I'm pretty sure all we did was re-elect Bill Clinton...

...which isn't to say that we shouldn't have, given our choices. But, as I've always said, the problems continue because of the choices we're given...which, in turn, is dictated by a very broken and corrupt system. But I digress.

"Dozens Dead" in U.S. Drone Strike

when all else fails, provoke

Memo Reveals U.S. Plan to Provoke an Invasion of Iraq

Nothing we all probably didn't already know. Just seems like it's been a while since we've read about it in such stark terms...

children of the grave

I usually stick something that Chris Floyd has written on this site at least a couple times a month. As much as I love him - what he stands for, what he does and how he does it - his only flaw is that he can, on occasion, throw out a few adjectives here and there that are a bit...strong, over the top, shrill. Every once in a while, one of his statements can get derailed by the fact that it sounds like something Kim Jong Il - or Saddam in his heyday - would release to the press.

But, with that in mind, I invite you all to read the following. And I challenge you all to find something - anything - worthy of dispute...

Post-Mortem America: Bush's Year of Triumph and the Hard Way Ahead

Tomorrow is here. The game is over. The crisis has passed -- and the patient is dead. Whatever dream you had about what America is, it isn't that anymore. It's gone.

So now what...?

it's just what I do

Cindy wrote the greatest post on her blog yesterday about The Amazing Bill. It was a tribute of sorts, as KERA broadcast an essay Bill wrote for their "This I Believe" segment. Bill's essay was a perfect and beautiful crystallization of what I love so much about the guy. More than that, though, it was yet another confirmation that he and I, in my humble opinion, are flip sides to the same coin. The differences we have are pretty extreme - he's a man of strong, sincere Christian faith, whereas I'm a person with a strong, sincere (and intentional) lack of religious faith - but I find it kinda fascinating that we both arrive at those places with the same motivations driving us: compassion, admiration for people more creative than us, and a desire to serve. Someone...something...somehow. Bill's found his way to do so and he does it well. I'm still working toward getting myself into a condition where I'm able to do something I'm proud of or consider honorable - either for a living or at the very least on a consistent basis. (Maybe I need to rethink that whole religion thing...)

Cindy was "furious at the world" yesterday. Bill's essay inspired her to see events like the one she wrote about in a different light...not as a reason to be pissed off at everything but as an opportunity to contribute in a way that she finds mentally gratifying. I still think it's okay to pissed off so long as you have a purpose.

I was furious at the world yesterday, too. (What else is new...I'm usually pissed about something that's going on and, frankly, it's becoming a drain on my mental and physical health. As I've stated many times, moderation is not my strong suit.)

The reason for my anger...Without getting into politics or soapboxing, I'd just like to draw your attention to the following two articles in the hopes of finding out whether I'm alone in my conclusion that there's a disparity on display that is...well, you be the judge:

New Orleans marks Katrina anniversary

Not far away, President Bush visited a school. "We're still paying attention. We understand," he said before heading to the Mississippi Gulf Coast, also devastated by Katrina...

...(Said a man) whose house was the only restored home on an otherwise desolate block, "There was supposed to be all this money, but where'd it go? None of us got any."

Bush to request $50 billion more for Iraq war: report

The additional funds would come on top of about $460 billion in the fiscal 2008 defense budget and $147 billion in a pending supplemental bill to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq...

Last night I had the pleasure of seeing the supremely talented and inspiring Kristy Kruger play the AllGood Cafe, with a really kick-ass band called Rose's Pawn Shop first backing her, then following with their own set. This show was for me what Bill's commentary was for Cindy, as it was a benefit for Hurricane Katrina relief efforts.

But the topics in the two above articles collide even more starkly if you know that Kristy's been on her own personal mission lately. Aside from - or in addition to - the fact that she lived and recorded in New Orleans and considers it her "true home," Kristy's older brother, Doug, was killed on the first day of his deployment to Iraq this past November. She plans to play shows in all fifty states in the U.S. in his honor. In her words, "Since he died in the name of this country, I'd like the country to know his name. And I'd like to see America, the whole thing. I'd like to see what he died for."

I videotaped (thanks again, Val) Kristy's tremendous show last night. I hope it turns out decent so that she and maybe Cindy can use the footage. If it winds up looking all Zapruder-film-jumbly or something, at least I got to enjoy some awesome performances, buy a copy of Kristy's third album and give a few bucks to the cause.

