Shorter US to Iran - "Asphinctersayswhat?"

I can make this simple, I think.

The U.S. says they are willing to join European nations in direct talks with Iran if the Iranian government first agrees to suspend its programs to enrich uranium and reprocess spent nuclear fuel.

Iran has always said, correctly , that it has a right to those exact programs under the terms of the NPT and has no intention, therefore, of giving them up.

Mohammed El Baradei, head of the IAEA, says it is clear that Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapons program at present - "Our assessment is that there is no immediate threat," he says.

So yes, the official Iranian news agency is quite correct when it describes the U.S. offer as "propoganda".

That's it, folks. The rest is blowing hard and bloviating by a bunch of bloodthirsty warmongers on one hand an a crackpot with a pottymouth desperately trying to hang on to the end of his term on the other.

ElBaradei: Iran not an immediate nuclear threat

This is the guy on the spot, the guy who knows the score better than anyone else. Want to be he gets ignored?

Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said the world shouldn't "jump the gun" with erroneous information as he said the U.S.-led coalition did in Iraq in 2003, nor should it push the country into retaliation as international sanctions did in North Korea.

"Our assessment is that there is no immediate threat," the winner of the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize told a forum organized by the Monterey Institute of International Studies south of San Francisco. "We still have lots of time to investigate."

"You look around in the Middle East right now and it's a total mess," he said. "You can not add oil to that fire."

The recent violent history in Iraq bears an important lesson for diplomacy with neighboring Iran, the diplomat said. "We should not jump the gun. We should be very careful about assessing the information available to us," he said.

The Bush administration led a coalition into Iraq in 2003 saying President Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction. No such weapons were found.

"I ask myself every day if that's the way we want to go in getting rid of every single dictator," ElBaradei said.

While it was unclear whether Iran ultimately intended to redirect its development of nuclear power into a weapons system, it was clear there was no danger of that right now, he said.

And perhaps most worrying of all is that Democrat hawks are more than happy to jump on the "Iran is eeevvvuuuulllll and wants to nuke everybody!!!" bandwagon so that they don't appear "squishy" alongside the bloodthirsty sociopaths that have hijacked the Republican party. Their thinking can only be compared to going out and murdering someone because you don't want to be seen as a wimp next to Hannibal Lecter.

Admin : Slow Posting

No sooner do we all get over the gastric flu my kid brought home so thoughtfully from school than he ups and brings home a proper flu - which we now all have.

Posting will be slow, or maybe even nonexistant, until my head stops feeling like it is packed with scratchy cotton wool.

Thanks for your patience, folks.

Give A Fallen Hero His Wiccan Headstone!

Sgt. Patrick Stewart served in Desert Storm and after completing his active duty, enlisted in the Nevada Army National Guard in 2005 and went to Afghanistan. He was killed there last September when the helicopter he was in was shot down.

Stewart, who was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star and Purple Heart, was a follower of Wicca. And therein lies the problem. Stewart wanted a Wiccan pentagram on his gravestone - and the symbol and the faith it represents are not recognised by the Dept. of Veteran's Affairs.

The department is reviewing a request to include the symbol, but when a decision will come is unclear.

That has angered many. The state's top veterans official, Tim Tetz, said he was "diligently pursuing" the matter with Gov. Kenny Guinn, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev.

"Sergeant Stewart and his family deserve recognition for their contributions to our country," said Tetz, executive director of the Nevada Office of Veterans Services.

"It's unfortunate the process is taking so long, but I am certain Sgt. Patrick will ultimately receive his marker with the Wiccan symbol," he said Thursday.

This is, quite frankly, outrageous. The Department of Veteran's Affairs have been considering similiar requests for nearly nine years and still haven't come to a decision. That's even though the military as a whole recognises Wicca as a religion (something Dubya and the wingnut Christians would like to take away and replace with active discrimination against us).

So here's the Newshog's plea for this Memorial day weekend - can we please start honoring ALL our fallen heroes in the way they would wish instead of insulting them and their religion?

Click here

Some Thoughts On Haditha

I wrote this post yesterday and then my PC froze up, the ancient piece of dinosaur crap that it is, and it was lost. Now I am re-writing it, sort-off. What I am going to do is let some other bloggers say what I think.

Let's start with Captain Ed, a man who can truly think when he takes his GOP-approved blinkers off.

This makes me physically ill. We can say it happens in every war, and that would be accurate, but it doesn't excuse it in the least. Our military has the reputation of high discipline and morale, and 99.9% of our troops live up to that standard. As with Abu Ghraib, only on a much less serious scale, the actions of one undisciplined unit will reflect horribly on those who have done their best to protect Iraqi civilians, especially the children. Those 99.9% of our troops provide the best possible security for the United States. If these men turn out to be war criminals of the most despicable variety, they will have damaged the work done by our armed forces immeasurably.

I keep hoping that this report will say something different when it gets publicly released, but I know it won't.

Needless to say, every Marine involved in this atrocity must face court-martial, and their command has to answer for the brutal murders of people that we took under our protection. Those court-martials must be public and thorough. Nothing should be held back.

I've known a fair few military types over the years and most were great-hearted people and great-hearted friends with a massive commitment to their personal honor. I figure, taking that small experience and generalizing, that most of the rest are the same. I have to say that this event, Abu Graib and others have shown that the "few bad apples" are perhaps greater in number than we would like, though. Even so, I applaud the military in this case. They did the investigation, they did the briefings and they did it fast. Let us hope they have figured out they have a problem and are doing something about it. The sudden visit of the Marine's Commandant to Iraq to tell his guys that they can and will fight war in a humane manner is another good sign.

Next comes Allahpundit at Hot Air - a man who I am coming to realise is only on the team so that Malkin can pretend to be balanced. I predict he and she will part company over some wingnuttery of hers within the year.

I meant to post about this last week when Murtha was making the rounds but I got caught up in other things. Yeah, it’s awful and par for the course that he’d pronounce the Marines guilty before the investigation is complete; and yeah, no one’s surprised that he’d exploit the incident to promote a pullout. But it rubbed me the wrong way to watch righty bloggers go ballistic on Murtha while dismissing the underlying allegations with a perfunctory “these are serious charges.”

The bloggers he refers to have to include My Pet Jawa, always a home to "the only good muslim..." thinking and of course Dan Reihl who writes "no effort should be made to minimize any possible war crime". Reihl then goes on to attempt to minimize any possible war crime - conducting his own investigation, obviously better than the one the military has made, on the basis of incomplete press reports and basically accusing eye witnesses of being complicit in terrorism for the crime of being awake too early in the morning.

Finally, to Jon Henke at Q & O blog, a man I respect greatly for his thinking and his integrity even when I don't agree with him.

It's difficult to estimate the kind of damage this does to the United States. For one thing, this may increase the pressure on the Iraqi government to push US troops out of Iraq more quickly and more completely. And of course, the propoganda value of this action to anti-US interests is enormous.

It helps, of course, that we've conducted an investigation and will (presumably) be taking legal action against the guilty soldiers. It also helps that people like Rep. John Murtha — and "[Rep.] John Kline, a Minnesota Republican" — spoke out forcefully against the war crime as soon as they were briefed on the findings of the investigation by Marine officials, who also claimed "the Marine Corps' own evidence appears to show Murtha is right." (though, for what it's worth, I reject Murtha's "overreacted because of the pressure" excuse)

...Apparently, John Murtha was not a "traitor", but simply privy to the outcome of the investigation before the Marine Corps released it to the press. I'd suggest that he's owed an apology if I thought it would do any good.

Yeah, what he said.

Instahoglets 25th May 06

Some news, some views, even some "news less travelled" - all in the accepted "InstaAtrios" style.

No, we are not safer because of Bush's bungled foreign adventures. That's what the International Institute for Strategic Studies' (IISS) annual assessment of global security threats says, anyway. Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan are all identified as flashpoints, as well as North Korea. Iraq? The IISS director says that "It is doubtful that a collective sense of Iraqi nationalism can survive in a context of increasing sectarian violence and the continuing security vacuum. Democracy has exacerbated Iraq's ethnic and religious tensions, with voters largely dividing along Sunni, Shia and Kurdish lines." and "The danger is clear: an increase in instability, violence and radical Islamism."

Given that Iraq is in civil war and the Taliban are resurgent in Afghanistan from their bases in Pakistan, it seems just stupid to be inviting a war with Iran which would add a piggy-in-the-middle to the geographic problem. Yet the Bush administration has ruled out previously authorised direct talks between Tehran and the US ambassador in Baghdad, which were to have focused on the situation in Iraq.

