The God, Greenspan, is Another Liar; Who'd Have Guessed??

Alan Greenspan’s new book draws on extensive public records, transcripts, data, others’ books and accounts, interviews (many on background) he has previously given, interviews he has conducted with his contemporaries, and his personal notes and recollections. The resulting story is sweeping and fact-filled. Still, there are a few points where his assertions differ from the historical record or with his public statements at the time, though they do not change the overall story. (See related article.)

For example, the former Fed chairman writes that he told President Gerald Ford that “recessions are like hurricanes — they range from ordinary to catastrophic.” He was relieved when the recession of 1974-75 turned out to be “the milder kind of storm.” But in fact, it was the most severe recession of the post-World War II period, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the official scorekeeper.

He recalls writing in a campaign speech for President Ronald Reagan that the 1980 recession had been “one of the major economic contractions in the last fifty years.” In fact, the NBER later determined it was the mildest. Mr. Greenspan points out in a subsequent interview that the point of his story is to show how Reagan went on to exaggerate what his speechwriters had said by referring to the “Carter depression,” despite their efforts to correct him.

Mr. Greenspan also describes the risks he was taking by moving to raise rates shortly after taking office in August, 1987 because the Fed “hadn’t raised interest rates for three years… The risk in clamping down during a stock-market surge is especially acute- it can pop the bubble of investor confidence.” In fact, Mr. Greenspan’s predecessor, Paul Volcker, had begun tightening monetary policy the prior fall, raising the federal funds rate a full percentage point, which in turn drove Treasury bond yields up over a point. The combined Volcker-Greenspan tightening undermined stock valuations, precipitating that fall’s crash.

It is true that the largely symbolic discount rate hadn’t risen in more than three years; Mr. Greenspan boosted it on Sept. 4. Mr. Greenspan, in the interview, notes at the time the discount rate mattered more than today because changes in the federal funds rate weren’t announced.

Mr. Greenspan, often criticized for not preventing the 1990 bull market from becoming a bubble, says he attempted to do just that in early 1997. He writes that he told the Federal Open Market Committee in February that “some sort of preemptive move” was needed to rein in the stock market. But an official transcript of that meeting clearly shows Mr. Greenspan was recommending a preemptive move against inflation, not stocks. In his book he quotes himself as saying, “What we are trying to avoid is bubbles that break,” but in fact he said that at the next meeting, in March, and the context suggests he was arguing against, rather than for, raising rates to damp stocks.

In the interview, Mr. Greenspan says regardless of the motivation for the Fed’s rate increase then, the fact that stocks soared even higher afterwards only proves his larger point that incremental rate increases can’t defuse a bubble.

He writes that when the Fed cut rates to 1%, it knew a possible risk was “we might foster a bubble.” At least one former colleague confirmed hearing Mr. Greenspan express such concerns. But publicly Mr. Greenspan dismissed such a possibility. “My own sense is we don’t have to worry much about the emergence of bubbles for a while because it takes a number of years for the trauma of the collapse [of the last bubble] to wear off,” he told an academic conference in early 2004.

One less serious discrepancy involves CNBC’s whimsical exercise of filming Mr. Greenspan arriving at his office on the mornings of FOMC meetings, then informing viewers a fat briefcase meant a rate hike was coming and a thin one meant the opposite. Mr. Greenspan says in fact the thickness of his briefcase “was solely a function of whether I had packed my lunch.” But Greenspan’s wife Andrea Mitchell, in her own autobiography, gives a different explanation: “I had bought him two briefcases for Christmas, and if he was carrying a lot of books, he took one, and not the other.”

In the interview, Mr. Greenspan defers to his wife’s account.

At the end of his book Mr. Greenspan writes, “There are errors in this book. I do not know where they are. If I did, they wouldn’t be there. But with two hundred thousand words, my probabilistic mind tells me some are wrong. My apologies in advance.”

Link.

Do This Now!

Sign the petition.

The Good News for Today; What We Work for: To Pay Our Health Insurance Premiums

The cost of health insurance in the United States climbed nearly twice as fast as wages in the first half of 2007, with family coverage costing employers around 1,000 dollars (714 euros) a month, a poll showed Wednesday.

[more]

Actually, here is more:

There was a great line at this morning's Business and Health Care forum, attributed to Newt Gingrich, which went something like, "one man's $200 billion in waste is another man's $200 billion profit stream." That's about the most essential fact in health care politics there is.

Some other thought-provoking comments:

• "In this country, our biggest source of health costs are preventable, chronic diseases. 25 years ago, they were acute conditions." In other words, the bulk of our spending isn't in cardiac arrest, but in managing cardiac disease. That suggests a prevention and wellness directed approach to cost control, not to mention significantly more research into how to cost effectively manage chronic conditions.

• "We need plan designs that incentivize the right patient behaviors and disincentivize wrong behaviors. At Pitney-Bowes, we eliminated the costs of 'tier one' drugs for chronic conditions. The result was reductions in the rate of cost increase for diabetes, cardiovascular health, etc -- all because we made those drugs free!" This goes to my progressive cost-sharing argument, but there are quite a few treatments we know to be effective and cheap if followed. If we made it effective and cheap to follow them, it would lower costs and improve health.

• "Commodities that are very bad for you are heavily subsidized. Poor people thinking very rationally about how to maximize their food purchasing are purchasing foods that contribute to chronic conditions." Our subsidies go into corn, not organic fruit. So those most likely to take advantage of subsidized foods load up on corn. And then they get sick. And then we pay. On the bright side, this is very good for a very small number of very politically powerful corn farmers.

• "In the past, folks have asked if we really should have wellness plans, because well be spending money on employees who leave for other companies. The hope, now, is that enough other companies will do this that we'll benefit from their programs and they'll benefit from ours." This is what you'd call a collective action problem: If every company will invest in wellness, they'll all save money. But on your own, it doesn't make sense to pump money ensuring a healthy middle age for young workers who will leave your firm.

Big Journalism Keeps Shooting Itself in Its Foot

What breathtaking bullshit:

During the September 12 edition of CNN Headline News' Glenn Beck, Washington Post media critic and CNN Reliable Sources host Howard Kurtz said that MSNBC host Keith Olbermann has described Fox News as a channel that "poses as a news organization and puts out dangerous misinformation [and] is a cheerleader for the Bush administration, that it is misinforming our society." Kurtz added: "But you know what? They're entitled to do that."

Link.

Essential Reading

Jane Smiley tells us how Naomi Klein spells it all out for us and how it all went bad and stuff:

You might have read the piece in Salon the other day where John Dean laments the passing of the Republican Party as a positive, or, even, a non-damaging force in American life. The party he has known for forty years, and the party he says that his friends now know, is a hateful, entirely corrupt, and self-interested body composed of those who take revenge and those who fear having revenge taken upon them. Every current candidate for the presidency is "authoritarian" in an extreme and unAmerican way that Dean thinks would have in earlier decades been "corrected" by the political system, but the Republicans, according to Dean, have broken the political system precisely so that it won't correct them. Sounds like the financial markets, doesn't it?

