Today's the end of 2004... and it ends with visions of tremendous devestation worldwide. I sit in comfy house with cat curled in the window, crock pot cooking the NewYear's beans, and am very thankful that we are so lucky.
My New Year's resolution is to try harder to follow through and spend energy on doing what's "Right" rather than convenient.

First action was to donate to "Doctor's Without Borders" for aid to the victims in Asia.

Again the Bush response to worldwide anquish is woefully lacking. What an arrogant A****.

How much better would it have been for him to announce that in light of the worldwide catastrophe, and in honor of and mourning for the dead, families of the dead, and homeless, etc. that he would be scaling back the Inaugruial Festivities and calling on all those who so generously donated to his campaign (Rangers, Pioneers, et. al.) to donate in equal kind to the relief efforts.

I'm going to try to send this suggestion to all the Rangers (http://www.whitehouseforsale.org/ContributorsAndPaybacks/pioneer_search.cfm) that I can find an address. Perhaps there are many oligarchs out there with some compassion left?

May 2006 be a better year than 2005. Peace be with you.

From all the press about B. Kerik (well followed by Josh Marshall at Talking Points memo) it seems that someone should be building a case for prosecution against the man. Clearly he's put himself above the law again and again.
I almost wish for a return of the Nixon/Agnew days... at least then, when crooks were clearly outed, there was a chance of justice and "rule of law". Now that the lawless Texans have established the rule of the "lawless", I fear for our country.

Bush Says Social Security Faces 'Looming Danger' ............. is "loming danger" the same as WMD???

I've been sort of numb since the election, spending online time reading, watching and waiting. Thanks to Josh Marshall, Steve Clemmons, Steve Gilliard, et. al. for the fine reporting and continued analysis of events.
Today's copy of Issues and Alibis at http://www.issuesandalibis.org/ had an article by Ernst Stuart The Cost Of Bush's Oil Wars -Your Tax Dollars And Your Children At Work! that punched through the depressive fog and hit hard.... The photos should be required viewing for Bush, his Cabinet, and ALL members of the Branches of Government. HOW DARE WE SAY THIS IS GOOD?.

"Republicans close to the White House" said Thursday that the choice of Alberto Gonzales "as attorney general was part of a political strategy to bolster" his "credentials with conservatives and position him for a possible Supreme Court appointment," the New York Times reports.

This is Bush's crony known recently for his memo supporting the administration's disregard for the Geneva Convention and when Bush was governor of Texas, the guy who filtered all the requests for clemency of death row prisoner's despite some evidence of innocence. And we will get HIM as a new Supreme Court Judge??

Somehow "Out of the pot and into the fire" comes to mind.

Read of the Day: William Blum. Killing Hope

"[American leaders] are perhaps not so much immoral as they are amoral. It's not that they take pleasure in causing so much death and suffering. It's that they just don't care ... the same that could be said about a sociopath. As long as the death and suffering advance the agenda of the empire, as long as the right people and the right corporations gain wealth and power and privilege and prestige, as long as the death and suffering aren't happening to them or people close to them ... then they just don't care about it happening to other people, including the American soldiers whom they throw into wars and who come home-the ones who make it back alive-with Agent Orange or Gulf War Syndrome eating away at their bodies. American leaders would not be in the positions they hold if they were bothered by such things."

Well the die has been cast. I am sad for the world and those that inherit it for bad choices we made. A Bush, DeLay and a neo-con control over all three branches of government can not be anything but a BAD thing for the little guy and a delight to all the oligarchs everywhere.

Where now?

Bill Moyers probably said it best in his speech to the Take Back America Conference in 2003:

"our nation can no more survive as half democracy and half oligarchy than it could survive "half slave and half free" -- and that keeping it from becoming all oligarchy is steady work -- our work.
Ideas have power -- as long as they are not frozen in doctrine. But ideas need legs. The eight-hour day, the minimum wage, the conservation of natural resources and the protection of our air, water, and land, women's rights and civil rights, free trade unions, Social Security and a civil service based on merit -- all these were launched as citizen's movements and won the endorsement of the political class only after long struggles and in the face of bitter opposition and sneering attacks. It's just a fact: Democracy doesn't work without citizen activism and participation, starting at the community. Trickle down politics doesn't work much better than trickle down economics. It's also a fact that civilization happens because we don't leave things to other people. What's right and good doesn't come naturally. You have to stand up and fight for it -- as if the cause depends on you, because it does. Allow yourself that conceit -- to believe that the flame of democracy will never go out as long as there's one candle in your hand.

So go for it. Never mind the odds."

Today's the day, here's the place, make one change now.

Now I know that I'm a good American. I've taken the Patriot Pledge!
Take the Patriot Pledge!

Josh Marshall, from inside the beltway, consistently describes the "discernible reality" of our governmental working. Today's article and links were particularly telling about the Bush regime.

It's scary stuff .

October 17th, 2004 - Josh Marshall (www.talkingpointsmemo.com)

"In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure,and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'

''In meetings, I'd ask if there were any facts to support our case. And for that, I was accused of disloyalty!'' Christie Whitman, as quoted by Ron Suskind in the New York Times Magazine. (Ron Suskind, "Without a Doubt", New York Times)"

Bush regime on woman's rights:

From Associated Press October 14, 2004

UNITED NATIONS — The United States has refused to join 85 heads of state and government in signing a statement that endorsed a 10-year-old U.N. plan to ensure every woman's right to education, healthcare and choice about having children.

The Bush administration said it withheld its signature because the statement included a reference to "sexual rights."

Kelly Ryan, deputy assistant secretary of State, wrote to backers of the plan that the United States was committed "to the empowerment of women and the need to promote women's fullest enjoyment of universal human rights."

"The United States is unable, however, to endorse the world leaders' statement," Ryan said, because it "includes the concept of 'sexual rights,' a term that has no agreed definition in the international community."

Ryan did not elaborate. At previous U.N. meetings, U.S. representatives have spoken out against abortion, gay rights and what they see as the promotion of promiscuity by distributing condoms to prevent AIDS.

The statement was signed by leaders of 85 nations, including those in the European Union, China, Japan, Indonesia, Pakistan and more than a dozen African countries, as well as 22 former world leaders.

Yesterday's report about WMD was again a clear indication the the invasion of Iraq was WRONG. What amazed me is how many people believe the Bush/Cheney lies over reports from so MANY groups with no political agenda.

Good editorial be NYTimes:
"Since any objective observer should by now have digested the idea that Iraq posed no imminent threat to anyone, let alone the United States, it was disturbing to hear President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney continue to try to justify the invasion this week on the grounds that after Sept. 11, 2001, Iraq was clearly the most likely place for terrorists to get illicit weapons. Even if Mr. Hussein had wanted to arm groups he could not control - a very dubious notion- he had nothing to give them."

Last night a friend of mine and I watched the VP debate in the critical care unit of the hospital where she has been daily after her husbands VERY bad motorcycle crash last week. I was very aware of the importance of life and the need to be connected. During the whole debate a lady in her mid 40s spent the time gossiping LOUDLY on her cell phone. The main topic of conversation was "Sports". Which team would win what game, what were the odds, etc. It seemed to me that she was the key to "What's wrong with America Today". Not only had she absolutely no concern about the state of the world, but had not empathy, politeness or compassion, but was self absorbed in her banal conversation.

Senator Byrd WV knows how to give a good irate speech:

"Two weeks ago, the Republican National Committee sent a mass mailing to West Virginians suggesting that liberals – in other words, everyone but Republicans -- are out to ban the Bible. Can you imagine? Ban the Bible? What a ridiculous claim. It is a flat-out, no-doubt-about-it, silly, sophomoric charge. The Republican National Committee is spreading this tripe to smear Democrats, and the President ought to demand that the Republican National Committee apologize to the people of West Virginia."
Senator Byrd delivered the remarks above in the Senate, highly critical of a flyer paid for by the Republican National Committee that suggests that Democratic officials want to ban the Bible.

How We Got Into This Imperial Pickle: A PNAC Primer By: Bernard Weiner

Interesting articles: "What if Bush Wins" by a panel of 16 writers
Washington Monthly

From John Ashcroft's lips to God's ear
Kiss Your Rights Goodbye
by Gary Indiana in the Village Voice August 23rd, 2004 4:45 PM

These articles on the police actions during the Republican conventions should give ALL Americans pause. It this the "freedom" and democracy we are so proud of??

