By The River

The blogs Talk Left and Anonymous Liberal report that new Attorneygate e-mails turned over Friday to Congress by the U.S. Department of Justice include one in which central Pennsylvania's own Monica Goodling, a top aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, gives an order to delete certain documents related to the Bush Administration's firings of eight U.S. Attorneys. That could put her at risk for an obstruction of justice indictment.

Goodling, a York Haven, Pa., native who graduated from Messiah College in Grantham, Pa., and was a summer lifeguard at the West Shore Country Club in Camp Hill, Pa., has already said she would invoke her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination if called to testify before Congress. She said through her lawyer that she fears being a victim of a partisan witch hunt, which was rich coming from a Republican wingnut.

But perhaps, as the e-mail shows, her reasons for refusing to testify were a bit more pointed and practical. Stay tuned; we have barely scratched the surface of the Bush Administration horrors.

Posted by David at 07:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Washington Post is reporting Sunday that hundreds of millions of dollars in cash aid offered by foreign governments to help New Orleans and the Gulf Coast recover from Hurricane Katrina was not accepted by the Bush Administration. Of $854 million offered, barely $40 million made it to stricken New Orleans.

But it gets worse. Greece offered two cruise ships for free to house refugees. The Bush folks rejected the offer because they wouldn't arrive before Oct. 10, 2005, and later spent $249 million leasing cruise ships from Carnival Cruise Lines. Medicines and medical supplies donated by Italy were left to rot on the docks. And on and on.

This beggars belief, and there must be firings and an investigation by the Democratic Congress of the full dimensions of this Bush fiasco. For the good of America, Bush and Cheney need to resign and let the Democrats take over and begin the long recovery. The Republicans have forfeited, perhaps permanently, any right to ask Americans to trust them to govern. If Bush and Cheney refuse to go, it is time for the Congress to remove them from office.

Posted by David at 10:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It was long ago, but worth remembering.

On April 27, 1937, German warplanes struck the old Basque town of Guernica. Nazi Germany wanted to help Spanish rightist Catholic strongman Francisco Franco, then engaged in a civil war with the legitimate leftist government of Spain. It was also a perfect opportunity to test out new methods of terror from the air. Guernica was well behind the lines and of little military value. The attack was aimed solely at terrorizing the population.

London Times reporter George Steer was in Guernica when the attack occurred. After confirming it was a German attack--he found the German eagle on some bomb casings--he filed this dispatch by telegram to his editors in London. It is a classic of war reporting, and it also ran in the New York Times. Steer, who was honored posthumously by Guernica last year, did what the best journalists have always done: report on the abuses of the powerful against the weak and helpless.

At a time when extreme ideology and religion are making our world a terrible place, at home and abroad, it is worth re-reading Steer's classic story to remind ourselves what can happen.

Posted by David at 10:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

America has nearly forgotten Jessica Lynch, the Army soldier from West Virginia who was turned into a one-week hero by the Army and White House. Trouble is, she told a Congressional committee today, it was all a pack of lies. She was wounded in the invasion of Iraq and captured by Iraqi soldiers, but just about everything else was made up by the Bush Administration. She's embarassed and disturbed, and rightfully so.

Just another day in the rapidly unraveling world of George W. Bush. Keep in mind that we've only seen a tiny bit of what during the last days of the Nixon Administration were called the "White House horrors." I doubt if any of us can imagine what waits to be revealed.

Posted by David at 11:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'll always have a warm spot in my heart for former Sen. George McGovern, the Democratic candidate for President in 1972. I was one of the organizers of Students for McGovern at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, in 1972, and you never forget your first, glorious, campaign disaster. Today's Hope College students are more likely to organize Students for Brownback or some other standard-bearer of the so-called Christian right, but it was a far different place back then. McGovern lost overwhelmingly to President Richard Nixon in 1972, but he was right on the issues then and he's right now. Nixon, of course, resigned in disgrace over the Watergate revelations in 1974.

McGovern has an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times today rebutting Vice President Cheney's attack on him in a recent speech in Chicago. Cheney, as usual, distorted the facts, and McGovern sets him straight. George McGovern won the nomination in 1972 because of his steadfast opposition to the Vietnam War. He likewise, and for the same reasons, opposes the Iraq War. But read it for yourself.