Personally, I would have put things slightly differently. The Republican Party now seems to work like a gang, in which the most valued qualities in members are loyalty to the gang and the leader, obedience to authority, and violence toward outsiders. The gang is constantly having to prove its dominance, and so candidates for leadership vie with one another for the most tyrannical or violent rhetoric, rhetoric which simultaneously demonizes those who don't accept the authority of the gang and the leader and removes all rules and laws for the gang and the leader. No one is exempt from the wrath of the gang. In this case, the Republican party has now separated itself fairly clearly from the general American population, and as Americans support it less, they come to seem to the Republicans to be more and more the enemy. The far away enemy is one thing, in terms of threat (think Al Qaeda, Shiites, Sunnis) but the enemy close at hand is more threatening because their enmity is seen as a "betrayal."

I don't doubt Dean. I always thought that for a Republican, he had something of a conscience. What amazes me is that Republicans who are now exclaiming at what has happened to the Republican Party (and yes, I talked to my mother this morning) didn't see this coming. Everything, every value, that the Republicans have held up for my lifetime as desirable has been pointing us in this direction. As I've said before on the HuffPost, all of this is the necessary consequence of traditional Republican values, not an accidental byproduct. Or maybe I'll put it this way -- when you reject common humanity, value profits above people, practice sectarian religion, feel contempt for the choices of others, exalt wealth, conflate consumersim with citizenship, join exclusive clubs, daily practice unkindness rather than kindness, and develop theories, such as those of free market capitalism, that allow you to congratulate yourself morally for selfishness and short-sightedness, then being a gang member is in your future.

Speaking of Free Market Capitalism, John Dean should start reading Naomi Klein's new book, The Shock Doctrine, which is being published next week, simultaneously in the US and in Britain. As Karl Marx pointed out, history and politics are not only psychological, they are also material. This week, the Guardian is running not only four excerpts from Klein's book, but also several commentaries both disagreeing and agreeing with her thesis. Her thesis is this (and if I am slightly inaccurate, blame me, not Naomi): In the fifties and sixties in the US, at least two lines of thought converged. One was about how to change people's minds without leaving marks and the other was about what was the best way of organizing a given economy. The first grew out of experiments in psychological torture (whoops, I mean electrocshock therapy) run by Ewen Cameron in the late 1940s. The theory was that patients could be rid of mental illnesses by "regressing" them to an infantile state, attaining a "clean slate" upon which new patterns of behavior and thought would be etched. Cameron used both electroshock and powerful drugs to attain his clean slate, having no actual knowledge of the chemistry of the brain or how it works -- in other words, he was operating in accordance with a metaphor. The result of Cameron's experiments, for the patients, was often considerable loss of short term and even long term memory and a subsequent lifelong feeling of "blankness" on the part of the patients (apparently, later refinements of electroshock techniques have mitigated these effects). In the 1950s, the CIA redirected these techniques toward torture of political opponents, allegedly to find out information, but really to test the techniques themselves (hello, Jose Padilla!).

At the same time, Milton Friedman was coming up with the idea that if only an economy could be purified of any kind of restraints on the free market (for example labor unions or socialized medicine or history), then the free market would be able to perfectly gauge the value of any type of good or service, and therefore an economy would balance itself, and, most importantly, inflation would be controlled (also, as you can see, a metaphor, or, perhaps, an extended analogy).

According to Klein, it soon became apparent that all powerful shocks to a system had a similar effect, whether the system was a human body or a national body, and this was to temporarily disable the system's defenses. The US government, the CIA, and the free market economists began to act on this insight, to collude in larger experiments. The first of these was the right wing coup, in Chile, led by Augusto Pinochet, in 1973. At the time, Chile had a functioning leftish government and economy, and the voters had already rejected Friedman's pure free market troika: privatization of government functions, an end to social spending, and deregulation.The new economy was dependent upon outside investors and highly profitable to them -- let's call that the allure of globalization. Pinochet set about instilling terror in the population (that's the shock therapy) using death squads, exemplary killings, and torture. Taking advantage of this, the economists installed the new free market way of doing things within days of the coup. But Friedman's ideas did not work -- inflation rose. In the eighties, the Chilean government tried again, this time by inducing a profound economic crash -- essentially impoverishing the populace in order to bring them to heel. Ultimately, the Chilean "miracle" (Friedman's term) did nothing for the population, but it did enrich the top ten per cent and put 45% below the poverty line. It turns out that as far as the economists were concerned, this was a good thing.

The Shock Doctrine traces what the US, the CIA, the economists, the Neocons, and the multinational corporations learned from the Chilean experiment and subsequent ones (Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Poland, Russia, China, England) and finally makes its way to Iraq (this is a 590 page book, and the print is small). Essentially, they learned that a small economy is easier to "regress" than a large one, that the shock has to be brutal, and that the free market doesn't work as Friedman said it would (automatically assigning appropriate value), but that it sure does make a few people rich beyond their wildest dreams, and that these people were Friedman's (and his students') benefactors and paymasters. They also learned to lie lie lie in order to sell what amounts to a program of inhuman greed to voters who have other needs, wishes, and ideas.

For our purposes, the more interesting section of Klein's book is about Iraq, where she traveled in the first year after the invasion, and this section forms part of her series of posts at the Guardian. She believes that the Iraq War was intended to not only steal Iraqi oil, but also to impose a radical free market on an unwilling populace, and that that was what was behind the installation of Bremer as the capo of Iraqi reconstruction. She believes that, thanks to the resistance of the Iraqis and their deep resentment at being used and exploited by the Americans, this effort has failed. However, a parallel effort, to shock the US economy into absolute deregulation, privatization, and an end to social spending, has been and is succeeding. What this amounts to is the fleecing of the American taxpayer in order to enrich the war making industries. The byproduct, as in Chile, is the gutting of the rule of law and the American political system as we have known it. Why did Bush and Cheney go to war? Well, where do they get their fortunes? The Shock Doctrine works perfectly for them. As for that 45% below the poverty line, well, once the globalizing manufacturers exported the well-paying US jobs, then the globalizing financiers moved in and sold the newly impoverished working class a few sub-prime mortgages guaranteed to take whatever else they had. Then the financiers screamed for a bailout, and Bernanke gave it to them. The free market, you might say, is working perfectly now, at least according to its shock principles.

So, John Dean, stop wondering what happened to your fellow Republicans. They embarked, knowingly in many cases, unknowingly in some cases, with utter indifference in still other cases, upon the destruction of the common good. They began doing this in the Cold War and kept up with it when it turned out to benefit them economically. Some of them did this because they were fearful and aggressive by nature, and hurting those outside their own families and clubs felt good, or reassuring. Some did it for money. Some did it for "patriotism." Some did it for religion and some did it out of pure cussedness, but they did it, and they did it over time.

Klein ends her book on a hopeful note -- in many places such as Chile and Lebanon, the people have learned from their experiences -- they are cannier and more resistant to the shocks administered to them by Bushco and their own ruling classes. Having endured "Disaster Capitalism" for several decades, they understand their own self-interests better and aren't as easy to fool. I would like to be as hopeful. The question, as always, with Bush and Cheney, is how far are they willing to go? And, is anyone willing to stop them? From John Dean's article, it doesn't sound as though it is going to be the Republicans.

Another Winner; Fred Thompson, Agent of Libya

Here.

Of course, once being BFF with Saddam didn't stop the Rummy-Cheney team from invading Iraq for no good reason and kicking his ass big time.

How Bad is it for the Iraqis?

