If you were wasting a record amount of millions on a new American embassy in Baghdad, wouldn’t you keep the blueprints of the compound, along with its security features, locked up rather than published to the net?

Apparently Bush’s “surge” in Iraq is going so well that we don’t need to worry about al Qaeda or the many different factions we call the insurgency. And if this is true, shouldn’t the Iraq War, along with the bumpersticker slogan, “War on Terror”, be over?

I am a bit bemused at President Bush’s analogy between the situation we face in Iraq being similar to the Korean occupation.

Hostilities were ended on the Korean Peninsula due to the signing of an armistice on July 27, 1953. The signing ceremony occurred in the South Korean village of Panmunjom.

A well rehearsed talking point by President Bush tells us that victory in Iraq will not be realized with a surrender ceremony on a battleship. Let us acknowledge that there was no battleship airlifted to Panmunjom for the Korean armistice signing. Yet the overall point remains here. The President admits there will be no ceremony ending hostilities in Iraq, yet he thinks there is an analogy between Korea and Iraq.

It is unimaginable that the American people would have allowed our forces to remain in Korea for 60 years if the Korean war had continued on without the armistice. The only way the President can draw a comparison between Iraq and Korea is to end hostilities in Iraq, which he knows is not going to happen. If the President believes that America is going to keep our forces in Iraq as hostilities drag on and on for 60 years, he is delusional. Frankly, the President being delusional is not out of the question given his fantastic pronouncements from the lead up to the war to the present day. (more…)

Nevermind that pictures from NASA equipment have helped scientists document the great changes Earth undergoes and which other scientists can track as part of the climate change phenomenon. Nope; when Bush wants someone else to mock global warming, he just picks up the phone and calls a top NASA official to tell us that climate change is just a theory and how wonderful it will be when the polar icecaps melt.

In other words, the Bush Administration will do everything in its incompetent and massively corrupt power to not just wage a war on science but to nuke any scientist with decent information.

As Frank Rich noted in his Sunday column, “Operation Freedom From Iraqis“, the Bush Administration and the neocons who help drive it have rather effectively made Iraqi citizens into the scapegoat for how badly this war - and its supposed coming peace - has gone rather than hold culpable Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, John Bolton, Paul Wolfowitz, and all the other Neocon neanderthals.

If you haven’t caught the May 28th Rich column, what are you waiting for?

The Wall Street Journal editorial by Norman Podhoretz imploring the President to bomb Iran should provide plenty of fodder for a rant by yours truly.   But let me just focus on the very first impression he gives with the editorial because I think the title and subtitle are very noteworthy:

The Case for Bombing Iran

I hope and pray that President Bush will do it.

I am dismayed that Podhoretz wouldn’t pray for a peaceful solution to present itself. To my way of thinking, it would be best to pray for ANY possible outcome which fit the point of view of the person in prayer other than for America to bomb another nation. Isn’t it strange that someone would proudly proclaim that they were praying for an action which would result in hundreds of deaths directly, with perhaps thousands more dead in the aftermath. (more…)

I’m not always a super fan of Bill Maher; while I loved his ABC show “Politically Incorrect” for the diversity of panel participants, this new HBO show doesn’t always light my Bunsen. But on Friday’s (5/25) last show before a hiatus til August 24th, he (and his small number of panelists) scored some good ones:

• “Only George Bush could wage a war for oil and then not get any!”
• “As I watched all this hardware about to go into Iraq, I thought: “Shit but it’s a hell of a lot more expensive to STEAL oil than to BUY oil.” (P.J. O’Rourke)

and let’s not forget:

• “…because when you ridicule George Bush, you ridicule America, and when you do that, America’s feelings get hurt and when they feel that hurt, Tinkerbell’s light goes out and she dies!“

…at least eight American GIs have died in Iraq over, for us, the Memorial Day weekend (while for the troops, I’m sure some saw this as Dante’s Inferno or at least hell on earth; and the Iraqi civilians aren’t happy either).

And yet, Bush will have more troops in Iraq by Christmas - many from units already having served multiple tours but forced into another year or so in Iraq - than we’ve EVER had. This isn’t a “surge” or “escalation”. This is a fight for empire that Bush simply won’t stop, regardless of how many soldiers and civilians die.

Right now, the country of Iraq is DOWN more than three million people from the time before the invasion when their population was around 25 million, a surprisingly large number of which were either fairly secular and some not-insignificantly in number Christians. Now do the math:

2 Million = the number the government (U.S. ‘cos we still control Iraqi govt) acknowledges/documents fled the country
2-5 Million = the number of Iraqi citizens believed may have made it out of Iraq via border-crossing routes then not controlled or loosely patrolled
1-6 Million = number of Iraqi civilians dead through U.S-to-Iraq and Insurgent-Iraq actions committed in the last 4+ years

This takes the total of Iraq civilian death/citizen flee numbers in Iraq at between a low of 5 million up to a potential high of 13 million. Out of a population starting the war at 25 million, these figures suggest that Iraq has lost between 20% and greater than 50% of its citizens. And notice I’m staying away from our devastation of the country of Afghanistan which I think was completely rubble-ized making the poverty-, war-, and quality-of-life there not meet the “standards of quality” required to be just “Stone Age”.

If you haven’t yet heard, Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a son named Casey who went to Iraq for Bush and became one of fast-rising statistics of U.S. soldiers dead, is stepping down as the “face” and voice of the anti-war movement. While she’s tired after years of fighting to stop our fighting, however, Cindy isn’t just tired, she’s angry.

