Archive for May 27th, 2007
Climax Blues Band
Louisiana Blues
from Raw Story
by Michael Roston
It amazes me that West Point would even consider this lying, five time deferment, cheating war-monger to address their graduating class. But it’s not my decision
Vice President Dick Cheney criticized the notion of applying the Geneva Conventions to individuals captured in the course of the war on terrorism in a Saturday commencement address at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York.
“Capture one of these killers, and he’ll be quick to demand the protections of the Geneva Convention and the Constitution of the United States,” the Vice President said in the Saturday morning speech. “Yet when they wage attacks or take captives, their delicate sensibilities seem to fall away.”
Cheney delivered the remarks in the context of moral and ethical lessons that the graduating cadets at West Point had learned in the course of their study.
“You have lived by a code of honor, and internalized that code as West Point men and women always do,” he said. “As Army officers on duty in the war on terror, you will now face enemies who oppose and despise everything you know to be right, every notion of upright conduct and character, and every belief you consider worth fighting for and living for.”
Recently, West Point instructors have complained of the difficulty of persuading Army cadets to adhere to the principles of the Geneva Conventions in the war on terrorism. A February article in the New Yorker highlighted a dialog on the problem between West Point’s dean and Joel Surnow, producer of the hit Fox television program ‘24.’
“This past November, U.S. Army Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, the dean of the United States Military Academy at West Point, flew to Southern California to meet with the creative team behind ‘24,’” wrote Jane Mayer in the magazine. “Finnegan, who is a lawyer, has for a number of years taught a course on the laws of war to West Point seniors - cadets who would soon be commanders in the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. He always tries, he said, to get his students to sort out not just what is legal but what is right. However, it had become increasingly hard to convince some cadets that America had to respect the rule of law and human rights, even when terrorists did not. One reason for the growing resistance, he suggested, was misperceptions spread by ‘24,’ which was exceptionally popular with his students. As he told me, ‘The kids see it, and say, ”If torture is wrong, what about ‘24?””
read more at RAW STORY
cross posted at DAILY KOS
by BarbinMD
Sun May 27, 2007
On May 28, 2001, George W. Bush gave his first Memorial Day address. At that point in time, there were zero fatalities in Bush’s Global War on Terror. On that day he said:
It is not in our nature to seek out wars and conflicts.
Unfortunately, it was in his nature and four months after speaking those words, the terrorist attacks of September 11th “changed everything.”
And as the post 9/11 events unfolded and Bush planned for his war but not for the peace, it’s too bad he didn’t remember something else he said that Memorial Day:
We know that they all loved their lives as we love ours. We know they had a place in the world, families waiting for them, and friends they expected to see again. We know that they thought of a future, just as we do, with plans and hopes for a long and full life.
By May 27, 2002, there were 34 fatalities in Bush’ GWOT when he made his second Memorial Day address from Normandy.
Words can only go so far in capturing the grief and sense of loss for the families of those who died in all our wars. For some military families in America and in Europe, the grief is recent, with the losses we have suffered in Afghanistan. They can know, however, that the cause is just and, like other generations, these sacrifices have spared many others from tyranny and sorrow.
This was when we were in Afghanistan, going after al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and those responsible for attacking America. But as we now know, the plans for Iraq had been made months before and on this Memorial Day, Bush floated one of the talking points for the upcoming war:
...In the nearly 14 decades since, our nation’s battles have all been far from home. Here on the continent of Europe were some of the fiercest of those battles, the heaviest losses, and the greatest victories.
And in all those victories American soldiers came to liberate, not to conquer.
Less than a year later, the mission was accomplished and when Bush made his third Memorial Day address on May 26, 2003, there were 275 total fatalities in his GWOT. On that day he said:
…we have laid to rest Americans who fell in the battle of Iraq. One of the funerals was for Marine Second Lieutenant Frederick Pokorney Junior, of Jacksonville, North Carolina. His wife, Carolyn, received a folded flag. His two year old daughter, Taylor, knelt beside her mother at the casket to say a final goodbye.
read more at DAILY KOS
from the Longview News-Journal
AMHERST, Mass. - President Bush’s former chief of staff Andrew Card was loudly booed by hundreds of students and faculty members as he rose to accept an honorary degree at the University of Massachusetts on Friday.
