Baghdad Bob Had Better ESP Than Bush?

"When Über-Republicans like Gingrich, Meese, and James Baker are calling a spade a spade, that’s hopeful. Denial and wishful thinking are on the run. But that doesn’t mean last week’s show of earnest, bipartisan good faith will last."

- Kurt Andersen

In a post of mine last week, I questioned the sanity of President Bush's determination to stay an obvious disatrous course in Iraq. I promise you that I'm not the kind of person who is quick to resorting to impulsivity or flippancy about such matters.

Last night on Jon Stewart's Daily show, I heard Fareed Zakaria joke that there are therapists for what ails President Bush. It was a fun moment, yet I suspect the joke wasn't told for the sake of the laugh factor. I believe Mr. Zakaria was making a point as he continued to shed educated doubt on any hope you or I may have that this President has learned any material lesson from the recent elections or bipartisan critiques of his conduct of the Iraq war.

Barbara's Tchatzkas has supplied the blogosphere with a link to an article by Kurt Andersen in the December 18th edition of New York magazine. Mr. Andersen discusses President Bush's pathological denial and, seeing the disaster that has unfolded in Iraq, how it has perplexed, worried, and depressed an entire helpless-feeling nation. Mr. Andersen throws Kübler-Ross in the mix:

The evolution of hopelessness is following the Kübler-Ross model: We’re bargaining for time, being depressed, moving toward acceptance, while Bush is still in the denial stage.

The vindication of nutty old Baghdad Bob, of all people, should be the bitter elixir to awaken even the "dead-enders" who still believe there's a "victory" for America in any of this madness. After all the reality we've seen with "our lying eyes", this President is still seemingly possessed by his own pathological arrogance. Concerned about his own legacy as the Abe Lincoln of the Middle East, he is foundering in a sea of due crticism as I suspect he's planning to further embroil our fighting men and women in an urban ground war that he still - incredibly - won't admit is a civil war. At this point in time, it's frightening for the American people to see this and to see Congress standing idly by.

When will Congress come alive and see madness for what it is? When will the Democrats understand that this is not a brand new post-election day of civility - and that the Bush Republicans will do anything they can to convince the public that it will have been the Democrat's fault that Iraq was "lost" when - in all reality -Iraq was lost three years ago while the GOP enjoyed solid majority leadership in every branch of government?

Mr. Andersen says it this way:

Early in the New Year, the 2008 election cycle will crank up, the new Congress will convene, and the 3,000th American will die in Iraq. The particulars of our Iraq policy are now mainly a matter of harm reduction and triage, but the big accountability question—Who Lost Iraq?—will loom ever larger as we wind down our involvement, and the consensus answer will shape our politics for decades. Whichever party the public blames will be hobbled.

I never thought I'd hear his name again, but as it turns out, Baghdad Bob's nutty-sounding intuition was closer to the mark of reality than was our own President's nutty intuition.

From Kurt Andersen's New York magazine piece:

Pathological denial and pathological arrogance combined to produce the tragedy of Iraq. The “Iraqi Perspectives Project”—a freshly declassified study by the U.S. Joint Forces Command of the peculiar geopolitical, intelligence, and military command-and-control doctrines that prevailed before and during the invasion in 2002 and 2003—is an astonishing document. The Pentagon report describes a president who relied to an extreme degree on his gut, with a “supreme, even mystical, confidence in his own abilities and wisdom [that] allowed him to ignore or discount the practical considerations” and “hard evidence.”

I'll admit that I applied my own intuition when opining on my suspicion in 2003 that Bush was offering no more than "hand-jobs" to the UN while pursuing his mad pre-emptive foray. [So call me Baghdad Bob already].

Mr. Andersen describes it this way

[Bush] finally acceded to a new round of WMD inspections only as a tactic, to please his quasi allies in the U.N., who he knew would try to stop the invasion. Underlings “at all levels understood that … the bearer of bad news was in almost every case punished.” During the war, “when gloomy reports finally did get” to the president, he “either discarded them or considered the tidings to be exaggerated,” owing to “the distortions of his ideological perceptions.” The president saw the war as a “spiritual battle,” and told intimates that God would help. He was absolutely cocksure of victory.

Mr. Andersen then makes his final point, comparing Baghdad Bob's style of favoring ESP over reality to that of President Bush:

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

The Pentagon report is not, of course, about the dysfunctional presidency of George Bush, but rather of Saddam Hussein. It also suggests that the Iraqi Information minister, the ludicrous guy on TV during the invasion whom we knew as Baghdad Bob, may have thought he was telling the truth when he insisted that the Iraqi army was vanquishing the Americans: “[F]rom the point of view of Iraq’s leaders, Baghdad Bob was largely reporting what they were hearing from the front.”

For old times’ sake, I dug up the transcripts of Baghdad Bob, whose real name is Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf. As with the Pentagon report, I was astonished. Time changes everything. Some of his propaganda no longer seems so funny, or wrong. “Those America losers, I think their repeated frequent lies are bringing them down very rapidly,” he said. And then: “This invasion will end in failure.” And on his last day in office: “They will surrender, it is they who will surrender.”

Bush still wants Baghdad Bob to end up to be the one who takes home the grand prize as the guy with the weakest grip on reality. Right now, I think the contest between the two madmen is too close to call.

Senator Robert Byrd said this:

As if that were not bad enough, members of Congress are reluctant to ask questions which are begging to be asked. How long will we occupy Iraq? We have already heard disputes on the numbers of troops which will be needed to retain order. What is the truth? How costly will the occupation and rebuilding be? No one has given a straight answer...We cower in the shadows while false statements proliferate. We accept soft answers and shaky explanations because to demand the truth is hard, or unpopular, or may be politically costly.

But, I contend that, through it all, the people know. The American people unfortunately are used to political shading, spin, and the usual chicanery they hear from public officials. They patiently tolerate it up to a point. But there is a line. It may seem to be drawn in invisible ink for a time, but eventually it will appear in dark colors, tinged with anger. When it comes to shedding American blood - - when it comes to wreaking havoc on civilians, on innocent men, women, and children, callous dissembling is not acceptable. Nothing is worth that kind of lie - - not oil, not revenge, not reelection, not somebody's grand pipedream of a democratic domino theory..

..And mark my words, the calculated intimidation which we see so often of late by the "powers that be" will only keep the loyal opposition quiet for just so long. Because eventually, like it always does, the truth will emerge. And when it does, this house of cards, built of deceit, will fall. "

When did he say it?

May, 2003.

Congress - where the hell are you?

Bush Clueless; Founders on Iraq

Read it and weep. We'll get nothing from Bush on "a new way forward" until after the first of next year. With each day that passes, the Bushites will have more reason to say it's too late to implement the temporal ideas of the Iraq Study Group, who, themselves, have offered no recognition that "the goalposts" in Iraq are already way behind us and we're running the ball on a field with no end in sight. There are no fans cheering for a win left on the sidelines of this endless field. The game's over. There are no rules left. Just running - running aimlessly. Even the most diehard fans mumble amongst one another with confusion.

The only "moving forward" left to do is to turn around and get in some kind of game again. Most Americans believe it's time to set the sights on getting the players back home and wait for a better game - one with a clear goal - one that they believe in - one they can actually win.

