Rice defends Bush policy on Iran as ’successful’, said same about Iraq in 2001

“‘I think this is called a successful multilateral coalition of states that have the same view’ that Iran should be rewarded for its cooperation or isolated for its defiance, Rice said.

She added: ‘I would like to see what other options there are for the international community, given that this policy is one that I think is the best course for us.’”AFP

This can only mean one thing: because everything is working, there needs to be war.

Why? Because she said the same about Iraq:

US postpones first Guantanamo war crimes trial

A military judge on Friday postponed the first war crimes tribunal at Guantanamo Bay, saying he wants to wait until the Supreme Court makes its highly anticipated ruling on the right of detainees to challenge their confinement in civil courts.

Navy Capt. Keith Allred ruled the trial for Osama bin Laden’s former driver should be delayed seven weeks, until July 21, in case the Supreme Court ruling affects his case. He scheduled pretrial hearings to begin a week earlier.

A Supreme Court ruling is expected by June 30.”AP

And of course it’s only a mere coincidence that after witnesses attested the timing of the trials was political in nature, they will now postponed and occur even closer to the US election in November. Mere coincidence, I tell you.

NYT: 81% of Americans say country on wrong track

“Americans are more dissatisfied with the country’s direction than at any time since the New York Times/CBS News poll began asking about the subject in the early 1990s, according to the latest poll.

In the poll, 81 percent of respondents said they believed ‘things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track,’ up from 69 percent a year ago and 35 percent in early 2002.

Although the public mood has been darkening since the early days of the war in Iraq, it has taken a new turn for the worse in the last few months, as the economy has seemed to slip into recession. There is now nearly a national consensus that the country faces significant problems.”

(…) Only 21 percent of respondents said the overall economy was in good condition, the lowest such number since late 1992, when the recession that began in the summer of 1990 had already been over for more than a year. In the latest poll, two in three people said they believed the economy was in recession today. NY Times

Welcome back to reality.

weak US Dollar makes EU world’s number one economy

The U.S. economy lost the title of “world’s biggest” to the euro zone this week as the value of the dollar slumped in currency markets.

Taking the gross domestic product of both economies in 2007, the combined GDP of the 15 countries which use the euro overtook that of the United States when the European currency surged to a record high of more than $1.56 per euro. Reuters

Kremlin handpicked Medvedev ‘heading for clear win,’ Putin to ’serve’ as PM

Not exactly shocking:

Vladimir Putin’s chosen successor, Dmitry Medvedev, is set to win Russia’s presidential election by a wide margin, exit polls indicate.
Mr Medvedev, a first deputy PM, was the clear favourite from the start and enjoyed generous television coverage. (…)

Mr Putin has pledged to serve as Mr Medvedev’s prime minister. BBC

US military spending reaches levels of WWII

I take it this is Bush’s strategy to jump-start the US economy?

As Congress and the public focus on more than $600 billion already approved in supplemental budgets to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and for counterterrorism operations, the Bush administration has with little notice reached a landmark in military spending.

When the Pentagon on Monday unveils its proposed 2009 budget of $515.4 billion, annual military spending, when adjusted for inflation, will have reached its highest level since World War II. NY Times

Clinton, Obama in dead heat ahead of big vote

Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were locked in a near dead heat two days before the biggest presidential voting so far while John McCain tried to nail down the Republican nomination for the White House. Reuters

The problem with this is that while the Republican primaries work on a “winner takes all” principle as far as the delegates are concerned while the Democratic ones don’t. If McCain should win in a state by just 1 vote he will have ALL the states’ delegates. But Obama and Clinton do not get all the state’s delegates but only as many as they gained percent in the state.

As a result of this Obama and Clinton may keep very close to each other up until, or even including, the convention, while the Republicans already have effectively picked their candidate.

Grateful Dead to reunite for Obama campaign

The Grateful Dead, the San Francisco cult rock band that has played at political events since the 1960s, will reunite on Monday for the first time in four years to rally support for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, a spokesman said on Friday.

(…) ‘They have agreed to reunite for this one-time-only event in order to lend support to Senator Obama leading into the crucial ‘Super-Tuesday’ series of primaries held on Tuesday, February 5th,’ the band said in a statement. Reuters

Iraq study group: U.S. underreported Iraq violence

Thought it was bad in Iraq? Well, it’s worse:

U.S. military and intelligence officials have systematically underreported the violence in Iraq in order to suit the Bush administration’s policy goals, the bipartisan Iraq Study Group said.

