nin

Quoted in The Art of Mental Warfare
"We are like people born in a cage and unable to visualize any world beyond our familiar bars of prejudice and superstition. That opinion the few create in order to control the many has seen to it that we are kept in permanent ignorance of our actual estate."
- Gore Vidal, The Great Unmentionable, Harvard lecture

Billions, trillions, soon you're talking about real money. Just not enough for children to be insured.

September 11, time to buy new school clothes and books and roll out a new campaign to sell the same old product

This is the day that commemorates the venality and criminality of politicians and religious leaders, made manifest.
Wake up. Six years later, wake up.

Or, better yet, lighten up, America.

Dwelling on your injuries make you sound all whiny and maudlin, and you ruin the party! Your makeup starts running with all those tears! You're ruining your botox treatment! Here's an idea from a great leader... Go SHOPPING!

Be your selfish self and get on with it.
You've had electricity and clean water for the past six years, right?
Have you been tortured or ethnically cleansed?
Are the kids insurgents, yet?
Grow up, America.

The boogey men, OBL and Dubya are two peas from the same pod. Front men for the perpetual war machine, propagandists, chosen by the real movers for their supposed religiosity and their stage presence. Both of them are rich sons of richie riches, playing with blocks and dress up costumes like they were buildings and uniforms. What do they know of anything?

But they scared you out of your wits, didn't they.
They're pretty certain of themselves, aren't they.
Their product has been tested on focus groups.

But I think they are both losing their appeal, and I think their planners are thinking of retiring their dog and pony shows to move on to bigger and brighter shiny new products...
like Iran, and then on to the Road to Damascus.
Fall is the time to roll out the new shows, Andy!

Isn't it interesting how predictably Madison Avenue their productions have become?
It's like watching the summer reruns, only they're 6 years along now. More like watching Gilligan's Island reruns.

Dubya's speeches are worse than bad. He can barely deliver them. (or more correctly, catapult them.) And OBL has lost all credibility, showing up in a funny beard and asking us to embrace Islam, indeed. He really doesn't know us, does he.

Both of them need another speech writer, another makeup man, stand-ins, props and better costumes.
Another terrorist attack, another election, and the seasons, they go round and round and the painted ponies go up and down...

Lucky for their sponsors, they have Congress to pick our pockets and post date their checks...

an old woman calls CSPAN and says WE Gotta do What we GOTTA DO

So afraid of "terror" she is, that she has murdered her own conscience.

Post under "cost of war":

Move decimal place 4 positions to left to see how many families could be fed for a year.
Move decimal place 5 positions to left to see how many homes could be converted to run forever on solar power.
Move decimal place 6 positions to left to see how many people could have basic health coverage without deductibles or co-pays for a lifetime.
For roughly twice the number above, the United States could replace its entire liquid fuel needs from wind power, and could do it in less time than has elapsed since it invaded Iraq.

Eventual Cost
Scott Wallsten, senior fellow at the Progress and Freedom Foundation, AEI-Brookings and American Enterprise Institute, former economist at The World Bank, and staff economist at the U.S. President's Council of Economic Advisers, argues for a figure of $1 trillion in today’s dollars. Linda Bilmes, at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate and former Clinton administration adviser, put a total price tag of more than $2 trillion.

I understand the Bush Dynasty's War on Iraq has cost more than a million Iraqi lives.
For what?

I understand super sensitive superpatriot Americans are still referring daily to September 11.

"Parallels" a.k.a. Vietraq
Big Brother makes Universal Soldiers of our sons to stoke the corporate war machine.



But (irony alert) I guess these young men are "fighting over there so that they don't have to fight someone over here". As in... WHO would they be fighting?

And they are "fighting for my freedom to say what I think." (Just be careful what you say, and who you say it to, and how you say it, even in what used to be called the privacy of your own home. Because if you wear a Casio watch, that could be proof enough for the Gonzales Star Chamber to declare you a terrorist, and you could be disappeared.)

That old woman with the pragmatic view of the valuelessness of the Bill of Rights just put ZERO value on the lives of the boys fighting over there.
Unless she meant we have to have them there so she can fill her tank on her Wallymart paycheck and still have something left to pay for food.
We're No. 1!

In the movie we say "This isn't Us."
Isn't it?

Nuke 'em Day

Today the Japanese remember insanity.
They were victims of our nukes.
The only country to experience, first hand, the truth about nukes.
We nuked 'em.
The only country to ever use nukes on other human beings.
The biggest owner of nukes, the proliferator of nukes, the country who recently allowed it's Imperial Leader to negate the nuke treaty.
We need more and newer nukes, our old nukes are too... well, old. (What is the shelf life, er, half life of a nuke? only Dubya knows.)

How can any human being even consider this to be an option? When I hear a man say "nuke 'em" (and now candidate Hiroshima Hillary is spouting that filth) I think that man is not a human being, he is a koolaide drinking death-cultist, a cannibal with an ideology.



This is the day the Japanese recall insanity.

Dear Mainstream Media

I wake up a few days ago to hear on the radio that Condoleeeza is offering 44 Billion of my taxpayer dollar bills worth of arms to countries in the Mideast.
Then I hear the figure 20 Billion, Today it is 60 Billion. What the hell are you doing with this reporting? What figure can I quote when I'm painting my signs and writing my letters? What the hell figure can I quote when I'm expressing my rage?
I'm having some "cognitive dissonance" here, folks. Help me out.



Seize the Day is a British group, but the sentiment is the same.

We have 60 Billion taxpayer dollars to supply more carnage, but we don't have money to insure our children, or fix our bridges, or pay our fruit pickers a living wage...
in this great moral self proclaimed Christian nation.

there is another way

they want you to think there are only two choices...

a pause for some kulture

Gingsberg on amerika - ballad of skeletons


bomb


his letter to america, 1956


and a living artist, Coby Batty

remember when oil was 20 dollars a barrrel?

And Bush's war only cost We the People (the American taxpayers) a billion a week?
Good thing we have soma (24-7 television coverage of a rock concert for dead Diana, and Paris-and-Brittany's latest doin's) to paralyze our brain cells... otherwise... We'd be ticked.

Report: Wars Cost US $12 Billion a Month
By ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The boost in troop levels in Iraq has increased the cost of war there and in Afghanistan to $12 billion a month, and the total for Iraq alone is nearing a half-trillion dollars, congressional analysts say.

All told, Congress has appropriated $610 billion in war-related money since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror assaults, roughly the same as the war in Vietnam. Iraq alone has cost $450 billion.

The figures come from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, which provides research and analysis to lawmakers.

For the 2007 budget year, CRS says, the $166 billion appropriated to the Pentagon represents a 40 percent increase over 2006.

The Vietnam War, after accounting for inflation, cost taxpayers $650 billion, according to separate CRS estimates.

The $12 billion a month "burn rate" includes $10 billion for Iraq and almost $2 billion for Afghanistan, plus other minor costs. That's higher than Pentagon estimates earlier this year of $10 billion a month for both operations. Two years ago, the average monthly cost was about $8 billion.

Among the reasons for the higher costs is the cost of repairing and replacing equipment worn out in harsh conditions or destroyed in combat.

But the estimates call into question the Pentagon's estimate that the increase in troop strength and intensifying pace of operations in Baghdad and Anbar province would cost only $5.6 billion through the end of September.

