Category: Foreign Relations

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Venezuela

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez made headlines last week when he told the United States government to “Go to Hell” in a Sunday radio address. My first reaction was to laugh. Then I asked myself why I was laughing.

I might be laughing because someone in the Americas has the outspoken temerity to stand up to Washington’s bullying of the rest of the world, especially smaller, less economically and militarily powerful countries like Venezuela. It is refreshing for someone in the position of Hugo Chavez to stand up to Washington’s arrogance.

Chavez made headlines in September when at his address to the U.N.’s General Assembly he said the UN was basically powerless as an organization to make much of an effect on world politics. Referring to Bush’s speech the day before, Chavez said, ”The devil came here yesterday and it smells of sulfur still today.” I admit that I laughed at that statement, too. My opinion of George Bush isn’t very flattering, and I will admit that on at least one occasion I flippantly referred to him as the anti-christ. Last year, when Chavez was in the U.S. for the annual meeting at the U.N., Chavez declared in a Washington Post interview that the Bush Administration was a terrorist administration. In case you’re wondering, that statement did not make me laugh.

Chavez’s posturing is especially refreshing in light of the fact that he overcame what was probably a U.S.-backed coup d’etat in April 2002. In fairness, Washington investigated itself and officially denies it had anything to do with that coup. Whether or not the U.S. government-backed it, it was clear that Washington would not have been unhappy to see Chavez go. The administration actively supports Chavez’s political rivals, despite the popularity of the Venezuelan leader among his people and in Latin America in general.

Chavez’s ire rose most recently in response to a U.S. State Department statement that the legislative body in Venezuela has allowed Chavez too much power when it gave him the authority to make the extensive socialist reforms, including the nationalization of public utilities and the country’s main telecommunications company. Gasoline is already heavily subsidized by the government of this oil-rich Latin American nation and sells for around 12¢ per gallon.

But is socialization such a bad idea for these basic necessities? In Venezuela, the same as in the rest of Latin America, there is a huge gap between the rich elite minority and the hoards of the desperately poor. Economically, Latin America has not been the global powerhouse that Europe or North America are. Our neighbors to the south have not yet thrown off the yoke of poverty enforced by centuries of Spanish colonization and dictatorial regimes.

Recently, though, the countries on that continent have started working together for a common political and economic good. The example of the European Union, countries which joined together for economic strength, is one I would not be surprised to see South America emulate in the reasonably near future. Venezuela was instrumental in helping Argentina out of its devastating economic crisis a few years ago when the International Money Fund stood by and did nothing. Venezuela bought much of Argentina’s debt and contributed significantly to stabilizing the country in the face of catastrophe.

Chavez is a significant economic leader in the region. He is the driving force behind ALBA, the “Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas” that Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia have joined together to form, and which Nicaragua, once again under the control of Sandinista Daniel Ortega, will soon be joining. ALBA is an alternative to NAFTA-style free trade among Latin American countries, where the countries come together economically but retain their own political sovereignty.

Venezuela is positioning itself as a force to be reckoned with on more than just the economic front, though. Despite a U.S. arms embargo against Venezuela, that country is increasing its defense spending at the rate of more than 12% a year. “According to the US Defense Department, since 2005, Venezuela spent more than China, Pakistan and Iran in procurement of weapons,” El Universal reported. The article quoted Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, who said that Chavez’s government “emerged as a major purchaser of weapons and resorted to Russia for high-tech weaponry in order to neutralize the US influence.”

How major is major? Well, since 2005 Venezuela has spent $4.3 billion acquiring weapons. That’s almost $1 billion more than China, which spent $3.4 billion, and Pakistan, which spent $3 billion. Venezuela has spent two and a half times the amount Iran has spent on arms since 2005.

Iran is the country the Bush administration is focused on right now because of its possible intent to acquire nuclear weapons. The Bush administration is doing practically nothing about North Korea, which not only has acquired nuclear weapons but has actually test-fired its Taepo Dong missiles in our general direction. (Make no jokes about the name of those North Korean missiles which have such trouble staying up, ok? I’m trying to be serious here.)

