6020. jexster - 8/21/2006 12:38:30 PM

Interview With Ray McGovern, Part 1


In this first installment of this short interview series for Truthout, I asked McGovern what he thought of the fact that Israel had been planning their attack on Lebanon for well over a year.

Ray McGovern: The most important thing, from our perspective, is to determine what role the US government played. It's very clear that the US government not only gave the green light to the Israelis, but actively encouraged them to do what they are doing now, and then blocked diplomatic efforts to prevent them, to halt them, or to have an immediate cease-fire. That much is clear. You can even read Charles Krauthaumer, who says precisely that: that we are proud that we not only gave the permission, but we encouraged them to do precisely what they are doing.

Now, the question arises, why? What in God's name would possess our so-called neo-con leadership to persuade this new fledgling Israeli government, which represents in my understanding a right-wing fringe of the Israeli people and not at all the Israeli people as a whole, just as our government represents the extremist right wing of the Republican Party? These so-called neo-conservatives who pretty much mounted and successfully waged a putsch of our government early in this administration, what in God's name do they have in mind?

6021. jexster - 8/21/2006 9:17:24 PM

Jews preverting our morals with gay porno stars performing for the troops...

What IS the world cumming to???

Senior Gay Correspondent - Rob Corddry

6022. jexster - 8/21/2006 11:03:32 PM

Heckuva Documentary

6023. jexster - 8/22/2006 7:59:01 AM

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Opposition among Americans to the war in Iraq has reached a new high, with only about a third of respondents saying they favor it, according to a poll released Monday

6024. robertjayb - 8/22/2006 1:36:22 PM

Marines being recalled...

August 22, 2006 - (AP) - The U.S. Marine Corps said Tuesday it has been authorized to recall thousands of Marines to active duty, primarily because of a shortage of volunteers for duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Up to 2,500 Marines will be brought back at any one time, but there is no cap on the total number of Marines who may be forced back into service in the coming years as the military battles the war on terror. The call-ups will begin in the next several months.

This is the first time the Marines have had to use the involuntary recall since the early days of the Iraq combat. The Army has ordered back about 14,000 soldiers since the start of the war.

Marine Col. Guy A. Stratton, head of the manpower mobilization section, estimated that there is a current shortfall of about 1,200 Marines needed to fill positions in upcoming unit deployments.

6025. robertjayb - 8/22/2006 2:01:35 PM

Who will clean up the mess this time?

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

When he was young, caretakers picked up his toys. When he was a dissolute adult, protectors covered up for his seedy, irresponsible behavior and dereliction of duty. When he was older, his father's friends cleaned up after his business failures.

Someone has always cleaned up Bush's messes for him. He's never had to or been able to do it himself.

Now, through the power of Rove packaging, right-wing mastery of the media, and a silent Supreme Court coup in 2000, he is playing with weapons of war and lives. And there is no one who can clean up his messes anymore.

6026. jexster - 8/22/2006 3:41:07 PM

A question I have axed and answered dozens of time

You and me and the fella behind the tree.

But Americans won't be alone.

This clusterfuck will have underwriters worldwice

6027. robertjayb - 8/22/2006 3:50:38 PM

McCain has doubts...

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- Republican Sen. John McCain, a staunch defender of the Iraq war, on Tuesday faulted the Bush administration for misleading Americans into believing the conflict would be "some kind of day at the beach."

The potential 2008 presidential candidate, who a day earlier had rejected calls for withdrawing U.S. forces, said the administration had failed to make clear the challenges facing the military.

"I think one of the biggest mistakes we made was underestimating the size of the task and the sacrifices that would be required," McCain said. "Stuff happens, mission accomplished, last throes, a few dead-enders. I'm just more familiar with those statements than anyone else because it grieves me so much that we had not told the American people how tough and difficult this task would be."

Too little, too late, John...

6028. judithathome - 8/22/2006 3:54:15 PM

No shit.

"The time has come, the waffler said....."

6029. jexster - 8/22/2006 4:22:11 PM

Vile fuck ..."Send more troops...I support the President...I have doubts"

He would have voted no before he voted yes

6030. jexster - 8/22/2006 5:02:16 PM

You guyz notice anything out of the ordinary?

Like the Sound of Silence?

Bush gave his Iron Texican speech yesterday, and nobody seems to have come?

What happened to the GOP Stay the Course Choir and Chorus?

All I hear is the pitter patter of little rat's feet on the deck of the SinkingShip Bush.

6031. wonkers2 - 8/22/2006 6:53:32 PM

Kieth Olberman is in the middle of a compelling documentary showing how the Bush administration has repeated issued untruthfull or exaggerated press releases on imminent terror attacks for political purposes to inspire terror among voters and divert them from unfavorable developments. Quite a persuasive report.

6032. jexster - 8/22/2006 7:27:57 PM

I missed today but he did one last week I think.


Since UR here....

6033. jexster - 8/22/2006 8:37:57 PM

The Macacans Are Coming
Oh Gosh!!

WASHINGTON - Republican Sen. Conrad Burns (news, bio, voting record), whose re-election campaign is pressing for tighter immigration controls, referred to his house painter as "a nice little Guatemalan man" and suggested that worker as well as employees of a roofing company he hired might be in the country illegally.

"The other day, the little fella who does our maintenance work around the house, he's from Guatemala, and I said, 'Could I see your green card?'" Burns said at a June meeting recorded by Democrats. "And Hugo says, 'No.' I said, 'Oh, gosh.

6034. jexster - 8/23/2006 6:19:53 AM

Hold on to Your Wallets America

Israeli Treasury Shocked by Cost of War


A Jew and Your Money are Not Soon Parted!

6035. jexster - 8/23/2006 2:23:24 PM

US Intel: die Juden sind unser Unglück



Via Pat Lang...

U.S. Intelligence officials: Israeli raid a violation


According to serving U.S. intelligence sources, Israel's commando raid conducted Saturday in eastern Lebanon aimed at recovering the two Israeli soldiers captured July 12 by Hizbullah.

These sources said that the Israeli commandos were wearing Lebanese Army uniforms during the operation.

They added that the Israeli soldiers apparently mispronounced an Arabic password while attempting to get through a Hizbullah checkpoint. They got through but were met a deadly ambush at the next checkpoint, these sources said.

The raid ccaused a firestorm in the Middle East. CNN quoted the Lebanese Defense Minister, Elias Murr, as threatening to halt the deployment of Lebanese Army troops to the country's southern region unless the United Nations can ensure Israeli compliance with Resolution 1701 requesting a pause in the fighting.

Israel defended its Saturday raid by claiming it was an operaton aimed at interdicting the transfer of weapons from Syria and Iran to Hizbullah, according to Israeli public statements.

But one U.S. intelligence source said, "That was an excuse worked out in advance -- to give the operaton some legitimacy. The real target was its two kidnapped soldiers," he said.

Another U.S. source said that ia commando raid was not an appropriate way to go about intercepting weapons shipments.

Richard Sale

6036. jexster - 8/23/2006 2:47:11 PM

Washington Post - Greatest Strategic Disaster in US History

Iraq: The President from Tralfamadore




Even conservatives have begun openly assessing the president's intellect, especially its impermeability to new information. Cable television pundit Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman, devoted a segment of his MSNBC show to "George Bush's mental weakness," with a legend at the bottom of the screen that impertinently asked: "IS BUSH AN 'IDIOT'?"

6037. jexster - 8/24/2006 11:47:55 AM

The Gift That Keeps on Killing

Jewish Delivery Service
Made-in-USA Cluster Bombs Killing Innocents

6038. jexster - 8/24/2006 12:06:54 PM

LoserPalooza: The Defeats of War President Bush

BBC:
Iran 'boosted by war on terror'
Iran's influence in the Middle East has been heightened by the US "war on terror", according to a report.
The Chatham House think-tank study said the US had eliminated regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan but failed to replace them with stable political structures.

Recent conflicts involving Israel in Lebanon and Gaza have added to instability, the report continued.

Iran has now superseded the US as the most influential power in the Middle East, it concluded.

'Confident ease'

The report - called Iran, Its Neighbours And Regional Crises - by the London-based think-tank said: "There is little doubt that Iran has been the chief beneficiary of the war on terror in the Middle East.

"The United States, with coalition support, has eliminated two of Iran's regional rival governments - the Taliban in Afghanistan in November 2001 and Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq in April 2003 - but has failed to replace either with coherent and stable political structures."


The chief beneficiary of America's global war on terror in the Middle East has been the very country that it considers to be a major part or a founding member of the axis of evil
Dr Ali Ansari

The report said Iran was too important for political, economic, cultural, religious and military reasons not to be taken seriously by other countries in the Middle East or the rest of Asia.

"The US-driven agenda for confronting Iran is severely compromised by the confident ease with which Iran sits in its region," the study added.

Iran's importance in the region helps explain why it is able to resist outside pressure over its nuclear intentions, the report continued.

But Edward Luttwak, a US Pentagon advisor, told the BBC that although Iran had gained influence, it was also dealing its own domestic problems.

He cited calls for autonomy by the Azeris, the largest ethnic minority in Iran, an insurgency by the Kurds and said that growing secularism meant some believed the government was out of tune with its people.

He said: "There are insurgencies all around the fringes and in the core of the country, in Tehran, half of the population won't talk to them."





One of the authors of the Chatham House report, Dr Ali Ansari of the University of St Andrews, told BBC Radio Five Live: "We've seen really since 9/11 that the chief beneficiary of America's global war on terror in the Middle East has been the very country that it considers to be a major part or a founding member of the axis of evil.

"And that basically tells us that there's an enormous incoherence in American approach to the Middle East.

"They simply haven't managed to work out a strategy and a policy that will work and will achieve results."

Chatham House is a non-profit, non-government organisation for the analysis of international issues.

6039. jexster - 8/24/2006 4:04:46 PM

LoserPalooza: The Defeats of War President George W. Bush
Afghanistan

Interview With Michael Sheuer, Frmr Chief CIA Bin-Laden Unit


5. Things seemed to have turned for the worse in Afghanistan too. What's your take on the situation there?

The President was sold a bill of goods by George Tenet and the CIA—that a few dozen intel guys, a few hundred Special Forces, and truckloads of money could win the day. What happened is what's happened ever since Alexander the Great, three centuries before Christ: the cities fell quickly, which we mistook for victory. Three years later, the Taliban has regrouped, and there's a strong insurgency. We paid a great price for demonizing the Taliban. We saw them as evil because they didn't let women work, but that's largely irrelevant in Afghanistan. They provided nationwide law and order for the first time in 25 years; we destroyed that and haven't replaced it. They're remembered in Afghanistan for their harsh, theocratic rule, but remembered more for the security they provided. In the end, we'll lose and leave. The idea that we can control Afghanistan with 22,000 soldiers, most of whom are indifferent to the task, is far-fetched. The Soviets couldn't do it with 150,000 soldiers and utter brutality. Before the invasion of Afghanistan, [the military historian] John Keegan said the only way to go there was as a punitive mission, to destroy your enemy and get out. That was prescient; our only real mission there should have been to kill bin Laden and Zawahiri and as many Al Qaeda fighters as possible, and we didn't do it.

6040. jexster - 8/24/2006 4:12:08 PM

By the way, that's exactly what I recommended in 2001

6041. jexster - 8/24/2006 6:10:02 PM

The Realist Legacy

The basic flaw in the Bush administration’s Middle East strategy is that it departs from the essential propositions of foreign-policy realism. In his days as the principal architect of American foreign policy under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, Henry Kissinger established a paradigm for U.S. grand strategy in the Middle East. In this paradigm, American policy should seek always to empower moderates and marginalize radicals. The best way to do this was through careful management of the region’s balance of power, primarily through diplomatic means. The essence of such diplomacy is “carrots-and-sticks” engagement -- credibly threatening negative consequences for regional actors who work against U.S. goals, but also promising strategically significant benefits in exchange for cooperation.

6042. jexster - 8/25/2006 7:58:13 AM

Nuremberg Prosecutor: Bush Should Stand Trial With Saddam for War Crimes

6043. jexster - 8/25/2006 8:26:14 AM

From a joint Army/USMC draft field manual:

Napoleon’s campaign included a rapid conventional victory over Spanish armies but ignored the immediate requirement to provide a stable and secure environment for the people and the countryside.

The French should have expected ferocious resistance. The Spanish people were accustomed to hardship, suspicious of foreigners, and constantly involved in skirmishes with security forces. The French failed to analyze the history, culture, and motivations of the Spanish people, or to seriously consider their potential to support or hinder the achievement of French political objectives. Napoleon’s cultural miscalculation resulted in a protracted struggle… The Spanish resistance drained the Empire’s resources and was the beginning of the end of Napoleon’s reign.

6044. jexster - 8/25/2006 9:27:41 AM

Bush Has Gas in Background

6045. jexster - 8/25/2006 9:34:40 AM

In an interview yesterday, Bedard, who writes “Washington Whispers” for the weekly newsmagazine, also said he’s heard about Bush’s full-salute “Austin Greeting.” That’s when new aides come in for their “meet and greet.”

“Word is,” says Bedard, “he likes to gas a couple, and then bring the aide in and see what the kid’s face looks like.”

Damn. I voted for the wrong guy - TWICE

6046. jexster - 8/26/2006 6:10:01 PM

Housing Gets Ugly

BYLINE: By PAUL KRUGMAN

BODY:


Bubble, bubble, Toll's in trouble. This week, Toll Brothers, the nation's premier builder of McMansions, announced that sales were way off, profits were down, and the company was walking away from already-purchased options on land for future development.

Toll's announcement was one of many indications that the long-feared housing bust has arrived. Home sales are down sharply; home prices, which rose 57 percent over the past five years (and much more than that along the coasts), are now falling in much of the country. The inventory of unsold existing homes is at a 13-year high; builders' confidence is at a 15-year low.

A year ago, Robert Toll, who runs Toll Brothers, was euphoric about the housing boom, declaring: ''We've got the supply, and the market has got the demand. So it's a match made in heaven.'' In a New York Times profile of his company published last October, he dismissed worries about a possible bust. ''Why can't real estate just have a boom like every other industry?'' he asked. ''Why do we have to have a bubble and then a pop?''

The current downturn, Mr. Toll now says, is unlike anything he's seen: sales are slumping despite the absence of any ''macroeconomic nasty condition'' taking housing down along with the rest of the economy. He suggests that unease about the direction of the country and the war in Iraq is undermining confidence. All I have to say is: pop!

Now what? Until recently most business economists were predicting a ''soft landing'' for housing. Even now, the majority opinion seems to be that we're looking at a cooling market, not a bust. But this complacency looks increasingly like denial, as hard data -- which tend, for technical reasons, to lag what's actually going on in the market -- start to confirm anecdotal evidence that it is, indeed, a bust.

Why the sudden crackup? When prices were rising rapidly, some people bought houses purely as investments, betting that prices would keep going up. Other people rushed to buy houses, or stretched themselves to buy houses they couldn't really afford, because they feared that prices would rise out of reach if they waited. And all this speculative demand pushed prices even higher. In other words, there was a market bubble.

But eventually prices reached a level beyond what even optimistic potential buyers were willing to pay, especially after interest rates rose a bit. (They're still low by historical standards.) As demand fell short of supply, double-digit price increases declined into the low single digits, then went negative everywhere except in the South.

And with prices falling in many areas, the speculative demand for houses has gone into reverse, as people try to get out with a profit while they still can. There's now a rapidly growing glut of unsold houses. This is a recipe for a major bust, not a soft landing.

Moreover, it could be both a deep and a prolonged bust. Since 2000, much of the nation has experienced a rise in home prices comparable to the boom in Southern California during the late 1980's. After that bubble popped, Los Angeles house prices began a slow, grinding deflation, eventually falling 20 percent (34 percent after adjusting for inflation). Prices didn't begin a sustained recovery until 1996, more than six years after the downturn began.

Now imagine the same thing happening across a large part of the United States. It's an ugly picture, and not just for people and companies in the construction business. Many homeowners -- especially those who bought their houses with interest-only loans or with minimal down payments -- will find themselves in financial distress. And the economy as a whole will take a hit.

As far as I know, Nouriel Roubini of Roubini Global Economics is the only well-known economist flatly predicting a housing-led recession in the coming year. Most forecasters consider his call alarmist, and many Federal Reserve officials remain optimistic. Last week, Richard Fisher, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, dismissed ''Eeyores in the analytical community'' who worry about a possible recession.

Call me Eeyore. While I don't share Mr. Roubini's certainty, I see his point: housing has been the main engine of U.S. economic growth over the past three years, and with that engine now going into reverse, it's hard to see how we can avoid a serious slowdown.

6047. alistairConnor - 8/27/2006 4:38:27 AM

"Serious slowdown". Krugman is behind the curve.

Perfect storm, I'd call it. US personal debt, dominated by housing loans, and high energy prices, mean that the bursting of the housing bubble will cause huge numbers of people to default on loans. Bringing down some big financial institutions (Fannie Mae etc) and triggering a stock market collapse and deep recession / depression.

And that's just within the next six months.

(It's all in Nostradamus anyway.)

The only question in my mind is whether this will be exacerbated by oil prices at over $100 a barrel, or whether, on the contrary, demand destruction (i.e. large numbers of people can no longer afford to buy gas) causes oil prices to ease off to, say, $60.

Very ugly, in any case. Mark my words. Bookmark my post.

6048. jexster - 8/27/2006 8:56:15 AM

I am with you AC. No one will need to be reminded "It's the economy stupid" in 2008 ....In every recession I recall, the "expert" consensus either did not forsee or called for a "slowdown"....this one is going to be long and deep...nothing a nice little war wouldn't cure


What Ahmadinejad Really Said - Cole

Sunday, August 27, 2006

Ahmadinejad: We are Not a Threat to Any Country, Including Israel

Believe it, don't believe it, that's up to you. But at least we should know what exactly he said, which is not something our US newspapers will tell us about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech on Saturday:

Kayhan reports that [Pers.] Ahmadinejad said, "Iran is not a threat to any country, and is not in any way a people of intimidation and aggression." He described Iranians as people of peace and civilization. He said that Iran does not even pose a threat to Israel, and wants to deal with the problem there peacefully, through elections:

"Weapons research is in no way part of Iran's program. Even with regard to the Zionist regime, our path to a solution is elections."

Ahmadinejad seems to be explaining what his calls for the Zionist regime to be effaced actually mean. He says he doesn't want violence against Israel, despite its own acts of enmity against Middle Eastern neighbors. I interpret his statement on Saturday to be an endorsement of the one-state solution, in which a government would be elected that all Palestinians and all Israelis would jointly vote for. The result would be a government about half made up of Israeli ministers and half of Palestinian ones. Whatever one wanted to call such an arrangement, it wouldn't exactly be a "Zionist state," which would thus have been dissolved.

The schlock Western pundits, journalists and politicians who keep maintaining that Ahmadinejad threatened "to wipe Israel off the map" when he never said those words will never, ever manage to choke out the words Ahmadinejad spoke on Saturday, much less repeat them as a tag line forever after.

Supreme Jurisprudent Khamenei's pledge of no first strike against any country by Iran with any kind of weapon, and his condemnation of nuclear bombs as un-Islamic and impossible for Iran to possess or use, was completely ignored by the Western press and is never referred to. Indeed, after all that talk of peace and no fist strike and no nukes, Khamenei at the very end said that if Iran were attacked, it would defend itself. Karl Vicks of the Washington Post at the time ignored all the rest of the speech and made the headline, 'Khamenei threatens reprisals against US." In other words, on Iran, the US public is being spoonfed agitprop, not news....

6049. jexster - 8/27/2006 9:01:41 AM

Responding to Krugman's column, a real estate agent friend reports,

Real estate sales are down 25% in California; and they are down 27% in both Florida and Arizona (former real estate hot spots).

6050. alistairConnor - 8/27/2006 9:10:22 AM

nothing a nice little war wouldn't cure

I can't see any war curing the coming depression. I think that, together with expensive energy, it'll wipe off a lot of the wealth of the USA, permanently.

I think you poor suckers are going to have to live like Europeans.

6051. jexster - 8/27/2006 9:36:49 AM

Civil War in 3 Dimensions: The KurdenFrage

Iraq was never a unified country,” said Asos Hardi, editor in chief of Awene, an independent Kurdish newspaper. “When you released the only factor keeping this country together, Saddam, all the problems came to the surface.”

6052. jexster - 8/27/2006 12:37:05 PM

The H'Town Chronicle Reports...

GOP's fortune in Congress could hinge on gains in Iraq
Bush's position weakens as the war becomes one of longest-fought by U.S.


YES!

6053. jexster - 8/27/2006 9:02:02 PM

University of Michigan Study: Iraqi Public Opinion

6054. jexster - 8/27/2006 9:04:20 PM

Percent strongly agreeing that life in Iraq these days life is unpredictable and dangerous

6055. jexster - 8/28/2006 9:15:39 AM

Bush 'palace' shielded from Iraqi storm





THE plans are a state secret, so just where the Starbucks and Krispy Kreme stores will be is a mystery. But as the concrete hulks of a huge 21-building complex rise from the ashes of Saddam's Baghdad, Washington is sending a clear message to Iraqis: "We're here to stay."

It's being built in the Middle East, but George W's palace, as the locals have dubbed the new US embassy, is designed as a suburb of Washington.

An army of more than 3500 diplomatic and support staff will have their own sports centre, beauty parlour and swimming pool. Each of the six residential blocks will contain more than 600 apartments.

The prime 25-hectare site was a steal — it was a gift from the Iraqi Government. And if the five-metre-thick perimeter walls don't keep the locals at bay, then the built-in surface-to-air missile station should.

Guarded by a dozen gangly cranes, the site in the heart of the Green Zone is floodlit by night and is so removed from Iraqi reality that its entire construction force is foreign.

After almost four years, the Americans still can't turn on the lights for the Iraqis, but that won't be a problem for the embassy staffers. The same with the toilets — they will always flush on command. All services for the biggest embassy in the world will operate independently from the rattletrap utilities of the Iraqi capital.

Scheduled for completion next June, this is the only US reconstruction project in Iraq that is on track. Costing more than $US600 million ($A787 million), the fortress is bigger than the Vatican. It dwarfs the edifices of Saddam's wildest dreams and irritates the hell out of ordinary Iraqis.

6056. robertjayb - 8/28/2006 9:47:32 AM

Deadly Weekend...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- A suicide car bombing and clashes between Shiite militia and Iraqi security forces left at least 50 people dead Monday in a brutal contradiction of the prime minister's claim that bloodshed was decreasing.

The deaths followed bombings and shootings Sunday that killed more than 60 people across the country, from the northern city of Kirkuk to Baghdad and Basra in the south. The dead included eight American soldiers, one of the U.S. military's deadliest weekends in months.

6057. jexster - 8/28/2006 10:11:31 AM

Do ya think the insurgents watch CNN?


I mean right in the middle of a PR offensive .... how rude

6058. jexster - 8/28/2006 12:09:36 PM

"Anybody knows not to mess with me"
Nancy Pelosi leads the Democrats with a fiery style that could make her the first woman Speaker of the House


Time

For Wire fans, notice the bar shot in the intro...the "Pelosi" posters...

Daddy was a Balmer ward boss

6059. robertjayb - 8/28/2006 7:20:23 PM

And a busy day...

(AP) Shiite militiamen battled Iraqi forces for 12 hours Monday, leaving at least 40 people dead and underlining the government's struggle to rein in an anti-U.S. cleric. The U.S. announced nine soldiers killed over the weekend in separate fighting.

The fighting in this southern city dominated a day that saw at least 19 people die in two suicide car bombings in Baghdad _ one outside the Interior Ministry and one on a line of cars waiting for fuel at a gas station.

6060. jexster - 8/28/2006 7:43:40 PM

6061. jexster - 8/29/2006 7:44:26 AM

Today's Absurd Headline

Gonzales in Iraq to push 'rule of law'

6062. jexster - 8/29/2006 8:43:26 AM

Best take care in his post-presiduncey travel arrangements


Bush's War Crimes Problem

6063. robertjayb - 8/29/2006 2:21:41 PM

What a classy guy! Rummy, in his last throes, compares critics to Hitler appeasers. HERE

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah (AP) -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Tuesday accused critics of the Bush administration's Iraq and counterterrorism policies of lacking the courage to fight terror.

In unusually explicit terms, Rumsfeld portrayed the administration's critics as suffering from "moral and intellectual confusion" about what threatens the nation's security.

Addressing several thousand veterans at the American Legion's national convention, Rumsfeld recited what he called the lessons of history, including the failed efforts to appease the Adolf Hitler regime in the 1930s.

"I recount this history because once again we face the same kind of challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism" he said.

6064. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 8/29/2006 2:34:35 PM

6065. jexster - 8/29/2006 2:37:56 PM

From Friends to "Fascists"

6066. jexster - 8/29/2006 4:22:37 PM

BushLeague Bigotry and Ignorance of Islam


President George Bush's ignorance of the Middle East and its people is well-known. So also is his habit of parroting words and sentences given to him by other people. He hit a new low when he referred to "Islamic fascists."

No two more opposite concepts are to be found. Fascism glorifies the nation-state; Islam is transnational. Fascism demands slavish devotion to a national leader; Muslims are far too independent-minded to be slavish followers of anybody. Virtually all the people Saddam Hussein murdered were people trying to overthrow him. Fascism is militaristic. Islam is not....

6067. jexster - 8/29/2006 6:46:55 PM

As of Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2006, at least 2,637 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes seven military civilians. At least 2,087 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.



The AP count is eleven higher than the Defense Department's tally, last updated Tuesday at 10 a.m. EDT.

6068. jexster - 8/30/2006 7:25:31 AM

Lie by Lie: Chronicle of a War Foretold: August 1990 to March 2003


There is some genuinely GOOD news for once. According to the Financial Times, a deal has been reached for petroleum revenue sharing.

6069. jexster - 8/30/2006 7:35:44 AM

From the Sunday Times (UK)


You wouldn’t catch me dead in Iraq


Scores of American troops are deserting — even from the front line in Iraq. But where have they gone? And why isn’t the US Army after them? Peter Laufer tracked down four of the deserters

6070. jexster - 8/30/2006 8:46:30 AM

The Battle of Diwaniya: Cole Takes on Two Bushie Flaks (NewsHour)

JUAN COLE: Well, expecting the Shiite religious parties to dissolve militias is sort of like expecting the wine industry to go in for prohibition....

6071. jexster - 8/30/2006 8:51:24 AM

Desperate Lies of Desperate Politicians...


Dumbsfeld GOP Flails the "IslamoFascists"


Stephen J. Wayne, a professor of government at Georgetown University, suggested White House strategists "probably had a focus group and they found the word `fascist.'

"Most people are against fascists of whatever form. By definition, fascists are bad. If you're going to demonize, you might as well use the toughest words you can," Wayne said

6072. jexster - 8/31/2006 9:42:15 AM

Deception as a Way of Life
Israeli Myths
By JONATHAN COOK

Nazareth.

In a state established on a founding myth -- that the native Palestinian population left of their own accord rather than that they were ethnically cleansed -- and in one that seeks its legitimacy through a host of other lies, such as that the occupation of the West Bank is benign and that Gaza's has ended, deception becomes a political way of life.

And so it is in the "relative calm" that has followed Israel's month-long pounding of Lebanon, a calm in which Israelis may no longer be dying but the Lebanese most assuredly are as explosions of US-made cluster bombs greet the south's returning refugees and the anonymous residents of Gaza perish by the dozens each and every week under the relentless and indiscriminate strikes of the Israeli air force while the rest slowly starve in their open-air prison.

Israeli leaders deceive as much in "peace" as they do in war, which is why it is worth examining the slow trickle of disinformation coming from Tel Aviv and reflecting on where it is leading.

Many of Israel's war lies have already been deeply implanted in Western consciousness by the media:

* that Hizbullah "started" the war by capturing two Israeli soldiers rather than that Israel maintained a hostile and provocative posture for the previous six years by daily sending its warplanes and spy drones into Lebanese airspace;

* that Hizbullah's launching of rockets into Israel was an act of aggression, even though they were fired after, and in response to, Israel's massive bombing of civilian areas in Lebanon;

* that Hizbullah, unlike Israel, used the local civilian populaton as human shields, even though Israel's continual and comprehensive aerial spying on south Lebanon produced almost no evidence of this;

* that Hizbullah, not Israel, targeted civilians, despite a death toll that suggests the exact opposite;

* and that Hizbullah's arming by Iran is entirely illegitimate, even though the weapons were used to defend Lebanon from a long-prepared Israeli attack, while Israel has an absolute and unchallengeable right to receive its arsenal from the US, even though those armaments have been used offensively, mostly against against Lebanese and Palestinian civilian populations.

Similar deceptions are now being sown after the fighting....

6073. jexster - 8/31/2006 10:06:59 PM

The Islamo-Fascist Macaca

Welcome to Neo-Fascism 101
By Andrew Bosworth, PhD.


Who is reading from the new script? William Kristol, Bill O'Reilly, Christopher Hitchens, Michelle Mankin, Michael Savage, Ann Coulter, Nick Cohen, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Daniel Pipes, Glenn Beck, Oliver North - even George W. Bush, prompting legitimate complaints from Muslim-Americans.

Middle Eastern powers include pan-Arab socialist dictatorships (Syria), monarchies (Saudi Arabia), constitutional theocracies (Iran), and assorted fundamentalist movements. None are "fascist." For three decades of political scientists, "fascism" is a phenomenon of industrialized societies and exhibits features alien to the Middle East.

Classical fascism was evident in inter-war Italy, Germany and Japan, and full-blown fascism exhibits three dimensions: economic, political and cultural.....

6074. jexster - 9/1/2006 10:18:37 AM

America the Jewed

Critics Decry 'Destroy and Lend' Policy in Lebanon


Lebanon is firmly en route to becoming the third nation in the Middle East after Iraq and the Palestinian territories to experience a devastating Washington-backed war and a massive influx of new illegitimate debt to cover reconstruction expenses, anti-debt activists say....

6075. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 9/1/2006 12:35:54 PM

6076. Ronski - 9/1/2006 2:08:11 PM

....this war inflicted by Israel in violation of international treaties governing relations between states.

Glad to see this thread is still good for a hearty laugh.

6077. wonkers2 - 9/1/2006 2:48:53 PM

You have a curious sense of humor!

6078. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 9/1/2006 5:46:50 PM

He has no sense of humor, he's a Republican. Their idea of funny is the powerful trodding over humanity in pursuit of control and money.

6079. jexster - 9/2/2006 8:23:45 AM

Lost Wars of Our Fearless Loser
"Beleaguered President Hamid Karzai"

KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghanistan could be "taken down" by its booming illegal drug trade, a senior U.S. anti-narcotics official warned Saturday, ahead of the scheduled release of U.N. opium crop data expected to show a massive increase in cultivation this year. ...

Well the numbers are in 0 6,100 Tons (+50%) But get this 92% of the world supply it exceeds global consumption by 30#. Plus we've spent hundreds of millions in the War on Drugs Front of the War in Afghanistan. Now, I personally like martinis and am told, could be barkeep legend, that martinis produce a sensation not unlike smoking a bowl of opium. Wouldn't it be cheaper to put hookahs in bars???

Afghanistan: "beleagured president Hamid Karza's" narco-state


or

Iraq:

Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said that four of his ministers are expected to lose their jobs in an imminent reshuffle of his embattled government.


Two months ago this was the "National Unity Government"

6080. jexster - 9/2/2006 8:28:41 AM

Remember When?

Remenmber when Iraq's Embattled Government was a Government of National Unity?

How about....

Remember when peaceful, democratic, reconstructed Afghanistan was advertised as the exemplar for the extreme makeover of Iraq? August 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was already proclaiming the new Afghanistan "a breathtaking accomplishment" and "a successful model of what could happen to Iraq." As everybody now knows, the model isn't working in Iraq. So we shouldn't be surprised to learn that it's not working in Afghanistan either.


Why Bush is Losing the War in Afghanistan

6081. jexster - 9/2/2006 8:40:55 AM

ROY ORBISON — Try to Remember Lyrics, MP3

6082. wonkers2 - 9/2/2006 8:57:25 AM

This isn't turning out quite the way I hoped. I was hoping the pig Rove would fry, but Libby will have to do. Plamegate denoument.

6083. jexster - 9/2/2006 9:56:56 AM

6076...

Not the first time that Israel's transgressed the laws of God and man Ronski...

A reading from the Prophet Hosea ...

Because they have not listened to him,
my God will reject them;
they shall become wanderers among the nations.... Even though they give birth,
I will kill the cherished offspring of their womb.






Hosea 8

8Set the trumpet to your lips!
One like a vulture* is over the house of the Lord,
because they have broken my covenant,
and transgressed my law.
2Israel cries to me,
‘My God, we—Israel—know you!’
3Israel has spurned the good;
the enemy shall pursue him.