The Rise of the Homeland Security State
Fortress Big Apple, Revisited By Nick Turse

Lockdown Manhattan
By JoAnn Wypijewski on September 3, 2004

Commentary:Being arrested by the NYPD is no picnic
By SHAWN MACOMBER Guest Commentary The Union Leader and New Hampshire Sun

Judge orders immediate release of 470 protesters
Guantanamo on the Hudson
by Sarah Ferguson for The Village Voice: September 2nd, 2004 6:45 PM

Need clarity this November? I suggest taking the Quizes by by Paul Slansky from the New Yorker's "Shouts & Murmers" section.

It's clear that the leadership (at the top..... Bush and cronies) has been instrumental in distroying any world wide believe in American honor and decency. Any good done by the American citizens (especially the soldiers, etc) has been offset by the Bushites "evil" behavior.

Case in point... excellently summarized by Helen Brown... the leadership into Abu Graibe atrocities..

Time for Rumsfield to Resign - Reports Place Blame At Top Levels
by Helen Brown POSTED: 4:30 pm CDT August 27, 2004

"The origin of the scandal traces back to Feb. 2, 2002, when President George W. Bush abrogated the Geneva Conventions requiring humanitarian treatment of prisoners. Bush declared that those rules didn't apply to the U.S. war against terrorism. Bush has been scrapping our international agreements since he came into office, but for this one he has paid dearly in terms of just plain decency. When he canceled the Geneva accords, the U.S. focus was in Afghanistan, where American forces were rounding up al Qaida and the Taliban suspects.Later that year, in December, Rumsfeld authorized ruthless interrogation practices against detainees rounded up in Afghanistan and held at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Those approved practices included the use of dogs to terrify prisoners, forcing prisoners into prolonged, painful stress positions, stripping them naked, solitary confinement, shaving them and hooding them.The train then completely left the tracks after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, where American military personnel at the Abu Ghraib prison adopted the same interrogation tactics used in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay."

Most times sound bites and reports of what someone said do not represent the truth but are used to misrepresent....

Thanks to fellow bloggers I was able to read the transcript of Kerry's testimony in 1971 (a time when Bush was busy drinking too much and avoiding too much work... see note of those who were with him at that time...) I am taking the liberty of publishing the transcript here :

Speaking as the representative of a studlier demographic (the cohort that deplored Vietnam is significantly more numerous these days than the surviving parents who still hold that fight to have been a noble cause). I'd like to go on record as endorsing Kerry's 1971 Senate testimony, a slab of which follows:

Thank you very much, Senator Fulbright, Senator Javits, Senator Symington and Senator Pell.

I would like to say for the record, and also for the men sitting behind me who are also wearing the uniforms and their medals, that my sitting here is really symbolic. I am not here as John Kerry. I am here as one member of a group of 1,000, which is a small representation of a very much larger group of veterans in this country, and were it possible for all of them to sit at this table, they would be here and have the same kind of testimony. I would simply like to speak in general terms. I apologize if my statement is general because I received notification [only] yesterday that you would hear me, and, I am afraid, because of the injunction I was up most of the night and haven't had a great deal of chance to prepare.

I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and say that several months ago, in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged, and many very highly decorated, veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia. These were not isolated incidents, but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis, with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command. It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit--the emotions in the room, and the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.

They told stories that, at times, they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Ghengis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam,in addition to the normal ravage of war and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.

We call this investigation the Winter Soldier Investigation. The term "winter soldier" is a play on words of Thomas Paine's in 1776, when he spoke of the "sunshine patriots," and "summertime soldiers" who deserted at Valley Forge because the going was rough.

We who have come here to Washington have come here because we feel we have to be winter soldiers now. We could come back to this country, we could be quiet, we could hold our silence, we could not tell what went on in Vietnam, but we feel, because of what threatens this country, not the reds, but the crimes which we are committing that threaten it, that we have to speak out.

I would like to talk to you a little bit about what the result is of the feelings these men carry with them after coming back from Vietnam. The country doesn't know it yet, but it has created a monster, a monster in the form of millions of men who have been taught to deal and to trade in violence, and who are given the chance to die for the biggest nothing in history; men who have returned with a sense of anger and a sense of betrayal which no one has yet grasped.

As a veteran and one who felt this anger, I would like to talk about it. We are angry because we feel we have been used it the worst fashion by the administration of this country.

In 1970, at West Point, Vice President Agnew said, "some glamorize the criminal misfits of society while our best men die in Asian rice paddies to preserve the freedom which most of those misfits abuse," and this was used as a rallying point for our effort in Vietnam.

But for us, as boys in Asia whom the country was supposed to support, his statement is a terrible distortion from which we can only draw a very deep sense of revulsion. Hence the anger of some of the men who are here in Washington today. It is a distortion because we in no way consider ourselves the best men of this country, because those he calls misfits were standing up for us in a way that nobody else in this country dared to, because so many who have died would have returned to this country to join the misfits in their efforts to ask for an immediate withdrawal from South Vietnam, because so many of those best men have returned as quadriplegics and amputees, and they lie forgotten in Veterans' Administration hospitals in this country which fly the flag which so many have chosen as their own personal symbol. And we cannot consider ourselves America's best men when we are ashamed of and hated what we were called on to do in Southeast Asia.

In our opinion, and from our experience, there is nothing in South Vietnam which could happen that realistically threatens the United States of America. And to attempt to justify the loss of one American life in Vietnam, Cambodia, or Laos by linking such loss to the preservation of freedom, which those misfits supposedly abuse, is to us the height of criminal hypocrisy, and it is that kind of hypocrisy which we feel has torn this country apart.

We found that not only was it a civil war, an effort by a people who had for years been seeking their liberation from any colonial influence whatsoever, but, also, we found that the Vietnamese, whom we had enthusiastically molded after our own image, were hard-put to take up the fight against the threat we were supposedly saving them from.

We found most people didn't even know the difference between communism and democracy. They only wanted to work in rice paddies without helicopters strafing them and bombs with napalm burning their villages and tearing their country apart. They wanted everything to do with the war, particularly with this foreign presence of the United States of America, to leave them alone in peace, and they practiced the art of survival by siding with whichever military force was present at a particular time, be it Viet Cong, North Vietnamese or American.

We found also that, all too often, American men were dying in those rice paddies for want of support from their allies. We saw first hand how monies from American taxes were used for a corrupt dictatorial regime. We saw that many people in this country had a one-sided idea of who was kept free by the flag, and blacks provided the highest percentage of casualties. We saw Vietnam ravaged equally by American bombs and search-and-destroy missions as well as by Viet Cong terrorism, - and yet we listened while this country tried to blame all of the havoc on the Viet Cong.

We rationalized destroying villages in order to save them. We saw America lose her sense of morality as she accepted very coolly a My Lai, and refused to give up the image of American soldiers who hand out chocolate bars and chewing gum.

We learned the meaning of free-fire zones--shooting anything that moves--and we watched while America placed a cheapness on the lives of orientals.

We watched the United States falsification of body counts, in fact the glorification of body counts. We listened while, month after month, we were told the back of the enemy was about to break. We fought using weapons against "oriental human beings" with quotation marks around that. We fought using weapons against those people which I do not believe this country would dream of using, were we fighting in the European theater. We watched while men charged up hills because a general said that hill has to be taken, and, after losing one platoon, or two platoons, they marched away to leave the hill for reoccupation by the North Vietnamese. We watched pride allow the most unimportant battles to be blown into extravaganzas, because we couldn't lose, and we couldn't retreat, and because it didn't matter how many American bodies were lost to prove that point, and so there were Hamburger Hills and Khe Sanhs and Hill 81s and Fire Base 6s, and so many others.

Now we are told that the men who fought there must watch quietly while American lives are lost so that we can exercise the incredible arrogance of "Vietnamizing" the Vietnamese.

Each day, to facilitate the process by which the United States washes her hands of Vietnam, someone has to give up his life so that the United States doesn't have to admit something that the entire world already knows, so that we can't say that we have made a mistake. Someone has to die so that President Nixon won't be, and these are his words, "the first President to lose a war."

