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Archive: POLITICS >please note: some links may no longer be active.
Beyond NSA spying The Heretik has a very useful roundup of examples of recent government overreach. And while the NSA wiretap scandal may be the most important, some of the specific targets found in other programs are truly outrageous. THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE through TALON (Threat and Local Observation Notice) and CIFA (Counterintelligence Field Activity) has spied on some very “dangerous” groups. Protesters outside Halliburton offices handing out peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in Houston An anti war protest at a Quaker meetinghouse in Lake Worth, Florida A Students Against War demonstration at a military recruiting fair at the University of California, Santa Cruz Read the full post here
Simultaneously hilarious and pathetic Josh Marshall makes a great catch: Great Moments in Abramoff-Ain't-Such-A-Big-Deal Spin. Honorable Mention for Ed Rogers, GOP lobbyist, from last night's Hardball (emphasis added): ". Look, this is going to come out. Nobody is going to keep it a secret. Jack Abramoff is so radioactive—I've got Jack Abramoff fatigue already. I mean, good grief, he didn't kill anybody. Maybe that one guy in Florida."
Lil' Debbie (though not of snack cakes fame) Jane Hamsher of the Firedoglake blog has been indispensable during the past several months. Today, she eviscerates Deborah Howell, the Washington Post's Ombudsman. Even if you haven't been following the story, you'll get the gist of it from reading Jane's post. [Howell, in today's Post] I've heard from lots of angry readers about the remark in my column Sunday that lobbyist Jack Abramoff gave money to both parties. A better way to have said it would be that Abramoff "directed" contributions to both parties. [Jane] And a better way to have said this would've been "I fucked up, what I said was an outright fabrication based on the fact that I was writing about something I did not understand. I accepted too quickly what the Heritage Foundation told me and I did not do my job as a journalist to check the facts." [Howell] Lobbyists, seeking influence in Congress, often advise clients on campaign contributions. [Jane] Debbie here assumes everyone is as slow on the uptake as she is and needs a nice, patronizing lecture about this amazing discovery she seems to have just now made. You guys at the WaPo did a great job hiring an obudsman. Really top-drawer. [Howell] While Abramoff, a Republican, gave personal contributions only to Republicans, he directed his Indian tribal clients to make millions of dollars in campaign contributions to members of Congress from both parties. [Jane] I don't expect Lil' Debbie to understand this, so she can just stop reading now and go back to speed dialing the Hudson Institute for her next column, but those with some interest in spin, publicity and the generation of public image probably don't need to be told that all this dancing around about "Democrats took contributions from Abramoff clients too" is an intentional attempt to mislead the public into making a conclusion that is patently false. Read the complete masterpiece at firedoglake.com
Rank Republican hypocrisy Glenn Reynolds highlights a particularly vile example in this recent, scathing post. When Sam Alito’s wife cried, we were subjected to all sorts of solemn hand-wringing and pious sermons about the need for civility and dignity in our political system. And we're hearing some of these same lectures over Hillary Clinton's terribly crass and uncivil description of the Bush Administration as a dissent-squashing plantation. These GOP sermons are delivered by Republicans who are very, very concerned that such incivility will deter good people from entering public life. Our media stars, always eager to show their serious and nonpartisan side, join in with these condemnations of the mean and uncivil Democrats. When doing so, they apparently fail to remember, and thus never mention, that the same Republicans delivering these dignity lectures spent the 1990s engaging in elevated and dignified discussions of semen stains on dresses, speculation about whether the President has unusual spots on his penis, tales of the lesbian First Lady’s murder of a male political aide with whom she was having an affair and subsequent efforts to make it look like a suicide, and all sorts of other similar sewer-scraping filth that they spewed for an entire decade in lieu of any substantive or political debate. Read the full post at Glenn's site
The harsh truth about the current state of Iraq The next time you hear a typically unreal, rosy pronouncement by a Bush Administration official on the wonderful progress being made in Iraq, consider the following set of headlines written by Juan Cole in today's report: The Washington Post reports that guerrillas killed 50 Iraqis on Wednesday
