crayz.org

Rep. Doggett:

When the surge was announced, the White House said, “wait til the summer.” And as the summer approached, the White House said, “wait til September.” Well, now that this much overrated September is here, they cry, “wait til next year.” The only real mystery about President Bush’s September decision has been what new excuse he would offer to justify staying the same old deadly course. And as the American people have seen through the duplicity of each and other excuse, the President has returned to his original ploy: 9/11. Coincidentally, just as we receive this report on the anniversary of 9/11. He claims that, quote, “the same folks that are bombing in Iraq are the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11th.” That is false and he knows it’s false.

This is the plan, apparently:

Or as one blogger interprets:

Indeed

I just returned from Iraq on Monday (Aug.27), and I thought I might describe some of the impressions that I got and what I might expect will happen in the Congress in September.

I’m a member of the Defense Appropriations Committee, and it was in that capacity that we talked with General Petraeus, Oderno, and the rest of them, as well as senior Iraqi leaders. We have weaponized that entire country. There are more jersey barriers than blades of grass, and more weapons than there are people. The military is performing well, and that’s what Petraeus is going to say. The result of the military success is going to be wholly inconsistent with our values, and certainly unworthy of the sacrifice of our military families. You could have the greatest car ever manufactured and drive it at the right speed, but if you don’t have the right map, you’re never going to get to your destination, and that’s the situation we have with the military. I personally think we put too much money into the military, but any way you put it, the end result is going to be Shiite theocracy that is suppressive of woman’s rights, human rights, and is closely aligned with Iran, with the most conservative elements of the Iranian government.

The Iraqi police have coordinated with the Shia militia, and they’ve cleansed most of Baghdad of Sunnis. The last time I was there, Baghdad was about 50 percent Shia, 50 percent Sunni. Now it is more than 75 percent Shia. There have been 4 million people from the Sunni middle class forced out of their homes, 2 million out of the country. There are 20,000 people who have been imprisoned—85 percent of them are Sunni. This is in country when only 20 percent of the population are Sunni. Only 10 percent of them have actually been charged with any crime. The police under the Ministry of Interior are corrupt: They are stealing weapons and money, and it is an embarrassment that we are supporting and empowering them. The Malaki government is not something we should be supporting. They are part of the Dawa Party, a semi-terrorist Islamic secret society, and the most moderate is the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), with very close ties to Iran. So I won’t go into that any more, but I’m just saying that the end result, even if we are successful, is not anything we could ever be proud of.

We know now that the President is going to recommend an additional 50 billion dollars on top of the 145 billion that he’s already said he’d going to request as supplemental. In the House, we’ve already passed 560 billion for the regular bill, and passed another 130 billion dollar supplemental earlier this year. If you add all that up, it comes to almost 800 billion dollars that we have made available for war making in this country. That’s more money than we’ve ever devoted to any other initiative; it’s more money than we would need to make this a better country and a better world.

One of the most striking juxtapositions is New Orleans. With the 450 million dollars we are spending everyday now in Iraq, we could transform New Orleans, and rescue it and make it a city we could be proud of. Instead we’re rebuilding Baghdad, and Mosul, and Tikrit and I call tell you that the Iraqi people are not appreciative. The Government is. The Government is because they’re using us and getting wealthy on our money. The people are oppressed and never see their government, and blame us for the conditions that we have imposed on them

Now, to talk about strategy: I’m going to recommend that Mr. Murtha reject the 50 billion entirely, take the 14 billion, and use it solely for withdrawal purposes. I asked Gen. Petraeus in Iraq whether he had made plans for withdrawal, and he said “No! There are no contingency plans for withdrawal.” He said: “I don’t know how to do it. It takes six months just to close down one military base, and you can’t do many simultaneously.” You can check on how many military bases we have all over Iraq. So basically they’re created a situation that they think precludes any ability to withdraw from that country in any reasonable period of time. I hope that we are going to recommend that the money that the President is requesting for Iraq be used solely for withdrawing our troops, weapons, and facilities.

And I think it is important for us to withdraw our weapons, because if we don’t take all that sophisticated, lethal weaponry out of that country they’re going to use it to kill each other eventually.