In part, this bad:

Iraqis found themselves in a difficult position on Tuesday as they reflected on the report to Congress by Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker. Although they say there is nothing they want more than to have American soldiers leave Iraq, they also say there is nothing they can afford less.

More than 20 Iraqis of different sects and ethnicities said in interviews across the country that they viewed the report favorably because it — or, at least the parts shown on television in Iraq — portrayed the situation accurately. They also said it signaled that there would be little change in the status quo.

Most of those who wanted a quicker pullback were politically close to the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr, who has advocated immediate withdrawal. But even Mr. Sadr’s supporters left room for negotiation when it came to suggesting dates for withdrawal.

“We prefer the occupation forces get out today,” said Salah al-Ubaidi, the spokesman for Mr. Sadr’s office in Najaf. But he added: “The exact timetable of the withdrawal, in my opinion, is up to these forces to decide. It is up to the professionals in the security field.”

Mostly, Iraqis appeared rueful about their vulnerability and the need to allow foreign troops to help keep order for some time to come. Politicians were more measured in their views, and most stuck to the line that any withdrawal should be pegged to the readiness of Iraqi troops.

A city employee in Baquba, the capital of Diyala Province, vividly described his ambivalence.

“The withdrawal of the occupation forces is a must because they have caused the destruction of Iraq, they committed massacres against the innocents, they have double-crossed the Iraqis with dreams,” said the worker, Ahmad Umar al Esawi, a Sunni. “I want them to withdraw all their troops in one day.”

Dropping his voice, he continued: “There is something that I want to say although I hate to say it. The American forces, which are an ugly occupation force, have become something important to us, the Sunnis. We are a minority and we do not have a force to face the militias. If the Americans leave, it will mean a total elimination of the Sunnis in Iraq.”

Mr. Esawi added, “I know I said I want them to leave, but if we think about it, then I have to say I want them to stay for a while until we end all the suspicions we have of each other and have a strong national government.”

Several people said they were certain that the trend of decreasing violence cited by General Petraeus would reverse itself as soon as the Americans left.

“Violence could erupt at any moment if the Americans leave,” said Sara al-Zubaidi, 30, a Baghdad resident whose father is Sunni and whose mother is Shiite. “The ones who do these terrible things are asleep, not gone. They are waiting for the opportunity, just waiting for the opportunity to eat one another,” said Ms. Zubaidi, a graduate of the city’s College of Arts.

In interviews four months ago, many Iraqis refused to say how long American troops should stay. Now, however, some say they want them here for a minimum of three years, and maybe even five years. Ms. Zubaidi said she thought five years would be the minimum, adding that the police and army needed to be remade to root out sectarianism.

“They will need five years,” she said. “The first year they need to prepare themselves properly to work with the Iraqi people. Then they need a year or two years to start from the ground building the security services and then. ...” She lowered her voice and looked around as if she was afraid someone might be listening, then continued: “They need one year to prepare a government for Iraq that is built not on a sectarian foundation. It must be a secular government.

“Religion has nothing to do with government,” she said. “Religion is in my heart.”

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki in his speech to Parliament on Monday, acknowledged that the country was not ready for the American forces to withdraw. In subdued language, he voiced the views of many Iraqis.

“We quietly realize that we need more time before our security forces can take over the security dossier throughout Iraq from the multinational forces,” he said. “They have played an important role in helping and backing our armed forces in fighting terror and outlaws.”

Like many legislators, Mr. Maliki said he favored tying any withdrawal to the ability of Iraqi forces to protect civilians.

While most of the Iraqis interviewed blamed the Americans for the country’s deterioration, several echoed the sentiments of members of Congress who blamed the Iraqi government for failing to provide services and for allowing sectarianism to dominate.

However, several Iraqis noted that it was the Americans who created the government. And the corollary, they say, is that Americans bear the responsibility for fixing it. Some went further, saying the Americans should start all over again — even if it meant they would be here for years.

Link.

Way to go, Bushie!

Our Leaders' Lie of the Moment

So many lies, so little time for, you know, facts....

Them Al-Qaida insurgents fighting for Sunnis... you know, our reason (at the moment) for being in Iraq?

Damn few of them there.

More on ABC News' Lying Sack of Crap

Serious Big Media journalism does not believe in corroborating reporters' bona fides. BMJ is not sloppy like us bloggers who aren't all professionals but maybe just, you know, people with opinions, but who nonetheless must be held up to the higher standards the pros lyingly claim they live by.

Assholes.

Oh look, more on ABC News' higher standards!

In the end, it was Pascal Riché, a Paris-based former Washington correspondent for France's Libération newspaper, who uncovered a scandal at a top US television news network. On September 7, Pascal reported that an ABC counterterrorism consultant, Alexis Debat, had faked an interview with Sen. Barack Obama that he published under his name in a French journal, Politique Internationale, and that he had published other alleged interviews in the same journal with Sen. Hillary Clinton, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, former Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, and former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. It turns out, ABC itself later reported, the interviews were apparently fabricated.

Riché also reported that Debat claimed to have a Ph.D. from the Sorbonne that he did not in fact complete, and that he had exaggerated his CV in other respects—claiming to be an advisor to the French Ministry of Defense on transatlantic issues, for instance, when in fact he had been a lowly desk clerk in the bowels of the ministry for less than a year; claiming to be a visiting professor at Middlebury College, when in fact he had been a visiting instructor for a short winter term at Middlebury, and other such exaggerations. Mother Jones has obtained an annotated CV the French Embassy prepared about Debat—whose claims to be a former government official have apparently long irritated the government in Paris—outlining these and other discrepancies. (ABC believed the annotated CV was prepared by the French embassy, but sources now say it may have been annotated by a Washington-based French academic.)

Though Debat, often described in the American media as "a former French defense official," insisted he would clear his name and sue Riché and his online magazine Rue89 for slander, the alleged fabricated interviews soon became a problem not just for Debat but for ABC. Since 2002, the network has employed Debat as a counterterrorism consultant and sometimes reporter, sending him to far-flung locations to report on Al Qaeda, Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan. (For the past year and a half, Debat has also served as the director of the terrorism and national security program at the Nixon Center; he resigned "for personal reasons" this week, an official with the Nixon Center said.)

Sources also say that Debat claimed in the spring to have received a "large chunk of money" from the Pentagon to conduct a study concerning radical Islam; when I inquired about the contract, a Defense Department official said he would check into it.

Following Riché's report, ABC publicly announced that it had demanded Debat's resignation in June, after obtaining the annotated CV and investigating his claims to have a doctorate. ABC said it had investigated his reports then, and was undertaking a more extensive investigation upon learning of the fabricated interviews at Politique Internationale, but that to date, it was confident that all of Debat's reports for ABC had been vetted and multiply sourced and were standing up to scrutiny.

Interviews with journalists, think tank associates, and a former government official indicate that there were warning signs about Debat for years—even within the network itself. Two journalists familiar with Debat's work point to ABC chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross not only as the victim of Debat's alleged deceptions, but as an enabler, who has promoted sensational stories—including some that Debat brought the network—at the expense at times of rigorous journalism standards. (Ross did not return Mother Jones' phone call by press time, although an ABC executive has been in touch by phone and email.) They also say that they do not believe ABC has properly investigated Debat's reporting at all.

