The Administration keeps lying to us --

about links between Iraq and Al Qaida. Peter Bergen is an expert on Al Qaeda, and in this article discusses the Administrations continuing attempts to convince the American people that Iraq is responsible for the September 11 attacks.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | This link between Islamist zealot and secular fascist just doesn't add up Moreover, an al-Qaida-Saddam alliance defies common sense. Osama bin Laden is an Islamist zealot who despises secular fascists such as Saddam. I heard from Bin Laden himself that he is no fan of Saddam. When I met with the Saudi exile in Afghanistan five years ago he volunteered that he thought the Iraqi dictator was a "bad Muslim". For Bin Laden, that's as bad as it gets.

Why then has the Bush administration consistently tried to make a connection between Iraq and al-Qaida? The answer lies in the administration's quasi-theological conviction that such a connection must exist.

A Reveille, Not a Record - The state of our union is … unmentionable. By William Saletan
Why didn't Bush talk about the state of the union? Because the state of the union is nothing to talk about. The stock market is in the toilet. The economy is going nowhere. Unemployment is up. The deficit is out of control. Remember those State of the Union speeches Bill Clinton gave? The guy couldn't stop quoting happy numbers. That's one problem Bush doesn't have.

Flashback

Local eclectic guitarist and professional hippy Eugene Chadbourne sang this updated protest song the other night:

One, two, three, what would we wanna do that for?
Why would we wanna go back
And fight with Eye-Raq?
Five, six, seven, open up the Pearly Gates!
Last time they hardly put up a fight --
I guess we didn't train them right!

You go, girl!

Janeane Garofalo on our "pro-life" President:

CNN.com - Transcripts So, apparently, if you are pre-sentient mass of cells, this country will protect you and your rights to the n-th degree. If you have made the mistake of becoming an Iraqi citizen, apparently we can just drop bombs on you with impunity.

The Independent on the War

News In the spring of last year, President Bush spoke of an axis of evil, broadening his narrow and failed foreign policy objective of capturing Osama bin Laden to tackling rogue states such as Iraq. Mr Blair popped up shortly afterwards to say that the issue of Iraq had to be "dealt with" or else Saddam would use his weapons of mass destruction. For several months there were nods and winks in Washington and London that Saddam already possessed nuclear weapons. There were equally strong hints that he was directly linked to the 11 September attacks. When there was no evidence of this on either front, the arguments changed. Saddam had to be dealt with because "in the future" he would supply terrorists with weapons of mass destruction. Tentative and speculative though it is, the link between Iraq and the "war against terrorism" has been established.

Instead of finding increasingly contorted reasons for going to war, President Bush and Mr Blair should think about the possible consequences. As The Independent on Sunday has argued in recent weeks, a war risks fuelling terrorist attacks, with Britain becoming an especially vulnerable target. A military attack, even one that is successful in the short term, threatens to destabilise a fragile region, especially as attempts to revive the Middle East peace process have made little headway.

When will they stop lying to us?

Habeas Iraqus - Do we have the goods on Saddam? By Fred Kaplan
Wolfowitz's speech on Thursday was dreadful to a degree not remotely suggested in news accounts. His basic theme, which he states right off and repeats throughout, is Iraq as an extension of al-Qaida and the upcoming Gulf War II as an answer to 9/11. "Iraq's weapons of mass terror and the terror networks to which the Iraqi regime are linked are not two separate themes, two separate threats?they are part of the same threat," Wolfowitz says. This is a point that he and his boss, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, have been pitching for months now. Last fall they even set up a separate intelligence network, within the inner rings of the Pentagon, to find evidence of some Iraqi-terrorist link that the CIA and even the Defense Department's own spy agency had overlooked. If they have discovered a connection in the months since, they haven't told anybody about it. Nor does Wolfowitz reveal the proof here. He merely behaves as if stating it is proof enough. "Disarming Iraq of its chemical and biological weapons and dismantling its nuclear weapons program," he says, "is a crucial part of winning the war on terror."If war

I guess you really can't trust the librul media. Josh Marshall says that Time has stated that the Confederate wreath story is, uh, well, not actually a true fact.

It's all just so damn depressing.

