Democrats: Snap Out Of It! That goes for the rest of us, too

I post this article today, even though it was written as the Dems began their convention, mainly because I like Gene Robinson and because much of what he says here is still pertinent, if not in the same way or for the same reasons.



I doubt that the Democrats' convention could have come off any better if it had been produced and directed by Spielberg.



Obama's choice for V.P could not have been better for him or for the nation. No one in their right mind could doubt that Biden's experience in foreign affairs, not to mention the military and Justice, is just what the ticket needed.



Hill and Bill did what they had to do, not just for their party but for the nation. As Hillary said, No McCain, no way, or something to that effect. There is no way the country we all love can survive more of the GOP in the White House, not to mention as the majority party on the Hill; certainly not this GOP.


This is not Eisenhower's GOP. As a matter of fact, it is the GOP that Eisenhower warned us about, the political party whose lust for one party rule is, by now, obvious to the whole world and whose relationship with the military/industrial/(and now security)/complex, as well as other big corporate interests, is stunning and the greatest danger to face this nation since the civil war.


I was also struck by another thing Hillary said; rather a question she asked her supporters, "Are you in this just for me?" Hillary's supporters need to seriously contemplate that question, if they haven't already. Perhaps there was a time when Americans could afford to play our usual silly political games, but not this election year. No time for cult-of-personality politics this year! We, as a nation, have been staring into the abyss for too long. The abyss is staring back.


This is not politics as usual in the U.S.A.


Truth be told, the end of politics as usual began, obviously to all, with the impeachment of Bill Clinton for lying about adultery in sworn testimony, making his words fall under the legal term of perjury. Clinton's perjury is a form of perjury committed daily (except for weekends and holidays) in courthouses across this land, from sea to shining sea. Rarely is anyone ever charged with any kind of perjury in family/divorce courts, let alone criminal perjury.



"It is almost expected that people will lie their arses off when it comes to sex," as I was informed by an attorney friend some years before Clinton was impeached for it. Oddly and naively, I had thought that perjury was perjury, period, when a person lied in a court of law. I was wrong. Slapping someone with a perjury charge arising out of lies about adultery is very rare, the case of Bill Clinton, then a sitting president, being one of the exceptions, aparently, though certainly not a very bright one for the country.


Let me be clear. I am not a big Bill Clinton fan. I give him his due. He is probably the smartest politician I have seen in my lifetime and his administration was about peace, for the most part, social and economic justice, fiscal responsibility and, for a majority of the people, prosperity. The U.S. had a surplus when he left office, so the GOP can scream from the roof-tops about the "recession" the economy was sliding into as Bush/Cheney took office, as they in fact did and still do, but that "recession" was a tiny blip on the radar compared to what we face now.


Nevertheless, many of his campaign promises went unkept, some with barely and effort at all. The other thing that makes me think less of Clinton is that he hardly ever lays into Republicans for what they did to him and what they put this country through. He blames the news media. Admittedly they did their share of x-rated reporting, breathlessly, hourly, on and on, ad nauseum, but there would have been nothing to report had the GOP and their money men had not investigated Bill and Hill, as if they were the reincarnations of Bonnie and Clyde, almost from the day he took the oath of office. Of course, none of it would have been possible were it not for Clinton's own stupid/sick behavior. His enemies had been after him for his womanizing ways since before the election. Clinton, as smart as he seems to be, honestly thought they had let go of that one?



Do they put something that is toxic to the brain in the White House water supply?


So, we can all forget about politics as usual. The GOP House managers, who prosecuted perjury charges against Clinton, while frothing at their pompous mouths, against the clearly expressed wishes of the majority of the American people, put an end to politics as usual and everything that has happened since has only made it more apparent, from the stolen election of 2000, to 9/11 and Osama bin Forgotten, to the stunning deception that led this nation into a war of aggression (the mother of all war crimes) against a nation of people who had nothing to do with the attacks of 9/11 or the second major terrorist attack on American soil during the Bush administration, the anthrax attacks. Terror is terror and terrorism is terrorism, just as murder is murder and war crimes are war crimes


No, this is not politics as usual, but this election is by far the most important election I have seen in my lifetime, not only for our country and the future of our kids and grand kids, but for the well-being of the planet and all its citizens.


