USA Today's Founder: Once Supportive of Bush, The First To Call For U.S. Troop Exit From Iraq

Al Neuharth, the founder of USA Today, once quite supportive of the president's "grand mission" in Iraq, also became one of the first (and for too long, only) editorialists/political pundits to call for an exit strategy to bring American soldiers home from Iraq. I've quoted from many of his columns on the subject because they are lucid and infinitely understandable at the same time demonstrating that sane people who exist to the right of dead center often share many of the same aspirations, savvy administration, and intelligent discourse with those to the left of center.

As Greg Mitchell of Editor & Publisher notes, Neuharth even strongly recommended that, given the situation in Iraq and elsewhere in Bush's "another day, another war" kingdom, Bush NOT seek re-election in November 2004.

In The "How Kind Of Bush To Pay $200 In Restitution For Killing My Son But I Would Rather Have My Child Back" Department

Here's another example of why Greg Mitchell is a good as well as an important read in these disastrous, far from rapturish Bush years:

Until recently, the press has rarely covered the U.S. military program that occasionally offers “condolence” payments to Iraqis and Afghans whose loved ones have been killed or injured by our troops. But a number of high-profile incidents involving the killing of noncombatants has drawn some long-overdue, if fleeting, attention to the subject.

On Tuesday, in the latest example, the U.S. military apologized for a not-accidental atrocity near Jalalabad back in March and agreed to make the usual maximum payment -- don’t laugh -- of about $2000 to survivors for each of the 19 Afghan lives lost.

That’s an improvement in some ways. Last month I titled a column on this subject, "Sorry We Shot Your Kid, Here’s $500," referring to a documented case in Iraq.

Of Bill Moyers, LBJ and the Vietnam/Iraq Link

One of my favorite columnists, editor Greg Mitchell with Editor & Publisher magazine, gives us the deeper background behind "a chilling 1964 phone conversation" linked to then president Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ, as in "LBJ, LBJ, how many kids have you killed today?") at a time when documentarian and returned PBS host (what a mistake they made in pushing him out) Bill Moyers was LBJ's press secretary.

This chat transcript, between LBJ and a top aide, occurred not long after JFK's assassination, and sounds more reminiscent than some may find comfortable re: parallels between today's Iraq and the '60s' Vietnam. I started to cry when I read this remark, finding it way past tragic and pathetic that Johnson could ask these questions at that particular point in time because LBJ did have a conscience.

Johnson: I will tell you the more, I just stayed awake last night thinking of this thing, and the more that I think of it I don't know what in the hell, it looks like to me that we're getting into another Korea. It just worries the hell out of me. I don't see what we can ever hope to get out of there with once we're committed. I believe the Chinese Communists are coming into it. I don't think that we can fight them 10,000 miles away from home and ever get anywhere in that area. I don't think it's worth fighting for and I don't think we can get out. And it's just the biggest damn mess that I ever saw.

Bundy: It is an awful mess.

Johnson: And we just got to think about it. I'm looking at this Sergeant of mine this morning and he's got 6 little old kids over there, and he's getting out my things, and bringing me in my night reading, and all that kind of stuff, and I just thought about ordering all those kids in there. And what in the hell am I ordering them out there for? What in the hell is Vietnam worth to me? What is Laos worth to me? What is it worth to this country? We've got a treaty but hell, everybody else has got a treaty out there, and they're not doing a thing about it.

(Note Jurassic Pork's question regarding that Iraq could turn into another 50-year police action/occupation as it has with South Korea while it continues to wage tactics which have NEVER produced a positive result.) Bush, on the other hand, seems incapable of taking responsibility for any action, operates in delusional mode so often I wonder if he's ever known the truth about anything, and like just about all sociopaths, demonstrates he is without conscience.

American Empire Building Disguised As Legit Aid to Third World Countries

Robb Kidd at Evolving Peace (another blog from my neck of the Vermont woods, Montpelier, still the only state capitol without a McDonald's) has a very solid piece up about the World Bank and the whole new horrific levels of corrupt behavior thanks to President Bush's appointment of neocon-man Paul "He puts the wolf in..." Wolfowitz. Wolfie, of course, was allowed to resign when indictment would be much more appropriate - and not just because Wolfie couldn't control his penis or his penis' playmate.

There seems to be a mood of ecstatic joy in regards to the downfall of Paul Wolfowitz from heading of the World Bank and while many may have noticed that Mr. Wolfowitz had been a chief architect of the Neo-Cons disastrous implantation of the war in Iraq, they now celebrate with glee his down fall with little discussion revolving around the harsh reality that he was perfect for the World Bank position.
The World Bank has nothing to do about raising the quality of living for “the undeveloped world” but for the mere purpose of creating further markets of development. While to the mere outsider the World Bank produces an imagery of wholesome concern; however that is far from the real truth of the matter. The World Bank has been a tool for venture capitalists in further procuring their desires of developing and exploiting the undeveloped world. Instead of using military force the World Bank goes into the “undeveloped world” and installs loans to spur economic development that perpetuates them into system of subservience.

On paper it sounds nice, but in reality these loans subject the population to dramatic changes to their environment and create an environment of greater poverty. In Mexico farmers were discouraged from growing corn due to the abundance of US corn and now with the greater demand for ethanol corn prices have skyrocketed and many Mexicans are left without their most basic staple for food. Mexican peasantry who had left the farms for the promises of greater economic freedom are now in a pinch since corn is no longer cheap to them. Now they are unable to support themselves and are in need of work, so left with little options the opportunities north of the border look good to them.

Catch the rest here.

Is Iraq Morphing Into The 50-Year War?

My favorite pig "the other white meat" product (JurassicPork) of Welcome to Pottersville makes some decent points about South Korea, Iraq, and now. Here's a dollop:

Perhaps we should’ve been listening more closely when government officials began making muffled noises to the effect that our presence in Iraq could stretch for decades.

Because, through Tony Snow, we now know that George W. Bush, our nation’s most creative historian, holds up as a shining example of eternal police action our 50+ year-long occupation of South Korea.

And, really now, folks: Do we have the right to feign surprise? After all, while being unable to build a single children’s cancer hospital in Basra, we’ve somehow gotten our shit together well enough to build an embassy in Baghdad that’s bigger than the fucking Vatican.

Add to the lightning fast “urban renewal” 14 permanent bases. Troop strength is going up almost constantly.

But the more this is beginning to look like South Korea, the less it does.