The two key questions to ask ABC, one source familiar with Ross' unit who asked to speak on background, are: "How is ABC investigating the information: Is it only being investigated by the Ross unit, or are outside reporters doing it? And in vetting or second-sourcing information brought to the network [by Debat], were resources outside of the Ross unit used?" Sources, and the AP reported late Thursday that ABC was sending long time Ross producer Rhonda Schwartz to Pakistan to investigate some of Debat's stories.

Overall, the picture of Debat that emerges from these interviews is of a smart, ambitious and cunning operator who would claim to be getting text messages from Middle Eastern intelligence operatives while at meetings with Ross and others at ABC, with tips that seemed too good to be true (which some colleagues believe were bogus), yet were used as "exclusives."

Sources provided multiple examples of stories that Ross—often with Debat's contributions—reported, only to be forced to run a correction the next day. For instance, one source noted, on September 5 last year, Ross reported that a Pakistani general had said that Pakistan would leave Osama bin Laden alone as long as he didn't cause any trouble. The Pakistani government angrily denied it, and the next day the ABC investigative unit's blog, the Blotter ran a correction.

Another ABC news story largely sourced to Debat – claiming that the U.S. government was advising and encouraging an Iranian Baluchi separatist group Jundullah which was carrying out attacks against the Iranian regime – was followed by an ABC report the next day carrying a "sharply-worded" denunciation from the Pakistani government.

One ethical issue raised by ABC's handling of Debat concerns the investigative unit's use of paid sources/consultants, who are often put on monthly retainer. But in ABC's use of Debat as a paid "consultant" who also had for the past year and a half an appointment at the Nixon Center, ABC also frequently had him reporting on its blog, the Blotter, and appearing as a "source" inside others' stories, blurring the line between source (and a paid one at that, with outside -- also paid -- affiliations) and a journalist, not clearly identified in the report. ABC also sent Debat frequently abroad, to gather information which he would put on the air and on the investigative unit's website.

Network officials strongly deny that ABC has tried to sweep the Debat matter under the rug, and say they are taking the matter of investigating his stories very seriously. "We acted expeditiously to sever ties with Debat when we could not establish his credentials and we did immediately investigate his work," ABC senior vice president Jeffrey W. Schneider emailed me.

In fact, the French news service AFP reported as far back as 2002 that according to the French government, Debat had never been a defense ministry official. "Alexis Debat, presented by the American [TV] channel ABC as 'a former official at the French Defence Ministry' in the context of the case of [Zacarias] Moussaoui … 'has never belonged' to this ministry," the AFP reported September 6, 2002. According to the annotated Debat CV, he had at one time had a low-rank desk job at the Ministry for less than a year.

And overnight Friday, Riché had a new scoop: a whistleblower inside ABC had alerted the network to its Debat problem, first in complaints to editors, and later, with a memo. "The ABC news reporter tried to alert the management of her network that Alexis Debat was not reliable," Riché reported. "In an email she wrote last May to a researcher in a Washington think tank, she explained she had been 'quietly concerned' about Debat's work for ABC 'for some time.'"

Rudy: His Law, His Order

Respect for law is a beautiful thing. Rudy, of course, is above anything so silly:

Rudy's new political ad attacking Hillary Clinton features multiple pictures of General Petraeus in uniform -- but now the Pentagon says that the General "has not condoned" the use of his image in Rudy's ad or any other political ads, adding that it was done "without his consent."

Rudy's Web ad -- launched yesterday -- features images of a uniformed Petraeus as a narrator's voice in the background accuses Clinton of slandering the General. In the ad, the Giulilani campaign also faults Clinton for not forcefully condemning a MoveOn ad in The Times that also features a picture of Petraeus.

Giuliani's ad, in addition to featuring multiple pictures of Petraeus in uniform, also features photos of uniformed American soldiers in Iraq that are "shown as Mrs. Clinton is accused of turning her back on them," as today's New York Times piece on the ad puts it. You can view the ad here, on Giuliani's campaign Web site.

Defense Department regulations prohibit uniformed personnel from appearing in political ads. And while these are stock photos, meaning that neither Petraeus nor the other military personnel actively moved to appear in Giuliani's ad, their use in this ad makes the question of whether Petraeus or the Defense Department condone the use of images of him or other military uniformed personnel a fair one.

It also raises the question of whether the Giuliani campaign perhaps should have asked Petraeus' permission to use his image in the ad -- particularly since the ad is designed to portray him as respectful of the General while painting Clinton as disrespectful, even disdainful, towards the top commander in Iraq.

Link.

Triumph of the Christofascists

Freedom and tolerance are great. Not that we were perfect at it, we must try again... if we can.

"Someone" (the lawyers will have to figure it out) flagged our video exposing the criminal actions of the Creation Science Evangelism Ministry, and had our account pulled. Unlike false copyright complaints, we're unsure currently how we can have this rectified at the youtube level. We may in fact decide to stay off youtube and do as Gisburne has done, having you repost thousands of our videos over and over.
Our suggestion for right this minute is to upload as many videos as you can all over the internet exposing the illegal activity that the CSE Ministry has currently been engaging in. They want to silence critics, that is clear, to ensure that this doesn't happen you must become more critical of them than you ever have. DO SOMETHING!
If you don't have a video serving that purpose merely uploading a video critiquing Kent Hovind would be good enough. If you feel like acting as childish as "they"do, feel free to flag their videos like it's your business all day long. We don't condone restricting free speech, but since nobody at youtube seems to care about these egregious and vile actions it's up to us to do anything we can to get youtubes attention. (this account is the main account causing the problems - users are reporting that they are flagging these videos left and right). That they would allow such activity after dozens of warnings from youtube members is extremely horrible mismanagement at best. There are dozens of videos and thousands of comments from angry youtube members who are pissed off that it takes 1 minute for someone to pull down a video if they're willing to claim ownership but it takes 14 days, tons of paperwork, and lawyers to reinstate what is rightfully ours. We are pissed. The Creation Science Ministries picked the wrong people to fuck with.
You have just as much right to CSE material as they do, as they've made their videos public domain. They changed their website recently to reflect a change that will never hold up in a court of law. You can't make videos public domain, and then rescind the copyright. Not only have there been countless fraudulent DMCA take down notices, but tracks have been covered with more illegal activity (by attempting to rescind free copyright usage).
Please keep in mind, Sapient wrote the above after being awake for 46 hours spending almost all of that time trying to defend all youtube atheists, only to have his own account removed. Please consider a paypal donation to help offset what will be lost.
Creation Science Evangelism has submitted many copyright violations on youtube in the past few days. The owner of the ministries is Kent Hovind who over the last 20 years has been seen as a public liar. He has held many lectures where he spends hours making people more ignorant as to how evolution works. He now sits in a jail cell for having refused to pay $840,000 in taxes. His defense the whole time was that his money belonged to God and nobody else.
He has stated that none of his material is copyrighted, and so far all of the instances of videos that have been pulled would have fallen within the boundaries of fair use.
Here is why this is important
Earlier this year the famous "psychic" Uri Geller submitted a false DMCA request takedown notice to have a video of mine removed which included about 8 seconds of material (that ironically painted URI in a positive light). When he submitted this notice, he had to sign off stating that he did in fact own the rights to the video, which he did not. What did I do? The same thing I am going to help many others do.
If you had a video pulled from youtube because of Creation Science Evangelism Ministries please make sure to post information about what happened IN THIS THREAD ON OUR SITE. I will try to help you obtain a lawyer.
Kent Hovinds people didn't learn enough from his jail sentence. Is Eric Hovind the next to spend time behind bars? Here is some more background information, behind the scenes footage and tapes.
Kents in jail, so Eric takes over.

