LEFT is RIGHT (blogging against The Bush-war) |
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Iraq War Cost
 
 
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....The defenders of our White House, who routinely claim that their much vaunted War President can do anything, have now flip-flopped to say he can't do a thing and neither can anyone else. To hear them whine and bleat you'd think the nation that won the cold war, the guys who sent people to the moon, the country that invented the atomic bomb, the descendants of the very people who took on the greatest empire on earth and won, twice by the way, is as helpless as a kitten up a tree. They can't do a thing. They Can't. Ask the Republicans, how about using less oil? They'll tell you: We Can't. How about redirecting ALL oil company giveaways to providing incentives for alternative energy companies and mass transit? We'll pretend to reexamine them, but We Can't really eliminate them. How about putting the same kind of resources into achieving energy freedom we put into Iraq or Halliburton or the pockets of billionaires via tax cuts? We Can't. How about mandating higher fuel efficiencies for cars and trucks from every manufacturer allowed access to our markets, with some tax credits thrown in for our domestic auto industry to comply? We Can't. How about getting rid of the lavish tax breaks for Hummers and mega-SUVs and instead lavishly reward every compact and hybrid buyer? The recycled excuses and lack of accountability, underscored with blood and treasure, are bad enough. Siphoning off even more of our paychecks for Exxon and the Saudi-Bush Family is simply disgusting. But those two words "We Can't" should send a chill of revulsion up the spine of any American who hears them. America was not built by the "I Can't's." These United States were first forged as a sovereign nation and later strengthened to world super-power status by generations of visionary statesmen and leaders who stepped up to the plate and said loudly "I Can and I Will!" If the Republican "I Can'ts," really can't (Or won't) then maybe they're in the wrong line of work. And maybe We the People would be better off replacing them with people who Can. |
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- 18 rich families pay for campaign to kill estate taxes (sent by Phil L.)
- Rep. Nancy Pelosi shows how a Democratic Congressperson should speak (video)
- Oh my friggin' god, Bush has become a preacher (video)
- John Dean explains why there will be an "October Surprise" and speculates what it might be.
- Fighting IEDs in Iraq with BomBots
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| From our Leave the Hard Work To Santa Claus Files we find one more reason to leave a spare key under the mat as police in Hayward found a man lodged in his chimney yesterday. A 23-year-old Michael Urbano of Hayward "came home early Saturday morning and, finding himself locked out and without his keys, tried to enter the single-story house through its chimney." Did we mention he was bare-assed naked? "He told us he took off his clothes because as he was going down the chimney the clothes would rub up against it and slow him down," Branson said. "If it was skin on cement he felt he would go down easier." "Urbano's effort ended disastrously when a cable-television wire he used to lower himself snapped. He fell and was wedged in a section of the chimney tapering into the home's fireplace." "For the next four hours he cried out for help. A neighbor called police and fire fighters, who dislodged Urbano, Branson said. Officers booked Urbano for being under the influence of drugs, he added." |
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If any of you affected veterans would like to contact Phil directly, email me and I will forward it to him.
