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Archive: POLITICS >please note: some links may no longer be active.
We All Killed Her I have excerpted Rami G. Khouri's work a number of times in the past. Khouri is an internationally syndicated columnist, and director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut. His perspective on Middle Eastern affairs is, in my view, clear-eyed, insightful, and important to anyone interested in understanding the fundamental issues driving that profoundly important part of the world. Here is what Khouri had to say about the Bhutto assasination, reprinted in its entirety: The tragic assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto will engulf Pakistan in grief and turmoil. Her death symbolizes the wider calamity that envelops us all -- throughout the Middle East, Asia, Europe, and the United States. The real significance of this latest killing -- and the others that are sure to follow -- is not their surprise, but rather how common, almost inevitable, this sort of event has become in our part of the world. If we wish to end this horror show engulfing more Arab-Asian regions and increasingly sucking in American and other Western armies, we should start getting serious about what it means and why it happens. We should largely dismiss the many exhortations we will now hear about democracy, stability, restraint, terrorism, and patience in the face of extremism. These are increasingly vacuous appeals by leaders who willfully ignore a central, miserable reality in which they participate: Much of the vast region from North Africa and the Middle East to south Asia is now routinely defined by political violence as an everyday fact of life. A telltale sign in Pakistan today, as it has been in Lebanon for years, and in many other similarly scarred countries, is that we can identify multiple plausible culprits because so many political people -- good guys and bad guys alike -- kill on the job. Bhutto, her father, and brother have all been assassinated, as have been successive generations of other political families, in Arab and Asian countries. The lack of novelty is another telling sign that should clarify for us the wider meaning of this crime, beyond Pakistan. After grieving for one family and one country, we must react to the chronic nature of political violence by trying to understand the entire phenomenon, rather than its isolated, episodic manifestations. An honest beginning in this direction would be to acknowledge that political violence does not occur in a historical vacuum. Lone gunmen, local militias, suicide terrorists, state armies, and even democratically elected leaders in dozens of countries have all become players in an extensive global drama. On this stage, the use of force is an everyday event -- the threat of force is never off the table. It makes little difference if this is the work of democratic or dictatorial leaders: Dead children and war-ravaged societies do not value such distinctions. When the military and political violence of democrats and dictators goes on for several generations, social values are distorted, and human values are disjointed. It does not matter if this occurs in Pakistan, Egypt, Algeria, Kazakhstan, Northern Ireland, or pre-democratic southern Europe. The absence of credible governance systems based on the rule of law and the equal rights of all citizens slowly pushes citizens and rulers alike to rely on the law of the jungle. They use death and intimidation, rather than electoral or accountable legitimacy, to make their point, to perpetuate their incumbency, and to eliminate their opponents. When everyone uses violence and intimidation as a routine, daily expression of their political aims, when terrorists and presidents use firepower to lay down the law, the circle of culpability widens like the ripples from a pebble thrown into a pond. It is becoming harder and harder to tell the difference between gunmen, gangs, and governments -- in Asia, the Middle East and parts of the West -- when the chronic use of violence and lawlessness makes death and assassinations routine, and subsequently inevitable. We will hear passionate appeals this week about courage, democracy, and terror, from presidents, kings and warlords alike. These emperors appear increasingly naked as they exhort us to higher values. It is hard to take them seriously -- these Asians, Arabs, Americans, Israelis, Iranians, Turks, Europeans, Africans and anyone else who wishes to stand up and be recognized. These pontificating presidents, kings, and warlords who preach about life and democracy have spent the last generation sending their armies to war, overthrowing regimes, authorizing covert assassinations, arming gangs and militias, trading weapons for political favors, buying protection from thugs, cozying up to terrorists, lauding autocrats, making deals with dictators, imprisoning tens of thousands of foes, torturing at will, thumbing their nose at the UN Charter, buying and bullying judges, ignoring true democrats, and blindly refusing even to hear the simple demands of their own citizens for minimum decency and dignity. I have spent my entire adult life in the Middle East -- since the 1970s -- watching leaders being assassinated, foreign armies topple governments, local colonels seize power, foreign occupations persist for decades, the rule of law get thrown in the garbage, constitutions being ignored, and, in the end, ordinary people finally deciding that they will not remain outside of history, or invisible in their own societies. Instead, they decide to write themselves into the violent and criminal scripts. They kill, as they have been killed. Having been dehumanized in turn, they will embrace inhumanity and brutality. Who killed Benazir Bhutto? We all killed her, in east and west, Orient and Occident, north and south. We of the globalized beastly generation that transformed political violence from an occasional crime to an ideology and an addiction.
