Tag Archives: Iraq

Posted on by

A few last thoughts on the South Carolina Democratic Debate:

Sharpton is absolutely right to question why for the poor to die for their country abroad is an “honor,” but for the rich to pay taxes is a “burden,” and to call for a less regressive payroll tax.

I’m not sure what Dean was trying to pull off with his critique of Kerry’s failed healthcare bills – it felt overly self-conscious and affected, even grasping. Kerry wasn’t particularly smooth in responding, but came off better over all in that exchange.

I wish I could say that Lieberman’s touting welfare reform as the sort of “bipartisan accomplishment” he’d continue lost him my vote, but clearly he never had it in the first place. I do find it sad that the welfare system has been completely off the radar of these debates.

I was glad to see Kerry get called on what Brooks called the “inner Moynihan” of some of his ’90s rhetoric. He came off quite defensive responding to a statement of his on affirmative action, and preached fealty to the “mend it, don’t end it” stance multiple times without allaying any fears about what kind of mending he plans to do.

Posted on by

Nathan Newman offers a good reason to like Kerry. Mickey Kaus offers several reasons not to. As I see it, Kerry’s greatest offense of the past months has been telling Eric Alterman in early December

Eric, if you truly believe that if I had been President, we would be at war in Iraq right now, then you shouldn’t vote for me

and then using the capture of Saddam Hussein to argue Howard Dean was weak for opposing the war.

Posted on by

Timothy Noah argues that Howard Dean has nothing to apologize for. She’s right. Well, there’s plenty for him to apologize for – but getting worked up isn’t it. Was yelling in the way he did a poor tactical move in that it was inevitable to be interpreted by some not as a rallying cry he learned from the Farmworkers but as a the cry of blood-thirsty banshee? Sure. But the odds that you’ll turn on TV news and see Howard Dean yelling as supposed to the odds that the 30-second clip will be, say, George Bush flirting in the State of the Union with writing bigotry into the US Constitution are disgraceful. As Garance Franke-Rutka observes:

I — and others — could scarcely hear what Dean was saying on the stage from the press section in the back of the room because several thousand Deaniacs were making so much noise (Dean wasn’t the only one screaming) and the acoustics in the room weren’t very good. From inside the room, it seemed that he was feeding off the energy of a crowd that was cheering him on, and that they got louder and louder in concert with each other.

There’s a great deal going on in this country about which we should be hollering bloody murder right now, and the more time spent fixating on whether getting worked up is “presidential,” the farther we are from doing something about it. As Russ Baker writes:

Basically, at a pep rally, he yelled like a football coach. This is described as being “unpresidential.” But says who? Besides, what’s the definition of ‘presidential?’ Isn’t giving insulting nicknames to world leaders unpresidential? Isn’t sending hundreds of American soldiers to die for uncertain and misrepresented ends in Iraq unpresidential – or worth considering as such? Isn’t having an incredibly poor grasp of essential world facts and an aversion to detail and active decision-making unpresidential?

Posted on by

A couple thoughts about the State of the Union Address:

Glad to see so many Democrats clapping when Bush announced that the PATRIOT Act was set to expire next year and before he had called for it to be renewed. Nice to see glimmers of resistance from the Dems – maybe this time they’ll vote against the damn thing.

Have to say I’m not quite sure what Bush meant by “weapons of mass destruction-related program activities” – but I guess that’s the idea. Were the Iraqis hosting academic conferences about WMD?

If Bush believes that alluding to a constitutional marriage denying homosexual couples the right to marriage without explicitly calling for it with mollify both the “religious right” and the “soccer moms,” he’s got another think coming.

Giving gay couples the same legal protections as heterosexual ones? Not, contrary to conservative dogma, “special rights.” Giving religious groups a free pass to ignore anti-discrimination law and still receive federal funding on account of being religious? There are your special rights.

Howard Dean’s primal scream Monday night I think we can agree didn’t make him new friends. But how many people actually found the Daschle-Pelosi fireside chat to be a more effective response to a speech that was a paen to the radical right?

The Center for American Progress offers some line-by-line parshanut (commentary).

Posted on by

Jacob highlights (first here, then here) a deeply troubling and shamefully unreported story: US troops being used to destroy and dismantle Iraqi trade union headquarters and arrest their leaders – this in the context of continued US maintenance of Ba’athist labor laws. Of course, it’s easy to become numb to this kind of rank hypocrisy from this administration – but vital not to. Enforcing Saddam’s Pinkerton policies ranks up there with appealing to Cuban sovereignty to justify abusing POWs in Camp X-Ray and co-operating with the “evildoers” at the UN to hamstring global access to contraception. Let’s not forget the Bush Doctrine:

If you can make something that others value, you should be able to sell it to them. If others make something that you value, you should be able to buy it. This is real freedom…

Those other freedoms are just to be trotted out when the situation calls for a moral fig leaf.

Lodge your protest here.

Posted on by

Elton Beard at BusyBusyBusy has devoted his site as late to sentence-encapsulations of pieces by authors of the right (and whatever that place is that Tom Friedman is of), making sometimes for cheap shots and other times for biting satire. His summary of this Condoleeza Rice piece is right on the mark:

Shorter Condoleezza Rice:

We attacked Iraq without provocation in order to transform it into a democracy and so enhance world peace, as countries with elected leaders do not attack other countries without provocation.

Posted on by

This must be why President Bush doesn’t do press conferences more often.

