Inaugural post of the new BI30 blog is online!

March 6, 2007 by mugsy.

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See you there! - Mugsy

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Bush’s Disasterous Economy: Adjusted for inflation, market has now officially gone BACKWARDS!

March 5, 2007 by mugsy.

ANNOUNCEMENT! The new BI30 blog is online and ready to go! Please REGISTER for the new blog to post comments and receive notification whenever the blog is updated! This post will be the final entry to the old blog! Visit the NEW “Mugsy’s Rap Sheet” here: www.bi30.org/wordpress/.

 
Last Tuesday, the DJIA (Dow Jones Industrial Average) fell a whopping 546 points before rebounding to close down 416.02 points (12,234.34 on Tuesday). The reason for the sudden decline: a nasty 9% drop in the China Market the night before. It used to be said of the U.S. Stock Market, “When the United States sneezes, the world catches cold”. Now the roles seem to have been reversed, and thanks to Bush’s economic policies, it is the U.S. stuck in bed with a nasty head cold when China sneezes. Good work, Dubya!

For the week, the Dow lost 530 points, closing at 12,114.10.

Now, plenty of people would like to tell you that… statistically… last weeks’ market plunge was not particularly significant. In terms of percentages, last week’s “4.4% drop doesn’t even rank in the Top 20 [worst weeks for the Dow]”. Yes, but few (if any) of those other market plunges took place in such a weak economy struggling for years just to keep its head above water. Those other declines they refer to were typically one-time events, taking place during an otherwise healthy economy that quickly absorbed them. Not so this time around.

I wrote about this in some detail last October when the Dow, after six years of Bush’s economic policies, *finally* surpassed the 11700+ record high of the Clinton Administration before a year of Republican Presidential campaigning talked he economy into a recession. But with last weeks’ decline, the true record of President Bush’s economic policies becomes clear…

On January 14, 2000, the Dow closed at a record high of 11,722.98. It took the Bush economy SIX YEARS to creep back up to that number, and adjusted for inflation (17% since 2000), the Dow had another 2,000 points to go. By comparison, the DJIA under Bush peaked at 12,514.98 on January 11th of this year, which, adjusted for inflation, was still 1,210 points shy of the 2000 record. On Bill Clinton’s last day in office, the DJIA closed at 10,587.59. Adjusted for inflation, that would be 12,396 today. Last Friday’s close of 12,114 is not just a pathetic gain of just 392 points IN SIX YEARS, when adjusted for inflation, has actually lost ground (equivalent to 10,346 in year 2000 dollars, a NEGATIVE NET LOSS of 241 points). That’s not just anemic, that’s “Last Rites” sickly.

During the entire Clinton Administration, (except during the election years of ‘96 & 2000 when Republicans had to talk down the economy just to compete), the Dow was setting new records every month. 100 point… sometimes even 200 point… gains were not unusual. And you can’t credit the Republican Congress for Clinton’s success because it is that same Congress that has been serving under Bush, and look how they’ve done.

For years, the Republicans insisted they could do better if only they had control over both the White House AND Congress, THEN we’d REALLY see the economy take off! So, Americans did. They handed the Presidency over to “the bosses son, the spoiled rich kid that had never run a successful business in his life” because… well… as far as I can figure… because he LOOKS LIKE his Dad. Dubya bears a stronger resemblance to his father than any of his three brothers (Neil, Jeb and Marvin). His brother Jeb had been governor of Florida longer than Dubya had been governor of Texas, whose marginal successes are easily attributable to the Clinton economy. Those things he actually had influence over were all disasters (Houston, with just under 2-million people, surpassing LA with just under 6-million, as becoming the most polluted city in the country, comes to mind). So the GOP controlled the reins of power and the first thing they did was ignore the most recent terrorist attack, ignored warnings of one yet to come, and launched an illegal, unprovoked and unnecessary war against Iraq without regard for the consequences.

Those (few) who (still) defend the Bush Administration’s policies/record, continue to blame “9/11” for all the Administrations’ ills. But that argument grows weaker by the day if, after nearly six years, the economy isn’t strong enough to shake off the impact of that fateful day. In fact, if the Dow is any indicator, the economy has long since rebounded from the impact of the 2001 attacks, but the rate of growth (or lack thereof) in our economy has been flat as a pancake.

When the stock market was growing by leaps & bounds under Bill Clinton, Republicans started floating the idea of privatizing Social Security. The argument being that investors saw their money grow FAR faster than the rate of growth in the Social Security Trust Fund during the same period. Just imagine where those seniors would be today had Republicans of gotten their way and let all those retirees pour their retirement into the stock market? This has always been an atrociously bad idea because the ONLY way for it to work is to deny those who choose to “roll the dice” any safety net. If you loose your money, no one is going to bail you out. If you go broke and end up living on the street, too bad. You gambled and lost. WHY must it work that way? Because if we allowed people to risk their Social Security funds in the Market AND still promise to take care of them should they lose all their money, then everyone would just invest their money in the riskiest, high-dollar venture with the biggest payoff. And if it fails, no problem, because the government is still promising you enough money to live on. And just where is the government supposed to get that money from if everyone is pulling it out to make private investments? Your guess is as good as mine.

(UPDATE: Sunday evening, CBS’s “60 Minutes” aired an interview with Comptroller General of the United States, David Walker, who spoke on this very subject (story and video). If you don’t believe what I’m telling you here, maybe you’ll believe him.)