Fisk on Bhutto/Pakistan Weird, isn't it, how swiftly the narrative is laid down for us. Benazir Bhutto, the courageous leader of the Pakistan People's Party, is assassinated in Rawalpindi – attached to the very capital of Islamabad wherein ex-General Pervez Musharraf lives – and we are told by George Bush that her murderers were "extremists" and "terrorists". Well, you can't dispute that. But the implication of the Bush comment was that Islamists were behind the assassination. It was the Taliban madmen again, the al-Qa'ida spider who struck at this lone and brave woman who had dared to call for democracy in her country. Of course, given the childish coverage of this appalling tragedy – and however corrupt Ms Bhutto may have been, let us be under no illusions that this brave lady is indeed a true martyr – it's not surprising that the "good-versus-evil" donkey can be trotted out to explain the carnage in Rawalpindi. [snip] Only a few days ago – in one of the most remarkable (but typically unrecognised) scoops of the year – Tariq Ali published a brilliant dissection of Pakistan (and Bhutto) corruption in the London Review of Books, focusing on Benazir and headlined: "Daughter of the West". In fact, the article was on my desk to photocopy as its subject was being murdered in Rawalpindi. Towards the end of this report, Tariq Ali dwelt at length on the subsequent murder of Murtaza Bhutto by police close to his home at a time when Benazir was prime minister – and at a time when Benazir was enraged at Murtaza for demanding a return to PPP values and for condemning Benazir's appointment of her own husband as minister for industry, a highly lucrative post. In a passage which may yet be applied to the aftermath of Benazir's murder, the report continues: "The fatal bullet had been fired at close range. The trap had been carefully laid, but, as is the way in Pakistan, the crudeness of the operation – false entries in police log-books, lost evidence, witnesses arrested and intimidated – a policeman killed who they feared might talk – made it obvious that the decision to execute the prime minister's brother had been taken at a very high level." When Murtaza's 14-year-old daughter, Fatima, rang her aunt Benazir to ask why witnesses were being arrested – rather than her father's killers – she says Benazir told her: "Look, you're very young. You don't understand things." Or so Tariq Ali's exposé would have us believe. Over all this, however, looms the shocking power of Pakistan's ISI, the Inter Services Intelligence. This vast institution – corrupt, venal and brutal – works for Musharraf. But it also worked – and still works – for the Taliban. It also works for the Americans. Fisk's full piece can be read in The Independent (U.K.)
Benazir Bhutto (1954–2007)
If you are interested in more than the common, trite, and/or dishonest analyses of Bhutto's death and its ramifications, you might want to start with Tariq Ali's piece in The Guardian. Here's the beginning: Even those of us sharply critical of Benazir Bhutto's behaviour and policies - both while she was in office and more recently - are stunned and angered by her death. Indignation and fear stalk the country once again. An odd coexistence of military despotism and anarchy created the conditions leading to her assassination in Rawalpindi yesterday. In the past, military rule was designed to preserve order - and did so for a few years. No longer. Today it creates disorder and promotes lawlessness. How else can one explain the sacking of the chief justice and eight other judges of the country's supreme court for attempting to hold the government's intelligence agencies and the police accountable to courts of law? Their replacements lack the backbone to do anything, let alone conduct a proper inquest into the misdeeds of the agencies to uncover the truth behind the carefully organised killing of a major political leader. How can Pakistan today be anything but a conflagration of despair? It is assumed that the killers were jihadi fanatics. This may well be true, but were they acting on their own? I'd also recommend this piece written by Naim Sahib
Afghanistan, The Taliban, and al-Qaeda By many measures, Afghanistan is falling apart. The Afghan opium crop has flourished in the past two years and now represents 93 percent of the world’s supply, with an estimated street value of $38 billion in 2006. That money helps bankroll an insurgency that is now operating virtually within sight of the capital, Kabul. Suicide bombings have risen eightfold in the past two years, including several devastating attacks in Kabul, and as of October, coalition casualties had surpassed those of any previous year. The situation has gotten so bad, in fact, that ethnic and political factions in the northern part of the country have started stockpiling arms in preparation for when the international community decides to pull out. Afghans—who have seen two foreign powers on their soil in 20 years—are well aware of the limits of empire. They are well aware that everything has an end point, and that in their country end points are bloodier than most. Sebastian Junger's fascinating report can be read at Vanity Fair
