Left I on the News  

The headline of the article reads "Iron-fisted leaders still threaten the world," and no, they aren't talking about George Bush, one of the only world "leaders" who really is threatening the world, on a routine basis. The subhead reads "Nuclear, biological weapons falling into hands of unaccountable states" but curiously, the word "Pakistan" doesn't appear anywhere in the article. Instead, with the exception of North Korea and Russia, the article is filled with diatribes against countries which definitely don't have nuclear weapons and, as far as we know, have no biological weapons either -- Serbia (under Milosevic, not now, for goodness sake), Liberia (under Charles Taylor, not now, for goodness sake), Iran, Venezuela, Belarus, Syria, Sudan.

Alexander Lukashenko, recently re-elected with 83% of the vote, is a "dictator...who has turned Belarus into the political equivalent of a Brezhnev-era theme park." Then there are "non-traditional dictatorships," in which are included Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, both elected with a far greater percentage of the vote than George Bush ever got (Chavez multiple times). See how many errors you can count in this sentence:

There are Hugo Chavez's Venezuela and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Iran, built on economic anger and religious resentment, where oil and nuclear power have become symbolic fists raised against a perceived oppressor -- whether it be the Americans or the Great Satan.

Stephen Colbert may have skewered George Bush for his willingness to ignore "reality," but Bush has nothing on the author of this article:

What they have in common is that the rulers can exploit the whole panoply of state power without regard for the will of the people. The irony of Iran has been that, for years now, a significant part of its population has been decidedly less anti-American than almost any other state in the Middle East. Chávez and Lukashenko are also hated by vital parts of their populations.

But the scariest, the most troubling, paragraph, is this one, which is the one intended to rouse the American people to action against these "potential threats" (note also the attempt to rewrite the past and provide yet another justification for the invasion of Iraq):

We are entering a well-armed world, with more players than ever who can unhinge the international system and who have fewer reasons to be afraid of us. That's why a resentful state leader, armed with disruptive technologies and ready to make use of stateless terrorists, poses such a threat. Saddam was a wannabe in this regard. According to a Joint Forces Command study, parts of which appeared in the May/June issue of Foreign Affairs, he was preparing thousands of paramilitary fighters from throughout the Arab world to defend his regime and to be used for terror attacks in the West. Looking ahead, Ahmadinejad would also be a prime candidate for such tactics, as would Chavez, given his oil wealth and the elusive links between South American narco-terrorists and Arab gangs working out of Venezuelan ports.

Update: Another article from the socialist press on what is behind the U.S. venom against Belarus, this one from Socialism and Liberation magazine.

I'm not going to the trouble of providing links, but in a variety of print coverage I've seen, virtually all of it has also dwelt either exclusively or predominantly on the Bush duo bit, although that was much shorter than Colbert's routine. The press simply doesn't want to touch that Colbert material with a ten-foot pole. USA Today was practically the only paper I looked at that had extensive coverage of Colbert's routine, but even there it was subordinated to the Bush routine, and ended with this curious sentence: "He then showed a clip in which he fielded questions by the press corps, only to wind up running from the building chased by veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas." Notice anything missing? Like the word "Iraq"? Which was, after all, the entire point of that bit.

The New York Times covered the demonstration in the local section; other papers didn't cover it at all. There was an AP article, but it didn't make it into the paper I read, the San Jose Mercury News.

And on the morning after 300,000 people demonstrated against the war, what was the lead story on NPR radio this morning? The upcoming (later that day) demonstration on Darfur. The actual demonstration in New York was not mentioned at all.

And what happened at that Darfur rally, which got so much pre-event publicity? They certainly had a good turnout, as I saw while watching a bit of it over lunch on C-SPAN. This article says "thousands" (which we all know could mean "hundreds of thousands," although an underestimate like that is much less likely to occur at a rally supported by the establishment), but also includes a formulation for crowd size estimate I've never seen before: "The organizers' permit estimated a turnout of 10,000 to 15,000 for the rally." Honestly, I don't care what the permit estimated before the rally, what did the organizers say at the rally? The article doesn't say.

Here's the most curious thing I noted in watching a dozen speeches or so. Speaker after speaker talked about genocide in Darfur. But just two days ago, a major story emerged: because of the lack of a few hundred million dollars, the U.N. is cutting in half the food rations of the people in Darfur. Surely that imminent and completely preventable catastrophe would be mentioned by the speakers at the rally, wouldn't it? Not one that I heard. God forbid they should raise a concrete demand against their own government (other than launching an intervention in yet another country). I found it bizarre.

I particularly loved how he ended with a long segment with Helen Thomas, which repeated over and over the question, why did the U.S. invade Iraq? No punches were pulled, and no quarter given. Brilliant stuff. If only he were like this every night I'd start watching his show again. In the meantime, I could watch this performance again and again. Well, at least again.

Update: Just watched it again, this time from the beginning. I love the George Bush clone, who I've seen many times (and enjoyed) on the Tonight Show (Jay Leno). The most notable thing about the whole evening was the sparseness of the laughter for Colbert's routine, and the mere smattering of applause at the end. I was rolling in the aisles, but the White House Press Corps and guests were not, for the most part, amused.

Second update: There was so much material, just two quotes. First:

The greatest thing about this President is you know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday!

Incidentally, if you want to read more, I cross-posted this at Daily Kos here; there are now 411 comments (and climbing) on the post.

And, as predicted, the video is at Crooks and Liars here.

Life isn't something you buy; it comes in your paper, in my case the San Jose Mercury News. And what is on the front page of that paper today, in the same issue containing the Life Magazine? An article celebrating the "longest commute in the U.S." -- a man who commutes 372 miles round-trip five days a week (and who won $10,000 as a result). The article has lots of sentences about how he finds the drive "exhilirating" and the trade-off (living in the country vs. having to commute that far) "decent." Here's a sentence it doesn't include: how much gasoline he manages to burn during the course of a year, and how much pollution he contributes to the atmosphere as a result.

The Alabama state congress has approved a resolution urging the U.S. Congress to annul all trade, financial and travel restrictions related to Cuba.

A second resolution passed by Alabama’s congress expressed thanks to Alimport’s Alvarez for his efforts toward normalizing bilateral relations.

The resolutions read out by [Alabama Agriculture Commissioner Ron] Sparks were presented by nine legislators who traveled to Cuba together with the agriculture commissioner.

The Alabama commissioner added that the southern state’s trade relations with Cuba have been "extremely important to the farmers of Alabama," who have sold $150 million worth of goods.

Sparks also said that the trade has been an important boost for port activities, and that it "ensures" the maintenance of 467,000 jobs in the agricultural sector, according to the AFP.

P.S.: yes, that "whopping" was a joke. Of course the Senate, Democrats and Republicans, should be voting to cut off all funding for the war. That would require that they were actually listening to their constituents, however, rather than to the people and corporations putting money in their pockets.

The scandal surrounding disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff has been a Washington obsession for months, but Republican lawmakers who returned from a two-week recess this week said they felt free to pass a relatively tepid ethics bill because their constituents rarely mention the issue.

Escalating the threats between Washington and Tehran, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warned Wednesday that his country would strike U.S. targets around the world in the event it is attacked over its refusals to curb its nuclear program.

I know I've said this before, but I'm afraid I'll have to keep writing about it because it is clearly the issue of the moment, and the powers that be are sparing no effort to convince the American people of the "danger" from Iran. As with the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, their lies must be exposed continuously, because they aren't going to stop telling them.

Equally eager to dangle a carrot in front of the nose of its target audience is the U.S. military:

As the top U.S. commander in Iraq suggested today that the United States would soon reduce the number of troops in Iraq, Pentagon planners said to ABC News that they hoped to pull more than 30,000 troops out by the end of the year, and possibly by as early as November.

The reductions depend on political and security progress in Iraq.

The analogy does fall apart however (aside from the fact that Microsoft products don't usually result in death). Even if the U.S. military does manage to pull out 30,000 troops by the end of the year, it won't be the equivalent of a new release. More like a service pack. Just like Windows needs to be totally replaced by MacOS or Linux, the U.S. military and the system it represents (and defends) needs to replaced by a totally new system. In the short term, however, we'll settle for a complete withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Update: By a curious coincidence, the latest issue of eWeek magazine just arrived, carrying this story:

Microsoft has 'fessed up to hiding details on software vulnerabilities that are discovered internally, insisting that full disclosure of every security-related product change only serves to aid attackers.

Second update: On CNN's Anderson Cooper 360, tonight, Cooper led into this story by talking about how troops might be coming home "soon." A little later, he elaborated and used the "end of the year" formulation. Clearly Anderson works from a different calendar than I do, if he thinks that eight months qualifies as "soon." Of course that's precisely what this whole story is about, and Anderson Cooper and most others in the press play right into the Administration's wishes -- in order to weaken the opposition to the war, convince the American people that they will "soon" be withdrawing troops, even when they have no such intention.

The second development relates to that application. Posada Carriles entered the U.S. illegally (strangely enough, I've never seen him referred to as an "illegal alien") in March, 2005. I first wrote about it shortly thereafter, when it was widely known (e.g., reported in the Cuban and Miami press) that he was in Miami, but at which time the U.S. was taking no action against him (he was finally arrested in May after flaunting his presence with a public interview). And now it turns out that, at a time when he was claiming through his lawyer that he had snuck into the country illegally through Texas, and that the U.S. government was pretending it didn't know he was here, that an FBI informant had already told the government, from the moment he entered the country, that he had actually entered the country through Miami on a ship with two of his associates (neither of whom has been charged with assisting his entry).

The hypocrisy, duplicity, and responsibility of the U.S. government in this case is truly remarkable. There have been two very good summaries recently of the entire history of this case -- one published today on Consortium News by Robert Parry, and the other recently on CounterPunch by Venezuelan lawyer Jose Pertierra.

The number of victims of this war, not even counting the victims of misplaced economic priorities, is vastly greater than shows up in any count. Back in economics class in college, I remember learning about the "multiplier effect." A similar thing occurs in war. Unfortunately, it involves subtraction as well as multiplication.

The Army plans to charge Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, the former head of the interrogation center at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, with dereliction of duty, lying to investigators and conduct unbecoming an officer, Army officials and a lawyer for the officer said on Tuesday.

Colonel Jordan was the last major figure from Abu Ghraib whose status remained unresolved two years after the graphic accounts and photographs of detainees being abused and sexually humiliated became public. Other more senior officers have been reprimanded, fined and relieved of command.

Is Miller's status "resolved"? Hardly. Here's what his status was back in January:

Miller, now based at the Pentagon as a senior official managing Army installations, was recommended for administrative punishment for his alleged mishandling of interrogations of a valuable detainee in Guantanamo Bay. But high-ranking military officials have declined to impose the penalty.

