Anyone who thinks they have all the Answers before they've even heard the Question - is Dangerously Deluded! Real Truth Requires Vigilance, Perseverance and Courage, regardless of Party and who wields Power. Left, Right, Center, Corporations, Government, Unions, Criminals or the Indifferent.
Over the past week a simmering bruhaha has been bubbling over comments made by Billy O'Reilly regarding the Harlem restaurant Sylvia's which he visited with Al Sharpton.
I couldn't get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia's restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it's run by blacks, primarily black patronship... There wasn't one person in Sylvia's who was screaming, "M-Fer, I want more iced tea."
Now, there's cluesless and then there's Fucking Clueless. Hey, look Black people eat with knives and forks, just like White People - and they chew with mouth's closed. Wow - Black People have manners and shit, just like White people. Motherfuck! Who knew?
This entire thing is getting play all over the place, Joe Scarborough has tried - with great difficulty - to talk about on his show Morning Joe.
BRZEZINSKI: Oh, my God.
SCARBOROUGH: He could not --
BRZEZINSKI: Wow.
SCARBOROUGH: -- get over the fact that -- his words -- he could not get over the fact that there was no difference between that black restaurant and any other restaurant despite the fact -- his words -- despite the fact it was run by black people --
BREZEZINSKI: Hmm.
SCARBOROUGH: -- and the primary patrons --
BREZEZINSKI: That's attractive.
SCARBOROUGH: -- were black people.
GEIST: Sounds like Bill doesn't get up to Harlem a whole lot.
SCARBOROUGH: I don't think he does.
BRZEZINSKI: It sounds like a lot of things are going on there, that I, I, I --
GEIST: Also using the term 'blacks." I don't think anybody's said that since like 1973.
SCARBOROUGH: Well, that, you know, it's just -- it's very surprising that, that Bill O'Reilly would be stunned that you could go to a restaurant that is run by African Americans, and that it would be, his words again, "I couldn't get over the fact that there was no difference between a black restaurant and a white restaurant."
GEIST: What, what was he expecting? You walk in, and they throw the food in the middle of the room and everybody just -- it's a free for all. What did he think was going to happen?
SCARBOROUGH: I don't know, he also was surprised that they were quote "tremendously respectful."
BRZEZINSKI: Oh great, here we go.
GEIST: Wow
BRZEZINSKI: I believe, whatever, it seems a little bit --
SCARBOROUGH: That's just strange. That's all I'm gonna say. Listen, O'Reilly is the king of cable, he's been number one for six years. That is fascinating, by the way, and I'm sure we're going to be hearing more about that throughout the day.
Needless to say the people that actually work and eat at Sylvio's were less than amused - and what's even worse they said so on The Today Show.
On NBC’s Today Show this morning, patrons of the famous Harlem restaurant Sylvia’s expressed their shock over recent comments by Fox News’ host Bill O’Reilly, who said on his radio show that he was surprised that the service at Sylvia’s was like that of “any other restaurant…even though it’s run by blacks.” “It wasn’t appropriate,” said one patron. “Does he expect anything different from black folk than from white folk?,” asked another. Watch it:
Responding to Bill O’Reilly’s complaint that he’s been taken out of context, Media Matters’ Paul Waldman said, “[I]f Bill O’Reilly got caught robbing a bank he would say he was taken out of context.
Though some have said this is a "Imus Level" event, I would argue that it's not nearly that serious. He didn't call the patrons of Sylvio's "Nappy Headed Ho's", but what he did do was damn them with the soft bigotry of low-expectations. It's the same as when Joe Biden called Barrack Obama "Clean and Articulate", neither he nor O'Reilly seem to realize how powerful the stereotype and expectation of black people being dirty, stupid and unruly actually is. It's something that's been cultivated for the past 500 years in this society as an after-the-fact justifiction for their economic exploitation first via Slavery, then via Open Jim Crow and now through the ongoing legacy of closet bigotry.
O'Reilly just accidently gave us a peak into his closet, and even though what he said was less directly insulting than Imus - it was far more revealing. And what it shows isn't at all pretty.
