Woodburydadd

Enter the Suburban Refugee

2005-01-20T14:07:00.000Z

It's been a long strange trip. But, incredibly, George W. Bush has been inaugurated for a second time promising that his higher power from beyond the stars will guide the nation.

And so, with that, Woodburydadd is moving and changing his name.

The new name, which requires a lot less explaining, is the Suburban Refugee.

Look for us now at www.suburbanrefugee.com and on Blogspot at suburbanrefugee.blogspot.com

"Power Beyond the Stars" says Iran is next

2005-01-20T13:09:00.000Z

While Americans were distracted by the pomp and circumstance of the inauguration the rest of the world was paying closer attention, and the message was loud and clear: How will the U.S. mark the two year anniversary of Bush's invasion and occupation of Iraq? Why by attacking its neighbor Iran, that's how.

Of course it's true, Bush never used the word "Iran" in his inaugural address. He just declared war on the rest of the world citing as his authority a power coming from "somewhere beyond the stars" and vowing to fight for those seeking freedom from the "rulers of outlaw regimes."

And Condi Rice, soon to be America's chief diplomat, only set the stage by saying, "It's really hard to find common ground with a government that thinks Israel should be extinguished," thus abandoning a diplomatic approach.

No, to really get the story you had to listen to The Angry Puppeteer himself, Dick Cheney. Just minutes before the inauguration hoopla began he warned right-wing talk radio listeners Iran has a "fairly robust new nuclear program," is a sponsor of terrorism against Americans, and ignores the rights of its citizens. (Gee, they've got WMD and they sponsor terrorism? On top of that they're nasty to their own people? No irony there.) Then he on to predict that a coalition of the U.S. and Israel Israel "might well decide to act first" militarily.

So there you have it, the "power beyond the stars" is Dick Cheney.

Scotsman News - War with Iran Not Ruled Out by Bush

Condi's Ghost of Christmas Past

2005-01-19T01:56:00.000Z

"The biggest regret is that we didn't stop 9/11. And then in the wake of 9/11, instead of redoubling what is our traditional export of hope and optimism we exported our fear and our anger. And presented a very intense and angry face to the world. I regret that a lot," said Richard Armitage, outgoing Deputy Secretary of State.

That's likely to be the last little bit of candor from the State Department for a while if Condoleezza Rice's "see-no-evil, hear-no-evil" analysis of the Bush administration at her confirmation hearings this week is any indicator.

The Australian - Reflections of a straight shooter

Iraq? Don't blame Bush. It's your fault. It's all your fault.

2005-01-17T13:33:00.000Z

It's official. You, as an American, are personally responsible for the mess in Iraq. The invasion, the occupation, the 100,000 dead civilians, the devastation, the hell that is daily life on the streets, the brutal political dictatorship ... it's all your fault.

According to George W. Bush he's not responsible, you are. And his proof is that you "re-elected" him last November.

"We had an accountability moment, and that's called the 2004 elections. The American people listened to different assessments made about what was taking place in Iraq, and they looked at the two candidates, and chose me."

Much as it pains Woodburydadd to admit it, George W. Bush is right, though not for the reasons he thinks.

The American people are responsible for the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq and all of the atrocities and war crimes that have accompanied it. What is more, polls continue to show that upwards of fifty percent of Americans support the occupation, which has included the targeting of doctors, the bombing of hospitals, the wholesale destruction of entire cities, the sadism of "our troops" as they execute wounded prisoners, rape male and female detainees, and use Iraqis as human shields, to name a few of the war crimes inflicted in Iraqi civilians every single day.

So later today, when you see one of those magnetic "Support Our Troops" ribbons on the car ahead of you, remember what it means. And tonight, when today's carnage in Iraq ranks only a brief mention on the nightly news, remember that it is all being done in your name.

Washington Post - Bush Says Election Ratified Iraq Policy (washingtonpost.com)

Destroying Buddhas and Babylon

2005-01-16T10:50:00.000Z

Remember a couple of years back when the evil-doers called the Taliban shocked the world by using the giant Buddhas of Bamiyan for artillery targets? The world protested in outrage, but the Taliban said they had to destroy the graven images because they were an affront to god.

The good news is that many of the other artifacts at the site in Afghanistan have been preserved and plans have been made to restore some of the damaged statues. Just in time, it turns out, for the archaeologists to beat it on over to Iraq where the U.S. military has been wantonly destroying the ancient city of Babylon.

In our case it's different, of course. We're not using the excuse of graven images and "god told me to do it." No, we're ripping up the place because of its strategic importance to the War on Terror and in order to bring the almighty's gifts of freedom and democracy to the locals.

Besides, we're big enough to apologize. According to a Pentagon spokesman, plans are being considered to move some of the military units in order "to better preserve the Babylon ruins. The significance of Babylon is not lost on the coalition. The site dates back to the time of Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon."

That's it. We're sensitive. Smart too. Besides, we're there to help. Somehow that makes it different when a U.S. soldier gouges out a decorated brick from the famous Ishtar Gate as a souvenir and then drives away in his tank crushing the 2,600-year-old brick pavement.

CBC News (Canada) - Mission secures Buddhas of Bamiyan site in Afghanistan
Guardian (UK) - Babylon wrecked by war

Norm Coleman's Strategy: Feign Horror at Petty Corruption and You Never Have to Say You're Sorry for All the Destruction

2005-01-15T01:54:00.000Z

Now that we have "officially" admitted what we've known all along, that there were never any Weapons of Mass Destruction, perhaps Minnesota's own Norm Coleman will be the first to admit that the economic sanctions were working and that U.S. paranoia regarding Saddam Hussein is responsible for the mess that was made of the oil-for-food program.

The original idea was simple: maintain economic sanctions on Iraq so that it can't re-build its military following the war in Kuwait. However, given the near certainty that sanctions would trigger unbearable suffering for the citizens of Iraq, the U.S. devised the oil-for-food program which would allow Iraq to sell a certain amount of its crude oil production in exchange for humanitarian goods, all subject to close review and scrutiny with the U.N. serving as the exchange banker for the transactions.

However, always suspicious of Saddam Hussein, the U.S. consistently used its veto power to block billions of dollars of humanitarian goods legitimately bought by Iraq under the oil-for-food agreement.

Then, fearing the worst from Hussein, the U.S. devised a new strategy: force oil buyers to commit to contracts where the price is set after the oil is sold. This insane process quickly brought oil sales to a halt, starving the oil-for-food program of money to the point that billions of dollars of humanitarian contracts could not be paid for by the U.N.

According to Scott Ritter (yes, that Scott Ritter, the former U.S. weapons inspector who first pointed out that there were never any Weapons of Mass Destruction):

The corruption evident in the oil-for-food program was real, but did not originate from within the United Nations, as Norm Coleman and others are charging. Its origins are in a morally corrupt policy of economic strangulation of Iraq implemented by the United States as part of an overall strategy of regime change. Since 1991, the United States had made it clear - through successive statements by James Baker, George W Bush and Madeleine Albright - that economic sanctions, linked to Iraq's disarmament obligation, would never be lifted even if Iraq fully complied and disarmed, until Saddam Hussein was removed from power. This policy remained unchanged for over a decade, during which time hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died as a result of these sanctions.

Look at Baghdad in 2002, after years of the food-for-oil program that Norm Coleman condemns as "corrupt." Emerging from near total economic ruin after the first war with the U.S., Baghdad was full of booming businesses, restaurants were full, and families walked freely along well-lit parks.

Now look at the day-to-day reality of Baghdad today where the city lies in ruins, there is electricity only a few hours a day, shortages of food and water abound, and most citizens spend their time running for their lives.

True, Saddam Hussein is gone, but whatever petty corruption there may have been in the oil-for-food program pales in comparison to the destruction the U.S. has rained on Iraq over the past two years.

Independent (UK) - The oil-for-food "scandal" is a cynical smokescreen

When will they come for you?

2005-01-11T15:27:00.000Z

Surprise! George W. Bush picked a loyal right-wing law enforcement officer to head the Department of Homeland Security. Michael Chertoff used to be a federal prosecutor before Bush appointed him as federal appeals court judge. Chertoff was also deeply involved in Federal prosecutions following 9/11 and a strong advocate for the elimination of civil liberties under Bush's Patriot Act.

So now the guy in charge of making all feel more secure at home is going to be a lawyer who has no qualms arresting and prosecuting those who disagree with the government. Meanwhile the Attorney General is likely to be the lawyer who advised Bush to go ahead and jail forever people when you don't have enough evidence to convict them and cannot manage to torture a confession out of them.

First Bush came for the terrorists, but since none of us were terrorists, we did not speak out. Then he came for the "enemy combatants," but since we didn't know any enemy combatants, we did not object. And even last summer, when they came for the protestors resisting "free speech zones" near Bush campaign rallies, we only voiced mild objection.

How long will it be before they come for someone we know, and then for the rest of us?

Associated Press - Bush Picks Ex-Prosecutor for Homeland Post

Faced with the Facts in the War on Victims of Medical Malpractice

2005-01-10T03:02:00.000Z

George W. Bush launched a new war, this one on victims of medical malpractice, in a speech in Madison County, IL, which was described as a "judicial hellhole" because of its alleged history of lopsided pro-plaintiff verdicts.

Problem is it's not true. Not a word of it.

Of 720 medical malpractice and wrongful death lawsuits filed from 1996 to 2003, only 14 cases - 1.9 percent - resulted in jury verdicts. Eight of those favored the defendant. And of the six verdicts favoring the plaintiff, only one exceeded the $250,000 cap that Bush has proposed.

As to Bush's hysterical claim that well meaning doctors are being driven from their practices by greedy plaintiffs and their lawyers: network executives at Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Illinois' largest health insurer, said that they are "not aware of any great flight of physicians because of the malpractice issues. We are basically about where we have been. Even anecdotally, [we are] not hearing any evidence of that."

Roanoke Times )VA) - So much for facts on tort reform

Delusions

2005-01-09T14:05:00.000Z

"We're making great progress," and the Iraqi election is "a historical marker for our Iraq policy," chirped George W. Bush, adding, without a hint of irony, "I suspect if you were asking me questions 18 months ago and I said there's going to be elections in Iraq, you would have had trouble containing yourself from laughing out loud at the president."

Bush acknowledged that in parts of four of Iraq's 18 provinces, "terrorists are trying to stop people from voting," failing to mention that one-half of the population of Iraq lives in those four provinces, and refusing to acknowledge that the insurgency is growing stronger, having just this week demonstrated that they have learned how to successfully attack and kill 50,000 pound Bradley armored vehicles.

Meanwhile Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter's national security advisor, said that the only chance the U.S. might have of meeting its goals of producing a reasonably stable Iraqi government would be "if we are willing to put in 500,000 troops, spend $200 billion a year, probably have the draft and have some kind of wartime taxation," adding that even then, far from the Jeffersonian democracy Mr. Bush extols, the most we can hope for is a Shiite-controlled theocracy.

Toward the end of the week, U.S. forces handed the insurgents another victory when they mistakenly dropped a 500 pound bomb on a private home. Residents said the U.S. attack killed 14 civilians. The Pentagon acknowledge its mistake, but said only five were killed.

Los Angeles Times - Bush Optimistic About Iraq Vote Despite Warnings

Our Newest Credibility Gap: Tsunami Warnings

2005-01-08T14:43:00.000Z

Did the U.S. have advanced warning of the tsunami hurtling toward the populated areas of the Indian Ocean and choose not to warn anyone? Were U.S. experiments in electromagnetic wave propagation responsible for the earthquake? Did a top secret U.S. nuclear weapon test trigger the movement of the tectonic plates?

Probably not.

While domestic media moves Americans deftly through the stages of grieving ... after this week's spate of hopeful survivor stories we seem to be well on our way to full reconciliation, just in time to shove the whole thing aside for the NFL playoffs ... international and alternative media have carried a rising tide of stories that the U.S. did not do all it could to warn those in the path of the tsunami.

But U.S. denials are being viewed with skepticism.

This is one of the costs of the Bush administration's years of deception and misinformation. From large to small, George W. Bush has pursued an aggressive policy of managing information to his own advantage and of misleading and lying when it furthers his own objectives:

lies about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein's imminent plan to attack the U.S., and Iraqi involvement in 9/11 have undermined trust in U.S. intelligence agencies and our government

the fictional account of soldier Jessica Lynch's bravery and the outright lies surrounding the "friendly fire" killing of NFL hero Pat Tillman have caused the world to question the valor of U.S. soldiers

last week's news that conservative talk-show host and commentator Armstrong Williams was paid by the Bush administration promote No Child Left Behind

George W. Bush's claim last summer that Fidel Castro "welcomes sex tourism"

last year's "surprise" increase in the cost of Bush's prescription drug program

the Pentagon spokesman last fall who told CNN that the invasion of Fallujah had begun when it would not begin for another three weeks

... the list just goes on an on.

Woodburydadd has a friend, raised in a small Midwestern town, whose mother always warned her, "Remember, in a small town the only thing you have is your reputation."

The United States of America would do well to remember that the world is a small town and that our reputation is the only thing we have. Given our track record, why wouldn't they believe that we had something to do with the tidal wave? Why would they trust anything we have to say?

Daily Times (Pakistan) - U.S. denies "foreknowledge" of Asian tsunami

Guardian (UK) - U.S. Island Base Given Warning

Dissident Voice (CA) - Tsunami Cover Up? NOAA and the Flood

Herald Tribune (FL) - Credibility at Stake: Eventually, misinformation is a disadvantage

Stirring the Pot

2005-01-07T16:42:00.000Z

U.S. military commanders declined to coordinate with local leaders in deployment of 10 Seahawk helicopters in Banda Aceh, and they flat out refused pleas from Major General Bambang Darmono, the commander of the military relief operation in Aceh, who was frantically trying to arrange for the use of aircraft to conduct damage assessment surveys in order to determine the needs of his people.

Then Father Chris Riley, who heads the Catholic charity Youth Off The Streets, arrived in Aceh and immediately announced plans to set up an orphanage to house some of the estimated 35,000 children with dead or missing parents.

Next Hilmy Bakar Almascaty, leader of the Islamic Defenders Front, warned that the orphanage should not try to convert Muslim children to Christianity and that Fr Riley ought to stick purely to humanitarian work in Aceh.

And now the Washington Times, featuring the word "al Qaeda" in its headline, warns readers that "an extremist Islamic group with links to al Qaeda has set up relief operations in Aceh province on Sumatra island, raising concerns that international relief workers will become terrorist targets as in Iraq."

There's pattern here. And it seems familiar.

The News (AU) - Religious tensions stir in Aceh

Washington Times (DC) - Group linked to al Qaeda starts 'relief' work in Aceh

A Quagmire by Any Other Name

2005-01-06T16:25:00.000Z

A significant division of the army is "rapidly degenerating into a broken force." If called upon, several divisions would have to report, "not ready for duty" (a condition, by the way, finally made a reality by George W. Bush several years after he falsely accused Democrats of having caused it). Paid mercenaries replacing brave volunteer citizen-soldiers.

What is going on here? Does this sound like a victorious nation about to magnanimously bestow the gifts of freedom and democracy on the vanquished? Or does this sounds like ... Dare we say it? ... a quagmire?

In a written warning to the Pentagon, the commander of the U.S. Army Reserve cited Army and Pentagon officials' refusal to deal with "dysfunctional" personnel policies for causing "the Army Reserve's inability ... to meet mission requirements associated with Operation Iraqi Freedom (Bush's War on Iraq) and Enduring Freedom (Bush's War on Afghanistan) and to reset and regenerate its forces for follow-on and future missions."

But it gets worse. George W. Bush's bungling of his War on Terror is actually undermining Homeland Security.

While that alone "is of great importance", the memo said, the Reserves are "in grave danger of being unable to meet other operational requirements", including emergency needs in the U.S. and abroad.

And, perhaps worst of all, the Bush administration's Orwellian policies of deploying reserves for indefinite periods of time and into situations never before imagined is converting the U.S. Army into a mercenary force.

Citing the Bush administration's plan to pay cash bonuses to those who re-enlist, he said, "We must consider the point at which we confuse 'volunteer to become an American soldier' with 'mercenary'. Use of pay to induce 'volunteerism' will cause the expectation of always receiving such financial incentives in future conflicts."

Sydney Morning Herald (AU) - U.S. Army Reserves a 'Broken Force' According to Top General

Relatively Generosity

2005-01-05T20:27:00.000Z

Dear President and Mrs. Bush:

Thank you so much for your personal contribution of (US)$10,000 toward tsunami relief.

Things are very bad here, as we are sure you are well aware, and so your gift will be put to use immediately helping those of us who have lost everything we have.

It is great to see the outpouring of generosity from all around the world and we hope one day to be able to return the favor in kind.

Sincerely,

The Tsunami Victims

Woodburydadd notes that, like the space-time continuum itself, the Bush's generosity is all relative:

The Bush's $10,000 contribution is about 15% of their total charitable contributions of $68,360 and about 1% of their annual income of $822,126 (according to their 2003 tax return).

Or, as a percentage of the Bush's wealth, it's about 0.08% of their $13,000,000 net worth (as estimated by the Los Angeles Times).

Capital News 9 (Washington, DC) - Bush gives $10,000 to quake relief

Worth a Thousand Words

2005-01-04T13:21:00.000Z

Enjoying his well-earned and care-free vacation at the beach.

Western beachcombers return.

Western toruists pitch in to help with the clean-up.

"Suspects"

2005-01-03T13:24:00.000Z

The Bush administration is preparing lifetime imprisonment for suspects whom they do not want to set free or turn over to courts in the United States, including the hundreds of people now in military and CIA custody whom the government does not have enough evidence to charge in courts. The administration is concerned that the government lacks sufficient evidence to convict these suspects in court even though they remain a danger to U.S. interests.