We don’t have 150,000 troops in South Korea but 28,000 and men and women serve there for just a single one-year tour, not three or four concurrent tours of duty. Plus the South Koreans aren’t blowing us to bits with increasingly sophisticated and powerful IED’s.

But these are the pie in the sky assumptions that you get from a rube who’s addicted to making faulty historical analogies such as synonymzing WW II with the “war on terror” and then tries in the next shaky breath to elevate himself to the level of FDR.

[...]Anyone remember “the Nixon Doctrine”? It stated that Asian nations should not have to be propped up by US troops but that they should develop their own security forces. Which, incredibly, is the exact opposite thing that we’re seeing in Iraq. In fact, the only enemy that the Iraqi security forces seem to be adept at combating are their American occupiers.

Another irony: The Bush administration is actually more prone to withdraw troops by 2008 from South Korea than it is from Iraq. We’re planning on pulling a third of our troops from Li’l Kim’s southern neighbors, which have suffered from the iron rule of one tyrant after another and have undergone five major changes in their constitution since the Korean War.

In Bush's Constant Warmongering, We Do Unto Others As We Most Fear They Could Do Unto Us

So we can dish it out, but we can't accept that it be served to us? Isn't "Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto Us" part of the Bible? Donald Rumsfeld, then Secretary of Defense and the crazed leader of the Pentagon/Defense Department, only thought he walked on water.

From TPM Muckraker:

Many of the controversial interrogation tactics used against “war on terror” detainees in Guantanamo, Iraq and Afghanistan are similar to strategies the United States feared its worst enemies would use against captured soldiers during the Cold War.

Time magazine catches this connection in a recently declassified report, "Review of DoD-Directed Investigations of Detainee Abuse,” that has received little media coverage.

The same potential enemy tactics the U.S. military trained forces to face during the Cold War became interrogation strategies used on enemy combatants.

You know how badly this will work; we've already seen it with the grisly and gruesome deaths (by torture, by decapitation/beheading) of some soldiers and aid workers.

Bear in mind that, while U.S. Attorney Greed4all er.. Alberto Gonzales called the Geneva Conventions "quaint", these rules about combat and treatment of the enemy was developed in large part to keep American soldiers safe. But we can't demand better treatment for our men and women GIs than we afford others.

Unfair! Fat Old White Republican Men Don't Always Control Everything

As Alec points out in comments here as well as on his blog (Prose Before Hos), it's a dark and pathetic day when fat old white (almost invariably Republican, I may add) men don't get 103% of all the fatcat positions and money and favors and law-making and... well, read for yourself:

Oh no! Old rich white males are being oppressed again! Sound the alarms!

Males - As of the 2006 congress, 83.7% of the Congress is male, while the percentage of males of the voting age population (18 plus) is only 48.4. If this is further evaluated to include the over-representation of white males, the figure is even more staggering: 36.3% of the voting age population are white males, yet there are 79 White Male senators making up the Senate (79%).

A Vote For Mitt Romney Equals Funding The Mormons?

While there are some reasons to strongly admire the Mormon Church, I'm not sure how comfortable I feel allowing taxpayer dollars to fund an entity which - like too many religious organizations - sees women as chattel, people of color as potentially evil, and keeps re-electing the bitter and easily-bought Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) to the Senate. But I'm also not crazy about electing yet another man who, with all his money, believes the rules simply don't apply to him.

Maureen Dowd: "Bush's Fleurs du Mal"

Try not to break a rib laughing too hard in this MoDo column from May 27th when you learn how Bush insists he "is credible because he reads the intelligence". Even if we can pretend Bush can read, the only credibility this man (loosely defined) has is that which the right demands everyone else provide him.

For me, the saddest spot in Washington is the inverted V of the black granite Vietnam wall, jutting up with the names of young men dying in a war that their leaders already knew could not be won.

So many died because of ego and deceit — because L.B.J. and Robert McNamara wanted to save face or because Henry Kissinger wanted to protect Nixon’s re-election chances.

Now the Bush administration finds itself at that same hour of shame. It knows the surge is not working. Iraq is in a civil war, with a gruesome bonus of terrorists mixed in. April was the worst month this year for the American military, with 104 soldiers killed, and there have been about 90 killed thus far in May. The democracy’s not jelling, as Iraqi lawmakers get ready to slouch off for a two-month vacation, leaving our kids to be blown up.

The top-flight counterinsurgency team that President Bush sent in after long years of pretending that we’d “turned the corner” doesn’t believe there’s a military solution. General Petraeus is reduced to writing an open letter to the Iraqi public, pleading with them to reject sectarianism and violence, even as the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr slinks back from four months in Iran, rallying his fans by crying: “No, no, no to Satan! No, no, no to America! No, no, no to occupation! No, no, no to Israel!”

W. thinks he can save face if he keeps taunting Democrats as the party of surrender — just as Nixon did — and dumps the Frankenstate he’s created on his successor.

“The enemy in Vietnam had neither the intent nor the capability to strike our homeland,” he told Coast Guard Academy graduates. “The enemy in Iraq does. Nine-eleven taught us that to protect the American people we must fight the terrorists where they live so that we don’t have to fight them where we live.”

The president said an intelligence report (which turned out to be two years old) showed that Osama had been trying to send Qaeda terrorists in Iraq to attack America. So clearly, Osama is capable of multitasking: Order the killers in Iraq to go after American soldiers there and American civilians here. There AND here. Get it, W.?

The president is on a continuous loop of sophistry: We have to push on in Iraq because Al Qaeda is there, even though Al Qaeda is there because we pushed into Iraq. Our troops have to keep dying there because our troops have been dying there. We have to stay so the enemy doesn’t know we’re leaving. Osama hasn’t been found because he’s hiding.

The terrorists moved into George Bush’s Iraq, not Saddam Hussein’s. W.’s ranting about Al Qaeda there is like planting fleurs du mal and then complaining your garden is toxic.

The president looked as if he wanted to smack David Gregory when the NBC reporter asked him at the news conference Thursday if he could still be “a credible messenger on the war” given all the mistakes and all the disillusioned Republicans.

“I’m credible because I read the intelligence, David,” he replied sharply.

But he isn’t and he doesn’t. Otherwise he might have read “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” in August 2001, and might have read the prewar intelligence reports the Senate just released that presciently forecast the horrors in store for naïve presidents who race to war because they want to be seen as hard, not soft.

Intelligence analysts may have muffed the W.M.D. issue, but they accurately predicted that implanting democracy in Iraq would be an “alien” idea that could lead to turbulence and violence; that Al Qaeda would hook up with Saddam loyalists and “angry young recruits” to militant Islam to “wage guerrilla warfare” on American forces, and that Iran and Al Qaeda would be the winners if the Bushies botched the occupation.