Even after Obama's speech last night in front of 80,000 people at Denver's Mile-High Stadium, other millions tuned in all across the country and on television sets all around the world, a speech that was both electrifying and informative, the Democrats and all who wish to join them in getting Obama/Biden elected have got to hit the ground running and get tough. After all, it is only our Democratic Republic that is at stake....at least, what's left of it after the last 40 years, especially the last 7 years and some months.



In case it was missed, Obama issued a call-to-arms last night.


There is no doubt about it. Obama knows that no matter how good of a speech he gave and no matter how well the convention went, we are in for the fight of our lives; it will be nasty and brutal. How could any of us believe otherwise. McCain has the Rovian smear machine on his payroll, not to mention Rover's geek-squad, specializing in election tampering and headed up by Chief Geek, Mr. Connell.


Those of us, whether we are independents, Democrats, disaffected Republicans or Americans registered as members of some of the many minor parties, who see our current situation clearly, had better be prepared to fight to our last last breath, if necessary or be prepared to suffer consequences still unimaginable to many.



Barack Obama made it crystal clear to us that he is ready to take on the real enemies of our constitution. He does not plan on leaving the fight to Joe Biden and others. He made that perfectly clear when he said he would be glad to have the debate about who is prepared to be "commander-in-chief," about who has the judgment and TEMPERAMENT for the job.


(I remember when we elected a president every four years. Now, thanks to Junior and his express wish to be a war president because, in his somewhat addled mind, endless war is how one holds onto power in this country, we get to elect a commander-in-chief....or not, depending on how many and how wide-spread the paperless voting machines and easily hacked optical-scanners are remaining around the country on November 4, 2008.)


We can fight tooth and nail, just by telling the truth. There is no need for meaness and nastiness, let alone lies about the opposition, circulated through the back-channels of Wingnutia in the form of chain emails and other whispering campaigns. The truth will be sufficient if told forcefully and often.


Right this moment, in our history as a nation and as citizens of this planet we call home, it is hard to imagine ourselves in greater peril. Electing Barack Obama and Joe Biden is a huge task. Let's not kid ourselves. The Republicans, Neocons, their swift-boating pals and the right-wing media echo-chamber are going to pull out all the stops. This is not a time for the faint of heart. It is a time for real courage and faith in our own minds and hearts.


We need to be prepared to make their tactics costly to them.


We must remember to re-visit our origins as a nation and demand transparency, the only answers to fear-mongering and deception.


We were not born as a nation of people scared witless; a nation of cowards, voting for security which cannot possibly be achieved, even if, like frightened fools, we gladly gave up every Right we ever had, under the Bill of Rights in the Constitution.


Our founders warned us about a tyranny that would one day come our way. They warned us about a government that would come to oppress the free people of the U.S.A. American citizens used to have a healthy skepticism about government power and how it was exercised. We were taught that power corrupts and than absolute power corrupts absolutely. We've certainly had our brushes with tyranny before, but nothing like what's happening now.


Those who would exchange freedom for security deserve neither. It was old Ben Franklin who said that. I would add that history has taught us that not only do such people deserve neither, they get neither. It was Franklin who informed a curious citizen who asked what kind of government we had, "A Republic, if you can keep it."


I wonder, can we?

By Eugene Robinson

DENVER—If they want to win in November, Democrats have one task to accomplish this week: Snap out of it.

Somehow, tentativeness and insecurity have infected a party that ought to be full of confident swagger. It’s not that Democrats don’t like their odds of winning the presidency and boosting their majorities in both houses of Congress. It’s that they are even bothering to calculate and recalculate those odds.

That’s what you could catch Democrats doing last weekend as they assembled for the convention. We’ll win, they would say, but we just have to do this or Barack Obama just has to do that or the Clintons have to do this, that and the other. And the stars have to align just so.

