The Soldiers Speak. Will President Bush Listen?
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
When President Bush held a public meeting with troops by satellite last fall, they were miraculously upbeat. And all along, unrepentant hawks (most of whom have never been to Iraq) have insisted that journalists are misreporting Iraq and that most soldiers are gung-ho about their mission.
Hogwash! A new poll to be released today shows that U.S. soldiers overwhelmingly want out of Iraq - and soon.
The poll is the first of U.S. troops currently serving in Iraq, according to John Zogby, the pollster. Conducted by Zogby International and LeMoyne College, it asked 944 service members, "How long should U.S. troops stay in Iraq?"
Only 23 percent backed Mr. Bush's position that they should stay as long as necessary. In contrast, 72 percent said that U.S. troops should be pulled out within one year. Of those, 29 percent said they should withdraw "immediately."
That's one more bit of evidence that our grim stay-the-course policy in Iraq has failed. Even the American troops on the ground don't buy into it - and having administration officials pontificate from the safety of Washington about the need for ordinary soldiers to stay the course further erodes military morale.
While the White House emphasizes the threat from non-Iraqi terrorists, only 26 percent of the U.S. troops say that the insurgency would end if those foreign fighters could be kept out. A plurality believes that the insurgency is made up overwhelmingly of discontented Iraqi Sunnis.
So what would it take to win in Iraq? Maybe that was the single most depressing finding in this poll.
By a two-to-one ratio, the troops said that "to control the insurgency we need to double the level of ground troops and bombing missions." And since there is zero chance of that happening, a majority of troops seemed to be saying that they believe this war to be unwinnable.
This first systematic look at the views of the U.S. troops on the ground suggests that our present strategy in Iraq is failing badly. The troops overwhelmingly don't want to "stay the course," and they don't seem to think the American strategy can succeed.
It's tempting, but not very helpful, to repeat that the fatal mistake was invading Iraq three years ago and leave it at that. That's easy for a columnist to say; the harder thing for a policy maker is to figure out what we do next, now that we're already there.
I still believe that while the war was a dreadful mistake, an immediate pullout would also be a misstep: anyone who says that Iraq can't get worse hasn't seen a country totally torn apart by chaos and civil war. Mr. Bush is right about the consequences of an immediate pullout - to Iraq, and also to American influence around the world.
But while we shouldn't rush for the exits immediately, we should lay out a timetable for withdrawal that would remove all troops by the end of next year. And we should state clearly that we will not keep any military bases in Iraq - that's a no-brainer, for it costs us nothing, but our hedging on bases antagonizes Iraqi nationalists and results in more dead Americans.
Such a timetable would force Iraqis to prepare - politically and militarily - to run their own country. The year or two of transition would galvanize Iraqi Shiites to find a modus vivendi with Sunnis while undermining the insurgents' arguments that they are nationalists protecting the motherland from Yankee crusaders.
True, a timetable is arbitrary and risky, for it could just encourage insurgents to hang tight for another couple of years. But we're being killed - literally - because of nationalist suspicions among Iraqis that we're just after their oil and bases and that we're going to stay forever. It's crucial that we defuse that nationalist rage.
For now, we've become the piñata of Iraqi politics, something for Iraqi demagogues to bash to boost their own legitimacy. Moktada al-Sadr, one of the scariest Iraqi leaders, has very shrewdly used his denunciations of the U.S. to boost his own political following and influence across Iraq; that's our gift to him, a consequence of our myopia. And many ordinary Iraqis are buying into this scapegoating of the U.S. Edward Wong, one of my intrepid Times colleagues in Baghdad, quoted a clothing merchant named Abdul--Qader Ali as saying: "I can tell you the main reason behind all our woes - it is America. Everything that is going on between Sunnis and Shiites, the troublemaker in the middle is America."
Will a timetable work? I don't know, but it's a better bet than our present policy of whistling in the dark. And it's what the troops favor - and they're the ones who have Iraq combat experience.
Hey Chris Matthews - the right wingers hate you. That's right. Check out Free Republic, they loathe you. They already have plenty of mouth pieces for their side, all of Fox News, most of talk radio. They don't need you. Even when you compare George Bush to Atticus Finch (DEAR GOD, have you read To Kill a Mockingbird? Can you see Bush standing up for anyone other than Big Business? Can you even imagine Bush giving a summation in court without a teleprompter?) they're still not going to watch you. Anyone in the center or left you just made throw up.