In its report on ways to improve the U.S. approach to stabilizing Iraq, the group recommended Wednesday that the director of national intelligence and the secretary of defense make changes in the collection of data about violence to provide a more accurate picture.

The panel pointed to one day last July when U.S. officials reported 93 attacks or significant acts of violence. “Yet a careful review of the reports for that single day brought to light 1,100 acts of violence,” it said. AP

This should be the wake-up call the Mass Media™ has been “waiting” for. Then again, the media shouldn’t need a wake-up call, they should be doing their job of reporting the news even if it is uncomfortable or invonvenient.

But the absolute kicker is this quote from the report:

“Good policy is difficult to make when information is systematically collected in a way that minimizes its discrepancy with policy goals.”

Translation: It’s bad for the country if its lead by power-hungry, lying bastards.

Rick Santorum, a friend of the family (um, no)

One person who deservedly got the boot on Tuesday is Republican Rick Santorum, who lost his Senate seat in Pennsylvania to Democrat Bob Casey. Here he is trotting out his family to get some sympathy before cashing in with a book deal and/or becoming a lobbyist:

Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) concedes his race to Democrat Robert P. Casey Jr. as Santorum’s wife, Karen, comforts their daughter Sarah Maria. Older daughter Elizabeth is at right. Washington Post

Don’t worry, little Sarah Maria. One day you will understand that American’s didn’t vote your daddy out just because they hate him. On the contrary, they voted him out because they have problems with how much he based his political career on hate and fearmongering:

The Santorum controversy arose over U.S. Senator Rick Santorum’s statements about homosexuality and the right to privacy in April 2003. In an interview with the Associated Press (AP) taped on April 7, 2003 and published April 20, 2003, Santorum stated that he believed consenting adults do not have a Constitutional “right” to privacy with respect to sexual acts. Santorum described the ability to regulate consensual homosexual acts as comparable to the states’ ability to regulate other consensual and non-consensual sexual behaviors, such as adultery, polygamy, child molestation, incest, sodomy and zoophilia (bestiality), whose legalization he believed would threaten society and the family, as they are not monogamous and heterosexual. Wikipedia

But at least he became famous in the process.

Hersh on Iraq: Worst. War. Ever.

In Vietnam, our soldiers came back and they were reviled as baby killers, in shame and humiliation. It isn’t happening now, but I will tell you – there has never been an [American] army as violent and murderous as our army has been in Iraq.”

Journalist Seymour Hersh (link)

Sy has always made absolutely sure that he can back up what he claims. His track record is stellar, as far as that is concerned. Now he claims he has seen video footage of war crimes that not only rival Vietnam, it is even worse. And since we now know it’s not because American troops are dumb, we should ask why is it happening then?

My own guess: because nobody has a working plan for Iraq. If we’re confused back home, imagine how confused the guys and gals in the field must be. In other words: Who’s the more foolish? The fool, or the fool who follows him?

I guess we’ll see on Tuesday.

US death toll in Iraq for October tops 100

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The U.S. military death toll in Iraq for October climbed to 100 on Monday, a week before U.S. elections in which President George W. Bush’s Republicans could lose control of Congress over his policies in Iraq. link

Rove

Wondering what White House chief-strategist Karl Rove is up to in order to cling to power? The LA Times has an extensive account here.

Because the I.R.S. works for the White House

The recent tool in a row of desperate moves (see below) to retain Republican control of Congress are tax collectors:

The commissioner of internal revenue has ordered his agency to delay collecting back taxes from Hurricane Katrina victims until after the Nov. 7 elections and the holiday season, saying he did so in part to avoid negative publicity.

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election snapshot

Today’s front front page of the New York Times gives a nice snapshot of where the election is heading.

First of for the members of the “reality based community” and also a reason why Republicans are panicky:

The economy grew more slowly in the third quarter than at any time since early 2003, held back by a deflating housing market.