In light of the military might of the United States, Venezuela’s acquisitions may seem inconsequential. Purchases included 24 Russian Su-30 multi-role fighter jets, 50 transport and attack military helicopters, 10 new Russian multi-purpose helicopters, 53 Russian Ak-103 assault rifles (before you laugh at that number, note that there was a deal for 100,000 more). Venezuela also purchased a license to build a factory to produce Kalashnikov assault rifles.

Venezuela has spent hundreds of thousands to refit older helicopters and on maintenance of two submarines (for the first time ever Venezuela is tending to this matter herself) and to improve existing weapons systems. More than half a billion dollars went to streamline and revamp the entire Venezuelan military.

Chavez is politically allied with Castro’s Cuba, and this week went so far as to say ‘When they name me, they name Fidel and when they name Fidel, they name me.’ Any moves the U.S. might make against Cuba in Fidel Castro’s waning days as a dictator will be seen by Chavez as an attack on Venezuela.

The Venezuelan people recently re-elected Chavez President. Despite his popular support in free elections, the Bush administration perceives Chavez as a threat to democracy because of the socialist reforms he wants to enact, his political alignment with communist Cuba, and his outspoken opposition to President George W. Bush’s “War on Terror.” Chavez, in turn, sees Bush as a threat. He has accused the Bush administration of attempting to assassinate him, not just overthrow him.

The official position of our government is that Chavez’s government is eroding democracy and human rights in Venezuela. Our government also claims that Chavez wants to undermine American influence in the region. I am forced to disagree. By supporting a coup d’etat of a leader that had been elected in fair elections, the American government, not Hugo Chavez, is acting as the greatest threat to democracy in Venezuela. Chavez is attempting to make utilities, which we rich Americans consider the basic necessities of life, available to more Venezuelans through socialization. That appears to me to be a betterment of the human condition in Venezuela, not a worsening of it.

And let’s consider this: if George Bush believed that Venezuela had been behind a temporarily successful but ultimately failed coup d’etat of our government, and believed that the Venezuelan government had a hit out on him, don’t you think he’d be doing all he could to undermine Venezuelan influence among our neighbors and allies? And wouldn’t it be reasonable to build our arsenal and strengthen our military in the face of such threats?

The logic of our government’s foreign relations completely escapes me at times.

Oh, and get this. Venezuela is providing low-income Americans with two million barrels of heating oil at a 40 percent discount price. The program, which is similar to many Chavez has spearheaded in his own region, underscores the fact that he recognizes a difference between the American people and our leader. I, for one, am greatly relieved by that news.

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Homeland Security–Your Incompetent Bureaucracy at Work

 

A nonprofit organization my aunt works with was awarded a State grant and had to submit some forms to get the money. There is a new form this year, one they had never heard of before: Declaration Regarding Material Assistance/No Assistance to a Terrorist Organization Form.

My aunt went to the state homeland security website to get the form. There were two pages to fill out, swearing that they do not give aid to terrorist organizations that are on the U. S. Department of State Terrorist Exclusion list.

Now, let’s think about this. If you were in the business of aiding terrorists, would you tell the government all about it?

Maybe, but only if you were a really stupid terrorist.

Feel safer now?

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Pinochet Ricochet

Every once in a while, we come across a conspiracy theory that has just enough truth in it to make us want to probe it a bit deeper.

I don’t mean a theory like “Elvis is alive and working at a 7-eleven in Minneapolis.” His accent would give him away if that were true, right? Not to mention that he would have killed Michael Jackson’s African-American ass for messin’ with his baby girl before Michael ever had a chance to mess with too many little boys.

No, I’m talking about the conspiracy theories that have just enough truth in them to make us think that the hysterical hyperbole surrounding them may not be all that hysterical.

Yesterday a friend posted a list of his favorite conspiracy theories, among which is that the world is run by a small number of hyper-rich, elusive families.

The Illuminati conspiracy, right?