We are asking Americans to think about that, because how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? We are here in Washington to say that the problem of this war is not just a question of war and diplomacy. It is part and parcel of everything that we are trying, as human beings, to communicate to people in this country--the question of racism, which is rampant in the military, and so many other questions, such as the use of weapons: the hypocrisy in our taking umbrage at the Geneva Conventions and using that as justification for a continuation of this war, when we are more guilty than any other body of violations of those Geneva Conventions; in the use of free-fire zones; harassment-interdiction fire, search-and-destroy missions; the bombings; the torture of prisoners; all accepted policy by many units in South Vietnam. That is what we are trying to say. It is part and parcel of everything.

An American Indian friend of mine who lives in the Indian Nation of Alcatraz put it to me very succinctly: He told me how, as a boy on an Indian reservation, he had watched television, and he used to cheer the cowboys when they came in and shot the Indians, and then suddenly one day he stopped in Vietnam and he said, "my God, I am doing to these people the very same thing that was done to my people," and he stopped. And that is what we are trying to say, that we think this thing has to end.

We are here to ask, and we are here to ask vehemently, where are the leaders of our country? Where is the leadership? We're here to ask where are McNamara, Rostow, Bundy, Gilpatrick, and so many others? Where are they now that we, the men they sent off to war, have returned? These are the commanders who have deserted their troops. And there is no more serious crime in the laws of war. The Army says they never leave their wounded. The Marines say they never even leave their dead. These men have left all the casualties and retreated behind a pious shield of public rectitude. They've left the real stuff of their reputations bleaching behind them in the sun in this country....

We wish that a merciful God could wipe away our own memories of that service as easily as this administration has wiped away their memories of us. But all that they have done, and all that they can do by this denial, is to make more clear than ever our own determination to undertake one last mission: To search out and destroy the last vestige of this barbaric war; to pacify our own hearts; to conquer the hate and fear that have driven this country these last ten years and more. And more. And so, when, thirty years from now, our brothers go down the street without a leg, without an arm, or a face, and small boys ask why, we will be able to say "Vietnam" and not mean a desert, not a filthy obscene memory, but mean instead where America finally turned, and where soldiers like us helped it in the turning.

Our Executive Branch of government flagrantly spins, twists, reinterprets or blatently disregards the LAW. Our Judiacial Branch is quickly becoming codependent, enabling the twisting of the the constitutional law to meet those with big voices ($$$) and the Congress has Squashed all debate and dialog and is using strong arm tactics or "hidden" and "last minute" maneuvering to ensure that the "chosen" few rewrite the laws....

The public is busy watching "reality TV" and more concerned with the fate of Paris Hilton's dog than the responsibility to create and MAINTAIN: "a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity"

This is scary... not comforting.... What in hell are we doing????

But lets make sure that ALL COLLEGE students are versed in "homeland security"... Since that's the only jobs other than hamburger flippers that will be available.

Homeland Security 101 (from Wired News )
In an effort to attract federal funding, draw new students and prepare graduates for careers in the expanding field of homeland security, universities are augmenting existing courses and launching entire programs around security, defense and terror issues.
Most university course books now include at least a few related classes. For example, students at the University of Richmond can enroll in Rhetorics of Terror/ism, Homeland (In)Security, and the State, which examines the root causes of terrorism and current United States security concerns. Rice University offers Jihad and the End of the World, a religion class that explores the concept of holy war in the Islamic world."

I just wonder WHO is going to pay the bill for all the mess we have gotten ourselves into and when will it come due. Soon I hope, cause I think its only fair and right that "them that caused the mess..... clean it up" , and not our children!!

quote for the day: "The pressure may be getting to Mr. Bush. He came up with a gem of a Freudian slip yesterday. At a signing ceremony for a $417 billion military spending bill, the president said: "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."

Lets see.... we invaded Iraq in part because they wouldn't let the UN inspect for weapon's of mass destruction ...

Today as reported in the Washington Post: "In a significant shift in U.S. policy, the Bush administration announced this week that it will oppose provisions for inspections and verification as part of an international treaty that would ban production of nuclear weapons materials.For several years the United States and other nations have pursued the treaty, which would ban new production by any state of highly enriched uranium and plutonium for weapons. At an arms-control meeting this week in Geneva, the Bush administration told other nations it still supported a treaty, but not verification.

<> Administration officials, who have showed skepticism in the past about the effectiveness of international weapons inspections, said they made the decision after concluding that such a system would cost too much, would require overly intrusive inspections and would not guarantee compliance with the treaty. They declined, however, to explain in detail how they believed U.S. security would be harmed by creating a plan to monitor the treaty

While declaring nonproliferation a priority, however, the administration has opposed other arms-control treaties that rely on inspection regimes.

In 2001, the administration opposed attempts to create an inspections regime for the Biological Weapons Convention. It has signed an arms-reduction deal with Russia that doesn't include new verification mechanisms, and in its first year in office, the administration pulled out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty."

It is going to be an interesting fall.
from today's Washington Post - about the Florida elections:
"Constance Kaplan, director of the largest elections office in the state, spent the day trying to explain why the 2002 election data that she had been telling everyone were irretrievably lost were not lost after all. In fact, the data -- audits of the troubled 2002 governor's primary and general election -- were on a computer disk in a folder among "books and bookcases and old reports" in the conference room next to her office.

"It's like watching Laurel and Hardy," said Bobbie Brinegar, president of the Miami-Dade County League of Women Voters. "I don't know why anyone needs to watch these reality TV shows; they could just as easily watch voting issues in Florida."

Ted Rall has an interesting article on the Bush's trial "Let's now invade Iran" balloon.
Heaven help us all should the Republican's win or steal the election in November..

Ted Rall has an interesting article on the Bush's trial "Let's now invade Iran" balloon.
Heaven help us all should the Republican's win or steal the election in November..

This is the week of the Democratic Convention. With no TV or Cable available, I've been following via the internet: C-Span, AirAmerica Radio, and the various convention blogs.
For a contrast, I've made the occasional foray into Clear Channel's radio media to see what the "other" media is reporting. I continue to be floored by the complete misrepresentation of the speeches by the neo-conservitive pundits. They must not speed the same English that I do.
I tried finding a translation program but "google" didn't turn up an adequate. The Democrat Underground "Humor and Parody" section had some good sites but even satire can't touch the amazing disconnection...
For what it's worth: Tuesday's speeches were inspiring: Thank you Carter, Heinz-Kerry and Obama...

Interview with Robert Kennedy Jr:
"Grist: Your upcoming book, Crimes Against Nature, addresses many of these issues. Is the larger mission of your book to help oust Bush?

Kennedy: It's to help the voting public recognize the truth. We win this battle when the American public knows what's going on. You can't talk about the environment today honestly in any context without being critical of this president. A few years ago, if you asked the principal environmental leaders in our country, "What's the greatest threat to our global environment?," you would have gotten a range of answers from global warming to acid rain, overpopulation, etc. But today, they will all tell you the same thing: It's George W. Bush. There is no other issue today. He is the only issue." (read more)

Juan Cole has an excellent rebuttal ....

"Wednesday, July 14, 2004 - Arguing with Bush yet Again

President Bush gave a speech on Tuesday in which he made specific claims about how the United States is safer as a result of his military action. I dispute assertions about particular Middle Eastern or South Asian countries... (read article)"

We should all read the Declaration of Independence. Well written doc.

from the LA Times: Look to 1777 and Learn, Mr. Bush
By David Bromwich, David Bromwich is editor of "On Empire, Liberty and Reform: Speeches and Letters of Edmund Burke" (Yale University Press, 2000).

"When imperial conquest is grafted onto the normal structures of constitutional government, the change will produce grotesque distortions of thinking that undermine judgment and common sense."

A reminder from Ted Rall on Memorial Day... to remember all..

" According to the Associated Press, Iraqi morgue records lead to a low-balled rough estimate of 33,000 additional civilians killed between May 2003 and April 2004. (This doesn't include those killed in explosions or those who were buried without ever going to a hospital.) These 63,000-plus people--yes, people--paid precisely the same price as our soldiers for deposing Saddam Hussein. But unlike our soldiers, they didn't volunteer.

No one, even Michael Moore, talks about the dead Taliban and Iraqi government soldiers, many of them conscripts. Yet the these tens of thousands, every bit as much as U.S. celebrity war heroes like Pat Tillman (killed, it turns out, by "friendly fire") died performing their duty, defending their countries against enemy forces. The fact that their side lost cannot diminish the horror of their destruction, wipe away the grief of their wives and children, or dishonor their sacrifice. God knows we try. We pretend that our 880 dead soldiers, followed at a distant second by civilians reduced to "collateral damage," are the only losses that matter out of nearly 100,000.

