There Are No Moral Giants In The Iraq Mess

Only degenrate garden slugs.

Frank Rich
The New York Times
May 27, 2007

When all else fails, those pious Americans who conceived and directed the Iraq war fall back on moral self-congratulation: at least we brought liberty and democracy to an oppressed people. But that last-ditch rationalization has now become America’s sorriest self-delusion in this tragedy.

However wholeheartedly we disposed of their horrific dictator, the Iraqis were always pawns on the geopolitical chessboard rather than actual people in the administration’s reckless bet to “transform” the Middle East.

From “Stuff happens!” on, nearly every aspect of Washington policy in Iraq exuded contempt for the beneficiaries of our supposed munificence. Now this animus is completely out of the closet. Without Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz to kick around anymore, the war’s dead-enders are pinning the fiasco on the Iraqis themselves.

Our government abhors them almost as much as the Lou Dobbs spear carriers loathe those swarming “aliens” from Mexico.

Iraqis are clamoring to get out of Iraq. Two million have fled so far and nearly two million more have been displaced within the country. (That’s a total of some 15 percent of the population.) Save the Children reported this month that Iraq’s child-survival rate is falling faster than any other nation’s. One Iraqi in eight is killed by illness or violence by the age of 5. Yet for all the words President Bush has lavished on Darfur and AIDS in Africa, there has been a deadly silence from him about what’s happening in the country he gave “God’s gift of freedom.”It’s easy to see why.

To admit that Iraqis are voting with their feet is to concede that American policy is in ruins. A “secure” Iraq is a mirage, and, worse, those who can afford to leave are the very professionals who might have helped build one. Thus the president says nothing about Iraq’s humanitarian crisis, the worst in the Middle East since 1948, much as he tried to hide the American death toll in Iraq by keeping the troops’ coffins off-camera and staying away from military funerals.

But his silence about Iraq’s mass exodus is not merely another instance of deceptive White House P.R.; it’s part of a policy with a huge human cost. The easiest way to keep the Iraqi plight out of sight, after all, is to prevent Iraqis from coming to America. And so we do, except for stray Shiites needed to remind us of purple fingers at State of the Union time or to frame the president in Rose Garden photo ops.

Since the 2003 invasion, America has given only 466 Iraqis asylum. Sweden, which was not in the coalition of the willing, plans to admit 25,000 Iraqis this year alone. Our State Department, goaded by January hearings conducted by Ted Kennedy, says it will raise the number for this year to 7,000 (a figure that, small as it is, may be more administration propaganda).

A bill passed by Congress this month will add another piddling 500, all interpreters.In reality, more than 5,000 interpreters worked for the Americans. So did tens of thousands of drivers and security guards who also, in Senator Kennedy’s phrase, have “an assassin’s bull’s-eye on their backs” because they served the occupying government and its contractors over the past four-plus years.

How we feel about these Iraqis was made naked by one of the administration’s most fervent hawks, the former United Nations ambassador John Bolton, speaking to The Times Magazine this month. He claimed that the Iraqi refugee problem had “absolutely nothing to do” with Saddam’s overthrow: “Our obligation was to give them new institutions and provide security.
We have fulfilled that obligation. I don’t think we have an obligation to compensate for the hardships of war.”

Actually, we haven’t fulfilled the obligation of giving them functioning institutions and security.

One of the many reasons we didn’t was that L. Paul Bremer’s provisional authority staffed the Green Zone with unqualified but well-connected Republican hacks who, in some cases, were hired after they expressed their opposition to Roe v. Wade. The administration is nothing if not consistent in its employment practices. The assistant secretary in charge of refugees at the State Department now, Ellen Sauerbrey, is a twice-defeated Republican candidate for governor of Maryland with no experience in humanitarian crises but a hefty résumé in anti-abortion politics. She is to Iraqis seeking rescue what Brownie was to Katrina victims stranded in the Superdome.

Ms. Sauerbrey’s official line on Iraqi refugees, delivered to Scott Pelley of “60 Minutes” in March, is that most of them “really want to go home.”

The administration excuse for keeping Iraqis out of America is national security: we have to vet every prospective immigrant for terrorist ties. But many of those with the most urgent cases for resettlement here were vetted already, when the American government and its various Halliburton subsidiaries asked them to risk their lives by hiring them in the first place. For those whose loyalties can no longer be vouched for, there is the contrasting lesson of Vietnam.

Julia Taft, the official in charge of refugees in the Ford administration, reminded Mr. Pelley that 131,000 Vietnamese were resettled in America within eight months of the fall of Saigon, despite loud, Dobbs-like opposition at the time. In the past seven months, the total number of Iraqis admitted to America was 69.

The diplomat Richard Holbrooke, whose career began during the Vietnam War, told me that security worries then were addressed by a vetting process carried out in safe, preliminary asylum camps for refugees set up beyond Vietnam’s borders in Asia. But as Mr. Holbrooke also points out in the current Foreign Affairs magazine, the real forerunner to American treatment of Iraqi refugees isn’t that war in any case, but World War II.

That’s when an anti-Semitic assistant secretary of state, Breckinridge Long, tirelessly obstructed the visa process to prevent Jews from obtaining sanctuary in America, not even filling the available slots under existing quotas. As many as 75,000 such refugees were turned away before the Germans cut off exit visas to Jews in late 1941, according to Howard Sachar’s “History of the Jews in America.”

Like the Jews, Iraqis are useful scapegoats.

This month Mr. Bremer declared that the real culprits for his disastrous 2003 decision to cleanse Iraq of Baathist officials were unnamed Iraqi politicians who “broadened the decree’s impact far beyond our original design.”

The Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, is chastising the Iraqis for being unable “to do anything they promised.”

The new White House policy, as Zbigniew Brzezinski has joked, is “blame and run.” It started to take shape just before the midterm elections last fall, when Mr. Rumsfeld wrote a memo (propitiously leaked after his defenestration) suggesting that the Iraqis might “have to pull up their socks, step up and take responsibility for their country.”

By January, Mr. Bush was saying that “the Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude” and wondering aloud “whether or not there is a gratitude level that’s significant enough in Iraq.” In February, one of the war’s leading neocon cheerleaders among the Beltway punditocracy lowered the boom. “Iraq is their country,” Charles Krauthammer wrote. “We midwifed their freedom. They chose civil war.” Bill O’Reilly and others now echo this cry.

The message is clear enough: These ungrateful losers deserve everything that’s coming to them. The Iraqis hear us and are returning the compliment. Whether Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is mocking American demands for timelines and benchmarks, or the Iraqi Parliament is setting its own timeline for American withdrawal even while flaunting its vacation schedule, Iraq’s nominal government is saying it’s fed up.

The American-Iraqi shotgun marriage of convenience, midwifed by disastrous Bush foreign policy, has disintegrated into the marriage from hell.

While the world waits for the White House and Congress to negotiate the separation agreement, the damage to the innocent family members caught in the cross-fire is only getting worse. Despite Mr. Bush’s May 10 claim that “the number of sectarian murders has dropped substantially” since the surge began, The Washington Post reported on Thursday that the number of such murders is going up.

For the Americans, the cost is no less dear. Casualty figures confirm that the past six months have been the deadliest yet for our troops.While it seems but a dim memory now, once upon a time some Iraqis did greet the Americans as liberators.