Bush is a weak flip-flopper who was for negotiations with Iran before he was against them? Or was it always just a cynical lie showing the most powerful man in the world deals with others in bad faith? It HAS to be one or the other. Go on, Bush cheerleaders, pick one!

This week we learned that Bush has delegated to John Negroponte the ability to allow companies to sidestep SEC reporting requirements in the name of national security. Michael Roston at "looking for Someone to Lie to Me" blog puts two and two together and thinks the most likely candidates for such exemptions are to sheild companies like MZM ("Duke" Cunningham bribers) involved in corruption and companies involved in extraordinary rendition flighhts in Europe and elsewhere. I would add, perhaps, companies like the one with possible ties to both Jack Abramoff and the CIA who ended up with 5 tons of cocaine on board their plane.

Michael is on fire this week, with another excellent post - this time he picks up on a typical Mike Ledeen moment in connection with the shooting by extremists of five Turkish judges last week. Ledeen warns that "If we continue to dither along as we are at present, the day will come when some disgusting animals shouting "God is great" burst into our courtrooms and kill our judges, and the deranged elite of this country will wonder what terrible things we have done to provoke such carnage." while conveniently fogetting that the "disgusting animals" who have already said violence against judges here in the U.S. include the GOP's very own John Cornyn.

Ledeen is theleading pundit in the stable of Benador Associates. Given that, it isn't too surprising that his fellow Benador hack Amir Taheri was caught so flagrantly making sh* up in pursuit of the hard-on for regime change in Iran that every Benador shill for the neocon whackjobs possesses. The Jewish Week has the rundown on exactly the scam was run and how it was debunked.

What is really surprising to me is that anyone in the Benador stable is able to hold a position of prestige as a reporter or pundit, many for important media outlets - and often never mention their involvement with Benador's shilling for the neocon movement. Either they declare it openly or the newspapers etc. are coniving in a grave misleading of the public that their reporting is "fair and balanced". Yes, I mean you too, Washington Post.

Greg Palast writes that we have passed the point of "peak oil" but that we still have as much oil as we could possible need for decades. Confused? Palast explains that we have to distinguish between an economist's concept of "running out" and a scientist's. This is a must-read column if you want to understand modern geopolitics as well as understanding why Chevron is running ads to sell the "peak oil" idea that we now consume more oil than we discover.

Newshog will never officially endorse a candidate for anything (although it may state a preference). I'm a foreigner in your wonderful country and it's not my place to do such a thing when I can't carry through by going out and voting for my endorsement. Newshog's wife, however, is native born and has no such problem. In a state where the Democrat machinery seems just as firmly enmeshed in lobbyist shenanigans and corporate welfare as any Republican, she is getting Kinky.

Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling of Enron, once Bush's biggest corporate donor, have been found guilty of a total of 29 criminal counts, including a conspiracy to hide the failing health of the company by selling a boosterish optimism to Wall Street and the public. Ben Adler at Tapped has a first "reaction to the reaction" as he lays the smackdown on anyone who would write that this verdict will damage Bush in any way. Sadly, it will not happen.

Speaking truth to (nuclear) power?: "Nukes breed nukes. As long as some nations continue to insist that nuclear weapons are essential to their security, other nations will want them. There is no way around this simple truth," ElBaradei told the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

"When it comes to nuclear weapons, we are reaching a fork in the road. Either we must begin moving away from a security system based on nuclear weapons or we should resign ourselves to President (John F.) Kennedy's 1960s prediction of a world with 20 to 30 nuclear weapons states," he said.

How embarassing will it be for the neocons who cried "traitor" if Murtha turms out to be right again? Suddenly they go from being patriots decrying anyone "undermining" the war on terror to apologists for atrocities. It's looking awfully like he was. Their very own NPR has a report that says the criminal investigation has established some serious wrongdoing and is focused on the actions of a Marine sergeant and a corporal. Unfortunately, none of it will help the dead get better.

Pressuring Dems on Presidential Powers

If you thought that eventually common Americans would rise up in protest at Bush's totalitarian power-grabs, think again. "Respectable People" think everything's O.K. because the government would never use those powers of the King-President against them, only against those awful terr'ists. Independent Institute fellow Robert Higgs recently attended a discussion in St. Louis which opened his eyes somewhat:

My expressions of disapproval in regard to the government's recent invasions of liberties, in particular, elicited expressions of stunned disbelief. I had said that the government's announced claim is that the president may, at his sole pleasure, arrest, incarcerate, and punish, even put to death, anyone he describes as a terrorist, wholly denying due process of law to the accused terrorist. One lady adamantly insisted that I say exactly whose rights had actually been so violated. When I replied that the leading case concerns a U.S. citizen named Jose Padilla, I thought she might expire from apoplexy. No sooner had I uttered Padilla's name than she half shouted, half sputtered indignantly "a terrorist!" "How do we know," I replied, "if he does not receive due process of law? Are we to accept the government's claims solely on its officials' say-so?" Well, for this lady and for most of the others in the room, of course, we were to accept all such claims on the government's say-so. These respectables are simply incapable of imagining that the government they so blindly and enthusiastically support might do anything to harm THEM or, by extension, any other similarly respectable persons in the United States – clearly, the only people who matter.

This kind of "us and them" myopia, so carefully fostered by Rovian fearmongering, is why although I respect his writing greatly I think for once Glenn Greenwald is on the wrong track when it comes to his explanation for the Great Democrat Wimp-Out on the nomination of General Hayden as CIA director - and on just about every other issue connected to the rise of the King-President. Glenn believes that the Dems are simply used to operating "from a place of fear and excess caution" and will continue to do so even though they (subtext) know they should speak up. He believes that Dems on the Hill think they have a comfort zone now and can think to themselves:

President Bush is a lame duck who is out in 2008, and so it doesn't matter what he got away with or what he did. Conducting investigations into these intelligence and ”anti-terrorist” scandals will be depicted as obstructionist and weak on national security, and will jeopardize our chances to re-take the White House and will cost us House and Senate seats. It is best to look forward, not to the past, and not be seen as conducting vendettas against the lame duck President. What matters is taking the White House in 2008 and so there is no reason to attack the President on these matters of the past.

And he concludes:

I think Congressional Democrats will be more cautious and passive, not less so, if they take over one of the Congressional houses in 2006. People who operate from a place of fear and excess caution become even more timid and fearful when they have something to lose. The Democratic Congressional Chairs are going to be desperate not to lose that newfound power, and they will be very, very vulnerable to the whiny whispers of the consultant class that they should not spend their time and energy investigating this administration or vigorously opposing them on national security matters...there is no reason to believe they will be any better than they are now (and have been for the past four years) if and when they take over one or both Congressional Houses. One could make a compelling case that they will be even worse.

Glenn and I agree that the Dem leadership will only change their tune if forced to do so by a vocal and insistent message from their base - but Glenn thinks the current wimping is due to fear while I think it is due to a satisfaction with the status quo which is handing the next Dem majority and a Democrat President a massively greater power than they ever had before. In other words, I think the Democrat leadership knows the mood of the "Respectable People" and is just fine and dandy with the precedent Bush and the G.O.P. are giving them for ever more power to the incumbent party.

There are some who agree with me. Last week the St. Petersburg Times ran an op-ed from their regular columnist Robyn E. Blumner which nailed the danger.

the changes that George W. Bush has made to our nation's constitutional firmament may not depart with the first family's bags. His disregard for the separation of powers has so dramatically distorted the office of the president that he may have engineered a turning point in American history.

...Bush has taught tomorrow's leaders that, if there are no consequences for ignoring legal constraints on power and if no one stops you from conducting the nation's business in secret, you don't have to be accountable. He is ruling through the tautological doctrine of Richard Nixon, who told interviewer David Frost that as long as the president's doing it "that means it is not illegal.''

Blumner points out that some rightwing voices have been more vocal than the Democrats in Congress on the issue:

I challenge anyone to read an important new report by the libertarian Cato Institute (www.cato.org) and not be chilled. "Power Surge: The Constitutional Record of George W. Bush" is an unblinking 28-page analysis of our slow devolution into autocracy. Its message can be summed up with this quote: "Under (the president's) sweeping theory of executive power, the liberty of every American rests on nothing more than the grace of the White House."

Blumner, like Greenwald, realises that someone has to hold future leaders accountable and that Bush has handed those future leaders a dangerous new method of governance.

Being answerable to another is humbling. It makes you more careful in your actions. It requires that you consider how you will defend your decisions. George Bush has freed himself of this constitutional imperative and is showing the next president, and the next, how it is done.

