Friday cat blogging!

Cynthia's wonderful kitty, Simon!


Photo by Cynthia Burgess

Secret prisons and torture

Go read the Molly Ivins column entitled, Some Kind of Manly. It makes you sick. Well, if it doesn't, you ARE sick.

Austin, Texas -- I can't get over this feeling of unreality, that I am actually sitting here writing about our country having a gulag of secret prisons in which it tortures people. I have loved America all my life, even though I have often disagreed with the government. But this seems to me so preposterous, so monstrous. My mind is a little bent and my heart is a little broken this morning.

Maybe I should try to get a grip -- after all, it's just this one administration that I had more cause than most to realize was full of inadequate people going in. And even at that, it seems to be mostly Vice President Cheney. And after all, we were badly frightened by 9-11, which was a horrible event. "Only" nine senators voted against the prohibition of "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment of persons under custody or control the United States." Nine out of 100. Should we be proud? Should we cry?

"We do not torture," said our pitifully inarticulate president, straining through emphasis and repetition to erase the obvious.

A string of prisons in Eastern Europe in which suspects are held and tortured indefinitely, without trial, without lawyers, without the right to confront their accusers, without knowing the evidence or the charges against them, if any. Forever. It's "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich." Another secret prison in the midst of a military camp on an island run by an infamous dictator. Prisoner without a name, cell without a number.

Who are we? What have we become? The shining city on a hill, the beacon and bastion of refuge and freedom, a country born amidst the most magnificent ideals of freedom and justice, the greatest political heritage ever given to any people anywhere.

I'll tell you what we have become. We have become what we once despised. That is what we have become.

Go ahead. Read the rest of the article. No sense hiding.

A poem to give one pause

Hangman
by Maurice Ogden

1.
Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.

The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.

And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.

And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"

Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."

And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief

And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.

2.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.

And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.

And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."

He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."

Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"

And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.

That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;

Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.

3.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a usurer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"

And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."

The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"

The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."

And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.

The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.

4.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all

For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.

He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.

And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.

"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"

Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.

For who has served me more faithfully
Than you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"

"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."

Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.

The president's credibility

Found on Eschaton:

AOL poll

Should the U.S. ban abusive treatment of terrorism suspects?
Yes 79%
No 21%

President Bush has said "we do not torture" terrorism suspects.
Do you believe him?
No 88%
Yes 12%

"Support our troops" - yeah, right

You are just not going to believe this. Here is a report entitled, "Veterans Day Outrage: Conservatives End 55-Year-Old Practice of Hearings for Vet Groups". Here's what it says:

On Tuesday — three days before Veterans Day — House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Steve Buyer (R-IN) announced that for the first time in at least 55 years, “veterans service organizations will no longer have the opportunity to present testimony before a joint hearing of the House and Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committees.”
...
The Disabled American Veterans, the “official voice of America’s service-connected disabled veterans,” just issued a scathing release calling the move “an insult to all who have fought, sacrificed and died to defend the Constitution.” The timing, they said, “could not have been worse.”

I have one word for the so-called conservatives: hypocrites.

Good question

If you can impeach a President for lying about an extramarital affair, why can't you impeach a President for lying about weapons of mass destruction that led to a war that led to thousands of deaths. In one case, you have thousands of deaths, and in another, you have a dry-cleaning bill for a dress.

-- Tim Robbins

Catapulting the propaganda

Well, the White House is starting a propaganda campaign to try to plant in the public's mind that the CIA leak had nothing to do with the reasons for the Iraq war. CNN reports on it in an article entitled, "White House to 'hit back' at Democrats":

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Top White House officials say they're developing a "campaign-style" strategy in response to increasing Democratic allegations that the Bush administration twisted intelligence to make its case for war.

White House aides, who agreed to speak to CNN only on the condition of anonymity, said they hoped to increase what they called their "hit back" in coming days.

The officials say they plan to repeatedly make the point -- as they did during the 2004 campaign -- that pre-war intelligence was faulty, it was not manipulated and everyone was working off the same intelligence.

They hope to arm GOP officials with more quotes by Democrats making the same pre-war claims as Republicans did about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. Democrats have pointed at declassified information they say shows the White House was "deceptive" in pre-war statements.

Telegraphing the beginning of a communications effort is a tactic the Bush team has used in the past, especially when it comes to Iraq.