Link.

The banned video is here. Remember, these people are really evil. They hate you.

Meanwhile, a somewhat deeper, fuller analysis is here.

Betray-Us for Dummies

He's already declaring victory for... Iraq?? Himself??? Our Beloved Leader??

The Ambitious Delusions of George Bush and David Petraeus

We now learn that General David Petraeus fancies himself a Dwight Eisenhower for the 21st century.

According to a report in London's Independent newspaper by the reliable Middle East observer Patrick Cockburn, the U.S. military viceroy in Iraq would like very much to return from his mission and -- like the Supreme Commander of Allied forces in Europe during World War II and of North Atlantic Treaty Organization in its aftermath -- mount a bid for the White House.

Petraeus has apparently been so open in expressing his "long-term interest in running for the US presidency" that Sabah Khadim, a former senior adviser at Iraq's Interior Ministry who worked closely with the general in Baghdad, recalls, "I asked him if he was planning to run in 2008 and he said, 'No, that would be too soon'."

Such are the political calculations of the man whose embrace of President Bush's war has become so complete that he and his aides have radically altered the manner in which statistics are gathered on violence in Iraq in order to foster the fantasy that the fight has taken a turn for the better.

"General Petraeus has a reputation in the US Army for being a man of great ambition. If he succeeds in reversing America's apparent failure in Iraq, he would be a natural candidate for the White House in the presidential election in 2012," explains Cockburn. "His able defense of the 'surge' in US troop numbers in Iraq as a success before Congress this week has made him the best-known soldier in America. An articulate, intelligent and energetic man, he has always shown skill in managing the media."

The problem, of course, is that Petraeus's "open interest in the presidency" might, Cockburn suggests, "lead critics to suggest that his own political ambitions have influenced him in putting an optimistic gloss on the US military position in Iraq "

It is Petraeus's willingness to apply the optimistic gloss that marks him as a worthy successor to George Bush, who in Thursday night speech to the nation pronounced himself well and truly pleased with his general's recitation of the administration's talking points. Based on general's testimony, Bush is claiming "success in meeting (our) objectives."

The president's "return on success" is an empty promise that a small number of troops already scheduled for withdrawal from Iraq may, in fact, be withdrawn. At the same time, however, Bush acknowledges that this "success will require U.S. political, economic, and security engagement that extends beyond my Presidency."

Translation: For all the window-dressing talk about drawing down troop levels, Bush continues to peddle the " stay-the-course" message that has been his theme since the occupation of oil-rich Iraq went awry more than four years ago. And, once more, the president is asking Congress to provide him with more money for more war.

All that has changed is that the president now has a medal-bejeweled general who is willing to gloss over the failure the naked emperor so desperately seeks to define as "success."

Bush and Petraeus have joined their ambitions -- one for a presidency that is not summed up by the word "failed," one for a presidency of his own.

Ambition is, unfortunately, the wet nurse of delusion -- a delusion so severe that Bush has seldom hesitated to compare his meandering "war on terror" with the fight against fascism.

For their own reasons, the president and Petraeus feel they can afford to maintain the war until they figure out how to rearrange the letters of the word "quagmire" to spell "victory."

That will not happen. Bush's will be a failed presidency. And Petraeus's will be not be a presidency at all.

Unfortunately, on the way to their shared fate, the commander-in-chief and his general will preside over thousands of additional American deaths, tens of thousands of additional Iraqi deaths, the continued collapse of this country's global reputation and the emptying from our treasury of the resources that might have made America and the world more secure, more functional and more humane.

Petraeus may fancy himself a latter-day Eisenhower. But he has shown none of the wisdom of the man who, recognizing the folly of turning the Cold War into a hot fight, campaigned for the presidency in 1952 on a promise to end the bloodshed on the Korean Peninsula -- and, when elected, did so quickly and honorably.

To those who suggested in 1953 that it was necessary to wage an endless ground and air war against Chinese communists who were portrayed as being every bit as diabolical as the targets of the "war on terror," Eisenhower responded, "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. [...] This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron."

Six years later, as he was finishing a presidency that had, for the most part, maintained the peace, Eisenhower counseled against paying too much heed to the pleading of generals and politicians for new fights.

"I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments," Ike told British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. "Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it."

And where do the people stand after weeks of propagandizing by the president and his Petraeus with regard to the war to which they have attached their ambitions?

A new poll of Iraqis, conducted by ABC News, Britain's BBC, and Japan's public broadcaster NHK, finds that 70 percent of those surveyed say they believe security has worsened in regions where the Bush/Petraeus surge has been focused. Another 11 percent of the people in whose name Bush claims the occupation must continue say the buildup has had no effect.

A new poll of Americans, conducted by the Gallup organization just prior to Petraeus's testimony, 58 percent rated the surge a failure. Perhaps more significantly, at least for the general's ambitions, 59 percent predicted that history would judge the whole of Bush's preemptive war with Iraq to have been a failure.

That is a seven percent increase from a year ago, when voters were preparing to reject the war and the war president's party at the polls. And while the testimony of a general and the preaching of a president may move some poll numbers temporarily, their empty words cannot change the reality that Eisenhower was right about such endeavors. "All of us have heard this term 'preventative war' since the earliest days of Hitler. I recall that is about the first time I heard it," the 34th president told a press conference in 1953. "In this day and time... I don't believe there is such a thing; and, frankly, I wouldn't even listen to anyone seriously that came in and talked about such a thing."

Those are the words of a general who had the wisdom required to assume the presidency, and of a president who had the wisdom to serve as commander-in-chief. It is a deficit of such wisdom that disqualifies both David Petraeus and George Bush, and that ill serves both Iraq and America.

Link.

And there's this:

The Fakery of General Petraeus: What Iraqis Think About the Surge

By PATRICK COCKBURN

At first sight the Petraeus report looks as if it is going to be one of those spurious milestones in the war in Iraq, (like the Iraq Study Group’s report last December), heavily publicized at the time, but not affecting the political and military stalemate in the country.

Unfortunately, the propaganda effort by the White House now underway may have a more malign impact than most propaganda exercises. It claims that victory is possible where failure has already occurred. It manipulates figures and facts to produce a picture of Iraq that is not merely distorted but substantively false.

The ‘surge’, the dispatch of 30,000 American reinforcements, was announced by President Bush on January 10 as a bid to regain control of Baghdad and reduce the level of violence. But the achievements are more apparent than real. The Interior Ministry in Baghdad says that 1,011 people died violently in Iraq in August, but an official at the ministry revealed to the US news agency McClatchy that the true figure for the month is 2,890 killed.

The truest indicator of the level of violence in Iraq is the number of people fleeing their homes because they are terrified that they will be murdered. According to the UN High Commission for Refugees the number of refugees has risen from 50,000 to 60,000 a month and none are returning.

Iraqi society is breaking down. It is no longer possible to get medical treatment for many ailments because 75 per cent of doctors, pharmacists have left their jobs in the hospitals, clinics and universities. The majority of these have fled abroad to join the 2.2 million Iraqis outside the country.