If, like many Democrat supporters, you blthly assume that a new Dem-led Congress or a Dem president will roll back the new Bush Doctrine of presidential power, I fear you are sadly mistaken in your optimism. Glenn Greenwald, like many other progressive commentators, seems to realize that his optimism may be misplaced but other than a vague call for pressure has no tactic to force the issue.

However, there is a way, as I have previously written. Just ask the damn question. It is a simple question and one which is, at base, unfair. It is:

Will you, if elected, pledge to roll back the Bush vision of total Presidential executive power?

Its unfair because, if the answer is no, then the candidate - and I mean for President, Senator, Congresscritter, Governor, whatever - has to launch into an explanation of why he or she thinks Bush's vision of utter power vested in the Oval Office is a good idea. I can't see any Democrat (or Republicans for that matter) being able to carry that one off in a way that will do them any good at all. The soundbite quotes it would hand their political opposition would be devastating. If the answer is "yes" less explanation is required and the soundbites will all be about balance of power and the vision of the Founders - good PR stuff - and then the pressure is there to act as if they mean it.

I feel so strongly about this that I am going to keep saying it in the hope that others pick up the idea and do something with it. I repeat:

Just ask the damn question.

Catholic Issues "Fatwa" For Dan Brown's Head

Here's a theorem - call it Cernig's theory of religious extremism. It says if you combine evangelistic teaching of any religion with a general feeling of disenfranchisement, it will produce enough militant nutters to fuel a terror movement somewhere. Cases in point - the IRA, al Qaeda, U.S. anti-abortionist extremists, vegan environmentalist bombers, pagan "Norse" white supremacists. Usually, these angry people of hardline faith couch their violence in terms of their idiotic religious rivalries even when disenfranchisement or poverty are the real breeding ground for their extremism.

Here's another, from India, proving that Christianity can still not say it has become purely a religion of peace.

New Delhi (ENI). Some Indian Christians are so incensed with the fictional blockbuster "The Da Vinci Code" they want the government to ban it and one Roman Catholic has offered a bounty of US$25 000 on the head of author Dan Brown, leaving other members of the faithful embarrassed by the reaction.

Nicolas Almeida, a Catholic and former Mumbai municipal councillor, offered a reward of 1.1 million rupees ($25 000) for the head of author Brown, leading a Catholic journalist to compare Almeida to the Taliban.

That's one journalist, who I suspect works for Ecumenical News International, the body that produced the report. Others were less charitably Christian, while managing somehow to use freedom of religion as an argument against freedom of speech (a tactic familiar from the Christian Right in America):

Archbishop Stanislaus Fernandes, secretary general of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India, said the fictional work "belittles what is at the heart of Christian faith and cherished in Christian life", in a statement objecting to the release of the movie.

"Every individual has a right to his religious beliefs and to enjoy the respect to them from the followers of other religions," said the bishops' conference in an 11 May statement.

It's thinking like that which has caused one small Indian state, the small and predominantly Christian state of Nagaland, to ban the movie already.

Question: if God is so great and powerful, why do his followers (of any religion) so often ascribe to him the personality and motives of a schoolyard bully? Is it because they ascribe their own personalities and motives, only writ far larger, I wonder?

Bush's Brother To Restrict Freedom Of Travel

When Lefties are being lectured by the sanctimonious and uninformed Right, we are often told that we supported, simply by being Lefties, the totalitarian excesses of the old communist Soviet Union. We didn't support any such thing, but that's never going to impact on them...still...

One of the things that is held up as most indicative of a totalitarian state like the old Soviet one - or Hitler's Germany for that matter - was that the regime restricted freedom of movement so that the influx of new ideas, possibly dangerous to the State's control, could be prevented and the exit of all the nation's best minds be stymied.

Still, that could never happen in America.

Think again.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Gov. Jeb Bush said he will likely sign a bill that would make Florida one of the most restrictive states in the nation for college professors and students interested in traveling abroad.

The bill bans travel to five countries identified as "terrorist states," including Cuba, WESH 2 News reported.

Professors and students alike are angered by a proposal to ban scholarly travel to five countries.

Cuba, Syria, Iran, North Korea and the Sudan would all be off-limits for college or university-sponsored research trips if Bush signs the bill passed by lawmakers earlier this month.

Thing is, this smells awfully like a trial balloon to me. Try it in lil' brother's pet state and see if the libertarians, the human rights groups and the Dems make a stink. If not, then extend it to the whole nation.

Could we be seeing the beginnings of a restriction of Americans' rights to move freely beyond their own borders? What's next? Papers giving permission to cross state boundaries?

There's some seriously scary sh*t coming from the Bush family nowadays.

Instahoglets 22nd May 06

It's been a busy few days and I didn't do any of the following the justice I should have.

As I type this the BBC world service on PBS is reporting - I've no link - that Iraqi PM Maliki is saying occupation troops could be out of everywhere except Baghdad by the year's end. Color me sceptical about his motives. I can just imagine it would suit his party fine to be given a free hand to ply death squads and ethnic cleansing everywhere beyond sight of the Green Zone. I have a sneaking feeling that we are seeing Iraq's next strongman dictator in the making here. (Diplomat's with Tony Blair on his visit to Iraq are saying four years, by the way.)

Update Here's the Guardian's version - Maliki is saying troops out by year's end "apart from Baghdad and Anbar province". I stick by my opinion that Maliki - who has promised to use "maximum force" - is a strongman would-be dictator who will be patient and play the democracy game a little longer. I also think a strongman is exactly what Khalilzad and the neocons who have always backed him have been aiming for these past several months.

You definitely should read this report from Helena Cobban on US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad's (he who supported the Taliban before he was against them) heavy-handed stage managing of the recent "united" Iraqi parliament. It makes a joke of any pretense of sovereignty. She also suggests that Khalilzad is already setting up his CYA should the Iraqi government fail to bring order. Truly, being a neocon means never having to say you are sorry.

Patrick Coburn of the Independent yet again has some of the best reporting and analysis from Iraq in his piece today looking at the difference between what the politicians say and the reality for the common people. "Which is the real Iraq?"

Here's a snippet: So divided is the new government that each ministry becomes the fief of the party that holds it. The ministries are, in practice, patronage machines employing only party loyalists. They are milked for money, jobs and contracts. Ministers cannot be dismissed for incompetence or corruption, however gross, because it would lead to the deal between the parties and communities unravelling. (The government has become a sort of bureaucratic feudalism with each ministry presided over by an independent chieftain.)

The Head of the IAEA wants the U.S. to offer Iran a pledge not to try to topple the Islamic Republic's government if they give up uranium enrichment. Unsurprisingly, the Iranians say they wouldn't believe it even if such a pledge was given and the Bush administration says it will never give Iran any security assurances. I wonder how long the EU3 will continue to act as puppets for BushCo's regime changing drive-by democracy? I don't think it will be long before they split with the US and do what they think is best for them, rather than for neocon warmongers.

The Guardian reports that Britain's Secret Intelligence Service is bracing itself for a fresh series of security leaks about its operations on an internet blog launched by former top-ranking MI6 officer, Richard Tomlinson. I almost hope this tactic catches on with other whistleblowing ex-agents.

Update Here's the Tomlinson website. Judge for yourselves if you wish but, to me, he comes across as a priveliged-background spoiled brat with a huge chip on his shoulder. Sounds about right for a member of Her Majesty's Secret Service. (Many thanks to reader nostril-recon for the link).

Wired News has published documentation provided by AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein and concerning the telecom giant's involvement with NSA warrantless domestic wiretapping. Wired News says "AT&T claims information in the file is proprietary and that it would suffer severe harm if it were released. Based on what we've seen, Wired News disagrees. In addition, we believe the public's right to know the full facts in this case outweighs AT&T's claims to secrecy." Good for them.

We keep being told by Rightwing cheerleaders that Iraq is nothing like Vietnam. That may well be true - so far - in terms of general violence and casualties, but for British troops at least the two conflicts have something in common. Drug abuse. Could we be seeing something that has never happened before - the "vietnamization" through falling morale and discipline of the vaunted British military? If so, then American experience from that older war suggests the path to recovery is not an easy or short one.

Another first class analysis, this time from Steve Soto. He says he has been talking to retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner, the man who wrote the book on how the White House sold the war on Iraq. Based on those conversations, in which Gardiner says "I would stay the probability of a strike before the elections is 80 to 90%" and others with historian Juan Cole, Soto says "Keep Your Eyes On Iran".

What kind of heartless bastard would you have to be to want to renege on the 1868 constitutional amendment granting citizenship to babies born on U.S. soil just so that you can deport them with their illegal mom or dad? A Republican one, it seems.

