There’s one thing that’s certain about Bu$hCo and the Republican Party: when people start figuring out their game, and begin speaking up about the Emperor’s invisible suit, the apparatchiki start a coordinated pushback. The key factors are public awareness of the fraud of “compassionate conservatism,” which is dedicated to separating the middle and lower classes from their money as quickly and as viciously as possible, and the public discussion of this by any media entity or figure, and any public portrayal of the inherent falseness and fakery of the whole thing.

As long as the media faithfully toes the Bu$hCo line and repeats the storyline preferred by the ideological gurus of the high maintenance think tanks, everything is wonderful. As soon as some original thought creeps into a public presentation the entire well-oiled machinery of the VRWNM swings into action to destroy the dissenting voice and squash the heresy of honest reporting.

Case in point: the media has been reporting the truth about Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the start of the Bu$hCo campaign that Iran is an immediate danger to America. The media must be whipped back into line. The last week has seen pushback by several top faces of Bu$hCo expressing concern that the media is unfair, and reporting only the bad news from Iraq and Afghanistan. Iran, has been left alone since all the preparations haven’t been completed yet.

Jeff Huber has written about the appearance of viral email marketing of “good news,” following the official story line that the media will report IEDs, bomb attacks and assassinations of Iraqis and US troops, but never talk about the school that has been repainted, or the water plant that is back in operation, or the electric plant that has been repaired. (That electric plant, of course, is only generating electricity 3 hours a day, but – Hey! That’s progress, because it used to only generate electricity one hour a day.) It’s interesting to note that the viral email Jeff is discussing contains mostly photos from Afghanistan, which is only dangerous outside Kabul, rather than Iraq, which is dangerous only outside the Green Zone, except for when there are rocket or mortar attacks, or the occasional IED inside the Green Zone.

The media, which is corporately owned, obediently started to broadcast a few minor good news stories along with the daily recitation of all the death, maiming and catastrophe of a Bu$hCo boondoggle which is now costing $200 Billion-with-a-B per DAY. Instructions from plush corporate offices in skyscrapers high over Manhattan and Los Angeles went out: “Get out of the Green Zone, and report about some good news.”

Bureau chiefs and independent reporters wired back: “Please send more money. It is so dangerous here we need fully armored SUVs and three chase cars filled with bodyguards to go outside the Green Zone.” The Corporate empty suits read these wires, gulped, looked at the cost estimates, compared them to advertising income, and suggested “Do what you can; cut and paste CENTCOM press releases.”

There is a new theme in Bu$hCo’s propaganda: the good news is out there; we’re repairing and repainting schools; troops are buying crayons and coloring books with their own funds (Halliburton decided not to compete with Binney & Smith) but we can’t tell you about them because the “insurgents” will immediate go and blow them up, because after all, the “insurgents” watch our news broadcasts.

“Dr” Laura Ingraham was on the Today Show on March 21st, complaining that the “media” prefers to report news from Baghdad hotel balconies, rather than from out in Injun country, where people are dying. David Gregory, one of the few reporters who has not yet handed his testicles to Bu$hCo for safekeeping, discusses the matter with her here, and it’s well worth watching.

Howard Kurtz, who allegedly reports on the media for CNN- did you know he’s married to a Republican Party political operative? – has a live conversation with Lara Logan, who reports from Baghdad for CBS News, here and she straightens his tie for him, as well as discussing “Dr” Laura’s ridiculous hate speech about reporters who don’t want to risk their lives to provide video of Bu$hCo’s propaganda.

But when all else fails, Bu$hCo is quite capable of invoking the “state secret” page of their playbook. That’s where you hear that the good news is out there, but the Iraqis al Quaeda foreign fighters terrorists ”insurgents“ hate our freedoms and if we tell you where the great stuff is, they’ll just blow it up. This play seems to fly in the face of many polls that show Iraqis overwhelmingly want our asses out of their country, are tired of the occupation, and agree that the insurgency is both right, and is winning. This theme was first field tested late last year, and no one immediately laughed at it, so Bu$hCo figures it’s a winner.

An AP story from last November, originally published in a Kansas City paper and repeated on Daily Kos, discusses a Congressional fact-finding mission to Iraq, and the injuring of two of them in what was reported as a traffic accident on the way to the Baghdad Airport. The problem is that the road from BIA to Baghdad is so frickin’ dangerous that vehicles travel at full speed and damn the torpedoes. Now, even in the US, where roads are well-lit, and not pockmarked with craters from RPGs and IEDs, authorities will tell you full speed at night is not a wise thing to do.

Right around that time, I printed out something I found somewhere in the internet. I have no idea where I found it, but obviously it was a seminal moment for me, the first time I’d heard of this fertilizer:

I have heard it all now. Clicking through the channels, I stopped briefly on Fox News to listen to Rep Tim Murphy (R-PA) talking about his recent trip to Iraq. He said things were improving daily, and that the reason we don’t hear anything about the successful reconstruction effort is that if we announce the successes, al Quaeda will seek to destroy them. NEW TALKING POINT: “Can’t talk about the successful projects because insurgents will blow them up, so you’ll just have to trust us.” New spin on an old talking point. Instead of blaming the press for not covering success stories, they blame the insurgents for not being able to tell people about success stories. Hey, don’t we pay journalists in Iraq good money to talk about success stories? Armed with this talking point they will no longer be necessary

The test marketing was successful, and now we’re seeing the new spring lineup.

Laura has a very interesting article over at War and Piece and there are several different concept threads going on all at once. They’re all interleaved, however with one exception.

How is the Lincoln Group spinning the US authorizing torture? As Bush's poll numbers since November indicate, it's hard to know whether to laugh or cry at the administration's efforts to attempt to covertly buy good press in Iraq through such an outfit as Lincoln. After all, so much for the spin machine employed by this administration at home or abroad when the single most used word American citizens tell pollsters they associate with the president is "incompetent" -- (closely followed by "idiot" and "liar," according to Pew).

We’ve had these discussions about the malAdministration’s serious (and expensive) efforts to “buy” good press in the Iraq and the US. Why is anyone surprised? They’re Republicans. Republicans coerce assent through fear or bribery. It’s what the party does. Why is anyone surprised?

In some ways, perhaps the best Lincoln's funders could hope for is that its influence campaign convinces Iraqis that the US's foibles in Iraq are the result of incompetence rather than some malign intent. The White House's position on torture would seem however to erode the "bad apples" defense the Bush White House characteristically employs when acts of gross abuse by US personnel are uncovered in Iraq and Afghanistan, and eat away at the US's image in the world, far more than any Pentagon-funded Lincoln Group influence campaign could ever manage to counteract.

Now, isn’t that an interesting idea? A conscious attempt to “minimize” the political fallout and moral outrage from revelations of torture by invoking the “incompetence” theme, rather than the “evil bastards” theme.

It’s certainly no secret that George Bush loves torture. Those who have taken the time to investigate his youth have found numerous sources revealing his pleasure in sticking firecrackers into some orifice of frogs and blowing them up. And there’s a memorable photograph of our Cheerleader-in-Chief playing rugby or soccer in college, with his arm around another player’s neck, and his fist saying hello to the hapless (and helpless) opponent’s face. That was published in a Yale yearbook, in fact, I believe.