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"As Alexis de Tocqueville once said: "America is great because she is good. If America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great." "In January 2001, with the inauguration of George W. Bush as president, America set on a path to cease being good; America became a revolutionary nation, a radical republic. If our country continues on this path, it will cease to be great - as happened to all great powers before it, without exception. From the Kyoto accords to the International Criminal Court, from torture and cruel and unusual treatment of prisoners to rendition of innocent civilians, from illegal domestic surveillance to lies about leaking, from energy ineptitude to denial of global warming, from cherry-picking intelligence to appointing a martinet and a tyrant to run the Defense Department, the Bush administration, in the name of fighting terrorism, has put America on the radical path to ruin. "Unprecedented interpretations of the Constitution that holds the president as commander in chief to be all-powerful and without checks and balances marks the hubris and unparalleled radicalism of this administration. "Moreover, fiscal profligacy of an order never seen before has brought America trade deficits that boggle the mind and a federal deficit that, when stripped of the gimmickry used to make it appear more tolerable, will leave every child and grandchild in this nation a debt that will weigh upon their generations like a ball and chain around every neck. Imagine owing $150,000 from the cradle. That is radical irresponsibility. "This administration has expanded government - creation of the Homeland Security Department alone puts it in the record books - and government intrusiveness. It has brought a new level of sleaze and corruption to Washington (difficult to do, to be sure). And it has done the impossible in war-waging: put in motion a conflict in Iraq that in terms of colossal incompetence, civilian and military, and unbridled arrogance portends to top the Vietnam era, a truly radical feat...." |
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| "Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that numbers of people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience. . . Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem." - - - Howard Zinn |
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| Democrats in DC think that keeping their mouths shut and letting the country see the GOP debacle in all its glory will earn them dramatic gains. The corrosive consultants whisper in their ears that taking a strong stance will only earn them enemies, galvanize partisan Democrats to turn out. So they remain in relative silence. Heck, even admonishing Dems like Russ Feingold who have the temerity to speak out against the disaster in DC. But silence doesn't motivate. People ARE seeing that Republicans can't govern. There's no way around that. What they AREN'T seeing is how Democrats will be any different. How they offer change. The GOP WILL motivate its voters come November. They'll rail on abortion and gays and scary brown people crossing the southern border and how Democrats want to take their Bibles away. And their core supporters will turn out. And Democrats, unless they realize that they need to inspire, will find those huge gains will fail to materialize. You cannot have leadership without offending someone. Someone once said you could measure Bobby Kennedy's greatness by the number of enemies he had. George Bush and Karl Rove know this, and they don't care who they offend as they seek to inspire and motivate their core supporters. DC Democrats are afraid to lead. They're afraid to inspire. They're afraid to offend. They're afraid to clearly state their core principles. They're simply afraid. And that better change soon. - - - Kos |
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- Traffic lights aren't necessary in India (video)
- How a computer works
- Umbrella that forecasts the weather
- Help broke rock bands (video)
- How neon lights work
- GoogleMaps locations of ghosts from the Ghostbusters movies
- Prints With/Out Pressure (relief prints)
- Really cool periodic table of the elements
- Zone Zero (photography galleries)
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I came across this great govt. site that shows historical graphs of how the U.S. uses/produces/imports/exports energy going as far back as 1950. It's quite fascinating.
Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is on the verge of filing criminal charges against Karl Rove.
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| Drug Industry Works to Impede Marketing of Generic Drugs The brand-name drug industry is fighting in Congress, state legislatures, and courtrooms across the country to make the process of bringing generic drugs to market more difficult. As a result, discount drug makers may not be able to sell many drugs commonly used by seniors in cheaper generic versions as soon as the drugs’ brand name patents expire, the organization that represents pharmacy benefit managers warned this week. "There's an agenda to prevent generics from getting to the market as soon as they could," said Mark Merritt, president of the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association in The Washington Post. With several top-selling drugs scheduled to go off patent within five years, the organization reported, “branded drug companies are creating roadblocks to possible savings of $23 billion to seniors and the Medicare system.” Together, the cholesterol drugs Zocor and Pravachol, the antidepressant Zoloft and the prostate medication Proscar would save Medicare $13 billion if generic competitors come on the market as scheduled. After discovery of a new drug, drug makers currently have the legal right for 20 years to sell it exclusively. Slightly more than 53 percent of all U.S. prescriptions are filled with generics. “There is no need to give brand-name drug makers more than twenty years of exclusive rights,” said Ruben Burks, Secretary-Treasurer of the Alliance. “Twenty is more than enough.” |
I wonder what our do-nothing Democratic Senators and Congresspeople will do for you now. Let's take a guess: NOTHING! I mean, they just gave the obscenely wealthy oil companies more tax breaks, so why should your elected representatives change their tune now? I know the Dems don't have a majority in Congress, but that doesn't give them an excuse for sitting on their hands and not speaking out vociferously every chance they get. Did you elect these bums to represent the corporations or to represent you?