Well, I laughed and dismissed it until I happened across a certain article that appeared in the Baltimore Chronicle & Sentinel while perusing the news this morning. Then I did such a fast double-take that whiplash seems to have set in. Now I need a neck brace as well as an ankle brace.

The author of the article is Robert Parry, an investigative journalist in the mold of Woodward and Bernstein. Parry broke a number of the Iran-Contra stories during the Reagan administration, and later wrote a book about the experience. He also wrote a book about the October Surprise of 1980, which explored whether the Reagan-Bush campaign secretly sabotaged President Carter’s desperate negotiations to free the 52 Americans held hostage in Iran for over a year. Parry’s latest book is Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq.

Today’s article appears to be a synopsis of his book, so I take it for what it’s worth. Nevertheless, I want to check out his claims.

In a nutshell, Parry says that because former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet died Sunday, former President George H.W. Bush and the current President George W. Bush will be spared what might have been extremely damning accusations of involvement in covering up international terrorism. We can imagine how poorly that would fly for the president who declared war on terror five years ago.

The senior President Bush was Pinochet’s “longtime friend and protector.” Parry claims that both #41 and #43 covered up for Pinochet’s assassination squads, arms dealings, money-laundering, terrorism, and drug running, and the facts behind these allegations may die with Pinochet.

The slightly longer version is this:

The Bush family’s involvement with Pinochet began about 1976 when then-CIA Director George H.W. Bush diverted investigators from Pinochet’s involvement in a Washington, D.C. car bombing. That attack killed Pinochet’s political rival Orlando Letelier and an American woman named Ronni Moffitt. Our current president effectively stopped a recent FBI attempt to indict Pinochet for that act of terrorism, which in 1976 was the worst that had ever occurred on American soil. The car bomb was detonated along the well-guarded Embassy Row.

Pinochet’s US connections didn’t start with that episode. He took power in 1973 during a bloody coup when his CIA-supported rebels shot Chilean President Salvador Allende at Santiago’s presidential palace. Until the coup, Chile was a constitutional democracy.

His military uniform made Pinochet look like any number of military dictators across South America and Africa at the time. His conduct was not far from the Fascism and Nazism that seem almost to be hallmarks of the twentieth century. Thousands of political dissidents were rounded up, tortured, and executed under his rule. It made no difference to Pinochet whether those dissidents were Chilean, or even if they were to be found in Chile.

Pinochet and his military junta were deadly serious about stamping out any and all opposition, wherever it might be. In 1974, Pinochet sent an assassin to eliminate a memoir-writing rival, Gen. Carlos Prats, who had fled to Argentina after the coup. A year later an unsuccessful assassination attempt was made against another rival, Chilean Christian Democratic leader Bernardo Leighton, who was in Rome.

The most far-reaching of Pinochet’s assassination squads, though, went by the code name “Operation Condor ” and involved intelligence services from several South American military dictatorships. Operation Condor was formed in 1976, taking effect about the same time that George H.W. Bush was sworn in as CIA director.

Chile’s former Foreign Minister and former Defense Minister, Orlando Letelier, lived in Washington, D.C., where he had relocated after Pinochet’s coup. The international community was favorably impressed with Letelier, who was apparently more personable than Pinochet. Letelier also tended to be highly critical of Pinochet’s human rights abuses, a fact that was obviously displeasing to the Chilean dictator.

Parry claims in his article that Bush’s CIA learned considerable information about Operation Condor even as Pinochet used it to eliminate Orlando Letelier in Washington, D.C. Pinochet’s government “heatedly denied any responsibility” for Letelier’s assassination. It was suggested that Chilean leftists had killed Letelier to turn him into a martyr.

The CIA knew differently. One CIA field report specifically implicated the Chilean government’s direct involvement in Letelier’s death. However, under the senior Bush’s command, the CIA instead leaked information that pointed away from the real killers. The FBI’s legal attaché in Buenos Aires, Robert Scherrer, reported to his superiors that based on information from Argentinian sources, the assassination was most likely the work of Operation Condor, the assassination project organized by the Chilean government.