Guerrilla threats and sabotage have denied electricity to Baghdad for all but about 6 hours a day in recent weeks
It may cost $20 billion to fix the electricity problem, even if enough security could be established to allow the work to be done and maintained Read the wrenching details here
A historian in uniform in Iraq blogs about his experiences The following was written by Chris Bray, a graduate student in history at UCLA, now on duty in Kuwait with the US Army. Last September, American and Iraqi troops swept through the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar, killing and capturing insurgents in a strike launched under the name "Operation Restoring Rights." It was the most successful attack on the insurgency in that city, USA Today reported, since "American forces ran insurgents out of Tal Afar a year ago." Before the month was over, a female suicide bomber had launched another attack in Tal Afar, killing six men at an Iraqi Army recruiting center. More recently, insurgents fired mortars at polling stations in Tal Afar during the December elections. You can tell that story in other Iraqi cities; in a much-quoted op-ed piece in the Washington Post early this month, Paul Schroeder noted that his son, a marine, had died in a familiar town: "Augie was killed on his fifth mission to clear Haditha." A few days before, the news pages of that same paper reported that American soldiers were preparing to hand over the city of Samarra to Iraqi police -- for the third time in three years. American military leaders quoted in the piece were urgently hoping the hand-over would stick the third time. The unblinking cheerleaders for the war in Iraq like to make comparisons to WWII: Imagine if we'd left Europe before Hitler's army had been defeated. To which I say, imagine if nine landings at Normandy had led to four liberations of Paris, followed by a series of as-yet-unfinished marches on Berlin. (snip) The image I have is that of a man being bled slowly to death by thousands of biting flies. He's well armed, and he's sure he can stop the swarm from biting him, so he raises his shotgun again -- the flies flitting away from the slow-moving barrel -- and fires another load of buckshot. And then is being swarmed and bitten again, and chambers another shell to put a stop to it. Because how can a fly hope to stand up to a shotgun? Read more of Bray's writings at CLIOPATRIA: A Group Blog on the History News Netwqork site
Bloggers and the establishment journalists Glenn Greenwald has written an excellent piece on the discomfort which bloggers are causing in the established media, and the underlying dynamics. What makes this particular post so powerful, is that it actually demonstrates the superiority of the interactive blogosphere. What I mean by that is that at the end of the post, Greenwald welcomes his readers to link to a serious, critical response written by another, very good blogger, Ezra Klein. I strongly recommend following the link, as the dialogue between the two (Greenwald answers Klein's criticisms in the comments section of Klein's post) is enlightening. It also vividly illustrates the potential of such dialogues, the likes of which were unheard of in the mainstream media until very recently, when pressure from the blogosphere model forced them to include some forms of interactivity. The principal benefit from the emergence of the blogosphere is that it has opened up our political discourse to a much wider and more diverse group of participants. Previously, establishment journalists and their hand-picked commentators were the sole vehicle for the dissemination of political opinions. The only commentators and opinions which received any real attention were the ones which establishment journalists deemed worthy of attention. Those who were outside of the club of established journalists were ignored and unable to have their opinions heard. All of that has changed with the blogosphere. The blogosphere is a hard-core and pure meritocracy. It doesn’t matter who you are or what your pedigree is. You either produce persuasive arguments and do so with credibility, or you don’t. Whether someone has influence in the blogosphere has nothing to do with their institutionalized credentials and everything to do with the substance of what they produce. That is why even those who maintain their anonymity can be among the most popular, entertaining and influential voices. The blogosphere has exploded open the gates of influence which were previously guarded so jealously by the establishment journalists. For precisely that reason, many establishment journalists have raging contempt for the blogosphere. It is a contempt grounded in the fallacy of credentialism and a pseudo-elitist belief that only the approved and admitted members of their little elite journalist club can be trusted to enlighten the masses. Many of them see blogs as a distasteful and anarchic sewer, where uncredentialed and irresponsible people who are totally unqualified to articulate opinions are running around spewing all sorts of uninformed trash. And these journalistic gate-keepers become especially angry when blogospheric criticism is directed towards other establishment journalists, who previously were immune from any real public accountability. Read the full post at Glenn's site