The examination into the intelligence used to justify invading Iraq has intensified on the heels of the October 28 indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, who resigned the day he was indicted. (Full
story)

You'd think the American people would realize they're being manipulated. But many will not and will believe the propaganda. Let's hope enough don't buy it that we're able to win back at least one house of Congress in 2006.

Another polling result

Some time ago I posted the results of a CBS poll that gave the president a 35% approval rating - the lowest it's been yet. Well, AMERICAblog has published some other interesting numbers from that poll. Take a look:

HOW IMPORTANT TO THE NATION IS THE CIA LEAK MATTER?

CIA Leak
Great importance - 51%
Some importance - 35%
Little/no importance - 12%

Clinton-Lewinsky (1/98)
Great importance - 41%
Some importance - 21%
Little/no importance - 37%

Whitewater (3/94)
Great importance - 20%
Some importance - 29%
Little/no importance - 45%

Iran-Contra (2/87)
Great importance - 48%
Some importance - 33%
Little/no importance - 19%

Watergate (5/73; Gallup Poll)
Great importance - 53%
Some importance - 25%
Little/no importance - 22%

Definitely people think the CIA leak is more important than Monica. But they even think it's overall more important that Watergate when you total the "great importance" and "some importance" figures. This is serious folks. In spite of the fact that the right wingers have an incredibly effective propaganda machine going, the people are not happy.

This is good news. Definitely.

True religious persecution

Oh the right-wing fundamentalists love to carry on about how persecuted they are. But their churches are not threatened by the IRS. In spite of the fact that many of them engage in blatant political activity. But an Episcopal Church where an anti-war sermon was preached is threatened. What? Christians are no longer allowed to preach against war? What part of "Prince of Peace" don't they understand?

The articles are all over the internet but I'm giving you a link to the one published by CNN. It's entitled, "Church: Anti-war sermon imperils tax status". Here's part of what it says:

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- The Internal Revenue Service has warned a prominent liberal church it could lose its tax-exempt status because of an anti-war sermon a guest preacher gave on the eve of the 2004 presidential election, church officials say.

The Rev. George F. Regas did not urge parishioners at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena to support either President Bush or John Kerry, but he was critical of the Iraq war and Bush's tax cuts.

The IRS warned the church in June that its tax-exempt status was in jeopardy because such organizations are prohibited from intervening in political campaigns and elections.

The church's rector, J. Edwin Bacon, told his congregation about the problem Sunday.

"It's important for everyone to understand that the IRS concerns are not supported by the facts," Bacon said.

Bacon later said he chose Sunday to inform the congregation because Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu was in attendance and because he believes a decision from the IRS is imminent.

He called the IRS threat "a direct assault on freedom of speech and freedom of religion."

An IRS spokesman in Washington declined to comment Monday, saying he could not discuss particular cases.

What about the Mennonite Churches and the Quakers who are historic peace churches? Preaching against war is part of their identity. Are they going to lose their tax exempt status because of anti-war messages? Time to turn those tables and go after the fundamentalists and reactionary Catholics who try to influence elections over abortion. I don't think liberals are going to go down without a fight on THIS one.

The proposed budget cuts

I got an email today the bulk of which I want to share with you. Here it is:

WHO WOULD JESUS STARVE?

With a national budget hemorrhaging red ink, even the profligate pork barrel princes in Congress had to do something. And what is their solution? Will they trim back even modestly any of the gratuitous tax cuts gifted to the most wealthy and the most fortunate? No, they propose to cut the last ropes of what remains of the social safety net for those hurt most by their "soak the masses and give it all to the corporate kingpins" policies, apparently to pave the way for even MORE reckless tax injustice.

When a right wing think tanker said he wanted to shrink the government down to where it could be drown in a bathtub, he was talking about the social services that are the only thing that keep the burgeoning class of the abjectly poor going. Perhaps the former residents of New Orleans experienced exactly what he meant by drowning, as FEMA had been degenerated into a dispenser of Christmas plums for administration cronies only. The only thing he wanted to shrink was that part of government that does NOT serve the most powerful corporate interests. For the rest it's still unlimited, no-bid, cost plus party time.

Yes, for those whose agenda is war profiteering, or bankrupting families with blockbuster medical bills, or gouging the public with usurious interest charges and fees, or pocketing unneeded subsidies while they collect windfall profits for environmentally hostile sources of energy, or absolving corporations of any social responsibility whatsoever . . . for them it's supply side as far as the eye can see. And the primarily Republican members of Congress they own lock stock and beholden barrel have no shame in continuing to push though special interest legislation written word for word by the corporate lobbyists themselves, to the detriment of every other pressing national policy need.