Blah3: "One Less Liar"

From Stranger at Blah3 regarding another Bush loyalist biting the dust. Sadly, however, the Bushies always have more liars to come to their aid.

You gotta wonder why a hard-core Kool Aid drinker like Bartlett is jumping ship.

Dan Bartlett, one of President Bush's most trusted advisers and his longest-serving aide, said Friday he is resigning to begin a career outside of government.

[...] As counselor to the president, Bartlett has been at the center of White House decision-making, stepping into the public eye in times of trouble to defend Bush on everything from the unpopular war in Iraq to the government's bungled response to Hurricane Katrina and the Republicans' loss of Congress.

I guess even a world-class prevaricator like Bartlett has limits when it comes to defending the indefensible.

Indeed!

And Still The Bushies Do Nothing But Lie, Inflame, and Corrupt All They Touch!

So Emperor Bush continues to behave, while things worsen by the hour, like he's the only one smart enough to know what's going on and he's sure he owes the American people NO explanation, let alone apology. When great skepticism was tendered about Bush's "Iraq Surge", and a way to burn through a trillion more dollars and lives of soldiers and Iraqi citizens, the Bush crew either ignored the skeptics outright, tried to discredit them, or flat out lied. With it, they've concocted huge webs of lies and spin so convoluted and labyrinthian they are sure the "dumb" voting public will nap through it.

If you've been paying attention to any of the Bush Administration's latest ever-expanding lists of the reasons King George demands we "give war a (thousand more) chance(s))", you're welcome to share my bottle of Bush-strength Excedrin. While you swallow (and the longer Bush and Cheney stay in office, the harder it becomes each day to try to force down your palate their strange and twisted recipes), let me note some of the White House's wildly changing rational, talking points, and unofficially official statements: which include:

• why we haven't caught Osama bin ForgottenLaden whom Bush told us "can run, but can't hide!" - For a megalomaniac who smirks thinking how smart he is (anyone who disagrees with him is garbage), the president SURE is wrong a lot, a WHOLE lot
• it was necessary to LIE throughout the build-up to war
• why we waged war when we KNEW there was no reason to do so
• we keep forgetting that Afghanistan, since our invasion on October 8, 2001, has turned from a bottom-of-the-bottom third world country into a full fifth world humanitarian meltdown producing a truly STUNNING amount of drugs and people with no great love for Bush, the United States, or the Bush Far Right's war on Muslims/oil producing countries
• With it clear to almost every American now (and obvious to those outside the U.S. far sooner) that the War on Terror was to finally satisfy those rich dinosaur fatcats (in deep grief since the Cold War "ended") and their war-making hardware, how can anyone treat the War on Terror seriously when the Bushies and Neocons try to act like something out of a very dim-witted Marvel comic book?

I don't know about you but I don't need superheroes. Especially pretend, fucked-up, corrupting superheroes like The Burning Bush, "Duck, It's Dick!" Cheney, Why-ever-would-you-conclude-I'm-a-woman-of-color? Captain Condi (Rice), Revoltin' Smotin' (John) Bolton, Karl "Blow Out The Pilot Lights On That Democrat's Gas Stove" Rove, and a cast of tens of thousands more representing "connected", crooked, confabulating, incompetent, factless fuckers of all time.

Remember. This is still the Bush Administration, where we consider Charles Darwin a greater threat than Osama Bin (over)Laden-with-business-contacts-with-Bush-Family bank accounts, where free speech should only be allowed to praise this president and to demand more war, and where the 25-year-old-and-never-held-a-job Bush Twins have spent more in one single night of partying (with some of the same drugs that would send you to prison) than almost all U.S. soldiers in Iraq each earn in a single year.

Your Map To All The Security Features In The New American Embassy in Baghdad

Considering the multiple millions going into the new embassy headquarters for the U.S. in beautiful, brutal downtown Baghdad, you would think someone could have locked up the plans.

But they didn't which seems like a fatal flaw.

Bill O'Reilly & John McCain: These Two Minds DO NOT Work Better Than One

So we can't have immigrants here because they're not "us" and because these immigrants, aided by the evil empire of The New York Times, want to destroy the white Christian male power structure? This nonsense is straight out of the late 30s and 40s.

From Cernig's Newshog (And The Newshoggers):

Bill O'Reilly and John McCain agree about what's really behind rightwing resistance to any immigration bill at all. Fear.

Bill O'Reilly: But do you understand what the New York Times wants, and the far-left want? They want to break down the white, Christian, male power structure, which you're a part, and so am I, and they want to bring in millions of foreign nationals to basically break down the structure that we have. In that regard, Pat Buchanan is right. So I say you've got to cap with a number.

John McCain: In America today we've got a very strong economy and low unemployment, so we need addition farm workers, including by the way agriculture, but there may come a time where we have an economic downturn, and we don't need so many.

[crosstalk]

O'Reilly: But in this bill, you guys have got to cap it. Because estimation is 12 million, there may be 20 [million]. You don't know, I don't know. We've got to cap it.

McCain: We do, we do. I agree with you.

I may be an immigrant but I also fit the WASP profile (other than being non-Christian). However, since the entrenched "white, Christian, male power structure" is made up of asshats like O'Reilly and McCain I figure breaking it down would be a damn good idea - and isn't going to happen anytime soon no matter how many immigrants who don't fit their phenotype come to America. It's rampant, paranoid xenophobia, that's all.

Is it too late to deport these two men?

And where the hell did McCain pull the "strong economy" nonsense from? Out of Bill O's ass?

From the AP:

Economic growth skidded to a near halt in the first quarter, with the worst showing in more than four years raising concerns about how long the country's sluggish spell will last.

The Commerce Department reported Thursday that gross domestic product increased by just a 0.6 percent pace in the January-through-March period, much weaker than estimated a month ago. Government statisticians slashed by more than half their first estimate of a 1.3 percent growth rate for the quarter.

The economy has been quite bad for a long time except for very specific sectors (like the big cheeses at the military industrial complex corps). Yet again and again, Bush and his ilk insist everything is wonderful so pay no attention to the national debt.

As for low unemployment, this is tragically laughable. Sure, people can find jobs: for minimum wage. And then they need to work 2-3 of them full-time just with the hope of feeding and sheltering their families.

Just Close Your Eyes And Pretend Iraq Is Like DisneyWorld!

