Maureen re Dick C.

Some choice words from Maureen Dowd's column in today's New York Times:

" Things had been going so smoothly. The global torture franchise was up and running. Halliburton contracts were flowing. Tax cuts were sailing through. Oil companies were raking it in. Alaska drilling was thrillingly close. The courts were defending his executive privilege on energy policy, and people were still buying all that smoke about Saddam's being responsible for 9/11, and that drivel about how we're fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here. Everything was groovy.

"But not anymore. Cheney could not believe that Karl had made him go out and call that loudmouth Jack Murtha a patriot. He was sure the Pentagon generals had put the congressman up to calling for a withdrawal from Iraq. Is the military brass getting in touch with its pacifist side? In Wyoming, Vice shoots doves.

" How dare Murtha suggest that Cheney dodged and dodged and dodged and dodged and dodged the draft? Murtha thinks he knows about war just because he served in one and was a marine for 37 years? Vice started his own war. Now that's a credential!"

Lest one feel sorry for DeLay

Poor, persecuted, harassed Tom DeLay....

- Said the EPA is "the Gestapo of government."
- Wants to repeal the Clean Air Act because "it's never been proven that air toxins are hazardous to people."
- Repeatedly has said that judges on the other side of issues "need to be intimidated."
- Rejects the idea of a separation of church and state.
- Denies there are parents trying to raise families on the minium wage, saying "fortunately such families do not exist."
- Said "A woman can't take care of the family. It takes a man to provide structure."

(Reference, Newsweek 10/10/05, pg. 35)

To George on Thanksgiving

A couple of paragraphs from Cindy Sheehan's letter to George Bush on Thanksgiving Day as she was returning to the peace campsite in Crawford, Texas:

"Also, since August we have discovered that American forces are using chemical weapons in Iraq ... The Army admitted that white phosphorous was used as an offensive weapon against 'enemy combatants.' Oh really, George, since when did a weapon fired from a distance distinguish between enemies and innocents? Especially when it is so hard for soldiers on the ground to differentiate between enemies and innocents? It is hard for one to ignore if not look away from the grisly pictures of the burned citizens of Fallujah. By the way, George, isn't the use of chemical weapons prohibited? Don't you always say that "Saddam is a bad man" for using chemical weapons on his own people? So is it okay for you to use chemical weapons in Iraq because the citizens of Iraq are not 'your' people? ...

"Are you and Laura going to hit the sack tonight and toss and turn or stare out of the window worried that Jenna or Barbara may be killed in Iraq? Are you going to jump at every single ringing of the telephone, will your hearts beat wildly at every knock at the door, fearing the Angel of Death in an Army uniform? I didn't think so. Two soldiers were killed today in Iraq, George. I hope to God their families aren't just sitting down to enjoy their meal when the grim reapers come to tell them their holidays are ruined for ever. There is no good time for such horrendous news."

While Bush is riding his bike...

A little piece of Frank Rich's article in the NY Times today:

A USA Today/CNN/Gallup survey last week found that the percentage (52) of Americans who want to get out of Iraq fast, in 12 months or less, is even larger than the percentage (48) that favored a quick withdrawal from Vietnam when that war's casualty toll neared 54,000 in the apocalyptic year of 1970.

Meltdown time

It seems like most of the world is just plain disgusted. And no wonder. No wonder at all.

The ugliness has been visible to everybody since "Shock and Awe." But now a new cancer seems to surface under the spotlight every day. U.S. torture stations uncovered in "friendly" countries. Clear evidence that chemical weapons, specifically white phosphorous (which burns human flesh right down to the bone), were used last year in the ferocious attack on Falluja. (First they denied it, then they said it was legal to use it against combatants--who of course were sitting amongst a multitude of civilians. Is this equal-opportunity devastation?) FEMA sending displaced Katrina families into the streets. One Bush-crony scandal after another. New revelations in the Plame affair. while prosecutor Fitzgerald makes it clear that his investigation is not closing down. (Will it get to Cheney?) Afghanistan thriving as a global heroin store, while president Karzai has to be protected by 100 U.S. guards and the Taliban are thriving. And in the meantime, ongoing efforts to give the super-rich more tax breaks and the corporate raptors less rules.

