Praise bravery, seek forgiveness

Throughout the weekend I had thoughts like these expressed in a Minneapolis Star Tribune editorial:

"In exchange for our uniformed young people's willingness to offer the gift of their lives, civilian Americans owe them something important: It is our duty to ensure that they never are called to make that sacrifice unless it is truly necessary for the security of the country. In the case of Iraq, the American public has failed them; we did not prevent the Bush administration from spending their blood in an unnecessary war based on contrived concerns about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. President Bush and those around him lied, and the rest of us let them. Harsh? Yes. True? Also yes. Perhaps it happened because Americans, understandably, don't expect untruths from those in power. But that works better as an explanation than as an excuse.

The 'smoking gun,' as some call it, surfaced on May 1 in the London Times. It is a highly classified document containing the minutes of a July 23, 2002, meeting at 10 Downing Street in which Sir Richard Dearlove, head of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, reported to Prime Minister Tony Blair on talks he'd just held in Washington. His mission was to determine the Bush administration's intentions toward Iraq.

At a time when the White House was saying it had 'no plans' for an invasion, the British document says Dearlove reported that there had been 'a perceptible shift in attitude' in Washington. 'Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The (National Security Council) had no patience with the U.N. route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.'

It turns out that former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke and former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill were right. Both have been pilloried for writing that by summer 2002 Bush had already decided to invade."

(emphasis added)

Fox News Admits Bias!

Timothy Noah reports. The money quote from the London bureau chief:

"Even we at Fox News manage to get some lefties on the air occasionally, and often let them finish their sentences before we club them to death and feed the scraps to Karl Rove and Bill O'Reilly. And those who hate us can take solace in the fact that they aren't subsidizing Bill's bombast; we payers of the BBC license fee don't enjoy that peace of mind.

Fox News is, after all, a private channel and our presenters are quite open about where they stand on particular stories. That's our appeal. People watch us because they know what they are getting. The Beeb's institutionalized leftism would be easier to tolerate if the corporation was a little more honest about it."

Romantic Love Under a Microscope

Or rather a brainscan. Randall has a hit list of the new insights.

More on Peak Oil

Kevin Drum has a good starting thread on the subject. As the realization of the fact of it begins to percolate through the public consciousness there will be more and more about it.

Why are we in Iraq?

A report in Britain's Sunday Times shows how Britain and the US prepared for a war that they knew was inevitable. Inevitable because they were determined to start it.

"During 2000, RAF aircraft patrolling the southern no-fly zone over Iraq dropped 20.5 tons of bombs from a total of 155 tons dropped by the coalition, a mere 13%. During 2001 that figure rose slightly to 25 tons out of 107, or 23%.

However, between May 2002 and the second week in November, when the UN Security Council passed resolution 1441, which Goldsmith said made the war legal, British aircraft dropped 46 tons of bombs a month out of a total of 126.1 tons, or 36%.

By October, with the UN vote still two weeks away, RAF aircraft were dropping 64% of bombs falling on the southern no-fly zone.

Tommy Franks, the allied commander, has since admitted this operation was designed to “degrade” Iraqi air defences in the same way as the air attacks that began the 1991 Gulf war.

It was not until November 8 that the UN security council passed resolution 1441, which threatened Iraq with “serious consequences” for failing to co-operate with the weapons inspectors."

And here's a link to a kos diary on the subject. Courtesy of Congressman John Conyers.

What Are They Hiding?

Indeed. This will truly bear watching. What is it that they don't dare reveal about Bolton?

Auntie Pinko's Manifesto

Every once in a while Auntie Pinko catches the bigger picture and puts it into words.

"Public servants who really wish to address the problems and inequities in our tax structure would do better to undertake a thoughtful, long-term review of our entire national tax policy, with an eye to balancing the tax burden equally between assets and income, between earned and unearned wealth, and to making it appropriately progressive based on who benefits to the greatest extent (in terms of wealth accumulation) from the public infrastructure supported by the tax system. It would also be beneficial to examine our national priorities in terms of what our taxes should be funding. For example, we could increase the competitiveness of American businesses by creating and maintaining really effective transportation and communications infrastructures, and decreasing our dependence on power sources that require us to purchase fuels from foreign states.