Yesterday on MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson show, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) repeatedly condemned the recent MoveOn.org ad about Gen. Petraeus. But when host David Shuster asked her for the name of the last soldier from her district killed in Iraq, Blackburn faltered. Schuster informed her of the soldier’s name and added, “When was the last time a New York Times ad ever killed somebody?” Watch it:
Breaking centuries of tradition where retired General reserve comment regarding ongoing conflicts over the past months 20 military leaders have come forward to point out the the Iraq War and how it is being persued has been a mistake and a failure and that they feel betrayed by Bush and his advisors.
The generals acted independently, coming in their own ways to the agonizing decision to defy military tradition and publicly criticize the Bush administration over its conduct of the war in Iraq.
What might be called The Revolt of the Generals has rarely happened in the nation's history.
In op-ed pieces, interviews and TV ads, more than 20 retired U.S. generals have broken ranks with the culture of salute and keep it in the family. Instead, they are criticizing the commander in chief and other top civilian leaders who led the nation into what the generals believe is a misbegotten and tragic war.
General Eaton.
“The ethos is: Give your advice to those in a position to make changes, not the media,” said Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, now retired. “But this administration is immune to good advice.”
General Batiste
The self-described arch-conservative and lifelong Republican made the “gut-wrenching” decision to end his 31-year military career in order to “speak out on behalf of soldiers and their families.”
“I had a moral obligation and a duty to do so,” Batiste wrote. “I have been speaking out for the past 17 months and there is no turning back.”
Brig. General John Johns
“My wife lost her first husband in Vietnam,” said Johns, who taught leadership and ethics at West Point.
“To learn later that President Lyndon Johnson and (then-Secretary of Defense) Robert McNamara knew as early as 1965 that we could not win there, that hurts her deeply to this day.”
Six months before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Johns, who retired in 1978, agonized over whether to go public with a paper calling the impending war “one of the great blunders of history.”
But it's not as if these Generals have gone uncriticized for speaking out. Ret. Navy Vice-Admiral David Richardson:
“They may sound off as they please, but I don't approve of that,” said Richardson, 93, who served in World War II, Korea, and commanded an aircraft-carrier task force during the Vietnam War. He now lives in North Park and remains active in military circles.
“When we are at war, voices that may give aid and comfort to the enemy can cost American blood,” Richardson said. “I would not want what I said to in any way affect our troops' morale and effectiveness.”
In contrast I think these Generals have been pointing out that a failed policy and failed strategy is what has been costing American Blood for four years now - and at some point, that policy has to change. It's high time someone began listening to what they have to say.
Based on witness statements and video which had been shot from the nearby headquarters of Iraq's national police command Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, an Iraqi interior ministry spokesman, has told the Associated Press that they have completed their investigation into the Blackwater Shooting at Nisoor Square this past Thursday and determined that the BlackwaterUSA guards were "unprovoked, and not under attack as they had claimed."
Uh oh.
Mirroring other unprovoked shootings which have occured in Iraq with private military services such as Triple Canopy whose employees have allegedly shot at Iraqi Civilians for Sport, the attack by Blackwater last week left 11 Iraqis dead as many as another dozen wounded. Although Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki initially ordered Blackwater to be expelled from the country effectively pulling their license the U.S. State Dept which employs BlackWater to protect their employees intervened and attempted to dispelled the Iraqi account claiming "the basic fact is that there was an attack on the convoy." A claim which has now been countered not only by numerous eye-witness accounts, but also on video!.
No more "He Said/She Said", now we're ready for Spike TV.
Indications of problems with Blackwater have been long coming and had been completely ignored by U.S. Officials.
BAGHDAD, Sept. 22 -- Senior Iraqi officials repeatedly complained to U.S. officials about Blackwater USA's alleged involvement in the deaths of numerous Iraqis, but the Americans took little action to regulate the private security firm until 11 Iraqis were shot dead last Sunday, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials.
Before that episode, U.S. officials were made aware in high-level meetings and formal memorandums of Blackwater's alleged transgressions. They included six violent incidents this year allegedly involving the North Carolina firm that left a total of 10 Iraqis dead, the officials said.
