The Hamden decision is yesterday's news now, and as useful as a dead cat, but Chris Floyd is S M O K I N this morning:

The Defense Department repeated that view on Thursday, asserting that the court's sweeping ruling against the tribunals did not undermine the government's argument that it can hold foreign suspects indefinitely and without charge, as "enemy combatants" in its declared war on terror.

So that's OK, then. Naturally, a ruling "against the government," doesn't affect the Pentagon – because Rumsfeld's Castle is a government unto itself, unbound by the petty chains of law that simpering civilians try to put around the lusty sinews of war-fightin' he-men. And of course, as the Pentagon notes, the most important thing is that the Bush Regime can continue its Nazi/Stalinist/al Qaeda/Vlad the Impaler/Ghenghis Khan/ Assyrian/ Babylonian/ Cro-Magnon policy of grabbing "suspects" and holding them "indefinitely without charge."

Really now: has there ever been a political faction that lived more in its own little fantasy world? Has there ever been such a collection of cowards who blustered so hysterically about their own macho all the time? How on God's earth did a great nation fall under the sway of such shallow fools?

Stand Up! Stand Down! Fight! Fight! Fight!

The current U.S./Iraqi offensive operation in Ramadi is the latest attempt to control the chaos that's been raging in that city since the fall of Baghdad. A key component of the plan is that once American troops secure an area, they'll turn it over to Iraqi forces.

But are Iraqi forces up to the task?

Lieutenant Colonel Raad Niaf Haroosh, commander of the Iraqi battalion in Ramidi, only has 145 of his troops committed to the operation. He left 500 of them back in Mosul. Why? According to Colonel Raad, it's because they fear that they'll create tribal vendettas if they kill fellow Iraqis. "They said, 'We don't want fight our own people.'"

Isn't that dandy? NPR reports that recruits have to pay a $600 bribe to get into Colonel Raad's battalion. If I could serve in a battalion where I didn't have to fight if I didn't want to, I'd pay money to get into it too. Staying back at the base and peeling potatoes beats the heck out of getting shot at…

…We've arrived at a point where we're fighting Iraqis because the Iraqis don't want to fight among themselves. How many American troops are in harm's way in Ramadi right now because 500 Iraqi soldiers got to sit this dance out and wax the floors in the barracks instead?

A rather smart reader of Eric Alterman’s Altercation has collected all of Mr Bush’s signing statements and created what will probably not be a perpetual website to display them for study. All statements have links to the full text of the bills they modify, because the collator wants you to know just what parts of what bills Mr Bush feels he is free to break.

There are also separate pages for Annotated and Unannotated statements.

Some stories just write themselves. But sometimes a reader gets ambiguous inferences. I saw this story linked to at Josh Marshall’s incredible asset, TPM Muckraker:

Sen. Charles Grassley, chairman of the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee, wants the Internal Revenue Service to chase after pimps and sex traffickers with the same fervor it stalked gangster Al Capone for tax evasion.

Grassley, R-Iowa, would hit pimps with fines and lengthy prison sentences for failing to file employment forms and withhold taxes for the women and girls under their command.

The proposal would make certain tax crimes a felony when the money comes from a criminal activity. A one-year prison sentence and $25,000 fine would become a 10-year sentence and $50,000 fine for each employment form that a pimp or sex trafficker fails to file.
Grassley planned to propose the penalties when his panel meets Wednesday.

"The thugs who run these trafficking rings are exploiting society's poorest girls and women for personal gain," Grassley said. "The IRS goes after drug traffickers. It can go after sex traffickers."

Michael Horowitz, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, said the change has the potential to put pimps out of business without difficult trials that require women to testify to abuse and mistreatment.

"We need to simply treat the pimps and massage parlor operators the way we would treat anybody who takes the proceeds of a customer transaction from somebody and then gives a fraction of it back," he said.

Under tax law, that relationship makes the pimp an employer, requiring the filing of a wage statement and the withholding of payroll taxes, including Social Security.

First response:

Pimps = K Street….sex traffickers = Congress

Second response:

Sounds like someone got humbugged at a massage parlor or at some sleazy motel.

Tough day today; medical mini-emergencies, appointments. Two letters in a local fishwrapper. Compare and contrast:

Zarqawi coverage emphasizes bias
Sadly, I'm not surprised that the front page emphasis on June 8 was on the losing Miami Heat rather than on the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. After all, basketball is more important than the elimination of one of the world's most murderous monsters. No big deal that hundreds and probably thousands of Iraqi civilians and U.S. military personnel may be spared death and injury by his demise.

If Clinton, Gore or Kerry (or Hillary) had been president during this hugely significant event, the story with photo would have taken up the entire front page with headlines praising the administration. The Heat and Shaq would have been relegated to page one of the Sports section.

Like Dan Rather, et al., have claimed, there is, of course, no liberal, anti-conservative bias in the media (or is there?). [Your newspaper] has done a huge disservice to our brave military personnel in Iraq.

Alternative news universes
The writer of the June 26 letter, "Zarqawi coverage emphasized bias, cited the fact that the killing of Zarqawi was not the only story on the June 8 front page as evidence of anti-Bush bias. "No big deal that hundreds and probably thousands of Iraqi civilians and U.S. military personnel may be spared death and injury by his demise," he opined.

I guess if you are a fervent supporter of Bush's war, you feel like any rare bit of good news from the nightmare that is Iraq should be shouted from the rooftops. I would submit that if the letter writer was so concerned about Iraqi civilians (over 120,000 dead) and U.S. military personnel (over 2,500 dead), he would not be supporting this unnecessary war based on a pack of lies.

If the writer is so distressed by what he perceives as liberal bias in the media, I suggest he stick to watching the Fox News Channel, where there is always an al-Qaida-Saddam Hussein link, and weapons of mass destruction have been discovered in Iraq. In the alternative universe that is Fox News, there are only two kinds of Americans: God-fearing supporters of George Bush or traitors who love terrorists and hate America. Pass the Kool-Aid, Jethro.

*********************************************

I suppose that as long as Mr Bush's Occupation goes on, all semblances of normal life in the US must stop. No basketball, baseball, football (or futbol.) No NASCAR, obviously. Many of us already have meatless Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, but that's because so many of us can't afford meat everyday because of the lost jobs under Mr Bush's "stewardship" of what was once the world's most-envied economy.

And lemmings like the first writer can afford computers to send letters like that because of Mr Clintoon's stewardship of the economy, but that's a bad thing because the lucky guy caught a bj from a stalker.

Artemiy Lebedev, who is supposed to be one of the best web designers in Russia, was recently in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. (To mimic St Ronald of Reagan’s worldview, that’s not “our” Korea.) He took some photos of life in and around Pyongyang. Some photos were taken secretly, in violation of the instructions of the official “minders.” Some of the photos (such as those in the countryside) are quite picturesque, but point out the abject poverty of the country. Lebedev’s commentary in Russian was translated by an émigré living in Canada.

The authoritarian nature of the regime is obvious from the photos and commentary, and there is a photo of a picture of a village and road in a museum that is poorly photoshopped – apparently something wasn’t to be seen.

Besides the pictures and statues depicting the Socialist Realism form of art, my favoite picture was of a beachfront, with electrified barbed wire along the roadside. The fence was either to keep people in or to keep American imperialist frogmen out - I'm not sure which. That seems to be the reality of North Korea - a country with 10% of the population in the military, and crushing poverty in the countryside. A nation permanently at war.

This website report has nine pages. Lebedev’s photos are on the first two pages; the remaining seven pages have viewer comments and the occasional photo from elsewhere.

There is a second report from a UK citizen who resides in Kyoto, Japan. His report, written in English has more detail.

We’re very busy this morning discussing people’s initiatives to correct the almost catastrophic condition that exists in our political system (and our society in general) these days.

Fixer of Alternate Brain has posed some interesting questions and answers in a series of posts that deserve more attention than I paid them in a post of mine earlier today.

As always, anything the Fixer writes can stand a good read and some serious thought in a quiet room. It’ll do you some good.