I considered showing the two aforementioned articles to Kristy last night. Not to push an agenda on her, but to see what her reaction would be. But something told me it would be inappropriate or insensitive (or both) to do so.

I'll get into the politics and ranting and raving about this later (trust me). In the meantime, I guess I'd just like to take this opportunity to thank Bill and Cindy and Kristy for inspiring me. And reminding me to do something with what hurts or angers me. To serve...somehow.

war

Gleaned from the fabulous backpage section of The Sun magazine (March issue) called Sunbeams...

War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. - Major General Smedley Butler

I guess every generation is doomed to fight its war...suffer the loss of the same old illusions, and learn the same old lessons on its own. - Philip Caputo

I hate those men who would send into war youth to fight and die for them; the pride and cowardice of those old men, making their wars that boys must die. - Mary Roberts Rinehart

Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties. - George W. Bush, prior to the invasion of Iraq

Name me an emperor who was ever struck by a cannonball. - King Charles V the Wise

Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac. - George Orwell

Here's what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial. And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we're hooked on. - Kurt Vonnegut

I believe in compulsory cannibalism. If people were forced to eat what they killed, there would be no more war. - Abbie Hoffman

(acs note: Okay, so that one's a bit nonsensical - and probably not even true anymore considering the lack of conscience among the folks involved these days - but Abbie's a longtime hero of mine...)

If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace. - John Lennon

No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots. - Barbara Ehrenreich

...and so we march

I read the following poem in the March 2007 issue of The Sun magazine and it stopped me dead in my tracks. “Basic” appeared originally in The Dumbbell Nebula (Heyday Books, 2000), by Steve Kowit. It appears again here with very kind permission of the author.

“Basic”
by Steve Kowit

The first thing that they do is shave your head
& scream into your face until you drop
the pleasant fiction that had been your life.
More quickly than you would have guessed
you learn obedience: to shut your mouth
& do what you are told; that you survive
by virtue of compliance, shutting down.
When they scream, “Drop for twenty,” then you drop.
If, wobbly from lack of sleep,
you’re told to sit up half the night & strip
your M-1 down, that’s what you do. You strip it down.
The only insubordination’s in your eyes, which can’t
accept the order not to close. Your combat boots
kept so compulsively spit-shined
you see your face in both hard toes – skinned
to the scalp, pathetically distorted,
not unrecognizable but not quite you – a self
that marches dutifully through sleet & has perfected
the low crawl.
One gray morning in the second week
of basic training, lacing up his boots,
that shy, phlegmatic, red-haired boy who bunked
above me whispered,
“Steve,
I don’t believe I’m gonna make it…”
“No way, man! You’re doing fine! Hey, look, c’mon,
we’re late,”
& shrugged him off to race out just in time
to make formation in the mist
of that Kentucky morning.
- He was right. He didn’t. He took a razor blade that night,
& crawling underneath the barracks slashed his throat.
What little of myself I saved in there
I saved by tiny gestures of defiance:
Instead of screaming, Kill, I’d plunge my bayonet
Into that dummy screaming, Quill…Nil…
At rifle drill I’d hum the Internationale
& fire fifty feet above the target. I kept Dexedrines
in my fatigues. Took heart from the seditious drollery
of Sergeant May, that LA homeboy
with the black goatee, all hip panache & grace:
that bop salute and smartass version of left face.
& sometimes from his cadre room at night, the wailing
blues of Ray Charles drifted through the barracks,
& I’d lie there in the dark, awake – remembering
that other life that I had left behind.
& it was Sergeant May & Ray Charles
& Dexedrine that got me through.
Had I been more courageous, less the terrified recruit
who did what he was told, I would have hung back
with that boy & argued with him,
said whatever needed saying,
or at least have heard him out, just listened, or let someone
know, or somehow, god knows, saved him.
But I wasn’t. & I didn’t.
I was just a kid myself.
For all my revolutionary rhetoric, I shut my eyes
& ears when shutting of the eyes & ears was politic.
When they said strip your M-1 down, I stripped it down.
When they said march, I marched.

killing in the name of...

