Open thread

Busy week or slow week ahead in politics? Read More......

Video allegedly shows private security forces (mercenaries?) shooting innocent Iraqi civilians for fun

Oh yeah, this is gonna be good.

Video from C&L; (it's real creepy). More on the story from DKos.

But hey, please don't let this jaundice your view of the war. We wouldn't want our troops to have bad morale while the Republicans leave them for sitting ducks. Read More......

It's soooo not over for Rove

Despite all the spin to the contrary, there are more indications that Rove is still in the crosshairs of Patrick Fitzgerald. Another Time magazine reporter is testifying for Fitzgerald about Rove. This time it's about conversations with his lawyer:

A second Time magazine reporter has agreed to cooperate in the CIA leak case and will testify about her discussions with Karl Rove's attorney, a sign that prosecutors are still exploring charges against the White House aide.

Viveca Novak, a reporter in Time's Washington bureau, is cooperating with Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, who is investigating the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity in 2003, the magazine reported in its Dec. 5 issue.

Novak specifically has been asked to testify under oath about conversations she had with Rove attorney Robert Luskin starting in May 2004, the magazine reported.

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Dear British Press: Please get us the secret memo

I have friends in the UK that can help out, and there are lots of other options. Please consider emailing me, or feel free to find another way for us to talk about this - I want that memo. I've done interviews with the BBC and lots of American media, folks know how to find me.

Something as easy as going to a public Internet cafe or library (with appropriate baseball hat and sunglasses - you guys have those crazy cameras everywhere I hear) and emailing me a photo image of the document (scanned image, digital camera image, whatever) from a Hotmail account you create on the spot, that would work too, and there's no way the govt can trace that to you. The best they can do is perhaps trace it to the Internet cafe, but if you don't sign in to the cafe under your name or pay with a credit card (even better, use a free public library's Net access), and you create the Hotmail address on the spot, the authorities will never find you. Read More......

Open Thread

Take it away. Read More......

Bush says Democrats have embraced "Bush's withdrawal plan." Only problem? Bush has never offered a withdrawal plan.

It's amazing how willing you are to lie when 66% of the country hates you.

The White House for the first time has claimed possession of an Iraq withdrawal plan, arguing that a troop pullout blueprint unveiled this past week by a Democratic senator was "remarkably similar" to its own....

The statement late Saturday by White House spokesman Scott McClellan came in response to a commentary published in The Washington Post by Joseph Biden, the top Democrat of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in which he said US forces will begin leaving Iraq next year "in large numbers."....

Even though Bush has never publicly issued his own withdrawal plan and criticized calls for an early exit, the White House said many of the ideas expressed by the senator were its own.

And I guess we're supposed to forget the fact that Bush and Cheney pilloried Democrats for embracing a withdrawal plan only a week ago.

Time for the media to ask Bush what changed in the last week that suddenly makes a withdrawal acceptable?

And in fact, As Atrios has mentioned, quoting someone else whose name eludes me, this isn't a real withdrawal anyway. It's a feint. Bush is simply embracing withdrawal because he's desperate and he knows it's what the public wants. He's not going to go through with it, even a partial withdrawal. And in any case, our soldiers will continue to die because this war is a disaster and we're losing. So long as we have a significant number of soldiers in Iraq, the deaths will continue and this war will continue to be an albatross around the neck of the worst president ever. Read More......

Chris Wallace caught covering up Bush's blatant lies

Think Progress busts Wallace for re-writing history to cover up Bush's lies about the link between Saddam and Al Qaeda. Definitely worth a read. Shows one more time how far Fox will go to cover for Bush. Fox doesn't let the facts get in the way. Read More......

Happy Birthday to me...

I've learned that by a certain age if you don't hype your own birthday, no one else will :-) Read More......

Two US congressmen hurt in Iraq

Are we winning yet?

And whose brilliant idea was it to ride really fast down the middle of the road (i.e., into oncoming traffic)? Are they surprised that some Iraq driver basically replied "screw you" to this game of chicken?

The congressional delegation was riding in a box-like vehicle that troops call the "ice cream truck" -- it streaks through the middle of the road to deter oncoming motorists, Marshall told the paper. But shortly after dark, an oncoming truck refused to yield.

"Then, all of a sudden, brakes get slammed on. Then we hit something and go off the side of the road and tip over," Marshall said.

Hubris is not a war plan. Read More......