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Jonathan Freedland: War is not inevitable

What should opponents of the war, and doubters, do now? They might be tempted to give up, as if the argument has already been lost. That would be premature. Even if Washington (and perhaps London) has made up its mind - George Bush was drumming his fingers on the desk yesterday, saying "time is running out" - the rest of the world has not. France, from its current perch in the chair at the UN security council, is promising to lead the coalition of the unwilling. "We are mobilised, we believe war can be avoided," said French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin yesterday, launching his bid to become the George Galloway of international diplomacy. Public opinion has hardly been lost either: on the contrary, as the Guardian's own poll laid bare yesterday, outright opposition to war all but commands a majority in Britain.

What's more, the arguments against immediate war remain robust. First, to take on this enemy at this moment is a gross error of priorities. Surely the more pressing threat to our security - confirmed by every new arrest of suspects or discovery of poison in our own country - comes from the terrorists of al-Qaida. Officials in the Bush administration, and in Whitehall for that matter, like to insist that they can walk and chew gum at the same time: that they can take on Saddam without taking their eye off the ongoing battle against Osama bin Laden and his followers. But experience suggests otherwise. One veteran of the Clinton White House admits that, during the Kosovo war of 1999, that conflict was "the only show in town". There are only so many hours in the day and "all the meetings, all the phone calls, all the faxes" were taken up with fighting Slobodan Milosevic: there was no room for anything else. Despite the bogus attempt to pretend the two tasks are intertwined - with Baghdad somehow a front in the war on terror - the likelier truth is that energy that should be spent hunting down the men bent on carnage in London, Paris or Chicago is being diverted instead towards the much less urgent threat from Iraq. To govern is to choose, and our governors are choosing badly.

Of course a war against Iraq is not just a foolish diversion from fighting terror, it is a sure-fire way to fuel it. What more vigorous recruiting sergeants for anti-western militant Islamism could Bin Laden have hired than Bush, Blair and their 160,000 troops - westerners invading and occupying an Arab land?

A great Ted Kennedy speech.

I listened to part of it today on C-Span radio. (I'm a geek -- I admit it) . We tend to think of him as a figure of fun, but teh old warrior is pretty sharp.

washingtonpost.com: Kennedy Assails Bush Policies

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) yesterday lambasted the Bush administration's domestic and foreign policies as dangerously divisive, and warned Democrats that they will rebound at the polls only if they "stand up and speak out" for their core principles.

In his annual speech to the National Press Club, Kennedy sharpened his earlier challenge to President Bush's policy on Iraq, arguing that weapons inspections are working and that North Korea and domestic terrorism pose more imminent threats to the United States. The critique was one of the broadest and sharpest attacks on Bush policies since the president took office two years ago, and had particular significance because it came from one of the Democrats' most powerful figures on Capitol Hill.

While Kennedy did not specifically criticize the dozen Senate Democrats who supported Bush's 2001 tax cuts or others who have been hesitant to criticize the Iraq policy, he said the 2002 elections demonstrated there is "no assured political safety in just going along with President Bush."

Another reason I oppose the war.

If the Bush Administration was genuinely concerned about the Iraqi people, maybe they should apologize for supporting Saddam's regime in the 80's.

Argument
Even if Donald Rumsfeld's hearty handshake with Saddam Hussein in 1983 ? just after the Great Father Figure had started using gas against his opponents ? didn't show how little the present master of the Pentagon cares about human rights or crimes against humanity, along comes Joost Hilterman's analysis of what was really going on in the Pentagon back in the late 1980s.

Hilterman, who is preparing a devastating book on the US and Iraq, has dug through piles of declassified US government documents ? only to discover that after Saddam gassed 6,800 Kurdish Iraqis at Halabja (that's well over twice the total of the World Trade Centre dead of 11 September 2001) the Pentagon set out to defend Saddam by partially blaming Iran for the atrocity.

A newly declassified State Department document proves that the idea was dreamed up by the Pentagon ? who had all along backed Saddam ? and states that US diplomats received instructions to push the line of Iran's culpability, but not to discuss details. No details, of course, because the story was a lie. This, remember, followed five years after US National Security Decision Directive 114 ? concluded in 1983, the same year as Rumsfeld's friendly visit to Baghdad ? gave formal sanction to billions of dollars in loan guarantees and other credits to Baghdad. And this forthcoming war is about human rights?

