Aussies to Bush: Butt Out, ya Dag

Just as it was in Spain, the political opposition to PM Howard in Oz wants to bring their nation's troops back by Christmas, and likely will if the can win a majority in the next election. Except this time if the opposition wins, it might not be due to the majority party's scandalous abuse of a terror attack.

Bush might have handed them the win they need.

After meeting with Howard the other day, Bush said, "It would be a disastrous decision for the leader of a great country like Australia to say that 'we're pulling out'. It would embolden the enemy. It would dispirit those who love freedom in Iraq. It would say that the Australian Government doesn't see the hope of a free and democratic society leading to a peaceful world."

That constitutes direct interference with an election in a foreign state. That has always been somewhat of a no-no (think about how the American right wing would react if foreign leaders started endorsing Kerry), particularly unhelpful to Howard since a majority of Australian voters now think it was a mistake to go into Iraq.

It may also be giving vital ammunition to the opposition Labor party, not to mention severely ticking off the Australian Greens and Democrats. "Australia is a sovereign nation, not some second-rate state in Bush's dream of an American empire," said Greens Senator Brown. "[Bush] talks about and freedom and democracy, but he doesn't understand the concept of equality. ... [Howard] should have made it clear that he wouldn't want the president interfering in a domestic political debate in Australia, particularly in the run to an election."

Democrat leader Andrew Bartlet said that the issue "should be something that Australians should sort out for ourselves." The Labor leader declined to comment, but reiterated the party stance of withdrawing troops from Iraq.

At this rate, we'll be lucky if even the Brits stay around. It all brings to mind a old "Get Smart" routine:

Bush: OK, you guys in Iraq, you better give up! Would you believe that this country has been surrounded by 1,400 Spanish troops?

Iraqis: Somehow I don't believe that.

Bush: Um, well, okay, how about if I told you that 850 Australian troops are out there, ready to charge in at a moment's notice?

Iraqis: I don't think I'd buy that, either.

Bush: Would you believe Two German Shepherds and a Polish truck driver?

Stories to Follow

Well, you don't need me to tell you that George Tenet resigned, that's for sure. I was hoping to catch the final rebroadcast of Bill Maher on Larry King last night, but it was not shown as CNN was way too hyped about their second hour of telling us for the twenty-seventh time that, yes, Tenet still has resigned.

The question is, why did he resign? Saying it is because of "personal reasons" is so much of a cliché that no one takes it seriously. Some think it was because of the investigations into intelligence handling. Others think Tenet is being the loyal fall guy for Bush.

And then there's the resignation of James Pavitt, the Deputy Director for Operations at the CIA, who just announced his resignation. Kinda makes you think that a lot is going on here that we don't know about, and a lot of people are waiting for the other shoe to drop.

In news that may or may not be related, the story has leaked that Bush has spoken to, and is considering hiring, private counsel in the Valerie Plame affair. As you recall, it was reported that at least two senior White House officials committed a federal felony by vindictively releasing the identity of a covert CIA operative, and at this time there is a grand jury investigation into the matter. Just like the Tenet resignation, this has many scratching their heads and wondering why--does Bush expect some serious flak to come directly at him? Or is he just being cautious?

One source says that it is damnably serious: Capitol Hill Blue--not always the most reliable news source, I must warn--has released a story that witnesses testifying before the grand jury in the Plame affair accused Bush of knowing about the Plame leak and not doing anything to stop it. If (a) this report is accurate and (b) it can be proven that Bush knew, that would make him an accessory to a federal felony. Which kind of puts this in the too-good-to-be-true category, so I am taking this with a grain of salt and waiting for other independent sources to confirm.

The relevant part of the Capitol Hill Blue article reads:

Witnesses told a federal grand jury President George W. Bush knew about, and took no action to stop, the release of a covert CIA operative's name to a journalist in an attempt to discredit her husband, a critic of administration policy in Iraq.

Their damning testimony has prompted Bush to contact an outside lawyer for legal advice because evidence increasingly points to his involvement in the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame's name to syndicated columnist Robert Novak.

The move suggests the president anticipates being questioned by prosecutors. Sources say grand jury witnesses have implicated the President and his top advisor, Karl Rove.

If anyone hears anything more on this tack, please let me know.

Reaganesque Memory Lapse

George W. Bush last February, on Meet The Press (emphasis added):

Russert: If the Iraqis choose, however, an Islamic extremist regime, would you accept that, and would that be better for the United States than Saddam Hussein?

President Bush: They're not going to develop that. And the reason I can say that is because I'm very aware of this basic law they're writing. They're not going to develop that because right here in the Oval Office I sat down with Mr. Pachachi and Chalabi and al-Hakim, people from different parts of the country that have made the firm commitment, that they want a constitution eventually written that recognizes minority rights and freedom of religion.

George W. Bush yesterday, Rose Garden press conference:

Q Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. Chalabi is an Iraqi leader that's fallen out of favor within your administration. I'm wondering if you feel that he provided any false information, or are you particularly --

THE PRESIDENT: Chalabi?

Q Yes, with Chalabi.

THE PRESIDENT: My meetings with him were very brief. I mean, I think I met with him at the State of the Union and just kind of working through the rope line, and he might have come with a group of leaders. But I haven't had any extensive conversations with him.
...

Q I guess I'm asking, do you feel like he misled your administration, in terms of what the expectations were going to be going into Iraq?

THE PRESIDENT: I don't remember anybody walking into my office saying, Chalabi says this is the way it's going to be in Iraq.

Plame Flame Rising, Enron Burning

The grand jury investigation into the Valerie Plame affair came into the media spotlight today as we find that Bush is speaking with private counsel about what he should do if they want to 'sit down and talk' with him. This is most interesting in that it means the grand jury might be focusing on more than just Cheney's chief of staff, if only as far as looking into what the president knew and when did he know it.

Meanwhile, another Bush-related scandal has also shifted back into view: Enron, Bush's biggest Texas backers. We are now getting an earful of the traders cheerfully gabbing about screwing California over:

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"He just f---s California. He steals money from California to the tune of about a million."

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Shutting down power plants to drive up prices:

"If you took down the steamer, how long would it take to get it back up?"

"Oh, it's not something you want to just be turning on and off every hour. Let's put it that way,"

"Well, why don't you just go ahead and shut her down."

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"They're f------g taking all the money back from you guys? All the money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers in California?"

"Yeah, grandma Millie, man"

"Yeah, now she wants her f-----g money back for all the power you've charged right up, jammed right up her a------ for f------g $250 a megawatt hour."

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Enron traders hoping for Bush to win in 2000:

"It'd be great. I'd love to see Ken Lay Secretary of Energy."

"When this election comes Bush will f------g whack this s--t, man. He won't play this price-cap b------t."

Which is exactly what Bush did. "We will not take any action that makes California's problems worse and that's why I oppose price caps," Bush said during the election. It is commonly believed that Bush fully supported not only Enron and its shady business practices, but also the rifling of California through usurious energy rates, so that Democrats in that particular Blue State would become unpopular, so that Republicans could take over. And guess what happened?

And as a massive fire scorched California, one trader made the quintessential Enron comment about California: "Burn, baby, burn. That's a beautiful thing."

Fahrenheit 9/11 Trailer

It can be found the the new Fahrenheit 9/11 web site. It is available in QuickTime and Windows Media. The main page (www.fahrenheit911.com) is just a static placard at the moment, no other content can be accessed.

