Bush Administration Hypes ‘Timeline’ For Iraq, Policy Stays The Course

The American public wants a timeline for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. In response, the Bush administration has started throwing around terms like “timeline” and “timetable.”

Unfortunately, this rhetoric is not accompanied by any change in strategy. The Iraqis have agreed to a 12-18 month “timeline” to control violence in Iraq. But if they don’t meet the benchmarks they’ve agreed to, there are no consequences. The “timeline” is disconnected from a drawdown of U.S. troops.

Casey noted, “I said a year or so ago that if the conditions on the ground continued the way they were going, that I thought we’d have fairly substantial reductions in coalition forces.” That plan was thrown out in “early July.”

Casey made it clear that if the latest effort to get the Iraqis to assume more responsibility doesn’t work out, he’s ready to reinvent the wheel again. This is the same approach the Bush administration has been pursuing for more than three years. Staying the course provides very little incentive for Iraqis to assume control of their own security problems.

LSB: So, the Bush regime has started throwing around terms like “timeline” and “timetable.” Reminder: On July 27, 2005 Feingold introduced Senate Resolution 171 that called on the President to create a timeline for achieving clear and coherent goals in Iraq. Three weeks later Feingold proposed a gradual withdraw of U.S. troops from Iraq, with December 31, 2006 as the target date for military completion in Iraq. So, other than the semantics, how is this "new" tactic by the Bushites any different than ‘Stay the Course’?

O’Reilly: Taliban Resurgence In Afghanistan Is A ‘Myth’

Yesterday on Fox News, host Bill O’Reilly tried to argue that Afghanistan has been “successful” and that “there’s no danger at all of the Taliban reclaiming that country.” At the worst, he said, the Taliban will be “annoying.” When his guest, Harvard University professor Sarah Sewall, pointed out that people on the ground disagree, O’Reilly dismissed her, stating, “I talked to everybody.” Watch what he said.

Supreme NATO commander Gen. James Jones recently stated that Afghanistan is close to becoming a “narco state,” whose $3 billion dollars in annual drug profits are financing the Taliban. Council on Foreign Relations Afghanistan expert Dr. Barnett Rubin said that Afghanistan Afghanistan is at a “tipping point” and that the Afghan people believe “trends are going in the Taliban’s favor.” Gen. David Richards, a British officer who commands NATO’s 32,000 troops, warned that unless coalition forces begin stepping up reconstruction efforts, 70 percent of the country could decide to back the Taliban.

Note: Counterterrorism officials [also] say Iraq is “drawing fewer foreign fighters as Muslim extremists, aspiring to battle the West, turn their attention back to the symbolically important and increasingly violent turf of Afghanistan.” So it doesn’t sound like O’Reilly talked to everybody.

Full transcript

Why you should vote!

VOTE FOR A CHANGE!

(Double-click the pic for the video.)

Money Squabbles in Connecticut

NYT’s Empirezone:

As Joe Lieberman and Ned Lamont were getting ready for their final debate today with Republican Alan Schlesinger, their campaigns traded barbs on money. This weekend, as Mr. Lamont donated another $2 million to his campaign’s coffers — grand total so far: $12.7 million — the campaign raised questions about $387,000 the Lieberman campaign reported spending on “petty cash” to pay for “volunteers” in the field during the days before the primary campaign.

Today, the Lamont campaign filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission and called on the Lieberman camp to release the petty cash journal it is required to keep.

The Lieberman campaign said it was in full compliance with the law and said, bluntly, it would release the journal when Mr. Lamont releases the joint tax returns he filed with his wife. (And each campaign has an online petition calling for the other side to do as requested.)

A nonpartisan campaign finance expert with a government watchdog organization tells us that while it is rather curious that Mr. Lieberman has so much money listed in petty cash, it is probably not illegal. The expert spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not want to wade publicly into an election dispute. Any final determination of the legality will be up to the F.E.C., which is investigating.

