Despite The Surge

Even CNN - through reporter Anwa Damon - has seen through the constant hype of the Bush cabal over the past year's surge of US troops into Baghdad. (CNN online, January 31)

Anyone in their right mind is going to be profoundly grateful for the big drop in violence in Baghdad. But of course the story does not stop there.

Baghdad residents told Damon that "almost everyone knows someone -- a family member or friend -- who has been killed or kidnapped." They said that their capital is barely recognizable. "Baghdad is largely chopped into sectarian blocks, each guarded by its own armed force, most supported by the United States. And many Iraqis still don't dare cross sectarian lines."

A young Iraqi man tells Damon: "This isn't a government. It's a mob that came to govern a palace called the Green Zone, and it can't even govern that."

An Iraqi doctor says: "I told my friends once that we must all go to heaven -- us Iraqis -- because we have already been to hell."

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As of today, the number of US troops killed in Iraq is 3,943.

Another disgusting AG

Though attorney general Alberto Gonzales has departed the scene of the Bushite crimes, his successor Michael Mukasey is marching to the same old dreadful drumbeat.

Bush loyalist Mukasey cannot bring himself to admit that waterboarding - prohibited by the US military and the CIA - is a form of torture and therefore clearly illegal.

Mukasey tangled this week with Senators Patrick Leahy, Ted Kennedy and Arlen Specter. Leahy told the AG: "It is not enough just to say that waterboarding is not currently authorized. The attorney general of the United States should be able to declare that it is wrong, it is illegal, and it is beyond the pale. It has been for over a century."

Eleven more months of this hellish administration. God help us.

A personal note

Almost every night since George W. Bush first moved into the White House, I have sent out articles to a list I called (like this blog) "j&p" - justice and peace. But beginning last Saturday, my ISP (Cox) would not send out any of the articles to the 135 people on the list. Over those four days I just kept getting a cryptic message that basically said I was a potential spammer.

After carefully going through the Cox website, talking by phone with one of their (courteous) reps and sending email to the company, all I ended up with was useless automated email responses. Then I finally reached someone on the Cox phone who had some answers. He said that long lists are being seen as potential spam and told me not to go above 20 recipients per list. (Apparently these limits are becoming common all around.) Not willing to post each article to seven separate j&p lists every night, I decided to shut down my little operation of seven years.

I've informed everyone who was on the list that I will try - as a partial replacement - to post to this blog each night.

ricardo
jan. 30, 2008

The Bush cabal's mega-mendacity

The whole world knows that BushWorld is LieWorld.

Now we've got the numbers.

Last Tuesday two nonprofits, the Center for Public Integrity and the Fund for Independence in Journalism, released the results of their study that showed Bush and Co. put out a ton of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Some of those numbers:

935 false statements in two years from Team Bush, including 532 statements that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaida or both.

Bush himself: 259 false statements, 231 about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 28 about Iraq's links to al-Qaida

Colin Powell: 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq and al-Qaida.

Other stars of the show: Vice President Dick Cheney, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan.

And the media just ate it all up.

A well-dressed hate group

The folks at the Southern Poverty Law Center are again talking plain English. They always do.

The center has added the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR, hah) to its list of hate groups.

FAIR was founded in 1959 by John Tanton, one of our country's leading racists and nativists. Its connections to hate groups has been well documented by the SPLC. (www.splcenter.org and www.tolerance.org)

Perhaps the worst part of the whole picture is that the mainline media often turn to FAIR as a resource. The SPLC says in its winter report: "FAIR's history of hatred is troubling, but even more so is the fact that the mainstream media frequently rely on the group for information and commentary. In just the first 10 months of 2007, the group was quoted in mainstream media outlets nearly 500 times with virtually no mention of its more unsavory aspects. Its president was featured on CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight at least 12 times during the same period... FAIR also has been taken seriously by the Congress, which has called upon its officials to testify on immigratiion more than 30 times since 2000."

There's just no excuse for this.

Primary questions

On this night of Hillary Rodham Clinton's surprise win over Barack Obama in New Hampshire, I am wondering:

* Why on earth (literally, since no other democracy on the planet has to bear with such lunacy) do we have to spend two years watching presidential candidates breathlessly run around the country doing their campaign thing?

* Why is said lunacy apparently going to cost one billion dollars this time around?

* Why do people trust polls? Tonight, according to those sacred cows, Hillary was going to get clobbered by Barack. Even her own in-house polling came to that conclusion. So Hillary took an early lead and stayed ahead all the way. (And I suppose that by 8 a.m. the pollsters will start calling people in South Carolina and Michigan.)

* In 2009, will the vociferous protestations against Bush-blest corporate greed presently coming from the mouths of the top Democratic candidates actually take hold in the White House? Now THAT would be change.

Tonight in Iowa

I had thought tonight in Iowa would be a lot of ho-hum. Now I think I was very wrong. Here are some reasons why:

* Exit polls apparently showed that--despite all the media reports on the success of the Surge--the Iraq war/occupation is still issue number one for voters. (And nobody is forgetting that Hillary has consistently refused to admit that her pro-war vote was wrong.)

* The turnout of Democrats was relatively huge.(Maybe national stupor is not so widespread after all.)

* Young folks (under 30) are listening to Obama's call for real change and following him in droves. 57% of voters in that age bracket voted for Obama tonight.

* The fact that Iowa's independent voters went big for Obama is a good omen for the rest of the primary season. (Considering the power of the Clinton machine, I was somewhat dumbfounded that she came in third.)

* Interesting that the two winners, Obama and Huckabee, had been criticized for being outsiders who did not have experience. (I love Obama's riposte in recent months--that Cheney and Rumsfeld were men with lots and lots of experience.)

New Hampshire, here they come (minus at least three candidates so far.)