If Congress approves President Bush's pending request for another $147 billion for the budget year starting Oct. 1, the total bill for the war on terror since Sept. 11 would reach more than three-fourths of a trillion dollars, with appropriations for Iraq reaching $567 billion.

Also, if the increase in war tempo continues beyond September, the Pentagon's request "would presumably be inadequate," CRS said.

The latest estimates come as support for the war in Iraq among Bush's GOP allies in Congress is beginning to erode. Senior Republicans such as Pete Domenici of New Mexico and Richard Lugar of Indiana have called for a shift in strategy in Iraq and a battle over funding the war will resume in September, when Democrats in Congress begin work on a funding bill for the war.

Congress approved $99 billion in war funding in May after a protracted battle and a Bush veto of an earlier measure over Democrats' attempt to set a timeline for withdrawing U.S. combat troops from Iraq.

The report faults the Pentagon for using the Iraq war as a pretext for boosting the Pentagon's non-war budget by costs such as procurement, increasing the size of the military and procurement of replacement aircraft as war-related items.

The new estimate comes as the White House and Democrats are fighting over spending bills for next year. That battle is over about $22 billion _ almost the cost of two months' fighting in Iraq.

"Think about what $10 billion a month would mean to protecting Americans from terrorism, improving security at our ports and airports, and increasing border security," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press.

why I love Michael Moore

a hometown boy does good, damn good

How many people can you name in the mainstream media who have been as correct, right, prescient, and humane as Michael Moore?

they look like damn nice kids

Living in Hell, brought to them by the U.S. of A.

Follow the link to watch the series.
I am so sorry, I wish my fellow Americans were sorry.
We turned nice college kids into war zone survivors. Go, watch the series.

Privatizing the military - a hallmark of a fascist state

Nice Job, NPR - exposing another powerful twit

Morning Edition made me fall out of bed laughing this a.m.

Steve Inskeep's interview with Doug Feith reveals our most innerest insider, highest super duper secretest know-all, Wizard of Oz to be a dweep of a twit.

Mike Moore exposed Paul Wolfowitz for a comb licking twit before the war.
William Krystol exposed himself to be a twitchy twit in his frequent talking head appearances on the MSM.
Rummy Rumsfield exposed himself to be a lyrical twit in his press briefings.
Rush Limbaugh's sexual twitdom was found in his bag at the airport.
Karl Rove rapped himself into pillsbury doughboy twit status forever at the press dinner.
Shrub has always been a frat boy twit.
I always wonder why Republican women look like mean, unhappy mothers.
Because Republican men are, basically, twits.

and No One Ever explained Jeff Gannon/Guckert.
I think he was Cheney's boytoy.

The GOP is perverted in every sense of the word.
These are your leaders, people. Rich Twits with Power.

Now for the cost of not believing the real experts:


Iraq: the hidden cost of the war
Andrew Stephen
Published 12 March 2007

America won't simply be paying with its dead. The Pentagon is trying to silence economists who predict that several decades of care for the wounded will amount to an unbelievable $2.5 trillion.

They roar in every day, usually direct from the Landstuhl US air-force base in the Rhineland: giant C-17 cargo planes capable of lifting and flying the 65-tonne M1 Abrams tank to battlefields anywhere in the world. But Landstuhl is the first staging post for transporting most of the American wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan back to the United States, and these planes act as CCATs ("critical care air transport") with their AETs - "aeromedical evacuation teams" of doctors, nurses and medical technicians, whose task is to make sure that gravely wounded US troops arrive alive and fit enough for intensive treatment at the Walter Reed Army Medical Centre, just six miles up the road from me in Washington.

These days it is de rigueur for all politicians, ranging from President Bush and Ibrahim al-Jaafari (Iraq's "prime minister") to junior congressmen, to visit the 113-acre Walter Reed complex to pay tribute to the valour of horribly wounded soldiers. Last Christmas, the centre was so overwhelmed by the 500,000 cards and presents it received for wounded soldiers that it announced it could accept no more.

Yet the story of the US wounded reveals yet another deception by the Bush administration, masking monumental miscalculations that will haunt generations to come. Thanks to the work of a Harvard professor and former Clinton administration economist named Linda Bilmes, and some other hard-working academics, we have discovered that the administration has been putting out two entirely separate and conflicting sets of numbers of those wounded in the wars.

This might sound like chicanery by George W Bush and his cronies - or characteristic incompetence - but Bilmes and Professor Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel laureate economist from Columbia University, have established not only that the number wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan is far higher than the Pentagon has been saying, but that looking after them alone could cost present and future US taxpayers a sum they estimate to be $536bn, but which could get considerably bigger still. Just one soldier out of the 1.4 million troops so far deployed who has returned with a debilitating brain injury, for example, may need round-the-clock care for five, six, or even seven decades. In present-day money, according to one study, care for that soldier alone will cost a minimum of $4.3m.

However, let us first backtrack to 2002-2003 to try to establish why the administration's sums were so wildly off-target. Documents just obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show how completely lost the Bush administration was in Neverland when it came to Iraq: Centcom, the main top-secret military planning unit at Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon, predicted in its war plan that only 5,000 US troops would be required in Iraq by the end of 2006.

Rummy's deputy Paul Wolfowitz was such a whizz at the economics of it all that he confidently told us that Iraq would "really finance its own reconstruction". Rumsfeld himself reported that the administration had come up with "a number that's something under $50bn" as the cost of the war. Larry Lindsey, then assistant to the president on economic policy at the White House, warned that it might actually soar to as much as $200bn - with the result that Bush did as he habitually does with those who do not produce convenient facts and figures to back up his fantasies: he sacked him.

From official statistics supplied by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, we now know that the Iraq war is costing roughly $200m a day, or $6bn every month; the total bill so far is $400bn. But, in their studies, Bilmes and Stiglitz consider three scenarios that were not even conceivable to Bush, Rummy, Wolfowitz et al back in 2003. In the first, incurring the lowest future costs, troops will start to be withdrawn this year and be out by 2010. The second assumes that there will be a gradual withdrawal that will be complete by 2015. The third envisages the participation of two million servicemen and women, with the war going on past 2016.

Estimating long-term costs using even the second, moderate scenario, Bilmes tells me: "I think we are now approaching a figure of $2.5 trillion." This, she says, "includes three kinds of costs. It includes the cash costs of running the combat operations, the long-term costs of replenishing military equipment and taking care of the veterans, and [increased costs] at the Pentagon. And then it includes the economic cost, which is the differential between reservists' pay in their civilian jobs and what they're paid in the military - and the macroecono mic costs, such as the percentage of the oil-price increase."

Let me pause to explain those deceptive figures. Look at the latest official toll of US fatalities and wounded in the media, and you will see something like 3,160 dead and 23,785 wounded (that "includes 13,250 personnel who returned to duty within 72 hours", the Washington Post told us helpfully on 4 March). From this, you might assume that only 11,000 or so troops, in effect, have been wounded in Iraq. But Bilmes discovered that the Bush administration was keeping two separate sets of statistics of those wounded: one (like the above) issued by the Pentagon and therefore used by the media, and the other by the Department of Veterans Affairs - a government department autonomous from the Pentagon. At the beginning of this year, the Pentagon was putting out a figure of roughly 23,000 wounded, but the VA was quietly saying that more than 50,000 had, in fact, been wounded.