Today, in fact, it is just such Iraqis — not the local Iraqi insurgents the president conflates with Osama bin Laden’s Qaeda in Pakistan — who do want to follow us home. That we are slamming the door in their faces tells you all you need to know about the real morality beneath all the professed good intentions of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Though the war’s godfathers saw themselves as ridding the world of another Hitler, their legacy includes a humanitarian catastrophe that will need its own Raoul Wallenbergs and Oskar Schindlers if lives are to be saved.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

Congress Approves Bush's Oil Theft Plan

But don't expect cheaper gasoline. The idea is the control of fuel, not cheaper gas.

What Congress Really Approved:
Benchmark No. 1: Privatizing Iraq's Oil for US Companies

By Ann Wright
t r u t h o u t Guest Contributor
Saturday 26 May 2007


On Thursday, May 24, the US Congress voted to continue the war in Iraq. The members called it "supporting the troops." I call it stealing Iraq's oil - the second largest reserves in the world. The "benchmark," or goal, the Bush administration has been working on furiously since the US invaded Iraq is privatization of Iraq's oil. Now they have Congress blackmailing the Iraqi Parliament and the Iraqi people: no privatization of Iraqi oil, no reconstruction funds.

This threat could not be clearer. If the Iraqi Parliament refuses to pass the privatization legislation, Congress will withhold US reconstruction funds that were promised to the Iraqis to rebuild what the United States has destroyed there. The privatization law, written by American oil company consultants hired by the Bush administration, would leave control with the Iraq National Oil Company for only 17 of the 80 known oil fields. The remainder (two-thirds) of known oil fields, and all yet undiscovered ones, would be up for grabs by the private oil companies of the world (but guess how many would go to United States firms - given to them by the compliant Iraqi government.)

No other nation in the Middle East has privatized its oil. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and Iran give only limited usage contracts to international oil companies for one or two years. The $12 billion dollar "Support the Troops" legislation passed by Congress requires Iraq, in order to get reconstruction funds from the United States, to privatize its oil resources and put them up for long term (20- to 30-year) contracts.

What does this "Support the Troops" legislation mean for the United States military?

Supporting our troops has nothing to do with this bill, other than keeping them there for another 30 years to protect US oil interests. It means that every military service member will need Arabic language training. It means that every soldier and Marine would spend most of his or her career in Iraq. It means that the fourteen permanent bases will get new Taco Bells and Burger Kings! Why? Because the US military will be protecting the US corporate oilfields leased to US companies by the compliant Iraqi government. Our troops will be the guardians of US corporate interests in Iraq for the life of the contracts - for the next thirty years.

With the Bush administration's "Support the Troops" bill and its benchmarks, primarily Benchmark No. 1, we finally have the reason for the US invasion of Iraq: to get easily accessible, cheap, high-grade Iraq oil for US corporations.

Now the choice is for US military personnel and their families to decide whether they want their loved ones to be physically and emotionally injured to protect not our national security, but the financial security of the biggest corporate barons left in our country - the oil companies.

It's a choice for only our military families, because most non-military Americans do not really care whether our volunteer military spends its time protecting corporate oil to fuel our one-person cars. Of course, when a tornado, hurricane, flood or other natural disaster hits in our hometown, we want our National Guard unit back. But on a normal day, who remembers the 180,000 US military or the 150,000 US private contractors in Iraq?

Since the "Surge" began in January, over 500 Americans and 15,000 Iraqis have been killed. By the time September 2007 rolls around for the administration's review of the "surge" plan, another 400 Americans will be dead, as well as another 12,000 Iraqis.

How much more can our military and their families take?

Ann Wright served 29 years in the US Army and US Army Reserves and retired as a colonel. She served 16 years in the US diplomatic corps in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, Micronesia and Mongolia. She resigned from the US Department of State in March, 2003 in opposition to the war on Iraq.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

McCain, Bush; What Democracy?

Who would expect the Bushites to give a hoot about what the "democratically elected" parliament of Iraq thinks about anything?

They don't care what our congress thinks, nor do they care what the people who elected that congress think.

People who steal elections in a so-called Democracy are not great lovers of Democracy.

McCain and Bush: Making a Mockery of Democracy in Iraq

It's an odd thing to be running for president while simultaneously denigrating the very idea of democracy. But, then, the Republican Party's relationship to democracy has become, to put it charitably, very odd. Right now, they're barely on speaking terms, and if they could just have the whole relationship annulled, they probably would. Just like Rudy did with his first marriage (you know, the one to his cousin that lasted 14 years).

But wasn't democracy in the Middle East what the entire Iraq adventure was all about? Or, I should say, wasn't it the reason of last resort when the other 217 reasons turned out to be lies? Well, apparently, the idea of bringing the Iraqis democracy was about as real as Saddam's WMD.

Just listen to John McCain -- the biggest supporter of the war outside of Dick Cheney -- on this week's Meet the Press. Tim Russert asked him about the fact that 144 members of the 275 person Iraqi parliament signed a legislative petition last week calling on the U.S. to set a timetable to withdraw:

RUSSERT: The duly elected people's bodies, the U.S. Congress and the Iraqi parliament, say they want a troop withdrawal. That's more than a poll. Isn't that the voice of the people?

McCAIN: ...There is a certain amount of domestic political calculations involved there in what the Iraqi, quote, "parliament" said.

You could almost see the contempt dripping off McCain's lips: "The Iraqi, quote, 'parliament.'"
So what, pray tell, is the difference between a "parliament" and a parliament? To McCain it's apparently whether the parliament agrees with him. And, by the way, Senator, there is another word for "domestic political calculations": democracy. But McCain, like Bush, is too arrogant to believe that real democracy could ever include disagreement with their wishes.

The syllogism goes something like this:

a) I'm right. b) Democracy is right. c) Whatever I agree with is therefore "democracy" and whatever I don't agree with, isn't.

At least McCain didn't attack the Iraqi legislators as being "un-American."

Bush's lack of respect for democracy runs even deeper than McCain's and is topped only by his cynical use -- and abandonment -- of the concept.

Throughout the Iraq debacle, Bush has insisted that Iraq is a sovereign country ("Let Freedom Reign!") and that if the Iraqis didn't want us there we would leave. Indeed, in January 2005, on the eve of the Iraqi election, the president was asked if America would pull out of Iraq if the new government asked him to do so. "Absolutely," he replied. "This is a sovereign government. They're on their feet."

But now that a majority of that government is calling for a withdrawal date, what has been the president's response? Silence. Which is standard operating procedure for those in this administration.

Any time they fail on their stated goals, they just make up new ones.

Any time a fact comes out that belies their increasingly skewed view of reality, they just deny it.

And as the circle of war supporters gets smaller and smaller, the last dead-enders -- which, unfortunately, includes every serious GOP candidate for president -- grow more detached.

What's worse for the president is that the war isn't even a left/right issue anymore -- and hasn't been for a long time now.

John McCain may discount what the Iraqi parliament did last week, but George Will doesn't. "We may be watching the wrong legislature," he told George Stephanopoulos on This Week.

"We're watching Congress on Capitol Hill. There are 275 seats in the Iraqi parliament -- 138 of them are occupied by people -- that's one more than a majority -- who signed a petition..."

But to McCain, Bush, Cheney and their dwindling allies, that doesn't matter. And if it means turning up their noses at democracy in action, so be it.

The danger for them, of course, is that it's a lot easier to discount democracy in Iraq than democracy back here at home. Americans made a "domestic political calculation" in November; they're going to make another in 2008. And "Making a Mockery of Democracy" isn't likely to be a winning campaign slogan for McCain or the GOP.


