Brewer's Tavern |
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No one seems to be writing opinion pieces quite the way I would, so I decided to do it myself. The name? Taverns are places where one goes to discuss the interesting events and things in the world, so this is my tavern. I will offer my views on politics, economics, and whatever else strikes my fancy.
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Tuesday, August 31, 2004
How Has Bush Managed Post-War Iraq?The Republican National Convention yesterday was mixing “Kerry Bashing” with self-congratulations for how Bush has managed the ‘war on terror’ since 9/11. It has been a pep rally that is a long way from the truth. Just one example is how Bush has handled the war and post-war in Iraq.
So it wasn't a catastrophic success that caused the problem. It was that Iraq was being run at the upper levels by a handful of screw-ups who had all sorts of ulterior motives, and at least sometimes did not have the best interests of the country at heart. And Bush is the one who put them in charge.
| Monday, August 30, 2004
Bush is a consistent leader - Oh Yeah??This is really too good. George Bush is talking out of both sides of his mouth.
| Wednesday, August 25, 2004
What's Wrong with the Bush administrations' handling of Iraq?I watched "Charley Rose" this evening, as he interviewed Larry Diamond , a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution . Larry discussed his analysis of what is happening in Iraq. It very closely describes what I have concluded that the media has been describing, and does not very closely describe what the Bush administration wants the public to believe. My view has been that the failure to provide security for the average Iraqi has pretty much doomed the effort in Iraq. Larry adds to that the issue of the inadequate legitimacy of the government which we have installed. The term "legitimacy" refers to the popular acceptance of a government and acceptance of its right to make and enforce laws for a given territory. Legitimacy is considered a basic condition for rule: without at least a minimal amount of legitimacy, a government will deadlock or collapse.
June 10, 2004, Los Angeles Times, When I went to Baghdad in early January as a senior advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority, I believed that a democracy of sorts could gradually be constructed in Iraq, despite the formidable obstacles. Although I had opposed the war, I accepted the invitation because I believed that the United States could not allow postwar Iraq to sink into chaos and that the Iraqi people deserved an opportunity to live in freedom. This did not seem to me to be an unrealistic goal. But I returned three months later sorely disappointed. Because of a long catalog of strategic and tactical blunders, the United States has failed to come anywhere near meeting the postwar expectations of Iraqis. It now seems clear that the occupation will leave a mixed, and on balance negative, record when the Americans hand over power June 30. Though we leave behind a framework for political transition, it is hobbled by two huge deficits: security and legitimacy. Previous international efforts to build democracy after violent conflict counsel one clear, overriding lesson: "It's security, stupid." If a decimated country doesn't restore enough security to rebuild its infrastructure, revive commercial life, employ workers and enable civic organizations to mobilize, political parties to campaign and voters to register and vote, it can't craft a decent political order, certainly not a democratic one. The aftermath of tyranny and war is never going to be perfectly tranquil. But to build a democratic state, a country must first build a state, and the transcendent imperative for that is to establish a monopoly over the means of violence. [The highlighting is mine - RB] In Iraq, this meant moving quickly to prevent a resurgence of violence on the part of the defeated Baathists, radical Islamists, external jihadists and others threatened by the new political order. But despite warnings from the Rand Corp. and others, the Pentagon plunged blithely ahead with only half the necessary force (less than 150,000 troops). Our inability to control the savage looting that swept Baghdad in April 2003 signaled the hollowness of the U.S. posture and emboldened the die-hard Baathists to regroup for the insurgency that has devastated postwar reconstruction. By the time I arrived, the signs of insecurity were pervasive. Iraqi translators and drivers at the palace where the CPA has its headquarters told me of the threats to their lives and the murders of their co-workers, while our soldiers confessed frankly that they could do nothing to protect those Iraqis outside the Green Zone. Repeatedly I had to cancel trips to meet Iraqis outside of the compound because we could not obtain the armored cars or helicopters that would enable me to travel with some measure of safety. Today, in place of security, Iraq has a welter of heavily armed militias serving not the new Iraq but political parties, incipient regional warlords and religious leaders. To the security deficit was added a yawning legitimacy deficit. The CPA delayed local elections and imposed one unwieldy transition plan after another while leaning too heavily on Iraqi exiles, especially the widely distrusted Ahmad Chalabi. Crippled by a severe shortage of American officials fluent in Arabic (as well as the steady loss of Iraqi translators to intimidation and assassination), and distanced from Iraqi society by formidable walls of security, the CPA never adequately grasped Iraqi preferences, hopes and frustrations. While I was there, the CPA repeatedly misjudged and underestimated the most important Shiite leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, and finalized in early March an interim constitution that most Iraqis (including Sistani) felt gave too sweeping a veto to minorities and too little participation to the people. When I traveled the country speaking about this new document, I was stunned by the anger and frustration of Iraqis who felt excluded from the process. But by then, the CPA was interested only in "selling" the document (for which we hired an expensive advertising agency). Too often, our engagement with ordinary Iraqis was a one-way conversation from above. Today, as the U.S. continues to battle the radical Shiite insurgency led by cleric Muqtada Sadr while trying to sell Iraqis on its post-occupation plans, the challenges are as tough as ever. The new interim government includes a number of politically shrewd Iraqis, some with roots in Iraq's crucially important tribes, who may yet prove capable of mobilizing support for the political transition. But the new government will not be viable and the elections for a transitional parliament will drown in bloodshed and fraud unless the new Iraqi state can defeat the former regime loyalists, the terrorists, the organized criminals and the militias. [the highlighting is mine - RB] To do that, a recommitment from the United States and a smarter American strategy will be needed.
