Bush Blackmails Congress

Bush blackmails Congress and threatens to fire civilian military workers

by Mary Shaw | Nov 23 2007 - 8:43am |

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Congress has been trying to tie conditions to further Iraq funding -- conditions like a withdrawal timeline. But the White House must have its way -- open-ended war for all of the foreseeable future.

So now the Bush administration is threatening to lay off 100,000 civilian workers at military bases in mid-December if it doesn't get its war money.

Merry f'ing Christmas.

These are the civilian workers who make their living by supporting our troops and their families. And Bush is holding them hostage for war money.

What a way to support the troops, George.

Of course, if it comes to that, Bush will blame it all on Congress. It will be Congress's fault that these people lost their jobs. Because Congress, according to Bush, does not support the troops.

According to Bush, the only way to support the troops is to keep funneling money into his senseless war, so that more of our troops can be killed or injured and he can go down in history as a war president.

God bless America.

(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.

Will, They, Won't They? 12 Months of Hell Lies Ahead

Yes, they are crazy enough, but will the Navy Mutiny?

Noun + Verb + 9/11 + Iran = Democrats' Defeat?
By Frank Rich
The New York Times

Sunday 04 November 2007

When President Bush started making noises about World War III, he only confirmed what has been a Democratic article of faith all year: Between now and Election Day he and Dick Cheney, cheered on by the mob of neocon dead-enders, are going to bomb Iran.

But what happens if President Bush does not bomb Iran? That is good news for the world, but potentially terrible news for the Democrats. If we do go to war in Iran, the election will indeed be a referendum on the results, which the Republican Party will own no matter whom it nominates for president. But if we don't, the Democratic standard-bearer will have to take a clear stand on the defining issue of the race. As we saw once again at Tuesday night's debate, the front-runner, Hillary Clinton, does not have one.

The reason so many Democrats believe war with Iran is inevitable, of course, is that the administration is so flagrantly rerunning the sales campaign that gave us Iraq. The same old scare tactic - a Middle East Hitler plotting a nuclear holocaust - has been recycled with a fresh arsenal of hyped, loosey-goosey intelligence and outright falsehoods that are sometimes regurgitated without corroboration by the press.

Mr. Bush has gone so far as to accuse Iran of shipping arms to its Sunni antagonists in the Taliban, a stretch Newsweek finally slapped down last week. Back in the reality-based community, it is Mr. Bush who has most conspicuously enabled the Taliban's resurgence by dropping the ball as it regrouped in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Administration policy also opened the door to Iran's lethal involvement in Iraq. The Iraqi "unity government" that our troops are dying to prop up has more allies in its Shiite counterpart in Tehran than it does in Washington.

Yet 2002 history may not literally repeat itself. Mr. Cheney doesn't necessarily rule in the post-Rumsfeld second Bush term. There are saner military minds afoot now: the defense secretary Robert Gates, the Joint Chiefs chairman Mike Mullen, the Central Command chief William Fallon. They know that a clean, surgical military strike at Iran could precipitate even more blowback than our "cakewalk" in Iraq. The Economist tallied up the risks of a potential Shock and Awe II this summer: "Iran could fire hundreds of missiles at Israel, attack American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, organize terrorist attacks in the West or choke off tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, the world's oil windpipe."

Then there's the really bad news. Much as Iraq distracted America from the war against Al Qaeda, so a strike on Iran could ignite Pakistan, Al Qaeda's thriving base and the actual central front of the war on terror. As Joe Biden said Tuesday night, if we attack Iran to stop it from obtaining a few kilograms of highly enriched uranium, we risk facilitating the fall of the teetering Musharraf government and the unleashing of Pakistan's already good-to-go nuclear arsenal on Israel and India.

A full-scale regional war, chaos in the oil market, an overstretched American military pushed past the brink - all to take down a little thug like Ahmadinejad (who isn't even Iran's primary leader) and a state, however truculent, whose defense budget is less than 1 percent of America's? Call me a Pollyanna, but I don't think even the Bush administration can be this crazy.

Yet there is nonetheless a method to all the mad threats of war coming out of the White House. While the saber- rattling is reckless as foreign policy, it's a proven winner as election-year Republican campaign strategy. The real point may be less to intimidate Iranians than to frighten Americans. Fear, the only remaining card this administration still knows how to play, may once more give a seemingly spent G.O.P. a crack at the White House in 2008.

Whatever happens in or to Iran, the American public will be carpet-bombed by apocalyptic propaganda for the 12 months to come. Mr. Bush has nothing to lose by once again using the specter of war to pillory the Democrats as soft on national security. The question for the Democrats is whether they'll walk once more into this trap.

You'd think the same tired tactics wouldn't work again after Iraq, a debacle now soundly rejected by a lopsided majority of voters. But even a lame-duck president can effectively wield the power of the bully pulpit. From Mr. Bush's surge speech in January to Gen. David Petraeus's Congressional testimony in September, the pivot toward Iran has been relentless.

Reinforcements are arriving daily. Dan Senor, the former flack for L. Paul Bremer in Baghdad, fronted a recent Fox News special, "Iran: The Ticking Bomb," a perfect accompaniment to the Rudy Giuliani campaign that is ubiquitous on that Murdoch channel. The former Bush flack Ari Fleischer is a founder of Freedom's Watch, a neocon fat-cat fund that has been spending $15 million for ads supporting the surge and is poised to up the ante for Iran war fever.

There are signs that the steady invocation of new mushroom clouds is already having an impact as it did in 2002 and 2003. A Zogby poll last month found that a majority of Americans (52 percent) now supports a pre-emptive strike on Iran to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons.

In 2002 Senators Clinton, Biden, John Kerry, John Edwards and Chris Dodd all looked over their shoulders at such polls. They and the party's Congressional leaders, Tom Daschle and Dick Gephardt, voted for the Iraq war resolution out of the cynical calculation that it would inoculate them against charges of wussiness. Sure, they had their caveats at the time. They talked about wanting "to give diplomacy the best possible opportunity" (as Mr. Gephardt put it then). In her Oct. 10, 2002, speech of support for the Iraq resolution on the Senate floor, Mrs. Clinton hedged by saying, "A vote for it is not a vote to rush to war."

We know how smart this strategic positioning turned out to be. Weeks later the Democrats lost the Senate.

This time around, with the exception of Mrs. Clinton, the Democratic candidates seem to be saying what they really believe rather than trying to play both sides against the middle. Only Mrs. Clinton voted for this fall's nonbinding Kyl-Lieberman Senate resolution, designed by its hawk authors to validate Mr. Bush's Iran policy. The House isn't even going to bring up this malevolent bill because, as Nancy Pelosi has said, there has "never been a declaration by a Congress before in our history" that "declared a piece of a country's army to be a terrorist organization."

In 2002, the Iraq war resolution passed by 77 to 23. In 2007, Kyl-Lieberman passed by 76 to 22. No sooner did Mrs. Clinton cast her vote than she started taking heat in Iowa. Her response was to blur her stand. She abruptly signed on as the sole co- sponsor of a six-month-old (and languishing) bill introduced by the Virginia Democrat Jim Webb forbidding money for military operations in Iran without Congressional approval.

In Tuesday's debate Mrs. Clinton tried to play down her vote for Kyl-Lieberman again by incessantly repeating her belief in "vigorous diplomacy" as well as the same sound bite she used after her Iraq vote five years ago. "I am not in favor of this rush for war," she said, "but I'm also not in favor of doing nothing."