In a separate incident just two weeks after the Letelier assassination, anti-Castro terrorists planted a bomb on a Cubana Airlines DC-8 leaving Barbados. The bomb exploded nine minutes after takeoff. The attack had been planned in part by a CIA-trained veteran of the Bay of Pigs, Luis Posada, who was still in close contact with the CIA. Just as they had in the Letelier assassination, senior CIA officials pleaded ignorance.

It is Parry’s position in his book and in the article that the CIA’s proclaimed ignorance was a sham.

When Jimmy Carter assumed the US Presidency in 1977, federal investigators cracked the Letelier case, successfully bringing charges against several conspirators. However, nothing the CIA offered helped to solve this case. Before the matter could be closed, though, the Republicans returned to power in 1981. Former CIA Director George H.W. Bush was now Vice President and a top foreign policy adviser to President Ronald Reagan.

Pinochet was a close ally of the Reagan administration, providing help on a variety of sensitive intelligence projects, including shipping military equipment to Nicaraguan contra rebels who also were implicated in the exploding cocaine trade to the United States. Part of Pinochet’s $28 million fortune apparently came from his own cocaine dealings.

When help was needed on sensitive projects, the Reagan administration often turned to Pinochet. For instance, in 1982, after Reagan used one of Pinochet’s favored arms dealers to deliver weapons to Saddam Hussein’s army. A Deputy CIA director named Robert Gates was instrumental in getting the military equipment to Iraq.

Yes.

This is the very same Robert Gates who was nominated by President George W. Bush as Donald Rumsfeld’s successor as Secretary of Defense. This is the same Robert Gates that the still-Republican congress confirmed just days ago, and who will now be in charge of the war in Iraq.

Isn’t it amazing what comes around?

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Bush: “There is No Civil War” and “It’s Al Qaida’s Fault”

This photo, a slide from a power point presentation prepared by the United States Central Command (CENTCOM), shows the drastic increase in sectarian violence in Iraq since the February bombing of the Shiite shrine in Samarra. CENTCOM is the military command that oversees the war in Iraq.

As of this writing, the slide is nearly two months old. October and November were the deadliest months for American forces in Iraq since the war began, and it was not exactly a picnic for the Iraqis. The death squads that roam Baghdad didn’t exist before Samarra’s bombing. Snipers were not out in the force that they now are. Scores of tortured, usually dismembered or decapitated bodies have been found daily in Baghdad since August. Anbar Province is practically lawless.

Why is the situation deteriorating? There are numerous reasons apparent from the slide.

• Iraqi police are ineffective at best, and are being rounded up and murdered by local militias.

• Moderate politicians have little influence and often are kidnapped or assassinated. Those who scream for drastic action get more attention and militant followings.

• More important than the political leaders are the religious leaders, and the moderates among them are being assassinated and silenced. Again, the militants seem to gravitate toward the extremists, not the moderates.

• Sectarian conflicts among the members of Iraq’s security forces are increasing.

• Police and military desert their posts and jobs in greater numbers.

• Militias, not the military or the police, seem to be “law enforcement” in Iraq, and they are becoming more and more active.

• Violence motivated by sectarian differences has moved into a “critical” phase.

Neighborhoods “allow” the violence to go on, according to CENTCOM. I question how the neighborhoods could stop armed militia members from their random kidnappings and murders, but CENTCOM obviously knows more that I do about that situation.

At the bottom of the slide, CENTCOM notes that “urban areas [are] experiencing ‘ethnic cleansing’ campaigns to consolidate control” and “violence [is] at all-time high, spreading geographically.” Based on the news reports I’ve seen, violence also appears to be increasing exponentially. The sheer number of mutilated, tortured corpses found since August, often at the rate of more than 50 a day, boggles the mind.

According to the New York Times, President Bush said Tuesday that al Qaida was responsible for the increasing sectarian violence in Iraq. He claimed that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al Qaida leader in Iraq who was killed by American forces over the summer, operated al Qaida in Iraq with the primary purpose of causing this kind of conflict between the different branches on Islam in the country. Naturally the president says that the US “will continue to pursue al Qaida to make sure that they do not establish a safe haven in Iraq.”