More news from the “war on terror” that – aside from the international media – only the great Chris Floyd seems willing to report. If there’s any hope of salvaging a free press in this country, it’s people like him, Bill Moyers, and the greatness of TomDispatch.com…

Bush-Backed Liberation of Somalia: "Most of the dead are poor people"

In the new Terror War front opened by the Bush Administration and its proxy armies – the brutal "regime change" invasion of Somalia, led by the American-trained troops of the Ethiopian dictatorship – conditions for innocent civilians are worsening by the day. The BBC reports that the Ethiopians and their Somali warlord allies have essentially sealed off large quadrants of the capital, Mogadishu, and are shelling the residential areas to root out "insurgents" – forces loyal to the Islamic Courts government overthrown by the invasion, tribal groups on the outs with the ascendant warlords, and ordinary Somalis defending their country from foreign attack.

More than 300,000 people have fled the carnage in Mogadishu, some heading for the Kenyan border – where many have been captured with the help of U.S. Special Forces and intelligence agents and "rendered" to Ethiopia's notorious torture-chamber prisons – while many other refugees have been forced to simply camp out in the open, prey to extreme hunger and exposure, and the spread of disease. Some have become so desperate that they have had to return to the rubble of their homes in Mogadishu, and are now trapped in the ring of fire that the American-backed invaders are drawing around the city.

At least 250 people have been killed in Mogadishu in this week alone, almost all of them civilians, say relief workers and UN officials. And the innocent victims are overwhelmingly the most vulnerable people in Somali society; the poor, the sick, the crippled, the old and the very young.

The U.S. corporate media – and indeed, much of the "progressive" media as well – have largely ignored the conflict in Somalia, beyond a few brief mentions in the traditional "oh, those African savages are killing each other again" mode. But the war in Somalia is an American war. As we have reported often here – drawing on the extensive work of other researchers – the Bush Administration has armed, trained and financed the war machine of the Ethiopian dictatorship, with special attention paid to "counterinsurgency" training in preparation for the "regime change" that Washington wanted in Somalia. What's more, American warplanes assisted the invasion, launching airstrikes on fleeing civilians and natives of the border regions, ostensibly in a flailing, ham-handed attempt to kill a few suspected "al Qaeda" leaders supposedly hidden among the refugees. Many innocent people were killed – but no terrorist operatives. In addition, U.S. Special Forces troops have been operating with the invaders, and U.S. intelligence agents have been interrogating refugees and "rendering" some of them into a nightmarish journey through warlord prisons in Somalia on their way to captivity in Ethiopia. Again, all of this is going on with practically no U.S. news coverage – and absolutely no political debate in America.

The proxy conquest of Somalia is being undertaken to serve the Administration's strategic aim of dominating the oil supplies and distribution lines in the Middle East and Africa. The "justification" for this act of aggression is, as always, "terrorism." Bush and his proxies accuse the Islamic Courts government of "having ties to al Qaeda," a charge with the Courts faction has always denied, and of which there is no proof. But the accusation provides a handy excuse for attacking, arresting, rendering or killing anyone remotely associated with the overthrown government – or anyone who opposes the new Bush-imposed regime. "Al Qaeda" has become a magical incantation by which the Bush Administration can transform anyone into a "terrorist" or an "enemy combatant." As with the Islamic Courts government, no proof is necessary; the accusation itself will suffice.

Again, all of this happening – helped by American money, arms, training, planes, bombs, troops and intelligence – without the slightest debate or controversy among the American Establishment, and with no attempt whatsoever by the media to inform the American people of the situation. A whole new front in the never-ending, Constitution-shredding, death-dealing, atrocity-bearing "War on Terror" has been opened – a third "regime change" operation descending into murder and ruin – but no one pays the slightest mind. And as long as the Bush Administration can avoid another "Black Hawk Down" incident, as long as most of the dead are poor people – poor black people, those eternal non-entities in the public consciousness – then the American amnesia about the slaughter in Somalia will go on and on.