Hey Tim Russert - same to you, my friend. Sure, you had three Republicans on today with no attempt at balance but the right wingers hate you, too.
Don't you get it? No matter what you do to become Faux Lite (the diet coke of bias) they still won't come to you. Because they already have FOX.
What do we on the left have? Keith Olbermann and Jon Stewart. And guess what? Keith reports the news and Jon mocks everyone. Please, CNN, name one host who is Liberal. MSNBC, name one - God knows you have Tucker Carlson, Joe Scarborough and Rita Cosby (why, I can't imagine); why not throw us a bone?
Everyone, all 50 of you, who read this blog, please write CNN, MSNBC and ask them to give us something. I have stopped watching Hardball. I wrote Mr. Matthews an email and told him I had the good fortune of voting for Tip O'Neill and couldn't imagine what Tip would think of Matthews. Click here for a link with everyone's email.
Liberal media my ass.
The President gave a little speech today - let's have a look, shall we?
Our most important duty is to defend the American people. So we're taking the fight to those who attacked us. We're taking the fight to those who share their murderous vision for future attacks. We will take this fight to the enemy without wavering -- and we will prevail.
OK - where does Iraq fit into this? Apparently the only part of Afghanistan that is now "free" is Kabul. And, let's not forget, Bin Laden is still coming out with his greatest hits.
The enemy we face is brutal. And determined. The terrorists have an ideology. They share a hateful vision that rejects tolerance and crushes all dissent.
They seek a world where women are oppressed. Where children are indoctrinated. And those who reject their ideology of violence and extremism are threatened and often murdered.
The Neo-cons have an ideology, they share a hateful vision that rejects tolerance and crushes all dissent. Tolerance of gays - how silly am I? Don't agree on warrentless wiretapping - tough. Although, this administration may be willing to listen to "ideas" from Congress, they're doing it anyway.
Oppressing women? South Dakota just passed a bill that would make abortion illegal even in cases of rape or incest.
They seek to impose their heartless ideology of totalitarian control throughout the Middle East. They seek to arm themselves with weapons of mass murder. Their stated goal is to overthrow moderate governments, take control of countries and then use them as safe havens to launch attacks against Americans and other free nations.
To achieve their aims, the terrorists have turned to the weapon of fear.
Just replace the terrorists with Bush & Co.
After September the 11th, I looked at the world and saw a clear threat in Saddam Hussein. Saddam Hussein was an enemy of the United States.
Of course, he saw this before September the 11th as well. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
We know throughout history that democracies can replace resentment with hope and respect the rights of their citizens and our neighbors and join together to fight in this global war against terror.
History has shown that free nations are peaceful nations
The rights of our citizens to be spied on, yeah, sure, that's respecting us. And as a free nation we are not so peaceful. You know, invading a sovereign nation and all.
In less than three years, the nation of Iraq has gone from living under the boot of a brutal tyrant to liberation, to sovereignty, to free elections, to a constitutional referendum, and to elections for a fully constitutional government.
Except for a little civil war, the possibility of being blown up at the market, no water, little electricity. It's super, really.
Our efforts in the broader Middle East have been guided by a clear principle: Democracy takes different forms in different cultures. Yet all cultures, in order to be successful, have certain common truths, universal truths: rule of law, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, a free economy, freedom of women and the freedom to worship.
Societies that lay these foundations not only survive, but they thrive. Societies don't lay these foundations risk backsliding into tyranny.
First, notice he doesn't mention freedom of the press, because we're still paying for it in Iraq and it ain't cheap. Thanks Mr. Rumsfeld.
Rule of law - pesky, really. The President can do anything he wants, the rule of law is only for poor people.
Under Saddam, Iraq was a country where dissent was crushed, a centralized economy enriched the dictator instead of the people, secret courts meted out repression instead of justice, and Iraqis were brutally oppressed by Saddam's security forces.
Too easy. Replace dictator with Cheney and you're done!
The days in Iraq was going to be difficult and exhausting. We're likely to see a lot of political bargaining.
That doesn't happen under dictatorships. They seem orderly, particularly when one man makes all the decisions and there is no need for negotiation or compromise.
What did the President say this week about Congress proposing legislation to stop/delay the Dubai deal? Did he sound like he was willing to negotiate or compromise?
And when the new Iraqi government assumes office, Iraq's new leaders will face tough decisions on issues such as security and reconstruction and economic reform.
The government will need to provide effective leadership and earn the confidence of the Iraqi people by showing it can protect them. The government will also need to put a stop to human rights abuses by security officers.
