Director's Cut Due Out Soon-

"...have you ever retired a human by mistake?"
"...wake up, it's time to die."
"I wouldn't come after you, but someone would."
"I like a man who knows his place."
"You're talking about mammaries."

EM Radiation: The Sky is Falling !!

Apple warning on unlocked iPhones

Users may not be able to add Apple features to an unlocked phone

Apple has warned that anyone attempting to unlock their iPhone to use with an unauthorised mobile network could find their phones irreparably damaged.

The company said that modified mobiles would become "permanently inoperable" once Apple updates were installed.

It follows a flurry of hacks claiming to unlock the phone, which is tied into the US AT&T network and O2 in the UK.

Apple has denied that it is "doing anything proactively to disable iPhones that have been hacked or unlocked".
<------------------------------------->

September 26, 2007
Hackers Scoff At iPhone Warning
By Larry Barrett

After issuing a thinly veiled threat this week to customers who had the audacity to unlock their iPhones, Apple could soon be dealing with much more troublesome issues than the predictable backlash it's already receiving from rogue hackers and Apple fans alike.

Industry pundits, angry customers and loophole-seeking attorneys are now weighing in with their take on Apple's unambiguous response to what's become something of a cottage industry for hackers and customers who want to unlock their iPhones for use on wireless networks other than AT&T's.

In a statement released Monday, Apple admonished that "unauthorized iPhone unlocking programs available on the Internet cause irreparable damage to the iPhone's software which will likely result in the modified iPhone becoming permanently inoperable when a future Apple-supplied iPhone software update is installed."

It also said users who unlocked their iPhones have violated the terms of their software license agreement and, therefore, had voided their warranty.

Apple's solution—undoubtedly required by virtue of its contract with AT&T—didn't thrill customers who paid as much as $599 for their iPhones and then unlocked them to use non-AT&T wireless networks.

Now they face the "likely" prospect of their iPhones becoming "permanently inoperable" when a future software version is installed. And once their iPhones are disabled, they won't be able to return them to Apple and AT&T for a refund or a replacement.

Apple's position has left iPhone customers, locked or unlocked, asking themselves the same question: Can they really do that?

"In my opinion, if future software upgrades are withheld then there might some legal actions by consumers if, at the time of the purchase of the iPhone, there was no disclaimer in place stating the policy," Terry Daidone, co-founder of CertiCell, a Louisville, Ky.-based mobile phone repair company, wrote in an e-mail to InternetNews.com.

Dan Rather stands by his story

His lawsuit will attempt to show that CBS tried to suppress the report on Bush's National Guard Service and the Abu Ghraib abuses.

By Sidney Blumenthal

Sep. 27, 2007 | Dan Rather's complaint against CBS and Viacom, its parent company, filed in New York state court on Sept. 19 and seeking $70 million in damages for his wrongful dismissal as "CBS Evening News" anchor, has aroused hoots of derision from a host of commentators. They've said that the former anchor is "sad," "pathetic," "a loser," on an "ego" trip and engaged in a mad gesture "no sane person" would do, and that "no one in his right mind would keep insisting that those phony documents are real and that the Bush National Guard story is true."

If the court accepts his suit, however, launching the adjudication of legal issues such as breach of fiduciary duty and tortious interference with contract, it will set in motion an inexorable mechanism that will grind out answers to other questions as well. Then Rather's suit will become an extraordinary commission of inquiry into a major news organization's intimidation, complicity and corruption under the Bush administration. No congressional committee would be able to penetrate into the sanctum of any news organization to divulge its inner workings. But intent on vindicating his reputation, capable of financing an expensive legal challenge, and armed with the power of subpoena, Rather will charge his attorneys to interrogate news executives and perhaps administration officials under oath on a secret and sordid chapter of the Bush presidency.

In making his case, Rather will certainly establish beyond reasonable doubt that George W. Bush never completed his required service in the Texas Air National Guard. Moreover, Rather's suit will seek to demonstrate that the documents used in his "60 Minutes II" piece were not inauthentic and that he and his producers acted responsibly in presenting them and the information they contained -- and that that information is true. Indeed, no credible source has refuted the essential facts of the story.

Most cases of this sort are usually settled before discovery. But Rather has made plain that he is uninterested in a cash settlement. He has filed his suit precisely to be able to take depositions.

In his effort to demonstrate his mistreatment, Rather will detail how network executives curried favor with the administration, offering him up as a human sacrifice. The panel that CBS appointed and paid millions to in order to investigate Rather's journalism will be exposed as a shoddy kangaroo court.

Rather's complaint has already asserted a pattern of network submission to administration pressure, beginning with the Abu Ghraib story. In early 2004, Mary Mapes, a producer for "60 Minutes II" with more than two decades of experience, uncovered the torture at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Her sources were sound and the evidence incontrovertible, but according to Rather's complaint, "CBS management attempted to bury" the story. In a highly unusual move, then CBS News president Andrew Heyward and then senior vice president Betsy West personally intervened to demand editing changes and ever more "substantiation."

Rather's suit states that "for weeks, they refused to grant permission to air the story" and "continued to 'raise the goalposts,' insisting on additional substantiation." Even after Mapes gained possession of some of the now-infamous photographs of the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib (a full set of which was later obtained and posted by Salon), the news executives suppressed the story, "in part," according to Rather's suit, "occasioned by acceding to pressures brought to bear by government officials."

Gen. Richard Myers, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called Rather at his home, sources close to the case told me, telling him that broadcasting the story would endanger "national security." Myers explained to Rather that U.S. soldiers, just then poised for an assault on Fallujah, would be demoralized and suggested that Rather and CBS might threaten the outcome of the battle and the soldiers' safety.

Only when Seymour Hersh, investigative reporter for the New Yorker, relying on different sources from Mapes', unearthed the Abu Ghraib story and CBS executives learned that the magazine was about to scoop the network did they grudgingly permit it to be aired. "Even then," Rather's suit states, "CBS imposed the unusual restrictions that the story would be aired only once, that it would not be preceded by on-air promotion, and that it would not be referenced on the CBS Evening News." Feeling forced against their will to broadcast a story they knew was accurate, CBS's executives did everything within their power to ensure the public would pay as little attention to it as possible by prohibiting any mention of it. CBS's self-censorship set the stage for its reaction to the Bush National Guard story.

The widely accepted account that Mapes and Rather's original piece on Bush and the Guard was unproved and discredited has been based on the notion that the documents revealed were false. But three years after the heated controversy exploded, these premises appear very uncertain in the cold light of day.

Upon graduation from Yale in 1968, George W. Bush was accepted into the Texas Air National Guard, known as the "Champagne Unit" for serving as a haven for the privileged sons of the Texas elite seeking to escape duty in Vietnam. Through carefully placed calls made by Bush family friends, Bush was edged ahead of a 500-man waiting list. Then, after failing to complete his required hours of flight, he requested transfer to a unit in Montgomery, Ala. But there is no proof that he ever performed any of his service there; he refused to take a physical and was grounded. Ordered to return to his Houston base, he simply disappeared. Yet he was honorably discharged in 1973, though there is no proof that he had fulfilled his obligation.

During the 2000 campaign, the Boston Globe reported a number of discrepancies in Bush's National Guard record. However, the rest of the national press corps virtually ignored the Globe's stories, instead preferring to swarm around fictions about Al Gore helpfully stoked by the Bush campaign. Bush refused to make public his military records, in contrast to his principal primary opponent, Sen. John McCain, who had released his. But the press collectively let the matter pass. Nonetheless, the gaps in Bush's service as reported by the Globe had not been answered and hung in the air, if anyone cared to pursue them.

After breaking the Abu Ghraib story, Mapes, who lived in Texas and had reported on Bush when he was governor, began looking into the National Guard episode. By then, Sen. John Kerry,Swift Boat Veterans for Truth to mount a smear campaign that Kerry had been dissembling all these years about his medals. Kerry's campaign, like Gore's, chose not to dignify obvious lies by responding, and the press lagged behind the story as it gained traction. Discrediting Kerry's greatest biographical asset was calculated to compensate for Bush's hidden liability. In February 2004, the Washington Post followed on the Boston Globe articles of 2000, and its reporters were unable to find anyone that could corroborate Bush's claim that he had served at an Alabama air base in 1972. To an aggressive journalist like Mapes it seemed logical to examine Bush's National Guard story, which remained a mystery. a decorated Vietnam War hero who was awarded the Silver and Bronze stars, had emerged as the Democratic candidate. The Bush operation arranged for funding a front group called

The opaque story was partly illuminated by a piece in Salon, written by Mary Jacoby, on Sept. 2, 2004. Offering extensive documentation, including photographs and letters, Linda Allison, who had housed Bush during his missing year, explained that his drunken misbehavior was creating havoc for his father's political aspirations and that the elder Bush asked his old friend Jimmy Allison, a political consultant from Midland, Texas, now living in Alabama, to handle the wastrel son. "The impression I had was that Georgie was raising a lot of hell in Houston, getting in trouble and embarrassing the family, and they just really wanted to get him out of Houston and under Jimmy's wing," Linda Allison told Salon. During the time the younger Bush was under the watchful eye of the Allisons, he never went to a National Guard base or wore a uniform. "Good lord, no. I had no idea that the National Guard was involved in his life in any way," said Allison. She did, however, remember him drinking, urinating on a car, screaming at police and trashing the apartment he had rented.

On Sept. 8, "60 Minutes II" broadcast its story. It featured former Texas Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes, a Democrat, who disclosed that just before George W. Bush would be eligible for the draft, a mutual friend of then Rep. George H.W. Bush asked him to help procure the younger Bush a spot in the "Champagne Unit." Barnes appeared on camera, saying: "It's been a long time ago, but he said basically would I help young George Bush get in the Air National Guard. I was a young, ambitious politician doing what I thought was acceptable. It was important to make friends. And I recommended a lot of people for the National Guard during the Vietnam era -- as speaker of the House and as lieutenant governor. I would describe it as preferential treatment."

Then Rather, acting as correspondent, introduced new material drawn from the files of Col. Jerry Killian, Bush's squadron commander: "'60 Minutes' has obtained a number of documents we are told were taken from Col. Killian's personal file. Among them, a never-before-seen memorandum from May 1972, where Killian writes that Lt. Bush called him to talk about 'how he can get out of coming to drill from now through November.' Lt. Bush tells his commander 'he is working on a campaign in Alabama ... and may not have time to take his physical.' Killian adds that he thinks Lt. Bush has gone over his head, and is 'talking to someone upstairs.'"