This is the advice being tendered by some of the weaker minds of the right, including the ever-so-desperate-for-any-attention-at-all adopted son of Ronnie Raygun. [Michael keeps trying so darned hard to be idolized like his dad as he fails to realize he is like his dad... a puppet of the right who can deliver scripted lines.]

Frank Rich of The Times has already reminded the far right that the gipper is dead, but Michael Reagan (Ronald's adopted son and a fairly poor second version which says a lot considering Ronald Reagan did not have one smart moment after the McCarthy witchhunt in the 1950s while Reagan headed the Screen Actors Guild) begs us to give one more to the ol' Gip.

Michael Reagan insists that we should "shut up" the press, ponder only pretty pictures of Iraq (perhaps take some flowers off the thousands of new civilian graves there each month or the hearts blown from bodies of U.S. and coalition soldiers with all the bombings), and demand that nothing but tales of "wonderful Disney-like perfect sweetness" be allowed to go out over the airwaves.

Apparently feeble-mindedness can be passed from one generation to the next even when there is no blood-bond between Daddy-o (Ronald) and sonny boy (Michael). Perhaps eternally-blond Michael would like to stop his chickenhawk status, put on some substandard body armor, and go over to Iraq to document all these pretty pictures. Idiot.

In The "Insanity Doesn't Run In My Household, It Races!" Department

[Note: Please do NOT refer to me as the "Good Humor" gal. I'm distinctly a Bad Humor sorta salesperson.]

Part of the reason you're seeing more "blurt" types of posts here is preparation to move again (while I have not found the right place to go) and find a new job strangely interferes with my ability to sleep, eat, and cope with the ongoing bedlam that comes with starting an "old-fashioned" premium ice cream business here in Ben & Jerry's backyard (literally).

The ice cream business isn't mine, but it might as well be. I'm the one who decided to try to develop my own from-scratch ice cream just for friends and family and quickly found everyone saying, "I'm not kidding; you could have a hit if you can produce this commercially."

As my partner John said endlessly, "You must sell this!", I kept saying, "Look, I hate ice cream so I only make it when you and/or guests want it. But hey, if you're so sure, then take my recipe and figure out a way to produce it." Uh... for once, he listened (awww....) and the rest will live on in infamy. It's been eye-opening; you can't believe how hard the government makes it for humans to have anything natural in their diet!

Then, with the news we had to find a new place quickly, suddenly the Vermont Milk Company (the producer of various dairy items) called up and said, "We're making the ice cream in the morning." Unfortunately, however, no one mentioned that the "pasteurized" eggs they were including in this recipe (a custard style ice cream like in the old days) had more salt than anything I've ever tasted. Mouth-burning kind of salt.

Once salt goes in, you can't really compensate elsewhere to effectively cure the sodium overdose. Thus we sadly had to torpedo the first batch (all 500 pints) and miss out on Memorial Day weekend sales. VMC has been quite good about working out a solution.

So here we are, in the same 2-3 days in which we need to get moved, with hundreds of pints of ice cream from milk ONLY produced in Vermont, and only from dairy farmers who do not use bovine growth hormone or any of that other yucky stuff. (Fantastic paired with apple pie, cake, root beer for floats, high end milkshakes, atop Belgian waffles with/without blueberries, strawberries, melted chocolate, or whatever your fancy.)

Suddenly, the Suzuki has a freezer installed and we're staying up late in the night, in "clean room" apparel, labeling containers, while we debate the other flavors we may want to add (white chocolate? white chocolate with Rainier cherries? The tasty maple variations with or without nuts? holiday eggnog version or "Dangerously Dark Chocolate"? and with/without roasted pear or apple... or ...?

Hey, at least I'm involved with a product where - thank you my lactose intolerantbelligerent digestive system! - I do not need to worry about eating the profits. Talk about getting one's just dessert.

Frank Rich: "Operation Freedom From Iraqis"

As Rich wisely pointed out in his Sunday (May 27th) column, everyone rushes now to blame the Iraqi citizens for a war they did NOT invite us to wage, for which neocon lies were fabricated to provide the excuse. This is another must-read.

When all else fails, those pious Americans who conceived and directed the Iraq war fall back on moral self-congratulation: at least we brought liberty and democracy to an oppressed people. But that last-ditch rationalization has now become America’s sorriest self-delusion in this tragedy.

However wholeheartedly we disposed of their horrific dictator, the Iraqis were always pawns on the geopolitical chessboard rather than actual people in the administration’s reckless bet to “transform” the Middle East. From “Stuff happens!” on, nearly every aspect of Washington policy in Iraq exuded contempt for the beneficiaries of our supposed munificence. Now this animus is completely out of the closet. Without Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz to kick around anymore, the war’s dead-enders are pinning the fiasco on the Iraqis themselves. Our government abhors them almost as much as the Lou Dobbs spear carriers loathe those swarming “aliens” from Mexico.

Iraqis are clamoring to get out of Iraq. Two million have fled so far and nearly two million more have been displaced within the country. (That’s a total of some 15 percent of the population.) Save the Children reported this month that Iraq’s child-survival rate is falling faster than any other nation’s. One Iraqi in eight is killed by illness or violence by the age of 5. Yet for all the words President Bush has lavished on Darfur and AIDS in Africa, there has been a deadly silence from him about what’s happening in the country he gave “God’s gift of freedom.”

It’s easy to see why. To admit that Iraqis are voting with their feet is to concede that American policy is in ruins. A “secure” Iraq is a mirage, and, worse, those who can afford to leave are the very professionals who might have helped build one. Thus the president says nothing about Iraq’s humanitarian crisis, the worst in the Middle East since 1948, much as he tried to hide the American death toll in Iraq by keeping the troops’ coffins off-camera and staying away from military funerals.

But his silence about Iraq’s mass exodus is not merely another instance of deceptive White House P.R.; it’s part of a policy with a huge human cost. The easiest way to keep the Iraqi plight out of sight, after all, is to prevent Iraqis from coming to America. And so we do, except for stray Shiites needed to remind us of purple fingers at State of the Union time or to frame the president in Rose Garden photo ops.

Since the 2003 invasion, America has given only 466 Iraqis asylum. Sweden, which was not in the coalition of the willing, plans to admit 25,000 Iraqis this year alone. Our State Department, goaded by January hearings conducted by Ted Kennedy, says it will raise the number for this year to 7,000 (a figure that, small as it is, may be more administration propaganda). A bill passed by Congress this month will add another piddling 500, all interpreters.