Not surprisingly, neither the American military commanders most familiar with the situation nor Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, agree with Bush’s assessment of al Qaida. The conflict between Sunni and Shi’a that has heavily armed militias roaming the streets of Baghdad and other cities is more complicated that simply what happened at Samarra. Although the al Qaida-sponsored attack in Samarra may have started things back in February, neither that attack nor any continued efforts of al Qaida are credited with the roving bands of militia that kidnap, torture, mutilate, and kill members of the other sect in what amounts to sectarian cleansing of neighborhoods in Baghdad and other cities.

Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the senior spokesman for the American military in Iraq, says that mortar and rocket attacks between Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods are on the rise, and things are expected only to get worse because of last week’s attacks. Last Thursday, our Thanksgiving Day, a series of bombs exploded in a Shiite district of Baghdad killing more than 200 people. The following day, Shiite militias attacked Sunni mosques in Baghdad and in the nearby city of Baquba.

King Abdullah of Jordan and Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, have both said publically that Iraq teeters at the brink of civil war, something that President Bush seems to spend da great deal of time denying. Jordan is one of the moderate states in the Middle East that is on reasonably good terms with the US. In the geography of the Middle East, however, Syria and Iran, both of which border Iraq and both of which have large Kurdish populations, may have more influence than Jordan, and certainly more influence than the UN. Bush has repeatedly said that the US will never ask either of those countries for help to stem the sectarian violence in Iraq.

In August Gen. John P. Abizaid, who heads CENTCOM, publically mentioned the likelihood of civil war in Iraq. The sides in a civil war would be along sectarian lines – and there are essentially two divisions: Sunni and Shi’a. Throw in the Kurds’ eternal quest for a homeland and a third party comes into the mix.

Bush says it’s not a civil war, but earlier this month Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples of the Defense Intelligence Agency described the conflict between the two sects of Islam as an “ongoing, violent struggle for power.” Prime Minister Maliki says that the sectarian attacks are “the reflection of political backgrounds” and that “the crisis is political.”

What is a civil war but a political struggle for power between two or more opposing armed factions? The American Heritage Dictionary defines “civil war” as simply “a war between factions or regions of the same country.” Wikipedia, my go-to authority for anything that needs defining, goes into a little more detail:

“A civil war is a war in which parties within the same culture, society or nationality fight for political power or control of an area. Political scientists use two criteria: the warring groups must be from the same country and fighting for control of the political center, control over a separatist state or to force a major change in policy. The second criterion is that at least 1,000 people must have been killed in total, with at least 100 from each side.”

Regardless of the definition used, I think the sectarian conflict in Iraq qualifies. In the NY Times article that supplied Wiki’s definition of the term, James Fearon, a political scientist at Stanford, agrees.  “I think that at this time, and for some time now, the level of violence in Iraq meets the definition of civil war that any reasonable person would have,” he said.

General Caldwell, the military spokesman,  described Al Qaida as having been “severely disorganized” by American and Iraqi efforts this year, but reminded us that it is “the most well-funded of any group and can produce the most sensational attacks of any element out there.” He summarized the continuing violence in Baghdad this way: Shiite militias conducting murders and assassinations in the city’s Sunni western section, and Sunni insurgents and Al Qaida staging “high visibility casualty events” in the city’s predominantly Shiite east.  And despite the fact that a tourniquet might be applied to the sectarian violence if influential neighboring nations exerted pressure on the warring factions, President Bush appears determined to ignore Iran and Syria, Iraq’s two key neighbors, as long as possible.

General Caldwell won’t say that Iraq is engaged in a civil war because the government still operates and there is not “another viable entity that’s vying to take control.”  Yes, that would take it out of the part of the Wiki definition, certainly, but the people of the middle east are not only accustomed to theocratic control of their governments, Islam demands it.  Sunni and Shi’a are battling in the streets to determine which branch of Islam will dominate Iraq’s government.  But struggles for political and economic power were taking place on many levels throughout the country, including fights among Shiite groups seeking dominance in the south and among Sunni elements in Iraq’s west.