Back in 1997, in the years of the Clinton administration, Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and a bunch of other right-wing men ? most involved in the oil business ? created the Project for the New American Century, a lobby group demanding "regime change" in Iraq. In a 1998 letter to President Clinton, they called for the removal of Saddam from power. In a letter to Newt Gingrich, who was then Speaker of the House, they wrote that "we should establish and maintain a strong US military presence in the region, and be prepared to use that force to protect our vital interests [sic] in the Gulf ? and, if necessary, to help remove Saddam from power".

You should listen to Diane Rehm's interview with Susan MacDougal. Click here to listen in RealAudio.

A 2001 article on pro-confederate cabinet nominees.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Echoes of slavery as Bush nominees back confederacy To most outsiders, and of course to many Americans too, it seems barely believable that any modern, serious politician in the United States should express a hankering, however obliquely and conditional, for the ideals of the southern confederacy.

Yet incredibly that is the situation which the US senate now faces as it prepares to conduct confirmation hearings for two of George W Bush's cabinet nominees - John Ashcroft of Missouri, the would-be attorney-general, and Gale Norton of Colorado, who has been nominated as interior secretary - both of whom have publicly praised the pro-slavery confederacy.

We are not talking youthful indiscretion here. Mr Ashcroft's praise was offered only two years ago in an extensive interview with a magazine called Southern Partisan. In the course of the interview, Ashcroft said it was important to defend "southern patriots" like Jefferson Davis and Robert E Lee.

"Traditionalists must do more. I've got to do more. We've all got to speak up in this respect, or else we'll be taught that these people were giving their lives, subscribing their sacred fortunes and their honour to some perverted agenda," Ashcroft said.

To many people, the meaning of such words is difficult to misunderstand. Preserving slavery, Ashcroft is implying, is not a perverted agenda.

Southern Exposure Magazine / Institute for Southern Studies

Southern Exposure Magazine / Institute for Southern Studies
The story, published on the website of Southern Exposure magazine, http://www.southernstudies.org/southernexposure.asp, and which will be featured in the print version of the magazine in early March, reveals that Governor Bush has "long-standing close ties with - and offers financial support to - neo-Confederate groups and causes."

Among the evidence of Bush's questionable associations documented in the story:

* * * Governor Bush is listed as a donor to the Museum of the Confederacy, based in Richmond, Virginia, as a supporter of the Museum's annual ball - an event held in a slave hall, which has drawn fire for its celebration of the Southern Confederacy.

* * * A letter on Texas Governor stationary, dated January 1, 1996, shows Gov. Bush congratulating the 100th anniversary of the United Daughters of the Confederacy - a group known for glorifying the Confederate past, and which has been criticized for sponsoring books by extreme-right authors who, among other claims, downplay the harms of the slave trade.

* * * Bush also penned an official state letter honoring the Sons of Confederate Veterans in 1996, a group which claims to be mainstream, but which has repeatedly offered a platform for avowedly white supremacist organizations like the Council of Conservative Citizens.

"This puts Bush's silence on the South Carolina battle flag controversy into perspective," says editor Chris Kromm, editor of Southern Exposure and author of the story. "Gov. Bush has gone out of his way to embrace the agenda of the Old South - a position that, if made public, would alienate most forward-looking Southerners, not to mention the rest of the country."

Most disturbing, Kromm says, is Bush's support for the Museum of the Confederacy ball, held at the Tredgar Iron Works in Richmond, Virginia, where slaves worked to build war material for the Confederate Army. Each year, the ball draws hundreds of all-white guests in period costume to a hall festooned with Confederate flags.

Is George Bush soft on trason and slavery?
Evidently. Here's a site from the 2000 campaign that discusses some of the links between Bush and confederate sympathizers.

Here's a link to the Jim Crow Museum's Page on the Mammy caricature. Here's some of what it has to say:

From slavery through the Jim Crow era, the mammy image served the political, social, and economic interests of mainstream white America. During slavery, the mammy caricature was posited as proof that blacks -- in this case, black women -- were contented, even happy, as slaves. Her wide grin, hearty laugher, and loyal servitude were offered as evidence of the supposed humanity of the institution of slavery

According to the OED, the term "Mammy" is now considered derogatory. Do you think the official site of the Military District of Washington should be using the term? And should an official site of the United States government uncritically discuss a memorial to the dead of what was it's enemy?