In reality, more than 5,000 interpreters worked for the Americans. So did tens of thousands of drivers and security guards who also, in Senator Kennedy’s phrase, have “an assassin’s bull’s-eye on their backs” because they served the occupying government and its contractors over the past four-plus years. How we feel about these Iraqis was made naked by one of the administration’s most fervent hawks, the former United Nations ambassador John Bolton, speaking to The Times Magazine this month. He claimed that the Iraqi refugee problem had “absolutely nothing to do” with Saddam’s overthrow: “Our obligation was to give them new institutions and provide security. We have fulfilled that obligation. I don’t think we have an obligation to compensate for the hardships of war.”

Cold, calculating, cowardly bastards this Washington lot. Read the rest of Rich here.

Maureen Dowd: "How We're Animalistic - In Good Ways and Bad"

[I've always suspected I was a churchmouse in a previous life; Bush was a fat rat.] Without further adieu, say Yo! to MoDo's May 30th column:

The odd thing is that conservatives wear pinstriped suits, when they really should be walking around in togas. The main contribution of the Greeks to modern American politics may have been Michael Dukakis, who once climbed the Acropolis in wingtips.

But that doesn’t stop conservatives — especially the Straussians who pushed for going into Iraq — from being obsessed with ancient Greece, and from believing that they are the successors to Plato and Homer in terms of the lofty ideals and nobility and character in American politics — while Democrats merely muck about with policies for the needy.

Harvey Mansfield, a leading Straussian who teaches political science at Harvard and who wrote a book called “Manliness” (he’s for it), gave the Jefferson lecture recently at the National Endowment for the Humanities in Washington.

It was an ode, as his book is, to “thumos,” the Greek word that means spiritedness, with flavors of ambition, pride and brute willfulness. Thumos, as Philip Kennicott wrote in The Washington Post, “is a word reinvented by conservative academics who need to put a fancy name on a political philosophy that boils down to ‘boys will be boys.’ ”

Mr. Mansfield did not mention the war, which is a downer at conclaves of neocons and thumos worshippers. But he explained that thumos is “the bristling reaction of an animal in face of a threat or a possible threat.” In thumos, he added, “we see the animality of man, for men (and especially males) often behave like dogs barking, snakes hissing, birds flapping. But precisely here we also see the humanity of the human animal” because it is reacting for “a reason, even for a principle, a cause. Only human beings get angry.”

The professor used an example, naturally, from ancient Greece to explain why politics should be about revolution rather than equilibrium: “What did Achilles do when his ruler Agamemnon stole his slave-girl? He raised the stakes. He asserted that the trouble was not in this loss alone but in the fact that the wrong sort of man was ruling the Greeks. Heroes, or at least he-men like Achilles, should be in charge rather than lesser beings like Agamemnon who have mainly their lineage to recommend them and who therefore do not give he-men the honors they deserve. Achilles elevated a civil complaint concerning a private wrong to a demand for a change of regime, a revolution in politics.” Mr. Mansfield concluded: “To complain of an injustice is an implicit claim to rule.”

Read the rest here.

Of Guns And Labels And Assumptions

Regular readers know I have no love for guns. But regulars have seen me state on many occasions that although I don't want a gun anywhere in my home or office, I have no desire to take guns away from everyone or make it impossible for good and educated-to-the-risks-and-safety people to have one or more guns. [Although I continue to strive for a world where one of our favorite possessions is something that largely exists only to threaten, wound, or kill, I recognize we're sure not there now.] My 2004 choice for president was Howard Dean who is for many issues I care about while he is also hardly anti-gun.

So I was a little surprised to see that I was branded as an anti-gun misanthrope simply for posting about an article on Gun Guys; here's my response:

As the blogger in question, let me point out a few things:

First, you're right; I do not like guns although I was raised even as a little girl to know how to handle them and to shoot. But not liking is rather different from "anti-gun".

Second, while I am strongly FOR gun education and safety, I do not campaign against guns or likewise. To some degree, adults should be able to choose their particular interests without having the feds in your face all the time.

Third, as part of item two, I support intelligent gun laws that allow those who want to shoot as a passtime (or use for protection). I just happen to prefer not to use, see, or even have brought into my home or office a handgun or anything larger.

Fourth - and here's probably the biggest gap between us - while some may call it issue advocacy at The Gun Guys, I find them a good place to start for information on an issue that I can then research through other means. After checking out several items, I find GunGuys generally less invested in spin than many of the sites that promote the "give every American a gun" ideals.

Since this post mentions the need for education, I say hell yes! We can start with a better reading of the 2nd amendment as to what it DOES say, rather than what some wish to infer.

In The "Haven't The Iraqis Suffered Enough?" Department

ABC News' blog The Blotter says one GOP lawmaker - this the one who was behind renaming "French toast" and "French Fries" to Freedom Coronaries-on-Cheap - thinks disgraced Pentagon official/neocon engineer and even more disgraced head of the World Bank Paul Wolfowitz should be sent to Iraq as a mayor.

I say the Iraqis have suffered enough!

But perhaps we could send Wolf and Rummy and all those numb-minded neocons to Iraq for a day where we let civilians play Whack-a-Mole with their heads and family jewels (that's ball sacks to those of you who hate euphemisms).

Debunking The Myth of John Wayne-As-Celluloid War Hero

[Ed. note: When I was really little, one of my generation older siblings took me to Lime Rock Racetrack - a big deal with many drivers then, including Paul Newman and I believe at least one of the Smothers Brothers drove there - where my brother Bob worked as a pit mechanic. Got to meet John Wayne there one day as I had many big celebrities then. At four, I'm told I was not too diplomatic which, once I was returned home to my mother, who when she heard that I had been less than servile to Mr. Wayne, made certain the only hair left on my head was that which did not fall out with harsh tugs. You'd think I'd learn.]

TruthDig helps debunk the myth of John "The Duke" Wayne who, even for his time, seems to have been something of a racist, rah-rah America type offscreen as well as on who rooted for war but did not fight. This from a man whose real first name is "Miriam" or "Marion" or something.

Wayne’s motion picture persona is associated with cowboys and soldiers. In fact, he was neither.

Wayne was full of contradictions. Although the star of countless Westerns such as John Ford’s 1939 “Stagecoach” and 1953’s “Hondo” owned a ranch, the Duke “didn’t particularly like horses and preferred suits and tuxedos to chaps, jeans and boots,” according to his son, Michael Wayne. The prototypical cowpoke also favored the sea over the prairie.

