Strategery = Abduction & Torture

Last week when Karl Rove criticized liberal responses to 9/11 for presumably wanting "to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers," he specifically singled out MoveOn.org as one of the targets of his criticism. Eli Pariser was said by the New York Times to have responded by asserting that MoveOn had not opposed military action in Afghanistan. Pariser then rightly criticized the administration for trying to deflect attention from its own failures and problems.

What's wrong with the first part of Pariser's response is that it plays the administration's game inadvertently. In deriding a desire to prepare indictments Rove is attempting to discredit a more effective response to terrorism than the dubious war strategy Bush & Co. have embraced. If you doubt me, follow the details of the arrest orders against 13 CIA officials issued by an Italian Judge for their role in kidnapping an Egyptian cleric in Milan who was taken to Egypt and allegedly tortured.

Although there's alot to be said here, my key point is that the rendition of this terror suspect reportedly "disrupted Italian efforts to identify his connection to a terror network believed to have active operations throughout Europe," and that in other countries the effort to capture and convict terrorists has been stymied and undone by the Bush regime's lack of cooperation. Bush & Co. are not merely deriding effective legal responses to terrorism, they are actively subverting them.

We should not forget that the rush to unity after 9/11 was an attempt to make war, first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq apear to be the only justifiable alternative.

Thanks to the Professor.

Learn the Truth

If you have friends or loved ones serving in the U.S. Military, of if you give a damn about the two wars we are waging in the Middle East, you might want to check out this web site.

Operation Truth is an organization made up of non-partisan veterans. This web site has a lot of information about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that you won't see on the evening news, or read in your local newspapers.

Thanks to Kate over at Broken Windows for the info and link.

Go read Kate for first and second-hand news from the front.

M'aidez

Last week Tbogg had this photo posted. "My God," I said, "she looks like a Sith!"

Today's Boondocks.

The transformation is complete.

TIME Magazine Dabbles in Freeper Porn

I’ve just finished my first paper of the semester (a charming bon mot about the relationship between Jeffersonian Anglo-Saxon nationalism and racial ethnology) and given that I already have a headache, I figured a look-see around the net couldn’t possibly hurt.

Christ was I wrong!

If you haven’t already seen it, Here’s TIME magazine’s latest cover girl. Ms. Right indeed. Gross.

I’m not going to read the piece. My brain is not so fried as to not feel the pain of Ms. Coulter’s non-logic. One of the depressing things I’ve realized, particularly after spending the weekend on this paper, is that Coulter is part of along WASP-y tradition beginning before the revolution that declares Anglo-Americans as the true heirs to ancient Anglo-Saxon democratic values. Coulter’s rhetoric of “invading their countries and converting them to Christianity,” abhorrent as it may be, is quite as American as apple pie.

Discouraging n’est-ce pas?

However, just because Coulter isn’t technically un-American, that doesn’t mean we have to stop treating her like the lunatic throwback she is. This means NOT reading TIME, canceling your subscription , and telling them that you’re offended at their foray into the obscene. For fuck’s sake, there is a war going on! Coulter’s shtick is over 200 years old. It’s not going anywhere. Bring on the news already.

293,027,571 pairs of rose-colored glasses, please

Ironically, one reason why Washington can persuade the outside world that its venture in Iraq is finally coming right is that it is too dangerous for reporters to travel outside Baghdad or stray far from their hotels in the capital.

OK, note to American reporters: if it's too dangerous to leave your hotel, then the situation is getting worse not better.

Most violent incidents in Iraq go unreported...Last year US soldiers told the IoS that they do not tell their superiors about attacks on them unless they suffer casualties. This avoids bureaucratic hassle and "our generals want to hear about the number of attacks going down not up". This makes the official Pentagon claim that the number of insurgent attacks is down from 140 a day in January to 40 a day this month dubious.

Boy, does that tactic sound familiar.