Unfortunately, the trailer is streamed, not a downloadable file. I have no idea why they did this, it makes the trailer harder to watch at the larger sizes. I have at least 3 Mbps of bandwidth at my home account, several times more than most DSL accounts in the U.S., and the larger sized versions of the trailer had sound dropouts and/or video freezes. The small version played beautifully, though.

Thanks once again to Mark for the info!

Herseth Wins SD Seat for Dems, But GOP Fights Back Illegally

Stephanie Herseth won a close election to narrow the Republican majority in the House to only 11 seats. DailyKos points out quite rightly that their involvement in the campaign may very well have helped tip the scales, and points out the importance of grass-roots Democratic support, which is swelling enormously in this contentious election year. Herseth replaces Republican Janklow, who killed one of his constituents (which is pretty much how far a Republican has to go nowadays in order to get the police to arrest him).

This is the second big win for Democrats in special elections this year (they picked up a House seat in Kentucky earlier), and signals a likely trend for Democrats to gain seats and take over at least one house if not both in Congress--but there is a possible braking action here, an illegitimate Republican dirty trick in the form of non-census-related redistricting. Usually voting districts are redrawn only when new census figures change the number alloted to a state and require the districts to be re-drawn. If there is one party decisively in power at the beginning of a decade, they often gerrymander, that is, draw up districts to maximize their chance to win more seats in Congress.

Republicans, however, have hit upon a new strategy: instead of waiting a whole ten years for those pesky censuses, just do it now. Any time Republicans gain control of both houses in a state, they pounce on the opportunity to redistrict right then, in order to solidify their hold on power. In 2002, the GOP broke with long-standing political tradition and gerrymandered in Colorado without any legitimate need to do so; they wanted to win more seats in the next election, so they just redrew the lines for that purpose and that purpose only. This year, with Tom DeLay pushing the agenda, Texas followed suit--and Republicans elsewhere are gearing up to follow.

The Supreme Court has ruled "excessive partisanship" in districting as unconstitutional, and the recent Republican efforts in Colorado and Texas are undeniably just that. In fact, the entire redistricting effort by GOP members in control of those states is, without any question or possibility of doubt, strictly designed for the purpose of slanting the playing field so more Republicans can win, and for no other reason whatsoever. The Texas redistricting alone stands to gain Republicans at least four seats in the House. Republicans in Georgia and Ohio say they want to do the same thing next.

A case was rejected by the Supreme Court last month (Vieth vs. Jubelirer) concerning the overtly partisan Republican Pennsylvania gerrymandering (at the time of the census) on the grounds that there are no "workable standards" for courts to follow in determining whether a redistricting is partisan or not. But a new case, Jackson vs. Perry, brings forth the question of non-census gerrymandering in the Texas debacle, and may have the "workable standards" that would bring about a majority of SC justices to agree that the redistricting is unconstitutional.

Unfortunately, Jackson vs. Perry will likely not be decided until after the election--which means the Republicans will get away scot-free with another heaping handful of stolen elections. There is a chance that perhaps the Texas courts will find the reason to throw out the new lines before time runs out, but I am not holding my breath there. If the Dems fail to win a majority in the House by less than five seats, then the Republicans will have won yet another victory for governmental control via the illegal scumbag route. In other words, nothing new to see here.

Distribution Deal Set for Fahrenheit 9/11

The New York Times is just now reporting that the independent Canadian Lions Gate Films has won the distribution rights for Moore's film, and that a release date of June 25 has been set. The film will be released on "about 1,000 theaters" in the U.S. Showtime, which caught the ditched Reagan miniseries, will show the film on pay cable.

If you go to Michael Moore's site, you'll see the initial flash screen confirms this, though there are as yet no details on the main page.

For those of us in Japan, I have found no release date for this country, though films quite often are delayed by a month or so; smaller films like those Moore makes are often delayed by several months or even more than a year, but this film is time-based enough that we will hopefully see it before November.

More Air America Ratings: Franken Trounces Limbaugh

A few days ago I reported on how preliminary ratings had shown Air America Radio to be highly popular. Now new numbers show that not only is AAR doing well, it actually beat out time-slot competitor Rush Limbaugh--especially in the most prized young-listener demographic:

Heard in New York on WLIB-AM, whose ratings were virtually non-existent prior to switching over to Air America's programming earlier this year, Franken and the rest of Air America's 10 a.m-to-3 p.m lineup grabbed a 3.4 rating among listeners age 25-to-54. By contrast, Limbaugh who has been the most highly rated political talk show host in America for the last decade, and who is heard in New York on talk radio powerhouse WABC, lead the station to just a 3.2 rating. There's more (although the Times forgot to mention it): Among listeners 18-to-34, Franken and WLIB won in a knockout, garnering a 2.9 ratings share compared to WABC's dismal 0.4 showing.

Wow. For a brand-spanking-new radio station with mostly inexperienced talent and using masking tape to hold things together, to beat out the #1-rated show in the biggest market in the country is nothing less than spectacular--if the preliminary ratings are accurate. It will be fascinating to see how the final ratings will come out.

Nasty Campaigning

The Washington Post (requires registration) has an interesting front page article which compares the advertisements of the Bush campaign with those of the Kerry campaign.

"Three-quarters of the ads aired by Bush's campaign have been attacks on Kerry. Bush so far has aired 49,050 negative ads in the top 100 markets, or 75 percent of his advertising. Kerry has run 13,336 negative ads -- or 27 percent of his total."

Personally, I'm glad I'm not watching U.S. tv any more.

"Brown University professor Darrell West, author of a book on political advertising, said Bush's level of negative advertising is already higher than the levels reached in the 2000, 1996 and 1992 campaigns. And because campaigns typically become more negative as the election nears, "I'm anticipating it's going to be the most negative campaign ever".

Just to be even-handed, here's a quote from Bush a campaign spokesperson about the Kerry campaign: "John Kerry never misses an opportunity to deliver a political attack" he managed to slur-out before foaming at the mouth and falling-over as his little prune-like soul shriveled-up and crumbled into charcoal-dust.

Here's my idea for a short pro-Bush commercial.

Opening scene: poor-quality black and white picture of John Kerry's face.

Voice-over: "Oh sure, John Kerry says he's actually a United States senator..."

John Kerry's face suddenly morphs into picture of Saddam Hussein with blood dripping from vampire-fangs.

Voice-over booms into a hysterical screech: "But are you willing to take that risk?!"

The Tale of the Intern Who Wasn't

Of Matt Drudge's three abortive attempts to smear John Kerry earlier this year (the first two were the fake Botox and Jane Fonda stories), the most famed was the charge that Kerry had had an affair with an "intern" named Alexandra Polier. The story was false, of course, but that didn't stop Drudge, a boatload of conservative pundits and a wave of tabloid reporters from sinking their teeth into it and acting like it was real.

Now it's time for Polier to have her say. In a six-page story in the New York Metro, Polier gives an exhaustive account of the story, from her first meeting with Kerry to the genesis of the rumor and finally, an interview with Matt Drudge. The story, told in a light that makes neither side of the political spectrum appear very attractive, gives a personal account of how she weathered the story, and then how she went about investigating its origins.

She describes how she met Kerry in Switzerland, then attended a fundraiser where she met Kerry's finance director whom she later dated. But her relationship to Kerry was nothing more than a few public encounters, never alone with him. And then the rumor struck.

