Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack have written an editorial which cherry picks the most positive signs from Iraq and calls upon America to stay the course just a little while longer.   This type of editorial is hardly noteworthy, but for the fact that O’Hanlon and Pollack try to give themselves legitimacy by proclaiming that they are “two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq.”

By that billing, one would think that a couple of liberals who have always been against the war have looked at the situation and decided to change their minds…  suddenly switching opinion from against the war to for it.  That would be a mistaken impression because the truth is that O’Hanlon and Pollack are war critics in the vein of McCain, and even Bush himself, not in the vein of Barack Obama or Keith Olbermann.  O’Hanlon/Pollack supported the invasion from the start with O’Hanlon writing a book before the invasion making the case for war.  Like McCain they have consistently called upon more troops to be sent to Iraq.  Like McCain, and even Bush for that matter, O’Hanlon/Pollack have decried the futility and results of the policy to this point.

So the reaction by the mainstream media to the call from these two to stay the course was to announce that two critics of the war had taken an independent look at the facts and changed their tunes.  Well if that is the case, let me announce that I am a long time administration supporter, and backer of the war in Iraq… and I have independently reached the conclusion after years of studying the facts that this war is harming American interests and should be brought to a close as soon as possible. (more…)

According to Oxfam, no less than one-third of Iraqi citizens today lack the most basic of food, water, sanitation, health care, you name it.

And another report says that, whereas almost every Iraqi citizen during Saddam Hussein’s tenure enjoyed a MINIMUM of 16 hours of electricity a day (and Iraq was one of the vastly advanced of the Muslim countries before our sanctions in 1991) but almost all had 24 hours of service, NOW, under the Bush occupation, many Iraqis see just ONE hour of electricity a day.

Which probably explains why a THIRD report insists that the Bush occupation corruption is, in effect, a SECOND insurgency against the stabilization of Iraq.

Way to go, White House and Defense Department! Screw those human rights.

It was just before the November mid-term elections when Vice President (and Pope of Darkness) Dick Cheney gave then Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, his kiss of death approval. And then, the day after the GOP lost the Senate and the House, Rumsfeld was gone.

Thus, after Friday’s BIG Media Message was that U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was just purrr-fect and only bloodthirsty, angry, mean Democrats should infer otherwise AND The Dick spoke up again (”Al’s a great guy”), it was ever so amusing to find that Fox News on Sunday could not find a SINGLE person to speak favorably of Gonzo.

That this happened on the day when I belatedly - hey, I’m only like 30 something years behind the times) - saw the Godfather Saga for the first time (ick) and saw the line I keep hearing referenced for Gonzales (where Al Pacino as Michael Corleone says to his rat brother, Fredo, played by no one I think has ever worked in films since):

“I know it was you, Fredo. You broke my heart.”

I was vaguely amused. But Gonzo himself is NOT amusing. He’s rubberstamped for this president the obliteration of the U.S. Constitution, the destruction of habeas corpus and the Geneva Convention, glorified torture and domestic spying, purged any (Republican at that!) attorney who did not bow to Bush, and turned the Justice Department into a cesspool, making what was once one of the most glorified systems of justice in the world into a pathetic joke told ’round the world.

Unfortunately, I still do not believe Bush will definitely shed him. Do you?

Has anyone else been able to find and examine the full content of a new law Bush hastily signed into effect last week, I believe, that supposedly allows the U.S. government to confiscate the property of (without benefit of any legal protections or perhaps even any charges filed) anyone our government sees as “bothering” their success in Iraq?

I’ve seen nutso stuff about it being used to go after people here - and perhaps not so nutso, given how we already allow the confiscation of money and property even without charges in certain areas, and not to mention the complete politicization of justice under Alberto Gonzales’ Justice Department - and much calmer stuff indicating it will only be used to “hurt” Iran and al Qaeda.

But I’ve yet to find anything that lays this law on the line. With it, too, I’d like to see if Bush added one of his famed “signing” statements to it, too. After all, Bush and Cheney, who have laid waste to ALL of Iraq, certainly wouldn’t want THEIR millions confiscated by this law. [cough]

Before I cite the dubious source of the most recent “great prediction” that the Democrat 2008 presidential ticket will be Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama, let me note that I am not necessarily opposed to this pairing (although I just might prefer Obama-Clinton or Obama-someone else or yes, even a Gore-Obama). I also don’t think this would be the first time a white woman and a black man have run for presidential together. Wasn’t Frederick Douglass paired with an equal rights-free love female candidate back in the 19th century? I believe so.