When FDR created Social Security in the wake of the 1929 Stock Market Crash, it was to ensure that no one was ever again left destitute due to old age or illness, promising to take care of the impoverished, elderly and disabled so that they didn’t end up living on the street. Privatizing Social Security would mean an end to that safety net.

If you’ve been anywhere near a television set this past week, you’ve undoubtedly heard about the deplorable conditions at the “Walter Reed” out-patient hospital quarters for inured vets returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. And now it appears that privatization played a role in that too. The Bush Administration apparently farmed out management, maintenance and upkeep of the facility to private contractors.

The war in Iraq has been privatized to countless contractors, and look how that is going. The upkeep of “Walter Reed” was privatized, and it too has been a disaster. And STILL President Bush talks about wanting to privatize Social Security. And “No Child Left Behind” has been a MASSIVE unfunded mandate in an attempt to bleed our public school system dry in an attempt to privatize it. As I wrote last November, Iraq is a living/breathing example of “Conservativism run amok”. The great Neocon experiment to build an entire country on Conservative economic and social principles. And just look where they are today.

If you can look at Iraq and still call yourself a Republican, you’re no longer in touch with reality. Am I getting through to you, Mr. Conservative Voter?

---

BTW: I saw this poster on “Antiques Roadshow” over the weekend. It’s a 1942 government poster in support of the war effort:


Which instantly reminded me of scenes like THIS:


…and this:


This is your nation on Bush.

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The BI30 Blog is getting a facelift!

March 1, 2007 by mugsy.

As you may of noticed, BI30 has been restricted to using a “built-in” blog template with minimal customization options… a choice of colors, text sizes and a few preset graphics, but that’s all, resulting in a generic looking blog that never seemed to go with our official website. We couldn’t even add a link back to our official website!

So BI30 is installing/configuring new blogging software on our own servers that makes more customization options available to us. The downside is that the old blog’s database can not be exported so that we can reuse it on the new one. As such, everyone that had an account on the old blog needs to Register for a new one on the new blog (Look on the bright side, if you didn’t like your old username, or settings, now is your chance to pick something more to your liking!)

After a few weeks, this generic blog will be mothballed and our standard blog link (blog.bi30.org) will point to the blog at our new location.

Please take a moment to Register for the new blog to ensure you continue to be alerted whenever it is updated. See you there!

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The Ghost of Nixon still setting policy today

February 26, 2007 by mugsy.

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Is this an old story? Maybe not. The meme has been around since before Bush ascended to the Presidency in 2000, but I’ve yet to find a report anywhere that does more than just pick at the list of Nixon/Bush similarities like a child picking the carrots out of his peas. Maybe because a true point-by-point rundown of similarities would fill an encyclopedia. An illegal war, launched on a lie, perpetuated under false pretenses, during which Republicans spoke of “surges”, “fighting there to protect us here” and the accusation that “protesters hate the troops”. I was reminded of all this over the weekend as I watched the excellent 2006 documentary “The U.S. vs. John Lennon“. (If you are reading this blog, you want to see this movie.)

Ever since presidential candidate George W. Bush announced that his running mate would be a holdover from the Nixon/Ford Administration, have critics viewed Bush’s Presidency through the prism of Nixonian politics. And when he appointed several other holdovers from the Nixon White House… Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle… as advisers, the concern grew even more. Then President Bush appointed Nixon’s former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger… the architect of Nixon’s secret war in Cambodia… to investigate 9/11, even NeoCons could no longer deny the growing similarity between the two administrations.

But as time passed, the “Bush-II” presidency hasn’t become just “similar” to Nixon’s, it’s nearly an outright clone (and you thought Bush outlawed human cloning). The paranoia, a criminal scandal involving the CIA (Watergate/Plame), spying on American citizens, lying to the American people, illegally expanding their unwinnable war into neighboring territory, total disregard for the Constitution and assertion of powers that they don’t really have… the list goes on.

Now, the new Democratic Congress is working to revoke and redefine the ill-fated “War Authorization” they themselves gave President Bush in the scant 18 months they controlled Congress… an ENORMOUS mistake (the authorization, not their gaining control). Foolishly, they actually trusted President Bush to use the power they were giving him wisely and not abuse his authority to take the country on an idealistic Neo-Conservative binge.

Head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) was on “Meet the Press” Sunday and made the comparison to Vietnam, saying Congress “made the mistake” of taking their lack of support for the war “out on the troops” by stopping the funding of the war. “We aren’t going to make the same mistake again”, he proclaimed.

I’m sorry, but I just don’t see how that decision 35 years ago was “a mistake”. Did it result in increased in casualties? Did Vietnam descend into chaos? Did it become a haven for terrorists or a “base” from which the Soviets could plot an attack on the U.S.? The answer to all those questions is a resounding “No”.

The Ghost of Richard Nixon saturates every pore of the Bush Administration, and now the Ghosts of Vietnam have begun to influence Congressional policy as well. And it might not be so bad if “what actually happened” was what was influencing those decisions, but instead, it’s the “fairy tale” version of events that never happened, forming policy decisions today. That’s a disaster waiting to happen.

Congresses basis for repealing the 2002 resolution that gave President Bush the power to “use force should he decide to do so” all on his own, is that the mission as defined by that 2002 resolution no longer exists. No WMD’s to protect us from. No more Saddam to overthrow. The power was given to President Bush in hopes that he would use it “as leverage” to force Iraq into cooperating, and draw other nations in to support the mission of peacefully dismantling Iraq’s weapons program. And you know what happened next. The Ghosts of Vietnam are desperately trying to teach us valuable lessons. But those lessons are being lost as we rewrite history and eschew courses of action based upon consequences that never happened.

