Op-Ed
Even by the rushed standards of these presidential jaunts, Bush's current outing to Latin America is a pell-mell affair. First it was Brazil, still smarting from De Gaulle's crack on the way back out to the airport, that "this is not a serious country." Bush got to say hello to President Lula and visit a slum. Then it was Uruguay on Saturday, with Colombia scheduled for Sunday, Guatemala on Monday, Mexico on Tuesday. It's this kind of rushed travel that prompted Bush Sr., in his presidential jaunt around Asia, to mix too many shots of sake with his Ambien and throw up into the lap of the Japanese prime minister, Kiichi Miyazawa.
Today my family formally purchased and took over Air America Radio. Why? Because if progressive values were a stock, now is the time to buy.
This hasn't always been true, as the cycle of politics demonstrates. In recent decades, politics seems to have been governed by physics for every action, there's an opposite and equal reaction. William F. Buckley Jr. started The National Review in the 1950s to rebut what he saw as the dominance of liberalism in the academy and opinion journals like The Nation and The New Republic. From 1970-72, Public Citizen, Common Cause and the NRDC were all created in reaction to Nixon's depredations. Similarly, People For the American Way grew out of the rise of the Religious Right under Reagan in the mid-80s.
New progressive think tanks over the past 10 years, most recently and prominently the Center for American Progress, were created to counter AEI and Heritage. And of course, the Huffington Post and Air America were born in reaction to the electronic propaganda of Drudge and Limbaugh et. al.
This hasn't always been true, as the cycle of politics demonstrates. In recent decades, politics seems to have been governed by physics for every action, there's an opposite and equal reaction. William F. Buckley Jr. started The National Review in the 1950s to rebut what he saw as the dominance of liberalism in the academy and opinion journals like The Nation and The New Republic. From 1970-72, Public Citizen, Common Cause and the NRDC were all created in reaction to Nixon's depredations. Similarly, People For the American Way grew out of the rise of the Religious Right under Reagan in the mid-80s.
New progressive think tanks over the past 10 years, most recently and prominently the Center for American Progress, were created to counter AEI and Heritage. And of course, the Huffington Post and Air America were born in reaction to the electronic propaganda of Drudge and Limbaugh et. al.
Anybody who thought this was going to be an "easy war," please raise your hand.
By now, the horror and scandal have exceeded the expectations of even the harshest critics of the invasion - mine, for instance - and I numbly play Count the Quagmires along with the rest of the media and general public. The latest one has burst into national awareness with a piercing "what's next, for God's sake?"
Afghanistan, Iraq, New Orleans. All of them bear the mark of W. And now, incredibly, we learn of a gulag of wounded and emotionally shattered returning veterans, as forgotten and abandoned as nursing home residents in the Crescent City. Support our troops!
But what we're witnessing under George Bush is not what I would call incompetent leadership, any more than we witnessed, in an earlier, happier phase of his administration - the mission-accomplished phase - "leadership." What we have instead is the guileless void of an administration that has not even tried to lead, but rather, from the get-go has concentrated on manipulating national symbols and traditions to give the American public the appearance of leadership.
By now, the horror and scandal have exceeded the expectations of even the harshest critics of the invasion - mine, for instance - and I numbly play Count the Quagmires along with the rest of the media and general public. The latest one has burst into national awareness with a piercing "what's next, for God's sake?"
Afghanistan, Iraq, New Orleans. All of them bear the mark of W. And now, incredibly, we learn of a gulag of wounded and emotionally shattered returning veterans, as forgotten and abandoned as nursing home residents in the Crescent City. Support our troops!
But what we're witnessing under George Bush is not what I would call incompetent leadership, any more than we witnessed, in an earlier, happier phase of his administration - the mission-accomplished phase - "leadership." What we have instead is the guileless void of an administration that has not even tried to lead, but rather, from the get-go has concentrated on manipulating national symbols and traditions to give the American public the appearance of leadership.
The U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs is prepared to follow in Dick Cheney's footsteps and shoot a friend in the face. I just sat through a hearing on Iran, and there is apparently universal bipartisan agreement in the committee that Iranians feel kindly toward Americans and welcome them as friends, and that Iranians should be brutally punished by the toughest economic sanctions possible. This simple truth went unstated: sanctions kill.
Who remembers this exchange on your television a decade back?
Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: "We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?"
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it."
--60 Minutes (5/12/96)
Who remembers this exchange on your television a decade back?
Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: "We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?"
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it."
--60 Minutes (5/12/96)
The following is a remarkable interview of Karen Kwiatkowski who retired from the active duty USAF as a Lieutenant Colonel in early 2003. Her final assignment was in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Under Secretary for Policy Near East South Asia (NESA) Policy directorate. In her responses below, Kwiatkowski describes the manipulation of intelligence on Iraq and Iran and what it would take to avoid an attack on the latter.