"Our objective is to help the Iraqi government deal with the extremists and the killers, and support the vast majority of Iraqis who are reasonable, who want peace," Bush said after an Oval Office meeting Tuesday with Tariq al-Hashemi. [WaPo]

If President Bush cannot even support the vast majority of Americans who are reasonable, who want peace - he's brushed them off, calling them "focus groups" in the past - - how can our commander in chief square that by saying he supports the vast majority of Iraqis who are reasonable, who want peace? Why is he getting us further embroiled in the civil war in Iraq? Why is his administration showing signs of sticking with "the course" in Cheney/neocon disguise by "tilting" toward Shi'ites? So much for coaxing the Sunnis into the political process!
[see Laura Rozen and Michael Stickings]



Professor Juan Cole had this to say yesterday pleading for an acceptance of reality and an end to denial in Iraq:

"We're taking sides..without necessarily meaning to....but we're taking sides in a civil war. [Our troops] are killing Sunni Arabs in Baquaba on behalf of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq which dominates the political apparatus of that place. Is that really what we want to be doing? Do we want to kill Sunni Arabs for the Supreme Council for Islamic Revoltion in Iraq - the Shi'ite organization that was founded at the instance of Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran?

Go to this CSPAN video - Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) on Humanitarian Situation in Iraq.

Do we really want to become 'Murder, Incorporated' in Iraq's civil war? Is that where all of this has taken us?

See Laura Rozen's "whiffs" and indications toward a decided intent toward the 'Salvadorization' of Iraq.

The Left Coaster shows how it's getting so bad that Bush and Cheney are shooting for different ways to get to God-knows-what-outcome in the region:

[Cheney] is the one arguing for the “80 Percent Solution”, whereby we side with the Shiites against the Sunnis, and Cheney is against anything that would shorten our time in the country. Yet while Cheney is afraid of forcing al-Maliki’s hand directly, the Bush Administration is working around al-Maliki anyway by building a coalition amongst the Kurds, the Sunnis, and the Iranian-backed SCIRI to marginalize him and Muqtada al-Sadr. As [this NYT] story indicates, any move by the SCIRI and al-Maliki to isolate al-Sadr and reduce his political imprint threatens an open rejection from Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani that would split the Shiites and turn thousands into the streets against both the government and the Sunnis, which could be the endgame Shooter is really looking for.

A comment made today at Informed Comment reveals a new line in a Bush statement from yesterday:

"This is really the calling of our time, that is, to defeat these extremists and radicals."

The commenter says:

Not "terrorists," only "extremists and radicals"! What's going on here? Have all or some of the former global terrorists been demoted, or are "extremists and radicals" a different group altogether -- even possibly the Mahdí Army specifically?

Marine General Peter Pace, a fine and capable leader, has been tap dancing for Bush for a long time now. Too long. He's a good soldier. Removing him is not going to produce a better man for the job of chairman of the Joint Chiefs. I hope Bush and incoming Sec'y of Defense Robert Gates don't think we're so stupid that we'd believe that General Pace is to blame for this mess. Maybe they just want a better tap dancer.

Tom Delay Blogs With Hate for Democrats

This corrupt creature has started to blog with the promise to censor out "undesirables" [aka Democrats]. It's what he would have loved to have done as House majority leader - and I'm convinced he would have - if he thought that he could have gotten away with it. I'm so glad he's gone from a position where he had any power over any of our representatives. He's been the prototype for the kind of poison that has ruined the reputation of the once-popular and trusted Republican party - and likely will for many years yet to come. I pity whoever he decides to link to because the ones he "appreciates" says a lot, by the sheer connection, about the kinds of ideas with which this corrupt creature agrees.

I suppose none of us should be surprised that Delay connects himself with groupthink and divisive rightwing blogtalk. He's "lived it" for years as he destroyed civility and statesmanship in the House and actively sought to gerrymander Texas to the point that, on the map, the voting districts look like silly string on a psychedelic acid trip.



According to Raw Story, the corrupt creature Tom Delay is blogging about President Jimmy Carter, bashing Mr. Carter for pointing out and writing about the Palestinian plight, of which the inability to reach a peace agreement has nearly everyone in the world agreeing upon at least one thing - it is the root cause of all strife in the Middle Eastern region today. President Carter could hardly give a care to criticisms from puny little creatures like Delay. I can see that President Carter's become immune to such nonsense, and I am glad.

Delay isn't alone in that uneasy feeling when President Carter cuts through the bullshit and right to the chase on the crisis. I'm not sure what Delay finds so novel about the idea. It's like an alternative universe in the halls of the People's official business in Washington D.C. Crooks can go on doing whatever they want in the name of the American people while the slightest mention of Israel in a realistic light gets every House Rep and Senator's pair of shorts in an uproar.

I'm out here listening to the experienced, wise, compassionate, and just former President Jimmy Carter - and I'm reading his books on the Middle East with an open mind - all the while experiencing something between amazement and disgust whenever a political leader sprints faster than the winds of Hurricane Katrina to separate their political selves from President Carter's beliefs. I ask myself how many miles any of these House Reps and Senators have walked in the shoes of a Palestinian compared to the amount of time post-President Carter has spent in those same shoes? In short, there's no comparison and I put a very great value on the wisdom that comes from age, experience, and a set of values that very closely match my own. If there's any route to take us to greater American national security today, that route will need to traverse Jerusalem where peace, even with 2000 years of a painful history, must be found if any of us plan to live in peace.

As of 2007, the Palestinians will have wandered the desert without a home for forty years. Decent people deplore every death of each innocent person - regardless of national origin - if they are unbiased. Decent people want to see a resolution after years of meaningless death and destruction if they possess unbiased souls. Trouble is, our nation's leaders have a bias that no one dare mention - and that bias is making them appear soulless. The tighter they hold onto this bias, the less chance for the political will to see a real and peaceful resolution which now not only involves Isreal's security interests, but our own.

Someone needs to be honest, and soon. I've never seen our nation, in all of its history, in such an embarrassing and shameful spot.




He says he was "thinking of Jesus" when this photo was snapped.
God will forgive him, but we won't.
Like Lyle Lovett sang,
that's the difference between God and me.

I'm very glad that I'm not the kind of blogger that corrupt little citizen Tom Delay wants responding to his divisive tripe, even though, in a large sense, I have responded right here at my own blog. A large part of being American is respecting and welcoming all viewpoints. Little Tom can come here anytime he likes. That's the difference between me and him, and I think it says something about the writer's trust and confidence in the decency and moral consistency of his or her own beliefs when he or she welcomes all - respectfully - to join in the conversation.


__________

UPDATE
See this "snapshot" of Delay's first attempt to allow comments. The blogger who captured it calls it "A tribute to the 75-minute period where tom delay actually received feedback from America. The experiment has now ended, but, this blog has taken a snap-shot, just for you..."

Look at this Keith Olbermann video - Tom Delay had admitted he's not even the blogger on his own blog. He's also admitted that he's not quite literate enough to trust his own writing style. This kind of deception is typical of the corrupt kind of creature this man, Tom Delay, is. I wonder who his ghost writer is?

David Brooks as Fear Mongerer

In a decidedly fear-mongering "blame everyone but Bush and the 'stay-the-course' supporters" column by David Brooks raising the future spectre of a thirty-year Middle East conflict, he says:

This war had several stages. The first was the disintegration of Iraq.

Someone should remind Mr. Brooks that that is not a contingency. It's already a reality, courtesy of the worst President in United States history.

Look at the last two thousand years. The Middle East will take more than thirty years to work itself out to whatever it will be. We should not fret. We should make it our global goal to attain higher ground, not to act in a deliberate effort to cause one another to fear. We should look toward uniting in a common, attainable, and reasonable purpose.

Diplomacy, heart, and intelligence will be required. In the future, I hope that David Brooks, an intelligent man with a New York Times column, will use his talents for a higher purpose than to defend a course that has already been crushed into to the blood-tinted sands of Baghdad.

This is really funny; a bit scary

Photo credit: AmuseYourself.com

Frank Rich: ISG Delays Recognition of Defeat in Iraq

"The illusion of not losing must be preserved no matter what the price in blood."