Much like her now notorious effort to fudge her stand on Eliot Spitzer's driver's license program for illegal immigrants, this is a profile in vacillation. And this time Mrs. Clinton's straddling stood out as it didn't in 2002. That's not because she was the only woman on stage but because she is the only Democratic candidate who has not said a firm no to Bush policy.

That leaves her in a no man's - or woman's - land. If Mr. Bush actually does make a strike against Iran, Mrs. Clinton will be the only leading Democrat to have played a cameo role in enabling it. If he doesn't, she can no longer be arguing in the campaign crunch of fall 2008 that she is against rushing to war, because it would no longer be a rush. Her hand would be forced.

Mr. Biden got a well-deserved laugh Tuesday night when he said there are only three things in a Giuliani sentence: "a noun and a verb and 9/11." But a year from now, after the public has been worn down by so many months more of effective White House propaganda, "America's mayor" (or any of his similarly bellicose Republican rivals) will be offering voters the clearest possible choice, however perilous, about America's future in the world.

Potentially facing that Republican may be a Democrat who is not in favor of rushing to war in Iran but, now as in 2002, may well be in favor of walking to war. In any event, she will not have been a leader in making the strenuous case for an alternative policy that defuses rather than escalates tensions with Tehran.

Noun + verb + 9/11 - also Mr. Bush's strategy in 2004, lest we forget - would once again square off against a Democratic opponent who was for a pre-emptive war before being against it.

(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.

BushCo Continues Push To WWIII

Deja Vu All Over Again.

Bush sanctions on Iranian military force, banks, and companies doomed to failure. Russia and China are pushing back on unilateral U.S. sanctions against Iran.

Turkey masses troops in Iraqi border. Bush Iraqi folly stands to unravel in wider regional conflict.

(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.

The Crazies Almost Got Us Into A Nuclear War With China

NeCons should be deported or something..

These people are NUTZ!

Defense Officials Tried to Reverse China Policy, Says Powell Aide
By Jeff Stein,
CQ National Security Editor

The same top Bush administration neoconservatives who leap-frogged Washington’s foreign policy establishment to topple Saddam Hussein nearly pulled off a similar coup in U.S.-China relations—creating the potential of a nuclear war over Taiwan, a top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell says.

Lawrence B. Wilkerson, the U.S. Army colonel who was Powell’s chief of staff through two administrations, said in little-noted remarks early last month that “neocons” in the top rungs of the administration quietly encouraged Taiwanese politicians to move toward a declaration of independence from mainland China — an act that the communist regime has repeatedly warned would provoke a military strike.

The top U.S. diplomat in Taiwan at the time, Douglas Paal, backs up Wilkerson’s account, which is being hotly disputed by key former defense officials.

Under the deliberately fuzzy diplomatic formula hammered out between former President
Richard Nixon and Chairman Mao Zedong in 1971, the United States agreed that there is only “one China” —with its capital in Beijing.

But right-wing Republicans in particular continued to embrace Taiwan as an anticommunist bastion 125 miles off the Chinese coast, long after their own party leaders and U.S. big business embraced the communist regime.

With the election of George W. Bush in 2000, some of Taiwan’s most fervent allies were swept back into power in Washington, particularly at the Pentagon, starting with Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld.

They included such key architects of the Iraq War as Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, Douglas Feith, the undersecretary for policy, and Steven Cambone, Rumsfeld’s new intelligence chief, Wilkerson said. President Bush’s controversial envoy to the United Nations, John Bolton, was another.

While Bush publicly continued the one-China policy of his five White House predecessors, Wilkerson said, the Pentagon “neocons” took a different tack, quietly encouraging Taiwan’s pro-independence president, Chen Shui-bian.

“The Defense Department, with Feith, Cambone, Wolfowitz [and] Rumsfeld, was dispatching a person to Taiwan every week, essentially to tell the Taiwanese that the alliance was back on,” Wilkerson said, referring to pre-1970s military and diplomatic relations, “essentially to tell Chen Shui-bian, whose entire power in Taiwan rested on the independence movement, that independence was a good thing.”

Wilkerson said Powell would then dispatch his own envoy “right behind that guy, every time they sent somebody, to disabuse the entire Taiwanese national security apparatus of what they’d been told by the Defense Department.”

“This went on,” he said of the pro-independence efforts, “until George Bush weighed in and told Rumsfeld to cease and desist [and] told him multiple times to re-establish military-to-military relations with China.”

Routine military ties had been suspended in early 2001 after China forced a U.S. reconnaissance plane down on Hainan Island off Vietnam.
Strong Denials

Feith, now teaching and working on a book at Georgetown University, responded that Wilkerson’s “remarks are not even close to being accurate. They are phrased so vaguely and sweepingly that it is impossible to deny them with precision, but they are not right.”
Rumsfeld’s former spokesman Lawrence DiRita called Wilkerson’s allegations “completely ridiculous—clear and simple . . . absurd.”

“The idea that there was some kind of DoD attempt to favor some faction in Taiwan, as described by Wilkerson ... is just crazy,” DiRita said in a brief telephone interview.
Wilkerson told a similar story in a recent critical biography of Rumsfeld by Washington-based British journalist Andrew Cockburn.

He elaborated on the episode during a May 7 panel, organized to discuss the controversy over Iraq intelligence at the University of the District of Colombia, as well as in subsequent conversations last week.

“It was a constant refrain of they said one thing, we said another thing for months on end,” Wilkerson said by e-mail. “They said, ‘Don’t worry, you are our allies and we will defend you—regardless.’ We said, ‘Do worry—if you declare independence, we may not be there; so be quiet and let sleeping dogs lie. . . .’ ”

Rewriting Bush

Another key character in the minidrama was Therese Shaheen, the outspoken chief of the U.S. office of the American Institute in Taiwan, which took on the functions of the American embassy after the formal 1979 diplomatic switch.

Shaheen, who happens to be DiRita’s wife, openly championed Chen and the independence movement, at one point even publicly reinterpreting Bush’s reiteration of the “one China” policy, saying that the administration “had never said it ‘opposed’ Taiwan independence,” according to a 2004 account in the authoritative Far Eastern Economic Review.

“Therese Shaheen . . . said don’t sweat it, the president didn’t really mean what he said,” Wilkerson said.

Coming from the wife of Rumsfeld’s spokesman, Shaheen’s remarks sent off angry alarms in Beijing.


Powell asked for her resignation.

Douglas Paal was then head of the American Institute in Taiwan, effectively making him the U.S. ambassador there. He backed up Wilkerson’s account.

“In the early years of the Bush administration,” Paal said by e-mail last week, “there was a problem with mixed signals to Taiwan from Washington. This was most notably captured in the statements and actions of Ms. Therese Shaheen, the former AIT chair, which ultimately led to her departure.”

Now retired, Paal said he, too, “received many first- and second-hand reports of messages conveyed to Taiwan by DoD civilians and perhaps a uniformed officer or two during that time that were out of sync with President Bush’s position.”

DiRita defended his wife, saying “she understood U.S. policy and executed it to the very best of her abilities and wasn’t trying to play games with” Taiwanese independence forces.

“That was always kind of a mythology of what happened over there,” he said.


Mushroom Clouds

“They are dangerous men who will lie about almost anyone or anything,” Wilkerson angrily responded by e-mail, singling out Feith, DiRita, Cheney and Rumsfeld for scorn.

He called back-stage encouragement of the Taiwanese “even more serious” than the alleged manipulation of Iraq intelligence, because it could provoke China to attack the island, triggering a U.S. response and the world’s first nuclear shooting war.

The independence issue, agrees China experts Richard Bush and Michael O’Hanlon, is Beijing’s third rail—touch it and you die.