Anyhoo… on to Newt Gingrich, serial adulterer as speaker of the house while impeaching Billary for the same and the very same man who last summer, as Israel was blasting the hell out of Lebanon said we needed to make Lebanon OUR World War III to ensure the Republicans stayed in power. Yeah, THAT Newt.

Newt is the one insisting the Democratic ticket for 2008 WILL be Hillary-Barack Obama, while saying all three of the top GOP contenders are just soooooo strong at the same time he is laughing off ol’ John (”sell ‘em low, sell ‘em cheap”) McCain. We know Newt and many other Republicans would like to see a Clinton-Obama ticket just to anger the brighter GOP and scare the bejesus out of the lesser ones. But we also know how often Newt is delusional.

Climate change will hurt all of us - and has. But for Darfur, it is already making a bloody nightmare that much worse.

The Associated Press reports this weekend that more and more Republican lawmakers want military limits on Iraq. This sounds right, of course, since no fewer than 7 out of 10 Americans answering polls for well more than a year want us the hell out of Iraq.

However, we’ve heard Republicans say this about limits for awhile; GOPers like Chuck Hagel.

Yet, whenever it comes to a vote and an effort, always spearheaded by the Democrats (finally able to do so with last November’s slim marginal majority win), the Republicans “stand by their man.” They vote with Bush and to hell with the men and women both of our armed services and of Iraq.

Republicans need to put up or shut up. And they won’t do that if we get mad at the Dems for not “making the war end” so we get sloppy about voting either this November or the all important presidential vote in 2008.

Our vote IS our power. Of course, that is, if our votes are properly counted, which they were not in 2000 and 2004.

When I wrote my investigative report on Iraq war suicides, I did not expect that the issue would suddenly become very personal, but it has. A reader wrote me about his brother’s suicide. His brother was an Iraq War veteran suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

I did not sleep much that night, finally awakening as one day became another, moved by the impulse to write. This death asked me to try to put its meaning into words, because this soldier and his family deserved as much. (more…)

The FBI chief gives yet more evidence that U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales can’t even be trusted to … well, even let’s just say at this point, we shouldn’t even assume his name IS Alberto Gonzales.

As for the Senate’s proposal to ask the Justice Department to investigate their boss, well… good luck!

Was the football star turned American soldier in Afghanistan (because he did not believe the war in Iraq was quite just), Pat Tillman, murdered? We don’t know, and largely because of the Bush Administration and the Pentagon, eager to use Tillman as a recruitment ad but ever so unwilling to allow any serious and just investigation into his death. Associated Press broke new documents tonight that go a long way toward showing how willing the Bushies have been to lie and protect themselves. Is there any doubt Bush is waging war on our soldiers?

At least some of his family, once so supportive of our war effort, now wrestles with whether their son and brother was deliberately killed rather than simply the victim of friendly fire. And why wouldn’t they considering the massive coverup that occured at the time, with the soldiers in the field and then with the Pentagon and the White House?

But this isn’t just some misunderstanding. This is yet another example of the war the Bush Administration is waging ON OUR TROOPS - the people so many call heroes. Valerie Plame, the covert CIA operative outed by the Bushies, was also a “soldier” in the information gathering war. She was expendable to the Bushies. We watched them hang out to dry the soldiers at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere who, while I doubt any of us applaud what they did, clearly worked at the White House-Pentagon’s bequest.

This week, we found out that Vice President Dick Cheney couldn’t tell the dippy-doo Jessica Simpson from the Private Jessica Lynch whom the Bushies hid while they spun this huge story about her that Lynch, God bless her, was eager to unwind.

Remember too some news from yesterday: after a task force presented recommendations for how to better care for our injured soldiers and vets in light of the Walter Reed scandal and after Bush insisted he would ACT as soon as they had the recommendations, Tony Snow told us the president has no plans to act. Then they sent out another GOP sellout, the former Sen. Bob Dole, to insist that problems with the military and health care aren’t new. Nice, Bob. Nice. You’re a real credit to your race… the race of Republican rats, that is. Hope no one refers to old Bob as a war hero again.