More affordable housing, available and affordable health care, and an adequate retirement system for workers would decrease pressure on wages. Preserving the future of our children by assuring them of clean air to breathe and water to drink, healthy food to eat, and a quality education would create a highly productive, competitive workforce. Addressing issues of poverty, blight, and urban decay would reduce crime and make it more desirable for businesses to locate in population centers, preserving the environment and decreasing sprawl. By prioritizing these items, rather than trying to address the problems of business piecemeal with subsidies, corporate welfare, pork-laden military equipment contracts, and repealing or relaxing the enforcement of regulations, we could achieve real 'across-the-board' benefits to all taxpayers."

Ed. note: This was deleted by mistake so I reposted it.

GOP trial sham

Danny Westneat of The Seattle Times characterizes the GOP Washington Gubernatorial Voting Fraud case.

"GOP lawyer Dale Foreman told me earlier this week that when I saw the circumstantial evidence of fraud, there would be no doubt in my mind that 'somebody was messing with the ballots.'

Now that I've seen the evidence, there's no doubt in my mind Republicans ought to be ashamed of themselves.

They've shown plenty of evidence that this election was badly marred by mistakes. But they should retract their bogus fraud allegation, immediately and publicly.

The claim that the vote was stolen is no more than a conspiracy theory tarted up with statistics."

Running Out of Bubbles

Paul Krugman continues to fret about long-term economic prospects for the country when the housing bubble finally bursts.

Life Forms

Detecting the presence of life forms remotely may be possible. As long as the world happens to be covered in slime.

Unintended Consequences

Studies now suggest that birth control pills may permanently dull women's libidos. That may connect to this item in which another study indicates that half of women suffer some sort of sexual dysfunction. Randall Parker has some thoughts about this, too.

Boot Knows It

Even LeBoutillier knows we are screwed in Iraq.

Stem Cell News

While the Koreans consume media oxygen in pimping their recent success in embryonic cloning scientists in the States mark some success with producing cloned stems from the current Bush-authorized lines. For an excellent graphic that explains what the Koreans have done I refer you to uggabugga.

Meanwhile back at the front

The US is so screwed. Those in power in this country have an enormous interest in putting a good face on efforts in Iraq. And yet things don't seem to be getting any better. It is sounding more and more like Vietnam. According to official reports the enemy was beaten back time and again. While the returning soldiers told a different story. It's hard to tell where the truth lies from here. But to the degree that past experience is a guide I have to give the nod to Juan Cole.

The guerillas have enormous advantages, of knowing the local clans and terrain and urban quarters, of knowing Arabic, and of being local Muslims who are sympathetic figures for other Muslims. American audiences often forget that the US troops in Iraq are mostly clueless about what is going on around them, and do not have the knowledge base or skills to conduct effective counter-insurgency. Moreover, as foreign, largely Christian occupiers of an Arab, Muslim, country, they are widely disliked and mistrusted outside Kurdistan.

US military tactics, of replying to attacks with massive force, have alienated ever more Sunni Arabs as time has gone on. Fallujah was initially quiet, until the US military fired on a local demonstration against the stationing of US troops at a school (parents worried about their children being harmed if there was an attack). Mosul was held up as a model region under Gen. Petraeus, but exploded into long-term instability in reaction to the November Fallujah campaign. The Americans have lost effective control everywhere in the Sunni Arab areas. Even a West Baghdad quarter like Adhamiyah is essentially a Baath republic.

...

In an ideal world, the United States would relinquish Iraq to a United Nations military command, and the world would pony up the troops needed to establish order in the country in return for Iraqi good will in post-war contract bids. But that is not going to happen for many reasons. George W. Bush is a stubborn man and Iraq is his project, and he is not going to give up on it. And, by now the rest of the world knows what would await its troops in Iraq, and political leaders are not so stupid as to send their troops into a meat grinder.

It's difficult to see how there can be any solution to this that isn't costly in lives and dollars for a long time to come.

We need to remember that our current leadership got us into this mess by playing on our fears of trumped-up dangers. As a people we were too cowardly to take the risk of leaving Saddam alone. But it's too late now. We are on a slide from which there is no escape in the near term and only faint hope for the long term. Too many of our sons, daughters, wives, and husbands are going to be sacrificed on the altar of our cowardice and there is nothing we can do about it.

Blowout Scam

An Eschaton commenter points out that the current administration of our government is really nothing more than a common blowout scam. Read the details and I'm sure you'll agree.

Patriot Act

Someone wanted to talk about the Patriot Act.