| Monday, August 23, 2004
Juan Cole writes about George Bush
But to address the substance of this Big Lie is to risk falling into its logic. The true absurdity of the entire situation is easily appreciated when we consider that George W. Bush never showed any bravery at all at any point in his life. He has never lived in a war zone. If some of John Kerry's wounds were superficial, Bush received no wounds. (And, a piece of shrapnel in the forearm that caused only a minor wound would have killed had it hit an eye and gone into the brain; the shrapnel being in your body demonstrates you were in mortal danger and didn't absent yourself from it. That is the logic of the medal). Kerry saved a man's life while under fire. Bush did no such thing. What was Bush doing with his youth? He was drinking. He was drinking like a fish, every night, into the wee hours. For decades. He gave no service to anyone, risked nothing, and did not even slack off efficiently. The history of alcoholism and possibly other drug use is a key issue because it not only speaks to Bush's character as an addictive personality, but may tell us something about his erratic and alarming actions as president. His explosive temper probably provoked the disastrous siege of Fallujah last spring, killing 600 Iraqis, most of them women and children, in revenge for the deaths of 4 civilian mercenaries, one of them a South African. (Newsweek reported that Bush commanded his cabinet, "Let heads roll!") That temper is only one problem. Bush has a sadistic streak. He clearly enjoyed, as governor, watching executions. His delight in killing people became a campaign issue in 2000 when he seemed, in one debate, to enjoy the prospect of executing wrong-doers a little too much. He has clearly gone on enjoying killing people on a large scale in Iraq. Drug abuse can affect the ability of the person to feel deep emotions like empathy. Two decades of pickling his nervous system in various highly toxic substances have left Bush damaged goods. Even for those who later abstain, "visual-spatial abilities, abstraction, problem solving, and short-term memory, are the slowest to recover." That he managed to get on the wagon (though with that pretzel incident, you wonder how firmly) is laudable. But he suffers the severe effects of the aftermath, and we are all suffering along with him now, since he is the most powerful man in the world. We all know by now that Bush did not even do his full service with the Texas Air National Guard, absenting himself to work on the Alabama senate campaign of Winton "Red" Blount. Whether he was actually AWOL during this stint is unclear. But it is clear that not only did Bush slack off on his National Guard service, but he also slacked off from his campaign work.This little-noted interview with Blount's nephew Murph Archibald, which appeared on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered on March 30, 2004, gives a devastating insight into what it was like to have to suffer through Bush in that period.
This campaign season, there have been questions about whether George W. Bush fulfilled his obligations to the National Guard as a young lieutenant in the early 1970s. For weeks, reporters scoured Alabama in search of pilots or anyone who might have remembered seeing Mr. Bush at the time he was serving in the National Guard there. There is one place in Alabama where Mr. Bush was present nearly every day: the headquarters in Montgomery of US Senate candidate Winton "Red" Blount. President Bush has always said that working for Blount was the reason he transferred to the Alabama Air National Guard. NPR's Wade Goodwyn has this report about Mr. Bush's time on that campaign. WADE GOODWYN reporting: In 1972, Baba Groom was a smart, funny young woman smack-dab in the middle of an exciting US Senate campaign. Groom was Republican Red Blount's scheduler, and in that job, she was the hub in the campaign wheel. Ask her about the handsome young man from Texas, and she remembers him 32 years later like it was yesterday. Ms. BABA GROOM (Former Campaign Worker): He would wear khaki trousers and some old jacket. He was always ready to go out on the road. On the phone, you could hear his accent. It was a Texas accent. But he just melded with everybody. GOODWYN: The candidate Mr. Bush was working for, Red Blount, had gotten rich in Alabama in the construction business. Prominent Southern Republicans were something of a rare breed in those days. Blount's support of the party led him to be appointed Richard Nixon's postmaster general. In Washington, Blount became friends and tennis partners with Mr. Bush's father, then Congressman Bush. That was how 26-year-old Lieutenant Bush came to Montgomery, at his father's urging . . . It was Mr. Bush's job to organize the Republican county chairpersons in the 67 Alabama counties. Back in 1972 in the Deep South, many rural counties didn't have much in the way of official Republican Party apparatus. But throughout Alabama, there were Republicans and Democrats who wanted to help Red Blount. It was the young Texan's job to find out what each county leader needed in the way of campaign supplies and get those supplies to them. Groom says this job helped Mr. Bush understand how even in a statewide Senate campaign, politics are local.. . . Murph Archibald is Red Blount's nephew by marriage, and in 1972, he was coming off a 15-month tour in Vietnam in the infantry. Archibald says that in a campaign full of dedicated workers, Mr. Bush was not one of them. Mr. MURPH ARCHIBALD (Nephew of Red Blount): Well, I was coming in early in the morning and leaving in mid-evenings. Ordinarily, George would come in around noon; he would ordinarily leave around 5:30 or 6:00 in the evening. GOODWYN: Archibald says that two months before the election, in September of '72, Red Blount's campaign manager came to him and asked that he quietly take over Mr. Bush's job because the campaign materials were not getting out to the counties. Mr. ARCHIBALD: George certainly didn't seem to have any concerns about my taking over this work with the campaign workers there. My overall impression was that he didn't seem as interested in the campaign as the other people who were working at the state headquarters. GOODWYN: Murph Archibald says that at first, he didn't know that Mr. Bush was serving in the Air National Guard. After he found out from somebody else, Archibald attempted to talk to Mr. Bush about it. The president was a lieutenant and Archibald had been a lieutenant, too; he figured they had something