Though my name wasn’t mentioned in the initial Drudge “exclusive,” it made its first appearance in the British tabloid The Sun on Friday, February 13. The article, by one Brian Flynn, referred to Kerry as a SLEAZEBALL in the headline and said I was 24 (didn’t I wish). It purported to quote my father at home in Pennsylvania discussing the senator, saying, “I think he’s a sleazeball.” The article also claimed to quote my mother as saying Kerry had once chased after me to be on his campaign. My mother was not even home when Flynn called, and Flynn didn’t tell my father—who at this stage was unaware of the Drudge allegations—that he was interviewing him. Instead, he presented himself as a friend trying to get hold of me to talk about John Kerry. My father, a Republican, who believed Kerry had flip-flopped on various issues, said, ‘Oh, that sleazeball.’ ” Here’s how it reappeared in Flynn’s piece: “There is no evidence the pair had an affair, but her father, Terry, 56, said: ‘I think he’s a sleazeball.’ ” Drudge quickly linked to The Sun’s interview.

By that time, Polier had already moved to Nairobi to be with her new fiancé. There, she was mostly trapped in her fiancé's home as swarms of reporters amassed outside, desperate for some kind of story, offering anyone who had a photo of her massive amounts of money.

When she finally issued an official denial, the story began to die down, and eventually, Polier decided to start investigating the story behind the story. Interestingly, she found one of the earliest reports to have been on a blog, some guy who had posted a vague rumor which was then picked up by reporters. One reporter, who like the others has spent weeks looking into it and found nothing, told her, "We shook the tree. A bunch of names fell out, and yours had the most flesh to it." Furthermore, Polier reports on the genesis of the infamous Clark comment that Drudge reported:

Drudge claimed Clark himself had told reporters on his campaign bus that Kerry was going to “implode” over a scandal, but when I called Wesley Clark Jr., a screenwriter in L.A., who had helped out on his father’s campaign, he told me Drudge had ignored the context of his father’s quote. “He was reacting to the latest issue of The National Enquirer, which had just run a front-page story about Kerry and possible scandals, when he said that.”

In other words, Clark was reportedly only commenting on the rumor itself, not providing any personal knowledge of the matter--a fact ignored by Drudge.

The story quickly gained steam, however, as Bush was under attack for his National Guard record, and conservatives were hungry for any scandal to throw in the opposite direction. "Rush Limbaugh spent the first hour of his program discussing Kerry’s 'affair' with his 10 million listeners. Dozens of conservative commentators followed suit."

Polier tracked down the reporter from The Sun, and tried to pin him to the wall for fabricating a quote from her mother and taking out of context a remark by her father, "evidence" which seemed to give the story weight when it in fact had none.

“Why did you quote my mother when she wasn’t even home?” I persisted.

“I really can’t talk about this right now, Alex,” he said.

When I finally tracked him down the following week, he was brusque and told me to go through The Sun’s PR office. I asked him about my mother again, but he kept saying, “Sorry, Alex, proper channels.”

Of course, she never got through to him. But she did get through to Drudge, who told her, “In retrospect, I should have had a sentence saying, ‘There is no evidence to tie Alex to John Kerry.’ I should have put that,” and then blamed the Wesley Clark quote for pushing him forward.

All in all, a very informative article, one which outlines the serpentine and often messy path a rumor takes from the mists of obscurity to the front pages of the world press.

Email Reveals Cheney Arranged Halliburton Contract

TIME Magazine will soon be reporting the existence of an email which incriminates Dick Cheney of being involved in the arrangement of Halliburton's billion-dollar no-bid contract for work in Iraq. If this is or can lead to a smoking gun, it would have serious ramifications for Cheney and for Bush, as Cheney was the former CEO of the company and still receives payments from the firm. In addition, when the obvious connection between Cheney and Halliburton was pointed out when Halliburton won the no-bid contract, Cheney denied through a spokesman that he was "involved in any way, shape or form in the contracting issue."

However, the March 5, 2003 "internal Pentagon email from an Army Corps of Engineers official to another Pentagon employee" states in part: "[the contract is] contingent on informing WH [White House] tomorrow. We anticipate no issues since action has been coordinated w[ith] VP's office."

Naturally, Cheney's people tried to weasel out of the mess, though surprisingly did not try to deny the email's veracity; instead, they attempted to spin the meaning of the note, claiming the coordination" mentioned in the email was "that of publicly announcing the contract decision that has already been made." Um, yeah, okay. Sorry, but that constitutes a "way shape or form," even if you believe Cheney's present claim.

The question is, will the media latch on to this one, or just let it wither away like the many other felonies and scandals in the wings?

News Bits 5-30-2004

It turns out that Michael Moore has footage of Nick Berg at an Iraqi business conference in the U.S. 6 months before before he was killed, stating concerns over security in his upcoming trip, which eventually led to his death. Moore, however, decided that it would not be responsible or considerate to Berg's family to use the footage; instead, he sent the footage to the Bergs for them to view as they wished, and made the decision not to use the interview--which could have been a sensational and dramatic addition to the film.

David Berg, Nick's father said Moore handled the situation with "dignity, respect and discipline"; "Michael Moore has really been a total class act with this whole thing. He could have sold this to the media or stuck it in his movie."

In the meantime, the Weinsteins have bought "Fahrenheit 9/11" from Disney and talks are ongoing between them and several distributors, Lion's Gate and Focus Features being among the forefront. At this, I am ending my own personal boycott of Disney goods, but my opinion about the company has taken a palpable hit even so.

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The hostage event at Khobar Towers (that place really seems to draw attacks, you gotta wonder if people have the choice of moving to another place or not) has ended, and the Saudis say that "most" of the 50 foreign hostages are now safe, suggesting that some died in the dramatic storming of the towers. The group has not yet been identified as al Qaeda, though that is what most suspect. The hostage-taking is seen as an act of desperation, as it involved the killing of Saudi security guards, and while killing Westerners is not seen as being critical, many people in the Middle East see the killing of other Arabs as crossing the line.

This crisis is yet another development in the ongoing disruption in the Middle East. As Bush tries to worm his way out without giving up anything, he is missing chance after chance of any hope of return to even the days of regular Middle East instability.

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While the dramatically sudden climate shift and drastic temperature drops illustrated in the film The Day After Tomorrow are more fiction than science, it has been observed that some gradual and yet dramatic trends are taking place and could remake the world climate into something significantly different for our descendants. This story shows that "global dimming" is responsible for less and less sunlight hitting the ground, that the skies have darkened by 10% over the last 50 years, and it may be a natural phenomena, though some contend it is a result of pollution.

And then there is the Earth's magnetic field shift, which many scientists believe is now underway--though it may not be complete for thousands of years. Our magnetic field is dropping in strength by about 5% every century, and has been waning for perhaps 2,000 years now, and the decline is accelerating. The north magnetic pole is also not static even now--it has moved 1,100 km in the past 200 years, and most of the movement has happened in the past century. The north magnetic pole now travels at the rate of 40km per year.

The previous magnetic pole flip was 730,000 to 790,000 years ago, and scientists say that a flip every 200,000 or 300,000 years is average--so we seem to be due for one. Reversals can last between 1,000 and 28,000 years. During that time, it has been believed that the Earth would be open to solar and galactic radiation, and we would get a higher dose, increasing the incidence of cancer--though not by so much as to be cataclysmic. One positive side effect thought to be possible is the occurrence of the Aurora Borealis just about every where on Earth, most of the time, fantastic light displays on a regular basis.

A new study, however, indicates that there may be a backup system: the solar wind, which would wrap itself around the Earth and create a new magnetic field which would do about as good a job in protecting us from radiation as the Earth's present magnetic field accomplishes.