As you may recall we were running scared when the law was enacted. We had just experienced a horribly successful terrorist attack. At the time we didn't know how many more might be coming. John Ashcroft certainly believed other attacks were coming. It was politically unpalatable to do nothing even if we didn't have a clue about what would be effective or not. We had no good plan. We didn't know the strength or weakness of the attackers. We didn’t know how many different attacking groups there might be. So we guessed. We cobbled together a bunch of measures from the intelligence and law enforcement wishlist with little regard for potential abuse or unintended consequences.

Now, of course, we have a better understanding of the threat as well as some experience under the provisions of the act. It turns out the Osama bin Ladin group were the only major players in the attack and there were no other players waiting in the wings. The anthrax attack is still a mystery but there has been no recurrence, only hoaxes. The perpetrator has been accidentally inhibited or no longer has the wherewithal to launch another attack. We may never know if he was a part of the OBL organization. But Ashcroft's fear of a series of attacks has proven to be typically overblown.

Those in favor of the act argue that the changes were incremental, not revolutionary. Such things as libary peeking were already allowed for grand juries. In some cases, government conduct came under regulation where previously there was no regulation whatsoever on the conduct. In support of their position they point out that the delayed-notification search warrants have been used 108 times resulting in the seizure of material 45 times. And there has been no evidence discovered yet of abuse under the act. There has been no need to invoke the libary peeking provision of the act.

Those on the other side point out that simple exercise of first amendment rights can be sufficient cause to bring you under surveillance. There is even less protection for those who are not native-born. They argue that even a grand jury was under the supervision of the court system if it where to authorize library peeking. In many of the cases where libraries and other entities voluntarily turned over information, the mere threat of invoking the act was sufficient to motivate the party. It seems to me that this is simply a form of abuse that can be denied. Law enforcement no longer needs probable cause to gain access to personal information. Where the delayed-notification warrants have been used, it was in the investigation of non-terrorist wrongdoing. The detractors point out that there is a bit of disconnect in saying that the changes were small and incremental and in saying that the changes have been highly effective. It's hard to believe that both aspects are objectively true. In any case the secrecy permitted by the act makes it very difficult to assess the actual effectiveness of the act. They also point out that the FISA powers may have expanded way too much. FISA cases were over-reaching before PATRIOT and under PATRIOT roving surveillance loosen the restrictions even further. Fishing expeditions are now possible (and probable). Perpetrators of violence get slapped with an additional crime of domestic terrorism if it can be shown that they hoped to influence government policy with the violence.

Part of PATRIOT has been ruled unconstitutional. It made a crime out of talking with terrorist groups regardless of the content of the talk. If you advised them to renounce terrorism and seek their goals by nonviolent means you were in violation of the act. Another feature of the act even prevented reporting about the constitutional challenge until the case was decided. A second part of PATRIOT was also ruled unconstitutional. NSL’s presented to ISP’s to get everything on a person without telling the person was ruled to be a prior restraint on speech. I have my suspicions whether the prior restraint argument is going to hold up.

Before PATRIOT, FISA only rejected 4 of 14,000 warrants. Many of those warrants were based on allegations that proved false. The bar for getting a FISA warrant is now much less. There will be even more warrants issued on false allegations. The NSL’s have been used a lot (At least a 5 page list).

My first conclusion is that in high stakes poker and national security it's dangerous to be a chicken. There's no way that running from inflated fears makes for good law. We have seen how a law for fighting terror allows itself to be used for fighting more ordinary crime. Maybe we have it backwards in that we need to have better laws for fighting ordinary crime and these will cover the terror problem as well. There is just not enough accountability for it to be good law. I suspect we will eventually be up in arms about abuses that have already happened but are still being kept under wraps. We’ll never hear about them until DOJ prosecutes. And almost by definition if DOJ doesn’t prosecute, they have abused their powers.

I think our country would be better served if we pierced the secrecy of actions taken under the act is such a way that the effectiveness and weaknesses of the act can be judged. We need to allow the act to die and put a law in place that avoids running afoul of the first and fifth amendments. I wonder if Ashcroft was replaced partially because PATRIOT was his baby. The act is going to get hammered by Congress, especialy if abuses show up when the veil of secrecy is lifted to them. With John gone the current Attorney-General is insulated from potential PATRIOT blowback.

Democrats back away from a double win

By going to the compromise the Democrats may have allowed the Republicans to sprinkle a little rose water on the stench coming from red state portion of the chamber. And perhaps some of them will have avoided the outraged they have earned for now. But more importantly I think the Democrats have missed an opportunity to lose a battle in order to win a war. When the thin Republican majority fades as it inevitably will as more of their chickens come home to roost, Democrats would have been in a far better position to get this country back on track that it will be now.