Our good friend Jeff Huber posted a comment to my response to Fixer, opening the door for the introduction of the ‘voter’s triad.’ I like the term ‘triad’ in this case; reminds me of the old Cold War military triad of ICBMs, bombers, and Navy missile submarines. Both can end a war. The difference is that the voter’s triad is designed to end the political war of politician oppression, dishonesty and incompetence without leaving a radioactive wasteland in its path.

With the sort of happy coincidence that usually occurs only in fiction, we find Georgia 10 has put up a diary entry at Daily Kos that fits in quite well with this thread here. From discussing the Republican base, she moves onto our hapless, bought-and-paid-for corporate media’s attempt to discern what’s happening in the new Democratic base – the netroots.

For years, the press has focused with laser-like precision on the Republican base. After the 2004 election, the media's focus on the Republican base reached a nauseating fever pitch as we were subjected to fawning coverage of the "political" power of Evangelical Christians; we saw networks hire "faith and values" correspondents," and we saw them hire commentators straight out of the conservative movement. Liberal voters? They were barely mentioned, let alone mentioned as a cohesive and influential body within the party itself.

But something has happened lately. For various reasons, the media have ceased lovingly gazing into the navel of the Republican Party. They have lifted up their heads, tilted them slightly to the left, only to see a massive sea of people that previously existed only in their blind spot.

Yes, the Democratic Party does have a base.

And boy, judging from the reaction from some quarters of the press, it was like they stumbled upon a New World filled with an undiscovered indigenous people. Who are these members of the "netroots"? How do they interact? What are their goals? Who is their leader? Do they light bonfires and eat their young?

Since Republicans, and their vassals, the corporate media, are classically victims of groupthink, they feel it’s necessary to place this netroots thing into a standard mold. In their way of thinking, this will require defining things as they view them: lots of cocktail parties, bobble head gossiping, and (as always) plain brown envelopes furtively delivered in corners of rooms and behind closed doors.

We saw it as the media descended upon YearlyKos, armed with cameras and notepads ready to "observe" this strange phenomenon, this corporeal gathering of the newly discovered Democratic base, as if they were filming a Discovery Channel documentary. For quite a while, their coverage of us focused not so much on us as much as on our reaction to things--such as our reaction to Colbert's speech.

We have always been here, of course. The only difference is that the internet has allowed us to meet in a 21st century public square of sorts. And yeah, like people do when they get together for change, we (gasp!) organize and we (holy shit!) debate strategy. We argue. We support each other. We raise money. We spend money. We make miracles happen, and we make mistakes. And, unlike the Republican base, we do this all publicly. Our debate is online, naked and raw. Millions attend our town hall meetings, and each participant speaks out in her own unique (and yeah, usually anonymous) voice.

I suppose it's only natural that when presented with something so unconventional, the media have tried to understand it in conventional terms. The fundamental flaw in the media's discovery of the Democratic base though is that they presume that the same traits they have observed in the Republican base apply equally to us as well. Thus, we have seen the effort to shove our movement into the jello-mold form of the Republican grassroots movement that has dominated politics thus far.

Mmmmm… lemming herds. I like that term. Better than groupthink, don’tcha agree? Go read all of it. Give it the "Fixer" treatment in a quiet room.

Over at Alternate Brain, our pals Fixer and Gordon are two of the more level-headed dreamers we’ve seen in the Liberal/Progressive arena. Fixer writes the AM edition from Long Island, and Gordon, writing from northern California, takes the second shift.

Fixer has an opinion on the response of Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill) on ABC’s “This Week” when asked about the Lieberman/Lamont primary battle in Connecticut. Durbin thinks it’s quite proper to support Lieberman (Fake Democrat - Israel) because he’s worked with Holy Joe for quite a few years in Washington. Lieberman used to be correct on a lot of Democratic/Progressive issues before he figured out that Mr Bush represents millionaires, major corporations and Israel more than he represents the US. My own personal opinion is that ANY Democrat who allows Mr Bush to kiss him on the lips must be tarred, feather, and run right out of the Democratic Party. Any Republican who allows that should get the T & F treatment, and then run out of the human race. Fixer takes a 20 lb sledge to the pesky nail of reality:

I tell ya what. You Dems who aren't up for reelection in Fall can afford to run off at the mouth but remember this, I, and probably most of Left Blogtopia (y!sctp!), will not forget. If Holy Joe loses the primary to Ned Lamont, you guys better be prepared to back Ned or we'll find a Ned Lamont in your state or district to support. Don't think this is an aberration. We've had it with Republican-lite. Warn your buddy Schumer too. The crap he's been spouting lately ain't gonna fly for long.

Bang! Zoom! Right to the moon, Alice!

In a succeeding post Fixer also quotes Lambert,of CorrenteWire fame, who has a realistic view of the compost heap that the current Democratic Party “leaders” have become in Washington.:

I have the feeling that the pebble that started the avalanche that will be 2006-2008 went down the mountainside sometime in the last six months, and that alia iacta est - Though we don't know what the outcome is, yet, the forces that will bring it about already have huge momentum, and all of us are riding the rocks down the mountain.

Lambert is right. The die is cast. The DLC, which hasn’t won an election in 14 years, is still trying to direct the national electoral affairs of the Party. This is a huge drain on the financial resources of the progressive and liberal elements of the American people. It’s just about time for those boys to go out and get real jobs, and start working for a living. Just like the old Soviet Army, I don’t believe in reinforcing failure.

That brings us to Fixer’s logical follow on idea, picking up from a post by Bulldog, who sez:

My point to all of this is that bloggers are a very politically aware group; even those who do nothing more than read the blogs. A healthy distrust of the spoon-fed news we see on TV is good. Blogs tend to serve as alternate media sources with varying degrees of readership and knowledge on the issues. Personally, I don't think there is anything stopping us bloggers transitioning from talking about the issues and policies to deciding the issues and policies.

So, what do you think? Do we really need the Dems (I'm thinking long-term here, not the '06 - '08 elections)? After all, we, painting with a broad brush, are probably more progressive than anybody but Dean and Feingold. Why not a Blogger Party? At least, an American Progressive Party? Should we say 'fuck the Dems' and create a party that's 'more lefter', where competency, integrity, and ethics, as well as the betterment of all Americans are the major planks of the party platform?

I'd agree that a "Bloggers' Party" has some merit to it, viewed from the point that the Democratic Party seems doomed to fall by the wayside. However, as you noted, this must be viewed as a long-term goal, because all too many bloggers are not politically conscious enough to properly empower such an enterprise. Tragically, neither of the two current major parties is responsive to the concerns of American citizens. So the ball has to start with the online community, all 30 or 40 million of us.

The theory of politics in America as it was established is that the people are sovereign. All political power resides in them, and they allow some of their members to represent them in the conduct of national, state and local government. It was never intended to be a life time career.

The major enemy is not the Republican Party. It’s corporate media which has been bullied, coerced, and bribed into whole-heartedly supporting the Republican narrative-of-the-day, and the “pay for play” of the professional lobbying industry. Their political power is all out of proportion to the social and economic realities of their position. Both have to have their sails trimmed to a serious degree.

The long-term solution to the power of corporate media is forced divestiture, as the Bell system was broken up after a US lawsuit that began in 1974. More independently-owned newspapers and radio and television stations will inevitably provide a more balanced, reasonable, and honest reporting of real news. To wake America up we need more news, and fewer stories about missing blondes and Mr Clinton’s sex life.

I’ve got some ideas about lobbying, too. More on that later. For now, I’m waiting on Gordon’s second shift ideas.

It seems the Bu$h malAdministration has a new excuse for secrecy. Samsara at The Agonist fills us in:

Not only is the Bush Administration more closed to journalists than administrations in recent memory, now it says the media is forcing its hand, driving the "kind of insularity that the press claims they don't like."

Secretary Chertoff says in the interview, "That's having a real damaging effect." Too bad he's referring to the press, not the overreaching and seemingly ceaseless secrecy hurting public trust in the government.

“You made me do that. I didn’t want to, but you forced my hand” is one of the basic cheap, sleazy excuses of an abusive, drunkard husband after sending his wife to the hospital emergency room for the fifth time.