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Smoking, it seems, is even more dangerous than we've thought. The Surgeon General released a report that says smoking "significantly harms almost every major organ of the body and has been directly linked to a new series of diseases including leukemia, cataracts, pneumonia and cancers of the kidney, cervix, pancreas and stomach."

Me, I just hat the smell. It gives me headaches, a sore throat, and makes me nauseous--and more than that, it gets into your clothes and hair after a short time and you have to shower and change just to get rid of it. So if they find that it is more dangerous and that dissuades more people from smoking, it is not a result I would mind at all.

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And finally, in a story reported at Morons.org, it appears that some Christian charity can have strings attached. A woman donated her kidney to a 20-year-old in need, who was a Lutheran and a Christian camp counselor. The donor was widely acclaimed for her selflessness.

But then she found out that the recipient said that she "wanted to get away from the belief system I was raised in and find the truth for myself." Upon hearing this, the donor demanded that the recipient either cough up the kidney or re-convert. "I feel helpless. Part of my body, my DNA, is stuck inside a person who's going to hell." She also characterized the recipient's search for an independent truth as forcing her former kidney to filter "strange Asian teas, pig blood and witch doctor brews in Africa."

Well, there was never any promise of Christian tolerance.

Ahh, Compassion...

Here's an article about the Bush administration's planned 2006 budget... a bit of a peek at the future if the White House retains its current occupants.

"The Bush administration has told officials who oversee federal education, domestic security, veterans and other programs to prepare preliminary 2006 budgets that would cut spending after the presidential election, according to White House documents."

You wonder what gets cut, don't you? Why, the stuff which services the needs of the populace, of course...

The Education Department budget would go from $57.3 billion in 2005 to $55.9 billion in 2006, 2.4 percent less.

The Veterans Affairs Department would fall 3.4 percent from $29.7 billion in 2005 to $28.7 billion.

The Environmental Protection Agency would drop from $7.8 billion in 2005 to $7.6 billion, or 2.6 percent.

The National Institutes of Health, which finances biomedical research and had its budget doubled over a recent five-year period, would fall from $28.6 billion to $28 billion, or 2.1 percent.

But there's good news-- the coercive bits of the government are going to get bigger! Yay!

"The Defense Department [budget] would grow 5.2 percent to $422.7 billion in 2006, and the Justice Department would increase 4.3 percent to $19.5 billion in 2006."

Four more years!

The Ratings Are In: Air America Radio Rocks

Despite the constant right-wing rants about how AAR is due for an untimely demise, the first ratings have come in, and they are stellar: Air America Radio even beat out Rush Limbaugh in New York among target audiences. In Chicago, it shot the local station's ratings up 2000%, despite being pulled off the air after 28 days due to a billing dispute.

"If this is how we're doing now, imagine what things will be like when we actually know what we're doing," Franken said.

The ratings are preliminary, but prove one thing that conservatives will hate to hear: AAR is popular and has a good future in radio. So much for the naysaying and death knells from the right.

Polling Trends and Politicizing Terror

After Andrew asked about an updated Bush approval polling chart on Blogd.com the other day, I went back to Pollkatz, and sure enough, they have an updated chart available (pictured at right, link here). Looking at this chart answered some concerns that I'd had.

Until just last week, I had been worried by the fact that Bush seemed to be unmovable at around 50%, despite all the crises, not to mention the fact that his numbers have always followed a steady downwards trend. So what was with the long hovering at 50%?

The Pollkatz chart, an amalgam of 14 different polls, shows something that I'd been missing: the telescoping of time, and the disorientation of seeing different polls at unpredictable times. The Pollkatz chart demonstrates that Bush's "hover" was less a hover and more of an early drop and steadiness, and that the three or so months Bush hovered do not really break the trends so clearly demonstrated on the chart. Save a major event between now and November, Bush's trend should take him below 40%--though he might get a fair bump at convention time; question is, how much, and will it do him any good?

The next question is, as Bush and his people are no doubt painfully aware of these numbers and Bush's usual trend, what will they try to do in order to get Bush's numbers up? There are a number of October surprise scenarios, but they seem to be off to an early start with a tried and true strategy: scare the sh*t out of the American people.

Ashcroft--excuse me, "federal officials" have leaked news that al Qaeda is planning some kind of major attack on U.S. soil between now and September. What kind of attack? We don't know, apparently. But there's "chatter" out there again.

Why is this most likely a political move rather than one of national security? First, Ashcroft is not raising the alert level. Why not? This is one of the strongest warnings of terrorist action in the past few years, and we've gone to "Orange" or "Burnt Umber," or whatever it is, over less than this in the past. The lack of alert level change seems to belie the seriousness of the warning.

Second, the time span--between now and the election. Bush's people know full well that Bush's highest numbers are in his dealings with terrorism--though even they are falling. But playing to this strength would be an obvious move for them to make. Which ties into point number three: how they're phrasing this. "They saw that an attack of that nature can have economic and political consequences and have some impact on the electoral process," said a Bush administration official.

The translation: if there is an al Qaeda attack, it is because, like in Spain, they will be trying to make Bush lose. If this impression is successfully implanted into the American psyche, then Bush would automatically benefit from such an attack rather than be blamed for it--after all, if the terrorists are trying to affect the elections to make Bush lose, that would be great publicity for Bush--he could run against al Qaeda rather than John Kerry.

The claim is bogus, of course; if al Qaeda attacks, history seems to show that Bush would be the obvious beneficiary--he has always gotten a boost in popularity in times of crisis (see the above graph for the obvious proof), and the Spain election did not go to the Socialists because the people were shaken by the attack--quite the contrary, they were brought together by it and emboldened--the election was lost by the ruling party because they screwed around with the bombing investigation, lying by saying it was Basque separatists instead of al Qaeda, and they were caught red-handed. They lost the election because the people were ticked off by that improper manipulation of the attack for political purposes.

But by making this terror warning, Bush & Co. are covering their bets: if there is no attack, they benefit by people being afraid and believing that Bush is better at fighting terror; if al Qaeda does strike, then they can say that they tried to warn everyone and did the best they did, and then they can campaign as if the choices are Bush vs. al Qaeda.

Lying Librul Media

According to Editor and Publisher, the media is simply rife with lefties!

"Those convinced that liberals make up a disproportionate share of newsroom workers have long relied on Pew Research Center surveys to confirm this view, and they will not be disappointed by the results of Pew's latest study released Sunday.

While most of the journalists, like many Americans, describe themselves as "moderate," a far higher number are "liberal" than in the general population. At national organizations (which includes print, TV and radio), the numbers break down like this: 34% liberal, 7% conservative. At local outlets: 23% liberal, 12% conservative. At Web sites: 27% call themselves liberals, 13% conservatives. This contrasts with the self-assessment of the general public: 20% liberal, 33% conservative."

So basically, the proof here is that journalists describe themselves as "liberals" in far greater numbers than do reg'lar Joes. Buncha pot-smokin' hippes, they are!

But I have three points in rebuttal:

1) Reporters don't report the news to suit their personal politics, but to provide the outfits that employ them with the sort of news that those outfits require. In other words: the major shareholders and the advertisers call the shots in the media business. There are professed liberals working even at Fox News. So what?

2) There's only one way to determine whether media are "liberal" or "conservative" or Martian: by studying what they report, and how they report it. How did the media cover Clinton through the Nineties? How did they cover Gore in the 2000 race? What did they urge Gore to do throughout the Florida debacle? How have they covered Bush? I could go on, and on, and on. So QED.