By the way, "Gitmo-izing" has a cutesy ring to it. If you want to know more about what it really means, and the role Geoffrey Miller played in it, start with this Democracy Now! interview with Alfred McCoy, author of "A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, From the Cold War to the War on Terror." For more complete documentation, visit the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has it all, having played (and still playing) a lead role in the fight against torture, or read the transcript of the Frontline show on the subject.

Check it out.

Hi:

I caught your post regarding CENTCOM and casualty reports. We do post them on our webpage, http://www.centcom.mil. I don’t know if you’ve seen the site, but it features news, photos, audio and video from Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. Please give it a look; Hopefully it will prove to be a helpful resource. If you could add a link to our site (I’m trying to spread the word about it), it’d be appreciated. If you want to be signed up for the weekly electronic newsletter and monthly Coalition Bulletin, just ask.

SPC C. Flowers
CENTCOM Public Affairs

4/23/2006: Roadside Bomb Kills 3 Mnd-b Soldiers
4/22/2006: Four Coalition Soldiers Killed By Roadside Bomb In Kandahar Province
4/22/2006: Ied Blast Kills Four Mnd-b Soldiers
4/22/2006: Mnd-b Soldier Killed In Roadside Bomb Attack
4/21/2006: Marine Killed In Al Anbar Province
4/19/2006: Roadside Bomb Kills Mnd-b Soldier
4/16/2006: Three Marines Killed In Al Anbar Province
4/16/2006: Marine Killed In Al Anbar Province
4/15/2006: Marine Killed In Motor Vehicle Accident
4/14/2006: Two Marines Killed, 22 Wounded In Al Anbar Province
4/13/2006: Multi-national Division-baghdad Soldier Killed
4/13/2006: Marine Dies Due To Enemy Action Near Baghdad
4/12/2006: Soldier Dies From Wounds In Al Anbar Province
4/12/2006: Two Mnd-b Soldiers Killed By Roadside Bombs
4/12/2006: Ied Kills Mnd-b Servicemember
4/12/2006: Task Force Band Of Brothers Soldier Dies
4/11/2006: Task Force Band Of Brothers Soldiers Killed
4/11/2006: Three Mnd-b Soldiers Killed By Roadside Bomb
4/10/2006: Soldier Dies From Wounds In Al Anbar Province
4/10/2006: Two Soldiers Killed In Al Anbar Province

And, if you're looking for actual totals of casualties (or even just fatalities) on the CentCom site, you'll have to do a better job than I. I couldn't find them anywhere.

"We must never take any option off the table, because the danger is real. But we need to make every effort to negotiate, and it doesn't look like that's being done."

With "progressives" like this, hyping the "danger" of Iran and refusing to "take any option off the table," why worry about FOX News and the right wing?

"Working in the framework of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the agency is our concrete policy," [Iranian President Ahmadinejad] said. But "if we see that they are violating our rights, or they don't want to accept" what he called the country's rights, "well, we will reconsider."

Iran insists the Non-Proliferation Treaty gives it the right to enrich uranium for fueling civilian nuclear power plants, and he has given no ground in the international faceoff.

The United States, Britain and France maintain Iran also wants enriched uranium for atomic bombs, which would violate its commitments under the treaty.

The article continues with this gem:

Taken together, the actions appear to show an Iranian determination to move ahead with a confrontation with the West when the U.N. Security Council meetss, probably next week, to debate its next steps.

The topsy-turvy world of the American government and media is also reflected in another Times article, headlined "Rice Dismisses New Threats From Iran." Iran is making threats? Technically, yes. They are "threatening" to withdraw from the NPT if sanctions are imposed on it. Put another way, they are "threatening" to "retaliate" in the mildest possible way if the economic powers of the world launch an economic war against it. And what else is Iran "threatening"? Why, those aggressive people are actually vowing to do something (unspecified) if attacked militarily. The fiends!

I searched both The New York Times and the Washington Post for the phrase "threats against Iran." I got exactly one match -- in a quote from Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on why oil prices are rising!

But the whole problem is actually more subtle than this, which is why today's report triggered this post. CNN Headline News, which I was watching, reported "More than 100 casualties in Egyptian resort." Which made me realize -- whenever there is a report of a "terrorist" action, such as the one in Egypt or this car bombing yesterday in Baghdad, we always see sentences like this: "Seven car bombs exploded in the capital on Monday morning, killing at least 20 people and wounding more than 100." They actually tend to avoid the word "casualties," but almost always give us the largest possible numbers to react to by including the number of wounded. But when it comes to U.S. military personnel, it's quite a different story, typified by this story in the same paper on the previous day: "Three U.S. soldiers were killed Sunday when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb northwest of the capital, raising to eight the number of Americans killed this weekend in the Baghdad area." Now I don't know, since it wasn't reported, but it seems highly unlikely that eight Americans were killed and not a single one injured. It's simply that those casualties go unmentioned. (Added later: And, it should be noted, incidents in which there are only injuries, and no fatalities, go completely unreported in the media).

The explanation seems fairly straightforward. The higher the numbers of Iraqi (or Egyptian) casualties inflicted by "terrorists," the worse the "enemy" seems and the more justified the war and occupation. On the other hand, the lower the number of American casualties, the "better" the war is going, and the longer Americans are willing to put up with the "cost" (not that a majority are willing to accept the cost even now).

There's a reason why you have to swear in court to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Because, as I wrote just yesterday, an omission can be just as much a misrepresentation of the truth as an actual lie. Too bad the U.S. media and the U.S. military don't have to take that oath.

"Just the fact that the Iranian government is making a lot of noise doesn't prove their capability. Remember, the Iraqi government made a lot of noise, and they had nothing."

- Democratic Rep. Jane Harmon

Update: Joining right in to the chorus of lies, Tony Blair, who says that "Nobody is talking about military invasion" (a patent falsehood in and of itself), then adds to the pressure for such an invasion by claiming "Iran...is in breach of its nuclear obligations." No, Tony, that's you and your American allies who are in breach of the NPT; Iran is in complete compliance with that treaty.

Brown Creeper

The Brown Creeper is not an uncommon bird, but one which very few "non-birders" are ever likely to see, for reasons which are obvious if you look at the picture above, which I took yesterday during my annual "Birdathon." Small (5"), extremely well-camouflaged, generally silent, and always seen alone, you really have to be looking for them to see them, even though they can be seen in perfectly ordinary places (this one was photographed in the picnic area of a local park).

The team I was part of saw 55 different species of birds, which, considering that we were walking, and did no driving at all (unlike the "serious" birdathon teams intent on seeing 200 or so species), wasn't bad at all.

Looking for politics? Well, like many bird species, the Brown Creeper is threatened by habitat loss. And appreciating what the world has to offer now really helps to strengthen one's resolve to work to see that it isn't lost forever, and to fight for a world in which everyone can appreciate its beauty.

Crude-oil prices reached a new record of $75 a barrel Friday, driven by nuclear gamesmanship in Iran, continued violence in Iraq, the war of words between Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and U.S. officials, and Nigerian rebel attacks on the African nation's oil pipelines.

"Your headline '2 SJSU students to hang with Bush' struck me immediately. That's a noble sacrifice if they are willing to make it, but couldn't we hang Cheney and Rove with him instead?"

- Letter writer to the San Jose Mercury News

Here are three videos of the song: the plain acoustic version, just featuring Pink and the Indigo Girls singing the song, and two different versions in which other people have added their own video on top of the music, basically a series of photos illustrating the lyrics. My favorite is the one linked to the word "two." Good stuff.

Hat tip to The Blue Voice, who posts all the lyrics.

Bush traveled Friday night to Stanford University, where he met privately with members of the libertarian Hoover Institution to discuss the war. He concluded the day with a private dinner held by George P. Shultz, a Hoover fellow and former secretary of state. Bush will have lunch Sunday with Marine Corps and Navy families.

The New York Times, to its credit, actually led with the cancelled visit to the Hoover Institution.

And, just for fun (or disgust, as you prefer):

"What the f--- do I know about science and technology?
I'm as dumb as a post."

The Bush administration is battling to stop Venezuela and Cuba from gaining seats in important U.N. posts in a confrontation that has many Latin American nations caught in the middle, diplomats and analysts say.

Most observers believe Washington faces an uphill battle to keep Venezuela out of the Security Council and Cuba out of a newly created U.N. Human Rights Council.

While President Bush is generally disliked abroad, leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Cuban leader Fidel Castro have courted nations with a strong anti-U.S. discourse and offerings that range from discounted oil to free eye surgery.

All of the real power in the U.N. resides in the Security Council, and even there within its five permanent members. But these two votes are one of the rare situations where the General Assembly, composed of virtually all of the nations of the world, gets to have a say. And in that forum, the U.S. can experience some pretty humiliating defeats. At least, defeats that would be humiliating to someone with any humility.

U.S. military officials in Iraq say improvements to bases are necessary because the U.S. is likely to have troops in Iraq and Afghanistan for years, albeit in smaller numbers than the 135,000 that are there now. They point out that 50 years after the Korean War, the United States maintains around 30,000 troops on Korean bases as a hedge against renewed hostilities.

I'll close with the same close from that post:

Here's my exit strategy for Iraq (and Korea, for that matter): "As the American people stand up (and say NO! to the occupation), American forces will be stood down." Stand up, America! Just say NO!

"We will not allow an American soldier to set foot [in Iran]. We will defend our country till the last drop of blood.''

- Shirin Ebadi, Iranian winner of the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize.

"The intervention of the American army will not improve the situation - the experience of Iraq has demonstrated that."

Unlike the "real" (original) Nobel Prizes (Physics, Chemistry, etc.), the Nobel Peace Prize is a political award, meant to sent a message to someone, typically someone not in favor in "the West." This year's prize, to Iranian reformist lawyer Shirin Ebadi, was meant to send a message to the religious rulers of Iran in support of human rights in that country. However the winner herself apparently has a different idea about the message she wants to send:

Iran's Shirin Ebadi became the first Muslim woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize Wednesday and sent a bold anti-war message to the West, accusing it of hiding behind the Sept. 11 attacks to violate human rights.

"In the past two years, some states have violated the universal principles and laws of human rights by using the events of Sept. 11 and the war on international terrorism as a pretext," she said in a prepared acceptance speech.

"Regulations restricting human rights and basic freedoms ... have been justified and given legitimacy under the cloak of the war on terrorism."

Ebadi said Guantanamo prisoners had been "without the benefit of the rights stipulated under the international Geneva conventions, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the (U.N.) International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights."