I think the thing that pisses me off the most, at least for the moment, is that there is no accountability in this administration…particularly with regard to Pentagon spending. There is no telling what kind of ghastly shit we’re financing all over the world. The media in the U.S. certainly won’t report on it. And I’m sure this is pure naiveté and/or doe-eyed ideology on my part, but shouldn’t Congress or somebody have some say in how and on what our tax dollars are spent? Our government is out of control to an obscene degree and has to answer to no one – at home or abroad. And the agenda of greed and global corporate domination without conscience or even the slightest bit of humanity – that I am paying for and you are paying for – is beyond offensive.

impeach the motherfuckers

APRIL 28 NATIONWIDE IMPEACHMENT ACTIONS

TEXAS - Arlington

NOTE: The event's actually been moved to Sunday the 29th at 2:00 pm.

We're going to merge the event with a May Day rally we were planning on taking place on the 28th because May Day falls on a Tuesday. The event will be composed of games which will be decided democratically by the group. It may be kickball, soccer, capture the flag... it is really up to the group and resources present. Free Food by Food Not Bombs. There is a possibility of a skit by Code Pink. We will be having tabling by IWW, Peaceful Vocations (counter-recruitment in FW schools!), unions, anarchists, zine distros, etc. It will be at Cravens Park [Cravens Park Drive (near Green Oaks Cravens park intersection)] from 1 or 2 PM until late. They welcome help making signs and banners and bringing food. E-mail alan.seth@gmail.com.

Please visit the website - A28 - for more information on events scheduled around the country, photos like the one above, and some additional information on what they hope can be accomplished. I'm damn sure gonna be there.

“Buying the War”

Record of Iraq War Lies to Air April 25 on PBS

Bill Moyers has put together an amazing 90-minute video documenting the lies that the Bush administration told to sell the Iraq war to the American public, with a special focus on how the media led the charge. Watch PBS from 9:00 to 10:30 PM on Wednesday, April 25. Spending that 90 minutes will actually save you time because you'll never watch television news again - not even on PBS, which comes in for its own share of criticism.

While a great many pundits, not to mention presidents, look remarkably stupid or dishonest in the four-year-old clips included in "Buying the War," it's hard to take any spiteful pleasure in holding them to account, and not just because the killing and dying they facilitated is ongoing, but also because of what this video reveals about the mindset of members of the DC media.

It's great to see an American media outlet tell this story so well, but it leads one to ask: When will Congress tell it? While the Democrats were in the minority, they clamored for hearings and investigations, they pushed Resolutions of Inquiry into the White House Iraq Group and the Downing Street Minutes. Now in the majority, they've gone largely silent. The chief exception is the House Judiciary Committee's effort to question Condoleezza Rice…about the forged Niger documents.

But what comes out of watching this show is a powerful realization that no investigation is needed by Congress, just as no hidden information was needed for the media to get the story right in the first place. The claims that the White House made were not honest mistakes. But neither were they deceptions. They were transparent and laughably absurd falsehoods. And they were high crimes and misdemeanors.

The program opens with video of President Bush saying "Iraq is part of a war on terror. It's a country that trains terrorists. It's a country that can arm terrorists. Saddam Hussein and his weapons are a direct threat to this country."

Was that believable or did the media play along? The next shot is of a press conference at which Bush announces that he has a script telling him which reporters to call on and in what order. Yet the reporters play along, raising their hands after each comment, pretending that they might be called on despite the script.

Video shows Richard Perle claiming that Saddam Hussein worked with al Qaeda and that Iraqis would greet American occupiers as liberators. Here are the Weekly Standard, The Wall Street Journal, William Safire from The New York Times, Charles Krauthammer and Jim Hoagland from The Washington Post, all demanding an overthrow of Iraq's government. George Will is seen saying that Hussein "has anthrax, he loves biological weapons, he has terrorist training camps, including 747s to practice on."

But was that even plausible? Bob Simon of "60 Minutes" tells Moyers he wasn't buying it. He says he saw the idea of a connection between Hussein and al Qaeda as an absurdity: "Saddam, as most tyrants, was a total control freak. He wanted total control of his regime. Total control of the country. And to introduce a wild card like al Qaeda in any sense was just something he would not do. So I just didn't believe it for an instant."

Knight Ridder Bureau Chief John Walcott didn't buy it either. He assigned Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay to do the reporting and they found the Bush claims to be quite apparently false. For example, when the Iraqi National Congress (INC) fed The New York Times's Judith Miller a story through an Iraqi defector claiming that Hussein had chemical and biological weapons labs under his house, Landay noticed that the source was a Kurd, making it very unlikely he would have learned such secrets. But Landay also noticed that it was absurd to imagine someone putting a biological weapons lab under his house.

