A Blogswarm To End All Swarms? Dream On!

However, the March 19th blogswarm commencing now is not to be taken lightly. Indeed, this war has never been a lightweight when it comes to brutality, sheer horror, the depths of human depravity, the ridiculously small amount of lying it took for Bush to get America to buy into a war that was not, nor was it ever, making torture sound like the most patriotic thing an American can do, anything to do with September 11th or al Qaeda, etc.

The race in November is, at its core, part of a much more fundamental competition against those who turn fascism into proud patriotism and bankrupted our nation at the same time securing record profit for banks who brought about the foreclosure crisis and energy companies demanding tax payers build them free refineries while we say thanks! for those $4/gallon at the umps.

We need a leader who can take us OUT of Iraq ASAP and not in the 100 years or so Republican presidential candidate John McCain recently proudly proclaimed it may take.

War With Iran Closer?

General William Fallon, who until this week was the most recent head of CentCom and the atrocity that is Iraq, has been referred to many times as perhaps the only person standing in the way of Bush-Cheney's nightmare folly of war with Iran.

Now Fallon has been effectively forced out.

I dunno. Scott Ritter predicted an April 2008 all-out war, us vs. Iran. Fallon's departure makes me damned scared this IS it. (Bush has pushed out countless people who dared suggest his plans were bad.)

Anyone else concerned?

It's Getting Nasty Out There... And I'm Not Talking About Weather

(No, if I talked about weather, I'd use plenty of four-, six-, and even voluminously polysyllabic words as I curse. Vermont has actually had a 36-hour respite from our daily 12 inch dumps of snow and frozen rain BUT...)

What I'm talking about is the talk between some Democrats. And no, I'm not talking solely about Hillary Clinton and her entourage vs. Barack Obama and his Oprah machine. Every day in my travels, mostly online but also off, I see people beating up the other candidate in ways that would give the anti-Clinton elves like Ann Coulter jealousy that they didn't think of the nastiness first.

OK, true, neither Barack nor Hillary is Perfect, by whatever definition we choose to assign to that term. And as much as I have long lists of pros and cons for each of the two, I'm still feeling rather deadlocked, Vermont primary over aside.

But they're like soooooooo freaking much better than what the Republicans want to give us - John McCain, one of those rare men who is actually much more difficult to deal with when he thinks he's winning than he is petulant and tyrannical when he's not winning (see the leadup to how he quit the 2000 presidential race and his frequent meltdowns, usually in the media's face).

Some call McCain a war hero. I once did. But the first time he said it was worth it to stay in Iraq when he knew we have lost SO many soldiers and far more innocent Iraqi civilians meant he was no longer a hero, but another ambitious dickhead with a God complex who never minds leading lambs to slaughter "for a good enough cause" (read: his own).

And when I remember who I don't want to see in the White House next January, Hillary and Barack sure look pretty damned good by comparison. Maybe we can evolve them toward protection by getting them into office and then getting them to do the will of the people (for a change).

Military Suicides Soar While Bushies & Pentagon Look The Other Way

In case you haven't heard, Bush's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have brought active-duty military GI and veteran suicides to some of the highest - if not THE highest, since the Bush Administration and the Pentagon have steadfastly ignored the issue altogether - levels on record. Here:

The parents of an Iraq war veteran who committed suicide and members of Congress on Wednesday questioned why there's not a comprehensive tracking system of suicide among Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.

Mike Bowman, of Forreston, Ill., said his son, Spc. Timothy Bowman, 23, is a member of the "unknown fallen" not counted in statistics. His son, a member of the Illinois National Guard, took his own life in 2005 eight months after returning from war. Bowman said he considers his son a "KBA" — killed because of action.

"If the veteran suicide rate is not classified as an epidemic that needs immediate and drastic attention, then the American fighting soldier needs someone in Washington who thinks it is," Bowman said.

Think About Next Thanksgiving

When we approach Thanksgiving 2008, we _should_ already know who won the 2008 presidential race (but it's hard to exclude the possibility the Bushies will pull either a 2000 vote cheat/a 2001 "Rudy tells NY he must stay mayor after 9-11"/a Musharraf end-run around democratic vote this last month).

I suspect certain things will be true by then and while I'll tender some here, please keep in mind that what I predict does NOT mean what I necessarily want to have happen AND that I'd like to see what your predictions are for this time next year.

