Operation First Casualty

"How does occupation feel, D.C.?!" shouted Geoff Millard, head of the local chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War, who previously served on a brigadier general's staff in Tikrit.

They cut a swath across downtown, taking imaginary sniper fire and casualties on the grounds of the Capitol and the Washington Monument, scouting the White House, performing mock arrests at the foot of the Capitol steps and a vehicle search on the Mall. At the Capitol, the veterans almost got detained themselves by civilian peace officers with real guns. The vets brought their act to a military recruiting station on L Street NW and concluded with a memorial ceremony in the cemetery.

This is how protest is done.

Read Melissa Rogers Blog.

Then read the entire Washington Post Article.

Flying the un-friendly skies of Iraq

Chris Floyd at Empire Berlesque notes that at one time "No-Fly Zones" meant American dominance of the skies of Iraq. It is a bitter Irony that now the term means areas in which American aircraft must not fly due to the high probability of loss to the Iraqis.

...now the phrase is the sad and bloodsoaked emblem of a wretched defeat, a pointless and unnecessary gutting of American power. It now denotes those areas where American aircraft are forbidden to fly, lest they be shot down by Iraqis -- the precise opposite of the No-Fly Zones of yore.

A full four years into the war, and just shy of that mark since "Mission Accomplished" was proclaimed, the occupying power has been forced to deny its own pilots access to larger and larger swathes of Iraqi airspace -- even as the use of helicopters for troop transport and supply is growing, due to the increasingly unsafe conditions on the ground. It is the Iraqis who are now imposing "No-Fly Zones" on the "world's only superpower."

Read more

It's so sad about John McCain...

McCain says there are neighborhoods in Baghdad where Americans can stroll safely...

CNN reporter Michael Ware(in Baghdad) says, “I don't know what part of Neverland Senator McCain is talking about…”

It's in Larry Johnson's post at No Quarter

You have to love the headline of this post.

Dear Bush: Suck It. Love, Senate Republicans

clammyc at Booman Tribume

here is the most important thing – certainly in the long term and even in the mid term: in two short months since Congress convened, there is a bill regarding Iraq that has passed BOTH the House and Senate that calls for major redeployment and withdrawal within a year or so. There will be more funding for veteran’s benefits.

It couldn’t have happened without We the People.

It couldn’t have happened without Speaker Pelosi.

It couldn’t have happened without John Murtha, Lynne Woolsley, Jim Webb and hundreds of other Democrats in Congress.

But it also couldn’t have happened without some Senate republicans. Which is very bad news for Bush’s plans for Iraq domination. And very good for the rest of us.

Read the post

I mentioned the SciFi bumper on unraveling the whole man...

And how in Bush (League) land, that hair is Alberto Gonzales.

Here's more by Phoenix Woman at Firedoglake

I'm beginning to wonder if the US Attorney firing/force-out scandal may well be the Grand Unifying Scandal that connects most if not all of the other Bush scandals.

Like a loose bit of yarn on a sweater, pulling on it tugs at a whole bunch of other things involving the Bush Junta's extreme politicization of the Justice Department — not to mention the rest of the Federal government – and the extreme efforts made by the top players to avoid facing any kind of penalties for wrongdoing.

The rest (of the story)

Four Simple Truths to Advance in Your Dialogue with Those in Denial

...there are four simple truths to bear in mind -- repeat them to yourself when you are at a loss, and articulate them at every opportunity to those who are still avoiding reality:

The evidence continues to mount, and the case is compelling.

There is a clearly defined and realizable alternative to the paralyzing triad of apathy, despair and complicity.

The way forward demands that the governments, industries and financial institutions of the great nations take responsibility and lead, and so far they are not doing so.

Meanwhile, the delusional denial and wanton dissemination of disinformation continues.

Read the post

Why do we have to go to foreign press for breaths of fresh air like this?

Tony Benn Beats Bolton To A Pulp

03/24/07 - BBC Question Time

The RIAA... We call it ridin’ the gravy train.

Ahh, The RIAA.
Chuck Dupree at Bad Attitudes

…according to the MIT campus newspaper “The Tech,” the RIAA has suggested to students that they ought to drop out of college to be able to afford RIAA settlements. They’ve also sued people who don’t own and never have owned a computer.

[…]

And now we reach the crux of the matter. Those companies are part of a multi-billion-dollar-a-year business. They argue that people downloading music takes money away from the artists, but in reality, it takes money away from them, if anyone.

I don’t like people that hide behind lies. If the RIAA is going to do this, and they will continue to, I only have one request: Be honest with us. If you want more money, come out and say it. Don’t act like you’re protecting the artists. If you really were, would a huge group of them have formed a coalition (that would be the Recording Artists Coalition) aimed specifically at bringing change to the recording industry’s structure?

