I WAS WRONG [Jonah Goldberg]
I should at least admit that my prediction that Cheney would ultimately receive a bump in the polls from the hunting accident mania hasn't panned out.
Still, he remains my favorite politician in the GOP leadership.
Posted at 12:31 PM
JONAH GO FUCK YOURSELF!
President Bush said his 2004 re-election victory over Sen. John Kerry was inadvertently aided by Osama bin Laden, The Washington Examiner newspaper reported Tuesday...
"What does it mean? Is it going to help? Is it going to hurt?" Bush told Sammon of the bin Laden tapes. "Anything that drops in at the end of a campaign that is not already decided creates all kinds of anxieties, because you're not sure of the effect.
"I thought it was going to help," Bush said. "I thought it would help remind people that if bin Laden doesn't want Bush to be the president, something must be right with Bush."
WASHINGTON - Handwritten notes taken by the CIA show Vice President Cheney's top aide knew the name of CIA spy Valerie Plame a month before her cover was blown.
It appears to be the first known document in the hands of prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that directly contradicts Lewis (Scooter) Libby's claim he learned from reporters in July 2003 that Valerie Plame was a CIA employee...
..."A CIA employee assigned to provide daily intelligence briefs to the Vice President and Libby has handwritten notes indicating that Libby referred to 'Joe Wilson' and 'Valerie Wilson' by those names in conversation with the briefer on June 14, 2003," Fitzgerald wrote in a recently unsealed brief.
The filing suggests Cheney may have been present when Libby griped to his CIA briefer about agency officials slamming the veep in the press.
Seven officials have testified that Libby raised the CIA spy with them before columnist Robert Novak outed her. In the filing, Fitzgerald also revealed that his investigators also confiscated computers.
Whatever their concerns may be, whatever their fears, they would not have had them, expressed them or seen them in print had the middle name of the United Arab Emirates been something else.
The parent company of a Dubai-based firm at the center of a political storm in the US over the purchase of American ports participates in the Arab boycott against Israel...
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Look in the pockets of Iraqis whose jobs take them around Baghdad every day and you are likely to find a clutch of passes and identity cards, one for every police, military or militia checkpoint they may run into.
"This one is says I'm Badr, this one I show to police, and I have the American press pass and my ordinary ID. I applied for a Mehdi Army pass on Friday but it hasn't arrived yet," said one Iraqi driver working for a foreign media organisation.
"I am Sunni so these passes mean I don't get in trouble with anyone while I'm out and about."
The sheer proliferation of armed groups -- some official, some unofficial and some that operate in the murky middle ground -- underscores the lawlessness of Iraq, where neither U.S. forces who invaded in 2003 nor the Iraqi armed forces they trained have been able to impose their authority on the whole country.
Add to that the militias, most drawn up on ethnic or religious lines, and the mix is potentially explosive as the sectarian violence that brought Iraq to the brink of civil war last week showed all too clearly.
Throughout the Iraq war, NR has tried to temper the rival fatalisms of the Iraq optimists and pessimists. Victory in Iraq has never been inevitable or impossible. The outcome depends, as is always the case, on the choices made by the players, including ourselves. Even if our influence in Iraq is waning, our commitment — and the specific forms it takes — still matters very much. Defeatism will be self-fulfilling.
The poll is the first of U.S. troops currently serving in Iraq, according to John Zogby, the pollster. Conducted by Zogby International and LeMoyne College, it asked 944 service members, "How long should U.S. troops stay in Iraq?"
Only 23 percent backed Mr. Bush's position that they should stay as long as necessary. In contrast, 72 percent said that U.S. troops should be pulled out within one year. Of those, 29 percent said they should withdraw "immediately."
(1) Well sure, but that won't happen.
OR
(2) Iraq is a secular society, they're too well-educated to go down that path.
Or, Finally the most common response:
(3) Shut up you wuss, you America-hater, U.S.A.!! U.S.A.!! I love me some stuff blowed up real good!