And what demonstration would be complete without this total waste of taxpayers' money:

Here's the funny thing. That building behind the line of cops? That's not where Bush and Schwarzenegger were at all! They were in a building far to the right (and actually behind) me as I'm photographing the cops. They were so far away from us that, had we decided to "rush the building" (why, I don't know), jets could have scrambled from the nearest air force base and probably beat us there. This kind of show of force isn't about protecting Bush, or protecting the precious Cisco buildings for that matter. It's about intimidating the protesters, making people feel uneasy and in some way "guilty" about exercising their First Amendment rights. Of course it doesn't work with the people who do show up at a demonstration like this, but imagine the effect it has on some people who see this kind of thing on TV, figure that "where there's smoke there's fire," and that they'd be better off not coming to such a potentially dangerous place.

Update: That one-woman protest against Chinese President Hu yesterday? WIIIAI tells us she's been charged with "harassing, intimidating or threatening a foreign official," carrying a penalty of up to six months in prison. I wonder what you can get for "harassing or intimidating" George Bush? I left out "threatening," because I'm pretty sure that could land you in Guantanamo for life.

2nd Update: I forgot the most interesting story. As I was leaving, an acquaintance told me about a friend of hers that works at Cisco (where the speech occured). They had received a memo saying, in effect, "If you are a supporter of George Bush, let us know and we'll consider you for admission to the speech." Has there ever been a President who was as big a coward as George Bush? I seriously doubt it.

Update #3: After leaving Cisco, Bush was supposed to pay a visit to the Hoover Institution on the Stanford campus. But, as the San Jose Mercury News reports, he didn't:

At Stanford, where Bush ended up canceling an appearance at the Hoover Institution, a peaceful but spirited group of about 1,000 students and community activists gathered to await Bush's arrival. Many waved placards and chanted against U.S. involvement in Iraq.

And now Bush is further north in St. Helena, where he is being greeted by still more protests. No justice, no peace!

Israel occupied East Jerusalem during the Six-Day war of 1967 and later annexed the Palestinian half of the city and its inhabitants to Israel in violation of international law.

Now Olmert, the former mayor of Jerusalem and a man well-versed in underhand manoeuvres in the holy city, is expelling Palestinians from East Jerusalem on the grounds that he doesn't like their politics.

Foreign minister Tzipi Livni observed that Israel had the right to revoke the residency of whomever it deemed disloyal to Israel. In other words, Olmert and his cronies are behaving as though Palestinian residency in Jerusalem is a right conferred by Israel -- as though Palestinians are immigrants rather than the city's indigenous inhabitants living under an illegal and increasingly vicious occupation.

Today I and a thousand or two others will be out protesting Bush's visit to San Jose. We can scream for as long as we like, and Bush won't even hear us, because we'll be in the "not-so 'free speech' zone" talking basically to each other (and to the public, to the extent that the media allows us to), while he's kept at a comfortable distance from us. "Comfortable" in the sense that his poor brain won't have to be disturbed with the thought that there are actually people who not only disagree with him, but think he's a war criminal responsible for the death of more than a hundred thousand people.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said last week that Iran was pursuing the enrichment of uranium on an industrial scale, which could allow it to accelerate the development of nuclear weapons.

The Washington Post wasn't the only one doing its best to promote war with such subtle influences on the American psyche. Here's what Jon Stewart, the person liberals think is a liberal but really isn't, had to say last night:

"We've got an America-hating madman who we know is building WMDs in an oil-rich country that starts with the letters I-R-A."

In this article, Ritter is his usual scientific self while laying out the truth about Iran's nuclear program, in the face of the relentless media and political onslaught on that truth:

The reality is Iran does not possess an active, ongoing, viable nuclear weapons program. In all reality, Iran does not yet even possess the capability to enrich uranium on an industrial scale.

The fact that the IAEA safeguard inspections are at play in Iran may in itself come as a surprise to most observers of the ongoing Iranian nuclear saga. Iran is still very much a member, in good standing, of the non-proliferation treaty, and all of its nuclear activities continue to be under the stringent monitoring of the IAEA safeguard inspectors.

But it is wrong, and futile, to simply blame these power nodes, or the institutions they have come to so heavily influence. These power nodes did not simply appear out of nowhere. They are a product of American history and culture, a manifestation of the reality that, even more so than the processes of representative democracy, America is a product of unadulterated capitalism.

Some might argue that this very definition in itself provides justification for a total rejection of the current manifestation of the American system, and the need to seek a new path or direction. There are those in the anti-war movement today who articulate such an argument. I, for one, am not prepared to embrace this way of thinking. I recognize both the good and bad inherent in the difficult blending of capitalistic greed and individual humanism that is modern America, and accept that this system is the best model in existence today, as long as it maintains a system of checks and balances that keeps the forces of excessiveness under control.

Since America is, first and foremost, a capitalist system, it is to capitalism that one must look to for these adjustments. We got the first inklings of this very sort of attitudinal wake-up call just this week, when Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, a Republican of distinction who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called for the Bush administration to "cool it" on the issue of Iran.

Senator Lugar did not base his arguments on grand ideological principles of peace and justice, but rather the more base passion of prosperity.

Scott Ritter should stick to speaking about what he knows. The facts. And keep his opinions to himself.

Update: More Scott Ritter (hat tip Firedoglake). Lots of good stuff, and some, in my opinion, completely inane things too (cf his comments on Cindy Sheehan).

Chelli's brother, who is in Tel Rumeida now, has been beaten three different times, and hospitalized once. She reports that just this morning in Tel Rumeida, settlers beat four elderly human rights workers, one of them 79 years old. As usual, soldiers who were present did nothing to stop the beatings.

And he said the U.S. has no military option in Iran.

"We don't have the resources to do it" because of the ongoing war in Iraq," he said.

[And no, I don't understand that placement of quotes more than you do, but it appears that way in both the Washington Post online and also in the AP section of Yahoo News]

"Bush [is] a man of applied ignorance who has undernourished his mind with the empty calories of comfy dogma."

- Richard Cohen

Worst-case climate change called unlikely

Climate Change Will Be Significant but Not Extreme, Study Predicts

Climate scientists have for more than a decade concurred that climate sensitivity's most likely value is in the range of about 2.5 degrees to 8 degrees Fahrenheit. But...scientists have been unable to rule out more extreme calculations suggesting a warm-up of 16 degrees Fahrenheit or more.

Climate sensitivity almost certainly falls within the more conventional range of current predictions [that's the 2.5 to 8 degrees], with only a 5 percent chance that it will exceed 11 degrees Fahrenheit.

Note what's missing from the article -- any discussion of the impact of what even that more likely, 2.5 to 8 degree change, will have on the world.

According to Department of Labor statistics, at least 425 U.S. civilians have died in Iraq including at least 22 Blackwater contractors.

When [a Roseville couple] attempted to buy a treadmill on a financing plan, a Wells Fargo representative told the salesperson that the couple would have to wait 72 hours while they were investigated. The reason? The husband's first name was Hussein. He is a U.S. citizen who has lived here more than 30 years, but because others named Hussein -- like Saddam -- are on the [OFAC] list, he had to be "cleared."

Similarly, a Chicago resident discovered the watch-list when he went to an auto dealership to purchase a used car. At the top of his credit report, a salesman noticed a reference to an "OFAC search" -- followed by the names of terrorists, including Osama bin Laden. Apparently, the customer's last name, Muhammad -- one of the most common names in the world -- had triggered false matches to the watch-list, because the individuals named on the credit report had Muhammad as their middle name.

One wonders what would have happened had this man applied for a job or sought to rent an apartment using the same credit report. How many nervous employers or landlords would have simply turned him down, scared off by the alarming reference to terrorists? The prospect of lost opportunities for jobs or homes is very real, as more employers and landlords begin checking not just credit reports but also the OFAC list itself -- most with very little understanding of what the list means.

Why are companies screening people against the list? While some, like financial institutions, are required to do so by the government, most businesses face no such requirement. But because the law prohibits anyone in the United States from doing business with people on the list, theoretically any company or individual could be fined for a transaction with a blacklisted person.

Civil rights, anyone? Logic, anyone?

Recent decades have been cruel to the children of Iraq, a country that was a regional leader in health care 30 years ago. Then came Saddam Hussein's diversion of Iraq's wealth into weapons, wars and palaces, 12 years of crushing international sanctions and finally, the invasion, occupation and insurgency. More children have probably died from lack of clean water and sanitation, malnutrition, and lack of health care than from the missile, bomb and rocket attacks of invading armies and insurgent militias.

Delvis Fernandez, the founder and president of the national Cuban American Alliance Education Fund, would like to take his blind 88-year-old mother Sara to Cuba to visit with her diabetic 86-year-old sister, whose leg was recently amputated. But their proposed trip is illegal under the U.S. Administration's tightening regulations.

George "Jorge" Milanes of Los Osos wants to travel to Havana to see his dying 94-year-old aunt, Tia Carmen, who--in a typical Cuban extended family custom--helped raise him. However, U.S. rules forbid him to go.

Although other Americans are not allowed to travel to Cuba at all, Cuban-Americans are now allowed one trip every three years to visit family members. But under the new rules, "family" has been redefined only as mother, father, sister or brother. Aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, and nephews don't qualify--which is the reason Fernandez is not allowed to accompany his aging mother on a visit to her sister.

With the Bush Administration's new definition of "family" for Cuban-Americans, Milanes cannot legally travel to Havana again, since he has only aunts, cousins, nieces and nephews there. His California-born children are not allowed a first-hand experience of their Cuban roots. "How gross is that, to hinge foreign policy on the separation of families, especially for a 'family values' kind of guy," Milanes fumes.

To fully re-equip and upgrade the U.S. Army after the war ends would cost $36 billion over six years, and that figure assumes U.S. forces would begin withdrawing in July and would be completely out of Iraq by the end of 2008, an assumption Bush dismissed when he suggested withdrawal will be up to his White House successor.

Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a member of the Armed Services Committee, said a more protracted fight could triple Schoomaker's $36 billion figure.

Of course, this calculation of "continuing expenditure" has to do with exactly one thing -- re-equiping the Army. The Washington Post neglects to tells its readers about the biggest expense of all - continuing medical care for tens of thousands of injured veterans. That amount is likely to exceed one trillion dollars over the next 50 years.

Of course, the "opposition" is going to do something about all this, right? Yeah, right:

Senate Democrats say that, in the end, they will vote for the measure, which congressional leaders plan to deliver to President Bush by Memorial Day. But the upcoming debate will offer opponents of the war ample opportunity to question the Bush administration's funding priorities.

Resignation is legal and, unlike impeachment with conviction, actually precedented. The call for resignation puts the power of the country where it belongs -- into the hands of the people of the country, who, like the people of countries around the world, actually have the power to force it to happen, if they want it badly enough.

I'll try again. Resign. Now.