People, the stars don’t line up any more auspiciously than this. George W. Bush is to presidential unpopularity what Michael Phelps is to aquatic velocity. The Republican candidate for president is a wooden, uncharismatic denizen of Washington whose “maverick” image belies the fact that he has supported Bush on practically every big issue. The economy is sagging, the financial system is in crisis and gasoline prices remain punishingly high. In recent polls, as many as eight out of 10 Americans have said the country is on the wrong track. You don’t need a soothsayer to read omens like these.

Since I landed here Saturday night, though, I haven’t heard a lot of Democrats crowing about the terrible whuppin’ they’re about to administer. I’ve heard predictions of victory, yes, but also a lot of questions. Will Hillary Clinton’s die-hard supporters refuse to lay down their arms, even if their champion begs them to? Will an unreconciled Bill Clinton steal the show? Will Obama’s acceptance speech at Invesco Field be so stirring and poetic that the Republicans will slam him again for excessive eloquence?

In other words: Are Hillary Clinton’s followers, many of whom care deeply about women’s issues, ready to accept a Supreme Court majority that would do away with Roe v. Wade, which John McCain would surely deliver? Has Bill Clinton forgotten everything he ever learned about politics and forsaken his lifelong loyalty to the Democratic Party? Would Obama be wise to effectively renounce the use of his great oratorical gifts, which constitute one his most powerful and effective weapons?

All these questions are just excuses to fret. Unlike Republicans, Democrats like to obsess about what could go wrong. It’s kind of a partisan hobby.

I was going to say that the Republican Party’s hobby is driving Democrats crazy with worry, but the truth is that the Democrats are doing this to themselves.

People here complain that the polls are too close for comfort, forgetting that there is rarely anything comfortable about a presidential contest. When was the last time a non-incumbent Democrat cruised easily to the White House? Clinton, remember, won only a 43 percent plurality of the popular vote in 1992. You have to go all the way back to Franklin Roosevelt in 1932. Why would anyone think for a moment that Obama could win this without a fight?

I’m being somewhat unkind, because the truth is that the Democratic Party has tried mightily this year to fight its depressive tendencies. The party is even playing offense for a change, taking the fight to McCain in states that used to be a forgone conclusion for the Republicans. Here in Colorado, recent polls show Obama with a small but significant lead; in Virginia, which hasn’t gone Democratic since 1964, the race is a dead heat.

As for the Democratic states that McCain is trying to contest, Democrats should take the advice of Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell. Last Saturday, as Joe Biden was being announced as Obama’s running mate, Rendell was asked how to keep his state in the Democratic column. His answer, and I’m paraphrasing here, was to quit whining about it and just go out and win the state. He helped the Clintons pummel Obama in the primary, and he pronounced himself raring to help Obama and Biden do the same to McCain in the general.

Even with the fundamentals teed-up and the stars smiling, winning the White House was never going to be a walk in the park for any Democrat. The party will have had a successful convention if, at the end of the week, Democrats stop all the worrying and declare a moratorium on second-guessing. Go shake some hands and kiss some babies.

Eugene Robinson’s e-mail address is eugenerobinson(at)washpost.com.

© 2008, Washington Post Writers Group

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Mercinaries Putting Troops At Risk. Where Is Congress?

Where the hell is Congress while these sociopaths are running loose in Iraq and god only knows where all else?

Want to stop the war? Stop funding these idiots!

Published on Saturday, September 22, 2007 by The Nation

Blackwater: Hired Guns, Above the Law

by Jeremy Scahill

This is an edited transcript of the prepared testimony of Jeremy Scahill before the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, September 21, 2007.

My name is Jeremy Scahill. I am an investigative reporter for The Nation magazine and the author of the book Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. I have spent the better part of the past several years researching the phenomenon of privatized warfare and the increasing involvement of the private sector in the support and waging of US wars. During the course of my investigations, I have interviewed scores of sources, filed many Freedom of Information Act requests, obtained government contracts and private company documents of firms operating in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. When asked, I have attempted to share the results of my investigations, including documents obtained through FOIA and other processes, with members of Congress and other journalists.