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| "....if every American household changed five regular light bulbs to this new kind of bulb-- it's called a compact florescent bulb--it would be equivalent to taking eight million cars off the road for a year. Now why the heck don't we do that? "....They're easily purchased, they cost a little bit more, but you make it back on your energy bill, and you will never replace that light bulb, because they last forever. So this is a very good thing we all should do. And again, it's not about sacrifice, because it's just as much light. You're not going to have to light five candles in order to read at night." - - - from an interviewn with Laurie David, Executive Producer of "Too Hot Not To Handle", a new HBO Film |
Here's some info on CFL bulbs.
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| April 20, 2006 Mr. Michael xxxxxxxxx xxxx xxxxxxxxxxx Street xxxx xxxxxx, California 9xxxx Dear Mr. xxxxxxxxx: Thank you for writing to me to express your concerns with the Bush Administration's recent efforts to increase fuel economy standards for Sport Utility Vehicles (SUVs) and light trucks. I appreciate hearing from you on this important issue and welcome the opportunity to respond. I understand and share the concerns you mention in your letter. The bottom line is that this new policy continues to allow SUVs and light trucks to achieve less stringent fuel economy standards than passenger cars. America's cars and light trucks are responsible for 33 percent of U.S. carbon dioxide pollution, which causes global warming. In addition, the United States is the largest consumer of oil, using 20.4 million barrels per day. By increasing Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, particularly for SUVs and other light trucks, we can reduce our dependence on oil in addition to decreasing our greenhouse gas emissions. You will be pleased to know that I have re-introduced the "Automobile Fuel Economy Act of 2005" (S. 889). This bill would phase in an increase in the CAFE standards for light duty trucks and SUVs so that by 2011, light duty trucks and SUVs would meet the same CAFE standards as cars do today. The bill would also mandate that the federal fleet of cars and trucks meet a higher fuel economy standard than currently required. Closing the "SUV loophole" will save 1 million barrels of oil a day, decrease foreign oil imports by 10 percent, and prevent 240 million tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere each year. Again, thank you for contacting me. If you have any additional comments or questions, please feel free to contact my Washington, D.C. staff at (202) 224-3841. Best regards. Sincerely yours, Dianne Feinstein United States Senator http://feinstein.senate.gov Further information about my position on issues of concern to California and the Nation are available at my website http://feinstein.senate.gov. You can also receive electronic e-mail updates by subscribing to my e-mail list at http://feinstein.senate.gov/issue.html. |
It's a solution, but as usual with our established Democratic leadership, it's a solution that only mildly attempts to resolve the increasingly critical energy depletion and environmental pollution factors of fossil fuel consumption. We won't know if a solution is truly adequate until we propose one that has the American automobile industry screaming bloody murder.
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| "Equipment is wearing out five times faster than normal, and maintenance and procurement expenditures were intentionally put off by the Bush Administration and GOP Congress to mask the true costs of the [Iraq] war, on the mistaken assumption apparently that we wouldn’t be in this predicament three years down the road. "They were wrong, and we are broke, in hock up to our asses to the Chinese, while the Bush Administration and GOP Congress want to make the upper income and Paris Hilton tax cuts permanent. "That's my idea of treasonous behavior." - - - Steve Soto |
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| University of California, Berkeley, Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau announced today (Wednesday, April 19) a major new multidisciplinary campus initiative to improve the quality of life for impoverished people by helping them develop their full economic potential. The Richard C. Blum Center for Developing Economies is being launched with a $15 million gift, which includes a $5 million challenge grant, from San Francisco financier, philanthropist and University of California regent Richard C. Blum. The center will tap the expertise and resources of the nation's top public teaching and research university to achieve significant — and financially sustainable — solutions to problems affecting the nearly 3 billion people in the world who are living on less than $2 a day.... ...The Blum Center will have two purposes: 1) to educate UC Berkeley students about the world of foreign assistance, its potential and challenges; and 2) to draw on UC Berkeley faculty expertise from a wide range of disciplines including governance and law, affordable technology, agriculture, health care services, infrastructure and general economic development. It will also focus on encouraging and developing entrepreneurship. It will draw on the expertise from faculty at other University of California campuses to put together teams to work on projects in the field.... |
Note: Blum is married to U.S. Senator Diane Feinstein of California.