The Wiki definition also says that civil wars occurs when there is fighting or voilence intended to force a major policy change.  Changing the government’s Sunni leanings to Shi’a and vice versa are huge policy matters in any Islamic state.

The question of whether the fighting constitutes a civil war has becoming an increasingly sensitive one for the Bush administration, as Democrats cite agreement among a wide range of academic and military experts that the conflict meets most standard definitions of the term.

Why is President Bush so reluctant to admit what seems obvious to so many experts? I wonder if Bush believes that if the administration is left with no alternative but to concede that Iraq is in a state of civil war, then the American mission there will have failed despite “Mission Accomplished” being declared there three and a half years ago.

I’d love to hear from politically conservative friends as well as the more liberal-leaning ones who tend to comment on my political blogs.

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Kurdistan


Kurds are one of the largest ethnic populations in the world without a country. They have inhabited the area of Kurdistan for as long as 8,000 years, but have never had a country or a kingdom.

The Kurdish language cannot be taught legally in Iranian schools. It is banned entirely as a language in Syria, and Turkey has prosecuted people for using it even as recently as 2003. The only part of Kurdistan where the language thrives is Iraq, and Iraq hosts Kurdish refugees from the other parts of Kurdistan. Although the language is Indo-Iranian in origin, “the historical development of the Kurdish language (both grammar and vocabulary) is distinct and different than the other members of the Iranian language family,” according to Wikipedia.

For centuries the Kurds have been persecuted much like the Jews of Europe and the Native tribes of North America.  For instance, in the 16th century, as the Ottomans conquered more and more of Persian, entire Kurdish regions of Anatolia were systematically destroyed.  Cities were and crops were burned and the people who survived were forcibly marched to Azerbaijan and even further east, as far as 1,500 miles away to Afghanistan’s Hindu Kush mountains.

Because of their ethnic identity, Kurds have continually sought autonomy from the governments that have split Kurdistan.  When the Ottoman Empire finally decayed out of existence in the early  20th century, many Kurds expected that autonomy.  When it failed to materialize, they believed that the newly created Turkish republic had betrayed them.  Backed by the United Kingdom, Turkish Kurds declared independence in 1927 and established the Republic of Ararat, which was never recognized by the international community.  In 1931Turkey resumed control over the disputed area. Turkey again suppressed Kurdist revolts in 1937-1938, while Iran did the same in the 1920s. The Soviet-sponsored Kurdish Republic of Mahabad, in Iran, lasted barely more than one year after World War II.  Kurds fought Iraq’s Baathist government for independence in the 1960’s and in 1970 rejected limited territorial self-rule within Iraq, unsuccessfully demanding larger areas including the oil-rich Kirkuk region.

During the Iran-Iraq War, Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime implemented anti-Kurdish policies and practices which were widely condemned by the international community.  Among the more notorious actions against the Kurds under his rule was the Halabja poison gas attack, when Saddam used of chemical weapons against the Kurds. Thousands died.

Later, Saddam’s army, under the command of Ali Hassan al-Majid, carried out  a systematic genocide of the Kurdish people. From March 29, 1987 until April 23, 1989, more than 2000 Kurdish villages were destroyed and an estimated 50,000 Kurds were killed in rural areas. The large Kurdish town of Qala Dizeh (population 70,000) was completely destroyed by the Iraqi army. The campaign also included Arabization of Kirkuk, a program to drive Kurds out of the oil-rich city and replace them with Arab settlers from central and southern Iraq. Kurdish sources report the number of dead to be greater than 182,000. Saddam Hussein is currently on trial and no doubt awaiting sentencing for his crimes against the Kurds.

So should Kurdistan be autonomous?