Let's be clear:

1) we grabbed them because we thought they were suspicious;

2) we don't have evidence to prove they are guilty of anything;

3) there's a danger that the courts would set the innocent free;

4) so we'll just keep them locked up forever.

However, those who are imprisoned for life may be the lucky ones. The administration is also expanding a policy of "rendition" under which the U.S. transfers captured suspects to other countries where they can be tortured and killed outside of U.S. law.

What country is this anyway? Maybe check Alexander Solzenytsin's Gulag Archipelago and compare notes. But watch your step! You wouldn't want to do anything that the Bush administration might view as "suspicious" ... like buying a book written by an insurgent.

Washington post - Long-Term Plan Sought For Terror Suspects

100,000 dead here, 100,000 dead there

2005-01-02T18:50:00.000Z

International relief agencies now report more than 100,000 have died as a result of last week's tsunami. Meanwhile the British journal Lancet estimates that at least that many Iraqis have been killed since the U.S. invaded Iraq.

100,000 dead here, 100,000 dead there: is there really any difference?

Sure, you say, Woodburydadd's about to take an obviously true but none-the-less cheap shot and point out that in one case they died as a result of an unanticipated natural disaster, while in the other they were killed as a result of a conscious decision by the U.S. to invade another country.

But is that all? Were the tsunami deaths unanticipated victims?

There's another dimension to this tragedy, one which we in the west seem to be trying our level best to avoid. We ought to consider this:How many permanent residents of the region were killed as a result of the economic system that forces them to live and work in the coastal areas?
Plenty of western tourists now seem to be making their way to the safety of their homes (after stopping to provide their "survivor stories" for the television cameras). We ought to consider why these foreigners were there in the first place ... and how that added to the scale of this tragedy.

Over the three decades since the U.S. retreat from its war on Vietnam, Southeast Asia has become a vacation mecca for all sorts of affluent tourists, most of them from the western hemisphere. Attracted by the five-star resorts and the lure of low prices including $3/night beach front bungalows, tourists triggered an economic boom and an entire economy developed that was centered in the coastal regions and focused on the tourism industry.

Inevitably, local citizens in droves uprooted entire families to move to the coastal regions in order to take jobs serving the tourists. Abandoning their traditional villages inland, breaking up extended families and social support systems, a generation migrated in search of a measure of economic security. And the western tourists, coming from their worlds of plenty, provided the momentum by happily partaking of the bargain prices in this paradise on earth.

Cultural geographers point out that beach front regions are usually not favorable for human settlements. The soil is generally bad and the water is likely to be salty. There are frequent storms and, occasionally, a tsunami. And so settlements, particularly in agrarian societies, tend to be a way back from the beach. Unless there is some additional catalyst to encourage settlement, population centers tend to develop a safe distance away from the beach ... and often the catalyst is an economic one.

In Thailand alone tourism was a $20 billion industry last year. Is it any wonder then that government seismologists on the island of Sumatra, near the epicenter of the earthquake that triggered the tsunami, decided that it would be best delay issuing a warning because, if they were wrong, a false alarm might harm the tourism industry.

But now the tourists have gone leaving behind the locals to pick through the ruins, the air polluted with the stench of rotting corpses, perhaps pausing to contemplate what they have in common with the west ... and with the people of Iraq.

The Lancet (UK) - Mortality Before and After the 2003 Invasion of Iraq

The Star (Malaysia) - Thai tourism to suffer as tourists flee devastated beaches

Whose Side is God on Anyway?

2005-01-01T13:50:00.000Z

"Democracy is a Greek word meaning the rule of the people, which means that the people do what they see fit. This concept is considered apostasy and defies the belief in one God, which is Muslims' doctrine." Democracy amounts to idolizing human beings and "anyone who accepts or takes part in this dirty farce will not be safe," according to a joint statement issued by three Sunni Muslim groups in Iraq.

Meanwhile the opposing Shiite Muslim leaders claim that voting in the Iraqi election is every Muslim's holy duty. Shiite Muslims, who make up 60 percent of the population, hope to use the vote to take power from the minority Sunni Muslims, who have controlled Iraq for decades.

In case you've lost your place: U.S. invaders support the Shiite Muslims and are hunting down and killing the Sunni Muslims (who were favored under Saddam Hussein's regime) in order to bring what George W. Bush has called "the Almighty's Gift of Democracy" to the long suffering people of Iraq.

History may well record was the concept of separation of church and state was the highest achievement of American democracy ... and that it took us a couple of centuries to prove it.

Star-Tribune (MN) - Democracy is un-Islamic, say extremists; vow to attack voters

2005: the year America learns the meaning of "A-nuff"

2004-12-31T23:06:00.000Z

There he was at last, standing in front of a banner emblazoned with the seal of the "Western White House - Crawford, Texas." We'd been wondering why we hadn't heard from George W. Bush. It had been days since the Tsunami struck and all we'd heard was that he was busy at his ranch clearing brush and riding his mountain bike ... and, we were reassured, "monitoring developments." Finally, here he was at last.

So what finally moved him to speak out? Was it the mounting death toll?

No.

Maybe the home videos graphically illustrating the violence with which the first wave crashed ashore?

Nope.

Perhaps the first aerial photos showing the extent of the devastation?

No, not that either.

Or the story of the retired American couple who held for dear life onto a tree until she could no longer hold on and lost her grip and then he let go too to be with her?

No, even that didn't move the leader of the free world to come forward.

What finally moved the diminutive POTUS to address the public was his annoyance at what he seemed to see as veiled criticism of his masculinity by Americans and the rest of the world as they complained about the inadequacy of his piker's pledge of financial support to help with Tsunami disaster recovery.

"Americans are a generous people. Last year alone the United States spent $2.4 billion for disaster relief alone," Bush said. Then, after pausing for emphasis, he repeated the number, this time syllable-by-syllable.

"Is that enough? I guess I'm not in a position to know," he concluded using his fingers to place quotation marks around the word "enough," however, still stuck in his syllable-by-syllable cadence, he slipped and pronounced it "A-nuff."

In the end, does it really matter that George W. Bush doesn't know when "enough is enough?"

In fact, in today's world, it does matter. And it ought to be a concern for each and every American, even the most conservative Red State residing Republicans who are now eagerly bashing as ingrates all who dare question America's largesse. Here is why:

According to research conducted by the Global Market Institute, foreign consumers in droves are turning against U.S. brands and companies. One third of all consumers in Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, and the United Kingdom said that U.S. foreign policy, particularly Bush's "war on terror" and the occupation of Iraq, were a real turn-off and that they were shying away from U.S. goods as a result. In fact, twenty percent of respondents in Europe and Canada said they consciously avoided buying U.S. products as a protest against those policies. Brands most closely identified with the U.S., such as Marlboro, America Online, McDonald's, American Airlines, and Exxon-Mobil are particularly at risk, but the trend is spreading. According to the Financial Times of London consumers in Europe and Asia are becoming increasingly resistant to having "brand America rammed down their throats."

So how about this scenario for 2005: What if the world concludes that U.S. Imperialism is actually the greatest threat to world peace. And what if they decide that a dramatically weakened U.S. would actually make the world a much safer place?

Of course they'd know that they wouldn't stand a chance directly challenging the largest and most violent military force ever assembled in human history. But recognizing that the value of the U.S. dollar is already at record lows and losing value each day, might they consider what would happen if they simply decided that they didn't want to buy U.S. stuff anymore?

What would happen in 2005 if the rest of the world finally said, "enough is enough?" Would that be "A-nuff" for Mr. Bush?

Global Market Institute (WA) - World Poll: Half of European Consumers Distrust American Companies

While nobody's watching

2004-12-30T11:23:00.000Z

It is happening again. The difference is, this time, nobody seems to notice, or even care. Of course the media, and most Americans, lost interest once John Kerry rushed to concede the day after election day.

"That settles that, right? Since we've got a looser, we must have a winner."

But in Ohio the battle rages on. Republican Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell (who also served as Chair of the Bush/Cheney campaign) has flat-out refused to appear at a deposition preceding a Supreme Court lawsuit. President George Bush, Vice-President Richard Cheney and White House Political Advisor Karl Rove have all received notice that they will be deposed this week. And thousands of sworn affidavits detailing election day fraud continue to pile up.

But nobody's watching. Nobody cares.

The last stop will come next week when members of Congress meet in Washington to evaluate and certify the Electoral College vote. Most of us were unaware of this required step until footage of the 2001 certification meeting appeared in Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 911.

Representative John Conyers (D-MI), says that numerous members of the Congressional Black Caucus will challenge the Electoral College vote, as they did in 2001. But according to the arcane rules of the Electoral College the assent of at least one U.S. Senator is required for the challenge to go forward. You'll recall that in 2001 no Senator came forward, and thus far none has for 2005 either.

But nobody will be watching, and nobody will care.

After that, what really happened in Ohio will be pretty much academic, won't it? No reason to be concerned that the shenanigans that swayed another U.S. presidential election might affect George W. Bush's credibility when, later in the month, he praises the election of the former exiled Iraqi freedom fighter Ahmad Chalabi ... oh no, wait, he's the crook isn't he? ... when he praises the election of U.S. appointed Prime Minister Ayad Allawi as the new leader of Iraq, then demands that all Iraqis lay down their weapons and brands those who don't as "terrorists."

Remember the logic here: As George always tells us, freedom and democracy are a gift from the almighty and George is only the humble conduit of god's plan. Lying, cheating, fraud, misrepresentation and theft? Those are not the qualities of a servant of the lord, and therefore George could not possibly have been involved.

What were you thinking anyway? Grow up, take it like a man. Peel off that Kerry/Edwards bumper sticker. Besides, it's time for the Super Bowl.

The Free Press (OH) - Ohio GOP Election Officials Ducking Subpoenas as Kerry Enters Stolen Vote Fray

The Incredible Power of God

2004-12-29T14:45:00.000Z

On Sunday morning god woke up and decided that it was time to re-arrange the continental plates. Seconds later the sea floor under the Indian Ocean jutted up some 50 feet and the entire island of Sumatra was shoved 100 feet to the northwest.

Within a couple of hours the Tsunami resulting from this act of god had crashed ashore and killed 100,000 or so unsuspecting human beings.

When some of the survivors were interviewed the next day they eagerly thanked god for sparing them.

Incredible.

U.S. Geological Survey - Magnitude 9.0: Off the West Coast of Northern Sumatra, 2004 December 26, 00:58:49 UTC

Scotsman (UK) - Relief Tinged with Sadness as Tourists Fly Home

Steinbeck's Libraries Closed

2004-12-28T13:25:00.000Z

John Steinbeck's hometown will close all of it's public libraries this summer in a cost cutting move in order to avoid raising taxes, making the blue-collar town of 150,000 the most populous U.S. city without a public library.

So now, if a citizen wants to read the Grapes of Wrath, or Cannery Row, or perhaps about life in Salinas as portrayed in East of Eden, he or she will just have to go to Barnes & Noble, or perhaps order it up from Amazon (except that the public access internet terminals at the library will be closed too).

It is not clear exactly where the John Steinbeck historical archives and the Steinbeck literature collection, which are a part of the public library, will go ... perhaps Ebay.

Chicago Sun-Times - Steinbeck's Hometown Closing Libraries

George Bush Learns the Lessons of History

2004-12-27T21:32:00.000Z

George W. Bush is managing his war on Iraq to have minimum impact on everyday Americans. In fact, he's succeeded in making this war nearly invisible to most of us.

As U.S. troops face the relentless violence in Iraq, each death and injury tears a hole in a small circle of family and friends. Meanwhile, for everyone else in America, the war is proceeding without a cost greater than a little unease and sorrow when watching the evening news.

Since the Civil War, Americans have raised taxes to fund all of the nation's wars, but when Congress returns next month, Bush's first priority will be making permanent the huge tax cuts he won during his first term.

And so we all proceed with our lives, perhaps pausing long enough to slap a "support the troops" magnet on the car, as though nothing is out of the ordinary ... as though we're not at war at all.

Apparently recognizing that the war on Vietnam was "lost on the homefront, not on the battlefield," Bush has devised an elegant strategy: keeping the war as far as possible from the citizens keeps them content and happy, generally oblivious to the carnage being carried out in their name, and effectively blunts serious internal opposition.

Who would have guessed that Bush is such a student of history. Seventy years before, recognizing that his country had lost World War I "on the homefront, not on the battlefield," the Chancellor of Germany used the same strategy to lead his people down the path toward World War II.

Los Angeles Times - Bush Sending the Wrong Message as Chaos Smolders in Iraq

Efficiently Prolonging the Horrors of War

2004-12-26T13:56:00.000Z

Only ten percent of soldiers injured in Iraq have died from their war wounds. That's the lowest casualty fatality rate ever. By contrast, 24 percent of soldiers wounded in the Vietnam War or the Persian Gulf War did not survive.

Technological advances and the deployment of surgical SWAT teams at the front lines have made this low death rate possible. Traveling in Humvees with hand-held ultrasound machines, portable ventilators, supplies of red blood cells and an array of surgical tools and pharmaceuticals, the teams focus on stabilizing patients and moving them for further treatment in less than two hours.

But the remarkable lifesaving rate is creating a generation of severely wounded young veterans. The combination of body armor and new systems of battlefield medical care makes it possible for the wounded to survive injuries that were unsurvivable before.

In the rush to George W. Bush's war on Iraq we've not yet focused on how to rehabilitate, physically and emotionally, a human being who has suffered this kind of damage, and who may well have to cope with living out a normal lifespan without legs or arms or sight.

It used to be that the number of deaths reflected the violence of a war but now that number more accurately measures the efficiency of surgical teams.

New England Journal of Medicine - Notes of a Surgeon: Casualties of War

New England Journal of Medicine - Caring for the Wounded in Iraq -- A Photo Essay

Pictures of Christmas

2004-12-25T14:02:00.000Z

Doing his best Wyatt Earp impersonation, George W. Bush says, "Y'all have a very merry Christmas now, y'ear?"

REUTERS/Mannie Garcia

In his Christmas Message released by the White House with a simultaneous greeting to "those observing Kwanzaa," George W. Bush said, "Christmastime reminds each of us that we have a duty to love our neighbor just as we would like to be loved ourselves."

Meanwhile, on the road between Samarra and Tikrit, a child was killed and three others wounded in a roadside bomb attack, and in Baghdad nine people died and 14 were seriously wounded when a butane truck, which was wired with explosives, blew up in the upscale Mansour district, which houses many foreign missions and is home to top Iraqi government officials.

The attacks occurred just as Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was wrapping up his surprise Christmas Eve visit during which he told the troops, "Once again, we've seen the truth that terrorists can attack at any time, at any place, using any tactic. It is physically impossible to defend in every place against every conceivable technique." Still, he continued, the U.S. soldiers were helping to replicate what he described as a "breathtaking" success in Afghanistan, concluding, "Maybe I should answer questions ... No, let's just sing 'Jingle Bells.' "

Aljazeera (Qatar) - Unrest sweeps Iraq

Bush Monkeys: The Immutable Power of Art Meets the New America

2004-12-24T13:12:00.000Z

At first it was just a little painting of George W. Bush on display as a part of an exhibition at New York's Chelsea Market. But then, after Bush supporters threatened to boycott the market, managers of the public space shut down the whole show.

The portrait, called Bush Monkeys, is the work of artist Chris Savido. From a distance, Bush Monkeys appears to be an unremarkable portrait of Bush, but upon closer examination, the 18 x 24 acrylic-on-canvas work proves to be a double image: Bush's face is actually made up of monkeys in a marsh.

This week the banned painting found a new home, projected on a giant billboard in Manhattan. In response to the censorship of the art show, anonymous donors paid to have the painting projected above the entrance to the Holland Tunnel, where it will be seen by roughly 400,000 commuters every day.

Savido says the painting is a reaction to Bush's blurring of the traditional separation of church and state in the U.S. "The chimps symbolize the shared biological ancestry of all humanity (including that of President Bush)." The artist plans to put the original painting up for sale on EBay with the proceeds going to buy body armor for U.S. troops in Iraq.

CBC News (Canada) - Banned Bush portrait finds new home

Bush Monkeys is the work of artist Chris Savido

It's sad when we lose a loss of life...

2004-12-23T14:03:00.000Z

"Any time of the year it's a time of sorrow and sadness when we lose a loss of life," stuttered George W. Bush.

(Don't blame Woodburydadd! That's an exact quote from the official White House press release, in which the Leader of the War on Terror goes on to say, "I'm confident democracy will prevail in Iraq. I know a free Iraq will lead to a more peaceful world. So we ask for God's blessings on all who are involved in that vital mission. Thank you very much. Have a good holiday*.")

Meanwhile, in Britain at least some of their leaders are willing to fess up to the public. "It will take 10 to 15 years at least [before troops can be fully withdrawn]. It is another Cyprus. The Iraqis just cannot cope with the security situation and won't be able to for years," said a senior member of the Commons Defence Select Committee (which was unable to visit Baghdad because the security situation was too dangerous).

Let's do a little math: Thus far the U.S. has had 1,321 killed and 9,844 wounded in George W. Bush's adventure in Iraq. Now, just using the averages (ignoring for the moment that the rate is increasing), that would mean we can expect 9,700 to 13,800 dead and somewhere between 72,000 103,000 wounded by the time this is over.

Using the same analysis the number of confirmed Iraqi dead would be in the range of 62,500 and 89,500.

Independent (UK) - Ten more years? Senior MPs warn British troops will be in Iraq for a decade, as Blair in Baghdad proclaims: 'We are not a nation of quitters'

* Christian leaders immediately announced a boycott of the Bush Administration in protest of George W. Bush's use of the politically correct term holiday instead of the preferred Merry Christmas. "The War against Christmas is a tactic of the new fascism: a culturally hedonistic barbarism, a sensual gluttony that Pope John Paul II has aptly entitled 'the culture of death.' "

(Just kidding. They didn't really announce a boycott of George W. Bush ... but the quotation from Tidings, the newspaper of the Catholic Los Angeles Archdiocese of Los Angeles, is real.)