Last year, President Bush visited Vietnam for the first time in his life, requiring little more security than he would if visiting New Mexico. Now a peaceful and developing country with bustling economy and no Soviet Tanks patrolling the streets, President Bush was asked what lesson Vietnam might have taught him about the war in Iraq. His horrifying response was “we’ll succeed unless we quit.” How could an American victory of turned out any better than what they have today? The people are not being repressed. Their economy is booming. They live in peace and are productive members of the International community. But there, directly in front of his host, President Fearless Leader says in essence, “if we had just killed a few thousand more of you and occupied your country a bit longer, you might still be living in the same peace and prosperity that you enjoy today, except that the U.S. would have a check in its Win column.” I bet that really went over well there!

And now Senator Levin is repeating the same mistake, trying to avoid “repeating a mistake” that never happened. Cutting off funding for the war in Vietnam didn’t COST lives. In fact, if it did anything, it SAVED lives by not drawing out the war any longer. And so we are 35 years later, with a Congress that was voted in to reverse… among other reasons like rampant corruption and abuses of power… the direction of the Iraq War, end this war and bring the troops home. Instead, the Congress is fearful of “pulling the plug”, trying to avoid “what happened last time”… which is nothing except a quick exit to the war.

One kudo however: the Democratic plan is to have “most” of the troops out of Iraq by “early” 2008, not “the end of” 2008 as so many others are proposing. So I guess we’re only going to kill “a few thousand more” before we get out of Vietnam… er, Iraq… this time around. Gotta make sure we get that check in the Win column!

Postscript: I am currently working on giving “Mugsy’s Rap Sheet” a full facelift by installing my own copy of the Blogging software, so that I am not limited to the pre-defined templates and color schemes only available to me now. The main drawback of this however is that our blog must be restarted from scratch. If you’ve Registered to receive update notifications and the ability to post comments, you will need to RE-REGISTER for the new blog. We deeply apologize for the inconvenience and will notify all our subscribers as to when the final update takes place. - Mugsy

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In A Word: Pew poll of words describing Bush. Tracking trends.

February 21, 2007 by mugsy.

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Just for fun, an Early Edition treat:

If you haven’t seen it yet, the “Pew Research Center” released the results of one of its annual polls, asking 740 people for a one word description:

34 Incompetent
25 Arrogant
25 Honest
19 Good
19 Idiot
13 Integrity
13 Leader
11 Strong
11 Stupid
10 Ignorant
8 Determined
8 Fair
7 Ass
7 Selfish
6 Confused
6 Dishonest
6 Persistent
6 President
6 Sincere
6 Trying
5 Committed
(…)

One guess who they were being asked to describe. Yes, it’s President Bush.

So I’m looking at previous results of this poll, and I’m noticing some trends:

When the poll was first taken in February 2004, “Excellent” ranked #6 in popularity when describing him. By the middle of the 2004 campaign, “Excellent” had fallen to 14th place in a nine way tie with words like “Decisive” and “Dumb”). The next year, “Excellent” rebounded to eighth place, before dropping off the list entirely.

Not long ago, someone discovered that if you Googled the word “failure” all by itself, the top entry was the biography of George W. Bush ON the official WhiteHouse.gov website (this embarrassing result has since been “fixed” after the White House either complained to Google, pulled or otherwise altered their page). Remembering this embarrassing result from 2004, I decided to see what some searches using Pew’s poll might result in:

Googling the word “Incompetent”… five of the top ten results, including the #1 result, have something to do with President Bush (links to the Pew poll were not among the results, in case you were wondering). Of all the people in the world, for ONE person to be so irrevocably linked to a particular word, is significant. For it to be a derogatory word like “incompetent”, should tell everyone something. Moving on…

Next on the list, “Arrogant”, still produces two Bush related articles among the top ten.

So does this mean President Bush is associated only with “negative” words? What about those “positive” words used to describe him?

The top positive word used to describe President Bush, “honest” does not produce a Bush-related link in the top ten results. Digging deeper, I gave up looking after the first ELEVEN pages of results (ten results per page). Links with even the *slightest* connection to President Bush or this current Administration did not appear among the first 110 results.

But maybe that’s because “honest” is too generic a word. What about #5, “Integrity”, a word every bit as loaded as “incompetent”? Once again, no “Bush” results after 11 pages. What about a gimmee like “Leader” to describe The Leader of the Free World? Nope, 0 for 11 there too.

Maybe it’s just Google? Trying some other search engines (note, “Yahoo” is not a search engine, it is an Index of “sites” not individual articles or pages, and therefore produced even worse results) such as “Ask.com“, we find six of the top ten results for “incompetent” are links relating to President Bush (with a seventh linking to a site heavy with anti-Bush editorials… counterpunch.org).

“Honest”? “Leader”? “Integrity”? Nope, nope and nope. Apparently, Partisans are the only ones that associate those words with President Bush.

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Key to Opening the Gates of Hell? Another questionable slideshow. Bush Admin makes another weak case to justify expanding war.

February 19, 2007 by mugsy.

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“The notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is ridiculous. That being said, all options are on the table.” - President Bush, Aug. 13, 2005   “Former president George Bush said Tuesday that a military conflict with Iraq is not inevitable and that his son `clearly does not want war.”’ - Oct 23, 2002   “The idea that somehow we’re manufacturing the idea that the Iranians are providing IEDs is preposterous” - President Bush, last Wednesday, Feb 14, 2007

Keep that last quote in mind as you read this.