Hah! Life imitates art.

In an effort to improve relations with America's "Liberal Press" (ah - the wonderful SCLM) the White House has opened a new adjunct to the Press Room department, creating "suggested headlines" for newspapers so as to lessen the editorial pressure of meeting publishing deadlines.

Thanks to Doug Richardson at The Agonist for the tipoff.

Over at the Daily Kos, Bill of Portland (Maine) has an interesting and somewhat curious diary entry:

Wow...this is an unbelievable admission from Dick Cheney. Let's set it up step-by-step:

1. The Republican "hawks" love to boast of how quickly and efficiently the Iraqi security forces are getting trained and deployed to defeat the terrorists inside their country. They promise that "as the Iraqis stand up, we'll stand down."

2. The Republicans also love to boast that invading Iraq made America safer because we're "fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here."

3. Yesterday, Dick Cheney blew #1 and #2 all to hell with this jaw-dropping admission that we can never, ever pull our troops out:

"If we pull out, [the terrorists in Iraq] will follow us. It doesn't matter where we go. ... And it will continue---whether we complete the job or not in Iraq---only it'll get worse. Iraq will become a safe haven for terrorists."

The only conclusion that can be drawn from the vice president---the architect of this war---is, we're screwed. So today I bid a warm welcome to our Iraqi brothers and sisters who now belong to America's 51st state: Cheneyoming. Whether they, or we, like it or not.
P.S. Who's undermining the morale of our troops now by admitting the mission will never be accomplished? Who could that be, Dick?

Of course, Mr Cheney, whom many consider to be the prime architect of the ridiculous military response in Iraq to the 9/11 attacks, understands that the final goal is actually two goals: undisputed ‘ownership’ of all the oil resources in the middle east, and the undisputed and perpetual mastery of the US political scene by the Republican Party, held in escrow for their masters, Corporate Big Business.

Mr Cheney insists that the US will never leave Iraq (until all the oil is stolen) and pre-positions a perpetual US occupation of Iraq so as to eventually conquer all the other oil-bearing countries in the middle east. Mr Cheney realizes he cannot (once again) tell the truth. He has to camouflage his intent, presenting it behind the veil of anti-terrorism. The fact that “al_Qaeda in Iraq became a self-fulfilling reality is immaterial. I imagine he understood that US occupation of Iraq would draw the crowds, so to speak, and he would be able to point his finger and say, “See? Lots of foreign fighters in Iraq. I told you so.”

There is also an occupation within the US. The Republican Congressional majority, which began in 1994 with Newt Gingrich’s “Contract on America” has been proceeding apace. We had the 7 year long campaign against Bill Clinton, which served two goals. It both marginalized a President, setting him apart from the American public, and served ably to squash any sense of political testicular fortitude among the Democratic politicians in Congress.

And then the stealth campaign to make their hold on power perpetual: the introduction of voting computers in the key states. These machines are eminently hackable, making the reversing of votes for Democrats into votes for Republicans an easy task. At the same time the blocking of many obviously core Democratic voters through the method of just removing large groups of black voters from the voter registration rolls, as was done in Florida in 2000, and in Ohio in 2004.

People have wondered at the recent arrogance and greed of Republican politicians and lobbyists. They shouldn’t be too surprised; expect more of it. Republicans are thieves. And, more to the point, they really don’t expect to ever again lose a national election. They have become experts at the politics of division, ably turning a once-united people into warring factions. A marginalized and divided population tends to revolt by turning its back on the electoral process, and refusing to vote. This enables small, keenly dedicated groups such as the Religious Not-Right maniacs to gain a much larger control over the elections than their numbers should allow them to.

Yes, an almost insurmountable problem, eh? Well, not really. If every one of our readers made a firm commitment to drag TWO like-minded friends or relatives to the polls to vote for Liberal and Progressive candidates, why, that would be 75 more votes for sanity in government. And if you could prevail upon others who think the way you do, and love America, and encourage them to also drag two patriotic Americans to the polls, we might even find ourselves with a huge landslide, one that not even the Republican criminals could cover up.

A few days ago, we briefly discussed the endemic Republican problem of taking things that aren't theirs. They seem to believe that membership in the GOP is a teflon license to steal everything that isn't welded in place.

But I was wrong. They also appear to be universally sexual reprobates. If they're not serial adulterers, or self-loathing homosexuals, they seem to be child molesters.

The latest bit of proof of the above thesis involves Carey Lee Cramer. According to the McAllen, Texas Monitor,

EDINBURG — Political consultant and ad producer Carey Lee Cramer is expected to testify today defending himself against charges he sexually molested two young girls.

Cramer, 44, took the stand shortly before court recessed at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday. He will likely continue today before Visiting Judge Homer Salinas in Auxiliary Court A, where his trial began June 7.

Cramer, who gained national notoriety with an anti-Al Gore commercial in 2000, is facing several counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child.

He is the second witness defense attorney Charles Banker called to rebut the testimony of the two 15-year-old girls who testified Cramer sexually molested them when they were younger.

How fascinating. Well, maybe it isn't so surprising. Mr Cramer's anti-Gore ad was a string of lies from beginning to end. I guess if you have the type of mind that believes screwing with the truth is all right, it's onlt a small step to figuring screwing with children must also be allowable.

Cramer’s commercial showed a young girl picking daisy petals and ends with a nuclear blast, a remake of a 1964 ad by Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson’s campaign against Republican Barry Goldwater. Cramer’s ad made national news, though he refused to identify who financed the commercial. One of the girls in the ad stands as his accuser now.

One of the girls lived with Cramer and his ex-wife Samara Whittaker for eight years in Mercedes, McAllen and Tucson, Ariz., and claimed he began to inappropriately touch her beginning when she was 8 years old. She testified the abuse included pornography, sex toys and escalated from touching to sexual intercourse.

Another 15-year-old testified that Cramer touched her genital area one time when she was visiting the family in Mercedes. Cramer’s alleged victims are relatives.

I know, I know, the golden rule of American Law: You're innocent until proven guilty. Have you ever talked with a prosecutor? They have too much crime to waste their time pursuing cases that are murky or not reasonably solid. As much as I love the backbone of American criminal law, I have to go with the state on this one.

The Iraqi government has proposed an amnesty for all Iraqi resisters who have killed US troops, as a method of trying to halt the civil war currently burning across that country.

The primary news story is in a WaPo article published June 15th. We won’t directly link to WaPo stories until Fred Hiatt resigns in disgrace for his deliberate acts that have reduced much of the WaPo to nothing more than the print equivalent of Fox News.

The articles examines Iraqi Prime Minister’s attempt to end the civil war there by granting amnesty to the gunmen, thugs, and resisters who have spread violence across the nation country. The amnesty would extend to those who have killed American and other allied troops in Iraq.

The Huffington Post has a list of some Republican Senators who are on the public record as stating that granting amnesty to those who killed US troops is fine with them. It’s nice to see that these Senators have finally come around to the understanding that these Iraqis are right in resisting the illegal occupation of their country by the US.

I titled this article “Traitorous Republican Senators” because that is how the wingnuts should immediately designate them. After all, they support our illegal war and occupation in Iraq. It seems to me that they should revile the Senators of their own party, shouldn’t they?

Shakespeare’s Sister has published an email sent by a trooper in Iraq to his wife:

I am one of the soldiers that these proposals are dishonoring.

Did any of these men ever serve??? Have to go through memorial service after memorial service day after day for comrades they knew and loved???

Have they had to live in fear every moment of every unchanging, horrible day, waiting for a never-seen rocket or a mortar to kill them—or worse, kill those to whom they are close???

Have they bore body armor in 120 degree heat in the face of an unrecognizable enemy, one who uses terrified civilians as shields?

Have they seen the remains of tanks, HMMWVs, BODIES!!! that were rent asunder by invisible bombs, planted by fanatical zealots???

Have they truly seen the shatter lives of Iraqis, these lives broken by the very people they propose to grant amnesty?

Have they had to pull the trigger with the aim of killing another human being, someone you have never met or seen before, never knowing if the target was truly an enemy?

Do these gentlemen wrestle at night with the nightmares of guilt and second-guessing?