“Even if the odds are fairly low of miscalculation leading to war, and war then bringing in the United States, this scenario is scary,” they recently wrote in The Washington Times.

A Taiwanese declaration of independence, they said, “could result in the first major war between nuclear weapons states in history, with no guarantee it would be successfully concluded prior to a major escalation.”

Jeff Stein can be reached at jstein@cq.com.

(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.

ARK. GOP Head: We Need More Terrorist Attacks!

As a friend of mine likes to remind me, there is nothing quite so good for progressives in America than allowing the citizens of Wingnuttia to rave on.

Sooner or later, we are bound to get a garbage truckload their real truth.

Arkansas GOP head: We need more 'attacks on American soil' so people appreciate Bush
Josh Catone
Published: Sunday June 3, 2007

In his first interview as the chairman of the Arkansas Republican Party, Dennis Milligan told a reporter that America needs to be attacked by terrorists so that people will appreciate the work that President Bush has done to protect the country.

"At the end of the day, I believe fully the president is doing the right thing, and I think all we need is some attacks on American soil like we had on [Sept. 11, 2001]," Milligan said to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, "and the naysayers will come around very quickly to appreciate not only the commitment for President Bush, but the sacrifice that has been made by men and women to protect this country."

Milligan, who was elected as the new chair of the Arkansas Republican Party just two weeks ago, also told the newspaper that he is "150 percent" behind Bush in the war in Iraq.

In his acceptance speech on May 19th, Milligan told his fellow Republicans that it was "time for a rediscovery of our values and our common sense."

The owner of a water treatment company, Milligan was a relative unknown in Arkansas politics until being elected the party chairman. He had previously served as the party's treasurer and the Saline County Republican chair.

THE FULL DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE INTERVIEW CAN BE READ HERE


(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.

More Calls For Impeachment, While Junoir Smirks On

Democrats MUST Impeach George W. Bush
A. Alexander, May 3rd, 2007

George W. Bush is enjoying his victory. But for him, it isn't a victory that is about forcing Democrats to surrender in their attempt to compel a withdrawal from Iraq. No, the victory Mister Bush is enjoying goes well beyond a president bullying the loyal opposition into political submission - his enjoyment is more akin to that experienced by Caesar when he and his legions crossed the Rubicon and ended the Roman Republic.

Despite a large and growing majority of Americans demanding an end to Emperor Bush's Iraq folly, he and his legion of the ever-shrinking Republican Kool-Aid drinkers are defying the will of the majority and insisting upon establishing a tyranny of the minority. Democrats meanwhile, as always, have been half-stepping and half-hearting their way through the battle for America's democracy; preferring instead to piddle while Rome burns.

If one looks closely enough, it isn't difficult to see the smirk lurking just beneath Mister Bush's thin lips. The smirk is fed, of course, by knowing that he has managed to completely destroy America's Democratic Republic. He knows all that remains of Constitutional America is little more than a ceremonial exoskeleton. A shell of what once was...a little something that he and all future quasi-elected Emperors can point to, while feigning respect and loyalty for the "principles of freedom and liberty."

Mister Bush's victorious smirk, however, is not only in regard to his newfound tyranny of the Republican minority. His latest and, perhaps, most direct scheme is to completely eviscerate the Constitutional Amendments protecting American citizens from illegal search and seizure. At the same time Bush and his radicalized Congressional Republicans were defying the will of the American people regarding the Iraq War, the White House had sent a proposal to Congress that would make it legal for America's Emperor-like president to spy on citizens without ANY warrant whatsoever. A privilege Emperor Bush already considers his right. In other words Mister Bush and his legion of the minority have told Congress, "Rubber-stamp our right to spy on U.S. citizens within America or don't...either way, we claim the authority to do so."

Through it all -- with each step Mister Bush and his legion of the minority take across the Rubicon of tyranny -- Democrats half-heartedly employ half-stepping half-measures. Bush vetoed the war-funding bill, so Democrats surrendered. Mister Bush declares all Constitutional guarantees of American citizens to be free from illegal search and seizure, and Democrats grumble. Democrats will insist that there is only so much they can do.

After all, they just barely have a majority in the Senate. Still, there is something Democrats can do.... Morally speaking, Democrats must end Emperor Bush's tyranny of the minority...they MUST impeach him, now! Failing to impeach is, by omission, the Democratic Party's vote to grant Mister Bush the Emperor-Presidency status that he seems to be seeking. Putting it in the only terms Democrats can understand: Either they impeach Mister Bush or they are a Party unworthy of a single American citizen's vote.

(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.

GOP Still Doesn't Get It

Republicans do not seem to realize how much trouble they are in. They should be more than nervous. They should be scared shitless.


GOP Moderates Nervous on Iraq

By Steven T. Dennis
Roll Call
Monday 30 April 2007

Support for Bush starts to slip.

Cracks are starting to show in the near-monolithic Republican support for the Iraq War, with President Bush's critics hoping that the trickle of opposition will swell into a flood later this year.

Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (R-Mo.), a moderate appropriator who had been agonizing about her vote on the Iraq War supplemental for weeks, decided last week that she could no longer toe the party line.

Emerson has been increasingly unhappy with the conduct of the war, but at the same time didn't want to support a bill she considered to be a partisan political document. So last Wednesday night, she voted "present."

"I cannot abide the way this war is being conducted, but neither can I lend my support to a measure that politicizes the men and women in uniform so bravely serving our country," Emerson said in a statement.

After posting the orange vote on the board, she sat next to Rep. Wayne Gilchrest (Md.), one of two Republicans to vote for the measure, for about 10 minutes. Gilchrest said the two had been talking for weeks about the war, along with a small but growing circle of disconcerted Republicans.

"She is reading 'Fiasco,' which I think should be required reading for every Republican," Gilchrest said, referring to the book by Washington Post reporter Thomas Ricks.

"It came out a year ago, but people only now are reading it," Gilchrest said.

Gilchrest, a soft-spoken, decorated Vietnam War veteran, said that as more information gets out about the war, from books such as "Fiasco" and former CIA Director George Tenet's new book, "At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA," which is being released today, more Republicans will want new answers beyond simply supporting Bush.

Although the party has been remarkably cohesive in opposing the Democratic drive for a timeline for withdrawal, that doesn't mean they are willing to go along indefinitely.

Gilchrest predicted that unless the situation on the ground improves significantly in the next few months, the number of Republicans like Emerson willing to stray from the party line will grow significantly.

"They are going to start popping off," he said. "I think by midsummer we could see that happening, breaking the logjam."

House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said last week that he was not concerned in the short term about a party split on the war but acknowledged that results on the ground need to improve. And in a sign that Republicans also are restless to see changes, Blunt and other Republicans could support binding benchmarks on the Iraqi government tied to a "consequences package," so long as it would not put restrictions on the military.

Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.), a leading moderate, said many Republicans are looking for a way out of Iraq, and he hopes that the Democrats will work with them after Bush likely vetoes the $124 billion war supplemental this week.

"I think a lot of us feel that the time has come for us to look for solutions to bring this war to a close," Castle said. "And I don't think that's just a feeling among moderate Republicans but among Republicans in general."

Castle said Republicans of all stripes "are very reluctant to put in dates on our Army" but said that other ideas, including Blunt's talk of a "consequences package" for the Iraqi government, could bring the parties together.

"I think most of us feel that what the Democrats did was wrong ... but that doesn't mean we can't work something out that moderates and even conservative Republicans can support," Castle said.

Democrats acknowledge that they will not be able to end the war until enough Republicans ultimately decide that they can no longer support it.

House Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) has described his strategy as forcing Republicans to vote "again and again and again" to back the war until they tell Bush they've had enough.