Another Killian memo contained the coup de grâce: "I ordered that 1st Lt. Bush be suspended not just for failing to take a physical ... but for failing to perform to U.S. Air Force/Texas Air National Guard standards. The officer [then Lt. Bush] has made no attempt to meet his training certification or flight physical."

Within minutes of the conclusion of the broadcast, conservative bloggers launched a counterattack. The chief of these critics was a Republican Party activist in Georgia. Almost certainly, these bloggers, who had been part of meetings or conference calls organized by Karl Rove's political operation, coordinated their actions with Rove's office.

Questioned for the "60 Minutes" story, White House communications director Dan Bartlett had not denied the story but simply characterized it as "dirty." The right-wing bloggers raised questions about the authenticity of the Killian documents, arguing that typewriters of the time lacked the specific superscript in the documents, that the proportional spacing was wrong and the font anachronistic, and that therefore they were likely fabricated on a computer. Various handwriting and typewriter experts weighed in, some challenging the documents' authenticity. The press almost uniformly took the absence of a universal opinion of experts as proof of the documents' falsity. Because they could not be proved with complete certainty to be authentic, they must be counterfeit.

While the battle over the authenticity experts and assorted inconclusive sources continued, CBS interviewed Marian Carr Knox, who had been Col. Killian's assistant when the memos were allegedly produced. She didn't recall typing them and didn't believe Killian had written them (though various handwriting experts had verified his signature), but she also asserted, "The information in here is correct."

Under fire, CBS executives reeled backward. On Sept. 20, Heyward issued an apology: "Based on what we now know, CBS News cannot prove that the documents are authentic, which is the only acceptable journalistic standard to justify using them in the report. We should not have used them. That was a mistake, which we deeply regret." And Rather chimed in: "If I knew then what I know now -- I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question." With these self-abasing mea culpas (Rather claims in his complaint that his statement was "coerced"), the veracity of the story about Bush's past seemed to be settled in his favor. But the underlying facts of the story were not discredited; nor was the authenticity of the documents resolved.

The day after these apologies CBS announced the creation of a review panel to determine "what errors occurred." Two Bush family loyalists, Richard Thornburgh, former attorney general in the elder Bush's administration, and Louis Boccardi, former executive editor and CEO of the Associated Press, were chosen to head the internal investigation. Thornburgh had been the subject of critical Rather reports, while Boccardi felt close and indebted to the elder Bush for being helpful as vice president in gaining the release of AP reporter Terry Anderson, held hostage for six years in Lebanon. Lawyers in Thornburgh's firm with no background in journalism and media performed the real work of the panel and wrote its final report.

As the panel called witnesses, Sumner Redstone, CEO of Viacom (CBS's owner), declared his interest in the 2004 election. "I look at the election from what's good for Viacom. I vote for what's good for Viacom. I vote, today, Viacom," he said. In fact, Viacom had a number of crucial issues before the Federal Communications Commission, including loosening media ownership rules. "I don't want to denigrate Kerry," said Redstone, "but from a Viacom standpoint, the election of a Republican administration is a better deal. Because the Republican administration has stood for many things we believe in, deregulation and so on. The Democrats are not bad people ... But from a Viacom standpoint, we believe the election of a Republican administration is better for our company."

Rather believed that the panel would conduct a fair-minded inquiry. But he learned that neither he nor Mapes would be allowed to cross-examine witnesses. They heard from some researchers on the "60 Minutes II" staff that before they had been questioned, a CBS executive had told them that they should feel free to pin all blame on Rather and Mapes. CBS had told Rather to cease investigating the story and had even hired a private investigator of its own, Erik Rigler. Rather and Mapes discovered that Rigler's investigation had uncovered corroboration for their story. Rather's complaint states that "after following all the leads given to him by Ms. Mapes, he [Rigler] was of the opinion that the Killian Documents were most likely authentic, and that the underlying story was certainly accurate." But rather than probing Rigler on his findings, the panel, to the extent its lawyers questioned him in a single telephone call, "appeared more interested whether Mr. Rigler had uncovered derogatory information concerning Mr. Rather or Ms. Mapes, as to which he had no information," according to the Rather complaint. Rigler's report was suppressed, never presented to the panel, and remains suppressed by CBS. Nor did the panel fully question James Pierce, the handwriting expert consulted by "60 Minutes" who insisted that the signature on the documents was surely Killian's.

When Mapes appeared before the panel, she was harshly questioned at length about her use of the word "horseshit." On the issue of the special privileges granted to those sons of wealth in the "Champagne Unit," Thornburgh asked her, "Mary, don't you think it's possible that all these fine young men got in on their own merits?"

When it came to the merits of the facts the panel elided them. It never addressed the facts at all. Instead it criticized the "60 Minutes" team for failing to "obtain clear authentication" of the Killian documents, among other "errors," though it admitted it could not prove one way or another whether they were inauthentic. Mapes and three other producers were dismissed. "60 Minutes II" was abolished. And on the day after Bush's reelection, Rather was unceremoniously fired. His contract had called for him to continue as anchor for an additional year and then to serve as a correspondent for "60 Minutes" and "60 Minutes II," but that promise was not honored. CBS believed that by severing its link with Rather it could put the whole incident behind it and begin a new happy relationship with the ascendant Republicans.

An article by James Goodale, former vice chairman and general counsel of the New York Times, in the New York Review of Books on April 7, 2005, and his subsequent exchange with Thornburgh and Boccardi, went little noticed. Goodale found the panel's report filled with flaws, lacking a factual basis, revealing an absence of due diligence and due process, and substituting empty legal concepts and language for any understanding of the actual gritty practice of journalism. Goodale determined that the "underlying facts of Rather's '60 Minutes' report are substantially true." He observed, "Since the broadcast, no one has come forward to say the program was untruthful."

Goodale's summation rejected the report and left its credibility in tatters: "The rest of the report, which is directed to the newsgathering process of CBS, is flawed. The panel was unable to decide whether the documents were authentic or not. It didn't hire its own experts. It didn't interview the principal expert for CBS. It all but ignored an important argument for authenticating the documents -- 'meshing.' It did not allow cross-examination. It introduced a standard for document authentication very difficult for news organizations to meet -- 'chain of custody' -- and, lastly, it characterized parts of the broadcast as false, misleading, or both, in a way that is close to nonsensical. One is tempted to say that the report has as many flaws as the flaws it believes it has found in Dan Rather's CBS broadcast."

But Goodale's magisterial and experienced voice seemed to be a faint cry in the wilderness. Who, after all, cared anymore?

In November 2005, Mapes published a memoir, "Truth and Duty," containing her memo to Thornburgh and Boccardi that they had failed to include in the appendix of the panel's report, although they reproduced many other memos and documents. Mapes' argument was that the Killian documents "meshed" with the facts in precise and nuanced ways. "The Killian memos, when married to the official documents, fit like a glove," she wrote. "There is not a date, or a name, or an action out of place. Nor does the content of the Killian memos differ in any way from the information that has come out after our story ... In order to conclude that the documents are forged or utterly unreliable, two questions must be answered: 1) how could anyone have forged such pristinely accurate information; and 2) why would anyone have taken such great pains to forge the truth?" But Mapes' book, like Goodale's article, was all but ignored.

Rather has always been an uncomfortable figure, sometimes abrasive, sometimes strangely inappropriate or baffling, given to rustic rhetoric at odd moments, and sometimes and suddenly lapsing into teary sentimentality or bursts of patriotic doggerel. Since his confrontations as the correspondent covering the Nixon White House, conservatives have targeted him as a symbol of the despised "liberal media." However idiosyncratic, Rather stood for the remnants of CBS's tradition of speaking truth to power, as Edward R. Murrow did finally about Sen. Joseph McCarthy and Walter Cronkite did finally about the Vietnam War and Watergate. The corporate unease with Murrow's outspokenness, leading to the cancellation of his weekly program, "See It Now" (depicted in the recent film "Good Night, and Good Luck"), was little different from the unease with Rather a half-century later. At last, the corporation's necessity for demonizing Rather coincided with the long-standing conservative demonizing.

When CBS replaced the edgy Rather with the sugary Katie Couric as anchor of the "Evening News," it imagined it had solved its problem, its "errors." The news would get softer, the Republicans in control of the White House and Congress would be nicer, Viacom would grab more media, and ratings would climb. Thus, dismissing Rather would yield untold dividends. Unfortunately for CBS's visionaries, none of that has worked out as planned. Couric simply lacks basic journalistic instincts and skills, and the "CBS Evening News" is at rock bottom in ratings and sinking farther.

Rather could have simply allowed the statute of limitations to run out, lived off his millions, and faded away. But the incident ate at him. On one level, the Bush National Guard story is about Bush and the National Guard. On another, of course, it is about Rather's reputation. But on yet another it is about CBS's overwhelming desire to please the Bush White House and censor itself. The White House campaign against Rather has been so successful that many in the national press corps behave as though in mouthing its talking points they are demonstrating their own independent thought.

On Sept. 20, the day after he filed his suit, Rather said, "The story was true." Rather's suit may turn into one of the most sustained and informative acts of investigative journalism in his long career. He is not going gentle into that good night.

Progress Report: Iraq War Timeline

GOP FILIBUSTERS

I see that Republicans have successfully filibustered two more bills today: one to give a House seat to the District of Columbia (57-42) and one to restore habeas corpus rights to terrorism suspects (56-43).

That seems like a good excuse to rerun this chart that McClatchy put together a couple of months ago. As you can see, Republicans aren't just obstructing legislation at normal rates. They're obstructing legislation at three times the usual rate. They're absolutely desperate to keep this stuff off the president's desk, where the only choice is to either sign it or else take the blame for a high-profile veto.

As things stand, though, Republicans will largely avoid blame for their tactics. After all, the first story linked above says only that the DC bill "came up short in the Senate" and the second one that the habeas bill "fell short in the Senate." You have to read with a gimlet eye to figure out how the vote actually broke down, and casual readers will come away thinking that the bills failed because of some kind of generic Washington gridlock, not GOP obstructionism.

So, for the record, here are the votes. On the habeas bill, Democrats and Independents voted 50-1 in favor. Republicans voted 42-8 against. On the DC bill, Democrats and Independents voted 49-1 in favor. Republicans voted 41-8 against. Would it really be so hard for reporters to make it clear exactly who's responsible for blocking these bills?" http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_09/012097.php

From "The West Wing" Episode: Bad Moon Rising

LEO
I mean, in the two and a half hours we've been sitting here have you discovered one thing that he's done wrong?