- Frank Rich

In a column titled "The Sunshine Boys Can’t Save Iraq", New York Times columnist Frank Rich has said that, rather than "plotting a way forward," the Iraq Study Group is only "delaying the recognition of our defeat."

That's it - exactly. This Iraq Study group was not willing to admit we've already done everything we could (within reason) to make any hay out of the worst strategic mistake any U.S. leader has ever made in U.S. history.

"The group’s coulda-woulda recommendations are either nonstarters, equivocations (it endorses withdrawal of combat troops by 2008 but is averse to timelines) or contradictions of its own findings of fact."

It ain't going to get any better, folks. I'm sick of every talking head in the world blabbing non-stop on TV and radio talk shows about this situation while nothing is done in Washington D.C.

Our eyes aren't lying to us.

We are not supposed to be fighting against Iraq - that thought is counterproductive. Ask yourself - who the heck are we supporting over there and who are we fighting against? Doesn't it change by the moment at the whims of fate over there? When was the last time a President left our troops dangling, risking their lives, at the whim of fate? Was it Vietnam? I think it was. In Iraq, the whims of fate are far more erratic than those that materialized in Vietnam. This is why Iraq is worse than Vietnam. We are not at the driving wheel of this war. There is no military solution. None. Nada. Zzzzip. And this group is trying to make us not look like losers while coming up with more ideas to not lose. All the while, we've already lost.

There have to be limits as to how far we'll go to fight FOR the goal of Iraq becoming a united and stable nation. I think we passed that limit of reason less than a year after we toppled Saddam - and it was such a mistake for us to do it unilaterally that I believe we never had a chance of success at all. Bush's "goal" in Iraq has never carried the hallmark of having any distinct or clearly delineated goals. Prior to the war, America was given at least twenty different rationales for war.

Mr. Rich comments further about the Iraq Study Group report:

The tip-off to the cynical game can be found in a single sentence: “We agree with the goal of U.S. policy in Iraq, as stated by the president: ‘an Iraq that can govern itself, sustain itself, and defend itself.’ ”

If the Iraqi people aren't going to fight for Bush's "goal", then we are just spinning our wheels over there and leaving our own men and women to whatever ill fate is destined for them. I'm sorry - but I have trouble sleeping at night knowing all of this.

Since these troops don’t exist and there is no public support in either America or Iraq for mobilizing them, the president can’t satisfy the hawks even if he chooses to do so.

Mothers and fathers - look across the dinner table at your son and daughter tonight. The hawkish McCains, the Rangels risking your kid on a bet that Bush will back down, the neocon chickenhawk Bill Kristols, the grumpy war apologist Brit Humes, the chickenhawk Rich Lowrys who won't go to the war they say they support - they are all jonesing for your child to become a draftee - a moving target in a war we'd lost before we even got there. President Bush seems determined to keep us bogged down in this real and present disaster and defeat. To put it bluntly, the Iraqi people just aren't willing enough to fight for Bush's goal and the American people are sick and tired of watching Bush trying to force feed his fuzzy "goal" down everyone's throats while so many Iraqis have showed their "thanks" not with roses, but by cheering while insurgents have been literally slitting throats.

We could put a million U.S. troops over there and it would still be an occupation that we cannot get out of lest Iraq fall apart the moment we leave. They got their civil war on the moment Saddam Hussein disappeared from the scene and our President has willfully ignored and denied the facts every step of the way.

...to the extent that their report forestalls reality and promotes pipe dreams of one last chance for success in this fiasco, it will be remembered as just one more delusional milestone in the tragedy of our age.

Frank took the words right out of my own head. I guess that's why Frank makes the big bucks.



___________

I wrote Mr. Rich an email telling him how much I appreciate his clarity. Reading Scrutiny Hooligans today, I came across a great quote by Dan Froomkin:

"...some of our most important political battles are about competing views of reality more than they are about policy choices. Calling bullshit has never been more vital to our democracy..."

Louisiana Voters Won't Dump Frozen Cash Dem

Raw Story is reporting that voters, by a clear majority, have chosen to give U.S. Rep. William Jefferson the benefit of the doubt. He easily defeated his fellow Democratic opponent in a runoff election in his Louisiana district. If his presence in Washington is embarrassing for any Democrats, I hope they'll remember that the message (and Rep. Jefferson) is coming from the People. Perhaps the people who voted for Jefferson are more sick of the machinery that seeks to destroy leaders than they are of leaders' questionable practices. Love him or hate him, the voters are stickin' with the man with the frozen assets.

Hard Times Come Again No More

I decided to take one of my favorite Stephen Foster songs, as sung by Nanci Griffith, and do a photo essay. Only one of the photos is mine, the rest were found on the web. FYI, I used the image of my own father in the third image. He's the gentleman in the hat looking out meditatively toward the ocean near Kennebunkport, Maine. I wanted to show the faces of poverty and misfortune all around our world - tsunami, war, hurricane, famine, and social injustice, along with the faces of families affected by disease that could have been prevented but wasn't - because not only did their governments not care enough, but we have also turned our faces from their pain for too long. I especially gave exposure to the people of New Orleans, the city whose hidden poverty was unveiled to the rest of America and to the world after Katrina blew that veil away.

It's my first YouTube full-length feature.



If you want to see why you can expect to hear a lot about our nation's need for universal health care from John Edwards in the near future, see this mini-video - my first try at YouTube.

NY Post Becomes the Weekly World News

Here's a quiz. Which is the Weekly World News and which is the New York Post? You can only tell them apart by their masthead! When I go on vacation, I sometimes read the Weekly World News for the sheer mindless fun of it. To me, it's like a comic book. Sometimes I cut out the heads in photographs of my friends and paste them onto the bodies on Weekly World News covers and give them as silly birthday cards. Maybe I'll start using the Post. It's gotten to be goofy enough to qualify it as a comic book rather than a newspaper.

____and_____

*inspired by Ron's post today at Raw Story

Remember this beauty?

Nigerian Writer Hopes For Dem POTUS

Why is Nigerian writer Dele Sobowale praying for a Democrat to take the White House in 2008? He's looking to history to explain his case to us:

According to P.J Crowley, a military and national security aide under President Clinton: “Ironically, we went into Viet Nam to fight one war, the Cold War, and found ourselves in the middle of a struggle over nationalism…And we are seeing the same thing in Iraq. We may have well thought we were going into Iraq as part of the war on terror, but now we find ourselves in the middle of a civil war”.

More unfortunately for Bush and for Africa, history is again not on his side. ‘The average civil war since 1945 has lasted 10 years, and the median (or typical) one has lasted seven years” according to Sebastain Mallaby of the Washington Post. This civil war has just got underway, so in all probability it will outlast Bush who has only two years to go. The level of violence will also escalate pointing increasingly to the failure of America policy.

The end of the Korean War and the partial humiliation of the U.S, which still re-echoes in North Korea’s obstinacy on nuclear arms, led to the victory of the Republicans, led by General Eisenhower in 1952. It also coincided with isolationism and protectionism as U.S policies. Africa, which had always assumed peripheral importance in U.S foreign policy became even less of a focus of attention. Unless history does not repeat itself isolationism and protectionism will remain the first option of the U.S after this imminent humiliation.

The 1960 electoral victory of the Democrats, led by John Kennedy, brought Africa more into the focus of American policymakers. It was under Kennedy, that the Peace Corps was established as well as the African American Institute. The African American Institute in turn operated the ASPAU and AFGRAD scholarship programmes which enabled several hundred of the cream of English speaking students to study in America. [..] [There] were among hundreds of Nigerians, professors of professors, who were among those who benefited from the Democratic Party administration’s pro-African policies which started in 1960 and ended in 1968.