The boos and catcalls - including those from faculty members who stood on stage with Card - drowned out Provost Charlena Seymour’s remarks as she awarded the honorary doctorate in public service. Protesters claim Card lied to the American people in the early days of the Iraq war and should not have been honored at the graduate student commencement.
Card smiled slightly while Seymour spoke and raised his hand in thanks, then sat down without speaking.
Afterward he ignored a reporter’s question about the protesters. “It was a great honor and a privilege to be here,” he said.
The protests were mainly contained to an area in the back of the campus arena, though many of the faculty members on stage joined the three- to four- minute outburst.
One faculty member on stage held a sign: “Card - no honor, no degree.” Another sign said, “War criminals go home.”
Chancellor John Lombardi declined to comment on the protests or Card’s honorary degree.
Before the commencement ceremony, about 100 faculty members and students sang anti-war songs, handed out leaflets and waved signs outside the arena.
read more at the NEWS-JOURNAL
from The Rockridge Institute
So many (including those of us at Blue Herald) have criticized Congress for “softballing” a new spending bill and giving in to President Bush’s demands for “his way”. His critique of Democrats in the House and Senate before he vetoed the first Iraq Accountability Act is just another example of his bullying and arrogance that has been the norm of the Bush White House.
It’s time for action and time for all progressives to speak up. But to speak up intelligently means being informed correctly, knowing what you’re talking about and knowing that you are correct.
The following article appeared on the Rockridge Institutes website. Below, we’ll post the link where you can download (in pdf) George Lakoff’s critical pamphlet
Critics of Congress’s passage this week of the Iraq supplemental spending bill lament a lack of political courage. But Congress would find it easier to act courageously if the public understood the constitutional stakes. And that public understanding requires correct and persistent framing by Congress itself. What needs to have been framed - indeed what still needs to be framed - is Congress’s constitutional responsibility and power to set the course on military missions like Iraq.
Thinking Points: Communicating our American Values and Vision is George Lakoff and the Rockridge Institute’s handbook for the grassroots progressive community. You, the progressive community, have expressed a need for a short, easy-to-read systematic account of the progressive vision, for the morals and principles that apply across issue areas, and for all the essentials of framing. That, along with extensive argument analysis and an important new explanation of the so-called political center, is what we’ve written. We are confident that this book will empower progressives to express themselves in an authentic, values-driven fashion.
The book is now available to order online at Powells, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Cody’s Books and in bookstores across the country, and has a list price of $10.
Join a discussion of Thinking Points on the Rockridge Nation web community. Whether you are new to the idea of framing and the work of George Lakoff or simply wish to delve deeper, we hope that you will join us. This is a great time and place to ask questions and share your thoughts, if you are interested in learning more about framing and how to express progressive values more effectively. The discussion starts with a look at the first chapter of Thinking Points, and will be followed with discussion of a new chapter each week.
download “Thinking Points” in pdf
By Emily Bazelon and Dahlia Lithwick
from SLATE ONLINE
Monica Goodling and the “girl” card: Nobody seems to want to go there, so we will.
Let’s pretend for a moment that the world divides into two types of women: the soft, shy, girly kind who live to serve and the brash, aggressive feminists who live to emasculate. Not our paradigm, but one that’s more alive than dead.
When she was White House liaison in Alberto Gonzales‘ Justice Department, Monica Goodling, 33, had the power to hire and fire seasoned government lawyers who had taken the bar when she was still carrying around a plastic Hello Kitty purse. Goodling, in fact, described herself as a “type-A woman” who blocked the promotion of another type-A woman basically because the office couldn’t tolerate infighting between two strong women. (”I’m not just partisan! I’m sexist, too!”) That move sounds pretty grown-up and steely. Yet in her testimony this week before the House judiciary committee, Goodling turned herself back into a little girl, and it’s worth pointing out that the tactic worked brilliantly.
