The level of activity that we see today from a military standpoint, I think, will clearly decline. I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency."
We've been hearing this kind of talk a lot lately...
“We see these attacks as another desperate attempt by the terrorists to discredit the newly formed Iraqi government,” US-led forces said in a statement. (29 April 2005)
Maybe it means they really are getting desperate...
"So the level of violence will be high during this period of time because they're desperate. They know the window is closing. They know they've either got to derail the process now, or ultimately we'll succeed in our objectives there." (Cheney, 29 September 2004)
"They are becoming more deadly because we think they are getting more desperate," Dr Allawi said. (24 September 2004)
"The general said the letter-writer's recommendation of instigating sectarian violence in Iraq "is almost a sign of desperation." (Gen. Kimmet, 9 February 2004)
"As they approach Baghdad, our fighting units are facing the most desperate elements of a doomed regime." (President Bush, 27 March 2003)
Or maybe it just means we're getting really desperate.
UPDATE: Josh Marshall notes that Cheney declared that the insurgency was in its last throes, and that the insurgency would be over by 2009. I just love how this man can say whatever the hell he wants, with no logic or sense, and the media just lets it go.
At least they're consistent.
But I guess you don't even need a ministry of truth to destroy the past if no one pays any attention anyway.
One of the lamest statements of the year. Bush at his news conference: I think the Iraqi people dealt the insurgents a serious blow when they had the elections [in January]." That's right, kids...the bad guys have been blowing themselves up for the last five months because of low self-esteem.
A
coalition of veterans' groups, peace groups, and political activist
groups announced a campaign today to urge that the U.S. Congress launch
a formal investigation into whether President Bush has committed
impeachable offenses in connection with the Iraq war. The campaign
focuses on evidence that recently emerged in a British memo containing
minutes of a secret July 2002 meeting with British Prime Minister Tony
Blair and his top national security officials.
John
Bonifaz, a Boston attorney specializing in constitutional litigation,
sent a memo to Congressman John Conyers of Michigan, the Ranking
Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, urging him to introduce a
Resolution of Inquiry directing the House Judiciary Committee to launch
a formal investigation into whether sufficient grounds exist for the
House to impeach President Bush.
Bonifaz's memo, made available
today at www.AfterDowningStreet.org, begins: "The recent release of the
Downing Street Memo provides new and compelling evidence that the
President of the United States has been actively engaged in a
conspiracy to deceive and mislead the United States Congress and the
American people about the basis for going to war against Iraq. If true,
such conduct constitutes a High Crime under Article II, Section 4 of
the United States Constitution."
In February and March 2003,
John Bonifaz served as lead counsel for a coalition of United States
soldiers, parents of U.S. soldiers, and Members of Congress (led by
Representatives John Conyers, Jr. and Dennis Kucinich) in a federal
lawsuit challenging President George W. Bush’s authority to wage war
against Iraq absent a congressional declaration of war or equivalent
action. Bonifaz is the author of Warrior-King: The Case for Impeaching
George W. Bush (NationBooks-NY, 2004, foreword by Rep. John Conyers,
Jr.), which chronicles that case and its meaning for the United States
Constitution.
The organizations forming the
AfterDowningStreet.org coalition include: Global Exchange, Gold Star
Families for Peace, Democrats.com, Veterans for Peace, Code Pink,
Progressive Democrats of America, and Democracy Rising. These
organizations, beginning today, will be urging their members to contact
their Representatives to urge support of a Resolution of Inquiry.
Congressman Conyers is now seeking 100,000 signatures to sign a letter on the Downing Street Inquiry.Information available at Raw Story and dKos.
Sign the letter here.Write to your Congresspeople here.
Daniel
Ellsberg once said that what's good about the American people is that
you have to lie to them. What's bad about Americans is that it's so
easy to do.
..It is our duty to ensure that [soldiers] never are called to make that sacrifice unless it is truly necessary.. 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...