Read the post

Bill Maher: “Traitors don’t get to question my patriotism!”

Go, Watch!

The imperial 'We'. If you haven't read the snark on shrub's hissy fit, I mean, press conference, read this.

Watertiger at Firedoglake

[W]e will not go along with a partisan fishing expedition aimed at honorable public servants. . . .

Listen, first of all, these U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President. I named them all. . . . They serve at our pleasure. . . . And I repeat, we would like people to hear the truth.

– G.W. Bush, 3/20/07

What happens when the grandiose fantasies of a megalomaniacal, emotionally palsied fraud finally come crashing through the plate glass window of reality? Well, for one thing, that "good ol' boy you'd wanna have a beer with" facade drops faster than a schoolgirl's knickers at a Justin Timberlake concert. After watching the clips of Bush's performances last week, I was reminded of a line from Monty Python and the Holy Grail: "Ooh, a king? Well, I didn't vote for you!"

What we saw last week was the real Bush: imperious, contemptuous, rigid with thin-lipped anger, one straightjacket lace shy of a full-blown meltdown on national television after Congress personally affronted him (not once, but TWICE!) by announcing that they were no longer playing by his arbitrary, self-serving rules. The AUDACITY!

There is MUCH more

You know that SciFi channel bumper? Where the guy starts pulling the hair out of his head?

That hair is AG Gonzales. He is the thread that will unravel Bushco.
He MUST be impeached.
Arianna at Hufffington

If the president continues trying to run out the clock on this scandal, Congress should immediately begin impeachment proceedings against Alberto Gonzales. It's the quickest way to the truth.

Appearing on CNN's Late Edition, Joe DiGenova said that if Congress insists on issuing subpoenas, the White House will surely contest them, and the ensuing litigation will last until the end of Bush's term. DiGenova's point was that Congress should go ahead and compromise, but my takeaway was just the opposite: if Bush's game is to stall, Congress should play the impeachment card since, as Robert Kuttner points out, "an impeachment inquiry could be completed in a matter of months."

Read the rest

More on the idea of going for the low hanging fruit.

Iraqi munitions dumps STILL ungarded!

Does this surprise anyone? Why does George Bush hate American troops?
Winter Patriot

As of October 2006 US forces had still not secured all of the unguarded munition sites in Iraq, allowing thieves to keep stealing war material and stoke the country's violence, a US government report said Thursday.

The Government Accountability Office said that not enough soldiers were available to take control of massive arms dumps across Iraq after the March 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

All this time and not a single head!

They've left these arms caches open for all this time, while insurgents kept stealing whatever they needed to kill more and more people -- American troops as well as civilians -- and not a single head has rolled over this scandal!

Amazing! Or is it?

[...]

"DOD does not appear to have conducted a theaterwide survey and assessment of the current risk unsecured conventional munitions represent to US forces and others."

... which raises the question: Why would the DOD not even bother to look into it? ... unless they just don't care ... or unless ... maybe ... just maybe ... this is the way they wanted it!

More

Iraq will end when the Republi-cons figure out how to blame the Democrats.

Jeff Huber at Pen and Sword:

The House resolution that will require combat troops to be out of Iraq by the end of August, 2008 passed at approximately 12:45 on Friday. A similar Senate bill that calls for troops to come home a year from now has passed a committee vote.

We're approaching a point where the Democratic Congress may well wrest control of the Iraq war away from Mr. Bush. If that happens, will the Democrats rue the "victory?"

[...]But the real trick behind all this maneuvering is whether or not the step-lock Republicans will decide to knuckle under to pressure from the Democrats when they decide once and for all that the war in Iraq is "lost" and they can blame the Democrats for it.

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From a republi-con Blog... AG AG needs to go

The Captain at the Captain's Quarters:

...Gonzales made himself the target here with what looks like blatant deception. I don't think we do ourselves any good by defending the serially changing stories coming out of Gonzales' inept administration at Justice. One cannot support an Attorney General who misleads Congress, allows his staffers to mislead Congress, and deceives the American people, regardless of whether an R or a D follows his name or the majority control of Congress.

[...]At this point, the notion that Bush has to retain Gonzales to protect himself and Republicans in general is starting to become absurd. Gonzales inflicted most of this damage on the administration himself, and the longer he remains, the more damage he will do. As Jonah said, it's hard to find a worse example of self-inflicted damage outside of circus tents.

Gonzales' dismissal/resignation would not do any more damage to Republicans than has already occurred. If we have to defend incompetents and/or deceivers as critical to the Republican cause, then be prepared for a disastrous 2008. Offering Clintonian word-parsing as a defense does nothing to help the cause of conservatism.