A college professor taught me in a class on Logic and Philosophy that “generalizations are ALWAYS suspect.” Yet I think most astute and experienced Americans understand that bullies are invariably moral and physical cowards, and most likely to take vicious pleasure in hurting another life form – animal or human. It’s hardly surprising that people like Mr Bush, Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld have advocated torture – rather stridently I understand, right from September 12th.

There’s another concept in all of this, of course. Lincoln is one of the patrons and clients of the Republican Party. Another is Bechtel. A third is CheneyBurton. It’s a good way to get cash into the hands of the patrons of the party, who then return a portion of their windfalls by way of donations, both legal and illegal. By legal I mean those campaign donations, bundled and otherwise, so carefully protected by all the “reform” laws that have been enacted to “control” paying to play. Illegal is a touchy subject of course, because even those things generally perceived as “legal” like say a bundle of $2,000 checks given by Jack Abramoff to Katherine Harris, to cite one example is only kinda sorta “legal.” That sort of thing is technically legal, but stop and consider what would happen if Ms Harris was a Democrat.

What I really had in mind was the thought that Mom and Pop candy stores, dry cleaners, and bars aren’t the only businesses that have a lot of loose cash floating around, if you get my drift and I’m sure you do.

William Learned Marcy, an American Senator once said “They see nothing wrong with the rule that to the victor belong the spoils of the enemy.” And that’s a contributory reason for the looting of the Treasury and why we no longer have the surplus that President Clinton worked so hard to amass.

This was just too good to pass up. In the wake of a published list of Darth Cheney’s hotel suite demands when on the road, The Satirical Political Report has discovered there is a similar list for Mr Bush’s road trips.

1. All lights turned off — Bush prefers to stay in the dark.

2. Four cartons of chocolate milk, and a package of Oreos, in honor of such Bush aides as Claude “The Fraud” Allen.

3. Temperature set to 31 degrees — helps maintain Bush’s “brain freeze.”

4. Two televisions, one equipped with an X-Box, one tuned to The Cartoon Channel.

5. Wireless internet capacity, so he can track NSA surveillance of Helen Thomas.

6. A swivel chair, so the President can do “whirlybirds.”

7. For reading material, a comic book version of The King James Bible.

8. For when he travels with Laura, a banner over the bed, reading: “MISSIONARY POSITION ACCOMPLISHED.”

9. A “double-commode” in the bathroom, so that Bush can share intimate moments with Karl “Turd Blossom” Rove.

10. A sign on the back of the hotel room door, providing a map for an “exit strategy.”

Fontana, California is a fairly large city in the San Bernardino Valley, at the intersection of Interstate routes 10 & 15, about 60 miles east of Los Angeles. The city has a population estimated at over 160,000, and was a booming part of the massive industrialization brought about by World War II. Kaiser built a huge steel plant there to feed the military’s need for ships and tanks. A major part of the steel plant has long since closed, and an area that used to be known for agriculture has diversified. Solidly middle class, and heavily blue collar, it’s now a distant exurb of Los Angeles, part of the huge city-sprawl.

Fontana was where the Hell’s Angels first banded together, and is now right next to the California Speedway, which prefers to pretend it’s located in Ontario, California. It was once a center of the Great Meth Empire, but now it’s part of the Inland Empire.

Now it’s got something else to be known for: the home of Kevin Stonestreet. Kevin graduated from the local high school in 2001, and joined the Army that summer, volunteering for Infantry, and earning a $20,000 enlistment bonus. (That bonus isn’t paid out in a lump sum, but rather in increments over the term of service.) In September 2003 Kevin went to war, in Iraq.

[Kevin] said he was first attracted to the infantry because of the kind of work it did.

"We did raids, searches, observations, all the good stuff," he said.

He received his first installment of his bonus -- $7,000 -- in February 2002, he said, adding the rest of the money would come over time.

Stonestreet was stationed near Fallujah, Iraq in April 2004 when an insurgency was being put down by U.S. military personnel.

On April 6, 2004, Stonestreet said he was riding in a Bradley fighting vehicle, which can seat up to 13 soldiers -- albeit not comfortably -- when it was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.

"We were providing security for the Marines as they were pulling out (of Fallujah) when they just got ambushed," Stonestreet said. "My platoon leader lost his leg and his gunner lost his right hand."

Stonestreet also was wounded. He was hit by shrapnel in his neck and was grazed by a bullet on his left arm. The shrapnel is still in his neck.

"I was a centimeter away from bleeding to death if it had hit my jugular," he said.

He was later recommended for the Bronze Star as he gave up his machine gun to a buddy when he went to get first aid for the injured -- but that's now all but forgotten, he said.

"I went on top of the Bradley to give them first aid," he said. "We were apparently under heavy fire, but because of the blast, I didn't hear anything. I was surprised there wasn't a fire, just a lot of smoke -- a lot of smoke -- and our uniforms smelled like ammonia for days."

Stonestreet came back to the States in September 2005. Now stationed at Ft. Riley, Kan., he came back to Fontana where he was welcomed with a big party, he said.

Kevin had a lot of problems adjusting to life after Iraq, a situation that will be familiair to some of our readers.

"When I first got home I had insomnia," he said. "When I could sleep, I had flashbacks, nightmares and cold sweat.

"I'm a world better being away from the Army. I miss my friends, but they'll be all right, hopefully."

Kevin was honorably discharged in 2005, diagnosed as suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. There’s a lot of that going around in George Bush’s America, it seems. The honorable discharge terminated his service before the end of his six year enlistment. It sounds as if he did his part, and the Army decided to cut their losses and turn him loose, right?

Wrong.

[W]hen Stonestreet was honorably discharged from the Army in 2005, he found out he needed to repay $3,800 of that bonus because he did not complete his six years.

[Kevin] said the amount he was to pay back was originally $6,000, but the government repossessed his final paycheck of $2,200.

"They were nice enough to take out the $170 for my child support," Stonestreet said, laughingly.

The man enlists, the Army agrees to pay him a bonus in annual increments, he’s wounded, and the Army discharges him because he’s wounded and suffers psychological maladies because of the wound, and then wants money back because he didn’t complete his full term of enlistment that the Army unilaterally terminated for their convenience.

And they’ve sicced a collection agency on him.

The Government isstill interested in recouping its $3,800 it believes it is entitled to. Stonestreet, who works as a clerk at Pep Boys in Rialto, said he has been contacted by a collection agency on the government's behalf and will soon be owing interest on that amount if something isn't done soon.

He added while he feels he shouldn't have to repay the money, he doesn't have it in the first place.

"They ended my contract for me and I'm being forced into paying this," Stonestreet said. "I tried to hold up my end of the bargain."

In addition, while Stonestreet said the government contends it paid him his entire bonus, Stonestreet said he never received the final payment and his bank has no record of ever receiving it.

Stonestreet said the government contends it paid him his entire bonus, Stonestreet said he never received the final payment and his bank has no record of ever receiving it.

This is a no-brainer. The services are very careful with their financial records. If they paid him the last portion there will be either a cancelled check, or a record of electronic deposit into a bank account.