And as we reach the 45th anniversary of the Bay of Pigs, the most overt attempt by the U.S. to overthrow the Cuban government, Joseph Palermo, writing at the Huffington Post, reminds us of another key lesson from the history of Cuba:

In April 1961, in preparing for the Bay of Pigs invasion, the CIA had painted several of its own planes with Cuban Air Force insignia, and the pilots pretended to be "defectors" from Castro's own military when they provided air support for the invading operatives on Cuba's south coast.

On April 15, 1961, two of the freshly-painted B-26 bombers were forced to emergency land in Miami after Fidel Castro's air defenses riddled them with bullets. The Immigration and Naturalization Service announced that the crews had "defected" to the United States, and their identities had to be kept secret lest Castro's goons kill their families.

Fast forward to 2002, according to a leaked memo from the British government, President George W. Bush suggested to Tony Blair prior to attacking Iraq that the United States should paint aircraft with "United Nations" colors, and then provoke Saddam Hussein to fire on them, thereby creating the pretext for an invasion.

In 1961, the United Nations Ambassador, Adlai Stevenson, told the world that the CIA planes were from "Castro's own air force" that "took off from Castro's own air force fields." (They had taken off from Nicaragua.)

We should be suspicious if "defectors" from the Iranian Air Force begin bombing in support of a U.S. invasion. We should be equally suspicious if the Iranians fire upon some "neutral" planes (or ships) giving Bush a pretext to launch the war.

Located in the Israeli-controlled area of Hebron, Tel Rumeida is a small neighborhood living out the brutal extravagance of direct Israeli occupation. If Tel Rumeida is viewed as a microcosm of the Israeli plan for Palestine, the sometimes subtle realities of Palestinian life under occupation and the type of Palestinian state Israel desires can be more easily comprehended.

Nearly every tactic used by Israel to create its merciless occupation is employed in Tel Rumeida: displacement, imprisonment, economic strangulation, extreme militarization, arbitrary detention, land confiscation, disruption of normal Palestinian life, settler violence, soldier brutality, government complicity with illegal settler acts, and daily humiliation.

But these right-wing racists are backed by the full power of the Israeli state (and, not so indirectly, by the full power of the American state). In the first 3 1/2 months of living in Tel Rumeida, the activists counted 120 attacks on Palestinians by the settlers, almost all of them witnessed by soldiers, and none of them prevented by the soldiers. In 8 months they haven't witnessed a single significant intervention by Israel police to prevent stonings, beatings, or other acts of settler violence against Palestinians. When Palestinians attempt to lodge complaints, the police routinely hang up the phone when they hear Arabic spoken on the line, but even incidents documented with video footage and reported by the internationals are simply ignored. The constant harassment has already succeeded in ethnically cleansing 90% of the neighborhood; only 10% of the Palestinians originally living there have had the courage to remain in the face of the onslaught.

One of the dramatic aspects of this situation is that, because of Israeli law, children under the age of 12 are not subject to penalties, nor are their parents, so the acts of stoning Palestinians are routinely carried out by children as young as 6. Video footage of such incidents is available on the website (a full, edited documentary is in preparation). Watching such footage, you should remember that a Palestinian child carrying out a similar activity, and not even stoning people but just stoning an armored personnel carrier in a completely symbolic act, is likely to be shot and killed by the same Israeli soldiers who watch indifferently while Israeli children stone Palestinians. In the current Intifada, approximately 800 Palestinian children have been killed. Of those, 68% were shot in the head or upper chest, indicating rather conclusively that they were not "caught in the crossfire" but were deliberately assassinated by Israeli soldiers.

The people involved in the Tel Rumeida project are few in number, and incredibly brave, as they attempt to put themselves between the Palestinians of Tel Rumeida and the Israeli settlers, simultaneously documenting and attempting to prevent the atrocities which occur on a daily basis. I've added a new "Donate" link in the right-hand column; a small donation will go a long way to helping this small band of heroes. And if you have the opportunity to either hear them present a program in your area, or to arrange a presentation, I strongly recommend you do so. In the meantime you can visit their website to read their reports and see their photos and videos.

When you read Western corporate media, you frequently read about how Arabs want to "drive the Jews into the sea." When you see the Israeli Jews who live in Tel Rumedia, you'll realize that in reality, the shoe is very much on the other foot. They are the ones who are quite openly, and unapologetically, trying to drive the Palestinians, if not "into the sea," then at least completely out of their historic home. And, as an ironic sidenote, a significant fraction of these people claiming Hebron, and the rest of the West Bank, as their "home," are in fact recent arrivals from places like Brooklyn.

Q Sir, when you talk about Iran, and you talk about how you have diplomatic efforts, you also say all options are on the table. Does that include the possibility of a nuclear strike? Is that something that your administration will plan for?

THE PRESIDENT: All options are on the table.

While we're at this "press availability," we have to take note of the fact that Bush is paying much more attention to what's going on in the world than he did previously:

"I have strong confidence in Don Rumsfeld. I hear the voices, and I read the front page, and I know the speculation."

But reading the corporate media, you simply wouldn't have a clue why any of this was happening. That's where left-wing media comes in, in this case, Workers World newspaper, and this enlightening article. First we have the "fair elections" part, where the U.S. and E.U. figure that's it's "fair" for their heavy thumb to be pressing down on one side of the scale.:

Both the U.S. and European governments poured in millions of dollars openly and covertly to defeat Lukashenko. The Feb. 26 New York Times admitted that the Bush Administration was spending $12 million in 2006 to overthrow the Belarus leader. Another $2.2 million was allocated by the quasi-governmental National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which is also trying to topple Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.

The European Union awarded $2.4 million to a German company to broadcast hostile radio and television programs into Belarus. The Polish regime set up Radio Racja with similar goals. Though he is an opposition figure in Belarus, Milinkevich was allowed to address the Sejm, the Polish Parliament.

The NED, Britain's Westminster Foundation and Germany's Foreign Ministry gave money directly to Lukashenko's opponents, according to the Times.

Belarus is the only country carved out of the former Soviet Union that didn't allow a fire sale of its state-owned industry. Unlike Russia, there are no billionaire "oligarchs"--like the now-imprisoned Mikhail Khodorkovsky--who were able to loot factories and natural resources.

There is a stock market in Minsk. But 80 percent of industry is still state-owned. That is a good reason why the unemployment rate in Belarus is 1.5 percent, as compared to 18 percent in Poland in 2005, and 48 percent for Black men in New York City in 2003.

Average wages increased by 24 percent last year. Pensions also went up. The sales tax was cut. So why shouldn't President Lukashenko get an overwhelming number of votes?

Lukashenko also angered Bush by denouncing the invasion of Iraq and defending Cuba, Iran, People's Korea and Venezuela in his address to the United Nations General Assembly last fall.

Belarus's economy in 2005 posted 8% growth. The government has succeeded in lowering inflation over the past several years...During 2005, the government re-nationalized a number of private companies...A wide range of redistributive policies has helped those at the bottom of the ladder; the Gini coefficient is among the lowest in the world.

The Lord of War isn't really a political movie; the wars which form the basis for the arms trade which the movie is about are presented without any real context. Are there political messages in the film? I'm sure there are, if you want there to be, but that isn't the reason to watch it. The fact that it's simply a terrific movie is. While listening to the director's commentary after watching the movie, I was quite surprised to learn that this was a low-budget, "indie" film; it certainly doesn't give that impression.

Update: While we're at the movies, Crooks and Liars has a short post about a new movie American Dreamz which I've been seeing trailers for on TV. It's supposed to be some kind of parody of George Bush, but a USA Today article tells us all we need to know about where the writer/director is coming from:

"I'm not a conspiracy theorist," Weitz says. "I genuinely believe people in the administration went to war in Iraq for a dream, to create a liberal democracy in the Middle East, the only problem being it's a little more difficult than that."

One interesting feature of this story is that I only heard about it on a local TV station (KTVU, Oakland). It wasn't an important (or unordinary) enough story to even make the local paper, the San Jose Mercury News, nor does a Google news search turn up any other news coverage. "Every person for themselves" is such an intrinsic part of capitalism that when it rears the ugliest part of its head, as in this story, it simply isn't even news.

I wonder how many of the local "Christian" leaders preached sermons about this situation on Easter Sunday, and called on their flocks to rise up and call for their government to reflect their nominal values? I'll bet it was few and far between.

Where do capitalists spend their money, besides for fighting war? Another story did make the Mercury News this morning - so far in this election season, local developers have managed to find $412,356 in spare change to "donate" (i.e., invest) in the San Jose mayoral election (out of a total of $1.2 million).

President Bush says he declassified portions of the prewar intelligence assessment on Iraq because he "wanted people to see the truth" about Iraq's weapons programs and to understand why he kept accusing Saddam Hussein of stockpiling weapons that turned out not to exist. This would be a noble sentiment if it actually bore any relationship to Mr. Bush's actions in this case, or his overall record.
...
Since Mr. Bush regularly denounces leakers, the White House has made much of the notion that he did not leak classified information, he declassified it. This explanation strains credulity. Even a president cannot wave a wand and announce that an intelligence report is declassified.

To declassify an intelligence document, officials have to decide whether disclosing the information would jeopardize the sources that provided it or the methods used to gather it. To answer that question, they closely study the origins of the intelligence to be disclosed. Had Mr. Bush done that, he should have seen that the most credible information made it clear that the Niger story was wrong. (In any case, Iraq's supposed attempt to buy uranium from Niger happened four years before the invasion, and failed. The idea that this amounted to a current, aggressive and continuing campaign to build nuclear weapons in 2002 — as Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney called it — is laughable.)

(Judith Miller, who then worked for The Times, was one of the reporters Mr. Libby chose for this leak, although she never wrote about it.) But the version of the facts that Mr. Libby was authorized to divulge was so distorted that it seems more like disinformation than any sincere attempt to inform the public.

The fortress-like compound rising beside the Tigris River here will be the largest of its kind in the world, the size of Vatican City, with the population of a small town, its own defense force, self-contained power and water, and a precarious perch at the heart of Iraq's turbulent future.

The embassy complex -- 21 buildings on 104 acres, according to a U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee report -- is taking shape on riverside parkland in the fortified "Green Zone."

"Embassy Baghdad" will dwarf new U.S. embassies elsewhere, projects that typically cover 10 acres. The embassy's 104 acres is six times larger than the United Nations compound in New York, and two-thirds the acreage of Washington's National Mall.

It will have its own water wells, electricity plant and wastewaster-treatment facility, "systems to allow 100 percent independence from city utilities," says the report, the most authoritative open source on the embassy plans.

Security, overseen by U.S. Marines, will be extraordinary: setbacks and perimeter no-go areas that will be especially deep, structures reinforced to 2.5-times the standard, and five high-security entrances, plus an emergency entrance-exit, the Senate report says.

Iraq's interim government transferred the land to U.S. ownership in October 2004, under an agreement whose terms were not disclosed.