Casualty conspiracy

To draw attention to her academic findings, Bilmes wrote a piece for the Los Angeles Times of 5 January 2007 in which she quoted the figure of "more than 50,000 wounded Iraq war soldiers". The reaction from the Pentagon was fury. An assistant secretary there named Dr William Winkenwerder phoned her personally to complain. Bilmes recalls: "He said, 'Where did you get those numbers from?'" She explained to Winkenwerder that the 50,000 figure came from the VA, and faxed him copies of official US government documents that proved her point. Winkenwerder backed down.

Matters did not rest there. Despite its independence from the Pentagon, the VA is run by Robert James Nicholson, a former Republican Party chairman and Bush's loyal political appointee. Following Bilmes's exchange with Winkenwerder - on 10 January, to be precise - the number of wounded listed on the VA website dropped from 50,508 to 21,649. The Bush administration had, once again, turned reality on its head to concur with its claims. "The whole thing is scary," Bilmes says. "I have never been conspiracy-minded, but watching them change the numbers on the website - it's extraordinary."

What Bilmes had discovered was that the tally of US fatalities in Iraq and Afghanistan included the outcome of "non-hostile actions", most commonly vehicle accidents. But the Pentagon's statistics of the wounded did not. Even troops incapacitated for life in Iraq or Afghanistan - but not in "hostile situations" - were not being counted, although they will require exactly the same kind of medical care back home as soldiers similarly wounded in battle. Bilmes and Stiglitz had set out, meantime, to explore the ratio of wounded to deaths in previous American wars. They found that in the First World War, on average 1.8 were wounded for every fatality; in the Second World War, 1.6; in Korea, 2.8; in Vietnam, 2.6; and, in the first Gulf war in 1991, 1.2. In this war, 21st-century medical care and better armour have inflated the numbers of the wounded-but-living, leading Bilmes to an astounding conclusion: for every soldier dying in Iraq or Afghanistan today, 16 are being wounded. The Pentagon insists the figure is nearer nine - but, either way, the economic implications for the future are phenomenal.

So far, more than 200,000 veterans from the current Iraq or Afghanistan wars have been treated at VA centres. Twenty per cent of those brought home are suffering from serious brain or spinal injuries, or the severing of more than one limb, and a further 20 per cent from amputations, blindness or deafness, severe burns, or other dire conditions. "Every person injured on active duty is going to be a long-term cost of the war," says Bilmes. If we compare the financial ramifications of the first Gulf war to the present one, the implications become even more stark. Despite its brevity, even the 1991 Gulf war exacted a heavy toll: 48.4 per cent of veterans sought medical care, and 44 per cent filed disability claims. Eighty-eight per cent of these claims were granted, meaning that 611,729 veterans from the first Gulf war are now receiving disability benefits; a large proportion are suffering from psychiatric illnesses, including post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.

More than a third of those returning from the current wars, too, have already been diagnosed as suffering from similar conditions. But although the VA has 207 walk-in "vet centres" and other clinics and offices throughout the US, it is a bureaucracy under siege. It has a well-deserved reputation for providing excellent healthcare for America's 24 million veterans, but is quite unable to cope with a workload that the Bush administration did not foresee.

The unknown unknowns

There is now a backlog of 400,000 claims from veterans and waiting lists of months, some of which "render . . . care virtually inaccessible", in the words of Frances Murphy, the VA's own deputy under-secretary for health. Claims are expected to hit 874,000 this year, 930,000 in 2008. Casualties returning from Iraq meanwhile outnumber other patients at Walter Reed 17 to one, and many have to be put up at nearby hotels and motels rather than in the hospital beds they desperately need. Suicide attempts are frequent; often the less wounded end up having to care for the more seriously wounded.

Since I researched this piece, the Washington Post has published a series of articles outlining the chaos at Walter Reed and elsewhere. Undercover reporters found soldiers suffering from schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress and other brain injuries, occupying rooms infested with mice and cockroaches. The ensuing furore resulted in the sacking of the general in charge. Even Bush says he is "deeply troubled" by these "unacceptable" conditions at Walter Reed, but his government has carefully avoided the issue of how much it will cost to put right these wrongs. The failure to look after returning, often traumatised troops leads to yet further hidden costs to the US economy: the consequences of unemployment, family violence, crime, alcoholism and drug abuse, for example.

The projected $2.5trn price tag also includes the costs of replacing and replenishing military equipment in use. Nearly 40 per cent of the army's equipment, according to the Washington Post, is currently deployed in Iraq; as long ago as March 2005, Rumsfeld conceded that tanks, fighting vehicles and helicopters were wearing out at six times the normal rate.

Significant quantities of equipment are being destroyed, too. The Washington Post reported last December that the army alone has lost more than 280,000 major pieces of equipment in the combat zones; the Army Times reported as long ago as February last year that 20 M1 Abram tanks, 50 Bradley fighting vehicles, 20 Stryker wheeled combat vehicles, 20 M113 armoured personnel carriers, 250 Hum vees, hundreds of mine-clearing vehicles and the like - plus more than a hundred aircraft, most of them helicopters - have been lost. Those figures have increased considerably since then as fighting has intensified. Add something between $125bn and $300bn for these unanticipated long-term costs, say Bilmes and Stiglitz.

Yet another gargantuan White House miscalculation was over the price of oil. Before his departure, Larry Lindsey told the Wall Street Journal in September 2002 that "the successful prosecution of the war would be good for the economy"; the WSJ echoed his thoughts in an editorial the same day, arguing that "the best way to keep oil prices in check is a short, successful war on Iraq". In 2002, the average cost of a barrel of oil was $23.71; today, it is hovering around $50. Dick Cheney's chums in firms such as his own Halliburton - or ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and Chevron - have profited enormously, but Bilmes estimates that even if only $5 of the oil-price increase can be attributed to the Iraq war, that alone adds $150bn to the cost of war.

There are also countless imponderables that add to the bill. The deployment of hundreds of thousands of reservists depletes the economy. At present, 44 per cent of US police forces, for example, have members deployed as reservists in Iraq, and their duties have to be performed by others in America; the same goes for firefighters, medical staff, prison wardens.

Then there are the future illnesses that may well unfold. For instance, nobody knew that the notorious Agent Orange defoliant, used by the US in Vietnam from 1961-71, would turn out to have had carcinogenic and other effects on US troops. Today, there is mounting evidence that exposure to depleted uranium - used for firing anti-tank rounds from US M1 tanks and A-10 attack aircraft - can cause cancer, diabetes and birth defects. Many veterans are returning to the US with their health apparently in ruins from adverse reactions to anti-anthrax injections and/or consumption of experimental pills to counter chemical warfare agents. The long-term costs of looking after the likes of them make the cost of the actual war dead pale by comparison: spouses of deceased soldiers receive a "death gratuity" of $100,000. Troops are also given the opportunity to take out subsidised life insurance policies for up to $500,000 for dependants. In the dispassionate way economists assess such things, Bilmes and Stiglitz estimate the additional cost to the economy of the death of a young soldier - typically 25 years old - to be $6.5m.

Bilmes has become a marked woman to the Bush administration. She was invited to participate in a VA seminar on the cost of war, to be held on the last day of this month - but then was suddenly uninvited. She is no raving lefty, though, and her economic credentials are unimpeachable: she was responsible for an annual budget of $9bn in the Clinton-era commerce department. Like none other than George W Bush, she, too, holds an MBA from Harvard.

It is sobering to think how the money going down the drain in Iraq could otherwise have been spent. "For this amount of money, we could have provided health insurance for the uninsured of this country," Bilmes tells me. "We could have made social security solvent for the next three generations, and implemented all the 9/11 Commission's recommendations [to tighten domestic security]."