The White House finds its military commitment in Iraq politically damaging at home. The easiest way to bring the troops home is, as in Vietnam, to declare a victory and full confidence in US-trained Iraqi forces to win the war. These soldiers and police supposedly number 152,000, but it is not clear who. The figure may include the 14,000 blue-uniformed Iraqi police in Nineveh province, the capital of which is Mosul, with a population of 2.7 million. But Khasro Goran, the deputy governor and Kurdistan Democratic Party leader in Mosul, told the IoS that the police had helped insurgents assassinate the previous governor.

Mr Goran said that when guerrillas captured almost all of Mosul on 11 November last year, the police had collaborated, abandoning 30 police stations without a fight. "They didn't fire on terrorists because they were terrorists themselves," he said. Some $40m-worth of arms and equipment was captured by the insurgents.

It is a measure of how far the reality of the war in Iraq now differs from the rosy picture presented by the media that the fall of Mosul to the insurgents went almost unreported abroad because most journalists were covering the assault by the US marines on Fallujah.

So we lost Mosul in November; we're training terrorists and counting them among the forces we are confident can "win" the war that we declared victory in over a year ago; our guys are hamstrung by leaders who don't want to hear bad news or properly arm them; and our biggest stories have been Terri Schiavo, Michael Jackson and the pope, with Tom Delay's shenanigans thrown in for balance. Terri and the pope are dead. Toss Michael Jackson and Tom Delay in jail, and be done with it.

We are at war and people are dying needlessly every single day. Can't that be taken seriously by the goddamn news?

Jesus

At least 16 people were killed when an American military helicopter crashed in bad weather near the town of Ghazni, south of the capital Kabul, an American military spokeswoman said.

The American spokeswoman, Cindy Moore, said that 18 people were listed as having been aboard the helicopter. It was not known, however, whether the two people unaccounted for had actually boarded the aircraft.

Nor had the nationalities of all the victims been determined, she said.

I missed the death of the Pope because I was off watching Sin City and studying. And after reading this, I'm really not sorry that I did.

...the conversation has been conducted almost exclusively among men. It's like that recent God panel on Meet the Press that consisted of five men theologizing, with Jon Meacham of Newsweek mewing the most awful pious twaddle, at one point using Bush and Dante in the same sentence with a straight face.

Ick.

As a laspsed Catholic I can't quite bring myself to completely disregard the Pope's death. But c'mon people. This has been coming for ages. Stop mourning and rejoice that the man no longer has to suffer the indiginity of the mortal coil.

Now I'm off to an early bedtime because I'm getting sick. I think that God is punishing me for the whole Sin City thing.

What Do We Do with a Drunken Liar?

If we're the CIA and it's 2001, we codename him Curveball, invade a country and kill thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people, based on his wacky stories of biological weapons programs.

If the headline on thisGuardian special report isn't enough to make you choke on your oatmeal, the very first line will.

An alcoholic cousin of an aide to Ahmed Chalabi has emerged as the key source in the US rationale for going to war in Iraq.

"An alchoholic cousin of an aide..."??!!??

According to a US presidential commission looking into pre-war intelligence failures, the basis for pivotal intelligence on Iraq's alleged biological weapons programmes and fleet of mobile labs was a spy described as 'crazy' by his intelligence handlers and a 'congenital liar' by his friends.

The defector, given the code-name Curveball by the CIA, has emerged as the central figure in the corruption of US intelligence estimates on Iraq. Despite considerable doubts over Curveball's credibility, his claims were included in the administration's case for war without caveat.

I say let's put him in a boat and row him over or at the very least hoist him up to the topsail yardarm. Nope, this kind of incompetent lunacy deserves a Congressional Medal of Honor.

Sweet Home Chicago

Gov. Rod Blagojevich filed an emergency rule Friday requiring pharmacies that sell contraceptives to fill prescriptions for birth control quickly, following recent incidents in which a Chicago pharmacist refused to fill orders for contraceptives because of moral opposition.

"Our regulation says that if a woman goes to a pharmacy with a prescription for birth control, the pharmacy or the pharmacist is not allowed to discriminate or to choose who he sells it to or who he doesn't sell it to," Blagojevich said. "The pharmacy will be expected to accept that prescription and fill it ... No delays. No hassles. No lectures."