Because ASPAU/AFRGRAD scholarships were perhaps the greatest contribution of the Kennedy/Johnson, Democratic Administration to Nigeria and Africa, it has set the pattern for judging what to expect from any American government – Republican or Democratic.
President Kennedy was assassinated but his vision for Africa and Nigeria continued under the Lydon Johnson administration’s Great Society Programme. The reversal came when President Nixon, a Republican, was elected in 1968. Then concern for Africa again took the back seat. Nixon resigned when faced with imminent impeachment on account of the Watergate scandal and his successor, President Gerald Ford, lost to Jimmy Carter. Under Carter, another Democrat, African concerns again experienced a revival and till today, Carter still maintains his links to Africa.

Carter lost the next election to Reagan, another Republican, and Africa again receded among foreign policy interests of the Americans for twelve years because George Bush I, one more Republican, succeeded Reagan. Four years after the Democrats were back in the White House when Bill Clinton won the election.
And for eight years African again received favourable attention until 2000 when George Bush II, the current Republican in the White House, mounted the saddle. Since then Africa has again become a fringe issue for the American government. Bush still has two years to go. Despite the victory of the Democrats in the mid-term elections, the prospects for Africa are not very bright. In fact, more than at any other time, the U.S will focus on Iraq (especially how to retreat from the quagmire), the Middle East and Korea. The tough talk notwithstanding, the U.S will not immediately go to war, either against Iran or North Korea given the debacle in Iraq.

Retreat itself is a costly exercise both financially and in terms of national prestige. While the U.S is trying to figure out what to do next in and about the misadventure in Iraq, there will be no change of policy regarding Africa. Thus, even if Sudan disintegrates further and Somalia remains a failed state, the U.S will stand aloof.

Nigeria has a stake in this. If politicians fail to manage the 2007 elections and allow it to degenerate into civil war or widespread unrest, the last country to come to the rescue is the United States of America. Clearly, the mid-term, elections by themselves will not translate into a pro-Africa or pro-Nigeria policy change by the U.S government. Africa and Nigeria must hope that the presidential elections of 2008 will produce another Democratic Party victory. They have always been our friends

Full text at Vanguard Online

Faking It

When I saw this headline, I thought - just for a second - that they might have been talking about my brother.

Haha. Sorry, Tommy.

If We Can't Trust Bush to Listen, Will Gates Matter?

James Jay Carafano is right. Politics should end at the water's edge. The problem is that George W. Bush has plunged our people into the deep well of an unnecessary war and we stand today, over three years later, groping for the sides of that dark well - drowning in failure. At nearly every phase of the disastrous war, it seemed that Karl Rove was behind the scenes calculating Bush's next move to make it appear politically attractive.

Politics has had far too much to do with the war in Iraq. Last month, American voters screamed loudly at the polls that they not only found this war politically unattractive, but that they wanted a change in course immediately.

Yesterday at his confirmation hearing, our leaders were hoping to find something in (and hear something from) Robert Gates that would convince them that President Bush, who has stubbornly stuck to a clearly failed course, would actually take Mr. Gates' counsel and apply it toward the change that the people wish to see.

I heard Mr. Gates say that he is sure today that many in the Bush administration now regret some of the past decisions that have been made and that, in hindsight, they wouldn't have made the same decisions today. While I was glad to hear something that sounded so honest, I realized that Mr. Gates wasn't speaking for himself, and his statement was meaningless because it didn't come straight from the horse's mouth.

Who regrets what? If individual Bush administration officials, including President Bush, won't come out and say it themselves, why should we believe it? It's dark times like these, when glaring mistakes have clearly been made, that the American people listen closely for any indication that their leaders have learned something important from the mistakes that they'll willingly admit to having made.

It wasn't partisan for Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia to have asked Mr. Gates who he felt was responsible for 9/11 and who posed a greater threat in the war on terror - Saddam Hussein or Osama Bin Laden? With a firmness in his tone, Mr. Gates replied that it was Osama Bin Laden. It wasn't partisan when Senator Byrd felt that he had to ask about what's wrong with Bush's current tactics on the war on terror to have allowed Osama Bin Laden to escape justice for over five years.

It wasn't partisan for Senator Byrd to have asked for clarification when Mr. Gatres said that an American attack on Iran would be his absolute last resort and that diplomacy should be first. Mr. Gates said that he believed, once war is unleashed, it becomes 'unpredictable' and that military consequences could be quite traumatic.

It was not partisan for Senator Byrd to have wanted to be reassured that Mr. Gates would counsel President Bush against an attack on Iran and to have gotten clarification that Mr. Gates doesn't believe that President Bush would have the right to attack Iran under the 2002 Iraq War Resolution.

Although Mr. Gates said that he thought it would be 'awkward' to speak of hypotheticals, he said that the likely negative consequences of an attack on Iran would be:

1. Iran's capacity to close off the Persion Gulf to oil exports
2.The possibility of an unleashing of a significant wave of terror in Europe, the Middle East, and even here.
3. Although Iran is not being helpful to the U.S. on the Iraq War, they could be doing more to hurt our effort in Iraq.
4. A likeliness of Iran spreading WMD (chemical and biological weapons) to terrorist groups is real.
5. Iran would likely encourage Hezbollah to further destabilize
Lebanon.
6. Greater U.S. casualties in Iraq if we attacked Iran.

It was not partisan to have learned that our nation's options, when we consider reining in Iran, are "quite limited."

It wasn't partisan for Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts to have asked Mr. Gates why he should believe that President Bush would accept Mr. Gates' advice if he were to be confirmed.

America is concerned because our President doesn't seem to be taking the advice of the people he has taken on as trusted advisors. More and more, I hear people asking, "What's up with President Bush? Is he sane?"

It's a no-brainer that none of this was partisan. Our leaders' tough questions on Iraq and Bush's foreign policy have never been partisan. We're all in this together. The problem has been that our President has made this war and his foreign policy fiercely political and partisan - all throughout the course, from the lead-up to the war until the present time. President Bush has admitted that he wouldn't even fire the worst Secretary of Defense in recent history before the November elections - all because of politics, knowing fully well that our nation had long been in dire need of a new Defense leader.

If we can't trust our President, we can confirm new administration officials ad infinitum with the possibility that we will still see no appreciable change in the Bush foreign policy. James Jay Carfagno's optimism about unguarded bipartisan moments was based on a confirmation hearing where leaders were searching for signs that the character of Mr. Gates might be the kind of character with the force  that could sway an oddly stubborn and unpopular President toward the change we know that we all need to see.

I wish Robert Gates a lot of luck. He's going to need it, and I hope he can talk a lick of sense into this President's thick and stubborn skull.  

The transcript of the confirmation hearings is here.



Update: Today's headline at Raw Story leads you to a story by Brian Beutler with information in keeping with my thoughts on this matter. -
Sources say Gates confirmation unlikely to lead to major policy changes

Colby Buzzell:A New Podcast

There was a blogger we only knew as "cbftw" back in the days when he was a soldier. Wanting to stay an anonymous soldier-blogger in Iraq, used his initials, and saw "ftw" tattooted on his arm. That's how he got his screen name. He posted from an internet cafe at his base in Iraq without any censorship (while other soldiers wrote on their MySpace accounts and HotorNot.) On his blog, he vividly described the war experience for quite some time before the Army shut him down - temporarily. The soldier-blogger, Colby Buzzell, reminded me of myself - he seemed to have an inexplicable need to share his experiences and thoughts with others. Kind of like talking to yourself, fully knowing others will be reading. I really got to like him - his voice. I was one of thousands of people from all over the world who loved reading "cbftw" the soldier. I remember going ballistic when I went to read him one day and he wasn't there. Boy, was I ever pissed off about it when he disappeared. Look at the size of my headline. Heh heh.

