Sami's Shame, and Ours - New York Times
The New York Times

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
October 17, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Sami's Shame, and Ours
By
NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

There is no public evidence that Sami al-Hajj committed any crime other than
journalism for a television network the Bush administration doesn't like.

But the U.S. has been holding Mr. Hajj, a cameraman for Al Jazeera, for
nearly five years without trial, mostly at Guantánamo Bay. With the jailing
of Mr.
Hajj and of four journalists in Iraq, the U.S. ranked No. 6 in the world in
the number of journalists it imprisoned last year, just behind Uzbekistan
and
tied with Burma, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

This week, President Bush is expected to sign the Military Commissions Act
concerning prisoners at Guantánamo, and he has hailed the law as "a strong
signal
to the terrorists." But the closer you look at Guantánamo the more you feel
that it will be remembered mostly as a national disgrace.

Mr. Hajj is the only journalist known to be there, and, of course, it's
possible that he is guilty of terrorist-related crimes. If so, he should be
tried,
convicted and sentenced.

But so far, the evidence turned up by his lawyers and by the Committee to
Protect Journalists - which published an excellent report on Mr. Hajj's case
this
month - suggests that the U.S. military may be keeping him in hopes of
forcing him to become a spy.

Mr. Hajj, 37, who attended university and speaks English, joined Al Jazeera
as a cameraman in April 2000 and covered the war in Afghanistan. He was
detained
on Dec. 15, 2001, and taken to the American military prison in Bagram,
Afghanistan.

"They were the longest days of my life," Mr. Hajj's lawyers quoted him as
saying. He told them he was repeatedly beaten, kicked, starved, left out in
the
freezing cold and subjected to anal cavity searches in public "just to
humiliate me."

In June 2002, Mr. Hajj was flown to Guantánamo, where he says the beatings
initially were brutal but have since subsided somewhat.

At first, interrogators said Mr. Hajj had shot video of Osama bin Laden
during an Al Jazeera interview, but it turned out that they may have mixed
him up
with another cameraman of a similar name. When that assertion fell apart,
the authorities offered accusations that he had ferried a large sum of money
to a suspicious Islamic charity, that he had supported Chechen rebels, and
that he had once given a car ride and other assistance to an official of Al
Qaeda.

One indication that even our government may not take those accusations so
seriously is that the interrogations barely touched on them, Mr. Hajj's
lawyers
say.

"About 95 percent of the interrogations he went through were about Al
Jazeera," said one of the lawyers, Zachary Katznelson of London. "Sami would
say,
'What about me? Will you ask about me?' "

He added, "It really does seem that the focus of the inquiry is about his
employer, Al Jazeera, and not about him or any actions he may have taken."

Mr. Katznelson also says that interrogators told Mr. Hajj they would free
him immediately if he would agree to go back to Al Jazeera and spy on it. He
once
asked what would happen if he backed out of the deal after he was free.

"You would not do that," Mr. Hajj quoted his interrogator as saying,
"because it would endanger your child."

The Defense Department declined to comment on Mr. Hajj's case, saying that
in general, it does not comment on specific detainees at Guantánamo.

While Mr. Hajj is unknown in the U.S., his case has received wide attention
in the Arab world. The Bush administration is thus doing long-term damage to
American interests.

Mr. Hajj's lawyers say he has two torn ligaments in his knee from abuse in
his first weeks in custody, making it exceptionally painful for him to use
the
squat toilet in his cell. The lawyers say he has been offered treatment for
his knee and a sitting toilet that would be less painful to use - but only
if he spills dirt on Al Jazeera. And he says he has none to spill.

And while Defense Department documents indicate that he has been a model
inmate at Guantánamo, he protests that he has been called racial epithets
(he is
black) and that he has seen guards desecrate the Koran.

When Sudan detained an American journalist, Paul Salopek, in August in
Darfur, journalists and human rights groups reacted with outrage until he
was freed
a month later. We should be just as offended when it is our own government
that is sinking to Sudanese standards of justice.

This doesn't look like a war on terrorism, but a war on our own values.

Copyright 2006
The New York Times Company

Posted by Miriam V.

The Killing Fields of Iraq

by Robert Scheer

Martin Luther King Jr., shortly before his assassination, grieved that his own nation was “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” He was referring to the U.S. quagmire in Vietnam, but were he alive today, his prophetic voice would no doubt similarly question the bloodbath in Iraq. In response to the 9/11 killing of 3,000 Americans by a gang of mostly Saudi Arabian terrorists with no links to Iraq, the president has rendered that country a veritable killing field. An occupation initially advertised as a “cakewalk” war to disarm a tyrant is now, according to our politically desperate president, a fight for the soul of the world—good versus evil, democracy versus tyranny.

But the carnage we have visited upon Iraq represents nothing of the sort. We are not building democracy, we are creating mayhem.

The evidence arrives daily in the form of dozens, sometimes hundreds, of mutilated bodies. But even the few ghastly images that actually make it onto the television actually underestimate the horror. And it is getting worse, not better: The killing of innocents is now 10 times higher than a year ago.

The most thorough appraisal of Iraqi deaths, done by British and American epidemiologists using accepted norms for public health research and published in the respected medical journal The Lancet, puts the number of war- and occupation-related dead at an appalling 650,000.

The authors, being serious scientists, concede that counting the dead in a country turned into a war zone is a difficult enterprise, but even the lowest figure in their estimate, more than 300,000 dead, is shocking enough.

Perhaps most important, it is not only the derided “cut and run” domestic critics of the president’s policy who recognize that our continued presence is part of the problem rather than of the solution, but 90 percent of the Iraqi people we are supposedly trying to help, according to recent U.S. government and scholarly public-opinion surveys.

Even more shocking: Six in 10 believe it actually is acceptable to target U.S. troops for assassination. And while President Bush on Monday once again reassured the impotent puppet government in Baghdad that the United States is prepared to “stay the course,” the vast majority of both Shiite and Sunnis want us to leave within the next year.

That is not because, as the president insists, they want the outcome of an Al Qaeda-dominated Iraq; on the contrary, all of the polling data shows that Osama bin Laden remains enormously unpopular in Iraq. It is rather that they feel strongly that they could do a better job of providing security on their own, and they are afraid that the destabilizing U.S. presence, the main recruiting poster for terrorists, threatens to be permanent.

This makes the relevance of King’s earlier condemnation of a pigheaded stay-the-course policy in Vietnam all the more relevant. The point is that it is time for the Iraqis, like the Vietnamese, to make their own history. They can hardly make a worse mess of it.

One cannot predict with any certainty the future of Iraq, or the region, in the face of a U.S. military withdrawal, but clearly Bush is wrong in insisting that our continued occupation of Iraq lessens rather than increases the likelihood of future terrorist attacks on the United States. Iraqis, like the Vietnamese, are most of all nationalists, preoccupied with the future of their own country rather than, as the president insists, challenging America’s way of life. We still have not a single example of a disgruntled Iraqi carrying the battle to U.S. soil, but the longer we stay, the greater the likelihood of just such blowback.

Staying the course is a prescription for disaster. That is why a commission backed by Bush and led by the former Secretary of State James Baker, a Republican and a longtime aide to the Bush family, intends to propose—against the repeatedly stated wishes of the president—significant changes in the administration’s strategy by early next year, according to the Los Angeles Times and other papers. “Two options under consideration would represent reversals of U.S. policy: withdrawing American troops in phases, and bringing neighboring Iran and Syria into a joint effort to stop the fighting,” reported the paper. At least one commission participant says they have already decided Bush is dead wrong: “It’s not going to be ‘stay the course,’ ” the participant told the Times. “The bottom line is, [U.S. policy] isn’t working.... There’s got to be another way.”

In other words, Bush’s critics were right all along.

Iraq for Sale Update: DVD Becoming a Weapon in 06 Election
by Arianna Huffington

A growing number of Democratic leaders are using Iraq for Sale to call attention to the GOP's failure to reign in the contractor abuse and fraud that have been the hallmark of the Iraq war privatization fiasco. It's also allowed them to go on the offensive and reframe the national security debate -- showing how the Republicans sacrificed the well-being of our troops and the Iraqi people on the altar of rewarding their corporate backers. I can't help but picture these newly emboldened Dems as campaign ninjas, but instead of throwing deadly pointed stars, they are flinging Iraq for Sale DVDs -- carving up the idea that the GOP is more patriotic, more concerned about America's soldiers, and more able to keep us safe.