NOTE – The relevant statute from the FEC: “A political committee may maintain a petty cash fund out of which it may make expenditures not in excess of $100 to any person per purchase or transaction. If a petty cash fund is maintained, it shall be the duty of the treasurer of the political committee to keep and maintain a written journal of all disbursements. This written journal shall include the name and address of every person, to whom any disbursement is made, as well as the date, amount, and purpose of such disbursement. In addition, if any disbursement is made for a candidate, the journal shall include the name of that candidate and the office (including State and Congressional district) sought by such candidate.” (11 CFR 102.11.)

[Initial story comments are compiled and edited]:

Lieberman said he’d release the journal (as required by law) when Lamont releases something that’s *not* required by law? When did candidates win the right to bargain over whether they’ll obey the law or not?

“A campaign finance expert” = “Some people say” – since when does the NYT take its cues from Fox News?

I thought the Times didn’t use anonymous sources unless it supplied a good reason that the source had to remain anonymous. Why did the “campaign finance expert” have to remain anonymous? Is it Karl Rove? This unattributed quote does NOT meet the NYT standards for quoting anonymous sources.

“…probably not illegal”? I want my boss to pay me out of petty cash if it’s not illegal. Why would anyone pay FICA or income taxes if you can get paid out of petty cash?

My goodness, $387,000. Remember Whitewater? That was like a $25,000 investment the Clintons made? The New York Times didn’t take the position that “it is probably not illegal.” The New York Times pushed for a thorough investigation and that was chump change compared to Lieberman disbursing cold hard cash by the hundreds of thousands. If this is OK, we’re being gulled that there’s any such thing as a “Campaign Finance Law.” It’s a free for all.

The unquestioning “journalism” displayed by the NYT concerning the Lieberman campaign is an insult to their fellow journalists. What the Lieberman campaign has done is illegal. Why didn’t you state that in your article?

Glad to see the NYT’s sense of curiosity hasn’t been enhanced by the Judy Miller affair.

Olbermann’s Special Comment on GOP Fear Mongering

Keith issued arguably his most powerful Special Comment yet tonight. This time he takes on the GOP's newest fear mongering ad which quotes Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri superimposed over pictures of explosions with the sound of a ticking bomb in the background. As if that wasn't enough, it's topped off with the cryptic message echoing LBJ's 1960 "Daisy" ad that ran just once: These are the stakes.

Video-WMP Video-QT

The most important point Keith makes concerns the recent uproar over the video CNN showed this week of a sniper attack on US troops in Iraq. House Armed Services Chairman Duncan Hunter and Congressman Brian Bilbray have come out strong against it calling it a "terrorist snuff film" yet they seem to have no problem with a RNC ad which is really nothing short of a terrorist propaganda film itself.

Transcript

Firedoglake takes Lieberman to task following last night’s debate

Evidently after the debate Lieberman walked up to Ned and said "You goddamn sonovabitch," and something to the effect of "how dare you run those direct mail pieces accusing me of voting for the energy bill in 2005 because of campaign contributions from the oil companies."

Don't know what Joe's so angry about. He should be proud of that record-breaking $15 million dollar war chest, and the things he's done to raise it:

LIEBERMAN REWARDED FOR HIS "BIPARTISAN' ANTI-ENVIRONMENT VOTES WITH ENERGY INDUSTRY CASH: Lieberman has cashed in from his willingness to cast key votes against the environment. In the last year and a half alone, he has received more than $72,000 in corporate PAC contributions from the energy industry – that's almost $1,000 in energy PAC contributions per week since 2005. Since 2000, he's raked in more than $285,000 from the energy industry. This includes PAC contributions from, among others, Texaco, Conoco, British Petroleum and Occidental Petroleum. It also includes contributions from the natural gas industry that will benefit from Lieberman's support of stripping Connecticut's ability to regulate the construction of natural gas terminals in Long Island Sound. Specifically, Lieberman has received contributions from the American Gas Assocation, Consolidated Natural Gas and the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America. Meanwhile, Enron lobbyist Michael Lewan (also formerly Lieberman's chief of staff and a top fundraiser for John Rowland) continues to hold K Street fundraisers for Lieberman in Washington, D.C. [Sources: Center for Responsive Politics, Lieberman report, 2001-2006 Center for Responsive Politics, Lieberman PAC report; Hartford Courant, 8/4/06.]