Yet one more reason why I love the great state of Illinois. Democrats, take note. This is the way to do things.

The Contraceptive Nazis

Ok, this could be the start of something bad.

''There are pharmacists who will only give birth control pills to a woman if she's married. There are pharmacists who mistakenly believe contraception is a form of abortion and refuse to prescribe it to anyone," said Adam Sonfield of the Alan Guttmacher Institute in New York, which tracks reproductive issues. ''There are even cases of pharmacists holding prescriptions hostage, where they won't even transfer it to another pharmacy when time is of the essence."

Supporters see this as "...a welcome expression of personal belief"? Did anyone else just hear a toilet flush? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.

TBogg points out the hypocrisy quite nicely.

After reading the article you will notice that no mention is made of pharmacists declining to sell condoms, which are disposable gulags for the pre-Fetus-Americans. And ribbed condoms? Forget it, Sparky. Sex is for babies, not for pleasure. Well, her pleasure anyway.

If female pharmacists suddenly started refusing to dispense Viagra or Cialis to men, Congress would reconvene in the middle of the night and George Bush would make another midnight run from Crawford to sign the Tentpole Act of 2005 (also known as Bob Dole's Law).

What's next? Will the almighty pharmacist decide, in all his wisdom and selfrighteous willfulness, that the pesky rash you've been trying to get rid of is the punishment of a just God? No cortisone for you!

Ten Little Indians UPDATE

Ok, so it wasn't ten Indian kids who were killed at the high school on the Red Lake Indian reservation in Minnesota on Monday. It was six students (including the shooter), a security guard and a teacher, and the grandfather of the shooter as well as the grandfather's girlfriend. What can I say? I depend on the constant yammering of nattering nabobs to pound the details into my brain.

President Raised In A Barn finally offered his condolences today, five days after the fact. A White House spokesperson actually claimed Bush tried to get a hold of someone earlier in the week and got their voicemail.

I shit you not.

ADDED: Amanda over at Pandagon links to a Washington Post article detailing the dissatisfaction many Native Americans feel about Bush's lackluster response to the shootings.

"From all over the world we are getting letters of condolence, the Red Cross has come, but the so-called Great White Father in Washington hasn't said or done a thing," said Clyde Bellecourt, a Chippewa Indian who is the founder and national director of the American Indian Movement here. "When people's children are murdered and others are in the hospital hanging on to life, he should be the first one to offer his condolences. . . . If this was a white community, I don't think he'd have any problem doing that."

Ten Little Indians

Is it just me or did 10 high school kids just meet their maker in the worst schoolyard murder/suicide since Columbine and it barely rated a blip on the collective radar of our Dear Leader and his poodle press? Where the hell is the wall-to-wall coverage we've come to know and love in our 24/7 news all day/every day?
...maybe if they were ten brain-dead white women on life support for 15 years and Michael Schiavo factored into each case somehow, instead of ten indian kids in an economically depressed community that the powers that be try very hard never to think about under any circumstances.

Republican Logic Condensed

Artificially terminating a pregnancy in its earliest stages: UNNATURAL AND AGAINST GOD'S WILL.

Artificially keeping a brain dead adult alive for over a decade: THE WILL OF GOD.

Culture of life my ass.

Um, Freud? A little help over here.

Via A Tiny Revolution, a look at the Rockwellian childhood of Jerry Falwell, from his autobiography:

There were times that Dad’s pranks bordered on cruelty. One of his oil-company workers, a one-legged man he nicknamed “Crip” Smith, complained about everything. Dad and Crip’s co-workers got tired of the old man’s bellyaching and decided to take revenge. One morning Crip called in sick and Dad volunteered to send by lunch to his grateful but suspicious employee. Dad and his chums caught Crip’s old black tomcat, killed it, skinned it, and cooked it in the kitchen of one of Dad’s little restaurants. They called it squirrel meat and delivered it to Crip on a linen-covered tray. When Crip returned to work the next morning, Dad and his co-conspirators asked him how he liked his meal. They knew he would complain even about a free home-cooked lunch, and when Crip called it “the toughest squirrel meat” he had ever eaten, they were glad to tell him why.