 Look past Goodling’s long, silky blond hair, which may or may not have been a distraction. She’s entitled to have pretty hair. Look past her trembling hand as she swore her oath and the tremulous voice as she described her “family” at Justice. What really shot Goodling into the stratosphere of baby-doll girls were her own whispered words: “At heart,” she testified, “I am a fairly quiet girl, who tries to do the right thing and tries to treat people kindly along the way.” [Late-breaking discovery, courtesy of a sharp reader: Goodling used the word girl in the written rather than spoken version of her testimony.] The idea, of course, was to scrub away her past image as ruthless, power-mad, and zealously Christian. But-as professor Sandy Levinson noted almost immediately over at Balkinization-it was in calling herself a “girl” that the 33-year-old did herself a great favor. It was a signal to the committee that she was no Kyle Sampson. Or Anita Hill.
To be sure, plenty of twenty- and thirty- and eightysomethings refer to themselves and their friends as girls. Particularly when there are mojitos around. But they don’t often do so before the U.S. Congress. The same Goodling who once wanted to be powerful, so powerful that she refused to relinquish her power to hire and fire assistant U.S. attorneys even when she changed jobs at the Justice Department, painted herself as helpful and empathetic and out of the loop. She testified that the biggest and most important part of her job was hooking up employees with tickets for sporting events. The little matter of firing assistant U.S. attorneys was a minor extracurricular. She testified that she went to a Christian school because of her devotion to “service.” One half expected her to leap up out of the witness chair and start offering canapés to the assembled members of Congress.
more at SLATE
HOBART, Australia - Warner Bros. will donate money from the sale of DVDs featuring Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck to help efforts to save the Tasmanian Devil from extinction, an Australian official said Saturday.
The Looney Tunes character Taz - a whirling, growling rival to Bugs Bunny - is based on the Australian marsupial, which is being threatened by contagious cancer in its homeland, the island state of Tasmania.
State Tourism, Arts and Environment Minister Paula Wriedt said Warner Bros. had struck a deal with the government to donate one Australian dollar - the equivalent of 82 cents - for each sale from a new series of DVDs to be released in Australia featuring the company’s cartoon characters.
Proceeds would be donated to a fund managed by the University of Tasmania to help the animals, Wriedt said in a statement.
“This partnership will go a long way to assist in raising funds, awareness and future opportunities to ensure the survival of the Tasmanian Devil,” she said.
A spokesman for Warner Bros. did not immediately return calls for comment on Saturday.
The fox-like animals with powerful jaws and a bloodcurdling growl are being wiped out by a contagious cancer that creates grotesque facial tumors.
The disease was first noticed in the mid-1990s in Tasmania’s northeast, where 90 percent of the devils have since perished. It is spreading south and west, and scientists estimate that within five years, there will be no disease-free population in Tasmania - the only place in the world where the devils exist outside zoos.
Programs to try to save them include plans to relocate breeding pairs to island sanctuaries.
Normally, I don’t like to post a commercial here. But I couldn’t resist today.
It’s for Snickers Candy Bars featuring Mr. T. The funniest part of the ad, in my
opinion is the final “tag line” at the very end.
Enjoy!
from the International Herald-Tribune
By Michael Kamber
Published: May 27, 2007
BAGHDAD: Staff Sergeant David Safstrom does not regret his previous tours in Iraq, not even a difficult second stint when two comrades were killed while trying to capture insurgents.
“In Mosul, in 2003, it felt like we were making the city a better place,” he said. “There was no sectarian violence, Saddam was gone, we were tracking down the bad guys. It felt awesome.”
But now on his third deployment in Iraq, he is no longer a believer in the mission. The pivotal moment came, he says, this past February when soldiers killed a man setting a roadside bomb. When they searched the bomber’s body, they found identification showing him to be a sergeant in the Iraqi Army.
“I thought, ‘What are we doing here? Why are we still here?’ ” said Safstrom, a member of Delta Company of the 1st Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry, 82nd Airborne Division. “We’re helping guys that are trying to kill us. We help them in the day. They turn around at night and try to kill us.”