It's little wonder that the U.S. State Dept. has done little to curb these excesses when you note that former CIA Counter-terrorism Chief Cofer Black (he of "bring back Bin Laden's head in a box of dry ice" fame) is Blackwater's Vice-Chairman (as well as being a campaign manager for Mitt Romney!)
Complaints about Blackwater have not just been about security concerns but also a blatant disregard and lack of respect for Iraqis in general, even those in positions of authority.
[Deputy Interior Minister Lt. Gen. Hussein] Kamal said addressing Blackwater’s alleged actions was also a matter of preserving Iraq’s dignity and honor. Seated in his spacious office, he recalled an incident two months ago when Blackwater guards threw a water bottle at a traffic policeman. The officer was so furious that he submitted his resignation, but his superiors turned it down, Kamal said.
"This is a flagrant violation of the law," Kamal said. "This guy is an officer with a rank of a brigadier general. He was standing in the street doing his job, regulating traffic. He represents the state and the law, and yet this happened."
Khalaf also intends to investigate all six other fatal Blackwater shootings in order to paint a more broad picture of habitual Blackwater wrongdoing.
"These six cases will support the case against Blackwater, because they show that it has a criminal record," Khalaf said.
Khalaf said the report had been "sent to the judiciary," although he would not specify whether that amounted to filing of criminal charges. Under Iraqi law, an investigating judge reviews criminal complaints and decides whether there is enough evidence for a trial.
The AP report did not mention whether Khalaf would also be investigating allegations of Blackwater's involvement in weapons smuggling to suspected terrorists which U.S. Officials have begun to investigate.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The Iraqi government will file criminal charges against employees of U.S. security firm Blackwater who are blamed for a gun battle in Baghdad in which civilians were killed, an Iraqi Interior Ministry official said Sunday.
Under to original Coalition Provisional Authority headed by U.S. envoy Paul Bremer, contractors mercenaries such as Blackwater had been rendered immune from Iraqi law, but with the establishment of the new Iraqi Constitution and Government superceding the CPA - that immunity has apparently been rendered moot, but considering how effectively the Iraqis rendered "Justice" for Saddam Hussein, this could get very very serious, very quickly.
In a new report FactCheck.org has charged that President Bush has repeatedly made false claims about SCHIP, the Children's Health Care Program, while threatening to Veto the bi-partisan Senate version of it's reauthorization which would provide an additional $35 billion in funding for the program. According to Factcheck.org the President has stated that Senate's version of the bill would take a program "meant to help poor children and turning it into one that covers children in households with incomes of up to $83,000 a year." yet according to estimates from the Urban Institute "70 percent of children who would gain coverage are in families earning half that amount".
In contrast to Bush's claim that SCHIP was intended only to help "poor children", Factcheck points out that the stated intent of the program has always been to fill the void between "low-income" children who are above the poverty line but still uninsured.
Meanwhile Bush's own proposal to increase SCHIP funding by just $5 Billion would widen that void even further. As noted by Media Matters Bush's proposal of an additional $5 billion over five years not enough to meet the project demand for the program and would by 2012 result in a $9 billion net reduction in health care for poor and low-income children compared to current levels, according to figures released by the Congressional Budget Office..
During her little noticed appearance on The Colbert Report this week author Naomi Wolf mentioned a list of ten specific steps that can and will lead a country from Democracy and Freedom into Totalitarian Fascism - and unfortunately it appears that we've already ticked our way past all but one of those goalposts while hardly blinking an eye.
From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all
The old analogy of the frog in the frying pan clearly applies here. It's only by very slowly and gradually increasing the heat that we are lulled into believing everything is just fine - meanwhile our skin is peeling off.
Because Americans like me were born in freedom, we have a hard time even considering that it is possible for us to become as unfree - domestically - as many other nations. Because we no longer learn much about our rights or our system of government - the task of being aware of the constitution has been outsourced from citizens' ownership to being the domain of professionals such as lawyers and professors - we scarcely recognize the checks and balances that the founders put in place, even as they are being systematically dismantled. Because we don't learn much about European history, the setting up of a department of "homeland" security - remember who else was keen on the word "homeland" - didn't raise the alarm bells it might have.