Interesting how that prank merely borders on cruelty. What would be downright cruel in this sick sad world?

This is what whup-ass looks like in HTML.

A lot of people wanted to buy into the bullshit that the GOP was beating us like a trailer park wife. Well that's horseshit. Our problems is that our coaches suck. They not only don't know how to win, they act like they don't want to win. Yeah, yeah, Clinton won, but this is a different team playing a different fucking game. The public likes clear choices. You may hate George Bush, but you know where he stands, and that's why John McCain will NEVER be president. He's too many things to too many fucking people. And Hillary is marching down that same fucking road.

A lot of you blame John Kerry for losing. Well, that's also horseshit. Even Tucker fucking Carlson thought Kerry had in the bag. We fucked up by discounting the church offensive of Rove. That's where those votes came from. It wasn't any fucking Swift Boat either. They fucked up, according to Zogby, and people didn't believe them. But that was one fine magic trick, taking out Rather and neutralizing the draft dodging issue against a bona fide war hero. They played a better ground game. Did Kerry fuck up? Sure, but it wasn't about any vote fraud shit. That battle was lost when Ken Blackwell decided to play for the home team. Once he decided to Tom his way to popularity, that was a done deal, Diebold or no, wacky Bev Harris or no. Part of the problem is that Kerry was saddled with the same losers everyone else had to deal with. Coaches who can't fucking coach and try to win using the old playbook. They KNOW that playbook and hand our asses to us when we use it. They didn't want to win bad enough. They thought there were rules. Our old friend Hunter Thompson knew that politics had one set of rules, do anything to win which you can get away with. The fact that Kerry got close is a miracle, given the team he had.

But the real blame belongs in Congress. Anyone want to tell me how that wacko Tom Coburn is a Senator? It's like Theodore fucking Bilbo rose from the dead and took back his seat. He should have been carted off to await the rapture in a mental hospital.

The DLC should be called the dumbass losing coaches. Al From couldn't coach his way out of a fucking paper bag. His day is done.

It's obcenity-laced ambrosia and just what I needed to hear. This is the only language left to us, the language of rage. Reason doesn't work, nor does compassion. From 1820 to 1860 abolitionists saw their carefully crafted anti-slavery rhetoric shatter in the face of Southern intransience. You know why slavery ended in this country? It was because Sherman cut a bloody swathe so fucking wide through the South that they no choice. It's no longer about crafting the better argument. It's about dividing and conquering. There are many types of warfare, and we've suffered a massive defeat mostly because we've never behaved as though this is war.

Fighting to Care

Fighting to Care

I'm following Kate's instructions and reposting this story so it does NOT fall down the memory hole. And you haven't read this scary NYT piece on media manipulation, read it and weep. Weep for the millions of Americans who will never ever break away from complacency and indifference, and weep for the billions around the world who will be made to suffer from it.

I'm not immune to either complacency or indifference. Being in school makes is very easy to turn inward and shut out the rest of the world. In some ways it's been a blessing. After the election, the task of putting together seminar papers saved me from the deepest of funks. In some ways choosing the path of academia is the selfish thing to do. For me it was respite from the constant barrage of misinformation and outright lies. Away from it all I am free to follow an idea to its conclusion regardless of how meaningless it may be to the world at large.

But the world at large will not be ignored. So I must try harder not to be bitter and indifferent especially when friends are in pain.

She's Ba-a-ack!

Kate at Broken Windows has rejoined the land of the blogging. And about time, too.
As I was just commenting on her blog -- I wish I had gone to the Tuesday Democratic party meetup. I'm just so frustrated with the Democrats. I have to keep telling myself--"It's my party, and I'll cry if I want to."

I haven't seen Hotel Rwanda, yet, but it's truly frightening to learn how much Clinton DIDN'T do--and this is a guy who felt our pain. When I think about the complete obliviousness of President Raised-By-Poodles, who "lives about three feet up his own ass" (to borrow a phrase from Jon Stewart)--I cry myself to sleep.