Every IED that injures or kills an American soldier exacerbates the normal soldiers' attitude toward those who he is sent to help and protect. Every sniper shot hardens our hearts.

Propose accolades for those who have lived through this hell, not for those who have opposed them in the shadows, in the dark.

When an insurgent—a terrorist—an enemy combatant—call them what you will—strikes at an American, he attacks Iraq.

When we these "right, honorable" gentlemen realize that we are in a war we should have never entered—one where our very presence provokes and increases the enemy's resolve and recruitment—perhaps then I will consider their words.

But until then, tell these paper warriors to go to Walter Reed, to Landstuhl, to Sam Houston and face the soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen whose lives have been drastically altered or ended.

Tell them to face the families of the fallen and propose their accolades to our foes.

Instead of resolutions that honor those who are trying to kill us, these senators, these congressmen should devote their efforts, their words, their very lives to try and figure out how we can extricate ourselves from this war.

Perhaps then they can look themselves in the eye and admit Iraq was a mistake and commit all our energies to saving American lives, instead of worrying about mollifying our enemies' rage.

Sean Frerking
A soldier serving in Iraq

Winger trolls have a lot of work ahead of them: They have to tar-and-feather a whole bunch of Republican Senators for abandoning the troops, and they also must begin sliming Sean Frerking for resenting the treason of these Senators.

That much work is a man’s job.

The winger trolls certainly are not up to the job.

Chris in Paris, again:

What he said.

Chris of Americablog points out a yahoo news item this morning about the deaths two years ago of two GIs:

SAN FRANCISCO - Two California soldiers shot to death in Iraq were murdered by Iraqi civil-defense officers patrolling with them, military investigators have found. The deaths of Army Spc. Patrick R. McCaffrey Sr. and 1st Lt. Andre D. Tyson were originally attributed to an ambush during a patrol near Balad, Iraq, on June 22, 2004.

But the Army's Criminal Investigation Command found that one or more of the Iraqis attached to the American soldiers on patrol fired at them, a military official said Tuesday.
A Pentagon spokesman knew of no other similar incident, calling it "extremely rare."

In his commentary, Chris states, “Interesting that he did not say ‘was a single exception’ because ‘rare’ implies it has happened on other occasions.” This is wrong, because the story directly quotes the Pentagon spokesman as knowing of no similar incident. That’s not to say such incidents have not happened; we haven’t been apprised of them, just as we weren’t apprised of the savagery and brutality committed in our names at Abu Ghraib until a few brave patriots whispered the news to Seymour Hersh, who published the first public words about the horrors in two columns in the New Yorker. (See http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040510fa_fact and
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040524fa_fact ) in case you've forgotten this atrocity.

The Army has conducted an extensive investigation into the deaths but declined to provide details out of respect for relatives of the soldiers, spokesman Paul Boyce said Tuesday evening. It was unclear whether the investigators had established a motive or arrested any suspects.

The families of McCaffrey and Tyson were to be briefed on the report's conclusions Tuesday and Wednesday by Brig. Gen. Oscar Hilman, the soldiers' commander at the time, and three other officers.

Of course the Army hasn’t arrested anyone. Who would they arrest? All the Iraqi police? The Iraqi National Guard? At the time the even occurred two years ago, we were desperately and happily signing on any Iraqi who came forward and said he wanted to be a gunsel for us, because each Iraqi working for us was a “victory” and a feather in the cap of Mr Bush, the “Commander-in-Chief” of the Armed Forces. There must be some records somewhere of who was signed on, because we were paying them, and they must have had to sign for their weekly pay, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn those records have somehow magically disappeared.

I’m fascinated that the grieving families are going to be briefed by a general and “three officers.” The families are going to get the full monty: a classic Army dog and pony show, complete with carefully crafted photos and charts and long well-parsed speeches by sleek staff officers, full of jargon, so as to carefully camouflage the truth: we fucked up. We went into a foolish, ill-thought-out war of aggression against an unprepared, basically unarmed country that had done us no harm, and when we fell flat on our faces, we floundered around desperately, signing on any pair of walking legs that showed up, because we were (and still are) pathetically eager to show to the American public that we’re “winning” the war against resistors who resent our illegal occupation of their country.

"When they come I have my list of questions ready, and I want these answers and I don't want lies," McCaffrey's mother, Nadia McCaffrey, said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.

Sorry, Mrs McCaffrey, that’s not going to happen. In 2004, just as in 2003, 2002, 2001, and even in 2006, the Army’s goal remains the same: obey the idiotic and brutal orders of civilian criminals who dreamed up this war, because that’s best for a soldier’s career. They will lie, obfuscate, hide the truth, deny and side-step any demands you make on them for facts.

Just ask Cindy Sheehan.

I don't like to link to the Rude Pundit, even though he often has a fresh look at topics of coversation. Rude is just that - rude- in language. Reading him does cause a titillating bit of laughter, but, let's face it: his writing style is...immature, non-professional, and vivid.

But he's spot on today:

Two Captured American Soldiers and the Implied "What If": Chances are, maybe even by the time you read this, the two American soldiers, captured by the Mujahideen Shura Council in Iraq, will be dead, probably in some horrible way, probably with their bodies dumped like all the horribly murdered Iraqis in the blood and gore-strewn landscape that are the markers of Iraqi liberation. The Rude Pundit can't help thinking, though, about the implied "What if" of the capture, on the field of battle, of American soldiers, prisoners of war, if you will.

What if we get pictures of the soldiers, nude, cowering, screaming in a corner, shitting themselves on the filthy floors of a makeshift cell, as their captors hold snarling dogs on leashes just out of bite range of the soldiers?

What if we learn that their captors decide that the soldiers can offer intelligence that can be of use to al-Qaeda and, in order to get that information, the captors put the nude soldiers into rooms that are heated to hellish temperatures, followed by rooms that are impossibly cold with colder water tossed onto them? What if the soldiers are made to stand for days on end? Put into stress positions that fuck up their muscles and limbs? Denied sleep? Had loud music played into their cells? Kept in isolation and fed bread and water for days, weeks on end?

What if they strap one or both of those Americans to a board and hold them underwater until their drowning reflex forces them to panic, thrash, claw desperately for air, only to be brought up to breathe and then placed underwater again? And again? Until the captors get the answers they seek?

What if those captors take the nude, sleep-deprived, shit and piss-covered, nearly drowned and dog-frightened American soldiers and handcuff them to beds with women's panties on their heads, snapping photographs and laughing, talking about publishing the photos so that everyone can see the soldiers with their panty-sniffing heads and terror-shriveled cocks, so that all of al-Qaeda can laugh at what pussies Americans can be made to seem?

What if, and, really, does it need to be said, they are made to stand, hooded, with faux electrodes attached to their nuts and fingers, told that if they don't start answering questions, well, testicles only can take so much electroshock before they just pop like squeezed grapes?

What will our government do? What could it do? Could it condemn the actions as not abiding by the Geneva Conventions? Could it call the actions "torture"? Could it demand accountability? Could it demand that the soldiers be treated as POWs? Could it simply say, "Well, we don't do that shit...anymore"?

And what about the good right-wing punditry? Would Rush Limbaugh look at the photos of the nude, cowering Americans and say it looks like fraternity hazing or some such shit? Would others dismiss it as a media fabrication? Or would they just pathetically overlook everything done in our American names to Iraqis, Afghanis, and others, calling madly for the heads of the captors, not even thinking about the irony of such a statement?

It goes without saying, but, considering the times, perhaps it needs to be said: the Rude Pundit wishes none of this on Privates Thomas Tucker and Kristian Menchaca. He hopes they are found or released safe and sound. But he also wishes none of this on our prisoners, whether in Iraq, at Gitmo, or in secret prisons or countries of rendition where fuck-all can happen with no law, no regulation, no hope to bespeak our putative humanity.

An Episcopalian priest, Rev Charles Hoffacker, has written a column in the Port Huron, Michigan Times Herald about a study of Fascism:

We should take a hard look at our anti-democratic tendencies

A recent study identifies characteristics common to seven fascist regimes. Laurence W. Britt examines regimes in Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Chile, and Indonesia-all of them eventually overthrown - and notes these 14 patterns of national behavior that each regime engaged in to one extent or another.

Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism. This was usually coupled with a suspicion of things foreign.

Disdain for human rights. Victims of human rights abuse were marginalized or abuse was concealed.

Identification of scapegoats as a unifying cause. Scapegoating directed attention away from public problems and channeled frustration into controlled directions.

Avid militarism. The military was used to assert national goals, intimidate other countries, and increase the ruling elite's prestige.

Rampant sexism. Women were treated as second-class citizens. Homophobia was intensified.

A controlled mass media. Leaders of the mass media were often compatible with the regime and kept the public unaware of the regime's excesses.

Obsession with national security. A national security apparatus served as an instrument of internal repression.

Religion and ruling elite tied together. Propaganda kept up the illusion that those in power were opponents of the "godless."

Power of corporations protected. The ability of large corporations to act in relative freedom was not compromised even when personal liberties were curtailed.

Power of labor suppressed or eliminated. The poor were seen as an underclass and viewed with suspicion or contempt.

Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts. Artistic and academic freedom were considered subversive.

Obsession with crime and punishment. Severe systems of criminal justice produced huge prison populations. Police power was almost unchecked, leading to widespread abuse.

Rampant cronyism and corruption. The economic elite and the power elite enriched one another through unethical favoritism.

Fraudulent elections. When elections with candidates took place, they would usually be perverted by those in power to achieve the desired result.

Does this sound familiar? Ample parallels can be found between Britt's portrait of fascism and events in early 21st-century America.
Fascism is an ideology built on fear. What breaks the allure of fascism is a faith too authentic to accept lies. One form of this faith is belief in a God of compassion whose perfect love casts out fear. Another is belief in the ability of a free people to govern themselves.

We do not strive for a justice based on repentance and encounter with the God of compassion. Distracted in countless ways, disconnected from one another, we remain deeply ignorant of how all people are one people.

This nation once engaged in a gigantic military struggle to defeat European fascism. We must now undertake a spiritual struggle to defeat the fascism now threatening our hearts and our public life.

Thanks to Buzzflash.com for the tipoff

Sometime today, approximately 24 hours after the incident, CENTCOM finally got around to publishing a news report about the two GIs missing in Iraq.

Last night, a Coalition Force Soldier was killed and two others are currently listed as Duty Status and Whereabouts Unknown after their security element came under attack at a traffic control point south of Yusifiyah, Iraq, at approximately 7:55 p.m. local time, Friday, June 16th. The names of the Soldiers are being withheld pending notification of their next of kin.

Coalition Forces and Iraqi Security Forces initiated a search operation within minutes to determine the status of these Soldiers, and we are currently using every means at our disposal on the ground, in the air and in the water to find them.

Saying "I told you so" is pointless, of course. Let's be frank; Liberals and Progressives have said "I told you so" consistently for the last 3 1/2 years.

Let it be noted that the search began "within minutes" - 15 minutes, in fact, according to CENTCOM's press release.

Coalition forces at an adjacent traffic control point heard an explosion and small arms fire at approximately 7:55 p.m. last night in the vicinity of the missing Soldier’s checkpoint, at a canal crossing near the Euphrates River in the vicinity of Yusifiyah. After being unable to communicate with the check point, a Quick Reaction Force was launched, arriving on scene within 15 minutes.

The Quick Reaction Force reported finding one Soldier killed in action and two Soldiers duty status and whereabouts unknown.
All traffic control points were notified to stop civilian traffic and increase security.

Helicopter, unmanned aerial vehicle and fixed wing assets provided reconnaissance over and around the site.

A dive team was requested.

Within an hour of the incident, blocking positions were established throughout the area in a concerted effort to focus the search and prevent movement of suspects out of the area.

Since the operation began with an explosion - possibly a car bomb, or even a hurled grenade - and shots were fired afterwards, we can assume the GIs traded fire with the attackers. The two missing GIs might have been wounded, of course, and were taken away and well-hidden.

Let's hope they receive adequate medical care, and the followup care is more merciful than captured insurgents and resistors have gotten from out forces.

There’s a very interesting dKos Diary covering a debate between Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Advisor, presently counselor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies; and Walter Russell Mead, the Henry Kissinger Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. The debate was on the PBS News Hour.

Dr Brzezinski, who’s lived through and made history compares Iraq with Viet Nam, unfavorably.

Gentlemen, welcome. Dr. Brzezinski, the president ended his news conference saying, "Going to war in Iraq was worth it. It was necessary, and it will succeed." Do you agree?

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI, Former National Security Adviser to President Carter: No, I do not. I don't think it was worth it. I don't think it is succeeding, and I think we ought to think very seriously as to how we can extract still some degree of success from what, obviously, has been a major misadventure.

BRZEZINSKI, Now, this is what the president actually visited. This is an aerial map of Baghdad and, within it, the viewers can see a small spot. That is the so-called Green Zone, a fortified American fortress housing the American embassy, the American high command, and all the major institutions of the Iraqi, as he said, free and democratic government, in an American fortress.

This is worse than in the bad days of Vietnam, when the South Vietnamese regime was still operating from its own palaces, had its own army and so forth. We do not have in Iraq a free and democratic government that is functioning.

It’s worth taking the time to actually listen to the transcript because the written word is a poor form of communication. One loses the vocal inflections and intonations – the hard stress on words and phrases that emphasize urgency.

Dr Brzezinski made one other very significant point in response to Mead’s attempt to increase the significance of the present Iraqi government:

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: I would have to have an enormous magnifying glass to be able to see them that way. The fact of the matter is: The government is meeting in an American fortress.

If it is meeting in an American fortress, it is because it is not able to operate outside of an American fortress. That tells you a lot. The notions that a new plan is being put in to enhance security in Baghdad makes me think of a person in the midst of a huge fire in a house who all of a sudden announces that he has a new plan for the installation of air conditioning.

That says it all to me. They’re a “government” because they’re hiding behind American razor wire, concrete blast walls and guns. They don’t control their own capital city. I don’t think they ever will. The present Iraqi constitution that the Bu$h malAdministration and its lackeys seem so proud of establishes an Islamic republic, operating under Sharia law. You know – just like Iran, the country they’re trying to start a third war with. This Iraqi government will stand until we are forced to leave, either by such crushing international debt that we eventually go bankrupt and default on our international financial obligations, or by finally getting a sane government here in our own country.

After we leave, these Iraqi politicians will be replaced by an Islamic council, consisting of mullahs and other clerics.

Steve Gilliard has similar thoughts:

When they talk about the Iraqi government, they're talking about the front men for the militias. These men have no power. Iraqis treat those who kill Americans as heroes and would, if given the chance, kill the Iraqi government like Mussolini.

The Iraqi leaders need Americans to live. They know it, because they are not the men with power. They know that Sistani could collapse this government in a day. Sadr could blockade the Green Zone. They are waiting. But they will not wait forever. In fact, they may not wait much longer.

The LA Times reports on Mr Bush apparently doing something good for a change:

President Bush created a vast new marine sanctuary Thursday, extending stronger federal protections to the northwest Hawaiian Islands and the surrounding waters with their endangered monk seals, nesting green sea turtles and other rare species.

The Northwestern Hawaiian Islands National Monument covers an archipelago 1,400 miles long and 100 miles wide in the Pacific Ocean. It is home to more than 7,000 species, at least one-fourth of them found nowhere else.

"To put this area in context, this national monument is more than 100 times larger than Yosemite National Park," Bush said. "It's larger than 46 of our 50 states, and more than seven times larger than all our national marine sanctuaries combined. This is a big deal."

Creation of the nation's 75th national monument was announced at a White House ceremony. The decision immediately sets aside 140,000 square miles of largely uninhabited islands, atolls, coral reef colonies and underwater peaks known as seamounts to be managed by federal and state agencies.

This is so unlike Mr Bush that when I heard about it, my immediate thought was, “Which one of his cronies is going to score on this?”

Try as I might, I just can’t think of a way for a Big Business crony to make money off this. Can anyone suggest an idea?