Skeptics have another pressing concern -- that a prominent antiwar group may be playing a leading role in the boycott, linking its cause with the immigrant rights campaign to promote its own agenda.

Diaz [Ricardo Diaz, who helped organize two marches in Philadelphia.], Contreras [Jaime Contreras, president of the National Capital Immigrant Coalition and chairman of the local Service Employees International Union in Washington, D.C.] and other leaders were alarmed that the antiwar organization Act Now to Stop War and End Racism co-sponsored an April 4 news conference in the District to announce the boycott, even before the April 10 events. The group has been criticized by conservatives as being affiliated with the Socialist Workers Party and supporting the Palestinian uprising against Israel.

"Groups . . . that have done nothing on immigration have no reason to stick their nose where it doesn't belong," Contreras said. "They have no business saying, 'Let's do a strike' when it will create a humongous burden on immigrant groups. They need to stay in their box."

Brian Becker, national coordinator of the antiwar organization, said his group has long supported immigrant rights and is not trying to co-opt the May 1 action. "We are just part of the coalition; we are not spearheading it at all," he said. "Whatever the immigrant rights community calls for is what we support."

The second thing to note is the alleged criticism from these unnamed conservatives. What are they? Aside from the incorrect "affiliation with the SWP," it's "supporting the Palestinian uprising against Israel." I'm sure you'll all note the language of that. Not "supporting Palestinian rights," not "opposing Israeli occupation of Palestine," not "opposing the Israeli oppression of the Palestinians," but "supporting the Palestinian uprising." By the way, since Diaz and Contreras are not "conservatives," that language clearly comes straight from the reporter, and not from anyone else.

The third thing to note is what is missing. "Conservatives" also criticize ANSWER for opposing the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Isn't that a bit more central to what ANSWER has been doing lately, and relevant? Why mention Palestine and not Iraq? Isn't Iraq just as "irrelevant" (in the eyes of conservatives) to the immigrant rights movement as Palestine? And, by the way, we might also note that it's not just "conservatives" who criticize ANSWER's support for the Palestinian people, but liberals as well. Just as an aside.

But the central point, of course, is the claim by Contreras that ANSWER has "done nothing on immigration" and Becker's counterclaim that "his group has long supported immigrant rights." I'll provide the proof. Here's the Socialism and Liberation issue for July, 2005, with a cover reading "The workers struggle has no borders, " and articles entitled "Real I.D. Act attacks immigrants," "Fighting the racist Minutemen," and "The global struggle against CAFTA." The current (April) issue, produced before all but one of the recent wave of demonstrations, has as its cover article "Stop the war on immigrants!," and features an article on the huge Chicago demonstration which kicked off the latest wave. Of course this kind of attitude, and activism, is hardly limited to the PSL and hardly began in July 2005; this issue has been central to the left, and to the workers movement, for a long, long time (probably since the time of Marx, but I'm not the Marx scholar some are, so I'll leave that proof to others). And if you've been reading the blog Politics in the Zeroes, written by an ANSWER activist in Los Angeles, you know that that's one of the few places on the web you've been able to read about these recent demos before they happened, because Bob, and ANSWER-LA, were centrally involved in their planning. Not, as Becker makes clear, "spearheading" the activity, but supporting it with all their energy.

The attempts to split the immigrant rights movement must be resisted at all costs. That doesn't mean, as I said at the start, that there can't be or aren't legitimate discussions over strategy and tactics. But redbaiting, explicit or implicit, is completely unacceptable.

Update: Just to sample some other sources, I plugged in the phrase "immigrant rights" at some web sites. At Socialist Worker, I got 260 articles from their paper; at Workers World, 468 articles. Proving once again what I said above - immigrant rights has always been a major issue for the left; the implication that the left has just shown up at immigrant rights demonstrations in order to "promote its own agenda" is nonsense. Immigrant rights is an integral part of the agenda of the left.

First question from the Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll: "Overall, taking into consideration everything you have heard or read about the situation with Iran, do you think Iran will be stopped from getting nuclear weapons through diplomatic solutions, or only through military action, or do you think Iran will eventually get nuclear weapons?"

Iran isn't interested in obtaining nuclear weapons? Not a possible answer. Just "how can we stop them" and "are they too incompetent to manage it"?

Next question: "If Iran continues to produce material that can be used to develop nuclear weapons, would you support or oppose the U.S. taking military action against Iran?"

Iran hasn't produced any material that can be used to develop nuclear weapons. None.

At the same link, we find a FOX News/Opinion Dynamics Poll. Here's their first question: "Which one of the following do you think is the most likely outcome for the situation with Iran trying to obtain nuclear weapons? (1) Iran will be stopped from getting nuclear weapons through diplomatic solutions. (2) Iran will be stopped from getting nuclear weapons through military action. (3) Iran will eventually get nuclear weapons."

Here's a CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll: "What do you think the United States should do to get Iran to shut down its nuclear program: take military action against Iran now, use economic and diplomatic efforts but not take military action right now, or take no action against Iran at this time?"

And a Pew Research Center poll: "Who should take the lead in dealing with Iran's nuclear program: the United States or countries in the European Union?" and "Which is your greater concern when it comes to dealing with Iran's nuclear program -- that we will take action too quickly, or that we will wait too long?"

The closest anyone comes to an unbiased question without implicit assumptions is this CBS News Poll: "Which comes closer to your opinion? Iran is a threat to the United States that requires military action now. Iran is a threat that can be contained with diplomacy now. OR, Iran is not a threat to the United States at this time." And even there, that "at this time" carries the implicit assumption of future threat.

In politics, I believe these are called "push polls." But then, I'd be lying if I said it was these polls, and not the daily drumbeat from "opinion makers" which are convincing Americans that there is a threat that needs to be "dealt with."

Update: Here is the opening sentence from the New York Times article on the subject today: "Western nuclear analysts said yesterday that Tehran lacked the skills, materials and equipment to make good on its immediate nuclear ambitions." There simply is no allowance for any debate on the "fact" that Iran has "nuclear ambitions." I admit that "immediate nuclear ambitions" could in principle refer only to nuclear power, but reading the whole article in context, it's pretty clear that is not what it means. After all, if that was Iran's only "ambition," this would be a non-story. Which it would be, were it not for the war-mongering U.S. government and U.S. media.

No surprise, then, that after catching Ahmadinejad's entire speech on C-SPAN (not a direct link), I was unable after considerable effort to find any kind of transcript of his complete remarks. I mean, maybe you don't believe a word he says, but shouldn't you at least want to know what he said? Since I couldn't find a transcript, I made one. Here it is; you be the judge. I should say this isn't a complete transcript, but it is a transcript of the most relevant portion. I have, I admit, left out the part where he said "Death to America, death to England, death to the infidels, death to Israel." You can take that for what it was worth too.

"Sciences and technologies thanks to the faith in God is in the service of humanity. It is science tempered by faith that serves peace and progress. We have declared on numerous occasions that we seek peace and stability on the basis of faith in humanity, in a unitary God, and in justice for the entire human race. We have declared many times, and we declare again, that our nuclear technology is in the service of peaceful goals. We declare that mass destruction weapons are sought by those who still think in the mode of 50 years ago. Those who think that political equations and cultural and economic equations can be solved to their benefit by relying on arsenals of mass destruction weapons. Our nation is a civilized nation, a cultured nation, that relies on the faith and will of its young nationals. Our nation, in order to achieve its aspiration, relies on the thoughts and beliefs and enhanced values that lie in the Islamic culture and Iranian culture. Our nation does not elicit its power from nuclear weapons. The power of our nation is rooted in the justice of its beliefs.

"We have declared and I declare again that the total sum of our nuclear activities in all phases were under the full supervision of the atomic agency, and today we also wish to stay under the supervision of the IAEA and continue our activities. What we have achieved and will achieve in the future will be in the framework of the legitimate rights of Iran and based on the universally accepted laws including the laws of our nation and the IAEA under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. We, on the basis of international rules and our legitimate rights, continue our path towards having nuclear power plants. Unfortunately, our nation in its advancement path, faces some bad temper, some law-breaking, and some coercion by some nations. Of course it is not without precedent in our history. In the movement for nationalizing our oil industry which was our legitimate right, some of these same powers stood up against us and boldly defied the legitimate rights of Iran. Of course, the product of this was a permanent hatred of them rooted in the hearts of our nation. And they today, with the same argument, with the same literature, and with psychological warfare, they try to prevent Iran's access to its legitimate rights. I advise them not to repeat the bitter experience of the past and to respect the rights of the Iranian people. I urge them not to create a permanent hatred in the hearts of the Iranian nation for themselves and in the world.

"We have declared many times and I declare here again that the Iranian progress and power will always be in the service of peace and stability for its neighbors and the entire world, and it will be such in the future."

Update: From the comments, this link to an August 10, 2005 speech (note, as the speaker does, that is in the historical context of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, sixty years earlier) by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, well worth reading in this context. Here's the "money quote," but there's lots more - it's a powerful, comprehensive speech:

"The Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has issued the Fatwa that the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam and that the Islamic Republic of Iran shall never acquire these weapons."

Just so you don't think that's a misprint, or a missing decimal, here's the article Tinsley refers to, which asserts that "the costs of operating the tax system: compliance costs, litigation costs, tax planning distortions, and so on...add up [to a] 65 cent loss for every dollar of taxes collected."

I really shouldn't waste my time on this, but it was irresistable. The IRS budget? $10.6 billion. Total tax collected? $1.9 trillion. That's 0.55 cents per dollar. Not 55 cents. 0.55 cents. Now Payne clearly wants to include things other than the IRS budget - as he says, compliance costs, litigation costs, etc. No doubt those are real. But more than a hundred times greater than the IRS budget? 65 cents per dollar -- $1.2 trillion total? I don't think so. And what proof does Payne offer for his assertion? Although it's part of a 2500-word article, this is the sum total of the "proof" he offers: "A few years ago I made an attempt to add up all these burdens." Well ok then.

Gheesh.

"I wanted people to see the truth and thought it made sense for people to see the truth. And that's why I declassified the document."

On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile "biological laboratories." He declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction."

The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the decision to go to war. But even as Bush spoke, U.S. intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true.

A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq -- not made public until now -- had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement.

The three-page field report and a 122-page final report three weeks later were stamped "secret" and shelved. Meanwhile, for nearly a year, administration and intelligence officials continued to publicly assert that the trailers were weapons factories.

And the second is the "deathbed conversion" aspect of the story:

The authors of the reports were nine U.S. and British civilian experts -- scientists and engineers with extensive experience in all the technical fields involved in making bioweapons -- who were dispatched to Baghdad by the Defense Intelligence Agency for an analysis of the trailers. Their actions and findings were described to a Washington Post reporter in interviews with six government officials and weapons experts who participated in the mission or had direct knowledge of it. None would consent to being identified by name because of fear that their jobs would be jeopardized.