"authoritarianism, official secrecy and incompetence" While discussing Al Gore's recent speech, Josh Marshall succinctly makes a very important point: The president's critics are always accusing him of law-breaking or unconstitutional acts and then also berating the incompetence of his governance. And it's often treated as, well ... he's power-hungry and incompetent to boot! Imagine that! The point though is that they are directly connected. Authoritarianism and secrecy breed incompetence; the two feed on each other. It's a vicious cycle. Governments with authoritarian tendencies point to what is in fact their own incompetence as the rationale for giving them yet more power. Katrina was a good example of this. Read the full post here
Iraq and Iran Glenn Greenwald discusses some of the lessons that we should take away from our entanglement in Iraq, and the very important connection to the simmering Iranian problem. Regardless of what else one thinks of the Iranian problem, one fact seems to have clearly emerged: in dealing with the Iranian threat, we are in a drastically weaker position, on almost every level, as a result of our invasion and ongoing occupation of Iraq. By severely limiting our options and consuming our resources, our war against a decrepit and impotent Saddam has made us less able to deal with real threats to our security – exactly what the dreaded war opponents insisted in advance would be the case if we went to war in Iraq. The question of what to do about Iraq was depicted – and continues to be depicted – as a choice between courage and cowardice, strength and weakness, Churchillian resolve or Chamberlain-like appeasement. With this premise firmly in place, those who cheered on the war (from a safe distance) are courageous, manly fighters in the glorious, resolute mold of Churchill. Those who opposed the war, even on the most pragmatic and even hawkish grounds, are caricatured as cowardly pacifists wanting to appease our enemies and make America weak. This crude depiction was always pure fantasy, a cheap cartoon, but is unmistakably being hauled out again for Iran Read the full post at Glenn's site
Very good catch! Eric Umansky caught an excellent, simple point made by someone on a Washington Post forum: Conway, Ark.: So let me get this straight--of course the warrantless snooping is legal, says the Bush administration, because the program was vetted by executive branch lawyers, who exercised legal judgment independent of their client, we're supposed to believe. Meanwhile, down the street, we shouldn't put too much stock in things Sam Alito wrote in the 80s when he was a government lawyer in the Reagan administration, because he was just doing his client's bidding. Which is it? Thanks to Eric
Tacit admission Having given it some thought, it occured to me that Alito's attempt to evade responsibility for having been a member of CAP (see previous post) actually had the opposite effect. It may be true that the most of the American public believes that the issue is in dispute, because Alito claims not to remember anything about his association. But that's nonsense, of course. If Alito didn't belong to CAP, then both he and (especially) his Republican supporters would be indignantly and loudly refuting the outrageous, false accusation. But they're not. So, then, what exactly does Alito's failure to remember anything about his association with CAP actually reveal? Sadly for the country, it can only mean one of two things: either Alito was a proud member of CAP, as his inclusion of the credit in a Justice Department job application suggests, or he was using the association to further himself in some way(s), but didn't share the (racists, sexist, etc.) beliefs of his colleagues. In the former case, Alito would be an awful addition to the Supreme Court, for even if his views on racism and sexism, etc. have changed, he is not being honest about that evolution. In the latter case, he is the worst kind of opportunist, as such behavior can barely be distinguished from the good guy who laughs heartily with his co-workers at the latest nigger joke. In either case, Alito was clearly being dishonest, and should be disqualified from consideration for that reason alone.