I've always wished a Democratic president could have found a place in his administration for McGovern, but that was not to be and now he's quite old, as all the World War II veterans are. But his quiet fire and decency have not died, and we can only look back with nostalgia to a glorious moment and what might have been.

Posted by David at 07:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It seems likely that today's 5-4 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court upholding the partial-birth abortion ban will earn the same scorn heaped on the decision which ultimately led to it, the 5-4 decision in Bush vs. Gore which handed the presidency to George W. Bush in 2000. Both were political decisions aimed at accomplishing political ends.

Elections, even tainted ones, have consequences. Bush, aided by the fanaticall discipline of the majority Republicans in Congress, was able to put John Roberts and Samuel Alito, both rightwing conservatives, on the high court. Both voted today to uphold the ban, as did Reagan appointee Anthony Kennedy and Bush-41 appointees Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. The latter two, incidentally, urged the Court in a concurring statement to overturn other abortion precedents, meaning Roe v. Wade. The majority even coached their decision in terms of protecting women from making wrong decisions, perhaps the most patronizing and demeaning language ever uttered by Justices in modern times.

The right can smell blood, and the anti-abortion forces are dancing in the street. They dream of this court overturning Roe v. Wade on another 5-4 decision. But somewhere, sometime, a woman will die in childbirth because of this decision, or have her insides so ripped apart she can never have children again. It will be up to the coming Democratic president and post-2008 Congress to legislatively overturn this decision.

This just in: McCain loves today's abortion decision.

Posted by David at 11:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I find it offensive that President Bush showed up at the memorial service for the 32 slain Virginia Tech students and professors a day after he directed his spokeswoman, after news of this atrocity broke, to emphasize that he still supported the mythical individual right to bear arms that is second only to God and possibly above God among diehard rightists, Christian or otherwise, in our bleeding country. Hopefully the families of the slain drew some comfort from his presence and words, but what did it accomplish?

Why bother to mourn these innocent dead if nothing is to be done about the method used to kill them? If we continue to allow clearly-troubled people like Cho Seung-Hui to buy and own personal weapons of mass destruction, these atrocities will continue to pile up. Columbine, the Amish school massacre in Pennsylvania last fall, and now this, along with other school shootings too numerous to mention. By the way, I have to wonder if the killer copied the well-publicized methods of the Amish slayer when he chained shut the doors of the classroom building at Virginia Tech.

The AP story at the link above speculates that Cho Seung-Hui had high-capacity ammunition clips for his Glock handgun, clips that were banned until the Bush Administration and the Republican Congress allowed the Brady Bill to expire in 2004.

The U.S. press has so far shied away from presenting the full horror of what this 23-year-old man unleashed on his fellow students yesterday. But the Australian press has been far less reticent. Here is a story from the Brisbane Times about the experience of one young survivor of the massacre. It is not for the squeamish.

I'm about to the point where I would support a Constitutional amendment repealing the 2nd Amendment, which could then be replaced by a sensible federal gun control law enacted by Congress. Despite clear wording that limits the right of gun ownership to an organized state militia, i.e., the National Guard, gun "rights" advocates choose to focus only on the second half of the 2nd Amendment. Get rid of it, start over, let people live.

By now, the gun lobby and its minions have their story down. Oh, what a tragedy, they wail. If only teachers and students were armed, one of them could have taken out the shooter. If you need any help finding that ridiculous, think back on the procession of teachers in your life, from kindergarten to college. How many of them can you imagine shooting it out with a determined Cho Seung-Hui? Any?

(And by the way, conservative bloggers are all but calling the male students of Virginia Tech wimps for not fighting back. Of course they know exactly what went on there. I might pay attention to bleating like this one day if the young conservatives rushed to enlist to serve in the Army or Marines in Iraq.)

No, the answer is tight restrictions on gun ownership . That is the only thing that has a prayer of stopping future atrocities like this. The answer to gun violence is not more guns.

Posted by David at 05:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This has disappeared from MSM stories on the Virginia Tech shootings, but I saw it in the first Associated Press wire stories this afternoon and finally found it on Google News. The link goes to the full press briefing today by White House press secretary Dana Perino, but I've copied out the key paragraphs below. The Leader felt it important on a day when 32 students were slaughtered by a lone gunman to reiterate the fictitious "right to bear arms," and with a nod and a wink, reassure the National Rifle Association that even the worst shooting incident in U.S. history won't lead to toughening of our insanely weak gun laws:

Q Dana, going back to Virginia Tech, what more does this White House think needs to be done as it relates to gun issues? The President says current laws need to be strengthened, anything beyond that -- you had a conference on school violence with guns -- what more needs to be done?

