A comment on the wisdom of invading Iran....

Its EASY to believe things that are true and apparent and visible.To believe something that is absolutely and utterly wrong, false, clearly mistaken and borderline insane on the other hand requires great faith, strength, stamina, resolute determination and courage.

From Americablog

For a long time, perhaps roughly 2003 to 2005, there was a disturbing edge to discourse in this country, and I think our society will eventually look back upon this time not unlike we now do the McCarthyist years: as a shameful period in our nation's history, one in which the prevailing powers made the inappropriate common and the opposition was eventually proven both right and righteous.

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/12/dixie-chicks-movie-great-and.html

I actually feel this is an understatment. Insofar as a nation can be spoken of like an individual, in March 2003 we were batshit insane. Jes sayin'.........

Quick note

Of coures, in my view, anybody whose idea of the Creator of The Universe is so limited that they can imagine that said creator fails to regard all humanity equally and instead differentiates between those who face Mecca when they pray from those who face an altar, then you too are a victim of the blindness that drives most of the clearly irrational conflict in the world

Lifted Directly from Digby.....

I do know that when someone speaks like a fool and acts like a spoiled child and appears to be "intellectually uncurious" and has never done anything in life that would give you a clue that he knows how to govern or lead -- well, it's not a good idea to make that person the most powerful person on the planet. If we've learned nothing else, I hope we have learned that.......
The past six years have been a tragedy and we desperately need some thoughtful, intelligent, competent leadership to set this right.

Read it all

Once again, the easiet way for me to come up with new posts is to cut'n'paste my own comments elsewhere!

I like the fact that the word "christianist" exists (even if I'm unlikely to use it with the precise meaning that Sullivan intends) because I think its important to differentiate between what Christianity means as expressed in the Gospels and what Christianity means as expressed in current public discourse.

One of the overriding themes of the New Testament is that of hypocrisy. Judge not, lest you be judged, when you pray, pray in secret, render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, don't speak of the speck in your brother's eye when you have a log in your own..etc.

The degree to which politically active Christian sects stray from these ideals is the degree to which I want a label to separate their beliefs from my own.

Call me selfish but I hope that "christianist" makes Oxford's English within ten years.

A response to a comment at GG's

Where do you find support for the idea that "training the Iraqi army" is a feat still within our grasp?

Who'd's response actually brings to light one of the more serious problems affecting us as Americans.

Contrary to some of the accusations levelled by the more serious, libelous warmongers, Americans feel at home travelling anywhere in this country and have no trouble understanding that our loyalty and the "providing for the common defense" that we all share operates on a national level. I can fly to Birmingham, Alabama one day and Chicago, Illinois the next and while I might feel uncomfortable getting into serious political debates in barrooms in those places, I can reasonably expect to come away from such a conversation alive.

In Afghanistan and Iraq, however such confidence is totally misplaced. Tribal/Religious identity trumps nationalism and we as Americans just don't get it.

That's why Who'd and others who think similarly think that "a sovereign Iraq able to truly act like one, including quelling sectarian violence, and resisting the influence of Iran is actually achievable. Nothing in their immediate experience suggests otherwise.

That's why I pray vigorously that at some point in our near future, we can put adults in charge of our foreign policy and give the frat-boys a well deserved time-out.

Revisionist History

I recently had the opportunity to visit the Nixon Library.

I learned two things.

1: The truth is whatever someone is willing to say it is.

2: Or not.....

Thank you

I'd just like to take this opporunity to thank American voters all over the Country for restoring my faith.

Quoting Myself:

I happen to be old enough to remember when the stakes in the nuclear stalemate was the survival of the entire planet. It almost seemed like we were given a puzzle. "Can the human race figure out a way to get along without anhilating the entire planet." Facing such choices we nevertheless (except for a few zits -J Edgar Hoover, Nixon - Kissinger) chose to keep the Constitution of the United States intact and if we did engage in horribly unethical behavior (blind LSD trials, sensory deprivation research) we at least had the decency to PRETEND we weren't doing it. Besides we had a monolithic scary enemy to point to to justify the actions.