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Bush wants it both ways in the AG vs USAs mess

Dubya wants to claim executive privilege over something he claims not to know about.
Anonymous Liberal at Crooks and Liars

President Bush is in a real bind. The circumstances surrounding the firing of eight United States Attorneys reek so badly of crass partisan politics that the President's advisers are trying very hard to distance him as much as possible from the decision-making process. Hence, this from Tony Snow:

MR. SNOW: The President has no recollection of this ever being raised with him. . . .

Q Just to follow, did you say, again for the record, that the President has no recollection of ever being asked about any of this?

MR. SNOW: Yes, the removal — yes, that is correct.

Indeed, Snow went as far as to assert that this was "a decision that was made at the U.S. Department of Justice."

Here's the problem, though. As Marty Lederman points out, the relevant statute–28 U.S.C. 541(c)–vests the power to remove U.S. Attorneys with the president ("Each United States attorney is subject to removal by the President.") As we've repeatedly been told, U.S. Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President–not the pleasure of the Attorney General (and certainly not the pleasure of the Attorney General's chief of staff). The decision to fire a U.S. Attorney–much less eight of them–is unquestionably one for the president to make, so if President Bush was truly out of the loop on this, that's a problem in and of itself.

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All together now, "It's all right if you are a republi-con."

Had Bill Clinton offered to speak or have his aids to speak to congressional committees, but in private, unsworn and with no transcript the uproar would have been stupendous. But Dubya is different. He is a Republi-con.
E. J. Dionne at The Washington Post:

The senator vigorously rejected the president's claim of executive privilege. "I find this extraordinary and troublesome," he said, "and I think it will ultimately be damaging to the president. . . . This is an attempt to stonewall our committee, and the public will be outraged."

Doesn't that sound like one of those tough statements by Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York, the Democratic point man on the U.S. attorney scandal? The speaker was actually the Republican whom Schumer defeated nine years ago, Alfonse D'Amato, discussing Bill Clinton's invocation of executive privilege in the Whitewater investigation. Nice to see Chuck and Al agree on something.

So many principles that Republicans held dear when they were trying to take Clinton down are no longer operative. This certainly applies to a 1998 column now whizzing around the Internet that ran under the headline "Executive Privilege Is a Dodge." It was written by Tony Snow, who is now President Bush's press secretary.

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The latest Gee Whiz new car.

The XR-3 Hybrid is a super-fuel-efficient two-passenger plug-in hybrid that achieves 125 mpg on diesel power alone, 225 mpg on combined diesel and electric power, and performance like a conventional automobile. The design of the XR-3 Hybrid focuses on existing technologies and a vehicle �personality� that makes conserving energy a fun driving experience. It showcases the design ideas explored in Robert Q. Riley�s book, Alternative Cars in the 21^st Century.
At just 1300 pounds, this high-performance design combines lightening-fast acceleration, a maximum speed of 85 mph, and fuel economy of 125- to over 200-mpg.

Read More

Special delivery gift from Dubya. A big can of Whoop-Ass

From thereisnospoon at My Left Wing:

What an extraordinary gift Bush has given the Democratic Party and the American People. For months if not years, Democrats and Progressives have wrung our hands and beaten our heads against the wall: should we move to impeach? Whom, exactly, should we impeach? How can we do it? On what grounds? Will the American people stand with us, or against us? Above all, how can we do it without making Republicans look like the victims of a partisan witch hunt? [...]

Thankfully for Democrats, the American People and the United States Constitution, George Bush's recalcitrance, petulance, and extraordinary loyalty to his corrupt cronies have already answered all those vexing questions for us. Rather than our bringing the confrontation to him, George Bush is bringing the confrontation of Constitutional crisis to us. [...]

In sum, Bush has given us every possible political cover and excuse for impeaching him, on an issue for which he has little to no congressional support among Republicans. It's wrapped up in a neat little package with a bowtie. It is, frankly, a generous gift to our Party, our Nation, and our Constitution.

All we need is the courage to open it.

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Four years, and where IS Bin-Ladin?

Bob Cesca at Huffington

If an American citizen is caught cheating on their taxes, they're fined and imprisoned; if an American citizen races up to a yellow light and it turns red just as they're passing under it, they're photographed without their permission and fined; if an American citizen talks about farting or nipples on the radio, they can be fined $325,000 by your federal government. Holy hell, it's a federal offense to make a copy of a DVD or CD, whether you plan to sell it or not!

But the last four years have proved that it's perfectly legal to go to war based on lies, fabricated evidence, propaganda, media manipulation; then to lie about its progress every step of the way; then to allow massive unregulated -- practically encouraged -- war profiteering at the taxpayer's expense; then to ignore the international rules of warfare by permitting torture; then to ignore rational solutions for redeployment; then to cut the budget for veterans; and the list of trespasses against morality, decency, the Constitution, and the American way of life goes on and on and on.

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I sure love me some 'Support the Troops'!