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

Bush Keeps On Lying and The Press Corps Keeps On Buying.

The D.C. press corps are cowards of the worst kind.

Send them to Iraq, along with the Commander Guy and Vice.


The Ongoing Iraq Intel Fraud
By Robert Parry May 5, 2007

Almost five years and perhaps half a million deaths too late, it’s finally the accepted wisdom in Washington that the intelligence that George W. Bush used to justify invading Iraq was garbage.
But the pattern of twisting the truth about Iraq continues unabated and the President is still rarely called on it.

Bush has never stopped making statements about the Iraq War that are untrue, illogical or irrelevant. Yet, the Washington press corps remains almost as lax today about holding Bush accountable as it was in 2002 and 2003.

So, when Bush mocks Democratic “politicians in Washington” who supposedly seek to substitute their judgments for those of experienced commanders on the ground, the national news media stays silent on Bush’s hypocrisy. It’s almost never mentioned that he was the Washington politician in December who overruled the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the two top generals in Iraq on the escalation of the war.

Bush not only rejected the advice of the Joint Chiefs and his field generals, John Abizaid and George Casey, but then replaced Abizaid and Casey with new commanders who were compliant to Bush’s wishes. Though the removals fell within Bush’s Commander-in-Chief powers, it can’t be said he was respecting the judgments of the combat generals.

Nevertheless, Bush sees no risk when he attributes to congressional Democrats the notion that commanders should “take fighting directions from politicians 6,000 miles away in Washington, D.C.,” as Bush said in a speech on May 1.

Nor does the national news media question Bush’s sincerity when he asserts, as he did on May 2, that “the question is, who ought to make that [military] decision? The Congress or the commanders? And as you know, my position is clear – I’m a commander guy.”

But Bush is not “a commander guy,” at least not when the commanders disagree with him. In that same May 2 speech, Bush took both sides of the issue and got away with it. He claimed to respect the judgments of his commanders and then explained how he repudiated his commanders.

Bush said last year’s polls showed many Americans responding “we don’t approve of what’s happening in Iraq. That was what the poll said last fall and winter, you know. And had they polled me, I’d have said the same thing. I didn’t approve of what was happening in Iraq. And so we put a new strategy in that was fundamentally different.”

In other words, politicians in Washington – Bush and his neoconservative advisers – imposed their opinions about Iraq on the judgments of the on-the-ground commanders and the Joint Chiefs who thought the “surge” of more U.S. troops would prove counterproductive by reducing pressure on Iraqi authorities to take the lead.

After switching out Abizaid and Casey with new commanders, Admiral William Fallon and General David Petraeus, Bush then settled back comfortably into the fiction that he was just following the guidance of the commanders on the ground; the Democrats were the ones guilty of bucking the military’s advice by seeking a phased withdrawal.

Explaining why he vetoed a congressional war appropriation bill that included a timeline for withdrawal, Bush said, “That didn’t make any sense to me, to impose the will of politicians over the recommendations of our military commanders in the field.”

(In another indicator of feckless Washington behavior, two key “surge” proponents in the White House – political appointees Dr. J.D. Crouch II and Meghan O’Sullivan – are resigning even before their new policy is fully implemented. Another “surge” architect, retired Army Gen. Jack Keane, was among five retired generals who rejected the new “war czar” position for overseeing the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.)


Hot Buttons

Bush also continues to push American hot buttons despite contrary intelligence assessments, just like he did before the Iraq invasion when he warned of “mushroom clouds” and touted a non-existent relationship between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.

For instance, the U.S. intelligence community has long ago concluded that the Iraq War has been a recruiting bonanza for al-Qaeda and other Islamic extremist groups, increasing – not decreasing – the threat of future terrorist attacks on U.S. interests.

But Bush has insisted in speech after speech that the Iraq War is protecting the United States from terrorism and that if the United States doesn’t win in Iraq, “the enemy would follow us home.”

U.S. intelligence analysts consider that argument nonsensical, recognizing that fighting some extremists in Iraq doesn’t preclude other terrorists from mounting an operation inside the United States. Indeed, the swelling anti-Americanism makes such an eventual attack more likely.

CIA analysts believe that al-Qaeda wants the United States to remain bogged down in Iraq indefinitely, so the terrorist group can continue recruiting, training and hardening new jihadists, some of whom surely will be assigned to undertake violent operations against U.S. targets. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Bush Is Losing the War on Terror."]

Al-Qaeda leaders view Bush’s open-ended war in Iraq as crucial to their long-range plans for spreading their radical ideology throughout the Muslim world. As “Atiyah,” one of Osama bin Laden’s top lieutenants, explained in an intercepted Dec. 11, 2005, letter, “prolonging the war is in our interest.”

[To read the “prolonging the war” passage from the Atiyah letter at the Web site of West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center, click here and then scroll down to the bottom of page 16 and the top of page 17.]

Yet, even as an open-ended Iraq War helps al-Qaeda, Bush still cites 9/11 and al-Qaeda as reasons to continue the Iraq War indefinitely.

“For America, the decision we face in Iraq is not whether we ought to take sides in a civil war; it’s whether we stay in the fight against the same international terrorist network that attacked us on 9/11,” Bush said in his May 2 speech. “I strongly believe it’s in our national interest to stay in the fight.”

But Bush’s position again conflicts with the views of many intelligence analysts and top U.S. commanders, who understand that Bush’s simplistic thinking presents a dangerous and false dichotomy, a choice between glorious “victory” and humiliating “surrender.”

The real issue, in the analysts’ opinion, is whether the United States will mount a sophisticated global counter-insurgency campaign against Islamic extremism – addressing legitimate concerns of the Muslim world and isolating al-Qaeda terrorists – or continue playing into al-Qaeda’s hands by extending the Iraq War for years and years.


More Cherry-Picking

But the U.S. news media continues to let Bush get away with cherry-picking the few facts that tend to bolster his position, while ignoring the more significant information that undercuts him.
For instance, the remarkable “Atiyah” comment that “prolonging the [Iraq] war is in our interest” was first reported by Consortiumnews.com in a story posted on the Internet on Oct. 3, 2006. That story was matched by a Christian Science Monitor article on Oct. 6, but the revelation has been widely ignored by other news organizations.

Much wider media currency has gone to the recurring – and trivial – White House theme about an increasing number of “tips” from Iraqis, supposedly proving progress in the war.
“American and Iraqi forces received more tips from local residents in the past four months than during any other four-month period on record,” Bush said in his May 2 speech. “People are beginning to have some confidence.”

But the “tips” argument – similar to earlier reports from Iraq that the number of painted classrooms proved success for the U.S. reconstruction effort – represents ephemeral evidence that establishes little. More than a year ago, the “tips” argument also was cited to demonstrate war progress that turned out to be illusory.

On Dec. 2, 2005, for instance, the right-wing Heritage Foundation published a report entitled “Dispelling Myths about Iraq” that challenged the growing pessimism about whether U.S.-trained Iraqi forces could bring security to the country.

“The increasing effectiveness of the Iraqi security forces has inspired optimism among the Iraqi people,” the Heritage report countered. “This is reflected in the growing number of intelligence tips from Iraqi civilians. In March 2005, Iraqi and coalition forces received 483 tips from Iraqi citizens. This figure rose to 3,300 in August [2005], and to more than 4,700 in September.”