MS. PERINO: I would point you back to the fact that President, along with Secretary Spellings, hosted last October -- October 10, 2006 -- a conference on school gun violence after the Amish school shooting and the other shootings that had happened, because the tragedies are the ones that just collectively break America's heart and are ones that we deeply feel, because all of us can imagine what it would be like to have been at your own school, your own college, and to have something happen. And those of us who are parents, or brothers or sisters of people at the schools have to take that into consideration.

As far as policy, the President believes that there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed. And certainly bringing a gun into a school dormitory and shooting -- I don't want to say numbers because I know that they're still trying to figure out many people were wounded and possibly killed, but obviously that would be against the law and something that someone should be held accountable for.

Q Columbine, Amish school shooting, now this, and a whole host of other gun issues brought into schools -- that's not including guns on the streets and in many urban areas and rural areas. Does there need to be some more restrictions? Does there need to be gun control in this country?

MS. PERINO: The President -- as I said, April, if there are changes to the President's policy we will let you know. But we've had a consistent policy of ensuring that the Justice Department is enforcing all of the gun laws that we have on the books and making sure that they're prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Q Lastly, in Texas, if I'm correct, he passed legislation, no age restriction on possession of weapons, if I'm correct. Should there be some kind of federal age limit, as far as the President is concerned, raising the age for gun possession in this country?

MS. PERINO: Unfortunately, I'm going to have to go back and look at what the record was in Texas.

SO, THE RIGHT TO ACCESS ASSAULT FIREARMS AND AMMUNITION THAT MAKE IT POSSIBLE TO EASILY SLAUGHTER LARGE NUMBERS OF PEOPLE WILL BE PRESERVED. ALL HAIL THE NRA!

Postscript: Arizona Sen. John McCain makes one more attempt to revive his flagging Presidential hopes by saying that, he, too supports the mythical individual right in the Second Amendment to bear arms. Mitt Romney and Rudolph Guiliani issues statements of condolence but don't join McCain in pandering to the gun nuts.

Posted by David at 08:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I had the enjoyable experience of seeing myself on the big screen Saturday afternoon when a terrific new documentary about the Centralia mine fire, "The Town That Was," played at the Philadelphia Film Festival.

The photo is from the Q&A session that followed. I'm second from right. The others, from left, are Malinka Thompson-Godoy, producer, Tom Larkin, a former Centralia activist who also appeared in the film, Georgie Roland, co-director, Chris Perkel (with microphone), the other co-director, and at far right, Paul Henning, who composed the film's haunting score. I wrote the book "Unseen Danger: A Tragedy of People, Government, and the Centralia Mine Fire," and covered Centralia as a newspaper reporter. I'm in the film to talk about the history of Centralia and the mine fire.

Centralia, Pa., was a small town with a long history and strong community ties. The mine fire started in 1962 when a clean-up project at the town dump went horribly wrong. Underfunded and occasionally misguided attempts by the state and federal government to stop the fire all ultimately failed. Beginning in the winter of 1979-80, the fire broke through the last barrier and began moving under Centralia, sending dangerous gases into homes and causing the ground to collapse without warning. Relocations of the most endangered residents began in 1981, and the entire town was relocated beginning in 1984.

But not all of them. Some chose to stay. About 12-15 mostly elderly people out of an original population of a little over a thousand remain, but also John Lokitis, Jr., who is in his early 30s. John lives alone in the former home of his grandparents and carries on a quixotic effort to keep a semblance of the town alive. But viewers of the film come to see the futility of the effort, and understand that what had been a real town with real families is gone forever. "The Town That Was" leaves many viewers with a sense of sadness or melancholy at what was lost.

The film drew extended applause from the audience in the Prince Music Theater. There were 200 advance ticket sales and the house was nearly but not entirely filled. Chris Perkel at one point asked how many former Centralia residents or people with ties to Centralia were in the audience, and about 10 hands went up. Among them were Joe Coddington, whose sister, Colleen Dwonczyk appears in the film, and Shannon Buckley, who I had last seen as a six-year-old in 1981. Her family was in that early group of relocatees. She suffered from asthma, which was aggravated by the mine fire gases in her home, and her parents appeared in Tony Mussari's 1983 PBS documentary "Centralia Fire."