4They made kings, but not through me;
they set up princes, but without my knowledge.
With their silver and gold they made idols
for their own destruction.
5Your calf is rejected, O Samaria.
My anger burns against them.
How long will they be incapable of innocence?
6 For it is from Israel,
an artisan made it;
it is not God.
The calf of Samaria
shall be broken to pieces.*



7For they sow the wind,
and they shall reap the whirlwind.
The standing grain has no heads,
it shall yield no meal;
if it were to yield,
foreigners would devour it.
8Israel is swallowed up;
now they are among the nations
as a useless vessel.



Hosea 9

9Do not rejoice, O Israel!
Do not exult* as other nations do;
for you have played the whore, departing from your God.
You have loved a prostitute’s pay
on all threshing-floors.
2Threshing-floor and wine vat shall not feed them,
and the new wine shall fail them.
3They shall not remain in the land of the Lord;
but Ephraim shall return to Egypt,
and in Assyria they shall eat unclean food.



4They shall not pour drink-offerings of wine to the Lord,
and their sacrifices shall not please him.
Such sacrifices shall be like mourners’ bread;
all who eat of it shall be defiled;
for their bread shall be for their hunger only;
it shall not come to the house of the Lord.



5What will you do on the day of appointed festival,
and on the day of the festival of the Lord?
6For even if they escape destruction,
Egypt shall gather them,
Memphis shall bury them.
Nettles shall possess their precious things of silver;*
thorns shall be in their tents.



7The days of punishment have come,
the days of recompense have come;
Israel cries,*
‘The prophet is a fool,
the man of the spirit is mad!’
Because of your great iniquity,
your hostility is great.
8The prophet is a sentinel for my God over Ephraim,
yet a fowler’s snare is on all his ways,
and hostility in the house of his God.
9They have deeply corrupted themselves
as in the days of Gibeah;
he will remember their iniquity,
he will punish their sins.



10Like grapes in the wilderness,
I found Israel.
Like the first fruit on the fig tree,
in its first season,
I saw your ancestors.
But they came to Baal-peor,
and consecrated themselves to a thing of shame,
and became detestable like the thing they loved.
11Ephraim’s glory shall fly away like a bird—
no birth, no pregnancy, no conception!
12Even if they bring up children,
I will bereave them until no one is left.
Woe to them indeed
when I depart from them!
13Once I saw Ephraim as a young palm planted in a lovely meadow,*
but now Ephraim must lead out his children for slaughter.
14Give them, O Lord—
what will you give?
Give them a miscarrying womb
and dry breasts.



15Every evil of theirs began at Gilgal;
there I came to hate them.
Because of the wickedness of their deeds
I will drive them out of my house.
I will love them no more;
all their officials are rebels.



16Ephraim is stricken,
their root is dried up,
they shall bear no fruit.
Even though they give birth,
I will kill the cherished offspring of their womb.
17Because they have not listened to him,
my God will reject them;
they shall become wanderers among the nations.



Hosea 10





13You have ploughed wickedness,
you have reaped injustice,
you have eaten the fruit of lies.
Because you have trusted in your power
and in the multitude of your warriors,
14therefore the tumult of war shall rise against your people,
and all your fortresses shall be destroyed,
as Shalman destroyed Beth-arbel on the day of battle
when mothers were dashed in pieces with their children.
15Thus it shall be done to you, O Bethel,
because of your great wickedness.
At dawn the king of Israel
shall be utterly cut off.

6084. jexster - 9/2/2006 2:32:39 PM

Can You Smell That Smell?


IranScam Agitprop: Bush Claims Iran Behind Iraq Troubles
BushShit Fails Smell-test - Again


Top U.S. officials have made strong charges in recent weeks that Iran is directly stirring up trouble in Iraq. But inside Iraq, it's hard to see any change and some American officials in Baghdad say privately the evidence is not that clear.

Most experts on Iran say there is no question that Iran is funneling support to certain Shiite political parties in Iraq, groups it long supported when they were fighting Saddam Hussein.

Ironically, most of that aid appears to go to the same Shiite parties in Iraq that the American government supports and that are part of the government. The more militant Shiite groups are equally critical of U.S. and Iranian influence in the country.

Nevertheless, the anti-Iran rhetoric from Washington has escalated sharply.

.... many experts on the region believe Iran thinks its interests would be better served by a stable Iraq dominated by Shiites friendly to Tehran. Those experts question why Iran would be trying to destabilize a government already dominated by parties with longtime ties to Tehran.

"Iran has every reason to want a stable Iraq," said Juan Cole, a professor of Middle Eastern history at the University of Michigan. "The evidence is that the Shiite groups most opposed to the (U.S.-led) coalition presence and the current pro-U.S. government ... are also the most anti-Iranian."

Iran is believed to finance some major Shiite political parties, but mostly ones the United States also backs.

6085. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 9/2/2006 2:42:57 PM

You'll enjoy this video, Jexster:

Olbermann: Rummy Reloaded

6086. jexster - 9/2/2006 8:31:23 PM

Wonk...

VALERIE PLAME WILSON AND FORMER AMBASSADOR JOSEPH WILSON NAME SUCCESSOR COUNSEL
Washington D.C. - Former CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband former Ambassador Joseph Wilson announced today that they have engaged the non-profit, public interest organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) as successor counsel and Joseph Cotchett and Frank Pitre with the law firm of Cotchett, Pitre, Simon & McCarthy as trial counsel in their case against Vice President Dick Cheney, his former Chief of Staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, top Presidential advisor Karl Rove and other unnamed current and former administration officials. Erwin Chemerinsky, Professor at Duke University School Of Law, will continue to serve in the case as co-counsel.

The Wilsons have filed a sweeping federal civil lawsuit against the defendants for their involvement in intentionally exposing Valerie Wilson’s classified CIA status to reporters in order to punish and seek revenge against Joseph Wilson for publicly disputing statements made by President Bush in his 2003 State of the Union address justifying the war in Iraq.

During this next phase of the litigation, the Wilsons will work closely with their new legal counsel in their efforts to uncover the truth surrounding the leak, to ensure all relevant public officials are held accountable for their actions and to deter similar offenses from being committed in the future.

6087. jexster - 9/2/2006 8:36:39 PM

Press Release
Response to Wash Post Editorial of 9/1/06



Allegation: It is untrue that the WH orchestrated leak of Plame’s identity to ruin her career and punish Joe Wilson


• According to Washington Post article of 10/12/03: “two top White House officials disclosed Plame’s identity to at least six Washington journalists.” An administration source told the Post: “officials brought up Plame as part of their broader case against Wilson . . . It was unsolicited . . . They were pushing back. They used everything they had.”

• After Novak’s column appeared Rove called Chris Matthews and told him Mr. Wilson’s wife was “fair game” (Newsweek 7/11/05)

• Mr. Fitzgerald, who has long been aware of Mr. Armitage’s role, stated in court filing: “there is ample evidence that multiple officials in the White House discussed [Valerie Wilson’s] employment with reporters prior to (and after) July 14, “ and further that “it is hard to conceive of what evidence there could be that would disprove the existence of White House efforts to ‘punish’ [Mr.] Wilson.” (Washington Post 4/7/06)

Allegation: Mr. Wilson’s charge that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger is false

• The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Assessment of Iraq describes Mr. Wilson’s role:

• The CIA’s decision to send Mr. Wilson to Niger was part of an effort to obtain responses to questions from the Vice President’s Office and State and Defense on “the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal” (p. 39)

• Two CIA staffers debriefed Mr. Wilson upon his return from Niger and wrote a draft intelligence report that was sent to the CIA Director of Operations (“DO”) reports officer. (p. 43)

• The intelligence report based on Mr. Wilson’s trip was disseminated on March 8, 2002, and was “widely distributed.” It did not identify Mr. Wilson by name to protect him as a source, which the CIA had promised Mr. Wilson. (p. 43)

• According to the report, the CIA’s DO gave Mr. Wilson’s information a grade of “good” “which means it added to the IC’s body of understanding on the issue.” (p. 46)

• After Mr. Wilson’s July 6, 2003 New York Times op-ed, the Administration acted as if he had made a major revelation:

• The day after a spokesman for the President told The Washington Post: “the sixteen words [“The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa”] did not rise to the level of inclusion in the State of the Union.” (NY Times 7/8/03)

• On July 11, 2003, CIA Director George Tenet said “These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the president.” (LA Times 7/12/03).

• According to a Washington Post article, the National Intelligence Council stated in a January 2003 memo that “the Niger story [that Iraq had been caught trying to buy uranium from Niger] was baseless and should be laid to rest.” (Washington Post 4/9/06)

• According to a Vanity Fair article of July 2006, there was a last-minute decision before the President’s State of the Union Address to attribute the Niger uranium deal to British intelligence even though “the CIA had told the White House again and again that it didn’t trust the British reports.”

• On March 7, 2003, Mohamed ElBaradei, the Director General of the IAEA, publicly disclosed that the Niger documents which formed the basis for reports of a Iraq-Niger uranium transaction were false. He stated that “the IAEA has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents . . . are in fact not authentic. We have therefore concluded that these specific allegations are unfounded.”

Allegation: Mr. Wilson “ought to have expected . . . that the answer [to why he was sent to Niger] would point to his wife.”

• A July 22, 2003 Newsday article cites a senior intelligence officer who confirmed that “she [Valerie Plame] did not recommend her husband to undertake the Niger assignment.”

• Joe Wilson’s July 15, 2005 letter to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence explains that Valerie Wilson was not at the meeting at which the subject of him traveling to Niger was raised for the first time and then only after a discussion of what the participants at the meeting did not did not know about Niger. This is confirmed by SSCI report at p. 40.

Melanie Sloan

Executive Director

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington

1400 Eye Street, N.W.

Suite 450

Washington, D.C. 20005

202-408-5565

202-588-5020 (f)

Cotchett Pitre is a plaintiff's litigation firm on the Peninsula. Aggressive. I was in a case in which they were brought in as trial approached.

CREW is a non-profit. Wilsons and their $800/hr. DC suits parted company.

6088. jexster - 9/2/2006 9:08:03 PM

Wonk...My comment on Larry Johnson's No Quarter post on the NyT hit piece

Fitzgerald's got em running scared no doubt about that.

Facts:

1. He knew of Armitage early on

2 In his Libby indictment announcement, he went to great lengths to explain the public interest in the indictment to wit that the defendant's acts obstructed discovery of the truth.

"Prosecutorial misconduct"?

Bring on a Motion. Last time I checked, the DC Courthouse was open for business.

Oh and show us the Rove "no indictment" letter!

Posted by: John McCutchen at Sep 2, 2006 11:05:32 PM

6089. wonkers2 - 9/2/2006 9:19:59 PM

Thanks. That's helpful. Is there a link to the CREW press release by Melanie Sloan? I went to the CREW website but couldn't find it.

6090. jexster - 9/3/2006 12:06:31 PM

Not up yet. You can find it at Larry Johnson's No Quarter and at UMich demi-god's site

6091. jexster - 9/3/2006 12:09:44 PM

The Grand Ayatollah "is very angry.."


Pat Lang Comments...

An interesting situation in Iraq just now:

-We have on the one hand the Sunni Iraqi Islamic and secularist insurgents waging their war against the coalition and the Shia.

-We have the international Jihadis of "al-Qa'ida in Iraq" fighting for a Utopian Islamic state according to their belief as to what that might be. (fat chance)

-We have Sistani declaring himself out of the process.

-We have the three major Shia factions fighting each other for control of the "rump" state of Iraq.

-We have the Kurds running ads on TV here saying that they are "the other Iraq."

-We have the Kurds declaring Kurdistan to be an inapproriate place to fly the Iraqi flag.

What's left" Ah! We have the coalition forces in the middle of all this. Let's see--What was John Warner saying about a re-authorization?

Pat Lang



"..the extent to which he has become marginalised was demonstrated last week when fighting broke out in Diwaniya between Iraqi soldiers and al-Sadr's Mehdi army. With dozens dead, al-Sistani's appeals for calm were ignored. Instead, the provincial governor had to travel to Najaf to see al-Sadr, who ended the fighting with one telephone call.

Al-Sistani's aides say that he has chosen to stay silent rather than suffer the ignominy of being ignored. Ali al-Jaberi, a spokesman for the cleric in Khadamiyah, said that he was furious that his followers had turned away from him and ignored his calls for moderation.

Asked whether Ayatollah al-Sistani could prevent a civil war, Mr al-Jaberi replied: "Honestly, I think not. He is very angry, very disappointed."" Telegraph

6092. jexster - 9/3/2006 5:49:37 PM

Old Glory - Long May She Wave!

IRBIL, Iraq - The leader of the Kurdish region in northern Iraq threatened secession Sunday as a dispute over flying the Iraqi flag intensified.


Massoud Barzani on Friday ordered the country's national flag to be replaced with the Kurdish one, sparking harsh words in Baghdad.

"If we want to separate, we will do it, without hesitation or fears," Barzani

6093. jexster - 9/3/2006 7:01:25 PM

The Troops Are the First to Know:
The Iraq War is Lost

Sergeant Poetsch thought the United States was doing the right thing by toppling Saddam Hussein. But the Army, he says, does not have nearly enough troops to patrol the city effectively, and he says Hit's residents, unlike the people he encountered during his previous tour in Baghdad, do not want to have much to do with the Americans.

"At the beginning, I was all for it," he said. "Saddam Hussein was not a good guy, and I always felt good that he is gone. But somehow it seems it seems that we lost direction. It is just hard for guys here to understand what we are doing. What makes it so significant if we can't have more manpower and better living conditions?"

...

The loss of a comrade hit the platoon hard, as Sgt. Ryan Kahlor, 22, noted in an emotional letter to his parents in San Diego.

"The world keeps turning and so does the fighting in Iraq," he wrote. "Yesterday, my soldier and friend was shot and killed. ...He is the first one in our platoon to be killed. His death has started an uproar of emotions in the platoon."

"No one understands why we are here and what our mission is," Sergeant Kahlor added. "This war is lost. We aren't helping these people. We are just dying and getting injured."

"What is the mission of the United States today under this resolution if [Iraq] erupts into a civil war? . . . I think we have to examine very carefully what Congress authorized the president to do in the context of a situation if we're faced with all-out civil war and whether we have to come back to the Congress to get further indication of support."

6094. robertjayb - 9/4/2006 12:21:08 PM

Think Progress has these capsule commentaries on Architects of the war: Where are they now?

President Bush has not fired any of the architects of the Iraq war. In fact, a review of the key planners of the conflict reveals that they have been rewarded – not blamed – for their incompetence.

6095. jexster - 9/4/2006 12:35:28 PM

Anti-war protests come to congressman's lawn

About 35 members of Military Families Speak Out face off with Rep. Rohrabacher at his house in Huntington Beach.

By NATALYA SHULYAKOVSKAYA
The Orange County Register

HUNTINGTON BEACH – About 35 people, carrying anti-war signs, walked down the quiet street and knocked on the congressman's door. Surfing gear and a couple of children's strollers were on the porch. A window fan was working.

But no one answered.

The activists from Military Families Speak Out, three of them with sons serving in Iraq, went to a nearby park.

They returned with a giant mock check for an "endless war" and put it on the doorstep of Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Huntington Beach. Then, one by one, they placed black combat boots on the grass. The boots had tags with names of soldiers killed in Iraq.

The activists, part of a national "house call" campaign to reach politicians during their recess, filled up the sliver of grass between the road and the sidewalk. They stood quietly for several minutes.

Rohrabacher has supported the Bush administration on the war in Iraq.

Then, the protesters started shouting: "Bring them home! Now!"

As the pitch rose, the congressman ran out of his grey stucco home. He was barefoot.

"You just woke my babies!" Rohrabacher said. He and his wife, Rhonda, have 2-year-old triplets. Rohrabacher said he was on his back porch when he heard crying over a baby monitor.

6096. jexster - 9/4/2006 2:02:45 PM

The Myth of the Omnipresent Enemy


Q: Is There Still a Terrorist Threat?
By John Mueller
Foreign Affairs


September/October 2006

Despite all the ominous warnings of wily terrorists and imminent attacks, there has been neither a successful strike nor a close call in the United States since 9/11. The reasonable -- but rarely heard -- explanation is that there are no terrorists within the United States, and few have the means or the inclination to strike from abroad.






A:

6097. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 9/4/2006 4:01:24 PM

6098. jexster - 9/4/2006 8:24:08 PM

On terrorism, Bush maligns history and our intelligence

By Rami G. Khouri
Lebanon Daily Star


There is something sad about a grown man playing children's make-believe war games in a tree house in grandpa's back yard -

6099. jexster - 9/4/2006 8:42:05 PM

On Dec. 7, 1941, Japan launched a sneak attack that devastated the U.S. Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. And the United States rose in righteous fury, immediately declaring war on Thailand. Because, you know, it was in the same part of the world as Japan and the people kind of looked alike and besides, those Thais had been getting a little uppity and were due for a smackdown.

Dumsfeld's WWII Fantasies

6100. jexster - 9/5/2006 4:58:32 AM

This is for Ronski's amusement

Israeli Legal Team Prepares for War Crimes Defense

6101. RickNelson - 9/5/2006 8:16:23 AM

R KY Whip, Ditto head freak!

saying a Dems want a cut and run strategy that will bring another 9-11

and Duhhhhbya saying Iran is behind Iraqs trouble?


Jayyyyyyyyyyysus!

6102. RickNelson - 9/5/2006 8:26:05 AM

Jex,

It's become more evident as tiny bits of information trickle through the micro sized holes in the politically spun media output, that politics and Israel don't mix.



weird stuff next:

This weekend there was a movie from the 1990, about Bush I and the demeanted Republican lying machine. It was called "Bob Roberts".

A lying, cheating, back stabbing, cult of personality.

He gathered ditto head followers with zombie characteristics.

He spoke of the conspiracies against America derived from those who question Americas determination in the world.

He made the poor to be enemies of true Americans, worthy of scorn, to have no rights, especially no voting rights.

As I see it, this is a preminition movie of W's terms and the insanity imposed upon America as a result of his money grubbing big business charities, big war contract charities, big oil charities, big farms charities, and welfare money for all rich folk in America who have to suffer the poor among them.

6103. RickNelson - 9/5/2006 8:27:56 AM

I would love to see the media catch the eyes of scared Republicans, who have that caught in the headlights stare.

6104. jexster - 9/3/2006 10:39:30 AM

Next up is the parade of presidential speeches culminating in what The Washington Post describes as "a whirlwind tour of the Sept. 11 attack sites": All Fascism All the Time. In his opening salvo, delivered on Thursday to the same American Legion convention that cheered Mr. Rumsfeld, Mr. Bush worked in the Nazis and Communists and compared battles in Iraq to Omaha Beach and Guadalcanal. He once more interchanged the terrorists who struck the World Trade Center with car bombers in Baghdad, calling them all part of the same epic "ideological struggle of the 21st century." One more drop in the polls, and he may yet rebrand this mess War of the Worlds.

6105. RickNelson - 9/5/2006 9:03:12 AM

our local incumbent governor Tim Pawlenty still lies that he didn't raise taxes. He's not debated at all, and he only puts up lying ads about his record.

He promised not to cut education. He cut it.

He caused the rise of fees and property taxes for all Minnesotans, and that is raising taxes!

We gotta vote that bum out!

6106. jexster - 9/5/2006 9:24:52 AM

The War Is Lost
by Paul Craig Roberts



Who is going to tell Bush that the war is lost?

Is Rumsfeld going to tell him?

Is Cheney going to tell him?

Rick..you tell him

6107. RickNelson - 9/5/2006 9:28:45 AM

He doesn't talk to Demcrats.

6108. jexster - 9/5/2006 10:49:39 AM

No Shit

Ex Iranian leader Khatami says US should stay in Iraq for moment (AFP)

6109. jexster - 9/5/2006 11:55:01 AM

Government of National Unity

BAGHDAD (AFP) - Iraq's parliament has reopened after a month-long recess marred by mounting sectarian violence, with deputies expected to discuss breaking up the country into semi-independent regions.



At the top of the agenda was the controversial issue of whether to allow Iraq's provinces to merge into larger autonomous regions, a move which some Sunni Arab lawmakers fear could tear the country apart.

Other groups, however, strongly support a plan which would create virtually independent zones in the oil-rich Shiite south and Kurdish north, and leave Sunni Arabs economically isolated in the barren western desert.

6110. jexster - 9/5/2006 4:14:12 PM

MN-Gov | USA Today/Gallup
Mike Hatch (D) 44%
Tim Pawlenty (R) 43%



Pawlenty...that some sorta injun name?

6111. jexster - 9/6/2006 7:29:56 AM

Bush, "Islamo-Fascism" and the Strategic Elipse

6112. jexster - 9/6/2006 7:40:53 AM

BushWars Supercharge Growth of Political Islam

6113. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 9/6/2006 9:14:49 AM

6114. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 9/6/2006 9:21:43 AM

Talk about fascist ripples, from Bush down to his minions . . .

6115. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 9/6/2006 10:07:26 AM

facist! (toys)

6116. alistairConnor - 9/6/2006 10:13:07 AM

Ex Iranian leader Khatami says US should stay in Iraq for moment

Dead right. US presence in Iraq serves Iranian interests. Sort of like hostages. Easy to reach for revenge if the US were to bomb Iran.

6117. jexster - 9/6/2006 1:44:40 PM

Poll: Europeans See US as Threat to Global Security

6118. wonkers2 - 9/6/2006 1:46:51 PM

What an asshole!

6119. jexster - 9/6/2006 2:13:12 PM

Taliban Controls Half of Afghanistan (Senlis Council Report - Link in Intl

The U.S.-led nation-building efforts have failed because of "ineffective and inflammatory military and counter-narcotics policies," the report says. "At the same time, there has been a dramatic under-funding of aid and development programs."

The disastrous policies could have created the very circumstances for the growth of terrorism that the United States set out to fight, the report says. "The U.S. policies in Afghanistan have recreated the safe haven for terrorism that the 2001 invasion aimed to destroy," Reinert said.

"The reason that the international force is in Afghanistan for the last five years is to make sure that Afghanistan will never again be a safe haven for international terrorists," Reinert told IPS. But the rise of the Taliban is still short of a rise in terrorism, he said.

"Right now we cannot say we see a lot of foreign elements; we see the Taliban in Afghanistan," he said. "We see basically the neo-Talibans as they are called, they are Afghans, they are people from the communities, they are from the Pashtun tribes who have been fighting in the south for so many years. In a way, it is a civil war which is being waged over there."

6120. jexster - 9/6/2006 2:22:54 PM

US Has Lost Control of al-Anbar Province

6121. jexster - 9/7/2006 7:39:19 AM

France rejects "war on terror
"Against terrorism, what's needed is not a war," de Villepin

6122. wonkers2 - 9/7/2006 9:14:40 AM

deVillepin is correct. When we declare war on something, the result is often counter-productive--as in the war on drugs, the war on poverty and now the war on terror. War is the wrong word to use. I prefer "counter-terrorism" or "dealing with terrorism" or something that emphasizes measures other than those involving large-scale, protracted military moves. "War on," like zero-tolerance, is an over-used and dangerous cliche.

6123. jexster - 9/7/2006 10:45:27 AM

Not just AC's wussie citoyens


Pentagon Strategy Chief: 'War' Language Boosts Terrorists

6124. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 9/7/2006 11:10:20 AM

6125. jexster - 9/7/2006 11:51:42 AM

??????? ?? ???? ?????????, Al-Qaa`idatu fii bilaadi r-raafidayn,

Place your hands in our hands ... our enemy has unified his ranks, now is the time to unite

Abu Hamza al-Muhajir

6126. jexster - 9/7/2006 4:20:40 PM

Civil War in Several Dimensions


Eye on Iraq: Adrift in a complex war
By MARTIN SIEFF
UPI Senior News Analyst

WASHINGTON, Sept. 6 (UPI) -- U.S. policymakers and forces in Iraq are now adrift in a complex, many-sided war and the democratic political system that was the centerpiece of U.S. strategy is collapsing before Washington's eyes.

6127. jexster - 9/8/2006 1:04:00 PM

Bush Lied - US Senate
Senate panel finds no prewar Iraq-Qaeda link

Saddam Hussein provided no material support for al Qaeda and had no relationship with al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi, despite claims by administration officials including President George W. Bush, said a Senate report released on Friday.

The report by the Senate Intelligence Committee, drawing on a previously undisclosed 2005 CIA assessment, was released as Americans prepared to mark the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the United States by al Qaeda.

Democrats said it undercut the Bush administration's justification for the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, including recent statements by the president himself.

"Today's reports show that the administration's repeated allegations of a past, present and future relationship between al Qaeda and Iraq were wrong and intended to exploit the deep sense of insecurity among Americans in the immediate aftermath of the September 11th attacks," said Sen. John Rockefeller (news, bio, voting record) of West Virginia, the panel's ranking Democrat.

The committee's Republican chairman, Sen. Pat Roberts (news, bio, voting record) of Kansas, accused Democrats of presenting a misleading version of the committee's findings.

"The additional views of the Committee's Democrats are little more than a rehashing of the same unfounded allegations they've used for over three years," Roberts said in a statement.

Another Democrat, Sen. Carl Levin (news, bio, voting record) of Michigan, used the report to accuse Bush of making a false statements about ties between Saddam and Zarqawi, the one-time al Qaeda in Iraq leader killed by U.S. forces.

At an August 21 press conference, Bush told reporters that Saddam had relations with Zarqawi.

"The CIA's October 2005 assessment that Saddam's regime did not have a relationship, harbor or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates," Levin said.

"The president's statement, made just two weeks ago, is flat-out false," Levin said.

Bush administration officials pointed to supposed links between Saddam and al Qaeda to help justify their case for war before the March 2003 invasion.

The assessment in the CIA report was similar to the conclusion reached by the bipartisan 9/11 Commission, which found that there had been no "collaborative relationship" between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.

Top officials also told Americans that Saddam posed a threat to his neighbors and U.S. interests because he possessed large WMD stockpiles. But no such weapons were found.

6128. jexster - 9/9/2006 11:10:31 AM

Wars Bush Has Lost

Prospect of Shiite Self-rule Spells Break-up of Iraq
By Oliver Poole
Daily Telegraph, London

6129. jexster - 9/9/2006 11:51:50 AM

6130. jexster - 9/9/2006 12:33:38 PM

"As the slaughter [in Iraq] continues," according to an essay this week by Alon Ben-Meir, an Israeli international relations professor at New York University, "the Arab and Muslim world are increasingly enraged over the plight of the Iraqi people, with hatred toward the United States reaching new heights."

6131. jexster - 9/9/2006 1:26:48 PM

From this morning's LATimes:

Prewar claims versus report findings

A report by the Senate Intelligence Committee found no evidence connecting Iraq to weapons of mass destruction and Al Qaeda:

On connections between Iraq and terrorists



"We clearly know that there were in the past and have been contacts between senior Iraqi officials and members of Al Qaeda going back for actually quite a long time."

Condoleezza Rice, Sept. 25, 2002

"We are especially concerned about Iraq because of the developments we see with respect to [Hussein's] weapons of mass destruction, because he has in the past, for example, had a relationship with terrorist organizations, has provided sanctuary in Iraq for terrorist organizations of various kinds."

Vice President Dick Cheney, Sept. 9, 2002

Committee finding:

• "According to debriefs of multiple detainees — including Saddam Hussein and former Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz — and captured documents, Saddam did not trust Al Qaeda or any other radical Islamist group and did not want to cooperate with them. Hussein reportedly believed, however, that Al Qaeda was an effective organization because of its ability to successfully attack U.S. interests."

*

On Iraq's desire and ability to acquire nuclear weapons

"Saddam Hussein promised the U.N. that he would destroy and cease further development of weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles, and that he would submit to unrestricted inspections. He has flatly broken these pledges, producing chemical and biological weapons, aggressively pursuing a nuclear weapons program and working to develop long-range ballistic missiles."

Vice President Dick Cheney, Sept. 27, 2002

Committee findings:

• "Postwar findings do not support the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) judgment that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Information obtained after the war supports the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research's (INR) assessment in the NIE that the intelligence community lacked persuasive evidence that Baghdad had launched a coherent effort to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program."

• "Postwar findings do not support the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) assessment that 'Iraq has biological weapons' and that 'All key aspects of Iraq's offensive biological weapons (BW) program are larger and more advanced that before the Gulf War.'

• "The ISG [Iraq Survey Group] uncovered no evidence indicating that Iraq maintained a stockpile of chemical weapons or had been producing chemical weapons…. Since the spring of 2003, coalition forces have discovered approximately 500 filled and unfilled degraded chemical munitions. All of the munitions appear to be pre-1991 CW [chemical weapons] and not part of an active weapons stockpile…. Postwar inspections of the sites suspected of having a CW role revealed that they were likely used for the production of non-CW dual-use materials, and had a limited capability to restart the manufacture of CW."

*

On Iraq developing unmanned aerial vehicles for delivering weapons of mass destruction



"We know that he has been working hard on developing a means to disseminate those weapons…. We have evidence that he has been looking at aerial vehicles."

Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, Sept. 8, 2002

Committee finding:



• "Postwar findings do not support the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) assessments that Iraq had a developmental program for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) 'probably intended to deliver biological agents' or that an effort to procure U.S. mapping software 'strongly suggests that Iraq is investigating the use of these UAVs for missions targeting the United States.' Postwar findings support the view of the Air Force, joined by the DIA [Defense Intelligence Agency] and the Army, in an NIE published in January 2003, that Iraq's UAVs were primarily intended for reconnaissance."

*

Sources: U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Times research

6132. jexster - 9/9/2006 1:44:54 PM

Sad day for the Ace of Spades


Iraq's Alleged Al-Qaeda Ties Were Disputed Before War
Links Were Cited to Justify U.S. Invasion, Report Says

Kiss my faggot ass fatso where ever you are

6133. jexster - 9/9/2006 7:46:03 PM

"We cannot leave Iraq before it is stabilized," declared a former CIA officer. But to maintain a prolonged foreign occupation of Iraq is to destabilize it only further. Once the invader departs, there will no doubt be a civil war, which will accelerate the dismemberment of the nation, giving rise to a fundamentalist regime, which will make at least some people miss the era of Saddam.

Regis Debray
Sept 2003

6134. jexster - 9/10/2006 8:18:03 AM

Rumsfeld Forbade Talk of Post-Invasion Planning Army Official

6135. jexster - 9/10/2006 8:35:21 AM

IraQ the Model

Sunnis boycotted the Parliamentary debate on the creation of a Shiite SuperRegion. Tensions aee running so high that the Government of National Unity banned political meetings

6136. judithathome - 9/10/2006 11:35:53 AM

We could have gotten bin Ladin in 03, but the military was stretched too thin.

Pertinent quote:

In July 2003, Vines said that U.S. forces under his command thought they were close to striking bin Laden, but had only one drone to send over three possible routes he might take. "A UAV was positioned on the route that was most likely, but he didn't go that way," Vines said. "We believed that we were within a half-hour of possibly getting him, but nothing materialized."

6137. jexster - 9/10/2006 11:39:25 AM

Merry 9/11 to You and Yours Judith!

6138. jexster - 9/11/2006 6:03:46 AM

Bush Loses Battle for al-Anbar

A confidential Marine Corps intelligence report on al-Anbar Province concludes that there are no functioning governmental institutions there, that the vacuum is filled by groups such as al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and that the US has been defeated politically even if not militarily.

These conclusions have long been obvious to any close observer of the situation there. There was significant violence in Fallujah on Sunday, and it had even been destroyed by the US. Ramadi saw a firefight Saturday, and the whole city appears to be under constant siege by US forces. The Sunni Arab tribes of Anbar are openly agitating for Saddam Hussein to be released! There is no point in keeping all those US troops there. They will just steadily be blown up or picked off. Hold provincial elections, hand the keys of the cities to the new govenors, and withdraw over the horizon. The Shiites and Kurds will have to reach an accommodation with them, and it would be all to the good if they knew that the Americans were no longer going to try to keep the Sunni Arabs down for them. Cole




A Very Merry 911 to You and Yours!

6139. jexster - 9/11/2006 11:50:29 AM

6140. jexster - 9/11/2006 3:41:32 PM

Ayatollah al-Sistani and the end of Islam
By Spengler, Asia Times

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the definitive presence of traditional Shi'ite Islam, has warned that he "no longer has power to save Iraq from civil war", and has withdrawn from politics (see Iraq loses its voice of reason, Asia Times Online, September 6).

ATol's Sami Moubayed reported, "If Sistani lives up to his word, this means silencing the loudest - and only - remaining voice of reason and moderation in Iraqi politics." He noted that Sistani's followers have transferred loyalty toward the Iranian-controlled warlord Muqtada al-Sadr.

That Iraq would break up in bloodshed has seemed predestined since late 2003, when I predicted civil war and eventual partition (Will Iraq survive the Iraqi resistance? December 23, 2003). But the collapse of Sistani's influence is news indeed. It portends the end of Islam in the Persian Gulf, as much as pope Pius XII's virtual incarceration in the Vatican during World War II augured the end of Christianity in Europe.

