Well I can stand beside ideals I think are right

Thank you, Sen. Clinton.

Forever and a day

The good news:

Iraq Lawmakers Want US Forces Out As Part of Deal

A majority of the Iraqi parliament has written to Congress rejecting a long-term security deal with Washington if it is not linked to a requirement that U.S. forces leave, a U.S. lawmaker said on Wednesday.
[...]
“What are the threats that require U.S. forces to be there?” asked Nadeem Al-Jaberi, a co-founder of the al-Fadhila Shi’ite political party, speaking through a translator.
[...]
A Sunni Iraqi lawmaker, Khalaf Al-Ulayyan, founder of the National Dialogue Council, said bilateral talks on a long-term security deal should be shelved until American troops leave — and until there is a new government in Washington.
[...]
A senior U.S. official said in Baghdad earlier this week that the United States still hopes to reach a new security agreement with Iraq by July,

Now the bad news:

Revealed: Secret Plan to Keep Iraq Under US Control
Bush wants 50 military bases, control of Iraqi airspace and legal immunity for all American soldiers and contractors
[...]
The terms of the impending deal, details of which have been leaked to The Independent, are likely to have an explosive political effect in Iraq. Iraqi officials fear that the accord, under which US troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law, will destabilise Iraq’s position in the Middle East and lay the basis for unending conflict in their country.

But the accord also threatens to provoke a political crisis in the US. President Bush wants to push it through by the end of next month so he can declare a military victory and claim his 2003 invasion has been vindicated. But by perpetuating the US presence in Iraq, the long-term settlement would undercut pledges by the Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama, to withdraw US troops if he is elected president in November.

The timing of the agreement would also boost the Republican candidate, John McCain

And the worse news:

US issues threat to Iraq's $50bn foreign reserves in military deal

The US is holding hostage some $50bn (£25bn) of Iraq's money in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to pressure the Iraqi government into signing an agreement seen by many Iraqis as prolonging the US occupation indefinitely, according to information leaked to The Independent.

US negotiators are using the existence of $20bn in outstanding court judgments against Iraq in the US, to pressure their Iraqi counterparts into accepting the terms of the military deal, details of which were reported for the first time in this newspaper yesterday.

BTW, the "$20bn in outstanding court judgments against Iraq" is part of the exact same money that

the Bush "administration lawyers have argued that Iraqi assets frozen in bank accounts in the United States are needed for Iraqi reconstruction

In a related case, a federal judge in New York ruled in September that the families of people killed in the Sept. 11 attacks could not claim any part of about $1.7 billion in frozen Iraqi assets in the United States.

The judge noted that President Bush had signed an executive order in March, on the eve of the American invasion of Iraq, that confiscated Iraqi assets and converted them into assets of the United States government. "

Does anyone else remember when Bush said:

"We are there at the invitation of the Iraqi government. This is a sovereign nation. Twelve million people went to the polls to approve a constitution. It's their government's choice. If they were to say, leave, we would leave."

Bush previously said it was 'up to the Iraqi people.' (I couldn't find the link to that. The first commenter who does gets a free year's supply of SteveAudio and VidiotSpeak!)

It's a fact that the majority of Iraqis have wanted us out at least since 2004.

So apparently Shi’ite's and Sunni's do agree on some things. And what they and 68% of Americans agree on is that US troops should not be in Iraq.

McCain and Bush think we should be there as long as Bush/McCain want us to be there, which is either 50 years, 100 years, or 10,000 years. It just depends on which day you ask.

As much as McCain tries to distance himself from Bush, including hiding joint fundraising events away from the press and the people, the fact is McCain has voted with Bush 95% to 100% of the time in the past 2 years.



Cross posted at VidiotSpeak

Get 'em Up Against The Wall

Mercury News:

SAN DIEGO—Workers in the San Diego County clerk's office who object to same-sex marriages may be excused from officiating at gay weddings.

County Clerk Gregory Smith says he is considering allowing his employees to opt out of the ceremonies for religious or moral reasons.