Now, one thing about Al Qaeda, since the President continues to mention Al Qaeda—there are only about 100 Al Qaeda in all of Baghdad, and only 1000 in the entire country. Now granted, they will pay people to do their dirty work, but there are very few Al Qaeda, it is hardly a war, and a policing action and [not?] and occupation, if anything. They are not going to be a sustained force in Iraq. Just to give you one example: Al Qaeda is saying that it’s a sin to smoke. They’re cutting of the fingers of smokers. Everybody in Iraq smokes cigarettes. It hasn’t been discussed, but it’s a principal the Sunni sheiks have turned against Al Qaeda in Anbar province. We’re taking credit for it, which is fine, but a lot of it is a reflection that this is a secular society, and all least the Sunni wont tolerate the Talibanization of their villages.

To go back to the supplemental: I hope we will only use the supplemental for the purposes of withdrawal. If we are successful, and I don’t know if we will be, but I know this is what Jack Murtha wants to accomplish, and if we can get it through the whole appropriations committee, and the House leadership stands firm, I think we might be able to get 220 votes in the House. That looks to be about what we can get in that situation, assuming we get two or three Republicans. The Senate is much more difficult, I don’t think we can get sixty votes in the Senate. As you know, we need more than a majority to kill a filibuster, and I don’t think even Senator Warner would support language that would do that. But if we could get sixty votes in the Senate, the President would veto it, and we can’t override a veto. It’s inconceivable that we could. So this war is going to continue until we have a national referendum, and that’s going to occur in November of 2008, when we elect a President who is absolutely committed to ending this misguided military mission that will make future generations of Americans ashamed what this generation of Americans allowed to happen. I’ve talked too much, but if anyone has any questions, I’d be happy to respond.

Pretty depressing. There’s clearly a lot of Democrats who deserve to be thrown out of office sooner rather than later

On Sept. 18, 2002, CIA director George Tenet briefed President Bush in the Oval Office on top-secret intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, according to two former senior CIA officers. Bush dismissed as worthless this information from the Iraqi foreign minister, a member of Saddam’s inner circle, although it turned out to be accurate in every detail. Tenet never brought it up again….

On the eve of Sabri’s appearance at the United Nations in September 2002 to present Saddam’s case, the officer in charge of this operation met in New York with a “cutout” who had debriefed Sabri for the CIA….

The next day, Sept. 18, Tenet briefed Bush on Sabri. “Tenet told me he briefed the president personally,” said one of the former CIA officers. According to Tenet, Bush’s response was to call the information “the same old thing.” Bush insisted it was simply what Saddam wanted him to think. “The president had no interest in the intelligence,” said the CIA officer. The other officer said, “Bush didn’t give a fuck about the intelligence. He had his mind made up.”

But the CIA officers working on the Sabri case kept collecting information. “We checked on everything he told us.” French intelligence eavesdropped on his telephone conversations and shared them with the CIA. These taps “validated” Sabri’s claims, according to one of the CIA officers. The officers brought this material to the attention of the newly formed Iraqi Operations Group within the CIA. But those in charge of the IOG were on a mission to prove that Saddam did have WMD and would not give credit to anything that came from the French. “They kept saying the French were trying to undermine the war,” said one of the CIA officers.

The officers continued to insist on the significance of Sabri’s information, but one of Tenet’s deputies told them, “You haven’t figured this out yet. This isn’t about intelligence. It’s about regime change.”

The CIA officers on the case awaited the report they had submitted on Sabri to be circulated back to them, but they never received it. They learned later that a new report had been written. “It was written by someone in the agency, but unclear who or where, it was so tightly controlled. They knew what would please the White House. They knew what the king wanted,” one of the officers told me….

While one Iraqi source told the CIA that there were no WMD, information that was true but distorted to prove the opposite, another Iraqi source was a fabricator whose lies were eagerly embraced. “The real tragedy is that they had a good source that they misused,” said one of the former CIA officers. “The fact is there was nothing there, no threat. But Bush wanted to hear what he wanted to hear.”