Fast forward to 2006:

We are now so afraid of 15 guys armed with box-cutters, that we're completely trashing the Constitutional protections that have served us so well these last 200 years and were openly declaring our willingness to use the same techniques which justified our outrage in years past. In other words we are becomming our enemy.

Just for the record....

While I'm enjoying watching the Congressional meltdown over the Foley thing, I still think that the willful destruction of our Constitutional guarantees of freedom is a more important issue...jes sayin'

from the NYT

They’ll know that in 2006, Congress passed a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy, our generation’s version of the Alien and Sedition Acts

From me:

The problem is that once this law is on the books, it's not going to go away and "who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States" is sufficiently vague that a few years down the line it can be used to mean just about anything. Like perhaps giving money to PETA or Greenpeace.

This has to go down as the worst legislation ever passed in my lifetime and certainly an indicator that morality and human decency has fallen victim to political expediency.

It is a sad day in America.

The tragic case of Maher Arar.

Read about it .here

My comment follows......

Where were the media..??

What gets me is simply this....The rendition took place in September 2002. He was released in October 2003. I distinctly remember reading about his case at the time (probably at antiwar.com) Why is it taking until September 2006 for this to be getting prominent coverage. He's now been exonerated by the Canadian government. But he's been an innocent man unlawfully detained all along. Shouldn't more Americans have been informed of this back in 2003 when it could have made a difference

Six Questions for Dr. Emile A. Nakhleh on the CIA and the Iraq War

There are 1.4 billion people in the Islamic world and only a tiny minority, maybe 2 or 3 percent, are politically active. Just like Jews and Christians, most have kids to raise and bills to pay. Most view Islam as a personal and societal force, not a political one, and only a tiny minority becomes terrorists.Link

From Kevin Drum

It's not because liberals don't understand the threat, it's because liberals seem to be the only ones who do understand the threat these days — namely that public opinion in the Muslim world is our biggest problem, and conventional military action only makes this problem worse

Link

Standin’ at the Crossroads by Tom Chartier

Five years ago America suddenly and brutally found itself at a major intersection of its history. September 11, 2001 was America’s crossroads. At that emotionally charged moment, Americans chose the path of revenge. They chose hastily, ignoring warnings from those still possessed of rational thought. Since that moment, America has been charging unchecked and blind toward self-destruction

Link Here

I can't believe I used that phrase in a sentence!

Lefties and righties should be in agreement about the evils of our current administration. Because after all, using the military to provide perquisites for particular industries at the expense of the economy as a whole certainly runs counter to any free-market idealism one could care to entertain.

The degree that so-called conservatives come to the defense of the current administration is the degree to which they have abandoned any principles and are now engaged in masturbatory xenophobia (it feels good to hate people!)

Quagmire means never having to say you're sorry

He ought to be too ashamed to continue pontifficating and to shunned to be able to do so -- at the very least without admitting his error, recanting and apologizing.

Its called cognitive dissonance and it can be quite crippling. When faced with a choice between perceiving reality and feeling good about ones self, the feeling good wins hands down.

Everybody does it, its not a phenomenon limited to warmongering wingnuts. But in the hands of said wingnuts, its exceedingly dangerous!


Unclaimed Territory - by Glenn Greenwald: So wrong that it re-defines "wrongness"

From AmericaBlog

Yes, well, we've been at war in Iraq in order to stop home-grown British terrorists from blowing up US airplanes.



Link here

Digby:

When your country is engaged in dangerous wars based on lies and obscure reasoning, it is immoral to say nothing simply because you are afraid it will make you look bad.

Link

Just quoting myself......

It was a few weeks ago that I pointed out that the only real commodity that matters in the world is consensus. After all the value of money only exists because we all agree to value it. The chain of command in a military heirarchy only exists because everyone agrees to obey it. Our Constitution has only survived because we all agree to honor it. These instiitutions have tons more power than we give them credit for.

This is why the battle for "hearts and minds" is so important and it's also why the "moral high ground" and "rule of law" that we've so blatantly abandoned when the going got rough needs to be reclaimed.

Digby's turn again.