3) There is one area in which the mainstream journalists' own views are to the right of Average Joe's. On economic matters, the DC press corps is less liberal than most Americans: social security, minimum wage, corporate taxes, etc. This difference was statistically established by Prof. David Croteau of Virginia Commonwealth University, at the behest of FAIR a few years back. In this case, the reporters' views converge with the desires of management--and so in that case there's no "liberal bias."

Interestingly enough, the Pew Research center also said this about liberal bias in the media:

"The poll finds that many journalists - especially those in the national media - believe that the press has not been critical enough of President Bush. Majorities of print and broadcast journalists at national news organizations believe the press has been insufficiently critical of the administration. More broadly, there has been a steep decline in the percentage of news people who think the traditional criticism of the press as too cynical still holds up. If anything, more national news people today fault the press for being too timid, not too cynical."

Gee, you'd think that all those liberal reporters would be happy, seeing as how they control the media and all.

But there's a possibility which explains this seeming contradiction: the media is only as liberal as the giant corporations which own it.

Restricted

Doubt the claim that Bush events are carefully screened so that only fervent Bush backers get in, and no one else is allowed to see the president? Check out this article, with a number of eyewitness accounts of organizers tossing out people who want to see the president speak if they even look like they might not support him--even if they have valid tickets to the event.

Do not doubt for a moment why the president is always greeted by cheering, adoring crowds: no one but the most fervent true believers are allowed within miles of the president, even when driving by in a motorcade.

Electoral Polls

Other new poll information coming in now, this one from Zogby, published in the Wall Street Journal in a very nicely done Flash page.

The poll covers 16 battleground states and includes Nader in the poll. Even so, Kerry stands out markedly well. Of the states listed, Bush leads in only four: Iowa, Arkansas, Tennessee and West Virginia. In two of the four states--Tennessee and West Virginia--Bush's lead is only within the margin of error.

In contrast, Kerry leads in the other 13 battleground states (Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin), with only three of those (Florida, Missouri and Nevada) being within the margin of error. In all other states, Kerry has leads of up to 9.6%.

According to the count made by Daily Kos (who keep good track of polling info), if the election were held today, Kerry would win the electoral college by 102 electoral votes, 320-218. Even this conservative guy has Kerry winning by an even larger margin, though he points out in his blog that Dukakis was leading by more at this time (though he ignores the fact that Bush Sr. was not an incumbent then and was not post-war).

While Kerry holds only a few percentage points' lead in national polls, it has always been the case that the electoral situation has favored Kerry, as Bush's lead is much bolstered by a very large (and useless) concentration of support in "red" states, whereas Kerry's support is more broad.

Down and Down He Goes, Where He'll Stop....

Bush is now at a record low of 41%, according to a CBS News poll. This follows a recent trend--other polls put him at 46%, 44%, 46%, 44%, 42%, 42% and 41%, in time order starting from the first week of the month. But two other polls just out (Washington Post/ABC and CNN/Gallup/USA Today) put him at 47%, so it is hard to say.

So Bush goes on TV tonight to try to sell us on how rosy things are. This is a campaign speech coming up, folks, centering on what will be a key issue in the elections. Watch for Bush to try to make it sound like (a) he's pulling our forces out of Iraq as we hand over power, and (b) U.N. forces will be coming in to share the burden. The irony is that this is Kerry's strategy, and of course Bush will do no such thing. He'll talk about the handover of power (he might even have decided to whom the power will be given) and make it sound like our troops will be leaving, but he's planned for them to stay there for a decade at least, and with things going so badly--and with troops being taken from other posts around the world and sent to Iraq--don't count on July to be a time when we reduce the number of troops by any real number.

And as far as U.N. involvement goes, don't count on that too much, either. Even "coalition" countries are pulling out troops or threatening to do so; and with Bush unwilling to be humble, to allow any substantial foreign influence or command, or to give up any of the control over oil or juicy contracts for rebuilding, don't buy into the fiction that U.N. troops will be pouring in anytime soon.

Expect smoke-and-mirrors, folks. Expect nice-sounding words. But count your change, and believe nothing until it actually materializes. Remember that Africa is still waiting for Bush's AIDS assistance, and your kids are still waiting for funding for the No Child Left Behind scam.

The Party of Colonel Klink II

The previous entry under this title involved a little recollection as to how a number of "ethnic outreach" committees of the 1988 George Bush campaign involved a number of former Nazi collaborators.

And this was the good Bush, mind you.

Ann "nutcase" Coulter, my favorite bomb-thrower of the right-wing, said in her book Treason: "From Truman to Kennedy to Carter to Clinton, America has contained, appeased, and retreated, often sacrificing America's best interests and security."

Coulter (if you ignore her shoddy research, her incoherence and her occasional descents into sub-idiocy) attempts to describe the aid and comfort which three generations of liberals and Democrats have supposedly given to any and every anti-American cause on the planet.

Strong words. She has a somewhat selective memory when it comes the Nazis, however.

According to the book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer (a bit old, but considered for many decades to be one of the finest monographs on Nazi Germany) there is a rather interesting passage beginning on page 983 about German diplomatic activities in the U.S. immediately after the surrender of France in 1940.

"In the United States the German Embassy, under the direction of Hans Thomsen, the charge d'affaires, was spending every dollar it could lay its hands on to support the isolationists in keeping America out of the war and thus discourage Britain from continuing it. The captured German Foreign Office documents are full of messages from Thomsen reporting on his embassy's efforts to sway American public opinion in Hitler's favor. The party conventions were being held that summer and Thomsen was bending every effort to influence their foreign-policy planks, especially that of the Republicans.

On June 12, for example, he cabled Berlin in code "most urgent, top secret" that a "well-known Republican congressman," who was working "closely" with the German embassy, had offered, for $3,000, to invite fifty isolationist Republican Congressmen to the Republican convention "so that they may work on the delegates in favor of an isolationist foreign policy." The same individual, Thomsen reported, wanted $30,000 to help pay for full-page advertisements in the American newspapers, to be headed "Keep America Out of the War!" (Such an advertisement appeared in the New York Times June 25, 1940.)

...

One of Hitler's first public utterances about his hopes for peace with Britain had been given to Karl von Weigand, a Hearst correspondent, and published in the New York Journal-American on June 14. A fortnight later Thomsen informed the German Foreign Office that he had printed 100,000 extra copes of the interview and that "I was able furthermore through a confidential agent to induce the isolationist Representative Thorkelson [Republican of Montana] to have the Fuehrer interview inserted in the Congressional Record of June 22. This assures the interview once more the widest distribution."

So for some peculiar reason, a Nazi diplomat in Washington seemed to think that in 1940, a time when Germany had won some of its most impressive victories and less than 2 years before Germany would declare war on America itself, many of the most cooperative people in town happened to belong to the Republican party.

Goodness. That's a real shocker, isn't it?

Hmm. Well, I'm sure that means nothing. Naturally, I wouldn't stoop so low as to suggest that certain elements of the Republican party have shown a pattern of nodding and winking towards the more fascistic and racist sectors of the political spectrum. That would be an absurd insinuation for me to make, wouldn't it?

Bush Fall Down Go Boom. Again.

Maybe Bush is getting desperate and is trying to take on attributes of the fictional president Josiah Bartlet. In the pilot episode of "The West Wing," Bartlet crashes his bike into a tree. Today, Bush fell off his bike, injuring his chin, upper lip, nose, right hand and both knees. Of course, it wasn't because he was so mad because fundamentalists sent a doll with a knife through its throat to his daughter, as happened in the fictional version. But it does involve his daughter, as he is attending a party tonight for her graduation.