to talk about. Mr. ARCHIBALD: George didn't have any interest at all in talking about the military. In fact, when I broached the subject with him, he simply changed the subject. He wasn't unpleasant about it, but he just changed the subject and wouldn't talk about it. GOODWYN: Far from Texas and Washington, DC, Mr. Bush enjoyed his freedom. He dated a beautiful young woman working on the campaign. He went out in the evenings and had a good time. In fact, he left the house he rented in such disrepair--with damage to the walls and a chandelier destroyed--that the Montgomery family who owned it still grumble about the unpaid repair bill. Archibald says Mr. Bush would come into the office and, in a friendly way, offer up stories about the drinking he'd done the night before, kind of as a conversation starter. Mr. ARCHIBALD: People have different ways of starting the days in any office. They're going to talk about their kids, they're going to talk about football, they're going to talk about the weather. And this was simply his opening gambit; he would start talking about that he had been out late the night before drinking. GOODWYN: Archibald says the frequency with which Mr. Bush discussed the subject was off-putting to him. Mr. ARCHIBALD: I mean, at that time, I was 28; George would have been 25 or 26. And I thought it was really unusual that someone in their mid-20s would initiate conversations, particularly in the context of something as serious as a US senatorial campaign, by talking about their drinking the night before. I thought it unusual and, frankly, inappropriate. GOODWYN: According to Archibald, Mr. Bush would also sometimes tell stories about his days at Yale in New Haven, and how whenever he got pulled over for erratic driving, he was let go after the officers discovered he was the grandson of a Connecticut US senator. Archibald, a middle-class Alabama boy--who, by the way, is now a registered Democrat--didn't like that story. Mr. ARCHIBALD: He told us whenever he was stopped, as soon as the law enforcement found out that he was the grandson of Prescott Bush, they would let him go. And he would always laugh about that. "Goodwyn dutifully notes that Baba Groom didn't remember George telling drunk stories. But that means nothing, since they weren't the sort of things guys like Bush told the "girls". He was trying to buddy with Archibald and impress him.Again, decades of this sort of behavior do not leave a person untouched. Our world is in crisis and our Republic is in danger. It should not be left in the hands of a man who spent his life like this.
I have copied this to my blog for purposes of offering information for debate. | Saturday, August 21, 2004
Culture War - Conservatives Rail at the Moon and the Tides.Robert Lorge is a Republican candidate for Senate to replace Russ Feingold. in Wisconsin. When asked on Wisconsin public radio why he was running he stated that America is in 3 wars. They are:
The panic and overreaction is the response of the mass of conservatives, but the conservative politicians have identified that reaction, are stoking it, and are using it to gain their personal power. Remember that the first time Newt Gingrich ran for Congress he ran as a liberal Democrat. He was beaten. Then he remade himself as a conservative and won his next elections. The problems America faces aren't going to get any better. America has passed it's peak as a world power and as the single most important economic power in the world. While we will remain a very powerful nation, economy and society, we have no place to go except towards a position of greater parity with Europe, China and India. The reality of that parity is much further along than our national image of it. Most Americans still see the 'Third World' as made up of peasants and farmers. They really aren't aware that half the world's population lives in cities now and that much of the world is really urban middle class. They still think in WW II images. The 'outsourcing' issue is just the very surface of this latter set of changes, and as a nation we have no clue yet how to respond. It shows that the 'Culture War' is just a part of the overall set of problems we as a nation, culture, economy and society are facing. Capitalism vs. Socialism/Communism is the older set of questions and answers - they no longer apply. The world has clearly passed those ways of phrasing the issues by. Current problems are much more complex. But they seemed to work (for Conservatives) before, and since when did Conservatives update their accepted panaceas to all problems? The War or Terror is a reaction to Extreme Islamists. Yet the Extreme Islamists are the Muslim equivalent of our Conservatives attempting to deal with the same set of problems. That is why it sometimes appears that our religious fundamentalists battling are battling against their religious fundamentalists. Fundamentalist religion is one social reaction to such major social changes. Those fundamentalists of all religions agree that the real problem they face is secularism, but religious fundamentalism is really an effort to stop social change by simply willing it to stop. The fact that social change does not stop causes them to take on more extreme beliefs which is why they become 'fundamentalists.' They are searching for the absolute basic element of belief so that it will be most effective at stopping the changes they fear so strongly. But that is only religious conservatives. There are also secular conservatives. Conservatives of all types (secular and religious) get sucked into the myth of the social cleansing power of decisive war. That is why bin Laden attacked the US and why Bush promulgated 'Preemptive War.' Terrorism is not limited to religious extremists. Terrorism is just another way of fighting social change that seems wrong, or fighting for social change that seems to be necessary. It takes very few people to make a big splash as a terrorist, and so not many people need to make the mistake of killing others for what they believe. No matter what happens, though these social changes aren't going away. The only way to survive is to analyze them, understand them and adapt to them. The conservatives who can't or won't analyze the Conservatives will then blame those who adapt for the causing changes themselves. It is two different responses to implacable social change. The conservatives rail at the moon and shake their fists, as the progressives adapt to the tides. Then the conservatives blame the progressives for the tides. Thus - Culture War.
