Reality Bites

Over the last few months the Bush administration has experienced a fairly rapid unraveling of whatever support existed among the general public (other than the diehard fans) for continuing the occupation in Iraq. The debate continues, for sure, regarding how or when to pull the troop levels down, but the underlying message is pretty clear, "We're about done here".

Watching this unraveling, something occured to me. If the administration had honestly articulated their ambitious foreign policy goals for the Middle East, rather than the fear mongering and pickled intelligence, how would things be different today? I think it's rather telling that the administration decided that the public is either too stupid or the policy agenda too wacky to subject to a public debate.

Yes, of course it would have been a risky move to get into such a debate. The public might have indeed rejected the idea. However, when politicians want to sell people on something they are often pretty good at it. I believe that a convincing case could be made for the Project for New American Century's ideology for pushing American power and influence into the Middle East for the purpose of "remaking the region". But again, it's risky and scaring the shit out of people must have seemed more certain to produce the desired level of political support for invading Iraq.

The funny thing is this: The route that the administration took in selling the invasion to the public created a false agenda, toppling Hussein and preventing proliferation of his mythical WMD. Once that rationale evaporated, the public's appetite for this process began to slip away.
There was no particular sense of purpose other than trying to get a bunch of people with deep-seated grudges against eachother to get their shit together so we can get the hell out.
And the sense that we have fucked this thing up from day one of the occupation just seems to hover over the whole mess.

If the administration had actually taken the country into Iraq with the expectation of a long-term plan to change the character of that region in order to push reform and (hopefully) reduce the region's tendency toward instability and violence, I think that the public's tolerance for a long term commitment would be very different today.

Personally, I think that the PNAC ideology is terribly flawed and naive. But I also didn't think the public would buy the WMD scam either. My point is that the administration, as much as they'd like to blame lefties or the press or Hollywood for the public's loss of stomach for the occupation, they can take most of the blame for themselves. They didn't prepare the public for this type of commitment in Iraq, which naturally makes me wonder if they were even prepared for it themselves. I think the public is wondering too.

Dam libruls are trying to ruin Christmas!!

The usual suspects are back again to try to get some more mileage out of this entirely media created "controversy". Tom Tommorrow, in keeping with the spirit, recycles last year's comic that pokes fun at them.

Terrorist Spotting

A bit of fun from Bob Harris

Pickled News

From AP via Breitbart:

The U.S. military secretly paid Iraqi newspapers to plant favorable stories about its efforts to rebuild the country, the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday.

The newspaper quoted unidentified officials as saying many of the stories in Iraqi newspapers are written by U.S. troops and while basically factual, sometimes give readers a slanted view of what is happening in Iraq. Some expressed fears that use of such stories could hurt the credibility of the U.S. military worldwide, the newspaper said.

And further down in the same piece:

The Times said documents it obtained showed Al Mutamar was paid about $50 to run a story with the headline "Iraqis Insist on Living Despite Terrorism" on Aug. 6.

Luay Baldawi, Al Mutamar's editor in chief, said the articles have come to him via the Internet and are often unsigned.

"We publish anything," he said. "The paper's policy is to publish everything, especially if it praises causes we believe in. We are pro- American. Everything that supports America we will publish."

(emphasis added by me)

Liberated...

From the New York Times:

Hundreds of accounts of killings and abductions have emerged in recent weeks, most of them brought forward by Sunni civilians, who claim that their relatives have been taken away by Iraqi men in uniform without warrant or explanation.

Some Sunni men have been found dead in ditches and fields, with bullet holes in their temples, acid burns on their skin, and holes in their bodies apparently made by electric drills. Many have simply vanished.

Songs To Wear Pants To

Weird fun:

"I make songs in any genre, for free or for money, based on instructions people send me.You can scroll down to read what some people have requested, and listen to the songs by clicking on their titles."

Nifty.

Mercenaries...

TheTelegraph has a disturbing story alleging very serious misconduct on the part of private security guards working for the US military in Iraq. I continue to find it baffling that our military subcontracts so much of the work that it should (and used to) do for itself. It's a situation that's ripe for serious abuses.

A "trophy" video appearing to show security guards in Baghdad randomly shooting Iraqi civilians has sparked two investigations after it was posted on the internet, the Sunday Telegraph can reveal.

The video has sparked concern that private security companies, which are not subject to any form of regulation either in Britain or in Iraq, could be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of innocent Iraqis.

The elephant in the middle of Baghdad, part II

From The Guardian:

Human rights abuses in Iraq are now as bad as they were under Saddam Hussein and are even in danger of eclipsing his record, according to the country's first Prime Minister after the fall of Saddam's regime.

Allawi's bleak assessment is likely to undermine any attempt to suggest that conditions in Iraq are markedly improving.

'We are hearing about secret police, secret bunkers where people are being interrogated,' he added. 'A lot of Iraqis are being tortured or killed in the course of interrogations. We are even witnessing Sharia courts based on Islamic law that are trying people and executing them.'

He said that immediate action was needed to dismantle militias that continue to operate with impunity. If nothing is done, 'the disease infecting [the Ministry of the Interior] will become contagious and spread to all ministries and structures of Iraq's government', he said.

(emphasis mine)

Normalizing Torture

Digby has a good post about the moral price of "normalizing" torture.

Feeling Blue...

(courtesy of DailyKos)

Data here.

Politics blocking the exit

"And so, on the most urgent question confronting America today, we have reached an absurd and exquisite equipoise. The Republicans cannot credibly defend the war; the Democrats cannot quite bring themselves to call for its end. And the war goes on."

More here..

Timing is everything..

Well this is sort of funny. Venezuelan leader, Hugo Chavez, has arranged for heating fuel to be sent to Massachusetts so that it can be distributed, at a discount, by two non profit organizations to assist needy residents this fall and winter. Now you know that the timing on this is just too funny. Remember, just a couple of weeks ago, American big oil companies were sitting in front of congress trying to justify their massive, record-breaking profits right after Katrina hit the Gulf region. Now Chavez bypasses the middle-man and looks like a hero to the working man. Love him or hate him, the guy knows how to work the room.

Winning the battle and losing the war...

From the UK's Telegraph:

Millions of Iraqis believe that suicide attacks against British troops are justified, a secret military poll commissioned by senior officers has revealed.

The poll, undertaken for the Ministry of Defence and seen by The Sunday Telegraph, shows that up to 65 per cent of Iraqi citizens support attacks and fewer than one per cent think Allied military involvement is helping to improve security in their country.

It demonstrates for the first time the true strength of anti-Western feeling in Iraq after more than two and a half years of bloody occupation.

And...

The nationwide survey also suggests that the coalition has lost the battle to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people, which Tony Blair and George W Bush believed was fundamental to creating a safe and secure country.

Results?

• Forty-five per cent of Iraqis believe attacks against British and American troops are justified - rising to 65 per cent in the British-controlled Maysan province;

• 82 per cent are "strongly opposed" to the presence of coalition troops;

• less than one per cent of the population believes coalition forces are responsible for any improvement in security;

• 67 per cent of Iraqis feel less secure because of the occupation;

• 43 per cent of Iraqis believe conditions for peace and stability have worsened;

• 72 per cent do not have confidence in the multi-national forces.

More here...

Another way 'round

Alter has a good piece up at Newsweek about the dire need for a real debate about how best to end our occupation in Iraq. Here's a snippet:

we should be holding a big national debate about whether the presence of U.S. troops reduces the insurgency or fuels it, whether timetables for withdrawal embolden the terrorists or motivate Iraqi forces to perform better. Instead of cut-and-run versus more-of-the-same, we need a few imaginative "Third Way" alternatives. (The GOP's hastily called vote on more-timely progress reports from Iraq doesn't qualify.) Maybe they won't bear scrutiny, but why not give them a look?

I couldn't have said it better myself. This is what needs to be happening right now. Fingerpointing may be fun and politically expedient at times, but it's also a waste of time right now. We need substantive discussion and debate on how to close the deal on this thing. It's too important to fuck around with for the sake of politics:

The stakes in Iraq are higher than in Southeast Asia 40 years ago. Failure would give Al Qaeda a huge base from which to kill us. But for now it looks as if we'll keep sinking in the quicksand, with no consensus, no substantive debate and no end to the finger-pointing. It's almost enough to make you nostalgic for Vietnam.

It's time to shake off the paralysis and wake up to the fact that, Republican or Democrat, we're all screwed if this thing goes completely down the shitter.

The Man Who Sold The War

Rolling Stone has an interesting article on the smokey back room shennanigans behind the PR campaign that sold the public on the Iraq invasion scheme.

Douchebags on Parade

As I watched the GOP troop withdrawal resolution stunt unfolding last night, it hit me just how disfunctional and pointless congress has become in the last several years. Certainly we must be witnessing some sort of peak (god, I hope so) in the levels of partisan bullshitting that has been passing for representation. What should be happening right now, and prompted by Murtha's resolution, is a debate. The public needs for this debate to take place. We need a vigorous discussion about the merits of troop withdrawal vs. continued indefinite deployment in Iraq. But this debate can't take place because congress doesn't opperate that way anymore apparently. Our legislative branch has deteriorated into a partisan mosh pit where the two parties to try to out maneuver and out spin eachother. Politcs, not governing, is the number one priority for our Representatives and Senators. As a result, issues aren't debated and voted upon based on their merits, they're simply political 2 x 4's used to bludgeon the hell out of "the opposition".
Last night's troop withdrawal resolution introduced in the House couldn't be a better example of how lame and repugnant congress has become. Was Murtha's resolution debated on it's merits? Hell no. An alternative, cynical bullshit resolution was voted upon instead, simply for the purpose of trying to squeeze the Democrats into an uncomfortable political position. Hey, fuck the troops, fuck the public (who are doing the paying and the dying), fuck you all! We're busy politicking here.

Big government contracts+no oversight = abuse

Undocumented foreign workers who were hired to assist with post-Katrina clean-up are getting screwed by KBR. Wow, it used to be you had to go to a lot of effort to become an abused, undocumented worker in the US. I guess KBR really is all about getting the job done more efficiently.

Neo-Napalm

From CBC news:

A spokesman for the U.S. military has admitted that soldiers used white phosphorus as an "incendiary weapon" while trying to flush out insurgents in the northern Iraqi city of Fallujah last year.

..and:

An unknown number of Iraqi women and children died of phosphorus burns during the hostilities, Italian documentary makers covering the battle for Fallujah have claimed.

..and, of course:

Venable's comments could expose the United States to allegations that it has been using chemical weapons in Iraq.

The suspicion that former president Saddam Hussein was developing chemical weapons, as well as biological and nuclear ones, was one of the Bush administration's main justifications for the 2003 invasion of the Persian Gulf country.

And they said irony was dead...

And the hits, they just keep on coming...

Jebus! Is there ANY part of this Iraq adventure that doesn't just stink to high heaven?

WASHINGTON - A criminal complaint unsealed in federal court in Washington on Wednesday alleges a web of corruption and bid rigging in Iraq by officials who worked with the now-defunct Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S.-led agency that ran Iraq for more than a year after the 2003 invasion.

More here...

The Elephant in the Middle of Baghdad

This afternoon I read this, from MSNBC:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Conditions — including the use of torture — at a secret Baghdad detention facility run by the Iraqi Interior ministry were so “horrific” that some of the scores of men held there “looked like Holocaust survivors” when they were found, NBC News has learned.

..and furthur down in the article:

Interior Ministry officials acknowledged that the abused men were mostly Sunni Arabs. They said the abusers were Shiite police officers loyal to the Badr Organization militia. Hadi al-Amery, the head of the Badr Organization, denied any involvement, the New York Times reported.

I was immediately reminded of this article that I read in the Washington Post, back in August of this year:

BASRA, Iraq -- Shiite and Kurdish militias, often operating as part of Iraqi government security forces, have carried out a wave of abductions, assassinations and other acts of intimidation, consolidating their control over territory across northern and southern Iraq and deepening the country's divide along ethnic and sectarian lines, according to political leaders, families of the victims, human rights activists and Iraqi officials.

The Post article goes on to describe what I think is the most serious problem that will undermine US and Iraqi efforts to create a stable society in Iraq. The fractious nature of the social and political situation there is what will screw the pooch. While elections and constitutions look great in headlines and make for some nice phot-ops, transparent and accountable government with protection for political and social minorities are fundamental to a free society. And it doesn't count if it's only on paper. If Iraqis can't find they have more loyalty to their nation than they do to their sect, ethnic group, and/or political party, The whole business of creating a "free society" there is DOA. What they'll end up with is a nasty civil war, possibly followed by another strongman government that emerges as the only thing that can quell the instability. Then we end up right back where we started. This is the elephant sitting in the middle of Baghdad. Why aren't we talking about this?

A Treacherous Trend

Newsweek International Edition has a good piece about the decline of the middle class worldwide. I think the concluding paragraph hits the point home nicely:

Just as growth does not necessarily translate into greater equity, poverty does not always translate into impotence. If we allow the ranks of the most economically vulnerable to grow, then the pain will be felt all across the economic continuum. And we among the privileged of the world need to recognize that even if, as Deng Xiaoping once said, "to be rich is glorious," giving others the chance to simply be comfortable and offer a better future for their children is the bedrock upon which our collective futures must be built.

So many of our current problems around the world really end up boiling down to the have-nots vs. the haves. We're obviously the "haves", and the ranks of "have-nots" in the developing world are growing. Improving global security is ultimately going to depend on economic prosperity and opportunity, not how many radical fighters we manage to kill or detain. In my opinion, addressing this worldwide slide of the middle class needs to be a part of the effort to stop terrorism.

Our Nation's Finest Scientific Minds At Work

The dillgent lads at MIT have been burning the midnight oil, testing the tinfoil hat's effectiveness against those pesky government mind control rays:

It has long been suspected that the government has been using satellites to read and control the minds of certain citizens. The use of aluminum helmets has been a common guerrilla tactic against the government's invasive tactics [1]. Surprisingly, these helmets can in fact help the government spy on citizens by amplifying certain key frequency ranges reserved for government use. In addition, none of the three helmets we analyzed provided significant attenuation to most frequency bands.

They share their research with us and it's pretty thorough, testing three different foil hat designs: The Fez, The Centurion, and for the purist, The Classical...



More fun here...

Big Oil's message to the consumer: Bend over, this will only hurt for a minute

The big oil companies basically whistled and shuffled their feet when asked by the Senate to explain their record profits generated during a period of national disaster following Hurricane Katrina:

Oil profits "go up and down," Exxon Mobil Chairman Lee Raymond told the Senate the other day, explaining why the oil giants' huge post-Katrina profits were not profiteering.

Thus the $32.8 billion in profits that America's five biggest petroleum corporations reported for the July-September quarter were more like a natural occurrence -- that darned "invisible hand"! -- than a calculated effort to take advantage of a national emergency. Profits just "go up and down."

Oil executives want you to understand that their post-Katrina price gouging (which resulted in staggering profits) was really all for our own good:

But if prices were raised to cover additional costs, whence the record profits?

Well, Raymond had a secondary explanation: Three-dollar-a-gallon gasoline reduced demand and helped to regulate the market. That's why you didn't see those long lines at gas stations. Reducing consumption also reduces reliance on oil imports and, though he didn't say it, probably reduces hydrocarbon emissions and slows global warming -- all good stuff.

What could be more American than the unfettered capitalism demonstrated by Big Oil? Consider this, what I think is the column's best point:

There is also another way to respond to a national disaster, and lots of individuals, organizations -- even entire towns -- found it. I mean the response of sacrifice. Americans opened their hearts, their wallets and their homes to Katrina's victims. Where is the record of Big Oil's selfless largess? As Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) told the oil executives: "Your sacrifice, gentlemen, appears to be nothing."

Maybe the notion of corporate sacrifice -- the very idea of the corporate citizen -- is dying, giving way to the bottom line as the only thing worthy of serious attention.

Indeed.

Veterans Day

"Dulce Et Decorum Est"
(It is sweet and dignified to die for your country)
by Wilfrid Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through
sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!-An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,-
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

America and Child Poverty

Among wealthy nations, the US has the highest percentage of it's children living in poverty. We also spend the least among these nations on social welfare. The nations that spend the most, have the lowest percentage of children living in poverty. Here's a look at a 2004 "Economic Snapshot" from Economic Policy Institute:

The United States stands out as the country with the lowest expenditures and the highest child poverty rate — five times as much as the Nordics.

The paucity of social expenditures addressing high poverty rates in the United States is not due to a lack of resources — high per capita income and high productivity make it possible for the United States to afford much greater social welfare spending. Moreover, other OECD countries that spend more on both poverty reduction and family-friendly policies have done so while maintaining competitive rates of productivity and income growth.

Here in the US, we've been living with the meme of "government is worthless" for so long that many of us think of it as a given. Are we ready to re-think this position? Recently we've had the misfortune of seeing, in disturbing detail, the price we pay when we trivialize the role of government in improving and protecting the lives of its citizens. And plainly, we have walked away from the notion that government has a significant role to play in the alleviation of poverty in our nation. Clearly we pay a price for this. But are we ready to grapple with an honest discussion of the role of government and the price (and I'm talking dollars here, not just intangibles) society pays when that role is reduced to what amounts to a bit part?

John Edwards Is Asking America To Make Tackling Poverty A Priority

From Bob Moser's Piece in The Nation:

"In a country of our wealth, to have 37 million people living in poverty? It's a huge moral issue," he says. "There's a hunger in this country for a sense of national community, that we're not in this thing by ourselves. There's been a long period of selfish thinking. I think there's a great opportunity for us to be about a big, moral cause that's bigger than people's own self-interest."

John Edwards is now the director of the Center of Poverty, Work, and Opportunity at UNC, Chaple Hill's law school. They have a website that details their mission.

Home, Sweet Home...

The Mercury-bound MESSENGER spacecraft captured several stunning images of Earth during a gravity assist swingby of its home planet on Aug. 2, 2005. Several hundred images, taken with the wide-angle camera in MESSENGER’s Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS), were sequenced into a movie documenting the view from MESSENGER as it departed Earth.

For some additional fun, check out Fourmilab's site, which allows you to look at views of Earth from dozens of different satellites.

Purpose

Lately I've been mulling over the idea of national goals. I haven't really considered it before actually. What happens when a nation or society has no unifying goals? If you look at the US' recent history, you can see that we seemed to thrive when we had a sense of common purpose. In the 30's we were trying to get through the Depression. In the 40's, it was WWII. In the 50's and 60's it was defeating the commies and the space program. Look at the 70's though. It was a period of disillusionment and drift. In the 80's we resurected the commies again, and we were trying to pull out of a recession. Since 1990 though...it's pretty much a void as far as any sort of unifying issue or purpose for the US. What seemed to take its place was a fractious divide between the left and the right. "The War On Terror" seemed like it might fill that void for a time, but the major players overplayed their hand and ended up just further exacerbating the ideological division within the US. I think the public is generally pretty cynical about the government's efforts, both overseas and domestically. The issue has been overly politicized and the public feels manipulated (with good reason, in my opinion). I'm beginning to feel that if a leader emerges with an agenda of goals for the US to accomplish (I'm talking real goals here, with deadlines and accountability) he or she could be very successful. I think that a people yearn for good leadership and want to know what they can do to help. Americans see themselves as "can do" people. If someone clever enough to recognize this comes along in '08, they could run away with the presidential race.
So what should America set as national goals? What do we want to fix, or improve about our society? I think the time is NOW to begin this discussion.

Filling the void

A dirty little secret has been thrust into the spotlight recently. There are a lot of people in the US that are living below the poverty line. Tens of millions of Americans hover in poverty in one of the richest nations in the world. Here's a quote from a Newsweek article:

But after a decade of improvement in the 1990s, poverty in America is actually getting worse. A rising tide of economic growth is no longer lifting all boats. For the first time in half a century, the third year of a recovery (2004) also saw an increase in poverty. In a nation of nearly 300 million people, the number living below the poverty line ($14,680 for a family of three) recently hit 37 million, up more than a million in a year.

What does this cost society? We all know that entrenched poverty is responsible for a litany of social ills and wasted human potential. As a society, do we feel obligated to create structures that create avenues out of entrenched poverty? As far as class goes, things are pretty fluid for people who are working class, on up. But for large numbers of Americans, living below the poverty line becomes a trap that ensnares people for generations.
Government has sought to address the problem of poverty at various points in the 20th century, to varying degrees of success. In recent decades, these efforts have been derided as "social engineering" and have been roundly criticized as failures. However, some of these efforts have brought positive results:

Following the Gatreaux model in Chicago, the Clinton administration launched a "scatter-site" housing program in four cities that found homes for the poor in mixed-income neighborhoods. While the move doesn't much benefit adults, their children—confronted with higher expectations and a less harmful peer group—do much better. "It really helped in Atlanta," says Rep. John Lewis, a hero of the civil-rights movement.

Social welfare programs, both successful and otherwise, have been reduced or eliminated in recent years as the Bush administration continues to persue the conservative "personal responsibility" agenda. So government's role in attempting to diminish poverty has been reduced considerably over the years.

For me, the question is, what fills the void? Society is pretty secular and transient today. The pressures of religious or community obligation to care for or mentor people in the community who are less fortunate have largely evaporated. So what's left?

I think that we need to take another look at the boogyman of "social engineering". What's so bad about trying to engineer society? I think the American public needs to take a look at where it is, and really set some goals. Issues of poverty, education, class, and crime need to be discussed. Openly. What are the social institutions that can be a conduit for society's efforts to deal with its' problems and "engineer" a future where more people can find their way out of poverty and be productive members of society? Public education springs to mind immediately. Another avenue is community embracing the values of social responsibility.
We Americans love our independance and individuality. Those values are important but they need to be balanced with obligation to neighbor, friend, community, and society as a whole.

Crisis = Danger + Opportunity

As I continue to digest the the images and stories that have emerged from the destruction in the the gulf coast region, I find myself pulled toward the subjects of community, society, and duty. What does it mean to be an American? To be part of a society or a community? What price do we pay when we abandon the ideals of duty to one's fellow man? Do we even believe in such a thing anymore?
I will be watching to see what impact the recent destruction and massive displacement of people will have on our culture. I think it could be pretty significant. I feel oddly optimistic, actually. Katrina has shattered our ideals of who we are.
Out of that destruction, something new can grow.
Crisis = danger + opportunity