By building free institutions and an inclusive society that provides minority rights, Iraqi leaders will bring the nation together and this will help to defeat the terrorists and the Saddamists who are fighting Iraq's democratic progress.
Stop human rights abuses by security officers...mmmmmnnn, perhaps we could try that, too?
It was the status quo in the Middle East that produced 19 hijackers and took planes and crashed them into the Pentagon and the World Trade towers and killed nearly 3,000 innocent people on September the 11th, 2001.
And how has the status quo changed in the countries that the 19 highjackers came from? Oh, we're going to give control of our ports to one of them. Good one Mr. President!
And it's only by giving people in the Middle East the freedom to express their opinions and choose their leaders that we will be able to defeat radical extremism.
We, however, will continue to use the Supreme Court and Diebold to choose ours.
In democracies, elected leaders must deliver real change in people's lives or the voters will boot them out at the next election time.
From your lips to God's ears!
The world's free nations are also worried because the Iranian regime is not transparent. You see, a non-transparent society that is the world's premier state sponsor of terror cannot be allowed to possess the world's most dangerous weapons.
So as we confront Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions, we're also reaching out to the Iranian people to support their desire to be free, to build a free, democratic and transparent society.
Who writes this shit? The most secretive administration we have ever had is telling someone else to be transparent? Oy!
Is it any wonder they call him the smirking chimp?
OK - I went to Actor's blog and this was on top. It is from the West Wing and it makes me so happy. Actually, ambivalent is probably closer to the mark. Love the sentiment but frustrated because no one in my party in government will say it out loud.
"Liberals got women the right to vote. Liberals got African-Americans the right to vote. Liberals created Social Security and lifted millions of elderly people out of poverty. Liberals ended segregation. Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act. Liberals created Medicare. Liberals passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act. What did Conservatives do? They opposed them on every one of those things -- every one. So when you try to hurl that label at my feet, "Liberal," as if it were something to be ashamed of, something dirty, something to run away from, it won't work, Senator, because I will pick up that label and I will wear it as a badge of honor."
How many times have we heard that the cover up ends up being the downfall of public officials?
The new photos from Abu Ghraib should have been released when the original story came out. Trying to hide these images (in case you've forgotten the argument was that we would be violating prisoners' Geneva Conventions if we showed photos of us violating their Geneva Conventions) and hoping they wouldn't come out was beyond stupid. PS - the argument now is that releasing these images will inflame the hatred for us.
I don't recommend anyone view the pictures. I just finished crying after seeing them at Salon.com. It breaks my heart that we could have done this.
This administration continues to pile up the cover ups.
Dick Cheney shooting someone. As Al Frankin said, if the VP was so concerned for his friend that he couldn't go to the press why couldn't he go to the hospital with his friend? Why would he instead go back to the ranch house and have dinner and cocktails? Doesn't make a lot of sense no matter what Katie O'Biern says. I'm so overwrought I go to the hospital. I don't fix myself a cocktail and sit down to dinner.
The reason the press has jumped all over this story is because this administration has shrouded itself in secrecy. The frustration over Scotty never answering questions from Jeff Gannon, to Katrina (let's not play the blame game), to warrentless wiretapping,and everything else in between has built to critical mass.
We have every right to be angry.
The Bush administration is destroying our country.
First off, I love the winter Olympics. Full disclosure. I watched Mr. Cheek win last night and thought he skated incredibly well.
Now I love him.
From The Washington Post:
Monday at the Turin Olympics, Cheek fulfilled his dream of following in Koss's vaunted steps in more ways than one. The North Carolina native blistered the slow, sticky ice at the Lingotto Oval to win gold in the 500-meter speedskating event. Then, he held reporters' questions at bay at the start of his post-race news conference to announce that he was taking another cue from his idol and donating the $25,000 he would receive from the U.S. Olympic Committee for having won gold to the charitable organization Koss now oversees, Right to Play, which uses sports and games as a tool for helping children in the most needy corners of the world.
Cheek said his donation would be earmarked specifically for children of the Darfur region in Sudan, where roughly 60,000 youngsters have been displaced, and he called on corporate sponsors of the Olympic Games to match his contribution.
Read this.
The unmasking of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson by White House officials in 2003 caused significant damage to U.S. national security and its ability to counter nuclear proliferation abroad, RAW STORY has learned.
According to current and former intelligence officials, Plame Wilson, who worked on the clandestine side of the CIA in the Directorate of Operations as a non-official cover (NOC) officer, was part of an operation tracking distribution and acquisition of weapons of mass destruction technology to and from Iran.