Fw: Hillary-Condoleesa Ho-Down

From Miriam
----- Original Message -----
From: <ATROYNY@aol.com>
To: <jahola55@yahoo.com>; <Arleene2@Verizon.net>; <sbelgard@comcast.net>;
<MBochner@aol.com>; <Shebock@aol.com>; <LamarRN1@aol.com>;
<MBurns@nyc.rr.com>; <Eisphil@aol.com>; <Bethellor57@aol.com>;
<elsie25@gmail.com>; <andrea.fallick@sascorp.org>; <sams144@gmail.com>;
<jeanworthnewyork@yahoo.com>; <jbkaplan@pclearn.com>; "Rita Kasky"
<development@gouldfarm.org>; <LAKizner@yahoo.com>; <Biknyc@aol.com>;
<kklein7@nyc.rr.com>; <Ctll266@aol.com>; <MELipinski@aol.com>;
<Phyllow@aol.com>; <Kslupi@aol.com>; <mar.sil@verizon.net>;
<diane.rode@msnyuhealth.org>; <KLSands106@aol.com>; <SharonMag@aol.com>;
<glenda3042@yahoo.com>; <miriamvieni@optonline.net>; <Barb@hrconnected.org>;
<marydiperna@mdpsystemsinc.com>; <hermail@newhavenrtc.com>;
<law.62@osu.edu>; <graceklein@optonline.net>;
<FFASMARIS@Family.optonline.net>; <frydough@yahoo.com>; <ATROYNY@aol.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2006 9:52 AM
Subject: FWD: Hillary-Condoleesa Ho-Down

> This is to die (laughing) for.
> http://i.euniverse.com/funpages/cms_content/13180/HillaryCondi_HoDown.swf
>

BUSH AND BLAIR ISOLATED AS CRITICISM OF WAR GROWS

The End of American Democracy.

Countdown's Keith Olberman explains:

Are YOU the Enemy?

The Military Commissions Act of 2006 is an eradication of the most basic protections of liberty enshrined for over 200 years in our sacred Constitution. The all-encompassing powers granted to the president by this law potentially forbid any man, woman, or child deemed an enemy of the administration or its policies from seeking judicial relief from unlawful imprisonment. Most terrifying of all, this law enthrones President Bush — and his successors, whether Democrat or Republican — as the ultimate arbiters of justice to those suspected of being America's enemies. You can only hope that that person is not you.

Those who fail to see the dire gravity of this legislation and who prefer to take refuge in the naive partisan belief that President Bush and the Republican Congress would never abuse this tremendous power, should contemplate well the fact that both the White House and Congress may very possibly change to Democrat control in the near future. Then will the supporters of the Bush administration's grasp for power have a leg to stand on to even protest, let alone stop, dictatorial exercise of the same power under a Democrat regime run by Clinton, Feinstein, Boxer, Pelosi, Schumer, and the like?

This law, as well as other recently chronicled usurpations, sacrifices the due process of law on the altar of absolutism. There can be but one final obstacle to complete executive power — the people of the United States of America. We must hold every member of Congress accountable who voted for this unprecedented and unconscionable breach of our constitutional rule of law, and we must seek out and support men and women determined to uphold the federal oath of office and courageously defend the Constitution against all enemies — foreign or domestic. If we do not do this, are we really better than the terrorists?

A Stain on Our Democracy

Today, America's own Fearless Leader signed into the law Presidential powers unlike any ever enacted in our history. With the compliance of a paid-for Congress and an opposition party afraid to make waves, George W. Bush became King.

From today on, any President can arbitrarily deem anyone, even full fledged citizens, "unlawful enemy combatants". This means you can be held indefinitely in secret prisons, tortured and disappeared, without any recourse to law.

Never before has the Constitution being discarded in such a disgraceful manner, all in the name of "protecting our freedoms."

WaPo: Bush In A Snit...
by David Froomkin

More Grist For the Mill aka Bush/Cheney Gang Arrests

Seems the ALL have their hands dirty

Fun, fun, fun till Daddy took the Iraq war away

Bush's Iraq disaster is taking the GOP down, and his father's old pal James Baker is about to tell him what to do. By Gary Kamiya

From the same crooks who stole Ohio for Bush in 2004

The New York Times

October 17, 2006
Editorial
And the Winner Is ... Me

Voters in Ohio can be forgiven if they feel they have been beamed out of the Midwest and dropped into a third-world autocracy. The latest news from the state’s governor’s race is that the Republican nominee, Kenneth Blackwell, who is also the Ohio secretary of state, could rule that his opponent is ineligible to run because of a technicality. We’d like to think that his office would not ultimately do that, or that if it did, such a ruling would not be allowed to stand. But the mere fact that an elected official and political candidate has the authority to toss his opponent out of a race is further evidence of a serious flaw in our democracy.

Ted Strickland, the Democratic nominee, is leading Mr. Blackwell by as much as 28 points, according to one recent poll. In their panic, some Blackwell supporters have hit on the idea of trying to prevent the election from occurring. One of them filed a complaint alleging that Mr. Strickland, who is a member of Congress, does not live in the apartment where he is registered to vote. Mr. Strickland owns a condominium in another part of Ohio, and the complaint alleges that he actually lives there. If Mr. Strickland was not a qualified voter, he would be prohibited from running for governor.

The complaint itself is without merit. No one disputes that Mr. Strickland lives in Ohio, or that he is registered. The only issue is which of his two homes he chose to register from, and the law gives voters with multiple homes broad discretion in choosing among them.

What is more interesting, and troubling, is the way the complaint is proceeding. The county board that heard it broke down 2 to 2, on party lines, about whether to hold a hearing. In the case of a tie vote at the county level, complaints like these get forwarded to the secretary of state’s office to be resolved. Mr. Blackwell says he has designated his assistant secretary to handle duties that could conflict with his candidacy. But passing these matters on to a subordinate who is a political ally and owes his job to the candidate hardly removes the conflict.

Election administration should be removed from partisan politics, in Ohio and everywhere else. Decisions like these should be made by nonpartisan bodies or, failing that, by people who do their utmost to insulate themselves from partisan politics. In 2004, Mr. Blackwell chose to become co-chairman of President Bush’s Ohio campaign, and then issued rulings that helped the campaign. Now we have the even more bizarre prospect of Mr. Blackwell, or his deputy, potentially participating in the baseless disqualification of his opponent.

We are confident it will not come to that. But however this particular case is resolved, it underscores the need for Ohio, and other states, to find a way to administer elections that is insulated from partisan politics.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Why Aren't We Shocked? - New York Times
The New York Times

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
October 16, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Why Aren't We Shocked?
By
BOB HERBERT

"Who needs a brain when you have these?"

- message on an Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirt for young women

In the recent shootings at an Amish schoolhouse in rural Pennsylvania and a
large public high school in Colorado, the killers went out of their way to
separate
the girls from the boys, and then deliberately attacked only the girls.

Ten girls were shot and five killed at the Amish school. One girl was killed
and a number of others were molested in the Colorado attack.

In the widespread coverage that followed these crimes, very little was made
of the fact that only girls were targeted. Imagine if a gunman had gone into
a school, separated the kids up on the basis of race or religion, and then
shot only the black kids. Or only the white kids. Or only the Jews.

There would have been thunderous outrage. The country would have first
recoiled in horror, and then mobilized in an effort to eradicate that kind
of murderous
bigotry. There would have been calls for action and reflection. And the
attack would have been seen for what it really was: a hate crime.

None of that occurred because these were just girls, and we have become so
accustomed to living in a society saturated with misogyny that violence
against
females is more or less to be expected. Stories about the rape, murder and
mutilation of women and girls are staples of the news, as familiar to us as
weather forecasts. The startling aspect of the Pennsylvania attack was that
this terrible thing happened at a school in Amish country, not that it
happened
to girls.

The disrespectful, degrading, contemptuous treatment of women is so
pervasive and so mainstream that it has just about lost its ability to
shock. Guys at
sporting events and other public venues have shown no qualms about raising
an insistent chant to nearby women to show their breasts. An ad for a major
long-distance telephone carrier shows three apparently naked women holding a
billing statement from a competitor. The text asks, "When was the last time
you got screwed?"