Buzzflash offers the guest contribution she made for Memorial Day; I encourage you to read it. I think it raised some questions for me. If you have the same reaction, please share in comments here.

No, I am not being facetious. While 72%-plus Americans now join him, Dean was the first MAJOR Democratic 2004 candidate who took a strong and vocal NO on Iraq when some of the others were all to eager to cut Bush every possible blank check.

Of course, the former 2004 “put the netroots in net roots” Dem presidential candidate is doing some good things for the Democratic National Committee, or DNC. But why is he not getting the press?

If Vermont’s former governor is not being purposely censored (and frankly, three-plus years is a heluva long mea maxima culpa for a single damned “YEE-hawwwww!”), why is it we have the far more centrist Rahm Emanuel saying some perhaps uh… less than perceptive things (or as some pundits insisted, “I know Rahm and I can tell you even he doesn’t believe that today is the beginning of the end of Bush’s war beginning without ending.”)

And if Dean’s being purposely sidelined, I am even less happy that Howard took (was pushed into with little support of his party?) the DNC chair when it meant he would have no chance to wage another campaign. 2004 was his first attempt while few prez candidates can stop at just one (Lay’s potato chip eating theory confirmed). Also, to me, the Rahm Emanuel Democratic/Democratic Leadership Committee (DLC) viewpoint is wholly different (centrist, concessionary) compared to an energized solid Democrat DNC-type like Howard, not just trying to bridge the gap to the Republican far right.

Seriously, isn’t this exactly what message was sent by last week’s vote and decision to keep funding King George’s war of empire in Iraq with no timetables and even less accountability and certainly never any exit strategy?

And you should have noticed that NO ONE in the media, while rushing to report the Democrats’ failure to break the Bush VETO, mentioned contemporaneously how Bush and Most Republican Red of the GOP lawmakers are balking at giving even the most modest wage increase for American troops.

Yup, but it’s the Dems who don’t appreciate the troops. Y,S,R.

I wonder if the president and vice president spent Memorial Day out celebrating at a defense contractor’s fatcat barbecue. Combat soldiers might not get the full equivalent of minimum wage jobs at home, but we don’t mind that so long as our private contractors are so very handsomely paid so they can finance only those candidates willing to push us or return us to a state far worse than the cold war.

If you have SHOWTIME, they’re running a good documentary called “Flocks of Dodos” (mind you, I see it referred to with both singular and plural “flock”) about the intelligent design perpetrators.

I posted about Hillary and the rush to bring us back to the days of fretting over the Clintons’ sex life more than our very own. You can read it here, but I’ll give you a snip:

Also as the holiday weekend revved came word of two Hillary Clinton books due out soon and another on the Clintons available long before the 2008 presidential election. Apparently ALL of these books have been touted as ‘Hillary exposes‘”. [”exposes” usually refer to real documentation and not just yellow tabloid crap but with some polysyllabic words]

And do you know what these scandal peddlers tell us BRAND SPANKING NEW about Bill and Hillary (which the right likes to call “Billary”) Clinton? Here goes a list of items mentioned by mostly rightwing nutcases but also dim types like Chris Matthews:

That Hillary is calculating and competent. And she’s female? Really? Gee. How did that happen? Why did no one ever tell us before!

As we headed into the long Memorial Day weekend (which has more meaning than a day off and as much barbecue as you can pack in), there were four dominant stories in the media.

These stories were:

1. The so-called catfight between The View’s hosts Rosie O’Donnell and the human fulfillment of “the dumb blonde” joke, Elizabeth Hasselbeck, over the purported issue of “whether Rosie thinks America troops in Iraq are terrorists”
2. How the Democrats “bent over and spread ‘em” for Bush
3. Hillary Clinton “Exposed” As Calculating and Capable and how she just stayed with Bill for the sympathy vote when she ran for New York senator (and her worst crime, according to the Bushies and the media, is that Hillary WON)
4. Watch when a bird exacted some revenge by shitting all over The Commander-in-Cheat as he was giving a press conference telling us just how much he enjoyed making the Democrats “his bitch”

Notice any pattern here? Notice anything which seems like - except for #4 (divine providence, perhaps?) - a setup that Karl Rove could not miss (and should not, since it’s much of what Felonious Rove has been pulling since he hitched his star to Dubya).

Since I am still laid up after a serious accident, I thought it would be appropriate to publish the first Memorial Day proclamation for this weekend. In its words lie the essence of what people used to call Decoration Day, and, by implication, those values this nation holds in common. Memorial Day is about what unites us, not what divides us. (more…)

I understand my fellow liberal bloggers, t.v. commentators and anti war activists angst at yesterdays vote to continue funding the Iraq war with no time lines. Looking at a partial history of my blog shows that it is filled to the brim with rants against the Iraq war, George Bush, Bush’s conduct of the war, and any other permutation of the Iraq wars affect on this nation.  So I’m on board with the effort to end this war, and lets defend the constitution by impeaching Bush while we’re at it…  (more…)

Well, having successful stolen the last two presidential elections, Karl Rove and the GOP have found a new way to keep America from voting: the “polling tax” of the first digital millenium, guaranteed to make it nearly impossible for some to vote. For example, forget your ID and you don’t get in. BradBlog has the story of the voter suppression tuck-in to the immigration reform act to either kill immigration reform OR greater voter participation.

But there’s a bigger issue here. Many people - including some very thoughtful and learned ones I’ve talked with - find that the use of a photo ID makes it potentially much easier for operatives in a polling place to determine how you (that’s little ole you) cast your votes. Then, if your candidate doesn’t get in, the opposing party that did could use that vote against you.