That kind of list goes on: the annual cost of treating all heart disease and diabetes in the United States would amount to a quarter of what the Iraq war is costing. Pre-school for every child in America would take just $35bn a year. In their main paper, Bilmes and Stiglitz come up with an even more intriguing possibility: "We could have had a Marshall Plan for the Middle East, or the developing countries, that might have succeeded in winning hearts and minds."

What a historic triumph that would have been for Bush. Instead, his legacy to generations of Americans will be a needless debt of at least $2.5trn, what his own defence secretary describes as a four-way civil war in Iraq, dangerous instability in the Middle East, and increasingly entrenched hatred of the United States throughout the world. Alas, we are likely to hear the daily roar of those C-17s as they approach Andrews Air Force Base for years to come.



The unknown price that Britain is paying

No one is counting the long-term costs of caring for injured British troops, reports Sam Alexandroni

The cost to Britain of the Iraq war, according to the Ministry of Defence, will hit £5bn at the end of this financial year. This is the figure given for direct spending on fuel, ammunition, repairs and transport; the real bill is certainly much bigger. The greatest of the uncounted costs is the financial and human toll the war is taking on the mental and physical health of British personnel serving in Iraq.

The government has not attempted to calculate the long-term cost of caring for the injured, and official statistics offer little guidance. Four thousand eight hundred personnel have been evacuated from Iraq on medical grounds but only 144 were classified as "seriously" or "very seriously" injured. What about the rest? Nobody in the MoD or NHS was able to say how many personnel who served in Iraq are being treated in Britain, or how many will require long-term medical care. The treatment costs of servicemen at NHS hospitals such as Selly Oak in Birmingham - home to the Royal Centre of Defence Medicine - are passed on to the MoD, which in turn bills the Treasury Reserve, but once a patient leaves the armed forces, ongoing treatment is paid for by the NHS.

Mental health offers similar uncertainties. So far, 2,123 troops who served in Iraq have been diagnosed with mental health problems, 328 with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD); but cases take 12 years on average to surface and there is no sure cure. "We won't know for many years after the Iraq war is over how many former servicemen are suffering from psychological problems," says Toby Elliot, chief executive of the charity Combat Stress. "The MoD doesn't provide all the funds we need by a long way. We have to make up 40 per cent of our funding ourselves, and that's a problem."

Nor has anyone tried to quantify the indirect economic effects. The surge in the price of Brent crude oil from $31 a barrel at the start of 2003 to $60 today has been driven largely by increased demand, but Middle East instability affects the market and "Iraq has been factored in for years", according to the oil analyst Jean-Luc Amos. The extent to which the Iraq war has exacerbated the domestic threat of terror and made Britain less safe remains similarly ungauged. Then there are other costs barely considered. In 2002 a study commissioned by Ken Livingstone, the city's mayor, estimated that war in Iraq would cost the London economy £1bn in lost tourism alone, though there has been no post-invasion follow-up.

That no one in the British government has even attempted these calculations is worrying, but perhaps any cost-benefit analysis of the war misses the point. "In the end, if the Iraq war had brought the Iraqis a better life and us greater security, then - whatever the costs - it would seem 'worth it'," says Sir Lawrence Freedman, professor of war studies at King's College London. "Because it has been such a screw-up, then, even at a lower level of calculated costs, it seems like a waste."



Iraq War: Key Dates
Research by Sarah O'Connor

20 March 2003 US and Britain invade
1 May 2003 Bush announces "mission accomplished"
13 December 2003 Saddam Hussein is captured
28 April 2004 Images of US troops abusing prisoners emerge from Abu Ghraib
November 2004 US assault on Fallujah insurgents
30 January 2005 Eight million Iraqis vote in elections
July 2006 Deadliest month in Iraq: 3,438 civilians are killed
30 December 2006 Saddam Hussein is executed
10 January 2007 Bush announces 21,500 troop surge to Iraq
21 February 2007 Blair announces the withdrawal of 1,600 British troops


Iraq 2007 by numbers
Research by Rebecca Bundhun

l57,805 minimum number of Iraqi civilians reported killed since the 2003 invasion, according to the Iraq Body Count website
33% of Americans in a March 2007 poll approved of George Bush's Iraq policy
80 US soldiers killed in Iraq last month
7,100 number of UK troops currently in Iraq
135,000 number of US troops currently in Iraq
134 number of British soldiers killed in Iraq
21,500 additional troops Bush plans to deploy in the "troop surge"
28 percentage of Americans in the March poll who said the US will probably or definitely win the war

Flesh eating zombies protecting the snowflake fetuses

a.k.a. the Republican WarParty.

In the past two weeks TUC Radio has posted two halves of a speech by Chris Hedges, on American Fascism (link), and I listened to the .mp3 yesterday. What he said about Blackwater was particularly chilling.
The Paul Krugman article, For God's Sake, posted on CommonDreams.org (link)reiterates what Hedges is saying, as does David Michael Green's article, Dark of Heartness (link).

Coincidentally, as I was reading responses to a story on Black (Extraordinary Rendition) Sites (link) posted at CommonDreams.org, this following posted comment about the criminal, fascist Bush administration caught my attention... The GOP leadership are "Deep Ecologists"!
It could explain a lot.
(While you're there, read the Scott Ritter article.)
It brought to mind a bumper sticker I saw in the parking lot of Michigan State University that I wish I'd had last fall. It read,

'Soylent Green is People
like Devos is Amway'

The 'survival of the fittest' mentality of the right wingnuttery sometimes makes me wonder why they hate Darwinianism so intensly, but then I remember... oh right, they are in the Wizard of Oz movie. The dutiful munchkins of the GOP flock hate evolution theory, so their satanic Rovian masters twist the propaganda to fit the scenario.

The flesh-eating zombie 30 percent of Americans polled who still back Bush, Cheney and the War Party resemble something out of the Night of the Living Dead.

Okay, I go on. Here's the post I mentioned...

Clark Kent April 17th, 2007 1:57 pm
In a sense they are the deepest of the “Deep Ecologists”. They look at the population explosion problem and, through their actions, imply that the best possible solution at this time is mass murder of Iraqis, New Orleans residents, poor people without health care, underprivileged people who join the U.S. armed services, people who breathe (polluted) air, eat (tainted) food or drink (polluted) water or use (toxic, but approved) chemicals.

Their means are military action, withholding of food, health care and emergency services and neglect (African AIDS being the most obvious example). In every case, the propaganda spin is to “make it look like an accident”.

Their criterion for deciding who should live and who should die is largely based on wealth– rich live, poor die, however there is also a racist component that cannot be ignored.

Obviously, such a program of mass death could not be undertaken in a real democracy, so it has been necessary for them to undermine democracy to achieve their goals.

We can fight them, of course, but until and unless we can show them that humanity is capable of limiting itself to a sustainable population, there will probably be a thriving and passionate group of people who hold their views.

This may seem overly cynical to some, but if you make your judgement based on their actions, not their words, it’s hard to find a better explanation of it all.

Crafting a new story for the attention deficit nation

Iraq
- q + n= Iran
- n= IRA

The news of the Iranian roadside bombs in Iraq that kill our troops you are being innundated with is just another new BS story.

I predict is another Jessica Lynch- Pat Tillman Potemkin type propaganda story, crafted to rouse the Attention Deficit Nation.
Don't trust anything the War Party says on the War Media.
Don't you remember, the story has been hinted around for months now.
I recall hearing it mentioned briefly by the ABC writer- embedded reporter on Diane Rheme's show last week.