On Jan. 10, 2006, White House reprised the progress on Iraqi tips for a fact sheet entitled “Progress and the Work Ahead in Iraq.”

“As Iraqis see their own countrymen defending them against the terrorists and Saddamists, they are stepping forward with needed intelligence,” the fact sheet read, noting the supposed success of a tips hot line. “The number of tips from Iraqis has grown from 400 in March 2005 to over 4,700” in December 2005.

But a New York Times story in November 2006 punched a hole in the tips-as-evidence-of-success story.

“After rising slowly yet steadily since the hot line’s inception, the number of tips suddenly started to dry up last summer [2006]. From a rate of about 62 usable tips a day in June, the number dropped to about 29 tips a day in mid-September, according to statistics provided by the U.S. military. On Sept. 19, the operators recorded only one usable tip.”

The Times story said the discrepancy between the overall number of “tips” and the number of usable tips was explained by the fact that the vast majority of “tips” were phony. “Almost all intended to harass the operators, presumably as part of an effort by the insurgency to tie up the lines,” the article said. “Callers berated and threatened the operators.” [International Herald Tribune, Nov. 5, 2006]

Despite these problems with this success indicator, the tips argument returned in the past two weeks as part of Bush’s new sales pitch arguing progress in the Iraq War.

In an April 20, 2007, fact sheet, the White House announced that “Iraqi and American forces have received more tips in the past three months than during any three-month period on record.” But specific numbers were not released.

(Bush used a four-month comparison in his May 2 speech, but it wasn’t clear if he simply misspoke or if the White House had revised its “good news” argument. Bush’s tips claim has shown up unchallenged in U.S. news outlets, including the Los Angeles Times.)


Critical Assessment

A less sanguine view of the Iraq War, reflecting the judgment of many intelligence analysts, was provided by Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Nebraska, in an interview with right-wing columnist Robert D. Novak.

After a fifth visit to Iraq, with stops in Baghdad, Fallujah and Ramadi, Hagel said, "this thing is really coming undone quickly, and [Prime Minister] Maliki's government is weaker by the day. The police are corrupt, top to bottom. The oil problem is a huge problem. They still can't get anything through the parliament – no hydrocarbon law, no de-Baathification law, no provincial elections," which could help bring Sunnis into the governing process.

As for Bush’s repeated assertions that the terrorists in Iraq would “follow us home,” Hagel said, "That's nonsense… That's the same kind of rhetoric and thinking that neocons used to get us into this mess.”

Hagel, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, cited "national intelligence" attributing "maybe 10 percent" of the insurgency and violence to al-Qaeda and noting that Iraqis across the board have no fondness for the non-Iraqi terrorists who have swarmed into Iraq to fight the Americans.

The Iraqis “don't like the terrorists. What's happened in Anbar province is the tribes are finally starting to connect with us because al-Qaeda started killing some of their leadership and threatening their people. So the tribes now are at war with al-Qaeda."

"So," said Hagel, "when I hear people say, 'Well, if we leave them to that, it will be chaos' – what do you think is going on now? Scaring the American people into this blind alley is so dangerous." [Washington Post, April 30, 2007]

But President Bush continues to get a relatively easy ride on his Iraq arguments because the U.S. news media has little more appetite now for challenging him and his influential right-wing backers than the press corps did in 2002-03, when the prevailing Washington conventional wisdom was that invading Iraq was one peachy idea.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

Bring it on, Junior!

Senate OKs war bill with Iraq timeline
By ANNE FLAHERTY, Associated Press Writer 8 minutes ago


A defiant Democratic-controlled Senate passed legislation Thursday that would require the start of troop withdrawals from Iraq by Oct. 1, propelling Congress toward a historic veto showdown with President Bush on the war.

At the White House, the president immediately promised a veto.

"It is amazing that legislation urgently needed to fund our troops took 80 days to make its way around the Capitol. But that's where we are," said deputy press secretary Dana Perino.
The 51-46 vote was largely along party lines, and like House passage of the same bill a day earlier, fell far short of the two-thirds margin needed to overturn the president's threatened veto. Nevertheless, the legislation is the first binding challenge on the war that Democrats have managed to send to Bush since they reclaimed control of both houses of Congress in January.

"The president has failed in his mission to bring peace and stability to the people of Iraq," said Sen. Robert Byrd (news, bio, voting record), D-W.V., chairman of the Appropriations Committee. He later added: "It's time to bring our troops home from Iraq."

The $124.2 billion bill requires troop withdrawals to begin Oct. 1, or sooner if the Iraqi government does not meet certain benchmarks. The House passed the measure Wednesday by a 218-208 vote.

Across the Potomac River at the Pentagon, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, told reporters the war effort likely will "get harder before it gets easier."
Republicans said the vote amounted to little more than political theater because the bill would be dead on arrival after reaching the White House. Bush said he will veto the bill so long as it contains a timetable on Iraq, as well as $20 billion in spending added by Democrats.

"The solution is simple: Take out the surrender date, take out the pork, and get the funds to our troops," said Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (news, bio, voting record), R-Ky.
Republicans Gordon Smith (news, bio, voting record) of Oregon and Chuck Hagel (news, bio, voting record) of Nebraska sided with 48 Democrats and Independent Bernard Sanders (news, bio, voting record) in supporting the bill. No Democrats joined the 45 Republicans in voting against it. Missing from the vote were GOP Sens. John McCain (news, bio, voting record) of Arizona and Lindsey Graham (news, bio, voting record) of South Carolina, both staunch advocates of the president's Iraq policy.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman (news, bio, voting record), I-Conn., sided with Republicans in opposing the bill.

"We delude ourselves if we think we can wave a legislative wand and suddenly our troops in the field will be able to distinguish between al-Qaida terrorism or sectarian violence. Or that Iraqis will suddenly settle their political differences because our troops are leaving," Lieberman said.
Democrats said the bill was on track to arrive on the president's desk by Tuesday, the anniversary of Bush's announcement aboard the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln that major combat operations in Iraq had ended.

"The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on Sept. 11, 2001, and still goes on," Bush said on May 1, 2003, in front of a huge "Mission Accomplished" banner.
Bush since has acknowledged that the war has not progressed as he had hoped. After the November elections in which Democrats swept up enough seats to take the majority, he announced a new strategy that involved sending additional forces to Iraq.

Perino said earlier that if Democratic lawmakers timed the sending of the bill to the anniversary of Bush's speech, it would be "a ridiculous P.R. stunt."

"That is the height of cynicism, and absolutely so unfortunate for the men and women in uniform and their families who are watching the debate," she said Thursday morning.
As Democrats pushed through the bill, Petraeus depicted the situation in Iraq as "exceedingly complex and very tough." He said there have been some improvements in the two months since Bush's troop buildup began, but "there is vastly more work to be done across the board. ... We are just getting started with the new effort."

Asked at a Pentagon news conference Thursday about the impact on the effort in Iraq if that legislation passed, Petraeus said, "I have tried to stay clear of the political minefields of various legislative proposals."

Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told The Associated Press the vote was not helpful.

"We see some negative signs in the decision because it sends wrong signals to some sides that might think of alternatives to the political process," al-Dabbagh said. "Coalition forces gave lots of sacrifices and they should continue their mission, which is building Iraqi security forces to take over."