Update: Joe Lieberman said in 2005 that “The health of the Long Island Sound is crucial to our region’s economy, quality of life and heritage.” Yet just a few months after saying that, he was the only Democrat in the New England to vote for President Bush’s Energy Bill – a bill that strips Connecticut’s right to prevent Long Island Sound from being the site of potentially hazardous liquid natural gas terminals. After casting his vote, Lieberman was rewarded with more than $50,000 in campaign contributions from the energy industry – a ten-fold increase in energy contributions from what he had received in previous years in the same time period. That included Lieberman recently being the guest of honor at a lavish fundraiser sponsored by, among others, Edison Electric and the American Gas Association – both energy special interests that will make a fast buck from Lieberman’s vote to sell out Long Island Sound.

Why, who would ever think that there was any quid-pro-quo going on?

Rush Limbaugh attacks Michael J. Fox: ” …he was either off the medication or he was acting. He is an actor, after all.”

(Click the pic to view the video ad.)

Yesterday Rush Limbaugh accused Michael J. Fox, actor and Parkinson's Disease victim, of deliberately going off of his meds to appear on camera with exaggerated symptoms of his disease for dramatic effect. Fox appeared in a recent Clair McHaskill (D-MO) Senate campaign ad, touting the need for stem cell research. Limbaugh even goes so far as to accuse Fox of faking his symptoms all together.

Audio-MP3: "I stated when I saw the ad, I was commenting to you about it, that he was either off the medication or he was acting. He is an actor, after all."

Rush further claims in his broadcast that he’s gotten a "plethora of emails" claiming Fox has admitted in interviews that he goes off his medication. A tireless search of the Internet produced no such record of any interview, or any statement in which Fox has ever admitted or even suggested that he ever goes off his Parkinson's treatment at all, let alone for the purposes of shaking it up for the television audience.

Dr. Daniel comments on this C&L website: “The chorea that Michael J Fox has in that ad comes from chronic use of dopamine agonists in the context of Parkinson's. They're movements from the medicine, not the disease itself. Although he might have odd movements OFF of his meds, they wouldn't look like the ones in the ad. They'd look like the Parkinson's-like presentation of Muhammed Ali's Dementia Pugilistica. In addition, those movements are hard to imitate accurately because they stem from circuits between the basal ganglia and cortex that you can't just turn off or on. Those aren't volitional circuits. There is little chance he was acting, and if he was, he could only accentuate slightly movementse already had. In other words, this is as tragic as it looks.”

LSB: Rush, have you no shame? Is there anyone or anything that you will not attack, any low you will not seek, or any personal tragedy you will not exploit in the service of your conservative cause?

UPDATE: Fox responded to Limbaugh’s smear.

Many follow U.S. example on detainees

UNITED NATIONS – Several governments around the world have tried to rebut criticism of how they handle detainees by claiming they are only following the U.S. example in the war on terror, the U.N. anti-torture chief said Monday.

Manfred Nowak, the U.N. special investigator on torture, said that when he criticizes governments for their questionable treatment of detainees, they respond by telling him that if the United States does something, it must be all right. He would not name any countries except for Jordan.

"The United States has been the pioneer, if you wish, of human rights and is a country that has a high reputation in the world," Nowak told a news conference. "Today, many other governments are kind of saying, 'But why are you criticizing us, we are not doing something different than what the United States is doing?'"