Chris, Georgie, and Malinka invited Paul Henning, Tom Larkin and I onstage afterward, and we all answered questions from the audience. I think the Q&A would have gone on for another half hour at least, but we had to clear the house for the next film. All in all, it was a great experience. "The Town That Was" will screen one more time at the film festival, April 16 at 7 p.m. at International House in Philadelphia.

Posted by David at 12:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(This response was written by Jim Harris, a Hope College classmate of mine and regular reader of this blog)

I sincerely wish I could vote for the army. I am certain that Major Daniels'
accounts of his experiences are true and are significant. I am thankful for men
and women like him who are willing to risk their lives for our country. I am
certain that our military is doing everything within its capabilities to provide
for the security of Iraq. I am not as certain that Major Daniels' experiences
are indicative of how the entire occupation is proceeding.

As for the command assessment of the situation in Iraq, that must be viewed in
light of past performance. My entire life, I have heard military assessments
designed to please the civilian political leadership. Our presidents, secretaries of
defense and state, and other government spokespersons have lied to us and misled
us repeatedly. They lie about the pretexts for war, they lie about what will be
required to win the war, and they very often lie about the events in the war.
Major Daniels is probably too young to remember General Westmoreland's, "I see
light at the end of the tunnel", or President Johnson's ,"win the hearts and
minds of the Vietnamese people." But he surely remembers WMD's and the lies
about Iraq and 9/11.

We know that when military leaders contradict the official government line, they
jeopardize their careers. Even the gentle and forgiving President Carter
wouldn't countenance the second guessing of General Singlaub. Imagine the
reaction of the Cheney-Bush camp if the military command were to make statements
contary to the remanufactured "Stay the Course" policy.

The press is certainly not the final authority when it comes to getting the
facts right. But thank God we have them to challenge the official statements of
government, and to publish the letters of brave soldiers like Major Daniels.

Much like the insurrection in Iraq, the battle to learn the truth about events
in Iraq will continue. So will the debate over what, if any, legitimate
interests and responsibilities the United States has in Iraq.

My only hope is that Major Daniels, and every other American serviceman and
woman, will return home safely and quickly. I vote for the end of war.

Posted by David at 07:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A lot of people don't realize how closely Monica Goodling is tied to the Harrisburg region. Goodling, of course, is the 34-year-old femme fatale of the U.S. Attorney firing scandal, the aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales who took the Fifth rather than testify to Congress about what she knew regarding the firings. She has been portrayed as a dragon lady, driving career lawyers out of the Justice Department and replacing them with Christian rightists like herself.

Someone out there in blogworld dug up her old web page from her years at Regent University, the Pat Robertson-founded law school in Virginia Beach, and it reveals more of her ties to Harrisburg than have generally been reported to date. Nothing ever dies on the Web--it just gets archived somewhere.

Goodling is from York Haven in York County, born in the Watergate summer of 1973 and part of the same evangelical or fundamentalist Christian subculture that produced the Intelligent Design fiasco in the Dover Area School District. She attended Messiah College in nearby Grantham, Pa., graduating in 1995, and appears to have been the Big Girl on Campus during her four years. Editor of the yearbook, 1992-94, and president of the Student Government Association 1994-95, her senior year.

What I find particularly interesting is that Goodling spent the summers of 1993, 1994, and 1995 working as a lifeguard and swim coach at the West Shore Country Club in Camp Hill, a suburb of Harrisburg known for its old-line Repubican political conservatism. Those were the the early years of the so-called (Newt) Gingrich Revolution, and I wouldn't be surprised if she met people at the country club who helped enlist her as a foot soldier and furthered her career.

Goodling, who has resigned from the Justice Department, doesn't seem destined to escape the headlines anytime soon. Bloggers continue to dig into her background. She very likely was part of George W. Bush's opposition research team--the folks who dig up dirt on the opposing candidate--for the Bush-Gore debates in 2000. There is talk of Congress granting her immunity from prosecution so she can be compelled to testify about what she knows.

Documents which continue to be released by the Justice Department in response to pressure from Congressional Democrats have her in the thick of things. And I'm sure there's more to come.

Posted by David at 06:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

David, I read your entry and I will take the opportunity to respond.