It is my argument that, beneath our very noses, George Bush and his administration are using time-tested tactics to close down an open society. It is time for us to be willing to think the unthinkable - as the author and political journalist Joe Conason, has put it, that it can happen here. And that we are further along than we realize.
Naomi makes an excellent point, but what is even more chilling is the fact that it has happened before - TO US!
Step 1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
As was done after the Reichstag Fire and the Attack on Pearl Harbor a new and enduring enemy of the state has been identified, both within and without - both real and imagined. In Germany the imagined enemy were the Jews, Gypsies and Gays, in America it was the interned Japanese-Americans, the dreaded "Fifth Column" and later The Reds and Commies.
As the Reichstag Fire was followed by the Enabling Act which supplanted constitutional law with a perpetual state of emergency, we have seen Sept 11th followed by the Patriot Act, the (toothless) Detainee Treatment Act, the Military Commissions Act and the FISA Act - all of whom have continued to trade freedom and protections against the overreaching of the state for the pyrite of "Security" in a deal so naked in it's lopsidedness it would make Beelzebulb blush with envy.
Today the real threat is indeed al Qeada, albeit a far less deadly and damaging threat than the one which wiped most of New Orleans from the map, while the imagined one are those damn filthy Liberals who just about seem to be to blame for everything. Especially those mouthy Liberals who would rail against the slow loss of liberty and our national moral standing. Pity those who dare to stand firm against the juggernaut of fear and loathing, they who will become nothing more than grease upon it's wheels.
Step 2. Create a Gulag
As we've seen under Stalin once you have identified your enemies - you need a dank dark place to put them. Permanently. And of course, like a little butter to make this bitter pill go down - you need a sham kangaroo court to make your Secret Prisons and Detention Centers seem completely legitimate.
By the way, the establishment of military tribunals that deny prisoners due process tends to come early on in a fascist shift. Mussolini and Stalin set up such tribunals. On April 24 1934, the Nazis, too, set up the People's Court, which also bypassed the judicial system: prisoners were held indefinitely, often in isolation, and tortured, without being charged with offenses, and were subjected to show trials.
Today people such Abu Omar, Maher Arar and Pulitzer Prize winning AP photographer Bilial Hussein have been literally snatched off the street by U.S. forces and agents, kidnapped, transported across international lines against their will and in several cases tortured by our "allies" only to be later to have been found as Omar and Ahar have been - to be completely innocent. Most of those held at Abu Ghraib were innocent of any real charge, and had no connections to insurgents or terrorists - yet they have remained.
Meanwhile the American public has hardly lifted a voice in protest, let alone a finger. Just as they remained silent during the internment of Japanese-Americans, and the blacklisting of suspected "Pinkos" in decades past.
3. Develop a thug caste.
When leaders who seek what I call a "fascist shift" want to close down an open society, they send paramilitary groups of scary young men out to terrorize citizens. The Blackshirts roamed the Italian countryside beating up communists; the Brownshirts staged violent rallies throughout Germany. This paramilitary force is especially important in a democracy: you need citizens to fear thug violence and so you need thugs who are free from prosecution.
Today we have private military firms such as Triple Canopy, and of course Black Water. These firms not only roam the streets of Baghdad, but have already roamed the streets of New Orleans. Accountable to no one except their share-holders, these firms employ their on mercenary army with their own rules of engagement and a history of shooting civilians for sport as Triple Canopy was accused of in 2006.
WASHINGTON - Shane Schmidt was a U.S. Marine for seven years, the leader of a sniper unit. Chuck Shepard spent seven years in the U.S. Army. After leaving the military, each found his way into the legions of heavily armed private security contractors working in Iraq.
The two were working together on July 8, 2006, when they claim they witnessed what they believe was a crime. They say another American fired, unprovoked, into two Iraqi civilian vehicles. They say it started during a mission to Baghdad International Airport, when their supervisor, who was leaving Iraq the next day and was in the vehicle with them, made a troubling remark.
"He'd made a comment that he was going to kill somebody today," says Schmidt. "Kill someone."
This new generation of Brownshirts are now all powerful and completely immune to U.S. Law and Iraqi Law as Ms. Wolf points out.