The food rationing system on which five million Iraqis rely to stay alive is also breaking down with two million people no longer being fed because food cannot be distributed in dangerous areas. Rice and beans are of poor quality and flour, tea and baby formula are short. Unemployment is 68 per cent of the workforce, so without a state ration and no jobs, more and more Iraqis are living on the edge of starvation.

No wonder then that what Iraqis believe is happening to them and their country is wholly contrary to the myths pumped out by the White House and the Pentagon. The opinion poll commissioned by ABC news, the BBC and Japanese Television NHK and published yesterday shows that 70 per cent of Iraqis say that their security has got worse during the last six months when the US increased the number of its US troops in Baghdad and surrounding provinces. A solid 57 per cent believe that attacks on coalition forces are acceptable. Some 93 per cent of Sunni approve such attacks and 50 per cent of Shia also back them.

Interestingly, 46 per cent of Iraqis believe that full-scale civil war would be less likely if the US withdrew before civil order is restored. Some 35 per cent say it would be more likely to occur.

There are some other telling statistics showing the differences between the Shia and Sunni communities. Some 30 per cent of Shia Arabs say the security situation in their neighborhood has become better in the last six months and 21 per cent say it is getting worse. But more than half the Sunni -- 56 per cent -- say their security is worse and only 7 per cent say it is better. These figures confirm the belief that the Sunni are being pushed out of Baghdad or into small enclaves within the city.

Ever since the summer of 2003 the US has never admitted the political and military consequences of the lack of support for the occupation outside Kurdistan. The latest poll shows that 79 per cent of Sunni and 59 per cent of Shia have no confidence at all in the US and UK forces.

This basic lack of support for the occupation undermines the elaborate tactics which Gen David Petraeus is supposedly carrying out in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq. The US and Britain have been training Iraqi forces for four years now without producing Iraqi units willing to fight alongside them. The difficulty is not equipment or training but legitimacy and loyalty.

At the start of yesterday’s Congressional hearings congressmen asked how it was that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was unable to produce a power sharing government. The answer is that he was not elected to do so. He was elected because the United Iraqi Alliance, the coalition of Shia parties, won the greatest number of seats in the December, 2005 general election and formed a government in alliance with Kurdish nationalist coalition. Some 54 per cent of Shia Arabs now support the government and 98 per cent of Sunni Arabs disapprove of it.

The Shia know they are 60 per cent of the population and are suspicious that the US is endlessly trying to find ways of robbing them of the power they were denied for centuries under the domination of Sunni Arabs who are only 20 per cent of Iraqis. They are deeply worried that the US is in effect creating a Sunni militia under US control by turning the Anbar Sunni tribes against al Qaida in Iraq.

The Shia leaders also notice that President Bush visited Anbar and not Baghdad earlier this month (though he may also have been seeking to to avoid the mortar bombs which rain down on the Green Zone these days to greet visiting foreign dignitaries).

Essentially there is a political and military stalemate in Iraq which the US ‘surge’ has not changed. The departure of Mr Maliki under pressure from the US would produce no more benefits than the sacking of his predecessor Ibrahim al-Jaafari last year. So-called moderate politicians like Iyad al-Allawi have limited local support though he has been heavily backed by the Sunni Arab states.

All the players in the Iraq tragedy who were present at the beginning of the surge in January are still there. Thanks to the US there are more militias than there used to be. General Petraeus might make a case for saying that the US position in Iraq is not much worse, but it is certainly no better.

And here's another guy's opinion -- Betray-Us' superior:

In sharp contrast to the lionisation of Gen. David Petraeus by members of the U.S. Congress during his testimony this week, Petraeus's superior, Admiral William Fallon, chief of the Central Command (CENTCOM), derided Petraeus as a sycophant during their first meeting in Baghdad last March, according to Pentagon sources familiar with reports of the meeting.

Fallon told Petraeus that he considered him to be "an ass-kissing little chickenshit" and added, "I hate people like that", the sources say. That remark reportedly came after Petraeus began the meeting by making remarks that Fallon interpreted as trying to ingratiate himself with a superior.

That extraordinarily contentious start of Fallon's mission to Baghdad led to more meetings marked by acute tension between the two commanders. Fallon went on develop his own alternative to Petraeus's recommendation for continued high levels of U.S. troops in Iraq during the summer.

The enmity between the two commanders became public knowledge when the Washington Post reported Sep. 9 on intense conflict within the administration over Iraq. The story quoted a senior official as saying that referring to "bad relations" between them is "the understatement of the century".

[Photo link.]

Last 10 Tourist Spots to Visit

No good for your health....

How the Press Does it or Not

Let it be noted that the morning after George W. Bush announced an open-ended – possibly permanent – military occupation of Iraq the premier U.S. newspapers ran headlines about the President ordering “troop cuts,” itself a troubling reminder of how the American people got into this mess.

The New York Times’ lead headline read: “Bush Says Success Allows Gradual Troop Cuts.” The Washington Post went with: “Bush Tells Nation He Will Begin to Roll Back ‘Surge.’”

In a subhead, the Post highlighted a tidbit from its own interview with Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq: that he projected “sustainable security” in that country by mid-2009 (which would fall shortly after the sixth anniversary of Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech).

Granted, the news stories did include some reasons for skepticism about Bush’s latest happy talk, including references to the assassination of the U.S.-allied Sheik Abdul Sattar Abu Risha earlier in the day in Anbar Province and the apparent collapse of Iraqi negotiations over how to divvy up the country’s oil revenues.

Yet, despite Bush’s long history of wishful thinking – or delusions – about Iraq, the major newspapers still gave Bush the headlines he wanted.

So, Americans bustling past newsstands on their way to work would get the superficial impression that Bush was finally moving toward the Iraq exit door when he really was doing all he could to paint the country, and his presidential successor, into a corner.

While the newspapers played up Bush’s relatively modest troop cuts – 5,700 by year’s end and another 20,000 or so by July 2008 – the more significant point was that the total number of U.S. troops in Iraq would still exceed the 130,000 or so who were in Iraq last November when anti-war sentiment led to the defeat of Republicans in Congress.

In his televised address, Bush also made clear that he foresaw an indefinite U.S. military commitment to Iraq reaching “beyond my presidency,” with any possible future de-escalation tied to Bush’s new slogan, “return on success.”

So, the headlines after the Sept. 13 speech could have read: “Bush Vows Indefinite U.S. Military Occupation of Iraq.” Indeed, if Bush’s speech is remembered historically, it will almost surely be for that reason, the clearest indication yet of his imperial impulse in the Middle East.

But the major U.S. news outlets still fear diverging from the message that Bush and his right-wing allies want delivered to the American people.

More Propaganda

That was the case in 2002-03 when the same newspapers trumpeted Bush’s Iraq-WMD propaganda and in early 2005 when Bush’s “freedom agenda” was conveyed with almost no skepticism, even as Bush was eliminating the classic American principle of inalienable rights, including the habeas corpus guarantee against arbitrary imprisonment, protection against “cruel and unusual punishment, “ and prohibitions against unreasonable searches.

The news media’s timidity and/or complicity in relation to Bush and his “war on terror” policies remain a fact of life today.

When the President asserts that up is down, readers of American newspapers have to search somewhere in the jump for a carefully hedged suggestion that perhaps up is really sideways. After six years of this behavior, it’s clear that the U.S. press corps has proven no match for Bush’s cognitive dissonance.