In the House, two Republicans — Reps. Wayne Gilchrest (news, bio, voting record) of Maryland and Walter Jones (news, bio, voting record) of North Carolina — joined 216 Democrats in passing the bill. Voting no were 195 Republicans and 13 Democrats.

do after Bush's veto. One option would be funding the war through September as Bush wants but setting benchmarks that the Iraqi government must meet, he said.
Murtha chairs the House panel that oversees military funding.

"I think everything that passes will have some sort of condition (placed) on it," he said. Ultimately, Murtha added, the 2008 military budget considered by Congress in June "is where you'll see the real battle," he said.

Sen. Joseph Biden (news, bio, voting record), D-Del., said the immediate focus should stay on the president "making such a tragic mistake in vetoing this." Eventually, "I think he's going to have to accept constraint on his bad judgment here. . . . We've got to keep relentlessly putting pressure on him."

The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service has said the Army has enough bookkeeping flexibility to pay for operations in Iraq well into July. Lawmakers and Capitol Hill staff aides view mid- to late May as the deadline for completing the war spending bill to avoid hardships.

Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

The Spotlight: Al Gore!

Gore is our legitimate president.

G.W. Bush has never won a national election in his life!

Consortiumnews.com:

As Al Gore steps into the national spotlight because of the Academy Awards and his global-warming documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” it’s worth remembering that in fall 2002 Gore sought to warn the American people about another “inconvenient truth,” the folly of invading Iraq."

Bushites Make Nixon Look Like A Choir Boy!

Bernstein: Bush administration's disinformation, misinformation 'something I have never witnessed before on this scale'


Mike Sheehan


Sponsored by: The Agenda with Joe Solmonese


Veteran reporter Carl Bernstein says the lack of truth and candor from the Bush administration is unprecedented in his experience.


Comparing the Nixon administration's press relations to those of Bush, Bernstein says, "Nixon's relationship to the press was consistent with his relationship to many institutions and people. He saw himself as a victim. We now understand the psyche of Richard Nixon, that his was a self-destructive act and presidency.

"The Bush administration," Bernstein continues, "is a far different matter in which disinformation, misinformation and unwillingness to tell the truth -- a willingness to lie both in the Oval Office, in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, in the office of the vice president, the vice president himself -- is something that I have never witnessed before on this scale."

Bernstein contrasted Nixon's covering up of illegal activities tied to his re-election campaign with the Bush White House's "unwillingness to be truthful, both contextually and in terms of basic facts that ought to be of great concern to people of all ideologies.


"This president has a record of dishonesty and obfuscation that is Nixonian in character in its willingness to manipulate the press, to manipulate the truth," he adds. "We have gone to war on the basis of misinformation, disinformation and knowing lies from top to bottom."

Bernstein blasts what he describes as "the willingness of the president and the vice president and the people around them to try to undermine people who have effectively opposed them by telling the truth." He cites attacks on Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), former Sen. Max Cleland (D-GA) and even Sen. John McCain (R-AZ).


"That's the real story, and that's the story that [the press] should have been writing," he says.
Bernstein, who gained fame with Bob Woodward for their breakthrough reporting on the Watergate scandal, was interviewed for a PBS Frontline series on the media.

In an earlier interview reported on at RAW STORY, the famed journalist said the Bush administration had done "far greater damage" than Nixon.

Excerpts from an Editor and Publisher article with portions of the PBS interview follow...


It's very difficult, as a reporter, to get across that when you say, "This is a presidency of great dishonesty," that this is not a matter of opinion.

This is demonstrable fact.

If you go back and look at the president's statements, you look at the statements of the vice president, you look at the statements of Condoleezza Rice, you go through the record, you look at what [counterterrorism expert] Richard Clarke has written, you look at what we know -- it's demonstrable.


It's fact.

Now, how do you quantify it?

That's a different question.


But to me, if there is a great failure by the so-called mainstream press in this presidency, it's the unwillingness to look at the lies and disinformation and misinformation and add them up and say clearly, "

Here's what they said; here's what the known facts were," because when that is done, you then see this isn't a partisan matter. This is a matter of the truth, particularly about this war. This is a presidency that is not willing to tell the truth very often if it is contrary to its interests.

It's not about ideology from whence I say this.....

It's about being a reporter and saying:

"That's what the story is. Let's see what they said; let's see what the facts are." ...


....and the truth shall set us free.

Patrick Leahy on Iraq

The War in Iraq

Remarks Of US Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT)

t r u t h o u t Statement

Thursday 15 February 2007


Mr. President, a week ago the distinguished Majority Leader tried every which way to provide the Senate with an opportunity to debate a bipartisan resolution on Iraq. That effort failed because it was blocked by some in the Minority party, who insisted on a separate vote that was nothing more than a political ploy. Instead of a debate on the President's policy, they wanted the debate to be about who "supports" the troops.

As has so often been the case when anyone has asked a question, expressed reservations, or outright opposed the President's failed policy in Iraq, his defenders accuse his detractor of not being patriotic or of not supporting the troops.


As one who for years has fought for veterans benefits, for fair treatment for the National Guard, for armor for our troops who were sent into battle unprepared, and for replacing the depleted stocks of essential equipment that our troops need and depend on, the absurd accusation that it is unpatriotic to disagree with a policy that has resulted in the deaths of thousands of American soldiers and created a terrorist haven in a country that before posed no threat to the United States, has worn thin.


It reminds me of my days as a prosecutor. When a defendant was caught red-handed, the predictable response was to attack the accuser. That is what has been going on here since President Bush, Vice President Cheney and former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, ignoring all advice to the contrary, led us into this costly fiasco. These flawed policies have thrust our troops into the maw of a bloody civil war. Our troops are not responsible for the mistaken policies they have been asked to implement. Policymakers in Washington are responsible for that. And only decision makers in Washington can change those policies.

The polls show unmistakably that a majority of the American people wants the Congress to debate and vote on the President's policy in Iraq. They know that Iraq is the key issue of today, they see that it is a widening civil war, and they want their sons and daughters out of there, in as sensible a timeframe and as sensible a plan as we can muster. It is that simple, and that is what we should be debating.

The costs of this misadventure have not just been onerous; they have been catastrophic. More than 3,000 Americans killed, and more than 20,000 wounded. Tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis have lost their lives. In material terms we are fast approaching the one trillion dollar mark, throwing money out the door at a rate of more than $2 billion per week to fund this war. Our international reputation and the influence it brings, including among our allies, has been badly tarnished and diminished.

Where are we in Iraq? We are in the midst of a civil war among religious and ethnic factions, an insurgency that shows no sign of diminishing, and out-of-control organized crime. It is hard to say that we have made any real progress toward the larger objectives of bringing democracy to Iraq or the Middle East. It is time we face the grim reality, and it is time we deal with it. Our soldiers' lives are in the balance.

I made a brief statement on Tuesday about an column in last Sunday's Washington Post by retired Lieutenant General William Odom. General Odom has one of the most distinguished military intelligence careers, and he continues to provide powerful insights on national security. In his piece entitled "Victory in Not an Option," he outlines how this Administration's entire policy on Iraq, including the so-called surge strategy, is based on a self-defeating inability to face reality.

The reality, according to the general, is that we are not going to make Iraq a democracy and that the longer we stay, the more likely Iraq will be anti-American at the end of our intervention.

Our invasion made civil war and increased Iranian involvement in Iraq inevitable, and no amount of military force - especially after so many errors of judgment - will prevent those outcomes.