One Man's Life - The Cost of the War in Iraq

Today the LA Times has the story of the life and death of Col. Ted Westhusing. It's a portrait of a an incredibly intelligent man whose experiences in Iraq either led to his suicide or murder. No matter what you think of the war in Iraq, it has an often overwhelming human impact on those that experience it. From the LA Times:

One hot, dusty day in June, Col. Ted Westhusing was found dead in a trailer at a military base near the Baghdad airport, a single gunshot wound to the head.

The Army would conclude that he committed suicide with his service pistol. At the time, he was the highest-ranking officer to die in Iraq.

The Army closed its case. But the questions surrounding Westhusing's death continue.

Westhusing, 44, was no ordinary officer. He was one of the Army's leading scholars of military ethics, a full professor at West Point who volunteered to serve in Iraq to be able to better teach his students. He had a doctorate in philosophy; his dissertation was an extended meditation on the meaning of honor.

So it was only natural that Westhusing acted when he learned of possible corruption by U.S. contractors in Iraq. A few weeks before he died, Westhusing received an anonymous complaint that a private security company he oversaw had cheated the U.S. government and committed human rights violations. Westhusing confronted the contractor and reported the concerns to superiors, who launched an investigation.
...
Then there was the note.

Investigators found it lying on Westhusing's bed. The handwriting matched his.

The first part of the four-page letter lashes out at Petraeus and Fil. Both men later told investigators that they had not criticized Westhusing or heard negative comments from him. An Army review undertaken after Westhusing's death was complimentary of the command climate under the two men, a U.S. military official said.

Most of the letter is a wrenching account of a struggle for honor in a strange land.

"I cannot support a msn [mission] that leads to corruption, human rights abuse and liars. I am sullied," it says. "I came to serve honorably and feel dishonored.

"Death before being dishonored any more."
...
"Despite his intelligence, his ability to grasp the idea that profit is an important goal for people working in the private sector was surprisingly limited," wrote Lt. Col. Lisa Breitenbach. "He could not shift his mind-set from the military notion of completing a mission irrespective of cost, nor could he change his belief that doing the right thing because it was the right thing to do should be the sole motivator for businesses."

Lt. Col. Lisa Breitenbach is the one with the problem, not Westhusing. Our military is not intended to work for profit of private corporations - its purpose is to support U.S. foreign policy with force.

Our recent governments - both Democrat and Republican - have supported privitization of our military. This is the price.

Read the whole story. Read More......

"People are doing the same as (in) Saddam's time and worse"

That's according to former Iraqi Prime Minister Allawi. What a great moment for freedom and democracy, GOP style. I'm sure that the families of the dead soldiers will be thrilled with hearing that their loved ones died to re-create the same mess that was there before. So there were no WMD and we replaced one brutal regime with another brutal regime, we're forking over billions of taxpayer dollars to help Big Oil take back business they lost thirty years ago and we have Americans, Brits and tens of thousands of Iraqis being killed, all for this. Brilliant.

"People are remembering the days of Saddam. These were the precise reasons that we fought Saddam and now we are seeing the same things."

"We are hearing about secret police, secret bunkers where people are being interrogated," said Allawi, who was Iraq's first prime minister of the post-Saddam Hussein era.

"A lot of Iraqis are being tortured or killed in the course of interrogations," Allawi said. "We are even witnessing Sharia courts based on Islamic law that are trying people and executing them.

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What exactly is the "noble mission"?

Yesterday, driving back to D.C. from Maine, I listened to the news over and over. I kept hearing this snippet from Bush's radio address:

"The military families who mourn the fallen can know that America will not forget their sacrifice, and they can know that we will honor that sacrifice by completing the noble mission for which their loved ones gave their lives."

Does anyone know exactly what the noble mission is? The White House thinks if you just keep calling Iraq a "noble mission" people will think it is a noble mission even if they don't know what that noble mission is. Read More......

Sunday Morning Open Thread

Open thread away!

I've got a hangover this morning - someone please remind me the next time I want to drink that I'm not 22 anymore... Read More......

UK preparing for Official Secrets Act trial this week

Blair is getting desperate and doing exactly what Bush would do, if he could do it, by going after the press for printing embarrassing stories. Remember how Blair had his thugs arrest a Labour MP a few weeks ago for vocalizing his thoughts on Blair's reasons for going to war? During that little event where the MP said "rubbish" Team Blair had him arrested by using the anti-terror laws, clearly abusing the basis of those laws to mistreat a frail old man who dared criticize. Blair and his little group are tarnishing the UK laws by using them for frivolous actions and just like his master in DC has no idea what he is talking about when he talks about freedom and democracy.