By focusing on “troop cuts” after Bush’s endless-war speech, the newspaper headlines represent just the latest example of why large segments of the American people have lost confidence in the U.S. news media.

The public intuitively understands that national-level journalists are looking out for their careers first, way more than the public’s right to know. With a few exceptions, these well-paid media stars fear that their livelihoods would be endangered if they got on the wrong side of the administration and its brass-knuckled allies.

So the beat goes on. By jacking up the number of troops and then letting some go home, Bush gets to play an escalation of the war into a troop cut. He also gets to sell the Iraq War again as a battle necessary to thwart al-Qaeda terrorists, even though U.S. intelligence has long ago concluded that Bush’s strategy is playing into al-Qaeda’s hands.

Almost one year ago, West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center posted a captured al-Qaeda communiqué from a senior aide to Osama bin Laden, a Libyan identified as Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, to the now-deceased Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, which stated in black-and-white al-Qaeda’s view of the Iraq War.

“Prolonging the war is in our interest,” the al-Qaeda letter read. Yet, neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post has ever mentioned this remarkable fact. Nor have Democrats cited the “Atiyah” comment as a counterpoint to Bush’s claims that al-Qaeda wants to “drive us out” of Iraq.

The reality – as many U.S. intelligence analysts know – is that al-Qaeda leaders in Pakistan see their personal survival and their movement's growth tied to the tying down of American forces in Iraq and to the outrage that an indefinite U.S. occupation of Iraq continues to stir up in the Islamic world.

***

Meanwhile, President Bush keeps pointing the way forward in Iraq from one mirage to another, as the United States staggers deeper into a neoconservative dreamscape of delusions.

Link.

The Joke that is Big Media Journalism

Cut corners, save money by using stringers, supervise them even less than employees, then expect any sort of competence:

As predicted yesterday, the scandal over disgraced ex-ABC News consultant Alexis Debat continues to spin out of control, with major implications for the way that Americans have been getting their news about the flashpoints that could determine war or peace in the Persian Gulf and South Asia.

The story first broke in Debat's native France, but here at home Laura Rozen continues to lead the pack on the coverage. Writing online today for Mother Jones, she exposes that there were long-time, serious questions about Debat by some at ABC News -- yet those questions never stopped star investigative reporter Brian Ross from airing sensational and inflamatory articles about U.S. meddling in Iran and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, using Debat as a prime source. Writes Rozen:

Interviews with journalists, think tank associates, and a former government official indicate that there were warning signs about Debat for years—even within the network itself. Two journalists familiar with Debat's work point to ABC chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross not only as the victim of Debat's alleged deceptions, but as an enabler, who has promoted sensational stories—including some that Debat brought the network—at the expense at times of rigorous journalism standards.

She notes two Ross ABC "scoops" on Pakistan that were either corrected or instantly denounced as false by Pakistani officials.

In the meantime, little attention had been paid to the French journal Politique Internationale -- which published Debat's bogus "interviews" with Barack Obama, as well as Hillary Clinton, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, former Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, and former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

But the French magazine deserves closer scrutiny. In continuing to connect the dots between Debat and the push for a neoconservative agenda that includes ratcheting up war tensions with Iran, it turns out that a prominent member of the neocon movement has served as editor of Politique Internationale for much of this decade.

Iranian-borm Amir Taheri (pictured at top) -- who edited a leading Iranian newspaper prior to the 1979 overthrow of the Shah and has since written for a number of western publications, including several owned by conservative press lord Rupert Murdoch -- has been a leading voice in Politique Internationale. It's not clear what his current role is, but in numerous press reports from 2001 through 2006 he was listed as its editor.

In recent years, Taheri's work has been prominently promoted by Benador Associates, a New York based public-relations firm that specializes in Middle Eastern affairs with a roster of experts, according to its own Web site, that reads like a Who's Who of the neo-conservative movement, including Richard Perle and James Woolsey.

Taheri's articles appear frequently in Murdoch-owned publications like the New York Post, the Times of London (which front-paged colleague Debat's accusations of the pending U.S. bombing of Iran), and the Weekly Standard. Ironically, Taheri has also written occasionally for the Wall Street Journal, which will soon be owned by Murdoch as well.

And like Debat, Taheri's work has been called into question in recent years. Most notably, Taheri reported in a column in Canada's National Post in May 2006 that Iran had passed a law requiring the country's Jews and other religious minorities to wear coloured badges identifying them as non-Muslims. The story was received wide play in conservative circles, but it was not true -- the newspaper had to publish a retraction the next day.

A month later, the Nation reported there has been a long history of questions about Taheri's work, including numerous inaccuracies in a popular 1988 book by Taheri about Islamic terrorism called Nest of Spies. The article lays out the allegations against Taheri in detail and concludes that:

Even among a crowd notable for wrongheaded analyses, Taheri stands out, with a rap sheet that leaves one amazed that he continues to be published. It is here that the role of Benador is key; the firm gives Taheri a political stamp of approval that provides entree to hawkish media venues, where journalistic criteria are secondary.
It notes that just days after the bogus National Post article, Taheri was invited to the White House to consult with President Bush on Iraq with other "experts."

Now it turns out that Taheri also served as editor -- or claimed to, anyway -- of a publication that also came to print Debat and his fake "interviews" with world leaders who for the most parts are opponents to the neoconservatve movement, like Obama, Clinton, and Kofi Anan. The made-up quotes attached to Obama -- saying the U.S. had suffered a "defeat" in Iraq -- were quite inflamatory and could have been re-surfaced in the heat of a presidential campaign. What type of working relationship did Taheri have with Debat at Politique Internationale? Was the Iranian also a second-hand source for Ross' inflamatory pieces?

In nearly seven years of the Bush administration, we've grown used to the loud and often wrong drumbeat in the usual right-wing publications. However, for this kind of clap-trap to find its way -- unfiltered, apparently -- onto ABC News and into millions of American homes was a huge coup for the neocon movement, but a huge blow to the U.S. media, and our political discourse on the Middle East.

Link.

Even Our Victories Merely Sow the Seeds of a Later Defeat or Disaster

The administration is employing a very prudent tactic by having American commanders in the field striking these alliances, which eases our immediate torment. But the administration is spinning this as some sort of strategic victory for its vision of the Middle East. It’s not. The good news is that the sheiks are accepting our guns and money. The bad news is that the sheiks are accepting our guns and money. Yes, okay, go ahead and make these alliances–but understand how it’s going to play out. Don’t boogey in the end zone and pretend these Sunni fighters are a bunch of Presbyterians.

When I was in Pakistan I asked an Army commander if we could get the Afghan tribes to do something and he said, “We can usually get the Afghans to do something that they want to do.” In Afghanistan, the Soviets made thousands of deals with the tribes, but you don’t buy them–you rent them. These guys change sides all the time. It’s the same thing here. Their needs and goals are completely unrelated to our vision of the world. The sheiks figure that their turf is threatened by Al Qaeda in Iraq and they’re happy to help go after them, especially when the U.S. is doing the heavy lifting. But there will be a piper that needs to be paid. You don’t have to go much beyond T.E. Lawrence to see how this is likely to play out.

Link.