A string of Iraq votes are planned from now to October that will put Republicans on the spot. In addition to the new war supplemental, the upcoming fiscal 2008 Defense authorization and Defense appropriations bills will hit the House floor by the end of June. "This is going to play out over the year," said Appropriations subcommittee on Defense Chairman John Murtha (D-Pa.).

Murtha has acknowledged that his proposal for a short-term supplemental of a few months to keep the pressure on the president is problematic because of the full legislative calendar and the August recess, and the idea has received a cool reception among House and Senate leaders and the White House.

A key vote to watch will come in September, when Murtha plans to bring up Bush's $140 billion fiscal 2008 war request as a supplemental. That bill will coincide with a major update from Iraq commander Gen. David Petraeus on whether the surge strategy is working.

With polls showing the public solidly favoring Democrats and their plan to withdraw troops by the end of Bush's term, there also will be growing pressure on Republicans, Democrats believe.

"The closer it gets to the election in 2008 the more focused the Republican Senators will be on this issue," said Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). "If it has not been resolved on the ground, they will have to decide whether or not they want to take this, the president's position, as their party position into the next election. And I think they'll be more open to a new direction in Iraq."

Republicans and Bush have sought to portray the Democratic bill as a "surrender" date, but party apostates such as Gilchrest and fellow war opponent Rep. Walter Jones Jr. (R-N.C.) say the party's leaders have been focused too much on sloganeering while problems with the conduct of the war have been allowed to fester.

"To simply say this is about winning is a disservice to the public," Gilchrest said. "We should be about drilling down to the information."

Gilchrest noted that fellow Republicans have started stepping out more and more, including Rep. David Hobson (R-Ohio), a senior appropriator who traveled to Syria with Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) even as the White House and Republican leaders ripped her for meeting with the head of a state sponsor of terrorism.

Gilchrest's stand has resulted in varied opinions back home, he said.

"Some come up to me and say, 'I loathe your vote,'" Gilchrest said. Others quietly thank him.

Many others are just curious and want to know why he's stepping out from his party and the president. He said he takes the critics in stride.

"It's nothing compared to the importance of getting this issue right," he said.


(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.

Sy Hersh: On The Bushies, Iraq and Iran, and The Corrupt News Media

For forty years, Seymour Hersh has been America’s leading investigative reporter. His latest scoop?

The White House’s secret plan to bomb Iran

MATT TAIBBI

On May 29th, 1975, an aide to then-White House chief of staff Donald Rumsfeld sat down with a yellow legal pad and in careful longhand sketched out a list of possible responses to a damaging investigative report in The New York Times. "Problem," the aide wrote. "Unauthorized disclosure of classified national security information by Sy Hersh and the NYT." He then laid out five options, ranging from the most ominous (an FBI investigation of the newspaper and a grand jury indictment) to the least offensive ("Discuss informally with NYT" and "Do nothing").

Number three on the list, however, read, "Search warrant: to go after Hersh papers in his apt."
The note's author? A viper-mean Beltway apparatchik named Dick Cheney, who was making his name doing damage control for the Republican White House after the Watergate disaster.

Coming so soon after Nixon was burned at the public stake for similar targeting of political enemies, the Cheney memo was proof that the next generation of GOP leaders had emerged from the Watergate scandal regretting only one thing: getting caught.

This year, an almost identical note in Cheney's same tight-looped, anal script appeared as a key piece of evidence in the trial of another powerful White House aide, Scooter Libby. The vice president's handwritten ruminations on how best to dispose of an Iraq War critic named Joe Wilson are an eerie reminder of how little has changed in America in the past three decades. Then as now, we have been dragged into a bloody massacre in the Third World, paying the bill for the operation with the souls and bodies of the next generation of our young people. It is the same old story, and many of the same people are once again in charge.

But some of the same people are on the other side, too. In the same week that Libby was convicted in a Washington courthouse, Seymour Hersh outlined the White House's secret plans for a possible invasion of Iran in The New Yorker. As amazing as it is that Cheney is still walking among us, a living link to our dark Nixonian past, it's even more amazing that Hersh is still the biggest pain in his ass, publishing accounts of conversations that seemingly only a person hiding in the veep's desk drawer would be privy to. "The access I have -- I'm inside," Hersh says proudly. "I'm there, even when he's talking to people in confidence."

America's pre-eminent investigative reporter of the last half-century, Hersh broke the story of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam and was on hand, nearly four decades later, when we found ourselves staring back at the same sick face in the mirror after Abu Ghraib. At age seventy, he clearly still loves his job. During a wide-ranging interview at his cramped Washington office, Hersh could scarcely sit still, bouncing around the room like a kindergartner to dig up old articles, passages from obscure books and papers buried in his multitudinous boxes of files. A hopeless information junkie, he is permanently aroused by the idea that corruption and invisible power are always waiting to be uncovered by the next phone call. Somewhere out there, They are still hiding the story from Us -- and that still pisses Hersh off.

During the Watergate years, you devoted a great deal of time to Henry Kissinger. If you were going to write a book about this administration, is Dick Cheney the figure you would focus on?Absolutely. If there's a Kissinger person today, it's Cheney. But what I say about Kissinger is: Would that we had a Kissinger now! If we did, we'd know that the madness of going into Iraq would have been explained by something -- maybe a clandestine deal for oil -- that would make some kind of sense. Kissinger always had some back-channel agenda. But in the case of Bush and this war, what you see is what you get. We buy much of our fuel from the Middle East, and yet we're at war with the Middle East. It doesn't make sense.

Kissinger's genius, if you will, was that he figured out a way to get out. His problem was that, like this president, he had a president who could only see victory ahead. With Kissinger, you have to give him credit: He had such difficulties with Nixon getting the whole peace package through, but he did it. Right now, a lot of people on the inside know it's over in Iraq, but there are no plans for how to get out. You're not even allowed to think that way. So what we have now is a government that's in a terrible mess, with no idea of how to get out. Except, as one of my friends said, the "fail forward" idea of going into Iran. So we're really in big trouble. Real big trouble here.

Is what's gone on in the Bush administration comparable or worse than what went on in the Nixon administration?Oh, my God. Much worse. Bush is a true radical. He believes very avidly in executive power. And he also believes that he's doing the right thing. I think he's a revolutionary, a Trotsky. He's a believer in permanent revolution. So therefore he's very dangerous, because he's an unguided missile, he's a rocket with no ability to be educated. You can't change what he wants to do. He can't deviate from his policy, and that's frightening when somebody has as much power as he does, and is as much a radical as he is, and is as committed to democracy -- whatever that means -- as he is in the Mideast. I really do believe that's what drives him. That doesn't mean he's not interested in oil. But I really think he thinks democracy is the answer.

A lot of people interpreted your last article in "The New Yorker" as a prediction that we're going into Iran. But you also make clear that the Saudis have reasons to keep us from attacking Iran. I've never said we're going to go -- just that the planning is under way. Planning is planning, of course. But in the last couple of weeks, it has become nonstop. They're in a position right now where the president could wake up and scratch his, uh --
His what?His nose, and say, "Let's go." And they'd go. That's new. We've made it closer. We've got carrier groups there. It's not about going in on the ground. Although if we went in we'd have to send Marines into the coastal areas of Iran to knock out their Silkworm missile sites.

So the notion that it would just be a bombing campaign isn't true at all?

Oh, no. Don't forget, you'd have to take out a very sophisticated radar system, and a guidance system for their missiles. You'd have to knock out the ability of the Iranians to get our ships.
So this is the "fail forward" plan?I think Bush wants to resolve the Iranian crisis. It may not be a crisis, but he wants to resolve it.