On the face of it the notion that Islam is in jeopardy seems absurd. Muqtada al-Sadr is a Shi'ite cleric of fanatic persuasion, close to and perhaps wholly owned by the fanatical mullahs of Tehran. But Islam is not defined by political allegiance, nor by a specific set of doctrines, but rather by a way of life. In the case of Islam it is the life of traditional society embedded in a circle of spears directed outward against the leveling empires.

More than any man alive, Sistani personifies the traditional life of Islam. The end of his mission implies that his followers are thrust onto the stage of the modern world in the cruelest form, in this case a civil war of attrition. Islam, as Sistani teaches it, cannot survive the shock.

6141. jexster - 9/11/2006 6:26:37 PM

Nation Deconstructing

As violence escalates, so does talk of a divided Iraq

6142. jexster - 9/11/2006 7:15:50 PM

Monsters, Inc: Bush's Terror War

6143. jexster - 9/11/2006 8:54:15 PM

Bush to bin Laden: "America will find you" (Reuters)




Bubs is right...five years on, nothing's changed except that the Taliban can once more



Hook Em Goats!

6144. jexster - 9/12/2006 9:32:29 AM

Iraq the Model: The "Government" of National Unity
Bush's Ballyhooed Elections Have Worsened Divisions
GAO

6145. jexster - 9/12/2006 12:13:50 PM

Irak: Mission unmöglich
Der Spiegel

6146. jexster - 9/12/2006 12:32:56 PM

After the Warsaw Pact fell apart, Americans felt safer than ever. Jolted by 9/11, US President Bush and his advisors resolved to deter any future attacks. But ousting Saddam Hussein only put Iraq on the brink of civil war and exposed the vulnerability of the world's only superpower.




Fourth Infantry Division
On BushWar Mission Impossible


The 4th Infantry Division (Mechanized) is the most technologically advanced combat division in the U.S. Army.

6147. wonkers2 - 9/12/2006 1:24:22 PM

Lies sure do have consequences says Michigan Senator Carl Levin about Bush's, Cheney's, Rumsfeld's, Wolfowitz's and Tenet's repeated lies about a connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. Full text of Carl Levin's speech.

6148. robertjayb - 9/13/2006 3:34:12 AM

Pay attention, dammit! There is no civil war!

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A total of 60 unidentified bodies have been found in various parts of Baghdad over the past 24 hours, an Interior Ministry source said on Wednesday.
The unusually high 24-hour tally was recorded despite a month-old security crackdown in Iraq's capital by U.S. and Iraqi troops.

The source said most bodies were bound and shot in the head and many bore signs of torture -- trademarks of sectarian death squads and kidnap gangs plaguing the capital.

The United Nations estimated two months ago about 100 people a day were being killed in Iraq in sectarian bloodshed between the country's majority Shi'ite Muslims and minority Sunni Arabs.

6149. judithathome - 9/13/2006 9:55:06 AM

From the Trib:


BAGHDAD -- The American military did not count people killed by bombs, mortars, rockets or other mass attacks, including suicide bombings, when it reported a dramatic drop in the number of murders in the Baghdad area last month, the U.S. command said Monday.
The decision to include only victims of drive-by shootings and those killed by torture and execution, usually at the hands of death squads, allowed U.S. officials to argue that a security crackdown that began in the capital Aug. 7 had more than halved the city's murder rate.
But the types of slayings, including suicide bombings, that the U.S. excluded from the category of "murder" weren't made explicit at the time. That led to confusion after Iraqi Health Ministry figures showed that 1,536 people died violently in and around Baghdad in August, nearly the same number as in July.

6150. jexster - 9/13/2006 10:08:13 AM

Operation Forward Together (rev 0 and rev 1) drives home once more the fundamental truth of the war in Iraq - Instability follows US military operations.

It's happened in al-Anbar and happening in Baghdad too. As the Der Spiegel article trenchantly observes, it has been happening throughout Iraq for three years:

Data collected by Washington's respected Brookings Institution traces the decline between November 2003 and May 2006. The number of insurgents climbed from 5,000 to 20,000 during this period. When President Bush prematurely announced the end of major combat operations from the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in 2003, there were five attacks a day. Now there are nearly one hundred. Some 250 clashes between Sunnis and Shiites are now recorded every month.

6151. jexster - 9/13/2006 10:10:16 AM

We don't care who runs Rangoon. Why should we care who runs Ramadi?

Bush and Rockefeller (Cole)

Two controversies are swirling. One regards President Bush's address to the nation on the anniversary of September 11, which Democrats say was too nakedly political for that solemn occasion.

The other concerns remarks by Jay Rockefeller that seemed to say it would have been better to leave Saddam in power.

With regard to the second controversy, I have a suggestion for war opponents in this debate. It is to make war the issue. The question is not whether the Saddam regime should have been neutralized. The question is the best method to achieve that goal without destabilizing the Middle East. War was clearly a mistake. It was too blunt an instrument, and it sent Iraq into shock, making the United States inevitably less secure since as an oil-dependent superpower it is negatively affected by instability in the Persian Gulf.

Should Saddam have been defanged and if possible removed? Yes. But it is now obvious that he had been defanged. The weapons inspection regime and the sanctions had destroyed his weapons' programs and thrown the Iraqi economy down to fourth world status. In fact, it is clear in retrospect that the economic sanctions were too stringent (even after the ban on chlorine was lifted, allowing water purification). Saddam was being attacked, constrained, and ever increasingly diminished as a threat, by sanctions and inspections, which needed to be extended and turned into smart sanctions.

War as a tactic was the wrong tactic for Iraq. It is not that any of us in retrospect wish Saddam had not been overthrown. It is a fool's errand to compare Iraq in 2002 and Iraq now. The question is war. War was not the answer. It has not produced stability or security.

As for Bush, his speech was in fact a shameless appropriation of the tragedy of September 11 for partisan political purposes. But what was really strange was the key contradiction it contained. He maintained that the Iraq War had made Americans more secure. But then he said that if they lose the battle in Iraq, "the terrorists" will come after them.

But we never had a beef with the people of Ramadi, ever in our history. If Bush is saying that he has induced a feud between the US and the people of Ramadi so vicious that if we don't spend the rest of the century keeping that city behind barbed wire, they will find a way to blow up something on the US mainland-- if that is what he is saying, then the only logical conclusion is that by invading Iraq, Bush has made us less secure and has created enemies for us where none existed before.

But in fact, the US in the Sunni Arab heartland of Iraq is not fighting "terrorists" mostly. Bush has started to believe his own propaganda. The US is fighting Iraqi nationalists and nativists, secular, tribal or religious. If the Iraqi Sunni nationalists could take over their own territory, they would not put up with the few hundred foreign volunteers blowing things up, and would send them away or slit their throats.

This is Washington's classical Vietnam error. They thought they were fighting international communism in Vietnam, when they were actually fighting Vietnamese nationalists with a leftist cast. Not so long after the end of the war, the Vietnamese were fighting with Communist China. That makes no sense if they were international communists. It makes perfect sense if they were nationalists.

Just as there was no grand global domino effect from our losing the Vietnam War, so there would be no grand terror effect if we left Ramadi. We left Saudi Arabia, which some might see as an enormous concession to al-Qaeda, and nothing bad happened to us. Al-Qaeda cannot control Sunni Iraq because there are too many Iraqi claimants on power and authority, whether Sunni or other. Nor would Turkey and Jordan put up with an al-Qaeda state on their borders, and both have proved that they can intervene effectively if they want to.

Ramadi is not going to follow the US troops back to Ft. Bragg if they leave. Ramadi will celebrate and then go about its business.

As for al-Qaeda, we cannot make policy on the basis of what it thinks of us. Al-Qaeda is stalking America. It is tiny and disrupted, but still dangerous. But an American withdrawal from Iraq would not change a key fact: Al-Qaeda wants to hit us, whether we are in Iraq or not. On the other hand, our being in Iraq is enraging the Muslim world and making it easier for al-Qaeda to recruit and plot against us. If we leave, all that will immediately settle down. When the French left Algeria in 1962, within a year the Franco-Algerian struggle was completely gone from the newspapers of both countries. The French Right kept saying that France could not leave Algeria. But it could, and did, and everything was all right. It will be all right if we get our ground troops out of Ramadi. They aren't winning there, and the occupation is causing more trouble than it is worth. As for who takes over Ramadi when we leave, well, the Iraqis can work that out among themselves. We don't care who runs Rangoon. Why should we care who runs Ramadi?

6152. jexster - 9/13/2006 10:38:20 AM

Good News from Iraq!
Major Move to Secure Production from Southern Oil Fields Announced

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad had something of a lovefest at their press conference on Tuesday. Ahmadinejad expressed his complete support for the Iraqi parliament, political process and government. The Iranians always sound just like the Bush administration when they talk about political progress in Iraq. Ahmadinejad also offered help with security affairs.

Al-Maliki declined to associate himself with American charges that Iran is fomenting turmoil in Iraq, saying that there were no obstacles to security cooperation between the two countries.

Iran and Iraq will cooperate in pumping petroleum from oil fields traversed by their common border, and in its refining. One such project could be online within a year. These fields are far from the Sunni Arab areas, and Iran would help with security, so that they could help the government escape the economic blockade the guerrilla movement has placed on the northern Kirkuk fields, which generally cannot export through Turkey because of pipeline sabotage.

6153. robertjayb - 9/13/2006 12:05:14 PM

Congressman Murtha introduces resolution for Rumsfeld ouster...

Therefore, be it resolved that --------


It is the sense of the Congress that, for the good of the country, the United States of America must restore credibility both at home and abroad and that the first step toward restoring that credibility must be to demonstrate accountability for the mistakes that have been made in prosecuting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq by immediately effecting the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and replacing him with someone capable of leading the nation's military in a strategy to resolve our deployment in Iraq, prevent regression in Afghanistan, reconstitute our military readiness, and refocus on the threats to national security posed by diffuse and proliferating terrorist cells as well as belligerent states.



__________________________________

JOHN P. MURTHA

Member of Congress

6154. jexster - 9/13/2006 8:02:50 PM

The Folly Of Exporting Democracy

Anatol Lieven is a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, author of "America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism" (2004) and a former British journalist specializing in foreign affairs. John Hulsman is a contributing editor at the National Interest and a visiting fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations. This essay is drawn from the authors’ book, "Ethical Realism: A Vision for America ’s Role in the World" ...

6155. jexster - 9/14/2006 8:01:03 PM

War Crimes of the Rabid Jews

Israeli Troops Admit to Widespread Use of Banned Weapons

6156. jexster - 9/14/2006 9:19:55 PM

Died for Less Than Nothing


Suicide Bomb Kills 2 at US Base

6157. jexster - 9/15/2006 7:12:41 AM

A Tragic Irony



BushWar's signature wound: Brain injury AP

6158. jexster - 9/15/2006 7:22:04 AM

Many a Slip Twixt the BushShit and the Lip

An Unexpected Collision Over Detainees

WASHINGTON, Sept. 14 — President Bush and Congressional Republicans spent the last 10 days laying the foundation for a titanic pre-election struggle over national security, and now they have one. But the fight playing out this week on Capitol Hill is not what they had in mind.

Instead of drawing contrasts with Democrats, the president’s call for creating military tribunals to try terror suspects — a key substantive and political component of his fall agenda — has erupted into a remarkably intense clash pitting some of the best-known warriors in the Republican Party against Mr. Bush and the Congressional leadership.

6159. jexster - 9/15/2006 9:21:50 AM

IraQ the Model
Duhbya Does Nation Building

Iraq to build trenches around Baghdad AFP

6160. jexster - 9/15/2006 10:15:11 AM

Wars Bush Has Lost - IraQ
109109 Doesn't Think Laos Should Control US foreign policy...

Here's why they should

Why We Can't Send More Troops to Clean Up Georgie's Big Mess
Lawrence Korb/Peter Ogden Op-Ed
WaPo

In "Reinforce Baghdad" [op-ed, Sept. 12], William Kristol and Rich Lowry argue that the United States needs to deploy "substantially" more troops to Iraq to stabilize the country. Aside from the strategic dubiousness of their proposal -- Kristol and Lowry's piece might alternatively have been titled "Reinforcing Failure" -- there is a practical obstacle to it that they overlook: Sending more troops to Iraq would, at the moment, threaten to break our nation's all-volunteer Army and undermine our national security. This is not a risk our country can afford to take.
Lawrence J. Korb was assistant secretary of defense for manpower, installations and logistics during the Reagan administration. He and Peter Ogden work on national security issues at the Center for American Progress.

6161. wonkers2 - 9/15/2006 10:40:34 AM

Where is niner these days? He was always good for a laugh.

6162. wonkers2 - 9/15/2006 10:41:54 AM

I guess he couldn't stand the heat so he got out of the kitchen. I suppose we ganged up on him too much.

6163. jexster - 9/15/2006 1:50:06 PM

Under the nom de guerre "Francis Urquarht she appeared the other day in News along with her sidekick Tonto

I hope some had the chance to see MSNBC this morning. The topic - the Non-alingned nations summit in Havana. MSNBC's morning bimbo is a piece of work. Breathlessly she asks the NBC correspondent covering the summit

"This is a gathering of US foes NK, Syria, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran - how are things going"

Andrea Mitchell corrects her....there are 108 enemies including PM Maliki of Iraq

Non plussed bimbo tried another line...

"Well how are they treating the press in this Communist dictatorship?"

Andrea calmly replied that she had unfettered access to all but the leaders attending (she had to deal with For. Ministry types just as she deos at G-8) but otherwise she was able to speak freely with dissidents whomever she wish with no interference at all. "The Cuban people are extremely friendly"

6164. jexster - 9/15/2006 5:20:04 PM

Benedict XVI: Uniter Not a Divider


Pope's comments on Islam unite Iraqis (AP)

6165. jexster - 9/15/2006 7:29:28 PM

Pyrrhus on the Potomac: How Bush Wrecked the US Military

9/15/06 Reports summarizing security policy and activities since 9/11 are now available in html and pdf formats at the Project on Defense Alternatives, http://www.comw.org/pda:

"Pyrrhus on the Potomac: How America's post-9/11 wars have undermined US national security," by Carl Conetta. A net assessment of America's post-911 security policy.

Appendix I: "Fighting on Borrowed Time: The Effect on US Military Readiness of America's post-911 Wars." Summarizes recent data on military readiness and suggests that the administration has adopted a policy of "risk displacement."

Appendix II: "Losing Hearts and Minds: World Public Opinion and post-9/11 US Security Policy." Draws on a broad range of multi-national public opinion surveys to assess the drift in world opinion. It looks especially at opinion in the Muslim world and among America's European allies regarding US leadership, the war on terror, and the Iraq war.

Are We Safer? Five Years After the September 11th Attacks: Assessing the U.S. Security Situation and Alternatives for Moving Forward, an Anthology of National Security Essays, September 2006. Nine essays and assessments published by the Security Policy Working Group addressing the security situation five years after 9/11.

6166. jexster - 9/15/2006 7:35:40 PM

General Puff
By William S. Lind


During World War II, one of the Führer’s favorite sayings was, “All generals lie.” Today, Washington prefers the word “spin” to lie, although the difference is often difficult to parse. As an eighteenth-century man, I prefer an eighteenth century word: puffery. If we consider some of the statements coming from our military leaders regarding the war in Iraq, we might think they are all clones of General Puff.

In recent days, a classified report on the situation in Anbar province, written by a senior Marine intelligence official in Iraq, has been widely reported on in the press. The report, which I have not seen, apparently paints a bleak picture of the situation there. According to a story by Tom Ricks of The Washington Post, the Marine commander in Anbar, Major General Richard Zilmer, said “I have seen that report and I do concur with that assessment.” Score one for the Marine Corps in the honesty department.

But then, General Puff seems to have stolen General Zilmer’s identity. According to Ricks’ story, Zilmer

Also insisted that “tremendous progress” is being made in that part of the country…

“I think we are winning this war,” he told reporters. “We are certainly accomplishing our mission…”

“This is such a huge, significant event that’s about to occur tomorrow. If you go back and map out significant events that have occurred in this government’s formation in taking control of the country, tomorrow is gigantic.”

The U.S. military did not count people killed by bombs, mortars, rockets or other mass attacks—including suicide bombings—when it reported a dramatic drop in the number of killings in the Baghdad area last month, the U.S. Central Command said Monday…

6167. jexster - 9/15/2006 8:20:41 PM

Report: CIA Knew in '02 That bin Laden Had No Iraq Ties

The CIA learned in late September 2002 from a high-level member of Saddam Hussein's inner circle that Iraq had no past or present contact with Osama bin Laden and that the Iraqi leader considered bin Laden an enemy of the Baghdad regime, according to a recent Senate Intelligence Committee report.

"Al-Qaeda hides. Saddam doesn't, but the danger is, is that they work in concert. The danger is, is that al-Qaeda becomes an extension of Saddam's madness and his hatred and his capacity to extend weapons of mass destruction around the world. . . . [Y]ou can't distinguish between al-Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror." George W. Bush 9/25/02

6168. jexster - 9/16/2006 8:42:10 AM

Benny's Big Boner
Pope's Trip to Turkey in Doubt
Protests Grow

Turkish officials are becoming skittish about Pope Benedict XVI's planned November trip to Turkey, an almost entirely Muslim country where feelings have been hurt by the pope's quotation of a medieval Byzantine emperor to the effect that the Prophet Muhammad brought nothing but evil.

Protests grew on Friday, from Muslim clerics, from lay politicians,a nd from Muslim crowds demonstrating. The Pakistani parliament passed a resolution condemning the Pope's remarks. (Since the Pakistani parliament has been fighting Muslim fundamentalists and trying to avoid implementing Islamic law, this was an easy way to stress their Muslim bonafides even as they pursue secular policies). Muslims in Jammu and Kashmir took time out from worrying about the Kashmir issue to protest the Pope. Likewise there were protests by Palestinians in Gaza.

The Vatican continues to decline to apologize, only saying that no offense was meant by the Pope's remarks.

Some commentators have complained about Muslim sensibilities in this regard. But in my view, this sensitivity is a feature of postcolonialism. Muslims were colonized by Western powers, often for centuries, and all that period they were told that their religion was inferior and barbaric. They are independent now, though often they have gained independence only a couple of generations (less if you consider neocolonialism). As independent, they are finally liberated to protest when Westerners put them down.

There is an analogy to African-Americans, who suffered hundreds of years of slavery and then a century of Jim Crow. They are understandably sensitive about white people putting them down, and every time one uses the "n" word, you can expect a strong reaction. In the remarks the pope quoted about Muhammad, he essentially did the equivalent of using the "n" word for Muslims. It is no mystery that people are protesting.

This issue is not going to go away until the Pope comes out and clarifies and apologizes. All he has to do is quote Vatican II on Islam, which is still Catholic doctrine last I knew, and the whole issue would blow over. It will be a huge error if he sticks to his guns.

All he has to do is say he is sorry if it appeared he was slamming Muhammad and Islam, and that this is what the Catholic Church actually feels about the issue:

' The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men. Indeed, she proclaims, and ever must proclaim Christ, "the way the truth, and the life" (John 14, 6), in whom men may find the fullness of religious life, in whom God has reconciled all things to Himself (4).

The Church therefore, exhorts her sons, that through dialogue and collaboration with the followers of other religions, carried out with prudence and love and in witness to the Christian faith and life, they recognize, preserve and promote the good things, spiritual and moral, as well as the socio-cultural values found among these men.

3. The Church regards with esteem also the Moslems. They adore the one God, living and subsisting in Himself, merciful and all-powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth (5), who has spoken to men; they take pains to submit wholeheartedly to even His inscrutable decrees, just as Abraham, with whom the faith of Islam takes great pleasure in linking itself, submitted to God. Though they do not acknowledge Jesus as God, they revere Him as a prophet. They also honor Mary, His virgin mother; at times they even call on her with devotion. In addition, they await the day of judgement when God will render their deserts to all those who have been raised up from the dead. Finally, they value the moral life and worship God especially through prayer, almsgiving and fasting.

Since in the course of centuries not a few quarrels and hostilities have arisen between Christians and Moslems, this Sacred Synod urges all to forget the past and to work sincerely for mutual understanding and to preserve as well as to promote together for the benefit of all mankind social justice and moral welfare, as well as peace and freedom. '

6169. jexster - 9/16/2006 9:41:37 AM

Georgie Has a Hissy Fit

6170. jexster - 9/16/2006 5:32:47 PM

America the Impotent
Bush the Irrelevant

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Major powers are considering a joint meeting with Iran next week that excludes the United States as a way of bridging a divide over its nuclear program, U.S. and European diplomats said on Saturday.

6171. jexster - 9/16/2006 6:29:07 PM

Picture as purty as this deserves to bust margins

6172. jexster - 9/16/2006 6:43:36 PM

A thoughtful comment to Cole's Informed Comment on Holy Benny's Big Boner.....

HalalChickenNugget said...
I do not see why Muslim protests are always viewed as the result of someone "stoking the fire" or egging them on, as if the choice to protest and at what level to protest could never come from themselves. Their Prophet has been called a warmonger. For those who think that Muslims love war and hate, these protests against a quote to the effect that Muhammad was a war-like individual, should be a good sign for those people that Muslims take this as a slight.

Having read the full text, I must say, it was rather academic, although the quote seems anything but. It discusses the 14th century emperor having a debate with a Persian about the religions. I think its quite clear that the "Persian" represents the Muslims. What I think is more insulting than the quote, is how he uses this historical encounter to relate how Christians believe in the Greek concepts of "logos" and reason, whereas Muslims believe in a transcendent, impersonal God who, as he quotes from Ibn Hazm, is not even bound by the obligations He makes on himself.

At the end of the speech, he calls for dialogue, BUT he says that the "partner" in this dialogue should be called to reason and logos.

Thus I am left with the impression at the end that the Catholics are rational, the Muslims irrational people who worship an utterly impersonal God. In a sense, it reaffirms commonly held fears about Muslims, albeit in academic lingo.

7:26 PM

6174. jexster - 9/16/2006 7:09:53 PM

Abu Muhammad 'Ali ibn Ahmad ibn Sa`id ibn Hazm (??? ???? ??? ?? ???? ?? ???? ?? ???) (November 7, 994 – August 15, 1069) was an Andalusian Muslim philosopher and theologian of Persian descent [1] born in Córdoba, present day Spain.

He was known for being very well versed, and able to converse with his tongue. It is stated that the way warriors would chop with the sword, he would chop with the tongue. He was born into a very affluent family, with his father being a minister in the government.

He served as a minister in the government multiple times, under different caliphs. He used to serve under the Ummayad caliphs, and was known to have worked under Mansoor, the last of the Ummayad caliphs.

He became a scholar late in his life, but ended up becoming one of the most influential scholars. In fact, he wrote over 400 books, in many different fields.

He opposed the allegorical interpretation of religious texts, preferring instead a grammatical and syntactical interpretation of the Qur'an. He granted cognitive legitimacy only to revelation and sensation and considered deductive reasoning insufficient in legal and religious matters. He did much to revitalize the Zahiri madhhab, which denied the legitimacy of legal rulings based upon qiyas (analogy) and focused upon the literal meanings of legal injunctions in the Qur'an and hadith. Many of his rulings differed from those of his Zahiri predecessors, and consequently Ibn Hazm's followers are sometimes described as comprising a distinct madhhab.

You can see why the Pope quoted Ibn Hazm and why, without more, quoting such a person as an authority on Muslim faith and reason, is dubious indeed.

6175. jexster - 9/16/2006 7:30:47 PM

Better paid, better armed, better connected - Taliban rise again



Kandahar under threat, war raging in two provinces and an isolated president. So what went wrong?

6176. jexster - 9/16/2006 8:18:14 PM

According to news media and Vatcan apologist accounts of the Bishop of Rome's Regensberg lecture, the Byzantine quote (puns reserved) was somehow tangential to the subject of his address.

Well it wasn't. In Benedict's own words, it was the "starting point" of his reflections.

This profound sense of coherence (during his university days) within the universe of reason was not troubled, even when it was once reported that a colleague had said there was something odd about our university: it had two faculties devoted to something that did not exist: God.

That even in the face of such radical scepticism it is still necessary and reasonable to raise the question of God through the use of reason, and to do so in the context of the tradition of the Christian faith: this, within the university as a whole, was accepted without question.

I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury (Münster) of part of the dialogue carried on - perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara - by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both.

It was presumably the emperor himself who set down this dialogue, during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402; and this would explain why his arguments are given in greater detail than those of his Persian interlocutor.

The dialogue ranges widely over the structures of faith contained in the Bible and in the Qur'an, and deals especially with the image of God and of man, while necessarily returning repeatedly to the relationship between - as they were called - three "Laws" or "rules of life": the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Qur'an.

It is not my intention to discuss this question in the present lecture; here I would like to discuss only one point - itself rather marginal to the dialogue as a whole - which, in the context of the issue of "faith and reason", I found interesting and which can serve as the starting-point for my reflections on this issue.

In the seventh conversation [text unclear] edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion".

According to the experts, this is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur'an, concerning holy war.

Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached".

The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God", he says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably ... is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death...".



Full Text

6177. Ulgine Barrows - 9/17/2006 12:45:10 AM

According to news media and Vatcan apologist accounts of the Bishop of Rome's Regensberg lecture


do you have any names, here? wondering,

6178. Ulgine Barrows - 9/17/2006 12:47:31 AM

Alimony, alimony payin' your bills,
Livin', lovin', she's just a woman.
When your conscience hits, you knock it back with pills.
Livin', lovin', she's just a woman.


~Led Zep

6179. Ulgine Barrows - 9/17/2006 12:48:59 AM

keep on talking until your dying day

6180. jexster - 9/17/2006 7:13:53 AM

THE EMERALD CITY
Ties to GOP Trumped Know-How Among Staff Sent to Rebuild Iraq
Crony Capitalism in the Green Zone

6181. wonkers2 - 9/17/2006 8:20:48 AM

Frank Rich's column today tells how to tell when Bush, Cheney and Rice are lying, aside from when their lips are moving. How to tell when Bush, Cheney and Rice are Lying.

6182. RickNelson - 9/17/2006 9:17:47 AM

Did you read the article from the WP on MSNBC today, about the political appointees running things in Iraq immediately after the "end of major hostilities"?

"Ties to GOP trumped skill on Iraq team"

6183. RickNelson - 9/17/2006 9:24:06 AM

No wonder Iraqi officials had complaints about inadequate hospital services after the war. The idiot assigned to oversee that hospitals were reequiped decided to revamp the drugs offered, and build local clinics instead. Contrary to the immediate needs of a post-war state, he decided that it was better to make Iraqis less dependent on hospitals and reliant upon clinics. He also decidec it was important to reduce the drugs available from 4,500 to something smaller. This, he decides is a priority over reestablishing hospitals.

Which is why the hospitals received no attention and a year after were still unequiped and had empty pharmacy shelves.

He had experince in Michigan reducing their drug offerings to save money for Medicare.

In Iraq he also decided that Iraqi clinics, he thought so important must be supplied by American companies, rather than the regional suppliers already known to Iraqis.

This is one example in the article. There's a couple more.

6184. RickNelson - 9/17/2006 9:25:35 AM

Jex, did Wiz give us a good cartoon of the Pope? Can you tell me where it is if he did?

Dang, I wish we had a special link to Wiz material.

Except Wiz would have to manage it himself and that would be a lot of work.

6185. jexster - 9/17/2006 11:08:01 AM

CNN has an Aussie correspondent in Iraq who tells it like it is. Speaking of the leaked Marine intel report on al-Anbar "This has been developing for 3 years. Anyone who has spent anytime in the province will tell you that there is nothing new in this report."

Which raises the obvious question - Why the front page WaPo story from Tom Ricks? Why the major league stink for the past week or so?

The answer is, of course, obvious = the supine US media publishes Bush regime propaganda not news

6186. jexster - 9/17/2006 4:21:01 PM

The hatemongers think that the American public is sort of like a big stupid dog, and you can fairly easily "sic" it on whoever you like. Just tell them that X people are intrinsically evil and that the US needs to go to war to protect itself from them. Then they turn around and blame those of us who don't want our country reduced to footsoldiers in someone else's greedy crusade for being "unpatriotic."



Juan Cole

6187. jexster - 9/17/2006 5:17:07 PM

BAGHDAD, Iraq - In the few short years since the first shackled Afghan shuffled off to Guantanamo, the U.S. military has created a global network of overseas prisons, its islands of high security keeping 14,000 detainees beyond the reach of established law.

6188. jexster - 9/17/2006 5:18:45 PM

They hate our values...so do I


As she watched one recent day for a bus from distant Camp Bucca, one mother wept and told her story.

"The Americans arrested my son, my brother and his friend," said Zahraa Alyat, 42. "The Americans arrested them October 16, 2005. They left together and I don't know anything about them."

The bus pulled up. A few dozen men stepped off, some blindfolded, some bound, none with any luggage, none with familiar faces.

As the distraught women straggled away once more, one ex-prisoner, 18-year-old Bilal Kadhim Muhssin, spotted U.S. troops nearby.

"Americans," he muttered in fear. "Oh, my God, don't say that name," and he bolted for a city bus, and freedom.

___

6189. jexster - 9/17/2006 6:34:55 PM

HEADLINE: The Longer the War, the Larger the Lies

BYLINE: By FRANK RICH

BODY:


RARELY has a television network presented a more perfectly matched double feature. President Bush's 9/11 address on Monday night interrupted ABC's ''Path to 9/11'' so seamlessly that a single network disclaimer served them both: ''For dramatic and narrative purposes, the movie contains fictionalized scenes, composite and representative characters and dialogue, as well as time compression.''

No kidding: ''The Path to 9/11'' was false from the opening scene, when it put Mohamed Atta both in the wrong airport (Boston instead of Portland, Me.) and on the wrong airline (American instead of USAirways). It took Mr. Bush but a few paragraphs to warm up to his first fictionalization for dramatic purposes: his renewed pledge that ''we would not distinguish between the terrorists and those who harbor or support them.'' Only days earlier the White House sat idly by while our ally Pakistan surrendered to Islamic militants in its northwest frontier, signing a ''truce'' and releasing Al Qaeda prisoners. Not only will Pakistan continue to harbor terrorists, Osama bin Laden probably among them, but it will do so without a peep from Mr. Bush.

You'd think that after having been caught concocting the scenario that took the nation to war in Iraq, the White House would mind the facts now. But this administration understands our culture all too well. This is a country where a cable news network (MSNBC) offers in-depth journalism about one of its anchors (Tucker Carlson) losing a prime-time dance contest and where conspiracy nuts have created a cottage industry of books and DVD's by arguing that hijacked jets did not cause 9/11 and that the 9/11 commission was a cover-up. (The fictionalized ''Path to 9/11,'' supposedly based on the commission's report, only advanced the nuts' case.) If you're a White House stuck in a quagmire in an election year, what's the percentage in starting to tell the truth now? It's better to game the system.

The untruths are flying so fast that untangling them can be a full-time job. Maybe that's why I am beginning to find Dick Cheney almost refreshing. As we saw on ''Meet the Press'' last Sunday, these days he helpfully signals when he's about to lie. One dead giveaway is the word context, as in ''the context in which I made that statement last year.'' The vice president invoked ''context'' to try to explain away both his bogus predictions: that Americans would be greeted as liberators in Iraq and that the insurgency (some 15 months ago) was in its ''last throes.''

The other instant tip-off to a Cheney lie is any variation on the phrase ''I haven't read the story.'' He told Tim Russert he hadn't read The Washington Post's front-page report that the bin Laden trail had gone ''stone cold'' or the new Senate Intelligence Committee report contradicting the White House's prewar hype about nonexistent links between Al Qaeda and Saddam. Nor had he read a Times front-page article about his declining clout. Or the finding by Mohamed ElBaradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency just before the war that there was ''no evidence of resumed nuclear activities'' in Iraq. ''I haven't looked at it; I'd have to go back and look at it again,'' he said, however nonsensically.

6190. jexster - 9/17/2006 6:35:02 PM

These verbal tics are so consistent that they amount to truth in packaging -- albeit the packaging of evasions and falsehoods. By contrast, Condi Rice's fictions, also offered in bulk to television viewers to memorialize 9/11, are as knotty as a David Lynch screenplay. Asked by Chris Wallace of Fox News last Sunday if she and the president had ignored prewar ''intelligence that contradicted your case,'' she refused to give up the ghost: ''We know that Zarqawi was running a poisons network in Iraq,'' she insisted, as she continued to state again that ''there were ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda'' before the war.

Ms. Rice may be a terrific amateur concert pianist, but she's an even better amateur actress. The Senate Intelligence Committee report released only two days before she spoke dismissed all such ties. Saddam, who ''issued a general order that Iraq should not deal with Al Qaeda,'' saw both bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as threats and tried to hunt down Zarqawi when he passed through Baghdad in 2002. As for that Zarqawi ''poisons network,'' the Pentagon knew where it was and wanted to attack it in June 2002. But as Jim Miklaszewski of NBC News reported more than two years ago, the White House said no, fearing a successful strike against Zarqawi might ''undercut its case for going to war against Saddam.'' Zarqawi, meanwhile, escaped.