Mine:

* I don't think it's a given that the Democratic candidate WILL win the 2008 presidential race as much as some would like to believe it is; in fact, because we've allowed "fair election" policies to languish rather than get enacted, we've made it more likely there will be incredible shenanigans pulled in 2008

* IF a Dem wins, it will be Hillary - a choice that many Dems and Republicans will not embrace; if it's Hillary, we have ourselves to blame

* If a GOPeeuponus wins, it will be Rudy Giuliani, and that will be a disaster for the world as well as just us

* Before the 2008 race, we will be in a fight with Iran - whether it's full blown war which I expect it to be or not, it's still wrong

* A fight with Iran will make the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq seem like child's play; it will further bankrupt us financially and militarily and will ensure that those who want to hurt us have more free rein to do so because our resources will be committed in Iran

* Iran's Ahmadinejad was RIGHT about one thing this week: the American dollar is worth almost nothing; the longer the current GOP policies prevail, the worse our dollar will get and more and more and more Americans will suffer

* ALL of the bad inherent here CAN be changed if WE get involved and give as much passion and energy to changing events as we do to carping about what is wrong; NOTE this: it's critical - we can affect a change but only if we DO something more than complain and blog and slog

What say you?

"Out of The Mouths of Blabbering Boobs & Bushies"

With so much bad news - from the economy to the declaration that we're having our deadliest years E-V-E-R in both Iraq and Afghanistan to a host of other awfuls, the Bushies have made a few really TELLING declarations in the past week that are worthy of note.

First, there was Bush's insistence that anything Pakistan leader Pervez Musharraf wanted to do to for his country was A-OK with Bush. But that's not quite the NEWS. Bush, when asked if it was appropriate for Musharraf to claim the presidency when he came to power through a military coupe with Musharraf heading the military at the time, Bush comes out with:

Can a leader run both the military AND be president of his country at the same time? Of course not!

Uh.... Houston to the president: YOU ostensibly run the military as commander in cheat.. uh chief WHILE you are also supposedly president.

Then there's White House spokesvermin Dana Perino, Tony Snow(job)'s even sorrier replacement who, when asked if it was appropriate for any country's leadership to choose arbitrarily to end his/her nation's democracy and civil liberties in the name of protecting its citizens from terrorism, said NO!

But all the Bushies have done, since even before Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, is spy upon us as its citizens without ANY proof any of us is jeopardizing national security, to wiretap and remove constitutionally protected liberties, all in the name of "homeland security." In fact, in the same week Perino uttered this startling declaration (and removing our liberties have NOT made us any safer, I must add), the Bushies had several new initiatives underway to snoop upon us without due cause.

Stop the insanity, people!

This Veterans Day

I think it's important to consider that IF Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney truly respected our American service men and women, many of them now vets, than they would NOT be talking about another bloody, useless, war without end with Iran - worse than our endless wars with Iraq and Afghanistan rolled together.

Instead, it's telling just to remember how hard Bush fought to keep from fighting in Vietnam while Dick Cheney, speaking of this time and his many evasions of the draft: "I had other priorities."

Not Just Iraq: U.S. Also Marks Deadliest Year In Afghanistan

Not only does the Bush-led campaign in Iraq result in more U.S. and coalition deaths than ever in 2007 despite all the happy horseshit about the "grand success" of the "surge" to kill the insurgency; no, Bush has something else to boast about (and he's enough of an ass to do so, too): this is our deadliest year for American troops in Afghanistan (remember them?) since we invaded in early October 2001.

And this distinction was earned BEFORE Pakistan fell apart to prop up Musharraf's ego; with the chaos there now, one must assume that Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, and friends have more room to manuever than ever. And each day, the Bushies push harder and harder for war with Iran, a country where we can't even begin to claim it will be a "cakewalk" to wage war.

The Bush Administration: fucking the world over since January 2001.

Obscene: Bush "Leans" On Dead Soldiers' Families For Support

Grrrrrrrr.....

While Bush and Cheney and Petraeus keep insisting "the surge" has been an unprecedented success, and given that the "surged" numbers were there just about all year, then how is it that 2007 became the deadliest year on record for American and coalition forces in Iraq?

And that doesn't even address how deadly it's been for Iraqis.