HHere's a description of the Confederate Monument at Arlington Cemetery

Military District of Washington - Fact Sheet: Confederate Memorial
Ezekiel created a monument rich in symbols. Standing atop the 32-foot monument is a larger-than-life figure of a woman representing the South. Her head is crowned with olive leaves, her left hand extends a laurel wreath toward the South, acknowledging the sacrifice of her fallen sons. Her right hand holds a pruning hook resting on a plow stock. These symbols bring to life the biblical passage inscribed at her feet: "And they shall beat their swords into plow shares and their spears into pruning hooks."

The plinth on which she stands is embossed with four cinerary urns symbolizing the four years of the Civil War. Supporting the plinth is a frieze of 14 inclined shields, each depicts the coat of arms of one of the 13 Confederate states and Maryland, which did not join the Confederacy but supported the South in the war.

Below the plinth is another frieze of life-sized figures depicting mythical gods and Southern soldiers. At the front of the monument, the panoplied figure of Minerva, Goddess of War and Wisdom, attempts to hold up the figure of a fallen woman ("The South") who is resting upon her shield, "The Constitution." Behind "The South," the Spirits of War are trumpeting in every direction calling the sons and daughters of the South to aid their falling mother. On either side of the fallen woman are figures depicting those sons and daughters who came to her aid and who represent each branch of the Confederate service: soldiers, Sailor, Sapper and Miner.

Completing the frieze are six vignettes illustrating the effect of the war on Southerners of all races. The vignettes include a black slave following his young master; an officer kissing his infant child in the arms of her mammy; a blacksmith leaving his bellows and workshop as his sorrowful wife looks on; a young lady binding the sword and sash on her beau; and a young officer standing alone.

This just in -- Bush supports treason and slavery!

TIME.com: TIME Magazine -- Look Away, Dixieland
Last Memorial Day, for the second year in a row, Bush's White House sent a floral wreath to the Confederate Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery. Six days later, as the United Daughters of the Confederacy celebrated Jefferson Davis' birthday there, Washington chapter president Vicki Heilig offered a "word of gratitude to George W. Bush" for "honoring" the Old South's dead.

Bush has quietly reinstated a tradition dating back to Woodrow Wilson that his father had halted in 1990. The elder Bush was weary of infighting among various Confederacy groups, so his White House quit participating altogether. The current Bush White House denies any change in policy. But John Edward Hurley, head of the Confederate Memorial Association in Washington, says, "No one saw a wreath from 1990 until George W. Bush got elected," and other participants in the annual event support his account.

Is Steve Young dressing from the Peter Brady Collection?

If it wasn't from The Onion, you wouldn't know it was satire.

The Onion | Bush On North Korea: 'We Must Invade Iraq' "For years, Kim Jong Il has acted in blatant disregard of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation Of Nuclear Weapons, and last week, he rejected it outright," Bush told reporters after a National Security Council meeting on North Korea. "We cannot allow weapons of mass destruction to remain in the hands of volatile, unpredictable leaders. Which is exactly why we must act quickly and decisively against Saddam Hussein."

I'm flipping back and forth between the NFC championship game and a documentary on Desert Storm. They just showed a clip of George I speaking before a joint session of Congress which prompted the following thought: Was Dan Quayle really Vice President once? Yeeesh.

Dubya's Dividend Delight By Michael Kinsley

Dubya's Dividend Delight By Michael Kinsley
The Bush plan is like a pot of soup made by someone who decides it needs more salt, then adds water to make sure it's not too salty, then worries that it's gotten too watery and stirs in some flour, then decides it needs more salt. Making dividends tax-free is supposed to correct the tax code's tilt in favor of retained earnings, but there's a large capital gains tax break for companies that retain their earnings, in case this new arrangement tilts things too far toward paying out profits as dividends. The plan starts by excluding dividends from a stockholder's taxable income, then adds rules limiting the exclusion when the corporation itself has taken too many deductions and exclusions, then excludes certain kinds of exclusions from this exception to the main exclusion. And so on.