Nowak said that because of its prominence, the United States has a greater responsibility to uphold international standards for its prisoners so other nations do not use it as an excuse to justify their own behavior.

The remarks were the latest in a tense back-and-forth between Nowak and the United States. He has been an outspoken critic of U.S. detainee policy, chastising the United States for maintaining secret prisons. He has also been skeptical about new legislation that would protect detainees from blatant abuse – such as rape and torture – but does not require automatic legal counsel and specifically bars detainees from protesting their detentions in federal courts.

After Pat’s Birthday

Pat Tillman (left) and his brother Kevin stand in front of a Chinook helicopter in Saudi Arabia before their tour of duty as Army Rangers in Iraq in 2003.

Editor’s note: Kevin Tillman joined the Army with his brother Pat in 2002, and they served together in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pat was killed in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004. Kevin, who was discharged in 2005, has written a powerful, must-read document.

It is Pat’s birthday on November 6, and elections are the day after. It gets me thinking about a conversation I had with Pat before we joined the military. He spoke about the risks with signing the papers. How once we committed, we were at the mercy of the American leadership and the American people. How we could be thrown in a direction not of our volition. How fighting as a soldier would leave us without a voice… until we got out.

Much has happened since we handed over our voice:

Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct threat to the American people, or to the world, or harbored terrorists, or was involved in the September 11 attacks, or received weapons-grade uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD, or had a need to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy, or stop an insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that can’t be called a civil war even though it is. Something like that.

Somehow our elected leaders were subverting international law and humanity by setting up secret prisons around the world, secretly kidnapping people, secretly holding them indefinitely, secretly not charging them with anything, secretly torturing them.

Somehow that overt policy of torture became the fault of a few “bad apples” in the military.

Somehow back at home, support for the soldiers meant having a five-year-old kindergartener scribble a picture with crayons and send it overseas, or slapping stickers on cars, or lobbying Congress for an extra pad in a helmet. It’s interesting that a soldier on his third or fourth tour should care about a drawing from a five-year-old; or a faded sticker on a car as his friends die around him; or an extra pad in a helmet, as if it will protect him when an IED throws his vehicle 50 feet into the air as his body comes apart and his skin melts to the seat.

Somehow the more soldiers that die, the more legitimate the illegal invasion becomes.

Somehow American leadership, whose only credit is lying to its people and illegally invading a nation, has been allowed to steal the courage, virtue and honor of its soldiers on the ground.

Somehow those afraid to fight an illegal invasion decades ago are allowed to send soldiers to die for an illegal invasion they started.

Somehow faking character, virtue and strength is tolerated.

Somehow profiting from tragedy and horror is tolerated.

Somehow the death of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people is tolerated.

Somehow subversion of the Bill of Rights and The Constitution is tolerated.

Somehow suspension of Habeas Corpus is supposed to keep this country safe.

Somehow torture is tolerated.

Somehow lying is tolerated.

Somehow reason is being discarded for faith, dogma, and nonsense.

Somehow American leadership managed to create a more dangerous world.

Somehow a narrative is more important than reality.

Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is.

Somehow the most reasonable, trusted and respected country in the world has become one of the most irrational, belligerent, feared, and distrusted countries in the world.

Somehow being politically informed, diligent, and skeptical has been replaced by apathy through active ignorance.

Somehow the same incompetent, narcissistic, virtueless, vacuous, malicious criminals are still in charge of this country.

Somehow this is tolerated.

Somehow nobody is accountable for this.

In a democracy, the policy of the leaders is the policy of the people. So don’t be shocked when our grandkids bury much of this generation as traitors to the nation, to the world and to humanity. Most likely, they will come to know that “somehow” was nurtured by fear, insecurity and indifference, leaving the country vulnerable to unchecked, unchallenged parasites.

Luckily this country is still a democracy. People still have a voice. People still can take action. It can start after Pat’s birthday.

