Ho,Ho, Hobart…Merry Christmas!
Project for a New American Century…PNAC
It’s A Blunderful Life!….thanks Alicia!
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The True Cost of Lies and Deception
I couldn’t in good conscience let this tragic milestone pass without notice.
The major news services are reporting that as of today, more members of the US military have died in the Iraq conflict (2978) than people who were killed as a direct result of the September 11, 2001 attacks (2973). Unlike the terrorist attacks of 2001, the death toll in Iraq has no end in sight.
Few people would protest the invasion of Afghanistan which resulted from the September 11, 2001 attacks. The Taliban government of Afghanistan sanctioned and supported these terrorist actions. The primary failure of the US Government in Afghanistan is that the job of eliminating the terrorist leadership remains incomplete to this day.
The reason for this military shortcoming is that US military personnel were prematurely withdrawn from Afghanistan for the build-up to invade Iraq. Please forgive me for restating the obvious, but the invasion of Iraq has been a failure both militarily and politically, and has made a mockery of due process:
- The American people were told from the beginning that Iraq was a part of the so-called “War on Terror”. The truth is, Saddam Hussein would have nothing to do with terrorist groups.
- The American people were told from the beginning that Iraq was an immediate threat, possessing (or close to completing) so-called “weapons of mass destruction”. The truth is, Iraq’s military prowess had been shattered by a decade of economic sanctions and internal mismanagement.
- The American people were told from the beginning that the invasion of Iraq was by a “US led coalition”. The truth is, GW Bush doesn’t have a fraction of the maturity, wisdom, or tact that his own father used to assemble an international coalition to liberate Kuwait in 1990. As a result, the vast majority of troops used to invade Iraq were US, unlike the 30 or so nations involved in the 1990-1991 Gulf war. The result of GW Bush’s arrogance and immaturity is that the US went from being a well-regarded country to one of the most loathed governments in the world over the span of barely two years.
- NO coherent plan for post-war Iraq existed either before or after the US invasion. There never was a plan for winning the peace. Apparently GW Bush and his secretive inner circle were convinced that the Iraqi people would welcome the US with open arms, and quickly organize a peaceful democracy. The truth is, Iraq has a history of thousands of years of internal conflict between various competing tribal and/or religious factions. GW Bush and his inner circle ignored numerous warnings of what would happen when these forces were released from the oppression of a totalitarian regime.
And on and on and on and on. This has been discussed many times, in many different places. Today’s milestone has been inevitable for too many years. How many more must die as a result of the arrogance of so few?
From all of us who dared question the wisdom of invading a country that the US had no direct quarrel with, to all of those who called us “unpatriotic” and raised the specter of more terrorist attacks if the US didn’t invade Iraq:
WE TOLD YOU SO!
Souls Tis
This comic goes out to the Ghost of Peter Boyle…
Also, Kiss my Democratic Ass
The War on Christmas Confucious
And finally, A Huge round of applause for hosting the Zappadan Festival….Flies all green and buzzin’
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Restaurant Pharmacopeia
Buy an Otis Taylor Band CD for the Blues Lover’s Christmas Gift. You will not be disappointed. A Wendy Woo CD would also make a great gift. Buy a copy for yourself while you’re at it!
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Single Payer Health Plan
Animation Giant Joseph Barbera passed away. RIP…
The Nitpicker on Rightwingers whining about their beloved “Free Market”
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The Worlds Best Person of the Day: Pennsylvania DEP Secretary Kathleen McGinty
I can not tell you how huge this lawsuit could be.
Thirteen U.S. states sued the federal Environmental Protection Agency on Monday for failing to set air quality standards that could save up to 24,000 lives a year.The suit, filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, says the EPA ignored the advice of its own scientists. They recommended that it should lower the acceptable level for airborne soot — known as fine particulate matter — to 13 or 14 micrograms per cubic metre of air from the 15-microgram level that took effect on Monday.
The agency’s own analysis found that lowering the level to 13 would have prevented 24,000 premature deaths per year from chronic respiratory disease and asthma attacks, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, one of the parties to the lawsuit.
Living near possibly the worst polluter in the state of Pennsylvania, Shenango Coke Works, I can attest to the immediate effects of the EPA’s criminal attempt at deregulation.
Copper Kettle Health Plan C
Secret NSA Update from the Heretik
7th Day Ramblings at Ripley’s Zencabin
That Colored Fella is back, with a piece about Barack Obama
Iran wants to replace the dollar with the Euro
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For all my Libertarian friends…
Yep, the Ganj has officially become America’s top cash crop.