"Pre-war reconstruction planning assumed that Iraq's bureaucracy would go back to work when the fighting stopped," it said. "When it became clear that the Iraqi bureaucracy was in widespread disarray," occupation authorities "had to find coalition personnel to perform these tasks."
"The U.S. government workforce planning for Iraq's reconstruction suffered from a poorly structured, ad-hoc personnel management processes," the report said, calling hiring practices "haphazard."
At one point, officials asked civilian and military agencies for personnel "but did not prepare detailed job descriptions because of time constraints," the report said.
In late summer 2003, a new recruiting team was set up in the
Pentagon's White House Liaison Office, based in part on the "transition team" model used to staff new presidential administrations. The team quickly hired hundreds of new temporary employees, "but some possessed what proved to be inconsistent skill sets," the report said.
[Bush]looks like he's a wise man now and a man of restraint, almost Atticus Finch. You know, almost the guy against the mob outside this -- the police station.
The simplest and most obvious lesson I've learned in the past few years is that the American press has an incredible bias in favor of whatever our foreign policy happens to be that day. Whoever the government deems as "friends" are the good guys and whoever they deem as "enemies" are the bad guys. The form of government, freedoms, human rights abuses, suffrage, etc... are entirely irrelevant.
Grisly attacks and other sectarian violence unleashed by last week's bombing of a Shiite Muslim shrine have killed more than 1,300 Iraqis, making the past few days the deadliest of the war outside of major U.S. offensives, according to Baghdad's main morgue. The toll was more than three times higher than the figure previously reported by the U.S. military and the news media.
Hundreds of unclaimed dead lay at the morgue at midday Monday -- blood-caked men who had been shot, knifed, garroted or apparently suffocated by the plastic bags still over their heads. Many of the bodies were sprawled with their hands still bound -- and many of them had wound up at the morgue after what their families said was their abduction by the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr...
...The disclosure of the death tolls followed accusations by the U.S. military and later Iraqi officials that the news media had exaggerated the violence between Shiites and Sunnis over the past few days.
Former United Nations ambassador and Atlanta mayor Andrew Young will be the public spokesman for a group organized with backing from Wal-Mart Stores Inc. that defends the world's largest retailer against mounting attacks from its critics.
Working Families for Wal-Mart, a group of community leaders from across the country, was set to announce Monday that Young will be the chairman of its 16 member steering committee formed in December to counter charges from two union-backed groups that are pressuring Wal-Mart to improve wages and benefits.
Young said he will be a public face for the group, giving interviews and publishing opinion articles defending the company. "They are some of the best entry level jobs that are available to poor people. And they also make products available to the working poor," Young said in a phone interview from Atlanta.
''In recent years, too many people have abused the bankruptcy laws. They've walked away from debts even when they had the ability to repay them."
In what will undoubtedly be the first of many ''I told you so" reports, the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys has found that, overwhelmingly, people who file for bankruptcy protection aren't deadbeats who went on shopping sprees with the intention of shirking their debts.
I'd like to see one of them confronted about this -- fucking Biden should have it stuck in his face anytime he hits the trail. When he comes to Iowa and New Hampshire hit the idiot up on this and let him know he's NOT getting a nomination.
That's quite contrary to what was being charged by supporters of a federal bankruptcy law that went into effect last October.
For years, those proponents argued that billions of dollars were being lost because people were simply being allowed to walk away from their debts...
...Now, in the first analysis of the tens of thousands of people who have undergone credit counseling since the law passed, the bankruptcy attorneys association found that nearly all (97 percent) of the debtors truly couldn't pay their debts...
...Four out of five filers felt forced to seek bankruptcy protection because of a job loss, catastrophic medical expenses, or the death of a spouse, according to the report, ''Bankruptcy Reform's Impact: Where Are All the Deadbeats?"
Violence killed at least 29 people Sunday, including three American soldiers, and mortar fire rumbled through the heart of Baghdad after sundown despite stringent security measures imposed after an explosion of sectarian violence.