You can listen to this fantastic Ashley Foot interview with guest Colby Buzzell at Allegro Radio:

Radio Allegro:The Pop Culture Podcast
RA2.6: Life After War: Colby Buzzell, Killing Time in Iraq

*Please note there is profanity on this episode so parental discretion is advised.

Colby says that he feels that he's served and sacrificed for his country. Rather than having to go back again, he says that the people who scream the most about supporting the war should go to the war and take their turn. CB thinks that the gung-ho pro-war crowd is "retarded" and the people who say they hate Bush but don't understand why they hate Bush are equally retarded. He says that the sooner we get out of Iraq, the better. The last presidential election's result - the Bush win - caused him to feel sick and nauseous. He couldn't believe the American people would have supported him or the Iraq war. He added that he doesn't like to spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about it.

He joked that he has suffered PSTD from writing his book than from the war.

Trivia: CB was one of the only soldiers with an iPod. He loves the song "Free" by Cat Power and most songs by The Clash (and I'll bet he turned a lot of his fellow soldiers onto his music). Without the music, he couldn't have relaxed and he couldn't have coped with missing his loved ones and his life back home while facing the hell of war.

I'm one of those people who believes that music is so powerful that it helps us transcend time, age, anxiety, grief, hopelessness, religious boundaries, loneliness, whatever... and I think music helped CB stay sane and stay gold through this crazy war. He says he came back "fine" - no flashbacks - no problems readjusting to his life other than the booze habit he picked up over there. He says people can't believe it when he tells them he's fine when they ask - and they almost always ask. He has no special expectations for entitlement just because he fought in a war, but he admits that he's glad that the Iraq War chapter of his life is securely behind him. Some guys aren't able to move on with life and they're the ones who have problems adjusting.

Some of his friends from Iraq have had problems finding decent jobs since they've returned. Some went back to Iraq. CB wrote a book. My War. Trust me, it's a really good book. Colby's not sure what he's going to do next, but I have a feeling that Colby will be just fine - life's a journey and judging by the song he chose for the closing of his podcast, What A Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong, you just know CB's going to be okay.

CB's a good egg. It's for guys like him and all the other troops that I wrote on the sidebar of my original Iddybud blog long ago:

This blog, out of love and respect for our citizens who serve in the armed forces, supports the brave men and women who do their duty for this nation. This blog does not support the current policies of GW Bush. May Providence grant us all the wisdom to know the difference.

Be sure to listen to CB's interview.




What a Wonderful World
by Louis Armstrong

International Carnival of the Pozitivities #6

Ron Hudson hosts the International Carnival of the Pozitivities [ICP] this month with the 6th - World AIDS Day edition. We encourage you to participate in future editions. Next month's ICP [#7] will be hosted by me, Jude Nagurney Camwell, here at Iddybud Journal.

The homepage URL for the ICP is at THIS LINK.

If you have any questions, please feel free to email me.

Obama Too Deliberate to be Believed?

Senator Barack Obama as portrayed in the Economist Magazine, July 2006

Chris Bowers has some interesting and frank points to make about his experience as a supporter of Barack Obama. He's generated an interesting discussion. My comments are here - and they involve subject material that I have previously blogged about - a subject regarding faith and politics that "bugs" me more and more about Senator Obama with each passing day. If he wants to be a great leader, he needs to appear far less calculating.

In a leader, I'm looking for someone I perceive to be saying exactly what he or she means, whatever his or her convictions may be. In a moment, I can spot a person who's reaching too deliberately - too hard - and in a way that's too calculated - for a particular position. Senator Obama is one of those. If anyone tells me he was anti-war before the Iraq War Resolution, I would ask them to listen carefully to what Obama is saying about the war today - now that he is in a position of power. I look for grace in my leaders - and grace, to me, involves staying true to yourself at all times and not deliberately seeking to create a straw-man to stomp on and step over in order to get to a place of greater power.

That said, I believe that Senator Obama has a bright future ahead of him and I hope he would take criticisms like mine as an encouragement to change his rhetoric. I fully support him for the good things I believe that he's doing. I want him to succeed, and I believe he will - in time.

"To everything there is a season..."

Boy and His Dog Killed by Cops over PlayStation3

Dear God, these are days when I regret the consequences that stem from our materialistic and violent society. This boy and his dog should not be dead.

Advent, A Poem by Father Daniel Berrigan

I found this new poem by Father Daniel Berrigan at a feature written by Rev. John Dear at the National Catholic Reporter, who says that "Advent calls us to prepare anew for the coming of the God of peace and God's reign of peace on earth. We do that by working to end war and the causes of war, and making peace with everyone."

I took artistic (blogtistic) license and framed Father Berrigan's lovely poem about the Advent season the way I saw it in my heart and my mind. Two of the photos below are my own - both taken at the conference of teh Network of Spiritual Progressives in Washington, D.C. One of the photos features a fellow blogger and friend, David of Anonymoses, who is the fellow at the end of the line walking (last May) with the Network of Spritual Progressives to our White House to implore our officials to change their foreign policy in Iraq. I believe that thios activity is in keeping with the spirit of Advent and the tone of Father Berrigan's poetic message to us.

"It is not true that we have to wait for those who are specially gifted, who are the prophets of the Church, before we can be peacemakers..."


- May you have a peaceful Advent season
Jude

Advent
By Daniel Berrigan

It is not true that creation and the human family are doomed to destruction and loss --
This is true: For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son,
that whoever believes in him, shall not perish, but have everlasting life.




It is not true that we must accept inhumanity and discrimination,
hunger and poverty, death and destruction --
This is true: I have come that they may have life, and that abundantly.







It is not true that violence and hatred should have the last word,
and that war and destruction rule forever --
This is true: For unto us a child is born, and unto us a Son is given,
and the government shall be upon his shoulder,
And his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
the Everlasting, the Prince of Peace.



It is not true that we are simply victims of the powers of evil who seek to rule the world --
This is true: To me is given authority in heaven and on earth,
and lo, I am with you, even unto the end of the world.

It is not true that we have to wait for those who are specially gifted,
who are the prophets of the Church, before we can be peacemakers.
This is true: I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh,
and your sons and daughters shall prophesy,
your young shall see visions,
and your old shall have dreams.


It is not true that our hopes for the liberation of humanity, for justice, human dignity, and
peace are not meant for this earth and for this history --
This is true: The hour comes, and it is now, that true worshippers
shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth.









So let us enter Advent in hope, even hope against hope.
Let us see visions of love and peace and justice.


Let us affirm with humility, with joy, with faith, with courage:
Jesus Christ -- the Life of the world.

You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive

The 14th century Sufi poet Yunus Emre wrote that under every stone hides a Moses and that the seeker's wealth is poverty. He also assured us that the precious ore we should seek can be found in humbleness. Stone, ore, poverty, humility....all are part of the miner's life.

I came from beginnings as humble as you can imagine. My great grandfather Michael came to Ellis Island from Ukraine with $18 in his pocket. His son, my grandfather John, dug coal in the mountains of Pennsylvania for a living as a young man to support my Grandma Pauline and their family.

He eventually left the mines when opportunity in New York state arrived, but the mines never left him. He died of Black Lung disease when I was a young girl.

This video by Patty Loveless reminds me of my grandparents and my ancestry. Patty talks about losing her own father to the mines.

Gratitude

One of my volunteer experiences in my own community is taking confidential crisis calls from fellow community members. I know, from living it and hearing it, how the Holidays can gut-punch a person in psychological ways that one never expects.Whether it's loneliness, grief, an unexplainable emptiness, a sad or happy memory, or some other frighteningly overwhelming feeling that grips a person, it seems to be maginfied by December.