The Ghosts of Abu Gharib

2004-12-22T13:00:00.000Z

from www.BushSpeaks.com

Hometown Hero: He's Only a Pawn in Their Game

2004-12-20T11:42:00.000Z

The story is powerful mythology:

The brave young soldier, gravely wounded trying to save the lives of his comrades during the Battle of Fallujah, orders military doctors to cut off his finger rather than destroy his wedding ring as they operate to save his life. "But that would mean destroying my wedding ring," he said. "My wife is the strongest woman I know. She's basically running two people's lives since I've been gone. I don't think I could ever repay her or show her how grateful ... how much I love my wife, my soul mate."

In a cruel twist of fate, during the chaos of the battlefield surgical hospital the ring is lost anyway. But just a month later, recuperating at home, Marine Lance Cpl. David Battle, gets a Christmas surprise when a local merchant replaces the ring and treats L/Cpl Battle and his young wife ... they were married just weeks before the Battle of Fallujah ... to a limousine ride and night in the Presidential Suite of a local hotel.

L/Cpl Battle ... who, it turns out, was a high school football star ... says "I always wanted to give something back to my country because the country has been so good to my mother and father," and then makes personal appearances at Toys for Tots fundraisers around town.

No one in the media, not even the foreign press, has done anything but take this story for granted. There isn't a reporter or editor willing question the story of the brave citizen soldier (high school football hero no less!) who was willing to make such a sacrifice.

No one has asked what kind of an unethical doctor would agree to amputate a finger to save a ring, even if the patient requested it, especially given that the patient was in shock and already anesthetized.

And no one is willing to ask about the convenient plot twist where the precious ring is lost. Perhaps misplacing the ring is understandable, but no one has wondered how the dramatic episode could make such an impression that someone took the time to make a record of the soldier's words of devotion to his young wife, and yet still misplaced the physical object that was at the point of it all.

Let's face it, this plot-line wouldn't hold up as the next Law and Order episode. Yet people who watch that show every week are buying L/Cpl Battle's story lock, stock, and barrel.

These are the things that ought to make citizens skeptical about what their government says, and especially about what it says at a time of war. Without taking away from L/Cpl Battle's personal integrity at all, this story has become a powerful piece of propaganda, and the young soldier merely a pawn in a much larger game.

And as propaganda this is a beauty. It is a plausible story that underscores the propagandist's message while discouraging rational examination. Somewhere there is a surgeon or a medical technician of some sort who knows what really happened in the operating room and where the ring went, but as the story grows it becomes less and less likely that he or she will ever come forward with the rest of the story.

There are three forces that demand stories like L/Cpl Battle's and continue to create them and use people like him for different purposes:

First, to convince soldiers to do the things they must do in battle requires deep psychological conditioning, something akin to brainwashing. Legends like the one about L/Cpl Battle are powerful tools to help coerce ordinary human beings to commit the inhuman acts that are commonplace in battle.

Second, another kind brainwashing on a mass scale is required to convince an entire society to accommodate and support war. We start with lies, preferably really big ones. Who can forget Condoleeza Rice's "mushroom cloud" comments? Then we bolster them with carefully constructed stories. Remember, early in the war, the story of Pvt Jessica Lynch who bravely fought the enemy when she innocently took a wrong turn into a bad neighborhood in Baghdad after dark and then had to be liberated in another act of valiantry from a hospital that the dark enemy had seized? And now we have L/Cpl David Battle (is his last name a mere coincidence?), gallantly sacrificing his finger for the love of his wife (a cynic might note that the sacrifice of life and limb for mere physical possessions is an even more appropriately American trait).

Third, and an obviously unpatriotic point of view, each time an individual in battle decides to pull the trigger he or she makes a moral judgment, one for which he or she pays moral consequences. They make that moral judgment each and every moment they are involved in war, which sooner or later causes them to become morally ambivalent (how else can you explain the torture of fellow human beings at Abu Gahrib?). One of the things that keeps these individuals from coming completely unglued when they get back home is the mythology that we build up with stories like the one about L/Cpl Battle.

No doubt L/Cpl Battle will quickly fade from the scene, as did Pvt Lynch. When she was interviewed recently Pvt Lynch was remarkably forthcoming and guileless. She freely admits that she has little memory of the events of that evening or the following weeks. She thinks the popular story could be true, and since she's been told the story over and over she thinks it might be true, but she does not really remember it that way ... all of the earmarks of successful propaganda.

A few months from now L/Cpl Battle will still be missing his finger and will still be living with the memories of the things he had to do in Fallujah, but the propaganda will have worked its magic and we still will not have asked the important questions about what really happened, and who put L/Cpl Battle in that awful position and why.

San Diego Union - SoCal Marine Who Sacrificed Finger for Ring Gets New Wedding Band

WIS-TV (SC) - SoCal Marine Sacrifices Finger for Wedding Ring

Evidence Gained Through Torture Justifies Secret Imprisonment by U.S.

2004-12-19T22:18:00.000Z

Does this sound like America, or some 1950s version of life behind the Iron Curtain? Secret "evidence" obtained by torture can be used to arrest and imprison you forever without anyone knowing about it.

According to Bush Administration policy, that's exactly what's happening now in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba: Evidence gained by torture is being used by the U.S. military to decide whether or not to imprison foreigners indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other secret prisons around the world.

The issue is the determination of whether or not the individual in question is an "enemy combatant," because enemy combatants, so the reasoning goes, are not entitled to the same rights and privileges as citizens of a foreign country.

So, the American approach to international justice is this: First we torture some poor fellow until he rats out his neighbor in order to make the torture stop. Then we grab the neighbor and throw him in jail forever without ever telling anyone.

According to the Bush Administration what makes this all okay is that torture is against U.S. policy and any allegations of torture are "forwarded through command channels for military discipline" (just like those at Abu Gharib, no doubt).

And, the rest of the world should rest assured that America is providing "due process" to these enemy combatants. The Bush Administration has set up "combatant status review tribunals" (after the Supreme Court forced them to in June), consisting of three colonels and lieutenant colonels that individually review each case.

Never mind that detainees cannot have lawyers at the combatant status review proceedings and cannot see any secret evidence against them, (reviewing the military's evidence for holding foreign detainees could have "practical and collateral consequences ... at a time of war" explains a helpful Pentagon lawyer), they are getting a fair hearing, believe us.

Thus far the panels have reviewed 440 of the prisoners and released only one.

Which, no doubt, just goes to prove that we were right to arrest these enemies in the first place.

Guardian Unlimited | World Latest | U.S. OKs Evidence Gained Through Torture

The Looser

2004-12-18T13:23:00.000Z

The CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the State Department have all warned President Bush that the United States and is loosing the war in Iraq.

Well, they didn't really say we are "loosing the war." What they said is we "aren't winning the battle against Iraqi insurgents," the people who are trying to derail Iraq's January 30 elections. Since they are the ones we "aren't winning" against, that would seem to mean that they must be "winning" in their efforts to stop the elections. I think.

Nevertheless, Bush Administration officials, who agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity because intelligence estimates are classified, said the battle in Iraq wasn't lost and that successful elections might yet be held next month even though the warnings - including one delivered to George W. Bush by CIA Director Porter Goss - indicated that U.S. forces hadn't been able to stop the insurgents' intimidation of Iraqi voters, candidates and others who want to participate in the elections.

Prediction: Under the barrels of U.S. guns some sort of election will take place in Iraq as scheduled on January 30. U.S. appointed dictator Iyad Allawi will be declared the landslide victor in "the first free elections in Iraq." Then anyone who is opposed will be called a "terrorist and enemy of freedom."

Bradenton Herald (FL) - U.S. losing Iraq Battle, Bush Told

Whistlin' Past the Graveyard

2004-12-17T13:26:00.000Z

Even with a fresh set of Bin Laden tapes and attempts to appoint a gangster bully to head Homeland Security, what should really be terrifying Americans is that our "allies" in Pakistan continue to run the world's largest illicit weapons bazaar, and that they do it with the full support of the Bush Administration.

"Senior investigators said they were especially worried that dangerous elements of the illicit network of manufacturers and suppliers remain undetected and capable of operations," the Los Angeles Times reported.

The weapons bazaar is run by Pakistan's top nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan who is currently under the protection of Pakistan's military dictator, President Pervez Musharraf, who pardoned Khan and refuses to allow foreign investigators to speak with him. What "officials call the world's worst case of nuclear proliferation" -- in which sophisticated nuclear technology was supplied to Libya, Iran and other rogue nations -- never would have been possible without the support of the Pakistani military, the Times reported.

Woah! Wait just a minute! The Pakistani military? The same organization that made Pakistan a dictatorship in a 1999 coup by installing General Pervez Musharraf as "President" followed by George W. Bush's decision to disregard international nonproliferation restraints and drop U.S. sanctions against Pakistan?

You mean to say that Pervez Musharraf who, Bush now lauds and accommodates at every turn, is the kingpin of weapons proliferation?

No, apparently he is our staunch ally in Bush's "war on terror." Some other guy is responsible for the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

Los Angeles Times - Robert Scheer: Ignoring a threat to keep an "ally"

Swift Boat Veteran Launches New Attack ... on Iran

2004-12-16T20:34:00.000Z

Jerome R. Corsi, the leader of the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" attack on John Kerry, is hard at work on his next political project: the U.S. invasion of Iran. Corsi believes a U.S.-Iran war could occur as soon as March, 2005.

"The world cannot tolerate the potential that these mad mullahs would have a deliverable nuclear weapon, even one, secretly developed," Corsi said. "They might just launch on Tel Aviv. The moment the world intelligence community becomes convinced that could happen, either the U.S. alone or the U.S. plus Israel or Israel alone will seriously contemplate a preemptive strike, and I'd be in favor of it."

Prior to organizing the Kerry attack, Corsi was a denizen of right-wing chat rooms, most spectacularly one called "Free Republic" where, among other things he wrote that Islam is "a worthless, dangerous Satanic religion," that "boy buggering in both Islam and Catholicism is okay with the Pope as long as it isn't reported by the liberal press," and that Muslims (whom he habitually refers to as "ragheads") "are Boy-Bumpers as clearly as they are Women-Haters -- it all goes together."

Corsi vows to use the same "successful tactics" that he employed in organizing the "Swift Boat" group. Given that none of the "Swift Boat Veterans" served with John Kerry and had no knowledge of Kerry's performance in battle, and given the fact that Corsi himself never even served in the military, it must be that he intends to tell big whopping public lies in pursuit of his new goal.

WorldNetDaily (US) - Iran Needs to Get Serious: Bush Isn't Buying Nukes Lie

Two Types of Duds

2004-12-15T13:07:00.000Z

There are two kinds of "duds," as anyone who has set off fireworks will tell you. The first is relatively benign. It just doesn't go off. The second is much more dangerous. It does nothing when it is supposed to and then, unpredictably, it goes off, often taking your hand or your eyesight or sometimes your life with it.

The latest test of George W. Bush's version of the Star Wars anti-missile defense system was a dud of the first sort. It couldn't even muster the right stuff to blow-up on the launch pad. It just sat there and refused to do anything.

The intrepid Senator John Kyl, Republican of Arizona and a strong advocate of the program, said "one bum test" would not alter support for it. The Senator appears unaware that, having already spent more than $80 billion on the project, it has yet to have even one successful test.

And, of course, "The president remains firmly committed to moving forward on missile defense," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. "It's important that we move forward on this because the president's top responsibility is to do everything he can to protect the American people."

Sure. Do everything he can ... to protect the American people ... like spending billions more on a missile system that will only provoke our enemies while doing absolutely nothing to protect us instead of providing equipment to the troops in Iraq and firing Donald Rumsfeld, a dud of the second kind whose incompetence on a daily basis is costing hands and eyes and lives.

New York Times - Defense Missile for U.S. System Fails to Launch

A History of Torture

2004-12-14T13:37:00.000Z

Thirty years ago the U.S. overthrew Salvador Allende, the democratically elected President of Chile. Allende happened to be an avowed socialist and was a perennial pain in the side for the U.S. Not only was he another socialist leader in our hemisphere (Cuba was the first and there was that whole domino theory to worry about), but Allende was elected, making him an obvious abomination of the democratic process. Who, after all, would vote for a socialist?!

So, Allende he had to go in the name of U.S. enforced freedom for the long suffering Chileans.

Then the U.S. installed General Augusto Pinochet as as dictator of Chile. With strong support from the U.S., Pinochet immediately declared martial law and relied heavily on his own military police to bring order to the country.

Now an independent investigative commission has concluded that during his bloody 17-year rule Pinochet tortured 27,255 of his own people, at least 3,400 of whom were women, most of them sexually abused, and 88 of whom were under the age of 12.

But at least he wasn't a socialist, and that's why he was our guy.

And besides, this was no Abu Gharib or Guantanamo. There isn't a shred of evidence that the U.S. was involved in the torture of Chileans.

The only thing we might be accused of is standing by and watching while torture happened.

Hey, wait a minute...

Knight Ridder (Washington) - Chilean torture victims demand compensation, prosecution

"An Iraqi Hitler"

2004-12-13T03:22:00.000Z

Iraqi President Ghazi Yawar seems a little worried about the U.S. occupation of his country. "This could in the long term create an environment in which an Iraqi Hitler could emerge like the one created by the defeat of Germany and the humiliation of Germans in World War I," Yawar told the London-based Asharq al-Awsat newspaper.

What has George W. Bush wrought?

Reuters - "Iraqi Hitler" may emerge from unrest - Iraq president

"Less Lethal, More Traumatic" or Johnny Got His Gun Redux

2004-12-12T13:39:00.000Z

The flap over Donald Rumsfeld being too cheap to buy enough armor may well have been another smoke screen providing cover for much more serious developments last week.

First there was the mysteriously shrinking number of U.S. casualties in Iraq. Did you notice? Now that we're told only about the number of "combat deaths," the total stands at modest "about 1,000."

But only a few weeks ago, before we limited the count to those killed "in combat" the total was 1,276 U.S. fatalities and 9,556 wounded. (Of course we've never reported the 14,619 confirmed Iraqi dead and we completely ignored the estimate in the journal The Lancet of more than 100,000 dead.)

But the real news should have been the stories behind the "good news" about the high "survival rates" of U.S. wounded ... good news in that at least they aren't dead ... good news only if you never, ever think about the lives that lie ahead for these young sons and daughters.

"This is unprecedented. People who lose not just one but two or three extremities are people who just have not survived in the past," said Dr. Atul Gawande, a surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston who researched military medicine and wrote about it in the New England Journal of Medicine. The journal also published a five-page spread of 21 military photographs that graphically depict the horrific injuries and conditions under which these modern-day MASH surgeons operate.

We thought a lot about it," said the journal's editor, Dr. Jeffrey Drazen, and ultimately decided the pictures told an important story. "This war is producing unique injuries - less lethal but more traumatic," he said. In one traumatic case, Gawande tells of an airman who lost both legs, his right hand and part of his face. "How he and others like him will be able to live and function remains an open question," Gawande writes.

For Christmas, Woodburydadd wants each of you to have a copy of Dalton Trumbo's novel Johnny Got His Gun. And if you're not likely to read the whole thing there's his film version which, sadly most Americans never saw except as a clip in a Metallica video entitled One.*

Los Angeles Times - Army Doctors Scrambling, Report Says

San Diego Union - U.S. Medical Advances May Mask Wars' Human Cost

*Dalton Trumbo was an American who wrote Johnny Got His Gun in 1939 just before Hitler invaded Poland. The novel's strong anti-war message offended many Americans at a time of war and enraged J. Edgar Hoover who launched an FBI investigation of the author that ultimately led to Trumbo's persecution by Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s. After twenty years of effort Trumbo finally managed to produce a film version which opened to critical acclaim in 1971 ... but U.S. studios refused to distribute the film, and so it played to only a few limited audiences in this country. The heavy metal band Metallica used clips from the film in their music video One. (BTW: Even though most of the rest of the world can view Johnny Got His Gun on DVD, there has never been a U.S. encoded version of the film. You'll have to settle for VHS.)

Buying Elections, All Over the World

2004-12-11T13:14:00.000Z

The Bush administration spent more than $65 million in Ukraine trying to get opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko elected, even bringing Yushchenko to meet U.S. leaders and helping to underwrite exit polls indicating he won last month's disputed runoff election.

Administration officials deny Russian President Vladimir Putin's accusations that the U.S. interfered in Ukraine's election, but admit that the U.S. spends more than $1 billion each year on such activities, "trying to build democracy worldwide."

In Ukraine the money helped train groups and individuals opposed to the Russian-backed government candidate -- people who now call themselves part of the Orange revolution, the political party of Viktor Yushchenko. Most of the U.S. money is clandestinely funneled through organizations like the Eurasia Foundation or through groups ostensibly organized to provide election training, with human rights forums or with independent news outlets.

Remember the howls of indignation over "foreign influence" when John Kerry asserted that most Europeans would rather see him as President?

Would $1 billion have helped ensure that there were enough polling places and voting machines in Ohio and Florida and elsewhere in this country so that thousands of voters would not have been disenfranchised?

Isn't it ironic that George W. Bush believes so fervently in democracy that he's driven to bring elections at the point of a gun to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, but he doesn't trust the people to make the right decision in Ukraine?

Hey, wait a minute ... do you mean to say that political contributions might be used to distort the will of the people? Well, maybe over there, but certainly never here.

The Day (CT) - U.S. Money Helped Groups That Joined Opposition In Ukraine

Bush Announces Censorship Plan

2004-12-10T13:19:00.000Z

Under orders from the Bush administration the Treasury Department has issued regulations barring American companies from publishing works by dissident writers in certain countries unless they first obtain approval of the U.S. government.