This groaning chuck wagon of cruel greed will be ringing the bell once again in the House of Representative this coming week. And if the failure of the Senate last week to stand up and protect the most weak and needy wasn't bad enough, the House version of the budget bill proposes even MORE cuts for essential and indispensable lifeline services. They want to cut to the bone Medicare, Medical, food stamps, student loans, pension protection, Supplemental Social Security . . . the massacre list goes on and on.

It has been called "immoral" by voices representing a wide ranging spectrum of the religious community. For example, all 65 synod bishops of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America have signed a letter to members of Congress in strong protest opposing the proposed budget cuts. But what of you conscientious reader? What are you doing to speak out about this uncompassionate cruelty, so cold of heart that it would chill any but the most unrepentant Scrooges among this administration's cronies?

For those who profess to be Christians, is it not written in your bible? "I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me." (Matthew 25:43-45)

And yet here we have a bill which will take AWAY food from the hungry, rob medicine from the sick, and steal clothing intended for those who are already naked. What would your Lord say should be the judgement for those who do such things? Perhaps you already know the next verse. What do you have to say about all this? Words of true compassion can be found in all faiths. Send a message to Congress and tell them to get their priorities straight.

http://www.millionphonemarch.com/no_cruelty.htm
(Save our social services)

For those who profess to be liberals, or progressives, or whatever the latest trendy label for people who care about their fellow human being, who will speak out if not you? The action pages linked from this article will send your personal message in real time to your own members of Congress with just once click, and you can make it also a letter to the editor of your nearest daily newspaper as well all at the same time.

And those who profess to be conservatives, even if you care only for yourselves, do you not understand that those who are fortunate in society prosper MOST when there are more who can afford to buy the goods and services from which you profit. The more you cheat the workers in your businesses the less they can buy the necessities which in truth drive the very economy itself. The more you force people into the ditch of debt, the less there will be for all but a handful of unaccountable owners of monopoly corporations, which so few of even you will ever be.

That's what puzzles me the most. Why would corporations want to destroy the consumer class thus making it impossible for people to buy the goods they produce? It seems that greed makes people stupid.

War reparations

Well, here's an idea that will never be adopted, I know, but I thought I'd tell you about it anyway. I want to share an article with you entitled, "Why We Should Pay War Reparations To Iraq":

We recently learned that the $30 billion the United States allocated to "reconstruct" Iraq is about to run out. That seems like a whopping amount, until you realize that the World Bank estimates the cost of rebuilding at between $50 billion and $100 billion. This sum does nothing, of course, to compensate Iraqi families for the deaths and immense suffering caused by the invasion.

Withdrawal from Iraq has understandably been the main focus of the peace movement. The problem with this approach is that many concerned Americans have serious reservations about withdrawal, because they fear that we'd be abandoning Iraq to chaos. If, however, withdrawal is linked to hefty reparations payments, this fear could be alleviated. Withdrawal while providing the resources to recover and restore order could lead to domestic peace far more readily than withdrawal by itself.

Reparations are clearly appropriate in an invasion that was justified on false advertising of the Bush administration, which purposely dismissed solid evidence against its dubious claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Before the hardball pundits and opportunist politicians who got us into this mess dismiss reparations as a "non-starter," we should note that there is ample precedent for reparations, the most obvious being that of Iraq itself. Iraq has been forced to shell out more than $19 billion in reparations claims related to Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, and it owes another $33 billion. The payments, ordered by the U.N. Security Council, have gone to many claimants, including U.S. corporations, according to the U.N. Compensations Commission.
...
Making amends through reparations might also help us regain some of the international respect we have lost. Withdrawal coupled with reparations would also deprive terrorists of their most attractive recruiting tool, hatred of a nation that is perceived to be on a pathological crusade against Islam.

In addition to the strategic and moral reasons for getting out and paying reparations, there's an economic argument: Because we've already wasted more than $200 billion in Iraq, reparations might end up costing us less than staying the course, and less than battling the increased terrorism that the occupation has provoked.

Of course, we owe the Iraqis more than money. We owe them repentance. But money would be a start.

Police State America

I really want to urge you to read Mike Whitney's latest article entitled, "Drifting towards a Police State". How is it that we are asleep to what's happening? Take a look:

Did you know that under the terms of the new Patriot Act prosecutors will be able to seek the death penalty in cases where "defendants gave financial support to umbrella organizations without realizing that some of its adherents might eventually commit violence"? (NY Times; editorial 10-30-05) So, if someone unknowingly gave money to a charity that was connected to a terrorist group, he could be executed.