Meanwhile, our presence is only stoking al Qaeda's involvement in Iraq. The reality is that supporting our troops does not mean keeping them there to carry out a failed strategy. It means pursuing a course that protects the country's interests and prevents more Americans from dying in pursuit of an ill-defined, open-ended strategy that cannot succeed.

General Odom knows that we need to begin an orderly withdrawal from Iraq. He argues that we should join with other countries in the region - those whose input this Administration has often ignored - and seek to stabilize the region through sustained, high level diplomacy.

These views are in line with those of some our senior military officers, other national security experts, many of us in Congress, and a majority of the American people.

Yet look at what the Administration and it defenders in the Minority party offer instead. We get filibusters that stymie a debate on our Iraq policy. We get the same old rhetoric about not supporting the troops. And we get a bill from the President for another $100 billion to send 20,000 more troops and continue the war.

If the President cannot face the reality that even members of his own party increasingly have come to accept, then it is our responsibility, our patriotic duty, our moral duty, to act. A non-binding resolution that sends a clear message in opposition to an escalation of troops is better than years of the silence of a rubberstamp Congress. But we know the President will ignore it; he has already said so. It is only a first step.

I support binding legislation by Senator Obama and Senator Feingold to begin a phased redeployment of our troops out of Iraq. It is not our role to choose sides in a civil war. It is not our troops' role to die trying to force these warring factions to settle their age-old differences.

We need to continue to fight the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan. We need to deploy sufficient forces and intelligence assets to track down international terrorists around the world. We need to do a lot better job of policing our borders without denying entry to innocent people who are fleeing persecution.

General Odom is right. Keeping our troops in Iraq is not making us safer. We should begin bringing our troops home. Congress has it in its power to force the President to change course. That is what the American people want, and that is what we should be debating.


....and the truth shall set us free.

Tearing Down the Old Lie Factory

Breakdown At The Iraq Lie Factory

Robert Dreyfuss
February 15, 2007

Robert Dreyfuss is an Alexandria, Va.-based writer specializing in politics and national security issues. He is the author of Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (Henry Holt/Metropolitan Books, 2005), a contributing editor at The Nation and a writer for Mother Jones, The American Prospect and Rolling Stone. He can be reached through his website, www.robertdreyfuss.com.


It was, President Bush must have been thinking, a heck of a lot easier five years ago. Back in 2002, the president had a smoothly running lie factory humming along in the Pentagon, producing reams of fake intelligence about Iraq, led by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Doug Feith and his Office of Special Plans. Back then, he had a tightly knit cabal of neoconservatives, led by I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, based in Vice President Dick Cheney’s office, to carry out a coordinated effort to distribute the lies to the media. And he had a chorus of yes-men in the Republican-controlled Congress ready to echo the party line.

In 2007, Bush stands nearly alone, and he never looked lonelier than during a bumbling, awkward news conference on the Iraq-Iran tangle Wednesday.

Feith is long gone, and last week his lie factory was exposed by the Pentagon’s own inspector general, who told Congress that Feith had pretty much made up everything that his rogue intelligence unit manufactured. Libby is long gone, apparently about to be sentenced to jail for lying about Cheney’s frantic effort to cover up the lie factory’s work. And the congressional echo chamber is gone: In six weeks, the Democrats have held more than four dozen hearings to investigate the White House’s catastrophic Middle East policy, and even Hillary Clinton is warning that Bush had better keep his hands off Iran, saying: “It would be a mistake of historical proportions if the administration thought that the 2002 resolution authorizing force against Iraq was a blank check for the use of force against Iran.”

Without his Orwellian apparatus behind him, the president spent most of his hour-long news conference yesterday shrugging and smirking, jutting his jaw out with false bravado, joshing inappropriately with reporters asking deadly serious questions and stumbling over his words. It was painful to listen to him trying to justify the nonsensical claims that Iran and its paramilitary “Quds Force” are somehow responsible for the chaos in Iraq:

What we do know is that the Quds force was instrumental in providing these deadly IEDs to networks inside of Iraq. We know that. And we also know that the Quds force is a part of the Iranian government. That's a known. What we don't know is whether or not the head leaders of Iran ordered the Quds force to do what they did.

Pressed about what the “head leaders” are doing, he went on:
Either they knew or didn't know, and what matters is, is that they're there. What's worse, that the government knew or that the government didn't know? … What’s worse, them ordering it and it happening, or them not ordering it and it happening?

If that makes no sense to you, well, that’s because the whole thing makes no sense.

It’s a farcical replay of Iraq 2002, when the White House demonized Saddam Hussein with fake intelligence, turning him into a menacing al-Qaida backer armed with weapons of mass destruction. This time, however, the lie factory has been dismantled. All by himself, the president is trying to turn Iran into a scary, al-Qaida-allied, nuke-wielding menace. But he’s not fooling anyone. The potent “war president” of 2002-2003 is now an incoherent, mewling Wizard of Oz-like figure, and people are paying attention to the man behind the curtain.

Unlike 2002, when the White House fired salvo after salvo of fake intelligence about Iraq, today it can’t even stage its lies properly.

Like the incompetents who couldn’t organize a two-car funeral, the remaining Iran war hawks in the administration held a briefing in Baghdad on Sunday to present alleged evidence that Iran is masterminding the insurgency in Iraq. But it was a comedy of errors that convinced no one. Twice, at least, the administration had earlier postponed or canceled the much-promoted event, designed to reveal the supposed secrets behind Iran’s actions in Iraq. When it was finally held, it was not in Washington, but in Baghdad, with not a single White House official, no U.S. diplomat, no State Department official, no CIA official and no one from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Instead, a couple of anonymous military officers held a background-only briefing, barring cameras and tape recorders, to present some blurry photographs of bomb-looking things—and not a shred of evidence of Iranian government involvement.

It was as if Adlai Stevenson had gotten up at the United Nations during the missile crisis in Cuba and, rather than showing detailed U-2 photographs of missile emplacements, had simply said, “Ladies and gentleman, some Cuban guy we talked to said the Russians are putting missiles in Cuba.”

According to The Washington Times, the effort to blame Iran was directly torpedoed by the U.S. intelligence community, through the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The ODNI, said the Times , “sought to play down the intelligence on Iranian involvement, fearing that the report will be used as a basis to launch an attack on Iran.” Many earlier reports noted that both the State Department and the U.S. intelligence community were strongly opposed to any attempt to demonize Iran. There’s nothing like a bureaucracy scorned to conduct passive-aggressive sabotage of misguided policies, and in this case the bureaucracy apparently succeeded. The dog-and-pony show on Iranian meddling in Iraq not only didn’t scare anyone, it caused guffaws of laughter and ridicule.

And then there was the hilarious presidential press conference yesterday, to top it off.

There is, of course, no basis for arguing that the civil war in Iraq is caused by Iran. And there is no basis—“not supported by underlying intelligence,” as the Pentagon I.G. said about Doug Feith’s 2002 work—to argue that Iran is responsible for a significant part of American deaths in Iraq. Nearly all of the U.S. casualties in Iraq are caused by the secular-Baathist Sunni-led resistance and religious Sunni extremists fighting the occupation, and none of the forces allied with the resistance have ties to Iran. Even the anonymous briefers at the dog-and-camel show in Baghdad admitted that Iran is helping the Shiite militias, not the Sunnis; in other words, Iran is helping the self-same militias that are being trained and armed by the United States.