Yes, it has had widespread political implications, political implications predicted by many, many of us who could see that sending a bunch of Americans into the heart of the middle east with no knowledge of the culture, a lie for a mission, an officer corps convinced that Arabs were primitive creatures who had to be subdued by brute force and sexual humiliation and a political leadership that lived on starry-eyed dreams of American omnipotence and high-tech fairy dust --- was a colossal mistake of epic proportions.

It was all there for people to see. Seymour Hersh saw it and he was called a terrorist by Richard Perle. That was par for the course.
link

Here's an extremely pertinent quote from Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift when he was on Hardball last week.

SWIFT: It‘s not whether they deserve it or not. It‘s how we conduct ourselves. It has to do where if we say that our opponent can cause us not to follow the rules anymore, then we‘ve lost who we are. We‘re the good guys. We‘re the guys who follow the rule and the people we fight are the bad guys and we show that every day when we follow the rules, regardless of what they do. It‘s what sets us apart. It‘s what makes us great and in my mind, it‘s what makes us undefeatable, ultimately.

I find the fact that we're even having a discussion about torture, let alone that some people are coming out in favor, profoundly troubling. When we have become our enemy, then we no longer have the standing to attack the enemy. What next? A debate on the efficacy of beheadings in discouraging crime in cities?

here's the link

I liked my comment on Glenn's site so much, I posted it here too.

PS. Does this mean killing has now been sanctioned by the left?

Shooter's epiphany reveals a lot about how the right wing mind works in general.

He just can't get it through his head that there's a difference between legitimate self defense and wanton aggression.
He can't understand that there's a difference between taking prisoners in a field of battle and interrogating them vs sticking light wands up their asses just for yucks.
He doesn't realize that there's a difference between a joke based on the premise that the president is an idiot vs one based on the premise that 50% of the nation are traitors against the other 50%.
And lastly, he doesn't understand that there's a difference between using wiretap technology to detect and thwart those who would do us harm following the procedures set in place for the purpose vs. giving one agency carte blanche over the entire US communication infrastrusture and telling them to "have at it!"

Digby wins the "irresistable quote of the day"

Whether Rove cut a deal or Fitz just couldn't make a case for those two crimes is unknown. What is not unknown is whether Rove is a lying, scumbag piece of shit. He is.


Link here

Digby

The right specializes in schoolyard taunts and sleazy gossip because they must attract the stupid vote in order to get elected and that's the only humor stupid voters understand. Link

From Alan Bock

The U.S. has made mistakes in dealing with jihadism in part because it has had little firsthand intelligence of the kind that only human beings operating in delicate and sometimes dangerous environments can gather.

Link

From Matthew Yglesias guest-blogging at TPM

The issue is that there are actual limits to what our troops can accomplish. They're soldiers, not magicians.

Link

via Paul Craig Roberts

The question presents itself: Are Americans guilty of treason when they turn their backs on the Constitution? Treason is betrayal of country. And what defines country? In the United States, the Constitution defines country. The Bush regime's assault on the Constitution is an assault on America.

Link Here

From: An Open Letter to Richard Cohen By William Rivers Pitt

It isn't an excess of outrage that plagues this nation today, but an abject lack of it.

Link

Billmon depresses again...

Friends don't send friends to jail -- or smash their presses or abolish their political parties or line them up against the wall and shoot them.

The problem is that the tissue of this particular lie has been eroding ever since the Clinton impeachment, if not before, and is now worn exceedingly thin. It's becoming harder and harder to conceal the ruthlessness of the struggle for power, or ignore the consequences of losing it.

Here's The Link

Stolen from Digby

Are we all clear on how this works now? Lying about fellatio leads to lethal abuse of power by the state. Flatly refusing to obey the laws he signed and lying about national security serves the common good. This is your modern Republican party in a nutshell: A dictatorship of puritanical busybodies.

link here

Re Glenn Greenwald's new book....

>i love the thought that there are going to be thousands of wigged out, right-wing super patriots who buy this book thinking it's their preferred type of reading.<

As well they should. Patriotism is after all about not only loving your country, but participating in its governance and accepting responsibility for its actions. If our country's actions don't reflect our values, then we have a responsibility to try and bring about change.

I think more and more people are realizing this and are waking up to notice that our values are NOT being reflected in our governments actions.