A report released today by a marijuana public policy analyst contends that the market value of pot produced in the U.S. exceeds $35 billion — far more than the crop value of such heartland staples as corn, soybeans and hay, which are the top three legal cash crops.
Dude, I am so buying a farm and…what was I saying?
Is there a Doctor in the house?
The Dark Wraith, dba The Big Brass Blog, on John McCain leading the charge for internet censorship.
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Flat Earth Society Prevails for Republicans
The Hill is reporting that Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) is ending his battle with Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) over minority ranking membership in the Environment and Public Works Committee. While it is certainly pathetic that the Republican party is continuing to allow it’s position on issues like global climate change to be defined by the very same man who called the idea of global warming, “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people” Warner would have been no bed of roses either.
I plucked the environmental interest group ranking for the last 10 Senatorial votes and as you can see (below), if one were to remove the rankings of the American Land Rights Association - a group whose main goal appears to be the defense of private property rights (and that is environmental how?) the two of them combined barely crack a 10% rating.
What is the silver lining here? Well, as you can see the presumptive chairman of this committee, Sen. Jim Jeffords (I-VT), taking the same numbers into account rates a pretty solid 78%.
| Warner (R-Va.) | Inhofe (R-Okla.) | Jeffords (I-VT) | |
| 2006 American Land Rights Association | 78 | 100 | 0 |
| 2006 Comprehensive US Sustainable Population | 18 | 33 | 58 |
| 2005 American Wilderness Coalition | 0 | 0 | 100 |
| 2005 Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund | 0 | 0 | 100 |
| 2005 League of Conservation Voters | 20 | 0 | 85 |
| 2005 Republicans for Environmental Protection | 17 | -3 | 0 |
| 2005 American Land Rights Association | 83 | 100 | 0 |
| 2004 American Land Rights Association | 86 | 100 | 0 |
| 2004 Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund | 0 | 0 | 100 |
| 2003-2004 American Wilderness Coalition | 0 | 0 | 100 |
| Average | 30.2 | 33 | 54.3 |
| Average minus ALRA | 7.86 | 4.29 | 77.57 |
It’s Hard Work
Having worked the fewest days of any Congress in over 100 years you would think they could have at least utilized their time a bit more effectively.
Of the 383 pieces of legislation that were signed into law during the two-year 109th Congress, more than one-quarter dealt with naming or renaming federal buildings and structures — primarily post offices — after various Americans.
That’s right folks, had these corrupt, lazy, Bush-sycophants not been busy naming/renaming buildings - is there a Milton Friedman trickle down rest area somewhere? - they actually would have worked roughly two days a week! Even then it should have been enough time to carry out some freakin’ oversight, lazy bastards.
Drinking Conservatively
You’re doin’ a heckuva job, Tinsley!
I couldn’t let this go without commenting.The Nitpicker is holding a contest, and the prize is a Bloom County Book.
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Clap Harder
US News and World Report is reporting that President Bush is looking to go "big" in Iraq in next month’s speech on a new policy:
"senior administration officials" who suggested Bush wants more time because he "is planning to do something big" namely, he is "very seriously considering agreeing with John McCain and increasing troop levels." In fact, the Los Angeles Times reports on its front page that "strong support has coalesced in the Pentagon behind a military plan to ‘double down’ in the country with a substantial buildup in…troops, an increase in industrial aid and a major combat offensive against Muqtada Sadr, the radical Shiite leader impeding development of the Iraqi government." The Times also notes that strategy would overlap "somewhat a course promoted by" McCain. And the Washington Times says "top military officials with whom Mr. Bush met yesterday backed Mr. McCain’s stance."
The only US combat units that are available for a surge operation into Iraq are the units currently in Iraq. Units will be getting orders to extend their deployments from twelve months to sixteen, seventeen, eighteen months, while the units that were supposed to replace them will instead come in on schedule, or slightly ahead of schedule and fight side by side with the units they were suppose to replace.
This constraint limits the size of the force to an additional four or five brigades above baseline, or roughly one division.
President Bush indicates that he wants this force to take on both the Mahdi Army and reinitiate the fight in Anbar Province against the Sunni Arab insurgencies. However the problem is that an additional four or five brigades is only 25,000 troops or so, and this is not enough manpower for either problem. The Washington Post reported in September that commanders in both Anbar and Baghdad were calling for an extra division in each area.