While many of his contemporaries, including Henry Fonda, Clark Gable and Ronald Reagan, served in the armed forces during World War II, the lead in such wartime sagas as 1945’s “They Were Expendable,” 1948’s “Fort Apache” and 1968’s “The Green Berets” did not. Wayne was not only missing in action during the 1940s’ liberation of the Philippines and Europe, he wasn’t a cavalry officer, a Vietnam commando or a Leatherneck—flying or otherwise—for he was never in the military.

According to Gary Wills’ book “John Wayne’s America,” the man who portrayed the archetypal, battle-hardened Marine, Sgt. Stryker, in 1949’s “The Sands of Iwo Jima,” actually avoided the draft during WWII. Wills contends that the Duke did not reply to letters from the Selective Service system, and applied for deferments. Apparently, Wayne—who had sought stardom during years of B-pictures following Raoul Walsh’s 1930 frontier drama “The Big Trail”—got his big break during the struggle against fascism when many Hollywood action heroes like Tyrone Power enlisted and shipped out overseas.

With much of the competition away in the Pacific and European theaters, Wayne was able to storm movie theaters to solidify his stardom. While Jimmy Stewart and his fellow celebrity servicemen were real action heroes, Wayne was a “Lights! Cameras! Action!” hero who merely played the part in the safety of Tinseltown’s home front and back lot.

So Duke dodged military service, just like Dick Cheney and George Bush. What a (yawn) surprise.

Vermont Impeachment Movement Showing Its Cracks?

As even semi-regulars here know, I'm way beyond wanting Bush and Company impeached. After all, their crimes LONG AGO AND FAR AWAY crossed the threshold of treasonous acts and they're still racing to do far worse!

After reading this by Odum, who runs the Daily Kos-Vermont version Green Mountain Daily, I'm worried about the impeachment efforts myself. However, as Anon tells us here in Comments, all hope is not lost (600 more days of Bush, God help us all). Namely:

Hi. Yes, there is something that can be done. Two links VT/Odum at GMD may be interested in: When impeachment is not an option/off the table, a sitting President may be prosecuted outside Congress, outside impeachment.

1. Blogswarm: Visit these links, and let others know Bush can be prosecuted outside impeachment/Congress:http://www.haloscan.com/
   comments...a=13945#2389359
2. Commentary/discussion at the end of this blog thread [See the links in the end-comments/blog responses]:http://indictdickcheney.blogspot...comey-
   only.html

If the State/Federal legislators refuse to act -- as they have done with the House Rule 603/impeachment proclamations -- any one of the State Attorney Generals or District Attorneys may prosecute a sitting President. Congress and the states legislators have had their chance, and refused. Prosecution is the only option and remains on the table.

Bang! Bang! You Aren't Just Shot, You're Eviscerated!

From The Gun Guys on one nasty bit of "home enthusiast" equipment:

Here’s a nice editorial from over the weekend about the .50 caliber ban currently working its way through the New Jersey legislature. The Philly Inquirer lays out exactly why this weapon is so dangerous, and why the only way to really prevent it from being used against our citizens is to get it off of gun store shelves completely.

The measure, which unfortunately has been detoured, takes aim mainly at what gun-control advocates call the .50-caliber sniper rifle. Gun-rights advocates call it the .50-caliber bmg.

By either name it is a weapon of great velocity and long range. It is used against enemy fortifications in battle. Place this rifle’s .50-caliber bullet alongside a .22-caliber bullet, and it is like an elephant next to its calf. (The new law would also outlaw a handgun version of the weapon, though in each case current lawful owners would be exempt.)

A police officer’s body armor cannot stop this bullet. Some versions of this bullet are incendiary or armor-piercing. The weapon can be devastating even if fired from more than a mile away. Imagine it in the hands of terrorists targeting planes at takeoff or landing. The alleged Fort Dix conspirators come to mind.

Corraling this weapon is sensible to do and will pose little inconvenience to recreational users, except to deprive them of using it for target shooting. It cannot be used for hunting in New Jersey; the state already prohibits hunting with all cartridge-firing rifles.

Not to mention that with the five inch bullet used in this firearm, any hunting target that gets shot at won’t have much left of it anyway. The fact is that leaving this weapon available to anyone with cash and an ID (and, at gun shows, just anyone with cash) is opening the door for any terrorist in the United States to walk into a gun store and walk out with a military grade weapon (a weapon that’s both used by and against our troops in Iraq).

3,000 September 11th Deaths; Compare To More Than 30,000 American Deaths By Gunfire Every Year

Stop Gun Deaths

Poor Pundit, Rich Pundit - I'll Take Rich Over Brooks Anyday

While David Brooks tries to analyze Al Gore and, as usual, despite his bleak attempts at painting a "Vulcan Utopia" comes off far more like a Stiffly Stifferson than any media spin about Gore, Frank Rich has far richer things to say in "Operation Freedom From Iraqis!":

When all else fails, those pious Americans who conceived and directed the Iraq war fall back on moral self-congratulation: at least we brought liberty and democracy to an oppressed people. But that last-ditch rationalization has now become America’s sorriest self-delusion in this tragedy.

However wholeheartedly we disposed of their horrific dictator, the Iraqis were always pawns on the geopolitical chessboard rather than actual people in the administration’s reckless bet to “transform” the Middle East. From “Stuff happens!” on, nearly every aspect of Washington policy in Iraq exuded contempt for the beneficiaries of our supposed munificence. Now this animus is completely out of the closet. Without Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz to kick around anymore, the war’s dead-enders are pinning the fiasco on the Iraqis themselves. Our government abhors them almost as much as the Lou Dobbs spear carriers loathe those swarming “aliens” from Mexico.

Iraqis are clamoring to get out of Iraq. Two million have fled so far and nearly two million more have been displaced within the country. (That’s a total of some 15 percent of the population.) Save the Children reported this month that Iraq’s child-survival rate is falling faster than any other nation’s. One Iraqi in eight is killed by illness or violence by the age of 5. Yet for all the words President Bush has lavished on Darfur and AIDS in Africa, there has been a deadly silence from him about what’s happening in the country he gave “God’s gift of freedom.”

It’s easy to see why. To admit that Iraqis are voting with their feet is to concede that American policy is in ruins. A “secure” Iraq is a mirage, and, worse, those who can afford to leave are the very professionals who might have helped build one. Thus the president says nothing about Iraq’s humanitarian crisis, the worst in the Middle East since 1948, much as he tried to hide the American death toll in Iraq by keeping the troops’ coffins off-camera and staying away from military funerals.