The Washington Post ran this story on page one. The report it describes is still classified. Does the Post editorially call for its declassification? Not today, anyway.

"There simply isn't a precedent for the world's dominant superpower turning into a rogue state."

Noted blogger Billmon, who really should know better, discussing the potential of a U.S. attack on Iran

Kerry: "As president, I will bring back this nation's time-honored tradition: The United States of America never goes to war because we want to; we only go to war because we have to. That is the standard of our nation."

Billmon: If you know anything about American history, you know it's more a made-up tradition than a time-honored one (the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Spanish-American War, World War I and the Vietnam War were all wars of choice, as was Gulf War I, for that matter.)

Let me just quote the ending, which is off the central topic of the article, but stands by itself:

We are in the midst of a new social movement that is shaking this continent to its core. On the 30th anniversary of Operation Condor's bloodiest year, we are witness that the people Latin America have taken back their countries from the grip of terror. Argentina, Uruguay, Venezuela, Brazil, Chile and Bolivia have governments that respond to the needs of their own people, rather than to the interests of US corporations. Other countries will soon join them. This is an election year in America. The people of Latin America are taking back their governments.

It's high time that the people of the United States did the same.

"There is obviously concern about Iran. It's a country that is -- supports terrorists. It's a country that has indicated an interest in having weapons of mass destruction."

Said Rumsfeld: "There is obviously concern about Iran. Iran is a country that supports terrorism. It is a country that has indicated" a desire to obtain nuclear technology.

Unbelievable!

"When an alien lives with you in your land, do not mistreat him. The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the LORD your God."

- Leviticus 19:33-34

Kinda' funny I had to learn about this quote from SusanG and not, say, Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell or George Bush or William F. Buckley or Pat Buchanan or one of those other self-proclaimed "religious" people.

But the one thing that rarely gets emphasized, or even mentioned, is that these numbers are apples and oranges. The Iraq Body Count number is the number of "civilians reported killed by military intervention in Iraq." Notice that word: "killed." And what was the Johns Hopkins study? The number of "excess deaths" of Iraqi civilians that have happened since the U.S./U.K. invasion in March, 2003 (through the date of the study in mid-to-late 2004). Those are not the same thing!

What prompted this post was this news item, which provides a graphic (and tragic) illustration of the difference between the two numbers:

As a result of water-borne diseases and a lack of medical supplies, infants born in the southern city of Basra are subject to abnormally high mortality rates, say officials of an international NGO devoted to child health issues.

"For weeks, there were no I.V. fluids available in the hospitals of Basra," said Marie Fernandez, spokeswoman for European aid agency Saving Children from War. "As a consequence, many children, mainly under five-years old, died after suffering from extreme cases of diarrhoea."

Many doctors in the area say that the local health situation has deteriorated markedly since the US-led invasion of the country in 2003. "The mortality of children in Basra has increased by nearly 30 percent compared to the Saddam Hussein era," Dr Haydar Salah, a paediatrician at the Basra Children's Hospital, pointed out. "Children are dying daily, and no one is doing anything to help them."

Fernandez added that, for the last three years, the Maternity and Children's' hospital in Basra had not received any cancer drugs from the health ministry. "In all of Basra, a city with nearly two million inhabitants, there's no radiotherapy department available," Fernandez complained.

Readers of any duration will note that I am limiting the scope of this post to the death of Iraqi civilians. I have discussed on multiple occasions how, including all Iraqis, the number killed (not just the number who have died) easily exceeds 100,000.

A 12-year-old Palestinian girl...was killed Monday by Israeli shelling in the Gaza Strip. Thirteen other members of her family, including toddlers, children and teenagers were injured. Nonetheless, a senior Israel Defense Forces officer Monday night told Haaretz that the widespread shelling of Gaza would continue.

Hundreds of IDF artillery shells are being fired daily, along with air strikes, missiles and cannons from naval vessels offshore.

Recently, the IDF also reduced the "safety zone" artillery batteries must maintain around Palestinian communties. The military was aware the decision could result in civilian casualties, as occurred Monday. The safety zone was reduced from 300 meters to 100 meters. The shell fragmentation range is 100 meters, so the decision clearly endangers civilian lives.

Since Friday, 17 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli shelling. The dead include two children.

The senior officer admitted the army knew the expanded operation could cost Palestinian civilian lives. "We have no certainty that more civilians won't be hurt in upcoming attacks," he said. (Source)

And the supposed cause of these attacks?

At least six rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel Monday. One landed close to an IDF base at Zikim, south of Ashkelon. Some landed in the sea. The rockets caused no injuries or damage.

(Hat tip to the Angry Arab for the picture). Yesterday's Flashpoints! features (at 36:00 into the show) an interview with Gaza correspondent Mohammed Ali on this subject. The despair and hopelessness in his voice is palpable.

Chavez...has never enjoyed overwhelming support in Venezuela; his ratings have mostly fluctuated a few points above and below 50 percent.

And has Chavez' popularity declined since 2004? Hardly. The most recent poll done by the organization Seijas, which worked with the opposition Democratic Action party (AD) for many years, gave Chavez 82% popular support, and a likely 60% vote in the upcoming Presidential election.

Jackson Diehl is, not to put too fine a point on it, a liar.

But what drives me crazy in addition is that Newbold offers "full-throated critique" of the fact that "American troops were marched off to an ill-considered engagement" and of "those who had used 9/11's tragedy to hijack our security policy. He talks about "successive policy failures [including]: the distortion of intelligence in the buildup to the war, McNamara-like micromanagement that kept our forces from having enough resources to do the job, the failure to retain and reconstitute the Iraqi military in time to help quell civil disorder, the initial denial that an insurgency was the heart of the opposition to occupation, alienation of allies who could have helped in a more robust way to rebuild Iraq, and the continuing failure of the other agencies of our government to commit assets to the same degree as the Defense Department." And after all that, he calls for the resignation...of Donald Rumsfeld! Isn't it obvious that it is George Bush and Dick Cheney who bear responsibility for the entire range of failures and lies which Newbold discusses? Why isn't he calling for them to resign, as I have been for more than six months? Don't military people, even more than people in general, supposedly believe in chains of command, and assigning responsibility for problems where they belong? Does he really think it was Donald Rumsfeld who "used 9/11's tragedy to hijack our security policy," or who "distort[ed] intelligence in the building to the war," etc. If nothing else, hasn't he seen The Godfather? Doesn't he know the fish rots from the head?

"We do not want the Iranians to have a nuclear weapon, the capacity to make a nuclear weapon, or the knowledge as to how to make a nuclear weapon."

- George Bush

One briefing slide about U.S. "strategic communications" in Iraq, prepared for Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top U.S. commander in Iraq, describes the "home audience" as one of six major targets of the American side of the war.

That slide, created by Casey's subordinates, does not specifically state that U.S. citizens were being targeted by the effort.

The second is the attempt by New York Times reporter Dexter Filkins to cover his behind (again, emphasis added):

One slide in the same briefing, for example, noted that a "selective leak" about Zarqawi was made to Dexter Filkins, a New York Times reporter based in Baghdad. Filkins's resulting article, about a letter supposedly written by Zarqawi and boasting of suicide attacks in Iraq, ran on the Times front page on Feb. 9, 2004.

Leaks to reporters from U.S. officials in Iraq are common, but official evidence of a propaganda operation using an American reporter is rare.

Filkins, reached by e-mail, said that he was not told at the time that there was a psychological operations campaign aimed at Zarqawi, but said he assumed that the military was releasing the letter "because it had decided it was in its best interest to have it publicized." No special conditions were placed upon him in being briefed on its contents, he said. He said he was skeptical about the document's authenticity then, and remains so now, and so at the time tried to confirm its authenticity with officials outside the U.S. military.

O'BRIEN: You talk about American officials holding onto a document that they believe was written by a Jordanian operative in Iraq. And basically, it's asking al Qaeda for help in waging this sectarian war. What do you think this memo says about the relationship between al Qaeda and the folks in Iraq?

FILKINS: Well, it doesn't really prove anything other than the fact that these operatives in Iraq want some help. And to me, that was the fascinating thing about the document. It was sort of part business plan and part plea for help. I mean, basically, they were saying, it's really hard here. We're not getting a lot of support. We think we're losing. Here is this sort of last-ditch plan that we can come up with. Can you help?

O'BRIEN: Paint the scenario, the kind of help that they are asking for in this memo.

FILKINS: Well, it's a little complicated, but what they are saying is -- I mean, predominantly al Qaeda and the religious extremists, who are believed to be operating in Iraq, are Sunni Muslims. They are a majority here. And the Shiite Muslims are the majority.

And what the plan says is, we'll start doing suicide bombings and start attacking the Shiites, and we'll attack them so hard and so often that they'll crack down on the Sunnis, and then the Sunnis will come to us and they'll flock to us. And this was basically a plea to al Qaeda for their approval and for possibly for their support.

So, I think the other thing they said, which was kind of interesting, was they said we are running out of time. We need to do this quickly. We need to do it before we lose, and we need to do it before the Americans transfer sovereignty to the Iraqis on June 30.

So, it was -- again, to me, what was so fascinating about the document, assuming it was authentic, was that it was a stark admission that things were not going very well for them.

Update: I'm moving some material from the comments to here, because Haloscan comments seem to have a finite life, and this is worth preserving. First, reader Phil provides us a link to the original Filkins article. Then, my comment on it:

It confirms my observations from the interview. It has the obligatory "Americans [meaning American authorities] say they believe..." [that Zarqawi wrote the letter], but Filkins "suspicions" are summarized in one sentence: "Yet other interpretations may be possible, including that it was written by some other insurgent, but one who exaggerated his involvement." However that sentence is immediately followed by this one: "Still, a senior United States intelligence official in Washington said, 'I know of no reason to believe the letter is bogus in any way,'" and there's no way the "average reader" (that doesn't include me, or most of us who know better, but anyway...) could read that article and conclude that Filkins thinks anything other than that the story is legitimate. After all, if there were legitimate doubts about the authenticity of the letter, the Times shouldn't have been running the story at all until they could confirm or deny that. Clearly the fact that they ran the story at all is "proof" to the reader that it has been vetted and is considered accurate.

With politicians deadlocked over who will be Iraq's next prime minister, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said Sunday that planned talks with Iranian officials over Iraq-related issues would be delayed until a government is formed.

"We do not want to give the impression that the United States is sitting with Iran to decide about the Iraqi government. The Iraqis will decide that," Khalilzad told Fox News Sunday.

"The idea of a nuclear strike on Iran is completely nuts."

- UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw

The Bush administration is studying options for military strikes against Iran as part of a broader strategy of coercive diplomacy.

Good Night, and Good Luck, although it was nominated as a "Best Film," comes as close to being a documentary as any docudrama can, with extensive actual footage (speeches by Sen. Joseph McCarthy, President Dwight Eisenhower, Roy Cohn, Joe Welch, and various witnesses from the Senate hearings of the time), and every word spoken publicly by Edward R. Murrow during the movie being his actual words. David Straithern, who I've loved since his turn as the Sheriff in the excellent John Sayles film Matewan, is simply amazing as Murrow. Listening to Murrow talk about where TV news was headed, or hearing Eisenhower talking about the importance of habeas corpus, or conservative Sen. McClellan talking about the importance of the right to confront one's accusers, is prophetic in the extreme (and intentionally so, of course). As a film, it's good; as subject matter, it's much more, and should be required viewing for every person in the United States.

Paradise Now is about "ordinary" people, but it's an extraordinary film. The story of two Palestinians who are chosen for a suicide bombing mission and what happens to them is absolutely gripping from start to finish, both in its details of the preparation for the mission, the thoughts and motivations of the two men and the people who touch their lives, and also in just the details of Palestinian life (an earlier post about the movie, with a link to an interview with the director, is here). The movie definitely doesn't present "two sides" to the Palestinian question itself; everyone in the movie believes that Palestine is an occupied land, and Palestinians are an oppressed people. But it does present "two sides" (or more) to the question of how to react to that oppression, and what tactics are (and are not) appropriate in the struggle; the movie is hardly an unabashed paean to suicide bombers as those who sought to have it banned from the Academy Awards want the world to believe.

One thing the movie does put the lie to, at least if you accept its framework, is the idea promoted by the Western media and defenders of Israel (or belittlers of Muslims) in general that suicide bombers are all motivated by the thought of those "72 virgins" in Paradise. Paradise Now isn't a documentary, of course, nor does it purport to show the motivation of every single suicide bomber who has ever acted, but it should be clear to anyone who watches this movie that there are very real motivations, rational motivations, why people would commit their lives to such a course of action.

Above all, Paradise Now is a great movie; I couldn't recommend it more highly.

Two thumbs up. Twice.

Update: An interesting piece by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman comparing Katie Couric to Amy Goodman, in the context of Good Night, and Good Luck. Their conclusion:

Amy Goodman and Democracy Now are what Edward Murrow professed television could become.

Katie Couric and the CBS Evening News represent what he feared it would become.

Piloted remotely from a Nevada air base half a world away or by soldiers on the scene, unmanned aircraft have become so indispensable in Iraq and in the war on terror that by next year the U.S. could be spending nearly seven times more on the vehicles than it did before the 9/11 attacks.

Underscoring their importance, spending on the planes is expected to total at least $12 billion over the next five years. The spike in annual spending - from $300 million in 2001 when terrorists attacked America to perhaps $2 billion next year - will pay for at least 132 UAVs, including a new version for the Navy, beefed up models for the Army and a major effort to solve technical problems.

At least 700 unmanned aerial vehicles of all shapes and sizes are being used in Iraq, with dozens often jostling for room in the crowded airspace 24 hours a day.

At least five times in December, the larger unmanned Air Force Predators flown remotely by airmen sitting at consoles in a Nevada Air Force base bombed insurgent strongholds in western Anbar province.

The [Iraq Ministry of the Interior] warned people to stay away from crowded places like mosques and market places.

This is the place about which, exactly one month ago, the Chairman of the (U.S.) Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Peter Pace, said: "I would say they're going very, very well from everything you look at." Gen. Pace must not watch much TV, because even FOX News can't doesn't hide the reality that well.

President Defends Iraq War for Peace

Give Rebuilding Lower Priority in Future Wars

Update: I really should say something more about this story. Because perhaps the most interesting thing about it is the framing. The article is about a State Department report. But that report isn't about "what we did wrong in Iraq." It's about what should be done, as the headline says, in a future conflict -- the next country the U.S. invades, overthrows its government, and completely destroys. Do the words "rogue state" come to mind? Do you think there is any other country in the world which actually has plans for what they're going to do after they destroy another country?

There simply is no credible rationale by which international calls automatically surpass some magical threshhold of "threat" while domestic calls automatically do not.

By the way, my conclusion from this analysis is that those domestic calls are being wiretapped without warrants, but that Bush doesn't want to admit it because he thinks it will generate even more outrage. Not that I'd worry if I were him. Making a show of preventing the release of library records is as far as the "opposition" seems to want to go.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales suggested for the first time Thursday that the president might have the legal authority to order wiretapping without a warrant on communications between Americans that occur within the United States.

Saddam acknowledges signing political enemies' death warrants

And while we're on the subject of third parties, Rep. Ron Paul isn't a member of a third party, he's actually a Republican, but in reality he's a libertarian (though evidently not a Libertarian), but today in Congress he gave an absolutely amazing speech, directed in the immediate instance against a U.S. attack on Iran, but during its course dissecting the entirety of U.S. foreign policy for 50 years, including the overthrow of Mossadegh, the invasion of Grenada, the support of the contras in Nicaragua, and lots more. He actually said that Iran had the right to possess nuclear weapons to defend itself! I mean, other than Left I on the News, can you name even one other blog where you've read that opinion? The entire speech could have come straight off this website. Of course no one was present to listen to it, and, other than the handful of people like myself who just happened to flip past CSPAN at the right moment and stop and watch it, it will make the same sound as a tree falling in the forest with no one around. Still, an amazing speech.

Catch it on a rerun if you're lucky, or read it here. I've read a lot of Ron Paul on Antiwar.com, where he's a fixture (being another libertarian), so I wasn't surprised to hear him speaking for withdrawal from Iraq and against an invasion or attack or even sanctions (which he correctly identified as an act of war) against Iran, but still the breadth and depth of the speech was amazing.

HUSAYBA, Iraq, April 2 — Last August, under daily attack from car bombs and mortars, the Marines took down the only bridge over the Euphrates River for miles around.

With the bridge down, marines say, insurgents and foreign fighters can no longer infiltrate as easily into this town near the Syrian border in western Anbar Province, the heavily Sunni Arab area that has formed the heart of the insurgency. But Iraqis who live on the river's northern bank grumble that they have no easy way to get to town to buy and sell goods or to see the doctor.

In Husayba, the Marines are the only reconstruction team around. They use local labor as much as possible, but Colonel Marano is not sure he will be able to find a company that can handle the work.

In addition, the bridge project has not been budgeted by the provincial government, several marines said.

Hoping for an interim fix, Colonel Marano inquired recently about moving a little-used pontoon bridge installed by Army engineers miles down river. He was told that the unit was to rotate back to the United States soon, and would be taking its bridge back.

Out now! Then we can take what will undoubtedly be just a fraction of the money that would otherwise have been spent on the war and let the Iraqis use it to rebuild their own country.

Watch out for exploding heads.

Jan. 31, 2006 (State of the Union address): "Because lawsuits are driving many good doctors out of practice -- leaving women in nearly 1,500 American counties without a single OB/GYN -- I ask the Congress to pass medical liability reform this year."

Apr. 5, 2006: "You know what's an amazing statistic, is there are 1,700 counties in our country that have no OB/GYN. They got run out of business."

200 counties (that 6.5% of all counties in the country) lost Ob/Gyns in February and March alone! That is a problem. Or would be, if it were true. [I was actually unsuccessful at finding data online on the actual number, nevertheless the actual number as a function of time. I'll add that to this post if anyone does find it.]

Let's examine some of the issues. First of all, as you can read here, the United States relies heavily on Family Physicians to provide basic medical services, including Ob/Gyn services, particularly in sparsely populated rural counties, so talking about counties without Ob/Gyns per se is highly misleading. Second, it should be noted that talking about all medical care, not just Ob/Gyn care, a whopping 784 counties (25%) are designated "Primary Care Health Personnel Shortage Areas," i.e., have insufficient health care personnel for the population.

The heart of Bush's argument, that lawsuits are "driving many good doctors out of practice," is taken on with lots of statistical data here. Some examples of the data:

ACOG's [American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists] predictions for ob-gyns are especially dire. According to a survey ACOG conducted of its membership in June 2004, "a 5-10% increase in the liability insurance rates... would cause 66% of respondents to alter their practice" and "58% stated that a 5-10% increase would cause them to give up obstetrics or close their practice altogether."

In July 2004, the New York State Department of Insurance approved an across-the-board 7% rate increase for all physicians, including ob-gyns. There has been no indication that this increase is causing any ob-gyns to give up obstetrics, much less 58% of them.

In 2003, Florida had the highest medical malpractice liability insurance premiums in the nation. If doctors are relocating from states with higher premiums to states with lower ob-gyn premiums, they certainly would be leaving Florida. Yet the GAO found, "Reports of physician departures in Florida were anecdotal, not extensive, and in some cases we determined them to be inaccurate."

Public statements by ACOG and MSSNY attribute the scarcity of ob-gyns in some rural counties of New York to rising and increasingly unaffordable medical malpractice liability insurance premiums. Yet, since 1996 ob-gyn medical malpractice liability insurance premiums in most rural counties declined when adjusted for inflation. In most rural counties of the state, ob-gyns pay among the lowest ob-gyn premiums in the nation.

The real reasons why some rural counties have few or declining numbers of ob-gyns include stagnant or contracting populations, falling birth rates, inadequate Medicaid payments, and an expanding share of residents who lack health insurance. The Oswego Business Journal has reported on how hard it is to recruit physicians to locate in its area because of harsh climate, lack of professional opportunities for spouses, and the increasing desire of physicians to be near larger hospitals with the most advanced new technologies and equipment. It is not surprising that most young ob-gyns do not find these to be attractive locations to set up practices.

"I don't want my readers to be readers. I want them to be activists. I want them to come to Daily Kos, learn about what's happening in the country. And then when all of that is done, I want them to turn off the computer, walk outside and talk to real people."

- Markos "Kos" Moulitsas

Since I'm on the subject of Daily Kos, I'll encourage readers to read this article by "SusanG," who presumably (she never exactly says) thinks the problem is "Republicans" and not "capitalism," but still manages to assemble some damning data about the gap between rich and poor in the United States.

Thousands of voters turned out in Wisconsin to offer a purely symbolic but heartfelt message: Bring the troops home from Iraq.

By margins overwhelming in some places and narrow in others, voters in 24 of 32 communities approved referendums Tuesday calling for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

It's critical to remember that although Kerry now says our "strategy isn't working," he has actually refused in the past to describe the invasion of Iraq as a mistake:

"Asked Friday if he would face that question about the Iraq war as president, Kerry said: 'I never said it was a mistake now. What I said is the way the president chose to go to war was a mistake.'