And the spurious claim that 170 Americans have died in attacks using Iranian-supplied super-IED’s since 2004 can only mean one thing: that the Pentagon is counting the numbers of U.S. soldiers and Marines who died in April and August, 2004. That was when the United States waged two mini-wars against Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army. It was the only time in the past four years when the United States suffered significant casualties fighting the Shiites—though the administration presented zero evidence that Sadr’s Mahdi Army gets weapons from Iran, or needs to. But if they’re counting as far back as 2004—and, according to the Pentagon, the super-IED’s started showing up in 2004—then the whole issue is absurd, since what happened three years ago has little or no relevance to current conditions.

Those prone to believe, along with the president, that Iran is fomenting the violence in Iraq have already drunk deep of the neocon Kool-Aid.

The rest of us can only shake our heads in wonder that the president thinks he can get away with this. (or in wonder that the damn fool is still the president?)


....and the truth shall set us free.

Pelosi Says Bush Lacks Authority To Invade Iran

Don't be so sure, Nancy!

Congress needs to act to prevent it.

The way his lawyers interpret the Constitution, he thinks it's quite alright to invade Canada

By DAVID ESPO
AP Special Correspondent

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that President Bush lacks the authority to invade Iran without specific approval from Congress, a fresh challenge to the commander in chief on the eve of a symbolic vote critical of his troop buildup in Iraq.

Pelosi, D-Calif., noted that Bush consistently said he supports a diplomatic resolution to differences with Iran "and I take him at his word."

At the same time, she said, "I do believe that Congress should assert itself, though, and make it very clear that there is no previous authority for the president, any president, to go into Iran."
Pelosi spoke in an interview in the Capitol as the House moved through a third marathon day of debate on a nonbinding measure that disapproves of the military buildup in Iraq while expressing support for the troops.

Passage of the measure was expected Friday, and across the Capitol, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (news, bio, voting record) unexpectedly announced plans to hold a test vote Saturday.

Partisan bickering has prevented a Senate vote on the troop increase, with Republicans insisting on equal treatment for an alternative rules out the "elimination or reduction of funds for troops in the field."

Pelosi and other Democrats have said approval on the nonbinding measure would mark the first step in an effort by the new Democratic-controlled Congress to force Bush to change course in a war that has killed more than 3,100 U.S. troops.

Bush administration officials and their allies are resigned to House passage of the resolution and have worked in recent days to hold down defections by GOP lawmakers.

But Bush took a swipe at his critics during the day.

"This may become the first time in the history of the United States Congress that it has voted to send a new commander into battle and then voted to oppose his plan that is necessary to succeed in that battle," the president said.

The Senate unanimously confirmed Lt. Gen David Petraeus last week to take over as the top U.S. commander in Iraq.

Bush said at a news conference Wednesday there is no doubt the Iranian government is providing armor-piercing weapons to kill American troops in Iraq. But he backed away from claims the top echelon of Iran's government was responsible.

Administration critics have accused the president of looking for a pretense to attack the Islamic republic, which is also at loggerheads with the United Nations about what Tehran says is a nuclear program aimed at developing energy for peaceful purposes.

Defending U.S. intelligence that has pinpointed Iran as a hostile arms supplier in Iraq, Bush said, "Does this mean you're trying to have a pretext for war? No. It means I'm trying to protect our troops."

Bush has asked Congress to approve $100 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Congressional Democrats are hoping to insert provisions that would make it harder for the administration to follow through on its plan to deploy an additional 21,500 combat troops to Iraq.

Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., who is leading the effort, has said the measure may be changed to require that any troops deployed must meet formal Army readiness standards.

Murtha also said the measure may be changed to prohibit any military action against Iran without specific congressional approval.

Asked about Murtha's remarks, Pelosi said, "I fully support that." She added that she would propose it as stand-alone legislation if it is not included in the bill that provides more money for the Iraq war.

Bush has said he intends to go ahead with the troop buildup regardless of nonbinding expressions of disapproval in Congress.

But, Pelosi said, "I don't think that the president can completely ignore it."

She spoke down the hall from the House chamber, where Republicans and Democrats alternated turns at the microphone in a debate on the war.

"The enemy wants our men and women in uniform to think their Congress doesn't care about them," said Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Texas, who was a prisoner of war during Vietnam. "We must learn from our mistakes. We cannot leave a job undone like we left in Korea, like we left in Vietnam, like we left in Somalia," Johnson said.

Added Rep. Geoff Davis, R-Ky., a West Point graduate who was a flight commander with the Army's 82nd Airborne: "This nonbinding resolution serves no purpose other than pacifying the Democrats' political base and lowering morale in our military."

When his turn came to speak, Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas., said,
"There is a better way of protecting our troops than sending more of them to be killed."

Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, a member of the Democratic leadership, said the victory to be won in Iraq "is not a military conquest."

"The victory we seek is earned through the restoration of America's role as peacemaker, not warmonger," he said.


....and the truth shall set us free.

Bush a pathetic drunk: Al Zawahiri

By Maamoun Youssef
ASSOCIATED PRESS02/14/07

AP" -- -- CAIRO, Egypt – Al-Qaeda's No. 2 said President Bush was an alcoholic and a lying gambler who wagered on Iraq and lost, according to a new audiotape released Tuesday by a U.S. group that tracks extremist messages. The Washington-based SITE Institute released a transcript of the audio by Ayman al-Zawahri, which it said it had intercepted from Islamic militant Web sites where his messages are usually posted. “

Bush suffers from an addictive personality, and was an alcoholic. I don't know his present condition ... but the one who examines his personality finds that he is addicted to two other faults – lying and gambling,” al-Zawahri said in the audiotape.

Bush, who is now 60, has acknowledged he had a problem with drinking but gave up alcohol when he was 40 years old.

The Associated Press could not immediately find the audiotape independently on Web sites but found messages on a number of them that said an al-Zawahri tape was expected to be aired shortly.

IntelCenter, a U.S. group that monitors terrorism communications, said it also obtained the audio and that it was accompanied by a video that showed a still picture of al-Zawahri. SITE said the multimedia arm of al-Qaeda, as-Sahab, claimed to have produced the 41-minute audiotape.

On the tape, al-Zawahri said Bush has gone down in history as one of the world's “most notorious liars.”

“So pay attention before it's too late, and beware of Bush's losing gambler's lie which claims that he, with the corpses of your killed and limbs of your wounded, is spreading democracy around the world,” said al-Zawahri, apparently addressing the American people.

Al-Zawahri also said recent congressional elections in the United States that elected a majority of Democrats would change nothing.

“The people chose you due to your opposition to Bush's policy in Iraq, but it appears that you are marching with him to the same abyss,” al-Zawahri said of the Democrats according to the transcript.

He repeated an earlier condemnation of the Palestinian Fatah movement led by Mahmoud Abbas for seeking to establish a secular state. “I'm not asking them to join Hamas, the Islamic Jihad or al-Qaeda, but rather, I'm asking them to return to Islam, in order to fight for the establishment of an Islamic state over all of Palestine and not for the establishment of a secularist state which will please America,” al-Zawahri said.

It was the fourth message by Osama bin Laden's deputy since the beginning of the year. The last was on Jan. 22, when he mocked Bush's plan to send an additional 21,000 troops to Iraq.

Al-Zawahri called what he described as Bush' failure in Iraq and the growing Taliban resistance in Afghanistan the “most important events” of the past year.

He also said that “the people cooperating with the United States in Afghanistan and in Iraq would be abandoned by the Americans once they fail, the same way they did in Vietnam.”