A ban on driving in Baghdad and its suburbs helped prevent major attacks during daylight Sunday, but after nightfall explosions thundered through the city as mortar shells slammed into a Shiite quarter in southwestern Baghdad, killing 16 people and wounding 53, police said.
Mortar fire also hit a Shiite area on the capital's east side, killing three people and injuring six, police reported.
Nevertheless, officials announced they would let vehicles back on the streets at 6 a.m. Monday — in part because shops were running out of food and other basics. Gasoline stations were closed, and people were unable to go to work Sunday, a work day in this Muslim country.
Former costar Andy Griffith was at Knotts's bedside when he died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, as were his third wife, Francie, and his children, Thomas and Karen.
President Bush is planning a two-day wind sprint across India this week, when he will meet with political leaders, chat up high-tech millionaires and give a speech at a 16th-century fort. But to the consternation of the Indians, he will not see the country's most famous monument, the Taj Mahal, a decision that Mr. Bush said was made by an omnipotent scheduler.
"Look, if I were the scheduler, perhaps I'd be doing things differently," Mr. Bush said last week, when he was asked in an interview with Indian reporters at the White House why he was skipping the Taj. "I'll be the president, we've got the scheduler being the scheduler. I'm going to miss a lot of the really interesting parts of your great country. I know that."
By Pretend Thomas Friedman (sort of)Hundreds of Iraqis are being tortured to death or summarily executed every month in Baghdad alone by death squads working from the Ministry of the Interior, the United Nations' outgoing human rights chief in Iraq has revealed.
John Pace, who left Baghdad two weeks ago, told The Independent on Sunday that up to three-quarters of the corpses stacked in the city's mortuary show evidence of gunshot wounds to the head or injuries caused by drill-bits or burning cigarettes. Much of the killing, he said, was carried out by Shia Muslim groups under the control of the Ministry of the Interior.
1. Pro Voting Rights Act;
2. Pro Equal Rights Amendment;
3. Pro Expansion of Title VII to include sexual orientation as a protected class;
4. Pro Equal Pay;
5. Pro diplomatic relations with the Palestinians even if Hamas is in power;
6. Was anti-Iraq Invasion;
7. Opposed military action against Iran, Syria, or any other nation Michael Ledeen can spell;
8. Anti-employment or civil rights discrimination against individuals on the basis of religion, including, as especially in this era, Islam.
Harvard Divinity School has agreed to return a $2.5 million gift from the president of the United Arab Emirates after 18 months of controversy over the donor's alleged connection to anti-Semitic and anti-American propaganda, Harvard officials said yesterday.
While not unprecedented, the university's return of a major donation is rare. It followed a campaign by some students and faculty members to protest the inflammatory activities of a think tank named for the UAE's unelected leader, Sheik Zayed bin Sultan Nahayan. . . .
Seven of the divinity school's 39 faculty members and hundreds of students and alumni had signed petitions urging Harvard to reject the gift. The petitions cited the activities of the Abu Dhabi-based Zayed International Center for Coordination and Follow-Up, which sponsored lectures and publications claiming that Zionists -- rather than Nazis -- were responsible for the Holocaust and that the U.S. military staged the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Poor President Bush, prince of fools. He let the neoconservative creative destructors play upon his religiosity (and Cheney's power hunger) and persuade him that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein would be a transformative moment that would set democracy and freedom in motion across the region, and crown him in history with Churchillian honor. I believe Bush wanted democracy in Iraq, or convinced himself that he believed it after the Chalabi-as-chess-king scheme fell through, because such belief flatters his pride in his own idealism. But the intellectual architects of the policy didn't care. If there was peace and stability in the new Iraq that would strength America's power in the region and bolster Israeli security, fine; if Iraq fissured into factional strife, fire, and chaos, better still.
Clooney, who has weathered attacks since opposing the 2003 Iraq invasion, said at one point that it was "frustrating" to be listed as a "traitor" on a set of playing cards, but he also accepted people's right to free speech.
He later admitted he relished the attacks.