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| "Recent reports suggest that the Bush administration is considering using nuclear weapons against Iran. The very fact that nuclear weapon use is being discussed as an option—against a state that does not have nuclear weapons and does not represent a direct or imminent threat to the United States—illustrates the extent to which the Bush administration has changed U.S. nuclear weapons policy. "The Bush administration has explicitly rejected the basic precept that the sole purpose of U.S. nuclear weapons should be to deter the use of nuclear weapons. It has assigned a new, and provocative, mission to U.S. nuclear weapons: to dissuade or prevent other countries from undertaking military programs that could threaten U.S. interests in the future. A 'preventive' nuclear attack on Iran would fall into this category. It has also blurred the line between nuclear and conventional weapons by declaring that nuclear weapons can be used as part of military operations. "This nuclear policy increases the likelihood that nuclear weapons will be used, and ultimately decreases U.S. as well as international security. Instead, the United States should commit itself to strengthen the taboo against the use of nuclear weapons that has developed over the past 60 years. "Plans to use nuclear weapons against Iran also fail to recognize the immediate dangers inherent in the use of nuclear weapons. The administration is reportedly considering using the B61-11 nuclear 'bunker buster' against an underground facility near Natanz, Iran. The use of such a weapon would create massive clouds of radioactive fallout that could spread far from the site of the attack, including to other nations. Even if used in remote, lightly populated areas, the number of casualties could range up to more than a hundred thousand, depending on the weapon yield and weather conditions. "Threatening to use nuclear weapons against Iran provides the strongest of incentives for nuclear proliferation, since it would send the message that the only way for a country to deter nuclear attack is to acquire its own nuclear arsenal. The administration cannot have its cake and eat it, too—it cannot have a viable nuclear non-proliferation policy while continually expanding the roles for its own nuclear weapons." |
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| "I hear the voices, and I read the front page, and I know the speculation. But I'm the decider, and I decide what is best." - - - George W. Bush - 4/18/06 |
If only he would decide to learn how to speak.
He didn't used to read newspapers, so it's good to hear that he's advanced to reading the front page. And those voices.... are they the ones of his critics, or the ones in his head that keep telling him to do everything possible to feed the wealthy and screw every other human on this planet?
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- Charges filed against Ohio elections officials for wrongdoings during 2004 election ballot counting
- Half of young US adults lack health insurance
- An interview with Amy Goodman (of Democracy Now!)
- You'll be hearing a lot about this Vanity Fair article by Carl Bernstein, so you may as well go and read it now.
- Neil Young sings and bashes Bush
- Christian Fundamentalists: The Most Evil People In The World?
- Another corrupt, elected Republican sent to the slammer
- Bush Administration: "No sex before marriage." For anyone.
- Another
MedicareMedicaid "gotcha": New rules will adversely affect thousands, especially the poor. (thanks, Joy) - Phil L. sends us a link to this article by WaPo staff writer David Finkel, about angry liberals.
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- Photos of Iraq seen everywhere else in the world except the U.S.
- Avian Flu Tip: Don't drink swan's blood
- "It's the President, stupid."
- Bill Gates may help wipe out malaria
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| On Hardball Friday afternoon, Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of the Iraq war, was defending Defense Secretary Rumsfeld against the recent offensive by the retired generals. In passing, he said this: "Ask him about the 14 months we spent planning this thing." That would put the operational, as opposed to contingency, planning as having started in roughly January of 2002.... |
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| "America has helped create and instigate the appetite for nuclear weapons in nations that want to be powerful. This is something we, as a nation, must fix." - - - Steve Clemons |
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- What the Easter Bunny does the other 364 days of the year (video)
- Titanic Two The Surface (video)
- Alternate endings to "Snakes on a Plane"
- Darth Vader versus Japanese Police - PART I - PART II (videos; you'll need to click the embedded URLs)
- Mmmm.... yummy: Cadbury Egg Cake
- Funny Firefox Ad (video)
- Intelligent Spoons
- Video Game Reenactment of the infamous 10th inning debacle by the Red Sox in Game 6 of 1986 Baseball World Series
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Isn't anyone out there, who is paying attention, just a little concerned about the fact that our leaders are actively planning (and I emphasize "planning") to use nuclear weapons preemptively (as compared to their use in retaliation against Japan.... which was still grotesquely wrong) against Iran? What is wrong with you people? Why aren't you
This is as serious as it gets.