But probably it's just because he's a klutz. In 2002, he suffered from the dreaded Pretzel Attack, and in 2003, he dropped his dog and then managed to fall off his Segway (images and background on the Barney Conspiracy here).

His staff tried to make the accident seem as macho as possible. A White House spokesman reported that Bush "likes to go all out. Suffice it to say he wasn't whistling show tunes."

Update: the same spokesman claimed that Bush fell off his bike because "It's been raining a lot and the topsoil is loose." However, Kos took the trouble of looking up precipitation for Crawford and discovered that it had not rained there for an entire week. Oops.

This comes, by the way, after the Bushes declined to attend their daughter Jenna's graduation, a move most presume is due to their not wanting to appear at a function where the audience is not hand-picked from Republican loyalty lists, Bush's audience of choice. Heaven forbid someone who disagrees with him should be allowed with a mile's distance. (He did, however, give a commencement address at Concordia University, a Lutheran school in Wisconsin, where he managed to stick in a sound bite against reproductive rights.) Later, it was revealed that even Jenna did not attend the ceremony in Texas.

Another fun fact about Bush: he has spent about a quarter of his term in office so far on vacation, mostly in Crawford, Texas, having visited the ranch at least 34 times now. Before September 11, Bush spent fully 42% of his time in office on vacation. And even at that, he still has not beaten out his father, who spent wholly 543 days on holiday, or 37% of his term. The two Bushes hold the #1 and #2 spot for most-vacationing presidents in U.S. history, with Reagan coming in close after them.

Right-Wing Words of Vitriol

It is astounding sometimes what the right wing punditry spews out. You may recall Ann Coulter, on the day after 9/11, saying that:

We know who the homicidal maniacs are. They are the ones cheering and dancing right now.

We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.

That followed by the suggestion that we go in to Middle East countries and kill civilians. Not only did she say that, but she still has it up on her web site.

Not to be outdone, Michael Savage is now saying:

...Christianity has been one of the great salvations on planet Earth. It's what's necessary in the Middle East. Others have written about it, I think these people need to be forcibly converted to Christianity but I'll get here a little later, I'll move up to that. It's the only thing that can probably turn them into human beings. ...

Smallpox in a blanket, which the U.S. Army gave to the Cherokee Indians on their long march to the West, was nothing compared to what I'd like to see done to these people, just so you understand that I'm not going to be too intellectual about my analysis here in terms of what I would recommend, what Doc Savage recommends as an antidote to this kind of poison coming out of the Middle East from these non-humans.

Rush Limbaugh has also garnered attention by saying about the prisoner abuse scandal:

This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation and we're going to ruin people's lives over it and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You of heard of need to blow some steam off? ...

Even this latest picture of a dog and a nude Iraqi -- you seen that one? A couple of Americans are holding -- it looks like German Shepherd, some kind of vicious big dogs, the dogs are barking, bow wow arf arf arf, this big dog -- you know and the Iraqi prisoner is cowering there in fear, he's all nude. And the picture caption "Dog attacks Iraqi." No, the dog isn't attacking anyone, the dog's on a leash. The dog is scaring an Iraqi prisoner. [gasp] "No! We're scaring them, too? Is that allowed in the Geneva Convention?! We're scaring then with dogs?" Yes, my friends we are. The dog didn't attack anybody. The dog's not attacking anybody. The dog's on a leash. Both of them are. I've seen the pictures. ... (35 minutes later, Limbaugh had to correct himself, as the article which Limbaugh referred to also showed the dog having bitten the prisoner.) ...

All right, so we're at war with these people. And they're in a prison where they're being softened up for interrogation. And we hear that the most humiliating thing you can do is make one Arab male disrobe in front of another. Sounds to me like it's pretty thoughtful. Sounds to me in the context of war this is pretty good intimidation -- and especially if you put a woman in front of them and then spread those pictures around the Arab world. And we're sitting here, 'Oh my God, they're gonna hate us! Oh no! What are they gonna think of us?' I think maybe the other perspective needs to be at least considered. Maybe they're gonna think we are serious. Maybe they're gonna think we mean it this time. Maybe they're gonna think we're not gonna kowtow to them. Maybe the people who ordered this are pretty smart. Maybe the people who executed this pulled off a brilliant maneuver.

Media Matters offers this look at 77 recent comments made by Rush that are offensive and/or outrageous. In fact, they launched a media campaign to highlight some of these comments, but have had some problems--like in Washington D.C. where WMAL refused to air the ads. The president and general manager explained, "Rush Limbaugh is the top-rated show on my station… I’m not going to run something that screws him." WBAP-AM in Dallas also refused to accept the commercials.

Not to be left out of this high-minded discourse, Coulter is on the air calling Clinton a "scumbag" and "rapist," Ted Kennedy and Michael Moore "treasonous," and Nancy Pelosi "stupid."

Right-wing news rag News Max says that George Soros "hates America," is delusional, a cult-like self-fashioned messiah, an anti-semite Jew, anti-Christian, out to destroy God, plotting to undermine the U.S. economy, and to spread the evils of "abortion, atheism, drug legalization, sex education, gay marriage, globalization and other radical causes." And let's not forget his secret "Project on Death" program.

There is so much more, this is just the start, the result of just a half hour of searching. The sad point is that millions read and hear this and are not disgusted by it, but rather seem to think it is right-minded dialog. That is positively horrifying.

Bush Administration's Attacks on Soldiers and Vets Continue

The Bush administration is still looking for ways to send people to Iraq. As the living hell people have gone through there, and the administration's massive mistreatment of soldiers and vets has led to falling recruitment and retention numbers. The administration needs warm bodies, and badly; recently a decision was made to pull 4,000 troops out of Korea and send them to Iraq--that's more than 10% of all U.S. troops in South Korea, which has angered South Korea, whose leaders claim this will leave them vulnerable. Other ways they're trying to scrape up recruits is--as part of the unfunded "No Child Left Behind" sham--by requiring schools to give military recruiters students' names, addresses and phone numbers. But even with all of this, the Bush administration is having trouble finding the soldiers they need to fuel the war they've started.

How to solve the problem? Lie to reservists and trick them into re-enlisting.

Now, there are about 118,000 IRR ("Individual Ready Reserves"), people who finished their 4-year service but who could be called upon to serve during another 4-year period.

Army recruiters started calling reservists and telling them that if they did not voluntarily re-enlist and choose an assignment in the Army Reserve or the National Guard, they might well be called up involuntarily and be placed in a unit they did not want or were not familiar with. More than 1000 reservists signed up for service under this threat.

The problem? It was a lie. No involuntary assignments are forthcoming.

Now there is a movement to allow those who felt they were Shanghaied into re-enlistment to appeal and, hopefully, be allowed to retract their decision--but there are no guarantees as of yet.

This article in the Oregonian does an excellent job of summing up the situation.

U.S. Actually Allowing Criticism of Israel. Has The World Gone MAD?!?

The U.S. has abstained from vetoing a UN Security Council Resolution which criticizes Israel's recent house demolitions and condemns the killing of unarmed demonstrators in Rafah.

My God, you can't criticize Israeli foreign policy-- that would be anti-Semitism!

But seriously now, I suppose this suggests that the IDF is starting to get careless. The total lack of pretexts for the killing of those protesters has even caused Bush and Colin Powell to urge Israel to exercise 'restraint'.