I am MAJ Chip Daniels and I am currently serving in Baghdad. The letter you
referenced was a mere email that I sent to my family. It certainly was not a
piece of propaganda floated to a media outlet like you suggest the Army is
doing. You are correct that many soldiers, Democrat and Republican, feel
compelled to tell their side of the story. I did not suggest that the media is
lying to the American public, nor do I believe that. What I do believe is that
our media, for the most part, has become an entertainment industry. Members of the media are under pressure to publish and broadcast what will sell. I believe my sister is right. Finding unbiased reporting is nearly
impossible today.

Allow me to offer an example. About one month ago, I hosted a reporter from a
major publication for three days. As we discussed the situation over here and I
took him around our area, I could not help but feel that he had already written
his story in his mind. He suffered from "confirmation bias" because he only
recognized the information that supported the story he wanted to write in the
first place. We were sitting in a room and talking with a mid-level official in
the Iraqi Ministry of Education. My unit had noticed that some schools which had
been closed due to a poor security situation had recently re-opened. I asked her
if that was true. She replied that ALL the schools in the district were open. I
asked her three times why the schools re-opened and she told me each time that
it was because the security situation had dramatically improved. Thousands of children were able to go back to school and yet what did the reporter, who was sitting right beside me, choose to write about? He wrote about
the fact that she did not have electricity at that time in her office. Is
constant electricity a good thing? Of course. Does it matter as much as
educating the future of this nation? No. Does the fact that thousands of kids
are back in school matter as much as the fact that a bridge was destroyed? I,
for one, believe that it absolutely does. Does it sell well when published by
the media? Of course not, and that is why I believe you won't see it printed,
not because of some conspiracy on the part of the media. It is a simple business
decision.

By the way, both the bridge bombing and the attack on Iraqi Parliament took
place in the area where my unit operates. It is early to say how these attacks
will affect the population but I do believe that parents will still send their
kids to school and go to the market. Why? Because sectarian killings are down dramatically in the area. In January, there were 53 murders in our area. That number dropped to eight in February. In March, there was one. Total numbers of "significant acts" of violence (murders, mortar attacks, IEDs, small arms
attacks, car bombs, etc.) dropped from 140 to 37 to 27, respectively.

What we saw yesterday is exactly what I expect we will see more of in the near
future. Spectacular attacks, as you call them, will keep the terrorists like Al
Qaeda in the news, which is what they want and need. Why do I think we will see
an increase in the short term? I expect an increase because the terrorists are
losing their support base day by day and they need to convince America and the
world that there is no hope for a free Iraq. It is still very early in this new
security plan, but it appears to me that the Sunnis, who have traditionally
tolerated terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda, are beginning to see that they
have been duped. Many mainstream Sunnis are turning on terrorist organizations
and denying them safe haven. I witnessed it in action myself this past week when an
Iraqi citizen approached me and the Iraqi colonel with whom I was conversing.
The man told the colonel that a man in his neighborhood was trying to recruit
young men to join an illegal militia. The Iraqi Army soldiers went with the
older man to his street where he identified the young militia recruiter right to
his face. The Iraqis detained him on the spot and took him in for questioning.
The Iraqi colonel told me yesterday that since that incident, many local
citizens have now started to "tip off" the Iraqi security forces to illegal or
terrorist activity because they trust that the Iraqi soldiers will respond. By
the way, dig deeper than the headlines and ask yourself why Al Qaeda is suddenly
targeting other Sunnis, particularly Iraqi politicians. What does it tell you
about what might be happening over here?

Now, as far as trusting US Army soldiers, I can promise you that while there are
some people here who will stop at nothing to kill us, the majority of Iraqis trust us and they do not fear us. You used
the word "love" in your response to my email when you claimed my message was a
canard. Please notice that I never claimed that they love us in that message, so
whose message is more of a canard? David, I am here on the ground everyday. I
can tell you that the majority of Iraqis wish that we did not have to be here
but they realize that if US forces were to leave in the near future, the
resulting chaos would be even more catastrophic than the current situation.

Combat is chaotic beyond belief. Trying to explain it to someone who was not
experienced it is like trying to explain sex to a virgin...much is lost in the
effort to communicate what it is like. The confusion and stress is surreal. Do
American soldiers make mistakes under such conditions? Yes, unfortunately we do,
and the cost of those mistakes can often be unbearable. I can also tell you,
though, that I have witnessed on more than one occasion the incredible discipline our soldiers possess. I have seen 19-year old men not shoot back even when being fired upon because they were afraid they would hit the wrong mistakes have been made and members of your US Army have tried to make amends as
best they can. Contrast that to Saddam's police who, after executing hundreds of
innocent people, sent a bill for the cost of the bullet to the family of the
slain.