At the same time, this story by Stolberg in The Times about how Bush and the families of dead soldiers are "leaning on each other for great support" just makes me sick. Bush, who wouldn't attend one damned service funeral, who certainly won't meet with the families of ALL fallen soldiers because he wants a guarantee the grieving loved ones won't ask him any pesky questions. I find this to be the height of obscenity.

Homelessness And Vets: More Than Just A Crying Shame

With a new study out that shows that American veterans account for 25% of the country's homeless comes two questions that are far more than academic:

1) What do we do to our soldiers that they end up this way?
2) Why are so many Americans now homeless - and many of them are homeless WHILE working more than one job because housing here is so expensive - and why are we allowing the numbers to soar higher each and every day?

Other stats show that we have NEVER seen an epidemic of homelessness like this among people WHO WORK, who pay taxes. So why under Bush has this flourished?

Well, I know the answer to that.

The Dumb(er) Bush Twin, Jenna: "Why Fight In Iraq When I Can Get Married In The White House!"

This one just makes me so ill...

Your kids can fight and die in Iraq but Jenna's just too busy having a good time spending some of the money the Bush-Cheney war of empire is netting the dumbest man ever to breathe White House air.

As I noted at All Things Democrat, Jenna's top 5 reasons for not fighting her dumb daddy's Iraq quagmire of a war must include:

a) not enough drugs and alcohol in Iraq
b) few nightclubs that allow women
c) will ruin her manicure
d) “What’s eye-rock? Cos if it’s hip clothing, I already own it!”
e) “Cos I’m a Bush, silly. We just suck the blood out of everything, not serve!”

Serve Those Who Served Us (Despite Bush's Lies)

This sent along by Steve of Cernigs Newshog (aka The Newshoggers) is worthy of our attention in this bipartison blog fundraising effort:

I'd like, if I may, to impose and request you spend a few minutes reading about a bipartisan blog fundraiser in honor of the tragically-killed NYT op-ed writers Sgt. Omar Mora & Sgt. Yance T. Gray.

This is truly a bipartisan effort, which has the approval of Sgt. Gray's father, and it goes to a good cause. All funds raised will go to the Fisher House charity, an organization which builds houses near military medical facilities where loved ones of those who have been injured in the line of duty can stay free of charge while their service member undergoes necessary treatment.

More here.

A Must Read

This is from Wes Clark (Retired NATO Supreme Commander and 2004 Dem presidential runner), but I've heard great reviews of this book from many sources. I won't like reading about it, but I feel it's my duty as a citizen of a country that sees war as a tool of empire.

I have just finished reading a book that was so compelling and moving that I wanted to urge you to buy a copy, while helping a worthy cause. "The War I Always Wanted: The Illusion of Glory and Reality of War," by Iraq and Afghanistan Veteran Brandon Friedman, captures the feelings of war with uncanny perception. Among the many excellent war memoirs by Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, Brandon's stands out as the best. I couldn't put it down.

Bush and Iran: Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid But STOP Him

Insane and megalomaniacal simply do not begin to describe Bush anymore.

Our military is broken, our coffers are empty, and yet the Bushies say Iran is not just in their sights, but a definite strike zone.

Support our troops in the best way possible: demand treason charges be leveled against the Bush Administration not next week, not next month. NOW.

Torture And The Laws Bush Won't Even Pretend to Follow

At the same time he stands by his unmitigated nerve to cry foul against Russia in 2001 for its human rights abuses (talk about the skanky pot calling the Putey-Put kettle black), Bush wants everyone to notice he's "making illegal" what was already illegal to do but which he practices with all the fervor of a Republican Christian moralist paying a dominatrix for kinky sex (can you say William "Morals Czar" Bennett, anyone?).

Thus, may we assume (oh, yeaaaaahhhhh!) that President Bush signed a new law designed to "stop" torture in interrogations used against detainees and so-called terror suspects using invisible ink, with his fingers crossed behind his hand, AND with a signing statement that says, "this law applies only to Democrats and others not named Bush & Cheney"?

Meanwhile, the CIA is now allowed to return to interrogating whoever the hell they want, after many appropriate (and too many unasked) questions arose about how they conducted them.