His views are echoed by most of his fellow soldiers in Delta Company, renowned for its aggressiveness.
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A small minority of Delta Company soldiers - the younger, more recent enlistees in particular - seem to still wholeheartedly support the war. Others are ambivalent, torn between fear of losing more friends in battle, longing for their families and a desire to complete their mission.
With few reliable surveys of soldiers’ attitudes, it is impossible to simply extrapolate from the small number of soldiers in Delta Company. But in interviews with more than a dozen soldiers over a one-week period, most said they were disillusioned by repeated deployments, by what they saw as the abysmal performance of Iraqi security forces and by a conflict that they considered a civil war, one they had no ability to stop.
They had seen shadowy militia commanders installed as Iraqi Army officers, they said, had come under increasing attack from roadside bombs - planted within sight of Iraqi Army checkpoints - and had fought against Iraqi soldiers whom they thought were their allies.
“In 2003, 2004, 100 percent of the soldiers wanted to be here, to fight this war,” said Sergeant First Class David Moore, a self-described “conservative Texas Republican” and platoon sergeant who strongly advocates an American withdrawal. “Now, 95 percent of my platoon agrees with me.”
It is not a question of loyalty, the soldiers insist. Safstrom, for example, comes from a thoroughly military family. His mother and father have served in the armed forces, as have his three sisters, one brother and several uncles. One week after the Sept. 11 attacks, he walked into a recruiter’s office and joined the army.
read more at The International Herald-Tribune
 BlueHerald Image We’re talking about taking my Mom out on the boat tomorrow. We don’t have a ramp, nor do we have a floating dock, so depending on the tide, it can be hard to get on and off the boat. So my boyfriend and my Mom are trying to figure out a good way to get her on the boat. They’re talking about blowing up an air mattress and sticking it on the deck and just tossing her on. (they kid) I leave the room, come back in and they’ve figured that will work. And just to be safe, she’ll wear a helmet. Oh Good Lord somebody help me………. See Bro……what your Mother is up to?
This article is from the NYTimes Select, so I’m posting it in it’s entirety.
Frank Rich,
N.Y. Times
WHEN all else fails, those pious Americans who conceived and directed the Iraq war fall back on moral self-congratulation: at least we brought liberty and democracy to an oppressed people. But that last-ditch rationalization has now become America’s sorriest self-delusion in this tragedy.
However wholeheartedly we disposed of their horrific dictator, the Iraqis were always pawns on the geopolitical chessboard rather than actual people in the administration’s reckless bet to “transform” the Middle East. From “Stuff happens!” on, nearly every aspect of Washington policy in Iraq exuded contempt for the beneficiaries of our supposed munificence. Now this animus is completely out of the closet. Without Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz to kick around anymore, the war’s dead-enders are pinning the fiasco on the Iraqis themselves. Our government abhors them almost as much as the Lou Dobbs spear carriers loathe those swarming “aliens” from Mexico.
Iraqis are clamoring to get out of Iraq. Two million have fled so far and nearly two million more have been displaced within the country. (That’s a total of some 15 percent of the population.) Save the Children reported this month that Iraq’s child’survival rate is falling faster than any other nation’s. One Iraqi in eight is killed by illness or violence by the age of 5. Yet for all the words President Bush has lavished on Darfur and AIDS in Africa, there has been a deadly silence from him about what’s happening in the country he gave “God’s gift of freedom.”
Read more »
TRIPOLI, Lebanon - A majority of families from a besieged Palestinian refugee camp caught in the crossfire between Islamic militants and the Lebanese army have fled but thousands remain trapped inside, a U.N. official said Sunday.
The Nahr al-Bared camp, located near the outskirts of this northern Lebanon port city, was calm Sunday after sporadic gunfire overnight between the army and Fatah Islam militants inside punctured a four-day-old truce.
Hoda al-Turk, a spokeswoman for U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees, known as UNRWA, said more 5,000 refugee families - or about 25,000 refugees - have left the camp since the fighting began one week ago. The camp is home to about 31,000 people.