It's No Joke An old Jewish joke tells of a devoted mother who briefs her son before he sets out to battle: "Kill a Turk and rest," she advises. But the son asks: "And what happens if in fact the Turk tries to kill me?" She opens her eyes wide in surprise: "Why would he want to kill you? What have you done to him?" This is exactly the kind of self-righteousness that accompanies our attitude toward the Palestinians. It is evident in the reports on the television, radio and in the newspapers - which paint only a partial picture of the conflict. Because when considerations of ratings and just plain cowardice determine coverage, the information the public gets is biased. In this way an extremist public opinion is created, which believes that all of the justice is on our side only, because "what have we done to them?" Last Wednesday, the media reported the severe rocket attack on Sderot. Twenty rockets landed on the city and Mayor Eli Moyal resigned on live radio. The broadcasts, on all three television channels, were dramatic. Reporters interviewed furious residents who demanded immediate and harsh military action in the Gaza Strip. One of the Qassams hit the home of Aliza Amar, and she was taken in moderate condition to Barzilai Medical center in Ashkelon. Last Tuesday, the day before the barrage on Sderot, three people were killed in Gaza by a tank shell fired into a house southeast of Khan Yunis. Two more were killed by a bomb dropped by a plane on their car and another "met his death" in the area of Beit Hanoun. According to the IDF, all of the dead were terror activists, members of the Islamic Jihad. A total of 13 people were killed in the action and 40 were arrested for interrogation. the rest of Nehemia Shtrasler's piece can be read in Haaretz
Paving the Road to Peace (Israeli Style) Ramallah, 16-12-07: An international orchestra refused to perform in Gaza today after its sole Palestinian member, violinist Ramzi Aburedwan, was prevented from entering the Strip by the Israeli authorities and threatened with arrest, despite the fact that all 20 members of the orchestra – including Aburedwan - had secured prior coordination from the Israeli authorities via the General Consulate of France in Jerusalem to enter Gaza. The orchestra had been due to perform as part of a Baroque Music Festival which is taking place throughout Palestine and Israel, supported by the Barenboim-Said Foundation, the General Consulate of France in Jerusalem, the A.M. Qattan Foundation, and the Goethe Institute of Ramallah. The tour specifically scheduled a performance in the Strip to give ordinary Gazans some respite from the grinding, daily suffering they face because of Israeli measures of collective punishment and isolation, including fuel and electricity cuts and crippling border closures, which have caused massive levels of poverty and unemployment, and continued Israeli military attacks. When the orchestra arrived at the Israeli-controlled Erez crossing, all of its international members were told they could pass except Aburedwan, who was told that he had travelled to the crossing illegally despite possessing all the necessary documentation. The orchestra refused to enter Gaza without Aburedwan. After being detained at Erez for almost seven hours, Aburedwan was taken to an Israeli police station in Sderot accompanied by his fellow musicians, where he was held for a further two hours. more from Norman Finklestein
Your opposition party at work As regular readers of this blog know, I definitely do not exempt Congressional Democrats from blame for many of the outrages committed by the Bush administration, as they were, in many cases, complicit. But to be fair, they have also facilitated some very important legislation, and Glenn Greenwald notes a fine example: ...the Democratic-led House was able to pass an extremely important bipartisan resolution yesterday – by a vote of 372-9 – which "recognizes the Christian faith as one of the great religions of the world"; proclaims that Christmas is "a holiday of great significance to Americans"; decrees that "Christians and Christianity have contributed greatly to the development of western civilization"; explains that "on December 25 of each calendar year, American Christians observe Christmas, the holiday celebrating the birth of their savior, Jesus Christ"; and "expresses its deepest respect to American Christians and Christians throughout the world."