With Bush, The Damned Lies Keep Coming After HE Refused to Give Troops a Pay Raise

The words Bush and lies go together as surely as hot fudge sauce and vanilla ice cream, Halliburton and stealing/overbilling, Cheney and nasty secrets, government and crime, not to mention Republican "Christian moralists and kinky prostitutes. So why should this surprise us? Well, except that Bush and his GOP loyalists have refused for 4+ years to properly equip our troops and that just a few weeks ago, they insisted soldiers did NOT need a pay raise and would block any measure to give them one:

President Bush, ratcheting up a fight with Congress over Iraq, accused Democrats on Friday of conducting a political debate on the war while delaying action on money to upgrade equipment and give troops a pay raise.

"It is time to rise above partisanship, stand behind our troops in the field, and give them everything they need to succeed," Bush said in the Rose Garden after meeting with veterans and military families.

Bush spoke two days after Senate Republicans thwarted a Democratic proposal to pull out troops from Iraq. Bush said that instead of approving money for the war, "the Democratic leaders chose to have a political debate on a precipitous withdrawal of our troops from Iraq."

Despite Bush's suggestion that the bill is a must-pass measure that would pay for critical war programs, the legislation is not an appropriations bill that feeds military spending accounts. Called the defense authorization bill, the legislation is a policy measure used by Congress to influence the management of major defense programs, set goals and guide the 2008 military spending bill.

His and Hersh: How Bush And Rumsfeld Created The Horror of Abu Ghraib, Then Protected Themselves

I posted this at All Things Democrat in the wee hours of this morning, but it needs as much attention as possible (remember how Rummy dismissed abuses in Iraq prisons as the work of "a few bad apples" - I can agree with this if you say those bad apples are named Georgie Porgy and Donny Dumbsfeld):

While perhaps too many Americans have been closely following interviews with England’s two princes (Harry and William) and the unanswered questions of what happened on the night of their mother’s - Princess Diana’s - death a decade ago, there’s a much bigger issue that needs attention: what Bush and Rumsfeld allowed happen at the Iraq prison Abu Ghraib (and elsewhere).

Hardhitting journalist Seymour Hersh, one of the first to break the stories of abuse of prisoners - many of whom were arrested only for being Iraqis or Muslim or simply looking different from Americans - by American soldiers in 2004, is back in The New Yorker with fresh details that tell us both President Bush and then Pentagon Secretary Donald Rumsfeld LIED LIED LIED about not knowing of the torture and degradation and unnecessary deaths while they worked tirelessly to keep any official investigation into it from looking beyond grunt soldiers and low ranking generals.

Much of the punch packed in Hersh’s latest piece comes from Major General Antonio M. Taguba, the man charged with investigating the abuses at Abu Ghraib when the Bush Administration and Pentagon could no longer look blankly and say, “What’s Abu Ghraib?” Taguba says that Bush and Rummy knew WAY before they say they did about the claims of massive abuses, tortures and even deaths at the prison, that they specifically BLOCKED Taguba from looking any higher up the food chain than lowly GIs and minor generals, and THEN forced Taguba to retire as punishment for trying to investigate as fully and fairly as a decent inquiry should.

The highest “hit” there, of course, was Janis Karpinski, a one star general then titularly in charge of Abu Ghraib but - she says - forced by the Pentagon to allow psy ops and torture proponents run the prison and then busted down when she did as ordered by Rummy; the rest were the likes of Lindy England (the Abu Ghraib poster girl for torture and leash holding as well as frequent model for sex pictures in and around prisoners).

Only in BushTopia: U.S. Races To Deport Wife Of American Soldier Missing In Iraq

Alex Jimenez is one of the three U.S. soldiers ambushed and still missing in Iraq weeks after several comrades in the same unit were killed in the same scuffle that resulted in these MIAs. As if this isn't sad enough, bhfrik at All Things Democrat tells us how the U.S. government wants to say thanks to his family by deporting Jimenez's wife, who applied for a green card four years ago.

Why does the story of Yaderlin deserve any more attention than hundreds of others facing deportation, separation from children and families and uncertain futures in a land thousands of miles from home? Because Alex is one of the two soldiers whose unit was attacked and is now missing in Iraq. A third member of his unit was also captured and later found dead near the Tigris river.

That’s right… the government is working to deport the wife of a soldier missing in Iraq. It would be bad enough if the couple were just dealing with Alex being in Iraq and having to go through this domestic nightmare. Can you imagine our soldiers having to worry about dodging IED’s in the broiling heat surrounded by misery and death on a biblical scale… and having to worry and fret about your wife’s immigration status. I wonder how many soldiers have been killed or wounded from being all distracted by thoughts on legal proceedings at home, rather than concentrating on surviving the hell hole they find themselves in.