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| "When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer 'Present' or 'Not guilty.'" - - - Theodore Roosevelt |
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In the meantime, be sure to listen to this eye-opening interview about abortion laws in El Salvador (click the "LISTEN" button). These laws are the ultimate goal of the Right in the USA.
Also, see how nearly everything you eat, one way or another, comes from corn.
Mutually Assured Dementia (one man's prediction of consequences of nuking Iran)
And to all you morons who voted for this total idiot in 2000 and 2004, again fuck you very much.
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| Iran Can Now Make glowing Mickey Mouse Watches Despite all the sloppy and inaccurate headlines about Iran "going nuclear," the fact is that all President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday was that it had enriched uranium to a measely 3.5 percent, using a bank of 180 centrifuges hooked up so that they "cascade." The ability to slightly enrich uranium is not the same as the ability to build a bomb. For the latter, you need at least 80% enrichment, which in turn would require about 16,000 small centrifuges hooked up to cascade. Iran does not have 16,000 centrifuges. It seems to have 180. Iran is a good ten years away from having a bomb, and since its leaders, including Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei, say they do not want an atomic bomb because it is Islamically immoral, you have to wonder if they will ever have a bomb. The crisis is not one of nuclear enrichment, a low-level attainment that does not necessarily lead to having a bomb. Even if Iran had a bomb, it is hard to see how they could be more dangerous than Communist China, which has lots of such bombs, and whose Walmart stores are a clever ruse to wipe out the middle class American family through funneling in cheaply made Chinese goods. What is really going on here is a ratcheting war of rhetoric. The Iranian hard liners are down to a popularity rating in Iran of about 15%. They are using their challenge to the Bush administration over their perfectly legal civilian nuclear energy research program as a way of enhancing their nationalist credentials in Iran. Likewise, Bush is trying to shore up his base, which is desperately unhappy with the Iraq situation, by rattling sabres at Iran. Bush's poll numbers are so low, often in the mid-30s, that he must have lost part of his base to produce this result. Iran is a great deus ex machina for Bush. Rally around the flag yet again. If this international game of chicken goes wrong, then the whole Middle East and much of Western Europe could go up in flames. The real threat here is not unconventional war, which Iran cannot fight for the foreseeable future. It is the spread of Iraq-style instability to more countries in the region. Bush and Ahmadinejad could be working together toward the Perfect Storm. |
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| I don't think you've seen what war can do...I know our politicians have not. Beware, some of the pictures can be graphic: a few samples. Maybe the AP needs to publish these photos separately, say in People magazine for instance. I certainly don't see them in any MSM newspapers. I've seen very few of them in fact. I get the occasional, "this week's soldier killed in battle", on the 6 o'clock news but that's it! We talk of Democrats getting a spine but if journalists would get a spine and start reporting the true atrocities, along with the lies of this Administration, this war might come to an end! Can we possibly expect Katie [Couric] to do her job? "This presents about 4,000 photographs showing the Iraq War killing and maiming, most from the Associated Press's archive and others from sources listed." This administration is so good at hiding the evidence; they stop the photos of the coffins coming home, they stop the viewing of soldiers' funerals and they try to stop publishing the stories that go with the faces of the victims of this senseless Iraq war. Take a few minutes to review and ponder...had enough...outraged yet? I don't think you are! Most of you will still turn on American Idol tonight! How do I turn this into viral propaganda? Everyone needs to get off their asses and send these photos to every congressperson and everyone running for office! These are the faces of our soldiers, our troops, our American Family!! They're fucking dying for lies, you know...dying for fucking lies! Phil (hat tip Michael Moore) |
When enough Americans get as justifiably enraged as Phil, then hopefully we can put an end to this very dark period of our history.