You’ve probably noticed that the Bush Administration has been talking a lot about Iran lately and appear to be making the case for an invasion that we can neither afford, have the troops for, nor necessary. No, you aren’t experiencing Deja’ Vu, the case for war with Iran bears more than just a slight resemblance to the case they made against Iraq. And like Iraq four years ago, their “evidence” is extremely thin and, even if 100% correct, doesn’t demand all out war. Fortunately this time, America is no longer seething for revenge as we were in the months following 9/11, and having since learned how the Bush Administration’s case against Iraq was 180′ from the “slam dunk” they were claiming, no one except the most hopeless Neo-Conservative Bush loyalist war-mongers are ready to blindly accept without question whatever this White House now tells them.

Not unlike Colin Powell’s “devastating” slideshow making the case against Iraq at the U.N. in early 2003, the Bush Administration… proving they have learned NOTHING in the last four years, has produced a similar slideshow suggesting evidence of Iranian involvement in Iraq. The presentation does anything but. It makes a strong case that “EFP’s” (Explosively Formed Projectiles) are being used in Iraq… which no one has ever disputed and have been in use since 2004… and tells you that the weapons came from Iran… yet only one seizure actually took place at the Iraq/Iran border: a cache of TNT, not mortars or missiles. The ENTIRE basis for their claims of “Iranian government complicity” seems to be that capture of five Iranian officials in Iraq last month (see last weeks column) whose release was lobbied for by the President of Iraq. Let’s look at a few of the photos from that slideshow (this was the first photo to capture my attention):

(Click to enlarge)

This weapon was both made in “September, 2006″ and found “September 9, 2006″, barely more than a week later. Okay, MAYBE this weapon rolled off the assembly line on September 1st, was shipped to Iraq on September 2nd, and traveled 500 miles undetected to just South East of Baghdad in less than a week before Iraqi police found it, but that’s exceedingly unlikely. If weapons are being snuck into Baghdad from Iraq that quickly and easily without detection, then it is no wonder security in Iraq is as bad as it is right now.

Also notice that the font and information on the weapon on the left looks nothing like the “confirmed Iranian munition” on the right (81 MM HE is 81mm “high explosive”). Some have pointed out that it seems highly unlikely that Iran… a longtime ally of Russia (and the Soviet Union before that)… would produce American-style 81mm mortars instead of the Soviet format 82mm shell size (Russia has done this for years so that Soviet troops could use captured American ammunition in their weapons, but we could not use theirs in ours). Both mortars include “H.E.”, the ENGLISH abbreviation for “high explosive”, though only the 2006 weapon includes the word “mortar” in English. What’s wrong with this picture (besides everything)?

(Click to enlarge)

Above is another supposedly Iranian munition found in Iraq. It is difficult to see even at full size, but what appears to be a date on the front of the ordinance reads: “54-02-06″. Not sure what month or day “the 54th” is, but the numbers are clear. And the “06″ can not be a year if the weapon was found in “2004″ as they claim. If these numbers are not a date, then what are they and where IS the date on this weapon? The numbers do not conform to the alphanumeric Serial Number format found on every other weapon in the slideshow. And every other munition shown has a date on it. The shell itself also looks nothing like any of the other munitions in the slideshow. If these weapons were all being produced by the Iranian government, there would be more consistency among fonts and serial number formats across weapons. This shell looks nothing like the one above (or below).

(Click to enlarge)

On the front of this RPG is the date “5-31-2006″… May 31, 2006. ONLY the United States writes the date in “Month/Day/Year” format. The rest of the world uses the more logical “Day/Month/Year” format, including Iran. If this weapon did indeed come from Iran, it was built in the U.S…. and in 2006! This particular anomaly appears on just about every munition in the slideshow.

Also shown is an image of Iranian made TNT seized at the border before it could get into Iraq:

(Click to enlarge)

Notice that EVERYTHING on this munition is written in Farsi… the language of Iran. Even the numbers are in Arabic.

There is another possibility here: that Iran is PURCHASING weapons from multiple sources and then exporting them to Iraq. But they provide NO hard evidence that this is the case. In fact, as in the first slide above, they try and make the case that the weapons are of Iranian make. The RPG in slide #3 is described as an “Iranian” Anti-Tank RPG. If in fact Iran is importing these weapons and then smuggling them into Iraq, that makes the “production date” issue on the first slide even more dubious. And the date-format issue on the third slide even more alarming. U.S. forces in Iraq do not use RPG’s, so these could not be American weapons stolen from us by Iran. And even if they were, we’d surely recognize our own stolen weapons and would of identified them as such in the slide. They do not.

The evidence that Bush is prep’ing to attack Iran:

Just days into the new year, President Bush removed the top two Generals leading U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan… both of whom opposed his “Surge” in Iraq… with Officers that supported his scheme to send an additional 21,500 troops into Iraq. Questions immediately began to arise when their replacements were announced. Lead General George Casey was replaced by *Lieutenant* General David Petraeus… Casey’s underling. But the appointment that *really* caught everyone’s attention was the appointment of *Navy Admiral*, William Fallon, to replace General Abazaid as head of CentCom. Why on Earth would you appoint a Navy Admiral to lead ground forces in Iraq? We had our answer soon after when President Bush ordered the first of two aircraft carriers to the Persian Gulf off the coast of Iran (and a third is rumored to be sent soon).