Brother and Friend of Pat Tillman,
Kevin Tillman

"Would Americans really be so superficial?"

In the magazine THE WEEK, there's a regular feature called "How they see us," in which press opinion from around the world regarding some aspect of the American scene is pithily anthologized. In the October 30 issue, the subject is the Foley scandal, and the little anthology closes with this paragraph regarding what was said by the Spanish newspaper EL PAIS:

Would the American really be so superficial, asked Spain's EL PAIS in an editorial. Given the massive failures of this administration, "from the invasion of Iraq, with its disastrous human and economic effects, to the mismanagement of the hurricane Katrina crisis," it should be a foregone conclusion that the party that enabled and abetted Bush should be punished at the polls. Yet most commentators seem to believe that only the Foley scandal has tipped public opinion definitively away from Bush's Republicans. No further evidence is needed that "the tradition of democracy in America' is in decline.

So what is the story here about Americans? It does seem as though those commentators are right, that it's the Foley scandal that's changed the dynamic of public opinion. What does it mean that Bush's poll numbers were gradually climbing back while he's been twisting arms in Congress to give him the right to torture and to give him all those powers that our Founding Fathers put habeus corpus and a half-dozen amendments into the Constitution to prevent any president from exercising. It does seem as though --before the Foley scandal broke-- the tide was slowly turning the Republicans way, while the Bushites were telling one DEMONSTRABLE lie after another, and while their blunders were making an ever more dangerous mess of the world.

And then comes this tawdry business of the Republican who has the hots for the young male pages, and the leadership that kept it all under cover to protect their power rather than to protect the young men or the values of decency about which they've made a big show of their supposed devotion all these years.

Yes, it's a juicy scandal, and the cover-up is especially important for what it reveals about the utter hypocrisy of the Republicans, about how power is really their only true value.

So I don't think it's so terrible that the American people respond with revulsion to this Foley scandal.

But why did it take this scandal, with its sexual dimension, to get the people's attention? Why wasn't it enough, for so many Americans, that these Bushites are visibly assaulting the Constitution that defines what this country stands for, that they have our friends around the world to recoil with revulsion from this Bushite America, that they lie about everything, that they are quickly creating the very kind of unchecked and unprincipled power against which this country stood in opposition?

More

Vets Group Proves GOP Does Not Support Troops

Paul Rieckhoff, Executive Director and founder of Iraq & Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), the country's first and largest Iraq Veterans group, announced on Friday that IAVA has made available a web site giving the results of their analysis of who in Congress truly backs up their words on supporting the troops.

"Sure, politicians say they support the troops. But whose votes back up their rhetoric, and who's just wearing an American flag lapel pin?" asked Rieckhoff in a Huffington Post column last week. "Now there's an easy way to know for sure. The nonprofit, nonpartisan Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America's Action Fund has tallied up every Congressional vote cast on troops' and veterans' issues for the last five years. We've crunched the numbers, and given every legislator a letter grade - the IAVA Congressional Rating."

It is a wonderful idea to be sure and IAVA is certainly the organization to do it. So I thought I would go out over the weekend and do some crunching of my own to document what I think we already know about who in Congress really sticks up for the military and who are merely support-the-troops hypocrites.

I cover the Senate so I decided to do my digging there and what I found will not surprise anyone. IAVA analyzed 155 Senate votes that have taken place since September 11, 2001 and, to calculate their ratings, looked at "…each piece of legislation that affected troops, veterans or military families." IAVA then matched each Senator's votes with the organization's own view of what constitutes true support for active troops, Veterans and their families.

IAVA assigned an 'A' through 'F' grade using the scale at left showing the percentage of time each Senator has indeed supported troops and Veterans. As someone who has watched Senate Republicans vote time and time again against legislation that would benefit military families, the results did not shock me in the slightest.

No Senator in either party was given an A grade by IAVA. Thirteen Senators received a rating of A- and all of those were Democrats. A total of 23 Senators were given a B+ rating and 22 of those were Democrats as well. The other was Independent James Jeffords of Vermont, who caucuses with the Democrats.