Since we invaded the country, the most peaceful portion of the Iraq has been the Kurdish north.  I have seen several articles about non-Kurdish Iraqis moving to Iraqi Kurdistan to escape the violence.  One has to wonder if this mass migration will result in the violence being brought to the doorstep of the peaceful Kurds. To a degree, it already has in cities like Kirkuk and Mosul.

Kirkuk itself is a thorny issue within the issue of Kurdish autonomy within Iraq.  Kirkuk is in a region with vast oil resources, but lies on the southwestern edge of the Kurdish area.  Negotiations with the Baathist government in 1970 broke down over whether or not Kirkuk would be part of the Kurdish autonomous region.

Iraqi Kurds want independence.  It would seem at first glance that an independent Kurdistan would be reasonable, except that our ally Turkey objects.  Turkey has the largest population of Kurds.

The area that would make an ethnic Kurdistan actually spreads into six countries: Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Armenia, and Azerbaijan.  An estimated 25-40 million Kurds inhabit the area, which is approximately the size of France.  If Iraqi Kurds win independence, there could very easily be a domino effect in the other five countries with Kurdish populations.  This would destabilize the entire region, especially Turkey, Iran and Syria.  I can’t imagine anyone wants to see any of these countries, especially Iran or Syria, destabilized.

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Bush: ‘We’ve Never Been Stay The Course’

Think Progress » Bush: ‘We’ve Never Been Stay The Course’

Do You BELIEVE this BS? And Bush actually expects the American public to BUY this sudden denial of everything he’s said for the last three years?

Now, here’s another look at the “Stay the Course” idea. The Washington Post can sure spin things for this president. It’s “Cut and Run” from “Stay the Course.”

Bush’s New Tack Steers Clear of ‘Stay the Course’

Now, is he a moron, or does he think WE are?

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‘Just a Comma’ on National Punctuation Day

According to the Carpetbagger Report, which can be accessed on the Think Progress website, this afternoon on CNN’s Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, George W. Bush practically said that all the sectarian violence in Iraq is irrelevant. When history views what is going on in Iraq now, Bush claims it will be seen as “just a comma.”

Is it just me, or does anyone else think he needs to go back to primary school and learn punctuation?

This is what was said:

BLITZER: Let’s move on and talk a little bit about Iraq. Because this is a huge, huge issue, as you know, for the American public, a lot of concern that perhaps they are on the verge of a civil war, if not already a civil war…. We see these horrible bodies showing up, tortured, mutilation. The Shia and the Sunni, the Iranians apparently having a negative role. Of course, al Qaeda in Iraq is still operating.

BUSH: Yes, you see — you see it on TV, and that’s the power of an enemy that is willing to kill innocent people. But there’s also an unbelievable will and resiliency by the Iraqi people…. Admittedly, it seems like a decade ago. I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like just a comma because there is — my point is, there’s a strong will for democracy.

Presumably, our Ivy League-educated Miscommunicator in Chief meant that all the mutilations, the suicide bombs, the beheadings, as well as all the senseless murder of civilian men, women, and children in the marketplaces and at mosques, will be only a footnote in Iraqi history. That would make more sense, anyway.

I find it extremely hard to believe that what is happening in Iraq right now will be reduced to some kind of punctuation mark – a squiggle that doesn’t even mention it. Heck, I’ll go out on a limb and admit that I believe that it will even merit considerably more than a footnote! The Boston Tea Party merits more than a footnote, after all, and it had all the hallmarks of a fraternity prank, the likes of which I’m sure our esteemed chief executive was familiar with at Yale. If dumping a cargo of tea into Boston Harbor is part of the legend of American democracy, surely the mutilations and murders of thousands of people over a period of a few months will be part of the legend of Iraqi democracy.

How could we have re-elected this idiot? How could this fool ever have been elected president in the first place? Oh, yeah. I forgot. He wasn’t.

Perhaps Bush decided to make this comment because today is National Punctuation Day. No kidding. It really is.