An ad for Clinique moisturizing lotion shows a woman's face with the lotion
spattered across it to simulate the climactic shot of a porn video.

We have a problem. Staggering amounts of violence are unleashed on women
every day, and there is no escaping the fact that in the most sensational
stories,
large segments of the population are titillated by that violence. We've been
watching the sexualized image of the murdered 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey for
10 years. JonBenet is dead. Her mother is dead. And we're still watching the
video of this poor child prancing in lipstick and high heels.

What have we learned since then? That there's big money to be made from
thongs, spandex tops and sexy makeovers for little girls. In a misogynistic
culture,
it's never too early to drill into the minds of girls that what really
matters is their appearance and their ability to please men sexually.

A girl or woman is sexually assaulted every couple of minutes or so in the
U.S. The number of seriously battered wives and girlfriends is far beyond
the
ability of any agency to count. We're all implicated in this carnage because
the relentless violence against women and girls is linked at its core to the
wider society's casual willingness to dehumanize women and girls, to see
them first and foremost as sexual vessels - objects - and never, ever as the
equals
of men.

"Once you dehumanize somebody, everything is possible," said Taina
Bien-Aimé, executive director of the women's advocacy group Equality Now.

That was never clearer than in some of the extreme forms of pornography that
have spread like nuclear waste across mainstream America. Forget the
embarrassed,
inhibited raincoat crowd of the old days. Now Mr. Solid Citizen can come
home, log on to this $7 billion mega-industry and get his kicks watching
real
women being beaten and sexually assaulted on Web sites with names like
"Ravished Bride" and "Rough Sex - Where Whores Get Owned."

Then, of course, there's gangsta rap, and the video games where the players
themselves get to maul and molest women, the rise of pimp culture (the
Academy
Award-winning song this year was "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp"), and on
and on.

You're deluded if you think this is all about fun and games. It's all part
of a devastating continuum of misogyny that at its farthest extreme touches
down
in places like the one-room Amish schoolhouse in normally quiet Nickel
Mines, Pa.

Copyright 2006
The New York Times Company

Posted by Miriam V.

Osama's Perogative

Bin Laden 'fantasised over' Whitney Houston
RACHEL WILLIAMS IN NEW YORK

OSAMA bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader, was obsessed with the singer Whitney Houston and wanted to marry her, a new book claims.

Kola Boof, a Sudanese poet and novelist, who says she was kept against her will as the terrorism mastermind's mistress in 1996, writes in her autobiography that he wanted to give the star a mansion and make her one of his wives.

"He told me that Whitney Houston was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen," Boof claims in Diary of a Lost Girl, excerpts of which are published in Harper's magazine.

But bin Laden had less respect for Houston's husband Bobby Brown, apparently talking about the possibility of having him killed.

"He said that he had a paramount desire for Whitney Houston and although he claimed music was evil, he spoke of some day spending vast amounts of money to go to America and try to arrange a meeting with the superstar," Boof writes.

"He said he wanted to give Whitney Houston a mansion that he owned in a suburb of Khartoum.

"He explained to me that to possess Whitney, he would be willing to break his colour rule and make her one of his wives."

Bin Laden would speak constantly about "how beautiful she [Houston] is, what a nice smile she has, how truly Islamic she is but is just brainwashed by American culture and by her husband - Bobby Brown, whom Osama talked about having killed, as if it were normal to have women's husbands killed."

Boof, who also says the al- Qaeda leader would "ramble on" about his favourite TV shows, The Wonder Years, Miami Vice and MacGyver, adds: "In his briefcase, I would come across photographs of the star, as well as copies of Playboy ... It would soon come to the point where I was sick of hearing Whitney Houston's name."

Bin Laden was first married in 1974, at the age of 17, to Najwa Ghanem, his mother's niece.

Although bin Laden has reportedly married four other women, he divorced one, Umm Ali bin Laden, a university lecturer, who studied in Saudi Arabia, and spent holidays in Khartoum, Sudan, where Osama later settled during his exile in the years 1991 to 1996.

The three latter wives of bin Laden were all university lecturers.

The al-Qaeda leader has fathered at least 24 children. His wife Najwa reportedly has 11 children by him.

NAACP to monitor elections in 10 states
By ALEX DOMINGUEZ, Associated Press Writer

The NAACP said Monday that it will monitor voting in 10 states next month, sending observers to polling places, taking citizen complaints and notifying the Justice Department of any serious problems.

The states were chosen based on those with pivotal elections, states with concentrations of black voters, and those with a history of polling problems, according to the Baltimore-based civil rights organization.

President Bruce Gordon urged voters to persist in trying to cast ballots.

"While the NAACP will take steps to counter obstacles to voter participation, we are encouraging our communities to cast their votes, even if it requires extra effort," he said in a statement released before a news conference at the group's headquarters.

"Civil rights activists went to extraordinary lengths to earn the right for black Americans to vote. Some lost their lives. We owe it to them and ourselves to honor their sacrifice by voting, no matter what challenges we face."

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People plans to have hundreds of volunteers monitoring elections in Maryland, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas.

Cleaning Up the Mess
by Robert Kuttner

On every issue you can name, victorious Democrats would face an enormous task just picking up the pieces from the wreckage that Bush has left.

Church, State and a whole and Lot of Pandering
by Byron Williams

Les Payne: Bush's Rube Ruse Just Won't Cut It

'The Empire State Strikes Back'
By E. J. Dionne Jr.

NEW YORK -- What is happening to the Republican Party in New York state is the national GOP's nightmare. The once-thriving political organization of Nelson Rockefeller, Al D'Amato and George Pataki is a shambles.

And the way the Republican coalition has broken up should have national Republicans scurrying for a new game plan.

For many Americans, "New York" evokes the liberal salons of Manhattan. But Manhattan is a small piece of the Empire State. Political change has been driven by the populous suburbs of Long Island and Westchester and Rockland counties, and by the vast stretches of Upstate New York that are far closer in spirit to the Midwest than to the Upper West Side or the Silk Stocking District.

The Republican collapse here has been driven by two streams of defectors: suburban moderates and Upstaters.

As a result, the entire Democratic ticket, led by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Eliot Spitzer, the party's candidate for governor, is expected by just about everyone to sweep the state. As many as five Upstate Republican congressional seats -- they would constitute a third of the 15 seats that Democrats need to win the House -- are in jeopardy.

"It's 'The Empire State Strikes Back,' " says Democrat Dan Maffei, a former congressional aide who is running a surprisingly strong race against Rep. Jim Walsh, the Republican incumbent, in a district that stretches from Syracuse to the Rochester area.

Maffei sees the immediate trend toward Democrats powered by frustration with President Bush and the Iraq war. But it is also rooted in long-term factors: the economic troubles of many Upstate communities, the area's "libertarian" leanings on cultural issues and the homelessness felt by many moderate Republicans in the face of a national party increasingly dominated by conservatives.

"Bush Republicanism," Maffei says, "is not for them."

D'Amato, the voluble Republican who served 18 years in the U.S. Senate until he was defeated in 1998 by Charles Schumer, sees demographic change -- the increasing number of Hispanic and African American voters -- as augmenting the Democrats' advantage in party registration. Hispanics, of course, are also a growing part of the electorate in other key states, some of them traditionally Republican.

But he adds that "there is something broader than the Republicans falling on hard times, which they are." He notes that in New York, "after the tenure of a strong governor," the party that long held power often sees its organization fall apart. This happened to Republicans after Rockefeller's long run and to Democrats after Pataki defeated Mario Cuomo in 1994. With Pataki retiring, said Assemblyman Pete Grannis, a Manhattan Democrat, it's the Republicans' "time in the skillet."

State Sen. Kemp Hannon, a Long Island Republican who has spent nearly three decades in the legislature, also worries that the coalition of "Reagan Democrats" that D'Amato helped build -- "they were Irish, Italian and Polish Democrats and some Jews" -- is a thing of the past. "I believe that Bush has destroyed that whole thing," Hannon says. "It's not here any longer in the Northeast." And the parts of Upstate New York "not moving ahead economically whatsoever . . . feel it a great deal."

Adds D'Amato: "It's very similar to an Ohio kind of thing," meaning that vulnerable New York Republicans are in much the same spot as their endangered congressional colleagues in former industrial powerhouse regions to their west.