I'm actually holding out hope that more Republicans will also realize that civil liberties are not a partisan issue but rather affect us all and will help to pull us back from the precipice

Today we quote Scott Ritter

Sandy Berger is a liar every bit as much as Condoleezza Rice is. Madeleine Albright’s a liar every bit as much as Donald Rumsfeld is. I mean, they’ve all lied about the same thing, which is that Iraq represented a threat in the form of weapons of weapons of mass destruction that warranted military action.

The article



His Book

Buy this while your at it!

Too short to excerpt

Just follow the link

Re: Iran

So Bush wants to be remembered as the one President who had the "courage" (read - complete lack of accountability) to prevent Iran from aquiring a WMD and he refuses to rule out the first use of an atomic weapon against a country with which we are NOT currently at war.

Tell me again which one is the rougue state?

Stolen from Digby

Pacifism is a respectable philosophy that has been a part of the American (hell, the Christian) experience forever. And it, at least, has some intellectual coherence, unlike this hawkish/centrist mish mash of nothingness you find among the so-called liberal hawks
Full post here

Another excite poll

Testifying before a Senate committee, former Nixon White House counselor John Dean asserted Friday that President Bush's conduct in connection with a domestic spying program exceeds the wrongdoing that toppled President Nixon from power. The Senate, Dean said, should censure or reprimand Bush as proposed in a resolution by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin). (AP)
Do you think the Senate should censure President Bush over conduct related to the domestic wiretapping program?


Yes 49% => 4178 votes

No 48% => 4113 votes

I'm not sure 2% => 224 votes
Current number of voters: 8515

Kool-aid anyone?

President Bush said Wednesday that Saddam Hussein, not continued U.S. involvement in Iraq, is responsible for ongoing sectarian violence that is threatening the formation of a democratic government. In response to critics who say the U.S. presence in the wartorn nation is fueling the insurgency, Bush said that Saddam was a tyrant and used violence to exacerbate sectarian divisions to keep himself in power, and that as a result, deep tensions persist to this day. (AP)
What do you think is the chief cause of ongoing sectarian violence in Iraq - ongoing U.S. involvement in the country, or the legacy of Saddam Hussein?


Saddam's legacy 36% => 2252 votes

U.S. involvement 29% => 1815 votes

Both are equally to blame 30% => 1909 votes

I'm not sure 3% => 224 votes
Current number of voters: 6200

From John at AmericaBlog

You simply can't sit back, hug a tree and sing cumbaya in your Birkenstocks by the campfire and expect the crystal fairy to hand you your civil rights and your country back.


Link

I'm occasionally reassured.

Do you think the U.S. should establish long-term military bases in Iraq?


Yes 25% => 2606 votes

No 69% => 6962 votes

I'm not sure 4% => 484 votes
Current number of voters: 10052

Today's Quote - Joshua Micah Marshall

He's set on a destructive course, laced with corruption and fed by extremism. And he mistakenly believes that stubborness and ignorance constitute a virtue he calls 'leadership'.

Link

I hate to tell Auntie Pinko this

But American audiences are shallow myopic selfish ADD victims!


"Even well-intentioned journalists are often betrayed by a relentless focus on playing to a conventional wisdom that depicts American audiences as shallow, myopic, selfish individuals with short attention spans and an appetite for the sensational."

Link here

I comment at AmericaBlog

The exchange between F&L and gorilla is a great example of what's happening among Dems in general. Here we have a pacifist who would refuse to kill on principle ( a position I'm quite sympathetic toward) countered by someone who would actually like to regain control of where the country is headed so we can bring this madness to an end! In order to do that, we need to take a bite out of the center, which of course means a> not appearing weak b> acknowleging that most people in our military feel that they are honestly and morally defending our nation c>not set ourselves up to be caricatured.

Today's Quote - The Green Knight

Personally, I no longer give a crap whether people respect my beliefs or not. If they do, they do, and if they don't there's very little I can do to change their minds. Ultimately, it comes down to personality type, perhaps. Some people don't like the Beatles. What are you gonna do?