Smith says he doesn't think it's correct "to force employees to do it, and I don't think you would want someone who is hostile to your beliefs performing your ceremony."

Quite frankly, this is an insipid decision, on a par with allowing pharmacists to refuse dispensing of materials that conflict with their religious beliefs.

I realize that it takes a certain subjectively fragile suspension of reality to maintain fundamentalist thought of any faith, but these people are government employees who are tasked to uphold the laws of the state that they work for - All of them, not just the ones that they feel comfortable with.

Do the job that you have contracted to do, or declare yourself incompetent to do so on religious grounds and find a more suitable pastime that enables you to maintain your fictions and refrain from inflicting yourself on those who choose not to share your beliefs.

Via con Dios

Incurious George

Focuses on the important things...

Blue Hue's Ruse

I know I'm losing my appeal, 'Cause I was hung, drawn and quartered before my trial

Khadr Judge Fired Amid Record Squabble

Suspicion of Political Manuevers As 9/11 Trial Schedule Materializes

Colonel Says Speaking Out On Detainees Cost Him a Medal

US: Guantanamo Judge Not 'Fired'; Move Simply A 'Manpower Management Consideration'

The $$ quote in the last article: "In a statement yesterday, Marine Col. Ralph Kohlmann said Col. Peter Brownback was removed because the army had turned down an application to extend his active-duty status."

How interesting that in these days of the forced draft, (AKA stop loss), that the Army would refuse to let a senior officer re-enlist!

I'm suuuure that it had nothing to do with Col. Brownback's insistence on making the kangaroo court hop a bit slower and lower.

After all, it's not like Bushco is pursuing these cases because they're 'sexy' or timing them just before the November elections.

p.s. Australians are already asking the International Criminal Court to prosecute Bush's BFF, Australia's former Prime Minister John Howard for war crimes.



Cross posted at VidiotSpeak

Hey Bo Diddley, Where ya gone?

December 30, 1928 – June 2, 2008
Ellas Otha Bates has shuffled of, in 5/4, this mortal coil

The Bo Diddley beat has been used by many other artists, notably Elvis Presley ("His Latest Flame"); Bruce Springsteen ("She's The One"); U2 ("Desire"); The Smiths ("How Soon Is Now?"); Roxette ("Harleys And Indians (Riders In The Sky)"); Dee Clark, a former member of the Hambone Kids (see above) ("Hey Little Girl"); Johnny Otis ("Willie and the Hand Jive"); George Michael ("Faith"); Normaal ("Kearl van stoahl"); The Strangeloves ("I Want Candy"); Ace Frehley ("New York Groove"); Guns N' Roses ("Mr. Brownstone"); David Bowie ("Panic in Detroit"); The Pretenders ("Cuban Slide"); The Police ("Deathwish"); Wayne Fontana & The Mindbenders ("The Game of Love"); The Supremes ("When the Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes"); Jefferson Airplane ("She Has Funny Cars"); The White Stripes ("Screwdriver"); The Byrds ("Don't Doubt Yourself, Babe"); Tiny Letters ("Song For Jerome Green") and The Stooges ("1969").

They left out a few, but considering he had his first hit before I was born it's understandable.

I don't know, or even want to go, to that heaven preachers shout about
But if my dying I can't defeat, let me go out to the Bo Diddley beat
Go out, go out,
Let me go out to the Bo Diddley beat.

(Hey, who's that guy with his back to us in the corner playin' trumpet?
That's God man, he thinks he's Miles.)

Bo Diddley will be in good company for his next gig.

Money, money, money bags, There goes mingy Stingy

Email from Courage Campaign today:

Last Monday, at a Memorial Day event in the 26th Congressional District (just outside of Los Angeles), Rep. David Dreier -- chair of the California Republican Congressional Delegation -- said:

"What we say to honor those who serve will never be more than lip service if we don't ensure that our veterans are cared for when they return home."

Turns out, lip service is all Rep. Dreier has for our troops. On May 15, Mr. Dreier voted against the "21st Century GI Bill" -- a bill that would fully fund four years of college for our returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan.