But absurd announcements were the order of the day. A video clip shows a Fox anchor saying, "A former top Iraqi nuclear scientist tells Congress Iraq could build three nuclear bombs by 2005." And the most fantastic stories of all were fed to David Rose at Vanity Fair Magazine. We see a clip of him saying, "The last training exercise was to blow up a full-size mock-up of a US destroyer in a lake in central Iraq."

Forged documents from Niger could not have gotten noticed in this stew of lies. Had there been some real documents honestly showing something, that might have stood out and caught more eyes. Walcott describes the way the INC would feed the same information to the vice president and secretary of defense that it fed to a reporter, and the reporter would then get the claims confirmed by calling the White House or the Pentagon. Landay adds: "And let's not forget how close these people were to this administration, which raises the question, was there coordination? I can't tell you that there was, but it sure looked like it."

Simon…tells Moyers that when the White House claimed a 9/11 hijacker had met with a representative of the Iraqi government in Prague, "60 Minutes" was easily able to make a few calls and find out that there was no evidence for the claim. "If we had combed Prague," he says, "and found out that there was absolutely no evidence for a meeting between Mohammad Atta and the Iraqi intelligence figure…if we knew that, you had to figure the administration knew it. And yet they were selling the connection between al Qaeda and Saddam."

Moyers questions a number of people about their awful work, including Dan Rather, Peter Beinart and then Chairman and CEO of CNN Walter Isaacson. And he questions Simon, who soft-pedaled the story and avoided reporting that there was no evidence.

Landay at Knight Ridder did report the facts when it counted, but not enough people paid attention. He tells Moyers that all he had to do was read the UN weapons inspectors' reports online to know that the White House was lying to us. When Cheney said that Hussein was close to acquiring nuclear weapons, Landay knew he was lying: "You need tens of thousands of machines called 'centrifuges' to produce highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon. You've got to house those in a fairly big place, and you've got to provide a huge amount of power to this facility."

Simon says he knew the claims about aluminum tubes were false because "60 Minutes" called up some scientists and researchers and asked them. Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post says that skeptical stories did not get placed on the front page because they were not "definitive."

Moyers's wonderful movie is marred by a single line - the next to the last sentence - in which he says, "The number of Iraqis killed, over 35,000 last year alone, is hard to pin down." A far more accurate figure could have been found very easily.

Cannot wait to see this. And it's about goddamn time somebody in the...well, close to the mainstream media finally is calling them all out on it. Yes, we have greedy, elitist thugs - thoroughly corrupt and without the slightest bit of conscience (Rove, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz and, probably least of all, Bush) - using propoganda Hitler would have envied to create this ongoing, racist, corporate-funded massacre. But if there's any group responsible for that agenda to proceed unchallenged, it's the American media. They have collectively forgotten their calling, if they ever had one. And they deserve as much of the blame as those dickheads in Washington. Folks like Bill Moyers are our only hope of ever regaining and independent, free press. Go, Big Bill...!

not all conservatives are ooky (I have proof!)...

I'm starting to fall behind on my issues of The Sun and National Geographic - which I never do - thanks to assigned readings from my shrink. Nevertheless, here's some additional greatness from the March issue of The Sun...an interview with Andrew J. Bacevich, a professor of history and international relations at Boston University who has also contributed to the Weekly Standard and the National Review. He's a traditional conservative who, like an increasing (or increasingly vocal) group of Republicans, finds himself none too pleased with the hijacking of the GOP by the neocons - and the neocon ideology of global domination. While I certainly didn't agree with all of his viewpoints, it's striking - and encouraging - to hear from a sincere conservative who can separate his politics from the party that is supposed to represent his politics (and no longer does...much the way I feel about the Democratic Party). Check out the following comments from Bacevich...

...It does seem Orwellian. I am increasingly concerned about the public's habit of deferring to elites, particularly on national-security issues. We citizens don't pay enough attention to such matters, or are kept in the dark on them. Too many of us are willing to persuade ourselves that the generals will do the right thing, or that the civilians in the national-security establishment know better than we do what's good for the country. It's undemocratic. Citizens need to be engaged and informed, and they need to have a voice.