I suppose the story really is not too surprising, coming from an Army that planned how to protect an Oil Ministry, but not how to deliver food and water to its troops. An Army that worked very hard to organize no-bid contracts to a favored civilian contractor that was a big Republican campaign donor because the Vice President of the country used to be CEO of the company. This is an Army that considers its troops to be as expendable as an empty plastic bag, and less important than a uniform and ballistic vest that was burned as a health hazard after the wearer was wounded.

Many thanks to Pacific John at Daily Kos for the tip on this story.

I just adore Bu$hCo Amalgamated International Sell-out and Trading, LLC. (NYSE – BSTRATR) Always a good investment.

They failed to hand over operation of 22 US shipping ports to the UAE, those folks who helped finance 9/11. (Not six ports as the mullet-brains in the MSM keep trying to gull us into believing.) Now they have a new plan to endanger US security. AP has some of the details, although I’m sure not all of the backroom haggling:

WASHINGTON - In the aftermath of the Dubai ports dispute, the Bush administration is hiring a Hong Kong conglomerate to help detect nuclear materials inside cargo passing through the Bahamas to the United States and elsewhere.

The administration acknowledges the no-bid contract with Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. represents the first time a foreign company will be involved in running a sophisticated U.S. radiation detector at an overseas port without American customs agents present.
Freeport in the Bahamas is 65 miles from the U.S. coast, where cargo would be likely to be inspected again. The contract is currently being finalized.

You read that right. Hong Kong, now part of Communist China, (the “enemy” just a few short decades ago,) is now being asked to operate the still-not-in-place-five-years-after-9/11 radiation detectors in the Bahamas. Why, I can remember less than a decade ago when the Republican Party went batshit crazy because the Clinton Administration was thinking of contracting Hutchison Whampoa to operate either or both ends of the Panama Canal. As I remember that great international relations expert Trent Lott called Whampoa an agency of the Peoples’ Liberation Army, or some such paranoia. It’s interesting how your view of who’s an enemy changes when you’re trying to sell out avoid taking responsibility in the WH, eh?

And note that this is a no-bid contract, the kind Bu$hCo favors, because if they overpay the contract they can expect a “return” on their investment.

I see the AP says that after inspection in the Bahamas the “cargo would likely be inspected again.” With what radiation detectors? We still don’t have radiation detectors in US ports, and anyone who says that’s because Halliburton couldn’t hook up with some company that manufactures them is objectively pro-terrorist.

Even if we did have radiation detectors why would we want to inspect the cargo a second time? Are we going to pretend we trust the Chinese to protect us in the Nahamas from Iranian nukes being sent into a port in a CONEX in the Bahamas but not trust the Chinese between Freeport and Miami or New York? What happens if a ship just sails on past the Bahamas?

Hutchison Whampoa is the world's largest ports operator and among the industry's most-respected companies. It was an early adopter of U.S. anti-terror measures. But its billionaire chairman, Li Ka-Shing, also has substantial business ties to China's government that have raised U.S. concerns over the years.

"Li Ka-Shing is pretty close to a lot of senior leaders of the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party," said Larry M. Wortzel, head of a U.S. government commission that studies China security and economic issues. But Wortzel said Hutchison operates independently from Beijing, and he described Li as "a very legitimate international businessman."

"One can conceive legitimate security concerns and would hope either the Homeland Security Department or the intelligence services of the United States work very hard to satisfy those concerns," Wortzel said.

If someone really believes that Hutchinson Whampoa is completely independent of the government of the Peoples Republic of China, please pass me your wallet. I will hold it for you while you take your daily bath and of course will hand it right back again when you’re done, without looking inside. There is no need for you to look inside afterwards, because I’ve already assured you I won’t touch your money.

As Mr Wortzel says, “One…would hope either DHS or the intelligence services” would work very hard.

One would hope. That would be like “faith-based” security, I suppose. I know Mr Bush keeps insisting he’s a good Christian, so I’m sure he’s aware of these:

It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man.” (Psalm 118:8)

”Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1)

WaPo seems determined to be the bottom turd in the shitpile. Jane Hamsher has a letter for Jim Brady, allegedly in charge of WaPo Online:

Dear Jim,

We need to talk.

We’ve had our moments in the past but I’m worried about you, man. This is bad. Really bad.

I know it must’ve been damned near impossible to resist hiring some warmongering punk who ought to be in Iraq himself to sling proxy mud on those liberal bloggers who have beaten you like a rented mule, especially when you learned his old man was up to his elbows in Jack Abramoff.

But you’re supposed to be the go-to online guy for the Post, right? Isn’t it your job to know the ins and outs of the "fever swamp?" It’s not exactly an online secret that Red State is a bastion of racism, and Box Turtle Ben is one of the founders. But did you not do any due diligence and look at the guy’s history? The Hotline Blogometer’s William Beutler — a conservative DC blogger himself who would presumably know — has identified Ben as the "Augustine" of Red State. You need to step up and say if this is true or not, Jim. Right now.
It was bad enough when "Augustine" wrote on the day of Coretta Scott King’s funeral that she was a communist . Then he said the KKK had better moral fiber than the Supreme Court . But now digging through the "Augustine" archives we find via Steve Gilliard that he posted this quote from First Things without comment:

People who are poor and black are a drag on society. We would all be better off if there were fewer of them. Since we have, with little success, spent trillions of dollars over the past several decades trying to make poor blacks non-poor, it is time we recognize that there are more efficient means of eliminating the drag.

Now, I’m not too bright. I have to work hard to figure things out. I’m not convinced that WaPo looked this kid over, saw all the problems and decided they needed so desperately to replace the Wash Times as Official Washington White House Fellator that they decided to take him on no matter how many skeletons the punk had in his closet.

I think what happened was, Jim Brady sat down with Debora Howell to lick each other’s wounds (now, there’s an image to take home for the kids) after being savaged last month by about 37 skazillion liberals and progressives who were offended by Howell’s attack on Dan Froomkin. And Jim, being the big aggressive, decisive executive- type (yeah, kinda like Mr Bush) said, “I’ll show those filthy little people that they can’t tell ME what to do. Debbie, go out and find me a Fascist blogger. If he’s a racist, that’s even better. I just want him to be cheap inexpensive, because we have to cut back on salaries, because Fred and me both have got some stock options coming up.” And Debbie asked around, and found out Danny Boy Domenech could be bought for next to nothing.

Brady signs him up without bothering to check his c.v. because, after all, he’s a take charge kind of executive, just like Mr Bush, and expects the underlings to pay attention to all the little details like “Is the dude qualified for the job?”

It’s possible Brady knew about the kid, and took him on, figuring that any kind of P.R. is good P.R. For that matter Karl might have called him up from the WH and instructed Brady to sign the kid up. That’s not a fantasy image. Believe me. Karl does call the WaPo and issue instructions. Ask Fred Hiatt.

I’m not going to be surprised if WaPo reluctantly cuts this kid loose in a couple of months, and Brady will of course blame Howell for the crisis in lost subscriptions because, after all, he’s an aggressive, take charge kind of executive, like Mr Bush.