Also comes word, from the May 19 New York Times, that senior U.S. military leaders are not encouraged about prospects in Iraq. Yes, they think the United States can prevail, but as one said, it may take "many years."
As this bloody month of car bombs and American deaths -- the most since January -- comes to a close, as
we gather in groups small and large to honor our war dead, let us all
sing of their bravery and sacrifice. But let us also ask their
forgiveness for sending them to a war that should never have happened.
In the 1960s it was Vietnam. Today it is Iraq. Let us resolve to never,
ever make this mistake again. Our young people are simply too precious.
The stories about its origin are indeed varied. Perhaps it began as "Decoration Day." The stories I heard was that families would go out to the cemeteries to honor the dead from the Civil War. Graves would be decorated, picnics would be held. The dead and the living would both be honored. Where it originated, and how, is still subject to debate and conjecture. But this much seems clear: we used to be more mature about such things.
We used to recall that war had a high price,
and yet we too easily forget how easily is it paid when all the bodies
are out of sight. It wasn't long after the Civil War, after all, that
we were engaged in the glorious adventure of liberating the
Philippines. Apparently inspired by that venture, Mark Twain wrote his
famous "War Prayer." But even so, we used to honor our dead soldiers.
Perhaps
the Gettysburg Address is linked to Memorial Day, too. The eloquence of
Lincoln is unimaginable in any living politician. But just try to
imagine any of them even addressing the subject of death in this way:
Four score and seven years
ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation,
conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that "all men
are created equal"
Now we are engaged in a great civil war,
testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so
dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle field of that
war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it, as a final resting place
for those who died here, that the nation might live. This we may, in
all propriety do. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can
not consecrate -- we can not hallow, this ground -- The brave men,
living and dead, who struggled here, have hallowed it, far above our
poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long
remember what we say here; while it can never forget what they did here.
It
is rather for us, the living, we here be dedicated to the great task
remaining before us -- that, from these honored dead we take increased
devotion to that cause for which they here, gave the last full measure
of devotion -- that we here highly resolve these dead shall not have
died in vain; that the nation, shall have a new birth of freedom, and
that government of the people by the people for the people, shall not
perish from the earth.
Lincoln praised those who died in a valiant struggle to preserve the
union, to keep the nation from ending. "I wish I could translate the
hints about the dead young men and women,/And the hints about old men
and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps./ What do
you think has become of the young and old men?/What do you think has
become of the women and children?" I think: "A wise man who speaks his
mind calmly is more to be heeded than a commander shouting orders among
fools." I think: "Wisdom is better than weapons of war, and one mistake
can undo many things done well." (Ecclesiastes 9:17-18, NEB)
Ian Sample, science correspondent Friday May 27, 2005 The Guardian
Scientists
in America have found the first evidence that common chemicals used in
products as diverse as cosmetics, toys, clingfilm and plastic bags may
harm the development of unborn baby boys.
Researchers
have long known that high levels of substances called phthalates have
gender-bending effects on male animals, making them more feminine and
leading to poor sperm quality and infertility. The new study suggests
that even normal levels of phthalates, which are ubiquitous, can
disrupt the development of male babies' reproductive organs.
The
discovery poses a huge problem for the chemical industry, which is
already embroiled in a battle with the government over EU proposals on
chemical safety.
Several types of
phthalates, which are used to make plastics more pliable, and have been
around for more than 50 years, have been banned, but many are still
produced in vast quantities.
The study was carried out by
scientists from centres across the US, including the University of
Rochester and the National Centre for Environmental Health.Several
types of phthalates, which are used to make plastics more pliable, and
have been around for more than 50 years, have been banned, but many are
still produced in vast quantities.
The study was carried out by
scientists from centres across the US, including the University of
Rochester and the National Centre for Environmental Health.
The
researchers measured the levels of nine widely used phthalates in the
urine of pregnant women and compared them with standard physiological
measurements of their babies.
Tests
showed that women with higher levels of four different phthalates were
more likely to have baby boys with a range of conditions, from smaller
penises and undescended testicles to a shorter perineum, the distance
between the genitals and the anus. The differences, say the authors, indicate a feminisation of the boys similar to that seen in animals exposed to the chemicals.