Major New Problems At Walter Reed
Written by Bruce Leshan 9NEWS NOW

A worried quality control inspector, Mark Cordell, finally quit last week in frustration, and brought his fears to 9NEWS NOW.

"I won't sit back and watch someone get killed," he says while running through 81 pictures of the problems on a laptop computer.

[...]

When the Washington Post exposed the black mold in Building 18, where wounded soldiers recover, the contractor sent Cordell in to coordinate repairs. He says he did 250 to 300 work orders in two weeks.

The Army moved many of the injured soldiers to Building 14 -- and Cordell says as soon as they arrived the troops found more problems.

"So the building the soldiers moved to is just as messed up as Building 18?" asked 9NEWS NOW Reporter Bruce Leshan.

"Yes. Every one of the buildings at Walter Reed is the same way, or worse."

More (with pictures)

From the man who toppled Saddam's statue

He was the man with the sledge hammer breaking up the base upon which that statue of Saddam stood. Remember?
He was consumed with such hope and joy. Now?

"There were lots of people from my tribe who were also put in prison or hanged. It became my dream ever since I saw them building that statue to one day topple it."

Yet he now says he would prefer to be living under Saddam than under US occupation. He said: "The devil you know [is] better than the devil you don't. We no longer know friend from foe. The situation is becoming more dangerous. It's not getting better at all. People are poor and the prices are going higher and higher."

Saddam, he says, "was like Stalin. But the occupation is proving to be worse".

More of the story

Asked about the US Attorneys uproar 'Turd Blossom' said Clinton did it too.

Oh, really? Here are some facts, instead of spin.
Glenn Greenwald at Salon:

...even Rush Limbaugh, on the March 23, 1993 broadcast of his television show, acknowledged that the full-scale replacement of all U.S. attorneys at the start of an administration is routine:

JANET RENO (US Attorney General): I haven't asked for Stephens' resignation. I've asked for the resignation of all the US attorneys as part of an orderly transfer to a new administration, so that the new administration can choose its US attorneys which it re--thinks is absolutely integral to the Department of Justice ought--and based on what we think the qualifications for US attorney should be.

LIMBAUGH: Now this happens. She's right. New administrations just come in and get rid of all the US attorneys.

The beginning of the Clinton administration was really the birth of the all-out right-wing filth and noise machine, and -- working with Republican Congressional leaders -- it attempted to convert a completely routine decision by the Clinton administration to replace all U.S. attorneys into some sort of explosive corruption scandal. And yet these are the same people, and the same faction, which now insists that there is absolutely nothing wrong with firing U.S. attorneys at any time and that the President has the unfettered right to do so -- even in the unprecedented circumstance of singling prosecutors out and replacing them in the middle of the President's term.

It's literally the same people who defend President Bush today by saying the exact opposite of what they said in 1993. Yes, that is extremely common for them to do. And yes, there is nothing surprising about it. But it is still worth noting, particularly when the dishonesty is as glaring and inescapable as it is in this case.

more here.

Also see this from Diane Feinstein

and "All roads lead to Rove" -- By Sidney Blumenthal

Getting into the Bird Flu market

Want to buy a few shares of Bird Flu? They say it's gonna go big one of these days.
CNN:

Think bird flu will become a worldwide threat this summer? Wanna put some money on that?

In an unusual effort to better predict the advance of a potential flu pandemic, public health experts will be staked about $100 apiece to bet on the spread of bird flu. This type of grim futures market has also been created to predict hurricanes and temporarily, a few years ago, terrorist attacks.

In this case, the goal is to develop a faster way to collect expert opinion about the potential spread of a deadly disease outbreak.

"Farmers have used futures markets for decades to make decisions about what crops to plant. We're just borrowing that concept to help people in public health and health care make decisions about the future," said Dr. Phil Polgreen, a University of Iowa assistant professor of medicine who helped create the project.

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The 'Rule Of Karl' must end!

Christy Hardin Smith at Firedoglake

When the Founding Fathers of our nation established a government of the people, by the people and for the people, with built-in provisions for the protection of the rule of law against the tyranny of the majority through a separation of powers into three governmental branches: executive, legislative and judiciary, they failed to count on one thing: the Rule of Karl. In reading through the massive document dump of e-mails from the USAs firings and the DoJ tap dance between Gonzales and the Bush White House, the fingerprints of Karl Rove are everywhere, carefully concealed behind having other people do the actual, written e-mailing so that his hands (and signature line) stay off the direct line of communication — but everywhere nonetheless.

[...]

Politics is not supposed to be the foremost consideration in judicial action. In fact, it is supposed to be quite far down the list, if there at all, in terms of the factors in play for charging decisions. The fact that the Bush Administration has attempted to so pervert the legal system as to skew it for its own political gain is appalling enough. But that they would fire US Attorneys for doing their jobs — and doing them well, in uncovering corrupt acts of politicians regardless of party, or for making charging decisions outside the realm of political vendetta — is unconscionable.