One highlight would be the implication (in the context of defending himself as tolerant of gay people despite not wanting them to have civil rights like marriage) that homosexuals are sinners:

I am mindful that we’re all sinners and I caution those who may try to take a speck out of the neighbor’s eye when they got a log in their own,” the president said. “I think it is important for our society to respect each individual, to welcome those with good hearts.”

Another would be blaming the failure of massive tax cuts to jump-start the economy on the media’s choice to cover his desire to go to war:

I remember on our TV screens–I’m not suggesting which network did this, but it said: “March to war,” every day from last summer until the spring: “March to war, march to war, march.” That’s not a very conducive environment for people to take risks when they hear “march to war” all the time.

Posted on by

Looks like Bush may be losing support among another traditionally Republican bloc of voters:

“He pats us on the back with his speeches and stabs us in the back with his actions,” said Charles A. Carter of Shawnee, Okla., a retired Navy senior chief petty officer. “I will vote non-Republican in a heart beat if it continues as is.”

“I feel betrayed,” said Raymond C. Oden Jr., a retired Air Force Chief Master Sergeant now living in Abilene, Texas.

Many veterans say they will not vote for Bush or any Republican in 2004 and are considering voting for a Democrat for the first time. Others say they will sit out the election, angry with Bush and Republicans but unwilling to support Democrats, whom they say are no better at keeping promises to veterans. Some say they will still support Bush and his party despite their ire.

While there are no recent polls to measure veterans’ political leanings, any significant erosion of support for Bush and Republicans could hurt in a close election. It could be particularly troublesome in states such as Florida that are politically divided and crowded with military retirees.

Registered Republican James Cook, who retired to Fort Walton Beach, Fla., after 24 years in the Air Force, said he is abandoning a party that he said abandoned him. “Bush is a liar,” he said. “The Republicans in Congress, with very few exceptions, are gutless party lapdogs who listen to what puts money in their own pockets or what will get them re-elected.”

…Since 1891, anyone retiring after a full military career has had their retirement pay reduced dollar for dollar for any Veterans Administration checks they get for a permanent service-related disability. However, a veteran who served a two-or-four-year tour does not have a similar reduction in Social Security or private pension.

A majority of members of Congress, from both parties, wants to change the law. A House proposal by Rep. Jim Marshall, D-Ga., has 345 co-sponsors.

But it would cost as much as $5 billion a year to expand payments to 670,000 disabled veterans, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld earlier this month told lawmakers that the president would veto any bill including the change.

The proposal is stuck in committee. A recent effort to bring it to the full House of Representatives failed, in part because only one Republican signed the petition.

“The cost is exorbitant. And we are dealing with a limited budget,” said Harald Stavenas, a spokesman for the House Armed Services Committee…

Good for these vets for deciding that the ones who want to deploy them for unjust and unnecessary warfare abroad and then welcome them back to the same shaft designated for every other working-class American are not on their side. The (first) Gulf War, and the official refusal to treat or even recognize the Gulf War Syndrome our soldiers suffered from exposure to our weapons, is only the most disturbing case. On a related note, one of the gratifying changes to see at the most recent round of anti-war protests was a departure from the pitfall too many on the left fell into in Vietnam: targeting the largely working class soldiers who carry out orders rather than the men who sit behind desks who send them. Looks like the latter group may be in for a comeuppance…

Posted on by

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

On Wednesday morning, when the ABC news show reported from Fallujah, where the division is based, the troops gave the reporters an earful. One soldier said he felt like he’d been “kicked in the guts, slapped in the face.” Another demanded that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld quit.

The retaliation from Washington was swift.

“It was the end of the world,” said one officer Thursday. “It went all the way up to President Bush and back down again on top of us. At least six of us here will lose our careers.”

First lesson for the troops, it seemed: Don’t ever talk to the media “on the record” — that is, with your name attached — unless you’re giving the sort of chin-forward, everything’s-great message the Pentagon loves to hear.

And it’s one, two, three, what are we fighting for…

Posted on by

Ari Fleischer closes out his time as Prevaricator-in-Chief, well, appropriately:

“I think the bottom has been gotten to …

No, we said it didn’t rise to a Presidential level. That’s what we’ve said, that in hindsight, we now realize it did not rise to a Presidential level. There is still — it would be also erroneous for anybody to report that the information about whether or not Iraq sought uranium from Africa was wrong. No one can accurately tell you that it was wrong. That is not known.”

(as quoted by Josh Marshall)

This may not top telling reporters to ask Pakistan about US policy towards Pakistan, or to count the number of felons working in the White House for themselves…but it’s a classic nonetheless.

Posted on by

From a piece by Robert Scheer:

In a Washington Post interview, Wilson added, “It really comes down to the administration misrepresenting the facts on an issue that was a fundamental justification for going to war. It begs the question: What else are they lying about?”

Those are the carefully chosen words of a 23-year career diplomat who, as the top U.S. official in Baghdad in 1990, was praised by former President Bush for his role as the last American to confront Saddam face-to-face after the dictator invaded Kuwait. In a cable to Baghdad, the President told Wilson: “What you are doing day in and day out under the most trying conditions is truly inspiring. Keep fighting the good fight.”

As Wilson observed wryly, “I guess he didn’t realize that one of these days I would carry that fight against his son’s administration.”

Posted on by

Ari Fleischer on mounting evidence that the White House intentionally misled the American people and the world for the sake of building support for the first test of the Bush Doctrine:

“The President has moved on.”

Feel better yet?