Gwynne Lyons, toxics adviser to the WWF, said: "At the moment regulation of the chemicals industry is woefully inadequate."
She added: "Right now
the government is looking at how the regulation of hormone disrupting
chemicals could be made more effective under new EU chemicals law, but
the chemicals industry is lobbying very hard to water down this
legislation.
"Political agreement
on this legislation is not expected until later this year so it remains
to be seen whether the UK government has the guts to stand up to
industry lobbying. If they don't, wildlife and baby boys will be the losers."
All sick joking aside, this is a very worrying result. This story
isn't new and it has lots of hard data to back it up. I first saw a
documentary on it in Canada about eight years ago and the WHO has been
trying for ten years to figure out why Men's sperm counts have been in
dramatic decline for the last twenty years.
At the rate that we're going... we may not need birth control in a few more years!
This week's installment of the Presidential iPod Commission is a fine ditty from the young indie rock sage Bright Eyes. Bright Eyes is the musical vehicle of Conor Oberst, a young singer-songwriter from Nebraska. Looking like a young Bob Dylan, he actually performed When The President Talks to God on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno a few weeks ago. You may download a free mp3 of the song and watch the video of the Tonight Show performance here. Don't ask me how or why NBC (General Electric) gave him airtime. The executives probably never listened to the song.
I'm glad he received that exposure. The song deserves it.
When the president talks to God Are the conversations brief or long? Does he ask to rape our women's rights And send poor farm kids off to die? Does God suggest an oil hike When the president talks to God?
When the president talks to God Are the consonants all hard or soft? Is he resolute all down the line? Is every issue black or white? Does what God say ever change his mind When the president talks to God?
When the president talks to God Does he fake that drawl or merely nod? Agree which convicts should be killed? Where prisons should be built and filled? Which voter fraud must be concealed When the president talks to God?
When the president talks to God I wonder which one plays the better cop We should find some jobs. the ghetto's broke No, they're lazy, George, I say we don't Just give 'em more liquor stores and dirty coke That's what God recommends
When the president talks to God Do they drink near beer and go play golf While they pick which countries to invade Which Muslim souls still can be saved? I guess god just calls a spade a spade When the president talks to God
When the president talks to God Does he ever think that maybe he's not? That that voice is just inside his head When he kneels next to the presidential bed Does he ever smell his own bullshit When the president talks to God?
I doubt it
I doubt it
I doubt it too. What do you think God tells President Bush?
Torturing prisoners, rather than making the U.S. safer, puts us all in greater danger. Herbert:
People have been murdered, tortured, rendered to foreign countries to be tortured at a distance, sexually violated, imprisoned without trial or in some cases simply made to "disappear" in an all-American version of a practice previously associated with brutal Latin American dictatorships.All of this has been done, of course, in the name of freedom.
We are what we have always been. It's just that the mask has slipped. Think of Birmingham and Watts, of Wounded Knee, of the Phillipines and Cuba, of Central American wars fought over fruit, of Hiroshima and Hanoi, of steel strikes and all the rest of the places where American brutality has surfaced.
We remember what we want to remember, most of the time. We are not all evil, but we've never been what we wanted to be, either. And it's grieving for the death of the myth, the dream, the goal, that makes us Progressives instead of Republicans, I think.
What keeps me awake at night is that this is our tax dollars at work. Sometimes I think about it and makes me very uneasy: no matter how much I protest, a huge chunk of the money I pay in taxes is being used in these neocon adventures. I know there's not much of an alternative to that and this is how our society works, but I feel used: they take the largest part of my tax dollar to finance delusional crusades around the world, something I strongly oppose. Then they turn around and tell me they are doing it on my name.
It blows.
In the meantime public schools are going to hell, teachers are paid miserable salaries, our infrastructure is decaying at an alarming rate, and more Americans than ever have to get around without health insurance.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An FBI agent wrote in a 2002 document made public on Wednesday that a detainee held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had accused American jailers there of flushing the Koran down a toilet.