Muslims around the world, he added, should go to “Afghanistan, Iraq, Algeria and Somalia, because your brothers the Mujahedeen are in need of men, money, materiel, opinion, expertise and information.”


....and the truth shall set us free.

Psycologists And The Bush Administration.

Why hasn't there been more of an outcry from professional psychologists about the practice of torture in the 'war on terror'?

There has been an enormous outcry.

No one is listening!

More mental health professionals have spoken out, in warning, regarding this president and his co-conspirators than I have ever seen.

By Peter Kinderman

02/14/07 "The Guardian" -- -- There is substantial evidence that the so-called "war on terror" has inveigled psychology and psychologists into its abusive systems. Last year's UN report on the abuse of detainees in Guantanamo Bay contained a reference to the extensive use of psychological methods and also referred to the role of psychologists and psychiatrists in interrogation techniques. It is profoundly worrying that such techniques are used, frightening to observe that they may be becoming more widely used, and depressing not to hear more condemnation of the involvement of professional psychologists and psychiatrists in their deployment.

CIA interrogation manuals written in the 1960s and 1980s describe the coercive techniques such as those used to mistreat detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and in Guantanamo Bay. The CIA manual, Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual - 1983, was originally obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the Baltimore Sun in 1997. It lists a wide range of psychological techniques now widely observed in the "war on terror". The document is freely available in downloadable form from academic libraries in the US. It is clear that psychological expertise contributed to this "training manual". UK and US personnel trained in psychological techniques are involved in the R2I (resistance to interrogation) programmes taught to British and US military specialists. Psychologists, of course, study all aspects of human behaviour, including coercion and torture. Equally, members of the UK armed forces are likely to be exposed to danger and they should be prepared for that. But there are aspects of the present situation that are deeply troubling.

The US government has tried to excuse the CIA and the US military from laws prohibiting the use of torture, and defines torture in a very limited manner that refers explicitly to pain and tissue damage. And it is clear that American and other interrogators are abusing psychological knowledge. Terrorism suspects are disorientated and rendered anxious (even terrified). People are humiliated and degraded. Cunning plans appear to have been developed to use psychological approaches to adversely affect the victim.

One example given in the recent UN report involves a female interrogator sexually taunting an observant Muslim subject, including removing her clothes, then putting her hand down her knickers and removing what appeared to be menstrual blood, which she then smeared on the subject's face (it was, in fact, red marker-pen ink). For a clinical psychologist, this behaviour is psychological abuse, and is either designed to, or in any case will, harm the individually psychologically.

The psychological impact of psychological torture, degradation and abuse is well known. Indeed, the CIA itself has admitted as much, warning in its 1983 Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual that: "Extreme deprivation of sensory stimuli induces unbearable stress and anxiety and is a form of torture...there is a profound moral objection to applying duress beyond the point of irreversible psychological damage". The forms of psychological abuse reported as occurring in the "war on terror" can be devastating on the mental health of victims. Amnesty International has documented these consequences extensively, and academic mental health workers have commented on the severity of the possible consequences. In the UK, in a different context, it is possible to achieve a conviction for grievous bodily harm as a result of purely psychological abuse. It is highly likely - as indeed the CIA itself admits - that hooding, sensory deprivation, sexual humiliation and intense fear will harm the victim.

International law, of course, is clear. The Geneva Convention of 1949 bans "physical or mental torture, or any other form of coercion [...] threat[s], insult[s], or [...] any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind". The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights outlaws "inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment". Psychological abuse such as that carried out at Guantanamo Bay will not only cause harm, it is illegal.

The US Government has attempted to hide from this fact. Alfred McCoy from the US History News Network has detailed the legal labyrinths that the administration has constructed to exempt such psychological abuse from their prefer definitions; such that "severe mental pain" is defined only as "drug injection drug injection; death threats; threats against another; and extreme physical pain". Clearly there are a vast number of unacceptable practices - physical practices such as stress positions and even "waterboarding" and psychological practices such as sexual humiliation, disorientation and the exploitation of phobias - that fail to meet this useful definition but remain abhorrent.

We are all aware of the failure of many governments to act appropriately to remove the scourge of torture. The prevalence of psychological techniques perhaps warrants particular attention. In addition to protecting people against physical harm, people's mental well-being must be protected. People must be protected against indefinite detention - itself testified to lead to serious mental health problems. People need protection from techniques such as routine hooding and sensory deprivation techniques. And people, of course, need protection from the techniques reported by the UN as being used in a variety of international facilities.

The impulse to resort to torture seems depressingly common. A recent BBCWorld Service poll found that up to a third of people think torture is justified under certain circumstances (the "ticking bomb suspect" scenario, for instance).

It's just this kind of dramatic circumstance that Jack Bauer portrays in the new series of 24 - so realistically that the US military has appealed to the producers to tone down the torture scenes because of the impact they are having on troops in the field and America's reputation.

Action is required by international bodies and governments. But relevant professionals must also do something. It is noticeable that there has been relatively little outcry from professional psychologists and psychiatrists about the trend. Most professional bodies require their members to repudiate torture, and forbid their involvement in torture.

The British Psychological Society is, in fact, a positive example in this regard. It would be naive to expect the US Government to change its practice following pressure from obscure professional groups, but it might help generate democratic pressure if mental health professionals were more out-spoken.

Copyright The Guardian

....and the truth shall set us free.

Veterans face consecutive budget cuts

Heckuva job, Georgie, way to support those troops!

Veterans face consecutive budget cuts - Yahoo! News:

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration plans to cut funding for veterans' health care two years from now — even as badly wounded troops returning from Iraq could overwhelm the system.

Bush is using the cuts, critics say, to help fulfill his pledge to balance the budget by 2012.

After an increase sought for next year, the Bush budget would turn current trends on their head. Even though the cost of providing medical care to veterans has been growing rapidly — by more than 10 percent in many years — White House budget documents assume consecutive cutbacks in 2009 and 2010 and a freeze thereafter.

The proposed cuts are unrealistic in light of recent VA budget trends — its medical care budget has risen every year for two decades and 83 percent in the six years since Bush took office — sowing suspicion that the White House is simply making them up to make its long-term deficit figures look better.


....and the truth shall set us free

D.C. Protests! This ain't goin' away!

If the peace movement can live through years of shunning and smearing by the mainstream media and scumbags on the radio and blogosphere; pundits who have no clue what the peace movement of today is about, we can surely endure more time in D.C.. We are talking citizens' occupation of the National Mall.

George"the-decider" Bush cannot seem to hear us when we do our duty, as citizens, and vote. Perhaps he needs to see us in order to hear us. He does have a learning disorder, after all.

WASHINGTON - Protesters energized by fresh congressional skepticism about the Iraq war demanded a withdrawal of U.S. troops in a demonstration Saturday that drew tens of thousands and brought Jane Fonda back to the streets.

A sampling of celebrities, a half-dozen members of Congress and busloads of demonstrators from distant states joined in a spirited rally under a sunny sky, seeing opportunity to press their cause in a country that has turned against the war.

The House Judiciary Committee chairman, Rep. John Conyers, threatened to use congressional spending power to try to stop the war. “George Bush has a habit of firing military leaders who tell him the Iraq war is failing,” he said, looking out at the masses. “He can’t fire you.” Referring to Congress, the Michigan Democrat added: “He can’t fire us.

Story continues ↓

....and the truth shall set us free.