In Iraq, some of these contract operatives have been accused of involvement in torturing prisoners, harassing journalists and firing on Iraqi civilians. Under Order 17, issued to regulate contractors in Iraq by the one-time US administrator in Baghdad, Paul Bremer, these contractors are immune from prosecution.
4. Set up an internal surveillance system
Enter the Secret Police, watching everyone, hearing everything - and their most valuable agent just might be your next door neighbor.
In Mussolini's Italy, in Nazi Germany, in communist East Germany, in communist China - in every closed society - secret police spy on ordinary people and encourage neighbors to spy on neighbors.
In 2005 and 2006, when James Risen and Eric Lichtblau wrote in the New York Times about a secret state programme to wiretap citizens' phones, read their emails and follow international financial transactions, it became clear to ordinary Americans that they, too, could be under state scrutiny
Total Information Awareness, long thought dead has continued to re-emerge in new and more powerful forms. Tracking tens of millions of international domestic phone calls, emails and financial transactions without any judicial oversight. Clear and obvious violations of the FISA Law, the Pen and Trap restrictions and the 4th Amendment. No checks, no balance - just more paranoia, more fear, and more consolidation of power and influence.
5. Harass citizens' groups
And who better to watch than those peace-loving anti-war Liberals. Clearly they represent the most clear and present danger to the state (of perpetual war).
the American Civil Liberties Union reports that thousands of ordinary American anti-war, environmental and other groups have been infiltrated by agents: a secret Pentagon database includes more than four dozen peaceful anti-war meetings, rallies or marches by American citizens in its category of 1,500 "suspicious incidents". The equally secret Counterintelligence Field Activity (Cifa) agency of the Department of Defense has been gathering information about domestic organizations engaged in peaceful political activities: Cifa is supposed to track "potential terrorist threats" as it watches ordinary US citizen activists.
That's right you too could be on the Watchlist. But of course you still have freedom of speech, just watch what you say.
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release
Whether you are a professor Emeritus at Princeton, a U.S. Senator, a former Vice President of the United States, a humble folk singer who has converted to Islam or simply a window washer we are all now well aware that at anytime we could be arbitrarily detained, particularly while attempting to travel by air.
In 2004, America's Transportation Security Administration confirmed that it had a list of passengers who were targeted for security searches or worse if they tried to fly. People who have found themselves on the list? Two middle-aged women peace activists in San Francisco; liberal Senator Edward Kennedy; a member of Venezuela's government - after Venezuela's president had criticized Bush; and thousands of ordinary US citizens.
And we've seen more mundane but violent incidents of arbitrary detention particularly at colleges. In addition to the tasing at last weeks Kerry event, we've had other students who were a less vocal and resistant Iranian Student was singled out, profiled and then tasered into submission for refusing to provide his ID unless other students in the area were similarly questioned at such "Liberal" schools as UCLA. Quicktime Video
An incident late Tuesday night in which a UCLA student was stunned at least four times with a Taser has left the UCLA community questioning whether the university police officers’ use of force was an appropriate response to the situation.
Mostafa Tabatabainejad, a UCLA student, was repeatedly stunned with a Taser and then taken into custody when he did not exit the CLICC Lab in Powell Library in a timely manner. Community Service Officers had asked Tabatabainejad to leave after he failed to produce his BruinCard during a random check at around 11:30 p.m. Tuesday.
Mostafa demanded that he be afforded equal treatment and equal justice while being harassed by security without probable cause - for his impudence he was tased repeatedly, even after he has already been handcuffed.
7. Target key individuals
Threaten civil servants, artists and academics with job loss if they don't toe the line. Mussolini went after the rectors of state universities who did not conform to the fascist line; so did Joseph Goebbels, who purged academics who were not pro-Nazi; so did Chile's Augusto Pinochet; so does the Chinese communist Politburo in punishing pro-democracy students and professors.
From the harassment of Ward Churchill for daring to state that the 9/11 hijackers might actually have a reasons for wanting to strike back at the World Trade Center, to the attacks to the Smearboating of John Kerry and John Murtha - those who speak out against the authoritarians have a target painted directly on their forehead. Disabling and neutralizing potential leaders stalls organization of larger movements and protests against the status quo.