The other implication of your piece is that we went into Iraq as a response to Sunni extremism, and now we are realigning ourselves with Sunni extremists to fight the Shiites. Is it really that simple? Are we really that stupid?From what I gather, there's no real mechanism in the administration for looking at the downside of things. In the military, when they do a major study, they say something like "We give it to you with the pluses and minuses." They usually show it to you warts and all. But these guys in the White House don't want the warts. They just want the good side. I don't think they know all of the consequences.

This seems to be something that Bush has in common with Nixon: the White House ignoring everyone and seeking to become a government unto itself.One of the things this administration has shown us is how fragile democracy is. All of the institutions we thought would protect us -- particularly the press, but also the military, the bureaucracy, the Congress -- they have failed.

The courts . . . the jury's not in yet on the courts. So all the things that we expect would normally carry us through didn't. The biggest failure, I would argue, is the press, because that's the most glaring.

In the Nixon years, you had the press turning against the Vietnam War after the Tet Offensive, you had Watergate, you had all these reasons why the press became involved in bringing the Nixon administration to an end. But it hasn't performed that function in Bush's case. Why do you think that is?I don't know. It's very discouraging. I've had conversations with senior people at my old newspaper, the Times, who know that there are serious problems there. It's not that they shouldn't run the stories that they run. They run stories that represent the government's view, because there are people at the Times who have access to senior people in the government. They see the national security adviser, they see Condoleezza Rice, and they have to reflect their view. That's their job. What doesn't get reported is the other side. What I always loved about the Times when I worked there is that I could write what the kiddies down the line said. But that doesn't happen now. You're not getting broad, macro coverage from the White House that represents anything like opposition. And there is opposition -- the press just doesn't know how to deal with it.

But why isn't there more of an uproar by the public at atrocities committed by American troops? Have people become inured to those stories over the years?I just think it's because they are Iraqis. You have to give Bill Clinton his due: When he bombed Kosovo in 1999, he became the first president since World War II to bomb white people. Think about it. Does that mean something? Is it just an accident, or is it an inevitable byproduct of white supremacy? White man's burden? You tell me what it is, I don't know.

You talk a lot about the similarities between Iraq and Vietnam: how Lynndie England is the new Lt. Calley, how it's lower-middle-class white kids from America killing nonwhite people overseas. Yes, there's this similarity -- but why is this same kind of war happening again? Is this a pattern that's built into the way our government works?I don't know. Why would you go to war when you don't have to go to war? It takes very little courage to go to war. It takes a lot of courage not to go to war.

I once had a friend -- this was thirty years ago -- from a major university. He studied the scientific problem the government had of detecting underground missile tests in Russia. It took him a couple of years, but he solved the problem. At that point the Joint Chiefs of Staff was against any treaty with the Russians on testing, because we couldn't detect when they cheated. My friend attended a meeting of the Joint Chiefs and demonstrated conclusively that there was a technical way of monitoring missile explosions inside Russia, even without being on-site. But when the meeting was over, the Joint Chiefs just issued a sigh and said, "Well, we better go back to a political objection to the treaty now." Where there had been a scientific objection to a treaty, now there was a political objection. So you begin to see that pushing for peace is very hard.

There is safety in bombing, rather than negotiating. It's very sad.

Did America learn anything from Vietnam? Was there a lesson in the way that war ended that could have prevented this war from starting?You mean learn from the past? America?
Yes.No. We made the same dumb mistake. One of the arguments for going into Vietnam was that we had to stop the communist Chinese. The Chinese were behind everything -- we saw them and North Vietnam as one and the same. In reality, of course, the Chinese and the Vietnamese hated each other -- they had fought each other for 1,000 years. Four years after the war ended, in 1979, they got into a nasty little war of their own. So we were totally wrong about the entire premise of the war. And it's the same dumbness in this war, with Saddam and the terrorists.

On the other hand, I would argue that some key operators, the Cheney types, they learned a great deal about how to run things and how to hide stuff over those years.

From the press?

Oh, come on, how hard is it to hide things from the press? They don't care that much about the straight press. What these guys have figured out is that as long as they have Fox and talk radio, they're OK in the public opinion. They control that hard. It kept the ball in Iraq in the air for a couple of years longer than it should have, and it cost Kerry the presidency. But now it's over -- Iraq's done. A lot of the conservatives who promoted the war are now very much against it. Some of the columnists in this town who were beating the drums for that war really owe an apology. It's a sad time for the American press.

What can be done to fix the situation?[Long pause] You'd have to fire or execute ninety percent of the editors and executives. You'd actually have to start promoting people from the newsrooms to be editors who you didn't think you could control. And they're not going to do that.

What's the main lesson you take, looking back at America's history the last forty years?There's nothing to look back to. We're dealing with the same problems now that we did then. We know from the Pentagon Papers -- and to me they were the most important documents ever written -- that from 1963 on, Kennedy and Johnson and Nixon lied to us systematically about the war. I remember how shocked I was when I read them. So . . . duh! Nothing's changed. They've just gotten better at dealing with the press. Nothing's changed at all.


(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.

At least Hillary Can Speak English!!!

April 20, 2007, 4:53 pm

Clinton Slams Bush Before Sharpton’s Group

By Patrick Healy

Appealing for black and female votes this afternoon in remarks to the Rev. Al Sharpton’s political organization, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton was full of personal touches: Using housecleaning imagery to swipe at President Bush, criticizing Don Imus’s “demeaning treatment” of the Rutgers women’s basketball team, and adopting the southern-fried lilt of a preacher at times.

Mrs. Clinton assailed President Bush at several points, particularly over Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts and over Iraq, referring to the latter as “this war that he deliberately started.”
But she mostly calibrated her political message to ask, in personal terms, for support from the audience of the National Action Network – one day before one of her main rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, was to address the group.

“When I walk into the Oval Office in 2009 I’m afraid I’m going to lift up the rug and I’m going to see so much stuff under there,” she told a few hundred people in a midtown Manhattan hotel banquet room. “You know, what is it about us always having to clean up after people?”

“But this is not just going to be picking up socks off the floor. This is going to be cleaning up the government,” she said, drawing applause from the audience.

Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama have been competing aggressively to win over various blocs of the black vote: Intellectuals, the wealthy and the lower income, southern blacks, blue-collar workers, and now those associated with Mr. Sharpton, who are some of the more liberal members of the black community.

Other candidates have also appeared at the group’s ninth annual convention this week, including former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina and Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico.

Mrs. Clinton said she met earlier today with C. Vivian Stringer, coach of the Rutgers women’s basketball team, the Scarlet Knights, who together spoke out against remarks deemed racist and sexist that were made by Don Imus, who was fired for the comments.

Mrs. Clinton told Mr. Sharpton’s group that “we owe that extraordinary woman a debt of gratitude.”

“She and her young players taught us all a lesson,” Mrs. Clinton said. She noted that she, Mr. Sharpton, and Rev. Jesse Jackson, who also attended the conference, have been attacked for years, and after a while political figures begin to tune out such criticism.

“It took these extraordinary young women to say enough is enough, and we need to stand with them and be clear that as women we will not put up with the degradation and demeaning treatment that is too often put upon young women,” Mrs. Clinton said.

At times today, Mrs. Clinton’s slight, flat Midwestern accent dissolved in a cadence-laden speaking style that is more associated with a Southern Baptist minister (or her husband) than with her. Sometimes it was the “g” at the end of a gerund that disappeared, like “runnin’” instead of running. Sometimes her voice went soft at the end of sentences.