American lives are precious, but we-and our soldiers--are no more valuable than any anyone else. Until we accept our founding principle that we are all created equal and start acting accordingly, we'll keep wondering why the world holds us in contempt.

(Ted Rall is the author of "Wake Up, You're Liberal: How We Can Take America Back From the Right,"

A bit old, but an interesting observation from Jimmy Carter during his recent African tour... from Mali..

Jimmy Carter - Reflections "It is disturbing to observe the adverse effect of some U.S. policies on the less-developed nations. Despite helpful contributions of USAID and military assistance in Mali, for instance, the grossly exorbitant cotton subsidies for mega-farms in America cost the country far more than all the combined assistance from rich nations. Malians produced more cotton last year than any other African country and it is their number one export, but they had to sell it with no profit in order to compete with the heavily subsidized U.S. crop. Also, there is a heavy-handed effort by Washington to force other countries to violate the basic premises of the newly established International Criminal Court. Our government threatens to withhold military assistance
unless they will guarantee that U.S. citizens be immune to possible punishment for war crimes or other atrocities. Another interesting development has been the efforts from Washington to elevate the issue of terrorism, and American diplomatic officials are forced to participate in this over-emphasis. We were warned strenuously about the new terrorist dangers that had arisen when we planned our visit to Timbuktu and Mopti. I decided that we would take a chance, and when we met with representatives of a dozen donor agencies in Bamako, I asked if any of them had any evidence of increased violence in the area or terrorist threats. The unanimous response was laughter."

I've always liked K.Vonegut.... still do...
Here's true words from an article he wrote in Mar 2004:
Cold Turkey

"How about Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes?
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. …
And so on.

Not exactly planks in a Republican platform. Not exactly Donald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney stuff.
For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere."

“Blessed are the merciful” in a courtroom? “Blessed are the peacemakers” in the Pentagon? Give me a break!

"The ability to end wars comes from the inside out. 'War' is just the name we give to the ultimate dysfunction, in a mass way. We're murdering each other -- babies, children - polluting the land, destroying beautiful buildings and works of art, torturing people, lying about people, projecting all our fears. That's what war is. War isn't hell; it's worse than hell. It's madness. It is our self-inflicted madness."

-- Patricia Sun

The shear arrogance of this administration is clearly demonstrated in the latest scandal of "torture" and memos. The Miami Herold's editorial is clear as any article I've read on the danger's to our "rule of law" as any:

President's power vs. laws against torture
OUR OPINION: U.S. MUST ABIDE BY ITS COMMITMENTS AGAINST ABUSES
Miami Herald - June 10th

"U.S. presidents customarily have pushed the envelope of their legal authority to the maximum during wartime. President Bush has been no exception, suspending the right of habeas corpus for U.S. citizens in two known cases and claiming the right to operate a prison at Guantánamo Bay that exists in an extra-legal, no-man's land. Even with all that, the claim by government lawyers that Mr. Bush can authorize torture of prisoners in disregard of U.S. law, international law, the Geneva Conventions, treaty commitments, human decency and plain common sense should shock the conscience of every American.

It's hard to say what's worse -- the notion that the power to set aside laws is ''inherent in the president,'' as one report has it, or the claim that a president's power as commander-in-chief includes the right to use torture. Both of these wrongheaded ideas offend legal and constitutional standards -- the separation of powers, to cite only one -- and must be unequivocally rejected."

Today's readings linked me to an article by William R. Polk on Torture
(guest editorial on Juan Cole's blog)

He was writing about lessons (not learned) from the French handling of the Algerians during the French-Algerian War.

"One of the most influential books on that war, written by Colonel Roger Trinquier, a French paratrooper, argued that torture is to “modern war” what the machinegun was to World War I. Horrified by what they learned was happening, French critics called torture the “cancer of democracy.” Using it, the French not only destroyed their claim to legitimacy in Algeria but also nearly destroyed French civil life.

If there was a lesson to be learned by the Algerian experience, it certainly was not heeded.

Influenced by the French – Trinquier’s book was translated and made available by the CIA "



Out of curiosity, I googled Colonel Roger Trinquier.

The top returns were US militiary sites and this was an interesting item from http://www.usafa.af.mil/jscope/JSCOPE03/Schrepel03.html (U.S Airforce).

It sheds a bit of light on the widening distance between the "from the trenches" military leaders and the Bush/Rumsfield approach.

"Algiers should instruct us about the ethical landmines and limitations of using soldiers in urban terrain, in and among civilians. In the near future, American soldiers may be forced by strategic or operational necessity to operate in urban terrain among a hostile indigenous population. One may assume such battlefields would necessarily be found abroad. In reality, the likelihood of conducting urban operations in domestic cities within the United States should not be ruled out. Wherever an enemy adopts asymmetric attacks, including terrorism, American soldiers must respond to challenge to the American way of war. Combating terrorism in urban areas pits soldiers into uncomfortable and unfamiliar roles. In order to defeat a terrorist enemy, American soldiers at all levels of command will require prior training and education to prevent military operations from becoming moral quagmires without victory or justice. While the message for general officers is plain, political leaders must not be excluded from the educational process. Taking the Pontius Pilate route of symbolically washing one’s hands after the event is no longer a permissible option."

And warnings from the Army:

"This requires an extremely capable intelligence infrastructure endowed with human sources and deep cultural knowledge. Indeed, intelligence is key. As the Commander of the US Army's 1st Armored Division in Iraq, Major General Martin Dempsey, observed in November 2003, "Fundamentally, here in Baghdad we do two things: We're either fighting for intelligence or we're fighting based on that intelligence." Despite unparalleled improvements in military intelligence, the United States does not seem to have the depth and breadth required in human intelligence (humint) and cultural intelligence arenas. Arabic linguists are lacking. .....Mistakes made in the process of waging a counterinsurgency war often reinforce an insurgent's propaganda. For example, accidental shootings, deaths during interrogations, misdirected raids, and inappropriate behavior by new police organizations fuel insurgent claims that the new regime is corrupt or unable to protect the population"

Reading further, it seems that Lieutenant-Colonel Roger Trinquier was reportedly the architect of brutal repression in Algiers. The necessity of "secrecy" was stressed rather than a push to not do the wrong. We see that in the administrations response to the torture.. basically a "we're sorry this got out and the troops will no longer be allowed access to cameras" .

This thinking was behind the atrocities (covertly sponsored by the US-CIA) perpetrated in South America, Latin America, Africa, etc. over the past 50 years. The effectiveness?? We are the most hated nation in the world... We have been instrumental in the "disappearance" of millions of people under the guise of "humanitiy" and "democracy".

I just don't get it !!

The past week has brought many politicians, pundits, and columnists into discusson of "human rights" vs terrorist rights. One of the best articles was Juan Cole's reaction the the waffle by Lieberman on justification of torture.
see: Informed Comment - Juan Cole (archives) date of article: May

"There are several things wrong with this stance. Although Lieberman was trying to distance himself from the Abu Ghuraib practices, he was slipping in a justification of torture under some circumstances. In fact, there is every evidence that "that" was not a long way from Abu Ghuraib at all, and it was precisely Lieberman's reasoning that led to it, starting at Gitmo and spreading. First, torture does not work, and there is no evidence that it worked at Abu Ghuraib. (It may work tactically on a limited basis, but it doesn't work strategically; it throws up bad information with the good and creates lots of enemies; if it worked Algeria would be French soil).
Second, the argument that the ends justify the means always turns human beings into monsters. If something is morally wrong, you don't do it if you hope to remain a moral society. Society would be a lot safer if all known heads of identified criminal organizations were taken out by police snipers. We don't do that. Why? Sen. Lieberman should think about it. That way lies a descent into barbarity before which September 11 would pale.
Third (as a reader reminded me) there were no terrorist suspects at Abu Ghuraib, only persons suspected of knowing something about the insurgency or being involved in it (and apparently from what the Red Cross says, a lot of them were picked up in error anyway).

We Americans either stand for something or we don't. What I always assumed we stood for was the US Constitution. Our State Department annually rates other countries by how well their record stacks up against the US Bill of Rights. That custom seems an implicit admission that we hold these rights and values to be universal, not limited to US soil or only a privilege of citizens. And here is what the founding generation of Americans thought about Abu Ghuraib and torture:
Article 8:
"Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."