We Were Getting it Right, But Not Right Wing

An excerpt from Bill Moyers' response to Corporation for Public Broadcasting's new Bush (hswib) flunky Tomlinson on charges of liberal bias (emphasis is my own).

Judith Miller of The New York Times, among others, relied on that credibility, relied on that credibility of official but unnamed sources when she served essentially as the government stenographer for claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. So the rules of the game permit Washington officials to set the agenda for journalism, leaving the press all too simply to recount what officials say instead of subjecting their words and deeds to critical scrutiny. Instead of acting as filters for readers and viewers sifting the truth from the propaganda, reporters and anchors attentively transcribe both sides of the spin invariably failing to provide context, background or any sense of which claims hold up and which are misleading.

I decided long ago that this wasn’t healthy for democracy. I came to see that news is what people want to keep hidden, and everything else is publicity. In my documentaries, whether on the Watergate scandal thirty years ago, or the Iran-Contra conspiracy twenty years ago, or Bill Clinton’s fundraising scandals ten years ago, or five years ago the chemical industry’s long and despicable cover up of its cynical and unspeakable withholding of critical data about its toxic products, I realized that investigative journalism could not be a collaboration between the journalist and the subject. Objectivity was not satisfied by two opposing people offering competing opinions, leaving the viewer to split the difference. I came to believe that objective journalism means describing the object being reported on, including the little fibs and fantasies, as well as the big lie of people in power.

In no way – in no way does this permit journalists to make accusations and allegations. It means, instead, making sure that your reporting and your conclusions can be nailed to the post with confirming evidence.

This is always hard to do, but it’s never been harder. Without a trace of irony, the powers that be have appropriated the Newspeak vernacular of George Orwell’s 1984. They give us a program vowing no child will be left behind, while cutting funds for educating disadvantaged children; they give us legislation cheerily calling for clear skies and healthy forests that give us neither, while turning over our public lands to the energy industry. In Orwell’s 1984 the character Syme, one of the writers of that totalitarian society’s dictionary, explains to the protagonist, Winston, “Don’t you see? Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050 at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we’re having right now. The whole climate of thought,” he said, “will be different. In fact, there will be no thought as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking, not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”

Hear me: an unconscious people, an indoctrinated people, a people fed only partisan information and opinion that confirm their own bias, a people made morbidly obese in mind and spirit by the junk food of propaganda is less inclined to put up a fight, ask questions and be skeptical. And just as a democracy can die of too many lies, that kind of orthodoxy can kill us, too.

Torture's Dirty Secret: It Works

Naomi Klein deconstructs the reason torture is part of our current policy. It's a red herring that it actually provides any sort of useful information. The purpose it really serves is to intimidate social dissent. It's function is similar to the Soviet warning shot. You shoot the first guy over the fence and that acts as a warning to the second guy who is thinking about going over the fence. The prospect of torture for no good reason such as what we have going in Gitmo and other places is to make it easier for our forces to exercise control over fractious populations. It serves to keep the casual offenders in line which allow us to focus energy on the hardcore offenders who are undaunted by the prospect of torture.

Galloway's testimony takes no prisoners

George Galloway reams Coleman a new one. Great Stuff!

"Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies.

If the world had listened to Kofi Annan, whose dismissal you demanded, if the world had listened to President Chirac who you want to paint as some kind of corrupt traitor, if the world had listened to me and the anti-war movement in Britain, we would not be in the disaster that we are in today. Senator, this is the mother of all smokescreens. You are trying to divert attention from the crimes that you supported, from the theft of billions of dollars of Iraq's wealth.

"Have a look at the real Oil-for-Food scandal. Have a look at the 14 months you were in charge of Baghdad, the first 14 months when $8.8 billion of Iraq's wealth went missing on your watch. Have a look at Halliburton and other American corporations that stole not only Iraq's money, but the money of the American taxpayer.

"Have a look at the oil that you didn't even meter, that you were shipping out of the country and selling, the proceeds of which went who knows where? Have a look at the $800 million you gave to American military commanders to hand out around the country without even counting it or weighing it.

"Have a look at the real scandal breaking in the newspapers today, revealed in the earlier testimony in this committee. That the biggest sanctions busters were not me or Russian politicians or French politicians. The real sanctions busters were your own companies with the connivance of your own Government."

Where's the woad when you need it?