Whoa! Calm down there, boys! That's some harsh language!

I mean, back a few weeks ago when the IDF was merely making over a thousand people homeless within a 10 day period and it was revealed that there were allegations of abuse of Palestinian kids in Israeli prisons, those things were perfectly fine.

A Veteran's Remorse

The Sacramento Bee has published an interview with a returned veteran of the Iraq War. It's extremely poignant, and there are a number of notable statements in it which offer a sobering description of what's been happening in our name...

"Q: What does the public need to know about your experiences as a Marine?

A: The cause of the Iraqi revolt against the American occupation. What they need to know is we killed a lot of innocent people. I think at first the Iraqis had the understanding that casualties are a part of war. But over the course of time, the occupation hurt the Iraqis. And I didn't see any humanitarian support.

Q: What experiences turned you against the war and made you leave the Marines?

A: I was in charge of a platoon that consists of machine gunners and missile men. Our job was to go into certain areas of the towns and secure the roadways. There was this one particular incident - and there's many more - the one that really pushed me over the edge. It involved a car with Iraqi civilians. From all the intelligence reports we were getting, the cars were loaded down with suicide bombs or material. That's the rhetoric we received from intelligence. They came upon our checkpoint. We fired some warning shots. They didn't slow down. So we lit them up.

Q: Lit up? You mean you fired machine guns?

A: Right. Every car that we lit up we were expecting ammunition to go off. But we never heard any. Well, this particular vehicle we didn't destroy completely, and one gentleman looked up at me and said: "Why did you kill my brother? We didn't do anything wrong." That hit me like a ton of bricks."

There's much more, it's worth having a look.

Fahrenheit 9/11 Reviews

So far Moore's new film is getting outstanding reviews, after receiving a 20-minute standing ovation at Cannes--the longest a film has ever received there, according to some. All the comments I have found of people who saw the film are positive, even from critics of Moore.

TIME Magazine's positive though not ecstatic review says: "...Moore is such a clever assembler of huge accusations and minor peccadillos (as with a shot of Wolfowitz sticking his pocket comb in his mouth and sucking on it to slick down his hair before a TV interview) that the film should engage audiences of all political persuasions," and concludes, "In sum, it’s an appalling, enthralling primer of what Moore sees as the Bush Administration’s crimes and misdemeanors."

From the short but enthusiastic review from A. O. Scott from The New York Times:

Its bill of particulars against Mr. Bush can be found in a number of recently published books, and it is unapologetically polemical. It is also the best film Mr. Moore has made so far, a powerful and passionate expression of outraged patriotism, leavened with humor and freighted with sorrow. Yes, I said patriotism, though there will inevitably be those, pointing to the film's enthusiastic reception in France, who will insist that it is the opposite. They should (unlike Disney's board of directors) see it first. ...

"Fahrenheit 9/11," his most disciplined and powerful movie to date, suggests that he is also, arguably, a great filmmaker. Using interviews and archival video clips (including a tape made by the staff at the Florida elementary school Mr. Bush was visiting on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001), he has assembled a moving and invigorating documentary. Is it partisan? Of course. But there are not many important films that haven't been.

The Herald has just now come out with this review, titled "Unexpectedly bold and moving piece of work.

"Fahrenheit 9/11 is a baggy, eccentric, unashamedly partisan animal, which makes its many points with broad strokes and even broader humour.
However, it's also an audacious, angry, and unexpectedly moving piece of work, the boldness and relevance of which few could deny.

Not that the movie didn't have its detractors, albeit ones who have not seen and do not care to see the film at all. The vehemently right-wing news rag News Max more than once compared Moore with Adolf Hitler and said he "screeched" at the audience, then hinted in a variety of ways that this was a left-wing conspiracy, whose members are "aligned with America's enemies"--while managing to sneak in references to Ann Coulter as "brilliant" and Bush as being strong and having "guts." Now, there's an objective review!

We Shots Us Some Terr'ists Real Good!

The New York Times has more details on a rather bizarre story from Macedonia which I'd mentioned in an earlier posting.

Essentially, some elements of the Macedonian police killed seven foreigners and pretended that they were terrorists as part of a desire to show they were serious about fighting terror and increase the national esteem in the eyes of the western world.

The plan was to "find a group of Muslims with a specific physical description, who have to look like mujahedeen", lure them to a house, shoot them, and rather sloppily set them up to make it seem like they'd been killed in a gun-battle.

This probably has to be one of the more ridiculous abuses of power which has been unleashed in the name of fighting terror. You really have to wonder about the moral calculus which leads to decision-making like that.

Fahrenheit 911 and Patriotism

Well, Fahrenheit 911 opens today at Cannes, and Moore has let a bit of a cat out of the bag: the film is not completely about what he said it would be about. Yes, much of the film deals with Bush's ties to the Saudis and the bin Laden family, as has long been reported. But at least half the film, Moore says, is about Iraq. With very unexpected footage: "we were able to get film crews embedded with American troops without them knowing that it was Michael Moore."

This should be interesting, and the timing more than just a little bit spot-on, considering how Iraq is now dragging Bush down more than anything else in his three and a half years. "The film is only partly to do with the Bin Ladens and Bush," Moore added. "I was able to send three different freelance film crews to Iraq. Soldiers had written to me to express their disillusionment with the war. It's a case of our own troops not being in support of their commander-in-chief." Moore has been printing letters from soldiers on his web site since last October.

One should also not miss the New York Times article on Moore and his film, which adds details about the films content, and does a very balanced job reporting on the issues involved and public views on the film.

---

One columnist points out that Moore is often seen as less than a patriotic American, a theme which is more often implied and hinted at than stated outright, but it does bring up a point that I think a great many people would agree with, but an ideal that is far from universally observed in the U.S. these days: one can be no more patriotic than to point out what is wrong with one's own country.

Many people have a skewed perspective on patriotism. They think that "my country, right or wrong" means that whatever terrible things happen in their country, or is done by their country worldwide, the patriotic thing to do is to deny they happen, zealously attack anyone pointing out these faults, and wave the flag while singing the national anthem at the top of their lungs. They have mistaken patriotism for idiocy.

Patriotism means that one will do whatever is necessary--sacrifice your life, your fortune, your sacred honor if needed--to ensure that your country is safe, sound and secure. And ignoring, even denying its faults will not accomplish any of those. Protesting what we believe is wrong is not just simply a right, it is a vital mechanism required to keep this country from destroying itself from within.

Some times good countries come under the control of bad people, some times people with base and selfish motives subvert the mechanisms of government. And some times even well-meaning leaders and administrators do things that are wrong despite their good intentions. Were we never to criticize these things, the results would be disastrous. Bad policies would not be reversed. Wrongdoings would not be corrected, and wrongdoers would know that all they have to do is get elected and they could abuse and undermine the system as much as they wanted, without fear of challenge from the people.

No, it's the ones who are mindlessly and blindly patriotic who are dangerous, those are the ones who the wrongdoers will prevail upon to hide and legitimize their misdeeds. Those are the people who attack the real patriots, who have the courage and will to stand up and criticize their own country, not because they hate it, but because they love it, because they know that however painful it might be, criticizing their own country is sometimes the only way to keep it whole and true.

If a family member became an alcoholic or other kind of drug user, went driving while under the influence and displayed other self-destructive behavior, would the measure of a loyal family member be to quiet their conscience and their criticism, and tell their kin nothing but positive things? Of course not--you would only be helping to destroy them if you did such a thing. A true parent, sibling or child would take that person aside and tell them what was wrong, and would do everything possible to help them make it right.