It was in an interview with Ted Koppel for the Discovery Channel, though, that Ms. Rice rose to a whole new level of fictionalizing by wrapping a fresh layer of untruth around her most notorious previous fiction. Asked about her dire prewar warning that a smoking gun might come in the form of a mushroom cloud, she said that ''it wasn't meant as hyperbole.'' She also rewrote history to imply that she had been talking broadly about the nexus between ''terrorism and a nuclear device'' back then, not specifically Saddam -- a rather deft verbal sleight-of-hand.

Ms. Rice sets a high bar, but Mr. Bush, competitive as always, was not to be outdone in his Oval Office address. Even the billing of his appearance was fiction. ''It's not going to be a political speech,'' Tony Snow announced, knowing full well that the 17-minute text was largely Cuisinarted scraps from other recent political speeches, including those at campaign fund-raisers. Moldy canards of yore (Saddam ''was a clear threat'') were interspersed with promising newcomers: Iraq will be ''a strong ally in the war on terror.'' As is often the case, the president was technically truthful. Iraq will be a strong ally in the war on terror -- just not necessarily our ally. As Mr. Bush spoke, the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, was leaving for Iran to jolly up Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Perhaps the only way to strike back against this fresh deluge of fiction is to call the White House's bluff. On Monday night, for instance, Mr. Bush flatly declared that ''the safety of America depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad.'' He once again invoked Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, asking, ''Do we have the confidence to do in the Middle East what our fathers and grandfathers accomplished in Europe and Asia?''

Rather than tune this bluster out, as the country now does, let's try a thought experiment. Let's pretend everything Mr. Bush said is actually true and then hold him to his word. If the safety of America really depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad, then our safety is in grave peril because we are losing that battle. The security crackdown announced with great fanfare by Mr. Bush and Mr. Maliki in June is failing. Rosy American claims of dramatically falling murder rates are being challenged by the Baghdad morgue. Perhaps most tellingly, the Pentagon has now stopped including in its own tally the large numbers of victims killed by car bombings and mortar attacks in sectarian warfare.

And that's the good news. Another large slice of Iraq, Anbar Province (almost a third of the country), is slipping away so fast that a senior military official told NBC News last week that 50,000 to 60,000 additional ground forces were needed to secure it, despite our huge sacrifice in two savage battles for Falluja. The Iraqi troops ''standing up'' in Anbar are deserting at a rate as high as 40 percent.

''Even the most sanguine optimist cannot yet conclude we are winning,'' John Lehman, the former Reagan Navy secretary, wrote of the Iraq war last month. So what do we do next? Given that the current course is a fiasco, and that the White House demonizes any plan or timetable for eventual withdrawal as ''cut and run,'' there's only one immediate alternative: add more manpower, and fast. Last week two conservative war supporters, William Kristol and Rich Lowry, called for exactly that -- ''substantially more troops.'' These pundits at least have the courage of Mr. Bush's convictions. Shouldn't Republicans in Congress as well?

After all, if what the president says is true about the stakes in Baghdad, it's tantamount to treason if Bill Frist, Rick Santorum and John Boehner fail to rally their party's Congressional majority to stave off defeat there. We can't emulate our fathers and grandfathers and whip today's Nazis and Communists with 145,000 troops. Roosevelt and Truman would have regarded those troop levels as defeatism.

The trouble, of course, is that we don't have any more troops, and supporters of the war, starting with Mr. Bush, don't want to ask American voters to make any sacrifices to provide them. They don't want to ask because they know the voters will tell them no. In the end, that is the hard truth the White House is determined to obscure, at least until Election Day, by carpet-bombing America with still more fictions about Iraq.

6191. jexster - 9/17/2006 9:12:29 PM

GOP Candidates for Congress need to learn to smash keyboards when pissed off

Chairman Mike

From a former GOP Congressman to a GOP congressional hopeful
I can't help but feel sorry for my old Republican friends in Congress who are fighting for their political lives. After all, it must be tough explaining to voters at their local Baptist church's Keep Congress Conservative Day that it was their party that took a $155 billion surplus and turned it into a record-setting $400 billion deficit.

How exactly does one convince the teeming masses that Republicans deserve to stay in power despite botching a war, doubling the national debt, keeping company with Jack Abramoff, fumbling the response to Hurricane Katrina, expanding the government at record rates, raising cronyism to an art form, playing poker with Duke Cunningham, isolating America and repeatedly electing Tom DeLay as their House majority leader?

How does a God-fearing Reagan Republican explain all that away?
Easy. Blame George W. Bush
.
Escaping political death by attacking an unpopular president is hardly new -- especially since most endangered politicians have the loyalty of a starving billy goat. But this is Dubya's Washington, where the White House has pushed around, bullied and betrayed GOP lawmakers for years.

Of course, you GOP candidates can be sure that such attacks will annoy Bush, even though your survival may be all that stands between him and a crazy Democratic chairman launching impeachment hearings. But if you win this fall only to face his stern rebuke next winter, just tell him it was schadenfreude for all the times the White House treated you badly. With any luck, Bush will think you are talking about that Berlin disco that Moammar Gaddafi bombed back in 1986 and then dismiss you like the worthless billy goat he always suspected you were.

Save Yourself, Blame Bush
» Joe Scarborough | How does a God-fearing Reagan Republican explain away the erosion of conservative values and the nation's problems? Easy. Blame George W. Bush.


• Mike's Answer
  John
  Get the F--k out of my way
  I NEVER want to hear from you again
  You are PATHETIC --(and you know it) --you are a CLASSIC self loathing sad sack
  I mean it STOP insulting my intellignce
  DO NOT email me again
  MD
  
  
  
• My Rebuttal
  
  I don't take shit like that from anyone Mike
  
  You can count on that Sir.
  
  Joe Scarborough's the man...what in the hell are you?
  
  
  
• His Surrebutal
  F U
  BRING IT ON
  I MEAN IT AND YOU KNOW IT
  YOU NEED HELP
  
  
• The Last Word
  
  
  
  
  
  There goes my job on K-Street

  6192. jexster - 9/18/2006 8:43:55 AM

  The Lost Wars of GWB
  The Taliban Can!
  "A textbook case of how to screw up a counterinsurgency."
  
  Afghan government failure reopens door to the Taliban
  Military officials say the outlook is grim.
  
  Analysts say U.S. focus on Iraq is hurting mission, allowing insurgency to grow
  
  

  Who can take a rainbow, wrap it in the sky
  Soak it in the sun and make a groovy lemon pie
  The Taliban, the Taliban can
  The Taliban can 'cause he mixes it with love
  and makes the world taste good
  
  
  

  6193. jexster - 9/18/2006 8:54:22 AM

6194. jexster - 9/18/2006 10:16:09 AM

Terror of the Gulag

The Torturer-in-Chief Tries to
Save His Own Hide
The War Crimes of George W. Bush
by Paul Craig Roberts

6195. jexster - 9/18/2006 8:48:42 PM

We're Baaaaack

There is, ... a separate and distinct cohort of U.S. foreign-policy thinkers who stood in clear, unequivocal opposition to the Iraq war -- to the idea of the war, not merely its poor planning -- and who, despite being ignored back then, are now cobbling together an overarching strategic response to the fix America is in. This group is known as "the realists."

This tag denotes a certain tradition and cast of mind in political philosophy. In shorthand, realists tend to believe in the supreme value of maintaining order in international politics, as opposed to pursuing policies, such as trying to turn dictatorships into democracies, that may proceed from good intentions but can invite a ruinous instability.

6196. jexster - 9/18/2006 8:50:56 PM

Unbroke Link

6197. jexster - 9/18/2006 8:56:29 PM

What Realists Believe
"WAR WITH IRAQ IS NOT IN AMERICA'S NATIONAL INTEREST." So declared the headline of an advertisement placed on the op-ed page of The New York Times on September 26, 2002, some six months before the shooting started. There were 33 signatories, and filmmaker Michael Moore's name was not among them: All of the signers were international-relations scholars from academia -- including three from the University of Chicago and three from Columbia University.

The scholars noted in their ad that Iraq "is a deeply divided society" that could ensnare U.S. forces, even if Saddam Hussein was easily toppled. That worry was commonplace among war critics -- the anxiety that Iraq could be another Vietnam-like quagmire. (Realists, back in the 1960s, were early opponents of the Vietnam engagement.) The more distinctive insight offered by realists was that Saddam's removal "could spread instability in the Middle East" by upending an order in ways that harm America's interests. Realists did not have a crystal ball, but what is perhaps the signal geopolitical consequence of the Iraq war -- the resurgence of a Shiite Iranian regime that is no longer contained by a Sunni-controlled Iraq and is pursuing its ambitions from Baghdad to southern Lebanon -- is like a proof out of a realist theorem.

The Times ad, which cost $38,000 to place, was orchestrated by a pair of realist bigwigs: Harvard's Stephen M. Walt and the University of Chicago's John J. Mearsheimer. "No theory is perfect," Mearsheimer recently told me, but the call on the Iraq war was a relatively easy one for realist adherents because the war "contradicted basic realist logic."

If that phrase -- the war "contradicted basic realist logic" -- sounds like what a physicist might say about the known properties of the atom, welcome to the world of realism. Although realist scholars don't quite claim to have discovered the immutable laws of the political universe, they do come fairly close.

The "science" of realism involves how to keep order. (Liberty and justice for all can come later.) The realist manual of strategic principles thus contains such phrases as "balance of power" and "divide and rule." In defense of such amoral-sounding tenets, realists are apt to cite chapter and verse from their bible: the bloody testament of history. Scratch a realist and you're apt to find a history buff. Some people may have forgotten the lessons of the Peloponnesian War of ancient Greece, as chronicled by Thucydides (the key here is "misperceptions"), but the realists are not among them. They cast one eye toward the future while keeping the other trained on the past. The home page of Mearsheimer's Web site reproduces an Otto Dix painting of disfigured corpses piled up on the World War I killing ground of Flanders.

In the press, realism is typically associated with the political scientist Hans Morgenthau (who taught at the University of Chicago and died in 1980) and policy makers like Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft. But in realist academic circles in America, there is no more esteemed name than Kenneth N. Waltz, who long taught at the University of California (Berkeley). Waltz is the author of such classics as the 1954 book "Man, the State, and War," and he has been the mentor for scholars such as Walt, whose doctoral dissertation he supervised

Realists of the Hans Morgenthau school are associated with the insight that human beings are at bottom power-seeking political animals. Their "realism" stems from a keen appreciation of humankind's limitations.....

6198. jexster - 9/18/2006 9:02:07 PM

As for Kenneth Waltz, the dean of realists,.... "This government is the worst I have ever seen," he pronounced of the Bush regime. "They are explicitly anti-realist. Realists believe that if a country has a great deal of power and abuses it, there will be retribution. How long it will take, one can't say," he continued. But "these guys [in the Bush administration] don't believe that."

Amen brother!

6199. jexster - 9/18/2006 9:28:15 PM

Now where have we read this before!!!!

How Realists Think About Israel

As controversial as "strategic withdrawal" may be as a policy -- it is easy to hear a critic substitute "retreat" for "withdrawal" -- it is mild stuff compared with the fare that some leading realist thinkers are serving up on the related matter of America's relationship with Israel.

The cloistered circles of realism -- and circles well beyond -- were roiled by "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," a 42-page piece (plus 40 pages of endnotes) written by Mearsheimer and Walt, and published in March as part of the "faculty research working papers series" of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. The authors' premise was that a long-standing policy of "unwavering U.S. support for Israel," dating back at least to 1967, "jeopardized U.S. security" by helping to inflame Arab and Islamic opinion and was, therefore, not a policy in America's national interest.

"Pressure from Israel and the lobby was not the only factor behind the U.S. decision to attack Iraq in March 2003, but it was a critical element," they wrote in what was probably their most disputed conclusion. "I don't think it was right to say that Israel was critical to our decision to invade Iraq," Waltz told me in our telephone chat.

But the larger point of the paper -- the argument that America's tight support for Israel is "a strategic liability" to the United States, as Mearsheimer and Walt wrote, is one that commands support from a fair number of realists. "In general, I am in agreement that we coddle Israel, and we do so at our peril," Waltz said. Jeffrey Record, a professor of strategy at the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Ala., told me that America should "dissolve the strategic partnership" with Israel. "I would announce the termination of all military and other assistance over, say, a five-year period," said Record, a signer of the "Perils of Empire," the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy's 2004 statement. He is a former Capitol Hill aide to Sam Nunn, the ex-senator and Georgia Democrat who was a powerhouse on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Waltz's rap on Israel is actually a lot like his rap on America. "If you are overwhelmingly strong in your area, as Israel is, and a strong country abuses its power, as Israel does, what do you expect the other people to do?" he asked. "They are not going to just assume a supine position."

Waltz was speaking in early August, before it was evident that Israel, in the battle then raging in Lebanon, would fall well short of its aim of destroying the military capability of the Hezbollah guerrilla force. In realist terms, the current, U.N.-imposed peace looks tenuous, mostly because Israel, its nose bloodied, may feel impelled to deal more aggressively with Hezbollah at some future point.

So what does the realist model prescribe for a more durable peace between Israel and its enemies? A genuine state for the Palestinians, yes, but also this: "It is almost indisputable that the Middle East would be more stable if both Iran and Israel had nuclear weapons," said Mearsheimer, reasoning along the lines of Cold War deterrence, when both the United States and the Soviet Union had the power to destroy each other but didn't, because each side knew it wouldn't survive the attempt.

Realists clearly enjoy being provocative -- but the main reason they make statements like that one is that their theory of the world virtually demands it.

6200. RickNelson - 9/19/2006 5:42:28 AM

But, the fanatics aren't finished! Not by a long shot.


In North Dakota, that bastion of intelect, a female minister has a school for children to be indoctrinated as soldiers for Jesus. She likens it to the indoctrination schools for Islamic Jihad. There will be a documentary soon, showing children speaking in tongues, crying over abortions and declaring their willingness to die for Christ.

Great! Just Great!

6201. RickNelson - 9/19/2006 5:46:12 AM

Jesus! Jesus for real!

Get your butt to bootcamp for Jesus you little tweerp. Give me 50 for the Lord! You better cry for the unborn and over the disbeliever who contradicts the beloved president W!

6202. jexster - 9/19/2006 9:16:41 AM

Sad but true Rick...the key is to get them out of DC and re-settle in ND

6203. robertjayb - 9/19/2006 4:11:58 PM

A few more good men and women?

September 19,2006 | WASHINGTON -- (AP) -- The U.S. military will likely maintain or possibly even increase the current force levels of more than 140,000 troops in Iraq through next spring, the top US. commander in the Middle East said Tuesday in one of the gloomiest assessments yet of how quickly American forces can be brought home.

Gen. John Abizaid, commander of U.S. Central Command, said military leaders would consider adding troops or extending the Iraq deployments of other units if needed.

"If it's necessary to do that because the military situation on the ground requires that, we'll do it," he said. "If we have to call in more forces because it's our military judgment that we need more forces, we'll do it."

6204. wonkers2 - 9/19/2006 4:50:33 PM

Joan Didion does a pretty elegant job on Dick Cheney in the latest issue of The New York Review of Books. Her long article amounts to a short biography of this evil man from the time he got into Yale through the auspices of a rich donor and was kicked out after three semesters, dodged the draft for the duration of the Vietnam War, became Rumsfeld's pull-toy and so on. The rest is history. "Cheney: The Fatal Touch" by Joan Didion.

6205. jexster - 9/20/2006 10:43:42 AM

Bush’s Useful Idiots
Tony Judt on the Strange Death of Liberal America
[London Review of Books

Why have American liberals acquiesced in President Bush’s catastrophic foreign policy? Why have they so little to say about Iraq, about Lebanon, or about reports of a planned attack on Iran? Why has the administration’s sustained attack on civil liberties and international law aroused so little opposition or anger from those who used to care most about these things? Why, in short, has the liberal intelligentsia of the United States in recent years kept its head safely below the parapet?

6206. jexster - 9/20/2006 11:36:31 AM

We have seen a steady erosion of American power and an unsteady exercise of American influence.

Our military is low on parts, pay and morale.

If called on by the commander-in-chief today, two entire divisions of the Army would have to report ... Not ready for duty, sir.

GWB 2000 Acceptance Speech

"We are in a dilemma," [Michael "Brookings"] O'Hanlon said. "A radical new policy may be needed, such as offering citizenship to foreigners abroad if they'll serve first" in the U.S. military.

6207. robertjayb - 9/20/2006 11:59:42 AM

Life and death in the streets of Baghdad...No one dares to help...(LATimes)

The wounded die alone on Baghdad's streets. An offer of aid could be your own death sentence, an Iraqi reporter writes.

6208. jexster - 9/20/2006 12:47:21 PM

Yeah Rohburht...I am in a sad sad mood...For background, PBS on the Battle of San Jacinto - the Greatest Tradegery in US History - Until Iraq

Dear john,

Like clockwork, here they come again. According to news reports, Bob Perry, the Texas millionaire who bankrolled the so-called "Swiftboat Veterans for Truth" is up to his old tricks. He's spending $5 million dollars under the radar screen to launch a new GOP attack group called the "Economic Freedom Fund."

Their first attack ads against Democratic House candidates are already on the air. They hope they've caught you sleeping. We have to respond quickly and in force. Help the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) stand behind Democratic candidates under attack.

6209. jexster - 9/20/2006 2:08:38 PM

You Can Still Smell the Sulphur

September 20, 2006
Chavez Calls Bush ‘The Devil’
By DAVID STOUT
It is not always easy to tell what a politician is thinking, but it is safe to assume that when President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela spoke at the United Nations today, he was not angling for an invitation to visit President Bush’s Texas ranch.

“Yesterday, the devil came here,” Mr. Chavez told the General Assembly, alluding to Mr. Bush’s speech to the assembly on Tuesday. “Right here. Right here. And it smells of sulfur still today, this table that I am now standing in front of.”

Then Mr. Chavez made the sign of the cross, brought his hands together as if in prayer and glanced toward the ceiling. ...“It smells of sulfur here, but God is with us, and I embrace you all,” he said. “May God bless us all. Good day to you.”

6210. jexster - 9/20/2006 2:29:09 PM

Doubt it?

In July Bush launched "Operation Forward Together"

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Hundreds more Iraqis died in violence in July and August than in the previous two months, many of them tortured to death because of their religion with cables, acid and power drills, a U.N. report said on Wednesday.



The July total of 3,590 deaths was unprecedented, it said, while the August figure of 3,009, though lower, was also among the worst yet.

In its previous report two months ago, it gave a combined figure of 5,818 for the two months of May and June. The latest two-month figure shows an increase of more than 13 percent over that number, which it described as a sharp surge at the time.

6211. jexster - 9/20/2006 7:09:06 PM

Afghanistan: Time for the Truth

6212. jexster - 9/20/2006 9:31:07 PM

We're Not Going to Iran

by Robert Dreyfuss

Looking small and humbled on the big stage, trying to appear at once defiant and reasonable, President Bush yesterday addressed the United Nations General Assembly with few arrows in his quiver. Never before has the United States had so few allies, never before has an American president appeared before the world body so utterly bereft of credibility. The sprawling wreckage of American foreign policy was figuratively strewn across the room as Bush spoke. And when he addressed the central diplomatic question of the day—namely, what to do about Iran’s quest for nuclear technology and its likely plans to build a bomb—the president appeared naked and unarmed.

After three years of bluster, after three years of menacing Iran with military options ever “on the table,” after three long years of declaring forcefully that Iran will never gain access to nuclear technology, the president’s stunningly mild-mannered comments on the topic yesterday—“we’re working toward a diplomatic solution to this crisis”—may be a sign that the corner has been turned on Iran. It may be a sign that once and for all that the realists have won, that the international community has triumphed, that the opposition of Russia and China to sanctions on Iran has been victorious, and that Western Europe’s far more level-headed approach to Iran has prevailed.

For the neoconservatives, David Frum—Mr. “Axis of Evil”—wrote soon after Bush’s speech: “Make no mistake: boring as it was, the president's speech to the U.N. today was one of the most important of his presidency. It marks the final fizzling out of his Iran policy of the past three years.” Indeed.

6213. alistairconnor - 9/21/2006 2:41:06 AM

And nobody told Bolton?

We'll see.

Probably it was all about talking down the price of a barrel of oil before the elections.

Come to think of it. Wouldn't put it past them :

* Rattle sabres at Iran, push Israel into a foolhardy war with Hezbollah. Oil price through the roof.
* UN buffer zone in Lebanon, all sweetness and light with Iran. Oil price drops, followed by nice gentle gas price just in time for the elections.

It'll probably work.

6214. jexster - 9/21/2006 6:27:02 AM

No question but that they don't want any crises driving up gas prices before the election and if the GOP retains control of both houses Bush will be in a different position. Since the regime's political strategy domestic has determined its foreign policy, I would put a big asterik on that conclusion too.

6215. jexster - 9/21/2006 6:27:07 AM

No question but that they don't want any crises driving up gas prices before the election and if the GOP retains control of both houses Bush will be in a different position. Since the regime's political strategy domestic has determined its foreign policy, I would put a big asterik on that conclusion too.

6216. jexster - 9/21/2006 6:28:09 AM

Speaking of democracy

Poll Numbers Skyrocket


The US Department of Defense has done some opinion polling that indicates that 3/4s of Iraqi Sunnis now support what the Pentagon calls the "insurgency". When the DoD started doing polling on the subject in 2003, they found that 14 percent of Sunni Arabs supported the insurgency. If there are 5 million Sunni Arabs, let us say that 1.5 million are less than 15 years of age. Of the 3.5 million left, half are women and less likely to actually engage in violence, though they might offer support for it. So that is 1.75 million men. At 75%, that is 1.3 million male supporters of the guerrilla movement.

Of the 147,000 US troops in Iraq, a very large number of which now seem to be in and around Baghdad itself, I don't know exactly how many are fighters. The traditional rule of thumb is 10%, but I read somewhere that the percentage is much higher in this war. A reader who served over there challenged the latter assertion and said that no, it is just 10%.

If we really just have 14,700 fighters facing 1.3 million Sunni guerrilla supporters, it isn't any mystery why things in Iraq are as they are and why Gen. Casey openly admits that we are not there to win, just to keep a lid on. I can't imagine how they could hope even to keep a lid on. Given the figures released today, I'd say it isn't much of a lid (though remember that the death figures could easily be twice or ten times as bad.)

The other thing to remember is that the Sunni Arab areas have been under US military occupation for the past over 3 years, and that this vast increase in support for the guerrilla movement is therefore in some large part the fault of bad counter-insurgency tactics by the US military. They were all reading that stupid, racist tract, Raphael Patai's The Arab Mind, which says you can control Arabs by humiliating them. What Patai didn't tell them is that yes, you can for a short while, but then in order to recover his self-respect, the humiliated Arab has to spend the rest of his life trying to kill you, and so do his 5 brothers and 25 cousins.

There are probably also at least a couple million Shiite mem who support guerrilla action to get the multinational forces out of their country.

A UAE newspaper reports that the vast majority of guerrilla fighters in Iraq are not international terrorists but rather Iraq Sunni Arabs worried about their position in the new Iraq.

Cole

6217. jexster - 9/21/2006 7:15:45 AM

TIME: You have been quoted as saying Israel should be wiped off the map. Was that merely rhetoric, or do you mean it?

Ahmadinejad: People in the world are free to think the way they wish. We do not insist they should change their views. Our position toward the Palestinian question is clear: we say that a nation has been displaced from its own land. Palestinian people are killed in their own lands, by those who are not original inhabitants, and they have come from far areas of the world and have occupied those homes. Our suggestion is that the 5 million Palestinian refugees come back to their homes, and then the entire people on those lands hold a referendum and choose their own system of government. This is a democratic and popular way. Do you have any other suggestions?

6218. robertjayb - 9/21/2006 11:59:05 AM

Iraq torture worse than under Saddam...(Guardian)

Torture in Iraq is worse now than it was under the regime of Saddam Hussein and "is totally out of hand", according to a United Nations investigator.

"The situation is so bad many people say it is worse than it has been in the times of Saddam Hussein," said Manfred Nowak, a UN special investigator on torture, at a press conference in Geneva.

He said government forces, private militia and terrorist groups were all involved.

6219. jexster - 9/21/2006 4:08:44 PM

From the BushGulag...

CIA ‘refused to operate’ secret jails
Financial Times Front Page

6220. jexster - 9/22/2006 6:15:11 AM

The republic of fear is born again. The state of terror now gripping Iraq is as bad as it was under Saddam Hussein. Torture in the country may even be worse than it was during his rule, the United Nation's special investigator on torture said yesterday.

"The situation as far as torture is concerned now in Iraq is totally out of hand," said Manfred Nowak. "The situation is so bad many people say it is worse than it had been in the times of Saddam Hussein."

No wonder 77% of Sunnis support Operation Iraqi Liberation

6221. jexster - 9/22/2006 6:53:27 AM

Brokeback Army: Not Ready for Duty Sir!

“There is no brigade in the United States Army active, Guard or reserve that is completely ready back at home,” General Blum said.

Our military is low on parts, pay and morale.

If called on by the commander in chief today, two entire divisions of the Army would have to report. 'Not ready for duty, sir.' Howdy Duty

6222. jexster - 9/22/2006 7:12:13 AM

The Taliban Can: Gains Forestall U.S. Troop Reductions in Afghanistan

6223. jexster - 9/22/2006 7:16:00 AM

Who can take tomorrow,
Dip it in a dream?
Separate the sorrow and collect up all the cream,
The Taliban? The Taliban can, the Taliban can…
The Taliban can 'cause he mixes it with love
and makes the world taste good…
And the world tastes good
'cause the Taliban thinks it should…

6224. jexster - 9/22/2006 12:55:04 PM

Why Bush Loses All His Wars

by Jon Basil Utley associate publisher of The American Conservative and Robert A. Taft Fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

Two interesting reports explain in detail why America simply cannot win wars against guerrilla terrorism. A Washington Post report details the conflict between Special Forces and regular Army units in Iraq. The Special Forces officers and sergeants speak some Arabic, know the culture, have patience over endless cups of tea, look at the long view, and succeeded in getting a major tribe with 300,000 members to take up arms and work with American forces. The regular Army colonel wants to "win" the battles, do body counts, and primarily protect the lives of his men. He is impatient with slow and incompetent tribal ways, and is losing the war. His soldiers are isolated and afraid, hate being in Iraq, brutally arrest the tribesmen, despise the locals, kill and destroy indiscriminately, and create more enemies for America. The report is well worth reading in detail to understand how hopeless the war is.

Of course an additional factor is the criminal incompetence of the initial occupation strategies,....

America simply does not have the will, resources, patience, care, or ability to "run" an empire or even an effective counterinsurgency. ....


The second report is a Cato Institute study, "The American Way of War: Cultural Barriers to Successful Counterinsurgency [.pdf]," by Jeffrey Record of the Air War College. The paper criticizes our view of military victory as an end in itself. It also argues, "Simply put, the U.S. is not very good at defeating enemies who do not fight like we do, enemies who avoid our strengths while exploiting our weaknesses."

The professor recounts several characteristics of the "American way of war" as described by the respected British strategist Colin S. Gray, such as:

We are apolitical, with a long history of "waging war for the goal of victory, paying scant regard to the consequences of the course of its operations for the character of the peace that will follow."

We are ahistorical, with little interest in the lessons of history, because we consider ourselves so unique and good.

We are optimistic, thinking that everything will work out well after we "win."

We are culturally ignorant, with little interest or respect for other cultures.

We are dependent on technology for intelligence, lacking human resources. Our propaganda about Saddam being a new Hitler obscured how he really ruled, through the tribal leaders. If we had known that (or cared), then the early occupation might have been more sensitive to such issues of control. Instead, the Pentagon neoconservatives brought in Israeli "advisers" to show us their methods of occupation.

We are "firepower focused." I refer readers to the truly excellent and original thinking of William S. Lind, who explains that America still follows the Second Generation ideology of massive firepower and is woefully inept at Fourth Generation warfare against guerrillas (Third Generation warfare involves the mass maneuvers associated with the era of Gen. Patton).

We are impatient, wanting quick "victory" (like we see in the movies about the Second World War). Indeed, nearly all military training is still about war with nation-states. Pentagon spending is mainly designed for a war with China or Russia.

We are "profoundly regular." According to Gray, "U.S. armed forces have not been friendly either to irregular warfare or to those in its ranks who were would-be practitioners and advocates of what was regarded as the sideshow of insurgency."

We are sensitive to casualties. In order to maintain support for war on the home front, we are overly destructive on the war front. To minimize our own casualties, we use excessive firepower that destroys what we are trying to save, as well as killing many foreign civilians.
....

Other major points from Professor Record:

Counterinsurgency is "inherently manpower intensive and rel[ies] heavily on special skills – for example, human intelligence, civil affairs, police, public health, foreign language, foreign force training, psychological warfare – that are secondary, even marginal, to the prosecution of conventional warfare."

Pentagon procurement is still almost wholly weighted to big-ticket items irrelevant to the War on Terror; the Pentagon prefers to do what it does well. Record explains how counterinsurgency "demands the utmost restraint and discrimination in the application of force. In counterinsurgency warfare, firepower is the instrument of last rather than first resort."

Small-war expert Thomas X. Hammes has noted that war against unconventional enemies "is the only kind of war America has ever lost. … As the only Goliath in the world, we should be worried that the world's Davids have found a sling and stone that work." It is, needless to say, ironic that America won its independence from Britain using unconventional warfare.

Record goes on to say that "great power intervention in small wars is almost always a matter of choice. … Most such wars do not engage core U.S. security interests other than placing the limits of American military power on embarrassing display." Furthermore, "Neither the Pentagon nor the U.S. government as a whole is properly organized or sufficiently motivated to meet the challenges of political reconstruction in foreign lands. …
Notwithstanding the exceptional cases of post-World War II Germany and Japan, the United States has demonstrated – in Vietnam,Somalia, Haiti, the Balkans, and Afghanistan – that it lacks the will and skills required to effect the enduring rehabilitation of failed states."

....

Record concludes that "abstention from small wars of choice would mandate a realistic foreign policy that placed the protection of concrete interests ahead of crusades to promote the overseas expansion of abstract American political values."
....
Two years ago, James Pinkerton wrote an amusing analysis in The American Conservative titled "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Imperialists." Like Record's analysis, Pinkerton's piece confirms that America is incapable of organizing itself to successfully impose our will by force upon small foreign nations, much less the world

6225. jexster - 9/22/2006 7:59:06 PM

Sucker

The Road to Disillusionment
Army Reserve Captain 'Anxious and Depressed' Over Iraq

"I bought into the vision of an alternative Middle East"

6226. jexster - 9/23/2006 5:25:02 AM

"I saw a mother holding her child, both of them burned and dead."

6227. jexster - 9/23/2006 11:35:35 AM

Jeezusaleezus





Gen. Pace: 'We Need to Do Something' About Forces Unfriendly To US

Man gives "jarhead" a bad name

6228. jexster - 9/23/2006 11:43:20 AM

The Miracle Worker
Blessed Hugo of Caracas

6229. robertjayb - 9/23/2006 12:01:52 PM

Gen. Pace should tend to the wars already on his plate.

6230. jexster - 9/23/2006 12:55:02 PM

77% of IraQ's Sunnis supporting the Resistance...I think Fidel, Hugo, Morales have nothing to fear but fear itself

6231. jexster - 9/23/2006 12:56:47 PM

The Facts on the Ground

Lost in a Bermuda Triangle of Injustice

Mini-Gulags, Hired Guns, Lobbyists, and a Reality Built on Fear

6232. jexster - 9/23/2006 3:41:01 PM

Still Leaking....



National Intelligence Estimate
Iraq War Worsens Terror Threat


WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 — A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.

6233. robertjayb - 9/23/2006 3:46:13 PM

Oof Dah! Who would have thought?

WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 — A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.

6234. jexster - 9/23/2006 5:47:31 PM

There he goes again.

Never reads even the PRECEDING post


A Texican has to get up pretty early in the morning....

6235. jexster - 9/23/2006 5:56:57 PM

Republicans Repent!

Renouncing Bush's Failures Is a Start
By Todd Gitlin
The Los Angeles Times
Saturday 23 September 2006

The president's onetime lapdogs should also rethink the extremist ideology that got us here.

6236. jexster - 9/24/2006 6:45:48 AM

Appearances Can Be Deceiving



From the AP on the NIE report...

The findings contained in the National Intelligence Estimate appear to be in stark contradiction with recent claims by US President George W. Bush and other top administration officials that victory in Iraq is the key to winning the global war on terror.

6237. jexster - 9/24/2006 7:26:42 AM

The Greatest Disaster Ever Sold

Facing Facts on IraQ

While Iraq is a central issue in this year’s election campaigns, there is very little clear talk about what to do, beyond vague recommendations for staying the course or long-term timetables for withdrawal. That is because politicians running for election want to deliver good news, and there is nothing about Iraq — including withdrawal scenarios — that is anything but ominous.