| Friday, August 20, 2004
The Essential Case for Electing KerryGeorge Bush was elevated from an undistinguished career to the office of President by friends of his father. Since taking office he has given us poor policy badly done, but he did hold office on September 11, 2001 when bin Laden was successful in attacking this nation. Bush has since used 9/11 to aid those friends of his father as they work to exploit the United States in every way they can. Now those friends and cronies are running Bush for reelection.
| Should Kerry offer a new and better Policy that is different from that of Bush?There have been a number of complaints that Kerry offers rather little alternative in proposed policy for Iraq. Quite true, and there are two reasons.
| State of the Presidential election as of August 20 - My opinionAs of right now, this Christian Science Monitor article seems to describe the Presidential election well.
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| Thursday, August 19, 2004
Kerry Attacks Bush on Swift Boat AdsKerry has now attacked Bush on the nasty Swift Boat people for Bush ads. It was an interesting set-up.
But until Bush disavows their ads as Kerry has the MoveOn ads Bush remains responsible for them. Kerry's response makes This perfectly clear. Then Kerry expands the counterattack. Kerry's line - "If he (Bush) wants a debate on our service in Viet Nam, then Bring it on." is a great soundbyte. It lays out the basic argument on Viet Nam service in a single line, to Bush's severe disadvantage.
It is beautiful. Present a position, predict your opponents' reaction, then if his reaction is the weaker one, attack his weakness.
| Fourth Generation War The following was published in Empower America 6/18/2003 http://www.empoweramerica.org/stories/storyReader$801 by Dr. George Friedman The title is Guerrilla War. (An excerpt follows) -------------------------------------------------------------- There is another level on which the guerrilla war intersects strategy. The United States invaded Iraq in order to be perceived as a decisive military power and to set the stage for military operations elsewhere. Guerrilla warfare inevitably undermines the regional perception of U.S. power -- justly or not -- while creating the impression that the United States is limited in what it can do in the region militarily. Thus, the United States is in a tough spot. It cannot withdraw from Iraq and therefore must fight. But it must fight in such a way that avoids four things: 1. It cannot fight a war that alienates the general Iraqi populace sufficiently to generate recruits for the guerrillas and undermine the occupation. 2. It cannot lose control of the countryside; this could destabilize the entire occupation. 3. It cannot allow the guerrilla operation to undermine its ability to project forces elsewhere. 4. It cannot be allowed to extend the length of the conflict to such an extent that the U.S. public determines that the cost is not worth the prize. The longer the war, the clearer the definition of the prize must be. ---------------------------------------------------------------- There is a lot more. But it looks to me like the US has walked into all four traps that Dr. Friedman delineated above. | Wednesday, August 18, 2004
Kerry denounces the MoveOn Ad against Bush's use of his father's friends to get an Air National Guard slot.
MoveOn has presented a hard-hitting advertisement that attacks Bush for his use of his fathers’ friends to get into a Texas Air National Guard pilot’s slot over many much better qualified candidates.
Kerry is using Bush’s apparent strength against him. The Bush people know how to deal with a Clinton-type war-room immediate response, but they can't handle the judo approach that Kerry is using, letting Bush use his own efforts to defeat himself.
| Saturday, August 14, 2004
Right Wing Lies about Social SecurityOK. I responded to this on another site, and I think it is worth a blog. So here is the initial piece of right-wing garbage on Social Security, together with my reply.
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I don't think you will find me far wrong, however.
http://www.ssa.gov/history/InternetMyths2.html for the official take from the Social Security Administration, but here is mine below.
1. Never voluntary. It was known from the beginning that it had to be mandatory to be actuarially successful.
----Taxing half of social security benefits for people with higher retirement income occurred in 1983. Al Gore became Vice President in 1992. Someone needs to cut the crap. George Bush was President of the Senate then. ----SSI (Supplemental Security Income) is not Social Security. It is the older set of programs dating back to the 1930s called Aid to the Aged, Blind and Disabled. They are welfare programs paid out of general revenue funds, and they were transferred from state administration to federal administration in 1972 under Nixon. (http://www.ssa.gov/history/pdf/ssi.pdf)The fourth program, Aid to Families with Dependent children (AFDC) was NOT included in the shift to federal administration. It was replaced by TANF under Clinton in 1996.