But the REAL story is that it is another covert provication to war on Iran.

Dubya is spending millions on propaganda aimed at you and me. Are you awake enough to catch it?

Just Google it for yourself... IRA and IED. These are the same bombs that covert Brit and US spooks taught the IRA to use in their violence, as reported in the Guardian newspaper.

Dear Diane Rehm - a big lie repeated, and you just sat there

Your guest, a reporter for ABC News, repeated a "big lie".

Of course, she's a corporate, imbedded reporter. Take those with a grain of salt.

The Big Lie your guest repeated, discussed by Dr. Les Roberts in the following interview, is that the new British study of the famous John-Hopkins study on civilian Iraqi deaths found that the original study may have been too conservative in its numbers.
The big lie she mouthed was that yes, the Brit scientists (of whom nobody could question their expertise) said the numbers were determined to be "wrong".
Some propaganda is easy - lie by ommission.

Not that the numbers were conservative, but that they were wrong... implying they were perhaps excessive or done sloppily.

The study of the study said the numbers were too small.
Dr. Roberts was in Rwanda after the genocide. He said the numbers of dead innocent people in Iraq equal or exceed the numbers of dead in the Rwandan genocide.
Chew on that.

Antiwar Radio: Charles Goyette Interviews Les Roberts
Thursday, March 29th, 2007 in News, War crimes, Antiwar Radio, Iraq by Charles Goyette (link listen)

Dr. Les Roberts from Columbia University discusses the famous Johns Hopkins/Lancet studies of “excess civilian deaths” in Iraq since 2003, the UK government scientists who told Tony Blair that Lancet had, if anything, underestimated the dead at 655,000 (more than the Rwandan genocide of 1994), the deliberate efforts of the U.S. government to suppress numbers of the dead.

MP3 here. (16:49)
Les Roberts, PhD, holds has a Masters degree in public health from Tulane University and a Ph.D. in environmental engineering from Johns Hopkins. He did a post-doctorate fellowship in epidemiology at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention where he worked for 4 years. In 1994, he worked as an epidemiologist for the World Health Organization in Rwanda during their civil war. He previously served as the Director of Health Policy at the International Rescue Committee. He is a lecturer at the Johns Hopkins University Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering where he teaches each fall. He teaches a class entitled Water and Sanitation in Complex Emergencies and the 7-week quantitative component of the Program’s Investigative Methods in Complex Emergencies course.

Dear Mr. Blair

Blair: Next 2 Days With Iran Are Crucial
By DAVID STRINGER, Associated Press Writer
Tue Apr 3, 2007
LONDON - The next two days are "fairly critical" to resolving the dispute over a seized British navy crew, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Tuesday, after Iran's chief international negotiator offered a new approach to end the standoff with Tehran.

So the primo diplomats of the civilized world can't solve a map dispute.
Sounds like a set-up to me.

Tony Poodle Dog Blair has a choice here for his final act. Let the neo-cons he has always kneeled to take us to another war on ginned up pretext, or retire and go on a sweet vacation for the rest of his life.
What is it about these egomaniacs?

It's common knowlege, isn't it, Tony has a cushy job in line with Rupert Murdoch after his reign of error is over.

Some Russian rag has leaked that Good Friday is the date.
I heard somewhere else that the Eisenhower is going to be replaced by the Nimitz, thereby at overlap time it would be auspicious for Dubya and his wolfpack to go blood simple.
Come on, Tony, stand on yer hind legs and make peace.

http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/timeline/flash_index.htm

Still relevant, because the same bad actors are still pulling the strings:
Bringing on 'World War III'
by Bill Berkowitz
WorkingForChange
URL: http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=21146
07.27.06

If you thought that a global conflagration on the order of a world war was more the stuff of Biblical prophecy, science fiction and apocalyptic end-of- times novels, think again.
For years, U.S. neoconservatives have been ratcheting up the rhetoric -- mostly in small gatherings and on partisan Web sites -- claiming that terrorist activities around the world constituted the initial stages of a new world war.
But during the past two weeks, with the Israeli/ Hezbollah conflict in full swing, Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, is using any media platform available to him to launch a campaign aimed at convincing the public that the United States is engaged in World War III.
Gingrich made national headlines when he claimed while discussing the situation in the Middle East during an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" on July 16 that the United States should be "helping the Lebanese government have the strength to eliminate Hezbollah as a military force."
A day earlier, the Seattle Times reported that during a fundraising trip to the state of Washington, Gingrich used the term World War III, while at the same time mixing in a little partisan politics, acknowledging that he was his concerned about the Republican Party's prospects in the fall elections.
"This is World War III," Gingrich said. "Israel wouldn't leave southern Lebanon as long as there was a single missile there. I would go in and clean them all out and I would announce that any Iranian airplane trying to bring missiles to re-supply them would be shot down. This idea that we have this one-sided war where the other team gets to plan how to kill us and we get to talk, is nuts."
Gingrich also maintained that the use of the term "World War III" could re-energise the base of the Republican Party. He pointed out that public opinion can change "the minute you use the language" of World War III. The message then, he said, is "okay, if we're in the third world war, which side do you think should win?"
Gingrich, a regular Fox News Channel contributor also appeared on the network's "Hannity & Colmes" program, and restated his World War III contention.
In a recent column, the Rev. Jerry Falwell echoed Gingrich's comments: "... I believe we are on the verge of a war without borders, one that could bring bouts of violence and bloodshed into our lives. Remember that Iran's Ahmadinejad has not only threatened to destroy Israel, but has also threatened to nuke the United States."
While Gingrich's media tour definitely thrust him back into the national political spotlight, it may have also given the public a sneak peek into the Republican Party's political/marketing strategy for the November congressional elections: If the war on terrorism doesn't create a fearful enough climate amongst voters, why not ratchet it up by mentioning the specter of a World War III?
Gingrich, who has also been testing the waters for a 2008 run at the presidency, was not the first conservative to use the phrase World War III. Media Matters for America, a Web site devoted to "monitoring, analysing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media," recently documented a number of World War III references by a gaggle of cable television's conservative talking heads.
On the July 13 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly said "World War III ... I think we're in it."
On the same day's edition of MSNBC's Tucker, a graphic read: "On the verge of World War III?"
"CNN Headline News host Glenn Beck began his program on July 12 with a discussion with former CIA officer Robert Baer by saying 'We've got World War III to fight,' while also warning of 'the impending apocalypse,'" Media Matters for America noted.
"Beck and Baer had a similar discussion on July 13, in which Beck said: 'I absolutely know that we need to prepare ourselves for World War III. It is here.'"
President Bush mentioned World War III in May, telling CNBC that the action taken by the passengers on the hijacked flight 93 on Sep. 11, 2001 was the "first counter-attack to World War III."
Bush said that he agreed with the description by David Beamer, whose son Todd died in the crash, in an April Wall Street Journal commentary that the act was "our first successful counter-attack in our homeland in this new global war -- World War III."
Hyping World War III isn't new to conservatives. Some have even argued that the real World War III was the Cold War against the Soviet Union, and that now the United States is engaged in World War IV.
The Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a neoconservative think tank that in the late 1990s was advocating regime change in Iraq and has consistently promoted a muscular U.S. foreign policy, was one of the groups that used the term World War III to describe the Cold War.
In April 2003, at a teach-in at the University of California, Los Angeles sponsored by Americans for Victory Over Terrorism, R. James Woolsey, a former CIA director and founding member of PNAC, told the audience that "This fourth world war, I think, will last considerably longer than either World Wars I or II did for us; hopefully not the full four-plus decades of the Cold War."
Woolsey pointed out that the religious rulers of Iran, the "fascists" of Iraq and Syria, and terrorist groups like al Qaeda were the main targets of the new war. But PNAC and Woolsey's labeling of the Cold War as World War III and the current war against terrorism World War IV may have been more a case of premature elocution than a precise reading of the times. That construct "might sell well inside the Beltway, but out in the countryside where the younger generation can't recall the Cold War it doesn't do much," John Stauber, the founder and executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy and the author of the forthcoming book, "The Best War Ever," told me in an email.
"The Cold War was the best thing that ever happened to American capitalism, and the collapse of the Soviet Union was a disaster for the Eisenhower-named military-industrial complex," Stauber pointed out.
"The strategists among the pro-war right jumped all over 9/11; an endless, secret, war against a foreign enemy bent on terrorism and acquiring weapons of mass destruction is an even better scenario for American militarists than the Cold War."
"Calling it World War III is sound packaging," he said. "You've got to call it something and five years after 9/11 with Osama [bin Laden] still roaming free and Iraq an American quagmire, and the Republican Party in danger of losing control of Congress, this ploy makes marketing sense."
If the Republican Party brain-trust -- read, Karl Rove -- determines that labeling the Democrats "cut and runners," "weak on terrorism," or that they are incapable of understanding the reality of the dangerous world we live in, does not appear to be resonating with voters, the term World War III just might be put in play.