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In the spirit of Johnathan Swift: A Simple Proposal.

thereisnospoon of My Left Wing notices that there has been a distinct change in the conduct of government corruption...

Usually, you see, corruption takes a little bit of work: special interest "X" gives you money for your campaign; you return the favor on the sly by giving handouts to special interest "X"; special interest "X" takes you on special junkets to keep your loyalty.

These a**holes, on the other hand, don't even think they need to stoop to such effort. The corruption doesn't even happen in exchange for campaign contributions; it's a direct connection from policies of mass bloodshed to increased profits in their overly bloated personal bank accounts. The Republicans in this administration--from Cheney to Rumsfeld to everyone else--are content to own direct stock in companies that have direct interest in killing Americans, killing foreigners overseas, and letting our wounded veterans rot in substandard medical facilities. They literally make a DIRECT PROFIT from death and destruction, while they make decisions to lie the American people into creating even more death and destruction.

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Boycott the RIAA

Lumpy at WEBBITS

Most important, change the way you think about the music you do buy. Each dollar you spend is, in fact, a vote. If any portion of it is funneled to the RIAA, its fire is fueled. If we all stopped listening to and buying RIAA music, how long would it be able to continue with its madness?

In any way you can afford to, support organizations that are protecting your rights and opposing the RIAA. This could mean donations, linkage, or simply spreading the word. Make a statement on this matter.

I heard of a good way to make such a statement this month on The Daily Source Code Podcast. The idea is simple, elegant, and a great way for all of us to make a statement. It is a great way for us to say that we, the consumers, should decide what and how we listen to. It is Bum Rush the Charts.

Read all

Big Brother Wants to Kill Net 'Radio' again.

Doc Searls Weblog

Internet radio is a canary in the coal mine of an insane Net-hostile Regulatorium that stretches from the cableco/telco duopoly to the copyright oligarchs who are strangling what Professor Lessig calls Free Culture. That Regulatorium should be the enemy of every free-market Republican and every free-speech Democrat. It's slowing down the U.S. and its businesses as competitors in the World Wide Marketplace we call the Net.

Will this decision to execute the Internet radio canary motivate us to do what we should have been doing more of for the past ten years? That's up to you and me.

Computer World

The new rates charge $.0008 per song per listener for 2006 (the royalty board's ruling is retroactive to 2006); $.0011 in 2007; $.0014 for 2008; $.0018 for 2009; and $.0019 for 2010. For multichannel operators like Pandora.com, a service that helps users find music on the Web, the fee is a flat $500 per radio channel for a particular number of listening hours per month.

Hanson said that under the previous royalty rate, his radio station paid $48,000. Under this decision, AccuRadio's royalty obligation for 2006 would be $600,000, he said.

"So we're bankrupt," he said.

Hanson said Web radio operators are considering their options, which could include an appeal of the board's ruling.

LAW.COM

Will the March 2 decision of the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board raising royalty rates for Webcasts 30 percent mean the death of Internet radio? U.S. Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., thinks so. As CNET News reports, he testified yesterday before the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet that the CRB's decision "represents a body blow to many nascent Internet radio broadcasters." That is also the conclusion of the Radio and Internet Newsletter, which did the math and found that the royalties an Internet radio station would pay would easily exceed any revenues the station might bring in.

Trends in the Living Networks

In a shocking decision last Friday, the Copyright Royalty Board announced new Internet radio royalty rates, doing exactly what was suggested by the RIAA’s lobby body, effectively tripling the cost of streaming music, effective retroactively from the beginning of 2006, and increasing every year until 2010. Bill Goldsmith of Radio Paradise, a leading Internet radio station, does the math, working out that he will now have to pay out around 125% of his revenue, meaning he immediately has to consider closing down. Mark Cuban says “goodbye to webcasting.” Om Malik asks “Last.FM, Pandora KO’ed by new royalties?” Mike Masnick talks about “internet radio royalty rates designed to kill webcasts.” Indeed, there some bad craziness in the business logic here. In the first instance, putting music webcasting stations out of business isn’t going to increase revenue. Secondly, recording companies make the majority of their money from hits, and hits happen because people hear them. There is massive investment in promoting music to traditional radio and music TV stations, yet for no good reason the opposite attitude to online music streaming.

For more go to Google Blog Search and try 'Net Radio'

This is how you talk smack!

Booman shows you how it's done.

In the category of simple slapdown:

“The Bush plan is ridiculous,” Mr. Chávez said at the gathering in Buenos Aires, across the Río de la Plata from Montevideo, Uruguay, Mr. Bush’s next stop. “He thinks he is Columbus, discovering poverty after seven years in power.”