U.S. Energy Secretary Sam Bodman says his wife bargain hunts for cheap gas. The only reason he doesn't do the same is because the Secret Service fills up his car. I'm not sure I could add snark to this. It is complete and perfect as is.

Iraq's New Day, New Corner, New and Old Problems

According to George Bush, coming back from church today, "the formation of a unity government in Iraq is a new day for the millions of Iraqis who want to live in freedom." Meanwhile, Condi Rice, in a statement eerily similiar to Dubya's ill-fated assessment of Russia's Putin told the world about the new Iraqi Prime Minister - "I've met him. I've looked into his eyes. This is somebody who is determined to do what is right for the Iraqi people." The rhetoric, yet again, is of a "last throe" for the insurgency, of an eventual drawdown but "no timetable" for doing so and of a "corner" being turned.

Unfortunately, for many ordinary Iraqis, turning that corner may expose them to the withering crossfire of sectarian feuds which have become a civil war even if no-one pearing over the parapets of the Green Zone wishes to admit it. Two separate major UK newspapers have run reports this weekend on Iraq's meltdown. At the Independent, Patrick Cockburn looked at ethnic cleansing he describes as "like Bosnia" and has been widely quoted by bloggers. The Guardian's Ghaith Abdul-Ahad has a likewise intimate portrayal of the "hidden war", taking it to the streets to speak to individual Iraqis. Surprisingly, his report hasn't attracted as much notice yet his account of the daily "slideshow" at the Baghdad mortuary - there are too many dead each day to allow all the relatives inside - is as harrowing as it is revealing about the truth-on-the-ground concealed by reports of unfilled cabinet ministries at Defense and Interior.

The ministry is under the control of the Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, and a large mural of his dead ayatollah father decorates the entrance to the compound. Most of the security guards in the morgue and the ministry are affiliated to his militia, the Mahdi army, one of the militias thought to be behind the sectarian killing going on in their neighbourhoods.

"Why do you want to go inside? Those inside are all terrorists, Sunni terrorists," said Captain Abu Ahmad, the officer in charge of security at the morgue, when the Guardian presented a document granting permission from the ministry of health to visit. "If you want to see innocent victims, go to the hospitals and see the victims of Sunni terrorism on Shia civilians."

Not only does this show the level to which Iraq's daily apparatus of government has been polarized into factions, it shows the building of vendettas and urban legends of hate which will, I fear, fuel this civil war for more than a decade no matter who sits in the assembly in the safe Green Zone.

The Gurdian report also quotes one Sunni insurgency leader, who says that the civil war has begun and that the Shia will probably win due to more and better militias, leaders and equipment. Then he adds, in a statement that should run shudders up the backs of all those watching the neocon rush to war with Iran:

"Our only hope is if the Americans hit the Iranians, and by God's will this day will come very soon, then the Americans will give a medal to anyone who kills a Shia militiaman. When we feel that an American attack on Iran is imminent, I myself will shoot anyone who attacks the Americans and all the mujahideen will join the US army against the Iranians."

Should that happen, then there should be no doubt that the "unity government" - only a day old and already seen as nothing of the sort - will collapse in the shockwaves of the explosions.

Breaking - FBI Raids House Of Reps. Offices

Reuters via Yahoo News:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - FBI officers raided a House of Representatives office building on Saturday night, and NBC television said it had searched the offices of Louisiana Democratic Rep. William Jefferson.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation confirmed the unusual raid at the Rayburn House Office Building on Washington's Capitol Hill but would not say whose office was searched.

"Agents of the FBI's Washington field office executed a search warrant this evening at Rayburn at approximately 7:15," Debbie Weierman, a spokeswoman for the FBI's Washington field office, said.

Weierman said the search warrant was sealed and she could not confirm whose office was being searched.

But two lawmakers under investigation in separate bribery scandals have offices in the Rayburn building -- Jefferson and Ohio Republican Rep. Bob Ney.

I guess we will find out which one it was tomorrow.

Jefferson has, amazingly, tried to pretend innocence while a technology company executive has pleaded guilty to bribing him and a former Jefferson aide has pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting bribery of the congressman.

Ney also says he is innocent of any wrongdoing in the face of a probe during which his former chief of staff has pleaded guilty to conspiring to corrupt the congressman on behalf of Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist at the center of the influence-peddling probe that has gripped Capitol Hill for months. Neil Volz enumerated 16 actions he said his old boss took on behalf of Abramoff clients and acknowledged he conspired to corrupt Ney, his staff and other members of Congress with trips, free tickets, meals, jobs for relatives and fundraising events.

As one academic put it, "We have an entire generation who imagines their member of Congress in an orange jumpsuit."

Note - the NY Times and others seem to have gone with NBC and said the raid was on Jefferson's office. However, it seemed to me Reuters had the correct report in saying the FBI wouldn't confirm which office under a sealed warrant so I've gone with that one.

Update Looks like it was indeed Jefferson. His lawyer has called the search "outrageous". No, what is outrageous is his trying to maintain a facade of innocence when there are guilty pleas from the briber and Jefferson's aide on record.

A Man's A Man For A' That

Note: This post began as comment to another post here. I cannot even begin to measure how important I feel the whole idea to be, so I've decided to make it a seperate post for posterity - C

I'm not the only one who has been labelled a Bush hater and admonished that I should respect the office, if not the man, in what I write or say about the presidency.

Well, I was brought up in Scotland. We have an attitude over there, born of Calvinism and the Enlightenment. Respect no titles or offices and respect a man, no matter what his office, when he deserves it. We thought we had passed that trait on to our cousins in the West. I've never understood why so many Americans nowadays think a strange shaped room might have such a miraculous effect on a person's personality. If he was a sh*t before the election, he will still be a sh*t when he sits in the Oval Office.

To illustrate how deeply seated this precept is in the Scots spirit - and how deeply seated it should be in every American's - I present to you a song by the Scottish Bard, Robert Burns (1759 - 1796). So important is the message it contains that "A Man's A Man For A' That" was sung at the first opening of the new Scottish Parliament. You can have it in the original Scots or an English translation:

1.
Is there for honest poverty
That hings his head, an' a' that?
The coward slave, we pass him by --
We dare be poor for a' that!
For a' that, an' a' that,
Our toils obscure, an' a' that,
The rank is but the guinea's stamp,
The man's the gowd for a' that.
2.
What though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hoddin grey, an' a' that?
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine --
A man's a man for a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,
Their tinsel show, an' a' that,
The honest man, tho' e'er sae poor,
Is king o' men for a' that.
3.
Ye see yon birkie ca'd 'a lord,'
Wha struts, an' stares, an' a' that?
Tho' hundreds worship at his word,
He's but a cuif for a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,
His ribband, star, an' a' that,
The man o' independent mind,
He looks an' laughs at a' that.
4.
A prince can mak a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, an' a' that!
But an honest man's aboon his might --
Guid faith, he mauna fa' that!
For a' that, an' a' that,
Their dignities, an' a' that,
The pith o' sense an' pride o' worth
Are higher rank than a' that.
5.
Then let us pray that come it may
(As come it will for a' that)
That Sense and Worth o'er a' the earth
Shall bear the gree an' a' that!
For a' that, an' a' that,
It's comin yet for a' that,
That man to man the world o'er
Shall brithers be for a' that.


Is there for honest poverty
That hangs his head, and all that?
The coward slave, we pass him by -
We dare be poor for all that!
For all that, and all that,
Our toils obscure, and all that,
The rank is but the guinea's stamp,
The man's the gold for all that.

What though on homely fare we dine,
Wear course grey woolen, and all that?
Give fools their silks, and knaves their wine -
A man is a man for all that.
For all that, and all that,
Their tinsel show, and all that,
The honest man, though ever so poor,
Is king of men for all that.

You see yonder fellow called 'a lord,'
Who struts, and stares, and all that?
Though hundreds worship at his word,
He is but a dolt for all that.
For all that, and all that,
His ribboned, star, and all that,
The man of independent mind,
He looks and laughs at all that.

A prince can make a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, and all that!
But an honest man is above his might -
Good faith, he must not fault that
For all that, and all that,
Their dignities, and all that,
The pith of sense and pride of worth
Are higher rank than all that.

Then let us pray that come it may
(As come it will for a' that)
That Sense and Worth over all the earth
Shall have the first place and all that!
For all that, and all that,
It is coming yet for all that,
That man to man the world over
Shall brothers be for all that.

Methinks too many have lost sight of the idea that the President serves the People, not vice versa.

Political Fib of the Day - Peacetime Economy

What with MZM and Hookergate, Halliburton's various misdeeds, Lockheed and the rest bidding for the BerlinBorder wall and today's news of an FBI investigation of senior Generals, Earl's fib today speaks to a major sign of the Bush Times - outsourcing the Pentagon and the windfalls of war, and not always in an honest way.