But his silence about Iraq’s mass exodus is not merely another instance of deceptive White House P.R.; it’s part of a policy with a huge human cost. The easiest way to keep the Iraqi plight out of sight, after all, is to prevent Iraqis from coming to America. And so we do, except for stray Shiites needed to remind us of purple fingers at State of the Union time or to frame the president in Rose Garden photo ops.

Read the rest of Rich.

Cindy Sheehan: "Good Riddance, Attention Whore"

If you haven't yet heard, Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a son named Casey who went to Iraq for Bush and became one of fast-rising statistics of U.S. soldiers dead, is stepping down as the "face" and voice of the anti-war movement. While she's tired after years of fighting to stop our fighting, however, Cindy isn't just tired, she's angry.

Buzzflash offers the guest contribution she made for Memorial Day; I encourage you to read it. I think it raised some questions for me. If you have the same reaction, please share in comments here.

Meanwhile, I want to thank Cindy for all she did. This woman had already gone through hell when she decided to stand up and it only got tougher the more she was willing to exercise courage and standards our elected officials rarely do. Remember too that there are many other mothers (and friends and other family members) speaking up and out.

Heads Up! The FCC And The Internet Revolution

From the good folks at FreePress.Net how the Bushies are about to sell the public airwaves and what people should know:

The FCC is on the verge of turning over a large chunk of the public airwaves to the same giant phone and cable companies that control high-speed Internet access for more than 96 percent of connected American homes.

This public "spectrum" could revolutionize the Internet in America. Its wireless signal passes through concrete buildings and over mountains; it can connect tens of million of Americans who are being passed over by Internet providers like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast.

Don't let the FCC give away our wireless Internet to these price-gouging giants. The FCC deadline is fast approaching. Act now:

Tell the FCC: Use Our Airwaves for the Public Good

Broadcast television channels will soon vacate these airwaves when they go digital by 2009. If used right, these public airways will revolutionize the ways we connect to laptops, cell phones, PDAs, music players and other mobile Internet devices. They can deliver an open Internet into your house without the need for a telephone wire or cable modem.

Phone and cable lobbyists are pressuring the FCC to sell companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast our airwaves so they can horde spectrum and stifle competitive and cheaper alternatives to their established networks.

This would be a disaster. After years of phone and cable company control over Internet access, the United States has fallen to 16th in the world in high-speed Internet rankings, with few choices and some of the highest prices for the slowest speeds in the world. We will continue this decline as long as we let AT&T, Verizon and Comcast dictate the terms of Internet access for the majority of Americans.

These phone and cable giants refuse to open their networks to competitive applications and services. They lobby Washington to stifle new innovations like Internet phone service and to destroy Net Neutrality, the one principle that protects equal opportunity and free choice on the Web.

We need to end their stranglehold and demand a better Internet for everyone:

Tell the FCC: Keep the New Internet Open to All

Paul Krugman: "Trust and Betrayal"

Apt. Very apt. Read it all here.

“In this place where valor sleeps, we are reminded why America has always gone to war reluctantly, because we know the costs of war.” That’s what President Bush said last year, in a Memorial Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery.

Those were fine words, spoken by a man with less right to say them than any president in our nation’s history. For Mr. Bush took us to war not with reluctance, but with unseemly eagerness.

Now that war has turned into an epic disaster, in part because the war’s architects, whom we now know were warned about the risks, didn’t want to hear about them. Yet Congress seems powerless to stop it. How did it all go so wrong?

Future historians will shake their heads over how easily America was misled into war. The warning signs, the indications that we had a rogue administration determined to use 9/11 as an excuse for war, were there, for those willing to see them, right from the beginning — even before Mr. Bush began explicitly pushing for war with Iraq.

In fact, the very first time Mr. Bush declared a war on terror that “will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated,” people should have realized that he was going to use the terrorist attack to justify anything and everything.

When he used his first post-attack State of the Union to denounce an “axis of evil” consisting of three countries that had nothing to do either with 9/11 or with each other, alarm bells should have gone off.

But the nation, brought together in grief and anger over the attack, wanted to trust the man occupying the White House. And so it took a long time before Americans were willing to admit to themselves just how thoroughly their trust had been betrayed.

[...]Here’s the way it ought to be: When Rudy Giuliani says that Iran, which had nothing to do with 9/11, is part of a “movement” that “has already displayed more aggressive tendencies by coming here and killing us,” he should be treated as a lunatic.

When Mitt Romney says that a coalition of “Shia and Sunni and Hezbollah and Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda” wants to “bring down the West,” he should be ridiculed for his ignorance.

And when John McCain says that Osama, who isn’t in Iraq, will “follow us home” if we leave, he should be laughed at.

But they aren’t, at least not yet. And until belligerent, uninformed posturing starts being treated with the contempt it deserves, men who know nothing of the cost of war will keep sending other people’s children to graves at Arlington.

Rest is here.

Not That Blonde And Stupid Must Go Together...

[Ed. note: I live with a natural blonde (or so he says ::cough::) from a short line of MIT nuclear and metal engineers.]

But The View's Elizabeth Hasselbeck now not only believes she can engage in critical thinking (even if she can't spell it) and that Rosie is a force of one trying to bring her - and the smiles on the troops faces while being shot and bombed at - down. No, Bimbette also believes Dick Wolfe of "Law&Order" fame is out to get her.

"Flock of Dodos": Delusional Design v. Evolution

If you have SHOWTIME, they’re running a good documentary called “Flocks of Dodos” (mind you, I see it referred to with both singular and plural “flock”) about the intelligent design perpetrators and how poorly (if at all) they answer any of the multitude of questions their "theory" raises.

Of Catfights and Clintons and Cretins - Part 3

[Ed note: See Part I and Part II.]

Also as the holiday weekend revved came word of two Hillary Clinton books due out soon and another on the Clintons available long before the 2008 presidential election. Apparently ALL of these books "which have been touted as 'Hillary exposes".

And do you know what these scandal peddlers tell us BRAND SPANKING NEW about Bill and Hillary (which the right likes to call "Billary") Clinton? Here goes a list of items mentioned by mostly rightwing nutcases but also dim types like Chris Matthews:

That Hillary is calculating and competent. Really? Gee. How did that happen?

Oh wait... she went to good schools and was taught that critical thinking makes far more sense than "intelligent design." After all, MY GOD, what will we tell the children if they see a woman running for this nation's highest post is both calculating and competent? And remember the right's big cry during Monicagate? "What will we tell the children about blowjobs?!?