Alito and CAP For those who haven't been following the Alito hearings closely, there is a particularly disturbing, albeit disputed aspect of the Supreme Court nominees' past: his membership in a racist organization called CAP during his college years at Princeton. Take a look at some of Alito's responses to questions (from Ted Kennedy) about the organization. And bear in mind that he himself claimed membership of approximately 13 years in a Justice Department job application. "I've learned of that in recent weeks." "I feel confident that I didn't, Senator ..." "I don't think I was aware of that until recent weeks when I was informed of it." Quiddity's full, damning overview can be found here.
Harsh reality In order to put into perspective the Administration's outrageously distorted, politically expedient claims about the current situation in Iraq, consider the following. The current security situation here has gotten much worse since the elections. We had a security briefing yesterday right after a fellow journalist was abducted. Besides the usual reminders to keep a low profile and going over our own unique security measures and procedures as to what to do in any given scenario we were told that there’s a high probability of all out civil war. Iraq has been in a low level civil war since the end of 2003 that has been increasing in intensity ever since, but now our security team is telling us that should all-out war break out most, if not all of us, may have to be evacuated to safety in a nearby country. Instead of the scores of Iraqis dying each day as do now, thousands a day could perish. Most Sunnis have given up hope of getting adequate representation in the new Iraqi government and radical elements in the Shiite parties want to exact revenge on the Sunni for supporting Saddam over the years. Shiite death squads roam the city at night (in police and army uniform no less) dragging all the male members of a Sunni family out into the street and executing them in front of their women folk. Sunni insurgents (not in uniform) do the same to Shiite families in areas claimed as theirs. That terribly sober report comes from an American who is in Iraq, and is clearly familiar with the state of affairs.There is more from him at Juan Cole
Antibiotics: yet another surprising twist Those who know me well, know that I have a rather unusual, some would say radical view of health and illness. I don't intend to elaborate in detail, but suffice to say that, especially with respect to the treatment of diseases, I often question the approach used by the Western medical model. One of my chief complaints has always been the apparent short shrift given to the study of those who are exceptionally healthy. There are billions of dollars spent each year on the study of disease, yet only a tiny fraction is spent attempting to discern why some people, even in the face of direct exposure and other high risks, do not become ill. I believe that a large part of the reason for that imbalance is the perceived success of the use of antibiotics as a magic bullet in the "war on disease". But I'm afraid that, much like the "war on terror", attempting to kill the enemy without a full understanding of it is, ultimately, futile. There is, of course, widespread hope that rapid advances in technology and the development of new medicines will eradicate the terrible diseases which afflict us. And why not? Haven't a number of important diseases already been eradicated? Well, the answer to the latter question is actually not as straighforward as it may seem. But setting that aside, the history and, especially the current state of antibiotics provide a fascinating illustration of just how complex and difficult it is to fight diseases by attempting to kill them with a drug. In fact, modern society's heavy reliance on (and overuse of) antibiotics has now rendered the world's population dangerously vulnerable to the very type of illnesses which they were originally designed to fight. Professor Richard James, a biomolecular scientist based in the U.K., touches on some of these points in an interesting recent interview with Stephen Armstrong of The Guardian. "Between 1940 and 1970 - the golden age of antibiotics - we developed thousands of the drugs," he explains. "And then we squandered them. We fed antibiotics to chickens and cattle. We handed them out to people with a cold. Each time you try to kill bacteria, you're forcing them to select for survival. Now we've basically bred bugs that flourish in a hospital environment and they're just waiting to bite. You've got sick people in there, people having transplants taking drugs to suppress their immune systems, HIV patients, the elderly and the young. And yet nothing is being done." (snip) We drive to the village of Eyam - the site of a strange skirmish in this long-running campaign. In 1665 the Black Death arrived there via some flea-infested cloth. In an attempt to protect nearby towns and cities, the villagers made an extraordinary sacrifice: they quarantined themselves. No one could leave and no one could enter. Over the ensuing two years, more than 260 out of 350 died, but the plague was contained. Curiously, one of the survivors was the undertaker, who had handled every infected corpse. Researchers into Aids recently traced his descendants and found that they possessed unusual cell walls that made them immune to both bubonic-plague bacteria and HIV. Read the full interview at The Guardian
and yet, 40 years later...