Or, that the Senate Intelligence Committee is fine-tuning the details of a bill that will allow the FBI to secretly procure any of your personal records without "probable cause" or a court order giving them "unchecked authority to pry into personal and business matters"? (New York Times, "Republicans seek to widen FBI Powers, 10-19-05)

Or, that on June 29, President Bush put "a broad swath of the FBI" under his direct control by creating the National Security Service (aka; the "New SS")? This is the first time we've had a "secret police" in our 200 year history. It will be run exclusively by the president and beyond the range of congressional oversight.

Whitney gives even more example. Then he says the following:

The American people have no idea of the amount of energy that has been devoted to stripping them of their constitutional protections and how stealthily that plan has been carried out. It has required the concerted efforts of the political establishment, the corporate elite, and the collaborative media. For all practical purposes, the government is no longer constrained in its conduct towards its citizens; it can do as it pleases.

The campaign to dismantle the Bill of Rights has focused primarily on the key amendments; the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th and 14th. These are the cornerstones of American liberty and they encompass everything from due process to equal protection to free speech to a ban on the "cruel and unusual" treatment of prisoners. Freedom has little tangible meaning apart from the safety provided by these amendments.

At present, there's no reason for the administration to assert its new powers. That would only dispel the widely-held illusion of personal freedom. But, the existing climate of "well being" will not last forever. The poisonous effects of war, tax cuts, burgeoning budget deficits, and inflation indicate that darker days lie ahead. The middle class is stretched paper-thin and disaster could be as close as a hike in interest rates. The new repressive legislation anticipates the massive political unrest that naturally follows a tenuous and volatile economic situation.

The time will come when it's so bad we will take to the streets. And that's when we will discover that we are no longer a free people.

Downright evil

Here's an article by a religion writer of the Chicago Sun-Times that is entitled, "Bush administration's moral compass is lost". Of course I don't think they ever HAD a moral compass to begin with but this writer is being generous. Here's part of the article:

And this week, as Republican leaders try to force a monstrous $50 billion budget cut designed allegedly to offset the mounting costs (currently in excess of $62 billion) of hurricane-related aid through Congress, it is clear that its moral compass also has been lost.

The proposed budget cuts, part of the so-called "budget reconciliation," would have devastating effects on the poorest, most vulnerable Americans, while allowing tax relief for the rich.

The massive budget reductions would include billions of dollars from pension protection and student loan programs, Medicaid and child support enforcement, as well as millions from the food stamp program, Supplemental Security Income (read: senior citizens and the disabled) and foster care. Also attached to the "reconciliation" proposal is a plan that would allow oil drilling in Alaska's pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
...
[A]ll 65 synod bishops of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America have signed a letter to members of Congress vehemently opposing the proposed budget cuts, saying in part, "The Biblical record is clear. The scriptural witness on which our faith tradition stands speaks dramatically to God's concern for and solidarity with the poor and oppressed communities while speaking firmly in opposition to governments whose policies place narrow economic interests driven by greed above the common good."

Evangelical Christian theologian and leader Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners, a national network of "progressive Christian" peace-and-justice activists, led an ecumenical gathering of religious leaders in a protest at the Capitol building Thursday, calling the proposed cuts "a moral travesty."

"Instead of wearing bracelets that ask, 'What would Jesus do?' perhaps some Republicans should ponder, 'What would Jesus cut?' " Wallis said.

The immorality (by any religious tradition's measure) of the proposed $50 billion budget reconciliation package is brazen.

If enacted, it would prove only to increase the suffering of the already-struggling poor, including tens of thousands who lost everything along the Gulf Coast.

Maybe immoral isn't the appropriate word.

Downright evil is a better description.

Soon the streets of our cities and towns are going to look like the streets of Calcutta and we will be stepping over the poor, the sick and the dying as we try to go about our business. It is beyond reprehensible.

Friday Cat Blogging!

Leroy on his window seat.


Photo by Ellie Finlay

Secret CIA prisons

Well, anyone who keeps up on the internet has known about these for years but the secret CIA prisons have just come to public light in the mainstream press. I want to call your attention to an editorial by the Star Tribune entitled, "U.S. must dismantle its secret CIA gulag". Here's part of what it says:

Not many months ago, Amnesty International and Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., got in hot water for respectively calling Guantánamo Bay prison "the gulag of our times" and comparing America's treatment of terror-war detainees to the kind of treatment one would expect from the Soviet gulag, Pol Pot, Nazis and others. Durbin apologized.