The American Civil Liberties Union released the memo and other FBI documents it obtained from the government under court order through the Freedom of Information Act.
"Personally, he has nothing against the United States. The guards in the detention facility do not treat him well. Their behavior is bad. About five months ago, the guards beat the detainees. They flushed a Koran in the toilet," the FBI agent wrote.
"It's not credible," chief Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said of the allegation regarding a Koran in a toilet. Di Rita said the U.S. military questioned the detainee on May 14, and that the man was "very cooperative and answered the questions but did not corroborate the allegation recorded on Aug. 1, 2002." Di Rita said he did not know whether the man actually recanted the allegation.
"These kind of, sort of, fantastic charges about our guys doing something willfully heinous to a Koran for the purposes of rattling detainees are not credible on their face," Di Rita told reporters.
HOLY BOOK
The documents indicated that detainees were making allegations that they had been abused and that the Muslim holy book had been mishandled as early as April 2002, about three months after the first detainees arrived at Guantanamo. In other documents, FBI agents stated that Guantanamo detainees also accused U.S. personnel of kicking the Koran and throwing it to the floor, and described beatings by guards. But one document cited a detainee who accused a guard of dropping a Koran, prompting an "uprising" by prisoners, when it was the prisoner himself who dropped it.
"Unfortunately, one thing we've learned over the last couple of years is that detainee statements about their treatment at Guantanamo and other detention centers sometimes have turned out to be more credible than U.S. government statements," said ACLU lawyer Jameel Jaffer. Former detainees and a lawyer for current prisoners previously have stated that U.S. personnel at Guantanamo had placed the Koran in a toilet, but the Pentagon has said it also does not view those allegations as credible.
In document written in April 2003, an FBI agent related a detainee's account of an incident involving a female U.S. interrogator.
"While the guards held him, she removed her blouse, embraced the detainee from behind and put her hand on his genitals. The interrogator was on her menstrual period and she wiped blood from her body on his face and head," the memo stated.
A similar incident was described in a recent book written by a former Guantanamo interrogator.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan last week said Newsweek "got the facts wrong" and Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman called the article "demonstrably false." Di Rita said last week the Pentagon had received "no credible and specific allegations" that U.S. personnel had put a Koran in the toilet.
Will Newsweek Retract its Retraction?And Isikoff un-apologize?
Who will they blame for the Iraq and Afghanistan setbacks? Don't worry, there's always the usual gays, blacks, women, liberals, communinsts, atheists, the all-around infidels, and the Clintons.
now it is true that i believe this country is following a dangerous trend when it permits too great a degree of centralization of governmental functions. i oppose this--in some instances the fight is a rather desperate one. but to attain any success it is quite clear that the federal government cannot avoid or escape responsibilities which the mass of the people firmly believe should be undertaken by it. the political processes of our country are such that if a rule of reason is not applied in this effort, we will lose everything--even to a possible and drastic change in the constitution. this is what i mean by my constant insistence upon "moderation" in government. should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. there is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. among them are h.l. hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. their number is negligible and they are stupid.
-president eisenhower letter to his brother, edgar newton eisenhower, on 8 november 1954.
American F.B.I. agents repeatedly interrogated two United States citizens who were illegally detained for eight months and did nothing to stop them from being tortured by Pakistani authorities, a human rights group said Tuesday.
The brothers, Zain and Kashan Afzal, ages 23 and 25, respectively, both Americans of Pakistani descent, were arrested at their Karachi home last August and kept in secret Pakistani detention facilities for eight months until their release on April 22. No charges were ever filed, and for many months their family did not know where they were, according to a report by the group, Human Rights Watch.
"What crime did we commit?" a distraught Zain Afzal said in a brief telephone interview from Karachi. "If we did something wrong, would they let us go? It was an illegal detention."
The Afzal brothers' claims suggest a close collaboration of American and Pakistani intelligence officials in vetting terror suspects, and they raise questions about the responsibilities that the United States has for its own citizens abroad.