Beyond the perfunctory (and too often politically expedient) annual remembrances of Dr. Martin Luther King, and beyond his four most famous words and the speech within which they were uttered, there are many words of wisdom to be rediscovered. Words which challenge us now–more than ever–to think carefully about what is happening to our society. From a speech which Dr. King gave on April 4, 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City: I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. (snip) Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence when it helps us to see the enemy’s point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition. Read the full, remarkable text here (thanks to the Feral Scholar)
Bush's War on Professionals Sidney Blumenthal, one of the few mainstream journalists not intimidated by the Administration, has a scathing new article at Salon.com. Congress, at best, is held in contempt as a pest and, at worst, is regarded as an intruder on the president's rightful authority. The Republican chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence committees, Rep. Duncan Hunter of California and Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, have been models of complicity in fending off oversight, attacking other members of Congress, especially Republicans, who have had the temerity to insist on it, using their committees to help the White House suppress essential information about the operations of government, and issuing tilted partisan reports smearing critics. This is the sort of congressional involvement, at White House direction, that the White House believes fulfills the congressional mandate. (snip) Cheney not only intervened personally in attempting to force CIA analysts to rubber-stamp Chalabi's disinformation, Risen writes, but also directly interfered in CIA field operations. When the Netherlands declined to permit the CIA to attempt to recruit an Iraqi official there as an intelligence asset, Cheney called the prime minister of Netherlands to demand his approval, but was rebuffed. Read the full piece at truthought.org
Which is the greater threat, terrorism or the continued abuses of power by our government? I can unhesitatingly answer the latter, and I live in the metro NYC area–surely (still) the most attractive terrorist target in the world. Why do I say that? Consider the following example. James Moore, co-author of the bestselling book Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential, has apparently been put on the TSA's no-fly list. On what basis? Well, the inability of those placed on the list to ascertain the answer to that question should be of great concern to every citizen. Here's a glimpse into Moore's experience: "I'm sorry, sir," she said. "There seems to be a problem. You've been placed on the No Fly Watch List." "Excuse me?" "I'm afraid there isn't much more that I can tell you," she explained. "It's just the list that's maintained by TSA to check for people who might have terrorist connections." "You're serious?" "I'm afraid so, sir. Here's an 800 number in Washington. You need to call them before I can clear you for the flight." Exasperated, I dialed the number from my cell, determined to clear up what I was sure was a clerical error. The woman who answered offered me no more information than the ticket agent. "Mam, I'd like to know how I got on the No Fly Watch List." "I'm not really authorized to tell you that, sir," she explained after taking down my social security and Texas driver's license numbers. "What can you tell me?" "All I can tell you is that there is something in your background that in some way is similar to someone they are looking for." The full, scary story can be found at The Daily Kos
A letter from the father of a dead soldier I am outraged at what I see as the cause of his death. For nearly three years, the Bush administration has pursued a policy that makes our troops sitting ducks. While Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that our policy is to "clear, hold and build" Iraqi towns, there aren't enough troops to do that. In our last conversation, Augie complained that the cost in lives to clear insurgents was "less and less worth it," because Marines have to keep coming back to clear the same places. Marine commanders in the field say the same thing. Without sufficient troops, they can't hold the towns. Augie was killed on his fifth mission to clear Haditha. Read the full piece at the Washington Post
$100m of taxpayers money In June of this year, a little-known company called The Lincoln Group received a $100m Pentagon contract. This company, as it turns out, was being paid to place pro-American propaganda in the Iraqi media. For background, Billmon has some interesting things to say. But beyond the questionable efficacy of such an approach, the story of the young man behind The Lincoln Group, particularly as it relates to how he gained quick access to money and power, is remarkable. The London Times has his profile here
"Freedom's on the march." When I hear Bush and his cronies repeat platitudes like that ad nauseum, the following question invariably spring to mind. Even if, years down the road, Iraq has been transformed into a recognizable democratic state, would it, in fact, have been worthwhile to the tens (hundreds?) of thousands maimed the process? Not to mention those killed and their families...