Is it much better to have a coke-addled dim bulb in the White House like Bush whose ONLY three skills are):

1. Smirk
2. Endanger America with every single act
3. Pass off any really important and respected parts of decision making and country-building to the most incompetent and corrupt people to walk this continent's soil?

As for the "resurgency" of the Hillary-Only-Stood-By-Her-Man-2-Win-Votes, puh-leez! After all those millions Ken Starr wasted of OUR money while keeping our attention onto Monica Lewinsky and blowjobs and some "anatomical oddity with CLENUS' penis (noted by rocket scientist Paula Jones) while OFF Al Qaeda and clear signs of danger, do we really have to sit through this crap again?

Just as with every other American, it is no one's business what decisions and deliberations and dilemmas these two mature, intelligent people make toward the present and future of their marriage. Neither of them owe an explanation.

If anything, I'd say a lot of parties should apologize to Billary for letting them be turned into a soap opera. Then these same folks need to apologize to ALL of America for keeping its attention on Gary Condit and Clinton's penis and the West Wing creator being stopped by airport security for traveling with psychedelic mushrooms RATHER than upon clear and present dangers on the horizon as Bush took over.

Of Catfights and Clintons and Cretins - Part 2

[Update on Dizzy Lizzy here. Part 1 of this post is here; Part III here.]

Let's start with Rosie, Elizabeth, and the myth of the "cat fight".

Slice away from last week's so-called catfight on The View between O'Donnell and Hasselbeck and the only thing you're truly left with is the very post-9/11 Bush Administration's "loyalty oath" TV style dedication to the Bush "vision" for empire. Sorry, boys, there's just very little evidence that such a phenom (where a guy sees two women start to speak crossly to one another while the guy is riveted, hoping the two women suddenly kiss instead of argue.) has any truth as its base.

The media could not stop playing the footage even before O'Donnell quit show three weeks early (notably, The View had a jump in viewers ONLY one Rosie came aboard. Their argument got so bad:

• the side of America (the 72%+++ majority) that thinks Dizzy Lizzy is one of those real-real right types who thinks like George Bush because they share roughly the same mental capabilities began to insist that Elizabeth was more right (is she ever!) and the victor
• Donald "The Comb-over" Trump (who hates Rosie) called the fight for Omnipotent O'Donnell (which we expected to happen sometime soon after a snowball has cause to melt in Bush's brainpan)
• made some folks wonder if the timing of this fight could have been better picked given that it hit the media most places just as the Memorial Day weekend wound up to speed (wow! serendipity! kismet!), a rightwing woman got center stage defending the troops and the lefty Rosie couldn't stand it and quit.

Wanna bet Hasselbeck gets an invite to a state dinner or even something more casual at the White House, in part to reward her giving Karl Rove the exact perfect message to play JUST AS people try to put this miserable war behind them for three days ?

[I didn't hear, as others insisted they did, that O'Donnell called the troops terrorists; I think it's pretty clear she meant the Bush Administration's orchestration of this, just one of his many wars. And many of us would agree that the Bushies operate far more like terrorists than "freedom fighters".]

Of Catfights and Clintons and Cretins - Part 1

As we headed into the long Memorial Day weekend (which has more meaning than a day off and as much barbecue as you can pack in), there were at least four that got some/major play.

These stories were:

1. The so-called catfight between The View's hosts Rosie O'Donnell and the human fulfillment of "the dumb blonde" joke, Elizabeth Hasselbeck, over the purported issue of "whether Rosie thinks America troops in Iraq are terrorists"
2. How the Democrats "bent over and spread 'em" for Bush
3. Hillary Clinton "Exposed" As Calculating and Capable and how she just stayed with Bill for the sympathy vote when she ran for New York senator (and her worst crime, according to the Bushies and the media, is that Hillary WON)
4. Watch when a bird exacted some revenge by shitting all over The Commander-in-Cheat as he was giving a press conference telling us just how much he enjoyed making the Democrats "his bitch"

Notice any pattern here? Notice anything which seems like - except for #4 (divine providence, perhaps?) - a setup that Karl Rove could not miss (and should not, since it's much of what Felonious Rove has been pulling since he hitched his star to Debya).

[See Part II here with Part III here]

On This Memorial Day Weekend...

Let us appreciate America's 25 million living veterans (one in every dozen citizens), demand we stop unnecessary aggression against other countries, and begin to worry about our own massive problems. At the same time, think about all the many wars this Republican chickenhawk vice president (Dick Cheney) and chickenshit commander in chief, Mr. Bush, have started since they used corrupt court processes to take the White House in December 2000:

Besides those declared wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the proxy war Israel waged for Bush to break the spine of Lebanon in proxy:

• War on the military and our veterans (asking so much while cutting services to them every damned day)
• War on basic human rights
• War on individual privacy
• War not on poverty but against the poor
• War on families (you have to be the "right" kind of family not to feel "intruded" upon
• War on science
• War on reason
• War on truth and accountability as well as the whistleblowers who try to make the Bushies honest
• War on public education and against the best conditions for our kids
• War on young minds, trying to lure them away from high school or college with lies
• War on drugs (which got rolled into the War on Terror which, as they say, is a bumper sticker motto but hardly a game plan) which includes the ability for Americans to afford them, to get them for their most urgent needs (ex: contraception, pain relief, and yes, even decongestants in cold formulas), and to make decisions about their own bodies
• War on anyone who isn't of the Fascist Fundamentalist Christian "faith" (Muslims, especially)
• War on America's honor, its reputation, its compassion
• War on the sick (remember Terri Schiavo, kept alive when there was little brain left in her while the Bushies had no trouble discontinuing treatment to the ultra poor minority babies)
• War on journalism
• War on the United Nations, NATO, and other worldly agencies

Care to name some other wars?

Too Fat To Be Executed? 10 Tries to Kill A Man And You Blame It On The Convict?

This, from one of only five countries in the entire world to apply the death penalty to those less than the age at which they can enter into a legal contract (as in children less than age 18-21, often called "kids" as in "immature" and "not fully cooked"):

LUCASVILLE, Ohio (AP) -- Death penalty opponents called on the state to halt executions after prison staff struggled to find suitable veins on a condemned man's arm to deliver the lethal chemicals.

The execution team stuck Christopher Newton at least 10 times with needles Thursday to insert the shunts where the chemicals are injected.

He died at 11:53 a.m., nearly two hours after the scheduled start of his execution at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility. The process typically takes about 20 minutes.

"What is clear from today's botched execution is that the state doesn't know how to execute people without torturing them to death," American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio attorney Carrie Davis said Thursday.