I know many of you are reading this because there's a change you want to see in this world. I also know that you work extremely hard and that you are very human.

I heard James Taylor singing about shedding a little light on a PBS special the other night in a song recalling the spirit of Martin Luther King, and I thought about how much the world needs your light - no matter how much light you have to spare or who you are. Imagine the inner trials of Martin Luther King in his day.

we are bound together
In our desire to see the world become
A place in which our children
Can grow free and strong
We are bound together
By the task that stands before us
And the road that lies ahead
We are bound and we are bound

In Max Ehrmann's Desiderata, he advises, "With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy." To that, I would only add: Be grateful. Life is uncertain and life can be a rocky road (and I'm not talking about ice cream.) But it isn't all bad and sometimes there's a moment you just can't seem to get yourself out of. Try to breathe and let that moment pass. James Taylor sings about finding that passage through the darkness:

There is a passage through the darkness and the mist
And though the body sleeps the heart will never rest.

I thought I'd share this link* with all of you, along with my blessings and gratitude. May you rise above the chaos - outside and inside yourself - and find your own way to enjoy and embrace the Holidays, whether it's giving to your favorite charities, writing a blogpost, plotting the next political campaign or peace march, climbing a mountain, sitting by a fire, or simply holding your loved one's hand on a winter's night.


* Thanks to Michael Pokocky of Sophistica World for first forwarding the link to me.

Bush: Worst Ever? Worst Over?

At Raw Story, Ron Brynaert has collected quotes from various news sources debating whether or not, when it comes to Presidents, that Bush 43 is the worst ever.

My question, with some admitted fear behind it, is this: Is Bush's worst over?

Have we yet seen the worst from the worst President ever?

We've see in recent days that he is jettisoning [some call it "accepting the resignations of"] many of those who have remained loyally close in his circle of failure.

Who are the people that are taking the place of the old Bush administration guard?

What does Bush plan to take and to get from these people?

Could things get any worse?

Hallelujah! Bolton's Gone!

John Bolton has resigned as U.S. ambassador to the UN and I couldn't be happier for America. Steve Clemons was right last fall when he said that Bolton's chances for confirmation were all but dead in the water. There have been few positive reviews of Bolton's performance on behalf of the American people at the UN, and I want to publicly thank outgoing Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island for refusing to cave in to the Senate confirmation of Mr. Bolton. * I don't call it a reconfirmation because Bolton wasn't confirmed the first time - he was thrown in by a Bush recess appointment.

Three months ago, while Senate confirmation of Bolton looked unlikely, I blogged some thoughts about Bolton, including this:

John Bolton has been carrying the ball for President Bush at the U.N. The failure of his conformation leads us to see that the members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee are seeing the value of the return to tradional diplomacy, which has been appropriately utilized by every Oval Office predecessor of George W. Bush.

The question is: After so many wasted years, with whom will Bush replace Bolton?

A Raw Story article reveals, through information extracted from a recent Roll Call article, that Sen. Harry Reid has a plan that is a "back-door way of preventing President Bush from unilaterally installing controversial nominees in key executive and judicial branch posts through recess appointments."

Republican Questions Bush on $ Millions for Gitmo Compound

"The issue of the tribunals is very controversial. For them to want to move this fast makes me wonder why."

- Congressman James Walsh, chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Quality of Life, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies

From an article by Mark Weiner/Newhouse News Service

On November 17, after uncovering a Defense Department notice on the internet, the Miami Herald broke the story about the Pentagon's plans for a multi-million dollar "mini-city" military commissions compound to be built for Guantanamo Bay terror trials.

In a Syracuse Post Standard article by Newhouse News writer Mark Weiner today, it is reported that the Bush administration plans to approach Congress this coming week with an "emergency request" for over $100 million to build this military compound that will be "seen around the world as a permanent monument to an unfair system of justice", as the group Human Rights Watch has politically framed the compound in question.

Congressman James Walsh (NY-25), who chairs a House military appropriations subcommittee for only three more weeks before Democrats take majority control, is uncomfortable with this "emergency spending" request which would divert already-apropriated funds from other necessary military projects. Congressman Walsh is asking the White House what the hurry is all about.

With the legitimacy of the military commissions set up for the Gitmo terror trials not even settled, with Donald Rumsfeld and other officials [past and present] of the Bush administration are being charged [in Germany] with war crimes at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, and with key strategical errors having been made in our nation's war in Iraq for which history will surely judge on a harshly criftical basis, this is no time for acting quickly, before Republican power is diminshed by the Democrats, to seal the repuation of the already-distrusted Republican-led Congress with one last ugly rubber stamp. James Walsh finally gets it.

After technically losing the November election in his home county, Onondaga, and in Monroe County [Rochester], but winning the overall race by a razor-thin margin against challenger Dan Maffei with the help of gerrymandered rural voters in Upstate New York, James Walsh seems to understand that he needs to do something that until now has seemed foreign to him. He is steppping back and consciously challenging the policies of the Bush administration rather than rubber-stamping them, as he did 90% of the time before nearly losing his Congressional seat.

Mark Weiner's article can be read here.

Pentagon Proposal here [Miami Herald pdf]


UPDATE: And on Monday, December 4 the continuing story made the Washington Post.

Rev. Jim Wallis Delivers Dem Radio Address

This week, Reverend Jim Wallis delivered the Democratic Radio Address.

To listen to his remarks, click here.

I'm Jim Wallis, author of God's Politics. I was surprised and grateful when Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid called to say his party wanted to set a new tone and invite, for the first time, a non-partisan religious leader to deliver their weekly radio address and speak about the values that could unite Americans at this critical time.

So, I want to be clear that I am not speaking for the Democratic Party, but as a person of faith who feels the hunger in America for a new vision of our life together, and sees the opportunity to apply our best moral values to the urgent problems we face. I am not an elected official or political partisan, but a religious leader who believes that real solutions must transcend partisan politics. For too long, we have had a politics of blame and fear, while America is eager for a politics of solutions and hope. It is time to find common ground by moving to higher ground.

Because we have lost a commitment to the common good, politics is failing to solve the deepest crises of our time. Real solutions will require our best thinking and dialogue, but also call us to transformation and renewal.

Most Americans know that the important issues we confront have an essential moral character. It is the role of faith communities to remind us of that fact. But religion has no monopoly on morality. We need a new, morally-centered discourse on politics that welcomes each of us to the table.

A government that works for the common good is central. There is a growing desire for integrity in our government across the political spectrum. Corruption in government violates our basic principles. Money and power distort our political decision-making and even our elections. We must restore trust in our government and reclaim the integrity of our democratic system.

At this moment in history, we need new directions.

Who is left out and left behind is always a religious and moral question. In the Hebrew Scriptures, the health of a society was measured by how it cared for its weakest and most vulnerable, and prosperity was to be shared by all. Jesus proclaimed a gospel that was "good news to the poor."

I am an evangelical Christian, and a commitment to "the least of these" is central to my personal faith and compels my public actions. It is time to lift up practical policies and effective practices that "make work work" for low-income families and challenge the increasing wealth gap between rich and poor. We must find a new moral and political will to overcome poverty that combines personal and social responsibility with a commitment to support strong families.

Answering the call to lift people out of poverty will require spiritual commitment and bipartisan political leadership. Since the election, I have spoken with leaders from both parties about creating a real anti-poverty agenda in Congress. We need a grand alliance between liberals and conservatives to produce new and effective strategies.

This week, President Bush met with Prime Minister Maliki of Iraq, seeking solutions to the rapidly deteriorating situation in that civil-war torn nation. Nearly 3,000 Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died. The cost and consequences of a disastrous war are moral issues our country must address. Leaders in both parties are acknowledging that the only moral and practical course is to dramatically change the direction of U.S. policy, starting with an honest national debate about how to extricate U.S. forces from Iraq with the least possible damage to everyone involved.