I began the interview by asking about Undersecretary of Defense for policy Douglas Feith, whose actions in the Pentagon in the lead-up to the Iraq War were the subject of a recent report by the Pentagon Inspector General.
SWANSON: Did the operations led by Doug Feith gather intelligence?
I began the interview by asking about Undersecretary of Defense for policy Douglas Feith, whose actions in the Pentagon in the lead-up to the Iraq War were the subject of a recent report by the Pentagon Inspector General.
SWANSON: Did the operations led by Doug Feith gather intelligence?
As war wages on in the Middle East, there's a heated battle on Capitol Hill over which political party's proposals to continue the war are more PRO-TROOP. There's a raging debate over exactly what set of futile recommendations to the dictator living in the Vice President's mansion on Massachusetts Avenue amounts to the greatest PRO or ANTI TROOP agenda.
Leading contestants are:
1.-a Republican proposal to give Cheney and Bush another $93 billion off the books for the war, no questions asked.
2.-a Democratic proposal to give Cheney and Bush another $93 billion off the books for the war but reauthorize the war with new lies in place of the old ones and/or ask the President to issue a public statement whenever he sends troops to Iraq without proper equipment or training, but not actually DO anything if the President chooses not to make such a public statement.
Leading contestants are:
1.-a Republican proposal to give Cheney and Bush another $93 billion off the books for the war, no questions asked.
2.-a Democratic proposal to give Cheney and Bush another $93 billion off the books for the war but reauthorize the war with new lies in place of the old ones and/or ask the President to issue a public statement whenever he sends troops to Iraq without proper equipment or training, but not actually DO anything if the President chooses not to make such a public statement.
They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn,
But without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn.
We can break their haughty power; gain our freedom when we learn
That the Union makes us strong.
The House has just passed the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill that would effectively restore to Americans the internationally and domestically recognized but nonexistant right to form unions. The US labor movement has invested untold millions in lobbying for this victory, and plans to invest untold more in trying to achieve the same victory in the Senate in the coming months. Should that happen, the fate of the bill is already known. Cheney has promised to have Bush veto it.
But that's not all Bush intends to veto. Here's a recent Associated Press story:
The House has just passed the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill that would effectively restore to Americans the internationally and domestically recognized but nonexistant right to form unions. The US labor movement has invested untold millions in lobbying for this victory, and plans to invest untold more in trying to achieve the same victory in the Senate in the coming months. Should that happen, the fate of the bill is already known. Cheney has promised to have Bush veto it.
But that's not all Bush intends to veto. Here's a recent Associated Press story:
FOR THE WASHINGTON STATE SENATE HEARING CALLING FOR THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES TO INVESTIGATE AND CONSIDER HEARINGS ON EVIDENCE THAT COULD LEAD TO THE IMPEACHMENT OF PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH AND VICE-PRESIDENT RICHARD B. CHENEY
MARCH 1, 2007
MARCH 1, 2007
Wow, the weapons heavies had to cut and run. A sense of enlightened self-interest - the same stuff that legendary community organizer Saul Alinsky was preaching in Chicago's Back-of-the-Yards neighborhood six decades ago - enabled a bunch of little guys out West to stare down the future of nuclear warfare, and win.
This unprecedented development must be savored. Divine Strake, the simulated nuclear blast the Defense Threat Reduction Agency was initially planning to set off nine months ago at the Nevada Test Site near Las Vegas - which would have raised a 10,000-foot mushroom cloud of god-knows-what - has been scrapped for good. After several postponements and a round of power-point presentations at various locations downwind of the test site that did nothing but fuel people's outrage, it ain't gonna happen.
This unprecedented development must be savored. Divine Strake, the simulated nuclear blast the Defense Threat Reduction Agency was initially planning to set off nine months ago at the Nevada Test Site near Las Vegas - which would have raised a 10,000-foot mushroom cloud of god-knows-what - has been scrapped for good. After several postponements and a round of power-point presentations at various locations downwind of the test site that did nothing but fuel people's outrage, it ain't gonna happen.
On March 17, a huge mass of people will gather at the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C., and march from there to the Pentagon for the cause of impeachment and peace.
http://www.impeach07.org
A handful of pro-war people, some volunteer and some probably paid to be there, will stage a counter-demonstration. This relatively tiny pro-death contingent will garner 50 percent of the media coverage if those on the side of peace do everything right. If a single demonstrator for peace turns violent in any way, that story will take up far more than 50 percent of the news, and that news will hurt the cause of peace and justice.
A handful of pro-war people, some volunteer and some probably paid to be there, will stage a counter-demonstration. This relatively tiny pro-death contingent will garner 50 percent of the media coverage if those on the side of peace do everything right. If a single demonstrator for peace turns violent in any way, that story will take up far more than 50 percent of the news, and that news will hurt the cause of peace and justice.