So forget about reading anything written by someone from Iran, Sudan, Cuba, North Korea or, until recently, Iraq, unless it is first censored by the Bush administration.

And don't even think about breaking this law. Violators will suffer severe consequences -- publishing houses can be fined $1 million and individual violators face up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

The Bush administration would only say that the sanctions are "a very important part of our overall national security."

In other news: George W. Bush announced that John Snow will remain as Secretary of Treasury where his responsibility includes the Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) which is the agency that enforces the Bush administration's censorship of foreign dissidents.

The Times-News (ID) - U.S. Government Moves to Muzzle Dissident Voices

Who's Zoomin' Who?

2004-12-09T01:37:00.000Z

"Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles," the soldier asked the Secretary of Defense.

"You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want to have. The Army is pressing ahead to produce the armor necessary at a rate that they believe is the rate that is all that can be accomplished at this moment," answered Donald Rumsfeld.

Hours later a Pentagon spokesman issued a statement that, to his knowledge, "every vehicle going into Iraq from Kuwait has at least 'Level 3' armor." What he failed to mention is that "Level 3 armor" means "armor locally fabricated for the vehicles' side panels." In other words, scrap metal strapped onto the sides ... just like the G.I. said. No bulletproof glass or armor against explosions under the floorboard, just some junk in the doors. About as safe as a good sized Chevy Blazer.

However, neither Rumsfeld nor the Pentagon offered any comment on the Marine who testified to a Canadian immigration court that the U.S. military regularly "murdered" civilians in Iraq and that he and his fellow marines shot and killed more than 30 unarmed men, women and children and even shot a young Iraqi who got out of his car with his arms in the air. "We killed the man. We fired at a cyclic rate of 500 bullets per vehicle. The company gunnery sergeant came running over and began yelling, 'You just shot a guy with his hands up.' "

None of the Iraqis they shot had suicide bombing materials in their vehicles, so why were they shot? "We were told to consider all Arabs as potential terrorists ... to foster an attitude of hatred that gets your blood boiling."

So lets see. We trump up some charges and send soldiers to invade a foreign country telling them that everyone there is a potential terrorist and deserves to die but we neglect to provide them the means to protect themselves. Who's zoomin' who?

The Globe and Mail (UK) - Killed Unarmed Iraqis, Marine Tells Hearing

A Special Request from Michael Moore

2004-12-08T01:09:00.000Z

Subject: People's Choice Awards Nominates "Fahrenheit 9/11" as "Favorite Film of the Year"
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004

Dear Friends,

May I take a break from our post-election despair to share with you a little piece of happy/silly/cool news?

"Fahrenheit 9/11" has been nominated by the People's Choice Awards as the American public's "Favorite Film of the Year." The five nominees were chosen from a poll of thousands of Americans in mid-to-late November. The other nominees for best film are "Spiderman 2," "The Incredibles," "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" (with Jim Carrey), and "Shrek 2." It is the first time ever a documentary has been nominated for best film by the People's Choice Awards.

The People's Choice Awards are considered, among all the awards shows, to be the one which most accurately reflects the "mainstream" public opinion in the United States.

OK, now, here's the best part: YOU get to vote! Online. Now. Just go to http://www.pcavote.com/voting/film/f01.shtml, click on the little circle next to "Fahrenheit 9/11" in the "Favorite Movie" category and press the "vote" button. Voting is going on now and continues only through this coming Monday, December 13, at 3:00pm ET, so send an e-mail to your friends and let them know they can vote, too. Winners will accept their awards live on CBS on January 9.

Now, normally I wouldn't make a very big deal out of something like this. It's nice and I'm honored, but it's not exactly the number one priority on any of our minds these days. In fact, when we found out we were nominated over a week ago, I didn't even think to tell you about it or put it up on our website.

But then a group of top Republicans took out a full page ad in USA Today (and placed a similar one in the Hollywood trade magazine, Variety) proclaiming that "An election is over, but a war of ideas continues." The point of the ad was to say that while they, as right wing conservatives, were proud of getting rid of Kerry, there was still one more nuisance running around loose they had to deal with -- me! They also issued a not-so-subtle threat to the Academy Awards voters that, in essence, said don't even THINK about nominating "Fahrenheit 9/11" for Best Picture. And Bill O'Reilly recently bellowed that if the Oscars recognize my work this year, Middle America will boycott Hollywood.

Oops. I guess he spoke too soon. Because now along comes Middle America's favorite awards show, the People's Choice, and the People's Choice this year, along with a Spiderman superhero and a lovable green ogre, is a film that apparently continues to resonate throughout the country. The truth about Iraq, Bush, terror and fear. The election has not altered or made irrelevant, unfortunately, a single one of these issues. That they (and the film that dealt with these issues) are still at the forefront of the majority of the public's minds should give serious pause to Mr. Bush as he brags about a nonexistent "mandate" and begins to spend his "political capital."

He may have been (barely) the people's choice on November 2 (Ohio recount excluded), but now the people get to vote again, this time for a movie. It's about the best we can do right now, and, trust me, it won't be long before we start the real work we need to do to get our country back.

Again, go to http://www.pcavote.com/voting/film/f01.shtml if you want to vote for our film. I promise, if we win, to give a nice and polite speech.

Yours,

Michael Moore
www.michaelmoore.com
mmflint@aol.com

P.S. Please feel free to post or forward this to your friends...
P.P.S. Yes, it's true, I'm on the Barbara Walters people of the year special tonight. Did I cry? You'll have to watch to find out! :-)

"Absolutely less safe," but "It takes a while..."

2004-12-07T13:06:00.000Z

General Pervez Musharraf, the president of Pakistan says that the world is "absolutely less safe" as a result of the war on terror, and he knows why:

"We are not addressing the core problems, so therefore we can never address terrorism in its totality. We are fighting terrorism in its immediate context, but we are not fighting it in its strategic, long-term context. It is the political disputes and also the issues of illiteracy and poverty, combined these are breeding grounds of extremism and terrorism."

However, U.S. President George W. Bush cannot understand why everyone's so anxious. After all:

the voting scheduled for Iraq on Jan. 30 will "send the clear message to the people in Iraq that are trying to stop the march toward democracy that they cannot stop elections. People must understand that democracy just doesn't happen overnight. It takes a while for democracy to take hold. And this is a major first step in a society which enables people to express their beliefs and their opinions."

That same day in Iraq:

An attack at dawn ruptured a domestic oil pipeline supplying fuel from northern Iraq to Baghdad.

A gunfight broke out on central Baghdad's Haifa Street in the ultra secure "Green Zone," home to the country's most fortified facilities including the U.S. Embassy and interim Iraqi government headquarters and where American and Iraqi forces protect government officials, diplomats and private contractors. Witnesses said the gunmen killed an Iraqi employed by coalition authorities. The dead man was the 80th coalition employee killed in the neighborhood in a month.

Five more American soldiers were killed in the volatile Anbar province.

Other clashes killed three militants in the country's turbulent west.

And the elections George W. Bush praises are six weeks away.

Meanwhile, in Saudi Arabia, al Qaeda (Remember them? They are group responsible for the 9/11 attacks on America. You know, the ones who never had any ties to Iraq?) carried out a successful attack on the U.S. Consulate in the Red Sea port of Jeddah that left eight people dead, saying that the attackers stormed the U.S. Consulate because it is "one of the bastions of the crusaders in the Arabian Peninsula."

Ever on message, the intrepid George W. Bush summed the day up this way:

"The attacks in Saudi Arabia remind us that the terrorists are still on the move. They're interested in affecting the will of free countries. They want us to leave Saudi Arabia. They want us to leave Iraq. And that's why these elections in Iraq are very important."

Besides, if we can just keep the people focused on elections then maybe they won't have time to worry about "illiteracy and poverty," the "breeding grounds of extremism and terrorism," because if they ever did become literate and enjoy a measure of economic justice, who knows what they might demand next?

Guardian (UK) - Musharraf: al-Qaida is on the run

New York Times - 2 C.I.A. Reports Offer Warnings on Iraq's Path

Keeping the Cream of the Crop

2004-12-04T14:34:00.000Z

The fix is in. The man responsible for more than 1,250 U.S. soldiers dead, the one who has admitted torture in Iraq and Guantanamo, the guy who has drafted thousands of reservists and sent overseas indefinitely, the fellow who has spent an enormous increase in military spending, will remain as U.S. Secretary of Defense.

(Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden continues to issue threats whenever he pleases and "insurgents" (who include growing numbers of regular Iraqi citizens fighting an invading army) move with impunity inside the "Green Zone" setting off bombs whenever they choose and capture and kill foreign aid workers.)

Nevertheless, George W. Bush thinks Donald Rumsfeld is "the right person at this moment in our history in fighting the war on terror to lead our armed forces," according to the White House.

That would be a lot easier to accept if Americans were really any safer because of Rumsfeld's efforts, but on the same day as Bush pledged his support for the old man, Tommy Thompson, the Health and Human Services Secretary, confirmed what we all know: we're a lot less safe than ever before, "For the life of me, I cannot understand why the terrorists have not attacked our food supply because it is so easy to do. We are importing a lot of food from the Middle East, and it would be easy to tamper with that," Thompson said. (Gee, thanks for the suggestion Tommy. Even though professional terrorists probably already thought of it, I'll bet there's a domestic psycho or two taking notes.)

At least Thompson had the decency to resign.

Guardian (UK) Thompson to Leave Cabinet, Rumsfeld Stays

Immaculate Conception - The Facts of Life

2004-12-03T13:14:00.000Z

"Can a people that believes more fervently in the Virgin Birth than in evolution still be called an Enlightened nation?"

Garry Wills, a professor of history at Northwestern University posed that question in a New York Times column. A day or two later Jefferson Reid, a professor of anthropology at the University of Arizona, cited the Wills article as a part of a class lecture.

Then all hell broke loose. Outraged parents called the University offended that Professor Reid would denigrate their religious beliefs by comparing the myth of the virgin birth to evolution. Eventually Professor Reid decided it would be best to deliver an apology to his class.

So much for academic freedom and the open discussion ideas on a university campus.

Of course, a virgin birth is probably not much of a stretch for people that already believe in a personified god who can bring the dead back to life, part the seas, walk on water, and feed the masses with only one small basket of fishes and loaves.

However, the notion of a virgin birth, even if it was just one time, does raise a tricky question for the Christian zealots who are trying to force "abstinence only" education into our schools: How can you say that "abstinence is the only 100% effective means of contraception?"

Arizona Daily Wildcat - Anthro Prof 'Explains' Mention of Evolution

Dying for what?

2004-12-02T16:29:00.000Z

This question is going to be very unpopular, but with U.S. losses now standing at 1,258 killed and 4,503 wounded, and Iraqi casualties standing at a minimum of 14,591 (some international relief agencies put the total at 100,000), it's high time to ask:

Why are Americans dying in Iraq?

"Our soldiers are fighting to defend our country and our freedom and to make it safe for Americans to live securely in the greatest democracy the world has ever known." Right?

Not so fast. "Defending our country," which would include sensible activities like guarding our borders and protecting us from invaders, does not explain why our children are killing and being killed today in Iraq. The fact is the U.S. has only been invaded twice, by Great Britain in 1812 and by Mexico in 1846. Other than these two cases, no member of the U.S. military has ever fought or died to repel a foreign invader.

(Apparently our best military minds didn't consider invasion much of a threat either, given the fact that up until 9/11 there were only 12 "ground-based" Air National Guard jets to guard the entire country against invaders. In fact, they must not consider invasion much of a threat even now, given the Pentagon's conniving to prevent the intelligence bill from coming to a vote in Congress.)

The truth is, U.S. troops are hardly ever called upon to "defend our country." Of the approximately 250 deployments of U.S. armed forces since 1798, the majority have been preemptive actions against possible future threats, or wars of aggression waged to advance American interests.

The indisputable facts are: Iraq had no plans to attack the U.S., Iraq did not possess weapons that could threaten the U.S., and Iraq had no connection with those who attacked the U.S.

So if Americans in Iraq are not "defending our country," what are they doing there? Could it be retribution and vengeance? We all should hope not if only because sacrificing the life of your child for "retribution and vengeance" just doesn't have the same proud ring of patriotism and honor "defending her country."

Ted Rall (US) -- They Fight and Die, But Not for Their Country

Faith-based Hell

2004-12-01T16:18:00.000Z

Blithely ignoring the legitimate protests of his hosts, George W. Bush joked his way past serious issues, "I appreciate the Canadian people who came out to wave - with all five fingers (snick, snick, snick)."

Then he turned around and gave the finger to his many critics around the world, "I haven't seen the polls you look at, but we just had a poll in our country, where people decided that the foreign policy of the Bush administration ought to be - stay in place for four more years."

In other words: "Bush to the world (and everyone else): 'Bite me.!'"

Why, oh why does the President of the United States of America insist on behaving this way?

It's because he views the world from a faith-based perspective. And that's precisely why government should never, ever, operate from a faith-based orientation.

People of faith see no need whatsoever to present reasons or empirical evidence to back up their positions. In fact, they see no point in entertaining discussion at all. Either you accept the faith or not, but there is no reason or basis for discussion or debate. Of course, this faith-based outlook also removes any opportunity to learn or to grow (and alleviates any need to ever admit that you made mistakes in the past).

A faith based world is one of clear black and white choices: "You're either with us or you're with the terrorists;" "No abortions, no exceptions;" and on an on.

Thank goodness the real world, the one in which we all live, is one with a wonderful and infinite variety of shades of gray. Indeed, it has been said that only an insane person would live in a world of black and white.

George W. Bush clearly governs from a faith-based perspective. He has no doubt that he stands for good and morality and he readily concludes that therefore those who disagree with him are not just loyal opposition, but that they must somehow stand for evil and immorality.

The world is a much more dangerous and instable place today because George W. Bush possesses weapons of mass destruction and has proven his willingness to use the largest and most violent military establishment in the history of humankind to pursue his faith-based view of the world.

Ironic, isn't it? The threat of a madman in posession of weapons of mass destruction is the excuse George Bush used to invade and occupy Iraq. Now watch as America eagerly pursues George Bush's next target.

South Australia Advertiser Canada's frosty welcome for Bush

The hearts and Minds of North Americans: Win a Few, Loose a Few

2004-11-30T13:38:00.000Z

Today George W. Bush makes his first foray into Canada, with the aim of smoothing relations damaged by the war in Iraq and trade disputes over Canadian beef and softwood lumber. Even though he's occupied the Office of the President for nearly four years now, this is his first trip to Canada, his country's largest trading partner which shares its longest international border.

In light of Bush's blustering ugly-American show in Chile, we have an idea of what to expect. Ottawa's airspace has been closed as police helicopters patrol the skies and a number of main streets will be blocked off as the heavily armored Bush motorcade speeds through the city. Many businesses are simply shutting down and giving their employees a day off. Thousands of anti-Bush protests are expected in a number of Canadian cities, including Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, Vancouver and Halifax, where demonstrators will picket near Bush's speech on the city's waterfront.

As we all know, it's hard work being the leader of the free world ... especially when so few are willing to follow.

Nevertheless the resolute Bush can be expected to make a patriotic speech thanking Canadians for their commitment to the war on terror (700 troops in Afghanistan (but none in Iraq) and allowing U.S. passenger planes to land in Nova Scotia after U.S. airspace was closed on September 11), but more substantive discussions on difficult issues (ordering the U.S. borders closed to Canadian beef which has cost Canadian ranchers $5 billion and boosted profits for Texas cattlemen, accusing Canadian lumber companies of dumping lumber in the U.S. even though the World Trade Organization has consistently ruled in favor of Canada) will take place behind closed doors.

No doubt Bush, and most Americans, missed what turned out to be a remarkable bit of television last night on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation program "The National" (carried on C-SPAN stateside where you might find a re-run of the 11/29/04 program) which featured a segment where U.S. citizens who've decided to move to Canada spoke directly with Bush supporters who are, of course, staying the course. What was remarkable was not the jingoist attitude of the loyal Americans, vintage "love it or leave it" stuff, but rather the utter disbelief on the part of the Bush supporters. They simply could not fathom that there might be anything "wrong" with the direction America has taken (eerily reminiscent of their leader's inability to recall any mistakes he's made) and were completely dumbfounded as to why anyone, especially an American citizen, would actually believe that America is a threat to world peace.

CBC (Canada) - Security, trade on agenda for Bush visit

A Cold Dark Place

2004-11-29T13:13:00.000Z

The Bush administration has long made clear America's position on the environment: God put it here for us to exploit. In fact, god expects us to exploit the environment for his glory. And, besides, since the end-times are nigh, we won't be around long enough to suffer any nasty consequences ... like when a continent sized chunk of ice breaks off of the polar ice cap and causes sea levels to rise to catastrophic heights overnight.

And now, thanks to the sponsorship of the U.S. petroleum industry, the Bush administration will soon be able to tout a "scientific" study concluding that global warming is actually good for human beings.

(As a side note, apparently most Britons agree with Americans: we're all for the environment, but not if it means sacrificing uncontrolled growth in our economy or our right to spend each and every day burning 7% of the world's output of oil in our cars.)

The Observer (London) - Greenhouse Effect "may benefit man" Claims by pro-Bush think-tank outrage eco-groups

Eyewitness to Life in Wartime

2004-11-28T14:44:00.000Z

According to reports from eyewitnesses in the streets of Fallujah, U.S. troops committed all manner of atrocities including opening fire on Iraqi citizens who were carrying white flags and attempting to surrender, running over the wounded with tanks, and dumping bodies into the river.

Of course, the sources of these reports are not considered to be credible. They are not embedded reporters working alongside U.S. forces and the Pentagon has refused to release any official reports and the city remains closed to outside observers or international relief organizations.