Bill de Blasio, who managed Hillary Clinton's 2000 Senate campaign and is now a New York City Council member from Brooklyn, sees the pincer movement against Republicans from the suburbs and Upstate as similar to what's happening in other parts of the country.

"The two trends are quite universal," de Blasio says. "There's a growing body of suburbanites who are increasingly concerned about the rightward drift of the Republican Party, and voters very worried about what's happening to real wages." Paul Tokasz, the retiring Democratic majority leader in the state Assembly -- he hails from Cheektowaga, just outside Buffalo -- says the same suburban movement away from the Republicans that is so visible in the New York City area is happening in metropolitan areas across the state.

D'Amato, normally a happy Republican warrior, is in a blue mood about November. "You have a foreign policy which is groping and a domestic [Mark] Foley scandal, so you have a lot of disaffected people, and I think it's going to result not only in the Democrats taking over the House, but also with substantial numbers."

As New York goes, so goes the nation?

NUKE REBUKE
Steve Coll on the President’s reaction to Kim Jong Il.

Legendary punk club CBGB closes

CBGB, the legendary New York punk club credited with discovering Patti Smith and The Ramones, has shut its doors after a final gig by Smith herself. ...

Uncivil War?

just don't call it a civil war.

It Was Never About the Weapons of Mass Destruction

by Cenk Uygur

North Korea is proof positive that the Bush administration never cared about weapons of mass destruction. If that was really their main concern, clearly North Korea would have been their top priority. As it was, North Korea was so low on the priority list that we paid almost no attention to them for six years while they built and tested nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile, we invaded a country that had no biological or chemical weapons, let alone even a hint of a nuclear weapons program. Cheney and the rest of the administration looked so far and so wide to find any evidence, questionable or otherwise, to link Iraq to WMD. If they were so concerned about WMD, why didn't they obsess about far, far clearer evidence of WMD in North Korea?

The answer is obvious. They never cared about weapons of mass destruction. That was just a convenient excuse to invade a country they wanted to invade since the first day they stepped into office. One of the main architects of the war, Paul Wolfowitz, pretty much admitted it to Vanity Fair, saying it was the most convenient reason they could use. Paul O'Neill explained that the White House was holding meetings on invading Iraq ten days after inauguration - and eight months before September 11th.

There are some that even argue that the Bush administration eased up on the weapons inspection requirements for North Korea (they argue that because it's true). There are some that argue that the Bush White House stopped an investigation of the financing behind nuclear weapons proliferation, which led to North Korea having the bomb.

But you don't have to believe any of that to understand the indisputable fact that the whole weapons of mass destruction excuse they used to attack Iraq was nothing but a clear and unequivocal lie. There isn't one person on earth that can justify an invasion of Iraq (and now a complete obsession with Iran) while totally ignoring North Korea - if you're real concern was weapons of mass destruction.


Some people are now using North Korea as an excuse to go further down the road of military action against Iran. What?! How does that make any sense? Iran doesn't have any WMD and couldn't possibly have any for another five years. North Korea has them now. So, why six party talks for North Korea and military options for Iran?

Why didn't we do six party talks for Iraq if they're such a great idea for North Korea? Because six party talks is another way of saying, "I don't really care and I just want to avoid this topic until my administration ends."

You might think all of this is painfully obvious (and you would be right). But then why are we still seriously talking about Iran's nuclear program as if that's the real reason we're interested in Iran. Could it be that we are obsessed with Iran and couldn't care less about North Korea because one has oil and the other has absolutely no natural resources.

It's definitely not about the weapons of mass destruction. That is now abundantly clear. So, you tell me what the difference is? Why did we invade Iraq and now threaten military action against Iran and couldn't care less about North Korea?

Rednecks just love a good country tune!
Borat - Throw The Jew Down The Well

Now It's Personal

It's time to say it: Republicans are facing widespread and visceral public loathing, and their goose is cooked.
By Terence Samuel

Republicans are in trouble -- and it is not the kind of trouble that dissipates with time or the kind that can be overridden by the usual political subterfuge or great 30-second ads in the waning weeks of the campaign.

This is the kind of trouble that takes root. It is found not just in the garden variety public cynicism most politicians are used to enduring, but in the personal, visceral disdain occasioned by people being able to see clear through to politicians' motives and character -- and being repelled by them.

As a result, I am now in the big-wage tent betting that the GOP will lose control of both houses of Congress -- and, in the House, likely not by a small margin,. And it is Mark Foley who will play a larger-than-anticipated role in his party's demise. Of course, many factors have coalesced to help usher Republicans out the door: midterm elections in two-term presidencies are never good for the president's party; the war in Iraq is, to say the very least, more protracted than we had prepared for; and despite the hopeful economic trends, there is a nervousness coursing through the economy that has kept Americans' enthusiasm for it consistently dim.

Still, it is the Foley episode that will end up burying the whole party this election. I emphasize "election" in the singular because, despite the fact that there are of course hundreds of individual local contests this year involving hundreds of individual, local issues, November 7 will be a national election day. It'll be about the war in Iraq, who controls the Congress, and how changing the latter would affect the former. People understand they are voting for congressional control -- there is no longer any way of obscuring the fact that this election is now about who's in charge and what that means for the country.

For the many already dismayed by the war -- and that is now a majority -- the Foley scandal, not in its particulars but in what it revealed about the House leadership, will be a nail in the GOP coffin. I'm saying 30 House seats change hands.

Why? The Foley follies reveal a truth in a manner that the war in Iraq does not. The motives in the Foley scandal are much easier to grasp. You don't have to sift through the facts, the spin, and the good-faith differences of opinion to come to some shaky understanding of what has happened and is happening. You can argue until you're blue in the face -- and who hasn't? -- about the war, its relation to the war on terror, the justifications for launching it, and what should be done now, but there is only so much evidence to prove your point one way or the other. Further, there is not much in the way of personal experience by which people can measure the validity of the arguments. (Who among us has ever bought yellowcake in Niger?)

Phone sex, on the other hand, is all too accessible. People get sex and they get why it's scandalous. They understand the impulse that would compel a person to send tamer messages by e-mail and raunchier ones by IM. They grasp intuitively that the safeness of the Foley seat, as long as Foley was in it, could have been a consideration in the GOP leadership's muted response when they learned what he was up to with the pages. The dynamics of this scandal are no mystery.

A lot of questionable comparisons have been drawn between the midterms of 2006 and those of 1994, but I think the Foley scandal parallels the house banking scandal in a very damaging way for Republicans. Back then, amid abstract discussions by the GOP about smaller government and lower taxes, there sprang from the political heavens this ridiculous story about people who bounced checks without any consequences. Americans did not have to compare notes or go sifting through their own political baggage to understand that a bunch of powerful Democrats were using their position of privilege to act irresponsibly and without fear of any consequences.

Americans didn't like that then, and they are not going to like it now.

Bush Unleashes the Nuclear Beast

If the administration won't abide by time-tested nuclear treaties, why should anyone else?
By Joseph Cirincione

IN THEIR THIRD PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE, in October 1960, John F. Kennedy went after Vice President Richard Nixon, blasting him as weak on national security for not stopping the spread of nuclear weapons. France had just tested its first nuclear device, joining the United States, the Soviet Union and Britain as the world's first nuclear powers. Kennedy warned "that 10, 15 or 20 nations will have a nuclear capacity — including Red China — by the end of the presidential office in 1964."

As president, Kennedy sought to fight that dark vision, telling the United Nations: "The weapons of war must be abolished, before they abolish us." He restarted talks on a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty, began pursuit of a global nonproliferation pact and signed a treaty with the Soviet Union to ban atmospheric nuclear tests. Although Kennedy did not live to finish the job, in 1968, Lyndon Johnson signed what became the diplomatic crown jewel of his presidency: the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, or NPT. President Nixon secured its ratification.

The NPT is now considered one of the most successful security pacts in history. Every nation in the world is a member except Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea. Most of the 183 member states that do not have nuclear weapons believe what the treaty says: We should eliminate nuclear weapons.

The treaty became the hub around which liberals and conservatives built an interlocking network of agreements that deterred, though didn't altogether stop, the spread of nuclear weapons. As a result, by 2000, only three other countries — Israel, India and Pakistan — had joined the original five nuclear nations. With the success of these agreements, and the end of the Soviet-American nuclear standoff at the close of the Cold War, it seemed that the nuclear threat that had haunted the world for so many years might finally be receding.