----Let's look at retirement planning.
| Thursday, August 12, 2004
Events in Najaf are at a Crisis Point. Why? and Why now? Juan Cole weighs in on the American battle with the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr in Najaf and at the shrine of Imam Ali (Shiite Islam's St. Peter). It sounds like a politically extremely high-risk operation, one with little likelihood of a payoff worth the risk. -------------------------------------------------- http://www.juancole.com/2004_08_01_juancole_archive.html#109234425753976053 Al-Jazeerah says that the Mahdi Army may have mined the shrine. This information suggests that if any force does attack the Mahdi Army there, it may trigger explosions that could level it. (Read: Very, very bad publicity for the US). … Some readers have written to ask if I think the Bush administration is deliberately provoking Iran, in hopes of widening the war and getting a pretext to attack Tehran.I don't know what in the world they are thinking. All I know is that they are acting in a hamfisted manner that is endangering the United States in the medium term for no good reason. If I were thinking conspiratorially, this is what I would say: The Mahdi Army continued to be a challenge to the caretaker government of Allawi and could possibly have launched violence at any time. The Bush administration may have feared leaving this element of uncertainty out there, with the risk that it might explode in their faces in October just before the election. So they could have thought that there are advantages to just taking care of the problem in August, on the theory that the American electorate can't remember anything that happened more than one month previously. Likewise, if they finish off the Mahdi Army, it sends a signal to other potential challengers to the Allawi government and they may think it will be strengthened. Likewise, the Mahdi Army's control of so many neighborhoods was a problem for the proposed January elections, and might have allowed a Sadrist party "machine" to dominate the returns from them. The problem is that in actual fact they are undermining the credibility of the Allawi government as an independent actor. They are probably also actually increasing Muqtada's popularity, and the likelihood there will be new recruits to the Mahdi Army. The radical Shiites are reworking the conflict as a defense of Iraq's independence from brutal American Occupation. On Thursday, the Board of Muslim Clergy, a Sunni fundamentalist organization with substantial support from Sunni Muslims, issued a fatwa or ruling that no Iraqi Muslim may participate in an attack on other Iraqi Muslims in support of the occupying power. That is, even the hard line Sunnis, who mostly don't like Shiites, are siding with Muqtada against Allawi and Rumsfeld on this one. | Halliburton and IraqI have seen a lot written that blames the Iraq fiasco on Haliburton and the greed of the Bush administration and its’ business allies. Frankly, I have a real difficulty with that view.
Unfortunately, buying into the fantasies spun by Chalabi and the equally inaccurate fantasies about how everyone wants to become Americans led them to fail to properly plan for the post-war occupation and security. Chalabi is an untrustworthy con man, as his history established if the Neocons did not ignore it, and the switch from a command economy to one that is run on extreme free-market principles was never well thought out and has never run smoothly any time it has been tried. Then the Administration was unprepared for the complex internal problems that have made Iraq difficult to govern since its creation by the British, and they were thoroughly unprepared to deal with the Nationalism they faced. Finally, the Bush administration people is made up largely of people who do not see any reason for government to exist. They have a significant Libertarian view in which reasonable people agree to accept minimal government, rather than have to have it enforced on them. As a result, they were unprepared for the problems of providing security.
It was really a nice dream. But now it is reality that is coming to face them. The bill has come due. Next month we Americans will be able to chalk up the 1000th US military casualty in Iraq as partial payment for chasing that utopia the way we did. | How did the Mainstream 'objective' press fail America in the WMD debate? The Washington Post has finally admitted that it “underplayed” skeptical reports on WMDs during the run-up to the war in Iraq. So they were trying to appear unbiased (perhaps) or maybe just not negative towards to administration policy. As a result, they failed to do their jobs. This article lays the blame squarely where it belongs, on the timid editors. So essentially we had a conservative right-wing press (FOX, CNN, The Washington Times, The American Standard, National Review, etc.) that was touting the administration line 110%, and an “objective” mainstream press who was emphasizing the administration line and downplaying the facts that contradicted the administration. There was no debate. Just a rush to war. As a nation we were poorly served, especially by the mainstream press. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Excerpts below: Post says it underplayed skeptical reports on WMDs http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5676702/ By Howard Kurtz Updated: 1:15 a.m. ET Aug. 12, 2004 WASHINGTON - Days before the Iraq war began, veteran Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus put together a story questioning whether the Bush administration had proof that Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction. But he ran into resistance from the paper's editors, and his piece ran only after assistant managing editor Bob Woodward, who was researching a book about the drive toward war, "helped sell the story," Pincus recalled. "Without him, it would have had a tough time getting into the paper." Even so, the article was relegated to Page A17. "We did our job but we didn't do enough, and I blame myself mightily for not pushing harder," Woodward said in an interview. "We should have warned