OLIVER
No.

LEO
So, what's your problem?

OLIVER
That's my problem, Leo. Are you out of your mind? He did everything right. He did everything you do if your intent is to perpetrate a fraud. 

<------------------------------------->
Note: As a contrarian, who asserts the Iraq War is actually, and almost exclusively, the American Empire's way of gaining access to crude oil under favorable terms, it's entirely possible to see all the US inspired misdeeds and mayhem in Iraq as perfectly fitting girders that provide the justification for continued occupation.

No?

• Disband the Iraqi Army, depriving 1+ million young men of their dignity, and income.
  
• Allow 50-100,000 US private contractors to come in as US Approved mercenaries who are not accountable to any government control agent.
• Sanction and promote bounties on the heads of opposition personnel
• Eliminate a countries previous monetary units, and issue new currency
• Play favorites with ethnic, tribal, and religious groups
• Obfuscate, hide, or de-legitimize oversight of in-country economic affairs
• Artifically inflate the importance or capabilities of the opposition
• Project a diplomatic facade which asserts that continued occupation is "a cross we have to bear" because of the dire consequences of failing to continue the occupation
• De-legitimize any attempt toward portraying the opposition as "freedom fighters" or possessing any grounds for legitimate grievances against the occupation
• Make it difficult for any external entity to inject themselves or their interests into consideration except on request
• Never publically admit to a strategic error, or politically unacceptable ulterior motive
• Give the Empire's efforts a moral, intellectual, social, and economic justification for public consumption

Seen in this light by Imperialists , one could say the Bush Administration has done a fine job.

"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act" - George Orwell

What I Hate About Political Coverage

by Paul Krugman - Warning: this is a bit (actually, more than a bit) of a rant.

One of my pet peeves about political reporting is the fact that some of my journalistic colleagues seem to want to be in another business – namely, theater criticism. Instead of telling us what candidates are actually saying – and whether it’s true or false, sensible or silly – they tell us how it went over, and how they think it affects the horse race. During the 2004 campaign I went through two months’ worth of TV news from the major broadcast and cable networks to see what voters had been told about the Bush and Kerry health care plans; what I found, and wrote about, were several stories on how the plans were playing, but not one story about what was actually in the plans.

There are two big problems with this kind of reporting. The important problem is that it fails to inform the public about what matters. In 2004, very few people had any idea about the very real differences between the candidates on domestic policy. It remains to be seen whether 2008 is any better.

The other problem, which has become very apparent lately, is that this sort of coverage often fails even on its own terms, because the way things look to inside-the-Beltway pundits can be very different from the way they look to real people.

Which brings me to the Petraeus hearing.

To a remarkable extent, punditry has taken a pass on whether Gen. Petraeus’s picture of the situation in Iraq is accurate. Instead, it was all about the theatrics – about how impressive he looked, how well or poorly his Congressional inquisitors performed. And the judgment you got if you were watching most of the talking heads was that it was a big win for the administration – especially because the famous MoveOn ad was supposed to have created a scandal, and a problem for the Democrats.

Even if all this had been true, it wouldn’t have mattered much: if the truth is that Iraq is a mess, the public would find out soon enough, and the backlash would be all the greater because of the sense that we had been deceived yet again.

But here’s the thing: new polls by CBS and Gallup show that the Petraeus testimony had basically no effect on public opinion: Americans continue to hate the war, and want out. The whole story about how the hearing had changed everything was a pure figment of the inside-the-Beltway imagination.

What I found striking about the whole thing was the contempt the pundit consensus showed for the public – it was, more or less, “Oh, people just can’t resist a man in uniform.” But it turns out that they can; it’s the punditocracy that can’t.

(ps: Krugman has his own blog now. Go to it.)

Oh! - Gag me with a spoon!

"General Petraeus, a former two star general (in 2002)(until promoted to 4-Star just before his 2004 Washington Post Op-Ed piece) could have said anything he wanted about the conditions in Iraq."

Note: Paul Krugman said it best in July 2007: "General Petraeus, without saying anything falsifiable, conveyed the totally misleading impression, highly convenient for his political masters, that victory was just around the corner."

BTW: How many changes have there been in the proconsul position for the Bush Administration in Iraq since 2003? Count them !! I come up with about a dozen !! All of whom spout the same nonsense that is not taken seriously by anyone outside their neocon circle, especially those in the formerly praised "coalition partner countries" of Australia, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Poland, and England.

The Bush Administration has created a cesspool in Iraq, and tries anything it can dream up to shift the discussion away from any substantiative attempt to implement an alternative strategy for Iraq.

Then after puffing up Gen. Petraeus and presenting him to the Congress to report on conditions in Iraq, the Bush Administration goes after those who criticize the veracity of the General's assessment. Worse yet, Gen. Petraeus allowed himself to become a stand-in for Pres. Bush in a political discussion where his "assessment" becomes the ex-offico US Government policy in Iraq. That is: continue a failed policy, for up to ten years, because a military departure from Iraq would have dire consequences for the region.

Hiding behind the Generals? Betrayals? Spinning the truth? Not by the near unanimity of the worlds' peoples, over 60% of the US Population, and progressive media critics; but certainly by the neocon facilitators, instigators, and managers who have turned a pariah state into a global disaster zone!

So WTF is so bad about being "a liberal"???

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) - Cite This Source - Share This: lib·er·al /ˈlɪbərəl, ˈlɪbrəl/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[lib-er-uhl, lib-ruhl] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation

–adjective

1.	favorable to progress or reform, as in political or religious affairs.

2.	(often initial capital letter) noting or pertaining to a political party advocating measures of progressive political reform.

3.	of, pertaining to, based on, or advocating liberalism.

4.	favorable to or in accord with concepts of maximum individual freedom possible, esp. as guaranteed by law and secured by governmental protection of civil liberties.

5.	favoring or permitting freedom of action, esp. with respect to matters of personal belief or expression: a liberal policy toward dissident artists and writers.

6.	of or pertaining to representational forms of government rather than aristocracies and monarchies.

7.	free from prejudice or bigotry; tolerant: a liberal attitude toward foreigners.

8.	open-minded or tolerant, esp. free of or not bound by traditional or conventional ideas, values, etc.

9.	characterized by generosity and willingness to give in large amounts: a liberal donor.

10.	given freely or abundantly; generous: a liberal donation.

11.	not strict or rigorous; free; not literal: a liberal interpretation of a rule.

12.	of, pertaining to, or based on the liberal arts.

13.	of, pertaining to, or befitting a freeman.

–noun

14.	a person of liberal principles or views, esp. in politics or religion.

15.	(often initial capital letter) a member of a liberal party in politics, esp. of the Liberal party in Great Britain.

---

[Origin: 1325–75; ME līberālis of freedom, befitting the free, equiv. to līber free + -ālis -al¹

Whose Betrayal?

by George Lakoff: Posted September 15, 2007 | 11:26 PM (EST)

---

Read More: David Petraeus, Moveon ad, MoveOn.org, Breaking Politics News

Betrayal is everywhere in the news. We learned today from the Washington Post that Alan Greenspan said, in his new book, "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." Not keeping our country safe, as the troops were told. Not democracy. Not Weapons of Mass Destruction. Not al Qaeda. Oil! All those lives and maimings about oil! Are you shocked, shocked? It is Betrayal of Trust of the highest order: "Politically inconvenient ... everyone knows..." Oil was not discussed at the Petraeus hearings. The silence in Washington has been polite.

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MoveOn's "General Petraeus or General Betray Us?" ad has raised vital questions that need a thorough and open discussion. The ad worked brilliantly to reveal, via its framing, an essential but previously hidden truth: the Bush Administration and its active supporters have betrayed the trust of the troops and the American people.

MoveOn hit a nerve. In the face of truth, the right-wing has been forced to change the subject -- away from the administration's betrayal of trust and the escalating tragedy of the occupation to of all things, an ad! To take the focus off maiming and death and the breaking of our military, they talk about etiquette. The truth has reduced them to whining: MoveOn was impolite. Rather than face the truth, they use character assassination against an organization whose three million members stand for the highest patriotic principles of this country, the first of which is a commitment to truth.

New York Times columnist Frank Rich, right about so many things, got it wrong when he criticized the ad in his Sunday column.

He overlooks the fact that the "distraction" he worries about has led the supporters of the Iraq occupation to endlessly evoke the Betrayal of Trust frame, identifying themselves with the Betrayer of Trust in that frame. The betrayers themselves took MoveOn's bait.

Thanks to their making it a national issue, we can now proceed to discuss their Betrayal of Trust on the national stage they have conveniently provided. The importance of this frame is discussed in "Betrayal of Trust: Beyond Lying" -- Chapter 6 of Don't Think of an Elephant!

Betrayal is a moral issue, and with respect to war, mass destruction, maiming, and death, it is a moral issue of the highest order. Betraying trust is a matter of deception that knowingly leads to significant harm. There is little doubt that the Iraq War and its aftermath have done considerable harm -- to our troops, to the Iraqi people, and to our nation as whole. It is equally clear that there has been a considerable amount of deception in the instigation of the war and throughout the occupation. In short, there has been, and continues to be, a considerable betrayal of trust. It goes well beyond the general and the fudging of his figures.

The issue is this: Who has been betraying the trust of the American people -- including our troops -- in bringing about the American invasion of Iraq and in continuing the occupation? What were the acts of betrayal and with what consequences? And is a betrayal of trust still going on, and if so where, how, and by whom?

I have developed a deeper look at these issues. You can read that in my new article Iraq and the Betrayal of Trust. But meanwhile, let's talk about one of the traps we should stay out of: The Politeness Trap.

Bush took advantage of certain conventions of etiquette and politeness when he sent Petraeus to testify before Congress. Those conventions hold that one does not criticize the symbolic stand-in for the military, even when the uniform-wearing stand-in is on an overt political mission that is at the heart of the Administration's continuing betrayal of trust. Decorum can be put to political use, and Bush did just that.

Bush was using a familiar right-wing tactic: identifying himself with a military uniform and the stature of the military in general, when he had no military stature himself. Rudy Guiliani used the same tactic in his ad in Friday's NY Times: he put on military drag by associating himself with Petraeus' rank and role, hoping some of the stature of the military would rub off on him.