Speaking under strict confidentiality, intelligence officials revealed heretofore unreported elements of Plame's work. Their accounts suggest that Plame's outing was more serious than has previously been reported and carries grave implications for U.S. national security and its ability to monitor Iran's burgeoning nuclear program.
Well, well, well. What will all the people who said that leaking the news of warrentless wire taps was a threat to national security say now? If they were honest (who are we kidding?) they would say that perhaps the leaking of Ms. Wilson's covert status was as damaging to our national security. They want Mr. Risen on a stick. Will they also want Mr. Novak skewered? That would, of course, mean that they would have to deal with reality. Which is something that the true believers will never do.
First the link: The Conservative movement in America is gone. Maybe DEAD. Off the radar for sure. Run over and obliterated not by the Left but by George W. Bush and the wild band of loons who support him against all logic.
Now the rest:
THe liberal movement for a better, more just, and ever greater society is muddled, habitually on the defensive, and lacking good leadership - but it is very much alive.
HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT? You ask, and I answer.
Many moons ago (say 2002) there was a political movement in the United States called "the conservatives". I never liked what they stood for - as time always proved them wrong
(start with slavery, keep going through child labor laws, womens' suffrage, Jim Crow, Social Security, voting rights, - bring your self into the 90s with Global Warming and round the bend with WMDs - and you will find a cornucopia of tunnel vision and fear. The Right is nearly always Wrong. There track record is appalling.)
However: I have often respected leaders of the old conservative movement. Barry Goldwater was an honorable hero. Frankly, Goldwater deserves more respect than he gets from the Right. Ronald Reagan, though no JFK or FDR, was still a good man of clear conviction, and a fine President. 80% of the time I disagreed with him - but I trusted him and liked him.
But conservatism as a political movement is dead. The link above extrapolates on this phenomenon more clearly than I could. Read it. I only add this: The dearly held beliefs of generations of conservatives have been put to sleep by George Bush and his rabid supporters. Sadly, real Conservatives are barely aware of it. Still.
George Will yelps now and then. And Pat Buchanan has left the Bush ranch. But the great defenders of small government are silent.
The political use of 9/11 by the "neo cons" - far from destroying liberals ( we are have no microphone, but still have loud voices - and we will get the mike back eventually) has eaten away the heart of American conservatism. Small Government as an ideal is gone in this administration. The system of checks and balances defended by the Right and Left for 220 years is now only defended vocally by the Left. Senator Pat Roberts seems to think the President has no check on his power.
Look at the books: debt is the fiscal policy of this Republican administration. On domestic issues Bush is, well, Clintonian. No Child Left Behind is a carnival of expansive nanny state government. On paper, the prescription drug "benefit" would make Truman and LBJ dance with joy. Of course, they where liberals, who knew how to govern, so the implementation would not have been botched.
Judges are the one place W has been "conservative". But this must be cold comfort to thinking Conservatives. 5 years of GOP rule in DC and the debt has exploded, the Saudis and the Chinese control the American economy, and the reach of the Federal government is greater than ever.
Wake up, conservatives. Get your balls back. We on the Left need your help in restoring American values.
Besides, it gets boring bashing the neo-cons. Their PR is good, and the lies they tell are so over the top it often becomes performance art - but they have no soul. Those defending this god awful President are members of a cult. There simply is no other way to describe their level of mindlessness. Any 10th grader playing Risk would have done a better job invading Iraq. The Weather Channel pizza delivery kid knew New Orleans was flooding - but the Prez did not...
What will it take to end the neo-cons' Kool Aid cocktail party?
It may take a while cuz liberals are a motley bunch - but we will end it. Sure could use the help of some of the good old Conservatives.
Oh my. If they open their mouths they are lying. Really how much more evidence do we need that this is the most inept, dishonest, corrupt Administration in 100 years? What a week. The levees on the Bush bullshit dam have been breached.
At random:
1. Libby's "superiors" authorized him to release classified information. Since we are not talking about his moral superiors (which would include most of us) we must be talking about the Prez. and/or the V.P.
Liars.
2. Brownie isn't having it. The White house knew New Orleans was flooding. They did nothing.
Liars.
3. Jack A. (not the actress from "227' - the lobbyist) did, in fact, know W - apparently rather well.
Liars.