That GI bill overwhelmingly passed the House of Representatives, 256-166. Then, on May 22, the Senate passed a similar version of the same bill, 75-22. This week, that Senate bill is being sent back to the full House for a new vote and, if passed, will then be sent to the President.

With the Senate version of the "21st Century GI Bill" coming to the House, Rep. Dreier has a new opportunity to stop paying lip service to veterans. You can tell Rep. Dreier that he owes more than words to the troops he and President Bush sent to war -- he owes them his vote. Please sign our petition to Rep. Dreier ASAP and we'll deliver your signatures to his San Dimas office after 12 p.m. on Thursday:

http://www.couragecampaign.org/NoMoreLipService

St. McCain also voted against this bill. He no longer has any national security or military support credibility. From VetVoice:

Yesterday VoteVets.org delivered a petition with 30,000 signatures to the office of Senator John McCain. Through that petition, we asked him to support Senator Jim Webb's new GI Bill. And less than 24 hours later, we have an answer:

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, seemed to give a thumbs down to bipartisan legislation that would greatly expand educational benefits for members of the military returning from Iraq and Afghanistan under the GI Bill.
McCain indicated he would offer some sort of alternative to the legislation to address concerns that expanding the GI Bill could lead more members of the military to get out of the service.

Both Democratic presidential candidates - Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., - have signed on as co-sponsors, and the bill has gained bipartisan support from 54 senators on Capitol Hill in addition to Webb.

The reason for McCain's refusal to support the bill is about the most disturbing rationale one could imagine.

Officials in charge of Pentagon personnel worry that a more generous and expansive GI Bill would create an incentive for troops to get out of the military and go to college.

Right. God forbid.

Indeed.

Brian Buetler writing at The Nation has the true story of McCain's startling indifference to men and women wearing the uniform he once did. Elitism and privilege, Right-wing hypocrisy in hatred of spending money to help anyone else, who knows? And who cares? Read the whole thing, it's startling:

Times have changed since McCain needed veterans services so urgently. And for many of those thirty-five years, McCain, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, the candidate who talks the best talk on veterans issues, has demonstrated a tendency to work against veterans' interests, voting time after time against funding and in favor of privatizing services--in other words, of rolling back the VA's improvements by supporting some of the same policies that wrecked Walter Reed.

During a March 2005 Senate budget debate, McCain voted to kill an amendment that would have "increase[d] veterans medical care by $2.8 billion in 2006." That amendment lacked an assured funding stream, but lest one mistake this incident for a maverick's stance against budget-busting, there's more. Just a year later McCain voted against an amendment that would have "increase[d] Veterans medical services funding by $1.5 billion in FY 2007 to be paid for by closing corporate tax loopholes." Two days after it failed, he voted to kill "an assured stream of funding for veterans' health care that [would] take into account the annual changes in the veterans' population and inflation to be paid for by restoring the pre-2001 top rate for income over $1 million, closing corporate tax loopholes and delaying tax cuts for the wealthy." That amendment died quietly, forty-six to fifty-four.

In September 2006 McCain voted to table an amendment to a Defense appropriations bill that would have prevented the department from contracting out support services at Walter Reed. The amendment was indeed tabled--by a vote of fifty to forty-eight, the sort of margin a true veterans' senator might have been able to flip if he really cared about veterans' healthcare.

Straight-talk about McCain is that he's a hypocrite, even worse than Drier, who is just a closet-case self-loathing Republican stooge.

Bastards. Both of 'em.

tried to mix with those animals, and it just left you full of humiliated confusion

Was Press a War ‘Enabler’? 2 Offer a Nod From Inside

In his new memoir, “What Happened,” Scott McClellan, the former White House press secretary, said the national news media neglected their watchdog role in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, calling reporters “complicit enablers” of the Bush administration’s push for war. Surprisingly, some prominent journalists have agreed.