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[click image for source]
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| Bush's defense is that he has an "inherent right" to declassify documents. What BS. Declassification is a bureaucratic process with rules. Bush can initiate it. He can't just arbitrarily declare some parts of some documents leakable for petty political purposes. The number of "inherent rights" of the presidency, from torturing people to prancing around their living rooms when they are out at a ball, keeps exponentially increasing. Next he'll be asserting a claim to deflower our daughters. - - - Juan Cole |
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| George Orwell's classic novel 1984 is a chilling glimpse into what was supposed to be the not too distant future. But it's now happening…here…RIGHT NOW. Orwell's "Big Brother" depended on suppression of information, individual freedom and a complete surrender of privacy. It included rabid Nationalism and slogans like WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH Blood-soaked corporate oil wars wrapped in the flag is of course for PEACE. Making a slave class out of immigrants is their FREEDOM. Suppression of news to keep you ignorant of course makes you STRONGER. Orwell was warrior and an artist who fought fascism where ever he saw it up until he drew his last breath. And he knew, just like the Neocons do, that resistance and reform is always possible with a large, healthy, informed middle class willing to speak truth to power. Once you understand that, you can understand the motivation behind every move Bush makes from tax cuts for the ultra rich, to importing cheap labor from Mexico, to turning healthcare over to pharmaceutical and insurance companies. Every move keeps the poor poor and further weakens the middle class. |
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Katherine Harris: PTV True Washington Story (video)
Weird Keyboards
Animal Launching (video)
Caffeine inhaler
A rousing tribute to Numa Numa (video)
Terrific stop motion video
Wireless extension cords
Rating every single taco stand in L.A.
I know a few people who should wear this dog fart neutralizer
Meatrix II (video; not too funny, but it is a cartoon)
Cell phone handset
NIHILIST JOB RÉSUMÉ
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Issue of 2006-04-03, Posted 2006-03-27 After the fall of Baghdad, three years ago, the United States military began a secret investigation of the decision-making within Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship. The study, carried out by the U.S. Joint Forces Command, drew on captured documents and interviews with former Baath Party officials and Iraqi military officers, and when it was completed, last year, it was delivered to President Bush. The full work remains classified, but “Cobra II,” a recently published book about the early phases of the war, by the Times reporter Michael Gordon and Lieutenant General Bernard Trainor, has disclosed parts of the study, and the Pentagon has released declassified sections, which Foreign Affairs has posted on its Web site. Reading them, it is easy to imagine why the Administration might resist publication of the full study. The extracts describe how the Iraq invasion, more than any other war in American history, was a construct of delusion. Frustratingly, however, we now understand much more about the textures of fantasy in Saddam’s palaces in early 2003 than we do about the self-delusions then prevalent in the West Wing. The study portrays the Iraqi President as a fading adversary who felt boxed in by sanctions and political pressure. Saddam’s former generals and civilian aides—such as his principal secretary, Lieutenant General Abed Hamid Mahmoud, and the former Iraqi foreign minister, Tariq Aziz—describe their old boss as a Lear-like figure, a confused despot in the enervating twilight of a ruthless career: unable to think straight, dependent upon his two lunatic and incompetent sons, and increasingly reliant on bluff and bluster to remain in power. Saddam lay awake at night worrying about knotty problems, and later issued memos based on the dreams he had when he drifted into sleep. As the invasion approached, he so feared a coup that he refused to allow his generals to prepare seriously for war. Instead, he endorsed a plan for the defense of Baghdad that essentially instructed his generals to talk with no one, think rousing thoughts, and await further orders. The generals knew that to question their leader or his sons was suicide, so they just saluted. “We’re doing great!” the Minister of Defense wrote to his field commanders on April 6th, as Baghdad fell. Nor did this sham mask any plan to foil the invasion by launching a guerrilla war. There has long been speculation that the insurgency, which has so far taken more than twenty-three hundred American lives, might have been seeded in part by clandestine prewar cell formations or arms distributions. In fact, according to the study, there was no such preparation by Saddam or any of his generals, not even as the regime’s “world crumbled around it”; the insurgency was an unplanned, evolving response to the political failings and humiliations of the occupation. As for weapons of mass destruction, there were none, but Saddam could not bring himself to admit it, because he feared a loss of prestige and, in particular, that Iran might take advantage of his weakness—a conclusion also sketched earlier by the C.I.A.