And, of course, there is the National Spying on Americans program - N.S.A. Which is illegal on its face, and hardly needs further debate. There is no reason whatsoever why they could not have gone to F.I.S.A. except one: it is a power grab.
The beat goes on. A nonsense story about nerve gas in the Capitol soaked up some CNN air time. Rove's employee, Bush, barked something out about a thwarted attack in L.A. Which, of course, was pointless except to divert attention. and Ann Coulter made a joke about killing a President.
America 2006.
P.R. Post Script:
Wednesday: A false nerve gas alarm goes off in D.C.
Thursday: Bush announces that a plan to attack L.A. was stopped.
Friday: Bush's microphone was "left on" after the press had left a GOP gathering. He is heard telling his audience exactly what he tells the press. He sounds decisive and it is all, of course, "overheard" by us.
Do the math.
Smoking Dutch Cleanser
By MAUREEN DOWD
Vice President Dick Cheney bitterly complains that national security leaks are endangering America. Unless, of course, he's doing the leaking, tapping Scooter Libby to reveal national security information to punish a political critic.
President Bush says he will not talk about specific security threats to America. Unless, of course, he needs to talk about a specific threat to Los Angeles to confuse the public and gain some cheap political advantage.
The White House says it has done everything possible to protect the homeland. Unless, of course, it hasn't. Then it can lie to hide the callous portrait of Incurious George in Crawford as New Orleans drowned.
The attorney general can claim that torture and warrantless wiretapping are legal, and can mislead Congress. Unless, of course, enough Republicans stand up and say, as Arlen Specter told The Washington Post, that if that lickspittle lawyer thinks all this is legal, "he's smoking Dutch Cleanser."
The president doesn't know the Indian Taker Jack Abramoff. Unless, of course, W. has met with him a dozen times, invited him to Crawford and joked with him about his kids.
The Bushies can continue to claim that the invasion of Iraq was justified because Saddam was a threat to our security. Unless, of course, he wasn't, and the Cheney cabal was simply abusing the trust of Americans to push a wild-eyed political scheme.
At the Bush White House, the mere evocation of the word "terror" justifies breaking any law, contravening any convention, despoiling any ideal, electing any Republican and brushing off any failure to govern.
Asked yesterday by Senator Susan Collins why the administration had reacted in slo-mo on Katrina, with "people dying, people waiting to be rescued," Michael Brown replied that if FEMA had declared that a terrorist had blown up the 17th Street Canal levee, "then everybody would have jumped all over that and been trying to do everything they could."
Instead of just going after the 9/11 fiends, as W. promised with his bullhorn, the president and Vice President Strangelove have cynically played the terror card to accrue power and sidestep blame. They have twisted our values, mismanaged crises, fueled fundamentalist successes and violence around the world, and magnified a clash of civilizations.
It used to take an Israeli incursion to inflame the Arab world. Now all it takes is a cartoon in Denmark.
W. and Vice have wasted hundreds of billions of dollars, turning Iraq into a terrorist training ground, leaving the 9/11 villains at large, and letting cronies and losers botch the job of homeland security.
Brownie, one of the biggest boneheads in U.S. history, considered the homeland security chief, Michael Chertoff, so useless that he deliberately didn't call him right away about the suffering in New Orleans.
"The culture was such that I didn't think that would have been effective and would have exacerbated the problem, quite frankly," Brownie told the Republican senator Bob Bennett, who called the statement "staggering." A telephone call to his boss, Brownie said, "would have wasted my time."
The doofus who frittered away lives e-mailing colleagues about being a "fashion god" and wondering how he looked on television may have just been engaged in self-protective spin. Or has the Homeland Security Department simply created another set of paralyzing turf battles?
The most dysfunctional man in government is calling the government dysfunctional.
W.'s sophomoric "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job" line makes even Brownie cringe.
"Unfortunately," the former FEMA chief complained, "he called me 'Brownie' at the wrong time. Thanks a lot, sir."
In the new Foreign Affairs, Paul Pillar, who was a senior C.I.A. official overseeing Middle East intelligence assessments until October, says the obvious conclusion that should have been drawn from the intelligence on Iraq was that war was unnecessary. He says the White House "went to war without requesting - and evidently without being influenced by - any strategic-level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq."
He calls the relationship between the intelligence community and the policy makers - you guessed it - politicized, damaged by bureaucratic rivalries and dysfunctional.
A final absurd junction of dysfunction was reached on Wednesday, when Republican Party leaders awarded Tom DeLay with a seat on the Appropriations subcommittee overseeing the Justice Department, which is investigating Jack Abramoff, including his connections to Tom DeLay.