"I think it's important to be on the right side of history," Clooney said.
"I want to be on that deck of cards. And I want to be able to say that they boycotted my films... I want to be able to say I was on the cover of a magazine called a 'traitor,'" he said.
"I'm proud of those because those were badges of honor for me because that was when you did it when it was hard to do," the actor and director said.
The defense was told that the White House had recently located and turned over about 250 pages of e-mails from the vice president's office. Fitzgerald, in a letter last month to the defense, had cautioned Libby's lawyers that some e-mails might be missing because the White House's archiving system had failed.
The emails are said to be explosive, and may prove that Cheney played an active role in the effort to discredit Plame Wilson's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a vocal critic of the Bush administration's prewar Iraq intelligence, sources close to the investigation said.
Sources close to the probe said the White House "discovered" the emails two weeks ago and turned them over to Fitzgerald last week. The sources added that the emails could prove that Cheney lied to FBI investigators when he was interviewed about the leak in early 2004. Cheney said that he was unaware of any effort to discredit Wilson or unmask his wife's undercover status to reporters.
Singer MORRISSEY was quizzed by the FBI and British intelligence after speaking out against the American and British governments.
The Brit is a famous critic of the US-led war in Iraq and has dubbed President GEORGE W BUSH a "terrorist" - but he was baffled to be hauled in by authorities.
Morrissey explains, "The FBI and the Special Branch have investigated me and I've been interviewed and taped and so forth.
One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed. The same edition of the paper quotes a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute. Mr. Reuel Marc Gerecht backed the American intervention. He now speaks of the bombing of the especially sacred Shiite mosque in Samara and what that has precipitated in the way of revenge. He concludes that “The bombing has completely demolished” what was being attempted — to bring Sunnis into the defense and interior ministries.
Our mission has failed because Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an invading army of 130,000 Americans. The great human reserves that call for civil life haven't proved strong enough. No doubt they are latently there, but they have not been able to contend against the ice men who move about in the shadows with bombs and grenades and pistols.
The Iraqis we hear about are first indignant, and then infuriated, that Americans aren't on the scene to protect them and to punish the aggressors. And so they join the clothing merchant who says that everything is the fault of the Americans.
As a country, we must not go down this road of global ethnic profiling — looking for Arabs under our beds the way we once looked for commies. If we do — if America, the world's beacon of pluralism and tolerance, goes down that road — we will take the rest of the world with us. We will sow the wind and we will reap the whirlwind.
...
What ranks much higher for me is the terrible trend emerging in the world today: Sunnis attacking Shiite mosques in Iraq, and vice versa. Danish caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, and violent Muslim protests, including Muslims killing Christians in Nigeria and then Christians killing Muslims. And today's Washington Post story about how some overzealous, security-obsessed U.S. consul in India has created a huge diplomatic flap — on the eve of Mr. Bush's first visit to India — by denying one of India's most respected scientists a visa to America on the grounds that his knowledge of chemistry might be a threat. The U.S. embassy in New Delhi has apologized.
February 22, 2006
Chairman Robert Wright
National Broadcasting Company
30 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, New York 10112
Dear Chairman Wright:
We, the undersigned, are becoming increasingly concerned about the well-being of MSNBC and, in particular, note the continuing ratings failure of the program currently airing weeknights on that network at 8:00 PM EST.
It is now apparent to everyone that a grave injustice has been done to the previous host for that time slot, Phil Donahue, whose ratings, at the time of his show's cancellation three years ago, were demonstrably stronger than those of the current host.
Therefore, in an effort to rescue MSNBC from the ratings basement and to restore the honor and dignity of Mr. Donahue, who was ignobly removed as host three years ago, we ask that you immediately bring Phil Donahue's show back at 8:00 PM EST before any more damage is done.
If you would like to express your support for this issue please fill in the information below and press the "Sign the Petition" button. Your signature will be added from the information you provide below. To protect your privacy, your last name will not be displayed on the web site.