...(George) Washington...advised citizens to be wary of 'those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.'

Washington was a general and did not see military power as an evil. He held soldiers in high esteem and considered the army to be essential to our national safety. He was warning against building a powerful military for its own sake or for the sake of expanding the nation's influence.

Americans hardly needed such a warning in 1796, having so recently won their freedom from the militaristic British Empire. But today, with our illusions about war and military might as means of forcing our values on the rest of the world, we need to heed Washington's words. If we don't, we'll surely follow in the footsteps of other empires that tried to use military power to fulfill their goals. We'll go on endangering not only our own security, but the security of other nations and the values we hold dear.

I wonder how many votes Andrew J. Bacevich would get if he were running for president...not as a Republican but as a conservative...

oops…

That’s what usually causes the shit to hit the fan with regard to political crimes…when financial irregularities start to become impossible to cover up. The only thing I keep wondering is what took so fucking long…?

Selected highlights for your entertainment…

A damning report issued last month by the nonpartisan research arm of Congress says the Department of Defense continues to overstate its financial needs, by tens of billions of dollars, to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The agency also casts serious doubt on President Bush's statements that money to fund the war will dry up by the end of the month if his budgetary demands are not immediately met.

The 45-page report, "The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11," prepared for Congress by the Congressional Research Service, warned lawmakers that before they release additional funds to the Pentagon for the Iraq war, they should first demand that Defense Department officials provide an accurate accounting of how the money is being spent.

Since 2001, the Pentagon has grossly mismanaged the $510 billion spent thus far on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars; has used money earmarked for equipment upgrades to finance fighting on the battlefield, and has refused to provide Congress with a transparent accounting of the money it has spent and intends to spend, according to the CRS report.

…Exacerbating the issue is the fact that the Department of Defense "has periodically revised the figures shown for each operation in previous years, suggesting questions about the validity of its figures," the report says, adding that some of the department's supplemental requests for 2007 include "$2 billion from some unknown source."

Last July, David Walker, comptroller general of the Government Accountability Office, testified before the Congressional Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Affairs. He told lawmakers that a lack of actual costs, supporting documentation and routine reporting problems by the Pentagon with regard to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan "make it difficult to reliably know what the war is costing, to determine how appropriated funds are being spent, and to use historical data to predict future trends."

But the Defense Department "has not been willing to provide Congress" with the data it uses to predict its operating costs on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan. As such, Congressional researchers have recommended in their report that Congress ask the Department of Defense Inspector General to audit the Pentagon in order to resolve these various gaps and discrepancies in cost data related to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

The report recommends that Congress should consider taking drastic measures to rein in the administration's out-of-control spending and draw on history for guidance.

…Furthermore, before agreeing to provide the Pentagon with additional funds for Iraq, lawmakers should insist that the Defense Department provide a detailed financial report on the reasons its costs for funding the war have more than doubled from last year.

…Documents turned over to Congress by the Defense Department to justify its financial needs in Iraq and the so-called global war on terror "have been sparse," and government agencies, including the Congressional Budget Office and the Government Accountability Office, "have all found various discrepancies in DOD figures - including understating budget authority and obligations, mismatches between [budget authority] and obligations data, double-counting of some obligations, questionable figures, and a lack of information about basic factors that affect costs such as troop strength ..."

…The Department of Defense "has provided little rationale or explanation for its requirements or change in requirements for replacing war-worn equipment or extensive upgrades. In some cases, requirements do not appear to be strictly related to war needs," the report says.

Congressional researchers have warned Congress that the Defense Department's $1.9 billion supplemental request for "military construction" in its 2007 budget is twice as much as what it received in 2005 and may be controversial if approved by lawmakers, because it would indicate an "intent to set up permanent bases in Iraq and ... not clearly an emergency. "

To read the full story, click on this below…
Congressional Report: Gross Mismanagement of Iraq Funds

“burned at the state”

(...a botched cliché that a former co-worker – and probably Dubya, at some point – used)

You know, I never watch the State of the Union speeches. Or any other speeches by politicians. I haven’t for years and I’m not ashamed in the least to admit it. Because I know full well that all political speeches are not designed to communicate anything truthful or realistic…they’re designed to sell. And that applies to any politician in either party…at least from the state level up. There are perhaps a few local or regional politicians who give speeches that are actually attempts to inform residents and/or constituents in a useful way. But the truth is that most political speeches are exercises in public relations. And I have no desire to waste my time with them.