...Onward Christian Soldiers

saturday nite dance music

from a perennial favorite, Depeche Mode...

deja vu all over again

Sy Hersh, the guy who has always been right in the past. Unless Congress impeaches Bush and Cheney, Iran will be the new Iraq.


And Michael Klare connects all the dots for us...

Tomgram: Michael Klare, Talking Points for the Next War
posted February 25, 2007 on www.tomdispatch.com
a project of the Nation Institute
compiled and edited by Tom Engelhardt

This post can be found at http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=169271

At 10:16 PM on March 19, 2003, after copious military preparations in the Persian Gulf region and beyond, after months of diplomatic maneuvers at the United Nations, after a drumbeat of leaked intelligence warnings and hair-raising statements by top U.S. officials and the President about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and how close Saddam Hussein might be to developing a nuclear weapon, after declaring Saddam's regime a major threat to Americans, after countless insinuations that it was somehow connected to the 9/11 attacks on our country, after endless denials that war with Iraq was necessarily on the administration's agenda, President George W. Bush addressed the nation from the Oval Office. "My fellow citizens," he began, "at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger…"

Almost four years later, all the above elements are again in place, this time in relation to Iran -- with Iranian responsibility for the deaths of Americans in Iraq replacing Iraqi responsibility for the deaths of Americans in New York and Washington. On a careful reading of our President's latest speeches and statements, Michael Klare has noted that an actual list of charges against Iran, a case for war, has already essentially been drawn up, making it easy enough to imagine that at 10:16 PM on some night not so very distant from this one, from that same desk in the Oval Office, the President of the United States might again begin, "My fellow citizens, at this hour…" But read on for yourself. Tom


Bush's Future Iran War Speech
Three Charges in the Case for War
By Michael T. Klare

Sometime this spring or summer, barring an unexpected turnaround by Tehran, President Bush is likely to go on national television and announce that he has ordered American ships and aircraft to strike at military targets inside Iran. We must still sit through several months of soap opera at the United Nations in New York and assorted foreign capitals before this comes to pass, and it is always possible that a diplomatic breakthrough will occur -- let it be so! -- but I am convinced that Bush has already decided an attack is his only option and the rest is a charade he must go through to satisfy his European allies. The proof of this, I believe, lies half-hidden in recent public statements of his, which, if pieced together, provide a casus belli, or formal list of justifications, for going to war.

Three of his statements, in particular, contained the essence of this justification: his January 10 televised speech on his plan for a troop "surge" in Iraq, his State of the Union Address of January 23, and his first televised press conference of the year on February 14. None of these was primarily focused on Iran, but the President used each of them to warn of the extraordinary dangers that country poses to the United States and to hint at severe U.S. reprisals if the Iranians did not desist from "harming U.S. troops." In each, moreover, he laid out various parts of the overall argument he will certainly use to justify an attack on Iran. String these together in one place and you can almost anticipate what Bush's speechwriters will concoct before he addresses the American people from the Oval Office sometime later this year. Think of them as talking points for the next war.

The first of these revealing statements was Bush's January 10th televised address on Iraq. This speech was supposedly intended to rally public and Congressional support behind his plan to send 21,500 additional U.S. troops into the Iraqi capital and al-Anbar Province, the heartland of the Sunni insurgency. But his presentation that night was so uninspired, so lacking in conviction, that -- according to media commentary and polling data -- few, if any, Americans were persuaded by his arguments. Only once that evening did Bush visibly come alive: When he spoke about the threat to Iraq supposedly posed by Iran.

"Succeeding in Iraq also requires defending its territorial integrity and stabilizing the region in the face of extremist challenges," he declared, which meant, he assured his audience, addressing the problem of Iran. That country, he asserted, "is providing material support for attacks on American troops." (This support was later identified as advanced improvised explosive devices -- IEDs or roadside bombs -- given to anti-American Shiite militias.) Then followed an unambiguous warning: "We will disrupt the attacks on our forces... And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq."

Consider this item one in his casus belli: Because Iran is aiding and abetting our enemies in Iraq, we are justified in attacking Iran as a matter of self-defense.

Bush put it this way in an interview with Juan Williams of National Public Radio on January 29: "If Iran escalates its military action in Iraq to the detriment of our troops and/or innocent Iraqi people, we will respond firmly… It makes common sense for the commander-in-chief to say to our troops and the Iraqi people -- and the Iraqi government -- that we will help you defend yourself from people that want to sow discord and harm."

In his January 10 address, the President went on to fill in a second item in any future casus belli: Iran is seeking nuclear weapons in order to dominate the Middle East to the detriment of our friends in the region -- a goal that it simply cannot be allowed to achieve.

In response to such a possibility, the President declared, "We're also taking other steps to bolster the security of Iraq and protect American interests in the Middle East." These included deploying a second U.S. aircraft carrier battle group to the Gulf region, consisting of the USS John C. Stennis and a flotilla of cruisers, destroyers, and submarines (presumably to provide additional air and missile assets for strikes on Iran), along with additional Patriot anti-missile batteries (presumably to shoot down any Iranian missiles that might be fired in retaliation for an air attack on the country and its nuclear facilities). "And," Bush added, "we will work with others to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating the region."

Bush added a third item to the casus belli in his State of the Union Address on January 23. After years of describing Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda as the greatest threats to U.S. interests in the Middle East, he now introduced a new menace: the resurgent Shia branch of Islam led by Iran.

Aside from al-Qaeda and other Sunni extremists, he explained, "it has also become clear that we face an escalating danger from Shia extremists who are just as hostile to America, and are also determined to dominate the Middle East." Many of these extremists, he noted, "are known to take direction from the regime in Iran," including the Hezbollah movement in Lebanon.