The implicit message is an attack on MoveOn: in pointing out Petraeus' deception, MoveOn, so Giuliani implies, was being disrespectful of the military itself. This is a typical right-wing attack on progressives, and progressives shouldn't stand for it. They should not be allowed to hide behind the troops. The troops themselves have been betrayed. None of us wants to hear it, to know it, to acknowledge it. Least of all me. It disgusts me how the troops have been betrayed by people saying, "Support our troops." But it is true, and millions of us must start saying so. There are unacknowledged villains behind this carnage.

In a country that takes its freedoms seriously, freedom of speech must be maintained. Betrayal through deception is much worse than being impolite. Where tens of thousands of deaths and maimings are concerned, it is immoral not to point out betrayals when they are real. It is patriotic to root out betrayal on grand scale wherever it occurs.

The American people have been betrayed by the architects and apologists for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. By avoiding the politeness trap in a patriotic, direct, and factual way, MoveOn correctly framed the betrayal of trust for what it is. And right now, the apologists for the occupation seem to be forgetting a lesson we thought Frank Luntz had schooled them on. They are quite busy invoking the frame of betrayal of trust, a frame that clearly best fits them. That frame is essential to bringing an end to the tragedy in Iraq.

License to Kill? License Revoked.

American Progress Report: Sept 18th, 2007

Yesterday, the Interior Ministry of Iraq announced that it was revoking the license of Blackwater USA, a private American company that provides security to government and private officials in Iraq such as Amb. Ryan Crocker. Employees of the firm were involved in Baghdad shootout that killed at least nine civilians, including a mother and her child. Details of the shootout are murky. The shooting began after a car bomb exploded near a State Department motorcade in central Baghdad. Blackwater and U.S. officials say the security contractors then exchanged fire with armed attackers, but "three people who claimed to have witnessed the shooting" told McClatchy that "only the Blackwater guards were firing." Regardless, the incident has sent shockwaves through Iraq. "We have canceled the license of Blackwater and prevented them from working all over Iraqi territory," said Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul-Karim Khalaf. "We will also refer those involved to Iraqi judicial authorities." A senior Iraqi official, however, told Time that "as far as the license being permanently revoked, 'it's not a done deal yet.'" Additionally, it is unlikely that Iraqi courts would have the legal ability to hold the contractors accountable. While Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called Iraqi Prime Minister Mouri al-Maliki yesterday to offer condolences and the promise of a "fair and transparent investigation," one American official in Baghdad told The New York Times that "this incident will be the true test of diplomacy between the State Department and the government of Iraq."

THE FALLOUT: Approximately 1,000 Blackwater employees are currently operating in Iraq. If the Iraqi government is able to successfully kick Blackwater out of the country, the move would deal "a blow to U.S. government operations in Iraq by stripping" many "diplomats, engineers, reconstruction officials and others of their security protection." "There is simply no way at all that the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security could ever have enough full-time personnel to staff the security function in Iraq. There is no alternative except through contracts," said Crocker in his Senate testimony last week. The Iraqi government has also said that it will "review the status of all private security firms operating in the country" to "determine whether such contractors were operating in compliance with Iraqi law." The total number of private contractors in Iraq is estimated between 126,000 and 180,000, which includes 20,000 to 50,000 private security guards. The expulsion of Blackwater from Iraq would be a boon for Iraqi politicians as "newspapers in Iraq on Tuesday trumpeted the government's decision." Maliki is expected to "gain political capital from the move against unpopular foreign security contractors" while the national government as a whole would be given a political "boost."

PRIVATE CONTRACTOR'S DARK PAST: "Visible, aggressive" private contractors have "angered many Iraqis, who consider them a mercenary force that runs roughshod over people in their own country." At Abu Ghraib, "the U.S. Army found that contractors were involved in 36 percent of proven abuse incidents," but "not a single private contractor named in the Army's investigation report has been charged, prosecuted or punished." Though many other private security firms are operating in Iraq, Blackwater is perhaps the most visible. On March 31, 2004, four contractors working for Blackwater were brutally killed in Fallujah. After images of their mutilated bodies were shown hanging from a bridge, the American military laid siege to the city, resulting in some of the most intense fighting of the war. In Dec. 2006, a Blackwater employee allegedly drunkenly killed a guard for the Iraqi Vice President. Instead of being held accountable in Iraq, the contractor was smuggled out of the country and fired by the company. This past May, "Blackwater guards were involved in shooting incidents on consecutive days in Baghdad." In total, Interior Ministry officials say they have "received reports of at least a half-dozen incidents in which Blackwater guards allegedly shot civilians, far more than any other company."

LEGAL GREY AREA: "A Blackwater employee is not going to be subject to Iraqi courts," says Scott Silliman, director of the Center on Law, Ethics, and National Security at Duke University. The day before the Coalition Provisional Authority ceased to exist, L. Paul Bremer, the chief American envoy in Iraq, issued CPA Order 17, which "granted American private security contractors immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts." Though "the Iraqi government has contested the continued application of this order," they are restrained from "changing or revoking CPA orders," so the order is still in effect. It is unclear what U.S. laws would govern the actions of private security contractors operating in a foreign country. Though "uniformed military personnel are subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and 'persons serving with or accompanying an armed force in the field' are technically subject as well," the application of the UCMJ to these private contractors would likely face constitutional challenges. The Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act of 2000 covers civilians working for the Department of Defense, but even this would be insufficient to cover Blackwater employees involved in Sunday's shootout, since they are actually employed by the State Department.

CONGRESS NEEDS TO ACT: Yesterday, House Oversight Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) announced that "the Oversight Committee will be holding hearings to understand what has happened and the extent of the damage to U.S. security interests." In addition to investigating this specific incident, action needs to be taken that explicitly clarifies what laws govern private contractors and how they can officially be held accountable for their actions. In fall 2006, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) added a clause to the 2007 Defense bill that "changed the law defining UCMJ to cover civilians not just in times of declared war but also contingency operations." But "no Pentagon guidance has been issued on how this clause might be used by JAGs in the field." Graham's clause also didn't not extend to contractors not working for the Defense Department. Rep. David E. Price (D-NC) "has proposed legislation that would make all contractors, whether they work for the State Department or the Defense Department, to be subject to prosecution under U.S. law."

Tomb of the Unknown AircraftWhat's up with all the uncharted plane wrecks we're finding around the Sierra Nevada?

By Juliet Lapidos on Slate
Posted Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2007, at 4:12 PM ET

Millionaire Steve Fossett has been missing since last Monday, when he took off from a Nevada airstrip for a short flight. Rescue crews have yet to find the famous adventurer or his plane, but according to news reports, they've discovered at least six "uncharted wrecks" across a 17,000-square-mile swath of the Sierra Nevada—or nearly one a day since the search began. Why are there so many undocumented crash sites around the Sierra Nevada?

Rough terrain. When a plane goes missing, county law enforcement agencies deploy rescue teams to search for the pilot and his aircraft. Often the local wing of the Civil Air Patrol, the highway patrol, and even the National Guard pitch in to help. But manpower doesn't change the fact that the Sierra Nevada mountains are some of the tallest in the Northern Hemisphere with few low-altitude passes for rescue crews traveling by foot or helicopter. If a plane goes down in a wooded area, then ground teams might walk close by without realizing it. Plus, frequent wind gusts with sudden downdrafts make it difficult to search for long periods of time. A crash site, therefore, can go undetected for months or even years until a hiking party or another rescue team stumbles upon it.

Judging from missing-aircraft reports that were never closed, Nevada's Civil Air Patrol estimates that there are nearly 200 uncharted crash sites hidden in the treacherous mountain range. That may sound like a lot, but some of the wrecks go back 50 years, before the advent of high-tech search gadgets like the ARCHER imaging system, which can identify targets as small as a motorcycle from 2,500 feet away. One of the crash sites that the Fossett team discovered might date to 1964, when most search crews relied on a woefully inefficient "fly over and look" method.

What's the protocol when a search crew finds a wreck? They call up the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center, which maintains a registry of known crashes that were never cleaned up because they're inaccessible or remote. Nevada, by the way, has 129 such sites. If the AFRCC already knows about the wreck, the search members move on. If not, the search crew provides the AFRCC with exact coordinates and a physical description. Then inspectors from the Federal Aviation Administration conduct a forensic analysis to determine how the plane crashed and use the plane's serial number (if it's still visible) to identify the original owner.

---

Democratic Response to President's Address

CQ Transcripts Wire
Friday, September 14, 2007; 1:09 AM

SPEAKER: SEN. JACK REED, D-R.I.

REED: Good evening. I'm Senator Jack Reed from Rhode Island, and I was privileged to serve in the United States Army for 12 years.

I opposed the war in Iraq from the beginning. It was a flawed strategy that diverted attention and resources away from hunting down Osama bin Laden's terrorist network.

And since then, too often, the president's Iraq policies have worsened America's security. Hundreds of billions have been spent. Our military is strained. Over 27,000 Americans have been wounded, and over 3,700 of our best and brightest have been killed.

Tonight, a nation eager for change in Iraq heard the President speak about his plans for the future. But, once again, the president failed to provide either a plan to successfully end the war or a convincing rationale to continue it.

The president rightfully invoked the valor of our troops in his speech, but his plan does not amount to real change. Soldiers take a solemn oath to protect our nation, and we have a solemn responsibility to send them into battle only with clear and achievable missions.

Tonight, the president provided neither.

As a former Army officer, I know the great sacrifices our soldiers and their families make. Our military can defeat any foe on the battlefield.

Yet, as General Petraeus has repeatedly stated, Iraq's fundamental problems are not military, they are political. The only way to create a lasting peace in Iraq is for Iraqi leaders to negotiate a settlement of their longstanding differences.

When the president launched the surge in January, he told us that its purpose was to provide Iraqi leaders with the time to make that political progress.

But now, nine months into the surge, the president's own advisers tell us that Iraq's leaders have not, and are not likely to do so. Meanwhile, thousands of brave Americans remain in the crossfire of another country's civil war.

So tonight, we find ourselves at a critical moment.

Do we continue to heed the president's call that all Iraq needs is more time, more money, and the indefinite presence of 130,000 American troops -- the same number as nine months ago? Or do we follow what is in our nation's best interest and redefine our mission in Iraq?

Democrats believe it is a time to change course. We think it's wrong that the president tells us there's not enough money for our veterans and children's health care because he is spending $10 billion a month in Iraq. We have put forth a plan to responsibly and rapidly begin a reduction of our troops. Our proposal cannot erase the mistakes of the last four and a half years, but we can chart a better way forward.