And still the Bush Administration is insisting it is not preparing to attack Iran… just as they did before they attacked Iraq.

Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show” had a great video that demonstrates the conflicting messages coming out of the White House.

And just WHO are the Iranians arming? Consider that Saddam Hussein was a Sunni… the minority religion in Iraq. When we toppled Saddam, the Bush Administration reflexively helped put the Shi’ite majority in power. Sunni’s boycotted the first post-Saddam election in 2004, which put the Shia majority in most of the top positions in Government. Sunni Saddam declared war on Shi’ite Iran. Now with Saddam gone, Iran has found an ally in the new Iraqi government. 90% of attacks on U.S. troops are by Sunni’s in the so-called “Sunni Triangle”. The likelihood that Shia Iran is arming Sunni’s in Iraq is almost zero. As mentioned here last time, the five Iranian officials “captured in Iraq” last month that President Bush has been citing as examples of Iranians working in Iraq to help the insurgency, were actually diplomats invited by the Iraqi government. These “officials” belong to an Iranian organization called the “Qods” (pronounced “Cuds”), which has a long history of supporting organizations the U.S. opposes: namely Hizbollah in Israel/Palestine. Their logo appears on their ID’s. Incredibly stupid if you’re a secret organization whose job it is to aide terrorists. The final slide of the aforementioned slideshow purports that “Over the last 60 days, Iranian and Iraqi detainees have told us the Qods Force provides support to extremist groups in the form of money and weapons.” There you have it folks. Solid “slam-dunk proof” evidence that Iran is behind the arming of insurgents inside Iraq. Feel better? Can I attack Iran now? Pretty please? With sugar on top?

THIS is the case this White House is making to justify expanding their war in the Middle East to include Iran. In his 2000 RNC acceptance speech, George Bush told us that under President Clinton, our military had been stretched so thin, “two entire divisions would have to report: Not ready for duty!” Today, after six years of his endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we have NO divisions that can report “Ready for Duty!” Our military has been stretched beyond its breaking point. And now they want to *expand* their war in the Middle East to include a country four times the size of Iraq, with a standing army of more than a half-million men with another 350,000 in reserve, allied with Russia and China, based upon seriously flawed evidence and of questionable necessity.

And if Bush starts lobbing missiles at the second of the three nations in his “Axis of Evil”, what do you think the odds are North Korea will sit back and not come to Iran’s aide?

The Bush Administration has cried “Wolf“ too many times now, and fortunately, this time, people are asking questions and voicing their opposition.
…

Postscript: HERE’s a little slideshow for anyone pondering the sanity of getting into a shooting match with Iran.

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Would the Bush White House Attack Iran Despite Public Disapproval, Lack of Troops and No Allies?

February 12, 2007 by mugsy.

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“This is very good indeed … Encouraging … Not like the crap we are all so used to getting out of CIA.” - Vice President Cheney in the margins of a report by Under Secretary of Defence Douglas Feith suggesting links between Iraq and al-Qaeda had been found prior to the invasion.

Note Cheney’s reaction to the news that the terrorists that attacked us on 9/11 might have a state sponsor with access to “Weapons of Mass Destruction”… Disturbing news? Worry? Troubled? No. “Very Good”, “Encouraging“ (link). Dick Cheney is the enemy of the United States of America and its citizens. Treason might be too light a charge.

NeoCon and Former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith was on Fox News Sunday this weekend defending the Pentagon’s rejection of the CIA’s pre-war intelligence assessment of Iraq and providing an intelligence report of their own. He defended the move as “the responsible thing to do” rather than simply “trust the CIA’s word for it”. “They were wrong before the ‘91 Gulf War“, he protested. Of course, we didn’t have hundreds of international inspectors crawling around Iraq before 1991. And how ironic that the DIA’s report told the Bush Administration everything they wanted to hear (”Encouraging!“) where the CIA report contradicted everything they wanted to believe. And while Feith futilly continued to make the case that ignoring the CIA was justified, the facts have since proven that the CIA was right and Feith and his DIA were dead wrong. But still he had the gall to criticize the CIA and defend the Pentagon and his own actions.

My first blog entry of the year were my predictions for 2007. In them, I predicted that the Bush Administration would provoke Iran into a confrontation to justify an attack. However, Iran may be too smart to let The Bush Crime Syndicate trick them into striking first and give them the excuse they need to justify war against them. As such, the Neo-Con’s may of found a way around this… by suggesting Iran is ALREADY attacking U.S. troops by supplying the Iraqi insurgency with those “shaped charges” that I spoke about two weeks ago (only now they are being called “EFP’s: Explosively Formed Penetrators“).

Earlier last month, the U.S. captured and detained five Iranian officials inside of Iraq. Despite Bush Administration accusations that these Iranian “agents” were there to kill Iraqis, the Iraqi government called for their release, suggesting that the Iranians that were captured were diplomats invited by the Iraqi government. It is not implausible to think that this capture was the first shot fired in the Bush Administrations scheme to provoke Iran into striking first in order to justify a U.S. strike on Iran.

Now, I have little doubt Iran has been aiding the insurgency for quite a while now. But the fact remains, if our troops were not there in the first place, there would be no one for Iran to attack. And only this Administration and the war-mongering psychos running it could possibly conceive that EXPANDING this war with a military already stretched to its breaking point, without the manpower, equipment, funds, nor multinational support, against a nation four times the size of Iraq with a standing army of more than a half-million men with another 350,000 in reserve, might be a good idea. And if Iran was attacked, don’t think for a moment that their allies (namely Syria) would not rush to their defense and join in on all the fun. Iran is also still closely allied with Russia and China… two countries we DEFINITELY don’t want to get into a shoving match with.