6238. jexster - 9/24/2006 7:32:33 AM

The "Why" of this Thread....

"If there is still a constructive way out of this disaster, it has to begin with some truth-telling."

6239. jexster - 9/24/2006 7:32:56 AM

The "Why" of this Thread....

"If there is still a constructive way out of this disaster, it has to begin with some truth-telling."

6240. jexster - 9/24/2006 7:35:01 AM

6241. jexster - 9/24/2006 1:04:02 PM

Why Bush Loses All His Wars
You break the army you have not the one you need

US army’s kill-kill ethos under fire
Times UK



THE American army should scrap the Warrior Ethos, a martial creed that urges soldiers to demonstrate their fighting spirit by destroying the enemies of the United States at close quarter rather than winning the trust of local populations, according to senior US officers and counter-insurgency experts.

Soldiers are instructed to live by the creed, which evokes the warrior spirit of the modern US army. It begins with the stirring vow, “I am an American soldier”, and goes on to affirm that “I will never accept defeat. I will never quit . . . I stand ready to deploy, engage and destroy the enemies of the United States of America in close combat”.



Admirable though this may be in the heat of battle, the Warrior Ethos’s emphasis on annihilating the enemy is inimical to the type of patient, confidence-building counter-insurgency warfare in which America is engaged in the Middle East, according to Lieutenant-General Gregory Newbold, former director of operations to the joint chiefs of staff at the Pentagon.

6242. jexster - 9/24/2006 1:09:51 PM

Maliki and Al Sadr Punk America

6243. robertjayb - 9/24/2006 2:01:41 PM

U.S. troops standing up as Iraqis stand around...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - (AP) - The plan was simple: Iraqi troops would block escape routes while U.S. soldiers searched for weapons house-by-house. But the Iraqi troops didn't show up on time.

When they finally did appear, the Iraqis ignored U.S. orders and let dozens of cars pass through checkpoints in eastern Baghdad — including an ambulance full of armed militiamen, American soldiers said in recent interviews.

It wasn't an isolated incident, they added.

Senior U.S. commanders have hailed the performance of Iraqi troops in the crackdown on militias and insurgents in Baghdad. But some U.S. soldiers say the Iraqis serving alongside them are among the worst they've ever seen — seeming more loyal to militias than the government.

6244. jexster - 9/24/2006 6:31:24 PM

And these are the folks that are humiliating the HyperPower's Sturm-'n-Awe Troops?

6245. jexster - 9/25/2006 4:36:25 AM

Memory Lane....

Cole 9/25/06:

Reuters reports on political violence on Sunday in Iraq. I count 36 dead, including two GIs killed in Fallujah, where, in adddition, 10 bodies showed up dead. Also in Fallujah, guerrillas burst into the home of the chairman of the municipal council, killing him and his son. Typically the "war of the corpses" has been between Sunni and Shiite militias in Baghdad, Diyala and other mixed regions. But in Fallujah this is likely Sunni on Sunni violence, a case of committed guerrillas killing other Sunni Arabs whom they consider collaborators with the Americans. The US military invested Fallujah in November of 2004, killing hundreds if not thousands of civilians along with one to two thousand guerrillas, and damaging 2/3s of the buildings in the city. Only gradually has the population drifted back in, under severe security controls by the US. It is therefore a particularly bad sign that guerrillas in Fallujah managed to kill 13 people Sunday, 2 of them GIs and one of them the head of the municipal council. That was the sort of thing that was going on in 2004 that provoked the US military to think it needed to invade in the first place. That was when we lost the hearts and minds of the Sunni Arabs of Iraq decisively. You have a sense now that it was all for naught.

6246. RickNelson - 9/25/2006 10:21:43 AM

Dammit Jex, I've been working against this Pyro dude in Slate all morning. He keeps putting up that Clinton's administration was weak on terrorism and is the cause for increased terrorism. He tries to show that terrorism increased the most during Clinton. I showed him it started as an increase under Reagan.

I also showed him a Times piece explaining how Berger and Clarke tried to aid the Bush transition team with Condie Rice involved, and that Bush's team ignored all the warnings about Al Qaeda to America's peril.

Anyway,

Clinton kicked some FOX ass in my opinion. He did do more to try and kill Osama, and is right that Bush has and does nothing to kill him.

6247. robertjayb - 9/25/2006 10:37:12 AM

"Your ass is grass and the army has the lawn mower."

WASHINGTON - (AP) - In a new sign of mounting strain from the war in Iraq, the Army has extended the combat tours of about 4,000 soldiers who would otherwise be returning home, a defense official said Monday.

The 1st Brigade of 1st Armored Division, which is operating in the vicinity of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, will be kept in place for several weeks beyond their scheduled departure, the official said. The official spoke only on condition of anonymity because the decision has not been announced by the Pentagon.

The brigade’s home base is in Germany. The soldiers’ families were notified of the extension Monday, the official said.

6248. jexster - 9/25/2006 11:13:08 AM

Rick check out AP for resources. TD pulled the same shit there.

I cannot stand Slate. Too many morons

6249. jexster - 9/25/2006 11:14:35 AM

Sometimes you have to wreck the army you have,
not the one you wish you had


Army Tells Rumsfeld It's Billions of Dollars Short
LAT

Extraordinary move by the chief of staff sends a message: The Pentagon must grow the budget or reduce troop levels in Iraq and elsewhere.

6250. jexster - 9/25/2006 11:18:08 AM

Actually the first car bomb in the ME was Yid

6251. jexster - 9/25/2006 11:22:34 AM

The short answer Rick is that when you invade people and shoot up their towns with smart bombs, dumb bombs, Apaches, M1A1's, Strykers, Bradleys, Specter gunships and the First Marine Expeditionary Brigade, the conquered and their friends fight back

6252. robertjayb - 9/25/2006 12:02:42 PM

Here is a working link to the LATimes story on the army's request for a 41% funding increase. This is an important development (Realism emerging!) and I thank jexster for his well-intentioned futile effort.

Chief of staff says Army needs more money...

WASHINGTON — The Army's top officer withheld a required 2008 budget plan from Pentagon leaders last month after protesting to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that the service could not maintain its current level of activity in Iraq plus its other global commitments without billions in additional funding.

The decision by Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army's chief of staff, is believed to be unprecedented and signals a widespread belief within the Army that in the absence of significant troop withdrawals from Iraq, funding assumptions must be completely reworked, say current and former Pentagon officials.
.................................................

According to a senior Army official involved in budget talks, Schoomaker is now seeking $138.8 billion in 2008, nearly $25 billion above budget limits originally set by Rumsfeld. The Army's budget this year is $98.2 billion, making Schoomaker's request a 41% increase over current levels.

"It's incredibly huge," said the Army official, who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity when commenting on internal deliberations. "These are just incredible numbers."

6253. jexster - 9/25/2006 12:47:40 PM

My bad

6254. jexster - 9/25/2006 12:50:22 PM

[Fuckin texicans...can't live with em, can't live with em...Mexico needs foreign aid]

History shows that the Bush administration's pattern of lies and deception cannot change reality - whether they are trying to deceive us that the war is in its "last throes," that global warming needs "more study" before we can combat it, or that tax cuts for the top one percent help ordinary families. Americans know the truth and Americans know that it is time to bring the truth back to Washington....

Republicans will do anything to maintain their grip on power. But as I write you today, we are within striking distance of ending their disastrous reign of incompetence.

You can give the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee the resources it needs to carry out its strategy, to keep our candidates ahead in the countdown to Election Day. I ask that you make that choice.

Thank you.

Sincerely,



Al Gore

6255. jexster - 9/25/2006 1:09:04 PM

Bush Desperate Sound Bites - Part I

6256. jexster - 9/25/2006 1:11:44 PM

Parte Deux

6257. jexster - 9/25/2006 2:19:53 PM

Another Dumbsfeld Firing Squad

Retired Officers Open Up on Bush's Sacrificial Moron




09-25) 11:23 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) --


Retired military officers on Monday bluntly accused Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld of bungling the war in Iraq, saying U.S. troops were sent to fight without the best equipment and that critical facts were hidden from the public.

We have seen a steady erosion of American power and an unsteady exercise of American influence. Our military is low on parts, pay and morale. If called on by the commander-in-chief today, two entire divisions of the Army would have to report, "Not ready for duty, sir."

Howdy Duty
War President

6258. jexster - 9/25/2006 5:27:10 PM

Alert Fox "News"!

White House Admits Iraq War Fuels Extremism

6259. jexster - 9/25/2006 6:53:48 PM

Thank you President Clinton!

No more free pass
Clinton Tells the Truth About 9/11
Olbermann: Bush never tried to stop bin Laden before 9/11 • Now we can talk about it!

{Fox} "Propaganda so blatant that Tokyo Rose would have quit...Perhaps we should cross our fingers and wait until a grownup takes the oath of office...."

6260. jexster - 9/25/2006 7:17:58 PM

Statement of the obvious: Al Gore Told You So (Sept 02)

JIM LEHRER: We get two additional views now of the intelligence report. The first is from former CIA official Paul Pillar, a 28-year veteran of the agency. He was national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia, and, before that, deputy director of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center.

There was an unnamed intelligence official quoted in the Washington Post story that said what this actually did was state the obvious. How would you characterize it?

PAUL PILLAR, Former Deputy Director, CIA Counterterrorism Center: I would characterize it the same way, Jim. One of the things noted in your report was how the war has served as a sort of recruitment poster and recruiting device. Well, that's something that's plain for all to see. The videotapes and audiotapes from the likes of Zawahiri, and bin Laden, and the other terrorist recruitment efforts has made that quite clear.

The other major thing, Iraq as a training ground, well, that's something that our military is dealing with every day, has been for the last three and a half years. And we've seen a progression of tactics during that time getting more skillful, whether it's the improvised explosive devices or anything else.

So the evidence, if you will, both on the recruitment side and on the training ground side, has been all too plain....


A losing war against terrorism?


JIM LEHRER: Back to the substance, at least as far as we know it at this point, and what Iraqi President Talabani told Ray Suarez in an interview we're going to see in a moment, he said that he doesn't agree with the finding that it increases the terrorist threat on the United States because the terrorists are on all now focused on Iraq. Does that make sense to you?

PAUL PILLAR: No, it doesn't. Well, it makes sense for the president of Iraq to say it because the president of Iraq has to have Iraqi interests uppermost in mind, and evidently President Talabani have concluded, as have many other Iraqi officials, that keeping the U.S. presence there longer rather than shorter amount of time is in Iraqi interest.

But his point about all the terrorists in the world are being attracted to Iraq -- this is the flypaper theory -- and therefore they're going to stay away from the United States, the flaw in that is we don't have a fixed number of terrorists in the world. I think the more appropriate comeback to that was what Secretary Rumsfeld raised the question in another leaked memo, a year or so ago, as you may recall.

JIM LEHRER: I do.

PAUL PILLAR: And the question was, "Are we breeding more terrorists faster than killing or incarcerating the ones we already have?" That's really the issue that is at stake here with the Iraq war.

JIM LEHRER: And if what's been in the press is correct, this intelligence estimate appears to suggest that we are breeding more than we're catching, is that right?

6261. jexster - 9/25/2006 7:51:32 PM

Bush and Bashar
The Torture States of America


Torture Victim Had No Terror Link, Canada Told US

When the United States sent Maher Arar to Syria, where he was tortured for months, the deportation order stated unequivocally that Mr. Arar, a Canadian software engineer, was a member of al-Qaeda. But a few days earlier, Canadian investigators had told the FBI that they had not been
able to link him to the terrorist group.

6262. jexster - 9/26/2006 7:47:03 PM

Text of Declassified NIE With Grim Findings

pdf ...don't worry, only three pages

6263. jexster - 9/26/2006 9:28:26 PM

Big Dog has really created a perfect storm and I do mean perfect..NIE, Bush's Record before and after 9/11

Now the Army's in the act

Army to Bush:
We ain't playin in your budget farce any longer

6264. jexster - 9/26/2006 9:51:53 PM

Where's Tricky Dick Now?

No Silent Majority for Bush

6265. jexster - 9/27/2006 5:16:41 AM

Howdy Duty

How Bush Wrecked the Army
by Fred Kaplan

We have seen a steady erosion of American power and an unsteady exercise of American influence.

Our military is low on parts, pay and morale.

If called on by the commander in chief today, two entire divisions of the Army would have to report. 'Not ready for duty, sir.'

6266. jexster - 9/27/2006 5:17:30 AM

The Grizzly Truth
Cole on the NIE

6267. jexster - 9/27/2006 5:22:41 AM

Facts Behind the NIE
Larry Johnson
Ray Close

6268. jexster - 9/27/2006 9:58:48 AM

WASHINGTON, Sept. 26 — Three years ago, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld wrote a memo to his colleagues in the Pentagon posing a critical question in the “long war’’ against terrorism: Is Washington’s strategy successfully killing or capturing terrorists faster than new enemies are being created?

Until Tuesday, the government had not publicly issued an authoritative answer.

Ruh Roh

6269. jexster - 9/27/2006 10:40:42 AM

Tuesday 26 September 2006

United States Senate
Committee on the Judiciary
224 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

The Honorable Arlen Specter, Chairman
The Honorable Patrick J. Leahy, Ranking Democratic Member

Dear Senators:

We write as experienced intelligence and military officers who have served in the frontlines in waging war against communism and Islamic extremism. We fully support the need for proactive operations to identify and disrupt those individuals and organizations who wish to harm our country or its people. We also recognize that intelligence operations, unlike law enforcement initiatives, enjoy more flexibility and less scrutiny, but at the same time must continue to be guided by applicable US law.

We are very concerned that the proposals now before the Congress, concerning how to handle detainees suspected of terrorist activities, run the risk of squandering the greatest resource our country enjoys in fighting the dictators and extremists who want to destroy us—our commitment as a nation to the rule of law and the protection of divinely granted human rights.

Apart from the moral considerations, we believe it is important that the Congress send a clear message that torture is not an effective or useful tactic. As noted recently by the head of Army Intelligence, Lt. Gen. John Kimmons:

No good intelligence is going to come from abusive practices. I think history tells us that. I think the empirical evidence of the last five years, hard years, tells us that.
Our nation was created in response to the abuses visited on our ancestors by the King of England, who claimed the right to enter their homes, to levy taxes at whim, and to jail those perceived as a threat without allowing them to be confronted by their accusers. Now, 230 years later, we find our own President claiming the right to put people in detention centers without legal recourse and to employ interrogation methods that, by any reasonable legal standard, are categorized as torture.

We ask that the Senate lead the way in upholding the principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence and affirmed in the Geneva Conventions regarding the rights of individuals and the obligations of governing authorities towards those in their power. We believe it is important to combat the hatred and vitriol espoused by Islamic extremists, but not at the expense of being viewed as a nation who justifies or excuses torture and incarceration without recourse to a judicial procedure.

The US has been in the forefront of the human rights campaign throughout the 20th century, led by Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. The end of World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust inspired the United States to take the lead in making the case that human rights were universal, not parochial. Until recently the policy of our country was that all people, not just citizens of the United States, were entitled to these protections. It is important that the world understand that we remain committed to these principles. In fighting our enemies we must wage this battle in harmony with the traditional values of our society that were enshrined in the opening clause of the Declaration of Independence, "We hold these truths to be self-evident...."

Respectfully yours,

CIA Officers:
Milton Bearden, Directorate of Operations
Ray Close, Directorate of Operations
Vincent Cannistraro, Directorate of Operations
Philip Giraldi, Directorate of Operations
James Marcinkowski, Directorate of Operations
Melissa Mahle, Directorate of Operations
Paul Pillar, Directorate of Intelligence
David MacMichael, Directorate of Intelligence
Melvin Goodman, Directorate of Intelligence
Ray McGovern, Directorate of Intelligence
Mary O. McCarthy, DCI professional staff

US Military and Department of Defense:
W. Patrick Lang, (Colonel, US Army retired, Director Defense Humint Services, retired)
A. D. Ackels, (Colonel, US Army, retired)
Karen Kwiatkowski, (Lt. Colonel, USAF, retired)

US Department of State:
Thomas R. Maertens, Deputy Coordinator, Office of Counter Terrorism, US Department of State
Larry C Johnson, Office of Counter Terrorism, US Department of State

Federal Bureau of Investigation:
Christopher Whitcomb, Hostage Rescue Team

6270. jexster - 9/27/2006 12:27:35 PM

How the Israel Lobby Works
Israel's New Anti-Semitism Propaganda Campaign

6271. jexster - 9/27/2006 5:52:13 PM

"A Failure of Immense Proportions"

Chickens Are Home to Roost in Iraq
By Andrew Bacevich



The Bush administration is running out of troops, money and ideas.

As if by stealth, almost without our noticing, the Iraq war's long-awaited turning point has arrived. After the innumerable events touted as decisive that turned out to be anything but that - the capture of Saddam Hussein, the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the various milestones related to the creation of a new Iraqi political order - the end game now becomes clear. And the outcome points ineluctably towards an American failure of immense proportions.

Historians of the global war on terror will likely recall September 2006 as a pivotal moment. Throughout this month, chickens have come home to roost. Each has arrived bearing bad news for the Bush administration.

6272. jexster - 9/27/2006 6:48:15 PM

6273. judithathome - 9/27/2006 10:33:08 PM

Meanwhile, another great column by Sidney Blumenthal -

"You know," said Bush at a press conference on Aug. 21, "I've heard this theory about everything was just fine until we arrived, and kind of 'we're going to stir up the hornet's nest' theory. It just doesn't hold water, as far as I'm concerned." Bush did not say where he had "heard this theory." Nor did he present evidence to oppose it. He simply asserted his authority against the phantom critic that unmasked turned out to be the entire intelligence community.

Once the NIE became known, Bush invented a conclusion in order to claim that any difficulties had their source in his success. He advanced a history of the past 20 years based on the tortured logic that because various acts of terror had happened in the absence of an invasion and occupation of Iraq, the invasion and occupation therefore could not be ascribed as a motive for terrorism now. "You know," he said, "to suggest that if we weren't in Iraq, we would see a rosier scenario with fewer extremists joining the radical movement requires us to ignore 20 years of experience. We weren't in Iraq when we got attacked on September the 11th."

Bush's sophistry obscured that he had received many warnings before the invasion that the consequences spelled out in the NIE would come to pass. His father's close associate, Brent Scowcroft, the elder Bush's national security advisor, who was a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board before he was booted out in 2005, told Bush in stark terms that an invasion would lead to sectarian violence within Iraq and stoke terrorism. Scowcroft was not alone. Other former associates of the elder Bush confided in me that they also told President Bush to his face the same things that Scowcroft had. . .

Within months of the invasion, in August and November, the CIA station chief in Baghdad wrote urgent reports (called "aardwolfs") detailing how U.S. missteps had destabilized Iraq and fueled the insurgency. When Bush was briefed he was furious, not at the blunders or those committing them but at the CIA chief for having the insolence to catalog them. "What is he, some kind of defeatist?" Bush said. Soon, the station chief was replaced. "He had committed the unpardonable sin of telling the truth," writes James Risen, the New York Times correspondent, in his book "State of War.".. .

...another, new NIE on Iraq has been produced, and, despite (a) request for its public release, is being withheld by the administration, even from members of Congress, until January 2007, that is, until after the midterm elections.

6274. jexster - 9/28/2006 4:46:48 PM

Bush Losing "Battle for Bagdhad"


Operation Together Forward;
Violence Returns to "Secure Areas"

6275. jexster - 9/28/2006 11:11:47 PM

Freedom from torture is an inalienable human right. The United States is committed to the world-wide elimination of torture, and we are leading this fight by example.

June 2003



Rogue State
Lawbreaker and torturer -- that's America, loud and proud.


As Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky has pointed out, an intelligence service shot-through with demands that it torture people "degenerates into a playground for sadists," the service itself "an army of butchers" skilled at terrorizing its victims but hardly capable of unraveling complicated investigations.

It's a grim future brought to us by grim and deranged men -- by people who seem to have developed an unhealthy level of admiration for America's enemies. (They want the country they run to transform itself into a facsimile of its evil adversaries.) It's a future in which it may become increasingly hard for decent citizens of this country to say truthfully that they're proud to be Americans.

6276. jexster - 9/29/2006 6:01:46 AM

State of Denial

WASHINGTON, Sept. 28 — The White House ignored an urgent warning in September 2003 from a top Iraq adviser who said that thousands of additional American troops were desperately needed to quell the insurgency there, according to a new book by Bob Woodward, the Washington Post reporter and author. The book describes a White House riven by dysfunction and division over the war.


The warning is described in “State of Denial,” scheduled for publication on Monday by Simon & Schuster. The book says President Bush’s top advisers were often at odds among themselves, and sometimes were barely on speaking terms, but shared a tendency to dismiss as too pessimistic assessments from American commanders and others about the situation in Iraq.

6277. jexster - 9/29/2006 6:03:04 AM

State of Denial

Link

6278. jexster - 9/29/2006 7:11:40 AM

The Sanctuary Delusion

by William S. Lind

At America's behest, Pakistan sent its army into the tribal territories along its northwest frontier. Predictably, its army got beaten. The Pakistani government has now signed a truce with the tribes in North Waziristan, a wise move given that government's fragility. (On Sunday, when the power went out all over Pakistan, everyone assumed there had been a coup.)

Washington and its gentlemanly Afghan puppet, Mr. Karzai, are howling that this will give the Taliban a sanctuary, which is true. Every military force, including those of the Fourth Generation, needs some sort of secure rear area where its fighters can relax, its wounded can receive treatment, and its new recruits can be trained. Such sanctuaries are vital for the Taliban, al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and all the rest.

Unfortunately, this need for sanctuaries is leading the "silver bullet" crowd, those who seek some magical single answer to the Fourth Generation threat, off on another detour to nowhere. They say that if we only put enough pressure on states such as Pakistan not to permit sanctuaries, and overthrow state governments that openly provide sanctuary such as Syria's, then the Fourth Generation will disappear. Sorry, but it won't.

The error is that, as usual, the silver bulleteers are thinking in terms of states. They argue not only that Fourth Generation entities need sanctuaries, which is true, but that those sanctuaries have to be in states, which is not true. On the contrary, stateless regions provide the best sanctuary Fourth Generation forces can hope to find.

The best example is the stateless region of Mesopotamia, formerly the state of Iraq (minus Kurdistan)....The former Iraq has become a Fourth Generation theme park. Six Hundred Flags, perhaps? Or maybe Bushworld.

6279. jexster - 9/29/2006 8:04:09 AM

Speaking Truth to Bullshiters

Gen Odom Lays Down Artillery Barrage in Capitol

Odom spoke second and addressed points of argumentation that he hears too often and is tired of hearing, including being told to ignore the past and focus on the future, to ignore how we got into Iraq and only talk about what to do from here on. Unless, Odom said, we discuss whose interests this war served, we cannot decide what to do. It served no U.S. interests. It served the interests of al Qaeda and Iran....

Odom again spoke about what would happen when/if the United States pulls out. The aftermath is going to be bad, he said. It was going to be thus the day you went in, but the longer you wait the worse it will be. And, Odom added to noticable effect, this will be the greatest strategic defeat in American history.

Odom again spoke of leaving Iraq and said "It takes a very high level of ignorance to believe America can leave behind in Iraq any government that will not be anti-American."


Rep. Hinchey asked Odom "How do we get out?" Odom's reply came without a pause: "Well, the Constitution gives the House the right to impeach."

6280. jexster - 9/29/2006 4:09:50 PM

NIKOLAS GVOSDEV (ed. National Interest)
AND RAY TAKEYH (Council Foreign Relations)


The myths and realities of Iraq


AS THE midterm elections approach, Iraq dominates the headlines. In a remarkable misappropriation of history, President Bush is conjuring the ghost of Hitler and outlandish World War II analogies to justify his policies. In the Bush administration's distorted lexicon, calls for withdrawal are appeasement, and dissent is yet another form of disloyalty.

But if the United States wants to achieve its strategic objectives in the Middle East -- after three and half years of inconclusive warfare -- it is time to transcend the prevailing myths and consider the ramifications of an American departure from Iraq.

...
``Staying the course" isn't working. A US departure can't make things much worse. If direct confrontation is not succeeding, then a more realistic solution is to quarantine the country to minimize negative consequences...

Nearly four years after the American invasion, it is time to acknowledge that the mission will likely remain unaccomplished. The problems that the American invasion was to avert have only grown worse. Instead of embracing distorted myths that only perpetuate an errant war, it is time to appreciate that the consequences of failure may not be calamitous.

6281. jexster - 9/29/2006 8:44:32 PM

Tell me something I don't know rag head

Al-Zawahri: Bush a liar in war on terror

6282. robertjayb - 9/29/2006 8:47:16 PM

via billmon at the Whiskey Bar:

Help is on the Way

For eight years, Clinton and Gore have extended our military commitments while depleting our military power. Rarely has so much been demanded of our armed forces, and so little given to them in return. George W. Bush and I are going to change that, too. I have seen our military at its finest, with the best equipment, the best training, and the best leadership. I'm proud of them. I have had the responsibility for their well-being. And I can promise them now, help is on the way.

Dick Cheney
Acceptance speech to the GOP national convention
August 2, 2000

6283. jexster - 9/30/2006 3:47:46 PM

The Shit Storm Continues
All Is Not Well in the Kingdom of Pain


Memo Fueled Deep Rift in Administration on Detainees

In June 2005, two senior national security officials in the Bush administration came together to propose a sweeping new approach to the growing problems the United States was facing with the detention, interrogation and prosecution of terrorism suspects.

In a nine-page memorandum, the two officials, Gordon R. England, the acting deputy secretary of defense, and Philip D. Zelikow, the counselor of the State Department, urged the administration to seek Congressional approval for its detention policies.

They called for a return to the minimum standards of treatment in the Geneva Conventions and for eventually closing the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The time had come, they said, for suspects in the 9/11 plot to be taken out of their secret prison cells and tried before military tribunals.

The recommendations of the paper, which has not previously been disclosed, included several of the major policy shifts that President Bush laid out in a White House address on Sept. 6, five officials who read the document said. But the memorandum’s fate underscores the deep, long-running conflicts over detention policy that continued to divide the administration even as it pushed new legislation through Congress last week on the handling of terrorism suspects.

6284. jexster - 9/30/2006 8:53:49 PM

The Laura and Barney Show


Is Woodward Calling Bush a Liar?
Froomkin



On CNN, Jack Cafferty had this to say: "President Bush is absolutely certain that the United States is on the right track in Iraq. That's according to this new book by Bob Woodward. In fact, Bush is so sure that he supposedly told a group of Republicans gathered at the White House quote, 'I will not withdraw even if Laura and Barney are the only ones supporting me', unquote.

"Apparently it doesn't matter that almost two-thirds of Americans oppose the war in Iraq. That only a quarter of this country thinks we're winning the war in Iraq. And that most Americans think the situation in Iraq has degenerated into a civil war, 65 percent, as long as Barney supports him."

6285. jexster - 9/30/2006 9:02:04 PM

WH in Crisis Over "Iraq Lies" Claims

Well blow me

6286. jexster - 9/30/2006 10:05:49 PM

The Senlis Council Report on the Disaster in Afghanistan is linked in Intl...

Teaser..

US and UK-led failed counter-narcotics policies have led directly to the return of the Taliban, by creating security and hunger crises in southern Afghanistan

Five years later, large areas of Afghanistan, particularly in the South, are not under central government control. Insurgency is present in half of the country: the Taliban
are back and advancing rapidly towards Kabul. The Taliban’s return is directly connected to a number of failures on the part of the international community, many
of which are linked to the formulation and implementation of failed counternarcotics policies.

Although the events of 11 September 2001 are perceived by many in the Muslim world as embodying the clash of two global cultures, recognition of this underlying cultural clash has not been evident in the international community’s subsequent responses in Afghanistan. There has been a profound failure on the part of the international community to appreciate that the majority of Afghans have a
completely different “world view” to that of the ‘Western’ world. The Afghan population identifies itself first and foremost as Muslim, and its sense of cultural identity is very closely tied to Islam and the global Islamic community - the Umma.1

“That religion was, and to an extent still is, so deeply part of the personal identity and worldview of Afghans that it is hard for a secular, atheist Westerner to comprehend...."

6287. jexster - 9/30/2006 11:05:07 PM

G.O.P. Leaders Knew in Late ’05 of E-Mail

6288. jexster - 10/1/2006 8:50:49 AM

Good Fences
Sketchy Neighbors


Security has deteriorated so badly in Iraq that Saudi Arabia has decided to build a 550-mile-long high-tech security fence. The Saudis are afraid that if Iraq has a hot civil war, Iraqis will try to flee as refugees to Saudi Arabia. They also are afraid that the nasty characters who blow up weddings and children buying ice cream will come to Saudi Arabia at some point. The Saudi security fence is a huge vote of no-confidence in the Iraq that Bush built. Let's put it this way. Americans think of the puritanical Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia as the most militant of the Muslims. Now, the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia are saying that they are afraid of the Iraqis. What does that tell you? Or what does it tell the American public that the Saudi government views Iraq rather the way the Israeli government views the Palestinians?

Nawaf Obaid, director of the Saudi National Security Assessment Project, said, ". . . the feeling in Saudi is that Iraq is way out of control with no possibility of stability. The urgency now is to get that border sealed: physically sealed." He added that the Saudis are especially concerned about massive immigration of asylum seekers into the traditionally Shiite area of al-Hasa, where Saudi petroleum is. He said, "If and when Iraq fragments there's going to be a lot of people heading south and that is when we have to be prepared . . ..

6289. jexster - 10/1/2006 9:17:52 AM

Virginia's Manly Man Usta be a Hottie!
{didn't we all!]

Be on the lookout for swiftboat attack from the River of Sleaze...

Allen was too busy burning crosses or bashing beaners or some such..

Jim Webb's Navy Cross Citation:



Jim Webb, First Lieutenant, U.S. Marine Corps
Company D, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, 1st Marine Division (Rein.) FMF
Date of Action: July 10, 1969

6290. jexster - 10/1/2006 9:19:35 PM

"It is the oldest story in the coverage of government: the failure to tell the truth,"

6291. jexster - 10/1/2006 9:56:47 PM

So You Call This Breaking News?
By Frank Rich
The New York Times

Sunday 01 October 2006

IF your head hurts from listening to the Washington furor over the latest National Intelligence Estimate, by all means tune it out. The entire debate is meaningless except as a damning election-year indicator of just how madly our leaders are fiddling while Iraq burns.

6292. jexster - 10/2/2006 4:33:50 AM

Rove agreed they did not want to do anything that would prompt hearings on the war.

6293. jexster - 10/2/2006 4:48:59 AM

Rep. Hinchey asked [Gen} Odom "How do we get out?" Odom's reply came without a pause: "Well, the Constitution gives the House the right to impeach."

6294. jexster - 10/2/2006 12:32:01 PM

Are YOU An Unlawful Combattant?
Raimondo

6295. jexster - 10/2/2006 1:28:19 PM

6296. jexster - 10/2/2006 7:31:46 PM

They say he never authorized the sign..

They say that the sign was the Navy's idea, an expression of the sailors' love for their SeaLord

They lied.....




The phrase was in Bush's speech and taken out at the last minute.

Someone forgot to tell the sign guy.

6297. jexster - 10/2/2006 10:37:49 PM

Colbert Nation Recommends:
Frank Rich, "The Greatest Story EVer Sold"

New York Times columnist Frank Rich would probably agree with this assessment. In "The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina," he picks apart Bush's policies since 9/11. Like Blumenthal, Rich covers numerous scandals, but his central argument is that Bush and his aides have used 9/11 as a pretext for starting an unnecessary war in Iraq that they did not know how to win. Indeed, he casts his account as "[a] critical retracing of the sophisticated steps by which some clever people in the White House, handed an opportunity and a mandate by the shocking events of 9/11, unfurled a brilliantly produced scenario to accomplish a variety of ends, the most unambiguous of which was to amass power and hold on to it."

Throughout, Rich compares Bush's efforts to convince the country that the war was necessary to a company unveiling a product, dubbing Colin Powell's presentation before the United Nations a "sales pitch." "The story," he writes, "was effective enough to take America into a war against a nation that did not attack it on 9/11." Yet his accusations strike much deeper: He does not cast Bush simply as an eager salesman but rather as a huckster who purposely cons his customers. He argues that "[t]he facts and intelligence didn't fit the policy, and so ... they would have to be fixed (and contradictory evidence suppressed) to build a fictional narrative that would speed the march to war."

6298. jexster - 10/3/2006 10:12:01 AM

Died in Vain

BAGHDAD (AFP) - At least 17 US soldiers have been killed around Iraq since Saturday, including eight in a single day in Baghdad, the US military announced, saying the toll had brought "a tragic day".

6299. jexster - 10/3/2006 11:18:47 AM

George Bush: A Disaster by Any Name

6300. jexster - 10/3/2006 11:55:03 AM

Foley Saga No Shock to Some

The Florida Republican was known to have an interest in younger men, Capitol Hill workers say.