That is why our plan focuses on counterterrorism and training the Iraqi army. It engages in diplomacy to bring warring factions to the table and addresses regional issues that inflame the situation. It begins a responsible and rapid redeployment of our troops out of Iraq. And it returns our focus to those who seek to do us harm: Al Qaida and other terrorist groups.

An endless and unlimited military presence in Iraq is not an option.

Democrats and Republicans in Congress and throughout the nation cannot and must not stand idly by while our interests throughout the world are undermined and our armed forces are stretched toward the breaking point.

We intend to exercise our constitutional duties and profoundly change our military involvement in Iraq. We ask Americans of good will of whatever party to join us in this historic effort to restore the strength and security of the United States.

I urge the president to listen to the American people and work with Congress to start bringing our troops home and develop a new policy that is truly worthy of their sacrifices.

Thank you very much.

Source: CQ Transcriptions
2007, Congressional Quarterly Inc., All Rights Reserved

Invest in US Instead of Sacrificing in Iraq
By Jesse Jackson
The Chicago Sun Times

Tuesday 04 September 2007

This nation faces a clear choice this September. President Bush will insist that Congress continue the war in Iraq and demand another $50 billion for the occupation. That is on top of the $147 billion already pending for Iraq and Afghanistan this year, and that's on top of the $460 billion annual military budget. The United States will spend about as much as the rest of the world combined on its military this year.

At the same time, the president vows to veto any spending on domestic programs that exceed his budget. He has threatened to veto any increases for children's health care (even as more children go without health insurance); for college loans and scholarships; for public schools; for renewable energy; for basic infrastructure. The difference between the president's budget and that of Congress is about $20 billion. The president says that's a lot of money, over "$1,300 in higher spending every second of every minute of every hour." His request for Iraq this year is about eight times greater, or $10,400 every second of every hour. The total estimated cost of Iraq now exceeds $1 trillion — and rising.

Democrats in Congress are virtually unanimous in wanting to get U.S. troops out of the civil war in Iraq. Republicans are waiting for the reports of Gen. David Petraeus, the intelligence agencies, the GAO and independent commissions — all due this month. The reports, no doubt, will differ, with the administration claiming progress and others being more skeptical. Supporters of the war will see the glass half full; opponents, half empty.

But there really isn't much difference in fact. Occupation of a country is hard, costly and deadly. Petraeus has said from the beginning that, if all goes well, it will take 10 to 20 years to pacify Iraq, rebuild it and create a functioning democracy there. That would raise the cost of Iraq to more than $2 trillion, with more than 6,000 American lives likely to be lost. A lot more than $20 billion in this year's domestic budget will be sacrificed to bear those costs.

Already we see the domestic costs of this war and our continuing commitment to police the world. A bridge falls in Minneapolis. An aged steam valve breaks and terrorizes Manhattan. The levees are still not rebuilt to the needed strength in New Orleans. College is getting priced out of reach of working families. Our schools grow older, more crowded and more in need of repair. Our transportation system — from airports to roads to subways — cries out for investment. Our broadband system is the slowest in the industrial world. Our park facilities are in disrepair. America's domestic investment deficit is strangling opportunity.

In Iraq, the United States has a three-point plan. Stop the flow of guns and secure the streets. Consolidate a democracy. Invest in vital infrastructure and put Iraqis to work. The United States could use that three-point plan, too. It would be a lot more cost effective here since we're not yet in the midst of sectarian civil strife.

The choice this September isn't really about Iraq, it is about the United States. Like Rome and Britain and the USSR before us, we face a choice: empire or republic? We can police the streets of Baghdad, patrol the seas, guard the borders of Korea and Bosnia, build a new generation of more deadly nuclear and space weaponry, or we can invest here at home in areas vital to our social and economic health. We can be the globocop or the city on the hill — but we can't be both.

The War: Point & Counterpoint

• We went to war with Iraq because they had WMD they were preparing to use against America. (The U.N. chief weapons inspectors told the world they were unable to find any WDM in Iraqi, and vehemently denied U.S. insistence that they were being deceived by Saddam. After six years, no WMD have been found in Iraq.)
  

• We went to war with Iraq because Saddam Hussein was an evil tyrant. (The U.N. Charter does not allow any country the right to invade and occupy another country unilaterally, or without the express approval of member states. The U.N. refused to condone the invasion of Iraq in 2003 by America.)
  

• We went to war with Iraq because their country has the second largest reserve of crude oil which is critical to America's needs. (No country is justified in invading another country to secure that countries resources from misuse by that country's Government. If America was so concerned with having ready access to energy stocks, why has it not seen fit to implement strict conservation measures on consumption, adequately fund research into alternate fuels, or work toward greater cooperation with other producers.)
  

• We went to war with Iraq because Saddam was working with Al Qaeda to attack American interests. (All evidence obtained thus far adequately demonstrates that Saddam's administration did not trust Al Qaeda, and refused to join with them in any attack on American interests.)
  

• We went to war with Iraq because the UN and global community would do nothing to control Hussein's ambitions. (In the "Gulf War" 1990-1991 a coalition force from 35 nations was authorized by the U.N. to attack Iraq as part of the liberation of Kuwait. As part of the agreement signed by Saddam ending the Gulf War he pledged to allow U.N. Weapons inspectors full and complete access to any area of Iraq to verify they were not producing WMD, or engaging in the production of tactical weapons which could be used against neighboring States. The U.N. member States concluded that sanctions, and the weapons inspections were sufficient to control Iraq's aggressive actions.)
  

• We must complete the mission in Iraq, or else there will be severe repercussions for the entire region. (The Bush Administration has changed the general and specific plans of the mission at least five times, and in 2007 cannot offer a coherent explanation of what mission completion would look like. No-one doubts there will be severe repercussions when American forces leave Iraq. British forces vacated the southern regions of Iraq in the Summer of 2007. The second largest "coalition" armed force in Iraq are U.S. private contractors working for American companies. No other country has more than a thousand military personnel in Iraq.)
  

• We are staying in Iraq to allow the formation of a stable, democratic, representative government for all Iraqi citizens. (Oh, come on...the U.S. sanctioned Maliki Government resembles nothing so much as the denizens of the bar scene in Star Wars I, each more interested in their own agenda than that of the whole.)
  

• The economic costs of OIF are manageable given the conditions. (The 1990's Gulf War costs America about 61 billion dollars, of which 53 billion was paid by other Gulf States. From 2003 to the Fall of 2007, OIF has directly cost America in excess of 500 billion dollars, with a projected endgame cost over 2.2 trillion dollars - approximately 1/3 of America's annual GNP, or over $7,300 for each man, woman, and child in America.)

• There is no alternative to continuing on as America has been doing in Iraq for the past five years. (While it may be true there are no "good" alternatives, there are at least four possible scenarios that are "better" than our current orientation.)

1. Pull all American forces out of Iraq as rapidly as possible, and close all U.S. military, commercial, and civilian installations in the country, and let whatever Iraqis chose to do within their borders to occur.

2. Work with the U.N. and other entities to segment Iraq into three confederated ethnic states for Sunni, Shia, and Kurds.

3. Pull American forces, NGO's, and contractors back to a mega-camp, (such as Camp Cupcake), and defend that area only; until Iraq became stable, and the camp could be closed. No support or effort would be expended on behalf of any Iraqi entity. American forces would be there solely to prevent a regional conflagration.

4. Convene a "big tent" assembly of all identified national and regional "leaders" and require the assembly to come up with a functional central government for Iraq in a fixed time frame of less than one year, after which all American forces would be removed, regardless of circumstances.
<------------------------------------->
What is absolutely clear is what Sen. Chuck Hagel stated during the Patraeus hearings: “Are we going to continue to invest American blood and treasure [in Iraq] at the same rate we’re doing [now]? For what? How does this end?”

Two of Seven Soldiers Who Wrote "NYT" Op-Ed Die in Iraq
By Greg Mitchell
Editor and Publisher

Wednesday 12 September 2007

New York - The Op-Ed by seven active duty U.S. soldiers in Iraq questioning the war drew international attention just three weeks ago. The controversial Times column on Aug. 19 was called "The War As We Saw It," and expressed skepticism about American gains in Iraq. "To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched," the group wrote.

Now two of the seven are dead. Sgt. Omar Mora and Sgt. Yance T. Gray died Monday in a vehicle accident in western Baghdad, two of seven U.S. troops killed in the incident which was reported just as Gen. David Petraeus was about to report to Congress on progress in the "surge." The names have just been released.

One of the other five authors of the Times piece, Staff Sergeant Jeremy Murphy, an Army Ranger and reconnaissance team leader, was shot in the head while the article was being written. He was expected to survive after being flown to a military hospital in the United States.

How does this end?

"Are we going to continue to invest American blood and treasure at the same rate we are doing now, for what? The president said let's buy time. Buy time? For what?"
Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb

Reporting From Baghdad
By Scott Ritter {Former Chief Weapons Inspector}
Truthdig
Thursday 06 September 2007

It should come as no surprise that the Bush administration's newest military-man-of-substance-turned- political lapdog, General Petraeus, maintains that the situation in Iraq is not only salvageable, but actually improving, due to the "surge" of U.S. combat troops into Iraq over the past year. All the president and his collection of GI Joe hand-puppets ask for is more time, more money and more troops.

There is no reason to believe that the compliant war facilitators who comprise the "anti-war" Democratic majority in Congress will do anything other than give the president what he is asking for. No one seems to want to debate, in any meaningful fashion, what is really going on in Iraq.

Why would they? The Democrats, like their Republican counterparts, have invested too much political capital into fictionalizing the problem with slogans like "support the troops," "we're fighting the enemy there so we don't have to fight them here," and my all-time favorite, "leaving Iraq would hand victory to al-Qaida."

There simply is no incentive to put fact on the table and formulate policy that actually seeks a solution to a properly defined problem. Like the Republicans before them, the Democrats today seek not to govern with the best interests of the people in mind, but rather to game the system in order to consolidate political power. Political sloganeering has so trumped reality that any political backlash that is generated from the so-called "Petraeus Report" will be limited to how the Democrats could better sustain a conflict that kills American troops, since no main-stream Democratic leader has expressed a true "get out of Iraq now" policy.