But Republicans don’t look that far ahead. They can’t, or else nothing they do would make any sense. Do you think Ronald Reagan considered the repercussions of Quadrupling the national debt and essentially running the Federal Government on credit for eight years? Yes, Reagan DID raise taxes four of his eight years to offset the growing deficit, but that was after the fact. And while Reagan was able to run the government that way, what if EVERY President to follow did the same thing? Only the Bush’s… father and son respectively… have tried, with devistating consequences. Sound familiar?

And here we are.

In 2003, the Bush Administration balked at an Iranian Peace Offer to help end the war in Iraq. Their demands were much as you’d expect… abolishment of all sanctions and permitting them to develop peaceful nuclear technology… but in exchange for allowing inspectors into Iran to monitor their weapons and nuclear energy program, assistance in hunting down al Qaeda, and pulling their support of Hizbollah in Palestine/Israel (among their demands was a quite understandable “stop calling us evil“). The Bush Administration rejected Iran’s offer. The Neo-Cons are once again drooling over the prospect of invading another Middle Eastern country. And just as Saddam caught the Bush Administration off-guard by agreeing to allow inspectors back into Iraq and provided reams of material on their WMD disposal over the past decade, denying them the justification they hoped for… that Saddam would reject their demands, thus giving them an excuse to invade… Iran seems to be just as cool a customer as Saddam was and depriving the Bushies of their excuse to invade now in 2007.

Al Samoud missiles being destroyed in Iraq before the war:

War was totally unnecessary in 2003 when they started making the case to attack Iraq. No one seemed to realize just how big a deal it is to go to war. It is something that should be avoided if there is ANY reasonable alternative. “People are going to die!“, I wrote my friends in February of 2003. “It would be preferable to send in a million international inspectors crawling all over Iraq for the next twenty years rather than to go to war.” But my arguments fell on deaf ears.

And now a case for war against Iran is being manufactured right before our very eyes. And once again, alternatives exist. We don’t NEED to go to war over this. War is totally unnecessary in this circumstance, and tantamount to suicide at this point. The American public, burned once by the lies and falsehoods the Bushies used to convince us we needed to invade Iraq, are no longer so trusting of this Administration. Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) outright declared that the Bush Administration took us to war in Iraq based upon “doctored information.” (which makes me think, “If THAT isn’t reason for impeachment, what is?“) And evidence has been coming out that the Bush Administration is once again cooking the books to manufacture evidence to justify a strike against Iran. But this time, there’s a Democratic Congress to contend with. Unfortunately, all Congress can do is cut the purse strings and/or react after the fact. As Commander-in-Chief, President Bush can still order the military to do whatever he pleases. He has already ordered two aircraft carriers into the Persian Gulf to intimidate Iran.

So, might this Administration launch a strike against Iran without the troops to back it up, no funds, no equipment and almost no public support? If past events hold any indicator of what’s to come, this administration has already proven themselves to be more than willing to manufacture evidence, fake intelligence, lie to the American people, and go to war on the flimsiest of proof, I think we need to be prepared for the worst.

UPDATE: This (Monday) morning, Newsweek is reporting that a third aircraft carrier group is likely to follow the other two already sent to the Persian Gulf. Bush’s decision to put a Navy Admiral in charge of the war in Iraq is starting to prove to be more and more by design than first suggested.

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Making the Case for Precipitous Withdrawal.

February 7, 2007 by mugsy.

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SPECIAL EDITION

Like most people, I’ve been opposed to the “precipitous withdrawal” option that President Bush and most Republicans have been falsely trashing Democrats with for more than a year now.

“Cut & Run!” is what they accused any Democrat of that even remotely recommended “redeployment”. Most Democrats respond by saying, “almost nobody is calling to pull all of our troops out of Iraq all at once. Just a few on the far Left.” Most Democrats have agreed with the notion that precipitously pulling ALL of our troops out of Iraq all at once would mean utter chaos in Iraq with a civil war that could very well spill over Iraq’s borders into neighboring countries. Also, that abandoning Iraq “dishonors the lives of the fallen”. Just typing this all out, the flaws in those arguments become appallingly clear.

I’ve suddenly… surprisingly… find myself to be one of those people calling for “precipitous withdrawal”, and it’s not because I don’t have the stomach for a fight or believe that we should pull out simply because the war was wrong to begin with (which it was).

A few months ago, stories started popping up of “death squads dressed in police uniforms” killing dozens… even hundreds… in Iraq. Like most people, my reaction was probably that the uniforms were stolen or perhaps the uniforms were “look-alikes”. But I figured out something today:

WE ARE NOW TRAINING, ARMING AND UNIFORMING THE IRAQI INSURGENCY! Insurgents are joining the Iraqi police and military, being given weapons and training in how to use them by our own military, donning their uniforms and going out and killing U.S. soldiers and Iraqi’s of opposing sects. And now President Bush wants to EMBED our own soldiers in with these same Iraqi’s?