But now, suddenly, the threat is back. In the last six years, we seem awash in nuclear threats: First it was Saddam Hussein, then North Korea and Iran. How did it happen? Is nuclear restraint dead?

At the heart of the problem is the strategy George W. Bush chose, which rejects international treaties as the solution to proliferation. He and his advisors saw these agreements as limiting U.S. flexibility and viewed the United Nations and other global gatherings as arenas where the world's Lilliputians could tie down the American Gulliver.

Bush scuttled the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, walked away from the nuclear test ban treaty secured by President Clinton, opposed efforts to enforce the treaty banning biological weapons, mocked the U.N. inspectors before the Iraq war and sent low-level officials to critical negotiations, including last year's NPT conference. The world now believes that the chief architect of the global nonproliferation system has abandoned its creation.

Instead, the administration preferred to rely on U.S. military might and technology, such as anti-missile systems, to protect the United States. Rather than negotiate treaties to eliminate weapons, it forged a strategy to eliminate the regimes that might use them against us. The Bush team felt they knew who the bad guys were, and they aimed to get them — one by one.

But the strategy has backfired. Both Iran and North Korea accelerated their programs, making more progress in the last five years than they had made in the previous 10. Now North Korea's test threatens to trigger an Asian nuclear-reaction chain that could prompt South Korea, Taiwan and even Japan to reconsider their nuclear options.

And it is not just the threats from small nations such as North Korea that could fuel a new atomic arms race. It is the continued existence of huge nuclear arsenals in the United States, Russia and other states. The importance of nuclear weapons as a cornerstone of U.S. defense had been declining since the Cold War ended. Though the U.S. never ruled out their use, Clinton and George H.W. Bush made it clear that they believed they were unusable, except perhaps in retaliation.

But the current president's policies have elevated the role of these weapons. The 2002 Nuclear Posture Review detailed plans to build new, more usable "low-yield" nuclear weapons and created missions for them. Bush decided to retain about 6,000 weapons and to research a new generation of nuclear missiles, bombers and submarines.

What's the relevance of this to proliferation? Simple. U.S. intelligence officials concluded as early as 1958 that other nations' nuclear appetites could not be curbed without limiting the superpowers' stockpiles. That judgment was confirmed by subsequent administrations.

As the superpowers cut their weapons from a Cold War high of 65,000 in 1986 to about 27,000 today, other countries took note. In the 1960s, 23 countries had nuclear programs, including Australia, Canada, Egypt, Japan, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and West Germany. Most ended any weapons programs. Brazil and Argentina stopped research in the 1980s, and South Africa, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine gave up their bombs in the 1990s.

We now know that U.N. inspectors ended Iraq's nuclear program in 1991. In 2003, Libya abandoned its secret program. Until last week, no nation had tested a nuclear weapon for eight years — the longest period in the Atomic Age. The outrage that greeted the North Korean test shows how strong anti-nuclear sentiment has become.

Many political and military leaders recognize the limited military utility of weapons whose use would kill thousands of innocent civilians. Rep. David L. Hobson (R-Ohio), a solid Midwest conservative, led the effort last year to kill the administration's proposed "nuclear bunker buster," a new weapon designed to go after conventional targets. Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara advocates greatly reducing the U.S. and Russian arsenals and then working to eliminate them completely, just as countries have done with chemical and biological weapons. Even former Bush advisor Richard Perle has said the U.S. could cut to well below 1,000 warheads. "The truth is we are never going to use them," Perle said. "The Russians aren't going to use theirs either."

By clinging to our own nuclear arsenal, and touting the importance of these weapons to our own security, the Bush administration has sent the world a schizoid message: Nuclear weapons are very, very important and useful — but you cannot have them. This double standard is impossible to maintain.

Last year, International Atomic Energy Agency Director Mohamed ElBaradei said that until the world was committed to eradicating nuclear weapons, "we will continue to have this cynical environment that all the guys in the minor leagues will try to join the major leagues…. They will say, 'If the big boys continue to rely on nuclear weapons, why shouldn't I?' "

Bush administration officials have proved expert at smashing the agreements their predecessors so painstakingly built, but in doing so they broke the bars that had caged the nuclear beast. Those who will have to repair the damage would do well to look back at the handiwork of the past. They might learn a thing or two.

The Attack on Human Rights Watch By Aryeh Neier

On August 3—three weeks after a Lebanese Hezbollah raid into Israel set off a war that lasted until August 14—Human Rights Watch published a report, "Fatal Strikes: Israel's Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians in Lebanon," that inspired a series of vitriolic attacks on the organization's credibility. According to some of the critics, the organization's executive director, Kenneth Roth, is biased against Israel and an anti-Semite. Unfortunately, the criticisms are based on misunderstandings and distortions of international humanitarian law. They contribute to an atmosphere that makes rational discussion in the United States of Israel's policies and practices increasingly difficult.

"throw the Jew down the well"

and other cultural exchanges....

Psycho canned..

Hey Stevie, can you say "estupido"?

Charlie Manson Could've Run as a Republican

Mark Foley could have been a lobbyist by now, until a very senior White House official got involved, says the New Republic's Ryan Lizza :

"It seems increasingly clear that the GOP congressional leadership, eager for every safe incumbent in the House to run for re-election, looked the other way as evidence accumulated that Mark Foley had a thing for pages. Holding onto his seat became more important than confronting him over his extracurricular activities.

"But there's more to the story of why Foley stood for re-election this year. A source close to Foley explained to THE NEW REPUBLIC that in early 2006 the congressman had all but decided to retire from the House and set up shop on K Street. 'Mark's a friend of mine,' says this source. 'He told me, "I'm thinking about getting out of it and becoming a lobbyist.""

"But when Foley's friend saw the congressman again this spring, something had changed. To the source's surprise, Foley told him he would indeed be standing for re-election. What happened? Karl Rove intervened.

"According to the source, Foley said he was being pressured by 'the White House and Rove gang,' who insisted that Foley run. If he didn't, Foley was told, it might impact his lobbying career.

"'He said, 'The White House made it very clear I have to run,' explains Foley's friend, adding that Foley told him that the White House promised that if Foley served for two more years it would 'enhance his success' as a lobbyist. 'I said, "I thought you wanted out of this?" And he said, "I do, but they're scared of losing the House and the thought of two years of congressional hearings, so I have two more years of duty."'

read it here:

With YouTube, Student Hits Jackpot Again

Robert Scheer: Dear Leader Brings It On
by Robert Scheer

Right-wingers want to blame Bill Clinton for North Korea’s nuclear provocation, but it was the wannabe cowboy in the Oval Office who goaded the Hermit Kingdom’s leader into a Cold War-style bout of nuclear brinkmanship.

Jimmy Carter, former emissary to N. Korea, calls for resumption of negotiations with Pyongyang.

Wagging the "Big Dog"

In desperate straits, the GOP has reverted to blaming the Clinton administration for its failed policy toward North Korea.
By Joe Conason

North Korea's apparent nuclear blast exposed the incoherence not only of Bush administration foreign policy but of the Republican midterm political strategy as well. While White House underboss Karl Rove has long planned to win this November's elections on a "national security" platform questioning the strength and patriotism of the Democrats, the developments of the past several days have showed that the Republicans are in a reactive mode, unable to master the policy agenda, and reduced to flailing against their perennial target: They've reverted to blaming Bill Clinton.

Debating the Korea policy of the Clinton administration could hardly be what Rove had in mind when he designed his party's midterm strategy. His original plan, a variation on the successful blueprints used in the 2002 and 2004 elections, was to label the opposition "Defeatocrats" who would "cut and run" from the "war on terror," leaving the nation defenseless against bloodthirsty enemies. What Rove's plan obviously didn't contemplate was continually worsening circumstances in Iraq -- and stark proof of the resulting American military and diplomatic paralysis in defiant moves by North Korea and Iran. In an unusual moment of lucidity and candor, National Review's Jonah Goldberg confessed last Monday that Pyongyang's test -- although possibly a distraction from the Mark Foley mess -- undeniably represents "a failure of U.S. policy ... President Bush denounced the Axis of Evil five years ago and promised that he would do everything to keep its members from getting nukes. Well, North Korea just detonated one. Iran is well on its way to getting one. And Iraq, well, that's not quite the bright spot we hoped it would be." Not quite indeed, particularly with former pal Bob Woodward now denouncing the president for concealing the truth about Iraq from the American people and himself.