She has spoken like this to black audiences before, most memorably at a black church in Selma, Alabama, this winter when both she and Mr. Obama were in the town to commemorate a civil rights anniversary. Mr. Obama, who usually speaks without an accent, sometimes displays a similar lilt as well, and Mr. Edwards’s North Carolina accent sometimes sounds much sharper than at other moments.

After Mrs. Clinton’s remarks, a reporter asked Mr. Sharpton if he thought she was pandering for black votes by sounding like she did.

“No,” he said, “people kind of relate to audiences. I don’t know if I heard as much differences as people said.”


(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.

Don't Pay Taxes Until Democracy is Restored

Lawyers in Denver are arguing that President Bush has the right to remove from an audience people who disagree with him.

The case involves two people ejected from a taxpayer-funded Bush speech two years ago.
Leslie Weise and Alex Young were removed from a Bush address on Social Security after a staffer for Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., pointed them out as suspicious because they had arrived in a car with an anti-war bumper sticker.

Weise and Young sued, arguing that the ouster violated their First Amendment right to free speech.

Attorneys for Michael Casper and Jay Klinkerman, who were involved in removing them, have filed an appeals brief saying the ouster was legal.

"The president's right to control his own message includes the right to exclude people expressing discordant viewpoints from the audience," says the brief, filed by attorneys Sean Gallagher, Dugan Bliss and others representing Casper and Klinkerman.

The White House declined comment, citing the ongoing lawsuit. Three White House staffers have also been sued in the case for ordering the ouster.

Gallagher said the White House was not involved in developing the argument.

The appeal centers on "whose speech is at issue -- the president's or the plaintiffs'?" the brief says.

Weise responded, "My read of the Constitution does not give the president free speech rights greater than the citizens he serves."

Martha Tierney, attorney for Weise and Young, described the argument as "pretty amazing." She said it claims her clients' mere attendance forced the government to adopt their views.
Casper's attorneys cited a case, Sistrunk vs. City of Strongsville, involving the first President George Bush. There, an appeals court supported the removal of a person with a Bill Clinton button from an event organized by the Republican Party.

The speech organizers were trying to "convey a pro-Bush message to the media by use of pro-Bush speakers and largely pro-Bush attendees," they quote the case. They wanted to 'send the media a message' that Bush would win; to convey the message that 'Strongsville Trusts George Bush.' "

But Tierney said that the cited case doesn't apply because it was a Republican Party event, "and a private party can control speech." The Denver speech was open to the public and paid for by taxpayers, she said.

If the argument that the government can exclude people based on their views is supported by the appeals court, "it guts the First Amendment," Tierney said.

Alan Chen, a University of Denver law professor, agreed.

"The whole purpose is to protect dissenters from the government," he said. "That's an inherent element of the democratic process."

--ANN IMSE



(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.

Madam Speaker is the Queen of Understatements.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Tuesday that she believes President Bush's judgment on the Iraq war "is a little impaired."

She also said his approach to Iraq is based on personal conviction, rather than political judgment.

"What I don't think is that it is a political decision on the part of the president. This is what he firmly believes," Pelosi said in an interview with CNN's "Larry King Live."

"I just would hope that whatever he thinks about the war that he would also value the fact that the American people have lost confidence in him." (Watch how the Iraq war has changed public perception of Bush )

"I think his judgment is a little impaired on this war, with all due respect to the president and his good intentions," she told King.

Pelosi also blasted a comment made last week by Vice President Dick Cheney that legislative moves by Pelosi and other House Democrats to oppose Bush's war policy would "validate" al Qaeda's strategy.

"What the vice president said is beneath the dignity of his office and beneath the dignity of the sacrifice of our men and women in uniform," Pelosi said.

"The vice president is in a place that is out of touch with the American people, out of touch with what so many generals are saying and out of touch with even a bipartisan majority in the Congress."

The speaker confirmed she called Bush to complain about Cheney's comments.

"The president had said to me ... that he would not tolerate any undermining of anybody's patriotism or our intention to protect the national security," she said.
"He said, 'Could you let me know if this happens?' So I wanted to let him know that it happened."

Pelosi, a California Democrat, became the first female speaker in American history in January.
Asked by King what about the job has most surprised her, she replied "the overwhelming show of enthusiasm across the country from women of all ages -- young girls to women my age -- who say they never thought that they'd see the day."

(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.

Junior Doesn't Give A Damn, My Dears

WASHINGTON: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged the Democratic-controlled U.S. Congress not to interfere in the conduct of the Iraq war and suggested President George W. Bush would defy troop withdrawal legislation.

But Sen. Carl Levin, Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said lawmakers would step up efforts to force Bush to change course. "The president needs a check and a balance," said Levin.

Rice said Sunday that proposals being drafted by Senate Democrats to limit the war amounted to "the worst of micromanagement of military affairs." She said military leaders such as Gen. David Petraeus, the new U.S. commander in Iraq, believe Bush's plan to send more troops is necessary.

"I can't imagine a circumstance in which it's a good thing that their flexibility is constrained by people sitting here in Washington, sitting in the Congress," Rice said. She was asked in a broadcast interview whether Bush would feel bound by legislation seeking to withdraw combat troops within 120 days.

"The president is going to, as commander in chief, need to do what the country needs done," she said.

The Senate Democrats' legislation would try to limit the mission of U.S. troops in Iraq by revoking Congress' 2002 vote authorizing Bush's use of force against Saddam Hussein.
One draft version supported by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, also a Democrat, would pull out combat forces by March of next year and restrict U.S. troops to fighting al-Qaida terrorists, training the Iraqi security forces and maintaining Iraq's borders.

Democrats have acknowledged that the proposal does not yet have enough votes to overcome Republican procedural obstacles and a veto by Bush. But they are hoping the latest effort will draw enough Republican support to embarrass the president and keep the pressure on.
Levin said it was appropriate for lawmakers to limit the broad wording of the 2002 war resolution given how the situation in Iraq has deteriorated.

"This is not a surge so much as it is a plunge into Baghdad and into the middle of a civil war," he said. "We're trying to change the policy, and if someone wants to call that tying the hands instead of changing the policy, yeah the president needs a check and a balance."

Sensitive to wavering Republicans, Rice made clear that Bush had no intention of backing away from plans to send 21,500 more combat troops to Iraq. While the U.S. role has changed since its overthrow of Saddam, the United States is obligated to see the mission through by working to build a stable and democratic Iraq, she said.

Rice said it is impossible to distinguish what is going on in Iraq from the larger fight against al-Qaida.

"Some of these car bombs may indeed be the work of an organization like al-Qaida," she said of the violence that continues to rock Baghdad.

"I would hope that Congress would recognize that it's very important for them to have the oversight role," Rice said. "But when it comes to the execution of policy in the field, there has to be a clear relationship between the commander in chief and the commanders in the field."

Senate Republicans recently thwarted two Democratic attempts to pass a nonbinding resolution critical of Bush's troop plan.

In the House, a nonbinding anti-war measure was approved this month. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, has said she expects the next challenge might be to impose money restrictions and a requirement that the Pentagon adhere to strict readiness standards for troops heading to the war zone.

But that plan has drawn only lukewarm support from Democrats in the Senate and some in the House, who believe it is a politically risky strategy that could be seen as an unconstitutional micromanaging of a president's power to wage war.

"We're going to fund the troops as long as they're there," Levin said.

Rice appeared on "Fox News Sunday" and "This Week" on ABC. Levin was on "Meet the Press" on NBC.

(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.

Junior is Already Making The Case, In Speech After Speech

Are they actually dragging 4 year old speeches and giving them a slighly new do?

Am I having a flashback?

Who put the DMT in my coffee?