I found this over at ePluribus Media in an article written by jimstaro, telling us about a Viet Nam vet who still sees ghosts today, thirty-odd years after the fact. Wyatt Punty wrote this poem to accompany the PBS News Hour Honor Roll for troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Returning Dead Each night I make a drink and wait for them

They have become the day's concluding news,

Installments from a world without anthems

Or children, unfocusing eyes

A question that repeatedly rejects

My easy terms. They are ones who believed

And acted in the narrow and select

Ways handed them, while ordinary lives

Ran on without interruption

Or bad pictures, as though nothing had changed

Change is the one unanswerable question

Of these faces. The world can rearrange

Itself repeatedly, but these remain

The same, silent in everything they lack;

That's what they've come to, in places with names

Like Afghanistan, Iraq,

And this is the way it happens: the words

Are old - mother, father, home - and will catch

Surrounding currents in the slow absurd

Descending will of any river etched

Out of a landscape history refines

To myth. The TV blanks between

Segments, but every static face defines

Itself, holds stubbornly its private scene...

Fixed, publicly, as we are led

Back to that little negative whose lack

Is each of us, staring the staring dead,

Leaning, sometimes like grief itself; then straightening
back.

There are things a man can never forget, and there are things he wants to. When he wants to forget things he can’t forget, it can create torment. Late at night those figures appear in front of us, morphing out from the dark wall of the room. Or maybe a suggestive mind thinks they are there. Does it matter? They inhabit my life as surely as if I could reach out, touch them, bum a smoke, offer a can of beans, or pass a canteen.

I don’t drink any more.

There are nights when I wish I did.

I’m sure many of you are aware by now that the once-great Washington Post has been successfully transformed into its intended new role as primary print mouthpiece for the Republican Party. In the wake of dramatically changing fortunes at the Washington Times, with lower subscription figures and drastically increased loss of reputation as a reputable news organization, the WaPo has pounced.. Sensing a great opportunity to take over the Wash Times’ former position as front page for the ultra right wing elements of the Republican Party, the Post hired one of the worst racists at RedState.org as a blogger – get this now – to provide “balance.”

It’s not quite clear just who this cretin Ben Domenech is supposed to balance against at a paper that features George Will, Charles Krauthammer, and occasionally James Buckley, but there it is.

Ben has been a Republican speech writer for the last 4 years, which is a pretty remarkable achievement for a home schooled child. It’s been my observation that home schooled children get a particularly limited view of life before they bravely step out into this frightening world where people actually have skin colors and opinions and lifestyles that are different from those of your Mommy and Daddy. But Ben’s entry into the world of the Inner Party was eased by the fact that his father was also a political operative. His father has been the “go to” guy at the Department of the Interior for the last year of two, handing the bagman duties there for Jack Abramoff.

So, in consideration of the WaPo’s new position as official print organ of the Republican Party we hereby establish a NEW RULE

No more hot links for the WaPo. Links to WaPo that can be clicked will only increase their numbers and that’s not good for America. There is no point in reinforcing idiocy.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention the Official WaPo introduction about Ben Domenech:

"Ben Domenech brings an original and authentically conservative voice to the site's Opinions area, where we're committed to presenting the most provocative, informed and ideologically diverse policy debate on the web.

"authentically conservative"? Well, let's see now:

The President visits the funeral of a Communist. And phones in a message to the March for Life. I think we can get a little pissed about this.

I'd cay that's about accurate. I can't think of a single public conservative who isn't a bigot and a racist.

It seems that the Senators, our part-time employees down in Washington, once again voted on a bill without bothering to read it. It’s an understandable mistake of course, since the majority Party has been very busy trying to figure out a new way to get their golfing vacations paid for by their Corporate clients, who are Congress' real employers.

Influential lawmakers are moving to block for at least a year the Defense Department's plan to raise TRICARE fees, co-payments and deductibles for military retirees under age 65 and their family members. Defense officials had hoped to begin to phase in the higher rates, the average fee increases for under-65 retirees would be 115 percent, as early as October, 2006. Enrollment fees for TRICARE Prime would triple for retired officers, double for senior enlisted and rise by 41 percent for retired enlisted in grades E-6 and below. Deductibles for TRICARE Standard also would rise sharply for under-65 retirees and, for the first time, Standard users among them also would pay an annual enrollment fee. TRICARE retail pharmacy co-payments too would increase under the plan. To learn more, read article "Higher TRICARE Fees for Retirees Run Aground" by Tom Philpott.

When informed that he had screwed the pooch once again, Senator Bill “Kitty Killer” Frist blanched, mumbled to himself and hissed, “For Gawd’s sake, don’t tell Cheney we’re spending money on soldiers. He’ll insist I go duck hunting with Scalia.”

OK, I couldn’t resist that one. Like cheap wines, cheap shots are often the best. This actually is very good news, both for active duty and retired personnel and their dependants. I cannot understand why the DOD is so determined to screw over uniformed troops at every opportunity If anyone can explain this, please do so in the comments. Please avoid resorting to snark or cynical cheap-shotting, because I reserve that right for myself.

And, if you want to go into business for yourself:

The organization that helps veterans become entrepreneurs by hooking them up with national franchises and contracts with industry and the federal government celebrated its fifth anniversary last week with an open house at the Department of Veterans Affairs in Washington, D.C. The Center for Veterans Enterprise has helped hundreds of veteran entrepreneurs set up their businesses or swell their company's coffers. Hundreds more have been helped to compete in the federal and private sector marketplace since the center was created five years ago. The law calls for 3 percent of federal contracts to be given to veteran-owned businesses. For more information, visit the Center's website at http://www.vetbiz.gov/.

I figure I'd better get this up here quickly. Thanks to Josh Marshall for pointing it out.

General Paul Eaton, the subject of the first part of this article, is considered the "Father of the Iraqi Army." How do I know this? One of the official sites of the Department of Defense says so.

BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 14, 2004 — Less than a year ago an unassuming man from Weatherford, Okla., arrived in this country to guide an organization that didn’t even exist – to build an army that wasn’t there.

There was no plan, no force, and only slight guidance.

And 363 days later – despite a host of staggering setbacks and difficulties with logistics, contractors, funding, cultural differences and a plan that changed in scope, size and overall delivery – Iraq’s armed forces and civil security forces total more than 230,000 people. In only a matter of months, the army will consist of a 27-battalion, nine-brigade, three-division army and air force, navy, coastal defense force, civil defense corps, police service, facilities protection service, border police force, customs police force, immigration police force, national security police force and a diplomatic protection service officers force.

“There’s nothing that could have prepared me for what I’ve encountered here – but a number of things have happened to me in my career that have proven helpful,” said U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, the former Office of Security Transition Commanding General.

Eaton recognized the parallels between his career and the huge assignment to rebuild the Iraqi Armed Forces and civil security forces. A duty that brought him here June 13, 2003 – and one which true to his modest reputation, he quietly handed over to the current chief, U.S. Army Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, on June 6, 2004.

“When I was commissioned, the Army was a conscript army,” the solidly built, slightly grey-haired 54-year-old Eaton said, recalling his early beginnings with the U.S. Army in 1972 as a fresh graduate from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.

“One year later when I took over my platoon,” Eaton said, “It was an ‘all volunteer’ platoon. We had become a professional army.”