The War's Lost Weekend - Frank Rich ... NY Times
"Through a cruel accident of timing, each of (this week's) images (of Iraq) was cross-cut with a retread of a golden oldie: President Bush standing under the "Mission Accomplished" banner of a year ago. "I wish the banner was not up there," Karl Rove had told a newspaper editorial board in the swing state of Ohio in mid-April. Not "I wish that we had planned for the dangers of post-Saddam Iraq before recklessly throwing underprepared and underprotected Americans into harm's way." No, Mr. Rove has his eye on what's most important: better political image management through better set design"

This is surreal ! A not funny parody??

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
May 5, 2004
President Bush Meets with Al Arabiya Television on Wednesday
Interview of the President by Al Arabiya Television
The Map Room
10:33 A.M. EDT

My thoughts on some of the statements:
"I want to tell the people of the Middle East that the practices that took place in that prison are abhorrent and they don't represent America"
Jerry Springer show? Take the average values shown on American TV and this behavior unfortunately does represent the worst of America...

"it's important for people to understand that in a democracy that there will be a full investigation. In other words, we want to know the truth. "
These abuses were reported by the Red Cross MONTHS ago. Nothing was done until someone finally went public with photos.. And the Pres STILL has NOT READ all the reports.

"there will be a full investigation and justice will be delivered"
Many of the abuses were committed by our mercenaries (not our soldiers) and are thereby "outside" of any law. We set a precedent in Guantanamo when our Pres and cronies decided to do away with the Geneva Convention, the Constitution, or any "Rule of Law" except perhaps the "law of the jungle"...

"the people in Fallujah are tired of foreign fighters and radicals and extremists preventing them from living a normal life"
So does that mean we're getting out???

"still Mr. Sadr in defense with U.S., how do you think this person should be dealt with?

THE PRESIDENT: I think he ought to be dealt with by the Iraqi citizens who are getting tired of him occupying the holiest of holy sites. And
we are very respectful for the holy sites in Iraq, we understand their importance to the Iraqi citizens. Mr. Sadr is occupying those sites as if they're his, and I think the Iraqi citizens are getting tired of that. "
He's the cleric for the mosque and his followers... We bombed the mosque and abused and disrespected the people???

"Free societies do not allow thugs to roam streets and hold people hostage to their whims"
That's a nice thought... so we're going to repeal the "Patriot Act", give the hostages in Guantanamo justice and spend our resources dealing with the thugs in our streets?

Give us a break !!!! Geez.....

Don Rumsfeld: "I think that -- I'm not a lawyer. My impression is that what has been charged thus far is abuse, which I believe technically is different from torture. I don't know if it is correct to say what you just said, that torture has taken place, or that there's been a conviction for torture. And therefore I'm not going to address the torture word."

Taguba Report: "Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee."

What a cool way to map the world.... The Degree Confluence
"The goal of the project is to visit each of the latitude and longitude integer degree intersections in the world, and to take pictures at each location. The pictures and stories will then be posted here"

"Victory attained by violence is tantamount to defeat" - Mathatma Ghandi

As the working of the Bush administration are made public, it becomes more and more evident that our Government is on an unconscionably immorally WRONG path... one that is not caused by good intensions but dramatically let by greed and corruption...
This article from Juan Cole was another eye opener....soj

Juan Cole "Informed Comment"
on Perle at the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
"It is deeply shameful that Perle is still pushing Chalabi, and may well succeed in installing him. Chalabi is wanted for embezzling $300 million from a Jordanian bank. He cannot account for millions of US government money given him from 1992 to 1996. He was flown into Iraq by the Pentagon (Perle was on the Defense Advisory Board, a civilian oversight committee for the Pentagon) with a thousand of his militiamen. The US military handed over to Chalabi, a private citizen, the Baath intelligence files that showed who had been taking money from Saddam, giving Chalabi the ability to blackmail large numbers of Iraqi and regional actors. It was Chalabi who insisted that the Iraqi army be disbanded, and Perle almost certainly was an intermediary for that stupid decision. It was Chalabi who insisted on blacklisting virtually all Baath Party members, even if they had been guilty of no crimes, effectively marginalizing all the Sunni Iraqi technocrats who could compete with him for power. It was Chalabi who finagled his way onto the Interim Governing Council even though he has no grassroots support (only 0.2 percent of Iraqis say they trust him)."

From Carl Hiaasen - Miami Herald Apr 4 2004
So this is the new America. Our government wants to deport an Oregon woman who was convicted 11 years ago of growing six marijuana plants. Kari Rein, a Norwegian citizen, had never been in trouble before, and hadn't been in trouble since. That changed Dec. 30. She, her husband and two children were returning from a vacation to Norway when she was questioned at the Seattle-Tacoma Airport by officers of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They had run Rein's name through a computer and found the old marijuana conviction. They asked her to step into a private room. ''And that,'' says her husband, James Jungwirth, ``was the last time we saw her for three weeks.''.......(see article for more)

It is a bizarre and harrowing time in the new America. Our president defends Rush Limbaugh, a serial narcotic scammer and pillhead, as ``a great American.'' Meanwhile, the full might of law enforcement is aimed at deporting someone whose only crime is keeping half a dozen pot plants, more than a decade ago. Perhaps if Rein had her own right-wing radio show, the feds would leave her alone. - Carl Hiaasen

Our tax dollars hard at work for the Bush propaganda team:
from the New York Times:

"Bush administration, which has responded to the growing national appetite for fictionalized news by producing a steady supply of its own. Of late it has gone so far as to field its own pair of Jayson Blairs, hired at taxpayers' expense: Karen Ryan and Alberto Garcia, the "reporters" who appeared in TV "news" videos distributed by the Department of Health and Human Services to local news shows around the country. The point of these spots — which were broadcast whole or in part as actual news by more than 50 stations in 40 states — was to hype the new Medicare prescription-drug benefit as an unalloyed Godsend to elderly voters. They are part of a year-plus p.r. campaign, which, with its $124 million budget, would dwarf in size most actual news organizations.
When one real reporter, Robert Pear of The Times, blew the whistle on these TV "news" stories this month, a government spokesman defended them with pure Orwell-speak: "Anyone who has questions about this practice needs to do some research on modern public information tools." The government also informed us that Ms. Ryan was no impostor but an actual "freelance journalist." The Columbia Journalism Review, investigating further, found that Ms. Ryan's past assignments included serving as a TV shill for pharmaceutical companies in infomercials plugging FluMist and Excedrin. Given that drug companies may also be the principal beneficiaries of the new Medicare law, she is nothing if not consistent in her journalistic patrons. But she is a freelance reporter only in the sense that Mike Ditka would qualify as one when appearing in Levitra ads."

It's college reunion time... fund raising, etc.. Looking back, it feels like I jumped through 30 years, to suddenly find all the VERY IMPORTANT ISSUES even more compelling. Peace, sustainability, human rights, love... Still worth the good fight. Still causes that are likely to get one persecuted.
My New College days were eye openers. One book that was on the top of my list of inspirational reading was Eric Hoffer's The True Believer. We are more in danger of the destructive power of "true believers" today then we were during the Nixon paranoia.. and that was SCARY.

Hoffer said:
"The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause."

"A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding, when it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business."

"The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its antihumanity."

"The only index by which to judge a government or a way of life is by the quality of the people it acts upon. No matter how noble the objectives of a government, if it blurs decency and kindness, cheapens human life, and breeds ill will and suspicion- it is an evil government."

"Absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep."

"Freedom means freedom from forces and circumstances which would turn man into a thing, which would impose on man the passivity and predictability of matter. By this test, absolute power is the manifestation most inimical to human uniqueness. Absolute power wants to turn people into malleable clay."

Wow.. another step towards dictatorship. First we take the judiciary system and put it under control of Congress... then we take Congress and put it under control of Executive (oh wait... Bush and gang are already busy doing that...)...

H.R.3920
Title: To allow Congress to reverse the judgments of the United States Supreme Court.
Sponsor: Rep Lewis, Ron [KY-2] (introduced 3/9/2004) Cosponsors: 19
Latest Major Action: 3/9/2004 Referred to House committee. Status: Referred to the Committee on the Judiciary, and in addition to the Committee on Rules, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned.