Cutting to the chase -- and, perhaps more than anything I've seen in recent years, truly defining the difference between the two parties -- is that the worst grade received by a Senate Democrat was higher than the best grade granted a Republican. GOP-lite Ben Nelson (D-NE) received the lowest grade of any Democrat with a B- while Lincoln Chafee (R-RI), Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Arlen Specter (R-PA) managed a C grade from IAVA.

And, when I averaged the scores of both the Democratic and Republican caucuses by assigning the numeric midpoint of the letter grade received by each Senator, which party truly supports the troops was made remarkably clear: The 44 Democrats and Jeffords had an average military-support grade of B+, while the 55 Republicans, who beat their chests with disgusting regularity about how strong they are on military issues, averaged a pathetic D.

And how about the guys Americans will be voting on in two weeks? Republican Senator Mike DeWine -- you know, he's the guy who starts one of his campaign's television ads with "While they're fighting for us abroad, he's fighting for them at home" -- came in with a D+. His opponent, Democrat Sherrod Brown, was given a B rating for his military votes in the House, despite DeWine's bogus claim in an October 1 Meet the Press debate that Brown "has voted against funding for the military when it really counted."

Let's look at some of the other GOP stalwarts trying to keep their Senate seats this year by telling voters how much they fight for military families. George Allen (R-VA), Conrad Burns (R-MT) and James Talent (R-MO) couldn't manage to get over a D+. John Ensign (R-NV), Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Rick Santorum (R-PA) were all rated a lowly D- by the largest group dedicated to the troops and Veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of course, of those Republican Senators, only Burns has actually served in the military himself.

And here's more stunning hypocrisy: In May, 2006, while giving a speech at the Nevada Republican Convention, Mr. D-minus himself, John Ensign, said "Democratic leaders like Nancy Pelosi and Ted Kennedy -- let me tell you, I say this without reservation -- they have hurt our military" and, of Kennedy, Ensign once said "Every time Ted Kennedy gets up and speaks (against the war) he undermines our troops."

Pelosi and Kennedy both received a B+ rating from IAVA.

This is an incredibly interesting and enlightening resource and everyone who is really interested in finding out who is supporting our men and women in uniform with action and not just words, should pay a visit. You can go here to see a list showing how each of the 100 Senators scored -- and you'll even find out which Republicans were given a failing grade of F by IAVA.

While assigning a simple letter grade to the choices being made by elected officials may seem to oversimplify the matter, these ratings are the result of exhaustive research and IAVA Executive Director Rieckhoff makes clear that these are serious decisions, where there's no room for fake patriotism or posturing.

"Politicians' choices in Washington have a real human cost: Troops on the streets of Iraq with inadequate body armor. Veterans waitlisted for treatment at the VA. Military widows facing cuts in their survivor benefits," wrote Rieckhoff last week. "There is no excuse for a low score."

$34,000

$34,000. The amount conservative pundit Armstrong Williams will have to repay of the $240,000 government contract he received for promoting President Bush’s No Child Left Behind agenda. Under a settlement reached with prosecutors, Williams also “admits no wrongdoing.”

NOTE: It seems the conservative pundit who’s taking heat for accepting $240K from the Bush Administration in exchange for hyping the No Child Left Behind program may go on the ‘down low’ from time to time. In 1997, Armstrong Williams was sued by a male employee, Stephen Gregory, for sexual harassment. The suit said Armstrong “grabbed [Gregory’s] buttocks and penis, tried to kiss him, and climbed into his hotel-room bed asking for affection while they were traveling together.” Williams vehemently denies all, but reportedly settled the lawsuit for an undisclosed amount of cash.

LSB: it appears that Williams is another of the closeted anti-gay group. Seems out and proud would serve these folks a lot better, because “it’s the lies, stupid!”