We have no way of really knowing what is going on in Fallujah. We can only guess. We might simply accept at face value the mainstream media stories of American valor. But then there are the puzzling stories like the two below ... and there was that video of U.S. soldiers executing a wounded Iraqi in a mosque ... and a few months back we were shocked by those photos from the prison at Abu Gharib showing torture that was first denied and then admitted by the Pentagon (and, it turns out, sanctioned by Attorney General nominee Alberto Gonzales).

Fortunately we can get a glimpse of what life is like in Fallujah through independent reports like the blog of Kevin Sites (the photographer who caught the execution shooting on video) and the dispatches of Dahr Jamail, an independent U.S. correspondent in Iraq.

However, even though we could learn about the horrors we are inflicting on the people ever day, it's a lot easier to stop with the published reports that the Iraq will hold free elections, as scheduled, in January.

Twenty years ago Jackson Browne wrote:

On the radio talk shows and the T.V.,
You hear one thing again and again,
How the U.S.A. stands for freedom,
And we come to the aid of a friend.
But who are the ones that we call our friends--
These governments killing their own?
Or the people who finally can't take any more,
And they pick up a gun or a brick or a stone.

There are lives in the balance,
There are people under fire.
There are children at the cannons,
And there is blood on the wire.

And it hasn't really changed much.

Inter Press Service (Italy) - "Unusual Weapons" Used in Fallujah

Bay View (CA) - Fallujah refugees: "Old ladies with white flags were killed by the Americans!"

U.S. Supports the Continued Use of Landmines

2004-11-27T14:16:00.000Z

The rest of the world might conclude that we Americans believe that blowing up Army trucks and tanks is bad but blowing up human beings, including thousands of children and other civilians each year, is okay.

U.S. troops in Iraq have suffered at the hands of insurgents using so-called "Improvised Explosive Devices" (essentially, home made land mines) to blow up Humvees, trucks and other military vehicles killing and wounding hundreds of U.S. soldiers. And so it's understandable that the U.S. has urged the international community to ban all sales of antitank and other heavy landmines.

But why is the U.S. is refusing to participate in an international effort to eliminate mines designed to hurt primarily people?

More than 140 nations have signed on to the accord, which bans the manufacture, sale, and use of anti-personnel mines. But the U.S. has refused to endorse the ban on landmines that kill and maim between 15,000 and 20,000 people around the world every year.

Dismissing the international effort, Deputy State Department Spokesman Adam Ereli said, "Eliminating civilian landmine casualties requires a comprehensive approach addressing landmines of every type that remain hazardous after a conflict has ended, including the larger antivehicle landmines that are not covered by the Ottawa Convention."

In an extreme example of doublespeak, Assistant Secretary of State Lincoln Bloomfield said that the U.S. was a "strong partner" in trying to prevent humanitarian tragedies caused by landmines, but affirmed U.S. decision to stay out of the convention because the Pentagon deems it necessary to have landmines at its disposal "either to save U.S. forces in the field or to save allied forces or to save a population that we are protecting."

And the whole world is watching.

Manila Times - U.S. won't attend international conference on land mines

Coming Soon: Tanks in the Streets of Your Hometown

2004-11-26T14:19:00.000Z

It's time to merge the U.S. Army and your local police department according to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

In in a meeting with Latin American defense ministers that was scarcely covered by U.S. media, Rumsfeld said that, given the challenges posed by 21st-century threats, it is time to re-think the separation of the armed forces from the police. It was an interesting audience given that separation of the military from domestic police has been a major reform pursued by U.S. and Latin American human-rights organizations as a way of asserting civilian control over the military and reducing abuses, but that didn't deter Rumsfeld:

"Since September. 11, 2001, we have had to conduct an essential re-examination of the relationships between our military and our law enforcement responsibilities in the U.S.," asserted Rumsfeld, who never let the phrase "human rights" pass his lips. "The complex challenges of this new era and the asymmetric threats we face require that all elements of state and society work together." He went on to include under the rubric of "enemies" faced by the armed forces a number of actors who normally would come under the jurisdiction of the civilian authorities. "Terrorists, drug traffickers, hostage takers and criminal gangs form an anti-social combination that increasingly seeks to destabilize civil societies," he declared.

So, apparently our neighbors to the south are encouraged to blur the line between the roles of the military and the police ... but in America there's no need to worry about becoming a military police state, right? Our local police are there to "protect and serve" and we would never really let the Army take over the cities and towns in America, right?

Wait! Better do a little research before you answer. To start, Google the phrase "posse comitatus" which is the 19th century law that prohibits U.S. military involvement in local police affairs.

And, lest you think it's just a bunch of black helicopter militia nuts, check out some of the surprisingly mainstream groups like "The Homeland Security Institute" which features a lengthy essay entitled The Myth of Posse Comitatus written by a U.S. Army Major arguing that the posse comitatus law has been misinterpreted all these years and that there's no reason why the Army should not be policing the streets of your city today.

ZNet (US) - Rumsfeld's 'Dirty Wars'

Secret Service investigates Boulder High School band

2004-11-25T16:40:00.000Z

In Boulder Colorado the Secret Service investigated a band made up of high-school students after reports of death threats against U.S. President George W. Bush. The group, which now calls itself "Coalition of the Willing," was formerly known as the "Taliband."

Secret Service agents carried out an investigation at the high school after they received reports that the band had changed the lyrics of the 1963 Bob Dylan song Masters of War to include a threat against Bush.

One line in the song, which is an attack on arms dealers, goes "And I hope that you die/And your death'll come soon." However, an anonymous caller reported to the secret service that during a rehearsal the line was changed to "George Bush, I hope you die soon."

"I know that people have made accusations and allegations about people and kids that are unfounded and untrue," Principal Ron Cabrera told the Associated Press. "I talked to many people who were [at the practice], including teachers, students and other faculty and no one altered the lyrics or expressed any ill will or any reference to President Bush or anyone dying."

CBC News: Secret Service investigates high-school band

Voting for Irony

2004-11-24T13:01:00.000Z

Irony. You know, when somebody uses words that mean one thing but what the person really means to say is something else entirely. Irony can be a highly effective way to point out differences between, say, official policy and reality. And sometimes irony can be very funny when used to express in an ingeniously humorous manner the relationship between seemingly incongruous or disparate things.

We already know from experience that George W. Bush has no sense of irony. He's far too serious for that. But who knew that Colin Powell has a marvelous sense of ironic wit? Look at these two stories from today:

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said that the voting in Ukraine's presidential election was riddled with fraud and that the United States could not accept a victory by Victor F. Yanukovich as legitimate, warning that there would be "serious consequences" to the American-Ukraine relationship if allegations of fraud were not cleared up. "We cannot accept this result as legitimate because it does not meet international standards and because there has not been an investigation of the numerous and credible reports of fraud and abuse," he said. "It is still not too late for Ukrainian authorities to find a solution that respects the will of the Ukrainian people."

That from the Secretary of State on the same day that the Government Accountability Office (You might remember the "GAO" by its old name, the "Government Accounting Office" which it was called until those ironic fellows in the Republican controlled House renamed it a couple of years ago.):

Congress' investigative agency, Government Accountability Office, responding to complaints from around the country, has begun an investigation of the Nov. 2 vote count. The probe will cover voter registration, voting machine problems and handling of provisional ballots, which were given to voters who said they were eligible to cast votes although their names were not on the rolls. The GAO usually begins investigations in response to specific requests from Congress, but the agency's head, Comptroller General David Walker, said the GAO acted on its own because of the many complaints it received about ballot counting. He noted, however, that the GAO noted cannot enforce the law if voting irregularities are found.

Now that's irony for you: "the GAO acted on its own because of the many comments it received about ballot counting ... the GAO cannot enforce the law if voting irregularities are found."

New York Times - Powell Says Ukraine Vote Was Full of Fraud

Star Tribune (MN) - GAO opens review of voting in response to complaints

The Ugliest American

2004-11-23T16:41:00.000Z

George W Bush made a shambles of a state visit to Chile which was intended to counter Latin American talk of American "arrogance."

The Chilean security guards had been stationed at the door for Bush's security, but that didn't deter Bush from shoving his way through the guards and then pushing them out of the way to pull his own armed body guard through. Then, while cameras rolled for a worldwide audience, he made a show of strutting across the foyer, dusting off his sleeves and straightening his shirt.

For an encore Bush haughtily cancelled a state dinner in his honor when Chilean authorities refused U.S. demands that each and every one of the 300 guests, including the president of the Chilean senate, the head of the Chilean supreme court, the top commanders of each branch of the Chilean military and their wives, pass through metal detectors and submit to searches before they being permitted to dine near Bush at the presidential palace in Santiago.

Tell me again: they hate us because we love freedom, right?

Telegraph (UK) - Bush scuffles with Chilean guards at summit

News 24 (South Africa) - Bush cancels dinner date

Red Neck Nation

2004-11-22T13:49:00.000Z

First there was that awful moment when that white lady stripped naked and then jumped into that black man's arms on national TV. Sure it was supposed to be only a spoof, but there are some things you just don't joke about, especially on TV when the children are watching!

Then there was George W. Bush, who had to wade in and rescue his bodyguard from that crowd of scruffy little brown people in South America, then strutting away straightening his shirt and dusting off his sleeves only to boycott a state dinner later that evening because the locals wouldn't let the U.S. Secret Service search each one of the foreigners who planned to attend.

That was followed by the upstanding good old boy who threw his beer at one of the black gladiators on the basketball court. The ensuring melee resulted in the suspension of a number of black men from the team but no consequences for the white beer-thrower because, after all, he paid for his court-side seats.

And then there was the Hmong man who shot eight white deer hunters and killed six, after the white people harassed the foreigner (a U.S. citizen and a veteran) and tried to drive him from "their" land.

What is it that these people don't understand about supremacy?

Pioneer Press (MN) Collision of Cultures: Hmong and white hunters have had disputes in the woods

"Democratically Elected" Bush Regime Overthrown in Military Coup

2004-11-21T15:50:00.000Z

In the waning hours of the 108th Congress, the democratically elected government of George W. Bush was overthrown in a military coup lead by a coalition including Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon.

Ignoring the outpouring of public support for the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, and overcoming the strong support of the Bush Administration, the Cheney-Rumsfeld-Pentagon Coalition killed landmark legislation that would have forced the Pentagon, which controls an estimated 80 percent of the government's $40 billion intelligence budget, to cede much of its authority on intelligence issues to a national intelligence director.

The decision to block a vote on the bill, which would have created the job of a cabinet-level national intelligence director to oversee the C.I.A. and the government's other spy agencies, came after what was described as a near-rebellion by a core of highly conservative House Republicans aligned with the Pentagon who were emboldened to oppose their leadership and the White House.

The coup occurred while the recently elected President of the U.S., George W. Bush, was in Chile at a meeting with world leaders where he was seeking support for his planned expansion of U.S. military action against the sovereign governments of Iran, North Korea and Syria.

New York Times - House Leadership Blocks Vote on Intelligence Bill

A world-wide economic meltdown, but by god we've got our moral values

2004-11-20T07:05:00.000Z

It's the economic nightmare scenario: foreign investors suddenly decide to invest in fewer U.S. assets and begin to sell-off those that they already own. Under this scenario the dollar would plummet, stock prices would plunge and U.S. interest rates would soar. Eventually, as the U.S. becomes unable to afford to buy all those imports, global economic growth stalls plunging the world into an economic depression.

Who dat trash talkin the U.S. economy? Why it's Alan Greenspan, that's who.

Meanwhile, Congress increased the Federal debt ceiling and passed a record Federal spending bill.

But before passing the spending bill they first attached a rider that would make it easier for doctors to refuse to perform abortions for their patients. The abortion language, completely unrelated to the spending bill, bars federal, state and local agencies from withholding taxpayer money from health care providers that refuse to provide or pay for abortions or refuse to offer abortion counseling or referrals. Current federal law, aimed at protecting Roman Catholic doctors, provides such "conscience protection'' to doctors who do not want to undergo abortion training. The new language would expand that protection to all health care providers, including hospitals, doctors, clinics and insurers.

I could not make this stuff up.

The Economic Times (India) - Greenspan joins IMF in urging US to live within its means

Not again!

2004-11-19T06:45:00.000Z

So let's see: they cheated by rigging the vote tabulators to give Bush extra votes, but it doesn't matter because they didn't steal enough votes to alter the outcome of the election, so who cares?

A quarter of a million "ghost" votes tallied for Bush on the Diebold electronic voting machines. But there's no paper trail and no need to worry.

Oakland Tribune - Study finds Florida. "ghost" e-votes

We want you ... to be one of us!

2004-11-18T18:03:00.000Z

"When you captured Saddam Hussein, I was very happy, and not fighting Americans, but you used your guns, and your military debased me. I am very angry. I hate all Christians, because you killed my family, my city, and my mosques."

Mahmoud al-Samarrai was irate. After all he'd been through, now he had learned that, having been invited to his Mosque to be given food for what is left of his family, the U.S. soldiers there had secretly taken a swab of his hands to test for the presence of explosives.

The swab process, much like the one in use at U.S. airports, will detect minute traces of explosives left on a terrorist who has handled explosives or fired a gun during the last few days. However, it also will detect those, like Mahmoud, who have merely been trying to clear away the mounds of shells and other debris left over after the U.S. attacked his city and invaded his home.

Forty-seven men were arrested as a result of the tests. Forty-one were eventually released. Six were held for an as yet to be determined period of time on as yet unspecified charges.

Seems like a banner day for al Quaeda recruiters. Wonder how it's going for National Guard recruiters here?

USATODAY - Test nets suspects and enrages Fallujah residents

A Neocon Definition of Victory

2004-11-17T05:19:00.000Z

The neocons are flushed with victory:

"Bush has never moved away from his policy agenda and since winning reelection has asserted it again. He thinks success is possible in Iraq and he has no intention of allowing Iran to acquire nuclear weapons."

"Bush regards the election as a vindication of his Iraq policy. All the nay-sayers, the doubters, the defeatists have emerged as losers."

Meanwhile in Iraq, days after George W. Bush announced another "mission accomplished" saying that the U.S. had destroyed rebel control of Fallujah, U.S. artillery pummeled the city while American troops hunted guerrillas door-to-door. Further north, where violence has surged since the U.S. assault on Fallujah began, 15 Iraqis were killed and 22 wounded in the oil refining town of Baiji and a suicide car bomber rammed a U.S. convoy, prompting troops to open fire.

Far from facing off in a decisive battle against the resistance fighters, it seems the more Americans squeeze Falluja, the more the violence explodes elsewhere. Scott Ritter, former U.N. inspector describes the U.S. strategy as, "exercises in futility, akin to squeezing jello. The more you try to get a grasp on the problem, the more it slips through your fingers."

Aljazeera (Qatar) - Squeezing jello in Iraq

New York Times - Neoconservatives Gain Strength in New Bush Team

US Marine Shoots Dead an Unarmed and Wounded Iraqi Prisoner in a Mosque in Fallujah

2004-11-16T05:58:00.000Z

Perception is everything.

While Right-wing talk radio in America is excusing it as an "inevitable consequence of war," much of the rest of the world is reporting the facts: a day after mortally wounding and then leaving them for dead, a group of U.S. Marines returned to the Mosque and finished the job by shooting the Iraqis in the head.

It kind of makes you wonder, if some Americans in a church had been wounded and then shot execution style a day later, under what conditions would we call it a consequence of war?

Aljazeera (Qatar) - Marine filmed killing Iraqi prisoner

What is it about right-wingers and Homos?

2004-11-15T05:32:00.000Z

For years a small school in Texas has held a day each year when girls dress as boys and vice versa. Nobody seems to be able to remember how it got started or why, but it was all in fun ... until this year.

"It's like experimenting with drugs," said a mother. "You just keep playing with it and it becomes customary. ... If it's OK to dress like a girl today, then why is it not OK in the future?"

"I don't think it was a liberal agenda," said another parent, a 35-year-old mother of eight biological and foster children. "I think it was just foolishness, just being funny, being silly, but it opens the door for other things to happen."

And so the school is now allowing the children to dress in military camouflage instead.

As Woodburydadd's West Coast correspondent noted, as hard as it may to believe, this is not from The Onion.

Houston Chronicle - Texas school district nixes 'cross-dressing day'

Cross Purposes

2004-11-14T13:36:00.000Z

A suburban fellow, who voted for Kerry, was wondering why people had been befuddled by the "Christians for Kerry" bumper sticker that he was now anxiously peeling off of his SUV. "Not all Christians believe abortion and embryonic stem-cell research are murder. Not all Christians believe marriage is limited to the union of a man and a woman. Not all Christians believe a commander in chief who prays should never change his mind or admit a mistake. Not all Christians believe the only thing that matters ultimately is an individual's personal relationship with Jesus," he complained.

Oh really? Then perhaps you can explain the letter Bob Jones III, president of the private, fundamentalist Bob Jones University sent to George W. Bush:

"In your re-election, God has graciously granted America -- though she doesn't deserve it -- a reprieve from the agenda of paganism. You have been given a mandate. We the people expect your voice to be like the clear and certain sound of a trumpet. Because you seek the Lord daily, we who know the Lord will follow that kind of voice eagerly."

Or maybe you've noticed the instant and intense attack on Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA), an abortion rights supporter and likely Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, by Christians intent on packing the courts with judges who will represent "Christian values."

"He (Senator Specter) is a problem, and he must be derailed," said Dr. James Dobson, founder and chairman of Focus on the Family. And what about Patrick Leahy (D-VT), former Chair of the Judiciary Committee? Dobson told The Daily Oklahoman that "Patrick Leahy is a 'God's people-hater.'" When it was pointed out that was not a particularly Christian thing to say about the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, Dobson shot back, "I don't know if he hates God, but he hates God's people. Do you think you ought to lecture me on what a Christian is all about?"