A Twisted Relationship Laid Bare If you need any further proof that the relationship between the U.S. and Israel has become warped, spend a few minutes checking out some Israeli newspapers on the Iran NIE -- the feature articles, the opinion pieces, all the way down to the message board posts. It's quite extraordinary: the outrage, the feeling of betrayal, the sense of entitlement to a supportive, obsequious, almost vassal-like U.S. intelligence apparatus. That Israel's political and military leaders have made no pretense of hiding their own scorn for the NIE is both striking and telling. How common is it for one ally to publicly mock another's intelligence community? It's obvious now that one of our main "allies" depends on us, like them, living in a constant state of alarm. For Israel, ideally, it's fear by osmosis. There's clearly a longing for those heady days right after 9/11 -- "very good" for the relationship, Bibi gushed -- when Americans "got" the threat. But it's not just fear. We've also become occupiers-in-arms, with the same rotting of national identity and soul suffered by Israel during the past few decades well underway here. At this point I don't think it's an exaggeration to describe this relationship as not only perverted, but increasingly dangerous. from The Cunning Realist The issue is fleshed out significantly by Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery
A Notable Anomaly One of the most disappointing – to put it mildly – aspects of the past seven years of disastrous governance by the Bush administration, is that so few people of principle have spoken out and/or resigned in protest of the outrageous behavior which was taking place around them on a regular basis. Obvious names like Colin Powell spring to mind immediately. But there have been a few whose actions deserve credit, and Morris D. Davis clearly falls into that category: I was the chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, until Oct. 4, the day I concluded that full, fair and open trials were not possible under the current system. I resigned on that day because I felt that the system had become deeply politicized and that I could no longer do my job effectively or responsibly. In my view -- and I think most lawyers would agree -- it is absolutely critical to the legitimacy of the military commissions that they be conducted in an atmosphere of honesty and impartiality. Yet the political appointee known as the "convening authority" -- a title with no counterpart in civilian courts -- was not living up to that obligation. In a nutshell, the convening authority is supposed to be objective -- not predisposed for the prosecution or defense -- and gets to make important decisions at various stages in the process. The convening authority decides which charges filed by the prosecution go to trial and which are dismissed, chooses who serves on the jury, decides whether to approve requests for experts and reassesses findings of guilt and sentences, among other things. Earlier this year, Susan Crawford was appointed by the secretary of Defense to replace Maj. Gen. John Altenburg as the convening authority. Altenburg's staff had kept its distance from the prosecution to preserve its impartiality. Crawford, on the other hand, had her staff assessing evidence before the filing of charges, directing the prosecution's pretrial preparation of cases (which began while I was on medical leave), drafting charges against those who were accused and assigning prosecutors to cases, among other things. How can you direct someone to do something -- use specific evidence to bring specific charges against a specific person at a specific time, for instance -- and later make an impartial assessment of whether they behaved properly? Intermingling convening authority and prosecutor roles perpetuates the perception of a rigged process stacked against the accused. The second reason I resigned is that I believe even the most perfect trial in history will be viewed with skepticism if it is conducted behind closed doors. Telling the world, "Trust me, you would have been impressed if only you could have seen what we did in the courtroom" will not bolster our standing as defenders of justice. Getting evidence through the classification review process to allow its use in open hearings is time-consuming, but it is time well spent. Crawford, however, thought it unnecessary to wait because the rules permit closed proceedings. There is no doubt that some portions of some trials have to be closed to protect classified information, but that should be the last option after exhausting all reasonable alternatives. Transparency is critical. Finally, I resigned because of two memos signed by Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England that placed the chief prosecutor -- that was me -- in a chain of command under Defense Department General Counsel William J. Haynes. Haynes was a controversial nominee for a lifetime appointment to the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, but his nomination died in January 2007, in part because of his role in authorizing the use of the aggressive interrogation techniques some call torture. I had instructed the prosecutors in September 2005 that we would not offer any evidence derived by waterboarding, one of the aggressive interrogation techniques the administration has sanctioned. Haynes and I have different perspectives and support different agendas, and the decision to give him command over the chief prosecutor's office, in my view, cast a shadow over the integrity of military commissions. I resigned a few hours after I was informed of Haynes' place in my chain of command. Davis' full commentary can be read in the LA Times
Structural Constraints
via Glenn Greenwald
Right On For the men and women who have sacrificed so much, more must be given. A nation that has accepted one's service must not neglect those disabled in that service. Every veteran receiving VA compensation at the 100% rating (total and permanent) should receive at least $5,000 per month in compensation, with yearly increases equal to the inflation rate plus one or two percentage points. Perhaps a more equitable payment would be one-half of the salary paid to members of Congress. After all, they are the ones that vote for war and conflict and Veterans benefits. Dreams are shattered, lives broken, fear and anxiety rule. Veterans, spouses, children, parents and families pay a horrendous price for the pain and suffering from disease and physical and mental trauma that does not go away and increases with age. The issue is not money, because money is available to continue a conflict and to maintain and build weapons systems. The cost of one B-1 Lancer bomber is over $280 million or about the cost of some war games that would pay for 20 years of benefits for the 100% disabled veterans. Billions of dollars are found for foreign aid, and a fraction of the money would provide for a lifetime of benefits. . . .Freedom is not free. The cost of war is long-term and must never be incurred if those few, those very few, that sacrifice so much for so many are not cared for physically, mentally and financially. Freedom would then be but words in the wind. The above was written by Dr. Thomas Dimitry in the November/December Purple Heart Magazine.