[snip]
The two told Human Rights Watch that they had been interrogated six times over the eight months by F.B.I. agents and had been repeatedly questioned by American and Pakistani intelligence officials about their role in Al Qaeda - a role they denied having - and were threatened with detention at the American base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Human Rights Watch said in a statement on Tuesday that the F.B.I. agents did not intervene to end torture, insist that the Pakistani government comply with a Pakistani court order to produce the men in court or provide consular services normally offered to detained Americans.
"Instead," the group said, "they threatened the men with being sent to the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay if they did not confess to involvement in terrorism."
The Supreme Court got it right over a century ago in Ex parte Milligan (1866):
....No graver question was ever considered by this court, nor one which more nearly concerns the rights of the whole [71 U.S. 2, 119] people; for it is the birthright of every American citizen when charged with crime, to be tried and punished according to law. The power of punishment is, alone through the means which the laws have provided for that purpose, and if they are ineffectual, there is an immunity from punishment, no matter how great an offender the individual may be, or how much his crimes may have shocked the sense of justice of the country, or endangered its safety. By the protection of the law human rights are secured; withdraw that protection, and they are at the mercy of wicked rulers, or the clamor of an excited people.
The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times, [71 U.S. 2, 121] and under all circumstances. No doctrine, involving more pernicious consequences, was ever invented by the wit of man than that any of its provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government. Such a doctrine leads directly to anarchy or despotism, but the theory of necessity on which it is based is false; for the government, within the Constitution, has all the powers granted to it, which are necessary to preserve its existence; as has been happily proved by the result of the great effort to throw off its just authority....
Sorry, these 'americans' are not white enough for amerikans to care.
Some people keep forgetting that everything changed on 1/20/01. The world shifted on its axis. Old rules and laws became inoperative. Everything became legal for government to do. Remember, that was when our country came under attack and the long, long war began. Never forget it.
It's bad enough these "values" charlatans are moral degenerates. They have to try and foist their false morality down the rest of our throats. Bennett, Bakker, Swaggart, Limbaugh, and the rest of the hypocritical moralistic gang need to get their own house in order before they preach their brand of cynical morality on the rest of us.
Myth: Republicans value sexual morality
Fact: There’s an entire newsgroup just for right-wing Christian pedophiles.
There is almost too much to explore here, too much twisted psychology and inverted morality though it's safe to say perhaps the most insidious angle of this story is the vicious hypocrisy of the gay-hatin' Republican Party itself, along with their giddy self-righteous fluffers from the Religious Right.
And someone should really do a national, once-and-for-all study to back up what everyone already knows -- which is, that the more repressed and sanctimonious and uptight you are about sex and love and gender and religion, the more likely you are to be involved in secret kink, in deep perversion, illegal perversion, perversion that crosses the line from healthy and slippery and delicious to degrading and morally reprehensible.
Which brings up one more tidbit. A twisted kicker. Spokane, homogeneous, uneventful, wildly uninteresting (well, until now) hometown with the not-so-secretly gay and possible pedophilic Republican hypocrite mayor, is also the home of only the third Roman Catholic archdiocese in the nation (after Portland and Tucson) to file for bankruptcy protection. Because of all the lawsuits. Dozens of lawsuits, all against Spokane's archdiocese. Lawsuits over, you guessed it, sex scandals.
Pedophilia. Sexual abuse of young boys. About $76 million worth of lawsuits, to be exact, most stemming from allegations against one Spokane priest, Patrick O'Donnell, who admitted molesting young boys from the time he was in the seminary. Coincidence? Something in the Spokane water? Karmic connection with West?
There is, of course, zero causal link between homosexuality and pedophilia. I couldn't care less that West, and other GOP people like him, might be gay, or bisexual, or whatever the hell else he tells himself he is when he goes to sleep at night and dreams of, I don't know what. Bunnies. In leather chaps. On fire.