Iraqi Ali Khalil Thejeil, 22, was wounded when a bomb ignited a fuel truck. "I was at home with my sister. She asked me to buy some ice cream. So I thought: 'Good idea. I'll get one for you and one for me.' I remember walking toward the market. Then, an explosion. I woke up at the hospital. Now I am burnt. My ankle is broken. My body is filled with shrapnel." (Photo: Adam Nadel / Polaris) Thanks to truthout.com
Darwinian "Signaling", John Yoo, and Ann Coulter The above are tied together in interesting fashion by publius in a recent post. Here's an excerpt: When one gender of a given species has markedly different external characteristics than the other, that’s usually the result of sexual selection pressures. For instance, male peacocks show their fitness through their long tail feathers (females don’t have them). And male peacocks with longer tail feathers than the male peacocks who compete with them for mates possess a relative reproductive advantage. Over time, the pressures of sexual selection lead to increasingly long tail feathers. And that’s why male peacocks have such long tail feathers. Same deal with male deer antlers or a male lion’s mane or a male lawyer’s Lexus. In all of these examples, the organism’s external features attempt to signal the organism's superior fitness to a potential mate. So hold that thought and let’s turn to the Federalist Society. Read the full post at the lawandpolitics blog
Greenwald, again and again Glenn Greenwald continues to produce a steady stream of excellent and incisive posts on important political matters of the day. He really does have the rare ability to make serious and, at times, complicated thoughts both clear and accessible. I've added his blog to my daily reads, and hope that he continues to share his thoughts for a long time to come. In his most recent post, Glenn eviscerates the Civil War analogy which some Bush defenders have offered. But more importantly, in my view, he gets to the heart of the problematic use of "war" as an excuse for the Adimistration's abuses of power. The United States today is a nation that has not had a single attack for four years. In the last ten years, it had a grand total of one attack on its soil – an attack which took place on a single day and killed roughly the same number of Americans as suicide kills every month (somehow it's perfectly acceptable to make comparisons like this to show how safe Iraq is and what a great, un-deadly war it's been, but it's horrible to use exactly the same rationale to put the threat posed by terrorism into some perspective). The attention of Americans these days is primarily devoted to "news stories" involving pretty young girls who get abducted by teenage boys, salacious trials of pop stars, and the latest local fire. Americans spend a lot more time and energy analyzing plot mysteries on Desperate Housewives than they do discussing counter-terrorism measures. We just experienced what Amazon.com is suggesting is a record period of Christmas buying of luxury items, computer toys, and other sundry forms of light entertainment and distraction. If this is a nation at "war," it certainly is making the best of it. Read the full post here
George W. Bush, criminal The most recent scandal to emanate from the astonishingly corrupt Bush Administration serves as a textbook example of just how effective, at least in the near term, their defensive maneuvers (i.e. spinning, obfuscating, lying, etc.) are. Most of us are not trained in the law, and therefore have a hard time analyzing and distinguishing between the arguments of the critics and those who are defending Bush. That, of course, is what the Administration is counting on. The mainstream media, not surprisingly, is of little help in sorting out the argument (and that is an important story in and of itself). However, thanks to an increasing number of learned and articulate people posting on the internet, clear and comprehensive analyses are available. The most impressive of this immensely important group is, in my view, Glenn Greenwald. He has been all over this profoundly important story, and his last few posts have been devastating. The combination of his legal acumen and gift for laying out clear, concise arguments, make his contributions essential reading for all of those who are really concerned about the dangerous current political state of the U.S. Here are a couple of brief excerpts from Glenn's most recent post: There is not a single bit of authority in any of this for the absurd and dangerous proposition that the President has the right to violate a criminal law passed by Congress. Period. The Administration is trotting out lawyers to make legalistic arguments designed to cloud this extremely clear issue, but none of that can change the fact that Bush defenders are arguing that he has the right to enage in conduct which Congress made it a crime to engage