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Car wars

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Car wars War in Iraq is inevitable. That there would be war was decided by North American planners in the mid-1920s. That it would be in Iraq was decided much more recently. The architects of this war were not military planners but town planners. War is inevitable not because of weapons of mass destruction, as claimed by the political right, nor because of western imperialism, as claimed by the left. The cause of this war, and probably the one that will follow, is car dependence.

The US has paved itself into a corner. Its physical and economic infrastructure is so highly car dependent that the US is pathologically addicted to oil. Without billions of barrels of precious black sludge being pumped into the veins of its economy every year, the nation would experience painful and damaging withdrawal.

And shouldn't banks catch this kind of thing?

Audit Says Union Lost $5 Million To Theft (washingtonpost.com)
Some of the checks Holmes cashed had been altered, with the name of the original payee -- such as Verizon or the D.C. treasurer -- crossed out and his name written in, the audit said. On one occasion, Holmes cashed a check for $20,000 and stuffed the cash in his pocket before returning to union offices, the audit said.

Corruption at the DC teacher's union

I don't think there is anything special about the embezzlement and other corruptin at the DC chapter of the American Federation of Teachers, but I do have one question.

Audit Says Union Lost $5 Million To Theft (washingtonpost.com)
Bullock, who was elected union president in 1994, made unauthorized and personal charges of at least $1.8 million to the union's corporate American Express cards and used an additional $381,000 for her personal benefit by writing checks to herself or others, the lawsuit said.

The suit alleged that Hemphill diverted at least $492,000 through unauthorized credit card charges or checks written to herself. Baxter is accused of diverting at least $537,000 to his personal use by making credit card purchases for art, clothing, theater and sporting tickets and other items, and by writing checks to himself, including some designated as "pension payments."

In addition, Bullock's chauffeur, Leroy Holmes, allegedly received more than 200 checks totaling more than $1.2 million from Hemphill. He cashed the checks, sometimes depositing the funds in Bullock's account and sometimes providing proceeds to Hemphill, who returned a portion to him, the audit said. It said Holmes believed that his 2001 salary as a chauffeur was $105,000, an amount higher than the salary of any other union employee besides Bullock.

Chauffeur? Do the heads of union locals in DC, or other similar-sized organizations, have chauffeurs? I don't think so, but I've been wrong before.
I don't think this story means anything larger than it's facts -- it's not that all union officials are corrupt, or that people in DC can't govern themselves. (In other words, I'm not Instapundit.) But I do wonder how people in relatively small organizations can think they are entitled to drivers. Hey, take a cab.

I get it, the rules of international law apply to everyone -- except us.

Via Joe Conason, a question prompted by the Human Rights Watch report:

Salon.com | Joe Conason's Journal Question:"... [T]he Geneva Convention has as a signatory, the United States. How does it reconcile its being a signatory to Geneva Conventions and the conditions that [exist] in Guantanamo Bay? This is one of the issues that was in the [HRW] report."

Mr. Boucher:"... The United States made very clear that we will treat detainees, Guantanamo or elsewhere, in a manner that's consistent with the Geneva Convention even though we don't necessarily agree with all these groups over precisely how they're covered. So, we have pledged that and we have committed to that and we will try to -- we will ensure that we do that, that we do treat detainees consistent with the Geneva Convention."

The issue isn't the treatment of the prisoners, whose present conditions are consistent with reasonable standards. What worries HRW is the State Department's insistence that the Geneva Convention doesn't apply to those captured in Afghanistan (just as the Justice Department says the Constitution doesn't apply to "prisoners of war," including American citizens, who are arrested here). One potential danger of this policy is a blowback effect. American service personnel could be taken prisoner by a government that disregards international law -- and uses our government's ambivalence about the Geneva Convention as an excuse to mistreat our people.

That's one of many reasons why Human Rights Watch is indispensable.

I want some of whatever they are smoking over at Fox Broadcasting. I mean, Man versus Beast? 50 dwarves versus an elephant?

I heard an interview toady with the outgoing Democratic Governor of Maryland, Parris Glendening. He said that one of the things he was looking forward was having a private life. Evidently, he didn't have one while he was in office. Funny, I would think that having an affair with a staffer, getting her pregnant, getting a divorce, and marrying the young inamorata would be evidence of not just a private life, but one that is quite a bit more exciting than say, mine.