I would like to thank this committee for the opportunity to be here today and for taking on this very serious issue. Over the past six days, we have all been following very closely the developments out of Baghdad in the aftermath of the fatal shooting of as many as 20 Iraqis by operatives working for the private military company Blackwater USA. The Iraqi government is alleging that among the dead are a small child and her parents and the prime minister has labeled Blackwater’s conduct as “criminal” and spoke of “the killing of our citizens in cold blood.” While details remain murky and subject to conflicting versions of what exactly happened, this situation cuts much deeper than this horrifying incident. The stakes are very high for the Bush administration because the company involved, Blackwater USA, is not just any company. It is the premiere firm protecting senior State Department officials in Iraq, including Ambassador Ryan Crocker. This company has been active in Iraq since the early days of the occupation when it was awarded an initial $27 million no-bid contract to guard Ambassador Paul Bremer. During its time in Iraq, Blackwater has regularly engaged in firefights and other deadly incidents. About 30 of its operatives have been killed in Iraq and these deaths are not included in the official American death toll.

While the company’s operatives are indeed soldiers of fortune, their salaries are paid through hundreds of millions of dollars in US taxpayer funds allocated to Blackwater. What they do in Iraq is done in the name of the American people and yet there has been no effective oversight of Blackwater’s activities and actions. And there has been absolutely no prosecution of its forces for any crimes committed against Iraqis. If indeed Iraqi civilians were killed by Blackwater USA last Sunday, as appears to be the case, culpability for these actions does not only lie with the individuals who committed the killings or with Blackwater as a company, but also with the entity that hired them and allowed them to operate heavily-armed inside Iraq–in this case, the US State Department.

While the headlines of the past week have been focused on the fatal shootings last Sunday, this was by no means an isolated incident. Nor is this is simply about a rogue company or rogue operators. This is about a system of unaccountable and out of control private forces that have turned Iraq into a wild west from the very beginning of the occupation, often with the stamp of legitimacy of the US government.

What happened Sunday is part of a deadly pattern, not just of Blackwater USA’s conduct, but of the army of mercenaries that have descended on Iraq over the past four years. They have acted like cowboys, running Iraqis off the road, firing indiscriminately at vehicles and, in some cases, private forces have appeared on tape seemingly using Iraqis for target practice. They have shown little regard for Iraqi lives and have fueled the violence in that country, not just against the people of Iraq but also against the official soldiers of the United States military in the form of blowback and revenge attacks stemming from contractor misconduct. These private forces have operated in a climate where impunity and immunity have gone hand in hand.

Active duty soldiers who commit crimes or acts of misconduct are prosecuted under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the court martial system. There have been scores of prosecutions of soldiers– some 64 courts martial on murder-related charges in Iraq alone. That has not been the case with these private forces. Despite many reports–some from US military commanders–of private contractors firing indiscriminately at Iraqis and vehicles and killing civilians, not a single armed contractor has been charged with any crime. They have not been prosecuted under US civilian law; US military law and the Bush administration banned the Iraqi government from prosecuting them in Iraqi courts beginning with the passage of Coalition Provisional Authority Order 17 in 2004. The message this sends to the Iraqi people is that these hired guns are above any law.

US contractors in Iraq reportedly have their own motto: “What happens here today, stays here today.” That should be chilling to everyone who believes in transparency and accountability of US operations and taxpayer funded activities– not to mention the human rights of the Iraqis who have fallen victim to these incidents and have been robbed of any semblance of justice.

The Iraqi government says it has evidence of seven deadly incidents involving Blackwater. It is essential that the Congress request information on these incidents from the Iraqi authorities. What we do know is that in just the past nine months, Blackwater forces have been involved with several fatal actions. Last Christmas Eve, as Katy mentioned, an off-duty Blackwater contractor allegedly killed a bodyguard for the Iraqi Vice President. Blackwater whisked that individual out of the country. Iraqi officials labeled the killing a “murder” and have questioned privately as to why there has apparently been no consequences for that individual. Blackwater says it fired the individual and is cooperating with the US Justice Department. To my knowledge no charges have yet been brought in that case.