Even Our Victories Merely Sow the Seeds of a Later Defeat or Disaster

The administration is employing a very prudent tactic by having American commanders in the field striking these alliances, which eases our immediate torment. But the administration is spinning this as some sort of strategic victory for its vision of the Middle East. It’s not. The good news is that the sheiks are accepting our guns and money. The bad news is that the sheiks are accepting our guns and money. Yes, okay, go ahead and make these alliances–but understand how it’s going to play out. Don’t boogey in the end zone and pretend these Sunni fighters are a bunch of Presbyterians.

When I was in Pakistan I asked an Army commander if we could get the Afghan tribes to do something and he said, “We can usually get the Afghans to do something that they want to do.” In Afghanistan, the Soviets made thousands of deals with the tribes, but you don’t buy them–you rent them. These guys change sides all the time. It’s the same thing here. Their needs and goals are completely unrelated to our vision of the world. The sheiks figure that their turf is threatened by Al Qaeda in Iraq and they’re happy to help go after them, especially when the U.S. is doing the heavy lifting. But there will be a piper that needs to be paid. You don’t have to go much beyond T.E. Lawrence to see how this is likely to play out.

Link.

What's Crazier than Rudy? His Advisors

On September 11, staffers for Barack Obama had a campaign ad taken down that had appeared as a “sponsored link” on Amazon.com’s web page for The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, the controversial new book by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt. Obama’s campaign didn’t place the ad; it apparently appeared on the Amazon page because his campaign, like those of other presidential candidates, pay to have their ads pop up when people do searches for key words like “politics.”

That same day, in the face of questions from the media, Obama’s campaign released a statement saying that while he had not actually read the book, its conclusions were “dead wrong” and that the senator “has stated that his support for a strong U.S.-Israel relationship, which includes both a commitment to Israel’s security and to helping Israel achieve peace with its neighbors, comes from his belief that it’s the right policy for the United States.”

Yet just five days earlier, Daniel Pipes–who, as I first reported here, has signed on as a foreign policy advisor to Rudy Giuliani’s campaign–essentially argued for war crimes against Palestinians, and there was no cry of protest from the media or anywhere else.

“Believing that if you don’t win a war, you lose it, I have long encouraged the Israeli government to take more assertive measures in response to attacks,” Pipes wrote on his blog on September 6.

In a Jerusalem Post piece six years ago, “Preventing war: Israel’s options,” I called for shutting off utilities to the Palestinian Authority as well as a host of other measures, such as permitting no transportation in the PA of people or goods beyond basic necessities, implementing the death penalty against murderers, and razing villages from which attacks are launched. Then and now, such responses have two benefits: First, they send a strong deterrent signal “Hit us and we will hit you back much harder” thereby reducing the number of attacks in the short term. Second, they impress Palestinians with the Israeli will to survive, and so bring closer their eventual acceptance of the Jewish state.

The Geneva Conventions label collective punishments as a war crime. “No protected person may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed,” according to Article 33. “Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.”

For the record, there’s much I disagree with in the Mearsheimer/Walt Book. But there’s something terribly wrong with the American debate on the Middle East when, due to public criticism, Obama’s campaign flees from an unintentional link to that book, while a Giuliani advisor argues for a policy of ethnic cleansing against Palestinians and his comments pass unremarked.

Link.

The People Speak Out on the President's Potential Troop Reduction

"I hope he hasn't picked out the specific 30,000 troops already, because by next August it will be more like 13,500."

Link.

More Presidential Lies

As I recollect -- always a hit and miss proposition -- first became aware of and enamored by this joke during the administration of Bush the Elder, apropos, of course, Bush the Elder:

How can you tell that the president is lying?

His lips are moving.

Or you know, maybe this was the joke (actually, I think it was, and it was during the Reagan administration):

What's the difference between President ----- and a bucket of hot steaming shit?

The bucket.

I of course digress, and it's just the first joke that segues in the little Bush's recent major speech to the nation:

BUSH SAID:

"Anbar province is a good example of how our strategy is working," Bush said, noting that just last year U.S. intelligence analysts had written off the Sunni area as "lost to al-Qaida."

FACT CHECK:

Early Thursday, the most prominent figure in a U.S.-backed revolt of Sunni sheiks against al-Qaida in Iraq was killed by a bomb planted near his home.

The killing of a chief Anbar ally hours before Bush spoke showed the tenuous and changeable nature of success in Anbar and Iraq at large.

Although Sunni sheiks have defied al-Qaida and largely allied with U.S. forces in Anbar, the province remains violent and al-Qaida remains a threat.

Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha died 10 days after he met with Bush during a surprise visit the U.S. leader made to highlight the turnaround in Anbar. The charismatic young sheik led the Anbar Salvation Council, also known as the Anbar Awakening - an alliance of clans backing the Iraqi government and U.S. forces.

The Sunni revolt against al-Qaida led to a dramatic improvement in security in Anbar cities such as Fallujah and Ramadi. Iraqis who had been sitting on the sidelines - or planting roadside bombs to kill Americans - have now joined with U.S. forces to hunt down al-Qaida in Iraq, whose links to Osama bin Laden's terror network are unclear.

Anbar is not secure, accounting for 18 percent of the U.S. deaths in Iraq so far this year - making it the second deadliest province after Baghdad.

Bush's top military commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, told Congress this week that Anbar's circumstances are unique and its model cannot be replicated everywhere in Iraq, but "it does demonstrate the dramatic change in security that is possible with the support and participation of local citizens."

BUSH SAID:

Progress in Iraq, including improvement in the performance of the Iraqi army, led to Petraeus' recommendation that "we have now reached the point where we can maintain our security gains with fewer American forces."

Bush said there is still work to be done to improve the Iraqi national police.

FACT CHECK:

A new White House report on Iraq shows slim progress, moving just one more political and security goal into the satisfactory column. Efforts to let former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party rejoin the political process earned the upgrade, a senior administration official told The Associated Press.

The report largely tracks a comparable poor assessment in July on 18 benchmarks. The earlier White House report said the Iraqi government had made satisfactory gains toward eight benchmarks, unsatisfactory marks on eight and mixed results on two.

Although the benchmark list is the rubric that the White House and the Iraqi government proposed earlier this year, the Bush administration has recently said it offers a skewed or incomplete view of progress in Iraq.

BUSH SAID:

Bush noted that the government has not met its own legislative benchmarks, but he pointed to limited political progress among Iraq's national leaders. He said Iraq has passed a budget and is sharing oil wealth.

FACT CHECK:

The General Accountability Office reported last month that Iraq has only partially met a test involving reformation of its budget process, although the State Department, Pentagon and White House disputed the finding.

Some proceeds from Iraq's vast oil and gas resources are being shared among regions, but the country lacks a national framework agreement for the distribution of oil revenues.

A national oil law, which would also invite foreign investment, has been repeatedly promised by Iraq's leaders and frequently mentioned by U.S. officials as a crucial marker of the country's ability to reconcile its ethnic and religious groups.

Iraq's main political parties are deadlocked over the law and the legislation has been sent back to party leaders to see if they can salvage it, an official involved in the talks said Thursday.

BUSH SAID:

"We thank the 36 nations who have troops on the ground in Iraq and the many others who are helping that young democracy."

FACT CHECK:

There may well be 36 nations contributing to the cause, but the overwhelming majority of troops come from the United States. For example, Albania has 120 soldiers there and Bulgaria has 150 non-combat troops in Iraq. Bush visited both nations this summer as a thank you.

The United States has 168,000 troops in Iraq.

Link.