readers we had information that the basis for this was shakier" than widely believed. "Those are exactly the kind of statements that should be published on the front page." "The paper was not front-paging stuff," said Pentagon correspondent Thomas Ricks. "Administration assertions were on the front page. Things that challenged the administration were on A18 on Sunday or A24 on Monday. There was an attitude among editors: Look, we're going to war, why do we even worry about all this contrary stuff?" | What is the possibility Republicans will replace Bush in New York? When reading the polls, we Democrats are a biased audience. Biased against Bush. So we see in the polls a clear downward trend for Bush as the election grows closer. The GOP is at least equally biased ~for~ Bush. How do they read the polls? They view the polls as being more indeterminate than clearly showing Bush has lost the election. Non-professionals are probably reading the results of the polls as much based on their prior bias as on the information content of the polls themselves. While we Democrats see them as trending downward, the Republicans seem to see them as merely "close" and the Republicans do have the geographic advantage in the Electoral College. The polls are not bad enough yet to cause the Bush supporters to give up hope. Assuming that is correct, then barring some surprise event between now and the Republican convention, the Republicans will nominate Bush as already planned. Not to nominate Bush would be to forfeit the November Presidential election. They aren't going to do that. But where the general polls can be read as downward for Bush, the polls on the effectiveness of the Swift Boat Veterans for Bush may be seen as having an effect in their favor. Those advertisements are the only positive thing Bush has going for him right now. Since their decision comes down to the choice between capitulating the Presidency when they still see some hope of winning, or increasing the effort in the single area that seems to be going their way, they will increase the effort by becoming more and more nasty as the election gets closer. The next three months are not going to be very pretty. | Friday, August 06, 2004
Why the exagerations?? OK. I don’t question that Saddam’s regime was a nasty one. At least as nasty as the Argentine Generals and Chile’ Pinochet, both of which were supported by our conservative leaders. But why did we get bombarded by such a collection of exaggerations and misleading statements regarding the invasion of Iraq?? By now, if either Bush or Blair says to look up, my reaction by now is to look down to see what they don’t want me to look at. Based on this report, among other things, I really doubt that the Butler Report has any connection to reality. Needless to say, Bush's recent statements that our economy was "turning the corner" led me to suspect that either it was getting worse or not changing. Sad to say, today's employment report shows that it is getting worse. Sad. But not surprising. --------------------------------------------------------------- PM admits graves claim 'untrue' http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,1263901,00.html Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor Sunday July 18, 2004 The Observer Downing Street has admitted to The Observer that repeated claims by Tony Blair that '400,000 bodies had been found in Iraqi mass graves' is untrue, and only about 5,000 corpses have so far been uncovered. The claims by Blair in November and December of last year, were given widespread credence, quoted by MPs and widely published, including in the introduction to a US government pamphlet on Iraq's mass graves. In that publication - Iraq's Legacy of Terror: Mass Graves produced by USAID, the US government aid distribution agency, Blair is quoted from 20 November last year: 'We've already discovered, just so far, the remains of 400,000 people in mass graves.' On 14 December Blair repeated the claim in a statement issued by Downing Street in response to the arrest of Saddam Hussein and posted on the Labour party website that: 'The remains of 400,000 human beings [have] already [been] found in mass graves.' The admission that the figure has been hugely inflated follows a week in which Blair accepted responsibility for charges in the Butler report over the way in which Downing Street pushed intelligence reports 'to the outer limits' in the case for the threat posed by Iraq. Downing Street's admission comes amid growing questions over precisely how many perished under Saddam's three decades of terror, and the location of the bodies of the dead. The Baathist regime was responsible for massive human rights abuses and murder on a large scale - not least in well-documented campaigns including the gassing of Halabja, the al-Anfal campaign against Kurdish villages and the brutal repression of the Shia uprising - but serious questions are now emerging about the scale of Saddam Hussein's murders. | Thursday, August 05, 2004
Going on 1,000 Dead American Soldiers in Iraq. For What??Nine hundred plus American soldiers have now died in Iraq. That is very nearly a third of the deaths in 9-ll, and Iraq HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH 9-11! Yet, allegedly, 9-11 is the reason we unilaterally invaded Iraq. That and the now clearly false weapons of mass destruction. Later, of course, when those excuses were being shown to be lies, we also were told it was to remove Saddam and to bring democracy to Iraq. Removing Saddam isn't enough. There were worse dictators, and dictators more dangerous to the US. For example, Iran had and has greater Nuclear threat. As for democracy, democracy in Iraq is extremely unlikely any time soon and we aren't going to bring it with the US Army or Marine Corps. In essence, there was no rational reason for invading Iraq.
The inaction and stupidity of Reagan and Bush 41 caused the problems of 9-11. The Republican Congress with accusations of "Wag the Dog" prevented Clinton from taking any effective action to change things. Since 9-11, the actions of Bush 43 have made those problems much worse than they were.