-supervised Iraq Survey Group. He did not tell even his most senior generals that he had no W.M.D. until just before the invasion. They were appalled, and some thought he might be lying, because, they later told their interrogators, the American government insisted that Iraq did have such weapons. Saddam “found it impossible to abandon the illusion of having W.M.D.,” the study says. The Bush war cabinet, of course, clung to the same illusion, and a kind of mutually reinforcing trance took hold between the two leaderships as the invasion neared. When the opposing armies finally crashed into each other in the desert, the professional officers fighting the war had in common a rich disdain for the self-styled strategists who had sent them into battle. Gordon and Trainor’s extensive interviews with the Army and Marine generals and colonels who commanded the invasion show that they had almost as little faith in Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his aides as their Iraqi counterparts had in Saddam and his sons. Indeed, the American officers featured in “Cobra II” are remarkably open about the war’s many errors of conception and execution. Of course, they do not seem to believe that any of the big mistakes were their fault—they blame the C.I.A. for repeatedly getting the battlefield intelligence wrong, and they blame Rumsfeld and his pliant subordinates for sending them to occupy Iraq with a force of inadequate size. The Army and the Marines have paid an extraordinarily high price for the war’s compounding blunders, and, presumably, the officers are speaking candidly now not just to settle scores but to avoid such bungling in the future. As usual, this transparency and self-reflection does not extend to the White House. Bush and Cheney—even with their approval ratings at historic lows and with Iraq veering toward open civil war—and their staffs still apparently find it impossible to admit error. In the week marking the third anniversary of the invasion, the Bush Administration delivered a portfolio of speeches and op-ed essays that seem even more arid and isolated than usual. (The President kept repeating his claim that he had a “strategy for victory,” but he sounded as if he were reading texts from 2004 that his staff had forgotten to clear from his desk.) At the same time, the White House reissued a national-security strategy doctrine that blandly reaffirmed Bush’s intent to “act pre-emptively,” should he see the need, as if there were not a reason in the world to reconsider his assumptions. The President and the members of his war cabinet now routinely wave at the horizon and speak about the long arc of history’s judgment—many years or decades must pass, they suggest, before the overthrow of Saddam and its impact on the Middle East can be properly evaluated. This is not only an evasion; it is bad historiography. Particularly in free societies, botched or unnecessary military invasions are almost always recognized as mistakes by the public and the professional military soon after they happen, and are rarely vindicated by time. This was true of the Boer War, Suez, and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and it will be true of Iraq. At best, when enough time has passed, and the human toll is not so palpable, we may come to think of the invasion, and its tragicomedy of missing weapons, as just another imperial folly, the way we now remember the Spanish-American War or the doomed British invasions of Afghanistan. But that will take a very long time, and it will never pass as vindication. - - - Steve Coll |
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"You ask why I support undocumented immigrants who take low wage work. Because they are human beings who have a right at natural law to earn a living and because, for the most part, they have little choice but to accept the work they do. The employee who finds him or herself forced to work for substandard pay under substandard conditions should not be declared a felon for doing so, which is what the bill I was criticizing proposes to do. - - - N.J. labor lawyer Bennet D. Zurofsky |
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| Well the weight of the world is FALLING And on my back I've been CRAWLING The state of affairs is APPALLING And the 6 o'clock news keeps CALLING Well I've been trying to see the world through their eyes Where black is white and day is night Left is Right Left is Right Left is Right, For me Well negotiations keep STALLING The United Nations keeps CALLING The Skeletons you're HAULING Won't hold when you're FALLING Put your head in the sand and you'll never know What's waiting for you in the depths below (below) Don't believe everything that you read Take what you want and keep what you need TWISTED NIXON |