The same applies to one's country. Right now, Bush and his people are driving this country into the ground. We do our country no favors if we simply stand by, put our fingers in our ears, and hum the national anthem real loud. Public criticism, at times like these, is the highest and truest form of patriotism.

Rumsfeld OK'd Torture, Bush Was Informed

A breaking news story originates from an article in the New Yorker magazine by Seymour M. Hersh, in which CIA officials leak the fact that Rumsfeld created a policy that led to the torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison, and that Bush was informed of the creation of the program and was told of the investigation into Abu Ghraib in January, at least three months before Bush claims to have known anything at all about it. The Bush administration is falling over itself to deny the story, but someone at the CIA seems rather miffed with Bush and is spilling the beans:

The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation, which had been focussed on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq. Rumsfeld’s decision embittered the American intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of élite combat units, and hurt America’s prospects in the war on terror.

According to interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials, the Pentagon’s operation, known inside the intelligence community by several code words, including Copper Green, encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq. A senior C.I.A. official, in confirming the details of this account last week, said that the operation stemmed from Rumsfeld’s long-standing desire to wrest control of America’s clandestine and paramilitary operations from the C.I.A.

And the CIA is not taking kindly to it, apparently. The source Hersh quotes is a "senior official" at the CIA, who says that "Any suggestion that there is not a full, deep awareness of what has happened, and the damage it has done, I think, would be a misunderstanding."

The story, apparently, began in Afghanistan when Rumsfeld was extremely angry over the fact that legal clearances and authorizations slowed down attack times and sometimes caused our forces to miss their targets. Rumsfeld is described as "kicking a lot of glass and breaking doors." His reactions was to create a "highly secret program that was given blanket advance approval to kill or capture and, if possible, interrogate 'high value' targets in the Bush Administration’s war on terror." This program, called an SAP, or "special access program," allowed operatives to work without any authorization; in short, "Grab whom you must. Do what you want."

Stephen Cambone, the new Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence in March 2003, was a strong advocate for war in Iraq, and his assistant was none other than Lieutenant General William G. (Jerry) Boykin, the same religious nut who commonly speaks in fundamentalist religious terms, and who stated publicly that the U.S. is a "Christian nation" and in the war on terror, we are fighting "Satan." So already we have a great cast of characters here.

When things started going badly in Iraq, with insurgents killing our troops and causing chaos in the streets, Rumsfeld oversaw an effort to "get tough" with captured guerillas. Major General Geoffrey Miller, who had been in charge of Gitmo (an early effort to declassify and displace captured prisoners so the Bush administration could evade any U.S. or international law concerning their treatment), came to Iraq to “Gitmoize” the prisons in Iraq.

He also briefed military commanders in Iraq on the interrogation methods used in Cuba—methods that could, with special approval, include sleep deprivation, exposure to extremes of cold and heat, and placing prisoners in “stress positions” for agonizing lengths of time. (The Bush Administration had unilaterally declared Al Qaeda and other captured members of international terrorist networks to be illegal combatants, and not eligible for the protection of the Geneva Conventions.)

Rumsfeld and Cambone went a step further, however: they expanded the scope of the SAP, bringing its unconventional methods to Abu Ghraib. The commandos were to operate in Iraq as they had in Afghanistan. The male prisoners could be treated roughly, and exposed to sexual humiliation.

Hersh's intelligence source claims Cambone was "tired of working through the normal chain of command," and so in Iraq, used the program initiated by Rumsfeld in Afghanistan. But more than that, he brought in military intelligence people to the prisons like Abu Ghraib and told them that "no rules apply." But the CIA was none too enamored of the idea:

By fall, according to the former intelligence official, the senior leadership of the C.I.A. had had enough. “They said, ‘No way. We signed up for the core program in Afghanistan—pre-approved for operations against high-value terrorist targets—and now you want to use it for cabdrivers, brothers-in-law, and people pulled off the streets’”—the sort of prisoners who populate the Iraqi jails. “The C.I.A.’s legal people objected,” and the agency ended its sap involvement in Abu Ghraib, the former official said.

What's more, a Pentagon consultant claimed that the responsibility went higher than Cambone: “The White House subcontracted this to the Pentagon, and the Pentagon subcontracted it to Cambone. This is Cambone’s deal, but Rumsfeld and Myers approved the program.”

Then the cat got let out of the bag on January 13th when an Abu Ghraib MP reported what was going on to the Army’s Criminal Investigations Division, giving them a CD filled with images. Rumsfeld and the Pentagon figured they could try to cover it up, and it would go away. But an important piece of information is that not only did Rumsfeld know everything here, he also informed Bush about it. This directly contradicts Bush's own claim that he did not hear about the matter until April 28th.

Hersh's article is very well written and is highly informative; I would suggest that you read it in full.

Newsweek: Bush at 42%

In one of our international phone calls this morning, my father pointed me to the fact that a new poll from Newsweek has Bush at a all-time low of 42%, his lowest number ever in any poll I have seen (Bush was momentarily at 43% in a Pew poll some time back, but that was a blip). Continuing evidence that Bush's drop is still going.

Still, when the poll looks at Bush vs. Kerry, it has Bush down by only 1 percent--Kerry gets 46%, Bush 45%, and 9% are undecided. But as Zogby points out, most of the undecideds go to the challenger and against the incumbent. Further, Andrew Kohut has an editorial in the May 12 New York Times that gives a possible explanation as to why Kerry is not yet taking off:

The real reason that Mr. Kerry is making so little progress is that voters are now focused almost exclusively on the president. This is typical: as an election approaches, voters first decide whether the incumbent deserves re-election; only later do they think about whether it is worth taking a chance on the challenger. There is no reason to expect a one-to-one relationship between public disaffection with the incumbent and an immediate surge in public support for his challenger.

Which makes sense and is in line with the coverage in the press, which is all about Bush these days, with Kerry stories much fewer and far-between.

Bush Drop Confirmed by Pew, CNN

In addition to Bush's dismal approval numbers recently reported by Gallup (46%) and CBS (44%), those numbers have been mirrored by a new CNN/Time poll which has Bush at 46%, and a Pew Poll that has him at 44%. That leaves no doubt that Bush's popularity has taken a real hit, and leaves open the possibility that his numbers could continue to drop.

The New York Times has a good article on Bush's recent drop. It quotes even conservatives as saying that Kerry's new lines of attack are hitting home and worrying the Bush administration. "And it should," the right-wing commentator added.

Kerry has become somewhat more vocal in his criticisms of Bush's handling of Iraq, partly due to his viewing of the prisoner abuse photos in Congress. He notes how badly Bush has handled the war, and insists that a true international effort in Iraq is the only real hope for succeeding there. With Bush's history of insulting our allies, both traditional and new, suddenly Kerry's noted internationalism--until now scoffed at and ridiculed by Bush and the GOP--is looking better and better.

But Kerry is still not speaking too much about Iraq, not nearly as much as he could be; obviously, he does not want to appear like he is taking advantage of the war for political reasons. Instead, he is highlighting health care on a swing through the south, and has just picked up the endorsement of a police union that supported Bush in 2000, but now feels let down by Bush.

In the meantime, Bush is trying yet again to pretend that only a few malcontents are against him. "We're being tested," he said. "People are testing our mettle. And I will not yield to the whims of the few."

How about yielding to the whims of 49% of the American people?