This past May, Blackwater operatives engaged in a gun battle in Baghdad, lasting an hour, that drew in both US military and Iraqi forces, in which at least four Iraqis are said to have died. The very next day in almost the same neighborhood, the company’s operatives reportedly shot and killed an Iraqi driver near the Interior Ministry. In the ensuing chaos, the Blackwater guards reportedly refused to give their names or details of the incident to Iraqi officials, sparking a tense standoff between American and Iraqi forces, both of which were armed with assault rifles.

The actions of this one company, perhaps more than any other private actor in the occupation, have consistently resulted in escalated tension and more death and destruction in Iraq–from the siege of Fallujah, sparked by the ambush of its men there in March of 2004, to Blackwater forces shooting at Iraqis in Najaf with one Blackwater operative filmed on tape saying it was like a “turkey shoot” to the deadly events of the past week.

Colonel Thomas Hammes, the US military official once overseeing the creation of a new Iraqi military, has described driving around Iraq with Iraqis and encountering Blackwater operatives. “[They] were running me off the road. We were threatened and intimidated,” Hammes said. But, he added, “they were doing their job, exactly what they were paid to do in the way they were paid to do it, and they were making enemies on every single pass out of town.” Hammes concluded the contractors were ” hurting our counterinsurgency effort.”

Brigadier General Karl Horst, deputy commander of the 3rd Infantry Division said of private security contractors, “These guys run loose in this country and do stupid stuff. There’s no authority over them, so you can’t come down on them hard when they escalate force…. They shoot people, and someone else has to deal with the aftermath. It happens all over the place.” Horst tracked contractor conduct for a two month period in Baghdad and documented at least a dozen shootings of Iraqi civilians by contractors, resulting in six Iraqi deaths and the wounding of three others. That is just one General in one area of Iraq in just 60 days.

The conduct of these private forces sends a clear message to the Iraqi people: American lives are worth infinitely more than theirs, even if their only crime is driving their vehicle in the wrong place at the wrong time. One could say that Blackwater has been very successful at fulfilling its mission–to keep alive senior US officials. But at what price?

It is long past due for the actions of Blackwater USA and the other private military firms operating in Iraq–actions carried out in the names of the American people and with US tax dollars–to be carefully and thoroughly investigated by the US Congress. For the Iraqi people, this is a matter of life, and far too often, death. In the bigger picture, this body should seriously question whether the linking of corporate profits to war making is in the best interests of this nation and the world. I would humbly submit that the chairs of relevant committees in both the House and Senate use their power of subpoena to compel the heads of the major war contracting companies operating on the US payroll in Iraq to appear publicly before the American people and answer for the actions of their forces. I am prepared to answer any questions.

Jeremy Scahill is the author of the New York Times bestseller Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. He is currently a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at the Nation Institute.

© Copyright 2007 Jeremy Scahill

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Transparency! Damn! Gotta Have It. NOW!

The Libby, Enron and Arthur Andersen cases have all put the issue of “transparency” in the forefront of the news. But how transparent are the media themselves? How candid are they about how they cover the news? How willing are the media to make their reporting and editing standards public? According to this new ICMPA study most news outlets are unwilling to let the public see how their editorial process works. Fewer than half of the websites publicly corrected mistakes in their stories and only a handful shared with readers the journalistic and ethical standards that theoretically guide their newsrooms… (Results are continued in Study Conclusions) How the media outlets scored on transparency: Click on each media outlet above for further details. Each of the news outlets above was individually coded in five categories of transparency: Corrections, Ownership, Staff Policies, Reporting Policies and Interactivity. See Understanding Results for a detailed explanation of each category. The chart shows the aggregate score of those categories. For a breakdown of the coding in each of the five categories for all media outlets, see Study Conclusions.

A center of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism and the School of Public Policy. Copyright © 2006 International Center for Media and the Public Agenda. 1117 Journalism Building, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.