This from CNN, through Raw Story:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A U.S. soldier was killed and two were unaccounted for Friday after they came under attack at a traffic checkpoint in Yusufiya, about 20 miles southwest of Baghdad.

A quick reaction team was searching for the missing soldiers early Saturday morning. The team was dispatched to the scene after other troops nearby heard gunfire.

The soldiers were officially listed as "whereabouts unknown," which means they could have been captured or killed or could be hiding out.

This cannot be good. One dead, two more possibly dead. Note they were working a traffic checkpoint, which I discussed here.

Checkpoints, which are static, make excellent bomb targets. Expect an upturn in suicide bombings at checkpoints. There are always a lot of people, driven by patriotism, religious zealotry, or stupidity willing to immolate themselves in the hopes of taking a few enemies with him.

Here's hoping those missing, unaccounted for troops are just hiding out somewhere, waiting for the cavalry. It would not be good for them to turn up as prisoners, because Mr Bush's attitude towards prisoners is so atrocious, it just invites a tit-for-tat response.

Josh Marshall tells us about another Republican with a flat palm:

Flying blind: Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee insists it was ethical to take a flight on a private plane owned by the director of a state contractor, the Lord's Ranch youth home. It was not a favor to him, but a gift to his PAC, Huckabee told a reporter. This and other news in today's Daily Muck.

Yet another Republican taking payola from a customer of the state. The link to the Daily Muck has a quickie condensation of a much longer Yahoo news article:

"Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said Thursday a flight he took on a private plane that was provided by a state contract-holder did not pose a conflict of interest. The plane was provided by the director of a youth ranch that has been paid at least $8.5 million through a contract with the state. Huckabee said the flight was not a gift to him, but instead was an in-kind contribution to his political action committee."

See? By calling it an in-kind contribution, Huckabee gets a free ride (no Republican can ever resist anything that is free,) and can still pretend it’s not a bribe, while the bible thumpers at the Jeebus Ranch get to write something off on their taxes.

If Diogenes were to walk into a Republican caucus with his torch, searching for an honest man, he’d be lucky if he escaped with his underwear.

Juan Cole mentions a talk given at the Naval War College in Newport Rhode Island at which the two political scientists, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer who are responsible for so much hysteria among the Israel lobby in the US spoke regarding the US, it’s position as a world today and throughout the 21st century, and (of course) Iraq. Philip Weiss chronicles it.

Yesterday the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, opened its annual conference on international strategy with a speech from the Navy Secretary in a vast hall, followed by a panel on American power composed of three scholars, all of whom had opposed the war in Iraq. Indeed, in the biographical notes that were given out to the audience of officers—men and women wearing their dress whites—one of the scholars stated bluntly that he had written about the "folly of invading Iraq."

For an hour the panelists gave their reasons for why they believe America will remain the most powerful country in the world well into this century, regardless of the morass in Iraq. There were about ten questions. The last one was from a Navy commander named Cladgett from Syracuse, who rose in the middle of the audience.

"My question to the panel is, What is the path to success in Iraq?"

It’s interesting that a naval officer asked this question. I suspect that if the same question was asked at a similar conference sponsored by the Army the response would be “stay the course.” Iraq is a ground forces show, strictly for the Army and Marines, and it seems Bu$hCo plans for the wet navy to be spearholders, and supply tomahawk and harpoon missiles and the occasional bombing by F/A-18s as needed, and otherwise please don’t interfere. It’s a good deal for senior ground commanders, who get career boosts by dint of assignment to the war zone that used to be a relatively peaceful country, ruled by a dictator whose fangs had been pulled by 12 years of sanctions and UN weapons inspections. For the younger ground commanders at company level, and the EM, of course, it’s just toughski shitski, so suck it up, troop.

…Stephen Walt of Harvard, said "This was a huge strategic blunder, there are no attractive plans forward." The greatest danger—an international conflict in Iraq—would be there no matter when we left. The next man, Robert Art of Brandeis, said, he thought it was extremely important for America's image in the Arab world not to have permanent bases in Iraq.

Messers Walt and Art got it exactly right, although Mr Art is sadly out of step with the neocons from PNAC and the Israel lobby, who are determined to project American military power throughout the Gulf region into the mid-21st century, or until the oil runs out, or until Israel finally comes to a peaceful co-existence with its Arab neighbors. That will probably be after all the surrounding Arab nations have been attacked and conquered by the US, and compliant puppet governments have been installed.

The last one to speak was the one who had used the word "folly" in the program: John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago. Mearsheimer is 58. He told the audience that when he was a teenager, he had enlisted in the Army. Then he'd spent 1966-1970 at West Point. Then he said this:

I remember once in English class we read Albert Camus's book The Plague. I didn't know what The Plague was about or why we were reading it. But afterwards the instructor explained to us that The Plague was being read because of the Vietnam War. What Camus was saying in The Plague was that the plague came and went of its own accord. All sorts of minions ran around trying to deal with the plague, and they operated under the illusion that they could affect the plague one way or another. But the plague operated on its own schedule. That is what we were told was going on in Vietnam. Every time I look at the situation in Iraq today, I think of Vietnam, and I think of The Plague, and I just don't think there's very much we can do at this point. It is just out of our hands. There are forces that we don't have control over that are at play, and will determine the outcome of this one. I understand that's very hard for Americans to understand, because Americans believe that they can shape the world in their interests.

But I learned during the Vietnam years when I was a kid at West Point, that there are some things in the world that you just don't control, and I think that's where we're at in Iraq.

I’m not quite in agreement with the use of Camus’s “The Plague” as a useful example for international relations because there is a suggestion that a medical pandemic could assume some sort of sentient quality. Actors on the International stage, whether nations, movements and groups, or individuals pursue their own agendas, seeking consciously to arrive at a favorable goal. Epidemics are not sentient. They just happen. Matters like Iraq occur because of conscious decisions made by people. But I believe he’s right in stating that the damned thing just has to run its course. America is now hostage, gripping the tiger’s tail desperately, hoping to avoid being bitten, until the tiger gets weary and we can safely let go.
We are no longer in control of events in Iraq. The events control us, and we’d better hope the tiger gets tired soon, before we are forced by domestic politics to let go and walk away. The varied forces at work in Iraq – the central government, the Shiite political faction and its armed militias, the Sunni insurgents, including the Baathist loyalists and old regime Army officers and soldiers, Iranian sponsored militants, Saudi sponsored militants, Pakistani sponsored militants – are basically not ours to command, with the exception of the present central government, which sadly doesn’t even control all of its own capital city.

The always dependable Atrios points us to an Americablog article about a new NBC/WSJ poll that shows Mr Bush has “surged” ahead in the polls.

The latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll had Bush "surging" 1 point -- all the way from 36% to 37%. This morning, Matt Lauer was incredulous that the numbers for Bush haven't spiked. The media is waiting for -- and pushing the narrative that there will be -- a Bush surge. The American people, who, unlike the media, grasp that Bush has lied to them about Iraq many times, aren't giving him one:

According to the poll, 37 percent approve of Bush's job performance — an increase of one point since the last survey in April. This is the seventh straight NBC/Journal poll that has had Bush's job approval below 40 percent.

For whatever reason, the traditional media always, always, always falls for the Bush spin. Yet, these days, the public doesn't. Bush can -- and does -- play the media. Exhibit A yesterday was CNN's John King who was literally gushing about the Bush trip to Iraq. But Bush's tricks and lies don't seem to be working on the American people -- yet anyway.

Our bought-and-paid-for media keeps trying to advance the theory that Mr Bush is a very popular president. Regardless of the contempt so many Americans hold for Mr Bush, the media refuse to admit the truth. In fact, they are not permitted to tell the truth. Most of our media have a vested interest in a Republican majority in Congress, on the Supreme Court and in the White House. Relaxed or eliminated restrictions on monopolies, usury, pollution, and all the other disgraceful forms of predatory capitalism that were so slowly and painfully eliminated in the last century of social progress are antithetical to everything the Big Business powers that own the media today demand from their compliant Republican vassals.