Introducing a short term surge of American forces into an area will do next to nothing about the violence trend line. There have been several other temporary surges that have not successfully dampened the insurgency; instead as soon as US troops withdraw and Iraqi forces ‘take over’ security, the violence ramps right back and the situation continues to deterioriate. The war is lost, and the ability of the United States to influence events on the ground in a manner that is favorable to US interests (define that as you may) is and has been consistently decreasing. Another 20,000 troops, or 30,000 troops or 60,000 troops for six months will not change this dynamic.
It is time to leave, and to learn how we collectively made and endorsed this horrendous series of decisions. That is the best that we can do today.
Are You Experienced?
Why does everybody hate America?
Hard Times in The Land Of Plenty
As always, The Progressive Blog Digest has a good round up of news.
Small Men, Big Cars, and Soy Based Food Products
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I am The Walrus and The Carpenter
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Grill Rats # 9
The Newshog and a rights free zone.
Another Zappadan Miracle!
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Why I dislike Barnett
Thomas Barnett is one freaking smart dude. That is obvious. And it is also obvious that he has the ear of quite a few people who can make decisions at the national level. However I have a very hard time buying into his seriousness at times, and a post at his blog today illustrates why. But before I go further, let me give you a basic gloss of his views:
His basic idea is that this era of globalization, vastly cheaper communication devices, trade and the flattening of decision making structures is a positive feedback process. From the initial startpoint, there were few free and fairly free countries and regions throughout the world, but the benefits of opening up to the international economy makes countries and global elites want to syncronize their internal rule sets to market and global rule sets that promote initially stability and then secondarily liberty. And this process has been going on for a while and has been pretty successful so now the world can be divided into three groups: the old Core, led by the United States and composed of the Cold War Western Alliance (including Japan, ANZAC and others), the new Core being led by China and India, and then the GAP — most of the resource and rent extraction countries of the Middle East, most of Africa — that barely benefit from globalization, and in some cases are actively hostile to the rule sets that govern other countries.
Okay, up to this point, this is a rehash of Wallenstein combined with a bit of neo-classical economics and Tom Friedman thrown in for some flavor. I have no big problems with this. The problem I have is with his prescription and impatience.
He wants to accelerate the integration of the New Core into the Old Core’s with a synthesized common rule set, AND also bring the GAP into the Core’s synthesized rule set. And he is willing to use a shitload of military force to do this. His idea is to have the US provide the ass-kicking force (much like the US did in Iraq or during the air campaign in Kosovo) while the rest of the Core take care of the peacemaking and keeping process. He does not have a whole lot of faith in the rest of the Core stepping up to support US invasions for either political or capability reasons, so he wants the US military to transform itself from an asskicking Leviathon force to a Systems Adminstration force that can rebuild GAP countries to becoming functioning members of the Core. From here, he figures that demonstration strikes against the ‘rogue’ GAP nation will encourage other GAP members to hasten their process of integration out of fear and motivated self-interest. He argues that Libya’s agreement to stop and dismantle its limited nuclear, chemical and biological weapons program is proof that this works in the real world. He sees it as proof because the demolition of Iraq during the invasion, and subsequently supposedly put fear into Quadaffi and his top leadership cadre that they could be next on the list. And for this reason, among others, Thomas Barnett was and still is a supporter of the decision to invade Iraq.
Your [President Bush's] big-bang strategy to reform the Middle East took down Saddam, which was good; you’ve completely screwed up the Iraq occupation, which is bad; and now you don’t seem to know exactly where you\’re going, which is not so great……
I know, I know. If the mullahs are so weak and scared, then why do they reach so obviously for the bomb?
Look at it from their perspective, Mr. President. Those scary neocons just toppled regimes to Iran’s right (Afghanistan) and left (Iraq), and ourmilitary pulled off both takedowns with ease. Moreover, your administration has demonstrated beyond all doubt that you don’t fear leaving behind a god-awful mess in your war machine’s wake. Frankly,youre as scary as Nixon was in his spookiest White House moments on Vietnam.
So he still thinks that Iraq is producing positive results, and he still supports the concept despite the fact that he admits the occupation and counterinsurgency is screwed up beyond all belief. And part of this screw-up of the occupation as he sees it is because the US military has not transformed itself into his desired System Administration force of linguists and special forces and civil affairs officers who can effectively embed themselves into a foreign society and then do ‘good.’ Another part of this failure as he diagnosises it is the betrayal of the Core’s great mission by the rest of the core (excluding Great Britian) by their refusal to provide troops to be bullet sponges. And he knew that these problems were present by February 2003. And yet he still thinks the invasion of Iraq was a good idea.
With the release of the