What year is this? What decade is it?

Tomgram: Michael Klare, Talking Points for the Next War

At 10:16 PM on March 19, 2003, after copious military preparations in the Persian Gulf region and beyond, after months of diplomatic maneuvers at the United Nations, after a drumbeat of leaked intelligence warnings and hair-raising statements by top U.S. officials and the President about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and how close Saddam Hussein might be to developing a nuclear weapon, after declaring Saddam's regime a major threat to Americans, after countless insinuations that it was somehow connected to the 9/11 attacks on our country, after endless denials that war with Iraq was necessarily on the administration's agenda, President George W. Bush addressed the nation from the Oval Office. "My fellow citizens," he began, "at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger…"

Almost four years later, all the above elements are again in place, this time in relation to Iran -- with Iranian responsibility for the deaths of Americans in Iraq replacing Iraqi responsibility for the deaths of Americans in New York and Washington. On a careful reading of our President's latest speeches and statements, Michael Klare has noted that an actual list of charges against Iran, a case for war, has already essentially been drawn up, making it easy enough to imagine that at 10:16 PM on some night not so very distant from this one, from that same desk in the Oval Office, the President of the United States might again begin, "My fellow citizens, at this hour…" But read on for yourself. Tom


Bush's Future Iran War Speech: Three Charges in the Case for War
By Michael T. Klare

Sometime this spring or summer, barring an unexpected turnaround by Tehran, President Bush is likely to go on national television and announce that he has ordered American ships and aircraft to strike at military targets inside Iran. We must still sit through several months of soap opera at the United Nations in New York and assorted foreign capitals before this comes to pass, and it is always possible that a diplomatic breakthrough will occur -- let it be so! -- but I am convinced that Bush has already decided an attack is his only option and the rest is a charade he must go through to satisfy his European allies. The proof of this, I believe, lies half-hidden in recent public statements of his, which, if pieced together, provide a casus belli, or formal list of justifications, for going to war.

Three of his statements, in particular, contained the essence of this justification: his January 10 televised speech on his plan for a troop "surge" in Iraq, his State of the Union Address of January 23, and his first televised press conference of the year on February 14. None of these was primarily focused on Iran, but the President used each of them to warn of the extraordinary dangers that country poses to the United States and to hint at severe U.S. reprisals if the Iranians did not desist from "harming U.S. troops." In each, moreover, he laid out various parts of the overall argument he will certainly use to justify an attack on Iran. String these together in one place and you can almost anticipate what Bush's speechwriters will concoct before he addresses the American people from the Oval Office sometime later this year. Think of them as talking points for the next war.

The first of these revealing statements was Bush's January 10th televised address on Iraq. This speech was supposedly intended to rally public and Congressional support behind his plan to send 21,500 additional U.S. troops into the Iraqi capital and al-Anbar Province, the heartland of the Sunni insurgency. But his presentation that night was so uninspired, so lacking in conviction, that -- according to media commentary and polling data -- few, if any, Americans were persuaded by his arguments. Only once that evening did Bush visibly come alive: When he spoke about the threat to Iraq supposedly posed by Iran.

"Succeeding in Iraq also requires defending its territorial integrity and stabilizing the region in the face of extremist challenges," he declared, which meant, he assured his audience, addressing the problem of Iran. That country, he asserted, "is providing material support for attacks on American troops." (This support was later identified as advanced improvised explosive devices -- IEDs or roadside bombs -- given to anti-American Shiite militias.) Then followed an unambiguous warning: "We will disrupt the attacks on our forces... And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq."
Consider this item one in his casus belli: Because Iran is aiding and abetting our enemies in Iraq, we are justified in attacking Iran as a matter of self-defense.

Bush put it this way in an interview with Juan Williams of National Public Radio on January 29:

"If Iran escalates its military action in Iraq to the detriment of our troops and/or innocent Iraqi people, we will respond firmly… It makes common sense for the commander-in-chief to say to our troops and the Iraqi people -- and the Iraqi government -- that we will help you defend yourself from people that want to sow discord and harm."

In his January 10 address, the President went on to fill in a second item in any future casus belli:

Iran is seeking nuclear weapons in order to dominate the Middle East to the detriment of our friends in the region -- a goal that it simply cannot be allowed to achieve.

In response to such a possibility, the President declared, "We're also taking other steps to bolster the security of Iraq and protect American interests in the Middle East." These included deploying a second U.S. aircraft carrier battle group to the Gulf region, consisting of the USS John C. Stennis and a flotilla of cruisers, destroyers, and submarines (presumably to provide additional air and missile assets for strikes on Iran), along with additional Patriot anti-missile batteries (presumably to shoot down any Iranian missiles that might be fired in retaliation for an air attack on the country and its nuclear facilities). "And," Bush added, "we will work with others to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating the region."

Bush added a third item to the casus belli in his State of the Union Address on January 23.

After years of describing Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda as the greatest threats to U.S. interests in the Middle East, he now introduced a new menace: the resurgent Shia branch of Islam led by Iran.

Aside from al-Qaeda and other Sunni extremists, he explained, "it has also become clear that we face an escalating danger from Shia extremists who are just as hostile to America, and are also determined to dominate the Middle East."

Many of these extremists, he noted, "are known to take direction from the regime in Iran," including the Hezbollah movement in Lebanon.

As if to nail down this point, he offered some hair-raising imagery right out of the Left Behind bestselling book series so beloved of Christian evangelicals and their neoconservative allies:

"If American forces step back [from Iraq] before Baghdad is secure, the Iraqi government would be overrun by extremists on all sides. We could expect an epic battle between Shia extremists backed by Iran, and Sunni extremists backed by Al Qaeda and supporters of the old regime. A contagion of violence could spill across the country, and in time the entire region could be drawn into the conflict. For America, this is a nightmare scenario. For the enemy, this is the objective."

As refined by Bush speechwriters, this, then, is the third item in his casus belli for attacking Iran: to prevent a "nightmare scenario" in which the Shia leaders of Iran might emerge as the grandmasters of regional instability, using proxies like Hezbollah to imperil Israel and pro-American regimes in Jordan, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia -- with potentially catastrophic consequences for the safety of Middle Eastern oil supplies. You can be sure of what Bush will say to this in his future address: No American president would ever allow such a scenario to come to pass.

Many of these themes were reiterated in the president's White House Valentine's Day press conference. Once again, Iraq was meant to be the main story, but Iran captured all the headlines.

Bush's most widely cited comments on Iran focused on claims of Iranian involvement in the delivery of sophisticated versions of the roadside IEDs that have been responsible for many of the U.S. casualties in recent months. Just a few days earlier, unidentified American military officials in Baghdad had declared that elements of the Iranian military -- specifically, the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards -- were supplying the deadly devices to Shiite militias in Iraq, and that high-ranking Iranian government officials were aware of the deliveries.

These claims were contested by other U.S. officials and members of Congress who expressed doubt about the reliability of the evidence and the intelligence work behind it, but Bush evinced no such uncertainty:

"What we do know is that the Quds force was instrumental in providing these deadly IEDs to networks inside of Iraq. We know that. And we also know that the Quds force is a part of the Iranian government. That's a known."

What is not known, he continued, is just how high up in the Iranian government went the decision-making that led such IEDs to be delivered to the Shia militias in Iraq. But that doesn't matter, he explained. "What matters is, is that they're there... [W]e know they're there, and we're going to protect our troops." As Commander-in-Chief, he insisted, he would "do what is necessary to protect our soldiers in harm's way."