Needless to say, I didn’t watch Dubya’s SOTU the other night. But I’ve heard grumblings from fellow grumblers about one particular subject the president went out of his way to avoid, and it is a subject that has become dear to my heart: New Orleans. And the wretched debacle that was – and is – the aftermath of Katrina.

Here’s a blurb from a blog I read this morning about the gaping hole in the president’s speech… (You can read the entire blog – it’s not a long one – by clicking on the title.)

The Missing Paragraph

I was hoping you'd have something like an attempt to remind the country that what binds us together as American(s) vastly outnumbers that which separates us. Instead you gave us the lady from Baby Einstein who sold out to Disney. You could have attempted to speak clearly, thoughtfully, poetically, but then you gave us phrases like: "the great tradition of the melting pot." Sir, I'm sorry, but that makes me think of the nacho cheese in movie theaters, not how the very foundation of our solidarity as a nation rests in our diversity as a people…

...But back to the Katrina-shaped hole in your speech, President Bush. America was left afraid, angry, and ashamed by what happened in New Orleans, to say little of what is still happening there. Has so much time passed from when you flew over people's broken lives that you've forgotten what happened to your fellow Americans? It seems to me that it is more than possible that tonight's speech was just another reminder of your unfailingly apathetic and blatantly racist disregard for the citizens who need not only your time and attention, but the rest of the country's as well.

I have a stack of Katrina-related articles just waiting to be compiled into a monster post of some kind. (I also have a fantasy of dragging Hal Samples down to New Orleans with me for a week or two to see how much shit we can stir up, and see what kind of physical and emotional carnage we can report on, since no one else seems to be doing it with much success.) But since I’m still trying to get caught up on that and other subjects, I’d just like to run a quick set of numbers past everyone…

$10 million per hour

$8.4 billion per month

The first number is what we are currently spending (pre-“surge”) to continue our occupation of Iraq. The second number is what is projected to become the new pricetag for the ongoing operation there…what I’ve taken - like, just now - to calling Operation Muslim Humiliation. (Which I believe we called “the crusades” once, back in the olden days…)

Can any of us even fathom what ten million dollars per hour could do for the U.S. gulf region and New Orleans in particular? What eight billion dollars per month could have already accomplished down there by now? The fact that those figures are so unfathomable is, in itself, unfathomable. There is no adjective I can think of that can describe the injustice – not to mention just obscenely misplaced priorities – of our spending that kind of money on the other side of the globe when so many lives were destroyed – and remain in ruin more than a year after Hurricane Katrina – here on American (toxic) soil. Disgraceful? Unthinkable? Is “inhuman” too strong a word?

In New Orleans, mental illness, suicide, decay, disease, violent crime and cruelty to animals have become the new standard of living. At least until all the poor (read: people of color) people are gone permanently…dead or alive.

Why are so few Americans as outraged by what is – and is not – happening in the NOLA area? How is it that it’s acceptable on any level to spend the amount of money we have already spent - and will continue to spend - in Iraq while this absolutely deliberate ethnic cleansing (and I challenge anyone to prove to me that this is not what the situation has become) is occurring right here in our own country?

Our esteemed leader has visited New Orleans once – once – in the last eight months. That visit amounted to a photo op to mark the one year anniversary of…I’m not sure, actually. Katrina making landfall? The first breach of the levees? His comment to Michael Brown that he was “doing a heckuva job…”? His initial, compassionately conservative fly-over in Air Force One? Anyway, he said the following at his brief, though no doubt productive, visit last August: “This anniversary is not an end. And so I come back to say that we will stand with the people of southern Louisiana and southern Mississippi until the job is done.”

The question I have is what “job” he and his people have in mind.

"stronger than history..."

The following is true. Too bad so few Americans believe it anymore...

You are stronger than history, if you choose to be so. The future is yours to create, if you choose to do so. The moments to come are yours. Let nothing and no one steal them from you. Guard them with your life, because that is exactly what they are.

You can read the rest of the article from William Rivers Pitt by following this link...

A Sentinel in Time