As if to nail down this point, he offered some hair-raising imagery right out of the Left Behind bestselling book series so beloved of Christian evangelicals and their neoconservative allies: "If American forces step back [from Iraq] before Baghdad is secure, the Iraqi government would be overrun by extremists on all sides. We could expect an epic battle between Shia extremists backed by Iran, and Sunni extremists backed by Al Qaeda and supporters of the old regime. A contagion of violence could spill across the country, and in time the entire region could be drawn into the conflict. For America, this is a nightmare scenario. For the enemy, this is the objective."

As refined by Bush speechwriters, this, then, is the third item in his casus belli for attacking Iran: to prevent a "nightmare scenario" in which the Shia leaders of Iran might emerge as the grandmasters of regional instability, using proxies like Hezbollah to imperil Israel and pro-American regimes in Jordan, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia -- with potentially catastrophic consequences for the safety of Middle Eastern oil supplies. You can be sure of what Bush will say to this in his future address: No American president would ever allow such a scenario to come to pass.

Many of these themes were reiterated in the president's White House Valentine's Day press conference. Once again, Iraq was meant to be the main story, but Iran captured all the headlines.

Bush's most widely cited comments on Iran focused on claims of Iranian involvement in the delivery of sophisticated versions of the roadside IEDs that have been responsible for many of the U.S. casualties in recent months. Just a few days earlier, unidentified American military officials in Baghdad had declared that elements of the Iranian military -- specifically, the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards -- were supplying the deadly devices to Shiite militias in Iraq, and that high-ranking Iranian government officials were aware of the deliveries. These claims were contested by other U.S. officials and members of Congress who expressed doubt about the reliability of the evidence and the intelligence work behind it, but Bush evinced no such uncertainty:


"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 is not known, he continued, is just how high up in the Iranian government went the decision-making that led such IEDs to be delivered to the Shia militias in Iraq. But that doesn't matter, he explained. "What matters is, is that they're there... [W]e know they're there, and we're going to protect our troops." As Commander-in-Chief, he insisted, he would "do what is necessary to protect our soldiers in harm's way."

He then went on to indicate that "the biggest problem I see is the Iranians' desire to have a nuclear weapon." He expressed his wish that this problem can be "dealt with" in a peaceful way -- by the Iranians voluntarily agreeing to cease their program to enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels. But he also made it clear that the onus was purely on Tehran to take the necessary action to avoid unspecified harm: "I would like to be at the -- have been given a chance for us to explain that we have no desire to harm the Iranian people."

No reporters at the press conference asked him to explain this odd twist of phrase, delivered in the past tense, about his regret that he was unable to explain to the Iranian people why he had meant them no harm -- presumably after the fact. However, if you view this as the Bush version of a Freudian slip, one obvious conclusion can be drawn: that the President has already made the decision to begin the countdown for an attack on Iran, and only total capitulation by the Iranians could possibly bring the process to a halt.

Further evidence for this conclusion is provided by Bush's repeated reference to Chapter 7 of the UN Charter. On three separate occasions during the press conference he praised Russia, China, and the "EU3" -- Britain, France, and Germany -- for framing the December 23 Security Council resolution condemning Iran's nuclear activities and imposing economic sanctions on Iran in the context of Chapter 7 -- that is, of "Action with Respect to Threats to the Peace, Breaches of the Peace, and Acts of Aggression."

This sets the stage for the international community, under UN leadership, to take such steps as may be deemed necessary "to maintain or restore international peace and stability," ranging from mild economic sanctions to full-scale war (steps that are described in Articles 39 to 51). But the December 23 resolution was specifically framed under Article 41, which entails "measures not involving the use of armed force," a stipulation demanded by China and Russia, which have categorically ruled out the use of military force to resolve the nuclear dispute with Iran.

One suspects that President Bush has Chapter 7 on the brain because he now intends to ask for a new resolution under Article 42, which allows the use of military force to restore international peace and stability. But it is nearly inconceivable that Russia and China would approve such a resolution. Such approval would also be tantamount to acknowledging American hegemony worldwide, and this is something they are simply unwilling to do.

So we can expect several months of fruitless diplomacy at the United Nations in which the United States may achieve slightly more severe economic sanctions under Chapter 41 but not approval for military action under Chapter 42. Bush knows that this is the inevitable outcome, and so I am convinced that, in his various speeches and meetings with reporters, he is already preparing the way for a future address to the nation. In it, he will speak somberly of a tireless American effort to secure a meaningful resolution from the United Nations on Iran with real teeth in it and his deep disappointment that no such resolution has been not forthcoming. He will also point out that, despite the heroic efforts of American diplomats as well as military commanders in Iraq, Iran continues to pose a vital and unchecked threat to American security in Iraq, in the region, and even -- via its nuclear program -- in the wider world.

Further diplomacy, he will insist, appears futile and yet Iran must be stopped. Hence, he will say, "I have made the unavoidable decision to eliminate this vital threat through direct military action," and will announce -- in language eerily reminiscent of his address to the nation on March 19, 2003 -- that a massive air offensive against Iran has already been underway for several hours.

Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and the defense correspondent of the Nation magazine. He is the author, most recently, of Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependence on Imported Petroleum (Owl Books).
Copyright 2007 Michael T. Klare

The NeoLiberals screw us too

If you want to know all about AIPAC and the Neocons (and the Neolibs) your best resource is Antiwar.com

Pelosi's Capitulation
by Patrick J. Buchanan
March 20, 2007

If George W. Bush launches a preemptive war on Iran, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will bear full moral responsibility for that war.
For it was Pelosi who quietly agreed to strip out of the $100 billion funding bill for Iraq a provision that would have required President Bush to seek congressional approval before launching any new war on Iran.
Pelosi's capitulation came in the Appropriations Committee.
What went down, and why?

"Conservative Democrats as well as lawmakers concerned about the possible impact on Israel had argued for the change in strategy," wrote The Associated Press' David Espo and Matthew Lee.
"Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said in an interview there is a widespread fear in Israel about Iran, which … has expressed unremitting hostility to the Jewish state.
"'It would take away perhaps the most important tool the U.S. has when it comes to Iran,' she said of the now-abandoned provision.
"'I don't think it was a very wise idea to take things off the table if you're trying to get people to modify their behavior and normalize in a civilized way,' said Gary Ackerman of New York."

According to John Nichols of The Nation, Pelosi's decision to strip the provision barring Bush from attacking Iran without Congress' approval "sends the worst possible signal to the White House."
"The speaker has erred dangerously and dramatically," writes Nichols. Her "disastrous misstep could haunt her and the Congress for years to come."
Nichols does not exaggerate.

If Bush now launches war on Iran, he can credibly say Congress and the Democrats gave him a green light. For Pelosi, by removing a provision saying Bush does not have the authority, de facto concedes he does have the authority.
Bush and Cheney need now not worry about Congress.
They have been flashed the go sign for war on Iran.

Pelosi & Co. thus aborted a bipartisan effort to ensure that if we do go to war again, we do it the constitutional way, and we do it together.
Nothing in the provision would have prevented Bush, as commander in chief, from responding to an Iranian attack or engaging in hot pursuit of an enemy found in Iraq. Nor would the provision have prevented Bush from threatening Iran. It would simply have required him to come to Congress – before launching all-out war.
Now Pelosi has, in effect, ceded Bush carte blanche to take out Iran's nuclear facilities. It's all up to him and Cheney.

For this the nation elected a Democratic Congress?