Now comes a story by the Washington Post's Dana Priest describing a string of secret CIA prisons scattered around the world, including one at an old Soviet facility in Eastern Europe. These are prisons that are known only to a handful of officials, facilities where inmates are kept, potentially until they die, in dark, sometimes underground cells. The prisoners have no contact with anyone except jailers, are afforded no legal rights and are subjected to "enhanced" interrogation techniques that include almost drowning them. That is a gulag, albeit a miniature one.

This string of prisons is where the most important terrorist suspects are kept. Those with less potential intelligence value are "renditioned" to other countries for interrogation, including some nations that are known by the State Department to practice torture.

All this has left many professionals at the CIA, Priest reports, distressed about the legality, morality and benefits of the operation. As many experts and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a former POW, have said, this sort of treatment does not yield good intelligence. It is also a poor reflection on the United States, a horrible example that enables other countries to use similar techniques.

Incredibly, the Bush administration wants the inhuman treatment to continue. McCain has sponsored legislation banning the "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment of prisoners by the U.S. military and its intelligence agencies. In early October, the Senate passed the measure by a vote of 90-9. It now awaits action by a conference committee. President Bush has threatened to veto the measure if it contains the McCain language, while Vice President Dick Cheney has been lobbying hard to get the CIA exempted. At the same time, Cheney's new chief of staff, David Addington, is pushing the Pentagon to avoid invoking the Geneva Conventions in a new code that top military leaders want to promulgate for the armed forces.

I was really disappointed in Durbin at the time for apologizing. I hope he feels vindicated.

Pay attention to what is being done in our name.

Democrats are sizzling!

Wow. Nancy Pelosi introduced a resolution on the House floor that just knocks my socks off. Of course, the Republicans squashed it but now her attempt is part of the record. Here's the text:

Privileged Resolution on Iraq

Whereas the war in Iraq has resulted in the loss of over 2,000 American lives and more than 15,000 wounded soldiers, and has cost the American people $190 billion dollars;

Whereas the basis for going to war was Iraq’s alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and the President made a series of misleading statements regarding threats posed by Iraq, but no weapons of mass destruction have been found;

Whereas the Republican Leadership and Committee Chairmen have repeatedly denied requests by Democratic Members to complete an investigation of pre-war intelligence on Iraq and have ignored the question of whether that intelligence was manipulated for political purposes;

Whereas the Vice President’s Chief of Staff Lewis Libby has been indicted on five counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements in connection with the disclosure of the identity of a CIA operative, and that disclosure was part of a pattern of Administration efforts to discredit critics of the Iraq war;

Whereas four separate requests to hold hearings on the disclosure of the CIA operative were denied in the Government Reform Committee, and Resolutions of Inquiry were rejected in the Intelligence, Judiciary, Armed Services, and International Relations Committees;

Whereas the American people have spent $20.9 billion dollars to rebuild Iraq with much of the money squandered on no-bid contracts for Halliburton and other favored contractors;

Whereas Halliburton received a sole-source contract worth $7 billion to implement the restoration of Iraq’s oil infrastructure, and a senior Army Corps of Engineers official wrote that the sole-source contract was “coordinated with the Vice President’s office”;

Whereas despite these revelations, on July 22, 2004 the Republican-controlled Government Reform Committee voted to reject a subpoena by Democratic Members appropriately seeking information on communications of the Vice President’s office on awarding contracts to Halliburton;

Whereas prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, Guantanamo, and Afghanistan have seriously damaged the reputation of the United States, and increased the danger to U.S. personnel serving in Iraq and abroad;

Whereas the Republican Leadership and Committee Chairmen have denied requests for hearings, defeated resolutions of inquiry for information, and failed to aggressively pursue serious allegations, including how far up the chain of command the responsibility lies for the treatment of detainees;

Whereas the oversight of decisions and actions of other branches of government is an established and fundamental responsibility of Congress;

Whereas the Republican Leadership and the Chairmen of the committees of jurisdiction have failed to undertake meaningful, substantive investigations of any of the abuses pertaining to the Iraq war, including the manipulation of pre-war intelligence, the public release of a covert operative’s name, the role of the Vice President in Iraqi reconstruction, and the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal;

Therefore be it resolved that:

The House calls upon the Republican Leadership and Chairmen of the committees of jurisdiction to comply with their oversight responsibilities, demands they conduct a thorough investigation of abuses relating to the Iraq War, and condemns their refusal to conduct oversight of an Executive Branch controlled by the same party, which is in contradiction to the established rules of standing committees and Congressional precedent.