Blair is losing it and is trying anything and everything to keep his grip on power. Too bad Poodle-boy, you've crossed the tipping point just like Bush. Quit abusing the law and worry about what you are actually doing instead of those who criticize you. Read More......

Winter has arrived across Europe

It wasn't much compared to what I saw growing up in the northeast but for Paris and for November it was pretty surprising. After a dusting of flurries on Friday we had a nice little snowstorm in Paris yesterday leaving all of about half an inch, maybe. A little snow on the ground always looks so nice. I always miss it when it snows here because I'm traveling somewhere else so it was good fun to see the trees covered. I am still keeping my fingers crossed that our cold start to winter fizzles out and we go back to our normal mild winter, just like every other winter. Read More......

Keeping Track Of Bush's Lies: A Full-time Job

Here's the latest on the NYT columnists you can't read for free anymore.

Frank Rich does a great rundown of the latest info on how Bush lied to the American people in the runup to war. He provides links to that engrossing LA Times story from last Sunday on how the Bush administration knew the Iraqi informant Curveball was a discredited source but kept championing his lies anyway. Rich also links to the new National Journal article that lays out the Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney lies linking Iraq to Al Quaeda and what they were being told by the CIA et al at the time. Then Rich links to a terrific Rolling Stone piece on John Rendon, Bush's "general in the propoganda war." Yep, staying on top of Bush's lies is a full-time job.

Nicholas Kristof continues to focus on the genocide in the Sudan, where the death toll is already in the hundreds of thousands. Anytime Bush claims to be promoting a culture of life, bring up the Sudan.

And David Brooks writes a truly idiotic article about a brave US captain who took part in a battle for an Iraqi town. Brooks writes about the battle in detail and then notes that it all proved in vain because the soldiers won the battle but didn't have enough troops to secure the town and had to do it all over again weeks later. Brooks writes: "Every time you delve into the situation in Iraq, you come away with the phrase 'not enough troops' ringing in your head, and I hope someday we will find out how this travesty came about."

Then he complains that the media never tells stirring stories about warriors like this captain. Uh, this "travesty" came about because you supported a President who ignored the advice of his generals, punished anyone who called for more troops and tried to secure Iraq on the cheap, regardless of the cost in blood to our soldiers. And the media doesn't tell stirring stories about bravery because -- as you just described -- they take place in a backdrop of incompetence and futility.

As a conservative myself, I can't decide who I hate more -- Brooks or Tierney. Can you? Read More......

Iraq's Human Rights Abuses Worse Than Under Saddam, Says Allawi

Bush wants to claim victory and get the hell out, but Iraq's first Prime Minister says the country is rife with death squads and torture centers and could soon eclipse Hussein's reign of terror. Bush's one-time ally Ayad Allawi is making it very difficult for the President to pretend everything is hunky-dory, thanks to this interview with UK's The Observer. Read it. It's a bombshell. Allawi is a secular Shiite who has been reaching out to Sunnis. Some highlights:

'People are doing the same as [in] Saddam's time and worse,' Ayad Allawi told The Observer. 'It is an appropriate comparison.'

'We are hearing about secret police, secret bunkers where people are being interrogated,' he added. 'A lot of Iraqis are being tortured or killed in the course of interrogations. We are even witnessing Sharia courts based on Islamic law that are trying people and executing them.'

And how's this for a kicker?

[Allawi] added that he now had so little faith in the rule of law that he had instructed his own bodyguards to fire on any police car that attempted to approach his headquarters without prior notice, following the implication of police units in many of the abuses.

Read More......

Even Frist Condemned Alito's Narrow-Minded Far Right College Group

The latest on Alito: that far-right college group he belonged to -- Concerned Alumni of Princeton -- was condemned by none other than Senator Bill Frist way back in 1975 for presenting a "distorted, narrow and hostile view" of Princeton. In 1985, when Alito championed his ties to the group, it was sputtering to a halt, with even its own members calling the group's stances possibly racist and certainly antiquated and embarrassing.

Naturally, Alito's allies now say we shouldn't read anything into his membership in a group that even Frist thought was divisive and backwards, a group that championed a "more traditional undergraduate population," ie, a whiter one with more alumni and fewer minorities. Is there anything about Alito he hasn't distanced himself from? Read More......

The Pentagon is now spying on US citizens

Big story in Sunday's Washington Post. Democratic Veteran blog has the coverage.

Gotta love the quote at the end of the blog entry:

"Naturally, the common people don't want war, but after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country."

Hermann Goering, Hitler's Reich-Marshall at the Nuremberg Trials

Read More......