It is a fact that most Americans attend church with some regularity. And it certainly seems that most Americans would really like to believe what they hear there. But if they are honest, most Americans would admit that they have their doubts. They notice that what they hear from the pulpit does not square with what they see on the street and in their lives. And they wonder when they learn that in the "Red States" teenage pregnancy rates are about double those of the "Blue States" despite the high priority placed on religious values in the "Red States." But while they wonder and seek answers, they continue to attend church, or at least send their children to church, because it's "the right thing to do," even though they really cannot tell you exactly why.

Time to wake up to a harsh new reality: America has become a place where you are no longer allowed to have doubts or nuanced beliefs about religion. Where once you had a guaranteed right to thoughtfully determine your own beliefs, now you are either saved or damned, the choice is yours. Indeed, god has a plan for you, the Christians are all too eager to tell you what god's plan is, and then you can accept it or go, literally, to hell.

If you want to call yourself a Christian these days, then you'd have to deal with this new fact: the likes of James Dobson and Bob Jones are your people.

But, consider this: if you can't bring yourself to buy into the bible thumping fundamentalist Christian view of the world, then perhaps you are not a Christian. After all Christians say that in order to use the name of their lord you must buy into their whole story, not just the parts that seem innocuous and comfortable on Sunday morning.

Sadly, in the new America it's not enough to believe in and work for "the ideals of Jesus." And, after all that has been done in the name of Christianity, if you still insist on calling yourself a Christian you'd better be willing to heed your brethren because if you don't they have a plan for you that's the same as their plan for the rest of us Pagans.

The Day (CT) - After A Hard-Fought Election Victory, Evangelicals Want Faith Rewarded

It's too late! This religious zealot has already been appointed.

2004-11-13T14:24:00.000Z

The e-mail, currently making the rounds, conveys real urgency:

Important Women's Health Issue

Whether you're Right or Left on the issue of women's reproductive rights, please consider the following...

President Bush has announced his plan to select Dr. W. David Hager to head up the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee. The committee has not met for more than two years, during which time its charter has lapsed. As a result, the Bush Administration is tasked with filling all eleven positions with new members. This position does not require Congressional approval.

Dr. W. David Hager, an obstetrician-gynecologist, is indeed an extreme zealot. He is author of a book entitled As Jesus Cared for Women: Restoring Women Then and Now, as well as another, Stress and the Woman's Body, which puts "an emphasis on the restorative power of Jesus Christ in one's life" and recommends specific bible readings and prayers for such ailments as headaches and premenstrual syndrome. Dr. Hager also routinely refuses to write prescriptions for birth control pills for his unmarried patients.

The problem is Bush has already appointed Hager, in December 2002, and re-appointed him in June of 2004.

Urban Legends Reference Pages: Politics (W. David Hager)

The Victorious Exterminators of Fallujah

2004-11-12T13:55:00.000Z

It is not the first time that genocide has been the unofficial policy of the U.S. government, nor is it the first time that we haven't given a thought to the toll on the soldiers who eventually return to try to lead "normal" lives here at home. Nevertheless, we are about to declare victory in Fallujah.

Of course, George W. Bush will argue that he is merely "fighting the terrorists there instead of here." And while he may really believe that, he's missing two critical points.

First, the "terrorists" (or "insurgents," or "revolutionaries," or "guerrillas" -- we've used different labels depending upon the circumstances) this time are much more mobile and, frankly, have got much better information than ever before, which makes it foolish to believe that distance alone will keep them from us. In the past it was simply not possible for a Vietcong cell to arrange travel to the U.S., and there wasn't much chance that freedom fighters in the Congo would envision bringing their battle to Omaha.

And, second, realistically we will never be able to kill or imprison all of our enemies, which means we've got to find another way.

But why seek another way when victory is ours!?!

And so, instead of looking for lasting solutions we're treated to what has been unfolding in Fallujah these last few days: "Hey! There's nobody here! Wonder where they went? Oh, but look, here are "torture rooms" and other paraphernalia (never mind the suspicious looking piles of the exact same weapons that we gave to the "loyal" Iraqis just a few weeks ago). So see, it was good that we liberated this city," ... while the reality is that "they" have blended back into "their" society to live and fight another day.

Nevertheless, we'll celebrate another glorious victory in George W. Bush's War on Terror.

And those Americans who aren't killed first will return home eventually. And the ones who don't have their legs amputated on the way will walk among us for the rest of their lives trying to shake off the nightmares of the things they did in Iraq ... like first taking over the hospitals and then exterminating every living thing in a city ... things they did because we told them to.

Sydney Morning Herald (AU) - Victories Rooted in Barren Ground: The forthcoming election in Iraq will be as hollow as the latest US triumph there

Seattle Post-Intelligencer - Attack on Fallujah Can't Be Justified

College Republicans: Eat the Elderly

2004-11-11T13:28:00.000Z

Picture the young College Republicans. Clean shaven. Upstanding. Serious. Every mother's pride and joy. The sort of young American who might wear a tie to a street demonstration. The future leaders of the Compassionate Conservative movement in America.

And what a great start! This year the College Republicans discovered a new and highly lucrative fund raising opportunity: elderly and vulnerable adults.

An 88 year-old window proved her party loyalty when she got a stream of fundraising letters from the National College Republicans by sending in 91 checks totaling $42,985.

An 87 year-old wrote 256 checks totaling $10,789 this year, sometimes making several donations on the same day.

Another senior citizen agreed, when solicited by phone and mail, to "lend" nearly $60,000 to the group, but hasn't gotten her money back. "They were supposed to give it back, and I haven't heard nothing," she said.

Eric Hoplin, a graduate of St. Olaf College in Minnesota, who chairs the College Republican National Committee, a job was once held by top White House strategist Karl Rove, noted that the group had a record breaking year, raising more than $8 million, but said that he would "look into" the accusations.

"We've come to discover that there are a few donors who have been confused, a few donors who have some form of dementia, who aren't entirely sure of the amount of money that they're giving -- and how often they're giving," Hoplin said this week. He also acknowledged one source of that confusion: The College Republicans raise funds "using a lot of project names" in letters that neglect to mention his group at all.

In fairness, it should be noted that the College Republicans also support other less direct methods of fleecing elderly Americans like privatizing Social Security, limiting Medicare coverage while increasing premiums, and prohibiting the importation of low-cost prescription drugs.

Star Tribune (Minnesota) - College Republicans' tactics raise questions

Ashcroft Declares an End to the Domestic War on Terror

2004-11-10T00:13:00.000Z

In his five-page hand-written resignation letter, submitted on election day but withheld from the public for a week, John Ashcroft said, “The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved.”

Does that mean I can have my civil liberties back?

“I believe that my energies and talents should be directed toward other challenging horizons,” Ashcroft said.

Nope, I guess not.

Scotsman News (Scotland) - Bush Cabinet Resignations Prompt Speculation

Demolishing Fallujah to Bring Democracy to Iraq

2004-11-09T01:25:00.000Z

Guess that didn't work so well...Does anyone know if we have a Plan B?

"BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) A powerful group of Sunni Muslim clerics called Tuesday for a boycott of national elections set for late January to protest the U.S.-led attack against the Sunni insurgent stronghold Fallujah. The group's director, Harith al-Dhari, said the election was being held 'over the corpses of those killed in Fallujah and the blood of the wounded.'

"In the past weeks, al-Dhari's Association of Muslim Scholars has been warning it would call such a boycott if a Fallujah offensive took place. The association is influential among Iraq's Sunni Muslim minority, and U.S. and Iraqi officials have expressed concern that a lack of Sunni participation would raise question about the legitimacy of the vote."

"We ain't got time to bleed."

2004-11-08T16:25:00.000Z

The body of 25 year old has been found inside the "Ground Zero" site in New York City with a shotgun nearby. A friend says she believes the suicide was a protest to the election results.

To paraphrase the one-time Governor of Minnesota, "We ain't got time to bleed." This is a fight to the finish for the heart and soul of America. We will define what it is to be an American and we will not allow narrow and fearful people to take our country away. Self inflicted shotgun blasts to our own heads won't accomplish anything.

Sure, it was hard watching watching Kerry concede. And while Bush's gloating acceptance speech an hour later was about what you expected, the bleepin' press conference the next day was designed to put all of us right over the edge! "I've earned some political capital and now I'm going to spend it because that's who I am," as if George W. Bush ever devoted any effort to introspection or reasoning!

George W. Bush has also earned some political anger, and we need to capitalize on that. The first step is to tell ourselves that the American people aren't really greedy, fearful, and unthinking like they seem to be, but rather just ignorant of what's really going on. And we need to believe that once they figure it all out, there will be hell to play. (Have you yet talked to anyone who is proud to say "I voted for Bush?" In a few years, like Nixon, no one will admit having committed this atrocity.)

Is that rationalization? Sure. But there's real hope in the fact that 56 million others are, in varying degrees, as angry as you are.

And we've got to keep in mind that if the result had been just the reverse, no one would be saying that a 3 point margin gives Kerry a mandate or that it spells the death of conservativism.

Maybe it's just the bargaining phase that Kubler-Ross talked about, but there are really hopeful signs. It's like we're gradually awakening from a long trance. These last months there were legions of strangers working on political organizing who hadn't done that in decades. We've each found out that many of our neighbors share our beliefs, but they've been too fearful to speak up.

We should have been doing this all along. Shame on us for not getting started sooner. But the baby boom generation has always been slow to start and unstoppable one we get rolling.

Daily Breeze (Los Angeles) Young man shoots himself at ground zero in New York

The Next Holy War: Evangelical Marines Prepare to Battle Barbarians

2004-11-07T16:01:00.000Z

"What it really comes down to is this: Are the American voters going to sit still for this? Are we going to treat our democracy like some sort of spectator sport, like watching the Super Bowl, or are we going to ask a little more of ourselves this time? Are we going to explore the Bush Administration's claims? Are we going to look at the details of what this administration has actually done?" — William Hartung, Senior Fellow, World Policy Institute

Some answers are emerging...

More Americans believe in the virgin birth of Christ than believe in evolution.

Most of those who voted for George W. Bush still believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that we just haven't been able to find them and that Saddam Hussein directed the attacks on 9/11.

And American Marines are being anointed with oil and assured that god wants them to vanquish the Philistines.

You don't any additional commentary, you just need to click on the link below.

Agence France Presse - Holy War: Evangelical Marines Prepare to Battle Barbarians

Takin' it to the Streets

2004-11-06T14:43:00.000Z

The police are already preparing for the Bush inauguration. Sources familiar with law enforcement planning said a Bush win means that the D.C. Police Department will beef up its security presence much more significantly than if Kerry were the one taking the oath of office. A Bush inauguration means many more demonstrations and protests that require policing. More demonstrators equal more cops on-duty and more crowd-control measures in place.

The Hill (Washington, D.C.) - Man the barricades, it's Bush again

The Ten Commandments Condemn "Lying" but Fortunately They are Silent on "Concealing Information"

2004-11-06T14:15:00.000Z

A Moral Man, like George W. Bush, wouldn't lie, right? Unlike President Clinton, who quibbled over the definition of "is," a Moral Man, like George W. Bush, can be counted upon to be honest and forthcoming, can be trusted, right?

What if there was an investigation, completed last summer by the CIA, that named the individuals responsible and pinpointed major national security lapses that led to our nation being asleep at the switch on 9/11? Wouldn't that be a helpful bit of information that all Americans ought to have when deciding who should be president? And a Moral Man would want to ensure that Americans have the information they need to make a reasoned decision, right?

As it happens, there is just such a report. But under pressure from George W. Bush it was been withheld until after the election.

"It is infuriating that a report which shows that high-level people were not doing their jobs in a satisfactory manner before 9/11 is being suppressed," an intelligence official who has read the report said, adding that "the report is potentially very embarrassing for the administration, because it makes it look like they weren't interested in terrorism before 9/11, or in holding people in the government responsible afterward. What all the other reports on 9/11 did not do is point the finger at individuals, and give the how and what of their responsibility. This report does that."

According to the intelligence official, release of the report, which represents an exhaustive 17-month investigation by an 11-member team within the agency, has been "stalled" by Porter J. Goss, the former Republican House member (and chairman of the Intelligence Committee) who recently was appointed CIA chief by President Bush. The official stressed that the report was more blunt and more specific than the report produced by the 9/11 Commission.

By law, the only legitimate reason the CIA director has for holding back such a report is national security. Yet Porter Goss has not invoked national security as an explanation for not delivering the report to Congress. "It surely does not involve issues of national security," said the intelligence official. "The agency directorate is basically sitting on the report until after the election," the official continued. "No previous director of CIA has ever tried to stop the inspector general from releasing a report to the Congress, in this case a report requested by Congress."

And remember, one in five voters said they chose George W. Bush because of his strength on "moral issues."

Los Angeles Times - The 9/11 Secret in the CIA's Back Pocket

National Guard Opens Fire on N.J. School, Young Girl Looses Leg

2004-11-05T13:15:00.000Z

A supersonic F-16 jet fighter fired 25 rounds into Little Egg Harbor Middle School in New Jersey. Officials would not confirm rumors that the public school had failed to make "adequate yearly progress" as required under No Child Left Behind, however observers noted that New Jersey was a blue (Democratic) state in the hotly contested Presidential election.

Robert Brown, whose twin daughters attend the school, about a quarter-mile from their home, said, "Twenty five rounds? Wow! That can be dangerous. That kind of scares me." Brown said planes sometimes fly so low while approaching the nearby military practice range that he can see the pilots' heads. "It's kind of like an air show when they're out there."

Fortunately the attack on the middle school occurred at night when the building was unoccupied except for a custodian.

Meanwhile, half a world away, AC-130 gunship aircraft and tanks bought by American citizens and dispatched on the orders of George W. Bush, who declared that he had a mandate from the voters, dropped bombs and shot shells into a city called Fallujah. "Marine Expeditionary Forces will continue to conduct operations and will not cease until Fallujah is free of foreign terrorists and insurgents," read an official military statement.

Issam Mohammad, spokesman for the Fallujah hospital, said that a woman was "badly wounded" and a young girl lost her leg.

Washington Post - D.C. Guard Jet Fires, Hitting N.J. School

An American Caliphate

2004-11-04T07:18:00.000Z

Don't run for the dictionary! A caliphate is form of government headed by a man believed to be a direct descendant of god -- and it is the form of government that American voters seem to prefer.

Perhaps the most terrifying aspect of the election of is that so many Americans cited "moral values" in their decision to ignore reason and vote for Geroge W. Bush. He won because of an outpouring of people who don't just favor different public policy -- that would be well within the tradition of American democracy -- these people favor a whole different definition of America.

As Tom Friedman wrote in his New York Times column, we disagree on the answers to fundamental questions that define what America is:

Is it a country that does not intrude into people's sexual preferences and the marriage unions they want to make? Is it a country that allows a woman to have control over her body? Is it a country where the line between church and state bequeathed to us by our Founding Fathers should be inviolate? Is it a country where religion doesn't trump science? And, most important, is it a country whose president mobilizes its deep moral energies to unite us - instead of dividing us from one another and from the world?

Bush was able to construct a mandate by cobbling together votes from two groups, the evangelical and the fearful, in support of the greedy. Bush won majority votes of whites, married women, white born-again Christians, military families, and regular church goers. By contrast, Kerry was supported by single women, working women, blacks, youth, gays and lesbians and those who rarely or never attend religious services.

The foreign newspapers headlined it as "Divided States of America" and "Torn in the USA." Their editorial writers warned that the newly elected George W. Bush will use his mandate to consolidate his conservative and militaristic platform. The Guardian of London issued a two word editorial, "Oh God!"

Last month tax policy expert David Kay Johnston warned an audience in Minneapolis that twenty years from now the United States is in danger of being a "fascist theocracy," and predicted that, "it could happen sooner if George W. Bush is elected."

He may be right. The largest economy the world has ever known, with the mightiest military in the history of humankind, is now firmly under the control of a man who many voted for in the hopes that he would carry out a religious mandate.

The Times of India - Why George Bush won the poll: God, Gays and Guns

Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) - What We Call Peace is Little Better Than Capitulation To a Corporate Coup

I didn't know the world would last this long...

2004-11-03T07:12:00.000Z

This has happened before: the American people spoke with stunning clarity on one issue and astonishing ambivalence on most others ... and in so doing have triggered a series of consequences that will take an entire generation to rectify.

Although we'll all have to get used to calling him President Bush now (without the quotation marks), the ultimate outcome is not so certain. Even though we will inevitably see a further swing to the hard right (there will be a viciously conservative Supreme Court and dangerous times for gays, intellectuals, the poor and minorities of any classification are upon us), ultimately it will fall to each of us to define what it really means to be an American.

Those of us in the baby boom generation have been here before. The bad news is: last time my generation really blew it and that's a big part of why we're in this mess right now. Those of us in the baby boom generation fell asleep at the switch, and that's the reason why America now teeters on the brink of being a conservative theocracy.

When I was in grade school Governor Ronald Reagan called out the National Guard to take over the University of California. I was a high school student when the Vietnam war was in full rage and young Democrats were being beaten on national television in the streets of Chicago. We read Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and thought it was a travelogue.

Today it's difficult to believe, but back then many of us thought that the revolution must surely be right around the corner. It was common wisdom: tomorrow morning, or certainly by the end of the week, the revolution would be starting because it was the only way to restore some sense of justice and humanity, and the only way to control this huge and violent society of ours. Even though the police were hunting down the Black Panthers and the National Guard was killing students in Ohio their violence would only postpone the inevitable restoration of justice.

But then, about the time we were finishing college, everything changed. The U.S. retreated from Vietnam and Richard Nixon finally resigned in shame. We were so relieved! Obviously justice had prevailed and it seemed that America would naturally lead the world into a period of peace and opportunity and the idea of respect for all people no matter the color of their skin or their beliefs was such a sensible notion that it simply had to prevail, and there would be no need for us to be constantly on guard anymore.

