Month: September 2006

Classified Spy Document: Iraq War Is Inflaming Terrorism

Jon Ponder

In 2004, a Bush administration official (believed to be Karl Rove) described his team’s approach to governing this way:

If we lived in real reality, there would be no need for this information to be classified. It was kept secret because it reveals facts that run counter to the false construction of reality created by the White House political office.

‘’We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. It was kept secret because it reveals facts that run counter to the false construction of reality created by the White House political office.

But sometimes real reality has a way of intruding:

The war in Iraq has made global terrorism worse by fanning Islamic radicalism and providing a training ground for lethal methods that are increasingly being exported to other countries, according to a sweeping assessment by U.S. intelligence agencies.

The classified document, which represents a consensus view of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, paints a considerably bleaker picture of the impact of the Iraq war than Bush administration or U.S. intelligence officials have acknowledged publicly, according to officials familiar with the assessment.

“They conclude that the Iraq war has made it worse,” said a government official familiar with the document who spoke on condition of anonymity because of its classified nature.

No one should be surprised that the war is breeding more terrorism. If we lived in real reality, there would be no need for this information to be classified. It was kept secret because it reveals facts that run counter to the false construction of reality created by the White House political office.

Makes me tired to think about it. It must be exhausting for them. No wonder they screw it up so often.

Just How Bad Are Bush’s Poll Numbers?

Jon Ponder

Eric Boehlert for Media Matters:

Here then, is some much-needed historical perspective to put Bush’s standing in context:

  • According to Gallup, on the eve of President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 assassination, he was suffering the worst job-approval ratings of his presidency — 58 percent.
  • In 1968, when the war in Vietnam was claiming hundreds of U.S. casualties each week, President Lyndon Johnson was considered so unpopular that he didn’t even run for re-election. Johnson’s average Gallup approval rating for that year was 43 percent.
  • When Reagan’s second term was rocked by the Iran-Contra scandal, his ratings plummeted, all the way down to 43 percent.
  • This year, according to the Gallup numbers, Bush has averaged an approval rating of 37 percent.

Bush’s dismal ratings put him well within range of the country’s recent failed presidencies, like the one of his father, Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon. That’s the historical company Bush keeps, although you’d never know that from journalists who refuse to connect the dots and refuse to treat Bush’s second term as the failure that a majority of Americans say it is.

Fox News Stages Attack on Pres. Clinton — But Big Dog Attacks Back

Jon Ponder

Clinton Shows Liberals How to Take on Fox News: Come Loaded for Bear and Be Prepared for Ambush

Pres. Bill Clinton agreed to be interviewed on Fox News to talk about the Clinton Global Initiative. But when the cameras started rolling, all Fox’s Chris Wallace wanted to discuss were accusations by rightwingers that the Clinton Administration let Osama bin Laden escape during the 1990s, as depicted in ABC’s “Path to 9/11.”

But Pres. Clinton would have none of it and he fired back at Wallace in a way that rightwing bullies rarely see from liberals. Crooks & Liars has the transcript and the video. Read the whole thing but here are a few choice excerpts:

[…]

Did Osama Die Like a Martian?

Trish

If it’s true that Osama bin Laden died of a “waterborne illness” last month, as is looking fairly credible, I can’t help but think of the ending to War of the Worlds. Remember how humans weren’t saved from the Martians by firepower or strategy, but by disease microbes?

If Osama is dead, and not by anything Bush and his minions can claim credit for, then what next?

In another moment I had scrambled up the earthen rampart and stood upon its crest, and the interior of the redoubt was below me. A mighty space it was, with gigantic machines here and there within it, huge mounds of material and strange shelter places. And scattered about it, some in their overturned war-machines, some in the now rigid handling-machines, and a dozen of them stark and silent and laid in a row, were the Martians — DEAD! — slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared; slain as the red weed was being slain; slain, after all man’s devices had failed, by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth.

For so it had come about, as indeed I and many men might have foreseen had not terror and disaster blinded our minds.

Gives me goosebumps, or makes me laugh bitterly, or both. If Osama is dead, and not by anything Bush and his minions can claim credit for, then what next?

We’ve been playing Whack-a-Mole for five years now, as the Bush administration identifies an endless stream of second-in-commands. We are usually introduced to them as they are captured or killed, but in a few weeks or months, new ones with similar names replace them. And none of it brings us any closer to some kind of ending in this fight.

So if bin Laden is dead, has in fact been dead for awhile now, then why are still at it? All along, we have accepted the Bush-given view that if we just kill all the “evil-doers,” especially the leaders, the problem’s solved. Could it be maybe, just maybe, the solution was never extermination? As George Lakoff and Evan Frisch pointed out in a brilliant Buzzflash guest contribution, declaring war on terror[ists] was a dumb strategy.

To Osama bin Laden, the moral was simple: American power can be used against America itself. This moral has defined the post 9/11 world: the more America uses military force in the Middle East, the more damage is done to America and Americans.

The more Americans kill and terrorize Muslims, the more we recruit Muslims to become terrorists and fight against us.

The war in Iraq was over in 2003 when the US forces defeated Saddam’s army. Then the American occupation began…

If bin Laden is dead, I can’t wait to hear what our new goal is morphed into by the folks who are profiting from all this carnage. But rest assured, a new one there will be. The question is, will we keep accepting it?

New Site Enables You to Make Sure You Are Registered to Vote

Buck Banks

Make it count: What with all the elections shenanigans the last couple of times around (remember, I live in Florida, where Katherine Harris annointed George Bush King of the World in 2000), it’s probably not a bad idea to make sure you’re still on the voter rolls and your name is spelled correctly (oh, and your face matches your photo ID). There’s a new site that enables you to check your voter registration status here.