Nearly 4 1/2 years following President Bush's ill-fated (and illegal) decision to invade and occupy Iraq, few people in a position to influence policy formulation and implementation in America have actually grasped the horrible truth about what has transpired, and what is transpiring, in Mesopotamia today. As the United States places the finishing touches on Fortress America, the new half-billion-dollar Embassy complex in the heart of the Green Zone in downtown Baghdad, and more troops pour into mega-bases throughout Iraq, the reality (and futility) of permanent occupation has yet to sink in. What could be going through the minds of those members of Congress who keep signing blank checks for the president? Is there no oversight of how and why this money is spent? How can someone fund permanent infrastructure one day, then speak of the need to get out of Iraq the next?

The compliant mainstream media, of course, is no help. The war in Iraq has become a major generator of advertising revenue for these corporations, so there is no incentive to actually report the truth, but rather manipulate the fiction. Iraq has become a prestige destination for every aspiring journalist or struggling anchor, determined to get "the big story." The most recent manifestation of this syndrome is CBS News anchor Katie Couric, who earlier this week travelled to Iraq because she was (in her own words), "Curious about very basic questions regarding living conditions, about how much fear there is in the street, about how the soldiers really are doing." That the situation in Iraq has been boiled down to these three big, burning issues (living conditions, fear in the streets, and how the troops are really doing), and that CBS is sending their multi-million-dollar investment to investigate, speaks volumes about the truly degenerate state of American journalism today.

The real big three she should be addressing are "Why do Americans keep dying?" "Who is killing them?" and "Why?" Of course, answering these questions would undermine the very fantasy world Couric is being sent to cover, one where Americans are doing good deeds in the name of peace and justice for downtrodden Iraqis. Couric's jaunt is fraud on a massive scale. Ironically, she herself acknowledged this when she admitted that her up-beat reports from Iraq were reflective of what the US military wanted her to see, and not honest 'reporting' on her part.

If Couric and her ilk won't answer these questions, I will. "Why do Americans keep dying?" Simple: Because we are in Iraq. We don't belong there. Our presence is derived from our own violation of law, not someone else's, and as such any effort to sustain our presence is tainted by this same foundation of illegitimacy. In short, Americans will keep dying in Iraq as long as we remain in Iraq. If Katie wanted to really get to the bottom of this story, she could venture out on her own to any one of the villages and towns where Americans have been killed recently. Of course, she would probably end up dead herself, which would defeat the purpose of trying to report the story.

"Who is killing them?" Another easy answer: Iraqis. We are occupying their homeland. We are violating their sovereignty. We are butchering, abusing and torturing their citizens. Our continued presence is an affront to the socio-economic-political fabric that is (or was) Iraqi society. If someone occupied my hometown in the same manner Americans occupy Iraq, I'd be killing them any way I could. And I would be called a hero by my own people, and not a terrorist. The Bush administration, in an effort to deflect public attention away from this reality, has created the fiction of a massive al-Qaida presence in Iraq, working in parallel with a similarly large Iranian Revolutionary Guard Command presence, which apparently is responsible for the majority of anti-American violence and dead U.S. troops.

Rhetoric aside, however, American officials who make these claims have been unable to back them up with hard facts and figures. There is an al-Qaida presence in Iraq. However, the majority of what is known as "al-Qaida in Iraq" is composed of Iraqis, not foreigners. The whole phenomenon is a direct result of the American occupation of Iraq, and would dissipate the moment America left the country. Likewise, the accusation of direct Iranian involvement in anti-American violence is questionable. Iranian political support of Iraqi Shiite groups who violently oppose the American occupation of Iraq is real, but then again we know this: We invited the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq to join us in toppling Saddam. Based out of Iran, functioning as a de-facto arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Command, SCIRI did as we asked. Why, then, are we shocked when SCIRI maintains ties with the very entity that created and nurtured it? It is Iraqi Shiites who are killing Americans, not Iranians. And they would kill us with or without the support of Iran.

Now we come to the third and perhaps most difficult question: "Why?" In some odd way, Katie Couric's jaunt to Iraq answers that question: Because Americans truly don't care. Oh, we care about vague softball issues, such as "conditions in the street," "fear," and of course, "how the American troops are really doing," especially when they are fed to us in 30-second sound bites or three- minute "in-depth" stories. Little feel good segments planted in between commercials, designed not to infringe on our intellectual curiosity for more than 30 minutes so we don't loose our focus watching the latest "reality" show or made-for-television drama.

The fact is, Couric's made-for-television news is to what is really happening in Iraq as "CSI: Las Vegas" is to what is really happening on the streets of Sin City. CBS knows that, which is why they are packaging Katie in this fashion. The shame is that for most Americans watching, they think they're getting the real deal. They are not, but will continue to wallow in their ignorant indifference. Katie will struggle to tell us that our kids keep dying in Iraq to "improve the quality of life" and "reduce the level of fear" on the streets of Baghdad. She solemnly informs us that "our boys and girls" are suffering, but they know it is in support of a just and noble cause. Katie will continue to report the story in Iraq from the perspective of an American political dynamic, not Iraqi reality.

She won't go visit one of the American mercenary units in Iraq, the private military contractors who challenge the American military for numerical supremacy. She won't burrow into the never-never land of legal ambiguity that allows these mercenaries to commit murder at will, to treat Iraq (and Iraqis) as second-class citizens in their own nation, and whose continued abuse of Iraq results in a deep and undying hatred for all things American. Katie may catch a movie in a hardened underground theater on one of the Pentagon's mega-bases, or go shopping in a PX inside the "Green Zone" to get a "feel" of life for our troops, but she won't venture up north, into Kurdistan, where other secure outposts of foreign occupation sit, out of sight and mind. If Couric would visit the Iraqi Oil Ministry, she might be shocked to witness the legal maneuvering and exploitation carried out by foreign oil companies (including, directly or indirectly, American oil companies).

Working with local Kurdish officials, small oil exploration and drilling camps are sprouting up all over northern Iraq, where they siphon off the wealth of the Iraqi people. Shipped out of Iraq via Turkey and (surprisingly) Iran, using long-established smuggling routes, these illegal ventures are generating billions of dollars in income for oil companies, and because these ventures aren't supposed to exist, this income goes unreported. You can't miss these sites. Any review of Google-Earth imagery would show these facilities springing up like mushrooms over the last few years. The U.S. military knows about them, and yet does nothing. Note to Richard Kaplan (Katie Couric's producer): If you want to investigate this story, I'll provide you with the geographic coordinates. Drive up and try to talk your way into the security perimeter. Position Katie well for the camera shot and demand answers. Just look out for the Canadian, South African or American mercenaries who are charged by "Big Oil" to keep this dirty little secret "secret."

Instead of going to Iraq to report on why Americans keep dying, Katie could just stay here, in America. There are any number of corporations whose board rooms she could visit. Or she could smooth talk her way into a number of country clubs, to interview the human face of the "military industrial complex" that President Eisenhower warned us about a half-century ago. She might take a look at congressional campaign financing, where the profits from these corporations fund the campaigns of the politicians who continue to do nothing about Iraq. Then, and just then, would Katie come close to answering the question of "Why?"

But she won't. Or should I say, she can't. CBS is owned by General Electric. GE is working hard to get favorable trading status with any number of foreign trading partners. The U.S. trade representative is working hard on GE's behalf. Hard-nosed "reporting" by the likes of Couric would not go over well in the bowels of the White House, where instructions to the U.S. trade representative are issued. "I'm Katie Couric," her broadcast could begin. "Tonight I am declaring independence from corporate control over how I report (i.e., read) the news." Answering the "why" of Iraq requires confronting the layers of corruption and corporate domination of America on so many levels that even if Katie wanted to, she couldn't - at least not from her perch as anchor of the CBS Evening News.

In a way, Iraq is a manifestation of all that ails America today. A complete breakdown of fundamental societal checks and balances brought on by greed and hubris. From General Petraeus who will give it, to the mindless corporate-owned minions who populate much of Congress who will receive it, to the entertainment-as-news media which will report on it, and to the American people who will consume it with no foundation upon which to evaluate it, the "Petraeus Report" will have little relevance to what is really going on in Iraq. Once again, Americans will be searching for a solution to a problem they have yet to properly define.

Just ask Katie Couric. Or better yet, watch her.

"Die Eitelkeit anderer geht uns nur dann wider den Geschmack, wenn sie wider unsere Eitelkeit geht." - Friedrich Nietzsche

Tumors, or Rumors?
by RFID Journal - Sept 2007

A recent Associated Press article suggested that the implanting of RFID transponders might pose a cancer risk. The article's author, Todd Lewan, based his argument on a number of scientific studies that observed the appearance of tumors in some lab mice and rats injected with the tags. However, implantable tag manufacturer Applied Digital Solutions and its subsidiaries, Digital Angel and VeriChip, as well as some researchers, say the cited studies fail to prove that chip implantation causes tumors of any sort.

VeriChip notes that the FDA has approved VeriChip's VeriMed RFID tag for use in humans, that millions of animals have had been implanted without developing tumors, that mice can develop tumors from injections of any kind and that results involving mice are not necessarily significant to humans.

What's more, according to Digital Angel's Zeke Mejia, Lewan misrepresented the results of a French study, implying 4.1 percent of the mice developed malignant tumors, even though the study made no mention of cancer. Ten million fish and more than 12 million dogs and cats, Meija notes, have been injected with his company's chips, none of which have developed sarcomas as a result.

Others also view the article as having an alarmist tone, including Laurence McGill, a veterinary pathologist with the Animal Reference Pathology Laboratory, who took part in a 2003 epidemiological study that found no increase in the number of sarcomas in cats due to RFID tags. "Many of us who were involved in the study," McGill states, "would say the microchips aren't going to cause sarcomas." Read the full story here.

Unlock Your IPhone For Free

By Scott Gilbertson September 12, 2007 | 7:28:57 AMCategories: iPhone, software

The minute the overpriced iPhoneSIMUnlock was released, open source hackers vowed to come up with a free version and they have in just a few days. iUnlock, the first free, open source iPhone SIM unlocking app, was released yesterday evening.

The software was developed by the iPhone Dev Team and it’s not yet suitable for the average iPhone user, but the group promises a GUI front-end — automating some of the command line portions of the hack — will be released in the very near future Update: it's here, grab it from the iUnlock site.

For now, if a terminal window doesn’t faze you, you can find some detailed instructions on MacApper, as well as links to all the necessary files (note that some of the servers hosting the files are getting hammered, here’s a link (.zip) to the same files hosted on Gizmodo which should be able to handle the traffic).