The entire piece is sentence after sentence of damning expose on the inner-workings of the CIA and White House during the road to war. I still remember vividly all the people back in 2002 and early 2003 arguing that the government would never lie to us about the threat we faced from Iraq – if they said it, we should trust it and act accordingly

Turns out not only did they lie to us proles, but this cabal was hiding information from Powell, from the Senate, from the British… its absolutely mind-boggling that this entire administration isn’t in prison for what they did. We’ve spent a trillion dollars and nearly 3800 american lives on a lie

An interesting poll on the Democrats plans for Iraq:

What Democrats Think Clinton, Edwards and Obama will do in Iraq
1. Make no cutbacks in U.S. troops in Iraq 2. Leave a substantial number of troops in Iraq, but have them concentrate on training Iraqis and targeting Al Qaeda leaders in Iraq. 3. Start withdrawing troops within the next three months, with all troops out within nine months from now. 4. Begin an immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops in Iraq

Candidate	Option #1	Option #2	Option #3	Option #4
Clinton	6%	10%	48%	28%
Edwards	3%	15%	44%	15%
Obama	5%	10%	44%	27%

I’m not too clear on what Edwards has said, because overall I don’t find him a very compelling candidate. But as the original article notes, the correct answer for Obama and Clinton is clearly #2. It seems fairly obvious that most Democratic voters aren’t actually in favor of this option, and what’s more than Clinton and Obama are both trying (and succeeding) to mislead voters into believing they’re in favor of a much more significant withdrawl than they actually advocate

What I still can’t understand is what the heck they’re thinking a half-way withdrawal is going to accomplish. We’ll wind up with 60 thousand mostly non-combat troops sitting around in bases as the country falls apart around them. The only plausible explanation seems to be a desire to carry on indefinitely with permanent bases in Iraq, a phrase I’m sure would be political poison for the first to utter it. Pretty awful if this is the best we can get from any of the ‘top-tier’ candidates

Really, really scary:

Today I received a message from a friend who has excellent connections in Washington and whose information has often been prescient. According to this report, as in 2002, the rollout will start after Labor Day, with a big kickoff on September 11. My friend had spoken to someone in one of the leading neo-conservative institutions. He summarized what he was told this way:

They [the source’s institution] have “instructions” (yes, that was the word used) from the Office of the Vice-President to roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day; it will be coordinated with the American Enterprise Institute, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, Fox, and the usual suspects. It will be heavy sustained assault on the airwaves, designed to knock public sentiment into a position from which a war can be maintained. Evidently they don’t think they’ll ever get majority support for this—they want something like 35-40 percent support, which in their book is “plenty.”

Of course I cannot verify this report. But besides all the other pieces of information about this circulating, I heard last week from a former U.S. government contractor. According to this friend, someone in the Department of Defense called, asking for cost estimates for a model for reconstruction in Asia. The former contractor finally concluded that the model was intended for Iran. This anecdote is also inconclusive, but it is consistent with the depth of planning that went into the reconstruction effort in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The state of politics in America, 2007(via hilzoy):

“People say to me, ‘Well, what about the 30-second spots?’ ” said Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, referring to attack ads. He is pushing a bill to restore habeas corpus.

Who in god’s name worries about negative TV ads as a consequence of restoring one of the bedrocks of western civilization? The rest of the article is written proof that huge portions of the Democrats in Congress are complete opportunists who believe in nothing above their own worthless careers as rubber-stamping hacks. These people would vote for concentration camps if the polling went the right way

No one should be naive enough to believe that political considerations don’t influence the actions of Congressmen, but to literally stand for nothing? We might as well do away with the entire concept of a constitutional republic – its only advantages to the mob-rule of direct democracy are the inviolate rules and principles enshrined in the constitution, and the belief that legislators can make more informed, level-headed decisions than the hoi polloi. The Democrats are proving that neither of these are still applicable

I can almost muster more respect for the Republicans – they at least have the guts to ride their idiotic, failed policies down into flaming defeat. The Democrats would rather adopt the failed policies of the other side under the shockingly stupid belief that America put them in office to continue the methodical destruction of this country’s every founding principle

Seriously, wtf?