Same Old (Outrageously Dishonest) Tune Over the past year, the rhetoric from our Serious Foreign Policy establishment regarding the supposed threat posed by Iran's active pursuit of nuclear weapons has severely escalated both in terms of shrillness and threats. Opposition to this building hysteria has been led by Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who -- exactly as he did prior to the invasion of Iraq -- has been relentlessly warning that there is no real evidence to support these war-fueling allegations. Because of that, he has been relentlessly attacked and smeared by our Serious Foreign Policy elite -- yet again. And yet again, ElBaradei has been completely vindicated, and our Serious Foriegn Policy Experts exposed as serial fabricators, fear-mongerers and hysterics. In 2005, the Bush administration vigorously (though unsuccessfully) sought to block ElBaradei's re-election as IAEA head on the ground that he was right about Iraq's non-existent weapons stockpiles: The U.S. has complained ElBaradei has been too soft with Iraq, and has clashed with him over weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. ElBaradei balked at U.S. claims that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted WMD. The administration went so far as to tape record ElBaradei's conversations with Iranian officials in order to prove he was in league with them, all "in search of ammunition to oust him as director general." As The Washington Post reported, even back then (2005), administration officials "with access to the intercepts" were accusing ElBaradei of being "way too soft on the Iranians." According to the Post: "Some U.S. officials accused ElBaradei of purposely concealing damning details of Iran's [nuclear] program from the IAEA board." Less than three months ago, the Very Serious Foreign Policy Expert Fred Hiatt published a scathing Washington Post Editorial attacking ElBaradei for warning of the dangers of an unnecessary war with Iran and pointing out that the evidence is non-existent that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. Hiatt's Editorial accused ElBaradei of being a "Rogue Regulator" right in the headline. ElBaradei's crime in Hiatt's eyes: he was trying to "use his agency to thwart their leading members -- above all the United States." And how, according to Hiatt, was ElBaradei engaging in his dastardly obstruction? By pointing out that the claims from American warmongers regarding Iran's nuclear program were exaggerated or false. Hiatt said that ElBaradei's chief sin was "to excuse the Iranian activity that most justifies the would-be bombers -- uranium enrichment." Hiatt actually went so far as to warn that ElBaradei's insufficiently hysterical statements might mean that we will run out of time to act before Iran gets The Bomb -- exactly the same way that hysterical warmongers like Charles Krauthammer argued that we could not afford to wait for the U.N. inspections process in Iraq to be complete because, by then, Saddam might have The Bomb and it would be too late to act. Hiatt: The IAEA issued a report last week playing down the centrifuge operation, saying that "only" 2,600 were operating or being installed and tested in July. But Mr. Ahmadinejad announced over the weekend that 3,000 were in place -- and even the lower number is a 50 percent increase over the number that inspectors counted earlier this year. By the time the IAEA and Iran are done talking about past questions, Iran will almost certainly have enough working centrifuges to produce a bomb within a year. . . . Moscow and Beijing could join Mr. ElBaradei in arguing that nothing should be done before the end of the year. By then, the options of the Bush administration and other governments that believe Iran's nuclear program must be stopped, and not accommodated, may be greatly attenuated -- thanks to a diplomat who apparently believes he need not represent anyone other than himself. Showing his true allegiances, Hiatt mocked ElBaradei for having "set himself a new task: stopping what he considers to be the 'crazies' in Washington who 'want to say, 'Let us go and bomb Iran.'" Hiatt loyally defended his friends in the the "Bomb Iran" crowd: "we consider its members saner than many of the statements of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad." Identically, earlier this year, Hiatt's neoconservative comrade John Bolton went on CNN with Wolf Blitzer and repeatedly smeared ElBaradei for suggesting that there was no evidence that Iran was pursuing a nuclear weapon. After Blitzer showed Bolton a clip of ElBaradei on