“The analogy,” Eaton said from behind his desk at the headquarters of the soon to be disbanded Coalition Provisional Authority, “Coming out of the Vietnam War – having lost it – and going into a professional army from a conscript army is precisely what we have done with the Iraqi army. I trained my own platoon. And that’s what I’m asking these cadre officers and non-commissioned officers to do.

“So a lot of what we are doing here is a direct reflection of what I’ve done in my career,” Eaton said.

What Eaton’s done is spend 32 years serving his country in various capacities and stations beginning with his first assignment as that young platoon leader with the 4th Infantry Division in Fort Carson, Colorado. Most recently he served as the commanding general at the U.S. Army Infantry School at Fort Benning, Ga. – as a master of training soldiers and instilling in them the values and ethos of being a soldier.

OK. It would be a good idea to save this page, in its entirety, so we can see it disappear within a day or two.

What was in the past doesn't matter. The present creates the past, and controls the future. Winston Smith taught me this.

This frosts my sac:

This weekend… a new cloud hangs over the legacy of the Troubles and the alleged role played in a number of deaths by both American and British security agencies. The claim - if true - threatens a new political storm over how and why FBI officials and MI5 operatives conspired to supply deadly bomb-making equipment to the Provisional IRA in the early 1990s, mechanisms the paramilitary organisation later shared with Palestinian fighters.

Today in Iraq the same technology is being used by insurgents to kill and maim British and American soldiers.

Everyone knows about the IRA, Provos, and so forth, right? No need for a history lesson, other than that the “Troubles” mentioned above is part of the decades long fight by Irish separatists to make the entire island a free Republic. Currently, the Republic of Ireland (Eire) in the south is an independent country. Six counties in the north are still part of the UK.

And we taught the IRA how to use this new technology, and they taught the Palestinians. Ummm…. Any chance this knowledge spread elsewhere, like, say, to Iraq? Pakistan? Afghanistan?

Six months ago, when The Independent on Sunday first broke the story, the Secretary of State for Defence, John Reid, was forced into a humiliating retraction.

For weeks his officials had claimed that bombs which killed eight British soldiers in separate attacks in Basra had been supplied to foreign fighters by Iran's Revolutionary Guard.

Our story showed that the technology, far from being new, had in fact first been used in Newry, Co Down, in 1992 to murder a policewoman and maim her male colleague.

Kevin Fulton, a former soldier who infiltrated the IRA on behalf of the security services, made an astonishing claim: that he had flown to New York, met FBI and MI5 agents and was given money to buy an infra-red device to be used to set off IRA bombs.

Are we up to speed here? The FBI and MI5 showed the IRA how to use infrared signals to set off bombs. And the FBI and the MI5, which is organizationally analogous to the FBI in the British government, wanted to help their enemies because…..

The security services - already successful in preventing radio-signal bombs - believed that by supplying the equipment they could then introduce counter-measures.

"They knew the IRA was looking at the technology. By supplying the equipment, they thought they could stay one step ahead of the IRA," Mr Fulton told the IoS yesterday.

Because they thought they could stop the bombings! It makes perfect sense to give an enemy dedicated to killing you new technology, doesn’t it?

And then there’s this, via “No More Mister Nice Blog”:

KABUL, March 20, 2006 (AFP) - US-made Stinger missiles will pose a threat to military and commercial aircraft across the region if they fall into the hands of Taliban rebels in Afghanistan, the US-led coalition said Monday.

Washington supplied a large number of shoulder-fired Stingers to Afghans fighting the Soviet occupation in the 1980s and dozens are still thought to be missing.

There was no evidence to support media reports that the Taliban had obtained some of the heat-seeking missiles but coalition forces were continuously monitoring the situation, spokesman Colonel Jim Yonts said.

"Stinger missiles are a dangerous threat. It's a worry to all Afghans, Pakistanis and the coalition," Yonts told reporters in Kabul.

"Stinger missiles can be used not only against coalition aircraft but against civilians flying in the area, commercial aircraft coming in and out," he added.

"(Stingers are) a common enemy and a regional threat that we have to address."

Well, we’ve wondered what happened to all the Stingers and Russian-supplied MANPADS. Officially we haven’t seen them used in Afghanistan and Iraq, which is a good thing. It’s deadly dangerous to fly into Baghdad International Airport, primarily because of the fear of these SAMs.

These are supposedly old units, dating back into the 80s and even with proper care and storage you’d expect they’d be non-operational today. I don’t think the battery packs can even be recharged like the batteries of the cell phones we taught the insurgents to use, via the IRA. We're lucky the missiles can't be used because of the dead batteries.

Kabul US AND Nato forces are following up reports that the Taliban has received vital component parts for shoulder-fired Stinger missiles from Pakistani officials enabling them to be used against helicopters in Afghanistan.

It is claimed that the missiles - originally supplied to the Afghan Mujaheddin by the US during the war against the Russians - have been fitted with new battery packs allegedly provided by the Pakistani intelligence service, ISI, in the last four months.

Western sources say they are not sure whether the supplies, needed to make the American-made missiles operational, were provided by rogue elements within the Pakistani secret service or approved at a high level.

However, the effect of rearming the Stingers could be to make Nato aircraft vulnerable at a time when Britain is carrying out the deployment of a force of almost 6,000 in southern Afghanistan.

It is believed that the battery packs had been fitted to between 18 and 20 heat-seeking Stingers which can hit targets at around 12,000 feet.

Ut. Oh. New batteries.

Any chance this is a sign that Mr Bush is following the old adage, “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.” ?

Taliban fighters have yet to successfully use anti-aircraft missiles against US and Nato forces. One American helicopter has been brought down in the conflict, but that was through the use of a rocket-propelled grenade.

However, both US and British pilots report that ground to air missiles have been fired at them. Western diplomats and military are extremely sensitive about the Stinger allegations as it comes at a time when Afghanistan and Pakistan are engaged in an escalating feud over insurgent attacks inside Afghanistan. The director of the US Defence Intelligence Agency, Lieutenant General Michael Maples, recently claimed that a resurgent Taliban were now at their most powerful since the official end of the war five years ago.

Mission Accomplished in Afghanistan.

ChiDyke has a mention from CorrenteWire about a recent gathering of the Republican Senate Conference in which someone misplaced the script for a frightening moment and no one knew which leading question to ask first.

We go from there to an article by Robert Bluey over at Human Events, which is one of those winger faux-magazines supported by either Scaife or Coops, I forget which evil megalomaniac.

I’ve been to plenty of Capitol Hill events over the past four years, and today’s quasi-presser for bloggers—staged by the Senate Republican Conference—was by far the most bizarre.

As I attempted to live blog the event—I gave up on after the first senator spoke—it struck me that Senate Republicans (with the exception of Majority Leader Bill Frist and Sen. John Cornyn) really have no idea about blogging.

Well, of course they don’t. Does anyone really expect them to understand much more than taking in cash to sell out our Democracy? They wouldn’t bother learning about blogging unless there was a profit in it for them. Silly Robert.

Robert then goes on to explain just about everything that’s wrong with today’s top-down Republican Party. Check your brain at the door, swallow the Kool-Aid, and do not dare to let independent thought intrude.