Perfect.
Illegal and Inept
By BOB HERBERT
While testifying about the Bush administration's warrantless eavesdropping program, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was asked to explain how the program had been damaged by the disclosure of its existence in the press.
Senator Joseph Biden suggested that Al Qaeda operatives have most likely been aware for some time that the government is trying to intercept their phone calls.
Mr. Gonzales agreed. "You would assume that the enemy is presuming that we are engaged in some kind of surveillance," he said. "But if they're not reminded about it all the time in newspapers and in stories, they sometimes forget."
Senator Biden managed to laugh. Probably to keep from crying. This was the attorney general of the United States speaking, yet another straight man for an administration that has raised governing to new heights of witlessness. Watching the Bush administration in action would be hilarious, if its ineptitude and brutally misguided policies didn't end so often in needless suffering and sorrow.
The public should be aware of two important points about the president's domestic spying program: it's illegal, and it's not catching terrorists.
If the program were legal, there is no chance so many Republicans would be upset about it. While questioning Mr. Gonzales at Monday's Judiciary Committee hearing, Senator Lindsey Graham, a conservative Republican from South Carolina, assailed both of the rationales used by the administration to justify the program.
Referring to the administration's repeated insistence that the Congressional resolution authorizing the use of force against Al Qaeda gave the president the power to bypass restrictions on domestic surveillance imposed by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Senator Graham said:
"I'll be the first to say, when I voted for it, I never envisioned that I was giving to this president or any other president the ability to go around FISA carte blanche."
Senator Graham then addressed the argument that the president has the inherent power under the Constitution to authorize the warrantless wiretapping. Such a view, said Senator Graham, would undermine the principle of checks and balances. "Taken to its logical conclusion," he said, "it concerns me that it could basically neuter the Congress and weaken the courts."
Moments later, he added, "And when the nation's at war, I would argue, Mr. Attorney General, you need checks and balances more than ever."
Other Republicans on the Judiciary Committee who expressed skepticism or voiced serious doubts about the program included Mike DeWine and Sam Brownback, and the chairman, Arlen Specter. "You think you're right," Senator Specter told Mr. Gonzales. "But there are a lot of people who think you're wrong."
Apart from the legal issues, it's increasingly clear that the president's program is contributing little if anything to the effort to protect Americans from Qaeda-type terrorism.
Senator Biden asked Mr. Gonzales whether the program had achieved any results. Mr. Gonzales said it had helped identify "would-be terrorists here in the United States."
"Have we arrested those people?" asked Mr. Biden. "Have we arrested the people we've identified as terrorists in the United States?"
The attorney general's reply left people shaking their heads and rubbing their eyes. "When we can use our law enforcement tools to go after the bad guys," he said, "we do that."
Senator Biden tried to push the issue, but Mr. Gonzales would not elaborate. Mr. Biden finally said: "Well, I hope we arrested them - if you identified them. I mean, it kind of worries me because you all talk about how you identify these people, and I've not heard anything about anybody being arrested."
A clue to Mr. Gonzales's reluctance to discuss the achievements of the president's domestic spying program could be found on the front page of The Washington Post on Sunday. A long article about the program began as follows:
"Intelligence officers who eavesdropped on thousands of Americans in overseas calls under authority from President Bush have dismissed nearly all of them as potential suspects after hearing nothing pertinent to a terrorist threat, according to accounts from current and former government officials and private-sector sources with knowledge of the technologies in use."
To laugh or to cry - that is the question as we contemplate three more years of this theater of the absurd known as the Bush administration.
From The Washington Post:
A group of 85 evangelical Christian leaders on Wednesday backed legislation opposed by the White House to cut carbon dioxide emissions, kicking off a campaign to mobilize religious conservatives to combat global warming.
The group which included mega-church pastors, Christian college presidents, religious broadcasters and writers, also unveiled a full-page advertisement to run in Thursday's New York Times and a television ad it hopes to screen nationally.
Well, well, well. I'm starting to feel really good about 2006.
 Asking for your help again. Please go to Savedarfur.org and fill out the form to send to the President. There is power in numbers.
Also - if you want a wrist band please leave your address in the comments and I'll send you one.
Thanks.
OH - and don't forget that our pal, Nicholas Kristof is sponsoring a trip for Bill O'Reilly to go to Darfur - send an email to sponsorbill@gmail.com and pledge some dough.
Check this out.