Our earth and the fragile atmosphere that surrounds it are God's good creation. Yet, our environment is in jeopardy as global warming continues unchecked and our air and water are polluted. Good stewardship of our resources is a religious and moral question. Energy conservation and less dependence on fossil fuels are commitments that could change our future- from the renewal of our lifestyles to the moral redemption of our foreign policies.

A culture that promotes healthy families is necessary to raise our children with strong values, and the breakdown of family and community in our society must be addressed. But we need serious solutions, not the scapegoating of others. And wouldn't coming together to find common ground that dramatically reduces the number of abortions be better than both the left and the right using it as an issue to divide us?

We need a new politics inspired by our deepest held values. We must summon the best in the American people, and unite to solve some of the moral issues of our time. Americans are much less concerned about what is liberal or conservative, what is Democrat or Republican. Rather, we care about what is right and what works.

The path of partisan division is well worn, but the road of compassionate priorities and social justice will lead us to a new America. Building that new America will require greater moral leadership from both Democrats and Republicans, and also from each and every one of us.

I'm Jim Wallis. Thank you and God bless you.

Who Knows Why Cambone Goes?

The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights charged, in a lawsuit two years ago in Germany, that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld bears direct responsibility for the torture of U.S. detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and the U.S. Navy prison at Guantanamo by approving illegal interrogation techniques. His undersecretary of Defense, Stephen Cambone, who resigned yesterday, was also named in that lawsuit.

The Washington Post leads us to believe Cambone has quit because of the spying he's previously authorized on Quakers and other non-threatening American citizens who were involved in anti-war groups. That was bad enough, but I think it's something else. I think Bush is now trying to distance himself from the Defense Department people he kept on for too long while trying to shield himself and his Vice President (Cheney) from political attack about the Iraq mess - the torture, the post-war disaster, et al. If Bush had canned these people when they should have been canned (in Spring 2004 when Abu Ghraib scandal first erupted), Bush would have lost the people's confidence (the little confidence he still had in 2004 about Iraq) and my bet is that he knew he would have lost the 2004 election. So Bush kept all of his administration's "errors" close to his circle, where they could continue the string of failure and deception.

In the most current news, it's said that eleven Iraqis who were held at Abu Ghraib prison and other U.S.-run facilities in Iraq and a Saudi detainee at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, would file a criminal complaint on Nov. 14, according to Michael Rattner of the Center for Constitutionals Rights.

At a May, 2004 Senate Armed Services committee hearing on Iraqi prisoner abuse, the undersceretary of Defense Stephen Cambone said:

"...with respect to the application of the Geneva Convention to detainees in Iraq, from the outset of the war in Iraq, the United States government has recognized and made clear that the Geneva Conventions apply to our activities in that country. Members of our armed forces should have been aware of that."

We know now that his statement isn't true at all. Former Army Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski has said that the case of prisoner abuses in Abu Ghraib wasn't just a case of a few bad apples and that the knowledge and responsibility clearly "goes all the way to the top of the chain of command to the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, and to the Vice President, Dick Cheney."

The Center for Constitutionals Rights' spokesman Mr. Rattner has said,

"Now that Rumsfeld has resigned he no longer has the type of immunity typically given to heads of state and high-ranking government officials."

Since the Military Commissions Act signed by Bush last month gives immunity to U.S. officials in connection with detainee interrogations, "the German courts no longer have the excuse of saying these cases are going to be prosecuted in U.S. courts," Rattner said.

A TIME magazine article has more on the German lawsuit. I don't see any way that Cambone could have remained welcome to stay in a White House that will likely want to make this entire Iraq mess look like it was always (and solely) the Defense Department heads' fault. We know better - we followed Dick Cheney's role in the "shadow-CIA" Office of Special Planning all throughout the lead-up to the biggest mistake our nation has ever made. Bush Attorney General Alberto Gonzales may also be taking a lot of heat if this lawsuit has any legs - and perhaps a permenent vacation.

World AIDS Day -December 1

When asked to write something for December's International Carnival of the Pozitivities, a cooperative blog effort to help others understand how HIV/AIDS effects real human beings, I immediately agreed. I've lost (and am losing) too many friends and loved ones to a disease that no one talks about because of pride, fear, embarrassment, depression, or pain. We need to open up and talk about HIV/AIDS and how it effects our lives and the lives of those around us.

December 1, 2006 is World AIDS Day. On this day, I'll tell you about Chuck, a boy I grew up with and called a close friend. He was always a joyous person. A gifted musician and a gay male living in a town where his prospects for happiness with openness about his true self were dulled by prejudice and fear, he moved to San Francisco in the late 70s. Chuck was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in the days when the public barely knew what the heck it was. Those were the days when President Reagan's response to the easily forseeable oncoming public health crisis was "halting and ineffective," according to his biographer Lou Cannon. "Those infected initially with this mysterious disease -- all gay men -- found themselves targeted with an unprecedented level of mean-spirited hostility." [source of quote]

I knew Chuck's mother and father all my life. They were good friends to my own parents and Chuck was more to me like family than just a friend. He was like a big brother to me. An only child, Chuck was luckier than some others of his time. He was "out" from the beginning. None of us who knew and loved him ever questioned his personal choices. He had wonderful, loving and supportive parents.

The disease took him quickly once the opportunistic infections begin to emerge. At that time, medicine could do little for him. There just wasn't enough known about the disease except what you'd hear from the so-called "moral majority" - that it was a punishment from God for the sin of homosexuality. When I speak about real values today on this blog - love, compassion, understanding, human rights, justice - I speak about the memory of the lack of compassion and the outright fear-mongering of the Religious Right toward a disease that stole someone I knew and loved.

Looking back, I wish I could have been mature enough to have been an effective listener in the many times when Chuck and his mother must have needed to talk to someone confidentially. I wasn't old enough, nor was I educated enough at the time. I remember my own parents explaining it all to me. I didn't learn about HIV/AIDS from my own government. Instead, I learned it the hard way, and believe me, I realize it was a lot harder for those who had to suffer the night sweats and the never ending body pains - hardly realizing what was slowly killing them. I made a journey West ten years ago just to visit Chuck's grave. I wish to God Chuck could have been standing there - alive. Thankfully, there has been good progress in medical research that allows for HAART (anti-retroviral therapy) that can improve the quality and length of life for many HIV-positive people. The importance of early detection is key to survival. If you are not sure, please go and get tested today.

On December 1 - World AIDS day - I see that there are many people in this world who have taken up the cause because our leaders abdicated their responsibilities so long ago. President Reagan could have chosen to end the homophobic rhetoric that flowed from so many in his administration. Dr. C. Everett Koop, Reagan's surgeon general, has said that because of "intradepartmental politics" he was cut out of all AIDS discussions for the first five years of the Reagan administration. On June 1 1987, after being booed at an AIDS conference, then-Vice President George HW Bush wondered aloud in front of a live mic: "Who was that? Some gay group out there?" We're way behind the eight-ball, but I give former President Clinton credit for really opening up the gates of knowledge about HIV/AIDS during his administration. With a foul scent of the old "moral majority" foolishness, the current Bush administration seems to have closed some doors and brought back some of the fear and ignorance about birth control and how it can stop the deadly disease in our own nation as well as overseas.

A leader who understands values from the most human perspective would scramble to push an agenda that would include real and complete sex education for the protection of the children of this world. If you think that frank talk about sex causes children to lose their innocence, just wait until you see what the effect of AIDS will do to their sense of innocence. I was no more than an innocent child when Chuck died of AIDS-related complications. It is realizing that Chuck was an innocent child that makes me so sad as I write these words today. We're all innocent children.