Why did Pelosi capitulate? Answer: She was "under pressure from some conservative members of her caucus, and from lobbyists associated with neoconservative groups that want war with Iran and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)," writes Nichols.

The Washington Times agrees as to who bully-ragged Nancy into scuttling any requirement that Bush come to the Hill before unleashing the B-2s on Arak, Natanz, and Bushehr:

"Last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi received a smattering of boos when she badmouthed the war effort during a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and the Democratic leadership, responding to concerns from pro-Israel lawmakers, was forced to strip from a military appropriations measure a provision meant to weaken President Bush's ability to respond to threats from Iran."

This episode, wherein liberal Democrats scuttled a bipartisan effort to require Bush to abide by the Constitution before taking us into a third war in the Middle East, speaks volumes about who has the whip hand on Capitol Hill, when it comes to the Middle East.

Pelosi gets booed by the Israeli lobby, then runs back to the Hill and gives Bush a blank check for war on Iran, because that is what the lobby demands. A real candidate for Profiles in Courage.

As for the presidential candidates, it is hard to find a single one willing to stand up and say: If Bush plans to take us into another war in the Mideast, he must first come to Congress for authorization. And if he goes to war without authorization, that will be impeachable.

All retreat into the "all-options-are-on-the-table" mantra, which is another way of saying, "It's Bush's call."

The corruption of both parties is astonishing. Republicans used to be the party of the Constitution: "No more undeclared wars! No more presidential wars!"

Democrats used to be the party of the people. The people don't want this war. They don't want another. The Jewish community voted 88 percent for Democrats in November, and 77 percent oppose the war in Iraq.

So says Gallup. Yet, just because the Israeli lobby jerked her chain, the leader of the Peoples' House has decided she and her party will leave the next war up to Bush.

Sam Rayburn must be turning over in his grave.

COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/pat/?articleid=10701

Pelosi Invades Iran
Tom Gilroy
01.31.2007
published on the Huffington Post

There's an interesting note in yesterday's New York Times article about the latest efforts of the White House to get around having to answer to the law, the Congress, or the will of the people.
In yet another stunning example of his ceaseless march to circumvent the Constitution and exert a totalitarian grip on every aspect of American life---be it access to information in libraries, gas prices, education, a free Internet, the environment, media, science, privacy, or civil liberties, imprisonment, torture--President Bush signed a directive giving the White House even greater control over the rules and policy statements the government develops to protect public health, workplace safety, the environment, civil rights and privacy.
In short, our lives.

Historically, agencies like the EPA or OSHA issue regulations under authority granted to them in laws enacted by Congress, but now that Congress is 'democrat' as Bush called it in his State of the Union address---thereby insulting roughly half of the Union---there's suddenly a slim chance that one of these agencies might actually break free from W's stranglehold and get back to doing what its supposed to do; enforce federal regulations----you know, the rules that protect the American people.
Well, the White House can't have that, hence this directive.

Remember, the White House isn't the government.

It is one part of a government that consists of three equally powerful branches, designed to insure an environment of compromise. Those clichés from history class-- 'balance of power' and 'checks and balances'--are drummed into our heads to remind us the Framers felt it central to our democracy and freedom that no branch of government should get more powerful than the others.
But the White House has been doing just that for 6 years.

With the implementation of this new directive, the federal rules and regulations we count on for our safety will only be issued or enforced if the Bush appointee installed to look over the shoulder of the given agency says its okay. Oh, and no one in any agency can tell the public about any findings--scientific or otherwise--unless one of these brown shirts gives the go ahead, either.
Sound like freedom to you?

"Having lost control of Congress," said Peter L. Strauss, a professor at Columbia Law School, "the president is doing what he can to increase his control of the executive branch." The order "achieves a major increase in White House control over domestic government."

Does this sound familiar? It should--the Nazis did it, like so many other things we've found ourselves doing lately, like water boarding, removing habeas corpus, and tapping the phones of Quakers.

Ignore for the moment that this is what the president chooses to do with his time when we're averaging about 30 deaths a day in Iraq, and look at this quote from the Times article;
'Business groups welcomed the executive order, saying it had the potential to reduce what they saw as the burden of federal regulations.'Huh? The 'burden of federal regulations?'

Isn't that, you know, the 'burden of obeying the law?'

When did it become the job of the White House to help business get around obeying the law?

You know, I'd like to reduce the burden of federal regulations on me, too, but I can't afford a lobbyist. I'd like to get around the federal law that says I have to pay taxes that pay for torture. I'd also like to get off the airplane I'm kept waiting in on the runway for 45 minutes forced to watch Everybody Loves Raymond. I'd like to start a pot farm and hand out free joints to cancer patients. I'd like to speed through the tollbooth when the line is too long without paying. I'd like to go see what's so scary about Cuba. I'd like to see any doctor I want and have my HMO pay for it. I'd like to shoot down the traffic helicopter hovering over my house every morning at 5 am, and I'd like to waterboard Ann Coulter. The only problem is, federal laws and regulations prohibit these things.
Man, this burden is such a drag. Too bad I'm not a business.

Remember how Bush claimed he'd "taken a thumpin'" after he lost Congress, how he was ready to usher in a new era of bipartisan cooperation? When exactly is that era beginning? It's been about a month with this new Congress and already he's gone after Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security (again!), spit in the face of the Iraq Study Group, escalated the war in Iraq in full defiance of the will of the American citizenry, and brought us closer to war with Iran.

And those are just the biggies. They're still undermining the truth about global warming, the FDA just lifted the ban on silicon breast implants for women despite proven health risks, and W's bogus 'health care' fix turned out to be just another transparent ploy to eliminate employer-funded health benefits once and for all.
Phew. Imagine if he didn't want to cooperate.

This is the man Nancy Pelosi doesn't want to impeach. Everywhere you look--other than the think tanks of Washington, that is---from opinion polls to the internet, restaurants to gyms, football games, letters to the editors, church bulletins, graffiti, mass transit---even the comment section of the Wall Street Journal online!--- citizens are demanding the guy has got to go, but Nancy Pelosi's decided impeachment is off the table.

The White House shows no sign of stopping, or even being chastened. It has been long one endless assault on constitutional democracy, and they don't take no for an answer.

Don't want to privatize Social Security? He'll come back with a new plan to privatize it.
Don't approve his appointees? He'll appoint them anyway.
Science says global warming exists? He says it doesn't.
Don't want to send more troops to Iraq? He sends them anyway.
Don't want to invade Iran? ___

It's not a lame duck Madam Speaker is giving a free ride to, it's an armed, insane, arrogant asshole duck and he has his webbed foot on the trigger of a third world war.

Only impeachment can stop him.

Only impeachment can stop this assault on democracy.

Only impeachment can stop the erosion of our constitution, our rights, our international stature, the impoverishment of our schools, the degradation of our air and water, the bankrupting of our future with mountains of debt, and the escalation of death to our soldiers, and to hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians.

What more is it going to take for Nancy Pelosi to stand up? How low do we have to go? Maybe Madam Speaker can play nice-nice and robotically sit, stand, sit, stand, applaud, sit, and stand with a smile plastered on her face after W insults her and her 'democrat' congress in full view of the nation, but I've had it.

From this day forward, Ms Pelosi and my two Senators--one of whom will be running for President--will receive either an email, a letter or a phone call EVERY DAY demanding the impeachment of the most loathed global figure in the world. EVERY DAY. And I pledge to get one friend a week to take up this challenge.
Will you join me?