Plan
Makes
Sense Now.
More Money.
Defense Contractors
Always Need A Bit More Money...

Earl writes "Is my cynicism showing? The unwarranted influence of the military-industrial complex is starting to annoy me. Starting?"

Instahoglets 19th May 06

Some punchposts, some snark, and thee...

As calls from both Tony Blair and the UN to close the place go ignored, inmates at Gitmo are fighting with guards over the right to die. "The military says there have been 39 suicide attempts in the camp since 2002, and hunger strikes have been common as detainees protest against their continued detention without trial."

Iran has been quick to say it is now enriching its own uranium after experts said original samples had been prepared from better quality Chinese feedstock. Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, the Arms Control Wonk, also notes that Iran's centrifuges aren't as good as they were being made out to be. Which just goes to show how much of this program, in Iranian eyes, is about show and pride and how much of the panic about Iranian advancement in their program is driven by neocon hawks who are looking for excuses to unleash the bombers.

If you would like to talk about rogue states then how about our ally, Pakistan? The British military and the Afghan government are beginning to wonder just how much of an ally:

Colonel Chris Vernon, [British] chief of staff for southern Afghanistan, said the Taliban leadership was coordinating its campaign from the western Pakistani city of Quetta, near the Afghan border. "The thinking piece of the Taliban is out of Quetta in Pakistan. It's the major headquarters," he told the Guardian. "They use it to run a series of networks in Afghanistan."

The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, echoed these comments by accusing Pakistan of arming the insurgents. "Pakistani intelligence gives military training to people and then sends them to Afghanistan with logistics," the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press news agency quoted him as saying.

The highest ranking officer in the U.S. Air Force and his predecessor are under FBI investigation for steering a $50 million contract to an old colleague's company. Gen. Michael Moseley and Gen. John Jumper helped to steer a Thunderbird contract to a friend, retired Air Force Gen. Hal Hornburg - once head of Air Combat Command - it is alleged.

The U.S. has proposed a new nuclear treaty which it says would help prevent production of bomb-making materials. The Arms Control Wonk describes the treaty as "the most most transparently cynical proposal since Caligula made a Senator of his horse." - in other words this treaty is going nowhere, it is just yet another excuse to bang the war drums over Iran.

Talking of which, the story that is driving the chickenhawks batshit today concerns a report that a new law in Iran would require Jews, Christians and other non-Muslims to wear color coded badges. The parallels with Hitler's Final Solution are being paraded everywhere...but the story may well be made up from whole cloth. That is, fake. I'm not as confident as some about Amir Taheri's credibility. Look closely at his report and you will see he is a member of Benador Associates, a well known neocon propaganda organ. They have done more to lead the American nation into senseless wars than most already and this seems to me like their latest effort. I've written about both Taheri and Benador before.

Update The National Post has run a sort-of retraction of the "special clothing for Jews" report. They weasel it a lot but quote tons of experts both inside and outside Iran who all say that, basically, Taheri was talking out of his ass. Nothing unusual there then.

Humans and Chimps Interbred, Say Scientists

This post writes itself...in fact all it needs is that headline and this picture:


And that, my friends, is about the limit of my intellect today. The whole household has had some nasty kind of stomach bug over the past few days and today is my turn. Hopefully, more normal service will resume tomorrow. Today....well, if I mention the phrase "the bottom dropped out of my world" and told you to switch the two nouns, you would have the gist.

Political Fib of the Day

Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, descendant of immigrants, is upset because George Bush, descendant of immigrants, feels it might be a good idea to encourage more people like Alberto Gonzales' grandparents to stay and become documented. Maybe Jim should recall that others (e.g. Ben Franklin) weren't too happy about his ancestors and cut the latest generation some slack.





Wants
To
"Reform"
La Migra
It's Sensenbrenner
Pointing Out The Hypocrisy.

Earl E. Hart III, GnostiNews.

Wingnut Links NH Floods To DaVinci Code Author

I kid you not! Some moron is trying to suggest Jesus flooded out the whole NorthEast just to get back at Dan Brown for suggesting he (Jesus) was playing 'hide the sausage' with the Magdelene!

Here's the entirety of the commentary by J. James Estrada at wingnut internet rag The American Daily:

Have you seen one of these headlines during the week?

New England hit by biblical flood
New England Sees Worst Floods in 70 Years
Rainfall submerges parts of New England

Isn’t New England the birthplace of Da Vinci Code Author Dan Brown? And didn’t that movie debut this week at the Cannes Film Festival (where it was flooded with negative reviews)? It did. It also opens this week all across the U.S.

Coincidence?

Amazing, eh? This paragon of christian conservative idiocy, we are told,

is a political writer, song writer, speaker and columnist. A native New Yorker and first generation American, he now lives in Arizona. His evangelical “good sense” can currently be found on the internet, on the opinion pages of the Arizona Republic and in Charisma magazine.

He now follows in the steps of other great evangelists who have asserted that their avowed Supreme Being has a penchant for petty vengence that involves laying waste to entire regions to get at some small number of supposed heretics. Hardly how I would want MY God or Goddess to act.

If I wasn't already pagan it would be enough to make me an atheist. (/snark)

Political Fib of the Day - Informed Judgement

Republican Senator Orrin Hatch says two FISA court judges were "informed" that the NSA was going to be collecting all of our phone records. As John at AmericaBlog puts it - "Oh, well, if judges were "informed" that we were going to begin mass illegal spying on American citizens, then that makes it constitutional and legal. Silly me, I thought judges were the ones who decided such things."

Earl thinks Orrin's informing is just a crock.

Hatch
Says
Judges
Were All "Briefed"
Two Judges Were Briefed
On Subjects They Were To Approve…

Earl E Hart III, GnostiNews

Deaf To The Sound Of Jackboots

There's been a bit of a row in the last day or so over on the Rightwing blogs that, I think, perfectly captures their voluntary sensory deprivation - a kind of mental lockdown that prevents them seeing exactly what kind of things they support as they cheerlead the Bush administration.

It began with Vox Populus over at World News Daily, who wrote - incredibly - in glowing terms of the Third Reich's final solution as a prescription for dealing with immigration issues:

And he will be lying, again, just as he lied when he said: "Massive deportation of the people here is unrealistic – it's just not going to work."

Not only will it work, but one can easily estimate how long it would take. If it took the Germans less than four years to rid themselves of 6 million Jews, many of whom spoke German and were fully integrated into German society, it couldn't possibly take more than eight years to deport 12 million illegal aliens, many of whom don't speak English and are not integrated into American society.

Ed Morrisey of Captain's Quarters, a Rightwing blogger who can actually think when he looks up from the Bushite virtual reality, was understandably repulsed:

Unfortunately, while Bush underwhelmed the conservative movement on immigration tonight, certain conservatives busied themselves by embarrassing us much more than Bush could ever have. Vox Day, whose provocative writing I normally enjoy, has lost all sense of perspective in his latest effort at World Net Daily. He suggests that we learn a lesson from the Nazis in dealing with illegal immigrants in our midst:

...This column is so ill-advised that it is difficult to imagine that a responsible news organization would not have attempted to keep the writer from discrediting himself before publishing it. Vox owes us an apology, and so does World Net Daily.

And quite a few other Rightwing bloggers agreed - although many of their commenters seemed to think the Final Solution was a good one.

Of course, Ed is right.

But then Vox Pupolus responded, on his own blog:

lest the Captain forget, he's presumably the one who supports the War on Terror the Patriot Act, as well as the War on Drugs and its concomitant no-knock raids, property seizures, masked police, accidental killings and so forth, not me. Modern America doesn't exactly boast an absence of police state trappings these days and I'm not among those who favor them.

And on this, at least, Vox is spot on.

See what I mean?

Diplomatic Nuclear Doublespeak

Nothing bugs me more than the way in which the drums are being beaten for a war with Iran by both the media and politicians in America and Europe. It has become a kabuki production - openly admitting that attempts at negotiation are just window dressing. Here's the latest:

BERLIN (Reuters) - The EU's three biggest powers plan to offer Iran a light-water nuclear reactor as part of a package of incentives if Tehran agrees to freeze its uranium enrichment program, EU diplomats said on Tuesday.

They said they would be very surprised if Iran accepted -- but would take a rejection as confirmation that its nuclear program does not solely aim at generation for peaceful ends.