Never use a script. It was embarrassing when today’s event began and Santorum was nowhere to be found. Sen. Kit Bond (R.-Mo.) looked befuddled, saying, “Someone ask a question.” Bond quickly recovered when a staffer handed him a script that had been prepared for the event. It may have been a savior for Bond, but it was an instant turnoff for me.

True, Robert. When you read from a script it just highlights the utter fraud and vacuousness of today’s Republican Party.

Staged questions are bad. Upon receiving the script, Bond said the first question would go to the Rev. Luis Cortés Jr., president and chief executive of Esperanza USA. Cortés read the question, which happened to be about immigration reform, and Cornyn answered it. This continued until all five questioners asked their respective questions, all of which, coincidentally, fit perfectly into the GOP’s 2006 agenda.

Five questions, pre-written by some ideological drone in some Republican think-tank highlighting the entire Party platform for what they laughingly term “performance.” And these mutts as so deep into Bu$hCo ideology and cult worship they have no idea what they are advocating, and supporting, unless it’s written down for them on a piece of paper.

Wouldn’t you think the tame participants, the “questioners” would resent their participation as sock dolls? I’d have thought so. Feeling very cynical for a moment, can you perform as a “questioner” at one of these if you’ve got a bad hemorrhoidal problem? Wouldn’t the arm up your whizkit hurt?

Bloggers like interaction. As I accurately predicted at the start of the event, the five bloggers in attendance were given no opportunity to ask their own questions once the staged questions were asked and answered. As Santorum was leaving, Tim Chapman of Townhall.com’s Capitol Report suggested to him that next time bloggers should have more of a role; Santorum said to talk to his staff.

I don’t understand the problem here. Robert isn’t new to Republican politics. He’s been around a few years and must surely have caught on that his job is spread the fertilizer in the field, not ask whether he can have a different brand name. Bloggers like to have attention paid to them, but that’s hard to do in today’s American politics, unless you’re writing with a big bundle of checks, or a fat plain brown envelope in your hand. At least that’s the way it is on the right, where money always talks loudest. True, there are some pols on the left who are actually paying some attention to what’s going on in the real world outside the Beltway and away from the Gucci-loafers of K Street. A few Democratic pols have heard the rage boiling out across America and are beginning to pay attention.

So I guess that’s what I’m doing now: talking to the legions of Hill staffers who seem to want to engage bloggers, but are grappling with ways to do it.

As I wrote about in my recap of the House GOP blog workshop on March 3, I find it absolutely alarming that members of Congress fear bloggers, and as a result, are reluctant to either a) blog themselves or b) interact with bloggers

I agree that the blogging phenomenon has frightened quite a few politicians on both sides of the aisle. They aren’t accustomed to having the “little people” speak up and express their own thoughts. It’s ….. “un-American” ……. Foreign to their way of thinking. Quite outside their experience as deposit banks for Corporate demands for welfare and friendly votes.

But that’s going to change.

Robert has a small epiphany on the road to Tarsus:

The latter appeared evident today. By staging a scripted event with pre-selected questions, and then preventing bloggers from asking questions, I was left wondering why I was even there. I had already read about Santorum’s agenda Thursday morning in the Washington Times. Dumping a bunch of talking points on me only makes me angry. I’m not a flack for the GOP.

Sorry, Robert. I truly am. You might be a nice guy, and have some good ideas to help cure America of the sickness that has infected its body politic and is slowly killing the country. Writing for Human Events Online DOES in fact make you a flack for GOP talking points.

You picked the wrong side of the country to try to get an independent thought heard.

UPDATE: Reader Joffan points out that old men should not be allowed to handle keyboards when they are cranky and tired. Title has been changed.

Major General Paul Eaton, USA, (Ret) had a good career in the Army, with service in Viet Nam, various other overseas commands, and in Gulf War I. He was also tasked with training the newly refurbished Iraqi Army in 2003 and 2004. His traitorous editorial in the liberal New York Times today has given unbelievable aid and comfort to our enemies, who hate our freedoms. He is now officially an Enemy of the State.

DURING World War II, American soldiers en route to Britain before D-Day were given a pamphlet on how to behave while awaiting the invasion. The most important quote in it was this: "It is impolite to criticize your host; it is militarily stupid to criticize your allies."

By that rule, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is not competent to lead our armed forces. First, his failure to build coalitions with our allies from what he dismissively called "old Europe" has imposed far greater demands and risks on our soldiers in Iraq than necessary. Second, he alienated his allies in our own military, ignoring the advice of seasoned officers and denying subordinates any chance for input.

General Eaton obviously is senile, living in a past populated with egalitarian principles, two-way communication, open source information and such useless military concepts as honor, duty, and truth.

In sum, he has shown himself incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically, and is far more than anyone else responsible for what has happened to our important mission in Iraq. Mr. Rumsfeld must step down.

In the five years Mr. Rumsfeld has presided over the Pentagon, I have seen a climate of groupthink become dominant and a growing reluctance by experienced military men and civilians to challenge the notions of the senior leadership.

General Eaton foolishly clings to these outmoded military principles in the face of the Fuehrerprinzip, which has proven quite clearly that a Great Warrior Leader, and those he designates as his apostles of direction, is never wrong. Any failure cannot be attributed to a faulty plan. It is self-evident that a Great Warrior Leader creates a perfect plan. The failure can only be in execution of the plan, carried out by deputies who lack the necessary American spirit to carry a perfect plan forward to a successful conclusion.

Mr. Rumsfeld has put the Pentagon at the mercy of his ego, his cold warrior's view of the world and his unrealistic confidence in technology to replace manpower. As a result, the Army finds itself severely undermanned — cut to 10 active divisions but asked by the administration to support a foreign policy that requires at least 12 or 14.

A nation conceived in greatness, destined to bring the entire heathen world to the altar of Big Oil Freedom, goes to war with the army it has, not with the army it needs. Failure is not an option. It is an honor to be tapped on the shoulder by Exxon God and told to civilize the world.

Only Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff when President Bush was elected, had the courage to challenge the downsizing plans. So Mr. Rumsfeld retaliated by naming General Shinseki's successor more than a year before his scheduled retirement, effectively undercutting his authority. The rest of the senior brass got the message, and nobody has complained since.

General Shinseki obviously lacked the primary skill of warmaking in a system fortunate enough to be led by George W Bush and Donald Rumsfeld. He did not have the necessary faith in the Fuehrerprinzip.

Donald Rumsfeld demands more than loyalty. He wants fealty. And he has hired men who give it. Consider the new secretary of the Army, Francis Harvey, who when faced with the compelling need to increase the service's size has refused to do so. He is instead relying on the shell game of hiring civilians to do jobs that had previously been done by soldiers, and thus keeping the force strength static on paper. This tactic may help for a bit, but it will likely fall apart in the next budget cycle, with those positions swiftly eliminated.

It is obvious that there is nothing at all wrong with paying high salaried civilian corporations to do the work once done by lower-salaried soldiers. Halliburton, for instance, an off shore corporation headquartered in the Cayman Islands performs sterling service in supporting the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I might add, enjoys excellent shareholder return, undiluted by US Corporate Taxes.

It is obvious that malcontents like General Eaton are the problem.

Let the Swift-boating begin.