[...]
More Chavez:

"The little imperial gentleman from the north must be across the river by now. Let's send him a big shout: 'Gringo go home,' " Mr Chavez told thousands at a soccer stadium in Buenos Aires, across the River Plate from the Uruguayan capital, Montevideo.

"We don't even need to make an effort to sabotage his tour. He's a political cadaver. He exhales the smell of the political dead, and he will soon be cosmic dust that will disappear from the stage."

More

How to stop the Iran war before Bush starts it.

The Winter Patriot:

If I were King for a Day, I'd issue a Royal Decree instructing all my Subjects to read Arthur Silber's three-part series, "Dispatch from Germany, Summer of 1939".

Parts I and II provide essential background, but here I want to focus on Part III, which carries the subtitle "Building an Effective Resistance".

Two or three years hence, no one will be happier than I to look back on this time and laugh about how worried we were about what turned out to be nothing in the end. [...] That is not a chance I am willing to take. Even if my assessment should turn out to be completely wrong, the steps suggested below would be wonderfully good practice, in the awful event that an equally maniacal administration should hold power in the future. It would be enormously useful and comforting to know that an effective force of resistance can be built to check the mad ambitions of those who hold the reins of power.

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Wesley Clark - Bush had planned to rape 7 countries in 5 years.

From DownWithTyranny!

My friend David hipped me to an interview Amy Goodman did with Wes Clark at Democracy Now on Friday. It's a lot more ambitious than my 6 countries in 2 years or those tourists' I met in Agra 15 in 14 days. Turns out the Bush Regime had some well-laid out, at least to look at-- plans to attack 7 countries in 5 years. I expect that one day the transcript of Clark's interview will be entered into evidence at a War Crimes Tribunal for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, et. al.

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Nice! We have Billions to blow the crap out of our fellow man and nothing for the potential salvation of the race.

Seth Borenstein at Huffington

The cost to find at least 90 percent of the 20,000 potentially hazardous asteroids and comets by 2020 would be about $1 billion, according to a report NASA will release later this week. The report was previewed Monday at a Planetary Defense Conference in Washington.

Congress in 2005 asked NASA to come up with a plan to track most killer asteroids and propose how to deflect the potentially catastrophic ones.

"We know what to do, we just don't have the money," said Simon "Pete" Worden, director of NASA's Ames Research Center.

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Democrats fought privitizing Walter Reed. Tell me again who is 'supporting the troops'?

Nicole Belle at Crooks and Liars

When the stories about the conditions at Walter Reed came out, the privatization angle didn't surprise me, other than I didn't recall hearing about it earlier. But let's face it, there's so much news coming out of Washington, things like that have a tendency to fall through the cracks.

However, I did find this press release by Sen. Barbara Mikulski from September of last year that shows that Democrats were concerned about the privatization of Walter Reed and were brushed aside by the DoD and the Army. Remind me again, who is supporting our troops?

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Wonder how they will explain the Pentagon telling Shrub that Global Warming is real - and a threat.

Mark Townsend and Paul Harris of The Observer

The findings will prove humiliating to the Bush administration, which has repeatedly denied that climate change even exists. Experts said that they will also make unsettling reading for a President who has insisted national defence is a priority.

The report was commissioned by influential Pentagon defence adviser Andrew Marshall, who has held considerable sway on US military thinking over the past three decades. He was the man behind a sweeping recent review aimed at transforming the American military under Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Climate change 'should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern', say the authors, Peter Schwartz, CIA consultant and former head of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and Doug Randall of the California-based Global Business Network.

An imminent scenario of catastrophic climate change is 'plausible and would challenge United States national security in ways that should be considered immediately', they conclude. As early as next year widespread flooding by a rise in sea levels will create major upheaval for millions.

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Three things to think about.

Get some aluminum foil, make yourself a hat and think about these points from the New Zeland Scoop.

UQ Wire: Illegalities Suggests Bush Role In 9/11

By Sherwood Ross

The trouble with thinking 9/11 was an inside job staged by George W. Bush & Co. is that it defies belief any U.S. president might be capable of such an iniquitous crime against his own people.

Yet, subsequent Bush actions, such as lying the nation into war against Iraq, makes one wonder if the man didn’t create the 9/11 massacres to justify his attacks on Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran.

After all, his record reveals him to be a serial liar, warmonger, tyrant, torturer, and usurper of his peoples’ civil liberties.

More on Bush and 9/11

Did Cheney Allow 9/11 Plane To Strike Pentagon?
Sherwood Ross

Although the official 9/11 Commission Report(CR) said Vice President Richard Cheney did not arrive at the Presidential Emergency Operations Center(PEOC) under the White House until "shortly before 10 a.m." that tragic day, Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta testified when he arrived in the room at 9:20 a.m. Cheney was already there. (CR published no testimony from Mineta.)