A House Republican whose subcommittee oversees the National Security Agency broke ranks with the White House on Tuesday and called for a full Congressional inquiry into the Bush administration's domestic eavesdropping program.
The lawmaker, Representative Heather A. Wilson of New Mexico, chairwoman of the House Intelligence Subcommittee on Technical and Tactical Intelligence, said in an interview that she had "serious concerns" about the surveillance program. By withholding information about its operations from many lawmakers, she said, the administration has deepened her apprehension about whom the agency is monitoring and why.
Please call Representative Wilson and tell her you support her - 202-225-6316.
Call you own Congressperson and ask them to do the same.
The legal justification the Bushies are using to spy on Americans without warrants is so broad and open ended it begs one question: WHAT CAN'T BUSH DO? Is there anything that is not legal for a President in a time of war? If the other 2 branches can be dismissed unilaterally where does Bush's power get checked? If this legal justification is allowed to stand and is accepted then we have an executive that is, in essence, an absolute monarch.
Can someone answer this? What are the limits to Bush's power? The "lawyers" in the White House have presented a defense that means there are no limits. Bush is all powerful.
Calling President Jefferson...
Do You Know What They Know?
By BOB HERBERT
Has the National Security Agency referred your name to the F.B.I. as a result of information it picked up from its illegal domestic eavesdropping program?
You don't know, do you? And the Bush administration, which has linked its mania for secrecy with its fetish for collecting data on Americans, is not saying.
The big problem related to this program, as far as the administration is concerned, is not its metastasizing threat to constitutional government, the rule of law, the privacy of innocent Americans, the venerable system of checks and balances, and the American way of life as we've known it.
No, the big problem for Bush & Co. — the thing that makes the president and his apologists apoplectic — is the mere fact that this domestic spying program has come to light. Investigations are under way to determine who might have leaked information about the supersecret program to The New York Times, which disclosed its existence, and others.
This is not a time for Congress or the media to bow before the intimidation tactics of a bullying administration. This is a time to heed the words of a federal judge named Damon Keith, who reminded us back in 2002 that "democracies die behind closed doors."
The attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, is scheduled to testify about the N.S.A. program today at a public hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Here are some of the questions that need to be asked:
Who is being spied upon, and why?
How many Americans here in the United States — or others who were lawfully in the country — have had their phone conversations or e-mails intercepted without a warrant?
Who determines what calls or e-mails are to be monitored in the U.S. without warrants, and what are their guidelines?
How many of those who were spied upon were found to have been involved in terror-related activities? How many were referred to the F.B.I. or other agencies for further investigation?
Of those who were referred, how many were cleared of wrongdoing?
What kind of information is being collected about people who are spied upon without warrants but are not referred to law enforcement agencies? How is that data being used, and how is it stored?
Is the government collecting information about the political views of the people who are being spied upon? With whom is that information being shared?
What has been the nature and the extent of the objections from people inside the government to the warrantless spying?
Until recently, no one was above the law in the U.S., not even the president. Richard Nixon was threatened with impeachment and run out of town for thumbing his nose at the Constitution. Bill Clinton was impeached for lying under oath about his sex life.
The Bush administration, by exploiting the very real fear of terrorism, and with the connivance of Republican majorities in both houses of Congress, has run roughshod over constitutional guarantees that had long been taken for granted. The prohibition against cruel and inhuman punishment? Habeas corpus? The right to face one's accuser? When it suits the Bush crowd, such protections are simply ignored.
The president would have you believe that the warrantless N.S.A. spy program is a very limited operation, narrowly focused on international communications involving "people with known links to Al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations."
If that were true, there would be no reason not to get a warrant from the secret court set up by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The most logical reason for not getting a warrant is that the president's intelligence acolytes, who behave as though they graduated from the Laurel and Hardy school of data mining, have not been able to demonstrate that the people being spied upon are connected to Al Qaeda or any other terror organization.
The National Security Agency sent so much useless information to the F.B.I. in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks that agents began to joke that the tips would result in more "calls to Pizza Hut." The Times reported that thousands of tips a month came pouring in, virtually all of them leading to dead ends or innocent Americans.
The American public needs to know what's really going on with this spy program. "Liberty," said John Adams, "cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people."
The Effectiveness Thing
By PAUL KRUGMAN
We are ruled by bunglers. Every major venture by the Bush administration, from the occupation of Iraq to the Medicare drug program, has turned into an epic saga of incompetence. In retrospect, the Clinton years look like a golden era of good government.