Katie Couric, the anchor of “CBS Evening News,” said on Wednesday that she had felt pressure from government officials and corporate executives to cast the war in a positive light.
[...]
At the time, Ms. Couric was a host of “Today” on NBC.

Another broadcast journalist also weighed in. Jessica Yellin, who worked for MSNBC in 2003 and now reports for CNN, said on Wednesday that journalists had been “under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation.”

Well that's clear enough, and us DFHs have been saying it for years. But what really shocked me was the flat out lie GE, (the owner of NBC), responded with later in the article:

A spokeswoman for General Electric, which owns NBC and MSNBC through its division NBC Universal, declined to speak about the specifics of the comments but said, “General Electric has never, and will never, interfere in the editorial process at NBC News.”

That statement goes against all evidence:

Shortly after George W. Bush declared his candidacy for president in June of 1999, General Electric Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jack Welch was contacted by Bush political advisor Karl Rove. Welch later informed associates that Rove told him a Bush administration would initiate comprehensive deregulation of the broadcast industry. Rove guaranteed that deregulation would be implemented in a way that would create phenomenal profits for conglomerates with significant media holdings, like GE.
[...]
In 1988, NBC News president Lawrence Grossman insisted to Welch that news was a public trust and should not be subjected to the same pressure to make profits that was applied to other GE units. Welch fired him.

In 1999, the GE chairman decided that it was no longer good enough for NBC News to just be profitable. Seven years of a frequently uncooperative Democratic Administration, combined with the Rove-inspired vision of spectacular profits through deregulation, now motivated Welch to take action.

He began to aggressively, but very discreetly, evangelize the gospel of corporate media as corporate lobbying tool. It was not a new concept; in the opinion of many, it was already the status quo. But from Welch’s point of view, the corporate news organizations were not living up to their potential.

The mainstream media could make George W. Bush president.
[...]
Welch viewed Al Gore as the candidate of the parasites. Gore voters were not the generators of wealth; they were the consumers of taxes. Welch privately described the typical Gore voter as “someone who needs all these goddamned social programs because she’s too goddamned dumb to keep her legs crossed and too goddamned lazy to get an abortion.”

And it's not like Welch is alone, Rupert Murdoch has done the same thing in the print media.

There is no longer a divide between the corporate and news divisions, and for GE to pretend otherwise is just ludicrous.

UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald has more:

Interview with former "Donahue" producer and MSNBC pundit Jeff Cohen

One of the most amazing aspects of this week has been watching network media stars feign shock over the fact that anyone could suggest that they were "deferential, complicit enablers" of the Bush march to war. It's as though they never heard anyone ever suggest such a thing until George Bush's own Press Secretary mocked them for being meek, uncritical disseminators of government propaganda, and now -- they seem to want to convey -- they're just so confused and astonished that anyone could possibly think that about them.

Cross posted at VidiotSpeak

The same old places and the same old songs, We've been going there for much too long

Our blogbuddy Blue Girl/Red State has a generally superb news roundup tonight.

Here's the best part:

Of pots, kettles and degrees of blackness John McSame would have done well to keep his mouth shut about Barack Obama not flying off to Iraq for a whirlwind shopping trip and some of the finest Kabuki Theater found outside Japan every time the wind blows. Well, it turns out that he has been remiss in a duty right here at home! Prior to last month's stroll through the Lower Ninth Ward, he had been to the Gulf Coast exactly once since the day Katrina made landfall. By contrast, Obama has visited the region five times. Mapquest says it is only 1089.87 miles between Washington DC and New Orleans, and it is not necessary for a visiting potentate to be escorted on a stroll by a full company of armed soldiers, three Blackhawk helicopters and two apache gunships to make sure the potentate stays safe. And by not monkeywrenching operations in a war zone six soldiers didn't get dead on any of the five trips that Obama has made to New Orleans. Not only has McShame been aWol in NOLA, he has failed to vote for reconstruction because it might saddle the future with debt, but the old hypocrite supports the occupation of Iraq - the single biggest expense and burden upon the backs of our grandchildren - without fail.

Indeed.