Break the silence.
If we want to know all we can about HIV/AIDS, go to the World AIDS Day website.

Please say a prayer for Chuck and promise me you'll teach your children well.


________________

See Royce Hardin's moving, honest and beautiful testimony to the trials of HIV/AIDS, along with the mysteries and wonders of love, life, death, and the spirit.

See outgoing UN secretary-general Kofi Annan's statement for World AIDS Day.

Cindy Sheehan on The Draft

"Why would we force feed this monster that steals our children and bleeds our pocketbooks dry? We should never force our children into the mouth of the behemoth, but we should also do everything in our power to stop them from volunteering for the same duty. Putting more of our bodies under the control of irresponsible maniacs, is just, well, irresponsible!"

- Cindy Sheehan on the topic of military conscription in the age of the Bush Wars

I got a note from Cindy Sheehan on MySpace today with her opinion of the recent chatter about reactivating the draft. Here's an excerpt:

Although, I admire Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY), who himself, served during the Korean conflict and has been serving America , honorably, as a Congressman for many years, I am 100%, categorically opposed to forced conscription and think that Mr. Rangel is seriously misguided on this issue.

First of all, we had forced conscription during the entire outrage that was the Vietnam War. That war lasted 13 years and cost the lives of millions of people. A draft didn’t stop that war and, in fact, provided fresh and continual cannon fodder for the war profiteers. Escalation of that conflict was horrific as the proposed escalation of Iraq will only beget new slaughter on a heretofore unprecedented and unimaginable scale. Forced conscription deals out the death and destruction at a greater and more deadly pace.

Secondly, a draft will never be fair and balanced. The children of the wealthy (who oftentimes are war profiteers themselves) will always be able to get out of war. Children of presidents, future presidents, Congressional Reps and Senators will never be forced to serve in the wars that their fathers and mothers commit other children to. A draft will not equalize what we have for the most part in our country, now, a poverty draft. The children of the poor and marginalized of our society are the ones who always have to pay for the greed of a very few.

Finally, a draft will only give the war machine more of our children to consume to generate its wealth. As Rep. Rangel said, we can’t fight wars in North Korea and Iran without a draft. I say “Amen!” We can’t fight wars in North Korea and Iran without a draft! More bullet sponges for two more needless wars: Please, God, no!

Jacksonville Daily News Boldly Defends Goliath Wal Mart

I give the editors at The Daily News in Jacksonville, N.C. credit for at least not letting Wal Mart's spreading of a false and misleading story about John Edwards last week go any further with more lies. Too many newspapers shamelessly jumped on conjecture borne of smear propaganda that was initiated last week by Wal Mart's coroporate headquarters after Edwards fiercely criticized their policies toward their employees.

I have a big problem with the Jacksonville Daily News editors' rationale regarding Senator Edwards support for the American worker.

I'm trying to figure out why these editiors would choose to defend the corporate behemoth with such lame rationalizations.

First example:

Employees in this nation have choices. If a Wal-Mart employee doesn’t think he or she is getting paid a fair wage, the employee is free to negotiate better pay and benefits. If that doesn’t work out, the employee can seek employment elsewhere.

Perhaps these news editors are out of touch because they make a decent wage and enjoy company benefits and forget that they're speaking about Wal Mart jobs with inadequate health care benefits for the employee and their children - - sometimes no health benefits at all.

In essence, this is what these editors are suggesting for the Wal Mart employees with horrible (or no) benefits and inadequate pay:
-
- Love your job - you're lucky to have it, you low wage peons. Ask, then shut up and accept it when Wal Mart tells you "no" and don't complain about the inequity. (This is not the American tradition.)
- Let the little Davids try to fight the corporate giant alone with no moral support from their government leaders, (This is not the American expectation.) or
- Leave your job if you dislike the pay and beneifits so some other David can come and be used up by Goliath. (This is not the American way)

Those kinds of ideas sound too close to pre-labor union America to sound "American" to me. Moral leadership is necessary in this particular situation. Wal Mart isn't some small business - they are a giant and they've rolled over small businesses and reduced choice in this nation (for shoppers and job seekers) in the name of low prices (which really aren't all that low if you consider the negative value of the dumb-down trade offs in our communities, with Wal Mart destroying or driving out the local classes of entrepreneurs and community leaders.) Our government has been sitting back and letting it go on for too long. The low wage American worker feels morally abandoned by their leaders. Is it any wonder they have become resigned to having to keep these economically unfair job packages? To argue had been hopeless for those with no voice..until leaders like Senator John Edwards came along and spoke for them.

..which brings me to the next decidedly misbegotten theory from the Jacksonville Daily News editors:

WakeUpWalMart.com claims that many of Wal-Mart’s practices are un-American. Of course, millions of Americans who shop at the retailer would beg to differ.

That's a hoot. What makes an American innately and undeniably "American" is certainly not Wal Mart and we should be aware of what they are implying and resent and reject the ridiculous implication. The Smiley Face is not the Red, White and Blue.

Here's another hoot: these editors speak as if Americans have a wider choice on where to go these days for their sundries and household needs. The strangest part, for me, is to see the editors assuming the playing field is even for Wal Mart and the few "moms and pops" that are still left competing with Wal Mart stores in this country. Mom and Pop have been steamrolled - flattened like pancakes by Wal Mart.

I'd wager, if you explained to the son of a recently-hired Wal Mart worker who'd lost his textile mill job and health benefits to "outsourcing" (and who can't even afford to get his son to the doctor when he's sick) that people are buying goods made of textiles from Pakistan at a low price because Dad no longer works for the American textile company that once supplied his own family with all the benefits and pay they'd needed to get by, the young son would "get it." The son would "get" the fact that Dad will no longer be able to afford college for him while those shoppers save a few pennies on those towels that were made in a faraway place of which he can't pronounce the name. If a kid can get it, why don't the editors of the Jacksonville Daily News get it? Perhaps the publisher had best get off its own anti-community right-wing because it's looking mightily ravaged from scraping bottom.

They say:

Businesses in the United States, whether they are corporate giants such as Wal-Mart or small mom-and-pop shops on Main Street, need less interference by government and politicians.

..as if the moms-and-pops ever had a choice or a chance against Wal Mart under the eye of a government who sat back and watched American choices fade with the sunset of globalization. Globalization will continue and I wonder when some of these ideological snails who call themselves "American" will catch up with the fact that regulations have been and will be (now more than ever) required in a democracy where American work, entrepreneurship, and leadership are still valued highly by the community and by the government that represents community members who work so hard and aspire to something greater.

It is very "American" to support the American worker and the American small business. Don't you forget it!

I think The Jacksonville News editors had best forget worrying their corporate-giant-loving heads about WakeUpWalMart and concentrate on "WakeUpJacksonvilleDailyNewsEditors".

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See WakeUpWalmart's latest ad.

Note: The editorial in today's Pittsburgh Tribune-Review is not simply constructive in its criticism, it is viscerally anti-Edwards. When an American leader generates this kind of reaction from newspaper editors, you can't help but wonder why they are defensive of Wal Mart to the point of outright political attack. It couldn't be because they have a right wing history, could it? Am I living in an alternative universe? I thought we, the people, voted against Bushworld last November 7, yet I can still smell Bushworld in these editorials.

Update: November 27 - The New Hampshire Union Leader continues the tradition of American newspaper editors oddly defending a corporate giant with what one rationally scrutinizing reader calls undisciplined logic. Senator Edwards provides a rebuttal in an AP article on November 28th appearing in the same newspaper (the same paper that endorsed Steve Forbes for President
in the 2000 election and Bush in 2004.)

Sunday Reflection

A Living Prayer
by Alison Krauss