The Commerce Department reported this morning that the nation’s total output of goods and services expanded at an annual rate of just 1.6 percent in the three months ended Sept. 30. That preliminary estimate compares with a revised rate of 2.6 percent in the second quarter and the robust 5.6 percent rate recorded in the first. The figures are seasonally adjusted. New York Times

And now The Issue™ that Republican strategists hope will scare voters into the election booth:

The divisive debate over gay marriage, which played a prominent role in 2004 campaigns but this year largely faded from view, erupted anew on Thursday as President Bush and Republicans across the country tried to use a court ruling in New Jersey to rally dispirited conservatives to the polls.

Wednesday’s ruling, in which the New Jersey Supreme Court decided that gay couples are entitled to the same legal rights and financial benefits as heterosexual couples, had immediate ripple effects, especially in Senate races in some of the eight states where voters are considering constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage.
New York Times

The only way Republicans can win this thing is to distract voters from story A by gay bashing enough to make voters focus on story B. Rinse. Repeat. (Story B is non-story really. In what other western country would a ruling that essentially says “gays are humans too” cause such a stink?)

Rumsfeld “forbade” post-war planning for Iraq

It’s one thing to be incompetent. But to not even try?

Long before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld forbade military strategists to develop plans for securing a postwar Iraq, the retiring commander of the Army Transportation Corps said Thursday.

In fact, said Brig. Gen. Mark Scheid, Rumsfeld said “he would fire the next person” who talked about the need for a postwar plan.
Rumsfeld did replace Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff in 2003, after Shinseki told Congress that hundreds of thousands of troops would be needed to secure postwar Iraq. Daily Press

Echoes of 9/11 Define Life 5 Years Later

The New York Times has opened a part of their Web site to comments from the public on how their lives have changed since the attacks. I find accounts such as this quite disturbing:

I do everything differently. I don’t like to be in crowds, I don’t ride elevators, I work from home. I don’t trust anyone at all. I shop and run errands as late as possible. I don’t travel on bridges or in tunnels. I feel trapped, held hostage by my fears. I don’t smile and laugh anymore. I have dark negative thoughts about the world events and people and have lost all faith and hope due to 9/11. I’ve become a hermit, a recluse. I’m thinking of leaving and moving to the mountains in NC. Imagine that, a catholic Yankee in the buckle of the bible belt. New York Times

Terrorism tries to instill fear. Nevermind that the US government seems to be rather happy having a comfortably-fearfull electorate, if accounts like this are as prevalent in real life as they are on the NYT Web site, we are in even more trouble than we thought.

It’s official: ‘No Saddam link to Iraq al-Qaeda’

Try not to be too shocked:

There is no evidence of formal links between Iraqi ex-leader Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda leaders in Iraq prior to the 2003 war, a US Senate report says.
The finding is contained in a 2005 CIA report released by the Senate’s Intelligence Committee on Friday.BBC

If only we had known this. Well… Hindsight is 20/20, isn’t it? Or is it more like 2,899/19,688 (dead/wounded US soldiers)?

Now all we have to wait for is someone like Cheney to jump up and say “I never said that.” Then we’re exactly where we were 2 years ago when Bush was facing an increasingly upset electorate.

The Three Year Lie

Three years ago on an aircraft carrier 39 miles off the coast of California President Bush declared “mission accomplished” on Iraq.

What a load of BS.

(The edit I wrote about it back then is still on the NY Times web site here. I later won an award for it. So I guess something good came out of it. Umm… so not worth it.)

Bush told Blair we’re going to war, memo reveals

This is required reading:

Tony Blair told President George Bush that he was “solidly” behind US plans to invade Iraq before he sought advice about the invasion’s legality and despite the absence of a second UN resolution, according to a new account of the build-up to the war published today.

A memo of a two-hour meeting between the two leaders at the White House on January 31 2003 - nearly two months before the invasion - reveals that Mr Bush made it clear the US intended to invade whether or not there was a second resolution and even if UN inspectors found no evidence of a banned Iraqi weapons programme. Guardian

Plame investigation could bring down house of cards

It looks more and more like the Plame investigation has the potential to become the Bush’s administration’s Watergate. By getting a foot in the door of the White House the investigation surrounding the CIA leak may finally be proved that the Bush administration rigged the intelligence it provided to Congress.

There is for example this piece in today’s National Journal that re-opend this very subject. The paper lays out how Cheney, seen here pimping the war on Meet the Press, ordered his chief of staff Lewis Libby to withhold proof that the White House rigged the information. By withholding the information of how the administration originally withheld information from Congress, VP Cheney may have stepped into a trap that is only now springing on him.