We were so ebullient, so comforted by our small success, and, frankly, so tired, that we fell asleep at the switch. We forgot that the fight for justice never ends. And we didn't recognize that the forces of fear and greed would never rest.

Some of it too was that we got caught up in ... well, growing up. You know, acting like adults. We convinced ourselves that our recent fights were really youthful affairs and that since we were "grownups" now we needed to act our age and quit being so outrageous. And so we set about getting on with our lives confident that the really important fights had been fought and that the war was won.

But, while we were busy getting on with our lives, the conservative voices became stronger ... and smarter ... and richer. They never rested. And over a couple of decades they managed to pull off something like a mass hypnosis on an unimaginably huge scale. They played on the twin emotions of fear and greed and cynically hijacked religion to build the awful juggernaut that has now taken full control of America.

The conservative voices convinced the majority of Americans that they have much more in common with the rich than they do with the poor ... and then dismantled the social safety net in the perverse belief that somehow if only we make it very hard to get help, then the helpless will help themselves, but knowing that in any case the fear of poverty will keep the masses docile and unwilling to fight back.

The conservative voices led us to believe that the world is a dangerous place and that the violent force of the American military is the only thing standing between us and the unwashed hordes who want to come and take our stuff without having to work for it. (And then, in a cruel but calculated irony, they made aggression our official foreign policy, which confirmed the suspicions of the rest of the world and gave even the uncommitted real reasons to hate us.)

The conservative voices insisted that collective action is a seditious idea and that no one need feel compelled to take any responsibility for others. The conservatives falsely defined government as the problem and demanded that if only government would get out of the way, then the "market forces" (ruled by fear and greed) would ensure that everyone prospered. The conservatives perversely twisted Adam Smith, who was talking only about economic fortunes not the welfare of the people, to the point where today a politician can seriously argue that the capitalism is actually the will of god.

The fact is that while my generation was sleeping America has come dangerously close to being a right-wing theocracy, and it has become the most violent and aggressive nation on the planet.

We didn't mean for that to happen. We certainly didn't expect it to happen. But being sorry won't help. We need to recognize that the current state of affairs is the result when those of us of liberal mind are not always on guard.

But there is a new wind blowing. On this cold November morning it feels like the winds of a major winter storm. You can feel it around the country and it will bring change. And we will determine what kind of change.

It's like we're gradually awakening from a long trance. These last months there were legions of my generation working on political organizing who hadn't done that in decades. We've found others who share our beliefs, but who have been too fearful to speak up. We should have been doing this all along, but our generation has always been slow to start, and now we've begun. We've met neighbors and made new friends who believe as we do.

Americans are tired of being afraid and suspicious. Americans are realizing that they actually feel better when they care about others and that they feel the best when they have the chance to give their best. We're realizing that we've been taken advantage of and lied to and misled. And most importantly, we are beginning to understand that only when every human being truly has real justice and real economic opportunity will we have succeeded and only then will be we truly safe.

The revolution begins now.

Life During Wartime

2004-11-02T23:59:00.000Z

The sound of gunfire, off in the distance
I'm getting used to it now

This ain't no party, this ain't no disco
this ain't no fooling around

No time for dancing, or lovey dovey
I ain't got time for that now

Get your instructions, follow directions
then you should change your address

Maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day
whatever you think is best

Burned all my notebooks, what good are notebooks?
They won't help me survive

My chest is aching, burns like a furnace
the burning keeps me alive

Try to be careful, don't take no chances
you better watch what you say

(from Life During Wartime,
lyrics by David Byrne)

Sins of the Cold-blooded

2004-10-30T20:13:00.000Z

John F. Kennedy, in a campaign speech at a rally at the University of Minnesota in 1960, said,

"We have all made mistakes. But Dante tells us that divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted on different scales. Better the occasional faults of a party living in the spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a party frozen in the ice of its own indifference."

Woodburydadd may not post much the next few days because we'll all be working 24-hours a day until the end of the election doing whatever it takes to over throw the Pretender and begin the long path to the reconstruction of America.

With Odds of 100 to 1, America Should Remember, The Whole World is Watching

2004-10-29T11:42:00.000Z

This is one of those things where, if you really are concerned about living in a safer America, you need to consider how the story is playing in the foreign press:

"Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were women and children, an abstract of the report published on the website of the medical journal Lancet said."

"A study designed and conducted by two American universities and a Baghdad institution estimates that a staggering 100,000 may have died in the 18-months since the United States invaded Iraq."

"The risk of death from violence in the period after the invasion was 58 times higher than in the period before the war, the researchers reported."

"Number of American troops killed in Iraq as of October 28: around 1,100. Number of Iraqis estimated killed: more than 100,000."

"Neither the invading US forces nor the Iraqi interim government have tallied deaths caused by the invading forces."

The whole world is watching.

Now, let's say that each of the 100,000 killed left behind a grieving family member or two. Assuming they weren't subsequently killed themselves that would be almost many new enemies of the United States as there are tons of high explosives missing from Al Qaqaa.

Just think, an aggrieved father, out of work since the Americans invaded his country, destroyed the Iraqi economy, and brought in U.S. contractors to take whatever jobs might be left. No electricity, no prospects for the future, and nothing to loose now that his family has been killed.

In fact, he's got nothing left in this world, except a ton of high explosives that his neighbor looted after the George W. Bush invaded his country.

And the Whole World is Watching.

In other news:

"It is crucial for the American president to be consistent. I have learned the American president must base decisions on principle - core convictions on which he should never waver," George W. Bush told a group of some 5,000 people in Toledo.

Later that day, also in Toledo, John F. Kerry exhorted a crowd of 80,000 supporters, "Can you imagine President Kennedy, in the wake of the Bay of Pigs, standing up and telling the American people that he couldn't think of a single mistake he'd made? That he would do everything again exactly the same way? Mr. President, John Kennedy was a leader who knew how to take responsibility for his actions. Mr. Bush, it's time for you to take responsibility for yours. Our troops in Iraq are doing a heroic job. The problem is, our commander in chief isn't doing his."

AND THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING US.

Times of India - 100:1 is the Iraqi-US death ratio

Local News Video Shows Explosives at Al Qaqaa Weeks after Bush Invasion

2004-10-28T19:34:00.000Z

After two days of scrambling and trying out different answers ("What explosives? ... We had other priorities ... We got a lot of other explosives ... ") George W. Bush finally settled on his line, "the explosives were gone before we got there," and besides, John Kerry is making "wild charges." Then he unleashed apologist Rudy Guiliani to growl and snarl, "John Kerry wants to pretend we know what happened, but we don't know what happened. The best possibility is that those explosives were gone even before the troops got there. At least it's an equal possibility. John Kerry hasn't admitted that."

Now suppose a sleepy little local TV station in the Midwest just happened to have a camera crew "embedded" with U.S. forces during the invasion of Iraq. And suppose that they just happened to shoot a little video tape at the munitions dump at Al Qaqaa about ten days after the fall of Baghdad. What if that tape clearly clearly shows that the 377 tons of high explosives were still there after a week and a half after George W. Bush took control of Iraq? What if the news video even showed the U.S. troops using bolt cutters to break into the locked warehouses, playing around with the explosives, and then leaving the doors standing open as they left?

(Click hereto go to the TV station's Web site which included (as of 2:30 CDT) a link to the video.)

KSTP (MN) - 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS video may be linked to missing explosives in Iraq

Herald Sun (AU) - Bush returns fire on stolen explosives

Making Sure His Vote Counts

2004-10-28T13:06:00.000Z

Without notice a silver Cadillac sped through an intersection, swerved, jumped the curb and barreled down the sidewalk straight toward Katherine Harris, the heavily made up former Florida Secretary of State who stopped counting ballots in the 2000 election when George W. Bush was 537 votes ahead. At the last minute the driver, Barry M. Seltzer, 46, of Sarasota, swerved away and back onto the street leaving no one injured.

He later went to the police and reported that Ms. Harris, now a U.S. Representative from Florida, and her supporters had been standing in the street, impeding traffic and that had been exercising his right to express his political views. "I intimidated them with my car," Mr. Seltzer told the police. "I was exercising my political expression. I did not run them down."

While Woodburydadd whole heartedly encourages political activism, especially this year, it's best not to use your silver Cadillac to deliver your vote in this way.

New York Times - Katherine Harris Is Almost Hit by Car

The November Surprise: Gasoline Prices Up 40%, Likewise Oil Company Profits

2004-10-27T02:25:00.000Z

Everybody knows that crude oil prices have been relentlessly moving to record highs. But here's the really odd thing: gasoline prices haven't kept pace with oil prices. In fact, even though gasoline is more expensive than ever, it's still about 40% behind the increase in crude oil prices.

How could this be?

Well, one reason is that the oil companies have been using-up the stocks of crude oil they have on hand and postponing purchases of the higher priced crude oil on the market today.

Why would they do that?

Maybe they're hoping that crude oil prices will fall. Maybe they hope that once George W. Bush has been elected, and after he brings peace and free elections to Iraq sometime in January, the grateful Iraqis will turn on the tap and the oil companies will be able to refill their tanks at new low prices.

Yeah, I'll bet that's it. Thank goodness those crafty oil barons are looking out for you and me and gaming the oil producing nations on behalf of the American consumer.

Or maybe there's something else going on.

It just might be that the oil companies are conspiring to artificially hold gasoline prices down until after the election in order to affect the outcome of the election.

If that's the case, better prepare for gasoline prices to rise about 40% or so to match crude oil prices. That would be something like $3 a gallon just in time for New Years. And it would also mean more record profits for the oil companies.

New York Times - Surging Oil Prices Lift BP's Quarterly Profit 43%

Bush's Back-up Plan: Declare Elections Unconstitutional

2004-10-26T02:42:00.000Z

Would George W. Bush really subvert the Constitution and sabotage the election? Consider this...

He can't really run on the economy ... what with the stock market bumping along at its low for the year.

He's tried running on fear ... "Vote for us or you'll die!" ... but that's getting a little old now that it's clear that he allowed hundreds of tons of high explosives to "vanish" after he told us that invading Iraq would make us safe.

And even the greed appeal ... "I'll cut your taxes" ... is wearing thin since so many of us are unemployed now.

So what's George W. Bush to do with only a week to go?

Turns out there's a plan shaping up to have thousands of Republican observers in polling places in battleground states with the aim of causing enough confusion and doubt so that there will inevitably be legal challenges, but this time from several states all at once.

And then the Supreme Court would have to step in. But unlike last time they'd decline rule on a raft of state-by-state cases and instead rule that since the election has been so badly botched it should be invalidated.

And, according to Rehnquist and Thomas' strict interpretation there is no Constitutional reqirement that an election be held to select the President. According to their reasoning Presidential elections are a nice tradition, but not required by the Constitution.

So what's the alternative? If there's no valid election, guess who gets to select the President? The Republican controlled House of Representatives, that's who.

The Independent (UK) - Portrait of a country on the verge of a nervous breakdown

Arrogance Again: 350 Tons of High Explosives Missing in Iraqi

2004-10-25T11:16:00.000Z

Once the U.S. invaded Iraq the Pentagon kicked out inspectors and personnel from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) who had been monitoring conditions inside Iraq. On their way out the IAEA warned the U.S. about all of the stockpiles and sites it had been tracking.

Now, it turns out, nearly 350 tons of high explosives have vanished from a military complex 16 miles south of Baghdad, right under the noses of U.S. forces.

The explosives, which can be used in powerful conventional weapons or to detonate nuclear devices were taken some point after the U.S. invasion in April 2003. The IAEA had warned the U.S. about the danger posed by the explosives on several occasions and were specifically told the Pentagon to keep the material secured.

The chemical and explosives complex was repeatedly visited by weapons inspectors and had been under continuous monitoring by the IAEA until the US. invasion of Iraq, after which point it had not been allowed to access the site.

According to the BBC, "It is not yet known whether U.S. President George W. Bush has been informed."

Probably not. Why bother?

BBC News - Tons of Iraqi Explosives Missing

In Secret Ceremony Bush Signs $136 Billion Corporate Tax Give-Away

2004-10-24T13:26:00.000Z

In a private meeting aboard Air Force One while flying across the country to a campaign appearance, without any fanfare or notice, George W. Bush signed into law another round of tax cuts for the rich and powerful, this time focusing on corporate titans. The measure is the most sweeping overhaul of corporate tax law since 1986.

The bill includes $136 billion in new tax breaks, most of them give-aways to corporations including military contractors General Dynamics and Northrup Grumman and some Houston companies that have re-incorporated in foreign tax havens.

Nevertheless, ever mindful of the fact that the election looms near, corporations aren't the only beneficiaries. Special consideration is also given to fishermen, bow and arrow hunters, native Alaskan whalers, importers of Chinese ceiling fans, and NASCAR race track owners. Tobacco farmers, however, must be a bit confused: although they'll get an accelerated payment under a crop buy-out program, the bill also gives the tobacco companies the ability to import unlimited amounts of uninspected cheap foreign grown tobacco.

To no one's surprise, as soon as Air Force One landed Bush immediately praised the new law as a "jobs creation act for manufacturers and small businesses" and noted that it is especially tailored to individual battleground states such as Pennsylvania and Ohio.

In other news: The Bush administration announced that government spending for the year ended September 30 rose 6.2 per cent to $2.29 trillion, swamping income, which climbed only 5.5 per cent to $1.88 trillion, and that the 2004 Federal budget deficit had exploded to $413 billion an increase of 9.5 per cent over the previous year.

Bloomberg - Bush Signs $145 Billion Corporate Tax Cut, Tobacco Buy-out

Australia Financial Review - Bush posts record US budget deficit

American Democracy on the Ropes: Republicans Plan to Challenge Voters at Polls

2004-10-24T12:59:00.000Z

You new that it had to be coming, the interesting question was not when, but what would it be? An "October Surprise" announcement that Osama's been captured? Nope, too late for that. A Karl Rove special attack ad in the last weeks before the campaign juxtaposing John Kerry and Karl Marx? It seems less and less likely. But you just know that the Bush/Cheney campaign has something up their sleeve that they'll drop so close to the election that there will be no time to respond.

And here it is. Diabolically simple and timed to hit one election day itself! In swing states all across the country the G.O.P. has mobilized thousands of "volunteer election observers" who will go to the polls and challenge citizens rights to vote with the objective of slowing down the polling process, creating confusion and delays, and hoping that voters will be discouraged and turn away.

New York - Big G.O.P. Bid to Challenge Voters at Polls in Key State

One-third of Reservists Fail to Report for Duty, Bush Touts "All Volunteer Army"

2004-10-23T13:20:00.000Z

More than one-third of U.S. soldiers ordered to report in a call up of the Individual Ready Reserve have failed to comply with orders to report for duty in Iraq or Afghanistan, according to the U.S. Army. The Pentagon said the number was about what they expected.

The Individual Ready Reserve is a supplemental pool consisting of about 118,000 soldiers who have completed active duty but remain under a contractual obligation to serve when called. The IRR was last tapped in 1991, when 20,000 troops were called up for Operation Desert Storm. Most members of the IRR are veterans who have completed their regular enlistment but have specialized training in critical areas like military policing, engineering, logistics, medicine, transportation or ... well, just about anything the Army needs to get done. When called they are put on active duty for a minimum of 12 months, leaving behind families, careers and communities.

In other news:

A Marine killed in western Iraq earlier this week was identified as Sgt. Douglas E. Bascom, 25, of Colorado Springs, who, according to the Pentagon, was the first member of the Individual Ready Reserve to be killed in Iraq.

Meanwhile on the campaign trail, George W. Bush continued to insist that he has no plans to reinstate the military draft, boasting that America's "all volunteer Army" will continue to fight his War on Terror.

So now go across the street to your neighbor's. You know, the one who's not answering his door anymore. Ask him how he feels about being a member of the All Volunteer Army fighting Bush's War on Terror. And ask him why in the world he's still got that goofy Bush/Cheney sign in the yard.

China View - Over 800 US ex-soldiers fail to report for duty

More Republican Delusion As Iraqi Prime Minister Allawi Tops Bush in Approval Ratings

2004-10-22T13:02:00.000Z

Support among Iraqis for the government in Baghdad has plunged since the U.S. appointed it last summer. Just over 45 percent of those surveyed said Allawi had been effective since taking office in June, down from over 66 percent in July. Support for his government plummeted from 62 percent to 43 percent over the same period. (Coincidentally, those numbers are about the same as Americans' evaluation of George W. Bush's handling of his War on Terror.)

The survey, ironically entitled "Optimistic Outlook on the Future and Support for Democracy Continues in Iraq" was taken at the end of September and showed popular support for U.S. appointed interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi had dropped more than 20 percentage points since July.

There's cause to wonder if even these dismal numbers aren't a bit too optimistic. The survey was carried out by an outfit called the "International Republican Institute," which is a U.S. government-funded organization created during the Reagan administration to promote democracy around the world. Lately it has been called upon to provide "independent" research in support of the George W. Bush's War on Terror and to oversee efforts to build political parties in Iraq. It is headed by Bush administration apologists like Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), Rep. David Dreier (R-CA), Sen. Chuck Hagel, (R-NE), Rep. Jim Kolbe, (R-AZ) and a whole host of defense contractors and former Republican administration appointees.

The Washington Post, reporting figures not publicly released by the IRI, said the survey also found that the most popular politician in Iraq was Abdel Aziz Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, followed closely by anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Seattle Times - Survey: Support for regime slipping

Challenging Bush Supporters' Legal Competency

2004-10-21T11:13:00.000Z

There is now proof that it helps to be delusional if you still want to support George W. Bush. According to a new survey by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes:

Three out of four Bush supporters still believe Saddam Hussein was involved in the September 11, 2001 attacks, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Half of them still believe, despite concrete proof, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and one in four still believe it was developing them.