“We’ll stand up as they stand down”. Well, they’ve been standing up, but we’re not standing down. In fact, Bush now wants to send MORE. And if victory in Iraq REALLY was as crucial as the Bush Administration claims, they wouldn’t be sending just over 20,000 new troops (or is it 48,000?), they’d be sending 20x that number, and no one would be unwilling to pay more in taxes if everyone agreed that success in Iraq really was that crucial to our long-term safety. But the American people have done a “Cost/Benefit Analysis” of the war in Iraq in their own minds. It’s not worth paying more in taxes and it’s not worth supporting a Draft to get the soldiers needed for victory. Certainly you’ve seen/heard all the Republicans that tell us how crucial it is to win in Iraq, but never do they advocate making any sacrifice besides “making TV time a little uncomfortable.”

We are now TRAINING THE INSURGENCY! And arguments that a “precipitous withdrawal” will result in a civil war that expands beyond the borders of Iraq is nonsense. Iraq’s neighbors will quickly fight to keep Iraq’s dispute inside Iraq. They may even send troops into Iraq to quell the violence in order to ensure this. But they are NOT going to do it with our troops there.

You may now count me among those advocating “precipitous withdrawal”. Hopefully, the case for withdrawal will grow to the point where it no longer is considered a “Far Left extremist position”.

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Too Much To Focus On This Week. So, some highlights:

February 5, 2007 by mugsy.

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A Titan Passes Away.

I started writing my usual Op/Ed earlier this week when news broke that a Superstar of the Progressive Media had passed away. If there was a Liberal Mount Rushmore, Molly Ivins’ face would be right up there (along with the likes of Bill Moyer and Phil Donahue). The 62 year old author of numerous “left wing” books including “Shrub” (a term she coined meaning “Little Bush” to refer to the Texas Governor and son of the former President) and its sequel “Bushwacked“, passed away Wednesday night after a valiant seven year battle with breast cancer.

For those not familiar with Molly, I’ve posted a couple of audio links of her to listen to. The first requires some setup. In 2003, Molly was promoting Bushwacked at The LA Book Expo along with fellow authors Al Franken and Right-Wing loudmouth Bill O’Reilly. Al was just about to release “Lies & Lying Liars“, in which he dedicated an entire chapter to Bill O’Reilly. Al had just finished relaying one of his prime examples of Bill-O being caught lying to make himself sound more important than he really is. One can only picture the steam shooting out of Billy’s ears when he finally explodes into a shouting match with Al. Molly then interjects with her classic Texas charm to defuse the situation. (The first voice you hear is that of host, former Congresswoman Pat Schroeder (D-CO).)

The second clip is the first three minutes of Molly reading the prologue from her 2000 book, “Shrub“.

Fourth Helicopter in Two Weeks Shot Down in Iraq
(Special thanks to contributor “LongFisher” for the heads up)

It went by pretty much unnoticed in the MSM (Mainstream Media) that Friday’s downing of an Army Apache helicopter by shoulder-fired SAM (Surface to Air Missile) is the FOURTH such downing in two weeks.

As LongFisher points out:

At least three of them have been reported to have been hit by a SAM. The other was reportedly downed by an medium-heavy machine gun.

One of the ships shot down as a U.S. Apache helicopter. Now, the Apache is one of the most advanced ground attack helicopters in the world. And, it’s missile warning and evasion systems are second to none. That’s a particularly bad sign.

If SAMs are now present on the battlefield in significant numbers and if, as apparent from the mounting SAM-caused shootdowns, the U.S. helos don’t have adequate defenses against them, then this war is going to change, change fast and change forever. That is, unless countermeasures can be found.

I should note that LongFisher correctly predicted the coming escalation of the violence in Iraq back in 2004 when “shaped charges” started to make their appearance amongst the violence. A “shaped charge” is a projectile produced using a method that basically involves firing a cannister-like iron/steel/uranium projectile with such force that it turns itself inside out, capable of slicing though armor plating like a hot knife through butter. This is a very advanced military technique not likely to be stumbled upon by your average street protester. It IS however the kind of weapon a trained (and now angry & unemployed) former Iraqi military officer would likely know something about.

Media STILL Trying to Figure Out “Who Told Libby About Plame?”

While I blogged on this very subject for the third time last week, the MSM still seems to be running around like squirrels in a cage trying to find evidence VP Cheney wasn’t lying when he confessed to committing treason on “Meet the Press” last September. I don’t know about you, but this is probably the one and only time I’m willing to take Cheney at his word.

Bush Asks for ANOTHER $245 BILLION DOLLARS for Iraq and Afghanistan

Remember when “the war in Iraq will cost the American taxpayer $1.7 Billion tops […] paid for by Iraqi oil revenues“? Well now, President Bush is seeking an additional $100 Billion this year, with another $145 Billion for 2008″ to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, bringing the total to just under $700 BILLION DOLLARS (7/10ths of a TRILLION) before Bush leaves office in January 2009. On March 19th, the Iraq war will begin its FIFTH year, and next October, Afghanistan will begin its SEVENTH.

“24″ is NOT a Conservative show

I’ve been a fan of the TV Show “24” since the first episode in early 2002. But only recently (like, in the past year) did I discover that Ubër-Conservatives like Rush Limbaugh are not only mega-fans of the hit television show, but also proudly point to the story lines as defense of Conservative Ideology on The War on Terror. They point to scenes where “Liberal” characters, had they of gotten their way in key situations, would of meant disaster for the United States. They point to the shows’ hero Jack Bauer learning crucial life-saving nick-of-time information only by breeching protocol and engaging in the torture of suspects.

I guess everybody sees what they want to see, but The Carpetbagger Report makes a strong case for what I’ve always felt: “24 is NOT a champion of Conservative politics“, citing numerous examples of the show introducing dangerous, often power-mad Republican characters and even the main character Bauer himself has embracing the idea that the key to counter-terrorism is relying on, instead of alienating, Muslim allies.