And those Republican vassals are eager to obey their masters, because of the money they get as rewards.

As Americablog also notes:

Meanwhile, just 23 percent approve of Congress' job, while a whopping 64 percent disapprove.

Having just returned from a road trip through “Red” America I can assure you Congress is held in general contempt. I found extensive disgust about Mr Bush, his war in Iraq, which was based on personal pique, and the resultant orgy of greed and corruption, as exemplified by Mr Cheney's Halliburton, and Mr Bush’s good friend, Jack Abramoff.

In a comment to my post on Abu Musab al-Zarqawi a rather clever reader commented:

I recall reading, back in the day when al_Zarqawi was named head of al kaedy in Eyerac, that he was already dead, killed in Afghanistan. I can't find where I read it now, but I really wish I could. I know that Riverbend of Baghdad Burning has questioned the existence of this mythical creature for some time now.

Funny shit, eh? I also smell a huge fat Rovian rat.

And I responded:

Every dictatorship has to have a prime enemy - the faceless dangers outside the wall given a name.

Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi......

Who will be the next Emmanuel Goldstein?

And we have a winner! Abu Ayyub al-Masri come on down! You have been selected as the next symbol!

The New York Times reports today:

In a televised briefing today in Baghdad, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, a spokesman for American forces in Iraq, displayed a photograph of a man he identified as Abu Ayyub al-Masri as "probably" being the man who was named as the successor to Mr. Zarqawi, the Jordanian terrorist who was killed in an American bombing last week.

An Islamic militant Web site said this week that Mr. Zarqawi's replacement was a man named Abu Hamza al-Muhajir. But his name was something of a mystery. It did not appear on any of the charts of wanted leaders of Al Qaeda previously issued by the American command, or on any of the dozens of previous statements posted on the Internet by Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

So, it appears that the “enemy” made a public claim about a new leader on some obscure website and we immediately crown the unknown as the new King of Terror in Iraq. We never heard of the guy before. We’re not even sure if this photo is really the guy the obscure website named, but that’s not important. The vital issue is that Bu$hCo and CENTCOM appear to be able to pull a photo out of a file because they seem to think this proves their right on top of things.

So, once again The Gang That Couldn’t Conquer Straight * has possibly fallen for a bit of simple misdirection. Eagerly responding to some vague rumor (because that’s what it is,) they proudly display a photo of some guy they never heard of, adding the caveat “We’re not really sure if this is the guy because we never heard of the guy before, but this is the new face of terror.”

This, from the world champions of propaganda and misdirection.

* Eternal gratitude to Jimmy Breslin, the last real reporter

Lots going on today, it being Flag Day (see previous post) as well as the day our feckless leader returned after sneaking in to Baghdad so as to “look Nouri al-Maliki in the eye” and discuss the next steps in the troubled 3-year-old war.

Because, you see, Baghdad is so dangerous that the alleged leader of the alleged Free World has to sneak out of the US, without telling anyone other than the barest minimum – Laura, (of course) Condi (of course – heh!) and the WH Secret Service detail, who has to tell the Air Force to fire up ole AF 1. (There has been no word I know of to tell whether Marine 1 was sent out there beforehand, although I’ll bet it wasn’t.) The tame press stenographers that get their copy handed to them by Karl Rove’s little elves didn’t know about the trip either. They were just shepherded out to the airport, their cell phones and Blackberrys collected, and told to get on board. I’ll just bet there was excitement and consternation when Nicky Notepad never came home for dinner, and with the cell phones impounded – well, you can speculate if you’ve got a dirty mind.

Baghdad is such a dangerous place that AF 1 had to do the corkscrew landing routine with (I’m sure) many F-16s and Apaches airborne looking for threats. It must be wonderful to be George Bush and be able to interrupt your own little imperial adventure for the sake of a cheap sleazy photo op. At least this time he had the testicular fortitude to land in the daylight, unlike his last cheap sleazy photo op at Thanksgiving, 2003, when he got to pose with a plastic turkey, pretending to feed some carefully selected troops. A plastic President and a plastic turkey. Piquant.

Steve Gilliard dislikes this guy almost as much as I do, and he had a terrific comment on the whole deal:

Dramatic, desperate, you make the move. Because Iraq must get better for Bush. He's running out of time and Army. US policy makers are under the delusion they can have hostile relations with Iran and good relations with Iraq and that isn't the case.

For Bush's presidency to survive, Iraq is going to have to improve tremendously.

So, we have George Bush, pretending to look into the most recent Prime Minister’s eyes, just like he pretended he looked into Vlad Putin’s eyes, and thereby, into his heart. Is this the 4th or the 5th Prime Minister of Iraq? I forget. The main point was that the Master made a trip to instruct his vassal as to what he expected: more unregistered oil for ExxonMobilShellConoco. (Unregistered and therefore free, to maximize corporate profits.) The vassal was also instructed to raise a lot of dust, to make things look better, because we’ve got these midterm elections coming up.

It was announced after Mr Bush left, in the dark (appropriate, because he is in the dark, figuratively,) that there will be a lengthened, more stringent curfew in Baghdad, more street checkpoints, and a hotline telephone number for Iraqis to phone in tips on “terrorism suspects.”

This is going to work out just peachy. They don’t get more than 3 hours a day of electricity, and I’ll bet the phones are just as reliable. Checkpoints (roadblocks) will just make it more difficult to move around the city as residents make their daily struggle for food, water and gasoline. Checkpoints, which are static, make excellent bomb targets. Expect an upturn in suicide bombings at checkpoints. There are always a lot of people, driven by patriotism, religious zealotry, or stupidity willing to immolate themselves in the hopes of taking a few enemies with him. Plus, probably half the government security troops (army and police) have loyalties elsewhere than with the al-Maliki government. We can expect some serious turn battles now that the Iraqi troop targets are out in the open, and not moving, which usually makes a target harder to hit.

And that phone thing? What’s that about? “Turn in a terrorist and we won’t tell anyone what your name is.)??? I can just see a line of people waiting for their turn at a street corner booth, can’t you?

Today, June 14th , is Flag Day, a day set aside by Congress to display and honor our nation’s flag. There’s a charming little website that has quite a bit of content on this matter.

Let’s remember our flag and our nation’s valorous history today. Perhaps, by next year, it won’t be our flag any longer. It may well be a wholly owned property of the Republican National Committee, like 9/11.

Today has such memories for me, as I’m sure it does for you, too. Lots of absent friends to think of and to talk with. They’ll visit me later, in the dark.

One other memory sticks in my mind on this day: Mrs Donnelly, my eighth grade teacher, who always had her class recite and discuss this poem, written by John Greenleaf Whittier in 1864, when our nation was also torn asunder by the forces of greed, lust for power, and bigotry:

Up from the meadows rich with corn,
Clear in the cool September morn,
The clustered spires of Frederick stand
Green-walled by the hills of Maryland.

Round about them orchards sweep,
Apple and peach trees fruited deep,
Fair as the garden of the Lord
to the eyes of the famished rebel horde,

On that pleasant morn of the early fall
When Lee marched over the mountain-wall;
Over the mountains winding down,
Horse and foot, into Frederick town.

Forty flags with their silver stars,
Forty flags with their crimson bars,
Flapped in the morning wind; the sun
Of noon looked down, and saw not one.

Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then,
Bowed with her fourscore years and ten;
Bravest of all in Frederick town,
She took up the flag the men hauled down;

In her attic window the staff she set,
To show that one heart was loyal yet.
Up the street came the rebel tread,
Stonewall Jackson riding ahead.

Under his slouched hat left and right
He glanced; the old flag met his sight.
"Halt!" the dust-brown ranks stood fast.
"Fire!" out blazed the rifle-blast.

It shivered the window, pane and sash;
It rent the banner with seam and gash.
Quick, as it fell, from the broken staff
Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf.

She leaned far out on the window-sill,
And shook it forth with a royal will.
"Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,
But spare your country's flag," she said.