Everyone's talking about "The Passion" ; flocking by the thousands to see Hollywood's interpretation of the torture and crucifixion of Jesus. .. I truly wish that all those moved by this "Passion" could be moved enough by today's cruelty perpetrated by our governmental regime to work to STOP it !!!

One would hope that with instrospection we, as a people, would try to do our best to protect mankind from such injustice and cruelty. Yet the anger I hear on the streets is against "gay-marriage" and how our government should not allow this "sin". So much energy spent on stopping two people of the same sex from openly committing to their love for each other and so little energy spent on stopping torture, murder, rape, and other sins against mankind is heartbreaking.

This blog from Riverbend was just a reminder of the heartlessness of the Bushies and the campaign against Iraq. How many Americans even knew of this, or cared, or still remember?

The sins of the father... the sins of the son... the sins of the American government... and our sins of complacency and silence....
Sunday, February 15, 2004 (Riverbend blog - Bagdad Burning: http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/ )

Dedicated to the Memory of L.A.S.

February 12, 1991, marked one of the days of the small Eid or 'Eid Al-Fitr'. Of course it also marked one of the heaviest days of bombing during the Gulf War. No one was in the mood for celebration. Most families remained at home because there wasn't even gasoline to travel from one area to the next. The more fortunate areas had bomb shelters and people from all over the neighborhood would get together inside of the shelter during the bombing. That year, they also got together inside of the shelters to celebrate Eid Al-Fitr with their neighbors and friends.

Iraqis don't go to shelters for safety reasons so much as for social reasons. It's a great place to be during a bombing. There's water, electricity and a feeling of serenity and safety that is provided as much by the solid structure as by the congregation of smiling friends and family. Being with a large group of people helps make things easier during war- it's like courage and stamina travel from one person to the next and increase exponentially with the number of people collected.

So the families in the Amiriyah area decided they'd join up in the shelter to have a nice Eid dinner and then the men and boys over the age of 15 would leave to give the women and children some privacy. Little did they know, leaving them behind, that it would be the last time they would see the wife/daughter/son/fiancé/sister/infant…

I can imagine the scene after the men left at around midnight- women sat around, pouring out steaming istikans of tea, passing out Eid kilaycha and chocolate. Kids would run around the shelter shrieking and laughing like they owned the huge playground under the earth. Teenage girls would sit around gossiping about guys or clothes or music or the latest rumor about Sara or Lina or Fatima. The smells would mingle- tea, baked goods, rice… comfortable smells that made one imagine, for a few seconds, that they were actually at home.

The sirens would begin shrieking- the women and children would pause in the midst of eating or scolding, say a brief prayer in their heart and worry about their loved ones above the ground- the men who refused to remain inside of the shelter in order to make room for their wives and kids.

The bombs fell hard and fast at around 4 a.m. The first smart bomb went through the ventilation, through the first floor of the shelter- leaving a gaping hole- and to the bottom 'basement' of the shelter where there were water tanks and propane tanks for heating water and food. The second missile came immediately after and finished off what the first missile missed. The doors of the advanced shelter immediately shut automatically- locking over 400 women and children inside.

It turned from a shelter into an inferno; explosions and fire rose from the lower level up to the level that held the women and children and the water rose with it, boiling and simmering. Those who did not burn to death immediately or die of the impact of the explosions, boiled to death or were steamed in the 900+ º F heat.

We woke in the morning to see the horrors on the news. We watched as the Iraqi rescue workers walked inside of the shelter and came out crying and screaming- dragging out bodies so charred, they didn't look human. We saw the people in the area- men, women and children- clinging to the fence surrounding the shelter and screaming with terror; calling out name after name… searching for a familiar face in the middle of the horror.

The bodies were laid out one beside the other- all the same size- shrunk with heat and charred beyond recognition. Some were in the fetal position, curled up, as if trying to escape within themselves. Others were stretched out and rigid, like the victims were trying to reach out a hand to save a loved one or reach for safety. Most remained unrecognizable to their families- only the size and fragments of clothing or jewelry indicating the gender and the general age.

Amiriyah itself is an area full of school teachers, college professors, doctors and ordinary employees- a middle-class neighborhood with low houses, friendly people and a growing mercantile population. It was a mélange of Sunnis and Shi'a and Christians- all living together peacefully and happily. After the 13th of February, it became the area everyone avoided. For weeks and weeks the whole area stank of charred flesh and the air was thick and gray with ash. The beige stucco houses were suddenly all covered with black pieces of cloth scrolled with the names of dead loved ones. "Ali Jabbar mourns the loss of his wife, daughter, and two sons…"; "Muna Rahim mourns the loss of her mother, sisters, brothers and son…"

I decided to pay my respects to the shelter and the victims. It was October and I asked the retired teacher if the shelter was open (hoping in my heart of hearts she'd say 'no'). She nodded her head and said that it was indeed open- it was always open. Is there anyone in the shelter? He nodded his head solemnly- yes the shelter was 'maskoon'.

Now the word 'maskoon' can mean two different things in Arabic. It can mean 'lived in' and it can also mean 'haunted'. My imagination immediately carried me away- could the child mean haunted? I'm not one who believes in ghosts and monsters- the worst monsters are people and if you survive war and bombs, ghosts are a piece of cake… yet something inside of me knew that a place where 400 people had lost their lives so terribly- almost simultaneously- had to be 'haunted' somehow by their souls…

We walked inside and the place was dark and cold, even for the warm October weather. The only light filtering in came from the gaping hole in the roof of the shelter where the American missiles had fallen. I wanted to hold my breath- expecting to smell something I didn't want to… but you can only do that for so long. The air didn't smell stale at all; it simply smelled sad- like the winds that passed through this place were sorrowful winds. The far corners of the shelter were so dark, it was almost easy to imagine real people crouching in them.

The walls were covered with pictures. Hundreds of pictures of smiling women and children- toothy grins, large, gazelle eyes and the gummy smiles of babies. Face after face after face stared back at us from the dull gray walls and it felt endless and hopeless. I wondered what had happened to their families, or rather their remaining families after the catastrophe. We knew one man who had lost his mind after losing his wife and children inside of the shelter. I wondered how many others had met the same fate… and I wondered how much life was worth after you lost the people most precious to you.

At the far end of the shelter we heard voices. I strained my ears to listen and we searched them out- there were 4 or 5 Japanese tourists and a small, slight woman who was speaking haltingly in English. She was trying to explain how the bomb had fallen and how the people had died. She used elaborate hand gestures and the Japanese tourists nodded their heads, clicked away with their cameras and clucked sympathetically.

"Who is she?" I whispered to my mother's friend.
"She takes care of the place…" she replied in a low voice.
"Why don't they bring in someone who can speak fluently- this is frustrating to see…" I whispered back, watching the Japanese men shake hands with the woman before turning to go.

My mother's friend shook her head sadly, "They tried, but she just refuses to leave. She has been taking care of the place since the rescue teams finished cleaning it out… she lost 8 of her children here." I was horrified with that fact as the woman approached us. Her face was stern, yet gentle- like that of a school principal or… like that of a mother of 8 children. She shook hands with us and took us around to see the shelter. This is where we were. This is where the missiles came in… this is where the water rose up to… this is where the people stuck to the walls.

Her voice was strong and solid in Arabic. We didn't know what to answer. She continued to tell us how she had been in the shelter with 8 of her 9 children and how she had left minutes before the missiles hit to get some food and a change of clothes for one of the toddlers. She was in the house when the missiles struck and her first thoughts were, "Thank God the kids are in the shelter…" When she ran back to the shelter from her house across the street, she found it had been struck and the horror had begun. She had watched the corpses dragged out for days and days and refused to believe they were all gone for months after. She hadn't left the shelter since- it had become her home.

She pointed to the vague ghosts of bodies stuck to the concrete on the walls and ground and the worst one to look at was that of a mother, holding a child to her breast, like she was trying to protect it or save it. "That should have been me…" the woman who lost her children said and we didn't know what to answer.

It was then that I knew that the place was indeed 'maskoon' or haunted… since February 13, 1991 it has been haunted by the living who were cursed with their own survival.