Still, it was startling to watch the Republicans respond to a boilerplate critical statement from Sen. Hillary Clinton by mounting a full-bore, multilevel assault on her husband's policies. At first, the White House refrained from "playing the blame game," as the president likes to say, and instead allowed surrogates to do the attacking. The first to step forward, unsurprisingly, was Sen. John McCain (or "Rove's poodle," as he is known without affection on a listserv I read). Speaking as if there had actually been nobody in charge at the White House, the State Department, the CIA and the Pentagon for the past five or six years, McCain excoriated the 1994 agreement negotiated between the Clinton administration and the North Korean regime as "a failure" that had rewarded Pyongyang repeatedly without achieving anything.

Swiftly following McCain's attack, the Republican National Committee began raking former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright as a stooge of Kim Jong Il. According to RNC chairman Ken Mehlman, the former secretary is somehow responsible for North Korean nukes because she shared a toast with the dictator and gave him an autographed basketball. This tactic was reminiscent of those old pictures of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein -- except that Albright had actually accomplished something when she talked with Kim.

Both McCain and Mehlman ignored the central achievement of the Clinton policy, which was to maintain monitoring of Pyongyang's plutonium supply for eight years -- and thus prevent the building of plutonium bombs or the transfer of those materials to other states or terrorist organizations. The North Koreans started a secret uranium enrichment program precisely because they could not use reprocessed plutonium to build weapons under the 1994 Agreed Framework. Since the Bush administration cast aside that process in 2002, Kim's scientists have been freed from the scrutiny of international inspection.

Whatever the merits or defects of Clinton's diplomacy in Asia, however, the political risks of focusing on that topic seem far greater than any potential rewards. Already once in this season the Republicans have learned (or should have learned) that angering the former president is unwise; he is far more popular than Bush is and considerably more skilled in argument than anyone on the other side, including McCain.

Even if Clinton's policy was completely misguided, why should any sane voter accept the notion that current policy problems are his fault? Didn't the mature statesmen and women of the Bush regime declare a clean break from the previous administration as soon as they assumed power? Where have they been since January 2001 and what have they been doing? What are they going to do now?

Coming from the Republicans as they face the increasing prospect of defeat in the midterm elections, the Clinton-bashing tactic stinks of political desperation and policy exhaustion. Flogging a "Big Dog" piñata may motivate the party's die-hard right-wing base -- but if that is Rove's objective four weeks before Election Day, he, his president and their party are in even greater trouble than the latest polls suggest.

The Slime Talk Express

McCain is dead wrong about Bill Clinton and North Korea.
By Fred Kaplan

Sen. John McCain has skidded his Straight Talk Express off the highway into a gopher's ditch of slime. The moment came Tuesday, when he responded to charges by Sen. Hillary Clinton, his potential rival in the 2008 presidential election, that George W. Bush bears some responsibility for North Korea's newborn status as a nuclear-armed power.

Here, according to the Washington Post, is what McCain said in a campaign speech near Detroit:

I would remind Senator Clinton and other Democrats critical of Bush administration policies that the framework agreement her husband's administration negotiated [with North Korea] was a failure. Every single time the Clinton administration warned the Koreans not to do something—not to kick out the IAEA inspectors, not to remove the fuel rods from their reactor—they did it. And they were rewarded every single time by the Clinton administration with further talks.

McCain's version of history goes beyond "revisionism" to outright falsification. It is the exact opposite of what really happened. Let's take a look at the plain facts.

In the spring of 1994, barely a year into Bill Clinton's presidency, the North Koreans announced that they were about to remove the fuel rods from their nuclear reactor (as a first step to reprocessing them into plutonium), cancel their commitment to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (which they had signed in 1985), and expel the international weapons inspectors (who had been guarding the rods under the treaty's authority).

Did Clinton "reward" them for doing these things, as McCain claims? Far from it. Not only did he push the U.N. Security Council to consider sanctions, he also ordered the Joint Chiefs of Staff to draw up plans to send 50,000 additional troops to South Korea—bolstering the 37,000 already there—along with more than 400 combat jets, 50 ships, and several battalions of Apache helicopters, Bradley fighting vehicles, multiple-launch rockets, and Patriot air-defense missiles. He also sent in an advance team of 250 soldiers to set up logistical headquarters for the influx of troops and gear.

He sent an explicit signal that removing the fuel rods would cross a "red line." Several of his former aides insist that if North Korea had crossed that line, he would have launched an airstrike on the Yongbyon reactor, even knowing that it might lead to war.

At the same time, Clinton set up a diplomatic backchannel, sending former President Jimmy Carter to Pyongyang for direct talks with Kim Il-Sung, then North Korea's dictator and the father of its present "dear leader," Kim Jong-il. (The official Washington line held that Carter made the trip on his own, but a recent memoir by three former U.S. officials, Going Critical: The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis, acknowledges that Clinton asked him to go.)

This combination of sticks and carrots led Kim Il-Sung to call off his threats—the fuel rods weren't removed, the inspectors weren't kicked out—and, a few months later, to the signing of the Agreed Framework.

McCain called the accord a "failure." This appraisal isn't quite as dead wrong as his claim that Clinton did nothing but toss Kim flowers. But it's highly misleading, to say the least.

The Agreed Framework of Oct. 21, 1994—a document that many cite but almost nobody seems to read—actually bottled up North Korea's nuclear program for eight years. Under its terms, Pyongyang kept the fuel rods locked up and kept the international inspectors on-site. In exchange, a multinational consortium, led by the United States and South Korea, was to provide North Korea with two light-water reactors to generate electricity. Gradually, Washington and Pyongyang were to establish diplomatic and trade relations. In an annex to the accord, drafted by the consortium and signed by all parties in June 1995, it was agreed that the nuclear fuel from the light-water reactors would be exported to a third country for recycling. (This, by the way, is what President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin recently proposed that Iran do with its nuclear fuel.)

The accord fell apart, but not for the reasons that McCain and others have suggested. First, the U.S.-led consortium never provided the light-water reactors. (So much for the wild claims I've heard lately that North Korea got the bomb through Clinton-supplied technology.) Congress never authorized the money; the South Koreans, who were led by a harder-line government than the one in power now, scuttled the deal after a North Korean spy submarine washed up on their shores.

Second, when President George W. Bush entered the White House in January 2001, he made it clear, right off, that the Agreed Framework was dead and that he had no interest in further talks with the North Korean regime; his view was that you don't negotiate with evil, you defeat it or wait for it to crumble.

Third, a few months into Bush's term, evidence mounted that the North Koreans had been … not quite violating the Agreed Framework but certainly maneuvering around it. Confronted by U.S. intelligence data in October 2002, Pyongyang officials admitted that they'd been enriching uranium—an alternative route (though much slower than plutonium) to getting a bomb.

It should be noted that the bomb that the North Koreans set off on Sunday was apparently a plutonium bomb, not a uranium bomb. In other words, it was a bomb made entirely in Bush's time, not at all in Clinton's.

After the disclosure about the uranium, Bush hardened his stance against negotiations. The North Koreans tried to replay the events of 1994. They threatened to unlock the fuel rods, expel the inspectors, and quit the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Meanwhile, through back channels (former ambassadors Bill Richardson and Donald Gregg), they signaled a willingness to back off if the Agreed Framework was resuscitated. Bush wasn't interested in playing the game. Everything fell apart.

At the end of 2002, when the North Koreans really did unlock the rods and kick out the inspectors—when they crossed what Clinton had called the "red line"—Bush didn't take military action, he didn't call for sanctions, nor did he try diplomacy. It's Bush, not Clinton, who did nothing.

And while we're on the subject of Bushes doing nothing, George H.W. Bush, the president's father, had just moved into the White House in 1989 when the CIA discovered that the North Koreans were building a reprocessing facility near their nuclear reactor at Yongbyon—the facility that could manufacture plutonium from the fuel rods. Five years later, Bill Clinton stopped them from moving the rods into this facility. Eight years after that, George W. Bush let them go ahead.

The rest is history. John McCain would do well to read up on it sometime.

Embattled GOP Rep. On Embattled Hastert: He “Didn't Kill Anybody"...