Okay, it’s run by Democrats, but if you check your history, it was Democratic votes that didn’t get counted in the last two elections, not Repugs.

For the sake of democracy, check it out.

Schwarzenegger Vetoes Universal Healthcare

Jon Ponder

Governor says, “a society is judged by how well we treat our most helpless,” on the same day he vetoes healthcare coverage for California’s poorest

This morning as I was scanning Buzzflash as I saw the headline, “Schwarzenegger denies all Californians the right to universal health insurance,” with a link to an article in the Washington Post:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a universal health care bill Friday, saying it would create a “vast new bureaucracy.”

The bill would have provided every California resident with health insurance through a program administered by a new entity, the California Health Insurance Agency…

The bill’s author, Sen. Sheila Kuehl, a Democrat, said the bill would do what the governor said he wanted while saving health care consumers and doctors money. She suggested his real agenda was to leave health care in the hands of private insurance companies.

This surprised me because I even earlier this morning I had read the dead-tree version of the Los Angeles Times, and there was nothing about this veto. We could reasonably expect this story to appear in the local paper. For starters, Sen. Kuehl represents a huge chunk of Los Angeles’ Westside.

I checked the Times online and found a story about laws the governor signed yesterday but not a peep about the universal healtchare bill. The online Times had a quote from the governor about a foster care bill he signed that is ironic in light of the bill he vetoed that would have guaranteed doctor’s care to poor people in California:

Saying that “a society is judged by how well we treat our most helpless,” Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday signed eight bills aimed at making California a better parent to roughly 75,000 foster children.

He also signed a bill that makes it a crime to leave a pet in a hot car.

The Times reported on September 6 that the universal healthcare bill was dead on arrival. The governor had announced before the bill was passed that he planned to veto it .

AZ-08: GOP All But Concedes Former Rep. Kolbe’s Seat to Dem

Jon Ponder

To gain control of the House, Democrats need to take 15 seats — or maybe just 14 now:

National Republicans canceled local television advertisement reservations Thursday — slots that would have been used to back 8th Congressional District candidate Randy Graf through the Nov. 7 election…

Graf is running against Democrat Gabrielle Giffords in a race that has held national significance since Rep. Jim Kolbe announced last November that he would not run for re-election…

According to Giffords’ bio, she is a “third generation Arizonan and the youngest woman ever elected to the Arizona State Senate.” She also dates a shuttle astronaut.

Kolbe is one of two openly gay Republicans who have served in Congress. (The other was Steve Gunderson, who retired in 1996.) Kolbe was first elected to the House from Arizona in 1985, and has represented the 8th District since it was created in 2004. That same year, the district split its vote, with majorities voting for both Republican President George W. Bush and Governor Janet Napolitano, who is a Democrat.

Campaigning for the Republican primary on Sept. 13, Graf ran on the single issue of immigration. The National Republican Congressional Committee supported his opponent, Steve Huffman, a more liberal Republican with views that are similar to Kolbe’s.

Is IRS Trying to Control Churches’ Speech?

Buck Banks

God is my co-defendant: There’s an interesting case in Pasadena, Calif., between the Internal Revenue Service and the liberal All Saints Episcopal Church stemming from a sermon delivered on the eve of the 2004 presidential election. According to the IRS, the sermon crossed the line from religious to political speech, and that could cause the 3,500-member church to lose its tax-exempt status. The church is refusing to knuckle under to the IRS’s bullying, characterizing the agency’s actions at a press conference yesterday as an attempt to quash speech critical of President Bush and the war in Iraq.

The San Jose Mercury News summed up the crux of the matter this way:

The dispute with All Saints centers on a sermon titled “If Jesus Debated Sen. Kerry and President Bush” that was delivered by guest pastor Rev. George Regas on Oct. 31, 2004. Though he did not endorse either President Bush or Sen. John Kerry, he said Jesus would condemn the Iraq war and Bush’s doctrine of pre-emptive war.

“I believe Jesus would say to Bush and Kerry: ‘War is itself the most extreme form of terrorism. President Bush, you have not made dramatically clear what have been the human consequences of the war in Iraq,'” Regas said, according to a transcript.

‘We smell intimidation, it smells rotten, and we should not allow any aspect of intimidation to be directed to any member of our great country’
— Maher Hathout of the Muslim Public Affairs Council

The IRS reprimanded the church in June 2005 and asked that it promise to be more careful. Church officials refused.

According to that article, the IRS claims it investigated 90 tax-exempt churches and charities in 2004 and found wrongdoing in 70 percent of the cases. Four — none of them churches — lost tax-exempt status. In 2005, the agency began audits of 70 churches and charities and has 40 cases pending in 2006.

The only church ever to lose tax-exempt status for partisan politicking was the Church at Pierce Creek near Binghamton, N.Y., which was penalized in 1995 after running full-page ads against President Clinton in USA Today and The Washington Times in 1992 during election season.

The dispute, which could cost the church its tax exempt status, has attracted the attention of religious leaders on the right and left, who say the IRS’ actions could make it more difficult for them to speak out on moral issues such as gay marriage and abortion during the midterm election campaign.

At Thursday’s news conference, church officials were flanked by about 40 representatives of mosques, synagogues and other churches.

“We smell intimidation, it smells rotten, and we should not allow any aspect of intimidation to be directed to any member of our great country,” said Maher Hathout, senior adviser of the Muslim Public Affairs Council.

All Saints omewhat has the IRS over a barrel because church leaders refused to answer a questionnaire about church practices and policies, requesting instead to have the case reviewed in court before a judge.
[…]