6301. jexster - 10/3/2006 12:31:32 PM

State of Denial Clips Here

6302. robertjayb - 10/4/2006 12:56:45 PM

Baghdad blasts at all-time high...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - At least 14 people were killed and 75 wounded in a car bomb attack on the convoy of Iraq's industry minister on Wednesday, Interior Ministry sources said.

Minister Fawzi al-Hariri, a Kurd, was not in the convoy when it was attacked in central Baghdad, but two of his bodyguards were among those killed, said Industry Ministry spokeswoman Dhuha Mohammed.

The attack came as the U.S. military reported that roadside bombings in Baghdad were "at an all-time high" and that more car bombs had been defused or detonated in the capital in the past week than at any other time this year. They gave no firm figures.

6303. robertjayb - 10/4/2006 1:47:42 PM

Backwards Day: Standing down a brigade of Iraqi cops...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Iraqi authorities have taken a brigade of up to 700 policemen out of service and put members under investigation for ''possible complicity'' with death squads following a mass kidnapping earlier this week, the U.S. military said Wednesday.

Meanwhile, a series of bombs went off in rapid succession in a shopping district in a mainly Christian neighborhood of Baghdad, killing 12 people and wounding 50, police said. The dead were among 28 people killed in attacks across Iraq.

6304. jexster - 10/4/2006 8:07:22 PM

Operation Together Foeward's stuck in reverse. It's actually lost ground faster the longer it has gone one. Best to declare Mission Accomplished while there's still something left of Baghdad to fuck up.

6305. jexster - 10/5/2006 12:34:49 AM

The Five Wars Bush Has Lost: Avoiding a Second Debacle in Afghanistan

Bill Lind


The Washington Post is currently serializing excerpts from Bob Woodward’s new book, State of Denial, which reads distressingly like Count Ciano’s diaries. Yesterday’s excerpt quotes Marine Corps General James L. Jones, the current NATO commander, saying to another Marine, General Peter Pace, on the eve of his accession to the Chairmanship of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “You’re going to face a debacle and be part of the debacle in Iraq.”

I’ve known General Jones since he was a major. He is an acute observer of the political scene, and his warning to General Pace was right on the mark. Unfortunately, General Jones is now caught up in another war, the war in Afghanistan, which is not going altogether well. Perhaps it is time to share some bad news with him, as he did with General Pace.

Dear Jim,

I hope this autumn finds you well and enjoying the rigours of chateau campaigning. No wonder the Europeans fought so many wars; they had such lovely places to fight them in.

In another part of the world, less lovely, the snows will soon bring campaigning to an end. As winter will offer some time for adjustment there, I thought I should say to you what you said to General Pace: if NATO continues on its present course, you’re going to face a debacle and be part of the debacle in Afghanistan.

6306. jexster - 10/5/2006 4:59:31 PM

Operation Together Forward lurches inexorably forwward to disaster, together fast forward to failure. It is often said that no insurgent force has ever defeated the US in any battle. Given its operational objectives this Battle for Baghdad will be a first and a decisive defeat of US arms.

Attacks in Baghdad Kill 13 US Soldiers in 3 Days
By Amit R. Paley
The Washington Post



Baghdad - Thirteen U.S. soldiers have been killed in Baghdad since Monday, the American military reported, registering the highest three-day death toll for U.S. forces in the capital since the start of the war.

The latest losses - four soldiers who were killed at 9 a.m. Wednesday by small-arms fire - are part of a recent spike in violent attacks against U.S. forces that have claimed the lives of at least 24 soldiers and Marines in Iraq since Saturday, the military said.

The number of planted bombs is "at an all-time high," said Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell, a military spokesman, defying American efforts to stanch the vicious sectarian bloodshed in Baghdad that threatens to plunge the country into civil war.

"This has been a hard week for U.S. forces," Caldwell said. "Unfortunately, as expected, attacks have steadily increased in Baghdad during these past weeks." Independent databases showed the three-day toll for American troops to be the highest in Baghdad so far.

U.S. military officials said the surge in violence could be partly attributed to the increased exposure of American forces as they patrol the dangerous streets of Baghdad to try to quell reprisal killings between Shiites and Sunnis. The number of troops in the capital has been doubled since June to support the Iraqi government's new security plan, said Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, another military spokesman.

6307. jexster - 10/5/2006 10:15:46 PM

The Republicans in Congress appropriated $20 million for a victory celebration for Iraq and Afghanistan, but couldn't use it in 2006 for obvious reasons.


To' Up!

Juan Cole's
Top Ten Victory Celebrations by Republicans in Congress

6308. jexster - 10/6/2006 12:04:07 AM

WARSAW (AFP) - The US general in charge of the multinational coalition in Iraq, General George Casey, said that the next six months will be a decisive period that will determine Iraq's future.

"This is a decisive period for everyone and everyone knows it. The next six months will determine the future of Iraq," Casey said in a statement after attending two days of closed-door meetings in Warsaw to address "the challenges facing Iraq and the US-led coalition."



I think I saw this movie a year ago The Sequel to "Last Throes; Death Dealt to Dead Enders"

Or was it "Democracy's Last Stand on the Central Front"

"Mission Accomplished" "Operation Iraqi Freedom" were prequels

So many movie titles

6309. jexster - 10/6/2006 12:08:09 AM

Stick One Taep O Dong Up Your Ass and Call Us in the Morning You Silly Gwailo

US: 'We're Not Going to Live With a Nuclear North Korea'


Chinese Analyst: Wanna a Bet?
'Too Late' to Stop North Korea's Bomb

6310. jexster - 10/6/2006 5:12:13 AM

Special Limited Time Offer

CUT and RUN
DO NOT WALK, pass GO or send Bush any more money



Insurgent Leader Offers Talks with US
Demands Withdrawal Timetable

Dr. Ibrahim al-Shammari of the Islamic Army of Iraq offered talks with the US if Congress will set a withdrawal timetable. IAI was at one point allied with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's "Monotheism and Holy War" guerrilla group, but appears itself to be indigenous Iraqis.

The USG Open Source Center translates al-Shammari's remarks:

' Islamic Army in Iraq Spokesman Sets Conditions for Negotiating With US
Jihadist Websites -- OSC Report
Thursday, October 5, 2006 T22:20:13Z

A translation of Dr. Al-Shammari's response follows:

"As for the issue of negotiating with the enemies, the issue of armistice, and the issue of peace, all of these issues are legitimately permissible; while the case as in the current state of war with the Crusaders and sectarians, it is a legitimate duty to defend the religion, people, and the land. In principle, we are not against negotiating with enemies if the other party is serious. In my previous interview with Al-Jazirah channel, I mentioned the conditions as viewed by the Islamic Army in Iraq group so that the negotiations may be fruitful. These views are:

1. The US Congress should issue a bill obligating the US administration to pull the US forces out of Iraq. While many question the wisdom behind this particular condition, we mentioned it in the context that there is no one among the international powers capable of forcing the US government to pull out of Iraq but its constitutional agencies, at the time when the international institutions like the UN Security Council and the UN have turned into a servicing agency attached to the US Department of State. Give the US what is desired of pre-fabricated resolutions to use as a pretext for launching its preemptive wars, or provide a facade for its ugly wars that have no legal grounds approved by the international community, such as the invasion of Iraq. We should not forget that it was the US Congress that issued the bill for liberating Iraq in 1998. It should also be mentioned that the continuous interest on the part of some elements in the Congress working to issue such a bill was a right step in the right direction. There are some efforts to prevent President Bush from establishing permanent bases in Iraq, which is another right step in the right direction.

2. The US government should recognize the Iraqi resistance as the sole legitimate representative of the Iraqi people, because right after the war, all of the Iraqi state's institutions crumbled and the legitimate government was ended. It is natural that the Iraqi resistance is the best to represent the Iraqi people, as it is the case in the whole world when a country falls under occupation. Why should Iraq be an exception to that rule, which the whole world adheres to when dealing with states falling under occupation.

These two items are the principle conditions upon which any successful negotiations depend, and under which other conditions could be subservient, like apologizing to the Iraqi people about the occupation, indemnifying for private and public properties, and setting free all prisoners and others. The peace process needs long and sound steps in the direction of the desired objective. If the US is serious about negotiations, we will be more serious, and ready to conduct any kind of negotiations overt or covert, the only exception is credibility. We do not object to intermediaries with international credibility in this regard. We also may exchange official memos and we do not object to secrecy." '

6311. jexster - 10/6/2006 1:42:53 PM

A Special Comment About Lying
By Keith Olbermann
MSNBC Countdown

6312. jexster - 10/6/2006 3:07:35 PM

Stu Rothenberg, independent analyst and sometime collaborator of Charile Cook, expects that within the next 2 weeks a whole new set of House-seats-in-play. Though Rothenberg like Cook follows key races, he has no idea which new contests, where, how many but they will reveal themselves.......

Hurricane Warning
Cat 5

6313. jexster - 10/6/2006 3:30:38 PM

Cunnilingus in Baghdad - CNN Situation Room

Michael Ware: “She [Condi] is so far from reality”


She might as well have been in Mexico gettin eatin out by beaners.

6314. jexster - 10/6/2006 7:04:23 PM

Jack Cafferty...

"We now turn to the F word, that fair and balanced news network which, when the Foley story broke, referred to the Congressman as a democrat all night long. No doubt an innocent mistake"

6315. jexster - 10/6/2006 9:11:39 PM

Cultural Corruption Chronicle
Abramoff Operative in Rove Office Resigns

6316. jexster - 10/6/2006 9:31:04 PM

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-map7oct07,0,3782980.story?coll=la-home-headlinesOne Day in the Life and Death of Iraq

6317. jexster - 10/7/2006 10:39:53 AM

So it's one two three
what R we fightin for? time


Richard Engel reports that US troops in Iraq are questioning why they are there and what exactly their mission is. He tells of how they find evidence that some among their colleagues, the Iraqi police, are actually secret death squad members who murdered a Sunni Arab man and tossed his body in the street.

Reality has a way of biting Bush in the ass

Warner Surprised WH

6318. jexster - 10/8/2006 7:29:42 AM

Which Part of FUBAR is BushVille Having Trouble With?

Cole



Solomon Moore and Louise Roug of the LA Times argue that Iraq is beset by four struggles: 1) Arab-Kurdish at Kirkuk in the north; 2) Sunni Arab guerrillas vs. US and Iraq security forces in al-Anbar Province; 3) Shiite-Sunni in Baghdad and environs; and 4) Shiite-Shiite struggles in the South.

The picture they paint accords well with sociologist Charles Tilly's description of a revolutionary situation as the simultaneous outbreak of several distinct struggles. The French Revolution was the same way, with urban riots in Paris and peasant unrest in the countryside, with ideological struggles between royal absolutists and partisans of the Rights of Man, etc., etc.

But I would offer this critique of the Solomon-Roug piece. It suggests that the struggles are more disparate than they really are.

Look at it this way. The US deposed the formerly ruling Sunni Arabs in favor of the Shiites and the Kurds. So there is a former ruling group fighting back against a tripartite alliance (US/Kurds/Shiites) and attempting to roll back their new dominance and their maximalist objectives. Over time a small number of Sunni Arabs have also attached themselves to the Americans and the new regime, and the guerrillas hit them, as well.

Thus, the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement wants 1) to force the US out of al-Anbar, Salahuddin and Ninevah Provinces and to displace Sunni Arab American allies there; 2) to roll back Kurdish dominance in Kirkuk and Kurdish claims on parts of Ninevah; and 3) to take back Baghdad and its hinterlands from the newly dominant Shiite/American alliance.

This way of looking at things unifies three of the major ongoing conflicts around the revanchist Sunni Arab guerrilla movement.

It also challenges the LAT trope of the US troops caught in the middle of several essentially Iraqi ethnic struggles. The US isn't an extraneous element. It put the Kurds and Shiites in charge and has been complaisant toward Kurdish expansion in Kirkuk. It isn't caught in the middle. It is the linchpin of the tripartite alliance.

The Shiite on Shiite struggles in the south are largely but not completely separate from this guerrilla war in the center-west-north. For instance, some of the violence in Basra has been laid at the feet of Sunni guerrillas funded from Saudi Arabia. It is not impossible that some Basra Sunnis are hitting Shiite groups and putting the blame on other Shiite groups, encouraging internecine Shiite faction-fighting.

But it is true that a struggle among SCIRI, the Sadr Movement, Da`wa and Fadhila, plus some small Sadrist offshoots, is roiling the south in a way not directly connected to the Sunni Arab guerrilla struggle elsewhere.

So I would argue that there really are just two major struggles going on.

Just two?

I say three....the Kurd/Arab which drives the entire thing is in a nascent stage

6319. jexster - 10/8/2006 5:15:48 PM

Three's a Crowd
Northern Iraq grows increasingly violent

6320. jexster - 10/8/2006 5:55:55 PM

Lies incompetence
Incompetence lies
Lying Incompetents




Was I three years ahead of the times or were the democrats 3 years behind....





What should be the Democratic strategy in November?

Prominent Democrats and political analysts offer their advice for how the party can regain control of Congress.



Competence Sells
By RAHM EMANUEL



Try Truth
By STANLEY B. GREENBERG



Iraq, Iraq, Iraq
By JODY POWELL

6321. jexster - 10/8/2006 6:01:16 PM

JODY POWELL
DEMOCRATS face the hard necessity of conducting a debate about the war in Iraq — and about ending it well short of victory, even as young Americans continue to fight and die. Debate now will not substitute for the honest, consensus-building discussion that should have happened before we sent our soldiers into battle, nor for the Congressional oversight that might have kept the hole from being dug deeper. Still, it needs to happen in the name of accountability, if for no other reason.

The challenge is to maintain a level of discourse that rises above the glib sloganeering that has typified the administration’s defense of its behavior, but that also transcends disgust and anger. Many Americans of my generation inevitably recall the 1960’s and 70’s, when the repugnant rhetoric and behavior of some war protesters repelled many Americans and thus helped prolong the war in Vietnam.

Today the evidence of arrogance, deceit, and miscalculation has grown so decisive that rhetorical excess will serve only to distract from it. [DAMN] America deserves, and I believe will reward, a level of debate that befits the sad and solemn circumstances that make it necessary.

6322. robertjayb - 10/8/2006 7:33:13 PM

Look for Bush family fixer James Baker to return from Iraq with schemes to save junior's worthless ass. Just a little something to divert the "folks" through election day.

6323. jexster - 10/8/2006 7:59:26 PM

The London Times is reporting he's backing Biden's breakup plan...

No surprise there. Hamilton obviously tipped Biden and Baker tipped Blowhard Warner but check out Cole's Comment and comments thereon

Here


Why who is this masked cajun man!

At 2:18 PM, johnMccutchen said...
I don't think the Iraqis know who James Baker is or care what he recommends. I don't think the US has the leverage to impose its will in this way. I think we are witnessing that last remannt of imperial hubris

6324. jexster - 10/8/2006 8:01:07 PM

The Report isn't due until after Election by design...the leaks began today....Warner/Biden the warm-up act

From the Times UK

Gelb is the co-author with Senator Joseph Biden, a leading Democrat, of a plan to divide Iraq. “There was almost no support for our idea until very recently, when all the other ideas being advocated failed,” Gelb said"

6325. jexster - 10/8/2006 8:04:16 PM

The Arabs are already noting that partition has been Israel's objective for decades...

Like I said...the Iraqis don't give a rat's ass about J Baker

What is Bush gonna do? Withdraw the troops? That'll learn em

6326. jexster - 10/8/2006 8:24:27 PM

Here's some food for thought...


Is Bush Planning a Post Election Coup in EyeRak a la Diem?

Desperate times
Tejas Desperados

6327. jexster - 10/9/2006 2:47:48 AM

Jews Gone Wild

Tony Judt Talk Cancelled after Pressure from Israel Lobby

6328. jexster - 10/9/2006 3:29:54 AM

March 2003 - British Warned Bush of Iraq Debacle

6329. jexster - 10/9/2006 11:15:44 AM

6330. robertjayb - 10/9/2006 1:02:37 PM

Army lowers standards to meet recruiting goal...

(AP) The U.S. Army recruited more than 2,600 soldiers under new lower aptitude standards this year, helping the service beat its goal of 80,000 recruits in the throes of an unpopular war and mounting casualties.

The recruiting mark comes a year after the Army missed its recruitment target by the widest margin since 1979, which had triggered a boost in the number of recruiters, increased bonuses, and changes in standards.
................................................

According to statistics obtained by The Associated Press, 3.8 percent of the first-time recruits scored below certain aptitude levels. In previous years, the Army had allowed only 2 percent of its recruits to have low aptitude scores. That limit was increased last year to 4 percent, the maximum allowed by the Defense Department.

6331. robertjayb - 10/9/2006 1:31:35 PM

A new slogan will fix things for sure...

WASHINGTON - In its battle to win the hearts and minds of recruiting-age Americans, the Army is replacing its main ad slogan — “An Army of One” — with one it hopes will pack more punch: “Army Strong.”

The new approach, the fruit of a $200 million-a-year contract with a major advertising agency, was announced Monday by Army Secretary Francis Harvey. He said “Army Strong” will be the centerpiece of a multimedia ad campaign to be launched Nov. 9, timed to coincide with Veterans Day weekend.

6332. jexster - 10/9/2006 1:58:26 PM

Just in time for three more funeral eulogies


BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Three Marines were killed in action in Anbar Province in western Iraq on Sunday, the U.S. military said in a statement.



Anbar is the heartland of the Sunni insurgency against Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Shi'ite-led government and U.S forces. It is the deadliest area in Iraq for U.S. soldiers.

The deaths of the three soldiers brought to at least 32 the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq since the start of October.

6333. thoughtful - 10/9/2006 2:16:03 PM

kudos yet again to keith olbermann...required reading.

Mr. President, these new lies go to the heart of what it is that you truly wish to preserve.

It is not our freedom, nor our country—your actions against the Constitution give irrefutable proof of that.

You want to preserve a political party’s power. And obviously you’ll sell this country out, to do it....

Please, sir, do not throw this country’s principles away because your lies have made it such that you can no longer differentiate between the terrorists and the critics.

6334. arkymalarky - 10/9/2006 2:37:41 PM

He's doing such a great job here lately I keep wondering when MSNBC's going to yank him.

6335. wonkers2 - 10/9/2006 5:29:05 PM

True. I wondered the same thing. And CNN gives us Beck and Nancy Grace. Where do they dig these creeps up?

6336. jexster - 10/9/2006 6:13:51 PM

Arky..someone I think at CounterPunch was wondering the same thing...Olberman's their highest rated program..as he frequently reminds his audience.

Very eloquent fella

6337. jexster - 10/9/2006 7:30:36 PM

Tsunami??
Dems Jump to +23% in Generic Ballot

On the question of which party's candidate would receive their vote if the election were held today, Democrats held a 23-point lead over Republicans among every type of person questioned -- likely voters, registered voters and adults. That's the largest lead Democrats have held among registered voters since 1978 and a jump from last month's 48%-48% split among likely voters.

Government corruption, Iraq and terrorism were the three most important issues to poll respondents. They said Democrats would do a better job on all three. The party had a 21-point advantage on handling corruption and a 17-point advantage on Iraq. A longstanding GOP advantage on terrorism vanished; Democrats had a 5-point edge. In other indicators:

* 57% of registered voters say their own representative should be re-elected, the lowest since just before the 1994 Republican House sweep.

* 56% said it was a mistake to send troops to Iraq while 40% said it was not -- the biggest split in a year.

* Voters gave Democrats a 54%-28% advantage over Republicans concerning which party would handle gasoline prices better despite the recent drop in prices

6338. jexster - 10/9/2006 7:38:32 PM

Ethical Realism: A Radical New Approach to U.S. Strategy
Anatol Lieven

6339. wonkers2 - 10/9/2006 8:20:18 PM

And Olberman, in addition to being an eloquent liberal, actually has a sense of humor. He has a change of pace-fastballs, slow balls and curves. He's at his best when he's heckling Bill O'Reilly.

6340. jexster - 10/9/2006 8:22:13 PM

Wonkers is gettin all bazeball on us

6341. jexster - 10/9/2006 8:26:41 PM

Charles Cook called it last week...

The hurricane would regain CAT 5 over warmer Oct water.

More Polls: Bush At 34% in The NYT/CBS, 39% in ABC/WaPo



Allah the Just and Merciful (His Name Be Praised!) has smiled.


Can the feckless Democrats bring it home?

6342. arkymalarky - 10/9/2006 10:14:07 PM

Olberman's their highest rated program..as he frequently reminds his audience.

I didn't know that! I think his goal should be to surpass O'Reilly. I actually rarely watch him now that I'm in grad school. At 7:00 he comes on at the same time Stewart and Colbert do, and I'm either at work or trying to pretend I'm getting wound down for bed on the other slots. I need to Tivo him, but then I don't have time to watch later.

Very eloquent fella

I've only come to appreciate that lately, and actually had gotten somewhat irritated at him for dissing Colbert over his ABSOLUTELY GENIUS press dinner performance and being a little too fond of silly video stuff. I liked the videos, but I wanted much less of that and much more witty liberal political commentary.

6343. arkymalarky - 10/9/2006 10:15:19 PM

And I agree, Wonk, that Beck and Grace are pathetic. At least I can laugh at Nancy Grace's histrionics. Beck, best I can tell, is just an unintertaining idiot.

6344. arkymalarky - 10/9/2006 10:16:12 PM

that would be unEntertaining

6345. jexster - 10/10/2006 9:30:03 AM

Foleygate, Iraq, NK: The Common Denominator

Could have added Afghanistan.

6346. jexster - 10/10/2006 9:36:43 AM

Interview: Barnett Rubin: Afghanistan at Dangerous 'Tipping Point'


Council on Foreign Relations
Interviewee: Dr. Barnett R. Rubin, New York University
Interviewer: Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor

6347. jexster - 10/10/2006 10:17:46 AM

Bush Bungles "Battle for Baghdad"

6348. jexster - 10/10/2006 10:23:24 AM

Bed, Baath and Beyond Baghdad


Rove announced in January that the GOP would Run on Iraq. I cheered. Rove does a heckuva job with direct mail campaigns for Bed, Bath and Beyond, but he don't know squat about war. But thatt's how this war's been run all along nd that's why the US is losing ..

6349. jexster - 10/10/2006 11:33:02 AM

Marj...take a cold shower

Iraq's Dark Day of Reckoning: Fareed Zakaria

6350. jexster - 10/10/2006 11:36:17 AM

Not too bad lookin - for a Macacan

6351. jexster - 10/10/2006 11:37:42 AM

Smart Too
For a Macacan

Oct. 16, 2006 issue - When Iraq's current government was formed last April, after four months of bitter disputes, wrangling and paralysis, many voices in America and in Iraq said the next six months would be the crucial testing period. That was a fair expectation. It has now been almost six months, and what we have seen are bitter disputes, wrangling and paralysis. Meanwhile, the violence has gotten worse, sectarian tensions have risen steeply and ethnic cleansing is now in full swing. There is really no functioning government south of Kurdistan, only power vacuums that have been filled by factions, militias and strongmen. It is time to call an end to the tests, the six-month trials, the waiting and watching, and to recognize that the Iraqi government has failed. It is also time to face the terrible reality that America's mission in Iraq has substantially failed.

6352. jexster - 10/10/2006 11:48:51 AM

Iraq's problem is fundamentally political, not military. Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds need a deal that each can live with. Sen. Joseph Biden has outlined an intelligent power-sharing agreement, but what he, or for that matter George Bush, says doesn't matter. Power now rests with the locals.

And it matters even less what the Fixer comes up with

6353. jexster - 10/10/2006 12:03:30 PM

Bush's Private Army Running Wild in EyeRak

the Rumsfeld Mercenary Force

You can add another 650 combat deaths ...

6354. thoughtful - 10/10/2006 1:11:59 PM

What they knew and when they knew it and what they did about it.

" Why did Attorney General John Ashcroft and some Pentagon officials cancel commercial-airline trips before Sept. 11?

On July 26, 2001 - 47 days before the Sept. 11 attacks - CBS News reported that Ashcroft was flying expensive charters rather than commercial flights because of a "threat assessment" by the FBI. CBS said, "Ashcroft has been advised to travel only by private jet for the remainder of his term." Newsweek later reported that on Sept. 10, 2001, "a group of top Pentagon officials suddenly canceled travel plans for the next morning, apparently because of security concerns."

Did either Ashcroft or the Pentagon have advance information about a 9/11-style attack and, if so, why wasn't this shared with the American public?

Tonight, it looks like we can answer the first half of this one.

Yes.

As pointed out earlier today by Christy Hardin Smith at Firedoglake, Ashcroft was in on the July 2001 warnings of a pending attack by top CIA officials, the same one that was given to then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, who then tried to lie and say the meeting never happened."

Ashcroft's priorities were clear...save his skin...to hell with everyone else's.

6355. jexster - 10/10/2006 1:47:59 PM

North Korea may be a starving, friendless, authoritarian nation of 23 million people, but its apparently successful explosion of a small nuclear device in the mountains above the town of Kilju on Monday was a big fuck you to the failed WarPresident

6356. jexster - 10/10/2006 1:54:58 PM

The following was written by Ben Stein and recited by him on CBS Sunday Morning Commentary.

Herewith, a few confessions from my beating heart: I have no freaking clue who Nick and Jessica are. I see them on the cover of People and Us constantly when I am buying my dog biscuits and kitty litter. I often ask the checkers at the grocery stores. They never know who Nick and Jessica are either.

Who are they? Will it change my life if I know who they are and why they have broken up? Why are they so important?

I don't know who Lindsay Lohan is either, and I do not care at all about Tom Cruise's wife.

Am I going to be called before a Senate committee and asked if I am a subversive? Maybe, but I just have no clue who Nick and Jessica are. If this is what it means to be no longer young. It's not so bad.

Next confession:

I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish.And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees Christmas trees. I don't feel threatened.I don't feel discriminated against. That's what they are: Christmas trees.

It doesn't bother me a bit when people say, "Merry Christmas" to me. I don't think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn't bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu . If people want a creche, it's just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.

I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution, and I don't like it being shoved down my throat. Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship Nick and Jessica and we aren't allowed to worship God as we understand Him?

I guess that's a sign that I'm getting old, too.

But there are a lot of us who are wondering where Nick and Jessica came from and where the America we knew went to.

In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different: This is not intended to be a joke; it's not funny, it's intended to get you thinking.

Billy Graham's daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her "How could God let something lik e this Happen?" (regarding Katrina)

Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said, "I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives. And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?"

In light of recent events...terrorists attack, school shootings, etc. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O'Hare (she was murdered, her body found recently) complained she didn't want prayer in our schools,

and we said OK.

Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school, the Bible says thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself.

And we said OK.


Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn't spank our children when they misbehave because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock's son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he's talking about.

And we said OK.

Now we're asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don't know right from wrong, and why it doesn't bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.

Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with "WE REAP WHAT WE SOW."

6357. Magoseph - 10/10/2006 1:55:05 PM

6358. jexster - 10/10/2006 6:09:38 PM

"These polls seem to suggest the public has decided to just 'throw the bums out,"' said Karlyn Bowman, a public opinion analyst at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

"These are huge, huge, numbers and they are very bad for Republicans," she said. "There is not a shred of good news in these polls for Republicans."

6359. jexster - 10/10/2006 6:28:56 PM

EUREKA!


Mushroom like cloud is seen over Baghdad as huge explosions rocked the Iraqi capital early Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2006.

6360. jexster - 10/10/2006 8:27:19 PM

Three U.S. Marines were killed in action in Anbar province in western Iraq on Monday, the U.S. military said in a statement on Wednesday.

Anbar is the heartland of the Sunni insurgency against Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Shi'ite-led government and U.S. forces. It is the deadliest area in Iraq for U.S. soldiers.

The deaths of the three soldiers brought to at least 37 the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq since the start of October.

The U.S. military said on Tuesday it killed seven insurgents in an air strike on a building in Ramadi, capital of Anbar, after U.S. troops came under "extremely heavy fire."

Three U.S. soldiers were killed in Anbar on Sunday

6361. jexster - 10/10/2006 8:38:52 PM

Baquba Erupts

by Dahr Jamail
With Ali al-Fadhily

BAQUBA - The little-known city of Baquba is emerging as one of the hotbeds of resistance in Iraq, with clashes breaking out every day.

The violence in this city 30 mi. northeast of Baghdad is also now spreading elsewhere around Diyala province.

"The new waves of terror are now forming a variety that we predicted long ago," a political leader in the city told IPS. "The Iraqi people have complained to everyone, but naturally no one will do anything about it. We know who is in charge and who is responsible and eventually who is to be dammed. It is the government of the United States of America."

The local leader, speaking from his home in Baquba, said the situation in the area was becoming dire in the face of the recent violence.

"The worst is the direct participation of the national security forces in criminal acts, and the U.S. Army's sudden disappearance from the scene as soon as those murderers show up," he said. Many have been killed, and hundreds arrested in the province, he said.

The al-Tawafuq Sunni party has demanded a full investigation into the violence in Baquba, and immediate release of the detained civilians. "We are sure the arrests were made under sectarian flags and those detainees are innocent farmers captured in their own plantations," the group said in a statement.

An Iraqi army colonel told reporters in Diyala last week that that U.S. troops had arrested 10 Iraqi soldiers suspected of sectarian killings. There was no official U.S. comment.

Iraqi MP Muhammad al-Dayni appeared on al-Jazeera television to say that Brig. Gen. al-Kaabi, leader of the fifth division in charge of Diyala province security, had led the arrest of 400 civilians. Hundreds of houses had been looted, he said. Al-Dayni accused the parties in power of supporting such acts, referring to the Shia parties in parliament.

The fighting has intensified now, but Baquba has long been a city of fierce resistance to the occupation. Resistance groups have often frustrated the efforts of the Multi-National Forces (MNF) and Iraqi security forces to bring the city under their control.

Residents of Baquba told IPS that an Iraqi police brigadier-general had used loudspeakers to announce dire warnings to residents.

"We were used to hearing our own government calling us terrorists, Saddamists and Zarqawis before, but this man added new words to the vocabulary like bastards and expressions of that sort," Abu Omar, a law student at Diyala University told IPS. "Yet we were not surprised because we know he was just repeating what his green-zone masters have always said."

Mazin al-Zaidy, a resident of Baquba, told IPS that the situation in Diyala province could be the worst in Iraq because people of many ethnicities live in the area. "The MNF and militias concentrate on clearing it of the Arab Sunnis prior to any federalism plan."

Al-Zaidy said "there are Kurds, Shias, and Sunnis who share the province, and that has to be altered for the benefit of the first two groups." Al-Zaidy was referring to the towns Mendily, Jalowlaa, and surrounding areas that are marked Kurdish on the Kurdistan map.

The influence of each group changes often. "Each day I wake up I don't know who is in control of my city," said a religious sheik in Baquba who asked to be referred to as Sheik Ahmed. "One day it is the Americans, the next day a militia, the next day a resistance group."

Diyala province gets little media attention "because of the journalists' fear of going in," said al-Zaidy.

The new violence has ripped apart old traditions, he said. "The people of the province do not understand how these powers could turn it into a sectarian city from a wonderful 1,400 years of community peace and intermarriages."

The U.S. military has announced meanwhile that bomb attacks in Baghdad have hit an all-time high. The number of U.S. soldiers killed is now approaching the 3,000 mark.

The number of Iraqi casualties runs into hundreds of thousands

6362. jexster - 10/10/2006 10:12:57 PM

Warmup for the Night of Power
The sky over Baghdad is illuminated by huge explosions in the Iraqi capital early Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2006

6363. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 10/10/2006 11:28:29 PM

6364. jexster - 10/11/2006 3:18:25 AM

Bush Bloodier Than Saddam

Lancet Johns-Hopkins
655,000 Extra Deaths Because of Iraq War

6365. jexster - 10/11/2006 3:34:55 AM

Imperial Life in the Emerald City


Cole Interview with Rajiv Chandrasekaran

6366. jexster - 10/11/2006 11:03:52 AM

Militia mortar attack destroys US ammo dump in Baghdad

6367. jexster - 10/11/2006 4:28:26 PM

Dear Leader Brings it On

6368. jexster - 10/11/2006 8:00:38 PM

HE's Earned the Right!?!?!?!?!?!

America's Defeat
by
Larry C Johnson

I've earned the right to say, "I told you so". That is my prefix to this post, which explains why the United States is now in an untenable military situation in Iraq and has no option but a strategic withdrawal and a shift to a covert action program targeted at secular Sunni, Shia, and Kurds.

6369. jexster - 10/11/2006 8:42:12 PM

The Truth Will Out
PBS NewsHour Interview

JESSICA MATHEWS: I think we're beyond that. I think what the American people are wondering is whether we are in this because some kind of a victory is possible or whether we're in this to avoid a catastrophic loss.

And, you know, the definition of victory has changed over the years, has kind of walked down the hill, from democratic tsunami across the Middle East to at least a country that can hang together and defend itself. Now, today, it seemed to be avoiding catastrophe and avoiding terrorists coming here, which is a whole other question.