Bush Blames Clinton Again

George W. Bush, retreating to familiar ground, has blamed the Clinton administration for North Korea’s nuclear arsenal. But the official who brokered the Clinton-era deal with North Korea called the idea “ludicrous,” and defended his efforts.

Washington Post:

Robert L. Gallucci, the chief negotiator of the accord and now dean of the Georgetown School of Foreign Service, said it is a “ludicrous thing” to say that the Clinton agreement failed. For eight years, the Agreed Framework kept North Korea’s five-megawatt plutonium reactor frozen and under international inspection, while North Korea did not build planned 50- and 200-megawatt reactors. If those reactors had been built and running, he said, North Korea would now have enough plutonium for more than 100 nuclear weapons.

By Gallucci’s account, North Korea may have produced a small amount of plutonium for one or two weapons before Clinton came into office—during the administration of Bush’s father—but “no more material was created on his watch.” When Clinton left office, officials saw signs that North Korea may have been attempting to create a clandestine uranium enrichment program, but nothing was definitive.

Such a program would violate the Agreed Framework. When the Bush administration decided it had conclusive proof of that enrichment in July 2002, it confronted North Korea and terminated fuel oil deliveries promised under the Agreed Framework. In response, North Korea evicted the inspectors, restarted the reactor and retrieved weapons-grade plutonium from 8,000 fuel rods that had been kept in a cooling pond. Intelligence analysts now think that, before Monday’s apparent nuclear test, North Korea had enough plutonium for as many as a dozen weapons.

Mixed-Up Metaphor

President Bush condemned the actions of North Korean Leader Kim Jong II. But amid concerns that North Korea’s claim to have tested a nuclear weapon could lead to destabilization in Asia, the president said he is committed to a peaceful resolution.

His negotiating skills, however, could be a cause for concern.

“…That is the best strategy to solve the problem. I mean, I – you – one has a stronger hand when there’s more people playing your same cards.”

In poker, a player usually has a stronger hand if his opponents don’t play the same cards. If the president expects to gain the upper hand, he may want to consider using his poker face. – Erika Lovley

The evil of banality

A new biography confirms that Colin Powell went along with the Iraq war because he was following orders. The tragic irony of the good soldier is that he deserted the people he was trying to protect.

By Gary Kamiya

Whose state of denial?

Bob Woodward's critical new book left the Bush White House feeling betrayed. But his earlier "Bush at War" hagiography betrayed all Americans
By Sidney Blumenthal

Yankee dies in plane crash.

Our condolences to the Lydle and Yankee families.

Jimmy Carter: 'I Am Frustrated'

Fareed Zakaria: "Iraq is Now a Civil War"

Fareed Zakaria may have been in a secret meeting with Paul Wolfowitz five years ago figuring out how to frame an Iraq invasion -- or even agitating at the meeting for many more troops for such an invasion and occupation.

Today, however, Zakaria captures clearly the consequences that have been wrought from America's misguided adventure.

Zakaria writes:

Iraq is now in a civil war.

Thirty thousand Iraqis have died there in the past three years, more than in many other conflicts widely recognized as civil wars. The number of internal refugees, mostly Sunni victims of ethnic cleansing, has exploded over the past few months, and now exceeds a quarter of a million people. (The Iraqi government says 240,000, but this doesn't include Iraqis who have fled abroad or who may not have registered their move with the government.)

The number of attacks on Shiite mosques increases every week: there have been 69 such attacks since February, compared with 80 in the previous two and a half years. And the war is being fought on gruesome new fronts. CBS News's Lara Logan has filed astonishing reports on the Health Ministry, which is run by supporters of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

According to Logan, hospitals in Baghdad and Karbala are systematically killing Sunni patients and then dumping their bodies in mass graves.

This Iraq crusade has been so harmful to so many, and America's ability to do great things in the world has been crippled by the likes of Wolfowitz, Feith, Cheney, Bolton, Rumsfeld and others.

It sickens me that the 'Axis of Evil' man himself, David Frum, who is also one of the people who helped diminish the stature and power of the United States is able to so freely warmonger for more.

-- Steve Clemons

Is Google Evil?
by Adam L. Penenberg

YouTube fans beware: Google already knows more about you than the National Security Agency ever will. And don’t assume for a minute it can keep a secret.

Problem Politics by Harold Meyerson

The GOP spends its time ignoring real problems while seeking politically beneficial solutions to fake ones.

Bush and Co. fuck up again, but it's all Bill's fault.

When you can't even pronounce the word nuclear correctly, it's easy to drop the bomb, eh, ball.

White House: It's "silly" to ask whether Bush was right on North Korea

When a foreign power claims to have detonated a nuclear weapon -- when that foreign power is one that the president of the United States singled out as a member of the "axis of evil" four years ago -- it might strike you as not entirely unreasonable to wonder whether the president's strategy for dealing with that foreign power has been the right one.

Unless you happen to be Tony Snow, that is.

A reporter asked the White House press secretary today if there's anything the president thinks he should have done differently with respect to North Korea. "Oh, my goodness," Snow responded. "It's a silly question."

As members of the White House press corps howled in protest, Snow said that any answer he might give would be translated into headlines saying that the Bush administration had admitted to making mistakes. "I have said this repeatedly from this podium," Snow said. "You need to give presidents the benefit of the doubt when national security is involved."

An incredulous David Gregory asked Snow if he really thinks it's unfair "to ask for some accountability as to what happened." Snow's response: "David, the accountability lies in North Korea, not in Washington."

Funny, but that's not how John McCain sees it. He says it's all Bill Clinton's fault.

-- Tim Grieve

But they're not American...

and besides, they blew up the WTC.

More Pandering by the nut in waiting

John talks out of his ass in anticpiation of coronation.

Let's see, Clinton prevented nukes by kooks; Georgie didn't and can't.

But Clinton did get laid, right?

N. Korea, Iraq, Foley: Anything in Common?
by Juan Cole

Now with the North Korea crisis erupting, it strikes me that there are some similarities among Bush's crises.

In all three cases--North Korea, Iraq and Foleygate-- the Republican establishment knew something was wrong but failed or declined to address the problem. And the reason for the inaction was mostly a desire to keep the public in the dark so as better to win elections.

In North Korea, Bush knew that there was a brewing problem. He was not honest with the American people about it. He needed to work with China, which asked for such cooperation. He did not. In part this is because of his dislike of negotiating even indirectly with a member of the "axis of evil." In part it was about winning elections by posturing.

In Iraq, Bush knew that the security situation was collapsing and that his policies were failing. He needed to be honest with the American people about the growing crisis. He was not. He needed to work with Iran and Syria, among other neighbors. He did not. Again, he was paralyzed once he declared Iran "evil." And, again, it was about winning elections by putting lipstick on the pig.

In the case of Foley, the Republican leadership in Congress knew there was a problem. They needed to be honest with the American people about it. They were not. They needed to cooperate with their Democratic colleagues in addressing these ethics lapses. They did not. They covered up the problem and went it alone. It was about winning elections. They actually cared more about Foley's seat than they did about his excesses.

A kind of party unilateralism and disregard for the realities, along with a singleminded pursuit of victory at the ballot box (and all the wealth it can bring if properly arranged) seem at work in all three cases.

Bush’s Nuclear Apocalypse
By Chris Hedges

The aircraft carrier Eisenhower, accompanied by the guided-missile cruiser USS Anzio, guided-missile destroyer USS Ramage, guided-missile destroyer USS Mason and the fast-attack submarine USS Newport News, is, as I write, making its way to the Straits of Hormuz off Iran. The ships will be in place to strike Iran by the end of the month. It may be a bluff. It may be a feint. It may be a simple show of American power. But I doubt it.

War with Iran—a war that would unleash an apocalyptic scenario in the Middle East—is probable by the end of the Bush administration. It could begin in as little as three weeks. This administration, claiming to be anointed by a Christian God to reshape the world, and especially the Middle East, defined three states at the start of its reign as “the Axis of Evil.” They were Iraq, now occupied; North Korea, which, because it has nuclear weapons, is untouchable; and Iran.

Those who do not take this apocalyptic rhetoric seriously have ignored the twisted pathology of men like Elliott Abrams, who helped orchestrate the disastrous and illegal contra war in Nicaragua, and who now handles the Middle East for the National Security Council. He knew nothing about Central America. He knows nothing about the Middle East. He sees the world through the childish, binary lens of good and evil, us and them, the forces of darkness and the forces of light. And it is this strange, twilight mentality that now grips most of the civilian planners who are barreling us towards a crisis of epic proportions.