The Democrats are finally standing up and fighting. If you want a link for the above resolution it is here.

35 %

The president's approval rating is at 35 % according to a new CBS poll. Check it out: "Poll: More Bad News For Bush".

Karl Rove is going down

Wow. The Washington Post has a very encouraging article this morning entitled, "Rove's Future Role Is Debated: White House May Seek Fresh Start In Wake of Leak". Things don't look to good for Bush's Brain. Here's part of what the article says:

While Rove faces doubts about his White House status, there are new indications that he remains in legal jeopardy from Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald's criminal investigation of the Plame leak. The prosecutor spoke this week with an attorney for Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper about his client's conversations with Rove before and after Plame's identity became publicly known because of anonymous disclosures by White House officials, according to two sources familiar with the conversation.

Fitzgerald is considering charging Rove with making false statements in the course of the 22-month probe, and sources close to Rove -- who holds the titles of senior adviser and White House deputy chief of staff -- said they expect to know within weeks whether the most powerful aide in the White House will be accused of a crime.

But some top Republicans said yesterday that Rove's problems may not end there. Bush's top advisers are considering whether it is tenable for Rove to remain on the staff, given that Fitzgerald has already documented something that Rove and White House official spokesmen once emphatically denied -- that he played a central role in discussions with journalists about Plame's role at the CIA and her marriage to former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, a critic of the Iraq war.

Is the noose slowly being pulled tighter and tighter? It looks like it.

About the nightmare

I want to call your attention to a biting and penetrating column by Paul Krugman in the New York Times. It's entitled, "Ending the Fraudulence" and it takes a look at events over the last few days:

So is the nightmare finally coming to an end? Yes, I think so. I have no idea whether Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor, will bring more indictments in the Plame affair. In any case, I don't share fantasies that Dick Cheney will be forced to resign; even Karl Rove may keep his post. One way or another, the Bush administration will stagger on for three more years. But its essential fraudulence stands exposed, and it's hard to see how that exposure can be undone.

What do I mean by essential fraudulence? Basically, I mean the way an administration with an almost unbroken record of policy failure has nonetheless achieved political dominance through a carefully cultivated set of myths.

The record of policy failure is truly remarkable. It sometimes seems as if President Bush and Mr. Cheney are Midases in reverse: everything they touch - from Iraq reconstruction to hurricane relief, from prescription drug coverage to the pursuit of Osama - turns to crud. Even the few apparent successes turn out to contain failures at their core: for example, real G.D.P. may be up, but real wages are down.

The point is that this administration's political triumphs have never been based on its real-world achievements, which are few and far between. The administration has, instead, built its power on myths: the myth of presidential leadership, the ugly myth that the administration is patriotic while its critics are not. Take away those myths, and the administration has nothing left.

Krugman then outlines how those myths have been dismantled. But perhaps the most important part of his piece is the way he ends it:

And as for the media: these days, there is much harsh, justified criticism of the failure of major news organizations, this one included, to exert due diligence on rationales for the war. But the failures that made the long nightmare possible began much earlier, during the weeks after 9/11, when the media eagerly helped our political leaders build up a completely false picture of who they were.

So the long nightmare won't really be over until journalists ask themselves: what did we know, when did we know it, and why didn't we tell the public?

The journalists are supposed to be our watchdogs. Are they finally waking up? Let's hope so.

Harry has a blog

I thought you'd like to know that there's a blog set up with statements by Harry Reid. It's appropriately named, "Give 'em hell Harry". Makes for some interesting reading and lots of people are posting comments. Here's a sample from today's posting:

Instead of uniting the country around a consensus nominee, the White House has chosen a potentially divisive candidate to distract from its current problems. A Supreme Court nomination is too important to be scripted from the Karl Rove playbook of distract, deceive, and divide.

And while George Bush attempts to distract the country, he knows CIA leak case is bigger than the indictment of Scooter Libby or Karl Rove. It is about how the Administration manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to sell the war in Iraq and attempted to destroy those who dared to challenge its actions. Now it’s time for President Bush to come clean with the American people.

This is a man to watch. And I plan on paying attention.