was working on to some analyst or analysts who might have worked for years to be able to incorporate what she was learning into their work. What she was working on, was tracking and preventing illicit WMD sales among other things. For the sake of political power, for a little political revenge against her husband, Karl Rove destroyed all of that.

Karl Rove betrayed America because he thinks you either don't care or, won't care for very long.

Is he right?

CAFKIA

by Jeff Huber

It's fascinating watching Saddam Hussein's trial begin as we await the results of Patrick Fitzgerald's grand jury.

You've probably heard that Hussein has pleaded innocent, and that he has been granted a 30 day delay in the proceedings. You may also know that Patrick Fitzgerald has told associates he doesn't plan to publish a report of his investigation, which makes many observers certain that indictments are imminent.

Almost everyone is aware that Fitzgerald's investigation appears to have "zeroed in" on Dick Cheney's office. Many suspect that charges may be levied against Mister Bush himself.

And it seems everybody agrees now that Plame/Rove/Niger/Traitorgate is about a whole lot more than who outed Valerie Plame. It's about whether anyone purposely exaggerated, cooked, or out and out lied about the WMD intelligence that propelled America into invading Iraq.

#

Hussein continues to insist that he is still president of Iraq, and as such the tribunal has no authority to try him. One TV mouth breather said that Hussein is trying to shift the trial from the criminal to the political arena.

Bill Kristol, one of the chief architects of the Iraq policy, bemoans the Fitzgerald investigation as the criminalization of politics. Why does my sniffer tell me Kristol is trying to cover his own backside, both criminally and politically?

#

Part of Hussein's defense will be that his genocides were legitimate actions taken in his function as head of the Iraqi state to suppress rebellion. Hussein is also scheduled to be charged with the invasion of Kuwait, and will be held responsible for Iraqi soldiers torturing Kuwaiti prisoners. Hussein's lawyers will argue that the invasion of Kuwait was justified by ancient territorial claims (Kuwait was part of Mesopotamia). They'll also argue that Hussein can't be held to account for the "handful of bad apples" who tortured Kuwaitis.

If by some chance Mister Bush faces charges that he exceeded his constitutional authority in the name of "national security," and that he purposely lied about the Iraq intelligence in order to justify the invasion, and that his policies were directly responsible for the prisoner abuses in Cuba, Iraq, and Afghanistan, what will his defense be?

#

But let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. For all we know, Fitz will turn around after two years of investigation and say, "Sorry, I got nothing on these people."

And there's an outside chance that Saddam Hussein will walk.

Read more of Jeff's commentaries at Pen and Sword

You're going to see this over at Eschaton:

WASHINGTON – The Pentagon has reneged on its offer to pay a $15,000 bonus to members of the National Guard and Army Reserve who agree to extend their enlistments by six years, according to Sen. Patty Murray (D-Seattle...

A Pentagon spokeswoman, Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke, confirmed the bonuses had been canceled, saying they violated Pentagon policies because they duplicated other programs. She said Guard and Reserve members would be eligible for other bonuses.

I love to tee off on the Bushies as much as the next guy--especially when they're screwing soldiers (which they do...a lot)--but this one isn't really their fault. You see, Atrios's ellipses leave out a very important paragraph.

The bonuses were offered in January to Active Guard and Reserve and military technician soldiers who were serving overseas. In April, the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs ordered the bonuses stopped, Murray said.

This is um, just wrong. See, the bonuses were never offered to AGRs and technicians. Bonuses are for the "one weekend a month, two weeks a year" soldiers, known in the guard as "M-day" soldiers. AGRs and technicians have full-time jobs in the Guard in which the pay is based on either the active-duty military scale or the GS government pay scale, respectively. Why, honestly, would you need to pay those soldiers a $15,000 bonus when they'll re-enlist because they have to in order to keep their jobs?

I hate when journalists who don't understand the intricacies of the military get people worked up over b.s.

(Crossposted at Nitpicker.)

Ok, this is just one way to tell when I have something to do that I don't really want to do. I got the following garbage in email form. It isn't the first time I have gotten it. This time, since I'm procrastinating on other things, I decided to answer it. What you will see below is my answer interspersed with the original missive. I imagine that I shall not see stuff like this again from this person. Hopefully, you will find it entertaining at least.

From: http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/rooney4.asp  A site that debunks urban legends.

 

Moreover, Rooney himself denied it in 2003, saying:

 

About a year ago, I became aware of a more serious theft of my name and it is so hurtful to my reputation that it calls for legal action against the thief. Hundreds of people have written asking if I really wrote the 20 detestable remarks made under my name that have had such wide circulation on the Internet.

[...]

Some of the remarks, which I will not repeat here, are viciously racist and the spirit of the whole thing is nasty, mean and totally inconsistent with my philosophy of life. It is apparent that the list of comments has been read by hundreds of thousands of Americans, many of whom must believe that it accurately represents opinions of mine that I don't dare express in my column or on television. It is seriously damaging to my reputation.
 

 

 (more on the web page listed above)

However, even though it is complete bunk, keep reading.