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Gaining Respect for (gulp) Condoleezza

Lawyers and G.O.P. Chiefs Resist Proposal on Tribunal – New York Times

Selected portions of this astounding article:

    “The Bush administration’s proposal to bring leading terrorism suspects before military tribunals met stiff resistance Thursday from key Republicans and top military lawyers who said some provisions would not withstand legal scrutiny or do enough to repair the nation’s tarnished reputation internationally….
    “The administration officials, who agreed to discuss internal administration deliberations in exchange for anonymity, said the decision to transfer high-level terror suspects from Central Intelligence Agency prisons to military custody had been the result of months of secret debate at the highest levels of government.
    “The officials said the change had been most vigorously championed by the State Department, under Condoleezza Rice, against some resistance from a range of officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, who had defended the status quo, in which high-level leaders of Al Qaeda, including the man identified as the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, have been held in secret C.I.A custody.
    “Brig, Gen. James C. Walker, the top uniformed lawyer for the Marines, said that no civilized country should deny a defendant the right to see the evidence against him and that the United States ‘should not be the first.’
    “Maj. Gen. Scott C. Black, the judge advocate general of the Army, made the same point, and Rear Adm. Bruce E. MacDonald, the judge advocate general of the Navy, said military law provided rules for using classified evidence, whereby a judge could prepare an unclassified version of the evidence to share with the jury and the accused and his lawyer.
    Senate Republicans said the proposal to deny the accused the right to see classified evidence was one of the main points of contention remaining between them and the administration.
    ‘It would be unacceptable, legally, in my opinion, to give someone the death penalty in a trial where they never heard the evidence against them,’  said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who has played a key role in the drafting of alternative legislation as a member of the Armed Services Committee and a military judge.  ‘”Trust us, you’re guilty, we’re going to execute you, but we can’t tell you why”? That’s not going to pass muster; that’s not necessary.”

I may have to rethink my total disgust with absolutely every member of the Bush administration.  This NYT  article tells us that Condi actually opposes holding suspected terrorists in secret CIA prisons.  She apparently even wants to give them a trial before they are executed.  Yes, a member of the Bush administration thinks perhaps due process should at least be given a nod with respect to these people.

The article says she and Cheney have been in conflict over this subject.  Anyone in the administration who stands up to Cheney has my attention, if not my respect.  That man scares the hell out of me.  W observed the same vice presidential plan as his father – pick one that would be a much worse president and guarantee no one will opt for assassination.

How should our government prosecute someone when the evidence against them is classified?  The Bush administration would simply say that the defendant shouldn’t know the classified evidence against him, but should be convicted anyway.  This violates the Confrontation Clause in the US Constitution, which provides that a criminal defendant should be fully apprised of the evidence against him and be able to confront the witnesses presenting that evidence.

The Confrontation Clause is part of the Bill of Rights, those first ten Amendments to the Constitution that address the basic rights and freedoms that all people should have.  This is where we find the freedom of speech and religion, the right to be secure in our homes against government intrusion, the right of states to organize militias, the criminal defendant’s right to a lawyer, the right to associate with whomever we wish.

Why was this included in the Bill of Rights?  We should keep in mind that the framers of our constitution were considered criminals themselves at one point in their lives: immediately before and during the revolutionary war.  In crafting the constitution there were months of heated debate and argument about wehat to include and how it should be include d.  The framers carefully worded each phrase so as to lay a foundation for a free society.

I think if any of the framers were alive today to see how much government intrusion there is in our daily lives, they would be shocked senseless.

But back to the issue of confrontation: When one is accused of a crime and subject to losing his liberty or his life becauseof the accusations, he must know what the evidence is and he must be given a lawyer so that he can do his best to effectively counter it.  His liberty is on the line.    His life may be on the line.   The Bush administration would have us support keeping the terrorist suspects in custody as well as the prisoners of war held at Guantanamo Bay, just because the administration doesn’t want to explain what the evidence is.

This is the same administration that insisted Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, remember?  And it says, just like when it justified going to war in Iraq, “we have good evidence, but we’re not going to tell you what it is.”

The chief executive of the United States government should support the constitution enthusiastically and without exception.  This administration has sought ways around it and other laws at every turn.  It diminishes my respect for the government.

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