A report from the Front, in Lake Worth:

My war: Suburban Lake Worth's Kathleen Bogart

Sunday, March 19, 2006

LAKE WORTH — War shadows Kathleen Bogart everywhere she goes.

On a recent Sunday afternoon, it stares at her from newspaper boxes: "ABU GHRAIB" in huge letters. Followed by, "A LOCAL SOLDIER FACES COURT-MARTIAL." The article is about a soldier who could spend 24 years in prison for allegedly mistreating prisoners.

Abu Ghraib, the infamous prison west of Baghdad, is where she guarded detainees, dodged mortars and endured firefights for a year before returning home in January. And it's where she became very angry at the military — her military, the one she'd come to love as an Army reservist for 16 years.

It's hard to see the anger at first as the 40-year-old Lake Worth traffic cop flashes her sly smile, munches on chicken fingers, swigs a Miller Lite and smokes a Marlboro Ultra Light, then another and another, at South Shores Tavern.

But it's there. It has nothing to do with the Iraqi prisoners' promises that they'd kill her or the riots they staged or the explosions that, miraculously, never harmed her.

It has to do with how the good guys, her own commanders, treated her and her fellow soldiers. How, before she got there, military police officers like her were forced to take the fall for "mistreatment" they were ordered to perform, she says. How, after she arrived, the much-publicized scandal led commanders to tie the hands of the soldiers lest another controversy erupt.

How, about three days after she arrived, Abu Ghraib came under fire from insurgents outside the prison, Bogart shot back, then under questioning was made to feel she'd done something wrong for defending herself.

"I was in prison," she said. "And the only crime I committed was raising my right hand (when taking her oath). I was in prison as much as the detainees were."

She doesn't like talking about this. She doesn't like bad-mouthing the military — her military. It helped her become a better police officer. She expects to be ordered back and expects she'll be ready. She avoids cues that might bring on the anger, like a recovering druggie trying to avoid places where he used to shoot up.

When she got back, a common exchange went like this: "How was it?" "It sucked." Unsaid was, "No more questions."

"It was a feeling of that I didn't really belong or didn't really fit," Bogart said about her return to regular life in Lake Worth. "Everybody had questions and wanted to know this, that or the other. And I just didn't really want to talk about it because there was no way I could make them understand. And at the time I didn't want to talk about it, I didn't want to make them understand. So I felt a little disconnected, a little out of place."

Her sister Cecelia says, "I think psychologically she's still over there."

Fellow traffic cop Earl Bakke said Bogart was enthusiastic about returning to work. But he doesn't press for details: "When they're ready, they'll let you know someway or somehow."

Almost as soon as she returned, Bogart felt the best thing to do was to flee. She jetted to Vegas with fellow cops. To New York, Alabama. Then a recent trip to New Orleans for Mardi Gras with a group of other soldiers from Abu Ghraib, a trip they booked last year on the Internet while still in Iraq. That was before Hurricane Katrina — and their hotel reopened only a week before they got there.

Bogart's long trek to normal continues. Two weeks ago she returned to road patrol, responding to crashes and catching speeders and unscrewing the license plates of people driving with expired tags. She feels like a "sightseer." So much is different. All those new condos.

As she writes up a kid for doing 20 over the limit on Sixth Avenue South, Bakke, her mentor for the day, kids her: "You used to be faster than this."

She doesn't care. This is a distraction. This is not Abu Ghraib.

But as much as she doesn't like to talk about Iraq, she wears a constant reminder on her wrist: a black bracelet with Jimmy McNaughton's name. He was a New York City cop beloved by her unit who was shot and killed by a sniper while guarding prisoners at a camp. She's never taken it off, not even to shower.

As she sits behind the wheel of one of the Lake Worth Police Department's Ford Expeditions, she's also wearing her dog tags beneath the uniform.

"Don't ask me why. I just feel more comfortable with them on."

After all, it's her military.

Today being the third anniversary of my country’s slide into shame as an international pariah, I thought I’d have a lot to say about the topic, but somehow I’m having a problem putting words together in a coherent fashion.
It would be easy to rap off some trite commentary about her having ended one war, fighting unseen Iraqis who don’t want us in their country. So simple and trite to write about starting to fight another war against the demons and ghosts she brought home with her.
Would that be a disservice to her?

I deplore what this woman did, as part of something so shameful, so disgraceful that future generations will despise it, equating it with Hitler’s concentration camps, and Stalin’s gulag. And yet, I admire her as being honorable enough to keep to her sworn oath to defend the country and constitution when she entered the military service.

Unlike George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld who swore oaths to defend the same constitution and immediately set about trying to destroy the very country they swore to defend, this woman, this soldier kept faith with her fellow citizens.

This was carried in one of our local fishwrappers, and is a bit mawkish, but caught my attention:

RIO — In a bar in a strip mall in this tiny slice of Martin County, Linda Powell took a drag on her cigarette Saturday and tried her best not to cry.

"Oh, quiet," came the gentle teasing of the bartender. She offered a box of tissues. "You're not crying again, are you?"

Powell forced a smile. "It must be the dust in my eyes."

She turned her head, letting her gaze settle on the giant mural that covered a wall in the smoky canteen. But the tears welled up again as soon as she caught sight of the man with the power saw, who cut another slice into the painting.

"I just hope they can get it down without ruining it," Powell said.
For nearly two years, the mural, which depicts scenes of World War II, the Korean conflict, Vietnam and the first Gulf war, has been a landmark in the American Veterans Post 92, which sits at the end of the Pine Grove Plaza on Dixie Highway.

But Rio, the Old Florida community wedged between Stuart and Jensen Beach, is changing. Developers are snapping up land with views of the St. Lucie River. Property values are skyrocketing. And after 16 years, rent at their strip mall has climbed out of reach for the AmVets.

They will be shutting the post's doors for good April 1, and though members don't yet know whether they will find a new home for their canteen, of this much they are sure: "We weren't about to leave this mural behind," said Bruce Hudson, the post's commander.

In December, when members learned they would have to move, they quickly set about finding a way to salvage the mural, painted in 2004 by a member of the post's ladies' auxiliary.

On Saturday, an umbrella still hung upside down from the ceiling above the bar. A sign attached read, "donations to help save our mural."

"We got a couple dollars, but not enough," said the bartender, Bonnie Tilman.

Members considered having a professional do the work, but it would have cost upward of $1,100, with no guarantee that the mural wouldn't come down in a million pieces. So the members decided to try to do the work themselves.

On Saturday, Steven Boniface, a member of the Sons of AmVets, used a hand-held power saw to cut the drywall below and above the mural. Members of the ladies' auxiliary cringed as Boniface, wearing sunglasses in place of work goggles, then sliced the painting into three pieces.

"This mural is a part of us," Powell said. It symbolizes veterans and what they've fought for. It stirs memories of the Saturday night dinners, the Sunday morning breakfasts at the post, and the Christmas parties, when they'd invite poor children to the canteen to play games and open presents.

For months in 2004, members watched the mural's artist, Jeanie Jones, toil away, tracing with pencil the hand-drawn picture that she projected on the wall.