Oh yeah? It wouldn't prove anything of the kind. Iran has repeatedly stated that enriching its own fuel for power plants is a matter, not just of national pride, but of national security. How else could it reasonably be expected to act in an atmosphere where great powers who have threatened to use nukes on it are making such a sham of diplomatic discussion? I mean, this is just a ridiculous subterfuge - can you imagine the reaction in America if Bush announced that in future he would rely on China to provide all the nation's nuclear fuel?

One diplomat was particularly clear about the nature of the offer:

EU diplomats...made clear they saw little prospect that Iran would accept, and were aiming above all to demonstrate to skeptics such as Russia and China that the West was not trying to deprive Iran of civilian nuclear energy.

"No one believes that this reactor will be built, because Iran will say 'No'," an EU diplomat said, adding that a European reactor would be much more expensive for the Iranians than the $1 billion Russian plant currently under construction.

The amazing thing is that once this phony offer has been rejected, there will be a rush to yell exactly what it is being set up to "show" - that Iran isn't truthful about only wanting nuclear fuel for power. Right now, the Bush administration are being very grudging about the EU3's faux solution, suggesting it is "half a proposal" with no stick to the carrot - but you can bet they will be at the head of the queue to decry Iran's non-acceptance.

Iran is not being recalcitrant - it is simply asserting its rights under the NPT. It has been consistent in asserting those rights and for a time, until the two-faced nature of Western policy was exposed fully, went even further and voluntarily complied with a set of additional safeguards that were never legally binding. That's more than can be said for India, who likewise hid its nuclear program for decades and is now to gain huge access to US nuclear technology even though it really does have nuclear weapons. It is more than America does too - IAEA inspectors are not allowed access to a single American nuclear facility!

Dr. Gordon Prather, who was Reagan's go-to guy on matters of nuclear proliferation, is amazed too. He asks whether the media are dolts or liars - as they must be one or the other to keep so strictly to the official line. Despite all you have read, says Dr. Prather, the truth is that:

ElBaradei has made yet another report to the IAEA Board – and forwarded a copy to the UNSC – that he can find no undeclared proscribed materials in Iran and no indication that any such materials have ever been used in furtherance of any military purpose.

In another article he says that you can judge for yourself, as the confidential report that neocon hacks therefore thought they were safe in misquoting has now been made available online. And here it is.

For me at least, the obvious course is to back off from illegal calls for Iran to stop doing what it has every right to do - which would allow Iran to complete its power program within the legal framework of the NPT as well as enabling the reintroduction of Iran's voluntary extra protocols - and let the IAEA do its job! I don't expect that to happen.

Political Fib of the Day - Privacy and Free Speech

Earl sent today's fib with a link to a recent Tom Tommorrow strip and a message about another kind of Bush mission creep - "Just as the rationale for invading Iraq seemed to flit about from reason to reason, every day seems to bring more and more light on the phone(y) adventures of the NSA, W, Dick et al..."

The
Truth
Unknown
The Story
Showing A Pattern
Being Revised to Fit The Known

Earl E Hart III, GnostiNews

I would like to add my two cents worth and do so in a more substantive way than is my habit with Earl's fibs.. CNet News has a story that worries the hell out of me and has an immediate bearing on the issues Earl's poem deals with. (Hat Tip - Kat)

Wisconsin Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, is proposing that ISPs be required to record information about Americans' online activities so that police can more easily "conduct criminal investigations." Executives at companies that fail to comply would be fined and imprisoned for up to one year.

In addition, Sensenbrenner's legislation--expected to be announced as early as this week--also would create a federal felony targeted at bloggers, search engines, e-mail service providers and many other Web sites. It's aimed at any site that might have "reason to believe" it facilitates access to child pornography--through hyperlinks or a discussion forum, for instance.

Now, regular readers will maybe have worked out by now that I consider pedophilia one of the very few crimes worthy of the death penalty and as far as that bit goes I am just fine with penalizing those who enable it. In fact I am plenty happy with other provisions of the bill:

In addition to mandating data retention for ISPs and liability for Web site operators, Sensenbrenner's Internet Safety Act also would:

Make it a crime for financial institutions to "facilitate access" to child pornography, for instance by processing credit card payments.

Increase penalties for registered sex offenders who commit another felony involving a child.

Create an Office on Sexual Violence and Crimes against Children inside the Justice Department.

However, the devil is in the details as ever and a major part of Sensenbrenner's bill reads like a Police State's wet dream.

One unusual aspect of Sensenbrenner's legislation--called the Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today's Youth Act--or Internet Safety Act--is that it's relatively vague.

Instead of describing exactly what information Internet providers would be required to retain about their users, the Internet Safety Act gives the attorney general broad discretion in drafting regulations. At minimum, the proposal says, user names, physical addresses, Internet Protocol addresses and subscribers' phone numbers must be retained.

That generous wording could permit Gonzales to order Internet providers to retain records of e-mail correspondents, Web pages visited, and even the contents of communications. [Emphasis Mine]

Given this administrations viewpoint on mission creep - i.e. DO IT - it is no surprise that Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, called Sensenbrenner's measure an "open-ended obligation to collect information about all customers for all purposes. It opens the door to government fishing expeditions and unbounded data mining."

If Sensenbrenner's bill contained a proviso restricting federal access to those cases where the specific concern was child exploitation and where they could get a warrant to prove they had probable cause I would have no problems with the rest of it. Unfortunately, what it looks like right now is an attempt to use a highly emotive issue to slip yet more legislation for a Police State past the general public. Can you imagine any politician wanting to stand up to a bill demanding action on pedophiles or how such would be spun by the GOP? Political suicide unless more people are yelling about the devil in the details.

Spying On ABC News

ABC News' blog has a report by Brian Ross which is, frankly, scary sh*t.

A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we call in an effort to root out confidential sources.

"It's time for you to get some new cell phones, quick," the source told us in an in-person conversation.

ABC News does not know how the government determined who we are calling, or whether our phone records were provided to the government as part of the recently-disclosed NSA collection of domestic phone calls.

Other sources have told us that phone calls and contacts by reporters for ABC News, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, are being examined as part of a widespread CIA leak investigation.

Now the report itself is short on the details, other than that ABC News is under surveillance, but if this part of the fallout from the NSA collecting a massive database of phone records, then that would be "scary indeed" as James Joyner puts it. Josh Marshall writes that it would mean:

we can set aside any pretense that administration policy on all manner of electronic surveillance isn't being brought to bear on political opponents, media critics, the press, everybody...given the people in charge of the executive branch today, you just can't have any confidence that these tools will be restricted to targeting terrorists. Start grabbing up phone records to data-mine for terrorists and then the tools are just too tempting for your leak investigations. Once you do that, why not just keep an eye on your critics too? After all, they're the ones most likely to get the leaks, right? So, same difference.

Which is exactly the kind of mission creep I warned about.

The other possibility is that the NSA, CIA or other agency is directly tapping ABC's phone calls - actually listening in. If so, they better have a FISA warrant. It's definitely not foreign based. Joyner says such an action would be "reasonable, if problematic". Personally I dont think it is reasonable at all to attack the free press in such a way simply for printing leaked tales of government ineptitude and law-breaking - it smacks of yet more mission creep towards totalitarianism by the Bush administration. So yes, I would say it was problematic.

However, even if you don't agree with that, then you have to realise that this means one of the "problems" is that identifying the leakers at their places of work, the supposedly most secure agencies in the country, has been found to be too much like hard work. So the investigators have gone for the easy option and hang any conflicts with the First Amendment. Spying on ABC News is, therefore, a symptom of incompetence or a symptom of creeping dictatorship - maybe even both.

Political Fib of the Day - Bordering On Appeasement

Poor George, he just can't win with his base right now. The moderates are finally smelling the coffee on his totalitarian tricks and the hardliners want to impeach him for failing to stem the "Mexican invasion". You know that when Michelle Malkin laments "blind Bush supporters" that his popularity is headed for a record low. Glenn Greenwald expertly dissects the rabid bigots' dienchantment with Dear Leader and you may recall I quoted James Joyner, a moderate, when this story first surfaced as well as when the NSA phone record tale broke.

Earl is right on the mark when he calls sending troops to the border an " appeasement of the more rabid righties that will do nothing, really, to "solve" what isn't a problem for the country in the first place." And so to his daily "fib":

Bush
Speaks
Tonight
Armed Forces
At the Rio Grande
"Appearance" of a "Solution"

Earl Hart III, gnostinews.

Instahoglets 14th May 06

After I finish writing this I'm going to go make sure the kids spoil their Mom rotten for the rest of the day. She's the best.