| Iraq is the wrong war. Bush is the wrong President. Nine hundred plus American soldiers have now died in Iraq. That is very nearly a third of the deaths in 9-ll, and Iraq HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH 9-11! Why is Bush getting Americans killed for no reason? The number will reach a thousand sometime in September at the current rate of deaths. I am retired military. These people are my brothers and sisters in arms. Their deaths do nothing to protect our nation. Bush is to blame. Iraq is Bush's war. It has no meaning for America, no purpose for any of us, it is merely an increasing casualty rate of American Soldiers and Marines. . Yet now that we are there, we can't leave without creating a failed state like that in Afghanistan that led to 9-11. The inaction and stupidity of Reagan and Bush 41 caused the problems of 9-11. The irrational hatreds of the Republicans in Congress kept Clinton from doing anything useful in Afghanistan. The actions of Bush 43 have made those problems much worse than they were. We are in a downward spiral with conservatives and Republicans in charge. They have no way of stopping the disaster they have created. Only changing the administration in November can make a change in tbe disaster we have allowed to occur and grow. We need to get rid of Bush. Fast. | More info from Reliable Republican Resources. Hey! It’s so good to know that we still have officials who CARE! Later, after her statments reported below, she also stood and waved some papers saying “This is a list of over 200 Communists currently working in the State Department!” No. Wait. That was another crazy Republican elected official, wasn’t it? The drunk from Wisconsin, not the crook from Florida. http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2004408040633 Harris' words surprise officals BY DAVID HACKETT VENICE -- Officials in Indiana and Washington, D.C., said they are dumbfounded by a statement U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris made about a terrorist plot to blow up a power grid in Indiana.In making the statement during a speech to 600 people Monday night in Venice, Harris either shared a closely held secret or passed along second-hand information as fact. A staff member of the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which oversees the nation's intelligence operations, said he had heard of no such plot. And Indiana officials in the county where the power grid is located were at a loss to explain where the information originated." As the sheriff of this county, I would certainly be aware of such a threat," Hamilton County Sheriff Doug Carter said. "I have no information to corroborate any of that." In an interview Tuesday, Harris would not reveal the name of the mayor who told her about the threat or provide further details. She said in the speech that a man of Middle Eastern heritage had been arrested in the plot and that explosives were found in his home in Carmel, a suburb north of Indianapolis. Harris, a Republican from Longboat Key who is running for re-election, said the case was an example of the nation's success in fighting terrorism. Carmel Mayor James Brainard and a spokesman for Indiana Gov. Joe Kernan said they had no knowledge of such a plot. Brainard said he had never spoken to Harris. President Bush's fight against terrorism was a key part of the speech Harris gave Monday at a Republican rally in support of Bush at the Holiday Inn in Venice.During the speech, she also said 100 terrorist threats against the United States had been thwarted since Sept. 11, 2001. | Wednesday, August 04, 2004
Two more views on Iraq. http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/special_packages/sunday_review/9296480.htm?1c The situation in Iraq right now is not as bad as the news media are portraying it to be. It's worse. By Ken DilanianInquirer Staff Writer A kind of violence fatigue has descended over news coverage of Iraq. Car bombings that would have made the front page a year ago get scant mention these days. Assassinations and kidnappings have become so common that they have lost their power to shock. More U.S. soldiers died in July (38) than in June (26), but that didn't make the nightly newscasts, either. The U.S.-led effort to restore basic services has become a story of missed goals and frustrations. Hoped-for foreign investment in Iraq's economy hasn't materialized - what company is going to risk seeing its employees beheaded on television? Simply by staving off stability and prosperity, the insurgents are winning. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/184709_fisk04.html Iraq on verge of implode Neither Bush nor Blair appear to notice ROBERT FISK BRITISH COLUMNIST BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The war is a fraud. I'm not talking about the weapons ofmass destruction that didn't exist. Or the links between Saddam Hussein andal-Qaida that didn't exist. Nor all the other lies upon which we went towar. I'm talking about the new lies.For just as, before the war, our governments warned us of threats that did not exist; now they hide from us the threats that do exist. Much of Iraq has fallen outside the control of the United States' puppet government in Baghdad but we are not told. Hundreds of attacks are made against U.S.troops every month. But unless an American dies, we are not told. Lastmonth's death toll of Iraqis in Baghdad alone topped 700, the worst month since the invasion ended. But we are not told. Living in Iraq these past few weeks is a weird as well as dangerous experience. I drive down to Najaf. Highway 8 is one of the worst in Iraq. Westerners are murdered there. It is littered with burnt-out police vehicles and American trucks. Every police post for 70 miles has been abandoned. Yet a few hours later, I am sitting in my room in Baghdad watching Tony Blair,grinning in the House of Commons as if he is the hero of a school debating competition; so much for the Butler report. Indeed, watching any Western television station in Baghdad these days is like tuning in to Planet Mars. Doesn't Blair realize that Iraq is about to implode? Doesn't President Bush realize this? The American-appointed" government" controls only parts of Baghdad -- and even there its ministers and civil servants are car-bombed and assassinated. Baquba, Samara, Kut, Mahmoudiya, Hilla, Fallujah, Ramadi, all are outside government authority. Ayad Allawi, the "prime minister," is little more than mayor of Baghdad." Some journalists," Blair announces, "almost want there to be a disaster in Iraq." He doesn't get it. The disaster exists now.When suicide bombers ram their cars into hundreds of recruits outside policestations, how on Earth can anyone hold an election next January? Even the National Conference to appoint those who will arrange elections has been postponed twice. And looking back through my notebooks over the past five weeks, I find that not a single Iraqi, not a single American soldier I have spoken to, not a single mercenary -- be he American, British or SouthAfrican -- believes that there will be elections in January. All said that Iraq is deteriorating by the day. And most asked why we journalists weren't saying so. But in Baghdad, I turn on my television and watch Bush telling his Republican supporters that Iraq is improving, that Iraqis support the"coalition," that they support their new U.S.