Besides the Death Threat used against the Dixie Chicks for speaking out, there's the case of one elderly black minister, Rev Lennox Yearwood of the Hip Hop Caucus, who was pulled out of line, wrestled to the ground and dog piled by Capital Police (resulting in a fracture of his leg) in the Halls of the Capital Building for having the temerity for being "one peacenik too many" while trying to enter the hearing room where Gen Petreaus was scheduled to testify just last week.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiradcejA6o
If you have any doubts that we are rushing head-long into becoming a fascist state - this video should correct that mis-presumption.
8. Control the press
Italy in the 1920s, Germany in the 30s, East Germany in the 50s, Czechoslovakia in the 60s, the Latin American dictatorships in the 70s, China in the 80s and 90s - all dictatorships and would-be dictators target newspapers and journalists. They threaten and harass them in more open societies that they are seeking to close, and they arrest them and worse in societies that have been closed already.
As Dan Rather lawsuit has now revealed, CBS was completely manipulated by the Administration to stall the Killian Memo's story, they also attempted to block release of the Abu Ghraib story just as they had with the Secret CIA Prisons Story, the NSA Domestic Surveillance Story and the Financial Tracking Story.
In addition to pressuring the corporate media, the Administration has used sympathetic outlets such as Fox News to present uncritical stenography of their view of the world such as when Fox's Brit Hume allowed Gen Petreaus use his program to give an extended power point briefing on the Surge.
Cast dissent as "treason" and criticism as "espionage'. Every closing society does this, just as it elaborates laws that increasingly criminalize certain kinds of speech and expand the definition of "spy" and "traitor".
It has been quite common for anyone who criticizes the tactics of the Bush Administration to be labeled as "Traitor" or "Aider and Abetter". I have documented this in detail here and here - noting that time and time again, whether it's Ann Coulter, Melanie Morgan, Rush Limbaugh, Tom Delay, Dennis Hastert, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney or George Bush himself - the language of "treason" is always not far from the tip of their tongue.
Naomi argues that this salty rhetoric is not just a reflex, not just a political pose, it's meant by quite literally those who invoke it. Eventually we will see an American Citizen tried for Treason simply because they said the "wrong thing" at the wrong time. (Arguably, it may have already occurred with one particular attorney of a terrorism client whose name I don't currently recall) But then again, maybe there won't even be a trial, maybe they'll simply be deemed an "Enemy Combatant" with no evidence, hearing or access to Habeaus Corpus and disappear into our modern day Gulags. And if it did happen, how would we even know?
10. Suspend the rule of law
Final stop, all aboard on this well paved road to hell.
The John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 gave the president new powers over the national guard. This means that in a national emergency - which the president now has enhanced powers to declare - he can send Michigan's militia to enforce a state of emergency that he has declared in Oregon, over the objections of the state's governor and its citizens.
This of course is in direct violation of the Posse Commitatus act which restricts the ability of the Federal Government to use Military forces against it's own citizens. In effect, Posse Commitatus has now been nullified, just as Habeaus Corpus and the War Crimes Act had been previously.
There is now literally nothing standing in the way of Martial Law other than the President making a determination that he will or will not invoke it.
He can do this any time he feels like. Congress granted him this power, just as they granted him the authority to invade Iraq and the eviscerate FISA. This happened on Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid's watch, not when the Republicans had control of Congress and considering how incredibly ineffective they've been so far at ending the War they helped start in Iraq, once we cross this rubicon the likelihood of our ever coming back remains extremely remote.
This has been like a bolder rolling down the hill toward our Constitution for the past 30 years, ever since Nixon resigned and many Presidential "powers" were severely curtained by oversight and laws intended to protect the public from the abuse of power by the government such as FISA.
Now it's at full speed - and we will not manage to stop it on a "dime". Even if we do manage to recognize the danger in time, even if we do manage to muster a million man human chain of activists, journalists (and a few genuinely brave politicians) to stand in the way of this behemoth and either slow it down or change it's inevitable course toward full-on fascism, we won't do so without taking casualties.