OK, so there's that. Lemme put that aside. Next little story, and this -- this actually is from Sunday. It's an Associated Press story: "Ginsburg bears burden without O'Connor. It'll be a one-woman show in the Supreme Court starting Tuesday. Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the only female among the nine justices, and she's not so happy about it." So, resign. If you don't like it, resign. If you don't like being the only woman on the court, then go somewhere else. Besides, David Souter's a girl. Everybody knows that. What's the big deal?
Meanwhile, H5N1 is becoming endemic in Europe. This means that the poultry may be exposed again and again to the virus, as has already happened in Hong Kong. The longer term approach may be a better vaccine for poultry and humans; short term, culling and other methods must be used. But senior flu researcher Robert Webster in this paper warns against killing migratory birds:
Although culling domestic poultry to contain the spread of highly pathogenic H5N1 virus is considered an acceptable agricultural practice, culling migratory birds is not acceptable to any international authority (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations [FAO], the World Organization for Animal Health [OIE], the World Health Organization [WHO]). The idea of culling migratory birds must be strongly discouraged, for it could have unknown ecologic consequences.
Instead, since highly pathogenic H5N1 has been demonstrated in migratory birds, the poultry industries of the world must adapt measures such as increased biosecurity (Figure 1), the use of vaccines, or both.
"Elizabeth Dole knows that her work is separate from Bob Dole. Bob Dole works for a law firm. Elizabeth Dole works for the people of North Carolina."
Hours after a commercial plane struck the Pentagon on September 11 2001 the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, was issuing rapid orders to his aides to look for evidence of Iraqi involvement, according to notes taken by one of them.
"Hard to get good case. Need to move swiftly," the notes say. "Near term target needs - go massive - sweep it all up, things related and not."
The handwritten notes, with some parts blanked out, were declassified this month in response to a request by a law student and blogger, Thad Anderson, under the US Freedom of Information Act. Anderson has posted them on his blog at outragedmoderates.org.
A faltering political process seemed on the verge of collapse as the biggest Sunni Muslim bloc pulled out of delicate talks over the shape of Iraq's new government. Sunni politicians and clerics blamed the bloodshed on their Shiite counterparts, pushing sectarian tensions to new heights as the threat of civil war shadowed the country.
***
"The Americans also abandoned us extremely. They could have put some of their vehicles to protect the mosques; they have the forces to do that," said Khalaf al-Hayan, general secretary of the Sunni Iraqi National Dialogue Council. "How does a civil war start? It starts like this."
President Bush, who said the U.S. would help rebuild the Golden Mosque, today denounced the attacks on religious symbols and the ensuing violence.
"The voices of reason...understand that this bombing is intended to create civil strife, that the act was a evil act," Bush said. "The destruction of a holy site is a political act intending to create strife. And so I'm pleased with the voices of reason that have spoken out. And we will continue to work with those voices of reason to enable Iraq to continue on the path of a democracy that unites people and doesn't divide them."
Police said two bombs that had been planted at the mosque overnight exploded at dawn. Some local officials in Samarra said the bombers were dressed in the uniforms of Iraqi security forces. Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jafari, in one of several televised news conferences and appeals by Iraqi and U.S. leaders, said preliminary investigation into the bombing pointed to "infiltration'' of Iraqi security forces.
Insurgents posing as police destroyed the golden dome of one of
Iraq's holiest Shiite shrines Wednesday, setting off an unprecedented spasm of sectarian violence. Angry crowds thronged the streets, militiamen attacked Sunni mosques, and at least 19 people were killed...
...In predominantly Shiite Basra, police said militiamen broke into a prison, hauled out 12 inmates, including two Egyptians, two Tunisians, a Libyan, a Saudi and a Turk, and shot them dead in reprisal for the shrine attack.
The bodies of three Iraqi journalists, including a well-known correspondent for Al Arabiya television, were found Thursday near Samarra, police and the Arabic network said. Al Arabiya's Atwar Bahjat and two colleagues from the al-Wassan media company had been in the city to cover the bombing when they disappeared Wednesday night, the network said.