We have certainly had no lack of different policies over there, as one after another hasn't ended the violence. And I think the truth is none of them will. The violence has reached a level where it's self-reinforcing, and will have to play itself out.....

JESSICA MATHEWS: It's a terrible thing to say, although it was one of the reasons I was opposed to this war before it started, because I thought it was predictable that it would ultimately be more about American domestic politics than it would be about Iraq, and I think it has been every step along the way.

And that the key is that we come to a national agreement about whether we've won or lost and what to do about it that doesn't tear us apart for a generation the way Vietnam did.

6370. jexster - 10/11/2006 9:42:02 PM

b>Truth

Gernonimo

Robt Duvall, Chief of Scouts: There's two dead women there... and two little kids. They scalped them all, all four of 'em. Bounty hunters. The government down here pays 200 pesos a head for men, 100 for women and 50 for those kids. They kill any Indian and then claim they are Apache. I don't see how any man can sink so low. Must be Texans... the lowest form of white man there is.

6371. wonkers2 - 10/11/2006 9:52:26 PM

Fareed Zakaria was a supporter of the invasion of Iraq, as I recall. Now he's backing away.

6372. jexster - 10/12/2006 11:28:13 AM

Yes Cap'n and his macho manliness made Marji wet

6373. jexster - 10/12/2006 11:38:36 AM

Woodrow Wilson Rides Again
When Will Liberal Internationalists Get Real?

6374. jexster - 10/12/2006 11:59:17 AM

There is a link, in short, between America’s self-proclaimed role as “leader of the free world” and the preservation of our liberty, but it is not the link that President Bush (and FWLL’s) suggest. They both think the energetic promotion of liberty abroad is essential to preserving our liberty at home. But the opposite argument is more compelling: the harder we try to force others to become like us, the more we shall place that freedom at risk. If the President can wage preventive war because he has (or has cooked up) some worrisome intelligence information, then it is a small step to incarcerating people without trial because he says he has some information that leads him to suspect them too. While he is at it, why not tap their phones and emails because they have foreign-sounding names, or because they traveled to Egypt last summer, or because they have a subscription to The Nation and attended a Dixie Chicks concert? Such worries sound far-fetched, of course, but how many of us would have predicted Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib a few years ago? I am certain that Ikenberry and Slaughter would be horrified by such policies and would oppose them vehemently, but the foreign policy they are recommending will encourage the further concentration of Presidential power, and gradually jeopardize “liberty under law” here at home.

6375. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 10/12/2006 12:23:58 PM

6372.

You're incorrigible, Jexster!

6376. robertjayb - 10/12/2006 5:42:38 PM

British army chief disses Blair, says "get out soon"...(Daily Mail)

The head of the Army is calling for British troops to withdraw from Iraq "soon" or risk catastophic consequences for both Iraq and British society.

In a devastating broadside at Tony Blair's foreign policy, General Sir Richard Dannatt stated explicitly that the continuing presence of British troops "exacerbates the security problems" in Iraq.
.................................................

Sir Richard, who took up his post earlier this year, warned that "our presence in Iraq exacerbates" the "difficulties we are facing around the world."

He lambasts Tony Blair's desire to forge a "liberal democracy" in Iraq as a "naive" failure and he warns that "whatever consent we may have had in the first place" from the Iraqi people "has largely turned to intolerance."

6377. jexster - 10/12/2006 6:47:52 PM

BBC beat ya to it...Intl


Must be a Texan. Lowest form of white man there is

6378. jexster - 10/12/2006 6:51:04 PM

Thanks Wizzer!!!

6379. jexster - 10/12/2006 7:19:30 PM

Sniff Sniff

BBC political editor Nick Robinson described Sir Richard's remarks as "quite extraordinary".

6380. jexster - 10/12/2006 8:26:11 PM

Bush says it isn't credible...said same thing two years ago.





"This is the best estimate of mortality we have."
Ronald Waldman, epidemiologist at Columbia University , Center for Disease Control and Prevention

655,000 Excess Mortality

Makes Bush a mass murderer on a Saddamite scale

6381. jexster - 10/13/2006 5:13:05 AM

Stay the Course:
Aura of fear and death stalks Iraq

As the Lancet releases shocking figures on the death toll in Iraq, Peter Beaumont describes the daily carnage across Baghdad

Baghdad resounds to the tales of the dead. Not the distant, dry accounting of news wires, but terrifying close-up accounts.

6382. jexster - 10/13/2006 1:06:54 PM

Iraq: The reality

The overthrow of Saddam Hussein was supposed to bring them freedom democracy and peace. But murder, kidnap and lawlessness have become the facts of life for the people of Iraq. In an exclusive extract from his new book, Patrick Cockburn describes the terrifying disintegration of a nation

"The Stateless Region of Mesopotamia"
William Lind

See critics who claimed Bush did better by Baghdad than NOLA were full of shit

6383. robertjayb - 10/13/2006 4:41:15 PM

Nimble Blair makes chicken salad from chicken ----

Tony Blair has said he agrees with "every word" the new head of the British Army said on the Iraq war.
The Daily Mail quoted General Sir Richard Dannatt as saying he thought UK troops "exacerbated" security problems and should withdraw "sometime soon".

Mr Blair said transcripts of later radio interviews showed Sir Richard was saying "the same as we all are".

He said they wanted to exit Iraq "when the job is done", and to remove troops when no longer needed in certain areas.

6384. jexster - 10/13/2006 6:56:41 PM

Jack Cafferty Question of the Day
CNN

"Would you vote against an incumbent in your district even if you liked him alot just to get this worthless government out of Washington?"

6385. jexster - 10/14/2006 10:15:20 AM

They done stole it...
the Johnston/McCutchen Face Theory


WaPo:

Attractive politicians have an edge over not-so-attractive ones. The phenomenon is resonating especially this year. By a combination of luck and design, Democrats seem to be fielding an uncommonly high number of uncommonly good-looking candidates.
The beauty gap between the parties, some on Capitol Hill muse, could even be a factor in who controls Congress after Election Day.

My man up for re-election next year

6386. jexster - 10/14/2006 3:14:35 PM

Nation-Building by George


Let Them Eat Bumperstickers

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Thousands of posters and billboards dot Baghdad with messages of hope for a city of gloom, where residents largely stay home, afraid of the streets, their pain and grief deepening every day amid unending violence.

6387. jexster - 10/14/2006 4:06:54 PM

Must Be a Texan
Lowest Form of White Man There Is....

Bush Keeps Revising War Justifications


WASHINGTON - President Bush keeps revising his explanation for why the U.S. is in Iraq, moving from narrow military objectives at first to history-of-civilization stakes now....

For a while last summer, Bush depicted the war as one against "Islamic fascism," borrowing a phrase from conservative commentators. The strategy backfired, further fanning anti-American sentiment across the Muslim world.

The "fascism" phrase abruptly disappeared from Bush's speeches, reportedly after he was talked out of it by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Karen Hughes, a longtime Bush confidant now with the State Department.

6388. Jenerator - 10/14/2006 7:29:20 PM

Remind us all who the Islamic fascists were...

6389. Jenerator - 10/14/2006 7:30:07 PM

Oh yea! The Islamic terrorists who planned on blowing up TEN planes on their way into the US.


They *are* ISlamic fascists.

6390. poipual - 10/14/2006 7:38:32 PM

Hatred and contempt for "infidels" is caused by their existance, not behavior. One can read muslims hated words from 1,000 years before there was a U.S.A.

6391. Jenerator - 10/14/2006 7:41:25 PM

You're singing to the choir. Well, the one person choir (me) around here!

6392. Jenerator - 10/14/2006 7:53:06 PM

Jexster,

Let me dust off your memory cells:

British officials on Friday identified 19 of the suspects accused of planning to blow up U.S.-bound aircraft in the biggest terrorist plot to be uncovered since 9/11.

British police have arrested a total of 24 people suspected of involvement in the plot. CBS News correspondent Sheila MacVicar reports they are all British-born and most are middle class and of Pakistani descent. The youngest is 17. One is a pregnant woman and another is a woman with a six-month old child.

---------
Islamic fascists!

6393. Jenerator - 10/14/2006 7:59:13 PM

Hezbollah publications found during the second Lebanon war in south Lebanon inculcate the radical ideology of the Islamic revolution in Iran, and glorify jihad, shahada (death as a martyr) and the personality cults of the Ayatollah Khomeini and ‘Ali Khamenei'.

-----

Islamic fascists!

6394. Jenerator - 10/14/2006 8:03:05 PM

Hezbollah indoctrination for the younger generation: book and coloring books captured in the second Lebanon war designed to inculcate children and adolescents with the organization ideology.



A picture book showing the abduction of Israeli soldiers from the Sheba’a Farms. Coloring the picture is intended to subliminally inculcate children with the message, a pattern that repeats itself .




------------

Islamic fascists, Jexster!

6395. jexster - 10/14/2006 8:47:31 PM

There is no such thing as an Islamic Fascist Jen.

It is totally a Western creation and more rhetorical bumpersticker crap. That's why we're losing over there. We run things for people like you. Ignorant and who don't live there.

6396. jexster - 10/14/2006 8:49:21 PM

Discovery Phase

The CIA leak case isn't over by a long shot - and Cheney is still at the center of the story.


Damnedest thing about conventional wisdom is that it is so fucking conventional.

6397. jexster - 10/14/2006 9:12:27 PM

Fascism is not even a very good description of the ideology of most Muslim fundamentalists. Most fascism in the Middle East has been secular in character, as with Saddam Hussein's Baath Party. Fascism involves extreme nationalism and most often racism. Muslim fundamentalist movements reject the nation-state as their primary loyalty and reject race as a basis for political action or social discrimination. Fascists exalt the state above individual rights or the rule of law. Muslim fundamentalists exalt Islamic law above the utilitarian interests of the state. Fascism exalts youth and a master race above the old and the "inferior" races. Muslim fundamentalists would never speak this way. Fascism glorifies "war as an end in itself and victory as the determinant of truth and worthiness." Muslim fundamentalists view holy war as a ritual with precise conditions and laws governing its conduct. It is not considered an end in itself. Cole

Ideology is substitute religion, and Bush's beliefs were on display in his address to the Legion, where he painted the "decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century" in terms of good and evil.
...

The peril of ideology is that it rarely comports with reality and is contradicted by history, thus leading inevitably to disillusionment and tragedy.

In Iraq, we see the inevitable tragedy of ideology, of allowing some intellectual construct, not rooted in reality, to take control of the minds of men.
Run Pat Run!

6398. jexster - 10/15/2006 2:01:36 AM

Murtha Brings It On



Confessions of a DefeatOcrat

6399. jexster - 10/15/2006 9:22:07 AM

Bush With No Wingman
Juan Cole

With regard to the controversy over the remarks of the top British general about the need to get British troops out of Iraq, where they are probably provoking more problems than solving them, an informed reader wrote me on Friday:

'

A BBC reporter in Baghdad said on the Today programme this morning that 1) Donnat's bombshell reflects the view of the senior British officers in Iraq; and 2) were it purely a British decision, purely a military decision the Brits would have got out a long time ago.

So why haven't they? Again, in the phrasing on the Today programme this morning, that "would leave the Americans without their wing man".

Blair was up in Scotland last night concerning himself with the Northern Ireland intransigencies. So much for his stiff brandy and chance to put his feet up. Radio 4's political reporter Nick Robinson said on the Today programme that the government was thrown into such a tizzy by the Dannat bombshell that the hastily arranged [damage limitation] teleconference went on late into the night...and that - and this may be the most important point of all - "the Americans wanted to take part in the teleconference but had to be dissauded from doing so."

Now, think this one through. There is no question at all that the Brits would have contacted the White House to tell them that they were going to have a late night, emergency teleconference. It will have been the other way around. The Bush operation will have jumped down Blair's throat about this - "what's all this shit about, what are you going to do about it?" Wetting himself, Blair would have squeaked out something about his "teleconference"...the Americans would have tried to "kick that door in", as in "we're gonna take part in that teleconference"...and somehow, it'll be a first, needless to say, Blair found the cojones to say no to them. "Dissauded them".

What also needs to be highlighted is Donnat's use of that word "break". In the sense that the British army is so overstretched that it is in danger of breaking. The BBC report said - and I'm quoting - what was in question was "the survival of the British army if it stays too long in Iraq".

As the Today programme said shortly after 8 am, in its interview with the Lib Dems leader, the bombshell "goes right to the heart of the mission". The Lib Dems leader, needless to say, hit that one out of the park: "exactly, on every count: the circumstances in which it began, the preparations not made for the aftermath, and the fact that we are today very much part of the problem." Game. Set. Match.

Update. In the News at One the General is now saying that he and the Prime Minster are in full agreement. In other words, he's been got to. But the damage has already been done. No way they're going to be able to spin this one . . . the levee's been breached. Disastrously so. '

6400. jexster - 10/15/2006 9:22:26 AM

Quite extraordinary

6401. jexster - 10/15/2006 12:53:11 PM

Robert Dreyfuss, next to the Ace of Spades one of the more acute observers of BushWars, recently advanced the possibility of a coup in IraQ, a la the Kennedy CIA assinsation of Ngo Dinh Diem.

Well the Times UK story this morning on thee 5 man junta plans and this from McClatchy on the dwindling confidence in Ronksi's "unity government" lend increasing credence to what would be the Greatest Strategic Disaster's Greatest Disaster.


Little Georgie's "Family Fixer's" views are nearly as irrelevant as the No 1 Spawn's are.


So Bush leaves poor Jen jawin about "IslamoFascism"

How very pathetic

6402. jexster - 10/15/2006 5:08:54 PM

There Was a Plan for IraQ
But It Was To' Up
Daily Telegraph

6403. jexster - 10/15/2006 7:11:32 PM

It's time to say sorry for Iraq's agony

General Sir Richard Dannatt, the army's biggest gun, has blown apart Blair's promises and exposed the disaster our leaders try to hide

6404. jexster - 10/15/2006 7:21:09 PM

"Islamofascists" - Slop for the Booboisie


On Friday, the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) issued its bleakest assessment. Conflict has displaced 1.5 million people inside Iraq; a tide of refugees swells the 1.6 million living outside the country. The Lancet's estimate of 655,000 deaths since the conflict began is not only in a different stratosphere from Bush's ballpark figure of 30,000 'more or less'. It is also evidence of the asymmetry in the death roll of the war on terror.

Hero worship, racism, leader cult, state power, cult of war Jen

6405. Jenerator - 10/15/2006 9:48:53 PM

You want to talk about Fascism, Jexster?

6406. Jenerator - 10/15/2006 9:49:45 PM

6407. Jenerator - 10/15/2006 9:51:54 PM

6408. jexster - 10/15/2006 10:21:15 PM

Yes ...Your point?

Do even know what fascism is?


No you don't

Nice pictures though.

6409. wonkers2 - 10/15/2006 10:21:37 PM

Fundamentalist extremists in the East and the West are pushing the world toward a "clash of civilizations." So said a professor of Middle East studies at George Washington University.

6410. jexster - 10/15/2006 10:23:22 PM

Maybe if we stop invading their country and killing hundreds of thousands of them, they won't feel obliged to blow themselves up to stop our tanks

Sheesh.

A fool is born every minute.

Bush counts on it

6411. jexster - 10/15/2006 10:23:23 PM

Maybe if we stop invading their country and killing hundreds of thousands of them, they won't feel obliged to blow themselves up to stop our tanks

Sheesh.

A fool is born every minute.

Bush counts on it

6412. jexster - 10/15/2006 10:24:02 PM

You want to talk about Fascism, Jexster?


Why yes. Tell me what is fascism.

6413. jexster - 10/15/2006 10:25:02 PM

And when you do, you will have told everyone that there is no such thing as "Islamo-fascism"

6414. jexster - 10/15/2006 10:27:08 PM

And after you tell us the essential characteristics of a fascist state or movement, I will show you how Israel fits the bill much more closely than do the jihadists who don't even believe in a state to begin with.

6415. jexster - 10/15/2006 10:28:22 PM

The point being of course, that a country who doesn't know who the enemy is will lose all the wars it fights.


1. Afghanistan
2. iraq
3. Somalia
4. Lebanon
5. the Phony War on Terror

6416. jexster - 10/15/2006 10:35:10 PM

I suppose a tip of the hat is in order to Karen Hughes and Cunnilingus Rice for stuffing a sock in the Idiot's mouth stopping more blater about "Islamofascism" from Il Duce

6417. Jenerator - 10/16/2006 6:17:23 AM

I knew you'd like those pictures, Jexster.

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.0.1) - Cite This Source
fas?cism /?fæ??z?m/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[fash-iz-uhm] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation

–noun 1. (sometimes initial capital letter) a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.

fas·cism (fshzm) Pronunciation Key
n.
often Fascism
A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.



----------------

PLO, Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Aqsa, Al Jihad, Muslim Brotherhood, the list goes on.

They're terrorists hell-bent on forcibly controlling people through fear tactics, ideology, theology and violence (not to mention strict censorship). They're nationalistic towards their countries and racist againts Jews.

Islamo-fascist scum.

6418. Jenerator - 10/16/2006 6:18:57 AM

6419. Jenerator - 10/16/2006 6:19:31 AM

6420. Jenerator - 10/16/2006 6:21:51 AM

Bow, Jexster.

6421. Jenerator - 10/16/2006 6:25:36 AM

But don't bow too long, you might get your head cut off.

6422. jexster - 10/16/2006 7:35:11 AM

Hamas
Hezbollah??

You have got to be the most ignorant woman I have ever met.

Not one of those organizations is fascist. They are all elected! They don't have a dictator. They don't press the glorification of the state. They do not attempt to coopt the organs of the state and the state economy with crony capitalism. They do not have secret police.

Osama wants the return of something called the Caliphate, analogous if at all, not to Hitler's Germany ,Franco's spain or Mussolini's Italy or Bush's America, but to the Holy Roman Empire if at all.


None of these groups glorify the leader, the volk nor do they advocate racial superiority.

They aren't fascist in any sense of the word. In fact the term Isalamo-Fascist makes no sense whatsoever.

6423. jexster - 10/16/2006 7:35:54 AM

The More Force You Use, the Less Effective You Are

6424. jexster - 10/16/2006 7:39:10 AM

Merriam-Webster defines fascism as "a political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition".

6425. jexster - 10/16/2006 7:45:08 AM

Islamophobia
Not "IslamoFasciscm"



THE BIG LIE ABOUT `ISLAMIC FASCISM’

The latest big lie unveiled by Washington’s neoconservatives are the poisonous terms, `Islamo-Fascists’ and `Islamic Fascists. They are the new, hot buzzwords among America’s far right and Christian fundamentalists.

President George W. Bush made a point last week of using `Islamofacists’ when recently speaking of Hezbullah and Hamas – both, by the way, democratically elected parties. A Canadian government minister from the Conservative Party compared Lebanon’s Hezbullah to Nazi Germany.

The term `Islamofascist’ is utterly without meaning, but packed with emotional explosives. It is a propaganda creation worthy Dr. Goebbels, and the latest expression of the big lie technique being used by neocons in Washington’s propaganda war against its enemies in the Muslim World.

This ugly term was coined - as was the other hugely successful propaganda term, `terrorism’ – to dehumanize and demonize opponents and deny them any rational political motivation, hence removing any need to deal with their grievances and demands.

As the brilliant humanist Sir Peter Ustinov so succinctly put it, `Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.’

Both the terms `terrorism’ and `fascist’ have been so abused and over used that they have lost any original meaning. The best modern definition I’ve read of fascism comes in former Colombia University Professor Robert Paxton’s superb 2004 book, `The Anatomy of Fascism.’

Paxton defines fascism’s essence, which he aptly terms its `emotional lava’ as: 1. a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond reach of traditional solutions; 2. belief one’s group is the victim, justifying any action without legal or moral limits; 3. need for authority by a natural leader above the law, relying on the superiority of his instincts; 4. right of the chosen people to dominate others without legal or moral restraint; 5. fear of foreign `contamination.’

Fascism demands a succession of wars, foreign conquests, and national threats to keep the nation in a state of fear, anxiety and patriotic hypertension. Those who disagree are branded ideological traitors. All successful fascists regimes, Paxton points out, allied themselves to traditional conservative parties, and to the military-industrial complex.

Highly conservative and militaristic regimes are not necessarily fascist, says Paxton. True fascism requires relentless aggression abroad and a semi-religious adoration of the regime at home.

None of the many Muslim groups opposing US-British control of the Mideast fit Paxton’s definitive analysis. The only truly fascist group ever to emerge in the Mideast was Lebanon’s Maronite Christian Phalange Party in the 1930’s which, ironically, became an ally of Israel’s rightwing in the 1980’s.

It is grotesque watching the Bush Administration and Tony Blair maintain the ludicrous pretense they are re-fighting World War II. The only similarity between that era and today is the cultivation of fear, war fever and racist-religious hate by US neoconservatives and America’s religious far right, which is now boiling with hatred for anything Muslim.

Under the guise of fighting a `third world war’ against `Islamic fascism,’ America’s far right is infecting its own nation with the harbingers of WWII totalitarianism.

In the western world, hatred of Muslims has become a key ideological hallmark of rightwing parties. We see this overtly in the United States, France, Italy, Holland, Denmark, Poland, and, most lately, Canada, and more subtly expressed in Britain and Belgium. The huge uproar over blatantly anti-Muslim cartoons published in Denmark laid bare the seething Islamophobia spreading through western society.

There is nothing in any part of the Muslim World that resembles the corporate fascist states of western history. In fact, clan and tribal-based traditional Islamic society, with its fragmented power structures, local loyalties, and consensus decision-making, is about as far as possible from western industrial state fascism.

The Muslim World is replete with brutal dictatorships, feudal monarchies, and corrupt military-run states, but none of these regimes, however deplorable, fits the standard definition of fascism. Most, in fact, are America’s allies.

Nor do underground Islamic militant groups (`terrorists’ in western terminology). They are either focused on liberating land from foreign occupation, overthrowing `un-Islamic’ regimes, driving western influence from their region, or imposing theocracy based on early Islamic democracy.

Claims by fevered neoconservatives that Muslim radicals plan to somehow impose a worldwide Islamic caliphate are lurid fantasies worthy of Dr. Fu Manchu and yet another example of the big lie technique that worked so well over Iraq.

As Prof. Andrew Bosworth notes in an incisive essay on so-called Islamic fascism, `Islamic fundamentalism is a transnational movement inherently opposed to the pseudo-nationalism necessary for fascism.’

However, there are plenty of modern far rightists with neo-fascist tendencies. But to find them, you have to go to North America and Europe. They advocate `preemptive attacks against all potential enemies,’ grabbing other nation’s resources, overthrowing uncooperative governments, military dominance of the world, hatred of Semites (Muslims in this case), adherence to biblical prophecies, hatred of all who fail to agree, intensified police controls, and curtailment of `liberal’ political rights.

They revel in flag-waving, patriotic melodrama, demonstrations of military power, and use the mantle of patriotism to feather the nests of the military-industrial complex, colluding legislators and lobbyists. They urge war to the death, fought, of course, by other people’s children. They have turned important sectors of the media into propaganda organs and brought the Pentagon largely under their control.

And now they are furiously whipping up war fever against Syria and Iran as a last desperate effort to keep themselves in power after the debacles they created in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and Lebanon.

6426. jexster - 10/16/2006 7:50:03 AM

In addition to the Phalange, an overtly fascist group on the Franco model, I would add the Irgun. The Israeli terrorist group - the first group to use car bombs in the ME - a group formed I believe in Poland and consciously modeled on the then popular Fascist parties of Europe right down to the uniforms



Irgun Poster

Remind you of anything????

Grossedeutschland perhaps?

6427. jexster - 10/16/2006 7:54:48 AM

No Wonder We're Losing..We Don't Even Who or What We Are Fighting

Hizb Allah, Party of God


Isalmo-Fascist????

By Nir Rosen


In the wake of Israel's 33-day war with Hizballah, the 24-year-old Islamic movement has become the most popular political party in the Middle East. Here's why that shouldn't worry us.

Over 1 million Lebanese gathered in a vast square in a southern Beirut suburb on Sept. 22 to celebrate their country's largely successful campaign against Israel. Seyid Hassan Nasrallah, secretary-general of Hizballah, risked his life by appearing in public after Israeli leaders had sworn to kill him, and spoke to his adoring supporters in Lebanon and around the world.

Many children were given the day off from school, and buses ferried supporters from all over Lebanon for the victory celebration. Lebanon had endured 33 days of war, and not only was the Shia Hizballah movement undefeated, it had achieved a near parity of casualties with the Israeli military-a first in the history of Arab-Israeli wars. In an Arab world whose leaders were dictatorial, mendacious and corrupt, who made false promises and were beholden to the United States, Nasrallah was renowned for his integrity and for maintaining his movement's defense of Lebanon at all costs. It had made him the most popular leader in the Arab world.

Women, children and men waved the flags of Lebanon and Hizballah from outside the windows and sang in jubilation as they waited in traffic. Also on display were the flags of Palestine and Palestinian movements, Lebanese Christian movements, the Communist Party, Sunni and Druze movements, as well as secular nationalists. Although many of the celebrants were men with beards or women whose hair was covered, many were not. There were youths in trendy attire, girls in tight jeans with hair exposed and who had turned their Hizballah T-shirts into stylish form-fitting fashion statements....

6428. alistairconnor - 10/16/2006 8:26:18 AM

Good lord Jen. You have "PLO" in your list of "islamo-fascist" organisations.

You do realize it's not even an Islamic organisation?

It's notably because of the failure of the secular outfits to make any headway WRT Israel (including, disastrously for their cause, through terrorism) that islamism is now so popular.

6429. jexster - 10/16/2006 8:33:45 AM

Fascist is as Fascist Does: Warsaw Ghetto Redux


The Gaza Ghetto
The Great Experiment
By URI AVNERY

IS IT possible to force a whole people to submit to foreign occupation by starving it?

6430. Jenerator - 10/16/2006 8:46:20 AM

Not one of those organizations is fascist. They are all elected!

Hey!!! Guess what, the POTUS and the Prime Minister of England were both elected TOO!

isn't that neat?

6431. Jenerator - 10/16/2006 8:47:28 AM

They do not have secret police.

yeah, those pesky Taliban members were so visible. Those suicide bombers let themselves be seen heard, too, right?

6432. Jenerator - 10/16/2006 8:47:29 AM

They do not have secret police.

yeah, those pesky Taliban members were so visible. Those suicide bombers let themselves be seen heard, too, right?

6433. Jenerator - 10/16/2006 8:49:29 AM

Jex,

You quickly apply the term fascist to Bush and Blair despite the fact that they are not fascists, and so that same term can be loosely applied to the Islamic terrorist organizations that you hold dear to your heart.

What goes around comes around.

6434. jexster - 10/16/2006 9:06:17 AM

I said that the term fascist if it applies at all applies to Blair and particularly to Bush who glorify the state and launched wars of aggression with their military industrial complexes.

The essence of fascism isn't even remotely present but I should have to tell this to someone who worships George Bush as some later day King David

Chutzpah

6435. jexster - 10/16/2006 9:09:50 AM

No secret police
No military industrial complex
No perpetual war
No invasion of other countries
No crony capitalism

And hey...Hamas is a duly elected government except when Israel without warrant or just cause, arrests its leadership, reigns collective punishment on its people like some latter day Gestapo from Warsaw


Which it so happens is exactly where Begin's Irgun came from ..


They even modeled their uniforms after the fascists not to mention their militaristic party


The term has no meaning execept as hate speech which is why I said earlier..If you wanna hate, be my guest..

I suggest SAND NIGGER

6436. jexster - 10/16/2006 9:15:34 AM

"Isalmo Fascism" is indeed but more bumpersticker bilge for the booboisie, just like "mushroom cloud", "Saddam's grave and gathering threat" "Operation Iraqi Freedom" "Democratic Revolution" "axis of evil" etc...

Which brings us back to where this began and why Jen and her ilk bear serious responsibilty for the greatest strategic disaster in US history on account of their willful ignorance and pseudo-religious claptrap

The lies just keep coming...

Bush Keeps Revising War Justifications


Not all of Bush's rhetorical flourishes have had the intended consequences.

When the history of Iraq is finally written, the recent surge in sectarian violence is "going to be a comma," Bush said in several recent appearances.

Critics immediately complained that the remark appeared unsympathetic and dismissive of U.S. and Iraqi casualties, an assertion the White House disputed.

For a while last summer, Bush depicted the war as one against "Islamic fascism," borrowing a phrase from conservative commentators. The strategy backfired, further fanning anti-American sentiment across the Muslim world.

The "fascism" phrase abruptly disappeared from Bush's speeches, reportedly after he was talked out of it by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Karen Hughes, a longtime Bush confidant now with the State Department.

Hughes said she would not disclose private conversations with the president. But, she told the AP, she did not use the "fascism" phrase herself. "I use 'violent extremist,'" she said.



That's what fascists do

6437. jexster - 10/16/2006 9:41:52 AM

Fascist Is as Fascist Does

JERUSALEM (AFP) - Israeli President Moshe Katsav is fighting for his political life after police recommended he be indicted on charges including rape, the most serious ever faced by a national leader.

6438. jexster - 10/16/2006 9:47:53 AM

The Big Lies Continue


KIRKUK, Iraq (AFP) - Iraqi nationalist insurgents have told AFP they have begun talks with US forces, after a weekend meeting of Sunni tribal sheikhs called for the restoration of ousted leader Saddam Hussein.

6439. jexster - 10/16/2006 9:49:57 AM

Jen likes fascist porn

6440. jexster - 10/16/2006 9:51:11 AM

6420...

You see the problem in one picture..

You're a Saddam lover!
You're an Osama Lover!

No I am not/

You are a wack job

6441. Jenerator - 10/16/2006 12:11:32 PM

You and your allahu akbar's, Jex. That's what first clued me in to your love of all things terrorist. What perpetuates it is all of your defense of terrorist ideology. You actually *defend* Hamas and Hezbollah. Get a mirror, dude.

Hamas and Hezbollah were smart enough to use the democratic process to take away people's rights. Lovely.

Tell me, does Mahmoud Ahmedinejad qualify as a fascist? or is he another humanitarian in your world?

6442. jexster - 10/16/2006 1:24:31 PM

God is great Jen. I guess you don't think so?

6443. jexster - 10/16/2006 1:31:45 PM

You just don't get it. It doesn't matter one bit whether you or I like Muslims or Saddam or wanna convert or want to incinerate the lot. I should put it another way on reconsideration - that has been the primary focus of Bush foreign policy - your petty hatreds and bigoty and 9/11 hysterics

This has led to bumpersticker foreign policy that has little if anything to do with the real world in which 52 Americans have died in the last two weeks for nothing, in The Greatest Strategic Disaster in US History

The cause is ideologically muddled thinking, incompetence, deceit, self-deception, and lust for power even greater than Foley's lust for boys.

It is a fetid swamp indeed but more we are led by a gaggle of war criminals.

Don't worry too much Jen

"Iraq's Liberation is at Hand" [Saddam]

I am a realist, not a muslim and that's why I am so fucking angry and Bush and his ilk.

6444. jexster - 10/16/2006 2:08:39 PM

Another fine example...while Bush has Jen chasing "islamofascist" gremlins


The FBI is chasing another crooked GayOldPary congressthing

Curt "Where are the WMD's?" Weldon:
Feds Raid Daughter's Home and Lobbying Business

6445. jexster - 10/16/2006 5:05:33 PM

Good News from Gaza!
IDF Opens Luxury Detention Center
Ran HaCohen

Fleeing from Nazi Austria on the eve of World War II, Sigmund Freud was asked to sign a statement that saying he was not mistreated. The old Jewish psychiatrist is said to have asked whether he could add: "I can most highly recommend the Gestapo to everyone."

6446. jexster - 10/16/2006 6:07:20 PM

The three guilty men who have failed Iraq
Times of London

Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld all got it terribly wrong — now Britain cannot be ignored in the search for a solution

6447. jexster - 10/16/2006 6:12:57 PM

That splashing noise you hear-- Republican Senate
incumbents being tossed overboard-- is party leaders
acting before voters can. The GOP is cutting
its losses and conceding defeat in OH, PA, MT and RI.
They have given up on saving the House, and are
in deep macaca when their Senate hopes rest on George Allen.

Not a pretty sight!


Victor Kamber

6448. Jenerator - 10/16/2006 6:40:56 PM

Left, left, left, right, left.



More 'gremlins'.

6449. Jenerator - 10/16/2006 6:41:53 PM

Humanitarian:

6450. jexster - 10/16/2006 6:47:52 PM

Don't mean they are fascist Jen.

Just means you're a sucker for Jew hate propaganda.

Tell us something we didn't already know

6451. Jenerator - 10/16/2006 6:50:31 PM

Creating the perfect Islamo-fascist State.

6452. jexster - 10/16/2006 6:59:20 PM

Oh the Government of Iraq!