Hurricanes Frances and Jeanne disrupted her work, but the mural survived both storms unscathed, despite water damage to the ceiling.
On Saturday, members of the post took pry-bars and slipped them into the crevices, slowly separating each block of drywall from the pink cotton-candy insulation.

At the bar, gray-haired men in baseball caps turned away from the Western playing on TV. Puffing on cigarettes and sipping beer, they offered advice on how to avoid cracking the painting.

"Careful," Tilman muttered.

Powell grabbed another tissue.

And then the bar erupted in applause and whistles as the work crew pulled the last piece from the wall, not a crack to be seen.
Hudson started wrapping each piece of the mural in old bedspreads. The post plans to frame them, he said, so they'll be easier to hang.
But Powell was starting to tear up again.

"Now we just have to find a place to put them," she said.

One our 12 daily readers, wkmaier, makes a comment on another article:

Wonderful, so Operation Swarmer is just a media show?

http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/2006/03/operation_overblown.php

The reference, which is worth reading, if you haven’t already, is to a Chris Allbritton column describing the operation as a typical George W Bush – inspired military operation: a miserable failure. An air assault utilizing the 101st Airmobile Division’s airlift assets to place units from the 101st, the 4th ID, the 9th Cav and indigenous Iraqi Army units to perform a clear and search sweep in an isolated farm area near Samarra.

Forty one males were seized, just in case one of them was the Samarra-based insurgent leader Hamad el Taki of Mohammad’s Army, who someone decided just might possibly be in the area. Apparently he wasn’t, because 17 of them were released the same day, and I suppose the other will be quietly released after the news reporters turn their backs. But we had good intel, from some Iraqi sources. Those of you who spent some time in Viet Nam know how that goes. Oh – and we grabbed up about 300 pieces of ordnance, mostly mortar rounds and some plastic explosive bundles. The best of the catch was the cell phones, because the insurgents have TONS of explosives (thanks for not guarding all the bunkers and depots, Mr Rumsfeld) but cell phones cost the terrs money, which is always a problem. Unless we’re not bothering to monitor financial transactions from Saudi Arabia and the UAE going to Pakistan.

It looked sexy as hell when it was first announced, and I noticed that it was immediately announced that this was NOT (repeat NOT – got that MSM? All you anti-war Democrats and Liberals who hate America?) It was NOT ordered by the White House in order to prop up Mr Bush’s catastrophically tanking popularity. So, we all know what that means.

Speaking of which, did I mention he’s down to 32% today in at least one poll?

Steve Gilliard has a slightly different take on the whole thing, figuring that it’s all about internal Pentagon politics:

Look, the reason the 101st did this is because they have a lot of helicopters and commanders who are tired of sending out two and four ship patrols and dropping off recon teams and the odd Special Forces unit, between resupplies.

---snip---

And so many people wanted in, they pulled in a unit from the 4th ID, the Cav's 9th Cavalry Regiment (the one in Apocalyse Now) and a company from the 101st's 187th Rakkasans, one of the Army's best regiments. Along with the Iraqis auxiliaries tagging along, everyone had their combat op. The 101st aviation units did their large formation thing, the gunships had a milk run and no one got killed.

All this makes sense, except for the bit about the Rakkasans. Take it from me: 2nd/502d is a better unit.

So, Gilliard may be right, but somehow I just don’t believe any multi-divisional activity happens without political direction from either the White House or Pentagon. It’s a small point, but telling. The thing that makes my nose twitch is that this was supposedly done on Iraqi intelligence.

I suppose those Iraqis who really care about these things got to see exactly how we do business in an action like this. And we’ll do it EXACTLY the same way the next time. As we get closer to the mid-term elections, we can expect to see a lot more actions like this.

Time for some humor:

Capsaicin, which makes peppers hot, can cause prostate cancer cells to kill themselves, U.S. and Japanese researchers said on Wednesday.

Capsaicin led 80 percent of human prostate cancer cells growing in mice to commit suicide in a process known as apoptosis, the researchers said.

Prostate cancer tumors in mice fed capsaicin were about one-fifth the size of tumors in untreated mice, they reported in the journal Cancer Research.

Can we get about 100 tons of this stuff and spread it all over Capitol Hill? I've been bent over the table so many times that I think Congress has really become a cancer on the body politic.

Via Atrios we learn that the Pew Research Center has another poll running:

In the aftermath of the Dubai ports deal, President Bush's approval rating has hit a new low and his image for honesty and effectiveness has been damaged. Yet the public uncharacteristically has good things to say about the role that Congress played in this high-profile Washington controversy.

Sleeping Beauty has been kissed by the Prince of Reality, and awakens from her slumber.

Most Americans (58%) believe Congress acted appropriately in strenuously opposing the deal, while just 24% say lawmakers made too much of the situation. While there is broad support for the way Congress handled the dispute, more Americans think Democratic leaders showed good judgment on the ports issue than say the same about GOP leaders (by 30%-20%).

The new Pew survey underscores the public's alarm over the prospect that an Arab-owned company could have operated U.S. ports. Fully 41% say they paid very close attention to news about the debate, which is unusually high interest for a Washington story and is only slightly lower than the number tracking Iraq war news very closely (43%). There was broad opposition to the proposed deal from across the political spectrum, including two-to-one disapproval among conservative Republicans (56%-27%).

For 41% of the citizenry to pay as much attention to a news story as American Idol seems amazing, doesn’t it? I wonder how long the afterglow will last.

Bush’s overall approval hit 33%, just about he same as Republicans (32%) and Democrats (34%) in Congress. Those are also eye-openers.

Bush's personal image also has weakened noticeably, which is reflected in people's one-word descriptions of the president. Honesty had been the single trait most closely associated with Bush, but in the current survey "incompetent" is the descriptor used most frequently

There’s lots more in this report, including current attitudes about outsourcing (71% against) and a serious decline in Republican identifying samples’ confidence in Mr Bush.

This was noted by Atrios:

Currently, 48% use a negative word to describe Bush compared with just 28% who use a positive term, and 10% who use neutral language.

The changing impressions of the president can best be viewed by tracking over time how often words come up in these top-of-the-mind associations. Until now, the most frequently offered word to describe the president was "honest," but this comes up far less often today than in the past. Other positive traits such as "integrity" are also cited less, and virtually no respondent used superlatives such as "excellent" or "great" terms that came up fairly often in previous surveys.

The single word most frequently associated with George W. Bush today is "incompetent," and close behind are two other increasingly mentioned descriptors: "idiot" and "liar." All three are mentioned far more often today than a year ago.

It's time to light up a Cohiba Robusto.

Thanks to Chris in Idaho for pointing out this little gem:

On Wednesday, March 1st, 2006, in Annapolis at a hearing on the proposed Constitutional Amendment to prohibit gay marriage, Jamie Raskin, professor of law at AU, was requested to testify.

At the end of his testimony, Republican Senator Nancy Jacobs said: “Mr. Raskin, my Bible says marriage is only between a man and a woman. What do you have to say about that?”

Raskin replied: “Senator, when you took your oath of office, you placed your hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. You did not place your hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible.”

The room erupted into applause.

OK, is it legal for a law professor to point out to a Republican polician that he/she is a cowardly, pandering asshole? More about Professor Raskin's testimony here.

It's a damned good comme