David, you make some good points in your piece. You do seem bothered that I
would question the ability of the media to report fact and suppress bias, even
while questioning the integrity of the US Army. We could go on and on and never
agree so perhaps we should ask the American people what they think. Run a poll
asking the American public whether they think the US media or US Army is more
credible. As a man who has just been told that he will serve 15 months during
this tour instead of 12, consequently missing another Christmas with his wife
and children and several birthdays, I anxiously await the results. Then I will have a better sense as to the true state of our nation.

Posted by David at 03:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today on the Harrisburg (Pa.) Patriot-News op-ed page was a letter from Major Barry "Chip" Daniels of Palmyra, Pa., to his sister that touted the great work done by the U.S. Army in restoring schools in Iraq. A picture of happy, smiling kids from one of the schools accompanied the letter in the print edition. The tone of the letter implied criticism of the U.S. media for not reporting stories like this, and implied that we print lies that the Iraqi public distrusts and fears the U.S. Army.

As if by a vengeful God, today came reports of spectacularly deadly and damaging attacks by Iraqi insurgents. A truck bomb collapsed a major bridge over the Tigris River in Baghdad, sending cars into the water. And a female suicide bomber blew herself up in the cafeteria of the Iraqi Parliament, killing at least two legislators. I think Harrisburg residents, who are quite familiar with river bridges and Capitol cafeterias, can especially relate to the chaos and horror of these attacks.

I have no doubt that Major Daniels' letter is real. But I also know there seems to be an effort by certain elements of the U.S. military to get letters like this into American newspapers and onto rightwing talk radio. I've been offered one myself by a military neighbor. Knowingly or unknowingly, they further the slander that the U.S. press has deliberately published false and distorted news about the Iraq catastrophe, or suppressed "good" news like the school rebuilding. Call it the 21st century "Stab in the Back" theory. Is the school rebuilding a good thing? Of course. Does it matter in the greater scheme of things? No. Is it more important news than the attacks today? Of course not.

Again coincidentally, yesterday was the one-year anniversary of the arrest of Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein by the U.S. Army. He is still in an Army prison in Iraq. His main crime seems to have been taking photographs of the violence and chaos that were too close, too intense, too good. The Army has accused him of ties to insurgents and of coordinating his photos with roadside bomb explosions. The AP has hired a U.S. criminal defense attorney, a former federal prosecutor, to discredit the case against him and win his freedom. One problem: the Army claims the evidence against him is classified. Ta dum, ta dum. Maybe if he'd taken only pictures of smiling Iraqi schoolgirls he'd be a free man.

As for the canard that the Iraqi people love us, consider this story from the New York Times. Thousands of Iraqis have been paid compensation, though sometimes not very much, for innocent family members killed by the U.S. Army. The story is based on actual Army documents released under the Freedom of Information Act.

One of the stories is about a family who got $500 for a schoolboy shot to death by a U.S. soldier, who mistook his book bag for a bomb satchel. I know, mistakes happen in wartime. But they don't love us, and the sooner we bring the troops home, the sooner these awful tragedies will cease. There's no important happy news that anyone is hiding.

Posted by David at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This has to be one of the scariest Bush stories I've heard lately. Now let me say right out that I use a more expansive version of the term "Bush story" to describe any horror story emanating from his years as President, not just incidents in which Bush was directly, personally involved.

Dr. Walter F. Murphy, an emeritus professor of political science at Princeton University, delivered a speech in September 2006 criticizing the Leader for his many violations of the U.S. constitution. I should state right up front that Murphy is no liberal. He doesn't like the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion, and he supported Judge Samuel Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court.

Bet he's sorry now.

On March 1, 2007, Dr. Murphy attempted to use curbside check-in prior to boarding an American Airlines flight at Newark, N.J. The Sky Cap informed him that he couldn't use curbside check-in because he was on the Terrorist Watch List and would have to talk to American Airlines inside the terminal. A clerk verified that he was on the Terrorist Watch List. He protested that he was a law-abiding American, a Marine Corps veteran. She asked him if he had participated in a peace march, and commented that a lot of peace marchers ended up on the list.