At least - finally - a majority of Americans are coming out of their stupor. Lots more bombast will continue to come out of the White House of course. But the people ain't gonna be fooled no more. It is just sad, profoundly sad, that the wake-up has taken so long.

While celebrity entrances...

I wonder if anyone could produce a comparative study of media coverage of just Britney, Madonna and Tom Cruise against coverage of post-earthquake Kashmir.

On Nov. 8, Salman Rushdie wrote in the Toronto Star that up to three million people are homeless as the Himalayan winter sets in. 70,000 injured wait for help on the Pakistani side. Aid continues to arrive, but not nearly enough to avoid unimaginable disaster. Time is running out for international emergency funding.

In the meantime, Rushdie writes, "India and Pakistan are still mired in mutual suspicion, as the saga of the Indian helicopters reveals: India offered them, but Pakistan refused to accept them unless they were flown by Pakistani pilots, which India in turn refused to accept. Meanwhile the quake victims went right on dying. Moreover, as the recent murder of a moderate Kashmiri politician showed, and as the bombs in Delhi would seem to confirm, there are Islamist groups who remain determined to sabotage any improvement in Indo-Pakistani relations."

Rushdie says that the final death toll could be greater than the tsunami's (i.e., over 290,000) and that this could become the greatest natural calamity in human history.

Meantime, back on celebrity TV... What was it again that George and Laura served Charles and Camilla for dinner?

Revealing the US spy budget

Well, after all these decades of impenetrable secrecy, it is out. The NY Times reported on Nov. 9 that an insider accidentally spilt the beans on how much the US spends on its espionage agencies. The amount is $44 billion. (That is close to recent estimates of about $40 billion.)
 
"In court cases, intelligence officials have argued that disclosing the spy budget would create pressure to disclose more spending details, and that such revelations could aid U.S. adversaries. That argument has been rejected by many in the Congress and other experts, who note that most of the Defense Department budget is published in exhaustive detail without evident harm."
 

W. in a nutshell

I just got this from a friend:

George Bush has started a disastrous war under false pretenses by lying to the American people and to the Congress;
he has run a budget surplus into a severe deficit;
he has consistently and unconscionably favored the wealthy and corporations over the rights and needs of the population;
he has destroyed trust and confidence in and good will toward the US around the globe;
he has ignored global warming, to the world's detriment;
he has wantonly broken our treaty obligations;
he has condoned torture of prisoners;
he has attempted to create a theocracy in the land;
he has appointed incompetent cronies to positions of vital national importance.

Bush's travel companions

In reporting on the massive protest against Bush at the Fourth Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata, Argentina. the current issue of The Nation tells of "the imperial-style arrival of the US president with an entourage of 2,000 people and four AWACS surveillance systems."

It does not say if Karl Rove was one of the 2,000. Heck, even Libby could hide in that crowd.

America awakens

Here is what Rep. Dennis Kucinich had to say today in his article in "In These Times":

"Every major poll confirms that the war is a loser for the president and his party. Consider one of the most prominent: The ABC/Washington Post poll, which has surveyed public opinion on the war regularly since March 2003. Responses to all pertinent key questions clearly show eroding support for the war. Support for the president’s handling of Iraq has steadily fallen; belief that the war was worth fighting has fallen; belief that the number of U.S. casualties are an acceptable cost of the war has steadily fallen; belief that the war has contributed to U.S. long-term security has steadily fallen, and support for keeping forces in Iraq has steadily fallen. There are no exceptions to this trend."

Finally, finally. But it seems that awakenings like this always take such a gruesome amount of time. Nevertheless, every day that brings withdrawal closer is in its own way redemptive.