CNN downplaying the threat of Iran's nuclear program, Bolton angrily blurted out: "Mohammed ElBaradei is an apologist for Iran. . . . He needs to learn that he works for the members governments of his agency, not the other way around." Naturally, Bolton escalated the "Iran apologist" accusation against ElBaradei on Fox News. When Bolton accuses a U.N. weapons expert bearing the name "Mohamed ElBaradei" and an Egyptian accent of being an "Iran apologist" -- and when the Bush administration tapes his conversations with Iranian officials to prove he's in cahoots with them -- the reprehensible meaning could not be clearer. Much more from Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com
Any Questions? ABC News' Martha Raddatz, Jonathan Karl, Luis Martinez and Kirit Radia Report: In a stunning reversal of Bush administration conventional wisdom, a new assessment by U.S. intelligence agencies concludes Iran shelved it's nuclear weapons program over four years ago. "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program," reads a declassified version of the National Intelligence Estimate key findings. "We judge with moderate confidence that the earliest possible date Iran would be technically capable of producing enough highly enriched uranium (HEU) for a weapon is late 2009." Our own experts have arrived at that conclusion (one shared, incidentally, by other sober experts around the world), and yet the reckless, warmongering people at the top of the U.S. government continue to bang the drums warning of dire consequences if we don't act against (i.e. attack) Iran NOW. UPDATE: Here's Josh Marshall's appropriate take: I haven't had a chance yet to weigh in on today's news about the IC's apparent conclusion that the Iranians shuttered their nuclear program in 2003. But it's awfully big news. There's a secondary, though still very interesting question, of just why the NIE findings were released at all, and what intra-administration in-fighting might be behind it. But it shows us once again, for anyone who needed showing, that everything this administration says on national security matters should be considered presumptively not only false, but actually the opposite of what is in fact true, until clear evidence to the contrary becomes available. They're big liars. And actually being serious about the country's security means doing everything possible to limit the amount of damage they can do over the next fourteen months while they still control the US military and the rest of the nation's foreign policy apparatus.
You Got That Right If the Bush administration were honest, the government’s brief to the Supreme Court in the Guantanamo detainee cases (Boumediene v. Bush and Al Odah v. United States, to be argued Wednesday) would have said something like this. We admit that for the last six years, we have behaved badly. Very badly. We mistakenly denied hundreds of prisoners any protections under the Geneva Conventions. We then deliberately brought them to Guantanamo to evade judicial review. We engaged in highly coercive interrogations that often approached, and in some instances constituted, torture. After you rejected our position 3 ½ years ago in Rasul v. Bush, we ignored the message. Rather than providing the detainees fair hearings, we set up sham military proceedings, stonewalled district judges, and waited for Congress to bail us out. We don’t deserve to stand here today and argue against habeas corpus rights for these prisoners. But honesty has never been this administration’s strong suit. Jonathan Hafetz, of the Brennan Center for Justice, tears apart the Administration's most recent defense of the "habeas-stripping provisions" of the Detainee Treatment and Military Commissions Acts
Good Question I don’t know if children should be allowed to watch the Republican presidential debates. There’s so much talk of violence and mayhem as the solution to our ills. The candidates seem so eager to flex their muscles and engage the nation in conflict: Let’s continue the war in Iraq. Let’s show them what we’re made of in Iran. Let’s round up those immigrants and ship ’em back where they came from. It’s like watching adolescent boys playing the ultimate video game, with no regard for the consequences. Rudy, the crime-fighter and terror maven, says he’s tougher than Mitt, who actually had illegals working on his property. Mitt begs to differ and says he’d like to double the size of the Guantánamo prison. Are we electing a president or a sheriff? More from Bob Herbert in the NY Times
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