It’s complex, but the Plame investigation seems to be the trigger that brings down the house of cards that has been constructed over the past 5 years.

Vice President Cheney and his chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, overruling advice from some White House political staffers and lawyers, decided to withhold crucial documents from the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2004 when the panel was investigating the use of pre-war intelligence that erroneously concluded Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, according to Bush administration and congressional sources.

Among the White House materials withheld from the committee were Libby-authored passages in drafts of a speech that then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell delivered to the United Nations in February 2003 to argue the Bush administration’s case for war with Iraq, according to congressional and administration sources. The withheld documents also included intelligence data that Cheney’s office — and Libby in particular — pushed to be included in Powell’s speech, the sources said. National Journal

Bush refuses to rule out force against Iran

“The use of force is the last option for any president. You know we have used force in the recent past to secure our country,” (President Bush) said in a clear reference to Iraq, which the United States invaded in March 2003. AFP

Oh the irony… First we are told that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction because Bush wanted to settle a score with Saddam Hussein. But now that there actually is a country that fits all the claims the U.S. had made about Iraq, the U.S. is tied down in the country that didn’t even have any means to threaten the U.S.

Election tampering evident in Ohio, reform needed

For most Americans, the Presidential Election of 2004 is old news, but a group under the auspices of the Democratic National Committee has spent the past five months investigating allegations of foul play in the state of Ohio. The state provided the deciding electoral votes in a very close election, making the report?s findings troubling, if not damning.

Rather than being dismissed as partisan sour grapes, as has been the case, the report is yet one more warning sign that America?s democratic process is in serious trouble.

The report, released yesterday, paints a damning picture: More than one-fourth of the voters in Ohio had trouble voting.

Such claims range from excessive delays for black voters ? who, on average, spent 52 minutes waiting compared to the white voter?s average of 18 minutes. Intimidation tactics, such as ?unlawful requests for identification,? were also reported by 16 percent of black voters. Ohio law requires only first-time voters to provide ID, but while just 7 percent of Ohio voters were newly registered, 67 percent of two different groups ? black males and voters under the age of 30 ? were asked to show ID. Only 5 percent of aggregate white voters claimed intimidation by such tactics.

Due to such practices, only 19 percent of black voters said they had confidence their vote was counted, while among white voters that confidence was 71 percent.

Leading up to the election, a legal battle ensued over whether either party was allowed to have representatives present that would be allowed to question voters. The Republican Party had been planning to pay 3,600 poll workers $100 each and drive them into heavily Democratic precincts to question individual voters? right to vote, The New York Times reported.
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The amazing adventures of Ahmed Chalabi

The situation in Iraq can be best characterized by telling the tale of Ahmed Chalabi. After being one of the main lobbyists for the war and a main source for the claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, Chalabi had a falling out with the U.S. administration, only to become one of the big players in the newly formed Iraq government.

Chalabi has had quite an illustrious past. He was born in Iraq in 1944 to a wealthy Shi’a family. His family, however, left Iraq in the mid-’50s, allowing Chalabi to study in the United Kingdom and United States, receiving a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Chicago.

In 1977, Chalabi founded the Petra Bank in Jordan and that’s where it starts to get murky. When his bank went broke, he was tried in absentia and convicted of bank fraud. There are stories that he had to flee the country in the trunk of a car, accounts he himself has dismissed as politically-motivated rumors, labeling them “ridiculous.” In fear of the outstanding 22-year prison sentence with hard labor, he is no longer able to visit Jordan.

Most Americans first took note of Chalabi when the United States invaded Iraq in 2003 and made him one of the ruling members on the interim governing council. But his involvement in the war started before the invasion.

His agenda to take out Saddam Hussein was featured in front-page stories written by Judith Miller for The New York Times that prominently shilled for the war - albeit only named as an anonymous source.

But Chalabi also fed information to the CIA that we now know was untrue. Nicknamed “Curveball,” he essentially told the Bush administration what it wanted to hear to justify an invasion of Iraq. He was banking on a position in the government of Iraq once Saddam was taken out, and looking at how things played out he got what he wanted, albeit with some detours.
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