These men advocate a doctrine of permanent war, a doctrine which, as William R. Polk points out, is a slight corruption of Leon Trotsky’s doctrine of permanent revolution. These two revolutionary doctrines serve the same function, to intimidate and destroy all those classified as foreign opponents, to create permanent instability and fear and to silence domestic critics who challenge leaders in a time of national crisis. It works. The citizens of the United States, slowly being stripped of their civil liberties, are being herded sheep-like, once again, over a cliff.

But this war will be different. It will be catastrophic. It will usher in the apocalyptic nightmares spun out in the dark, fantastic visions of the Christian right. And there are those around the president who see this vision as preordained by God; indeed, the president himself may hold such a vision.

The hypocrisy of this vaunted moral crusade is not lost on those in the Middle East. Iran actually signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It has violated a codicil of that treaty written by European foreign ministers, but this codicil was never ratified by the Iranian parliament. I do not dispute Iran’s intentions to acquire nuclear weapons nor do I minimize the danger should it acquire them in the estimated five to 10 years. But contrast Iran with Pakistan, India and Israel.

These three countries refused to sign the treaty and developed nuclear weapons programs in secret. Israel now has an estimated 400 to 600 nuclear weapons. The word “Dimona,” the name of the city where the nuclear facilities are located in Israel, is shorthand in the Muslim world for the deadly Israeli threat to Muslims’ existence. What lessons did the Iranians learn from our Israeli, Pakistani and Indian allies?

Given that we are actively engaged in an effort to destabilize the Iranian regime by recruiting tribal groups and ethnic minorities inside Iran to rebel, given that we use apocalyptic rhetoric to describe what must be done to the Iranian regime, given that other countries in the Middle East such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia are making noises about developing a nuclear capacity, and given that, with the touch of a button Israel could obliterate Iran, what do we expect from the Iranians? On top of this, the Iranian regime grasps that the doctrine of permanent war entails making “preemptive” and unprovoked strikes.

Those in Washington who advocate this war, knowing as little about the limitations and chaos of war as they do about the Middle East, believe they can hit about 1,000 sites inside Iran to wipe out nuclear production and cripple the 850,000-man Iranian army. The disaster in southern Lebanon, where the Israeli air campaign not only failed to break Hezbollah but united most Lebanese behind the militant group, is dismissed. These ideologues, after all, do not live in a reality-based universe.

The massive Israeli bombing of Lebanon failed to pacify 4 million Lebanese. What will happen when we begin to pound a country of 70 million people? As retired General Wesley K. Clark and others have pointed out, once you begin an air campaign it is only a matter of time before you have to put troops on the ground or accept defeat, as the Israelis had to do in Lebanon. And if we begin dropping bunker busters, cruise missiles and iron fragmentation bombs on Iran this is the choice that must be faced—either sending American forces into Iran to fight a protracted and futile guerrilla war or walking away in humiliation.

“As a people we are enormously forgetful,” Dr. Polk, one of the country’s leading scholars on the Middle East, told an Oct. 13 gathering of the Foreign Policy Association in New York. “We should have learned from history that foreign powers can’t win guerrilla wars. The British learned this from our ancestors in the American Revolution and re-learned it in Ireland. Napoleon learned it in Spain. The Germans learned it in Yugoslavia. We should have learned it in Vietnam and the Russians learned it in Afghanistan and are learning it all over again in Chechnya and we are learning it, of course, in Iraq. Guerrilla wars are almost unwinnable. As a people we are also very vain. Our way of life is the only way. We should have learned that the rich and powerful can’t always succeed against the poor and less powerful.”

An attack on Iran will ignite the Middle East. The loss of Iranian oil, coupled with Silkworm missile attacks by Iran on oil tankers in the Persian Gulf, could send oil soaring to well over $110 a barrel. The effect on the domestic and world economy will be devastating, very possibly triggering a huge, global depression. The 2 million Shiites in Saudi Arabia, the Shiite majority in Iraq and the Shiite communities in Bahrain, Pakistan and Turkey will turn in rage on us and our dwindling allies. We will see a combination of increased terrorist attacks, including on American soil, and the widespread sabotage of oil production in the Gulf. Iraq, as bad as it looks now, will become a death pit for American troops as Shiites and Sunnis, for the first time, unite against their foreign occupiers.

The country, however, that will pay the biggest price will be Israel. And the sad irony is that those planning this war think of themselves as allies of the Jewish state. A conflagration of this magnitude could see Israel drawn back in Lebanon and sucked into a regional war, one that would over time spell the final chapter in the Zionist experiment in the Middle East. The Israelis aptly call their nuclear program “the Samson option.” The Biblical Samson ripped down the pillars of the temple and killed everyone around him, along with himself.

If you are sure you will be raptured into heaven, your clothes left behind with the nonbelievers, then this news should cheer you up. If you are rational, however, these may be some of the last few weeks or months in which to enjoy what is left of our beleaguered, dying republic and way of life.

Miltary Deaths in Iraq Spike.

Listen here.

President Pissypants

Now, however, friends, aides and close political allies tell the Daily News Bush is furious with his own side for helping create a political downdraft that has blunted his momentum and endangered GOP prospects for keeping control of Congress next month.

Some of his anger is directed at former aides who helped Watergate journalist Bob Woodward paint a lurid portrait of a dysfunctional, chaotic administration in his new book, "State of Denial."

In the obsessively private Bush clan, talking out of school is the ultimate act of disloyalty, and Bush feels betrayed from within."He's ticked off big-time," said a well-informed source, "even if what they said was the truth."

Josh Marshall:

The Bush-Cheney policy on North Korea was always what Fareed Zakaria once aptly called "a policy of cheap rhetoric and cheap shots." It failed. And after it failed President Bush couldn't come to grips with that failure and change course…read on

Bush's Latest Foreign Policy Failure

by Bill Scher

As I have noted on LiberalOasis.com several times in the last four years, the Bush Administration never was interested in a negotiated deal to prevent North Korea from getting nukes.

The neocons want regime change in North Korea, in an attempt to constrict the rise of China. And they see any deal as helping the North Korea dictator remain in power.

After initially suspending talks with North Korea, and unraveling the diplomatic progress made by the Clinton Administration, the Bushies then agreed to "six-party" talks.

But the move was not intended to make new diplomatic progress. It was intended to make the Bushies look like they tried diplomatic avenues, when in fact, they made no serious proposals.

We can now see the results of this so-called "hard-line" strategy. A nuclear North Korea. A greater risk of more nuclear proliferation. A more unstable world.

This is the latest Republican foreign policy failure, after the Iraq debacle, the freedom of Osama bin Laden, and the spread of the "global jihadist movement."

Conservatives are trying to spin this to further their reckless, unilateralist agenda. The W. Post reports:
...a number of senior U.S. officials have said privately that they would welcome a North Korean test, regarding it as a clarifying event that would forever end the debate within the Bush administration about whether to solve the problem through diplomacy or through tough actions designed to destabilize North Korean leader Kim Jong Il's grip on power.

"Clarifying" is a favorite conservative code word for spinning bad foreign policy developments, meaning: "Now we don't have to pretend to be diplomatic anymore."

Having said that, this does not mean Bush will attack North Korea. After all, North Korea has nukes and could destroy South Korea. (Neocons may be crazy, but not that crazy.)

But as the W. Post piece indicates, we'll probably see an attempt to economically strangle North Korea in hopes of undermining the regime.

The problem with that strategy is: it's giving North Korea even more incentive to sell nukes to other countries or even terrorist organizations.

Economic sanctions can be an appropriate response to the nuclear test, but only if they are coupled with a sincere strategy of good-faith negotiations, which will never happen with this White House.

And bringing freedom to the North Korea people absolutely should be a goal of our government. (It's the goal of the South Korea government, which desperately wants real talks with the North.)

But the Bushies don't care about freedom, they care about geopolitical chess games.

And their poor strategic judgment is putting America and the world at risk.

The Same Old Song
by Robert Kuttner

Foleygate just presents one more Republican story of foxes guarding the henhouse, and of political cover-up, and of feckless leadership, and...