Given the Bush administration's evident inability to govern, Democratic electoral victories should be a sure thing. But they aren't. Why?
Before I try to answer that question, let me justify my assertion — which is sure to generate a lot of angry mail — that Bill Clinton knew how to govern, while George W. Bush doesn't. All you have to do is consider the rise and fall of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Under the elder George Bush, FEMA was used as a dumping ground for political cronies, with predictable results. Descriptions of FEMA's response to Hurricane Andrew in 1992 sound just like the response to Katrina: for three days FEMA was nowhere to be found, and when it finally arrived its relief efforts were utterly incompetent.
Bill Clinton changed all that by choosing James Lee Witt, who knew a lot about disaster management, to run FEMA, and encouraging him to run the agency professionally. The result was a spectacular improvement in performance. FEMA, formerly considered one of the worst agencies in the federal government, won praise for its quick and effective responses to events like the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
But George W. Bush restored the practice of stuffing FEMA with cronies; the ludicrous Michael Brown is gone, but others remain. And the agency has reverted to impotence and incompetence.
As FEMA went, so went government as a whole.
On one side, FEMA's rebirth under Mr. Clinton wasn't unique. For example, a similar tale of miraculous turnaround can be told about the Veterans Health Administration. And I'd argue that there was a broad improvement in the government's professionalism during the Clinton era.
On the other side, what happened to FEMA starting in 2001 is typical: politicization and cronyism have become standard operating procedure throughout the federal government, even when the need for professionalism is obvious. (Recall how unqualified political loyalists were sent to run Iraq during the crucial first year.) That's one main reason President Bush has failed at everything he's tried except cutting taxes — and winning elections.
Which brings me to the political puzzle. Our leaders' bungling hasn't escaped public notice: more than half of Americans say that the Bush administration has been a failure. Yet it's not at all clear that Democrats can translate this sentiment into large political gains — because despite the governing skill of the last Democratic administration, the public doesn't think of Democrats as being effective.
A lot of this has to do with the way the news media cover politics: they focus mainly on Washington, and many news organizations — especially the broadcast media — prefer to do horse-race stories rather than discuss policy issues. And from that point of view, the Democrats present a sorry spectacle. Not only are they a minority in Congress, shut out of power; they're an undisciplined minority constantly facing defections from their own ranks on crucial issues.
The issue of Iraq epitomizes the political paradox. The war has been a monstrous policy failure, but it remains a political asset to the Bush administration, because it divides the Democrats and makes them look ineffectual.
Yet if the Democrats could present a united front on Iraq, they'd probably have a lot of public support. You'd never know it from the range of views represented on the Sunday talk shows, but a majority of Americans believes both that the administration deliberately misled the nation about W.M.D.'s and that we should set a timetable for withdrawal.
And the public's views on other issues seem to favor the Democratic position — or, rather, what the Democratic position would probably be if the Democrats could agree on one — even more strongly. For example, the public believes by two to one that the government should guarantee health insurance for all Americans.
The point is that Democrats are largely winning the battle of ideas: on the issues, public opinion is shifting in their direction. But to take advantage of that shift, they have to overcome an image of ineffectiveness that is partly the fault of the news media, but largely the result of their own disunion.
How about some good news?
WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 — The United Nations Security Council, acknowledging the failure of the current strategy for ending the carnage in Darfur, Sudan, agreed Friday to deploy thousands of peacekeepers to the troubled province.
The United States, which holds the Council presidency this month, offered the motion, and it was approved unanimously. Officials acknowledge that winning council approval was probably the least difficult step.
Believe it or not, this was proposed by John Bolton. I have to give him props for doing this. Nothing else has worked to end the genocide in Darfur. Let's just hope they send enough troops.
Watch this and tell my why President Bush has not been impeached.
The only doubt I have is that Bush would actually use the word internecine in a conversation.
 OK, I live in a small town and Good Night and Good Luck opened today in Lakeland, Florida. In the interest of full disclosure I should say that I think Mr. Clooney is gorgeous, our Cary Grant if you will. So, I am biased.
That being said this movie will make you long for a news anchor with a back bone. When Mr. Murrow says (I'm paraphrasing here) that you don't have to present both sides of a story when one is clearly wrong I gasped. Not a huge gasp, but a gasp none the less.
There a moments like that peppered throughout the movie. I saw the first showing with a very small audience but everyone applauded at the end.
Perhaps the Good Luck is for us that we will have a press that will hold our current politicians accountable.
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