"Seated aboard his campaign bus in a captain's chair, Kerry said he didn't consider the war in Iraq a mistake, but that President Bush had misled Americans and the world by waging the war hastily and not 'as a last resort.'"

The latest from the "presumptive Democratic nominee":

"While we may have differed on how we went to war, Americans of all political persuasions are united in our determination to succeed. The extremists attacking our forces should know they will not succeed in dividing America, or in sapping American resolve, or in forcing the premature withdrawal of U.S. troops. Our country is committed to help the Iraqis build a stable, peaceful and pluralistic society. No matter who is elected president in November, we will persevere in that mission."

To begin with, a bit of history. Americans didn't differ on "how" we went to war - Republicans and Democrats in Congress and the White House differed on that. Americans, as well as millions of French, Spanish, Italians, British, and people all around the world, differed on going to war. Millions of us were opposed to this war, we didn't just "differ on how we went to war." So let's keep that straight.

Next, let's consider that word "extremists." Apparently Mr. Kerry thinks that attacking foreign troops who are occupying your country is an "extreme" thing to do. Lucky thing for us Americans he and his kind weren't around in 1775, denouncing Paul Revere and Patrick Henry and George Washington as "extremists."

Now what are these "extremists" up to? According to Kerry, they are bent on "dividing America," "sapping American resolve," and "forcing the premature withdrawal of U.S. troops." Well isn't that just like an arrogant American - "it's all about us." No, John, the insurgents in Iraqi just want one thing - U.S. troops out of their country. And there will be nothing "premature" about it, since the penetration should never have occured in the first place.

Kerry, like Bush and the vast majority of Democratic and Republican politicians, want to convince us that we have to "stay the course," we have to "succeed," we have to "win." Apparently they've never heard about "throwing good money after bad" or "two wrongs don't make a right." We can't correct a mistake by continuing to make the same mistake! We can't make up for the deaths of 750+ coalition troops, 50-100 coalition "contractors," and 10-20,000 Iraqi civilians and soldiers by continuing a policy which will result in the death of more Americans, more Iraqis, and others. Iraq is not "ours" to "win."

Arrogant Americans like Kerry (and Bush, of course) think that it is up to the American people to decide who runs Iraq, or Venezuela, or Haiti, or Cuba, and to tell the people of those countries what kind of political and economic system they should follow. It is not. It is up to the people of those countries - the Iraqis, the Venezuelans, the Haitians, the Cubans, etc. to determine their own future. The U.S. should get the hell out of Iraq. Now. Before they do more damage and kill more people.

"How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"

- John Kerry, 1971. Ancient history according to Kerry. "No longer operative."

For three years now, the administration has told us that terrible things will happen if we get tough with the Iraqis. In fact, terrible things are happening now because we haven't gotten tough enough.

But what it's really all about it this:

An exit from Iraq will also strengthen our hand in dealing with the Iranian nuclear threat.

Pathetic.

Massachusetts is poised to become the first state to provide nearly universal health care coverage after the state legislature overwhelmingly passed a bill today that Gov. Mitt Romney says he will sign.

The bill, which resulted after months of wrangling between legislators and the governor, requires all Massachusetts residents to obtain health coverage by July 1, 2007.

"This is probably about as close as you can get to universal," said Paul Ginsburg, an economist who is president of the nonpartisan Center for Studying Health System Change in Washington.

Oh, and as for this bill? There is one little catch about the "nearly universal" bit. The bill assesses a fee of up to $295 per employee per year on businesses with more than 10 workers that do not provide insurance to their workers. Except for this:

One element that Mr. Romney and some legislators did not want was the fee for employers who do not provide health insurance. For several months the bill seemed stalled because the state House and Senate leaders could not agree on the issue of charging businesses or on how much to charge them. One proposal of an $800-per-employee charge was reduced to a maximum of $295 that will be reduced as more and more people become insured, Mr. Travaglini said.

Because the bill is part of a budget bill, Mr. Romney has line-item veto power and he said today that he would likely change the business fee provision in some way or veto it before signing the bill.

Rare conditions could have conspired to create hard-to-see ice on the Sea of Galilee that a person could have walked on back when Jesus is said to have walked on water, a scientist said today.

"Tens of thousands," possibly hundreds of thousands, of Iraqis did demonstrate in April, 2005, calling for the end of the occupation, and thousands (definitely not hundreds of thousands) demonstrated last December against fraud in the elections, and Iraqis have demonstrated against oil prices, and car bombing, and a variety of other things. Actually a Google search didn't pull up any demonstrations for Saddam's execution, nevertheless "regular" ones of "hundreds of thousands" of Iraqis. I'm not saying there has never been a demonstration in Iraq calling for Saddam's execution, but the author's statement is just truly bizarre.

What are you waiting for - buy the book! (And, lest you think that capitalism is in some way involved in that suggestion, I assure you that I have no financial interest in the transaction, nor do I even know Stephanie McMillan).

And while we're on the subject, be sure to check out this timely cartoon of hers.

The court's chief prosecutor, Desmond de Silva, said [Charles] Taylor's appearance was a watershed, proving that "those who commit atrocities and violate international humanitarian law will be held accountable, no matter how rich, powerful or feared people may be -- no one is above the law." (Source)

Now the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has said, in so many words, that Posada is indeed a terrorist in explaining their refusal to release him:

"Because of your long history of criminal activity and violence in which innocent civilians were killed, your release from detention would pose a danger to both the community and the national security of the United States."

But the reason for the post is perhaps the most interesting thing Zinni had to say:

"I heard the case being built to go to war right away. And what bothered me, I had been hearing about some of the assumptions on the planning, dismissal of the for--previous plans, and I was hearing a depiction of the intelligence that didn't fit what I knew. There was no solid proof, that I ever saw, that Saddam had WMD.

"Now, I'd be the first to say we had to assume he had WMD left over that wasn't accounted for: artillery rounds, chemical rounds, a SCUD missile or two. But these things, over time, degrade. These things did not present operational or strategic level threats at best.

"I saw it in the way the intelligence was being portrayed. I knew the intelligence; I saw it right up to the day of the war. I was asked at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing a month before the war if I thought the threat was imminent. I didn't. Many of the people I know that were involved in the intelligence side of this, or, or in the military felt the same way. I saw the--what this town is known for: spin, cherry-picking facts, using metaphors to evoke certain emotional responses, or, or shading the, the context."

You might be wondering about the title of this post. General Zinni, after all, isn't on his deathbed. No, but more than 100,000 Iraqis and more than 2500 Americans and others, are. Or were. They're dead now. Thanks to people like General Zinni, who kept what they knew to themselves until it was long since too late.

A reconstruction contract for the building of 142 primary health centers across Iraq is running out of money, after two years and roughly $200 million, with no more than 20 clinics now expected to be completed, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says.

The contract, awarded to U.S. construction giant Parsons Inc. in the flush, early days of reconstruction in Iraq, was expected to lay the foundation of a modern health care system for the country, putting quality medical care within reach of all Iraqis.

Second, and more importantly, is the fact which is stated, but only in half-truth form, much later in the article:

U.S. authorities say they made a special effort to preserve the more than $700 million of work for Iraq's health care system, which had fallen into decay after two decades of war and international sanctions.

There is, of course, a lot of material to read explaining the effect of sanctions on Iraq. From example, here's a first-hand report from Gloria La Riva, visiting Baghdad with Ramsey Clark and a delegation from the International Action Center in 1997. Just one fact out of many from that article: "Before sanctions, Iraq imported $500 million worth of medicines from Jordan. Last year it could only afford $7 million worth." More first-hand observations from 1998 can be found in this report by Sharon Eolis, RN, visiting Iraq with the Iraq Sanctions Challenge. She writes "Before the United States/United Nations sanctions and the Gulf war, Iraq had a developed, nationalized health-care system that provided care to everyone. The level of technological development in health care was on a par with industrialized Western nations." Some more from this very informative article:

Safe drinking water is a basic human need. Chlorine is used to disinfect water. UNSCOM, the UN Sanctions Committee, limits the amount of chlorine imported to Iraq because it is considered a dual substance that can be used to make poison gas.

Iraqis at a Baghdad water treatment center told delegate Dave Sole--a water specialist from Detroit--that there is not enough chlorine available to make the water safe to drink.

According to one of the Iraqi doctors we spoke with, 80 percent of the cases of amebic dysentery could be eradicated if there were clean water. In 1989, there were 19,615 cases; in 1997 the number rose to 543,295 cases.

In 1980, there were no cases of cholera in Iraq. In 1997, there were 10,000 cases caused by contaminated water and food.

And, we need to remind our readers that the destruction of Iraq's water supply, and the consequences which followed, was a deliberate policy of the U.S. government, as documented here.

I haven't mentioned Bremer's responses to DeWine's questioning. Bremer told DeWine that, besides for (or as a result of) the lack of spending by Iraq on health care, "the infrastructure is appallingly run down," and when asked by DeWine "How do you begin to improve the infant mortality rate?", his answer was to spend "$400 million on hospital refurbishment." Not a word about restoring the water purification and electricity generating systems, nor about importing medicines. Bremer clearly understands (or was willing to acknowledge) nothing about the causes of the problems nor their solutions.

Instead of spending $400 million on hospital refurbishment (no doubt designated for some Bechtel subsidiary), Bremer should let the Cubans take over. Cuba has the lowest infant mortality rate in the Americas (yes, lower than the United States), and they didn't accomplish that by concentrating on "hospital refurbishment" (though I'm sure they did that too), but by understanding public health (water, sewage, nutrition) and providing free health care (as Iraq did, of course) with clinics in every neighborhood.

Are things going badly in Iraq? No, they're much, much worse, and with folks like Bremer in charge, the future's so dark they've gotta wear night-vision goggles.

Followup: Stephen Zunes, analyzing Bush's speech to the UN, has this observation:

Bush: By the end of 2004, more than 90 percent of Iraqi children under age five will have been immunized against preventable diseases such as polio, tuberculosis, and measles thanks to the hard work and high ideals of UNICEF.

Zunes: This figure would be comparable to childhood immunization rates in Iraq prior to the U.S.-led Gulf War in 1991 and subsequent sanctions that largely destroyed the country’s public health system.

Once considered the best in the region, Iraq's health system currently has some of the worst health statistics. Diarrhea, measles, respiratory infections, and malaria -- compounded by under-nutrition affecting 30 percent of children under five -- contribute to excessive rates of infant and child mortality. Lack of care during pregnancy contributes to high maternal mortality rates. Tuberculosis and cholera have reemerged.

But here's my favorite sentence in the article:

Former CIA terrorism analyst Paul Pillar said any U.S. or Israeli airstrike on Iranian territory "would be regarded as an act of war" by Tehran.