in, and there is nothing in the law which gives a President that right. To the contrary, as one would expect, it has been repeatedly made clear that under our system of Government, the President does not possess the authoritarian right to engage in behavior which Congress expressly prohibits under the law. (snip) Anyone who wants to see just how clear the legal issues really are here -- just how plain it is that, as most people likely know intuitively, the President does not have the right to engage in conduct which the Congress prohibits under the criminal law -- should read the Supreme Court’s opinion in Youngstown. It is a clear, straightforward, and easy to understand opinion because the Justices evidently realized that they were articulating the basic principles of how the rule of law -- rather than Executive lawlessness -- is what governs our country and keeps it stable and just. And it literally obliterates every argument head-on which is being advanced now by Bush defenders who are trying to bestow him with the power of law-breaking. Read the full post here
Depleted Uranium: A scary update Perhaps, in part, because there are so many unquestionable scandals unfolding, there has been relatively little attention paid to the potential scandal relating to the use of depleted uranium in munitions by the U.S. armed forces. The Left I blog has been a relaible source of information, and the most recent update makes from grim reading. "Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter charged Monday that the reason Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi stepped down earlier this month was the growing scandal surrounding the use of uranium munitions in the Iraq War. "Writing in Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter No. 169, Arthur N. Bernklau, executive director of Veterans for Constitutional Law in New York, stated, 'The real reason for Mr. Principi's departure was really never given, however a special report published by eminent scientist Leuren Moret naming depleted uranium as the definitive cause of the 'Gulf War Syndrome' has fed a growing scandal about the continued use of uranium munitions by the US Military.' "Bernklau continued, 'This malady (from uranium munitions), that thousands of our military have suffered and died from, has finally been identified as the cause of this sickness, eliminating the guessing. The terrible truth is now being revealed.' "He added, 'Out of the 580,400 soldiers who served in GW1 (the first Gulf War), of them, 11,000 are now dead! By the year 2000, there were 325,000 on Permanent Medical Disability. This astounding number of 'Disabled Vets' means that a decade later, 56% of those soldiers who served have some form of permanent medical problems!' The disability rate for the wars of the last century was 5 percent; it was higher, 10 percent, in Viet Nam. 'The VA Secretary (Principi) was aware of this fact as far back as 2000,' wrote Bernklau. 'He, and the Bush administration have been hiding these facts, but now, thanks to Moret's report, (it) ... is far too big to hide or to cover up!'" Read the full post here
The danger of political abstractions Publius, at his Law and Politics blog, makes some very important points about the dangerous and (need I add?) misleading use of political abstractions by the Bush Administrations. Here's an excerpt: What’s frightening about political abstractions is how easily they can become unmoored from the factual context that originally gave them meaning. This is getting into some deeper philosophical territory - and one that pits Plato's idealism against Aristotle's materialism (for the record, I'm with Aristotle). To be grossly general, Plato argued that there was such a thing as the idea of, say, an apple. Aristotle disagreed - he thought "apple" was simply a useful description of concrete, material objects that share certain characteristics (red; shaped similarly; taste similarly; etc.). But for Aristotle, the idea of the apple had no meaning in the abstract. The term only made sense in the context of the concrete objects it described. I think the same thing is true for political abstractions like liberty or freedom – they only make sense when they’re grounded in some material context. For instance, I can look at slavery and the effect of the Civil War and understand what "freedom" means in that context. Similarly, I can see genocide in Rwanda and understand what “evil” means in that context. But what happens with abstractions is that people inevitably pull them out of the contexts in which they have meaning and start using them in ways that have no inherent connection to the material world they claim to describe. When this happens, abstractions can mean anything and nothing all at once. And here's where things get scary. The most effective political abstractions are ones that were initially grounded in some