A shade of sadness, a blush of shame,
Over the face of the leader came;
The nobler nature within him stirred
To life at that woman's deed and word;

"Who touches a hair of yon gray head
Dies like a dog! March on!" he said.
All day long through Frederick street
Sounded the tread of marching feet:

All day long that free flag tost
Over the heads of the rebel host.
Ever its torn folds rose and fell
On the loyal winds that loved it well;

And through the hill-gaps sunset light
shone over it with a warm good-night.
Barbara Frietchie's work is o'er,
and the Rebel rides on his raids no more.

Honor to her! And let a tear
Fall, for her sake, on Stonewall's bier.
Over Barbara Frietchie's grave,
Flag of Freedom and Union, wave!

Peace and order and beauty draw
Round thy symbol of light and law;
And ever the stars above look down
On thy stars below in Frederick town!

Like Dorothy, my spirits are lifted as I approach home. Driving past Tallahassee today, I detected strong barnyard odors of bovine feces. JEB! was telling everyone what a great job he did leading the state in dodging Alberto, the Hurricane that wasn't.

While driving by our state Capitol, where an especially mendacious and useless bi-cameral Legislature is infested with an overabundance of Republicans, I detected a powerful aroma of equine feces.

You can always spot a Florida Republican politician, by the elbow bent at 90 degrees and the hand outstretched, palm flat.

Regularly scheduled displays of anger, irascibility, scorn, and truth should resume tomorrow. It was a great trip, and I owe many thanks to the generosity and kindness extended by Six of Seven, who loiters with intent around Low and Left, and the Great Gordo, ex-USMC, now of Alternative Brain, where he works the afternoon shift, while Fixer is busy repairing Detroit's mistakes.

I owe even more thanks to Mrs Six of Seven and Mrs Gordo, for making like simpler and more pleasant

This, from Laura at War and Piece:

This fascinates, dateline Topeka, Kansas, GOP pols are registering and running as Dems, as social conservatives claim the state GOP: "Mark Parkinson got his start in Republican politics at age 19, as a precinct committeeman. He served six years as a Republican state legislator, eventually becoming state Republican chairman. But two weeks ago, Parkinson announced he was running for lieutenant governor — as a Democrat. He said he no longer felt welcome in the increasingly conservative Kansas Republican Party. Parkinson became the third Republican politician in the last nine months to startle this red state by switching to the minority party. [...] Political observers say the fracture within the Kansas GOP may foreshadow the future for the national party. The division between moderates and social conservatives is expected to define the contest for the party's 2008 presidential nomination."

Wait. Wait. A life-long Republican suddenly decides to run as a Democrat. Please… we already have Zell Miller and Joe Lieberman, both moles, running under our colors. No more Manchurian Candidates.

There is no “fracture” within the Kansas Republican Party. It’s slowly dawning on them that running on both sides of the card guarantees victory for their 10th century social idiocy.

Go dance with them what brung ya, sonny.

I was on the road early today, but I heard the radio news about “us” allegedly getting the alleged leader of Al-Quaeda in Iran, who is/was allegedly Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaida leader in Iraq who waged a bloody campaign of suicide bombings and beheadings, was killed overnight by F-16 jets dropping two 500-pound bombs, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Thursday. It was a long-sought victory in the war in Iraq. Al-Zarqawi and seven aides, including spiritual adviser Sheik Abdul Rahman, were killed inside a building in a remote area 30 miles northeast of Baghdad, officials sid.

Interestingly enough, the alleged leader, A. M. al-Zarqawi was little known throughout the world until Bu$hCo suddenly proclaimed him the leader of a-Q in Iraq, which in fact had never been heard of before Bu$hCo and CENTCOM, imitating Col Tom Parker said, “C’mere, cat. Ah’m gonna make you a star” a la Bobby Bare. Needing to explain their inability to control Iraq after the short-sheet conquest, and bearing in mind that the next stop was Iran, it was necessary to introduce the concept of “foreign fighters” early and often.

Thus was born the legend of A. M. al- Zarqawi, the deadliest one-legged terrorist/assassin in the Middle East. We got to hear a lot about him for three years. Every audacious attack, each outrageous atrocity was blamed on him. Bombings, beheadings, exploding trucks at embassies, spoiled whipped cream at Carvels and Dairy Queens– all was chalked up to al-Zarqawi.

Then in early May, 2006, in an attempt to deconstruct the legend of the larger-than-life al-Zarqawi, we were suddenly treated to a home video of him having trouble firing an M-249 SAW for a propaganda tape. I discussed it here.

I just don’t know whether to laugh, cry, or go kick the dog. Last week we were treated to an alleged video of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, failing to properly operate a M249 SAW that the a-Q somehow miraculously obtained. Now, honest disclosure: I don’t know the weapon myself. I was and am familiar with that pig M-60 though, and the beloved Ma Deuce and know that this sort of weapon needs some intensive familiarization to use it properly. But, oh! The bemedalled and perfumed CENTCOM briefers did have a wonderful time ridiculing Zarqawi’s inability to clear what was apparently a jam. My, how we all did laugh. Faux News showed the video about 47,216 times over 24 hours, pointing out that this is obvious proof that a-Q is losing, and has no chance to win. Everyone please clap your hands, three times. LOUDER so Tinkerbelle will hear.

A spokesman mocked the Jordanian's competence with a gun and his choice of American sports shoes, seen in the unedited film.

I added:

I did notice that the dude in the video in the black costume seemed to be able to walk perfectly, just like some guy with two perfectly good legs. This is the guy who Bu$hCo told us for three years had only one leg. I can’t understand why he had trouble handling one of the more complicated infantry weapons if he’s good enough to regenerate a leg. Can you?

CENTCOM has released a “death photo” of this alleged al-Zarqawi. If you look closely, and compare it with an undated comparative photo of (supposedly) al-Zarqawi from an earlier period, there appear to be several striking differences. The eyebrows are much thinner in the 2006 death photo. The nose seems broader at the end, and the tip has a much more pronounced hook. Further, the lower lip is fuller and deeper than the man in the earlier photo.

Color me unimpressed, dubious, leery, wary, and unconvinced. For three years they claimed the guy had one leg, then showed us a tape of a man with two perfectly good legs. Just when they need a good propaganda boost, something miraculous occurs.

The MSNBC report cited above claims seven aides were killed with him, including Sheik Abdul Rahman. That’s not this Abdul Rahman, the notorious “blind sheik” who was implicated in the 1993 WTC bombing attempt and is currently a guest of the US Gov’t at the maximum security penitentiary at Florence, Colorado for the rest of his life http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheikh_Omar_Abdel_Rahman. There are (so far) no photos of this Sheikh Abdul Rahman allegedly killed with the alleged al-Zarqawi. But there is a bit on tantalizing news about the bombed house:

There were six people in the house bombed by U.S. warplanes, including a woman and a child, but only Zarqawi and Abdul-Rahman have been identified. Zarqawi’s identification was verified at 3:30 a.m. ET on Thursday, Caldwell said.

Video from the scene of the attack showed children scrambling over a flattened jumble of cinderblocks, concrete reinforcing bars, blankets, blue plastic bowls and other debris. A pickup truck was scorched and crushed.

Two young members of the crowd held up a child’s sandal, a backpack with a teddy bear on it and a stuffed animal. The rubble was across a dirt road from a grove of palm trees.

Perfect. Just. Perfect.

UPDATE: I got so wrapped up in the trees that I forgot about the forest. Hey! I'm getting old! Some of You saw all my grey hair. Fortunately, Matt Iglesias has a forestry license:

TIME AND AGAIN (AND AGAIN!) K-Lo with an assist from David Pryce-Jones unleashes a dispatch from the Gamma Quadrant: "He calls Zarqawi’s demise both a 'collassal morale boost' for all of us but says it also has 'big operational significance.' 'When you get rid of a leader, it’s very hard to replace him.' The Israelis have proved this time and time again."

The Israelis certainly have proven a lot of things about the tactical/operational aspects of counterterrorism time and again. And, indeed, again. And again. They've proven them so often, for so long, that one might almost conclude that tactical counterterrorism accomplishes very little absent resolution of the underlying political conflicts.

Commenters to this post expand on Matt's valid point.

Additionally, Chris Floyd and his guests don't buy the unique and timely news about al_Zarqawi, either.