Congressman Tim Ryan hits another one out of the park

If you aren’t familiar with Congressman Tim Ryan (D-OH) from some of his past speeches on the floor of Congress (most notably, his 2004 speech on “why the Internet rumor that Bush might reinstate the draft if reelected persists despite Bush’s reassurances he won’t”), you will be. Ryan is a rising star among the Democratic Party you are sure to hear more from in the near future.

Congressman Ryan hit another one out of the park Friday when he spoke about “the hypocrisy of Republicans now lecturing Democrats on over spending“. Check it out. It’s a keeper.

I will return to my usual ranting and hypocrisy-exposing next week. See ya then!

BTW: The Super Bowl victory by the Colts heralds two firsts: first African-American head coach to win a Super Bowl (both coaches for each team were black) and the first “Domed stadium” team to win a Super Bowl… breaking a 40 year old curse.

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Does Cheney REALLY have the power to declassify an agents’ identity? And where’s the documentation?

January 29, 2007 by mugsy.

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This past week saw the start of the trial phase of “Scooter” Libby’s perjury & obstruction of justice investigation. In fact, the trial started on the day of President Bush’s State of the Union Address. If the timing was a little awkward for President Bush, the press definitely gave the Commander-in-Chief a pass by not bringing the subject up that evening.

I’ll spare you the details, assuming that if you are reading this blog, you already know the back-story behind this crime. As reported here several times in the past, Cheney has implied that he is the person that declassified Ms. Plame’s identity and ordered Libby to reveal that fact to the press. But there is a bigger question that I’m still not hearing anyone in the media ask: Does Cheney REALLY have the power to declassify an agents’ identity? And if so, shouldn’t there be a dated documented record of that declassification? Cheney has made the dubious claim that the power is afforded him in the Constitution (don’t you just love how this Administration hides behind the Constitution when defending their crimes, and then dismisses it when it forbids them from engaging in others?), And in so revealing, put at risk not only every person that has ever done business or consorted with Ms. Plame in the past, but any other agent that also claimed to have worked for the same CIA “front” cover organization as her… a fictitious company called “Brewster/Jennings”. The damage done by Cheney’s zeal to discredit Joe Wilson is immeasurable. Oddly, the fact that Cheney is asserting a power that he probably doesn’t even have, hasn’t made much sway in the mainstream press. An investigation by the LA Times yesterday/Sunday (registration required) reveals that former CIA official Robert Grenier is the likely source that told Libby, who then told Cheney, that Wilson’s wife worked with him at the CIA. Since Libby had the proper security clearance, that was nothing illegal in Grenier’s revelation. And if the VP does indeed have the power he claims, then the subsequent release of that information to the press would likewise not be illegal (but note this this does NOTHING to affect the perjury & obstruction charges against Libby). But even if the VP *does* have the power he claims, this was certainly an abuse of that power which both endangered lives and cost the U.S. significant counter-terrorism intelligence assets around the world at a time when we so desperately need them.

The story broke this way: Ms. Plame’s husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson, exposed the Bush Administrations lies about Iraq seeking Uranium from Niger, and how they used those lies to justify the preemptive invasion of that country, Cheney went on the warpath, seeking to “discredit” the former ambassador.

Here are Cheney’s now-famous notes scrawled atop Wilson’s article in the New York Times:

(Click to enlarge)

Even enlarged, the VP’s handwriting is a tad difficult to read. It says:

“Have they done this sort of thing before?
Send our Amb[assador] to answer a question?
Do we ordinarily send people out
pro bono to work for us?

Or did his wife send him on a junket?”

Okay, ignoring the stupidity of anyone thinking of Nigeria as a good place for a “junket“, it stuck me right away that even at that early point, Cheney ALREADY knew the significance of Ambassador Wilson’s wife. Not, “Why did the CIA send him”, but rather “Did his WIFE send him”. Assuming Cheney didn’t already know who Plame-Wilson was at the time he read the story, he would of had to of declassified her identity in the time between when he wrote those words and when Libby first started phoning reporters around town looking for one that would print the sensitive material (Libby spoke to at least five reporters before partisan hack Robert Novak took the bait). That leaves a very small window of time for any declassification to take place, and one should wonder how much of a review on the impact such a revelation could possibly have taken place in such a short period of time. If there currently is no such procedure, there needs to be.

The suggestion in the LA Times story is that Cheney started asking around about Wilson, and Grenier told Libby who told Cheney. Maybe that’s how it went down, maybe not. It is doubtful we’ll ever know for sure. But remember, NONE OF THIS CHANGES THE CASE AGAINST LIBBY. He willfully obstructed justice and tried to mislead the investigation. Why would he do that if they truly believed they had done nothing wrong? OF COURSE they knew what they were doing was wrong. There’d be no point in their going to such lengths to hide the truth if they truly believed otherwise.

Former President Bush described spy-name-leakers as “the most insidious of traitors“.

I’m confident Vice President Cheney was so hellbent on finding a way to discredit Wilson, he didn’t consider… or in my opinion probably even care… about the consequences of outing an undercover CIA agent. EVEN IF you believe, that as Vice President he does indeed have the power to declassify something like the identity of an undercover CIA agent, the consequences should have prevented him from doing so. The fact that the Vice President went on a crusade to discredit a critic that exposed his administrations lies, should raise some serious questions that I just don’t hear anyone asking.

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