-manufactured government, that the "war on terror" is being won, that Americans are safer. Then I go to anInternet site and watch two hooded men hacking off the head of an American in Riyadh, tearing at the vertebrae of an American in Iraq with a knife. Each day, the papers here list another construction company pulling out ofthe country. And I go down to visit the friendly, tragically sad staff of the Baghdad mortuary and there, each day, are dozens of those Iraqis we supposedly came to liberate, screaming and weeping and cursing as they carry their loved ones on their shoulders in cheap coffins. ------ This does not sound like reports from a pacified, stable country. Someone is lying, and Bush and the US media do not have a track record that indicates it is not them. | Next month the US will have the 1,000th military casualty in Iraq. But if we try to pull out Iraq will become a failed state generating more terrorists. This is what happened in Afghanistan when we pulled out precipitously after the Soviets were defeated there. Iraq is already creating and training a lot more terrorists than we are stopping. We were wrong to go in when we did, wrong to fail to plan to prevent looting (anticipated but ignored by Bush/Rumsfield/Feith), wrong to disband the military and police forces (organizedby Chalabi as he attempted to take over), wrong to prevent experienced Baathists who had not been criminals from continuing to do the jobs that were needed (also prevented by Chalabi), and wrong to try to restructure the economy in the Neocons image of some free-Enterprise fantasy while letting Haliburton and other US contractors rip off the Coalitional Provisional Adminstration (Hey! It wasn't ~their~ money!) Bush 41 warned of the chaos that we would create by taking control of Baghdad when he stopped the Gulf War at 100 hours. Bush 43 and Cheney ignored his warning, and now we and the Iraqis are reaping the whirlwind. Ignoring the facts as Bush and the Republicans are doing will not help. It is time to send in Kerry and a new team. We need some mentally healthy adults on the job, unlike Bush and Cheney. We need someone as President who will make decisions based on the ~facts~ on the ground, not on "gut feel", belief that God sent him, or Neocon fantasies as created by Ahmed Chalabi. We really need to replace Bush. Now!! | Next month, September 2004, the US will have the 1,000th military casualty in Iraq. There is no reason to believe that the rate of casualties will change much. It is an expensive adventure, yet if we try to pull out now Iraq will become a failed state generating more terrorists. This is just what happened in Afghanistan when we pulled out precipitously after the Soviets were defeated. Bush 43 committed us irrevocably. Bush 41 warned of exactly this situation when he stopped the Gulf War at 100 hours. Bush 43 ignored the warning, and now we and the Iraqis are reaping the whirlwind. Ignoring the facts as Bush and the Republicans are doing will not help. It is time to send in Kerry. We need some mentally healthy adults on the job, unlike Bush and Cheney. Clearly, it is time for a change. | This New York Times article was refered to in Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo. This is the lead paragraph: The Spanish government has begun formal discussions on a proposal to expand financing to religious institutions, and security officials say that one intention is to subsidize mosques to make them less dependent on money from militant groups abroad. My first thought is "Never happen here." Even if it is an effective way to minimize the diversion of religious money to terrorists (not a proven proposition itself, of course.) However, what if religious organizations were required to publicly report all funds received and disbursed, with sources? No government money to religious organizations, but complete transparency? It would have to apply to ALL religious organizations, of course. Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, whatever. Would it be of any value? Is there a compelling need for maintaining privacy in donations? What downsides would there be? Dunno. Just some questions triggered by that article. | Tuesday, August 03, 2004
The final stage of the Presidential election is becoming clear. The economy is weak, with no prospect for improvement soon. Even if employment turns upward this Fall it will be too late to effect the election. Everyone now recognizes that the private employer-based health insurance system is collapsing. The only question is how to pay to replace it. US soldiers are still being killed in Iraq and at the current rate the 1,000th US combat death in Iraq will occur sometime in September or October. The Army and Marines are severely over worked, and the Reserve structure has been effectively destroyed. Afghanistan is a mess outside Kabul. The federal deficit just reached a new record; promising further damage to the US economy soon, as the value of the dollar drops, gas prices increase, leading to inflation, and higher interest rates. In the meantime, Kerry and Edwards have effectively positioned themselves as hawkish on military matters and as concerned about the middle class and working people damaged in this economy. Bush has very little going for him as the election looms. Even if the administration can make a case that they did the right things, they have done them ineffectively in political terms. The Bush administrations' lack of competence has been nothing short of amazing. The only weapons the Bush administration have remaining to win the election are to make bland promises Bush is unlikely to carry out (like the mission to Mars a while back), to denigrate Kerry and the Democrats and to make Americans more afraid of the future. The first two items are being practiced quite openly. It is no surprise that the administration has recently begun issuing a series of terrorist warnings that have no specific or current basis. The purpose of the warnings is to build general public fear. The false promises, angry rhetoric and fear-mongering won’t work. Bush has lost this election. | 
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