Important Side Note:For those of you with the audacity to write to me claiming it was a legitimate target because "American officials assumed it was for military purposes" just remember Protocol 1 of the 1977 Geneva Conventions, Part IV, Section 1, Chapter III, Article 52: ... 3. In case of doubt whether an object which is normally dedicated to civilian purposes, such as a place of worship, a house or other dwelling or a school, is being used to make an effective contribution to military action, it shall be presumed not to be so used.

Our nationbuilding efforts strikes again:

Bush Hides White House's Complicity in Haiti from Daily Mislead:

"Now, with exiled Haitian dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc'' Duvalier planning a return to the island, the Administration is facing questions about why it supported the overthrow of a government that even Vice President Cheney admitted yesterday was "democratically elected." Though Aristide certainly had a problematic record, the Administration's policies could result in the restoration of an exiled dictator "accused of human rights violations, mass killings and stealing at least $120 million from Haiti's national treasury."

Goodbye Howard Dean and I thank you !
It was a welcome change to have a candidate for president with integrity and candor. It was also a welcome change to have a candidate for president that would give his wife rhododendron and bicycle rides for gifts. Someone with the integrity to put humanity and family forward as a prime virtue by practicing such... not preaching "family values" as show. It was time to have someone in the limelight who could differentiate between patriotism and demagoguery, someone believing in human and nation's rights, someone more interested in making our country a better place than building an empire.
I would have been proud to have had you as president... but am glad to have had you as a candidate..

Just read a scary article in Harper's on our WMD entitled When Killing Just Won't Do

Such wonders as :
Acoustic Bullets: High-power, very low-frequency waves emitted from one- to two-meter antenna dishes. Results in blunt-object trauma. Effects range from discomfort to death.
Infrasound: Very low-frequency sound that can travel long distances and easily penetrate most buildings and vehicles. Long-wavelength sound creates biophysical effects: nausea, loss of bowels, disorientation, vomiting, internal-organ damage, or death may occur. By 1972 an infrasound generator had been built in France. When activated it made the people in range sick for hours.
Genetic Alteration: The act of changing genetic code to create a desired less-than-lethal but long-term disablement effect, perhaps for generations, thereby creating a societal burden.

As long as our tax dollars continuing funding such research, it is no wonder that our country is seen as evil. What are we, as a nation, doing??

So is this what we want: Empire America ??

America's Empire of Bases
By Chalmers Johnson

As distinct from other peoples, most Americans do not recognize -- or do not want to recognize -- that the United States dominates the world through its military power. Due to government secrecy, our citizens are often ignorant of the fact that our garrisons encircle the planet. This vast network of American bases on every continent except Antarctica actually constitutes a new form of empire -- an empire of bases with its own geography not likely to be taught in any high school geography class. Without grasping the dimensions of this globe-girdling Baseworld, one can't begin to understand the size and nature of our imperial aspirations or the degree to which a new kind of militarism is undermining our constitutional order.

Our military deploys well over half a million soldiers, spies, technicians, teachers, dependents, and civilian contractors in other nations. To dominate the oceans and seas of the world, we are creating some thirteen naval task forces built around aircraft carriers whose names sum up our martial heritage -- Kitty Hawk, Constellation, Enterprise, John F. Kennedy, Nimitz, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Carl Vinson, Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, John C. Stennis, Harry S. Truman, and Ronald Reagan. We operate numerous secret bases outside our territory to monitor what the people of the world, including our own citizens, are saying, faxing, or e-mailing to one another.

Our installations abroad bring profits to civilian industries, which design and manufacture weapons for the armed forces or, like the now well-publicized Kellogg, Brown & Root company, a subsidiary of the Halliburton Corporation of Houston, undertake contract services to build and maintain our far-flung outposts. One task of such contractors is to keep uniformed members of the imperium housed in comfortable quarters, well fed, amused, and supplied with enjoyable, affordable vacation facilities. Whole sectors of the American economy have come to rely on the military for sales. On the eve of our second war on Iraq, for example, while the Defense Department was ordering up an extra ration of cruise missiles and depleted-uranium armor-piercing tank shells, it also acquired 273,000 bottles of Native Tan sunblock, almost triple its 1999 order and undoubtedly a boon to the supplier, Control Supply Company of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and its subcontractor, Sun Fun Products of Daytona Beach, Florida.

Secret Obsessions at the Top
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: February 7, 2004 New York Times

"When a country's capital is in the grip of hard-line ideologues who demand a certain kind of intelligence, they'll get it. The result is an intelligence failure. And, more fundamentally, it's a political failure by the top leaders themselves.

So to me, the administration's recent effort to blame the intelligence community for the Iraq mess is as misleading as the drive to war itself. Nothing the C.I.A. did was as harmful as the way administration officials systematically misled Americans about the incomplete and often contradictory mountain of intelligence.

For example, in September 2002 the Defense Intelligence Agency issued a still-classified report saying "there is no reliable information" on whether Iraq had chemical weapons. Yet in the same month Donald Rumsfeld was telling a House committee the opposite: "We do know that the Iraqi regime currently has chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction, and we do know they are currently pursuing nuclear weapons."

I've been canvassing people in the intelligence community, and one person at D.I.A. tells me: "I never saw anything that justified the idea that Saddam was an immediate threat, or that we knew with certainty what he had. Everything I saw was laced with `possibles' and `probables'; in fact, what I saw about those aluminum tubes, for instance, seemed to me to leave the impression that they probably were not nuclear-related."

Lt. Col. Dale Davis, a former Marine counterintelligence officer now at the Virginia Military Institute, says he hears from his former intelligence colleagues that top officials "cherry-picked the intel for the most damning, and often least reliable, tidbits and produced alarming conclusions — the 45-minute chemical attack scenario, the African uranium and the Al Qaeda connection. The C.I.A. never supported these assertions."

Another person with long experience in military intelligence put it this way: "Everyone knew from the start that there was no smoking gun and the assessment was based on speculation, anecdote and outdated information, not current evidence. We didn't have the `humint' [human intelligence] capability to confirm anything one way or the other."

The administration could have been truthful, saying that the intelligence about W.M.D. was incomplete but alarming — and that in any case Saddam was a monster. Instead, officials from the president down warned us that unless we went to war, we risked a mushroom cloud at home.

That was worse than an intelligence failure. That was dishonesty."

THE LIES THAT BIND US TO IRAQ
by Robert Scheer

"The central sickness of human history is the notion that the ends justify the means, and it has disastrously gripped political movements from left to right, and from the secular to the religious. It is axiomatic that immoral means will inevitably corrupt the noblest of ends, as has been displayed from the fatal hubris of the Roman Empire down through the genocidal policies of the last century's nationalists, communists and colonialists, and on through the suicide bombers of today.

Yet this profoundly immoral posture has been embraced by President Bush in justifying his pre-emptive war against Iraq, even when the much-touted Iraqi threat proved at best to be based on inexcusable ignorance and at worst to be impeachable fraud. The undemocratic means employed by Bush -- misinforming the public, Congress and the United Nations -- are now somehow to be justified by the ends of "building democracy" in Iraq. This is a daunting challenge that the American people never signed on for and which seems as elusive a goal today as a year ago. "

Where's the Apology?

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: January 30, 2004 New York Times

America's credibility has been badly damaged — and nobody is being held accountable. But that's standard operating procedure. As far as I can tell, nobody in the Bush administration has ever paid a price for being wrong. Instead, people are severely punished for telling inconvenient truths. And administration officials have consistently sought to freeze out, undermine or intimidate anyone who might try to check up on their performance.

America as a One-Party State
Today's hard right seeks total dominion. It's packing the courts and rigging the rules. The target is not the Democrats but democracy itself.

By Robert Kuttner
Issue Date: 2.1.04

America has had periods of single-party dominance before. It happened under FDR's New Deal, in the Republican 1920s and in the early 19th-century "Era of Good Feeling." But if President Bush is re-elected, we will be close to a tipping point of fundamental change in the political system itself. The United States could become a nation in which the dominant party rules for a prolonged period, marginalizes a token opposition and is extremely difficult to dislodge because democracy itself is rigged. This would be unprecedented in U.S. history.
In past single-party eras, the majority party earned its preeminence with broad popular support. Today the electorate remains closely divided, and actually prefers more Democratic policy positions than Republican ones. Yet the drift toward an engineered one-party Republican state has aroused little press scrutiny or widespread popular protest.