Three out of four also still believe Hussein provided substantial support to al-Qaeda and, contrary to its published report, half of them believe that the September 11 Commission found such ties.

Psychiatrists will tell you that "delusion" is a false belief strongly held in spite of invalidating evidence, and is a sure sign of mental illness as in "delusions of persecution" and "delusions of grandeur."

In most states (except perhaps Texas and Florida) individuals in a state of active psychosis are not allowed to vote. So how about this for a test question before you can get your hands on a ballot that will determine the fate of America and the world: "Do you still believe that Iraq had a damned thing to do with 9/11?"

Australian Financial Review - Bush supporters have a reality gap

FLASH - Bush creates another alliance in his War on Terror: al-Qaeda pledges support to Iraq

2004-10-20T13:24:00.000Z

In another stunning demonstration of George W. Bush's effectiveness in creating alliances in his War on Terror, the leader of the most feared militant group in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has declared his allegiance to Osama bin Laden, saying that his organization has agreed with al-Qaeda over strategy and the need for unity against "the enemies of Islam."

Displaying an utter inability to grasp the concept of "past tense" a White House spokesperson said "We've always said there were ties between Zarqawi and al-Qaeda, which underscores once again why Iraq is the central front in the war on terror."

No, you idiot. Here's the way it went:

1) first we invaded a nation that had nothing to do with al-Qaeda, possessed no weapons of mass destruction, and posed no threat whatsoever to America and then,

2) we proceeded to disrupt their economy, randomly arrest and lock-up the locals and abuse them while in prison, appoint a petty dictator of our choosing, and generally do everything possible to ensure that chaos would reign in the streets, and finally,

3) the local insurgents joined forces with our enemies at al-Qaeda.

So, if your neighbor tells you that she's voting for George W. Bush because he will "make us safer," ask her where in the world she got that idea.

The Register-Guard (OR) - Militants align with bin Laden

1,100 and Counting: Bush Cuts Veteran's Benefits

2004-10-19T20:17:00.000Z

With little fanfare we crossed another milestone this week as the 1,100th U.S. soldier was killed. (Actually, as of this writing the official number is now 1,102, not to mention, of course, the 15,357 Iraqis who have been killed.)

But the big numbers belie the personal tragedies like the one related in the link below.

Even if you usually do not follow the linked stories, take the time to read this one ... and as you do remember that George W. Bush has cut V.A. psychological treatment programs because they are subject to abuse (only girly men need counseling) and besides there are faith-based organizations to minister to troubled souls (if you're worried about burning in hell you just need to pray for forgiveness).

Portsmouth Herald - South of the Border: Marine returns from Iraq to emotional ruin, suicide

The Lying Liars at Sinclair Broadcasting

2004-10-18T13:15:00.000Z

After its stock price dropped 8% in reaction to its announcement that it had ordered all of its stations to run an anti-Kerry screed without commercial interruption just days before the election, Sinclair Broadcasting decided it better do something. So it called a day long meeting of its news directors where they discussed production of a "news special" providing a "balanced look" at the military records of the two Presidential candidates. Then they leaked the story of the meeting, apparently hoping to stem the tide of negative publicity.

But even this story seems to be unraveling, and they probably never had any intention of producing a news special, only to give the impression that they intended to present a balanced point-of-view:

Local affiliates have been told nothing other than that they are ordered to run the anti-Kerry film on Wednesday evening.

Meanwhile, Sinclair fired its Washington Bureau Chief for speaking out against the company's plans to air the hour-long Bush campaign commercial.

The producer of the anti-Kerry film has expressed shock that his film might be edited and says no one has asked him.

And, the producer of the anti-Kerry film is being sued for libel based upon the biased way in which he edited comments from Vietnam veterans in the film in order to make them seem anti-Kerry.

But, tragically, in the end it looks like Rabid Republicans who own Sinclair Broadcasting will get exactly what they wanted in the first place. This flap postpones once again any serious consideration of the military background of George W. Bush and delays, probably until well after the election, a reasoned discussion of his fitness to command the military. And that's precisely the intended outcome.

The New York Times - Ex-Marine Sues Over Portrayal in Kerry Film

Los Angeles Times - Sinclair Fires Journalist After Critical Comments

Condi's hormone problem

2004-10-17T21:00:00.000Z

It's one of those things you'd really rather not spend too much time thinking about, but ... well ... do you suppose Condi's got some sort of hormone imbalance? You know, is it possible she's running a bit over on the testosterone meter?

Testosterone levels run amok would explain a lot, and there's a logic to it. All right, it's a bit twisted, but there is a certain logic nonetheless.

She's been the voice in George W. Bush's ear advising him to ignore the outpouring of support for America after 9/11 and telling him that since we can kick the daylights out of anyone else on the planet we've got the right to do whatever we choose.

And National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice has let it be known that she would like to be NFL Commissioner.

In fact, she confesses that her father, himself a football coach, was disappointed at having a female child who would never be a linebacker, and that she's been a football fan ever since.

There's a certain symmetry to this career move: the NFL job also largely entails sending others to do violence on behalf of uninvolved spectators.

Of course there's the problem of Paul Tagliabue, the current commissioner of the NFL who has no plans to step down. But, come to think of it, Condi has experience in forced regime change too, doesn't she?

Actually, the world would probably be a much safer place if Condi was able to vent her testosterone fueled fantasies on a playing field instead of the Middle East.

Cleveland Browns - Condoleezza Rice visits practice

U.S. Troops who refused to drive held hostage, then released unharmed

2004-10-16T13:35:00.000Z

After heroically refusing to drive unprotected trucks full of contaminated helicopter fuel through the shooting gallery that George W. Bush's War on Terror has made of Iraq, 19 American soldiers were detained by U.S. the military.

Although under investigation and facing possible disciplinary action, none of those who refused to deliver contaminated helicopter fuel has been killed.

In other news: six more American GIs were killed, two of them in two separate helicopter crashes.

Boston Globe - Troops who refused Iraq mission said detained, released

USAToday - Six GIs killed in Iraq bombings, crashes

The Bush strategy? Appeal to appeal to lizards and other reptiles.

2004-10-15T20:52:00.000Z

Having a hard time understanding why otherwise responsible adults can still be posting Bush/Cheney signs in their yards? Wonder how someone can watch that last debate, with George W. Bush literally foaming at the mouth, and still conclude that he's emotionally mature enough to be trusted with the most powerful military in the history of the world?

The answer is, FEAR! It's a carefully designed campaign to trigger the fight or flight response and ensure that voters never have a moment's time to make a reflective decision before the election.

If Bush is elected, it will prove once and for all the extraordinary power of our reptilian brains. A vestigial evolutionary relic will have triumphed over thousands of years of human evolution. The rest of the world will be correct when they judge that America is truly the land of the Neanderthals. And you'll want to be careful to avoid provoking your scaly neighbor as you peel off your Kerry-Edwards bumper sticker.

ARIANNA ONLINE - Appealing To Our Lizard Brains: Why Bush Is Still Standing

Another Computer Crash Cancels Another Florida Voting Machine Test

2004-10-14T15:36:00.000Z

A routine test of Palm Beach County's electronic voting machines was canceled Tuesday because the computer network at the elections office crashed, halting the public exercise. Not to worry, the Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore said the "computer crash" won't affect the electronic touch-screen voting machines to be used during the upcoming presidential election.

Florida state law requires that a some of the machines be tested publicly to ensure that the equipment will count the votes cast for all the offices and measures on the ballot. In Palm Beach County, epicenter of the 2000 election fiasco, 86 of the 4,720 touch-screen machines are to be tested publicly, the rest are tested (or not) behind closed doors.

Apparently the computer crash that cancelled the test was due to a power failure during hurricane Jeanne which allowed the machines to over heat.

Under Florida law, vigorously defended by George W. Bush's brother Governor Jeb Bush, there is no verifiable paper record created when a voter uses the electronic voting machines. And, of course, the Florida Republican party has advised its supporters in electronic machine precincts to cast absentee ballots because they would result in a paper trail.

Florida voters would be well advised to vote, and then pray.

Palm Beach Post - Computer glitch delays routine voter machine test

Calling Sinclair Broadcasting's Bluff

2004-10-13T01:04:00.000Z

Paul Alexander, director of the critically-acclaimed film "Brothers in Arms" which examines John Kerry's experience in Vietnam in a favorable light has offered his film, free of charge, to Sinclair broadcasting, to run along with the anti-Kerry film they are forcing their stations to run next week.

A Sinclair spokesman told the New York Times that the company would consider running a Kerry documentary from a different perspective, but couldn't find one. Alexander's offer effectively, and publicly, calls Sinclair's bluff.

Meanwhile, a campaign is being mounted boycott Sinclair stations and contact their advertisers. The Boycott Sinclair website lists known advertisers in local markets and their contact info. You can search by market, see what local businesses advertise on Sinclair stations, call them up, and let them know you won't tolerate Sinclair's political attack masquerading as news programming, and they shouldn't be paying for it.

Salon.com - Stopping Sinclair

The "new reality" -- Will we grow, or merely sruvive? It's a choice you will have to make.

2004-10-12T14:19:00.000Z

We've heard a lot about how "everything changed" on September 11, 2001, and that we now face a "new reality." In the upcoming election we are presented with two radically different approaches to that new reality: one approaches the new reality by force denying it and insisting that it be shaped to our wishes, the other would adapt to the new reality and grow through it.

George W. Bush's approach to the new reality was to declare his "War on Terror" and vow to fight on until one day, when each and every terrorist is either dead or in jail and unable to commit further acts of terror, victory will be declared. It is becoming clear that such a day, should it every come, is a very long time in future.

John Kerry, on the other hand, believes that we must acknowledge that we are living in a new reality and adapt to it, recognizing that there is no realistic hope of nailing every last terrorist and that at some point the war on terror must cease to be "the focus of our lives".

The Bush campaign, of course, immediately seized upon Kerry's comment as evidence of his willingness to be soft on terrorists. In fact, to continue to deny the new reality in the face of all evidence borders on delusion.

Charles Darwin explained that while change can help prolong survival, it is adaptation that results in progress. George Bush's orientation is one of survival, John Kerry would adapt to the new reality and grow as a result. Bush's approach counts on brute force, Kerry's requires real courage.

ITV (Ireland) - Bush and Kerry trade blows over New Mexico

Bush cynically puts his war on terror on the back burner until after the election

2004-10-11T13:18:00.000Z

All right, that does it! Why exactly would any veteran or anyone on active duty even think of voting for George W. Bush?

The Bush administration now admits that it will delay major assaults on rebel-held cities in Iraq until after the U.S. elections because they are concerned that large-scale military offensives might affect the presidential race. Pentagon officials confirm that they will not try to retake cities such as Fallouja and Ramadi, where the insurgents' grip is strongest and U.S. casualties would be the highest, until after Americans vote in what is likely to be an extremely close election.

"When this election's over, you'll see us move very vigorously," said a Bush administration official involved in strategic planning, speaking on condition of anonymity. "Once you're past the election, it changes the political ramifications. We're not on hold right now. We're just not as aggressive."

We aren't likely to hear any complaints from Iyad Allawi, the U.S. appointed Interim Iraqi Prime Minister, who believes that he would face an uncertain future under a president Kerry and has a vested interest in seeing Bush re-elected. He is acutely aware of how bloody the next steps in the Iraq war will be and he knows the negative impact that an American body count would have on the election. "A lot of his political future depends on our election," said the senior administration official.

But worst of all, the 138,000 U.S. troops in Iraq who are trying to break the will of a deadly insurgency, will be expected to understand and accommodate the needs of U.S. politics and the demands of their Iraqi hosts.

Los Angeles Times - Major Assaults on Hold Until After U.S. Vote

U.S. Announces permanent occupation of Afghanistan, pipeline construction begins

2004-10-10T15:42:00.000Z

"This was an extraordinary day for the Afghan people, and this election is going to be judged legitimate. I'm just certain of it," thus speaking on behalf of George W. Bush, Condie Rice kicked off the administration's spin campaign to make us all believe that, after centuries of some of the fiercest tribal warfare on the planet, Afghanistan has now embraced the almighty's gift of freedom.

Hamid Karzai, the U.S.'s hand picked Prime Minister, received a majority of the votes in Afghanistan's novel election. However, as is so often the case with the Bush administration, reality is somewhat at odds with the official proclamation:

Karzai was the only one of the 16 candidates remaining on the ballot by the end of the election as all of his challengers withdrew when their calls for a postponement were rejected after massive ballot fraud became apparent during the day.

A "fool-proof" plan to prevent fraud involving the use of indelible ink marks on voters' thumbs fell apart when a number of provinces were provided with washable ink instead. (The inking procedure itself was a stop-gap measure after it became apparent that many Afghanis were registering more than once and that Karzai had ordered more than three times as many ballots printed as there were eligible voters.)

Karzai was the only candidate who was flown around the country from one campaign stop to another in a U.S. helicopters with security provided by the U.S. military.

Nevertheless, after having spent more than $200 million on the Afghani election, George W. Bush can now claim "mission accomplished" in the first front in his war on terror, and the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan can become permanent thus clearing the way for the construction of the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline.

The Age (Australia) - Fraud claims fuel election doubts

BBC (UK) - Central Asia pipeline deal signed

Lumber Baron Bush

2004-10-09T13:19:00.000Z

He was in his prime, pandering to the anti-intellectual wing of his constituency with his smug snickering, "Yuh mean ah own a timer cumpny? ...snick-snick ...News tuh me. ...Enybudy wanna buy sum wood? ...heh-heh."

John Kerry had just driven home his point that there are too many loopholes in tax law, pointing out that both George W. Bush and Dick Cheney qualify as "small businesses" under the Republican definition. "President Bush owns a timber business, made $84," Kerry said. And then Bush blew it. "I own a timber business? You want some wood, Charlie?" he clucked.

Actually, he does own part of a timber company, and on his 2001 taxes he did report $84 from it.

And, according to the tortured math used by the Republicans, that makes him one of the much vaunted "small business owners" who are going to fire the economic recovery if only we can get the "gummint off their backs."

According to the web site factcheck.org (which Cheney himself cited as a resource in his own debate), "President Bush himself would have qualified as a "small business owner" under the Republican definition, based on his 2001 federal income tax returns. He reported $84 of business income from his part ownership of a timber-growing enterprise. However, 99.99% of Bush's total income came from other sources that year. (Bush also qualified as a "small business owner" in 2000 based on $314 of "business income," but not in 2002 and 2003 when he reported his timber income as "royalties" on a different tax schedule.)"*

And, according to the same source, "Vice President Cheney and his wife Lynne qualify as "small business owners" for 2003 because 3.5% of the total income reported on their tax returns was business income from Mrs. Cheney's consulting business. She reported $44,580 in business income on Schedule C, nearly all of it from fees paid to her as a director of the Reader's Digest . But giving the Cheneys a tax cut didn't stimulate any hiring; she reported zero employees."

Come to think of it, according to the republican definition even my wife, who works as an "independent contractor" (in a position that used to be filled by a salaried employee with full medical insurance) qualifies as a "small business owner" because she files a Schedule C.

Rediff (India) - Kerry looks good in second debate too

factcheck.org - A Bush-Cheney ad says Kerry would raise taxes for 900,000 "small businesses" and "hurt jobs." It's a big exaggeration.

* Confirming the lengths to which Bush and his cronies are willing to go in order to disguise their activities, factcheck.org issued this clarification: "What we originally reported as a "timber-growing" enterprise is actually described on Bush's tax return as an "oil and gas production" concern, the Lone Star Trust. We were confused because The Lone Star Trust currently owns 50% of another company, "LSTF, LLC", described on Bushs 2003 financial disclosure forms as a limited-liability company organized "for the purpose of the production of trees for commercial sales." So, Bush does own part interest in a tree-growing company, but the $84 came from an oil and gas company and we should have reported it as such."

war is peace

2004-10-08T13:54:00.000Z

Somewhere over at the Ministry of Truth you can bet that Winston Smith is putting in some late hours this week.

We now learn that George W. Bush invaded Iraq knowing full well that Saddam Hussein had no chemical weapons; no biological weapons; and no nuclear weapons. In fact, that he had no banned weapons at all, not even "weapons related program activities."

That is the conclusion of the Iraq Survey Group, which was created by George Bush with the specific assignment of proving his case for removing Hussein. But Bush's own hand-picked group of investigators has found the facts to be precisely the opposite of what Bush and his band of thugs has been telling the American people: the much-maligned international regime of sanctions and weapons containment was working exactly as it was supposed to. Following the war over Kuwait Saddam Hussein was progressively disarmed and he never re-started the banned offensive programs.

The plan fact is this: the world was successfully dealing with Saddam Hussein without any need for an American invasion. In other words, this was a totally optional war. The invasion of Iraq was a choice made by Bush who then lied to America and the world to convince us otherwise.

So how do George Bush and his cronies react?

First, deny reality: "As soon as the sanctions were lifted, he had every intention of going back," asserted Dick Cheney, "delay, defer, wait, wasn't an option." In Cheney's world merely having the desire to commit a crime is enough to get your country invaded and occupied and land you in the slammer without a trial.

Then, change the subject: "Saddam was systematically gaming the system, using the U.N. oil-for-food program to try to influence countries and companies," added George Bush. So forget about all that stuff about WMD, ties to al Qaeda, state sponsor of terror and so on, Hussein was a shake-down artist and that's plenty of reason to invade a country, kill and maim thousands of Americans soldiers and tens of thousands of the local residents.

As Americans now the only sensible course of action is for us to vote for change. If we as the American people fail to take responsibility for this the world will hold us accountable, and there's no amount of spin or positioning that will save our sorry souls.

Independent (UK) - The final judgment