Very nice

Cheney: US forces winning support from Iraqis

6453. jexster - 10/16/2006 7:00:10 PM

"Faith and Freedom"

The Church of God in Bush

Snake chunker

6454. Jenerator - 10/16/2006 7:01:46 PM

Dispute the material within the site Jex. Go ahead, make my day!

6455. jexster - 10/16/2006 7:02:56 PM

Your Tax Dollars at Work




Abdul Aziz al-Hakim
Leader Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq
Member of Parliament

6456. jexster - 10/16/2006 7:03:41 PM

I am not to going to humor you Jen.

6457. jexster - 10/16/2006 7:05:51 PM

But I would suggest you lay off the KoolAid. Cause it doesn't matter that you don't know a fascist from a Muslim from your asshole

Hate em all you want. We've got no army left to do anything about it.

6458. jexster - 10/16/2006 7:10:25 PM

57 Dead for Nothing

6459. Jenerator - 10/16/2006 7:11:15 PM

By your very own criteria the Islamic terrorist organizations fit your model of Fascist!

Boo hoo, Jex.

NPR said that the army signed it's quota this year...

6460. Jenerator - 10/16/2006 7:12:21 PM

6461. Jenerator - 10/16/2006 7:14:45 PM

Sieg Heil for peace!

6462. Jenerator - 10/16/2006 7:20:52 PM

Paramedics bringing a woman suffering from shock to hospital after a Qassam rocket landed in the Negev town of Sderot on Monday. (Haaretz)

6463. jexster - 10/16/2006 7:25:30 PM

Damned tragic

6464. jexster - 10/16/2006 7:26:46 PM

6465. jexster - 10/16/2006 7:27:33 PM

By your very own criteria the Islamic terrorist organizations fit your model of Fascist!

Which? I missed it

6466. jexster - 10/16/2006 7:28:33 PM

And which groups are you talking about?

Do you know the difference between AlQaeda, Hamas, Hixbullah, and the Government of Iraq?

6467. jexster - 10/16/2006 8:17:14 PM

Ramadan is the (month) in which was sent down the Qur'an, as a guide to mankind, also clear (signs) for guidance and judgment ... al-Qur'an 2:185

Surely We revealed it (the Holy Quran) on the grand night. And what will make you comprehend what the grand night. The grand night is better than a thousand months. The angels and Gibreel descend in it by the permission of their Lord for every affair, Peace! It is till the break of the morning." (97:1-5)

6468. jexster - 10/16/2006 8:20:49 PM

JIM LEHRER: Now, some analysis from Matthew Sherman. He was deputy senior security adviser to the Iraqi government under the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority from 2003 until this year. He's now head of a political risk assessment company, and he was in Iraq last month.

And Juan Cole, he's a professor of Middle East history at the University of Michigan. He authored the book "Sacred Space and Holy War" about Shia Islam.

Professor Cole, do you share Lee Hamilton and others' doubts about the Maliki government?

JUAN COLE, University of Michigan: Oh, absolutely. I think it's not realized that, if this were a European government, it would have just fallen last week.

The Shiite majority in parliament ran through a proposal for provincial confederacies that was opposed by the Sunni Arabs and by some of the Shiites, and it was opposed by the prime minister. And they held the vote for it while the Sunni Arabs were boycotting the session.

The Sunni Arabs have been absolutely promised that they would have a voice in these matters. And they were denied that voice by the parliamentary majority of Shiites. And Maliki would have lost a vote of no confidence over this if he had been a British prime minister.

If he can't even control his own party, his own coalition in parliament, then how he is going to control guerrillas and militiamen roaming the countryside?

And these attacks that occurred in Balad were daylight attacks by company-sized units just shooting down over 70 people. Where were the police? Where was the army? Were they collaborating? Were they afraid? Maliki doesn't seem to have the levers to control these things.

6469. jexster - 10/16/2006 10:01:08 PM

160 Iraqis Killed Monday; 14 GI's Killed in 3 Days


At least Jen feels better. Dead in the Crusade of Christ-in-Bush against the Islamo-Fascists!

And they wonder why Rove laughs and calls them names behind their backs.

6470. jexster - 10/18/2006 12:20:53 AM

Hamas official: Is violence Palestinian "disease"?




By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) - A senior figure in Hamas, the Islamist group that heads the Palestinian government, published an article on Tuesday condemning internal violence and questioning whether it had become a "Palestinian disease".

Ghazi Hamad, a member of Hamas who also acts as the spokesman for the Hamas-led government, said he was disturbed by growing factionalism in the Palestinian territories, including recent deadly clashes between rival political movements.

"Has violence become a culture implanted in our bodies and our flesh?" he asked in the sharply worded article, published in the widely read Palestinian newspaper al-Ayyam.

"We have surrendered to it until it has become the master and is obeyed everywhere -- in the house, the neighborhood, the family, the clan, the faction and the university."

It was the second time in recent months that Hamad, who is based in Gaza, had written an opinion piece in al-Ayyam critical of Palestinian in-fighting.

In August, he criticized Palestinian militant groups fighting Israel, saying they were not doing the cause of Palestinian independence any good by launching attacks at moments when it appeared progress was being made.

In the article published on Tuesday, Hamad said the presence of armed men on almost every street, and their attendance at every rally, whether political or not, had created an atmosphere of guns and violence that damaged prospects for calm.

It also meant that television pictures of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict broadcast around the world too often showed armed men and images of violence, casting the Palestinian struggle in a poor light, he suggested.

"(Violence) has taken away the language of brotherhood and replaced it with arms ... It has stolen our unity and divided us into two camps, or three, or ten," he wrote.

"Shouldn't we be ashamed of this ugly behavior which scandalizes us before our people and before the world?"


Hamad wrote that 175 Palestinians had been killed by "Palestinian gunfire" since the beginning of the year.



"Are we all responsible? Yes. Do we all participate in this great sin? Yes," wrote Hamad. "All of us have the desire not to see arms in the streets except with policemen.

"We want to disown this disease, this cancer, which has damaged our brains and paralyzed our hearts.

"Have mercy on your people. Let us walk in peace, sit in peace, have a dialogue in peace and sleep in calm."

6471. jexster - 10/18/2006 1:32:50 AM

Can You Tell a Sunni From a Shiite?


FOR the past several months, I’ve been wrapping up lengthy interviews with Washington counterterrorism officials with a fundamental question: “Do you know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite?”

A “gotcha” question? Perhaps. But if knowing your enemy is the most basic rule of war, I don’t think it’s out of bounds. And as I quickly explain to my subjects, I’m not looking for theological explanations, just the basics: Who’s on what side today, and what does each want?



...

But so far, most American officials I’ve interviewed don’t have a clue. That includes not just intelligence and law enforcement officials, but also members of Congress who have important roles overseeing our spy agencies. How can they do their jobs without knowing the basics?...


Take Representative Terry Everett, a seven-term Alabama Republican who is vice chairman of the House intelligence subcommittee on technical and tactical intelligence.

“Do you know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite?” I asked him a few weeks ago.

Mr. Everett responded with a low chuckle. He thought for a moment: “One’s in one location, another’s in another location. No, to be honest with you, I don’t know. I thought it was differences in their religion, different families or something.”

To his credit, he asked me to explain the differences. I told him briefly about the schism that developed after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, and how Iraq and Iran are majority Shiite nations while the rest of the Muslim world is mostly Sunni. “Now that you’ve explained it to me,” he replied, “what occurs to me is that it makes what we’re doing over there extremely difficult, not only in Iraq but that whole area.”

Representative Jo Ann Davis, a Virginia Republican who heads a House intelligence subcommittee charged with overseeing the C.I.A.’s performance in recruiting Islamic spies and analyzing information, was similarly dumbfounded when I asked her if she knew the difference between Sunnis and Shiites.

“Do I?” she asked me. A look of concentration came over her face. “You know, I should.” She took a stab at it: “It’s a difference in their fundamental religious beliefs. The Sunni are more radical than the Shia. Or vice versa. But I think it’s the Sunnis who’re more radical than the Shia.”

Did she know which branch Al Qaeda’s leaders follow?

“Al Qaeda is the one that’s most radical, so I think they’re Sunni,” she replied. “I may be wrong, but I think that’s right.”

Did she think that it was important, I asked, for members of Congress charged with oversight of the intelligence agencies, to know the answer to such questions, so they can cut through officials’ puffery when they came up to the Hill?

“Oh, I think it’s very important,” said Ms. Davis, “because Al Qaeda’s whole reason for being is based on their beliefs. And you’ve got to understand, and to know your enemy.”



Gee Jen, you're clueless enough for government work

6472. jexster - 10/18/2006 5:03:15 AM

George Winston Bush? Islamo Fascists?


Invocations of Munich and a parade of new Hitlers won’t be enough to convince Americans that this is a good war.






Yet Bush suddenly turned into Churchill. Osama, Saddam, and any other leader that Bush didn’t like was exposed as a Hitler. And the war on terrorism, intertwined with the war in Iraq (and Iran?), became World War III against the “Islamo-Fascists.” ... “



“Churchill’s enemy was a powerful, determined dictator; President Bush’s conflict is with a shadowy nemesis and his small band of idolaters,” as one reader argued in a letter to the editor in the London Times. Another wrote, “The tragedy of 9/11 was the result of a ‘sucker punch’ landed by a weak enemy on the world’s superpower....

Nor does the term “War on Islamo-Fascism” make much historical sense in the context of the war of terrorism and U.S. policy in the Middle East. First, the term seems to jumble together secular nationalist regimes and movements, like the Ba’ath in Iraq and Syria, with religious fundamentalist governments and groups—the radical anti-American (Sunni) al-Qaeda and the Lebanese-based (Shi’ite) Hezbollah; the fundamentalist Sunni Wahabbi movement that is headquartered in pro-American Saudi Arabia and the Shi’ite clerics that rule in Tehran; the anti-Western Muslim Brotherhood movement (including Hamas in Palestine) and the Shi’ite clerics in power in (pro-American?) Baghdad. The Islamo-Fascism label seems to be applied to movements and governments that have nothing in common with each other—much less European fascism.

Unlike al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, or Hezbollah, the fascist movements in Europe in the 1930s were rooted in modern and secular Western ideologies, and their economic nationalist agendas had won many followers in the democratic nations, including the U.S., then beset by the Great Depression.

6473. Jenerator - 10/18/2006 6:17:13 AM

I know the difference between Sunni and Shiite.

Do you know the difference between humanitarian and terrorist? When are you going to move to Gaza to help more?

6474. jexster - 10/18/2006 6:30:45 AM

Oh do you now?

Thinking of "humanitarian" and terrorists.

600,000 dead Iraqis, nearly 3000 US servicemen and women, the people of Afghanistan, the bombed out nation of Lebanaon with your Jew gift of a million cluster bombs bombs, the Gazans in the world's largest concentration camp. the parents of Gilad IDFBoi, all of them living, dead and dying don't think you do.

So what is the difference between a Suuni and a Shiite?

6475. robertjayb - 10/18/2006 11:47:26 AM

Sad day...

NYTimes---Ten American soldiers were killed on Tuesday, the military announced today, bringing October’s death toll for United States forces to 69.

Four of the soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb west of Baghdad, and three others died in fighting in Diyala province, a troubled area northeast of the capital where sectarian violence has run high.

A Marine was killed by insurgents in Anbar province, the western region where the Sunni insurgency is centered, and two soldiers were killed in Baghdad, one by insurgent gunfire and one by a roadside bomb.

In addition to the American casualties, the Iraqi chief of intelligence for Maysan province in the south died along with four of his bodyguards when his car touched off a bomb planted on a highway.

6476. Jenerator - 10/18/2006 11:52:53 AM

Jex,

I am not going to jump through hoops for you, so tell me what difference you want to know between Sunni and Shiite. Their theological differences? The countries they're prevalent in? What exactly?

And since I am willing to answer your question, you must answer mine from a few days ago. What's your stance on Iran's President? PLease make your one sentence explanation meaningful, and no porn, please. Thanks!

6477. jexster - 10/18/2006 1:55:24 PM

What do they want? How do they differ? Who is Imam Ali and why does Osama hate Shiites more than Americans?

6478. jexster - 10/18/2006 1:57:58 PM

Just teasing Jen. I am sure you do. Too bad our government doesn't

Why just before the war Wolfowitz argued in Congress. test that we needed to invade Iraq. becuase unlike Saudi Arabia, there were no holy sites there and the population was largely secular

Can you believe it?

6479. Jenerator - 10/18/2006 2:02:02 PM

Jex,

What do they want?

With regard to…?

How do they differ?

Theologically? Politically? Geographically? What!?

Who is Imam Ali
Mohammed’s cousin whom the Shias believe should have been first caliph.
and why does Osama hate Shiites more than Americans?

Because he considers them traitors and pawns.

6480. Jenerator - 10/18/2006 2:03:30 PM

that we needed to invade Iraq. becuase unlike Saudi Arabia, there were no holy sites there and the population was largely secular

That's crazy! I guess he thought they were all like Hussein in that they were secular like he was. But there are definite Holy sites!

6481. Jenerator - 10/18/2006 2:04:27 PM

Jex,

I think if we can get past the accusations we will find that we do have some beliefs in common.

6482. jexster - 10/18/2006 2:04:51 PM

What's your stance on Iran's President? PLease make your one sentence explanation meaningful, and no porn, please. Thanks

I have no stance. Not an Iranian

I think he's playing a good game of geopoltical hardball. I don't think he's crazed. I think that the Jewish garbage along those lines - new hitler and all that - is a total load of shit

I think he's gonna face a day of reckoning at home. Like Bush he's a demagogue without results. I think he should have taken the EuroDeal and run. That was a crucial mistake. Bush handed the Gulf over to Iran. Better for Iran that he'd settled out with the US/Euro payoff..He could always restart nukes..it isn't like Iran is anywhere near a bomb. Iran's interests or Ahmadinejad's?????


I expect that Khatami might make a comeback

6483. jexster - 10/18/2006 2:12:34 PM

The Jihadis loathe the Shia because they think that they are idolators and saint worshiping heretics.

Pretty much everywhere in the ME, the Shia want a piece of the pie...Tired of being the sand nigger's sand niggers

Ali to sunnis last rightly guided caliph

To Shiites ..First imam

6484. jexster - 10/18/2006 4:29:35 PM

We do not often get to write such a report — changes so large over such a short period that they certainly portend a whole new playing field for the November election.

Democracy Corps

Meltdown: Competitive Districts Survey

6485. jexster - 10/18/2006 5:52:42 PM

A billboard now up in Connecticut unfairly attacks Joe Lieberman:


Weighing in on Connecticut's hotly contested congressional races, a group of religious activists have unveiled a giant billboard off busy Interstate 95 that accuses four candidates of voting to allow torture. The billboard in Stratford names Democratic U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman and Republican Reps. Christopher Shays, Rob Simmons and Nancy Johnson as supporters of the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

This billboard unfairly implies that Lieberman chose to support torture when he voted for the Military Commission Act of 2006. Now it is true that Lieberman is an unpincipled flip flopper, as his most recent flop on Bolton attests. But his position on torture has been consistent and steadfast -- he has always supported torture:


MoreMentum

6486. wonkers2 - 10/18/2006 6:38:34 PM

Yeah, too bad he has a big lead over Lamont despite the Wiz's heroic efforts.

6487. jexster - 10/19/2006 11:59:33 AM

Too bad the Wizzer spent so much time in the SUV

6488. jexster - 10/19/2006 12:00:22 PM

WOW this is a big surprise

Operation Failure Together

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The top American commander in Iraq has ordered a review of a U.S.-led crackdown in Baghdad, a spokesman said on Thursday, as reinforcements have failed to ease violence and the U.S. death toll has spiked this month.

6489. jexster - 10/19/2006 1:11:31 PM

Excerpts

While we applaud your efforts to oppose the dominance of positivism and materialism in human life, we must point out some errors in the way you mentioned Islam....

"You mention that 'according to the experts' the verse which begins, There is no compulsion in religion (al-Baqarah 2:256) is from the early period when the Prophet 'was still powerless and under threat,' but this is incorrect. In fact this verse is acknowledged to belong to the period of Quranic revelation corresponding to the political and military ascendance of the young Muslim community. There is no compulsion in religion was not a command to Muslims to remain steadfast in the face of the desire of their oppressors to force them to renounce their faith, but was a reminder to Muslims themselves, once they had attained power, that they could not force another's heart to believe....

"We would like to point out that 'holy war' is a term that does not exist in Islamic languages. Jihad, it must be emphasized, means struggle, and specifically struggle in the way of God. This struggle may take many forms, including the use of force. Though a jihad may be sacred in the sense of being directed towards a sacred ideal, it is not necessarily a 'war'. .

"God says in the Holy Qur'an: Let not hatred of any people seduce you into being unjust. Be just, that is nearer to piety (al-Ma'idah 5:8). In this context we must state that the murder on September 17th of an innocent Catholic nun in Somalia - and any other similar acts of wanton individual violence... is completely un-Islamic, and we totally condemn such acts.

"The notion that Muslims are commanded to spread their faith 'by the sword' ... does not hold up to scrutiny.... Islamic teaching did not prescribe that the conquered populations be forced or coerced into converting....

"Christians and Muslims reportedly make up over a third and over a fifth of humanity respectively....Upon this sincere and frank dialogue we hope to continue to build peaceful and friendly relationships based upon mutual respect, justice, and what is common in essence in our shared Abrahamic tradition, particularly 'the two greatest commandments' in Mark 12: 29-31."

6490. robertjayb - 10/19/2006 1:16:42 PM

Riverbend is blogging again after two months absence from the web. Her topic is the Lancet casualty study: Baghdad Burning...

...We literally do not know a single Iraqi family that has not seen the violent death of a first or second-degree relative these last three years. Abductions, militias, sectarian violence, revenge killings, assassinations, car-bombs, suicide bombers, American military strikes, Iraqi military raids, death squads, extremists, armed robberies, executions, detentions, secret prisons, torture, mysterious weapons – with so many different ways to die, is the number so far fetched?
............................................................


Let's pretend the 600,000+ number is all wrong and that the minimum is the correct number: nearly 400,000. Is that better? Prior to the war, the Bush administration kept claiming that Saddam killed 300,000 Iraqis over 24 years. After this latest report published in The Lancet, 300,000 is looking quite modest and tame. Congratulations Bush et al.

6491. jexster - 10/19/2006 1:57:26 PM

Jonah Goldberg: Iraq Was a Worthy Mistake
We know now that invading Iraq was the wrong decision, but that doesn't vindicate the antiwar crowd.

6492. jexster - 10/19/2006 2:13:31 PM

With friends like Goldberg and this guy, who needs Cheney?

Texan Friend of Bush
Rips Iraq War

A former Department of Homeland Security official who also worked for George W. Bush in Texas says his old friend exaggerated the threat from Saddam Hussein and only made America less safe by attacking Iraq.



Texicans! Just can't trust em

6493. robertjayb - 10/19/2006 8:49:29 PM

Is General Pace batshit crazy?

Miami - (AFP) - The top US general on Thursday defended the leadership of defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, saying it is inspired by God.

"He leads in a way that the good Lord tells him is best for our country," said marine General Peter Pace, chair of the joint chiefs of staff.

Rumsfeld is "a man whose patriotism focus, energy, drive, is exceeded by no one else I know ... quite simply, he works harder than anybody else in our building", Pace said at a ceremony in Miami.

Rumsfeld has faced a storm of criticism and calls for his resignation, largely over his handling of the Iraq war.

6494. judithathome - 10/19/2006 8:58:52 PM

If God is thinking Rummy is doing His work, I am so glad to be an atheist.

6495. Jenerator - 10/19/2006 9:03:02 PM

"The notion that Muslims are commanded to spread their faith 'by the sword' ... does not hold up to scrutiny.... Islamic teaching did not prescribe that the conquered populations be forced or coerced into converting....

This is so patently false. I cannot believe that *MUSLIMS* are denying faith by the sword or violent coercion! Heck, I can post the scriptures which explicitly call for death and violent conversion.

6496. Jenerator - 10/19/2006 9:04:27 PM

"Fight those who do not believe in Allah...And the Jews say Ezra is the son of God; and the Christians say Christ is the son of God; these are the words of their mouths; they imitate the saying of those who disbelieved before; Allah's curse be on them; how they are turned away!" (Koran 9:29-30)

And fight with them until there is no more persecution and religion should be only for Allah (8:39)

When the sacred months have passed away, THEN SLAY THE IDOLATERS WHEREVER YOU FIND THEM, AND TAKE THEM CAPTIVES AND BESIEGE THEM AND LIE IN WAIT FOR THEM IN EVERY AMBUSH, then if they repent and keep up prayer [become believers] and pay the poor-rate, leave their way free to them (9:5)

6497. Jenerator - 10/19/2006 9:04:37 PM

There's plenty more!

6498. jexster - 10/19/2006 9:40:16 PM

Well Jen you can go right ahead.

Post all you want.

Bring it on you stupid bitch....

I will bury your ignorant ass


Here's a preview of coming attractions. Either you best learn arabic or get an authorized translation


Forearmed is forarmed you whore

Sura - 9 Ultimatum (Bara'ah)
Order Of Revelation 113, Verses: 127


No Basmalah*

[9:1] An ultimatum is herein issued from GOD and His messenger to the idol worshipers who enter into a treaty with you.

[9:2] Therefore, roam the earth freely for four months, and know that you cannot escape from GOD, and that GOD humiliates the disbelievers.

[9:3] A proclamation is herein issued from GOD and His messenger to all the people on the great day of pilgrimage, that GOD has disowned the idol worshipers, and so did His messenger. Thus, if you repent, it would be better for you. But if you turn away, then know that you can never escape from GOD. Promise those who disbelieve a painful retribution.

[9:4] If the idol worshipers sign a peace treaty with you, and do not violate it, nor band together with others against you, you shall fulfill your treaty with them until the expiration date. GOD loves the righteous.

[9:5] Once the Sacred Months are past, (and they refuse to make peace) you may kill the idol worshipers when you encounter them, punish them, and resist every move they make. If they repent and observe the Contact Prayers (Salat) and give the obligatory charity (Zakat), you shall let them go. GOD is Forgiver, Most Merciful.

[9:6] If one of the idol worshipers sought safe passage with you, you shall grant him safe passage, so that he can hear the word of GOD, then send him back to his place of security. That is because they are people who do not know.

6499. jexster - 10/19/2006 9:43:25 PM

OOPS...obviously Jen has plugged into the Jewish Propaganda to the FuckBrained "Christians"


This shit has been circulating from Israel to the sewers of Evangelical nutters for two years...

So bring it on..bring it on....

Heretic.....freak

6500. jexster - 10/19/2006 9:46:59 PM

Your kind embarrass the hell out of me. To think I have to call you a Christian because you were baptized.

Good Lord deliver us

Bigotry toward Muslims and Anti-Arab Racism Grow in US;
Dubai and the Quran

The constant drumbeat of hatred toward Muslims and Arabs on the American Right, on television and radio and in the press, has gradually had its effect. This according to a Washington Post poll. Even in the year after September 11, a majority of Americans respected Islam and Muslims, but powerful forces in US society are determined to change that, and are gradually succeeding. As they win, Bin Laden also wins, since his whole enterprise was to "sharpen the contradictions" and provoke a clash of civilizations.

Some 25% of Americans now say they personally are prejudiced against Muslims. And 33% think that Islam as a religion helps incite violence against non-Muslims, up from 14% after September 11.

The Bush administration policy is to continually insinuate that the Muslim world is the new Soviet Union and full of sinister forces that require the US to go to war against them. But at the same time, America has warm relations with Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Senegal, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, Qatar, the UAE, Bahrain, Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, etc., etc. When Saudi Arabia's then crown prince (now king) Abdullah came to the US, Bush brought him to the Crawford ranch, held hands with him and kissed him on each cheek.

This two-faced policy and self-contradictory rhetoric has contributed to growing hatred and bigotry toward Muslims in the US, which is no less worrisome than the hatred Jews faced in Europe in the 1920s. It is dangerous because of what it can become.

The subtext of bigotry and racism is what has blindsided the Bush administration with regard to the port deal for a company based in Dubai. Dubai is like the Fifth Avenue of the Middle East-- the place with the pricey shopping and the tall skyscrapers and the extravagant fashions. Dubai businessmen are no more likely to take over US ports and allow them to come to harm than US businessmen are. They want the deal in order to make money. Bush knows this very well. But since he has spent so much time fulminating against shadowy and sinister forces over there somewhere, he has spooked the American public and members of his own party.

The Big Lie eventually catches up with you.

The hatemongers are well known. Rupert Murdoch's Fox Cable News, Rush Limbaugh's radio program and its many clones, telebimbos like Ann Coulter, Evangelical leaders like Franklin Graham, Congressmen like Tom Tancredo, and a slew of far rightwing Zionists who would vote for Netanyahu (or Kach) if they lived in Israel-- Frank Gaffney, Daniel Pipes, Michael Rubin, David Horowitz, etc., etc. And finally, there are many Muslims who have an interest in whipping up anti-Islamic feeling. Ahmad Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress helped maneuver the US into a war against Iraq with lies about a Saddam-al-Qaeda connection and illusory WMD. The dissident Islamic Marxist group, the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) is now placing equally false stories about Iran in the Western press and retailing them to Congress and the Pentagon.

The hatemongers think that the American public is sort of like a big stupid dog, and you can fairly easily "sic" it on whoever you like. Just tell them that X people are intrinsically evil and that the US needs to go to war to protect itself from them. Then they turn around and blame those of us who don't want our country reduced to footsoldiers in someone else's greedy crusade for being "unpatriotic."

All human beings are the same. They all have the same emotions. All laugh when happy and weep when sad. There are no broad civilizations that produce radically different behavior in human beings. All are capable of violence. (Christians killed tens of millions in the course of the 20th century, far, far more than did Muslims). Few commit much violence except in war. You can walk around any place in Cairo at 1 am perfectly safely, but cannot do that everywhere safely in many major US cities, including the nation's capital, Washington, DC. Even the idea of Islam as a cultural world or civilization opposed to the Christian West is a false construct. Eastern Mediterranean honor cultures (Greece, Bulgaria, Lebanon, Syria) have more in common with each other across the Christian-Muslim divide than either has in common with Britain or the US. And, Muslim states don't make their alliances by religion. Egypt was allied with the Soviet Union in the 1960s, then switched to the US in the 1970s and until the present. Four of the five non-NATO allies of the US are Muslim countries. Turkey is even a full NATO ally and fought along side the US in the Korean War.

Dangerous falsehoods are being promulgated to the American public. The Quran does not preach violence against Christians.




6501. jexster - 10/19/2006 9:51:26 PM

Quran 5:69 says (Arberry): "Surely they that believe, and those of Jewry, and the Christians, and those Sabeaans, whoso believes in God and the Last Day, and works righteousness--their wage waits them with their Lord, and no fear shall be on them, neither shall they sorrow."


In other words, the Quran promises Christians and Jews along with Muslims that if they have faith and works, they need have no fear in the afterlife. It is not saying that non-Muslims go to hell-- quite the opposite.

When speaking of the 7th-century situation in the Muslim city-state of Medina, which was at war with pagan Mecca, the Quran notes that the polytheists and Arabian Jewish tribes were opposed to Islam, but then goes on to say:



5:82. " . . . and you will find the nearest in love to the believers (Muslims) those who say: 'We are Christians.' That is because amongst them are priests and monks, and they are not proud."



So the Quran not only does not urge Muslims to commit violence against Christians, it calls them "nearest in love" to the Muslims! The reason given is their piety, their ability to produce holy persons dedicated to God, and their lack of overweening pride.

The tendency when reading the Quran is to read a word like "kafir" (infidel) as referring to all non-Muslims. But it is clear from a close study of the way the Quran uses the word that it refers to those who actively oppose and persecute Muslims. The word literally meant "ingrate" in ancient Arabic. So the polytheists ("mushrikun") who tried to wipe out Islam were the main referents of the word "infidel." Christians, as we see above, were mostly in a completely different category. The Christian Ethiopian monarch gave refuge to the Muslims at one point when things got hot in Mecca. The Quran does at one point speak of the "infidels" among the Jews and Christians (2:105: "those who committed kufr/infidelity from among the people of the Book.") But this verse only proves that it did not think they were all infidels, and it is probably referring to specific Jewish and Christian groups who joined with the Meccans in trying to wipe out the early Muslim community. (The Quran calls Jews and Christians "people of the book" because they have a monotheistic scripture).

People often also ask me about this verse:


[5:51] O you who believe, do not take Jews and Christians as friends; these are friends of one another. Those among you who ally themselves with these belong with them.



This is actually not a good translation of the original, which has a very specific context. In the Arabia of Muhammad's time, it was possible for an individual to become an honorary member or "client" of a powerful tribe. But of course, if you did that you would be subordinating yourself politically to that tribe. The word used in Arabic here does not mean "friend." It means "political patron" (wali). What the Quran is trying to do is to discourage stray Muslims from subordinating themselves to Christian or Jewish tribes that might in turn ally with pagan Mecca, or in any case might have interests at odds with those of the general Muslim community.

So the verse actually says:


[5:51] O you who believe, do not take Jews and Christians as tribal patrons; these are tribal patrons of one another. Those among you who become clients of these belong with them.



Since the Quran considers Christians nearest in love to Muslims, it obviously does not have an objection to friendship between the two. But apparently now it is some Christians who have that hateful attitude, of no friendship with "infidels."

6502. Jenerator - 10/19/2006 9:51:56 PM

Thanks Jex. Your passionate rant reminds me of the violent verses I am quoting from the Koran. They're very similar.

6503. jexster - 10/19/2006 9:52:56 PM

You haven't quoted verses from the Koran

And you haven't seen anything yet.

6504. Jenerator - 10/19/2006 9:54:02 PM

Read #6496 again, Jex.

Are you drunk?

6505. jexster - 10/19/2006 9:58:21 PM

You don't know the Quran any better than you know the Gospel.


You are a daughter of the Father of Lies. You spent days polluting this thread with garbage about IslamoFascism

I was obvious that you were ignorant of history

But now, it is also obvious that you were lying..You don't hate IslamoFascists.

You hate Muslims.

You hate and you murder in your heart

May God have mercy on your soul.

OPEN LETTER TO HIS
HOLINESS POPE BENEDICT XVI


In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful,
Do not contend with people of the Book except in the fairest way….
(The Holy Qur’an, al-Ankabut,
Your Holiness,


we thought it appropriate, in the spirit of open exchange, to address your use of a debate
between the Emperor Manuel II Paleologus and a “learned Persian” as the starting point for a discourse on the
relationship between reason and faith. While we applaud your efforts to oppose the dominance of positivism and
materialism in human life, we must point out some errors in the way you mentioned Islam as a counterpoint to the
proper use of reason, aswell as somemistakes in the assertions you put forward in support of your argument.
There is no Compulsion in Religion
You mention that “according to the experts” the verse which begins, There is no compulsion in religion (al-Baqarah is from the early period when the Prophet “was still powerless and under threat,” but this is incorrect. In fact this verse is acknowledged to belong to the period of Quranic revelation corresponding to the political and military ascendance of the young Muslim community. There is no compulsion in religion was not a command to Muslims to remain steadfast in the face of the desire of their oppressors to force them to renounce their faith, but was a reminder to Muslims themselves, once they had attained power, that they could not force another’s heart to believe. There is no compulsion in religion addresses those in a position of strength, not weakness. The earliest commentaries on the Qur’an (such as that ofAl-Tabari) make it clear that someMuslims ofMedina wanted to force their children to convert from Judaism or Christianity to Islam, and this verse was precisely an answer to them not to try to force their children to convert to Islam.Moroever,Muslims are also guided by such verses as Say: The truth is from your Lord;
so whosoever will, let him believe, and whosoever will, let him disbelieve. (al-Kahf ??:??); and Say: O disbelievers! I worship not that which ye worship; Nor worship ye that which I worship. And I shall not worship that which ye worship. Nor will ye worship that which I worship. Unto you your

6506. Jenerator - 10/19/2006 9:59:14 PM

Quran-8:12: I will instill terror into the hearts of the unbelievers: smite ye above their necks and smite all their finger-tips off them



Quran-8: 15,16: O ye who believe! when ye meet the Unbelievers in hostile array, never turn your backs to them. If any do turn his back to them on such a day - unless it be in a stratagem of war, or to retreat to a troop (of his own)- he draws on himself the wrath of Allah, and his abode is Hell,- an evil refuge (indeed

6507. Jenerator - 10/19/2006 10:00:43 PM

I'm not the one who's full of hate, Jex. The Koran is. You are a pagan to them. You are worthy of death because of your unbelief.

6508. jexster - 10/19/2006 10:00:58 PM

See above...


Take your filth to your tomb

Your own words damn you...

John 8:39-47They answered him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing what Abraham did, but now you are trying to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. You are indeed doing what your father does.” They said to him, “We are not illegitimate children; we have one father, God himself.” Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and now I am here. I did not come on my own, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot accept my word. You are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me.
Which of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? Whoever is from God hears the words of God. The reason you do not hear them is that you are not from God.”