British media have carried stories about an Italian immigrant who murdered a schoolteacher and was sentenced to life in prison. He is about to be released after serving just 12 years. The government wants to deport him to Italy, but a combination of British human rights legislation and European Union law are making it impossible to do so. This does not bode well for deporting Islamic terrorists who call for the overthrow of the government and incite young people to acts of violence.

Abraham Lincoln said no nation can exist half slave and half free. Neither can a nation be sustained if it allows conditions that result in mass emigration, while importing huge numbers of foreigners who come from backgrounds that do not practice assimilation or tolerance of other beliefs. When one factors in the high number of abortions (one in five pregnancies are aborted in England and Wales), the high birth rates of immigrants (15 times those of white Britons), it doesn’t take a population expert to predict that the days of the England we have known may be numbered.

The problem for Britain and the United States isn’t just the change in demographics. It is the reluctance of both countries to inculcate the beliefs, history and, yes, religious ideals, which made our nations so successful that others wanted to come and be a part of them. The difference between many of the current immigrants and those of the past is that the previous ones wanted to become fully American or fully British. The current ones, in too many cases, would destroy what makes our countries unique. And the “leaders” of Britain and America refuse to stop it.

Shorter Cal Thomas: Britains have abortions and low birth rates, but dirty muslim immigrant terrorists breed like rabbits. Also muslims commit lots of crimes, which I will empirically prove via an anecdotal case of an italian murderer – italians and muslims are the same. In summation, both America and Britain have much to fear from brown-skinned immigrants

Actual data such as this make it clear that of Thomas’ figure of 500,000 British immigrants, the vast majority are “EEA nationals,” and it’s likely British emigrants are also moving to other countries within the European block. Although I’m sure Thomas doesn’t give a fuck, since his only purpose in writing such things is stirring up entirely unfounded racial and sectarian tensions

How wonderful that America is blessed with such a large contigent of racist, xenophobic fear-mongering assholes like this

Another one bites the dust – bye Gonzo

Too ironic to pass up – a sham corporation named after the hero of the worst(and also only) Ayn Rand book I’ve ever read turns out to have “no experience” at the task they were hired for. Their shoddy work contributed to the death of two firefighters, but perhaps now that they’ve been fired from the job they’ll have time to go invent a new incredibly strong steel alloy

hello , you have a very nice site, but Im hired to leave advertising comments on sites, sorry i hate to do it but i have to . If you dont like advertising comments please send me an email with your site address to ...........yahoo(dot)com and I will not write on your site. Sorry for inconvenience.

In response to another small step by our government:

Any government or office within the government (intelligence and other appropriately sensitive agencies aside) who are proud of their work should be encouraged and willing to discuss openly with the people who give them the authority and resources to do their jobs. This whole issue of lack of transparency is becoming a larger and larger problem with the government and again…. if we are not careful will result into a slide into fascism. Transparency of government is one of the bedrocks of a democracy, hell, even a republic. The current Whitehouse administration has dramatically accelerated this move towards fascism and again, I have to quote Milton Mayer’s book They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1939-1945 where an anonymous professor said “What happened was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to be governed by surprise, to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believe that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security.”

The Democrats prove themselves to be cowards, again. This country needs to get rid of the winner-take-all elections and implement instant-runoff or a similar system that would change the political calculus of the gutless incumbents on both sides of the aisle. Right now they’re all far more worried about appearing weak than actually being weak; they’d rather tear up the constitution and let troops die for nothing than lose a few votes to the fascist wing of the Republican party

Update: Russ Feingold continues his track record of being on the right side of every important issue ever:

“There was an intentional manipulation of the facts to get this legislation through,” said Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, a Democrat on the Intelligence Committee who voted against the plan.

The White House, Mr. Feingold said Friday in an interview, “has identified the one major remaining weakness in the Democratic Party, and that’s its unwillingness to stand up to the administration when it’s making a power grab regarding terrorism and national security.”

“They have figured out that all they have to do is start talking about an imminent terrorist threat, back it up against a Congressional recess, and they know the Democrats will cave,” he added.