My e-mail to Russ Feingold

I, unfortunatly am not a constituent of yours but I do wish to write in support of your censure resolution. The effort our President is exerting to make the executive branch unaccountable to the American people will have ramifications far beyond any one person's term in office. I am grateful for your efforts to bring this to the attention of the American Public.

My stolen quote for today

"People place their hand on the Bible and swear to uphold the Constitution; they don't put their hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible," he said.

Jamie Raskin

via Preemptive Karma

Today's Quote from Mark Danner

Military power is good for blowing things up; it's good for destroying things. It's not good for building a new order. It takes a great deal more power, skill, and patience to construct an enduring order in Iraq.

Link

I've always said when your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When your only tool is a bomb everything looks like a target.

Matthew Yglesias pisses me off.

Fundamentally, if invading Iraq had proven to be a good idea I doubt there would be all that much concern about the president's honesty. The basic problem is that the war wasn't a good idea. The lying is sort of icing on the cake

And this guy's supposed to be on my team.

War is NEVER a good idea. Even if it might ever be necessary it is NEVER a "good idea". And the lying is The WHOLE EFFING PROBLEM!

link

George W. Bush 3% - I know I'm impressed!

Happy Presidents' Day!
Who do you think was the greatest U.S. president that served in the last 30 years?


Jimmy Carter 6% => 588 votes

Ronald Reagan 47% => 4614 votes

George H.W. Bush 1% => 112 votes

Bill Clinton 23% => 2269 votes

George W. Bush 3% => 373 votes

None of them were great 17% => 1737 votes

I'm not sure 1% => 105 votes
Current number of voters: 9798

I comment at Glenn Greenwald

The framers of the constitution understood the corrupting influence of power and did everything they could to guard against it. It doesn't matter whose "team" you're on. Can you imagine the howling that would be going on if it were Janet Reno who was claiming the right to wiretap without oversight?

(Actually we don't need to imagine it, we can remember it.) Anyone remember the "clipper chip"?

This battle is of crucial impoortance because whatever the result, it will affect the stucture of power in this country for decades to come.



Link

Posted without comment

Generally speaking, do you approve, disapprove, or have mixed feelings about the way President George W. Bush is handling his job? (Related AP article)

Strongly approve 23% => 2382 votes

Somewhat approve 14% => 1512 votes

Have mixed feelings 9% => 929 votes

Somewhat disapprove 5% => 550 votes

Strongly disapprove 47% => 4922 votes

I'm not sure 0% => 17 votes
Current number of voters: 10312

A comment I posted on Glenn Greenwald's site.

Too many people it seems have forgotten the lessons of Kent State and the 68 democratic convention. Violent action against citizens over their politics is a real possibility, if we can't maintain the rule of law.

Quoting from your post yesterday "the Administration has now baldly stated that whatever it is allowed to do against our enemies in a war, it is equally entitled to exercise all of the same powers against American citizens on American soil."

So what happens when the eavesdropping program discovers someone who's a really bad guy but they can't prosecute him because they've tainted the evidence?

We already know what they do if he happens to be in Pakistan.

I am occasionally encouraged that people are starting to get it.

What do you think should be the single most important priority in the federal budget?


Extending tax cuts 9% => 348 votes

Fighting the war on terrorism 18% => 674 votes

Medicare 7% => 265 votes

Reconstructing the Gulf Coast region 4% => 159 votes

Reducing domestic spending 4% => 170 votes

Reducing the federal deficit 23% => 856 votes

Social Security 9% => 354 votes

Stimulating job growth 11% => 403 votes

None of the above 7% => 250 votes

I'm not sure 2% => 92 votes
Current number of voters: 3571

From Glenn Greenwald

In case anyone wonders why I think this stuff is scary....

"Put another way, the Administration has now baldly stated that whatever it is allowed to do against our enemies in a war, it is equally entitled to exercise all of the same powers against American citizens on American soil. "

Link

From read JDM

I understand that our soldiers are making sacrifices. But I don’t really feel like my freedoms are on the line in Iraq at the moment. Maybe they are. But if so, I’m more concerned with how they got over there in the first place. I mean, they’re my freedoms, aren’t they? Shouldn’t they be over here with the rest of my things? I’m going to need some answers to those questions if “Defending Our Freedom” is going to work as a pro-war argument for me.