The question that has long puzzled Bush watchers is “Why does he smirk?” The Online Dictionary defines “smirk” as:

To smile in an affected, often offensively self-satisfied manner.

The dictionary’s thesaurus adds further to the term’s meaning:

A smile expressing smugness or scorn instead of pleasure.

Smile affectedly or derisively.

The negative connotations of these definitions are obvious. The Smirking Chimp blog has created a very good audience for jibes at the man they call “the Smirk.” So you would expect that only liberals and Democrats would use the word in connection with the President. Not so. A quick Google search turned up an astounding 469,000 hits for “Bush’s smirk.” Among them were some conservative heavy hitters. (more…)

The Office of Veteran Affairs is now as much as four years and more than 600,000 applications for disability BEHIND in processing a backlog that the Bush Administration has done everything to increase and nothing to resolve.

It’s amazing, really.

A president who stole two elections, lied us into countless wars (the one in Iraq and the ridiculous one he labeled “War on Terror” are but two), violates the U.S. Constitution and the Geneva Convention on a daily and egregious basis, has made our country far less safe (and our risk from terrorists seems almost microscopic compared with our grave and present risks from the Bush-Cheney minions who are themselves terrorists), has killed the American dollar (still in freefall throughout the world) along with countless soldiers, civilians, and so-called enemy detainees, goes scot-free.

But cops arrest a 74-year-old man for selling Impeach Bush buttons at a Maryland farmer’s market. Cindy Sheehan and nearly four dozen other Americans have also been arrested this week for impeachment efforts.

Feel any safer? I don’t. Neither should you.

I highly recommend an editorial in the International Herald Tribune regarding how the Bush Administration uses executive privilege as an excuse against truth-telling and accountability for everything from leaking the name of a covert CIA operative (Valerie Plame) for partisan objectives to whether Bush ever eats green vegetables with his dinner.

The Bush administration, which has been pushing presidential power to new extremes, is reportedly developing an even more dangerous new theory of executive privilege. It says that if Congress holds White House officials in contempt for withholding important evidence in the U.S. attorney scandal, the Justice Department simply will not pursue the charges. This stance tears at the fabric of the Constitution and upends the rule of law.

Congress has a constitutional right to investigate the purge of nine U.S. attorneys last year. And there is no doubt that the investigation has unearthed improprieties: Several administration officials have already admitted illegal or improper actions involving the politicization of the country’s chief law enforcement agency.

But the administration has been extraordinarily defiant toward Congress’ legitimate requests for information. The low point came recently when Harriet Miers, the former White House counsel, refused even to show up in response to a congressional subpoena.

The next question is how Congress will enforce its right to obtain information, and it is on that point that the administration is said to have made its latest disturbing claim. If Congress holds White House officials in contempt, the next step should be that the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia brings the matter to a grand jury. But according to a Washington Post report, the administration is saying that its claim of executive privilege means that the U.S. attorney would be ordered not to go forward with the case.

Let me also recommend a new book just out, “Presidential Secrecy and the Law” (the same one discussed on “The Daily Show” tonight) which talks about the many abuses our presidents (and Bush 43 is but the worst example) have covered up via claims of executive privilege and their so-called right to secrecy.

Completely true to form, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, appearing today before a Senate hearing trying to get to the bottom of the U.S. attorney-firing scandal and the politicization of the Justice Department, went out of his way to emphasize his oath to tell the truth. And then, also true to form, he lied through his taxpayer-financed perfect teeth.

It was good to see even some Republicans, notably Arlen Specter (R-PA), join Democrats like Patrick Leahy (D-VT) in demanding answers and calling Gonzales, formerly Bush’s personal attorney and still acting very much like it, on his many different versions, hedges, confabulations, excuses, and complete and utter nonsense. I applauded when Leahy laid it on the line with “I don’t trust you” and when Specter asked, “How can we believe you…?” I certainly support their (sadly mere) suggestion that a special prosecutor be appointed to investigate the endless amount of wrong-doing by a Justice Department that the Bush-Rove GOP has turned into the Far Right Republican Loyalty Police.

However, right now, I’m more interested to hear what you think about the sad history of this investigation and your reaction to what went on today.

Also, did you happen to catch Gonzales’ hint of yet ANOTHER illegal domestic spying program the Bushies have targeted normal Americans with against the protections of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights?