Benazir Bhutto Assassinated

Associated Press reports that Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in Rawalpindi today.

This is a shock but not a surprise, given the previous attempt.

One must sincerely hope that this does not lead to greater turmoil in Pakistan. Readers will not be surprised that I do not believe that U.S. policy is helping.

Year in Review

January: The A.P. reports that Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke testified to Congress that the U. S. economy could be hurt if Social Security and Medicare are not cut, due to rising boomer retirements.

February: I hope you all saw Prince's halftime show at the Super Bowl

March: When a democrat says troops lives are wasted, they are criticized for undermining the troops, hating america, smoking weed with osama, etc.

April: The decider appears to have decided that he is not such a good decider after all.

May: The network news tonight said that Harry Reid is going to negiotiate a compromise war funding bill with "benchmarks" but no timetable.

June: The following items from the D3/ABC/ARD/BBC/USA Today poll from March struck me as curious.

July: What does 'Cut and Run' mean?

August: I am back after three weeks neglecting my blogging duties. What do you know, Voldemort is out pumping up war with Iran again.

September: Read This.

October: The U.S. embassy in Iraq denounced the U.S Senate resolution calling for partition of Iraq.

November: Moderate academic and blogger extraordinare Juan Cole has turned up the heat on the pro-war faction of the government

December: Admiral Fallon said he would try to put the crazies back in the box.

My, what an interesting year. Pray for some boring ones.

Use It And Lose It

The Army can't retain young officers. It is burning up all its capability in Iraq and Afghanistan. The army doesn't have the resources left for other activities.

Of course, the U.S. military has long been focused on 'projecting power', that is, threatening and invading other countries, usually ones that are no threat to us, rather than on the actual defense of the U.S. That is why we spend more than the rest of the world combined on our war machine. The fact that the wars have used up all the capability shows that the supersized U.S. military is not really necessary to defend our country.

So the question is what comes after the war? Do we continue to spend money we don't have to rebuild a military we don't need? Or do we shrink it to an appropriate size, redirect our spending priorities to humane uses, and join the community of civilized nations?

Incompetent Fascists

Fired U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins takes the DOJ to task for its lies about the firings of the U.S. Attorneys. Technically, he is not calling them incompetent. He objects to the lies because they make hurt the departement's credibility and make it more difficult for the Bush administration to achieve its objectives regarding toture, surveillance, and holding prisoners without charging them!

There are a great number of relevant and legitimate legal debates about executive power generally - about topics like the terrorist surveillance program, torture, and the legal status of enemy combatants. Unlike a typical Washington Monthly reader, I happen to agree with President Bush on most of these issues. The executive branch, from the president down to the investigating agent on the street, should have as many constitutional tools to protect the security of the nation as possible. And it isn't smart to debate all of the issues that face us out in the open in front of our enemies. Some issues need to be analyzed more privately. In sum, our government needs a formidable range of powers in order to investigate and combat terrorism properly.

The public, however, will never grant it such powers if the government and its agencies lack credibility.

He is not calling for prosecutions of actual criminal actions by Justice Department officials, in allowing torture and illegal surveillance. He is calling for the dismissal of a PR hack whos lies make it difficult for DOJ officials to get away with these crimes.

Mr. Cummins, if you are shocked that a Bush adminstration official would lie to Congress and lie to the public, you are awfully late to the party. Also, don't forget to take that "Ollie North for President" bumper sticker off your car.

The only terrorists in Karmah are American

Leila Fadel and Ali Al-Basri report on the killing of a nine year old girl in Karmah. It is heartbreaking.

U.S. officials in Baghdad confirmed that U.S. special forces and Iraqi troops arrested one suspected member of al-Qaida in Iraq in a raid near Karmah, south of Fallujah. But they had no information about the death of Hadil Walid Majed Mitaab, 9, who family members said was in a house in Sicher, near Karmah, with her mother when U.S. and Iraqi troops attacked at about 2:30 a.m.

With helicopters flying overhead, the troops blasted away the doors of two houses and opened fire on a third. Police and relatives said a bullet pierced Hadil's neck, and she bled to death in her mother's arms.

Hadel's father, Walid Majed Mitaab, said a U.S. soldier apologized to him through a translator.

I commented in June on reports that a U.S. predicted that Karmah would be cleared of al-Qaida by July. Although I had a skeptical tone in that comment, the family of Hadil says that the area is clear of al-Qaida.

Family members said they didn't understand why troops had raided the area, which they said had been clear of al-Qaida in Iraq since residents turned on the group earlier in the year. Three men were detained in the raid, they said. The U.S. also said three men were detained, though two were later released.

Ali Abbass Ali, a local police officer who was doing the overnight shift at the police station about 60 yards away, said no one shot at the soldiers before they began shooting.

This kind of activity by U.S. military is incomprehensible, and it is totally counterproductive. We have to get the hell out of Iraq.

Denial and Deception

Longtime readers of Cascada Observer know that Condoleeza Rice bugs me. She is my number two target of derision and ranting here, after the IIC. It is certainly reasonable to be skeptical of the truth of any member of the Grand Old Prevaricators, but my animosity and anger towards Dr. Rice dates to her testimony to the 9-11 commission that the August 6 PDB was just a "historical document".

I've decided to root around in Google for more inflammatory material from Dr. Rice. Let's start with this pre-war opinion. In the piece she asks, "Has Saddam Hussein finally decided to voluntarily disarm?". Rice answers, "Unfortunately, the answer is a clear and resounding no." Her reasoning? Because when South Africa, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine 'voluntarily' disarmed, they behaved differently than Iraq. What utter lack of imagination. In other words, no positive evidence (of course, now established beyond all rational doubt), ignorance of the facts being established by restarted inspections, and fantasies.

Next is this CNN report with some juicy Rice quotes from her visit to Baghdad in 2005. CNN said:

Although the U.S. decision to launch the war in 2003 was condemned in many nations and the original justification -- Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction -- turned out to be based on flawed intelligence, Rice said, "This war came to us, no the other way around."

Rice told the Associated Press in December 2006 that

Iraq is “worth the investment” in American lives and dollars and said the U.S. can still win a conflict that has been more difficult than she expected.

She's all over the map. First, the Iraq war came to us. Then, it is an investment, and more difficult that expected. She probably recalls being told it would be a "cakewalk".

Just last month, Michael Hirsh published a devastating critique of Rice, with the underwhelming title "Rice Admits Error on Iraq". Her error:

Asked whether she and the Bush administration had made any mistakes early on "that you're perhaps trying to redeem yourself for," she responded with her trademark steely smile. ..."If I had to do it all over again, we would have had the balance between center, local and provincial better. But that's the kind of thing you learn over time."

Hirsh attributes to Larry Diamond of the Hoover Institution and Judith Yaphe of the National Defense University the view that

every expert in the region, going back to the British occupation after World War I, has known how crucial it was to build relations with the provinces and tribal leaders in Iraq. Prewar reports by both the Future of Iraq Project, run out of the State Department, and NDU had emphasized this at a time when Rice was national security adviser, Yaphe says. "If you look at Saddam's rule, he knew very well how important local and tribal leaders were," says Yaphe. She also says that Rice's idea that this was a "fairly new model" is wrong. "It seems to me anybody in that area understands that full well. That's how that system has operated there for a long time."

Here is one that slipped by me. While Rice was on the Board of Directors of Chevron, they were illegally paying kickbacks to Saddam Hussein. Rice should have known about this, and it would be enough to force her to resign if she was in the cabinet of any respectable president.

Anne Gearan writes about Elisabeth Bumiller's new book about Rice.

Alone in the Oval Office three months before the U.S. led-invasion of Iraq, President Bush asked Condoleezza Rice whether she believed war was the proper course, a new book about the close presidential adviser said.
"Yes," the book quotes Rice as telling Bush, ...
"Everybody knew what the consequences meant," Rice said ...
The book says Rice was surprised by the sudden question from Bush.

This is a gem. She directly contradicts her old quote that "this war came to us". I don't know how you reconcile "Everybody knew what the consequences meant" with "more difficult that expected." Maybe they thought they knew what the consequences meant, but they knew not what the hell they were doing. Most stunning in this quote is that after two years as NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER to the president, she claim to have been SURPRISED that the president would ask her advice? About going to war? This is just mind boggling.

In this interview about Iraq, Rice brings up Colombia.

I was discussing the issue of Colombia with some of the Colombians. They reminded me that in 1998, 1999, 2000, the FARC would kidnap people right out of the center of Bogotá. The Ambassador was describing to me how people felt they had to travel in convoys to prevent being kidnapped. Nobody thinks about Colombia in those terms in 2007.

Well, maybe not. Read this excerpt from the State Department Travel Warning for Colombia and judge for yourself:

Terrorist groups such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN), and other criminal organizations, continue to kidnap civilians for ransom or as political bargaining chips. No one can be considered immune from kidnapping on the basis of occupation, nationality, or other factors. The FARC have held three American official contractors hostage since February 2003.

U.S. government officials and their families in Colombia are permitted to travel to major cities in the country, but only by air. They are not allowed to use inter- or intra-city bus transportation. They also are not permitted to travel by road outside of urban areas at night. All Americans in Colombia are urged to follow these precautions.

Nothing about convoys, because you are advised not to travel by road!

'Not Us. We're not going.'

Read the article by Kelly Kennedy about 2nd Platoon, Charlie 1-26.

The platoon was devasted by losing nine of their 45 men in 11 months in Iraq, including five when an IED exploded under their Bradley Fighting Vehicle. Their company commander Capt. Cecil Strickland is quoted as saying

“If my guys had stayed at Adhamiya, they would have taken the gloves off. We were afraid somebody was going to get in trouble."

A month later, another company went on a mission that 2nd platoon had been scheduled to do. They hit an IED and lost four men. After this, 2nd platoon would not go on any more missions, because they were afraid their anger could set loose a massacre.

This decision did not meet with a unqualified approval. Strickland says, “I didn’t want to punish them,” Strickland said. “I understood what was going on. But they had to understand you couldn’t do something like that and have nothing happen.”

So he is aware of the potential for trouble, his men did the only thing they could do responsibly, but Capt. Strickland puts more weight on blind obedience than on doing the right thing. Still, Strickland claims to be understanding:

“I understood why they did what they did,” he said. “Some of the NCOs, I was disappointed in them because they failed to lead their soldiers through difficult times. They let their soldiers influence their decisions. But on a personal level, I applauded their decision because they stood behind their soldiers. I was disappointed, but I thought they had great courage. It was truly a Jekyll/Hyde moment for me.”

Sounds more like a Hyde moment to me. Capt. Strickland would have liked the soldiers to act as if they had not suffered the trauma that they had been through. Pretend things are alright and muddle through. Sort of like the bulk of the country who are doing their best to ignore the war.

no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.

So there, Huckabee.

I suppose I ought to go on and clarify this, but the language is so clear and easy to understand that to try to elucidate upon it would be an insult to the reader.

The real question, however, is why do people keep pushing to have presidents espouse fundamentalist doctrine? And why do all of the people who want this completely ignore the lessons of Jesus, to turn the other cheek, love your enemy, and not resist evil? Why do the two-faced religious bigots spew anti-immigrant rhetoric on Saturday and pay lip service to the good Samaritan on Sunday? Why do they ignore the heritage of pacifism of many of the colonists who originally established our form of government?

For President: Dennis Kucinich

So it is a bit pretentious of me to copy the snooty style of newspaper endorsements. Plus, I am sure that my dozens of readers are unbelievably impatient to be told how to vote. But here goes anyway.

It really isn't too hard to rule out most of the candidates. Only Kucinich, Gravel, and Paul are firm in their opposition to the Iraq war. (Oooh, what about Obama? He's against the war, right Captain? Right, he gave a big speech against it when he was a Illinois State Senator. That's almost as big a platform as Cascada Observer. Plus, he didn't have to actually vote against it. Plus, he is not on the ballot in my state, one of the most glorious in our glorious democracy.)

So let's look at some other issues. Health care is a pretty important issue. Michael Moore made a movie about it, after all. Kucinich is for Medicare for All, and is a cosponsor of HR 676. Check. Gravel supports universal health care. Check, I think. Doctor Ron Paul introduced the Health Freedom Protection Act, HR 2117, to ensure Americans can receive truthful health information about supplements and natural remedies. Sorry, Dr. Paul, I don't think I will choose your medicine.

How about poverty and economic inequality? Kucinich goes for the whole shebang:

"We must make it a top priority to restore the value of the federal minimum wage, bringing it up to at least its 1968 level and indexing it to automatically keep pace with the cost of living. This will allow workers to quit their second or third jobs and spend more time with their families.

My goal is to combine this with the creation of a truly universal single-payer health care system, universal free preschool, free college tuition at state colleges and universities, a public jobs program to restore our infrastructure, and withdrawal from NAFTA and the WTO in favor of bilateral trade pacts that protect workers' rights here and abroad. "

Gravel's Progressive Fair Tax proposal calls for eliminating the IRS and the income tax and replacing it with a national sales tax. He is in denial about the regressive nature of sales taxes.

And Paul? He wants to end taxes on tips. Not that there is anything wrong with that. I'm sure that will have minimum wage workers fighting for the right to be paid through tax-free tips rather than through an actual wage.

Game, set, match to Kucinich.

The knights of NIE

Lower Manhattenite explains Wolf Cookies and what they have to do with the Iran NIE.

It's required reading, folks, so hop right on over.

High IQ: Do you want another idiot as president?

I did some Google searches. The text was, 'bush idiot', 'clinton idiot', etc. Here are the stunning results:

bush 2240000
clinton 1420000
edwards 1250000
michael moore 1050000
obama 947000
ron paul 918000
giuliani 780000
mccain 769000
romney 660000
fred thompson 536000
kucinich 371000

Especially surprising are the relatively low numbers for Guiliani, Mccain, and Romney, well below Ron Paul. On the other hand, Kucinich is much lower than the others. I have a number of highly speculative theories about this:

1: Republican attack blogs are meaner.
2: Giuliani, Mccain, Romney etc. are more worried about Paul than each other.
3: The people who label others as idiots don't feel that Giuliani et. al. are worth bothering.
4: Kucinich really is less of an idiot than the others.

I am going to define the IQ (Idiot Quotient) of a presidential candidate is 1/(number of Google Hits for 'Candidate Name idiot'). By making the IQ the reciprocal, the fewer the hits, the higher the IQ.

Note that Bill Richardson, Chris Dodd, and Biden all have a higher IQ than Kucinich.

Put the crazies back in the box

Admiral Fallon said he would try to put the crazies back in the box. The Iran NIE, which seems to confirm the recent IAEA report and perhaps go a bit farther in saying when Iran's weapons activity stopped, may be a start.

Juan Cole called for a 'Team B' effort to counter the Bush-Cheney cabal's intelligence on Iran. It looks like the IC 'Team B'ed the president itself.

Cole now speculates about why Iran stopped weapons related activity. One possibility he left off was that they were doing it because they fell for Saddam's bluff, and stopped when they realized Saddam had nothing.

The Today show reported John Bolton says that the intelligence community is sabotaging Bush on Iran. Puhleez. Who cares what he says? Let's see: Bush and his cronies revealed the identity of a CIA agent working on a classified intelligence program relating to nuclear proliferation and Iran. Who is sabotaging who?