We aren't leaving this fight without putting some skin in the game. We will have setbacks, as we have this week with the failure of the Webb "Dwell Time" amendment, the collapse of Habeaus yet again, Reid-Feingold going down in flames only to have Levin-Reed bar-b-qued right beside it. Congress is simply not going to be able to end this war with a snap of their fingers or by attempting the disastrous strategy of cutting of the funding for the troops.
That ain't gonna happen, largely because we have yet to recognize exactly what it is we are truly fighting against. It's not just about the War, it's much, much more than that.
But we have to keep pushing, we have to keep fighting - as Naomi points out so clearly - we are headed directly down a incredibly dark and dangerous path. We can't say "It'll never happen here" - because even our own relatively recent history with McCarthyism proves this simply isn't true. I can happen, it has happened and now it's happening again. Back then it was just the ravings of one lone lunatic in the Senate, but today it's much worse. It's not just the President or the most extreme wingnuts in his party, it's the Democrats too - those who continue to cower and collapse when the pressure is applied, those who condemn MoveOn for simply saying the same type of thing that has been said about General Batiste, General Eaton and General Zinni when they dared to criticize the President's repeated failure after failure after failure. They are indeed "aiders and abettors" but not to al Qaeda, they have aided the rise of a New American Fascism. An America that is Patriotic as all get-out and rotten to the core.
Yes, it's happened before, it can happen to again - but only if we let it. Only if we're too busy with Brittany flashing her shaven poontang all over town or this nonsense of OJ stealing his own shit back to really Pay Attention, then stand and be counted as a personal defender of freedom. It's not just the job of the soldiers - it's our job as well and we have to take it back. Spread the word, spread the truth. It's won't be easy, it won't happen tomorrow, people won't listen, they won't believe, they won't respond - they'll ridicule us as being extremists and moonbats (heck, they already do) - it might take 20 or more years, but we have to do it and keep doing it.
The future of our Democracy really and truly is at stake.
Taking questions from reporters in the White House press room Thursday morning, President Bush seemed more eager to pile on a week-and-a-half's worth of Republican attacks on a MoveOn.org ad than he was to talk about issues with actual geopolitical impact.
In fact he was so upset by the ad that went into an "extended diatribe" over it at the end of his press conference.
The president called the group's full-page New York Times ad "disgusting," and he accused Democrats of caring more about the feelings of liberal activists than the US military.
Feelings.. nothing more than feelings...
Hey Commander Prez-Guy, can our troops have a side of Body Armor and Health Care to go with this old song and dance? Pretty Puhleeze?
Update A Short Clip from the Presser:
"I felt like the ad was an attack not only on General Petraeus but on the U.S. military.
Yet again, no one can say anything about any specific soldier without attacking the "ENTIRE U.S. MILITARY." It's not like they happen to be individuals or anything. What are they a multi-headed hydra joined at the hip or something? The Uni-mind? All is one - One is All. Y'know - like an Army of One!...
uh oh!
And I was disappointed that not more leaders in the Democrat party spoke out strongly against that kind of ad," Bush said. "That leads me to come to this conclusion: that most Democrats are (more) afraid of irritating a left-wing group like MoveOn.org ... than they are of irritating the United States military. That was a sorry deal."
He's upset that more Democrats didn't speak out against it? Let's see that ad was criticized by John Kerry, Joe Biden, John Edwards, Elizabeth Edwards and of course, Joe Lieberman - but who didn't speak out against it? Oh yeah - Hillary.
So this is just a pre-emptive jab a Hillary? Ok, fine - that just means Republicans are actually afraid of her. Good.
But it's interesting that when the show was on the other stage and you had people accusing someone like say - John Kerry - of being a "traitor" and giving "aid and comfort to the enemy" the President wasn't nearly so upset. Maybe that's because the President was one of the people making the accusation. (ala WaPo)
Appearing in the Rose Garden yesterday with Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, Bush said Kerry's statements about Iraq "can embolden an enemy." After Kerry criticized Allawi's speech to Congress, Vice President Cheney tore into the Democratic nominee, calling him "destructive" to the effort in Iraq and the struggle against terrorism.
As did Orin Hatch.
Democrats are "consistently saying things that I think undermine our young men and women who are serving over there."