Time to go off the grid. Welcome back, Kate.

Uh oh

In just a few months, he warns, bloggers and news organizations could risk the wrath of the federal government if they improperly link to a campaign's Web site. Even forwarding a political candidate's press release to a mailing list, depending on the details, could be punished by fines.

David Brooks sets out to prove that he is both literate and financially savvy and ends up as usual doing doing just the opposite.

Leo Tolstoy wrote a lovely novella called "Family Happiness," narrated by a young woman who goes out for a walk with a man she loves. They talk about nothing in particular - frogs, actually - but exchange looks and gestures. "He said goodbye as usual and made no special allusion; but I knew that from that day he was mine, and that I should never lose him now."

They are married but grow apart. She likes parties, while he doesn't. Then one day they are sitting at home and her heart suddenly grows light. She looks around and realizes that the courtship phase of their relationship has ended, but it has been replaced by something gentler and deeper:

Brooks could stop here, make some inane comments on the sanctity of marriage, and end up no worse for it. But in true Bobo-esque fashion he isn't content to simply be inane.

Tolstoy's novella came back to me while I was reading, of all things, The Wall Street Journal. The paper's Work and Family columnist, Sue Shellenbarger, had a piece last week reporting that the number of couples who now have separate checking accounts is rising rapidly. Roughly half of all married couples now keep multiple accounts, according to a Raddon Financial Group survey.

(snip)

I'm not saying that people with separate accounts have marriages that are less healthy than anybody else's. I'm saying we should pause before this becomes the social norm. Private property is the basis for our market democracy. But private property in the home is an altogether trickier proposition.

For one thing, separate accounts can easily turn into secret accounts. A person's status and resources inside the home shouldn't be based on how much he or she is making outside it. A union based on love can easily turn into a merger based on self-interest, where the main criterion for continuing becomes: Am I getting a good return on my investment, psychic or otherwise?

Isn't it just like Brooks to read about separate checking accounts and think about Tolstoy? Isn't it just like him to look for the most innocuous thing upon which to blame the collapse of the average American marriage? Incidentally the use of Tolstoy here is so painfully ham-handed that I can only assume that Brooks is trying to be all big and cool like his pin-up girl Condoleeza Rice. And if he's looking for a literary marriage guru, Tolstoy is probably not the best choice.

Tolstoy himself tried to abide by his new beliefs, simplifying his life, living on his own labor, and giving up material possessions. His wife, however, did not share all of his beliefs, and their marriage suffered under severe strain during their last years together. In November 1910 relations between them had grown so tense that Tolstoy decided to leave home for good. He contracted pneumonia while traveling and died at the small railway station of Astapovo.

Herbert today

Maher Arar is a 34-year-old native of Syria who emigrated to Canada as a teenager. On Sept. 26, 2002, as he was returning from a family vacation in Tunisia, he was seized by American authorities at Kennedy Airport in New York, where he was in the process of changing planes.

Mr. Arar, a Canadian citizen, was not charged with a crime. But, as Jane Mayer tells us in a compelling and deeply disturbing article in the current issue of The New Yorker, he "was placed in handcuffs and leg irons by plainclothes officials and transferred to an executive jet."

In an instant, Mr. Arar was swept into an increasingly common nightmare, courtesy of the United States of America. The plane that took off with him from Kennedy "flew to Washington, continued to Portland, Maine, stopped in Rome, Italy, then landed in Amman, Jordan."

(snip)

Mr. Arar was seized because his name had turned up on a watch list of terror suspects. He was reported to have been a co-worker of a man in Canada whose brother was a suspected terrorist.

"Although he initially tried to assert his innocence, he eventually confessed to anything his tormentors wanted him to say," Ms. Mayer wrote.

The confession under torture was worthless. Syrian officials reported back to the United States that they could find no links between Mr. Arar and terrorism. He was released in October 2003 without ever being charged and is now back in Canada.

I don't have the words.