Update:The GUI version apparently takes about twenty minutes to run, but there's no fiddling with the command line and early reports indicate that it works as advertised.

In related news, Gadget Lab reports that Apple’s official stance on third party apps is apparently neutral. In other words, Apple isn’t going to deliberately break anything with an update, but, at the same time, they aren’t going to care much if that happens.

And while Apple may be neutral on third party software, they certainly don’t seem to be taking the same approach to ringtones.

I haven’t tested the iUnlock software since I’m stuck with AT&T for another eight months no matter what phone I’m using, but one thing to keep in mind about unlocking the iPhone: a software update could easily render the hack obsolete tomorrow.

Microsoft Vista: Reduced Functionality Mode

"You can complain that roses have thorns, or you can rejoice because thorns have roses." --Ziggy

Greens Sue over Political Interference in Endangered Species Cases
September 7, 2007
eMagazine: Reporting by Roddy Scheer

Environmentalists are taking the Bush administration to task for political interference in dozens of cases of endangered species listings. The nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity last week filed a formal notice of intent to sue the U.S. Department of Interior for improper interference with 55 different endangered species cases in 28 states over the course of the last several years. The lawsuit maintains that unqualified, non-scientist bureaucrats edited scientific documents, overruled scientific experts, and falsified economic analyses to justify lessening endangered species protections mandated by federal law.

At stake in the suit is the removal of one species from the endangered species list, the refusal to grant Endangered Species Act protections to three other species, proposals to remove or downgrade protection for seven animals, and the stripping of protection from 8.7 million acres of critical habitat for a long list of species across the country.

“This is the biggest legal challenge against political interference in the history of the Endangered Species Act,” says Kieran Suckling, policy director of the Center for Biological Diversity. “It puts the Bush administration on trial at every level for systematically squelching government scientists and installing a cadre of political hatchet men in positions of power.”

Suckling maintains that the de-emphasis on endangered species protection comes straight from the White House. He adds that the Bush administration used Julie MacDonald, the embattled former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Interior who resigned in disgrace following allegations of misconduct on several endangered species listing cases, as a scapegoat.

“The corruption goes much deeper than one disgraced bureaucrat,” says Suckling, who hopes the national lawsuit will help “expose just how thoroughly the disdain for science and for wildlife pervades the Bush administration’s endangered species program.”

Latest Poll Results of Iraqi Nationals
ABC NEWS/BBC/NHK POLL – IRAQ: WHERE THINGS STAND
EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE AFTER 7 a.m. Monday, Sept. 10, 2007

Apart from a few scattered gains, a new national survey by ABC News, the BBC and the Japanese broadcaster NHK finds deepening dissatisfaction with conditions in Iraq, lower ratings for the national government and growing rejection of the U.S. role there.

More Iraqis say security in their local area has gotten worse in the last six months than say it’s gotten better, 31 percent to 24 percent, with the rest reporting no change. Far more, six in 10, say security in the country overall has worsened since the surge began, while just one in 10 sees improvement.

Who Rules Our World?

• For over 3 Billion Years it was Astrophysics and the Chemicals - 65+%
  
• For over 100 Million Years it was the Reptiles and Dinosaurs - 2+%
  
• For over 50 Thousand Years it has been Homo Sapiens - 0.001%
  
• For over 5 Thousand Years some say it has been God - 0.0001%
  
• For over 100 Years it will be Pathogens
  

Time To Make A Difference
from Jerusalem Post email: 9/10/07

If you are reading this, it is because you care about Israel. And if you are Orthodox, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Reform – or none of the above, you can make a difference in assuring that Israel will value and encourage all streams of Jewish religious identity for the benefit of Jews everywhere.

The Masorti Movement in Israel strongly identifies with traditional Jewish life while embracing a fully egalitarian and pluralistic approach. Masorti gives full respect and recognition to its Orthodox, Reconstructionist and Reform fellow Jews and asks only in return that in Israel all Jews be treated equally under the law.

Masorti is proud of its kehillot which stretch from the far north to Eilat, proud of its NOAM youth movement and Ramah/NOAM summer camp and proud of its young people who serve in the IDF. Masorti sponsors the only program in Israel for the training for bar and bat mitzvah of children with special needs. Masorti kehillot believe that tikkun olam and community service are as integral to Jewish life as t’fillot and study.

Given the passionate Zionist religious commitment of Masorti Jews, isn’t it absurd that the Government of Israel still will not recognize marriages performed by Masorti rabbis in Israel? Isn’t it absurd that traditional conversions overseen in Israel by Masorti rabbis are still not being recognized by the government? Even in death, there are issues about access to cemeteries.

How can a democratic Israel justify directing an estimated 98% of its financial support to Orthodox institutions while Masorti and Reform share 2%? Because the playing field is so uneven, Masorti needs your financial help to continue its effort to reach out to secular Israelis who might otherwise be lost to traditional Jewish life. When you help Masorti, you make a difference.

As we start the New Year, make a difference.
Click Here to make a donation, or
send your check to Masorti Foundation for
Conservative Judaism in Israel, Suite 832,
475 Riverside Drive, New York, NY 10115.
For more information, check our
website at www.masorti.org.

Respectable Religion to Evangelical Faith
excerpt from Rev. John H. Thomas - June 2006
* * * * * *

"Respectable religion is preoccupied with the people already in the church, caring only for themselves as if we were one great chaplaincy to each other.

Evangelical faith is deeply attentive to those outside the church, to the spiritually homeless yearning for a relationship with Jesus and with the community of Christ’s people.

Respectable religion fears transgressing the rules. It guards the door and is always “well-behaved.

Evangelical faith knows that the love of God and the love of neighbor ultimately trumps both the authority of the canons and the clerics, and will not stand for bouncers or ejector seats in our churches.

Respectable religion is afflicted with terminal politeness. It will never risk offending, even with the truth.

Evangelical faith rises up with outrage on behalf of the poor and oppressed and violated in our world who are left out, left alone, left behind.

Respectable religion blesses the culture and seeks to protect its own privileged place in the world.

Evangelical faith challenges the culture and risks the embrace of those at the margins.

Respectable religion seeks a congenial place where cross and flag can easily cohabit to claim our dual allegiance.

Evangelical faith calls into question every parochial idolatry and places us under the sole and sovereign claim of our Lord.

Respectable religion wants at all cost to avoid standing out; its cry is “please don’t make me feel embarrassed.

Evangelical faith is prepared to be odd, a peculiar salt and leaven in the world.

Respectable religion prays for the victims of war and for those in harm’s way.

Evangelical faith does this, but also challenges the arrogance and deception of those who lead us to war.

Respectable religion treats the church’s Book as a shrine to be worshipped, a talisman to be carried, an armor for protection.

Evangelical faith opens the Book to hear the surprising, confounding voice of the Stillspeaking God.

Respectable religion views the offering as at best a “necessary evil, a time to give “just enough.  It finds talk about money intrusive and offensive.

Evangelical faith sees the offering as an act of gratitude and joy, a time for extravagance and dance!

Respectable religion is an older brother ever grumpy that grace abounds for those deemed undeserving.

Evangelical faith is a waiting mother or father eager to embrace the one returning from a far country.

Respectable religion is always serious, sober, and somber.

Evangelical faith plays, teases, pokes fun, provokes us toward joy!

Apple And Starbucks Ink WiFi Deal Via New IPod

By Adario Strange September 05, 2007 | 2:47:48 PMCategories: Apple

Today is a day that will live in infamy for thousands of iPhone line-waiters as Steve Jobs essentially made them all look like fools with the introduction of what amounts to a phone-less iPhone. This is basically the device everyone was asking for in the first place. Now thousands of reluctant AT&T customers who convinced themselves that locking into a two-year contract was worth the prestige of the iPhone are likely kicking themselves over today's announcement. (Was two months of geek cred worth it?) Now that we've taken care of the embarrassed early adopters clearly pwned by Steve Jobs, let's talk about the business of the new iPod Touch.

It turns out that we accurately predicted just two weeks ago that Steve Jobs would soon launch a wireless music service of some sort. The new Apple deal with Starbucks will allow iPod Touch owners to wirelessly access the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store for free at 600 Starbucks locations in the U.S. Terms of the agreement weren't revealed, but according to Starbucks the rollout will continue with 350 Starbucks stores in the San Francisco Bay area on November 7, 500 stores in Los Angeles in early February 2008 and 300 stores in Chicago in March 2008. Apple has been in dire need of a wireless music download solution as competitors move forward with aggressive wireless music download initiatives, so the Apple/Starbucks deal is a nice (albeit limited) start.

The deal also sets an intriguing precedent that might find Apple partnering with other chain stores such as McDonalds and Wal-Mart in the future, thus making iTunes virtually ubiquitous in the United States in terms of brick and mortar outlets. The other intriguing part of the Apple/Starbucks deal is the use of the T-Mobile HotSpot WiFi network. T-Mobile, a direct competitor with AT&T, has successfully served WiFi to Starbucks customers for several years now. Assuming the iPod Touch could be modded for audio input, could a broader, WiFi/VoIP-centric deal be in the works? And, more importantly, what would AT&T's response be to such a deal?

Aside from T-Mobile's involvement, It doesn't take a lot of imagination to envision a scenario that has iPod Touch users accessing Skype or a similar service en masse, eventually making iPod Touch VoIP users more popular than AT&T iPhone users. Of course, Apple would never admit to such possibilities, but the implications are clear enough.

Will: Now, Defining Decency Down

A presidential candidate shows no mercy for Larry Craig. The attorney general implicitly disparages his father's life. And the nation mocks a beauty pageant contestant.

by George F. Will

Newsweek

Sept. 10, 2007 issue - Last week, a U.S. senator's 27-year congressional career crashed and burned and his life unraveled in public ignominy, and a presidential candidate announced his disgust in a way that did him no credit. The U.S. attorney general made a resignation statement containing a repulsive sentiment suffused with vanity. And in a weird addition to last week's jumbled sensibilities and sensitivities, the Public Broadcasting System announced that, because some station managers are afraid that the Federal Communications Commission's decency police might take umbrage and impose fines, two versions of Ken Burns's 14½-hour documentary "The War" will be distributed, in one of which four words of profanity will be removed. This is not because the words shockingly and wrongly suggest that soldiers in World War II sometimes used indelicate language (does no one remember what the F in the wartime acronym "snafu" stands for?), but because someone, somewhere, might be offended by that fact.

Good grief. Let's sift the rubble.