Murphy said he hadn't participated in any peace march, but had given that speech against Bush back in September. "That'll do it," she said. He was allowed to board his flight, but his luggage disappeared on the return flight. The clerk had told him his bags would be "ransacked."

That'll do it. What have we come to as a country if criticism of the Leader is enough to get one labeled a "terrorist"? This is more reminiscent of the former East Germany and other totalitarian states which spied on and sought to wreck the lives of dissidents. The dirty work was done by low-level employees . Their superiors had deniability. I suspect that Professor Murphy will be told eventually it was all a mistake, an error by a low level employee of the Transportation Security Administration who will be fired--they don't have union protection. And the next day, 200 more dissidents will be placed on the list.

Posted by David at 07:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Hard to believe that the 2008 primary season is right around the corner, but in truth, it's only a little over nine months away and the candidates are starting to register in the public perception. Former Sen. John Edwards, perhaps helped slightly by the announcement of his wife's cancer recurrence, has climbed into a strong second place to Sen. Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire. Clinton has slipped and Sen. Barack Obama is a strong third, basicly tied with Edwards.

The poll, commissioned by CNN/WMUR, and conducted by the University of New Hampshire, found that Edwards moved up from 16 percent in February to 21 percent this month, while Clinton fell from 35 to 27 percent. Obama fell slightly, from 21 percent to 20 percent. Of Democrats polled, 39 percent said the Iraq War would be the most important issue driving their vote in the primary, while 11 percent picked health care. That's bad news for Clinton, who still refuses to apologize for her vote to authorize Bush's war and is paying a political price. Edwards also voted for the resolution, but he has done his mea culpas and has largely been forgiven, or so it would seem. He has positioned himself as the most left-leaning of the major candidates.

Interestingly, Vice President Al Gore, who is not an announced candidate, still picked up 11 percent of Democrats in the poll. The betting money says Gore will win the Nobel Peace Prize for his global warming work this fall, and jump into the race shortly thereafter. I've talked to Democrats who dream of that scenario. Truthfully, I think the Democrats could run George McGovern or Walter Mondale again and trounce whichever midget the Republican Right throws up. But looking at this in serious terms, Gore would be a very attractive candidate to many Americans, not just those who think he was robbed of the Presidency in 2000 by Bush's minions and five members of the Supreme Court.

Posted by David at 10:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Sen. John McCain, whose candidacy for the Republican nomination for President in 2008 is in freefall because (1) he tried to move from freethinker to Bush thinker, and (2), people have figured out how old he'll be (76) when he finishes even one term as President, yesterday turned on the right's favorite whipping boy, the American press. McCain, after a heavily guarded trip to a few, select locations in Baghdad, proclaimed that the American people weren't getting the "full story" on the supposed great progress the U.S. has made in Iraq.

This pernicious myth--that the American press deliberately withheld news of the good things American troops have done in Iraq, of the progress that supposedly has been made--has been a staple of rightwing talk radio and letters-to-the-editor for at least the last two years, after the Iraq War began to go really bad. It came up a few months ago when the Patriot-News did reader nights to find out what people were thinking. There were people at the one I attended who clearly believed that the press had withheld positive stories to turn America against the war.

There is probably nothing tougher than to see your most cherished beliefs shown by facts and events to be based on lies by people you trusted. How much easier it must be to believe that a cabal of elite reporters with an anti-Bush agenda conspired to suppress good news. To do this, of course, requires tuning out the daily atrocities from Iraq, the senseless bombings of a religious civil war that kill dozens. Of course, a responsible politician, which McCain is not, would not deliberately pander to that sort of frenzied delusion. And by the way, even the Iraqis say McCain was dead wrong when he said parts of Baghdad were safe.

These sorts of delusions have been shown time and again to be extremely dangerous. The "stabbed-in-the-back" myth of German rightists after World War I, the belief that forces within Germany had betrayed the German Army, led directly to Adolf Hitler, World War II, and the Holocaust. In the 2004 election, we saw the force of delusion backed by big rightwing money as the Swift Boat Veterans tore into the supposed treason of Sen. John Kerry, a legitimate Vietnam War hero, and took away just enough votes for their hero, George W. Bush, to be re-elected and give us four more years of the war he started.

The price for myth in politics is a terrible one. I don't know if we are done paying for this one.

Posted by David at 09:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)