Never mind your phone records - the Bush administration wants your DNA. Not to mention data on your your medical records, your bill purchases and your entire personal profile including, not incidentally, your voting registration. It is needed for a massive database of non-felons run by a private company called Choicepoint on contract to the government. That way there's a nice sidestep of the law - "for the government to collect this stuff is against the law unless you're suspected of a crime. (The law in question is the Constitution.) But ChoicePoint can collect if for "commercial" purchases -- and under the Bush Administration's suspect reading of the Patriot Act -- our domestic spying apparatchiks can then BUY the info from ChoicePoint." And surprise, surprise - the board of Choicepoint are all GOP primemovers and Choicepoint already have history in cooking the data - like the Katherine Harris backed removal of black voters from the Florida rolls on the basis of spurious felonies. (Hat Tip - Kat)

Does it make you feel any better about King George that his bodyguards seem to think they need to point assault rifles at peaceful protestors?

AP's News Analysis asks the question "Is Bush Overreaching" and millions answer "Does the word 'DUH' mean anything to you?!"

Here's the relevant transcript of CNN's Jack Cafferty as he nails it. A snippet:

I don't know about wisdom but you'll get a bit of outrage. We better hope nothing happens to Arlen Specter, the Republican head of the Judiciary Committee, because he might be all that's standing between us and a full blown dictatorship in this country.

More last corners in Iraq - this time in the once peaceful city of Basra, now in turmoil because the police chief has been fired for links to terrorist groups. The province's governor has also demanded the resignation of the commander of the Iraqi army's Basra-based 10th Brigade. (Note, I think this is the same police chief who last year was lamenting the fact that over half his officers belonged to Shiite militia groups so the allegations of terror links may be true but are just as likely to be the Shiite governor clearing house of possible obstacles.)

And yet more - now the Iraqi Army's units of Kurds and Shiites are shooting at each other.

At least some of the 200,000 AK-47 assault rifles shipped to Iraq by arms dealers in a secret deal with the Pentagon have gone missing and may well be in insurgency hands. Not surprisingly, the Pentagon used crooked middlemen.

I haven't seen anyone cover this report at all, but given the uproar over the discovery of highly enriched uranium particles in Iran you would think someone who didn't want to see the world explode just might have mentioned it:

Head of the UN nuclear watchdog Mohamed ElBaradei said on Sunday he believes existence of highly enriched uranium in an Iranian atomic site was of little significance at the current juncture...The source of contamination may have originated from machines that were imported to Iran, ElBaradei said, adding time is still needed to reach a conclusion in this respect.

He stressed Iran's right to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes and added a balance between Iran's nuclear rights and concerns of the international community would not be created through verbal disputes, but rather dialogue would be the solution.

You would almost think the Western press wanted a really big war to report on!

Back in March, when speculation about Porter Goss and Dusty Foggo's possible involvement in what has become Hookergate was first mentioned, I wondered aloud whether he might have known corrupt military procurement official Steven Potoski. Now, with news that investigations of Foggo's possible involvement in corruption extend back to his time in Germany, the possibilities of a tie between Hookergate and the Potoski case are getting stronger.

Something else that isn't getting a lot of airtime in the USA - Russia's Vladimir Putin, responding to harsh words by Dick Cheney (in a classic case of the kettle calling the pot black) has called the U.S. a "hungry wolf that eats and listens to no one". Couple that with the news that Russian defense spending will grow by 27% next year and will concentrate on the nuclear missile force and the regular military's permanent combat duty forces. Dick got his wet dream - the Cold War has started again! The man should be gagged every time he is in public. Maybe Mistress Condi could handle it for the good of the nation...

Finally, a breaking report details a new NSA program ordered by Bush. It seems he has signed another secret executive order that requires the NSA to apprehend and detain young, fresh virgins so that he can feed on their still-beating hearts. According to sources granted anonymity due to the nature of the discussion, my pal Ken at "Anything They Say" blog may have had a satirical hand in this one.

The Right Catches Lying Bastard Fatigue

It took a while, but now at last the "conservatives" who have been cheerleading Bush and his minions for the last six years have become infected. Here's Prof. Stephen Bainbridge, noting how many other fellow bloggers have caught this syndrome and laying out why:

I'm suffering from Bush fatigue brought on by the culmination of:

-Failure to finish the 9/11 job by bringing Osama to justice
-An unnecessary and unwise war of choice in Iraq, waged with inadequate resources and a degree of political interference unmatched since LBJ ran the Viet Nam War from the Oval Office, as forcefully demonstrated by the W$J's extended story on retired Maj. Gen. John Batiste
-Runaway spending
-Vast expansion of the federal government in areas like No Child Left Behind, Sarbanes-Oxley, and the Medicare drug benefit
-Failure to address entitlement reform
-Failure to address comprehensive immigration reform that includes a guest worker system and regularization of the current undocumented population
-Infingement of civil liberties in the various NSA domestic spying programs
-An unwillingness to confront the corruption plaguing the party by virtue of the K Street Gang; or, rather, the Gang's lack of virtue
-Inability to admit error
-Entrenched anti-intellectualism

It's an epidemic of Lying Bastard Fatigue on the right. Welcome to rehab, guys...we know how you feel. Maybe you should start your own self-help group...

Hi, my name is Glen and I'm a Bushaholic.

Heh, indeedy.

Mission Creep and Creepy Missions

I want to say some more about the Bush administration's alarming policy of deliberate mission creep - give them an inch and they will take as many miles as they can and do so as secretly as they can. It has been most obviously seen in the evolution of his "President as King" policy but at present there are another two areas where mission creep represents a direct threat to America's tradition of liberty and democracy.

The new plan to use military forces for a law enforcement function on the border is the first. So far, everyone has concentrated upon the possibility that National Guard troops might be used at the border under federal command. However, the Defense Dept. hasn't said anything about restricting the troops used to National Guard personnel and has left open the possibility of using the regular military. That's mission creep. Once you've gone that far, the fact that it is the border makes no difference at all legally speaking - it is still American soil. That sets a precedent and you can be certain that Bush (or imagine some future Dem president if you have a rightwing lean) will make use of that precedent. Now we have creepy mission creep.

The other area of threat is that of intelligence agency domestic surveillance. At first we were told that any NSA programs were aimed solely at calls where one end was outside the USA. Now we are told that the NSA has compiled the biggest database ever - of domestic US phone records - but since they aren't listening to domestic calls it still isn't spying on Americans so there's nothing to worry about. That's mission creep. Then we learn in the same breath that the NSA plans to share that database with the other intelligence agencies - the Dept. of Defense's various groups, the CIA and the FBI. That's creepy mission creep. Those other agencies will make use of the NSA database to do what the NSA says it doesn't - spy on American citizens talking to American citizens in a purely domestic framework. Its legal, technically. Are you entirely happy that the technicality preserves the spirit of the law and the constitution?

Now we hear that the NSA may well have been up to even more sly tricks, and that this time they are clearly illegal according to the whistleblower:

Russell Tice, who worked on what are known as "special access programs," has wanted to meet in a closed session with members of Congress and their staff since President Bush announced in December that he had secretly authorized the NSA to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens without a court order. In an interview late Thursday, Tice said the Senate Armed Services Committee finally asked him to meet next week in a secure facility on Capitol Hill.

Tice was fired from the NSA last May. He said he plans to tell the committee staffers the NSA conducted illegal and unconstitutional surveillance of U.S. citizens while he was there with the knowledge of Hayden, who has been nominated to become director of the CIA. Tice said one of his co-workers personally informed Hayden that illegal and unconstitutional activity was occurring.

Yet more creepy missions and creepy mission creep. The White House say they are 100% behind Hayden and so they will be - mission creep is Bush policy.

That policy has already alienated many who used to support Bush. Take for instance Judge Micjael Luttig, who resigned recently in what was probably disgust at Bush administration mission creep over "enemy combatant" status and the case of Jose Padilla.

Finally today I want to tie the NSA's program to another kind of mission creep - that of corruption arising from a sense of power and entitlement. Many Bush supporters have defended the NSA data-trawl on the grounds of national security but there is one area that no-one has yet asked questions about where even they may find they have problems with that security - private contractors. It all comes down to whether you trust the guardians - and the guardians subcontract to some very untrustworthy people. Consider:

Porter Goss has resigned as head of the CIA with no reason given. He was a Bush appointee and both of Goss' chief appintees are now under investigation for possible involvement in Hokkergate, the ongoing web of corruption stemming from "Duke" Cunninghams convistion for bribe-taking. Both "Dusty" Foggo and "Nine Fingers" Brant Basset are now under investigation over possible involvement in the corrupt activities of the two defense contracting companies who bribed Cunningham.