Here's what does it. Here's what makes West, and people like him, rife with potential for, well, some of the nastiest and most dishonest and dangerous abuses humans are capable of.
It's the ability to ignore the incredible hypocrisy of their own lives, the staggering amount of self-loathing, the pathetic insincerity. It's the ability to join a political party that not only openly loathes, but actually violently condemns, your choice in sexual partners, a sexually ignorant platform that claims to have some sort of direct line to a gay-hating war-loving God, and then, in the middle of who knows how many gay affairs, to feel no shame as you step right up and endorse that exact same hateful agenda as public policy.
It's the fact that, in West's case, you can still sleep at night after you've voted against gay love and railed against healthy teen sex and bashed women's rights and criticized adult/youth sex when you are, in fact, so confused and lost and deeply engaged in much of it yourself that it's very likely your mangled, hypocritical mind has lost the ability to distinguish between informed, consensual, happily kinky adult relationships and, say, abusing the honest trust of a pre-teen boy. Or, for that matter, many boys.
Join that party and toe that line and swallow that nasty doctrine and spit it out into the world like oozing red-meat dogma while you secretly use your power to lure in teenagers and men for sex, and I don't put anything past you. To my mind, this gang of GOP fundies are capable of anything. Anything at all EXCEPT anything that is healthy, decent, kind and loving.
of catkillers, fundamentalists, and the undead: seems like his nuclear option was more bluster than "shock and awe"...
Seems to me that the biggest take-away is that this is a no-confidence vote for Senator Frist. These seven Republicans undercut his agenda and committed not to follow his lead on the nuclear option. While that deal can be broken at any time, any Senator who signed the document and then votes for the nuclear option is set up for a flip-flop charge at their next election. It puts them on the defensive if they choose to break the deal later.
Reid is simarly undercut but he was not the one who staked his reputation on this issue. In fact, he may even have approved but was unable to enter into the negotiations as leader. Can the minority leader negotiate with anybody on the other side, or is there a tradition that the leadership only deals with the other side's leadership?
Now, on the merits, it's clearly a loss that these three get confirmed. But maybe that was inevitable anyway, and now there's a majority of Senators who have committed not to go nuclear, regardless of the firmness of that commitment. That repudiation leaves Frist weakened, which can only be a good thing.
Given the last head count, it looked like Frist was going to have enough votes to pull the trigger on the nuclear option tomorrow and get all the judges through. This deal bloodied his nose and will keep at least two of the five, maybe three, from getting through.
Was it everything we wanted? No. But we wound up getting a lot more than we would've, and the first round of press spin is marking this round to the Democrats.
Frist is dead in the water for '08, the conservative base is going to howl for a while and turn on its moderates, Dobson has steam coming out of his ears, etc. All in all, the 2006 midterms are going to be great for us.
Cory Doctorow: There's loads of great stuff to love in this Worth1000 photoshopping competition to remix Star Wars cliches, but the Beverly Hillbillies mashup, "Return of the Jed," (pictured here) made me laugh aloud. Link
Good news from 
The stories about its origin are indeed varied. Perhaps it began as "Decoration Day." The stories I heard was that families would go out to the cemeteries to honor the dead from the Civil War. Graves would be decorated, picnics would be held. The dead and the living would both be honored. Where it originated, and how, is still subject to debate and conjecture. But this much seems clear: we used to be more mature about such things.
Scientists
in America have found the first evidence that common chemicals used in
products as diverse as cosmetics, toys, clingfilm and plastic bags may
harm the development of unborn baby boys.
This week's installment of the 
American F.B.I. agents repeatedly interrogated two United States citizens who were illegally detained for eight months and did nothing to stop them from being tortured by Pakistani authorities, a human rights group said Tuesday.
of catkillers, fundamentalists, and the undead: seems like his nuclear option was more bluster than "shock and awe"...
There's loads of great stuff to love in this Worth1000 photoshopping competition to remix Star Wars cliches, but the Beverly Hillbillies mashup, "Return of the Jed," (pictured here) made me laugh aloud. 