emotionally-charged, unifying cultural event. For instance, actions in the name of "liberty" make sense in the context of overthrowing an oppressive French monarch or a czar, just as actions in the name of "national security" or against “terrorism” make sense in the context of 9/11. All of these were unifying cultural events that triggered a lot of patriotic emotion and base rage. The problem comes when abstractions such as "liberty" and "national security" and “terrorism” are plucked out of their original factual context and used for new, unrelated purposes. For example, the oppressive regimes that emerged following the French and Russian Revolutions continued to quote the same abstractions even after those abstractions had long since lost any material connection to reality. Describing reality was no longer the point though. Instead, the abstractions were invoked simply to generate the emotion (or hatred) necessary to maintain support for the policy or the regime. Read the full post here
Glenn Greenwald exposes the power of a lie, multiplied Defenders of the Bush Administration are resorting to outright distortions and deliberate falsehoods about the Foreign Intelligence Security Act (FISA) in order to argue that the Administration's warrantless eavesdropping on U.S. citizens complies with the mandates of that statute. To do so, they are simply lying -- and that term is used advisedly -- about what FISA says by misquoting the statute in order to make it appear that the Administration’s clearly illegal behavior conforms to the statute. This is a real case study in how total falsehoods are disseminated by a single right-wing blogger who is then linked to and approvingly cited by large, highly partisan bloggers, which then cause the outright falsehoods to be bestowed with credibility and take on the status of a conventionally accepted talking point in defense of the Administration. Read the full post here
Spying on U.S. citizens without a warrant This is very, very big news, and many important questions spring immediately to mind. Though not the most important, my initial reaction was "Why did the NY Times choose to wait a full year to report this, and then choose a day which obviously had huge implications for the passing of laws relating to the Patriot Act?" The answer to the latter is probably because it knew that if it published the report after the voting on the PA extension, there would have been enormous (and justifiable) outrage. In any case, this is another blow to the already staggered giant. What I didn't immediately think about was impeachment. Not because I don't think that GWB should be impeached–he should–but rather because it has seemed so far fetched with a Republican controlled Congress. Well, having seen the reaction to this news by some Republican senators today, and having read the following comment to a post at huffingtonpost, that topic now strikes me as dreamworthy. At the moment, there is the howl of outrage about the spying on US ciizens. As of now, few are discussing the political and legal implications. The enormous importance of this news is hidden in the details or being glosssed over: (1) After the 60's and Nixon, the NSA was prohibited from spying on US citizens within the US by law (Congress passed, President signed.) (2) The Administration's legal justification and rational for secretly ordering such spying was set out in a legal memorandum authored by John Yoo, a Gonzales protege. Yoo - the same Yoo who wrote a Justice legal opinion defining torture so narrowly that even the Administration publicly disavowed it. (3) The US Justice legal memorandums claim to justify domestic spying by an agency prohibited from doing so on the grounds that the Congressional resolution authorizing action against Afganhistan and al Quaeda gives them the power to do what ever they want. How is that for a sweeping and loose interpetation? (5) If the Executive order directing such spying was done in violation of the law prohibiting such spying.... Sort of a grown up version of breaking into steal documents over apolitical campaign. (4) Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R) has said that his committee will (not might, but WILL) be holding hearings over this. McCain is definitely not pleased. What's this mean? My husband (also a retired lawyer) was a student of Tony Scalia and tends to define issues and results narrowly in the area of constitutional law. He finished reading the reports and said "That's it then. If the evidence supports the reports, it is high crimes and misdemeanors and an impeachable offense. It's not then a question of whether impeachable offenses have been committed but whether the elections will change the House makup enough so that he will be impeached. This would make Nixon look like a jaywalker by comparison." Thanks to kasa5400
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