Full article here

From the Washington Post

Police escorted Sheehan from the visitors' gallery above the House chamber after causing a disruption, said a Capitol Police official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because details of the incident were sketchy. he was lying.


link

First I'll quote Digby quoting Juan Cole

"Democracy depends not just on elections but on a rule of law, on stable institutions, on basic economic security for the population, and on checks and balances that forestall a tyranny of the majority. Elections in the absence of this key societal context can produce authoritarian regimes and abuses as easily as they can produce genuine people power. Bush is on the whole unwilling to invest sufficiently in these key institutions and practices abroad."

Then I'll just mention that it seems rather unwilling to invest in these things at home either.


the Digby Link

The Juan Cole Link

My point exactly!

From the Boston Globe

On a legal level, however, Bush's initiative has deeper implications, analysts said. If the public and the Congress accept Bush's assertion of power, they would clear the way for an increase in presidential power that could last long after Bush leaves office, the analysts said.

''This power will lie around like a loaded weapon for any future incumbent to use when he wants to override a law," said Bruce Fein, a former Justice Department official in the Reagan administration. ''There will be terrorism forever, so it will become a permanent fixture on our legal landscape.


link here

Shamelessly exerpting again

This time from Digby

Notice how Limbaugh and the preachers pander to the depraved imagination? It's not religious values these people are selling. They are selling a brutal, domineering, degenerate culture, making their listeners and viewers wallow in it, plumbing the depths of the subconscious, drawing forth Goyaesque images of bestiality and violence and death. That's a feature of some religions, to be sure, but it's not the nice upright Christian morality everybody's pretending it is.

Yet another reminder that 50% of people have below average intelligence.

Do you think an independent counsel should be appointed to investigate whether the Bush administration’s domestic eavesdropping program violated the law?


Yes 48% => 7797 votes

No 50% => 8176 votes

I'm not sure 1% => 224 votes
Current number of voters: 16197

Quoting ReddHedd who quoted Steve Clemons

Now is the time for true patriots to dig deep and raise their voices against the tyranny of King George. The question is, how many true patriots do we have in Congress and on the judicial bench? This is not a political issue, it is an American issue that crosses political party boundaries. If liberty will not be defended by the people of this nation, then liberty ceases to exist.

Either you are for liberty -- or you are for a King. You choose.

ReddHedd citing Steve Clemons

I can't believe someone actually wrote this sentence without their head exploding.

Bush has the chance to show his respect for what he calls Americans' personal freedoms. Now we'll see if the president rises to the occasion.



link here

Re: John Caroll's colums as link to by David Gans

I - like Jon Carroll have always assumed that this kind of eavesdropping was going on and that data mining technology was being used domestically. That isn't what bothers me. What bothers me is that in the context of the revelation that this has been going on, the president has abruptly declared that he is no longer bound by acts of Congress signed into law. He made the same declaration when he signed the bill that contains the McCain amendement. Not even back when the Chicago Police were beating the heads of photographers outside the Democratic National Convention, did I ever imagine that our nation would descend to the point where the phrases "legalizing torture" and "extraordinary rendition" and "indefinite detention" would enter our ordinary discourse. But here we are!

The original column

David Gans' Post

The most reasonable analysis of the NSA situation that I've encountered to date.

A more nuanced explanation may lie in the physics of the challenges faced by the NSA and the availability of sophisticated technologies not foreseen when the FISA law was passed in 1978.

link here

Every single American citizen needs to read this post.

This represents the most blatant executive power grab since Lincoln suspended habeus corpus and no one seems to be noticing.

Glenn Greenwald cross posting at Digby

We don't need no stinking badges!

''Of course the president has the obligation to follow this law, [but] he also has the obligation to defend and protect the country as the commander in chief, and he will have to square those two responsibilities in each case," the official added. ''We are not expecting that those two responsibilities will come into conflict, but it's possible that they will."

Per the Boston Globe

Today's quote is from Glenn Greenwald

Even Americans who agree on nothing else know, even if only on the most submerged and basest levels, that what distinguishes America from other countries and what keeps us safe and secure in our liberty is that nobody, including the President, is above the law. Read the full post