A majority of the families have fled to the nearby Beddawi refugee camp, while others are staying in Tripoli and other villages, she said.
In a videotape obtained Saturday by AP Television News in Tripoli, the head of the Fatah Islam, Shaker Youssef al-Absi, said his fighters would not surrender but would kill those who storm the camp.
“We wish to die for the sake of God … Sunni people are the spearhead against the Zionist Americans,” said the bearded leader, who is suspected of having ties to al-Qaida. He was shown seated before a black banner, as another militant holding a machine gun stood next to him. The tape also showed militants training in an unidentified camp.
More at Yahoo News
What a total mess Bush made……….
Employees of Blackwater USA, a private security firm under contract to the State Department, opened fire on the streets of Baghdad twice in two days last week, and one of the incidents provoked a standoff between the security contractors and Iraqi forces, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.
A Blackwater guard shot and killed an Iraqi driver Thursday near the Interior Ministry, according to three U.S. officials and one Iraqi official who were briefed on the incident but spoke on condition of anonymity because of a pending investigation. On Wednesday, a Blackwater-protected convoy was ambushed in downtown Baghdad, triggering a furious battle in which the security contractors, U.S. and Iraqi troops and AH-64 Apache attack helicopters were firing in a congested area.
Blackwater confirmed that its employees were involved in two shootings but could neither confirm nor deny that there had been any casualties, according to a company official who declined to be identified because of the firm’s policy of not addressing incidents publicly.
Blackwater’s security consulting division holds at least $109 million worth of State Department contracts in Iraq, and its employees operate in a perilous environment that sometimes requires the use of deadly force. But last week’s incidents underscored how deeply these hired guns have been drawn into the war, their murky legal status and the grave consequences that can ensue when they take aggressive action.
More at the Washington Post
Sunday Talk
* Meet the Press: Gov. Bill Richardson (D-NM)
* Face the Nation: Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL); Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI); CBS’s Kimberly Dozier
* This Week: Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ); Commerce Sec. Carlos Gutierrez; Jim Gilmore (R-VA); roundtable of LA Times’ Ron Brownstein, Donna Brazile, Jake Tapper and George Will; voices segment features Beth and Michael Belle (parents of fallen Marine)
* Fox News Sunday: Mike Huckabee (R-AR); Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA); Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-TX); commencement speeches
* Late Edition: Pakistani PM Shaukat Aziz; Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY); Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA); Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE); Maj. Gen. William Caldwell; Walter Isaacson; roundtable of Candy Crowley, Andrea Koppel and Elaine Quijano.
TV Alerts
* Political Capital with Al Hunt: Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on 5/25 (Bloomberg, repeats thru weekend)
* Chris Matthews Show 5/26-5/27: Howard Fineman, Gloria Borger, Andrew Sullivan, Josie Hearn discuss “Will new revelations about Hillary Clinton derail her, despite her double-digit lead going into the summer? JFK would have turned 90 this week. Conspiracy theories of his assassination still live on in two new books.” Quotes here.
* Newsmakers (C-SPAN, 10am): FEMA dir. David Paulison on 5/27
* Road to the WH (C-SPAN, 6:30pm): 08ers delivering commencement addresses
* 60 Minutes: 1st Battalion of the 133rd Infantry of the IA National Guard in Iraq, their families and transition to and from Iraq on 5/27
* Q&A (C-SPAN, 8pm): CAP’s Joseph Cirincione on nuclear proliferation on 5/27
* “Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed” (History Channel, 9pm, 5/28) features Stephen Colbert, Nancy Pelosi, Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw and Newt Gingrich.
* Tavis Smiley: “Right to Return: New Home Movies from the Lower 9th Ward” for week of 5/28
* Today Show: Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) on 5/29; Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) on 5/30
* “Flashpoint: Kimberly Dozier and the Army’s Fourth ID — A Story Of Bravery, Recovery And Lives Forever Changed” on CBS at 10pm on 5/29
* Letterman: Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) rerun on 5/29
* Leno: Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) rerun on 5/29
* Regis & Kelly: Charles Gibson on 5/30
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