In Baghdad, the bodies of 23 men were found bound and shot, police said Thursday. It was not immediately clear whether the killings were linked to the shrine attack.
On the lecture circuit, author and Washington Post Associate Editor Bob Woodward continues to push the idea that Dick Cheney may run for president in 2008.
Tracy Idell Hamilton writes in the San Antonio Express-News that Woodward "noted that Republicans have a long track record of nominating 'old war horses.'
"Given that, and depending on how things in Iraq proceed, 'You're going to think I'm crazy, but you heard it here first. I think they could nominate Dick Cheney.' "
"Cheney 2008: NOT IN THE FACE!"
"Cheney 2008: Shoot first, Don't Answer Questions Later"
"Cheney 2008: The Republic's Last Throes"
"Cheney 2008: Go Fuck Yourself in the Face!"
"In less than a second, less time than it takes to tell," Dick Cheney mused last week, his quail-hunting expedition had gone "from what is a very happy, pleasant day with great friends in a beautiful part of the country, doing something I love—to, my gosh, I've shot my friend. I've never experienced anything quite like that before." It was perhaps the most eloquent, emotionally unguarded moment from the notoriously buttoned-up Vice President. He seemed stunned, uncertain for once. And the haunted look in his eyes reminded me of what soldiers in Vietnam used to call the Thousand-Yard Stare—the paralytic shock that comes from seeing the impact that even low-caliber weaponry can have on human flesh.
The Vice President's hunting accident occasioned a familiar explosion of public inanity. We seem to have a primal need for these circuses; they are the postmodern equivalent of scapegoat sacrifice. There was the embarrassing, self-righteous reportorial melee in the White House pressroom. There was the predictable patter of late-night comedians, although the jokes didn't seem quite so funny this time; a man had been shot.
But Cheney's stubborn diffidence may have been something else entirely: a consequence of the incoherence and confusion that come with emotional trauma, as well as an understandable desire to protect oneself and one's friends from the ravening horde at a moment of personal anguish.
The possibility of vice-presidential anguish was barely mentioned by most commentators at first. Cheney is a tough customer; Oprahfied "sharing" isn't his way. But then, there he was, with that haunted look in his Fox News interview, saying, "[T]he image of him falling is something I'll never be able to get out of my mind. I fired, and there's Harry falling ..." Hunting had given him "great pleasure" in the past, but he wasn't so sure now. In fact, he sounded a lot like the combat veterans I've spoken with over the years, for whom the living nightmare of firing a weapon under questionable circumstances is a constant theme.
President Bush was unaware of the pending sale of shipping operations at six major U.S. seaports to a state-owned business in the United Arab Emirates until the deal already had been approved by his administration, the White House said Wednesday.
Lawmakers "ought to listen to what I have to say about this," he told reporters. "They ought to look at the facts and understand the consequences of what they're going to do. But if they pass a law, I'll deal with it, with a veto."
Sen. John McCain said Tuesday night that he stands behind the Bush administration's decision to approve a deal that gives an Arab company control over operations at six major U.S. ports.
"I trust the president of the United States," McCain, R-Ariz., told nearly 800 West Valley residents during a town-hall meeting in Sun City West. "I will not make a judgment until I hear his arguments as to why he made this decision. . . . I will not reject out of hand the decision of the commander in chief."
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a man in perpetual motion, flew to South Carolina in January. His stops included a tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. and speeches to local Republican groups. But one of his most important events was not on the public schedule -- a 5 p.m. meeting at a Spartanburg hotel with loyalists to President Bush.
A dozen or so people were in attendance. At least two were among Bush's major national fundraisers. Virtually all had been on Bush's side in the bitter 2000 South Carolina primary that badly damaged McCain's chances of winning the presidential nomination and scarred the relationship between the two men and their rival political camps. McCain was there to woo them.
One of the few legislators to come close to defending the transaction was Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, who is considered a security hawk among Democrats.
Rising Hegemon