Statements of faux contrition are a Washington literary genre, usually featuring the foggy phrase "mistakes were made." Larry Craig's contribution to the art of obfuscation was his apology "for the cloud placed over Idaho." "Placed"? Who was the placer? It was, he implied, the Idaho newspaper that created the stress that caused him to plead guilty to lewd behavior.

Craig's unraveling involved a sadness almost unfathomable to anyone who has not felt it necessary to live, as he seems to have done for years, disguising one's nature. The fact that Craig deepened his misery with an absurd "explanation" that was, in its way, lewd increased the duty to feel compassion for him. But the presidential candidate he supported quickly pounced, issuing a statement devoid of human sympathy. Craig, said Mitt Romney, seizing yet another opportunity to stroke social conservatives, "reminds us of Mark Foley and Bill Clinton" and, "frankly, it's disgusting."

If Romney fails to translate his intelligence and accomplishments into the Republican nomination, one reason will be the suspicion that there is something synthetic and excessively calculating about every move in his increasingly embarrassing courtship of those who are called "values voters." If they can be courted that way, their values need a tuneup.

And speaking of the tone-deaf, Alberto Gonzales could not even leave high office without advertising his unfitness for it. As he habitually has done, he reminded the nation that he has "lived the American Dream," which he evidently thinks is epitomized by his success in attaching himself to a politician not known for demanding quality in assistants. Gonzales then demonstrated how uncomprehending he is of essential American values. He said: "Even my worst days as attorney general have been better than my father's best days."

Well. His father married and had eight children—nine wonderful days, days even better, one would have thought, than any of the days his son spent floundering at the Justice Department. Furthermore, Gonzales's father had the fulfillment of a lifetime spent providing for his family. But what is any of that, Gonzales implies, compared with the satisfaction of occupying, however unsatisfactorily, a high office? This implicit disparagement of his father's life of responsibility and self-sufficiency turns conservatism inside out. It is going to take conservatism a while to recuperate from becoming associated with such people.

Last week, there was nationwide merriment at the expense of an 18-year-old participant in a South Carolina beauty pageant. Asked a question about why many Americans might lack elementary knowledge about the world, she got lost in syntactical tangles and spoke nonsense. Although there was not a shred of news value in it, Fox News and CNN played the tape of her mortification, and by last Friday YouTube's presentation of it had generated more than 10 million hits. The casual cruelty of publicizing her discomfort, and the widespread entertainment pleasure derived from it, is evidence that standards of decency are evolving in the wrong direction.

(Ed, note: The contestant was in a public forum where she was being evaluated for consideration as a potential winner of a beauty contest. Her failure to make a coherent reply to a question is suitable fodder for ridicule, just as it is for jocks who can't make a coherent statement that does not include multiple instances of "ya know". Will is much more on target with mocking Senator Craig's and Former AG Gonzales's "Statements of faux contrition" when what they have been accused of is criminal activity, not just stupidity or a mental lapse.)

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20546326/site/newsweek/

Dear MoveOn member - Email message received: Sept 5th, 2007

I'm John Bruhns and I served in Baghdad as an army sergeant for the first year of the war. Within my first days there, I realized that so much of what I had been told—about weapons of mass destruction, connections to 9/11—was just White House spin to sell the war.

I'm seeing the same thing all over again now. Even with this being the bloodiest summer for US troops in Iraq, even with Iraqi casualties running at twice the pace of last year, and even with 15 of 18 of President Bush's own benchmarks unmet, the White House is at it again. They're telling us that black is white, up is down, and things in Iraq are going just great thanks to the troop "surge."

This month Congress is going to vote on war policy for the next year—and Bush is hoping all this "progress" talk will scare Congress away from voting for withdrawal. We can't let that happen. Almost 4,000 US troops have died. We've spent half a trillion dollars in Iraq. Every day you turn on the news and more people are killed. We need Congress to stand up and fight to bring our troops home this fall.

I need your help to make sure that happens. Can you sign this petition demanding that Congress begin a fully funded redeployment and start bringing our troops home from Iraq immediately? I'll deliver your comments to Congress myself next week. Clicking below will add your name:

http://pol.moveon.org/troopshome/o.pl?id=11180-6146424-yfdWPo&t=4

I left Iraq on February 27, 2004 and from what I hear from my friends who are still there—many on their third or fourth deployments—it's worse now than ever before. The "surge" was a failure and it's time to draw down our troops.

This president can't be trusted, his policy is reckless and it's more and more dangerous every day.

Here's what's happened in Iraq since the escalation went into effect.

• Violence has gone up in Iraq. This summer is on track to be one of the bloodiest summers for Iraqis and U.S. troops, with nearly twice as many U.S. troops killed this July than the previous July. ¹
• The surge has not created political stability. The central premise of the surge was that it would increase political stability. Two years after Sunnis were brought into the political transition, a Sunni bloc withdrew from the government. ² This week's original Government Accountability Office report showed that 15 out of 18 of Bush's own political benchmarks remain unmet. ³
• We've poured weapons into Iraq's civil war. Another Government Accountability Office report earlier this summer showed that the Pentagon lost track of nearly 200,000 weapons given to Iraqis. We distribute weapons and then they disappear and we don't know what happens to them. What we do know is that violence increases—both among Iraqi sectarian groups and against American troops. ⁴
• Ethnic cleansing is happening in Baghdad. The once Sunni dominated city is now dominated by Shiites. Here is a quote from the most recent Newsweek: "When Gen. David Petraeus goes before Congress next week to report on the progress of the surge, he may cite a decline in insurgent attacks in Baghdad as one marker of success. In fact, part of the reason behind the decline is how far the Shiite militias' cleansing of Baghdad has progressed: they've essentially won." ⁵

As an Iraq war veteran I felt so much relief after the November of 2006 election—I felt like we would finally end this mess and start bringing our troops home from Iraq. I've been let down a lot over this last year and I want to do everything I can to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Congress has the power to force redeployment and they have to use that power this fall. Nothing is more important to me than making sure we start bringing all our troops home—and I need your help to make sure that's what happens.

Please sign the petition today.

http://pol.moveon.org/troopshome/o.pl?id=11180-6146424-yfdWPo&t=5

Thanks for all you do.

–John Bruhns, former US Army Infantry Sergeant.
Wednesday, September 5th, 2007

Sources:

1. "Diplomatic Surge for Iraq, But New Steps Require Credible Redeployment Plan for U.S. Forces," Center for American Progress, August 9, 2007
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=2929&id=11180-6146424-yfdWPo&t=6

2. Ibid

3. "Report Finds Little Progress On Iraq Goals," Washington Post, August 30, 2007
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=2930&id=11180-6146424-yfdWPo&t=7

4. "Stabilizing Iraq," United States Goverment Accountability Office, July 2007
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d07711.pdf

5. "Baghdad's New Owners," Newsweek, September 10, 2007
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20546328/site/newsweek

Katrina All the Time
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times

Friday 31 August 2007

Two years ago today, Americans watched in horror as a great city drowned, and wondered what had happened to their country. Where was FEMA? Where was the National Guard? Why wasn't the government of the world's richest, most powerful nation coming to the aid of its own citizens?

What we mostly saw on TV was the nightmarish scene at the Superdome, but things were even worse at the New Orleans convention center, where thousands were stranded without food or water. The levees were breached Monday morning - but as late as Thursday evening, The Washington Post reported, the convention center "still had no visible government presence," while "corpses lay out in the open among wailing babies and other refugees."

Meanwhile, federal officials were oblivious. "We are extremely pleased with the response that every element of the federal government, all of our federal partners, have made to this terrible tragedy," declared Michael Chertoff, the secretary for Homeland Security, on Wednesday. When asked the next day about the situation at the convention center, he dismissed the reports as "a rumor" or "someone's anecdotal version."

Today, much of the Gulf Coast remains in ruins. Less than half the federal money set aside for rebuilding, as opposed to emergency relief, has actually been spent, in part because the Bush administration refused to waive the requirement that local governments put up matching funds for recovery projects - an impossible burden for communities whose tax bases have literally been washed away.

On the other hand, generous investment tax breaks, supposedly designed to spur recovery in the disaster area, have been used to build luxury condominiums near the University of Alabama's football stadium in Tuscaloosa, 200 miles inland.

But why should we be surprised by any of this? The Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina - the mixture of neglect of those in need, obliviousness to their plight, and self-congratulation in the face of abject failure - has become standard operating procedure. These days, it's Katrina all the time.

Consider the White House reaction to new Census data on income, poverty and health insurance. By any normal standard, this week's report was a devastating indictment of the administration's policies. After all, last year the administration insisted that the economy was booming - and whined that it wasn't getting enough credit. What the data show, however, is that 2006, while a good year for the wealthy, brought only a slight decline in the poverty rate and a modest rise in median income, with most Americans still considerably worse off than they were before President Bush took office.

Most disturbing of all, the number of Americans without health insurance jumped. At this point, there are 47 million uninsured people in this country, 8.5 million more than there were in 2000. Mr. Bush may think that being uninsured is no big deal - "you just go to an emergency room" - but the reality is that if you're uninsured every illness is a catastrophe, your own private Katrina.

Yet the White House press release on the report declared that President Bush was "pleased" with the new numbers. Heckuva job, economy!

Mr. Bush's only concession that something might be amiss was to say that "challenges remain in reducing the number of uninsured Americans" - a statement reminiscent of Emperor Hirohito's famous admission, in his surrender broadcast, that "the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage." And Mr. Bush's solution - more tax cuts, of course - has about as much relevance to the real needs of the uninsured as subsidies for luxury condos in Tuscaloosa have to the needs of New Orleans's Ninth Ward.

The question is whether any of this will change when Mr. Bush leaves office.

There's a powerful political faction in this country that's determined to draw exactly the wrong lesson from the Katrina debacle - namely, that the government always fails when it attempts to help people in need, so it shouldn't even try. "I don't want the people who ran the Katrina cleanup to manage our health care system," says Mitt Romney, as if the Bush administration's practice of appointing incompetent cronies to key positions and refusing to hold them accountable no matter how badly they perform - did I mention that Mr. Chertoff still has his job? - were the way government always works.

And I'm not sure that faction is losing the argument. The thing about conservative governance is that it can succeed by failing: when conservative politicians mess up, they foster a cynicism about government that may actually help their cause.

Future historians will, without doubt, see Katrina as a turning point. The question is whether it will be seen as the moment when America remembered the importance of good government, or the moment when neglect and obliviousness to the needs of others became the new American way.