The timeline is important because if Cheney arrived at 10 a.m. it would have been about 20 minutes after the Pentagon was allegedly struck by a hijacked airplane at 9:38 a.m., too late for him to authorize the Air Force to shoot it down. Some 125 Pentagon employees perished in the attack.

More on Cheney

Karen Kwiatkowski On Feith, Cheney & Planning Iran
David Swanson

SWANSON: Who's running this show, Bush or Cheney or a group?

KWIATKOWSKI: I suspect it is Cheney, and Cheney's network of like-minded, old Cold Warriors struggling for money, power and relevance in a post-Cold War age. Hence the war on terror, hence the demonization of Russia, Iran and China by members of the Cheney clique. Cheney and those who share his worldview in Washington are dinosaurs, but they have big teeth, big appetites, and they aren't dead yet. Apparently, Cheney is also personally feared by many Republicans and Democrats alike. I don't know why. Are they afraid he'll curse at them and call them names? Bush doesn't seem to be much of an organization man. He seems more like the Paris Hilton of politics. He goes to the parties, he shows up, he has a good time, but doesn't take anything too seriously. Cheney seems to take world domination seriously, and he has a lot of friendly, and fearful, folks on board.

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Do you realize how the Right REALLY feels about you?

The truth of the matter is that it should thoroughly frighten you. These people are terrifying!
Digby at Hullabaloo:

Glenn Greenwald does a nice job today dealing with yet another example of journalistic double standards, dealing with the predictable excretory spew of Ann Coulter at this year's CPAC vs Howie Kurtz's recent spell on the fainting couch over few anonymous comments that were removed from the Huffington Post. But he highights this comment from Andrew Sullivan which just floored me

When you see her in such a context, you realize that she truly represents the heart and soul of contemporary conservative activism, especially among the young. The standing ovation for Romney was nothing like the eruption of enthusiasm that greeted her. . . .

Her endorsement of Romney today - "probably the best candidate" - is a big deal, it seems to me. McCain is a non-starter. He is as loathed as Clinton in these parts. Giuliani is, in her words, "very, very liberal." One of his sins? He opposed the impeachment of Bill Clinton. That's the new standard. She is the new Republicanism. The sooner people recognize this, the better.

Continue at Hullabaloo

Read Glenn at Salon

A comprehensive Primer on Iraq.

This is information you need From Mother Jones:

All right, no more excuses, people. After four years in Iraq, it’s time to get serious. We’ve spent too long goofing off, waiting to be saved by the bell, praying that we won’t get asked a stumper like, “What’s the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite?” Okay, even the head of the House intelligence committee doesn’t know that one. All the more reason to start boning up on what we—and our leaders—should have learned back before they signed us up for this crash course in Middle Eastern geopolitics. And while we’re at it, let’s do the math on what the war really costs in blood and dollars. It’s time for our own Iraq study group. Yes, there will be a test, and we can’t afford to fail.

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Iraq: What should have been.

Trust Larry Johnson to have the straight skinny on how Dubya screwed up Iraq, and by extention, the USA.

The article, Iraq: What Could Have Been, What Should Have Been..., was authored by retired U.S. Army Colonel Richard L. Stouder and details the fact that the debacle unfolding in Iraq is a consequence of the Bush Adminstration ignoring war plans the Army had developed, which if followed would have enabled us to get control of Iraq and avoid the bloody civil war now raging.

Ignoring the professionals and relying on political hacks is the defining characteristic of the Bush Administration. The military tried to tell them more troops would be needed to take over Iraq. Eric Shinseki and others were ignored. The CIA tried to tell them that there was no link between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden. Doug Feith set up the Office of Special Plans and set about manufacturing his own bogus intelligence. Then there are the Katrina and Walter Reed disasters. One time is a mistake. Doing the same thing over and over is a pattern of behavior.

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Joe Conason's Opinion Piece On Dick Cheney's Creditability

The New York Observer - Op-ED

...Cheney cares nothing for those facts. As the official who most vehemently assured us of the certain existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, he remains immune to the kind of embarrassment that would have required an honorable man to resign from office long ago.

During his latest foreign trip, he warned Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Representative Jack Murtha (D-Penn.) that the redeployment of U.S. troops from Iraq would “validate the Al Qaeda strategy,” as if Mr. bin Laden somehow lured the United States into invading Mesopotamia. Reiterating the point later, he added: “Al Qaeda functions on the basis that they think they can break our will. That’s their fundamental underlying strategy: that if they can kill enough Americans or cause enough havoc, create enough chaos in Iraq, then we’ll quit and go home.”