We are at risk of becoming an autocracy in three key respects. First, Republican parliamentary gimmickry has emasculated legislative opposition in the House of Representatives (the Senate has other problems). House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas has both intimidated moderate Republicans and reduced the minority party to window dressing, rather like the token opposition parties in Mexico during the six-decade dominance of the PRI.

Second, electoral rules have been rigged to make it increasingly difficult for the incumbent party to be ejected by the voters, absent a Depression-scale disaster, Watergate-class scandal or Teddy Roosevelt-style ruling party split. After two decades of bipartisan collusion in the creation of safe House seats, there are now perhaps just 25 truly contestable House seats in any given election year (and that's before the recent Republican super gerrymandering). What once was a slender and precarious majority -- 229 Republicans to 205 Democrats (including Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent who votes with Democrats) -- now looks like a Republican lock. In the Senate, the dynamics are different but equally daunting for Democrats. As the Florida debacle of 2000 showed, the Republicans are also able to hold down the number of opposition votes, with complicity from Republican courts. Reform legislation, the 2002 Help America Vote Act (HAVA), may actually facilitate Republican intimidation of minority voters and reduce Democratic turnout. And the latest money-and-politics regime, nominally a reform, may give the right more of a financial advantage than ever.

Third, the federal courts, which have slowed some executive-branch efforts to destroy liberties, will be a complete rubber stamp if the right wins one more presidential election.

Taken together, these several forces could well enable the Republicans to become the permanent party of autocratic government for at least a generation. Am I exaggerating? Take a close look at the particulars. "

Maybe I'm missing something.... but it seems to me that the lastest Budget has provisions that give greater "right to privacy" to those buying guns than to those checking out library books (USA Patriot Act).
How bizzare !!!

I couldn't say it a smidgen as well. Thank you Molly Ivins:

Molly Ivins
Creators Syndicate - 01.22.04 "Meanwhile, Bush was running the same old plays in his State of the Union Address: fear, threat, danger, terror, war, enemies. He even trotted out the weapons of mass destruction again, just as though they had actually existed. And the media accuse Howard Dean of being negative!

President Bush's speech contained so many outrageous distortions -- on No Child Left Behind, Pell Grants, the PATRIOT Act, job training, the deficit, on and on -- it takes the public interest groups pages just to correct the most blatant disinformation in the speech.

My favorite line was, "Jobs are on the rise." Not a hey or a howdy to the 9 million unemployed Americans, just a flat lie. Piece of work, isn't he? "

Again Bush acts with complete DISREGARD of the constitution. We do not need or want a dictator....

Bush Seats Judge, Bypassing Senate DemocratsBy NEIL A. LEWIS

Published: January 17, 2004 - New York Times

"WASHINGTON, Jan. 16 — President Bush on Friday used the Congressional recess to install Charles W. Pickering Sr. in a federal appeals court seat from which he had been blocked twice by the Senate because of Democratic opposition.

In using a president's power to make appointments during Congressional recesses to fill vacancies, Mr. Bush was able to skirt the Senate confirmation process, which Democrats have used for three years to block not only the Pickering nomination but also those of several other Bush judicial nominees."

Al Gore January 2004
"In preparing this series of speeches, I have noticed a troubling pattern that characterizes the Bush-Cheney administration's approach to almost all issues. In almost every policy area, the administration's consistent goal has been to eliminate any constraints on their exercise of raw power, whether by law, regulation, alliance or treaty. And in the process, they have in each case caused America to be seen by the other nations of the world as showing disdain for the international community."

Bush's Power to Plan Trial of Detainees Is Challenged
By NEIL A. LEWIS

Published: January 16, 2004 - New York Times

"WASHINGTON, Jan. 15 — Five uniformed military lawyers assigned to defend detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, have filed a brief with the Supreme Court, challenging the basis of President Bush's plan to use military tribunals without civilian court review to try some of the detainees there.

In their 30-page brief, filed late Wednesday, the lawyers assert that President Bush worked to "create a legal black hole" and overstepped his constitutional authority as commander in chief in the way he set up the program for military tribunals,

"Under this monarchical regime, those who fall into the black hole may not contest the jurisdiction, competency or even the constitutionality of the military tribunals," the defense lawyers wrote. "

BUSH EXPLOITS MARTIN LUTHER KINGS'S GRAVE FOR POLITICAL FUNDRAISER
from daily Mislead.com 1/15/04

"On last year's Martin Luther King Day, President Bush eloquently honored the
memory of Dr. King, saying "I believe [in the] power of his words, the
clarity of his vision and the courage of his leadership." This year,
however, instead of honoring the legacy of Dr. King, President Bush has
decided to use Martin Luther King Day as tool to force the federal
government to subsidize a fundraising trip for his re-election campaign.

The New York Times reports that the President "hastily planned" a visit to
Dr. King's grave, and then will immediately go to "a $2,000-a-person
fundraiser in Atlanta." Even though Bush may spend the majority of his time
hobnobbing with donors at the fundraiser, because he will briefly visit Dr.
King's grave, he is allowed to deem the entire trip "official" and then bill
taxpayers for portions of the huge cost of hotel rooms, rental cars,
security, and travel. And those are no small costs - the Washington Post
notes that Air Force One alone costs $57,000 an hour to operate."

GREG PALAST New York, Dec. 2, 2003
"Last year, with little fanfare and less scrutiny, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act, which effectively orders all states to buy the computerized voting machines that Mr. Krugman rightly dreads. Worse, the law requires all states to computerize their voter rolls and purge those lists of suspect voters, à la Florida.
Heaven help us when President Bush and Congress tell us that they are going to "help" us vote. "

The writer, an investigative reporter, is the author of a book about the disenfranchisement of black voters in Florida in the 2000 election.

Florida AGAIN demonstrated that our electorial process needs improvement. Electronic machines with no "paper trail" is NOT the answer:

Today's recount in the House District 91 race is likely to raise questions about electronic voting, including whether paper records are necessary.
BY ERIKA BOLSTAD
ebolstad@herald.com

"Three years after helping render punch-card voting systems obsolete, Broward County voters have proven that no election system is foolproof.

In Tuesday's special election to fill state House seat 91, 134 Broward voters managed to use the 2-year-old touch-screen equipment without casting votes for any candidate.

How so many happened to cast nonvotes remains a riddle. Unlike with punch cards or paper ballots, there's no paper record with electronic voting that might offer a clue to the voter's intent.

The percentage of nonvotes -- 1.3 percent -- is modest compared to the days of ''hanging'' and ''pregnant chads.'' But in Tuesday's race, every vote was crucial. In a seven-candidate field, Ellyn Bogdanoff beat Oliver Parker by just 12 votes.

''These were the new machines,'' said Chas Brady, a spokesman for Parker's campaign. ``This was not supposed to happen"

Former Treasury Sec. Paints Bush as 'Blind Man'
By Reuters

Friday 09 January 2004

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill likened President Bush at Cabinet meetings to "a blind man in a room full of deaf people," according to excerpts on Friday from a CBS interview. O'Neill, who was fired by Bush in December 2002, also said the president did not ask him a single question during their first one-on-one meeting, which lasted an hour.

Another reason why this "reign" is BAD for America....

Bush Grabs New Power for FBI By Kim Zetter
"While the nation was distracted last month by images of Saddam Hussein's spider hole and dental exam, President George W. Bush quietly signed into law a new bill that gives the FBI increased surveillance powers and dramatically expands the reach of the USA Patriot Act.

The Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004 grants the FBI unprecedented power to obtain records from financial institutions without requiring permission from a judge.

Under the law, the FBI does not need to seek a court order to access such records, nor does it need to prove just cause.

Previously, under the Patriot Act, the FBI had to submit subpoena requests to a federal judge. Intelligence agencies and the Treasury Department, however, could obtain some financial data from banks, credit unions and other financial institutions without a court order or grand jury subpoena if they had the approval of a senior government official. "

More secrets ------
" It was reported that the CIA is planning to set up a new secret police force in Iraq, modeled after the Phoenix program of the Vietnam War, that will ensure the United States retains control over the country after official sovereignty passes to a native government. The secret plan, of which Dick Cheney was the purported secret author, will cost $3 billion
and will be funded from the CIA's secret budget. " Harper's Weekly

It's been a long time since I read this. Thanks to www.antiwar.com, it's again surfaced...
Happy New Year to all. And may we all take care and wish carefully.The War Prayer, by Mark Twain: "The War Prayer
by Mark Twain"