And John Thune speaking about his then Senate rival Tom Daschle.
"His words embolden the enemy." Thune, on NBC's "Meet the Press," declined to disavow a statement by the Republican Party chairman in his state saying Daschle had brought "comfort to America's enemies."
And Dennis Hastert
Asked whether he believed al Qaeda would be more successful under a Kerry presidency, Hastert said: "That's my opinion, yes."
So did anyone on the Republican side of the aisle disavow these remarks? Did anyone at all stand up and say - "this is going too far - it's Disgusting!"? Hm, not so much.
The White House and the Bush campaign said they would neither endorse nor disavow the remarks by Hastert, Armitage and others. "Those statements speak to the great concern many people have about John Kerry's consistent vacillation under political pressure on the most significant issues the nation faces with regard to the war on terror," Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt said.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan had no quarrel with the remarks. "They are expressing their opinion," he said.
So all these Republicans were just "expressing their opinion", say like the opinion that Senator Max Clelend has now become a member of Al Qeada simply because he voted against the Patriot Act. It's not like the Patriot has been abused a few thousand times or anything.
No one on the Republican side has spoken out about these actual abuses, not just theoretically ones, real ones. But somehow Democrats are deficient if they don't toss MoveOn from the train over "General Betray Us?"
Yeah, It's not like Repubilicans have ever attacked General Zinni.
MOWBRAY: Discussing the Iraq war with the Washington Post last week, former General Anthony Zinni took the path chosen by so many anti-Semites: he blamed it on the Jews.
Technically, the former head of the Central Command in the Middle East didn’t say "Jews." He instead used a term that has become a new favorite for anti-Semites: "neoconservatives."
In making his point that Secretary Rumsfeld should resign, Eaton also maligned nearly all of the military's key leaders of the past four years. Eaton's attack was innacurate, unprofessional and uncalled for. In summing up his case against the Secretary of Defense, the retired general illustrated a mindset that appears focused on issues that have already passed, rather than the problems being faced by commanders in the field today.
AFTER being hailed as King David, the potential saviour of Iraq, the US commander General David Petraeus is facing a backlash in advance of his report to Congress in September on the progress of America’s troop surge.
Critics, including one recently retired general, are privately calling him "General Betraeus" on the grounds that he is too ambitious to deliver a balanced report on the war.
Lawrence Korb, a defence official under Ronald Reagan who is now at the Center for American Progress, a Democratic think tank, said Petraeus was regarded as "the most political general since General [Douglas] Mac-Arthur".
It's also interesting to note, as John Stewart did last night in discussion with General Wesley Clark, that Petreaus actually wrote the manual on counter-insurgency for the Army, yet his current strategy in Iraq is 180 degrees from what he wrote.
Hm. Could it be that it's not really his idea? (I mean, it's not like he wrote report all by himself or anything is it?)
Possibly not if you listen to what Petreaus own commanding officer, Admiral Fallon head of CentCom, really thinks of him.
Fallon told Petraeus [in March] that he considered him to be "an ass-kissing little chickensh*t" and added, "I hate people like that", the sources say. That remark reportedly came after Petraeus began the meeting by making remarks that Fallon interpreted as trying to ingratiate himself with a superior.
Might an "ass-kissing little chickenshit" toss his own long considered theories and opinions out the window in order to secure advancement and in effect BETRAY THE TROOPS in the process?
I think he might, and I think the fact that everything Petraus said contradicts the GAO, the CRS, The NIE and most recently released Pentagon Report on Iraq seems to back this up.
Democrats shouldn't be backing slowly away from Moveon.org - they should be piling on, particularly since everything Moveon.org has said about Petreaus - iS TRUE. (Psst! Just the way Republicans always do when what they're Playing the 'Traitor' Card!)
P.S. They should all take some lessons in courage from John Murtha (who has a few ribbons and medals to his credit, I think)
"I’m saying (Gen Petreaus) came back here at the White House’s request to purely make political statements," Murtha said. "That’s what I’m saying. There’s no question in my mind about it."
Based on witness statements and 
Indications of problems with Blackwater have been long coming and had been completely ignored by U.S. Officials.