He then went on to indicate that "the biggest problem I see is the Iranians' desire to have a nuclear weapon." He expressed his wish that this problem can be "dealt with" in a peaceful way -- by the Iranians voluntarily agreeing to cease their program to enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels. But he also made it clear that the onus was purely on Tehran to take the necessary action to avoid unspecified harm: "I would like to be at the -- have been given a chance for us to explain that we have no desire to harm the Iranian people."

No reporters at the press conference asked him to explain this odd twist of phrase, delivered in the past tense, about his regret that he was unable to explain to the Iranian people why he had meant them no harm -- presumably after the fact.

However, if you view this as the Bush version of a Freudian slip, one obvious conclusion can be drawn: that the President has already made the decision to begin the countdown for an attack on Iran, and only total capitulation by the Iranians could possibly bring the process to a halt.


Further evidence for this conclusion is provided by Bush's repeated reference to Chapter 7 of the UN Charter. On three separate occasions during the press conference he praised Russia, China, and the "EU3" -- Britain, France, and Germany -- for framing the December 23 Security Council resolution condemning Iran's nuclear activities and imposing economic sanctions on Iran in the context of Chapter 7 -- that is, of "Action with Respect to Threats to the Peace, Breaches of the Peace, and Acts of Aggression."

This sets the stage for the international community, under UN leadership, to take such steps as may be deemed necessary "to maintain or restore international peace and stability," ranging from mild economic sanctions to full-scale war (steps that are described in Articles 39 to 51). But the December 23 resolution was specifically framed under Article 41, which entails "measures not involving the use of armed force," a stipulation demanded by China and Russia, which have categorically ruled out the use of military force to resolve the nuclear dispute with Iran.

One suspects that President Bush has Chapter 7 on the brain because he now intends to ask for a new resolution under Article 42, which allows the use of military force to restore international peace and stability. But it is nearly inconceivable that Russia and China would approve such a resolution. Such approval would also be tantamount to acknowledging American hegemony worldwide, and this is something they are simply unwilling to do.

So we can expect several months of fruitless diplomacy at the United Nations in which the United States may achieve slightly more severe economic sanctions under Chapter 41 but not approval for military action under Chapter 42. Bush knows that this is the inevitable outcome, and so I am convinced that, in his various speeches and meetings with reporters, he is already preparing the way for a future address to the nation.

In it, he will speak somberly of a tireless American effort to secure a meaningful resolution from the United Nations on Iran with real teeth in it and his deep disappointment that no such resolution has been not forthcoming. He will also point out that, despite the heroic efforts of American diplomats as well as military commanders in Iraq, Iran continues to pose a vital and unchecked threat to American security in Iraq, in the region, and even -- via its nuclear program -- in the wider world.

Further diplomacy, he will insist, appears futile and yet Iran must be stopped. Hence, he will say, "I have made the unavoidable decision to eliminate this vital threat through direct military action," and will announce -- in language eerily reminiscent of his address to the nation on March 19, 2003 -- that a massive air offensive against Iran has already been underway for several hours.

Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and the defense correspondent of the Nation magazine. He is the author, most recently, of Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependence on Imported Petroleum (Owl Books).

Copyright 2007 Michael T. Klare


(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.

Thinking about another terrorist attack

They are going to have to be pretty desperate and martial law will have to be required, at some point and at some places, but not all.

There are far too many Americans who question the official story of 9/11. Another attack is going to send antennas skyward and unfurl red-flags everywhere.

Told a friend not long ago that I didn't believe that there would be another attack on U.S. soil, because that would be the end of the Republican Party, as we know it.

If investigations begin, into the shadier, if not out-right criminal actions of this administation, we might well get another attack.

That, however, does not mean that anyone should slack off on the Bushites.

Constant, consistent pressure.....


(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.

Senate Dems Seek To Limit Murder Monkey

Senate Dems move to limit Iraq mission


By DAVID ESPO,
AP Special Correspondent

Determined to challenge President Bush, Senate Democrats are drafting legislation to limit the mission of U.S. troops in Iraq, effectively revoking the broad authority Congress granted in 2002, officials said Thursday.

While these officials said the precise wording of the measure remains unsettled, one draft would restrict American troops in Iraq to combating al-Qaida, training Iraqi army and police forces, maintaining Iraq's territorial integrity and otherwise proceeding with the withdrawal of combat forces.

The officials, Democratic aides and others familiar with private discussions, spoke only on condition of anonymity, saying rank-and-file senators had not yet been briefed on the effort. They added, though, the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (news, bio, voting record) is expected to present the proposal to fellow Democrats early next week for their consideration.
The plan is to attempt to add the measure to anti-terrorism legislation that scheduled to be on the Senate floor next week and the week following.

Jim Manley, a spokesman for Reid, declined to discuss the deliberations, saying only, "No final decisions have been made on how to proceed."

Any attempt to limit Bush's powers as commander in chief would likely face strong opposition from Republican allies of the administration in the Senate and could also face a veto threat.
The decision to try to limit the military mission marks the next move in what Reid and other Senate war critics have said will be a multistep effort to force a change in Bush's strategy and eventually force an end to U.S. participation in the nearly four-year-old war.

Earlier efforts to pass a nonbinding measure critical of Bush's decision to deploy 21,500 additional troops ended in gridlock after Senate Republicans blocked votes on two separate measures.

The emerging Senate plan differs markedly from an approach favored by critics of the war in the House, where a nonbinding measure passed last week.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said she expects the next challenge to Bush's war policies to come in the form of legislation requiring the Pentagon to adhere to strict training and readiness standards in the case of troops ticketed for the war zone.

Rep. John Murtha D-Pa., the leading advocate of that approach, has said it would effectively deny Bush the ability to proceed with the troop buildup that has been partially implemented since he announced it in January.

Some Senate Democrats have been privately critical of that approach, saying it would have virtually no chance of passing and could easily backfire politically in the face of Republican arguments that it would deny reinforcements to troops already in the war zone.

Several Senate Democrats have called in recent days for revoking the original authorization that Bush sought and won from Congress in the months before the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

That measure authorized the president to use the armed forces "as he determines to be necessary and appropriate ... to defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq" and to enforce relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions.

At the time the world body had passed resolutions regarding Iraq's presumed effort to develop weapons of mass destruction.

In a speech last week, Sen. Joseph Biden (news, bio, voting record) of Delaware, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said, "I am working on legislation to repeal that authorization and replace it with a much narrower mission statement for our troops in Iraq."
He added that Congress should make clear what the mission of U.S. troops is: to responsibly draw down, while continuing to combat terrorists, train Iraqis and respond to emergencies.
"We should make equally clear what their mission is not: to stay in Iraq indefinitely and get mired in a savage civil war," said Biden, a 2008 Democratic presidential candidate.

Along with Biden, officials said Sen. Carl Levin (news, bio, voting record) of Michigan, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and a small group of key Democrats were involved in the effort to draft legislation. Leadership aides are also playing a role.

It was not clear whether the measure would explicitly state that the 2002 authorization for the use of military force was being revoked. One proposal that had been circulated would declare that Bush was not authorized to involve U.S. armed forces in an Iraqi civil war, but it appeared that prohibition had been dropped as part of the discussions.

One Democrat said the legislation could remain silent on the issue of Bush's troop increase and noted that Reid had said he was ready to move beyond the deployment of more troops.
At the same time, several officials noted that any explicit authority for U.S. troops to confront al-Qaida would effectively bless Bush's decision to dispatch about 3,500 troops to the volatile Anbar Province in the western part of Iraq.

The balance of the 21,500 additional troops would go to Baghdad, where the administration hopes they can help quell sectarian violence and give the Iraqi government time to establish its authority.

(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.