Those same two companies,MZM Inc. and Wilkes Corp/ADCS Inc., were always intimately involved in the Bush administrations intelligence gathering efforts in pursuit of the "war on terror". So much so that MZM Inc. was experiencing a 35% annual growth rate after winning contracts worth hundreds of millions in total from "the Defense Department, the U.S. intelligence community, the Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force and state and local governments". MZM may well have had an involvement in many of the seamier intelligence stories of the Bush administration.

Those same two contractors spent over a million dollars on campaign contributions - some of them illegal - to various political figures. Katherine Harris personally pushed an appropriation of $10 million for MZM to establish a "counterintelligence facility" at Sarasota. Harris received $50,000 in campaign contributions from MZM. Now the House Approprations Chairman, Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.), is also under investigation for possible corruption. He was the single biggest contribution receiver, other than Cunningham, from MZM and Wilkes Corp.

Every intelligence agency is now packed with civilian consultants - people who work for, say, the NSA or CIA but are employed by private companies. Those companies include MZM and its successor Athena Innovative Solutions Inc.

The chance that employees of Wilkes Corp, MZM or its successor have had intimate involvement with the current NSA data-trawl approaches certainty.

Now that really is creepy mission creep.

Political Fib of the Day - Fairly Taxing

I remember the last time a radical conservative used big government to line her cronies' pockets and this slogan made an impact at a gut level on those left behind. The lie was always that it was helping the nation but it was only the ultimate elitist nanny-state. Now her political offspring is doing it on a larger scale in a different country. Maybe the slogan will make a comeback.

Earl's Fib today gets to the core of the problem. Regards, Cernig

Tax
What?
Nation
Has To Choose
Labor? Capital?
One Unites, The Other Divides...

Earl Hart III, gnostinews.

Buh-Bye Posse Comitatus

Remember this?

Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.

Well, now you can forget it.

The Pentagon is looking at ways the military can help provide more security along the U.S. southern border, defense officials said Thursday, once again drawing the nation's armed forces into a politically sensitive domestic role.

...Defense officials said they have been asked to map out what military resources could be made available if needed — including options for using the National Guard under either state or federal control. The strategy would also explore the legal guidelines for use of the military on domestic soil, the officials said.

On Capitol Hill on Thursday, the House voted 252-171 to allow Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to assign military personnel under certain circumstances to help the Homeland Security Department with border security. The House added the provision to a larger military measure.

...Under the Civil War-era Posse Comitatus Act, federal troops are prohibited from performing law enforcement actions, such as making arrests, seizing property or searching people. In extreme cases, however, the president can invoke the Insurrection Act, also from the Civil War, which allows him to use active-duty or National Guard troops for law enforcement.

Although a quick look at the Insurrection Act's provisions will show it is hardly applicable in the case of border crossings, unless you happen to be a paranoid, xenophobic wingnut. Nor is there any real "invasion" beyond the delusions of those selfsame wingnuts. That is why even some of the more sane rightwing are helluva worried by this one:

It is a bedrock principle of American politics that the military does not get involved in domestic policing under any but the gravest of conditions. Peacetime standing armies were anathema until necessitated by the enduring Cold War. We even have a provision in the Bill of Rights precluding quartering of troops in private homes...Short of an armed invasion from Mexico, it is simply bizarre to consider militarizing the border.

And I think they are right to be worried.

Even James Joyner and other moderate conservatives are figuring out - among the various revalations about signing statements, military takeovers of the intelligence community, NSA domestic surveillance and general trampling on Congress - that the current occupant of the Oval Office will take every mile he can and always begins by taking an inch. It's called "mission creep" and the creepiest thing about it is that it is White House policy to creep as far and as fast as it can.

Political Fib of the Day - Dubya's Mandate

As Bush's poll numbers plummet into territory where we may need new mathematical terms to express them, today Earl is feeling wistful for what might have been. If only more voters had realised that the banner above was the shape of things to come.

New
Low
Numbers
Too Late Now
Wish Two Years Ago
Dubya's "Poll" Numbers Hit Bottom

Earl Hart III, gnostinews.

Earl Writes: "Sure, it's wallowing in the past and wishful thinking, but you've got to remember the past in order to make plans for the future. If you're into that whole "planning" thing, that is."

Creepy, Invasive, Dangerous and Un-American

The BIG story today - as shown by a snapshot of memeorandum.com where it seems every singl;e blogger has a post on the subject - is the revelation in USA Today that the NSA has been conducting a massive data trawl of domestic phone records. And when I say massive, I mean "makes the Death Star look like a hotwheels model".

Most of the wingnuts are in full sycophancy mode, decrying yet another leak that "damages national security". It is difficult to see what their justification for this tack is though - the kind of software pattern and anomaly recognition software likely employed would actually pick out those who change their patterns because of this "leak". (In other words, the leak will maybe catch a few terrorists which brings up the interesting possibility of a deliberate leak with just that aim in mind.) And the others will just establish a new pattern of calls to be recognised. I mean, what are the supposed terrorists going to do - switch to carrier pigeons?

James Joyner has a more measured rightwing response and he is clearly a wee bit worried. He points out that the program doesn't record calls, just phone numbers, and isn't the kind of domestic surveillance that the NSA is technically prohibited from doing. Even so, he reserves the possibility of changing his mind should abuses come to light.

Noah Shachtman at DefenseTech has words of caution for Joyner:

Now, some people might find some small measure of comfort in the fact that this particular NSA effort is only looking at calling patterns -- not the contents of the calls themselves. Don't be. Back in January, we learned that this data-mining is directly leading to a "flood" of tips, given to the FBI, virtually all of which have led "to dead ends or innocent Americans."

Does that count as "abuse", James?

Sean Hackworth, The American Mind, is another rightwinger and he has even greater misgivings than James Joyner:

A database containing all that information without a court order is unacceptable. It's ripe for abuse. One thousand secret FBI files fell into the hands of cronies during President Clinton's term. A record of every phone call made would offer too much temptation for some overzealous or unethical flack...the idea the NSA has a record of all my phone calls is creepy.

Which in itself is an interesting line of thought. The NSA's aim was to capture every phone call. Now, I am pretty sure that groups like the Minutemen are on the NSA's watch list in case they turn violent - which means it is pretty much a dead certainty that Michelle Malkin's phone records are of especial interest to the Feds. Still feel the NSA is just doing its job, Michelle?

Finally, as is often the case Glenn Greenwald provides some of the most perceptive commentary on the issue. Glenn points out that one phone company, QWest, declined to help the NSA without a warrant from the FISA court and that the NSA didn't go get said warrant because it didn't think FISA would grant one. Glenn writes:

This theme emerges again and again. We continuously hear that the Bush administration has legal authority to do anything the President orders. Claims that he is acting illegally are just frivolous and the by-product of Bush hatred. And yet...each and every time the administration has the opportunity to obtain an adjudication of the legality of its conduct from a federal court (which, unbeknownst to the administration, is the branch of our government which has the authority and responsibility to interpret and apply the law), it does everything possible to avoid that adjudication.

The same thing has been seen in the stonewalling and dropping of the investigation into the ethics of previous NSA wiretapping. The administration won't give its own Dept. of Justice lawyers clearance to see needed records because it is scared stiff those lawyers will find it acted illegaly.

Glenn also has the heart of the problem:

when the NSA scandal first broke, the administration’s principal political defense was to continuously assure Americans that they were eavesdropping only on international calls, not domestic calls. Many, many Americans do not ever make any international calls, and it was an implicit way of assuring the heartland that the vast bulk of the calls they make – to their Aunt Millie, to arrange Little League practice, to cite just a few of the administration’s condescending examples – were not the type of calls being intercepted. The only ones with anything to worry about were the weird and suspect Americans who call overseas to weird and suspect countries. If you’re not calling Pakistan or Iran, the Government has no interest in what you’re doing.

That has all changed. We now learn that when Americans call their Aunt Millie, or their girlfriend, or their psychiatrist, or their drug counselor, or their priest or rabbi, or their lawyer, or anyone and everyone else, the Government is very interested. In fact, they are so interested that they make note of it and keep it forever, so that at any time, anyone in the Government can look at a record of every single person whom every single American ever called or from whom they received a call. It doesn't take a professional privacy advocate to find that creepy, invasive, dangerous and un-American.

Or as one of James Joyner's commenters put it:

MAYBE all the NSA is doing with those records, today, is statistical analysis of the data set of calls. But given the clear assertions of unlimited prerogative by the President and his Attorney General, there’s every reason to think that if they wake up tomorrow and decide it would be a good idea to do something far more invasive with those records, they’d consider it well within their purview.

And if they woke up yesterday and had the same thought, they sure aren’t going to announce it to us.

I am of the belief that, in time, the news will surface that they have indeed already decided to do something more invasive with those records and decided not to tell us.