The Bush administration has essentially admitted their collective incompetence in foreign affairs by employing New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson to negotiate with the North Koreans. But that's okay, at least they finally realized that the Clintonistas should be doing their jobs. Maybe they can bring in Robert Rubin to fix the economy, and, oh, I dunno, Bill Clinton to fix the country. Dubya can continue to be in charge of vacationing, malaprop-making, and pretzel-choking.

No difference between Republicans and Democrats?

The War Against Women
Yet two years into the Bush presidency, it is apparent that reversing or otherwise eviscerating the Supreme Court's momentous 1973 ruling that recognized a woman's fundamental right to make her own childbearing decisions is indeed Mr. Bush's mission. The lengthening string of anti-choice executive orders, regulations, legal briefs, legislative maneuvers and key appointments emanating from his administration suggests that undermining the reproductive freedom essential to women's health, privacy and equality is a major preoccupation of his administration ? second only, perhaps, to the war on terrorism.

In other words, they're liars.

Spinsanity - Taxing the public's trust: The Bush administration is stretching the truth again to sell its latest tax cut The Bush administration has a history of being less than honest about the way it sells its tax and budget initiatives. Certainly, the administration should campaign hard for its proposals. But this should not include disinformation campaigns pushing misleading statistics and overly rosy predictions.

Some of what's wrong with Pickering

Jeffrey St. Clair: Under the White Robe, The Ghosts of Pickering's Past
The wonder is that Pickering's lifelong association with racists and his own ante-bellum views on blacks and civil rights were not thrown back in his face in 1990 when Pickering appeared before the senate to lobby for his seat on the federal bench. At the time, the Democrats controlled the senate and mighty Joe Biden (and Ted Kennedy) ruled the Judiciary Committee. They let Pickering slide through with barely a thought. Here we are presented once again with the noxious consequences of senate comity, wherein supposed champions of civil rights such as Biden and Kennedy simply defer to the wishes of the likes of Trent Lott in exchange for similar deference when it comes to their own personal picks for federal judgeships. Apparently, it doesn't matter if another full-blown racist dons federal robes in southern Mississippi.

But Pickering has done plenty of damage since he ascended to the federal bench, where his evident animus toward blacks has surfaced again and again in his rulings and opinions. In a case called Fairley v. Forrest County, Pickering lashed out against the one-man/one-vote doctrine as "obtrusive". In another case, Citizens Right to Vote v. Morgan, Pickering characterized the Voting Rights Act as "an unnecessary intrusion" of federal authority into matters that the states are "perfectly capable of resolving." This is perverse legal reasoning to say the least, since the federal role that Pickering is carping about came about only after Mississippi's voting procedures had been ruled repeatedly to be racist and unconstitutional.

Pickering has proved to be equally harsh in his rulings in cases involving minorities suits over employment discrimination. Indeed, Pickering has demonstrated an unrelenting hostility toward the very idea of such claims. In a case known as Seeley v. City of Hattiesburg, Pickering set forth an argument that might even make Antonin Scalia cringe. In dismissing a claim brought by a black worker, Pickering wrote that "the federal courts must never become safe havens for employees who are in a class protected from discrimination, but who in fact are employees who are derelict in their duties."

Never underestimate the power of wishful thinking.

Goodbye, Columbus! Standing in a hall lined with flaking editions of Chaucer and Hobbes, Menzies gave his talk. ''Massive evidence, simply overwhelming,'' he said, prancing amid the massive overwhelmingness of it all. He reprised his stories of junks and jades. He talked of peculiar ''bowel afflictions among the Indians once thought to be unique to the Chinese.'' Then there is the matter of the Chinese chickens in South America. Menzies cited his own experience for knowing well ''how the morning call of the Asiatic hen's 'kik-kiri-kee' was markedly different from the 'cock-a-doodle-doo' of their European counterparts.'' Menzies suggested that somewhere in South America, the crew of the Treasure Fleet dropped off some of Admiral Zheng's chickens -- scoring another historical milestone with the first delivery of Chinese takeout.