Actually, we now know that the occupation of Iraq—the Cheney strategy—has strengthened Al Qaeda immeasurably by recruiting thousands of young Muslims to its cause. We know that because the National Intelligence Estimate prepared for the Bush administration a year ago said so. According to The Washington Post, a newspaper whose editorial page supports the war, officials familiar with the classified document said the N.I.E. concluded that “rather than contributing to eventual victory in the global counterterrorism struggle, the situation in Iraq has worsened the U.S. position.”

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Repeat after me... It was never about the oil. Yeah, Right, Whatever.

Remember we didn't go into this war for oil. Just because Bush, Cheney and half of the president's staff are oilmen had nothing to do with going to war. You know that American troops protected the Oil Ministry from chaos and looting, while the seat of government, priceless antiquties, and vast ammo dumps were left to fend for themselves. The reason was to maintain order, don't 'cha know? Why, we went to war to destroy those WMDs, er, uh, Saddam had nuclear weapons, er, ah, to spread democracy.

Remember we didn't go into this war for oil...

Simbaud at King of Zembla

On Monday, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's cabinet in Baghdad approved the draft of the new Iraqi oil law. The government regards it as "a major national project". The key point of the law is that Iraq's immense oil wealth (115 billion barrels of proven reserves, third in the world after Saudi Arabia and Iran) will be under the iron rule of a fuzzy "Federal Oil and Gas Council" boasting "a panel of oil experts from inside and outside Iraq". That is, nothing less than predominantly US Big Oil executives.

[...]The law was in essence drafted, behind locked doors, by a US consulting firm hired by the Bush administration and then carefully retouched by Big Oil, the International Monetary Fund, former US deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz' World Bank, and the United States Agency for International Development. It's virtually a US law (its original language is English, not Arabic) . . . .

Big Oil is obviously ecstatic - not only ExxonMobil, but also ConocoPhillips, Chevron, BP and Shell (which have collected invaluable info on two of Iraq's biggest oilfields), TotalFinaElf, Lukoil from Russia and the Chinese majors. Iraq has as many as 70 undeveloped fields - "small" ones hold a minimum of a billion barrels. As desert western Iraq has not even been exploited, reserves may reach 300 billion barrels - way more than Saudi Arabia. Gargantuan profits under the PSA arrangement are in a class by themselves. Iraqi oil costs only US$1 a barrel to extract. With a barrel worth $60 and up, happy days are here again.

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1997 days and counting.

It has been five and a half years since 9/11. WHERE IS bin-Laden? Remember our cowboy president? You know, "Wanted , dead or alive," Bush?

From Huffington, Cenk Uygur

We invaded Iraq, which had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11. And we now threaten to attack Iran. Yet, still no word on the people who actually attacked us. Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri sit comfortably in Pakistan by all accounts.

I don't want to hear a single word about Iran until these guys catch bin Laden first. It's not like they don't know how to find someone they're looking for. They found Saddam Hussein in a spider hole in the middle of Iraq.

They found him in a hole in the ground!

Why? Because they were looking! Bush sent 150,000 guys after Saddam and his boys and he got them. He sent 36 troops after Osama bin Laden when he had him cornered in Tora Bora, and we didn't get him. Is anyone surprised? And can anyone make the argument that Osama was as big a priority as Saddam?

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'Encouraging' returning injured vets to STFU.

This is just too cold for words.

From No Quarter: Army Times: Shut Up and Get in Formation SusanUnPC

Walter Reed patients told to keep quiet

Soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center’s Medical Hold Unit say they have been told they will wake up at 6 a.m. every morning and have their rooms ready for inspection at 7 a.m., and that they must not speak to the media.

“Some soldiers believe this is a form of punishment for the trouble soldiers caused by talking to the media,” one Medical Hold Unit soldier said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

It is unusual for soldiers to have daily inspections after Basic Training.

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Also read this - Chris Floys at Empire Berlesque: Supporting the Troops: "Shut Up and Suffer"

Because some soldiers were ballsy enough to tell the press about the callous way the Bush gang treats the cannon fodder it sends off to die, kill, maim and be maimed in a useless, pointless, illegal, corrupt, immoral, murderous, mismanaged war, now all the soldiers in Walter Reed Army Medical Center’s Medical Hold Unit are being subjected to a punishment regimen – and banished to an area where they will be inaccessible to the press. So reports that well-known bastion of defeatist pink-lib Islamo-wimpism, the Army Times:

Soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center’s Medical Hold Unit say they have been told they will wake up at 6 a.m. every morning and have their rooms ready for inspection at 7 a.m., and that they must not speak to the media.

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George Bush's Excellent Atomic FUBAR

Here are three different posts to give you moe information about how well
Shrub is 'protecting' this country.

From Crooks and Liars:BushCo. really are a ship of fools By: John Amato

From Obsidian Wings: Idiots. Idiots. by hilzoy

From Booman Tribune:Bush Wrong about North Korea's Nukes, too by Steven D