Color me apoplectic and ashamed of any government agency that would do this, at this time.

In fact, I'm thinking perhaps the right-most Republicans clamoring so fervently for blood and tears in forcing so many immigrants back across borders should be deported themselves, perhaps along with those who came up with the execution of this plan against Jimenez's wife. Bet they're all sporting "Support Our Troops" bumper stickers featuring a ribbon as yellow as these people's bellies on a background as white as the skunk stripe down their hateful backs.

"The Dying Continues... While We Bury Our Heads In The Sand"

Very powerful words from Joseph Galloway (author of "They Were Soldiers Once") on Iraq and our complicity through our ignorance and blinders:

The war in Iraq grinds on without much regard for an American president's pipedreams of victory, a congressional majority's impotent attempts to stop it and most of the American people's wish that it would just go away.

We're now well into the fifth year of this war. All 30,000 of President Bush's surge reinforcements are on the ground, and we have more than 150,000 American soldiers and Marines in the cauldron. The only surge in sight is an inevitable surge in the numbers of those troops being killed and wounded.

More than 3,500 Americans have now been killed in action and more than 29,000 wounded, along with an additional 25,000-plus injured in accidents. That's close to 60,000 American casualties to date, and God alone knows how many Iraqis have been killed and wounded in the war and the civil war - certainly hundreds of thousands.

The central focus of George W. Bush's escalation was to make Baghdad more secure so that the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki could take control of its own capital. In truth, Baghdad seems no more secure now than it was - only a more target-rich environment - and even the president and his generals predict that things will get worse before they get better. If they get better.

A beleaguered president must travel to Albania, of all places, to find a little love. Will he now, as Richard Nixon before him, become an inveterate lame-duck globetrotter in search of a crowd that will cheer him? What's next? Kazakhstan? Tierra del Fuego? How about Baghdad?

The Army and Marines scrape and scratch and scheme and pay big bucks and beguile high school dropouts, even those with criminal records, in their efforts to recruit enough young men and women to replace the casualties and those who are leaving the service.

The administration doesn't want you to worry about any of this. It's summertime, shopping time, surf's up. Head for the beach and bury your heads in the sand.

The planes loaded with flag-draped coffins soar over the Atlantic coast sunbathers to land at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, the site of the military mortuary, unseen as they come home to a nation that barely noticed when they left so full of hope and dreams. Your government, your president, has banned cameras from Dover so those images won't intrude on your good times and good life.

The planes loaded with the scores of wounded - some of them double and triple amputees with bodies and brains shattered by the roadside bombs and mines that are responsible for two-thirds of our casualties - fly over the beachfront bars and restaurants and land at Andrews Air Force Base outside the nation's capital in the dark of night. The administration doesn't want too many people noticing them, either.

The rest is here.

Iraq: Our War For Oil Proven By U.S. Army's Visit

Granted, President Bush has in several speeches made it clear that we waged war in Iraq for "cheap" oil (like those cheap prices now? - heh) and before we launched the war in mid-March 2003, then Assistant Secretary of Defense (and now a man who had to leave the World Bank for serious fraud) Paul Wolfowitz said the Iraq war would pay for itself in cheap gas. But a report in yesterday's New York Times made it abundantly clear that we went to Iraq to hand their oil fields over to oil and energy companies (many of them American) for unheard of profits. Why else would the U.S. military be demanding the so-called democratically elected representatives of Iraq to sign an oil deal (the real reason for the surge) "or else."

BAGHDAD, June 11 — The top American military commander for the Middle East has warned Iraq’s prime minister in a closed-door conversation that the Iraqi government needs to make tangible political progress by next month to counter the growing tide of opposition to the war in Congress.

In a Sunday afternoon discussion that mixed gentle coaxing with a sober appraisal of politics in Baghdad and Washington, the commander, Adm. William J. Fallon, told Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki that the Iraqi government should aim to complete a law on the division of oil proceeds by next month.

Be clear: there is NO good reason for anyone in the U.S. military to be telling the democratically elected rep of ANY country what to do re: oil. That this happened gives us the conclusive proof that this is why we went to Iraq.